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 3 1924 103 924 381 
 
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THE 
 
 LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 CRITICALLY EXAMINED 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS 
 
 SCransIatclJ front tfre JFouttJi ©ertnan ISbitton 
 By GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 SECOND EDITION. IN ONE VOLUME 
 
 ILonbon 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. 
 
 NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO. 
 
 1892 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO THE PRESENT EDITION, 
 BY PROFESSOR OTTO PFLEIDERER, D.D. 
 
 The Leben Jesu of. David Friedrich Strauss, which 
 was published in the year 1835, marked an epoch 
 in the history of theology; On the one hand, this 
 book represents the crisis in theology, at which the 
 doubts and critical objections of centuries as to the 
 credibility of the Bible narratives had accumulated 
 in such overwhelming volume as to break through 
 and sweep away all the defences of orthodox 
 apologetics. On the other hand, in the very com- 
 pleteness of the destructive criticism of past tradi- 
 tion lay the germs of a new science of constructive 
 critical inquiry, the work of which was to bring 
 to light the truth of history. It is quite true that 
 the Life of Jesus of 1835 was far from perfect, as 
 judged by the present standard of scientific criti- 
 cism, and Biblical science has long since advanced 
 beyond it. Nevertheless, it cannot be disputed that 
 it takes rank amongst the standard works which 
 are secure of a permanent place in literature for all 
 time, for the reason that they give final expression 
 to the spirit of their age, and represent typically 
 one of its characteristic tendencies., The liberating 
 and purifying influence which such works exert 
 
VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 on their own time, as well as the service they 
 render in opening out new lines of thought, lends 
 to them, for all coming generations, a peculiar value 
 as admirable weapons in the great fight for truth 
 and freedom. Indeed, if our scientists are to be 
 believed, when they tell us that the development 
 of the individual is only an abbreviated repetition 
 of the similar but much slower phases of the 
 development of the species, it is hardly too much 
 to maintain, that in the present and in the future 
 every individual who determines to make his way 
 from the bondage of a naive trust in authority and 
 tradition into the freedom and light of mature 
 thought must pass through precisely that stage of 
 thorough-going logical negative criticism which is 
 represented by Strauss's work in a unique manner. 
 As, according to Christian ethics, the formation of 
 a pure moral character is possible only by the death 
 of the old Adam, the rise of true religious con- 
 victions is by a similar Stirb und merde, die and 
 come to life. The imaginary lights of mythological 
 tradition must be put out, that the eye may dis- 
 tinguish the false from the true in the twilight of the 
 Biblical origins of our religion. The ancient struc- 
 tures of belief, which the childish fancy of men had 
 constructed of truth and poetry, Wahrheit und 
 Dichtung, must be taken down and cleared away, in 
 order that a new erection of more durable materials 
 may be raised. To all earnest seekers after truth, 
 the Leben Jesn of Strauss may be helpful, not as 
 supplying the truth ready to hand, but as stripping 
 the bandages of prejudice from the eyes, and so 
 enabling them clearly to see and rightly to seek it. 
 
 For these reasons it is obvious that the publica- 
 tion of a new edition of the English translation of 
 
INTRODUCTION. VU 
 
 this work needs no justification. It is only those 
 who consider the first appearance of the book in- 
 excusable and unfortunate that can call in question 
 the desirability of its republication. But no one 
 can hold such an opinion who is able to follow the 
 course of the history of the religious thought of 
 Protestantism. The critical process which reached 
 its conclusion in Strauss's book, with its negative or 
 revolutionary results, was latent from the beginning 
 in the life-blood of Protestantism. The theologians 
 of the Reformed Churches of the sixteenth century 
 subjected the traditions of Catholic Church history 
 to keen historical criticism ; and if they did not then 
 think of extending its operations to Biblical tradi- 
 tion, we are justified in recognising in the well- 
 known declarations of Luther, as to the inferior 
 value of certain books of the Bible, and as to the 
 unimportance of physical in comparison with spiritual 
 miracles, plain predictions of the line of develop- 
 ment which Protestant theology was destined 
 ultimately to take. 
 
 It is intelligible enough that the criticism of the 
 Bible could not arise amongst the orthodox theo- 
 logians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
 They were restrained by a rigid doctrine of inspir- 
 ation from an unprejudiced treatment of the Bible, 
 and were moreover too much absorbed in dogmatic 
 controversies and the defence of their confessions of 
 faith, to feel the need of more searching Biblical 
 studies. It was amongst English Free-thinkers and, 
 Deists that the credibility of the Biblical narratives 
 was first seriously assailed, and with so much tem- 
 per as to greatly detract from the scientific value of 
 the result. Thomas Woolston's Discourses on the 
 Miracles of our Saviour (six in number, 1 727-1 729) 
 
Vm INTRODUCTION. 
 
 are specially noteworthy. They attack the literal 
 interpretation of the miracles as ludicrous and offen- 
 sive, and advocate the allegorical interpretation of 
 them as figures and parables of spiritual truths. 
 It is possible to find in Woolston's theory an an- 
 ticipation of the mythical principle of interpreta- 
 tion which Strauss opposes to the rationalistic one. 
 Reimarus, the author of the Wolfenbiittel Frag- 
 ments, by the publication of which Lessing threw 
 German theology into a ferment, occupies the same 
 position as the English Deists, and indeed owed 
 much to their influence. But at the same time a 
 noteworthy difference is observable from the very 
 first between the way in which Lessing treated 
 these questions and their treatment by the earlier 
 Free-thinkers; and the difference is characteristic 
 of the two schools. German rationalism bears the 
 marks of its origin in the idealistic optimism of the 
 philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff, and remains in 
 sympathy with the ethical spirit of Biblical religion ; 
 whilst the but faintly religious naturalism of the 
 English Deists leads them, with their rejection of 
 the Biblical miracles, to attack the religion of the 
 Bible, and drag down into the mire its representa- 
 tives and heroes. With this the German Rational- 
 ists have no sympathy. They were unable to treat 
 the Biblical narratives of miracles as historical occur- 
 rences, but they were not prepared on that account 
 to regard them as deceit and delusion on the part of 
 Biblical heroes, or as the invention of Biblical narra- 
 tors : their reverence for the Bible and its religion 
 kept them from both of these inferences. They 
 tried to get over the difficulty in two ways, — either 
 they looked upon the narratives of miracles, particu- 
 larly those of the Old Testament, as popular reli- 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 gious legends, traditions, or " myths," of the same 
 kind as the myths to be met with in all heathen 
 religions ; or, on the other hand, regarding them as 
 containing the actual history of perfectly natural 
 events, they ascribed the miraculous appearance 
 and form which they bear simply to the mistaken 
 judgment of the narrators, or, in other cases, to 
 the erroneous view of the interpreters. The latter 
 method was employed especially by Dr. Paulus in 
 his commentary on the Gospels, in which he seeks, 
 with a great display of learning and ingenuity, to 
 explain all the miracles of the New Testament. 
 The theologian Schleiermacher also made frequent 
 use of it in his Lectures on the Life of Jesus ; and 
 traces of it are to be met with even in the commen- 
 taries of theologians of the supernaturalist school — 
 as, for instance, Olshausen's. The inexcusable vio- 
 lence which was thereby done to the Biblical narra- 
 tives, by which they are forced to say something 
 quite different from what the unsophisticated narra- 
 tors intended them to say, according to the plain 
 sense of their words, was not felt ; nor were these 
 interpreters conscious of how much the Gospels are 
 deprived of their choicest treasures of ideal truth 
 and poetic beauty by this method of treatment, and 
 this only for the sake of securing instead miserable 
 common- place stories as the final outcome of 
 critical examination. 
 
 The favour with which this radically false ration- 
 alistic interpretation of the Gospels was received by 
 very many German theologians at the beginning of 
 this century finds its sole explanation and excuse 
 in the prevailing view of the time— that our Gospels 
 were written very soon after the death of Jesus, 
 during the first generation of Christians, and two of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 them by eye-witnesses — the apostles Matthew and 
 John. On this supposition, the occurrence in the 
 Gospels of unhistorical elements, of religious legends, 
 such as might be without hesitation allowed in the 
 Old Testament, could not be thought' of. Or if the 
 admissibility of this point of view was granted in 
 the case of the birth-stories of the opening chapters 
 of Matthew and Luke (as by De Wette), objection 
 was felt against its application to the miracles of the 
 public life of Jesus. Thus, on the question of the 
 historicity of the gospel narratives, theologians held 
 views which were confused, undecided, contradic- 
 tory, and lacking thoroughness. This state of things 
 could not last ; simple faith had at every point lost 
 its security ; doubt attached to the miraculous nar- 
 ratives of the New no less than to those of the Old 
 Testament. But before Strauss no one had had the 
 courage to explain all these narratives of both Testa- 
 ments alike by the logical application of one and the 
 same principle ; and mainly for the reason, that the 
 critics were all under the bondage of the supposition 
 of the apostolic authorship of the Gospels of Matthew 
 and John. Yet even this supposition had received 
 various shocks prior to Strauss, Critics had been 
 unable to close their eyes to the fact that there are 
 differences between these two Gospels particularly, 
 of such a fundamental nature as to preclude the pos- 
 sibility of both being right, and therefore of both 
 having been written by eye-witnesses and apostles. 
 Under the influence of dogmatic and sentimental 
 motives, Schleiermacher and his disciples accepted 
 it as an a priori certainty that John is to be preferred 
 to Matthew ; and from this secure position, as was 
 imagined, these theologians assailed the narrative of 
 Matthew at all points, and undermined the tradition 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 of its apostolic authority. But suppose the same 
 arguments with which they assailed Matthew might 
 be used against their favourite evangelist John ? 
 What if it could be shown that his narrative is in no 
 respect more probable, but, on the contrary, more 
 improbable, than that of Matthew ? In that case, 
 must not the critical verdict which those theologians 
 had given against Matthew so triumphantly and 
 without regard to its consequences, apply equally to 
 John, and thereby overthrow the only remaining 
 pillar of apostolic authority for the gospel tradi- 
 tion ? 
 
 This logical consequence, which was at the time 
 deemed an unheard-of innovation, notwithstanding 
 the opinions of a few individual critics (Vogel, Bret- 
 schneider), Strauss had the courage to draw. By 
 that act he cast off the fetters by which the examin- 
 ation of the Gospels had till then been bound, and 
 secured a free field for a thorough-going criticism of 
 them. Since the external evidence of the authorship 
 of the Gospels is not of a kind or a date such as to 
 compel us to consider the tradition of their apostolic 
 origin established, and as the matter of all the 
 Gospels alike is not free from historical improba- 
 bility, there is nothing, Strauss argued, to prevent 
 our complete abandonment of the historicity of their 
 miraculous narratives, though the Rationalists con- 
 tinue to maintain it, or our treating them as religious 
 legends or myths, similar to those which, as was ad- 
 mitted, the Old Testament contained. The novelty 
 in the work of Strauss was not the application of 
 the principle of " myth" to Biblical narratives ; others 
 had already made use of it in the case of the Old 
 and to some extent in the case of the New Testa- 
 ment ; the originality lay in the uncompromising 
 
XU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 thoroughness with which the principle was applied 
 to every section of the gospel story ; the originality, 
 lay in the merciless acumen and clearness with 
 which the discrepancies between the Gospels and 
 the difficulties presented to the critical understand- « 
 ing by their narratives were laid bare, and with • 
 which all the subterfuges of supernaturalist apolo- 
 gists, as well as all the forced and artificial interpre- 
 tations of semi-critical Rationalists, were exposed, s^ 
 thereby cutting off all ways of escape from the final 
 consequences of criticism. , 
 
 The merciless thoroughness and unreserved 
 honesty with which criticism did its negative work 
 in this book, by exposing the baselessness of the 
 supposed knowledge of the gospel history, pro- 
 duced a profound shock amongst theologians and 
 laymen. It was not merely the untaught multitude 
 who believed that the foundations of Christianity 
 must perish with the miraculous stories of the Bible; 
 learned theologians were distressed as the daring 
 critic so rudely, and without any regard to conse- 
 quences, roused them from the illusions of their senti- 
 mental or speculative dogmatism and their precipi- 
 tate treaty of peace between faith and knowledge,; 
 "Strauss was hated," as Baur truly said, " because the 
 spirit of the time was unable to look upon, its own 
 portrait, which he held up before it in faithful, clearly ■■ 
 drawn lines. The spirit of this age resists with all 
 its power the proof of its ignorance on a matter about 
 which it has long thought itself certain. Instead of 
 acknowledging what had to be acknowledged, if any 
 progress was to be made, all possible attempts were 
 instituted to create fresh illusions as to the true state 
 of the case, by reviving obsolete hypotheses and by 
 theological charlatanism. But a higher certainty as 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xlii 
 
 to the truth of the gospel history can be attained in 
 no other way than by acknowledging, on the baisis 
 of Strauss's criticism, that our previous knowledge is 
 no knowledge at all." But here we come upon the 
 limits of the criticism of Strauss : it brought home to 
 men the fact of their want of knowledge, but it did 
 not conduct to the required new and positive know- 
 ledge. This Strauss was unable to do, because he 
 offered a critique of the gospel history only, without 
 a critique of the documents which form the sources 
 of this history. 
 
 In these words Baur has accurately described the 
 main defect of Strauss's book. When Strauss drew 
 from the discrepancies and contradictions of the 
 various narratives of the Gospels the conclusion that 
 they have all alike little credibility, the conclusion 
 was intelligible enough in reply to the ingenious 
 artifices of the traditional harmonists, who main- 
 tained that in spite of the contradictions ; the evan- 
 gelists were all alike worthy of credit ; but really 
 this line of procedure on the part of Strauss con- 
 formed as little as that of the harmonists to the 
 principles of strict historical inquiry. These prin-, 
 ciples require us to examine the relative value of 
 the various sources with reference to their age, to 
 the situation, the character, the interests,aand 'a;irns 
 of their author; to assign accordingly to one account 
 a higher measure of credibility than to another>| and 
 so, by distinguishing between what is- better and 
 what is not so well attested, to make out what is 
 probable and reach the original matter of fact. It 
 is true Strauss made some advance towards such 
 a differentiation of the relative value of the gospel 
 narratives ; and particularly with reference to the 
 inferior historical value of the Johannine in com- 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 parison with the Synoptic narrative, he has made 
 acute observations, the worth of which ought to be 
 estimated the higher as they boldly opposed the 
 then dominant preference for the Gospel of John, 
 and effectively prepared the way for the criticism of 
 Baur. But it was not Straxiss's /orie to prepare, as 
 the foundation of the material critique of the gospel 
 history, a thorough critique of the literary sources, 
 nor, in the state of the general science of criticism 
 at the time, could this be very well expected. When 
 all deductions have been made, to Strauss belongs 
 the honour of having given, by his criticism of the 
 gospel narratives, the most effective impulse to a 
 more penetrating examination of the sources of the 
 gospel story, and of having prepared the way for 
 this to no small extent, particularly as regards the 
 Fourth Gospel. Baur's classical critique of this 
 Gospel completed in this direction the criticism of 
 Strauss, and laid its foundations deeper. As re- 
 gards the Synoptic Gospels, Weisse and Ewald, 
 Holtzmann and Volkmar, did good work towards 
 clearing up the relations of the Gospels to each 
 other, especially in establishing the priority of 
 Mark, by which a firmer basis was laid for the 
 positive decision of the question as to the historical 
 foundations of the gospel tradition. The fruit of 
 this critique of the sourcfes, carried on from various 
 sides with painstaking industry, was the new litera- 
 ture dealing with the life of Jesus, which, just a 
 generation after the first Leden Jesu of Strauss, 
 took up again the problems it had raised, but in a 
 new fashion, and with improved critical apparatus. 
 We shall have further on to refer to Strauss's new 
 life of Jesus. 
 
 The same scholar, Weisse, who was the first to 
 
INTRODUCTION. - XV 
 
 point out the want in Strauss's book of a more 
 satisfactory critique of the sources, and who had 
 sought to supply this defect in his Evangelische 
 Geschichte (1838), called attention at the same time 
 to a defect in the mythical theory of Strauss. 
 Weisse was fully agreed with Strauss so far, that 
 we must acknowledge the presence of religious 
 myths in miraculous narratives of the Bible, but he 
 was not satisfied with the way in which Strauss had 
 explained their origin. According to Strauss, the 
 early Christians had simply transferred to Jesus as 
 the actual Messiah the miraculous legends of the 
 Old Testament, out of which the Jews were sup- 
 posed to have composed the miraculous portrait of 
 their expected Messiah ; and he was right in think- 
 ing that the miraculous stories of the Old Testa- 
 ment do undoubtedly supply the motives and models 
 of no few narratives in the New Testament, but 
 not, surely, of all. Precisely the chief miracles — 
 the birth of Jesus, his baptism, transfiguration, 
 resurrection, the change of water into wine at Cana, 
 the stilling of the storm, and walking on the sea — 
 violence must be used to explain these miracles by 
 reference to Old Testament types, and the Jewish 
 idea of the Messiah offers no lines corresponding 
 to these. At this point therefore, at all events, we 
 must look about us for another method of explana- 
 tion. And Weisse was undoubtedly right in point- 
 ing to the spontaneous productivity of the Christian 
 spirit in the primitive Church as the source of the 
 miraculous narratives, in which it gave expression 
 in symbolic and allegorical forms to its ideal truth 
 and the new inspired life of which it was conscious. 
 Not that these narratives were intended by the 
 narrators themselves to be merely allegories, or 
 
I i 
 
 XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 symbolical illustrations of spiritual truths ; but the 
 religious imagination gave birth to these illustra- 
 tions after the manner of unconscious poetry, that 
 is, without distinguishing between the poetic form 
 and the essential truth of the idea ; believing, as the 
 religious imagination did, in the ideal content of the 
 narratives, and being at the same time unable to 
 give vivid and sensible expression to it in any other 
 than the material form of outward miracles, it in- 
 voluntarily came to believe also in the reality of the 
 symbolical form of the narrative to which it had 
 itself given rise ;' it conceived idea and history both 
 together in such inseparable combination as to con- 
 fer on each equal truth and certainty. 
 
 In the production of such ideal narratives the 
 same process is observable to-day in the experience of 
 simple religious believers : feeling the ideal truth of 
 the content of the stories, they come to believe also 
 in the reality of the outward history in which the 
 idea has for them been incorporated. But the critical 
 understanding of the historical inquirer is permitted, 
 and indeed is bound, to distinguish clearly and defi- 
 nitely, as the simple-minded believer cannot do, be- 
 tween the spiritual idea and the outward form of its 
 representation, and to find in the former both the 
 productive power and the permanent kernel within 
 the outward husk. This explanation of the miracu- 
 lous legends of the Bible is not only more correct 
 and profound than Strauss's from the point of view 
 of historical science, but for the religious conscious- 
 ness it is far less objectionable, as Weisse observes 
 with truth ; inasmuch as in this case the legends do 
 not appear as the worthless product of the idle play 
 of the imagination, but as the normal expression, 
 rationally and psychologically intelligible, of a crea- 
 
INTRODUCTION. XVll 
 
 tive religious spirit, which displays its treasures of 
 ideal truth in this legendary and mythical poetry for 
 the benefit of the originators and the wider world. 
 Nor should it be left unnoticed that Strauss himself 
 had already indicated in a few cases this more pro- 
 found explanation of myths by means of the re- 
 ligious idea. At the close of his interpretation of 
 the story of the Transfiguration (§ 107), for instance, 
 he says, we may see from this example very plainly 
 how the natural system of explanation, by insisting 
 on the historical certainty of the narratives, lets go 
 their ideal truth, sacrificing the content to the form 
 of the story, whereas the mythical interpretation, by 
 resigning the historical material body of such narra- 
 tives, really rescues and preserves their idea, their 
 soul and spirit. He might, however, have unfolded 
 the idea of the Transfiguration with greater definite- 
 ness and fulness if he had not merely alluded to the 
 dogmatic discussion of Paul in 2 Cor. iii. 7 sq., but 
 had recognised it as the real theme of the gospel 
 story, and had interpreted the latter accordingly. In 
 the same way, in the case of the story of the birth 
 of Jesus (Luke i. and ii.), Strauss laid great emphasis 
 on the analogies and figures of the Old Testament, 
 which, after all, could only contribute as secondary 
 motives in the formation of this birth-story, while 
 its real origin is to be sought in the Pauline Messi- 
 anic idea of " the Son of God, according to the spirit 
 of holiness" (Rom. i. 4; i Cor, xv. 45 sq.), a fact 
 Strauss overlooked. This defect takes a really 
 surprising form when he comes to explain the 
 miracles of the Fourth Gospel, which, in complete 
 independence of any suggestion from the Old Testa- 
 ment, are entirely based upon the dogmatic ideas of 
 the Alexandrian theology, and simply supply their 
 
XVIU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 transparent symbolic vestment. How much more 
 truthfully and profoundly can the miracle at Cana, 
 or the raising of Lazarus, or the cure of the man 
 born blind,, be interpreted from this point of view 
 than from that of Strauss ! In this respect Baur's 
 interpretation Of the Fourth Gospel was an immense 
 advance beyond Strauss, as the latter himself ac- 
 knowledged subsequently. 
 
 With the above defects of Strauss's method of 
 interpretation is connected, in the last place, the fact 
 that the outcome of his book in reference to the de- 
 cisive question, — What, then, is the historical kernel 
 of the evangelical tradition, what. the real character 
 of Jesus and of his work ? — is meagre and unsatis- 
 factory. In the closing essay at the end of his work, 
 it is true, he endeavoured to restore doghiatically 
 what he had destroyed critically, but he effected this 
 in a way which amounted to the transformation of 
 religious faith in Christ into a metaphysical allegory. 
 The predications of faith with regard to Christ are 
 to be regarded as containing predications as to the 
 relations of the human race to the Absolute, as to 
 the self-abasement of the Infinite to the Finite, 
 and the return of the InfinitQ,to itself, as to mind 
 and its power over nature, and its dependence 
 on it, and the likci In all this Strauss was led 
 astray by the influence of the Hegelian philosophy, 
 which looked for the truth of religion in logical and 
 metaphysical categories instead of in the facts and 
 experiences of moral feeling and volition. But as 
 there is no essential relation between these meta- 
 physical ideas and the person of Jesus, he is made 
 arbitrarily, as any one else might have been, an 
 illustration and example of absolute ideas to which 
 he stands in no more intimate relation than the rest 
 
INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 of the human race ; whereby the special historical 
 importance of the originator of the Christian com- 
 munity, and of the first model of its religious and 
 moral life, is not only left without explanation, but is 
 lost altogether, a result which does violence not 
 merely to the religious consciousness, but is unsatis- 
 factory to historical science, which is concerned to 
 understand Jesus as the originating source of 
 Christianity. It is quite true that we can go with 
 Strauss in his answer to the alternative of Ullmann 
 whether the church created the Christ of the Gos- 
 pels or he the church, by declaring the alternative 
 false, and the two things in so far both tenable as 
 the Christ of the Gospels is a creation of the faith 
 of the church, but this faith an effect of the person 
 of the historical Jesus. We find this answer to 
 Ullmann just, but cannot free Strauss from the 
 charge of having worked out in his book the first 
 only of these two positions, and of having passed 
 over the second. He has shown no more than 
 that the church formed the mythical traditions about 
 Jesus out of its faith in him as the Messiah. But 
 how did the church come by the faith that Jesus of 
 Nazareth was the Messiah ? To this question — 
 which is the main question of a Life of Jesus — 
 Strauss gave his readers no answer. Undoubtedly 
 it can be urged in his defence that the criticism of 
 the sources was at that time still in a condition of 
 too great confusion and uncertainty to permit any 
 successful answer to that problem of the historical 
 kernel of the life of Jesus. Nevertheless the difii- 
 culty of the matter could not relieve the historian 
 of the duty of at least making an attempt to. trace 
 from the materials left to him, as the residue of his 
 critical analysis of the deeds and words of Jesus, thq 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 main outlines of his. character, to bring out the pecu- 
 liarity and originality of his religious genius, and in 
 this way to discover in the original personality and 
 reforming activity of Jesus the originating cause of 
 the rise of the community of his disciples and their 
 faith in him as the Messiah and his divine mis- 
 sion. If in his closing essay Strauss had presented 
 a religious and moral description of Jesus of this 
 nature, instead of a metaphysical allegory as a sub- 
 stitute for the shattered mythological conception of 
 tradition, though the objection of the church to his 
 work would not have been wanting, it would then 
 undoubtedly have taken a less passionately denun- 
 ciatory form than was the case, in consequence of the 
 purely nega:tive character of the result, unrelieved 
 by any modifying conclusion. 
 
 In proportion to the strength of the feeling of 
 these defects, shared by readers of all parties, was 
 the urgency of the duty laid upon scientific theolo- 
 gians of preparing, by a renewed and more thorough 
 examination of the Gospels, the stones of a new 
 edifice to be reared upon the site laid bare by 
 Strauss's critical labours. "In the darkness which 
 criticism produces, by putting out all the lights 
 hitherto thought to be historical, the eye has first 
 to learn by gradual habit to again distinguish a few 
 single objects," as Strauss himself remarked in his 
 third edition. But this difficult task was not accom- 
 plished by those apologists who endeavoured to 
 make good the damage by the antiquated arts of 
 the harmonists, with their petty concessions, mysti- 
 fications, and evasions, but by those courageous in- 
 quirers who, undeterred by dogmatic considerations, 
 sought by a strictly historical method to set in the 
 true light the exact composition and the mutual re- 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 lations of the evangelical documents. We have 
 already remarked that Baur and his disciples, the 
 so-called Tubingen school, took a leading part in 
 this work, while other independent students co- 
 operated with them, supplementing and correcting 
 their labours. This, however, is not the place to 
 follow these inquiries in detail ; but we must glance 
 at their result as regards the historical treatment 
 of the life of Jesus. 
 
 For an entire generation the examination of the 
 literary details of the Gospels had occupied theo- 
 logians so exclusively that the interest in the 
 supreme problems of the evangelical history seemed 
 to have been almost lost sight of But this interest 
 was newly awakened, and made itself felt far beyond 
 learned theological circles, by the nearly simul- 
 taneous publication of Renan's Vie de Jdsus and 
 Strauss's second Leben Jesu fiir das deutsche Volk 
 (1864). These two works, with all their dissimi- 
 larity, resemble each other in this, that they were 
 both written by scholars of the highest eminence, 
 not for the learned world, but for educated people 
 generally, both throwing overboard, therefore, the 
 ballast of learned detailed criticism, and present- 
 ing the results of their inquiries in a language 
 intelligible to everybody, and attractive from its 
 ■literary excellence. They are alike also in this, 
 that both subordinate the criticism of the gospel 
 traditions to a positive description of the personality 
 of Jesus, of his essential religious tendency and 
 genius, of his relation to the Messianic idea of his 
 nation, to the law and the temple, to the hierarchy 
 and religious and political parties of his time, both 
 seeking an explanation of the reformatory success 
 of the commencement, and also of the tragical issue 
 
XXll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of his labours in these factors. But inasmuch as 
 Strauss confines himself to what he can deem the 
 ascertained or probable facts, after a strict critique 
 of the sources, the portrait delineated by him turns 
 out naturally somewhat indistinct and defective in 
 its outlines ; the meagreness of the result answers to 
 the caution of his historical conscience. Renan, on 
 the other hand, feels no such scruples ; in his criti- 
 cism of the sources he goes to work with a much 
 lighter heart, and claims for the biographer the 
 right to help himself over the lacuncB and obscuri- 
 ties or contradictions of his authorities by calling in 
 the aid of the creative imagination, with its powers 
 of combination and inference. By this means he 
 has succeeded in presenting a life of Jesus distin- 
 guished for its epic vividness and dramatic develop- 
 ment, but its aesthetic charm has been purchased at 
 the price of its historical solidity. This novelistic 
 feature becomes most questionable when it wanders 
 into the vagaries of the naturalistic explanation of 
 the miracles (e.g. the raising of Lazarus), and in 
 such cases casts reflections on the moral character 
 of Jesus. On the other hand, for Renan must be 
 claimed the merit of having emphasised the social 
 aspects of the Messianic mission of Jesus, and of 
 having attempted to sketch the development of his 
 inner life, a change in the phases of his reformatory 
 labours. As to Strauss's second Life of Jesus, its 
 strength lies, as in the first, not so much in the first 
 part, which deals with the positive side of the history, 
 as in the second part, where it comes to treat of the 
 mythical side of the history. But in the second 
 work, in the place of the analysis of the traditions 
 given in the first, we get a synthetic presentation of 
 the rise and gradual growth and elaboration, in 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXUI 
 
 more and more exalted forms, of the idea of the 
 Christ of mythical tradition ; the successive stages of 
 the development of the Christian consciousness are 
 set forth by reference to the genesis of the ideas of 
 Christ's person, power, and supernatural exaltation. 
 Thus this genetic method of treatment, followed in 
 the later work, supplants and confirms the result of 
 the former one ; while the latter had shown that the 
 miraculous narratives in the Gospels are myth and 
 not history, the new Life shows how in these 
 myths, after all, history is reflected, namely, the 
 history of the religious consciousness of the Chris- 
 tian community. The great advance of this new 
 treatment upon that of the previous work was the 
 fruit of the intervening studies of Baur and his 
 disciples, to which Renan, to the detriment of the 
 critical and historical value of his work, had not 
 paid sufificient attention. 
 
 The two works of Renan and Strauss were fol- 
 lowed by a deluge of literature on the life of 
 Jesus, the historical value of which .is very various. 
 To give an account of all these books would require 
 more space than is at my disposal. I must confine 
 myself to the work of Theodor Keim, an English 
 translation of which has been published under the 
 " Theological Translation Fund." The work is so 
 distinguished by the richness of its learned material, 
 and the ability with which it is handled, as to con- 
 stitute it the best representation of the present 
 condition of our knowledge of the life of Jesus. 
 Keim's standpoint differs from that of Strauss by the 
 warmth of religious feeling and enthusiasm which 
 pervades his entire work, while at the same time no 
 fetters are laid upon the critical reason ; freedom 
 and piety join hands, in order to be just to the 
 
XXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 double claim which the truth of history on the one 
 hand, and the church on the other, are justified in 
 presenting. The most brilliant part of Keim's work 
 is his delineation of the religious personality of 
 Jesus, — how in it were combined, in a unique de- 
 gree, strength and harmony, complete openness 
 towards the world, with perfect inwardness towards 
 God, so as to become the source of a new religion, 
 in which self-surrender and liberty, humility and 
 energy, enthusiasm and lucidity, are blended, and 
 the chasm of previous ages between God and man 
 filled up. His description of the psychological 
 development of the Messianic consciousness of 
 Jesus out of inward experiences and outward im- 
 pressions and impulses, is also drawn with great 
 delicacy of touch ; at all events, it is an able and 
 suggestive effort to penetrate, as far as the state of 
 the sources admits, by means of sympathetic and 
 reproductive divination, to the personal experi- 
 ences and mental states of the religious genius from 
 whom a new epoch in the world's religious history 
 proceeded. Still, as in the kindred efforts of Renan, 
 Weizsacker, Beyschlag and Weiss, we may never 
 forget how much, with the poverty of the ascer- 
 tained historical materials, is left to the uncontrolled 
 power of combination and divination ; in other 
 words, to the imagination, which at best can do no 
 more than roughly and approximately arrive at the 
 truth, while it may no less easily go far astray. It 
 is certainly to be deemed an advance that in the 
 more recent works on the life of Jesus the subject of 
 main interest is not so much the external miracles 
 as the internal, the problems of the peculiar nature 
 and development of his religious consciousness and 
 character, his view of his vocation, his attitude towards 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 the Messianic idea, and the like. Yet this advance 
 is manifestly attended by the temptation to sacrifice 
 the caution of historical criticism to the production 
 of a biography as rich in detail and as dramatic in 
 movement as possible, and to represent things as 
 the ascertained results of critical examination, which 
 are really nothing more than subjective combina- 
 tions of the writers, to which a certain degree of 
 probability may be attached, though the possibility 
 will always remain, that the actual facts were some- 
 thing quite different. The subde examination of the 
 question, whether Jesus himself ever declared him- 
 self to be the Messiah, or spoke of his return in 
 celestial glory, by Martineau, in his Seat of Authority 
 in Religion, is in this respect deserving of all atten- 
 tion, and is of great value, as at least supplying a 
 needed lesson in caution in view of the excessive 
 confidence with which questions such as these have 
 been treated by Renan, Keim, and later writers. 
 In any case, the reserve and caution of Strauss are 
 quite justified as a corrective and counterpoise to 
 the extravagances committed in the opposite 
 direction. 
 
 With regard to the miraculous narratives of the 
 Gospels, the advance of more recent criticism beyond 
 the first book of Strauss has been in two directions. 
 First, these questions no longer constitute the 
 central point of historical interest, but are subordi- 
 nated in importance to the problems of the religious 
 consciousness of Jesus. Secondly, we do not now 
 seek to interpret these narratives so exclusively and 
 without distinction from the one motive of the trans- 
 ference to Jesus of the types of the Old Testament ; 
 but the great difference between the various narra- 
 tives of miracles is clearly recognised, and various 
 
XXVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 clues are accordingly used in their explanation ; 
 whilst in one narrative we observe merely symbols of 
 religious and dogmatic ideas, in others we discover, 
 behind the glorifying tendency to idealism, some 
 background of historical fact, for instance, in the 
 miracles of healing, as is now very generally acknow- 
 ledged. It cannot be denied, it is true, that with 
 this perfectly legitimate endeavour is connected the 
 peril of falling back into the old abuses of rational- 
 istic artifice. Even Keim has not quite escaped 
 this danger, inasmuch as he abandons the basis of 
 strict history in the case of the story of the resur- 
 rection of Jesus, and makes concessions to super- 
 naturalistic dogma ; as the sequel of which the old 
 doctrine of miracles may be readmitted into Lives 
 of Jesus, as is really the case in the works, of 
 Beyschlag and Weiss. 
 
 In this danger appears the necessity for the con- 
 tinued prosecution of the negative work of criti- 
 cism, a duty as yet by no means supererogatory. 
 The inclination to sink into the slumber of dogma is 
 so natural to every generation that the most uncom- 
 promising critical intellect must without intermission 
 stand upon the watch against it. And as this task 
 was performed by Strauss in his first Life of Jesus 
 in a manner that may serve as a model for all time, 
 the book, like every truly classical work, must ever 
 retain its value. Strauss's criticism broke down the 
 ramparts of dogmatism, new and old, and opened 
 to the inquiring mind the breach through which the 
 conquest of historical truth might be won. 
 
 Otto Pfleiderer. 
 
Certior factus ex Britannia, librum meum, quern de vita Jesu XI abhinc 
 annis composui, virorutn ejusmodi studiis faventium cura in linguam Britan- 
 nicam translatum, brevi illic in publicum proditurum esse, Iselitia anxietate 
 teraperata commoveor. 
 
 Nam ut gratulari sibi sequum est auctorem, dujus operi contigit, patrise 
 terras ac linguae fines transgredi, ita soUicitudo eundem subeat necesse est, ne, 
 qui domi placuit liber, foris displiceat, aut cujus inter populares vel adversari- 
 orum numero creverat auctoritas, apud exteros neglectus in obscuro maneat. 
 Solum enim coelumque vix minore libri quam plantse periculo mutant. Et 
 facilius quidem transtuleris opera in illis rebus versantia, de quibus inter 
 diversas gentes communis quidam aut certe parum discrepans sensus obtinet : 
 ut, quae poetae aut disciplinarum quas exactas dicunt periti proferunt, inter 
 politiores hujus seculi nationes fere solent esse communia. Neque tamen vel 
 hoc in librorum genere plane aequum Germane cum Britannis aut Gallis cer- 
 taraen. Peregrina enim cum facilius nostra quam illorum et lingua et indoles 
 recipiat, longe frequentius poetae quoque illorum in nostram quam nostri in 
 illorum linguas transferuntur. At Germanicum opus in theologiae et philo- 
 sophise quasi confinio versans, si trajicere in Britanniam parat, ne ilia quidem 
 inter utramque gentem sensus et studiorum communione adjuvatur. Tam 
 diversa enim utrimque via istae disciplinae processerunt, ut in theologia impii, 
 in philosophia superstitiosi Britannis Germani iidem videamur. Cum iis, qui 
 in Britannia ausi sunt, historias, Judaeorum et Christianorum religione sacratas, 
 examini ut ajunt critico subjicere, nihil agendum esset, nisi ut Lockii sui atque 
 Huraii principia philosophica, sicut ad reliquas omnes historias, ita ad illas 
 etiam, quas legibus istis hucusque superstitio subtraxerat, adhiberent : in 
 Germania ad hoc monstri res degeneraverat, ut superstition! a theologorum 
 potissima parte derelictae philosophia succurreret, critico ergo non simplex 
 sanae philosophiae contra theologorum superstitionem, sed duplex et contra 
 philosophorum ex sanioribus principiis deductas ineptas conclusiones, et 
 contra theologorum propter philosophica ista auxilia ornamentaque inflatam 
 atque induratam superstitionem, certamen ineundum esset. Ex hoc rei statu 
 proprie Germanico natum opus meum, nominibus insuper atque opinionibus 
 theologorum ac philosophorum nostratium refertum,. nee scholarum etiam 
 vocabula, quibus nostrse tantum aures assuevere, satis evitans, a Britannorum 
 
XXVIU 
 
 usu ingenioque non posse non abhorrere, tam probe scio, ut de translate in 
 eorum linguam, licet interpretatio, quantum quidem ejus inspicere potuerim, 
 et accurata et perspicua sit et librum, quantum in ipsa est, popularibus com- 
 mendet, num gaudendum mihi magnopere sit, mehercule nesciam. 
 
 Accedit, quod a primo libri mei ortu duo lustra, et a recentissima etiam 
 editione unum jam lustrum intercessit. Ut turn, quum opus inchoabam, via 
 incedebam, quam pauci ingressi, totam emensus nemo erat, ita per primum 
 illud lustrum nullse fere nisi adversariorum voces audiebantur, principia mea 
 negantium et,historiam in Evangeliis vel meram, vel levissima tan turn erroris 
 rumorisve adspersione tinctam ^ contineri affirmantium, cum quibus non modo 
 non disputandum, sed a quibus ne discendum quidem quidquam erat, quod 
 ad rem et ad librum vere emendandum pertineret. Proximo demum lustro 
 viri vestigia mea non refugientes neque evitantes, sed persequentes, ubi ego 
 substiteram longius progressi, rem revera juverunt atque promoverunt. Nar- 
 rationes in Evangeliis traditas, quas rerum vere gestarum esse persuadere mihi 
 non potueram, mythorum in modum, qui inter antiquas gentes inveniuntuf, 
 aut in ore populi a minutis initiis coaluisse et eundo crevisse, aut a singulis, 
 sed qui vere ita evenisse superstitiose in animum induxerant, fictas esse exis- 
 timaveram. Quod ut sufficit explicandis plerisque eorum, quae dubitationem 
 moventia tribus prioribus Evangeliis continentur : ita quarti Evangelii auctorem 
 ad tuendas et illustrandas sentfentias suas baud raro meras fabulas scientem 
 confinxisse, a Baurio, theologo Tiibingensi doctissimo, nuper ita demonstratum 
 est, ut critici me judicii rigori religiosius quam verius temperasse intelligam. 
 Dumque prima a Christo secula accuratius perscrutantur, partes partiumque 
 certamina, quibus nova ecclesia commovebatur, in apricum proferunt, narra- 
 tionum baud paucarum, quas fabulas esse ego bene quidem perspexeram, sed 
 unde ortae essent deraonstrare non valueram, veram in illis primse ecclesise 
 motibus originem detegere theologis Tubingensibus contigit. 
 
 Imperfectum igitur opus meum, ut solent rerum initia, non ob hoc tamen, 
 quod sententiae deest, timerem, ne a Britannis sperneretur, nisi formse etiam 
 illud quod supra dixi peregrinum atque inusitatum accederet. Qui si suum 
 Hennellium non audiverunt, de iisdem rebus cum Britannis Britannice agentera, 
 quomodo audient, si quis Germanus surget, cujus liber cum sua lingua non 
 potuerit cogitandi quoque disputandique morem prorsus Germanicum exuere? 
 Sed absit omen verbis meis, atque ut pridem in Germania, ita mox in Brit- 
 annia jaceat liber hie €is tttSmtiv koL dvao-Totrtv ttoWwv koI di <Trifi.(iov 
 avTiXey6ft,t,vov ottws &v aitOKa\v<j>0St(Tiv ex iroXKHn/ KapStSiv 8ia\oyi(T[ji,oi. 
 
 STRAUSS. 
 Scribebam Heilbronnse. 
 Med. mens. April a. 1846. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION. 
 
 It appeared to the author of the work, the first half of which is herewith sub- 
 mitted to the public, that it was time to substitute a new mode of considering 
 the life of Jesus, in the place of the antiquated systems of supranaturalism 
 and naturalism. This application of the term antiquated will in the present 
 day be more readily admitted in relation to the latter system than to the 
 former. For while the interest excited by the explanations of the miracles and 
 the conjectural facts of the rationalists has long ago cooled, the commen- 
 taries now most read are those which aim to adapt the supernatural interpre- 
 tation of the sacred history to modern taste. Nevertheless, in point of fact, 
 the orthodox view of this history became superannuated earlier than the 
 rationalistic, since it was only because the former had ceased to satisfy an 
 advanced state of culture, that the latter was developed, while the recent 
 attempts to recover, by the aid of a mystical philosophy, the supernatural 
 point of view held by our forefathers, betray themselves, by the exaggerating 
 spirit in which they are conceived, to be final, desperate efforts to render the 
 past present, the inconceivable conceivable. 
 
 The new point of view, which must take the place of the above, is the 
 mjth\r.a]. This theory is not brought to bear on the evangelical history for 
 the first time in the present work : it has long been applied to particular parts 
 of that history, and is here only extended to its entire tenor. It is not by any 
 means meant that the whole history of Jesus is to be represented as mythical, 
 but only that every part of it is to be subjected to a critical examination, to 
 ascertain whether it have not some admixture of the mythical. The exegesis 
 of the ancient church set out from the double presupposition : first, that the 
 gospels contained a history, and secondly, that this history, was a supernatural 
 one. Rationalism rejected the latter of these presuppositions, but only to 
 cling the more tenaciously to the former, maintaining that these books present 
 unadulterated, though only natural, history. Science cannot rest satisfied with 
 this half-measure : the other presupposition also must ber elinquished, and 
 the inquiry must first be made whether in fact, and to what extent, the ground 
 on which we stand in the gospels is historical. This is the natural course of 
 things, and thus far the appearance of a work like the present is not only 
 justifiable, but even necessary. 
 
XXX PREFACE TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION. 
 
 It is certainly' not therefore evident that the author is precisely the indi- 
 vidual whose vocation it is to appear in this position. He has a very vivid 
 consciousness that many others would have been able to execute such a work 
 with incomparably superior erudition. Yet on the other hand he believes him- 
 self to be at least possessed of one qualification which especially fitted him to 
 undertake this task. The majority of the most learned and acute theologians 
 of the present day fail in the main requirement for such a work, a requirement 
 without which no amount of learning will suffice to achieve anything in the 
 domain of criticism— namely, the internal liberation of the feelings and intel- 
 lect from certain religious and dogmatical presuppositions; and this the author 
 early attained by means of philosophical studies. If theologians regard this 
 absence of presupposition from his work, as unchristian : he regards the 
 believing presuppositions of theirs as unscientific. Widely as in this respect 
 the tone of the present work may be contrasted with the edifying devoutness 
 and enthusiastic mysticism of recent books on similar subjects ; still it will 
 nowhere depart from the seriousness of science, or sink into frivolity; and it 
 seems a just demand in return, that the judgments which are passed upon it 
 should also confine themselves to the domain of science, and keep aloof from 
 bigotry and fanaticism. 
 
 The author is aware that the 'essence of the Christian faith is perfectly inde- 
 pendent of his criticism. The supernatural birth of Christ, his miracles, his 
 Bcsurrection and ascension, remain eternal truths, whatever doubts may be 
 cast on their reality as historical facts. The certainty of this can alone give 
 calmness and dignity to our criticism, and distinguish it from the naturalistic 
 criticism of the last century, the design of which was, with the historical fact, 
 to subvert also the religious truth, and which thus necessarily became frivolous. 
 A dissertation at the close of the work will show that the dogmatic signifi- 
 cance of the life of Jesus remains inviolate : in the meantime let the calmness 
 and insensibility with which, in the course of it, criticism undertakes appa- 
 rently dangerous operations, be explained solely by the security of the author's 
 conviction that no injury is threatened to the Christian faith. Investigations 
 of this kind may, however, inflict a wound on the faith of individuals. Should 
 this be the case with theologians, they have in their science the means of 
 healing such wounds, from which, if they would not remain behind the de- 
 velopment of their age, they cannot possibly be exempt. For the laity the 
 subject is certainly not adequately prepared ; and for this reason the present 
 work is so framed, that at least the unlearned among them will quickly and 
 often perceive that the book is not destined for them. If from curiosity or 
 excessive zeal against heresy they persist in their perusal, they will then have, 
 as Schleiermacher says on a similar occasion, to bear the punishment in their 
 conscience, since their feelings directly urge on them the conviction that they 
 understand not that of which they are ambitious to speak. 
 
 A new opinion, which aims to fill the place of an older one, ought fully to 
 adjust its position with respect to the latter. Hence the way to the mythical 
 view is here taken in each particular point through the supranaturalistic and 
 rationalistic opinions and their respective refutations ; but, as becomes a valid 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION. xxxi 
 
 refutation, with an acknowledgment of what is true in the opinions combated, 
 and an adoption of tliis truth into the new theory. This method also brings 
 with it the extrinsic advantage, that the work may now serve as a repertory of 
 the principal opinions and treatises concerning all parts of the evangelical 
 history. The author has not, however, aimed to give a complete biblio- 
 graphical view of this department of theological literature, but," where it was 
 possible, has adhered to the chief works in each separate class of opinions. 
 For the rationalistic system the works of Paulus remain classical, and are 
 therefore pre-eminently referred to ; for the orthodox opinions, the commentary 
 of Olshausen is especially important, as the most recent and approved attempt 
 to render the supranatural interpretation philosophical and modern ; while as 
 a preliminary to a critical investigation of the life of Jesus, the commentaries 
 of Fritzsche are excellently adapted, since they exhibit, together with un- 
 common philological learning, that freedom from prejudice and scientific 
 indifference to results and consequences, which form the first condition of 
 progress in this region of inquiry. 
 
 The second volume, which will open with a detailed examination of the 
 miracles of Jesus, and which will conclude the whole work, is already prepared 
 and will be in the press immediately on the completion of the first. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Tubingen, 24th May, 1835. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION. 
 
 As this new edition of my critical examination of the life of Jesus appears 
 simultaneously with the first volume of my Dogmatik, it will not be expected 
 to contain any essential alterations. Indeed, even in the absence of other 
 labours, I should scarcely have been inclined to undertake such on the 'pre- 
 sent occasion. The critical researches prompted by the appearance of my 
 work have, after the stormy reaction of the first few years, at length entered 
 on that quiet course, which promises the most valuable assistance towards the 
 confirmation and more precise determination of the negative results at which 
 I have arrived. But these fruits still require some years for their maturing ; 
 and it must therefore be deferred to a future opportunity to enrich this work 
 by the use of them. I could not persuade myself to do so, at least in the 
 present instance, by prosecuting a polemic against opposite opinions. Al- 
 ready in the last edition there was more of a polemical character than accorded 
 with the unity and calmness proper to such a work ; hence I was in this 
 respect admonished rather to abridge than tp amplify. But that edition also 
 contained too much of compliance. The intermingling voices of opponents, 
 critics, and fellow labourers, to which I held it a duty attentively to listen, 
 had ccinfused the idea of the work in my mind ; in the diligent comparison 
 of divergent opinions I had lost sight of the subject itself. Hence on coming 
 with a more collected mind to this last revision, I found alterations at which I 
 could not but wonder, and by which I had evidently done myself injustice. 
 In all these passages the earlier readings are now restored, and thus my 
 labour in this new edition has chiefly consisted in whetting, as it were, my 
 good sword, to free it from the notches made in it rather by my own grinding, 
 than by the blows of my enemies. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Stuttgard, 17th October, 1S40. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW IN RELATION TO THE 
 
 GOSPEL HISTORIES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § I. Inevitable rise of different modes of explaining sacred histories .... 39 
 
 2. Different explanations of sacred legends among the Greeks 40 
 
 3. Allegorical interpretations among the Hebrews. Philo 41 
 
 4. Allegorical interpretations among the Christians. Origan 41 
 
 5. Transition to more modern times. Deists and Naturalists of the 17th and i8th 
 
 centuries. The Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist 44 
 
 6. Natural mode of explanation adopted by the Rationalists. Eichhorn. Paulus, . 46 
 
 7. Moral interpretation of Kant 50 
 
 8. Rise of the mythical mode of interpreting the sacred history, in reference first to 
 
 the Old Testament 52 
 
 9. The mythical mode of interpretation in reference to the New Testament . . 57 
 ID. The notion of the mythus in its application to sacred histories not clearly appre- 
 hended by theologians 59 
 
 11. The application of the notion of the mythus too circumscribed .... 63 
 
 12. Opposition to the mythical view of the Gospel history 65 
 
 13. The possibility of the existence of mythi in the New Testament considered in 
 
 reference to external evidences ......... 69 
 
 14. The possibility of mythi in the New Testament considered on internal grounds . 75 
 
 15. Definition of the evangelical mythus, and its distinctive characteristics . . 86 
 
 16. Criteria by which to distinguish the unhistorical in the Gospel narrative . . 87 
 
 FIRST PART. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 
 
 I 17. Account given by Luke. Immediate supernatural character of the representation 95 
 
 18. Natural explanation of the narrative ^°^ 
 
 J9. Mythical view ofthe narrative in its different stages 104 
 
 xxxii Q 
 
xxxiv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 DAVIDICAL DESCENT OF JESUS, ACCORDING TO THE GENEALOGICAL TABLES OF MATTHEW 
 
 AND LUKE. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 § 20. The two genealogies of Jesus considered separately and irrespectively of one 
 
 another loS 
 
 21. Comparison of the two genealogies. Attempt to reconcile their contradictions . 112 
 
 22. The genealogies unhistorical 117 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS. — ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. — 
 VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH. 
 
 23. Sketch of the different canonical and apocryphal accounts II9 
 
 24. Disagreements of the canonical gospels in relation to the form of the annunciation 121 
 
 25. Import of the angel's message. Fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah 
 
 26. Jesus begotten of the Holy Ghost. Criticism of the orthodox opinion 
 
 27. Retrospect of the genealogies 
 
 28. Natural explanation of the history of the conception . 
 
 29. History of the conception of Jesus viewed as a mythus 
 
 30. Relation of Joseph to Mary. Brothers of Jesus 
 
 31. Visit of Mary to Elizabeth 
 
 126 
 130 
 132 
 
 137 
 140 
 
 143 
 148 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 BIRTH AND EARLIEST EVENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 
 
 32. The census 152 
 
 33. Particular circumstances of the birth of Jesus. The circumcision . . . 1 56 
 
 34. The Magi and their star. The flight into Egypt, and the murder of the children 
 
 in Bethlehem. Criticism of the supranaturalistic view . . . . .162 
 • 35. Attempts at a natural explanation of the history of the Magi. Transition to the 
 
 mythical explanation 169 
 
 36. The purely mythical explanation of the narrative concerning the Magi, and of 
 
 the events with which it is connected 1 73 
 
 37. Chronological relation between the visit of the Magi, together with the flight 
 
 into Egypt, and the presentation in the temple recorded by Luke . . . 1 78 
 
 38. The presentation of Jesus in the temple 18 1 
 
 39. Retrospect. Difference between Matthew and Luke as to the original residence 
 
 of the parents of Jesus 184 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE, AND THE EDUCATION OF JESUS. 
 
 i 40. Jesus, when twelve years old, in the temple 191 
 
 41. This narrative also mythical 196 
 
 42. On the external life of Jesus up to the time of his public appearance . . 198 
 
 43. The intellectual development of Jesus 201 
 
CONTENTS. XXXV 
 
 SECOND PART. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 
 
 PACE 
 
 § 44. Chronological relations between John and Jesus 209 
 
 45. Appearance and design of the Baptist. His personal relations with Jesus . . 214 
 
 46. Was Jesus acknowledged by John as the Messiah ? and in what sense ? . . 219 
 
 47. Opinion of the evangelists and of Jesus concerning the Baptist, with his own 
 
 judgment of himself. Result of the inquiry into the relationship between 
 these two individuals 230 
 
 48. The execution of John the Baptist 234 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS. 
 
 § 49. Why did Jesus receive baptism from John ? 237 
 
 50. The scene at the baptism of Jesus considered as supernatural, and as natural . 239 
 
 51. An attempt at a criticism and mythical interpretation of the narratives . . 242 
 
 52. Relation of the supernatural at the baptism of Jesus to the supernatural in his 
 
 conception 247 
 
 53. Place and time of the temptation of Jesus. Divergencies of the evangelists on 
 
 this subject 249 
 
 54. The history of the temptation conceived in the sense of the evangelists . . 252 
 
 55. The temptation considered as a natural occurrence either internal or external ; 
 
 and also as a parable ........... 255 
 
 56. The history of the temptation as a mythus 259 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LOCALITY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 
 
 § 57. Difference between the synoptical writers and John, as to the customary scene 
 
 of the ministry of Jesus 264 
 
 58. The residence of Jesus at Capernaum 271 
 
 59. Divergencies of the Evangelists as to the chronology of the life of Jesus. Dura- 
 
 tion of his public ministry 27s 
 
 60. The attempts at a chronological arrangement of the particular events in the 
 
 public life of Jesus • • 278 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 
 
 § 61. Jesus, the Son of Man '. " ^^' 
 
 62. How soon did Jesus conceive himself to be the Messiah, and find recognition as 
 
 such from others ? ^''4- 
 
 63. Jesus, the Son of God 288 
 
 64. The divine mission and authority of Jesus. His pre-existence . . . .291 
 
 65. The messianic plan of Jesus. Indications of a political element . . .293 
 
 66. Data for the pure spirituality of the messianic plan of Jesus. Balance . . 295 
 
 67. The relation of Jesus to the Mosaic law ^97 
 
 68. Scope of the messianic plan of Jesus. Relation to the Gentiles . . •:- . 300 
 6g. Relation of the messianic plan of Jesus to the Samaritans. His interview with 
 
 the woman of Samaria ...... ... 303 
 
PAGE 
 
 XXXVl CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 
 
 § 70. Callingof the first companions of Jesus. Difference between the first two Evan- 
 gelists and the fourth 309 
 
 71. Peter's draught of fishes . .* S'S 
 
 72. Calling of Matthew. Connexion of Jesus with the publicans . . . .319 
 
 73. The twelve apostles 323 
 
 74. The twelve considered individually. The three or four most confidential 
 
 disciples of Jesus 326 
 
 75. The rest of the twelve, and the seventy disciples 33° 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 
 
 § 76. The Sermon on the Mount 334 
 
 77. Instructions to the twelve. Lamentations over the Galilean cities. Joy over 
 
 the calling of the simple . 342 
 
 78. The parables 345 
 
 79. Miscellaneous instructions and controversies of Jesus 355 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 
 
 § 80. Conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus 365 
 
 81. The discourses of Jesus, John v.— xii. . . . . . . . .371 
 
 82. Isolated maxims of Jesus, common to the fourth gospel and the synoptical ones . 377 
 
 83. The modern discussions' on the authenticity of the discourses in the Gospel of 
 
 John. Result 381 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS, EXCLUSIVE OF THE MIRACLES. 
 
 § 84. General comparison of the manner of narration that distinguishes the several 
 
 Evangelists ■ , . . . 387 
 
 85. Isolated groups of anecdotes. Imputation of a league with Beelzebub, and 
 
 demand of a sign 391 
 
 86. Visit of the mother and brethren of Jesus. The woman who pronounces the 
 
 mother of JeSus blessed 394 
 
 87. Contentions for pre-eminence among the disciples. The love of Jesus for 
 
 children 396 
 
 88. The purification of the temple 399 
 
 89. Narratives of the anointing of Jesus by a woman 402 
 
 90. The narratives of the woman taken in adultery, and of Mary and Martha . . 409 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MIRACLES OF JESUS. 
 
 § 91. Jesus considered as a worker of miracles ! 413 
 
 92. The demoniacs, considered generally 415 
 
 93. Cases of the expulsion of demons by Jesus, considered singly .... 423 
 
 94. Cures of lepers 437 
 
 95. Cures of the blind 441 
 
 96. Cures of paralytics. Did Jesus regard diseases as punishments ? . . . 452 
 
CONTENTS. xxxvii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 97. Involuntary cures 457 
 
 98. Cures at a distance 462 
 
 99. Cures on the sabbath 47 1 
 
 100. Resuscitations of the dead 476 
 
 loi. Anecdotes having relation to the sea 496 
 
 102. The miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes 507 
 
 103. Jesus turns water into wine 519 
 
 104. Jesus curses a barren fig-tree 527 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS, AND HIS LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 
 
 § 105. The transfiguration of Jesus considered as a miraculous external event . . 535 
 
 106. The natural explanation of the narrative in various forms .... 537 
 
 107. The history of the transfiguration considered as a mythus .... 540 
 
 108. Diverging accounts concerning the last journey of Jesus to Jerusalem . . 546 
 
 109. Divergencies of the gospels, in relation to the point from which Jesus made his 
 
 entrance into Jerusalem 549 
 
 no. More particular circumstances of the entrance. Its object and historical reality 553 
 
 THIRD PART. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE PASSION, DEATH, AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RELATION OF JESUS TO THE IDEA OP A SUFFERING AND DYING MESSIAH ; HIS DIS- 
 COURSES ON HIS DEATH, RESURRECTION, AND SECOND ADVENT. 
 
 § III. Did Jesus in precise terms predict his passion and death ? .... 563 
 
 112. The predictions of Jesus concerning his death in general ; their relation to the 
 
 Jewish idea of the Messiah ; declarations of Jesus concerning' the object and 
 efiects of his death 5^7 
 
 113. Precise declarations of Jesus concerning his future resurrection . . . 574 
 
 114. Figurative discourses, in which Jesus is supposed to have announced his 
 
 resurrection 57° 
 
 115. The discourses of Jesus on his second advent. ■ Criticism of the different in- 
 
 terpretations 5°^ 
 
 116. Origin of the discourses on the second advent 59' 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS ; TREACHERY OF JUDAS ; LAST SUPPER WITH 
 
 THE DISCIPLES. 
 
 § 117. Development of the relation of Jesus to his enemies . . • -599 
 
 118. Jesus and his betrayer / 
 
 119. Different opinions concerning the character of Judas, and the motives of his 
 
 treachery °' 
 
 120. Preparation for the passover 
 
 121. Divergent statements respecting the time of the last supper . . . ■ ol4 
 
 122. Divergencies in relation to the occurrences at the last meal of Jesus . • 021 
 
 123. Announcement of the betrayal and the denial °^° 
 
 124. The institution of the Lord's supper °3l 
 
xxxviii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION, AND 
 CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i 125. Agony of Jesus in the garden • 635 
 
 126. Relation of the fourth gospel to the events in Gethsemane. The farewell dis- 
 
 courses in John, and the scene following the announcement of the Greeks . 640 
 
 127. Arrest of Jesus ^49 
 
 128. Examination of Jesus before the high priest . . . ■ • ^53 
 
 129. The denial by Peter 658 
 
 130. The death of the betrayer 662 
 
 131. Jesus before Pilate and Herod 669 
 
 132. The crucifixion ^77 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 
 
 133. Prodigies attendant on the death of Jesus 691 
 
 134. The wound by a spear in the side of Jesus 697 
 
 135. Burial of Jesus 7°! 
 
 136. The watch at the grave of Jesus 7°5 
 
 137. First tidings of the resurrection 709 
 
 138. Appearances of the risen Jesus in Galilee and in Judea, including those men- 
 
 tioned by Paul and by apocryphal writings 718 
 
 139. Quality of the body and life of Jesus after the resurrection .... 728 
 
 140. Debates concerning the reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus . . 735 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ASCENSION. 
 
 141. The last commands and promises of Jesus ....... 745 
 
 142. The s6-called ascension considered as a supernatural and as a natural event . 749 
 
 143. Insufficiency of the narratives of the ascension. Mythical conception of those 
 
 narratives .............. 752 
 
 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION, 
 
 THE DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JeSUS. 
 
 144. Necessary transition from criticism to dogma 757 
 
 145. The Christology of the orthodox system 758 
 
 146. Objections to the Christology of the church 764 
 
 147. The Christology of rationalism 767 
 
 148. The eclectic Christology of Schleiermacher 76S 
 
 149. Christology interpreted symbolically. Kant. De Wette .... 773 
 
 150. The speculative Christology 777 
 
 151. Last dilemma. ............ 778 
 
 152. Relation of the critical and speculative theology to the church .... 781 
 
THE LIFE OF JESUS 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT rOF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW IN RELATION 
 TO THE GOSPEL HISTORIES. 
 
 § I- 
 INEVITABLE RISE OF DIFFERENT MODES OF EXPLAINING SACRED HISTORIES. 
 
 Wherever a religion, resting upon written records, prolongs and extends the 
 sphere of its dominion, accompanying its votaries through the varied and 
 progressive stages of mental cultivation, a discrepancy between the repre- 
 sentations of those ancient records, referred to as sacred, and the notions of 
 more advanced periods of mental development, will inevitably sooner or later 
 arise. In the first instance this disagreement is felt in reference only to the 
 unessential — the external form : the expressions and delineations are seen to 
 be inappropriate ; but by degrees it manifests itself also in regard to that 
 which is essential : the fundamental ideas and opinions in these early writings 
 fail to be commensurate with a more advanced civilisation. As long as this 
 discrepancy is either not in itself so considerable, or else is not so universally 
 discerned and acknowledged, as to lead to a complete renunciation of these 
 Scriptures as of sacred authority, so long will a system of reconciliation by 
 means of interpretation be adopted and pursued by those who have a more or 
 less distinct consciousness of the existing incongruity. 
 
 A main element in all religious records is sacred history ; a history of events 
 in which the divine enters, without intermediation, into tTie human ; the ideal 
 thus a ssuming an immediate embodiment. But as the progress of mental cul- 
 tivation maInIy~o5nsisfsTh the gfaSiiar recognition of a chain of causes and 
 effects connecting natural phenomena with each other ; so the mind in its 
 development becomes ever increasingly conscious of those mediate links 
 which a,re indispensable to the realization of the ideal ; ^ and hence the dis- 
 crepancy between the modern culture and the ancient records, with regard to 
 their historical portion, becomes so apparent, that the immediate intervention 
 of the divine in human affairs loses its probability. Besides, as the humanity 
 of these records is the humanity of an early period, consequently of an age 
 
 ' [This passage varies slightly from the original, a subsequent amplification by Dr. Strauss 
 being incorporated with it. — Tr.] 
 
40 INTRODUCTION, § 2. 
 
 comparatively undeveloped and necessarily rude, a sense of repulsion is like- 
 wise excited. The incongruity may be thus expressed. The divine cannot so 
 have happened; (not immediately, not in forms so rude;) or, thai which has 
 so happened cannot have been divine : — and if a reconciliation be sought by 
 means of interpretation, it will be attempted to prove, either that the divine 
 did not manifest itself in the manner related, — which is to deny the historical 
 validity of the ancient Scriptures ; or, that the actual occurrences were not 
 divine — which is to explain away the absolute contents of these books. In 
 both cases the interpretation may be partial or impartial : partial, if under- 
 taken with a determination to close the eyes to the secretly recognised fact of 
 the disagreement between the modern culture and the ancient records, and to 
 se6 only in such interpretation the original signification of these records ; im- 
 partial, if it unequivocally acknowledges and openly avows that the matters 
 narrated in these books must be viewed in a light altogether different from 
 that in which they were regarded by the authors themselves. This latter 
 method, however, by no means involves the entire rejection of the religious 
 documents ; on the contrary, the essential may be firmly retained, Whilst the 
 unessential is unreservedly abandoned. 
 
 § 2- / 
 
 DIFFERENT EXPLANATIONS OF SACRED LEGENDS AMONG THE 'GREEKS. 
 
 Though the Hellenistic religion cannot be said to have rested upon written 
 records, it became enshrined in the Greek poems, for example, in those of 
 Homer and Hesiod ; and these, no less than its orally transmitted! legends, did 
 not fail to receive continually varying interpretations, successive!^ adapted to 
 the progressive intellectual culture of the Greeks. At an early period the 
 rigid philosophy of the Greeks, and under its influence even some j of the 
 Greek poets, recognized the impossibility of ascribing to Deity manifekations 
 so grossly human, so immediate, and so barbarous, as those exhibited' and 
 represented as divine in the wild conflicts of Hesiod's Theogony, and |in the 
 domestic occupations and trivial pursuits of the Homeric deities. Hence 
 arose the quarrel of Plato, and prior to him of Pindar, with Homer ; ^ pence 
 the cause which induced Anaxagoras, to whom the invention of the allegorical 
 mode of interpretation is ascribed, to apply the Homeric delineations /o vir- 
 tue and to justice ; ^ hence it was that the Stoics understood the Theogony of 
 Hesiod as relating to the action of the elements, which, according to their 
 notions, constituted, in their highest union, the divine nature.^ Tips did 
 these several thinkers, each according to his own peculiar mode of tiought, 
 succeed in discovering an absolute meaning in these representations : tpe one 
 finding in them a physical, the other an ethical signification, whilst,|at the 
 same time, they gave up their external form, ceasing to regard them as strictly 
 historical. i 
 
 On the other hand, the more popular and sophistical culture of another 
 class of thinkers led them to opposite conclusions. Though, in their Estima- 
 tion, every semblance of the divine had evaporated from these his ories ; 
 though they were convinced that the proceedings ascribed to the godf were 
 not godlike, still thej;^id_not^abandon the historical sense of these narritives. 
 
 ' Plato, de Republ. ii. p. 377. Steph. ; Pindar, Nem. vii. 31. 
 ' Diog. Laert. L. ii. c. iii. No. 7. 
 
 ' Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 10. 15. Comp, Athenag. Legal. 22. Tatian, c. Grsec. Oi)p,t. 21. 
 Clement, homil. 6, i f. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 4I 
 
 With Evemerus * they transformed the subjects of these histories from gods to 
 men, to heroes and sages of antiquity, kings and tyrants, who, through deeds 
 of might and valour, had acquired divine honours. Some indeed went still_ 
 further, and, with Polybius,* considered the whole system of heathen theology ) 
 as a fable, invented by the founders of stales to awe the people into subjec-J 
 tion. 
 
 § 3- 
 
 ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATIONS AMONG THE HEBREWS. — PHILO. 
 
 Whilst, on the one hand, the isolation and stability of the Hebrews served ' 
 to retard the development of similar manifestations amongst this people, on 
 the other hand, when once actually developed, they were the more marked ; 
 because, in proportion to the high degree of authority ascribed to the sacred 
 records, was the skill and caution required in their interpretation. Thus, 
 even in Palestine, subsequent to the exile, and particularly after the time of 
 the Maccabees, many ingenious attempts were made to interpret the Old 
 Testament so as to remove offensive literalities, supply deficiencies, and intro- 
 duce the notions of a later age. Examples of this system of interpretation 
 occur in the writings of the Rabbins, and even in the New Testament ; ^ but 
 it was at that place where the Jewish mind came into contact with Greek 
 civilization, and under its influence was.carried beyond the limits of its own 
 national culture — namely at Alexandria — that the allegorical mode of inter- 1 
 pretation was first consistently applied to the whole body of historical narra^f 
 tive in the Old Testament. Many had prepared the way, but it was Philo 
 who first fully developed the doctrine of both a common and a deeper sense 
 of the Holy Scriptures. He was by no means inclined to cast away the 
 former, but generally placed the two together, side by side, and even declared 
 himself opposed to those who, everywhere and without necessity, sacrificed 
 the literal to the higher signification. In many cases, however, he absolutely 
 discarded the verbal meaning and historical conception, and considered the 
 narrative merely as the figurative representation of an idea. He did so, for 
 example, whenever the sacred story appeared to him to present delineations 
 unworthy of Deity, tending either to materialism or anthropomorphism, or 
 otherwise to contain contradictions.^ 
 
 The fact that the Jews, whilst they adojjted this mode of explaining the 
 Old Testament, (which, in order to save the purity of the intrinsic significa- 
 tion, often sacrificed the historical form), were never led into the opposite 
 system of Evemerus (which preserved the historical form by divesting the 
 history of the divine, and reducing it to a record of mere human events), is to 
 be ascribed to the tenacity with which that people ever adhered to the super- 
 natural point of view. The latter mode of interpretation was first brought to 
 bear upon the Old Testament by the Christians. 
 
 § 4. 
 
 ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATIONS AMONG THE CHRISTIANS. — ORIGEN. 
 
 To the early Christians who, antecedent to the fixing of the christian caiion, 
 made especial use of the Old Testament as their principal sacred record, an 
 
 * Diodor. Sic. Bibl. Fragm. L. vi. Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 42. 
 
 * Hist. vi. 56. , „ „ 
 ' Ddpke, die Hermeneutik der neutestamentlichen Schnftsteller, s. 123. n. 
 
 2 Gfrorer. Dahne. 
 
42 INTRODUCTION. § 4. 
 
 allegorical interpretation was the more indispensable, inasmuch as they had 
 made greater advances beyond the views of the Old Testament writers than 
 even the most enlightened of the Jews. It was no wonder therefore that this 
 mode of explanation, already in vogue among the Jews, was almost universally 
 adopted by the primitive christian churches. It was however again in Alex- 
 andria that h found the fullest application amongst the Christians, and. that-in 
 connexion witETthe name of Origen. Origen attributes a threefofd rneaning 
 to"~the* Scriptures, corresponding with his distribution of the human being into 
 three parts : the literal sense answering to the body ; the moral, to the soul ; 
 and the mystical, to the spirit. ^ The rule with him was to retain all three 
 meanings, though differing in worth ; in some particular cases, however, he 
 was of opinion that the literal interpretation either gave no sense at all, or 
 else a perverted sense, in order the more directly to impel the reader to the 
 discovery of its mystical signification. Origen's repeated observation that it 
 is not the purpose of the bibUpal narratives to transmit old tales, but to in- 
 struct in the rules of life ; ^ his assertion that the merely literal acceptation of 
 many of the narratives would prove destructive of the christian religion;^ 
 and his application of the passage " The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth 
 life," * to the relative worth of the allegorical and the literal modes of biblical 
 interpretation, may be understood as indicating only the inferiority of the 
 literal to the deeper signification. But the literal sense is decidedly given 
 up when it is said, " Every passage of Scripture has a spiritual element, but 
 not every one has a corporeal element ;" ^ "A spiritual truth often exists 
 embodied in a corporeal falsehood " ; ^ " The Scriptures contain many things 
 which never came to pass, interwoven with the history, and he must be dull 
 indeed who does not of his own accord observe that much which the Scrip- 
 tures represent as having happened never actually occurred." '' Among the 
 passages which Origen regarded as admitting no other than an allegorical, 
 interpretation, besides those which too sensibly humanised the Deity,* he in- 
 cluded those which attributed unworthy action to individuals who had held 
 intimate communion with God.^ 
 
 It was not however from the Old Testament views alone that Origen had, 
 in consequence of his christian training, departed so widely that he felt him- 
 self compelled, if he would retain his reverence for the sacred records, to 
 allegorize their contents, as a means of reconciling the contradiction which 
 had arisen between them and his own mind. There was much likewise in 
 the N6w Testament writings which so little accorded with his philosophical 
 
 ' Homil. 5. in Levit. § 5. 
 
 ^ Homil. 2. in Exod. iii. ; Nolite putare, ut scepe jam diximus, veterum vobis fabulas re- 
 citari, sed dpceri vos per haec, ut agnoscatis ordinem vita. 
 
 * Homil. 5. in Levit. i. : Hcec omnia, nisi alio sensu accipiamus quam liter(2 textus osten- 
 dit, obstaculum magis et sukuersionem Christiana religioni, qziatn hortationem adificationem- 
 que prastabunt. 
 
 * Contra Cels. vi. 70. 
 
 * De principp. L. iv. § 20 : iraaa iiiv (ypa<j>7i) ^ei t6 irvevixanKbv, oi iraaa Si ri aujianKiv, 
 ^ Comm. in Joann. , Tom. x. § 4 : — aieiofUvov iroWaKH toC oXttSoCs vveviMmKov iv rip 
 
 auiMTiKif, lis &v etirot Tis, ^eiSei. 
 
 ' De principp. iv. 15 : i!wi<l>rivev ^ ypatjr)) tj) laToplij. t& iXt) yevd/ievov, ir^ jxjkv jjt/t) Svvariv 
 yeviaBai, it^ Sk Swarbv piv yevinBai, ab pL^v yeyevrjpi^voi', De principp. iv. 16 : Kal H Sei irXefu 
 Xiyeiv ; t&v pAf irivv d/i/SX^UK pi,vpla Saa. TOiavra SvvapAvuv (rwayayetv, yeypap,p^va p^v us 
 yeyovlrra, 06 yeyevripjiva Si (taxi Ti]v \i^iv. 
 
 * De principp. iv. 16. 
 
 ^ Homil. 6, in Gen. iii. : Qua nobis cedificatio erit, legentibus, Abraham, tantam patriar- 
 cham, non solum mentitum es^e Abimelech regi, sed et pudicitiam conjugis prodidisse 'i Quid 
 nos ddificat tanti patriarchce uxor, si putetur contaminationibus exposita per conniventiatn 
 mantalem ? Hac Judiei putent et si qui cum eis sunt liters amici, non spiritus. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 43 
 
 notions, that he found himself constrained to adopt a similar proceeding in 
 reference to them. He reasoned thus : — the New Testament and the Old are 
 the work of the same spirit, and this spirit would proceed in the same manner 
 in the production of the one and of the other, interweaving fiction with reality, 
 in order thereby to direct the mind to the spiritual signification .1" In a re- 
 markable passage of his work against Celsus, Origen classes together, and in 
 no ambiguous language, the partially fabulous stories of profane history, and 
 of heathen mythology, with the gospel narratives.^^ He expresses himself as 
 follows : " In almost every history it is a difficult task, and not unfrequently 
 an impossible one, to demonstrate the reality of the events recorded, however 
 true they may in fact be. Let us suppose some individual to deny the reality 
 of a Trojan war on account of the incredibilities mixed up with the history ; 
 as, for example, the birth of Achilles from a goddess of the sea. How could 
 we substantiate the fact, encumbered as it is with the numerous and undeni- 
 able poetical fictions which have, in some unascertainable manner, become 
 interwoven with the generally admitted account of the war between the Greeks 
 and the Trojans ? There is no alternative : he who would study history with 
 understanding, and not suffer himself to be deluded, must weigh each separate 
 •detail, and consider what is worthy of credit and may be believed without 
 further evidence ; what, on the contrary, must be regarded as merely figura- 
 tive; {rLva hi TpoTToXoyija-eL) always bearing in mind the aim of the narrator — 
 and what must be wholly mistrusted as being written with intent to please 
 certain individuals." In conclusion Origen says, " I was desirous of making 
 these preliminary observations in relation to the entire history of Jesus given 
 an the Gospels, not with the view of exacting from the enlightened a blind 
 and baseless belief, but with design to show how indispensable to the study 
 ■of this history are not only judgment and diligent examination, but, so to 
 speak, the very penetrating into the mind of the author, in order to discover 
 ithe particular aim with which each narrative may have been written." 
 ' We here see Origen almost transcending the limits of his own customary 
 point of view, and verging towards the more modern mythica,l view. But if 
 his own prepossessions in' favour of the supernatural, and his fear of giving 
 -offence to the orthodox church, combined to hinder him from making a wider 
 application of the allegorical mode of interpretation to the Old Testament, 
 the same causes operated still more powerfully in relation to the New Testa- 
 ment ; so that when we further inquire of which of the gospel histories in 
 particular did Origen reject the historical meaning, in order to hold fast a 
 ■truth worthy of God ? the instances will prove to be meagre in the extreme. 
 For when he says, in illustration of the above-mentioned passage, that amongst 
 •other things, it is not to be understood literally that Satan showed to Jesus 
 all the kingdoms of the earth from a mountain, because this is impossible to 
 the bodily eye; he here gives not a strictly allegorical interpretation, but 
 merely a different turn to the literal sense, which, according to him, relates 
 not to an external fact, but to the internal fact of a vision. Again, even 
 where the text offers a tempting opportunity of sacrificing the literal to the 
 ^spiritual meaning, as, for example, the cursing of the fig-tree.^^ Origen does 
 not speak out freely. He is most explicit when speaking of the expulsion of 
 the buyers and sellers from the temple ; he characterizes the conduct of Jesus, 
 
 "• De principp. iv. 16 : oi /idvov di wepl rOiv irpb Trjs irapomlas raCra tA Tvevfia ifiKovl>ia)(rev, 
 •i.\X, &Te tA aird Tvyx&vov Koi &Tb rod ivbs deoD, rb Siioioif rai ^Tri rSiv ciayyeXlui' TewolriKe Kal 
 iTl T&v iirotFTSXtap, oiSi roiroiv v&vtt] &KpaTO» t^v Urroplav tQiv vpo<Tv^a(Tp.hmi Kon-b, ri 
 •<ru)/iaTiKbv kxbvrijiv fii] yeyev-q/iivav. 
 
 " Contra Celsum, i. 40. 
 
 '2 Comm. in Matth., Tom. xvi. 26. 
 
44 INTRODUCTION. § 5. 
 
 according to the literal interpretation, as assuming and seditious.*^ He 
 moreover expressly remarks that the Scriptures contain many more historical 
 than merely scriptural truths.^* 
 
 §S- 
 
 TRANSITION TO MORE MODERN TIMES. — DEISTS AND NATURALISTS OF THE. 
 17TH AND i8tH centuries. — THE WOLFENBUTTEL FRAGMENTIST. 
 
 Thus was developed one of those forms of interpretation to which the 
 Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, in common with all other religious records,, 
 in relation to their historical contents, became necessarily subjected ; that, 
 namely, which recognizes in them the divine, but denies it to have actually 
 manifested itself in so immediate a manner. The other principal mode of 
 interpretation, which, to a certain extent, acknowledges the course of events 
 to have been historically true, but assigns it to a human and not a divine 
 origin, was developed amongst the enemies of Christianity by a Celsus, a 
 Porphyry, and a Julian; They indeed rejected much of the history as alto- 
 gether fabulous ; but they admitted many of the incidents related of Moses, 
 Jesus, and others, to be historical facts : these facts were however considered 
 by them as originating from common motives ; and they attributed their 
 apparently supernatural character either to gross fraud or impious sorcery. 
 
 It is worthy of observation that the circumstances attending the introduc- 
 tion of these several modes of interpretation into the heathen and Jewish 
 religions, on the one hand, and into the christian religion, on the other, were 
 different. The religion and sacred literature of the Greeks and Hebrews had 
 been gradually developed with the development of the nation, and it was not 
 until the intellectual culture of the people had outgrown the rehgion of their 
 fathers, and the latter was in consequence verging towards decay, that the 
 discrepancy which is the source of these varying interpretations became 
 apparent. Christianity, on the contrary, came into a world of already ad- 
 vanced civilization ; which was, with the exception of that of Palestine, the 
 Judaico-Hellenistic and the Greek. Consequently a disagreement manifested 
 itself at the very beginning ; it was not now, however, as in former times, be- 
 tween modern culture and an ancient religion, but between a new religion and 
 ancient culture. The production of allegorical interpretations among the 
 Pagans and the Hebrews, was a sign that their religion had lost its vitality ; 
 the allegories of Origen and the attacks of Celsus, in reference to Christianity, 
 were evidences rather that the world had not as yet duly accommodated itself 
 to the new religion. As however with the christianizing of the Roman empire, 
 and the overthrow of the chief heresies, the christian principle gained an ever- 
 increasing supremacy ; as the schools of heathen wisdom closed ; and the un- 
 civilized Germanic tribes lent themselves to the teaching of the church ; — the 
 world, during the tedious centuries of the middle ages, was satisfied with 
 Christianity, both in form and in substance. Almost all traces of these modes 
 of interpretation which presuppose a discrepancy between the culture of a 
 nation, or of the world, and religion, in consequence disappeared. The re- 
 formation effected the first breach in the solid structure of the faith of the 
 church. It was the first vital expression of a culture, which had now in the 
 heart of Christendom itself, as formerly in relation to Paganism and Judaism, 
 acquired strength and independence sufficient to create a reaction against the 
 
 " Comm. in Joann., Tom. x. 17. 
 
 " De principp. iv. 19. After Origen, that kind of allegory only which left the historical, 
 sense unimpaired was retained in the church ; and where, subsequently,, a giving up of the- 
 verbal meaning is spoken of, this refers merely to a trope or a simile. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 45 
 
 ■soil of its birth, the i)revailing religion. This reaction, so long as it was 
 directed against the dominant hierarchy, constituted the sublime, but quickly 
 terminated, drama of the reformation. In its later direction against the Bible, 
 it appeared again upon the stage in the barren revolutionary efforts of deism ; 
 and many and various have been the forms it has assumed in its progress 
 down to the present time. 
 
 The deists and naturalists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries re- 
 newed the polemic attacks of the pagan adversaries of Christianity in the 
 bosom of the christian church ; and gave to the public an irregular and con- 
 fused mass of criticisms, impugning the authenticity and credibility of the Scrip- 
 tures, and exposing to contempt the events recorded in the sacred volume. 
 Toland,! Bolingbroke,^ and others, pronounced the Bible to be a collection of 
 unauthentic and fabulous books ; whilst some spared no pains to despoil the 
 biblical histories, and the heroes whose actions they celebrate, of every ray of 
 divine light. Thus, according to Morgan,^ the law of Moses is a miserable 
 system of superstition, blindness, and slavery ; the Jewish priests are de- 
 ceivers; and the Jewish prophets the originators of the distractions and 
 civil wars of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel. According to Chubb,* 
 the Jewish religion cannot be a revelation from God, because it debases 
 the moral character of the Deity by attributing to him arbitrary conduct, 
 partiality for a particular people, and above all, the cruel command to 
 exterminate the Canaanitish nations. Assaults were likewise made by 
 these and other deists upon the New Testament : the Apostles were sus- 
 pected of being actuated by selfish and mercenary motives ;° the character 
 •of Jesus himself was not spared,^ and the fact of his resurrection was denied.'' 
 The miracles of Jesus, wrought by an immediate exercise of divine poiyer in 
 human acts and concerns, were made the particular objects of attack by 
 Woolston.8 This writer is also worthy of notice on account of the peculiar 
 position taken by him between the ancient allegorists and the modern natural- 
 ists. His whole reasoning turns upon the alternative ; either to retain the 
 historical reality of the miracles narrated in the Bible, and thus to sacrifice the 
 <livine character of the narratives, and reduce the miracles to mere artifices, 
 miserable juggleries, or commonplace deceptions ; or, in order to hold fast 
 the divine character of these narratives, to reject them entirely as details of 
 actual occurrences, and regard them as historical representations of certain 
 spiritual truths. Woolston cites the authority of the most distinguished al- 
 legorists among the fathers in support of this view. He is wrong however in 
 representing them as supplanting the literal by the figurative meaning. These 
 ancient fathers, on the contrary, were disposed to retain both the literal 
 and the allegorical meaning. (A few examples in Origen, it is true, are an 
 ■exception to this rule.) It may be doubted, from the language of Woolston, 
 which alternative was adopted by himself. If we reason from the fact, that 
 before he appeared as the opponent of the commonly entertained views of 
 Christianity, he occupied himself with allegorical interpretations of the Scrip- 
 tures,9 we may be led to consider the latter alternative as expressing his 
 H-eal conviction. On the other hand, he enlarges with so evident a predi- 
 
 ' In his Amyntor, 1698. See Leland's View of the Deistical Writers. 
 
 " See Leland. 
 
 ? In his work entitled The Moral Philosopher. 
 
 ■* Posthumous Works, 1748. 
 
 ■' Chubb, Posthumous Works, i. 102. 
 
 ' Ibid., ii. 269. 
 
 ■^ The Resurrection of Jesus Considered, by a Moral Philosopher, 1744. 
 
 « Six Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour. Published singly, from 1727-1729. 
 
 ■" Schrockh, Kirschengesch, seit der Reform. 6 Th. s. 191. 
 
46 INTRODUCTION. § 6. 
 
 lection on the absurdities of the miracles, when literally understood, and, 
 the manner in which he treats the whole subject is so tinged with levity, that 
 we may suspect the Deist to put forward the allegorical interpretations merely 
 as a screen, from behind which he might inveigh the more unreservedly 
 against the literal signification. 
 
 Similar deistical objections against the Bible, and the divine character 
 of its history, were propagated in Germany chiefly by an anonymous 
 author (Reimarus) whose manuscripts were discovered by Lessing in the 
 Wolfenbiittel library. Some portions of these manuscripts, called the 
 " Wolfenbiittel Fragments," were published by Lessing in 1774- They 
 consist of Essays, one of which treats of the many arguments which 
 may be urged against revealed religion in general ; the others relate 
 partly to the Old and partly to the New Testament. It is the opinion 
 of the Fragraentist, in relation to the Old Testament, first, that the men, of 
 whom the Scriptures narrate that they had immediate communications with 
 God, were so unworthy, that such intercourse, admitting its reality, compro- 
 mised the character of Deity ; secondly, that the result of this intercourse, — 
 the instructions and laws alleged to have been thus divinely communicated, — 
 were so barbarous and destructive, that to ascribe them to God is impossible ; 
 and thirdly, that the accompanying miracles were at once absurd and incred- 
 ible. From the whole, it appears to him clear, that the divine communications 
 were only pretended ; and that the miracles were delusions, practised with the 
 design of giving stability and efficiency to certain laws and institutions highly 
 advantageous to the rulers and priests. The author finds much to condemn 
 in the conduct of the patriarchs, and their simulations of divine communica- 
 tions ; such as the command to Abraham to sacrifice his son. But it is chiefly 
 Moses upon whom he seeks, in a long section, to cast all the obloquy of an 
 impostor, who did not scruple to employ the most disgraceful means in order 
 to make himself tlie despotic ruler of a free people : who, to effect his purpose, 
 feigned divine apparitions, and pretended to have received the command of 
 God to perpetrate acts which, but for this divine sanction, would have been 
 stigmatized as fraudulent, as highway robbery, as inhuman barbarity. For 
 instance, the spoiling of the Egyptians, and the extirpation of the inhabitants 
 of Canaan ; atrocities which, when introduced by the words '■'Jehovah hath 
 said it" became instantly transformed into deeds worthy of God. The Frag- 
 mentist is, as litde disposed to admit the divinity of the New Testament 
 histories. He considers the aim of Jesus to have been political ; and his con- 
 nexion with John the Baptist a preconcerted arrangement, by which the one 
 party should recommend the other to the people. He views the death of Jesus 
 as an event by no means foreseen by himself, but which frustrated all his 
 plans ; a catastrophe which his disciples knew not how else to repair than by 
 the fraudulent pretence that Jesus was risen from the dead, and by an artful 
 alteration of his doctrines i". 
 
 §6- 
 
 NATURAL MODE OF EXPLANATION ADOPTED BY THE RATIONALISTS. — EICH- 
 
 HORN. — PAULUS. 
 
 Whilst the reality of the biblical revelation, together with the divine origin 
 and supernatural character of the Jewish and Christian histories, were tena- 
 ciously maintained in opposition to the English deists by numerous English 
 apologists, and in opposition to the Wolfenbiittel Fragraentist by the great 
 majority of German theologians, there arose a distinct class of theologians in 
 
 "• Fragmente deslWolfenbuttelschen UngenannteiJ von G. E. Lessing herausgegeben. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 47 
 
 Germany, who struck into a new path. The ancient pagan mythology, as 
 understood by Evemerus, admitted of two modes of explanation, each of; 
 which was in fact adopted. The deities of the popular worship might, on the 
 one hand, be regarded as good and benevolent men ; as wise lavvgivers, and 
 just rulers, of early times, whom the gratitude of their contemporaries and 
 posterity had encircled with divine glory ; or they might, on the other hand, 
 be viewed as artful impostors and cruel tyrants, who had veiled themselves in 
 a nimbus of divinity, for the pupose of subjugating the people to their domin- 
 ion. So, likewise, in the purely human explanation of the bible histories, 
 besides the method of the deists to regard the subjects of these narratives as 
 wicked and deceitful men, there was yet another course open ; to divest these 
 individuals of their immediate divinity, but to accord to them an undegraded 
 humanity ; not indeed to look upon their deeds as miraculous ; — as little on 
 the other hand to decry them as impositions ;— but to explain their proceed- 
 ings as altogether natural, yet morally irreprehensible. If the Naturalist was 
 led by his special enmity to the Christianity of the church to the former ex- 
 planation, the Rationalist, anxious, on the contrary, to remain within the pale 
 of the church, was attracted towards the latter. 
 
 Eichhom, in his critical examination of the Wolfenbiittel Fragments,^ 
 directly opposes this rationalistic view to that maintained by the Naturalist. 
 He agrees with the Fragmentist in refusing to recognize an immediate divine 
 agency, at all events in the narratives of early date. The mythological re- 
 searches of a Heyne had so far enlarged his circle of vision as to lead Eich- 
 horn to perceive that divine interpositions must be alike admitted, or alike 
 denied, in the primitive histories of all people. It was the practice of all 
 nations, of the Grecians as well as the Orientals, to refer every unexpected or 
 inexplicable occurrence immediately to the Deity. The sages of antiquity 
 lived in continual communion with superior intelligences. Whilst these re- 
 presentations (such is Eichhorn's statement of the matter) are always, in 
 reference to the Hebrew records, understood verbally and literally, it has 
 hitherto been customary to explain similar representations in the pagan 
 histories, by presupposing either deception and gross falsehood, or the mis- 
 interpretation and corruption of tradition. But Eichhorn thinks justice 
 evidently requires that Hebrew and pagan history should be treated in the 
 same way ; so that intercourse with celestial beings during a state of infancy, 
 must either be accorded to all nations, pagan and Hebrew, or equally denied 
 to all. The mind hesitates to make so universal an admission : first, on 
 account of the not unfrequent errors contained in religions claiming to have 
 been divinely communicated ; secondly, from a sense of the difficulty of ex- 
 plaining the transition of the human race from a state of divine tutelage to 
 one of self-dependence : and lastly, because in proportion as intelligence in- 
 creases, and the authenticity of the records may be more and more confidently 
 relied iipon, in the same proportion do these immediate divine influences 
 invariably disappear. If, accordingly, the notion of supernatural interposition 
 is to be rejected with regard to the Hebrews, as well as to all other people, 
 the view generally taken of pagan antiquity presents itself, at first sight, as 
 that most obviously applicable to the early Hebrews ; namely, that their pre- 
 tended revelations were based upon deceit and falsehood, or that their rniracu- 
 lous histories should be referred to the misrepresentations and corruptions of 
 tradition. This is the view of the subject actually applied by the Fragmentist 
 to the Old Testament ; a representation, says Eichhorn, from which the mmd 
 on a nearer contemplation recoils. Is it conceivable that the greatest men of 
 1 Recension der ubrigen, noch ungedruckten Werke des Wolfenbiittler Fragmentiaten, in 
 Eichhorns allgemeiner Bibliothek, erster Band ites u. 2tes Stiick. 
 
48 INTRODUCTION. § 6. 
 
 antiquity, whoSe influence operated so powerfully and so beneficially upon 
 their age, should, one and all havfe been impostors, and yet have escaped the 
 detection of their contemporaries ? 
 
 According to Eichborn, so perverted a view could arise only in a mind that 
 refused to interpret the ancient records in the spirit of their age. Truly, had 
 they been composed with all the philosophical accuracy of the writers of the 
 present day, we should have been compelled to find in them either actual 
 divine interpositions, or a fraudulent pretence. But they are the production 
 of an infant and unscientific age ; and treat, without reserve of divine inter- 
 ventions, in accordance with the conceptions and phraseology of thg,t early 
 period. So that, in point of fact, we have neither miracles to wonder at, on 
 the one hand, nor deceptions to unmask on the other ; but simply the lan- 
 guage of a former age to translate into that of our own day. Eichhorn ob- 
 i serves that before the human race had gained a knowledge of the true causes 
 I of things, all occurrences were referred to supernatural agencies, or to the 
 interposition of superhuman beings. Lofty conceptions, noble resolves, use- 
 ful inventions and regulations, but more especially vivid dreams, were the 
 ■operations of that Deity under whose immediate influence they believed 
 themselves placed. Manifestations of distinguished intelligence and skill, by 
 -which some individual excited the wonder of the people, were regarded as 
 miraculous ; as signs of supernatural endowments, and of a particular inter- 
 course with higher beings. And this was the belief, not of the people only, 
 but also of these eminent individuals, who entertained no doubt of the fact, 
 and who exulted in the full conviction of being in mysterious connexion with 
 ithe Deity. Eichhorn is of opinion that no objection can be urged against 
 the attempt to resolve all the Mosaic narratives into natural occurrence?, and 
 thus far he concedes to the Fragmentist his primary position ; but he rejects 
 his inference that Moses was an impostor, pronouncing the conclusion to be 
 ■over-hasty and unjust. Thus Eichhorn agreed with the Naturalists in divest- 
 ing the biblical narratives of all their immediately divine contents, but he 
 •differed from them in this, that he explained the supernatural lustre which 
 adorns these histories, not as a fictitious colouring imparted with design to 
 -deceive, but as a natural and as it were spontaneous illumination reflected 
 from antiquity itself. 
 
 In conformity with these principles Eichhorn sought to explain naturally 
 the histories of Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc. Viewed in the light of that age, 
 the appointment of Moses to be the leader of the Israelities was nothing more 
 than the long cherished project of the patriot to emancipate his people, which 
 when presented before his mind with more than usual vividness in his dreams, 
 was believed by him to be a divine inspiration. The flame and smoke which 
 .ascended from Mount Sinai, at the giving of the law, was merely a fire which 
 Moses kindled in order to make a deeper impression upon the imagination of 
 the people, together with an accidental thunderstorm which arose at that par- 
 ticular moment. The shining of his countenance was the natural effect of 
 "being over-heated : but it was supposed to be a divine manifestation, not only 
 ■by the people, but by Moses himself, he being ignorant of the true cause. 
 
 Eichhorn was more reserved in his application of this mode of interpreta- 
 tion to the New Testament. Indeed, it was only to a few of the narratives in 
 the Acts of the Apostles, such as the miracle of the day of Pentecbst, the con- 
 version of the Apostle Paul, and the many apparitions of angels, that he 
 allowed himself to apply it. Here too, he refers the supernatural to the 
 figurative language of the Bible ; in which, for example, a happy accident is 
 ■called — a protecting angel ; a joyous thought— the salutation of an angel ; and 
 a peaceful state of mind — a comforting angel. It is however remarkable that 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 49 
 
 Ekhhorn was conscious of the inapplicability of the natural explanation to 
 some parts of the gospel history, and with respect tO' raainy of the narratives 
 took a more elevated view. 
 
 Many writings in a similar spirit, which partially included the New Testa- 
 ment within the circle of their explanations, appeared ; but it was Dr. Paulus 
 who by his commentary on the Gospels ^ in 1800, first acquired the full reputa- 
 tion of a christian Evemerus. In the introduction to this work he states it 
 to be the primary requisite of the biblical critic to be able to distinguish be- 
 tween what \s faclf.a.nA. what is opptwn^ That which has been actually experi- 
 enced, internally or externally, l^the participants in an event, he calls fact. 
 The interpretation of an event, the supposed causes to which it is referred either 
 by the participants or by the narrators, he calls opinion. But, according to Dr. 
 Paulus, these two elements become so easily blended and confounded in 
 the minds both of the original sharers in an event, and of the subsequent re- 
 lators and historians, that fact and opinion lose their distinction ; so that the 
 one and the other are believed and recorded with equal confidence in their 
 historical truth. This intermixture is particularly apparent in the historical 
 books of the New Testament ; since at the time when Jesus lived, it was still 
 the prevailing disposition to derive every striking occurrence from an invisible 
 and superhuman cause. It is consequently the chief task of the historian who 
 desires to deal with matters of fact, that is to say, in reference to the New 
 Testament, to separate these two constituent elements so closely amalgamated, 
 and yet in themselves so distinct ; and to extricate the pure kernel of fact 
 from the shell of opinion. Jn order to this, in the absence of any more 
 genuine account which would serve as a correcting parallel, he must trans- 
 plant himself in imagination upon the theatre of action, and strive to the ut- 
 most to contemplate the events by the light of the age in which they occurred. 
 And from this point of view he must seek to supply the deficiencies of the 
 narration, by filling in those explanatory collateral circumstances, which the 
 relator himself is so often led by his predilection for the supernatural to leave 
 unnoticed. It is well known in what nianner Dr. Paulus applies these prin- 
 ciples to the New Testament in his Commentary,, and still more fully in his 
 later production, " The Life of Jesus." He firmly maintains the historical 
 truth of the gospel narratives, and he aims to weave them into one consecutive 
 chronologically-arranged detail of facts ; but he ex;plains away every trace of 
 immediate divine agency, and denies all supernatural intervention. Jesus is 
 not to him the Son of God in the sense of the Church, but a wise and virtuous 
 human being ; and the effects he produced are not miracles, but acts some- 
 times of benevolence and friendship, sometimes of medical skill, sometimes 
 also the results of accident and good fortune. 
 
 This view proposed by Eichhorn,, and more completely developed by 
 Paulus, necessarily presupposes the Old and New Testament writings to con- 
 tain a minute and faithful narration, composed shortly after the occurrence ot 
 the events recorded, and derived, wherever this was possible, from the testi- 
 mony of eye-witnesses. For it is only from an accurate and original report 
 that the ungarbled fact can be disentangled from interwoven opinion. If the 
 report be later and less original, what security is there that what is taken for 
 the matter-of-fact kernel does not belong to opinion or tradition ? To avoid 
 this objection, Eichhorn sought to assign a date to the Old Testament histories 
 approximating as nearly as possible to the events they record : and here he, 
 and other theologians of the same school, found no difficulty in admitting sup- 
 positions the most unnatural: for example, that the Pentateuch was written 
 during the passage through the wilderness. However this critic admits that 
 
 • Paulus's Commentar iiber das neue Testament. 
 
so INTRODUCTION. § 7. 
 
 some portions of the Old Testament, the Book of Judges, for instance, could 
 not have been written contemporaneously with the events ; that the historian 
 must have contemplated his heroes through the dim mist of intervening ages, 
 which might easily have magnified them into giaiit forms. No historian who 
 had either witnessed the circumstances, or had been closely connected with 
 them in point of time, could embellish after such fashion, except with the ex- 
 press aim to amuse at the expense of truth; But with regard to remote 
 occurrences it is quite different. The imagination is no longer restricted 
 by the fixed limits of historical reality, but is aided in its flight by the notion 
 that in earlier times all things were better and nobler ; and the historian is 
 tempted to speak in loftier phrase, and to use hyperbolical expressions. 
 Least of all is it possible to avoid embellishment, when the compiler of a 
 subsequent age derives his materials from the orally transmitted traditions of 
 antiquity. The adventures and wondrous exploits of ancestors, handed down 
 by father to son, and by son to grandson, in glowing and enthusiastic repre- 
 sentations, and sung by the poet in lofty strains, are registered in the written 
 records of the historian in similar terms of high flowing diction. Though 
 Eichhorn took this view of a portion of the Old Testament Books, he believed 
 he was not giving up their historical basis, but was still able, after clearing 
 away the more or less' evident legendary additions, to trace out the natural 
 course of the history. 
 
 But in one instance at least, this master of the natural mode of interpreta- 
 tion in reference to the Old Testament, took a more elevated view : — namely, 
 of the history of the creation and the fall, In his influential work on primi- 
 tive history,^ although he had from the first declared the account of the crea- 
 tion to be poetry, he nevertheless maintained that of the fall to be neither 
 mythology nor allegory, but true history. The historical basis that remained 
 after the removal of the supernatural, he stated to be this : that the human 
 constitution had at the very beginning become impaired by the eating of a 
 poisonous fruit. He thought it indeed very possible in itself, and confirmed 
 by numerous examples in profane history, that purely historical narratives 
 might be overlaid by a mythical account ; but owing to a supranaturalistic 
 notion, he refused to allow the same possibility to the Bible, because he 
 thought it unworthy of the Deity to admit a mythological fragment into a 
 book, which bore such incontestable traces of its divine origin. Later, how- 
 eiver, Eichhorn himself declared that he had changed his opinion with regard 
 to the second and third chapters of Genesis.* He no longer saw in them an 
 historical account of the effects of poison, but rather the mythical embodying 
 of a philosophical thought ; namely, that the desire for a better condition than 
 that in which man actually is, is the source of all the evil in the world. Thus, 
 in this point at least, Eichhorn preferred to give up the history in order to 
 hold fast the idea, rather than to cling to the history with the sacrifice of every 
 more elevated conception. For the rest, he agreed with Paulus and others in 
 considering the miraculous in the sacred history as a drapery which needs 
 only to be drawn aside, in order to disclose the pure historic form. 
 
 § 7. 
 
 MORAL INTERPRETATION OF KANT. 
 
 Amidst these natural explanations which the end of the eighteenth century 
 brought forth in rich abundance, it was a remarkable interlude to see the old 
 
 ^ Eichhom's Urgeschichte, herausgegeben von Gabler, 3 Thl.'s. 98. ff. 
 
 ■• Allgem. Biblioth. I Bd. s. 989, and Einleitung in das A. T. 3 Thl. s. 82. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE li^YTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. $1 
 
 allegorical system Qf the christian fathers all at.oncej:alled up from ite grave, 
 and_reyive<I in the form of the moral interpretation of Kant. He, as a philo- 
 sopher, did not concern himself with the history, as did the rationalist theolo- 
 gians, but like the fathers of the church, he sought the idea involved in the 
 history: not however considering it as they did an absolute idea, at once 
 theoretical as well as practical, but regarding it only on its practical side, as 
 what he called iAe moral imperative and consequently belonging to the finite. 
 He moreover attributed these ideas wrought into the biblical text, not to the 
 Divine Spirit, but to its philosophical interpreters, or in a deeper sense, to the 
 moral condition of the authors of the book themselves. This opinion Kant * 
 bases upon the fact, that in all religions old and new which are partly comprised 
 in sacred books, intelligent and well-meaning teachers of the people have con- 
 tinued to explain them, until they have brought their actual contents into 
 agreement with the universal principles of morality. Thus did the moral 
 philosophers amongst the Greeks and Romans with their fabulous legends ; 
 till at last they explained the grossest polytheism as mere symbolical repre- 
 sentations of the attributes of the one divine Being, and gave a mystical sense 
 to the many vicious actions of their gods, and to the wildest dreams of their 
 poets, in order to bring the popular faith, which it was not expedient to de- 
 stroy, into agreement with the doctrines of morality. The later Judaism and 
 Christianity itself he thinks have been formed upon similar explanations, occa- 
 sionally much forced, but always directed to objects undoubtedly good and 
 necessary for all men. Thus thei Mahometans gave a spiritual meaning to the 
 sensual descriptions of their paradise, and thus the Hindoos, or at least the 
 more enlightened part of them, interpreted their Vedas. In like manner, ac- 
 cording to Kant, the Christian Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, 
 must be interpreted throughout in a sense which agrees with the universal 
 practical laws of a religion of pure reason : and such an explanation, even 
 though it should, apparently or actually, do violence to the text, which is the 
 case with many of the biblical narratives, is to be preferred to a literal one, 
 which either contains no morality at all or is in opposition to the moral prin- 
 ciple. For example, the expressions breathing vengeance against enernies in 
 many of the Psalms are made to refer to the desires and passions which we 
 must strive by all means to bring into subjection ; and the miraculous ac- 
 count in the New Testament of the descent of Jesus from heaven, of his rela- 
 tionship to God, etc., is taken as an imaginative description of the ideal of 
 humanity well-pleasing to God. That such an interpretation is possible, with- 
 out even always too offensive an opposition to the literal sense of these records 
 of the popular faith, arises according to the profound observations of Kant 
 from this : that long before the existence of these records, the disposition to 
 a moral religion was latent in the human mind ; that its first manifestations 
 were directed to the worship of the Deity, and on this very account gave oc- 
 casion to those pretended revelations ; still, though unintentionally, imparting 
 even to these fictions somewhat of the spiritual character of their origin. In 
 reply to the charge of dishonesty brought against his system of interpretation, 
 he thinks it a sufficient defence to observe, that it does not pretend that the 
 sense now given to the sacred books, always existed in the mtention of the 
 authors ; this question it sets aside, and only claims for itself the right to inter- 
 pret them after its own fashion. . u-m- i 
 Whilst Kapt in this manner sought to educe^noral thoughts from the biblical 
 writings, even in their historical part, and was even inclined to consider these 
 
 1 Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Veinunft, drittes Stuck. No. 'VI. : Der 
 Kirchenglaube hat zu seinem hochsten Ausleger den reinen Religionsglauben. 
 
52 INTRODUCTION. § 8. 
 
 thoughts as the fundamental object of the history : on the one hand, he de- 
 rived these thoughts only from himself and the cultivation of his age, and 
 therefore could seldom assume that they had actually been laid down by the 
 authors of those writings ; and on the other hand, and for the same ^^^^°"' 
 he omitted to show what was the relation between these thoughts and those 
 symbolic representations, and how it happened' that the one came to be ex- 
 pressed by the other. 
 
 § 8. 
 
 RISE OF THE MYTHICAL MODE OF INTERPRETING THE SACRED HISTORY, IN 
 REFERENCE FIRST TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 It was impossible to rest satisfied with modes of proceeding so unhistorical 
 on the one hand, and so unphilosophical on the other. Added to which, the 
 study of mythology, now become far more general and more prolific in its 
 results, exerted an increasing influence on the views taken of biblical history. 
 Eichhorn had indeed insisted that all primitive histories, whether Hebrew or 
 Pagan, should be treated alike, but this equality gradually disappeared ; for 
 though the mythical view became more and more developed in relation to 
 profane history, the natural mode of explanation was still rigidly adhered to 
 for the Hebrew records. All could not imitate Paulus, who sought to estab- 
 lish consistency of treatment by extending the same natural explanation 
 which he gave to the Bible, to such also of the Greek legends as presented any 
 points of resemblance ; on the contrary, opinion in general took the opposite 
 course, and began to regard many of the biblical narratives as mythi. Sem- 
 ler had already spoken of a kind of Jewish mythology, and had even called 
 the histories of Samson and Esther mythi ; Eichhorn too had done much to 
 prepare the way, now further pursued by Gabler, Schelling, and others, who 
 established the notion of the mythus as one of universal application to ancient 
 history, sacred as well as profane, according to the principle of. Heyne : A 
 mythis omnis priuorum hominum cum historia turn fhilbsophia procedii} And 
 Bauer in 1820 ventured so far as to publish a Hebrew mythology of the Old 
 and New Testament.* The earliest records of all nations are, in the opinion 
 of Bauer, mythical : why should the writings of the Hebrews form a solitary 
 exception ? — whereas in point of fact a cursory glance at their sacred books 
 proves that they also contain mythical elements. A narrative he explains, 
 after Gabler and Schellingj to be recognizable as mythus, first, when it pro- 
 ceeds from an age in which no written records existed, but in which facts were 
 transmitted through the medium of oral tradition alone ; secondly, when it 
 presents an historical account of events which are either absolutely or rela- 
 tively beyond the reach of experience, such as occurrences connected with the 
 spiritual world, and incidents to which, from the nature of the circumstances, 
 no one could have been witness ; or thirdly, when it deals in the marvellous 
 and is couched in symbolical language. Not a few narratives of this descrip- 
 tion occur in the Bible \ and an unwillingness to regard them as mythi can arise 
 only from a false conception of the nature of a mythus, or of the character of 
 the biblical writings. In the one case mythi are confounded with fables, pre- 
 meditated fictions, and wilful falsehoods, instead of being recognised as the 
 necessary vehicle of expression for the first efforts of the human mind ; in the 
 other case it certainly does appear improbable, (the notion of inspixatibn 
 
 • Ad. ApoUod. Athen. Biblioth. notae, p. 3 f. 
 
 * Hebraische Mythologie des alien und neuen Testaments, Gk L. Bauer, 1802. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 53 
 
 presupposed,) that God should have admitted the substitution of mythical for 
 actual representations of facts and ideas, but a nearer examination of the 
 scriptures shows that this very notion of inspiration, far from being any hind- 
 rance to the mythical interpretation, is itself of mythical origin. 
 
 W^soheider ascribed this greater unwillingness to recognise mythi in the 
 early records of the Hebrew and Christian religion than in the heathen reli- 
 gions, partly to the prevailing ignorance respecting the progress of historical 
 and philosophical science ; partly to a certain timidity which dares not call 
 things manifestly identical by the same name. At the same time he declared 
 it impossible to rescue the Bible from the reproaches and scoffs of its enemies 
 except by the acknowledgment of mythi in the sacred writings, and the 
 separation of their inherent meaning from their unhistorical form.^ 
 
 These biblical critics gave the following general definition of the mythus. 
 It is the representation of an event or of an idea in a form which is historical, 
 but, at the same time characterized by the rich pictorial and imaginative 
 mode of thought and expression of the primitive ages. They also distin- 
 guished several kinds of mythi.* 
 
 ist. Historical mythi: narratives of real events coloured by the light of 
 antiquity, which confounded the diving and the human, the natural and the 
 supernatural. 
 
 2nd. Philosophical mythi : such as clothe in the garb of historical narrative 
 a simple thought, a precept, or an idea of the time. 
 
 3rd. Poetical mythi: historical and philosophical mythi partly blended 
 together, and partly embellished by the creations of the imagination, in which 
 the original fact or idea is almost obscured by the veil which the fancy of the 
 poet has woven around it. 
 
 To classify the biblical mythi according to these several distinctions is 
 a difficult task, since the mythus which is purely symbolical wears the sem- 
 blance of history equally with the mythus which represents an actual occur- 
 rence. These critics however laid down rules by which the different mythi 
 might be distinguished. The first essential is, they say, to determine whether 
 the narrative have a distinct object, and what that object is. Where no 
 object, for the sake of which the legend might have been invented, is dis- 
 coverable, every one would pronounce the mythus to be historical. But if all 
 the principal circumstances of the narrative concur to symbolize a particular 
 truth, this undoubtedly was the object of the narrative, and the mythus is 
 philosophical. The blending of the historical and philosophical mythus is 
 particularly to be recognised when we can detect in the narrative an attempt 
 to derive events from their causes. In- many instances the existence of an 
 historical foundation is proved also by independent testimony; sometimes 
 certain particulars in the mythus are intimately connected with known genume 
 history, or bear in themselves undeniable and inherent characteristics of pro- 
 bability : so that the critic, lyhile he rejects the external form, may yet retam 
 the groundwork as historical. The poetical mythus is the most difficult to 
 distinguish, and Bauer gives only a negative criterion. When the narrative 
 is so wonderful on the one hand as to exclude the possibility of its being 
 a detail of facts, and when on the other it discovers no attempt to symbolize 
 a particular thought, it may be suspected that the entire narrative owes its 
 birth to the imagination of the poet. Schelling particularly remarks on the 
 unartificial and spontaneous origin of mythi in general. The unhistorical 
 
 » Institutiones Theol. Chr. Dogm. § 42. , . r ni. • ^■, .,,i™«r^i!= fnntp<; 
 
 ♦ Ammon, Progr. quo inquiritur in narrationum de vitas Jesu Christi pnmordus fontes, 
 etc., in Pott's and Ruperti's Sylloge Comm. theol. No. S, und G^'bler's n. theol. Journal. 
 S Bd. s. 83 und 397. 
 
54 INTRODUCTION, § 8. 
 
 which is interwoven with the matters of fact in the historical mythus is not, 
 he observes, the artistical product of design and invention. It has on the 
 contrary glided in of itself, as it were, in the lajjse of time and in the course of 
 transmission. And, speaking of philosophical mythi, he says : the sages of 
 antiquity clothed their ideas in an historical garb, not only in order to accom- 
 modate those ideas to the apprehension of a people who must be awakened 
 by sensible impressions, but also on their own account : deficient themselves 
 in clear abstract ideas, and in ability to give expreission to their dim concep- 
 tions, they sought to illumine what was obscure in their representations by 
 means of sensible imagery.^ 
 
 We have already remarked, that the natural mode of interpreting the Old 
 Testament could be maintained only so long as the records were held to be 
 contemporaneous, or nearly so, with the events recorded. Consequently it 
 was precisely those theologians, Vater, De Wette and others who controverted 
 this opinion, who contributed "to establish the mythical view of the sacred 
 histories. Vater ^ expressed the opinion that the peculiar character of the 
 narrations in the Pentateuch could not be rightly understood, unless it were 
 conceded that they are not the production of an " eye witness, but are a series 
 of transmitted traditions. Their traditional origin being admitted, we cease 
 to feel surprised at the traces which they discover of a subsequent age ; at 
 numerical exaggerations, together with other inaccuracies and contradictions ; 
 at the twilight which hangs over many of the occurrences ; and at representa- 
 tions such as, that the clothes of the Israelites waxed not old during their 
 passage through the wilderness. Vater even contends, that unless we ascribe 
 a great share of the marvellous contained in the Pentateuch to tradition, we 
 do violence to the original sense of the compilers of these narratives. 
 
 The natural mode of explaiiation was still more decidedly opposed by De 
 Wette than by Vater. He advocated the mythical interpretation of a large 
 proportion of the Old Testament histories. In order to test the historical 
 credibility of a narrative, he says,' we must ascertain the intention of the 
 narrator. If that intention be not to satisfy the natural thirst for historical 
 truth by a simple narration of facts, but rather to delight or touch the feelings, 
 or to illustrate some philosophical or religious truth, then his narrative has no 
 pretension to historical validity. Even when the narrator is conscious of 
 strictly historical intentions, nevertheless his point of view may not be the 
 historical : he may be a poetical narrator, not indeed subjectively, as a poet 
 drawing inspiration from himself, but objectively, as enveloped by and de- 
 pending on poetry external to himself. This is evidently the case when the 
 narrator details as boni fide matter of fact things which are impossible and 
 incredible, which are contrary not only to experience, but to the established 
 laws of nature. Narrations of this description spring out of tradition. 
 Tradition, says De Wette, is uncritical and partial; its tendency is not his- 
 torical, but rather patriotic and poetical. And since the patriotic sentiment 
 is gratified by all that flatters national pride, the more splendid, the more 
 honourable, the more wonderful the narrative, the more acceptable it is ; and 
 where tradition has left any blanks, imagination at once steps in and fills them 
 up. And since, he continues, a great part of the historical books of the Old 
 Testament bear this stamp, it has hitherto been believed possible (on the 
 part of the natural interpreters) to separate the embellishments and trans- 
 
 ' Ueber Mythen, historische Sagen und Philosopheme der altesten Welt. In Paulus 
 Memorabilien, S stuck. 1793. 
 * Vid. die Abhandlung iiber Moses und die Verfasser des Pentateuchs, im 3'™, Band 
 . des Comm. iiber den Pent. s. 660. 
 
 7 Kritik der Mosaischen Geschichte. Einl. 5. 10. ff. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 55 
 
 formations from the historical substance, and still to consider them available 
 as records of facts. This might indeed be done, had we, besides the mar- 
 vellous biblical narratives, some other purely historical account of the events. 
 But this is not the case with regard to the Old Testament history; we 
 are solely dependent on those accounts which we cannot recognize as 
 purely historical. They contain no criterion by which to distinguish between 
 the true and the false ; both are promiscuously blended, and set forth as of 
 equal dignity. According to De Wette, the whole natural mode of explana- 
 tion is set aside by the principle that the only means of acquaintance with a 
 history is the narrative which we possess concerning it, and that beyond this 
 narrative the historian cannot go. In the present case, this reports to us 
 only a supernatural course of events, which we must either receive or reject : 
 if we reject it, we determine to know nothing at all about it, and are not 
 justified in allowing ourselves to invent a natural course of events, of which 
 the narrative is totally silent. It is moreover inconsistent and arbitrary to 
 refer the dress in which the events of the Old Testament are clothed to 
 poetry, and to preserve the events themselves as historical ; much rather do 
 the particular details and the dress in which they appear, constitute a whole 
 belonging to the province of poetry and mythus. For example, if God's 
 covenant with Abraham be denied in the form of fact, whilst at the same time 
 it is maintained that the narrative had an historical basis, — that is to say, 
 that though no objective divine communication took place, the occurrence 
 had a subjective reality in Abraham's mind in a dream or in a waking vision ; 
 in other words, that a natural thought was awakened in Abraham which he, 
 in the spirit of the age, referred to God : — of the naturalist who thus reasons, 
 De Wette asks, how he knows that such thoughts arose in Abraham's mind ? 
 The narration refers them to God ; and if we reject the narration, we know 
 nothing about these thoughts of Abraham, and consequently cannot know 
 that they had arisen naturally in him. According to general experience, such 
 hopes as are described in this covenant, that he should become the father 
 of a mighty nation which should possess the land of Canaan, could not have 
 sprung up naturally in Abraham's mind; but it is quite natural that the 
 Israelites when they had become a numerous people in possession of that 
 land, should have invented the covenant in order to render their ancestor 
 illustrious. Thus the natural explanation, by its own unnaturalness, ever 
 brings us back to the mythical. 
 
 Even Eichhorn, who so extensively employed the natural explanation in 
 reference to the Old Testament, perceived its inadmissibility in relation to 
 the gospel histories. Whatever in these narratives has a tendency to the 
 supernatural, he remarks,^ we ought not to attempt to transform into a natural 
 occurrence, because this is impossible without violence. If once an event 
 has acquired a miraculous colourings owing to the blending together of some 
 popular notion with the occurrence, the natural fact can be disentangled only 
 when we possess a second account which has not undergone the like trans- 
 formation ; as, concerning the death of Herod Agrippa, we have not only the 
 narrative in the Acts, but also that of Josephus.' But since we have no such 
 controlling account concerning the history of Jesus, the critic who pretends 
 to discover the natural course of things from descriptions of supernatural 
 occurrences, will only weave a tissue of indemonstrable hypotheses :— a con- 
 sideration which, as Eichhorn observes, at once annihilates many of the 
 so-called psychological interpretations of the Gospel histories. 
 
 8 Einleit. in ilas N. T. i, s. 408. ff. 
 ' Antiquit. xix. viii. 2. 
 
S<5 INTRODUCTION. § 8. 
 
 It is this same difference between the natural and mythical modes of 
 interpretation wlhich Krug intends to point out, referring particularly to the 
 histories of miracles, when he distinguishes the physical or material, from the 
 genetic or formal, mode of explaining them. Following the former mode, 
 according to him, the inquiry is : how can the wonderful event here related 
 have possibly taken place with all its details by natural means and according 
 to natural laws ? Whereas, following the latter, the question is : whence arose 
 the narrative of the marvellous event? The former explains the natural pos- 
 sibility of the thing related (the substance of the narrative) ; the latter traces 
 the origin of the existing record (the form of the narrative). Krug considers 
 attempts of the former kind to be fruitless, because they produce interpreta- 
 tions yet more wonderful than the fact itself; far preferable is the other 
 mode, since it leads to results which throw light upon miraculous histories 
 collectively. He gives the preference to the exegetist, because in his expla- 
 nation of the text he is not obliged to do violence to it, but may accept it 
 altogether literally as the author intended, even though the thing related be 
 impossible; whereas the interpreter, who follows the material or physical 
 explanation, is driven to ingenious subtleties which make him lose sight of 
 the original meaning of the authors, and substitute something quite different 
 which they neither could nor would have said. < 
 
 In like manner Gabler recommended the mythical view, as the best means 
 of escaping from the so called natural, but forced explanation, which had 
 become the fashion. The natural interpreter, he remarks, commonly aims to 
 make the whole narrative natural ; and as this can but seldom succeed, he 
 allows himself the most violent measures, owing to which modern exegesis 
 has been brought into disrepute even amongst Uymen. The mythical view, 
 on the contrary, needs no such subtleties; since the greater part of a nar- 
 rative frequently belongs to the mythical representation merely, while the 
 nucleus of fact, when divested of the subsequently added miraculous enve- 
 lopments, is often very small. 
 
 Neither could Horst reconcile himself to the atomistic mode of proceeding, 
 which selected from the marvellous narratives of the Bible, as unhistorical, 
 isolated incidents merely, and inserted natural ones in their place, instead of 
 recognizing in the whole of each narrative a religious moral mythus in which 
 a certain idea is embodied. 
 
 An anonymous writer in Bertholdt's Journal has expressed himself very 
 decidedly against the natural mode of explaining the sacred history, and in 
 favour of the mythical. The essential defect of the natural interpretation, as 
 exhibited in its fullest development by Paulus's Commentary, is, according to 
 that writer, its unhistorical mode of procedure. He objects : that it allows 
 conjecture to supply the deficiencies of the record ; adopts individual specu- 
 lations as a substitute for real history ; seeks by vain endeavours to represent 
 that as natural which the narrative describes as supernatural ; and lastly, 
 evaporates all sacredness and divinity from the Scriptures, reducing them to 
 collections of amusing tales no longer meriting the name of history. Accord- 
 ing to our author, this insufficiency of the natural mode of interpretation, 
 whilst the supernatural also is felt to be unsatisfactory, leads the mind to the 
 mythical view, which leaves the substance of the narrative unassailed ; and 
 instead of venturing to explain the details, accepts the whole, not indeed as 
 true history, but as a sacred legend. This view is supported by the analogy 
 of all antiquity, political and religious, since the closest resemblance exists 
 between many of the narratives of the Old and New Testament, and the 
 mythi of profane antiquity. But the most convincing argument is this : if the 
 mythical view be once admitted, the innumerable, and never otherwise to be 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE xMYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. S7 
 
 harmonized, discrepancies and chronological contradictions in the gospel 
 histories disappear, as it were, at one stroke.^" 
 
 §9. 
 
 THE MYTHICAL MODE OF INTERPRETATION IN REFERENCE TO THE NEW 
 
 TESTAMENT. 
 
 Thus the mythical mode of interpretation was adopted not only in relatioh 
 to the Old Testament, but also to the New; not, however, without its being 
 felt necessary to justify such a step. Gabler'has objected to the Commentary 
 of Paulus, that it concedes too little to the mythical point of view, which 
 must be adopted for certain New Testament narratives. For many of these 
 narratives present not only those mistaken views of things which might have 
 been taken by eye-witnesses, and by the rectification of which a natural 
 course of events may be made out ; but frequently, also, false facts and im- 
 possible consequences which no eye-witness could have related, and which 
 could only have been the product of tradition, and must therefore be mythi- 
 cally •understood.'^ 
 
 The chief difficulty which opposed the transference of the mythical point 
 of view from the Old Testament to the New, was this : — it was customary to 
 look for mythi in the fabulous primitive ages only, in which no written records 
 of events as yet existed ; whereas, in the time of Jesus, the mythical age had 
 long since passed away, and writing had become common among the Jews. 
 Schelling had however conceded (at least in a note) that the terra mythi, in 
 a more extended sense, was appropriate to those narratives which, though 
 originating in an age when it was usual to preserve documentary records, 
 were nevertheless transmitted by the mouth of the people. Bauer ^ in like 
 manner asserted, that though a connected series of mythi, — a history which 
 should be altogether mythical, — ^was not to be sought in the New Testament, 
 yet there might occur in it single myths, either ti'ansferred from the Old 
 Testament to the New, or having originally sprung up in the latter. Thus 
 he found, in the details of the infancy of Jesus, much which requires to be 
 regarded from a mythical point of view. As after the decease of celebrated 
 personages, numerous anecdotes are circulated concerning them, which fail 
 not to receive many and wondrous amplifications in the legends of a wonder- 
 loving people ; so, after Jesus had become distinguished by his life, and yet 
 more glorified by his death, his early years, which had been passed m 
 obscurity, became adorned with miraculous embellishments. And, accordmg 
 to Bauer, whenever in this history of the infancy we find celestial bemgs, 
 called by name and bearing the human shape, predictmg future occurrences, 
 etc., we have a right to suppose a mythus ; and to conjecture as its origin, 
 that the great actions of Jesus being referred to superhuman causes this 
 explanation came to be blended with the history. On the same subject, 
 GablerS remarked that the notion of ancient is relative; compared with the 
 Mosaic religion Christianity is certainly young; but in itself it is old enough 
 to allow us to refer the original history of its founder to ancient times. That 
 at that time written documents on other subjects existed, proves nothing, 
 
 '» Die verschiedenen Rucksichten, in welchen und fur welche der Biograph Jesu arbeiteti 
 kann. In Bertholdt's krit. Journal, 5 Bd. s. 235. ff. 1 » , . ,nc ff l,RnA 
 
 ^ Recens-von Paulus Commentar, im neuesten theol. Journal 7, 4. s. 395 "• USoi)- 
 
 3 I^ttf:tuBtefBll™;f'i!/in, N.T., Mythen anzunehn^en? Im Journal 
 fiir auserlesene theol. Literatur, 2, i, s. 49 fF. 
 
58 INTRODUCTION. § Q. 
 
 whilst it can be shown that for a long period there was no written account of 
 the life of Jesus, and particularly of his infancy. Oral narratives were alone 
 transmitted, and they would easily become tinged with the marvellous, mixed 
 with Jewish ideas, and thus grow into historical mythi. On many other 
 points there was no tradition, and here the mind was left to its own surmises. 
 The more scanty the historical data, the greater was the scope for conjecture ; 
 and historical guesses and inferenpes of this description, formed in harmony 
 with the Jewish-Christian tastes, may be called the philosophical, or rather, 
 the dogmatical mythi of the early christian Gospel. The notion of the 
 mythus, concludes Gabler, being thus shown to be applicable to many of the 
 narratives of the New Testament, why should we not dare to call them by 
 their right name ; why — that is to say in learned discussion — avoid an ex- 
 pression which can give offence only to the prejudiced or the misinformed? 
 
 As in the Old Testament Eichhorn had been brought over by the force of 
 internal evidence from his earlier natural explanation, to the mythical view 
 of the history of the fall ; so in the New Testament, the same thing happened 
 to Usteri in relation to the history of the temptation. In an earlier work he 
 had, following Schleiermacher, considered it as a parable spoken by Jesus 
 but misunderstood by his disciples.* Soon however he perceived the diffi- 
 culties of this interpretation ; and since both the natural and the supernatural 
 views of the narrative appeared to him yet more objectionable, he had no 
 alternative but to adopt the mythical. Once admit, he remarks, a state of 
 excitement, particularly of religious excitement, among a not unpoetical 
 people, and a short time is sufficient to give an appearance of the marvellous 
 not only to obscure and concealed, but even to public aind well-known facts. 
 It, is therefore by no means conceivable that the early Jewish Christians, 
 gifted with the spirit, that is, animated with religious enthusiasm, as they 
 were, and famihar with the Old Testament, should not have been in a 
 condition to invent symbolical scenes such as the temptation and other New 
 Testament mythi. It is not however to be imagined that any one individual 
 seated himself at his table to invent them out of his own head, and write 
 them down, as he would a poem : on the contrary, these narratives like all 
 other legends were fashioned by degrees, by steps which can no longer be 
 traced ; gradually acquired consistency, and at length received a fixed form 
 in our written Gospels. 
 
 We have seen that in reference to the early histories of the Old Testament, 
 the mythical view could be embraced by those only who doubted the com- 
 position of these Scriptures by eye-witnesses or contemporaneous writers. 
 This was equally the case in reference to the New. It was not till Eichhorn ^ 
 became convinced that only a slender thread of that primitive Gospel believed 
 by the Apostles ran through the three first Gospels, and that even in Matthew 
 this thread was entangled in a mass of unapostolic additions, that he discarded 
 as unhistorical legends, the many narratives which he found perplexing, from 
 all share in the history of Jesus ; for example, besides the Gospel of Infancy, 
 the details of the temptation ; several of the miracles of Jesus ; the rising of 
 the saints from their graves at his crucifixion ; the guard at the sepulchre, 
 etc.* Particularly since the opinion, that the three first Gospels originated 
 from oral traditions, became firmly established,'' they have been found to 
 
 * Ueber den Taufer Johannes, die Taufe Und Versuchung Christi, in Ullmann's u. 
 Umbreit's theol. Studien u. Kritiken, 2, 3, s. 456 ff. 
 
 ' Beitrag zur Erklarung der VersuchungsgeschichteJ in ders. Zeitschrift, 1832, 4. Heft. 
 
 * Einleitung in das N. T. i, s. 422 ff. 453 ff. 
 
 ' Besonders durth Gieseler, iiber die Entstehung und die fruhsten Schicksale der sclirift 
 lichen Evangelien. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 59 
 
 contain a continually increasing number of mythi and mythical embellish- 
 inents.8 On this account the authenticity of the Gospel of John, and conse- 
 quently its historical credibility, is confidently maintained by most of the 
 theologians of the present day : he only who, with Bretschneider,^ questions 
 its apostolic composition, may cede in this Gospel also a considerable place 
 to the mythical element. 
 
 THE NOTION OF THE MYTHUS IN ITS APPLICATION TO SACRED HISTORIES 
 NOT CLEARLY APPREHENDED BY THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 Thus, indeed, did the mythical view gain application to the biblical history : 
 still the notion of the mythus was for a long time neither clearly apprehended 
 nor applied to a due extent. 
 
 Not clearly apprehended. The characteristic which had been recognised 
 as constituting the distinction between historical and philosophical mythi, 
 however just that distinction might in itself be, was of a kind which easily 
 betrayed the critic back again into the scarcely abandoned natural explana- 
 tion. His task, with regard to historical mythi, was still to separate the 
 natural fact — the nucleus of historical reality — from its unhistorical and 
 miraculous embellishments. An essential difference indeed existed : the 
 natural explanation attributed the embellishments to the opinion of the 
 actors concerned, or of the narrator; the mythical interpretation derived 
 them from tradition ; but the mode of proceeding was left too little deter- 
 mined. If the Rationalist could point out historical mythi in the Bible, 
 without materially changing his mode of explanation ; so the Supernaturalist 
 on his part felt himself less offended by the admission of historical mythi, 
 which still preserved to the sacred narratives a basis of fact, than by the 
 supposition of philosophical mythi, which seemed completely to annihilate 
 every trace of historical foundation. It is not surprising, therefore, that the 
 interpreters who advocated the mythical theory spoke almost exclusively of 
 historical mythi ; that Bauer, amongst a considerable number of mythi which 
 he cites from the New Testament, finds but one philosophical mythus ; and 
 that a mixed mode of interpretation, partly mythical and partly natural, 
 (a medley far more contradictory than the pure natural explanation, from the 
 difficulties of which these critics sought to escape,) should have been adopted. 
 Thus Bauer 1 thought that he was explaining Jehovah's promise to Abraham 
 as an historical mythus, when he admitted as the fundamental fact of the 
 narrative, that Abraham's hopes of a numerous posterity were re-awakened by 
 the contemplation of the star-sown heavens. Another theologian ^ imagined 
 he had seized the mythical point of view, when, having divested the announce- 
 ment of the birth of thfe Baptist of the supernatural, he still retamed tlie 
 dumbness of Zachariah as the historical groundwork. In like manner Krug,- 
 immediately after assuring us that his intention is not to explain the substance 
 of the history, (according to the natural mode,) but to explain the origui of 
 the narrative, (according to the mythical view,) constitutes an accidental 
 
 « Vid. den Anhangder Schulz'schen Schrift liber das Abendmahl, und die Schriften von 
 Sieffert und Sciineckenburger iiber den Ursprung des ersten kanonischen Evangeliums. 
 
 ' In den Probabilien. 
 
 ' Geschichte der hebraischen Nation, Theil. i. s. 123. 
 
 * In Henke's Magazin, Sten Bdes. ites Stuck, s. 163. w„„,,„,. 
 
 « Versuch Uber die genetische oder formelle Erklarungsart de Wunder. In Henke s 
 Museum, L 3. 1803. 
 
6o INTRODUCTION. § 10. 
 
 journey of oriental merchants the basis of the narrative of the visit of the 
 wise men from the east. But the contradiction is most glaring when we meet 
 with palpable misconceptions of the true nature of a mythus in a work on 
 the mythology of the New Testament, such as Bauer's ; in which for instance 
 he admits, in the case of the parents of John the Baptist, a marriage which 
 had actually been childless during many years ; — ^^in which he explains the 
 angelic appearance at the birth of Jesus as a meteoric phenomenon ; supposes 
 the occurrence of thunder and lightning and the accidental descent of a 
 dove at his baptism ; constitutes a storm the groundwork of the transfigura- 
 tion.; and converts the angels at the tomb of the risen Jesus into whit« 
 grave-clothes. Kaiser also, though he complains of the unnaturalness of 
 many of the natural explanations, accords to a very considerable proportion 
 of natural explanatioms a place by the side of the mythical ; remarking — and 
 the remark is in itself just — that to attempt to explain all the miracles of the 
 New Testament in one and the same manner betrays a limited and partial 
 comprehension of the subject. Let it be primarily admitted that the ancient 
 author intended to narrate a miracle, and the natural explanation is in many 
 instances admissible. This may be either a physical-historical explanation, 
 as in the narrative of the leper whose approaching recovery Jesus doubtless 
 perceived ; or it may be a psychological explanation ; since, in the case of 
 many sick person^ the fame of Jesus and faith in him were mainly instru- 
 mental in effecting the cure ; sometimes indeed good fortmie must be taken 
 into the account, as where one apparently dead revived in the presence of 
 Jesus, and he became regarded as the author of the sudden re-animation. 
 With respect to other miracles Kaiser is of opinion that the mythical inter- 
 pretation is to be preferred; he, however, grants a much larger space to 
 historical, than to philosophical mythi. He considers most of the miracles 
 in the Old and New Testament real occurrences mythically embellished : 
 such as the narrative of the piece of money in the fish's mouth ; and of the 
 changing of water into wine : which latter history he supposes to have 
 originated from a friendly jest on the part of Jesus. Few only of the miracles 
 are recognised by this critic as pure poetry embodying Jewish ideas ; as the 
 miraculous birth of Jesus, and the murder of the innocents.* 
 
 Gabler in particular calls attention to the error of treating philosophical 
 mythi as if they were historical, and of thus converting into facts things that 
 never happened. ^ He is however as little disposed to admit the exclusive 
 existence of philosophical, as of historical mythi in the New Testament, but 
 adopting a middle course, he decides in each case that the mythus is of this 
 kind or of that according to its intrinsic character. He maintains that it is 
 as necessary to guard against the arbitrary proceeding .of handling as philo- 
 sophical a mythus through which a fact unquestionably glimmers, as it is to 
 avoid the opposite tendency to explain naturally or historically that which 
 belongs properly to the mythical clothing. In other words : when the deri- 
 vation of a mythus from a thought is easy and .natural, and when the attempt 
 to educe from it a matter of fact and to give the wonderful history a natural 
 explanation, does violence to the sense or appears ridiculous, we have, accord- 
 ing to Gabler, certain evidence that the mythus is philosophical and not 
 historical. He remarks in conclusion that the philosophical-mythical inter- 
 pretation is in many cases far less offensive than the historical-mythical 
 explanation.* 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding this predilection in favour of the philosophical mythus 
 
 ' Kaiser's biblische Theologie, I Thl. 
 
 ' Gabler's Journal fur auserlesene theol. Literatur. ii. 1. s. 46. 
 
 ' Gabler's neuestes theolog. Journal, 7 Bd. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 6 1 
 
 in relation to biblical history, one is surprised to find that Gabler himself 
 was ignorant of the true nature both of the historical and of the philosophical 
 mythus. Speaking of the mythological interpreters of the New Testament 
 who had preceded him, he says that some of them, such as Dr. Paulus, 
 discover in the history of Jesus historical mythi only; whilst others, the 
 anonymous E. F. in Henke's Magazine for instance, find only philosophical 
 mythi. From this we see that he confounded not only the natural explana- 
 tion with the historical-mythical view, (for in Paulus's "Commentar" the 
 former only is adopted,) but also historical with philosophical mythi ; for the 
 author E. F. is so exclusively attached to the historical-mythical view. that 
 his explanations might almost be considered as naturalistic. 
 
 De Wette has some very cogent observations directed equally against the 
 arbitrary adoption either of the historical-mythical or of the natural explanation 
 in relation to the Mosaic history. In reference to the New Testament an 
 anonymous writer in Bertholdt's Critical Journal '' is the most decided in his 
 condemnation of every attempt to discover an historical groundwork even in 
 the Gospel mythi. To him likewise the midway path struck out by Gabler, 
 between the exclusive adoption of historical mythi on the one hand and of 
 philosophical mythi on the other, appears inapplicable ; for though a real 
 occurrence may in fact constitute the basis of most of the New Testament 
 narratives, it may still be impossible at the present time to separate the 
 element of fact from the mythical adjuncts which have been blended with it, 
 and to determine how much may belong to the one and how much to the 
 other. Usteri likewise expressed the opinion that it is no longer possible to 
 discriminate between the historical and the symbolical in the gospel mythi ; 
 no critical knife however sharp is now able to separate the one element from 
 the other. A certain measure of probability respecting the preponderance of 
 the historical in one legend, and of the symbolical in another, is the ultimate 
 point to which criticism can now attain. 
 
 Opposed however to the onesidedness of those critics who found it so 
 easy to disengage the historical contents from the mythical narratives of the 
 Scriptures, is the onesidedness of other critics, who, on account of the 
 difficulty of the proposed separation, despaired of the possibility of success, 
 and were consequently led to handle the whole mass of gospel mythi as 
 philosophical, at least in so far as to relinquish the endeavour to extract from 
 them a residuum of historical fact. Now it is precisely this latter onesided- 
 ness which has been attributed to my criticism of the life of Jesus ; conse- 
 quently, several of the reviewers of this work have taken occasion repeatedly 
 to call attention to the varying proportions in which the historical and the 
 ideal in the pagan religion and primitive history, (the legitimate province of 
 the mythus,) alternate ; an interchange with the historical which in the 
 christian primitive history, presupposing the notion of the mythus to be 
 admitted here, must unquestionably take place in a far greater degree. 
 Thus Ullmann distinguishes not on\y ivcstly the philosopMcai, and secondly the 
 historical mythus, but makes a further distinction between the latter (that is the 
 historical mythus, in which there is always a preponderance of the fictitious,) 
 and thirdly the mythical history, in which the historical element, though 
 wrought into the ideal, forms the predominating constituent ; whilst fourthly 
 in histories of which the legend is a component element we tread properly 
 speaking upon historical ground, since in these histories we meet only with 
 a few faint echoes of mythical fiction. Ullmann is moreover of opmion, 
 and Bretschneider and others agree with him, that independently of the re- 
 
 ' Bertholdt's Krit. Journal, v. s. 235. 
 
62 INTRODUCTION. § 10. 
 
 pulsion and confusion which must inevitably be caused by the application of 
 the term mythus to that which is Christian — a term originally conceived in 
 relation to a religion of a totally different character — it were more suitable, 
 in connexion with the primitive Christian records, to speak only of Gospel 
 legend, (Sage) and the legendary element.^ 
 
 George on the contrary has recently attempted not only more accurately to 
 define the notions of the mythus and of the legend, but likewise to demon- 
 strate that the gospel narratives are mythical rather than legendary. Speaking 
 generally, we should say, that he restricts the term mythus to what had 
 previously been distinguished as philosophical mythi ; and that he applies 
 the name legend to what had hitherto been denominated historical mythi. 
 He handles the two notions as the antipodes of each other ; and grasps them 
 with a precision by which the notion of the mythus has unquestionably 
 gained. According to George, mythus is the creation of a fact out of an 
 idea : legend the seeing of an idea in a' fact, or arising out of it. A people, a 
 religious community, finds itself in a certain condition or round of institutions 
 of which the spirit, the idea, lives and acts within it. But the mind, following, 
 a natural impulse, desires to gain a complete representation of that existing 
 condition, and to know its origin. This origin however is buried in oblivion, 
 or is too indistinctly discernible to satisfy present feelings and ideas. Con- 
 sequently an image of that origin, coloured by the light of existing ideas, is 
 cast upon the dark wall of the past, which image is however but a magnified 
 reflex of existing influences. 
 
 If such be the rise of the mythus, the legend, on the contrary, proceeds 
 from given facts : represented, indeed, sometimes in an incomplete and 
 abridged, sometimes in an amplified form, in order to magnify the heroes of 
 the history — but disjoined from their true connexion; the points of view 
 from which they should be contemplated, and the ideas they originally 
 contained, having in the course of transmission wholly disappeared. The 
 consequence is, that new ideas, conceived in the spirit of the different ages 
 through which the legend has passed down, become substituted in the stead 
 of the original ideas. For example, the period of Jewish history subsequent 
 to the time of Moses, which was in point of fact pervaded by a gradual 
 elevation of ideas to monotheism and to a theocracy, is, in a later legend, 
 represented in the exactly opposite light, as a state of falling away from the 
 religious constitution of Moses. An idea so unhistorical will infallibly here 
 and there distort facts transmitted by tradition, fill up blanks in the history, 
 and subjoin new and significant features — and then the mythus reappears in 
 the legend. It is the same with the mythus : propagated by tradition, it, in 
 the process of transmission, loses its distinctive character and completeness, 
 or becomes exaggerated in its details — as for exaiiiple in the matter of 
 numbers — and then the mythus comes under the influence of the legend. 
 In such wise do these two formations, so essentially distinct in their origin, 
 cross each other and mingle together. Now, if the history of the life of Jesus 
 be of mythical formation, inasmuch as it embodies the vivid impression of 
 the original idea which the first christian community had of their founder, 
 this history, though unhistorical in its form, is nevertheless a faithful represen- 
 tation of the idea of the Christ. If instead of this, the history be legendary — 
 if the actual external facts are given in a distorted and often magnified form 
 — are represented in a false light and embody a false idea, — then, on the con- 
 trary, the real tenpur of the life of Jesus is lost to us. So that, according to 
 George, the recognition : of the mythical element in the Gospels is far less 
 
 8 UUmann, Recens. meinesJL. J., in den Theol'StusJien^u. Kritiken 1836. 3. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 63 
 
 prejudicial to the true interests of the Christian faith than the recognition of 
 the legendary element.** 
 
 With tespect to our own opinion, without troubling ourselves here with the 
 dogmatic signification, we need only remark in this introduction, that we are 
 prepared to meet with both legend and mythus in the gospel history ; and 
 when we undertake to extract. the historial contents which may possibly 
 exist in narratives recognized as mythical, we shall be equally careful neither 
 on the one part by a rude and mechanical separation, tc place ourselves on 
 the same ground with the natuiral interpreter ; nor on the other by a hyper- 
 critical refusal to recognize such contents where they actually exist, to lose 
 sight of the history. 
 
 §"• 
 
 THE APPLICATION OF THE NOTION OF THE MYTHUS TOO CIRCUMSCRIBED. 
 
 The notion of the mythus, when first admitted by theologians, was not 
 only imperfectly apprehended, but also too much limited in its application to 
 biblical history. 
 
 As Eichhorn recognized a genuine mythus only on the very threshold of 
 the Old Testament history, and thought himself obliged to explain all that 
 followed in a natural manner ; as, some time later, other portions of the Old 
 Testament were allowed to be mythical, whilst nothing of the kind might be 
 suspected in the New ; so, when the mythus was once admitted into the 
 New Testament, it was here again long detained at the threshold, namely, 
 the history of the infancy of Jesus, every farther advance being contested. 
 Ammon,^ the anonymous E. F. in Henke's Magazine, Usteri, and others 
 maintained a marked distinction between the' historical worth of the narra- 
 tives of the piiblic life and those of the infancy of Jesus. The records of the 
 latter could not, they contend, have been contemporaneous ; for particular at- 
 tention was not at that time directed towards him ; and it is equally manifest 
 that they could not have been written during the last three years of his life, 
 since they embody the idea of Jesus glorified, and not of Jesus in conflict 
 and suffering. Consequently their composition must be referred to a period 
 subsequent to his resurrection. But at this period accurate data concerning 
 his childhood were no longer to be obtained. The apostles knew him first in 
 manhood. Joseph was probably dead; and Mary, supposing her to be living 
 , when the first and third gospels were composed, had naturally imparted an imagi- 
 native lustre to every incident treasured in her memory, whilst her embellish- 
 ments were doubtless still further magnified in accordance with the Messianic 
 ideas of those to whom her communications were made. Much also that is 
 narrated had no historical foundation, but originated entirely from the 
 notions of the age, and from the Old Testament predictions— that a virgin 
 should conceive — for example. But, say these critics, all this does not in 
 any degree impair the credibility of what follows. The object and task of 
 the Evangelists was merely to give an accurate account of the three last years 
 of the life of Jesus ; and here they merit implicit confidence, since they were 
 either themselves spectators of the details they record, or else had learned 
 them from the mouth of trustworthy eye-witnesses. This boundary line between 
 
 ' George, Mythus und Sage ; Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Entwicklung dieser 
 Uegriffeundihres Verhaltnisseszum christlichenGlauben, s. ii.ff.loS. ff. 
 
 1 Work cited, § 8, note 4. Hase, Leben Jesu, § 32. Tholuck, s. 208. ff. Kern, die 
 Hauptsachen der evangelischen Geschichte, 1st Article, Tubinger Zeitschnft fiir Theo- 
 logie, 1836, ii. s. 39. 
 
64 INTRODUCTION. § II. 
 
 the credibility of the history of the public life, and the fabulousness of the 
 history of the infancy of Jesus, became yet more definitely marked, from the 
 circumstance that many theologians were disposed to reject the two first 
 chapters of Matthew and Luke as spurious and subsequent additions.** 
 
 Soon, however, some of the theologians who had conceded the commence- 
 ment of the history to the province of mythi, perceived that the conclusion, 
 the history of the ascension, must likewise be regarded as mythicaL^ Thus 
 the two extremities were cut off by the pruning knife of criticism, whilst the 
 essential body of the history, the period fiBom: the baptism to the resurrection, 
 remained, as yet, unassailed : or in the words of the reviewer of Greiling's Life 
 of Jesus : * the entrance to the gospel history was through, the decorated 
 portal of mythus, and the exit was similar to it, whilst the intermediate space 
 was still traversed by the crooked and toilsome paths of natural interpreta- 
 tions. 
 
 In Gabler's ^ writings we meet with a somewhat more extended application 
 of the mythical view. He distinguishes (and recently Rosenkranz^ has 
 agreed with him) between the miracles wrought by Jesus and those operated 
 on him or in relation to him, interpreting the latter mythically, but the former 
 naturally. Subsequently however, we find Gabler expressing himself as if 
 with the above mentioned theologians he restricted the ni3ahical interpreta- 
 tion to the miraculous narratives of the childhood of Jesus, but this 
 restriction is in fact a limitation merely of the admitted distinction : since 
 though all the miracles connected with the early history of Jesus were operated 
 in relation to him and not wrought by him, many miracles of the same 
 character occur in the history of his public life. Bauer appears to have been- 
 guided by the same rule in his Hebrew mythology. He classes as mythical 
 the narratives of the conception and birth of Jesus, of the Baptism, the 
 transfiguration, the angelic apparitions in Gethsemane and at the sepulchre : 
 miracles selected from all periods of the life of Jesus, but all ^operated' in 
 relation to him and not \>y him. This enumeration, however, does not 
 include all the miracles of this kindi 
 
 The often referred to author of the treatise " Upon the different views 
 with which and for which a Biographer of Jesus may work," has endeavoured 
 to show that so limited, an application of the notion' of the mythus to the 
 history of the life of Jesus is insuflficient and inconsequent. This confused 
 point of view from which the gospel narrative is regarded as partly historical 
 and partly mythical owes its origim,. according to him, to those' theologians 
 who neither give up the history, nor are able to satisfy themselves with its clear 
 results, but who think to unite both parties by this middle course — a Vain en- 
 deavour which the rigid supranaturalist pronounces heretical, and the rational- 
 ist derides. The attempt of these reconcilers, remarks our author, to explain 
 as intelligible everything which is not impossible, lays them open. to all the 
 charges so justly brought against the natural interpretation ; whilst the admis- 
 sion of the existence of mythi in the New Testament subjects them to the 
 direct reproach of being inconsequent : the severest censure which can be 
 passed upon a scholar. Besides, the proceeding of these Eclectics is most 
 arbitrary, since they decide respecting what belongs to the history and what 
 to the mythus almost entirely upon subjective grounds. Such distinctions 
 
 ' Comp. Kuinol, Prolegom. in Matthaeum, § ,3 ; in Lucam, § 6. 
 
 ' e. g. Ammon, in der Diss^ : Ascensus J. C. in coelum historiai biblioa; in seinen Opusc. 
 nov. 
 
 * In Bertholdt's Krit. Journ. v. Bd. s. a(j8. 
 
 ' Gabler's neuestes theol. Journal,, Bd; viii !>. 395. 
 
 * Encyclopadie der theol. Wissenschaften, s. 161. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 6> 
 
 are equally foreign to the evangelists, to logical reasoning, and to historical 
 criticism. In consistency with these opinions, this writer applies the notion 
 of the mythus to the entire history of the life of Jesus ; recognizes mythi or 
 mythical embellishments in every portion, and ranges under the categoBy of 
 mythus not merely the miraculous . occurrences during the infancy of J.esusj. 
 but those also of his public life ; not merely miracles operated on Jiesus, but 
 those wrought by him. 
 
 The most extended application of the notion of the philosophical or 
 dogmatical mythus to the Gospel histories which has yet been made, was 
 published in 1799 in an anonymous work concerning Revelation and My- 
 thology. The writer contends that the whole life of j esus, all that he should 
 and would do, had an ideal existence in the Jewish mind long prior to his 
 birth. Jesus as an individual was not actually such as according to Jewish 
 anticipations he should have been. Not even that,, in which all the records 
 which recount his actions agree, is absolutely matter of fact. A popular idea 
 of the life of Jesus grew out of various popular contributions, and from this 
 source our written Gospels were first derived, A reviewer objects that this 
 author appears to suppose a still smaller portion of the historical element in 
 the gospels than actually exists. It would, he remarks, have been wiser to 
 have been guided by a sober criticism of details, than by a sweeping scepti- 
 cism.' 
 
 i7 
 
 § 12- 
 
 OPPOSITION TO THE MYTHICAt VIEW OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 
 
 In adopting the mythical point of view as hitherto applied to Biblical 
 history, our theologians had again approximated to the ancient allegorical 
 interpretation. For as both the natural explanations of the Rationalists, and 
 the jesting expositions of the Deists, belong to that form of opinion, which, 
 whilst it sacrifices all divine meaning in the sacred record, still upholds its 
 historical character; the mythical mode of interpretation agrees with the 
 allegorical, in relinquishing the historical reality of the sacred iiarratives in 
 order to preserve to them an absolute inherent truth. The mythical and the 
 allegorical view (as also the moral) equally allow that the historian apparently 
 relates that which is historical, but they suppose him, under, the influence 'of 
 a higher inspiration known or unknown to himself, to have made use of this 
 historical semblance merely as the shell of an idea— of a religious conception. 
 The only essential distinction therefore between these two modes of explana- 
 tion is, that according to the allegorical this higher intelligence is the imme- 
 diate divine agency ; according to the mythical, it is the spirit of a people 
 or a community. (According to the moral view it is generally the mind of 
 the interpreter which suggests the interpretation.) Thus the allegorical view 
 attributes the narrative to a supernatural source, whilst the mythical view 
 ascribes it to that natural process by which legends are originated and 
 developed. To which it should be added, that the allegorical interpreter (as 
 well as the moral) may with the most unrestrained arbitrariness separate from 
 the history every thought he deems to be worthy of God, as constituting its 
 inherent meaning ; whilst the mythical interpreter, on the contrary, in search- 
 ing out the ideas which are embodied in the narrative, is controlled by regard 
 to conformity with the spirit and modes of thought of the people and of the 
 age. 
 
 This new view of the sacred Scriptures was opposed alike by the orthodox 
 
 ' In Gabler's neuestem theolog. Journal, Bd. vi. 4tes Stuck, s. 356. 
 
66 INTRODUCTION. § 12. 
 
 and by the rationalistic party. From the first, whilst the mythical interpreta- 
 tion was still restricted to the prinJitive history of the Old Testament, Hess ^ 
 on the orthodox side, protested against it. The three following conclusions 
 may be given as comprising, however incredible this may appear, the sub- 
 stance of his book, a work of some compass ; upon which however it is un- 
 necessary to remark further than that Hess was by no means the last orthodox 
 theologian who pretended to combat the mythical view with such weapons. 
 He contends, ist, that mythi are to be understood figuratively; now the 
 sacred historians intended their writings to be understood literally : conse- 
 quently they do not relate mythi. 2ndly, Mythology is something heathen- 
 ish ; the Bible is a christian book ; consequently it contains no mythology. 
 The third conclusion is more complex, and, as will appear below, has more 
 meaning. If, says Hess, the marvellous were confined to those earliest 
 biblical records of which the historical validity is less certain, and did not 
 appear in any subsequent writings, the rhiraculous might be considered as a 
 proof of the mythical character of the narrative ; but the marvellous is no less 
 redundant in the latest and undeniably historical records, than in the more 
 ancient ; consequently it cannot be regarded as a criterion of the mythical. In 
 short the most hollow natural explanation, did it but retain the slightest vestige 
 of the historical — however completely it annihilated every higher meaning, — 
 was preferable, in the eyes of the orthodox, to the mythical interpretation. 
 Certainly nothing could be worse than Eichhorn's natural explanation of the 
 fall. In considering the tree of knowledge as a poisonous plant, he at once 
 destroyed the intrinsic value and inherent meaning of the history ; of this he 
 afterwards became fully sensible, and in his subsequent mythical interpreta- 
 tion, he recognized in the narrative the incorporation of a worthy and 
 elevated conception. Hess however declared himself more content with 
 Eichhorn's original explanation, and defended it against his later mythical 
 interpretation. So true is it that supranaturalism clings with childlike fond- 
 ness to the empty husk of historical semblance, though void of divine signifi- 
 cance, and estimates it higher than the most valuable kernel divested of its 
 variegated covering. 
 
 Somewhat later De Wette's bold and thorough application of the mythical 
 view to the Mosaic writings ; his decided renunciation of the so-called histori- 
 cal-mythical, or more properly speaking of the natural mode of interpretation ; 
 and his strict opposition to the notion of the possibility of arriving at any 
 certainty respecting the residue of fact preserved in these writings, gave rise 
 to much controversy. Some agreed with Steudel in totally rejecting the 
 mythical view in relation to the Bible, and in upholding the strictly historical 
 and indeed supranatural sense of the Scriptures : whilst Meyer and others 
 were willing to follow the guidance of De Wette, at leastas far as the principles 
 of Vater, which permitted the attempt to extract some, if only probable, 
 historical data from the mythical investment. If, says Meyer*, the marvellous- 
 ness and irrationality of many of the narratives contained in the Pentateuch, 
 (narratives which no one would have thought of inventing,) together with the 
 want of symmetry and connexion in the narration, and other considerations, 
 permit us not to mistake the historical groundwork of the record ; surely, 
 allowing the existence of an historical basis, a modest and cautious attempt 
 to seek out or at any rate to approximate towards a discovery of that historical 
 
 1 Granzbestimmung dessen, was in der Bibel Mythus, u. s. f., und was wirkliche 
 Geschichte ist. In seiner Bibliothek der heiligen Geschichte, ii. Bd. s. 155. ff. 
 
 * Meyer, Apologie der geschichtlichen Auffassung der historischen Bacher des A. T., 
 liesonders des Pentateuohs, im Gegensatz gegen die bios mythische Deutung des letztern. 
 Fritzsclie. Kelle. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 6/ 
 
 foundation is admissible. In the hope of preserving those who adopted the 
 historical-mythical view from relapsing into the inconsistencies of the natural 
 interpreters, Meyer laid down the following rules, which however serve rather 
 to exhibit afresh the difficulty of escaping this danger, i. To abstract every 
 thing which is at once recognizable as mythical representation as opposed to 
 historical fact ; that is the extraordinary, the miraculous, accounts of imme- 
 diate divine operation, also the religious notions of the narrators in relation 
 to final causes. 2. To proceed from that which is simple to that which is 
 more complicated. Let a case be supposed where we have two accounts of 
 the same event, the one natural, the other supernatural, as, for instance, the 
 gathering of the elders by Moses, attributed. Numbers, xi. 16., to the sugges- 
 tion of Jehovah, and Exodus, xviii. 14., to the counsel of Jethro. According 
 to this rule all divine inspiration must be subtracted from the known decisions 
 of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and others. (Precisely the proceeding which met 
 with the censure of De Wette quoted above.) 3. As far as possible to con- 
 template the fact which forms the basis of a narrative, in its simple and 
 common character, apart from all collateral incidents. (This however, is 
 going too far where no basis of fact exists.) For example. The story of the 
 deluge may be reduced thus ; a great inundation in Asia Minor, according 
 to the legend, destroyed many wicked. (Here the supposed final cause is not 
 abstracted.) Noah the father of Shem, a devout man, {the teleologieal notion 
 again !) saved himself by swimming. The exact circumstances of this pre- 
 servation, the character of the vessel, if such there were, which saved him, 
 are left undetermined in order to avoid arbitrary explanations. Thus, in 
 reference to the birth of Isaac, Meyer is satisfied with saying, that the wish 
 and hope of the wealthy and pious Emir Abraham to possess an heir by his 
 wife Sara was fulfilled unusually late, and in the eyes of others very unex- 
 pectedly. (Here again De Wette's censure is quite applicable.) 
 
 In like manner Eichhorn, in his Introduction to the New Testament, 
 declared in yet stronger terms his opposition to the view advocated by De 
 Wette. If the orthodox were displeased at having their historical faith 
 disturbed by the progressive inroads of the mythical mode of interpretation, 
 the rationalists were no less disconcerted to find the web of facts they had 
 so ingeniously woven together torn asunder, and all the art and labour 
 expended on the natural explanation at once declared useless. Unwillingly 
 does Dr. Paulus admit to himself the presentiment that the reader of his 
 Commentary may possibly exclain : " Wherefore all this labour to give an 
 historical explanation to such legends ? how singular thus to handle mythi as 
 history, and to attempt to render marvellous fictions intelligible according to 
 the rules of causality ! " Contrasted with the toilsomeness of his natural 
 explanation, the mythical interpretation appears to this theologian merely as 
 the refuge of mental indolence, which, seeking the easiest method of treating 
 the gospel history, disposes of all that is marvellous, and all that is difficult to 
 comprehend, under the vague term — mythus, and which, in order to escape 
 the labour of disengaging the natural from the supernatural, fact from opinion, 
 carries back the whole narration into the camera-obscura of ancient sacred 
 legends.* . . ,, 
 
 Still more decided was Greiling's * expression of disapprobation, elicited by 
 Krug's commendation of the genetic— "Cci^t is to say, mythical theory ; but each 
 stroke levelled by him at the mythical interpretation may be turned with far 
 greater force against his own natural explanation. He is of opinion that 
 among all the attempts to explain obscure passages in the New Testament, 
 
 " Exegetisclies Handbuch, L a. s. I, 71. 
 
 ■• Greiling in Henke's Museum '■ 4.. s. 621. if. 
 
68 INTRODUCTION. § 12. 
 
 scarcely any can be more injurious to the genuine historical interpretation, to 
 the ascertaining of actual facts and their legitimate objects (that is, more 
 prejudicial to the pretensions of the natural expounder) than the endeavour 
 to supply, by aid of an inventive imagination, the deficiencies of the historical 
 narrative. (The inventive imagination is that of the natural interpreter, 
 which suggests to him collateral incidents of which there is no trace in the 
 text. The imagination of the mythical interpreter is not inventive ; his part 
 is merely the recognizing and detecting of the fictitious.) According to 
 Greiling the genetic, or mythical mode of explaining miracles, is a needless 
 and arbitrary invention of the imagination. (Let a groping spirit of inquiry 
 be added, and the natural explanation is accurately depicted.) Many facts, 
 he continues, which might be retained as such are thus consigned to the 
 province of fable, or replaced by fictions the production of the interpreter. 
 (But it is the historical mythical mode of interpretation alone which substi- 
 tutes such inventions, and this only in so far as it is mixed up with the natural 
 explanation.) Greiling thinks that the explanation of a miracle ought not to 
 change the fact, and by means of interpretation, as by sleight of hand, 
 substitute one thing for another ; (which is done by the natural explanation 
 only,) for this is not to explain that which shocks the reason, but merely to 
 deny the fact, and leave the difficulty unsolved. (It is false to say we have a 
 fact to explain ; what immediately lies before us is a statement, respecting 
 which we have to discover whether it embody a fact or not.) According to 
 this learned critic the miracles wrought by Jesus should be naturally, or rather 
 psychologically, explained ; by which means all occasion to change, clip, and 
 amplify by invention the recorded facts, till at length they become meta- 
 morphosed into fiction, is obviated — (with how much justice this censure 
 may be applied to the natural m,ode of explanation has been sufficiently 
 demonstrated.) 
 
 Heydenreich has lately written a work expressly on the inadmissibility of 
 the mythical interpretation of the historical portions of the New Testament. 
 He reviews the external evidences concerning the origin of the Gospels, and 
 finds the recognition of a mythical element in these writings quite incom- 
 patible with their substantiated derivation from the Apostles, and the disciples 
 of the Apostles. He also examines the character of the gospel representa- 
 tions, and decides, in reference to their form, that narratives at once so 
 natural and simple, so complete and exact, could be expected only from eye- 
 witnesses, or those connected with them ; and, with respect to their contents, 
 that those representations which are in their nature miraculous are so worthy of 
 God, that nothing short of an abhorrence of miracles could occasion a doubt 
 as to their historical truth. The divine operations are indeed generally 
 mediate, but according to Heydenreich this by no means precludes the 
 possibility of occasional intermediate exertions of the divine energy, when re- 
 quisite to the accomplishment of some particular object ; and, referring to 
 each of the divine attributes in succession, he shows that such intervention 
 in nowise contradicts any of them ; and that each individual miracle is a 
 peculiarly appropriate exercise of divine power. 
 
 These, and similar objections against the mythical interpretation of the 
 gospel histories, which occur in recent commentaries and in the numerous 
 writings in opposition to my work on the life of Jesus, will find their place 
 and refutation in the following pages. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 69 
 
 § 13- 
 
 THE POSSIBILITY OF THE EXISTENCE OF MYTHI IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 CONSIDERED IN REFERENCE TO THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES. 
 
 The assertion that the Bible contains mythi is, it is true, directly opposed 
 to the convictions of the believing christian. For if his religious view be 
 circumscribed within the limits of his own community, he knows no reason 
 why the things recorded in the sacred books should not literally have taken 
 place ; no doubt occurs to him, no reflection disturbs him. But, let his 
 horizon be so far widened as to allow him to contemplate his own religion in 
 relation to other religions, and to draw a comparison between them, the con- 
 clusion to which he then comes is that the histories related by the heathens 
 of their deities, and by the Mussulman of his prophet, are so many fictions, 
 whilst the accounts of God's actions, of Christ and other Godlike men con- 
 tained in the Bible are, on the contrary, true. Such is the general notion 
 expressed in the theological position : that which distinguishes Christianity 
 from the heathen religions is this, they are mythical, it is historical 
 
 But this position, thus stated without further definition and proof, is merely 
 the product of the limitation of the individual to that form of belief in which 
 he has been educated, which renders the mind incapable of embracing any 
 but the affirmative view in relation to its own creed, any but the negative in 
 reference to every other — a prejudice devoid of real worth, and which cannot 
 exist in conjunction with an extensive knowledge of history. For let us 
 transplant ourselves among other religious communities ; the believing 
 Mohammedan is of opinion that truth is contained in the Koran alone, 
 and that the greater portion of our Bible is fabulous ; the Jew of the present 
 day, whilst admitting the truth and divine origin of the Old Testament, rejects 
 the New ; and, the same exclusive belief in the truth of their own creed and 
 the falsity of every other was entertained by the professors of most of the 
 heathen religions before the period of the Syncretism. But which community 
 is right ? Not all, for this is impossible, since the assertion of each excludes 
 the others. But which particular one ? Each claims for itself the true faith. 
 The pretensions are equal ; what shall decide ? The origin of the several 
 religions ? Each lays claim to a divine origin. Not only does the Christian 
 religion profess to be derived from the Son of God, and the Jewish from God 
 himself, through Moses; the Mohammedan religion asserts itself to be 
 founded by a prophet immediately inspired by God; in like manner the 
 Greeks attributed the institution of their worship to the gods. 
 
 " But in no other religion " it is urged *' are the vouchers of a divine origin 
 so unequivocal as in the Jewish and the Christian. The Greek and Roman 
 mythologies are the product of a collection of unauthenticated legends, 
 whilst the Bible history was written by eye-witnesses ; or by those whose con- 
 nexion with eye-witnesses afforded them opportunities of ascertaining the 
 truth; and whose integrity is too apparent to admit of a doubt as to the 
 sincerity of their intentions." It would most unquestionably be an argument 
 of decisive weight in favour of the credibility of the biblical history, could it 
 indeed be shown that it was written by eye-witnesses, or even by persons nearly 
 contemporaneous with the events narrated. For though errors and false 
 representations may glide into the narrations even of an eye-witness, there is far 
 less probability of unintentional mistake (intentional deception may easily be 
 detected) than where the narrator is separated by a long interval from the 
 
70 INTRODUCTION. § 1 3. 
 
 facts he records, and is obliged to derive liis materials through the medium of 
 transmitted communications. 
 
 But this alleged ocular testimony, or proximity in point of time of the 
 sacred historians to the events recorded, is mere assumption, an assumption 
 originating from the titles which the biblical books bear in our Canon. Those 
 books which describe the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, and their 
 wanderings through the wilderness, bear the name of Moses, who being their 
 leader would undoubtedly give a faithful history of these occurrences, unless 
 he designed to deceive ; and who, if his intimate connexion with Deity 
 described in these books be historically true, was likewise eminently qualified, 
 by virtue of such connexion, to produce a credible history of the earlier 
 periods. In like manner, of the several accounts of the life and fate of 
 Jesus, the superscriptions assign one to Matthew and one to John : two men 
 who having been eye-witnesses of the public ministry of Jesus from its com- 
 mencement to its close were particularly capable of giving a report of it ; and 
 who, from their confidential intercourse with Jesus and his mother, together 
 with that supernatural aid which, according to John, Jesus promised to his 
 disciples to teach them and bring all things to their remembrance, were 
 enabled to give information of the circumstances of his earlier years ; of 
 which some details are recorded by Matthew. 
 
 But that little reliance can be placed on the headings of ancient manu- 
 scripts, and of sacred records more especially, is evident, and in reference to 
 biblical books has long since been proved. In the so-called books of Moses 
 mention is made of his death and burial : but who now supposes that this 
 was written beforehand by Moses in the form of prophecy ? Many of the 
 Psalms bear the name of David which presuppose an acquaintance with the 
 miseries of the exile ; and predictions are put into the mouth of Daniel, a 
 Jew living at the time of the Babylonish captivity, which could not have been 
 written before the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. It is an incontrovertible 
 position of modern criticism that the titles of the Biblical books represent 
 nothing more than the design of their author, or the opinion of Jewish or 
 Christian antiquity respecting their origin ; points the first of which proves 
 nothing ; and as to the second every thing depends upon the following con- 
 siderations : I. the date of the opinion and the authority on which it rests ; 
 2. the degree of harmony existing between this opinion and the internal 
 character of the writings in question. The first consideration includes an 
 examination of the external, the second of the internal grounds of evidence 
 respecting the authenticity of the biblical books. To investigate the internal 
 grounds of credibility in relation to each detail given in the Gospels, (for it is 
 with them alone we are here concerned) and to test the probability or 
 improbability of their being the production of eye-witnesses, or of compe- 
 tently informed writers, is the sole bbject of the present work. The external 
 grounds of evidence may be examined in this introduction, only so far how- 
 ever as is necessary in order to judge whether they yield a definite result, 
 which may perhaps be in opposition to the internal grounds of evidence ; or 
 whether the external evidence, insufficient of itself, leaves to the internal 
 evidence the decision of the question. 
 
 We learn from the works of Irenaeus, of Clemens Alexandrinus, and of 
 TertuUian, that at the end of the second century after Christ our four Gospels 
 were recognized by the orthodox church as the writings of the Apostles and 
 the disciples of the Apostles ; and were separated from many other similar 
 productions as authentic records of the life of Jesus. The first Gospel 
 according to our Canon is attributed to Matthew, who is enumerated among 
 the twelve Apostles ; the fourth to John the beloved disciple of our Lord ; 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 7 1 
 
 the second to Mark the interpreter of Peter ; and the third to Luke the 
 companion of Paul."^ We have, besides, the authority of earlier authors, both 
 in their own works and in quotations cited by others. 
 
 It is usual, in reference to the first Gospel, to adduce the testimony of 
 Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, said to have been an auditor aKov(TT7j's of John, 
 (probably the presbyter) and to have suffered martyrdom under Marcus 
 Aurelius. (161-180.) Papias asserts that Matthew the Apostle wrote to. \6yia. 
 (to. KvpiaKo. ^). Schleiermacher, straining the meaning of Xoyta, has latterly 
 understood it to signify merely a collection of the sayings of Jesus. But 
 when Papias speaks of Mark, he seems to use crvvra^iv tS>v KvpiaKtov Xoyimv 
 Troiettrflai, and ra viro Tov X.pio'Tov ^ ki)(6a'Ta. ^ ■Trpa^Oivra ypa^eiv as equivalent 
 expressions. Whence it appears that the word Aoyia designates a writing 
 comprehending the acts and fate of Jesus ; and the fathers of the church were 
 justified in understanding the testimony of Papias as relating to an entire 
 Gospel.^ They did indeed apply this testimony decidedly to our first Gospel ; 
 but the words of the Apostolic father contain no such indication, and the 
 manuscript, of which he speaks, cannot be absolutely identical with our 
 Gospel ; for, according to the statement given by Papias, Matthew wrote in 
 the Hebrew language ; and it is a mere assumption of the christian fathers 
 that our Greek Matthew is a translation of the original Hebrew Gospel*. 
 Precepts of Jesus, and narratives concerning him, corresponding more or 
 less exactly with passages in our Matthew, do indeed occur in the works of 
 other of the apostolic fathers ; but then these works are not wholly genuine, 
 and the quotations themselves are either in a form which indicates that they 
 might have been derived from oral traditions ; or where these authors refer 
 to written sources, they do not mention them as being directly apostolic. 
 Many citations in the writings of Justin Martyr (who died 166) agree with 
 passages in our Matthew ; but there are also, mixed up with these, other 
 elements which are not to be found in our Gospels ; and he refers to the 
 writings from which he derives them generally as airop.vy)puiivcviJMTa tu>v 
 wrroaTokmv, or cuayye'Xia, without naming any author in particular. Celsus,* 
 the opponent of Christianity, (subsequent to 150) mentions that the disciples 
 of Jesus had written his history, and he alludes to our present Gospels when 
 he speaks of the divergence of the accounts respecting the number of angels 
 seen at the resurrection ; but we find no more precise reference to any one 
 Evangelist in his writings, so far as we know them through Origen. 
 
 We have the testimony of the same Papias who has the notice concerning 
 Matthew, a testimony from the mouth of John (wpetr/Surepos), that Mark, who 
 according to him was the interpreter of Peter (ep/xiji/ein-^s HeTpov), wrote down 
 the discourses and actions of Jesus from his recollections of the instructions 
 of that Apostle.^ Ecclesiastical writers have likewise assumed that this pas- 
 sage from Papias refers to our second Gospel, though it does not say any 
 thing of the kind, and is besides inapplicable to it. For our second Gospel 
 cannot have originated from recollections of Peter's instructions, i.e., from a 
 source peculiar to itself, since it is evidently a compilation, whether made 
 from memory or otherwise, from the first and third Gospels.'' As little will 
 the remark of Papias that Mark wrote without order (ou rd^a) apply to our 
 
 * See the quotations given by De Wette in his "Einleitung in d. N. T." § 76. 
 " Euseb. H. E., iii. 39. 
 
 ^ UUman, Credner, Liicke, De Wette. 
 
 * Hieron. de vir. illustr. 3. 
 
 " Contra Celsum, ii. 16. v. 56. 
 
 ^ Tliis^is clearly deionstrated by Griesbach in his " Commentatio, qui Marci Evangelium 
 totum e Matthsei et Lucse commentariis decerptum esse demonstratuL 
 
72 INTRODUCTION, f 1 3. 
 
 Gospel. For Tie -cannot by this expression intend a false chronological 
 arrangement, since he ascribes to Mark the strictest love of truth, which, 
 united with the consciousness that he had not the means of fixing dates, must 
 have withheld him from making the attempt. But a total renunciation of 
 chronological connexion, which Papias can alone have meant to attribute to 
 him, is not to be found in the second Gospel. This being the case, what do 
 those echoes which our second Gospel, in like manner as our first, seems to 
 find in the most ancient eoclesiastical writers, prove ? 
 
 That Luke, the companion of Paul, wrote a Gospel, is not attested by any 
 authority of corresponding weight or antiquity with that of Papias in relation 
 to Matthew and to Mark. The third Gospel however possesses a testimony 
 of a particular kind in the " Acts of the Apostles ; " not indeed ^ authenticat- 
 ing it as the composition of Luke, but attributing it to an occasional com- 
 panion of the Apostle Paul. According to the proem to the Acts and that to 
 the Gospel of Luke, these two books proceeded from the same author or 
 compiler : an origin which these writings do not, in other respects, contradict. 
 In several chapters in the second half of the Book of the Acts the author, 
 speaking of himself together with Paul, makes use of the first person plural,* 
 and thus identifies himself with the companion of that apostle. The fact is, 
 however, that many of the details concerning Paul, contained in other parts 
 of the book of the Acts, are so indefinite and marvellous, and are moreover 
 so completely at variance with Paul's genuine epistles, that it is extremely 
 difficult to reconcile them with the notion that they were written by a com- 
 panion of that apostle. It is also not a little remarkable that the author, 
 neither in the introduction to the Acts, nor in that to the Gospel, alludes to 
 his connexion with one of the most distinguished of the Apostles, so that it 
 is impossible not to suspect that the passages in which the writer speaks of 
 himself as an actor in the scenes described, belong to a distinct memorial by 
 another hand, which the author of the Acts has merely incorporated into his 
 history. But leaving this conjecture out of the question, it is indeed possible 
 that the companion of Paul may have composed his two works at a time, and 
 under circumstances, when he was no longer protected by Apostolic influence 
 against the tide of tradition ; and that he saw no reason why, because he had 
 not heard them previously from this Apostle, he should therefore reject the 
 instructive, and (acc<i^ding to his notions, which certainly would not lead him 
 to shun the marvellous,) credible narratives derived from that source. Now, 
 it is asserted that because the Book of the Acts terminates with the two years' 
 imprisonment of Paul at Rome, therefore this second work of the disciple of 
 that apostle, must have been written during that time, (63-65, a.d.) before 
 the decision of Paul's trial, and that consequently, the Gospel of Luke, the 
 earlier work of the same author, could not have been of later date. But, the 
 breaking off of the Acts at that particular point might have been the result of 
 many other causes ; at all events such testimony, standing alone, is wholly 
 insufficient to decide the historical worth of the Gospel. 
 
 It were to be wished that Polycarp, (he died 167) who both heard and saw 
 the Apostle John,* had left us a testimony respecting him similar to that of 
 Papias concerning Matthew. Still his silence on this subject, in the one 
 short epistle which has come down to us, is no evidence against the authen- 
 ticity of that Gospel, any more than the more or less ambiguous allusions in 
 several of the Apostolic fathers to the Epistles of John are proofs in its favour. 
 But it is matter of surprise that Irenaeus the disciple of Polycarp, who was 
 
 " Chap. xvi. 10-17 ; xx. 5-15; xxi. r-17; xxvii. 1-28; xxvlii. 10-16. 
 ' Euseb. H. E. v. 20, ,24. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 73 
 
 called upon to defend this Gospel from the attacks of those who denied its 
 composition by John, should neither on this occasion, nor once in his diffuse 
 work, have brought forward the weighty authority of his Apostolic master, as 
 to this fact. Whether or not the fourth Gospel originally bore the name of 
 John remains uncertain. We meet with it first among the Valentinians and 
 the Montanists, about the middle of the second century. Its Apostolic 
 origin was however (immediately after) denied by the so-called Alogi, who 
 ascribed it to Cerinthus ; partly because the Montanists derived from it their 
 idea of the Paraclete ; partly also because it did not harmonize with the other 
 Gospels.!" I^lje earliest quotation expressly stated to be from the Gospel of 
 John is found in Theophilus of Antioch, about the year 172. '^ How little 
 reaso« the numerous theologians of the present day have to boast of the 
 evidences in favour of the fourth Gospel, whilst they deny the not less well 
 attested Apocalypse, has been well remarked by Tholuck. Lastly, that there 
 were two Johns, the Apostle and the Presbyter, living contemporaneously at 
 Ephesus, is a circumstance which has not received sufficient attention in 
 connexion with the most ancient testimonies in favour of the derivation from 
 John, of the Apocalypse on the one hand, and of the Gospels and Epistles on 
 the other. 
 
 Thus these most ancient testimonies tell us, firstly, that an apostle, or some 
 other person who had been acquainted with an apostle, wrote a Gospel 
 history ; but not whether it was identical with that which afterwards came to 
 be circulated in the church under his name ; secondly, that writings similar 
 to our Gospels were in existence ; but not that they were ascribed with cer- 
 tainty to any one individual apostle or companion of an apostle. Such is the 
 uncertainty of these accounts, which after all do not reach further back than 
 the third or fourth decade of the second century. According to all the rules 
 of probability, the Apostles were all dead before the close of the first century ; 
 not excepting John, who is said to have lived till a.d. 100 ; concerning whose 
 age and death, hojvever, many fables were early invented. What an ample 
 scope for attributing to the Apostles manuscripts they never wrote ! The 
 Apostles, dispersed abroad, had died in the latter half of the first century ; 
 the Gospel became more widely preached throughout the Roman empire, and 
 by degrees acquired a fixed form in accordance with a particular type. It was 
 doubtless from this orally circulated Gospel that the many passages agreeing 
 accurately with passages in our Gospels, which occur without any indication 
 of their source in the earliest ecclesiastical writers, were actually derived. Be- 
 fore long this oral traditionary Gospel became deposited in different manu- 
 scripts : this person or that, possibly an apostle, furnishing the principal 
 features of the history. But these manuscripts were not at first compiled 
 according to a particular form and order, and consequently had to undergo 
 many revisions and re-arrangements, of which we have an example in the 
 Gospel of the Hebrews and the citations of Justin. It appears that these 
 manuscripts did not originally bear the names of their compilers, but either 
 that of the community by whom they were first read, as the Gospel of 
 Hebrews; or that of the Apostle or disciple after whose oral discourses or 
 notes some other person had composed a connected history. The latter 
 seems to have been the original meaning attached to th© word /caro, ; as in 
 the title to our first GospeL^^ Nothing however was more natural than the 
 supposition which arose among the early christians, that the histories con- 
 cerning Jesus which were circulated and used by the churches had been 
 
 1" De Wette, Gieseler. 
 11 Ad. Autol. ii., 22. 
 1' See Schleiermacher. 
 
74 INTRODUCTION. § 1 3. 
 
 written by his immediate disciples. Hence the ascription of the gospel 
 writings generally to the apostles by Justin and by Celsus ; and also of par- 
 ticular gospels to those particular apostles and disciples, whose oral discourses 
 or written notes might possibly have formed the groundwork of a gospel 
 manuscript, or who had perhaps been particularly connected with some 
 certain district, or had been held in especial esteem by some particular com- 
 munity. The Gospel of the Hebrews successively received all three kinds of 
 appellations ; being first called ivayyiXiov Kaff "E^paious, after the community 
 by which it was read ; somewhat later, Evangeliwn juxta duodecim apostolos ; 
 and finally, secundum Matthaum. 
 
 Admitting however that we do not possess the immediate record of an eye- 
 witness in any one of the four Gospels, it is still very incomprehensible, re- 
 plies the objector, how in Palestine itself, and at a time when so many eye- 
 witnesses yet lived, unhistorical legends and even collections of them should 
 have been formed. But, in the first place, the fact that many such compila- 
 tions of narratives concerning the life of Jesus were already in general circula- 
 tion during the lifetime of the Apostles, and more especially that any one of 
 our gospels was known to an Apostle and acknowledged by him, can never 
 be proved. With respect to isolated anecdotes, it is only necessary to form 
 an accurate conception of Palestine and of the real position of the eye-wit- 
 nesses referred to, in order to understand that the origination of legends, even 
 at so early a period, is by no means incomprehensible. Who informs us that 
 they must necessarily have taken root in that particular district of Palestine 
 where Jesus tarried longest, and where his actual history was well known ? 
 And with respect to eye-witnesses, if by these we are to understand the 
 Apostles, it is to ascribe to them absolute ubiquity, to represent them as 
 present here and there, weeding out all the unhistorical legends concerning 
 Jesus in whatever places they, had chanced to spring up and flourish. Eye- 
 witnesses in the more extended sense, who had only seen Jesus occasionally 
 and not been his constant companions, must, on the contrary, have been 
 strongly tempted to fill up their imperfect knowledge of his history with 
 mythical representations. 
 
 But it is inconceivable, they say, that such a mass of mythi should have 
 originated in an age so historical as that of the first Roman emperors. We 
 must not however be misled by too comprehensive a notion of an historical 
 age. The sun is not visible at the same instant to every place on the same 
 meridian af the same time of year ; it gleams upon the mountain summits 
 and the high plains before it penetrates the lower valleys and the deep 
 ravines. No less true is it that the historic age dawns not upon all people at 
 the same period. The people of highly civilized Greece, and of Rome the 
 capital of the world, stood on an eminence which had not been reached in 
 Galilee and Judsea. Much rather may we apply to this age an expression 
 become trite among historians, but which seems in the present instance 
 willingly forgotten : namely, that incredulity and superstition, scepticism and 
 fanaticism go hand in hand. 
 
 But the Jews, it is said, had long been accustomed to keep written records; 
 nay, the most flourishing period of their literature was already past, they were 
 no longer a progressing and consequently a productive people, they were a 
 nation verging to decay. But the fact is, the pure historic idea was never 
 developed among the Hebrews during the whole of their political existence ; 
 their latest historical works, such as the Books of the Maccabees, and even 
 the writings of Josephus, are not free from marvellous and extravagant tales. 
 Indeed no just notion of the true nature of history is possible, without a per- 
 ception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes, and of the impossi- 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 75 
 
 bility of miracles. This perception which is wanting to so many minds of 
 our own day was still more deficient in Palestine, and indeed throughout the 
 Roman empire. And to a mind still open to the reception of the marvellous, 
 if it be once carried away by the tide of religious enthusiasm, all things will 
 appear credible, and should this enthusiasm lay hold of a yet wider circle, it 
 will awaken a new creative vigour, even in a decayed people. To account 
 for such an enthusiasm it is by no means necessary to presuppose the gospel 
 miracles as the existing cause. This may be found in the known religious 
 dearth of that period, a dearth so great that the cravings of the mind after 
 some religious belief excited a relish for the most extravagant forms of 
 worship ; secondly in the deep religious satisfaction which was afforded by 
 the belief in the resurrection of the deceased Messiah, and by the essential 
 principles of the doctrine of Jesus. 
 
 § 14- 
 
 THE POSSIBILITY OF MYTHI IN THK NEW TESTAMENT CONSIDERED ON 
 INTERNAL GROUNDS. 
 
 Seeing from what has already been said that the external testimony re- 
 specting the composition of our Gospels, far from forcing upon us the conclu- 
 sion that they proceeded from eye-witnesses or well-informed contemporaries, 
 leaves the decision to be determined wholly by internal grounds of evidence, 
 that is, by the nature of the Gospel narratives themselves : we might imme- 
 diately proceed from this introduction to the peculiar object of the present 
 work, which is an examination of those narratives in detail. It may however 
 appear useful, before entering upon this special inquiry, to consider the general 
 question, how far it is consistent with the character of the Christian religion 
 that mythi should be found in it, and how far the general construction of the 
 Gospel narratives authorizes us to treat them as mythi. Although, indeed, if 
 the following critical examination of the details be successful in proving the 
 actual existence of mythi in the New Testament, this preliminary demonstra- 
 tion of their possibility becomes superfluous. 
 
 If with this view we compare the acknowledged mythical religions of 
 antiquity with the Hebrew and Christian, it is true that we are struck by many 
 differences between the sacred histories existing in these religious forms and 
 those in the former. Above all, it is commonly alleged that the sacred 
 histories of the Bible are distinguished from the legends of the Indians, 
 Greeks, Romans, etc., by their moral character and excellence. " In the 
 latter, the stories of the battles of the gods, the loves of Krishna, Jupiter, etc., 
 contain much which was offensive to the moral feeling even of enlightened 
 heathens, and which is revolting to ours : whilst in the former, the whole 
 colirse of the narration, offers only what is worthy of God, instructive, and 
 ennobling." To this it may be answered with regard to the heathens, that 
 the appearance of immorality in many of their narratives is merely the conse- 
 quence of a subsequent misconception of their original meaning : and with 
 regard to the Old Testament, that the perfect moral purity of its history has 
 been contested. Often indeed, it has been contested without good grounds, 
 because a due distinction is not made between that which is ascribed to 
 individual men, (who, as they are represented, are by no means spotless 
 examples of purity,) and that which is ascribed to God :^ nevertheless it is 
 
 ' This same want of distinction has led the Alexandrians to allegorize, the Deists to scoff, 
 
75 INTRODUCTION. § 14. 
 
 true that we have commands called divine, which, like that to the Israelites 
 on their departure out of Egypt to purloin vessels of gold, are scarcely less 
 revolting to an enlightened moral feeling, than the thefts of the Grecian 
 Hermes. But even admitting this difference in the morality of the religions 
 to its full extent (and it must be adrnitted at least with regard to the New 
 Testament), still it furnishes no proof of the historical character of the 
 Bible ; for though every story relating to God which is immoral is necessarily 
 fictitious, even the most moral is not necessarily true. 
 
 " But that which is incredible and inconceivable forms the staple of the 
 heathen fables ; whilst in the biblical history, if we only presuppose the 
 immediate interventioi^ of the Deity, there is nothing of the kind." Exactly, 
 if this be presupposed. Otherwise, we might very likely find the miracles in 
 the life of Moses, Elias, or Jesus, the Theophany and Angelophany of the 
 Old and New Testament, just as incredible as the fables of Jupiter, Hercules, 
 or Bacchus : presuppose the divinity or divine descent of these individuals, 
 and their actions and fate become as credible as those of the biblical person- 
 ages with the like presupposition. Yet not quite so, it may be returned. 
 Vishnu appearing in his three first avatars as a fish, a tortoise, and a boar ; 
 Saturn devouring his children ; Jupiter turning himself into a bull, a swan, 
 etc. — these are incredibilities of quite another kind from Jehovah appearing 
 to Abraham in a human form under the terebinth tree, or to Moses in the 
 burning bush. This extravagant love of the marvellous is the character of 
 the heathen mythology. A similar accusation might indeed be brought 
 against many parts of the Bible, such as the tales of Balaam, Joshua, and 
 Samson ; but still it is here less glaring, and does not form as in the Indian 
 religion and in certain parts of the Grecian, the prevailing character. What 
 however does this prove? Only that the biblical history might be true, 
 sooner than the Indian or Grecian fables ; not in the least that on this 
 account it must be true, and can contain nothing fictitious. 
 
 " But the subjects of the heathen mythology are for the most part such, as 
 to convince us beforehand that they are mere inventions : those of the Bible 
 such as at once to establish their own reality. A Brahma, an Ormusd, a 
 Jupiter, without doubt never existed; but there still is a God, a Christ, and 
 there have been an Adam, a Noah, an Abraham, a Moses." Whether an 
 Adam or a Noah, however, were such as they are represented, has already 
 been doubted, and may still be doubted. Just so, on the other side, there 
 may have been something historical about Hercules, Theseus, Achilles, and 
 other heroes of Grecian story. Here, again, we come to the decision that the 
 biblical history might be true sooner than the heathen mythology, but is not 
 necessarily so. This decision however, together with the two distinctions 
 already made, brings us to an important observation. How do the Grecian 
 divinities approve themselves immediately to us as non-existirig beings, if not 
 because things are ascribed to them which we cannot reconcile with our idea 
 of the divine? whilst the God of the Bible is a reality to us just in so far as 
 he corresponds with the idea we have formed of him in our own minds. 
 Besides the contradiction to our notion of the divine involved in the plurality 
 of heathen gods, and the intimate description of their motives and actions, 
 we are at once revolted to find that the gods themselves have a history ; that 
 they are born, grow up, marry, have children, work out their purposes, suffer 
 difficulties and weariness, conquer and are conquered. It is irreconcileable 
 with our idea of the Absolute to suppose it subjected to time and change, to 
 
 and the Supernaturalists to strain the meaning of words ; as was done lately by Hoffmann in 
 describing David's behaviour to the conquered Ammonites. (Christoterpe auf 1838, s. 184.) 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. "JJ 
 
 opposition and suffering ; and therefore where we meet with a narrative in 
 which these are attributed to a divine being, by this test we recognize it as 
 unhistorical or mythical. 
 
 It is in this sense that the Bible, and even the Old Testament, is said to 
 contain no mythi. The story of the creation with its succession of each day's 
 labour ending in a rest after the completion of the task ; the expression often 
 recurring in the farther course of the narrative, God repented of having done 
 so and so ; — these and similar representations cannot indeed be entirely vin- 
 dicated from the charge of making finite the nature of the Deity, and this is 
 the ground which has been taken by mythical interpreters of the history of the 
 creation. And in every other instance where God is said to reveal himself 
 exclusively at any definite place or time, by celestial apparition, or by miracle 
 wrought immediately by himself, it is to be presumed that the Deity has 
 become finite and descended to human modes of operation. It may how- 
 ever be said in general, that in the Old Testament the divine nature does 
 not appear to be essentially affected by the temporal character of its operation, 
 but that the temporal shows itself rather as a mere form, an unavoidable 
 appearance, arising out of the necessary limitation of human, and especially of. 
 uncultivated powers of representation. It is obvious to every one, that there 
 is something quite different in the Old Testament declarations, that, God 
 made an alliance with Noah, and Abraham, led his people out of Egypt, 
 gave them laws, brought them into the promised land, raised up for them 
 judges, kings, and prophets, and punished them at last for their disobedience 
 by exile ; — from the tales concerning Jupiter, that he was born of Rhea in 
 Crete, and hidden from his father Saturn in a cave ; that afterwards he made 
 war upon his- father, freed the Uranides, and with their help and that of the 
 lightning with which they furnished him, overcame the rebellious Titans, and 
 at last divided the world amongst his brothers and children. The essential 
 difference between the two representations is, that in the latter, the Deity 
 himself is the subject of progression, becomes another being at the end of the 
 process from what he was at the beginning, something being effected in himself 
 and for his own sake : whilst in the former, change takes place only on the side 
 of the world ; God remains fixed in his own identity as the I AM, and the 
 temporal is only a superficial reflection cast back upon his acting energy by 
 that course of mundane events which he both originated and guides. In the 
 heathen mythology the gods have a history : in the Old Testament, God 
 himself has none, but only his people : and if the proper meaning of mytho- 
 logy be the history of gods, then the Hebrew religion has no mythology. 
 
 From the Hebrew religion, this recognition of the divine unity and immu- 
 tability was transmitted to the Christian. The birth, growth, miracles, suffer- 
 ings, death, and resurrection of Christ, are circumstances belonging to the 
 destiny of the Messiah, above which God remains unaffected in his own 
 changeless identity. The New Testament therefore knows nothing of mytho- 
 logy in the above sense. The state of the question is however somewhat 
 changed from that which it assumed in the Old Testament : for Jesus is 
 called the Son of God, not merely in the same sense as kings under the 
 theocracy were so called, but as actually begotten by the divine spirit, or 
 from the incarnation in his person of the divine Xoyos. Inasmuch as he is 
 one with the Father, and in him the whole fullness of the godhead dwells 
 bodily, he is more than Moses. The actions and sufferings of such a bemg 
 are not external to the Deity : though we are not allowed to suppose a theo- 
 paschitie union with the divine nature, yet still, even in the New Testament, 
 and more in the later doctrine of the Church, it is a divine bemg that here 
 lives and suffers, and what befals him has an absolute worth and significance. 
 
78 INTRODUCTION. § I4. 
 
 Thus according to the above accepted notion of the mythus, the New Testa- 
 ment has more of a mythical character than the Old. But to call the history 
 of Jesus mythical in this sense, is as unimportant with regard to the historical 
 question as it is unexceptionable ; for the idea of God is in no way opposed 
 to such an intervention in human affairs as does not affect his own immuta- 
 biUty ; so that as far as regards this point, the gospel history, notwithstanding 
 its mythical designation, might be at the same time throughout historically 
 true. 
 
 Admitting that the biblical history does pot equally with the heathen 
 mythology offend our idea of Deity, and that consequently it is not in like 
 manner characterized by this mark of the unhistorical, however far it be 
 from bearing any guarantee of being historical, — we are met by the further 
 question whether it be not less accordant with our idea of the world, and 
 whether such discordancy may not furnish a test of its unhistorical nature. 
 
 In the ancient world, that is, in the east, the religious tendency was so pre- 
 ponderating, and the knowledge of nature so limited, that the law of cbn- 
 nexion between earthly finite beings was very loosely regarded. At evfery 
 link there was a disposition to spring into the Infinite, and to see God as the 
 immediate cause of every change in nature or the human mind. In tjiis 
 mental condition the biblical history was written. Not that God is hfere 
 represented as doing all and every thing himself : — a notion which, from the 
 manifold direct evidence of the fundamental connexion between finite things, 
 would be impossible to any reasonable mind: — but there prevails in the 
 biblical writers a ready disposition to derive all things down to the minutest 
 details, as soon as they appear particularly important, immediately from God. 
 He it is who gives the rain and sunshine ; he sends the east wind and the 
 storm ; he dispenses war, famine, pestilence ; he hardens hearts and softens 
 them, suggests thoughts and resolutions. And this is particularly the case 
 with regard to his chosen instruments and beloved people. In the history of 
 the Israelites we find traces of his immediate agency at every step : through 
 Moses, Elias, Jesus, he performs things which never would have happened in 
 the ordinary course of nature. 
 
 Our modern world, on the contrary, after many centuries of tedious re- 
 search, has attained a conviction, that all things are linked together by a 
 Chain of causes and effects, which suffers no interruption. It is true that 
 single facts and groups of facts, with their conditions and processes of change, 
 are not so circumscribed as to be unsusceptible of external influence; for the 
 action of one existence or kingdom in nature intrenches on that of another : 
 human freedom controls natural development, and material laws react on 
 human freedom. Nevertheless the totality of finite things forms a vast circle, 
 which, except that it owes its existence and laws to a superior power, suffers 
 no intrusion from without. This conviction is so much a habit of thought 
 with the modern world, that in actual life, the belief in a supernatural mani- 
 festation, an immediate divine agency, is at once attributed to ignorance or 
 imposture. It has been carried to the extreme in that modern explanation, 
 which, in a spirit exactly opposed to that of the Bible, has either totally 
 removed the divine causation, or has so far restricted it that it is immediate 
 in the act of creation alone, but mediate from that point onwards ; — i.e., God 
 operates on the world only in so far as he gave to it this fixed direction at the 
 creation. From this point of view, at which nature and history appear as a 
 compact tissue of finite causes and effects, it was impossible to regard the 
 narratives of the Bible, in which this tissue is broken by innumerable instances 
 of divine interference, as historical. 
 
 It must be confessed on nearer investigation, that this modern explanation, 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 79 
 
 although it does not exactly deny the existence of God, yet puts aside the idea 
 of him, as the ancient view did the idea of the world. For this is, as it has 
 been often and well remarked, no longer a God and Creator, but a mere finite 
 Artist, who acts immediately upon his work only during its first production, 
 and then leaves it to itself; who becomes excluded with his full energy from 
 one particular sphere of existence. It has therefore been attempted to unite 
 the two views so as to maintain for the world its law of sequence, and for 
 God his unlimited action, and by this means to preserve the truth of the 
 biblical history. According to this view, the world is supposed to move in 
 obedience to the law of consecutive causes and effects bound up with its con- 
 stitution, and God to act upon it only mediately : but in single instances, 
 where he finds it necessary for particular objects, he is not held to be restricted 
 from entering into the course of human changes immediately. This is the 
 view of modern Supranaturalism ^ ; evidently a vain attempt to reconcile two 
 opposite views, since it contains the faults of both, and adds a new one in the 
 contradiction between the two ill-assorted principles. For here the consecu- 
 tiveness of nature and history is broken through as in the ancient biblical 
 view ; and the action of God limited as in the contrary system. The propo- 
 sition that God works sometimes mediately, sometimes immediately, upon the 
 world, introduces a changeableness, and therefore a tfemporal element, into 
 the nature of his action, which brings it under the sime condemnation as both 
 the other systems ; that, namely, of distinguishing the maintaining power, in 
 the one case from individual instances of the divine agency, and in the other 
 from the act of creation.^ 
 
 Since then our idea of God requires an immediate, and our idea of the 
 world a mediate divine operation ; and since the idea of combination of the 
 two species of action is inadmissible : — nothing remains for us but to regard 
 them both as so permanently and immoveably united, that the operation of 
 God on the world continues for ever and every where twofold, both imme- 
 diate and mediate ; which comes just to this, that it is neither of the two, or 
 this distinction loses its value. To explain more closely : if we proceed from 
 the idea of God, from which arose the demand for his immediate operation, 
 then the world is to be regarded in relation to him as a Whole : on the con- 
 trary, if we proceed from the idea of the finite, the world is a congeries of 
 separate parts, and hence has arisen the demand for a merely mediate agency 
 of God : — so that we must say — God acts upon the world as a Whole imme- 
 diately, but on each part only by means of his action on every other part, 
 that is to say, by the laws of nature.* 
 
 This view brings us to the same conclusion with regard to the historical 
 value of the Bible as the one above considered. The miracles which God 
 wrought for and by Moses and Jesus, do not proceed from his immediate 
 
 ^ Heydenreich, iiber die Unzulassigkeit, u. s. f. i stiick. Compare Storr, doctr. christ. 
 
 § 35. ff- 
 
 ' If the Supranatural view contains a theological contradiction, so the new evangelical 
 theology, which esteems itself raised so far above the old supranatural view, contains a logi- 
 cal contradiction. To say that God acts only mediately upon the world as the general rule, 
 but sometimes, by way of exception, immediately, — has some meaning, though perhaps not a 
 wise one. But to say that God acts always immediately on the world, but in some cases 
 more particularly immediately,— is a flat contradiction in itself. On the principle of the 
 immanence or immediate agency of God in the world, to which the new evangelical theology 
 lays claim, the idea of the miraculous is impossible. Comp. my Streitschriften, i. 3, s. 
 46 f. 
 
 ^ In this view essentially coincide Wegscheider, instit. theol. dogm. § 12 ; De Wette, bibl. 
 Dogm., Vorbereitung; Schleiermacher, Glaubensl. § 46 f. ; Marheineke, Dogm. § 269 ff. 
 Comp. George, s. 78 f. 
 
8o INTRODUCTION. § 14. 
 
 operation on the Whole, but presuppose an immediate action in particular 
 cases, which is a contradiction to the type of the divine agency we have just 
 given. The supranaturalists indeed claim an exception from this type on be- 
 half of the biblical history ; a presupposition which is inadmissible from our 
 point of view*, according to which the same laws, although varied by various 
 circumstances, are supreme in every sphere of being and action, and there- 
 fore every narrative which offends against these laws, is to be recognized as so 
 far un historical. 
 
 The result, then, however surprising, of a general examination of the biblical 
 history, is that the Hebrew and Christian religions, like all others, have their 
 mythi. And this result is confirmed, if we consider the inherent nature of 
 religion, what essentially belongs to it and therefore must be common to all 
 religions, and what on the other hand is peculiar and may differ in each. If 
 religion be defined as the perception of truth, not in the form of an idea, 
 which is the philosophic perception, but invested with imagery ; it is easy to 
 see that the mythical element can be wanting only when religion either falls 
 short of, or goes beyond, its peculiar province, and that in the proper religious 
 sphere it must necessarily exist. 
 
 It is only amongst the lowest and most barbarous people, such as the 
 Esquimaux, that we find religion not yet fashioned into an objective form, but 
 still confined to a subjective feeling. They know nothing of gods, of superior 
 spirits and' powers, and their whole piety consists in an undefined sentiment 
 excited by the hurricane, the eclipse, or the magician. As it progresses how- 
 ever, the religious principle loses more and more of this indefiniteness, and 
 ceasing to be subjective, becomes objective. In the sun, moon, mountains, 
 animals, and other objects of the sensible world, higher powers are discovered 
 and revered; and in proportion as the significance given to these objects is 
 remote from their actual nature, a new world of mere imagination is created 
 -a. sphere of divine existences whose relations to one another, actions, and 
 influences, can be represented only after human analogy, and therefore as 
 temporal and historical. Even when the mind has raised itself to the con- 
 ception of the Divine unity, still the energy and activity of God are considered 
 only under the form of a series of acts : and on the other hand, natural events 
 and human actions can be raised to a religious significance only by . the 
 admission of divine interpositions and miracles. It is only from the philoso- 
 phic point of view that the world of imagination is seen again to coincide 
 with the actual, because the thought of God is comprehended to be his 
 essence, and in the regular course itself of nature and of history, the revela- 
 tion of the divine idea is acknowledged. 
 
 It is certainly difficult to conceive, how narratives which thus speak of 
 imagination as reality can have been formed without intentional deceit, and 
 believed without unexampled credulity ; and this difficulty has been held an 
 invincible objection to the mythical interpretation of many of the narratives of 
 the Old and New Testament. If this were the case, it would apply equally 
 to the Heathen legends ; and on the other hand, if profane Mythology have 
 
 ^ To a freedom from this presupposition we lay. claim in the following work ; in the same 
 sense as a state might be called free from presupposition where the privileges of station, etc., 
 were of no account. Such a state indeed has one presupposition, that of the natural equality 
 of its citizens ; and similarly do we take for granted the equal amenability to law of all 
 events ; but this is merely an affirmative form of expression for our former negation. But to 
 claim for the biblical history especial laws of its own, is an affirmative proposition, which, 
 according to the established rule, is that which requires proof, and not our denial of it, 
 which is merely negative. And if the proof cannot be given, or be found insufficient, it is 
 the former and not the latter, which is to be considered a presupposition. See my Streit- 
 schriften i. 3. s. 36 ff. ^ 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW, 8 1 
 
 steered clear of the difficulty, neither will that of the Bible founder upon it. 
 I shall here quote at length the words of an experienced inquirer into Grecian 
 mythology and primitive history, Otfried Miiller, since it is evident that this 
 preliminary knowledge of the subject which must be derived from general 
 mythology, and which is necessary for the understanding of the following ex- 
 amination of the evangelic mythus, is not yet familiar to all theologians. 
 " How," says Miiller ^, " shall we reconcile this combination of the true and' 
 the false, the real and ideal, in mythi, with the fact of their being believed and 
 received as truth ? The ideal, it may be said, is nothing else than poetry and 
 fiction clothed in the form of a iiarration. But a fiction of this kind cannot 
 be invented at the same time by many different persons without a miracle, 
 requiring, as it does, a peculiar coincidence of intention, imagination, and 
 expression. It is therefore the work of one person : — but how did he con- 
 vince all the others that his fiction had an actual truth ? Shall we suppose 
 him to have been one who contrived to delude by all kinds of trickery and 
 deception, and perhaps allied himself with similar deceivers, whose part it was 
 to afford attestation to the people of his inventions as having been witnessed 
 by themselves ? Or shall we think of him as a man of higher endowments- 
 than others, who believed him upon his word ; and received the mythical 
 tales under whose veil he sought to impart wholesome truths, as a sacred 
 revelation ? But it is impossible to prove that such a caste of deceivers 
 existed in ancient Greece (or Palestine) ; on the contrary, this skilful system 
 of deception, be it gross or refined, selfish or philanthropic, if we are not mis- 
 led by the impression we have recei%'ed from the earliest productions of the 
 Grecian (or Christian) mind, is little suited to the noble simplicity of those 
 times. Hence an inventer of the mythus in the proper sense of the word is 
 inconceivable. This reasoning brings us to the conclusion, that the idea of a 
 deliberate and intentional fabrication, in which the author clothes that which 
 he knows to be false in the appearance of truth, must be entirely set aside as 
 insufficient to account for the origin of the mythus. Or in other words, that 
 there is a certain necessity in this connexion between the ideal and the real, 
 which constitutes the mythus ; that the mythical images were formed by the 
 influence of sentiments common to all mankind ; and that the different 
 elements grew together without the author's being himself conscious of their 
 incongruity. It is this notion of a certain necessity and unconsciousness in 
 the formation of the ancient mythi, on which we insist. If this be once 
 understood, it will also be perceived that the contention whether the mythus 
 proceed from one person or many, from the poet or the people, though it may 
 be started on other, grounds, does not go to the root of the matter. For if 
 the one who invents the mythus is only obeying the impulse which acts also 
 upon the minds of his hearers, he is but the mouth through which all speak, 
 the skilful interpreter who has the address first to give form and expression to 
 the thoughts of all. It is however very possible that this notion of necessity 
 and unconsciousness, might appear itself obscure and mystical to our ailti- 
 quarians (and theologians), from no other reason than that this mythicising 
 tendency has no analogy in the present mode of thinking. But is not history 
 to acknowledge even what is strange, when led to it by unprejudiced 
 research?" 
 
 As an example to show that even very complicated mythi, in the formation 
 of which many apparently remote circumstances must have combined, may 
 
 » Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie, s. no ff. With this Ullmann, 
 and T. MUUer in their reviews of this work, Hoffmann, s. 113 f., and others are agreed as 
 far as relates lo the heathen mythi. Especially compare George, Mythus and bage, s. 15 tt. 
 103. 
 
82 INTRODUCTION. § I4. 
 
 yet have arisen in this unconscious manner, Miillgr then refers to the Grecian 
 raythus of Apollo and Marsyas. " It was customary to celebrate the festivals 
 of Apollo with playing on the lyre, and it was necessary to piety, that the god 
 himself should be regarded as its author. In Phrygia, on the contrary, the 
 national music was the flute, which was similarly derived from a demon of 
 their own, named Marsyas. The ancient Grecians perceived that the tones 
 of these two instruments were essentially opposed : the harsh shrill piping of 
 the flute must be hateful to Apollo, and therefore Marsyas his enemy. This 
 was not enough : in order that the lyre-playing Grecian might flatter himself 
 that the invention of his god was the more ejccellent instrument, Apollo must 
 triumph over Marsyas. But why was it necessary in particular that the un- 
 lucky Phrygian should be flayed ? Here is the simple origin of the mythus. 
 Near the castle of Celoene in Phrygia, in a cavern .whence flowed a stream or 
 torrent named Marsyas, was suspended a skin flask, called by the Phrygians, 
 the bottle of Marsyas ; for Marsyas was, like the Grecian Silenus, a demi-god 
 symbolizing the exuberance of the juices of nature. Now where a Grecian, or 
 a Phrygian with Grecian prepossessions, looked on thfe bottle, he plainly saw 
 the catastrophe of Marsyas ; here was still suspended his skin, which had been 
 torn oif and made into a botde : — Apollo had flayed him. In all this there is 
 no arbitrary invention : the same ideas might have occurred to many, and if 
 one first gave expression to them, he knew well that his auditors, imbued 
 with the same prepossessions, would not for an instant doubt his accuracy." 
 
 " The chief reason of the complicated character of mythi in general, is their 
 having been formed for the most part, not at once, but successively and by 
 degrees, under the influence of very different circumstances and events both 
 external and internal. The popular traditions, being orally transmitted and 
 not restricted by any written document, were open to receive every new 
 addition, and thus grew in the course of long centuries to the form in which 
 we now find them. (How far this applies to a great part of the New Testa- 
 ment mythi, will be shown hereafter.) This is an important and luminous 
 fact, which however is veiy frequently overlooked in the explanation of mythi ; 
 for they are regarded as allegories invented by one person, at one stroke, with 
 the definite purpose of investing a thought in the form of a narration." 
 
 The view thus expressed by Miiller, that the mythus is founded not upon 
 any individual conception, but upon the more elevated and general conception 
 of a whole people (or religious community), is said by a competent judge 
 of Miiller's work to be the necessary condition for a right understanding of 
 the ancient mythus, the admission or rejection of which henceforth ranges the 
 opinions on mythology into two opposite divisions.'' 
 
 It is not however easy to draw a line of distinction between intentional and 
 unintentional fiction. In the case where a fact lay at the foundation, which^ 
 being the subject of popular conversation and admiration, in the course of 
 time formed itself into a mythus, we readily dismiss all notion of wilful fraud, 
 at least in its origin. For a mythus of this kind is not the work of one man, 
 but of a whole body of men, and of succeeding generations ; the narrative 
 passing from mouth to mouth, and like a snowball growing by the involuntary 
 addition of one exaggerating feature from this, and another from that narrator. 
 In time however these legends are sure to fall into the way of some gifted 
 minds, which will be stimulated by them to the exercise of their own poetical, 
 religious, or didactic powers. Most of the mythical narratives which have 
 come down to us from antiquity, such as the Trojan, and the Mosaic series 
 of legends, are presented to us in this elaborated form. Here then it would 
 
 ' The words of Baur in his review of Miiller's Prolegomena, in Tahn's Tahrbiichern f. 
 Philol. u. Padag. 1828, l Heft, s. 7. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 83 
 
 appear there must have been intentional deception : this however is only the 
 result of an erroneous assumption. It is almost impossible, in a critical and 
 enlightened age like our own, to carry ourselves back to a period of civiliza- 
 tion in which the imagination worked so powerfully, that its illusions were 
 believed as realities by the very minds that created them. Yet the very same 
 miracles which are wrought in less civilized circles by the imagination, are 
 produced in the more cultivated by the understanding. Let us take one of 
 the best didactic historians of ancient or modern times, Livy, as an example. 
 " Numa," he says, " gave to the Romans a number of religious ceremonies, 
 ne luxuriarentur otto animi, and because he regarded religion as the best 
 means of bridling multitudinem imperitam et illis seculis rudem. Idem" he 
 continues, " nefastos dies fastosque fecit, quia aliquando nihil cum populo agi 
 utile futurum erat." * How did Livy know that these were the motives of 
 Numa ? In point of fact they certainly were not. But Livy believed them 
 to be so. The inference of his own understanding appeared to him so neces- 
 sary, that he treated it with full conviction as an actual fact. The popular 
 legend, or some ancient poet, had explained this fertility of religious inven- 
 tion in Numa otherwise ; namely, that it arose from his communication with 
 the nymph Egeria, who revealed to him the forms of worship that would be 
 most acceptable to the gods. It is obvious, that the case is pretty nearly the 
 same with regard to both representations. If the latter had . an individual 
 author, it was his opinion that the historical statement could be accounted for 
 only upon the supposition of a communication with a superior being ; as it 
 was that of Livy, that its explanation must lie in political views. The one 
 mistook the production of his imagination, the other the inference of his 
 understanding, for reality. 
 
 Perhaps it may be admitted that there is a possibility of unconscious 
 fiction, even when an individual author is assigned to it, provided that the 
 mythical consists only in the filling up and adorning some historical event 
 with imaginary circumstances : but that where the whole story is invented, 
 and not any historical nucleus is to be found, this unconscious fiction is 
 impossible. Whatever view may be taken of the heathen mythology, it is 
 easy to show with regard to the New Testament, that there was the greatest 
 antecedent probability of this very kind of fiction having arisen respecting 
 Jesus without any fraudulent intention. The expectation of a Messiah had 
 grown up amongst the Israelitish people long before the time of Jesus, 
 and just then had ripened to full maturity. And from its beginning this 
 expectation was not indefinite, but determined, and characterized by many 
 important particulars. Moses was said to have jiromised his people a 
 prophet Uke unto himself (Deut. xviii. 15), and this passage was in the time 
 of Jesus applied to the Messiah (Acts iii. 22 ; vii. 37). Hence the rabbinical 
 principle: as the first redeemer {GoeP), so shall be the second; which 
 principle was carried out into many particulars to be expected in the Messiah 
 after his prototype Moses.' Again, the Messiah was to come of the race 
 of David, and as a second David take possession of his throne (Matt. Xxii. 42 ; 
 
 » I. 19. ■ c. r ^ 
 
 » Midrasch Koheleth f. 73, 3 (in Schottgen, horce hebraicce et talmudics, 2, S. 251 f.). 
 E. Berechias nomine R. Isaaci dixit: Quemadmodum Goll primus (Moses), sic etiam 
 postremus (Messias) comfaratus est. De Golle prima guidnam scriptura dicit? Exod. iy. 20 : 
 et sumsit Moses uxorem et filios, eosque asino imposuit. Sic Gael postremus, Zachar. ix. 9: 
 pauper et insidens asino. Quidnam de Golle primo nosti? Is descendere fecit Man,q.d. 
 Exod. xvi. 14 : ecce ego pluere faciam vobis panem de coelo. Sic etiam GoH postremus Manna 
 descendere faciet, q, d. Ps. Ixxii. 16 : erit multitudo frumenti in terra. Quomodo GoU primus 
 comparatus fuit? Is ascendere fecit puteum: sic quoque Gael postremus _ ascendere faciet 
 aquas, q. d. Joel iv. 18 : etfoxs e domo Domini egredietur, et torrentem Sittim irrigabit. 
 
84 INTRODUCTION. § 1 4. 
 
 Luke i. 32 ; Acts ii. 30) : and therefore in the time of Jesus it was expected 
 that he, like David, should be born in the little village of Bethlehem (John 
 vii. 42 ; Matt. ii. 5 f.). In the above passage Moses describes the supposed 
 Messiah as a prophet ; so in his own idea, Jesus was the greatest and last 
 of the prophetic race. But in the old national legends the prophets were 
 made illustrious by the most wonderful actions and destiny. How could 
 less be expected of the Messiah ? Was it not necessary beforehand, that his 
 life should be adorned with that which was most glorious and important in 
 the lives of the prophets ? Must not the popular expectation give him a 
 share in the bright portion of their history, as subsequently the sufferings 
 ■ of himself and his disciples were attributed by Jesus, when he appeared as 
 the Messiah, to a participation in the dark side of the fate of the prophets 
 (Matt, xxiii. 29 ff.; Luke xiii. 33 ff. ; corap. Matt. v. 12)? Believing that 
 Moses and all the prophets had prophesied of the Messiah (John v. 46 ; 
 Luke iv. 21 ; xxiv. 27), it was as natural for the Jews, with their allegorizing 
 tendency, to consider their actions and destiny as types of the Messiah, as to 
 take their sayings for predictions. In general the whole Messianic era was 
 expected to be full of signs and wonders. The eyes of the blind should be 
 opened, the ears of the deaf should be unclosed, the lame should leap, and 
 the tongue of the dumb praise God (Isa. xxxv. 5 f. ; xlii. 7 ; comp. xxxii. 
 3, 4). These merely figurative expressions soon came to be understood 
 literally (Matt. xi. 5; Luke vii. 21 f.), and thus the idea of the Messiah was 
 continually filled up with new details, even before the appearance of Jesus.'" 
 Thus many of the legends respecting him had not to be newly invented ; 
 they already existed in the popular hope of the Messiah, having been mostly 
 derived with various modifications *' from the Old Testament, and had 
 merely to be transferred to Jesus, '^ and accommodated to his character and 
 doctrines. In no case could it be easier for the person who first added any 
 new feature to the description of Jesus, to believe himself its genuineness, 
 since his argument would be : Such and such things must have happened 
 to the Messiah; Jesus was the Messiah; therefore such and such things 
 happened to him.i^ 
 
 Truly it may be said that the middle term of this argument, namely, that 
 Jesus was the Messiah, would have failed in proof to his contemporaries 
 all the more on account of the common expectation of miraculous events, 
 if that expectation had not been fulfilled by him. But the following critique 
 
 ^^ Tanchuma f. 54, 4. (in Schbttgen, p. 74) : H. Acha nomine R. Samuelis bar Nachmani 
 dixit: Quacumque Dens S. B.facturus est N37 1^15?? (tempore Messiano) ea jam ante fecit 
 per manus justorum fit 11 D71SJ3 (seculo ante Messiam elapso). Deus S. B. suscitabit mortuos, 
 id quod jam ante fecit per Eliam, Elisam et Rzechielem, Mare exsiccabit, prout per Mosen 
 factum est. Oculos cacorum aperiet, id quod per Elisam fecit. Deus S. B. futuro tempore 
 visitabit steriles, quemadmodum in Ahrahamo et Sard fecit. 
 
 11 The Old Testament legends have undergone many changes and amplifications, even 
 without any reference to the Messiah, so that the partial discrepancy between the narratives 
 concerning Jesus with those relating to Moses and the prophets, is not a decisive proof that 
 the former were not derived from the latter. Compare Acts vii. 22, 53, and the correspond- 
 ing part of Josephus Antiq. ii. & iil. with the account of Moses given in Exodus. Also 
 the biblical account of Abraham with Antiq. i. 8, 2 ; of Jacob with i. 19, 6 ; of Joseph 
 with ii. 5, 4. 
 
 *2 George, s. 125 : If we consider the firm conviction of the disciples, that all which had 
 been prophesied in the Old Testament of the Messiah must necessarily have been fulfilled 
 in the person of their master ; and moreover that there were many blank spaces in the 
 history of Christ ; we shall see that it was impossible to have happened otherwise than that 
 these ideas should have embodied themselves, and thus the mythi have arisen which we find. 
 Even if a more correct representation of the life of Jesus had been possible by means of 
 tradition, this conviction of the disciples must have been strong enough to triumph over it. 
 
 1^ Compare O. Miiller, Prolegomena, s. 7, on a similar conclusion of Grecian poets. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 85 
 
 on the Life of Jesus does not divest it of all those features to which the 
 character of miraculous has been appropriated : and besides we must take into 
 account the overwhelming impression which was made upon those around 
 hint by the personal character and discourse of JesuSj as long as he was 
 living amongst them, which did not permit them deliberately to scrutinize 
 and compare him with their previous standard. The belief in him as the 
 Messiah extended to wider circles only by slow degrees ; and 6ven during 
 his lifetime the people may have reported many wonderful stories of him 
 (comp. Matt. xiv. 2). After his death, however, the belief in his resurrection, 
 however that belief may have arisen, afforded a more than sufficient proof 
 of his Messiahship ; so that all the other miracles in his history need not be 
 considered as the foundation of the faith in this, but may rather be adduced 
 as the consequence of it. 
 
 It is however by no means necessary to attribute this same freedom from 
 all conscious intention of fiction, to the authors of all those narratives in the 
 Old and New Testament which must be considered as unhistorical. In 
 every series of legends, especially if any patriotic or religious party interest 
 is associated with them, as soon as they become the subject of free poetry 
 or any other literary composition, some kind of fiction will be intentionally 
 mixed up with them. The authors of the Homeric songs could not have 
 believed that every particular which they related of their gods and heroes 
 had really happened j and just as little could the writer of the Chronicles 
 have been ignorant that in his deviation from the books of Samuel and of 
 the Kings, he was introducing many events of later occurrence into an 
 earlier period ; or the author of the book of Daniel 1* that he was modelling 
 his history upon that of Joseph, and accommodating prophecies to events 
 already psist ; and exactly as little may this be said of all the unhistorical 
 narratives of the Gospels, as for example, of the first chapter of the third, 
 and many parts of the fourth Gospel. But a fiction, although not undesigned, 
 may still be without evil design. It is true, the case is not the same with 
 the supposed authors of many fictions in the Bible, as with poets properly 
 so called, since the latter write without any expectation that their poems will 
 be received as history : but still it is to be considered that in ancient times, 
 and especially amongst the Hebrews, and yet more when this people was 
 stirred up by religious excitement, the line of distinction between history 
 and fiction, prose and poetry, was not drawn so clearly as with us. It is 
 a fact also deserving attention that amongst the Jews and early Christians, 
 the most reputable authors published their works with the substitution of 
 venerated names, without an idea that they were guilty of any falsehood or 
 deception by so doing. 
 
 '* The comparison of the first chapter of this book with the history of Joseph in Genesis, 
 gives an instructive view of the tendency of the later Hebrew legend and poetry to form 
 new relaiiions upon the pattern of the old. As Joseph was carried captive to Egypt, so was 
 Daniel to Babylon (i. 2) ; like Joseph he must .change his name (7). God makes the 
 D'p'nBn nb favourable to him, as the D^OaDn IB' D'lp to Joseph (9) ; he abstains from 
 polluting himself with partaking of the king's meats and drinks, which are pressed upon 
 him (8) ; a self-denial held as meritorious in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, as that of 
 Joseph with regard to Potiphar's wife ; like Joseph he gains eminence by the interpretation 
 of a dream of the king, which his D'BDin- were unable to explain to him (ii.); whilst 
 the additional circumstance that Daniel is enabled to give not only the interpretation, but 
 the dream itself, which had escaped the memory of the king, appears to be a romantic ex- 
 aggeration of that which was attributed to Joseph. In the account of Josephus, the history 
 of Daniel 'has reacted in a singular manner upon that of Joseph; for as Nebuchadnezzar 
 forgets his dream, and the interpretation according to Josephus revealed to him at the same 
 time, so does he make Pharaoh forget the interpretation shown to him with the dream. 
 Antiq. ii. 5, 4. 
 
86 INTRODUCTION. § IS- 
 
 The only question that can arise here is whether to such fictions, the work 
 of an individual, we can give the name of mythi ? If we regard only their 
 own intrinsic nature, the name is not appropriate ; but it is so when these 
 fictions, having met with faith, come to be received amongst the legends of 
 a people or religious party, for this is always a proof that they were the fruit, 
 not of any individual conception, but of an accordance with the sentiments 
 of a multitude. 15 
 
 A frequently raised objection remains, for the refutation of which the 
 remarks above made, upon the date of the origin of many of the gospel 
 mythi, are mainly important : the objection, namely, that the space of about 
 thirty years, from the death of Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem, during 
 which the greater part of the narratives must have been formed ; or even the 
 interval extending to the beginning of the second century, the most distant 
 period which can be allowed for the origin of even the latest of these gospel 
 narratives, and for the written composition of our gospels ; — is much too short 
 to admit of the rise of so rich a collection of mythi. But, as we have shown, 
 the greater part of these mythi did not arise during that period, for their first 
 foundation was laid in the legends of the Old Testament, before and after 
 the Babylonish exile; and the transference of these legends with suitable 
 modifications to the expected Messiah, was made in the course of the 
 centuries which elapsed between that exile and the time of Jesus. So that 
 for the period between the formation of the first Christian community and 
 the writing of the Gospels, there remains to be effected only the transference 
 of Messianic legends, almost all ready formed, to Jesus, with some alterations 
 to adapt them to christian opinions, and to the individual character and 
 circumstances of Jesus : only a very small proportion of mythi having to be 
 formed entirely new. 
 
 § 15- 
 
 DEFINITION OF THE EVANGELICAL MYTHUS AND ITS DISTINCTIVE 
 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 The precise sense in which we use the expression mythus, applied to certain 
 parts of the gospel history, is evident from all that has already been said ; 
 at the same time the different kinds and gradations of the mythi which we 
 shall meet with in this history may here by way of anticipation be pointed 
 out. 
 
 We distinguish by the name evangelical mythus a narrative relating directly 
 or indirectly to Jesus, which may be considered not as the expression of a 
 fact, but as the product of an idea of his earliest followers : such a narrative 
 being mythical in proportion as it exhibits this character. The mythus in 
 this sense of the term meets us, in the Gospel as elsewhere, sometimes in its 
 pure form,' constituting the substance of the narrative, and sometimes as 
 an accidental adjunct to the actual history. 
 
 The pure mythus in the Gospel will be found to have two sources, which 
 in most cases contributed simultaneously, though in different proportions, 
 to form the mythus. The one source is, as already stated, the Messianic 
 ideas and expectations existing according to their several forms in the Jewish 
 mind before Jesus, and independently of him ; the other is that particular 
 impression which was left by the personal character, actions, and fate of 
 Jesus, and which served to modify the Messianic idea in the minds of his 
 people. The account of the Transfiguration, for example, is derived almost 
 
 " Thus J. Miiller, theol. Studien u. Kritiken, 1836, iii. s. 839 ff. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 87 
 
 exclusively from tlie former source ; the only amplification taken from the 
 latter source being — that they who appeared with Jesus on the Mount spake 
 of his decease. On the other hand, the narrative of the rending of the veil 
 of the temple at the death of Jesus seems to have had its origin in the hostile 
 position which Jesus, and his church after him, sustained in relation to the 
 Jewish temple worship. Here already we have something historical, though 
 consisting merely of certain general features of character, position, etc. ; 
 we are thus at once brought upon the ground of the historical mythus. 
 
 The historical mythus has for its groundwork a definite individual fact 
 which has been seized upon by religious enthusiasm, and twined, around with 
 mythical conceptions culled from the idea of the Christ. This fact is perhaps 
 a saying of Jesus such as that concerning " fishers of men " or the barren 
 fig-tree, which now appear in the Gospels transmuted into marvellous histories : 
 or, it is perhaps a real transaction or event taken from his life ; for instance, 
 the mythical traits in the account of the baptism were built upon such a 
 reality. Certain of the miraculous histories may likewise have had some 
 foundation in natural occurrences, which the narrative has either exhibited 
 in a supernatural light, or enriched with miraculous incidents. 
 
 All the species of imagery here enumerated may justly be designated 
 as mythi, even according to the modern and precise definition of George, 
 inasmuch as the unhistorical which they embody — whether formed gradually 
 by tradition, or created by an individual author — is in each case the product 
 of an idea. But for those parts of the history which are characterized by 
 indefiniteness and want of connexion, by misconstruction and transforma- 
 tion, by strange combinations and confusion, — the natural results of a long 
 course of oral transmission ; or which, on the contrary, are distinguished by 
 highly coloured and pictorial representations, which also seem to point to 
 a traditionary origin ; — for these parts the term legendary is certainly the more 
 appropriate. 
 
 Lastly. It is requisite to distinguish equally from the mythus and the 
 legend, that which, as it serves not to clothe an idea on the one hand, and 
 admits not of being referred to tradition on the other, must be regarded as 
 the addition of the author, as purely individual, and designed merely to give 
 clearness, connexion, and climax, to the representation. , 
 
 It is to the various forms of the unhistorical in the Gospels that this 
 enumeration exclusively refers : it does not involve the renunciation of the 
 historical which they may likewise contain. 
 
 § 16. 
 
 CRITERIA BY WHICH TO DISTINGUISH THE UNHISTORICAL IN THE GOSPEL 
 
 NARRATIVE. 
 
 Having shown the possible existence of the mythical and the legendary m 
 the Gospels, both on extrinsic and intrinsic grounds, and defined their distmc- 
 tive characteristics, it remains in conclusion to inquire how their actual pre- 
 sence may be recognised in individual cases ? • • u 
 
 The mythus presents two phases : in the first place it is not history ; in the 
 second it is fiction, the product of the particular mental tendency of a certain 
 community. These two phases afford the one a negative, the other a positi.ve 
 criterion, by which the mythus is to be recognised. 
 
 I. Negative. That an account is not historical— that the matter related 
 could not have taken place in the manner described is evident, 
 
88 INTRODUCTION. § l6. 
 
 First. When the narration is irreconcilable with the known and universal 
 laws which govern the course of events. Now according to these laws, agree- 
 ing with all just philosophical conceptions and all credible experience, the 
 absolute cause never disturbs the chain of secondary causes by single arbitrary 
 acts of interposition, but rather manifests itself in the production of the 
 aggregate of finite casualities, and of their reciprocal action. When therefore 
 we meet with an account of certain phenomena or events of which it is either 
 expressly stated or implied that they were produced immediately by God 
 himself (divine apparitions — voices from heaven and the like), or by human 
 beings possessed of supernatural powers (miracles, prophecies), such an ac- 
 count is in so far to be considered as not historical. And inasmuch as, in 
 general, the intermingling of the spiritual world with the human is found only 
 in unauthentic records, and is irreconcilable with all just conceptions; so 
 narratives of angels and of devils, of their appearing in human shape and 
 interfering with human concerns, cannot possibly be received as historical. 
 
 Another law which controls the course of events is the law of succession, 
 in accordance with which all occurrences, not excepting the most violent con- 
 vulsions and the most rapid changes, follow in a certain order of sequence of 
 increase and decrease. If therefore we are told of a celebrated individual 
 that he attracted already at his birth and during his childhood that atten- 
 tion which he excited in his manhood ; that his followers at a single 
 glance recognized him as being all that he actually was ; if the transition from 
 the deepest despondency to the most ardent enthusiasm after his death is 
 represented as the work of a single hour ; we must feel more than doubtful 
 whether it is a real history which lies before us. Lastly, all those psycholo- 
 gical laws, which render it improbable that a human being should feel, think, 
 and act in a manner directly opposed to his own habitual mode and that of 
 men in general, must be taken into consideration. As for example, when the 
 Jewish Sanhedrim are represented as believing the declaration of the watch 
 at the grave that Jesus was risen, and instead of accusing them of having 
 suffered the body to be stolen away whilst they were asleep, bribing them to 
 give currency to such a report. By the same rule it is contrary to all the 
 laws belonging to the human faculty of memory, that long discourses, such as 
 those of Jesus given in the fourth Gospel, could have been faithfully recol- 
 lected and reproduced. 
 
 It is however true that effects are often far more rapidly produced, particu- 
 larly in men of genius and by their agency, than might be expected ; and that 
 human beings frequently act inconsequently, and in opposition to their general 
 modes and habits ; the two last mentioned tests of the mythical character 
 must therefore be cautiously applied, and in conjunction only with other 
 tests. 
 
 Secondly. An account which shall be regarded as historically valid, must 
 neither be inconsistent with itself, nor in contradiction with other accounts. 
 
 The most decided case falling under this rule, amounting to a positive con- 
 tradiction, is when one account affirms what another denies. Thus, one 
 gospel represents the first appearance of Jesus in Galilee as subsequent to the 
 imprisonment of John the Baptist, whilst another Gospel remarks, long after 
 Jesus had preached both in Galilee and in Judea, that " John was not yet- 
 cast into prison." 
 
 When on the contrary, the second account, without absolutely contradicting 
 yie first, differs from it, the disagreement may be merely between the inci- 
 dental particulars of the narrative ; such as time, (the clearing of the Temple,) 
 place, (the original residence of the parents of Jesus ;) number, (the Gadarenes, 
 the angels at the sepulchre ;) names, (Matthew and Levi ;) or it may concern 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 89 
 
 the essential substance of the history. In the latter case, sometimes the 
 character and circumstances in one account differ altogether from those in 
 another. Thus, according to one narrator, the Baptist recognizes Jesus as the 
 Messiah destined to suflfer ; according to the other, John takes offence at his 
 suffering condition. Sometimes an occurrence is represented in two or more 
 ways, of which one only can be consistent with the reality ; as when in one 
 account Jesus calls his first disciples from their nets whilst fishing on the sea of 
 Galilee, and in the other meets them in Judea on his way to Galilee. We 
 may class under the same head instances where events or discourses are 
 represented as having occurred on two distinct occasions, whilst they are so 
 similar that it is impossible to resist the conclusion that both the narratives 
 refer to the same event or discourse. 
 
 It may here be asked : is it to be regarded as a contradiction if one account 
 is wholly silent respecting a circumstance mentioned by another ? In itself, 
 apart from all other considerations, the argumentum ex silentio is of no weight ; 
 but it is certainly to be accounted of moment when, at the same time, it may 
 be shown that had the author known the circumstance he could not have 
 failed to mention it, and also that he must have known it had it actually 
 occurred. 
 
 II. Positive. The positive characters of legend and fiction are to be re- 
 cognized sometimes in the form, sometimes in the substance of a narrative. 
 
 If the form be poetical, if the actors converse in hymns, and in a more 
 diffuse and elevated strain than might be expected from their training and 
 situations, such discourses, at all events, are not to be regarded as historical. 
 The absence of these marks of the unhistorical do not however prove the 
 historical validity of the narration, since the mythus often wears the most 
 simple and apparently historical form : in which case the proof lies in the 
 substance. 
 
 If the contents of a narrative strikingly accords with certain ideas existing 
 and prevailing within the circle from which the narrative proceeded, which ideas 
 themselves seem to be the product of preconceived opinions rather than of 
 practical experience, it is more or ^less probable, according to circumstances, 
 that such a narrative is of mythical origin. The knowledge of the fact, that 
 the Jews were fond of representing their great men as the children of parents 
 who had long been childless, cannot but make us doubtful of the historical 
 truth of the statement that this was the case with John the Baptist ; knowing 
 also that the Jews saw predictions everywhere in the writings of their pro- 
 phets and poets, and discovered types of the Messiah in all the lives of holy 
 men re;corded in their Scriptures ; when we find details in the life of Jesus 
 evidently sketched after the pattern of these prophecies and prototypes, we 
 cannot but suspect that they are rather mythical than historical. 
 
 The more simple characteristics of the legend, and of additions by the 
 author, after the observations of the former section, need no further elucida- 
 tion. 
 
 Yet each of these tests, on the one hand, and each narrative on the other, 
 considered apart, will rarely prove more than the possible or probable un- 
 historical character of the record. The concurrence of several such indica- 
 tions, is necessary to bring about a more definite result. The accounts of the 
 visit of the Magi, and of the murder of the innocents at Bethlehem, harmonize 
 remarkably with the Jewish Messianic notion, built upon the prophecy of 
 Balaam, respecting the star which should come out of Jacob ; and with the 
 history of the sanguinary command of Pharaoh. Still this would not alone 
 suffice to stamp the narratives as mythical. But we have also the corrobora- 
 tive facts that the described appearance of the star is contrary to the physical, 
 
90 INTRODUCTION. § l6 
 
 the alleged conduct of Herod to the psychological laws ; that Josephus, who 
 gives in other respects so circumstantial an account of Herod, agrees with all 
 other historical authorities in being silent concerning the Bethlehem massacre; 
 and that the visit of the Magi together with the flight into Egypt related in the 
 one Gospel, and the presentation in the temple, related in another Gospel, 
 mutually exclude one another. Wherever, as in this instance, the several 
 criteria of the mythical character concur, the result is certain; and certain in 
 proportion to the accumulation of such grounds of evidence. 
 
 It may be that a narrative, standing alone, would discover but slight indi- 
 cations, or perhaps, might present no one distinct feature of the mythus ; but 
 it is connected with others, or proceeds from the author of other narratives 
 which exhibit unquestionable marks of a mythical or legendary character; 
 and consequently suspicion is reflected back from the latter, on the former. 
 Every narrative, however miraculous,, contains some details which might in 
 themselves be historical, but which, in consequence of their connexion with 
 the other supernatural incidents, necessarily become equally doubtful. 
 
 In these last remarks we are, to a certain extent, anticipating the question 
 which is; in conclusion, to be considered : viz., whether the mythical char- 
 acter is restricted to those features of the narrative, upon which such character 
 is actually stamped ; and whether a contradiction between two accounts in- 
 validate one account only, or both ? That is to say, what is the precise 
 boundary line between the historical and the unhistorical ? — the most difficult 
 question in the whole province of criticism. 
 
 In the first place, when two narratives mutually exclude one another, one only 
 is thereby proved to be unhistorical. If one be true the other must be false, 
 but though the one be false the other may be true. Thus, in reference to the 
 original residence of the parents of Jesus, we are justified in adopting the account 
 of Luke which places it at Nazareth, to the exclusion of that of Matthew, which 
 plainly supposes it to have been at Bethlehem ; and, generally speaking, when 
 we have to choose between two irreconcilable accounts, in selecting as his- 
 torical that which is the least opposed to the laws of nature, and has the least 
 correspondence with certain national or party opinions. But upon a more 
 particular consideration it will appear that, since one account is false, it is 
 possible that the other may be so likewise : the existence of a mythUs re- 
 specting some certain point, .shows that the imagination has been active in 
 reference to that particular subject; (we need only refer to the genealogies;) 
 and the historical accuracy of either of two such accounts cannot be relied 
 upon, unless substantiated by its agreement with some other well authenticated 
 testimony. 
 
 Concerning the different parts of one and the same narrative : it might be 
 thought for example, that though the appearance of an angel, and his an- 
 nouncement to Mary that she should be the Mother of the Messiah, must 
 certainly be regarded as unhistorical, still, that Mary should have indulged 
 this hope before the birth of the child, is not in itself incredible. But what 
 should have excited this hope in Mary's mind ? It is at once apparent that 
 that which is credible in itself is nevertheless unhistorical when it is so inti- 
 mately connected with what is incredible that, if you discard the latter, you at 
 the same time remove the basis on which the former rests. Again, any action 
 of Jesus represented as a miracle, when divested of the marvellous, might be 
 thought to exhibit a perfectly natural occurrence ; with respect to some of the 
 miraculous histories, the expulsion of devils for instance, this might with some 
 limitation, be possible. But for this reason alone : in these instances, a cure, 
 so instantaneous, and effected by a few words merely, as it is described in the 
 Gospels, is not psychologically incredible ; so that, the essential in these 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MYTHICAL POINT OF VIEW. 91 
 
 narratives remains untouched. It is different in the case of the heahng of a 
 man born blind. A natural cure could not have been effected otherwise than 
 by a gradual process ; the narrative states the cure to have been immediate ; 
 if therefore the history be understood to record a natural occurrence, the most 
 essential particular is incorrectly represented, and consequently all security for 
 the truth of the otherwise natural remainder is gone, and the real fact cannot 
 be discovered without the aid of arbitrary conjecture. 
 
 The following examples will serve to illustrate the mode of deciding in such 
 cases. According to the narrative, as Mary entered the house and saluted 
 her cousin Elizabeth, who was then pregnant, the babe leaped in her womb, 
 she was filled with the Holy Ghost, and she immediately addressed Mary as 
 the mother of the Messiah. This account bears indubitable marks of an un- 
 historical character. Yet, it is not, in itself, impossible that Mary should have 
 paid a visit to her cousin, during which everything went on quite naturally. 
 The fact is however that there are psychological difficulties connected with 
 this journey of the betrothed ; and that the visit, and even the relationship of 
 the two women, seem to have originated entirely in the wish to exhibit a 
 connexion between the mother of John the Baptist, and the mother of 
 the Messiah. Or when in the history of the transfiguration it is stated, that the 
 men who appeared with Jesus on the Mount were Moses and Elias : and that 
 the brilliancy which illuminated Jesus was supernatural ; it might seem here 
 also that, after deducting the marvellous, the presence of two men and a 
 bright morning beam might be retained as the historical facts. But the legend 
 was predisposed, by virtue of the current idea concerning the relation of the 
 Messiah to these two prophets, not merely to make any two men (whose per- 
 sons, object and conduct, if they were not what the narrative represents them, 
 remain in the highest degree mysterious) into Moses and Elias, but to create 
 the whole occurrence ; and in like manner not merely to conceive of some 
 certain illumination as a supernatural effulgence (which, if a natural one, is 
 much exaggerated and misrepresented), but to create it at once after the 
 pattern of the brightness which illumined the face of Moses on Mount Sinai. 
 
 Hence is derived the following rule. Where not merely the particular nature 
 and manner of an occurrence is critically suspicious, its external circumstances 
 represented as miraculous and the like ; but where likewise the essential sub- 
 stance and groundwork is either inconceivable in itself, or is in striking har- 
 mony with some Messianic idea of the Jews of that age, then not the particular 
 alleged course and mode of the transaction only, but the entire occurrence 
 must be regarded as unhistorical. Where on the contrary, the form only, and 
 not the general contents of the narration, exhibits the characteristics of the 
 unhistorical, it is at least possible to suppose a kernel of historical fact; 
 although we can never confidently decide whether this kernel of fact actually 
 exists, or in what it consists ; unless, indeed, it be discoverable from other 
 sources. In legendary narratives, or narratives embellished by the writer, it is 
 less difficult,— by divesting them of all that betrays itself as fictitious imagery, 
 exaggeration, etc. — by endeavouring to abstract from them every extraneous 
 adjunct and to fill up every hiatus — to succeed, proximately at leasts in separat- 
 ing the historical groundwork. 
 
 The boundary line, however, between the historical and the unhistorical, in 
 records, in which as in our Gospels this latter element is incorporated, will 
 ever remain fluctuating and unsusceptible of precise attainment. Least of all 
 can it be expected that the first comprehensive attempt to treat these records 
 from a critical point of view should be successful in drawing a sharply defined 
 line of demarcation. In the obscurity which criticism has produced, by the 
 extinction of all lights hitherto held historical, the eye must accustom itself 
 
92 INTRODUCTION. § 1 6. 
 
 by degrees to discriminate objects with precision ; and at all events the 
 author of this work, wishes especially to guard himself in those places where 
 he declares he knows not what happened, from the imputation of asserting 
 that he knows that nothing happened. 
 
FIRST PART. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF 
 
 JESUS. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 
 
 § 17- 
 
 ACCOUNT GIVEN BY LUKE.* IMMEDIATE, SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER OF 
 
 THE REPRESENTATION. 
 
 Each of the four Evangelists represents the public ministry of Jesus as pre- 
 ceded by that of John the Baptist ; but it is peculiar to Luke to make the 
 Baptist the precursor of the Messiah in reference also to the event of his 
 birth. This account finds a legitimate place in a work devoted exclusively to 
 the consideration of the life -of Jesus : firstly, on account of the intimate 
 connexion which it exJiibits as subsisting from the very commencement be- 
 tween the life of John and the life of Jesus ; and secondly, because it consti- 
 tutes a valuable contribution, aiding essentially towards the formation of a 
 correct estimate of the general character of the gospel narratives. The 
 opinion that the two first chapters of Luke, of which this particular history 
 forms a portion, are a subsequent and unauthentic addition, is the uncritical 
 assumption of a class of theologians who felt that the history of the childhood 
 of Jesus seemed to require a mythical interpretation, but yet demurred to 
 apply the comparatively modern mythical view to the remainder of the 
 Gospel.i 
 
 A pious sacerdotal pair had lived and grown old in the cherished, but 
 unrealized hope, of becoming parents, when, on a certain day, as the priest is 
 oifering incense in the sanctuary, the angel Gabriel appears to him, and 
 promises him a son, who shall live consecrated to God, and who shall be the 
 harbinger of the Messiah, to prepare his way when he shall visit and redeem 
 his people. Zacharias, however, is incredulous, and doubts the prediction on 
 account of his own advanced age and that of his wife ; whereupon the angel, 
 both as a sign and as a punishment, strikes him dumb until the time of its 
 accomplishment ; an infliction which endures until the day of the circumcision 
 of the actually born son, when the father, being called upon to assign to the 
 child the name predetermined by the angel, suddenly recovers his speech, 
 and with the regained powers of utterance, breaks forth in a hymn of praise. 
 (Luke i. 5-25, 57-80.) 
 
 It is evidently the object of this gospel account to represent a series of 
 external and miraculous occurrences. The announcement of the birth of the 
 
 * It may here be observed, once for all, that whenever In the following inquiry the names 
 "Matthew," " Luke," etc., are used, it is the author of the several Gospels who is thus 
 briefly indicated, quite irrespective of the question whether either of the Gospels was written 
 by an apostle or disciple of that name, or by a later unknown author. 
 
 ' See Kuinol Coram, in Luc, Proleg., p. 247 
 
 95 
 
96 PART I. CHAPTER I. § 1 7. 
 
 forerunner of the Messiah is divinely communicated by the apparition of a 
 celestial spirit ; the conception takes place under the particular and preter- 
 natural blessing of God; and the infliction and removal of dumbness are 
 effected by extraordinary means. But it is quite another question, whether 
 we can accede to the view of the author, or can feel convinced that the birth, 
 of the Baptist was in fact preceded by such a series of miraculous events. 
 
 The first offence against our modern notions in this narrative is the appear- 
 ance of the angel : the event contemplated in itself, as well as the peculiar 
 circumstances of the apparition. With respect to the latter, the angel 
 announces himself to be Gabriel that stands in the presence of God. Now it is 
 inconceivable that the constitution of the celestial hierarchy should actually 
 correspond with the notions entertained by the Jews subs'equent to the exile ; 
 and that the names given to the angels should be in the language of this 
 people.^ Here the supranaturalist finds himself in a dilemma, even upon his 
 own ground. Had the belief in celestial beings, occupying a particular station 
 in the court of heaven, and distinguished by particular names, originated from 
 the revealed religion of the Hebrews, — had such a- belief been established by 
 Moses, or some later prophet, — then, according to the views of the supra- 
 naturalist, they might, nay they must, be admitted to be correct. But it is in 
 the Maccabsean Daniel^ and in the apocryphal Tobit,* that this doctrine of 
 angels, in its more precise form, first appears ; and it is evidently a product of 
 the influence of the Zend religion of the Persians on the Jewish mind. We 
 have the .testimony of the Jews themselves, that they brought the names of 
 the angels with them from Babylon,^ Hence arises a series of questions 
 extremely perplexing to the supranaturalist. Was the doctrine false so long 
 as it continued to be the exclusive possession of the heathens, but true as 
 soon as it became adopted by the Jews ? or was it at all times equally 
 true, and was an important truth discovered by an idolatrous nation sooner 
 than by the people of God ? If nations shut out from a particular and divine 
 revelation, arrived at truth by the light of reason alone, sooner than the Jews 
 J who were guided by that revelation, then either the revelation was superfluous, 
 or its influence was merely negative : that is, it operated as a Check to the 
 premature acquisition of knowledge. If, in order to escape this consequence, 
 it be contended that truths were revealed by the divine influence to other 
 people besides the Israelites, the supranaturalistic point of view is annihilated; 
 and, since all things contained in religions which contradict each other cannot 
 have been revealed, we are compelled to exercise a ciritical discrimination. 
 Thus, we find it to be by no means in harmony with an elevated conception 
 of God to represent him as an earthly monarch, surrounded by his court : 
 and when an appeal is made, in behalf of the reality of angels standing round 
 the throne, to the reasonable belief in a graduated scale of created intelli- 
 gences,® the Jewish representation is not thereby jusfilted, but merely a 
 modern concepti6n substituted for it. We should, th^kbe driven to the 
 
 ' Paulus, exeget. Handbucli, i a. s. 78 f. 96. Bauer, hebr. Mythol., 2 Bd. s. 218 f. 
 ^ Here Michael is called one of the chief princes. 
 
 * Here Raphael is represented as one of the seven angels which go in and out before the glory 
 of the holy One; (Tobit, xii. 15), almost the sarre as Gabriel in Luke i^ 19, excepting the 
 mention of the number. This number is in imitation pf the Pers'.an Amschaspands. Vid. 
 De Wette, bibl. Dogmatik, § 171 b. 
 
 * Hieros, rosch haschanah.f. Ivi. 4. (Lightfoot, horse hebr. et talmud. in IV. Evangg., 
 p. 723) : R. Simeon ben iMchisch dicit : nomina angelorum ascenderunt in manu Israllis (X 
 Babylone. Nam antea dictum est : advolavit ad me unus tuv Seraphim, Seraphim steterunt 
 ante eum, Jes. vi. ; afposi; vir Gabriel, Dan. ix. 21, Michael princeps vester, Dan. x. 21. 
 
 6 Olshausen, biblischer Commentar zum N.T., i Thl. s. 29 (2te Auflage). Comp. 
 Hoffmann, s. 124 f. 
 
ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF THE BAPTIST. 97 
 
 expedient of s>ipposing an accommodation on the part of God : that he sent 
 a celestial spirit with the command to simulate a rank and title which did not 
 belong to him, in order that, by this conformity to Jewish notions, he might 
 insure the belief of the father of the Baptist. Since however it appears that 
 Zacharias did not believe the angel, but was first convinced by the result, the 
 accommodation proved fruitless, and consequently could not have been a 
 divine arrangement. With regard to the name of the angel, and the improba- 
 bihty that a celestial being should bear a Hebrew name, it has been remarked 
 that the word Gabriel, taken appellatively in the sense of Man of God, very 
 appropriately designates the nature of the heavenly visitant ; and since it may 
 be rendered with this signification into every different language, the name 
 cannot be said to be restricted to the Hebrew.'? This explanation however 
 leaves the difficulty quite unsolved, since it converts into a simple appgijative 
 a name evidently employed as a proper name. In this case Hkewise an 
 accommodation must be supposed, namely, that the angel, in order to indicate 
 his real nature, appropriated a name which he did not actually bear : an 
 accommodation already judged in the foregoing remarks. 
 
 But it is not only the name and the alleged station of the angel which shock 
 our modern ideas, we also feel his discourse and his conduct to be unwOrthy. 
 Paulus indeed suggests that none but a levitical priest, and not an angel of 
 Jehovah, could have conceived it necessary that the boy should live in nazarite 
 abstemiousnesSjS but to this it may be answered that the angel also might 
 have known that under this form John would obtain greater influence with 
 the people. But there is a more important difficulty. When Zacharias, 
 overcome by surprise, doubts the promise and asks for a sign, this natural 
 incredulity is regarded by the angel as a crime, and immediately punished 
 with dumbness. Though some may not coincide with Paulus that a real 
 angel would have lauded the spirit of inquiry evinced by the priest, yet all 
 will agreein the remark, that conduct so imperious is less in character with a 
 truly celestial being than with the notions the Jews of that time entertained of 
 such. Moreover we do not find in the whole province of supranaturalism a 
 parallel severity. 
 
 The instance, cited by Paulus, of Jehovah's far milder treatment of Abraham, 
 who asks precisely the same question unreproved. Gen xv. 8, is refuted by 
 Olshausen, because he considers the words of Abraham, chap. v. 6, an 
 evidence of his faith ; but this observation does not apply to chap, xviii. 1 2, 
 where the greater incredulity of Sarah, in a similar case, remains unpunished ; 
 nor to chap. xvii. 17, where Abraham himself is not even blamed, though the 
 divine promise appears to him so incredible as to excite laughter. The 
 example of Mary is yet closer, who (Luke i. 34) in regard to a still greater 
 improbability, but one which was similarly declared by a special divine 
 messenger to be no impossibility, puts exactly the same question as Zacharias; 
 so that we must agree with Paulus that such inconsistency certainly cannot 
 belong to the conduct of God or of a celestial being, but merely to the Jewish 
 representation of them. Feeling the objectionableness of the representation 
 in its existing form, orthodox theologians have invented various motives to 
 justify this infliction of dumbness. Hess has attempted to screen it from the 
 reproach of an arbitrary procedure by regarding it as the only means of keep- 
 ing secret, even against the will of the priest, an event, the premature procla- 
 mation of which might have been followed by disastrous consequences, similar 
 to those which attended the announcement by the wise men of the birth of 
 
 ' Olshausen, utsup. Hoffmann, s. 13S. 
 ' Ut sup. s. 77. 
 
98 PART I. CHAPTER I. § 1 7. 
 
 the child Jesus.^ But, in the first place, the angel says nothing of such an 
 object, he inflicts the dumbness but as a sign and punishment ; secondly, the 
 loss of speech did not hinder Zacharias from communicating, at any rate to 
 his wife, the main features of the apparition, since we see that she was 
 acquainted with the destined name of the child before appeal was made to the 
 father. Thirdly, what end did it serve thus to render difficult the communi- 
 cation of the miraculous annunciation of the unborn babe, since no sooner 
 was it born than it was at once exposed to all the dreaded dangers ? — for 
 the father's sudden recovery of speech, and the extraordinary scene at the 
 circumcision excited attention and became noised abroad in all the country, 
 Olshaiisen's view of the thing is more admissible. He regards the whole 
 proceeding, and especially the dumbness, as a moral training destined to teach 
 Zacharias to know and conquer his want of faith.^" But of this too we have 
 no mention in the text ; besides, the unexpected accomplishment of the pre- 
 diction would have made Zacharias sufficiently ashamed of his unbelief, if 
 instead of inflicting dumbness the angel had merely remonstrated with him. 
 
 But however worthy of God we might grant the conduct of his messenger 
 to have been, still many of the present day will find an angelic apparition, as 
 such, incredible. Bauer insists that wherever angels appear, both in the New 
 Testament and in the Old, the narrative is mythical. ^^ Even admitting the 
 existence of angels, we cannot suppose them capable of manifesting themselves 
 to human beings, since they belong to the invisible world, and spiritual 
 existences are not cognizable by the organs of sense; so that it is always 
 advisable to refer their pretended apparitions to the imagination. *2 It is not 
 probable, it is added, that God should make use of them according to the 
 popular notion, for these apparitions have no apparent adequate object, they 
 serve generally only to gratify curiosity, or to encourage man's disposition 
 passively to leave his affairs in higher hands.'^ It is also remarkable that in 
 the old world these celestial beings show themselves active upon the smallest 
 occasions, whilst in modern times they remain idle even during the most 
 important occurrences.^* But to deny their appearance and agency among 
 men is to call in question their very being, because it is precisely this occupa- 
 tion which is a main object of their existence (Heb. i. 14). According to 
 Schleiermacher^® we cannot indeed actually disprove the existence of angels, 
 yet the conception is one which could not have originated in our time, but 
 belongs wholly to the ancient ideas of the world. The belief in angels has a 
 twofold root or source : the one the natural desire of the mind to presuppose 
 a larger amount of intelligence in the universe than is realized in the human 
 ' race. We \who live in these days find this desire satisfied in the conviction 
 that other worlds exist besides our own, and are peopled by intelligent beings; 
 and thus the first source of the belief in angels is destroyed. The other 
 source, namely, the representation of God as an earthly monarch surrounded 
 by his court, contradicts all enlightened conceptions of Deity ; and further, 
 the phenomena in the natural world and the transitions in human life, which 
 were formerly thought to be wrought by God himself through ministering 
 angels, we are now able to explain by natural causes ; so that the belief in 
 
 ' Geschichte der dreiletzten Lebensjahrejesu, sammt dessen Jugendgeschichte. Tubingen 
 1779. I Bd. s. 12. 
 " Bibl. Comm. i, s. 115. 
 " Hebr. Mythol. ii. s. 218. 
 
 " Bauer, ut sup. i. s. 129. Paulus, exeget. Handbuch, i. a. 74, 
 '* Faulus, Commentar, i. s. 12. 
 '* Bauer, ut sup. 
 " Glaubenslehre, I Thl. § 42 und 43 (2te Ausgabe). 
 
ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF THE BAPTIST. , 99 
 
 angels is without a link by which it can attach itself to rightly apprehended 
 modern ideas ; and it exists only as a lifeless tradition. The result is the 
 same if, with one of the latest writers on the doctrine of angels,!^ we consider 
 as the origin of this representation, man's desire to separate the two sides of 
 his moral nature, and to contemplate, as beings existing external to himself, 
 angels and devils. For, the origin of both representations remains merely 
 subjective, the angel being simply the ideal of created perfection : which, as it 
 was formed from the subordinate point of view of a fanciful imagination, 
 disappears from the higher and more comprehensive observation of the 
 intellect.''^ 
 
 Olshausen, on the other hand, seeks to deduce a positive argument in 
 favour of the reality of the apparition in question, from those very reasonings 
 of the present day which, in fact, negative the existence of angels ; and he 
 does so by viewing the subject on its speculative side. He is of opinion that 
 the gospel narrative does not contradict just views of the world, since God is 
 immanent in the universe and moves it by his breath.^^ But if it be true that 
 God is immanent in the world, precisely on that account is the intervention of 
 angels superfluous. It is only a Deity who dwells apart, throned in heaven, 
 who requires to send down his angels to fulfil his purposes on earth. It would 
 excite surprise to find Olshausen arguing thus, did we not perceive from the 
 manner in which this interpreter constantly treats of angelology and demo- 
 nology, that he does not consider angels to be independent personal entities ; 
 but regards them rather as divine powers, transitory emanations and fulgura- 
 tions of the Divine Being. Thus Olshausen's conception of angels, in their 
 relation to God, seems to correspond with the Sabellian doctrine of the 
 ^ Trinity; but as his is not the representation of the Bible, as also the arguments 
 in favour of the former prove nothing in relation to the latter, it is useless 
 to enter into further explanation. The reasoning of this same theologian, 
 that we must not require the ordinariness of every-day life for the most pregnant 
 epochs in the life of the human race ; that the incarnation of the eternal 
 word was accompanied by extraordinary manifestations from the world of 
 spirits, uncalled for in times less rich in momentous results," rests upon a 
 misapprehension. For the ordinary course of every-day life is interrupted in 
 such moments, by the very fact that exalted beings like the Baptist are born 
 into the world, and it would be puerile to designate as ordinary those times 
 and circumstances which gave birth and maturity to a John, because they 
 were unembellished by angelic apparitions. That which the spiritual world 
 does for ours at such periods is to send extraordinary human intelligences, not 
 to cause angels to ascend and descend. 
 
 Finally, if, in vindication of this narrative, it be stated that such an exhibi- 
 tion by the angel, of the plan of education for the unborn child, was necessary 
 in order to make him the man he should become *'„ the assumption includes 
 too much ; namely, that all great men, in order by their education to become 
 such, must, have been introduced into the world in like manner, or cause 
 must be shown why that which was unnecessary in the case of great men of 
 other ages and countries was indispensable for the Baptist. Again, the 
 assumption attaches too much importance to external training, too httle to 
 the internal development of the mind. But in conclusion, many of the 
 circumstances in the life of the Baptist, instead of serving to confirm a belief 
 
 " Binder, Studien der evang. Geistlichkeit Wurtembergs, ix. 2, S- " ff- 
 1' Compare my Dogmatik, i. § 49. 
 " Bibl. Comm., I. Thl.». 119. 
 
 19 TJt SUD. S. 02. 
 
 2» Hess, Geschichte der drei letzten Lebensjahre Jesu u. s. w., I. Thl. s. 13, 33. 
 
100 PART I. (SIAPTER I. § 1 8. 
 
 in the truth -of the miraculous history, are on the contrary, as has been justly 
 maintained, altogether irreconcilable with the supposition, that his birth was 
 attended by these wonderful occurrences. If it were indeed true, that John 
 was from the first distinctly and miraculously announced as the forerunner of 
 the Messiah, it is inconceivable that he should have had no acquaintance 
 with Jesus prior to his baptism ; and that, even subsequent to that event,, he 
 should have felt perplexed concerning his Messiahship (John i. 30 ; Matt. 
 xi. 2).2i 
 
 Consequently the negative conclusion of the rationalistic criticism and con- 
 troversy must, we think, be admitted, namely, that the birth of the Baptist 
 could not have been preceded and attended by these supernatural occur- 
 rences. The question now arises, what positive view of the matter is to 
 replace the rejected literal orthodox explanation ? 
 
 § 18. 
 
 NATURAL EXPLANATION OF THE NARRATIVE. 
 
 In treating the narrative, before us according to the rationalistic method, 
 which requires the separation of the pure fact from the opinion of interested 
 persons, the simplest alteration is this : to retain the two leading facts, the 
 apparition and the dumbness, as actual external occurrences ; but to account 
 for them in a natural manner. This were possible with respect to the appari- 
 tion, by supposing that a man, mistaken by Zacharias for a divine messenger, 
 really appeared to him, and addressed to him the words he believed he 
 heard. But this explanation, viewed in connexion with the attendant circum- 
 stances, being too improbable, it became necessary to go a step further, and 
 to transform the event from an external to an internal one ; to remove the 
 occurrence out of the physicai into the psychological world. To this view 
 the opinion of Bahrdt, that a flash of Ughtning was perhaps mistaken by 
 Zacharias for an angel,^ forms a transition ; since he attributes the greater 
 part of the scene to Zacharias's imagination. But that any man, in an 
 ordinary state of mind, could have created so long and consecutive a dia- 
 logue out of a flash of I'ightning is incredible. A peculiar mental state must 
 be supposed ; whether it be a swoon, the effect of fright occasioned by the 
 lightning,^ but of this there is no trace in the text (no falling down as in Acts 
 ix. 4) ; or, abandoning the notion of the lightning, a dream, which, however,' 
 could scarcely occur whilst burning incense in the temple. Hence, it has 
 been found necessary, with Paulus, to call to mind that there are waking 
 visions or ecstasies, in which the imagination confounds internal images with 
 external occurrences." Such ecstasies, it is true, are not common ; but, says 
 Paulus, in Zacharias's case many circumstances combined to produce so un- 
 usual a state of mind. The exciting causes were, firstly, the long-cherished 
 desire to have a posterity ; secondly, the exalted vocation of administering 
 in the Holy of Holies, offering up with the incense the prayers of the people 
 to the throne of Jehovah, which seemed to Zacharias to foretoken the accep- 
 tance of his own prayer ; and thirdly, perhaps an exhortation from his wife 
 as he left his house, similar to that of Rachel to Jacob. Gen. xxx. i (!) In 
 
 '' Horst in Henke's Museum, i. 4. s. 733 f. Gabler in seinem neuest. theol. Journal, vii. 
 I. s. 403. 
 
 • Briefe iiber die Bibel im Volkstone (Ausg. Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1800), ites Bandchen, 
 5ter Brief, s. 51 f. ' 
 
 ' Bahrdt, ut sup. s. 52. 
 
 " Exeget. Handb. i, a. s. 74 ff. 
 
ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF THE BAPTIST. lOI 
 
 this highly excited state of mind, as he prays in the dimly-lighted sanctuary, 
 he thinks of his most ardent wish, and expecting that now or never his prayer 
 shall be heard, he is prepared to discern a sign of its acceptance in the 
 slightest occurrence. As the glimmer of the lamps falls upon the ascending 
 cloud of incense, and shapes it into varying forms, the priest imagines he 
 perceives the figure of an angel. The apparition at first alarms him ; but he' 
 soon regards it as an assurance from God that his prayer is heard. No sooner 
 does a transient doubt cross his mind, than the sensitively pious priest looks 
 upon himself as sinful, believes himself reproved by the angel, and — here two 
 explanations are possible — -either an apoplectic seizure actually deprives him 
 of speech, which he receives as the just punishment of his incredulity, till the 
 excessive joy he experiences at the circumcision of his son restores the power 
 of utterance : so that the dumbness is retained as an external, physical, 
 though not miraculous, occurrence ; * or the proceeding is psychologically 
 understood, namely, that Zacharias; in accordance with a Jewish superstition, 
 for a time denied himself the use of the offending member.^ Reanimated in 
 other respects by the extraordinary event, the priest returns home to his wife, 
 and she becomes a second Sarah. 
 
 With regard to this account of the angelic apparition given by Paulus, — 
 and the other explanations are either of essentially similar character, or are 
 so manifestly untenable, as not to need refutation — it may be observed that 
 the object so laboriously striven after is not attained. Paulus fails to free 
 the narrative of the marvellous ; for by his own admission, the majority of 
 men have no experience of the kind of vision here supposed.' If such a 
 state of ecstasy occur in particular cases, it must result either from a predis- 
 position in the individual, of which we find no sign in Zacharias, and which 
 his advanced age must have rendered highly improbable ; or it must have 
 been induced by some peculiar circumstances, which totally fail in the pre- 
 sent instance.'' A hope which has been long indulged is inadequate to the 
 production of ecstatic vehemence, and the act of burning incense is insuffi- 
 cient to cause so extraordinary an excitement, in a priest who has grown old 
 in the service of the temple. Thus Paulus has in fact substituted a miracle 
 of chance for a miracle of God. Should it be said that to God nothing is 
 impossible, or to chance nothing is impossible, both explanations are equally 
 precarious and unscientific. 
 
 Indeed, the dumbness of Zacharias as explained from this point of view is 
 very unsatisfactory. For had it been, as according to one explanation, the 
 result of apoplexy J admitting Paulus's reference to Lev. xxi. i6, to be 
 set aside by the contrary remark of Lightfoot,^ still, we must join with 
 Schleiermacher in wondering how Zacharias, nothwithstanding this apoplectic 
 seizure, returned home in other respects healthy and vigorous ; » and that in 
 spite of partial paralysis his general strength was unimpaired, and his long- 
 cherished hope fulfilled. It iimst also be regarded as a strange coincidence, 
 that the father's tongue should have been loosed exactly at the time of the 
 circumcision ; for if the recovery of speech is to be considered as the effect 
 of joy,'" surely the father must have been far more elated at the birth of the 
 
 * Bahrdt, ut sup. 7ter Brief, s. 60.— E. F. uber die beiden ersten Kapitel des Matthaus 
 und Lukas, in Henke's Magazin, v. i. s. 163. Bauer, hebr. Mythol. 2, s. 220. 
 ' Exeget. Handb. i, a. s. 77-80. 
 ' Ut sup. s. 73. 
 
 ' Comp. Schleiermacher iiber die Schriften des Lukas, s. 25. 
 ' Horae hebr.et talmud., ed. Carpzov. p. 722. 
 
 w EVamples^borrowed from Aulus Qellius, v. 9, and from Valerius Maximus, i. 8, are 
 cited. 
 
102 PART I. CHAPTER I. § 1 8. 
 
 earnestly-desired son, than at the circumcision ; for by that time he would 
 have become accustomed to the possession of his child. 
 
 The other explanation : that Zacharias's silence was not from any physical 
 impediment, but from a notion, to be psychologically explained, that he ought 
 not to speak, is in direct contradiction to the words of Luke. What do 
 'all the passages, collected by Paulus to show that oi Swafiai may signify not 
 only a positive non posse, but likewise a mere non sustinere^^ prove against 
 the clear meaning of the passage and its context? If perhaps the narrative 
 phrase (v. 22), ow ■^Swuto XaX^trai aurots might be forced to bear this sense, 
 yet certainly in the supposed vision of Zacharias, had the angel only forbidden 
 him to speak, instead of depriving him of the power of speech, he would 
 not have said : xat Icrg <niinrwi^ firj 8uva/A£i/os XaXrjcrai, but tcrOi <rio>ir(ov, fjurjo 
 eirixetpiyoTjs XaXrjcrai. The words Sie/xeve kwc^os (v. 21) also most naturally 
 mean actual dumbness. This view assumes, and indeed necessarily so, that 
 the gospel history is a correct report of the account given by Zacharias him- 
 self; if then it be denied that the dumbness was actual, as Zacharias affirms 
 that actual dumbness was announced to him by the angel, it must be ad- 
 mitted that, though perfectly able to speak, he believed himself to be dumb; 
 which leads to the conclusion that he was mad : an imputation not to be 
 laid upon the father of the Baptist without compulsory evidence in the text. 
 
 Again, the natural explanation makes too light of the incredibly accurate 
 fulfilment of a prediction originating, as it supposes, in an unnatural, over- 
 excited state of mind. In no other province of inquiry would the realization 
 of a prediction which owed its birth to a vision be found credible, even by 
 the Rationalist. If Dr. Paulus were to read that a somnambulist, in a state 
 of ecstasy, had foretold the birth of a child, under circumstances in the 
 highest degree improbable ; and not only of a child, but of a boy ; and had 
 moreover, with accurate minuteness, predicted his future mode of life, 
 character, and position in history ; and that each particular had been exactly 
 verified by the result : would he find such a coincidence credible ? Most 
 assuredly to no human being, under any conditions whatsoever, would he 
 concede the power thus to penetrate the most mysterious workings of nature ; 
 on the contrary he would complain of the outrage on human free-will, which 
 is annihilated by the admission that a man's entire intellectual and moral 
 development may be predetermined like the movements of a clock. And he 
 would on this very ground complain of the inaccuracy of observatiori, and 
 untrustworthiness of the report which represented, as matters of fact, things 
 in their very nature impossible. Why does he not follow the same rule with 
 respect to the New Testament narrative ? Why admit in the one case what 
 he rejects in the other? Is biblical history to be judged by one set of laws, 
 and profane history by another ? — An assumption which the Rationalist is 
 compelled to make, if he admits as credible in the Gospels that which he 
 rejects as unworthy of credit in every other history — which is in fact to fall 
 back on the supranaturalistic point of view, since the assumption, that the 
 natural laws which govern in every other province are not applicable to sacred 
 history, is the very essential of supranaturalism. 
 
 No other rescue from this self-annihilation remains to the anti-supernatural 
 mode of explanation, than to question the verbal accuracy of the history. 
 This is the simplest expedient, felt to be such by Paulus himself, who remarks, 
 that his efforts may be deemed superfluous to give a natural explanation of a 
 narrative, which is nothing more than one of those stories invented either 
 after the death or even during the lifetime of every distinguished man to em- 
 
 " Ut sup. s. 26. 
 
ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF THE BAPTIST. 103 
 
 hellish his early history. Paulus, however, after an impartial examination, is 
 of opinion that the analogy, in the present instance, is not applicable. The 
 principal ground for .this opinion is the too short interval between the birth 
 of the Baptist, and the composition of the Gospel of Luke.^^ ^g, on the 
 contrary, in harmony with the observations in the introduction, would reverse 
 , the question and inquire of this interpreter, how he would render it credible, 
 that the history of the birth of a man so famed as the Baptist should have 
 been transmitted, in an age of great excitement, through a period of more 
 than sixty years, in all its primitive accuracy of detail? Paulus's answer 
 is ready : an answer approved by others (Heidenreich, Olshausen) :— the 
 passage inserted by Luke (i. 5 ; ii. 39) was possibly a family record, which 
 circulated among the relatives of the Baptist and of Jesus ; and of which 
 Zacharias was probably the author.^' 
 
 K. Ch. L. Schmidt controverts this hypothesis with the remark, that it is 
 impossible that a narrative so disfigured (we should rather say, so embellished) 
 could have been a family record ; and that, if it does not belong altogether 
 to the class of legends, its historical basis, if such there be, is no longer to be 
 distinguished. 1* It is further maintained, that the narrative presents certain 
 features which no poet would have conceived, and which prove it to be a 
 direct impression of facts ; for instance, the Messianic expectations expressed 
 by the different personages introduced by Luke (chap. i. and ii.) correspond 
 exactly with the situation and relation of each individual.^^ But these dis- 
 tinctions are by no means so striking as Paulus represents ; they are only the 
 characteristics of a history which goes into details, making a transition from 
 generalities to particulars, which is natural alike to the poet and to the popu- 
 lar legend ; besides, the peculiar Judaical phraseology in which the Messianic 
 expectations are expressed, and which it is contende,d confirm the opinion 
 that this narrative was written, or received its fixed form, before the death of 
 Jesus, continued to be used after that event (Acts i. 6 ^^). Moreover we 
 must agree with Schleiermacher when he says : ^'^ least of all is it possible to 
 regard these utterances as strictly historical ; or to maintain that Zacharias, 
 in the moment that he recovered his speech, employed it in a song of praise, 
 uninterrupted by the exultation and wonder of the company, sentiments 
 which the narrator interrupts himself to indulge. It must, at all events, be 
 admitted, that the author has made additions of his own, and has enriched 
 the history by the lyric effusions of his muse. Kuinol supposes that Zacharias 
 composed and wrote down the canticle subsequent to the occasion ; but this 
 strange surmise contradicts the text. There are some other features which, 
 it is contended, belong not to the creations of the poet ; such as, the signs 
 made to the father, the debate in the family, the position of the angel on the 
 right hand of the altar.** But this criticism is merely a proof that these 
 interpreters have, or determine to have, no just conception of poetry or 
 popular legend; for the genuine characteristic of poetry and mythus is 
 natural and pictorial representation of details. *' 
 
 " Ut sup. s. 72 f. 
 " Ut sup. s. 69. 
 
 " In Schmidt's Bibliothek fur Kritik und Exegese, iii. I, s. 119. 
 '* Paulus, ut sup. 
 
 " Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb., i. 2, s. 9. 
 *' Uber die Schriften des Lukas, s. 23. 
 
 18 Paulus und Olshausen z. d. St., Heydenreich a. a. O. I, s. 87. r. . u 
 
 " Comp. Horst, in Henke's Museum, i. 4, s. 705 ; Vater, Commentar zum Pentateuch, 
 3, s. 597 ff. ; Hase L. J., § 35 ; auch George, s. 33 f. 91. 
 
104 PART I. CHAPTER I. § 1 9. 
 
 § 19- 
 MYTHICAL VIEW OF THE NARRATIVE IN ITS DIFFERENT STAGES. 
 
 The above exposition of the necessity, and lastly, of the possibility of doubt- 
 ing the historical fidelity of the gospel narrative, has led many theologians to 
 explain the account of the birth of the Baptist as a poetical composition ; 
 suggested by the importance attributed by the Christians to the forerunner of 
 Jesus, and by the recollection of some of the Old Testament histories, in 
 which the births of Ishmael, Isaac, Samuel, and especially of Samson, are, 
 related to have been similarly announced. Still the matter was not allowed^ 
 to be altogether invented. It may have been historically true that Zacharias 
 and Elizabeth lived long without offspring ; that, on one occasion whilst in 
 the temple, the old man's tongue was suddenly paralyzed ; but that soon after- 
 wards his aged wife bore him a son, and he, in his joy at the event, recovered 
 the power of speech. At that time, but still more when John became a re- 
 markable man, the history excited attention, and out of it the existing legend 
 grew.i 
 
 It is surprising to find an explanation almost identical with the natural one 
 we have criticised above, again brought forward under a new title ; so that the 
 admission of the possibility of an admixture of subsequent legends in the nar- 
 rative has little influence on the view of the matter itself. As the mode of 
 explanation we are now advocating denies all confidence in the historical 
 authenticity of the record, all the details must be in themselves equally prob- 
 lematic ; and whether historical validity can be retained for this or that par- 
 ticular incident, can be determined only by its being either less improbable 
 than the rest, or else less in harmony with the spirit, interest, and design of 
 the poetic legend, so as to make it probable that it had a distinct origin. The 
 barrenness of Elizabeth and the sudden dumbness of Zacharias are here re- 
 tained as incidents of this character : so that only the appearing and predic- 
 tion of the angel are given up. But by taking away the angelic apparition, 
 the sudden infliction and as sudden removal of the dumbness loses its only 
 adequate supernatural cause, so that all difficulties which beset the natural in- 
 terpretation remain in full force : a dilemma into which these theologians are, 
 most unnecessarily, brought by their own inconsequence ; for the moment we 
 enter upon mythical ground, all obligation to hold fast the assumed historical 
 fidelity of the account ceases to exist. Besides, that which they propose to 
 retain as historical fact, namely, the long barrenness of the parents of the 
 Baptist, is so strictly in harmony with the spirit and character of Hebrew 
 legendary poetry, that of this incident the mythical origin is least to be mis- 
 taken. How confused has this misapprehension made, for example, the 
 reasoning of Bauer ! It was a prevailing opinion, says he, consonant with 
 Jewish ideas, that all children born of aged parents, who had previously been 
 childless, became distinguished personages. John was the child of aged 
 parents, and became a notable preacher of repentance ; consequently it was 
 thought justifiable to infer that his birth was predicted by an angel. What an 
 illogical conclusion ! for which he has no other ground than the assumption 
 that John was the son of aged parents. Let this be made a settled point, 
 and the conclusion follows without difficulty. It was readily believed, he pro- 
 ceeds, of remarkable men that they were born of aged parents, and that their 
 birth, no longer in the ordinary course of nature to be expected, was an- 
 
 ' E. F. iiber die zwei ersten Kapitel u. s. w. in Henke's Magazin, v. 1, s. 162 ff., und 
 Bauer hebr, Mythol., ii. 220 f. 
 
ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF THE BAPTIST. 105 
 
 noiinced by a heavenly messenger 2; John was a great man and a prophet ; 
 consequently, the legend represented him to have been born of an aged 
 couple, and his birth to have been proclaimed by an angel. 
 
 Seeing that this explanation of the narrative before us, as a half (so called 
 historical) mythus, is encumbered with all the difficulties of a half measure, 
 Gabler has treated it as a pure philosophical, or dogmatical mythus.* Horst 
 likewise considers it, and indeed the entire two first chapters of Luke, of 
 which it forms a part, as an ingenious fiction, in which the birth of the Mes- 
 siah, together with that of his precursor, and the predictions concerning the 
 character and ministry of the latter, framed after the event, are set forth ; it 
 being precisely the loquacious circumstantiality of the narration which be- 
 trays the poet.* Schleiermacher likewise explains the first chapter as a little 
 poem, similar in character to many of the Jewish poems which we meet with 
 in their apocrypha. He does not however consider it altogether a fabri- 
 cation. It might have had a foundation in fact, and in a widespread tradition ; 
 but the poet has allowed himself so full a license in arranging, and combining, 
 in moulding and embodying the vague and fluctuating representations of tra- 
 dition, that the attempt to detect the purely historical in such narratives, must 
 prove a fruitless and useless effort.^ Horst goes so far as to suppose the 
 author of the piece to have been a Judaising Christian ; whilst Schleiermacher 
 imagines it to have been composed by a Christian of the famed Jewish school, 
 at a period when it comprised some who still continued strict disciples of 
 John ; and whom it was the object of the narrative to bring over to Christi- 
 anity, by exhibiting the relationship of John to the Christ as his peculiar and 
 highest destiny ; and also by holding out the expectation of a state of tem- 
 poral greatness for the Jewish people at the reappearance of Christ. 
 
 An attentive consideration of the Old Testament histories, to which, as 
 most interpreters admit, the narrative of the annunciation and birth of the 
 Baptist bears a striking affinity, will render it abundantly evident that this 
 is the only just view of the passage in question. But it must not here be 
 imagined, as is now so readily affirmed in the confutation of the mythical view 
 of this passage, that the author of our narrative first made a collection from 
 the Old Testament of its individual traits ; much rather had the scattered 
 traits respecting the late birth of different distinguished men, as recorded in the 
 Old Testament, blended themselves into a compound image in the mind of 
 their reader, whence he selected the features most appropriate to his present 
 subject. Of the children born of aged parents, Isaac is the most ancient pro- 
 totype. As it is said of Zacharias and Elizabeth, " they both were advanced 
 in their days " (v. 7) irpo^i^rjKOTK iv rats ^fiipat? airlov, SO Abraham and Sarah 
 "were advanced in their days " D'PJ3 D'K? (Gen.; xviii. 11 ; LXX : TrpojSc^i;- 
 KoVes TjixtpSiv), when they were promised a son. It is likewise from this history 
 that the incredulity of the father, on account of the advanced age of both 
 
 2 The adoption of this opinion is best explained by a passage— with respect to this matter 
 classical— in the Evangelium de nativitate Marias, in Fabricius codex apocryphus N. Ti. i, 
 p. 22 f., and in Thilo I, p. 322, " Deus"— it is here said,— cum alkujus uterum claudit, ad 
 hocfacii, ut mirahilius denuo aperiat, et non libidinis esse, quod nascitur, sed divini muneris 
 cognoscatur. Prima enim gentis ■vestm Sara mater nonne usque ad octogesimum annum in- 
 fecundafuit 1 et tamen in ultimd senectutis cetate genuit Isaac, cui repromissa erat benedictio 
 omnium gentium. Rachel quoque, tantum Domino grata tantumque a sancio Jacob amaia dm 
 sterilis fuit, et tamen Joseph genuit, non solum dominum Mgypti, sed plurimarum gentium 
 fame fierUUrarum liberatorem. Quis in ducibus velfortior Sampsone, vel sanctior Samuele I 
 et tamen hi ambo steriles matres habuere.—ergo—crede—dilatos diu conceptus et steriles partus 
 mirabiliores esse solere. 
 
 ' Neuestes theol. Joutnal, vii. I, s. 402 f. 
 
 ■• In Henke's Museum, i. 4, s. 702 ff. 
 
 5 Hase in his Leben Jesu makes the same admission ; compare S 5^ witn § 32. 
 
I06 TART I. CHAPTER I. § I9. 
 
 parents, and the demand of a sign, are borrowed in our narrative. As Abra- 
 ham, when Jehovah promises him he shall have a son and a numerous pos- 
 terity who shall inherit the land of Canaan, doubtingly inquires, " Whereby 
 shall I know that I shall inherit it ? " Kara tl yn/mcrofiaj,, Stu KKrfpovofv^crm 
 avrriv ; (sc. T^i' y^v. Gen. XV. 8. LXX) : so Zacharias — " Whereby shall I 
 know this ? " koto. Ttyvoicro/xat tovto ; (v. 18.) The incredulity of Sarah is not 
 made use of for Elizabeth ; but she is said to be of the daughters of Aaron, 
 and the name Elizabeth may perhaps have been suggested by that of Aaron's 
 wife (Exod. vi. 23. LXX.). The incident of the angel announcing the birth 
 of the Baptist is taken from the history of another late-born child, Samson. 
 In our narrative indeed, the angel appears first to the father in the temple, 
 whereas in the history of Samson he shows himself iirst to the mother, and 
 afterwards to the father in the field. This, however, is an alteration arising 
 naturally out of the different situations of the respective parents (Judges xiii.). 
 According to popular Jewish notions, it was no unusual occurrence for the 
 priest to be visited by angels and divine apparitions whilst offering incense in 
 the temple.*' The command which before his birth predestined the Baptist 
 — whose later ascetic mode of life was known — to be a Nazarite, is taken from 
 the same source. As, to Samson's mother during her pregnancy, wine, strong 
 drink, and unclean food, were forbidden, so a similar diet is prescribed for her 
 son,' adding, as in the case of John, that the child shall be consecrated to 
 God from the womb.^ The blessings which it is predicted that these two men 
 shall realize for the people of Israel are similar (comp. Luke i. 16, 17, with 
 Judges xiii. 5), and each narrative concludes with the same expression respec- 
 ting the hopeful growth of the child.* It may be too bold to derive the Le- 
 vitical descent of the Baptist from a third Old Testament history of a late-born 
 son — from the history of Samuel (compare i Sam. i. i ; Chron. vii. 27) ; but 
 the lyric effusions in the first chapter of Luke are imitations of this history. 
 As Samuel's mother, when consigning him to the care of the high priest, 
 breaks forth into a hymn (i Sam. ii. i), so the father of John does the same 
 at the circumcision ; though the particular expressions in the Canticle uttered 
 by Mary — of which we shall have to speak hereafter — have a closer resem- 
 blance to Hannah's song of praise than that of Zacharias. The significant 
 appellation yb4« (t3nin',=©eoxapis), predetermined by the angel, had its prece- 
 dent in the announcements of the names of Ishmael and Isaac *" ; but the 
 ground of its selection was the apparently providential coincidence between 
 the signification of the name and the historical destination of the man. The 
 
 ' Wetstein zu Luke i. 1 1, s. 647 f. adduces passages from Josephus and from the Rabbins 
 recording apparitions seen by the high priests. How readily it was presumed that the same 
 thing happened to ordinary priests is apparent from the narrative before us. 
 
 ? Judges xiii. 14 (LXX.) : . Luc. i. 15. 
 
 Kal oTvov Kul aUepa (al. iU6vana, hebr. l^tS*^ kcu olvov Kal alxepa oi /ni] 7r%. 
 fj.il irifTu. 
 
 ' Judg. xiii. 5 : Luc. 1.15: 
 
 &n ifyiaa'/jUiiov larai r^ Self (al. Nofip fleoO icai irneiiMTOs &yl(Hi vKriaBitireTai, in ix KotXfas 
 
 larat) to iraiSapiov oiiK ttjs yaiTTpbi (al. diri /jaiTpis aiiToS. 
 TTJs KoMas). 
 
 ' Judg. xiii. 24 f. : Luc. i. 80 : 
 
 Kal riSkbyritrev airbv Kipios, koI t; 'l^flij (al. tA Si TroiSioy Tjfff ave Koi iKparauiVTO Tvei/ian, 
 
 i)dpiivdri) rb iraiSdpiov ' xal ijp^aTO irvevim Kal ^v iv tois ipi^/wis, (us ^/n^/JO! AvaSel^em 
 
 Kvpiov (rv/ixopeieaBaiavT^ iv wape/i^oXy A&v, airov irpbs riv 'Xapa'qX. 
 i,vaiUaov Zapi, Kal iva/iijov ''E(r8a6\. 
 
 Comp. Gen. xxi. 20. 
 
 »» Gen. xvi. II. (LXX.) : Luc. i. 13 : 
 
 Kal KoKiireis ri 6m/M avrov 'Jdnaijk. Kal KoKiaeis t6 fiKo/to avTou 'liaivvriv. 
 
 xvii. 19 : 'laa&K. 
 
ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF THE BAPTIST. 10/ 
 
 remark, that the name of John was not in the family (v. 6i), only brought its 
 celestial origin more fully into view. The tablet (irivaKtStoi/) upon which the 
 father wrote the name (v. 63), was necessary on account of his incapacity to 
 speak ; but it also had its type in the Old Testament. Isaiah was commanded 
 to write the significant names of the child Maher-shalal-hash-baz upon a tab- 
 let (Isaiah viii. r ff.). The only supernatural incident of the narrative, of 
 which the Old Testament may seem to offer no precise analogy, is the dumb- 
 ness ; and this is the point fixed upon by those who contest the mythical 
 view.ii But if it be borne in mind that the asking and receiving a sign from 
 heaven in confirmation of a promise or prophecy was usual among the He- 
 brews (comp. Isaiah vii. 11 ff.) ; that the temporary loss of one of the senses 
 was the peculiar punishment inflicted after a heavenly vision (Acts ix. 8, 17 
 ff.) ; that Daniel became dumb whilst the angel was talking with him, and did 
 not recover his speech till the angel had touched his lips and opened his 
 mouth (Dan. x. 15 f.) : the origin of this incident also will be found in the 
 legend, and not in historical fact. Of two ordinary and subordinate features 
 of the narrative, the one, the righteousness of the parents of the Baptist (v. 6); 
 is merely a conclusion fourided upon the belief that to a pious couple alone 
 would the blessing of such a son be vouchsafed, and consequently is, void of 
 all historical worth ; the other, the statement that John was born in the reign 
 of Herod (the Great) (v. 5), is without doubt a correct calculation. 
 
 So that we stand here upon purely mythical-poetical ground ; the only 
 historical reality which we can hold fast as positive matter of fact being this : 
 — the impression made by John the Baptist, by virtue of his ministry and his 
 relation to Jesus, was so powerful as to lead to the subsequent glorification 
 of his birth in connection with the birth of the Messiah in the Christian 
 legend. ^2 
 
 " Olshausen, bibl. Commentar, i. s. 116. HoflFmann, s. 146. 
 
 '^ With this view of the passage compare De Wette, Exeg. Handbuch zum N. T., i. 2, 
 s. 12. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 DAVIDICAL DESCENT OF JESUS, ACCORDING TO THE GENEALOGICAL 
 TABLES OF MATTHEW AND LUKE. 
 
 § 20. 
 
 THE TWO GENEALOGIES OF JESUS CONSIDERED SEPARATELY AND 
 IRRESPECTIVELY OF ONE ANOTHER. 
 
 In the history of the birth of the Baptist, we had the single account of Luke ; 
 but regarding the genealogical descent of Jesus we have also that of Matthew ; 
 so that in this case the mutual control of two narrators in some respects mul- 
 tiplies, whilst in others it lightens, our critical labour. It is indeed true that 
 the authenticity of the two first chapters of Matthew, which contain the history 
 of the birth and childhood of Jesus, as well as that of the parallel section of 
 Luke, has been questioned : but as in both cases the question has originated 
 merely in a prejudiced view of the subject, the doubt has been silenced by a 
 decisive refutation.' 
 
 Each of these two Gospels contains a genealogical table designed to exhibit 
 the Davidical descent of Jesus, the Messiah. That of Matthew (i. 1-17) pre- 
 cedes, that of Luke (iii. 23-38) follows, the history of the announcement and 
 birth of Jesus. These two tables, considered each in itself, or both compared 
 together, aiford so important a key to the character of the evangelic records 
 in this section, as to render a close examination of them imperative. We 
 shall first consider each separately, and then each, but particularly that of 
 Matthew, in comparison with the. passages in the Old Testament to which it 
 is parallel. 
 
 In the Genealogy given by the author of the first Gospel, there is a com- 
 parison of the account with itself which is important, as it gives a result, a sum 
 at its conclusion, whose correctness may be proved by comparing it with the 
 previous statements. In the summing Up it is said, that from Abraham to 
 Christ there are three divisions of fourteen generations each, the first from 
 Abraham to David, the second from David to the Babylonish exile, the third 
 from the exile to Christ. Now if we compute the number of names for ourselves, 
 we find the first fourteen from Abraham to David, both included, complete 
 (2-5) ; also that from Solomon to Jechonias, after whom the Babylonish exile 
 is mentioned (6-1 1); but from Jechonias to Jesus, even reckoning the latter 
 as one, we can discover only thirteen (12-16). How shall we explain this 
 discrepancy ? The supposition that one of the names has escaped from the 
 third division by an error of a transcriber,* is in the highest degree improb- 
 
 ' Kuinol, Comm. in Matth. Proleg., p. xxvil. f. 
 * Paulus, p. 292. 
 
GENEALOGICAL TABLES OF MATTHEW AND LUKE. 109 
 
 able, since the deficiency is mentioned so early as by Porphyry.^ The inser- 
 tion, in some manuscripts and versions, of the name Jehoiakim * b£tween 
 Josias and Jechonias, does not supply the deficiency of the third division ; it 
 only adds a superfluous generation to the second division, which was already 
 complete. As also there is no doubt that this deficiency originated with the 
 author of the genealogy, the question arises : in what manner did he reckon 
 so as to count fourteen generations for his third series ? Truly it is possible 
 to count in various ways, if an arbitrary inclusion and exclusion of the first and 
 last members of the several series be permitted. It might indeed have been 
 presupposed, that a generation already included in one division was necessarily 
 excluded from another : but the compiler of the genealogy may perhaps have 
 thought otherwise ; and since David is twice mentioned in the table, it is 
 possible that the author counted him twice : namely, at the end of the first 
 series, and again at the beginning of the second. This would not indeed, any 
 more than the insertion of Jehoiakim, fill up the deficiency in the third 
 division, but give too many to the second ; so that we must, with some com- 
 mentators,^ conclude the second series not with Jechonias, as is usually done, 
 but with his predecessor Josias : and now, by means of the double enumer- 
 ation of David, Jechonias, who was superfluous in the second division, being 
 available for the third, the last series, including Jesus, has its fourteen mem- 
 bers complete. But it seems very arbitrary to reckon the concluding member 
 of the first series twice, and not also that of the second : to avoid which in- 
 consistency some interpreters have proposed to count Josias twice, as well as 
 David, and thus complete the fourteen members of the third series without 
 Jesus. But whilst this computation escapes one blunder, it falls into another ; 
 namely, that whereas the expression omo 'A^paafj. eios Aa/8t8 k. t. A,, (v. 17) is 
 supposed to include the latter, in aTro fi.eroi.Kea-ia's Ba/SvXSi'os c«)s tov Xpia-rov, 
 the latter is excluded. This difficulty may be avoided by counting Jechonias 
 twice instead of Josias, which gives us fourteen names for the third division, 
 including Jesus ; but then, in order not to have too many in the second, we 
 must drop the double enumeration of David, and thus be liable to the same 
 charge of inconsistency as in the former case, since the double enumeration 
 is made between the second and third divisions, and not between the first and 
 second. Perhaps De Watte has found the right clue when he remarks, that 
 in v. 1 7, in both transitions some member of the series is mentioned twice, 
 but in the first case only that member is a person (David), and therefore to 
 be twice reckoned. In the second case it is the Babylonish captivity occur- 
 ring between Josias and Jechonias, which latter, since he had reigned only 
 three months in Jerusalem (the greater part of his life having passed after 
 the carrying away to Babylon), was mentioned indeed at the conclusion of 
 the second series for the sake of connexion, but was to be reckoned only at 
 the beginning of the third.^ 
 
 If we now compare the genealogy of Matthew (still without reference to 
 that of Luke) with the corresponding passages of the Old Testament, we_ 
 shall also find discrepancy, and in this case of a nature exactly the reverse of 
 the preceding : for as the table considered in itself required the duplication 
 of one member in order to complete its scheme, so when compared with the 
 Old Testament, we find that many of the names there recorded have been 
 omitted, in order that the number fourteen might not be exceeded. That is 
 to say, the Old Testament affords data for comparison with this genealogical 
 
 ' Hieron. in Daniel, init. 
 
 * See Wetstein. 
 
 = e.g. Frische, Coram, in Matth., p. 13. 
 
 6 Exegt. Handbuch, i, i, s. 12 f. . • 
 
no PART I. CHAPTER II. § 20. 
 
 table as the famed pedigree of the royal race of David, from Abraham to 
 Zorobabel and his sons ; after whom the Davidical line begins to retire into 
 obscurity, and from the silence of the Old Testament the genealogy of Mat- 
 thew ceases to be under any control. The series of generations from Abraham 
 to Judah, Pharez, and Hezron, is sufficiently well known from Genesis; from 
 Pharez to David we find it in the conclusion of the book of Ruth, and in the 
 2nd chapter of the ist Chronicles ; that from David to Zerubbabel in the 3rd 
 chapter of the same book ; besides passages that are parallel with separate 
 portions of the series. 
 
 To complete the comparison : we find the line from Abr3,ham to David, 
 that is, the whole first division of fourteen in our genealogy, in exact accor- 
 dance with the names of men given in the Old Testament : leaving out 
 however the names of some women, one of which mdkes a difficulty. It is 
 said V. 5 that Rahab was the mother of Boaz. Not only is this without con- 
 firmation in the Old Testament, but even if she be made the great-grandmother 
 of Jesse, the father of David, there are too few generations between her time 
 and that of David (from about 1450 to 1050 B.C.), that is, counting either 
 Rahab or David as one, four for 400 years. Yet this error falls back upon 
 the Old Testament genealogy itself, in so far as Jesse's great-grandfather 
 Salmon, whom Matthew calls the husband of Rahab, is said Ruth iv. ^o, as 
 well as by Matthew, to be the son of a Nahshon, who, according to Numbers 
 i. 7, lived in the time of the itiarch through the wilderness'' : from which cir- 
 cumstance the idea was naturally suggested, to marry his son with that Rahab 
 who saved the Israelitish spies, and thus to introduce a woman for whom the 
 Israelites had an especial regard (compare James ii. 25, Heb. xi. 31) into the 
 lineage of David and the Messiah. 
 
 Many discrepancies are found in the second division from David to Zoro- 
 babel and his son, as well as in the beginning of the third. Firstly, it is said 
 V. % Jot am begat Ozias ; whereas we know from 1 Chron. iii. 11, 12, that 
 Uzziah was not the son, but the grandson of the son of Joram, and that three 
 kings occur between them, namely, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah, after whom 
 comes Uzziah (2 Chron. xxvi. i, or as he is called i Chron. iii. 12, and 2 
 Kings xiv. 21, Azariah). Secondly: our genealogy says v. 11, Josias begat 
 Jechonias and his brethren. But we find from i Chron. iii. 16, that the son 
 and successor of Josiah was called Jehoiakim, after whom came his son and 
 successor Jechoniah or Jehoiachin. Moreover brethren are ascribed to 
 Jechoniah, whereas the Old Testament mentions none. Jehoiakim, however, 
 had brothers : so that the mention of the brethren of Jtchonias in Matthew 
 appears to have originated in an exchange of these two persons. — A third 
 discrepancy relates to Zorobabel. He is here called, v. 12, a son of Salathiel ; 
 whilst in i Chron. iii. 19, he is descended from Jechoniah, not through 
 Shealtiel, but through his brother Pedaiah. In Ezra v. 2, and Haggai i. i, 
 however, Zerubbabel is designated, as here, the son of Shealtiel. — In the last 
 place, Abiud, who is here called the son of Zorobabel, is not to be found 
 amongst the children of Zerubbabel mentioned i Chron. iii. 19 f. : perhaps 
 because Abiud was only a surname derived from a son of one of those there 
 mentioned.^ 
 
 The second and third of these discrepancies may have crept in without evil 
 intention, and without any great degree of carelessness, for the omission of 
 Jehoiakim may have arisen from the similar s.ound of the names (D'i?',in^ and 
 
 ' The expedient of Kuinol, Comm. in Matth. p. 3, to distinguish the Rahab here men- 
 tioned from the celebrated one, becomes hence superfluous, besides that it is perfectly 
 arbitrary. 
 
 ' HolTmann, s. 154, according to Hug, Einl., ii. s. 271. 
 
GENEALOGICAL TABLES OF MATTHEW AND LUKE. Ill 
 
 I'^t''^!)) which accounts also for the transposition of the brothers of Jechoniah; 
 whilst respecting Zorobabel the reference to the Old Testament is partly 
 adverse, partly favourable. But the first discrepancy we have adduced, 
 namely, the omission of three known kings, is not so easily to be set aside. 
 It has indeed been held that the similarity of names may here also have led 
 the author to pass unintentionally from Joram to Ozias, instead of to the 
 similar sounding Ahaziah (in the LXX. Ochozias). But this omission falls in 
 so happily with the author's design of the threefold fourteen (admitting the 
 double enumeration of David), that we cannot avoid believing, with Jerome, 
 that the oversight was made on purpose with a view to it.' From Abraham 
 to David, where the first division presented itself, having found fourteen 
 members, he seems to have wished that those of the following divisions 
 should correspond in number. In the whole remaining series the Babylonish 
 exile offered itself as the natural point of separation. But as the second 
 division from David to the exile gave him four supernumerary members, 
 therefore he omitted four of the names. For what reason these particular 
 four were chosen would be difficult to determine, at least for the three last 
 mentioned. 
 
 The cause of the compiler's laying so much stress on the threefold equal 
 numbers, may have been simply, that by this adoption of the Oriental custom 
 of division into equal sections, the genealogy mignt be more easily committed 
 to memory^" : but with this motive a mystical idea was probably combined. 
 The question arises whether this is to be sought in the number which is thrice 
 repeated, or whether it consists in the threefold repetition ? Fourteen is the 
 double of the sacred number seven ; but it is improbable that it was selected 
 for this reason,ii because otherwise the seven would scarcely have been so 
 completely lost sight of in the fourteen. Still more improbable is the con- 
 jecture of Olshausen, that the number fourteen was specially chosen as being 
 the numeric value of the name of David '^j for puerilities of this kind, 
 appropriate to the rabbinical gematria, are to be found in no other part of the 
 Gospels. It is more likely that the object of the genealogists consisted 
 merely in the repetition of an equal number by retaining the fourteen which 
 had first accidentally presented itself: since it was a notion of the Jews that 
 signal divine visitations, whether of prosperity or adversity, recurred at 
 regular periodical intervals. Thus, as fourteen generations had intervened 
 between Abraham, the founder of the holy people, and David the king after 
 God's own heart, so fourteen generations must intervene between the re-estab- 
 lishment of the kingdom and the coming of the son of David, the Messiah, i* 
 The most ancient genealogies in Genesis exhibit the very same uniformity. 
 As according to the jSl^Xo's yeveo-ttus avBpumwv, cap. v., from Adam the first, 
 to Noah the second, father of men, were ten generations : so from Noah, or 
 rather from his son, the tenth is Abraham the father of the faithful. " 
 
 ' Compare Fritsche, Comm. in Matth., p. 19; Paulus, exeget. Handbuch, i. s. 289 ; De 
 Wette, exeg. Handb. in loco. 
 
 '" Fritsche in Matth., p. II. 
 
 '' Paulus, s. 292. 
 
 " Bibl. Comm., p. 46, note. , 
 
 " See Schneckenburger, Beitrage zur EJnIeitung in das N. T., s. 41 f., and the passage 
 cited from Tosephus, B. j. vi. 8. Also may be compared the passage "'^'J, .^'J' S'=1'°"S^"' 
 horse hebr. ei talm. zu Matth. i. from Synopsis Sohar, p. 132, n. 18. Ab Abrahamo usque 
 ad Salomonem XV. sunt generationes ; atque tunc luna fuit in plemlunw. A Salomons usque 
 ad ZedeHam iterum sunt XV. generationes, et tunc luna defecit et Zedekt^ effosnsuntocuh. 
 
 " De Wette has already called attention to the analogy between these Old _lestament 
 genealogies and those of the Gospels, with regard to the intentional equality of numbers. 
 Kritik der raos. Geschichte, s 69. Comp. s. 48. 
 
112 PART I. CHAPTER II. § 21. 
 
 This d pn'ori treatment of his subject, this Procrustes-bed upon which the 
 author of our genealogy now stretches, now curtails it, almost like a philoso- 
 pher constructing a system, — can excite no predisposition in his favour. It 
 is in vain to appeal to the custom of Oriental genealogists to indulge them- 
 selves in similar licence ; for when an author presents us with a pedigree 
 expressly declaring that a// the generations during a space of time were four- 
 teen, whereas, through accident or intention, many members are wanting,^7 
 he betrays an arbitrariness and want of critical accuracy, which must shake 
 our confidence in the certainty of his whole genealogy. 
 
 The genealogy of Luke, considered separately, does not present so many 
 defects as that of Matthew. It has no concluding statement of the number 
 of generations comprised in the genealogy, to act as a check upon itself, 
 neither can it be tested, to much extent, by a comparison with the Old 
 Testament. For, from David to Nathan, the line traced by Luke has no 
 correspondence with any Old Testament genealogy, excepting in two of its 
 members, Salathiel and Zorobabel ; and even with respect to these two, there 
 is a contradiction between the statement of Luke and that of i Chron. iii. 17. 
 19 f. : for the former calls Salathiel a son of Neri, whilst, according to the 
 latter, he was the son of Jechoniah. Luke also mentions one Resa as the 
 son of Zorobabel, a name which does not appear amongst the children of 
 Zerubbabel in i Chron. iii. 17, 19. Also, in the series before Abraham, Luke 
 inserts a Cainan, who is not to be found in the Hebrew text. Gen. x. 24 ; xi. 
 12 ff., but who was however already inserted by the LXX. In fact, the 
 original text has this name in its first series as the third from Adam, and 
 thence the translation appears to have transplanted him to the corresponding 
 place in the second series as the .third from Noah. 
 
 § 21. 
 
 COMPARISON OF THE TWO GENEALOGIES — ATTEMPT TO RECONCILE THEIR 
 
 CONTRADICTIONS. 
 
 If we compare the genealogies of Matthew and Luke together, we become 
 aware of still more striking discrepancies. Some of these differences indeed 
 are unimportant, as the opposite direction of the two tables, the line of Mat- 
 thew descending from Abraham to Jesus, that of Luke ascending from Jesus 
 to his ancestors. Also the greater extent of the line of Luke ; Matthew 
 deriving it no farther than from Abraham, while Luke (perhaps lengthening 
 some existing document in order to make it more consonant with the 
 universalism of the doctrines of Paul ' ;) carries it back to Adam and to God 
 himself. More important is the considerable difference in the number of 
 generations for equal periods, Luke having 41 between David and Jesus, 
 whilst Matthew has only 26. The main difficulty, however, lies in this : that 
 in some parts of the genealogy, in Luke totally different individuals are made 
 the ancestors of Jesus from those in Matthew. It is true, both writers agree 
 in deriving the lineage of Jesus through Joseph from David and Abraham, 
 and that the names of the individual members of the series correspond from 
 Abraham to David, as well as two of the names in the subsequent portion : 
 those of Salathiel and Zorobabel. But the difficulty becomes desperate when 
 we find that, with these two exceptions about midway, the whole of the names 
 from David to the foster-father of Jesus are totally different in Matthew and 
 
 1 See Chrysostom and Luther, in Credner, Einleitung in d. N. T., i,,s. 143 f. Winer, bibl. 
 Realworterbuch, i. s. 659. 
 
GENEALOGICAL TABLES OF MATTHEW AND LUKE. II3 
 
 in Luke. In Matthew, the father of Joseph is called Jacob ; in Luke, Heli. 
 In Matthew, the son of David through whom Joseph descended from that 
 king is Solomon ; in Luke, Nathan : and so on, the line descends, in Mat- 
 thew, through the race of known kings ; in Luke, through an unknown 
 collateral branch, coinciding only with respect to Salathiel and Zorobabel, 
 whilst they still differ in the names of the father of Salathiel and the son of 
 Zorobabel. Since this difference appears to offer a complete contradiction, the 
 most industrious efforts have been made at all times to reconcile the two. 
 Passing in silence explanations evidently unsatisfactory, such as a mystical 
 signification, ^ or an arbitrary change of names,^ we shall consider two pairs 
 of hypotheses which have been most conspicuous, and are mutually supported, 
 or at least bear affinity to one another. 
 
 The first pair is formed upon the presupposition of Augustine, that Joseph 
 was an adopted son, and that one evangelist gave the name of his real, the 
 other that of his adopted, father * ; and the opinion of the old chronologist 
 Julius Africanus, that a Levirate marriage had taken place between the parents 
 of Joseph, and that the one genealogy belonged to the natural, the other to 
 the legal, father of Joseph, by the one of whom he was descended from 
 David through Solomon, by the other through Nathan.^ The farther ques- 
 tion: to which father do the respective genealogies belong? is open to two 
 species of criticism, the one founded upon literal expressions, the other upon 
 the spirit and character of each gospel : and which lead to opposite con- 
 clusions. Augustine as well as Africanus, has observed, that Matthew makes 
 use of an expression in describing the relationship between Joseph and his 
 so-called father, which more definitely points out the natural filial relationship 
 than that of Luke : for the former says 'laKoj/S eyewria-e tov 'I<ocrr]<f) : whilst 
 the expression of the latter, 'Iwa-^cji tov 'UXl, appears equally applicable to a 
 son by adoption, or by virtue of a Levirate marriage. But smte the very 
 object of a Levirate marriage was to maintain the name and race of a deceased 
 childless brother, it was the Jewish custom to inscribe the first-born son of such 
 a marriage, not on the family register of his natural father, as Matthew has 
 done here, but on that of his legal father, as Luke has done on the above sup- 
 position. Now that a person so entirely imbued with Jewish opinions as the 
 author of the first Gospel, should have made a mistake of this kind, cannot 
 be held probable. Accordingly, Schleiermacher and others conceive them- 
 selves bound by the spirit of the two Gospels to admit that Matthew, in spite of 
 his eyeVcijo-E, must have given the lineage of the legal father, according to Jew- 
 ish custom : whilst Luke, who perhaps was not born a Jew, and was less 
 familiar with Jewish habits, might have fallen upon the genealogy of the 
 younger brothers of Joseph, who were not, like the firstborn, inscribed amongst 
 the family of the deceased legal father, but with that of their natural father, and 
 might have taken this for the genealogical table of the first-born Joseph, whilst 
 it really belonged to him only by natural descent, to which Jewish genealo- 
 gists paid no regard.^ But, besides the fact, which we shall show hereafter, 
 that the genealogy of Luke can with difficulty be proved to be the work of the 
 author of that Gospel :— in which case the little acquaintance of Luke with 
 
 ' Orig. homil. in Lucam 28. 
 
 ' Luther, Werke, Bd. 14. Walch. Ansg. s. 8 ff. ., j r 
 
 * De consensu Evangelistarum, ii. 3, u. c, Faust., iii. 3; amongst the moderns, for 
 example, E. F. in Henke's Magazin 5, I, 180 f. After Augustme had subsequently become 
 acquainted with the writing of Africanus, he gave up his own opmion for that ot the latter. 
 
 Retract, ii. 7. , . , t 1 «-, 
 
 5 Eusebius, H. E. i. 7, and lately e.^. Schleiermacher on Luke, p. S3- 
 
 6 S. 53. Comp. Winer, bibl. Realworterbuch, i Bd. s. 660. 
 
 H 
 
114 PART I. CHAPTER II. § 21. 
 
 Jewish customs ceases to afford any clue to the meaning of this genealogy; — 
 it is also to be objected, that the genealogist of the first Gospel could not 
 have written his iyiwrjo-e thus without any addition, if he was thinking of 
 a mere legal paternity. Wherefore these two views of the genealogical 
 relationship are equally difficult. 
 
 However, this hypothesis, which we have hitherto considered only in 
 general, requires a more detailed examination in order to judge of its admissi- 
 bility. In considering the proposition of a Levirate marriage, the argument 
 is essentially the same if, with Augustine and Africanus, we ascribe the 
 naming of the natural father to Matthew, or with Schleiermacher, to Luke.' 
 As an example we shall adopt the former statement : the rather . because 
 Eusebius, according to Africanus, has left us a minute account of it. Accord- 
 ing to this representation, then, the mother of Joseph was first married to 
 that person whom Luke calls the father of Joseph, namely Heli. But since 
 Heli died without children, by virtue of the Levirate law, his brother, called 
 by Matthew Jacob the father of Joseph, married the widow, and by her 
 begot Joseph, who was legally regarded as the son of the deceased Heli, and 
 so described by Luke, whilst naturally he was the sOn of his brother Jacob, 
 and thus described by Matthew. 
 
 But, merely thus far, the hypothesis is by no means adequate. For if the 
 two fathers of Joseph were real brothers, sons of the same father, they had 
 one and the same lineage, and the two genealogies would have differed only 
 in the father of Joseph, all the preceding portion being in agreement. In 
 order to explain how the discordancy extends so far back as to David, we 
 must have recourse to the second proposition of Africanus, that the fathers of 
 Joseph were only half-brothers, having the same mother, but not the same 
 father. We must also suppose that this mother of the two fathers of Joseph, 
 had twice married ; once with the Matthan of Matthew, who was descended 
 from David through Solomon and the line of kings, and to whom she bore 
 Jacob ; and also, either before or after, with the Matthat of Luke, the off- 
 spring of which marriage was Heli : which Heli, having married and died 
 childless, his half-brother Jacob married his widow, and begot for the deceased 
 his legal child Joseph. 
 
 This hypothesis of so complicated a marriage in two successive generations, 
 to which we are forced by the discrepancy of the two genealogies, must be 
 acknowledged to be in no way impossible, but still highly improbable : and 
 the difficulty is doubled by the untoward agreement already noticed, which 
 occurs midway in the discordant series, in the two members Salathiel and 
 Zorobabel. For to explain how Neri in Luke, and Jechonias in Matthew, 
 are both called the father of Salathiel, who was the father of Zorobabel ; — not 
 only must the supposition of the Levirate marriage be repeated, but also that 
 the two brothers who successively married the same wife, were brothers only 
 on the mother's side. . The difficulty is not diminished by the remark, that 
 any nearest blood-relation, not only a brother, might succeed in a Levirate 
 marriage, — that is to say, though not obligatory, it was at least open to his 
 choice (Ruth iii. 12. f. iv. 4 f). For since even in the case of two cousins, 
 the concurrence of the two branches must take place much earlier than here 
 for Jacob and Eli, and for Jechonias and Neri, we are still obliged to have 
 recourse to the hypothesis of half-brothers ; the only; amelioration in this 
 hypothesis over the other being, that these two very peculiar marriages do not 
 take place in immediately consecutive generations. Now that this extra- 
 ordinary double incident should not only have been twice repeated, but that 
 
 ' Comp. Michaelis, Mos. Recht. ii. s. 200. Winer, bibl. Realworterb. ii. s. 22 f. 
 
GENEALOGICAL TABLES OF MATTHEW AND LUKE. I15 
 
 the genealogists should twice have made the same selection in their statemeats 
 respecting the natural and the legal father, and without any explanation, — is 
 so improbable, that even the hypothesis of an adoption, which is burdened 
 with only one-half of these difficulties, has still more than it can bear. For 
 in the case of adoption, since no fraternal or other relatioHship is required, 
 between the natural and adopting fathers, the recurrence to a twice-repeated 
 half-brotherhood is dispensed with ; leaving only the necessity for twice 
 supposing a relationship by adoption, and twice the peculiar circumstance, 
 that the one genealogist from want of acquaintance with Jewish customs- was 
 ignorant of the fact, and the other, although he took account of it, was silent 
 respecting it. 
 
 It has been thought by later critics that the knot may be loosed in a 
 much easier way.by supposing that in one Gospel we have the genealogy of 
 Joseph, in the other that of Mary, in which case there would be no coiitradic- 
 tion in the disagreement : ^ to which they are pleased to add the assumption 
 that Mary was an heiress.' The opinion that Mary was of the race of David 
 as well as Joseph has been long held. Fisllowing indeed the idea, that the 
 Messiah, as a second Melchizedec, ought to unite in his person the priestly 
 with the kingly dignity,^** and guided by the relationship of Mary with Eliza- 
 beth, who was a daughter of Aaron (Luke i. 36) ; already in early times it 
 was not only held by many that the r^ces of Judah and Levi were blended in 
 the family of Joseph ; ^^ but also the opinion was not rare that Jesus, deriving 
 his royal lineage from Joseph, descended also from the priestly race through 
 Mary. 12 The opinion of Mary's descent from David, soon however became 
 the more prevailing. Many apocryphal writers clearly state this opinion,^^ as 
 well as Justin Martyr, whose expression, that the virgin was of the race of 
 David, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, may be considered an indication that he 
 applied to Mary one of our genealogies, which are both traced back to Abra- 
 ham through David.i* 
 
 On inquiring which of these two genealogies is to be held that of Mary ? we 
 are stopped by an apparently insurmountable obstacle, since each is distinctly 
 announced as the genealogy of Joseph ; the one in the words 'Iokoi/S eya/vrjo-e 
 Tov l(i)cr^<^, the other by the phrase vlos 'Imo-^c^ tov 'HXt. Here also, however, 
 the iyewTjcre of Matthew is more definite than the toD of Luke, which accord- 
 ing to those interpreters may mean just as well a son-in-law or grandson ; so 
 that the genitive of Luke in iii. 23 was either intended to express that Jesus 
 was in common estimation a son of Joseph, who was the son-in-law of Heli, 
 the father of Mary " :— or else, that Jesus was, as was believed, a son of 
 Joseph, and through Mary a grandson of Heli." As it may here be objected, 
 that the Jews in their genealogies were accustomed to take no account of the 
 
 ' Thus e.^. Spanheim, dubia evang. p. i. s. 13 ff. Lightfoot, Michaelis, Paulus, Kninol, 
 Olshausen, lately Hoffmann and others. 
 
 » Epiphanius, Grotius. Olshausen, s. 43. , . ,t t, 
 
 "> Testament XII. Patriarch., Test. Simeon ^. 71. In Fabric. Codex pseudepigr. V. I. 
 p. 542 : ^1 airrSp (the races of Levi and Juda) dmreXei i^ivri auriipiov toC ffcoO. AKOffijcrei 
 74/) Kiipios ix TOV kevt c!>s Apxi'^P^a-t Kal ix rou 'louSa is ^airCKea k. ■, . X. 
 
 " Comp. Thilo, cod. apocr. N.T. 1, s. 374 ff. 
 
 " Thus e.g. the Manichaean Faustus in Augustin. contra Faust. L. xxui. 4. 
 
 >8 Protevangel. Tacobi c. i f. u. 10. and evangel, de nativitate Manse c. I. Joachim and 
 Anna, of the race of David, are here mentioned as the parents of Maiy. Faustus on the 
 contrary, in the above cited passage, gives Joachim the title of Saeerdos. 
 
 '* Dial. c. Tryph. 43. 100. (Paris, 1742.) r tt ,• ^ 
 
 " Paulus The Jews also in their representation of a Mary, the daughter of Heli, tor- 
 mented in the lower world (see Lightfoot), appear to have taken the genealogy of Luke, 
 which sets out from Heli, for that of Mary. 
 
 " e.g. Lightfoot, horae, p. 750 ; Osiander, ». 86. 
 
Il6 PART I. CHAPTER II. § 21. 
 
 female line,^''' a farther hypothesis is had recourse to, namely, that Mary was 
 an heiress, i.e. the daughter of a father without sons : and that in this case, 
 according to Numbers xxxvi. 6, and Nehemiah vii. 63, Jewish custom required 
 that the person who married her should not only be of the same race with 
 herself, but that he should henceforth sink his own family in hers, and take 
 her ancestors as his own. But the first point only is proved by the reference 
 to Numbers ; and the passage in Nehemiah, compared with several similai: 
 ones (Ezra ii. 61 ; Numbers xxxii. 41 ; comp. with i Chron. ii. 21 f.), shows 
 only that sometimes, by way of exception, a man took the name of his maternal 
 ancestors. This difficulty with regard to Jewish customs, however, is cast 
 into shadeby one much more important. Although undeniably the genitive 
 case used by Luke, expressing simply derivation in a general sense, may 
 signify any degree of relationship, and consequently that of son-in-law or 
 grandson; yet this interpretation destroys the consistency of the whole 
 passage. In the thiirty-four preceding members, which are well known to us 
 from the Old Testament, this genitive demonstrably indicates throughout the 
 precise relationship of a son ; likewise when it occurs between Salathiel and 
 Zorobabel: how could it be intended in the one instance of Joseph to indicate 
 that of son-in-law? or, according to the other interpretation, supposing the 
 nominative utos to govern the whole series, how can we suppose it to change 
 its signification from son to grandson, great-grandson, and so on to the end ? 
 If it be said the phrase 'ASa/u, tov 6iov is a proof that the genitive does not 
 necessarily indicate a son in the proper sense of the word, we may reply that 
 it bears a signification with regard to the immediate Author of existence 
 equally inapplicable to either father-in-law or grandfather. 
 
 A further difficulty is encountered by this explanation of the two genealogies 
 in common with the former one, in the concurrence of the two names of 
 Salathiel and Zorobabel. The supposition of a Levirate marriage is as 
 applicable to this explanation as the other, but the interpreters we are now 
 examining prefer for the most part to suppose, that these similar names in the 
 different genealogies belong to different persons. When Luke however, in 
 the twenty-first and twenty-second generations from David, gives the very 
 same names that Matthew (including the four ornitted generations), gives in 
 the nineteenth and twentieth, one of these names' being of great notoriety, it 
 is certainly impossible to doubt that they refer to the same persons. 
 
 Moreover, in no other part of the NewTestament is there any trace to be found 
 of the Davidical descent of Mary : on the contrary, some passages are directly 
 opposed to it. In Luke i. 27, the expression e^ oikou Aa/8i8 refers only to the 
 immediately preceding dvSpt <« ovofi^a 'lia<Tri<f>, not to the more remote TrapOevov 
 li.eii.vria-Tf.vix.€vr)v. And more pointed still is the turn of the sentence Luke ii. 
 4, dve/Si/ 8e KoX 'lm(jri<l> — Bia to iivai avrov ef oikov koL jraTpias AayStS, ctjro- 
 ypdxj/aaOai airy Mapia k. t. A,., where avrovg might so easily have been written 
 instead of airrov, if the author had any thought of including Mary in the de- 
 scent from David. These expressions fill to overflowing the measure of proof 
 already adduced, that it is impossible to apply the genealogy of the third 
 Evangelist to Mary. 
 
 " Juchasin f. 55, 2. in Lightfoot s. 183, and Bava bathra, f. no, 2. in Wetstein s. 230 f. 
 Comp. Joseph. Vita, I. 
 
GENEALOGICAL TABLES OF MATTHEW AND LUKE. II7 
 
 § 22. 
 THE GENEALOGIES UNHISTORICAL. 
 
 A consideration of the insurmountable difficulties, which unavoidably em- 
 barrass every attempt to bring these two genealogies into harmony with one 
 another, will lead us to despair of reconciling them, and will incline us to 
 acknowledge, with the more free-thinking class of critics, that they are mu- 
 tually contradictory.! Consequently they cannot both be true : if, therefore, 
 one is to be preferred before the other, several circumstances would seem to 
 decide in favour of the genealogy of Luke, rather than that of Matthew. It 
 does not exhibit an arbitrary adherence to a fixed form and to equal periods : 
 and whilst the ascribing of twenty generations to the space of time from David 
 to Jechonias or Neri, in Luke, is at least not more offensive to probability, 
 than the omission of four generations in Matthew to historical truth ; Luke's 
 allotment of twenty-two generations for the period from Jechonias (born 617 
 B.C.) to Jesus, i.e. about 600 years, forming an average of twenty-seven years 
 and a half to each generation, is more consonant with natural events, particu- 
 larly amongst eastern nations, than the thirteen generations of Matthew, 
 which make an average of forty-two years for each. Besides the genealogy 
 of Luke is less liable than that of Matthew to the suspicion of having been 
 written with a design to glorify Jesus, since it contents itself with ascribing to 
 Jesus a descent from David, without tracing that descent through the royal 
 line. On the other hand, however, it is more improbable that the genealogy 
 of the comparatively insignificant family of Nathan should have been pre- 
 served, than that of the royal branch. Added to which, the frequent recur- 
 rence of the same names is, as justly remarked by Hoffmann, an indication 
 that the genealogy of Luke is fictitious. 
 
 In fact then neither table has any advantage over the other. If the one is 
 unhistorical, so also is the other, since it is very improbable that the genealogy 
 of an obscure family like that of Joseph, extending through so long a series of 
 generations, should have been preserved during all the confusion of the exile, 
 and the disturbed period that followed. Yet, it may be said, although wc re- 
 cognise in both, so far as they are not copied from the Old Testament, an un- 
 restrained play of the imagination, or arbitrary applications of other genealogies 
 to Jesus, — we may still retain as an historical basis that Jesus was descended 
 from David, and that only the intermediate members of the line of descent were 
 variously filled up by different writers. But the one event on which this his- 
 torical basis is mainly supported, namely, the journey of the parents of Jesus to 
 Bethlehem in order to be taxed, so far from sufficing to prove them to be of 
 the house and lineage of David, is itself, as we shall presently show, by no 
 means established as matter of history. Of more weight is the other ground, 
 namely, that Jesus is universally represented in the New Testament, without 
 any contradiction from his adversaries, as the descendant of David. Yet 
 even the phrase vws Aa^iS is a predicate that may naturally have been applied 
 to Jesus, not on historical, but on 1 dogmatical grounds. According to the 
 prophecies, the Messiah could only spring from David. When therefore a 
 Galilean, whose lineage was utterly unknown, and of whom consequently no 
 one could prove that he was not descended from David, had acquired the 
 
 • Thus Eichhorn, Einl. in das N. T. I Bd. s. 425. Kaiser, bibl. Theol. i, s 232 Weg- 
 scheider Institut. § 123, not. d. de Wette, bibl. Dogm. § 279, and exeget ITandbuch I, 
 2 s I2 Vv" ner, bibl. Realworterb. i, s. 660 f. Hase, Leben Jesu, § 33; Fr.Usche Comm. 
 iA Matt', p. 35. Ammon, Fortbildung des Christenthums zur Weltreligion, i, s. 190 tt. 
 
Il8 PART I. CHAPTER II. § 22. 
 
 reputation of being the Messiah ; what more natural than that tradition should 
 under diflFerent forms have early ascribed to him a Davidical descent, and 
 that genealogical tables, corresponding with this tradition, should have been 
 formed? which, however, as they were constructed upon no certain data, 
 would necessarily exhibit such differences and contradictions as we find actu- 
 ally existing between the genealogies in Matthew and in Luke.^ 
 
 If, in conclusion, it be asked, what historical result is to be deduced from 
 these genealogies? we reply: a conviction (arrived at also from other sources), 
 that Jesus, either in his own person or through his disciples, acting upon 
 minds strongly imbued with Jewish notions and expectations, left among his 
 followers so firm a conviction of his Messiahship, that they did not hesitate 
 to attribute to him the prophetical characteristic of Davidical descent, and 
 more than one pen was put in action, in order, by means of a genealogy 
 which should authenticate that descent, to justify his recognition as the 
 Messiah.^ 
 
 ^ See De Wette, bibl. Dogm. and exeg. Handb. i, i, s. 14 ; Hase, L. J. Eusebius gives 
 a not improbable explanation of this disagreement (ad. Staph, qusest. iii. , pointed out by 
 Credner, 1, p. 68 f.) that besides the notion amongst the Jews, that the Messiah must spring 
 from the royal line of David, another had arisen, that this line having become polluted and 
 declared unworthy of continuing on the throne of David (Jerem. xxii. 30), by the wickedness 
 of its later reigning members, a line more pure though less famed was to be preferred to it. 
 
 ' The farther considerations on the origin arid Import of these genealogies, which arise 
 from their connexion with the account of the miraculous birth of Jesus, must be reserved till 
 after the examination of the latter point. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS.— ITS SUPERNATURAL 
 CHARACTER.— VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH. 
 
 § 23- 
 
 SKETCH OF THE DIFFERENT CANONICAL AND APOCRYPHAL ACCOUNTS. 
 
 There is a striking gradation in the different representations of the concep- 
 tion and birth of Jesus given in the canonical and in the apocryphal Gospels. 
 They exhibit the various steps, from a simple statement of a natural occur- 
 rence, to a minute and miraculously embellished history, in which the event 
 is traced back to its very earliest date. Mark and John presuppose the fact 
 of the birth of Jesus, and content themselves with the incidental mention of 
 Mary as the mother (Mark vi. 3), and of Joseph as the father of Jesus (John 
 i. 46). Matthew and Luke go further back, since they state the particular 
 circumstances attending the conception as well as the birth of the Messiah. 
 But of these two evangelists Luke mounts a step higher than Matthew. 
 According to the latter Mary, the betrothed of Joseph, being found with 
 child, Joseph is offended, and determines to put her away ; but the angel of 
 the Lord visits him in a dream, and assures him of the divine origin and ex- 
 alted destiny of Mary's offspring; the result of which is that Joseph takes 
 unto him his wife : but knows her not till she has brought forth her first-born 
 son. (Matt. i. 18-25.) Here the pregnancy is discovered in the first place, 
 and then afterwards justified by the angel ; but in Luke the pregnancy is pre- 
 faced and announced by a celestial apparition. The same Gabriel, who had 
 predicted the birth of John to Zacharias, appears to Mary, the betrothed of 
 Josephj and tells her that she shall conceive by the power of the Holy 
 Ghost ; whereupon the destined mother of the Messiah pays a visit full of 
 holy import to the already pregnant mother of his forerunner ; upon which 
 occasion both Mary and Elizabeth pour forth their emotions to one another 
 in the form of a hymn (Luke i. 26-56). Matthew and Luke are content to 
 presuppose the connexion between Mary and Joseph ; but the apocryphal 
 Gospels, the ProtevangeliumJacoU, and the Evangelium de Nativitate Mariae,^ 
 (books with the contents of which the Fathers partially agree,) seek to repre- 
 sent the origin of this connexion ; indeed they go back to the birth of Mary, 
 and describe it to have been preceded, equally with that of the Messiah and 
 the Baptist, by a divine annunciation. As the description of the birth of 
 John in Luke is principally borrowed from the Old Testament accounts of 
 Samuel and of Samson, so this history of the birth of Mary is an imitation 
 of the history in Luke, and of the Old Testament histories. 
 
 Joachim, so says the apocryphal narrative, and Anna (the name of Samuel s 
 
 1 Fabricius, Codex apocryphus N. T. I, p. 19 ff. 66 ff. ; Thilo, I, p. 161 ff. 319 ff. 
 
120 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 23. 
 
 mother 2) are unhappy on account of their long childless marriage (asTvefe 
 the parents of the Baptist) ; when an angel appears to them both (so in the 
 history of Samson) at different places, and promises them a child, who shall 
 be the mother of God, and commands that this child shall live the life of a 
 Nazarite (hke the Baptist). In early childhood Mary is brought by her 
 parents to the temple (like Samuel) ; where she continues till her twelfth 
 year, visited and fed by angels and honoured by divine visions. Arrived at 
 womanhood she is to quit the temple, her future provision and destiny being 
 revealed by the oracle to the high priest. In conformity with the prophecy 
 of Isaiah xi. i f. : egredietur virga de radice Jesse, et flos de radice ejus ascendet, 
 et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini ; this oracle commanded, according 
 to one Gospel," that all the unmarried men of- the house of David, — accord- 
 ing to the other,* that all the widowers among the people, — should bring 
 their rods, and that he on whose rod a sign should appear (like the rod of 
 Aaron, Numb, xvii.), namely the sign predicted in the prophecy, should take 
 Mary unto himself. This sign was manifested upon Joseph's rod; for, in 
 exact accordance with the oracle, it put forth a blossom and a dove 
 lighted upon it.^ The apocryphal Gospels and the Fathers agree in repre- 
 senting Joseph as an old man;" but the narrative is somewhat differently told 
 in the two apocryphal Gospels. According to the Evang. de nativ. Mariae, 
 notwithstanding Mary's alleged vow of chastity, and the refusal of Joseph on 
 account of his great age, betrothment took place at the command of the 
 priest, and subsequently a marriage — (which- marriage, however, the author 
 evidently means to represents also as chaste). According to the Protmang. 
 Jacobi, on the contrary, neither betrothment nor marriage are mentioned, but 
 Joseph is regarded merely as the chosen protector of the young virgin,'' and 
 Joseph on the journey to Bethlehem doubts whether he shall describe his 
 charge as his wife or as his daughter ; fearing to bring ridicule upon himself, 
 on account of his age, if he called her his wife. Again, where in Matthew 
 Mary is called ^ yuv^ of Joseph, the apocryphal Gospel carefully designates 
 her merely as 17 ■;rats, and even avoids using the term irapoXaySeTv or substitutes 
 8ia^u\a|at, with which many of the Fathers concur.^ In the Frotevangelium 
 it is further related that Mary, having been received into Joseph's house, was 
 charged, together with other young women, with the fabrication of the veil for 
 the temple, and that it fell to her lot to spin the true purple. — But whilst 
 Joseph was absent on business Mary was visited by an angel, and "Joseph on 
 his return found her with child and called her to account, not as a husband, 
 but as the guardian of her honour. Mary, however, had forgotten the words 
 of the angel and protested her ignorance of the cause of her pregnancy. 
 Joseph was perplexed and determined to remove her secretly from under his 
 protection ; but an angel appeared to him in a dream and reassured him by 
 his explanation. The matter was then brought before the priest, and both 
 
 ^ Gregory of Nyssa or his interpolator is reminded of this mother of Samuel by the apocry- 
 phal Anna when he says of her : Mi/ieiTOi toIvw xal aihii tA. irepi t^s utirpis toC, Sa/iouiiK 
 StTiy/iiiaTa k.t.\. Fabricius, I, p. 6. 
 
 " Evang. de nativ. Mar. c. 7 : cunclos de domo etfamilia David nuptui hatiles, non con- 
 jugatos. 
 
 * Protev. Jac. t. 8 : toi)s -KTipiimnax toB Xoo5, 
 
 ' It is thus in the Evang. de nativ. Mariae vii. and viii. ; but rather different in the 
 Protev. Jac. c. ix. 
 
 ' Protev. c. 9 : irpeffpirris. Evang. de nativ. Mar. 8. ; grandaevus. Epiphan. adv. haeres. 
 78, 8 : Xa/i^ivet Ti]v iiaplav XVPo^i Kardyuii ^Xidav wepl irou dydtr/jKOPTa irdv Kal wpdau & 
 ivlip. 
 
 1 HapiXa^e air^v ds T'/jp^aw treauT^. c. ix. Compare with Evang. de nativ. Mar. viii. 
 and X. 
 
 ' See the variations in Thile, p. 227, and the quotations from the Fathers at p. 365 not. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS— ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 121 
 
 Joseph and Mary being charged with incontinence were condemned to drink 
 the "bitter water," ^ uSwp t^s eX-eyfews, but as they remained uninjured by it, 
 they were declared innocent. Then follows the account of the taxing and of 
 the birth of Jesus-^" 
 
 Since these apocryphal narratives were for a long period held as historical 
 by the church, and were explained, equally with those of the canonical 
 accounts, from the supranaturalistic point of view as miraculous, they were 
 entitled in modern times to share with the New Testament histories the 
 benefit of the natural explanation. If, on the one hand, the belief in the 
 marvellous was so superabundantly strong in the ancient church, that it 
 reached beyond the limits of the New Testament even to the embracing of 
 the apocryphal narratives, blinding the eye to the perception of their mani- 
 festly unhistorical character ; so, oa the other hand, the positive rationalism 
 of some of the heralds of the modern modes ofexplanation was so overstrong 
 that they believed it adequate to explain even the apocryphal miracles. Of 
 this we have an example in the author of the natural history of the great pro- 
 phet of Nazareth ; ^^ who does not hesitate to include the stories of the 
 lineage and early years of Mary within the circle of his representations, and 
 to give them a natural explanation. If we in our day, with a perception of 
 the fabulous character of such narratives, look down alike upon the Fathers 
 of the church and upon these naturaUstic interpreters, we are certainly so far 
 in the right, as it is only by gross ignorance that this character of the apocry- 
 phal accounts is here to be mistaken ; more closely considered, however, the 
 difference between the apocryphal and the canonical narratives concerning the 
 early history of the Baptist and of Jesus, is seen to be merely a difference of 
 form : they have sprung, as we shall hereafter find, from the same root, though 
 the one is a fresh and healthy sprout, and the other an artificially nurtured and 
 weak aftergrowth. Still, the Fathers of the church and these naturalistic in- 
 terpreters had this superiority over most of the theologians of our own time ; 
 that they did not allow themselves to be deceived respecting the inherent 
 similarity by the difference of form, but interpreted the kindred narratives 
 by the same method ; treating both as miraculous or both as natural ; and 
 not, as is nov usual, the one as fiction and the other as history. 
 
 § 24- 
 
 DISAGREEMENTS OF THE CANONICAL GOSPELS IN RELATION TO THE FORM OF 
 
 THE ANNUNCIATION. 
 
 After the foregoing general sketch, we now proceed to examine the ex- 
 ternal circumstances which, according to our Gospels, attended the first com- 
 munication of the future birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph. Leavmg out of 
 sight, for the present, the special import of the annunciation, namely, that 
 Jesus should be supernaturally begotten of the Holy Ghost, we shall, in the 
 first place, consider merely the form of the announcement; by whom, when, 
 and in what manner it was made. i ti. 
 
 As the birth of the Baptist was previously announced by an angel, so me 
 conception of Jesus was, according to the gospel histories, proclaimed after 
 the same fashion. But whilst, in the one case, we have but one history of the 
 apparition, that of Luke j in the other we have two accounts, accounts how- 
 ever which do not correspond, and which we must now compare. Apart from 
 
 " ProTev. Jac'.^x.-xvi. The account in the Evang. de nativ Mar. is less characteristic 
 ' 11 "We nitiirliche Geschichte des grossen Propheten von Nazaret," i«« Band, s. 119 ff. 
 
122 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 24. 
 
 the essential signification the two accounts exhibit the following differences. 
 I. The individual who appears is called in Matthew by the indefinite appel- 
 lation, angel of the Lord, ayyeXos Kvptou : in Luke by name, the angel Gabriel, 
 6 ayytAos FaPpiyjX. 2. The person to whom the angel appears is, according 
 to Matthew, Joseph, according to Luke, Mary. 3. In Matthew the appari- 
 tion is seen in a dream, in Luke whilst awake. 4. There is a disagreement 
 in relation to the time at which the apparition took place : according to 
 Matthew, Joseph receives the heavenly communication after Mary was already 
 pregnant : according to Luke it is made to Mary prior to her pregnancy. 5. 
 Lastly, both the purpose of the apparition and the effect produced are differ- 
 ent; it was designed, according to Matthew, to comfort Joseph, who was 
 troubled on account of the pregnancy of his betrothed : according to Luke to 
 prevent, by a previous announcement, all possibility of offence. 
 
 Where the discrepancies are so great and so essential, it may, at first sight, 
 appear altogether superfluous to inquire whether the two Evangelists record 
 one and the same occurrence, though with considerable disagreement; or 
 whether they record distinct occurrences, so that the two accounts can be 
 blended together, and the one be made to amplify the other? The first sup- 
 position cannot be admitted without impeaching the historical validity of the 
 narrative ; for which reason most of our theologians, indeed all who see in 
 the narrative a true history, whether miraculous or natural, have decided in 
 favour of the second supposition. Maintaining, and justly, that the silence of 
 one Evangelist concerning an event which is narrated by the other, is not a 
 negation of the event,* they blend the two accounts together in the following 
 manner: i, First, the angel makes known to Mary her approaching pregnancy 
 (Luke) ; 2, she then journeys to Elizabeth (the same Gospel) ; 3, after her 
 return her situation being discovered, Joseph takes offence (Matthew); 
 whereupon, 4, he likewise is visited by an angelic apparition (the same 
 Gospel ^). 
 
 But this arrangement of the incidents is, as Schleiermacher has already 
 remarked, full of difficulty^ ; and it seems that what is related by one 
 Evangelist is not only not presupposed, but excluded, by the other. For, in 
 the first place, the conduct of the angel who appears to Joseph is not easily 
 explained, if the same or another angel had previously appeared to Mary. 
 The angel (in Matthew) speaks altogether as if his communication were the 
 first in this affair : he neither refers to the message previously received by 
 Mary, nor reproaches Joseph because he had not believed it ; but more than 
 all, the informing Joseph of the name of the expected child, and the giving 
 him a full detail of the reasons why he should be so called, (Matt. i. 21,) would 
 have been wholly superfluous had the angel ^(according to Luke i. 34) already 
 indicated this name to Mary. 
 
 Still more incomprehensible is the conduct of the betrothed parties accord- 
 ing to this arrangement of events. Had Mary been visited by an angel, 
 who had made known to her an approaching supernatural pregnancy, would 
 not the first impulse of a delicate woman have been, to hasten to impart to' 
 her betrothed the import of the divine message, and by this means to antici- 
 pate the humihating discovery of her situation, and an injurious suspicion on 
 the part of her affianced husband. But exactly this discovery Mary allows 
 Joseph to make from others, and thus excites suspicions ; for it is evident 
 that the expression tvpiOrj iv yaa-rpl Ip^oucra (Matt. i. 18) signifies a discovery 
 
 ' Augustin, de consens. evangelist, ii. 5. 
 ^ Paulus, Ulshausen, Fritrsclie, Comm. in Malth. p. 56/-* 
 
 ' Comp. de Wette's exeg. Handbuch, i. i, s. 18. Schleiermacher, Ueber die Schriften des 
 Lul{.as, s. 42 S. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS — ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 123 
 
 made independent of any communication on Mary's part, and it is equally 
 clear that in this manner only does Joseph obtain the knowledge of her 
 situation, since his conduct is represented as the result of that discovery 
 (evpLo-Kea-Oai). The apocryphal Protevangelium Jacobi felt how enigmatical 
 Mary's conduct must appear, and sought to solve the difficulty in a manner 
 which, contemplated from the supranaturalistic point of view, is perhaps the 
 most consistent. Had Mary retained a recollection of the import of the 
 heavenly message — upon this point the whole ingenious representation of the 
 apocryphal Gospel rests — she ought to have imparted it to Joseph ; but since 
 it is obvious from Joseph's demeanour that she did not acquaint him with it, 
 the only remaining alternative is, to admit that the mysterious communication 
 made to Mary had, owing to her excited state of mind, escaped her memory, 
 and that she was herself ignorant of the true cause of her pregnancy.* In 
 fact, nothing is left to supranaturalism in the present case but to seek refuge in 
 the miraculous and the incomprehensible. The attempts which the modern 
 theologians of this class have made to explain Mary's silence, and even to find 
 in it an admirable trait in her character, are so many rash and abortive 
 efforts to make a virtue of necessity. According to Hess ^ it must have cost 
 Mary much self denial to have concealed the communication of the angel 
 from Joseph ; and this reserve, in a matter known only to herself and to God, 
 must be regarded as a proof of her firm trust in God. Without doubt Mary 
 communed thus with herself : It is not without a purpose that this apparition 
 has been made to me alone ; had it been intended that Joseph should have 
 participated in the communication, the angel would have appeared to him 
 also (if each individual favoured with a divine revelation were of this 
 opinion, how many special revelations would it not require ?) ; besides it is 
 an affair of God alone, consequently it becomes me to leave it with him to 
 convince Joseph (the argument of indolence). Olshausen concurs, and adds 
 his favourite general remark, that in relation to events so extraordinary the 
 measure of the ordinary occurrences of the world is not applicable : a category 
 under which, in this instance, the highly essential considerations of delicacy 
 and propriety are included. 
 
 More in accordance with the views of the natural interpreters, the Evange- 
 lium de nativitaie Mariae,^ and subsequently some later writers, for example, 
 the author of the Natural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth, have sought 
 to explain Mary's silence, by supposing Joseph to have been at a distance 
 from the abode of his affianced bride at the time of the heavenly communica- 
 tion. According to them Mary was of Nazareth, Joseph of Bethlehem ; to 
 which latter place Joseph departed after the betrothing, and did not return to 
 Mary until the expiration of three months, when he discovered the pregnancy 
 which had taken place in the interim. But since the assumptiori that Mary 
 and Joseph resided in different localities has no foundation, as will presently 
 be seen, in the canonical Gospels, the whole explanation falls to the ground. 
 Without such an assumption, Mary's silence towards Joseph might, perhaps, 
 have been accounted for from the point of view of the naturalistic mterpre- 
 ters, by imagining her to have been held back through modesty from confess- 
 ing a situation so liable to excite suspicion. But one who, like Mary, was so 
 fully convinced of the divine agency in the matter, and had shown so ready a 
 
 < Protev Tac. c. 12 : Ma/)i4/i hi iTeUBcTo tOiv ij.wrr,plav &!> (he wpbs airy Va.^p4\. 
 When questioned by Joseph she assures him with tears : 01) ywib^Ka, irbdev iurl tovto rt ^v 
 
 ^VGe;lfchte L'L\ letzten Lebensjahre Jesu u. s. w. I. Thl. s. 36. Comp. Hoffmann. 
 
 s. 176 f. 
 ^ Ch. viii.-x. 
 
124 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 24. 
 
 comprehension of her mysterious destination (Luke i. 38), could- not possibly 
 have been tongue-tied by petty considerations of false shame. 
 
 Consequently, in order to rescue Mary's character, without bringing 
 reproach upon Joseph's, and at the same time to render his unbelief intelli- 
 gible, interpreters have been compelled to assume that a communication, 
 though a tardy one, was actually made by Mary to Joseph. Like the last- 
 named apocryphal Gospel, they introduce a journey, not of Joseph, but of 
 Mary — the visit to Elizabeth mentioned in Luke — to account for the post- 
 ponement of the communication. It is probable, says Paulus, that Mary 
 did not open her heart to Joseph before this journey, because she wished 
 first to consult with her older friend as to the mode of making the disclosure 
 to him, and whether she, as the mother of the Messiah, ought to mari'y. 
 
 It was not till after her return, and then most likely through the medium- 
 of others, that she made Joseph acquainted with her situation, and with the 
 promises she had received. But Joseph's mind was not properly attuned 
 and prepared for such a disclosure ; he became haunted by all kinds of 
 thoughts ; and vacillated between suspicion and hope till at length a dream 
 decided him.'' But in the first place a motive is here given to Mary's journey 
 which is foreign to the account in Luke. Mary sets off to Elizabeth, not to 
 take counsel of her, but to assure herself regarding the sign appointed by the 
 angel. No uneasiness which the friend is to dissipate, but a proiid joy, 
 unalloyed by the smallest anxiety, is expressed in her salutation to the future 
 mother of the Baptist. But besides, a confession so tardily made tan in 
 nowise justify Mary. What behaviour on the part of an affianced bride — 
 after having received a divine communication, so nearly concerning her future 
 husband, and in a matter so delicate — to travel miles away, to absent herself 
 for three months, and then to permit her betrothed to learn through third 
 persons that which could no longer be concealed ! 
 
 Those, therefore, who do not impute to Mary a line of conduct which 
 certainly our Evangelists do not impute to her, must allow that she imparted 
 the message of the angel to her future husband as soon as it had been revealed 
 to her ; but that he did not believe her.^ But now let us see how Joseph's 
 character is to be dealt with ! Even Hess is of opinion that, since Joseph 
 was acquainted with Mary, he had no cause to doubt her word, when she 
 told him of the apparition she had had. This scepticism presupposes a 
 mistrust of his betrothed which is incompatible with his character as a just 
 man (Matt. i. 19), and an increduUty respecting the marvellous which is 
 difficult to reconcile with a readiness on other occasions to believe in angelic 
 apparitions ; nor, in any case, would this want of faith have escaped the 
 censure of the angel who subsequently appeared to himself. 
 
 Since then, to suppose that the two accounts are parallel, and complete one 
 another, leads unavoidably to results inconsistent with the sense of the 
 Gospels, in so far as they evidently meant to represent the characters of 
 Joseph and Mary as free from blemish ; the supposition cannot bt admitted, 
 but the accounts mutually exclude each other. ' An angel did not appear, 
 first to Mary, and also afterwards to Joseph ; he can only have appeared 
 either to the one or to the other. Consequently, it is only the one .or the 
 other relation which can be regarded as historical. And here different con- 
 siderations would conduct to opposite decisions. The history in Matthew 
 might appear the more probable from the rationalistic point of view, because 
 it is more easy to interpret naturally an apparition in a dream ; whilst that in 
 
 ' Paulus, exeg. Handb. i a, s. I2i. 145. 
 
 ' To this opinion Neander incli.ies, L. J. Ch. s. 18. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS— ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 125 
 
 Luke might be preferred by the supranaturalist, because the manner in which 
 the suspicion cast upon the holy virgin is refuted is more worthy of God. 
 But in fact, a nearer examination proves, that neither has any essential claim 
 to be advanced before the other. Both contain an angelic apparition, and 
 both are therefore encumbered with all the difficulties which, as was stated 
 above in relation to the annunciation of the birth of the Baptist, oppose the 
 belief in angels and apparitions. Again, in both narrations the import of the 
 angelic message is, as we shall presently see, an impossibility. Thus every 
 criterion which might determine the adoption of the one, and the rejection 
 of the other, disappears; and we find ourselves, in reference to both accounts, 
 driven back by necessity to the mythical view. 
 
 From this point of view, all the various explanations, which the Rationalists 
 have attempted to give of the two apparitions, vanish of themselves. Paulus 
 explains the apparition in Matthew as a natural dream, occasioned by Mary's 
 previous communication of the announcement which had been made to her ; 
 and with which Joseph must have been acquainted, because this alone can 
 account for his having heard the same words in his dream, which the angel 
 had beforehand addressed to Mary : but much rather, is it precisely this 
 similarity in the language of the presumed second angel to that of the first, 
 with the absence of all reference by the latter to the former, which proves 
 that the words of the first angel were not presupposed by the second. 
 Besides, the natural explanation is annihilated the moment the narratives are 
 shown to be mythical. The same remark applies to the explanation, ex- 
 pressed guardedly indeed by Paulus, but openly by the author of the Natural 
 History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth, namely, that the angel who visited 
 Mary (in Luke) was a human being ; of which we must speak hereafter. 
 
 According to all that has been said, the following is the only judgment we 
 can form of the origin of the two narratives of the angelic apparitions. The 
 conception of Jesus through the power of the Holy Ghost ought not to be 
 grounded upon a mere uncertain suspicion; it must have been clearly and posi- 
 tively asserted ; and to this end a messenger from heaven was required, since 
 theocratic decorUm seemed to demand it far more in relation to the birth of 
 the Messiah, than of a Samson or a John. Also the words which the angels 
 use, cprrespond in part with the Old Testament annunciations of extra- 
 ordinary children.9 The appearing of the angel in the one narrative before- 
 hand to Mary, but in the other at a later period to Joseph, is to be regarded 
 as a variation in the legend or in the composition, which finds an explana- 
 tory counterpart in the history of the annunciation of Isaac. Jehovah (Gen. 
 xvii. 15) promises Abraham a son by Sarah, upon which the Patriarch cannot 
 refrain from laughing ; but he receives a repetition of the assurance ; Jehovah 
 (Gen. xviii. i ff.) makes this promise under the Terebinth tree at Mamre, 
 and Sarah laughs as if it were something altogether novel and unheard of by 
 her; lastly, according to Genesis xxi. 5 flf. it is first after Isaac's birth that 
 
 » Gen. xvii. 19; LXX. (Annunciation of Matt. i. 21. 
 
 Isaac) : {/n^ 0oj3t;S^s vapaXa^etv Jiapiifi. Tijv -ywoSta 
 
 ISoi S(£/ipa Ti yviiri aov ri^erai cot viiiv, Kal trov—) r^^erai Si vibi/, Kal KaKitrcis ri 6m)ui 
 
 KoXiaeti rb Upo/j-a airou 'laa&K. airov 'IrjffovV airis yltp (riiirei rbv Mby 
 
 Judg. xiii. 5. (Annunciation of Samson) : '"^"C "i'^^-r"" ^I^P^^'^'' o-^^^"- 
 
 Kal airbs ipPerai auaai rbv 'I<rpaii\ & X"P*' ., , ■ a- 
 
 *i;Xi,r«?/t. Lukei. 3off. 
 
 Gen. xvi. llfF. (Annunciation of Ishmael) : Kal e'tirev 6 i-yyeXos airy—lSoii avXK^ri iv 
 
 Kal el^ey airri b &yy^^o, Kvplov ISoi ai i. y^rpl «ai rffi, «i6«', Kal /caX^«» t6 ivop^ 
 
 yacrpl ?x«». «»' "^^^'^ """ ™' ™'^^'^"' '"* "*'"'" ^'^'"""'' 
 
 ivoiJui airroG 'Icfia'liK. OBtos (arai . 
 
126 PART 1. CHAPTER III. § 25. 
 
 Sarah mentions the laughing of the people, which is said to have been the 
 occasion of his name; whereby it appears that this last history does not 
 presuppose the existence of the two other accounts of the annunciation of 
 the birth of Isaac.1" As in relation to the birth of Ifeaac, different legends or 
 poems were formed without reference to one another, some simpler, some 
 more embellished : so we have two discordant narratives concerning the birth 
 of Jesus. Of these the narrative in Matthew " is the simpler and ruder 
 style of composition, since it does not avoid, though it be but by a transient 
 suspicion on the part of Joseph, the throwing a shade over the character of 
 Mary which is only subsequently removed ; that in Luke, on the contrary, is 
 a more refined and artistical representation, exhibiting Mary from the first in 
 the pure light of a bride of heaven.'^ 
 
 § 25. 
 
 IMPORT OF THE ANGEL's MESSAGE. — FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECY OF 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 According to Luke, the angel who appears to Mary, in the first place 
 informs her only that she shall become pregnant, without specifying after 
 what manner : that she shall bring forth a son and call his name Jesus ; He 
 shall be great, and shall he called the Son of the Highest (uios vfCa-rov) ; 
 and God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall 
 reign over the house of Jacob- for ever. The subject, the Messiah is here 
 treated precisely in the language common to the Jews, and even the term 
 Son of the Highest, if nothing further followed, must be taken in the same 
 sense ; as according to 2 Sam. vii. 14, Ps. ii. 7 an ordinary king of 
 Israel might be so named ; still more, therefore, the greatest of these kings, 
 the Messiah, even considered merely as a man. This Jewish language reflects 
 in addition a new light upon the question of the historic validity of the angelic 
 apparition ; for we must agree with Schleiermacher that the real angel Gabriel 
 would hardly have proclaimed the advent of the Messiah in a phraseology 
 so strictly Jewish : * for which reason we are inclined to coincide with this 
 theologian, and to ascribe this particular portion of the history, as also that 
 which precedes and relates to the Baptist, to one and the same Jewish- 
 christian author. It is not till Mary opposes the fact of her virginity to the 
 promises hi a. son, that the angel defines the nature of the conception : that 
 it shall be by the Holy Ghost, by the power of the Highest ; after which the 
 appellation vios Oeov receives a more precise metaphysical sense. As a con- 
 firmatory sign that a matter of this kind is nowise impossible to God, Mary is 
 
 *" Comp. de Wette, Kritik der mos. Geschichte, s. 86 ff. 
 
 '1 The vision which, according to Matthew, Joseph had in his sleep, had besides a kind 
 of lype in the vision by which, according to the Jewish tradition related by Josephus, the 
 father of Moses was comforted under similar circumstances, when suffering anxiety concern- 
 ing the pregnancy of his wife, although for a different reason. Joseph. Antiq. II. ix. 3. 
 '.' A man whose name was Amram, one of the nobler sort of Hebrews, was afraid for his 
 whole nation, lest it should fail, by the want of young men to be brought up hereafter, and 
 was very uneasy at it, his wife being then with child, and he knew not what to do. Here- 
 upon he betook himself to prayer to God. . ." . Accordingly God had mercy on him, 
 and was moved. by his supplication. He stood by him in his sleep, and exhorted him not to 
 despair of his future favours. . . . For this child of thine shall deliver the Hebrew 
 nation from the distress they are under from the Egyptians. His memory shall be famous 
 while the world lasts." 
 
 '* Comp. Ammon, Fortbildung des Christenthums, i. s. 208 f. 
 
 ' Ueber die Schriften des Lukas, s. 23. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS— ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. \2J 
 
 referred to that which had occurred to her relative Elizabeth ; whereupon she 
 resigns herself in faith to the divine determination respecting her. 
 
 In Matthew, where the main point is to dissipate Joseph's anxiety, the 
 angel begins at once with the communication, that the child conceived by 
 Mary is (as the Evangelist had already stated of his own accord, chap. i. i8), 
 of the Holy Ghost {-nvevim ayiov) ; and hereupon the Messianic destination 
 of Jesus is first pointed out by the expression, Ife shall save his people from 
 their sins. This language may seem to sound less Jewish than that by which 
 the Messianic station of the child who should be born, is set forth in Luke ; 
 it is however to be observed, that under the term sins (d.fiapriai's) is compre- 
 hended the punishment of those sins, namely, the subjection of the people to 
 a foreign yoke; so that here also the Jewish element is not wanting; as 
 neither in Luke, on the other hand, is the higher destination of the Messiah 
 left wholly out of sight, since under the term to reign, /Saa-iXeveiv, the rule 
 over an obedient and regenerated people is included. Next is subjoined by 
 the angel, or more probably by the narrator, an oracle from the Old Testa- 
 ment, introduced by the often recurring phrase, all this was- done, that it might 
 be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet \y. 22]. It is the 
 prophecy from Isaiah (chap. vii. 14) which the conception of Jesus after this 
 manner should accomplish : namely, a virgin shall be with child, and shall 
 bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel — God-with-us. 
 
 The original sense of this passage in Isaiah is, according to modern 
 research,^ this. The prophet is desirous of giving Ahaz, who, through fear 
 of the kings of Syria and Israel, was disposed to make a treaty with Assyria, 
 a lively assurance of the speedy destruction of his much dreaded enemies ; 
 and he therefore says to him : suppose that an unmarried woman now on the 
 point of becoming a wife ^ shall conceive ; or categorically : a certain young 
 woman is, or is about to be with child (perhaps the prophet's own wife) ; 
 now, before this child is born, the political aspect of affairs shall be so much 
 improved, that a name of good omen shall be given to the child ; and before 
 he shall be old enough to use his reason, the power of these enemies shall 
 be completely annihilated. That is to say, prosaically expressed : before nine 
 months shall have passed away, the condition of the kingdom shall be 
 amended, and within about three years the danger shall have disappeared. 
 Thus much, at all events, is demonstrated by modern criticism, that, under 
 the circumstances stated by Isaiah in the introduction to the oracle, it is only 
 a sign having reference to the actual moment and the near future, which 
 could have any meaning. How ill chosen, according to Hengstenberg's * 
 interpretation, is the prophet's language : As certainly as the day shall arrive 
 when, in fulfilment of the covenant, the Messiah shall be born, so impossible 
 is it that the people among whom he shall arise, or the family whence he shall 
 spring, shall pass away. How ill-judged, on the part of the prophet, to endeav- 
 our to make the improbability of a speedy deliverance appear less improbable, 
 by an appeal to a yet greater, improbability in the far distant future ! — And 
 tji^n the given limit of a few years ! The overthrow of the two kingdoms, such 
 is Hengstenberg's explanation, shall take place— not in the immediately suc- 
 ceeding years, before the child specified shall have acquired the use of 
 
 * Compare Gesenius and Hitzig. Commentaren zum Jesaia ; Umbreit, Ueber die Geburt 
 des Immanuel durch eine Jungfrau, in den tlieol. Studien u. Kiit., 1830, 3. Heft, s. 541 if. 
 
 °,TIiis explanation does away witii tlie importance of tlie controversy respectmg tiie word 
 niO?!?. Moreover it ouglit to be decided by llie fact that tlie word does not signify an im- 
 maVuIate, but a marri^eable young woman (see Gesenius). So early as the time of Justin 
 the Jews maintained that the word nopy ought not to be rendered by irapff^cos, but by vtows. 
 Dial c. Tryph. no. 43. p. 130^. Comp. Iren. adv. haer. iii. 21. ^ 
 
 ' Christologie des A. T. s. i, b, s. 47. ' 
 
128 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 2$. 
 
 Jiis reason, but — within such a space of time, as in the far future will 
 elapse between the birth of the Messiah and the first development of his 
 mental powers ; therefore in about three years. What a monstrous con- 
 founding of times ! A child is to be born in the distant future, and that 
 which shall happen before this child shall know how to use his reason, is to 
 take place in the nearest present time. 
 
 Thus Paulus and his party are decidedly right in opposing to Hengsten- 
 berg and his party, that the prophecy of Isaiah has relation, in it^ original 
 local signification, to the then existing circumstances, and not to the future 
 Messiah, still less to Jesus. Hengstenberg, on the other hand, is equally in 
 the right, when in opposition to Paulus he maintains, that the passage from 
 Isaiah is adopted by Matthew as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus of a virgin. 
 Whilst the orthodox commentators explain the often recurring iAai it might 
 he fulfilled {Jva. wXi/jpiod^), and similar expressions as signifying : this happened 
 by divine arrangement, in order that the Old Testament prophecy, which in 
 its very origin had reference to the New Testament occurrence, might be 
 fulfilled ; — the rationalistic interpreters, on the contrary, understand merely : 
 this took place after such a manner, that it was so constituted, that the Old 
 Testament words, which, originally indeed, had relation to something different, 
 should admit of being so applied ; and in such application alone do they 
 receive their full verification. In the first explanation, the relation between 
 the Old Testament passage and the New Testament occurrence is objective, 
 arranged by God himself: in the last it is only subjective, a relation per- 
 ceived by the later author ; according to the former it is a relationship at 
 once precise and essential : according to the latter both inexact and 
 adventitious. But. opposed to this latter interpretation of New Testament 
 passages, which point out an Old Testament prophecy as fulfilled, is the 
 language, and equally so the spirit of the New Testament writers. The 
 language : for neither can irkripova-dcu signify in such connexion anything 
 than ratum fieri, eventu comprobari, nor Ivo. oirMs anything than eo consilio -ut, 
 whilst the extensive adoption of Zva iK^ariKov has arisen only from dogmatic 
 perplexity.^ But such an interpretation is altogether at variance with the 
 Judaical spirit of the authors of the Gospels. Paulus maintains that the 
 Orientalist does not seriously believe that the ancient prophecy was designedly 
 spoken, or was accomplished by God, precisely in order that it should pre- 
 figure a modern event, and vice versi ; but this is to carry over our sober 
 European modes of thought into the imaginative life of the Orientals. When 
 however Paulus adds : much rather did the coincidence of a later event with 
 an earlier prophecy assume only the form of a designed coincidence in the 
 mind of the Oriental : he thus, at once, annuls his previous assertion ; for 
 this is to admit, that, what in our view is mere coincidence, appeared to the 
 oriental mind the result of design ; and we must acknowledge this to be the 
 meaning of an oriental representation, if we would interpret it according to 
 its original signification. It is well known that the later Jews found pro- 
 phecies, of the time being and of the future, everywhere in the Old Testa- 
 ment ; and that they constructed a complete image of the future Messiah, 
 out of various, and in part falsely interpreted Old Testament passages.* And 
 the Jew believed he saw in the application he gave to the Scripture, however 
 perverted it might be, an actual fulfilment of the prophecy. In the words of 
 Olshausen : it is a mere dogmatic prejudice to attribute to this formula, when 
 used by the New Testament writers, an altogether different sense from that 
 
 ' See Winer, Grammatik des neutest. Sprachidioms, 3te Aufl. s. 382 ff. Fritzsche, 
 Comm. in Matth. p 49. 317 und Excurs. 1, p. 836 S. 
 * See the Introduction, § 14. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS— ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 1 29 
 
 which it habitually bears among their countrymen ; and this solely with the 
 view to acquit them of the sin of falsely interpreting the Scripture. 
 
 Many theologians of the present day are sufficiently impartial to admit, 
 with regard to the Old Testament, in opposition to the ancient orthodox 
 interpretation, that many of the prophecies originally referred to near events ; 
 but they are not sufficiently rash, with regard to the New Testament, to side 
 with the rationalistic commentators, and to deny the decidedly Messianic 
 application which the New Testament writers make of these prophecies ; they 
 are still too prejudiced to allow, that here and there the New Testament has 
 falsely interpreted the Old. Consequently, they have recourse to the ex- 
 pedient of distinguishing a double sense in the prophecy ; the one relating 
 to a near and minor occurrence, the other to a future and more important 
 event ; and thus they neither offend against the plain grammatical and 
 historical sense of the Old Testament passage on the one hand, nor distort 
 or deny the signification of the New Testament passage on the other.'' Thus, 
 in the prophecy of Isaiah under consideration, the spirit of prophecy, they 
 contend, had a double intention : to announce a near occurrence, the delivery 
 of the affianced bride of the prophet, and also a distinct event in the far distant 
 future, namely the birth of the Messiah of a virgin. But a double sense so 
 monstrous owes its origin to dogriijatic perplexity alone. It has been adopted, 
 as Olshausen himself remarks, in order to avoid the offensive admission 
 that the New Testament writers, and Jesus himself, did not interpret the Old 
 Testament rightly, or, more properly speaking, according to modern principles 
 of exegesis, but explained- it after the manner of their own age, which was 
 not the most correct. But so little does this offence exist for the unprejudiced, 
 that the reverse would be the greater difficulty, that is, if, contrary to all 
 the laws of historical and national' development, the New Testament writers 
 had elevated themselves completely above the modes of interpretation common 
 to their age and nation. Consequently, with regard to the prophecies brought 
 forward iri the New Testament, we may admit, according to circumstances, 
 without further argument, that they are frequently interpreted and applied by 
 the evangelists, in a sense which is totally different from that they originally 
 bore. 
 
 We have here in fact a complete table of all the four possible views on 
 this point : two extreme and two conciliatory ; one false and one, it is to be 
 hoped, correct. 
 
 1. Orthodox view _ (Hengstenberg and others) : Such Old Testament 
 passages had in their very origin an exclusive prophetic reference to Christ, 
 for the New Testament writers so understand them ; and they must be in the 
 right even should human reason be confourided. 
 
 2. Rationalistic view (Paulus and others) : The New Testament writers do 
 not assign a strictly Messianic sense to the Old Testament prophecies, for 
 this reference to Christ is foreign to the original signification of these 
 prophecies viewed by the light of reason ; and the New Testament writings 
 must accord with reason, whatever ancient beliefs may say to the contrary. 
 
 3. Mystical conciliatory view {Q)\i\^w&e.vi2x\.^ o\}cie.K)-. The Old Testament 
 passages originally embody both the deeper signification ascribed to them 
 by the New Testament writers, and that more proximate meaning which 
 common sense obliges us to recognize : thus sound reason and the ancient 
 faith are reconcilable. ,. • 1. j 
 
 4. Decision of criticism : Very many of the Old Testament prophecies had, 
 originally, only an immediate referejice to events belonging to the time : but 
 they came to be regarded by the men of the New, Testament as actual 
 
 '! See Bleak in den theol. Studien u. Kritiken, 1835, 2, s. 441 ff. 
 
 I 
 
I30 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 26. 
 
 predictions of Jesus as the Messiah, because the intelligence of these men 
 was limited by the manner of thinking of their nation, a fact recognized 
 neither by Rationalism nor the ancient faith.^ 
 
 Accordingly we shall not hesitate for a moment to allow, in relation to the 
 prophecy in question, that the reference to Jesus is obtruded upon it by the 
 Evangelists. Whether the actual birth of Jesus of a virgin gave rise to this 
 application of the prophecy, or whether this prophecy, interpreted beforehand 
 as referring to the Messiah, originated the belief that Jesus was born of a 
 virgin, remains to be determined. 
 
 §26. 
 
 JESUS BEGOITEN OF THE HOLY GHOST. CRITICISM OF THE ORTHODOX 
 
 OPINION. 
 
 The statement of Matthew and of Luke concerning the mode of Jesus's 
 conception has, in every age, received the following interpretation by the 
 church ; that Jesus was conceived in Mary hot by a human father, but by the 
 Holy Ghost. And truly thegospel expressions seem, at first sight, to justify 
 this interpretation; since the words irplv .^ a-vveXOelv airovs (Matt. i. 18) and 
 eirei aSvpa ov yiviiuTKm (Luke i. 34) preclude the participation of Joseph or 
 any other man in the conception of the child in question. Nevertheless the 
 terms Trveufjua. ayiov and 8vi/a/*ts v\f/icrrov do not represent the Holy Ghost in 
 the sense of the church, as the third person in the Godhead, but rathe^ the 
 D'O^S O-ll, Spiritus Dei as used in the Old Testament : God in his agency 
 upon the world, and especiailly upon man. In short the words kv ya&rpX 
 e)(ov<7a e/c ■jrvevjx.aTb^ ayiov in Matthew, and TrviVfw, ayiov lir^XixxTerai em (re 
 K. T. X. in Luke, express with sufficient clearness that the absence of human 
 agency was supplied — not physically after the manner of heathen representa- 
 tions — but by the divine creative energy. 
 
 .Though this seems to be the representation intended by the evangelists 
 in the passages referred to concerning the origin of the life of Jesus, still it 
 cannot be completed without considerable difficulties. We may separate 
 what we may term the physico-theological from the historical-exegetkal diffi- 
 culties. 
 
 The physiological difficulties amount to this, that such a conception would 
 be a most remarkable deviation from all natural laws. However obscure the 
 physiology of the fact, it is proved by an exceptionless experience that only by 
 the concurrence of the two sexes is a new human being generated ; on which 
 account Plutarch's remaik, "TraiSibl' ovSe/xia ttotI ywij Xeyerat ■TTOLrjcraL Si'^a 
 KoivmvMi avSpo's"^ and Cerinthus's " impossiMe " become a.pp\icab\e.^ It is 
 
 ' The whole rationalistic interpretation of Scripture rests upon a sufficiently palpable 
 paralogism, by which it stands or falls : 
 
 The New Testament authors are not to be interpreted as if they said something irrational 
 (certainly not something contrary to their own modes of thinking). 
 
 Now according to a particular interpretation their assertions are irrational (that is contrary 
 to dur modes qfjjhinking). 
 
 Consequently^he interpretation cannot give the original sense, and a different interpreta- 
 tion must be given. 
 
 Who does not here perceive the quaternio terminorum and the fatal inconsequence, when 
 Rationalism, takes its stand upon the same ground with supernaturalism ; that, namely, 
 whilst with regard to all other men the first point to be examined is whether they speak or 
 write what is just and true, to the New Testament writers the prerogative is granted of this 
 being, in their case, already presupposed ? 
 
 ' Conjugial. praecept. Opp. ed. Hutton, Vol. 7. s. 428. 
 
 •^ I'reilaus, adv. haer. I,' 26 : Cerinthus, Jesum subjecit non ex vii-gine natum, impossible 
 enim hoc ei visum est. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS— ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 131 
 
 only among the lowest species of the animal kingdom that generation takes 
 ■place without the union of sexes ; •* so that, regardine; the matter purely 
 physiologically, what Origen says, in the supranaturalistic sense, would 
 indeed be true of a man of the like origin ; namely, that the words in 
 Psalm xxii. 7, I am a worm and no man is a prophecy of Jesus in the above 
 respect.* But to the merely physical consideration a theological one is 
 subjoined by the angel (Luke i. 37), when he appeals to the divine omnipo- 
 tence to which nothing is impossible. But since the divine omnipotence, 
 by virtue of its unity with divine wisdom, is never exerted in the absence 
 of an adequate motive, the existence of such, in the present instance, must 
 be demonstrated. But nothing less than an object worthy of the Deity, and 
 at the same time necessarily unattainable except by a deviation from the 
 ordinary course of nature, could constitute a sufficient cause for the suspension 
 by God of a natural law which he had established. Only here, it is said, the 
 end, the redemption of mankind, required impeccability on the part of Jesus ; 
 and in order to render him exempt from sin, a divinely wrought conception, 
 which excluded the participation of a sinful father, and severed Jesus from all 
 connexion with original sin, was necessary.^ To which it has been answered 
 by others,^ (and Schleiermacher has recently most decisively argued this side 
 of the question,'') that the exclusion of the paternal participation is insufficient, 
 unless, indeed, the inheritance of original sin, on the maternal side, be 
 obviated by the adoption of the Valentinian assertion, that Jesus only passed 
 through the body of Mary. But that the gospel histories represent an actual 
 maternal participation is undeniable ;, consequently a divine intervention 
 which should sanctify the participation of the sinful human mother in the 
 conception of Jesus must be supposed in order to maintain his assumed 
 necessary impeccability. But if God determined on such a purification of the 
 maternal participation, it had been easier to do the same with respect to that 
 of the father, than by his total exclusion, to violate the natural law in so 
 unprecedented a manner; and consequently, a fatherless conception cannot 
 be insisted upon as the necessary means of compassing the impeccability 
 of Jesus. 
 
 Even he who thinks to escape the difficulties already specified, by envelop- 
 ing himself in a supranaturalism, inaccessible to arguments based on reason 
 or the laws of nature, must nevertheless admit the force of the exegetical- 
 historical difficulties meeting him upon his own ground, which likewise beset 
 the view of the supernatural conception of Jesus. Nowhere in the New 
 Testament is such an origin ascribed to Jesus, or even distinctly alluded to, 
 except in these two accounts of his infancy in Matthew and in Luke.^ The 
 history of the conception is omitted not only by Mark, but also by John, the 
 supposed author of the fourth Gospel and an alleged inmate with the mother 
 of Jesus subsequent to his death, who therefore would have been the most 
 accurately informed concerning these occurrences. It is said that John sought 
 rather to record the heavenly than the earthly origin of Jesus ; but the question 
 arises, whether the doctrine which he sets forth in his prologue, of a divine 
 
 ' In Henke's neuem Magazin, iii. 3, s. 369. 
 
 * Homil. in Lucain xiv. Comp. my Streitschriften, i. 2, s. 72 f. 
 
 5 Olshausen, Bibl. Comm. s. 49. Neander, L. J. Ch. s. 16 f. 
 
 ' e. g. by Eichhorn, Einleitung in das N. T. i. Bd. s. 407. 
 
 ^ Glaubenslehre, 2 Thl. § 97. s. 73 f. der zweiten Auflage. 
 
 e This side is particularly considered in der Skiagraphie des Dogma s von Jesu ubernatur- 
 licher Geburt, in Schmidt's Bibliothek, i. 3, s. 400 ff. ; in den Bemerkungen uber den 
 Glaubenspunkt: Christus ist empfangen vom heil. Geist, in Henke s neuem Magazm, 
 iii. 3, 365 ff. ; in Kaiser's bibl. Theol. I, s. 231 f. ; De Wette's bibl. Dogmatik, § 281 ; 
 Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre, 2 ThL § 97. 
 
132 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 26. 
 
 hypostasis actually becoming flesh and remaining immanent in Jesus, is 
 reconcilable with the view given in the passages before us, of a simple 
 divine operation determining the conception of Jesus ; whether therefore 
 John could have presuppcjsed the history of the conception contained in 
 Matthew and Luke ? This objection, however, loses its conclusive force if in 
 the progress of our investigation the apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel is 
 not established. The most important consideration therefore is, that no 
 retrospective allusion to this mode of conception occurs throughout the 
 four Gospels ; not only neither in John nor in Mark, but alsb neither in 
 Matthew nor in Luke. Not only does Mary herself designate Joseph simply 
 as the father of Jesus (Lukei ii. 48), and the Evangelist speak of both as his 
 parents, yoveis (Luke ii. 41), — ^an appellation which could oiily have been 
 used in an ulterior sense by one who had just related the miraculous concep- 
 tion, — but all his contemporaries in general, according to our Evangelists^ 
 regarded him as a son of Joseph, a fact which was not unfrequently alluded 
 to contemptuously and by way of reproach in his presence (Matt. xiii. 55-; 
 Luke iv. 22; John vi. 42), thus affording him an opportunity of making a 
 decisive appeal to his miraculous conception, of which, however, he says not 
 a single word. Should it' be answered, that he did not desire to convince 
 rfespecting the divinity of his person by this external evidence, and that he 
 could have no hope of making an inipr^ssion by such means on those who 
 were in heart his opponents, — it must also be remembered, that, according 
 to the testimony of the fourth Gospel, his own disciples, though they admitted 
 him to be the son of God, stilL regarded him as the actual son of Joseph; 
 Philip introduces Jesus to Nathanael as thi son of Joseph^ 'Itja-ovv tov vlhv 
 'Io«r:7<^ (John i. 46), manifestly in the same sense of real paternity which the 
 Jews attached to the designation ; and nowhere is this represented as an 
 erroneous or imperfect notion which these Apostles had subsequently to 
 relinquish ; much rather does the whole sense of the narrative, which is not 
 to be mistaken, exhibit the Apostles as having a right belief on this point. 
 The enigmatical presupposition, with which, at the marriage in Cana, Mary 
 addressed herself to Jesus,^ is far too vague to prove a recollection of his 
 mitaculous conception on the part of the mother ; at all events this feature 
 is counterbalanced by the opjiosing one that the family of Jesus, and, as 
 appears from Matt. xii. 46 ff. compared with Markiii. 21- ff., his mother also 
 were, at a later time, in error respecting his aims ; which is scarcely explicable, 
 even of His brothers, Supposing them to haVfe had such recollections. - - 
 
 Just as little'as in the Gospels, is anything in confirmation of the view 
 of the supernatural conception of Jesus, to be found in the remaining New 
 Testament writings. For when the Apostle Paul speaks of Jesus as made 
 of a woman, yevofnevov ek yuvaiKos (Gal. iv. 4), this' expression is not to be 
 understood as an exclusion of paternal participation ; since the addition made 
 under the law, ■yevd/Aci'ov -ra-b v6ix.av, clearly shows that he would here indicate 
 (in the form which is frequent in the Old and New Testament, for example 
 Job xiv. I ; Matt. xi. li) human nature with all its conditions. When Paul 
 (Rom. i. 3, 4 compared with ix. 5) makes Christ according to the flesh, Kara 
 a-apKa, descend from David, but declares him to be the son of God accord- 
 ing to the Spirit of Holiness, ko-to. TrvsS/ia dyMuo-uViys ; no one will here identify 
 the antithesis flesh and spirit with the maternal human participation, and 
 the divine energy superseding the paternal participation in the conception 
 of Jesus. Finally when in the Epistle to the Hebrews (vii. 3) Melchisedec 
 is compared with the son of God, vu>% tqH Seoi), because without father, 
 atraTiop, the application of the , literally interpreted atraruip to Jesus, as he 
 ' Brought to bear upon this point by Neander, L. J. Ch. s. 12. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS— ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 133 
 
 appeared upon earth, is forbidden by the addition without mother, d^iyfup^ 
 which agrees as little with him as the immediately following. 7£//Mw/ descent,. 
 dyeveaXoyiyros. 
 
 § 27. ' 
 RETROSPECT OF THE, GENEAUQGIES. 
 
 The most conclusive exegetical ground of decision against the supernatural 
 conception of Jesus, which bears more closely on the point than all the 
 hitherto adduced passages, is found in the two genealogies previously con- 
 , sidered. Even the Manichsean Faustus asserted that it is impossible without 
 contradiction to trace the descent of Jesus from David through Joseph, as is 
 done by our two genealogists, and yet assume that Joseph was not the father 
 of Jesus; and Augustine had nothing convincing to answer when he remarked' 
 that it was necessary, on account of the superior dignity of the' masculine 
 gender, to carry the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, who was Mary's 
 husband if not by a natural by a spiritual alliance.' In modern times also 
 the construction of the genealogical tables in Matthew and in Luke has led 
 many theologians to observe, that these authors considered Jesus as the actual 
 son of Joseph.^ The very design of these tables is to prove Jesus to be of the 
 lineage of David through Joseph ; but what do they prove, if indeed Joseph 
 was not the father of Jesus? The assertion that Jesus was the son of David, 
 vLo<i Aa^iS, which in Matthew (i. i) prefaces' the genealogy and announces 
 its object, is altogether annulled by the subsequent denial of his conception 
 by means of the Davidical Joseph. It is impossible, therefore, to think it 
 probable that the genealogy and the history of the birth of Jesus emanate 
 from the same author*; and we must concur with the theologians previously 
 cited, that the genealogies are taken from a different source. Scarcely could it 
 satisfy to oppose the remark, that as Joseph doubtlessly adopted Jesus, 
 the genealogical table of the former became fully valid for the latter. For 
 adoption might indeed suffice to secure to the adopted son the reversion 
 of certain external family rights and inheritances ; but such a relationship 
 could in no wise lend a claim to the MeSsianic dignity, which was attached 
 to the true blood and lineage of David. He, therefore, who had regarded 
 Joseph as nothing more than the adopted father of Jesus, would hardly have 
 given himself the trouble to seek out the DaividiCal descent of Joseph ; but 
 if indeed, besides the established belief that Jesus was the son of God, it still 
 remained important to represent him as the son of David, the pedigree of 
 Mary would have been preferred for this purpose ; for, however contrary to 
 custom, the maternal genealogy must have been admitted in a case where 
 a human father did not exist. Least of all is it to be believed, that several 
 authors would have engaged in the compilation of a genealogical table for 
 Jesus which traced his descent through Joseph, so that two different genea- 
 logies of this kind are still preserved to us, if a closer relationship between 
 Jesus and Joseph had not been admitted at the time of their composition. 
 
 Consequently, the decision of the learned theologians who agree that 
 these genealogies were composed in the belief that Jesus was the actual son 
 of Joseph and Mary, can hardly be disputed ; but the authors or compilers 
 of our Gospels, notwithstanding their own conviciion of the divine origin .of 
 
 ' Augustinus contra Faustum Manichaeum, L. 23. 3. 4. 8. ■ 
 
 2 See Schmidt, Schleierraacher, and Wegscheider, Instit. § 123 ( not. ). 
 -' Eichhorn thinks this probable, Einl. in das N. T. i. s. 425, De \yette possible, exeg. 
 Handb. i. i, =. 7- 
 
134 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 27. 
 
 Jesus, received them among their materials; only that Matthew (i. 16) 
 changed the originaX Joseph begat Jesus of Mary — 'IwcrriKJi Se hyiwr^cre. tov Iijo-ow 
 £K r^s Mapt'as (comp. verses 3. 5. 6) according to his own view ; and so like- 
 wise Luke (iii. 23) instead of commencing his genealogy simply viith, Jesus— 
 the son of Joseph — 'Iijo-oSs wos 'Itoo-^c/), inserts being as was supposed, uv, ws 
 ivofii^ero k. t. X. 
 
 Let it not be objected that the view for which we contend, namely, that 
 the genealogies could not have been composed under the notion that Joseph 
 was not the father of Jesus, leaves no conceivable motive for incorporating 
 them into our present Gospels. The original construction of a genealogy of 
 Jesus, even though in the case before us it consisted simply in the adapting 
 of foreign already existing genealogical tables to Jesus, required a powerful and 
 direct inducement ; this was the hope thereby to gain — the corporeal descent 
 of Jesus from Joseph being presupposed— a main support to the belief in his 
 Messiahship ; whilst, on the other hand, a less powerful inducement was suffi- 
 cient to incite to the admission of the previously constructed genealogies : the 
 expectation that, notwithstanding the non-existence of any real relationship 
 between Joseph and Jesus, they might nevertheless serve to link Jesus to 
 David. Thus we find, that in the histories of the birth both in Matthew and 
 in Luke, though they each decidedly exclude Joseph from the conception, great 
 stress is laid upon the Davidical descent of Joseph (Matt. i. 20, Luke i. 27, ii. 
 4) ; that which in fact had no real significance, except in connexion with the 
 earlier opinion, is retained even after the point of view is changed. 
 
 Since, in this way, we discover both the genealogies to be memorials be- 
 longing to the time and circle of the primitive church, in which Jesus was 
 still regarded as a naturally begotten man, the sect of the Ebionites cannot 
 fail to occur to us ; as we are told concerning them, that they held this view 
 of the person of Christ at this early period.* We should therefore have ex- 
 pected, more especially, to have found these genealogies in the old Ebionitish 
 Gospels, of which we have still knowledge, and are not a little surprised to 
 learn that precisely in these Gospels the genealogies were wanting. It is true 
 Epiphanius states that the Gospel of the Ebionites commenced with the public 
 appearance of the Baptist^; accordingly, by the genealogies, ycveoXoytW, 
 which they are said to have cut away, might have been meant, those histories 
 of the birth and infancy comprised in the two first chapters of Matthew ; 
 which they could not have adopted in their present form, since they contained 
 the fatherless conception of Jesus, which was denied by the Ebionites : and 
 it might also have been conjectured that this section which was in opposition 
 to their system had alone perhaps been wanting in their Gospel ; and that the 
 genealogy which was in harmony with their view might nevertheless have 
 been somewhere inserted. But this supposition vanishes as soon as we find 
 that Epiphanius, in reference to the Nazarenes, defines the genealogies,, (of 
 which he is ignorant whether they possessed them or not,) as reaching from 
 Abraham to Christ, ras airo rov 'Aj3paaiJL ews XpuTTOv ^ ; consequently, by the 
 genealogies which were wanting to some heretics, he evidently understood 
 the genealogical tables, though, in relation to the Ebionites, he might likewise 
 have included under this expression the history of the birth. 
 
 How is the strange phenomenon, that these genealogies are not found 
 among that very sect of Christians who retained the particular opinion upon 
 which they were constructed, to be explained ? A modern investigator has 
 
 * Justin Mart. Dial, cum Tryphone, 48 ; Origines contra Celsum, L. 5, 61. Euseb. 
 H. E. 3, 27. 
 
 * Epiphan. haeres. 30, 14. 
 ' Haeres. 29, 9. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS— ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 1 35 
 
 advanced the supposition, that the Jewish-christians omitted the genealogical 
 tables from prudential motives, in order not to facilitate or augment the per- 
 secution which, under Domitian, and perhaps even earlier, threatened the 
 family of David.^ But explanations, having no inherent connexion with the 
 subject, derived from circumstances in themselves of doubtful historical 
 validity, are admissible only as a last refuge, when no possible solution of the 
 questionable phenomenon is to be found in the thing itself, as here in the 
 principles of the Ebionitish system. 
 
 But in this case the matter is by no means so difficult. It is known that 
 the Fathers speak of two classes of Ebionites, of which the one, besides 
 strenuously maintaining the obligation of the Mosaic law, held Jesus to be 
 the naturally begotten Son of Joseph and Mary ; the other, from that time 
 called also Nazarenes, admitted with the orthodox church the conception by 
 the Holy Ghost.^ But besides this distinction there existed yet another. 
 The most ancient ecclesiastic writers, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus for example, 
 are acquainted with those Ebionites only, who regarded Jesus as a naturally 
 born man first endowed with divine powers at his baptism.^ In Epiphanius 
 and the Clementine Homilies, on the other hand, we meet with Ebionites 
 who had imbibed an element of speculative Gnosticism. This tendency, 
 which according to Epiphanius is to be dated from one Elxai, has been as- 
 cribed to Essenic influence,^" and traces of the same have been discovered in 
 the heresies referred to in the Epistle to the Colossians ; whereas the first 
 class of Ebionites evidently proceeded from common Judaism. Which form 
 of opinion was the earlier and which the later developed is not so easily de- 
 termined ; with reference to the last detailed difference, it might seem, since 
 the speculative Ebionites are mentioned first by the Clementines and Epi- 
 phanius, whilst Ebionites holding a simpler view are spoken of by Justin and by 
 Irenaeus, that the latter were the earlier ; nevertheless as Tertullian already 
 notices in his time the Gnosticising tendency of the opinions of the Ebionites 
 respecting Christ^', and as the germ of such views existed among the Essenes 
 in the time of Jesus, the more probable assumption is, that both opinions 
 arose side by side about the same period. ^^ As little can it be proved-with 
 regard to the other difference, that the views concerning Christ held by the 
 Nazarenes became first, at a later period, lowered to those of the Ebionites^^ ; 
 since the notices, partly confused and partly of late date, pf the ecclesiastical 
 writers, may be naturally explained as arising out of what may be called an 
 optical delusion of the church, which,-^whilst she in fact made continual ad-, 
 vances in the glorification of Christ, but a piart of the Jewish Christians 
 remained stationary, — made it appear to her as if she herself remained station- 
 ary, whilst the others fell back into heresy. 
 
 By thus distinguishing the simple and the speculative Ebionites, so much 
 is gained, that the failure of the genealogies among the latter class, mentioned 
 by Epiphanius, does not prove them to have been also wanting among the 
 
 ' Credner, in den Beitragen zur Einleitung in das N. T. i, s. 443. Anm. 
 
 * Orig. ut sup. 
 
 9 See Neander, K. G. I, 2, s. 615 f. . 
 
 •° Credner, iiber Essener, und einen theilweisen Zusammenhang beider, in Winer s Zeit- 
 schrift f. wissenschaftUche Theologie, i. Bd. 2tes and 3tes Heft ; see Baur, Frosr- de Ebton- 
 itarum origine et doctrind a6 Essenis repetendd, und christl. Gnosis, s. 403. 
 
 " De came Christi, c. 14 : Poterit haec opinio Hebioni convenire, qui nudum hominem, et 
 tantum ex semine David, i.e. non et DeifiUum, constiiuit Jesum, ut in Ulo angelum fuisse 
 
 12 Neander and Schneckenburger are of the latter, Gieseler and Credner of the former 
 
 opinion. - . „ , . _ . 
 
 '' I here refer to the account of Hegesippus in Eusebius, H. a.. 11. 22. 
 
136 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 27. 
 
 former. And the less if we should be able to make it appear probable, that 
 the grounds of their aversion to the genealogical table, and the grounds of 
 distinction between them and the other class of Ebionites, were identical. 
 One of these grounds was evidently the unfavourable opinion, which the 
 Ebionites of Epiphanius and of the Clementine Homilies had of David, from 
 ■whom the genealogy traces the descent of Jesus. It is well known that they 
 distinguished in the Old Testament a twofold prophecy, male and female, 
 pure and impure, of which the former only promised things heavenly and 
 true, the latter things earthly and delusive ; that proceeding from Adam and 
 Abel, this from Eve and Cain ; and both constituted an undercurrent through' 
 the whole history of the revelation.** It was only the pious men from Adam 
 to Joshua whom they acknowledged as true prophets : the later prophets and 
 men of God, among whom David and Sol«mon are named, were not only not 
 recognized; but abhorred.^" We even find positive indications that David' 
 was an object of their particular aversion. There were many things which 
 created in them a detestation of David (and Solomon). David was a bloody 
 warrior ; but to shed blood was, according to the doctrines of these Ebionites, 
 one of the greatest of sins ; David was known to have committed adultery, 
 (Solomon to have been a voluptuary); and adultery was even more detested 
 by this sect than murder. David was a performer on stringed instruments j 
 this art, the invention of the Canaanites (Gen. iv. 21), was held by these 
 Ebionites to be a sign of false prophecy ; finally, the prophecies announced 
 by David and those connected with him, (and Solomon,) had reference to 
 the' kingdoms of this world, of which the Gnosticising Ebionites desired to 
 know nothing^i^ Now the Ebionites who had sprung from common Judaism 
 could hot have shared this ground of aversion to the genealogies ; since to the 
 orthodox Jew David was an object of the highest veneration. 
 
 Concerning a second point the notices are not so lucid and accordant as 
 they should be ; namely, whether it was a further development of the general 
 Ebionitish doctrine concerning the person of the Christ, which led these' 
 Ebionites to reject the genealogies. According to Epiphanius, they fully re- 
 cognized the Gnostic distinction between Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary, 
 and the Christ who descended upon him *''' ; and consequently might have 
 been withheld from referring the genealogy to Jesus only perhaps by their 
 abhorrence of David. On the other hand, from the whole tenor of the Cle- 
 mentines, and from one passage in particular,'^ it has recently been inferred, 
 and not without apparent reason, that the author of these writings had him- 
 self abandoned the view of a natural conception, and even birth of Jesus ^^ ; 
 whereby it is yet more manifest that the ground of the rejection of the 
 genealogies by this sect was peculiar to it, and not common to the other 
 Ebionites. 
 
 Moreover positive indications, that the Ebionites who proceeded from 
 Judaism possessed the genealogies, do not entirely fail. Whilst the Ebionites 
 
 '■* Homil. 3, 33-27. 
 
 '* Epiphan. haeres. 30, 18. comp. 15. 
 
 '^ That these were the traits in David's character which displeased the Christian sect in 
 question, is sufficiently evideiit from a passage in the Clementine Homilies, though the name 
 is not given : Homil. 3, 25 ; In fi^v Kal ol airb ttjs roirov {tov Kab>) SiaSoxvs TrpoeXrfXvBilTes 
 irpuTOL jMixol iyivovfb, (cai^aXrifpia, xal ia8i,pai, Kal xoXKers SttXui' woXe/uKWp iyivovTo. At 
 8 Kal i] Tuv iyyivuv 'wpo(fniTeia, iwixi^v Kal tj/a\Ti]pl'wv ydfwvaa, "KavBavbiTias Sti tuv i/Sv- 
 iraBeiwv dis Tois TroXe/ious iyelpei. 
 
 " Epiphan. haer. 30, 14. 16. 34. 
 
 " Homil. 3, 17. 
 
 '' Schneckenburger, iiber das Evang. der Aegypter, s. 7 ; Baur, christl. Gnosis, s. 760 Jf. 
 See on the other side Credner and Hoffmann. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS— ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 137 
 
 of Epiphaniiis and of the Clementines called Jesus only Son of God, but re- 
 jected the appellation Son of David, as belonging to the common opinion of 
 the Jews »; other Ebionites were censured by the Fathers for recognizing 
 Jesus only as the Son of David, to whom he is traced in the genealogies, and 
 not likewise as the Son of God.21 Further, Epiphanius relates of the earliest 
 Judaising Gnostics, Cerinthus and Carpocrates, that they used a Gospel the 
 same in other respects indeed as the Ebionites, but that they adduced the 
 genealogies, which they therefore read in the same, in attestation of tiie 
 human conception of Jesus by Joseph.^^ Also the a7roju,i/i;/x.oi'€u>aTa cited by 
 Justm, and which Originated upon Judaeo-christian ground, appear to have 
 contamed a genealogy similar to that in our Matthew ; since Justin as well as 
 Matthew speaks, in relation to Jesus, of a yei/os toC Aa^SiS Kal 'A/Bpaafj,, of a 
 
 utripixa ii 'laKa)/3, Sta 'lovSa, Kal $ap€s kol 'U&(rat Kal Aa/31S KaTepx6fJi.€vov '■'^ ; 
 only that at the time, and in the circle of Justin, the opinion of a supernatural 
 conception of Jesus had already suggested the reference of the genealogy to 
 Mary, instead of to Joseph. 
 
 Hence it appears tiiat we have in the genealogies a memorial, agreeing with 
 indications from other sources, of the fact that in the very earliest Christian 
 age, in Palestine, a body of Christians, numerous enough to establish upon 
 distinct fundamental opinions two different Messianic tables of descent, con- 
 sidered Jesus to have been a naturally conceived human being. And no 
 proof is furnished to us in the apostolic writings, that the Apostles would have 
 declared this doctrine to be unchristian ; it appeared so first from the point 
 of view adopted by the authors of the histories of the birth in the first and 
 third Gospels : notwithstanding which, however, it is treated with surprising 
 lenity by the Fathers of the church. 
 
 §28. 
 
 NATURAL EXPLANATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE CONCEPTION. 
 
 If, as appears from the foregoing statements, so many weighty difficulties, 
 philosophical as well as exegetical, beset the supranaturalistic explanation, it 
 is well worth while to examine whether it be not possible to give an interpre- 
 tation of the gospel history which shall obyiate these objections. Recourse 
 has been had to the natural explanation, and the two narratives singly and 
 conjointly have been successively subjected to the rationalistic mode of inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 In the first place, the account in Matthew seemed susceptible of such an 
 interpretation. Numerous rabbinical passages were cited to demonstrate, that 
 it was consonant with Jewish notions to consider a son of pious parents to be 
 conceived by the divine co-operation, and that he should be called the son of 
 the Holy Spirit, without its being ever imagined that paternal participation 
 was thereby excluded. It was consequently contended, that the section in 
 
 2° Orig. Comm. in Matth. T. 16, 12. TertuUian, De came Christi, 14, s. Anm. 13 (a 
 passage in which indeed the speculative and ordinary Ebionites are mingled together). 
 
 "Clement, homil. 18, 13. They referred the words of Matth. xi. 27 : ovSels (yvta rhv 
 warepa, el/iii vlbs k. t. X. to roils iraTepa co^/focras xP'-'^'roC rhv Aa^ld, Kal avrbv 5^ rbv xpio-Tfe 
 vliii ivra, Kal vliv 0eov lut) iyvuKin-as, and complained that alH tov 0eoO rbv Aa^lS irdcres 
 IXeyov. , , , , _ 
 
 '^ Haeres. 30, 14 : /lin yi./) KiipLvBot Kal KdpiroKpas ri? auri? XP'^H'^""^ ^'^P avrait (tois 
 'E/Siuyoiois) eiayyeUifi, &irb t^s Apxi-i roS kotA UaTBaTov eiayyeUov dii ttjs yeyeaXoylas (SoiiX- 
 ovrac TrapuFTfv iK (nripiiaTOi 'iua'i]tp Kal Maplas ctvai rbv XpiHTbv. 
 
 " Dial. c. Tryph. 100. 120. 
 
138 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 28. 
 
 Matthew represented merely the intention of the angel to inform Joseph, not 
 indeed that Mary had become pregnant in the absence of all human inter- 
 course, but that notwithstanding her pregnancy she was to be regarded as 
 pure, not as one fallen from virtue. It was maintained that the exclusion of 
 paternal participation — which is an embellishment of the original representa- 
 tion — occurs first in Luke in the words avSpa oi ytvutrKuj (i. 34).' When 
 however this view was justly opposed by the remark, that the expression irplv 
 Tj (TvvekOeLv avTov's in Matthew (i. 18) decidedly excludes the participation of 
 the only individual in question, namely Joseph ; it was then thought possible 
 to prove that even in Luke the paternal exclusion was not so positive : but 
 truly this could be done only by an unexegetical subversion of the clear sense 
 of the words, or pise by uncritically throwing suspicion on a part of a well- 
 connected narrative. The first expedient is to interpret Mary's inquiry of the 
 angel i. 34, thus : Can I who am already betrothed and married give birth to 
 the Messiah, for as the mother of the Messiah I must have no husband ? 
 whereupon the angel replies, that God, through his power, could make some- 
 thing distinguished even of the child conceived of her and Joseph. ^ The 
 other proceeding is no less arbitrary. Mary's inquiry of the angel is explained 
 as an unnatural interruption of his communication, which bemg abstracted, 
 the passage is found to contain no decided intimation of the supernatural 
 conception.^ 
 
 If consequently, the difficulty of the natural explanation of the two accounts 
 be equally great, still, with respect to both it must be alike attempted or 
 rejected ; and for the consistent Rationalist, a Paulus for example, the latter 
 is the only course. This commentator considers the participation of Joseph 
 indeed excluded by Matt. i. 18, but by no means that of every other man; 
 neither can he find a supernatural divine intervention in the expression of 
 Luke i. 35. The Holy Ghost — twAn-a. aytov — is not with him objective, an 
 external influence operating upon Mary, but her own pious imagination. 
 'Y\ie power of the Highest — ^vvajj-vs v^I.<ttov — is not the immediate divine omni- 
 potence, but every natural power employed in a manner pleasing to God may 
 be so called. Conseq|Uently, according to Paulus, the pieaning of the angelic 
 announcement is simply this : prior to her union with Joseph, Mary, under 
 the influence of a pure enthusiasm in sacred things on the one hand, and by 
 an human co-operation pleasing to God on the other, became the mother of a 
 child who on account of this holy origin was to be called a son of God. 
 
 Let us examine rather more accurately the view which this representative 
 of rationalistic interpretation takes of the particulars of the conception of 
 Jesus. He begins with Elizabeth, the patriotic and wise daughter of Aaron, 
 as he styles her. She, having conceived the hope that she might give birth 
 to one of God's prophets, naturally desired moreover that he might be the 
 first of prophets, the forerunner of the Messiah; and that the latter also might 
 speedily be born. Now there was among her own kinsfolk a person suited in 
 every respect for the mother of the Messiah, Mary, a young virgin, a descen- 
 dant of David ; nothing more was needful than to inspire her likewise with 
 such a special hope. Whilst these intimations prepare us to anticipate a 
 cleverly concerted plan on the part of Elizabeth in reference to her young 
 relative, in the which we hope to become initiated ; Paulus here suddenly lets 
 
 1 Br 
 boren sei, aus 
 
 , die Nachricht, dass Jesus durch den heil. Geist und von einer Jungfrau ge- 
 i Zeitbegriflfen erlautert. In Schmidt's Bibl. i, i. s. 101 ff. — Horst, in Henke's 
 Museum I, 4, 497 ff. , iiber die beiden ersten Kapitel in Evang. Lukas. 
 
 ^ Bemerkungen iiber den Glaubenspunkt : Christus ist empfangen vom heil. Geist. In 
 Henke's neuem Magaz;in, 3, 3. 399. 
 * Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 26 f. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS — ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 1 39 
 
 fall the curtain, and remarks, that the exact manner in which Mary was con- 
 vinced that she should become the mother of tiie Messiah must be left histori- 
 cally undetermined ; thus much only is certain, that Mary remained pure, for 
 she could not with a clear conscience have stationed herself, as she afterwards 
 did, under the Cross, of her Son, had she felt that a reproach rested on her 
 concerning the origin of the hopes she had entertained of him. The follow- 
 ing is the only hint subsequently given of the particular view held by Paulus. 
 It is probable, he thinks, that the angelic messenger visited Mary in the even- 
 ing or even at night; indeed according to the correct reading of Luke i. 28, 
 which has not the word angel, koI eicreXOlav Trpos aur^v ciTre, without o ayyeXo?, 
 
 the evangelist here speaks only of some one who had come in. (As if in this 
 case, the participle eicreXdiuv must not necessarily be accompanied by rh ; or, 
 in the absence of the pronoun be referred to the subject, the angel Gabriel — • 
 o ay-ycXos Taj3pirjX., v. 26 !) Paulus adds: that this visitant was the angel 
 Gabriel was the subsequent suggestion of Mary's own mind, after she had 
 heard of the vision of Zacharias. 
 
 Gabler, in a review of Paulus's Commentary * has fully exposed, with com- 
 mensurate plainness of speech, the transaction which lies concealed under 
 this explanation. It is impossible, says he, to imagine any other interpreta- 
 tion of Paulus's view than that some one passed himself off for the angel 
 Gabriel, and as the pretended Messenger of God remained with Mary in 
 order that she might become the mother of the Messiah. What ! asks Gabler, 
 is Mary, at the very time she is betrothed, to become pregnant by another, 
 and is this to be called an innocent holy action, pleasing to God and irre 
 proachable? Mary is here pourtrayed as a pious visionary, and the pretended 
 messenger of heaven as a deceiver, or he too is a gross fanatic. The reviewer 
 most justly considers such an assertion as revolting, if contemplated from the 
 christian point of view ; if from the scientific, as at variance both with the 
 principles of interpretation and of criticism. 
 
 The author of the Natural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth is, 
 in this instance, to be considered as the most worthy interpreter of Paulus ; 
 for though the former could not, in this part of his work, have made use of 
 Paulus's Commentary, yet, in exactly the same spirit, he unreservedly avows 
 what the latter carefully veils. He brings into comparison a story in Jose- 
 phus,» according to which, in the very time of Jesus, a Roman knight won the 
 chaste wife of a Roman noble to his wishes, by causing her to be invited by 
 a priest of Isis into the temple of the goddess, under the pretext that the 
 god Anubis desired to embrace her. In innocence and faith, the woman re- 
 signed herself, and would perhaps afterwards have believed she had given birth 
 to the child of a god, had not the intriguer, with bitter scorn, soon after dis- 
 covered to her the true state of the case. It is the opinion of the author that 
 Mary, the betrothed bride of the aged Joseph, was in like manner deceived 
 by some amorous and fanatic young man (in the sequel to the history he 
 represents him to be Joseph of Arimathea), and that she on her part, in 
 perfect innoeence, continued to deceive others.* It is evident that this inter- 
 pretation does not differ from the ancient Jewish blasphemy, which we find in 
 Celsus and in the Talmud ; that Jesus falsely represented himself as born of 
 a pure virgin, whereas, in fact, he was the offspring of the adultery of Mary 
 with a certain Panthera.'' 
 
 ' Im neuesten theol. Journal, 7. Bd. 4. Stiick, ». 407 f. 
 * Antiq. xviii. 3, 4- 
 6 Iter xheil s 140 ff. 
 
 r The legend has undergone various modifications, but the name of Panthera or Pandi>-a 
 has been uniformly retained. Vid. Origenes c. Cels. i, 28. 32. Schbttgeu, Horse 2, 693 ff. 
 
140 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 29. 
 
 This whole view, of which the cuhninating point is in the calumny of the 
 Jews, cannot be better judged than in the words of Origen. If, says this 
 author, they wished to substitute something else in the place of the history of 
 the supernatural conception of Jesus, they should at any rate have made it 
 happen in a more probable manner; they ought not, as it were against their, 
 will, to admit that , Mary knew not Joseph, but they might have denied this, 
 feature, and yet have allowed Jesus to have been born of an ordinary human 
 marriage ; whereas the forced and extravagant character of their hypothesis 
 betrays its falsehood.^ Is not this as much as to say, that if once some particular 
 features of a marvellous narrative are doubted, it is inconsequent to allow 
 others to remain unquestioned ? each part of such an account ought to be: 
 subjected to critical examination. The correct view of the narrative before 
 us is to be found, that is indirectly, in Origen. For when at one time he 
 places together, as of the same kind, the miraculous conception of Jesus and, 
 the story of Plato's conception by Apollo (though here, indeed, the meaning; 
 is that only ill-disposed persons could doubt such things '), and when at 
 another time he says of the story concerning', Plato, that; it belongs to those 
 mythi by which it was sought to exhibit the distinguished wisdom and power 
 of great men (but here he does not include the narrative of Jesus's concep- 
 tion), he in fact states the two premises,;. namely, the similarity of the two 
 narratives and the mythical character of the one^"; from which the inference 
 of the merely mythical worth of the narrative of the conception of Jesus 
 follows; a conclusion which can never indeed have occurred, to his own 
 mind. 
 
 § 29. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS VIEWED AS A MYTHUS. 
 
 If, says Gabler in his review of the Commentary of Paulus, we must 
 relinquish the supernatural origin of Jesus, in order to escape the ridicule of 
 our contemporaries, and if, on the other hand, the natural explanation lea.ds to 
 conclusions not only extravagant, but revolting; the adoption of the my thus, 
 by which all these difficulties are obviated, is to be preferred. In the world 
 of mythology many great men bad extraordinary births, and were sons of the 
 gods. Jesus himself spoke of his heavenly origin; and called God his father ; 
 besides, his title as Messiah was^ — Son of God. From Matthew i. 22, it is 
 further evident th^t the passage of Isaiah, vii. 14, was referred to Jesus by the 
 early Christian Church. In conformity with tiiis passage the belief prevailed 
 that Jesus, as the Messiah, should be born of a virgin by means of divirie 
 agency; it was therefore taken for granted that what was to be actually did 
 occur ; and thus originated a philosophical (dogmatical) mythus concerning 
 the birth of Jesus. But according to historical truth, Jesus was the offspring 
 of an ordinary marriage, between Joseph and Mary ; an explanation which, 
 it has been justly remarked, maintains at once the dignity of Jesus and the 
 respect due to his mother.^ 
 
 aus Tract. Sanhedfin u. A.; Eisenmenger, eiitdecktes JudentKum, i, s. 105 ff. aus der 
 Schmahschrift : Toledoth Jeschu ; Thilo, cod. apocr. s. 528. Comp. my Abhandlung viber 
 die Namen Panther, Pantheras, Pandera, in jiidischen und patristischen Erzahlungen von der 
 Abstainmuug Jesu. Athenaum, Febr. 1839, s. 15 ff. 
 
 * Orig. c. Celsus i. 32. 
 
 9 Ibid. vi. 8. i , 
 
 •» Ibid. i. 37. 
 
 ' Gabler, in selnem neuesten theol. Journal, 7, 4. s. 408 f ; Eichhorn, Einleitung in das 
 N. T. I, s. 428 f. ; Bauer, liebr. Mythpl. i, 192 e ff. ; Kaiser, bibl. Theologie, i, s. 231 f. ; 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS — ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 141 
 
 The proneness of the ancient world to represent the great men and bene- 
 ifactors of their race as the sons of the gods, has therefore been referred to, in 
 order to explain the origin of such a mythus. Our theologians have accumu- 
 lated examples from the Greco-Roman mythology and history. They have 
 cited Hercules, and the Dioscuri ; Romulus, and Alexander ; but above all 
 Pythagoras,^ and Plato. Of the latter philosopher Jerome speaks in a manner 
 quite applicable to Jesus : sapientise principem non aliter arbitrantur, nisi de 
 partu virginis editum.* 
 
 From these examples it might have been inferred that the narratives of the 
 supernatural conception had possibly originated in a similar tendency, and 
 had no foundation rn history. Here however the orthodox and the rationa- 
 lists are unanimous in denying, though indeed upon different grounds, the 
 validity of the analogy. Origen, from a perception of the identical character 
 6{ the two classes of narratives, is not far from regarding the heathen legends 
 of the sons of the gods as true supernatural histories. Paulus on his side is 
 more decided, and is so logical as to explain both classes of narratives in the 
 same manner, as natural, but still as true histories. At least he says of the 
 narrative concerning Plato : it cannot be affirmed that the groundwork of the 
 History was a subsequent creation ; it is far more probable that Perictione 
 believed herself to be pregnant by one of her gods. The fact that her son 
 became a Plato might indeed have served to confirm that belief, but not to 
 have originated it. Tholuck invites attention to the important distinction 
 that the ihythi concerning Romulus and others were formed many centuries 
 after the lifetime of these men : the mythi concerning Jesus, on the contrary, 
 must have existed shortly after his death.* He cleverly fails to remember the 
 narrative of Plato's birth, since he is well aware that precisely in that parti- 
 cular, it is a dangerous point. Osiander however approaches the subject with 
 much pathos, and affirms that Plato's apotheosis as son of Apollo did not 
 exist till several centuries after' him ^ ; whereas in fact Plato's sister's son 
 speaks of it as a prevailing legend in Athens.* Olshausen, with whom Neander 
 coincides, refuses to draw any detrimental inference from this analogy of the 
 mythical sons of the gods ; remarking that though these narratives are un- 
 historical, they evince a general anticipation and desire of such a fact, and 
 therefore guarantee its reality, at least in one historical manifestation. Certainly, 
 a general anticipation and representation must have truth for its basis ; but 
 the truth does not consist in any one individual fact, presenting an accurate 
 correspondence with that notion, but in an idea which realizes itself in a series 
 of facts, which often bear no resemblance to the general notion. The widely 
 spread notion of a golden age does not prove the existence of a golden age : 
 so the notion of divine conceptions does not prove that some one individual was 
 thus produced. The truth which is the basis of this notion is something quite 
 different. 
 
 A more essential objection'' to the andogyisi that the representations of 
 
 Wegscheider, Instit. § 123 ; De Wette, bibl. Dogmat. § 281. und exeg. Handb. i, i, s. 18 [., 
 Ammon, Fortbildung des Ch^istenth. s. 201 fF. ; Hase, L. J. § 33 ; tritzsche, Comment, in 
 Matth. s. 56. The latter justly remarks in the title to the first chspter : non minus die 
 {Jesus) utferuntdoctoruniJUdaicoruindeMessid senlenlice, patrem habet spintum dimnum, 
 matrem virginem. ■ ' • ■ .\ ' 1 i 
 
 2 Jamblich. vita Pythagors, cap. 2, ed. Kiessling. 
 
 •' Adv. Jovin. I, 26. Diog. Laert., 3, i, 2. 
 
 * Glaubwiirdigkeit, s, 64. 
 
 » S^^^^-tl'o.-'^^^ia^'^^o, (Sororls Platonis filius, Hieron.) S' 4. rv\^«7/'»^o^^''V 
 
 tpAofflKpa)', <pafflv,'A9-/ivi[mv'^v\iyos, K. T.\. r 
 
 ' Neander, L. J. Ch. s. 10. 
 
■142 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 29. 
 
 tlie heathen world prove nothing with respect to the isolated Jews ; and that 
 the idea of sons of the gods, belonging -to polytheism, could not have exerted 
 an influence on the rigidly monotheistic notion of the Messiah. At all events 
 such an inference must not be too hastily drawn from the expression " sons 
 of God," found likewise among the Jews, which as applied in the Old Testa- 
 ment to magistrates, (Ps. Ixxxii. 6, or to theocratic kings, 2 Sam. vii. 14, 
 Ps. ii. 7,) indicates only a theocratic, and not a physical or metaphysical 
 relation. Still less is importance to be attached to the language of flattery 
 used by a Roman, in Josephus, who calls beautiful children of the Jewish 
 princes children of God.^ It was, however, a notion among the Jews, as was 
 remarked in a former section, that the Holy Spirit co-operated in the concep- 
 tion of pious individuals ; moreover, tliat God's choicest instruments were 
 conceived by divine assistance of parents, who could not have had a child 
 according to the natural course of things. And if, according to the believed 
 representation, the extinct capability on both sides was renewed by divine 
 intervention (Rom. iv. 19), it was only one step further to the belief that in 
 the case of the conception of the most distinguished of all God's agents, the 
 Messiah, the total absence of participation on the one side was compensated 
 by a more complete superadded capability on the other. The latter is 
 scarcely a degree more marvellous than the former. And thus must it have 
 appeared to the author of Luke i., since he dissipates Mary's doubts by the 
 same reply with which Jehovah repelled Sara's incredulity.^ Neither the 
 Jewish reverence for marriage, nor the prevalent representation of the Messiah 
 as a human being, could prevent the advance to this climax j to which, on tlie 
 other hand, the ascetic estimation of celibacy, and the idea, derived from 
 Daniel, of the Christ as a superhuman being, contributed. But decided 
 impulse to the development of the representations embodied in our histories 
 of the birth, consisted partly in the title, Son of God, at one time usually given 
 to the Messiah. For it is the nature of such originally figurative expressions, 
 after a while to come to be interpreted according to their more precise and 
 literal signification ; and it was a daily occurrence, especially among the later 
 Jews, to attach a sensible signification to that which originally had merely a 
 spiritual or figurative meaning. This natural disposition to understand the 
 Messianic title Son of God more and more literally, was fostered by the 
 expression in the Psalms (ii. 7), interpreted of the Messiah : Thou art my 
 Son; this day have I begotten thee : words which can scarcely fail to suggest a 
 physical relation ; it was also nurtured by the prophecy of Isaiah respecting 
 the virgin who should be with child, which it appears was applied to the 
 Messiah ; as were so many other prophecies of which the immediate significa- 
 tion had become obscure. This application may be seen in the Greek word 
 chosen by the Septuagint, wapOivos, a pure unspotted virgin, whereas by 
 Aquila and other Greek translators the word vcavts is used.i" Thus did the 
 notions of a son of God and a son of a virgin complete one another, till at last 
 the divine agency was substituted for human paternal participation. Wet- 
 stein indeed affirms that no Jew ever applied the prophecy of Isaiah to the 
 Messiah ; and it was with extreme labour that Schoettgen collected traces of 
 the notion that the Messiah should be the son of a virgin from the Rabbinical 
 writings. This however, considering the paucity of records of the Messianic 
 ideas of that age,ii proves nothing in opposition to the presumption that a 
 
 ^ Antiq. 15. 2. 6. 
 
 3 Gen. xviii., 14 Sept. _____ Luke i. 37. 
 
 jiA] idwarijaeL irapi, T$ deif^fm ; Sn ovk dSuyaTijo-ei irapa t^ BeQ vav pTJfm. 
 
 •» De Wette, Exeg. Handb. i, i, s. 17. 
 
 " They are to be found however in the more modern Rabbins, s. Matthsei, Religionsgl. 
 der Apostel 2, a. s. 555 ff. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS — ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 143 
 
 notion then prevailed, of which we have the groundwork in the Old Testament, 
 and an inference hardly to be mistaken in the New. 
 
 One objection yet remains, which I can no longer designate as peculiar to 
 Olshausen, since other theologians have shown themselves solicitous of shar- 
 ing the fame. The objection is, that the mythical interpretation of the gospel 
 narrative is especially dangerous, it being only too well fitted to engender, 
 obscurely indeed, profane and blasphemous notions concerning the origin of 
 Jesus; since it cannot fail to favour an opinion destructive of the belief in a 
 Redeemer, namely, that Jesus came into being through unholy means ; since, 
 in fact, at the time of her pregnancy Mary was not married.i^ In Olshausen's 
 first edition of his work, he adds that he willingly allows that these interpreters 
 know not what they do : it is therefore but just to give him the advantage of 
 the same concession, since he certainly appears not to know what mvthical 
 interpretation means. How otherwise would he say, that the mythical inter- 
 pretation is fitted only to favour a blasphemous opinion ; therefore that all who 
 understand the narrative mythically, are disposed to commit the absurdity 
 with which Origen reproaches the Jewish calumniators ; the retaining one 
 solitary incident, namely, that Mary was not married, whilst the remainder of 
 the narrative is held to be unhistorical ; a particular incident which evidently 
 serves only as a support to the other, that Jesus was conceived without human 
 paternal participation, and with it, therefore, stands or falls. No one among 
 the interpreters who, in this nafrative, recognise a mythus, in the full signifi- 
 cation of that term, has been thus blind and inconsequent ; all have supposed 
 a legitimate marriage between Joseph and Mary ; and Olshausen merely 
 paints the mythical mode of interpretation in caricature, in order the more 
 easily to set it aside ; for he confesses that in relation to this portion of the 
 Gospel in particular, it has much that is dazzling. 
 
 § 30- 
 
 RELATION OF JOSEPH TO MARY — BROTHERS OF JESUS. 
 
 Our Gospels, in the true spirit of the ancient legend, find it unbecoming to 
 allow the mother of Jesus, so long as she bore the heavenly germ, to be ap- 
 proached or profaned by an earthly husband. Consequently Luke (ii. 5) 
 represents the connexion between Joseph and Mary, prior to the birth of 
 Jesus, as a betrothment merely. And, as it is stated respecting the father of 
 Plato, after his wife had become pregnant by Apollo : SOev Kadapav ya/xou 
 <l)vXd^ai £0)9 TTJs dTTOKviJo-coDS,^ so likewise it is remarked of Joseph in Matthew 
 (i. 25) : Kal ovK iyivaia-Kev avrrjv {rriv yvvaiKa. avTOv) lo)S ov ertKt Tov viou avrrj^ 
 Tov TTparoTOKov. In each of these kindred passages the Greek word ecus (/z//) 
 must evidently receive the same interpretation. Now in the first quotation 
 the meaning is incontestably this :^that till the time of Plato's birth his father 
 abstained from intercourse with his wife, but subsequently assumed his con- 
 jugal rights, since we hear of Plato's brothers. In reference, therefore, to the 
 parents of Jesus, the Iws cannot have a different signification ; in each case it 
 indicates precisely the same limitation. So again the expression TrpuToroKos 
 (firstborn) used in reference to Jesus in both the Gospels (Matt. i. 25, Luke 
 ii. 7) supposes that Mary had other children, for as Lucian says : el /xev ■KpSiro's, 
 ov fiovos. £1 Se /xovo?, ov TrpCtroi.^ Even in the same Gospels (Matt. xiii. 55, 
 
 " Bibl. Comm. i, s. 47. Also Daub. 2 a, s. 3" f; Theile, § 14- Neander, s. 9. 
 ' Diog. Laert. a. a. O. See Origenes c. Cels. i, 37. 
 2 Demonax, 29. 
 
144 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 30. 
 
 Luke viii. 19) mention is made of a8eX.<j>o'vi 'Irjvov {the brothers of Jesus), In 
 the words of Fritzsche : Lubentissime post Jesu natales Mariam concessit Mat- 
 thceus (Luke does the %2xa€),uxorem Josepho, in hoc uno occupatus, ne quisante 
 Jesu primordia inutua venere usos suspicaretur. But this did not continue to 
 satisfy the orthodox ; as the veneration for Mary rose even higher, she who had 
 once become fruitful by divine a,gency was not subsequently to be profaned by 
 the common relations of life.' The opinion that Mary after the birth of Jesus 
 became the wife of Joseph, was early ranked among the heresies,* and the 
 orthodox Fathers sought every means to escape from it and to combat it. 
 They contended that according to thei exegetical interpretation of lus oS, it 
 sometimes affirmed or denied a thing, not merely up to a certain limit, but be*- 
 yond that limitation and for ever; and that the words of Matthew ovk e'yivw- 
 <TKf.v avTr]v e(i)s ov ircKi k. t. A. excluded a matrimonial connexion between 
 Joseph and Mary for all time.°. In like manner it was asserted of the term irpmro- 
 TOKos, that it did iiot necessarily irjclude the subsequent birth of other children, 
 but that it merely excluded any previous birth.^ But in order to banish the 
 thought of a matrimonial connexion between Mary and Joseph, not only gram- 
 matically but physiologically, they represented Joseph as a very old man, under 
 whom Mary was placed for control and protection only ; and the brothers, of 
 Jesus mentioned in the New Testament they regarded as the children of 
 Joseph by a former marriage.^ But this was not all ; soon it was insisted not 
 only that Mary never became the wife of Joseph, but that in giving birth to 
 Jesus she did not lose her virginity.^ But even the coiiservation of , Mary's 
 virginity did not long, continue to satisfy: perpetual virginity was likewise 
 required on the part of Joseph. It was not enpugh that, he had no connexion 
 with Mary ; it was also necessary that his entire life should, be one of celibacy. 
 Accordingly, though Epiphanius allows that Joseph had sons by. 3. former 
 marriage, Jerome rejects the supposition as an impious and audacious inven- 
 tion ; and from that time the brothers of Jesus were degraded to the rank of 
 cousins.^ 
 
 Some modern theologians agree with the Fathers of the Church in maintain- 
 ing that no matrimonial connexion subsisted at any time between Joseph and 
 Mary, and believe themselves able to explain the gospel expressions which 
 appear to assert the contrary. In reference to the term firstborn, Qls- 
 hausen contends that it signifies ati only son: no less than the eldest of 
 several. Paulus allows that here he is right, and Clemen '" aind Fritzsche seek 
 in vain to demonstrate the impossibility of this signification. For when it is 
 said in Ex. xiii. 2, CJ.ri^"?! "1^3 '133-73 'h'^'^'p. (irpuTOTQKov wpoToyeves LXX.) 
 it was not merely a firstborn followed by others subsequeittly born, who was 
 sanctified to Jehovah, but the fruit of the body of that motheir of whom no 
 
 ' S. Origenes in Matthaeum, 0pp. ed. de la Rue, Vol. 3. s. 463. 
 
 ' The Arian Eunomius according to Photius tauglit riv 'luo-r)0 /ieri tV &<l>pa(n-ov 
 Kvo^poplav avvdirTeadai tj irapSivtf. This was also; according to Epiphanius, the doctrine of 
 those called by him Dimaerites and Antidicomarianites, and in the time of Jerome, of Heir 
 vidius and his followers. Compare on thi? point the Samtnlung von Suicer,. ira ThesfiuXu^ 
 ii., s. V. Maptd, fol. 365 f. ' ' ' ' ' ' 1 
 
 ' Comp. Hieron. adv. Helv. 6, 7, Theophylact and Suidas in Suicer, I, s. v. ?ws, fol. 
 1294 f. 
 
 ' Hieron. *. d. St. j 1 >. ! 
 
 ? See Orig. in Matth. Tom, 10, 17; Epiphan. haeres. 78, 7; Historia. Joseph!, c. ,2^ 
 Protev. Jac. 9. 18. ' 
 
 ' Chrysostomus, hom. 142, in Suicer, s. v. Mapta, most repulsively described in the Protev. 
 Jac. xix. and xx. 
 
 9 Hieron. ad Matth. 12, und advers. Helvid. 19. 
 
 '" Die Briider Jesu. In Winer's Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliche Theoldgie, i, 3. s. 364 f. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS— ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. I4S 
 
 Other child had previously been born. Therefore the term ttpoitotokos must 
 of necessity bear also this signification. Truly however we must confess 
 with Winer 11 and others, on the other side, that if a narrator who was ac- 
 quainted with the whole sequel of the history used that expression, we should 
 be tempted to understand it in its primitive sense ; since had the author in- 
 tended to excludp other children, he would rather have employed the word 
 fi.ovoyevri's, or would have connected it with TrpmroTOKos. If this be not quite 
 decisive, the reasoning of Fritzsche in reference to the cois ov, k. t. X., is more 
 convincing. He rejects the citations adduced in support of the interpretation 
 of the Fathers of the Church, proving that this expression according to its 
 primitive signification affirms only to a given limit, and beyond that limit sup- 
 poses the logical opposite of the affirmation to take place ; a signification 
 which it loses only when the context shows clearly that the opposite is impos- 
 sible in the nature of things.^** For example, when it is said ovk iyivwa-Kev 
 avn^v, €«)? ov dwidavev, it is self-evident that the negation, during the time 
 elapsed till death — cannot be transformed after death into an affirmation ; 
 but when it is said, as in Matthew, ovk i. d. eco^ ov ^tck^v, the giving birth to 
 the divine fruit opposes no impossibility to the establishment of the conjugal 
 relations ; on the contrary it renders it possible, /.e. suitable ^^ for them now 
 to take place. 
 
 Olshausen, impelled by the same doctrinal motives which influenced the 
 Fathers, is led in this instance to contradict both the evidence of grammar 
 and of logic. He thinks that Joseph, without wishing to impair the sanctity 
 of marriage, must have concluded after the experiences he had had (?) that 
 his marriage with Mary had another object than the production of children ; 
 besides it was but natural (?) in the last descendant of the house of David, 
 and of that particular branch from which the Messiah should come forth, to 
 terminate her race in this last and eternal offshoot. 
 
 A curious ladder may be formed of these different beliefs and superstitions 
 in relation to the connexion between Mary and Joseph. 
 
 1. Contemporaries of Jesus and composers of the genealogies : Joseph and 
 Mary man and wife — Jesus the offspring of their marriage. 
 
 2. The age and authors of our histories of the birth of Jesus : Mary and 
 Joseph betrothed only ; Joseph having no participation in the conception of 
 the child, and previous to his birth no conjugal connexion with Mary. 
 
 3. Olshausen and others : subsequent to the birth of Jesus, Joseph, though 
 then the husband of Mary, relinquishes his matrimonial rights. 
 
 4. Epiphanius, Protevangelium Jacobi and others : Joseph a decrepit old 
 man, no longer to be thought of as a husband : the children attributed to him 
 are of a former marriage. . More especially it is not as a bride and wife that 
 he receives Mary ; he takes her merely under his guardianship. 
 
 5. Protevang., Chrysostom and others : Mary's virginity was not only not 
 destroyed by any subsequent births of children by Joseph, it was not in the 
 slightest degree impaired by the birth of Jesus. . . . 
 
 6. Jerome ; not Mary only but Joseph also observed an absolute virgmity, 
 and the pretended brothers of Jesus were not his sons but merely cousins to 
 Jesus. 
 
 " Biblisches Realworterbuch, i Bd. s. 664, Antn. De Wette, z. d. St. Neander L. J. 
 Ch.. s. 34. 
 
 " Comment, in Matth. s. 53 ff., vgl. auch s. 835. , ,• • rf ^f Mc in 
 
 " Olshausen is exceedingly unhappy in the example chosen by him m support ot his in- 
 terpretation of go,, oB. For when it is said, rve ^aUedtillmidmghtbutno '''f f^'"'' ?^;f '°^ 
 this by no means implies that after midnight some one did come but it does ™Ply «at ^ '" 
 midnight we waited no longer ; so that here the expression till retains its signification of 
 exclusion. „ 
 
146 PART I. CHAPTER III. § 30. 
 
 The opinion that the a8£A.<^ot (brothers) and a.Se\tf><u 'Ii/o-ov (sisters of Jesus) 
 mentioned in the New Testament, were merely half brothers or indeed cousins, 
 appears in its origin, as shown above, together with the notion that no matri- 
 monial connexion ever subsisted between Joseph and Mary, as the mere 
 invention of superstition, a circumstance highly prejudicial to such an opinion. 
 It is however no less true that purely exegetical grounds exist, in virtue of 
 which theologians who were free from prejudice have decided, that the opinion 
 that Jesus actually had brothers is untenable. 1* Had we merely the following 
 passages — Matt. xiii. 55, Mark vi. 3, where the people of Nazareth, astonished 
 at the wisdom of their countryman, in order to mark his well known origin, 
 immediately after having spoken of t^ktwv (the carpenter) his father, and his 
 mother Mary, mention by name his dSsXc^oiis (brothers) James, Joses, Simon, 
 and Judas, together with his sisters whose names are not given ^^ ; again Matt, 
 xii. 46, Luke viii. 19, when his mother and his brethren come to Jesus ; John 
 ii. 12, where Jesus journeys with his mother and his brethren to Capernaum ; 
 Acts i. 14, where they are mentioned in immediate connexion with his mother 
 — if we had these passages only, we could not for a moment hesitate to recog- 
 nize here real brothers of Jesus at least on the mother's side, children of Joseph 
 and Mary ; not only on account of the proper signification of the word d.8eX<f>bi, 
 but also in consequence of its continual conjunction with Mary and Joseph. 
 Even the passages — John vii. 5, in which it is remarked that his brethren did 
 not believe on Jesus, and Mark iii. 21, compared with 31, where, according to 
 the most probable explanation, the brothers of Jesus with his mother went out 
 to lay hold of him as one beside himself — furnish no adequate grounds for 
 relinquishing the proper signification of dS£X<^os. Many theologians have 
 interpreted aSeXcl>ov^ 'Irja-ov in the last cited passage half brothers, sons of Joseph 
 by a former marriage, alleging that the real brothers of Jesus must have be- 
 lieved on him, but this is a mere assumption. The difficulty seems greater 
 when we read in John xix. 26 f. that Jesus, on the cross, enjoined John to be 
 a son to his mother ; an injunction it is not easy to regard as suitable under 
 the supposition that Mary had other children, except indeed these were half- 
 brothers and unfriendly to Jesus. Nevertheless we can imagine the existence 
 both of external circumstances and of individual feelings which might have 
 influenced Jesus to confide his mother to John rather than to his brothers. 
 That these brothers appeared in company with his apostles after the ascension 
 (Acts i. 14) is no proof that they must have believed on Jesus at the time of 
 his death. 
 
 The real perplexity in the matter, however, originates in this : that besides 
 the James and Joses spoken of as the brothers of Jesus, two men of the same 
 name are mentioned as the sons of another Mary (Mark xv, 4<3i, 47, xvi. i. Matt. 
 xxvii. 56), without doubt that Mary who is designated, John xix. 25, as the 
 sister of the mother of Jesus, and the wife of Cleophas ; so that we have a 
 James and a Joses not only among the children of Mary the mother of Jesus, 
 but again among her sister's children. We meet with several others among 
 those immediately connected with Jesus, whose names are identical. In the 
 lists of the apostles (Matt. x. 2 ff., Luke vi. 14 fF.) we have two more of the 
 name of James : that is four, the brother and cousin of Jesus included ; two 
 more of the name of Judas : that is three, the brother of Jesus included ; two 
 of the name of Simon, also making three with the brother of Jesus of the 
 
 •* On this subject compare in particular Clemen, die Briider Jesu, in Winer's Zeitschrift 
 fiir wiss. Theol. I, 3, s. 329 ff, ; Paulus, Exeg. Handbuch, i Bd. s. 557 ff. ; Fritzsche, a. a. 
 
 0. s. 480 fF. ; Winer, bil)l. Realworterbuch, in den A. A. ; Jesus, Jacobus, Apostel. 
 
 '' See the different names assigned them in the legend in Thilo, Codex apocryphus N.T., 
 
 1, s. 360 note. 
 
CONCEPTION OF JESUS— ITS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER. 147 
 
 same name. The question naturally arises, whether the same individual is not 
 here taken as distinct persons ? The suspicion is almost unavoidable in refer- 
 ence to James. As James the son of Alpheus is, in the list of the apostles, 
 introduced after the son of Zebedee, as the second, perhaps the younger ; and 
 as James the cousin of Jesus is called p fxiKpbi (" the less ") Mark xv. 40 ; and 
 since by comparing John xix. 25, we find that the latter is called the son of 
 Cleophas, it is possible that the name KXcoTras (Cleophas) given to the hus- 
 band of Mary's sister, and the name 'A\<^aios (Alpheus) given to the father of 
 the apostle, may be only different forms of the Hebrew *S7n. Thus would 
 the second James enumerated among the apostles and the cousin of Jesus of 
 that name be identical, and there would remain besides him only the son of 
 Zebedee and the brother of Jesus. Now in the Acts (xv. 13) a James ap- 
 pears who takes a prominent part in the so-called apostolic council, and as, ac- 
 cording to Acts xii. 2, the son of Zebedee had previously been put to death, and 
 as in the foregoing portion of the book of the Acts no mention is made of any 
 other James besides the son of Alpheus (i. 13), so this James, of whom (Acts 
 xv. 13) no more precise description is given, can be no other than the son of 
 Alpheus. But Paul speaks of a James (Gal. i. 19) ^Ae Lord's brother, whom 
 he saw at Jerusalem, and it is doubtless he of whom he speaks in connexion 
 with Cephas and John as the a-rvKoi (pillars) of the church — for this is pre- 
 cisely in character with the (Apostle) James as he appeared at the apostolic 
 council — so that this James may be considered as identical with the Lord's 
 brother, and the rather as the expression Irepov Se tuIi' airotrroXuv ovk elSov, ei 
 /t^ 'laKojySov Tov aSeXc^ov rov Kvpiov {but other of the apostles saw I none, save 
 James the Lord's brother. Gal. i. 19), makes it appear as if the Lord's brother 
 were reckoned among the apostles ; with which also the ancient tradition which 
 represents James the Just, a brother of Jesus, as the first head of the church 
 at Jerusalem, agrees.*^ But admitting the James of the Acts to be identical 
 with the distinguished apostle of that name, then is he the son of Alpheus, 
 and not the son of Joseph ; consequently if he be at the same time dSeA.<^os 
 TOV Kuptou, then dSeA-^os cannot signify a brother. Now if Alpheus and Cleo- 
 phas are admitted to be the same individual, the husband of the sister of 
 Mary the mother of Jesus, it is obvious that d8e\<^os, used to denote the rela- 
 tionship of his son to Jesus, must be taken in the signification, cousin. If, 
 after this manner, James the Apostle the son of Alpheus be identified with the 
 cousin, and the cousin be identified with the brother of Jesus of the same name, 
 it is obvious that 'lov'Sa? 'la/cujSou in the catalogue of the Apostles in Luke (Luke 
 vi. 16, Actsi. 13), must be translated i^w/^'if of fames (son of Alpheus) ;^and this 
 Apostle Jude must be held as identical with the Jude dSeX^os 'Iria-ov, that is, 
 with the cousin of the Lord and son of Mary Cleophas (though the name of 
 Jude is never mentioned in connexion with this Mary). If the Epistle of Jude 
 in our canon be authentic, it is confirmatory of the above deduction, that the 
 author (verse i) designates himself as the aSi\^o<s'la.KoiPau {brother of Jatnes). 
 Some moreover have identified the Aposde Simon o ^»;Xu7^s or KomniTys 
 {Motes, or the Canaanite) with the Simon enumerated among the brothers of 
 Jesus (Mark vi. 3), and who according to a tradition of the church succeeded 
 James as head of the church at Jerusalem i7; so that Joses alone appears 
 without further designation or appellative. . 
 
 If, accordingly, those spoken of as (x8eX<^ol 'Iijo-oi; were merely cousins, and 
 three of these were apostles, it must excite surprise that not only m the Acts 
 (i. 14), after an enumeration of the apostles, the brothers of Jesus are separ- 
 
 >8 Euseb. H. E. 2, I. 
 17 Euseb. H.E. 3, 11. 
 
148 PART I. CHAPTER HI. § 3 1. 
 
 ately particularized, but that also (i Cor. ix. s) they appear to be a class dis- 
 tinct from the apostles. Perhaps, also, the passage Gal. i. 19 ought to be 
 understood as indicating that James, the Lord's brother, was not an apostle.^^ 
 If, therefore, the a8£X<^ot 'Irja-ov seem thus to be extruded from the number of 
 the apostles, it is yet more diflScult to regard them merely as the cousins of 
 Jesus, since they appear in so many places immediately associated with the 
 mother of Jesus, and in two or three passages only are two men bearing the 
 same names mentioned in connexion with the other Mary, who accordingly 
 would be their real mother. The Greek word aSeA^os may indeed signify, in 
 language which pretends not to precision, as well as the Hebrew f"*, a more 
 distant relative ; but as it is repeatedly used to express the relationship of these 
 persons to Jesus, and is in no instance replaced by wei/'ios — a word which is 
 not foreign to the New Testament language when the relationship of cousin is 
 to be denoted (Col. iv. 10), it cannot well be taken in any other than its proper 
 signification. Further, it need only be pointed out that the highest degree ot 
 uncertainty exists respecting not only the identity of the names Alpheus and 
 Cleophas, upon which the identity of James the cousin of Jesus and of the 
 Apostle James the Less rests, but also regardirig the translation of 'louSas 
 'IoK<oy8ou by the brother of James ; and likewise respecting the assumed iden- 
 tity of the author of the last Catholic Episde with the Apostle Jude. 
 
 Thus the web of this identification gives way at all points, and we are 
 forced back to the position whence we set out ; so that we have again real 
 brothers of Jesus, also two cousins distinct from these brothers, though bear- 
 ing the same names with two of them, besides some apostles of the same 
 names with both brothers and cousins. To find two pairs of sons of the same 
 names in a family is, indeed, not so uncommon fis to become a source of 
 objection. It is, however, remarkable that the same James who in the Epistle 
 to the Galatians is designated dSeX^os Kvpiov (the Lord's brother), must un- 
 questionably, according to the Acts of the Apostles, be regarded as the son of 
 Alpheus ; which he could not be if this expression signified a brother. So 
 that there is perplexity on every side, which can be solved only (and then, 
 indeed, but negatively and without historical result) by admitting the existence 
 of obscurity and error on this point in the New Testament writers, and even 
 in the very earliest Christian traditions ; error which, in matters of involved 
 relationships and family names, is far more easily fallen into than avoided.*^ 
 
 We have consequently no ground for denying that the mother of Jesus bore 
 her husband several other children besides Jesus, younger, and perhaps also 
 older ; the latter, because the representation in the New Testament that Jesus 
 was the first-born may belong no less to the mythus than the representation 
 of the Fathers that he was an only son. 
 
 § 31- 
 
 VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH. 
 
 The angel who announced to Mary her own approaching pregnancy, at the 
 same time informed her (Luke i. 36) of that of her relative Elizabeth, with 
 whom it was already the sixth month. Hereupon Mary immediately set out 
 on a journey to her cousin, a visit which was attended by extraordinary occur- 
 rences ; for when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in 
 her womb for joy j she also became inspired, and in her exultation poured 
 
 '8 Fritzsche, Coram, in Matth. p. 482. , 
 " Theile, Biographie Jesu, § 18. 
 
VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH. 1 49 
 
 forth an address to Mary as the future mother of the Messiah, to which Mary 
 responded by a hymn of praise (Luke i. 39-56). 
 
 The rationalistic interpreter believes it to be an easy matter to give a 
 natural explanation of this narrative of the Gospel' of Luke. He is of 
 opinion ^ that the unknown individual who excited such pecuUar anticipations 
 in Mary, had at the same time acquainted her with the similar situation of her 
 cousin Elizabeth. This it was which impelled Mary the more strongly to con- 
 fer on the subject with her older relative. Arrived at her cousin's dwelling, 
 she first of all made known what had happened to herself ; but upon this the 
 narrator is silent, not wishing to repeat what he had just before described. 
 And here the Rationalist not only supposes the address of Elizabeth to have 
 been preceded by some communication from Mary, but imagines Mary to 
 have related her history piecemeal, so as to allow Elizabeth to throw in sen- 
 tences during the intervals. The excitement of Elizabeth — such is the con- 
 tinuation of the rationalistic explanation — communicated itself, according to 
 natural laws, to the child, who, as is usual with an embryo of six months, 
 made a movement, which was first regarded by the mother as significant, and 
 as the consequence of the salutation, after Mary's farther communications. 
 Just as natural does it appear to the Rationalist that Mary should have given 
 utterance to her Messianic expectations, confirmed as they were by Elizabeth, 
 in a kind of psalmodic recitative, composed of reminiscences borrowed from 
 various parts of the Old Testament. 
 
 But there is much in this explanation which positively contradicts the text. 
 In the first place, that Elizabeth should have learned the heavenly message 
 imparted to Mary from Mary herself. There is no trace in the narrative 
 either of any communication preceding Elizabeth's address, or of interruptions 
 occasioned by farther explanations on the part of Mary. On the contrary, as 
 it is a supernatural revelation which acquaints Mary with the pregnancy of 
 Elizabeth, so also it is to a revelation that Elizabeth's immediate recognition 
 of Mary, as the chosen mother of the Messiah, is attributed.^ As little will 
 the other feature of this narrative — that the entrance of the mother of the 
 Messiah occasioned a responsive movement in his mother's womb on the part 
 of his forerunner — bear a natural explanation. In modem times, indeed, even 
 orthodox interpreters have inclined to this explanation, but with the modifi- 
 cation, that Elizabeth in the first place received a revelation, in which how- 
 ever the child, owing to the mother's excitement, a matter to be physiologi- 
 cally explained, likewise took part.^ But the record does not represent the 
 thing as if the excitement of the mother were the determining cause of the 
 movement of the child; on the contrary (v. 41), the emotion of the mother 
 follows the movement of the child, and Elizabeth's own account states, that 
 it was the salutation of Mary (v. 44), not indeed from its particular significa- 
 tion, but merely as the voice of the mother of the Messiah, which produced 
 the movement of the unborn babe : undeniably assuming something super- 
 natural. And indeed the supranaturalistic view of this miracle is not free 
 from objection, even on its own ground ; and hence the anxiety of the above- 
 mentioned modern orthodox interpreters to evade it. It may be possible to 
 conceive the human mind immediately acted upon by the divine mmd, to 
 which it is related, but how solve the difficulty of an immediate comniunica- 
 tion of the divine mind to an unintelligent embryo? And if we inquire the 
 object of so strange a miracle, none which is worthy presents itself. Should 
 
 ^ Paulus, exeg. Handb. i. a, s. 120 ff. 
 
 2 S. Olshausen und de Wetle, z. d. St. , ^ „ a- ,,<; 
 
 » Hess, Geschichte Jesu, I, s. 26 ; Olshausen, bibl. Comm. z. d. St. ; Hoffmann, s. 226 ; 
 Lange, s. 76 ff. 
 
ISO PART I. CHAPTER III. § 3 1. 
 
 it be referred to the necessity that the Baptist should receive the earliest pos- 
 sible intimation of the work to which he was destined ; still we know not how 
 such an impression could have been made upon an embryo. Should the pur- 
 pose be supposed to centre in the other individuals, in Mary or Elizabeth ; 
 they had been the recipients of far higher revelations, and were consequently 
 already possessed of an adequate measure of insight and faith. 
 
 No fewer difficulties oppose the rationalistic than the supranaturalistic ex- 
 planation of the hymn pronounced by Mary. For though it is not, like the 
 Canticle of Zacharias (v. 67) and the address of Elizabeth (v. 41), introduced 
 by the formula hrXi^ardri TvevixaToi ayiov, she was filled with the Holy Ghost, 
 still the similarity of these utterances is so great, that the omission cannot be 
 adduced as a proof that the narrator did not intend to represent this, equally 
 with the other two, as the operation of the irvivfiM (spirit). But apart from 
 the intention of the narrator, can it be thought natural that two friends visiting 
 one another should, even in the midst of the raost extraordinary occurrences, 
 break forth into long hymns, and that their conversation should entirely lose 
 the character of dialogue, the natural form on such occasions ? By a super- 
 natural influence alone could the minds of the two friends be attuned to a 
 state of elevation, so foreign to their every-day life. But if, indeed, Mary's 
 hymn is to be understood as the work of the Holy .Spirit, it is surprising that 
 a speech emanating immediately from the divine source of inspiration should 
 not be more striking for its originality, but should be so interlarded with remi- 
 niscences from the Old Testament, borrowed from the song of praise spoken 
 by the mother of Samuel (i Sam. ii.) under analogous circumstances.* Ac- 
 cordingly we must admit that the compilation of this hymn, consisting of 
 recollections from the Old Testament, was put together in a natural way ; but 
 allowing its composition to have been perfectly natural, it cannot be ascribed 
 to the artless Mary, but to him who poetically wrought out the tradition in 
 circulation respecting the scene in question. 
 
 Since then we find all the principal incidents of this visit inconceivable 
 according to the supernatural interpretation ; also that they will not bear a 
 natural explanation ; we are led to seek a mythical exposition of this as well 
 as the preceding portions of the gospel history. This path has already been 
 entered upon by others. The view of this narrative given by the anonymous 
 E. F. in Henke's Magazine ^ is, that it does not pourtray events as they actu- 
 ally did occur, but as they might have occurred ; that much which the sequel 
 taught of the destiny of their sons was carried back into the speeches of these 
 women, which were also enriched by other features gleaned from tradition ; 
 that a true fact however lies at the bottom, namely an actual visit of Mary to 
 Elizabeth, a joyous conversation, and the expression of gratitude to God ; all 
 which might have happened solely in virtue of the high importance attached 
 by Orientals to the joys of maternity, even though the two mothers had been 
 at that time ignorant of the destination of their children. This author. is of 
 opinion that Mary, when pondering over at a later period the remarkable life 
 of her son, may often have related the happy meeting with her cousin and 
 
 * Compare Luke i. 47 with i Sam. ii. i. 
 
 i. 49 ii. 2. 
 
 i- SI ii. 3. 4- 
 
 i. 52 ii. 8. 
 
 i- 53 ii. S- 
 
 Particularly Luke i. 48 with I Sam. i. 1 1. 
 Compare Luke i. 50 Deut. vii. 9. 
 
 i. 52 Ecclesiasticus X. 14. 
 
 1. 54 Ps. xcviii. 3. 
 
 ' 5 Band, I. StUck, s. 161. f. 
 
VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH. I51 
 
 their mutual expressions of thankfulness to God, and that thus the history 
 gained currency. Horst also, who has a just conception of the fictitious 
 nature of this section in Luke, and ably refutes the natural mode of explana- 
 tion, yet himself slides unawares half-way back into it. He thinks it not im- 
 probable that Mary during her pregnancy, which was in many respects a 
 painful one, should have visited her older and more experienced cousin, and 
 that Elizabeth should during this visit have felt the first movement of her 
 child : an occurrence which as it was afterwards regarded as ominous, was 
 preserved by the oral tradition.® 
 
 These are farther examples of the uncritical proceeding which pretends to 
 disengage the mythical and poetical from the narrative, by plucking away a 
 few twigs and blossoms of that growth, whilst it leaves the very root of the 
 mythus undisturbed as purely historical. In our narrative the principal 
 mythical feature (the remainder forms only its adjuncts) is precisely that, 
 which the above-mentioned authors, in their pretended mythical explanations, 
 retain as historical : namely, the visit of Mary to the pregnant Elizabeth. 
 For, as we have already seen, the main tendency of the first chapter of Luke 
 is to magnify Jesus by connecting the Baptist with him from the earliest pos- 
 sible point in a relation of inferiority. Now this object could not be better 
 attained than by bringing about a meeting, not in the first instance of the 
 sons, but of the mothers in reference to their sons, during their pregnancy, at 
 which meeting some occurrence which should prefigure the future relative 
 positions of these two men should take place. Now the more apparent the 
 existence of a dogmatical motive as the origin of this visit, the less probability 
 is there that it had an historical foundation. With this principal feature the 
 other details are connected in the following order : — The visit of the two 
 women must be represented as possible and probable by the feature of family 
 relationship between Mary and Elizabeth (v. 36), which would also give a 
 greater suitability to the subsequent connexion of the sons. Further, a visit, 
 so full of import, made precisely at that time, must have taken place by special 
 divine appointment ; therefore it is an angel who refers Mary to her cousin. 
 At the visit the subservient position of the Baptist to Jesus is to be particu- 
 larly exhibited ; — this could have been effected by the mother, as indeed it 
 is, in her address to Mary, but it were better if possible that the future Baptist 
 himself should give a sign. The mutual relation of Esau and Jacob liad been 
 prefigured by their struggles and position in their mother's womb (Gen. xxv. 
 22 ff.). But, without too violent an offence against the laws of probability, 
 an ominous movement would not be attributed to the child prior to that period 
 of her pregnancy at which the motion of the foetus is felt ; hence the necessity 
 that Elizabeth should be in the sixth month of her pregnancy when Mary, in 
 consequence of the communication of the angel, set out to visit her cousin (v. 
 36). Thus, as Schleiermacher remarks,'' the whole arrangement of times had 
 reference to the particular circumstance the author desired to contrive — the 
 joyous responsive movement of the child in his mother's womb at the moment 
 of Mary's entrance. To this end only must Mary's visit be delayed till after 
 the fifth month ; and the angel not appear to her before that period. 
 
 Thus not only does the visit of Mary to Elizabeth with all the attendant 
 circumstances disappear from the page of history, but the historical validity 
 of the further details— that John was only half a year older than Jesus ; that 
 the two mothers were related ; that an intimacy subsisted between the fami- 
 lies ;— cannot be affirmed on the testimony of Luke, unsupported by other 
 authorities : indeed, the contrary rather will be found substantiated in the 
 course of our critical investigations. 
 
 « In Henke's Museum, I, 4, s. 725- ' Ueber den Lukas, s. 23 f. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 BIRTH AND EARLIEST -EVENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 
 
 §32- 
 
 THE CENSUS. 
 
 With respect to the binh of Jesus, Matthew and Luke agree in representing 
 it as taking place at Bethlehem ; but whilst the latter enters into a minute 
 detail of all the attendant circumstances, the former merely mentions the 
 event as it were incidentally, referring to it once in an appended sentence as 
 the sequel to what had gone before (i. 25), and again as a presupposed occur- 
 rence (ii. i). The one Evangelist seems to assume that Bethlehem was the 
 habitual residence of the parents ; but according to the other they are led 
 thither by very particular circumstances. This point of difference between 
 the Evangelists however can only be discussed after we shall have collected 
 more data ; we will therefore leave it for the present, and turn our attention 
 to an error into which Luke, when compared with himself and with dates 
 otherwise ascertained, seems to have fallen. This is the statement, that the 
 census, decreed by Augustus at the time when Cyrenius (Quirinus) was gover- 
 nor of Syria, was the occasion of the journey of the parents of Jesus, who 
 usually resided at Nazareth, to Bethlehem where Jesus was born (Luke ii. 
 
 The iirst difficulty is that the airoypa<f)ri (namely, the inscription of the 
 name and amount of property in order to facilitate the taxation) commanded 
 by Augustus, is extended to a/i the world, Traxrav t^v oiKovfiivajv. This expres- 
 sion, in its common acceptation at that time, would denote the orl>is Roma- 
 nus. But ancient authors mention no such general census decreed by 
 Augustus ; they speak only of the assessment of single provinces decreed at 
 different times. Consequently, it was said Luke meant to indicate by oikov- 
 [x.on] merely the land of Judea, and not the Roman world according to its 
 ordinary signification. Examples' were forthwith collected in proof of the 
 possibility of such an interpretation, * but they in fact prove nothing. For 
 supposing it could not be shown that in all these citations from the Septua- 
 gint, Josephus, and the New Testament, the expression really does signify, 
 in the extravagant sense of these writers, the whole known world ; still in the 
 instance in question, where the subject is a decree of the Roman emperor, 
 wao-a 17 olKovfievrj must necessarily be understood of the regions which he 
 governed, and therefore of the orh's Romanus. This is the reason that 
 latterly the opposite side has been taken up, and it has been maintained, 
 upon the authority of Savigny, that in the time of Augustus a census of the 
 
 ' Olshausen, Paulus, Kuipbl. 
 
 .15= 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 153 
 
 whole empire was actually undertaken.^ This is positively affirmed by late 
 Christian writers » : but the statement is rendered suspicious by the absence 
 of all more ancient testimony*; and it is even contradicted by the fact, that 
 for a considerable lapse of time an equal assessment throughout the empire 
 was not effected. Finally, the very expressions of these writers show that 
 their testimony rests upon that of Luke.^ But, it is said, Augustus at all 
 events attempted an equal assessment of the empire by means of an univer- 
 sal census ; and he began the carrying out his project by an assessment of 
 individual provinces, but he left the further execution and completion to his 
 successors.^ Admit that the gospel term Soy/^a {decree) may be interpreted 
 as a niere design, or, as Hoffmann thinks, an undetermined project expressed 
 in an imperial decree ; still the fulfilment of this project in Judea at the time 
 of the birth of Jesus was impossible. 
 
 Matthew places the birth of Jesus shortly before the death of Herod the 
 Great, whom he represents (ii. 19) as dying during the abode of Jesus in 
 Egypt. Luke says the same indirectly, for when speaking of the announce- 
 ment of the birth of the Baptist, he refers it to the days of Herod the Great, 
 and he places the birth of Jesus precisely six months later ; so that according 
 to Luke, also, Jesus was born, if not, like John, previous to the death of 
 Herod I., shortly after that event. Now, after the death of Herod the 
 country of Judea fell to his son Archelaus (Matt. ii. 22), who, after a reign 
 of something less than ten years, was deposed and banished by Augustus,'' 
 at which time Judea was first constituted a Roman province, and began to 
 be ruled by Roman functionaries.^ Thus the Roman census in question must 
 have been made either under Herod the Great, or at the commencement of 
 the reign of Archelaus. This is in the highest degree improbable, for in those 
 countries which were not reduced z« formam provincice, but were governe'd by 
 regibus sociis, the taxes were levied by these princes, who paid a tribute to the 
 Romans ^ \ and this was the state of things in Judea prior to the deposition 
 of Archelaus. It has been the object of much research to make it appear 
 probable that Augustus decreed a census, as an extraordinary measure, in 
 Palestine under Herod. Attention has been directed to the circumstance 
 that the breviarium imperii, which Augustus left behind him, contained the 
 financial state of the whole empire, and it has been suggested that, in order 
 to ascertain the financial condition of Palestine, he caused a statement to be 
 prepared by Herod, i" Reference has been made first to the record of 
 Josephus, that on account of some disturbance of the relatipns between Herod 
 
 * Tholuck, s. 194 ff. Neander, s. 19. 
 
 ' Cassiodor. Variarum, 3, 52. Isidor. Orig. 5, 36. 
 
 * To refer here to the Monumentum Ancyranum, which is said to record a census of the 
 whole empire in the year of Rome 746 (Osiander, p. 95), is proof of the greatest carelessness. 
 For he who examines this inscription will find mention only of three assessments census 
 cimum Romanorum, which Suetonius designates census populi, and of whicli Dio Cassius 
 speaks, at least of one of them, as iwoypaipi] ruv ec tj 'IraMq, xaToiKoiPTav. See Ideler, 
 ChroDoI. 2, ». 339. 
 
 ° In the authoritative citations in Suidas are the words taken from Luke, aiini i) iiroypa(pii 
 Trpi^TT) iyhero. 
 
 ^ Hoffmann, s. 231. 
 
 ' Joseph. Antiq. 17, 13, 2. B.j. e, 7, 3. 
 
 ^ Antiq. 17, 13, 5. 18, i, I. B.j. 2, 8, I. 
 
 9 Paulus, exeg. Handb. I, a, s. 171. Winer, bibl. Realwbrterbuch. 
 
 ^"^ Tacit. Annal. I, II. Sueton. Octav. 191. But if in this document o^es puilicis con- 
 tinebantur : quantum civiurn sociorumque in armis ; quot classes, regna, provincue, tribula 
 aul veciigalia, et necessitates ac largitiones : the number of troops and the sum which the 
 Jewish prince had to furnish, might have been given without a Roman tax being levied in 
 their land. For Judea in particular Augustus had before him the subsequent census made 
 by Quirinus. 
 
IS4 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 32. 
 
 and Augustus, the latter threatened for the future to make him feel his subjec- 
 tion ^1 ; secondly, also to the oath of allegiance to Augustus which, according 
 to Josephus, the Jews were forced to take even during the lifetime of Herod.'^ 
 From which it is inferred that Augustus, since he had it in contemplation after 
 the death of Herod to restrict the power of his sons, was very likely to have 
 commanded a census in the last years of that prince.^^ But it seems more 
 probable that it took place shortly after the death of Herod, from the circum- 
 stance that Archelaus went to Rome concerning the matter of succession, and 
 that during his absence the Roman procurator Sabinus occupied Jerusalem, 
 and oppressed the Jews by every possible means.** 
 
 The Evangelist relieves us from a farther inquiry into this more or less 
 historical or arbitrary combination by adding, that this taxing was first made 
 when Cyrenius (Quirinus) was governor of Syria, ■^t/iovevovro^ tiJs ^vpias 
 KvpnrivCov ; for it is an authenticated point that the assessment of Quirinus did 
 not take place either under Herod or early in the reign of Archelaus, the 
 period at which, according to Luke, Jesus was born. Quirinus was not at 
 that time governor of Syria, a situation held during the last years of Herod by 
 Sentius Saturninus, and after him by Quintihus Varus ; and it was not till 
 long after the death of Herod that Quirinus was appointed governor of Syria. 
 That Quirinus undertook a census of Judea we know certainly from Josephus,^* 
 who, however, remarks that he was sent to execute this measure, tijs 'Ap^eXdov 
 Xmpa'i eis i-irapxiav ircpiypai^et'oTjs, or, viroreKovi Trpoo'i'e/u.Jjflewrijs rfj ^vpu>v *' ; 
 thus about ten years after the time at which, according to Matthew and Luke, 
 Jesus must have been born. 
 
 Yet commentators have supposed it possible to reconcile this apparently 
 undeniable contradiction between Luke and history. The most dauntless 
 explain the whole of the second verse as a gloss, which was early incorporated 
 into the text." Some change the reading of the verse; either of the nomen 
 proprium, by substituting the name of Saturninus or Quintilius,** according to 
 the example of TertuUian, who ascribed the census to the former '^ ; or of the 
 other words, by various additions and modifications. Paulus's alteration is 
 the most simple. He reads, instead of avT-r\, avrij, aiid concludes, from the 
 reasons stated above, that Augustus actually gave orders for a census during 
 the reign of Herod I., and that the order was so far.carried out as to occasion 
 the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem; iDut that Augustus being 
 afterwards conciliated, the measure was abandoned, and avrr] ^ diroypa(f}rj was 
 only carried into effect a considerable time later, by Quirinus. Trifling as this 
 alteration, which leaves the letters unchanged, may appear, in order to render 
 it admissible it must be supported by the context. The reverse, however, is 
 the fact. For if one sentence narrates a command issued by a prince, and 
 
 " 'Oti, ird\at xP'^/'^'o' "■in'^ <pC\if, mv iTnjKbif xp^o'f Tai, Joseph. Antiq. 16, 9, 3. But the 
 difference was adjusted long before the death of Herod. Antiq. 16, 10, 9. 
 
 '^ Joseph. Ant. 17, 2, 4. iravTbi toO 'louSniVoB ^epauiffavros Si SpKuv fi iiA)r evvorjaiu 
 'Kalaa.pl koI tois /SotrtWws irpiy/jiaiyt. That this oath, far from being a humiliating measure for 
 Herod, coincided with his interest, is proved by the zeal with which he punished the Pharisees 
 who refused to take it. 
 
 '* Tholuck, s. 192 f. But the insurrection which the iiroypa<f>ii after the depositions of 
 Archelaus actually occasioned — a fact which outweighs allTholuck's surmises — proves it tohave 
 been the first Roman measure of the kind in Judea. 
 
 " Antiq. 17, 9, 10, I ff. B. j. 2. 2. 2. His oppressions however had reference only to 
 the fortresses and the treasures of Herod. 
 
 " Antiq. 18, l,'l. 
 
 " Bell. jud. 2, 8, I. 9, I. Antiq. 17, 13, 5. 
 
 " Kuinol, Comm. in Luc. p. 320. 
 
 " Winer. 
 
 " Adv. Marcion. 4, 19. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 1 55 
 
 the very next sentence its execution, it is not probable that a spice of ten 
 years intervened. But chiefly, according to this view the Evangehst speaks, 
 verse i, of the decree of the emperor ; verse 2, of the census made ten years 
 later ; but verse 3, without any remark, again of a journey performed at the 
 time the command was issued ; which, in a rational narrative, is impossible. 
 Opposed to such arbitrary conjectures, and always to be ranked above them, 
 are the attempts to solve a difficulty by legitimate methods of interpretation. 
 Truly, however, to take irputTTj in this connexion for Trporipa, and ■^yefnovevovTO'; 
 K. not for a genitive absolute, but for a genitive governed by a comparative,, 
 and thus to understand an enrolment ie/ore that of Quirinus,^" is to do 
 violence to grammatical "construction ; and to insert trpo t^s after Trpwrrj *' is 
 is no less uncritical. As little is it to be admitted that some preliminary 
 measure, in which Quirinus was not employed, perhaps the already mentioned 
 oath of allegiance, took place during the lifetime of Herod, in reference to 
 the census subsequently made by Quirinus ; and that this preliminary step 
 and the census were afterwards comprised under the same name. In order in 
 some degree to account for this appellation, Quirinus is said to have been sent 
 into Judea, in Herod's time, as an extraordinary tax-commissioner ^^j but 
 this interpretation of the word -^ye/wvevovToi is rendered impossible by the 
 addition of the word Suptas, in combination with which the expression can 
 denote only the Prtzses Syria. 
 
 Thus at the time at which Jesus, according to Matt. ii. i, and Luke i. 5, 26, 
 was born, the census of which Luke ii. i f. speaks could not have taken place ; 
 so that if the former statements are correct, the latter must be false. But may 
 not the reverse be the fact, and Jesus have been born after the banishment 
 of Archelaus, and at the time of the census of Quirinus ? Apart from the 
 difficulties in which this hypothesis would involve us in relation to the chrono- 
 logy of the future life of Jesus, a Roman census, subsequent to the banishment 
 of Archelaus, would not have taken the parents of Jesus from Nazareth in 
 Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea. For Judea only, and what otherwise belonged 
 to the portion of Archelaus, became a Roman province and subjected to the 
 census. In Galilee Herod Antipas continued to reign as an allied prince, 
 and none of his subjects dwelling at Nazareth could have been called to 
 Bethlehem by the census. The Evangelist therefore, in order to get a census, 
 must have conceived the condition of things such as they were after the 
 deposition of Archelaus ; but in order to get a census extending to Galilee, he 
 must have imagined the kingdom to have continued undivided, as in the time 
 of Herod the Great. Thus he deals in manliest contradictions ; or rather he 
 has an exceedingly sorry acquaintance with the political relations of that 
 period ; for he extends the census not only to the whole of Palestine, but also 
 (which we must not forget) to the whole Roman world. 
 
 Still these chronological incongruities do not exhaust the difficulties which 
 beset this statement of Luke. His representation of the manner in which the 
 census was made is subject to objection. In the first place, it is said, the 
 taxing took Joseph to Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of 
 David, Sia to etvai airrov ef oikov icai irarpias AaySiS, and hkewise every one into 
 his own city, ek ttjv iSiav irokw, i.e. according to the context, to the place 
 whence his family had originally sprung. Now, that every individual should 
 be registered in his own city was required in all Jewish inscriptions, because 
 among the Jews the organization of families and tribes constituted the very 
 basis of the state. The Romans, on the contrary, were in the habit of takmg 
 
 ™ Storr, opusc. acad. 3, s. 126 f. Suskind, vermischte Aufsatze, s. 63. Tholuck,s. 182 f. 
 '' Michaelis, Anm. z. d. St. und Einl. in d. N.T. i, 71. 
 '* Miinter, Stern der Weisen. s. 88. 
 
15^ PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 33. 
 
 the census at the residences, and at the principal cities in the district. ^' They 
 conformed to the usages of the conquered countries only in so far as they did 
 not interfere with their own objects. In the present instance it would have 
 been directly contrary to their design, had they removed individuals — Joseph 
 for example — to a great distance, where the amount of their property was not 
 known, and their statement concerning it could not be checked.^* The view 
 of Schleiermacher is the more admissible, that the real occasiOTi which took 
 the parents to Bethlehem was a sacerdotal inscription, which the Evangelist 
 confounded with the better known census of Quirinus. But this concession 
 does not obviate the contradiction in this dubious statement of Luke. He 
 allows Mary to be inscribed with Joseph, but according to Jewish customs 
 inscriptions had relation to men only. Thus, at all events, it is an inaccuracy 
 to represent Mary as undertaking the journey, in order to be inscribed with 
 her betrothed in his own city. Or, if with Paulus we remove this inaccuracy 
 by a forced construction of the sentence, we can no longer perceive what 
 inducement could have instigated ■ Mary, in her particular situation, to make 
 so long a journey, since, unless we adopt the airy hypothesis of Olshausen 
 and others, that Mary was the heiress of property in Bethlehem, she had 
 nothing to do there. 
 
 The Evangelist, howeveij^new perfectly well what she had to do there ; 
 namely, to fulfil the prophe^ of Micah (v. i), by giving birth, in the city of 
 David, to the Messiah. Now as he set out with the supposition that the 
 habitual abode of the parents of Jesus was Nazareth, so he sought after a 
 lever which should set them in motion towards Bethlehem, at the time of the 
 birth of Jesus. Far and wide nothing presented itself but the celebrated 
 census ; he seized it the more unhesitatingly because the obscurity of his own 
 view of the historical relations of that time, veiled from him the many diffi- 
 culties connected with such a combination: If this be the true history of the 
 statement in Luke, we must agree with K. Ch. L. Schmidt when he says, that 
 to attempt to reconcile the statement of Luke concerning the a.Troypa(f>ij with 
 chronology, would be to do the narrator too much honour ; he wished to 
 place Mary in Bethlehem, and therefore times and circumstances were to 
 accommodate themselves to his pleasure.^^ 
 
 Thus we have here neither a fixed point for the date of the birth of Jesus, 
 nor an explanation of the occasion which led to his being born precisely at 
 Bethlehem. If then— it may justly be said— no other reason why Jesus 
 should have been born at Bethlehem can be adduced than that given by 
 Luke, we have absolutely no guarantee that Bethlehem was his birth-place. 
 
 § 33. 
 
 PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES OF' THE BIRTH OF JESUS. THE CIRCUMCISION. 
 
 The basis of the narrative, the arrival of Joseph and Mary as strangers in 
 Bethlehem on account of the census, being once chosen by Luke, the farther 
 details are consistently built upon it. In consequence of the influx of strangers 
 brought to Bethlehem by the census, there is no room for the travellers in the 
 inn, and they are compelled to put up with the accommodation of a stable 
 where Mary is forthwith delivered of her first-born. But the child, who upon 
 
 ** Paulus. Wetstein. 
 
 2* Credner. 
 
 ^ In Schmidt's Bibliothek fur Kritik und Exegese, 3, i. s. 124. See Kaiser, bibl. Theol. 
 I, s. 230; Ammon, Fortloildung, I, s. 196; Credner, Einleitung, in d. N.T. i, a. 155 ; I^e 
 Wette, exegel. Handbuch. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 157 
 
 earth comes into being in so humble an abode, is highly regarded in heaven. 
 A celestial messenger announces the birth of the Messiah to shepherds who 
 are guardmg their flocks in the fields by night, and directs them to the child 
 in the manger. A choir of the heavenly host singing hymns of praise next 
 appears to them, after which they seek and find the child. (Luke ii. 6-20.) 
 
 The apocryphal gospels and the traditions of the Fathers still further em- 
 bellished the birth of Jesus. According to the Protevangelium Jacobi} Joseph 
 conducts Mary on an ass to Bethlehem to be taxed. As they approach the 
 city she begins to make now mournful, now joyous gestures, and upon inquiry 
 explains that— (as once in Rebecca's womb the two hostile nations struggled, 
 Gen. XXV. 23)— she sees two people before her, the one weeping, the other 
 laughing : i.e. according to one explanation, the two portions of Israel, to one 
 of whom the advent of Jesus was set (Luke ii. 34) cis TrrZa-Lv, for the fall, to 
 the other eis avitrraa-Lv, for the rising again. According to another interpre- 
 tation, the two people were the Jews who should reject Jesus, and the heathens 
 who should accept him.^ Soon, however, whilst still without the city — as 
 appears from the context and the reading of several MSS.— Mary is seized 
 with the pains of child-bearing, and Joseph brings her into a cave situated by 
 the road side, where, veiled by a cloud of light, all nature pausing in celebra- 
 tion of the event, she brings her child into the wofld, and after her delivery is 
 found, by women called to her assistance, still a virgin.' The legend of the 
 birth of Jesus in a cave was known to Justin * and to Origen,' who, in order 
 to reconcile it with the account in Luke that he was laid in a manger, suppose 
 a manger situated within the cave. Many modern commentators agree with 
 them * ; whilst others prefer to consider the cave itself as 4>d.Tvri, in the sense 
 of foddering-stall.'' For the birth of Jesus in a cave, Justin appeals to the 
 prophecy in Isaiah xxviii. 16 : oCros (the righteous) oi/cjjo-a ei> v\j/riXw <nr-q\aua 
 TCTjoas icrxupas. In like manner, for the statement that on the third day the 
 child Jesus, when brought from the cave into the stable, was worshipped by 
 the oxen and the asses, the Historia de Nativitate Mariae^ etc. refers to 
 Isaiah i. 3 : cognovit bos possessorem suum, et asinus praesepe domini sui. In 
 several apocryphas, between the Magi and the women who assist at the birth, 
 the shepherds are forgotten ; but they are mentioned in the Evangelium 
 infantine arabicum,^ where it says, that when they arrived at the cave, and had 
 kindled a fire of rejoicing, the heavenly host appeared to them. 
 
 If we take the circumstances attending the birth of Jesus, narrated by Luke, 
 in a supran^turalistic sense, many difficulties occur. First, it may reasonably 
 be asked, to what end the angelic apparition ? The most obvious answer is, 
 to make known the birth of Jesus ; but so little did it make it known that, in 
 the neighbouring city of Jerusalem, it is the Magi who give the first informa- 
 tion of the new-born king of the Jews ; and in the future history of Jesus, no 
 trace of any such occurrence at his birth is to be found. Consequently, the 
 object of that extraordinary phenomenon was not to give a wide-spreading 
 intimation of the fact ; for if so, God failed in his object. Must we then 
 agree with Schleiermacher, that the aim was limited to an immediate opera- 
 
 • Chap. 17. Compare Historia denativ. Mariae et de infantia Servatoris, c. 13. 
 
 ^ Fabricius, im Codex Apocryph. N.T. i, s. 105, not. y. 
 
 ' Arabrosius and Jerome. See Gieseler, K. G. i, s. 516. 
 
 ' Dial. c. Trypli. 78. 
 
 ' C. Cels. I, 51. 
 
 ' Hess, Olshausen, Paulus. 
 
 ' Paulus. 
 
 " Chap. 14. 
 
 9 Chap. 4 in Thilo, s. 69. 
 
IS8 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 33. 
 
 tion upon the shepherds ? Then we must also suppose with him, that thef 
 shepherds, equally with Simeon, were filled with Messianic expectations, and 
 that God designed by this apparition to reward and confirm their pious belief. 
 The narrative however says nothing of this heavenly frame of mind, neither 
 does it mention any abiding effects produced upon these men. According to 
 the whole tenor of the representation, the apparition seems to have had 
 reference, not to the shepherds, but exclusively to the glorification and the 
 proclaiming of the birth of Jesus, as the Messiah. But as before observed, 
 the latter aim was not accomplished, and the former, by itself, like every 
 mere empty display, is an object unworthy of God. So that this circumstance 
 in itself presents no inconsiderable obstacle to the supranaturalistic conception 
 of the history. If, to the above considerations, we add those already stated 
 which oppose the belief in apparitions and the existence of angels in general, 
 it is easy to understand that with respect to this narrative also refuge has been 
 sought in a natural explanation. 
 
 The results of the first attempts at a natural explanation were certainly 
 sufficiently rude. Thus Eck regarded the angel as a messenger from Beth- 
 lehem, who carried a light which caught the eye of the shepherds, and the 
 song of the heavenly host as the merry tones of a party accompanying the 
 messenger. 1" Paulus has woven together a more refined and matter of fact 
 explanation. Mary, who had met with a hospitable reception in a herdsman's 
 family, and who was naturally elated with the hope of giving birth to the 
 Messiah, told her expectations to the members of this family ; to whom as 
 inhabitants of a city of David the comniunication could not have been in- 
 different. These shepherds therefore on perceiving, whilst in the fields by 
 night, a luminous appearance in thfe air — a phenomenon which travellers say 
 is not uncommon in those regions — they interpret it as a divine intimation that 
 the stranger in their foddering-stall is delivered of the Messiah ; and as the 
 meteoric light extends and moves to and fro, they take it for a choir of angels 
 chaunting hymns of praise. Returning home they find their anticipations 
 confirmed by the event, and that which at first they merely conjectured to be 
 the sense and interpretation of the phenomenon, they now, after the manner 
 of the, East, represent as words actually spoken.^i 
 
 This explanation rests altogether on the assumption, that the shepherds 
 were previously acquainted with Mary's expectation that she should give birth 
 to the Messiah. How otherwise should they have been led to consider the 
 sign as referring particularly to the birth of the Messiah in their manger ? 
 Yet this very assumption is the most direct contradiction of the gospel ac- 
 count. For, in the first place, the Evangelist evidently does not suppose the 
 manger to belong to the shepherds : since after he has narrated the delivery 
 of Mary in the manger, he then goes on to speak of the shepherds as a 
 new and distinct subject, not at all connected with the manger. His 
 words are : and there were in the same country shepherds, (cat ■n-oi/j.ivti rjo-av iv 
 Tg x<^P? '^V "■^V- If this explanation were correct he would, at all events, have 
 said, the shepherds etc. o\ 8e iroLfiive? k. t. X. ; besides he would not have been 
 wholly silent respecting the comings and goings of these shepherds during the 
 day, and their departure to guard the flock at the approach of night. But, 
 grant these presupposed circumstances, is it consistent in Paulus to represent 
 Mary, at first so reserved concerning her pregnancy as to conceal it even from 
 Joseph, and then so communicative that, just arrived among strangers, she 
 
 '" In seinem Versuch iiber die Wundergeschichten des N. T. See Gabler's Neuestes 
 theol. Journal, 7, 4, s. 411. 
 
 '1 Exeg. Handb. s. 180 ff. As Paulus supposes an external natural phenomenon so 
 Matthaei imagines a mental vision of angels. Synopse der vier Evangelien, s. 3. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 1 59 
 
 parades the whole history of her expectations? Again the sequel of the- 
 narrative contradicts the assumption that the shepherds were informed of the 
 matter by Mary herself, before her delivery. For, according to the gospel 
 history, the shepherds receive the first intelligence of the birth of the 
 ,_ Saviour a-wTrjp from the angel who appears to them, and who tells them, as a 
 sign of the truth of his communication, that they shall find the babe lying in 
 a manger. Had they already heard from Mary of the approaching birth of 
 the Messiah, the meteoric appearance would have been a confirmation to 
 them of Mary's words, and not the finding of the child a proof of the truth of 
 the apparition. Finally, may we so far confide in the investigations already 
 made as to inquire, whence, if neither a miraculous announcement nor a 
 supernatural conception actually occurred, could- Mary have derived the con- 
 fident anticipation that she should give birth to the Messiah ? 
 
 In opposition to this natural explanation, so full of difficulties on every side, 
 Bauer announced his adoption of the mythical view ^^ ; in fact, however, he 
 did not advance one step beyond the interpretation of the Rationalists, but 
 actually repeated Paulus's exposition point for point. To this mixed mythical 
 explanation Gabler justly objected that it, equally with the natural interpre- 
 tation, multiplies improbabilities : by the adoption of the pure, dogmatic 
 mythus, everything appears simpler ; thereby, at the same time, greater har- 
 mony is introduced into the early christian history, all the preceding narra- 
 tives of which ought equally to be interpreted as pure mythi.i* Gabler, 
 accordingly, explained the narrative as the product of the ideas of the age, 
 which demanded the assistance of angels at the birth of the Messiah. Now 
 had it been known that Mary was delivered in a dwelling belonging to shep- 
 herds, it would also have been concluded that angels must have brought the 
 tidings to these good shepherds that the Messiah was born in their manger ; 
 and the angels who cease not praising God, must have sung a hymn of praise 
 on the occasion. Gabler thinks it impossible, that a Jewish christian who 
 should have known some of the data of the birth of Jesus, could have thought 
 of it otherwise than as here depicted.** 
 
 This explanation of Gabler shows, in a remarkable manner, how difficult it 
 is entirely to extricate oneself from the natural explanation, and to rise com- 
 pletely to the mythical ; for whilst this theologian believes he treads on pure 
 mythical ground, he still stands with one foot upon that of the natural inter- 
 pretation. He selects from the account of Luke one incident as historical 
 which, by its connexion with other unhistorical statements and its conformity 
 to the spirit of the primitive christian legend, is proved to be merely mythical ; 
 namely, that Jesus was really born in a shepherd's dwelling. He also borrows 
 an assumption from the natural explanation, which the mythical needs not to 
 obtrude on the text : that the shepherds, to whom it is alleged the angels 
 appeared, were the possessors of the manger in which Mary was delivered. 
 The first detail, upon which the second is built, belongs to the same machin- 
 ery by which Luke, with the help of the census, transported the parents of 
 Jesus from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Now we know what is the fact respect- 
 ing the census ; it crumbles away inevitably before criticism, and with it the 
 datum built entirely upon it, that Jesus was born in a manger. For had not 
 the parents of Jesus been strangers, and had they not come to Bethlehem in 
 company with so large a concourse of strangers as the census might have 
 occasioned, the cause which-obliged Mary to accept a stable for her place of 
 
 " Hebraische Mythologie,f2. Thl. s. 223 ff. ^ , , , . , f ]==..„» n,«„i 
 
 '3 Recension von Bauer's hebr. Mythologie in Gabler's Journal fur auserlesene theol. 
 
 Literatur, 2, i, s. 58 f.' 
 
 1^ Neuestes theol. Journal, 7, 4, s. 412 f. 
 
I Co PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 33. 
 
 delivery would no longer have existed. But, on the other hand, the incir 
 dent, that Jesus was born in a stable and saluted in the first instance by 
 shepherds, is so completely in accordance with the spirit of the ancient 
 legend, that it is evident the narrative may have been derived purely from 
 this source. Theophylact, in his time, pointed out its true character, when 
 he says : the angels did not appear to the scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem, 
 who were full of all malice, but to the shepherds, in the fields, on account of 
 their simplicity and innocence, and because they by their mode of life were 
 the successors of the patriarchs. ^^ It was in the field by the flocks that Moses 
 was visited by a heavenly apparition (Exod. iii. i ff.); and God took David, 
 the forefather of the Messiah, from his sheepfolds (at Bethlehem), to be the shep- 
 herd of his people. Psalm. Ixxviii. 70 (comp. i Sam. xvi. 11). The mythi 
 of the ancient world more generally ascribed divine apparitions to country- 
 men '^ and shepherds i''; the sons of the gods, and of great men were fre- 
 quently brought up among shepherds. ^^ In the same spirit of the ancient 
 legend is the apocryphal invention that Jesus was born in a cave, and we are 
 at once reminded of the cave of Jupiter and of the other gods ; even though 
 the misunderstood passage of Isaiah xxxiii. 16 may have been the immediate 
 occasion of this incident. ^^ Moreover the night, in which the scene is laid, 
 — (unless one refers here to the rabbinical representations, according to which, 
 the deliverance by means of the Messiah, like the deliverance from Egypt, 
 should take place by night ^o) — forms the obscure background against which 
 the manifested glory of the Lord shone so much the more brilliantly, which, as 
 it is said to have glorified the birth of Moses,^"- could not have been absent 
 from that of the Messiah, his exalted antitype. 
 
 The mythical interpretation of this section of the gospel history has found 
 an opponent in Schleiermacher.^^ He thinks it improbable that this com- 
 mencement of the second chapter of Luke is a continuation of the first, 
 written by the same author ; because the frequent opportunities of introducing 
 lyrical effusions — as for example, when the shepherds returned glorifying and 
 praising God, v. 20 — are not taken advantage of as in the first chapter ; and 
 here indeed we can in some measure agree with him. But when he adds that 
 a decidedly poetical character cannot be ascribed to this narrative, since a 
 poetical composition would of necessity have contained more of the lyrical, 
 this only proves that Schleiermacher has not j.ustly apprehended the notion 
 of that kind of poetry of which he here treats, namely, the poetry of the 
 mythus. In a word, mythical poetry is objective : the poetical exists in 
 the substance of the narrative, and may therefore -appear in the plainest form, 
 free frorh all the adornments of lyrical effusions ; which latter are rather only 
 the subsequent additions of a more intelligent and artificially elaborated sub- 
 jective poetry. ^^ Undoubtedly this section seems to have been preserved to 
 us more nearly in its original legendary form, whilst the narratives of the first 
 chapter in Luke bear rather the stamp of having been re-wrought by some 
 
 " In Luc. 2. in Suicer, 2, p. 789 f. 
 
 '" Servius ad Verg; Eel. 10, 26. 
 
 " Liban. progymn. p. 138, in Wetstein, s. 662. 
 
 '^ Thus Cyrus, see Herod, i, 110 ff. Romulus, see Livy, i, 4. 
 
 i» Thilo, Codex Apocr. N. T. i, s. 383 not. 
 
 20 Vid. Schottgen, 2, s. 531. 
 
 ^^ Seta, I, 48 : Saj)ientes nostri ferhibent, circa horam nativitatis Mosis totam domum 
 ' repletainfuisse luce (Wetstein). 
 
 22 Ueber den Lukas, s. 29. f. With whom Neander and others now agree. — L. J. Ch. 
 s. 21 f. 
 
 2^ Comp. De Wette, Kritik der mosaischen Geschichte, s. 116 ; George, Mythus u. Sage, 
 s. 33 f- 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. l6l 
 
 poetical individual ; but historical truth is not on that account to be sought 
 here any more than there. Consequently the obligation which Schleier- 
 macher further imposes upon himself, to trace out the source of this narrative 
 in the Gospel of Luke, can only be regarded as an exercise of ingenuity. He 
 refuses to recognize that source in Mary, though a reference to her might have 
 been found in the observation, v. ig, she kept all these sayings in her heart \ 
 wherein indeed he is the more right, since that observation (a fact to which 
 Schleiermacher does not advert) is merely a phrase borrowed from the history 
 of Jacob and his son Joseph. '^ For as the narrative in Genesis relates cf 
 Jacob, the father of Joseph, that child of miracle, that when the latter told 
 his significant dreams, and his brethren envied him, his father observed the say- 
 ing: so the narrative in Luke, both here and at verse 51, relates of Mary, 
 that she, whilst others gave utterance aloud to their admiration at the extra- 
 ordinary occurrences which happened to her child, kept all these things and 
 pondered them in her heart. But the above-named theologian points out the 
 shepherds instead of Mary as the source of our narrative, alleging that all the 
 details are given, not from Mary's point of view, but from that of the shep- 
 herds. More truly however is the point of view that of the legend which 
 supersedes both. If Schleiermacher finds it impossible to believe that this 
 narrative is an air-bubble conglomerated out of nothing, he must include 
 imder the word nothing the Jewish and early christian ideas — concerning 
 Bethlehem, as the necessary birthplace of the Messiah; concerning the con- 
 dition of the shepherds, as being peculiarly favoured by communications from 
 heaven ; concerning angels, as the intermediate agents in such communica- 
 tions — notions we on our side cannot possibly hold in so little estimation, 
 but we find it easy to conceive that something similar to our narrative might 
 have formed itself out out of them. Finally, when he finds an adventitious or 
 designed invention impossible, because the Christians of that district might 
 easily have inquired of Mary or of the disciples concerning the truth of the 
 matter : he speaks too nearly the language of the ancient apologists, and pre- 
 supposes the ubiquity of these persons,^* already alluded to in the Introduction, 
 who however could not possibly have been in all places rectifying the ten- 
 dency to form christian legends, wherever it manifested itself. 
 
 The notice of the circumcision of Jesus (Luke ii. 21), evidently proceeds 
 from a narrator who had no real advice of the fact, but who assumed as a 
 certainty that, according to Jewish custom, the ceremony took place on the 
 eighth day, and who was desirous of commemorating this important event in 
 the life of an Israelitish boy ; ^* in like manner as Paul (Phil. iii. 5) records his 
 circumcision on the eighth day. The contrast however between the fulness of 
 detail with which this point is elaborated and coloured in the life of the 
 Baptist, and the barrenness and brevity with which it is stated in reference to 
 Jesus, is striking, and may justify an agreement with the remark of Schleier- 
 macher, that here, at least the author of the first chapter is no longer the 
 originator. Such being the state of the case, this statement furnishes nothing 
 for our object, which we might not already have known ; only we have till 
 now had no opportunity of observing, distinctly, that the pretended appoint- 
 
 " Gen. xxxvii. II (LXX.) : Luc. 2, 18 f. : 
 
 "&i-l\Ku(ia.v ik oirhv oi dSeX^ol airav, 6 Si Kal w&vres oJ dKoiaavres iBauiuuxat i; 
 
 Trar>]p airroS 6ieTi}/)ij(re ri ^w<«-— Schottgen, di Mopid/i wdirra ewer-iipa rd ^^/iara ravra, 
 
 horae, i, 262. 
 
 ffUyn/SoXXouffo iv tS KapUij, avrqi. 2, 51 : 
 ri liiiTiip aiiTOv Sieriipa Tovra rd, ^^/lara to 
 iv ry KapUtj, airris. 
 
 Koi 
 
 ^^ See Introduction. . . ■. r tv, t 
 
 »« Perhaps as a precautionary measure to obviate objections on the part ot tne Jews. 
 (Amnion, Fortbildung, I, s. 217.) 
 
 L 
 
1 62 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 34. 
 
 ment of the name of Jesus before his birth likewise belongs merely to the 
 mythical dress of the narrative. When it is said his name was called Jesus, 
 which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb, the 
 importance attached to the circumstance is a clear sign, that a dogmatic 
 interest lies at the bottom of this feature in the narrative ; which interest can 
 be no other than that which gave rise to the statement — in the Old Tes- 
 tament concerning an Isaac and an Ishmael, and in the New Testament 
 concerning a John — that the names of these children were, respectively, 
 revealed to their parents prior to their birth, and on account of which interest 
 the rabbins, in particular, expected that the same thing should occur in relation 
 to the name of the Messiah.^'' Without doubt there were likewise other far 
 more natural reasons which induced the parents of Jesus to give him this 
 name (I!-!^'.''. an abbreviation of S^iiT., o KtJptos . o-uTijpto) ; a name which was 
 very common among his countrymen ; but because this name agreed in a 
 remarkable manner with the path of life subsequently chosen by him as 
 Messiah and awn\p, it was not thought possible that this coincidence could 
 have been accidental. Besides it seemed more appropriate that the name of 
 the Messiah should have been determined by divine command than by human 
 arbitration, and consequently the appointment of the name was ascribed to 
 the same angel who had announced the concepti9n of Jesus. 
 
 § 34- 
 
 THE MAGI AND THEIR STAR. THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT AND THE 
 
 MURDER OF THE CHILDREN IN BETHLEHEM. CRITICISM 
 
 OF THE SUPRANATURALISTIC VIEW. 
 
 In the Gospel of Matthew also we have a narrative of the Messiah's 
 entrance into the world ; it differs considerably in detail from that of Lulce, 
 which we have just examined, but in the former part of the two accounts 
 there is a general similarity (Matt. ii. i ff.). The object of both narratives is 
 to describe the solemn introduction of the Messianic infant, the heralding of 
 his birth undertaken by heaven itself, and his first reception among men.' In 
 both, attention is called to the new-born Messiah by a celestial phenomenon ; 
 according to Luke, it is an angel clothed in brightness, according to Matthew, 
 it is a star. As the apparitions are different, so accordingly are the recipients ; 
 the angel addresses simple shepherds ; the star is discovered by eastern magi, 
 who are able to interpret for themselves the voiceless sign. Both parties are 
 directed to Bethlehem ; the shepherds by the words of the angel, the magi by 
 the instructions they obtain in Jerusalem ; and both do homage to the infant ; 
 the poor shepherds by singing hymns of praise, the magi by costly presents from 
 their native country. But from this point the two narratives begin to diverge 
 widely. In Luke all proceeds happily ; the shepherds return with gladness in 
 their hearts, the child experiences no molestation, he is presented in the 
 temple on the appointed day, thrives and grows up in tranquillity. In 
 Matthew, on the contrary, affairs take a tragical turn. The inquiry of the wise 
 
 2' Pirke R. Elieser, 33 : Sex hominum nomina dicta sunt, antequam nascerentur: Isaaci 
 nempe, Ismaelis, Mosis, ScUomonis, Josia et nomen regis Messia. Bereschith rabba, sect. I, 
 fol- 3. 3- — (Schbttgen, horae, 2, s. 436) : Sex res praevenerunt creationem muiidi : qu^am 
 ex illis creatae sunt, nempe lex et thronus glorise ; aliis ascenderunt in cogitationem (Dei) ut 
 crearentur, nirairam Patriarchae, Israel, templum, et nomen Messlae. 
 
 ' Comp. Schneckenburger, Uber den Ursprung des ersten kanonischen Evangeliums, 
 s. 69 fr. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 1 63 
 
 men in Jerusalem concerning the new-born King of the Jews, is the occasion 
 of a murderous decree on the part of Herod against the children of Bethle- 
 hem, a danger from which the infant Jesus is rescued only by a sudden flight 
 into Egypt, whence he and his parents do not return to the Holy Land till 
 after the death of Herod. 
 
 Thus we have here a double proclamation of the Messianic child : we 
 might, however, suppose that the one by the angel, in Luke, would announce 
 the birth of the Messiah to the immediate neighbourhood ; the other, by 
 means of the star, to distant lands. But as, according to Matthew, the birth 
 of Jesus became known at Jerusalem, which was in the immediate vicinity, by 
 means of the star ; if this representation be historical, that of Luke, according 
 to which the shepherds were the first to spread abroad with praises to God 
 (v. 17, 20"), that which had been communicated to them as glad tidings for all 
 jjeople (v. 10), cannot possibly be correct. So, on the other hand, if it be 
 true that the birth of Jesus was made known in the neighbourhood of Bethle- 
 hem as Luke states, by an angelic communication to the shepherds, Matthew 
 must be in error when he represents the first intelligence of the event as 
 subsequently brought to Jerusalem (which is only from two to three hours 
 distant from Bethlehem) by the magi. But as we have recognized many 
 indications of the unhistorical character of the announcement by the shepherds 
 given in Luke, the ground is left clear for that of Matthew, which must be 
 judged of according to its inherent credibility. 
 
 Our narrative commences as if it were an admitted fact, that astrologers 
 possessed the power of recognizing a star announcing the birth of the Messiah. 
 That eastern magi should have knowledge of a King of the Jews to whom 
 they owed religious homage might indeed excite our surprise ; but contenting 
 ourselves here with remarking, that seventy years later an expectation did 
 prevail in the east that a ruler of the world would arise from among the 
 Jewish people,^ we pass on to a yet more weighty difficulty. According to this 
 narrative it appears, that astrology is right when it asserts that the birth of 
 great men and important revolutions in human affairs are indicated by astral 
 phenomena ; an opinion long since consigned to the region of superstition. 
 It is therefore to be explained, how this deceptive science could in this 
 solitary instance prove true, though in no other case are its inferences to be 
 relied on. The most obvious explanation, from the orthodox point of view, 
 is an appeal to the supernatural intervention of God ; who, in this particular 
 instance, in order to bring the distant magi unto Jesus, accommodated himself 
 to their astrological notions, and caused the anticipated star to appear. But 
 the adoption of this expedient involves very serious consequences. For the 
 coincidence of the remarkable sequel with the astrological prognostic could 
 not fail to strengthen the belief, not only of the magi and their fellow- 
 countrymen, but also of the Jews and Christians who were acquainted with 
 the circumstances, in the spurious science of astrology, thereby creatmg 
 incalculable error and mischief. If therefore it be unadvisable to admit an 
 extraordinary divine intervention,^ and if the position that in the ordinary course 
 of nature, important occurrences on this earth are attended by changes in 
 the heavenly bodies, be abandoned, the only remaining explanation lies in 
 
 » Joseph. B. T. vi. vi. 4 : Tacit. Histor. v. 13 ; Sueton. Vespas. 4- AH the extant allu- 
 sions to the existence of such a hope at the era of Christ's birth, relate only in an indetermi- 
 nate manner to a ruler of the world. Virg. Eclog. 4 ; Sueton. Octav. 94. 
 
 In saving that it is inadmissible to suppose a divme mtervention directly tendmg to 
 ntenance superstition, I refer to what is called immediate intervention. In the doctrine 
 of mediate intervention, which includes the co-operation of man, there is doubtless a mixture 
 of truth and error. Neander confuses the two. L. J. Ch., s. 29. 
 
164 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 34. 
 
 the supposition of an accidental coincidence. But to appeal to chance is in 
 fact either to say nothing, or to renounce the supranaturalistic point of view. 
 
 But the orthodox view of this account not only sanctions the false science 
 of astrology, but also confirms the false interpretation of a passage in the 
 prophets. For as the magi, following their star, proceed in the right direction, 
 so the chief priests and scribes of Jerusalem whom Herod, on learning the 
 arrival and object of the magi, summons before him and questions concerning 
 the birth-place of the King of the Jews, interpret the passage in Micah v. i as 
 signifying that the Messiah should be born in Bethlehem ; and to this signifi- 
 cation the event corresponds. Now such an application of the above passage 
 can only be made by forcing the words from their true meaning and from all 
 relation with the context, according to the well-known practice of the rabbins. 
 For independently of the question whether or not under the word ?^iO, in the 
 passage cited, the Messiah be intended, the entire context shows the meaning 
 to be, not that the expected governor who was to come forth out of Bethlehem 
 would actually be born in that city, but only that he would be a descendant 
 of David, whose family sprang from Bethlehem.* Thus allowing the magi to 
 have been rightly directed by means of the rabbinical exegesis of the oracle, a 
 false interpretation must have hit on the truth, either by means of divine in- 
 tervention and accommodation, or by accident. The judgment pronounced 
 in the case of the star is applicable here also. 
 
 After receiving the above answer from the Sanhedrim, Herod summons the 
 magi before him, and his first question concerns the time at which the star 
 appeared (v. 7). Why did he wish to know this^? The i6th verse tells us, 
 that he might thereby calculate the age of the Messianic child, and thus 
 ascertain up to what age it would be necessary for him to put to death the 
 children of Bethlehem, so as not to miss the one announced by the star. But 
 this plan of murdering all the children of Bethlehem up to a certain age, that 
 he might destroy the one likely to prove fatal to the interests of his family, 
 was not conceived by Herod until after the magi had disappointed his expect- 
 ation that they would return to Jerusalem ; a deception which, if we may 
 judge from his violent anger on account of it (v. 16), Herod had by no means 
 anticipated. Prior to this, according to v. 8, it had been his intention to 
 obtain from the magi, on their return, so close a description of the child, his 
 dwelling and circumstances, that it would be easy for him to remove his 
 infantine rival without sacrificing any other life. It was not until he had dis- 
 covered the stratagem of the magi, that he was obliged to have recourse to 
 the more violent measure for the execution of which it was necessary for him 
 to know the time of the star's appearance.® How fortunate for him, then, 
 that he had ascertained this time before he had decided on the plan that made 
 the information important; but how inconceivable that he should make a 
 point which was only indirectly connected with his original project, the sub- 
 ject of his first and most eager interrogation (v. 7)1 
 
 Herod, in the second place, commissions the magi to acquaint themselves 
 accurately with all that concerns the royal infant, and to impart their know- 
 ledge to him on their return, that he also may go and tender his homage to 
 the child, that is, according to his real meaning, take sure measures for putting 
 
 * Paulus and De Wette, exeg. Handb. in loc. 
 
 ^ According to Hoffmann (p. 256), that he might control the assertion of the magi by in- 
 quiring of his own astrologers, whether they had seen the star at the same time. This is not 
 merely unsupported by the text — it is in direct contradiction to it, for we are there told that 
 Herod at once gave terrified credence to the magi. 
 
 * Fritzsche, in loc. aptly says — comperto, qvasi magos non ad se redituros statim scivisset, 
 ortisideris tempore, etc. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 16$ 
 
 him to death (v. 8). Such a proceeding on the part of an astute monarch like 
 Herod has long been held improbable.'' Even if he hoped to deceive the 
 magi, while in conference with them, by adopting this friendly mask, he must 
 necessarily foresee that others would presently awaken them to the probability 
 that he harboured evil designs against the child, and thus prevent them from 
 returning according to his injunction. He might conjecture that the parents 
 of the child on hearing of the ominous interest taken in him by the king, 
 would seek his safety by flight, and finally, that those inhabitants of Bethlehem 
 and its environs who cherished Messianic expectations, would not be a little 
 confirmed in them by the arrival of the magi. On all these grounds, Herod's 
 only prudent measure would have been either to detain the magi in 
 Jerusalem,^ and in the meantime by means of secret emissaries to dispatch 
 the child to whom such peculiar hopes were attached, and who must have 
 been easy of discovery in the little village of Bethlehem ; or to have given the 
 magi companions who, so soon as the child was found, might at once have 
 put an end to his existence. Even Olshausen thinks that these strictures are 
 not groundless, and his best defenee against them is the observation that the 
 histories of all ages present unaccountable instances of forgetfulness — a proof 
 that the course of human events is guided by a supreme hand. When the 
 supernaturalist invokes the supreme hand in the case before us, he must 
 suppose that God himself blinded Herod to the surest means of attaining his 
 object, in order to save the Messianic child from a premature death. But 
 the other side of this divine contrivance is, that instead of the one child, many 
 others must die. There would be nothing to object against such a substitution 
 in this particular case, if it could be proved that there was no other possible 
 mode of rescuing Jesus from a fate inconsistent with the scheme of human 
 redemption. But if it be once admitted, that God interposed supernaturally 
 to blind the mind of Herod and to suggest to the magi that they should not 
 return to Jerusalem, we are constrained to ask, why did not God in the first 
 instance inspire the magi to shun Jerusalem and proceed directly to Beth- 
 lehem, whither Herod's attention would not then have been so immediately 
 attracted, and thus the disastrous sequel perhaps have been altogether avoided?* 
 The supranaturalist has no answer to this question but the old-fashioned 
 argument that it was good for the infants to die, because they were thus freed 
 by transient suffering from much misery, and more especially from the danger 
 of sinning against Jesus with the unbelieving Jews; whereas now they had the 
 honour of losing their lives for the sake of Jesus, and thus of ranking as 
 martyrs, and so forth.^" 
 
 The magi leave Jerusalem by night, the favourite time for travelling m the 
 east. The star, which they seem to have lost sight of since their departure 
 from home, again appears and goes before them on the road to Bethlehem, 
 until at length it remains stationary over the house that contains the wondrous 
 child and its parents. The way from Jerusalem to Bethlehem lies southward; 
 now the true path of erratic stars is either from west to east, as that of the 
 planets and of some comets, or from east to west, as that of other comets; the 
 orbits of many comets do indeed tend from north to south, but the true 
 motion of all these bodies is so greatly surpassed by their apparent motion 
 
 ' K. Ch. L. Schmidt, exeg. Beitrage, i. s. 150 f. Comp. Fritzsche and De Wette in loc 
 
 8 Hoffman thinks that Herod shunned this measure as a breach of hospitahty , yet this 
 very Herod he represents as a monster of cruelty, and that justly, for '^e conduct attributed 
 to the monarch in chap. ii. of Matthew is not unworthy of his heart, against which Neander 
 superfluously argues (p. 30 f.), but of his head. 
 
 « Schmidt, ut sup. p. IS5 f- . 
 
 »» Stark, Synops. bibl. exeg. in N. T., p. 62. 
 
l66 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 34. 
 
 from east to west produced by the rotation of the earth on its axis, that it is 
 imperceptible except at considerable intervals. Even the diurnal movement 
 of the heavenly bodies, however, is less obvious on a short journey than the 
 merely optical one, arising from the observer's own change of place, in con- 
 sequence of which a star that he sees before him seems, as long as he moves 
 forward, to pass on in the same direction through infinite space ; it cannot 
 therefore stand still over a particular house and thus induce a traveller to halt 
 there also ; on the contrary, the traveller himself must halt before the star will 
 appear stationary. The star of the magi could not then be an ordinary, 
 natural star, but must have been one created by God for that particular 
 exigency, and impressed by him with a peculiar law of motion and rest.^* 
 Again, this could not have been a true star, moving among the systems of our 
 firmament, for such an one, however impelled and arrested, could never, 
 according to optical laws, appear to pause over a particular house. It must 
 therefore have been something lower, hovering over the earth's surface ; hence 
 some of the Fathers and apocryphal writers ^^ supposed it to have been an 
 angel, which, doubtless, might fly before the magi in the form of a star, 
 and take its station at a moderate height above ihe house of Mary in Beth- 
 lehem ; more modern theologians have conjectured that the phenomenon was 
 a meteor.i'* Both these explanations are opposed to the text of Matthew: the 
 former, because it is out of keeping with the style of our Gospels to designate ■ 
 anything purely supernatural, such as an angelic appearance, by an expression 
 that implies a merely natural object, as aor-^p {a star) ; the latter, because a 
 mere meteor would not last for so long a time as must have elapsed between 
 the dep: rt ire of the magi from their remote home and their arrival in Bethle- 
 hem. Perhaps, however, it will be contended that God created one meteor 
 for the first monition, and another for the second. 
 
 Many, even of the orthodox expositors, have found these difficulties inrela- 
 tion to the star so pressing, that they have striven to escape at any cost from 
 the admission that it preceded the magi in their way towards Bethlehem, and 
 took its station directly over a particular house. According to Siiskind, whose 
 explanation has been much approved, the verb irporiyev {weNt before) (v. 9), 
 which is in the imperfect tense, does not signify that the star visibly led the 
 magi on their way, but is equivalent to the pluperfect, which would imply 
 that the star had been invisibly transferred to the destination of the magi before 
 their arrival, so that the Evangelist intends to say : the star which the magi 
 had seen in the east and subsequently lost sight of, suddenly made its 
 appearance to them in Bethlehem above the house they were seeking ; it had 
 therefore preceded them.'* But this is a transplantation of rationalistic artifice 
 into the soil of orthodox exegesis. Not only the word Trpor/yev, but the less 
 flexible expression Iws l\Bm> k. t. X. (till it came, etc.) denotes that the transit 
 of the star was not an already completed phenomenon, but one brought to 
 pass under the observation of the maigi. Expositors who persist in denying 
 this must, to be consistent, go still farther, and reduce the entire narrative to 
 the standard of merely natural events. So when Olshausen admits that the 
 position of a star could not possibly indicate a single house, that hence the 
 magi must have inquired for the infant's dwelling, and only with child-like sim- 
 plicity referred the issue as well as the commencement of their journey to a 
 
 '• This was the opinion of some of the Fathers, e.g. Euseb. Demonstr. evang. 9, ap. 
 Suicer, i, ». 559 ; Joana Damasc. de fide orlhod. ii. 7. 
 '* Chrysostomus and others ap. Suicer, ut sup. and the Evang. infant, arab. c. vii. 
 " See Kuinol, Comm. in Matth., p. 23. 
 " Veimischte Aufsatze, >. 8. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 167 
 
 heavenly guide^^^ j he deserts his own point of view for that of the rationalists, 
 and interlines the text with explanatory particulars, an expedient which he 
 elsewhere justly condemns in Paulus and others. 
 
 The magi then enter the house, offer their adoration to the" infant, and pre- 
 sent to him gifts, the productions of their native country. One might wonder 
 that there is no notice of the astonishment which it must have excited in these 
 men to find, instead of the expected prince, a child in quite ordinary, perhaps 
 indigent circumstances. i" It is not fair, however, to heighten the contrast 
 by supposing, according to the common notion, that the magi discovered the 
 child in a stable lying in the manger ; for this representation is peculiar to 
 Luke, and is altogether unknown to Matthew, who merely speaks of a house, 
 oiKi'a, in which the child was found. Then follows (v. 10) the warning given 
 to the magi in a dream, concerning which, as before remarked, it were only 
 to be wished that it had been vouchsafed earlier, so as to avert the steps of 
 the magi from Jerusalem, and thus perchance prevent the whole subsequent 
 massacre. 
 
 While Herod awaits the return of the magi, Joseph is admonished by an 
 angelic apparition in a dream to flee with the Messianic child and its mother 
 into Egypt for security (v. 13-15). Adopting the evangelist's point of view, this 
 is not attended with any difficulty ; it is otherwise, however, with the prophecy 
 which the above event is said to fulfil, Hosea xi. i. In this passage the pro- 
 phet, speaking in the name of Jehovah, says : When Israel was a child, then I 
 loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. We may venture to attribute, even 
 to the most orthodox expositor, enough clear-sightedness to perceive that the 
 subject of the first half of the sentence is also the object of the second, 
 namely the people of Israel, who here, as elsewhere, (e.g. Exod. iv. 22, 
 Sirach xxxvi. 14), are collectively called the Son of God, and whose past 
 deliverance under Moses out of their Egyptian bondage is the fact referred 
 to : that consequently, the prophet was not contemplating either the Messiah 
 or his sojourn in Egypt. Nevertheless, as our evangelist says, v. 15, that the 
 flight of Jesus into Egypt took place expressly that the above words of Hosea 
 might be fulfilled, he must have understood them as a prophecy relating to 
 Christ — must, therefore, have misunderstood them. It has been pretended 
 that the passage has a twofold application, and, though referring primarily to 
 the Israelitish people, is not the less a prophecy relative to Christ, because 
 the destiny of Israel "after the flesh" was a type of the destiny of Jesus. 
 But this convenient method of interpretation is not applicable here, for the 
 analogy would, in the present case, be altogether external and inane, since 
 the only parallel consists in the bare fact in both instances of a sojourn in 
 Egypt, the circumstances under which the Israelitish people and the child 
 Jesus sojourned there being altogether diverse.^^ 
 
 When the return of the magi has been delayed long enough for Herod to 
 become aware that they have no intention to keep faith with him, he decrees 
 the death of all the male children in Bethlehem and its environs up to the 
 age of two years, that being, according to the statements of the magi as to the 
 time of the star's appearance, the utmost interval that could have elapsed 
 since the birth of the Messianic child (16-18). This was, beyond all 
 question, an act of the blindest fury, for Herod might easily have mformed 
 himself whether a child who had received rare and costly presents was yet to 
 be found in Bethlehem : but even granting it not inconsistent with the dis- 
 
 '* Bibl. Coram, in loc, Hoffmann, s. 261. 
 
 " Schmidt, exeg. Beitrage, I, I52.ff. 
 
 " This is shown in opposition to Olshausen by Steudel in Bengel s Archiv. vu. 11. 425 t. 
 viii. iii. 487. 
 
1 68 PART I. CHAPTER IV, § 34. 
 
 position of the aged tyrant to the extent that Schleiermacher supposed, it 
 were in any case to be expected that so unprecedented and revolting a 
 massacre would be noticed by other historians than Matthew.^^ gut neither 
 Josephus, who is very minute in his account of Herod, nor the rabbins, who 
 were assiduous in blackening his memory, give the slightest hint of this 
 decree. The latter do, indeed, connect the flight of Jesus into Egypt with a 
 murderous scene, the author of which, however, is not Herod, but King 
 Jannseus, and the victims not children, but rabbins.^^ Their story is evi- 
 dently founded on a confusion of the occurrence gathered from the christian 
 history, with an earlier event ; for Alexander Jannseus died 40 years before 
 the birth of Christ. Macrobius, who lived in the fourth century, is the only 
 author who notices the slaughter of the infants, and he introduces it obliquely 
 in a passage which loses all credit by confounding the execution of Antipater, 
 who was so far from a child that he complained of his grey hairs,^" with the 
 murder of the infants, renowned among the Christians.^^ Commentators have 
 attempted to diminish our surprise at the remarkable silence in question, by 
 reminding us that the number of children of the given age in the petty village of 
 Bethlehem, must have been small, and by remarking that among the numerous 
 deeds of cruelty by which the life of Herod was stained, this one would be lost 
 sight of as a drop in the ocean.** But in these observations the specific atro- 
 city of murdering innocent children, however few, is overlooked ; and it is this 
 that must have prevented the deed, if really perpetrated, from being forgotten.*^ 
 Here also the evangelist cites (v. 17, 18) a prophetic passage (J erem. xxxi. 15), 
 as having been fulfilled by the murder of the infants ; whereas it originally 
 referred to something quite different, namely the transportation of the Jews to 
 Babylon, and had no kind of reference to an event lying in remote futurity. 
 
 While Jesus and his parents are in Egypt, Herod the Great dies, and 
 Joseph is instructed by an angel, who appears to him in a dream, to return to 
 his native country; but as Archelaus, Herod's successor in Judaea, was to be 
 feared, he has more precise directions in a second oracular dream, in obedi- 
 ence to which he fixes his abode at Nazareth in Galilee, under the milder 
 government of Herod Antipas (19-23). Thus in the compass of this single 
 chapter, we have five extraordinary interpositions of God ; an anomalous star, 
 and four visions. For the star and the first vision, we have already remarked, 
 one iniracle might have been substituted, not only without detriment, but 
 with advantage ; either the star or the vision might from the beginning have 
 deterred the magi from going to Jerusalem, and by this means perhaps have 
 averted the massacre ordained by Herod. But that the two last visions are 
 not united in one is a mere superfluity ; for the direction to Joseph to proceed 
 to Nazareth instead of Bethlehem, which is made the object of a special 
 vision, might just as well have been included in the firs.t. Such a disregard, 
 even to prodigality, of the lex parsmonice in relation to the miraculous, one 
 is tempted to refer to human imagination rather than to divine providence. 
 
 The false interpretations of Old Testament passages in this chapter are 
 crowned by the last verse, where it is said that by the settlement of the 
 
 '^ Schmidt, ut sup. p. 156. 
 
 '^ Babylon. Sanhedr. f. cvii. 2, ap. Lightfoot, p. 207. Comp. Schbttgen, ii. p. 533. 
 According to Josephus Antiq. xiii. xiii. 5, xiv. 2, they were Jews of each sex and of all ages, 
 and chiefly Pharisees. 
 
 2° Joseph. B. J. i. xxx. 3. Comp. Antiq. xvii. iv. 1. 
 
 '^ Macrob. Saturnal. ii. 4 : Quum audisset {Augustus) inter piens, guos in SyriA Herodes 
 rex Judaorum intra bimatum jussit interfici, filium quoque ejus occisum, ait : melius est, 
 Herodis porcum (Be) esse quam filium (uJic). 
 
 22 Vid. Wetstein, Kuinol, Olshausen in loc. Winer d. A. Herodes. 
 
 '* Fritzsche, Comm. in Matt., p. 93 f. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 1 69 
 
 parents of Jesus at Nazareth was fulfilled the saying of the prophets : He 
 shall be called a Nazarene. Now this passage is not to be found in the Old 
 Testament, and unless expositors, losing courage, take refuge in darkness by 
 supposing that it is extracted from a canonical ^i or apocryphal ^^ book now- 
 lost, they must admit the conditional validity of one or other of the following 
 charges against the evangelist. If, as it has been alleged, he intended to com- 
 press the Old Testament prophecies that the Messiah would be despised, 
 into the oracular sentence. He shall be called a Nazarene, i.e. the citizen of 
 a despised city,^^ we must accuse him of the most arbitrary mode of ex- 
 pression ; or, if he be supposed to give a modification of -i*tJ (nasir) we must 
 tax him with the most violent transformation of the word and the grossest 
 perversion of its meaning, for even if, contrary to tlie fact, this epithet were 
 applied to the Messiah in the Old Testament, it could only mean either that 
 he would be a Nazarite,^'' which Jesus never was, or that he would be 
 crowned,*8 ^s Joseph,, Gen. xlix. 26, in no case that he would be brought up 
 in the petty town of Nazareth. The most probable interpretation of this 
 passage, and that which has the sanction of the Jewish Christians questioned 
 on the subject by Jerome, is, that the evangelist here alludes to Isa. xi. i, 
 where the Messiah is called 'B'! "1X3 {sunulus Jesse) as elsewhere nD^.29 But 
 in every case there is the same violence done to the word by attaching to a 
 mere appellative of the Messiah, an entirely fictitious relation to the name of 
 the city of Nazareth. 
 
 §.35- 
 
 ATTEMPTS AT A NATURAL EXPLANATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE MAGI. 
 TRANSITION TO THE MYTHICAL EXPLANATION. 
 
 To avoid the many difficulties which beset us at every step in interpreting 
 this chapter after the manner of the supranaturalists, it is quite worth our while 
 to seek for another exposition which may suffice to explain the whole according 
 to physical and psychplogical laws, without any admixture of supernaturalism. 
 Such an exposition has been the most successfully attempted by Paulus. 
 
 How could heathen magi, in a remote country of the east, know anything 
 of a Jewish king about to be born ? This is the first difficulty, and it is removed 
 on the above system of interpretation by supposing that the magi were ex- 
 patriated Jews. But this, apparently, is not the idea of the evangelist. 
 
 For the question which he puts into the mouth of the magi, " Where is he 
 that is born King of the Jews V^ distinguishes them from that people, and as 
 regards the tendency of the entire narrative, the church seems to have 
 apprehended it more correctly than Paulus thinks, in representing the visit of 
 the magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.. Nevertheless, 
 as we have above remarked, this difficulty may be cleared away without 
 having recourse to the supposition of Paulus. 
 
 Further, according to the natural explanation, the real object of the journey 
 of these men was not to see the new-born king, nor was its cause the star 
 which they had observed in the east; but they happened to be travelling to 
 Jerusalem perhaps with mercantile views, and hearing far and wide in the 
 land of a new-born king, a celestial phenomenon which they had recently 
 
 ■2* Chrysostom and others. 
 
 '^^ Vid. Gratz, Comm. zum Ev. Matlh. i, s. iij. 
 
 28 Kuinol, ad Matth. p. 44 f. 
 2' Wetstein, in loc. 
 
 2* Sclineckenburger, Beitrage zur Einleitung in das N. T., s. 42. 
 
 29 Gieseler, Studien und Kritiken, 1831, 3. Heft, s. 588/. Fritzsche, s. 104. Comp. 
 Hieron. ad Jesai. xi. I. 
 
170 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 35. 
 
 observed occurred to their remembrance, and they earnestly desired to see 
 the child in question. By this means, it is true, the difficulty arising from the 
 sanction given to astrology by the usual conception of the story is diminished, 
 but only at the expense of unprejudiced interpretation. For even if it were 
 admissible unceremoniously to transform magi fxAyovs into merchants, their 
 purpose in this journey cannot have been a commercial one, for their first 
 inquiry on arriving at Jerusalem is after the new-born king, and they forth- 
 with mention a star, seen by them in the east, as the cause not only of their 
 question, but also of their present journey, the object of which they aver to 
 be the presentation of their homage to the new-born child (v. z). 
 
 The axTTrip [star) becomes, on this method of interpretation, a natural 
 meteor, or a comet,' or finally, a constellation, that is, a conjunction of 
 planets.^ The last idea was put forth by Kepler, and has been approved by 
 several astronomers and theologians. Is it more easy, on any one of these 
 suppositions, to conceive that the star could precede the magi on their way, 
 and remain stationary over a particular house, according to the representation 
 of the text ? We have already examined the two first hypotheses ; if we 
 adopt the third, we must either suppose the verb -nrpodyav (v. 9) to signify the 
 disjunction of the planets, previously in apparent union,^ though the text does 
 not imply a partition but a forward movement of the entire phenomenon ; or we 
 must call Siiskind's pluperfect to our aid, and imagine that the constellation, 
 which the magi could no longer see in the valley between Jerusalem and 
 Bethlehem, again burst on their view over the place where the child dwelt.* For 
 the expression, eVavw ov ^v to TratSiW (v. 9), denotes merely the place of 
 abode, not the particular dwelling of the child and his parents. This we 
 grant ; but when the evangelist proceeds thus : koI i'urtXOovTcs ets ttjv oikiW, 
 (v. 9), he gives the more general expression the precise meaning of dwelling- 
 house, so that this explanation is clearly a vain effort to abate the marvellous- 
 ness of the evangelical narrative. 
 
 The most remarkable supposition- adopted by those who regard don-^p as a 
 conjunction of planets, is that they hereby obtain a fixed point in accredited 
 history, to which the narrative of Matthew may be attached. According to 
 Kepler's calculation, corrected by Ideler, there occurred, three years before 
 the death of Herod, in the year of Rome 747, a conjunction of Jupiter and 
 Saturn in the sign Pisces. The conjunction of these planets is repeated in 
 the above sign, to which astrologers attribute a special relation to Palestine, 
 about every 800 years, and according to the computation of the Jew 
 Abarbanel (1463) it took place three years before the birth of Moses; hence 
 it is probable enough that the hope of the second great deliverer of the nation 
 would be associated with the recurrence of this conjunction in the time of 
 Herod, and that when tlie phenomenon was actually observed, it would 
 occasion inquiry on the part of Babylonian Jews. But that the star men- 
 tioned by Matthew was this particular planetary conjunction, is, from our 
 uncertainty as to the year of Christ's birth, and also as to the period of the 
 above astrological calculation, an extremely precarious conjecture ; and as, 
 besides, there are certain particulars in the evangelical text, for instance, the 
 words TTporjyev and Io-tj/, which do not accord with such an explanation, — so 
 soon as another, more congruous with Matthew's narrative, presents itself, we 
 are justified in giving it the preference. 
 
 ' For both these explanations, see Kuinol, in loc. 
 
 ' Kepler, in various treatises ; Miinter, der Stern der Weisen ; Ideler, Handbuch der 
 mathemat. und technischen Chronologle, 2. Bd. a. 399 ff. 
 
 * Olshausen, s. 67. 
 
 * Faulus, ut sup. S. 202, 221. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 171 
 
 The difficulties connected with the erroneous interpretations of passages 
 from the Old Testament are, from the natural point of view, eluded by deny- 
 ing that the writers of the New Testament are responsible for the falsity of 
 these interpretations. It is said that the prophecy of Micah is applied to the 
 Messiah and his birth in Bethlehem by the Sanhedrim alone, and that 
 Matthew has not committed himself to their interpretation by one word of 
 approval. But when the evangelist proceeds to narrate how the issue corre- 
 sponded with the interpretation, he sanctions it by the authoritative seal of 
 fact. In relation to the passage from Hosea, Paulus and Steudel ^ concur in 
 resorting to a singular expedient. Matthew, say they, wished to guard 
 against the offence which it might possibly give to the Jews of Palestine to 
 learn that the Messiah had once left the Holy Land; he therefore called atten- 
 tion to the fact that Israel, in one sense the first-born of God, had been called 
 out of Egypt, for which reason, he would imply, no one ought to be as- 
 tonished that the Messiah, the son of God in a higher sense, had also visited 
 a profane land. But throughout the passage there is no trace ^ of such a 
 negative, precautionary intention on the part of the evangelist in adducing 
 this prophecy : on the contrary, all his quotations seem to have the positive 
 object to confirm the Messiahship of Jesus by showing that in him the Old 
 Testament prophecies had their fulfilment. It has been attempted with 
 reference to the two other prophecies cited in this chapter, to reduce the 
 signification of the verb TrXjjpta&^vai (Jo be fulfilled') to that of mere similitude 
 or applicability ; but the futility of the effort needs no exposure. 
 
 The various directions conveyed to the persons of our narrative by means 
 of visions are, from the same point of view, all explained psychologically, as 
 effects of waking inquiries and reflections. This appears, indeed, to be in- 
 dicated by the text itself, v. 22, according to which Joseph, hearing that 
 Archelaus was master of Judea, feared to go thither, and not until then did he 
 receive an intimation from a higher source in a dream. Nevertheless, on a 
 closer examination we find that the communication given in the dream was 
 something new, not a mere repetition of intelligence received in waking 
 moments. Only the negative conclusion, that on account of Archelaus it was 
 not advisable to settle at Bethlehem, was attained by Joseph when awake ; 
 the positive injunction to proceed to Nazareth was superadded in his dream. 
 To explain the other visions in the above way is a direct interpolation of the 
 text, for this represents both the hostility and death of Herod as being first 
 made known to Joseph by dreams ; in like manner, the magi have no distrust 
 of Herod until a dream warns them against his treachery. 
 
 Thus, on the one hand, the sense of the narrative in Matt. ii. is opposed to 
 the conception of its occurrence as natural ; on the other hand, this narrative, 
 taken in its original sense, carries the supernatural into the extravagant, the 
 improbable into the impossible. We are therefore led to doubt the historical 
 character of the narrative, atM to conjecture that we have before us some- 
 thing mythical. The first propounders of this opinion 'fiexo. so unsuccessful 
 in its illustration, that they never liberated themselves from the sphere of the 
 natural interpretation, which they sought to transcend. Arabian merchants 
 (thinks Krug, for example) coming by chance to Bethlehem, met with the 
 parents of Jesus, and learning that they were strangers in distress (according 
 to Matthew, the parents of Jesus were not strangers in Bethlehem), made 
 them presents, uttered many good wishes for their child, and pursued their 
 
 * Bengel's Archiv. vii. ii. p. 424. . 
 
 « At a later period, it is true, this journey of Jesus was the occasion of calumnies trom tne 
 Jews, but those were of an entirely different nature, as will be seen in the following chapter. 
 
172 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 3$. 
 
 journey. Whea subsequently, Jesus was reputed to be the Messiah, the inci- 
 dent was remembered and embellished with a star, visions, and believing 
 homage. To these were added the flight into Egypt and the infanticide ; the 
 latter, because the above incident was supposed, to have had some effect on 
 Herod, who, on other grounds than those alleged in the text, had caused some 
 f imilies in Bethlehem to be put to death ; the former, probably because Jesus 
 had, with some unknown object, actually visited Egypt at a later period.^ 
 
 In this, as in the purely naturalistic interpretation, there remain as so many 
 garb, the arrival of some oriental travellers, the flight into Egypt, and the 
 massacre in Bethlehem ; divested, however, of the marvellous garb with which 
 they are enveloped in the evangelical narrative. In this unadorned form, 
 these occurrences are held to be intelligible and such as might very probably 
 happen, but in point of fact they are more incomprehensible even than when 
 viewed through the medium of orthodoxy, for with their supernatural embel- 
 lishments vanishes the entire basis on which they rest. Matthew's narrative 
 adequately accounts for the relations between the men of the east and the 
 parents of Jesus ; this attempt at mythical exposition reduces them to a won- 
 derful chance. The massacre at Bethlehem has, in the evangelical narrative, 
 a definite cause ; here, we are at a loss to understand how Herod came 
 to ordain such an enormity ; so, the journey into Egypt, which had so urgent 
 a motive according to Matthew, is on this scheme of interpretation totally 
 inexplicable. It may indeed be said : these events had their adequate causes 
 in accordance with the regular course of things, but Matthew has withheld this 
 natural sequence and given a miraculous one in its stead. But if the writer 
 or legend be capable of environing occurrences with fictitious motives and 
 accessory circumstances, either the one or the other is also capable of fabri- 
 cating the occurrences themselves, and this fabrication is the more probable, 
 the more clearly we can show that the legend had an interest in depicting 
 such occurrences, though they had never actually taken place. 
 
 This argument is equally valid against the attempt, lately made from the 
 supranaturahstic point of yiew, to separate the true from the false in the evan- 
 gelical narrative. In a narrative like this, says Neander, we must carefully 
 distinguish the kernel from the shell, the main fact from immaterial circum- 
 stances, and not demand the same degree of certitude for all its particulars. 
 That the magi by their astrological researches were led to anticipate the birth 
 of a Saviour in Judea, and hence journeyed to Jerusalem that they might offer 
 him their homage is, according to him, the only essential and certain part of 
 the narrative. But how, when arrived in Jerusalem, did they learn that the 
 child was to be born in Bethlehem? From Herod, or by some other means? 
 On this point Neander is not equally willing to guarantee the veracity of Mat- 
 thew's statements, and he regards it as unessential. The magi, he continues, 
 in so inconsiderable a place as Bethlehem, might be guided to the child's 
 dwelling by many providential arrangements in the ordinary course of events ; 
 for example, by meeting with the shepherds or other devout persons who had 
 participated in the great event. When however they had once entered the 
 house, they might represent the circumstances in the astrological guise with 
 which their minds were the most familiar. Neander awards an historical 
 character to the flight into Egypt and the infanticide.^ By this explanation 
 of the narrative, only its heaviest difficulty, namely, that the star preceded the 
 
 ' Ueber formelle oder genetische Erklarungsart der Wunder. In Henke's Museum, i, 3, 
 399 ff. Similar essays see in the Abhandlungen iiber die beiden ersten Kapitel des Mat- 
 tliaus u. Lukas, in Henke's Magazin, 5, i, 171 ff., and in Matthai, Religionsgl. der Apostel, 
 2, s. 422 ff. 
 
 8L. J. Ch.,s. 29 ff. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 173 
 
 magi on their way and paused above a single house, is in reality thrown over- 
 board ; the other difficulties remain. But Neander has renounced unlimited 
 confidence in the veracity of the evangelist, and admitted that a part of his 
 narrative is unhistorical. .If it be asked how far this unhistorical portion ex- 
 tends, and what is its kind — whether the nucleus around which legend has 
 deposited its crystallizations be historical or ideal — it is easy to show that the 
 few and vague data which a less lenient criticism than that of Neander can- 
 admit as historical, are far less adapted to give birth to our narrative, than the 
 very precise circle of ideas and types which we are about to exhibit. 
 
 §36. 
 
 THE PURELY MYTHICAL EXPLANATION OF THE NARRATIVE CONCERNING 
 THE MAGI, AND OF THE EVENTS WITH WHICH IT IS CONNECTED. 
 
 Several Fathers of the Church indicated the true key to the narrative con- 
 cerning the magi when, in order to explain from what source those heathen 
 astrologers could gather any knowledge of a Messianic star, they put forth the 
 conjecture that this knowledge might have been drawn from the prophecies 
 of the heathen Balaam, recorded in the Book of Numbers.^ K. Ch. L. 
 Schmidt justly considers it a deficiency in the exposition of Pautus, that it 
 takes no notice of the Jewish expectation that a star would become visible at 
 the appearance of the Messiah ; and yet, he adds, this is the only thread to 
 guide us to the true origin of this narrative.^ The prophecy of Balaam (Num. 
 xxiv. 17), A star shall come out of Jacob, was the cause — not indeed, as the 
 Fathers supposed, that magi actually recognized a newly-kindled star as that 
 of the Messiah, and hence journeyed to Jerusalem — but that legend repre- 
 sented a star to have appeared at the birth of Jesus, and to have been recog- 
 nized by astrologers as the star of the Messiah. The prophecy attributed to 
 Balaam originally referred to some fortunate and victorious ruler of Israel ; 
 but it seems to have early received a Messianic interpretation. Even if the 
 translation in the Targum of Onkelos, surget rex ex Jacobo et Messias {unctus) 
 ungetur ex Israele, prove nothing, because here the word unctus is synony- 
 mous with rex, and might signify an ordinary king — it is yet worthy of notice 
 that, according to the testimony of Aben Ezra,'' and the passages cited by 
 Wetstein and Schottgen, many rabbins applied the prophecy to the Messiah. 
 The name Bar-Cocheba (son of a star), ^^swva&A. by a noted pseudo-Messiah 
 under Hadrian, was chosen with reference to the Messianic interpretation of 
 Balaam's prophecy. 
 
 It is true that the passage in question, taken in its original sense, does not 
 speak of a real star, but merely compares to a star the future prince of Israel, 
 and this is the interpretation given to it in the Targum above quoted. But 
 the growing belief in astrology, according to which every important event was 
 signalized by sidereal changes, soon caused the prophecy of Balaam to be 
 understood no longer figuratively, but literally, as referring to a star which 
 was to appear contemporaneously with the Messiah. We have various proofs 
 that a belief in astrology was prevalent in the time of Jesus. The future great- 
 ness of Mithridates was thought to be prognosticated by the appearance of a 
 comet in the year of his birth, and in that of his accession to the throne * ; 
 
 1 Orig. c. Cels. i. 60. Auctor, op. imperf. in Matth. ^p. Fabricius Pseudepigr. V. T., p. 
 807 ff. 
 « Schmidt's Bibliothek, 3, I, s. 130. . % j m -a 
 
 3 In loc. Num. (Schottgen, hora:, ii. p. 152) : Multi Interpretati stmt hac dc Messid. 
 
 < Justin. Hist. 37. 
 
174 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 36. 
 
 and a comet observed shortly after the death of Julius Csesar, was supposed 
 to have a dose relation to that event ^ These ideas were not without influ- 
 ence on the Jews; at least we find traces of them in Jewish writings of a later 
 period, in which it is said that a remarkable star appeared at the birth of 
 Abraham/ When such ideas were afloat, it was easy to imagine that the birth 
 of the Messiah must be announced by a star, especially as, according to the 
 common interpretation of Balaam's prophecy, a star was there made the sym- 
 bol of the Messiah. It is certain that the Jewish mind effected this combi- 
 nation ; for it is a rabbinical idea that at the time of the Messiah's birth, a 
 star will appear in the east and remain for a long time visible.'' The narra- 
 tive of Matthew is allied to this simpler Jewish idea ; the apocryphal descrip- 
 tions of the star that announced the birth of Jesus, to the extravagant fictions 
 about the star said to have appeared in the time of Abraham.** We may 
 therefore state the opinion of K. Ch. L. Schmidt,^ recently approved by 
 Fritzsche and De Wette, as the nearest approach to truth on the subject of 
 Matthew's star in the east. In the time of Jesus it was the general belief that 
 stars were always the forerunners of great events; hence the Jews of that 
 period thought that the birth of the Messiah would necessarily be announced 
 by a star, and this supposition had a specific sanction in Num. xxiv. 17. The 
 early converted Jewish Christians could confirm their faith in Jesus, and jus- 
 tify it in the eyes of others, only by labouring to prove that in him were realized 
 all the attributes lent to the Messiah by the Jewish notions of their age — a 
 proposition that might be urged the more inoffensively and with the less chance 
 of refutation, the more remote lay the age of Jesus, and the more completely 
 the history of his childhood was shrouded in darkness. Hence it soon ceased 
 to be matter of doubt that the anticipated appearance of a star was really 
 coincident with the birth of Jesus.*" This being once presupposed, it followed 
 as a matter of course that the observers of this appearance were eastern magi ; 
 first, because none could better interpret the sign than astrologers, and the 
 east was supposed to be the native region of their science ; and secondly, 
 because it must have seemed fitting that the Messianic star which had been 
 seen by the spiritual eye of the ancient magus Balaam, should, on its actual 
 appearance be first recognized by the bodily eyes of later magi. 
 
 This particular, however, as well as the journey of the magi into Judea, and 
 
 ' their costly presents to the child, bear a relation to other passages in the Old 
 
 Testament. In the description of the happier future, given in Isaiah, chap. 
 
 Ix., the prophet foretells that, at that time, the most remote people and kings 
 
 will come to Jerusalem to worship Jehovah, with offerings of gold and incense 
 
 ' Sueton. Jul. Cses. 88. 
 
 ' Jalkut Rubenij f. xxxii. 3 (ap. Wetstein) : quA hard natus est Abrahamus, pater noster, 
 super qtum sit pax, stetit quoddam sidus in orimte et deghitivit quatuor astra, qua erant in 
 quaiuor cmli plagis. According to an Arabic writing entitled Maallem, this star, prognosti- 
 cating the With of Abraham, was seen by Nimrod in a dream. Fabric. Cod. pseudepigr. V. 
 T. i. s. 345. 
 
 ' Testamentum XII. Patriarcharum, test. Levi, 18 (Fabric. Cod. pseud. V. T. p. 584 f.) : 
 Kttl di'aTeXei dffTpox aiiToD (of the Messianic ieperJs Ka,ivhi\ iv oipavip.—^uTli^ov <f>Ss yviiireas 
 K.T. \. PesiktaSotarta, f. xlviii. l{ap. Schottgen, ii. p. 531) : Et prodibit Stella ab oriente, quceest 
 Stella Messia, et in oriente versabitur dies X V. Comp. Sohar Genes, f. 74. Schottgen, ii. 
 524, and some other passages which are pointed out by Ideler in the Handbuch der Chrono- 
 ;, logic, 2 Bd. a. 409, Anm. I, and Bertholdt, Christologia Judseorum, § 14. 
 
 ' Compare with the passages cited Note 7. Protevang. Jac. cap. xxi. : elSo/iev aaripa 
 iraii/JteyiSTi, \6,ii,\j/avTa iv tois Aarpots Toirois Kal ipt^MvovTa airois toD tjxdvttv. Still more 
 exaggerated in.Ignat. ep. ad Ephes. 19. See the collection of passages connected with this 
 subject in Thilo, cod. apocr. i. p. 390 f. 
 
 ' Exeg. Beitrage, i. s. 159 ff- 
 
 '" Fritzsche in the paraphrase of chap. ii. Etiam stella, quam judaica disciplina sub Mes- 
 sia nalale visum iri dicit, quo Jesus nascebatur tempore exorta est. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 175 
 
 and all acceptable gifts^^ If in this passage the messianic times alone are 
 spoken of, while the Messiah himself is wanting,,.'iii Psalm Ixxii. we read of a 
 king who is to be feared as long as the sun and moon endure, in whose times 
 the righteous shall flourish, and whom all nations shall call blessed ; this king 
 might easily be regarded as the Messiah, and the Psalm says of him nearly 
 in the words of Isa. Ix., that foreign kings shall bring him gold and other 
 presents. To this it may be added, that the pilgrimage of foreign people to 
 Jerusalem is connected with a risen light,'^ which might suggest the star of 
 Balaam. What was more natural, when on the one hand was presented 
 Balaam's messianic star out of Jacob (for the observation of which magian 
 astrologers were the best adapted) ; on the other, a light which was to arise 
 on Jerusalem, and to which distant nations would come, bringing gifts — than 
 to combine the two images and to say : In consequence of the star which had 
 risen over Jerusalem, astrologers came from a distant land with presents for 
 the Messiah whom the star announced ? But when the imagination once had 
 possession of the star, and of travellers attracted by it from a distance, there 
 was an inducement to make the star the immediate guide of their course, and 
 the torch to light them on their way. This was a favourite idea of antiquity : 
 according to Virgil, a star, stellafacem ducens, marked out the way of ^neas 
 from the shores of Troy to the west i' ; Thrasybulus and Timoleon were led 
 by celestial fires ; and a star was said to have guided Abraham on his way to 
 Moriah.i* Besides, in the prophetic passage itself, the heavenly light seems 
 to be associated with the pilgrimage of the offerers as the guide of their course ; 
 at all events the originally figurative language of the prophet would probably, 
 at a later period, be understood literally, in accordance with the rabbinical 
 spirit of interpretation. The magi are not conducted by the star directly to 
 Bethlehem where Jesus was; they first proceed to Jerusalem. One reason 
 for this might be, that the prophetic passage connects the risen light and the 
 offerers witK Jerusalem ; but the chief reason lies in the fact, that in Jeru- 
 salem Herod was to be found ; for what was better adapted to instigate Herod 
 to his murderous decree, than the alarming tidings of the magi, that they had 
 seen the star of the great Jewish king ? 
 
 To represent a murderous decree as having been directed by Herod against 
 Jesus, was the interest of the primitive christian legend. In all times legend 
 has glorified the infancy of great men by persecutions and attempts on their 
 life ; the greater the danger that hovered over them, the higher seems their 
 value ; the more unexpectedly their deliverance is wrought, the mofe evident 
 is the esteem in which they are held by heaven. Hence in the history of the 
 childhood of Cyrus in Herodotus, of Romulus in Livy,i* and even later of 
 Augustus in Suetonius,!^ we find this trait ; neither has the Hebrew legend 
 neglected to assign such a distinction to Moses.^'' One point of analogy be- 
 
 '' As in Matt. ii. II it is said of the magi Tpoa-fivfyicav air^—xpvffbv Kal Xl^avov : so in 
 Isa. Ix. 6 (LXX. ) : fjf ow/, ^^poj-res x/swr'"", K^i Xl^mov otirov<n. The third present is in Matt. 
 fffiipva, in Isa. Xiflos tI/uos. 
 
 " V. I. und 3 : x!?^, "j"' "''l^?''' '^^'""* ^? *5 (LXX : 'I«/)owa\</M) *"!1i< 'P-1P 
 
 ".^neid. ii. 693 fF. 
 
 " Wetstein, in loc. 
 
 " Herod, i. 108 fr. Liv. i. 4- ,. . „ r . ^ ,*/;,- ^„. 
 
 "OdtuVQ^:— ante fiaurosauam nasceretur menses prodigium Roma factum puoiice, quo 
 dinuntiabatur, regem topuli Romani naturam farturire. Senatum extemtum, censmsse, ne 
 quis illo anno genitus educaretur. Eos, qui gravidas uxores haberent, quo ad se quisque sfem 
 traheret, curasse, ne Senatus consuUum ad ararium deferretur. 
 
 "Bauer (uber das Mythische in der fruheren Lebensper. des Moses, in the n. Iheol. 
 
176 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 36. 
 
 tween the narrative in Exod. i. ii., and that in Matthew, is that in both cases 
 the murderous decree does not refer specially to the one dangerous child, but 
 generally to a certain class of children ; in the former, to all new-born males, 
 in the latter to all of and under the age of two years. It is true that, accord- 
 ing to the narrative in Exodus, the murderous decree is determined on with- 
 out any reference to Moses, of whose birth Pharaoh is not supposed to have 
 had any presentiment, and who is therefore only by accident implicated in 
 its consequences. But this representation did not sufficiently mark out 
 Moses as the object of hostile design to satisfy the spirit of Hebrew tradition, 
 and by the time of Josephus it had been so modified as to resemble more 
 nearly the legends concerning Cyrus and Augustus, and above all the narra- 
 tive of Matthew. According to the later legend, Pharaoh was incited to issue 
 his murderous decree by a communication from his interpreters of the sacred 
 writings, who announced to him the birth of an infant destined to succour the 
 Israelites and humble the Egyptians.^^ -phe interpreters of the sacred writ- 
 ings here play the same part as the interpreters of dreams in Herodotus, and 
 the astrologers in Matthew. Legend was not content with thus signalizing 
 the infancy of the lawgiver alone — it soon extended the same distinction to 
 the great progenitor of the Israelitish nation, Abraham, whom it represented 
 as being in peril of his life from the murderous attempt of a jealous tyrant,, 
 immediately after his birth. Moses was opposed to Pharaoh as an enemy and 
 oppressor ; Abraham held the same position with respect to Nimrod. This 
 monarch was forewarned by his sages, whose attention had been excited by a 
 remarkable Star, that Tharah would have a son from whom a powerful nation 
 would descend. Apprehensive of rivalry, Nimrod immediately issues a mur- 
 derous command, which, however, Abraham happily escapes. ^^ What wonder 
 then, that, as the great progenitor and the lawgiver of the nation had their 
 Nimrod and Pharaoh, a corresponding persecutor was found for the restorer 
 of the nation, the Messiah, in the person of Herod ; — that this tyrant was said 
 to have been apprised of the Messiah's birth by wise men, and to have laid 
 snares against his life, from which, however, he happily: escapes ? The apo- 
 cryphal legend, indeed, has introduced an imitation of this trait, after its own 
 style, into the history of the Forerunner ; he, too, is endangered by Herod's 
 decree, a mountain is miraculously cleft asunder to receive him and his 
 mother, but his father refusing to point out the boy's hiding-place, is put to 
 death.S" 
 
 Jesus escapes from the hostile attempts of Herod by other means than 
 those by which Moses, according to the mosaic history, and Abraham, 
 according to the Jewish legend, elude the decree issued against them ; 
 namely, by a flight out of his native land into Egypt. In the life of Moses 
 also there occurs a flight into a foreign land ; not, however, during his child- 
 hood, but after he had slain the Egyptian, when, fearing the vengeance of 
 Pharaohi he takes refuge in Midian (Exod. ii. 15). That reference was made 
 to this flight of the first Goel in that of the second, our text expressly shows, 
 for the words, which it attributes to the angel, who encourages Joseph to 
 
 Journ. 13, 3) had already compared the marvellous deliverance of Moses with that of Cyrus 
 and Romulus ; the comparison of the infanticides was added by De Wette, Kritilc der Mos. 
 Geschichte, s. 176. 
 
 '' Joseph. Antiq. ii. ix. 2. 
 
 " Jalkut Rubeni (cont. of the passage cited in Note 6) : dixerunt sapientes Nimrodi : natus 
 est Tharafilius h&c ipsd hard, ex quo egressurm est populus, qui hareditabit prasens et futurum 
 siculum ; si tiiiplacuerit, detur patri ipsius domus argento auroqite plena, et occidat ipsum, 
 Comp. the passage of the Arabic book quoted- by Fabric. Cod. pseudepigr. ut sup. 
 
 *" Protev. Jacobi, c. xxii. f. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 1 77 
 
 return out of Egypt into Palestine, are those by which Moses is induced to 
 return' out of Midian into Egypt. ^^ The choice of Egypt as a place of refuge 
 for Jesus, may be explained in the simplest manner : the young Messiah could 
 not, like Moses, flee out of Egypt; hence, that his history might not be 
 destitute of so significant a feature as a connexion with Egypt, that ancient 
 retreat of the patriarchs, the relation was reversed, and he was made to flee 
 into Egypt, which, besides, from its vicinity, was the most appropriate asylum 
 for a fugitive from Judea. The prophetic passage which the evangelist cites 
 from Hosea xi. i, Out of Egypt have I called my son — is less available for the 
 elucidation of this particular in our narrative. For the immediate proofs that 
 the Jews referred this passage to the Messiah are very uncertain ; ^^ though, 
 if we compare such passages as Ps. ii. 7, in which the words HFiX '35 (thoU 
 art my son) are interpreted of the Messiah, it cannot appear incredible that 
 the expression 'W (my son) in Hosea was supposed to have a messianic signifi' 
 cation. 
 
 Against this mythical derivation of the narrative, two objections have been 
 recently urged. P'irst, if the history of the star originated in Balaam's pro- 
 ]jhecy, why, it is asked, does not Matthew, fond as he is of showing the 
 fulfilment of Old Testament predictions in the life of Jesus, make the slightest 
 allusion to that prophecy ? ^^ Because it was not he who wove this history 
 out of the materials furnished in the Old Testament ; he received it, already 
 fashioned, from others, who did not communicate to him its real origin. For 
 the very reason that many narratives were transmitted to him without their 
 appropriate keys, he sometimes tries false ones; as in our narrative, in relation 
 to the Bethlehem massacre, he quotes, under a total misconception of the 
 passage, Jeremiah's image of Rachel weeping for her children.^* The other 
 objection is this : how could the communities of Jewish Christians, whence 
 this pretended raythus must have sprung, ascribe so high an importance to 
 the heathen as is implied in the star of the magi ? ^^ As if the prophets had 
 not, in such passages as we have quoted, already ascribed to them this 
 importance, which, in fact, consists but in their rendering homage and sub- 
 mission to the Messiah, a relation that must be allowed to correspond with 
 the ideas of the Jewish Christians, not to speak of the particular conditions on 
 which the heathen were to be admitted into the kingdom of the Messiah. 
 
 We must therefore abide by the mythical interpretation of our narrative, 
 and content ourselves with gathering from it no particular fact in the life of 
 Jesus, but only a new proof how strong was the impression of his messiah- 
 ship left by Jesus on the minds of his contemporaries, since even the history 
 of his childhood received a messianic form.^^ 
 
 Let us now revert to the narrative of Luke, chap, ii., so far as it runs 
 parallel with that of Matthew. We have seen that the narrative of Matthew 
 
 " Ex. iv. 19, LXX ; Matt. ii. 20: 
 
 8o'8ii-e, dirfXee efa Uyvirrov, reBviiKatii. ycip iyepBcU—vopevov els yv I^/""!^- riHvriKaffi 
 TTivTes d h)TOVVTii aov T^v ^x¥- y^P <>'■ i-Vrovvre, t^v i/^uxV "" Ta'^O"' 
 
 We may remark that the inappropriate use of the plural in the evangelical passage, can only 
 be explained on the supposition of a reference to the passage in Exod. See Winer, JN. i. 
 Gramm. s. 149. Comp. also Exod. iv. 20 with Matt. ii. 14, 21. 
 
 22 Vide e. g. Schottgen, Horse, ii. p. 209. 
 
 " Theile, zur biographie Jesu, § 15, Anm. 9. Hoffmann, s. 269. 
 
 " Comp. my Streit.schri(ten, i. i, s. 42 f. ; George, s. 39. 
 
 ^° I'cltoa^chl; fueb;r^d;n Lukas, s. 47), «''Pl'''°^'^^^"?'''^^:^f™m tfe'o "l^an"^ 
 a symbolical one : but he scorns to take into consideration the passages from the O. 1. and 
 otheTwrittgs which have a bearing on the subject, and by way of retribution, his exposition 
 at one time rests in generalities, at another, takes a wrong path. ^ 
 
178 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 37. 
 
 does not allow us to presuppose that of Luke as a series of prior incidents : 
 still less can the converse be true, namely, that the magi arrived before the 
 shepherds : it remains then to be asked, whether the two narratives do not 
 aim to represent the same fact, though they have given it a different garb ? 
 From the older orthodox opinion that the star in Matthew was an angel, it 
 was an easy step to identify that apparition with the angel in Luke, and to 
 suppose that the angels, who appeared to the shepherds of Bethlehem on the 
 night of the birth of Jesus, were taken by the distant magi for a star vertical 
 to Judea,^'' so that both the accounts might be essentially correct. Of late, 
 only one of the Evangelists has been supposed to give the true circumstances, 
 and Luke has had the preference, Matthew's narrative being regarded as an 
 embellished edition. 
 
 According to this opinion, the angel clothed in heavenly brightness, in 
 Luke, became a star in the tradition recorded by Matthew, the ideas of angels 
 and stars being confounded in the higher Jewish theology ; the shepherds 
 were exalted into royal magi, kings being in antiquity called the shepherds 
 of their people. ^^ This derivation is too elaborate to be probable, even were 
 it true, as it is here assumed, that Luke's narrative bears the stamp of his- 
 torical credibility. As, however, we conceive that we have proved the 
 contrary, and as, consequently, we have before us two equally unhistorical 
 narratives, there is no reason for preferring a forced and unnatural derivation 
 of Matthew's narrative from that of Luke, to the very simple derivation which 
 may be traced through Old Testament passages and Jewish notions. These 
 two descriptions of the introduction of Jesus into the world, are, therefore, 
 two variations on the same theme, composed, however, quite independently 
 pf each other. 
 
 § 37- 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL RELATION BEEWEEN THE VISIT OF THE MAGI, TOGETHER 
 WITH THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT, AND THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE 
 RECORDED BY LUKE. 
 
 It has been already remarked, that the narratives of Matthew and Luke 
 above considered at first run tolerably parallel, but afterwards widely diverge ; 
 for instead of the tragical catastrophe of the massacre and flight, Luke has 
 preserved to us the peaceful scene of the presentation of the child Jesus in 
 the temple. Let us for the present shut our eyes to the result of the preced- 
 ing inquiry — the purely mythical character of Matthew's narrative — and ask : 
 In what chronological relation xould the presentation in the temple stand to 
 the visit of the magi and the flight into Egypt ? 
 
 Of these occurrences the only one that has a precise date is the presentation 
 in the temple, of which it is said that it took place at the expiration of the 
 period appointed by the law for the purification of a mother, that is, accord- 
 ing to Lev. xii. 2-4, forty days after the birth of the child (Luke ii. 22). The 
 time of the other incidents is not fixed with the same exactness ; it is merely 
 said that the magi came to Jerusalem, tov 'Iricrov yewj/^evros ev BrjOXee/n, (Matt. 
 ii. i) — how long after the birth the Evangelist does not decide. As, however, 
 the participle connects the visit, of the magi with the birth of the child, if not 
 immediately, at least so closely that nothing of importance can be supposed 
 t£) have intervened, some ' expositors have been led to the opinion that the 
 
 *' Lightfoot, Horse, p. 202.,., 
 
 " Schpeckenburger, Ueber deri Ursprung des ersten kanonischen Evahgeliums, s. 69 ff. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 179 
 
 ■visit ought to be regarded as prior to the presentation in the temple.^ Admit- 
 ting this arrangement, we have to reconcile it with one of two alternatives ; 
 either the flight into Egypt also preceded the presentation in the temple ; or, 
 while the visit of the magi preceded, the flight followed that event. If we 
 adopt the latter alternative, and thrust the presentation in the temple between 
 the visit of the magi and the flight, we come into collision at once with the 
 text of Matthew and the mutual relation of the facts. The Evangelist con- 
 nects the command to flee into Egypt with the return of the magi, by a 
 participial construction (v. 13) similar to that by which he connects the 
 arrival of the oriental sages with the birth of Jesus; hence those, who in the 
 one instance hold such a construction to be a reason for placing the events 
 which it associates in close succession, must in the other instance be withheld 
 by it from inserting a third occurrence between the visit and the flight. As 
 regards the mutual relation of the facts, it can hardly be considered probable, 
 that at the very point of time in which Joseph received a divine intimation, 
 that he was no longer safe in Bethlehem from the designs of Herod, he should 
 be permitted to take a journey to Jerusalem, and thus to rush directly into 
 the lion's mouth. At all events, the strictest precautions must have been 
 enjoined on all who were privy to the presence of the messianic child in 
 Jerusalem, lest a rumour of the fact should get abroad. But there is no trace 
 of this soUcitous incognito in Luke's narrative ;on the contrary, not only does 
 Simeon call attention to Jesus in the temple, unchecked either by the Holy 
 Spirit or by the parents, but Anna also thinks she is serving the good cause, 
 by publishing as widely as possible the tidings of the Messiah's birth (Luke 
 ii. 28 ff. 38). It is true that she is said to have confined her communica- 
 tions to those who were like-minded with herself (eA.aA.tt Trepl avrov iraa-i toi^ 
 ■rrpoa-Sexof^OK X.vrp<ji(nv iv 'lepova-aXrjiJ.), but this could not hinder them from 
 reaching the ears of the Herodian party, for the greater the excitement pro- 
 duced by such news on the minds of those who looked for redemption, the 
 more would the vigilance of the government be aroused, so that Jesus would 
 inevitably fall into the hands of the tyrant who was lying in wait. 
 
 Thus in any case, they who place the presentation in the temple after the 
 visit of the magi, must also determine to postpone it until after the return 
 from Egypt. But even this arrangement clashes with the evangelical state- 
 ment ; for it requires us to insert, between the birth of Jesus and his pre- 
 sentation in the temple, the following events : the arrival of the magi, the 
 flight into Egypt, the Bethlehem massacre, the death of Herod, and the 
 return of the parents of Jesus out of Egypt— obviously too much to be in-, 
 eluded in the space of forty days. It must therefore be supposed that the 
 presentation of the child, and the first app'earance of the mother m the 
 temple, were procrastinated beyond the time appointed by the law. This 
 expedient, however, runs counter to the narrative of Luke, who expressly 
 says, that the visit to the temple took place at the legal time. But in either 
 case the difficulty is the same; the parents of Jesus could, according to 
 Matthew's account, as little think of a journey to Jerusalem after their return 
 from Egypt, as immediately previous to their departure thither. I'or it 
 Joseph, on his return from Egypt, was warned not to enter Judea, because 
 Archelaus was Herod's successor in that province, he would least ot all 
 .venture to Jerusalem, the very seat of the redoubted government. ■ 
 
 . On neither of the above plans, therefore, will the presentation in the temple 
 bear to be placed after the visit of the magi, and the only remaining alterna- 
 
 %hus, e. g. Augustin de consensu evangelistarum, ii. S- Storr, opusc. acad. iii. s. 96 ff. 
 Suskind, in Bengel's Archiv. i. I, s. 2l6ff. 
 
l8o PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 37- 
 
 tive, which is embraced by the majority of commentators,^ is to make the 
 incident noticed by Luke, precede both those narrated by Matthew. This is 
 so far the most natural, that in Matthew there is at least an indirect intima- 
 tion of a considerable interval between the birth of Jesus and the arrival of 
 the magi. For we are told that Herod's decree included all the children in 
 Bethlehem up to the age of two years ; we must therefore necessarily infer, 
 that even if Herod, to make sure -of his object, exceeded the term fixed by 
 the magi, the star had been visible to these astrologers for more than a year. 
 Now the narrator seems to suppose the appearance of the star to have been 
 cotemporary with the birth of Jesus. Viewing the narratives in this order, 
 the parents of Jesus first journeyed from Bethlehem, where the child was 
 bom, to Jerusalenji, there to present the legal offerings ; they next returned 
 to Bethlehem, where (according to Matt. ii. i and 5) they were found by the 
 magi ; then followed the flight into Egypt, and after the return from thence, 
 the settlement at Nazareth. The first and most urgent question that here 
 suggests itself is this : What had the parents of Jesus to do a second time in 
 Bethlehem, which was not their home, and where their original business 
 connected with the census must surely have been despatched in the space of 
 forty days? The discussion of this question must be deferred, but we can 
 find an ample substitute for this argument, drawn from the nature of the fact, 
 in one which rests on the words of the evangelical narrative. Luke (v. 39) 
 says, in the most definite manner, that after the completion of the legal 
 observance, the parents of Jesus returned to Nazareth, as to their proper 
 home, not to Bethlehem, which, according to him, was merely a temporary 
 residence.* If, then, the magi arrived after the presentation in the temple, 
 they must have met with the parents of Jesus in Nazareth, and not in 
 Bethlehem, as Matthew states. Moi'eover, had the arrival of the magi really 
 been preceded by the presentation in the temple, together with the attention 
 which must have been excited by the language of Simeon and Anna ; it is 
 impossible that at the period of that arrival the birth of the messianic child 
 could have been so much a secret in Jerusalem, that the announcement of it 
 by the magi should be, as Matthew relates, a source of general astonishment.* 
 
 If, then, the presentation of Jesus in the temple can have taken place 
 neither earlier nor later than the visit of the magi and the flight into Egypt ; 
 and if the flight into Egypt can have taken place neither earlier nor later than 
 the presentation in the temple ; it is impossible that both these occurrences 
 really happened, and, at the very utmost, only one can be historical.^ 
 
 To escape from this dangerous dilemma, supranaturalism has lately been 
 induced to take a freer position, that by the surrender of what is no longer 
 tenable, the residue may be saved. Neander finds himself constrained to 
 admit, that neither did Luke know anything of what Matthew communicates 
 concerning the childhood of Jesus, nor did the Greek editor of Matthew (to 
 be distinguished from the apostle) know anything of the events detailed by 
 Luke. But, he contends, it does not therefore follow that both the different 
 series of incidents cannot have happened.* By giving this turn to the matter, 
 
 ' E.g. Hess, Geschiclite Jesu, I, s. 51 flf. P^ulus, Olshausen, in loc. 
 
 * Siiskind, ut sup. s. 222. 
 
 * The same difference as to the chronological relation of the two incidents exists between 
 the two different texts of the apocryphal book : Historia de nativitate Marise et de inf. Serv., 
 see Thilo, p. 385, not. 
 
 » This incompatibility of the two narratives was perceived at an early period by some 
 opponents of Christianity. Epiphanius names one Philosabbatius, together with Celsus and 
 Porphyry (haeres. li. 8). 
 
 « Neander, L. J. Ch. s. 33, Anm. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. l8l 
 
 the difficulties arising from the words of the Evangelist are certainly avoided ; 
 not so, the difficulties arising from the nature of the facts. The first Evangelist 
 ranges in close succession the visit of the magi and the flight into Egypt, as 
 though no change of place had intervened ; the author of the third Gospel 
 represents the parents of Jesus as returning with the child, after the presenta- 
 tion in the temple, directly to Nazareth. We cannot, on this ground, argue 
 from one evangelist against the other ; for it is inadmissible to maintain that 
 certain events never happened, because they were unknown to a remote 
 narrator. But viewing the two narratives in another light, we perceive how 
 improbable it is that, after the scene in the temple, the birth of the messianic 
 child should be so entirely unknown in Jerusalem as the conduct of Herod 
 on the arrival of the magi implies ; how incredible (reversing the order of the 
 events) that Joseph should be permitted to go to Jerusalem, with the child 
 which Herod had just sought to kill; how inconceivable, finally, that the 
 parents of Jesus should have returned to Bethlehem after the presentation in 
 the temple (of which more hereafter). All these difficulties, lying in the 
 nature of the facts, difficulties not less weighty than those connected with the 
 words of the Evangelists, still subsist in Neander's explanation, and prove its 
 inadequacy. 
 
 Thus the dilemma above stated remains, and were we compelled to choose 
 under it, we should, in the present stage of our inquiry, on no account decide 
 in favour of Matthew's narrative, and against that of Luke ; on the contrary, 
 as we have recognized the mythical character of the former, we should have 
 no resource but to adhere, with our modern critics,'' to the narrative of Luke, 
 and surrender that of Matthew. But is not Luke's narrative of the same 
 nature as that of Matthew, and instead of having to choose between the two, 
 must we not deny to both an historical character? The answer to this 
 question will be found in the succeeding examination. 
 
 §38. 
 
 THE PRESENTATION OF JESUS IN THE TEMPLE. 
 
 The narrative of the presentation of Jesus in the temple (Luke ii. 22) seems, 
 at the first glance, to bear a thoroughly historical stamp. A double law, on 
 the one hand, prescribing to the mother an offering of purification, on the 
 other, requiring the redemption of the first-born son, leads the parents of Jesus to 
 Jerusalem and to the temple. Here they meet with a devout man, absorbed 
 in the expectation of the Messiah, named Simeon. Many expositors hold 
 this Simeon to be the same with the Rabbi Simeon, the son of Hillel, his 
 successor as president of the Sanhedrim, and the father of Gamaliel ; some 
 even identify him with the Sameas of Josephus,' and attach importance to 
 his pretended descent from David, because this descent makes him a relative 
 of Jesus, and helps to explain the following scene naturally ; but this hypo- 
 thesis is improbable, for Luke would hardly have introduced so celebrated a 
 personage by the meagre designation, av6pwir6% Tts, (a certain man).* With- 
 out this hypothesis, however, the scene between, the parents of Jesus and 
 Simeon, as also the part played by Anna the prophetess, seems to adnait of 
 a very natural explanation. There is no necessity for supposmg, with the 
 
 • 
 
 ' Schleiermacher, Ueber den Lukas, s. 47. Schneckenburger, ut sup. 
 
 1 Antiq. xiv. ix. 4, xv. i. I and x. 4. , . ,, , j ^i, ■a.„t.„ 
 
 2 The Evang. Nicodemi indeed calls him, c. xvi. d ii^aj SiSdo-KaXos, and the Protey. 
 Jacobi, c. xxiv. makes him a priest or even high priest, vid. Vatr. ap. Thilo Cod. Apocr. 
 N. T. I, s. 271, comp. 203. 
 
1 82 PART 1. CHAPTER IV. § 38. 
 
 author of the Natural History,* that Simeon was previously aware of the hope 
 cherished by Mary that she was about to give birth to the Messiah ; we need 
 only, with Paulus and others, conceive the facts in the following manner. 
 Animated, like many of that period, with the hope of the speedy advent of 
 the Messiah, Simeon receives, probably in a dream, the assurance that before 
 his death he will be permitted to see the expected deliverer of his nation. 
 One day, in obedience to an irresistible impulse, he visited the temple, and 
 on this very day Mary brought thither her child, whose beauty at onee 
 attracted his notice ; on learning the child's descent from David, the attention 
 and interest of Simeon were excited to a degree that induced Mary to disclose 
 to him the hopes which were reposed on this scion of ancient royalty, with the 
 extraordinary occurrences by which they had been called into existence. 
 These hopes Simeon embraced with confidence, and in enthusiastic language 
 gave utterance to his messianic expectations and forebodings, under the con- 
 viction that they would be. fulfilled in this child. Still less do we need the 
 supposition of the author of the Natural History with respect to Anna, namely, 
 that she was one of the women who assisted at the birth of the infant Jesus, 
 and was thus acquainted beforehand with the marvels and the hopes thaP 
 had clustered round his cradle ; she had heard the words of Simeon, and 
 being animated by the same sentiments, she gave them her approval. 
 
 Simple as this explanation appears, it is not less arbitrary than we have 
 already found other specimens of natural interpretation. The evangelist no- 
 where says, that the parents of Jesus had communicated anything concerning 
 their extraordinary hopes to Simeon, before he poured forth his inspired 
 words ; on the contrary, the point of his entire narrative consists in the idea 
 that the aged saint had,, by virtue of the spirit with which he was filled, 
 instantaneously discerned in Jesus the messianic child, and the reason why 
 the co-operation of the/Holy Spirit is insisted on, is to make it evident how. 
 Simeon was enabled, without any previous information, to recognise in Jesus 
 the promised child, and at the same time to foretel the course of his destiny. 
 Our canonical Gospel refers Simeon's recognition of Jesus to a supernatural 
 principle resident in Simeon himself; xhs Evangeliuminfantice arabicum refers 
 it to something objective in the appearance of Jesus * — far more in the spirit 
 of the original narrative than the natural interpretation, for it retains the 
 miraculous element. But, apart from the general reasons against the credi- 
 biUty of miracles, the admission of a miracle in this instance is attended with 
 a special difficulty, because no worthy object for an extraordinary manifestation, 
 of divine power is discoverable. For, that the above occurrence during the 
 infancy of Jesus served to disseminate and establish in more distant circles 
 the persuasion of his Messiahship, there is no indication ; we must therefore, 
 with the Evangelist, limit the object of these supernatural communications to 
 Simeon and Anna, to whose devout hopes was vouchsafed the special reward, 
 of having their eyes enlightened to discern the messianic child. But that 
 miracles should be ordained for such occasional and isolated objects, is not 
 reconcileable with just ideas of divine providence. 
 
 Thus here again we find reason to doubt the historical character of the. 
 narrative, especially as we have found by a previous investigation that it is 
 annexed to narratives purely mythical. Simeon's real expressions, say some 
 commentators, were probably these : Would that I might yet behold the new- 
 born Messiah, even as I now bear this. child in my arms! — a simple wish 
 
 » I Th. s. 20s ff. 
 
 * Cap. vi. Viditque ilium Simeon senex instar columna lucis refulgentem, cum Domina 
 Maria virgo, mater ejus, ulnis suis eum gestaret, — et tircumdabant eum angeli instar ciictili, 
 celebrantes ilium, etc. Ap. Thilo, p. 71. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 1 83 
 
 which was transformed ex eventu by tradition, into the positive enunciations 
 now read in Luke*. But this explanation is incomplete, for the reason why 
 such stories became current concerning Jesus, must be shown in the relative 
 position of this portion of the evangelical narrative, and in the interest of the 
 primitive Christian legend. As to the former, this scene at the presentation 
 of Jesus in the temple is obviously parallel with that at the circumcision of 
 the Baptist, narrated by the same evangelist ; for on both occasions, at the 
 inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God is praised for the birth of a national 
 deliverer, and the future destiny of the child is prophetically announced, in 
 the one case by the father, in the other by a devout stranger. That this 
 scene is in the former instance connected with the circumcision, in the latter 
 with the presentation in the temple, seems to be accidental ; when however 
 the legend had once, in relation to Jesus, so profusely adorned the presentation 
 in the temple, the circumcision must be left, as we have above found it, 
 without embellishment. 
 
 As to the second spring in the formation of our narrative, namely, the 
 interest of the Christian legend, it is easy to conceive how this would act. 
 He who, as a man, so clearly proved himself to be the Messiah, must also, 
 it was thought, even as a child have been recognisable in his true character 
 to an eye rendered acute by the Holy Spirit ; he who at a later period, by his 
 powerful words and deeds, manifested himself to be the Son of God, must 
 surely, even before he could speak or move with freedom, have borne the 
 stamp of divinity. Moreover if men, moved by the Spirit of God, so early 
 pressed Jesus with love and reverence in their arms, then was the spirit that 
 animated him not an impious one, as his enemies alleged ; and if a holy seer 
 had predicted, along with the high destiny of Jesus, the conflict which he had 
 to undergo, and the anguish which his fate would cause his mother," then it 
 was assuredly no chance, but a divine plan, that fed him into the depths of 
 abasement on the way to his ultimate exaltation. 
 
 This view of the narrative is thus countenanced positively by the nature of 
 the fact, — and negatively by the difficulties attending any other explanation. 
 One cannot but wonder, therefore, how Schleiermacher can be influenced 
 against it by an observation which did not prevent him from taking a similar 
 view of the history of the Baptist's birth, namely, that the narrative is too 
 natural to have been fabricated '' ; and how Neander can argue against it, 
 from exaggerated ideas of the more imposing traits which the mythus would 
 have substituted for our narrative. Far from allowing a purification for the 
 mother of Jesus, and a redemption for himself, to take place in the ordinary 
 manner, Neander thinks the mythus would have depicted an angelic appear- 
 ance, intended to deter Mary or the priest from an observance inconsistent 
 with the dignity of Jesus.* As though even the Christianity of Paul did not 
 maintain that Christ was born under the law yevo/iievos ynto voixov (Gal. iv. 4) ; 
 how much more then the Judaic Christianity whence these narratives are 
 derived ! As though Jesus himself had not, agreeably to this view of his 
 position, submitted to baptism, and according to the Evangelist whose 
 narrative is in question, without any previous expostulation on the part of the 
 
 5 Thus E. F. in the treatise, on the two first chapters of Matth. and Luke. In Henke's 
 Mag. S bd. s. 169 f. A similar half measure is in Matthai, Synopse der 4 Evan. s. 3, S f- 
 
 « With the words of Simeon addressed to Mary : xal <rov Si airrijs r^v i'vxh" Sie\ev(reTai 
 l>ofi<pala (v. 35) comp. the words in the messianic psalm of sorrow, xxii. 21 : piffoi dTrd 
 hoijubalai tt)V i/vxiv iwv. , , j »i. t, 
 
 'Schleiermacher, Ueber den Lukas, s. 37. Compare on the other hand the observations 
 in 8 18, with those of the authors there quoted, Note 19. , , ., r . 
 
 8 Neander here (s. 24 f.) mistakes the apocryphal for the mythical, as he had before done 
 the poetical. 
 
184 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 39. 
 
 Baptist ! Of more weight is Schleiermacher's other observation, that suppos- 
 ing this narrative to be merely a poetical creation, its author would scarcely 
 have placed by the side of Simeon Anna, of whom he makes no poetical use, 
 still less would he have characterized her with minuteness, after designating 
 his principal personage with comparative negligence. But to represent the 
 dignity of the child Jesus as being proclaimed by the mouth of two witnesses, 
 and especially to associate a prophetess with a prophet — this is just the 
 symmetrical grouping that the legend loves. The detailed description of 
 Anna may have been taken from a real person who, at the time when our 
 narrative originated, was yet held in remembrance for her distinguished piety. 
 As to the Evangelist's omission to assign her any particular speech, it is to be 
 observed that her office is to spread abroad the glad news, while that of 
 Simeon is to welcome Jesus into the temple: hence as the part of the 
 prophetess was to be performed behind the scenes, her precise words could 
 not be given. As in a former instance Schleiermacher supposes the Evangelist 
 to have received his history from the lips of the shepherds, so here he con- 
 ceives him to have been indebted to Anna, of whose person he has so vivid 
 a recollection; Neander approves this opinion— not the only straw thrown 
 out by Schleiermacher, to which this theologian has clung in the emergencies 
 of modern criticism. 
 
 At this point also, where Luke's narrative leaves Jesus for a series of years, 
 there is a concluding sentence on the prosperous growth of the child (v. 40) ; 
 a similar sentence occurs at the corresponding period in the life of the 
 Baptist, and both recall the analogous form of expression found in the history 
 of Samson (Judg. xiii. 24 f.). 
 
 § 39- 
 
 RETROSPECT. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MATTHEW AND LUKE AS TO THE 
 ORIGINAL RESIDENCE OF THE PARENTS OF JESUS. 
 
 In the foregoing examinations we have called in question the historical 
 credibility of the Gospel narratives concerning the genealogy, birth, and 
 childhood of Jesus, on two grounds : first, because the narratives taken 
 separately contain much that will not bear an historical interpretation ; and 
 secondly, because the parallel narratives of Matthew and Luke exclude each 
 other, so that it is impossible for both to be true, and one must necessarily be 
 false ; this imputation however may attach to either, and consequently to 
 both. One of the contradictions between the two narratives extends from the 
 commencement of the history of the childhood to the point we have how 
 reached ; it has therefore often come in our way, but we have been unable 
 hitherto to give it our consideration, because only now that we have com- 
 pletely reviewed the scenes in which it figures, have we materials enough on 
 which to found a just estimate of its consequences. We refer to the diver- 
 gency that exists between Matthew and Luke, in relation to the original 
 dwelling-place of the parents of Jesus. 
 
 Luke,' from the very beginning of his history, gives Nazareth as the abode of 
 Joseph and Mary ; here the angel seeks Mary (i. 26) ; here we must suppose - 
 Mary's house oIkOs, to be situated (i. 56); from hence the parents of Jesus 
 jourrifey to Bethlehem, on account of the census (ii. 4): and hither, when 
 circumstances permit, they return as to their own city ttoAis aurui' (v. 39). 
 Thus in Luke, Nazareth is evidently the proper residence of the parents of 
 Jesus, and they only visit Bethlehem for a short time, owing to a casual 
 circumstance. 
 
BIRTH AND EAKLY LIFE OF JESUS. 185 
 
 In Matthew, it is not stated in the first instance where Joseph and Mary 
 resided. According to ii. i, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and since no 
 extraordinary circumstances are said to have led his parents thither, it appears 
 as if Matthew supposed them to have been originally resident in Bethlehem. 
 Here he makes the parents with the child receive the visit of the magi ; then 
 follows the flight into Egypt, on returning from which Joseph is only deterred 
 from again seeking Judea by a special divine admonition, which directs him 
 to Nazareth in Galilee (ii. 22). This last particular renders certain what had 
 before seemed probable, namely, that Matthew did not with Luke suppose 
 Nazareth, but Bethlehem, to have been the original dwelling-place of the 
 parents of Jesus, and that he conceived their final settlement at Nazareth to 
 have been the result of unforeseen circumstances. 
 
 This contradiction is generally glided over without suspicion. The reason 
 of this lies in the peculiar character of Matthew's Gospel, a character on 
 which a modern writer has built the assertion that this Evangelist does not 
 contradict Luke concerning the original residence of the parents of Jesus, for 
 he says nothing at all on the subject, troubling himself as little about topo- 
 graphical as chronological accuracy. He mentions the later abode of Joseph 
 and Mary, and the birth-place of Jesus, solely because it was possible to con- 
 nect with them Old Testament prophecies; as the abode of the parent of 
 Jesus prior to his birth furnished no opportunity for a similar quotation, 
 Matthew has left it entirely unnoticed, an omission which however, in his 
 style of narration, is no proof that he was ignorant of their abode, or that he 
 supposed it to have been Bethlehem.^ But even admitting that the silence 
 of Matthew on the earlier residence of the parents of Jesus in Nazareth, and 
 on the peculiar circumstances that caused Bethlehem to be his birth-place, 
 proves nothing ; yet the above supposition requires that the exchange of Beth- 
 lehem for Nazareth should be so represented as to give some intimation, or 
 at least to leave a possibility, that we should understand the former to be a 
 merely temporary abode, and the journey to the latter a return homeward. 
 Such an intimation would have been given, had Matthew attributed to the 
 angelic vision, that determined Joseph's settlement in Nazareth after his 
 return from Egypt, such communications as the following : Return now into 
 the land of Israel and into your native city Nazareth, for there is no further 
 need of your presence in Bethlehem, since the prophecy that your messianic 
 child should be born in that place is already fulfilled. But as Matthew is 
 alleged to be generally indifferent about localities, we will be moderate, and 
 demand no positive intimation from him, but simply make the negative 
 requisition, that he should not absolutely exclude the idea, that Nazareth was 
 the original dwelling-place of the parents of Jesus. This requisition would 
 be met if, instead of a special cause being assigned for the choice of Nazareth 
 as a residence, it had been merely said that the parents of Jesus returned by 
 divine direction into the land of Israel and betook themselves to Nazareth. 
 It would certainly seem abrupt enough, if without any preamble Nazareth 
 were all at once named instead of Bethlehem : of this our narrator was con- 
 scious, and for this reason he has detailed the causes that led to the change 
 (ii 22) But instead of doing this, as we have shown that he must have done 
 it had he, with Luke, known Nazareth to be the origmal dwelling-place of 
 the parents of Jesus, his account has precisely the opposite bearing, which 
 undeniably proves that his supposition was the reverse of Luke s. I'or when 
 Matthew represents Joseph on his return from Egypt as being prevented from 
 going to Judea solely by his fear of Archelaus, he ascribes to him an inclina- 
 
 ' Olshausen, bibl. Comm. i. a. 142 f- 
 
1 86 PART I. CHAPTER IV, § 37. 
 
 tion to proceed to that province — an inclination which is unaccountable if the 
 affair of the census alone had taken him to Bethlehem, and which is only to 
 be explained by the supposition that he had formerly dwelt there. On the 
 other hand as Matthew makes the danger from Archelaus (together with the 
 fulfilment of a prophecy) the sole cause of the settlement of Joseph and Mary 
 at Nazareth, he cannot have supposed that this was their original home, for 
 in that case there would have been an independently decisive cause which 
 would have rendered any other superfluous. 
 
 Thus the difficulty of reconciling Matthew with Luke, in the present 
 instance, turns upon the impossibility of conceiving how the parents of Jesus 
 could, on their return from Egypt, have it in contemplation to proceed a 
 second time to Bethlehem unless this place had formerly been their home. 
 The efforts of commentators have accordingly been chiefly applied to the task 
 of finding other reasons for the existence of such an inclination in Joseph and 
 Mary. Such efforts are of a very early date. Justin Martyr, holding by Luke, 
 who, while he decidedly states Nazareth to be the dwelling-place of the 
 parents of Jesus, yet does not represent Joseph as a complete stranger in 
 Bethlehem (for he makes it the place from which he lineally sprang), 
 seems to suppose that Nazareth was the dwelling-place and Bethlehem 
 the birth-place of Joseph,^ and Credner thinks that this passage of Justin 
 points out the source, and presents the reconciliation of the divergent 
 statements of our two Evangelists.^ But it is far from presenting a reconcili- 
 ation. For as Nazareth is still supposed to be the place which Joseph had 
 chosen as his home, no reason appears, why, on his return from Egypt, he 
 should all at once desire to exchange his former residence for his birth-place, 
 especially as, according to Justin himself, the cause of his former journey to 
 Bethlehem had not been a plan of settling there, but simply the census — a 
 cause which, after the flight, no longer existed. Thus the statement of Justin 
 leans to the side of Luke and does not suffice to bring him into harmony 
 with Matthew. That it was the source of our two evangelical accounts is still 
 less credible; for how could the narrative of Matthew, which, mentions neither 
 Nazareth as a dwelling-place, nor the census as the cause of a journey to 
 Bethlehem, originate in the statement of Justin, to which these facts are 
 essential ? Arguing generally, where on the one hand, there are two diverging 
 statements, on the other, an insufficient attempt to combine them, it is certain 
 that the latter is not the parent and the two former its offspring, but vice versa. 
 Moreover, in this department of attempting reconciliations, we have already, 
 in connection with the genealogies, learned to estimate Justin or his authorities. 
 
 A more thorough attempt at reconciliation is made in the Evangelium de 
 nativitate Maries, and has met with much approval from modern theologians. 
 According to this apocryphal book, the house of Mary's parents was at Naz- 
 areth, and although she was brought up in the temple at Jerusalem and there 
 espoused to Joseph, she returned after this occurrence to her parents in 
 Galilee. Joseph, on the contrary, was not only born at Bethlehem, as Justin 
 seems to intimate, but also lived there, and thither brought home his 
 betrothed.* But this mode of conciliation, unlike the other, is favourable to 
 
 2 Dial. c. Trypho, 78 : Joseph came from Nazareth, where he lived, to Bethlehem, whence 
 he was, to be enrolled, dveXT/Xiiffet ('luo-J;^) difd Nafap^T-, ^vSa SiKei, ei's BriBXei/i, S0ev ^t>, 
 airoypd\f/a(rBai. The words SBev ^v might however be understood as signifying merely the 
 place of his tribe, especially if J ustin's addition be considered : J-or his race was of the tribe 
 ofjudah, which inhabits that land, diri ykp rrp Ka.roi.KoiiTr\i ■riji' y^v ixelvriv 0uX?s 'loiiSo rb 
 yivoi ?». 
 
 ' Beitrage zur Einleit. in das N. T. i. s. 217. Comp. Hoffmann, s. 238 f. 277 ff. 
 
 * C. I. 8. 10. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 1 8/ 
 
 Matthew and disadvantageous to Luke. For the census with its attendant 
 circumstances is left out, and necessarily so, because if Joseph were at home 
 in Bethlehem, and only went to Nazareth to fetch his bride, the census could 
 not be represented as the reason why he returned to Bethlehem, for he would 
 have done so in the ordinary course of things, after a few days' absence. 
 Above all, had Bethlehem been his home, he would not on his arrival have 
 sought an inn where there was no room for him, but would have taken Mary 
 under his own roof. Hence modern expositors who wish to avail themselves 
 of the outlet presented by the apocryphal book, and yet to save the census of 
 Luke from rejection, maintain that Joseph did indeed dwell, and carry on his 
 trade, in Bethlehem, but that he possessed no house of his own in that place, and 
 the census recalling him thither sooner than he had anticipated, he had not 
 yet provided one.^ But Luke makes it appear, not only that the parents of 
 Jesus were not yet setded in Bethlehem, but that they were not even desirous 
 of settling there ; that, on the contrary, it was their intention to depart after 
 the shortest possible stay. This opinion supposes great poverty on the part 
 of Joseph and Mary ; Olshausen, on the other hand, prefers enriching them, 
 for the sake of conciliating the difference in question. He supposes that they 
 had property both in Bethlehem and Nazareth, and could therefore have 
 settled in either place, but unknown circumstances inclined them, on their 
 return from Egypt, to fix upon Bethlehem until the divine warning came as 
 a preventive. Thus Olshausen declines particularizing the reason why it ap- 
 peared desirable to the parents of Jesus to settle in Bethleheni ; but 
 Heydenreich ® and others have supplied his omission, by assuming that it 
 must have seemed to them most fitting for him, who was pre-eminently the 
 Son of David, to be brought up in David's own city. 
 
 Here, however, theologians would do well to take for their model the 
 honesty of Neander, and to confess with him that of this intention on the part 
 of Joseph and Mary to settle at Bethlehem, and of the motives which induced 
 them to give up the plan, Luke knows nothing, and that they rest on the author- 
 ity of Matthew alone. But what reason does Matthew present for this alleged 
 change of place ? The visit of the magi, the massacre of the infants, visions 
 in dreams — events whose evidently unhistorical character quite disqualifies 
 them from serving as proofs of a change of residence on the part of the 
 parents of Jesus. On the other hand Neander, while confessing that the 
 author of the first Gospel was probably ignorant of the particular circum- 
 stances which, according to Luke,- led to the journey to Bethlehem, and hence 
 took Bethlehem to be the original residence of the parents of Jesus, maintains 
 that there may be an essential agreement between the two accounts though 
 that agreement did not exist in the consciousness of the writers.'' But, once 
 more, what cause does Luke assign for the journey to Bethlehem? The 
 census, which our previous investigations have shown to be as frail a support 
 for this statement, as the infanticide and its consequences for that of Matthew. 
 Hence here again it is not possible by admitting the inacquaintance of the 
 one narrator with what the other presents to vindicate the statements of both ; 
 since each has against him, not only the ignorance of the other, but the 
 improbability of his own narrative. 
 
 But we must distinguish more exactly the respective aspects and elements 
 of the two accounts. As, according to the above observations, the change of 
 residence on the part of the parents of Jesus, is in Matthew so Unked with 
 the unhistorical data of the infanticide and the flight into Egypt, that without 
 
 s Paulus, exeg. Handb. i, a, s. 178. 
 
 « Ueber die Unzulassigkeit der mylhischen Auffassung u. s. 1. I, s. loi. 
 
 ' L. J. Ch. s. 33. 
 
1 88 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 39. 
 
 these every cause for the migration disappears, we turn to Luke's account, 
 which makes the parents of Jesus resident in the same place, both after and 
 before the birth of Jesus. But in Luke, the circumstance of Jesus being born 
 in another place than where his parents dwelt, is made to depend on an event 
 as unhistorical as the marvels of Matthew, namely the census. If this be 
 surrendered, no motive remains that could induce the parents of Jesus to take 
 a formidable journey at so critical a period for Mary, and in this view of the 
 case Matthew's representation seems the more probable one, that Jesus was 
 born in the home of his parents and not in a strange place. Hitherto, how- 
 ever, we have only obtained the negative result, that the evangelical state- 
 ments, according to which the parents of Jesus lived at first in another place 
 than that in which they subsequently settled, and /Jesus was born elsewhere 
 than in the home of his parents, are destitute of any guarantee ; we have yet 
 to seek for a positive conclusion by inquiring what was really the place of his 
 birth. 
 
 On this point we are drawn in two opposite directions. In both Gospels 
 we find Bethlehem stated to be the birth-place of Jesus, and there is, as we 
 have seen, no impediment to our supposing that it was the habitual residence 
 of his parents ; on the other hand, the two Gospels again concur in represent- 
 ing Nazareth as the ultimate dwelling-place of Joseph and his family, and it 
 is only, an unsupported statement that forbids us to regard it as their original 
 residence, and consequently as the birth-place of Jesus. It would be im- 
 possible to decide between these contradictory proba;bilities were both equally 
 strong, but as soon as the slightest inequality between them is discovered, we 
 are warranted to form a conclusion. Let us first test the opinion, that the 
 Galilean city Nazareth was the final residence of Jesus. This is not supported 
 barely by the passages immediately under consideration, in the 2nd chapters 
 of Matthew and Luke ; — it rests on an uninterrupted series of data drawn from 
 the Gospels and from the earliest church history. The Galilean, the Nazar- 
 ene — were the epithets constantly applied to Jesus. As Jesus of Nazareth he 
 was introduced by Philip to Nathanael, whose responsive question was, Can 
 any good thing come out of Nazareth? Nazareth is described, not only as 
 the place where he was brought up, ov ^v redpafifjievog (Luke iv. 16 f.), but also 
 as his country ; irarpis (Matt. xiii. 34, Mark vi. i). He was known among the 
 populace as Jesus of Nazareth (Luke xviii. 37.), and invoked under this name 
 by the demons (Mark i. 24). The inscription on the cross styles him a 
 Nazarene (John xix. 19), and after his resurrection his apostles everywhere 
 proclaimed him as Jesus of Nazareth (Acts ii. 22), and worked miracles in his 
 name (Acts iii. 6). His disciples too were long called Nazarenes, and it was 
 not until a late period that this name was exclusively applied to a heretical 
 sect. * This appellation proves, if not that Jesus was born in Nazareth, at least 
 that he resided in that place for a considerable time ; and as, according to 
 a probable tra'dition (Luke iv. 16 f parall.), Jesus, during his public life, paid 
 but transient visits to Nazareth, this prolonged residence must be referred to 
 the earlier part of his life, which he passed in the bosom of his family. Thus 
 his family, at least his parents, must have lived in Nazareth during his child- 
 hood ; and if it be admitted that they once dwelt there, it follows that they 
 dwelt there always, for we have no historical grounds for supposing a change 
 of residence : so that this one of the two contradictory propositions has as 
 much certainty as we can expect, in a fact belonging to so remote and obscure 
 a period. 
 
 Neither does the other proposition, however, that Jesus was born in Beth- 
 
 ' Tertull. adv. Marcion iv. 8. Epiphan. haet. xxix. I. 
 
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS. 1 89 
 
 lehem, rest solely on the statement of our Gospels ; it is sanctioned by an 
 expectation, originating in a prophetic passage, that the Messiah would be 
 born at Bethlehem (comp. with Matt. ii. 5 f., John vii. 42). But this is a 
 dangerous support, which they who wish to retain as historical the Gospel 
 statement, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, will do well to renounce. For 
 wherever we find a narrative which recounts the accomplishment of a long- 
 expected event, a strong suspicion must arise, that the narrative owes its origin ' 
 solely to the pre-existent belief that that event would be accomplished. But our 
 suspicion is converted into certainty when we find this belief to be groundless ; 
 and this is the case here, for the alleged issue must have confirmed a false 
 interpretation of a prophetic passage. Thus this prophetic evidence of the 
 birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, deprives the historical evidence, which lies in the 
 and chapters of Matthew and Luke, of its value, since the latter seems to be 
 built on the former, and consequently shares its fall. Any other voucher for 
 this fact is however sought in vain. Nowhere else in the New Testament is 
 the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem mentioned ; nowhere does he appear in any 
 relation with his alleged birth-place, or pay it the honour of a visit, which he 
 yet does not deny to the unworthy Nazareth ; nowhere does he appeal to the 
 fact as a concomitant proof of his messiahship,. although he had the most 
 direct inducements to do so, for many were repelled from him by his Galilean 
 origin, and defended their prejudice by referring to the necessity, that the 
 Messiah should come out of Bethlehem, the city of David (John vii. 42).' 
 John does not, it is true, say that these objections were uttered in the presence 
 of Jesus ; ^^ but as, immediately before, he had annexed to a discourse of Jesus 
 a comment of his own, to the effect that the Holy Ghost was not yet given, so 
 here he might very suitably have added, in explanationof the doubts expressed 
 by the people, that they did not yet know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. 
 Such an observation will be thought too superficial and trivial for an apostle 
 like John : thus much however must be admitted ; he had occasion repeatedly 
 to mention the popular notion that Jesus was a native of Nazareth, and the 
 consequent prejudice against him ; had he then known otherwise, he must 
 have added a corrective remark, if he wished to avoid leaving the false im- 
 pression, that he also believed Jesus to be a Nazarene. As it is, we find 
 Nathanael, John i. 46, alleging this objection, without having his opinion 
 rectified either mediately or immediately, for he nowhere learns that the good 
 thing did not really come out ' of Nazaredi, and the conclusion he is left to 
 draw is, that even out of Nazareth something good can come. In general, 
 if Jesus were really born in Bethlehem, though but fortuitously (according to 
 Luke's representation), it is incomprehensible, considering the importance of 
 this fact to the article of his messiahship, that even his own adherents should 
 always call him the Nazarene, instead of opposing to this epithet, pronounced 
 by his opponents with polemical emphasis, the honourable title of the Beth- 
 lehemite. 
 
 Thus the evangelical statement that Jesus was born at Bethlehem is desti- 
 tute of all valid historical evidence ; nay, it is contravened by positive his- 
 torical facts. We have seen reason to conclude that the parents of Jesus lived 
 at Nazareth, not only after the birth of Jesus, but also, as we have no counter 
 evidence, prior to that event, and that, no credible testimony to the contrary 
 existing, Jesus was probably not born at any other place than the home of his 
 parents. With this twofold conclusion, the supposition that Jesus was born at 
 Bethlehem is irreconcileable : it can therefore cost us no further effort to 
 
 » Comp. K. Ch. L. Schmidt, in Schmidt's Bibliothek, 3, I, s. 123 f. ; Kaiser, bibl. Theol. 
 
 I, s. 230. 
 " On this Heydenreich rests his defence, Ueber die Unzulassigkeit. I. s. 99, 
 
190 PART I. CHAPTER IV. § 39. 
 
 decide that Jesus was born, not in Bethlehem, but, as we have no trustworthy 
 indications that point elsewhere, in all probability at Nazai'eth. 
 
 The relative position of the two evangelists on this point may be thus stated. 
 Each of their accounts is partly correct, and partly incorrect: Luke is right in 
 maintaining the identity of the earlier with the later residence of the parents 
 of Jesus, and herein Matthew is wrong ; again, Matthew is right in rhaintaining 
 the identity of the birth-place of Jesus with the dwelling-place of his parents, 
 and here the error is on the side of Luke. Further, Luke is entirely correct in 
 making the parents of Jesus reside in Nazareth before, as well as after, the 
 birth of Jesus, while Matthew has only half the truth, namely, that they were 
 established there after his birth ; but in the statement that Jesus was born at 
 Bethlehem both are decidedly wrong. The source of all the error of their 
 narratives, is the Jewish opinion with which they fell in, that the Messiah must 
 be born at Bethlehem ; the source of all their truth, is the fact which lay be- 
 fore themj that he always passed for a Nazarene ; finally, the cause of the 
 various admixture of the true and the false in both, and the preponderance of 
 the latter in Matthew, is the different position held by the two writers in re- 
 lation to the above data. Two particulars were to be reconciled — the historical 
 fact that Jesus was universally reputed to be a Nazarene, and the prophetic 
 requisition that, as Messiah, he should be born at Bethlehem. Matthew, or 
 the legend which he followed, influenced by the ruling tendency to apply the 
 prophecies, observable in his Gospel, effected the desired reconciliation in such 
 a manner, that the greatest prominence was given to Bethlehem, the locality 
 pointed out by the prophet ; this was represented as the original home of the 
 parents of Jesus, and Nazareth merely as a place of refuge, recommended by 
 a subsequent turn of events. Luke, on the contrary, more bent on historic 
 detail, either adopted or created that form of the legend, which attaches the 
 greatest important to Nazareth, making it the original dwelling-place of the 
 parents of Jesus, and regarding the sojourn in Bethlehem as a temporary one, 
 the consequence of a casual occurrence. 
 
 Such being the state of the case, no one, we imagine, will be inclined 
 either with Schleiermacher, *^ to leave the question concerning the relation of 
 the two narratives to the real facts undecided, or with Sieffert,** to pronounce 
 exclusively in favour of Luke.*' 
 
 " Ueber den Lultas, s. 49. There is a similar hesitation in Thelte, Biographie Jesu, § 15. 
 
 '^ Ueber den Ursprung u. s. w., s. 68 f. u. s. 158. 
 
 '' Comp. Ammon. Fortbildung, I, s. 194 ff. ; De Wette, exeget. Handb. I, 2, s. 24 f. ; 
 George, s. 84 ff. That difTerent narrators may give different explanations of the same fact, 
 and that these different explanations may afterwards be united in one book, is proved by 
 many examples in the O. T. Thus in Genesis, three derivations are given of the name 
 of Isaac ; two of that of Jacob (xxv. 26. xxvii. 16), and so of Edom and Beersheba (xxi. 31. 
 xxvi. 33). Comp. De Wette, Kritik der mos. Gesch., s. no. 118 ff. and my Streitschriften, 
 I, I, s. 83 ff. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 THE FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE, AND THE EDUCATION OF JESUS. 
 
 § 40. 
 JESUS, WHEN TWELVE YEARS OLD, IN THE TEMPLE. 
 
 The Gospel of Matthew passes in silence over the entire period from the re- 
 turn of the parents of Jesus out of Egypt, to the baptism of Jesus by John : 
 and even Luke has nothing to tell us of the long interval between the early 
 childhood of J«sus and his maturity, beyond a single incident — his demeanour 
 on a visit to the temple in his twelfth year (ii. 41-52). This anecdote, out 
 of the early youth of Jesus is, as Hess has truly remarked,^ distinguished from 
 the narratives hitherto considered, belonging to liis childhood, by the circum- 
 stance that Jesus no longer, as in the latter, holds a merely passive position, 
 but presents an active proof of his high destination ; a proof which has always 
 been especially valued, as indicating the moment in which the consciousness 
 of that destination was kindled in Jesus.^ 
 
 In his twelfth year, the period at which, according to Jewish usage, the boy 
 became capable of an independent participation in the sacred rites, the parents 
 of Jesus, as this narrative informs us, took him for the first time to the Pass- 
 over. At the expiration of the feast, the parents bent their way homewards ; 
 that their son was missing gave them no immediate anxiety, because they 
 supposed him to be among their travelling companions, and it was not until 
 after they had accomplished a day's journey, and in vain sought their son 
 among their kinsfolk and acquaintance, that they turned back to Jerusalem to 
 look for him there. This conduct on the part of the parents of Jesus may 
 with reason excite surprise. It seems inconsistent with the carefulness which 
 it has been thought incumbent on us to attribute to them, that they should 
 have allowed the divine child entrusted to their keeping, to remain so long 
 out of their sight ; and hence they have on many sides been accused of ne- 
 glect and a dereliction of duty, in the instance before us. ^ It has been urged, 
 as a general consideration in vindication of Joseph and Mary, that the greater 
 freedom permitted to the boy is easily conceivable as part of a liberal method 
 of education ;* but even according to our modern ideas, it would seem more 
 than liberal for parents to let a boy of twelve years remain out of their sight 
 during so long an interval as our narrative supposes ; how far less reconcile- 
 able must it then be with the more rigid views of education held by the 
 
 ' Hess, Geschichte Jesu, i, s. no. 
 ' Olshausen, bibl. Comm. I, s. 145 f. 
 ' Olshausen, utsup. I. 150. 
 ■* Hase, Lebenjesu, § 37. 
 
192 PART I. CHAPTER V. § 40. 
 
 ancients, not excepting the Jews ? It is remarked however, that viewing the 
 case as an extraordinary one, the parents of Jesus knew their child, and they 
 could therefore very well confide in his understanding and character, so far as 
 to be in no fear that any danger would accrue to him from his unusual free- 
 dom ; ^ but we can perceive from their subsequent anxiety, that they were not 
 so entirely at ease on that head. Thus their conduct must be admitted to be 
 such as we should not have anticipated ; but it is not consequently incredible 
 nor does it suffice to render the entire narrative improbable, for the parents of 
 Jesus are no saints to us, that we should not impute to them any fault. 
 
 Returned to Jerusalem, they find their son on the third day in the temple, 
 doubtless in one of the outer halls, in the midst of an assembly of doctors, en- 
 gaged in a conversation with them, and exciting universal astonishment (v. 45 
 f.). From some indications it would seem that Jesus held a higher position in 
 the presence of the doctors, than could belong to a boy of twelve years. The 
 word KaOi^o/itvov [iitting) has excited scruples, for according to Jewish records, 
 it was not until after the death of the Rabbi Gamaliel, an event long subse- 
 quent to the one described in our narrative, that the pupils of the rabbins sat, 
 they having previously been required to stand ® when in the school ; but this 
 Jewish tradition is of doubtful authority.'' It has also been thought a diffi- 
 culty, that Jesus does not merely hear the doctors, but also asks them ques- 
 tions, thus appearing to assume the position of their teacher. Such is indeed 
 the representation of the apocryphal Gospels, for in them Jesus, before he is 
 twelve years old, perplexes all the doctors by his questions,^ and reveals to his 
 instructor in the alphabet the mystical significance of the characters ; ^ while 
 at the above visit to the temple he proposes controversial questions,*" such as 
 that touching the Messiah's being at once David's Son and Lord (Matt. xxii. 
 41), and proceeds to throw light on all departments of knowledge.^i If the 
 expressions cpwrav and anoKpivea-Oai implied that Jesus played the part of a 
 teacher in this scene, so unnatural a feature in the evangelical narrative would 
 render the whole suspicious.*^ But there is nothing to render this interpreta- 
 tion of the words necessary, for according to Jewish custom, rabbinical teach- 
 ing was of such a kind that not only did the masters ■ interrogate the pupils, 
 but the pupils interrogated the masters, when they wished for explanations on 
 any point. *^ We may with the more probability suppose that the writer in- 
 tended to attribute to Jesus such questions as suited a boy, because he, appar- 
 ently not without design, refers the astonishment of the doctors, not to his 
 questions, but to that in which he could best show himself in the light of an 
 intelligent pupil — namely, to his answers. A more formidable difficulty is the 
 statement, that the boy Jesus sat in the midst of the doctors, ev jj-ia-ta tS>v StSao-- 
 KoXoyv. For we learn from Paul (Acts xxii. 3) the position that became a 
 pupil, when he says that he was brought up at the feet {^a.po. roiis TroSas) of 
 Gamaliel : it being the custom for the rabbins to be placed on chairs, while 
 their pupils sat on the ground,'* and did not take their places among their 
 masters. It has indeed been thought that kv fiitrm might be so explained as 
 
 ' Heydenreich, iiber die Unzulassigkeit u. s. f. I, s. 103. 
 • Megillah, f. 21, apud Lightfoot, in loc. 
 ' Vid. Kuiniil, in I>uc. p. 353. 
 
 ' Evang. Thomse, c. vi. ff. Ap. Thilo. p. 288 ff. and Evang. infant, arab. c. xlviii. p. 
 123, Thilo. 
 » Ibid. 
 
 '" Evang. infant, arab. c. 1. 
 " Ibid. c. 1. and li. ; comp. ev. Thomse, c. xix. 
 " Olshausen confesses this, s. 151. 
 
 •' For proofs (e.g. Hieros. Taanith, Ixvii,. 4) see Wetstein and Lightfoot, in loc. 
 " Lightfoot, Horse, p. 742. 
 
FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE. I93 
 
 to signify, either that Jesus sat between the doctors, who are supposed to have 
 been elevated on chairs, while Jesus and the other pupils are pictured as sit- 
 ting on the ground between them.i^ or merely that he was in the company of 
 doctors, that is, in the synagogue ; i^ but according to the strict sense of the 
 words, the expression KaOe^ecrOai iv /j-ea-ia nvStv appears to signify, if not as 
 Schottgen believes,^'' in majorem Jesu gloriam, a place of pre-eminent honour, 
 at least a position of equal dignity with that occupied by the rest. It need 
 only be asked, would it harmonize with the spirit of our narrative to substitute 
 KoBetflfKoiov irapa toBs TrdSas Ttov 8i8acrKa\(ov for KaO. iv /letrw t. 8. ? the answer 
 will certainly be in the negative, and it will then be inevitable to admit, that 
 our narrative places Jesus in another relation to the doctors than that of a 
 learner, though the latter is the only natural one for a boy of twelve, however 
 highly gifted. For Olshausen's position,!^ — that in Jesus nothing was formed 
 from without, by the instrumentality of another's wisdom, because this would 
 be inconsistent with the character of the Messiah, as absolutely self-determined, 
 — contradicts a dogma of the church which he himself advances, namely, 
 that Jesus in his manifestation as man, followed the regular course of 
 human development. For not only is it in the nature of this development to 
 be gradual, but also, and still more essentially, to be dependent, whether it be 
 mental or physical, on the interchange of reception and influence. To deny 
 this in relation to the physical life of Jesus — to say, for example, that the food 
 which he took did not serve for the nourishment and growth of his body by 
 real assimilation, but merely furnished occasion for him to reproduce himself 
 from within, would strike every one as Docetism ; and is the analogous pro- 
 position in relation to his spiritual development, namely, that he appropriated 
 nothing from without, and used what he heard from others merely as a voice 
 to evoke one truth after another from the recesses of his own mind — is this 
 anything else than a more refined Docetism ? Truly, if we attempt to form a • 
 conception of the conversation of Jesus with the doctors in the temple accord- 
 ing to this theory, we make anything but a natural scene of it. It is not to be 
 supposed that he taught, nor properly speaking that he was taught, but that 
 the discourse of the doctors merely gave an impetus to his power of teaching 
 himself, and was the occasion for an ever-brightening light to rise upon him, 
 especially on the subject of his own destination. But in that case he would 
 certainly have given utterance to his newly acquired knowledge ; so that the 
 position of a teacher on the part of the boy would return upon us, a position 
 which Olshausen himself pronounces to be preposterous. At least such an 
 indirect mode of teaching is involved as Ness subscribes to, when he supposes 
 that Jesus, even thus early, made the first attempt to combat the prejudices 
 which swayed in the synagogue, exposing to the doctors, by means of good- 
 humoured questions and requests for explanation, such as are willingly per- 
 mitted to a boy, the weakness of many of their dogmas.^' But even such a 
 position on the part of a boy of twelve, is inconsistent with the true process 
 of human development, through which it behoved the God-Man himself to 
 pass. Discourse of this kind from a boy must, we grant, have excited the 
 astonishment of all the hearers.; nevertheless the expression iiia-ravTo iravres 
 ol aKovovres airov (v. 47), looks too much like a panegyrical formula. 2" 
 
 " Paulus, o. 279. 
 " Kuinbl, s. 353 f. 
 " Horffi, ii. p. 886. 
 " Bibl. Comm. p. 151. 
 
 '» Geschichte Tesu, I, s. 112. ■.•„„. 
 
 2» In the similar account also which Josephus gives us of himself when fourteen, it is easy 
 
 to discern the exaggeration of a self-complacent man. Life, 2 : Moreover, when I was a 
 
 N 
 
.194 PART I. CHAPTER V. § 40. 
 
 The narrative proceeds to tell us how the mother of Jesus reproached her 
 son when she had found him thus, asking him why he had not spared his 
 parents the anguish of their sorrowful search? To this Jesus returns an 
 answer which forms the point of the entire narrative ; he asks whether they 
 might not have known that he was to be sought nowhere else than in the 
 house of his Father, in the temple ? (v. 48 f.) One might be inclined to 
 understand this designation of God as tov Trarpos generally, as implying that 
 God was the Father of all men, and only in this sense the Father of Jesus. 
 But this interpretation is forbidden, not only by the addition of the pronoun 
 jiAoB, the above sense requiring ■^fi.wv (as in Matt. vi. 9), but still more abso- 
 lutely by the circumstance that the parents of Jesus did not understand these 
 words (v. 50), a decided indication that they must have a special meaning, 
 which can here be no other than the mystery of the Messiahship of Jesus, 
 who as Messiah, was dEos Oem in a peculiar sense. But that Jesus in his 
 twelfth year had already the consciousness of his Messiahship, is a position 
 which, although it may be consistently adopted from the orthodox point of 
 view, and although it is not opposed to the regular human form of the de- 
 velopment of Jesus, which even orthodoxy maintains, we are not here bound 
 to examine. So also the natural explanation, which retains the above narra- 
 tive as a history, though void of the miraculous, and which accordingly sup- 
 poses the parents of Jesus, owing to a particular combination of circumstances, 
 to have come even before his birth to a conviction of his Messiahship, and to 
 have instilled this conviction into their son from his earliest childhood, — this 
 too may make it plain how Jesus could be so clear as to his messianic rela- 
 tion to God ; but it can only do so by the hypothesis of an unprecedented 
 coincidence of extraordinary accidents. We, on the contrary, who have re- 
 nounced the previous incidents as historical, either in the supernatural or the 
 natural sense, are unable to comprehend how the consciousness of his mes- 
 sianic ' destination could be so early developed in Jesus. For though the 
 consciousness of a more subjective vocation, as that of a poet or an artist, 
 which is dependent solely on the internal gifts of the individual (gifts which 
 cannot long remain latent), may possibly be awakened very early; an objec- 
 tive vocation, in which the conditions of external reality are a chief co-operator, 
 as the vocation of the statesman, the general, the reformer of a religion, can 
 hardly be so early evident to the most highly endowed individual, because 
 for this a knowledge of cotemporary circumstances would be requisite, which 
 only long observation and mature experience can confer. Of the latter kind 
 is the vocation of the Messiah, and if this is implied in the words by which 
 Jesus in his twelfth year justified his lingering in the temple, he cannot have 
 uttered the words at that period. 
 
 In another point of view also, it is worthy of notice that the parents of 
 Jesus are said (v. 50) not to have understood the words which he addressed 
 to them. What did these words signify ? That God was his Father, in whose 
 house it behoved him to be. But that her son would in a specific sense be 
 called a uios 6eov had been already made known to Mary by the annunciating 
 angel (Luke i. 32, 35), and that he would have a peculiar relation to the 
 temple she might infer, both from the above title, and from the striking recep- 
 tion which he had met with at, his first presentation in the, temple, when yet 
 an infant. The parents of Jesus, or at least Mary, of whom it is repeatedly 
 noticed that she carefully kept in her heart the extraordinary communications 
 concerning her son, ought not to have been in the dark a single moment as 
 
 child, and about fourteen years of age, I was commended by all for the love I had to learning, 
 on which account the high priests and principal men of the city came there frequently to me 
 together, in order to know my opinion about the accurate understanding of points of the law. 
 
FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE. I95 
 
 to the meaning of his language on this occasion. But even at the presenta- 
 tion in the temple, we are told that the parents of Jesus marvelled at the 
 discourse of Simeon (v. 33), which is merely saying in other words that they 
 did riot understand him. And their wonder is not referred to the declaration 
 of Simeon that their boy would be a cause, not only of the rising again, but 
 of the fall of many in Israel, and that a sword would pierce through the heart 
 of his mother (an aspect of his vocation and destiny on which nothing had 
 previously been communicated to the parents of Jesus, and at which therefore 
 they might naturally wonder) ; for these disclosures are not made by Simeon 
 until after the wonder of the parents, which is caused only by Simeon's ex- 
 pressions of joy at the sight of the Saviour, who would be the glory of Israel, 
 and a light even to the Gentiles. And here again there is no intimation that 
 the wonder was excited by the idea that Jesus would bear this relation to the 
 heathens, which indeed it could not well be, since this more extended desti- 
 nation of the Messiah had been predicted in the Old Testament. There 
 remaiiis therefore as a reason for the wonder in question, merely the fact of 
 the child's Messiahship, declared by Simeon ; a fact which had been long ago 
 announced to them by angels, and which was acknowledged by Mary in her 
 song of praise. We have just a parallel difficulty in the present case, it being 
 as inconceivable that the parents of Jesus should not understand his allusion 
 to his messianic character, as that they should wonder at the declaration of 
 it by Simeon. We must therefore draw this conclusion : if the parents of 
 Jesus did not understand these expressions of their son when twelve years old, 
 those earlier communications cannot have happened ; or, if the earlier com- 
 munications really occurred, the subsequent expressions of Jesus cannot have 
 remained incomprehensible to them. Having done away with those earlier 
 incidents as historical, we might content ourselves with this later want of 
 comprehension, were it not fair to mistrust the whole of a narrative whose 
 later portions agree so ill with the preceding. For it is the character, not of 
 an historical record, but of a marvellous legend, to represent its personages as 
 so permanently in a state of wonder, that they not only at the first appearance 
 of the extraordinary, but even at the second, third, tenth repetition, when one 
 would expect them to be familiarized with it, continually are astonished and 
 do not understand — obviously with the view of exalting the more highly the 
 divine impartation by this lasting incomprehensibleness. So, to drawan example 
 from the later history of Jesus, the divine decree of his suffering and death is 
 set forth in all its loftiness in the evangelical narratives by the circumstance, 
 that even the repeated, explicit disclosures of Jesus on this subject, remain 
 throughout incomprehensible to the disciples ; as here the mystery of the 
 Messiahship of Jesus is exalted by the circumstance, that his parents, often as 
 it had been announced to them, at every fresh word on the subject are anew 
 astonished and do not understand. 
 
 The twofold form of conclusion, that the mother of Jesus kept all these 
 sayings in her heart (v. 51), and that the boy grew in wisdom and stature, 
 and so forth, we have already recognised as a favourite form of conclusion and 
 transition in the heroic legend of the Hebrews ; in particular, that which 
 relates to the growth of the boy is almost verbally parallel with a passage 
 relating to Samuel, as in two former instances similar expressions appeared 
 to have been borrowed from the history of Samson. ^i 
 
 *' I Sam. it 26 (LXX) : Luc. ii. 52 : 
 
 Kal ri waiddptov Sa^toui/X iiropeieTo koX 'IijiroCs wpodKOJrTe ffoipla Kal i/Ai/cig, rai 
 li^aXvvbfi£vov, KoX i.ya0bv naX furk xipi" 7ra/)& Sei? Kal &v$pd>irots. 
 Kvplov Kal ncrh &v6piSiiru>v. 
 Compare also what Josephus says Antiq. ii. ix. 6 of the x"^/"" iraiSiK^; of Moses. 
 
196 PART I. CHAPTER V. §41. 
 
 § 41- 
 THIS NARRATIVE ALSO MYTHICAL. 
 
 Thus here again we must acknowledge the influence of the legend ; but as 
 the main part of the incident is thoroughly natural, we might in this instance 
 prefer the middle course, and after disengaging the mythical,' seek to preserve 
 a residue of history. We might suppose that the parents of Jesus really took 
 their son to Jerusalem in his early youth, and that after having lost sight of 
 him (probably before their departure), they found him in the temple, where, 
 eager for instruction, he sat at the feet of the rabbins. When called to account, 
 he declared that his favourite abode was in the house of God ; ^ a sentiment 
 which rejoiced his parents, and won the approbation of the bystanders. The 
 rest of the story we might suppose to have been added by the aggrandizing 
 legend, after Jesus was acknowledged as the Messiah. Here all the difficulties 
 in our narrative, — the idea of the boy sitting in the midst of the_ doctors, his 
 claiming God as his father in a special sense, and the departure of the parents 
 without their son, would be rejected ; but the journey of Jesus when twelve 
 years old, the eagerness for knowledge then manifested by him, and his 
 attachment to the temple, are retained. To these particulars there is nothing 
 to object negatively, for they contain nothing improbable in itself; but their 
 historical truth must become doubtful if we can show, positively, a strong 
 interest of the legend, out of which the entire narrative, and especially these 
 intrinsically not improbable particulars, might have arisen. 
 
 That in the case of great men who in their riper age have been distinguished 
 by mental superiority, the very first presaging movements of their mind are 
 eagerly gleaned, and if they are not to be ascertained historically, are invented 
 under the guidance of probability, is well known. In the Hebrew history 
 and legend especially, we find manifold proofs of this tendency. Thus of 
 Samuel it is said in the old Testament itself, that even as a boy he received 
 a divine revelation and the gift of prophecy (i Sara, iii.), and with respect to 
 Moses, on whose boyish years the Old Testament narrative is silent, a subse- 
 quent tradition, followed by Josephus and Philo, had striking proofs to relate 
 of his early development. As in the narrative before us Jesus shows himself 
 wise beyond his years, so this tradition attributes a like precocity to Moses ; ^ 
 as Jesus, turning away from the idle tumult of the city in all the excitement 
 of festival time, finds his favourite entertainment in the temple among the 
 doctors ; so the boy Moses was not attracted by childish sports, but by serious 
 occupation, and very early it was necessary to give him tutors, whom, how- 
 ever, like Jesus in his twelfth year, he quickly surpassed.^ 
 
 According to Jewish custom and opinion, the twelfth year formed an epoch 
 in development to which especial proofs of awakening genius were the rather 
 attached, because in the twelfth year, as with us in the fourteenth, the boy 
 was regarded as having outgrown the period of childhood.* Accordingly it 
 
 1 Gabler neuest. theol. Journal 3, I, s. 39. 
 
 ^ Joseph. Antiq. ii. ix. 6. 
 
 ° Philo, de vita Mosis, Opp. ed. Mangey, Vol. 2. p. 83 f. oix o?" Ko/uSiJ yijirios fiSero 
 TUidatrfwTs xal yi\oi<n Kal iraiSiois — dXX' atSS Kal ffeiaibrrira irapa^icdviiin, &iroia/Mn (coi 
 eed/JLanv, & riiv ^j/vx^ l/ieXXei' <iipe\-^(rap rrpoaelxf. SiS&aKdKoi S' eidiii, iWaxSeev SXXos, 
 Tap^ffav — Sir ir oi fiaxpiji' xp/""/ '"^s SvvAiJ^is iirepipaXev, ei/wiplg. t/tHireai <l>Bi,v<iiv Tii,s 
 iijyqy^aeis. 
 
 * Chagiga, ap. Wetstein, in loc. A XII anno filim censetur maturus. So Joraa f. 
 Ixxxii. I. Berachoth f. xxiv. i ; whereas Bereschith Rabba Ixiii. mentions the 13th year 
 
FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE. 1 97 
 
 was believed of Moses that in his twelfth year he left the house of Jiis father, 
 to become an independent organ of the divine revelations. ^ The Old Testa- 
 ment leaves it uncertain how early the gift of prophecy was imparted to 
 Samuel, but he was said by a later tradition to have prophesied from his 
 twelfth year ; ^ and in like manner the wise judgments of Solomon and Daniel 
 (i Kings iii. 23 ff., Susann. 45 ff.) were supposed to have been given when 
 they were only twelve.'? If in the case of these Old Testament heroes, the 
 spirit that impelled them manifested itself according to common opinion so 
 early as in their twelfth year, it was argued that it could not have remained 
 longer concealed in Jesus ; and if Samuel and Daniel showed themselves at 
 that age in their later capacity of divinely inspired seers, Solomon in that of 
 a wise ruler, so Jesus at the corresponding period in his life must have shown 
 himself in the character to which he subsequently established his claim, that 
 namely, of the Son of God and Teacher of Mankind. It is, in fact, the 
 obvious aim of Luke to pass over no epoch in the early life of Jesus without 
 surrounding him with divine radiance, with significant prognostics of the 
 future J in this style he treats his birth, mentions the circumcision at least 
 emphatically, but above all avails himself of the presentation in the temple. 
 There yet remained according to Jewish manners one epoch, the twelfth year, 
 with the first journey to the passover ; how could he do otherwise than, fol- 
 lowing the legend, adorn this point in the development of Jesus as we find 
 that he has done in his narrative? and how could we do otherwise than regard 
 his narrative as a legendary embellishment of this period in the life of Jesus,* 
 from which we learn nothing of his real development,* but merely something 
 of the exalted notions which were entertained in the primitive church of the 
 early ripened mind of Jesus ? 
 
 But how this anecdote can be numbered among mythi is found by some 
 altogether inconceivable. It bears, thinks Heydenreich,^" a thoroughly his- 
 torical character (this is the very point to be proved), and the stamp of the 
 highest simplicity (like every popular legend in its original form) ; it contains 
 no tincture of the miraculous, wherein the primary characteristic of a mythus 
 (but not of every mythus) is held to consist ; it is so remote from all embel- 
 lishment that there is not the slightest detail of the conversation of Jesus with 
 the doctors (the legend was satisfied with the dramatic trait, sitting in the 
 midst of the doctors : as a dictum, v. 49 was alone important, and towards this 
 the narrator hastens without delay) ; nay, even the conversation between Jesus 
 and his mother is only given in a fragmentary aphoristic manner (there is no 
 
 * Schemoth R. ap. Wetstein : Dixit R. Chama : Moses duodenarms avulsus est a domo 
 patris sui etc. 
 
 ' Joseph. Antiq. v. x. 4 : Sa/«)i5i;\os S^ 7re7rXi;pwK(l)s ?ros ilfii) hitiMxaTOv, Tpoe<l>^evs. 
 
 ' Ignat. ep. (Interpol.) ad Magnes. c. iii. : ZoXo/iGx Bi — SuSeKaeriis /SairiXeiSiras, t7)i» 
 4>o^epav iKelvriv koX Svaep/M'^veVTOV ivi Tois yvpai^l Kplaiv iveKa tSiv TraiSlwii iTroiT/ffaTO. — AawrjX 
 6 (Toipis duiSeKaeriis yiyove kAtoxos T<p deLip Trvei/ian, xal Toiii iiaTr)v t^v TroXiov Kfiipovras 
 TpeiT^iras ffVKOtpdpTas Kal iiri6vjj.ip-as dWorptov KttXXous dir^Xeyfe. But Solomon, . 
 being king at the age of twelve years, gave that terrible and profound judgment between the 
 womM with respect to the children. . . . Daniel, the wise man, when twelve years old, 
 was possessed by the divine spirit, and convicted those calumniating old men who, carrying 
 gray hairs in vain, coveted the beauty that belonged to another. This, it is true, is found in 
 a Christian writing, but on comparing it with the above data, we are led to believe that it 
 was drawn from a more ancient Jewish legend. 
 
 8 This Kaiser has seen, bibl. Theol. I, 234. . 
 
 9 Neither do we learn what Hase (Leben Jesu § 37) supposes to be conveyed in this nar- 
 rative, namely, that as it exhibits the same union with God that constituted the idea of the 
 later life of Jesus, it is an intimation that his later excellence was not the result of conversion' 
 from youthful errors, but of the uninterrupted development of his freedom. 
 
 '" Ueber die Unzulassigkeit u. s. f. i , s. 92. 
 
198 PART I. CHAPTER V. § 42. 
 
 trace of an omission) ; finally, the inventor of a legend would have made 
 Jesus speak differently to his mother, instead of putting into his mouth words 
 which might be construed into irreverence and indifference. In this last 
 observation Heydenreich agrees with Schleiermacher, who finds in the be- 
 haviour of Jesus to his mother, liable as it is to be misinterpreted, a sure 
 guarantee that the whole history was not invented to supply something remark- 
 able concerning Jesus, in connexion with the period at which the holy things 
 of the temple and the law were first opened to him.'^'^ 
 
 In combating the assertion, that an inventor would scarcely have attributed 
 to Jesus so much apparent harshness towards his mother, we need not appeal 
 to the apocryphal Evangelium Thomce, which makes the boy Jesus say to his 
 foster-father Joseph : insipientissime fecisti ;'^'^ for even in the legend or his- 
 tory of the canonical gospels corresponding traits are to be found. In the 
 narrative of the wedding at Cana, we find this rough address to his mother : 
 Ti i^oi KOI crot ywai (John ii. 4) ; and in the account of the visit paid to Jesus 
 by his mother and brethren, the striking circumstance that he apparently 
 wishes to take no notice of his relatives (Matt. xii. 46). If these are real 
 incidents, then the legend had an historical precedent to warrant the intro- 
 duction of a similar feature, even into the early youth of Jesus ; if, on the 
 other hand, they are. only legends, they are the most vivid proofs that an 
 inducement was not wanting for the invention of such features. Where this 
 inducement lay, it is easy to see. The figure of Jesus would stand in the 
 higher relief from the obscure background of his contracted family relations, 
 if it were often seen that his parents were unable to comprehend his elevated 
 mind, and if even he himself sometimes made them feel his superiority — so 
 far as this could happen without detriment to his filial obedience, which, it 
 should be observed, our narrative expressly preserves. 
 
 § 42. 
 
 ON THE EXTERNAL LIFE OF JESUS UP TO THE TIME OF HIS PUBLIC 
 
 APPEARANCE. 
 
 What were the external conditions under which Jesus lived, from the scene 
 just considered up to the tirrte of his public appearance ? On this subject 
 our canonical gospels give scarcely an indication. 
 
 First, as to his place of residence, all that we learn explicitly is this : that 
 both at the beginning and at the end of this obscure period he dwelt at 
 Nazareth. According to Luke ii. 51, Jesus when twelve years old returned 
 thither with his parents, and according to Matthew iii. 13, Mark i. 9, he, 
 when thirty years old (comp. Luke iii. 23), came from thence to be baptized 
 by John. Thus our evangelists appear to suppose, that Jesus had in the 
 interim resided in Galilee, and, more particularly, in Nazareth. This sup- 
 position, however, does not exclude journeys, such as those to the feasts in 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 The employment of Jesus during the years of his boyhood and youth seems, 
 from an intimation in our gospels, to have been determined by the trade of 
 his father, who is there called a TiKrinv (Matt. xiii. 55). This Greek word, used 
 to designate the trade of Joseph, is generally understood in the sense oi faber 
 
 1' Ueber den Lukas, s. 39 f. 
 
 '^ Cap. V. In the Greek text also the more probable reading is koL fioKiara ov <roipii!, 
 vid. Thilo, p. 287. 
 
EDUCATION OF JESUS. 199 
 
 lignarius {carpenter) ;'^ a few only, on mystical grounds, discover in it z.faber 
 fermrius (blacksmith), aurarius {goldsmith), or cxmentarius {maso7z)? The 
 works in wood which he executed are held of different magnitude by different 
 authors : according to Justin and the Evangelium Thomce,* they were ploughs 
 and yokes, aporpa koI t,vya., and in that case he would be what we call a wheel- 
 wright; according to the Evangelium infanticB arabicum,^ they were doors, 
 milk-vessels, sieves and coffers, and once Joseph makes a throne for the king ; 
 so that here he is represented partly as a cabinet-maker and partly as a cooper. 
 The Protevangelium Jacobi, on the other hand, makes him work at buildings, 
 olKoSofial^,^ without doubt as a carpenter. In these labours of the father Jesus 
 appears to have shared, according to an expression of Mark, who makes the 
 Nazarenes ask concerning Jesus, not merely as in the parallel passage of 
 Matthew : /s not this the carpentet's son ? ofi/c oStos icrnv 6 rov tektovos vlo? ; 
 but 7s not this the carpenter 1 ovk oStos ia-nv 6 tc'ktcov (vi. 3). It is true that 
 in replying to the taunt of Celsus that the teacher of the Christians was a 
 carpenter by trade, TeKTotv rjv rrjv rex'"?'', Origen says, he must have forgotten 
 that in none of the Gospels received by ttie churches is Jesus himself called a car- 
 penter, oTL ovSa/xov Tuiv ev rais eKKA,i;<rtais <j>e.poix,ivii>v ivayyeXiutv reKTcov avTo<s 6 
 'Ii;o-ovs dvayeypaTrrai.^ The above passage in Mark has, in fact, the various 
 reading, 6 rov reKTovo^ utos, which Origen must have taken, unless he be 
 supposed altogether to have overlooked the passage, and which is preferred 
 by some modern critics.'' But here Beza has justly remarked that fortasse 
 mutavit aliquis, existimans, hanc artem Christi majestati parum convenire ; 
 whereas there could hardly be an interest which would render the contrary 
 alteration desirable.^ Moreover Fathers of the Church and apocryphal writ- 
 ings represent Jesus, in accordance with the more generally accepted reading, 
 as following the trade of his father. Justin attaches especial importance to 
 the fact that Jesus made ploughs and yokes or scales, as symbols of active 
 life and of justice.^ In the Evangelium infantice Arabicum, Jesus goes about 
 with Joseph to the places where the latter has work, to help him in such a 
 manner that if Joseph rnade anything too long or too short, Jesus, by a touch 
 or by merely stretching out his hand, gave to the object its right size, an 
 assistance which was very useful to his foster-father, because, as the apocryphal 
 text naively remarks : nee admodum peritus erat artis fabrilisP 
 
 Apart from these apocryphal descriptions, there are many reasons for 
 believing that the above intimation as to the youthful employment of Jesus 
 is correct. In the first place, it accords with the Jewish custom which pre- 
 scribed even to one destined to a learned career, or in general to any spiritual 
 occupation, the acquisition of some handicraft ; thus Paul, the pupil of the 
 rabbins, was also a tent-maker, o-ki^vottoios ttjv rexv)" (Acts xviii. 3). Next, 
 as our previous examinations have shown that we know nothing historical of 
 
 '■ Hence the title of an Arabian apocryphal, work (according to the Latin translation in 
 Thilo, I, p. 3) : historia Josephi, fabri lignarii. 
 
 * Vid. Thilo, Cod; Apocr. N. T. p. 368 f. not. , 
 
 2 Justin. Dial. c. Tryph. 88. According to him Jesus makes these implements, doubtless 
 under the direction of Joseph. In the Evang. noma c. xiii. Joseph is the workman. 
 
 * Cap. xxxviii. ap. Thilo, p. 112 ff. 
 ^ C. ix. and xiii. 
 
 8 C. Cels. vi. 36. 
 
 7 Fritzsche, in Marc. p. 200. -nt .. -nt j 
 
 8 Vid. Wetstein and Paulus, in loc. ; Winer, Realworterbuch, I, s. 665. ^ote; Neander, 
 
 L. J. Chr. =. 46 f- Note. , ^ ^ , x .j s - 
 
 ' Ut sup. : TaSra yip ri tsktovikIi, fyya elpydtero h> &v8p(!)Tois S>v, S,pOTpa xal flryd. Sra 
 
 Toiruv KcU Til,. TTJs SiKMOffirns aunpoXa SiS&aKiiiv, koI ivepyrj ^lov. 
 '» Cap. xxxviii. 
 
200 PART I. CHAPTER V. § 42. 
 
 extraordinary expectations and plans on the part of the parents of Jesus in 
 relation to their son, so nothing is more natural than the supposition that 
 Jesus early practised the trade of his father. Further, the Christians must 
 have had an interest in denying, rather than inventing, this opinion as to 
 their Messiah's youthful occupation, since it often drew down upon them the 
 ridicule of their opponents. Thus Celsus, as we have already mentioned, 
 could not abstain from a reflection on this subject, for which reason Origen 
 will known nothing of any designation of Jesus as a tsktwv in the New Testa- 
 ment ; and every one knows the scoffing question of Libanius about the 
 carpenter's son, a question which seems to have been provided with so striking 
 an answer, only ex eventu}^ It may certainly be said in opposition to this, 
 that the notion of Jesus having been a carpenter, seems to be founded on a 
 mere inference from the trade of the father as to the occupation of the son, 
 whereas the latter was just as likely to apply himself to some other branch 
 of industry ; nay, that perhaps the whole tradition of the carpentry of Joseph 
 and Jesus owes its origin to the symbolical significance exhibited by Justin. 
 As however the allusion in our Gospels to the trade of Joseph is very brief 
 and bare, and is nowhere used allegorically in the New Testament, nor entered 
 into more minutely ; it is not to be contested that he was really a carpenter ; 
 but it must remain uncertain whether Jesus shared in this occupation. 
 
 What were the circumstances of Jesus and his parents as to fortune ? The 
 answer to this question has-been the object of many dissertations. It is 
 evident that the ascription of pressing poverty to Jesus, on the part of orthodox 
 theologians, rested on dogmatical and aesthetic grounds. On the one hand, 
 they wished to maintain even in this point the status exinanitionis, and on the 
 other, they wished to depict as strikingly as possible the contrast between 
 the fijopfjirj 6iov (form of God) and the jnopv^v SovAou {form of a servant). That 
 this contrast as set forth by Paul (Phil. ii. 6, fF.), as well as the expression 
 iTTTutxeva-c, which this apostle applies to Christ (2 Cor. viii. 9) merely char- 
 acterizes the obscure and laborious life to which he submitted after his 
 heavenly pre-existence, and instead of playing the part of king which the 
 Jewish imagination attributed to the Messiah, is also to be regarded as estab- 
 lished.12 The expression of Jesus himself, TAe Son of man hath not where to 
 lay his head, irov t'^i' Ke<l>a\.^ KXivy (Matt. viii. 20), may possibly import merely 
 his voluntary renunciation of the peaceful enjoyment of fortune, for the sake 
 of devoting himself to the wandering life of the Messiah. There is only one 
 other particular bearing on the point in question, namely, that Mary pre- 
 sented, as an offering of purification, doves (Luke ii. 24), — according to 
 Ley. xii. 8, the offering of the poor : which certainly proves that the author 
 of this information conceived the parents of Jesus to have been in by no 
 means brilliant circumstances ; ^^ but what shall assure us that he also was 
 not induced to make this representation by unhistorical motives ? Mean- 
 while we are just as far froiii having tenable ground for maintaining the con- 
 trary jiroposition, namely, that Jesus possessed property : at least it is inadmis-. 
 sible to adduce the coat without seam 1* (John xix. 23), until we shall have 
 inquired more closely what kind of relation it has to the subject. 
 
 '■'■ Theodoret. H. E. iii. 23. 
 
 '" Hase, Leben Jesu, § 70 ; Winer, bibl. Realw. 1, s. 665. 
 
 •' Winer,-ut sup. 
 
 '* This is done by both the above-named theologians. 
 
EDUCATION OF JESUS. 201 
 
 §43- 
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT Of JESUS. 
 
 Our information concerning the external life of Jesus during his youth is 
 very scanty : but we are almost destitute of any concerning his intellectual 
 development. For the indeterminate phrase, twice occurring in Luke's 
 history of the childhood, concerning the increase of his spiritual strength 
 and his growth in wisdom, tells us no more than we must necessarily 
 have presupposed without it ; while on the expectations which his parents 
 cherished with respect to him before his birth, and on the sentiment which 
 his mother especially then expressed, no conclusion is to be founded, since 
 those expectations and declarations are themselves unhistorical. The narra- 
 tive just considered, of the appearance of Jesus in the temple at twelve years 
 of age, rather gives us a result — the early and peculiar development of his 
 religious consciousness, — than an explanation of the causes and conditions by 
 which this development was favoured. But we at Least learn from Luke ii. 41 
 (what however is to be of course supposed of . pious Israelites), that the 
 parents of Jesus used to go to Jerusalem every year at the Passover. We 
 may conjecture, then, that Jesus from his twelfth year generally accompanied 
 them, and availed himself of this excellent opportunity, amid the concourse 
 of Jews and Jewish proselytes of all countries and all opinions, to form his 
 mind, to become acquainted with the condition of his people and the false 
 principles of the Pharisaic leaders, and to extend his survey beyond the narrow 
 limits of Palestine.^ 
 
 Whether or in what degree Jesus received the learned education of a 
 rabbin, is also left untold in our canonical Gospels. From such passages as 
 Matt. vii. 29, where it is said that Jesus taught not as the scribes, ovx ws 01 
 ypa/A/iareis, we can only infer that he did not adopt the method of the doctors 
 of the law, and it does not follow that he had never enjoyed the education 
 of a scride (ypafifiarevi). On the other hand, not only was Jesus called pajifil 
 and pafi^ovvl by his disciples (Matt. xxvi. 25, 49; Mark ix. 5, xi. 21, xiv. 45. 
 John iv. 31, ix. 2, xi. 8, xx. 16 : comp. i. 38, 40, 50), and by supplicating 
 sufferers (Mark x. 5), but even the pharisaic apxa>v Nicodemus (John iii. 2) 
 did not refuse him this title. We cannot, however, conclude from hence that 
 Jesus had received the scholastic instruction of a rabbin ; ^ for the salutation 
 Rabbi, as also the privilege of reading in the synagogue (Luke iv. 16 S.), a 
 particular which has likewise been appealed to, belonged not only to graduated 
 rabbins, but to every teacher who had given actual proof of his qualifications.* 
 The enemies of Jesus explicitly assert, and he does not contradict them, that 
 he had never learned letters : ttSs oStos ypap.fji.aTa olSe p-r/ p.ep.a6rjKias (John vn. 
 15) ; and the Nazarenes are astonished to find so much wisdom in him, whence 
 we infer that he had not to their knowledge been a student. These facts cannot 
 be neutralized by the discourse of Jesus in which he represents himself as the 
 model of a scribe well instructed unto the kingdom of heaven * (Matt. xiii. 52), 
 for the word ypap-parev': here means a doctor of the law in general, and not 
 directly a doctor qualified in the schools. Lastly, the intimate acquamtance 
 with the doctrinal traditions, and the abuses of the rabbins, which Jesus ex- 
 hibits,« especially in the sermon on the mount and the anti-phansaic discourse 
 
 ' Paulus, exeget. Handb. I,a, ». 273 ff. 
 
 * Such, however, are the arguments of Paulus, ut sup. 275 ff. 
 
 3 Comp. Hase, Leben Jesu, § 38 ; Neander, L. J. Chr. s. 45 '• 
 
 * Paulus, ut sup. •,.,.•• o f 
 ' To this Schottgen appeals, Christus rabbinorum summus, in his horse, 11. p. 890 1. 
 
202 PART I. CHAPTER V. § 43. 
 
 Matt, xxiii. he might acquire from the numerous discourses of the Pharisees 
 to the people, without going through a course of study under them. Thus 
 the data on our present subject to be found in the Gospels, collectively yield 
 the result that. Jesus did not pass formally through a rabbinical school ; on 
 the other hand, the consideration that it must .have been the interest of the 
 Christian legend to represent Jesus as independent of human teachers, may 
 induce a doubt with respect to these statements in the New Testament, and 
 a conjecture that Jesus may not have been so entirely a stranger to the learned 
 culture of his nation. But from the absence of authentic information we can 
 arrive at no decision on this point. 
 
 Various hypotheses, more or less independent of the intimations given in 
 the New Testament, have been advanced both in ancient and modern times 
 concerning the intellectual development of Jesus : they may be divided into 
 two principal classes, according to their agreement with the natural or the 
 supernatural view. The supernatural view of the person of Jesus requires 
 that he should be the only one of his kind, independent of all external, human 
 influences, self-taught or rather taught of God ; hence, not only must its advo- 
 cates determinedly reject every supposition implying that he borrowed or 
 learned anything, and consequently place in the most glaring light the diffi- 
 culties which lay in the way of the natural development of Jesus ; ^ but, the 
 more surely to exclude every kind of reception, they must also be disposed to 
 assign as early an appearance as possible to that spontaneity which we find in 
 Jesus in his mature age. This spontaneous activity is twofold : it is theoretical 
 and practical. As regards the theoretical side, comprising judgment and 
 knowledge, the effort to give as early a date as possible to its manifestation in 
 Jesus, displays itself in the apocryphal passages which have been already partly 
 cited, and which describe Jesus as surpassing his teachers long before his 
 twelfth year, for according to one of them he spoke in his cradle and 
 declared himself to be the Son of God.^ The practical side, too, of that 
 superior order of spontaneity attributed to Jesus in his later years, namely, 
 the power of working miracles, is attached by the apocryphal gospels to his 
 earliest childhood and youth.- The Evangelium Thomm opens with the fifth 
 year of Jesus the story of his miracles,^ and the Arabian Evangelium Infantice 
 fills the journey into Egypt with miracles which the mother of Jesus performed 
 by means of the swaddling bands of her infant, and the water in which he was 
 washed.^ Some of the miracles which according to these apocryphal gospels 
 were wrought by Jesus when in his infancy and boyhood, are a;halogous to 
 those in the New Testament — cures and resuscitations of the dead ; others are 
 totally diverse from the ruling type in the canonical Gospels — extremely re- 
 volting retributive miracles, by which every one who opposes the boy Jesus 
 in any matter whatever is smitten with lameness, or even with death, or else 
 mere extravagancies, such as the giving of life to sparrows formed out of 
 mud. 10 
 
 The natural view of the person of Jesus had an opposite interest, which 
 was also, very early manifested both among Jewish and heathen opponents of 
 Christianity, and which consisted in explaining his appearance conformably 
 to the laws of causality, by comparing it with prior and contemporaneous 
 
 * As e. g. Reinhard does, in his Plan Jesu. 
 
 ' Evang. infant, arab. c. i. p. 60 f. ap. Thilo, and the passages quoted § 40 out of the 
 same Gospel and the Evang. Thomse. 
 
 8 Cap. ii. p. 278, Thilo. 
 
 9 Cap. X. flF. 
 
 '" E. g. Evang. ThomiK, c. iii.-v. Evang. infant, arab. c. xlvi. f. Evang. Thoma, c. ii. 
 Evang. inf. arab. c. xxxvi. 
 
EDUCATION OF JESUS. 203 
 
 facts to which it had a relation, and thus exhibiting the conditions on which 
 Jesus depended, and the sources from which he drew. It is true that in the 
 first centuries of the Christian era, the whole region of spirituality being a 
 supernatural one for heathens as well as Jews, the reproach that Jesus owed 
 his wisdom and seemingly miraculous powers, not to himself or to God, but 
 to a communication from without, could not usually take the form of an 
 assertion that he had acquired natural skill and wisdom in the ordinary way 
 of instruction from others." Instead of the natural and the human, the 
 unnatural and the demoniacal were opposed to the divine and the supernatural 
 (comp. Matt. xii. 24), and Jesus was accused of working his miracles by the 
 aid of magic acquired in his youth. This charge was the most easily attached 
 to the journey of his parents with him into Egypt, that native land of magic 
 and secret wisdom, and thus we find it both in Celsus and in the Talmud. 
 The former makes a Jew allege against Jesus, amongst other things, that he 
 had entered into service for wages in Egypt, that he had there possessed him- 
 self of some magic arts, and on the strength of these had on his return vaunted 
 himself for a God.i^ The Talmud gives him a member of the Jewish Sanhe- 
 drim as a. teacher, makes him journey to Egypt with this companion, and 
 bring magic charms from thence into Palestine. ^^ 
 
 The purely natural explanation of the intellectual development of Jesus 
 could only become prevalent amid the enlightened culture of modern times. 
 In working out this explanation, the chief points of difference are the follow- 
 ing : either the character of Jesus is regarded in too circumscribed a view, 
 as the result of only one among the means of culture which his times afforded, 
 or more comprehensively, as the result of all these combined ; again, in tracing 
 this external influence, either the internal gifts and self-determination of Jesus 
 are adequately considered, or they are not. 
 
 In any case, the basis of the intellectual development of Jesus was furnished 
 by the sacred writings of his people, of which the discourses preserved to us 
 in the Gospels attest his zealous and profound study. His Messianic ideas 
 seem to have been formed chiefly on Isaiah and Daniel ; spiritual religious- 
 ness and elevation above the prejudices of Jewish nationality were impres- 
 sively shadowed forth in the prophetic writings generally; together with the 
 Psalms. 
 
 Next among the influences affecting mental cultivation in the native country 
 of Jesus, must be reckoned the three sects under which the spiritual life of 
 his fellow-countrymen may be classified. Among these, the Pharisees, whom 
 Jesus at a later period so strenuously combated, can apparently have had only 
 a negative influence over him ; yet along with their fondness for tradition and 
 legal pedantry, their sanctimoniousness and hypocrisy, by which Jesus was re- 
 pelled from them, we must remember their belief in angels and in immortality, 
 and their constant admission of a progressive development of the Jewish 
 religion after Moses, which were so many points of union between them and 
 
 ^' Yet some isolated instances occur, vid. Semler, Baumgarten's Glaubenslehre, i, s. 42, 
 Anm. 8. 
 
 '2 Orig. c. Cels. 1 . 28 : Kol (X^7") Sn oBros (6 'ItjjoOs) Sii irevlav els Myvirrov //.(.(rSapr^ffas, 
 Koxei Swdfieimi tIvoiv ireipaSels, i(j)' aU Alyiirrioi ire/iriivovTai, iwavjiKdev, iv rats Swd/J.ea-1 /i,4ya 
 ^poDuv, Kai Si' airis 0ebv airbv dj/TiySpevffe. 
 
 " Sanhedr. f. cvii. 2 : /i. Josuaf. Perachja et It}** Alexandrian Aegypti profecti sunt — 
 — "||!»>* ex illo te7npore magiam exercuit, et Israllitas ad pessima quavis perduxit. (An im- 
 portant anachronism, as this Josua Ben Perachja lived about a century earlier. See Jost, 
 Geschichte des Isr., 2, s. 80 ff. and 142 of the Appendices.) Schabbath f. civ. 2 : Traditio 
 est, R. Elieserem dixisse ad viros doctos : annon f. Satdae {i.e. Jesus) magiam ex Aegypto 
 adduxit per incisionem in carne sud factam ? vid. Schbttgen, horse, ii. p. 697 ff. Eisen- 
 menger, entdecktes Judenthum, i, s. 149 f. 
 
204 PART I. CHAPTER V. § 43. 
 
 Jesus. Still as these tenets were only peculiar to the Pharisees in contradis- 
 tinction to the Sadducees, and, for the rest, were common to all orthodox 
 Jews, we abide by the opinion that the influence of the Pharisaic sect on the 
 development of Jesus was essentially negative. 
 
 In the discourses of Jesus Sadduceeism is less controverted, nay, he agrees 
 with it in rejecting the Pharisaic traditions and hypocrisy ; hence a few of the 
 learned have wished to find him a school in this sect.'* But the merely 
 negative agreement against the errors of the Pharisees, — an agreement which, 
 moreover, proceeded from quite another principle in Jesus than in the Saddu- 
 cees, — is more than counterbalanced by the contrast which their religious 
 indifference, their unbelief in immortality and in spiritual existences, formed 
 with the disposition of Jesus, and his manner of viewing the world. That 
 the controversy with the Sadducees is not prominent in the Gospels, may be 
 very simply explained by the fact that their sect had very slight influence on 
 the circle with which Jesus was immediately connected, the adherents of 
 Sadduceeism belonging to the higher ranks alone.*" 
 
 Concerning one only of the then existing Jewish sects can the question 
 seriously arise, whether we ought not to ascribe to it a positive influence on 
 the development and appearance of Jesus — the sect, namely, of the Essenes.^* 
 In the last century the derivation of Christianity from Essenism was very much 
 in vogue ; not only English deists, and among the Germans, Bahrdt and 
 venturini, but even theologians, such as Staudlin, embraced the idea." In 
 the days of freemasonry and secret orders, there was a disposition to transfer 
 their character to primitive Christianity. The concealment of an Essene 
 lodge appeared especially adapted to explain the sudden disappearance of 
 Jesus after the brilliant scenes of his infancy and boyhood, and again after 
 his restoration to life. Besides the forerunner John, the two men on the 
 Mount of Transfiguration, and the angels clothed in white at the grave, and on 
 the Mount of Ascension, were regarded as members of the Essene brotherhood, 
 and many cures of Jesus and the Apostles were referred to the medical traditions 
 of the Essenes. Apart, however, from these fancies of a bygone age, there 
 are really some essential characteristics which seem to speak in favour of an 
 intimate relation between Essenism and Christianity. The most conspicuous 
 as such are the prohibition of oaths, and the community of goods : with the 
 former was connected fidelity, peaceableness, obedience to every constituted 
 authority ; with the latter, contempt of riches, and the custom of travelling 
 without provisions. These and other features, such as the sacred meal par- 
 taken in common, the rejection of sanguinary sacrifices and of slavery, consti- 
 tute so strong a resemblance between Essenism and Christianity, that even 
 so early a writer as Eusebius mistook the Therapeutae, a sect allied to the 
 Essenes, for Christians. '^ But there are very essential dissimilarities which 
 must not be overlooked. Leaving out of consideration the contempt of mar- 
 riage, inrepo\j/La yafiov, since Josephus ascribes it to a part only of the Essenes ; 
 the asceticism, the punctilious observance of the Sabbath, the purifications, 
 and other superstitious usages of this sect, their retention of the names of the 
 angels, the mystery which they affected, and their contracted, exclusive devo- 
 
 ^* E. g. Des C6tes, Schutzschrift fUr Jesus von Nazaret, s. 128 if. 
 
 " Neander, L. J. Chr. ». 39 ff. 
 
 >' Vid. Joseph. B. j. ii. viii. 2-13. Antiq. xviii. i. 5. Comp. Philo, quod omnis prolus 
 liber and de vita contemplativa. 
 
 '? This opinion is judiciously developed by Staudlin, Geschichte der Sittenlehre Jesu, I, s. 
 570 ff. ; and in a romantic manner in the Geschichte des Grossen Propheten von Nazaret, i. 
 Band. 
 
 " H. E. ii. 16 f. 
 
EDUCATION OF JESUS. 205 
 
 tion to their order, are so foreign, nay so directly opposed to the spirit of 
 Jesus, that, especially as the Essenes are nowhere mentioned in the New 
 Testament, the aid which this sect also contributed to the development of 
 Jesus, must be limited to the uncertain influence which might be exercised 
 over him by occasional intercourse with Essenes. '' 
 
 Did other elements than such as were merely Jewish, or at least confined 
 to Palestine, operate upon Jesus ? Of the heathens settled in Galilee of the 
 Gentiles, FaXiXaia rSv iBvwv, there was hardly much to be learned beyond 
 patience under frequent intercourse with them. On the other hand, at the 
 feasts in Jerusalem, not only foreign Jews, some of whom, as for example 
 the Alexandrian and Cyrenian Jews, had synagogues there (Acts vi. 9), but 
 also devout heathens were to be met with (John xii. 20) ; and that inter- 
 course with these had some influence in extending the intellectual horizon 
 of Jesus, and spiritualizing his opinions, has, as we have already intimated, all 
 historical probability.^" 
 
 But why do we, in the absence of certain information, laboriously seek 
 after uncertain traces of an influence which cotemporary means of develop- 
 ment may have exercised on Jesus ? and yet more, why, on the other side, 
 are these labours so anxiously repudiated ? Whatever amount of intellectual 
 material may be collected, the spark by which genius kindles it, and fuses its 
 various elements into a consistent whole, is neither easier to explain nor 
 reduced in value. Thus it is with Jesus. Allow him to have exhausted the 
 means of development which his age afforded : a comprehensive faculty of 
 reception is with great men ever the reverse side of their powerful originality; 
 allow him to have owed far more to Essenism and Alexandrianism, and 
 whatever other schools and tendencies existed, than we, in our uncertainty, 
 are in a condition to prove : — still, for the reformation of a world these 
 elements were all too little ; the leaven necessary for this he must obtain from 
 the depth of his own mind.^"^ 
 
 But we have not yet spoken of an appearance to which our Gospels assign 
 a most important influence in developing the activity of Jesus^ — that of John 
 the Baptist. As his ministry is first noticed in the Gospels in connexion 
 with the baptism and public appearance of Jesus, our inquiry concerning 
 him, and his relation to Jesus, must open the second part. 
 
 " Comp. Bengel, Bemerkungen iiber den Versuch. das Christenthum aus dem Essaismus 
 abzuleiten, in Flatt's Magazin, 7, s. 126 ff. ; Neander, L. J. Chr. s. 41 ff. 
 
 2" This is stated with exaggeration by Bahrdt, Briefe iiber die Bibel, zweites Bandchen, 
 iSter, 20ster Brief ff. 4tes Bandchen, 49ster Brief. 
 
 21 Comp. Paulus ut sup. I, a, 273 if. Planck, Geschichte des Christenthums in der 
 Periode seiner ersten Einfuhrung i, s. 84. De Wette, bibl. Dogm. § 212. Hase L. J. § 38. 
 Winer, bibl. Realw. s. 677 f. Neander, L. J. Chr. s. 38 if. 
 
SECOND PART, 
 
 HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 
 
 § 44. 
 CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN JOHN AND JESUS. 
 
 For the ministry of John the Baptist, mentioned in all the Gospels, the 
 second and fourth evangelists fix no epoch ; the first gives us an inexact one ; 
 the third, one apparently precise. According to Matt. iii. i, John appeared 
 as a preacher of repentance, in those days, iv rats ^juepais eKeivats, that is, if we 
 interpret strictly this reference to the previous narrative, about the time when 
 the parents of Jesus settled at Nazareth, and when Jesus was yet a child. 
 We are told, however, in the context, that Jesus came to John for baptism ; 
 hence between the first appearance of the Baptist, which was cotemporary 
 with the childhood of Jesus, and the period at which the latter was baptized, 
 we must intercalate a number of years, during which Jesus might have 
 become sufficiently matured to partake of John's baptism. But Matthew's 
 description of the person and work of the Baptist is so concise, the office 
 attributed to him is so little independent, so entirely subservient to that of Jesus, 
 that it was certainly not the intention of the evangelist to assign a long series 
 of years to his single ministry. His meaning incontestably is, that John's 
 short career early attained its goal in the baptism of Jesus. 
 
 It being thus inadmissible to suppose between the appearance of John and' 
 the baptism of Jesus, that is, between verses 12 and 13 of the 3rd chapter of 
 Matthew, the long interval which is in every case indispensable, nothing 
 remains but to insert it between the close of the second and the beginning of 
 the third chapter, namely, between the settlement of the parents of Jesus at 
 Nazareth and the appearance of the Baptist. To this end we may presume, 
 with Paulus, that Matthew has here introduced a fragment from a history of 
 the Baptist, narrating many particulars of his life immediately preceding his 
 public agency, and very properly proceeding with the words, in those days, 
 iv raii rifj-epai? eKciVais, which connecting phrase Matthew, although he omitted 
 that to which it referred, has nevertheless retained^ ; or we may, with Siiskind, 
 apply the words, not to the settlement, but to the subsequent residence of 
 Jesus at Nazareth ; ^ or better still, iv rats rifxepais ck«Ws, like the correspond- 
 ing Hebrew expression, Dnci D'D'a e. g., Exodi ii. 11, is probably to be 
 interpreted as relating indeed to th€- establishment at Nazareth, but so that 
 
 ' Exeget. Handbuch. I a, s. 46^ Schneokenburger agrees with him, iiberden Ursprang, 
 des ersten kanon. Evang., s. 30, 
 ' Vermischte Aufsatze, s. 76 ff. Compare Schneckenburger, ut sup. 
 
210 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 44. 
 
 an event happening thirty years afterwards may yet be said, speaking in- 
 definitely, to occur in those days.^ In neither case do we learn from Matthew 
 concerning the time of John's appearance more than the very vague informa- 
 tion, that it took place in the interval between the infancy and manhood of 
 Jesus. 
 
 Luke determines the date of John's appearance by various synchronisms, 
 placing it in the time of Pilate's government in Judea ; in the sovereignty of 
 Herod (Antipas), of Philip and of Lysanias over the other divisions of Pales- 
 tine ; in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas ; and, moreover, precisely 
 in the isth year of the reign of Tiberius, which, reckoning from the death 
 of Augustus, corresponds with the year 28-29 of o""" ^^^^ ("'• ^' ^).- ^^^ 
 this last and closest demarcation of time all the foregoing less precise ones 
 agree. Even that which makes Annas high priest together with Caiaphas 
 appears correct, if we consider the peculiar influence which, according to 
 John xviii. 13, Acts iv. 6, that ex-high priest retained, even when deposed, 
 especially after the assumption of office by his son-in-law, Caiaphas. 
 
 A single exception occurs in the statement about Lysanias, whom Luke 
 makes cotemporary with Antipas and Philip as tetrarch of Abilene. Josephus, 
 it is true, speaks of an 'Aj8i\o 17 Auo-aviou, and mentions a Lysanias as governor 
 of Chalcis in Lebanon, near to which lay the territory of Abila ; so that the 
 same Lysanias was probably master of the latter. But this Lysanias was, 
 at the instigation of Cleopatra, put to death 34 years before the birth of 
 Christ, and a second Lysanias is not mentioned either by Josephus or by any 
 other writer on the period in question.^ Thus, not only is the time of his 
 government earlier by 60 years than the 15th year of Tiberius, but it is also 
 at issue with the other dates associated with it by Luke. Hence it has been 
 conjectured that Luke here speaks of a younger Lysanias, the descendant of 
 the earlier one, who possessed Abilene under Tiberius, but who, being less 
 famous, is not noticed by Josephus.^ We cannot indeed prove what Siiskind 
 demands for the refutation of this hypothesis, namely, that had such a younger 
 Lysanias existed, Josephus must have mentioned him ; yet that he had more 
 than one inducement to do so, Paulus has satisfactorily shown. Especially, 
 when in relation to the times of the first and second Agrippa , he designates 
 Abila, fi Ava-avlov, he must have been reminded that he had only treated of 
 the elder Lysanias, and not at all of the younger, from whom, as the later 
 ruler, the country must at that time have derived its secojid appellation.'' If, 
 according to this, the younger Lysanias is but an historic fiction, the proposed 
 
 ' De Wette and Fritzsche, in loc. 
 
 * See Paulus, ut sup., o. 336. 
 
 5 I here collect all the passages in Josephus relative to Lysanias, with the parallel passages 
 in Dion Cassius. Antiq. xiii. xvi. 3, xiv. iii. 2, vii. 8. — Antiq. xv. iv. I. B. j.i. xiii. I (Dio 
 Gassius xlix. 32). Antiq. xv. x. 1-3. B. j. i. xx. 4 (Dio Cass. liv. 9). Antiq. xvii. xi. 4. 
 B. j. ii. vi. 3. Antiq. xviii. vi. 10. B. j. ii. ix. 6 (Dio Cass. lix. 8). Antiq. xix. v. i. B. 
 j. ii. xi. 5. Antiq. xx. v. 2, vii. i. B. j. ii. xii. 8. 
 
 ^ Siiskind, vermischte Aufsatze, s. IJ ff. 93 ff. 
 
 ? Tholiick thinks he has found a perfectly corresponding example in Tacitus. When this 
 historian, Annal. ii. 42 (a.d. 17), mentions the death of an Archelaus, king of Cappadocia, 
 and yet, Annal. vi. 41 (a.d. 36), cites an Archelaus, also a Cappadocian, as ruler of the 
 ClitsB, the same historical conjecture, says Tholiick, is necessary, viz., that there were two 
 Cappadocians named Archelaus. But when the same historian, after noticing the death of 
 a man, introduces another of the same name, under different circumstances, it is no conjec- 
 ture, but a clear historic datum, that there were two such persons. It is quite otherwise 
 when, as in the case of Lysanias, two writers have each one of the same name, but assign 
 him distinct epochs. Here it is indeed a conjecture to admit two successive persons ; a con- 
 jecture so much the Ipss historical, the more improbable it is shown to be that one of the two 
 writers would have been silent respecting the second of the like-nameii men, had such an 
 one existed. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 211 
 
 alternative is but a philological one.^ For when it is said in the first place : 
 ^iXtTTirov— TETpapxoSvTos TTji 'iToupatas, K. T. \., and when it follows: /cat 
 A.v<raviov r^s 'A^iXiyi/'^s reTpapxovvTo^ : we cannot possibly understand from 
 this, that Philip reigned also over the Abilene of Lysanias. For in that case 
 the word rerpapxavvTO's ought not to have been repeated,^ and r^s ought to 
 have been placed before Lysanias, if the author wished to avoid misconstruc- 
 tion. The conclusion is therefore inevitable that the writer himself erred, 
 and, from the circumstance that Abilene, even in recent times, was called, 
 after the last ruler of the former dynasty, 77 Ava-aviov, drew the inference that 
 a monarch of that name was still existing ; while, in fact, Abilene either 
 belonged to Philip, or was immediately subject to the Romans.^" 
 
 The above chronological notation relates directly to John the Baptist 
 alone; a similar one is wanting when Luke begins farther on (v. 21 ff.) to 
 speak of Jesus. Of him it is merely said that he was adoui thirty years of 
 age, ma-el iruiv rpiaKovra, on his public appearance (apxafitevoi), but no date is 
 given ; while, in the case of John, there is a contrary omission. Thus even 
 if John commenced his ministry in the 15th year of Tiberius, we cannot 
 thence gather anything as to the time when Jesus commenced his, as it is 
 nowhere said how long John had been baptizing when Jesus came to him on 
 the Jordan ; while, on the other hand, although we know that Jesus, at his 
 baptism, was about 30 years old, this does not help us to ascertain the age of 
 John when he entered on his ministry as Baptist. Remembering, however, 
 Luke i. 26, according to which John was just half a year older than Jesus, 
 and calling to our aid the fact that Jewish usage would scarcely permit the 
 exercise of public functions before the thirtieth year, we mi^t infer that the 
 Baptist could only have appeared half a year before the arrival of Jesus on 
 the banks of the Jordan, since he would only so much earlier have attained 
 the requisite age. But no express law forbade a public appearance previous 
 to the thirtieth year ; and it has been justly questioned whether we can apply 
 to the freer office of a Prophet a restriction which concerned the Priests and 
 Levites, for whom the thirtieth year was fixed for their entrance on regular 
 service^' (Num. iv. 3, 47. Compare besides 2 Chron. xxxi. 17, where the 
 20th year is named). This then would not hinder us from placing the 
 appearance of John considerably prior to that of Jesus, even presupposing 
 the averred relation between their ages. Hardly, however, could this be the 
 intention of the Evangelist. For to ascertain so carefully the date of the 
 Forerunner's appearance, and leave that of the Messiah himself undeter- 
 mined, would be too great an oversight,'* and we cannot but suppose that 
 his design, in the particulars he gives concerning John, was to fix the time 
 for the appearance of Jesus. To agree with this purpose, he must have 
 understood that Jesus came to the banks of the Jordan and began to teach, 
 shortly after the appearance of John.i^ For that the above chronological 
 determination was originally merely the introduction to a document concern- 
 ing John, quoted by Luke, is improbable, since its exactness corresponds 
 with the style of him w/io had perfect understanding of all things from the very 
 
 * Michaelis, Paulus, in loc. Schneckenburger, in Ullmann's und Umbreit's Studien, 1833, 
 4 Heft, s. 1056 ff. Tholiick, s. 201 ff. 
 
 * For, on the authority of a single manuscript to erase, with Schneckenburger and others, 
 the second TCTpapxpvi'Tos, is too evident violence. 
 
 i» Compare with this view, Allgem. Lit. Ztg., 1803, No. 344, »■ SS^ = De Wette, exeg. 
 Handbuch, in loc. 
 
 " See Paulus, s. 294. 
 
 " See Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 62. 
 ' " Bengel was also of this opinion. Ordo temporum, s. 204 f. ed. 2. 
 
212 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 44. 
 
 fiyst, irapijKoXov^ijKOTt hiu^ev Tracnv dicpijSuJ?, and who sought to determine, in 
 like manner, the epoch of the Messiah's birth. 
 
 It is not easy, however, to imagine, in accordance with this statement, that 
 John was by so little the predecessor of Jesus, nor is it without reason that 
 the improbability of his having had so short an agency is maintained. For 
 he had a considerable number of disciples, whom he not only baptized, but 
 taught (Luke xi. i), and he left behind a party of his peculiar followers (Acts 
 xviii. 25, xix. ■(), all which could hardly be the work of a few months. There 
 needed time, it has been observed, for the Baptist to become so well known, 
 that people would undertake a journey to him in the wilderness ; there 
 needed time for his doctrine to be comprehended, time for it to gain a foot- 
 ing and establish itself, especially as it clashed with the current Jewish ideas ; 
 in a word, the deep and lasting veneration in which John was held by his 
 nation, according to Josephus '* as well as the evangelists, could not have 
 been so hastily won.^* 
 
 But the foregoing considerations, although they demand, in general, a 
 longer agency for the Baptist, do not prove that the evangelists err in placing 
 the commencement of his ministry shortly before that of Jesus, since they 
 might suppose the required prolongation as a sequel, instead of an introduc- 
 tion, to the appearance of Jesus. Such a prolongation of the Baptist's 
 ministry, however, is not to be found, at least in the first two Gospels ; for 
 not only do these contain no details concerning John, after the baptism of 
 Jesus, except his sending two disciples (Matt, xi.), which is represented as a 
 consequence of his imprisonment ; but we gather from Matt. iv. 12, Mark i. 
 14, that during or shortly after the forty days' abode of Jesus in the wilder- 
 ness, the Baptist was arrested, and thereupon Jesus went into Galilee, and 
 entered on his public career. Luke, it is true (iv. 14), does not mention the 
 imprisonment of John as the cause of the appearance of Jesus in Galilee, and 
 he seems to regard the commission of the two disciples as occurring while 
 John was at large (vii. 18 ff.) ; and the fourth Evangelist testifies yet more 
 decisively against the notion that John was arrested so soon after the baptism 
 of Jesus ; for in chap. iii. 24, it is expressly stated, that Johji was actively 
 engaged in his ministry after the first passover, attended by Jesus during His 
 public life. But on the one hand, as it appears from Luke ix. 9 ; Matt. xiv. 
 I ff. ; Mark xiv. 16, that John was put to death long before Jesus, the con- 
 tinuance of his agency after the rise of the latter could not be very protracted 
 (Luke ix. 9 ; Matt. xiv. i ff. ; Mark xiv. 16) ; and on the other, that which 
 may be added to the agency of John after the appearance of Jesus, will not 
 make amends for that which is subtracted from it before that epoch. For, 
 apart from the fact implied by the fourth Evangelist (i. 35), that the Baptist 
 had formed a definite circle of familiar disciples before the appearance of 
 Jesus, it would be difficult to account for the firm footing acquired by his 
 school, if he had laboured only a few months, to be, at their close, eclipsed 
 by Jesus. 
 
 There is yet one resource, namely, to separate the baptism of Jesus from 
 the commencement of his ministry, and to say : It was indeed after the first 
 half-year of John's agericy that Jesus was so attracted by his fame, as to 
 become a candidate for his baptism; but for some time subsequently, he 
 either remained among the followers of the Baptist, or went again into retire- 
 ment, and did not present himself independently until a considerable interval 
 
 ^* Antiq. xviii. v. 2. 
 
 1* ^0 Cludius, iiber die Zeit und Lebensdauer Johannis und Jesu. In Henke's Museum, 
 ii. iii. 502 S. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 213 
 
 had elapsed. By this means we should obtain the requisite extension of 
 John's ministry prior to the more brilliant career of Jesus, without impugning 
 the apparent statement of our evangelists that the baptism of Jesus followed 
 close upon the public appearance of John. But the idea of a long interim, 
 between the baptism of Jesus and the commencement of his ministry, is 
 utterly foreign to the New Testament writers. For that they regard the 
 baptism of Jesus as his consecration to the Messianic office, is proved by the 
 accompanying descent of the spirit and the voice from heaven ; the only 
 pause which they allow to intervene, is the six weeks' fast in the wilderness, 
 immediately jifter which, according to Luke, or after the apparently cotem- 
 porary arrest of the Baptist, according to Matthew and Mark, Jesus appears 
 in Galilee. Luke, in particular, by designating (iii. 23) the baptism of Jesus 
 as his &pxea-6a.L, his assumption of office, and by dating the intercourse of 
 Jesus with his disciples from the j8airT«r/ta 'Iwai/vou (Acts i. 22), evinces his 
 persuasion that the baptism and public manifestation of Jesus were identical. 
 
 Thus the gospel narrative is an obstacle to the adoption of the two most 
 plausible expedients for the prolongation of John's ministry, viz., that Jesus 
 presented himself for baptism later, or that his public appearance was retarded 
 longer after his baptism, than has been generally inferred. We are not, 
 however, compelled to renounce either of these suppositions, if we can show 
 that the New Testament writers might have been led to their point of view 
 even without historical grounds. A sufficient motive lies close at hand, and 
 is implied in the foregoing observations. Let the Baptist once be considered, 
 as was the case in the Christian Church (Acts xix. 4), not a person of 
 independent significance, but simply a Forerunner of the Christ ; and the 
 imagination would not linger with the mere Precursor, but would hasten 
 forward to the object at which he pointed. Yet more obvious is the interest 
 which primitive Christian tradition must have had in excluding, whatever 
 might have been the fact, any interval between the baptism of Jesus and the 
 beginning of his public course. For to allow that Jesus, by his submission 
 to John's baptism, declared himself his disciple, and remained in that relation 
 for any length of time, was offensive to the religious sentiment of the new 
 church, which desired a Founder instructed by God, and not by man : 
 another turn, therefore, would soon be given to the facts, and the baptism of 
 Jesus would be held to signify, not his initiation into the school of John, but 
 a consecration to his independent office. Thus the diverging testimony of 
 the evangelists does not preclude our adopting the conclusion to which the 
 nature of the case leads us ; viz., that the Baptist had been long labouring, 
 anterior to the appearance of Jesus. 
 
 If, in addition to this, we accept the statement of Luke (i. 26 and iii. 23), 
 that Jesus, being- only half a year younger than John, was about in his 
 thirtieth year at his appearance, we must suppose that John was in his 
 twentieth year when he began his ministry. There is, as we have seen, no 
 express law against so early an exercise of the prophetic office ; neither do I, 
 so decidedly as Cludius," hold it improbable that so young a preacher of 
 repentance should make an impression, or even that he should be taken for 
 a prophet of the olden time— an Elias ; I will only appeal to the ordmary 
 course of things as a sanction for presuming, that one who entered so much 
 earlier upon the scene of action was proportionately older, especially when 
 the principles and spirit of his teaching tell so plainly of a mature age as do 
 the discourses of John. There are exceptions to this rule ; but the statement 
 of Luke (i. 26), that John was only six months older than Jesus, is msufficient 
 
 " Cludius, ut sup. 
 
214 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 45- 
 
 to establish one in this instance, as it accords with the interest of the poetical 
 legend, and must therefore be renounced for the slightest improbability. 
 
 The result then of our critique on the chronological data Luke iii. i, 2, 
 comp. 23 and i. 26, is this : if Jesus, as Luke seems to understand, appeared 
 in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, the appearance of John occurred, not in the 
 same year, but earlier ; and if Jesus was in his thirtieth year when he began 
 his ministry, the Baptist, so much his predecessor, could hardly be but six 
 months his senior. 
 
 §45- 
 
 APPEARANCE AND DESIGN OF THE BAPTIST. HIS PERSONAL RELATIONS 
 
 WITH JESUS. 
 
 John, a Nazarite, according to our authorities (Matt. iii. 4, ix. 14, xi. 18 ; 
 Luke i. 1 5), and in the opinion of several theologians,^ an Essene, is said by 
 Luke (iii. 2) to have been summoned to his public work by the word of God 
 p^/ia ®tov, which came to him in the wilderness. Not possessing the Baptist's 
 own declaration, we cannot accept as complete the dilemma stated by 
 Paulus,^ when he says, that we know not whether John himself interpreted 
 some external or internal fact as a divine call, or whether he received a 
 summons from another individual ; and we must add as a third possibility, 
 that his followers sought to dignify the vocation of their Teacher by an ex- 
 pression which recalls to mind the ancient Prophets. 
 
 While from the account of Luke it appears that the divine call came to 
 John in the wilderness, iv rrj iprjtm, but that for the purpose of teaching and 
 baptizing he resorted to ihe country about Jordan, irept^wpos rpv 'lopSdvov 
 (ver. 3) ; Matthew (iii. ff.) makes the wilderness of Judea the scene of his 
 labours, as if the Jordan in which he baptized flowed through that wilderness. 
 It is true that, according to Josephus, the Jordan before emptying itself into 
 the Dead Sea traverses a great wilderness, iroA.A.'^i' kp-q^dav^ but this was not 
 the wilderness of Judea, which lay farther south.* Hence it has been 
 supposed that Matthew, misled by his application of the prophecy, the voice 
 of one crying in the wilderness, cjxavrj ^owvto^ iv ry ep'^ftM, to John, who issued 
 from the wilderness of Judea, eprifios t^s 'louSaias, placed there his labours as 
 a preacher of repentance and a baptizer, although their true scene was the 
 blooming valley of the Jordan. ^ In the course of Luke's narrative, however, 
 this evangelist ceases to intimate that John forsook the wilderness after 
 receiving his call, for on the occasion of John's message to Jesus, he makes 
 the latter ask , Whom went ye out into the wilderness to see ? • Tt 6feA.ijA.ij6aT€ eis 
 T^v eprifjiov d^da-aa-Oaj. (vii. 24). Now as the valley of the Jordan in the 
 vicinity of the Dead Sea was in fact a barren plain, the narrow margin of the 
 river excepted, no greater mistake may belong to Matthew than that of 
 specifying the wilderness as the Ipij/tos t^s 'lo-uSat'as ; and even that may be 
 explained away by the supposition, either that John, as he alternately 
 preached and baptized, passed from the wilderness of Judea to the borders 
 
 ' Staudlin, Geschichte der Sittenlehre Jesu, i, s. 580. Paulus, exeg. Handb. I a, s. 136. 
 Comp. also Creuzer, Symbolik, 4, s. 413 ff. 
 2 Ut sup. p. 347- 
 ■■ Bell. jud. iii. x. 7. 
 
 ♦ See Winer, bibl. Realworterbuch, A. Wiiste. Schneckenburger, Uber den Ursprung 
 des ersten kanonischen Evangeliums, s. 39. 
 
 * Schneckenburger, ut sup., s. 38 f. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS, AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 215 
 
 of the Jordan,^ or that the waste tract through which that river flowed, being 
 a continuation of the wilderness of Judea, retained the same name.'' 
 
 The baptism of John could scarcely have been derived from the baptism 
 of proseIytes,8 for this rite was unquestionably posterior to the rise of 
 Christianity. It was more analagous to the religious lustrations in practice 
 amongst the Jews, especially the Essenes, and was apparently founded chiefly 
 on certain expressions used by several of the prophets in a figurative sense, 
 but afterwards understood literally. According to these expressions, God 
 requires from the Israelitish people, as a condition of their restoration to his 
 favour, a washing and purification from their iniquity, and he promises that 
 he will himself cleanse them with water (Isaiah i. 16, Ez. xxxvi. 25, comp. 
 Jer. ii. 22). Add to this the Jewish notion that the Messiah would not 
 appear with his kingdom until the Israelites repented,' and we have the 
 combination necessary for the belief that an ablution, symbolical of con- 
 version and forgiveness of sins, must precede the advent of the Messiah. 
 
 Our accounts are not unanimous as to the signification of John's baptism. 
 They all, it is true, agree in stating repentance, fieravoLa, to be one of its 
 essential requirements ; for even what Josephus says of the Baptist, that he 
 admonished the Jews, practising virtue, just towards each other, and devout 
 towards God, to come to his baptism, aperijv iirao'KovvTa's, xat rfj Trpos aXX-^Xous 
 SiKaioa-uvr) kol irpos Tov ®iov txKre^eia ^(fxofJLivov; /3a7rTicr/i<3 o-wiei/ai,'" has the 
 
 same sense under a Greek form. Mark and Luke, however, while designating 
 the baptism of John, /8dimtr/Aa fieravoCas, add, «« atjaa-Lv dfjiafyriZv (i. 4, iii. 3). 
 Matthew has not the same addition ; but he, with Mark, describes the 
 baptized as confessing their sins, i^o/jMX.oyov/j.o'OL Tas dfiaprCa's airuiv (iii. 6). 
 Josephus, on the other hand, appears in direct contradiction to them, when 
 he gives it as the opinion of the Baptist, that baptism is pleasing to God, not 
 when we ask pardon for some transgressions, but when we purify the body, after 
 having first purified the mind by righteousness, ovtio yap koL t^v ^dirrunv 
 oTToSeKT^v aiiTiS (t<3 ©eu) t^aviitrOai, //.tj iiri rivrnv a/ji,apTa.Siov TrapaiTrjirei j^to/xivmv, 
 dW i<j> dyveia tov crol/iaTOs, are Sjj^Kai r^s i/fux^' SiKaLoa^vvy TrpoeKKCKaOapfji.ivTii. 
 We might here be led to the supposition that the words for the remission of 
 sins, ets d^itnv a/MpTilov, as in Acts ii. 38, and other passages, was commonly 
 used in relation to Christian baptism, and was thence transferred unhistorically 
 to that of John ; but as in the passages quoted from Ezekiel the washing 
 typified not only reformation but forgiveness, the probabilities are in favour 
 of the evangelical statement. Moreover, it is possible to reconcile Josephus 
 and the Evangelists, by understanding the words of the former to mean 
 that the baptism of John was intended to effect a purification, not from 
 particular or merely Levitical transgressions, but of the entire man, not 
 immediately and mysteriously through the agency of water, but by means of 
 the moral acts of reformation." 
 
 The several accounts concerning John are farther at variance, as to the 
 relation in which they place his baptism to the kingdom of heaven, Pa.(n\aa 
 tS)v ovpavSiv. According to Matthew, the concise purport of the appeal with 
 which he accompanied his baptism was. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is 
 at hand, y.eravoilTi rjyyiKi yap rj ^a<nX.ica tSiv ovpavZv (iii. 2) ; according to 
 
 8 Winer, ut sup., s. 691. 
 7 Paulus, ut sup., s. 301. 
 
 » Schneckenburger, iiber das Alter der Jiidischen Proselytentaufe. 
 
 9 Sanhedr. f. xcvii. 2 : X. Elieser dixit : si IsrailUa fcenitentiam agunt, tunc per Goelem 
 Hberantur ; sin vera, non liberantur. Schottgen, hor«, 2, p. 780 ff. 
 
 1" Antiq. xviii. v. 2. 
 
 11 Thus Paulus,! ut sup., s. 314 and 361, Anm. 
 
2l6 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 45- 
 
 Luke, the Baptist in the first instance mentions only repentance and remission 
 of sins, but no kingdom of heaven ; and it is the conjecture of the people, 
 that he might be the Messiah, by which he is first led to direct them to one 
 who was coming after him (iii. 15 fl".). In Josephus, there is no trace of a 
 relation between the ministry of John and the Messianic idea. Yet we must 
 not therefore conclude that the Baptist himself recognjzed no such relation, 
 and that its only source was the Christian legend. For the baptism of John, 
 waiving the opinion that it was derived from the baptism of proselytes, is not 
 quite explicable witliout a reference to the above-mentioned expiatory 
 lustrations of the people — ^lustrations which were to usher in the times of the 
 Messiah; moreover, the appearance of Jesus is made more comprehensible 
 by the supposition, that John had introduced the idea of the proximity of the 
 Messiah's kingdom. That Josephus should keep back the Messianic aspect 
 of the fact, is in accordance with his general practice, which is explained by 
 the position of his people with respect to the Romans. Besides, in the ex- 
 pression, to assemble for baptism, ^a.wTua-ft.w a-wievai, in his mention of popular 
 assemblages, a-vurpicjyccrdai, and in the fear of Antipas lest John should excite 
 a revolt, d7rocrTa(rts, there lies an intimation of precisely such a religious and 
 political movement as the hope of the Messiah was calculated to produce. 
 That the Baptist should so distinctly foretell the immediate appearance of the 
 Messiah's kingdom must create surprise, and (Luke's reference to a divine 
 call and revelation being held unsatisfactory) might lead to the supposition 
 that the Christian narrator, believing that the true Messiah was actually 
 manifested in the person of Jesus, the cotemporary of John, gave to the 
 language of the latter a definiteness which did not belong to it originally ; 
 and while the Baptist merely said, consonantly with the Jewish notion already 
 mentioned : Repent, that the kingdom of heaven may come, jtieravoctTe, Iva. eSSrj 
 ^ /Sao-. T. ovp., a later edition of his words gave yap {for) instead of Iva. {that). 
 But such a supposition is needless. In those times of commotion, John 
 might easily believe that he discerned signs, which certified to him the 
 proximity of the Messiah's kingdom ; the exact degree of its proximity he left 
 undecided. 
 
 According to the Evangelists, the coming of the kingdom of heaven, ^aa-iXeia 
 rutv ovpavmv, was associated by John with a Messianic individual to whom he 
 ascribed, in distinction from his own baptism with water, a baptism with the 
 Holy Ghost and with fire, ^airrltfoi irvevfiaTi. dyua Kol inipl (Matt. iii. II 
 parall.), the outpouring of the Holy Spirit being regarded as a leading feature 
 of the Messianic times (Joel ii. 28; Acts ii. 16 ff.). Of this personage he 
 farther predicted, in imagery akin to that used by the prophets on the same 
 subject, that he would winnow the people as wheat (Mai. iii. 2, 3 ; Zech. 
 xiii. 9). The Synoptical Gospels state the case as if John expressly understood 
 this Messianic individual to be Jesus of Nazareth. According to Luke, 
 indeed, the mothers of these two men were cousins, and aware of ttie destina- 
 tion of their sons. The Baptist while yet unborn acknowledged the divinity 
 of Jesus, and all the circumstances imply that both were early acquainted 
 with their relative position, predetermined by a heavenly communication. 
 Matthew, it is true, says nothing of such a family connexion between John 
 and Jesus ; but when the latter presents himself for baptism, he puts into the 
 mouth of John words which seem to presuppose an earlier acquaintance. 
 His expression of astonishment that Jesus should come to him for baptism, 
 when he had need to be baptized of Jesus, could only arise from a previous 
 knowledge or instantaneous revelatiori, of his character. Of the latter there 
 is no intimation ; for the first visible sign of the Messiahship of Jesus did not 
 occur till afterwards. While in the first and third Gospels (in the second, ' 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 21/ 
 
 the facts are so epitomized that the writer's view on the subject is not 
 evident), John and Jesus seem to have been no strangers to each other prior 
 to the baptism ; in the fourth, the Baptist pointedly asserts that he knew not 
 Jesus before the heavenly appearance, which, according to the Synoptical 
 Gospels, was coincident with his baptism (i. 31, 33). Simply considered, 
 this looks Uke a contradiction. By Luke, the previous acquaintance of the 
 two is stated objectively, as an external matter of fa6t ; by Matthew, it is 
 betrayed in the involuntary confession of the astonished Baptist ; in the fourth 
 Gospel, on the contrary, their previous unacquaintance is attested subjectively, 
 by his premeditated assertion. It was not, therefore, a very far-fetched idea 
 of the Wolfenbiittel fragmentist, to put down the contradiction to the account 
 of John and Jesus, and to presume that they had in fact long known and 
 consulted each other, but that in public (in order better to play into one 
 another's hands) they demeaned themselves as if they had hitherto been 
 mutual strangers, and each delivered an unbiassed testimony to the other's 
 excellence.^^ 
 
 That such premeditated dissimulation might not be imputed to John, and 
 indirectly to Jesus, it has been sought to disprove the existence of the contra- 
 diction in question exegetically. What Jolm learned from the heavenly sign 
 was the Messiahship of Jesus; to this therefore, and not to his person, refer 
 the words, / knew him not, Kayu) ovk rjSeiv avTQv.^^ But it may be questioned 
 whether such an acquaintance as John must have had with Jesus, presup- 
 posing the narrative of Matthew and Luke, was separable from a knowledge 
 of his Messiahship. The connection and intercourse of the two families, as 
 described by Luke, would render it impossible for John not to be early 
 informed how solemnly Jesus had been announced as the Messiah, before 
 and at his birth ; he could not therefore say at a later period that, prior to 
 the sign from heaven, he had not known, but only that he had not believed, 
 the story of former wonders, one of which relates to himself i* It being thus 
 unavoidable to acknowledge that by the above declaration in the fourth 
 Gospel, the Baptist is excluded, not only from a knowledge of the Messiah- 
 ship of Jesus, but also from a personal acquaintance with him ; it has been 
 attempted to reconcile the first chapter of Luke with this ignorance, by 
 appealing to the distance of residence between the two families, as a preven- 
 tive to the continuance of their intercourse.^^ But if the journey from 
 Nazareth to the hill country of Judea was not too formidable for the be- 
 trothed Mary, how could it be so for the two sons when ripening to maturity? 
 What culpable indifference is hereby supposed in both families to the heavenly 
 communications they had received ! nay, what could be the object of those 
 communications, if they had no influence on the early life and intercourse of 
 the two sons ? ^^ 
 
 Let it be granted that the fourth Gospel excludes an acquaintance with the 
 
 " Fragment von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jiinger, herausgegeben von Lessing, s. 
 
 " So thinks Semler in his answer to the above Fragments, in loc. ; so think most of the 
 modems ; Plank, Geschichte des Christenthums in der Periode seiner Einfiihrung, i, K. 7. 
 Winer, bibl. Realworterbuch, i, s. 691. . . j .< i? 
 
 >* Let the reader judge for himself whether Neander s arguments be not iorced : liven 
 if the Baptist could have expected" (say rather must necessarily have known) " from the 
 circumstances of the birth of Jesus, that he was the Messiah, the divine witness in his own 
 mind would eclipse all external testimony, and compared with this divine illumination, all 
 previous knowledge would seem ignorance." p. 68. 
 
 « Luckfi, Commentar zum Evang. Johannis i, s. 362. . . ., , • v» 
 
 " Osiander, in despair, answers, that the heavenly communications themselves might 
 contain directions for— keeping the two youths apart ! s. 127. 
 
2l8 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 45- 
 
 Messiahship only of Jesus, and that the third presupposes an acquaintance 
 with his person only, on the part of John ; still the contradiction is not re- 
 moved. For in Matthew, John, when required to baptize Jesus, addresses 
 him as if he knew him, not generally and personally alone, but specially, in 
 his character of Messiah. It is true that the words : I have need to be baptized 
 of thee, and comest thou to me? (iii. 14), have been interpreted, in the true 
 spirit of harmonizing, as referring to the general superior excellence of Jesus, 
 and not to his Messiahship." But the right to undertake the baptism which 
 was to prepare the way for the Messiah's kingdom, was not to be obtained by 
 moral superiority in general, but was conferred by a special call, such as John 
 hipnself had received, and such as could belong only to a prophet, or to the 
 Messiah and his Forerunner (John i. 19 flf.). If then John attributed to Jesus 
 authority to baptize, he must have regarded him not merely as an excellent 
 man, but as indubitably a prophet, nay, since he held him worthy to baptize 
 himself, as his own superior : that is, since John conceived himself to be the 
 Messiah's Forerunner, no other than the Messiah himself. Add to this, that 
 Matthew had just cited a discourse of the Baptist, in which he ascribes to the 
 coming Messiah a baptism more powerful than his own ; how then can we 
 understand his subsequent language towards Jesus otherwise than thus : " Of 
 what use is my water baptism to thee, O Messiah ? Far more do I need thy 
 baptism of the Spirit ! " « 
 
 The contradiction cannot be cleared away ; we must therefore, if we would 
 not lay the burthen of intentional deception on the agents, let the narrators 
 bear the blame ; and there will be the less hindrance to our doing so, the 
 more obvious it is how one or both of them might be led into an erroneous 
 statement. There is in the present case no obstacle to the reconciliation of 
 Matthew with the fourth evangelist, farther than the words by which- the 
 Baptist seeks to deter Jesus from receiving baptism ; words which, if uttered 
 before the occurrence of anything supernatural, presuppose a knowledge of 
 Jesus in his character of Messiah. Now the Gospel of the Hebrews, accord- 
 ing to Epiphanius, places the entreaty of John that Jesus would baptize him, 
 as a sequel to the sign from heaven ; ^^ and this account has been recently 
 regarded as the original one, abridged by the writer of our first Gospel, who, 
 for the sake of effect, made the refusal and confession of the Baptist coin- 
 cident with the first approach of Jesus. ^^ But that we have not in the Gospel 
 of the Hebrews the original form of the narrative, is sufificiently proved by its 
 very tedious repetition of the heavenly voice and the diffuse style of the 
 whole. It is rather a very traditional record, and the insertion of John's 
 refusal after the sign and voice from heaven, was not made with the view of 
 avoiding a contradiction of the fourth Gospel, which cannot be supposed to 
 have been recognized in the circle of the Ebionite Christians, but from the 
 very motive erroneously attributed to Matthew in his alleged transposition, 
 
 " Hess, Geschichte Jesu, i, s. 117 f. Paulus, ut sup., s. 366. 
 
 •" Comp. the Fragmentist, ut sup. 
 
 ^^ Hseres. xxx. 13 : Kai (Jis 6,vtiKQsv d7r6 tov (fSaros, ijvolyiiaav ol o^pavoi^ Kai elSe t6 Trvevfia 
 ToC 8eoO t6 ^7101' iv eiSei irepurTepas k. t. X. /coi ipuvii iyiptro k.t.\. koI ei$i>s TrepiAa/t^e tAv 
 Ttnrov (pws iJt4ya- iv ISiiv, tprifflv, o'lwdwijs \iyei airip- ai ris et, Ki5pie; zeal jrdXo' ^wktj k. t. X. 
 Kol TOT€, iprialv, 'ladvvris TrapaTreniiv aCrrifi (\eye' Siofuu aov Ki^pie, mi ne ^wimaov. And 
 when he came from the water, the heavens were opened, and he saw the holy spirit of God in 
 the form of a dove, etc., and a voice was heard, etc., and immediately a great light illuminated 
 the place ; seeing which, John said to him. Who art thou. Lord ? and again a voice, etc. And 
 then, John falling at his feet, said to him, I beseech thee. Lord, baptize me. 
 
 "" Schneckenburger, iiber den Ursprung des ersten kanonischen Evangeliums, s. 121 f. ; 
 Lucke, Comm. z. Ev. Joh., I, s. 361. Usteri, Uber den Taufer Johannes u. s. w., Studien, 
 2, 3. s. 446. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 219 
 
 namely, to give greater effect to the scene. A simple refusal on the part of 
 the Baptist appeared too weak ; he must at least fall at the feet of Jesus ; and 
 a more suitable occasion could not be given than that of the sign from 
 heaven, which accordingly must be placed beforehand. This Hebrew Gospel, 
 therefore, will not help us to understand how Matthew was led into contra- 
 diction with John ; still less will it avail for the explanation of Luke's narra- 
 tive. 
 
 All is naturally explained by the consideration, that the important relation 
 between John and Jesus must have been regarded as existing at all times, by 
 reason of that ascription of pre-existence to the essential which is a character- 
 istic of the popular mind. Just as the soul, when considered as an essence, 
 is conceived more or less clearly as pre-existent ; so in the popular mind, every 
 relation pregnant with consequences is endowed with pre-existence. Hence 
 the Baptist, who eventually held so significant a relation to Jesus, must have 
 known him from the first, as is indistinctly intimated by Matthew, and more 
 minutely detailed by Luke ; according to whom, their mothers knew each 
 other, and the sons themselves were brought together while yet unborn. All 
 this is wanting in the fourth Gospel, the writer of which attributes an opposite 
 assertion to John, simply because in his mind an opposite interest prepon- 
 derated ; for the less Jesus was known to John by whom he was afterwards 
 so extolled, the more weight was thrown on the miraculous scene which 
 arrested the regards of the Baptist — the more clearly was his whole position 
 with respect to Jesus demonstrated to be the effect, not of the natural order 
 of events, but of the immediate agency of God. 
 
 §46. 
 
 WAS JESUS ACKNOWLEDGED BY JOHN AS THE MESSIAH? AND IN WHAT 
 
 SENSE ? 
 
 To the foregoing question whether Jesus was known to John before the 
 baptism, is attached another, namely, What did John think of Jesus and his 
 Messiahship ? The evangelical narratives are unanimous in stating, that 
 before Jesus had presented himself for baptism, John had announced the 
 immediate coming of One to whom he stood in a subordinate relation ; and 
 the scene at the baptism of Jesus marked him, beyond mistake, as the per- 
 sonage of whom John was the forerunner. According to Mark and Luke, we 
 must presume that the Baptist gave credence to this sign ; according to the 
 fourth Gospel, he expressly attested his belief (i. 34), and moreover uttered 
 words which evince the deepest insight into the higher nature and office of 
 Jesus (i. 29 ff. 36 ; iii. 27 fif.) ; according to the first Gospel, he was already 
 convinced of these before the baptism of Jesus. On the other hand, Matthew 
 (xi. 2 ff.) and Luke (vii. 18 ff.) tell us that at a later period, the Baptist, on 
 hearing of the ministry of Jesus, despatched some of his disciples to him with 
 the inquiry, whether he (Jesus) was the promised Messiah, or whether an- 
 other must be expected. 
 
 The first impression from this is, that the question denoted an uncertamty 
 on the part of the Baptist whether Jesus were really the Messiah ; and so it 
 was early understood.^ But such a doubt is in direct contradiction with all 
 the other circumstances reported by the Evangelists. It is justly regarded as 
 
 1 TertuII. adv. Marcion, iv. 18. Comp. Bengel, historico-exegetical remarks in Matt. xi. 
 2-19, in his Archiv. i, iii. p- 754 ff- 
 
220 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 46. 
 
 psychologically impossible that he whose belief was originated or confirmed 
 by the baptismal sign, which he held to be a divine revelation, and who after- 
 wards pronounced so decidedly on the Messianic call and the superior nature 
 of Jesus, should all at once have become unsteady in his conviction ; he must 
 then indeed have been like a reed shaken by the wind, a comparison which 
 Jesus abnegates on this very occasion (Matt. xi. 7). A cause for such vacil- 
 lation is in vain sought in the conduct or fortunes of Jesus at the time ; for 
 the rumour of fke works of Christ, tpya tov Xpia-rov, which in Luke's idea 
 were miracles, could not awaken doubt in the Baptist, and it was on this 
 rumour that he sent his message. Lastly, how could Jesus subsequently 
 (John v. 33 if.) so confidently appeal to the testimony of the Baptist concern- 
 ing him, when it was known that John himself was at last perplexed about his 
 Messiahship ? * 
 
 Hence it has been attempted to give a different turn to the facts, and to 
 show that John's inquiry was not made on his own account, but for the sake 
 of his disciples, to overcome in them the doubt with which he was himself 
 untainted.* Hereby it is true, the above-named difficulties are removed ; in 
 particular it is explained why the Baptist should contrive to send this message 
 precisely on hearing of the miracles of Jesus ; he plainly hoping that his 
 disciples, who had not believed his testimony to the Messiahship of Jesus, 
 would be convinced of its truth by beholding the marvellous works of the 
 latter. But how could John hope that his envoys would chance to iind Jesus 
 in the act of working miracles ? According to Matthew, indeed, they did not 
 so find him, and Jesus appeals (v. 4) only to his former works, many of which 
 they had seen, and of which they might hear wherever he had presented him- 
 self. Luke alone, in giving his evidently second-hand narrative,* misconstrues 
 the words of Jesus to require that the disciples of John should have found 
 him in the exercise of his supernatural power. Further, if it had been the 
 object of the Baptist to persuade his disciples by a sight of the works of 
 Jesus, he would not have charged them with a question which could be 
 answered by the mere words, the authentic declaration of Jesus. For he 
 could not hope by the assertion of the person whose Messiahship was the 
 very point in debate, to convince the disciples whom his own declaration, in 
 other cases authoritative, had failed to satisfy. On the whole, it would have 
 been a singular course in the Baptist to lend his own words to the doubts of 
 others, and thereby, as Schleierraacher well observes, to compromise his 
 early and repeated testimony in favour of Jesus. It is clear that Jesus under- 
 stood the question proposed to him by the messengers as proceeding from 
 John himself; {wirayyelXare 'Itoavvjj, Matt. xi. 4;) and he indirectly com- 
 plained of the want of faith in the latter by pronouncing those blessed who 
 were not offended in him (ver. 6).^ 
 
 If then it must be granted that John made his inquiry on his own behalf, 
 and not on that of his disciples, and if nevertheless we cannot impute to him 
 a sudden lapse into doubt after his previous confidence; nothing remains but 
 to take the positive instead of the negative side of the question, and to con- 
 sider its scepticism as the mere garb of substantial encouragement.^ On this 
 
 ' See Paulus, Kuinol, in loc. Bengel, ut sup., p. 763. 
 
 ' Calvin, Comm. in harm. ex. Matth., Marc, et Luc. in loc. 
 
 * We agree with Schleiermacher, (iiber den Lukas, s. 106 f ) in thus designating the narra- 
 tive of the third evangelist, first, on account of the idle repetition of the Baptist's words, 
 ver. 20 ; secondly, on account of the mistake in ver. 18 and 21, of which we shall presently 
 treat, and to which ver. 29, 30, seem to betray a similar one. 
 
 * Compare Calvin in loc. and Bengel ut sup., s. 753 ff. 
 
 * Thus most recent commentators : Paulus, Kuinol, Bengel, Hase, Theile, and even 
 Fritsche. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 221 
 
 interpretation, the time which Jesus allowed to escape without publicly mani- 
 festing himself as the Messiah, seemed too tedious to John in his imprison- 
 ment ; he sent therefore to inquire how long Jesus would allow himself to be 
 waited for, how long he would delay winning to himself the better part of the 
 people by a declaration of his Messiahship, and striking a decisive blow 
 against the enemies of his cause — a blow that might even liberate the Baptist 
 from his prison. But if the Baptist, on the strength of his belief that Jesus 
 was the Messiah, hoped and sued for a deliverance, perhaps miraculous, by 
 him from prison, he would not clothe in the language of doubt an entreaty 
 which sprang out of his faith. Now the inquiry in our evangelical text is'one 
 of unmixed doubt, and encouragement must be foisted in, before it can be 
 found there. How great a violence must be done to the words is seen by the 
 way in which Schleiermacher handles them in accordance with this interpre- 
 tation. The dubitative question, o-v cl 6 ipxoij.tvo'; ; he changes into the 
 positive assumption, i/iou art he who 7vas to come ; the other still more em- 
 barrassing interrogatory, tj erepov irpo(TSoKS>fi,£v ; he completely transfigures 
 thus : wherefore (seeing that thou performest so great works) do we yet await 
 thee ? — shall not John with all his authority command, through us, all those who 
 have partaken of his baptism to obey thee as the Messiah, and be attentive to thy 
 signs ? Even if we allow, with Neander, the possibiUty of truth to this inter- 
 pretation, a mere summons to action will not accord with the earlier repre- 
 sentation of Jesus given by the Baptist. The two enunciations are at issue 
 as to form ; for if John doubted not the Messiahship of Jesus, neither could 
 he doubt his better knowledge of the.fitting time and manner of his appear- 
 ance : still farther are they at issue as to matter ; for the Baptist could not 
 take offence at what is termed the delay of Jesus in manifesting himself as 
 the Messiah, or wish to animate him to bolder conduct, if he retained his 
 early view of the destination of Jesus. If he still, as formerly, conceived Jesus 
 to be the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, 6 dp.v6i tov ®£ov, 
 6 alpiov rrjv a/mpriav tov Koa-p-ov, no thought could occur to him of a blow to 
 be struck by Jesus against his enemies, or in general, of a violent procedure to 
 be crowned by external conquest ; rather, the quiet path which Jesus trod 
 must appear to him the right one— the path befitting the destination of the 
 Lamb of God. Thus if the question of John conveyed a mere summons to 
 action, it contradicted his previous views. 
 
 These expedients failing, the original explanation returns upon us ; namely, 
 that the inquiry was an expression of uncertainty respecting the messianic 
 dignity of Jesus, which had arisen in the Baptist's own mind ; an explanation 
 which even Neander allows to be the most natural. This writer seeks to account 
 for the transient apostacy of the Baptist from the strong faith in which he gave 
 his earlier testimony, by the supposition that a dark hour of doubt had over- 
 taken the man of God in his dismal prison ; and he cites instances of men 
 who, persecuted for their Christian faith or other convictions, after having 
 long borne witness to the truth in the face of death, at length yielded to 
 human weakness and recanted. But on a closer examination, he has given a 
 false analogy. Persecuted Christians of the first centuries, and, later, a 
 Berengarius or a Galileo, were false to the convictions for which they were 
 imprisoned, and by abjuring which they hoped to save themselves : the 
 Baptist, to be compared with them, should have retracted his censure of 
 Herod and not have shaken his testimony in favour of Christ, which had no 
 relation to his imprisonment. However that may be, it is evident here that 
 these doubts cannot have been preceded by a state of certainty. 
 
 We come again to the difficulty arising from the statement of Matthew that 
 John sent his two disciples on hearing of the 7vorks. of Christ,, d<covo-as m 
 
222 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 46. 
 
 £joya rov Xpia-rov, or as Luke has it, because his disciples showed hhn of all 
 these things, aTrfiyy^iKav Trepl iravTuiv rovrtav. The latter evangelist has 
 narrated, immediately before, the raising of the widow's son, and the healing 
 of the centurion's servant. Could John,, then, believe Jesus to be the Messiah 
 before he had performed any messianic works, and be seized with doubt when 
 he began to legitimatize his claim by miracles such as were expected from the 
 Messiah '' ? This is so opposed to all pyschological probability, that I wonder 
 Dr. Paulus, or some other expositor versed in pyschology and not timid in 
 verbal criticism, has not started the conjecture that a negative has slipped out 
 of Matt. xi. 2, and that its proper reading is, 6 8c 'liodvvrjs ovk aKovcras iv tw 
 Sea-fjLWTTjpiio TO. cpya rov XpioroS, k. t. X. It might then be conceived, that 
 John had indeed been convinced, at a former period, of the Messiahship of 
 Jesus ; now, however, in his imprisonment, the works of Jesus came no 
 longer to his ears, and imagining him inactive, he was assailed with doubt. 
 But had John been previously satisfied of the Messiahship of Jesus, the 
 mere want of acquaintance with his miracles could not have unhinged his 
 faith. The actual cause of John's doubt, however, was the report of these 
 miracles ; — a state of the case which is irreconcilable with any previous con- 
 fidence. 
 
 But how could he become uncertain about the Messiahship of Jesus, if he 
 had never recognised it.? Not indeed in the sense of beginning to suspect- 
 that Jesus was not the Messiah ; but quite possibly in the sense of beginning 
 to conjecture that a man of such deeds was the Messiah. 
 
 We have here, not a decaying, but a growing certainty, and this discrimina- 
 tion throws light on the whole purport of the passages in question. John 
 knew nothing of Jesus before, but that he had, like many others, partaken 
 of his baptism, and perhaps frequented the circle of his disciples ; and not 
 until after the imprisonment of the Baptist did Jesus appear as a teacher, and 
 worker of miracles. Of this John heard, and then arose in his mind a con- 
 jecture, fraught with hope, that as he had announced the proximity of the 
 Messiah's kingdom, this Jesus might be he who would verify his idea.* So 
 interpreted) this message of the Baptist excludes his previous testimony ; if 
 he had so spoken formerly, he could not have so inquired latterly, and vice versA. 
 It is our task, therefore, to compare the two contradictory statements, that 
 we may ascertain which has more traces than the other, of truth or un- 
 truth. 
 
 The most definite expressions of John's conviction that Jesus was the 
 Messiah are found in the fourth Gospel, and these suggest two distinct ques- 
 tions : first, whether it be conceivable that John had such a notion of the 
 Messiah as is therein contained ; and, secondly, whether it be probable that 
 he believed it realized in the person of Jesus. 
 
 With respect to the former, the fourth Gospel makes the Baptist's idea of 
 the Messiah include the characteristics of expiatory suffering, and of a pre- 
 mundane, heavenly existence. It has been attempted, indeed, so to interpret 
 the expressions with which he directs his disciples to Jesus, as to efface the 
 notion of expiatory suffering. Jesus, we are told, is compared to a lamb on 
 account of his meekness and patience ; aXpav rrjv d/jLapTiav tov koo-jj-ov, is to 
 
 ' This difficulty occurred to Bengel also, ut sup., p. 769. 
 
 8 The gospel writers, after what they had narrated of the relations between Jesus and the 
 Baptist, of course understood the question to express doubt, whence probably v. 6 (Matt.) 
 and V. 23 (Luke) came in this connection. Supposing these passi^;es authentic, they suggest 
 another conjecture ; viz. that Jesus spoke in the foregoing verses of spiritual miracles, and 
 that the Baptist was perplexed by the absence of. corporeal ones. The AKoiaas fh, (pya t. 
 X. must then be set down to the writer's misapprehension of the expressions of Jesus. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 223 
 
 be understood either of a patient endurance of the world's malice, or of an 
 endeavour to remove the sins of the world by reforming it; and the sense 
 of the Baptist's words is this : " How moving is it that this meek and gentle 
 Jesus should have undertaken so difficult and painful an office ^ ! " But the 
 best critics have shown that even if atpeiv by itself might bear this interpreta- 
 tion, still a/iv6s, not merely with the article but with the addition rov ®€ov, 
 must signify, not a lamb in general, but a special, holy Lamb ; and if, as is 
 most probable, this designation has reference to Isa. liii. 7., atpeivT^v a/iapriav 
 can only be expounded by what is there predicated of the lamb-like servant of 
 God, that he ras afiaprCa^ yjiiSiv tjitpei, koi irepl rjp,a>v oSwarat (V. 4, LXX.), 
 words which must signify vicarious suffering, i" Now that the Baptist should 
 have referred the above prophetic passage to the Messiah, and hence 
 have thought of him as suffering, has been recently held more than doubt- 
 ful." 
 
 For so foreign to the current opinion, at least, was this notion of the 
 Messiah, that the disciples of Jesus, during the whole period of their inter- 
 course with him, could not reconcile themselves to it ; and when his death 
 had actually resulted, their trust in him as the Messiah was utterly confounded 
 (Luke xxiv. 20 ff.). How, then, could the Baptist, who, according to the 
 solemn declaration of Jesus, Matt xi. 11, confirmed by the allusions in the 
 Gospels to his strict ascetic life, ranked below the least in the kingdom of 
 heaven, to which the apostles already belonged — how could this alien discern, 
 long before the sufferings of Jesus, that they pertained to the character of the 
 Messiah, when the denizens were only taught the same lesson by the issue ? Or, 
 if the Baptist really had such insight, and communicated it to his disciples, why 
 did it not, by means of those who left his circle for that of Jesus, win an entrance 
 into the latter — nay, why did it not, by means of the great credit which John 
 enjoyed, mitigate the offence caused by the death of Jesus, in the public at 
 large 12? Add to this, that in none of our accounts of the Baptist, with 
 the exception of the fourth Gospel, do we find that he entertained such 
 views of the Messiah's character ; for, not to mention Josephus, the Synop- 
 tical Gospels confine his representation of the Messianic office to the spiritual 
 baptism and winnowing of the people. Still it remains possible that a pene- 
 trating mind, like that of the Baptist, might, even before the death of Jesus, 
 gather from Old Testament phrases and types the notion of a suffering 
 Messiah, and that his obscure hints on the subject might not be comprehended 
 by his disciples arid cotemporaries. 
 
 Thus the above considerations are not decisive, and we therefore turn to 
 the expressions concerning the premundane existence and heavenly origin of 
 the Messiah, with the question : Could the Baptist have really held such 
 tenets? That from the words, John i. 15, 27, 30 : ZT* that cometh after me 
 is preferred before me ; for he was before me, 6m<rw p.ov ipxop.evo's ip,irpocr6kv 
 p,ov yeyovev, on irpioTos /lov rjv, nothing but dogmatical obstinacy can banish 
 the notion of pre-existence, is seen by a mere glance at such expositions as 
 this of Paulus : "He who in the course of time comes after me; has so 
 appeared in my eyes, efHTrpoa-Oiv fiov, that he (on — wa-re, premiss — conclu- 
 sion !) deserves rather from his rank and character to be called the first." 1* 
 With preponderating arguments more unprejudiced commentators have 
 
 ' Gabler and Paulus. «■ t ■■ 1 ^ 
 
 " De Wette, de morte Christi expiatoria, in his Opusc. theol., s. 77 ff. L-ucke, Uomm. 
 zum Ev. joh. I, s. 347 ff. Winer, bibl. Realwbrterb. I, s. 693, Anm. 
 " Gabler and Paulus. De Wette. 
 ." De Wette, ut sup, p. 76. 
 " Paulus, Leben Jesu, 2 a, die Ubers., s, 29. 31. 
 
224 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 46. 
 
 maintained, that the reason here given why Jesus, who appeared after the 
 Baptist in point of time, had the precedence of him in dignity,, is the pre- 
 existence of the former. 1* We have here obviously the favourite dogma of 
 the fourth Evangelist, the eternal pre-existence of the Xdyos, present indeed to 
 the mind of that writer, who had just been inditing his proem, but that 
 it was also present to the mind of the Baptist is another question. The 
 most recent expositor allows that the sense in which the Evangelist. intends 
 wploTog /ioB, must have been very remote from the Baptist's point of view, at 
 least so far as the A.d'yos is concerned. The Baptist,, he thinks, held the 
 popular Jewish notion of the pre-existence of the Messiah, as the subject of 
 the Old Testament theophanies.^* There are traces of this Jewish notion in 
 the writings of Paul (e.g. i Cor. x. 4. Col. i. 15 f.) and the rabbins ^^ ; and 
 allowing that it was of Alexandrian origin, as Bretschneider argues," we 
 may yet ask whether even before the time of Christ, the Alexandrian-judaic 
 theology may not have modified the opinions of the mother country ?'* Even 
 these expressions then, taken alone, are not conclusive, although it begins to 
 appear suspicious that the Baptist, otherwise conspicuous for exhibiting the 
 practical side of the idea of the Messiah's kingdom, should have ascribed to 
 him by the fourth Evangelist solely, two notions which at that time undoubt- 
 edly belonged only to the deepest messianic speculations ; and that the form 
 in which those notions are expressed is too peculiarly that of the writer,, not 
 to be put to his account. 
 
 We arrive at a more decisive result by taking into examination the passage 
 John iii. 27-36, where John replies to the complaints of his disciples at the 
 rival baptism of Jesus, in a way that reduces all commentators to perplexity. 
 After showing how it lay at the foundation of their respective destinies, "which 
 he desired not to overstep, that, he must decrease, while Jesus must increase, 
 he proceeds (ver. 31) to use forms of expression precisely similar to those 
 in which the Evangelist makes Jesus speak of hipiself, and in which he 
 delivers his own thoughts concerning Jesus. Our most recent commentator 1* 
 allows that this discourse of John seems the echo of the foregoing, con*, 
 versation between Jesus and Nicodemus.^" The expressions in the speech 
 lent to the Baptist are peculiarly those of the apostle John ; for instance, 
 (T<jipayi^(i>, {to seal), fiaprvpCa {iestmiony), the antithesis of ivmOev and ew t^s y^s 
 {from above and of the earth), the phrase cxeti/ t/mrfv aiAvuiv {to have eternal 
 life) ; and the question presents itself : Is it more probable that the Evange- 
 list, as well as Jesus, in whose moiith these expressions are so often, put, 
 borrowed them from the Baptist, or that the Evangelist lent them (I will only 
 at present say) to the latter ? This must be decided by the fact that the 
 
 " Tholuck and Lucke, in loc. 
 
 ''■ Liicke, ut sup. 
 
 '° See Bertholdt, Christologia Judasorum Jesu apostolorumque aetata, § 23^25. 
 
 " Probabilia, p. 41. 
 
 '^ See Gfrorer, Philo und die Alexandr. Theosophie, partii. p. 180. 
 
 '" Liicke, ut sup. , p. 500. 
 
 ^^ Compare especially : 
 Joh. iii. II (Jesus to Nicodemus) : d/tVi Joh. iii. 32 (the Baptist): /toi i 4tipaKt xal 
 d/iujx, \4ya <rot, Sm 6 otSafiev, \a\oSiiei', iJKovae, tovto naprvpe!' Kal rij/i iiapTupiav 
 Kal 8 eiafidKa/iev, /laprvpoSftev Kal T'iiv nap- airrov oiSeWSa/tpd.vei. 
 TVpiav riiiuiv ov 'Ka/M^dveTe. 
 
 V. 18 : o Turreiav els airbv oi Kplverai. V. 36 : 6 iriareiuv elr tAv vlbv ?X" iJ""^" 
 
 6 Si M TTUXTeiav, fiiti KiKpvrai. " Srt iiAp aliivmv U iiretBuv ti} vl%,om i\j/eTiu fci»^, " 
 TrewlffTevKev cis ri ira/ia Tov /iovoyenoSs vloD dW t) dpyii rov GeoB p^fei iir' avrdn 
 rod 9eo(J. 
 
 Comp. also the words of the Baptist v. 31, with Joh. iii. 6., 12 f. viii. 23 ; v. 32 with 
 viii. 26 ; V. 33 with vi. 27 ; v. 34 with xij. 49, 50. ; v. 35 with v. 22, 27, ». 28 f. xviU 2. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 22S 
 
 ideas, to which the Baptist here gives utterance, lie entirely within the domain 
 of Christianity, and belong specially to the Christianity of the Apostle John. 
 Take for example that antithesis of avm {from, above), and ck t^s y^s {of the 
 earth), the designation of Jesus as avm^ev epxo/ievos (he that comethfrom above), 
 as ov direoT€iX€v 6 ©cos (he whom God hath sent), who consequently to. p^qp^ra 
 ToS ®€ov AoXei (speaketh the words of God), the relation of Jesus to God as 
 the vios (son), whom 6 war^p ayoirS (the Father loveth) : — what can be char- 
 acteristic of Christianity, and of the Apostle John's mode of presenting it, if 
 these ideas are not so ? and could they belong to the Baptist ? Christianis- 
 mus ante Christum I And then, as Olshausen well observes,^^ is it consistent 
 for John, who, even on the fourth Evangelist's own showing, remained sepa- 
 rate from Jesus, to speak of the blessedness of a believing union with him ? 
 (v. 33 and 36). 
 
 Thus much then is certain, and has been acknowledged by the majority of 
 modern commentators : the words v. 31-36 cannot have been spoken by 
 the Baptist. Hence theologians have concluded, that the Evangelist cannot 
 have intended to ascribe them to him, but from v. 31 speaks in his own 
 person.*^ This sounds plausible, if they can only point out any mark of divi- 
 sion between the discourse of the Baptist and the addenda of the Evangelist. 
 But none such is to be found. It is true that the speaker from v. 31 uses the 
 third person, and not the first as in v. 30, when referring to the Baptist : but 
 in the former passage the Baptist is no longer alluded to directly and indivi- 
 dually, but as one of a class, in which case he must, though himself the 
 speaker, choose the third person. Thus there is no definitive boundary, and 
 the speech glides imperceptibly from those passages which might have been 
 uttered by the Baptist, into those which are altogether incongruous with his 
 position ; moreover from v. 30 Jesus is spoken of in the present tense, as the 
 Evangelist might represent the Baptist to speak during the lifetime of Jesus, 
 but could not in his own person have written after the death of Jesus. In 
 other passages, when presenting his own reflections concerning Jesus, he 
 uses the preterite. ^^ Thus, grammatically, the Baptist continues to speak 
 fromv. 31, and yet, historically, it is impossible that he should have uttered 
 the sequel ; a contradiction not to be solved, if it be added that, dog- 
 matically, the Evangelist cannot have ascribed to the Baptist words which he 
 never really pronounced. Now if we do not choose to defy the clear rules 
 of grammar, and the sure data of history, for the sake of the visionary dogma 
 of inspiration, we shall rather conclude from the given premises, with the 
 author of the Probabilia, that the Evangelist falsely ascribes the language in 
 question to the Baptist, putting into his mouth a Christology of his own, of 
 which the latter could know nothing. This is no more than Liicke ^^ con- 
 fesses, though not quite so frankly, when he says that the reflections of the 
 Evangelist are here more than equally mixed with the discourse of the Baptist, 
 in such a way as to be undistinguishable. In point of fact, however, the 
 reflections of the Evangelist are easily to be recognized ; but of the funda- 
 mental ideas of the Baptist there is no trace, unless they are sought for with 
 a good will which amounts to prejudice, and to which therefore we make no 
 pretension. If then we have a proof in the passages just considered, that 
 the fourth Evangelist did not hesitate to lend to the Baptist messianic and 
 other ideas which were never his ; we may hence conclude retrospectively 
 
 21 Bibl. Comm. 2, p. 105. 
 
 ** Paulus, Olshausen, in loc. i_ ^ • »u t. 1 ' 
 
 '= E.g. here, v. 32, it is said : tV fiaprvpiav airod oiMi Xa/i^dfei, but in the frolog. v. 
 II : Kaloi tSioiairbp ov vapiKa^ov. Comp. Liicke, s. 501. 
 2* Ut sup. 
 
226 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 46. 
 
 concerning the passages on which we formerly suspended our decision, that 
 the ideas expressed in them of a suffering and pre-existent Messiah belonged,- 
 not to the Baptist, but to the Evangelist. 
 
 In giving the above reply to our first question, we have, in strictness, 
 answered the remaining one ; for if the Baptist had no such messianic ideas, 
 he could not refer them to the person of Jesus. But to strengthen the evi- 
 dence for the result already obtained, we will make the second question the 
 object of a special examination. According to the fourth Evangelist the 
 Baptist ascribed to Jesus all the messianic attributes above discussed. If he 
 did this so enthusiastically, publicly, and repeatedly, as we read in John, he 
 could not have been excluded by Jesus from the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 
 xi. 11), nor have been placed below the least of its citizens. For such a con- 
 fession as that of the Baptist, when he calls Jesus the dios toij 0eoS, who was 
 before him, — such refined insight into the messianic economy, as is shown by 
 his designatihg Jesus d a/ivos tov ©eoB, 6 alpiov tijv d/tapTtW toD k6(jixov, Peter 
 himself had not to produce, though Jesus not only receives him into the 
 kingdom of heaven for his confession. Matt. xvi. 16, but constitutes him the 
 rock on which that kingdom was to be founded. But we have something yet 
 more incomprehensible. John, in the fourth gospel, gives it as the object of 
 his baptism, Iva ^avepwBrj (Jesus as Messiah) t<3 'lo-pa^X (i. 31), and acknow- 
 ledges it to be the divine ordinance, that by the side of the increasing Jesus, 
 he must decrease (iii. 30) ; nevertheless after Jesus had begun to baptize by 
 the instrumentality of his disciples, John continues to practise his baptism 
 (iii. 32). Why so, if he knew the object of his baptism to be fulfilled by the 
 introduction of Jesus, and if he directed his followers to him as the Messiah ? 
 (i. 36 f.).*^^ The continuance of his baptism would be to no purpose; for 
 Liicke's supposition that John's baptism was still of effect in those places where 
 Jesus had not appeared, he himself overthrows by the observation, that at least 
 at the period treated of in John iii. 22 ff., Jesus and John must have been 
 baptizing near to each other, since the disciples of John were jealous of the 
 concourse to the baptism of Jesus. But the continuance of John's baptism 
 appears even to counteract his aim, if that aim were merely to point out Jesus 
 as the Messiah. He thereby detained a circle of individuals on the borders 
 of the Messiah's kingdom, and retarded or hindered their going over to Jesus 
 (and that through his own fault, not'theirs alone,^'' for he nullified his verbal 
 direction to Jesus by his contradictory example). Accordingly we find the 
 party of John's disciples still existing in the time of the Apostle Paul (Acts 
 xviii. 24 f., xix. i ff.) ; and, if the Sabseans are to be credited concerning their 
 own history, the sect remains to this day. ^7 Certainly, presupposing the 
 averred conviction of the Baptist relative to Jesus, it would seem most natural 
 for him to have attached hinjself to the latter; this, however, did not happen, 
 and hence we conclude that he cannot have had that conviction. ^^ 
 
 55 De Wette, de morte Christi expiatoria, in s. Opusc. theol. p. 81 ; biblische Dogmatik, 
 § Z09; Winer, bibl. Realwbrterbuch i, s. 692. 
 
 ^^ Neander, p. 75. This author erroneously supposes that there is an indication of the 
 Baptist having directed his disciples to Jesus in Acts xviii. 25, where it is said of ApoUos : 
 tSiSaaKev AKpi^Ss t& repl toD Kvplou, iTurT&fieiios t6 jSAtttw/m 'Iwdvvov. For on comparing 
 the following chapter, we find that Paul had to teach the disciples of John, that by the 
 ipxi/ievos announced by their master, they were to understand Jesus ; whence it is clear that 
 the things of the Lord expounded by ApoUos, consisted only in the messianic doctrine, 
 purified by John into an expectation' of one who was to come, and that the more accurate 
 instruction which he received from the Christians, Aquila and PrisciUa, was the doctrine of 
 its fulfilment in the person of Jesus. 
 
 ^' Gesenius, Probeheft der Ersch und Gruber'schen Encyclopadie, d. A. Zabier. 
 
 28 Bretschneider, Probab., s. 46 f. ; comp. Liicke, s. 493 f. ; De Wette, Opusc. a. a. O. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 22/ 
 
 But chiefly the character and entire demeanour of the Baptist render it 
 impossible to believe that he placed himself on that footing with Jesus, de- 
 scribed by the fourth evangelist. How could the man of the wilderness, the 
 stern ascetic, who fed on locusts and wild honey, and prescribed severe fasts 
 to his disciples, the gloomy, threatening preacher of repentance, animated 
 with the spirit of Elias — how could he form a friendship with. Jesus, in every 
 thing his opposite? He must assuredly, with his disciples, have stumbled at 
 the liberal manners of Jesus, and have been hindered by them from recogniz- 
 ing him as the Messiah. Nothing is more unbending than ascetic prejudice ; 
 he who, like the Baptist, esteems it piety to fast and mortify the body, will 
 never assign a high grade in things divine to him who disregards such ascetic- 
 ism. A mind with narrow views can never comprehend one whose vision 
 takes a wider range, although the latter may know how to do justice to its 
 inferior ; hence Jesus could value and sanction John in his proper place, but 
 the Baptist could never give the precedence to Jesus, as he is reported to have 
 done in the fourth gospel. The declaration of the Baptist (John iii. 30), 
 that he must decrease, but Jesus must increase, is frequently praised as an 
 example of the noblest and subliraest resignation.^' The beauty of this repre- 
 sentation we grant ; but not its truth. The instance would be a solitary one, 
 if a man whose life had its influence on the world's history, had so readily 
 yielded the ascendant, in his own aera, to one who came to eclipse him and 
 render him superfluous. Such a step is not less difficult for individuals than 
 for nations, and that not from any vice, as egotism or ambition, so that an 
 exception might be presumed (though not without prejudice) in the case of a 
 man like the Baptist ; it is a consequence of that blameless limitation which, 
 as we have already remarked, is proper to a low point of view in relation to 
 a higher, and which is all the more obstinately maintained if the inferior indi- 
 vidual is, like John, of a coarse, rugged nature. Only from the divine point 
 of view, or from that of an historian, bent on establishing religious doctrines, 
 could such things be spoken, and the fourth Evangelist has in fact put into 
 the mouth of the Baptist the very same thoughts concerning the relation be- 
 tween him and Jesus, that the compiler of the 2nd book of Samuel has com- 
 municated, as his own observation, on the corresponding relation between 
 Saul and David. ^^ Competent judges have recently acknowledged that there 
 exists a discrepancy between the synoptical gospels and the fourth, the blame 
 of which must be imputed to the latter : ^^ and this opinion is confirmed and 
 strengthened by the fact that the fourth Evangelist transforms the Baptist into 
 a totally different character from that in which he appears in the Synoptical 
 gospels and in Josephus ; out of a practical preacher-he makes a speculative 
 christologist ; out of a hard and unbending, a yielding and self-renunciating 
 nature. 
 
 The style in which the scenes between John and Jesus (John i. 29 ff. 35 ff.) 
 are depicted, shows them to have originated partly in the free coniposition ot 
 the imagination, partly in a remodelling of the synoptical narratives with a 
 view to the glorification of Jesus. With respect to the former : Jesus is walk- 
 ing, V. 35, near to John ; in v. 29 he is said to come directly to him; yet on 
 neither occasion is there any account of an interview between the two. Could 
 Jesus really have avoided contact with the Baptist, that there might be no 
 
 ^^ Greiling, Leben Jesu von Nazaret, s. 132 f. _.. 
 
 so z Sam. iii. I. ,. , .J°'^" i"-.3°- 
 
 P.tni ^!?n IITI eKeirov Sei au^dveir. 
 
 : D'^ni DDyn "pWE^ n*3-1 «/** ^^ eKarTowdau 
 
 " Schulz, die Lehre vom Abendmahl, s. 145. Winer, Realworterbuch, i, :.. 693. 
 
228 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 46. 
 
 appearance of preconcerted action ? This is Lampe's conjecture ; but it is 
 the product of modern reflections, foreign to the time and circumstances of 
 Jesus. Or shall we suppose that the narrator, whether fortuitously or pur- 
 posely, omitted known details ? But the meetings of Jesus and John must 
 have furnished him with peculiarly interesting matter, so that, as Liicke 
 allows,*** his silence is enigmatical. From our point of view the enigma is 
 solved. The Baptist had, in the Evangelist's idea, pointed to Jesus as the 
 Messiah. This, understood as a visible pointing, required that Jesus should 
 pass by or approach John ; hence this feature was inserted in the narrative ; 
 but the particulars of an actual meeting being unnecessary, were, though very 
 awkwardly, omitted. The incident of some disciples attaching themselves to 
 Jesus in consequence of the Baptist's direction, seems to be a free version of 
 the sending of two disciples by John from his prison. Thus, as in Matthew 
 xi. 2, and Luke vii. 18, John despatches two disciples to Jesus with the dubi- 
 tative question. " Art thou he that should come ? " so in the fourth gospel he 
 likewise sends two disciples to Jesus, but with the positive assertion that he 
 (Jesus) is the Lamb of God, o/avos ®eoS ; as Jesus in the former case gives to 
 the disciples, after the delivery of their message, the direction : " Go and tell 
 John the things ye have seen and heard" a. eiSere kox iiKova-aTe : so in the latter, 
 he gives to the inquiry concerning his abode, the answer : Come and see, 
 epxea-Oi (cat iSere. But while in the synoptical gospels the two disciples return 
 to John, in the fourth, they permanently attach themselves to Jesus. 
 
 From the foregoing considerations, it is inconceivable that John should ever 
 have held and pronounced Jesus to be the Messiah : but it is easy to show 
 how a belief that he did so might obtain, without historical foundation. 
 According to Acts xix. 4, the Apostle Paul declares what seems sufficiently 
 guaranteed by history, that John baptized eis tov ipxofievov, and this coming 
 Messiah, adds Paul, to whom John pointed was Jesus (TovriaTiv eh Xpurrov 
 'Iijo-ow). This was an interpretation of the Baptist's words by the issue ; for 
 Jesus , had approved himself to a great number of his cotemporaries, as the 
 Messiah announced by John. There was but a step to the notion that the 
 Baptist himself had, under the ipxoiievK, understood the individual Jesus, — 
 had himself the toutottiv, k.t.A.. in his mind ; a view which, however unhis- 
 torical, would be inviting to the early Christians, in proportion to their wish 
 to sustain the dignity of Jesus by the authority of the Baptist, then very influ- 
 ential in the Jewish world. ^* There was yet another reason, gathered from 
 the Old Testament. The ancestor of the Messiah, David, had likewise in the 
 old Hebrew legend a kind of forerunner in the person of Samuel, who by 
 order from Jehovah anointed him to be king over Israel (i Sam. xvi.), and 
 afterwards stood in the relation of a witness to his claims. If then it behoved 
 the Messiah to have a forerunner, who, besides, was more closely characterized, 
 in the prophecy of Malachi as a second Elias, and if, historically, Jesus was 
 
 22 Commentar, s. 380. 
 
 *" The passage above quoted from the Acts gives us also some explanation, why the fourth 
 Evangelist of all others should be solicitous to place the Baptist in a more favourable relation 
 to Jesus, than history allows us to conceive. According to v. i ff. there were persons in 
 Ephesus who knew only of John's baptism, and were therefore rebaptized by the Apostle 
 Paul in the name of Jesus. Now an old tradition represents the fourth gospel to have been 
 written in Ephesus (Irseneus adv. hser. iii. i). If we accept this (and it is certainly correct 
 1 in assigning a Greek locality for the composition of this Gospel), and presuppose, in accor- 
 dance with the intimation in the Acts, that Ephesus was the seat of a number of the Baptist's 
 followers, all of whom Paul could hardly have converted ; the endeavour to draw them over 
 to Jesus would explain the remarkable stress laid by the fourth Evangelist on the /iaprvpla 
 'loiivvov. Storr has very judiciously remarked and discussed this, iiber den Zweck der 
 Evangelischen Geschichte und der Briefe Johannis, s. 5 ff. 24 f. Compare Hug, Einleitung 
 in das N. T., s. 190 3" Ausg. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 229 
 
 preceded by John, whose baptism as a consecration corresponded to an 
 anointing ; the idea was not remote of conforming the relation between John 
 and Jesus to that between Samuel and David. 
 
 We might have decided with tolerable certainty which of the two incom- 
 patible statements concerning the relation between the Baptist and Jesus is 
 to be renounced as unhistorical, by the universal canon of interpretation, that 
 where, in narratives having a tendency to aggrandise a person or a fact (a 
 tendency which the Gospels evince at every step), two contradictory state- 
 ments are found, that which best corresponds to this aim is the least historical ; 
 because if, in accordance with it, the original fact had been so dazzling, it is 
 inconceivable that the other less brilliant representation should afterwards 
 arise; as here, if John so early acknowledged. Jesus, it is inexplicable how a 
 story could be fabricated, which reports him to have been in doubt on the 
 same subject at a very late period. We have, however, by a separate examina- 
 tion of the narrative in the fourth gospel, ascertained that it is self-contradictory 
 and contains its own solution ; hence our result, found independently of the 
 above canon, serves for its confirmation. 
 
 Meanwhile that result is only the negative, that all which turns upon the 
 early acknowledgment of Jesus by John has no claim to be received as his- 
 torical ; of the positive we know nothing, unless the message out of prison 
 may be regarded as a clue to the truth, and we must therefore subject this 
 side of the matter to a separate examination. We will not extend our argu- 
 ments against the probability of an early and decided conviction on the part 
 of the Baptist, to a mere conjecture awakened in him at a later period that 
 Jesus was the Messiah ; and therefore we leave uncontested the proper con- 
 tents of the narrative. But as regards the form, it is not to be conceived 
 without difficulty. That the Baptist in prison, iv t<3 S€a-//.taTripLw, should have 
 information of the proceedings of Jesus ; that he should from that locality 
 send his disciples to Jesus ; and that these as we are led to infer, should bring 
 him an answer in his imprisonment 
 
 According to Josephus,^* Herod imprisoned John from fear of disturbances : 
 allowing this to be merely a joint cause with that given by the Evangelist, it is 
 yet difficult to believe that to a man, one motive of whose imprisonment was 
 to seclude him from his followers, his disciples should have retained free 
 access ; although we cannot prove it an impossibility that circumstances might 
 favour the admission of certain individuals. Now that the message was sent 
 from prison we learn from Matthew alone ; Luke says nothing of it, although 
 he tells of the message. We might hence, with Schleiermacher,^' consider 
 Luke's account the true one, and the Sea-fJuaTrjpLw of Matthew an unhistorical 
 addition. But that critic has himself very convincingly shown, from the 
 tedious amplifications, partly betraying even misunderstanding, which the 
 narrative of Luke contains (vii. 20, 21, 29, 30), that Matthew gives the inci- 
 dent in its original, Luke in a revised form.'^ It would indeed be singular if 
 Matthew had supplied the Stcrfiayrripua when it was originally wanting ; it is far 
 more natural to suppose that Luke, who in the whole paragraph appears as a 
 reviser, expunged the original mention of the prison. 
 
 In judging of Luke's motives for so doing, we are led to notice the differ- 
 ence in the dates given by the evangelists for the imprisonment of John. 
 Matthew, with whom Mark agrees, places it before the public appearance of 
 Jesus in Galilee ; for he gives it as the motive for the return of Jesus mto that 
 province (Matt. iv. 12; Mark i. 14). Luke assigns no precise date to the 
 
 ^* Antiq. xviii. v. 2. 
 
 3* Ueber den Lukas, s. 109. . 
 
 3' Ibid. p. 106. 
 
230 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 47. 
 
 arrest of the Baptist (iii. 19 f.), yet it is to be inferred from his silence about 
 the prison, in connexion witk the sending of the two disciples, that he re- 
 garded it as a later occurrence ; but John expressly says, that after the first 
 passover attended by Jesus in his public character, yb^« was not yet cast into 
 prison (iii. 24). If it be asked, who is right? we answer that there is some- 
 thing on the face of the account of the first Evangelist, which has inclined 
 many commentators to renounce it in favour of the two last. That Jesus, on 
 the report of John's imprisonment in Galilee by Herod Antipas, should have 
 returned into the dominions of that prince for the sake of safety, is, as 
 Schneckenburger well maintains,^'' highly improbable, since there, of all 
 places, he was the least secure from a similar fate. But even if it be held 
 impossible to dissociate the avexoJpryo-ev {he withdrew) from the cognate idea 
 of seeking security, we may still ask whether, disregarding the mistake in the 
 motive, the fact itself may not be maintained. Matthew and Mark connect 
 with this journey into Galilee after John's imprisonment, the commencement 
 of the pubUc ministry of Jesus ; and that this was consequent on the removal 
 of the Baptist, I am quite inclined to believe. For it is in itself the most 
 natural that the exit of the Baptist should incite Jesus to carry on in his stead 
 the preaching of fitTavoieiri' ^yyt/ce yap ^ jSatriXeia ruiv ovpav&v ; and the canon 
 cited above is entirely in favour of Matthew. For if it be asked which fiction 
 best accords with the aggrandising spirit of the Christian legend, — that of 
 John's removal before the appearance of Jesus, or that of their having long 
 laboured in conjunction ? — the answer must be, the latter. If he to whom 
 the hero of a narrative is superior disappears from the scene before the en- 
 trance of the latter, the crowning opportunity for the hero to demonstrate his 
 ascendancy is lost — the full splendour of the rising sun can only be appreciated, 
 when the waning moon is seen above the horizon, growing paler and paler in 
 the presence of the greater luminary. Such is the case in the Gospels of Luke 
 and John, while Matthew and Mark rest satisfied with the less effective repre- 
 sentation. Hence, as the least calculated to magnify Jesus, the account of 
 Matthew has the advantage in historical probability. 
 
 Thus at the time when the two disciples must have been sent to Jesus, 
 the Baptist was already imprisoned, and we have remarked above, that he 
 could hardly, so situated, transmit and receive messages. But popular legend 
 might be prompted to fabricate such a message, that the Baptist might not 
 depart without at least an incipient recognition of Jesus as the Messiah ; so 
 that neither the one nor the other of the two incompatible statements is to be 
 regarded as historical. 
 
 §47- 
 
 OPINION OF THE EVANGELISTS AND JESUS CONCERNING THE BAPTIST, WITH 
 HIS OWN JUDGMENT QN HIMSELF. RESULT OF THE INQUIRY INTO THE 
 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THESE TWO INDIVIDUALS. 
 
 The Evangelists apply to John, as the preparer of the Messiah's kingdom, 
 several passages of the Old Testament. 
 
 The abode of the preacher of repentance in the wilderness, his activity in 
 preparing the way for the Messiah, necessarily recalled the passage of Isaiah 
 (xl. 3ff. LXX.) : ^•ui'^ PoSivToi tv ep^/uo- eToi/tao-are rrjv oSbv Kvpuo k. t. A.. 
 This passage, which in its original connection related not to the Messiah and 
 his forerunner, but to Jehovah, for whom a way was to be prepared through 
 
 87 Ueber den Ursprung u. s. w. s. 79. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 23 1 
 
 the wilderness toward Judea, that he might return with his people from exile, 
 is quoted by the first three Evangelists as a prophecy fulfilled by the appear- 
 ance of the Baptist (Matt iii. 3 ; Mark i. 3 ; Luke iii. 4 ff.). This might be 
 thought a later and Christian application, but there is nothing to controvert 
 the .statement of the fourth Evangelist, that the Baptist had himself character- 
 ized his destination by those prophetic words. 
 
 As the syiioptical gospels have unanimously borrowed this passage from 
 the Baptist himself, so Mark has borrowed the application of another prophetic 
 passage^to the Baptist from Jesus. Jesus had said (Matt. xi. 10; Luke vii. 
 
 27) : OVTOS yap ecrri trepi ov ylypairr<u- Ihov airocrTekko) rbv ayye\6v p-ov irpo 
 ■irpoa-unrov crov, os /caTatnceuatrci rr/v oSv crmi ip.irpoa-Oei' (Tovo. This is he of 
 whom it is written. Behold I send my messenger before thy face, to prepare thy 
 way before thee ; and Mark in the introduction to his Gospel, applies these 
 words of Malachi (iii. 1), together with the above passage from Isaiah, with- 
 out distinguishing their respective sources, to the forerunner, John. The 
 text is a messianic one ; Jehovah, however, does not therein speak of send- 
 ing a messenger before the Messiah, but before himself : and it is only in the 
 New Testament citations in all these instances that the second person (aov) 
 is substituted for the first (*^^?). 
 
 Another notable passage of the same prophet (iii. 23, LXX. iv. 4 : koa. iSou 
 eyi) diroo-TeXo) i/iiv 'HA.t'av Toi/ ®e(r^iTT]v, TTplv eXOCv rrfv ■^pepav Kvpiov, k. t. X. : 
 Behold, I will send you Elijah the Tishbite before the coming of the day of the Lord, 
 etc.) suggested to the Evangelists the assimilation of John the Baptist to Elias. 
 That John, labouring for the reformation of the people, in the spirit and 
 power of Elias, should prepare the way for the Divine visitation in the times 
 of the Messiah, was according to Luke i. 17, predicted before his birth. In 
 John i. 2 1, when the emissaries of the Sanhedrim ask, " Art thou Elias ? " 
 the Baptist declines this dignity : according to the usual explanation, he 
 only extended his denial to the rude popular notion, that he was the ancient 
 seer corporeally resuscitated, whereas he would have admitted the view of 
 the synoptical gospels, that he had the spirit of Elias. Nevertheless it 
 appears improbable that if the fourth Evangelist had been familiar with the 
 idea of the Baptist as a second Elias, he would have put into his mouth so 
 direct a negative. 
 
 This scene, peculiar to the fourth gospel, in which John rejects the title of 
 Elias, with several others, demands a yet closer examination, and must be 
 compared with a narrative in Luke (iii. 15), to which it has a striking simi- 
 larity. In Luke, the crowd assembled round the Baptist begin to think : Is 
 not this the Christ 1 fx-^irore auVos eirj 6 Xpurros ; in John, the deputies of the 
 Sanhedrim^ ask him, IVho art thou? a-v rts el; which we infer from the 
 Baptist's answer to mean : " Art thou, as is believed, the Messiah ? "^ Accor- 
 ding to Luke, the Baptist a.nswers, I indeed baptize you with water; but one 
 mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. 
 According to John he gives a similar reply ; I baptize with water ; but there 
 standeth one among you whom ye know not ; He it is who coming after me is pre- 
 ferred before me, whose shoes' latchet I am not worthy to unloose : the latter 
 Evangelist adding his peculiar propositions concerning the pre-existence of 
 Jesus, and deferring to another occasion (v. 33) the mention of the Messiah's 
 spiritual baptism, which Luke gives in immediate connexion with the above 
 passage. In Luke, and still more decidedly in John, this whole scene is intro- 
 
 1 The expression oi 'louSoioi is thus interpreted by the most learned exegetists. Comp. 
 Paulus, Lucke, Tholuck in loc. 
 
 2 Liicke, Commentar, s. 327. 
 
232 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 47. 
 
 duced with a design to establish the Messiahship of Jesus, by showing that 
 the Baptist had renounced that dignity, and attributed it to one who should 
 come after him. If at the foundation of two narratives so similar, there can 
 scarcely be more than one fact,' the question is, which gives that fact the 
 most faithfully ? In Luke's account there is no intrinsic improbability ; on 
 the contrary it is easy to imagine, that the people, congregated round the 
 man who announced the Messiah's kingdom, and baptized with a view to it, 
 should, in moments of enthiisiasm, believe him to be the Messiah. But that 
 the Sanhedrim should send from; Jerusalem to John on the banks of the 
 Jordan, for the sake of asking him whether he were the Messiah, seems less 
 natural. Their object could only be what, on a later occasion, it was with 
 respect to Jesus (Matt. xxi. 23 ff.), namely, to challenge the authority of John 
 to baptize, as appears from v. 25. Moreover, from the hostile position which 
 John had taken towards the sects of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matt. iii. 
 7), to whom the members of the Sanhedrim belonged, they must have pre- 
 judged that he was not the Messiah, nor a prophet, and consequently, that he 
 had no right to undertake a )8aimo-/ia. But in that case, they could not pos- 
 sibly have so put their questions as they are reported to have done in the 
 fourth gospel. In the passage from Mathew above cited, they asked Jesus, 
 quite consistently with their impression that he had no prophetic authority : 
 iv irota iicnia-Cq. ravra iroiets ; By what authority doest thou these things ? but in 
 John, they question the Baptist precisely as if they pre-supposed him to be the 
 Messiah, and when he, apparently to their consternation, has denied this, 
 they tender him successively the dignities of Elias, and of another prophetic 
 forerunner, as if they earnestly wished him to accept one of these titles. 
 Searching opponents will not thus thrust the highest honours on the man to 
 whom they are inimical; — this is the representation of a narrator who wishes 
 to exhibit the modesty of the man, and his subordination to Jesus, by his 
 rejection of those brilliant titles. To enable him to reject them, they must 
 have been offered ; but this could in reality only be done by well-wishers, as 
 in Luke, where the conjecture that the Baptist was the Messiah is attributed 
 to the people. 
 
 Why then did not the fourth Evangelist attribute those questions likewise to 
 the people, from whom, with a slight alteration, they would have seemed 
 quite natural ? Jesus, when addressing the unbelieving Jews in Jerusalem, 
 (John v. 33), appeals to their message to the Baptist, and to the faithful testi- 
 mony then given by the latter. Had John given his declaration concerning 
 his relation to Jesus before the common people merely, such an appeal would- 
 have been impossible ; for if Jesus were to refer his enemies to the testimony 
 of John, that testimony must have been delivered before his enemies ; if the 
 assertions of the Baptist were to ' have any diplomatic value, they must have 
 resulted from the official inquiry of a magisterial deputation. Such a re- 
 modelling of the facts appears to have been aided by the above-mentioned 
 narrative from the synoptical traditions, wherein the high priests and scribes ask 
 Jesus, by what authority he does such things (as the casting out of the buyers 
 and sellers). Here also Jesus refers to John, asking for their opinion as to 
 the authority of his baptism, only, it is true, with the negative view of repress- 
 ing their further inquiries (Malt: xxi. 23 ff. parall.) ; but how easily might this 
 reference be made to take an affirmative sense, and instead of the argument, 
 " If ye know not what powers were entrusted to John, ye need not know 
 whence mine are given," — the following be substituted : " Since ye know 
 what John has declared concerning me, ye must also know what power and 
 
 ' Lucke, s. 339. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 233 
 
 dignity belong to me ; " whereupon what was originally a question addressed 
 to Jesus, transformed itself into a message to the Baptist.* 
 
 The judgment of Jesus on the character of John is delivered on two 
 occasions in the synoptical gospels ; first after the departure of John's mes- 
 sengers (Matt. xi. 7 ff.); secondly, after the appearance of Elias at the trans- 
 figuration (Matt. xvii. 12 ff.), in reply to the question of a disciple. In the 
 fourth gospel, after an appeal to the Baptist's testimony, Jesus pronounces an 
 eulogium on him in the presence of the Jews (v. 35), after referring, as above 
 remarked, to their sending to John. In this passage he calls the Baptist a 
 burning and a shining light, in whose beams the fickle people were for a season 
 willing to rejoice. In one synoptical passage, he declares John to be the 
 promised Elias ; in the other, there are three points to be distinguished. First, 
 with respect to the character and agency of John, — the severity and firmness 
 of his mind, and the pre-eminence which as the messianic forerunner, who 
 with forcible hand had opened the kingdom of heaven, he maintained even 
 over the prophets, are extolled (v. 7-14) ; secondly, in relation to Jesus and 
 the citizens of the kingdom of heaven, the Baptist, though exalted above all 
 the members of the Old Testament economy, is declared to be in the rear of 
 every one on whom, through Jesus, the new light had arisen (v. 11). We 
 see how Jesus understood this from what follows (v. 18), when we compare 
 it with Matt. ix. i6f. In the former passage Jesus describes John as /t^re 
 eaOuav fi^qre irivtov, neither eating nor drinking ; and in the latter it is this 
 very asceticism which is said to liken him to the t/Aariois and aa-Kol'; iroXatoTs, 
 the old garments and old bottles, with which the new, introduced by Jesus, will 
 not agree. What else then could it be, in which the Baptist was beneath the 
 children of the kingdom of Jesus, but (in connexion with his non-recognition 
 or only qualified acknowledgment of Jesus as Messiah) the spirit of ex- 
 ternal observance, which still clung to fasting and similar works, and his 
 gloomy asceticism .? And, in truth, freedom from these is the test of tran- 
 sition from a religion of bondage, to one of liberty and spiritual! ty.^ Thirdly, 
 with respect to the relation in which the agency of John and Jesus stood to 
 their cotemporaries, the same inaptitude to receive the ministrations of both 
 is complained of v. 16 ff., although in v. 12 it is observed, that the violent 
 zeal of some jSiao-Tat had, under the guidance of John, wrested for them an 
 entrance into the kingdom of the Messiah.^ 
 
 In conclusion, we must take a review of the steps by which tradition has 
 gradually annexed itself to the simple historical traits of the relation between 
 John and Jesus. Thus much seems to be historical : that Jesus, attracted by 
 the fame of the Baptist, put himself under the tuition of that preacher, and 
 that having remained some time among his followers, and been initiated 
 into his ideas of the approaching messianic kingdom, he, after the imprison- 
 ment of John, carried on, under certain modifications, the same work, never 
 ceasing, even when he had far surpassed his predecessor, to render him due 
 homage. 
 
 The first addition to this in the Christian legend, was, that John had taken 
 approving notice of Jesus. During his public ministry, it was known that 
 he had only indefinitely referred to one coming after him ; but it behoved him, 
 
 * Whether the dialogue between John and his complaining disciples (John iii. 25 ff.) be 
 likewise a transmutation of the corresponding scene, Matt. ix. 14 f. , as Bretschneider seeks 
 to show, must remain uncertain. Probab., p. 66 ff. 
 
 ' That Jesus, as many suppose, assigns a low rank to the Baptist, because the latter thought 
 of introducing the new order of things by external violence, is not to be detected in the- 
 gospels. rt rp 
 
 « For a different explanation see Schneckenburger, Beitrage, i. 48 ff. 
 
234 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 48. 
 
 at least in a conjectural way, to point out Jesus personally, as that successor. 
 To this it was thought he might have been moved by the fame of the works 
 of Jesus, which, loud as it was, might even penetrate the walls of his prison. 
 Then was formed Matthew's narrative of the message from prison ; the first 
 modest attempt to make the Baptist a witness for Jesus, and hence clothed 
 in an interrogation, because a categorical testimony was too unprecedented. 
 
 But this late and qualified testimony was not enough. It was a late one, 
 for prior to it there was the baptism which Jesus received from John, and by 
 which he, in a certain degree, placed himself in subordination to the Baptist ; 
 hence those scenes in Luke, by which the Baptist was placed, even before his 
 birth, in a subservient relation to Jesus. 
 
 Not only was it a late testimony which that message contained ; it was 
 but half a one ; for the question implied uncertainty, and 6 ipxofievos conveyed 
 indecision. ' Hence in the fourth gospel there is no longer a question about 
 the Messiahship of Jesus, but the most solemn asseverations on that head, 
 and we have the most pointed declarations of the eternal, divine nature of 
 Jesus, and his character as the suifering Messiah. 
 
 In a narrative aiming at unity, as does the fourth gospel, these very pointed 
 declarations could not stand by the side of the dubious message, which is 
 therefore only found in this Gospel under a totally reorganized form. 
 Neither does this message accord with that which in the synoptical gospels 
 is made to occur at the baptism of Jesus, and even earlier in his intercourse 
 with John ; but the first three Evangelists, in their loose compositions, 
 admitted, along with the more recent form of the tradition, the less complete 
 one, because they attached less importance to the question of John than to 
 the consequent discourse of Jesus. 
 
 §48. 
 
 THE EXECUTION OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 
 
 We here take under our examination, by way of appendix, all that has been 
 transmitted to us concerning the tragic end of the Baptist. According to the 
 unanimous testimony of the synoptical Evangelists and Josephus,i he was 
 executed, after a protracted imprisonment, by order of Herod Antipas, 
 tetrarch of Galilee ; and in the New Testament accounts he is said to have 
 been beheaded. (Matt. xiv. 3 ff. ; Mark, vi. 17 ff. ; Luke ix. 9.) 
 
 But Josephus and the Evangelists are at variance as to the cause of his im- 
 prisonment and execution. According to the latter, the censure which John 
 had pronounced on the marriage of Herod with his (half) brother's ^ wife, was 
 the cause of his imprisonment, and the revengeful cunning of Herodias, at a 
 court festival, of his death : Josephus gives the fear of disturbances, which 
 was awakened in Herod by the formidable train of the Baptist's followers, as the 
 cause at once of the imprisonment and the execution.^ If these two accounts 
 be considered as distinct and irreconcilable, it may be doubted which of 
 the two deserves the preference. It is not here as in the case of Herod 
 Agrippa's death. Acts xii. 23, viz., that the New Testament narrarive, by 
 intermixing a supernatural cause where Josephus has only a natural one, 
 enables us to prejudge it as unhistorical j on the contrary, we might here give 
 
 ' Antiq. xviii. v. 2. 
 
 * This former husband of Herodias is named by the Evangelists, Philip, by Josephus, 
 Herod. He was the son of the high priest's daughter, Mariamne, and lived as a private 
 person. V. Antiq. xv. ix. 3; xviii. y. i. 4. B. j. i. xxix. 2, xxx. 7. 
 
 3 Antiq. xviii. v. 4. . 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST. 235 
 
 the palm to the evangelical narrative, for the particularity of its details. But 
 on the other hand, it must be considered that that very particularity, and 
 especially the conversion of a political into a personal motive, corresponds 
 fully to the development of the legendary spirit among the people, whose 
 imagination is more at home in domestic than in political circles.* Mean- 
 virhile it is quite possible to reconcile the two narratives. This has been 
 attempted by conjecturing, that the fear of insurrection was the proper cabinet 
 motive for the imprisonment of the Baptist, while the irreverent censure 
 passed on the ruler was thrust forward as the ostensible motive.^ But I 
 greatly doubt whether Herod would designedly expose the scandalous point 
 touched on by John ; it is more likely, if a distinction is to be here made 
 between a private and ostensible cause, that the censure of the marriage was 
 the secret reason, and the fear of insurrection disseminated as an excuse for 
 extreme severity.^ Such a distinction, however, is not needed ; for Antipas 
 might well fear, that John, by his strong censure of the marriage and the 
 whole course of the tetrarch's life, might stir up the people into rebeUion 
 against him. 
 
 But there is a diversity even between the evangelical narratives themselves, 
 not only in this, that Mark gives the scene at the feast with the most graphic 
 details, while Luke is satisfied with a concise statement (iii. 18-20, ix. 9), 
 and Matthew takes a middle course ; but Mark's representation of the rela- 
 tion between Herod and the Baptist differs essentially from that of Matthew. 
 While according to the latter, Herod wished to kill John, but was withheld 
 by his dread of the people, who looked on the Baptist as a prophet (v. 5) ; 
 according to Mark, it was Herodias who conspired against his life, but could 
 not attain her object, because her husband was in awe of John as a holy man, 
 sometimes heard him gladly, and not seldom followed his counsel (v. 19).'' 
 Here, again, the individualizing characteristic of Mark's narrative has induced 
 commentators to prefer it to that of Matthew.* But in the finishing touches 
 and alterations of Mark we may detect the hand of tradition ; especially as 
 Josephus merely says of the people, that they gave ear to the sound of his 
 words, TjpOrjo-av TTJ aKpodcrei Ttuv \6ya>v, while he says of Herod, that having 
 conceived fears of John, he judged it expedient to put him to death, Seicras KpAnov 
 yjy€ira.i {rov 'lojavviyv) avaipuv. How near lay the temptation to exalt the 
 Baptist, by representing the prince against whom he had spoken, and by 
 whom he was imprisoned, as feeling bound to venerate him, and only, to his 
 remorse, seduced into giving his death-warrant, by his vindictive wife ! It 
 may be added, that the account of Matthew is not inconsistent with the 
 character of Antipas, as gathered from other sources.^ 
 
 The close of the evangelical narratives leaves the impression that the 
 dissevered head of John was presented at table, and that the prison was 
 consequently close at hand. But we learn from the passage in Josephus 
 above cited, that the Baptist was confined in Machserus, a fortress on the 
 southern border of Persea, whereas the residence of Herod was in Tiberias,'* 
 a day's journey distant from Machserus. Hence the head of John the Baptist 
 
 * Hase, Leben Jesu, s. 88. 
 
 5 Fritzsche, Comm. in Matth. in loc. Winer, bibl. Realworterb. i, s. 694. 
 ^ Paulus, exeg. Handb. I, a, s. 361 ; Schleiermaoher, iiber den Lukas, d. 109. 
 7 Vergl. Fritzsche, Comm. in Marc, p. 225. 
 
 ' E.g. Schneckenburger, iiber den Ursprung des ersten kanonischen Evangeliums, s. 86 f. 
 That the i^vTr-Zidri of Matthew, v. 9, is not contradictory to his own narrative, see Fritzsche, 
 
 in loc. 
 9 S. Winer, b. Realworterb. d. A. Herodes Antipas. 
 i» Fritzsche, Commentar. in Matt., p. 491. 
 
236 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 48. 
 
 could only be presented to Herod after two days' journey, and not while he 
 yet sat at table. The contradiction here apparent is not to be removed by 
 the consideration, that it is not expressly said in the Gospels that John's head 
 was brought in during the meal, for this is necessarily inferred from the entire 
 narrative. Not only are the commission of the executioner and his return 
 with the head, detailed in immediate connexion with the incidents of the 
 meal ; but only thus has the whole dramatic scene its appropriate conclusion ; 
 — only thus is the contrast complete, which is formed by the death-warrant 
 and the feast : in fine, the mvai, on which the dissevered head is presented, 
 marks it as the costliest viand which tlie unnatural revenge of a woman could 
 desire at table. But we have, as a probable solution, the information of 
 Josephus,^^ that Herod Antipas was then at war with the Arabian king, 
 Aretas, between whose kingdom and his own lay the fortress of Machserus ; 
 and there Herod might possibly have resided with his court at that period. 
 
 Thus we see that the life of John in the evangelical narratives is, from 
 easily conceived reasons, overspread with mythical lustre on the side which 
 is turned towards Jesus, while on the other its historical lineaments are more 
 visible. 
 
 *' Antiq. xviii. v. I. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS. 
 
 § 49- 
 
 WHY DID JESUS RECEIVE BAPTISM FROM JOHN ? 
 
 In conformity with the evangelical view of the fact, the customary answer 
 given by the orthodox to this question is, that Jesus, by his submission to 
 John's baptism, signified his consecration to the messianic office ; an explana- 
 tion which is supported by a passage in Justin, according to which it was the 
 Jewish notion, that the Messiah would be unknown as such to himself and 
 others, until Elias as his forerunner should anoint him, and thereby make 
 him distinguishable by all.i The Baptist himself, however, as he is repre- 
 sented by the first Evangelist, could not have partaken of this design ; for had 
 he regarded his baptism as a consecration which the Messiah must necessarily 
 undergo, he would not have hesitated to perform it on the person of Jesus 
 (iii. 14). 
 
 Our former inquiries have shown that John's baptism related partly eh rbv 
 ipxofuvov, its recipients promising a believing preparation for the expected 
 Messiah ; how then could Jesus, if he was conscious of being himself the 
 ipx6fi€V(K, submit himself to this baptism ? The usual answer from the 
 orthodox point of view is, that Jesus, although conscious of his Messiahship, 
 yet, so long as it was not publicly attested by God, spoke and acted, not as 
 Messiah, but merely as an Israelite, who held himself bound to obey every 
 divine ordinance relative to his nation. ** But, here, there is a distinction 
 to be made. Negatively, it became Jesus to refrain from performing any 
 messianic deeds, or using any of the Messiah's prerogatives, before his title 
 was solemnly attested ; even positively, it became him to submit himself to 
 the ordinances which were incumbent on every Israelite ; but to join in a 
 new rite, which symbolized the expectation of another and a future Messiah, 
 could never, without dissimulation, be the act of one who was conscious of 
 being the actual Messiah himself. More recent theologians have therefore 
 wisely admitted, that when Jesus came to John for baptism, he had not a 
 decided conviction of his Messiahship.^ They indeed regard this uncertainty 
 as only the struggle of modesty. Paulus, for instance, observes that Jesus, 
 notwithstanding he had heard from his parents of his messianic destination, 
 and had felt this first intimation confirmed by many external incidents, as 
 well as by his own spiritual development, was yet not over eager to appro- 
 
 1 Dial. c. Tryph. 8, s. 1 10. der Mauriner Ausg. 
 =* Hess. Geschichte Jesu, i Bd. s. 118. 
 
 8 Paulus, ut sup., s. 362 ff. 337. Hase, L. J., s. 48, erste Ausg. 
 237 
 
238 PART II. CHAPTER I. § 49. 
 
 priate the honour, which had been as it were thrust upon him. But, if the 
 previous narratives concerning Jesus be regarded as a history, and therefore, 
 of necessity, as a supernatural onej then must he, who was heralded by 
 angels, miraculously conceived, welcomed into the world by the homage of 
 magi and prophets, and who in his twelfth year knew the temple to be his 
 Father's house, have long held a conviction of his Messiahship, above all 
 the scruples of a false modesty. If on the contrary it be thought possible, 
 by criticism, to reduce the history of the childhood of Jesus to a merely 
 natural one, there is no longer anything to account for his early belief that 
 he was the Messiah ; and the position which he adopted by the reception of 
 John's baptism becomes, instead of an affected diffidence, a real ignorance 
 of his messianic ■ destiny. — Too modest, continue these commentators, to 
 declare himself Messiah on his own authority, Jesus fulfilled all that the 
 strictest self-judgment could require, and wished to make the decisive experi- 
 ment, whether the Deity would allow that he, as well as every other, should 
 dedicate himself to the coming Messiah, or whether a sign would be granted, 
 that he himself was the ipxo/xevos. But to do something seen to be inappro- 
 priate, merely to try whether God will correct the mistake, is just such a 
 challenging of the divine power as Jesus, shortly after his baptism, decidedly 
 condemns. Thus it must be allowed that, the baptism of John being a 
 baptism tk t6v ipxofitvov, if Jesus could submit himself to it without ■ dis- 
 simulation or presumption, he could not at the time have held himself to 
 be that ipxofi-evo's, and if he really uttered the words ovra Trpeirov ecrri, k. t. \.j 
 Sufer it ta be so now, etc. (which, however, could only be called forth by 
 the refusal of the Baptist— a refusal that stands or falls with his previous 
 conviction of the Messiahship of Jesus), he could only mean by thern, that 
 it became him, with every pious IsraeUte, to devote himself by anticipation 
 to the expected Messiah, in baptism, although the Evangelist, instructed by 
 the issue, put on them a different construction. 
 
 But the relation hitherto discussed is only one aspect of John's baptism ; 
 the other, which is yet more strongly attested by history, shows it as a 
 PwirTia-iia, /nETavoias, .a baptism of repentance. The Israelites, we are told. 
 Matt. iii. 6, were baptized of John, confessing their sins : shall we thefi 
 suppose that Jesus made such a confession? They received the command 
 to repent : did Jesus acknowledge such a command ? This difficulty was 
 felt even in the early church. In the Gospel of the Hebrews, adopted by the 
 Nazarenes, Jesus asks his mother and brother, when invited by them to 
 receive John's baptism, wherein he had sinned, that this baptism was needful 
 for him?* and an heretical apocryphal work appears, to have attributed to 
 Jesus a confession of his own sins at his baptism.* 
 
 The sum of what modern theologians have contributed towards the re- 
 moval of this difficulty, consists in the application to Jesus of the distinction 
 between what a man is as an individual, and what he is as a member of 
 the community. He needed, say they, no repentance on his own behalf, 
 but, aware of its necessity for all other men, the children of Abraham not 
 
 * Hieron. adv. Pelagian, iii. 2 : In Evangelio juxta Hebrseos — narrat hlstoria : Ecce mater 
 Domini et fratres ejus dicebant ei : Joannes baptista baptizat in remissionem peccatorum ; 
 eamus et baptizemur ab eo. Dixit autem eis : quid peccavi ut vadam et baptizer ab eo ? nisi 
 forte hoc ipsum quod dixi, ignorantia est. 
 
 * The author of the Tractatus de non iterando taptistno in Cyprian's works, Rigalt., 
 p. 139, says (the passage is also found in Fabric. Cod. apocr. N.T., s. 799 f.) : Est — liier, 
 qui inscriitur Pauli pradicatio. In quo libro, contra omnes scripturas et de peccato propria 
 confitentem invenies Christum, qui solus omnino nihil deliquit, et ad accipiendum Joannis 
 baptisma pane invitum d matre sad Marid esse cotnpulsum. 
 
BAPTISM OF JESUS. 239 
 
 excepted, he wished to demonstrate his approval of an institute which con- 
 firmed this truth, and hence he submitted to it. But let the reader only 
 take a nearer view of the facts. According to Matt. iii. 6, John appears to 
 have required a confession of sins previous to baptism ; such a confession 
 Jesus, presupposing his impeccability, could not deUver without falsehood ; 
 if he refused, John would hardly baptize him, for he did not yet believe 
 him to be the Messiah, and from every other Israelite he must have con- 
 sidered a confession of sins indispensable. The non-compliance of Jesus 
 might very probably originate the dispute to which Matthew gives a wholly 
 different character ; but certainly, if the refusal of John had such a cause, 
 the matter could scarcely have been adjusted by a mere sufer it to be so now, 
 for no confession being given, the Baptist would not have perceived that 
 all righteousness was fulfilled. Even supposing that a confession was not 
 required of every baptized person, John would not conclude the ceremony 
 of baptism without addressing the neophyte on the subject of repentance. 
 Could Jesus tacitly sanction such an address to himself, when conscious that 
 he needed no regeneration ? and would he not, in so doing, perplex the 
 minds which were afterwards to believe in him as the sinless one ? We will 
 even abandon the position that John so addressed the neophytes, and only 
 urge that the gestures of those who plunged into the purifying water must 
 have been those of contrition ; yet if Jesus conformed himself to these 
 even in silence, without referring them to his own condition, he cannot be 
 absolved from the charge of dissimulation. 
 
 There is then no alternative but to suppose, that as Jesus had not, up to 
 the time of his baptism, thought of himself as the Messiah, so with regard 
 to the fi-erdvoia {repentance), he may have justly ranked himself amongst the 
 most excellent in Israel, without excluding himself from what is predicated 
 in Job iv. 18, xv. 15. There is little historical ground for controverting 
 this; for the words, which of you convinceth me of sin i (John viii. 46) could 
 only refer to open delinquencies, and to a later period in the life of Jesus. 
 The scene in his twelfth year, even if historical, could not by itself prove 
 a sinless development of his powers. 
 
 § SO- 
 
 THE SCENE AT THE BAPTISM OF JESUS CONSIDERED AS SUPERNATURAL 
 
 AND AS NATURAL. 
 
 At the moment that John had completed his baptism of Jesus, the synop- 
 tical gospels tell us that the heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit descended 
 on Jesus in the form of a dove, and a voice from heaven designated him the 
 Son of God, in whom the Father was well pleased. The fourth Evangelist 
 (i. 32 ff.) makes the Baptist narrate that he saw the Holy Spirit descend like 
 a dove, and remain on Jesus ; but as in the immediate context John says of 
 his baptism, that it was destined for the manifestation of the Messiah, and 
 as the description of the descending dove corresponds almost verbally with 
 the synoptical accounts, it is not to be doubted that the same event is 
 intended. The old and lost Gospels of Justin and the Ebionites give, as 
 concomitants, a heavenly light, and a flame bursting out of the Jordan ; ^ 
 in the dove and heavenly voice also, they have alterations, hereafter to be 
 
 1 Tustin Mart dial u. Tryph. 88 : KareXOdPTos tov 'IijffoC M rb SSup, rai rOp i,v/i<t>eii 
 iv T% 'lopUv-n, K- T. \. ^ Epiphan. hseres. 30, 13 (after the heavenly voice) : Kal em, 
 irtpWXaiife rbv rlnrov (pws /i^a. 
 
240 PART II. CHAPTER II. § JO. 
 
 noticed. For whose benefit the appearance was granted, remains doubtful 
 on a comparison of the various narratives. In John, where the Baptist 
 recites it to his followers, these seem not to have been eye-witnesses; and 
 from his stating that he who sent him to baptize, promised the descent and 
 repose of the Spirit as a mark of the Messiah, we gather that the appearance 
 was designed specially for the Baptist. According to Mark it is Jesus, who, 
 in ascending from the water, sees the heavens open and the Spirit descend. 
 Even in Matthew it is the most natural to refer elSe, he saw, and dvewx^ijcrav 
 ouTw, were opened to him, to 6 'lijo-ovi, /esus, the subject immediately before ; 
 but as it is said, in continuation, that he saw the Holy Spirit ipxofievov 
 iir' avTov, not 60' a^Tov (Mark's sir' airov, which does not agree with his con- 
 struction, is explained by his dependence on Matthew), the beholder seems 
 not to be the same as he on whom the Spirit descended, and we are obliged 
 to refer elSc and avtaxOija-av airm to the more remote antecedent, namely 
 the Baptist, who, as the heavenly voice speaks of Jesus in the third person, 
 is most naturally to be regarded as also a witness. Luke appears to give a 
 much larger number of spectators to the scene, for according to him, Jesus 
 was baptized iv r<S ^aimcrdrjvai, aTravra rbv Xaov, when all the people were 
 baptized, and consequently he must have supposed that the scene described 
 occurred in their presence.* 
 
 The narrations directly convey no other meaning, than that the whole 
 scene was externally visible and audible, and thus they have been always 
 understood by the majority of commentators. But in endeavouring to con- 
 ceive the incident as a real one, a cultivated and reflecting mind must stumble 
 at no insignificant difficulties. First, that for the appearance of a divine 
 being on earth, the visible heavens must divide themselves, to allow of his 
 descent from his accustomed seat, is an idea that can have no objective 
 reality, but must be the entirely subjective creation of a time when the 
 dwelling-place of Deity was imagined to be above the vault of heaven. 
 Further, how is it reconcilable with the true idea of the Holy Spirit as the 
 divine, all-peryading Power, that he should move from one place to another, 
 like a finite being, and embody himself in the form of a dove ? Finally, , 
 that God should utter articulate tones in a national idiom, has been justly 
 held extravagant.^ 
 
 Even in the early church, the more enlightened fathers adopted the 
 opinion, that the heavenly voices spoken of in the biblical history were not 
 external sounds, the eff'ect of vibrations in the air, but inward impressions 
 produced by God in the minds of those to whom he willed to impart him- 
 self : thus of the appearance at the baptism of Jesus, Origen and Theodore 
 of Mopsuestia maintain that it was a vision, and not a reality, owraa-M, 
 ou (^vo-ts.* To the simple indeed, says Origen, in their simplicity, it is a 
 light thing to set the universe in motion, and to sever a solid mass like 
 the heavens ; but those who search more deeply into such matters, will, he 
 thinks, refer to those higher revelations, by means of which chosen persons, 
 even waking, and still more frequently in their dreams, are led to suppose 
 that they perceive something with their bodily senses, while their minds only 
 are affected : so that consequently, the whole appearance in question should 
 
 2 See Usteri, viber den Taufer Johannes, die Taufe und' Versuchung Christi, in the 
 theolog. Studien und Kritiken, 2 Bd. 3 Heft, s. 442 ff., and Bleek, in the same periodical, 
 1833, 2, s. 428ff. 
 
 ^ Bauer, hebr. Mythologie, 2 s. 225 f. Comp. Gratz, Comm. zum Evang. Matt. i. s. 
 172 if. 
 
 * These are Theodore's words, in Hunter's Fragmenta patr. grsec. Fasc. i, s. 142. Orig. 
 c. Cels. i. 48. Basil. M. in Suicer's Thesaurus, 2, p. 1479. 
 
BAPTISM OF JESUS. 24 1 
 
 be understood, not as an external incident, but as an inward vision sent by 
 God ; an interpretation which has also met with much approbation among 
 modern theologians. 
 
 In the first two Gospels and in the fourth, this interpretation is favoured 
 by the expressions, were opened to him, avtrnx^W"-'*' "-vrS, he saw, «TSc, and 
 I beheld, TiOiafmi., wih\c\i seem to imply that the appearance was subjective, 
 in the sense intended by Theodore, when he observes that the descent of 
 the Holy Spirit was not seen by all present, but that, by a certain spiritual 
 contemplation, it was visible to John alone, ov iraa-iv wtjiOri tois TrapoCcrii', aXka 
 Kara. Ttva ■n-vev/j.anKrjv Ottiypiav uxfidrj /j,w<j) tu) 'Iwavvr/ : to John however we 
 must add Jesus, who, according to Mark, participated in the vision. But in 
 opposition to this stands the statement of Luke : the expressions which 
 he uses, iyevero — -avew^Orjuai — Kal Kara/irjvai — kolI (jtiavriv — yevicrOai, it came 
 to pass — was opened — and descended — and a voice came, bear a character so 
 totally objective and exterior,^ especially if we add the words, in a bodily 
 form, a-iofjLanKw ciSei, that (abiding by the notion of the perfect truthfulness 
 of all the evangelical records) the less explicit narratives must be interpreted 
 by the unequivocal one of Luke, and the incident they recount must be' 
 understood as something more than an inward revelation to John and Jesus.' 
 Hence it is prudent in Olshausen to allow, in concession to Luke, that there 
 was present on the occasion a crowd of persons, who saw and heard some- 
 thing, yet to maintain that this was nothing distinct or comprehensible. By 
 this means, on the one hand, the occurrence is again transferred from the 
 domain of subjective visions to that of objective phenomena ; while on the 
 other, the descending dove is supposed visible, not to the bodily eye, but 
 only to the open spiritual one, and the words audible to the soul, not to the 
 bodily ear. Our understanding fails us in this pneumatology of Olshausen, 
 wherein there are sensible realities transcending the senses ; and we hasten 
 out of this misty atmosphere into the clearer one of those, who simply tell 
 us, that the appearance was an external incident, but one purely natural. 
 
 This party appeals to the custom of antiquity, to regard natural occurrences 
 as divine intimations, and in momentous crises, where a bold resolution was 
 to be taken, to adopt them as guides. To Jesus, spiritually matured into the 
 Messiah, and only awaiting an external divine sanction, and to the Baptist 
 who had already ceded the superiority to the friend of his youth, in their 
 solemn frame of mind at the baptism of the former by the latter, every 
 natural phenomenon that happened at the time, must have been pregnant 
 with meaning, and have appeared as a sign of the divine will. But what the 
 natural appearance actually was, is a point on which the commentators are 
 divided in opinion. Some, with the synoptical writers, include a sound as 
 well as an appearance; others give, with John, an appearance only. They 
 interpret the opening of the heavens, as a sudden parting of the clouds, or a 
 flash of lightning ; the dove they consider as a real bird of that species, which 
 by chance hovered over the head of Jesus ; or they assume that the lightning 
 or some meteor was compared to a dove, from the manner of its descent. 
 They who include a sound as a part of the machinery in the scene, suppose 
 a clap of thunder, which was imagined by those present to be a Bath Kol, 
 and interpreted into the words given by the first Evangelist. Others, on the 
 contrary, understand what is said of audible words, merely as an explanation 
 of the visible sign, which was regarded as an attestation that Jesus was the 
 Son of God. This last opinion sacrifices the synoptical writers, who un- 
 deniably speak of an audible voice, to John, and thus contains a critical 
 
 5 As even Lucke confesses, Comm. zum Evang. Joh. i., s. 370, and Bleek, ut sup., s. 437. 
 
 Q 
 
242 PART II. CHAPTER II. § 5 1. 
 
 doubt as to the historical character of the narratives, which, consistently 
 followed out, leads to quite other ground than that of the naturalistic inter- 
 pretation. If the sound was mere thunder, and the words only an interpreta- 
 tion put upon it by the bystanders ; then, as in the synoptical accounts, the 
 words are evidently supposed to have been audibly articulated, we must allow 
 that there is a traditional ingredient in these records. So far as the appear- 
 ance is concerned, it is not to be denied that the sudden parting of clouds, 
 or a flash of lightnjng, might be described as an opening of heaven ; but in 
 nowise could the form of a dove be ascribed to lightning or a meteor. The 
 form is expressly the point of comparison in Luke only, but it is doubtless so 
 intended by the other narrators ; although Fritszche contends that the words 
 like a dove, io-ei irepiorcpav, in Matthew refer only to the rapid motion. The 
 flight of the dove has nothing so peculiar and distinctive, that, supposing 
 this to be the point of comparison, there would not be in any of the parallel 
 passages a variation, a substitution of some other bird, or an entirely new 
 figure. As, instead of this, the mention of the dove is invariable through all 
 the four gospels, the simile must turn upon something exclusively proper to 
 the dove, and this can apparently be nothing but its form. Hence those 
 commit the least violence on the text, who adopt the supposition of a real 
 dove. Paulus, however, in so doing, incurred the hard task of showing by 
 a multitude of facts from natural history and other sources, that the dove 
 might be tame enough to fly towards a man ; ^ how it could linger so long 
 over one, that it might be said, e/^eiviv i-r avrov, it abode upon him, he has not 
 succeeded in explaining, and he thus comes into collision with the narrative 
 of John, by which he had sustained his supposition of the absence of a 
 voice.'' 
 
 § SI- 
 
 AN ATTEMPT AT A CRITICISM AND MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE 
 
 NARRATIVES. 
 
 If then a more intelligible representation of the scene at the baptism of 
 Jesus is not to be given, without doing violence to the evangelical text, or 
 without supposing it to be partially erroneous, we are necessarily driven tq a 
 critical treatment of the accounts ; and indeed, according to De Wette and 
 Schleiermacher,* this is the prevalent course in relation to the above point 
 in the evangelical history. From the narrative of John, as the pure source, 
 it is sought to derive the synoptical accounts, as turbid streams. In the 
 former, it is said, there is no opening heaven, no heavenly voice ; only the 
 descent of the Spirit is, as had been promised, a divine witness to John that 
 Jesus is the Messiah ; but in what manner the Baptist perceived that the 
 Spirit rested on Jesus, he does not tell us, and possibly the only sign may 
 have been the discourse of Jesus. 
 
 One cannot but wonder at Schleiermacher's assertion, that the manner in 
 which the Baptist perceived the descending Spirit is not given in the fourth 
 gospel, when here also the expression Mo-el irepiarepav, like a dove, tells it 
 plainly enough ; and this particular marks the descent as a visible one, and 
 not a mere inference from the discourse of Jesus. Usteri, indeed, thinks 
 
 ' Comp. Eusebius, H. E. vi. 29. 
 ' See Paulus, Bauer, Kuinol, Hase and Theile. 
 
 ' De Wette, bibl. Dogmatik, § 208. Anm. 6, exeg. Handb. i, i, s. 34 f. i, 3, s. 29 f. 
 Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 58 f. Usteri, Bleek, Hase, Kern, Neander. 
 
BAPTI&M OF JESUS. 243 
 
 that the Baptist mentioned the dove, merely as a figure, to denote the gentle, 
 mild spirit which he had observed in Jesus. But had this been all, he would 
 rather have compared Jesus himself to a dove, as on another occasion he did 
 to a lamb, than have suggested the idea of a sensible appearance by the 
 picturesque description, / saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove. 
 It is therefore not true in relation to the dove, that first in the more remote 
 tradition given by the synoptical writers, what was originally figurative, was 
 received in a literal sense ; for in this sense it is understood by John, and 
 if he have the correct account, the Baptist himself must have spoken of a 
 visible dove-like appearance, as Bleek, Neander, and others, acknowledge. 
 
 While the alleged distinction in relation to the dove, between the first three 
 evangelists and the fourth, is not to be found ; with respect to the voice, the 
 difference is so wide, that it is inconceivable how the one account could be 
 drawn from the other. For it is said that the testimony which John gave 
 concerning Jesus, after the appearance : This is the Son of God (John i. 34), 
 taken in connexion with the preceding words : He that sent me to baptize, the 
 same said unto me, etc., became, in the process of tradition, an immediate 
 heavenly declaration, such as we see in Matthew : This is my beloved Son, in 
 wJiom I am well pleased. Supposing such a transformation admissible, some 
 instigation to it must be shown. Now in Isaiah xlii. i, Jehovah says of his 
 servant : ♦S'?3 nn^fT n'n? (i31ori« njy) to ; words which, excepting those 
 between the parentheses, are almost literally translated by the declaration of 
 the heavenly voice in Matthew. We learn from Matt. xii. 17 flf. that this 
 passage was applied to Jesus as the Messiah ; and in it God himself is the 
 speaker, as in the synoptical account of the baptism. Here then was what 
 would much more readily prompt the fiction of a heavenly voice, than the 
 expressions of John. Since, therefore, we do not need a misapprehension 
 of the Baptist's language to explain the story of the divine voice, and since 
 we cannot use it for the derivation of the allusion to the dove ; we must seek 
 for the source of our narrative, not in one of the evangelical documents, but 
 beyond the New Testament, — in the domain of cotemporary ideas, founded 
 dn the Old Testament, the total neglect of which has greatly diminished the 
 value of Schleiermacher's critique on the New Testament. 
 
 To regard declarations concerning the Messiah, put by poets into the 
 mouth of Jehovah, as real, audible voices from heaven, was wholly in the 
 spirit of the later Judaism, which not seldom supposed such vocal com- 
 munications to fall to the lot of distinguished rabbins,^ and of the messianic 
 prejudices, which the early Christians both shared themselves, and were com- 
 pelled, in confronting the Jews, to satisfy. In the passage quoted from 
 Isaiah, there was a divine declaration, in which the present Messiah was 
 pointed to as it were with the finger, and which was therefore specially 
 adapted for a heavenly annunciation concerning him. How could the spirit 
 of Christian legend be slow to imagine a scene, in which these words were 
 audibly spoken from heaven of the Messiah. But we detect a farther motive 
 for such a representation of the case by observing, that in Mark and Luke, 
 the heavenly voice addresses Jesus in the second person, and by comparing 
 the words which, according to the Fathers, were given in the old and lost 
 gospels as those of the voice. Justin, following his Memoirs of the Apostles^ 
 diroiJLvr)fi.ovevft.aTa tSsv airouToXiav, thus reports them : uios /*ov ei trv. eyu 
 a-TJfxepov yiyevv-qKa ere ; * Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. In 
 
 * According to Bava Mezia, f. lix. i (in Wetstein, p. 427), R. Elieser appealed to a 
 heavenly sign, in proof that he had tradition in his favour : turn personuit echo cceUstis : quid 
 vobis cum R. Eliesere ? nam ubivis secundum ilium abtinet traditio. 
 
 3 Dial. c. Tryph. 88. 
 
244 PART II. CHAPTER II. § SI. 
 
 the Gospel of the Hebrews, according to Epiphanius ; * this declaration was 
 combined with that which our Gospels contain. Clement of Alexandria ^ 
 and Augustin ^ seem to have read the words even in some copies of the 
 latter ; and it is at least certain that some of our present manuscripts of Luke 
 have this addition.'' Here were words uttered by the heavenly voice, drawn, 
 not from Isaiah, but from Psalm ii. 7, a passage considered messianic by 
 Jewish interpreters ; 8 in Heb. i. 5, applied to Christ; and, from their being 
 couched in the form of a direct address, containing a yet stronger induce- 
 ment to conceive it as a voice sent to the Messiah from heaven. If then the 
 words of the psalm were originally attributed to the heavenly voice, or if they 
 were only taken in connexion with the passage in Isaiah (as is probable from 
 the use of the second person, crii ct, in Mark and Luke, since this form is 
 presented in the psalm, and not in Isaiah), we have a sufficient indication 
 that this text, long interpreted of the Messiah, and easily regarded as an 
 address from heaven to the Messiah on earth, was the source of our narrative 
 of the divine voice, heard at the baptism of Jesus. To unite it with the 
 baptism, followed as a matter of course, when this was held to be a consecra- 
 tion of Jesus to his office. 
 
 We proceed to the descent of the Spirit in the form of a dove. In this 
 examination we must separate the descent of the Spirit from the form of the 
 dove, and consider the two particulars apart. That the Divine Spirit was 
 to rest in a peculiar measure on the Messiah, was an expectation necessarily 
 resulting from the notion, that the messianic times were to be those of the 
 outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh (Joel iii. iff.); and in Isaiah xi. i f. 
 it was expressly said of the stem of Jesse, that the spirit of the Lord would 
 rest on it in all its fulness, as the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of 
 might, and of the fear of the Lord. The communication of the Spirit,'con- 
 sidered as an individual act, coincident with the baptism, had a type in the 
 history of David, on whom, when anointed by Samuel, the spirit of Godc ame 
 fron^ that day forward (i Sam. xvi. 13). Further, in the Old Testament 
 phrases concerning the imparting of the Divine Spirit to men, especially in 
 that expression of Isaiah, "•'J' 0-13, which best corresponds to the fievav em of 
 John, there already lay the germ of a symbolical representation ; for that 
 Hebrew verb is applied also to the halting of armies, or, like the parallel 
 Arabic word, even of animals. The imagination, once stimulated by such an 
 expression, would be the more strongly impelled to complete the picture by 
 the necessity for distinguishing the descent of the Spirit on the Messiah, — 
 in the Jewish view, from the mode in which it was imparted to the prophets 
 (e.g. Isaiah Ixi. i)— in the Christian view, from its ordinary communication 
 to the baptized (e.g. Acts xix. i ff).^ The position being once laid down 
 that the Spirit was to descend on the Messiah, the question immediately 
 occurred : ITow would it descend ? This was necessarily decided according 
 to the popular Jewish Idea, which always represented the Divine Spirit under 
 some form or other. In the Old Testament, and even irt the New (Acts ii. 
 3), fire is the principal symbol of the Holy Spirit ; but it by no means follows 
 that other sensible objects were not similarly used. In an-important passage 
 of the Old Testament (Gen. i. 2), the Spirit of God is described as hovering 
 (nsnip), a word which suggests, as its sensible representation, the movement 
 
 * Haeres. xxx. 13. 
 ' Piedagog. i. 6. 
 
 ' De consens. Evangg. ii. 14, 
 
 ' S. Wetstein in loc. des Lukas, and De Wette, Einl. in das N. T., s. 100. 
 
 * S. Rosenmiiller's Schql. in Psalm ii. 
 
 ' Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 57. 
 
BAPTISM OF JESUS. 245 
 
 of a bird, rather than of fire. Thus the expression ^IDI, Deut. xxxii. 11, is 
 used of the hoyenng of a bird over its young. But the imagination could not 
 be satisfied with the general figure of a bird ; it must have a specific image, 
 and everythmg led to the choice of the dove. 
 
 In the East, and especially in Syria, the dove is a sacred bird.^" and it is so 
 for a reason which almost necessitated its association with the Spirit moving 
 on the face of the primitive waters (Gen. i. 2). The brooding dove was a 
 symbol of the quickening warmth of nature;" it thus perfectly represented 
 the function which, in the Mosaic cosmogony, is ascribed to the Spirit of 
 God,— the calling forth of the world of life from the chaos of the first 
 creation. Moreover, when the earth was a second time covered with water, 
 It is a dove, sent by Noah, which hovers over its waves, and which, by pluck- 
 ing an olive leaf, and at length finally disappearing, announces the renewed 
 possibility of living on the earth. Who then can wonder that in Jewish 
 writings, the Spirit hovering over the primeval waters is expressly compared 
 to a dove,'8 and that, apart from the narrative under examination, the dove 
 is taken as a symbol of the Holy Spirit pi^ How near to this lay the associa- 
 tion of the hovering dove with the Messiah, on whom the dove-like spirit 
 was to descend, is evident, without our having recourse to the Jewish writ- 
 ings, which designate the Spirit hovering over the waters. Gen. i. 2, as the 
 Spirit of the Messiah,^* and also connect with him. its emblem, the Noachian 
 dove.*^ 
 
 When, in this manner, the heavenly voice, and the Divine Spirit down- 
 hovering like a dove, gathered from the cotemporary Jewish ideas, had 
 become integral parts of the Christian legend concerning the circumstances 
 of the baptism of Jesus ; it followed, of course, that the heavens should open 
 themselves, for the Spirit, once embodied, must have a road before it could 
 descend through the vault of heaven.^^ 
 
 The result of the preceding inquiries, viz., that the -alleged miraculous 
 circumstances of the baptism of Jesys have merely a mythical value, might 
 have been much more readily obtained, in the way of inference from the 
 preceding chapter ; for if, according to that, John had not acknowledged 
 Jesus to be the Messiah, there could have been no appearances at the 
 baptism of Jesus, demonstrative to John of his Messiahship. We have, how- 
 ever, established the mythical character of the baptismal phenomena, without 
 
 "• TibuU. Carm. L. i, eleg. 8, v. 17 f. See the remark of Broeckhuis on tl^is passage ; 
 Cjeuzer, Symbolik, ii. s. 70 f. ; Paulus, exeg. Handb. i, d, a. 369. 
 
 '' Creuzer, Symbolik, ii. s. 80. 
 
 '■'' Chagiga c. ii. : Spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas, sicut colutnba, qua fertur super 
 pullos suos nee tangit illos. Ir Gibborim ad Genes. I, 2, ap. Schottgen, horse, i. p. 9. 
 
 '^ Targum Koheleth, ii. 12, vox turiuris is interpreted as vox spiritus sancti. To regard 
 this, with Liicke, as an arbitrary interpretation, seems itself like arbitrariness, in the face of 
 the above data. 
 
 •^ Bereschith rabba, s. 2, f. 4, 4, ad Genes. T. 2 (ap. Schottgen nt sup.) : intelUgitur 
 spiritus regis Messice, de quo dicitur, jes. xi. 2 : et quiescet super ilium spiritus Domini. 
 
 '5 Sohar. Numer. f. 68. col. 271 f. (in Schottgen, hors, 2, p. 537 f.). The purport of 
 this passage rests on the following cabalistic conclusion : If David, according to Ps. lii. 10, 
 is the olive tree ; the Messiah, a scion of David, is the olive leaf: and since it is said of 
 Noah's dove, Gen. viii. 11, that it carried an olive leaf in its mouth ; the Messiah will be 
 ushered into the world by a dove. — Even Christian interpreters have compared the dove at 
 the baptism of Jesus to the Noachian one ; see Suicer, Thesaurus, 2, Art. irepurrepli, p. 688, 
 It has been customary to cite in this connection, that the Samaritans paid divine honours 
 to a dove under the name of Achima, on Mount Gerizim ; but this is a Jewish accusation, 
 grounded -on a wilful misconstruction. See Staudlin's and Tzschirner's Archiv. fiir K. G. 
 I, 3, s. 66. Liicke, I, s. 367. 
 
 '* See Fritzsche, Comm. in Matt., p. 148. 
 
246 PART II. CHAPTER II. §51. 
 
 presupposing the result of the previous chapter ; and thus the two indepen- 
 dently obtained conclusions may serve to strengthen each other. 
 
 Supposing all the immediate circumstances of the baptism of Jesus un- 
 historical, the question occurs, whether the baptism itself be also a mere 
 mythus. Fritzsche seems not disinclined to the affirmative, for he leaves it 
 undecided whether the first Christians knew historically, or only supposed, 
 in conformity with their messianic expectations, that Jesus was consecrated 
 to his messianic office by John, as his forerunner. This view may be sup- 
 ported by the observation, that in the Jewish expectation, which originated 
 in the history of David, combined with the prophecy of Malachi, there was 
 adequate inducement to assume such a consecration of Jesus by the Baptist, 
 even without historical warrant ; and the mention of John's baptism in rela- 
 tion to Jesus (Acts i. 22), in a narrative, itself traditional, proves nothing 
 to the contrary. Yet, on the other hand, it is to be considered that the 
 baptism of Jesus by John furnishes the most natural basis for an explanation 
 of the messianic project of Jesus. When we have two cotemporaries, of 
 whom one announces the proximity of the Messiah's kingdom, and the other 
 subsequently assumes the character of Messiah ; the conjecture arises, even 
 without positive information, that they stood in a relation to each other — 
 that the latter owed his idea to the former. If Jesus had the messianic idea 
 excited in him by John, yet, as is natural, only so far that he also looked for- 
 ward to the advent of the messianic individual, whom he did not, in the first 
 instance, identify with himself; he would most likely submit himself to the 
 baptism of John. This would probably take place without any striking oc- 
 currences ; and Jesus, in no way announced by it as the Baptist's superior, 
 might, as above remarked, continue for some time to demean himself as his 
 disciple. 
 
 If we take a comparative retrospect of our evangelical documents, the pre- 
 eminence which has of late been sought for the fourth gospel appears totally 
 unmerited. The single historical fact, the baptism of Jesus by John, is not 
 mentioned by the fourth Evangelist, who is solicitous about the mythical 
 adjuncts alone, and these he in reality gives no more simply than the synop- 
 tical writers, his omission of the opening heaven excepted ; for the divine 
 speech is not wanting in his narrative, if we read it impartially. In the 
 words, i. 33 : He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said untotne, 
 Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the 
 same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost, we have not only substantially 
 the same purport as that conveyed by the heavenly voice in the synoptical 
 gospels, but also a divine declaration ; the only difference being, that here 
 John is addressed exclusively, and prior to the baptism of Jesus. This differ- 
 ence originated partly in the importance which the fourth Evangelist attached 
 to the relation between the Baptist and Jesus, and which required that the 
 criteria of the messianic individual; as well as the proximity of his kingdom, 
 should have been revealed to John at his call to baptize ; and it might be 
 partly suggested by the narrative in i Sap. xvi., according to which Samuel, 
 being sent by Jehovah to anoint a king selected from the sons of Jesse, is 
 thus admonished by Jehovah on the entrance of David : Arise and anoint 
 him, for this is he (v. 12). The descent of the Spirit, which in David's case 
 follows his consecration, is, by the fourth Evangelist, made an antecedent 
 sign of the Messiahship of Jesus. 
 
BAPTISM OF JESUS. 247 
 
 § 52- 
 
 RELATION OF THE SUPERNATURAL AT THE BAPTISM OF JESUS TO THE 
 SUPERNATURAL IN HIS CONCEPTION. 
 
 At the commencement of this chapter, we enquired into the subjective 
 views of Jesus in his reception of John's baptism, or the idea which he enter- 
 tained of its relation to his own character. We close this discussion with 
 an inquiry into the objective purpose of the miracles at the baptism of Jesus, 
 or the mode in which they were to subserve the manifestation of his messiah- 
 ship. 
 
 The common answer to such an inquiry is, that Jesus was thereby inducted 
 to his public office, and declared to be the Messiah,^ i.e. that "nothing was 
 conferred on him, and tliat simply the character which he already possessed 
 was manifested to others. But, it may be asked, is such an abstraction inr 
 tended by our narrators ? A consecration to an office, effected by divine 
 co-operation, was ever considered by antiquity as a delegation of divine powers 
 for its fulfilment ; hence, in the Old Testament, the kings, as soon as they 
 are anointed, are filled with the spirit of God (i Sam. x. 6, 10, xvi. 13) ; and 
 in the New Testament also, the apostles, before entering on their vocation, 
 are furnished with supernatural gifts (Acts ii.). It may, therefore, be before- 
 hand conjectured, that according to the original sense of the Gospels, the 
 consecration of Jesus at his baptism was attended with a supply of higher 
 powers ; and this is confirmed by an examination of our narratives. For the 
 synoptical writers all state, that after the baptism, the Spirit led Jesus into 
 the wilderness, obviously marking this journey as the first effect of the higher 
 principle infused at his baptism : and in John, the words ii.a'ei.v ctt' airov, 
 applied to the descending Spirit, seem to intimate, that from the time of the 
 baptism there was a relation not previously subsisting, between the wveC/ia 
 ayiov and Jesus. 
 
 This interpretation of the marvels at the baptism of Jesus seems in con- 
 tradiction with the narratives of his conception. If Jesus, as Matthew and 
 Luke state, was conceived by the Holy Ghost ; or if, as John propounds, the 
 divine Aoyos, f^e tvord, was made flesh in him, from the beginning of his 
 earthly existence ; why did he yet need, at his baptism, a special intromission 
 of the -Kv&iiLa aytov? Several modern expositors have seen, and sought to 
 solve, this difficulty. Olshausen's explanation consists in the distinction 
 between the potential and the actual ; but it is self-con tradictory.^ For if 
 the character of the Xpt^os which was manifested aM, with the ripened man- 
 hood of Jesus, at his baptism, was already present /loUntid in the child and 
 youth ; there must have also been an inward principle of development, by 
 means of which his powers would gradually unfold themselves from within, 
 instead of being first awakened by a sudden illapse of the Spirit from without. 
 This, however, does not preclude the possibility that the divine principle, 
 existing in Jesus, as supernaturally conceived, from the moment of his birth, 
 might need, owing to the human form of its development, sotne impulse from 
 without; and Liicke^ has more justly proceeded on this contrast between 
 external impulse and inward development. The Xdyos, present in Jesus from 
 his birth, needed, he thinks, however strong might be the inward bent, some 
 external stimulus and vivification, in order to arrive at full activity and mani- 
 
 • Hess, Geschichte Jesu, i, s. 120. 
 
 2 Bibl. Comm. i, s. 175 f. 
 
 » Comm. zum Evang. Joh. i, s. 378 f. 
 
248 PART II. CHAPTER II. § 52. 
 
 festation in the world ; and that which awakens and guides the divine life- 
 germ in the world is, on apostolic , showing, the wvev/Ma ayiov. Allowing this, 
 yet the inward disposition and the requisite force of the outward stimulus 
 stand in an inverse relation to each other ; so that the stronger the outward 
 stimulus required, the weaker is the inward disposition ; but in a case where 
 the inward disposition is consummate, — as it must be supposed in Jesus, 
 engendered by the Spirit, or animated by the Xdyos,— the exterior impulse 
 ought to be a minimum, that is, every circumstance, even the most common, 
 might serve as a determination of the inward tendency. But at the baptism 
 of Jesus we see the maximum of exterior impulse, in the visible descent of 
 the divine Spirit ; and although we allow for the special nature of the mes- 
 sianic task, for the fulfilment of which he must be qualified,* yet the maximum 
 of inward disposition, which fitted him to be the uios ®eoS, cannot at the same 
 time be supposed as existing in him from his birth : a consequence which 
 Liicke only escapes, by reducing the baptismal scene to a mere inauguration, 
 thus, as has been already shown, contradicting the evangelical records. 
 
 We must here give a similar decision to that at which we arrived concern- 
 ing the genealogies ; viz., that in that circle of the early Christian church, in 
 which the narrative of the descent of the Trfeu/io on Jesus at his baptism was 
 formed, the idea that Jesus was generated by the same iri/eS/^a cannot have 
 prevailed ; and while, at the present dayj the communication of the divine 
 nature to Jesus is thought of as cotemporary with his conception, those Chris- 
 tians must have regarded his baptism as the epoch of such communication. 
 In fact, those primitive Christians whom, in a former discussion, we found 
 to have known nothing, or to have believed nothing, of the supernatura.1 con- 
 ception of Jesus, were also those who connected the first communication of 
 divine powers to Jesus with his baptism in the Jordan. For no other doc- 
 trine did the orthodox fathers of the church more fiercely persecute the 
 ancient Ebionites,' with their gnostic fellow-believer Cerinthus,'' than for this : 
 that the Holy Spirit first united himself with Jesus at his baptism. In the 
 Gospel of the Ebionites it was written that the irveS/ia not only descended on 
 Jesus in the form of a dove, but entered into him ; '' and according to Justin, 
 It was the general expectation of the Jews, that higher powers would first be 
 granted to the Messiah, when he should be anointed by his forerunner Elias.s 
 
 The development of these ideas seems to have been the following. When 
 the messianic dignity of Jesus began to be acknowledged among the Jews, 
 it was thought appropriate to connect his coming into possession of the 
 requisite gifts, with' the epoch from which he was in some degree known, and 
 which, from the ceremony that marked it, was also best adapted to represent 
 that anointing with the Holy Spirit, expected by the Jews for their Messiah : 
 and from this point of view was formed the legend of the occurrences at the 
 baptism. But as reverence for Jesus was heightened, and men appeared in 
 the Christian church who were acquainted -with more exalted messianic ideas, 
 
 * From the orthodox point of view, it cannot be consistently said, with Hoffmann (p. 301), 
 that for the conviction of his messiahship and the maintenance of the right position, amid so 
 many temptations and adverse circumstances, an internally wrought certainty did not suffice 
 Jesus, and external confirmation by a fact was requisite. 
 
 ' Epiphan. hseres. xxx. 14 : eireid^ yhp poiXovrai Tin iih 'Iri<Tovv 6vtus avBpiiirov ehtu, 
 Xpurrdv Si h avTifi yeyevijadai rbv iv elSei wepiarepas KaraPe^Ktrra, li. i.\ : — T/iey maintain 
 that Jesus was really man, but that that which descended from heaven in the form of a dove 
 became Christ in him. 
 
 ^ Epiphan. hseres. xxviii. i. 
 
 ' Epiphan. hseres.xxx. 13 :— 7rfpiirTe/)as KoVeXffouirrjs (coi riffeXtfoi/crr/s eis mrhv \—of a dove 
 descending and entering into him. 
 
 ' See the passage above, § 48, note 7. 
 
BAPTISM OF JESUS. 249 
 
 this tardy manifestation of messiahship was no longer sufficient ; his relation 
 with the Holy Spirit was referred to his conception : and from this point of 
 view was formed the tradition of the supernatural conception of Jesus. Here 
 too, perhaps, the words of the heavenly voice, which might originally be those 
 of Ps. ii. 7, were altered after Isaiah xlii. i. For the words, a-qixepov yeyevvrjKa 
 <re, T/iis day have J begotten thee, were consistent with the notion that Jesus 
 was constituted the Son of God at his baptism ; but they were no longer suit- 
 able to that occasion, when the opinion had arisen that the origin of his life 
 was an immediate divine act. By this later representation, however, the 
 earlier one was by no means supplanted, but, on the contrary, tradition and 
 her recorders being large-hearted, both narratives— that of the miracles at the 
 baptism, and that of the supernatural conception, or the indwelling of the 
 Aoyos in Jesus from the commencement of his life, although, strictly, they 
 exclude each other, went forth peaceably side by side, and so were depicted 
 by our Evangelists, not excepting even the fourth. Just as in the case of the 
 genealogies : the narrative of the imparting of the Spirit at the baptism could 
 not arise after the formation of the idea that Jesus was engendered by the 
 Spirit ; but it might be retained as a supplement, because tradition is ever 
 unwilling to renounce any of its acquired treasures. 
 
 § 53- 
 
 PLACE AND TIME OF THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS. DIVERGENCIES OF THE 
 EVANGELISTS ON THIS SUBJECT. 
 
 The transition from the baptism to the temptation of Jesus, as it is made 
 by the synoptical writers, is attended with difficulty in relation both to place 
 and time, 
 
 With respect to the former, it strikes us at once, that according to all the 
 synoptical gospels, Jesus after his baptism was led into the wilderness to be 
 tempted, implying that he was not previously in the wilderness, although, 
 according to Matt. iii. i, John, by whom he was baptized, exercised his min- 
 istry there. This apparent contradiction has been exposed by the most recent 
 critic of Matthew's gospel, for the sake of proving the statement that John 
 baptized in the wilderness to be erroneous.^ But they who cannot resolve 
 to reject this statement on grounds previously laid down, may here avail 
 themselves of the supposition, that John delivered his prehminary discourses 
 in the wilderness of Judea, but resorted to the Jordan for the purpose of bap- 
 tizing ; or, if the banks of the Jordan be reckoned part of that wilderness, 
 of the presumption that the Evangelists can only have intended that the Spirit 
 led Jesus farther into the recesses of the wilderness, but have neglected to 
 state this with precision, because their description of the scene at the baptism 
 had obliterated from their imagination their former designation of the locality 
 of John's agency. 
 
 But there is, besides, a chronological difficulty : namely, that while, accord- 
 ing to the synoptical writers, Jesus, in the plenitude of the Spirit, just com- 
 municated to him at the Jordan, betakes himself, in consequence of that 
 communication, for forty days to the wilderness, where the temptation occurs, 
 and then returns into Galilee ; John, on the contrary, is silent concerning the 
 temptation, and appears to suppose an interval of a few days only, between 
 the baptism of Jesus and his journey into Galilee ; thus allowing no space 
 
 1 Schneckenburger, liber den Ursprung des ersten kanonischen Evang., s. 39. 
 
250 PART II. CHAPTER II. § 53- 
 
 for a six weeks' residence in the wilderness. The fourth Evangelist com- 
 mences his narrative with the testimony which the Baptist delivers to the 
 emissaries of the Sanhedrim (i. 19) ; the next day'(Tfj cTravpiav) he makes the 
 Baptist recite the incident which in the synoptical gospels is followed by the 
 baptism (v. 29) : again, the next day {^y ■ liravpuyv) he causes two of his dis- 
 ciples to follow Jesus (v. 3S) ; farther, the next day {ry eiravpiov, v. 44), as 
 Jesus is on the point of journeying into Galilee, Philip and Nathanael join 
 him ; and lastly, on the third day, ry 17/iepa tij Tpiry (ii. i), Jesus is at the 
 wedding in Cana of Galilee. The most natural inference is, that the baptism 
 took place immediately before John's narrative of its attendant occurrences, 
 and as according to the synoptical gospels the temptation followed close on 
 the baptism, both these events must be inserted between v. 28 and 29, as 
 Euthymius supposed. But between that which is narrated down to v. 28, 
 and the sequel from v. 29 inclusive, there is only the interval of a morrmv, 
 tTravpiov, while the temptation requires a period of forty days ; hence, exposi- 
 tors have thought it necessary to give htaipiov the wider sense of va-T^pov 
 afterwards ; this however is inadmissible, because the expression t^ fip^pi^ 
 rfj rpiTr], the third day, follows in connexion with iiravpiov, and restricts its 
 meaning to the morrow. We might therefore be inclined, with Kuinol, to 
 separate the baptism and the temptation, to place the baptism after v. 28, and 
 to regard the next day's interview between Jesus and John (v. 29) as a part- 
 ing visit from the former to the latter : inserting after this the journey into 
 the wilderness and the temptation.' But without insisting that the first three 
 Evangelists seem not to allow even of a day's interval between the baptism 
 and the departure of Jesus into the wilderness, yet even later we have the 
 same difficulty in finding space for the forty days. For it is no more possible 
 to place the residence in the wilderness between the supposed parting visit 
 and the direction of the two disciples to Jesus, that is between v. 34 and 35, 
 as Kuinol attempts, than between v. 28 and 29, since the former as well as 
 the latter passages are connected by ry iiravpwv, on the morrow, Hence we 
 must descend to v. 43 and 44 ; but here also there is only the interval of a 
 morrow, and even chap. ii. i, we are shut out by an inx.ipa. rpi-rq, third day, 
 so that, proceeding in this way, the temptation would at last be carried to 
 the residence of Jesus in Galilee, in direct opposition to the statement of the 
 synoptical writers ; while, in further contradiction to them, the temptation is 
 placed at a farther and farther distance from the baptism. Thus neither at 
 v. 29, nor below it, can the forty days' residence of Jesus in the wilderness 
 with the temptation be intercalated : and it must therefore be referred, 
 according to the plan of Liicke and others,^ to the period before v. 19, which 
 seems to allow of as large an interpolation as can be desired, inasmuch as 
 the fourth Evangelist there copnmences his history. Now it is true that what 
 follows from v. 19 to 28 is not of a kind absolutely to exclude the baptism 
 and temptation of Jesus as earlier occurrences; but from v. 29 to 34, the 
 Evangelist is far from making the Baptist speak as if there had been an 
 interval of six weeks between the baptism and his narrative of its circum- 
 stances.s That the fourth Evangelist should have omitted, by chance merely, 
 the history of the temptation, important as it was in the view of the other 
 Evangelists, seems improbable : it is rather to be concluded, either that it was 
 dogmatically offensive to him, so that he omitted it designedly, or that it was 
 not current in the circle of tradition from which he drew his materials. 
 
 The period of forty days is assigned by all three of the synoptical writers 
 
 ^ Coram, z. Ev. Joh. i, s. 344. 
 
 ' Comp. de Welte, exeg. Handb. I, 3, s. 27, 
 
BAPTISM OF JESUS. 25 1 
 
 for the residence of Jesus in the wilderness ; but to this agreement is annexed 
 the not inconsiderable discrepancy, that, according to Matthew, the tempta- 
 tion by the devil commences after the lapse of the forty days, while, according 
 to the others, it appears to have been going forward during this time ; for the 
 words of Mark (i. 13), he was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan, 
 tjV iv Ty tpi^fuo TjiJi.ipa'i Tecro-apaicovTa Treipa^o/tevos vtto tov SaTovS, and the simi- 
 lar ones of Luke i. 2, can have no other meaning. Added to this, there is a 
 difference between the two latter evangelists ; Mark only placing the tempta- 
 tion generally within the duration of forty days, without naming the particular 
 acts of the tempter, which according to Matthew, were subsequent to the 
 forty days ; while Luke mentions both the prolonged temptation (ireipa^eo-^ai) 
 of the forty days, and the three special temptations (Treipacr/xoi) which followed.* 
 It has been thought possible to make the three accounts tally by supposing 
 that the devil tempted Jesus during the forty days, as Mark states ; that after 
 the la{ise of that time he approached him with the three temptations given by 
 Matthew; and that Luke's narrative includes the whole.^ Further, the 
 temptations have been distinguished into two kinds ; that which is only 
 generally mentioned, as continued through the forty days, being considered 
 invisible, like the ordinary attempts of Satan against men ; and the three 
 particularized temptations being regarded as personal and visible assaults, 
 resorted to on the failure of the first.^ But this distinction is evidently built 
 on the air ; moreover, it is inconceivable why Luke should not specify one of 
 the temptations of the forty days, and should only mention the three subse- 
 quent ones detailed by Matthew. We might conjecture that the three 
 temptations narrated by Luke did not occur after the six weeks, but were 
 given by way of specimen from among the many that took place during that 
 time ; and that Matthew misunderstood them to be a sequel to the forty days' 
 temptation.'' But the challenge to make stones bread must in any case be 
 placed at the end of that period, for it appealed to the hunger of Jesus, 
 arising from a forty days' fast (a cause omitted by Mark alone). Now in 
 Luke also this is the first temptation, and if this occurred at the close of the 
 forty days, the others could not have been earlier. For it is not to be 
 admitted that the separate temptations being united in Luke merely by koI, 
 and not by roVe and iraA.iv as in Matthew, we are not bound to preserve the 
 order of them, and that without violating the intention of the third Evangelist 
 we may place the second and third temptation before the first. Thus Luke 
 is convicted of a want of historical tact ; for after representing Jesus as 
 tempted by the devil forty days, he has no details to give concerning this 
 long period, but narrates later temptations ; hence we are not inclined, with 
 the most recent critic of Matthew's Gospel, to regard Luke's as the original, 
 and Matthew's as the traditional and adulterated narrative.^ Rather, as in 
 Mark the temptation is noticed without farther details than that it lasted 
 forty days, and in Matthew the particular cases of temptation are narrated, 
 the hunger which induced the first rendering it necessary to place them after 
 the forty days ; Luke has evidently the secondary statement, for he unites the 
 two previous ones in a manner scarcely tolerable, giving the forty days' 
 process of temptation, and then superfluously bringing forward particular 
 instances as additional facts. It is not on this account to be concluded that 
 Luke wrote after Mark, and in dependence on him ; but supposing, on the 
 
 * Compare Fritzsche, Comm. in Marc, s. 23 De Wette, exeg. Handb., i, 2, s. 33. 
 
 * Kuinbl, Comm. in Luc, s. 379. 
 
 « Lightfoot, horse, p. 243. , „ .a 
 
 1 Schneckenburger, uber den UrspruHg des ersten kan. Evang., s. 40. 
 
 » Ibid. 
 
^52 PART II. CHAPTER II. § 54- 
 
 contrary, that Mark here borrowed from Luke, he extracted only the first and 
 general part of the latter Evangelist's narrative, having ready, in lieu of the 
 farther detail of single temptations, an addition peculiar to himself ; namely, 
 that Jesus, during his residence in the wilderness was /lera tS>v BrjpMv, with 
 the wild beasts. 
 
 What was Mark's object in introducing the wild beasts, it is difficult to say. 
 The majority of expositors are of opinion that he intended ,to complete the 
 terrible picture of the wilderness ; * but to this it is not without reason ob- 
 jected, that the clause would then have been in closer connexion with the 
 words rjv iv TTJ ifyiffUM, he was in the wilderness, instead of being placed after 
 Treipa^djiievos, iempted'y^ Usteri has hazarded the conjecture that this particu- 
 larity may be designed to mark Christ as the antitype of Adam, who, in 
 Paradise, also stood in a peculiar relation to the animals,!^ and Olshausen 
 has eagerly laid hold on this mystical notion ; but it is an interpretation 
 which finds little support in the context. Schleiermacher, in pronouncing 
 this feature of Mark's narrative extravagant,^^ doubtless means that this 
 Evangelist here, as in other instances of exaggeration, borders on the style of 
 the apocryphal gospels, for whose capricious fictions we are not seldom 
 unable to suggest a cause or an object, and thus we must rest contented, for 
 the present, to penetrate no farther into the sense of his statement. 
 
 With respect to the difference between Matthew and Luke in the arrange- 
 ment of the several temptations, we must equally abide by Schleiermacher's 
 criticism and verdict, namely, that Matthew's order seems to be the original, 
 because it is founded on the relative importance of the temptations, which is 
 the main consideration, — the invitation to worship Satan, which is the strongest 
 temptation, being made the final one ; whereas the arrangement of Luke looks 
 like a later and not very happy transposition, proceeding from the considera- 
 tion — alien to the original spirit of the narrative — that Jesus could more 
 readily go with the devil from the wilderness to the adjacent mountain and 
 from thence to Jerusalem, than out of the wilderness to the city and from 
 thence back again to the mountain. ^^ While the first two Evangelists close 
 their narrative of the temptation with the ministering of angels to Jesus, Luke 
 has a |Conclusion peculiar to himself, namely; that the devil left Jesus for a 
 season, axpt Kaipov (v. 13), apparently intimating that the sufferings of Jesus 
 were a farther assault of the devil ; an idea not resumed by Luke, but alluded 
 to in John xiv. 30. 
 
 § 54. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPTATION CONCEIVED IN THE SENSE OF THE 
 
 EVANGELISTS. 
 
 Few evangelical passages have undergone a more industrious criticism, or 
 more completely run through the circle of all possible interpretations, than 
 the history in question. For the personal appearanqe of the devil, which it 
 seems to contain, was a thorn which would not allow commentators to repose 
 on the most obvious interpretation, but incessantly urged them to new efforts. 
 The series of explanations hence resulting, led to critical comparisons, among 
 
 ' Thus Euthymius, Kuinol, and others. 
 '" Fritzsche, in loc. 
 
 " Beitrag zur Erklarung der Versuchungsgeschichte, in Ullmann's and Umbreit's Studien, 
 1834, 4. s. 789- 
 
 1* Ueber den Lukas, a. 56. 
 
 ^' Compare Schneckenburger, ut sup., s. 46 f. 
 
TEMPTATION OF JESUS. 253 
 
 which those of Schmidt, * Fritzsche,^ and Usteri,^ seem to have carried the 
 inquiry to its utmost limits. 
 
 The first interpretation that suggests itself on an unprejudiced considera- 
 tion of the text is this ; that Jesus was led by the Divine Spirit received at 
 his baptism into the wilderness, there to undergo a temptation by the devil, 
 who accordingly appeared to him visibly and personally, and in various ways, 
 and at various places to which he was the conductor, prosecuted his purpose 
 of temptation ; but meeting with a victorious resistance, he withdrew from 
 Jesus, and angels appeared to minister to him. Such is the simple exegesis 
 of the narrative, but viewed as a history it is encumbered with difficulties. 
 
 To take the portions of the narrative in their proper order : if the Divine 
 Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness with the design of exposing him to tempta- 
 tion, as^ Matthew expressly says, av-^x^r) eJs ry Ip-qimv vto tov nvcu'/uaros, 
 TrapaxrOrjvai (iv. i), of what use was this temptation ? That it had a vicarious 
 and redeeming value will hardly be maintained, or that it was necessary for 
 God to put Jesus to a trial ; neither can it be consistently shown that by this 
 temptation Jesus was to be made like us, and, according to Heb. iv. 15, 
 tempted iii all things like as we are ; for the fullest measure of trial fell to 
 his share in after life, and a temptation, effected by the devil in person, 
 would rather make him unlike us, who are spared such appearances. 
 
 The forty days' fast, too, is singular. One does not understand how Jesus 
 could hunger after six weeks of abstinence from all food without having 
 hungered long before ; since in ordinary cases the human frame cannot sus- 
 tain a week's deprivation of nourishment. It is true, expositors * console 
 themselves by calling the forty days a round number, and by supposing that 
 the expression of Matthew, vyja-Tevtrws, and even that of Luke, ovk i<j>ay€v 
 ovSkv, are not to be taken strictly, and do not denote abstinence from all 
 food, but only from that which is customary, so that the use of roots and 
 herbs is not excluded. On no supposition, however, can so much be sub- 
 tracted from the forty days as to leave only the duration of a conceivable 
 fast ; and that nothing short of entire abstinence from all nourishment was 
 intended by the Evangelists Fritzsche has clearly shown, by pointing out the 
 parallel between the fast of Jesus and that of Moses and Elias, the former of 
 whom is said to have eaten no bread and drunk no water for forty days (Exod. 
 xxxiv. 28; Deut. ix. 9, 18), and the latter to have gone for the same period 
 in the strength of a meal taken before his journey (i Kings xix. 8). But such 
 a fast wants the credentials of utility, as well as of possibility. From the 
 context it appears, that the fast of Jesus was prompted by the same Spirit 
 which occasioned his journey to the wilderness, and which now moved him 
 to a holy self-discipline, whereby men of God, under the old dispensation, 
 purified themselves, and became worthy of divine visions. But it could not 
 be hidden from that Spirit, that Satan, in attacking Jesus, would avail himself 
 of this very fast, and make the hunger thence arising an accomplice in his 
 temptation. And was not the fast, in this case, a kind of challenge to Satan, 
 an act of presumption, ill becoming even the best warranted self-confidence ?" 
 
 But the personal appearance of the devil is the great stumbling-block in 
 
 ' Exegetische Beitrage, i, s. 277 ff. 
 ^ Coram, in Matth. s. 172 ff. 
 ^ In the Essay quoted, s. 768. 
 
 • Thus, e.g., Kuinol, Comm. in Matth., p. 84. Comp. Gratz, Comm. zum Matth., i, s. 
 22g. Hoffmann, p. 315. 
 
 * Usteri, iiber den Taufer Johannes, die Taufe und Versuohung Christi. In den theol. 
 Studien und Kritiken, zweiten Jahrgangs (1829), drittes Heft, s. 450. De Wette, exeg. 
 Handb., I, I, s. 38. 
 
254 PART II. CHAPTER II. § 54. 
 
 the present narrative. If, it is said, there be a personal devil, he cannot take 
 a visible form ; and if that were possible, he would hardly demean himself as 
 he is represented to have done in the gospels. It is with the existence of the 
 devil as with that of angels — even the believers in a revelation are perplexed 
 by it, because the idea did not spring up among the recipients of revelation, 
 but was transplanted by them, during exile, from a profane soil.^ Moreover, 
 to those who have not quite shut out the lights of the present age, the exist- 
 ence of a devil is become in the highest degree doubtful. 
 
 On this subject, as well as on that of angels, Schleiermacher may serve ag 
 an interpreter of modern opinion. He shows that the idea of a, being such 
 as the devil, is an assemblage of contradictions : that as the idea of angels 
 originated in a limited observation of nature, so that of the devil originated 
 in a limited observation of self, and as our knowledge of human nature pro- 
 gresses, must recede farther into the background, and the appeal to the devil 
 be henceforth regarded as the resource of ignorance and sloth.'' Even ad- 
 mitting the existence of a devil, a visible and personal appearance on his 
 part, such as is here supposed, has its peculiar difficulties. Olshausen him- 
 self observes, that there is no parallel to it eitjier in the Old or New Testa- 
 ment. Farther, if the devil, that he might have some hope of deceiving 
 Jesus, abandoned his own form, and took that of a man, or of a good angel ; 
 it may be reasonably asked whether the passage, 2 Cor. xi. 14, Safan is 
 transformed into an angel of light, be intended literally, and if so, whether 
 this fantastic conception can be substantially true ? * 
 
 As to the temptations, it was early asked by Julian, how the devil could 
 hope to deceive Jesus, knowing, as he must, his higher nature ? ' And 
 Theodore's answer that the divinity of Jesus was then unknown to the devil, 
 is contradicted by the observation, that had he not then beheld a higher 
 nature in Jesus, he would scarcely have taken the trouble to appear specially 
 to him in person. In relation to the particular temptations, an assent cannot 
 be withheld from the canon, that, to be credible, the narrative must ascribe 
 nothing to the devil inconsistent with his established cunning. i" Now the 
 first temptation, appealing to hunger, we grant, is not ill-conceived ; if this 
 were ineffectual, the devil, as an artful tactician, should have had a yet more 
 alluring temptation at hand ; but instead of this, we find him, in Matthew, 
 proposing to Jesus the neck-breaking feat of casting himself down from the 
 pinnacle of the temple — a far less inviting experiment than the metamorphosis 
 of the stones. This proposition finding no acceptance, there follows, as a, 
 crowning effort, a suggestion which, whatever might be the bribe, every true 
 Israelite would instantly reject with abhorrence^ — to fall down and worship 
 the devil. So indiscreet a choice and arrangement of temptations has thrown 
 most modern commentators into perplexity. '^i As the three temptations took 
 place in three different and distant places, the question occurs : how did 
 Jesus pass with the devil from one to the other ? Even the orthodox hold 
 
 ^ De Wette, bibl. Dogmatik, § 171. Gmmberg, Grundziige einer Engellehre des A. T., 
 § S. in Winer's Zeitschrift f. wissenschaftliche Theologie, i Bd. s. 182 f. 
 
 ' Glaubenslehre, I, ss. 44, 45, der zweiten Ausg. 
 
 ' Schmidt, exeg. Beitrage. Kuinol, in Matt. 
 
 ' In a fragment of Theodore of Mopsuestia in Miinter's Fragm. Patr. Grsec. Fasc. 1, 
 p. 99 f- 
 
 »» Paulus. 
 
 " Hoffmann thinks that the devil, in his second temptation, designedly chose so startling 
 an example as the leap from the teiriple roof, the essential aim of the temptation being to. 
 induce Jesus to a false use of his miraculous power and consciousness of a divine nature. 
 But this evasion leaves the matter where it was, for there is the same absurdity in choosing 
 "unfit examples as unfit temptations. 
 
TEMPTATION OF JESUS. 255 
 
 that this change of place was effected quite naturally, for they suppose that 
 Jesus set out on a journey, and that the devil followed him.^^ But the ex- 
 pressions, the devil takes him — sets him, ■irapa\aij.j3a.va—i[a-T7iinv airov 6 8ia- 
 ^oA.os, in Matthew : taking, avaya-yoiv, brought, -^yayei/, set, lurqaiv, in Luke, 
 obviously imply that the, transportation was effected by the devil, and more- 
 over, the particular given in Luke, that the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms 
 of the world in a moment of time, points to something magical ; so that with- 
 out doubt the Evangelists intended to convey the idea of magical transporta- 
 tions, as in Acts viii. 29, a power of carrying away, apira^sLv, is attributed to 
 the Spirit of the Lord. But it was early found irreconcilable with the dignity 
 of Jesus that the devil should thus exercise a magical power over him, and 
 carry him about in the airj^^ an idea which seemed extravagant even to 
 those who tolerated the personal appearance of the devil. The incredibility 
 is augmented, when we consider the sensation which the appearance of Jesus 
 on the roof of the temple must have excited, even supposing it to be the 
 roof of Solomon's Porch only, in which case the gilded spears on the holy of 
 holies, and the prohibition to laymen to tread its roof, would not be an 
 obstacle.^* The well-known question suggested by the last temptation, as to 
 the situation of the mountain, from whose summit may be seen all the king- 
 doms of the world, has been met by the information that icdcr/^ios here means 
 no more than Palestine, and ^Sao-tXeias, its several kingdoms and tetrarchies ; ^^ 
 but this is a scarcely less ludicrous explanation than the one tliat the devil 
 showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world on a map ! No answer remains 
 but that such a mountain existed only in the ancient idea of the earth as a 
 plain, and in the popular imagination, which can easily stretch a mountain 
 up to heaven, and sharpen an eye to penetrate infinity. , 
 
 Lastly, the incident with which our narrative closes, namely, that angels 
 came and ministered to Jesus, is not without difficulty, apart from the above- 
 mentioned doubts as to the existence of such beings. For the expression 
 ^ii\Kavovv can signify no other kind of ministering than that of presenting 
 food ; and this is proved not only by the context, according to which Jesus 
 had need of such tendance, but by a comparison of the circumstances with 
 I Kings xix. 5, where an angel brings food to Elijah. But of the only two 
 possible suppositions, both are equally incongruous: that ethereal beings like 
 angels should convey earthly material food, or that the human body of Jesus 
 should be nourished with heavenly substances, if any such exist. 
 
 § 55- 
 
 THE TEMPTATION CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL OCCURRENCE EITHER 
 INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL; AND ALSO AS A PARABLE. 
 
 The impossibility of conceiving the sudden removals of Jesus to the teniple 
 and the mountain, led some even of the ancient commentators to the opinion, 
 that at least the locality of the second and third temptations was not present 
 to Jesus corporeally and externally, but merely in a vision ; ^ while some 
 
 " Hess, Geschichtejesu, I, s. 124. . ^ . , 
 
 " See the author of the discourse di jejunio et tmtationibus Chnsti, among Cyprian s 
 works* 
 
 " Compare Joseph. B. J. v. v. 6, vi. v. i. Fritzsche.in Matth., ». 164. De Wette, exeg. 
 
 Handb., i, I, s. 40. , , , t- ., t no 
 
 " The one proposed by Kuinol, in Matth., p. 90 ; the other by Fntzsche, P- 108. 
 t Theodore of Mopsuestia, ut sup. p. 107, maintained agamst Juhan that the devil had 
 
 made the image of a mountain, ^xuiTaaitui 6povs rbv didpoKon Treirow/icerai, and according to 
 
256 PART II. CHAPTER II. §55- 
 
 modern ones, to whom the personal appearance of the devil was especially 
 offensive, have supposed that the whole transaction with him passed from 
 beginning to end within the recesses of the soul of Jesus. Herewith they 
 have regarded the forty days' fast either as a mere internal representation ? 
 (which, .however, is a most inadmissible perversion of the plainly historic 
 text : viyeTTcucras rnxipai refrcrapaKOVTa varepov iirfCva(re, Matt. iv. 2), or as a real 
 fact, in which case the formidable difficulties mentioned in the preceding section 
 remain valid. The internal representation of the temptations is by some 
 made to accompany a state of ecstatic vision, for which they retain a super- 
 natural cause, deriving it either from God, or from the kingdom of darkness:^ 
 others ascribe to the vision more of the nature of a dream, and accordingly 
 seek a natural cause for it, in the reflections with which Jesus was occupied 
 during his waking moments.* According to this theory, Jesus, in the solemn 
 mood which the baptismal scene was calculated to produce, reviews his 
 messianic plan, and together with the true means for its execution, he recalls' 
 their possible abuses ; an excessive use of miracles and a love of domination, 
 by which man, in the Jewish mode of thinking, became, instead of an instru- 
 ment of God, a promoter of the plans of the devil. While surrendering him- 
 self to such meditations, his finely organized body is overcome by their 
 exciting influence ; he sinks for some time into deep exhaustion, and then into 
 a dream-like state, in which his mind unconsciously embodies his previous 
 thoughts in speaking and acting forms. 
 
 To support this transference of the whole scene to the inward nature of 
 Jesus, commentators think that they can produce some features of the evan- 
 gelical narrative itself The expression of Matthew (iv. i), avrjx^V «'« "^W 
 cpr)iJLOv vTTo Tov Hvev/xaTiK, and Still more that of Luke (iv. i), ■^yero iv riS 
 TIvevp,aTi., correspond fully to the forms: iykv6it.rjv iv Trvivii.ari, Rev. i.- 10, 
 aTrrp/eyKi fii ets €prip,ov iv irveufiAXTL, xvii. 3, and to similar Ones in Ezekiel ; and 
 as in these passages inward intuition is alone referred to, neither in the evan- 
 gelical ones, it is said, can any external occurrence be intended. But it has 
 been with reason objected,* that the above forms may be adapted either to 
 a real external abduction by the Divine Spirit (as in Acts viii. 39 ; 2 Kings ii. 
 16), or to one merely internal and visionary, as in the quotation from the 
 Apocalypse, so that between these two possible significations the context must 
 decide ; that in works replete with visions, as are the Apocalypse and Ezekiel, 
 the context indeed pronounces in favour of a merely spiritual occurrence ; but 
 in an historical work such as our gospels, of an external one. Dreams, and 
 especially visions, are always expressly announced as such in the historical 
 books of the New Testament : supposing, therefore, that the temptation was 
 a vision, it should have been introduced by the words elSev iv hpaimn, iv 
 CKcrrao-Et, as in Acts ix. 12, X. 10; or k(f>a,vr] avrio kwt ovap, as in Matt. i. 20, 
 ii. 13. Besides, if a dream had been narrated, the transition to a continuation 
 pf the real history must have been marked by a SieyepOfU, being awaked, as in 
 Matt. i. 24, ii. i4j 21; whereby, as Paulus truly says, much labour would 
 have been spared to expositors. 
 
 It is further alleged against the above explanations, that Jesus does not 
 
 the author of the discourse, already cited, dejejunio et tentationibus Christi, the first tempta- 
 tion it is true passed localiter in deserto, but Jesus only went to the temple and the mountain 
 as Ezelciel did from Chaboras to Jerusalem — that is, in spiritu. 
 
 2 Paulus, s. 379. 
 
 ' See for the former, H. Farmer, Gratz, Comm. zum Ev. Matth. 1, s. 217 ; for the latter, 
 Olshausen in loc, and Hoffmann (s. 326 f.) if I rightly apprehend him. 
 
 ^ Paulus, s. 377 ff. 
 
 ? Fritzsche, in Matth. 155 f. Usteri, Beitrag zur Erklarung der Versuchungsgeschichte, 
 s. 77+f. 
 
TEMPTATION OF JESUS. 2,57 
 
 seem to have been at any other time subject to ecstasies, and that he nowhere 
 else attaches importance to a dream, or even recapitulates one.* To what 
 end God should have excited such a vision in Jesus, it is difficult to conceive, 
 or how the devil should have had power and permission to produce it; espe- 
 cially in Christ. The orthodox, too, should not forget that, admitting the 
 temptation to be a dream, resulting from the thoughts of Jesus, the false 
 messianic ideas which were a part of those thoughts, are supposed to have had 
 a strong influence on his mind. ' 
 
 If, then, the history of the temptation is not to be understood as confined 
 to the soul of Jesus, and if we have before shown that it cannot be regarded 
 as supernatural; nothing seems to remain but to view it as a real, yet 
 thoroughly natural, event, and to reduce the tempter to a mere man. After 
 John had drawn attention to Jesus as the Messiah (thinks the author of the 
 Natural History of the Prophet of Nazareth),* the ruling party in Jerusalem 
 commissioned an artful Pharisee to put Jesus to the test, and to ascertain 
 whether he really possessed miraculous powers, or whether he might not be 
 drawn into the interest of the priesthood, and be induced to give his counten- 
 ance to an enterprise against the Romans. This conception of the Sta/JoXos 
 is in dignified consistency with that of the ayyeXot, who appeared after his 
 departure, to refresh Jesus, as an approaching caravan with provisions, or as 
 soft reviving breezes.'' But this view, as Usteri says, has so long completed 
 its phases in the theological world, that to refute it would be to waste words. 
 
 If the foregoing discussions have proved that the temptation, as narrated by 
 the synoptical Evangelists, cannot be conceived as an external or internal, a 
 supernatural or natural occurrence, the conclusion is inevitable, that it cannot 
 have taken place in the manner represented. 
 
 The least invidious expedient is to suppose that the source of our histories 
 of the temptation was some real event in the life of Jesus, so narrated by 
 him to his disciples as to convey no accurate impression of the fact. Tempt- 
 ing thoughts, which intruded themselves into his soul during his residence in 
 the wilderness, or at various seasons, and under various circumstances, but 
 which were immediately quelled by the unimpaired force of his will, were, 
 according to the oriental mode of thought and expression, represented by him 
 as a temptation of the devil ; and this figurative narrative was understood 
 literally.^** The most prominent objection to this view, that it compromises 
 the impeccability of Jesus,^^ being founded on a dogma, has no existence for 
 the critic.: we can, however, gather from the tenor of the evangelical history, 
 that the practical sense of Jesus was thoroughly clear and just ; but this 
 becomes questionable, if he could ever feel, an inclination corresponding to 
 the second temptation in Matthew, or even if he merely chose such a form 
 for communicating a more reasonable temptation to his disciples. Further, 
 in such a narrative Jesus would have presented a confused mixture of fiction 
 and truth out of his life, not to be expected from an ingenuous teacher, as he 
 otherwise appears to be, especially if it be supposed that the tempting 
 thoughts did not really occur to him after his forty days' sojourn in the 
 wilderness, and that this particular is only a portion of the fictitious investi- 
 
 ' Ullmann, Uber die Unsundlichkeit Jesu, in his Studien, i, i, s. 56. Usteri, ut sup., 
 
 s. 775- 
 
 ' Usteri, s. 776. 
 
 ' I Bd. s. 512 ff. . 
 
 » The former in Henke's n. Magazin 4, 2, a. 352 ; the latter m the naturiichen Ge- 
 
 schichte, I, s. 591 ff. 
 
 1" This view is held by Ullmann, Hase, and Neander. 
 
 1' Schleiermacher, Uber den Lukas, s. 54. Usteri, ut sup., s. 777- 
 
 R 
 
2S8 PART II. CHAPTER II. § 55. 
 
 ture ; while if it be assumed, on the contrary, that the date is historical, there 
 remains the forty days' fast, one of the most insurmountable difficulties of the 
 narrative. If Jesus wished simply to describe a mental exercise in the manner 
 of the Jews, who, tracing the effect to the cause, ascribed evil thoughts to 
 diabolical agency, nothing more was requisite than to say that Satan suggested 
 such and such thoughts to his mind ; and it was quite superfluous to depict 
 a personal devil and a journey with him, unless, together with the purpose of 
 narration, or in its stead, there existed a poetical and diadactic intention. 
 
 Such an intention, indeed, is attributed to Jesus by those who hold that 
 the history of the temptation was narrated by him as a parable, but understood 
 literally by his disciples. This opinion is not encumbered with the difficulty 
 of making some real inward experience of Jesus the basis of the history -^^ it 
 does not suppose that Jesus himself underwent such temptations, but only 
 that he sought to secure his disciples from them, by impressing on them, as a 
 compendium of messianic and apostolic wisdom, the three following maxims : 
 first, to perform no miracle for their own advantage even in the greatest 
 exigency ; secondly, never to venture on a chimerical undertaking in the 
 hope of extraordinary divine aid ; thirdly, never to enter into fellowship with 
 the wicked, however strong the enticement.** It was long ago observed, in 
 opposition to this interpretation, that the narrative is not easily recognized 
 as a parable, and that its moral is hard to discern.^* With respect to the 
 latter objection, it is true that the second temptation would be an ill-chosen 
 image ; but the former remark is the more important one. To prove that 
 this narrative has not the characteristics of a parable, the following definition 
 has been recently given : a parable, being essentially historical in its form, is 
 only distinguishable from real history when its agents are of an obviously 
 fictitious character.*^ This is the case where the subjects are mere generaliza- 
 tions, as in the parables of the sower, the king, and others of a like kind ; or 
 when they are, indeed, individualized, but so as to be at once recognized as 
 unhistorical persons, as mere supports for the drapery of fiction, of which even 
 I..azarus, in the parable of the rich man, is an example, though distinguished 
 by a name. In neither species of parable is it admissible to introduce as a 
 subject a person corporeally present, and necessarily determinate and historical. 
 Thus Jesus could not make Peter or any other of his disciples the subject of 
 a parable, still less himself, for the reciter of a parable is pre-eminently present 
 to his auditors ; and hence he cannot have delivered the history of the temp- 
 tation, of which he is the subject, to his disciples as a parable. To assume 
 that the history had originally another subject, for whom oral tradition substi- 
 tuted Jesus, is inadmissible, because the narrative, even as a parable, has no 
 definite significance unless the Messiah be its subject.*^ 
 
 If such a parable concerning himself or any other person, could not have 
 been delivered by Jesus, yet it is possible that it was made by some other 
 individual concerning Jesus ; and this is the view taken by Theile, who has 
 recently explained the history of the temptation as a parabolic admonition, 
 directed by some partisan of Jesus against the main features of the worldly 
 
 " If something really experienced by Jesus is supposed as the germ of the parable, this 
 opinion is virtually the same as the preceding. 
 
 " J. E. C. Schmidt, in seiner Bibliothek, i, i, s. 60 f. Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, 
 s. 54 f. Usteri, iiber den Taufer Johannes, die Taufe und Versuchung Christi, in den theol. 
 Studien, z, 3, s. 456 ff. 
 
 " K. Ch. L. Schmidt, exeg. Beitrage, i, s. 339. 
 
 '* Hasert, Bemerkungen iiber die Ansichten UUmatin's und Usteri's von der Versuchungs- 
 gesch., Studien, 3, 1, s. 74 f. 
 
 " Hasert, ut sup., s. 76. 
 
TEMPTATION OF JESUS. 259 
 
 messianic hope, with the purpose of establishing the spiritual and moral view 
 of the new economy." Here is the transition to the mythical point of view, 
 which the above theologian shuns, partly because the narrative is not suffici- 
 ently picturesque (though it is so in a high degree) ; partly because it is too 
 pure (though he thus imputes false ideas to the primitive Christians); and 
 partly because the formation of the mythus was too near the time of Jesus 
 (an objection which must be equally valid against the early misconstruction 
 of the parable). If it can be shown, on the contrary, that the narrative in 
 question is formed less out of instructive thoughts and their poetical clothing, 
 as is the case with a parable, than out of Old Testament passages and types, 
 we shall not hesitate to designate it a mythus. 
 
 § 56- 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPTATION AS A MYTHUS. 
 
 Satan, the evil being and enemy of mankind, borrowed from the Persian 
 religion, was by the Jews, whose exclusiveness limited all that was good and 
 truly human to the Israelitish people, viewed as the special adversary of their 
 nation, and hence as the lord of the heathen states with whom they were in 
 hostility.! The interests of the Jewish people being centred in the Messiah, 
 it followed that Satan was emphatically his adversary ; and thus throughout 
 the New Testament we find the idea of Jesus as the Messiah associated with 
 that of Satan as the enemy of his person and cause. Christ having appeared 
 to destroy the works of the devil (1 John iii. 8), the latter seizes every oppor- 
 tunity of sowing tares among the good seed (Matt. xiii. 39), and not only 
 aims, though unsuccessfully, at obtaining the mastery over Jesus himself 
 (John xiv. 30), but continually assails the faithful (Eph. vi. 1 1 ; i Pet. v. 8). 
 As these attacks of the devil on the pious are nothing else than attempts to 
 get them into his power, that is, to entice them to sin ; and as this can only 
 be done by the indirect suggestion or immediate insinuation of evil, seductive 
 thoughts, Satan had the appellation of 6 Treipd^av, the tempter. In the pro- 
 logue to the book of Job, he seeks to seduce the pious man from God, by the 
 instrumentality of a succession of plagues and misfortunes : while the ensnar- 
 ing counsel which the serpent gave to the woman was early consiclered an 
 immediate diabolical suggestion. (Wisdom ii. 24 ; John viii. 44; Rev. xii. 9.) 
 
 In the more ancient Hebrew theology, the idea was current that temptation 
 (nD3, LXX. ire.if)a.tjiiv) was an act of God himself, who thus put his favourites, 
 as Abraham (Gen. xxii. i), and the people of Israel (Exod. xvi. 4, and else- 
 where), to the test, or in just anger even instigated men to pernicious deeds. 
 But as soon as the idea of Satan was formed, the office of temptation was 
 transferred to him, and withdrawn from God, with whose absolute goodness it 
 began to be viewed as incompatible (James i. 13). Hence it is Satan, who 
 by his importunity obtains the divine permission to put Job to the severest 
 trial through suffering; hence David's culpable project of numbering the 
 people, which in the second book of Samuel was traced to the anger of God, 
 is in the later chronicles (r Chron. xxii. i) put directly to the account of the 
 
 " Zur Biographie Jesu, § 23. ,. , r .u 1 r *i, 
 
 > See Zech iii, i, where Satan resists the high priest standing before the angel of the 
 Lord; farther Vajikra rabba, f. cli. i (in Bertholdt, Christol. Jud., p. 183), where, accord- 
 ing to Rabbi Tochanan, Jehovah said to niDn l^^D (i-e. to Satan, comp. Heb. u. 14 and 
 Lightfoot, horse, p. 1088) : Feci quidem ti Koffiioupdropx, at vera cum fopulo fadens negotium 
 nulla in r» tibi est. 
 
26o PART II. CHAPTER II. § 56. 
 
 devil ; and even the well-meant temptation with which, according to Genesis, 
 God visited Abraham, in requiring from him the sacrifice of his son, was in 
 the opinion of the later Jews, undertaken by God at the instigation of Satan.^ 
 Nor was this enough — scenes were imagined in which the devil personally 
 encountered Abraham on his way to the place of sacrifice, and in which he 
 tempted the people of Israel during the absence of Moses.' 
 
 If the most eminent men of piety in Hebrew antiquity were thus tempted, 
 in the earlier view, by God, in the later one, by Satan, what was more natural 
 than to suppose that the Messiah, the Head of all the righteous, the repre- 
 sentative and champion of God's people, would be the primary object of the 
 assaults of Satan?* And we find this actually recorded as a rabbinical 
 opinion, 5 in the material mode of representation of the later Judaism, under 
 the form of a bodily appearance and a personal dialogue. 
 
 If a place were demanded where Satan might probably undertake such a 
 temptation of the Messiah, the wilderness would present itself from more 
 than one quarter. Not only had it been from Azazel (Lev. xvi. 8-10), and 
 Asmodeus (Tobit viii. 3), to the demons ejected by Jesus (Matt. xii. 43), the 
 fearful dwelling-place of the infernal powers : it was also the scene of tempta- 
 tion for the people of Israel, ihnij^lius Dei collectivusS' Added to this, it was 
 the habit of Jesus to retire to solitary places for still meditation and prayer 
 (Matt. xiv. 13 ; Mark i. 35 ; Luke vi. 12 ; John vi. 15) ; to which after his 
 consecration to the messianic office he would feel more than usually disposed. 
 It is hence possible that, as some theologians ^ have supposed, a residence of 
 Jesus in the wilderness after his baptism (though not one of precisely forty 
 days' duration) served as the historical foundation of our narrative ; but even 
 without this connecting thread, both the already noticed choice of place and 
 that of time are to be explained by the consideration, that it seemed con- 
 sonant with the destiny of the Messiah that, like a second Hercules, he should 
 undergo such a trial on his entrance into mature age and the messianic 
 ofifice. 
 
 But what had the Messiah to do in the wilderness ? That the Messiah, 
 the second Saviour, should like his typical predecessor, Moses, on Mount 
 Sinai, submit himself to the holy discipline of fasting, was an idea the more 
 
 2 See the passages quoted by Fabricius in Cod. pseudepigr. V. T. , p. 395, from Gemara 
 Sanhedrin. 
 
 ' The same, p. 396. As Abraham went out to sacrifice his son in obedience to Jehovah, 
 antevertii eum Satanas in via, et tali coUoquio cum ipso habito a proposito avertere eum cona- 
 tus est, etc. Schemoth, R. 41 (ap. Wetstein in loc. Matth-jiviaOT Moses in altum adscen- 
 deret, dixit Israeli : post dies XL hora sexta redibo. Cum. autl^i XL illi dies elapsi essent, 
 venit Satanas, et turbavit mundtim, dixiique : ubi est Moses, magister vester ? mortutis est. 
 It is worthy of remark that here also the temptation talces place after the lapse of 40 days. 
 
 ■* Thus Fritzsche, in Matt. p. 173. His very title is striking, p. 154 : Qteod in vulgari 
 JudcEorujn opinione erat, fore, ut Satanas salutaribus Messiee consiliis omni modo, sed sine 
 effectu tamen, nocere studeret, id ipsum Jesu Messii-e accidit. Nam quum is ad exemplum illus- 
 trium m-ajorum quadraginta dierum in deserto loco egisset jejunium, Satanas eum convenit, 
 protervisque aiqae impiis consiliis ad impietatem deducere frustra conatus est. 
 
 ' Schottgen, horae, ii. 538, adduces from Fini Flagellum Judseorum, iii. 35, a passage of 
 Pesikta : Ait Satan : Domine, permitte me tentare Messiam et ejus generationem ? Cui 
 inquit Deus : Non haberes ullam adversus eum potestatem. Satanas iterum ait : Sine me, 
 quia potestatem habeo. Respondit Deus : Si in hoc diutius perseverabis, Satan, potius (te) de 
 mundo perdam quam aliquam animam generationis Messiee perdi permittam. This passage at 
 least proves that a temptation of the Messiah undertaken by the devil, was not foreign to 
 the circle of Jewish ideas. Although the author of the above quotation represents the de- 
 mand of Satan to have been denied, others, so soon as the imagination was once excited, 
 would be sure to allow its completion. 
 
 ' Deut. viii. 2 (LXX_.) the people are thus addressed : ii.vqa8i](Tji waa-av t^v ddbv, ^v ■fjyayi 
 <re Ki)/3ios b Geis aov toOto mriTa.paKOiXTbv Stos iv T^ifyiijuf, Stus KaKilia-n ae koI ireipaa-r; tre Ko! 
 SiayvwaB'ff ri. iv ry icapSlq, aov, el ^uXofj; ris ivToKi^ airov ij otf. 
 
 ' Ziegler, in Gabler's n. theol. Journ., 5, 201 ; Theile, zur Biogr. J., § 23. 
 
TEMPTATION OF JESUS. 261 
 
 inviting, because it furnished a suitable introduction to the first temptation 
 which presupposed extreme hunger. The type of Moses and that of Elias 
 (i Kings XIX. 8), determined also the duration of this fast in the wilderness, 
 for they too had fasted forty days ; moreover, the number forty was held 
 sacred m Hebrew antiquity.^ Above all, the forty days of the temptation of 
 Jesus seem, as Olshausen justly observes, a miniature image of the forty years' 
 trial in the wilderness, endured by the Israelitish people as a penal emblem 
 of the forty days spent by the spies in the land of Canaan (Num, xiv. 34). 
 For, that in the temptations of Jesus there was a special reference to the 
 temptation of Israel in the wilderness, is shown by the circumstance that all 
 the passages cited by Jesus in opposition to Satan are drawn from the re- 
 capitulatory description of the journeyings of the Israelites in Deut. vi. and 
 viii. The apostle Paul too, i Cor. x. 6, enumerates a series of particulars 
 from the behaviour of the Israelites in the wilderness, with the consequent 
 judgments of God, and warns Christians against similar conduct, pronouncing, 
 V. 6 and II, the punishments inflicted on the ancients to be types for the 
 admonition of the living, his cotemporaries, on whom the ends of the world 
 were come ; wherefore, he adds, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest 
 he fall. It is not probable that this was merely the private opinion of the 
 apostle — it seems rather to have been a current notion that the hard trials of 
 the people led by Moses, as well as of Moses individually, were types of those 
 which awaited the followers of the Messiah in the catastrophe whicli he was 
 to usher in, and still more emphatically the Messiah himself, who here ap- 
 pears as the antitype of the people, gloriously overcoming all the temptations 
 under which they had fallen. 
 
 The Israelites were principally tempted by hunger during their wanderings 
 in the wilderness ; * hence the first temptation of the Messiah was determined 
 beforehand. The rabbins, too, among the various temptations of Abraham 
 which they recount, generally reckon hunger.'" That Satan, when prompting 
 Jesus to seek relief from his hunger by an exertion of his own will instead of 
 awaiting it in faith from God, should make use of the terms given in our 
 Evangelists, cannot be matter of surprise if we consider, not only that the 
 wilderness was stony, but that to produce a thing from stones was a proverbial 
 expression, denoting the supply of an object altogether wanting (Matt. iii. q ; 
 Luke xix. 40), and that stone and bread formed a common contrast (Matt. 
 vii. 9). The reply of Jesus to this suggestion is in the same train of ideas on 
 which the entire first act of temptation is constructed ; for he quotes the 
 lesson which, according to Deuteronomy viii. 3, the people of Israel tardily 
 learned from the temptation of hunger (a temptation, however, under which 
 they were not resigned, but were provoked to murmur) : namely, that man 
 shall not live by bread alone, etc. 
 
 But one temptation would not suffice. Of Abraham the rabbins enumerated 
 ten ; but this number was too large for a dramatic narrative like that in the 
 gospels, and among lower numbers the sacred three must have the prefer- 
 ence. Thrice during his spiritual contest in Gethsemane Jesus severed him- 
 self from his disciples (Matt, xxvi.) ; thrice Peter denied his Lord, and thrice 
 Jesus subsequently questioned his love (John xxi.). In that rabbinical pas- 
 sage which represents Abraham as tempted by the devil in person, the patri- 
 arch parries three thrusts from him ; in which particular, as well as in the 
 
 « See Wetstein, s. 270 ; De Wette, Kritik der mos. Geschichte, s. 24S ; the same in 
 Daub's and Creuzer's Studien, 3, s. 245 ; v. Bohlen, Genesis, s. 63 f. 
 8 Deut. viii. 3, koL iKAxwai ae Kal iXifmyxivria-e ffe, k. t. \. 
 '» S. Fabricius, Cod. pseudepigr. V. T., p. 398 ff. 
 
262 PART II. CHAPTER II. § $6. 
 
 manner in which Old Testament texts are bandied by the parties, the scene 
 is allied to the evangelical one.^*- 
 
 The second temptation (in Matthew) was not determined by itsrelation to 
 the preceding ; hence its presentation seems abrupt, and the choice fortuitous 
 or capricious. This may be true with respect to its form, but its substantial 
 meaning is in close connexion with the foregoing temptation, since it also has 
 reference to the conduct of the Jewish people in the wilderness. To them 
 the warning was given in Deut. vi. i6 to tempt God no more as they had 
 tempted him at Massah ; a warning which was reiterated i Cor. x. 9 to the 
 members of the new covenant, though more in allusion to Num. xxi. 4. To 
 this crying sin, therefore, under which the ancient people of God had fallen, 
 must the Messiah be incited, that by resisting the incitement he might com- 
 pensate, as it were, for the transgression of the people. Now the conduct 
 which was condemned in them as a tempting of the Lord, iKTreipd^tiv Kvpioy, 
 was occasioned by a dearth of water, and consisted in their murmurs at this 
 deprivation. This, to later tradition, did not seem fully to correspond to the 
 terms ; something more suitable was sought for, and from this point of view 
 there could hardly be a more eligible choice than the one we actually find in 
 our history of the temptation, for nothing can be more properly called a 
 tempting of God than so audacious an appeal to his extraordinary succour, as 
 that suggested by Satan in his second temptation. The reason why a leap 
 from the pinnacle of the temple was named as an example of such presump- 
 tion, is put into the mouth of Satan himself. 
 
 It occurred to the originator of this feature in the narrative, that the pas- 
 sage Ps. xci. 1 1 was capable of perversion into a motive for a rash act. It is 
 there promised to one dwelling under the protection of Jehovah (a designa- 
 tion under which the Messiah was pre-eminently understood), that angels 
 should bear him up in their hands, lest at any time he should dash his foot 
 against a stone. Bearing up in their hands to prevent a fall, seemed to 
 imply a precipitation from some eminence, and this might induce the idea 
 that the divinely-protected Messiah might hurl himself from a height with 
 impunity. But from what height? There could be no hesitation on this 
 point. To the pious man, and therefore to the head of all the pious, is 
 appropriated, according to Ps. xv. i, xxiv. 3, the distinction of going up to 
 Jehovah's holy hill, and standing within his holy place : hence the pinnacle of 
 the temple, in the presumptuous mode of inference supposed, might be re- 
 garded as the height whence the Messiah could precipitate himself unhurt. 
 
 The third temptation which Jesus underwent — to worship the devil — is not 
 apparent among the temptations of God's ancient people. But one of the 
 
 '' Gemara Sanh., as in note 3. The colloquy between Abraham and Satan is thus 
 continued : 
 
 1. Satanas: Annon tentare te (Deum) in tali re cegre feras? Ecce erudiebas multos — 
 labantem erigebant verba iua — guum nunc advenit ad te (Deus taliter te tenlans) nonne cegre 
 
 ferres (Job iv. 2-5)? 
 
 Cui resp. Abraham : Ego in integritate mea ambulo (Ps. xxvi. 11). 
 
 2. Satanas : Annon limor tuus, spes tua (Job iv. 6) ? 
 Abraham : Recordare guaso, quis est insons, quiperierit (v. 7) ? 
 
 3. Quare, quum videret Satanas, se nihil proficere, nee Abrahamum sibi obedire, dixit ad 
 ilium : et ad me verbum furtim ablatum est (v. 12), audivi — pecus futurum esse pro holo- 
 causto (Gen. xxii. 7), non autem Isaacum. 
 
 Cui resp. Abraham: Hac est pcena mendacis, ut eliam cum vera loquitur, fides ei nott 
 habeatur. 
 
 I am far from maintaining that this rabbinical passage was the model of our history of the 
 temptation ; but since it is impossible to prove, on the other side, that such narratives were 
 only imitations of the New Testament ones, the supposed independent formation of stories 
 so similar shows plainly enough the ease with which they sprang out of the given premisp=. 
 
TEMPTATION OF JESUS. 263 
 
 most fatal seductions by which the Israelites were led astray in the wilderness 
 was that of idolatry ; and the apostle Paul adduces it as admonitory to Chris- 
 tians. Not only is this sin derived immediately from the devil in a passage 
 above quoted ; ^'^ but in the later Jewish idea, idolatry was identical with the 
 worship of the devil (Baruch iv. 7 ; i Cor. x. 20). How, then, could the 
 worship of the devil be suggested to the Messiah in the form of a temptation ? 
 The notion of the Messiah as he who, being the King of the Jewish people, 
 was destined to be lord of all other nations, and that of Satan as the ruler of 
 the heathen world ^^ to be conquered by the Messiah, were here combined. 
 That dominion over the world which, in the christianized imagination of the 
 period, the Messiah was to obtain by a long and painful struggle, was offered 
 him as an easy bargain if he would only pay Satan the tribute of worship. 
 This temptation Jesus meets with the maxim inculcated on the Israelites, 
 Deut. vi. 13, that God alone is to be worshipped, and thus gives the enemy a 
 final dismissal. 
 
 Matthew and Mark crown their history of the temptation with the appear- 
 ance of angels to Jesus, and their refreshing him with nourishment after his 
 long fast and the fatigues of temptation. This incident was prefigured by a 
 similar ministration to Elijah after his forty days' fast, and was brought nearer 
 to the imagination by the circumstance that the manna which appeased the 
 hunger of the people in the wilderness was named, apros ayytXuv, angels' food 
 (Ps. Ixxviii. 25, LXX. ; Wisdom xvi. 20). 1* 
 
 " Note I. 
 
 " Bertholdt, Christolog. Judseorum Jesu aetate, § 36, not. I and 2 ; Fritzsche, Comm. in 
 Matth., s. 169 f. 
 
 " Compare with the above statement the deductions of Schmidt, Fritzsche, and Usteri, as 
 given § 54, notes 1-3, and of De Wette, exeg. Handbuch, I, I, s. 41 ff. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 LOCALITY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF 
 
 JESUS. 
 
 §57- 
 
 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SYNOPTICAL WRITERS AND JOHN, AS TO 
 THE CUSTOMARY SCENE OF THE MINISTRY OF JESUS. 
 
 According to the synoptical writers, Jesus, born indeed at Bethlehem in 
 Judea, but brought up at Nazareth in Galilee, only absented hiinself from 
 Galilee during the short interval between his baptism and the imprisonment 
 of the Baptist ; immediately after which, he returned thither and began his 
 ministry, teaching, healing, calling disciples, so as to traverse all Galilee; 
 using as the centre of his agency, his previous dwelling-place, Nazareth, 
 altfernately with Capernaum, on the north-west border of the lake of Tiberias 
 (Matt. iv. 12-25 parall.). Mark and Luke have many particulars con- 
 cerning this ministry in Galilee which are not found in Matthew, and those 
 which they have in common with him are arranged in a different order ; but 
 as they all agree in the geographical circuit which they assign to Jesus, the 
 account of the first Evangelist may serve as the basis of our criticism. 
 According to him the incidents narrated took place in Galilee, and 'partly in 
 Capernaum down to viii. 18, where Jesus crosses the Galilean sea, but is 
 scarcely landed on the east side when he returns to Capernaum. Here 
 follows a series of scenes connected by short transitions, such as Trapdymv 
 iiieidev (ix. 9, ^i), passing from thence, rorc (v. 14), t/ten, TaBraavroC A.oA.oCi'tos 
 (v. \^, while he spake .these things ; expressions which can imply no impor- 
 tant change of place, that is, of one province for another, which it is the 
 habit of the writer to mark much more carefully. The passage, ix. 35, 
 trepLrjyev 6 'IiycroCs Tois TroXets iratras — SiSa.(TKU)v ev rais cruvaycoyats avrlov, is 
 evidently only a repetition of iv. 23, and is therefore to be understood 
 merely of excursions in Galilee. The message of the Baptist (chap, xi.) is 
 also received by Jesus in Galilee, at least such appears to be the opinion of 
 the narrator, from his placing in immediate connexion the complaints of 
 Jesus against the Galilean cities. When delivering the parable in chap. xiii. 
 Jesus is by the sea, doubtless that of Galilee, and, as there is mention of his 
 house, o'lKia (v. i), probably in the vicinity of Capernaum. Next, after 
 having visited his native city Nazareth (xiii. 53) he passes over the sea (xiv. 
 13), according to Luke ix. 10), into the country of Bethsaida (Julias) ; 
 whence, however, after the miracle of the loaves, he speedily returns to the 
 western border (xiv. 34). Jesus then proceeds to the northern extremity 
 of Palestine, on the frontiers of Phoenicia (xv. 21); soon, however, returned 
 
 to the sea of Galilee (v. 29), he takes ship to the eastern side, in the 
 
 364 
 
LOCALITY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 265 
 
 coast of Magdala (v. 39), but again departs northward into the country of 
 Cffisarea Philippi (xvi. 13), in the vicinity of Lebanon, among the lower 
 ridges of which is to be sought the mount of the transfiguration (xvii. i). After 
 journeying in Galilee for some time longer with his disciples (xvii. 22), and 
 once more visiting Capernaum (v. 24), he leaves Galilee (xix. i) to travel 
 (as it is most probably explained) ^ through Perea into Judea (a journey which, 
 according to Luke ix. 52, he seems to have made through Samaria) ; xx. 17, 
 he is on his way to Jerusalem ; v. 29, he comes through Jericho ; and xxi. i, 
 is in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which, v. 10, he enters. 
 
 Thus, according to the synoptical writers, Jesus, from his return after being 
 baptized by John, to his final journey to Jerusalem, never goes beyond the 
 limits of North Palestine, but traverses the countries west and east of the 
 Galilean sea and the upper Jordan, in the dominions of Herod Antipas and 
 Philip, without touching on Samaria to the south, still less Judea, or the 
 country under the immediate adminstration of the Romans. And within 
 those hmits, to be still more -precise, it is the land west of the Jordan, 
 and the sea of Tiberias, and therefore Galilee, the province of Antipas, in 
 whicli Jesus is especially active ; only three short excursions on the eastern 
 border of the sea, and two scarcely longer on the northern frontiers of the 
 country, being recorded. 
 
 Quite otherwise is the theatre of the ministry of Jesus marked out in the 
 fourth gospel. It is true that here also he goes after his baptism by John 
 into Galilee, to the wedding at Cana (ii. i), and from thence to Capernaum 
 (v. 12); but in a few days the approaching passover calls him to Jerusalem 
 (v. 13). From Jerusalem he proceeds into the country of Judea (iii. 22), 
 and after some time exercising his ministry there (iv. i) he returns through 
 Samaria into Galilee (v. 43). Nothing is reported of his agency in this pro- 
 vince but a single cure, and immediately on this a new feast summons him 
 to Jerusalem (v. i), where he is represented as performing a cure, being 
 persecuted, and delivering long discourses, until he betakes himself (vi. i) 
 to the eastern shore of the sea of Tiberias, and from thence to Capernaum 
 (v. 17, 59). He then itinerates for some time in Galilee (vii. i), but again 
 leaves it, on occasion of the feast of tabernacles, for Jerusalem (v. 2, 10). 
 To this visit the Evangelist refers many discourses and vicissitudes of Jesus 
 (vii. 10, X. 21), and moreover connects with it the commencement of his 
 pubhc ministry at the feast of dedication, without noticing any intermediate 
 journey out of Jerusalem and Judea (x. 22). After this Jesus again retires 
 into the country of Perea, where he had first been with the Baptist (x. 40), 
 and there remains until the death of Lazarus recalls him to Bethany, near 
 Jerusalem (xi. i), whence he withdraws to Ephraim, in the vicinity of the 
 wilderness of Judea, until the approach of the passover, which he visited as 
 his last (xii. i ff.). 
 
 Thus, according to John, Jesus was present at four feasts in Jerusalem, 
 before the final one : was besides once in Bethany, and had been active for a 
 considerable time in Judea and on his journey through Samaria. 
 
 Why, it must be asked, have the synoptical writers been silent on this fre- 
 quent presence of Jesus in Judea and Jerusalem? .Why have they represented 
 the matter, as if Jesus, before his last fatal journey to Jerusalem, had not over- 
 stepped the limits of Galilee and Perea ? This discrepancy between the 
 synoptical writers and John was long overlooked in the church, and of late 
 it has been thought feasible to deny its existence. It has been said, that 
 Matthew, at the commencement, lays the scene in Galilee and Capernaum, 
 
 ■ Fritzsche, p. 591. 
 
266 PART II. CHAPTER III. § 57. 
 
 and pursues his narrative without noticing any journey into Judea until the 
 last; but that we are not hence to conclude that Matthew was unacquainted 
 with the earlier ministry of Jesus in Judea, for as with this Evangelist the 
 local interest is subordinate to the effort at an appropriate arrangement of his 
 events, many particulars in the former part of his history, which he narrates 
 without indicating any place, may have been known, though not stated by 
 him, to have occurred in the earlier journeys and residences in Judea.^ 
 But this alleged subordination of the local interest in Matthew, is nothing 
 more than a fiction of the harmonist, as Schneckenburger has recently 
 proved." Matthew very carefully marks (chap, iv.) the beginning and (chap, 
 xix.) the end of the almost exclusive residence of Jesus in Galilee ; all the 
 intervening narration must therefore be regarded as belonging to that resi- 
 dence, unless the contrary be expressed ; and since the Evangelist is on the 
 alert to notice the short excursions of Jesus across the lake and into the north 
 of Galilee, he would hardly pass over in silence the more important, and some- 
 times prolonged visits to Judea, had they been known or credited by him. 
 Thus much only is to be allowed, that Matthew frequently neglects the more 
 precise statement of localities, as the designation of the spot or neigbourhood 
 in which Jesus laboured from time to time : but in his more general bio- 
 graphical statements, such as the designation of the territories and provinces 
 of Palestine, within the boundaries of which Jesus exercised his ministry, he 
 is as accurate as any other Evangelist. 
 
 Expositors must therefore accommodate themselves to the admission of 
 a difference between the synoptical writers and John,* and those who think 
 it incumbent on them to harmonize the Gospels must take care lest this 
 difference be found a contradiction ; which can only be prevented by deduc- 
 ng the discrepancy, not from a disparity between the ideas of the Evangelists 
 is to the sphere of the ministry of Jesus, but from the difference of mental 
 aias under which they severally wrote. Some suppose that Matthew, being a 
 Galilean, saw the most interest in Galilean occurrences, and hence confined 
 his narrative to them, though aware of the agency of Jesus at Jerusalem.^ 
 But what biographer, who had himself accompanied his hero into various 
 provinces, and beheld his labours there, would confine his narration to what he 
 had performed in his (the biographer's) native province ? Such provincial 
 exclusiveness would surely be quite unexampled. Hence others have pre- 
 ferred the supposition that Matthew, writing at Jerusalem, purposely 
 selected from the mass of discourses and actions of Jesus with which he was 
 acquainted, those of which Galilee was the theatre, because they were the least 
 known at Jerusalem, and required narrating more than what had happened 
 within the hearing, and was fresh in the memories of its inhabitants^® In 
 opposition to this it has been already remarked,'' that there is no proof of 
 Matthew's gospel being especially intended for the Christians of Judea and 
 Jerusalem : that even assuming this, a reference to the events which had 
 happened in the reader's own country could not be superfluous : and that, 
 lastly, the like limitation of the ministry of Jesus to Galilee by Mark and 
 Luke cannot be thus accounted for, since these Evangelists obviously did not 
 write for Judea (neither were they Galileans, so that this objection is equally 
 
 ' Olshausen, bibl. Coium., I, s. 189 f. 
 
 ' .Schneckenburger, Beitrage, s. 38 f. ; iiber den Ursprung u. s. f., s. 7 f. 
 •* De Wette, Einleitung in das N. T., § 98 a. 106. 
 ^ Paulus, exeg. Handb., I, a, s. 39. 
 
 ' Guerike, Beitrage zur Einleitung in das N. T., s. 33; Tholuck, Glaubwurdigkeit, s. 
 303- 
 ' Schneckenburger, iiber den Ursprung u. s. w., s. 9. 
 
LOCALITY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 267 
 
 valid against the first explanation) ; and were not in so servile a relation to 
 Matthew as to have no access to independent information that might give 
 them a more extended horizon. It is curious enough that these two attempts 
 to solve the contradiction between the synoptical writers and John, are them- 
 selves in the same predicament of mutual contradiction. For if Matthew 
 has been silent on the incidents in Judea, according to one, on account of 
 his proximity, according to the other, on account of his remoteness, it follows 
 that, two contrary hypotheses being made with equal ease to explain the same 
 fact, both are alike inadequate. 
 
 No supposition founded on the local relations of the writers sufficing to 
 explain the difference in question, higher ground must be taken, in a con- 
 sideration of the spirit and tendency of the evangelical writings. From this 
 point of view the following proposition has been given : The cause 
 which determined the difference in the contents of the fourth gospel and that 
 of the synoptical ones, accounts also for their divergency as to the limits 
 they assign to the ministry of Jesus ; in other words, the discourses delivered 
 by Jesus in Jerusalem, and recorded by John, required for their comprehen- 
 sion a more mature development of Christianity than that presented in the 
 first apostolic period ; hence they were not retained in the primitive evangelical 
 tradition, of which the synoptical writers were the organs, and were first re- 
 stored to the church by John, who wrote when Christianity was in a more 
 advanced stage.* But neither is this attempt at an explanation satisfactory, 
 though it is less superficial than the preceding. For how could the 
 popular and the esoteric in the teaching of Jesus be separated with such 
 nicety, that the former should be confined to Galilee, and the latter to 
 Jerusalem (the harsh discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum alone ex- 
 cepted) ? It may be said : in Jerusalem he had a more enlightened public 
 around him, and could be more readily understood than in Galilee. But 
 the Galileans could scarcely have misunderstood Jesus more lamentably than 
 did the Jews from first to last, according to John's representation, and as in 
 Galilee he had the most undisturbed communion with his disciples, we should 
 rather have conjectured that here would be the scene of his more profound 
 instruction. Besides, as the synoptical writers have given a plentiful glean- 
 ing of lucid and popular discourses from the final residence of Jesus in 
 Jerusalem, there is no ground whatever for believing that his earlier visits 
 were devoid of such, and that his converse on these occasions took through- 
 out a higher tone. But even allowing that all the earlier discourses of Jesus in 
 Judea and Jerusalem were beyond the range of the first apostolic tradition, 
 deeds were performed there, such as the cure of the man who had had an 
 infirmity thirty-eight years, the conferring of sight on the man born blind, 
 and the raising of Lazarus, which, from their imposing rank among the evi- 
 dences of Christianity, must also have necessitated the mention of those early 
 visits of Jesus to Judea during which they occurred. 
 
 Thus it is impossible to explain why the synoptical writers, if they, knew of 
 the earlier visits of Jesus to Jerusalem, should not have mentioned them, 
 and it must be concluded that if John be right, the first three Evangelists 
 knew nothing of an essential part of the earlier ministry of Jesus ; if, on the 
 other hand, the latter be right, the author of the fourth gospel, or of the 
 tradition by which he was guided, fabricated a large portion of what he has 
 narrated concerning the ministry of Jesus, or at least assigned to it a false 
 locality. 
 
 " Kern iiber den Ursprung des Evang. Matthai, in der Tiibinger Zeitschrift, 1834, 2tes 
 Heft, s. 198 S. Comp. Hug, Einleit. in d. N. T., 2, s. 205 ff. (3te Ausg.). 
 
268 PART n. CHAPTER III. § 5/. 
 
 On a closer examination, however, the relation between John and the 
 synoptical writers is not simply such, that the latter might not know what the 
 former records, but such, that they must have proceeded from positively 
 opposite data. For example, the synoptical writers, Matthew especially, as 
 often as JesuS leaves Galilee, from the time that he takes up his abode there 
 after the Baptist's imprisonment, seldom neglect to give a particular reason ; 
 such as that he wished to escape from the crowd by a passage across the sea 
 (Matt. viii. i8), or that he withdrew into the wilderness of Perea to avoid 
 the snares of Herod (xiv. 13), or that he retired into the region of Tyre and 
 Sidon on account of the offence taken by the scribes at his preaching (xv. 
 21): John, on the contrary, generally alleges a special reason why Jesus 
 leaves Judea, and retires into Galilee. Not to contend that his very first 
 . journey thither appears to be occasioned solely by the invitation to Cana, his 
 departure again into Galilee after the first passover attended by him in his 
 public character, is expressly accounted for by the ominous attention which the 
 increasing number of his disciples had excited among the Pharisees (iv. i ff.). 
 His retirement after the second feast, also, into the country east of the Sea of 
 Tiberias (vi. i), must be viewed in relation to the ei,riTovv avrov ol 'louSaioi 
 aTTOKTetvai (v. 18), since immediately after, the Evangelist assigns as a reason 
 for the continuance of Jesus in Galilee, the malignant designs of his enemies, 
 which rendered his abode in Judea perilous to his life (vii. i). The interval 
 between the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of the Dedication seems to 
 have been spent by Jesus in the capital,' no unpropitious circumstances com- 
 pelling him to absent himself (x. 22); on the other hand, his journey into 
 Perea (x. 40) and that into Ephraim (xi. 54) are presented as effects of his 
 persecution by the Jews. 
 
 Thus precisely the same relation as that which exists between Matthew 
 and Luke, with respect to the original dwelling-place of the parents of Jesus 
 is found between the first three Evangelists and the fourth, with respect to 
 the principal theatre of his ministry. As, in the former instance, Matthew 
 pre-supposes Bethlehem to be the original place of abode, and Nazareth the 
 one subsequently adopted through fortuitous circumstances, while Luke gives 
 the contrary representation ; so in' the latter, the entire statement of the 
 synoptical writers turns on the idea that, until his last journey, Galilee was 
 the chosen field of the labours of Jesus, and that he only left it occasionally, 
 from particular motives and for a short time ; while that of John, on the 
 contrary, turns on the supposition, that Jesus would have taught solely in 
 Judea and Jerusalem had not prudence sometimes counselled him to retire 
 into the more remote provinces.*" 
 
 Of these two representations one only can be true. Before they were per- 
 ceived to be contradictory, the narrative of John was incorporated with that 
 of the synoptical writers ; since they have been allowed to be irreconcilable, 
 the verdict has always been in favour of the fourth Evangelist ; and so pre- 
 valent is this custom, that even the author of the Probabilia does not use the 
 difference to the disadvantage of the latter. De Wette numbers it among the 
 objections to the authenticity of Matthew's gospel, that it erroneously limits 
 the ministry of Jesus to Galilee,^! and Schneckenburger has no more important 
 ground of doubt to-produce against the apostolic origin of the first canonical 
 gospel, than the unacquaintance of its author with the extra- Galilean labours 
 of Jesus.** If this decision be well founded, it must rest on a careful con- 
 
 ' Tholuck, Comin. zum Evang. Joh., p., 207. 
 '" Comp. Liicke, ut sup., ». 546. 
 " De Wette, Einleitung in das N. T., § 98. 
 " Schneckenburger, iiber den Ursprungu. s. f., s. 7. ; Beitrage u. s. {., s. 38 ff. 
 
LOCALITY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS, 269 
 
 sideration of the question, which of the two incompatible narratives has the 
 greater corroboration from external sources, and the more internal verisimili- 
 tude ? We have shown in the introduction that the external evidence or 
 testimony for the authenticity of the fourth gospel and of the synoptical ones, 
 that of Matthew emphatically, is of about equal value : that is, it determines 
 nothing in either case, but leaves the decision to the internal evidence. In 
 relation to this, the following question must be considered : is it more prob- 
 able that, although Jesus was actually often in Judea and Jerusalem previous 
 to his last journey, yet at the time and place whence the synoptical gospels 
 arose, all traces of the fact had disappeared : or that, on the contrary, 
 although Jesus never entered Judea for the exercise of his public ministry 
 before his last journey thither, yet at the time and place of the composition 
 of the fourth gospel a tradition of several such visits had been formed ?| 
 
 The above critics seek to show that the first might be the case, in the 
 following manner. The first gospel, they say,i' and more or less the two 
 middle ones, contain the tradition concerning the life of Jesus as it was 
 formed in Galilee, where the memory of what Jesus did and said in that 
 province would be preserved with a natural partiality — while, of that part of 
 his life which was spent out of Galilee, only the most critical incidents, such 
 as his birth, consecration, and especially his last journey, which issued in his 
 death, would be retained ; the remainder, including his early journeys to the 
 various feasts, being either unknown or forgotten, so that any fragments of 
 information concerning one or other of the previous residences of Jesus at 
 Jerusalem would be referred to the last, no other being known. 
 
 But John himself, in whom our theologians rest all their confidence, ex- 
 pressly mentions (iv. 45) that at the first passover visited by Jesus after his 
 baptism (and probably at others also) the Galileans were present, and appar- 
 ently in great numbers, since as a consequence of their having witnessed his 
 works in Jerusalem, Jesus found a favourable , reception in Galilee. If we add 
 to this, that most of the disciples who accompanied Jesus in his early journeys 
 to the feasts were Galileans (John iv. 22, ix. 2), it is inconceivable that 
 tidings of the ministry of Jesus at Jerusalem should not from the first reach 
 Galilee. Once there, could time extinguish them ? We grant that it is in the 
 nature of tradition to fuse and remodel its materials, and as the last journey 
 of Jesus to Jerusalem was pre-eminently memorable, it might absorb the re- 
 collections of the previous ones. But tradition has also another impulse, and 
 it is its strongest ; namely to glorify. It may indeed be said that to circum- 
 scribe the early ministry of Jesus by the frontiers of Galilee would serve the 
 purpose of glorifying that province, in which the synoptical tradition had its 
 origin. But the aim of the synoptical legend was not to glorify Galilee, on 
 which it pronounces severe judgments ; — Jesus is the object round which it 
 would cast a halo, and his greatness is proportionate to the sphere of his 
 influence. Hence, to show that from the beginning of his ministry he made 
 himself known beyond the Galilean angulus terra, and that he often presented 
 himself on the brilliant theatre of the capital, especially on occasions when 
 it was crowded with spectators and hearers from all regions, was entirely ac- 
 cording to the bent of the legend. If, therefore, there had historically been 
 but one journey of Jesus to Jerusalem, tradition might be tempted to create 
 more by degrees, since it would argue— how could so great a light as Jesus 
 have remained so long under a bushel, and not rather have early and often 
 placed himself on the lofty stand which Jerusalem presented ? Opponents, 
 
 " Schneckenburger, Beitrage, s. 207. Comp. Gabler's Treatise on the Resurrection of 
 Lazarus, in his Journal fiir auserlesene theol. Literatur, 3, 2. 
 
270 TART 11. CHAPTER III. § S7- 
 
 too, might object, like the unbelieving brethren of Jesus (John vii. 3, 4), that 
 he who is conscious of the power to perform something truly great, does not 
 conceal himself, but seeks publicity, in order that his capabilities may be 
 recognized ; a:nd to these opponents it was thought the best answer to show 
 that Jesus actually did seek such publicity, and early obtained recognition in 
 an extended sphere. Out of this representation would easily grow the idea 
 which lies at the foundation of the fourth gospel, that not Galilee, but Judea, 
 was the proper residence of Jesus. 
 
 Thus, viewed from the point of the possible formation of a legend, the 
 balance inclines in favour of the synoptical writers. But is the result the same 
 when we ascend to the relations and designs of Jesus, and from this point of 
 view inquire, if it be more probable that Jesus visited Jerusalem once only 
 or several times during his public life ? 
 
 The alleged difficulty, that the various journeys to the feasts offer the prin- 
 cipal means of accounting for the intellectual development of Jesus is easily 
 removed. For those journeys alone would not suffice to explain the mental 
 pre-eminence of Jesus and as the main stress must still be placed on his 
 internal gifts, we cannot pronounce whether to a mind like his, even Galilee 
 might not present enough aliment for their maturing ; besides, an adherence 
 to the synoptical writers would only oblige us to renounce those journeys to 
 the feasts which Jesus took after his public appearance, so that he might still 
 have been present at many feasts previous to his messianic career, without 
 assuming a conspicuous character. It has been held inconceivable that Jesus, 
 so long after his assumption of the messianic character, should confine him- 
 self to Galilee, instead of taking his stand in Judea and Jerusalem, which, 
 from the higher culture and more extensive foreign intercourse of their popu- 
 lation, were a much more suitable field for his labours ; but it has been long 
 remarked, on the other hand, that Jesus could find easier access to the simple 
 and energetic minds of Galilee, less fettered by priestcraft and Pharisaism, and 
 therefore acted judiciously in obtaining a firm footing there by a protracted 
 ministry, before he ventured to Jerusalem, where, in the centre of priestLy and 
 Pharisaic domination, he must expect stronger opposition., 
 
 There is a graver difficulty in the synoptical statement, considered in rela- 
 tion to the Mosaic law and Jewish custom. The law rigorously required that 
 every Israelite should appear before Jehovah yearly at the three principal 
 feas'ts (Exod. xxiii. 14 ff.), and the reverence of Jesus for the Mosaic institutes 
 (Matt. V. 17 ff.) renders it improbable that, during the whole course of his 
 ministry, he should have undertaken but one journey of observance. 1* The 
 Gospel of Matthew, however, be our judgment what it may as to the date and 
 place of its composition, did certainly arise in a community of Jewish Christ- 
 ians, who well knew what the law prescribed to the devout Israelite, and 
 must therefore be aware of the contradiction to the law in which the practice 
 of Jesus was involved, when, during a public ministry of several years' dura- 
 tion, only one attendance at Jerusalem was noticed, or (in case the synoptical 
 writers supposed but a single year's ministry, of which we shall speak below) 
 when he was represented as neglecting two of the great annual feasts. If 
 then, a circle in close proximity to Jewish usage found nothing offensive in 
 the opinion that Jesus attended but one feast, may not this authority remove 
 all hesitation on the subject from our minds ? Besides, on a more careful 
 weighing of the historical and geographical relations, the question suggests 
 itself, whether between the distant, half Gentile Galilee, and Jerusalem, the 
 ecclesiastical bond was so close that the observance of all the feasts could be 
 
 " Hug, Einleit. in das N. T., 2, s. 210. 
 
LOCALITY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 2/1 
 
 expected from a Galilean? Even according to the fourth gospel, Jesus 
 omitted attending one passover that occurred in the period of his public 
 career (John vi. 4). 
 
 There is, however, one point unfavourable to the synoptical writers. That 
 Jesus in his last visit to Jerusalem should, within the short space of the 
 feast day, have brought himself into such decided hostility to the ruling party 
 in the capital, that they contrived his arrest and death, is inexplicable, if we 
 reject the statement of John, that this hostility originated and was gradually 
 aggravated during his frequent previous visits.^" " If it be rejoined, that even 
 in Galilean synagogues there were stationary scribes and Pharisees (Matt. ix. 
 3, xii. 14), that such as were resident in the capital often visited the provinces 
 (Matt. XV. i), and that thus there existed a hierarchical nexus by means of 
 which a deadly enmity against Jesus might be propagated in Jerusalem before 
 he had ever publicly appeared there ; we then have precisely that ecclesias- 
 tical bond between Galilee and Jerusalem which renders improbable on the 
 part of Jesus the non-observance of a series of feasts. Moreover the synop- 
 tical writers have recorded an expression of Jesus which tells strongly against 
 their own view. The words : Jerusalem, Jerusalem — how often would I have 
 gathered thy children together — and ye would not, have no meaning whatever in 
 Luke, who puts them into the mouth of Jesus before he had even seen Jeru- 
 salem during his public ministry (xiii. 34) ; and even from the better arrange- 
 ment of Matthew (xxiii. 37) it is not to be understood how Jesus, after a single 
 residence of a fe^ days in Jerusalem, could found his reproaches on multi- 
 plied efforts to win over its inhabitants to his cause. This whole apostrophe 
 of Jesus has so original a character, that it is difficult to believe it incorrectly 
 assigned to him ; hence to explain its existence, we must suppose a series of 
 earlier residences in Jerusalem, such as those recorded by the fourth Evan- 
 gelist. There is only one resource, — to pronounce the statement of the 
 synoptical writers unhistorical in the particular of limiting the decisive visit 
 of Jesus to Jerusalem to the few days of the feast, and to suppose that he 
 made a more protracted stay in the capital.'^ 
 
 It will be seen from the foregoing discussion, whether, when so much is to 
 be argued pro and contra, the unhesitating decision of the critics in favour of 
 the fourth Evangelist's statement is a just one. For our own part, we are far 
 from being equally hasty in declaring for the synoptical writers, and are 
 content to have submitted the actual state of the controversy, as to the com- 
 parative merits of John and the synoptical writers, to further consideration. 
 
 § 58. 
 
 THE RESIDENCE OF JESUS AT CAPERNAUM. 
 
 During the time spent by Jesus in Judea, the capital and its environs 
 recommended themselves as the most eligible theatre for his agency ; and we 
 might have conjectured that in like manner, when in Galilee, he would have 
 chosen his native city, Nazareth, as the centre of his labours. Instead of 
 this we find him, when not travelling, domesticated at Capernaum, as already 
 mentioned ; the synoptical writers designate this place the iSta irdXts of Jesus 
 (Matt. ix. i', comp. Mark ii. i) ; here, according to them, was the oIkos, 
 which Jesus was accustomed to inhabit (Mark ii. i, iii. 20 ; Matt. xiii. i, 
 
 " Hug, ut supra, s. 211. f. 
 
 " Compare Weisse, die evang. Geschichte I, s. 29 ff. 
 
272 PART II. CHAPTER III. § S8. 
 
 36) probably that of Peter (Mark i. 29 ; Matt. viii. 14, xvii. 25 ; Luke iv. 
 38). In the fourth gospel, which only mentions very transient visits of Jesus 
 to Galilee, Capernaum is not given as his dwelling-place, and Cana is the 
 place with which he is supposed to have the most connexion. After his 
 baptism he proceeds first to Cana (ii. i), on a special occasion, it is true ; 
 after this he makes a short stay at Capernaum (v. 12); and on his return 
 from his first attendance at the passover, it is again Cana to which he resorts 
 and in which the fourth Evangelist makes him effect a cure (iv. 46 ff.), accor- 
 ding to the synoptical writers, performed at Capernaum, and after this we find 
 him once again in the synagogue at Capernaum (vi. 59). The most eminent 
 disciples, also, are said by the writer of the fourth gospel, not as by the 
 synoptical writers, to come from Capernaum, but partly from Cana (xxi. 2) 
 and partly from Bethsaida (i. 45). The latter place, even in the synoptical 
 gospels, is mentioned, with Chorazin, as one in which Jesus had been pre- 
 eminently active (Matt. xi. 21 ; Luke x. 13). 
 
 Why Jesus chose Capernaum as his central residence in Galilee, Mark does 
 not attempt to show, but conducts him thither without comment after his 
 return into Galilee, and the calling of the two pairs of fishermen (i. 21). Mat- 
 thew (iv. 13 ff.) alleges as a motive, that an Old Testament prophecy (Isa. viii. 
 23, ix. i), was thereby fulfilled; a dogmatical motive, and therefore of no 
 historical value. Luke thinks he has found the reason in a fact, which is more 
 worthy of notice. According to him, Jesus after his return from baptism 
 does not immediately take up his residence in Capernaum, but makes an 
 essay to teach in Nazareth, and after its failure first turns to Capernaum. 
 This Evangelist tells us in the most graphic style how Jesus presented himself 
 at the synagogue on the sabbath-day, and expounded a prophetic passage, so 
 as to excite general admiration, but at the same time to provoke malicious 
 reflections on the narrow circumstances of his family. Jesus, in reply, is 
 made to refer the discontent of the Nazarenes, that he performed no miracles 
 before them as at Capernaum, to the contempt which every prophet meets 
 with in his own country, and to threaten them in Old Testament allusions, 
 that the divine benefits would be withdrawn from them and conferred on 
 strangers. Exasperated by this, they lead him to the brow of the hill, intend- 
 ing to cast him down; he, however, passes unhurt through the midst of them 
 (iv. 16-30). 
 
 Both the other synoptical writers are acquainted with a visit of Jesus to 
 Nazareth ; but they transfer it to a much later period, when Jesus had been 
 long labouring in Galilee, and resident in Capernaum (Matt. xiii. 54 ff. ; Mark 
 vi. I ff.). To reconcile their narrative with that of Luke, it has been custom- 
 ary to suppose that Jesus, notwithstanding his first rough reception, as de- 
 scribed by Luke, wished to make one more experiment whether his long 
 absence and subsequent fame might not have altered the opinion of the Naza- 
 renes — an opinion worthy of a petty town : but the result was equally un- 
 favourable.i The two scenes, however, are too similar to be prevented from 
 mingling with each other. In both instances the teaching of Jesus in the 
 synagogue makes the same impression on the Nazarenes, — that of amazement 
 at the wisdom of the carpenter's son (Luke only giving more details) : in 
 both instances there is a lack of miracles on the part of Jesus, the first two 
 Evangelists presenting more prominently its cause, namely, the unbelief of the 
 Nazarenes, and the third dwelling more on its unfavourable effect : lastly in 
 both instances, Jesus delivers the maxim (the result of his experience), that 
 a prophet is the least esteemed in his own country : and to this Luke appends 
 
 1 Paulus, exeg. ilandb. i, 6, s. 463. 
 
LOCALITY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE .OF JESUS. 2/3 
 
 a more ample discourse, which irritates the Na,zarenes to attempt an act of 
 vlioence, unnoticed by the other Evangelists. But the fact which most de- 
 cisively shows that the two narratives cannot exist in each other's presence, 
 is that they both claim to relate the first incident of the kind ;« for in both, 
 the Nazarenes express their astonishment at the suddenly revealed intellectual 
 gifts of Jesus, which they could not at once reconcile with his known con- 
 dition.' The first supposition that presents itself is, that the scene described 
 by Luke preceded that of Matthew and Mark ; but if so, the Nazarenes 
 could not wonder a second time and inquire, whence hath this man this 
 wisdotn ? since they must have had proof on that point on the first occasion ; 
 if, on the contrary, we try to give the later date to Luke's incident, it appears 
 unnatural, for the same reason that they should wonder at the gracious words 
 which proceeded out of his mouth, neither could Jesus well say, This day is 
 this scripture fulfilled in your ears, without severely reflecting on their former 
 insensibility, which had retarded that fulfilment. 
 
 These considerations have led the majority of modern commentators to the 
 opinion, that Luke and the other synoptical Evangelists have here given the 
 same history, merely differing in the date, and in the colouring of the facts ;* 
 and the only question among them is, which of the two narrations deserves 
 the preference. With respect to the date, that of Luke seems, at the first 
 glance, to have the advantage; it gives the desiderated motive for the change 
 of residence, and the wonder of the Nazarenes appears most natural on the 
 supposition that then he first assumed the function of a public teacher ; hence 
 Matthew's divergency from Luke has been recently made a serious reproach 
 to hi,m as a chronological error.^ But there is one particular in all the three 
 narratives which is an obstacle to our referring the incident to so early a 
 period. If Jesus presented himself thus at Nazareth before he had made 
 Capernaum the pHncipal theatre of his agency, the Nazarenes could not utter 
 the words which Jesus imputes to them in Luke : Whatsoever we have heard 
 done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country ; nor could they, according to 
 Matthew and Mark, be astonished at the mighty works of Jesus,^ for as he per- 
 formed few if any miracles at Nazareth, that expression, notwithstanding its 
 perplexing connexion with the o-o^ta, the wisdom, manifested in that city, 
 must refer to works performed elsewhere. If, then, the Nazarenes wondered 
 at the deeds of Jesus at Capernaum, or were jealous of the distinction conferred 
 on that city, Jesus must have previously resided there, and could not have 
 proceeded thither for the first time in consequence of the scene at Nazareth. 
 From this, it is plain that the later chronological position of the narrative is 
 the original one, and that Luke, in placing it earlier, out of mere conjecture, 
 was honest or careless enough to retain the mention of the wonders at Caper- 
 naum, though only consistent with the later position.'? If, with regard to the 
 date of the incident, the advantage is thus on the side of Matthew and Mark, 
 we are left in darkness as to the motive which led Jesus to alter his abode 
 from Nazareth to Capernaum ; unless the circumstance that some of his most 
 confidential disciples had their home there, and the more extensive traffic of 
 the place, may be regarded as inducements to the measure. 
 
 The fulness and particularity of Luke's description of the scene, contrasted 
 
 ^ This ScUeiermacher has made evident, iiber den Lukas, s. 63. 
 
 ' Siefifert, iiber den Ursprung des ersten kanonischen Evangeliums, s. 89. 
 
 * Olshausen, Fritzsche, in loc. Hase, Leben Jesu, § 62. Sieffert, ut supra. 
 ' Sieffert, ut supra. 
 
 * What these mighty works were can only be made clear when we come to the chapter on 
 the Miracles. 
 
 ' Schleiermacher, ut supra, s. 64. 
 
 S 
 
274 PART II. CHAPTER III. § S8. 
 
 with the summary style in which it is given by the other two Evangelists, has 
 generally won for the former the praise of superior accuracy. ^ Let us look 
 more closely, and we shall find that the greater particularity of Luke shows 
 itself chiefly in this, that he is not satisfied with a merely general mention of 
 the discourse delivered by Jesus in the synagogue, but cites the Old Testa- 
 ment passage on which he enlarged, and the commencement of its application. 
 The passage is from Isa. Ixi. i, 2, where the prophet announces the return 
 from exile, with the exception of the words to set at liberty them that are 
 bruised, a.->ro(TTvXa,i TeOpava-fia'ovi iv d^e'crei, which are from Isa. Iviii. 6. To 
 this passage Jesus gives a messianic interpretation, for he declares it to be ful- 
 filled by his appearance. Why he selected this text from among all others has 
 been variously conjectured. It is known that among the Jews at a later 
 period, certain extracts from the Thorah and the Prophets were statedly read 
 on particular' sabbathsand feast days, and it has hence been suggested that 
 the above passage was the selection appointed for the occasion in question. 
 It is true that the chapter from which the words airoo-TerXat k. t. k. are taken, 
 used to be read on the great Day of Atonement, and Bengel has made the 
 supposition, that the scene we are considering occurred on that day, a main 
 pillar of his evangelical chronology.^ But if Jesus had adhered to the regular 
 course of reading, he would not merely have extracted from the lesson ap- 
 pointed for this feast a few stray words, to insert them in a totally discon- 
 nected passage ; and after all, it is impossible to demonstrate that, so early as 
 the time of Jesus, there were prescribed readings, even from the prophets, i" 
 If then Jesus was not thus circumstantially directed to the passage cited, did 
 he open upon it designedly or fortuitously ? Many imagine him turning over 
 the leaves until he found the text which was in his mind -.^^ but Olshausen is 
 right in saying that the words dvairrufas to I3l0\iov evpe t6v tottov do not imply 
 that he found the passage after searching for it, but that he alighted on it 
 under the guidance of the Divine Spirit. ^^ This, however, is but a poor con- 
 trivance, to hide the improbability, that Jesus should fortuitously open on 
 a passage so well adapted to serve as a motto for his first messianic enterprize, 
 behind an appeal to the Spirit, as deus ex machind. Jesus might 'very likely 
 have quoted this text with reference to himself, and thus it would remain in 
 the minds of the Evangelists as a prophecy fulfilled in Jesus ; Matthew would 
 probably have introduced it in his own person with his usual form, tva irXripiaOrj, 
 aud would have said that Jesus had now begun his messianic annunciation, 
 Krjpvy/jia, that the prophecy Isa. Ixi. i fif. might be fulfilled ; but Luke, who is 
 less partial to this form, or the tradition whence he drew his materials, puts 
 the words into the mouth of Jesus on his first messianic appearance, very 
 judiciouslyj it is true, but, owing to the chances which it is necessary to sup- 
 pose, less probably ; so that I am more inclined to be satisfied with the in- 
 definite statement of Matthew and Mark. The other point in which the 
 description of Luke merits the praise of particularity, is his dramatic picture 
 of the tumultuary closing scene ; but this scene perplexes eVen those who on 
 the whole give the preference to his narrative. It is not to be concealed that 
 the extremely violent expulsion of Jesus by the Nazarenes, seems to have had 
 no adequate provocation :** and we cannot with Schleiermacher,i* expunge 
 
 * Schleiermacher, ut supra, s. 63 f. 
 
 ' Ordo temporum, p. 220 S, ed. 2. 
 
 '" Paulus, ut supra, I, b, s. 407. 
 
 " Paulus, ut supra. Lightfoot, horse, p. 765. 
 
 " Bibl. Comm. i, 470. 
 
 " Hase, Leben Jesu, § 62. 
 
 ^* Ueber den Lukas, s. 93. 
 
CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 2.7 S' 
 
 the notion that the life of Jesus was threatened, without imputing to the writer 
 a false addition of the words eis ro KwraKprifa/urai airov (v. 29), and thus 
 materially affecting the credibility of his entire narration. But the still more 
 remarkable clause, SieXOlav Sia fiicrov avrStv iTroptvero (v. 30), is the main diffi- 
 culty. It is not to be explained (at least not in accordance with the Evan- 
 gelist's view) as an effect merely of the commanding glance of Jesus, as Hase 
 supposes ; and Olshausen is again right when he says, that the Evangelist 
 intended to signify that Jesus passed unharmed through the midst of his furious 
 enemies, because his divine power fettered their senses and limbs, because 
 his hour was not yet come (John viii. 20), and because no man could take his 
 life from him until he himself laid it down (John x. 18).^* Here again we 
 have a display of the glorifying tendency of tradition, which loved to represent 
 Jesus as one defended from his enemies, like Lot (Gen. xix. 11), or Elisha 
 (2 Kings vi. 18), by a heavenly hand, or better still, by the power of his own 
 superior nature ; unless there be supposed in this case, as in the two examples 
 from the Old Testament, a temporary infliction of blindness, an illudere per 
 caliginem, the idea of which TertuUian reprobates.i^ Thus in this instance 
 also, the less imposing account of the first two Evangelists is to be preferred, 
 namely that Jesus, impeded from further activity by the unbelief of the Naza- 
 renes, voluntarily forsook his ungrateful paternal city. 
 
 § 59- 
 
 DIVERGENCIES OF THE EVANGELISTS AS TO THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE 
 OF JESUS. DURATION OF HIS PUBLIC MINISTRY. 
 
 In considering the chronology of the public life of Jesus, we must distinguish 
 the question of its total duration, from that of the arrangement of its par- 
 ticular events. 
 
 Not one of our Evangelists expressly tells us ho* long the public ministry 
 of Jesus lasted; but while the synoptical writers give us no clue to a decision 
 on the subject, we find in John certain data, which seem to warrant one. In 
 the synoptical gospels there is no intimation how long after the baptism of 
 Jesus his imprisonment and death occurred : nowhere are months and years 
 distinguished ; and though it is once or twice said : /*6^' ^fiipa^ e$ or 8vo 
 (Matt. xvii. i, xxvi. 2), these isolated fixed points furnish us with no guidance 
 in a sea of general uncertainty. On the contrary, the many journeys to the 
 feasts by which the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is distinguished from 
 that of his predecessors, furnishes us, so to speak, with chronological abut- 
 ments, as for each appearance of Jesus at one of these annual feasts, the 
 Passover especially, we must, deducting the first, reckon a full year of his 
 ministry. We have, in the fourth gospel, after the baptism of Jesus, and 
 apparently at a short interval (comp. i. 29, 35, 44, ii. i, 12), a passover at- 
 tended by him (ii. 13). But the next feast visited by Jesus (v. i) which is 
 indefinitely designated a/easi of the Jews, has been the perpetual crux of New 
 Testament chronologists. It is only important in determining the duration 
 of the public life of Jesus, on the supposition that it was a passover ; for in this 
 case it would mark the close of his first year's ministry. We grant that 17 eopr^ 
 T<Sv'Ioi;8aiW, 1^^ feast of the Jews, might very probably denote the Passover, 
 which was pre-eminent among their institutions : 1 but it happens that the best 
 
 " Ut supra, 479; comp. 2, p. 214. 
 
 '^ Adv. Marcion, iv. 8. 
 
 1 Paulus, exeg. Handb. I, b, s. 788 f. 
 
2/6 PART II. CHAfPTER III. § 59. 
 
 manuscripts have in the present passage no article, and without it, the above 
 expression can only signify indefinitely one of the Jewish feasts, which the 
 author thought it immaterial to specify.^ Thus intrinsically it might mean 
 either the feast of Pentecost,* Purim,* the Passover,^ or any other;® but in 
 its actual connection it is evidently- not intended by the narrator to imply the 
 Passover, both because he would hardly have glanced thus slightly at the most 
 important of all the feasts, and because, vi. 4, there comes another Passover, 
 so that on the supposition we are contesting, he would have passed in silence 
 over a whole year between v. 47, and vi. i. For to give the words, rjv Se e-yyus 
 TO TTcttrxa (vi. 4), a retrospective meaning, is too artificial an expedient of 
 Paulus, since, as he himself confesses, '^ this phrase, elsewhere in John, is in- 
 variably used with reference to the immediately approaching feast (ii. 13, 
 vii. 2, xi. ss), and must from its nature have a- prospective meaning, unless 
 the.' context indicate the contrary. Thus not until John vi. 4, do we meet 
 with the second passoyer, and to this it is not mentioned that Jesus resorted.* 
 Then follow the feast of Tabernacles and that of the Dedication, and after- 
 wards, xi. 55, xii. I, the last passover visited by Jesus. According to our view 
 of John V. I, and vi. 4, therefore, we obtain two years for the public ministry 
 of Jesus, besides the interval between his baptism and the first Passover, 
 The same result is found by those who, with Paulus, hold the feast mentioned, 
 V. I, to be a passover, but vi. 4, only a retrospective allusion ; whereas the 
 ancient Fathers of the Church, reckoning a separate Passover to each of the 
 passages in question, made out three years. Meanwhile, by this calculation, ■ 
 we only get the minimum duration of the public ministry of Jesus possible 
 according to the fourth gospel, for the writer nowhere intimates that he has 
 been punctilious in naming every feast that fell within that ministry, including 
 those not observed by Jesus, neither, unless we regard it as established that 
 the writer was the apostle John, have we any guarantee that he knew the 
 entire number. 
 
 It may be urged in opposition to the calculations, built on the represent- 
 ations of John, that the synoptical writers give no reasons for limiting the term 
 of the public ministry of Jesus to a single year :^ but this objection rests on 
 a supposition borrowed from John himself, namely that Jesus, Galilean though 
 he was, made it a rule to attend every Passover : a supposition, again, which 
 is overturned by the same writer's own representation. According to him, 
 Jesus left unobserved the passover mentioned, vi. 4, for from vi. i, where Jesus 
 is on the east side of the sea of Tiberias, through vi. 17 and 59, where he goes 
 to Capernaum, and vii. 1, where he frequents Galilee, in order to avoid the 
 Jews, to vii. 2 and 10, where he proceeds to Jerusalem on occasion of the 
 feast of Tabernacles, the Evangelist's narrative is so closely consecutive that 
 a journey to the Passover can nowhere be inserted. Out of the synoptical 
 gospels, by themselves, we gather nothing as to the length of the public 
 ministry of Jesus^ for this representation admits of our assigning him either 
 several years of activity, or only one ; their restriction of his intercourse with 
 Jerusalem to his final journey being the sole point in which they control our 
 
 ■* Liicke, Comtn. zutn E\tang. Joh., 2, li, 6. 
 ' Bengel, bido temporum, p. 219 f. 
 * Hug, Einleit. in das N. T. 2, s. 229 ff. 
 
 ^ Paulus, Comm. zum Ev. Joh., s. 279 f. Exeg. Handb. i, b, s. 784 ff. 
 8 Summaries of the different opinions are given by Hase, L. J., § 53"; and by Liicke, 
 Comm. z. Ev. Joh., 2, s. 2 ff 
 ' Exeg. Handb. i, h, s. 785. 
 
 8 See Storr, fiber den Zweck der evang. Gesch. und der Briefe Johannis, s. 330. 
 » Winer, b. Realw. I, s. 666. 
 
CHRONOLOGY OP THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 277 
 
 conclusion. It is true that several Fathers of the Church, i<» as well as some 
 heretics," speak of the ministry of Jesus as having lasted but a single year ; 
 but that the source of this opinion was not the absence of early journeys to the 
 feasts m the synoptical gospels, but an entirely fortuitous association, we learn 
 from those Fathers themselves, for they derive it from the prophetic passage 
 Isa. 1x1. I f. applied by Jesus (Luke iv.) to himself. In this passage there is 
 mention of the acceptable year of the Lord, eVtaOTos Kupiov Sesros, which the 
 prophet or,, according to the Evangelical interpretation, the Messiah is sent to 
 announce. Understanding this phrase in its strict chronological sense, they 
 adopted from it the notion of a single messianic year, which was more easily 
 reconcilable with the synoptical gospels than with that of John, after whose 
 statemeiit the calculation of the church soon came to be regulated. 
 
 In striking contrast with this lowest computation of time, is the tradition, 
 also very ancient, that Jesus was baptized in his thirtieth year, but at the time 
 of his crucifixion was not far from his fiftieth. ^^ But this opinion is equally 
 founded on a misunderstanding. The elders who had conversations with John 
 the disciple of the Lord, in Asia, -irpio-jivTepoi oi • Kara, rr/v 'Aa-lav 'lajai/i/Tyi tw 
 Tou KvpLov /iaftjTjj o-u/*/8«;8^i7icoTes, — on whose testimony Irenaeus relies when 
 he says, st/ch is the tradition of John, TrapaSeSioKevat. ravra tov 'Imdvvriv, — had 
 given no information further than that Christ taught, cstatem seniorem habens. 
 That this cetas senior was the age of from forty to fifty years is merely the in- 
 ference of Irenaeus, founded on what the Jews allege as an objection to the 
 discourse of Jesus, John viii. 57 : Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou 
 seen Abraham ? language which according to Irenaeus could only be addressed 
 to one, qui jam quadraginta annos excessit, quinquagesimum autem annum 
 nondum dttigit. But the Jews might very well say to a man a little more than 
 thirty, that he was much too young to have seen Abraham, since he had not 
 reached his fiftieth year, which, in the Jewish idea, completed the term of 
 manhood. 1* 
 
 Thus we can obtain no precise information from our gospels as to how long 
 the public labours of Jesus lasted ; all we can gather is, that if we follow the 
 fourth gospel we must not reckon less than two years and something over. 
 But the repeated journeys to the feasts on which this calculation is founded 
 are themselves not established beyond doubt. 
 
 Opposed to this minimum, we gain a maximum, if we understand, from 
 Luke iii. i ff. and 23, that the baptism of Jesus took place in the fifteenth 
 year of Tiberius, and add to this that his crucifixion occurred under the pro- 
 curatorship of Pontius Pilate. For as Pilate was recalled from his post in the 
 year of Tiberius's death, "^^ and as Tiberius reigned rather more than seven 
 years after the fifteenth year of his reign,i» it follows that seven years are the 
 maximum of the possible duration of the ministry of Jesus after his baptism. 
 But while one of these data, namely, that Jesus was crucified under Pilate, is 
 well attested, the other is rendered suspicious by its association with a chro- 
 nological error, so that in fact we cannot achieve here even a proximate, still 
 less an accurate solution of our question. 
 
 "• Clem. Alex. Stromat. I, p. 174, Wiirzb. ed., 340 Sylburg ; Orig. de principp. iv. 5, comp. 
 homil. in Luc. 32. 
 
 " Iren. adv. h«r. i. i, S- "■ 35- 38, on the Valentinians. Clem. hom. xvu. 19. 
 
 '^ Iren ii. xxii. 5 f. Comp. Credner, Einl. in das N. T. i, s. 215. 
 
 " Lightfoot and Tholuck in loc. 
 
 '■* Joseph. Antiq. xviii. iv. 2. 
 
 '* Sueton. Tiber, c. Ixxiii. Joseph. Antiq. xviii. vi. 10. 
 
278 PART II. CHAPTER III. § 60. 
 
 § 60. 
 
 THE ATTEMPTS AT A CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE PARTICULAR 
 EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 
 
 In attempting a chronological arrangement of the particular events occur- 
 ring in the interval between the baptism of Jesus and his crucifixion, the 
 peculiar relation of the synoptical writers to John, renders it necessary to give 
 them both a separate and a comparative examination. As to the latter, if its 
 result be a reconciliation of the two accounts, the journeys to the feasts in 
 John must form the panels between which the materials of the synoptical 
 writers must be so inserted, that between each pair of journeys with the inci- 
 dents at Jerusalem to which they gave rise, would fall a portion of the Galilean 
 history. For this incorporation to b~e effected with any certainty, two things 
 would be essential ; first, a notice of the departure of Jesus from Galilee by 
 the first three Evangelists, as often as the fourth speaks of a residence in Jeru- 
 salem ; and, secondly, on the part of John, an intimation, if not a narration, 
 between his accounts of the several feasts, of the Galilean occurrences repre- 
 sented by the synoptical writers as an uninterrupted train. But we have seen 
 that the synoptical writers fail in the required notice ; while it is notorious 
 that John, from the baptism of Jesus to the closing scenes of his life, is only 
 in two or three instances in coincidence with the other Evangelists. John 
 says (iii. 24) that when Jesus began his ministry, John was not yet cast into 
 prison ; Matthew makes the return of Jesus into Galilee subsequent to the 
 imprisonment of the Baptist (iv. 12), hence it has been inferred that that 
 return was from the first passover, and not from the baptism ; 1 but it is un- 
 deniable that Matthew places the commencement of the public ministry of 
 Jesus in Galilee, and presupposes no earlier ministry at the feast in Jerusalem, 
 so that the two statements, instead of dovetailing, as has been imagined, are 
 altogether incompatible. The next, but very dubious point of contact, occurs 
 in the healing of the nobleman's son, according to John iv. 46 S., or the cen- 
 turion's servant, according to Matt. viii. 5 ff., and Luke vii. i fF., which John 
 places (v. 47) immediately after the return of Jesus from his prolonged resi- 
 dence in Judea and Samaria, during and after the first passover. It was to 
 be expected, then, that the corresponding narration of the synoptical writers 
 would be preceded by some intimation of the. first journey made by Jesus 
 to a feast. Not only is such an intimation wanting — 'there is not a single 
 aperture to be found for the insertion of this journey, since, according to the 
 synoptical writers, the cure in question was an immediate sequel to the 
 Sermon on the Mount, which Matthew and Luke represent as the culminating 
 point, of an apparently uninterrupted course of teaching and miracles in 
 Galilee. Thus neither at this point is the chronology of the first three Evan- 
 gelists to be eked out by that of the fourth, since they nowhere present a 
 joint on to which the statements of the latter can be articulated. Another 
 more decided coincidence between the two parties exists in the associated 
 narratives of the miracle of the loaves, and that of walking on the sea, John 
 vi. 1-2 1, Matt. xiv. 14-36 paralL, which John places in the interval imme- 
 diately preceding the second passover, unvisited by Jesus ; but he differs so 
 completely from the synoptical writers in his account of these miracles, both 
 in their introduction and termination, that either he or they must inevitably 
 be wrong. For while, according to Matthew, Jesus retires from Nazareth 
 
 1 Comp. Paulus, Leben Jesu, I, a, 214 f. 
 
CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 279 
 
 probably, at all events from some part of Galilee, to the opposite side of the 
 sea, where he effects the multiplication of the loaves ; according to John he 
 sets out from Jerusalem. Further, in the first two gospels Jesus proceeds 
 after the miracle of the loaves into a district where he was less known (both 
 Matt. v. 35 and Mark v. 54 expressly stating that the people knew him), 
 whereas m John he goes directly to Capernaum, with which of all places he 
 was the most familiar. We know not here whether to tax the synoptical 
 writers or John with a mistake : and as we cannot pronounce whether he or 
 they have placed this incident too early or too late, we are equally ignorant 
 how much of the synoptical narratives we are to place before, and how much 
 after, the second passover, which John makes nearly cotemporary with the 
 feeding of the five thousand. Here, however, the points of contact between 
 this Evangelist and his predecessors are at an end, until we come to the last 
 jouriiey of Jesus ; and if they are too uncertain to promise even a simple 
 division of the synoptical materials by th^ two Passovers, how can we hope, 
 by the journeys of Jesus to the feast of the Jews, ioprri tGi/ 'louSatW, to the 
 feast of Tabernacles, or to the feast of Dedication, if that be a separate 
 journey, to classify chronologically the uninterrupted series of Galilean occur- 
 rences in the first three gospels ? Nevertheless this has been attempted by a 
 succession of theologians down to the present time, with an expenditure of 
 acumen and erudition, worthy of a more fertile subject ; ^ but unprejudiced 
 judges have decided, that as the narrative of the first three Evangehsts has 
 scarcely any elements that can give certitude to such a classification, not one 
 of the harmonies of the gospels yet written has any claim to be considered 
 anything more than a tissue of historical conjectures.* 
 
 It remains to estimate the chronological value of the synoptical writers, 
 apart from John. They are so frequently at variance with each other in the 
 order of events, and it is so seldom that one has all the probabilities on his 
 side, that each of them may be convicted of numerous chronological errors, 
 which must undermine our confidence in his accuracy. It has been main- 
 tained that, in the composition of their books, they meditated no precise 
 chronological order,* and this is partially confirmed by their mode of narra- 
 tion. Throughout the interval between the baptism of Jesus and the history 
 of the Passion, their narratives resemble a collection of anecdotes, strung 
 together mostly on a thread of mere analogy and association of ideas. But 
 there is a distinction to be made in reference to the above opinion. It is true 
 that from the purport of their jiarratives, and the indecisiveness and unifor- 
 mity of their connecting phrases, we can detect their want of insight into the 
 more accurate chronological relations of what they record; but that t/ie 
 authors flattered themselves they were giving a chronological narration, is 
 evident from those very connecting phrases, which, however indecisive, have 
 almost always a chronological character, such as Kara/Savrt d'jro tov opov?, 
 irapdymv ixeWev, rawa aiiTov \a\ovvTOS, ev airy rfj •^jxipa., tote, koI loov, etc." 
 
 The incidents and discourses detailed by John are, for the most part, pecu- 
 liar to himself; he is therefore not liable to the same control in his chrono- 
 logy from independent authors, as are the synoptical writers from each other ; 
 neither is his narration wanting in connectedness and sequence. Hence our 
 
 ^ See especially the labours of Paulus in the Chronological Exctirsus of his Commentary 
 and his exegetical Manual ; of Hug, in the Einl. z. N. T. 2, s. 2, 233 S ; and others, given 
 by Winer in his bibl. Realworterbuch I, s. 667. 
 
 ' Winer, ut sup. ; comp. Kaiser, biblische Theologie, i, s. 254. Anm ; die Abhandlung 
 iiber die verschiedenen Riicksichten u. s. w., in Bertholdt's krit. Journal, 5, s. 239. 
 
 * Olshausen i, s. 24 ff. 
 
 * Schneckenburger's Beitrage, s. 25 fif. 
 
28o PART ir. CHAPTER III. § 6o. 
 
 decision on the merits of his chronological order is dependent on the answer 
 to the following question : Is the development and progress of the ,cause and 
 plan of Jesus, as given by the fourth Evangelist, credible in itself and on 
 comparison with available data, drawn from the other gospels ? The solution 
 to this question is involved in the succeeding inquiry. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.' 
 
 § 6i. 
 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, thi 
 Son of man, 6 utos toC hSpimov. The exactly corresponding Hebrew express 
 sion ^'W^ 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, Kvpio^ yap icm 
 Tov aa^pdrov 6 vloi toi5 avOpunrov, — 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, 
 TO a-a^^arov Sta tov avOpunrov lyivero, oix 6 avOpaTroi Sta to crd^jSaTov. 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, 6 vtos tov avQpunrov ovk i^ei, ttov tyjv Ke.<f>akriv 
 KXtvy : 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 sug- 
 gested that he used the third person after the oriental manner, to avoid the I.^ 
 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 limita- 
 tion 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 
 
 * All tliat relates to the idea of the Messiah as suffering, dying, and rising again, is here 
 omitted, and reserved for the history of the Passion. 
 
 ' Paulus, exeget. Handb. i, 6, s. 465 ; Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 320. 
 
282 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 6 1. 
 
 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 ; ' 
 but this is a modern theory, not an historical inference, for there is no trace 
 of such an interpretation of the expression in the time of Jesus,' and it would 
 be more easy to show, as others have attempted, that the appellation, Son of 
 Man, so frequently used by Jesus, had reference to his lowly and despised 
 condition.* Apart however from the objection that this acceptation also 
 would require the addition of the demonstrative pronoun, though it might be 
 adapted to many passages, as Matt. viii. 20; John i. 51, there are others 
 (such as Matt. xvii. 22, where Jesus, foretelling his violent death, designates 
 himself o vios rav avdpunrov) which demand the contrast of high dignity with 
 an ignominious fate. So in Matt x. 23, the assurance given to the commis- 
 sioned 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 com- 
 parison of Matt. xvi. 28, where there is also a mention of an epxea-6at, a coming 
 of the Son of man, but with the addition iv rfj ^atriAeio, airov. As this addi- 
 tion can only refer to the messianic kingdom, the uios tov avOpunrov must be 
 the Messiah. 
 
 How so apparently vague an appellation came to be ajjpropriated to the 
 Messiah, we gather from Matt. xxvi. 64 parall., where the Son of inan is 
 depicted as coming in the clouds of heaven. This is evidendy 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 
 (^\^. 135 (Ls Dios a.vBpimm), 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 was to come with 
 clouds of heaven could only be, either a personification of the holy people, ^ 
 or a leader of heavenly origin under whom they were to achieve their destined 
 triumph — in a word, the Messiah ; and this was the customary interpretation 
 among the Jews.* Two things are predicated of this personage, — that he was 
 like the Son of man, and that he came with 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 fero- 
 cious beasts were the fitting emblems.'' At a later period, it is true, the Jews 
 regarded the coming with the clouds of heaven '<JP1?' '.MSfDJ? 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 
 
 ^ Thus after Herder, Koster e. g. in Immanuel, s, 265. 
 
 2 Lucke, Comm. zum Joh., i, s. 397 f. 
 
 * e.g. Grotius. 
 
 ^ Abenesra, see Havernick, ut sup. Comm. zum Daniel, s. 244. 
 
 ^ Schottgen, horae, ii. s. 63, 73 ; Havernick, ut sup., s. 243 f. 
 
 ' See for the most important opinions, Havernick, ut sup., s. 242 f. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 283 
 
 epithet of a person or thing.8 If, then, the expression o vlo? tov avOpumov 
 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 con- 
 nexion 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 him- 
 self, 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 retribu- 
 tion. Lastly, in the connected discourses. Matt, xxiv., xxv. parall., many par- 
 ticulars would be more easily conceived, if the vlos tov avOpumov whose 
 irapovaia Jesus describes, were understood to mean another than himself. 
 
 But this explanation is far from being applicable to the majority of in- 
 stances 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. j i, 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, ov 
 /ii) co-Tat o-ot TovTo, this shall not be unto thee ; in these and similar cases he 
 can only, by the v'\J6<i toO avQpwirov, have intended himself. And even those 
 passages, which, taken singly, we might have found capable of application to 
 a messianic person, distinct from Jesus, lose this capability when considered 
 in their entire connexion. It is possible, however, either that the writer may 
 have misplaced certain expressions, or that the ultimately prevalent conviction 
 that Jesus was the Son of Man caused what was originally said merely of the 
 latter, to be viewed in immediate relation to the former. 
 
 Thus besides the fact that Jesus on many occasions called himself the Son 
 of Man, there remains the possibility that on many others, he may have 
 designed another person ; and if so, the latter would in the order of time 
 naturally precede the former. Whether this possibility can be heightened to 
 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 ? 
 
 8 Let the reader bear in mind the designation of David's elegy, 2 Sam. i. I7ff. as T\^\>, 
 and the denomination of the Messiah as HDV. Had Schleiermacher considered the nature of 
 Jewish appellatives, he would not have called the reference of vli>% tov d. to the passage in 
 Daniel, a strange idea. (Glaubensl., § 99, s. 99, Anm.) 
 
284 PART n. CHAPTER IV. | 62. 
 
 § 62. 
 
 HOW SOON DID JESUS CONCEIVE HIMSELF TO BE THE MESSIAH, AND FIND 
 RECOGNITION AS SUCH FROM OTHERS? 
 
 Jesus held and expressed the convicCion 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 Xpitrros (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) re- 
 peatedly 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 frorh the time of his 
 baptism. AH of them attach to his baptism circumstances which must have 
 convinced himself, if yet uncertain, and all others who witnessed or credited 
 them, that he was no less than the Messiah; John makes his earliest disciples' 
 recognise his right to that dignity on their first interview (i. 42 ff.), and 
 Matthew attributes to him at the very beginning of his ministry, in the sermon 
 on the mount, a representation of himself as the Judge of the world (vii. 21 
 ff.) and therefore the Messiah. 
 
 ' Nevertheless, on a closer examination, there appears a remarkable diver- 
 gency 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. 
 
 Accordingto John (vi. 15), after the miracle of the loaves the people were 
 inclined to constitute Jesus their (messianic) King ; on the contrary, accord- 
 ing 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 Eltas, 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 1 when he had allayed the storm, fell at his feet and wor- 
 shipped 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. 
 
 ' That the expression oi ky t<p TrXoiy includes more than the disciples, vid. Fritzsche, in^ 
 loc. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 285 
 
 But there is a more troublesome divergency relative to the disciples. In 
 John, Andrew, after his first interview with Jesus, says to his brother, tve have 
 found the Messiah, .eufrqKafjLev tov Meo-o-i'av (i. 42) ; and Philip describes him to 
 Nathanael as the person foretold by Moses and the prophets (v. 46) ; Nathan- 
 ael salutes him as the Son of God and King of Israel (y. 50) ; and the 
 subsequent confession of Peter appearsmerely a renewed avowal of what had 
 been long a familiar truth. In the synoptical Evangelists it is only after pro- 
 longed intercourse with Jesus, and shortly before his sufferings, that the 
 ardent Peter arrives at the conclusion that Jesus is the Xpia-rbs, 6 vlb^rov Oeov 
 TOV ^SvTos (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 pro- 
 ceeds to speak of himself under the messianic title. Son of Man (i. 5 1 f.) : to 
 the Samaritans also after his first visit to the passover (iv. 26, 39 if.), and to 
 the Jews on the second (v. 46), he makes himself known as the Messiah pre- 
 dicted 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 1 (Matt. xvi. 15) he 
 teeems to wish^ that they should derive their conviction of his Messiahship 
 from his discourses and actions, and when he ascribes the avowed faith of 
 Peter to a revelation from his heavenly Father, he excludes the possibility of 
 his having himself previously made this disclosure to his disciples, either in 
 the manner described by John, or in the more indirect one- attributed to him 
 by Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount ; unless we suppose that the dis- 
 ciples 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 contra- 
 dictory, 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 con- 
 
 2 There is a difficulty involved in the form of the question, put by Jesus to his disciples : tIvo. 
 lie \kyovaiv ol &vdptoTOt elvai, tov vlbv to\j i,vBpti>irov ; i.e. what opinion have the people of me, 
 the Messiah ? This, when compared with the sequel, seems a premature disclosure ; hence 
 expositors have variously endeavoured to explain away its prima facie meaning. _ Some (e.g. 
 Beza) understand the subordinate clause, not as a declaration of Jesus concerning his own 
 person, but as a closer limitation of the question : For whom do the people take me ? for 
 the Messiah? But this would be a leading question, which, as Fritzsche well observes, 
 would indicate an eagerness for the messianic title, not elsewhere discernible iii Jesus. 
 Others, therefore, (as Paulus and Fritzsche,) give the expression vlbs r. &. a general significa- 
 tion, and interpret the question thus : Whom do men say that I, the individual addressing 
 you, am? But this explanation has been already refuted in the foregoing section. If, then, 
 we reject the opinion that the vWs t. d. is an addition which the exuberant faith of the 
 writer was apt to Suggest even in an infelicitous connexion, we are restricted to De Wette's 
 view (exeg. Handb. I, l, s. 86 f.), namely, that the expression, 6 vlis t. a. was indeed an 
 appellation of the Messiah, but an indirect one, so that it might convey that meaning, as an 
 allusion to Daniel, to Jesus and those already aware of his Messiahship, while to others it 
 was merely the equivalent of, this man. 
 
:286 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 62. 
 
 sistent with itself, and one of our critics has justly reproached it with derang- 
 ing the messianic economy in the life of Jesus.^ But here again we must not 
 lose sight of our approved canon, that in glorifying narratives, such as our 
 gospels, where various statements are confronted, that is the least probable 
 which best subserves the object of glorification. Now this is the case with 
 John's statement ; according to which, from the commencement to the close 
 of the public life of Jesus, his Messiahship shines forth in unchanging splen-. 
 dour, 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 w^e 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 watch- 
 word 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 hafl 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.* Hence the latest critic of the first gospel justly explains all those 
 discourses and actions therein narrated, by which Jesus explicitly claims to 
 be the Messiah, or, in consequence of which this dignity is attributed to him 
 and accepted, if they occur before the manifestation of himself recorded in 
 John v., or before the account of the apostolic confession (Matt, xvi.), as 
 offences of the writer against chronology or literal truth. ^ We have only to 
 premise, that as chronological confusion prevails throughout, the position of 
 this confess^Dn 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 promul- 
 gate the event, in these or similar words, opa /tiySci/t eiTnjs ; 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 
 
 ' Schneckenburger, Uber den Ursprung u. s. f., s. 28 f. 
 
 * This distinction of two periods in the public life of Jesus is also made by Fritzsche, 
 Comm. in Matth., s. 213. 536, and Schneckenburger ut sup. 
 
 * Schneckenburger, ut sup., s. 29. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 287 
 
 who were with him on the mount of the Transfiguration, to publish the scene 
 they had witnessed (Matt. xvii. 9) ; and after the confession of Peter, he 
 charges the disciples to tell no man the conviction it expressed (Luke 
 ix. 21). This prohibition of Jesus could hardly, as most commentators 
 suppose,' be determined by various circumstantial motives, at one time 
 having relation to the disposition of the person healed, at another to the 
 humour of the people, at another to the situation of Jesus : rather, as there is 
 an essential similarity in the conditions under which 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.'' This would be a valid reason ; but the synoptical 
 writers represent the wish, partly as the effect of humility ; ^ Matthew, in 
 connexion with a prohibition of the kind alluded to, applying to Jesus a 
 passage in Isaiah (xlii. if) where the servant of God is said to be distin- 
 guished 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 con- 
 viction of it existed from the first in equal strength ; but this conclusion can- 
 not be maintained in the face of the consideration above mentioned, that 
 Jesus began his career with the same announcement as the Baptist, an 
 announcement which can scarcely have more than one import — an exhorta- 
 tion to prepare for a coming Messiah. The most natural supposition is that 
 Jesus, first the disciple of the Baptist, and afterwards his successor, in preach- 
 ing repentance and the approach of the kingdom of heaven, took originally 
 the same position as his former master in relation to the messianic kingdom, 
 notwithstanding the greater reach and liberality of his mind, and only gradu- 
 ally attained the elevation of thinking himself the Messiah. This supposition 
 explains in the simplest manner the. prohibition we have been considering, 
 especially that annexed to the 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),^ it is prob- 
 
 8 Fritzsche, in Matth. p. 309, comp. 352. Olshausen, s. 265. 
 
 ' Fritzsche, p. 352. Olshausen, ut sup. , , . , ^ i.-i •.• ■ , a a 
 
 * The opposite view is held by the Fragmentist, who thinks the prohibition was intended 
 to stimulate the popular eagerness. 
 » Fritzsche, s. 309. 
 
288 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 63. 
 
 able tliat evangelical tradition, enamoured of the mysteriousness that lay in 
 this incognito of Jesus,'" unhistoricaliy multiplied the instances of it? adop- 
 tion. 
 
 § 63. 
 
 JESUS, THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 In Luke i. 35, we find the narrowest and most literal interpretation of the 
 expression, o di6s tov 6eov ; 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 
 ithe expression is presented. When (Matt. iv. 3) the devil challenges Jesus to 
 change the stones into bread, making the supposition, // 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, / 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 {MaXt. xxvi. 63) : it is obvious that the devil means nothing more 
 than, If thou be the Messiah ; and that in the other passages the vios tov 
 deov, united as it is with Xpio-Tos and jSaa-iXev?, is but an appellation of the 
 Messiah. 
 
 In Hos. xi. I ; Exod. iv. 22, the people of Israel, and in 2 Sam. vii. 14; 
 Ps. ii. 7 (comp. Ixxxix. 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 (3 Sam. vii. 14) ; and from the second 
 psalm we gather the farther reason, that as earthly kings choose their sons to 
 reign with or under them, so the Israelitish kings were invested by Jehovah, 
 the supreme ruler, with the government of his favourite province. Thus the 
 designation was originally applicable to every Israelitish king who adhered to 
 the principle of the theocracy ; but when the messianic idea was developed, 
 it was pre-eminently assigned to the Messiah, as the best-beloved Son, and 
 the most powerful vicegerent of God on earth.' 
 
 If, then, such was the original historical signification of the epithet. Son of 
 God, as applied to the Messiah, we have to ask : is it possible that Jesus 
 used it of himself in this signification only, or did he use it also in either of 
 the three senses previously adduced? The narrowest, the merely physical 
 import of the term is not put into the mouth of Jesus, but into that of the 
 annunciating angel, Luke i. 35 ; and for this the Evangelist alone is respons- 
 ible. In the intermediate, metaphysical sense, implying unity of essence 
 
 '" Comp. Schleiermacher, iiber den Ltikas, s. 74. 
 
 1 Comp. the excellent treatise of Paulus on the following question in the Einl. zum Leben 
 Jesu, 1, a, s. 28 ff. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 289 
 
 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.^ 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 dya^os 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 declara- 
 tions 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, 6 irarrip i^-ov ixtl^mv /jlov iari (xiy. 28), but this 
 slight echo of the synoptical statement does not remove the difficulty of con- 
 ciliating the numerous discourses of a totally different tenor in the former, 
 with the rejection of the epithet ayo^os in the latter. It is surprising, too, 
 that Jesus in the fourth gospel appears altogether ignorant of the theocratic 
 sense of the expression vios rov 6eov, and can only vindicate his use of it in 
 the metaphysical sense, by retreating to its vague and inetaphorical applica- 
 tion. When, namely (John x. 34 ff. ), to justify his assumption of this title, he 
 adduces the scriptural application of the term 6tol 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 de- 
 clared himself to be the Messiah (v. 25), might consistently claim this 
 
 appellation. . r /- ^ u 
 
 With respect to the light in which Jesus was viewed as the Son ot Lrod Dy 
 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 Xpia-rbs, and this 
 even in the fourth gospel ; while on the other hand the contentious lovbaioi 
 of this gospel seem in their objections as ignorant as Jesus m his defence, of 
 the theocratic, and only notice the metaphysical meaning of the expression. 
 
 « Even if a different reading be adopted for the parallel passage in Matthew (xix. 16 f.), 
 ■it must remain questionable whether his statement deserves the preference to that of the two 
 other Evangelists. ^ 
 
290 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 63. 
 
 It is true that, even in the synoptical gospels, when Jesus answers affirma- 
 tively 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 ta-ov tu Oeia, nay even lavrov 
 Oebv. 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, t/tey 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 uios tov Biou is not synonymous with Messiah, 
 but is a name far transcending the ordinary idea of the Messiah ; ^ they are 
 not, however, warranted in concluding that therefore in the first three Evan- 
 gelists also* the same expression imports more than the Messiah. For the 
 only legitimate interpretation of the high priest's question in Matthew makes 
 o vios Tvm Beav a synonym of 6 Xpioros, 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 Godt (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 vios t. B. must 
 have in such a connexion, and that in which he used it elsewhere — a want of 
 perception which habitual forms of expression are calculated to induce. We 
 have before cited examples of this oversight in the fourth Evangelist (John i. 
 49. vi. 69, xi. 27). 
 
 The author of the Probabilia reasonably considers it suspicious that, in the 
 fourth gospel, Jesus and his opponents should appear entirely ignorant of the 
 theocratic sense which is elsewhere attached to the expression o nios rov Owv, 
 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 \dyos /ioi'oyei/'^s to God would be the most 
 cherished association. 
 
 ^ Bibl. Coram. 2, s. 130, 253. 
 ' Olshausen, ut sup. i, s. 108 ff. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 29 1 
 
 § 64. 
 THE DIVINK 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 (Ma:tt 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 in- 
 terests of the messianic kingdom demand it, power to effect a thorough revo^ 
 lution in the whole world. At the future commencement of his reign, Jesus, 
 as Messiah, is authorized to awake the dead (John v. 28), and to sit as a 
 judge, separating those worthy to partake of the heavenly kingdom from the 
 unworthy (Matt. xxv. 31 ff. ; John v. 22, 29) ; offices which Jewish opinion 
 attributed to the Messiah,^ and which Jesus, once convinced of his Messiah- 
 ship, 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 whFGhi contain the 
 repeated assertion of such a pre-existence. We grant that whert Jesus de- 
 scribes himself as coming down from heaven (John iii. r.3, xvi. 28), the 
 expression, taken alone, may be understood as a mereFy 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, wplv 'A/Bpaafj, yivecyOai., iyd) ei/^ii (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 Sofa (g/ory) 
 which Jesus had with Him before the world was, irpo tov tov Kocrft-ov cTvat, 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 avajiaiveiv where he was befire oirov rfv to Trpanpov, is 
 in its intrinsic meaning, as well as in that which is reflected on it from other 
 passages, unequivocally significative of actual, not merely ideal, pre-existence. 
 
 It has been already conjectured ^ that these expressions, or at least the 
 adaptation of them to a real pre-existence, are derived, not from Jesus, but 
 from the author of the fourth gospel, with, whose opinions, as propounded in 
 his introduction, they specifically agree ; for if the Word was in the beginning 
 7vith God (iv apxy irpos tov Oeov), 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- 
 
 1 Bertholdt, Christol. Judseor. §§ 8. 35, 42- 
 
 2 Bretschneider, Probab., p. 59- 
 
292 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 64. 
 
 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,^ 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, asso- 
 ciated 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 j * 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 imme- 
 diate agency, to the Word (kiD'D). or the dwelling place (Kn3*Dt5') of 
 Jehovah, as may be seen in the venerable * Targum of Onkelos.^ These 
 expressions, at first mere paraphrases of the name of God, soon received the 
 mystical signification of a veritable hypostasis, of a being at once distinct 
 from, and one with God. As jnost 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 Israe!,^he manifestation, namely, of the Messiah, — a 
 peculiar relation with the Word or Shechina.'^ From this germ sprang the 
 opinion that with the Messiah the Shechina would appear, and that what 
 was ascribed to the Shechina pertained equally to the Messiah : an opinion 
 not confined to the Rabbins, but sanctioned by the Apostle Paul. Accord- 
 ing to it, the Messiah was, even in the wilderness, the invisible guide and 
 benefactor of God's people (i Cor. x. 4, 9) ; ^ hg was with our first parents 
 in Paradise;* he was the agent in creation (Col. i. 16); he even existed 
 before the creation,^" and prior to his incarnation in Jesus, was in a glorious 
 fellowship with God (Phil. ii. 6). 
 
 » Porphyr. Vita Pythag., 26 f. Jamblich. 14, 63. Diog. Laert. viii. 4 f. 14. Baur, 
 Apollonius von Tyana, pp. 64 f. 98 f. 185 f. 
 
 * See a notification and exposition of the passages in Liicke, Comm. zum Ev. Joh., I, s. 
 2H ff. 
 
 * Winer, de Onkeloso, p. 10. Comp. De Wette, Einleit. in das A. T., § 58. 
 " Bertholdt, Christol. Judaor., §§ 23-25. Comp. Liicke ut sup., s. 244, note. 
 ' Schottgen, ii. s. 6 f. 
 
 ' Targ. Jes. xvi. I : Iste (Messias) in deserto fuit rupes ecclesia Zionis. In Bertholdt, ut 
 sup. p. 145. 
 
 " Sohar chadasch f. Ixxxii. 4, ap. Schottgen, ii. s. 440. 
 
 1° Nezach Israel c. xxxv. f. xlviii. J. Schmidt, Bibl. fiir Kritik u. Exegese, i, s. 38 : 
 inin *3S5D n'B'D. Sohar Levit. f. xiv. 56. Schottgen, ii. s. 436 : Septtm (lumina condita 
 sunt, antequam mundus conderetur), nimirum . . . et lumen Messia. Here we have 
 the pre-existence of the Messiah represented as a real one : for a more ideal conception of 
 it, see Bereschith Rabba, sect, i, f. iii. 3 (Schottgen). 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 293 
 
 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 Ao'-yos, 
 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 flf. j 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 allega- 
 tion of the adversaries of Christianity, but has been maintained by none with 
 so much exegetical acumen as by the author of the Wolfenbiittel Fragments,^ 
 who, be it observed, by no means denies to Jesus the praise of aiming at the 
 moral reformation of his nation. According to this writer, the first indication 
 of a political plan on the part of Jesus is, that he unambiguously announced 
 the approaching messianic kingdom, and laid down the conditions on which 
 it was to be entered, without explaining what this kingdom was, and wherein 
 it consisted,^ as if he supposed the current idea of its nature to be correct. 
 Now, the fact is, that the prevalent conception of the messianic reign had a 
 strong political bias ; hence, when Jesus spoke of the Messiah's kingdom 
 without a definition, the Jews could only think of an earthly dominion, and as 
 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. i ; 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 inter- 
 
 ' Von dem Zweck Jesu und seiner Junger, s. 108-157. 
 2 Comp. Fritzsche, in Matth., s. 114. 
 
294 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 65. 
 
 course with Jesus, no other than the popular notion of the Messiah ; when, 
 therefore, Jesus despatched them as heralds of his kingdom, it seems neces- 
 sarily 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 Trakuyyev&ria, 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 contro- 
 verted. It is argued, however, that Jesus spoke figuratively on this occasion, 
 and only employed familiar Jewish images to convey to the apostles an assur- 
 ance, that the sacrifices they had made here would be richly compensated in 
 their future life by a participation in his glory.' But the disciples must have 
 understood the promise literally, when, even after the resurrection of Jesus, 
 they harboured anticipations of worldly greatness ; and as Jesus had had 
 many proofs of this propensity, he would hardly have adopted such lan- 
 guage, ha:d 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 him- 
 self shared the Jewish expectations which he here sanctions : but expositors 
 have made the most desperate efforts to escape from this unwelcome conclu- 
 sion. Some have resorted to an arbitrary alteration of the reading ; * others 
 to the detection of irony, directed against the disproportion between the 
 pretensions of the disciples, and their trivial services;' others to different 
 expedients, but all more unnatural than the admission, that Jesus, in accord- 
 ance 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 discour- 
 ages curiosity as to the times and seasons of its restoration. 
 
 Among the actions of Jesus, his last entry, into Jerusalem (Matt. xxi. i ff.) 
 is especially appealed to as a proof that his plan was partly political. Accord- 
 ing 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 Jeru- 
 salem ; 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. 
 
 3 Kuinol, Comm. in Matt., p. 518. Olshausen also, p. 744, understands the discourse 
 symbolically, though he attaches to it a different meaning. 
 * Paulus, exeget. Handb. 2, s. 613 f. 
 ' Liebe, in Winer's exeg. Studieil, i, 59 ff. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 295 
 
 §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 obedi- 
 ence to God with obedience to temporal authority, even when heathen (Matt. 
 xxii. 21) ; on his solemn entry into the capital, he chooses to ride the animal 
 of peace, and afterwards escapes from the multitude, instead of using their 
 excitement for the purposes of his ambition ; lastly, he maintains before his 
 judge, that his kingdom is not from hence ovk ei/reSSo', is not of this world ovk 
 EK Tov Koa-fiov TovTov (John xvi. 36), and we have no reason in this instance to 
 question either his or the Evangelist's veracity. 
 
 Thus we have a series of indications to counterbalance those detailed in the 
 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 : * 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.^ 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 accept- 
 able 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 alter- 
 native it be conceivable, that Jesus uttered during the same period the 
 
 1 So Reinhard, Uber den Plan, welchen der Stifter der christlichen Religion zum Besten 
 der Menschheit entwarf, s. 57 ff. (4te Aufl.). . „ t 1, t , 
 
 2 Paulus, Leben Tesu I, b, s. 85, 94. 106 ff. ; Ventunm, 2, s. 310 f. ; Hase, Leben Jesu I 
 ed 8« 68 84 Hase has modified this opinion in his 2nd edition, §§ 49, 50 (comp. theol. 
 Streitschr'ift i, s. 61 ff.), though with apparent reluctance, and he now maintains that Jesus 
 had risen above the political notion of the messianic kingdom before his public appearance. 
 
296 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 66. 
 
 declarations which seem to indicate, and those which disclaim, a political 
 design. 
 
 This, in our apprehension, is not inconceivable ; for Jesus might anticipate 
 a Kaei^ea-eai. iirl Opovaus 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 
 ■rraXiyy€V€(ria ; for this was not a political revolution, any more than a spiritual 
 regeneration, — it was a resurrection of the dead, which God was to effect 
 through the agency, of the Messiah, and which was to usher in the messianic 
 times.' Jesus qertainly 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. S3). Wherever he speaks of coming in his messianic glory, he depicts 
 himself surrounded by angels and heavenly powers (Matt. xvi. 27, xxiv. 30 i, 
 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 
 aposdes. 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 discon- 
 certed when his end approached without his having received the expected 
 intimation. They who shrink from this view, merely because they conceive 
 that it makes Jesus an enthusiast,* will do well to reflect how closely such 
 hopes corresponded with the long cherished messianic idea of the Jews,^ and 
 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 consist- 
 ent, and had, jin 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,^ compares it to a feast (Matt. viii. 11, xxii. 2 if.), 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 aiitv fjiikKwv the 
 organic relation between the sexes will cease, and men will be h'fie the angels 
 (i(rdyye>^oi, Luke xx. 35 if.), seems more or less to reduce the above discourses 
 10 a merely symbolical significance. 
 
 Thus we conclude that the messianic. hope of Jesus was not political, nor 
 even merely earthly, for he referred its fulfilment to supernatural means, and 
 to a supermundane theatre (the regenerated earth) : as little was it a purely 
 spiritual hope, in the modern sense of the term, for it included important and 
 unprecedented changes in the external condition of things : but it was the 
 national, theocratic hope, spiritualized and ennobled by his own peculiar 
 moral and religious views. 
 
 ' Fritzsche, in Matt., p. 606 f. 
 * De Wette, Bibl. Dogm., § 216. 
 ' Bertholdt, Christol. Judaeor., §§ 30 ff. 
 « Ibid., § 39. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 297 
 
 §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.^ 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 sacri- 
 fices, as one not far from the kingdom of God (Mark xii. 23 f.),^ and he ran 
 counter in action as well as in speech to the customary mode of celebrating 
 the Sabbath (Matt. xii. 1-13 ; Mark ii. 23-28, iii. 1-5 ; Luke vi. i-io, xiii. 
 10 ff., xiv. I ff. ; John v. 5 ff., vii. 22, ix. i ff.), of which in his character 
 of Son of Man he claimed to be Lord. The Jews, too, appear to have 
 expected a revision of the Mosaic law by their Messiah.' A somewhat analo- 
 gous 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 (?(7(/ (Mark, that is made with hands), and to build it in three days 
 (Mark, / 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 fif.), — 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 ; * but it is only in recent times that, the theological 
 
 1 E.g. Reinhard, Plan Jesu, s. 14 ff. 
 
 ' For an exaggeration in the Ebionite Gospel, vid. Epiphanius, haeres. xxx. 16. 
 ' Bertholdt, ut sup. § 31. , r, , . 
 
 * This is done the most concisely in the Wolfenbiittel Fragments, von dem Zweck u. s. 1., 
 s. 66 ff. 
 
298 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 6T. 
 
 horizon being extended, the unprejudiced expositors of the church ^ have 
 acknowledged its existence. In the first place, during his life Jesus remains 
 faithful to the paternal law ; hp 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. i 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, naxpo (Exod. xx. 
 8. ff., xxxi. 12 ff., Deut. v. 12 ff.), including ploughing, reaping (Exod. xxxiv. 
 21), gathering of sticks (Num. xv. 32 ff.), and similar work, and it was only 
 the spirit of petty observance, the growth of a later age, that made it an 
 offence to perform cures, or pluck a few ears of corn.^ The washing of hands 
 before eating was but a rabbinical custom ; '^ in the law one general yearly fast 
 was alone prescribed (Lev. xvi. 29 ff., xxiii. 27 ff.) and no private fasting re- 
 quired ; hence Jesus cannot be convicted of infringing the precepts of Moses. ^ 
 In that very Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus exalts spiritual religion so 
 far above all ritual, he clearly presupposes the continuation of sacrifices (Matt, 
 v. 23 f.), and declares that he is not come to destroy the law and the prophets, 
 but to fulfil (Matt. V. 17). Even if irXijpSirai, in all probability, refers chiefly 
 to the accomplishment of the Old Testament prophecies, oim vjXBav xaTaXvo-oi 
 must at the same time be understood of the conservation of the Mosaic law, 
 since in the context, perpetuity is promised to its smallest letter, and he who 
 represents its lightest precept as not obligatory, is threatened with the lowest 
 rank in the kingdom of heaven.^ In accordance with this, the apostles 
 adhered strictly to the Mosaic law, even after the feast of Pentecost ; they 
 went at the hour of prayer into the temple (Acts iii. i), clung to the syna- 
 gogues 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 obedi- 
 ence of Jesus to the law, but also his declarations in its favour, were a 
 necessary concession to the views of his cotemporaries, who would at once 
 have withdrawn their confidence from him, had he announced himself as the 
 destroyer of their holy and venerated law.^" We allow that the obedience of 
 Jesus to the law in his own person, might be explained in the same way as 
 that of Paul, which, on his own showing, was a measure of mere expediency 
 (i Cor. ix. 20, comp. Acts xvi. 3). But the strong declarations of Jesus con- 
 cerning 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 conces- 
 sion j for to pronounce that indispensable, which one secretly holds superfluous, 
 and which one even seeks to bring gradually into disuse, would, leaving 
 honesty out of the question, be in the last degree injudicious. 
 
 Hence others have made a distinction between the moral and the ritual 
 law, and referred the declaration of Jesus that he wished not to abrogate 
 the law, to the former alone, which he extricated from a web of trivial cere- 
 
 s Especially Fritzsche, in Matt., s. 214 flf. 
 ^ Winer, bibl. Realworterb. 2, s. 406 ff. 
 ' Comp. Paulus, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 273. 
 8 Winer, b. Realw., l Bd. s. 426. 
 * Fritzsche, s. 214 ff. 
 
 1" Reinhard, s. 15 ff. Planck, Geschichte des Christenthums in der Periode seiner 
 Einfiihrung, i, s. 175 ff. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 299 
 
 monies, and embodied in his own example." But such a distinction is not 
 found in those striking passages from the Sermon on the Mount ; rather in 
 the vo/Aos and irpo<f>7JTai, the law and the prophets, we have the most com- 
 prehensive designation of the whole religious constitution of the Old Testa- 
 ment, ^^ and under the most trivial commandment, and the smallest letter of 
 the law, alike pronounced imperishable, we cannot well understand anything 
 else than the ceremonial precepts.'^ 
 
 A happier distinction is that between really Mosaic institutes, and their 
 traditional amplifications." It is certain that the sabbath cures of Jesus, his 
 neglect of the pedantic ablutions before eating, and the like, ran counter, not 
 to Moses, but to later rabbinical requirements, and several discourses of 
 Jesus turn upon this distinction. Matt. xv. 3 ff., Jesus places the command- 
 ment 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 trans- 
 gress the tradition of the elders, than the commandment of God as given by 
 Moses (Matt. xv. 3 ff.). He describes the mass of traditional precepts, as a 
 burthen grievous to be borne, which he would remove from the oppressed 
 people, substituting his own light burthen and easy yoke ; whence it may be 
 seen, that with all his forbearance towards existing institutions, so far as they 
 were not positively pernicious, it was his intention that all these command- 
 ments of men, as plants which his heavenly Father had not planted, should be 
 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 con- 
 template 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 
 (i Sam. XV. 22), and Asaph, that an offering of thanksgiving is more accept- 
 able 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 shall 
 love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself. But 
 
 " De Wette, Bibl. Dogm., § 210. 
 
 12 Fritzsche, s. 214. 
 
 " Vid. the Fragmentist, s. 69. 
 
 " Paulus, exeg. Handb. i, b, s. 600 f. Leben Jesu, I, a, s. 296, 312. 
 
300 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 68. 
 
 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^ 
 vo/xos iraiSayoiyos (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 pre- 
 dictions 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. 1* It is true that the words 
 of Jesus, Luke xvi. 16, d vo/aos kox. ot Trpo^^Tat etas luai'voi), seem to imply, 
 that the appearance of the Baptist put an end to the validity of the law ; but 
 tliis 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 aiujv juAAtdv of the Messiah. Hence it appears, that the only difference 
 between the view of Paul and that of Jesus is this : that the latter antici- 
 pated the extinction of the Mosaic system as a concomitant of his glorious 
 advent or return to the regenerated earth, while the former believed its 
 abolition permissible on the old, unregenerated earth, in virtue of the 
 Messiah's first advent. ^^ 
 
 § 68. 
 
 SCOPE OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS. RELATION TO THE GENTILES. 
 
 Although the church founded by Jesus did, in fact, early extend itself 
 beyond the limits of the Jewish people, there are yet indications which might 
 induce a belief that he did not contemplate such an extension.^ When he 
 sends the twelve on their first mission, his command is. Go not into the way 
 
 '* Comp. Piiulus, exeg. Handb. i, b, s. 598 f. 
 
 '" Comp. Hase, L^J., s. 84. Rabbinical notions of the abrogation of the Law in 
 Schottgen, ii. s. 611 ff. 
 
 1 Thus the Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist, ut sup. s. 72 ff. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 3OI 
 
 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. II f., xxi. 33 ff., xxii. i ff., xxviii. 19 f.) : he had no motive for fabricating 
 this particularizing addition ; but the two other Evangelists had a strong one 
 for its omission, in the offence which it would cause to the Gentiles already 
 within the fold. Its presence in Matthew, however, demands an explanation, 
 and expositors have thought to furnish one by supposing the injunction of 
 Jesus to be a measure of prudence.^ It is unquestionable that, even if the 
 plan of Jesus comprehended the Gentiles as well as the Jews, he must at 
 first, if he would not for ever ruin his cause with his fellow-countrymen, 
 adopt, and prescribe to the disciples, a rule of national exclusiveness. This 
 necessity on his part might account for his answer to the Canaanitish woman, 
 whose daughter he refuses to heal, because he was only sent to the lost sheep 
 of the house of Israel (Matt. xv. 24), were it not that the boon which he 
 here denies is not a reception into the messianic kingdom, but a temporal 
 benefit, such as even Elijah and Elisha had conferred on those who were 
 not Israelites (i Kings xvii. 9 ff. ; 2 Kings v. 1 ff.) — examples to. which Jesus 
 elsewhere appeals (Luke iv. 25 ff.). Hence the disciples thought it natural 
 and unobjectionable to grant the woman's petition, and it could not be 
 prudential considerations that withheld Jesus, for a time, from compliance. 
 That an aversion to the Gentiles may not appear to be his motive, it has 
 been conjectured * that Jesus, wishing to preserve an incognito in that country, 
 avoided the performance of any messianic work. But such a design of con- 
 cealment 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 strerigthen their 
 already rigid exclusiveness. We should therefore rather listen to the opinion 
 that Jesus sought, by his repeated refusal, to prove the faith of the woman, 
 and furnish an occasion for its exhibition,* if we could find in the text the 
 slightest trace of mere dissimulation ; and none of a real change of mind.* 
 Even Mark, bent as he was on softening the features of the incident, cannot 
 have thought of a dissimulation of this kind ; otherwise, instead of omitting 
 the harsh words and making the inadequate addition, and would have no man 
 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 
 
 2 Reinhard ; Planck, Geschichtes des Christenthums in der Per. seiner Einfiihrung, 
 I, s. 179 ff. 
 
 ' Paulus, Leben Jesu, I, a, s. 380 f. Hase, L. J., § 102. 
 
 * Olshausen, i, b. 507. 
 
 * Hase, ut sup. 
 
302 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 68. 
 
 be a touch from the pencil of tradition, for the sake of contrast and 
 grouping. 
 
 This narrative, however, is neutrahzed 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. 1 1 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 announce- 
 ment 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 resur- 
 rection, 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 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 303 
 
 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 delibera- 
 tions 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 com- 
 mand, 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 Pounder 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 sliun 
 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 circum- 
 stance which accords with the information of Josephus, that those Galileans 
 who journeyed to the feasts usually went through Samaria.^ That Jesus was 
 not unfavourable to the Samaritans, nay, that in many respects he acknow- 
 ledged their superiority to the Jews, is evident from his parable of the Good 
 Samaritan (Luke x. 30 ff.) ; he also bestows a marked notice on the case of a 
 Samaritan, who, among ten cleansed, was the only one that testified his 
 gratitude (Luke xvii. 16) ; and, if we may venture on such a conclusion from 
 John iv. 25, and subsequent records,^ the inhabitants of Samaria themselves 
 had some tincture of the messianic idea. 
 
 However natural it may appear that Jesus should avail himself of this 
 susceptible side of the Samaritans, by opportunely announcing to them the 
 
 ' Antiq. xx. vi. I. For some rabbinical rules not quite in accordance with this, see 
 Lightfoot, p. 991. 
 
 2 Bertholdt, Christol. Jud^or., § 7. 
 
304 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 69. 
 
 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 haying with the most desirable 
 issue, personally taught in Samaria, and presented himself as the Messiah, 
 forbid his disciples to carry thither their messianic tidings ? On the other 
 hand, if the scenes narrated by John occurred after the command recorded 
 by Matthew, the disciples, instead of wondering that Jesus talked so earnestly 
 with a woman (John iv. 27), ought rather to have wondered that he held any 
 converse with a Samaritan? 
 
 Since then of the two extreme narratives at least, in Matthew and John, 
 neither presupposes the other, we must either doubt the authenticity of the 
 exclusive command of Jesus, or of his connexion with the inhabitants of 
 Samaria. 
 
 In this conflict between the gospels, we have again the advantage of 
 appealing to the Book of Acts as an umpire. Before Peter, at the divine 
 instigatioii, had received the firstfruits of the Gentiles into the Messiah's' 
 kingdom, Philip the deacon, being driven from Jerusalem by the persecutiofl 
 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 inti- 
 mation from the Spirit, to bring Peter into communication with the heathens ; 
 in the other, Philip, without any precedent, unhesitatingly baptizes the 
 Samaritans. Ahd 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. 
 
 5 Some erroneously attribute this meaning to their question ; see in Liicke i, s. 533. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. 305 
 
 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 conversa- 
 tion between Jesus and the woman;* but from v. 16 inclusively, there are, 
 as impartial expositors confess,* many grave difficulties. The woman had 
 entreated Jesus to give her of the water which was for ever to extinguish 
 thirst, and Jesus immediately says. Go, call thy husband. Why so ? It has 
 been said that Jesus, well knowing that the woman had no lawful husband, 
 sought to shame her, and bring her to repentance.^ Liicke, disapproving the 
 imputation of dissimulation to Jesus, conjectures that, perceiving the woman's 
 dulness, he hoped by summoning her husband, possibly her superior in. in- 
 telligence, to create an opportunity for a more beneficial conversation. But 
 if Jesus, as it presently appears, knew that the woman had not at the tinxe 
 any proper husband, he could not in earnest desire her to summon him; and 
 if, as Liicke allows, he had that knowledge in a supernatural manner, it could 
 not be hidden from him, who knew what was in man, that she would be little 
 inclined to comply with his injunction. If, however, he had a prescience that 
 what he required would not be done, the injunction was a feint, and had 
 some latent object. But that this object was the penitence of the woman 
 there is no indication in the text, for the ultimate effect on her is not shame 
 and penitence, but faith in the prophetic insight of Jesus (v. 19). And this 
 was doubtless what Jesus wished, for the narrative proceeds as if he had 
 attained his purpose with the woman, and the issue corresponded to the 
 design. The difficulty here lies, not so much in what Liicke terms dissimula- 
 tion, — since this comes under the category of blameless temptation {Tr(.ipdt,av), 
 elsewhere occurring, — as in the violence with which Jesus wrests an oppor- 
 tunity 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 appro- 
 priated 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 com- 
 mentators virtually confess, by their adoption of the opinion, that her drift in 
 this remark was to turn away the conversation from her own affairs.'' 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,* that in the Gospel of John 
 the .answers of Jesus refer not so much to the ostensible meaning of questions, 
 as to t;he 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, 
 
 '• Bretschneider, ut sup. s. 47 ff. 97 f. 
 
 ' Liicke, i, s. 520 ff. 
 
 ''Tholiick, in loc. 
 
 ' Liicke and Tholiick, in loc. Hase, L. J., 67. 
 
 ' E.g. Tholiick, in many passages. 
 
306 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 69. 
 
 not merely as a prophet, but as the Messiah, and he believed that to turn 
 the conversation to the question of the legitimate place for the worship of 
 God, the solution of which was expected from the Messiah,* would best 
 conduce to that end. 
 
 Jesus evinces (v. 17) an acquaintance with the past history and present 
 position of the woman. The rationalists have endeavoured to explain this 
 by the supposition, that while Jesus sat at the well, and the woman was 
 advancing from the city, some passer-by hinted to him that he had better 
 not engage in conversation with her, as she was on the watch to obtam a 
 sixth husband.!" But not to insist on the improbability that a passer-by 
 should hold a colloquy with Jesus on the character of an obscure, woman, 
 the friends as well as the enemies of the fourth gospel now agree, that every 
 natural explanation of that knowledge on the part of Jesus, directly counter- 
 acts the design of the Evangelist." For, according to him, the disclosure 
 which Jesus makes of his privity to the woman's intimate concerns, is the 
 immediate cause, not only of her own faith in him, but of that of many 
 inhabitants of the city (v. 39), and he obviously intends to imply that they 
 were not too precipitate in receiving him as a prophet, on that ground alone. 
 Thus in the view of the Evangelist, the knowledge in question was an 
 effluence of the higher nature of Jesus, and modern supranaturalists adhere 
 to this explanation, adducing in its support the power which John attributes 
 to him (ii. 24 f.), of discerning what is in man without the aid of external 
 testimony.!* jBut j-^ig 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 sup- 
 poses to co-exist 'in Jesus. •■* 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. iL); in the Clementine Homilies, the 
 true prophet is 6 TraVTore iravTa etScos' ra /acv yeyovora u)s iyivero, to. Sk yivopxva 
 u)s ycverai, to. Be itrontva is eo-Tot ; !* and the rabbins number such # know- 
 ledge 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.i* 
 
 Farther on (v. 23) Jesus reveals to the woman what Hase terms the 
 subhmest principle of his religion, namely, that the service of God consists 
 
 * Comp. Schottgen, horae, i. s. 970 f. Wetstein, s. 863. 
 " Paulus, Leben Jesu, I, a, 187; Comment. 4, in loc. 
 " Comp. Olshausen in loc, and Bretschneider, Probab., s. 50. 
 " Olshausen, Liicke, in loc. 
 '' Comp. Bretschneider, ut sup. s. 49 f. 
 '* Homil. ii. 6, comp. iii. 12. 
 '^ Schottgen, horse, ii. p. 371 f. 
 
JESUS AS THE MESSIAH, 307 
 
 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 con- 
 versation the above direction. But so contracted a design can never be 
 imputed to Jesus, who, on other occasions, exemplifies a more suitable mode 
 of dealing with mankind : it is the design of the glorifying legend, or of an 
 idealizing biographer. 
 
 Meanwhile, continues the narrative (v. 27), the disciples of Jesus returned 
 from the city with provisions, and marvelled that he talked with a woman, 
 contrary to rabbinical rule.^® While the woman, excited by the last dis- 
 closure 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, / 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.*'' We admit that this is 
 susceptible of the general interpretation, that the germ of the kingdom of 
 God, which blossomed and bore fruit under the cultivation of the apostles, 
 was first deposited in the world by Jesus : but it cannot be denied that a 
 special application is also intended. Jesus foresees that the woman, who is 
 hastening towards the city, will procure him an opportunity of sowing the 
 seed of the gospel in Samaria, and he promises the disciples that they at a 
 future time shall reap the fruits of his labours. Who is not here reminded 
 of the propagation of Christianity in Samaria by Philip and the apostles, as 
 narrated in the Acts ? *^ That, even abstracting all supernaturalism from our 
 idea of the person of Jesus, he might have foreseen this progress of his cause 
 in Samaria from his knowledge of its inhabitants, is not to be denied ; but as 
 the above figurative prediction forms part of a whole more than improbable 
 in an historical point of view, it is equally liable to suspicion, especially as it 
 is easy to show how it might originate without any foundation in fact. 
 According to the prevalent tradition of the early church, as recorded in the 
 synoptical gospels, Jesus laboured personally in Galilee, Judea, and Perea 
 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 
 
 '8 Lightfoot, p. 1002. 
 
 " Liicke, I, s. 542. 
 
 " Liicke, s. 540, note. Bretsch leider, s. [2. 
 
308 PART II. CHAPTER IV. § 69. 
 
 mere reapers of the harvest in Samaria ; and to put this distinction, on a 
 suitable occasion, into the mouth of Jesus ! 
 
 The result, then, of our examination of John's Samaritan narrative is, that 
 we cannot receive it as a real history : and the impression which it leaves as 
 a whole tends to the same conclusion. Since Heracleon and Origen,!^ the 
 more ancient commentators have seldom refrained from giving the interview 
 of Jesus with the woman of Samaria an allegorical interpretation, on the 
 ground that the entire scene has a legendary and poetic colouring. Jesus is 
 seated at a well, — that idyllic locality with which the old Hebrew legend 
 associates so many critical incidents; at the identical well, moreover, which- 
 a tradition, founded on Gen. xxxiii. 19, xlviii. 22; Josh. xxiv. 32, reported 
 to have been givenby 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 Mbses 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 Abra- 
 ham'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 indica- 
 tions 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 ? 
 
 " Comm. in Joan, torn. 13. 
 
CHAPTER 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 re- 
 spective situations of those who were summoned, than that they co7ne, and are 
 found, and Jesus himself calls only Philip ; Andrew and his nameless com- 
 panion 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 theni 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 suc- 
 ceeded those in Matthew and Mark. For if, as these writers tells us, Andrew 
 and John had alteady 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 neces- 
 sary for that teacher to have directed their attention to Jesus ; neither if Peter 
 
310 PART II. CHAPTER V. § ^0. 
 
 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,' 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 pre- 
 served. 
 
 Let us test the justness of their view. In the synoptical narrative Jesus 
 says to his future disciples. Come after me, SewTe oTrio-oj /aou, and the result 
 is that they follow him {iiKa\ovBt]<Ta.v aira). If we understand from this that 
 the disciples thenceforth constantly followed Jesus, how can we give a differ- 
 ent interpretation to the similar expression in the fourth gospel, Follow me, 
 aKoXovOa juot ? 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.* But this interpretation is incompatible 
 with the synoptical history. How could Peter, at a later period, say so em- 
 phatically 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 for- 
 saken houses, etc., a hundredfold recompense (Matt. xix. 27 ff.), if this forsak- 
 ing and following had been so transient and interrupted? From these 
 considerations alone it is probable that the aKoXovB^i fwi in John also denotes 
 the commencement of a permanent connexion ; but there are besides the 
 plainest indications that this is the case in the cdntext to the narrative. Pre- 
 cisely 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 ques- 
 tion, 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 Peraea, again dispersed themselves after the return of Jesus into Galilee,* 
 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 &fisker of men — a destination which was common to 
 all the disciples. 
 
 The rationalistic commentators. perceive a special advantage in their posi- 
 tion 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 
 
 ' Kuinol, Comra. in Matth., s. 100 ; Liicke, Comm. z. Joh. I, s. 388 ; Olshausen, bibl. 
 Comm. I, s. 197 ; Hase, Leben Jesu,.§§ 56, 61. 
 * Leben Jesu, i, a, s. 212. 
 ^ Paalus, Leben Jesu, 1, a, s. 213 ; Sieifert, iiber den Ursprung n. s. f., s. 72. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 311 
 
 readiness to follow him. But this apparent advantage is the condemning cir- 
 cumstance in the above position : for nothing can more directly counteract 
 the intention of the first two Evangelists, than to suppose a previous acquaint- 
 ance between Jesus and the brethren whom he summons to follow him. In 
 both Gospels, great stress is laid on the fact that they imtnediately evdiw 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 pre- 
 viously 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, nof needing that any should testify of man, for he knnv what 
 was in man, according to John ii. 25, and thus presenting one of the charac- 
 teristics 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.* 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 sup- 
 posed 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 with- 
 out these means, belongs to the visionary, or to that species of intuition for 
 which the rabbinical designation of this messianic attribute, odorando judi- 
 care,^ 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,* 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 pre- 
 tensions 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, 
 riot 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 (i Kings xix. 19-21) of the mode in which the prophet Elijah sum- 
 moned 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 phy- 
 sical 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 Ehsha 
 should return to him. Similar petitions are offered to Jesus (Luke ix. 59 ff. ; 
 
 * See Fritzsche, in Matt., p. 189. 
 
 * Schbttgen, horse, ii. p. 372. 
 " Paulus, ut sup. 
 
312 PART II. CHAPTER V. § /O. 
 
 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 dis- 
 cipleship 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, ac- 
 companied with greater sacrifices, than Elijah, in his character of Prophet 
 merely, required or was authorized to require ? '' The historical germ of the 
 narrative may be this : several of the most eminent disciples of Jesus, particu- 
 larly 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 examina- 
 tion 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 rela- 
 tion 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 M es- 
 siah, 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 un- 
 natural is the manner in which Jesus is said to have received Simon. He 
 accosts him with the words, Thou art Simon,' the son ofjona, — a mode of salu- 
 tation which seems, as Bengel has well remarked,^ to imply that Jesus had a 
 supernatural acquaintance with the name and origin of a man previously un- 
 known 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 
 preceeds 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,^ 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 
 
 ' iPauIus, exeg. Handb. i, b, s. 464. 
 
 Gnomon, in loc. 
 » Paulus, Leben Jesu, i, a, s. 168. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF. JESUS. 313 
 
 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 ac- 
 count 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 declara- 
 tion, Tliou shalt be called Cephas, presupposes a more intimate knowledge, 
 than the proposal, / will viake you fishers of men. Even after a more length- 
 ened conversation with Peter, such as Lucke supposes,^" 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 cele- 
 brated answer. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth (v. 47) ? There is 
 no historical datum for supposing that Nazareth, when Jesus began his minis- 
 try, was the object of particular odium or contempt," and there is every 
 probability that the adversaries of Christianity were the first to cast an asper- 
 sion 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 pre- 
 viously gathered some intimations concerning Nathanael at Cana, where he 
 had just been attending a marriage of some relations.^^ But if Jesus had be- 
 come acquainted with Nathanael's character in a natural way, he must, in 
 answer to the question Whence knowest thou me 1 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 commu- 
 nicated 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 1 " Liicke and Tholiick 
 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 en- 
 gaged in some occupation, such as prayer or the study of the law, which 
 
 '" S. 385. 
 
 " Vid. Lucke, s. 389 f. 
 
 '!> Ut sup. 
 
314 PART II. CHAPTER V. § 70. 
 
 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 ear- 
 nest study of the law, and thy fervent prayer under the fig-tree ? " he would not 
 have omitted the word ■jrpoa-evxojt.evov (praying), or avayivma-KovTa {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 accord- 
 ant 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 pro- 
 phet 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 mes- 
 sengers 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, en- 
 ables our Evangelist to form a climax, in which Jesus ascends from the pene- 
 tration 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 en- 
 cumbered : 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, ^^ 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. 
 
 " P. 141. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 3 IS 
 
 § 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. i-ii). I shall not dilate 
 on the minor points of difference ^ 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 
 Irom 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 hence- 
 forth 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 nar- 
 rated 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^ supposes that 
 Jesus at first wished to launch out farther into the deep merely to escape 
 Irom 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 yournets for a draught (eTrai/ayaye eis ro fia.Oo%, 
 Koi xaAao-aT£ to. Slktvu, k. t. \.), 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 ofhis 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 pomt of view, 
 how could Jesus be a better judge in this matter than the men who had spent 
 half their lite 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 pomt 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 
 
 1 Storr, iieber den Zweck der ev. Gesch. und der Br. Joh., s. 350. 
 
 2 Exeg. Handb. i, b, s. 449. 
 
3l6 PART ir. CHAPTER V. §71. 
 
 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, Lei 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, hA St to! p-^/iarl aov ^aXdirai to Siktvov, though 
 prj/ia 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 super- 
 natural 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 ;^ 
 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 super- 
 stitious 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 1 
 
 Under the pressure of these difiSculties, refuge may be sought in the other 
 supposition as the more facile one ; namely, that Jesus, by means of his super- 
 human 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 omni- 
 science 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 cog- 
 
 * Bibl. Comm. I, p. 283. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 317 
 
 nizant 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 j 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 sup- 
 position 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, unsup- 
 ported by any miracle, would have a better issue. The contrary chronologi- 
 cal 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 diciples, 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 oc- 
 curred, 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,* 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 re- 
 counted 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. 5 Which then is the correct narrative? Schleiermacher 
 prefers that of the Evangelist on whom he has commented, because it is more 
 particular « ; and Sieffert'' 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 in- 
 
 * Ueber den Lukas, s. 70. 
 
 5 This, with the legendary character of both narratives, is acknowledged by De. Wette, 
 exeg. Handb. i, i, s. 37, i, 2, s. 38 f. 
 « Neander is of the same opinion, L. J., s. 249 f. 
 ' Uber den Ursprung des ersten kan. Ev., s. 73. 
 
3l8 PART n. CHAPTER V. § /I. 
 
 trinsically 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 (tlie draught of fishes), is char- 
 acterized as the recital of one who was not an eye-witness. I have already 
 presented myself elsewhere ^ to this critic, as one hardy enough to express the 
 doubt of which he denies the existence, and I here repeat the question : sup- 
 posing 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 sliould 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 Evange- 
 list, 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.^ 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 ; i" 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." 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.^^ 
 
 " Berliner Jahrbiicher fiir wissenschaftliche Kritik, 1834 Nov.; now in the Charakteristi- 
 ken u. Kritiken, s. 264 f. 
 
 ' According to De Wette, the copious draught of fishes was a symbolical miracle, typifying 
 the rich fruits of the apostolic ministry. 
 
 '" Porphyr. vita Pythagora;, no. 25, ed. Kiessling ; Jamblich. v. P. no. 36. ders. Ausg. 
 It is fair to adduce this history, because, being less marvellous than the gospel narrative, it 
 can hardly be an imitation, but must have arisen independently, and hence it evinces a 
 common tendency of the ancient legend. 
 
 11 Luke V. 5 : Si.' SXris t^s vvktos KoiriduavTes oidkv iX&pofiev. John xxi. 3 : Kal h iKeivji t% 
 vvictI iTrittcrai' ovS^v. 
 
 "> Comp. de Wette, exeg. Handb., i, 3, s. 213. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS, 319 
 
 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 cele- 
 brating the number and weight of the fishes, they are said to be ;u,€-ya\ot 
 (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 pre- 
 sents 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 interpre- 
 tation, 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 Alphceus {Mark ii. 14 if. ; 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 sinneis partook, to the great scandal of 
 the Pharisees. 
 
 From the difference of the names it has been conjectured that the Evange- 
 lists refer to two different events ; ' 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 pubhcan is preceded and followed by the same occur- 
 rences ; the subject of the narrative is in the same situation ; Jesus addresses 
 him in the same words ; and the issue is the same.^ 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 ? 
 
 1 Vid. Kuinol, in Mattli., p. 255. 
 
 2 Siefifert, ut sup. p. 55. 
 
11 
 
 1 I 
 
 320 PART II. CHAPTER V. § 7 1. 
 
 This is commonly represented as conceivable on the supposition that Levi 
 was the proper name of the individual, and Matthew merely a surname ; ^ or 
 that after he had attached himself to Jesus, he exchanged the former for the 
 latter.* To substantiate such an opinion, there should be some indication that 
 the Evangelists who name the chosen publican Levi, intend under that desig- 
 nation 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, o reXoii/ijs (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.* 
 
 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.^ But this would only 
 ])rove, 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 z. forsaking of all, KaTaXiTrtav airavTo,, to one whom he does 
 not include among the constant followers of Jesus.'' 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 mcon- 
 siderate. 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.* But the meal appears, especially in Luke, to be the con- 
 sequence, and not the cause, of the summons ; moreover, a modest guest 
 would say to the host who had invited him, / will follow thee, aKokmiO^a-ta trot, 
 not Folloiv me, aKoXovdei /xoi; and in fine, this interpretation renders the whole 
 
 ' Kuinol, ut sup. Paulus, exeg. Handb., i, b, s. 513. L.J., i, a, 240. 
 
 * Bertholdt, Einleitung, 3, s. 1255 f. Fritzsche, s. 340. 
 = Sieffert, s. 56; De Wette, exeg. Handb., i, i, s. 91. 
 « Sieffert, s. 60. 
 
 ' De Wette, ut sup. 
 
 • Exeg. Handb., I, b, s. 510. L. J., i, a, 240. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 321 
 
 anecdote so trivial, that it would have been better omitted.® 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 discard- 
 ing 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,*" 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 atten- 
 tion. 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, avOpia-n-ov, MaT^atoi/ \€y6ii,cvov, which the 
 Manicheans made an objection," as they did the above-mentioned circum- 
 stance, is not without a precedent in the writings of Xenophon, who in his 
 Anabasis introduces himself as Xenophon, a certain Athenian, 'Bevo<}>S>v rts 
 'A6r)vaLos.^' 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,'* 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 : '* 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 hospit- 
 able 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, tha,t he 
 immediately made a great feast in his house. To say that he withheld this 
 
 ' Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, Si ^6. 
 '» Gratz, Comm. z. Matth. I, s. 470. 
 '' Augustin c. Faust. Manich. xvii. I. 
 
 12 
 
 111. 1. 4. 
 
 *' Plutarch, de gloria Atheniens., at the beginning. 
 '* Schulz, Ueber das Abendmahl, s. 308. 
 
322 PART II. CHAPTER V. § 72. 
 
 from modesty, is to invest a rude Galilean of that age with the affectation be- 
 longing 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. 1 1 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 natuneof 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.** For as the feast was in the house (cV Ty 
 oIkio.), 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 them- 
 selves 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. " 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 aand drinking of the dis- 
 ciples of Jesus ; Mark's account is not clear (v. 18). According to Schleier- 
 macher, every unprejudiced person njust 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 j 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 
 
 Comp. de Wette, exeg. Handb. I, 2, p. 134. 
 Ut sup., p. 77. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 3^3 
 
 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.!'' 
 
 Another narrative, which is peculiar to Luke (xix. i-io), 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, 
 opxiTcXciii^s, named Zacchseus, that he might, notwithstanding his short staturej 
 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 Zacchseus 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 Zacchseus, or that some one pointed him out to Jesus by 
 name ; '^ but, as Olshausen truly says, the knowledge of Zacchseus 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, ot ScuScko, the twelve disciples or 
 apostles, 01 8<i8eKa ixae-ffrai or aTroxnoXoi. 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. i). Luke, on the con- 
 trary, 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 1 neither had they any office to execute during its delivery. Mark's 
 representation, with the exception of the vague tradition from which he sets 
 
 17 De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, i, p. 93. 
 
 >8 Paulas, exeg. Handb., 3, a, s. 48. Kuinol, in Luc, p. 032. 
 
 1 Srhieiermacher. iiber den Lukas, s. 85. 
 
 Schiciermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 85. 
 
324 PART II. CHAPTER V. § 73. 
 
 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.^ 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 cor- 
 rect ? There certainly is little doubt that this number was fixed during the life- 
 time 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 (i 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 spon- 
 taneously formed itself.' 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 opiraion of the highest Christian antiquity 
 that this relation determined his choice.* 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. i if.) ; 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 fif.) ; of purifying their minds by his severe but friendly discipline 
 (Matt. viii. 26, xvi. 23, xviii. i fl". 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 f reach, 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 addi- 
 tional object on the part of Jesus. (Mark proceeds to enumerate the powers 
 
 * Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 85. 
 » Ut sup., s. 88. 
 
 * Ep. Barnab. 8, and the Gospel of the Ebionites ap. Epiphanius, hser. xxx. 13. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 325 
 
 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, dTTocTToXot (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} But that Jesus should have called them his envoys cannot 
 be improbable, if he really sent them on a journey to announce the approach- 
 ing 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. i), 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 exer- 
 cise 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 iridications 
 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 yAuo-o-oKo/iov, 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 thmk, 
 on more general grounds, that the total renunciation of their secular employ- 
 ment 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 
 
 " Schleiermacher, ut sup. s. 87. 
 
326 PART II. CHAPTER V. § 74. 
 
 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 fisher- 
 men, 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 TTToxovs, and the little ones, vrimovi (Matt, v, 3, xi. 5, 25), that they were 
 of a similar grade. 
 
 § 74- 
 
 THK 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-to ; 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 irpmro's (thefirst\ 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 ^ (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 ex- 
 planation, that Peter was first called,^ 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 else- 
 where 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) j 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,' 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. 
 
 ' If ^ 7r6Xis 'kvipiov koI Uh-pov, John i. 45, mean the same as rj ISla wSKis, Matth. ix. I, that 
 is, the place where they were resident, there exists a contradiction ou this point between John 
 and the synoptists. 
 
 * Comp. Fritzsche, in Matt., p. 358. 
 
 ' Comp. Lightfoot, in loc. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 327 
 
 The first and third Evangelists are evidently guided by the propriety of 
 uniting the couples of brethren j 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 to- 
 gether 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.* Again, Mark xiii. 3, our 
 four apostles concur in asking Jesus privately {kot ISiav) 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, 7%« disciples came to him privately (xxiv. 3) ; hence it is prob- 
 able that Mark's limitation is an erroneous one. Possibly the words Kar 
 l8Cav, being used in the document to which he referred to denote the separa- 
 ation of the twelve from the multitude, appeared to him, from association, an 
 introductory form, of which there are other examples (Matt. xvii. i ; 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 men- 
 tioned 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, tfJT '"J3 viol ^povrrjs (Mark iii. 17),^ 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. i; 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 
 metioned first, and John is appended to him as his brother (0 dSeX^os avrov). 
 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.* 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. 
 
 * Comp. Saunier, iiber die Quellen des Markus, s. 55 f. 
 
 5 Comp. de Wette, in loc. 
 
 6 Paulus, exeg. Handb. I, b, s. 556. 
 
328 PART II. CHAPTER V. § 74. 
 
 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.'' 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.^ 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 otit, 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 men- 
 tion of the sons of Zebedee ; while several narratives of the vocations of differ- 
 ent 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 im- 
 portance not less often than the synoptists ; he does not conceal that Jesus 
 bestowed on, him an honourable surname (i. 43) ; 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.^ He 
 also admits the honourable interpretation of the surname Peter, and the 
 
 '• This is probably a mere inference of Mark. Because Jesus excluded the multitude, and 
 forbade the publication of the event, the Evangelist saw in it one of those secret scenes, to 
 which Jesus was accustomed to admit only the three favoured apostles. 
 
 ' In the ancient church it was thought that Jesus had communicated to these three indi- 
 viduals the yvusK, to be mysteriously transmitted. Vid. in Gieseler, K. G. I, s. 234. 
 
 ' Even Paulus, L. J. i, a, s. 167 f., remarks that the fourth Evangelist seems to have had 
 a design in noticing this circumstance. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 329 
 
 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 Oip/xorepoi, casts himself into the sea ; 
 but it is not until after John, as the StopaTiKurepos (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 1 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 representa- 
 tion there given of the relative position of Peteir and John, is that the writer 
 wished a comparison to be drawn in favour of the latter. i" 
 
 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, imlOtjttjs 6v riyaira, or i^lXa 6 lijo-oSs (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 6 aX\os, or another 
 disciple, aAAos ii.aBr{T^^ (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 ; 
 
 " This has not escaped the acumen of Dr. Paulus. In a review of the first volume of the 
 second ed. of Lucke's Coram, zum Johannes, in Lt. Bl. zur allg. Kirchenzeitung, Febr., 1834, 
 no. 18, s. 137 f., he says : "The gospel of John has only preserved the less advantageous 
 circumstances connected with Peter (excepting vi. 68), such as place him in marked subordin- 
 ation to Tohn [here the passages above considered are cited]. An adherent of Peter can 
 hardly have had a hand in the Gospel of John." We may add that it seems to have pro- 
 ceeded from an antagonist of Peter, for it is probable that he had such of the school of John, 
 as well as of Paul. 
 
330 PART II. CHAPTER V. § 75. 
 
 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 Aposde 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." 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 bear record, 
 6 ccopa/cws f).€ix.apTvprjKe, 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.^^ 
 This mode of expression, however, may be explained also in accordance 
 with the otlier supposition, ^^ 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 prob- 
 able 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. ^4 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 natur- 
 ally be induced to designate the revered apostle, under whose name he wished 
 to write, in this half honourable, half mysterious manner.i^ 
 
 § 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 
 
 '' Vid. LUcke, Comm. zum Joh. 2, s. 708. 
 
 '^ Paulus, in his review of Bretschneider's Probabilien, in the Heidelberger Jahrbiichern, 
 1821, no. 9, s. 138. 
 
 '^ LUcke, ut sup. s. 664. 
 
 ^* Bretschneider, Probabilia, p. iii f. 
 
 '* Comp. Paulus, ut sup. s. 137. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 33 1 
 
 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 "EXXrjve's, 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 Phillip ; 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 *0?n -)2 is a mere patronymic, which must have been 
 accompanied by a proper name, such as Nathanael.^ But we have no ade- 
 quate ground for such an identification, since the juxtaposition of Bartholomew 
 and PhiHp 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 Ai8u/ios, 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 6 
 Kavavirtfi (from KJiJ, io be zealous). This surname seems to mark him as a 
 former adherent of the Jewish sect of zealots for religion,^ 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 rfead 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 ; * an attempt which others have made by pointing out a similarity 
 
 ^ Thus most of the expositors, Fritzsche, Matth., s. 359 ; Winer, Realworterb. i, s. 163 f. 
 Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, I, s. 98. 
 2 Joseph., bell. jud. iv. iii. 9. 
 ^ Comp. Credner, Einleitung i, s. 64 ; De Wette, exeg. Handh. i, I, s. 98 f. 
 
332 PART II. CHAPTER V. § 75. 
 
 of meaning between the two names, though such a similarity does not exist.* 
 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 diver- 
 gency, 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.^ 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 enu- 
 merated 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. iff.) 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, particu- 
 larly to the first Evangelist, in his. supposed character of apostle.^ But the 
 disfavour towards Matthew on this score ought to be moderated by the con- 
 sideration, 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,^ and hence they denoted the universal destination of 
 Jesus and his kingdom.^ Moreover, seventy was a sacred number with the 
 Jewish nation ; Moses deputed seventy elders (Num. xi. 16, 25) ; the San- 
 hedrim had seventy members ; " 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 num- 
 bers, and to surround himself with inner and outer circles of disciples, regu- 
 lated 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 
 
 * De Wette, ut sup. 
 
 * Ueber den Lukas, s. 88 f. 
 
 ^ Schulz, iiber das Abendmahl, s. 307. ; Schneckenburger, iiber den Ursprung, s. 13 f. 
 ' Tuf haarez, f. xix. c. iii. ; Clem. hom. xviii. 4 ; Recognit. Clement, ii. 42 ; Epiphan. 
 hser. i. 5. 
 » Schneckenburger, ut sup. ; Gieseler, iiber Entstehung der schriftl. Evangelien, s. 127 f. 
 s Lightfoot, p. 786. 
 
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. 333 
 
 Christian legend? This, supposing it imbued with Jewish prepossessions, 
 would infer, that as Jesus had respect to the twelve tribes in fixing the num- 
 ber of his apostles, he would extend the parallel by appointing seventy sub- 
 ordinate 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 accept- 
 ance of such a narrative, destitute as it is of all historical confirmation, and of 
 any other apparent source than dogmatical interests, is placed in disadvanta- 
 geous 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 ^''. 
 
 w De Wette, exeget. Handb., i, i, s. 99 f. I, 2, s. 61. i, 3, s. 220 ; Theile, zur Biogr. 
 J., § 24. For the contrary opinion, see Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 498 f. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS.* 
 
 §76. 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 
 
 In reviewing the public life of Jesus, we may separate from the events those 
 discourses which were not merely incidental, but which stand independent 
 and entire. This distinction, however, is not precise, for many discourses, 
 owing to the occurrences that suggested them, may be classed as events ; and 
 many events, from the explanations annexed to them, seem to range them- 
 selves with the discourses. The discourses of Jesus given in the synoptical 
 gospels, and those attributed to him in the fourth, differ widely both in form 
 and matter, having only a few isolated sentences in common : they must, 
 therefore, be subjected to a separate examination. Again, there is a dissimili- 
 tude between the three first Evangelists : Matthew affects long discourses, and 
 collects into one mass a number of sayings, which in Luke are distributed 
 among various places and occasions ; each of these two Evangelists has also 
 some discourses peculiar to himself. In Mark, the element of discourses 
 exists in a very small proportion. Our purpose will, therefore, be best an- 
 swered, if we make Matthew's comprehensive discourses our starting point ; 
 ascertain all the corresponding ones in the other gospels ; inquire which 
 amongst them has the best arrangement and representation of these dis- 
 courses ; and, finally, endeavour to form a judgment as to how far they really 
 proceeded from the Hps of Jesus. 
 
 The first long discourse in Matthew is that known as the Sermon on the 
 Mount (v.-vii.). The Evangelist, having recorded the return of Jesus after 
 his baptism into Galilee, and the calling of the fishermen, informs us, that 
 Jesus went through all Galilee, teaching and healing ; that great multitudes 
 followed him from all parts of Palestine ; and that for their instruction he 
 ascended a mountain, and delivered the sermon in question (iv. 23 ff.). We 
 seek in vain for its parallel in Mark, but Luke (vi. 20-49) gives a discourse 
 which has the same introduction and conclusion, and presents in its whole 
 tenor the most striking similarity with that of Matthew ; moreover, in both 
 cases, Jesus, at the termination of his discourse, goes to Capernaum, and 
 heals the centurion's servant. It is true that Luke gives a later insertion to 
 the discourse, for previous to it he narrates many journeyings and cures of 
 Jesus, which Matthew places after it ; and while the latter represents Jesus 
 as ascending a mountain, and being seated there during delivery of his dis- 
 course, Luke says, almost in contradiction to him, that Jesus came down and 
 
 • All that relates to the sufferings, death, and resurrection of Jesus is here excluded. 
 
 334 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 335 
 
 stood in the plain. Further, the sermon in Luke contains but a fourth part of 
 that in Matthew, while it has some elements peculiarly its own. 
 
 To avoid the unpleasant admission that one of two inspired Evangelists 
 must be in error, — which is inevitable if in relation to the same discourse one 
 of them makes Jesus deliver it on the mountain, the other in the plain ; the 
 ,one sitting, the other standing ; the one earlier, the other later ; if either the 
 one has made important omissions, or the other as important additions ; — the 
 ancient harmonists pronounced these discourses to be distinct,^ on the plea 
 that Jesus must frequently have treated of the essential points of his doctrine, 
 and may therefore have repeated word for word certain impressive enuncia- 
 tions. This may be positively denied with respect to long discourses, and 
 even concise maxims will always be reproduced in a new guise and connexion 
 by a gifted and inventive teacher ; to say the least, it is impossible that any 
 but a very barren mind should repeat the same formal exordium, and the 
 same concluding illustration, on separate occasions. 
 
 The identity of the discourses being established, the first effort was to con- 
 ciliate or to explain the divergencies between the two accounts so as to leave 
 their credibility unimpeached. In reference to the different designation of 
 the locality, Paulus insists on the etti of Luke, which he interprets to imply 
 that Jesus stood m^er the plain, and therefore on a hill. Tholiick, more 
 happily, distinguishes the level space, totto's ir^Sivos, from the plain properly so 
 called, and regards it as a less abrupt part of the mountain. But as one 
 Evangelist makes Jesus ascend the mountain to deliver his discourse, while 
 the other makes him descend for the same purpose, these conciliators ought 
 to admit, with Olshausen, that if Jesus taught in the plain, according to Luke, 
 Matthew has overlooked the descent that preceded the discourse ; or if, as 
 Matthew says, Jesus taught seated on the mountain, Luke has forgotten to 
 mention that after he had descended, the pressure of the crowd induced him 
 to reascend before he commenced his harangue. And without doubt each 
 was ignorant of what he omits, but each knew that tradition associated this 
 discourse with a sojourn of Jesus on a mountain. Matthew thought the 
 mountain a convenient elevation for one addressing a multitude ; Luke, on 
 the contrary, imagined a descent necessary for the purpose : hence the double 
 discrepancy, for he who teaches from a mountain is sufficiently elevated over 
 his hearers to sit, but he who teaches in a plain will naturally stand. The 
 chronological divergencies, as well as the local, must be admitted, if we would 
 abstain from fruitless efforts at conciliation.^ 
 
 The difference as to the length and contents of the discourse is susceptible 
 of three explanations : either the concise record of Luke is a mere extract 
 from the entire discourse which Matthew gives without abridgment; or Mat- 
 thew has incorporated many sayings belonging properly to otiier occasions ; 
 or, lastly, both these causes of variety have concurred. He who, with Tho- 
 liick, wishes to preserve intact the _fides divina, or with Paulus, the fides 
 humana of the Evangelists, will prefer the first supposition, because to with- 
 hold the true is more innocent than to add the false. The above theologians 
 hold that the train of thought in the Sermon on the Mount, as given byMat- 
 thew, is closely consecutive, and that this is a .proof of its original unity. 
 But any compiler not totally devoid of ability, can give a tolerable appearance 
 of connectedness to sayings which did not originally belong to each other ; 
 and even these commentators are obliged to admit ^ that the alleged consecu- 
 
 > Aueustin. de consens. ev. ii. 19. ; Storr, iiber den Zweclc des Evang. u. d. Br. Joh., a. 
 347 fr. For further references see Tholiick's Auslegung der Bergpredigt, Einl., fe i. 
 2 c'omp. De Wette, exeg. Handb., I, I, s. 47 ff. i, 2, s. 44. 
 8 Tholiick, s. 24 ; Paulus, exeg. Handb., i, b, s. 584. 
 
336 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § ^6. 
 
 tiveness extends over no more than half the sermon, for from vi. 19 it is a 
 string of more or less isolated sentences, some of them very unlikely to have 
 been uttered on the occasion. More recent criticism has therefore decided 
 that the shorter account of Luke presents the discourse of Jesus in its original 
 form, and that Matthew has taken the licence of incorporating with this much 
 that was uttered by Jesus at various times, so as to retain the general sketch 
 — the exordium, peroration, and essential train of thought ; while between 
 these compartments he inserted many sayings more or less analogous bor- 
 rowed from elsewhere.* This view is especially supported by the fact that 
 many of the sentences, which in Matthew make part of the Sermon on the 
 Mount, are in Mark and Luke dispersed through a variety of scenes. Com- 
 pelled to grant this, yet earnestly solicitous to avert from the Evangelist an 
 imputation that might invalidate his claim to be considered an eye-witness, 
 other theologians maintain that Matthew did not compile the discourse under 
 the idea that it was actually spoken on a single occasion, but with the clearest 
 knowledge that such was not the case.^ It is with justice remarked in oppo- 
 sition to this, that when Matthew represents Jesus as ascending the mountain 
 before he begins his discourse, and descending after its close, he obviously 
 makes these two incidents the limits of a single address ; and that when he 
 speaks of the impression which the discourse produced on the multitude, 
 whose presence he states as the inducement to its delivery, he could not but 
 intend to convey the idea of a continuous harangue.® As to Luke's edition 
 of the sermon, there are parts in which the interrupted connexion betrays 
 deficiencies, and there are additions which do not look genuine ; '' it is also 
 doubtful whether he assigns a more appropriate connexion to the passages 
 in the position of which he differs from Matthew ; ® and hence, as we shall 
 soon see more fully, he has in this instance no advantage over his predecessor. 
 
 The assemblage to whom the Sermon on the Mount was addressed, might 
 from Luke's account be supposed a narrow circle, for he states that the choice 
 of the apostles immediately preceded the discourse, and that at its commence- 
 ment Jesus lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and he does not,- like Matthew, 
 note the multitude, o-j(Kcni<i, as part of the audience. On the other hand, Mat- 
 thew also mentions that before the sermon the disciples gathered round Jesus 
 and were taught by him ; and Luke represents the discourse as being delivered 
 in the audience of the people (vii. i) ; it is therefore evident that Jesus spoke to 
 the crowd in general, but with a particular view to the edification of his dis- 
 ciples.^ We have no reason to doubt that a real harangue of Jesus, more 
 than ordinarily solemn and public, was the foundation of the evangelical 
 accounts before us. 
 
 Let us now proceed to an examination of particulars. In both editions, 
 the Sermon on the Mount is opened by a series of beatitudes ; in Luke, how- 
 ever, not only are several wantiiig which we find in Matthew, but most of 
 those common to both are in the former taken in another sense than in the 
 latter.i" The poor, irrux"', are not specified as in Matthew by the addition, 
 in spirit, t<3 irvevfiarL ; they are therefore not those who have a deep con- 
 sciousness of inward poverty and misery, but the literally poor ; neither is the 
 
 ' Schulz, vom Abendmahl, s. 313 f. ; Sieffert, s. 74 ff. ; Fritzsche, s. 301. 
 ' Olshausen, Bibl. Coram., I, s. 197 ; Kern, in der Tiib. Schrift, 1834, 2, s. 33. 
 ^ Schulz, ut sup. s. 315 ; Schneckenburger, Beitrage, s. 26 ; Credner, Einleit., i, s. 69. 
 ' Schleiermacher, Uber den Lukas, s. 89 f. 
 
 * Tholuck, p. 1 1, and my Review of the writings of Sieffert and others in the Jahrbuch f. 
 wiss. Kritik, Nov. 1834 ; now in my Charakteristiken u. Kritiken, s. 252 ff. 
 9 Comip. Tholuck, ut sup. s. 25 ff. ; De Wette, exeget. Handb., i, i, s. 49. 
 '° Storr, Ueber den Zweck u. s. w., s. 348 f. Olshausen. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 33/ 
 
 hunger of the ireivSvTes (hungering) referred to r^v l<.Kaxo<j\>vt\v {righteousness) ; 
 it is therefore not spiritual hunger, but bodily ; moreover, the adverb vvvyUow, 
 definitely marks out those who hunger and those who weep, the TreLvZvre^ and 
 KXaton-es. Thus in Luke the antithesis is not, as in Matthew, between the 
 present sorrows of pious souls, whose pure desires are yet unsatisfied, and 
 their satisfaction about to come ; but between present suffering and future 
 well-being in general." This mode of contrasting the aiu>v oStos and the alu>v 
 /AeAAcov, the present age and the future, is elsewhere observable in Luke, especi- 
 ally in the parable of the rich man ; and without here inquiring which of the 
 two representations is probably the original, I shall merely remark, that this 
 of Luke is conceived entirely in the spirit of the Ebionites, — a spirit which 
 has of late been supposed discernible in Matthew. It is a capital principle 
 with the Ebionites, as they are depicted in the Clementine HomiUes, that he 
 who has his portion in the present age; will be destitute in the age to come ; 
 while he who renounces earthly possessions, thereby accumulates heavenly 
 treasures. 12 -phe j^st beatitude relates to those who are persecuted for the 
 sake of Jesus. Luke in the parallel passage has, for the Son of man's sake ; 
 hence the words for my sake in Matthew, must be understood to refer to 
 Jesus solely in his character of Messiah.!** 
 
 The beatitudes are followed in Luke by as many woes oval, which are want- 
 ing in Matthew. In these the opposition established by the-Ebionites between 
 this world and the other, is yet rhore strongly marked ; for woe is denounced 
 on the rich, the full, and the joyous, simply as such, and they are threatened 
 with the evils corresponding to their present advantages, under the new order 
 of things to be introduced by the Messiah ; a view that reminds us of the 
 Epistle of James, v. i ff. The last woe is somewhat stiffly formed after the 
 model of the last beatitude, for it is evidently for the sake of the contrast to 
 the true prophets, so much calumniated, that the false prophets are said, with- 
 out any historical foundation, to have been spoken well of by all men. We 
 may therefore conjecture, with Schleiermacher,'* that we are indebted for 
 these maledictions to the inventive fertility of the author of the third gospel. 
 He added this supplement to the beatitudes, less because, as Schleiermacher 
 supposes, he perceived a chasm, which he knew not how to fill, than because 
 he judged it consistent with the character of the Messiah, that, like Moses of 
 old, he should couple curses with blessings. The Sermon on the Mount is 
 regarded as the counterpart of the law, deHvered on Mount Sinai ; but the 
 introduction, especially in Luke, reminds us more of a passage in Deutero- 
 nomy, in which Moses commands that on the entrance of the Israelitish 
 people into the promised land, one half of them shall take their stand on 
 Mount Gerizim, and pronounce a manifold blessing on the observers of the 
 law, the other half on Mount Ebal, whence they were to fulminate as mani- 
 fold a curse on its transgressors. We read in Josh. viii. 33 ff. that this in- 
 junction was fulfiUed.i^ 
 
 With the beatitudes, Matthew suitably connects the representation of the 
 
 " De Wette, exeg. Handb., i, 2, s. 44 f. ; Neander, L. J. Chr., .s. 155 f., Anm. 
 
 12 Hotnil. XV. 7 ; comp. Credner in Winer's Zeitschrift f. wiss. Theologie, i, s. 298 f. ; 
 Schneckenburger, iiber das Evangelium der Aegyptier, § 6. 
 
 " Schneckenburger, iiber den Ursprung, s. 29. 
 
 '^ Ut sup. s. 90, Neander agrees with him, ut sup. .j t • 1 r 
 
 " The Rabbins also attached weight to these Mosaic blessings and curses, vid. Lightfoot, 
 p 255. As here we have eight blessings, they held that Abraham had been blessed benedic- 
 Honibus septem (Baal Turim, in Gen. xii. Lightfoot, p. 256) ; David, Daniel with his three 
 companions, and the Messiah, betiedictionibus sex. (Targ. Ruth. 3. ibid.) They also counted 
 together with the twenty beatiiudities in the Psalms, as many va in Isaiah. (Midrasch 
 
 Tehillim in Ps. i. ib.). 
 
 Y 
 
338 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § ^6. • 
 
 disciples as the salt of the earth, and the light of the world {v. 13 ff-)- In Luke, 
 the discourse on the salt is, with a rather different opening, introduced in 
 another place (xiv. 34 f.), where Jesus admonishes his hearers to ponder the 
 sacrifices that must be made by those who would follow him, and rather to 
 abstain from the profession of discipleship than to maintain it dishonourably ; 
 and to this succeeds aptly enough the comparison of such degenerate disciples 
 to salt that has lost its savour. Thus the dictum accords with either context, 
 and from its aphoristical conciseness would be likely to recur, so that it may 
 have been really spoken in both discourses. On the contrary, it cannot have 
 been spoken in the sequence in which it is placed by Mark (ix. 50) : for the 
 idea that every one shall be salted with fire (in allusion to hell), has no in- 
 ternal connexion with the comparison of the true disciples of Jesus to salt, 
 denoting their superiority : the connexion is merely external, resulting from 
 the verbal affinity of dXifeiv and aXas, — it is the connexion of the dictionary.^* 
 The altered sequel which Mark gives to the apothegm {have salt in yourselves, 
 and be at peace with one another) might certainly be united to it without in- 
 congruity, but it would accord equally well with quite a different train of 
 thought. The apothegm on the light which is not to be hidden, as the salt 
 is not to be without savour, is also wanting in the Sermon on the Mount as 
 given by Luke ; who, however, omitting the special application to the dis- 
 ciples, has substantially the same doctrine in two different places. We find 
 it first (viii. 16) immediately after the interpretation of the parable of the 
 sower, where it also occurs in Mark (iv. 21), It must be admitted that there 
 is no incoherence in associating the shining of the light with the fructification 
 of the seed ; still, a judicious teacher will pause on the interpretation of a 
 parable, and will not disturb its effect by a hasty transition to new images. 
 At any rate there is no intrinsic connexion between the shining of the inward 
 light, and the declaration appended to it by Luke, that all secrets shall be 
 made manifest. We have here a case which is of frequent recurrence with 
 this Evangelist ; that, namely, of a variety of isolated sayings being thrown 
 confusedly together between two independent discourses or narratives. Thus 
 between the parable of the sower and the narrative of the visit paid to Jesus 
 by his mother and brethren, the apothegm on the light is inserted on account 
 of its internal analogy with the parable ; then, because in this apothegm there 
 occurs the opposition between concealment and manifestation, it suggested to 
 the writer the otherwise heterogeneous discourse on the revelation of all 
 secrets ; whereupon is added, quite irrelevantly to the context, but with some 
 relation to the parable, the declaration. Whosoever hath, to him shall be given. 
 In the second passage on the manifestation of the light (xi. 33), the subject 
 has absolutely no connexion, unless we interpolate one,''' with that of the 
 context, which turns on the condemnation of the cotemporaries of Jesus by 
 the Ninevites. The fact is, that here again, between the discourses against 
 the demand for signs and those at the Pharisee's dinner, we have a chasm 
 filled up with disjointed fragments of harangues. 
 
 At v. 17 ff. follows the transition to the main subject of the sermon ; the 
 assurance of Jesus that he came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but 
 to fulfil, etc. Now as Jesus herein plainly presupposes that he is himself the 
 Messiah, to whom was ascribed authority to abolish a part of the law, this 
 declaration cannot properly belong to a period in which, if Matt. xvi. 13 ff. 
 be rightly placed, he had not yet declared himself to be the Messiah, Luke 
 
 " Schneckenburger, Beitrage, s. $8. Neander tries to show, very artificially, a real con- 
 nection of thought, s. 157, Anm. 
 
 " Olshausen in loc. The true reading is indicated by Schneckenburger, Beitrage, s. 58 ; 
 ThoIUck, ut sup. s. II. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 339 
 
 (xvi. 17) inserts this declaration together with the apparently contradictory 
 one, that the law and the prophets were in force until the coming of John. 
 These are two propositions that we cannot suppose to have been uttered con- 
 secutively ; and the secret of their conjunction in Luke's gospel lies in the 
 word vo>os, law, which happens to occur in both.i* It is to be observed that 
 between the parable of the steward and that of the rich man, we have another 
 of those pauses in which Luke is fond of introducing his fragments. 
 
 So little, it appears from v. 20, is it the design of Jesus to inculcate a dis- 
 regard of the Mosaic law, that he requires a far stricter observance of its 
 precepts than the Scribes and Pharisees, and he makes the latter appear in 
 contrast to himself as the underminers of the law. Then follows a series of 
 Mosaic commandments, on which Jesus comments so as to show that he 
 penetrates into the spirit of the law, instead of cleaving to the mere letter, 
 and especially discerns the worthlessness of the rabbinical glosses (48). This 
 section, in the order and completeness in which we find it in Matthew, is 
 wanting in Luke's Sermon on the Mount ; a decisive proof that the latter has 
 deficiencies. For not only does this chapter contain the fundamental thought 
 of the discourse as given by Matthew, but the desultory sayings which Luke 
 gives, concerning the love of enemies, mercifulness and beneficence, only 
 acquire a definite purpose and point of union in the contrast between the 
 spiritual interpretation of the law given by Jesus, and the carnal one given by 
 the doctors of the time. The words, too, with which Luke makes Jesus pro- 
 ceed after the last woe : But I say unto you, and those at v. 39, And he spake 
 a parable unto them, have been correctly pointed out as indicative of chasms.*' 
 As regards the isolated parallel passages, the admonition to a quick recon- 
 ciliation with an adversary (v. 25 f.), is, to say the least, not so easily brought 
 into connexion with the foregoing matter in Luke (xii. 58) as in Matthew. 2*> 
 It is still worse with the passage in Luke which is parallel with Matt. v. 32 ; 
 this text (relative to divorce), which in Matthew is linked in the general chain 
 of ideas, is in Luke (xvi. 18) thrust into one of the apertures we have noticed, 
 between the assurance of the perpetuity of the law and the parable of the rich 
 man. Olshausen tries to find a thread of connexion between the passage and 
 the one preceding it, by interpreting adultery, /Moixeveiv, allegorically, as faith- 
 lessness to the divine law ; and Schleiermacher^i attaches it to the succeeding 
 parable by referring it to the adulterous Herod : but such interpretations are 
 altogether visionary. ^^ Probably tradition had apprized the Evangelist that 
 Jesus, after the foregoing declaration as to the perpetuity of the Mosaic law, 
 had enunciated his severe principle on the subject of divorce, and hence he 
 gave it this position, not knowing more of its original connexion. In Matt. 
 xix. 9, we find a reiteration of this principle on an occasion very likely to call 
 it forth. The exhortations to patience and submissiveness, form, in Matthew, 
 the spiritual interpretation of the old rule, an eye for an eye, etc., and are 
 therefore a following out of the previous train of thought. In Luke (vi. 29), 
 they are introduced with much less precision by the command concerning 
 love to enemies : which command is also decidedly better given in Matthew 
 as the rectification of the precept. Thou shall love thy neighbour, and hate thine 
 erumy (43 ff.). Again : the observation that to love friends is nothing more 
 than bad men can do, is, in Matthew, made, in order to controvert the tradi- 
 tional perversion of the Mosaic injunction to love one's neighbour, into a 
 
 " This cause is overlooked by Schleiermacher, s. 205 ; comp. De Wette, in loc. 
 
 " Schleiermacher, ut sup. s. 90. Tholiick, ». 21. 
 
 2» Tholuck, s. 12, 187 ; De Wette, in loc. 
 
 " Ut sup. 206 f. 
 
 s" Comp. De Wette, exeg.. Handb. i; 2, s. 86. 
 
340 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § ^&. 
 
 permission to hate enemies : in Luke, the observation follows the rule, What- 
 soever ye would that men should do to you, etc., which in Matthew occurs farther 
 on.(vii. 12) without any connexion. On the whole, if the passage in Luke 
 from vi. 2-36, be compared with the corresponding one in Matthew, there 
 will be found in the latter an orderly course of thought ; in the former, con- 
 siderable confusion.^3 
 
 The warnings against Pharisaic hypocrisy (vi. 1-6) are without a parallel m 
 Luke ; but he has one of the model prayer, which recent criticism has turned 
 not a little to the disadvantage of Matthew. The ancient harmonists, it is 
 true, had no hesitation in supposing that Jesus delivered this prayer twice, — 
 in the connexion in which it is given by Matthew, as well as under the circum- 
 stances narrated by Luke (xi. ff.).^* But if Jesus had already in the Sermon 
 on the Mount given a model prayer, his disciples would scarcely have requested 
 one afterwards, as if nothing of the kind had occurred ; and it is still more 
 improbable that Jesus would repeat the same formulary, without any recollec- 
 tion that he had delivered it to these disciples long before. Hence our most 
 recent critics have decided that Luke alone has preserved the natural and true 
 occasion on which this prayer was communicated, and that like many other 
 fragments, it was interpolated in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount by the 
 writer. 28 But the vaunted naturalness of Luke's representation, I, for one, 
 cannot discover. Apart from the improbability, admitted even by the above 
 critics, that the disciples of Jesus should have remained without any direction 
 to pray until the last journey, in which Luke places the scene ; it is anything 
 but natural that Jesus should abstain from giving his disciples the exemplar 
 which was in his mind until they sought for it, and that then he should forth- 
 with fall into prayer. He had, doubtless, often prayed in their circle from the 
 commencement of their intercourse ; and if so, their request was superfluous, 
 and must, as in John xiv. 9, have produced only an admonition to recollect 
 what they had long seen and heard in his society. The account of Luke 
 seems to have been framed on mere conjecture ; it was known that the above 
 prayer proceeded from Jesus, and the further question as to the motive for 
 its communication, received the gratuitous answer : without doubt his dis- 
 ciples had asked him for such an exemplar. Without, therefore, maintaining 
 that Matthew has preserved to us the connexion in which this prayer was 
 originally uttered by Jesus, we are not the less in doubt whether it has a more 
 accurate position in Luke.*^ With regard to the elements of the prayer, it is 
 impossible to deny what. Wetstein says : tola hcec oratio exformulis Hebrmorum 
 concinnata est ;''■'' but Fritzsche's observation is also just, that desires of so 
 general a nature might be uttered in the prayers of various persons, even in 
 similar phraseology, without any other cause than the broad uniformity of 
 human feeling.^* We may add that the selection and allocation of the peti- 
 tions in the prayer are entirely original, and bear the impress of that religious • 
 consciousness which Jesus possessed and sought to impart to his followers.^^ 
 Matthew inserts after the conclusion of the prayer two propositions, which 
 are properly the corollary of the third petition, but which seem inaptly placed, 
 not only because they are severed by the concluding petition from the passage 
 to which they have reference, but because they have no point of coincidence 
 
 88 De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, I, s. 48. 
 '* Orig. de oral, xviii. and Hess, Gesch. Jesu, 2, s. 48 f. 
 
 25 Schleiermacher, ut sup. s. 173; Olshausen, i, s. 235; Sieffert, s. 78 ft. Neander, s. 
 23s f. note. 
 
 2« Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, i, s. 69. i, 2, s. 65. 
 
 " N.T. I, 323. The parallels may be seen in Wetstein and Lightfoot. 
 
 ^^ Comm. in Matt., p. 265. 
 
 *» Comp. De Wette, i, I, s. 69 ff. ; Neander, s. .237 ffl 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 34 1 
 
 with the succeeding censures and admonitions which turn on the hypocrisy 
 of the Pharisaic fasts. Mark, however, has still more infelicitously appended 
 these propositions to the discourse of Jesus on the efficacy of believing prayer 
 (xi. 2 5). 30 
 
 At vi. 19, the thread of strict connexion is broken, according to the admis- 
 sion of Paulas, and so far all expositors are bound to agree with hira. But 
 his position, that notwithstanding the admitted lack of coherence in the suc- 
 ceeding collection of sentences, J esus spoke them consecutively, is not equally 
 tenable ; on the contrary, our more recent critics have all the probabilities on 
 their side when they suppose, that in this latter half of the Sermon on the 
 Mount Matthew has incorporated a variety of sayings uttered by Jesus on 
 different occasions. First stands the apothegm on earthly and heavenly 
 treasures (19-21), which Luke, with more apparent correctness, inserts in a 
 discourse of Jesus, the entire drift of which is to warn his adherents against 
 earthly cares (xii. 33 f.). It is otherwise with the next sentence, on the eye 
 being the light of the body. Luke annexes this to the apothegm already 
 mentioned on the light that is to be exhibited ; now as the light Xvxvo^ placed 
 on a candlestick, denotes something quite distinct from what is intended by 
 the comparison of the eye to a k'ghi, i^vxyo?, the only reason for combining 
 the two apothegms lies in the bare word X.v)(yoi : a rule of association which 
 belongs properly to the dictionary, and which, beyond it, is worse than none. 
 Then follows, also without any apparent connexion, the apothegm on the two 
 masters, appended by Luke to the parable of the steward, with which it 
 happens to have the word Mammon, fnafawva^, in common. Next comes, in 
 Matthew V. 25-34, a dissuasion from earthly solicitude, on the ground that 
 natural objects flourish and are sustained without anxiety on their part ; in 
 Luke, this doctrine is consistently united with the parable (found only in the 
 third gospel) of the man who, in the midst of amassing earthly treasures, is 
 summoned away by death (xii. 22 ff.).^^ The warning not to be blind to our 
 own faults while we are sharp-sighted and severe towards those of others (vii. 
 1-5), would, if we rejected the passage from v. 19, of chap. vi. to the end, 
 form a suitable continuation to the previous admonition against Pharisaic 
 sanctimoniousness (vi. 16-18), and might, therefore, have belonged to the 
 original body of the discourse. ^^ This is the more probable because Luke 
 has the same warning in his Sermon on the Mount (37 f. 41 f.), where it 
 happens to assort very well with the preceding exhortation to mercifulness ; 
 but at V. 39 and 40, and part of 38, it is interrupted by subjects altogether 
 irrelevant. The text, IVM what measure ye mete, etc., is very inappropriately 
 interposed by Mark (iv. 24), in a passage similar in kind to one of Luke's 
 intermediate miscellanies. V. 6, in Matthew, is equally destitute of connexion 
 and parallel ; but the succeeding assurances and arguments as to the efficacy 
 of prayer (v. 7-1 1), are found in Luke xi. 9, very iitly associated with another 
 parable peculiar to that Evangelist : that of the friend awaked at midnight. 
 The apothegm. What ye would that men should do unto you, etc., is quite iso- 
 lated in Matthew ; in Luke, it has only an imperfect connexion.^^ The fol- 
 lowing passage (v. 13 f.) on the strait gate cmvri rrvXri, is introduced in Luke 
 (xiii. 23) by the question addressed to Jesus : Are there few that be saved 1 d 
 okiyoL oi o-eo^d/iEvoi ; which seems likely enough to have been conceived by 
 
 3» Comp. De Wette, i, 2, s. 176. ... 
 
 '1 From vi. 19 to the end of the chapter even Neander finds no orderly association, and 
 conjectures that the editor of the Greek Gospel of Matthew was the compiler of this latter 
 half of the discourse (p. 169, note). 
 
 »2 Neander, ut sup. ; De Wette, in loc. 
 
 33 De Wette, i, 2, s. 45. 
 
342 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 'JJ. 
 
 one who knew that Jesus had uttered such a saying as the above, but was at 
 a loss for an occasion that might prompt the idea ; moreover, the image is far 
 less completely carried out in Luke than in Matthew, and is blended with 
 parabolical elements.^* The apothegm on the tree being known by its fruits 
 (v. 16-20), appears in Luke (vi. 43 ffi), and even in Matthew, farther on (xii. 
 33 ff.), to have a general application, but in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, 
 it has a special relation to the false prophets ; in Luke, it is in the last degree 
 misplaced. The denunciation of those who say to Jesus, Lord, Lord, but 
 who, on account of their evil deeds will be rejected by him at the day of 
 judgment (21-23), decidedly presupposes the Messiahship of Jesus, and can- 
 not therefore, have well belonged to so early a period as that of the Sermon 
 on the Mount; hence it is more appropriately placed by Luke (xiii. 25 ff.). 
 The peroration of the discourse is, as we have mentioned, common to both 
 Evangelists. 
 
 The foregoing comparison shows us that the discourses of Jesus, like frag- 
 ments of granite, could not be dissolved by the flood of oral tradition ; but 
 they were not seldom torn from their natural connexion, floated away from 
 their original situation, and deposited in places to which they, did not 
 properly belong. Relative to this effect, there is this distinction between the 
 three first Evangeliists ; Matthew, hke an able compiler, though far from 
 being sufficiently informed to give each relic in its original connexion, has 
 yet for the most part succeeded in judiciously associating analogous materials ; 
 while the two other Evangelists have left many small fragments just where 
 chance threw them, in the intervals between longer discourses. Luke has 
 laboured in some instances to combine these fragments artificially, but he 
 could not thus compensate for the absence of natural connexion. 
 
 § 77- 
 
 INSTRUCTIONS TO THE TWELVE. LAMENTATIONS OVER THE GALILEAN CITIES. 
 JOY OVER THE CALLING OF THE SIMPLE. 
 
 The first gospel (x.) reports another long discourse as having been delivered 
 by Jesus, on the occasion of his sending out the twelve to preach the kingdom 
 of heaven. Part of this discourse is peculiar to the first gospel ; that portion 
 of it which is common to the two other synoptists is only partially assigned 
 by them to the same occasion, Luke introducing its substance in connexion 
 with the mission of the seventy (x. 2 ff.), and in a subsequent conversation 
 with the disciples (xii. 2 ff.). Some portion of the discourse is also found 
 repeated both in Matthew and the other Evangelists, in the prophetic descrip- 
 tion given by Jesus of his second advent. 
 
 In this instance again, while the older harmonists have no hesitation in 
 supposing a repetition of the same discourse,^ our more recent critics are of 
 opinion that Luke only has the true occasions and the original arrangement 
 of the materials, and that Matthew has assembled them according to his own 
 discretion.* Those expositors who are apologetically inclined, maintain that 
 Matthew was not only conscious of here associating sayings uttered at various 
 times, but presumed that this would be obvious to his readers.^ On the 
 other hand, it is justly observed that the manner in which the discourse is 
 
 ** De Wette in loc. des Lukas. 
 ' E.g. Hess, Gesch. Jesu, i, s. 545. 
 2 Schulz, ut sup. s. 308, 314; Sieffert, s. 80 ff. 
 
 ' Olshausen, in loc. The latter bold assertion in Kem, iiber den Ursprung des Evang. 
 Matth., s. 63. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 343 
 
 introduced by the words : These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them 
 (v. s) ; and closed by the words : when Jesus made an end of commanding his 
 twelve disciples, etc. (xi. i); proves clearly enough that it was the intention 
 of the Evangelist to give his compilation the character of a continuous 
 harangue.* 
 
 Much that is peculiar to Matthew in this discourse, appears to be merely 
 an amplification on thoughts which are also found in the corresponding 
 passages of the two other synoptists ; but there are two particulars in the 
 opening of the instructions as detailed by the former, which differ specifically 
 from anything presented by his fellow Evangelists. These are the limitation 
 of the agency of the disciples to the Jews (v. 5, 6), and the commission 
 (associated with that to announce the kingdom of heaven and heal the sick, 
 of which Luke also speaks, ix. 2), to raise the dead : a surprising commission, 
 since we know of no instances previous to the departure of Jesus, in which 
 the apostles raised the dead; and to suppose such when they are not 
 narrated, after the example of Olshausen, is an expedient to which few will 
 be inclined. 
 
 All that the synoptists have strictly in common in the instructions to the 
 twelve, are the rules for their external conduct; how they were to journey, 
 and how to behave under a variety of circumstances (Matt. v. 9-1 1, 14; 
 Mark vi. 8-1 1 ; Luke ix. 3-5). Here, however, we find a discrepancy ; 
 according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus forbids the disciples to take with 
 them, not only gold, a scrip, and the like, but even shoes, vTro^/MiTa, and a 
 staj^, pd.l38ov ; according to Mark, on the contrary, he merely forbids their 
 taking more than a staj^ and sandals, el /j,^ pd^Sov fwvov and o-ai/8a\ta. This 
 discrepancy is most easily accounted for by the admission, that tradition only 
 preserved a remihiscence of Jesus having signified the simplicity of the 
 apostolic equipment by the mention of the staff and shoes, and that hence 
 one of the Evangelists understood that Jesus had interdicted all travelling 
 requisites except these; the other, that these also were included in his 
 prohibition. It was consistent with Mark's love of the picturesque to 
 imagine a wandering apostle furnished with a staff, and therefore to give the 
 preference to the former view. 
 
 It is on the occasion of the mission of the seventy, that Luke (x. 2) puts 
 into the mouth of Jesus the words which Matthew gives (ix. 37 f.) as the 
 motive for sending forth the twelve, namely, the apothegm. The harvest truly 
 is ready, but the labourers are few, also the declaration that the labourer is 
 worthy of his hire (v. 7, comp. Matt. x. 10) ; the discourse on the apostolic 
 salutation and its effect (Matt. v. 12 f ; Luke v. 5f.); the denunciation of 
 those who should reject the aposdes and their message (Matt. v. 15 ; Luke 
 v. 12); and finally, the words, Behold, I send you forth as lambs, etc. (Mate. 
 V. 16; Luke V. 3). The sequence of these propositions is about equally 
 natural in both cases. Their completeness is alternately greater in the one 
 than in the other ; but Matthew's additions generally turn on essentials, as 
 in V. 16 ; those of Luke on externals, as in v. 7, 8, and in v. 4, where there 
 is the singular injunction to salute no man by the way, which might appear 
 an unhistorical exaggeration of the urgency of the apostolic errand, did we 
 not know that the Jewish greetings of that period were not a litde cere- 
 monious.5 Sieffert observes that the instructions which Jesus gave^ccording 
 to Matthew, to the twelve, according to Luke, to the seventy — might, so far 
 as their tenor is concerned, have been imparted with equal fitness on either 
 
 * Schulz, s. 315. 
 
 5 Vid. De Wette, Archaol., § 265, and in loc. 
 
344 PART II. CHAPTER VI, § 7/. 
 
 occasion ; but I doubt this, for it seems to me improbable that Jesus should, 
 as Luke states, dismiss his more confidential disciples with scanty rules for 
 . their outward conduct, and that to the seventy he should make communica- 
 tions of much greater moment and pathos.® The above critic at length 
 decides in favour of Luke, whose narrative appears to him more precise, 
 because it distinguishes the seventy from the twelve. We have already 
 discussed this point, and have found that a comparison is rather to the 
 advantage of Matthew. The blessing pronounced on him who should give 
 even a cup of cold water to the disciples of Jesus (v. 42), is at least more 
 judiciously inserted by Matthew as the conclusion of the discourse of instruc- 
 tions, than in the endless confusion of the latter part of Mark ix. (v. 41), 
 where iav (if), and os av {whosoever), seem to form the only tie between the 
 successive propositions. 
 
 The case is otherwise when we regard those portions of the discourse 
 which Luke places in his twelfth chapter, and even later, and which in 
 Matthew are distinguishable as a second part of the same discourse. Such 
 are the directions to the apostles as to their conduct before tribunals (Matt. 
 X. 19 f.; Luke xii. 11); the exhortation not to fear those who can only kill 
 the body (Matt. v. 28 ; Luke v. 4 f.) ; the warning against the denial of Jesus 
 (Matt. v. 32 f. ; Luke v. 8 f); the discourse on the general disunion of which 
 he would be the cause (Matt. v. 34 ff. ; Luke v. 5 1 ff.) ; a passage to which 
 Matthew, prompted apparently by the enumeration of the members of a 
 family, attaches the declaration of Jesus that these are not to be valued 
 above him, that his cross must be taken, etc., which he partly repeats on a 
 subsequent occasion, and in a more suitable connexion (xvi. 24 f.) ; further, 
 predictions which recur in the discourse on the Mount of Olives, relative to 
 the universal persecution of the disciples of Jesus (v. 17 f. 22, comp. xxiv. 9, 
 13) ; the saying which Luke inserts in the Sermon on the Mount (vi. 40), 
 and which also appears in John (xv. 20), that the disciple has no claim to a 
 better lot than his master (v. 24 f.) ; lastly, the direction, which is peculiar 
 to the discourse in Matthew, to flee from one city to another, with the 
 accompanying consolation (v. 23). These commands and exhortations have 
 been justly pronounced by critics^ to be unsuitable to the first mission of the 
 twelve, which, like the alleged mission of the seventy, had no other than 
 happy results (Luke ix. 10, x. 17); they presuppose the troublous circum- 
 stances which supervened after the death of Jesus, or perhaps in the latter 
 period of his life. According to this, Luke is more correct than Matthew in 
 assigning these discourses to the last journey of Jesus ; * unless, indeed, such 
 descriptions of the subsequent fate of the apostles and other adherents of 
 Jesus were produced ex eventu, after his death, and put into his mouth in 
 the form of prophecies ; a conjecture which is strongly suggested by the 
 words, He who iaketh not up his cross, etc. (v. 38).^ 
 
 The next long discourse of Jesus in Matthew (chap, xi.) we have already 
 considered, so far as it relates to the Baptist. From v. 20-24, there follow 
 complaints and threatenings against the Galilean cities, in which most of his 
 mighty works zvere done, and which, nevertheless, believed not. Our modern 
 critics are perhaps right in their opinion that these apostrophes are less 
 suitable to the period of his Galilean ministry, in which Matthew places 
 
 * Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, I, s. 99. 
 
 ' Schulz, s. 308 ; Sieffert, s. 82 S. 
 
 ' The satisfactory connexion which modern criticism finds throughout the 12th chap, of 
 Luke, I am as little able to discover as TholUck, Auslegung der Bergpredigt, s. 13 f., who 
 has strikingly exposed the partiality of Schleiermacher for LUke, to the prejudice of Matthew. 
 
 9 Vid. Ue Wette in loc. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 345 
 
 them, than to that in which they are introduced by Luke (x. 13 ff.);, namely, 
 when Jesus had left Galilee, and was on his way to Judea and Jerusalem, 
 with a view to his final experiment.*** But a consideration of the immediate 
 context seeras to reverse the probability. In Matthew, the description of the 
 ungracious reception which Jesus and John had alike met with, leads very 
 naturally to the accusations against those places which had been the chief 
 theatres of the ministry of the former ; but it is difficult to suppose, according 
 to Luke, that Jesus would speak of his past sad experience to the seventy, 
 whose minds must have been entirely directed to the future, unless we con- 
 ceive that he chose a subject so little adapted to the exigencies of those 
 whom he was addressing, in order to unite the threatened judgment on the 
 Galilean cities, with that which he had just denounced against the cities that 
 should reject his messengers. But it is more likely that this association 
 proceeded solely from the writer, who, by the comparison of a city that 
 should prove refractory to the disciples of Jesus, to Sodom, was reminded of 
 the analogous comparison to Tyre and Sidon, of places that had been 
 disobedient to Jesus himself, without perceiving the incongruity of the one 
 with the circumstances which had dictated the other.** 
 
 The joy, ayaXXLacri's, expressed by Jesus (v. 25-27) on account of the 
 insight afforded to iaies, vTjmois, is but loosely attached by Matthew to the 
 preceding maledictions. As it supposes a change in the mental frame of 
 Jesus, induced by pleasing circumstances, Luke (x. 17, 21 ff.), would have all 
 the probabilities on his side, in making the return of the seventy with satis- 
 factory tidings the cause of the above expression ; were it not that the 
 appointment of the seventy, and consequently their return, are altogether 
 problematical ; besides, it is possible to refer the passage in question to the 
 return of the twelve from their mission. Matthew connects with this rejoicing 
 of Jesus his invitation to the weary and heavy laden (v. 28-30). This is 
 wanting in Luke, who, instead, makes Jesus turn to his disciples privately, 
 and pronounce them blessed in being privileged to see and hear things which 
 many prophets and kings yearned after in vain (23 f.) : an observation which 
 does not so specifically agree with the preceding train of thought, as the 
 context assigned to it by Matthew, and which is moreover inserted by the 
 latter Evangelist in a connexion (xiii. 16 f.) that may be advantageously con- 
 fronted with that of Luke. 
 
 § 78. 
 
 THE PARABLES. 
 
 According to Matthew (chap, xiii.), Jesus delivered seven parables, all 
 relating to the ^acnXeia rmv ovpavS>v. Modern criticism, however, has doubted 
 whether Jesus really uttered so many of these symbolical discourses on one 
 occasion.* The parable, it has been observed, is a kind of problem, to be 
 solved by the reflection of the hearer ; hence after every parable a pause is 
 requisite, if it be the object of the teacher to convey real instruction, and not 
 to distract by a multiplicity of ill-understood images.^ It will, at least, be 
 admitted, with Neander, that parables on the same or closely-related subjects 
 can only be spoken consecutively, when, under manifold forms, and from 
 
 *» Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 169 f. ; Schneckenburger, iiber den Ursprung 
 
 u. S. f. , a. 32 f. 
 
 " Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb., i, i, s. no. i, 2, s. 62. 
 » Schulz, iiber das Abendmahl, ». 314. 
 2 Olshausen, bibl. Comm. i, s. 437. 
 
346 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 78. 
 
 various points of view, they lead to the same result.^ Among the seven 
 parables in question, those of the mustard-seed and the leaven have a 
 common fundamental idea, differently shadowed forth — the gradual growth 
 and ultimate prevalence of the kingdom of God : those of the net and the 
 tares represent the mingling of the good with the bad in the kingdom of God ; 
 those of the treasure and the pearl inculcate the inestimable and all-indemni- 
 fying value of the kingdom of God ; and the parable of the sower depicts 
 the unequal susceptibility of men to the preaching of the kingdom of God. 
 Thus there are no, less than four separate fundamental ideas involved in this 
 collection of parables — ideas which are indeed connected by their general 
 relation to the kingdom of God, but which present this object under aspects 
 so widely different, that for their thorough comprehension a pause after each 
 was indispensable. Hence, it has been concluded, Jesus would not merit 
 the praise of being a judicious teacher, if, as Matthew represents, he had 
 spoken all the above parables in rapid succession.* If we suppose in this 
 instance, again, an assemblage of discourses similar in kind, but delivered 
 on different occasions, we are anew led to the discussion as to whether 
 Matthew was aware of the latter circumstance, or whether he believed that 
 he was recording a continuous harangue. The introductory form, And he 
 spake many things to them m parables (v. 3) : /cat kXaK-qaev avrok ttoXKo. iv 
 • Trapa^oXai's, and the concluding one, when Jesus had finished these parables 
 (v. 53) : ore ercXccrev 6 'Ii/croSs ras irapajSoXa? ravTai, seem to be a clear proof 
 that he did not present the intermediate matter as a compilation. Mark, 
 indeed, narrates (iv. 10), that at the close of the first parable, the disciples 
 being again, /caTa/tovas, in private, with Jesus, asked him for its interpretation ; 
 and hence it has been contended ^ that there was an interruption of the 
 discourse at this point ; but this cannot serve to explain the account of 
 Matthew, for he represents the request of the disciples as being preferred on 
 the spot, without any previous retirement from the crowd ; thus proving that 
 he did not suppose such an interruption. The concluding form which 
 Matthew inserts after the fourth parable (v. 34 f ), might, with better reason, 
 be adduced as intimating an interruption, for he there comprises all the 
 foregoing parables in one address by the words. All these things spake Jesus 
 in parables, etc., raXna. -Ka-VTO. eXaXrjaev 6 'Irjcrovi iv irapa^SoXdTs k. t. A,., and 
 
 makes the pause still more complete by the application of an Old Testament 
 prophecy ; moreover, Jesus is here said (36) to change his locality, to dismiss 
 the multitude to whom he had hitherto been speaking on the shore of the 
 Galilean sea, and enter the house, eis t^v ot/ctW, where he gives three new 
 parables, in addition to the interpretation which his disciples had solicited 
 of the second. But that the delivery of the last three parables was separated 
 from that of the preceding ones by a change of place, and consequently by a 
 short interval of time, very little alters the state of the case. For it is highly 
 improbable that Jesus would without intermission tax the memory of the 
 populace, whose minds it was so easy to overburthen, with four parables, 
 two of which were highly significant ; and that he should forthwith overwhelm 
 his disciples, whose power of comprehension he had been obliged to aid in 
 the application of the first two parables, with three new ones, instead of 
 ascertaining if they were capable of independently expounding the third and 
 fourth. Further, we have only to look more closely at Matthew's narrative, 
 in order to observe that he has fallen quite involuntarily on the interruption 
 at V. 34 fF. If it were his intention to communicate a series of parables, with 
 
 8 L. J. Chr., s. 175. 
 
 ' Schiieckenburger, iiber den Ursprung u. s. f., s. 33. 
 
 ^ Olshausen, s. 438. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THliEE TIRST GOSPELS. 347 
 
 the explanations that Jesus privately gave to his disciples of the two which 
 were most important, and were therefore to be placed at the head of the 
 series, there were only three methods on which he could proceed. First, he 
 might make Jesus, immediately after the enunciation of a parable, give its 
 interpretation to his disciples in the presence of the multitude, as he actually 
 does in the case of the first parable (10-23). But the representation is beset 
 with the difficulty of conceiving how Jesus, surrounded by a crowd, whose 
 expectation was on the stretch, could find leisure for a conversation aside 
 with his disciples.^ This inconvenience Mark perceived, and therefore chose 
 the second resource that was open to ,hini— that of making Jesus with his 
 disciples withdraw after the first parable into the house, and there deliver its 
 interpretation. But such a proceeding would be too great a hindrance to 
 one who proposed publicly to deliver several parables one after the other ; 
 for if Jesus returned to the house immediately after the first parable, he had 
 left the scene in which the succeeding ones could be conveniently imparted 
 to the people. Consequently, the narrator in the first gospel cannot, with 
 respect to the interpretation of the second parable, either repeat his first 
 plan, or resort to the second ; he therefore adopts a third, and proceeding 
 uninterruptedly through two further parables, it is only at their close that he 
 conducts Jesus to the house, and there makes him impart the arrear of inter- 
 pretation. Herewith there arose in the mind of the narrator a sort of 
 rivalry between the parables which he had yet in reserve, and the interpreta- 
 tion, the arrear of which embarrassed him; as soon as the former were 
 absent from his recollection, the latter would be present with its inevitably 
 associated form of conclusion and return homeward ; and when any remain- 
 ing parables recurred to him, he was obliged to make them the sequel of the 
 interpretation. Thus it befel with • the three last parables in Matthew's 
 narration; so that he was reduced almost against his will to make the 
 disciples their sole participants, though it does not appear to have been the 
 custom of Jesus thus to clothe his private instructions ; and Mark (v. 33!) 
 plainly supposes the parables which follow the interpretation of the second, 
 to be also addressed to the people.'' 
 
 Mark, who (iv. i) depicts the same scene by the sea-side, as Matthew, has 
 in connexion with it only three parables, of which the first and third corre- 
 spond to the first and third of Matthew, but the middle one is commonly 
 deemed peculiar to Mark.* Matthew has in its place the parable wherein 
 the kingdom of heaven is likened to a man who sowed good seed in his 
 field ; but while men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares among it, which 
 grew up with the wheat. The servants know not from whence the tares 
 come, and propose to root them up ; but the master commands them to let 
 both grow together until the harvest, when it will be time enough to separate 
 them. In Mark, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a man who casts 
 seed into the ground, and while he sleeps and rises again, the seed passes, he 
 knows not how, from one stage of development to another : and tvhen it is 
 rife, he puis in the sickle, because the harvest is come. In this parable there 
 is wanting what constitutes the dominant idea in that of Matthew, the tares, 
 sown by the enemy ; but as, nevertheless, the other ideas, of sowing, sleeping, 
 growing one knows not how, and harvest, wholly correspond, it may be 
 questioned whether Mark does not here merely give the same parable in a 
 different version, which he preferred to that of Matthew, because it seemed 
 
 * Schleiermacher, s. 120. 
 
 ' Fritzsche, Comm. in Marc, s. 120, 128, 134; De Wette, in loc. 
 
 8 Comp. Saunier, uber die Quellen des Markus, s. 74 J Fritzsche ut sup. ; De Wette m 
 loc. 
 
348 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 78. 
 
 more intermediate between the first parable of the sower, and the third of the 
 mustard-seed. 
 
 Luke, also, has only three of the seven parables given in Matt. xiii. ; 
 namely, those of the sower, the mustard-seed, and the leaven; so that the 
 parables of the buried treasure, the pearl, and the net, as also that of the tares 
 in the field, are peculiar to Matthew. The parable of the sower is placed 
 by Luke (viii. 4 ff.) somewhat earlier, and in other circumstances, than by 
 Matthew, and apart from the two other parables which he has in common 
 with the first Evangelist's series. These he introduces later, xiii. 18-21 ; a 
 position which recent critics unanimously acknowledge as the correct one.® 
 But this decision is one of the most remarkable to which the criticism of the 
 present age has been led by its partiality to Luke. For if we examine the 
 vaunted connectedness of this Evangelist's passages, we find that Jesus, having 
 healed a woman bowed down by a spirit of infirmity, silences the punctilious 
 ruler of the synagogue by the argument about the ox and ass, after which it 
 is added (v. 17), And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were 
 ashamed ; and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done' 
 by him. Surely so complete and marked a form of conclusion is intended to 
 wind up the previous narrative, and one cannot conceive that the sequel went 
 forward in the same scene ; on the contrary, the phrases, then said he, and 
 again he said, by which the parables are connected, indicate that the writer 
 had no longer any knowledge of the occasion on which Jesus uttered them, 
 and hence inserted them at random in this indeterminate manner, far less 
 judiciously than Matthew, who at least was careful to associate them with 
 analogous materials.^" 
 
 We proceed to notice the other evangelical parables,il and first among 
 them, those which are peculiar to one Evangelist. We come foremost in 
 Matthew to the parable of the servant (xviii. 23 ff) who, although his lord 
 had forgiven him a debt of ten thousand talents, had no mercy on his fellow- 
 servant who owed him a hundred ; tolerably well introduced by an exhorta- 
 tion to placability (v. 15), and the question of Peter, JIo7v oft shall my brother 
 sin against me, and I forgive him ? Likewise peculiar to Matthew is the 
 parable of the labourers in the vineyard (xx. i ff.), which suitably enough 
 forms a counterpoise to the foregoing promise of a rich recompense to the 
 disciples. Of the sentences which Matthew appends to this parable (v. 16), 
 the first, So the last shall be first, and the first last, by which he had also pre- 
 faced it (xix. 30), is the only one with which it has any internal connexion ; 
 the other, for many are called, but few chosen, rather gives the moral of the 
 parable of the royal feast and the wedding garment, in connexion with which 
 Matthew actually repeats it (xxii. 14). It was well adapted, however, even 
 torn from this connexion, to circulate as an independent apothegm, and as it 
 appeared fitting to the Evangelist to annex one or more short sentences to the 
 end of a parable, he might be induced, by some superficial similarity to .the 
 one already given, to place them in companionship. Farther, the parable of 
 the two sons sent into the vineyard, is also peculiar to Matthew (xxi. 28 ff.), 
 and is not ill-placed in connexion with the foregoing questions and retorts 
 between Jesus and the Pharisees ; its anti-Pharisaic significance is also well 
 brought out by the sequel (31 f.). 
 
 Among the parables which are peculiar to Luke, that of the two debtors 
 (vii. 41 ff.) ; that of the good Samaritan (x. 30 ff.) ; that of the man whose 
 
 ' Scbleiermacher, ut. sup. s. 192 ; Olshausen, i, s. 431 ; Schneckenburger, ut sup. s. 33. 
 '» Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb., I, 2, s, 73 f. 
 
 11 Analogies to these parables and apothegms are given out of the rabbinical literature 
 by Wetstein, Lightfoot, and Schottgen, in loc. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 349 
 
 accumulation of earthly treasure is interrupted by death (xii. 16 ff. comp. Wis. 
 xi. 17 ff.); and also the two which figure the efficacy of importunate prayer 
 (xi. 5 ff , xviii. 2 flf.); have a definite, clear signification,, and with the exception 
 of the last, which is introduced abruptly, a tolerably consistent connexion. 
 We may learn from the two last parables, that it is often necessary entirely to 
 abstract particular features from the parables of Jesus, seeing that in one of 
 them God is represented by a lukewarm friend, in the other by an unjust 
 judge. To the latter is annexed the parable of the Pharisee and Publican 
 (9-14), of which only Schleiermacher, on the strength of a connexion, fabri- 
 cated by himself between it and the foregoing, can deny the antipharisaic 
 tendency.i^ The parables of the lost sheep, the piece of silver, and the 
 prodigal son (Luke xv. 3-32), have the same direction. Matthew also has 
 the first of these (xviii. 12 fif.), but in a different connexion, which determines 
 its import somewhat differently, and without doubt, as will presently be shown, 
 less correctly. It is easy to imagine that these three parables were spoken in 
 immediate succession, because the second Is merely a variation of tlie first, 
 and the third is an amplification and elucidation of them both. Whether, 
 according to the opinion of modern criticism, the two succeeding parables 
 also belong with the above to one continuous discourse, "^^ must be deter- 
 mined by a closer examination of their contents, which are in themselves 
 noteworthy. 
 
 The parable of the unjust steward, notoriously the crux interpretum, is yet 
 without any intrinsic difficulty. If we read to the end of the parable, includ- 
 ing the moral (v. 9), we gather the simple result, that the man who without 
 precisely using unjust means to obtain riches, is yet in the sight of God an 
 unprofitable servant, SoBXos d)(peLoi (Luke xvii. 10), and, in the employment of 
 the gifts intrusted to him by God, a steward of injustice, oUovofio? r^s aStfctas, 
 may best atone for this pervading unfaithfulness by lenity and beneficence 
 towards his fellow-men, and may by their intervention procure a place in 
 heaven. It is true that the beneficence of the fictitious steward is a fraud ; 
 but we must abstract this particular, as, in the case of two previous parables, 
 we have to abstract the lukewarmness of the friend, and the injustice of the 
 judge : nay, the necessity for such an abstraction is intimated in the narrative 
 itself, for from v. 8 we gather that what the steward did in a worldly spirit is, 
 in the application, to be understood in a more exalted sense of the children 
 of light. Certainly, if we suppose the words. He that is faithful in that which 
 is least, etc. (10-12) to have been uttered in their present connexion, it 
 appears as if the steward were set forth as a model, deserving in some sense 
 or other the praise of faithfulness ; and when (v. 13) it is said that no servant 
 can serve two masters, the intended inference seems to be that this steward 
 had held to the rightful one. Hence we have expositions such as that of 
 Schleiermacher, who under the master understands the Romans ; under the 
 debtors, the Jewish people ; under the steward, the publicans, who were 
 generous to the latter at the expense of the former ; thus, in the most a.rbitrary 
 manner, transforming the master into a violent man, and justifying the 
 steward!^'' Olshausen carries the perversion of the parable to the extreme, 
 for he degrades the master, who, by his judicial position evidently announces 
 himself as the representative of God, into apx"" ^oi^ Koa-ftcyv tovtov, the prince 
 of this world, while he exalts the steward into the image of a man who applies 
 the riches of this world to spiritual objects. But as in the moral (v. 9) the 
 parable has a consistent ending ; and as inaccurate association is by no means 
 
 12 Ueber den Lukas, s. 220. 
 
 " Schleiermacher, ut sup. d. 202 ff. Olshausen in loc. 
 
 •* Ut sup. 
 
35° PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 78. 
 
 unexampled in Luke ; it is not admissible to concede to the following verses 
 any influence over the interpretation of the parable, unless a close relation of 
 idea can be made manifest. Now the fact is, that the very opposite, namely, 
 the most perplexing diversity, exists. Moreover, it is not difficult to show 
 what might have seduced Luke into a false association. In the parable there 
 was mention of the mammon of unrighteousness, /lafjimvois t^s aSiKias ; this 
 suggested to him the saying of Jesus, that he who proves faithful in the 
 d8(K<u fnafKova, the Unrighteous mammon, as that which is least, may also have 
 the true riches committed to his trust. But the word mammon having once 
 taken possession of the writer's mind, how could he avoid recollecting the 
 well-known aphorism of Jesus on God and Mammon, as two incompatible 
 masters, and adding it (v. 13), however superfluously, to the preceding 
 texts ? ^* That by this addition the previous parable was placed in a 
 thoroughly false light, gave the writer little concern, perhaps because he had 
 not seized its real meaning, or because, in the endeavour completely to dis- 
 burthen his evangelical meaning, he lost all solicitude about the sequence of 
 his passages. It ought, in general, to be more considered, that those of our 
 Evangelists who, according to the now prevalent opinion, noted down oral 
 traditions, must, in the composition of their writings, have exerted their 
 memory to an extent that would repress the activity of reflection ; conse- 
 quently the arrangement of the materials in their narratives is governed by 
 the association of ideas, the laws of which are partly dependent on external 
 relations ; and we need not be surprised to find many passages, especially 
 from the discourses of Jesus, ranged together for the sole cause that they 
 happen to have in common certain striking consonant words. 
 
 If from hence we glance back on the position, that the parable of the 
 unjust steward must have been spoken in connexion with the foregoing one of 
 the prodigal son, we perceive that it rests merely on a false interpretation. 
 According to Schleiermacher, it is tlie defence of the publicans against the 
 Pharisees, that forms the bond ; but there is no trace of publicans and 
 Pharisees in the latter parable. According to Olshausen, the compassionate 
 love of God, represented in the foregoing parable, is placed in juxtaposition 
 with the compassionate love of man, represented in the succeeding one ; but 
 simple beneficence is the sole idea on which the latter turns, and a parallel 
 between this and the manner in which God meets the lost with pardon, is 
 equally remote from the intention of the teacher and the nature of the sub- 
 ject.' The remark (v. 14) that the Pharisees heard all these things, and, being 
 covetous, derided Jesus, does not necessarily refer to the individuals men- 
 tioned XV. 2, so as to imply that they had listened to the intermediate matter 
 as one continuous discourse ; and even if that were the case, it would only 
 show the view of the writer with respect to the connectedness of the parables ; 
 a view which, in the face of the- foregoing investigation, cannot possibly be 
 binding on us.^^ 
 
 '5 Schaeckenbitrger has decided, Beitrage, No. V. where he refutes Olshausen's interpre- 
 tation of the parable, that this verse does not really belong to its present position, while 
 with respect to the preceding verses from v. 9, he finds it possible to hold the contrary 
 opinion. De Wette also considers that v. 13 is the only one decidedly out of place. He 
 thinks it possible, by supplying an intermediate proposition, which he supposes the writer 
 to have omitted, and which led from the prudent use of riches to faithfulness in preserving 
 those entrusted to us, to give a sufficient connexion to v. 9 and 10-12, without necessarily 
 referring the idea of faithfulness to the conduct of the steward. The numerous attempts, 
 both ancient and modern, to explain the parable of the steward without a critical dislocation 
 of the associated passages, are only so many proofs that it is absolutely requisite to & satis- 
 factory interpretation. 
 
 " Comp. de Wette, exeg. Handb. I, 2, s. 80. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 35 1 
 
 We have already discussed the passage from v. 15 to 18; it consists of 
 disconnected sayings, and to the last, on adultery, is annexed the parable of 
 the rich man, in a manner which, as we have already noticed, it is attempted 
 in vain to show as a real connexion. It must, however, be conceded to 
 Schleiermacher, that if we separate them, the alternative, namely, the common 
 application of the parable to the penal justice of God, is attended with great 
 difficulties.!'^ For there is no indication throughout the parable, of any 
 actions on the part of the rich man and Lazarus, that could, according to our 
 notions, justify the exaltation of the one to a place in Abraham's bosom, and 
 the condemnation of the other to torment ; the guilt of the one appears to lie 
 in his wealth, the merit of the other in his poverty. It is indeed generally 
 supposed of the rich man, that he was immoderate in his indulgence, and that 
 he had treated Lazarus unkindly. 1* But the latter is nowhere intimated; for 
 the picture of the beggar lying at the door of the rich man, is not intended in 
 the light of a reproach to the latter, because he might easily have tendered 
 his aid, and yet neglected to do so ; it is designed to exhibit the contrast, not 
 only between the earthly condition of the two parties, but between the'r 
 proximity in this life, and their wide separation in another. So the other 
 particular, that the beggar was eager for the crumbs that fell from the rich 
 man's table, does not imply that the rich man denied him this pittance, or 
 that he ought to have given him more than the mere crumbs ; it denotes the 
 deep degradation of the earthly lot of Lazarus compared with that of the rich 
 man, in opposition to their reversed position after death, when the rich man 
 is fain to entreat for a drop of water from the hand of Lazarus. On the 
 supposition that the rich man had been wanting in compassion towards 
 Lazarus, the Abraham of the parable could only reply in the following man- 
 ner : " Thou hadst once easy access to Lazarus, and yet thou didst not 
 relieve him ; how then canst thou expect him to traverse a long distance to 
 give thee alleviation ? " The sumptuous life of the rich man, likewise, is only 
 depicted as a contrast to the misery of the beggar ; for if he had been sup- 
 posed guilty of excess, Abraham must have reminded him that he had taken 
 too much of the good things of this life, not merely that he had received his 
 share of them. Equally groundless is it, on the other hand, to suppose high 
 moral excellencies in Lazarus, since there is no intimation of such in the 
 description of him, which merely regards his outward condition, — neither are 
 such ascribed to him by Abraham ; his sole merit is, the having received evil 
 in this life. Thus, in this parable the measure of future recompense is not 
 the amount of good done, or wickedness perpetrated, but of evil endured, and 
 fortune enjoyed,!^ and the aptest motto for this discourse is to be found in 
 the Sermon on the Mount, according to Luke's edition : Blessed be ye poor, 
 for yours is the kingdom of God I Woe to you thai are rich I for ye have 
 received your consolation ; a passage concerning which we have already re- 
 marked, that it accords fully with the Ebionite view of the world. A similar 
 estimation of external poverty is ascribed to Jesus by the other synoptists, in 
 the narrative of the rich young man, and in the aphorisms on the camel and 
 the needle's eye (Matt. xix. 16 ff. ; Mark x. 17 ff. ; comp. Luke xviii. 18 ff.). 
 Whether this estimation belong to Jesus himself, or only to the synoptical 
 tradition concerning him, it was probably generated by the notions of the 
 Essenes.'"' We have hitherto considered the contents of the parable down 
 
 " Ut sup. s. 208. " Vid. Kuinol, in loc. 
 
 " Comp. De Wette, r, 2, s. 86 f. t 1, 1 • ■■ 
 
 2° On the Essenes as contemners of riches [KaTa^povtirlts ttKovtov), comp. Joseph., b. j. u. 
 
 viii. 3; Credner, uber Essener und Ebioniten, in Winer's Zeitschrift, i, s. 217; Gfroier, 
 
 Philo, 2, s. 311. 
 
352 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 78. 
 
 to V. 27 : from whence to the conclusion the subject is, the writings of the 
 Old Testament as the adequate and only means of grace. 
 
 In conclusion, we turn to a group of parables, among which some, as 
 relating to the death and return of Christ, ought, according to our plan, to be 
 excepted from the present review; but so far as they are connected with the 
 rest, it is necessary to include them. They are the three parables of the re- 
 bellious husbandmen in the vineyard (Matt. xxi. 33 ff. parall), of the talents 
 or minse (Matt. xxv. 14 fF. ; Luke xix. i2flF.), and the marriage feast (Matt, 
 xxii. 2 ff. ; Luke xiv. 16 ff.). Of these the parable of the husbandmen in all 
 the accounts, that of the talents in Matthew, and that of the marriage feast 
 in Luke, are simple parables, unattended with difficulty. Not so the parable 
 of the minae in Luke, and of the marriage feast in Matthew. That the former 
 is fundamentally the same with that of the talents in Matthew, is undeniable, 
 notwithstanding the many divergencies. In both are found the journey of a 
 master ; the assembling of the servants to entrust them with a capital, to be 
 put into circulation ; after the return of the master, a reckoning in which 
 three servants are signalized, two of them as active, the third as inactive, 
 whence the latter is punished, and the former rewarded ; and in the annun- 
 ciation of this issue the words of the master are nearly identical in the two 
 statements. The principal divergency is, that besides the relation between 
 the master who journeys into a far country and his servants, in Luke there is 
 a second relation between the former and certain rebellious citizens ; and 
 accordingly, while in Matthew the master is simply designated SvOponroi, a 
 man, in Luke he is styled av^puiros evyev^s, a nobleman, and a kingdom is 
 assigned to him, the object of his journey being to receive for himself a king- 
 dom : an object of which there is no mention in Matthew. The subjects of 
 this personage, it is further said, hated him, and after his departure renounced 
 their allegiance. Hence at the return of the lord, the rebellious citizens, as 
 well as the slothful servant, are punished ; but in their case the retribution is 
 that of death : the faithful servants, on the other hand, are not only rewarded 
 generally by an entrance into the joy of their Lord, but royally, by the gift of 
 a number of cities. There are other divergencies of less moment between 
 Luke and Matthew; such as, that the number of servants is undetermined 
 by the one, and limited to ten by the other ; that in Matthew they receive 
 talents, in Luke minse ; in the one unequal sums, in the other equal ; in the 
 one, they obtain unequal profits from unequal sums by an equal expenditure 
 of effort, and are therefore equally rewarded ; in the other, they obtain un- 
 equal profits from equal sums by an unequal expenditure of effort, and are 
 therefore unequally rewarded. 
 
 Supposing this parable to have proceeded from the lips of Jesus on two 
 separate occasions, and that Matthew and Luke are right in their respective 
 arrangements, he must have delivered it first in the more complex form given 
 by Luke, and then in the simple one given by Matthew j^i since the former 
 places it before, the latter after the entrance into Jerusalem. But this would 
 be contrary to all analogy. The first presentation of an idea is, according to 
 the laws of thought, the most simple; with the second new relations may be 
 perceived, the subject may be viewed under various aspects, and brought into 
 manifold combinations. There is, therefore, a foundation for Schleiermacher's 
 opinion, that contrary to the arrangement in the Gospels, Jesus first delivered 
 the parable in the more simple form, and amplified it on a subsequent occa- 
 sion.22 But for our particular case this order is not less inconceivable than 
 
 2' Thus Kuinol, Comm. in Luc, p. 635. 
 
 "^ Ueber den Lukas, 239 f. Neander agrees with him, L. J. Chr., p. 188. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 353 
 
 the other. The author of a composition such as a parable, especially when 
 it exists only in his mind and on his lips, and is not yet fixed in writing, 
 remains the perfect master of his materials even on their second and more 
 elaborate presentation ; the form which he had previously given td them is 
 not rigid and mflexible, but pliant, so that he can adapt the original thoughts 
 and images to the additional ones, and thus give unity to his production. 
 Hence, had he who gave the above parable the form which it has in Luke, 
 been its real author, he would, after having transformed the master into a 
 king, and inserted the particulars respecting the rebellious citizens, have in- 
 trusted arms to the servants instead of money (comp. Luke xxii. 36),^* and 
 would have made them show their fidelity rather by conflict with the rebels, 
 than by increasing their capital ; or in general would have introduced some 
 relation between the two classes of persons in the parable, the servants and 
 the citizens ; instead of which, they are totally unconnected throughout, and 
 form two ill-cemented divisions.^* This shows very decisively that the 
 parable was not enriched with these additional particulars by the imagination 
 of its author, but that it was thus amplified by another in the process of 
 transmission. This cannot have been effected in a legendary manner, by the 
 gradual filling up of the original sketch, or the development of the primitive 
 germ ; for the idea of rebellious citizens could never be evolved from that of 
 servants and talents, but must have been added from without, and therefore 
 have previously existed as part of an independent whole. This amounts to 
 the position that we have here an example of two originally distinct parables, 
 the one treating of servants and talents, the other of rebellious citizens, 
 flowing together in consequence of their mutually possessing the images of a 
 ruler's departure and return.*" The proof of our proposition must depend 
 on our being able easily to disentangle the two parables; and this we can effect 
 in the most satisfactory manner, for by extracting v. 12, 14, 15, and 27, and 
 slightly modifying them, we get in a rather curtailed but consistent form, the 
 parable of the rebellious citizens, and we then recognise the similarity of its 
 tendency with that of the rebellious husbandmen in the vineyard.-* 
 
 A similar relation subsists between the form in which the parable of the 
 marriage feast is given by Luke (xiv. 16 if.), and that in which it is given by 
 Matthew (xxii. z ff.) ; only that in this case Luke, as in the other, Matthew, 
 has the merit of having preserved the simple original version. On both sides, 
 the particulars of the feast, the invitation, its rejection, and the consequent 
 bidding of other guests, testify the identity of the two parables ; but, on the 
 other hand, the host who in Luke is merely a certain man, avOpotwoi ni, is in 
 Matthew a king, jSao-tXevs, whose feast is occasioned by the marriage of his 
 son ; the invited guests, who in Luke excuse themselves on various pleas to 
 the messenger only once sent out to them, in Matthew refuse to come on the 
 first invitation, and on the second more urgent one some go to their occupa- 
 tions, while others maltreat and kill the servants of the king, who immediately 
 sends forth his armies to destroy those murderers, and burn up their city. 
 Nothing of this is to be found in Luke ; according to him, the host merely 
 causes the poor and afflicted to be assembled in place of the guests first 
 
 2' This is a reply to Neander's objection, p. 191, note. 
 
 "* How Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, p. 76, can pronounce the more complex form of the 
 parable in Luke as not only the most fully developed but the best wound up, I am at a loss 
 to understand. 
 
 " Comp. De Wette, I, i,s. 2o8f. , ,o~ ^ -o ^/ i 
 
 26 V. 12. "A.v$po>rros ns eiyevi^s iTope\j07i els x'^P'^" j"«K/'«''i Aaf(«i' iavTifi panMlav,^ kcU 
 iiroffTpiil/ai 14. ol Si iroUTai aiiroO ifilffovf airbv, Kal HiriffTeiKav irpecr/Seioc iirhia airoS, 
 \iyovT€r oi eiXoiiev tovtov ^curiKeSmi. i<t>' illM!. 15. koX iyherojv m? eTravtKBetv airiv 
 
354 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 78. 
 
 invited, a particular which Matthew also appends to his fore-mentioned inci- 
 dents. ■ Luke closes the parable with the declaration of the host, that none 
 of the first bidden guests shall partake of his supper ; but Matthew proceeds 
 to narrate how, when the house was full, and the king had assembled his 
 guests, one was discovered to be without a wedding garment, and was 
 forthwith carried away into outer darkness. 
 
 The maltreatment and murder of the king's messengers are features in the 
 narrative of Matthew which at once strike us as inconsistent — as a departure 
 from the original design. Disregard of an invitation is sufficiently demon- 
 strated by the rejection of it on empty pretexts such as Luke mentions ; the 
 maltreatment and even the murder of those who deliver the invitation, is an 
 exaggeration which it is less easy to attribute to Jesus than to the Evangelist. 
 The latter had immediately before communicated the parable of the rebellious 
 husbandmen ; hence there hovered in his recollection the manner in which 
 they were said to have used the messengers of their lord, beating one, killing 
 and stoning others (XaySovres tovs SovXovs airov ov fxev iSeipav, ov Bi OTreKTeivav, 
 ov 8e iX.i0oj36X.-q(rav), and he was thus led to incorporate similar particulars into 
 the present parable {KpaT-qa-avn'S tous SovXovi airov v^purav Koi direKTiivav), 
 overlooking the circumstance that what might have been perpetrated with 
 sufficient motive against servants who appeared with demands and authority 
 to enforce them, had in the latter case no motive whatever. That hereupon, 
 the king, not satisfied with excluding them from the feast, sends out his 
 armies to destroy them and burn up their city, necessarily follows from the 
 preceding incidents, but appears, like them, to be the echo of a parable 
 which presented the relation between the master and the dependents, not in 
 the milder form of a rejected invitation, but in the more severe one of an 
 insurrection; as in t;he parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard, and that 
 of the rebellious citizens, which we have above separated from the parable of 
 the minse. Yet more decidedly does the drift of the last particular in Mat- 
 thew's parable, that of the wedding garment, betray that it was not originally 
 associated with the rest. For if the king had commanded that all, 6o(/i dad 
 and good, who were to be found in the highways, should be bidden to the 
 feast, he could not wonder that they had not all wedding attire. To assume 
 that those thus suddenly summoned went home to wash, and adjust their 
 dress, is an arbitrary emendation of the text.^' Little preferable is the sup- 
 position that, according to oriental manners, the king had ordered a caftan to 
 be presented to each guest, and might therefore justly reproach the meanest 
 for not availing himself of the gift ; ^8 for it is not to be proved that such a 
 custom existed at the . period, ^^ and it is not admissible to presuppose it 
 merely because the anger of the king appears otherwise unfounded. But the 
 addition in question is not only out of harmony with the imagery, but with 
 the tendency of this parable. For while hitherto its aim had been to exhibit 
 the national contrast between the perversity of the Jews, and the willingness 
 of the Gentiles : it all at once passes to the moral one, to distinguish between 
 the worthy and the unworthy. That after the Jews had contemned the invi- 
 tation to partake of the kingdom of God, the heathens would be called into 
 it, is one complete idea, with which Luke very properly concludes his parable ; 
 
 \ap6vTa rijv /Sao-tXe/ac, koI etwe ipapitffijvai avri^ rois Soi\ov! — (/tal etirev aiTotf) 27. — rois 
 ixSpous iJusv exetvovs, Tois /iii OeMiaavrds /te jSaffiAeucrai iir' airoiis, Ayiyere &Se xal KOTao-^dJoTe 
 ^fiirpoffBdv fiov, 
 
 " Fritzsche, p. 656. This remark serves to refute De Wette's vindication of the above 
 particular in his exeg. Handb. 
 
 ^ Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, s, 210; Olshausenj bibl. Comm. i, s. 811. 
 
 ?' Vid, Fritzsche, ut sup, 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 355 
 
 that he who does not prove himself worthy of the vocation by a corresponding 
 disposition, will be again cast out of the kingdom, is another idea, which 
 appears to demand a separate parable for its exhibition. Here again it may 
 be conjectured that the conclusion of Matthew's parable is the fragment of 
 another, which, from its also referring to a feast, might in tradition, or in the 
 memory of an individual, be easily mingled with the former, preserved in its 
 purity by Luke.^'' This other parable must have simply set forth, that a king 
 had invited various guests to a wedding feast, with the tacit condition that 
 they should provide themselves with a suitable dress, and that he delivered 
 an individual who had neglected this observance to his merited punishment. 
 Supposing our conjectures correct, we have here a still more compound 
 parable than in the former case: a parable in which, istly, the narrative of 
 the ungrateful invited parties (Luke xiv.) forms the main tissue, but so that, 
 2ndly, a thread from the parable of the rebellious husbandmen is interwoven ; 
 while, 3rdly, a conclusion is stitched on, gathered apparently from an unknown 
 parable on the wedding garment. 
 
 This analysis gives us an insight into the procedure of evangelical tradition 
 with its materials, which must be pregnant with results. 
 
 § 79- 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS INSTRUCTIONS AND CONTROVERSIES OF JESUS. 
 
 As the discourses, in Matthew xv. 1-20 have been already considered, we 
 must pass on to xviii. i ff., Mark ix. 33 ff., Luke ix. 46 ff., where various dis- 
 courses are connected with the exhibition of a little child, occasioned by a 
 contention for pre-eminence among the disciples. The admonition to become 
 as a little child, and to humble one's self as a little child, in Matthew, forms 
 a perfectly suitable comment on the symbolical reproof (v. 3, 4,) ; but the 
 connexion between this and the following declaration of Jesus, that whoso- 
 ever receives one such little child in his name, receives him, is not so obvious. 
 For the child was set up to teach the disciples in what they were to imitate 
 it, not how they were to behave towards it, and how Jesus could all at once 
 lose sight of his original object, it is difficult to conceive. Bat yet more 
 glaring is the irrelevance of the declaration in Mark and Luke; for they 
 make it follow immediately on the exhibition of tlie child, so that, according 
 to this, Jesus must, in the very act, have forgotten its object, namely, to pre- 
 sent the child to his ambitious disciples as worthy of imitation, not as in want 
 of reception.^ Jesus was accustomed to say of his disciples, that whosoever 
 received them, received him, and in him, the Father who had sent him 
 (Matt. X. 40 ff. ; Luke x. 16; John xiii. 20). Of children he elsewhere says 
 merely, that whosoever does not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little 
 child cannot enter therein (Mark x. 15; Luke xviii. 17). This declaration 
 would be perfectly adapted to the occasion in question, and we may almost 
 
 venture to conjecture that os iav fii] Se'^rai t^v ^aa-cXeiav TU)V ovpavuiv is 
 
 TTcuStov, was the original passage, and that the actual one is the result^ of its 
 confusion with Matthew X. 40, os eav Sii^qrai iraiSlov roiovrov €V iirl tiS ovofxarL 
 
 jJiOV. 
 
 Closely connected by the word airoKpiOtXi, answering, with the sentences 
 
 so From the appendix to Schneckenburger's Beitragen, I see that a reviewer in the Theol. 
 Ijteraturblatt, 1831, No. 88, has also conjectured that we have here a blending of two 
 originally distinct parables. 
 
 1 Comp. De Wette, I, I, s. 152. 
 
3S6 PART li. CHAPTER VI. § 79. 
 
 just considered, Mark (ix. 38 f.) and Luke (ix. 49 f.) introduce the information 
 which John is said to give to Jesus, that the disciples having seen one casting 
 out devils in the name of Jesus, without attaching himself to their society, 
 had forbidden him. Schleierraacher explains the connexion thus : because 
 Jesus had commanded the reception of children in Ms name, John was led to 
 the confession, that he and his associates had hitherto been so far from 
 regarding the performance of an act in the name of Jesus as the point of 
 chief importance, that they had interdicted the use of his name to one who 
 followed not with them.^ Allowing this explanation to be correct, we must 
 believe that John, arrested by the phrase, in my name (which yet is not pro- 
 minent in the declaration of Jesus, and which must have been thrown still 
 further into the background by the sight of the child set up in the midst), 
 drew from it the general inference, that in all actions the essential point is to 
 perform them in the name of Jesus; and with equal rapidity, leaped to the 
 remote reflection, that the conduct of the disciples towards the exorcist was 
 in contradiction with this rule. But all this supposes the facility of combina- 
 tion which belongs to a Schleierraacher, not the dulness which still character- 
 ized the disciples. Nevertheless, the above critic has unquestionably opened 
 on the true vein of connexion between the preceding apothegm and this 
 airo/cpto-is of John ; he has only failed to perceive that this connexion is not 
 intrinsic and original, but extrinsic and secondary. It was quite beyond the 
 reach of the disciples to apply the words in my name, by a train of deduc- 
 tions, to an obliquely connected case in their own experience ; but, according 
 to our previous observations, nothing could be more consistent with the habit 
 of association that characterizes the writer of the evangelical tradition in the 
 third gospel, whence the second Evangelist seems to have borrowed, than 
 that he should be reminded by the striking phrase, in my name, in the pre- 
 ceding discourse of Jesus, of an anecdote containing the same expression, 
 and should unite the two for the sake of that point of external similarity 
 alone.* 
 
 To the exhortation to receive such little children, Matthew annexes the 
 warning against offending one of these little ones, (XKavhaXCQ^w %.va rSsv fUKplov 
 TovToiv, an epithet which, in x. 42, is applied to the disciples of Jesus, but in 
 this passage, apparently, to children.* Mark (v. 42) has the same continua- 
 tion, notwithstanding the interruption above noticed, probably because he 
 forsook Luke (who here breaks off the discourse, and does not introduce the 
 admonition against offences until later, xvii. 1 f., and apart from any occasion 
 that might prompt it), and appealed to Matthew.^ Then follows in Matthew 
 (v. 8 f.) and Mark (v. 43 f.) a passage which alone ought to open the eyes of 
 commentators to the mode in which the synoptists arrange the sayings of 
 Jesus. To the warning against the offending, o-KavSaXC^eiv, of the little ones, 
 and the woe pronounced on those by whom offences come, to o-KavSaXov epxerai, 
 they annex the apothegm on the offenditig, a-KavSaXi^eiv, of the hand, eye, etc. 
 Jesus could not proceed thus, — for the injunctions : Mislead not the little 
 ones ! and. Let not your sensuality mislead you ! have nothing in common 
 but the word mislead. It is easy, however, to account for their association by 
 the writer of the first gospel.^ The word a-KavSaXi^eLv recalled to his mind all 
 the discourses of Jesus containing a similar expression that had come to his 
 knowledge, and although he had previously presented the admonitions con- 
 
 2 Ueber den Lukas, s. 153 f. 
 
 " Comp. De Wette, in loc. 
 
 " Vid. Fritsche and De Wette, in loc. 
 
 ' Saunier, uber die Quellen des Markus, s. ill. 
 
 * Comp. De Wette, in loc, Matt. 
 
I 
 DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 357 
 
 cerning seduction by the members, in a better connexion, as part of the 
 Sermon on the Mount, he could not resist the temptation of reproducing them 
 here, for the sake of this slight verbal affinity with the foregoing text. But at 
 V. lo he resumes the thread which he had dropped at v. 7, and adds a further 
 discourse on the little ones, fjuKpovi. Matthew makes Jesus confirm the value 
 of the little ones by the declaration, that the Son of man was come to seek 
 the lost, and by the parable of the lost sheep (v. 11-14). It is not, however, 
 evident why Jesus should class the /xixpoiis with the aTroXcoXos {lost) ; and both 
 the declaration and the parable seem to be better placed by Luke, who intro- 
 duces the former in the narrative of the calling of Zaccheus (xix. 10), and the 
 latter, in a reply to the objections of the Pharisees against the amity of Jesus 
 with the publicans (xv. 3 ff.). Matthew seems to have placed them here, 
 merely because the discourse on the little ones reminded him of that on the 
 lost — both exemplifying the mildness and humility of Jesus. 
 
 Between the moral of the above parable (v. 14) and the following rules for 
 the conduct of Christians under injuries (v. 15 ff.), there is again only a verbal 
 connexion, which may be traced by means of the words, aTroXijTai, should 
 perish, and cKepSiycras, tAou hast gained ; for the proposition : God wills not 
 that one of these little ones should perish, might recall the proposition : We 
 should endeavour to win over our brother, by showing a readiness to forgive. 
 The direction to bring the offender before the church, kKKk-qtrla., is generally 
 adduced as a proof that Jesus intended to found a church. But he here 
 speaks of the iKKK-t\<yLa. as an institution already existing : hence we must either 
 refer the expression to the Jewish synagogue, an interpretation which is 
 favoured by the analogy of this direction with Jewish precepts ; or if, accord- 
 ing to the strict meaning of the word and its connexion, iKKX-qma. must be 
 understood as the designation of the Christian community, which did not then 
 exist, it must be admitted that we have here, at least in the form of expression, 
 an anticipation of a subsequent state of things. ^ The writer certainly had in 
 view the new church, eventually to be founded in the name of Jesus, when, in 
 continuation, he represented the latter as imparting to the body of the disciples 
 the authority to bind and to loose, previously given to Peter, and thus to form 
 a messianic religious constitution. The declarations concerning the success 
 of unanimous prayer, and the presence of Jesus among two or three gathered 
 together in his name, accord with this prospective idea.* 
 
 The next discourse that presents itself (Matt. xix. 3-12, Mark x. 2-12), 
 though belonging, according to the EvangeUsts, to the last journey of Jesus, is 
 of the same stamp with the disputations which they, for the most part, assign 
 to the last residence of Jesus in Jerusalem. Some Pharisees propose to Jesus 
 the question, at that time much discussed in the Jewish schools,' whether it 
 be lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause. To avoid a con- 
 tradiction between modern practice and the dictum of Jesus, it has been 
 alleged that he here censures the species of divorce which was the only one 
 known at that period, namely, the arbitrary dismissal of a wife ; but not the 
 judicial separation resorted to in the present day.i" ' But this very argument 
 involves the admission, that Jesus denounced all the forms of divorce known 
 to him; hence the question still remains whether, if he could have had cog- 
 nizance of the modern procedure in dissolving matrimony, he would have 
 held it right to limit his general censure. Of the succeeding declaration, 
 
 ' Vid. de Wette, exeg. Handb. i, I, p. 155. .,.,... t • v.r . c.i,Kff„»n 
 
 8 Analogous passages from Jewish writings are given m Wetstem, Lightfoot, Schottgen, 
 
 In loc. . „, 
 
 ' Bemidbar R. ad. Num. v. 30, in Wetstem, p. 303. 
 i« E.g. Paulus, L. J. I, b, s. 46. 
 
35 8 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 79. 
 
 prompted by a question of the disciples,!' namely, that celibacy may be 
 practised for the kingdom of heaven's sake, Jesus himself says, that it cannot 
 be understood by all, but only by those to whom it is given (v. 11). That the 
 doctrine of J esus may not run counter to modern opinion, it has been eagerly 
 suggested, that his panegyric on celibacy had relation solely to the circum- 
 stances of the coming time, or to the nature of the apostolic mission, which 
 would be impeded by family ties.'^ But there is even less intimation of this 
 special bearing in the text, than in the analogous passage i Cor. vii. 25 ff., 
 and, adhering to a simple interpretation, it must be granted that we have here 
 one of the instances in which ascetic principles, such as were then prevalent, 
 especially among the Essenes,'* manifest themselves in the teaching of Jesus, 
 as represented in the synoptical gospels. 
 
 The controversial discourses which Matthew, almost throughout in agree- 
 ment with the other synoptists, places after the entrance of Jesus into Jeru- 
 salem (xxi. 23-27 ; xxii. 15-46),'* are certainly pre-eminently genuine frag- 
 ments, having precisely the spirit and tone of the rabbinical dialectics in the 
 time of Jesus. The third and fifth among them are particularly worthy of 
 note, because they exhibit Jesus as an interpreter of Scripture. With respect 
 to the former, wherein Jesus endeavours to convince the Sadducees that there 
 will be a resurrection of the dead, from the Mosaic designation of God as the 
 God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, maintaining that he is not the God 
 of the dead, but of the living (Matt. xxii. 31-33 parall.): Paulus adniits that 
 Jesus here argues subtilly, while he contends that the concUision is really 
 involved in the premises. But in the expression Dn"55>?''0?S the God of 
 Abraham, etc., which had become a mere formula, nothing more is implied 
 than that Jehovah, as he had been the protecting Deity of these men, >yoiild 
 for ever continue such to their posterity. An individual relation subsisting 
 between Jehovah and the patriarchs after their death, is nowhere else alluded 
 to in the Old Testament, and could only be discovered in the above form by 
 rabbinical interpreters, at a time when it was thought desirable, at any cost, to 
 show that the idea of immortality, which had become prevalent, was contained 
 in the law ; where, however, it is not to be met with by unprejudiced eyes. 
 We find the relation of God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, adduced as a 
 guarantee of immortality elsewhere in rabbinical argumentations, all of which 
 could hardly have been modelled on this one of Jesus.'^ If we look into the 
 most recent commentaries, we nowhere find a candid confession as to the real 
 character of the argumentation in question. Olshausen has wonders to tell of 
 the deep truth contained in it, and thinks that he can deduce from it, in the 
 shortest way, the authenticity and divinity of the Pentateuch. Paulus sees 
 the validity of the proof between the lines of the text ; Fritzsche is silent. 
 Wherefore these evasions? Why is the praise of having seen clearly, and 
 spoken openly, in this matter, abandoned to the Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist ? ^^ 
 
 ^' For probable doubts as to the correctness of the position given to this discourse of 
 Jesus, vid. Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 525, Anm. 
 
 '^ Paulus, ib. s. 50, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 599. 
 
 '' In this passage, it is true that celibacy is at iirst recommended as good for the present 
 distress ; but the Apostle does not rest there ; for at v. 32 ff. he adds, He that is unmarried 
 carethfor the things of the Lord — he that is married for the things of the world : — ^ motive to 
 celibacy which must be equally valid under all circumstances, and which affords us a glimpse 
 into the fundamental asceticism of Paul's views. Comp. Riickert's Commentary in loc. 
 
 " Vid. Gfrorer, Philo, 2, s. 310 f. 
 
 '^ A concise elucidation of them may be found in Hase, L. J. § 129. 
 
 '^ Vid. Gemara Hieros. Berac. f. v. 4, in Lightfoot, p. 423, and K. Manasse Ben Isr. in 
 Schottgen, i. p. 180. 
 
 1' See his 4th Fragment, Lessing's 4ten Beitrag, s. 434 ff. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 359 
 
 What spectres and double-sighted beings, must Moses and Jesus have been, if 
 they mixed with their cotemporaries without any real participation in their 
 opinions and weaknesses, their joys and griefs : if, mentally dwelling apart 
 from their age and nation, they conformed to these relations only externally 
 and by accommodation, while, internally and according to their nature, they 
 stood among the foremost ranks of the enlightened in modern times ! Far 
 more noble were these men, nay, they would then only engage our sympathy 
 and reverence, if, in a genuinely human manner, struggling with the limita- 
 tions and prejudices of their age, they succumbed to them in a hundred 
 secondary matters, and only attained perfect freedom in relation to the one 
 point by which each was destined to contribute to the advancement of man- 
 kind. 
 
 A controversial question concerning the Messiah is proposed (v. 41-46) 
 to the Pharisees by Jesus, namely, How can the same personage be at once 
 the Lord and the son of David ? Paulus maintains that this is a model of 
 interpretation in conformity with the textj^* an assertion which is no good 
 augury that his own possesses that qualification. According to him, Jesus, in 
 asking how David could call the Messiah, Lord, when in the general opinion 
 he was his son, intended to apprise the Pharisees, that in this Psalm it is not 
 David who is speaking of the Messiah, but another poet who is speaking of 
 David as his lord, so that to suppose this warlike psalm a messianic one, is a 
 mistake. Why, asks Paulus, should not Jesus have found out this interprete- 
 tion, since it is the true one ? But this is the grand error of his entire scheme 
 of interpretation — to suppose that what is truth in itself, or more correctly, for 
 us, must, even to the minutest details, have been truth for Jesus and the 
 apostles. The majority of ancient Jewish interpreters apply this psalm to the 
 Messiah ; ^^ the apostles use it as a prophecy concerning Christ (Acts ii. 34 f. ; 
 I Cor. XV. 25); Jesus himself, according to Matthew and Mark, adds iv 
 ■TTvevfjuiTi to AayStS KoXei airov Kvpiov, thus plainly giving his approval to the 
 notion that it is David who there speaks, and that the Messiah is his subject : 
 how then can it be thought that he held the contrary opinion ? It is far more 
 probable, as Olshausen has well shown, that Jesus believed the psalm to be a 
 messianic one : while, on the other hand, Paulus is equally correct in main- 
 taining that it originally referred, not to the Messiah, but to some Jewish 
 ruler, whether David or another. Thus we find that Jesus here gives a model 
 of interpretation, in conformity, not with the text, but with the spirit of his 
 time : a discovery which, if the above observations be just, ought to excite no 
 surprise. The solution of the enigma which Jesus here proposes to the 
 Pharisees, lay without doubt, according to his idea, in the doctrine of the 
 higher nature of the Messiah ; whether he held that, in virtue of this, he 
 might be styled the Lord of David, while, in virtue of his human nature, he 
 might also be regarded as his son ; or whether he wished to remove the latter 
 notion as erroneous. 2" The result, however, and perhaps also the intention 
 of Jesus with respect to the Pharisees, was merely to convince them that he 
 was capable of retaliating on them, in their own way, by embarrassing them 
 with captious questions, and that with better success than they had obtained 
 in their attempts to entrap him. Hence the Evangelists place this passage 
 at the close of the disputations prompted by the Pharisees, and Matthew 
 adds, Neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions : 
 a concluding form which is more suitable here than after the lesson ad- 
 
 " L.J. I, b, S. IlSff. , r I r. 1 1,- If 
 
 i» Vid. Wetstein, in loc. Hengstenberg, Christol. I, a, s. 140 f. ; also Paulus himself, 
 exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 283 f. 
 2" Comp. De Wette, in loc. 
 
3^0 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 79. 
 
 miijistered to the Sudducees, where it is placed by Luke (xx. 40), or than after 
 the discussion on the greatest commandment, where it is introduced by Mark 
 (xii. 34). 
 
 Immediately before this question of Jesus, the first two Evangelists narrate 
 a conversation with a lawyer, voiuKqi, or serine, ypafi/j-arev^, concerning the 
 greatest commandment. (Matt. xxii. 34 ff. ; Mark xii. 28 flf.) Matthew 
 annexes this conversation to the dispute with the Sadducees, as if the 
 Pharisees wished, by their question as to the greatest commandnient, to 
 avenge the defeat of the Sadducees. It is well known, however, that these 
 sects were not thus friendly ; on the contrary, we read in the Acts (xxiii. 7), 
 that the Pharisees were inclined to go over to the side of one whom they had 
 previously persecuted, solely because he had had the address to take the posi- 
 tion of an opponent towards the Sadducees. We may here quote Schneck- 
 enburger's observation, ^i that Matthew not seldom (iii. 7, xvi. i) places 
 the Pharisees and Sadducees side by side in a way that represents, not their 
 real hostility, but their association in the memory of tradition, in which one 
 opposite suggested another. In this respect, Mark's mode of annexing this 
 conversation to the foregoing, is more consistent ; but all the synoptists seem 
 to labour under a common mistake in supposing that these discussions, 
 grouped together in tradition on account of their analogy, followed each other 
 so closely in time, that one colloquy elicited another. Luke does not give 
 the question concerning the greatest commandment in connexion with the 
 controversies ofi the resurrection and on the Messiah ; but he has a similar 
 incident earlier, in his narrative of the journey to Jerusalem (x. 25 ff.). The 
 general opinion is that the first two Evangelists recount the same occurrence 
 and the third, a distinct one.^* It is true that the narrative of Luke differs 
 from that of Matthew and Mark, in several not immaterial points. The first 
 difference, which we have already noticed, relates to chronological position, 
 and this has been the chief inducement to the supposition of two events. 
 The next difference lies in the nature of the question, which, in Luke, turns on 
 the rule of life calculated to insure the inheritance of eternal life, but, in the 
 other Evangelists, on the greatest commandment. The third difference is in 
 the subject who pronounces this commandment, the first two synoptists re- 
 presenting it to be Jesus, the third, the lawyer. Lastly, there is a difference 
 as to the issue, the lawyer in Luke putting a second, self-vindicatory, question, 
 which calls forth the parable of the good Samaritan ; while in the two other 
 Evangelists, he retires either satisfied, or silenced by the answer to the first. 
 Meanwhile, even between the narrative of Matthew and that of Mark, there 
 are important divergencies. The principal relates to the character of the 
 querist, who in Matthew proposes his question with a view to iempi Jesus 
 (ireipaimv) ; in Mark, with good intentions, because he had perceived that 
 Jesus had answered the Sadducees well. Paulus, indeed, although he else- 
 where (Luke X. 25) considers the act of tempting (cKirctpa^mv) as the putting 
 a person to the proof to subserve interested views, pronounces that the word 
 Trapii^wv in this instance can only be intended in a good sense. But the sole 
 ground for this interpretation lies, not in Matthew, but in Mark, and in the 
 unfounded supposition that the two writers could not have a different idea of 
 the character and intention of the inquiring doctor of the law. Fritzsche has 
 correctly pointed out the difficulty of conciliating Matthew and Mark as lying, 
 partly in the meaning of the word ir«paf wv, and partly in the context, it being 
 inadmissible to suppose one among a series of malevolent questions, friendly, 
 
 ^' Ueber den Ursprung u. s. f., s. 45, 47. 
 '^ Paulus and Olshausen, in loc. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS.. 36 1 
 
 without any intimation of the distinction on the part of the writer. With this 
 important diversity is connected the minor one, that while in Matthew, the 
 scribe, after Jesus has recited the two commandments, is silent, apparently 
 from shame, which is no sign of a friendly disposition on his part towards 
 Jesus ; in Mark, he not only bestows on Jesus the approving expression, 
 IVell, Master, thou hast said the truth, but enlarges on his doctrine so as to 
 draw from Jesus the declaration that he has answered discreetly, and is, not far 
 from the kingdom of God. It may be also noticed that while in Matthew 
 Jesus simply repeats the commandment of love, in Mark he prefaces it by the 
 words, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord. Thus, if it be held 
 that the differences between the narrative of Luke, and that of the two other 
 Evangehsts, entail a necessity for supposing that they are founded on two 
 separate events ; the no slighter differences between Mark and Matthew must 
 in all consistency be made a reason for supposing a third. But it is so 
 difficult to credit the reahty of three occurrences essentially alike, that the other 
 alternative, of reducing them to one, must, prejudice apart, be always pre- 
 ferred. The narratives of Matthew and Mark are the most easily identified ; 
 but there are not wanting points of contact between Matthew and Luke, for 
 in both the lawyer vo/aikos appears as a tempter {TTapaZfuv), and is not im- 
 pressed in favour of Jesus by his answer ; nor even between Luke and Mark, 
 for these agree in appending explanatory remarks to the greatest command- 
 ment, as well as in the insertion of forms of assent, such as. Thou hast 
 answered right. Thou hast said the truth. Hence it is evident that to fuse 
 only two of their narratives is a half measure, and that we must either regard 
 all three as independent, or all three as identical: whence again we may 
 observe the freedom which .was used by the early Christian legend, in giving 
 various forms to a single fact or idea — the fundamental fact in the present 
 case being, that, out ot the whole Mosaic code, Jesus had selected the two 
 commandments concerning the love of God and our neighbour as the most 
 excellent.*^ 
 
 We come now to the great anti-pharisaic discourse, which Matthew gives 
 (xxiii.) as a sort of pitched battle after the skirmishing of the preceding dis- 
 putations. Mark (xii. 38 ff.) and Luke (xx. 45 ff.) have also a discourse of 
 Jesus against the scribes, ypa/A/iaTers, but extending no farther than a few 
 verses. It is however highly probable, as our modern critics allow, ^* that 
 Jesus should launch out into fuller invectives against that body of men under 
 me circumstances in which Matthew places that discourse, and it is almost 
 certain that such sharp enunciations must have preceded the catastrophe ; so 
 that it is not admissible to control the account of the first Evangelist by the 
 meagre one of the two other synoptists,^" especially as the former is distin- 
 guished by connectedness and unity. It is true that much of what Matthew 
 tiere presents as a continuous address, is assigned by Luke to various scenes 
 and occasions, and it would hence follow that the former has, in this case 
 again, blended the original elements of the discourse with kindred matter, 
 belonging to the discourses of various periods,^'* if it could be shown that the 
 arrangement of Luke is the correct one : a position which must therefore be 
 examined. Those parts of the anti-pharisaic harangue which Luke has m 
 common with Matthew, are, excepting the couple of verses which he places 
 in the same connexion as Matthew, introduced by him as concomitant with 
 
 23 Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb., i , I, s. 186. 
 
 2* Sieffert, iiber den Ursprung des ersten Ev., s. 117 f. 
 
 25 Comp. De Wette, i, i, s. 189. 
 
 26 Schuiz, uber das Abendmahl, s. 313 f. ; Schneckenburger, uber den Ursprung, s. 54. 
 
362 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 79. 
 
 two entertainments to which he represents Jesus as being invited by Pharisees 
 (xi. 37 ff. ; xiv. I ff.)— a politeness on their part which appears in no other 
 gospel. The expositors of the present day, almost with one voice, concur 
 in admiring the naturalness and faithfulness with which Luke has preserved 
 to us the original occasions of these discourses.^'' It is certainly natural 
 enough that, in the second entertainment, Jesus, observing the efforts of the 
 guests to obtain the highest places for themselves, should take occasion to 
 admonish them against assuming the precedence at feasts, even on the low ' 
 ground of prudential considerations ; and this admonition appears in a 
 curtailed form, and without any special cause in the- final anti-pharisaic dis- 
 course in Matthew, Mark, and even in Luke again (xx. 46). But it is other- 
 wise with the discourse which Luke attaches to the earlier entertainment in 
 the Pharisee's house. In the very commencement of this repast, Jesus not 
 only speaks of the ravening, apvayri, and wickedness, wovtjpla, with which the 
 Pharisees fill the cup and platter, and honours them with the title of fools, 
 a<j>povti, but breaks forth into a denunciation of woe, oval, against them and 
 the scribes and doctors of the law, threatening them with retribution for all 
 the blood that had been shed by their fathers, whose deeds they approved. 
 We grant that Attic urbanity is not to be expected in a Jewish teacher, but 
 even according to the oriental standard, such invectives uttered at table 
 aga:inst the host and his guests, would be the grossest dereliction of what is 
 due to hospitality. This was obvious to Schleiermacher's acute perception ; 
 and he therefore supposes that the meal passed' off amicably, and that it was 
 not until its close, when Jesus was again out of the house, that the host 
 expressed his surprise at the neglect of the usual ablutions by ' Jesus and his 
 disciples, and that Jesus answered with so much asperity.^^ But to assume 
 that the writer has not described the meal itself and the incidents that accom- 
 panied it, and that he has noticed it merely for the sake of its connexion with 
 the subsequent discourse, is an arbitrary mode of overcoming the difficulty. 
 For the text runs thus : And he went in and sat down to meat. And when the 
 Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner. And 
 the Lord said unto him, extiiKBuiv Se a.viiTvTf.v 6 8k ^apicraios iSuv i6av[ia(rev, on 
 ov irpSrrov ifiairrio'dri — • etTre Si 6 K.vpio's wpos avrov. It is irianifestly im- 
 possible to thrust in between these sentences the duration of the meal, and it 
 must have been the intention of the writer to attach he marvelled iOav[juia-tv 
 to he sat down to meat aveirea-ey, and he said earev to he marvelled lOav/j.ao'ei'. 
 But if this could not really have been the case, unless Jesus violated in the 
 grossest manner the simplest dictates of civility, there is an end 16 the 
 vaunted accuracy of Luke in his allocation of this discourse : and we have 
 only to inquire how he could be led to give it so false a position. This is to 
 be discovered by comparing the manner in which the two other synoptists 
 mention the offence of the Pharisees, at the omission of the ablutions before 
 meals by Jesus and his disciples : a circumstance to which they annex dis- 
 courses different from ihosf given by Luke. In Matthew (xv. i ff.), scribes 
 and Pharisees from Jerusalem ask Jesus why his disciples, do not observe the 
 custom of washing before meat ? It is thus implied that they knew of this 
 omission, as may easily be supposed, by report. In Mark (vii. i ff.), they 
 look on (iSovTes,) while some disciples of Jesus eat with unwashen hands, and 
 call them to account for this irregularity. Lastly, in Luke, Jesus himself 
 
 " Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 182, 196 f. ; Olshausen, in loc, and the writers 
 mentioned in the foregoing note, 
 sis Ut sap. 180. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 363 
 
 dines with a Pharisee, and on this occasion it is observed that hei neglects the 
 usual washings. This is an evident climax : hearing, witnessing, taking food 
 together. Was it formed, in the descending gradation, from Luice to 
 Matthew, or, in the ascending one, from Matthew to Luke ? From the 
 point of view adopted by the recent critics of the first gospel, the former 
 mode will be held the most probable, namely, that the memory of the original 
 scene, the repast in the Pharisee's house, was lost in the process of tradition, 
 and is therefore wanting in the first gospel. But, apart from the difficulty of 
 conceiving that this discourse was uttered under the circumstances with which 
 it is invested by Luke, it is by no means in accordance with the course of 
 tradition, when once in possession of so dramatic a particular as a feast, to let 
 it fall again, but rather to supply it, if lacking. The general tendency of the 
 legend is to transform the abstract into the concrete, the mediate into the 
 immediate, hearsay into vision, the spectator into the participator ; and as 
 the offence taken against Jesus by the Pharisees referred, among other things, 
 to the usages of the table, nothing was more natural than for legend to asso- 
 ciate the origin of the offence with a particular place and occasion, and for 
 this purpose to imagine invitations given to Jesus by Pharisees — invitations 
 which would be historically suspicious, if for no other reason than that Luke 
 alone knows anything of them. Here, then, we again find Luke in his 
 favourite employment of furnishing a frame to the discourses of Jesus which 
 tradition had delivered to him ; a procedure much farther removed from 
 historic faithfulness, than the effort of Matthew to give unity to discourses 
 gathered from different periods, without adding matter of his own. The 
 formation of the climax above displayed, can only be conceived, in accord- 
 ance with the general relation between the synoptists, in the following 
 manner: Mark, who in this instance evidently had Matthew before him, 
 enriched his account with the dramatic expression iSoi/tes ; while Luke, inde- 
 pendent of both, has added a repast, Seim/oi', whether presented to him by a 
 more developed tradition, or invented by his own more fertile imagination. 
 Together with this unhistorical position, the proportions themselves seem to 
 be disfigured in Luke (xi. 39-41, 49), and the observation of the lawyer, 
 Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also (xi. 45), too much resembles an 
 artificial transition from the philippic against the Pharisees, to that against the 
 doctors of the law.^^ 
 
 Another passage in this discourse has been the subject of much discussion. 
 It is that (v. 3s) in which Jesus threatens his cotemporaries, that all the 
 innocent blood shed from that of Abel to that of Zacbarias, the son of Bara- 
 chias, slain in the temple, will be required of their generation. The Zacharias 
 of whom such an end is narrated 2 Chron. xxiv. 20 ff. was a son, not of 
 Barachias, but of Jehoiada. On the other hand, there was a Zacharias, the 
 son of Baruch, who came to a similar end in the Jewish war.™ Moreover, it 
 appears unlikely that Jesus would refer to a murder which took place 850 B.C. 
 as the last. Hence it was at first supposed that we have in v. 35 a prophecy, 
 and afterwards, a confusion of the earlier with the later event ; and the latter 
 notion has been used as an accessory proof that the first gospel is a posterior 
 compilation.^! It is, however, equally probable, that the Zacharias, son of 
 Jehoiada, whose death is narrated in the Chronicles, has been confounded 
 with the prophet Zechariah, who was a son of Barachias (Zech. i. i ; LXX. ; 
 
 29 Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, 1, s. 189. i, 2, s. 67, 76. 
 ^** Joseph b. j. iv. v. 4. 
 
 " EichhoVn, Einleitung in diis N.T., i, s. 510 ff. ; Hug, Einl. in das N.T., 2, s. lo ff. ; 
 Credner, Einl., I, s. 207. 
 
364 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 79. 
 
 Baruch, in Josephus, is not the same name) ; '^ especially as a Targum, 
 evidently in consequence of a like confusion with the prophet who was a 
 grandson of Iddo, calls the murdered Zechariah a son of Iddo.^* The murder 
 of a prophet, mentioned by Jeremiah (xxvi. 23), was doubtless subsequent to 
 that of Zechariah, but in the Jewish order of the canonical books, Jeremiah 
 precedes the Chronicles ; and to oppose a murder revealed in the first 
 canonical book, to one recorded in the last, was entirely in the style of 
 Jewish parlance.^* 
 
 After having considered all the discourses of Jesus given by Matthew, 
 and compared them with their parallels, with the exception of those which 
 had come before us in previous discussions, or which have yet to come before 
 us in our examination of single incidents in the public ministry, or of the 
 history of the passion : it might appear requisite to the completeness of our 
 criticism, that we should also give a separate investigation to the connexion 
 in which the two other synoptists give the discourses of Jesus, and from this 
 point review the parallels in Matthew. But we have already cast a compara- 
 tive glance over the most remarkable discourses in Luke and Mark, and gone 
 through the parables which are peculiar to each ; and as to the remainder of 
 what they offer in the form of discourses, it will either come under our future 
 consideration, or if not, the point of view from which it is to be criticised, has 
 been sufficiently indicated in the foregoing investigations. 
 
 '^ Vid. Theile, iiber Zacharias Barachias Sohn, in Winer's und Engelhardt's neuem krit. 
 Journ., 2, s. 401 ff. ; De Wette, in loc. 
 
 ^' Targum Thren. ii. 20, in Wetstein, s. 491. 
 '* Comp. De Wette, in loc. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 
 
 § 80. 
 CONVERSATION OF JESUS WITH NICODEMUS. 
 
 The first considerable specimen which the fourth gospel gives of the teach- 
 ing of Jesus, is his conversation with Nicodemus (iii. 1-2 1). In the previous 
 chapter (23-25) it is narrated, that during the first passover attended by Jesus 
 after his entrance on his public ministry, he had won many to faith in him 
 by the miracles, o-iy/ieia, which he performed, but that he did not commit 
 himself to them because he saw through them : he was aware, that is, of the 
 uncertainty and impurity of their faith. Then follows in our present chapter, 
 as an example, not only of the adherents whom Jesus had found even thus 
 early, but also of the wariness with which he tested and received them, a 
 more detailed account how Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews and a Pharisee, 
 applied to him, and how he was treated by Jesus. 
 
 It is through the Gospel of John alone that we learn anything of this 
 Nicodemus, who in vii. 50 f. appears as the advocate of Jesus, so far as to 
 protest against his being condemned without a hearing, and in xix. 39 as the 
 partaker with Joseph of Arimathea of the care of interring Jesus. Modern 
 criticism, with reason, considers it surprising that Matthew (with the other 
 synoptists) does not even mention the name of this remarkable adherent of 
 Jesus, and that we have to gather all our knowledge of him from the fourth 
 gospel ; since the peculiar relation in which Nicodemus stood to Jesus, and 
 his participation in the care of his interment, must have been as well known 
 to Matthew as to John. This difficulty has been numbered among the argu- 
 ments which are thought to prove that the first gospel was not written by the 
 Apostle Matthew, but was the product of a tradition considerably more remote 
 from the time and locality of Jesus.^ But the fact is that the common fund 
 of tradition on which all the synoptists drew had preserved no notice of this 
 Nicodemus. With touching piety the Christian legend has recorded in the 
 tablets of her memory, the names of all the others who helped to render the 
 last honours to their murdered master — of Joseph of Arimathea and the two 
 Marys (Matt, xxvii. 57-61 parall.); why then was Nicodemus the only 
 neglected one — he who was especially distinguished among those who tended 
 the remains of Jesus, by his nocturnal interview with the teacher sent from 
 God, and by his advocacy of him among the chief priests and Pharisees? It 
 is so difficult to conceive that the name of this man, if he had really assumed 
 such a position, would have vanished from the popular evangelical tradition, 
 
 ' Schulz, iiber das Abendmahl, s. 321. 
 365 
 
366 PART 11. CHAPTER VII. § 8o. 
 
 without leaving a single trace, that one is induced to inquire whether the 
 contrary supposition be not more capable of explanation : namely, that such 
 a relation between Nicodemus and Jesus might have been fabricated by 
 tradition, and adopted by the author of the fourth gospel without having 
 really subsisted. 
 
 John xii. 42, it is expressly said that many among the chief rulers believed 
 on Jesus, but concealed their faith from dread of excommunication by the 
 Pharisees, because they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.^ 
 That towards the end of his career many people of rank believed in Jesus, 
 even in secret only, is not very probable, since no indication of it appears in 
 the' Acts of the Apostles ; for that the advice of Gamaliel (Acts v. 34 ff.) did 
 not originate in a positively favourable disposition towards the cause of 
 Jesus, seems to be sufficiently demonstrated by the spirit of his disciple Saul. 
 Moreover the synoptists make Jesus declare in plain terms that the secret of 
 his Messiahship had been revealed only to babes, and hidden from the wise 
 d^nd. prudent (Matt. xi. 25 ; Luke x. 21), and Joseph of Arimathea is the only 
 individual of the ruling class whom they mention as an adherent of Jesus. 
 How, then, if Jesus did not really attach to himself any from the upper ranks, 
 came the case to be represented differently at a later period? In John vii.. 
 48 f. we read that the Pharisees sought to disparage Jesus by the remark that 
 none of the rulers or of the Pharisees, but only the ignorant populace, 
 believed on him ; and even later adversaries of Christianity, for example, 
 Celsus, laid great stress on the circumstance that Jesus had had as his disci- 
 ples iTTippriTOvs avOpdnrov?, reXwvag kol vavras rovi ■TrovrjpoTO.TOvi.^ This 
 reproach was a thorn in the side of the early church, and though as long as 
 her members were drawn only from the people, she might reflect with satis- 
 faction on the declarations of Jesus, in which he had pronounced the poor, 
 TTTMxou?, and simple, vrjiriavs, blessed : yet so soon as she was joined by men 
 of rank and education, these would lean to the idea that converts like them- 
 selves had not been wanting to Jesus during his life. But, it would be 
 objected, nothing had been hitherto known of such converts. Naturally 
 enough, it might be answered ; since fear of their equals would induce them 
 to conceal their relations with Jesus. Thus a door was opened for the 
 admission of any number of secret adherents among the higher class (John 
 xii. 42 f.). But, it would be further urged, how could they have intercourse 
 with Jesus unobserved ? Under the veil of the night, would be the answer ; 
 and thus the scene was laid for the interviews of such men with Jesus (xix. 
 39). This, however, would not suffice ; a representative of this class must 
 actually appear on the scene : Joseph of Arimathea might have been chosen, 
 his name being still extant in the synoptical tradition ; but the idea of him 
 was too definite, and it was the interest of the legend to name more than one 
 eminent friend of Jesus. Hence a new personage was devised, whose Greek 
 name NikoStj/xos seems to point him out significantly as the representative of 
 the dominant class.* That this development of the legend is confined to the 
 fourth gospel, is to be explained, partly by the generally admitted lateness of 
 its origin, and partly on the ground that in the evidently more cultivated 
 circle in which it arose, the limitation of the adherents of Jesus to the 
 
 " This " secret information " is very welcome to Dr. Paulus, because it gives a useful hint 
 " as to many occurrences in the life of Jesus, the causes of which are not obvious " (L. J. 1, 
 b, s. 141) ; that is Paulus, like Bahrdt and Venturini, though less openly, is fond of using 
 such secret and influential allies as deus ex machind; for the explanation of much that is mira- 
 culous in the life of Jesus (the transfiguration, residence after the resurrection, etc.). 
 
 » Orig. t. Cels. 1. 62. 
 
 * Let the reader bear in mind the kindred names Nicolaus and Nicolaitans. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 367 
 
 common people would be more offensive, than in the circle in which the 
 synoptical tradition was formed. Thus the reproach which modern criticism 
 has cast on the first gospel, on the score of its silence respecting Nicodemus, 
 is turned upon the fourth, on the score of its information on the same 
 subject. 
 
 These considerations, however, should not create any prejudice against the 
 ensuing conversation, which is the proper object of our investigations. This 
 may still be in the main genuine ; Jesus may have held such a conversation 
 with one of |his adherents, and our Evangelist may have embellished it no 
 further than by making this interlocutor a man of rank. Neither will we, 
 with the author of the Probabilia, take umbrage at the opening address of 
 Nicodemus, nor complain, with him, that there is a want of connexion 
 between that address and the answer of Jesus. ^ The requisition of a new birth 
 (yci'vijfl^vai avM^ev), as a condition of entrance into the kingdom of heaven, 
 does not differ essentially from the summons with which Jesus opens his 
 ministry in the synoptical gospels. Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at 
 hand. New birth, or new creation, was a current image among the Jews, 
 especially as denoting the conversion of an idolater into a worshipper of 
 Jehovah. It was customary to say of Abraham, that when, according to the 
 Jewish supposition, he renounced idolatry for the worship of the true God, 
 he became a new creature {pW\n ^*^3).6 The proselyte, too, in allusion to 
 his relinquishing all his previous associations, was compared to a new-born 
 child.'' That such phraseology was common among the Jews at that period, 
 is shown by the confidence with which Paul applies, as if it required no 
 explanation, the term new creation, Katvi) ktccti^ to those truly converted to 
 Christ. Now, if Jesus required, even from the Jews, as a condition of 
 entrance into the messianic kingdom, the new birth which they ascribed to 
 their heathen proselytes, Nicodemus might naturally wonder at the requisi- 
 tion, since the Israelite thought himself, as such, unconditionally entitled to 
 th9.t kingdom : and this is the construction which has been put upon his 
 question v. 4.* But Nicodemus does not ask. How canst thou say that a 
 Jew, or a child of Abraham, must be born again ? His ground of wonder is 
 that Jesus appears to suppose it possible for a man to be born again, and 
 that when he is old. It does not, therefore, astonish him that spiritual new 
 birth should be expected in a Jew, but corporeal new birth in a man. How 
 an oriental, to whom figurative speech in general^ — ^how a Jew, to whom the 
 image of the new birth in particular must have been familiar — how especially 
 a master of Israel, in whom the misconstruction of figurative phrases cannot, 
 as in the apostles (e.g. Matt. xv. 15 f. ; xvi. 7), be ascribed to want of educa- 
 tion — could understand this expression literally, has been matter of extreme 
 surprise to expositors of all parties, as well as to Jesus (v. 10). Hence some 
 have supposed that the Pharisee really understood Jesus, and only intended by 
 his question to test the ability of Jesus to interpret his figurative expression 
 
 ' Prob., p. 44. Bretschneider is right, however, in declaring against Kuinol's method of 
 supplying a connexion between the discourses in John, by the insertion of propositions and 
 intermediate discourses, supposed to have been omitted. Liicke judiciously admits (l, p. 
 446) that if, in John, something appears to be wanting between two consecutive expressions 
 of Jesus, we are yet to suppose that there was an immediate connexion between them in the 
 mind of 'the Evangelist, and it is this connexion which it is the task of exegesis to ascertain. 
 In truth the discourses in the fourth gospel are never entirely wanting in connexion (apart 
 from the exceptions to be noticed in § 81), though that connexion is sometimes very latent. 
 
 « Bereschith R., sect. 39 f. xxxviii. z. Bammidbar R., s. 11 f. ccxi. 2. Tanchuma f. v. 2, 
 in Schbttgen, i. s. 704. Something similar is said of Moses, from Schemoth R., ib. 
 
 ' Jevamoth f. Ixii. i, xcii. i, in Lightfoot, p. 984. 
 
 ' E.g. Knapp, comm. in colloq. Christi cum Nicod. m loc. 
 
368 PART II. CHAPTER VI. § 8o. 
 
 into a simple proposition : ^ but Jesus does not treat him as a hypocrite, as 
 in that case he must have done — he continues to instruct him, as one really 
 ignorant ov yivwa-KovTa (v. lo). Others give the question the following turn : 
 This cannot be meant in a physical sense, how then otherwise ? *° But the 
 true drift of the question is rather the contrary : By these words I can only 
 understand physical new birth, but how is this possible ? Our wonder at the 
 ignorance of the Jewish doctor, therefore, returns upon us ; and it is heigh- 
 tened when, after the copious explanation of Jesus (v. 5-8), that the new 
 birth which he required was a spiritual birth, yevvr]6rjvaL e/c tov irvcu/iaTos, 
 Nicodemus has made no advance in comprehension, but asks with the same 
 obtuseness as before (v; 9), Ifow can these things be ? By this last difficulty 
 Llicke is so straitened, that, contrary to his ordinary exegetical tact, he refers 
 the continued amazement of Nicodemus (as other expositors had referred his 
 original question) to the circumstance that Jesus maintained the necessity of 
 new birth even for Israelites. But, in that case, Nicodemus would have 
 inquired concerning the necessity, not the possibility, of that birth ; instead 
 of asking, How can these things be ? he would have asked. Why must these 
 things be ? This inconceivable mistake in a Jewish doctor is not then to 
 be explained away, and our surprise must become strong suspicion so soon as 
 it can be shown, that legend or the Evangelist had inducements to represent 
 this individual as more simple than he really was. First, then, it must occur 
 to us, that in all descriptions and recitals, contrasts are eagerly exhibited ; 
 hence in the representation of a colloquy in which one party is the teacher, 
 the other the taught, there is a strong temptation to create a contrast to the 
 wisdom of the former by exaggerating the simphcity of the latter. Further, 
 we must remember the satisfaction it must give to a Christian mind of that 
 age, to place a master of Israel in the position of an unintelligent person, by 
 the side of the Master of the Christians. Lastly, it is, as we shall presently see 
 more clearly, the constant method of the fourth Evangelist in detailing the 
 conversations of Jesus, to form the knot and the progress of the discussion,' 
 by making the interlocutors understand literally what Jesus intended figura- 
 tively. 
 
 In reply to the second query of Nicodemus, Jesus takes entirely the tone 
 of the fourth Evangelist's prologue (v. ir-is).'"^ The question hence arises, 
 whether the Evangelist borrowed from Jesus, or lent to him his own style. 
 A previous investigation has decided in favour of the latter alternative.'^ 
 But this inquiry referred merely to the form of the' discourses ; in relation to 
 their matter, its analogy with the ideas of Philo, does not authorize us at 
 once to conclude that the writer here puts his Alexandrian doctrine of the 
 Logos into the mouth of Jesus ; ^^ because the expressions. We speak that we 
 do know, etc. o oiSa/tev XaXoSjuev k. t. X., and. No man hath ascended up to 
 heaven, etc. oiJSeis dvajSe^rjKev K.T.k., have an analogy with Matt. xi. 27; 
 and the idea of the pre-existence of the Messiah which is here propounded, 
 is, as we have seen, not foreign to the Apostle Paul. 
 
 V. 14 and 15 Jesus proceeds from the more simple things of the earth, 
 imyeioK, the communications concerning the new birth, to the more difiScult 
 
 8 Paulus, Comm. 4, s. 183. L. J. I, a, s. 176. 
 
 1" Liicke and Tholiick, in loc. 
 
 '1 III. 11:8 iupdKa/My liaprrvpoviioi Kal I. l8 : Sew ovSels iiipaxe triiwoTe. b 
 
 T^v fiaprvpLav ruiun oi Xafi^di/ere. 13 ■ Kal fiovoyevijs vlis, 6 Siv els tov koKitov tov vaTpbi 
 oiSeU ava^ip-qKev els Tbv oipavbv, el ftij i iK ixelvos i^yiiaaTO. 
 
 ToC oipavov /f aTo/3is, 6 vlbs toB i,vdp[liwov 6 11: — koX oi ISioi avTui/ oi irapika^ov, 
 
 Sm iv Tip oipavip, 
 
 12 Sup. § 46. 
 
 " This is informed in the Probabilia, p. 46, 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 369 
 
 things of heaven, iirovpavioK, the announcement of the destination of the 
 Messiah to a vicarious death. The Son of Man, he says, must de lifted up 
 {v\j/(i)6rjvai, which, in John's phraseology, signifies crucifixion, with an allusion 
 to a glorifying exaltation), in the same way, and with the same effect, as the 
 brazen serpent Num. xxi. 8, 9. Here many questions press upon us. Is it 
 credible, that Jesus already, at the very commencement of his public ministry, 
 foresaw his death, and in the specific form of crucifixion ? and that long 
 before he instructed his disciples on this point, he made a communication on 
 the subject to a Pharisee ? Can it be held consistent with the wisdom of 
 Jesus as a teacher, that he should impart such knowledge to Nicodemus ? 
 Even Liicke^* puts the question why, when Nicodemus had not understood 
 the more obvious doctrine, Jesus tormented him with the more recondite, 
 and especially with the secret of the Messiah's death, which was then so 
 remote ? He answers : it accords perfectly with the wisdom of Jesus as a 
 teacher, that he should reveal the sufferings appointed for him by God as 
 early as possible, because no instruction was better adapted to cast down 
 false worldly hopes. But the more remote the idea of the Messiah's death 
 from the conceptions of his cotemporaries, owing to the worldliness of their 
 expectations, the more impressively and unequivocally must Jesus express 
 that idea, if he wished to promulgate it ; not in an enigmatical form which he 
 could not be sure that Nicodemus would understand. Liicke continues : 
 Nicodemus was a man open to instruction ; one of whom good might be 
 expected. But in this very conversation, his dulness of comprehension in 
 earthly things, eirtyoa, had evinced that he must have still less capacity for 
 heavenly things, ivovpavia ; and, according to v. 12, Jesus himself despaired 
 of enlightening him with respect to them. Liicke, however, observes, that it 
 was a practice with Jesus to follow up easy doctrine which had not been 
 comprehended, by difficult doctrine which was of course less comprehensible ; 
 that he purposed thus to give a spur to the minds of his hearers, and by 
 straining their attention, engage them to reflect. But the examples which 
 Liicke adduces of such proceeding on the part of Jesus, are all drawn from 
 the fourth gospel. Now the very point in question is, whether that gospel 
 correctly represents the teaching of Jesus ; consequently Liicke argues in a 
 circle. We have seen a similar procedure ascribed to Jesus in his conversa- . 
 tion with the woman of Samaria, and we have already declared our opinion - 
 that such an overburthening of weak faculties with enigma on enigma, does 
 not accord with the wise rule as to the communication of doctrine, which the 
 same gospel puts into the mouth of Jesus, xvi. 12. It would not stimulate, 
 but confuse, the mind of the hearer, who persisted in a misapprehension of 
 the well-known figure of the new birth, to present to him the novel compari- 
 son of the Messiah and his death, to the brazen serpent and its effects ; a 
 comparison quite incongruous with his Jewish ideas.^* In the first three 
 Gospels Jesus pursues an entirely different course. In these, where a mis- 
 construction betrays itself on the part of the disciples, Jesus (except where he 
 breaks off altogether, or where it is evident that the Evangelist unhistorically 
 associates a number of metaphorical discourses) ' applies himself with the 
 assiduity of an earnest teacher to the thorough explanation of the difficulty, 
 and not until he has effected this does he proceedj step by step, to convey 
 further instruction (e.g. Matt. xiii. 10 ff., 36 ff., xv. 16, xvi. 8 ff.).i« This 
 
 " Ut sup. p. 476. 
 
 " Comp. Bretschneider, ut sup. , r t • .u 
 
 16 De Wette adduces as examples of a similar procedure on the part ot Jesus m the 
 synoptical gospels, Matt. xix. 21, xx. 22 f. But these two cases are of a totally different 
 kind from the one under consideration in John. We have here to treat of a want of com- 
 
 A A 
 
37Q PART II. CHAPTER VH. § 80. 
 
 is the method of a wise teacher ; on the contrary, to leap from one subject 
 to another, to overburthen and strain the mind of the hearer, .a mode of 
 instruction which the fourth Evangelist attributes to Jesus, is wholly inconsis- 
 tent with that character. To explain" this inconsistency, we must suppose 
 that the writer of the fourth gospel thought to heighten in the most effective 
 manner the contrast which appears from the first, between the wisdom of the 
 one party and the incapacity of the other, by representing the teacher as 
 overwhelming the pupil, who put unintelligent questions on the most elemen- 
 tary doctrine, with lofty and difficult themes, beneath whish his faculties are 
 laid prostrate. 
 
 From V. i6, even those commentators who pretend to some ability in, this 
 department, lose all hope of showing that the remainder of the discourse may 
 have been spoken by Jesus. Not only does Paulus make this confession, but 
 even Olshausen, with a concise statement of his reasons.^'' At the above 
 verse, any special reference to Nicodemus vanishes, and there is commenced 
 an entirely general discourse on the destination of the Son of God, to confer 
 a blessing on the world, and on the manner in which unbelief forfeits this 
 blessing. Moreover, these ideas are expressed in a form, which at one 
 moment appears to be a reminiscence of the Evangelist's introduction, and at 
 another has a striking similarity with passages in the first Epistle of John.^^ 
 In particular, the expression, the only begotten Son, o fiovoyevrj^ vtos, which is 
 repeatedly (v. i6 and i8) attributed to Jesus as a designation of his own 
 person, is nowhere else found in his mouth, even in the fourth gospel ; this 
 circumstance, however, marks it still more positively as a favourite phrase of 
 the Evangelist (i. 14-18), and of the writer of the Epistles (i John iv. 9). 
 Further, many things are spoken of as past, which at the supposed period of 
 this conversation with Nicodemus were yet future. For even -if the words, 
 Ae gave, cSoikev, refer not to the giving over to death, but to the sending of 
 the Messiah into the world ; the expressions, men loved darkness yp/a.-rrf\uav ol 
 avOpomoL TO (7Kotos, and, their deeds were evil, ^v irovripa. airlov ra tpya (v. 19), 
 as Liicke also remarks, could only be used after the triumph of darkness had 
 been achieved in the rejection and execution of Jesus : they belong then ta 
 the Evangelist's point of view at the time when he wrote, not to that of Jesus 
 when on the threshold of his public ministry. In general the whole of this 
 discourse attributed to Jesus, with its constant use of the third person to 
 designate the supposed speaker ; with its dogmatical terms only begotten, light, 
 and the like, applied to Jesus ; with its comprehensive view of the crisis and 
 its results, which the appearance of Jesus produced, is far too objective for 
 us to believe that it came froni the lips of Jesus. Jesus could not speak thus 
 
 prehension, in the face of which it is surprising that Jesus instead of descending to its level, 
 chooses to elevate himself to a still less attainable altitude. In the passages quoted from 
 the synoptists, on the other hand, we have examples of an excessive self-valuation, too high 
 an estimate of their ability to promote the cause of Jesus, on the part of the rich young man 
 and of the sons of Zebedee, and Jesus with perfect propriety checks their egotistic ardour by 
 the abrapt presentation of a higher demand. These instances could only be parallel with 
 that of Nicodemus, if the latter' had piqued himself on his enlightenment, and Jesus, by a 
 sudden flight into a higher region, had sought to convince him of his ignorance. 
 
 " Bibl. Comm. 2, s. 96. 
 
 " III. 19 : oCtij Sk kariv t) Kptcris, Sn rb I. 9 : ffv rh 0<is rj dXijfliKiy, rh tpinrl^ov 
 
 tpws i')^'/i\v6-€v els t&v KdfffioVt 'c^ 'iiydirriffay ol irdvTa &v$poyjrov, ipx^fievov eU rhv Kdfffiov, 
 Av&ptaTOL fiSXKoj/ t6 cKiiros ^ Tb <p{as, 5 • 'ftti rb 0ws ev rij itkotI^ ipaivei, Kai ^ 
 
 III. 16 : oflru 7ckp ijyiir'riffti' b Seos rbv ckotIo. airb oil (rarAa|3ei>. 
 Koaiiov, Siare rbv vibv airroO tov fnovoyevij i John iv. 9 ; iy roirip iipai>,ep(i$ri i] 
 
 ISaxey, Xva ?ros 6 iri(rrei)wv di avrbv, iiij Ayiirri tov 6eoS iv ^fuv, Sri rbv, vlbv avrav rbv 
 &irbKiiTci.i dXX' txH i'^'h" ai'ivi'OV-, liovoyevij A-iriffTeiXgu i Bebs eis t4j» Kbaiwv, tva, 
 
 j^iru/itey SI aiToO, 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 37 1 
 
 of himself, but the Evangelist might speak thus of Jesus. Hence the same 
 expedient has been adopted, as in the case of the Baptist's discourse already 
 considered, and it has been supposed that Jesus is the speaker down to v. 16, 
 but that from that point the Evangelist appends his own dogmatic reflections.'" 
 But there is again here no intimation of such a transition in the text ; rather, 
 the connecting word for, yap (v. 16), seems to indicate a continuatioa of 
 the same discouise. No writer, and least of all the fouith Evangelist (comp. 
 vii. 39, xi. 51 f, xii. 16, xxxiii. 37 ff.), would scatter his own observations 
 thus undistinguishingly, unless he wished to create a misapprehension.^" 
 
 If then it be established that the evangelist, from v. 16 to the end of the 
 discourse, means to represent Jesus as the speaker, while Jesus can never 
 have so spoken, we cannot rest satisfied with the half measure adopted by 
 Liicke, when he maintains that it is. really Jesus who continues to speak from 
 the above passage, but that the Evangelist has inwoven his own explanations 
 and amplifications more liberally than before. For this admission under- 
 mines all certainty as to how far the discourse belongs to Jesus, and how far 
 to the Evangelist ; besides, as the discourse is distinguished by the closest 
 uniformity of thought and style, it must be ascribed either wholly to Jesus or 
 wholly to the Evangelist. Of these two alternatives the former is, according 
 to the above considerations, impossible ; we are therefore restricted to the 
 latter, which we have observed to be entirely consistent with the manner of 
 the fourth Evangelist. 
 
 But not only on the passage v. 16-21 must we pass this judgment : v. 14 
 has appeared to us out of keeping wiih the position of Jesus ; and the be- 
 haviour of Nicodemus, v. 4 and 9, altogether inconceivable. Thus in the 
 very first sample, when compared with the observations which we have 
 already made on John iii. 22 ff., iv. i ff., the fourth gospel presents to us all 
 the peculiarities which characterize its mode of reporting the discourses of 
 Jesus. They are usually commenced in the form of dialogue, and so far as 
 this extends, the lever that propels the conversation is the striking contrast 
 between the spiritual sense and the carnal interpretation of the language of 
 Jesus ; generally, however, the dialogue is merged into an uninterrupted dis- 
 course, in which the writer blends the person of Jesus with his own, and 
 makes the former use concerning himself, language which could only be used 
 by John concerning Jesus. 
 
 § 81. 
 
 THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS, JOHN V.-XII. 
 
 In the fifth chapter of John, a long discourse of Jesus is connected with a 
 cure wrought by him on the sabbath (19-47). The mode in which Jesus at 
 
 " Paulus and Olshausen, in loc. 
 
 2" TholUck (Glaubwurdigkeit, s. 335) adduces as examples of a similar unobserved fusion 
 of a discourse quoted from a foreign source, with the writer's own matter, Gal. ii. 14 ff. 
 Euseb., H. E. iii. i, 39. Hieron. Comm. in Jes. 53. But sufh instances in an epistle, a 
 commentary or an historical work interspersed with reasoning and criticism are not parallel 
 with those in an historical narrative of the nature of our fourth gospel. In works of the 
 former kind, the reader expects the author to reason, and hence, when tlie discourse of 
 another party has been introduced, he is prepared at the slightest pause to see the author 
 again take up the argument. It is quite different with a work like our fourth gospel. The 
 introduction, it is true, is put forth as the author's own reasoning, and it is there quite natural 
 that after a brief quotation from the discourse of another, v. 15, he should, at v. 16, resume 
 the character of speaker without any express intimation. But when once he has entered on 
 his narrative which is strictly a recital of what has been done, and what has been said, all 
 that he annexes without any mark of distinction (as e.g. xii. 37) to a discourse explicitly 
 ascribed to another, must be considered as a continuation of that discourse. 
 
372 PART II. CHAPTER VII. § 8 1. 
 
 V. 1 7 defends his activity on the sabbath, is worthy of notice, as distinguished 
 from that adopted by him in the earlier gospels. These ascribe to him, in 
 such cases, three arguments : the example of David, who ate the shew-bread ; 
 the precedent of the sabbatical labours of the priests in the temple, quoted 
 also in John vii. 23 (Matt. xii. 3 fif. parall.) ; and the course pursued with 
 respect to an ox, sheep, or ass, that falls into the pit (Matt. xii. 11, parall.), 
 or is led out to watering on the sabbath (Luke xiii. 18) : all which arguments 
 are entirely in the practical spirit that characterizes the popular teaching of 
 Jesus. The fourth Evangelist, on the contrary, makes him argue from the 
 uninterrupted activity of God, and reminds us by the expression which he 
 puts into the mouth of Jesus, My Father worketh hitherto, 6 iraryp ccos apn 
 ipyd^erai, of a principle in the Alexandrian metaphysics, viz. God never ceases 
 to act, TToiMv o ^cos oiSejroTe ■Travcrai : 1 a metaphysical proposition more likely 
 to be familiar to the author of the fourth gospel than to Jesus. In the 
 synoptical gospels, miracles of healing on the sabbath are followed up by 
 declarations respecting the nature and design of the sabbatical institution, a 
 species of instruction of which the people were greatly in need ; but in the 
 present passage, a digression is immediately made to the main theme of the 
 gospel, the person of Christ and his relation to the Father. The perpetual 
 recurrence of this theme in the fourth gospel has led its adversaries, not 
 without reason, to accuse it of a tendency purely theoretic, and directed to 
 the glorification of Jesus. In the matter of the succeeding discourse there, is 
 nothing to create a difficulty, nothing that Jesus might not have spoken, for 
 it treats, with the strictest coherence, of things which the Jews expected of 
 the Messiah, or which Jesus attributed to himself, according to the synoptists 
 also : as, for instance, the raising of the dead, and the office of judging the 
 world. But this consistency in the matter only heightens the difficulty con- 
 nected with the form and phraseology in >vhich it is expressed. For the 
 discourse, especially its latter half (from v. 31), is full of the closest analogies 
 with the first epistle of John, and with passages in the gospel in which either 
 the author speaks, or John the Baptist.* One means of explaining the for- 
 mer resemblance is to suppose, that the Evangelist formed his style by closely 
 imitating that of Jesus. That this is possible, is not to be disputed ; but it 
 
 ' Philo. 0pp. ed. Mang. i. 44. apud Gfrorer, i. p. 122. 
 
 ' Joh. V. 20 : 6 y&p irariip ipCKei t6v vlbv John iii. 35 (the Baptist) : 6 ykp irarrip 
 
 Kal irdvra SelKuvaw air^, & airbs Trotei. ayair^ riv vlbv Kal vavra SkSuKev iv rf X^'P' 
 
 24 : 6 rhv \6yov fiov 6,Koifav — fjLera^^^TjKey airoO. 
 ix roO Savirov eU T^f fui^i'. I Joh. iii. 14 : ij/ieU oi'Sa^ev, 8n /t6TO/Sc/3^- 
 
 32 : KoX otSa, in oKtiBiii iffnv ij fiaprvpla, xa/iev iK rod Oav&TOV els Trjv ^uijv. 
 ffv /iaprvpei irepl ifwO. Joh. xix. 35 : xal dXijflici; iffrtv aSroO i) 
 
 fiaprvpla, K&Keivoi oTSei>, Sn iXijOij \eyei. 
 
 34 : tyi) Si oi rcaph &v$piiirov T-iji' imprvplav Comp. xxi. 24. I Joh. 3, 12. 
 
 \afjL^(ivo). , I Joh. V. 9 ; el rijv fiaprvpiav tuv avOptinrtiiv 
 
 36 : iyi> Si ?X" IMprvplav /iet^'u toC 'laiv- Xafi^avonev, i] fiaprvpla tov 8eoS, jiel^iiiv 
 vov, etTTiv Uti airii ianv ij /iaprvpla ToC OeoS, ^x 
 
 37 : Kal 6 iren^ai fie rar^p, airrbs fJiefULpri- iKjiapriprqKe irepl tov vlov ainov. 
 pifKe irepl ifiov. 
 
 lb. : oSre t^jk (putr^v airov dioj«c6aTe iriinrore, Joh. i. 18: $ebv oiSels iiepaxe irtinroTe. 
 
 oOre rb eiSos airov ewpiKare. Comp. I Joh. iv. 12. 
 
 . 38 : Kal Tbv \byov airov oiK ?x^^ /texoiTa 1 Joh. i. 10 : Kal 6 \6yos airov oix ianv 
 
 iv i/iiv. ^ iv ipdv. 
 
 40 : <cai oi ii\ere iXOelv vpis /xe, tva fuiji' I Joh. v. 12:6 /t)j Ix''"' tAi' vlbv rov Beov 
 
 txnrc. . , f"V oiK ^x«- 
 
 42 ; Sri. T7)i' i,yiMi\v rov Seov oiK Ix""^ ^'' I Job. ii. IS : oix (ariv t) iyitrri toB irarpbs 
 
 eavTots.. _ i" avrifi. 
 
 44 : TTus SivatrBe ifieh Turreietv, Si^v irapb, Joh. xi. 43 : ^iirriaav ykp ri)v Sifav rdv 
 
 iyMjKwv Xafifidvovres, Kal rijv Sb^av r^v irapi, ivipiiiruv /iaWov, ijirep rijv Si^av rov 6eov. 
 Tou juicov ffeoS oi ^ijreH-e ; 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 373 
 
 is equally certain that it could proceed only from a mind destitute of origin- 
 ality and self-confidence, — a character which the fourth Evangelist in nowise 
 exhibits Further, as in the other gospels Jesus speaks in a thoroughly 
 different tone and style, it would follow, if he really spoke as he is repre- 
 sented to have done by John, that the manner attributed to him by the 
 synoptists is fictitious. Now, that this manner did not originate with the 
 EvangeUsts is plain from the fact, that each of them is so little master of his 
 matter. Neither could the bulk of the discourses have been the work of 
 tradition, not only because they have a highly original cast, but because they 
 bear the impress of the alleged time and locality. On the contrary, the 
 fourth Evangelist, by the ease with which he disposes his materials, awakens 
 the suspicion that they are of his own production ; and some of his favourite 
 ideas and phrases, such as, The Father showeth the Son all that hitnself doeth,^ 
 and those already quoted, seem to have sprung from an Hellenistic source, 
 rather than from Palestine. But the chief point in the argument is, that in 
 this gospel John the Baptist speaks, as we have seen, in precisely the same 
 strain as the author of the gospels, and his Jesus. It cannot be supposed, 
 that not only the Evangelist, but the Baptist, whose public career was prior to 
 that of Jesus, and whose character was strongly marked, modelled his expres- 
 sions with verbal minuteness on those of Jesus. Hence only two cases are 
 possible : either the Baptist determined the style of Jesus and the Evangelist 
 (who indeed appears to have been the Baptist's disciple) ; or the Evangelist 
 determined the style of the Baptist and Jesus. The former alternative will 
 be rejected by the orthodox, on the ground of the higher nature that dwelt 
 in Christ; and we are equally disinclined to adopt it, for the reason that 
 Jesus, even though he may have been excited to activity by the Baptist, yet 
 appears as a character essentially distinct from him, and original ; and for the 
 still more weighty consideration, that the style of the Evangelist is much too 
 feeble for the rude Baptist, — too mystical for his practical mind. There re- 
 mains, then, but the latter alternative, namely, that the Evangelist has given 
 his own style both to Jesus and to the Baptist : an explanation in itself more 
 natural than the former, and supported by a multitude of examples from all 
 kinds of historical writers. If however the Evangelist is thus responsible for 
 the form of this discourse, it is still possible that the matter may have be- 
 longed to Jesus, but we cannot pronounce to what extent this is the case, 
 and we have already had proof that the Evangelist, on suitable opportunities, 
 very freely presents his own reflections in the form of a discourse from Jesus. 
 In chap, vi., Jesus represents himself, or rather his Father, v. 27 ff., as the 
 giver of the spiritual manna. This is analogous to the Jewish idea above 
 quoted, that the second Goel, like the first, would provide manna ; * and to 
 the invitation of Wisdom in the Proverbs, ix. 5, Come, eat of my bread; 
 eKOere, <l>dyeTe T&v i/jt-Stv apTuiv. But the succeeding declaration, that he is 
 himself the bread of life that cometh down from heaven, aftroi 6 !C,S>v 6 ck tov 
 ovpavov KarajSa.'s (v. 33 and 35) appears to find its true analogy only in the 
 idea of Philo, that the dm'ne word, \oyos ^eios, is that which nourishes the soul, 
 TO Tpe<l)ov Trjv ij/vxnv.^ From v. 51, the difficulty becomes still greater. Jesus 
 proceeds to represent his flesh as the bread from heaven, which he will give 
 for the life of the world, and to eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and to drink 
 his blood, he pronounces to be the only means of attaining eternal life. Tiie 
 
 3 Vid. the passages compared by Gfrbrer, i, s. 194, from Philo, de linguarum confusioiie. 
 
 ■ "• De^'pro'fugis, Opp. Mang., i. s. 566, Gfrorer, i, s. 202. What is farther said of the 
 Xdyo! : d^' oS TrScrai vaiiaai. itai (ro^iot fiimnai iifyaoi may be compared with John iV. 14, 
 vi. 35. vii. 38- 
 
374 PART II. CHAPTER VII. § 8 1. 
 
 similarity of these expressions to the words which the synoptists and Paul 
 attribute to Jesus, at the institution of the Lord's Supper, led the older com- 
 mentators generally to understand this passage as having reference to the 
 Sacramental supper, ultimately to be appointed by Jesus.® The chief ob- 
 jection to this interpretation is, that before the institution of the supper, such 
 an allusion would be totally unintelligible. Still the discourse might have 
 some sense, however erroneous, for the hearers, as indeed it had, according 
 to the narrator's statement ; and the impossibility of being understood is not, 
 in the fourth gospel, so shunned by Jesus, that that circumstance alone would 
 suffice to render this interpretation improbable. It is certainly supported by 
 the analogy between the expressions in the discourse, and the words asso- 
 ciated with the institution of the supper, and this analogy has wrung from 
 one of our recent critics the admission, that even if Jesus himself, in uttering 
 the above expressions, did not refer to the supper, the Evangelist, in choosing 
 and conveying this discourse of Jesus might have had that institution in his 
 mind, and might have supposed that Jesus here gave a premonition of its 
 import.'' In that case, however, he could scarcely have abstained from 
 modifying the language of Jesus ; so that, if the choice of the expression eat 
 the flesh, etc., can only be adequately explained on the supposition of a refer- 
 ence to the Lord's Supper, we owe it, without doubt, to the Evangelist alone. 
 Having once said, apparently in accordance with Alexandrian ideas, that 
 Jesus had described himself as the bread of life, how could he fail to be re- 
 minded of the bread, which in the Christian community was partaken of as 
 the body of Christ, together with a beverage, as his blood ? He would the 
 more gladly seize the opportunity of making Jesus institute the supper pro- 
 phetically, as it were ; because, as we shall hereafter see, he knew nothing 
 definite of its historical institution by Jesus.* 
 
 The discourse above considered, also bears the form of a dialogue, and it 
 exhibits strikingly the type of dialogue which especially belongs to the fourth 
 gospel : that, namely, in which language intended spiritually, is understood 
 carnally. In the first place (v. 34), the Jews (as the woman of Samaria in 
 relation to the water) suppose that by the bread which cometh down from 
 heaven, Jesus means some material food, and entreat him evermore to supply 
 them with such. Such a misapprehension was certainly natural ; but one 
 would have thought that the Jews, before they carried the subject farther, 
 would have indignantly protested against the assertion of Jesus (v. 32), that 
 Moses had not given them heavenly bread. When Jesus proceeds to call 
 himself the bread from heaven, the Jews in the synagogue at Capernaum 
 murmur that he, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother they knew, 
 should arrogate to himself a descent from heaven (v. 41) ; a reflection which 
 the synoptists with more probability attribute to the people of Nazareth, the 
 native city of Jesus, and to which they assign a more natural cause. That 
 the Jews should not understand (v. 53) how Jesus could give them his flesh 
 to eat is very conceivable ; and for that reason, as we have observed, it is the 
 less so that Jesus should express himself thus unintelligibly. Neither is it 
 surprising that this hard saying, o'Kkripoi Xoyos, should cause many disciples to 
 fall away from him, nor easy to perceive how Jesus could, in the first in- 
 stance, himself give reason for the secession, and then, on its occurrence, 
 feel so much displeasure as is implied in v. 61 and 67. It is indeed said, 
 that Jesus wished to sift his disciples, to remove from his society the super- 
 
 * See Liicke's History of the interpretation of this passage in his Comm. 2, Appendix B, 
 p. 727 ff. 
 
 ' Hase, L. J. § 99. 
 
 ' Comp. Bretschneider, Probab., pp. 56, 88 ff. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 375 
 
 ficial believers, the earthly-minded, whom he could not trust; but the 
 measure which he here adopted was one calculated to alienate from him even 
 his best and most intelligent followers. For it is certain that the twelve, who 
 on other occasions knew not what was meant by the leaven of the Pharisees 
 (Matt. xvi. 7), or by the opposition between what goes into the mouth, and 
 what comes out of it (Matt. xv. 15), would not understand the present dis- 
 course ; and the words of ktel-nal life, for the sake of which they remained 
 with him (v. 68), were assuredly not the words of this sixth chapter.^ 
 
 The further we read in the fourth gospel, the more striking is the repetition 
 of the same ideas and expressions. The discourses of Jesus during the Feast 
 of Tabernacles, ch. vii. and viii. are, as Liicke has remarked, mere repetitions 
 and amplifications of the oppositions previously presented (especially in ch. 
 v.), of the coming, speaking, and acting, of Jesus, and of God (vii. 17, 28 f., 
 viii. 28 f., 38, 40, 42, compare with v. 30, 43, vi. 38) ; of being from above, 
 elvai Ik tSv avw, and from beneath, Ik tuIv Ka.ru> (viii. 23, comp. iii. 31); of 
 bearing witness of one's self, and receiving witness from God (viii. 13-19, 
 comp. v. 31-37); of light and darkness (viii. 12, comp. iii. 10, ff., also 
 xii. 35 f.); of true and fatlse judgment (viii. 15 f., comp. v. 30). All that 
 is new in these chapters, is quickly repeated, as the mention of the de- 
 parture of Jesus whither the Jews cannot follow him (vii. 33 f., viii. 21, 
 comp. xiii. 33, xiv. 2 ff., xvi. 16 ff.) ; a declaration, to which are attached, in 
 the first two instances, very improbable misapprehensions or perversions on 
 the part of the Jews, who, although Jesus had said, / go unto him that ient 
 me, are represented as imagining, at one time, that he purposed journeying 
 to the dispersed among the Gentiles, at another, that he meditated suicide. 
 How often, again, in this chapter are repeated the asseverations, that he 
 seeks not his own honour, but the honour of the Father (vii. 17 f., viii. 50, 
 54) ; that the Jews neither know whence he came, nor the father who sent 
 him (vii. 28, viii. 14, 19, 54); that whosoever believeth in him shall have 
 eternal hfe, shall not see death, while whosoever believeth not must die in 
 his sins, having no share in eternal life (viii. 21, 24, 51, comp. iii. 36, vi. 46). 
 — The ninth chapter, consisting chiefly of the deliberations of the Sanhedrim 
 with the man born blind, whom Jesus had restored to sight, has of course the 
 form of conversation, but as Jesus is less on the scene than heretofore, there 
 is not the usual amount of artificial contrast ; in its stead, however, there is, 
 as we shall presently find, another evidence of artistic design in the narrator. 
 
 The tenth chaprter commences with the well-known discourse on the Good 
 Shepherd; a discourse which has beien incorrectly called a parable. *" Even 
 the briefest among the other parables of Jesus, such as that of the leaven and 
 of the mustard-seed, contain the outline of a history that develops itself, 
 having a commencement, progress, and conclusion. Here, on the contrary, 
 there is no historical development ; even the particulars that have an historical 
 character are stateSd generally, as things that are wont to happen, not as things 
 that once happened, and they are left without further limitation ; moreover, 
 the door usurps the place of the Shepherd, which is at first the principal 
 image ; so that we have here, not a parable, but an allegory. Therefore this 
 
 9 In relation to this chapter, I entirely approve the following remark in the Probabilia 
 (p. 56) : videretur^esus ipse studUisse, ut verbis illuderet Judceis, nee ab iis intelligeretur, 
 sed reprobatitur. Ita ■Veri) nee egit, nee agere potuit, neque si ita docuisset, taftta effeeisset, 
 quanta illum egecissi hisioHa testatur. Cotnp. De Wette, exeg. Handb., i, 3, s. 6. 
 
 w E. g. by Tholiick and Liicke. The latter, however, allows' that it is ratheir an incipient 
 than a complete parable. Olshausen also remarks, that the discourses of the Shepherd and 
 the Viiie are rather comparisons than parables; and Neartdef shows himself Willing to dis, 
 tinguish the parable presented by the jyftbptisls a« a: specie's, linder the genus similitude, to 
 which the irapoiiilai of John belong. 
 
iZ7^ PART II. CHAPTER VII. § 8 1. 
 
 passage at least — (and we shall find no other, for the similitude of the vine, 
 ch. XV., comes, as Liicke confesses, under the same category as the one in 
 question)— furnishes no argument against the allegation by which recent 
 critics have justified their suspicions as to the authenticity of the fourth 
 gospel ; namely, that its author seems ignorant of the parabolic mode of 
 teaching which, according to the other Evangelists, was habitual with Jesus. 
 It does not however appear totally unknown to the fourth Evangelist that 
 Jesus was fond of teaching by parables, for he attempts to give examples of 
 this method, both in ch. x. and xv., the first of which he expressly styles a 
 parable, Trapot/tta. But it is obvious that the parabolic form was not accordant 
 with his taste, and that he was too deficient in the faculty of depicting external 
 things, to abstain from the intermixture of reflections, whence the parable in 
 his hand became an allegory. 
 
 The discourses of Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles extend to x. i8. From 
 V. 25, the Evangelist professes to record sayings which were uttered by Jesus 
 three months later, at the Feast of Dedication. When, on this occasion, the 
 Jews desire from him a distinct declaration whether he be the Messiah, his 
 iminediate reply is, that he has already told them this sufficiently, and he 
 repeats his appeal to the testimony of the Father, as given in the works, epya, 
 done by Jesus in his name (as in v. 36). Hereupon he observes that his 
 unbelieving interrogators are not of his sheep, whence he reverts to the 
 allegory of the shepherd, which he had abandoned, and repeats part of it 
 word for word.^^ But Jesus had not recently abandoned this allegory ; for 
 since its delivery three months are supposed to have elapsed, and it is certain 
 that in the interim much must have been spoken, done, and experienced by 
 Jesus, that would thrust this figurative discourse into the background of his 
 memory, so that he would be very unlikely to recur to it, and in no case 
 would he be able to repeat it, word for word. He who had just quitted the 
 allegory was the Evangelist, to whom three months had not intervened between 
 the inditing of the first half of this chapter, and that of the second. He wrote 
 at once what, according to his statement, was chronologically separated by a 
 wide interval ; and hence the allegory of the shepherd might well leave so 
 distinct an echo in his memory, though not in that of Jesus. If any think 
 that they can solve this difficulty by putting only the verbal similarity of the 
 later discourse to the earlier one to the account of the Evangelist, such an 
 opinion cannot be interdicted to them. For others, this instance, in connexion 
 with the rest, will be a positive proof that the discourses of Jesus in the fourth 
 gospel are to a great extent the free compositions of the Evangelist. 
 
 The same conclusion is to be drawn from the discourse with which the 
 fourth Evangelist represents Jesus as closing his public ministry (xii. 44-50). 
 This discourse is entirely composed of reminiscences out of previous chapters,'^ 
 and, as Paulus expresses it,^** is a mere echo of some of the principal apoph- 
 thegms of Jesus occurring in the former part of the gospel. One cannot easily 
 consent to let the ministry of Jesus close with a discourse so little original, 
 and the majority of recent commentators aire of opinion that it is the intention 
 
 " X. 27 : rh, irpbpara ri i/iA t?s ^uvris x. 3 : Kal Td vpS^ara -nis tpuv^s ofiroO 
 
 /iov &Koiei, iKoiei. 
 
 Kiyi) yiv(i<TK<a aitrd' 14 ; xal yiviiffKU TV i/w, 
 
 28 : Kal aKoKovOoOffl fiou 4 : Kal t& irpb^ara airQ i,Ko\ov8ei. 
 
 Also K&yu fujji' aliiviov Sldufu airrois corresponds to ^7(i iiXSoi), tva t<^iir (xtii(ri, v. 10, and 
 Kal oix aprdffa Tis oiiri iK TTJs x«p4s l">v is the counterpart of what is said v. 12 of the hire- 
 ling who allows the sheep to be scattered. 
 
 " Comp. V. 44 with vii. 17 ; f. 46 with viii. 12; v. 47 with iii. 17 ; v. 48 with iii. 18, 
 V. 45 ; v. 49 with viii. 28 ; v. 5° with vi. 40, vii. 17, viii. 28. 
 
 " L. J., b, s. 142. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 377 
 
 of the Evangelist here to give us a mere epitome of the teaching of Jesus." 
 According to our view also, the Evangelist is the real speaker ; but we must 
 contend that his introductory words, Jesus cried and said, 'It/o-oCs 8e Ixpafc Kat 
 eiTTcv, are intended to imply that what follows is an actual harangue, from the 
 lips of Jesus. This commentators will not admit, and they can appeal, not 
 without a show of reason, to the statement of the Evangelist, v. 36, that Jesus 
 withdrew himself from the public eye, and to his ensuing observations on the 
 obstinate unbelief of the Jews, in which he seems to put a period to the public 
 career of Jesus ; whence it would be contrary to his plan to make Jesus again 
 step forward to deliver a valedictory discourse. I will not, with the older 
 expositors, oppose to these arguments the supposition that Jesus, after his with- 
 drawal, returned to pronounce these words in the ears of the Jews; but I hold 
 fast to the proposition that by the introduction above quoted, the Evangelist 
 can only have intended to announce an actual harangue. It is said, indeed, 
 that the aorist in cKpa^e and etirc has the signification of the pluperfect, and 
 that we have here a recapitulation of the previous discourses of Jesus, not- 
 withstanding which the Jews had not given him credence. But to give this 
 retrospective signification there ought to be a corresponding indication in the 
 words themselves, or in the context, whereas this is far less the case than e.g. 
 in John xviii. 24. Hence the most probable view of the question is this : John 
 had indeed intended to close the narrative of the public ministry of Jesus at 
 V. 36, but his concluding observations, v. 37 ff., with the categories oi faith, 
 ■jTicTTK, and unbelief, wTnaria, reminded him of discourses which he had already 
 recorded, and he could not resist the temptation of making Jesus recapitulate 
 them with additional emphasis in a parting harangue. 
 
 § 82. 
 
 ISOLATED MAXIMS OF JESUS, COMMON TO THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE 
 
 SYNOPTICAL ONES. 
 
 The long discourses of Jesus above examined are peculiar to the fourth 
 gospel; it has only a few brief maxims to which the synoptists present 
 parallels. Among the latter, we need not give a special examination to those 
 which are placed by John in an equally suitable connexion, with that assigned 
 to them by the other Evangelists (as xii. 25, comp. with Matt. x. 39, xvi. 25 ; 
 and xiii. 16, comp. with Matt. x. 24) ; and as the passage ii. 19 compared 
 with Matt. xxvi. 61, must be reserved until we treat of the history of the 
 Passion, there remain to us only three passages for our present consideration. 
 
 The first of these is iv. 44, where the Evangelist, after having mentioned 
 that Jesus departed from Samaria into Galilee, adds, For Jesus himself testified 
 that a frophet has no honour in his 07vn country, airos yap 6 'I. ifnaprvpija-ev, on 
 ■n-pocjtrJTrii £v rg iSia TrarpiSi Ti/i^v ovK txii. We find the same idea in Matthew 
 xiii. 57 (Mark vi. 4 ; Luke iv. 24), A prophet is not without honour, save in his 
 own country and in his own house, ovk ea-rt. TrpotfirJTri? aTi/Aos, el /lij iv Trj irarpiSt 
 aiiTov Koi iv rrj olklo. avTov. But while in the latter case it stands in a highly 
 appropriate connexion, as a remark prompted by the ungracious reception 
 which Jesus met with in his native city, and which caused him to leave it 
 again : in John, on the contrary, it is given as a motive for the return of Jesus 
 into his own country, Galilee, where, moreover, he is immediately said to be 
 warmly received. The experience stated in the above sentence would rather 
 have disinclined than induced Jesus to undertake a journey into Galilee*; 
 
 '* Liicke, Tholiick, Paulus, in loc. 
 
378 PART II. CHAPTER VII. § 82. 
 
 hence the expedient of translating yap by although, is the best adslpte'd to the 
 necessity of the case, and has even been embraced by Kiiihol, except that, 
 unhappily, it is an open defiance of the laws of langua;ge. Unquestionably, 
 if Jesus knew that the prophet held this unfavourable position iri his native 
 country, irarpk, it is not probable that he would regard it as a reason fpr going 
 thither. Some expositors, therefore, have been induced to understand irarpts, 
 not as the province, but in a narrower sense, as the native city, and to supply, 
 after the statement' that Jesus went into Galilee, the observation, *hich they 
 assume the Evangelist to have omitted, that he avoided his native city^ 
 Nazareth, for the reason given in the ensuing verse. But an ellipsis such as 
 this explanation requires us to suppose, belongs not less to the order of 
 impossibilities than the transmutation of yap into though. The attempt to 
 introduce the desiderated statement that Jesus did not visit his own n-arpis 
 into the present passage has been therefore renounced : but it has yet been 
 thought possible to discover there an intimation that he did not soon I'eturn 
 thither ; a delay for which the maxim, otc Trpoct>yjtr]s k. t. X. might consistently 
 be quoted as a reason.* But to render this interpretation admissible, the 
 entire period of the absence of Jesus from Galilee must have been mentioned 
 immediately before the notice of his return 5 instead of this, however, only the 
 short time that Jesus had tarried in Samaria is given (v. 45), so that in 
 ludicrous disproportion of cause and effect, the fear of the contempt of his 
 fellow country men would on the above supposition, be made the reason for 
 delaying his return into Galilee, not until after a residence of some months in 
 Judea, but until after the lapse of two days spefit in Samaria. So long; 
 therefore, as Galilee and Nazareth are admitted to be the Trarpii of Jesus, the 
 passage in question cannot be vindicated from the absurdity of representing, 
 that Jesus was instigated to return thither by the contempt which he knew to 
 await him. Consequently, it becomes the interest of the expositor to recollect, 
 that Matthew and Luke pronounce Bethlehem to be the birthplace of Jesus, 
 whence it follows that Judea was his native country, which he now forsook on 
 account of the contempt he had there experienced.^ But according to iv. i, 
 comp. ii. 23, iii. 26 ff., Jesus had won a considerable number of adherents in 
 Judea, and could not therefore complain of a lack of honour, rifii^ ; moreover 
 the enmity of the Pharisees, hinted at in iv. i, was excited by the growing 
 consequence of Jesus in Judea, and was not at all referrible to such a cause 
 as that indicated in the maxim : om Trpoc^ijnjs k. t. \. Further, the entrance 
 into Galilee is not connected in our passage with a departure from Judea, but 
 from Samaria ; and as, according to the import of the' text, Jesus departed 
 from Samaria and went into Galilee, because he had found that a prophet has 
 no honour, in his own country, .Samaria might rather seem to be pointed out 
 ais his riafive country, iti conformity with the repfoach cast on him by the 
 Jews, viii. 48 ; though even this supposition would hot give consistency to the 
 passage, for in Samaria; also Jesus is said', iv. 39, to have had a favourable 
 reception. Besides, we have already seen,* that the fourth Evangelist knows 
 nothing of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, but on all occasions presupposes 
 him to be a Galileari and a Nazarene. From the above considerations we 
 
 ' Cyril, Efasmus. Tholuck's expedient, Which Olshausen approves, is to give iiw.pfvfi*i<ra) 
 the signification of the pluperfect, and to understand ykp as an explicative;, But I do not see 
 how this can be of any avail, for ykp and 081- (v. 45) would still form a relation of agreement 
 between two propositions, which one would have expected to be opposed to each other by 
 /i^v and Si. 
 
 2 Paulus, Coram. 4, s. 251, j6. 
 
 ' This idea is so entirely in the spirit of the ancient hirm'oriists, that I can scarcely believe, 
 Lucke to be the first to whom it had occurred (Comm. i, s. 545 f.). 
 
 * Vid. sup. § 39. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 379 
 
 obtain only the negative result, that it is impossible to discover any consistent 
 relation between the maxim in question and the context. A positive result,-^ 
 namely, how the maxim came to occupy its actual position, notwithstanding 
 this want of relation, will perhaps be obtained when we have examined the 
 two other passages belonging to the present head of our inquiry. 
 
 The declaration xiii. 20, He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that 
 receiveth me receiveth him that sent me, has an almost verbal parallel in Matt. 
 X. 40. In John, it is preceded by the prediction of the betrayal of Jesus, and 
 his explanation to his disciples that he had told them this before it came to 
 pass, in order that when his prediction was fulfilled, they might believe in 
 him as the Messiah. What is the connexion between these subjects and the 
 above declaration, or between the latter and its ensuing context, where Jesus 
 recurs to his betrayer ? It is said that Jesus wished to impress on his disciples 
 the high dignity of a messianic missionary, a dignity which the betrayer 
 thought lightly of losing ; * but the negative idea of loss, on which this 
 supposition turns, is not intimated in the text. Others are of opinion that Jesus, 
 observing the disciples to be disheartened by the mention of the betrayer, 
 sought to inspire them with new courage by representing to them their high 
 value ; ® but in that case he would hardly have reverted immediately after to 
 the traitor. Others, again, conjecture that some intermediate sentences have 
 been omitted by the writer ; '' but this expedient is not much happier than 
 that of Kuinol, who supposes the passage to be a gloss taken from Matt. x. 
 40, united originally to v. 16 of chap. xiii. of John, but by some chance 
 transposed to the end of the paragraph. Nevertheless, the indication of v. 16 
 is an useful way-mark. This verse, as well as v. 20, has a parallel in the 
 discourse of instructions in Matthew (x. 24) ; if a few fragments of this 
 discourse had reached the author of the fourth gospel through the medium of 
 tradition, it is very probable that one of them would bring the others to his 
 recollection. In v. 16 there is mention of the sent, ottoo-toAos, and oi him who 
 sent him, irkfu^oji avrbv ; so in v. 20, of those whom Jesus will send, and of 
 Him who sent Jesus. It is true, that the one passage has a humiliating, the 
 other an encouraging tendency, and their affinity lies, therefore, not in the 
 sense, but in the words ; so that as soon as the fourth Evangelist puts down, 
 from memory, traditional sayings of Jesus, we see him subject to the same 
 law of association as the synoptists. It would have been the most natural 
 arrangement to place v. 20 immediately after v. 16; but the thought of the 
 traitor was uppermost in the mind of the writer, and he could easily postpone 
 the insertion of an apophthegm that had only a verbal connexion with his 
 previous matter. 
 
 Our third passage, xiv. 31, lies yet farther within the domain of the history 
 of the Passion than the one last examined, but as, hke this, it can be viewed 
 quite independently, we shall not be anticipating if we include it in our present 
 chapter. In the above passage, the words Arise, let us go hence, ly^ipitr&e, 
 aywixev ivT^eev, remind US of those by which Jesus, Matt. xxvi. 46 ; Mark xiv. 
 42, summons his disciples to join him in encountering the traitor : Jiise, let us 
 be going, kydpiaBt ayiofLtv. The position of the words in John is perplexing, 
 because the summons to depart has no effect ; Jesus, as if he had said nothing 
 of the kind, immediately continues (xv. i), r am the true vine, etc., and does 
 not take his departure with his disciples until after he has considerably pro- 
 longed his discourse. Expositors of every hue have been singularly unani-, 
 mous in explaining the above words by the supposition, that Jesus certamly 
 
 5 Paulus, L. J. I, b, s. 158. 
 » LUcke, 2, s 478. 
 ' Tholuck, in loc. 
 
38o PART II. CHAPTER VII. § 82. 
 
 intended at the moment to depart and betake himself to Gethsemane, but 
 love for his disciples, and a strong desire to impart to them still further 
 admonition and comfort, detained him ; that hence, the first part of the 
 summons, Arise, was executed, but that, standing in the room in which he 
 had supped, he pursued his discourse, until, later (xviii. i), he also put into 
 effect the words, let us go hence?' It is possible that the circumstances were 
 such ; it is also possible that the image of this last evening, with all its details, 
 might be engraven so deeply and accurately in the memory of a disciple, that 
 he might narrate how Jesus arose, and how touchingly he lingered. But one 
 who wrote under the influence of a recollection thus lively, would note the 
 particulars which were most apparent ; the rising to depart and the delay, — 
 not the mere words, which without the addition of those circumstances are 
 altogether unintelligible. Here again, then, the conjecture arises that a 
 reminiscence of the evangelical tradition presented itself to the writer, and 
 that he inserted it just where it occurred to him, not, as it happened, in the 
 best connexion; and this conjecture assumes probability so soon as we 
 discover what might have reminded him of the above expression. In the 
 synoptical parallels the command. Rise, let us be going, is connected with the 
 announcement. Behold the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into 
 the hands of sinners — behold he is at hand that doth betray me; with the 
 announcement, that is, of the hostile power which is approaching, before 
 which, however, Jesus exhibits no fear, but goes to encounter the danger with 
 the decision implied in that command. In John's gospel, also, Jesus, in the 
 passage under our notice, had been speaking of a hostile power when he 
 said. The Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. It makes little 
 difference that in John it is the power that dwells in the betrayer, and in those 
 led by him, while, in the synoptical gospels, it is the betrayer who is impelled 
 by that power, that is said to approach. If the author of the fourth gospel knew 
 by tradition that Jesus had united with the announcement of an approaching 
 danger the words. Rise, let us be going, this expression would be likely 10 occur 
 to him on the mention of the prince of this world ; and as in that stage of his 
 narrative be had placed Jesus and his disciples in the city and within doors, 
 so that a considerable change of place was necessary before they could en- 
 counter the enemy, he added to ayo>/xev {let us go), ivrtvdev (hence). As, 
 however, this traditional fragment had intruded itself unawares into the 
 train of thought, which he designed to put as a farewell discourse into the 
 mouth of Jesus, it was immediately lost sight of, and a free course was given 
 to the stream of valedictory instruction, not yet exhausted. 
 
 If, from the point of view now attained, we glance back on our first passage, 
 iv. 44, it is easy to see how the Evangehst might be led to insert in so unsuit- 
 able a connexion the testimony of Jesus as to the treatment of a prophet in 
 his own country. It was known to him traditionally, and he appears to have 
 applied it to Galilee in general, being ignorant of any unfavourable contact of 
 Jesus with the Nazarenes. As, therefore, he knew of no special scene by 
 which this observation might have been prompted, he introduced it where the 
 simple mention of Galilee suggested it, apparently without any definite idea of 
 its bearing. 
 
 The result of the above investigation is this : the fourth Evangelist succeeds 
 in giving connectedness to his materials, when he presents his own thoughts 
 in the form of discourses delivered by Jesus ; but he often fails lamentably in 
 that particular, when he has to deal with the real traditional sayings of Jesus. 
 
 ' Paulus, L. J. I, b, s. 17s ; Lucke, Tholiick, Olshausen, in loc. ; Hug, Einl. in das N. 
 T. 2, s. 209. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 38 1 
 
 In the above instances, when he has the same problem before him as the 
 synoptists, he is as unfortunate in its solution as they ; nay, he is in a yet more 
 evil case, for his narrative is not homogeneous with the common evangelical 
 tradition, and presented few places where a genuine traditional relic could be 
 inserted. Besides, he was accustomed to cast his metal, liquid from his own 
 invention, and was little skilled in the art of adapting independent fragments 
 to each other, so as to form an harmonious mosaic. 
 
 § 83. 
 
 THE MODERN DISCUSSIONS ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE DISCOURSES 
 IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. RESULT. 
 
 The foregoing examination of the discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel, 
 has sufficiently prepared us to form a judgment on the controversy of which 
 they have recently been the subject. Modern criticism views these discourses 
 with suspicion, partly on account of their internal contexture, which is at 
 variance with certain generally received rules of historical probability, and 
 partly on account of their external relation to other discourses and narratives. 
 On the other hand, this gospel has had numerous defenders. 
 
 With respect to the internal contexture of the above discourses, there arises 
 a twofold question : Does it correspond to the laws, first of verisimilitude, and 
 secondly, of memory ? 
 
 It is alleged by the friends of the fourth gospel that its discourses are dis- 
 tinguished by a peculiar stamp of truth and credibility ; that the conversations 
 which it represents Jesus as holding with men of the most diverse disposition 
 and capacity, are faithful delineations of character, satisfying the strictest 
 demands of psychological criticism.*- In opposition to this, it is maintained 
 to be in the highest degree improbable, that Jesus should have adopted pre- 
 cisely the same style of teaching to persons differing widely in their degrees of 
 cultivation ; that he should have spoken to the Galileans in the synagogue at 
 Capernaum not more intelligibly than to a master of Israel ; that the matter 
 of his discourses should have turned almost entirely on one doctrine — the 
 dignity of his person ; and that their form should have been such as to seem 
 selected with a view to perplex and repel his hearers. Neither, it is further 
 urged, do the interlocutors express themselves in conformity with their position 
 and character. The most educated Pharisee has no advantage in intelligence 
 over a Samaritan woman of the lowest grade ; the one, as well as the other, can 
 only put a carnal interpretation on the discourse which Jesus intends spiritually; 
 their misconstructions, too, are frequently so glaring, as to transcend all belief, 
 and so uniform that they seem to belong to a standing set of features with whicK 
 the author of the fourth gospel has chosen, for the sake of contrast, to depict 
 those whom he brings into conversation with Jesus.^ Hence, I confess, I 
 understand not what is the meaning of verisimilitude in the mind of those who 
 ascribe it to the discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John. 
 
 As to the second point, regarding the powers of memory, it is pretty 
 generally agreed that discourses of the kind peculiar to John's gospel,— in 
 contradistinction to the apophthegms and parables, either isolated or strung 
 together, in the synoptical gospels, — namely, series of dependent propositions, 
 
 1 Wegscheider, Einl. in das Evang. Joh., s. 271 ; Tholuck Coram, s. 37 f. 
 
 " Thus Eckermann, theol. Beitrage, 5, 2, s. 228 ; (Vogel) der Evangelist Johannes und 
 seine Ausleger vor dera jiingsten Gericht, i, s. 28 ff. ; Wegscheider, s. 281 ; Bretschneider, 
 Probabil., 33, 45, apud Wegscheider, ut sup. s. 281 ; Bretschneider, Probab., p. 33, 45. 
 
382 PART II. CHAPTER VII. § 83. 
 
 or prolonged dialogues, are among the most difficult to retain and reproduce 
 with accuracy.^ Unless such discourses were reduced to writing at the 
 moment of their delivery, all hope of their faithful reproduction must be 
 abandoned. Hence Dr. Paulus once actually entertained the idea, that in the 
 judgment-hallsof the temple or the synagogues at Jerusalem, there were stationed 
 a sort of shorthand writers, whose office it was to draw up verbal processes, 
 and that from their records the Christians, after the death of Christ, made 
 transcripts.* In like manner, Bertholdt was of opinion, that our Evangelist, 
 during the lifetime of Jesus, took down most of the discourses of Jesus in the 
 Aramaean language, and made these notes the foundation of his gospel, 
 composed at a much later period.^ These modern hypotheses are clearly 
 unhistorical ; ^ nevertheless, their propounders were able to adduce many 
 reasons in their support. The prophetic declarations of Jesus relative to his 
 death and resurrection, said Bertholdt, are more indefinite in John than in the 
 synoptical gospels, a sure sign that they were recorded before their fulfilment, 
 for otherwise the writer's experience of the event would have reflected more 
 clearness on the predictions. To this we may add the kindred argument, by 
 which Henke thought it possible to establish the genuineness of the discourses 
 in John: namely, that the fourth Evangelist not seldom appends explanatory 
 remarks, often indeed erroneous, to the obscure expressions of Jesus, thus 
 proving that he was scrupulously conscientious in reporting the discourses, for 
 otherwise he would have mingled his comments with their original matter.'' 
 But it is with justice objected, that the obscurity of the predictions in the 
 fourth gospel is in perfect harmony with the mystical spirit that pervades the 
 work, and as, besides, the author, together with his fondness for the obscure 
 and enigmatical, indisputably possessed taste, he must have been conscious 
 that a prophecy would only be the more piquant and genuine-looking, the 
 more darkly it was delivered : hence, though he put those predictions into the 
 mouth of Jesus long after the events to which they refer, he might yet choose 
 to give them an indefinite form. This observation helps to explain why the 
 Evangelist, when elucidating some obscure expressions of Jesus, adds that his 
 disciples did not understand them until after his resurrection, or after the out- 
 pouring of the Holy Spirit (ii. 22, vii. 39) ; for the opposition of the darkness 
 in which the disciples at one time groped, to the light which ultimately arose 
 on them, belongs to that order of contrasts with which this gospel abounds. 
 Another argument, adopted by Bertholdt and approved by Tholiick, is, that 
 in the discourses of the fourth gospel there sometimes occur observations, 
 which, having no precise meaning in themselves, nor any connexion with the 
 rest of the discourse, must have been occasioned by some external circum- 
 stance, and can only be accounted for on the supposition of prompt, nay, of 
 immediate reduction to writing; and among their examples the passage, Arise, 
 let us go hence (xiv. 31), is one of the most important. But the origin of such 
 digressive remarks has been above explained in a manner that renders the 
 hypothesis of instantaneous notetaking superfluous. 
 
 Thus commentators had to excogitate some other means of certifying the 
 
 ' De Wette, Einl. in das N. T., § 105 ; Tholuck, Comm. z. Joh., s. 38 f. ; Glaubwurdig- 
 keit, s. 344 ff. ; Liicke, 1, s. 198 f. 
 
 •• Commentar, 4, s. 275 f. 
 
 5 Verosimilia de origine evangelii Joannis, opusc. p. i ff., Einleit. in das N. T., s. 1302 ff. 
 This opinion is approved by Wegscheider, 'ut sup. p. 270 ff. and also Hug, 2. 263 f., and 
 Tholiick, Comm. p. 38, think the supposition of early notes not to be altogether rejected. 
 
 ' Liicke, i, s. 192 f. 
 
 ' Henke, programm. quo illustratur Johannes apostolus nonnuUorum Jesu apophthegma- 
 tura et ipse interpres. 
 
 ' Bretschneider, Probab., p. 14 f. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 383 
 
 genuineness of the discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel. The general 
 argument, so often adduced, founded on what a good memory might achieve, 
 especially among men of simple lives, unusued to writing, lies in the region of - 
 abstract possibility, where, as Liicke remarks,** there may always be nearly as 
 much said against as for a theory. It has been thought more effectual to 
 adopt an argument resting on a narrower basis, and to appeal to the individual 
 distmctions of the Apostle John,— to his intimate and peculiar , relation to 
 Jesus as the favourite disciple,— to his enthusiasm for his master, which must 
 surely have strengthened his memory, and have enabled him to preserve in 
 the most lively recollection all that came from the lips of his divine friend. i" 
 Although this peculiar relation of John to Jesus rests on the authority of 
 John's gospel alone, we might, without reasoning in a circle, draw from it 
 conclusions as to the credibility of the discourses communicated by him, were 
 the faults of which his gospel is accused only such as proceed from the in- 
 evitable fading of the memory ; because the positive notices of that relation 
 could never flow from this negative cause. As, however, the suspicion which 
 has arisen to the prejudice of the fourth Evangelist has gone far beyond those 
 limits, even to the extent of taxing him with free invention, no fact resting on 
 the word of John can be used in support of the discourses which he com- 
 municates. But neither the above relation, if admitted, nor the remark that 
 John apparently attached himself to Jesus in early youth, when impressions 
 sink deepest, and from the time of his master's death lived in a circle where 
 the memory of his words and deeds was cherished, '* suffices to render it 
 probable that John could retain in his mind long series of ideas, and com- 
 plicated dialogues, until the period in which the composition of his gospel 
 must be placed. For critics are agreed that the tendency of the fourth gospel, 
 its evident aim to spiritualize the common faith of Christians into the Gnosis, 
 and thus to crush many errors which had sprung up, is a decisive attestation 
 that it was composed at a period when the church had attained a degree of 
 maturity, and consequently in the extreme old age of the apostle. 1^ 
 
 Hence the champions of the discourses in question are fain to bring 
 forward, as a forlorn hope, the supernatural assistance of the Paraclete, which 
 was promised to the disciples, and which was to restore all that Jesus had said 
 to their remembrance. This is done by Tholiick with great confidence, ^^ by 
 Liicke with some diffidence,'* which Tholiick's Anzeiger severely censures, but 
 which we consider laudable, because it implies a latent consciousness of the 
 circle that is made, in attempting to prove the truthfulness of the discourses 
 in John, by a promise which appears nowhere but in those discourses j^^ and 
 of the inadequacy of an appeal, in a scientific inquiry, to a popular notion, 
 such as that of the aid of the Holy Spirit. The consciousness of this in- 
 adequacy shows itself indirectly in Tholiick, for he ekes out the assistance of 
 the Paraclete by early notes ; and in Liicke also, for he renounces the verbal 
 authenticity of the discourses in John, and only contends for their substantial 
 veracity on grounds chiefly connected with the relation which they bear to 
 other discourses. 
 
 ' Ut sup. p. 199. 
 
 "° Wegscheider, p. 286 ; Liicke, p. 195 f. 
 
 " Wegscheider, p. 285 ; Liicke, ut sup. 
 
 " Liicke, s. 124 f. 175. Kern, iiber den Ursprung des Evang. Matthai, in der Tiib; 
 Zeitschrift, 1834, 2, s. 109. 
 
 " S. 39. 
 
 '* S. 197. " But lastly, why should we fear to adduce," etc. 
 
 '* The aid promised to the disciples when brought before rulers and tribunals. Matt. x. 
 19 {., is quite distinct from a bringing to remembrance of the discourses of Jesus (John 
 xiv. 26). 
 
384 PART II. CHAPTER VII. § 83. 
 
 The external relation of the discourses of Jesus in John's gospel is also 
 twofold ; for tliey may be compared both with those discourses which the 
 synoptists put into the mouth of Jesus, and with the manner in which the 
 author of the fourth gospel expresses himself when he is avowedly the 
 speaker. 
 
 As a result of the former comparison, critics have pointed out the important 
 diflference that exists between the respective discourses in their matter, as well 
 as in their form. In the first three gospels, Jesus closely adapts his teaching 
 to the necessities of his shepherdless people, contrasting, at one time, the 
 corrupt institutions of the Pharisees with the moral and religious precepts of 
 the Mosaic law ; at another, the carnal messianic hopes of the age with the 
 purely spiritual nature of his kingdom, and the conditions of entrance therein. 
 In the fourth gospel, on the contrary, he is perpetually dilating, and often in 
 a barren, speculative manner, on the doctrine of his person and higher nature : 
 so that in opposition to the diversified doctrinal and practical materials of the 
 synoptical discourses, we have in John a one-sided dogmatism.i^ That this 
 opposition does not hold invariably, and that in the discourses of the synoptical 
 gospels there are passages which have more affinity with those of John, and 
 vice vers^, must be gra,nted to judicious critics ; ^'' but the important prepon- 
 derance of the dogmatical element on the one side, and of the practical on the 
 other, is a difficulty that demands a thorough explanation. In answer to this 
 requisition, it is common to adduce the end which John is supposed to have 
 had in view in the composition of his gospel : namely, to furnish a supplement 
 to the first three gospels, and to supply their omissions. But if Jesus taught 
 first in one style, then in another, how was it that the synoptists selected 
 almost exclusively the practical and popular, John, nearly without.exception, 
 the dogmatic and speculative portions of his discourse ? This is accounted 
 for in a manner intrinsically probable. In the oral tradition, it is observed, 
 on which the first three gospels were founded, the simple and popular, the 
 concise and sententious discourses of Jesus, being the most easy of retention, 
 would alone be propagated, while his more profound, subtle and diffuse dis- 
 courses would be lost. 18 But according to the above supposition, the fourth 
 Evangelist came as a gleaner after the synoptists : now it is certain that all the 
 discourses of Jesus having a practical tendency had not been preserved by ' 
 them ; hence, that the former has almost invariably avoided giving any relic 
 of such discourses, can only be explained by his preference for the dogmatic 
 and speculative vein : a preference which must have had both an objective 
 and a subjective source, the necessities of his time and circumstances, and the 
 bent of his own mind. This is admitted even by critics who are favourable 
 to the authenticity of the fourth gospel, i^ with the reservation, that the pre- 
 ference betrays itself only negatively, by omission, not positively, by addition. 
 There is a further difference between the synoptical gospels and the fourth, 
 as to the form of teaching adopted by Jesus ; in the one, it is aphoristic and 
 parabolic, in the other, dialectic. 2" We have seen that the parable is alto- 
 gether wanting in the fourth gospel, and it is natural to ask why, since Luke, 
 as well as Matthew, has many admirable parables peculiar to himself, John 
 has not been able to make a rich gleaning, even after those two predecessors ? 
 It is true that isolated apothegms and sentences, similar to the synoptical 
 ones, are not entirely absent from the fourth gospel : but, on the other hand, • 
 
 " Bretschneider, Probab., p. 3, 3, 31 ff. 
 
 » De Wette, Einl. in das N. T., § 103 ; Hase, L. J., § 7. 
 
 w Liicke, ut sup. pp. 336, 337. Kern, ut sup. 
 
 " TholUck, ut sup. 
 
 "" Bretschneider, ut sup. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 385 
 
 it must be admitted that the prevailing aphoristic and parabolic form of in 
 struction, ascribed to Jesus by the synoptists, is more suited to the character 
 of a popular teacher of Palestine, than the dialectic form which he is made to 
 adopt by John.^i 
 
 But the relation of the discourses of Jesus in the gospel of John, to the 
 Evangelist's own style of thinking and writing, is decisive. Here we find a 
 similarity, 35> which, as it extends to the discourses of a third party, namely, the 
 Baptist, cannot be explained by supposing that the disciple had formed his 
 style on that of the master, ^3 but requires us to admit that the Evangelist has 
 lent his own style to the principal characters in his narrative. The latest 
 commentator on John has not only acknowledged this with regard to the 
 colouring of the expression ; he even thinks that in the matter itself he can 
 here and there detect the explanatory amplifications of the Evangelist, who, to 
 use his own phrase, has had a hand in the composition of the longer and more 
 difficult discourses.^* But since the Evangelist does not plainly indicate his 
 additions, what is to assure us that they are not throughout interwoven with 
 the ideas of Jesus, nay, that all the discourses which he communicates are not 
 entirely his own productions ? The style furnishes no guidance, for this is 
 everywhere the same, and is admitted to be the Evangelist's own ; neither does 
 the sense, for in it also there is no essential difference whether the Evangelist 
 speaks in his own name or in that of Jesus : where then is the guarantee that 
 the discourses of Jesus are not, as the author of the Probabilia maintains, free 
 inventions of the fourth Evangelist ? 
 
 Liicke adduces some particulars, which on this supposition would be in his 
 opinion inexplicable.^^ First, the almost verbal agreement of John with the 
 synoptists in isolated sayings of Jesus. But as the fourth Evangelist was with- 
 in the pale of the Christian community, he must have had at his command a 
 tradition, from which, though drawing generally on his own resources, he 
 might occasionally borrow isolated, marked expressions, nearly unmodified. 
 Another argument of Lvicke is yet more futile. If, he says, John had really 
 had the inclination and ability to invent discourses for Jesus, he would have 
 been more liberal in long discourses ; and the alternation of brief remarks 
 with prolonged addresses, is not to be explained on the above supposition. 
 But this would follow only if the author of the fourth gospel appeared to be a 
 tasteless writer, whose perception did not tell him, that to one occasion a 
 short discourse was suitable, to another a long one, and that the alternation of 
 diffuse harangues with concise sentences was adapted to produce the best 
 impression. Of more weight is the observation of Paulus, that if the fourth 
 Evangelist had given the rein to his invention in attributing discourses to 
 Jesus, he would have obtruded more of his own views, of which he has given 
 an abstract in his prologue ; whereas the scrupulousness with which he ab- 
 stains from putting his doctrine of the Logos into the mouth of Jesus, is a 
 proof of the faithfulness with which he confined himself to the materials pre- 
 sented by his memory or his authorities.^^ But the doctrine of the Logos is 
 substantially contained in the succeeding discourse of Jesus ; and that the 
 form in which it is propounded by the evangelist in his preface, does not also 
 
 2> De Wette, ut sup. § 105. 
 
 2" Comp. Schulze, der schriftst. Charakter und Werth des Johannes. 1803. 
 23 Stronck— de doctrin^ et dictione Johannis apostoli, ad Jesu magislri doctrinam diction- 
 emque exacte composita. 1 797. 
 ^* Liicke, Comm. z. Joh. i, p. 200. 
 
 25 Ut. FUp p. 199. 
 
 26 In his review of the 2nd Ed. of Liicke's Comraentar., in the Litt. BJatt der allgem. 
 Kirchenzeitung 1834, no. 18. 
 
 B B 
 
386 PART 11. CHAPTER VII. § 83, 
 
 reappear, is sufficiently explained by the consideration, that he must have 
 known that form to be altogether foreign to the teaching of Jesus. 
 
 We therefore hold it to be established, that the discourses of Jesus in John's 
 gospel are mainly free compositions of the Evangelist ; but we have admitted 
 that he has culled several sayings of Jesus from an authentic tradition, and 
 hence we do not extend this proposition to those passages which are counte- 
 nanced by parallels in the synoptical gospels. In these compilations we have 
 an example of the vicissitudes which befal discourses, that are preserved only 
 in the memory of a second party. Severed from their original connexion, and 
 broken up into smaller and smaller fragments, they present when reassembled 
 the appearance of a mosaic, in which the connexion of the parts is a purely 
 external one, and every transition an artificial juncture. The discourses of 
 Jesus in John present just the opposite appearance. Their gradual transi- 
 tions, only rendered occasionally obscure by the mystical depths of meaning 
 in which they lie,— transitions in which one thought develops itself out of 
 another, and a succeeding proposition is frequently but an explanatory ampli- 
 fication of the preceding,^'' — are indicative of a pliable, unresisting mass, such 
 as is never presented to a writer by the traditional sayings of another, but 
 §uch as proceeds from the stores of his own thought, which he moulds accord- 
 ing to his will. For this reason the contributions of tradition to these stores 
 of thought (apart from the sayings which are also found in the earlier gospels) 
 were not so likely to have been particular, independent dicta of Jesus, as rather 
 certain ideas which formed the basis of many of his discourses, and which were 
 modified and developed according to the bent of a mind of Alexandrian or 
 Greek culture. Such are the correlative ideas of irarrip and -uios {^father and 
 soli), ^(Ss and o-kotos (light and darkness), tfm\ and Ba.va.ro% {life and death), av<» 
 and KOTO) (aiove and beneath), a-ap^ and m/eB/ia {^esh and spirit) ; also some 
 symbolical expressions, as apros t^s ^oj^s (dread of life), vSutp tf^v (water of 
 life). These and a few other ideas, variously combined by an ingenious 
 author, compose the bulk of the discourses attributed to Jesus by John ; a 
 certain uniformity necessarily attending this elemental simplicity. 
 
 2' This peculiarity of the discourses in John cannot be better described than by Erasmus 
 in his Epist. ad Ferdinandum, prefatory to his Paraphrase : habet Johannes suum quoddam 
 dicendi genus, ita semionem velut ansulis ex sese coharentibus contexens, nonnunquam ex con- 
 
 trariis, nonnunquam ex similibus, nonnunquam ex iisdem, subinde repetitis, ut orationis 
 
 quodque membrum semper excipiat prius, sic ut prions finis sit initium sequentis, etc. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS, EXCLUDING THE MIRACLES. 
 
 § 84. 
 
 GENERAL COMPARISON OF THE MANNER OF NARRATION THAT DISTIN- 
 GUISHES THE SEVERAL EVANGELISTS. 
 
 If, before proceeding to the consideration of details, we compare the general 
 character and tone of the historical narration in the various gospels, we find 
 differences, first, between Matthew and the two other synoptists ; secondly, 
 between the three first evangelists collectively and the fourth. 
 
 Among the reproaches which modern criticism has heaped on the gospel of 
 Matthew, a prominent place has been given to its want of individualized and 
 dramatic life ; a want which is thought to prove that the author was not an 
 eye-witness, since an eye-witness is ordinarily distinguished by the precision 
 and minuteness of his narration. '^ Certainly, when we read the indefinite 
 designation of times, places and persons, the perpetually recurring Tore, then, 
 irapdywv iKoBev, departing from thence, avOptoiro^, a man, which characterize 
 this gospel ; when we recollect its wholesale statements, such as that Jesus 
 went through all the cities and villages (ix. 35, xi. i, comp. iv. 23); that 
 they brought to him all sick people, and that he healed them all (iv. 24 f., 
 xiv. 35 f., comp. XV. 29 ff.) ; and finally, the bareness and brevity of many 
 isolated narratives : we cannot disapprove the decision of this criticism, that 
 Matthew's whole narrative resembles a record of events which, before they 
 were committed to writing, had been long current in oral tradition, and had 
 thus lost the impress of particularity and minuteness. But it must be ad- 
 mitted, that this proof, taken alone, is not absolutely convincing ; for in most 
 cases we may verify the remark, that even an eye-witness may be unable 
 graphically to narrate what he has seen.^ 
 
 But our modern critics have not only measured Matthew by the standard of 
 what is to be expected from an eye-witness, in the abstract; they have also 
 compared him with his fellow-evangelists. They are of opinion, not only 
 that John decidedly surpasses Matthew in the power of dehneation, both in 
 their few parallel passages and in his entire narrative, but also that the two 
 other synoptists, especially Mark, are generally far clearer and fuller in their 
 style of narration.' This is the actual fact, and it ought not to be any longer 
 evaded. With respect to the fourth Evangelist, it is true that, as one would 
 
 1 Schulz, uber das Abendmahl, s. 303 ff. ; Sieffert, uber den Urspr. des ersten kanon, 
 Evang. s. 58, 73, u. s. ; Schneckenburger, uber den Urspr. s. 73. 
 
 2 Olshausen, b. Coram, i. s.'rs. ^. , . , ^^ „ 
 
 ' See the above named critics, passim; and Hug. Einl. in das M. i. 2, s. 212. 
 
388 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § 84. 
 
 have anticipated, he is not devoid of general, wholesale statements, such as, 
 that Jesus during the feast did many miracles, that hence many believed on 
 him (ii. 23), with others of a similar kind (iii. 22, vii. i) : and he not seldom 
 designates persons indecisively. Sometimes, however, he gives the names of 
 individuals whom Matthew does not specify (xii. 3, 4, comp. with Matt. xxvi. 
 7, 8; and xviii. 10 with Matt. xxvi. 51 ; also vi. 5 flf. with Matt. xiv. 16 f.) ; 
 and he generally lets us know the district or country in which an event hap- 
 pened. His careful chronology we have already noticed ; but the point of 
 chief importance is that his narratives (e.g. that of the man born blind, and 
 that of the resurrection of Lazarus) have a dramatic and life-like character, 
 which we seek in vain in the first gospel. The two intermediate Evangelists 
 are not free from indecisive designations of time (e.g. Mark viii. i ; Luke v. 
 17, viii. 22) ; of place (Mark iii. 13; Luke vi. 12); and of persons (Mark x. 
 17; Luke xiii. 23); nor from statements that Jesus went through all cities, 
 and healed all the sick (Mark i. 32 ff., 38 f.; Luke iv. 40 f.) ; but they often give 
 us the details of what Matthew has only stated generally. Not only does Luke 
 associate many discourses of Jesus with special occasions concerning which 
 Matthew is silent, but both he and Mark notice the office or names of per- 
 sons, to whom Matthew gives no precise designation (Matt. ix. 18 ; Mark v. 
 22 ; Luke .viii. 41; Matt. xix. 16; Luke xviii. 18; Matt. xx. 30 ; Mark x. 
 46). But it is chiefly in the lively description of particular incidents, that we 
 perceive the decided superiority of Luke, and, still more of Mark, over Mat- 
 thew. Let the reader only compare the narrative of the execution of John the 
 Baptist in Matthew and Mark (Matt. xiv. 3 ; Mark vi. 17), and that of the 
 demoniac or demoniacs of Gadara (Matt. viii. 28 ff. parall.). 
 
 These facts are, in the opinion of our latest critics, a confirmation of the 
 fourth Evangelist's claim to the character of an eye-witness, and of the greater 
 proximity of the second and third Evangelists to the scenes they describe,' than 
 can be attributed to the first. But, even allowing that one who does not 
 narrate graphically cannot be an eye-witness, this does not involve the propo- 
 sition that whoever does narrate graphically must be an eye-witness. In all 
 cases in which there are extant two accounts of a single fact, the one full, the 
 other concise, opinions may be divided as to which of them is the original.* 
 When these accounts have been liable to the modifications of tradition, it is 
 important to bear in mind that tradition has two tendencies : the one, to sub- 
 limate the concrete into the abstract, the individual into the general ; the 
 other, not less essential, to substitute arbitrary fictions for the historical reality 
 which is lost.^ If then we put the want of precision in the narrative of the 
 first Evangelist to the account of the former function of the legend, ought we 
 at once to regard the precision and dramatic effect of the other gospels, as a 
 proof that their authors were eye-witnesses ? Must we not rather examine 
 whether these qualities be not derived from the second function of the legend?^ 
 The decision with which the other inference is drawn, is in fact merely an 
 after-taste of the old orthodox opinion, that all our gospels proceed immedi- 
 ately from eye-witnesses, or at least through a medium incapable of error. 
 Modern criticism has limited this supposition, and adniitted the possibility 
 that one or the other of our gospels may have been affected by oral tradition. 
 Accordingly it maintains, not without probability, that a gospel in which the 
 descriptions are throughout destitute of colouring and life, cannot be the pro- 
 
 * Comp. Saunier, iiber die Quellen des Markus, s. 42 ff. 
 ' Kern, iiber den Urspr. des Ev. Matt, ut sup. s. 70 f. 
 
 * I say, examine whether — not, consider it decided that — so that the accusation of oppon- 
 ents, that I use both the particularity and the brevity of narratives as proofs of their mythical 
 character, falls to the ground of itself. 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 389 
 
 duction of an eye-witness, and must have suffered from the effacing fingers of 
 tradition. But the counter proposition, that the other gospels, in which the 
 style of narration is more detailed and dramatic, rest on the testimony of eye- 
 witnesses, would only follow from the supposed necessity that this must be 
 the case with some of our gospels. For if such a supposition be made with 
 respect to several narratives of both the above kinds, there is no question that 
 the more graphic and vivid ones are with preponderant probability to be re- 
 ferred to eye-witnesses. But this supposition has merely a subjective founda- 
 tion. It was an easier transition for commentators to make from the old 
 notion that- all the gospels were immediately or mediately autoptical narra- 
 tives, to the limited admission that perhaps one may fall short of this charac- 
 ter, than to the general admission that it may be equally wanting to all. But, 
 according to the rigid rules of consequence, with the orthodox view of the 
 scriptural canon, falls the assumption of pure ocular testimony, not only for 
 one or other of the gospels, but for all ; the possibility of the contrary must 
 be presupposed in relation to them all, and their pretensions must be esti- 
 mated according to their internal character, compared with the external testi- 
 monies. From this point of view — the only one that criticism can consistently 
 adopt — it is as probable, considering the nature of the external testimonies 
 examined in our Introduction, that the three last Evangelists owe the dramatic 
 effect in which they surpass Matthew, to the embellishments of a more mature 
 tradition, as that this quality is the result of a closer communication with eye- 
 witnesses. 
 
 That we may not anticipate, let us, in relation to this question, refer to the 
 result's we have already obtained. The greater particularity by which Luke 
 is distinguished from Matthew in his account of the occasions that suggested 
 many discourses of Jesus, has appeared to us often to be the result of subse- 
 quent additions; and the names of persons in Mark (xiii. 3 comp. v. 37 ; 
 Luke viii, 51) have seemed to rest on a mere inference of the narrator. Now, 
 however, that we are about to enter on an examination of particular narra- 
 tives, we will consider, from the point of view above indicated, the constant 
 forms of introduction, conclusion, and transition, already noticed, in the 
 several gospels. Here we find the difference between Matthew and the other 
 synoptists, as to their more or less dramatic style, imprinted in a manner that 
 can best teach us how much this style is worth. 
 
 Matthew (viii. 16 f.) states in general terms, that on the evening after the 
 cure of Peter's mother-in-law, many demoniacs were brought to Jesus, all of 
 whom, together with others that were sick, he healed. Mark (i. 32) in a 
 highly dramatic manner, as if he himself had witnessed the scene, tells, that 
 on the same occasion, the whole city was gathered together at the door of the 
 house in which Jesus was ; at another time, he makes the crowd block up the 
 entrance (ii. 2) ; in two other instances, he describes the concourse as so 
 great, that Jesus and his disciples could not take their food (iii. 20, vi. 31); 
 and Luke on one occasion states, that the people even gathered together in 
 innumerable multitudes so that they trade one upon another (xu. i). All 
 highly vivid touches, certainly : but the want of them can hardly be prejudicial 
 to Matthew, for they look thoroughly like strokes of imagination, such as 
 abound in Mark's narrative, and often, as Schleiermacher observes/ give it 
 almost an apocryphal appearance. In detailed narratives, of which we shall 
 presently notice many examples, while Matthew simply tells what Jesus said 
 on a certain occasion, the two other Evangelists are able to describe the 
 glance with which his words were accompanied (Mark 111. 5, x. 2 1 ; Luke vi. 10). 
 
 7 Ueber den Lukas, s. 74, and elsewhere. 
 
390 PART II, CHAPTER VIII. § 84. 
 
 On the mention of a blind beggar of Jericho, Mark is careful to give us 
 his name, and the name of his father (x. 46). From these particulars we 
 might already augur, what the examination of single narratives will prove : 
 namely, that the copiousness of Mark and Luke is the product of the second 
 function of the legend, which we may call the function of embellishment. 
 Was this embellishment gradually wrought out by oral tradition, or was it the 
 arbitrary addition of our Evangelists ? Concerning this, there may be a 
 difference of opinion, and a degree of probability in relation to particular 
 passages is the nearest approach that can be made to a decision. In any 
 case, not only must it be granted, that a narrative adorned by the writer's own 
 additions is more remote from primitive truth than one free from such 
 additions ; but we may venture to pronounce that the earlier efforts of the 
 legend are rapid sketches, tending to set off only the leading points whether 
 of speech or action, and that at a later period it aims rather to give a sym- 
 metrical effect to the whole, including collateral incidents ; so that, in either 
 view, the closest approximation to truth remains on the side of the first 
 gospel. 
 
 While the difference as to the more or less dramatic style of concluding and 
 connecting forms, lies chiefly between Matthew and the other synoptists ; 
 another difference with respect to these forms, exists between all the synoptists 
 and John. While most of the syiioptical anecdotes from the public life of 
 Jesus are wound up by a panegyric, those of John generally terminate, so to 
 speak, polemically. It is true that the three first Evangelists sometimes men- 
 tion, by way of conclusion, the offence that Jesus gave to the narrow-hearted, 
 and the machinations of his enemies against him (Matt. viii. 34, xii. 14, 
 xxi. 46, xxvi. 3f. ; Luke iv. 28 f., xi. 53 f.); and, on the other hand, the 
 fourth Evangelist doses some discourses and miracles by the remark, that in 
 consequence of them, many believed on Jesus (ii. 23, iv. 39, 53, vii. 31, 40 
 f., viii. 30, x. 42, xi. 45). But in the synoptical gospels, throughout the 
 period previous to the residence of Jesus in Jerusalem, we find forms implying 
 that the fame of Jesus had extended far and wide (Matt. iv. 24, ix. 26, 31 ; 
 Mark i. 28, 45, v. 20, vii. 36; Luke iv. 37, v. 15, vii. 17, viii. 39); that 
 the people were astonished at his doctrine (Matt. vii. 28 ; Mark i. 22, xi. 18; 
 Luke xix. 48), and miracles (Matt. viii. 27, ix. 8, xiv. 33, xv. 31), and hence 
 followed him from all parts (Matt. iv. 25, viii. i, ix. 36, xii. 15, xiii. 2, 
 xiv. 13). In the fourth gospel, on the contrary, we are continually told that 
 the Jews sought to kill Jesus (v. 18, vii. i) ; the Pharisees wish to take him, 
 or send out officers to seize him (vii. 30, 32,44; comp. viii. 20, x. 39); stones 
 are taken up to cast at him (viii. 59, x. 31); and even in those passages 
 where there is mention of a favourable disposition on the part of the people, 
 the Evangelist limits it to one portion of them, and represents the other as 
 inimical to Jesus (vii. 11-13). He is especially fond of drawing attention 
 to such circumstances, as that before the final catastrophe all the guile and 
 power of the enemies of Jesus were exerted in vain, because his hour was not 
 yet come (vii. 30, viii. zo) ; that the emissaries sent out against him, over- 
 come by the force of his words, and the dignity of his person, retired without 
 fulfilling their errand (vii. 32, 44 ff.) ; and that Jesus passed unharmed through 
 the midst of an exasperated crowd (viii. 59, x. 39 ; comp. Luke iv. 30). The 
 yvriter, as we have above remarked, certainly does not intend us in these 
 instances to think of a natural escape, but of one in which the higher nature 
 of Jesus, his invulnerability so long as he did not choose to lay down his life, 
 was his protection. And this throws some light on the object which the 
 fourth Evangelist had in view, in giving prominence to such traits as those just 
 enumerated : they helped him to add to the number of the contrasts, by 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 391 
 
 which, throughout his works, he aims to exalt the person of Jesus. The pro- 
 found wisdom of Jesus, as the divine Logos, appeared the more resplendent, 
 from its opposition to the rude unapprehensiveness of the Jews ; his goodness 
 wore a more touching aspect, confronted with the inveterate malice of his 
 enemies ; his appearance gained in impressiveness, by the strife he excited 
 among the people ; and his power, as that of one who had life in himself, 
 commanded the more reverence, the oftener his enemies and their instruments 
 tried to seize him, and, as if restrained by a higher power, were not able to 
 lay hands on him,— thp more marvellously he passed through the ranks of 
 adversaries prepared to take away his life. It has been made matter of praise 
 to the fourth Evangelist, that he alone presents the opposition of the pharisaic 
 party to Jesus, in its rise and gradual progress : but there are reasons for 
 questioning whether the course of events described by him, be not rather 
 fictitious than real. Partially fictitious, it evidently is ; for he appealg to the 
 supernatural for a reason why the Pharisees so long effected nothing against 
 Jesus : whereas the synoptists preserve the natural sequence of the facts by 
 stating as a cause, that the Jewish hierarchy feared the people, who were 
 attached to Jesus as a prophet (Matt. xxi. 465 Mark xii. 12 ; Luke xx. 19). 
 If then the fourth Evangelist was so far guided by his dogmatical interest, that 
 for the escape of Jesus from the more early snares and assaults of his enemies, 
 he invented such a reason as best suited his purpose ; what shall assure us 
 that he has not also, in consistency with the characteristics which we have 
 already discerned in him, fabricated, for the sake of that interest, entire scenes 
 of the kind ■ above noticed ? Not that we hold it improbable, that many 
 futile plots and attacks of the enemies of Jesus preceded the final catastrophe 
 of his fate : — we are only dubious whether these attempts were precisely such 
 as the gospel of John describes. 
 
 § 85. 
 
 ISOLATED GROUPS OF ANECDOTES. IMPUTATION OF A LEAGUE WITH 
 BEELZEBUB, AND DEMAND OF A SIGN. 
 
 In conformity with the aim of our criticism, we shall here confine our 
 attention to those narratives, in which the influence of the legend may be 
 demonstrated. The strongest evidence of this influence is found where one 
 narrative is blended with another, or where the one is a mere variation of 
 the other : hence, chronology having refused us its aid, we shall arrange the 
 anecdotes about to be considered according to their mutual affinity. 
 
 To begin with the more simple form of legendary influence : Schulz has 
 already complained, that Matthew mentions two instances, in which a league 
 with Beelzebub was imputed to Jesus, and a sign demanded from him ; cir- 
 cumstances which in Mark and Luke happen only once.^ The first time the 
 imputation occurs (Matt. ix. 32 ff.), Jesus has cured a dumb demoniac; at 
 this the people marvel, but the Pharisees observe, He casts outdeinons through 
 the prince (apx"") "f ^^^ demons. Matthew does not here say that Jesus 
 returned any answer to this accusation. On the second occasion (xii. 22 ff.), 
 it is a blind and dumb demoniac whom Jesus cures ; again the people are 
 amazed, and again the Pharisees declare that the cure is effected by the help 
 of Beelzebub, the apx<ov of the demons, whereupon Jesus immediately exposes 
 the absurdity of the accusation. That it should have been alleged against 
 Jesus more thah once when he cast out demons, is in itself probable. It is 
 
 1 Ut sup. s. 311. 
 
392 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § Sg. 
 
 however suspicious that the demoniac who gives occasion to the assertion of 
 the Pharisees, is in both instances dumb (in the second only, blindness is 
 added). Demoniacs were of many kinds, every variety of malady being 
 ascribed to the influence of evil spirits ; why, then, should the above imputation 
 be not once attached to the cure of another kind of demoniac, but twice to 
 that of a dumb one ? The difficulty is heightened if we compare the narrative 
 of Luke (xi. 14 f.), whicli, in its introductory description of the circumstances, 
 corresponds not to the second narrative in Matthew, but to the first ; for as 
 there, so in Luke, the demoniac is only dumb, and his cure and the astonish-' 
 ment of the people are told with precisely the same form of expression : — in 
 all which points, the second narrative of Matthew is more remote from that 
 of Luke. But with this cure of the dumb demoniac, which Matthew represents 
 as passing off in silence on the part of Jesus, Luke connects the very dis- 
 course which Matthew appends to the cure of the one both blind and dumb ; 
 so that Jesus must on both these successive occasions, have said the same 
 thing. This is a very unlikely repetition, and united with the improbability, 
 that the same accusation should be twice made in connexion with a dumb 
 demoniac, it suggests the question, whether legend may not here have doubled 
 one and the same incident ? How this can have taken place, Matthew him- 
 self shows us, by representing the demoniac as, in the one case, simply dumb, 
 in the other, blind also. Must it not have been a striking cure which excited, 
 on the one hand, the astonishment of the people, on the other, this desperate 
 attack of the enemies of Jesus ? Dumbness alone might soon appear an in- 
 sufficient milady for the subject of the cure, and the legend, ever prone to 
 enhance, ihight deprive him of sight also. If then, together with this new 
 form of the legend, the old one too was handed down, what wonder that a 
 compiler, more conscientious than critical, such as the author of the first gos- 
 pel, adopted both as distinct histories, merely omitting on one occasion the 
 discourse of Jesus, for the sake of avoiding repetition.^ 
 
 Matthew, having omitted (ix. 34)the discourse of Jesus, was obliged also 
 to defer the demand of a sign, which required a previous rejoinder on the 
 part of Jesus, until his second narration of the charge concerning Beelzebub ; 
 and in this point again the narrative of Luke, who also attaches the demand 
 of a sign to the accusation, is parallel with the later passage of Matthew.^ But 
 
 ' Schleiermacher (s. 175) does not perceive the connexion of the discourse on the blas- 
 phemy against the Holy Ghost, in Matthew (xii. 31 f.), though it links on excellently to the 
 foregoing expression, iyi) iv Tvei/jum ffeov ix^dWu ri, Sai/iidvia (v. 28). It is more easy, 
 however, to understand this difficulty, than that he should think (s. 185 f.) that discourse 
 better introduced in Luke (xii. 10). For here, between the preceding proposition, that 
 whosoever denies the Son of Man before men, shall be denied before the angels of God, and 
 the one in question, the only connexion is that the expression d/JveJcrSot rbv vila> tov i,v$pitnrov 
 brought to the writer's recollection the words clTelv 'Kiiyov ets rbv vlbv tov AvBpiiirov. One 
 proof of this is that between the latter passage and the succeeding declaration, that the 
 necessary words would be given to the disciples, when before the tribunal, by the irveufm 
 &-/1.0P, the connexion consists just as superficially in the expression irceC/io dytor. What fol- 
 lows in Matthew (v. 33-37), had been partly given already in the Sermon on the Mount, but 
 stands here in a better connexion than Schleiermacher is willing to admit. 
 
 * Luke makes the demand of a sign follow immediately on the accusation, and then gives 
 in succession the answefs of Jesus to both. This representation modern criticism holds to be 
 far more probable than that of Matthew, who gives first the accusation and its answer, then 
 the demand of a sign and its refusal ; and this judgment is grounded on the difficulty of sup- 
 posing, that after Jesus had given a sufficiently long answer to the accusation, the very same 
 people who had urged it would still demand a sign (Schleiermacher, s. 175 ; Schneckenbur- 
 ger, iiber den Urspr. s. 52 f.). Btit on the other hand, it is equally improbable that Jesus, 
 after having some time ago delivered a forcible discourse on the more important point, the 
 accusation concerning Beelzebub, and even after an interruption which had led him to a 
 totally irrelevant declaration (Luke xi. 27 f.), should revert to the less important point. 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 393 
 
 Matthew not only has, with Luke, a demand of a sign in connexion with the 
 above charge ; he has also another, after the second feeding of the multitude 
 (xvi. I ff.), and this second demand Mark also has (viii. ii f.), while he omits 
 the first. Here the Pharisees come to Jesus (according to Matthew, in the 
 unlikely companionship of Sadducees), and tempt him by asking for a sign from 
 heaven, (T-r\ft.v.ov Ik tov oipavov. To this Jesus gives an answer, of which the 
 concluding proposition, a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a 
 sign ; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas, 
 ytvio. TTovTjpa KoX /iotT(aA.is a-qfjLiiov hn^rjTeL, /cat a^/xeiov ov 8o5ijcr£Tat avr^, ti jxt] 
 TO o-jy/uetov 'lojva tov Trporfti^Tov, in Matthew, agrees word for word with the 
 opening of the earlier refusal. It is already improbable enough, that Jesus 
 should have twice responded to the above requisition with the same enigma- 
 tical reference to Jonah ; but the words (v. 2, 3) which, in the second passage 
 of Matthew, precede the sentence last quoted, are totally unintelligible. ' For 
 why Jesus, in reply to the demand of his enemies that he would show them a 
 sign from heaven, should tell them that they were indeed well versed in the 
 natural signs of the heavens, but were so much the more glaringly ignorant of 
 the spiritual signs of the messianic times, is so far from evident, that the other- 
 wise unfounded omission of v. 2 and 3, seems to have arisen from despair of 
 finding any connexion for them.* Luke, who also has (xii. 54 f), in words 
 only partly varied, this reproach of Jesus that his cotemporaries understood 
 better the signs of the weather than of the times, gives it another position, 
 which might be regarded as the preferable one ; since after speaking of the 
 fire which he was to kindle, and the divisions which he was to cause, Jesus 
 might very aptly say to the people : You take no notice of the unmistakable 
 prognostics of this great revolution which is being prepared by my means, so 
 ill do you understand the signs of the times.^ But on a closer examination, 
 Luke's arrangement appears just as abrupt here, as in the case of the two 
 l)arables (xiii. 18).^ If from hence we turn again to Matthew, we easily see 
 how he was led to his mode of representation. He may have been induced 
 to double the demand of a sign, by the verbal variation which he met with, 
 the required sign being at one time called simply a cn;/x,etov, at another a 
 a-r/fitiov iK tov oipavov. And if he knew that Jesus had exhorted the Jews to 
 study the signs of the times, as they had hitherto studied the appearance of 
 the heavens, the conjecture was not very remote, that the Jews had given 
 occasion for this admonition by demanding a sign from heaven, a-rip-eiov ix 
 Tov oipavov. Thus Matthew here presents us, as Luke often does elsewhere, 
 with a fictitious introduction to a discourse of Jesus ; a proof of the pro- 
 
 namely, the demand of a sign. The discourse on the departure and return of the unclean 
 spirit, is in Matthew (v. 43-45) annexed to the reply of Jesus to this demand ; but iri Luke 
 (xi. 24 ff.) it follows the answer to the imputation of a league with Beelzebub, and this may 
 at first seem to be a more suitable arrangement. But on a closer examination, it will appear 
 very improbable that Jesus should conclude a defence, exacted from him by his enemies, 
 with so calm and purely theoretical a discourse, which supposes an audience, if not favour^, 
 ably prepossessed, at least open to instruction ; and it will be found that here again there is 
 no further connexion than that both discourses treat of the expulsion of demons. By this 
 single feature of resemblance, the writer of the third gospel was led to sever the connexion 
 between the answer to the oft-named accusation, and that to the demand of a sign, which 
 accusation and demand, as the strongest proofs of the malevolent unbelief of the enemies of 
 Tesus seem to have been associated by tradition. The first Evangelist refrained from this 
 violence and reserved the discourse on the return of the unclean spirit, which was suggested 
 by the suspicion cast on the expulsion of demons by Jesus, until he had communicated the 
 answer by which Jesus parries the demand of a sign. 
 * Vid. Griesbach, Comm. crit. in loc. 
 
 5 Comp. Schleiermacher, s. 190 f. 
 
 6 De Wette, exeg. Handb. i. I. s. 139. 
 
394 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § 86. 
 
 position, advanced indeed, but too little regarded by Sieffert : '' that it is in 
 the nature of traditional records, such as the three first gospels, that one par- 
 ticular should be best preserved in this narrative, another in that ; so that 
 first one, and then the other, is at a disadvantage, in comparison with the 
 rest. 
 
 §86. 
 
 VISIT OF THE MOTHER AND BRETHREN OF JESUS. THE WOMAN WHO 
 PRONOUNCES THE MOTHER OF JESUS BLESSED. 
 
 All the synoptists mention a visit of the mother and brethren of Jesus, on 
 being apprised of which Jesus points to his disciples, and declares that they 
 who do the will of God are his mother and his brethren (Matt. xii. 46 ff. ; 
 Mark iii. 31 ff. ; Luke viii. 19 ff.). Matthew and Luke do not tell us the 
 object of this visit, nor, consequently, whether this declaration of Jesus, which 
 appears to imply a disowning of his relatives, was occasioned by any special 
 circumstance. On this subject Mark gives us unexpected information ; he 
 tells us (v. 21) that while Jesus was teaching among a concourse of people, 
 who even prevented him from taking food, his relatives, under the idea that 
 he was beside himself, went out to seize him, and take him into the keeping 
 of his family.! In describing this incident, the Evangelist makes use of the 
 expression, eXeyov on iita-ni {they said, he is beside himself), and it was merely 
 this expression, apparently, that suggested to him what he next proceeds to 
 narrate : 01 ■ypa/*/i,aT£ts iktyov, otl 'BeeX^ej3oi>X. e^ei ^. t. X. (the scribes said, he 
 hath Beelzebub, etc., comp. John x. 20). With this reproach, which however 
 he does not attach to an expulsion of demons, he connects the answer of 
 Jesus ; he then recurs to the relatives, whom he now particularizes as the 
 mother and brethren of Jesus, supposing them to have arrived in the mean- 
 time ; and he makes their announcement call forth from Jesus the answer of 
 which we have above spoken. 
 
 These particulars imparted by Mark are very welcome to commentators, 
 as a means of explaining and justifying the apparent harshness of the answer 
 which Jesus returns to the announcement of his nearest relatives, on the 
 ground of the perverted object of their visit. But, apart from the difficulty 
 that, on the usual interpretation of the accounts of the childhood of Jesus, 
 it is not to be explained how his mother could, after the events therein de- 
 scribed, be thus mistaken in her son, it is very questionable whether we ought 
 to accept this information of Mark's. In the first place, it is associated with 
 the obvious exaggeration, that Jesus and his disciples were prevented even 
 from taking food by the throng of people ; and in the second place, it has in 
 itself a strange appearance, from its ^want of relation to the context. If these 
 points are considered, it will scarcely be possible to avoid agreeing with the 
 opinion of Schleiermacher, that no explanation of the then existing relations 
 of Jesus with his family is to be sought in this addition ; that it rather belongs 
 to those exaggerations to which Mark is so prone, as well in his introductions 
 to isolated incidents, as in his general statements.^ He wished to make it 
 understood why Jesus returned an ungracious answer to the announcement of 
 his relatives ; for this purpose he thought it necessary to give their visit an 
 object of which Jesus did not approve, and as he knew that the Pharisees had 
 
 ? Ueber den Urspr. s. 1 15. 
 
 ' For the proof of this interpretation, see Fritzsche, comm. in Marc. p. 97 ff. 
 
 ' Ueber den Lukas, :>. 121. 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 395 
 
 pronounced him to be under the influence of Beelzebub, he attributed a 
 similar opinion to his relatives. 
 
 If we lay aside this addition of Mark's, the comparison of the three very 
 similar narratives presents no result as it regards their matter -^ but there is a 
 striking difference between the connexions in which the Evangelists place the 
 event. Matthew and Mark insert it after the defence against the suspicion of 
 diabolical aid, and before the parable of the sower ; whereas Luke makes the 
 visit considerably prior to that imputation, and places the parable even before 
 the visit It is worthy of notice, however, that Luke has, after the defence 
 against the accusation of a league with Beelzebub, in the position which the 
 two other Evangelists give to the visit of the relatives of Jesus, an incident 
 which issues in a declaration, precisely similar to that which the announce- 
 ment calls forth. After the refutation of the Pharisaic reproach, and the dis- 
 course on the return of the unclean spirit, a woman in the crowd is filled with 
 admiration, and pronounces the mother of Jesus blessed, on which Jesus, as 
 before on the announcement of his mother, replies ; Yea, rather blessed are 
 they who hear the word of God and keep it 1^ Schleiermacher here again pre- 
 fers the account of Luke : he thinks this litde digression ori the exclamation 
 of the woman especially evinces a fresh and lively recollection, which has 
 inserted it in its real place and circumstances ; whereas Matthew, confounding 
 the answer of Jesus to the ejaculation of the woman, with the very similar one 
 to the announcement of his relatives, gives to the latter the place of the former, 
 and thus passes over the scene with the woman.* But how the woman could 
 feel herself hurried away into so enthusiastic an exclamation, precisely on 
 hearing the abstruse discourse on the return of the expelled demons, or even 
 the foregoing reprehensive reply to the Pharisees, it is difficult to understand, 
 and the contrary conjecture to that of Schleiermacher might rather be estab- 
 lished ; namely, that in the place of the announcement of the relatives, the 
 writer of the third gospel inserted the scene with the woman, from its having 
 a like termination. The evangelical tradition, as we see from Matthew and 
 Mark, whether from historical or merely accidental motives, had associated 
 the above visit and the saying about the spiritual relatives, with the discourse 
 of Jesus on the accusation of a league with Beelzebub, and on the return of 
 the unclean spirit ; and Luke also, when he came to the conclusion of that 
 discourse, was reminded of the anecdote of the visit and its point — the extol- 
 ling of a spiritual relationship to Jesus. But he had already mentioned the 
 visit f he therefore seized on the scene with the woman, which presented a 
 
 ' Schneckenburger (iiber den Ur. s. 54) finds an attempt at dramatic effect in the fi-rri tis, 
 and the inTzlvai t^v x^'P" of Matthew, as compared with the eXirov and irepi/SXe^a/tei/os 
 KoxKif of Marlt. This is a remarkable proof of the partial acumen which plays so distin- 
 guished a part to the disadvantage of Matthew in modern criticism. For who does not see 
 that if Matthew had eZTroc, it would be numbered among the proofs that his narrative is want- 
 ing in dramatic life ? As for the words iKrelvas ttiv xei/aa, there is nothing to be discovered 
 in them which could give to them more than to the irepi^Xeij/diJxvos of Mark, the stamp of 
 artificiality ; we might as well attribute the latter expression to Mark's already discovered 
 fondness for describing the action of the eyes, and consequently regard it as an addition of 
 his own. 
 
 * Answer to the announcement, viii. 21 : Answer to the woman, xi^ 28 : /ievoSvye 
 
 liiiTTip fwD Kal ddeXipoi fioO oSroi eiaiv ol rbv /xaKdpioL (sc. ovx V /'■'fj^iip p.ov, dW) oi dfcou- 
 \6yov Tov Seov Akowtcs koi voioOvres airrdy. ocres t6ii Xdyojf toC deov Kal ipvXdffaovm airbv " 
 
 5 Ut sup s. 177 f. 
 
 « That which decided the Evangelist to place the visit after the parable of the sower, was 
 probably not, as Schleiermacher thinks, a real chronological connexion. On the contrary, 
 we recognize the usual characteristic of his arrangement, in the transition from the concluding 
 sentence in the explanation of the parable : these are they who having heard the word, keep 
 it and bringforthfru.it with patience, to the similar expression of Jesus on the occasion of 
 the visit : those who hear the word of Cod and do it. 
 
39^ PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § ^J. 
 
 similar termination. From the strong resemblance between the two anec- 
 dotes, 1 can scarcely believe that they are founded on two really distinct inci- 
 dents ; rather, it is more likely that the memorable declaration of Jesus, that 
 he preferred his spiritual before his bodily relatives, had in the legend received 
 two different settings or frames. According to one, it seemed the. most 
 natural that such a depreciation of his kindred should be united with an actual 
 rejection of them ; to another, that the exaltation of those who were spiritu- 
 ally near to him, should be called forth by a blessing pronounced on those 
 who were nearest to him in the flesh. Of these two forms of the legend, 
 Matthew and Mark give only the first ; Luke, however, had already disposed 
 of this on an earlier occasion ; when, therefore, he came to the passage where, 
 in the common evangelical tradition, that anecdote occurred, he was induced 
 to supply its place by the second form. 
 
 §87. 
 
 CONTENTIONS FOR PRE-EMINENCE AMONG THE DISCIPLES. THE LOVE OF 
 JESUS FOR CHILDREN. 
 
 The three first Evangelists narrate several contentions for pre-eminence 
 which arose among the disciples, with the manner in which Jesus composed 
 these differences. One such contention, which is said to have arisen among 
 the disciples after the transfiguration, and the first prediction of the passion, 
 is common to all the gospels (Matt, xviii. i ff. ; Mark ix. 33 ff. ; Luke ix. 
 46 ff.). There are indeed divergencies in the narratives, but the identity of 
 the incident on which they are founded is attested by the fact, that in all of 
 them, Jesus sets a little child before his disciples as an example; a scene 
 which, as Schleiermacher remarks,* would hardly be repeated. Matthew and 
 Mark concur in mentioning a dispute about pre-eminence, which was excited 
 by the two sons of Zebedee. These disciples (according to Mark), or their 
 mother for them (according to Matthew), petitioned for the two first places 
 next to Jesus in the messianic kingdom (Matt. xx. 20 ff. ; Mark x. 35 ff.).* 
 Of such a request on the part of the sons of Zebedee, the third Evangelist 
 knows nothing ; but apart from this occasion, there is a further contention for 
 pre-eminence, on which discourses are uttered, similar to those which the two 
 first Evangelists have connected with the above petition. At the last supper 
 of which Jesus partook with his disciples before his passion, Luke makes the 
 latter fall into a fjukoveiKia (dispute) which among them shall be the greatest ; 
 a dispute which Jesus seeks to quell by the same reasons, and partly with the 
 same words, that Matthew and Mark give in connexion with the a-yavd/cTiyo-ts, 
 (indignation), excited in the disciples generally by the request of the sons of 
 Zebedee. Luke here reproduces a sentence which he, in common with Mark, 
 had previously given almost in the same form, as accompanying the presen- 
 tation of the child ; and which Matthew has, not only on the occasion of 
 
 ' Ut sup. s. 152. 
 
 ' Schulz (lib. d. Abendm. s. 320) speaks consistently with the tone of the recent criticism 
 on Matthew wheii he asserts, that he does not doubt for a moment that every observant 
 reader will, without hesitation, prefer the representation of Mark, who, without mentioning 
 the mother, confines the whole transaction to Jesus and the two apostles. But so far as his- 
 torical probability is concerned, 1 would ask, why should not a woman, who was one of the 
 female companions of Jesus (Matt, xxvii. 56), have ventured on such a petition ? As regards 
 psychological probability, the sentiment of the church, in the choice of the passage for St. 
 James's day, has usually decided in favour of Matthew ; for so solemn a prayer, uttered on 
 the spur of the moment, is just in character with a woman, and more especially a mother 
 devoted to her sons. 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 397 
 
 Salome's prayer, but also in the great anti-pharisaic discourse (comp. Luke xxii. 
 26; Mark ix. 35 ; Luke ix. 48 ; Matt. xx. 26 f., xxiii. 11). However credible it 
 may be that with the worldly messianic hopes of the disciples, Jesus should 
 often have to suppress disputes among them on the subject of their future 
 rank in the Messiah's kingdom, it is by no means probable that, for example, 
 the sentence, Whosoever will be great among you, let him be the servant of all : 
 should be spoken, ist, on the presentation of the child ; 2ndly, in connexion 
 with the prayer of the sons of Zebedee ; 3rdly, in the anti-pharisaic discourse, 
 and 4thly, at the last supper. There is here obviously a traditional confusion, 
 whether it be (as SiefFert in such cases is fond of supposing) that several 
 originally distinct occurrences have been assimilated by the legend, i.e. the 
 same discourse erroneously repeated on various occasions ; or that out of one 
 incident the legend has made many, i.e. has invented various occasions for 
 the same discourse. Our decision between these two possibilities must 
 depend on the answer to the following question : Have the various facts, to 
 which the analogous discourses on humility are attached, the dependent ap- 
 pearance of mere frames to the discourses, or the independent one of occur- 
 rences that carry their truth and significance in themselves ? 
 
 It will not be denied that the petition of the sons of Zebedee, is in itselt 
 too specific and remarkable to be a mere background to the ensuing dis- 
 course ; and the same judgment must be passed on the scene with the child : 
 so that we have already two cases of contention for pre-eminence subsisting 
 in themselves. If we would assign to each of these occurrences its appropriate 
 discourses, the declarations which Matthew connects with the presentation of 
 the child : Unless ye become as this child, etc., and Whosoever shall humble 
 himself as this child, etc., evidently belong to this occasion. On the other 
 hand, the sentences on ruling and serving in the world and in the kingdom of 
 Jesus, seem to be a perfectly suitable comment on the petition of the sons of 
 Zebedee, with which Matthew associates them : also the saying about the first 
 and the last, the greatest and the least, which Mark and Luk* give so early as 
 at the scene with the child, Matthew seems rightly to have reserved for the 
 scene with the sons of Zebedee. It is otherwise with the contention spoken 
 of by Luke (xxii. 24 ff.). This contention originates in no particular occasion, 
 nor does it issue in any strongly marked scene (unless we choose to insert 
 here the washing of the disciples' feet, described by John, who, for the rest, 
 mentions no dispute; — of which scene, however, we cannot treat until we 
 come to the history of the Passion). On the contrary, this contention is 
 ushered in merely by the words, eyeVcTo Se koX <j>iXoveiKLa ev avroh, — nearly the 
 same by which the first contention is introduced, ix. 46, — and leads to a dis- 
 course from Jesus, which, as we have already noticed, Matthew and Mark 
 represent him to have delivered in connexion with the earlier instances of 
 rivalry ; so that this passage of Luke has nothing peculiarly its own, beyond 
 its position, at the last supper. This position, however, is not very secure ; 
 for that immediately after the discourse on the betrayer, so humiliating to the 
 disciples, pride should so strongly have taken possession of them, is as diffi- 
 cult to believe, as it is easy to discover, by a comparison of v. 23 and 24, how 
 the writer might be led, without historical grounds, to insert here a contention 
 for pre-eminence. It is clear that the words Kal avrol T^p^avro avtriTilv irpos 
 kavTov^, TO, Tts apa dr, l^ avrHv 6 tovto fieXXoiV vpacrcrw ;^ suggested^to him the 
 similar ones, JyeVeTO 8c xal (ftLkoveiKia ev aiirois, to, tis airtav SoKtl tlvai, /tei^wv ; 
 that is the disputes about the betrayer called to his remembrance the disputes 
 about 'pre-eminence. One such dispute indeed, he had already mentioned, 
 but had only connected with it, one sentence excepted, the discourses occa- 
 sioned by the exhibition of the child ; he had yet in reserve those which the 
 
398 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § 87. 
 
 two first Evangelists attach to the petition of the sons of Zebedee, an occasion 
 which seems not to have been present to the mind of the third Evangehst, 
 whence he introduces the discourses pertaining to it here, with the general 
 statement that they originated in a contention for pre-eminence, which broke 
 out among the disciples. Meanwhile the chronological position, also, of the 
 two first-named disputes about rank, has very little probability ; for iri both 
 instances, it is after a prediction of the passion, which, like the prediction of 
 the betrayal, would seem calculated to suppress such thoughts of earthly 
 ambition." We therefore welcome the indication which the evangelical narra- 
 tive itself presents, of the manner in which the narrators were led unhistori- 
 cally to such an arrangement. In the answer of Jesus to the prayer of Salome, 
 the salient point was the suffering that awaited him and his disciples ; hence' 
 by the most natural association of ideas, the ambition of the two disciples, the 
 antidote to which was the announcement of approaching trial, was connected 
 with the prediction of the passion. Again, on the first occasion of rivalry, the 
 preceding prediction of the passion leads in Mark and Luke to the observa- 
 tion, that the disciples did not understand the words of Jesus, and yet feared 
 to ask him concerning them, whence it may be inferred that they debated 
 and disputed on the subject among themselves ; here, then, the association 
 of ideas caused the Evangelists to introduce the contention for pre-eminence, 
 also carried on in the absence of Jesus. This explanation is not applicable 
 to the narrative of Matthew, for there, between the prediction of the passion 
 and the dispute of the disciples, the anecdote of the coin angled for by Peter, 
 intervenes. 
 
 With the above contentions for pre-eminence, another anecdote is indirectly 
 connected by means of the child which is put forward on one of those occa- 
 sions. Children are brought to Jesus that he may bless them ; the disciples 
 wish to prevent it, but Jesus speaks the encouraging words. Suffer little chil- 
 dren to come unto me, and adds that only for children, and those who resemble 
 children, is the kingdom of heaven destined (Matt. xix. 13 ff. ; Mark x. 13 ff. ; 
 Luke xviii. 15 ff.). This narrative has many points of resemblance to that of 
 the child placed in the midst of the disciples. Firstly, in both, Jesus presents 
 children as a model, and declares that only those who resemble children can 
 enter the kingdom of God ; secondly, in both, the disciples appear in the 
 light of opposition to children ; and, thirdly, in both, Mark says, that Jesus 
 took the children in his arms (emyKaXto-a/ievos). If these points of resem- 
 blance be esteemed adequate ground for reducing the two narratives to one, 
 the latter must, beyond all question, be retained as the nearest to truth, be- 
 cause the saying of Jesus, Suffer little children, etc., which from its retaining 
 this original form in all the narratives, bears the stamp of genuineness, could 
 scarcely have been uttered on the other occasion ; whereas, the sentences on 
 children as patterns of humility, given in connexion with the contention about 
 rank, might very well have been uttered under the circumstances above de- 
 scribed, in retrospective allusion to previous contentions about rank. Never- 
 theless, this might rather be the place for supposing an assimilation of origin- 
 ally diverse occurrences, since it is at least evident, that Mark has inserted the 
 expression evayKoXitrafievos in both, simply on account of the resemblance 
 between the two scenes. 
 
 ' Compare Schleiermacher, ut sup. s. 283. 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 399 
 
 THE PURIFICATION OF THE TEMPLE. 
 
 Jesus, during his first residence in Jerusalem, according to John (ii. 14 ff.), 
 according to the synoptists, during his last (Matt. xxi. 12 ff. parall.), under- 
 took the purification of the temple. The ancient commentators thought, and 
 many modern ones still think, ^ that these were separate events, especially as, 
 besides the chronological difference, there is some divergency between the 
 three first Evangelists and the fourth in their particulars. While, namely, the 
 former, in relation to the conduct of Jesus, merely speak in general terms of 
 ah expulsion, eK^dWeiv, John says that he made a scourge of small cords, 
 ^payiWiov Ik ar)(oi-viwv, for this purpose : again, while according to the former, 
 he treats all the sellers alike, he appears, according to John, to make some 
 distinction, and to use the sellers of doves somewhat more mildly ; moreover, 
 John does not say that he drove out the buyers, as well as the sellers. There 
 is also a difference as to the language used by Jesus on the occasion ; in the 
 synoptical gospels, it is given in the form of an exact quotation from the Old 
 Testament ; in John, merely as a free allusion. But, above all, there is a 
 difference as to the result : in the fourth gospel, Jesus is immediately called 
 to account ; in the synoptical gospels, we read nothing of this, and according 
 to them, it is not until the following day that the Jewish authorities put to 
 Jesus a question, which seems to have reference to the purification of the 
 temple (Matt. xxi. 23 ff.), and to which Jesus replies quite otherwise than to 
 the remonstrance in the fourth gospel. To explain the repetition of such a 
 measure, it is remarked that the abuse was not likely to cease on the first 
 expulsion, and that on every revival of it, Jesus would feel himself anew called 
 on to interfere ; that, moreover, the temple purification in John is indicated 
 to be an earUer event than that in the synoptical gospels, by the circumstance, 
 that the fourth Evangelist represents Jesus as being immediately called to 
 account, while his impunity in the other case appears a natural consequence 
 of the heightened consideration which he had in the meantime won. 
 
 But allowing to these divergencies their full weight, the agreement between 
 the two narratives preponderates. We have in both the same abuse, the same 
 violent mode of checking it, by casting out {iKpaWav) the people, and over- 
 throwing (dvao-Tpe^etv) the tables ; nay, virtually, the same language in justi- 
 fication of this procedure, for in John, as well as in the other gospels, the 
 words of Jesus contain a reference, though not a verbally precise one, to 
 Isa. Ivi. 7; Jer. vii. 11. These important points of resemblance must at 
 least extort such an admission as that of Sieffert,^ namely, that the two occur- 
 rences, originally but little alike, were assimilated by tradition, the features of 
 the one being transferred to the other. But thus much seems clear; the 
 synoptists know as little of an earlier event of this kind, as in fact of an 
 earlier visit of Jesus to Jerusalem : and the fourth Evangelist seems to have 
 passed over the purification of the temple after the last entrance of Jesus into 
 the metropolis, not because he presumed it to be already known from the 
 other gospels, but because he believed that he must give an early date to the 
 sole act of the kind with which he was acquainted. If then each of the 
 Evangelists knew only of one purification of the temple, we are not warranted 
 either by the slight divergencies in the description of the event, or by the 
 important difference in its chronological position, to suppose that there were 
 
 1 Paulus and Tholuck, in loc. ; Neander, L. J. Chr. , s. 388, Anm. 
 " Ueber den Urspr. s. 108 ff. 
 
400 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § 88. 
 
 two ; since chronological differences are by no means rare in the gospels, and 
 are quite natural in writings of traditional origin. It is therefore with justice 
 that our most modern interpreters have, after the example of some older ones, 
 declared themselves in favour of the identity of the two histories.^ 
 
 On which side lies the error ? We may know beforehand how the criticism 
 of the present day will decide on this question : namely, in favour of the 
 fourth gospel. According to Liicke, the scourge, the diversified treatment of 
 the different classes of traders, the more indirect allusion to the Old Testa- 
 ment passage, are so many indications that the writer was an eye and ear 
 witness of the scene he describes ; while as to chronology, it is well known 
 that this is in no degree regarded by the synoptists, but only by John, whence, 
 according to Sieffert,* to surrender the narrative of the latter to that of the 
 former, would be to renounce the certain for the uncertain. As to John's 
 dramatic details, we may match them by a particular peculiar to Mark, And 
 they would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple 
 (v. 1 6), which besides has a support in the Jewish custom which did not per- 
 mit the court of the temple to be made a thoroughfare.^ If, nevertheless, this 
 particular is put to the account of Mark's otherwise ascertained predilection 
 for arbitrary embellishment," what authorizes us to regard similar artistic 
 touches from the fourth Evangelist, as necessary proofs of his having been an 
 eye-witness ? To appeal here to his character of eye-witness as a recognized 
 fact,7 is too glaring ^.petitio principii, at least in the point of view taken by a 
 comparative criticism, in which the decision as to whether the artistic details 
 of the fourth Evangelist are mere embellishments, must depend solely on 
 intrinsic probability. Although the different treatment of the different classes 
 of men is in itself a probable feature, and the freer allusion to the Old Testa- 
 ment is at least an indifferent one ; it is quite otherwise with the most striking 
 feature in the narrative of John. Origen has set the example of objecting to 
 the twisting and application of the scourge of small cords, as far too violent 
 ind disorderly a procedure.® Modern interpreters soften the picture by sup- 
 posing that Jesus used the scourge merely against the cattle ^ (a supposition, 
 however, opposed to the text, which represents all Trai/ras as being driven out 
 by the scourge) ; yet still they cannot avoid perceiving the use of a scourge 
 at all to be unseemly in a person of the dignity of Jesus, and only calculated 
 to aggravate the already tumultuary character of the proceeding.'" The 
 feature peculiar to Mark is encumbered with no such difficulties, and while it 
 is rejected, is this of John to be received ? Certainly not, if we can only 
 find an indication in what way the fourth Evangelist might be led to the free 
 invention of such a particular. Now it is evident from the quotation v. 17, 
 which is peculiar to him, that he looked on the act of Jesus as a demonstra- 
 tion of holy zeal — -a sufficient temptation to exaggerate the traits of zealous- 
 ness in his conduct. 
 
 In relation to the chronological difference, we need only remember how 
 the fourth Evangelist. antedates the acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah 
 by the disciples, and the conferring of the name of Peter on Simon, to be 
 freed from the common assumption of his pre-eminent chronological accuracy, 
 
 ^ Liicke, i. s. 435 ff. ; De Wette, exeg. Handb. i. i, s. 174 f. ; i. 3, s. 40. 
 * Ut sup. s. 109 ; comp. Schneckenburger, s. 26 f. 
 ^ Lightloot, s. 632, from Bab. Jevamotli, f. vi. 2. 
 ' Liicke, s. 438. 
 
 ' Liicke, s. 437 ; Sieffert, s. no. 
 
 8 Comm. in joh. torn. 10, § 17 ; 0pp. I, p. 322, ed. Lommatzsch. 
 ° Kuinbl, in loc. 
 1° Bretschneider, Probab. p. 43. 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 401 
 
 which is alleged in favour of his position of the purification of the temple. 
 For this particular case, however, it is impossible to show any reason why the 
 occurrence in question would better suit the time of the first than of the last 
 passover visited by Jesus, whereas there are no slight grounds for the oppo- 
 site opinion. It is true that nothing in relation to chronology is to be founded 
 on the improbability that Jesus should so early have referred to his death and 
 resurrection, as he must have done, according to John's interpretation of the 
 saying about the destruction and rebuilding of the temple ; " for we shall see, 
 in the proper place, that this reference to the death and resurrection, owes 
 its introduction into the declaration of Jesus to the Evangelist alone. But it 
 is no inconsiderable argument against John's position of the event, that Jesus, 
 with his prudence and tact, would hardly have ventured thus early on so 
 violent an exercise of his messianic authority. ^^ For in that first period of his 
 ministry he had not given himself out as the Messiah, and under any other 
 than messianic authority, such a step could then scarcely have been hazarded ; 
 moreover, he in the beginning rather chose to meet his cotemporaries on 
 friendly ground, and it is therefore hardly credible that he should at once, 
 without trying milder means, have adopted an appearance so antagonistic. 
 But to the last week of his life such a scene is perfectly suited. Then, after 
 his messianic entrance into Jerusalem, it was his direct aim in all that he did 
 and said, to assert his messiahship, in defiance of the contradiction of his 
 enemies ; then, all lay so entirely at stake, that nothing more was to be lost 
 by such a step. 
 
 As regards the nature of the event, Origen long ago thought it incredible, 
 that so great a multitude should have unresistingly submitted to a single man, 
 — one, too, whose claims had ever been obstinately contested : his only re- 
 source in this exigency is to appeal to the superhuman power of Jesus, by 
 virtue of which he was able suddenly to extinguish the wrath of his enemies, 
 or to render it impotent ; and hence Origen ranks this expulsion among the 
 greatest miracles of Jesus. *^ Modern expositors decline the miracle,^* but 
 Paulus is the only one among them who has adequately weighed Origen's 
 remark, that in the ordinary course of things the multitude would have opposed 
 themselves to a single person. Whatever may be said of the surprise caused 
 by the suddenness of the appearance of Jesus ^^ (if, as John relates, he made 
 himself a scourge of cords, he would need some time for preparation), of the 
 force of right on his side '^ (on the side of those whom he attacked, however, 
 there was established usage) ; or, finally, of the irresistible impression pro- 
 duced by the personality of Jesus ^^ (on usurers and cattle-dealers — on brute 
 men, as Paulus calls them ?) : still, such a multitude, certain as it might be of 
 the protection of the priesthood, would not have unresistingly allowed them- 
 selves to be driven out of the temple by' a single man. Hence Paulus is of 
 opinion that a number of others, equally scandalized by the sacrilegious traffic, 
 made common cause with Jesus, and that to their united strength the buyers 
 
 " English Commentators, ap. Liicke, l, s. 435 f., Anm. 
 
 ^' Eng. Comm. ap Liicke. According to Neander (s. 387, Anm.), Jesus, after his last 
 entrance into Jerusalem, when the enthusiasm of the populace was on his side, must have 
 shunned every act that could he interpreted into a design of using external force, and thus 
 creating distusbances. But he must equally have shunned this at the beginning, as at the 
 end, of his career, and the proceeding in the temple was rather a provocation of external 
 force against himself, than a use of it for his own purposes. 
 
 " Comm. in Joh. Tom. 10. 16, p. 321 f., ed. Lommatzch. 
 
 '* Liicke, in loc. 
 
 " Liicke, s. 413. 
 
 i« lb. and Tholuck, in loc. 
 
 " Olshausen, i, s. 785. 
 
 C C 
 
402 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § 89. 
 
 and sellers were compelled to yield.^* But this supposition is fatal to the 
 entire incident, for it makes Jesus the cause of an open tumult ; and it is not 
 easy either to reconcile this conduct with his usual aversion to everything 
 revolutionary, or to explain the omission of his enemies to use it as an accu- 
 sation against him. For that they held themselves bound in conscience to 
 admit that the conduct of Jesus was justifiable in this case, is the less credible, 
 since, according to a rabbinical authority, ^^ the Jews appear to have been so 
 far from taking umbrage at the market in the court of the Gentiles (and this 
 is all we are to understand by the word Upoi/),^" that the absence of it seemed 
 to them like a melancholy desolation of the temple. According to this, it is 
 not surprising that Origeh casts a doubt on the historical value of this narrative, 
 by the expression, etye koI avrr) yeyevrjTai (if it really happened), and at most 
 admits that the EvangeUst, in order to present an idea allegorically, Kai 
 yeyevrj/ieva o-vvixpwaTo wpay/iari (also borrowed the form of an actual occur- 
 rence)?'^ 
 
 But in order to contest the reality of this history, in defiance of the agree- 
 ment of all the four Evangelists, the negative grounds hitherto adduced must be 
 seconded by satisfactory positive ones, from whence it might be seen how the 
 primitive Christian legend could be led to the invention of such a scene, apart 
 from any historical foundation. But these appear to be wanting. For our 
 only positive data in relation to this occurrence are the passages cited by the 
 synoptists from Isaiah and Jeremiah, prohibiting that the temple should be 
 made a den of robbers ; and the passage from Malachi iii. 1-3, according to 
 which it was expected that in the messianic times Jehovah would suddenly 
 come to his temple, that no one would stand before his appearing, and that 
 he would undertake a purification of the people and the worship. Certainly 
 these passages seem to have some bearing on the irresistible reforming acti- 
 vity of Jesus in the temple, as described by our Evangelists ; but there is so 
 little indication that they had reference in particular to the market in the 
 outer court of the temple, that it seems necessary to suppose an actual oppo- 
 sition on the part of Jesus to this abuse, in order to account for the fulfilment 
 of the above prophecies by him being represented under the form of an ex- 
 pulsion of buyers and sellers. 
 
 §89. 
 
 NARRATIVES OF THE ANOINTING OF JESUS BY A WOMAN. 
 
 An occasion on which Jesus was anointed by a woman as he sat at meat, is 
 mentioned by all the Evangelists (Matt. xxvi. 6 ff. ; Mark xiv. 3 ff. ; Luke vii. 
 36 ff. ; John xii. i ff.), but with some divergencies, the most important of 
 which lie between Luke and the other three. First, as to the chronology ; 
 Luke places the incident in the earlier period of the life of Jesus, before his 
 departure from Galilee, while the other three assign it to the last week of his 
 life; secondly, as to the character of the woman who anoints Jesus : she is, 
 according to Luke, a woman who was a sinner, ywi] afiaprmko^ ; according to 
 the two other synoptists, a person of unsullied reputation ; according to John, 
 who is more precise, Mary of Bethany. From the second point of difference 
 it follows, that in Luke the objection of the spectators turns on the admission 
 
 '« Comm. 4, s. 164. 
 
 '* Hieros. Joh. tobh. f. Ixi. 3, ap. Lightfoot, p. 411. 
 
 2" Liicke, Comm. I, s. 410. 
 
 " Ut sup., comp. also Woolston, Disc. I, 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 403 
 
 of so infamous a person, in the other gospels, on the wastefulness of the 
 woman; from both, it follows, that Jesus in his defence dwells, in the former, 
 on the grateful love of the woman, as contrasted with the haughty indifference 
 of the Pharisees, in the latter, on his approaching departure, in opposition to 
 the constant presence of the poor. There are yet the minor differences, that 
 the place in which the entertainment and the anointing occur, is by the two first 
 and the fourth Evangelists called Bethany, which according to John xi. i, was 
 a Kwfiri {town), by Lukea iroKvi {city), without any more precise designation ; 
 further, that the objection, according to the three former, proceeds from the 
 disciples, according to Luke, from the entertainer. Hence the majority of 
 commentators distinguish two anointings, of which one is narrated by Luke 
 the other by the three remaining Evangelists. ^ 
 
 But it must be asked, if the reconciliation of Luke with the other three 
 Evangelists is despaired of, whether the agreement of the latter amongst theni- 
 selves is so decided, and whether we must not rather proceed, from the dis- 
 tinction of two anointings, to the distinction of three, or even four ? To four 
 certainly it will scarcely extend ; for Mark does not depart from Matthew, ex- 
 cept in a few touches of his well-known dramatic manner ; but between these 
 two Evangelists on the one side, and John on the other, there are differences 
 which may fairly be compared with those between Luke and the rest. The 
 first difference relates to the house in which the entertainment is said to have 
 been given ; according to the two first Evangelists, it was the house of Simon 
 the leper, a person elsewhere unnoticed ; the fourth does not, it is true, ex- 
 pressly name the host, but since he mentions Martha as the person who waited 
 on the guests, and her brother Lazarus as one of those who sat at meat, there 
 is no doubt that he intended to indicate the house of the latter as the locality 
 of the repast.^ Neither is the time of the occurrence precisely the same, for 
 according to Matthew and Mark the scene takes place after the solemn 
 entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, only two days at the utmost before the 
 passover ; according to John, on the other hand, before the entrance, as early 
 as six days prior to the passover.^ Further, the individual whom John states 
 to be that Mary of Bethany so intimately united to Jesus, is only known to the 
 two first evangelists as a woman, yvvrj; * neither do they represent her as being, 
 like Mary, in the house, and one of the host's family, but as coming, one 
 knows not whence, to Jesus, while he reclined at table. Moreover, the act 
 of anointing is in the fourth gospel another than in the two first. In the 
 latter, ttie woman pours her ointment of spikenard on the head of Jesus ; in 
 John, on the contrary, she anoints his feet, and dries them with her hair,^ a 
 difference which gives the whole scene a new character. Lastly, the two 
 synoptists are not aware that it was Judas who gave utterance to the censure 
 against the woman; Matthew attributing it to the disciples, Mark, to the 
 spectators generally.* 
 
 Thus between the narrative of John, and that of Matthew and Mark, there 
 is scarcely less difference than between the account of these three collectively, 
 and that of Luke : whoever supposes two distinct occurrences in the one case, 
 must, to be consistent, do so in the other ; and thus, with Origen, hold, at 
 
 ' Thus Paulus, exeg. Handb. i, b, s. 766 ; L. J. i, a, s. 292 ; Tholuck, Lucke, Olshausen, 
 in loc. ; Hase, L. J. § 96, Anm. r i. r 
 
 * This difference struck Origen, who has given a critical comparison of these lour nar- 
 ratives, to which, in point of acumen, there is no parallel in more modern commentaries. 
 See his in Matth. Commmtarior. series, Opp. ed. de la Rue, 3, ». 892 ff. 
 
 ° Origenes, ut sup. 
 
 * lb. 
 ' lb. 
 « lb. 
 
404 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § 89. 
 
 least conditionally, that there were three separate anointings. So soon, how- 
 ever, as this consequence is more closely examined, it must create a difiSculty, 
 for how improbable is it that Jesus should have been expensively anointed 
 three times, each time at a feast, each time by a woman, that woman being 
 always a different one ; that moreover Jesus should, in each instance, have 
 had to defend the act of the woman against the censures of the spectators ! 7 
 Above al], how is it to be conceived that after Jesus, on one and even on two 
 earlier occasions, had so decidedly given his sanction to the honour rendered 
 to him, the disciples, or one of them, should have persisted in censuring it? * 
 These considerations oblige us to think of reductions, and it is the most 
 natural to commence with the narratives of the two first synoptists and of 
 John, for these agree not only in the place, Bethany, but also, generally, in the 
 time of the event, the last week of the life of Jesus ; above all, the censure and 
 the reply are nearly the same on both sides. In connexion with these simi- 
 larities the differences lose their importance, partly from the improbability 
 that an incident of this kind should be repeated ; partly from the probability, 
 that in the traditional propagation of the anecdote such divergencies should 
 have insinuated themselves. But if in this case the identity of the occur- 
 rences be admitted, in consideration of the similarities, and in spite of the 
 dissimilarities ; then, on the other hand, the divergencies peculiar to the 
 narrative of Luke can no longer hinder us from pronouncing it to be iden- 
 tical with that of the three other Evangelists, provided that there appear to be 
 only a few important points of resemblance between the two. And such really 
 exist, for Luke now strikingly accords with Matthew and Mark, in opposition 
 to John : now, with the latter, in opposition to the former. Luke gives the 
 entertainer the same name as the two first synoptists, namely, Simon, the only 
 difference being, that the former calls him a Pharisee, while the latter style him 
 the lepir. Again, Luke agrees with the other synoptists in opposition to John,, 
 in representing the woman who anoints Jesus as a nameless individual; not 
 belonging to the house ; and further, in making her appear with a box of oint- 
 fnent, aKdpafrTpov fivpov, while John speaks only of 2l pound of ointment, ktrpa 
 fivpov, without specifying the vessel. On the other hand, Luke coincides in 
 a remarkable manner with John, and differs from the two other Evangelists, as 
 to the mode of the anointing. While, namely, according to the latter, the 
 ointment is poured on the head of Jesus, according to Luke, the woman, who 
 was a sinner, as, according to John, Mary, anoints the feet of Jesus ; and even 
 the striking particular, that she dried them with her hair,' is given by both in 
 nearly the same words ; excepting that in Luke, where the woman is described 
 as a sinner, it is added that she bathed the feet of Jesus with her tears, and 
 kissed them. Thus, without doubt, we have here but one history under three 
 various forms ; and this seems to have been the real conclusion of Origen, as 
 well as recently of Schleiermacher. 
 
 In this state of the case, the effort is to escape as cheaply as possible, and 
 to save the divergencies of the several Evangelists at least from the appearance 
 of contradiction. First, with regard to the differences between the two first 
 Evangelists and the last, it has been attempted to reconcile the discrepant 
 dates by the supposition, that the meal at Bethany was held really, as John 
 informs us, six days before Easter ; but that Matthew, after whom Mark wrote, 
 has no contradictory date ; that rather he has no date at all ; for though he 
 inserts the narrrative of the meal and the anointing after the declaration of 
 
 1 Comp. Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. ill. 
 * Origenes and Schleiermacher. Winer, N. T. Gramm., s. 149. 
 
 ' Luke vii. 38 : toi>s TrASas aiirou — rofs John xii. 3 : e^ifia^e tms dpi^lv aiitrjs roii! 
 
 0pi^l T^s Ke(pa\rjs aiSr^s e^ifiaircre. vdSas airov. 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 4OS 
 
 Jesus, that after two days is the feast of the Passover, on jwcra Suo ^/lepas to 
 irdcrxa. yivexaj., this does not prove that he intended to place it later as to time, 
 for it is probable that he gave it this position simply because he wished to note 
 here, before coming to the betrayal by Judas, the occasion on which the traitor 
 first embraced his black resolve, namely, the repast at which he was incensed 
 by Mary's prodigality, and embittered by the rebuke of Jesus.i" But in oppo- 
 sition to this, modern criticism has shown that, on the one hand, in the mild 
 and altogether general reply of Jesus there could lie nothing personally offen- 
 sive to Judas ; and that, on the other hand, the two first gospels do not name 
 Judas as the party who censured the anointing, but the disciples or the by- 
 standers generally : whereas, if they had noted this scene purely because it 
 was the motive for the treachery of Judas, they must have especially pointed 
 out the manifestation of his feeling. ^^ There remains, consequently, a chro- 
 nological contradiction in this instance between the two first synoptists and 
 John : a contradiction which even Olshausen admits.'^ 
 
 It has been attempted in a variety of ways to evade the farther difference 
 as to the person of the host. As Matthew and Mark speak only of the house 
 of Simon the leper, oIkm St/iMvos tou Xeirpov, some have distinguished the 
 owner of the house, Simon, from the giver of the entertainment, who doubtless 
 was Lazarus, and have supposed that hence, in both cases without error, the 
 fourth Evangelist mentions the latter, the two first synoptists the former.^^ 
 But who would distinguish an entertainment by the name of the householder, 
 if he were not in any way the giver of the entertainment ? Again, since John 
 does not expressly call Lazarus the host, but merely one of the o-wai/aKet/icVrnv 
 (those sitting at the table), and since the inference that he was the host is 
 drawn solely from the circumstance that his sister Martha served, Sir/Kovet ; 
 others have regarded Simon as the husband of Martha, either separated on 
 account of his leprosy, or already deceased, and have supposed that Lazarus 
 then resided with his widowed sister : "■* an hypothesis, which it is more easy 
 to reconcile with the narratives than the former, but which is unsupported by 
 any certain information. 
 
 We come next to the divergency relative to the mode of anointing ; accord- 
 to the two first Evangelists, the ointment was poured Ion the head of Jesus ; 
 according to the fourth, on his feet. The old, trivial mode of harmonizing 
 the two statements, by supposing that both the head and the feet were 
 anointed, has recently been expanded into the conjecture that Mary indeed 
 intended only to anoint the feet of Jesus (John), but as she accidentally 
 broke the vessel (a-wrpifaa-a, Mark), the ointment flowed over his head also 
 (Matt.).i5 This attempt at reconcihation falls into the comic, for as we cannot 
 imagine how a woman who was preparing to anoint the feet of Jesus could 
 
 '" Kuinol, Contim. in Matt., p. 687. 
 
 " Sieffert, iiber den Ursprung, s. 125 f. 
 
 '" Bibl. Comm. 2, s. 277. 
 
 " Vid. Kuinol, ut sup. p. 688 ; also Tholiick, s. 228. 
 
 1* Paulus, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 582; 3, b, s. 466. 
 
 " Schneckenburger, iiber den Ursprung, u. s. f., s. 60. There is no trace in Marks 
 account that the words (rvvrpi^Ma rb iMpaarpov signify an accidental fracture ; nor, on the 
 other hand can they, without the harshest ellipsis, be understood to imply merely the removal 
 of that which stopped the opening of the vessel, as Paulus and Fritzsche maintain. In- 
 terpreted without violence, they can only mean a breaking of the vessel itself. Is it asked 
 with Paulus (Ex. Handb. 3. b. s. 471) = To what purpose destroy a costly vessel? or with 
 Fritzsche (in Marc. p. 602) : To what purpose risk wounding her own hand, and possibly 
 the head of Jesus also ? These are questions which have a bearing on the matter considered 
 as the act of the woman, but not as a narrative of Mark ; for' that to him, the destruction of 
 a precious vessel should appear suited to the noble prodigality of the woman, is in perfect 
 accordance with the exaggerating style which we have often observed in him. 
 
406 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § 89. 
 
 bring the vessel of ointment over his head, we must suppose that the ointment 
 spirted upwards like an effervescing draught. So that here also the con- 
 tradiction remains, and not only between Matthew and John, where it is 
 admitted even by Schneckenburger, but also between the latter Evangelist and 
 Mark. 
 
 The two divergencies relative to the person of the woman who anoints 
 Je?us, and to the party who blames her, were thought to be the most readily 
 explained. That what John ascribes to Judas singly, Matthew and Mark 
 refer to all the disciples or spectators, was believed to be simply accounted 
 for by the supposition, that while the rest manifested their disapprobation by 
 gestures only, Judas vented his in words.'^ We grant that the word lA.cyoi' 
 (they said), preceded as it is in Mark by the words ayava/troiJi'Tes irpos ka.Tnov<i 
 {having indignation within themselves), xadi followed, as in Matthew, by the 
 words 'lyvovs 8e 6 i/croijs {but Jesus knowing), does not necessarily imply that 
 all the disciples gave audible expression to their feelings; as, however, the 
 two first Evangelists immediately after this meal narrate the betrayal by Judas, 
 fhey would certainly have named the traitor on the above occasion, had he, 
 to their knowledge, made himself conspicuous in connection with the covetous 
 blame which the woman's liberality drew forth. That John particularizes the 
 woman, whose name is not given by the synoptists, as Mary of Bethany, is, in 
 the [ordinary -view, only an example how the fourth Evangelist supplies the 
 omissions of his predecessors." But as the two first synoptists attach so 
 much importance to the deed of the woman, that they make Jesus predict the 
 perpetuation of her memory on account of it — a particular which John has 
 not — they would assuredly have also given her name had they known it ; so 
 that in any case we may conclude thus much : they knew not who the woman 
 was, still less did they conceive her to be Mary of Bethany. 
 
 Thus if the identity only of the last Evangelist's narrative with that of the 
 two first be acknowledged, it must be confessed that we have, on the one 
 side or the other, an account which is inaccurate, and disfigured by tradition. 
 It is, however, not only between these, but also between Luke and his fellow 
 Evangelists collectively, that they who suppose only one incident to be the 
 foundation of their narratives, seek to remove as far as possible the appearance 
 of contradiction. Schleiermacher, whose highest authority is John, but who 
 will on no account renounce Luke, comes in this instance, when the two so 
 widely diverge, into a peculiar dilemma, from which he must have thought 
 that he could extricate himself with singular dexterity^ since he has not evaded 
 it, as he does others of a similar kind, by the supposition of two fundamental 
 occurrences. It is true that he finds himself constrained to concede, in 
 favour of John, that Luke's informant could not in this case have been an 
 eyewitness ; whence minor divergencies, as for instance those relative to the 
 locality, are to be explained. On the other hand, the apparently important 
 differences that, according to Luke, the woman is a sinner, according to John, 
 Mary of Bethany ; that according to the former, the host, according to the 
 latter, the disciples, make objections ; and that the reply of Jesus is in the 
 respective narrations totally different — these, in Schleiermacher's opinion, have 
 their foundation in the fact that the occurrence may be regarded from two 
 points of view. The one aspect of the occurrence is the murmuring of the 
 disciples, and this is given by Matthew ; the other, namely, the relations of 
 Jesus with the pharisaic host, is exhibited by Luke ; and John confirms both 
 representations. The most decided impediment to the reconciliation of Luke 
 with the other evangelists, his designation of the woman as a sinner, afji^aprtakb^, 
 
 " Kuinol, in Matth., p. 689. 
 
 '' Faulus, exeg. Handb. 3 b, s. 466, and many others. 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 407 
 
 Schleiermacher invalidates, by calling it a false inference of the narrator from 
 the address of Jesus to Mary, Thy sins are forgiven thee, d<j>i<i)VTai crot at 
 d/uaprcat. This Jesus might say to Mary in allusion to some error, unknown 
 to us, but such as the purest are liable to, without compromising her reputa- 
 tation with the spectators, who were well acquainted with her character ; and 
 it was only the narrator who erroneously concluded from the above words of 
 Jesus, and from his further discourse, that the woman concerned was a sinner 
 m the ordinary sense of the word, whence he has incorrectly amplified the . 
 thoughts of the host, v. 39."^* It is not, however, simply of sins, afiapriai, but 
 of many sins, woWal d/jLaprLai, that Jesus speaks in relation to the woman ; 
 and if this also be an addition of the narrator, to be rejected as such because 
 it is inconsistent with the character of Mary of Bethany, then has the entire 
 speech of Jesus from v. 40-48, which turns on the opposition between for- 
 giving and loving little and much, been falsified or misrepresented by the 
 Evangelist : and on the side of Luke especially, it is in vain to attempt to 
 harmonize the discordant narratives. 
 
 If, then, the four narratives can be reconciled only by the supposition that 
 several of them have undergone important traditional modifications : the 
 question is, which of them is the nearest to the original fact ? That modern 
 critics should unanimously decide in favour of John, cannot suprise us after 
 our previous observations ; and as little can the nature of the reasoning by 
 which their judgment is supported. The narrative of John, say they (reason- 
 ing in a circle), being that of an eyewitness, must be at once supposed the 
 true one,^^ and this conclusion is sometimes rested for greater security on the 
 false premiss, that the more circumstantial and dramatic narrator is the more 
 accurate reporter — the eye-witness.^" The breaking of the box of ointment, 
 in Mark, although a dramatic particular, is readily rejected as a mere em- 
 bellishment ; but does not John's statement of the quantity of spikenard as a 
 pound, border on exaggeration ? and ought not the extravagance which 
 Olshausen, in relation to this disproportionate consumption of ointment, 
 attributes to Mary's love, to be rather referred to the Evangelist's imagination, 
 which would then also have the entire credit of the circumstance, that ihe 
 house was filled with the odour of the ointment ? It is worthy of notice, that 
 the estimate of the value of the perfume at 300 denarii, is given by John and 
 Mark alone ; as also at the miraculous feeding of the multitude, it is these 
 two Evangelists who rate the necessary food at 200 denarii. If Mark only 
 had this close estimate, how quickly would it be pronounced, at least by 
 Schleiermacher, a gratuitous addition of the narrator ! What then is it that, 
 in the actual state of the case, prevents the utterance of this opinion, even as 
 a conjecture, but the prejudice in favour of the fourth gospel ? Even the 
 anointing of the head, which is attested by two of the synoptists, is, because 
 John mentions the feet instead of the head, rejected as unusual, and incom- 
 patible with the position of Jesus at a meal : 2" whereas the anointing of the 
 feet with precious oil was far less usual ; and this the most recent commentator 
 on the fourth gospel admits.^^ 
 
 But peculiar gratitude is rendered to the eye-witness John, because he has 
 rescued from oblivion the names, both of the anointing woman, and of the 
 censorious disciple. ^^ It has been supposed that the synoptists did in fact 
 
 >8 Ueber den Lukas, s. 1 1 1 ff. 
 " Sieffert, ut sup. s. 123 f. 
 2" Schulz, ut sup. s. 320 f. 
 
 21 Schneckenburger, ut sup. s. 60. 
 
 22 Lucke, 2, s. 417 ; comp. Lightfoot, horse, p. 468, 1081. 
 28 Schulz, ut sup. 
 
408 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § 89. 
 
 know the name of the woman, but withheld it from the apprehension that 
 danger might possibly accrue to the family of Lazarus, while John, writing 
 later, was under no such restraint; 2* but this expedient rests on mere 
 assumptions. Our former conclusion therefore subsists, namely, that the 
 earlier Evangelists knew nothing of the name of the woman ; and the question 
 arises, how was this possible? Jesus having expressly promised immortal 
 renown to the deed of the woman, the tendency must arise to perpetuate 
 her name also, and if this were identical with the known and oft-repeated 
 name of Mary of Bethany, it is not easy to understand how the association of 
 the deed and the name could be lost in tradition, and the woman who 
 anointed Jesus become nameless. It is perhaps still more incomprehensible, 
 supposing the covetous blame cast upon the woman to have been really 
 uttered by him who proved the betrayer, that this should be forgotten in 
 tradition, and the expression of blame attributed to the disciples generally. 
 When a fact is narrated of a person otherwise unknown, or even when the 
 person being known, the fact does not obviously accord with his general 
 character, it is natural that the name should be lost in tradition ; but when 
 the narrated word or work of a person agrees so entirely with his known 
 character, as does the covetous and hypocritical blame in question with the 
 character of the traitor, it is difficult to suppose that the legend would sever 
 it from his name. Moreover, the history in which this blame occurs, verges 
 so nearly on the moment of the betrayal (especially according to the position 
 given to it by the two first Evangelists), that had the blame really proceeded 
 from Judas, the two facts would have been almost inevitably associated. 
 Nay, even if that expression of latent cupidity had. not really belonged to 
 Judas, there must have been a temptation eventually to ascribe it to him, as 
 a help to the delineation of his character, and to the explanation of his sub- 
 sequent treachery. Thus the case is reversed, and the question is whether, 
 instead of praising John that he has preserved to us this precise information, 
 we ought not rather to give our approbation to the synoptists, that they have 
 abstained from so natural but unhistorical a combination. We can arrive at 
 no other conclusion with respect to the designation of the woman who anoints 
 Jesus as Mary of Bethany. On the one hand, it is inconceivable that the 
 deed, if originally hers, should be separated from her celebrated name ; on 
 the other, the legend, in the course of its development, might naturally come 
 to attribute to one whose spiritual relations with Jesus had, according to the 
 third and fourth gospels, early obtained great celebrity in the primitive church, 
 an act of devoted love towards him, which originally belonged to another and 
 less known person. 
 
 But from another side also we find ourselves induced to regard the 
 narratives of Matthew and Mark, who give no name to the woman, rather 
 than that of John, who distinguishes her as Mary of Bethany, as the parent 
 stem of the group of anecdotes before us. Our position of the identity of all 
 the four narratives must, to be tenable, enable us also to explain how Luke's 
 representation of the facts could arise. Now, supposing the narrative of John 
 to be the nearest to the truth, it is not a little surprising that in the legend, 
 the anointing woman should doubly descend from the highly honoured Mary, 
 sister of Lazarus, to an unknown, nameless individual, and thence even to a 
 notorious siiiner ; it appears far more natural to give the intermediate position 
 to the indifferent statement of the synoptists, out of whose equivocal nameless 
 woman might equally be made, either in an ascending scale, a Mary ; or, in 
 a descending one, a sinner. 
 
 2* Thus Grotius and Herder. 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 409 
 
 The possibility of the first transformation has been already shown : it must 
 next be asked, where could be an inducement, without historical grounds, 
 gradually to invest the anointing woman with the character of a sinner ? In 
 the narrative itself our only clue is a feature which the two first synoptists 
 have not, but which John has in common with Luke ; namely, that the 
 woman anointed the feet of Jesus. To the fourth Evangelist, this tribute of 
 feeling appeared in accordance with the sensitive, devoted nature of Mary, 
 whom he elsewhere also (xi. 32), represents as falling at the feet of Jesus ; 
 but by another it might be taken, as by Luke, for the gesture of contrition ; 
 an idea which might favour the conception of the woman as a sinner — might 
 favour, we say, not cause : for a cause, we must search elsewhere. 
 
 § 90. 
 
 THE NARRATIVES OF THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY, AND OF MARY 
 
 AND MARTHA. 
 
 In the Gospel of John (viii. i-ii), fthe Pharisees and scribes bring a 
 woman taken in adultery to Jesus, that they may obtain his opinion as to the 
 procedure to be observed against her ; whereupon Jesus, by appealing to the 
 consciences of the accusers, liberates the woman, and dismisses her with an 
 admonition. The genuineness of this passage has been strongly contested, 
 nay, its spuriousness might be regarded as demonstrated, were it not that 
 even the most thorough investigations on the subject ' indirectly betray a 
 design, which Paulus openly avows, of warding off the dangerous surmises as 
 to the origin of the fourth gospel, which are occasioned by the supposition 
 that this passage, encumbered as it is with improbabilities, is a genuine portion 
 of that gospel. For in the first place, the scribes say to Jesus : Moses in the 
 law commanded us that such should be stoned: now in no part of the Pentateuch 
 is this punishment prescribed for adultery, but simply death, the mode of 
 inflicting it being left undetermined (Lev. xx. 10 ; Deut. xxii. 22); nor was 
 stoning for adultery a latter institution of the Talmud, for according to the 
 canon : omne mortis suppliciuni, in scripturd absolute positutn esse strangu- 
 lationem^ the punishment appointed for this offence in the Talmud is strangu- 
 lation.3 Further, it is difficult to discover what there was to ensnare Jesus in 
 the question proposed to him ; * the scribes quoted to him the commandment 
 of the law, as if they would warn him, rather than tempt him, for they could 
 not expect that he would decide otherwise than agreeably to the law. Again, 
 the decision of Jesus is open to the stricture, that if only he who is conscious 
 of perfect purity were authorized to judge and punish, all social order would 
 be at an end. The circumstance of Jesus writing on the ground has a 
 legendary and mystical air, for even if it be not correctly explained by the 
 gloss of Jerome : eorum videlicet, qui accusabant, et omnium mortaliuin peccata, 
 it yet seems to imply something more mysterious than a mere manifestation 
 of contempt for the accusers. Lastly, it is scarcely conceivable that every 
 one of those men who dragged the woman before Jesus, zealous for the law, 
 and adverse to his cause as they are supposed to be, should have had so 
 tender a conscience, as on the appeal of Jesus to retire without prosecuting 
 their design, and leave the woman behind them uninjured; this rather 
 
 ' Ap. Wetstein, Paulus, Liicke, in loc. 
 
 2 Maimonides on Sanhedr. 7, i. 
 
 3 Mischna, tr. Sanhedr. c. 10. . ., ti 1 j t •■ 1 
 
 * For a thorough discussion of this and the following points, vid. Paulus and Lucke 
 
 in loc. 
 
41 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § 90. 
 
 appears to belong, merely to the legendary or poetical embellishment of the 
 scene. Yet however improbable it may appear, from these observations, 
 that the occurrence happened precisely as it is here narrated, this, as Bret- 
 schneider justly maintains,^ proves nothing against the genuineness of the 
 passage, since it is arguing in a circle to assume the apostolic composition of the 
 fourth gospel, and the consequent impossibility that a narrative containing 
 contradictions should form a portion of it, prior to an examination of its 
 several parts. Nevertheless, on the other hand, the absence of the passage in 
 the oldest authorities is so suspicious, that a decision on the subject cannot 
 be hazarded. 
 
 In any case, the narrative of an interview between Jesus and a woman of the 
 above character must be very ancient, since, according to Eusebius, it was 
 found in the Gospel of the Hebrews, and in the writings of Papias.® It was 
 long thought that the woman mentioned in the Hebrew gospel and by Papias 
 was identical with the adulteress in John ; but against this it has been justly 
 observed, that one who had the reproach of many sins, must be distinct from 
 her who was detected in the one act of adultery.' I wonder, however, that no 
 one has, to my knowledge, thought, in connexion with the passage of Eusebius, 
 of the woman in Luke of whom Jesus says that her many sins, a/xaprtai iroXKoX, 
 are forgiven. It is true that the word 8iapKrj6eia-rji does not fully agree with 
 this idea, for Luke does not speak of actual expressions of the Pharisee in 
 disparagement of the woman, but merely of the unfavourable thoughts which 
 he had concerning her ; and in this respect the passage in Eusebius would 
 agree better with the narrative of John, which has an express denunciation, 
 
 a Sia^aAAetv. 
 
 Thus we are led on external grounds, by the doubt whether an ancient notice 
 refer to the one or the other of the two narratives, to a perception of their 
 affinity,^ which is besides evident from internal reasons. In both we have a 
 woman, a sinner, before Jesus ; in both, this woman is regarded with an evil 
 eye by Pharisaic sanctimoniousness, but is taken into protection by Jesus, and 
 dismissed with a friendly iropivov, go. These were precisely the features, the 
 origin of which we could not understand in the narrative of Luke, viewed 
 as a mere variation of the history of the anointing given by the other Evan- 
 gelists. Now, what is more natural than to suppose that they were transferred 
 mto Luke's history of the anointing, from that of the forgiven sinner ? If the 
 Christian legend possessed, on the one side, a woman who had anointed Jesus, . 
 who was on this account reproached, but was defended by Jesus ; and on the 
 other side a woman who was accused before him of many sins, but whom 
 he pardoned ; how easily, aided by the idea of an anointing of the feet of 
 Jesus, which bears the interpretation of an act of penitence, might the 
 two histories flow together — the anointing woman become also a sinner, 
 and the sinner also an anointer? Then, that the scene of the pardon 
 was an entertainment, was a feature also drawn from the history of the 
 anointing : the entertainer must be a Pharisee, because the accusation of the 
 woman ought to proceed from a Pharisaic party, and because, as we have 
 seen, Luke has a predilection for Pharisaic entertainments. Lastly, the, dis- 
 course of Jesus may have been borrowed, partly from the original narrative 
 of the woman who was a sinner, partly from analogous occasions. If these 
 
 5 Probab., p. 72 ff. ^ 
 
 6 Euseb. H. E. iii. 39 : hriBeiTai Sk (6 IlaTrfas) koX S,\\r]v laroplav irepl yvfcuKos eVi 
 iroWats a/mpriais Sia^tiBeiaris kvl tou Kuplov, ■fji' to KaS' 'E^palovs eiayyiXiov wepiix^t- 
 
 ' Lucke, 2, s. 217. Paulus, Comm. 4, 3. 410. 
 
 8 Elsewhere aLso the two were confounded, vid. Fabricii Cod. apocryph. N. T. i, s. 357, 
 not. 
 
EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS. 4 II 
 
 conjectures be correct, the narratives are preserved unmixed, on the one hand, 
 by the two first Evangelists ; on the other, by the fourth, or whoever was the 
 author of the passage on the adulteress ; for if the latter contains much that 
 is legendary, it is at least free from any admixture of the history of the 
 anointing. 
 
 Having thus accounted for one modification of the narrative concerning the 
 anointing woman, namely, her degradation into a sinner, by the influence of 
 another and somewhat similar anecdote, which was current in the first age 
 of Christianity, we may proceed to consider, experimentally, whether a like 
 external influence may not have helped to produce the opposite modification 
 of the unknown into Mary of Bethany : a modification which, for the rest, we 
 have already seen to be easy of explanation. Such an influence could only 
 proceed from the sole notice of Mary (with the exception of her appearance 
 at the resurrection of Lazarus) which has been preserved to us, and which 
 is rendered memorable by the declaration of Jesus, One thing is needful, and 
 Mary hath chosen, etc. (Luke x. 38 ff.). We have, in fact, here as well as 
 there, Martha occupied in serving (John xii. 2, /cai 17 Map^a h-qKovn ; Luke 
 x. 40, 7] 8e M.dp6a irepi£(nraTO irepl iroXXr/v SiaKOviav) ; here, Mary sitting at the 
 feet of Jesus, there, anointing his feet ; here, blamed by her sister, there by 
 Judas, for her useless conduct, and in both cases, defended by Jesus. It is 
 surely unavoidable to say, if once the narrative of the anointing of Jesus by 
 a woman were current together with that of Mary and Martha, it was very 
 natural, from the numerous points of resemblance between them, that they 
 should be blended in the legend, or by some individual, into one story ; that 
 the unknown woman who anointed the feet of Jesus, who was blamed by the 
 spectators, and vindicated by Jesus, should be changed into Mary, whom 
 tradition had depicted in a similar situation ; the task of serving at the meal 
 with which the anointing was connected attributed to Mary's sister, Martha ; 
 and finally, her brother Lazarus made a partaker of the meal : — so that here 
 the narrative of Luke on the one side, and that of the two synoptists on the 
 other, appear to be pure anecdotes, that of John a mixed one. 
 
 Further, in Luke's narrative of the visit of Jesus to the two sisters, there is 
 no mention of Lazarus, with whom, however, according to John (xi. and xii.), 
 Mary and Martha appear to have dwelt ; nay, Luke speaks precisely as if the 
 presence or existence of this brother, whom indeed neither he nor either of 
 the other synoptists anywhere notices, were entirely unknown to him. For 
 had he known anything of Lazarus, or had he thought of him as present, he 
 could not have said : A certain woman, named Martha, received him into her 
 house; he must at least have named her brother also, especially as, according 
 to John, the latter was an intimate friend of Jesus. This silence is remark- 
 able, and commentators have not succeeded m finding a better explanation 
 of it than that given in the Natural History of the Prophet of Nazareth, where 
 the shortly subsequent death of Lazarus is made available for the supposition 
 that he was, about the time of that visit of Jesus, on a journey for the benefit 
 of his health." Not less striking is another point relative to the locality of this 
 scene. According to John, Mary and Martha dwelt in Bethany, a small town 
 in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem ; whereas Luke, when speaking of the 
 visit of Jesus to these sisters, only mentions a certain town, Kutfirjv nva, which 
 is thought, however, to be easily reconciled with the statement of John, by the 
 observation, that Luke assigns the visit to the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem, 
 and to one travelling thither out of Galilee, Bethany would lie in the way. 
 But it would lie quite at the end of this way, so that the visit of Jesus must 
 
 " 3. s- 379 f- 
 
4^2 PART II. CHAPTER VIII. § 90. 
 
 fall at the close of his journey, whereas Luke places it soon after the departure 
 out of Galilee, and separates it from the entrance into Jerusalem by a multi- 
 tude of incidents filling eight entire chapters. Thus much then is clear ; 
 the author or editor of the third gospel was ignorant that that visit was paid 
 in Bethany, or that Mary and Martha dwelt there, and it is only that Evan- 
 gelist who represents Mary as the anointing woman, who also names Bethany 
 as the home of Mary : the same place where, according to the two first 
 synoptists, the anointing occurred. If Mary were once made identical with 
 the anointing woman, and if the anointing were known to have happened in 
 Bethany, it would naturally follow that this town would be represented as 
 Mary's home. Hence it is probable that the anointing woman owes her name 
 to the current narrative of the visit of Jesus to Martha and Mary, and that 
 Mary owes her home to the nar4;ative of the meal at Bethany. 
 
 We should thus have a group of five histories, among which the narrative 
 given by the two first synoptists of the anointing of Jesus by a woman, would 
 form the centre, that in John of the adulteress, and that in Luke of Mary and 
 Martha, the extremes, while the anointing by the sinner in Luke, and that by 
 Mary in John, would fill the intermediate places. It is true that all the five 
 narratives might with some plausibility be regarded as varied editions of one 
 historical incident ; but from the essential dissimilarity between the three to 
 which I have assigned the middle and extreme places, I am rather of opinion 
 that these are each founded on a special incident, but that the two intermediate 
 narratives are secondary formations which owe their existence to the intermix- 
 ture of the primary ones by tradition. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 MIRACLES OF JESUS. 
 
 § 91- 
 
 JESUS CONSIDERED AS A WORKER OF MIRACLES. 
 
 That the Jewish people in the time of Jesus expected miracles from the 
 Messiah is in itself natural, since the Messiah was a second Moses and the 
 greatest of the prophets, and to Moses and the prophets the national legend 
 attributed miracles of all kinds : by later Jewish writings it is rendered 
 probable ; ' by our gospels, certain. When Jesus on one occasion had (with- 
 out natural means) cured a blind and dumb demoniac, the people were hereby 
 led to ask: Is not this the son of David 1 (Matt. xii. 23), a proof that a 
 miraculous power of healing was regarded as an attribute of the Messiah. 
 John the Baptist, on hearing of the works of Jesus (epya), sent to him with 
 the inquiry, Art thou he that should come (ipxo/ji.evo's) ? Jesus, in proof of the 
 affirmative, merely appealed again to his miracles (Matt. xi. 2 ff. parall.). At 
 the Feast of Tabernacles, which was celebrated by Jesus in Jerusalem, many 
 of the people beheved on him, saying, in justification of their faith, When 
 Christ Cometh, will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done 1 
 (John vii. 31). 
 
 But not only was it predetermined in the popular expectation that the 
 Messiah should work miracles in general, — the particular kinds of miracles 
 which he was to perform were fixed, also in accordance with Old Testament 
 types and declarations. Moses dispensed meat and drink to the people in a 
 supernatural manner (Exod. xvi. 17) : the same was expected, as the rabbins 
 explicitly say, from the Messiah. At the prayer of Elisha, eyes were in one 
 case closed, in another, opened supernaturally (2 Kings vi.) : the Messiah 
 also was to open the eyes of the blind. By this prophet and his master, even 
 the dead had been raised (r Kings xvii. ; 2 Kings iv.) : hence to the Messiah 
 also power over death could not be wanting.^ Among the prophecies, 
 Isa. XXXV. 5, 6 (comp. xlii. 7) was especially influential in forming this portion 
 of the messianic idea. It is here said of the messianic times : Then shall the 
 eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped ; then shall the lame 
 man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. These words, it is 
 true, stand in Isaiah in a figurative connexion, but they were early understood 
 literally, as is evident from the circumstance that Jesus describes his miracles 
 
 1 See the passages quoted in the first vohime, Introd. § 14. notes 9, 10, to which may be 
 added 4 Esdr. xiii. 50 (Fabric. Cod. pseudepigr. V. T. ii. p. 286), and Sohar Exod. fol. iii. 
 col. 12 (Schottgen, horse, ii. p. 541. also in Bertholdt's Christol. § 33, note i). 
 
 2 See the rabbinical passages quoted in the 1st vol. ut sup. 
 
 41J 
 
414 PART II. CHAPTER XL § 9 1. 
 
 to the messengers of John (Matt. xi. 5) with an obvious allusion to this pot- 
 phetic passage. 
 
 Jesus, in so far as he had given himself out and was believed to be the 
 Messiah, or even merely a prophet, had to meet this expectation when, 
 according to several passages already considered (Matt. xii. 38, xvi. i, 
 parall.), his Pharisaic enemies required a sign from him; when, after the 
 violent expulsion of the traders and money-changers from the temple, the 
 Jews desired from him a sign that should legitimate such an assumption of 
 authority (John ii. 18) ; and when the people in the synagogue at Capernaum, 
 on his requiring faith in himself as the sent of God, made it a condition of this 
 faith that he should show them a sign (John vi. 30). 
 
 According to the gospels, Jesus more than satisfied this demand made by 
 his cotemporaries on the Messiah. Not only does a considerable part of the 
 evangelical narratives consist of descriptions of his miracles ; not only did his 
 .disciples after his death especially call to their own remembrance and to that 
 of the Jews the 8wa/te« {miracles) crij/ieta {signs) and Tepara {wonders) wrought 
 by him (Acts ii. 22 ; comp. Luke xxiv. 19) : but the people also were, 
 even during his life, so well satisfied with this aspect of his character that 
 many believed on him in consequence (John ii. 23 ; comp. vi. 2), contrasted 
 him with the Baptist who gave no sign (John x. 41), and even believed 
 that he would not be surpassed in this respect by the future Messiah (John vii. 
 31). The above demands of a sign do not appear to prove that Jesus had 
 performed no miracles, especially as several of them occur immediately after 
 important miracles, e. g. after the cure of a demoniac, Matt. xii. 38 ; and after 
 the feeding of the five thousand, John vi. 30. This position indeed creates 
 a difficulty, for how the Jews could deny to these two acts the character of 
 proper signs it is not easy to understand ; the power of expelling demons, in 
 particular, being rated very highly (Luke x. 17). The sign demanded on these 
 two occasions must therefore be more precisely defined according to Luke 
 xi. 16 (comp. Matt. xvi. i ; Mark viii. 11), as a sign from heaven, <Tr\^Cwv ii 
 ovpavov, and we must understand it to be, the specifically messianic sign of the 
 Son of Man in heaven, a-i\fi,a,ov tov v'uov toS avOpwTrov iv t<S ovpaviS (Matt. xxiv. 
 30). If however it be preferred to sever the connexion between these 
 demands of a sign and the foregoing miracles, it is possible that Jesus may 
 have wrought numerous miracles, and yet that some hostile Pharisees, who 
 had not happened to be eyewitnesses of any of them, may still have desired 
 to see one for themselves. 
 
 That Jesus censures the seeking for miracles (John iv. 48) and refuses to 
 comply with any one of the demands for a sign, does not in itself prove that 
 he might not have voluntarily worked miracles in other cases, when they 
 appeared to him to be more seasonable. When in relation to the demand 
 of the Pharisees, Mark viii. 12, he declares that there shall be no sign given 
 io (his generation ry yevea ravrrj, or Matt. xii. 39 f., xvi, 4; Luke xi. 29 f., 
 that there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet, it 
 would appear that by this generation, yevea, which in Matthew and Lake he 
 characterizes as evil and adulterous, he could only mean the Pharisaic part 
 of his cotemporaries who were hostile to him, and that he intended to 
 declare, that to these should be granted either no sign at all, or merely the 
 sign of Jonas, that is, as he interprets it in Matthew, the miracle of his resurrec- 
 tion, or as modern expositors think, the impressive manifestation of his person 
 and teaching. But if we take the words oi Sofl^tferot aurij in the sense that 
 his enemies were to obtain no sign from him, we- encounter two difficulties : 
 on the one hand, things must have chanced singularly if among the many 
 miracles wrought by Jesus in the greatest publicity, not one fell under the 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS. 41S 
 
 observation of Pharisees (moreover Matt. xii. 24 f. parall. contradicts this, 
 for there Pharisees are plainly supposed to be present at the cure of the blind 
 and dumb demoniac) : on the other hand, if signs personally witnessed are 
 here intended, the enemies of Jesus certainly did not see his resurrection, 
 or his person after he was risen. Hence the above declaration cannot well 
 mean merely that his enemies should be excluded from an actual sight of his 
 miracles. There is yet another expedient, namely, to suppose that the ex- 
 pression ov SoflijtreTai airrj refers to a sign which should conduce to the good 
 of the subject of which it is predicated: but all the miracles of Jesus happened 
 equally with his original mission and his resurrection at once for the benefit 
 of that subject and the contrary, namely, in their object for its benefit, in 
 their result not so. Nothing therefore remains but to understand the ye^/ea 
 of the cotemporaries of Jesus generally, and the SiSoa-Gai to refer to observa- 
 tion generally, mediate or immediate: so that thus Jesus would appear to have 
 here repudiated the working of miracles in general. 
 
 This is not very consistent with the numerous narratives of miracles in the 
 gospels, but it accords fully with the fact that in the preaching and epistles 
 of the apostles, a couple of general notices excepted (Acts ii. 22, x. 38 f.), 
 the miracles of Jesus appear to be unknown, and everything is built on his 
 resurrection : on which the remark may be ventured that it could neither 
 have been so unexpected nor could it have formed so definite an epoch, if 
 Jesus had previously raised more than one dead person, and had wrought the 
 most transcendent miracles of all kinds. This then is the question : Ought 
 we, on account of the evangelical narratives of miracles, to explain away that 
 expression of Jesus, or doubt its authenticity; or ought we not, rather, on the 
 strength of that declaration, and the silence of the apostolic writings, to 
 become distrustful of the numerous histories of miracles in the gospels ? 
 
 This can only be decided by a close examination of these narratives, among 
 which, for a reason that will be obvious hereafter, we give the precedence to 
 the expulsions of demons. 
 
 § 92- 
 
 THE DEMONIACS, CONSIDERED GENERALLY. 
 
 While in the fourth gospel, the expressions Sai/jLoviov ixtiv to have a demon, 
 and hax^Mvdfift.aio'i, being a demoniac, appear nowhere except in the accusations 
 of the Jews against Jesus, and as parallels to [lalvtcrOai, to be mad (viii. 48 {., 
 X. 20 f.; comp. Mark iii. 22, 30 ; Matt. xi. 18), the synoptists may be said to 
 represent demoniacs as the most frequent objects of the curative powers of 
 Jesus. When they describe the commencement of his ministry in Galilee, 
 they give 'the demoniacs Satjuovi^oyneVous ^ a prominent place among the suffer- 
 ers whom Jesus healed (Matt. iv. 24 ; Mark i. 34), and in all their summary 
 notices of the ministry of Jesus in certain districts, demoniacs play a chief 
 part (Matt. viii. 16 f. ; Mark i. 39, iii. 11 f. ; Luke vi. 18). The power to 
 cast out devils is before anything else imparted by Jesus to his disciples 
 (Matt. X. I, 8 ; Mark iii. 15, vi. 7 ; Luke ix. i), who to their great joy suc- 
 ceed in using it according to their wishes (Luke x. 17, 20; Mark vi. 13). 
 
 Besides, these summary notices, however, several cures of demoniacs are 
 narrated to us in detail, so that we can form a tolerably accurate idea of their 
 peculiar condition. In the one whose cure in the synagogue at Capernaum is 
 
 1 That the ireXi/i'ia^/iei'Oi associated with them by Matthew are only a particular species of 
 demoniacs, whose malady appeared to be governed by the changes of the moon, is proved by 
 Matt. xvii. 14 ff. where a Satfiinov is expelled from a <re\rivta^6i),epos. 
 
41 6 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 92. 
 
 given by the Evangelists as the first of this kind (Mark i. 23 ff. ; Luke iv. 33 
 ff.), we find, on the one hand, a disturbance of the self-consciousness, causing 
 the possessed individuals to speak in the person of the demon, which appears 
 also in other demoniacs, as for example, the Gadarenes (Matt. viii. 29 f. 
 parall.); on the other hand, spasms and convulsions with savage cries. This 
 spasmodic state has, in the demoniac who is also called a lunatic (Matt, 
 xvii. 14 ff. parall), reached the stage of manifest epilepsy; for sudden falls, 
 often in dangerous places, cries, gnashing of the teeth, and foaming, are 
 known symptoms of that malady.^ The other aspect of the demoniacal state, 
 namely, the disturbance of the self-consciousness, amourits in the demoniac 
 of Gadara, by \vhose lips a demon, or rather a plurality of these evil spirits, 
 speaks as a subject, to misanthropic madness, with attacks of maniacal fury 
 against himself and others.^ Moreover, not only the insane and epileptic, but 
 the dumb (Matt. ix. 32 ; Luke xi. 14 ; Matt. xii. 22, the du!nl> demoniac is 
 also blind) and those suffering from a gouty contraction of the body (Luke 
 xiii. II ff.), are by the evangelists designated more or less precisely as demon- 
 iacs. 
 
 The idea of these sufferers presupposed in the gospels and shared by their 
 authors, is that a wicked, unclean spirit (Sat/idvtov, irvAfho. aKaOaprov), or several 
 have taken possession of them (hence their condition is described by the ex- 
 pressions Sai/jioviov ex"") ^o.'-f'Ovi^ea-daL, to have a demon, to be a demoniac), speak 
 through their organs (thus Matt. viii. 31, ot ^w.fx.ov^'i ira.pe.nakow avrov \eyov- 
 Tes), and put their limbs in motion at pleasure (thus Mark ix. 20, to Trviv^ia. 
 ia-irapa^ev avrov), until, forcibly expelled by a cure, they depart from the 
 patient {UpaXKuv, iiepxea-Oai). According to the representation of the Evan- 
 gelists, Jesus also held this view of the matter. It is true that when, as a 
 means of liberating the possessed, he addresses the demons within them (as 
 in Mark ix. 25 ; Matt. viiL 32 ; Luke iv. 35), we might with Paulus * regard 
 this as a mode of entering into the fixed idea of these more or less insane per- 
 sons, it being the part of a physical physician, if he would produce any effect, 
 to accommodate himself to this idea, however strongly he may in reality be 
 convinced of its groundlessness. But this is not all ; Jesus, even in his pri- 
 vate conversations with his disciples, not only says nothing calculated to 
 undermine the notion of demoniacal possession, but rather speaks repeatedly 
 on a supposition of its truth ; as e. g. in Matt. x. 8, where he gives the com- 
 mission, Cast out devils ; in Luke x. 18 ff. ; and especially in Matt. xvii. 21, 
 parall, where he says, This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. 
 Again, in a purely theoretical discourse, perhaps also in the more intimate 
 circle of his disciples, Jesus gives a description quite accordant with the idea 
 of his cotemporaries of the departure of the. unclean spirit, his wandering in 
 the wilderness, and his return with a reinforcement (Matt. xii. 43 ff.). With 
 these facts before us, the attenipt made by generally unprejudiced inquirers, 
 such as Winer,^ to show that Jesus did not share the popular opinion on de- 
 moniacal possession, but merdy accommodated his language to their under- 
 standing, appears to us a mere adjustment of his ideas by our own. A closer 
 examination of the last-mentioned passage will suffice to remove every thought 
 of a mere accommodation on the part of Jesus. It is true that commentators 
 have sought to evade all that is conclusive in this passage, by interpreting it 
 figuratively, or even as a parable," in every explanation of which (if we set 
 
 2 Compare the passages of ancient physicians, ap. Winer, btbl. Realworterb. i, s. 191. 
 
 8 Rabbinical and other passages, ap. Winer, ut sup. s. 192. 
 
 ■• Exeg. Handb. I, b, s. 475 ; comp. Hase, L. J. s. 60. 
 
 5 Ut sup. s. 191. 
 
 " Gratz, Coram, l. Matth. I, s. 615. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS. 417 
 
 aside such as that given by Olshausen "> after Calmet), the essential idea is, 
 that superficial conversion to the cause of Jesus is followed by a relapse into 
 aggravated sin.^ But, I would fain know, what justifies us in abandoning the 
 literal interpretation of this discourse ? In the propositions themselves there 
 is no indication of a figurative meaning, nor is it rendered probable by the 
 general style of teaching used by Jesus, for he nowhere else presents moral 
 relations in the garb of demoniacal conditions ; on the contrary, whenever 
 he speaks, as here, of the departure of evil spirits, e. g. in Matt xvii. 21, he 
 evidently intends to be understood Uterally. But does the context favour a 
 figurative interpretation? Luke (xi. 24 ff.) places the discourse in question 
 after the defence of Jesus against the Pharisaic accusation, that he cast out 
 devils by Beelzebub : a position which is undoubtedly erroneous, as we have 
 seen, but which is a proof that he at least understood Jesus to speak liter- 
 ally — of real demons. Matthew also places the discourse near to the above 
 accusation and defence, but he inserts between them the demand of a sign, 
 together with its refusal, and he makes Jesus conclude with the application, 
 £ven so shall it be also unto this wicked generation. This addition, it is true, 
 gives the discourse a figurative application to the moral and religious condi- 
 tion of his cotemporaries, but only thus : Jesus intended the foregoing de- 
 scription of the expelled and returning demon literally, though he made a 
 secondary use of this event as an image of the moral condition of his cotem- 
 poraries. At any rate Luke, who has not the same addition, gives the dis- 
 course of Jesus, to use the expression of Paulus, as a warning against 
 demoniacal relapses. That the majority of theologians in the present day, 
 without decided support on the part of Matthew, and in decided contradiction 
 to Luke, advocate the merely figurative interpretation of this passage, appears 
 to be founded in an aversion to ascrible to Jesus so strongly developed a de- 
 monology, as lies in his words literally understood. But this is not to be 
 avoided, even leaving the above passage out of consideration. In Matt. xii. 
 25 f. 29, Jesus speaks of a kingdom and household of the devil, in a manner 
 which obviously outsteps the domain of the merely figurative : but above all, 
 the passage already quoted, Luke x. 18-20, is of such a nature as to compel 
 even Paulus, who is generally so fond of lending to the hallowed personages 
 of primitive Christian history the views of the present age, to admit that the 
 kingdom of Satan was not merely a symbol of evil to Jesus, and that he be- 
 lieved in actual demoniacal possession. For he says very justly, that as Jesus 
 here speaks, not to the patient or to the people, but to those who themselves, 
 according to his instructions, cured demoniacs, his words are not to be ex- 
 plained as a mere accommodation, when he confirms their belief that the 
 spirits are subject unto them, and describes their capability of curing the 
 malady in question, as a power over ^\\& power of the enemy? In answer also 
 to the repugnance of those with whose enlightenment a belief in demoniacal 
 possession is inconsistent, to admit that Jesus held that belief, the same theo- 
 logian justly observes that the most distinguished mind may retain a false 
 idea, prevalent among his cotemporaries, if it happen to lie out of his pecu- 
 liar sphere of thought. *" 
 
 Some light is thrown on the evangelical conception of the demoniacs, by 
 the opinions on this subject which we find in writers more or less cotempor- 
 
 1 B. Comm. i, s. 424. According to this, the passage relates to the Jewish people, who 
 before the exile were possessed by the devil in the form of idolatry, and afterwards in the 
 worst form of Pharisaism. 
 
 * Thus Fritzsche, in Matt., p. 447. 
 
 ' Exeg. Handb. 2, s. 566. 
 
 w Ut sup. I, b. s. 483. 2, s. 96. 
 
 D D 
 
41 8 PART II. CHAPTER XX. § 92. 
 
 ary. The general idea that evil spirits had influence on men, producing 
 melancholy,, insanity, and epilepsy, was early prevalent among the Greeks " 
 as well as the Hebrews ; '^ but the more distinct idea that evil spirits entered 
 into the human body and took possession of its members was not developed 
 until a considerably later period, and was a consequence of the dissemination 
 of the Oriental, particularly the Persian pneumatology among both Hebrews 
 and Greeks. 1^ Hence we find in Josephus the expressions Sai/idwa rots ^Sxriv 
 eicr8ud/u,Eva,i* eyxaSe^d/Aeva i" {demons entering into the living, settling themselves 
 there'), and the same ideas in Lucian '^ and Philostratus.^'' 
 
 Of the nature and origin of these spirits nothing is expressly stated in the 
 gospels, except that they belong to the household of Satan (Matt. xii. 26 ff. 
 parall.), whence the acts of one of them are directly ascribed to Satan (Luke 
 xiii. 16). But from Josephus,^* Justin Martyr," and Philostratus,20 with ■ 
 whom rabbinical writings agree,^i we learn tliat these demons were the disem- 
 bodied souls of wicked men ; and modern theologians have not scrupled to 
 attribute this opinion on their origin to the New Testament also.^^ Justin 
 and the rabbins more nearly particularize, as spirits that torment the living, 
 the sopls of the giants, the offspring of those angels who allied themselves to 
 the daughters of men ; the rabbins further add the souls of those who perished 
 in the deluge, and of those who participated in building the tower of Babel f^ 
 and with this agree the Clementine Homilies, for, according to them also, these 
 souls of the giants, having become demons, seek to attach themselves, as the 
 stronger, to human souls, and to inhabit human bodies.^* As, however, in the 
 continuation of the passage first cited, Justin endeavours to convince the 
 heathens of immortality from their own ideas, the opinion which he there ex- 
 presses, of demons being the souls of the departed in general, can scarcely be 
 
 '' Hence the words Sai/iov^v, KaKoSai/xopfv were used as synonymous with /isXa-yxoXpc 
 ficdveaSu. Plippocrates had to combat the opinion that epilepsy was the effect of demonia- 
 cal influence. Vid. Wetstein, s. 282 ff. 
 
 '^ Let the reader compare the njnj nXD nilT nil, which made Saul melancholy, i 
 Sam. xvi. 14. Its influence on Saul Is expressed by -IPiriJJa. 
 
 '* Vid. Creuzer, Symbolik, 3, s. 69 f. ; Baur, ApoUonius von Tyana und Christus, s. 144. 
 
 " Bell. jud. vii. vi. 3. 
 
 " Antiq. vi. xi. 2. On the state of Saul. 
 
 " Philopseud., 16. 
 
 '^ Vitas ApoUon. iv. 20, 25, com.p. Baur, ut sup. s. 38 f. 42. Even Aristotle speaks of 
 Saifiovi Twi yevoiiiyois KaTdxois. de mirab. l56, ed. Bekk. 
 
 ^^ Ut sup. , bell. j. : rk ykp Ka\ou/j.sva datfi^vta — TrovqpQiv icrriv &,v9 ptb-jritiv xi'eiJ/iaTa, Toh 
 ^lafftv ei(r5u6fi€va Kal KTeivovra roiis ^OTjdeias /at; Tu'y^dj'oi'ras. 
 
 19 ApoU. i. 18. 
 
 i»° Ut sup. iii. 38. 
 
 ^1 Vid. Eisenmenger» entdecktes Judenthum, 2, s. 427. 
 
 ^2 Paulus, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 39 ; L. J. I, a, a. 217. He appeals in support of this to 
 Matt. xiv. 2, where Herod, on hearing of the miracles of Jesus, says : /t is John the Baptist, 
 he is risen from the dead. In this expression Paulus finds the rabbinical opinion of the 
 ■113*3?> which is distinct from that of the '?'|3^J, or transmigration of souls properly so called, 
 ■ (that is, the passage of disembodied souls into the bodies of infants, while in the process of 
 formation), and according to which the soul of a dead person might unite itself to that of a 
 living one, and add to its power (vid. Eisenmenger 2, s. 85 ff.) But, as Fritzsche and others 
 have shown, the word ■ir/ipdy] refers to an actual resurrection of the Baptist, and not to this 
 rabbinical notion ; which, moreover, even were it implied, is totally different from that of 
 'demoniacal possession. Here it would be a good spirit who had entered into a prophet for 
 ' khe strengthening of his powers, as according to a later Jewish idea the soul of Seth was 
 ^^inited to that of Moses, and again the souls of Moses and Aaron to that of Samuel (Eisen- 
 ' knenger, ut sup.) ; but from this it would ty no means follow, that it was possible for wicked 
 Ispirits to enter into the living. 
 
 ^* Justin, Apol. ii. 5., Eisenmenger, ut sup. 
 
 2* Homil. viii. 18 f., ix. 9 f. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— DEMONIACS. 419 
 
 regarded as his, especially as his pupil Tatian expressly declares himself 
 against it;"= while Josephus affords no criterion as to the latent idea of the 
 New Testamant, since his Greek education renders it very uncertain whether 
 he presents the doctrine of demoniacal possession in its original Jewish, or in 
 a Grecian form. If it must be admitted that the Hebrews owed their doctrine 
 of demons to Persia, we know that the Deves of the Zend mythology were 
 originally and essentially wicked beings, existing prior to the human race ; of 
 these two characteristics, Hebraism as such might be induced to expunge the 
 former, which pertained to Dualism, but could have no reason for rejecting 
 the latter. Accordingly, in the Hebrew view, the demons were the fallen 
 angels of Gen. vi., the souls of their offspring the giants, and of the great 
 criminals before and immediately after the deluge, whom the popular imagin- 
 ation gradually magnified into superhuman beings. But in the ideas of the 
 Hebrews, there lay no motive for descending beyond the circle of these souls, 
 who might be conceived to form the court of Satan. Such a motive was only 
 engendered by the unidn of the Graeco-roman culture with the Hebraic : the 
 former had no Satan, and consequently no retinue of spirits devoted to his 
 service, but it had an abundance of Manes, Lemures, and the like, — all names 
 for disembodied souls that disquieted the living. Now, the combination of 
 these Grseco-roraan ideas with the above-mentioned Jewish ones, seems to 
 have been the source of the demonology of Josephus, of Justin, and also of 
 the later rabbins ; but it does not follow that the same mixed view belongs to 
 the New Testament. Rather, as this Grsecised form of the doctrine in ques- 
 tion is nowhere positively put forth by the evangelical writers, while on the 
 contrary the demons are in some passages represented as the household of 
 Satan : there is nothing to contravene the inference to be drawn from the un- 
 mixedly Jewish character of thought which reigns in the synoptical gospels on 
 all other subjects (apart from Christian modifications) ; namely, that we must 
 attribute to them the pure and original Jewish conception of the doctrine of 
 demons. 
 
 Jt is well known that the older theology, moved by a regard for the author- 
 ity of Jesus and the Evangelists, espoused the belief in the reality of demonia- 
 cal possession. The new theology, on the contrary, especially since the time 
 of Semler,^'' in consideration of the similarity between the condition of the 
 demoniacs in the New Testament and many naturally diseased subjects of 
 our own day, has begun to refer the malady of the former also to natural 
 causes, and to ascribe the evangelical supposition of supernatural causes to 
 the prejudices of that age. In modern days, on the occurrence of epilepsy, in- 
 sanity, and even a disturbance of the self-consciousness resembling the condi- 
 tion of the possessed described in the New Testament, it is no longer the 
 custom to account for them by the supposition of demoniacal influence : and 
 the reason of this seems to be, partly that the advancement in the knowledge 
 of nature and of mind has placed at command a wider range of facts and 
 analogies, which may serve to explain the above conditions naturally : partly 
 that the contradiction, involved in the idea of demoniacal possession, is be- 
 ginning to be at least dimly perceived. For— ^apart- from the difficulties 
 which the notion of the existence of a devil and demons entails— whatever 
 theory may be held as to the relation between the self-consciousness and the 
 bodily organs, it remains absolutely inconceivable how the union between the 
 two could be so far dissolved, that a foreign self-consciousness could gain an 
 
 2' Orat. contra Graecos, 16. . j ,.• ■ ^ 
 
 2" See his Commeniatio de dcemoniacis quorum in N. T. fit mentto, and his minute con- 
 sideration of demoniacal cases. So early as the time of Origen, physicians gave natural ex- 
 planations of the state of those supposed to be possessed. Orig. in Matth. xvii. 15. 
 
420 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 92. 
 
 entrance, thrust out that which belonged to the organism, and usurp its place. 
 Hence for every one who at once regards actual phenomena with enlightened 
 eyes, and the New Testament narratives with orthodox ones, there results the 
 contradiction, that what now proceeds from natural causes, must in the time 
 of Jesus have been caused supernaturally. 
 
 In order to remove this inconceivable difference between the conditions of 
 one age and another, avoiding at the same time any imputation on the New 
 Testament, Olshausen, whom we may fairly take as the representative of the 
 mystical theology and philosophy of the present day, denies both that all 
 states of the kind in question have now a natural cause, and that they had in 
 the time of Jesus invariably a supernatural cause. With respect to our own 
 time he asks, if the apostles were to enter our mad-houses, how would they 
 name many of the inmates ? ^^ We answer, they would to a certainty name 
 many of them demoniacs, by reason of their participation in the ideas of their 
 people and their age, not by reason of their apbstolic illumination ; and the 
 official who acted as their conductor would very properly endeavour to set 
 them right : whatever names therefore they might give to the inmates of our 
 asylums, our conclusions as to the naturalness of the disorders of those in- 
 mates would not be at all affected. With respect to the time of Jesus, this 
 theologian maintains that the same forms of disease were, even by the Jews, 
 in one case held demoniacal, in another not so, according to the difference 
 in their origin : for example, one who had become insane through an organic 
 disorder of the brain, or dumb through an injury of the tongue, was not 
 looked on as a demoniac, but only those, the cause of whose condition was 
 more or less psychical. Of such a distinction in the time of Jesus, Olshau- 
 sen is manifestly bound to give us instances. Whence could the Jews of that 
 age have acquired their knowledge of the latent natural causes of these con- 
 ditions — whence the criterion by which to distinguish an insanity or imbecility 
 originating in a malformation of the brain, from one purely psychical ? Was 
 not their observation limited to outward phenomena, and those of the coarsest 
 character? The nature of their distinctions seems to be this : the state of an 
 epileptic with his sudden falls and convulsions, or of a maniac in his delirium, 
 especially if, from the reaction of the popular idea respecting himself he 
 speaks in the person of another, seems to point to an external influence 
 which governs him ; and consequently, so soon as the belief in demoniacal 
 possession existed among the people, all such states were referred to this 
 cause, as we find them to be in the New Testament : whereas in dumbness 
 and gouty contraction or lameness, the influence of an external power is less 
 decidedly indicated, so that these afflictions were at one time ascribed to a 
 possessing demon, at another not so. Of the former case we find an example 
 in the dumb persons already mentioned. Matt. ix. 32, xii. 22, and in the 
 woman who was bowed down, Luke xiii. 1 1 j of the latter, in the man who 
 was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, Mark vii. 32 ff"., and in the 
 many paralytics mentioned in the gospels. The decision for the one opinion 
 or the other was however certainly not founded on an investigation into the 
 origin of the disease, but solely on its external symptoms. If then the Jews, 
 and with them the Evangelists, referred the two chief classes of these condi- 
 tions to demoniacal influence, there remains for him who believes himself 
 bound by their opinion, without choosing to shut out the lights of modern 
 science, the glaring inconsistency of considering the same diseases as in one 
 age natural, in another supernatural. 
 
 But the most formidable difficulty for Olshausen, in his attempted media- 
 
 *' B. Comm. i, s. 296, Anm. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS — DEMONIACS. 42 1 
 
 tion between the Judaical demonology of the New Testament and the intelli-- 
 gence of our own day, arises from the influence of the latter on his own 
 mind — an influence which renders him adverse to the idea of personal 
 demons. This theologian, initiated in the philosophy of the present age, 
 endeavours to resolve the host of demons, which in the New Testament are 
 regarded as distinct individuals, into a system of emanations, forming the con- 
 tinuity of a single substance, which indeed sends forth from itself separate 
 povyers, not, however, to subsist as independent individuals, but to return as 
 accidents into the unity of the substance. This cast of thought we have 
 already observed in the opinions of Olshausen concerning angels, and it 
 appears still more decidedly in his demonology. Personal demons are too 
 repugnant, and as Olshausen himself expresses it,^ the comprehension of 
 two subjects in one individual is too inconceivable to find a ready acceptation. 
 Hence it is everywhere with vague generality that a kingdom of evil and 
 darkness is spoken of; and though a personal prince is given to it, its demons 
 are understood to be mere effluxes and operations, by which the evil principle 
 manifests itself. But the most vulnerable point of Olshausen's opinion con- 
 cerning demons is this : it is too much for him to believe that Jesus asked 
 the name of the demon in the Gadarene ; since he himself doubts the person- 
 ality of those emanations of the kingdom of darkness, it cannot, he thinks, . 
 have been thus decidedly supposed by Christ ; — hence he understands the 
 question. What is thy name 1 (Mark v. 9) to be addressed, not to the demon, 
 but to the man, 23 plainly in_opgosition_to the whole context, for the answer, 
 Legion, appears to be in no degree the result of a misunderstanding, but the 
 right answer — the one expected by Jesus. 
 
 If, however, the demons are, according to Olshausen's opinion, impersonal 
 powers, that which guides them and determines their various functions is the 
 law which governs the kingdom of darkness in relation to the kingdom of 
 light. On this theory, the worse a man is morally, the closer must be the 
 connexion between him and the kingdom of evil, and the closest conceivable 
 connexion — the entrance of the power of darkness into the personality of 
 the man, i.e. possession — must always occur in the most wicked. But his- : 
 torically this is not so : the demoniacs in the gospels appear to be sinners 
 only in the sense that all sick persons need forgiveness of sins ; and the greatest 
 sinners (Judas for example) are spared the infliction of possession. The com- 
 mon opinion, with its personal demons, escapes this contradiction. It is true 
 that this opinion also, as we find for instance, in the Clementine Homilies, 
 firmly maintains it to be by sin only that man subjects himself to the ingress 
 of the demon ; ^^ but here there is yet scope for the individual will of the 
 demon, who often, from motives not to be calculated, passes by the worst, 
 and holds in chase the less wicked. ^1 On the contrary, if the deraoris are 
 considered, as by Olshausen, to be the actions of the power of evil in its 
 relation to the power of goodness ; this relation being regulated by laws, 
 everything arbitrary and accidental is excluded. Hence it evidently costs 
 that theologian some pains to disprove the consequence, that according to 
 his theory the possessed must always be the most wicked. Proceeding from 
 the apparent contest of two powers in the demoniacs, he adopts the position 
 that the state of demoniacal possession does not appear in those who entirely 
 
 2» S. 29s f. 
 
 "' S. 302, after the example of Paulus, exeg. Handb. i, b, s. 474. 
 
 *" Homil. viii. 19. ,. j j ■ 
 
 31 Thus Asmodeus chooses Sara and her husband as objects of torment and destruction, 
 
 not because either the former or the latter were particularly wicked, but because Sara's 
 
 beauty attracted him. Tob. vi. 12-15. 
 
'422 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 92. 
 
 give themselves up to evil, and thus maintain an internal unity of disposition, 
 but only in those in whom there exists a struggle against sin."^ In that case, 
 however, the above state, being reduced to a purely moral phenomenon, must 
 appear far more frequently ; every violent inward struggle must manifest itself 
 under this form, and especially those who ultimately give themselves up to 
 evil must, before arriving at this point, pass through a period of conflict, that 
 is of possession. Olshausen therefore adds a physical condition, namely, 
 that the preponderance of evil in the man must have weakened his corporeal 
 organization, particularly the nervous system, before he can become suscep- 
 tible of the demoniacal state. But since such disorders of the nervous 
 system may occur without any moral fault, who does not see that the state 
 which it is intended to ascribe to demoniacal power as its proper source, is 
 thus referred chiefly to natural causes, and that therefore the argument defeats 
 its own object ? Hence Olshausen quickly turns away from this side of the 
 question, and lingers on the comparison of the Sai/Aow^oVei'os (demo7iiac) with 
 the TTovrjpo^ {wicked) ; whereas he ought rather to compare the former with 
 the epileptic and insane, for it is only by this means that any light can be 
 thrown on the nature of possession. This shifting of the question from the 
 ground of physiology and psychology to that of morality and religion, renders 
 the discussion concerning the demoniacs one of the most useless which 
 Olshausen's work contains.^^ 
 
 Let us then relinquish the ungrateful attempt to modernize the New Testa- 
 ment conception of the demoniacs, or to judaize our modern ideas ; — let us 
 rather, in relation to this subject, understand the statements of the New 
 Testament as simply as they are given, without allowing our investigations to 
 be restricted by the ideas therein presented, which belonged to the age and 
 nation of its writers.^* 
 
 The method adopted for the cure of the demoniacal state was, especially 
 among the Jews, in conformity with what we have ascertained to have been 
 the idea of its nature. The cause of the malady was not supposed to be, as 
 in natural diseases, an impersonal object or condition, such as an impure 
 fluid, a morbid excitement or debility, but a self-conscious being ; hence it 
 was treated, not mechanically or chemically, but logically, i.e. by words. The 
 demon was enjoined to depart ; and to give effect to this injunction, it was 
 coupled with the names of beings who were believed to have power over . 
 demons. Hence the main instrument against demoniacal possession was 
 conjuration,^^ either in the name of God, or of angels, or of some other 
 potent being, e.g. the Messiah (Acts xix. 13), with certain forms which were 
 said to be derived from Solomon. ^^ In addition to this, certain roots,^'' 
 stones,88 fumigations and amulets ^* were used, in obedience to traditions 
 likewise believed to have been handed down from Solomon. Now as the 
 cause of the malady was not seldom really a psychical one, or at least one 
 lying in the nervous system, which may be acted on to an incalculable extent 
 by moral instrumentality, this psychological treatment was not altogether 
 illusory ! for by exciting in the patient the belief that the demon by which he 
 
 'i! S. 294. 
 
 S8 It fills s. 289-298. 
 
 ?^ I have endeavoured to present helps towards a scientific conception of the states in 
 question in several essays, which are now incorporated in my Charakteristiken u. Kritiken. 
 Comp. Wirth, Theorie des Somnambulismus. S. 311 ff. 
 
 "' See note 16, the passage quoted from Lucian. 
 
 8^ Joseph., Antiq. viii. ii. S- 
 
 '' Joseph., ut sup. 
 
 *' Gittin, f. Ixvii. 2. 
 
 =' Justin Mart. dial. c. Tryph. Ixxxv. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS — DEMONIACS. 423 
 
 was possessed, could not retain his hold before a form of conjuration, it 
 might often effect the removal of the disorder. Jesus himself admits that 
 the Jewish exorcists sometimes succeeded in working such cures (Matt. xii. 
 27). But we read of Jesus that without conjuration by any other power, and 
 without the apphance of any further means, he expelled the demons by his 
 word. The most remarkable cures of this kind, of which the gospels inform 
 us, we are now about to examine. 
 
 § 93- 
 
 CASES OF THE EXPULSION OF DEMONS BY JESUS, CONSIDERED SINGLY. 
 
 Among the circumstantial narratives which are given us in the three first 
 gospels of cures wrought by Jesus on demoniacs, three are especially remark- 
 able : the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, that of the 
 Gadarenes possessed by a multitude of demons, and lastly, that of the lunatic 
 whom the disciples were unable to cure. 
 
 In John the conversion of water into wine is the first miracle performed by 
 Jesus after his return from the scene of his baptism into Galilee ; but in Mark 
 (i. 23 ff.) and Luke (iv. 33 if.) the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue of 
 Capernaum has this position. Jesus had produced a deep impression by his 
 teaching, when suddenly, a demoniac who was present, cried out in the 
 character of the demon that possessed him, that he would have nothing to do 
 with him, that he knew him to be the Messiah who was come to destroy 
 them — the demons ; whereupon Jesus commanded the demon to hold his 
 peace and come out of the man, which happened amid cries and convulsions 
 on the part of the demoniac, and to the great astonishment of the people at 
 the power thus exhibited by Jesus. 
 
 Here we might, with rationalistic commentators, represent the case to our- 
 selves thus : the demoniac, during a lucid interval, entered the synagogue, 
 was impressed by the powerful discourse- of Jesus, and overhearing one of the 
 audience speak of him as the Messiah, was seized with the idea that the un- 
 clean spirit by which he was possessed, could not maintain itself in the pre- 
 sence of the holy Messiah ; whence he fell into a paroxysm, and expressed 
 his awe of Jesus in the character of the demon. When Jesus perceived this, 
 what was more natural than that he should make use of the man's persuasion 
 of his power, and command the demon to come out of him, thus laying hold 
 of the maniac by his fixed idea; which according to the laws of mental 
 hygiene, might very probably have a favourable effect. It is under this view 
 that Paulus regards the occasion as that on which the thought of using his 
 messianic fame as a means of curing such sufferers, first occurred to Jesus. ' 
 
 But many difficulties oppose themselves to this natural conception of 
 the case. The demoniac is supposed to learn that Jesus was the Messiah 
 from the people in the synagogue. On this point the text is not merely 
 silent, but decidedly contradicts such an opinion. The demon, speaking 
 through the man, evidently proclaims his knowledge of the Messiahship of 
 Jesus, in the words, olSa o-t tU d k. t. X., not as information casually imparted 
 by man, but as an intuition of his demoniacal nature. Further, when Jesus 
 cries. Hold thy peace I he refers to what the demon had just uttered concern- 
 ing his messiahship ; for it is related of Jesus that he suffered not the demons 
 to speak because they knew him (Mark i. 34 ; Luke iv. 41), or because they 
 
 ' Exeg. Handb. i. 6, s. 422 ; L. J. i, a, s. iz8. 
 
424 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 93- 
 
 made him known (Mark iii. 12). If then Jesus believed that by enjoining 
 silence on the demon he could hinder the promulgation of his messiahship, 
 he must have been of opinion, not that the demoniac had heard something 
 of it from the people in the synagogue, but contrariwise that the latter might 
 learn it from the demoniac ; and this accords with the fact, that at the time 
 of the first appearance of Jesus, in which the Evangelists place the occurrence, 
 no one had yet thought of him as the Messiah. 
 
 If it be asked, how the demoniac could discover that Jesus was the Mes- 
 siah, apart from any external communication, Olshausen presses into his ser- 
 vice the preternaturally heightened activity of the nervous system, which, in 
 demoniacs as in somnambules, sharpens the presentient power, and produces 
 a kind of clear-sightedness, by means of which such a man might very well 
 discern the importance of Jesus as regarded the whole realm of spirits. The 
 evangelical narrative, it is true, does not ascribe that knowledge to a power of 
 the patient, but of the demon dwelling within him, and this is the only view 
 consistent with the Jewish ideas of that period. The Messiah was to appear, 
 in order to overthrow the demoniacal kingdom (diroXe'trat ^/uSs, comp. i John 
 iii. 8 ; Luke x. 18 f.)^ and to cast the devil and his angels into the lake of 
 fire (Matt. xxv. 41 ; Rev. xx. lo) ^ : it followed of course that the demons 
 would recognize him who was to pass such a sentence on them.* This 
 however might be deducted as an admixture of the opinion of the narrator, 
 without damage to the rest of the narrative ; but it must first be granted 
 admissible to ascribe so extensive a presentient power to demoniacal subjects. 
 Now, as it is in the highest degree improbable that a nervous patient, how- 
 ever intensely excited, should recognize Jesus as the Messiah, at a time when 
 he was not believed to be such by any one else, perhaps not even by him- 
 self; and as on the other hand this recognition of the Messiah by the demon 
 so entirely agrees with the popular ideas ;— we must conjecture that on this 
 point the evangelical tradition is not in perfect accordance with historical 
 truth, but has been attuned to those ideas.^ There was the more inducement 
 to this, the more such a recognition of Jesus on the part of the demons 
 would redound to his glory. As when adults disowned him, praise was pre- 
 pared for him out of the mouth of babes (Matt. xxi. 16) — as he was con- 
 vinced that if men were silent, the very stones would cry out (Luke xix. 40) : 
 so it must appear fitting, that when his people whom he came to save would 
 not acknowledge him, he should have the involuntary homage of demons, 
 whose testimony, since they had only ruin to expect from him, must be im- 
 partial, and from their higher spiritual nature was to be relied on. 
 
 In the above history of the cure of a demoniac, we have a case of the 
 simplest kind ; the cure of the possessed Gadarenes on the contrary (Matt, 
 viii. 28 ff ; Mark v. i if. ; Luke viii. 26 ff.) is a very complex one, for in this 
 instance we have, together with several divergencies of the Evangelists, instead 
 of one demon, many, and instead of a simple departure of these demons, 
 their entrance into a herd of swine. 
 
 After a stormy passage across the sea of Galilee to its eastern shore, Jesus 
 
 2 Bibl. Comm. i. 296. 
 
 3 Comp. Bertholdt, Christol. Jud. §§ 36-41. 
 
 * According to Pesikta in Jallcut Schimoni ii. f. Ivi. 3 (s. Bertholdt, p. 185). Satan re- 
 cognizes in the same manner the pre-existing Messiah at the foot of the throne of God with 
 terror, as he fui me et omnes gentiles in infemum pracipitaturus est. 
 
 ' Fritzsche, in Marc, p. 35 : In multis evangeliorum locis homines legasa prcaiis damoni- 
 bus agitatos, quum primum conspexerint Jesum, eum Messiam esse, a nemine unquam de hoc 
 re commonitos, statim intelligere. In qua re hac nostri scriptores ducti sunt sententia, con- 
 sentanmm esse. Satance satellites facile cognovisse Messiam, qtiippe insignia de se supplicia . 
 aliquando sumturmn. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS — DEMONIACS. 425 
 
 meets, according to Mark and Luke, a demoniac who lived among tlie tombs," 
 and was subject to outbreaks of terrific fury against himself and others ; ac- 
 cording to Matthew, there were two. It is astonishing how long harmonists 
 have resorted to miserable expedients, such as that Mark and Luke mention 
 only one because he was particularly distinguished by wildness, or Matthew 
 two, because he included the attendant who guarded the maniac,^ rather than 
 admit an essential difference between the two narratives. Since this step has 
 been gained, the preference has been given to the statement of the two inter- 
 mediate Evangelists, from the consideration that maniacs of this class are 
 generally unsociable ; and the addition of a second demoniac by Matthew has 
 Oeen explained by supposing that the plurality of the demons spoken of in the 
 narratives became in his apprehension a plurality of demoniacs.* But the 
 impossibiUty that two maniacs should in reality associate themselves, or per- 
 haps be associated merely in the original legend, is not so decided as to fur- 
 nish in itself a ground for preferring the narrative in Mark and' Luke to that 
 in Matthew. At least if it be asked, which of the two representations could 
 the most easily have been formed from the other by tradition, the probability 
 on both sides will be found equal. For if according to the above supposition, 
 the plurality of demons might give rise to the idea of a plurality of demoniacs, 
 it may also be said, conversely : the more accurate representation of Matthew, 
 in which a plurality of demoniacs as well as of demons was mentioned, did 
 not give prominence to the specifically extraordinary feature in the case, 
 namely, that one man was possessed by many demons ; and as, in order to 
 exhibit this, the narrative when reproduced must be so expressed as to make 
 it clear that many demons inhabited one man, this might easily occasion by 
 degrees the opposition of the demoniac in the singular to the plural number 
 of the demons. For the rest, the introduction of Matthew's narrative is con- 
 cise and general, that of the two others circumstantially descriptive ; another 
 difference from which the greater originality of the latter has been deduced. ^^ 
 But it is quite as probable that the details which Luke and Mark have in 
 common, namely, that the possessed would wear no clothing, broke all fetters, 
 and wounded himself with stones, are an arbitrary enlargement on the simple 
 characteristic, exceeding fierce, which Matthew gives, with the consequence that 
 no one could pass by that way, — as that the latter is a vague abridgment of 
 the former. 
 
 This scene between Jesus and the demoniac or demoniacs opens, like the 
 other, with a cry of terror from the latter, who, speaking in the person of the 
 possessing demon, exclaims that he wishes to have nothing to do with Jesus, 
 the Messiah, trom whom he has to expect only torment. Two hypotheses 
 have been framed, to explain how the demoniac came at once to recognize 
 Jesus as the Messiah: according to one, Jesus was even then reputed to be 
 the Messiah on the Persean shore ; "^^ according to the other, some of those 
 who had come across the sea with Jesus had said to the man (whom on ac- 
 count of his fierceness no one could come near !) that the Messiah had just 
 
 ^ A favourite resort of maniacs, vid. Lightfoot and Schottgen, in loc, and of unclean 
 spirits, vid. rabbinical passages, ap. Wetstein. 
 
 ' The notion tliat the cutting himself with stones which Mark ascribes to the demoniac, 
 was an act of penance in lucid moments, belongs to the errors to which Olshausen is led by 
 his false opinion of a moral and religious point of view in relation to these phenomena. It 
 is well known, however, that the paroxysms of such disorders are precisely the occasions on 
 which a self-destructive fury is manifested. 
 
 s Vid. the collection of such explanations, ap. Fritzsche, in Matt., p. 327. 
 
 9 Thus Schulz, iiber das Abendmahl, s. 309 ; Paulus, in loc. Uase, L. J. § 75. 
 . '" Schulz, ut sup. 
 
 11 Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 127. 
 
426 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 93- 
 
 landed at such a spot : ^^ but both are alike groundless, for it is plain that in 
 this narrative, as in the former, the above feature is a product of the Jewish- 
 Christian opinion respecting the relation of the demons to the Messiah.i^ 
 Here, however, another difference meets us. According to Matthew, the 
 possessed, when they see Jesus, cry : What have we to do with thee? Art 
 thou come to torment us 1 — according to Luke, the demoniac falls at the feet 
 of Jesus and says beseechingly. Torment me not; and lastly, according to 
 Mark, he runs from a distance to meet Jesus, falls at his feet and adjures him 
 by God not to torment him. Thus we have again a climax : in Matthew, the 
 demoniac, stricken with terror, deprecates the unwelcome approach of Jesus; 
 in Luke, he accosts Jesus, when arrived, as a suppliant ; in Mark, he eagerly 
 runs to meet Jesus, while yet at a distance. Those commentators who here 
 take Mark's narrative as the standard one, are obliged themselves to admit, 
 that the hastening of a demoniac towards Jesus whom he all the while 
 dreaded, is somewhat of a contradiction ; and they endeavour to relieve them- 
 selves of the difficulty, by the supposition that the man set off to meet Jesus 
 in a lucid moment, when he wished to be freed from the demon, but being 
 heated by running,'' or excited by the words of Jesus,'" he fell into the par- 
 oxysm in which, assuming the character of the demon, he entreated that the 
 expulsion might be suspended. But in the closely consecutive phrases of 
 Mark, Seeing— he ran — and worshipped — and cried — and said, llmv — ISpa/xe — kox 
 Trpoo-eKwiycrc — Kai Kpi.^oM — eiirc- there is no trace of a change in the state of 
 the demoniac, and the improbability of his representation subsists, for one 
 really possessed, if he had recognized t^e Messiah at a distance, would have 
 anxiously avoided, rather than have approached him ; and even setting this 
 aside, it is impossible that one who believed himself to he possessed by a 
 demon inimical to God, should adjure Jesus by God, as Mark makes the 
 demoniac do.'^ If then his narrative cannot be the original one, that of Luke, 
 which is only so far the simpler that it does not represent the demoniac as 
 running towards Jesus and adjuring him, is too closely allied to it to be 
 regarded as the nearest to the fact. That of Matthew is without doubt the 
 purest, for the. terror-stricken question. Art thou come to destroy us before the 
 time? is better suited to a demon, who, as the enemy of the Messiah's king- 
 dom, could expect no forbearance from the Messiah than the entreaty for 
 clemency in Mark and Luke ; though Philostratus, in a narrative which might 
 be regarded as an imitation of this evangelical one, has chosen the latter 
 form.''' 
 
 From the course of the narratives hitherto, it would appear that the demons, 
 in this as in the first narrative, addressed Jesus in the manner described, 
 before anything occurred on his part ; yet the two intermediate Evangelists go 
 on to state, that Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to com.e out of the 
 man. When did Jesus do this? The most natural answer would be : before 
 the man spoke to him. Now in Luke the address of the demoniac is so 
 closely connected with the word wpoo-eTrco-e, he fell down, and then again with 
 avaKpa^ws, having cried out, that it seems necessary to place the command of 
 Jesus before the cry and the prostration, and hence to consider it as their 
 cause. Yet Luke himself rather gives the mere sight of Jesus as the cause of 
 
 " Paulus, L.J. I, a, s. 232. 
 " Vid. Fritzsche, in Matt., p. 329. 
 " Natiirliche Geschichte, 2, 174. 
 " Paulus, exeg. Handb. i, 473 ; Olshausen, s. 302. 
 '^ This even Paulus, a. 474, and Olshausen, s. 303, find surprising. 
 
 '^ It is the narrative of the manner in which Apollonius of Tyana unmasked a demon 
 (empusa), vit. Ap.Av. <S ;j ap. Baur, s. 145. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— DEMONIACS. 427 
 
 those demonstrations on the part of the demoniac, so that his representation 
 leaves us in perplexity as to where the command of Jesus should find its 
 place. The case is still worse in Mark, for here a similar dependence of the 
 successive phrases thrusts back the command of Jesus even before the word 
 c8pa/*e, he ran, so that we should have to imagine rather strangely that Jesus 
 cried to the demon, i^ekOe, Come out, from a distance. Thus the two inter- 
 mediate Evangelists are in an error with regard either to the consecutive 
 particulars that precede the command or to the command itself, and our only 
 question is, where may the error be most probably presumed to lie ? Here 
 Schleiermacher himself admits, that if in the original narrative an antecedent 
 command of Jesus had been spoken of, it would have been given in its pro- 
 per place, before the prayer of the demons, and as a quotation of the precise 
 words of Jesus ; whereas the supplementary manner in which it is actually 
 inserted, with its abbreviated and indirect form (in Luke ; Mark changes it 
 after his usual style, into a direct address), is a strong foundation for the 
 opinion that it is an explanatory addition furnished by the narrator from his 
 own conjecture.^^ And it is an extremely awkward addition, for it obliges 
 the reader to recast his conception of the entire scene. At first the pith of 
 the incident seems to be, that the demoniac had instantaneously recognized 
 and supplicated Jesus ;but the narrator drops this original idea, and reflecting 
 that the prayer of the demon must have been preceded by a severe command 
 from Jesus, he corrects his previous omission, and remarks that Jesus had 
 given his command in the first instance. 
 
 To their mention of this command, Mark and Luke annex the question put 
 by Jesus to the demon : W/iat is ihy name 1 In reply, a multitude of demons 
 make known their presence, and give as their name. Legion. Of this episode 
 Matthew has nothing. In the above addition we have found a supplementary 
 explanation of the former part of the narrative : what if this question and 
 answer were an anticipatory introduction to the sequel, and likewise the 
 spontaneous production of the legend or the narrator ? Let us examine the 
 reasons that render it probable: the wish immediately expressed by the 
 demons to enter the herd of swine, does not in Matthew presuppose a mul- 
 titude of demons in each of the two possessed, since we cannot know whether 
 the Hebrews were not able to believe that even two demons only could 
 possess a whole herd of swine : but a later writer might well think it requisite 
 to make the number of the evil spirits equal the number of the swine. Now, 
 what a herd is in relation to animals, an army or a division of an army is in 
 relation to men and superior beings, and as it was required to express a large 
 division, nothing could more readily suggest itself than the Roman legion, 
 which term in Matt. xxvi. 53, is applied to angels, as here to demons. But 
 without further considering this more precise estimate of the Evangelists, we 
 must pronounce it inconceivable that several demons had set up their habita- 
 tion in one individual. For even if we had attained so far as to conceive how 
 one demon by a subjection of the human consciousness could possess himself 
 of a human organization, imagination would still fail us to conceive that many 
 personal demons could at once possess one man. For as possession means 
 nothing else, than that the demon constitutes himself the subject of the con- 
 sciousness, and as consciousness can in reality have but one focus, one 
 
 18 Ut sup s 128. When, however, he accounts for this incorrect supplement of Luke's 
 by supposing that his informant, being engaged in the vessel, had remained behmd, and 
 thus had missed the commencement of the scene with the demoniac, this is too laboured 
 an exercise of ingenuity, and presupposes the antiquated opinion, that there was the most 
 immediate relation possible between the evangelical histories and the facts which they 
 report. 
 
428 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 93- 
 
 central point : it is under every condition absolutely inconceivable that several 
 demons should at the same time take possession of one man. Manifold pos- 
 session could only exist in the sense of an alternation of possession by various 
 demons, and not as here in that of a whole army of them dwelling at once in 
 one man, and at once departing from him. 
 
 All the narratives agree in this, that the demons (in order, as Mark says, 
 not to be sent out ot the country, or according to Luke, into the deep) en- 
 treated of Jesus permission to enter into the herd of swine feeding near ; that 
 this was granted them by Jesus ; and that forthwith, owing to their influence, 
 the whole herd of swine (ivlark, we must not ask on what authority, fixes their 
 number at about two thousand) were precipitated into the sea and drowned. 
 If we adopt here the point of ,view taken in the gospel narratives, which 
 throughout suppose the existence of real demons, it is yet to be asked : how 
 can demons, admitting even that they can take possession of men, — how, we 
 say, can they, being at all events intelligent spirits, have and obtain the wish 
 to enter into brutal forms? Every religion and philosophy which rejects the 
 transmigration of souls, must, for the same reason, also deny the possibility of 
 this passage of the demons into swine ; and Olshausen is quite right in class- 
 ing the swine of Gadara in the New Testament with Balaam's ass in the Old, 
 as a similar scandal and stumbling blockP This theologian, however, rather 
 evades than overcomes the difficulty, by the observation that we are here to 
 suppose, not an entrance of the individual demons into the individual swine, 
 but merely an influence of all the evil spirits on the swine collectively. For 
 the expression, (.ia-tKdiiv cis tovs x°'P°^5) ^^ enter into the swine, as it stands 
 opposed to the expression, «feX6eiv e/c rov dvOpumov, to go out of the man, can- 
 not possibly mean otherwise than that the demons were to assume the same 
 relation to the swine which they had borne to the possessed man ; besides, a 
 mere influence could not preserve them from banishment out of the country 
 or into the deep, but only an actual habitation of the bodies of the animals : 
 so that the scandal and stumbling block remain. Thus the prayer in question 
 cannot possibly have been offered by real demons, though it might by Jewish 
 maniacs, sharing the ideas of their people. According to these ideas it is a 
 torment to evil spirits to be destitute of a corporeal envelopment, because 
 without a body they cannot gratify their sensual desires ; ^"^ if therefore 
 they were driven out of men they must wish to enter into the bodies of 
 brutes, and what was better suited to an impure spirit TTuev/jia aKadaprov, than 
 an impure animal ^Sov aKaOaprov, like a swine ? ^^ So far, therefore, it is 
 possible that the Evangelists might correctly represent the fact, only, in ac- 
 cordance with their national ideas, ascribing to the demons what should 
 rather have been referred to the madness of the patient. But when it is 
 further said that the demons actually entered the swine, do not the Evangelists 
 affirm an evident impossibility? Paulus thinks that the Evangelists here as 
 everywhere else identify the possessed men with the possessing demons, and 
 hence attribute to the latter the entrance into the swine, while in fact it was 
 only the. former, who, in obedience to their fixed idea, rushed upon the herd.^^ 
 It is true that Matthew's expression aTr^kdov di tovs x°V°^h taken alone, 
 might be understood of a mere rushing towards the swine ; not only however, 
 
 " S. 305, Anm. 
 
 20 Clem. Horn. ix. 10. 
 
 21 Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 332. According to Eisenmenger, 2, 447 ff., the Jews held that 
 demons generally had a predilection for impure places, and injalkut Rubeni f. x. 2. (Wetstein) 
 we find this observation : Anima idololairarum, qua venit a spiritu immundo, vacatur 
 porcus. 
 
 ^^ Ut sup. s. 474, 485. Winer, b. Realw. i, a. 192. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS — DEMONIACS. 429 
 
 as Paulus himself must admit, does the word eio-eX^o'vTes in the two other 
 Evangelists distinctly imply a real entrance into the swine ; but also Matthew 
 has like them before the word a.inj\$ov, they entered, the expression efeX^oVrcs 
 01 8at/iov£s, the demons coming out (sc. 4k tS>v a.v6p<!>Tr<i>v out of the men) : thus 
 plainly enough distinguishing the demons who entered the swine from the 
 men.^' Thus our Evangelists do not in this instance merely relate what 
 actually happened, in the colours which it took from the false lights of their 
 age ; they have here a particular, which cannot possibly have happened in the 
 manner they allege. 
 
 A new difficulty arises from the effect which the demons are said to have 
 produced in the swine. Scarcely had they entered them, when they compelled 
 the whole herd to precipitate themselves into the sea. It is reasonably asked, 
 what then did the demons gain by entering into the animals, if they immedi- 
 ately destroyed the bodies of which they had taken possession, and thus 
 robbed themselves of the temporary abode for which they had so earnestly 
 entreated? 2* The conjecture, that the design of the demons in destroying 
 the swine, was to incense the minds of their owners against Jesus, which is 
 said to have been the actual result,^^ is too far-fetched ; the other conjecture 
 that the demoniacs, rushing with cries on the herd, together with the flight of 
 their keepers, terrified the swine and chased them into the water, 2* — even if it 
 were not opposed as we have seen to the text, — would not suffice to explain 
 the drowning of a herd of swine amounting to 2,000, according to Mark ; or 
 only a numerous herd, according to the general statement of Matthew. The 
 expedient of supposing that in truth it was only a part of the herd that was 
 drowned,*'' has not the slightest foundation in the evangehcal narrative. The 
 difficulties connected with this point are multiplied by the natural reflection 
 that the drowning of the herd would involve no slight injury to the owners, 
 and that of this injury Jesus was the mediate author. The orthodox, bent ofi 
 justifying Jesus, suppose that the permission to the demons to enter into the 
 swine was necessary to render the cure of the demoniac possible, and, they 
 argue, brutes are assuredly to be killed that man may live ; ^^ but they do not 
 perceive that they thus, in a manner most inconsistent with their point of 
 view, circumscribe the power of Jesus over the demoniacal kingdom. Again, 
 it is supposed, that the swine probably belonged to Jews, and that Jesus in- 
 tended to punish them for their covetous transgression of the law,*^ that he 
 acted with divine authority, which often sacrifices individual good to higher 
 objects, and by lightning, hail and inundations causes destruction to the 
 property of many men,*" in which case, to accuse God of injustice would be 
 absurd. '1 But to adopt this expedient is to confound, in a way the most 
 inadmissible on the orthodox system, Christ's state of humihation with his 
 state of exaltation : it is to depart, in a spirit of mysticisth, from the wise 
 doctrine of Paul, that he was made under the law, yevo/j-evoi vtto vofiov (Gal, iv. 
 4), and that he made himself of no reputation iavrSv eKevuiae (Phil. ii. 7) : it 
 is to make Jesus a being altogether foreign to us, since in relation to the 
 moral estimate of his actions, it lifts him above the standard of humanity. 
 Nothing remains, therefore, but to take the naturalistic supposition of the 
 
 23 Fritzsche, in Matth., s. 330. 
 2* Paulus, ut sup. s. 475 f. 
 
 25 Olshausen, s. 307. 
 
 26 Paulus, s. 474- 
 
 27 Paulus, s. 485 ; Winer, ut sup. 
 
 28 Olshausen, ut sup. 
 
 29 Ibid. . o J- r 
 8" Ullmann, iiber die Unsiindlichkeit Jesu, in semen' Studien, I, I, s. 51 f. 
 31 Olshausen, ut sup. 
 
430 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 93. 
 
 rushing of the demoniacs among the swine, and to represent the consequent 
 destruction of the latter as something unexpected by Jesus, for which there- 
 fore he is not responsible : ^^ in the plainest contradiction to the evangelical 
 account, which makes Jesus, even if not directly cause the issue, foresee it in 
 the most decided manner. ^'^ Thus there appears to attach to Jesus the 
 charge of an injury done to the property of another, and the opponents of 
 Christianity have long ago made this use of the narrative.^* It must be ad- 
 mitted that Pythagoras in a similar case acted far more justly, for when he 
 liberated some fish from the net, he indemnified the fishermen who had taken 
 them. ^5 
 
 Thus the narrative before us is a tissue of difficulties, of which those re- 
 lating to the swine are not the slightest. It is no wonder therefore that 
 commentators began to doubt the thorough historical truth of this anecdote 
 earlier than that of most others in the public life of Jesus, and particularly to 
 sever the connexion between the destruction of the swine and the expulsion 
 of the demons by Jesus. Thus Krug thought that tradition had reversed the 
 order of these two facts. The swine according to him were precipitated into 
 the sea before the landing of Jesus, by the storm which raged during his 
 voyage, and when Jesus subsequently wished to cure the demoniac, either he 
 himself or one of his followers persuaded the man that his demons were 
 already gone into those swine and had hurled them into the sea ; which was 
 then believed and reported to be the fact.^^ K. Ch. L. Schmidt makes the 
 swine-herds go to meet Jesus on his landing; during which interim many of 
 the untended swine fall into the sea ; and as about this time Jesus had com- 
 manded the demon to depart from the man, the bystanders imagine that the 
 two events ^'' stood in the relation of cause and effect. The prominent part 
 which is played in these endeavours at explanation, by the accidental coinci- 
 dence of many circumstances, betrays that maladroit mixture of the mythical 
 system of interpretation with the natural which characterizes the earliest 
 attempts, from the mythical point of view. Instead of inventing a natural 
 foundation, for which we have nowhere any warrant, and which in no degree 
 explains the actual narrative in the gospels, adorned as it is with the miracu- 
 lous ; we must rather ask, whether in the probable period of the formation of 
 the evangelical narratives, there are not ideas to be found from which the 
 story of the swine in the history before us might be explained ? 
 
 We have already adduced one opinion of that age bearing on this point, 
 namely, that demons are unwilling to remain without bodies, and that they 
 have a predilection for impure places, whence the bodies of swine must be 
 best suited to them : this does not however explain why they should have 
 precipitated the swine into the water. But we are not destitute of informa- 
 tion that will throw light on this also. Josephus tells us of a Jewish conjuror 
 who cast out demons by forms and means derived from Solomon, that in 
 order to convince the bystanders of the reality of his expulsions, he set a 
 vessel of water in the neighbourhood of the possessed person, so that the 
 departing demon must throw it down and thus give ocular proof to the spec- 
 tators that he was out of the man.^^ jjj jji^g manner it is narrated of ApoUo- 
 nius of Tyana, that he commanded a demon which possessed a young man, to 
 
 3« Paulus. 
 '' UUmann. 
 
 ^* E. g. Woolston, Disc, i, p. 32 ff. 
 *5 Jamblich. vita Pythag. no. 36. ed. Kiessling. 
 
 ^ In the Abhandlung Uber genetische oder formelle Erklarungsart der Wunder in Henke's 
 Museum, i, 3, s. 410 ff. 
 
 ^' Exeg. Beitrage, 2, 109 ff. 
 "' Antiq. viii. ii. 5. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS — DEMONIACS. 43 1 
 
 depart with a visible sign, whereupon the demon entreated that he might 
 overturn a statue that stood near at hand ; which to the great astonishment 
 of the spectators actually ensued in the very moment that the demon went out 
 of the youth. 'SB If then the agitation of some near object, without visible 
 contact, was held the surest proof of the reality of an expulsion of demons : this 
 proof could not be wanting to Jesus ; nay, while in the case of Eleazar, the 
 object being only a little (//.iKpov) removed from the exerciser and the patient, 
 the possibility of deception was not altogether excluded, Matthew notices in 
 relation to Jesus, niore emphatically than the two other Evangelists, the fact 
 that the herd of swine was feeding a. good way offifxaKpav), thus removing the 
 last remnant of such a possibility. That the object to which Jesus applied 
 this proof, was from the first said to be a herd of swine, immediately pro- 
 y^eeded from the Jewish idea of the relation between unclean spirits and 
 animals, but it furnished a welcome opportunity for satisfying another ten- 
 dency of the legend. Not only did it behove Jesus to cure ordinary demo- 
 niacs, such as the one in the history first considered; he must have succeeded 
 in the most difficult cures of this kind. It is the evident object of the present 
 narrative, from the very commencement, with its startling description of the 
 fearful condition of the Gadarene, to represent the cure as one of extreme 
 difficulty. But to make it more complicated, the possession must be, not 
 simple, but manifold, as in the case of Mary Magdalene, out of whom were 
 cast seven demons (Luke viii. 2), or in the demoniacal relapse in which the 
 expelled demon returns with seven worse than himself (Matt. xii. 45) ; whence 
 the number of the demons was here made, especially by Mark, to exceed by 
 far the probable number of a herd. As in relation to an inanimate object, as 
 a vessel of water or a statue, the influence of the expelled demons could not 
 be more clearly manifested by any means, than by its falling over contrary to 
 the law of gravity ; so in animals it could not be more surely attested in any 
 way, than by their drowning themselves contrary to their instinctive desire of 
 life. Only by this derivation of our narrative from the confluence of various 
 ideas and interests of the age, can we explain the above noticed contradiction, 
 that the demons first petition for the bodies of the swine as a habitation, and 
 immediately after of their own accord destroy this habitation. The petition 
 grew, as we have said, out of the idea that demons shunned incorporeality, the 
 destruction, out of the ordinary test of the reality of an exorcism ;— what 
 wonder if the combination of ideas so heterogeneous produced two contra- 
 dictory features in the narrative ? 
 
 The third and last circumstantially narrated expulsion of a demon has the 
 peculiar feature, that in the first instance the disciples in vain attempt the 
 cure, which Jesus then effects with ease. The three synoptists (Matt. xvii. 
 14 ff. ; Mark ix. 14 if. ; Luke ix. 37 ff.) unanimously state that Jesus having 
 descended with his three most confidential disciples from the Mount of the 
 Transfiguration, found his other disciples in perplexity, because they were 
 unable to cure a possessed boy, whom his father had brought to them. _ 
 
 In this narrative also there is a gradation from the greatest simplicity in 
 Matthew, to the greatest particularity of description in Mark ; and here 
 again this gradation has led to the conclusion that the narrative of Matthew 
 is the farthest from the fact, and must be made subordinate to that of the 
 two other Evangelists.*" In the introduction of the incident in Matthew, 
 Jesus, having descended from the mountain, joins the multitude (o;(A.os), 
 whereupon the father of the boy approaches, and on his knees entreats Jesus 
 
 " Philostr. V. Ap. iv. 20 ; ap. Baur, ut sup. s. 39. 
 « Schulz. s. 319. 
 
432 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 93- 
 
 to cure his child ; in Luke, the multitude {p^oi) meet Jesus ; lastly, in Mark, 
 Jesus sees around the disciples a great multitude, among whom were scribes 
 disputing with them ; the people, when they see him, run towards him and 
 salute him, he inquires what is the subject of dispute, and on_ this the father 
 of the boy begins to speak. Here we have a climax in relation to the con- 
 duct of the people ; in Matthew, Jesus appears to join them by accident ; in 
 Luke, they come to meet him ; and in Mark, they run towards him to salute 
 him. The last Evangelist has the singular remark : And straightway all the 
 people, when they saw him, were greatly amazed. What could there possibly 
 be so greatly to amaze the people in the arrival of Jesus with some disciples ? 
 This remains, in spite of all the other means of explanation that have been 
 devised, so thorough a mystery, that I cannot find so absurd as Fritzsche 
 esteems it, the idea of Euthymius, that Jesus having just descended from the 
 Mount of Transfiguration, some of the heavenly radiance which had there 
 shone around him was still visible, as on Moses when he came down from 
 Sinai (Exod. xxxiv. 29 f.). That among this throng of people there were 
 scribes who arraigned the disciples on the ground of their failure, and involved 
 them in a dispute, is in and by itself quite natural j but connected as it is 
 with the exaggerations concerning the behaviour of the multitude, this feature 
 also becomes suspicious, especially as the other two Evangelists have it not ; 
 so that if it can be shown how the narrator might be led to insert it by a 
 mental combination of his own, we shall have sufficient warrant for renouncing _ 
 it. Shortly before (viii. 11), on the occasion of the demand of a sign from 
 Jesus by the Pharisees, Mark says, ^p^avro a-vt,7iTeLv aw-w, they began to questioA 
 with him, apparently on the subject of his ability to work miracles ; and so 
 here when the disciples show themselves unable to perform a miracle, he 
 represents the scribes (the majority of whom belonged to the Pharisaic 
 sect), as cru^ijrowTas rots \i.aBi)r(u.<s, questioning with the disciples. In the suc- 
 ceeding description of the boy's state there is the same gradation as to par- 
 ticularity, except that Matthew is the one who alone has the expression 
 o-cXiyvta^eTat («> /««aAV), which it is unfair to make a reproach to him,*"^ 
 since the reference of periodical disorders to the moon was not uncommon 
 in the time of Jesus. ^^ Mark alone calls the spirit that possessed the dumb 
 boy (v. 17), and deaf (v. 25). The emission of inarticulate sounds by epi- 
 leptics during their fits, might be regarded as the dumbness of the demon, 
 and their incapability of noticing any words addressed to them, as his 
 deafness. 
 
 When the father has informed Jesus of the subject of dispute and of the 
 inability of the disciples to relieve the boy, Jesus breaks forth into the exclam- 
 ation, O faithless and perverse generation, etc. On a comparison of the 
 close of the narrative in Matthew, where Jesus, when his disciples ask him 
 why they could not cast out the 'demon, answers; Because of your unbelief, and 
 proceeds to extol the power of faith, even though no larger than a grain of 
 mustard seed, as sufficient to remove mountains (v. 19 ff.): it cannot be 
 doubted that in this expression of dissatisfaction Jesus apostrophizes his dis- 
 ciples, in whose inability to cast out the demon, he finds a proof of their still 
 deficient faith'.** This concluding explanation of the want of power in the 
 disciples, by their unbelief, Luke omits : and Mark not only imitates him in 
 this, but also interweaves (v. '21-24), a by-scene between Jesus and the 
 father, in which he first gives an amplified description of the symptoms of 
 
 *^ As Schuiz appears to do, ut sup. 
 
 ♦2 See the passages quoted by Paulus, exeg. Handb, i, b, s. 569, and by Winer, I, s. 
 191 f. 
 
 *' Thus Fritzsche, in loc. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— DEMONIACS. 433 
 
 the child's malady, drawn partly from Matthew, partly from his own re- 
 sources, and then represents the father, on being required to believe, as con- 
 fessing with tears the weakness of his faith, and his desire that it may be 
 strengthened. Taking this together with the mention of the disputative 
 scribes, we cannot err in supposing the speech of Jesus, O faithless generation, 
 etc., in IMark and also in Luke to refer to the people, as distinguished from 
 the disciples; in Mark, more particularly to the father, whose unbelief is 
 intimated to be an impediment to the cure, as in another case (Matt. ix. 2), 
 the faith of relatives appears to further the desired object. As however both 
 the Evangelists give this aspect to the circumstances, because they do not here 
 give the explanation of the inefficiency of the disciples by their unbelief, to- 
 gether with the declaration concerning the power of faith to remove moun- 
 tains : we must inquire whether the connexion in which they place these dis- 
 courses is more suitable than this in which they are inserted by Matthew. In 
 Luke the declaration : If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, etc. 
 (neither he nor Mark has. Because of your unbelief \ occurs xvii. 5, 6, with 
 only the slight variation, that instead of the mountain a tree is named ; but it 
 is here destitute of any connexion either with the foregoing or the following 
 context, and has the appearance of a short stray fragment, with an introduc- 
 tion, no doubt fictitious (of the same kind as Luke xi. i, xiii. 23), in the 
 form of an entreaty from the disciples : Lord, increase our faith. Mark gives 
 the sentence on the faith which removes mountains as the moral of the history 
 of the cursed fig tree, where Matthew also has it a second time. But to this 
 liistory the declaration is totally unsuitable, as we shall presently see ; and if 
 we are unwilling to content ourselves with ignorance of the occasion on which 
 it was uttered, we must accept its connexion in Matthew as the original one, 
 for it is perfectly appropriate to a failure of the disciples in an attempted 
 cure. Mark has sought to make the scene more effective by other additions, 
 beside this episode with the father ; he tells us that the people ran together 
 that they might observe what was passing, that after the expulsion of the 
 demon the boy was as one dead, insotnuch that many said, he is dead ; but that 
 Jesus, taking him by the hand, as he does elsewhere with the dead (Matt. ix. 
 25), lifts him up and restores him to life. 
 
 After the completion of the cure, Luke dismisses the narrative with a brief 
 notice of the astonishment of the people ; but the two first synoptists pursue 
 the subject by making the disciples, when alone with Jesus, ask him why they 
 were not able to cast out the demon ? In Matthew the immediate reply of 
 Jesus accounts for their incapability by their unbelief; but in Mark, his 
 answer is. This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting, which Matthew 
 also adds after the discourse on unbelief and the power of faith. This seems 
 to be an unfortunate coiinexion of Matthew's ; for if fasiing and praying were 
 necessary for the cure,^the disciples, in case they had not previously fasted, 
 could not have cast out the demon even if they had possessed the firmest 
 faith.** Whether these two reasons given by Jesus for the inability of the 
 disciples can be made consistent by the observation, that fasting and prayer 
 are means of strengthening faith ; *3 or whether we are ^ to suppose with 
 Schleiermacher an association of two originally unrelated passages, we will 
 not here attempt to decide. That such a spiritual and corporeal discipline on 
 the part of the exorcist should have effect on the possessed, has been held 
 surprising : it has been thought with Porphyry,*" that it would rather be to 
 the purpose that the patient should observe this discipline, and hence it has 
 
 *■* Schleiermacher, s. 150. 
 
 ** Koster, Immanuel, s. 197 ; Fritzsche, in loc. 
 
 ■"> De abstinent, ii. p. 204 and 417 f. ; Vid. Winer, i, s. 191. 
 
 E E 
 
434 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 93. 
 
 been supposed that the trpoa-cuxQ koI vqa-rda, prayer and fasting, were pre- 
 scribed to the demoniac as a means of making the cure radical.*^ But this 
 is evidently in contradiction to the text. For if fasting and praying on the 
 part of the patient were necessary for the success of the cure, it must have 
 been gradual and not sudden, as all cures are which are attributed to Jesusf 
 in the gospels, and as this is plainly enough implied to be by the words,. (cat 
 i0ipa.Ttf.v6ri 6 irats airo t^s (upas eKctVijs, and the child was cured from that very 
 hour, in Matthew, and the word lao-aTo, he cured, placed between tn-^n'/iiyo-c 
 K. T. X.Jesus rebuked. the unclean spirit, and airkliaKi k. t. X. delivered him again 
 to his father, in Luke. It is true Paulus turns the above expression of 
 Matthew to his advantage, for he understands it to mean that from that time 
 forward the boy, by the application of the prescribed discipline, gradually , 
 recovered. But we need only observe the same form of expression where it 
 elsewhere occurs as the final sentence in narratives of cures, to be convinced 
 of the impossibility of such an interpretation. When, for example, the story 
 of the woman who had an issue of blood closes with the remark (Matt. ix. 22) 
 Kai ifT&Bt) r] yvvr] airo Spas eKeii/T/s, this will hardly be translated, et exinde 
 mulier paulatim servabaiur : it can only mean : servata est {et servatam se 
 prabuit) ab illo temporis momenta. Another point to which Paulus appeals as 
 a proof that Jesus here commenced a cure which was to be consummated 
 by degrees, is the expression of Luke, dTreSuKei' airov tu irarpi airoS, he 
 delivered him again to his father, which, he argues, would have been rather 
 superfluous, if it were not intended to imply a recommendation to special 
 care. But thp more immediate signification of diroSiSoi/At is not to deliver or 
 give up, but to give back ; and therefore in the above expression the only 
 sense is : puerum, quevi sanandum acceperat, sanatum reddidit, that is, the boy 
 who had fallen into the hands of a strange power — of the demon — was re- 
 stored to the parents as their own. Lastly, how arbitrary is it in Paulus to " 
 take the exprfession iKiropkverai, goeth (»«/(Matt. v. 21), in the closer significa- 
 tion of a total departure, and to distinguish this from the preliminary departure 
 which followed on the bare word of Jesus (v. 18) ! Thus in this case, as in 
 every other, the gospels present to us, not a cure which was protracted 
 through days and weeks, but a cure which was instantaneously completed by 
 one miracle : \itac^ \S\t. fasting and prayer cz.ri.wot ho. regarded as a prescrip- 
 tion for the patient. 
 
 With this whole history must be compared an analogous narrative in 2 
 Kings iv. 29 ff. Here the prophet Elisha attempts to bring a dead child to 
 life, by sending his staff by the hands of his servant Gehazi, who is to lay it 
 on the face of the child ; but this measure does not succeed, and Elisha is 
 obliged in his own person to come and call the boy to life. The same relation 
 that exists in this Old Testament story between the prophet and his servant, is 
 seen ii\jjje New Testament narrative between the Messiah and his disciples : 
 the latter can do nothing without their master, but what was too difficult for 
 them, he effects with certainty. Now this feature is a clue to the tendency of 
 both narratives, namely, to exalt their master by exhibiting the distance 
 between him and his most intimate disciples ; or, if we compare the evan- 
 gelical narrative before us with that of the demoniacs of Gadara, we may say : 
 the latter case was made to appear one of extreme difficulty in itself ; the 
 former, by the relation in which the power of Jesus, which is adequate to the 
 occasion, is placed to the power of the disciples, which, however great in other 
 instances, was here insufficient. 
 
 Of the other more briefly narrated expulsions of demons, the cure of a 
 
 " Paulus, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 471 f. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS — DEMONIACS. 435 
 
 dumb demoniac and of one who was blind also, has been already Sufficiently 
 examined in connexion with the accusation of a league with Beelzebub : as 
 also the cure of the woman who was bowed down, in our general consider- 
 ations on the demoniacs. The cure of the possessed daughter of the 
 Canaanitish woman (Matt. xv. 22 fF. ; Mark vii. 25 ff.) has no further pecu- 
 liarity than that it was wrought by the word of Jesus at a distance : a point of 
 which we shall speak later. 
 
 According to the evangelical narratives, the attempt of Jesus to expel the 
 demon succeeded in every one of these cases. Paulus remarks that cures of 
 this kind, although they contributed more than anything else to impress the 
 multitude with veneration for Jesus, were yet the easiest in themselves, and 
 even De Wette sanctions a psychological explanation of the cures of demon- 
 iacs, though of no others.** With these opinSttS we cannot but agree ; for if 
 we regard the real character of the demonis^al state as a species of madness 
 accompanied by a convulsive tendency of the nervous system, we know that 
 psychical and nervous disorders are most easily wrought upon by psychical 
 influence ; — an influence to which the surpassing dignity of Jesus as a prophet, 
 and eventually even as the Messiah himself, presented all the requisite con- 
 ditions. There is, however, a marked gradation among these states, according 
 as the psychical derangement has more or less fixed itself corporeally, and 
 the disturbance of the nervous system has become more or less ^bitual, and 
 shared by the rest of the organization. We may therefore lay down the 
 following rule : the more strictly the malady was confined to mental derange- 
 ment, on which the word of Jesus might have an immediate mojal influence, 
 or in a comparatively slight disturbance of the nervous system, on which he 
 would be able to act powerfully through the medium of the mind, the more 
 possible was it for Jesus l>y his word Xo'-yoi (Matt viii. 16), and instantly 
 ■7rapa.)(prjfia (Luke xiii. 13), to put an end to such states : on the other hand, 
 the more the malady had already confirmed itself, as a bodily disease, the 
 more difficult is it to believe that Jesus was able to relieve it in a purely 
 psychological manner and at the first moment. From this rule results a 
 second : namely, that to any extensive psycholi)gical , influence on the part of 
 Jesus the full recognition of his dignity as a prophet was requisite ; whence it 
 follows that at times and in districts where he had long had that reputation, 
 he could effect more in this way than where he had it not. , 
 
 If we apply these two measures to the cures in the gospels, we shall find 
 that the first, viz., that of the demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, is 
 not, so soon as we cease to consider the Evangelist's narrative of it circum- 
 stantially correct, altogether destitute of probability. It is true that the words 
 attributed to the demon seem to imply an intuitive knowledge of Jesus ; but 
 this may be probably accounted for by the supposition that the widely-spread 
 fame of Jesus in that country, and his powerful discourse in the synagogue, 
 had impressed the demoniac with the belief, if not that Jesus was the Messiah, 
 as the Evangelists say, at least that he must be a prophet : a belief that would 
 give effect to his words. As regards the state of this demoniac we are only 
 told of his fixed idea (that he was possessed), and of his attacks of con- 
 vulsions ; his malady may therefore have been of the less rpoted kind, and 
 accessible to psychological influence. The cure of the Gadarenes is attended 
 with more difficulty in both points of view. Firstly, Jesus was comparatively 
 little known on the eastern shore ; and secondly, the state of these demoniacs 
 is described as so violent atid deep-seated a mania, that a word from Jesus 
 
 48 Paulus, exeg. Handb. I, b, s. 438 ; L. J. i, a, s. 223 ; De Wette, bibl. Dogm. § 222, 
 Anm. c. 
 
436 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 93. 
 
 could hardly suffice to put an end to it. Here therefore the natural explana- 
 tion of Paulus will not suffice, and if we are to regard the narrative as haying 
 any foundation in fact, we must suppose that the description of the demoniac's 
 state, as well as other particulars, has been exaggerated by the legend. The 
 same judgment must be passed in relation to the cure of the boy who was 
 lunatic, since an epilepsy which had existed from infancy (Mark v. 21) and the 
 attacks of which were so violent and regular, must be too deeply rooted in the 
 system for the possibility of so rapid and purely psychological a cure to be 
 credible. That even dumbness and a contraction of many years' duration, 
 which we cannot with Paulus explain as a mere insane imagination that speech 
 or an erect carriage was not permitted,*^ — that these afflictions should dis- 
 appear at a word, no one who is not committed to dogmatical opinions can 
 pers^ade himself. Lastly, least of all is it to be conceived, that even without 
 the imposing influence of his presence, the miracle-worker could effect a cure 
 at a distance, as Jesus is said to have done on the daughter of the Canaanitish 
 woman. 
 
 Thus in the nature of things there is nothing to prevent the admission, that 
 Jesus cured many persons who suffered from supposed demoniacal insanity or 
 nervous disorder, in a psychical manner, by the ascendancy of his manner 
 and words (if indeed Venturini^" and Kaiser^i are not right in their conjecture, 
 that patients of this class often believed themselves to be cured, when in fact 
 the crisis only of their disorder had been broken by the influence of Jesus ; 
 and that the Evangelists state them to have been cured because they learned 
 nothing further of them, and thus knew nothing of their probable relapse). 
 But while granting the possibility of many cures, it is evident that in this field 
 the legend has not been idle, but has confounded the easier cases, which alone 
 could be cured psychologically, with the most difficult and complicated, to 
 which such a treatment was totally inapplicable.^* Is the refusal of a sign on 
 the part of Jesus reconcilable with such a manifestation of power as we have 
 above defined,— or must even such cures as can be explained psychologically, 
 but which in his age must have seemed miracles, be denied in order to make 
 that refusal comprehensible ? tVe will not here put this alternative otherwise 
 than as a question. 
 
 If in conclusion we cast a glance on the gospel of John, we find that it does 
 not even mention demoniacs and their cure by Jesus. This omission has not 
 seldom been turned to the advantage of the Apostle John, the alleged author, 
 as indicating a superior degree of enlightenment.^^ If however this apostle 
 did not believe in the reality of possession by devils, he must have had, as the 
 author of the fourth gospel, according to the ordinary view of his relation to 
 the synoptical writers, the strongest motives for rectifying their statements, 
 and preventing the dissemination of what he held to be a false opinion, by 
 setting the cures in question in a true light. But how could the Apostle John 
 arrive at the rejection of the opinion that the above diseases had their founda- 
 tion in demoniacal possession ?• According to Josephus it was at that period 
 a popular Jewish opinion, from which a Jew of Palestine who, like John, did 
 not visit a foreign land until late in life, would hardly be in a condition to 
 
 ■" Exeg. Handb. in loc. 
 
 ^0 Natiirliche Geschichte, 2, ». 429. 
 
 " Bibl. Theol. i, s. 196. 
 
 ^^ Among the transient disorders on which Jesus may have acted psychologically, we may 
 perhaps number the fever of Peter's mother-in-law, which Jesus is said to have cured, Matt. 
 viii. 14 if. parall. 
 
 ^' It is so more or less by Eichhorn, in the allg. Bibliothek, 4, s. 435 ; Herder, von Gottes 
 Sohn u. ». {., s. 20; Wegscheider, Einl. in das Evang. Joh., s. 313 ; Ut Wette, bibl. Dogm., 
 § 269. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES OF LEPERS. 437 
 
 liberate himself; it was, according to the nature of things and the synoptical 
 accounts, the opinion of Jesus himself, John's adored master, from whom the 
 favourite disciple certainly would not be inclined to swerve even a hair's 
 breadth. But if John shared with his cotemporaries and with Jesus himself 
 the notion of rear demoniacal possession, and if the cure of demoniacs formed 
 tlie principal part, nay, perhaps the true foundation of the alleged miraculous 
 powers of Jesus : how comes it that the Apostle nevertheless makes no mention 
 of them in his gospel? That he passed over them because the o:her Evan 
 gelists had collected enough of such histories, is a supposition that ought by 
 this time to be relinquished, since he repeats more than one history of a 
 miracle which they had already given ; and if it be said that he repeated 
 these because they needed correction, — we have seen, in our examination of 
 the cures of demoniacs, that in many a reduction of them to their simple 
 historical elements would be very much in place. There yet remains the 
 supposition that, the histories of demoniacs being incredible or offensive to 
 the cultivated Greeks of Asia Minor, among whom John is said to have 
 written, he left them out of his gospel for the sake of accommodating himself 
 to their ideas. But we must ask, could or should an apostle, out of mere 
 accommodation to the refined ears of his auditors, withhold so essential a 
 feature of the agency of Jesus ? Certainly this silence, supposing the authen- 
 ticity of the three first gospels, rather indicates an author who had not been 
 an eye-witness of the ministry of Jesus ; or, according to our view, at least one 
 who had not at his Command the original tradition of Palestine, but only a 
 tradition modified by Hellenistic influence, in which the expulsions of demons, 
 being less accordant with the higher culture of the Greeks, were either totally 
 suppressed or kept so far in the background that they might have escaped the 
 notice of the author of the gospel. 
 
 § 94. 
 
 CURES OF LEPERS. 
 
 Among the sufferers whom Jesus healed, the leprous play a prominent 
 part, as might have been anticipated from the tendency of the climate of 
 Palestine to produce cutaneous disease. When, according to the synoptical 
 writers, Jesus directs the attention of the Baptist's messengers to the actual 
 proofs which he had given of his Messiahship (Matt. ix. 5), he adduces among 
 these, the cleansing of lepers ; when, on the first mission of the disciples, he 
 empowers them to perform all kinds of miracles, the cleansing of lepers is 
 numbered among the first (Matt. x. 8), and two cases of such cures are nar- 
 rated to us in detail. ■• 
 
 One of these cases is common to all the synoptical writers, but is placed by 
 them in two different connexions : namely, by Matthew, immediately after the 
 delivery of the Sermon on the Mount (viii. 1 ff.) ; by the other Evangelists, at 
 some period, not precisely marked, at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus 
 in Galilee (Mark i. 40 ff. ; Luke v. 12 ff.). According to the narratives, a leper 
 comes towards Jesus, and falling on his knees, entreats that he may be cleansed ; 
 this Jesus effects by a touch, and then directs the leper to present himself to 
 the priest in obedience to the law, that he may be pronounced clean (Lev. 
 xiv. 2 ff.). The state of the man is in Matthew and Mark described siniply 
 by the word \eirpos, a leper ; but in Luke more strongly, by the words, ir\)jpi;s 
 XiTrpa's, full of leprosy. Paulus, indeed, regards the being thus replete with 
 leprosy as a symptom that the patient was curable (the eruption and peelmg 
 
438 PART 11. CHAPTER IX. § 94. 
 
 of the leprosy on the entire skin being indicative of the healing crisis) ; and 
 accordingly, that commentator represents the incident to himself in the 
 following manner. The leper applied to Jesus in his character of Messiah for 
 an opinion on his state, and, the result being favourable, for a declaration that 
 he was clean (ei ^tXeis, Swatrat /^e KaOapicrai), which might either spare him an 
 application to the priest, or at all events give him a consolatory hope in 
 making that application. Jesus expressing himself ready to make the desired 
 examination (Of\m), stretched out his hand, in order to feel the patient, 
 without allowing too near an approach while he was possibly still capable of 
 communicating contagion ; and after a careful examination, he expressed, as 
 its result, the conviction that the patient was no longer in a contagious state 
 {Kaeapi(r6r]TL), whereupon quickly and easily (ev^cus) the leprosy actually 
 disappeared.^ 
 
 Here, in the first place, the supposition that the leper was precisely at the 
 crisis of healing is foreign to the text, which in the two first Evangelists speaks 
 merely of leprosy, while the TrX^piys Xcirpas. of the third can mean nothing 
 else than the Old Testament expression J.?B'3 J'T^p (Exod. iv. 6; Num. 
 xii. 10 ; 2 Kings v. 27), which, according to the connexion in every instance, 
 signifies the worst stage of leprosy. That the word Ka6apit,£(.v in the Hebraic 
 and Hellenistic use of the Greek language, might also mean merely io pro- 
 nounce clean is not to be denied, only it must retain the signification throughout 
 the passage. ; But that after having narrated that Jesus had said, Be thou 
 clean, KaOapCaOriTi, Matthew should have added koI eiOtut^ iKa$apia-6ri k. t. A.. 
 in the sense that thus the sick man was actually pronounced clean by Jesus, 
 is, from the absurd tautology such an interpretation would introduce, so in- 
 conceivable, that we must here, and consequently throughout the narrative, 
 understand the word KaOapC^iu-Oai of actual cleansing. It is sufficient to 
 remind the reader of the expressions A.E7rpot KaGapi^ovrai, the lepers are cleansed 
 (Matt. xi. s), and Xeirpois Ka6a.pit,f.Tt, cleanse the lepers (Matt. x. 8), where 
 neither can the latter word signify merely to pronounce clean, nor can it have 
 another meaning than in the narrative before us. But the point in which the 
 natural interpretation the most plainly betrays its weakness, is the disjunc- 
 tion of BiXxo, I will, from Kadapia-Orjn, be thou clean. Who can persuade 
 himself that these words, united as they are in all the three narratives, were 
 separated by a considerable pause — that BiKm was spoken during or more 
 properly before the manipulation, KaOapCa-Orjn after, when all the Evangelists 
 represent the two words as having been uttered by Jesus without separation, 
 whilst he touched the leper? Surely, if the alleged sense had been the 
 original one, at least one of the Evangelists, instead of the words ^tj/aTo avrov 
 6 'lrj<Tovi Xcyojv' 6tX.io, KaOapia-Bifri, Jesus touched him, saying, J will, be thou 
 clean, would have substituted the more accurate expression, 6 'I. aTreKpivaro' 
 OiXm, mu, mlfdfievo^ airov eiire" KadapLa-OrfTi, Jesus answered, T will ; and 
 having touched him, said : be thou clean. But if KaOapCcrdrjn was spoken in one 
 breath with OeXw, so that Jesus announces the cleansing simply as a result of 
 his will without any intermediate examination, the former word cannot possibly 
 signify a mere declaration of cleanness, to which a previous examination would 
 be requisite, and. it must signify an actual making clean. It follows, therefore, 
 that the word awTea-Oai in this connexion is not to be understood of an ex- 
 ploratory manipulation, but, as in all other narratives of the same class, of a 
 curative touch. 
 
 In support of his natural explanation of this incident, Paulus appeals to the 
 rule, that invariably the ordinary and regular is to be presupposed in a narra- 
 
 . ■ Exeg. Handb., i, b, s. 698 ff. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES OF LEPERS. 439 
 
 tive where the contrary is not expressly indicated. ^ But this rule shares the 
 ambiguity which is characteristic of the entire system of natural interpretation, 
 since it leaves undecided what is ordinary and regular in our estimation, and 
 what was so in the ideas of the author whose writings are to be explained. 
 Certainly, if I have a Gibbon before me, I must in his narratives presuppose 
 only natural causes and occurrences when he does not expressly convey the 
 contrary, because to a writer of his cultivation, the supernatural is at the 
 utmost only conceivable as a rare exception. But the case is altered when I 
 take up an Herodotus, in whose mode of thought the intervention of higher 
 powers is by no means unusual and out of rule ; and when I am. considering 
 a collection of anecdotes which are the product of Jewish soil, and the object 
 of which is to represent an individual as a prophet of the highest rank 
 — as a man in the most intimate connexion with the Deity, to meet with the 
 supernatural is so completely a thing of course, that the rule of the rationalists 
 must here be reversed, and we must say : where, in such narratives, import- 
 ance is attached to results which, regarded as natural, would have no im- 
 portance whatever, — there, supernatural causes must be expressly excluded, 
 if we are not to presuppose it the opinion of the narrator that such causes were 
 in action. Moreover, in the history before us, the extraordinary character of 
 the incident is sufficiently indicated by the statement, that the leprosy left the 
 patient immediately on the word of Jesus. Paulus, it is true, contrives, as we 
 have already observed, to interpret this statement as implying a gradual, 
 natural healing, on the ground that ciSecos, the word by which the Evangelists 
 determine the time of the cure, signifies, according to the different connexions 
 in which it may occur, in one case immediately, in another merely soon, and 
 unobstructedly. Granting this, are we to understand the words ivOews iiefiaXev 
 airrov, which follow in close connexion in Mark (v. 43), as signifying that 
 soon and without hindrance Jesus sent the cleansed leper away ? Or is the 
 word to be taken in a different sense in two consecutive verses ? 
 
 We conclude, then,. that in the intention of the evangelical writers the in- 
 stantaneous disappearance of the leprosy in consequence of the word and 
 touch of Jesus, is the fact on which their narratives turn. Now to represent 
 the possibility of this to one's self is quite another task than to imagine the 
 instantaneous release of a man under the grasp of a fixed idea, or a per- 
 manently invigorating impression on a nervous patient. Leprosy, from the 
 thorough derangement of the animal fluids of which it is the symptom, is the 
 most obstinate and malignant of cutaneous diseases ; and that a skin corroded 
 by this malady should by a word and touch instantly become pure and healthy, 
 is, from its involving the immediate effectuation of what would require a long 
 course of treatment, so inconceivable, ^ that every one who is free from certain 
 prejudices (as the critic ought always to be) must involuntarily be reminded 
 by it of the realm of fable. And in the fabulous region of Oriental -and more 
 particularly of Jewish legend, the sudden appearance and disappearance of 
 leprosy presents itself the first thing. When Jehovah endowed Moses, as a 
 preparation for his mission into Egypt, with the power of working all kinds 
 of signs, amongst other tokens of this gift he commanded him to put his 
 hand into his bosom, and when he drew it out again, it was covered with 
 leprosy ; again he was commanded to put it into his bosom, and on drawing 
 it out a second time it was once more clean (Exod iv. 6, 7). Subsequently, 
 on account of an attempt at rebellion against Moses, his sister Miriam was 
 suddenly stricken with leprosy, but on the intercession of Moses was soon 
 
 ^ Ut sup. s. 705, and elsewhere. 
 ' Compare Hase, L. J., § 86. 
 
44° TART II. CHAPTER IX. § 94. 
 
 healed (Num. xii. 10 ff.). Above all, among the miracles of the prophet Elisha 
 the cure of a leper plays an important part, and to this event Jesus himself 
 refers (Luke iv. 27.) The Syrian general, Naaman, who suffered from 
 leprosy, applied to the Israelitish prophet for his aid ; the latter sent to him 
 the direction to wash seven times in the river Jordan, and on Naaman 's 
 observance of this prescription the leprosy actually disappeared but was sub- 
 sequently transferred by the. prophet to his deceitful servant Gehazi (2 Kings 
 v.). I know not what we ought to need beyond these Old Testament narra- 
 tives to account for the origin of the evangelical anecdotes. What the first 
 Goel was empowered to do in the fulfilment of Jehovah's commission, the 
 second Goel must also be able to perform, and the greatest of prophets must 
 not fall short of the achievements of any one prophet. If then, the cure of 
 leprosy was without doubt included in the Jewish idea of the Messiah ; the 
 Christians; who believed the Messiah to have really appeared in the person of 
 Jesus, had a yet more decided inducement to glorify his history by such 
 traits, taken from the Mosaic and prophetic legend ; with the single difference 
 that, in acfcordance with the mild spirit of the New Covenant (Luke ix. 55 f.) 
 they dropped the punitive side of the old miracles. 
 
 Somewhat more plausible is the appeal of the rationalists to the absence of 
 an express statement, that a miraculous cure of the leprosy is intended in the 
 narrative of the ten lepers, given by Luke alone (xvii. 12 ff.). Here neither do 
 the lepers expressly desire to be cured, their words being only, Have mercy 
 on us ; nor does Jesus utter a command directly referring to such a result, for 
 he merely enjoins them to show themselves to the priests : and the rationalists 
 avail themselves of this indirectness in his reply, as a help to their supposition, 
 that Jesus, after ascertaining the state of the patients, encouraged them to 
 subject themselves to the examination of the priests, which resulted in their 
 being pronounced clean, and the Samaritan returned to thank Jesus for His 
 encouraging advice. * But mere advice does not call forth so ardent a de- 
 monstration of gratitude as is here described by the words iirca-ev irrl Trpoa-unrov, 
 he fell down on his face ; still less could Jesus desire that because his advice 
 had had a favourable issue, all 'the ten should have returned, and returned to 
 glorify God — for what ? that he had enabled Jesus to give them such good 
 advice ? No : a more real service is here presupposed ; and this the narrative 
 itself implies, both in attributing the return of the Samaritan to his discovery 
 that he was healed (i8u)v on laBt\), and in makfng Jesus indicate the reason 
 why thanks were to be expected from all, by tl;ie words : oix' o' S^'"" inaOapia- 
 6r](Tav ; Were there not ten cleansed .? Both these expressions can only by 
 an extremely forced interpretation be made to imply, that because the lepers 
 saw the correctness of the judgment of Jesus in pronouncing them clean, one 
 of them actually returned to thank him, and the others ought to have returned. 
 But that which is most decisive against the natural explanation is this sen- 
 tence : And as they went they were cleansed, iv ti3 wayeiv aiirous iKa.6apLa-6ri(rav. 
 If the narrator intended, according to the above interpretation, merely to say : 
 the lepers having gone to the priest, and showed themselves to him, were 
 pronounced clean : he must at least have said : ■iropevOdvTe's iKaOapia-Orjorav, 
 having made the journey they were cleansed, whereas the deliberate choice of 
 the .expression iv t(3 BTrayeiv (while in the act of going); incontestibly shows 
 that a healing effected during the journey is intended. Thus here also we 
 have a miraculous cure of leprosy, which is burdened with the same difficulties 
 as the former anecdote ; the origin of which is, however, as easily explained. 
 But in this narrative there is a peculiarity which distinguishes it from the 
 
 < Paulus, L. J. I, b, s. 68. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES OF THE BLIND. 441 
 
 former. Here there is no simple cure, nay, ihe cure does not properly form 
 the main object of the narrative : this lies rather in the different conduct of 
 the cured, and the question of Jesus, were there not ten cleansed, etc. (v. 17), 
 forms the point of the whole, which thus closes altogether morally, and seems 
 to have been narrated for the sake of the instruction conveyed. ^ That the 
 one who appears as a model of thankfulness happens to be a Samaritan, can- 
 not pass without remark, in the narrative of the Evangelist who alone has 
 the parable of the Good Samaritan. As there two Jews, a priest and a Levite, 
 show themselves pitiless, while a Samaritan, on the contrary, proves ex- 
 emplarily compassionate : so here, nine unthankful Jews stand contrasted 
 with one thankful Samaritan. May it not be then (in so far as the sudden 
 cure of these lepers cannot be historical) that we have here, as well as there, 
 a parable pronounced by Jesus, in which he intended to represent gratitude, 
 as in the other case compassion, in the example of a Samaritan ? It would 
 then be with the present narrative as some have maintained it to be with the 
 history of the temptation. But in relation to this we have both shown, and given 
 the reason, that Jesus never made himself immediately figure in a parable, and 
 this he must have done if he had given a narrative of ten lepers once healed 
 by him. If then we are not -inclined to relinquish the idea that something 
 originally parabolic is the germ of our present narrative, we must represent 
 the case to ourselves thus : from the legelnds of cures performed by Jesus on 
 lepers, on the one hand; and on the other, from parables in which Jesus (as 
 in that of the compassionate Samaritan) presented individuals of this hated 
 race as models of various virtues, the Christian legend wove this narrative, 
 which is therefore partly an account of a miracle and partly a parable. 
 
 S 95- 
 
 CURES OF THE BLIND. 
 
 One of the first places among the sufferers cured by Jesus is filled (also 
 agreeably to the nature of the climate i) by the blind, of whose ciire again we 
 read not only in the general descriptions which are given by the Evangelists 
 (Matt. XV. 30 f. ; Luke vii. 21), and by Jesus himself (Matt. xi. 5), of his 
 messianic works, but also in some detailed narratives of particular cases. We 
 have indeed more of these cures than of the kind last noticed, doubtless be- 
 cause bUndness, as a malady affecting the most delicate and complicated of 
 organs, admitted a greater diversity of treatment.. One of these cures of the 
 blind is common to all the synoptical writers ; the others (with the exception 
 of the bUnd and dumb demoniac in Matthew, whom we need not here re- 
 consider) are respectively peculiar to the first, second, and fourth Evangelists. 
 
 The narrative common to all the three synoptical writers is that of a cure 
 of blindness wrought by Jesus at Jericho, on his last journey to Jerusalem 
 (Matt. XX. 29 parall.) : but there are important differences both as to the 
 object of the cure, Matthew having two blind men, the two other Evangelists 
 only one ; and also as to its locality, Luke making it take place on the en- 
 trance of Jesus into Jericho, Matthew and Mark on his departure out of 
 Jericho. Moreover the touching of the eyes, by which, according to the first 
 evangelist, Jesus effected the cure, is not mentioned by the two other narra- 
 tors. Of these differences the latter may be explained by the observation, 
 that' though Mark and Luke are silent as to the touching, they do not there- 
 
 ^ Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 215. 
 ' Vid. Winer, Realw., Art. Blinde. 
 
442 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 95- 
 
 fore deny it : the first, relative to the number cured, presents a heavier diffi- 
 culty. To remove this it has been said by those who give the prior authority 
 to Matthew, that one of the two blind men was possibly more remarkable 
 than the other, on which account he alone was retained in the first tradition ; 
 but Matthew, as an eye-witness, afterwards supplied the second blind man. 
 On this supposition Luke and Mark do not contradict Matthew, for they no- 
 where deny that another besides their single blind man was healed ; neither 
 does Matthew contradict them, for where there are two, there is also one. ^ 
 But when the simple narrator speaks of one individual in whom something 
 extraordinary has happened, and even, like Mark, mentions his name, it is 
 plain that he tacitly contradicts the statement that it happened in two indi- 
 viduals^to contradict it expressly there was no occasion. Let us turn then 
 to the other side and, taking the singular number of Mark and Luke as the 
 original one, conjecture that the informant of Matthew (the latter being 
 scarcely on this hypothesis an eye-witness) probably mistook the blind man's 
 guide for a second blind man.* Hereby a decided contradiction is admitted, 
 while to account for it an extremely improbable cause is superfluously in- 
 vented. . The third difference relates to the place ; Matthew and Mark have 
 eKiropEuojfiei/wr d™, as they departed from, Luke, iv t<3 e-yyt^eii' «is 'lepiX"^, as 
 they came nigh to Jericho. If there be any whom the words themselves fail to 
 convince that this difference is irreconcilable, let them read the forced at- 
 tempts to render these passages consistent with each other, which have been 
 made by commentators from Grotius down to Paulus. 
 
 Hence it was a better expedient which the older harmonists * adopted, and 
 which has been approved by some modern critics.^ In consideration of the 
 last-named difference, they here distinguished two events, and held that Jesus 
 cured a blind man first on his entrance into Jericho (according to Luke), and 
 tlien again on his departure from that place (according to Matthew and Luke). 
 Of the other divergency, relative to the number, these harmonists believed 
 ■that they had disencumbered themselves by the supposition that Matthew 
 connected in one event the two blind men, the one cured on entering and 
 the other on leaving Jericho, and gave the latter position to the cure of both. 
 But if so much weight is allowed to the statement of Matthew relative to the 
 locality of the cure, as to make it, in conjunction with that of Mark, a reason 
 for supposing two cures, one at each extremity of the town, I know not why 
 equal credit should not be given to his numerical statement, and Storr ap- 
 pears to me to proceed more consistently when, allowing equal weight to both 
 differences, he supposes that Jesus on hig entrance into Jericho, cured one 
 blind man (Luke) and subsequently on his departure two (Matthew).^ The 
 claim of Matthew is thus fully vindicated, but on the other hand that of Mark 
 is denied. For if the latter be associated with Matthew, as is here the case, 
 for the.sake of his locality, it is necessary to do violence to his numerical 
 statement, which taken alone would rather require him to be associated with 
 Luke; so that to avoid impeaching either of his statements, which on this 
 system of interpretation is not admissible, his narrative must be equally de- 
 tached from that of both the other Evangelists. Thus we should have three 
 distinct cures of the blind at Jericho : ist, the cure of one bhnd man on the 
 entrance of Jesus, 2nd, that of another on his departure, and 3rd, the cure of 
 two blind men, also during the departure ; in all, of four blind men. Now to 
 
 ' Gratz, Comm z. Matth. 2, s. 323. 
 
 ^ Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 44. 
 
 ■* Schulz, Anmerkungen zu Michaelis, 2, a. 105. 
 
 ' Sieffert, ut sup. s. 104. 
 
 6 Ueber den Zweck der evang. Geschichte und der Briefe Joh., s. 345. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES OF THE BLIND. 443 
 
 separate the second and third cases is indeed difficult. For it will not be 
 maintained that Jesus can have gone out by two different gates at the same 
 time, and it is nearly as difficult to imagine that having merely set out with 
 the intention of leaving Jericho, he returned again into the town, and not 
 until afterwards took his final departure. But, viewing the case more gener- 
 ally, it is scarcely an admissible supposition, that three incidents so entirely 
 similar thus fell together in a group. The accumulation of cures of the blind 
 is enough to surprise us ; but the behaviour of the companions of Jesus is in- 
 comprehensible ; for after having seen in the first instance, on entering Jericho, 
 that they had acted in opposition to the designs of Jesus by rebuking the 
 blind man for his importunity, since Jesus called the man to him, they 
 nevertheless repeated this conduct on the second and even on the third 
 occasion. Storr, it is true, is not disconcerted by this repetition in at least 
 two incidents of this kind, for he maintains that no one knows whether those 
 who had enjoined silence on going out of Jericho were not altogether different 
 persons from those who had done the like on entering the town : indeed, sup- 
 posing them to be the same, such a repetition of conduct which Jesus had 
 implicitly disapproved, however unbecoming, was not therefore impossible, 
 since even the disciples who had been present at the first miraculous feeding, 
 yet asked, before the second, whence bread could be had for such a multitude? 
 — but this is merely to argue the reality of one impossibility from that of 
 another, as we shall presently see when we enter on the consideration of the 
 two miraculous feedings. Further, not only the conduct of the followers of 
 Jesus, but also almost every feature of the incident must have been repeated 
 in the most extraordinary manner. In the one case as in the other, the blind 
 men cry, Have mercy upon us, (or me^ thou son of David; then (after silence 
 has been enjoined on them by the spectators) Jesus commands that they 
 should be brought to him : he next asks what they will that he should do 
 to them ; they answer, that we may receive our sight ; he complies with their 
 wish, and they gratefully follow him. That all this was so exactly repeated 
 thrice, or even twice, is an improbability amounting to an impossibility ; and 
 we must suppose, according to the hypothesis adopted by Sieffert in such 
 cases, a legendary assimilation of different facts, or a traditionary variation of 
 a single occurrence. If, in order to arrive at a decision, it be asked : what 
 could more easily happen, when once the intervention of the legend is pre- 
 supposed, than that one and the same history should be told first of one, then 
 of several, first of the entrance, then of the departure ? it will not be necessary 
 to discuss the other possibility, since this is so incomparably more probable 
 that there cannot be even a momentary hesitation in embracing it as real. 
 But in thus reducing the number of the facts, we must not with Sieffert stop 
 short at two, for in that case not only do the difficulties with respect to the 
 repetition of the same incident remain, but we fall into a want of- logical 
 sequency in admitting one divergency (in the number) as unessential, for the 
 sake of removing another (in the locality). If it be further asked, supposing 
 only one incident to be here narrated, which of the several narratives is the 
 original one ? the statements as to the locality will not aid us in coming to 
 a decision ; for Jesus might just as well meet a blind man on entering as on 
 leaving Jericho. The difference in the number is more likely to furnish us 
 with a basis for a decision, and it will be in favour of Mark and Luke, who 
 have each only one blind man ; not, it is true, for the reason alleged by 
 Schleiermacher,'' namely, that Mark, by his mention of the blind man's name, 
 evinces a more accurate acquaintance with the circumstances ; for Mark, from 
 his propensity to individualize out of his own imagination, ought least of all to 
 
 ' Ut sup. s. 237. 
 
444 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 95. 
 
 be trusted with respect to names which are given by him alone. Our deci- 
 sion is founded on another circumstance. 
 
 It seems probable that Matthew was led to add a second blind man by his 
 recollection of a previous cure of two blind men narrated by him alone (ix. 
 27 ff.). Here, likewise, when Jesus is in the act of departure,— from the 
 l)lace; namely, where he had raised the ruler's daughter, — two blind men 
 follow him (those at Jericho are sitting by the way side), and in a similar 
 manner cry for mercy of the Son of David, who here also, as in the other 
 instance, according to Matthew, immediately cures them by touching their 
 eyes. With these similarities there are certainly no slight divergencies ; no- 
 thing is here said of an injunction to the Wind men to be silent, on the part of 
 the companions of Jesus ; and, while at Jericho Jesus immediately calls the 
 blind men to him, in the earlier case, they come in the first instance to him 
 when he is again in the house ; further, while there he asks them, what they 
 will have him to do to them ? here he asks, if they believe him able to cure 
 them? Lastly, the prohibition to tell what had happened, is peculiar to the 
 earlier incident. The two narratives standing in this relation to each other, 
 an assimilation of them might have taken place thus : Matthew transferred 
 the two blind men and the touch of Jesus from the first anecdote to the 
 second ; the form of the appeal from the blind men, from the second to the 
 first. 
 
 The two histories, as they are given, present but few data for a natural 
 explanation. Nevertheless the rationalistic commentators have endeavoured 
 to frame such an explanation. When Jesus in the earlier occurrence asked 
 the blind men whether they had confidence in his power, he wished, say they, 
 to ascertain whether their trust in him would remain firm during the opera- 
 tion, and whether they would punctually observe his further prescriptions ; ^ 
 having then entered the house, in order to be free from interruption, he 
 examined, for the first time, their disease, and when he found it curable 
 (according to Venturini " it was caused by tiie fine dust of that country), he 
 assured the sufferers that the result should be according to the measure of 
 their faith. Hereupon Paulus merely says briefly, that Jesus removed the 
 obstruction to their vision ; but he also must have imagined to himself some- 
 thing similar to what is described in detail by Venturini, who makes Jesus 
 anoint the eyes of the blind men with a strong water prepared beforehand, 
 and thus cleanse them from the irritating dust, so that in a short time their 
 sight returned. But this natural explanation has not the slightest root in 
 the text ; for neither can the faith (iria-Tii) required from the patient impl; 
 anything else than, as in all similar cases, trust in the miraculous power ol 
 Jesus, nor can the word TJij/aTo, he touched, signify a surgical operation, but 
 merely that touch which appears in so many of the evangelical curative 
 miracles, whether as a sign or a conductor of the healing power of J esus ; 
 of further prescriptions for the completion of the cure there is absolutely 
 nothing. It is not otherwise with the cure of the blind at Jericho, where, 
 moreover, the two middle Evangelists do not even mention the touching of 
 the eyes. 
 
 If then, according to the meaning of the narrators, the blind instantaneously 
 receive their sight as a consequence of the simple word or touch of Jesus, 
 there are the same difficulties to be encountered here as in the former case 
 of the lepers. For a disease of the eyes, however slight, as it is only en- 
 gendered gradually by the reiterated action of the disturbing cause, is still 
 
 ' Paulus, L. J. I, a, s. 249. 
 
 ' Naturl. Gesch. des Propheten von Naz. 2, 5. 216. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES OF THE BLIND. 445 
 
 less likely to disappear on a word or a touch ; it requires very complicated 
 treatment, partly surgical, partly medical, and this must be pre-eminently the 
 case with blindness, supposing it to be of a curable kind. How should we 
 represent to ourselves the sudden restoration of vision to a blind eye by a 
 word or a touch ? as purely miraculous and magical ? That would be to give 
 •up thinking on the subject. As magnetic? There is no precedent of mag- 
 netism having influence over a disease of this nature. Or, lastly, as psychical? 
 But blindness is something so independent of the mental life, so entirely 
 corporeal, that the idea of its removal at all, still less of its sudden removal 
 by means of a mental operation, is not to be entertained. We must therefore 
 acknowledge that an historical conception of these narratives is more than 
 merely difficult to us ; and we proceed to inquire whether we cannot show it 
 to be probable that legends of this kind should arise unhistorically. 
 
 We have already quoted the passage in which, according to the first and 
 third gospels, Jesus in reply to the messengers of the Baptist who had to ask 
 him whether he were the £px°/*^°s (■^^ ^'^'^^ should come), appeals to his works. 
 Now he here mentions in the very first place the cure of the blind, a signifi- 
 cant proof that this particular miracle was expected from the Messiah, his 
 words being taken from Isa. xxxv. 5, a prophecy interpreted messianically; 
 and in a rabbinical passage above cited, among the wonders wiiich Jehovah 
 is to perform in the messianic times, this is enumerated, that he oculos ccscorutn 
 aperiet, id quod per Elisam fecit?-^ Now Elisha did not cure a positive blind- 
 ness, but merely on one occasion opened the eyes of his servant to a percep- 
 tion of the supersensual world, and on another, removed a blindness which 
 had been inflicted on his enemies in consequence of his prayer (2 Kings vi. 
 17-20). That these deeds of Elisha were conceived, doubtless with reference 
 to the passage of Isaiah, as a real opening of the eyes of the blind, is proved 
 by the above rabbinical passage, and hence cures of the blind were expected 
 from the Messiah." Now if the Christian community, proceeding as it did 
 from the bosom of Judaism, held Jesus to be the messianic personage, it 
 must manifest the tendency to ascribe to him every messianic predicate, and 
 therefore the one in question. 
 
 The narrative of the cure of a blind man at Bethsaida, and that of the 
 cure of a man that was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, which are 
 both peculiar to Mark (viii. 22 ff., vii. 32 ff.), and which we shall therefore 
 consider together, are the especial favourites of all rationalistic commentators. 
 If, they exclaim, in the other evangelical narratives of cures, the accessory 
 circumstances by which the facts might be explained were but preserved as 
 they are here, we could prove historically that Jesus did not heal by his mere 
 word, and profound investigators might discover the natural means by which 
 
 1° Vid. vol. i. p. 8i, note. 
 
 " Elsewhere also we find proof that in those times the power of effecting miraculous cures, 
 especially of blindness, was commonly ascribed to men who were regarded as favourites of 
 the Deity. Thus Tacitus, Hist. iv. 8t, and Suetonius, Vespas. vii. tell us, that in Alexan- 
 dria a blind man applied to Vespasian, shortly after he was made emperor, alleging that he 
 did so by the direction of the god Serapis, with the entreaty that he would cure him of his 
 blindness by wetting his eyes with his spittle. Vespasian complied, and the result was that 
 the blind man immediately had his sight restored. As Tacitus attests the truth of this story 
 in a remarkable manner, Paulus is probably not wrong in regarding the affair as the contri- 
 vance of adulatory priests, who to procure for the emperor the fame of a miracle- worker, and 
 by this means to secure his favour on behalf of their god, by whose counsel the event was 
 occasioned, hired a man to simulate blindness. Ex. Handb. 2, s. 56 f. However this may 
 be we see from the narrative what was expected, even beyond the limits of Palestine, of a 
 man who, as Tacitus here expresses himself concerning Vespasian, enjoyed favor e emits and 
 an inclinatio numinum. 
 
446 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 95. 
 
 his cures were effected ! ^^ And in fact chiefly on the ground of these 
 narratives, in connexion with particular features in other parts of the second 
 gospel, Mark has of late been represented, even by theologians who do not 
 greatly favour this method of interpretation, as the patron of the naturalistic 
 system. 18 ... 
 
 In the two cures before us, it is at once a -good augury for the rationalistic 
 commentators that Jesus takes both the patients apart from the multitude, 
 lor no other purpose, as they believe, than that of examining their condition 
 medically, and ascertaining whether it were susceptible of relief. Such an 
 examination is, according to these commentators, intimated by the Evangelist 
 himself, when he describes Jesus as putting his fingers into the ears of the 
 deaf man, by which means he discovered that the deafness was curable, aris- 
 ing probably from the hardening of secretions in the ear, and hereupon, also 
 with the finger, he removed the hindrance to hearing. Not only are the 
 words, he put his fingers into his ears, £/8aA.£ roiis hakrvXaw ets to. Sto, inter- 
 preted as denoting a surgical operation, but the words, he touched his tongue, 
 ijil/aTo TTjs y\ui(T<rr]s, are supposed to imply that Jesus cut the ligament of the 
 tongue in the degree necessary to restore the pliancy which the organ had 
 lost. In like manner, in the case of the blind man, the words, when he had 
 put. his hands upon him, i-TnOeU ras x"P"* "ijt¥> ^^e explained as probably 
 meaning that Jesus by pressing the eyes of the patient removed the crystalline 
 lens which had become opaque. A further help to this mode of interpreta- 
 tion is found in the circumstance that both to the tongue of the man who had 
 an impediment in his speech, and to the eyes of the blind man, Jesus applied 
 spittle. Saliva has in itself, particularly in the opinion of ancient physicians,^* 
 a salutary effect on the eyes ; as, however, it in no case acts so rapidly as 
 instantaneously to cure blindness and a defect in the organs of speech, it is 
 conjectured, with respect to both instances, that Jesus used the saliva to 
 moisten some medicament, probably a caustic powder ; that the blind man 
 only heard the spitting and saw nothing of the mixture of the medicaments, 
 and that the deaf man, in accordance with the spirit of the age, gave little 
 heed to the natural means, or that the legend did not preserve them. In 
 the narrative of the deaf man the cure is simply stated, but that of the blind 
 man is yet further distinguished, by its representing the restoration of his 
 sight circumstantially, as gradual. After Jesus had touched the eyes of the 
 patient as above mentioned, be asked him if he saw aught ; not at all, 
 observes Paulus, in the manner of a miracle-worker, who is sure of the result, 
 but precisely in the manner of a physician, who after performing an operation 
 endeavours to ascertain if the patient is benefited. The blind man answers 
 that he sees, but first indistinctly, so that men seem to him like trees. Here 
 apparently the rationalistic commentator may triumphantly ask the orthodox- 
 one : tfidivine power for the working of cures stood at the command of Jesils, 
 why did he not at once cure the blind man perfectly .? If the disease pre- 
 sented an obstacle which he was not able to overcome, is it not clear from 
 thence that his power was a finite, ordinarily human power ? Jesus once 
 more puts his hands on the eyes of the blind man, in Order to aid the effect 
 of the first operation, and only then is the cure completed.^^ 
 
 '^ These are nearly the words of Pauhis, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 312, 391. 
 
 IS De Wette, Beitrag zur Charakteristik des Evangelisten Markus, in UUmann's und 
 Umbreit's Sludien, 1, 4, 789 fT. Comp. Koster, Immanuel, f. 72. On, the other hand : 
 comp. De Wette's exeg. Handb. i, 2, s. 148 f. 
 
 '■• Pliny, H. N. xxviii. 7, and other passages in Wetstein. 
 
 ^ Paulus, ut sup. s. 312 f. 392 ff. ; Natiirliche Geschichte, 3, s. 31 ff. 216 f. ; Koster, 
 Immanuel, s. 188 ff. 
 
MIRACLES OP JEStrS— CURES OF THE BLIND. 447 
 
 The complacency of the rationalistic commentators in these narratives of 
 Mark, is liable to be disturbed by the frigid observation, that, here also, the 
 circumstances which are requisite to render the natural explanation possible 
 are not given by the Evangelists themselves, but are interpolated by the said 
 commentators. For in both cures Mark furnishes the saliv^ only; the 
 efficacious powder is infused by Paulus and Venturini : it is they alone who 
 make the introduction of the fingers into the ears first a medical examination 
 and then an operation ; and it is they alone who, contrary to the signification 
 of language, explain the words imriOivai ras x«pas e'f' tous d<^SaA/Aoiis, to lay 
 the hands vpon the eyes, as implying a surgical operation on those organs. 
 Again, the circumstance that Jesus takes the blind man aside, is shown by 
 the context (vii. 36, viii. 26) to have reference to the design of Jesus to keep 
 the miraculous result a secret, not to the desire to be undisturbed in the 
 application of natural means : so that all the supports of the rationalistic 
 explanation sink beneath it, and the orthodox one may confront it anew. 
 This regards the touch and the spittle either as a condescension towards the 
 sufferers, who were thereby made more thoroughly sensible to whose power 
 they owed their cure ; or as a conducting medium for the spiritual power of 
 Christ, a medium with which he might nevertheless have dispensed.!^ That 
 the cure was gradual, is on this system accounted for by the supposition, that 
 Jesus intended by means of the partial cure to animate the faith of the blind 
 man, and only when he was thus rendered worthy was he completely cured ■^'' 
 or it is conjectured that, owing to the malady being deep-seated, a sudden 
 cure would perhaps have been dangerous.^^ 
 
 But by these attempts to interpret the evangelical narratives, especially in 
 the last particular, the supernaturalistic theologians, who bring them forward, 
 betake themselves to the same ground as the rationalists, for they are equally 
 open to the charge of introducing into the narratives what is not in the remotest 
 degree intimated by the text. For where, in the procedure of Jesus towards 
 the blind man, is there a trace that his design in the first instance was to prove 
 and to strengthen the faith of the patient? In that case, instead of the ex- 
 pression. He asked him if he saw aught, which relates only to his external con- 
 dition, we must rather have read, as in Matt, ix; 28, Believe ye that I am able 
 to do this 1 But what shall we say to the conjecture that a sudden cure might 
 have been injurious ! The curative act of a worker of miracles is (according to 
 Olshausen's own opinion) not to be regarded as the merely negative one of 
 the removal of a disease, but also as the positive one of an impartation of new 
 and fresh strength to the organ affected, whence the idea of danger from an 
 instantaneous cure when wrought by miraculous agency, is not to be entertained. 
 Thus no motive is to' be discovered which could induce Jesus to put a restraint 
 on the immediate action of his miraculous power, and it must therefore have 
 been restricted, independently of his volition, by the force of the deeprseated 
 malady. This, however, is entirely opposed to the idea of the gospels, which 
 represent the miraculous power of Jesus as superior to death itself ; it cannot 
 therefore have been the meaning of our Evangelists. If we take into consider- 
 ation the peculiar characteristics of Mark as an author, it will appear that his 
 only aim is to give dramatic effect to the scene. Every sudden result is diffi- 
 cult to bring before the imagination : he who wishes to give to another a vivid 
 idea of a rapid movement, first goes through it slowly, and a quick result is 
 perfectly conceivable only when the narrator has shown the process in detail. 
 
 '* For the former explanation, Hess, Geschichte Jesu, I, s, 390 f. ; for the latter, Olshausen, 
 b, Comm. i. s. 510. 
 
 " Kuinol, in Marc, p. no. 
 " Olshausen, s. 509. 
 
448 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 95. 
 
 Consequently a writer whose object it is to assist as far as may be the imagin- 
 ation of his reader, will wherever it is possible exhibit the propensity to render 
 the immediate mediate, and when recording- a sudden result, still to bring for- 
 ward the successive steps that led to it. 1" So here Mark, or his informant, 
 supposed that he was contributing greatly to the dramatic effect, when he in- 
 serted between the blindness of the man and the entire restoration of his sight, 
 the partial cure, or the seeing men as trees, and every reader will say, from his 
 own feeling, that this object is fully achieved. But herein, as others also have 
 remarked,^" Mark is so far from manifesting an inclination to the natural con- 
 ception of such miracles, that he, on the contrary, not seldom labours to 
 aggrandize the miracle, as we have partly seen in the' case of the Gadarene, and 
 shall yet have frequent reason to remark. In a similar manner may also be 
 explained why Mark in these narratives which are peculiar to him (and else- 
 where also, as in vi. 13, where he observes that the disciples anointed the sick 
 with oil), mentions the application of external means and manifestations in 
 miraculous cures. That these means, the saliva particularly, were not in the 
 popular opinion of that age naturally efficacious causes of the cure, we may be 
 convinced by the narrative concerning Vespasian quoted above, as also by 
 passages of Jewish and Roman authors, according to which saliva was believed 
 to, have a magical potency, especially against diseases of the eye.^"^ Hence 
 Olshausen perfectly reproduces the conception of that age when he explains 
 the touch, salivaj and the like, to be conductors of the superior power resident 
 in the worker of miracles. We cannot indeed make this opinion ours, unless 
 with Olshausen we proceed upon the supposition of a parallelism between the 
 miraculous power of Jesus and the agency of animal magnetism : a supposition 
 which, for the explanation of the miracles of Jesus, especially of the one before 
 us, is inadequate and therefore superfluous. Hence we put this means merely 
 to the account of the Evangelist. To him also we may then doubtless refer the 
 taking aside of the blind man, the exaggerated description of the astonishment 
 of the people, (i'lrepirepuTa-m c^itX^o-ctovto airavTes, vii. 37,) and the strict pro- 
 hibition to tell any man of the cure. This secrecy gave the affair a mysterious 
 aspect, which, as we may gather from other passages, was pleasing to Mark. 
 We have another trait belonging to the mysterious in the narratives of the cure 
 of the deaf man, where Mark says. And looking up to heaven he sighed (vii. 34). 
 What cause was there for sighing at that particular moment ? Was it the 
 misery of the human race, ''■'^ which must have been long known to Jesus from 
 many melancholy examples ? Or shall we evade the difficulty by explaining 
 the expression as implying nothing further than silent prayer or audible 
 speech ? 23 Whoever knows Mark will rather recognise the exaggerating nar- 
 rator in the circumstance that he ascribes to Jesus a deep emotion, on an occa- 
 sion which could not indeed have excited it, but which, being accompanied by 
 it, had.a more mysterious appearance. But above all, there appears to me to 
 be an air of mystery in this, that Mark gives the authoritative word with which 
 Jesus opened the ears of the deaf man in its original Syriac'form, i<J3<l>a6a, as 
 on the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, this Evangehst alone has the 
 words ToXidk Kovfj-L (v. 41). It is indeed said that these expressions are any- 
 thing rather than magical forms ; 2* but that Mark chooses to give these 
 authoritative words in a language foreign to his readers, to whom he is obliged 
 
 '" Comp. De Wette, Kritik der Mosaischen Geschichte, s. 36 {. 
 
 '" Fritzsche, Comm. in Marc, p. xliii. 
 
 ^' Vid. ap. Wetsiein and Lightfoot, John Ix. 6. 
 
 ^^ Thus Fritzsche, after Euthymius, in Marc, p. 304. 
 
 2' The former is the supposition of Kuinol, the latter of Schott. 
 
 " Hess, Gesch. Jesu, i, s. 391, Anm. i. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES OF THE BLIND. 449 
 
 at the same time to explain them, nevertheless proves that he must have 
 attributed to this original form a special significance, Which, as it appears from 
 the context, can only have been a magical one. This inclination to the mys- 
 terious we may now retrospectively find indicated in the application of those 
 outward means which have no relation to the result ; for the mysterious consists 
 precisely in the presentation of infinite power through a finite medium, in the 
 combination of the strongest effect with apparently inefficacious means. 
 
 If we have been unable to receive as historical the simple narrative given by 
 all the synoptical writers of the cure of the blind man at Jericho, we are still 
 less prepared to award this character to the mysterious description, given by 
 Mark alone, of the cure of a blind man at Bethsaida, and we must regard it as 
 a product of the legend, with more or less addition from the evangelical 
 narrator. The same judgment must be pronounced on his narrative of the cure 
 of the deaf man who had an impediment in his speech Kui^ds /j.oyiXdXo's ; for, to- 
 gether with the negative reasons already adduced against its historical credibility, 
 there are not wanting positive causes for its mythical origin, since the prophecy 
 
 relating to the messianic times, roTt. ura kui<J>wv aKovarovrai — Tpav-ij hi IcTToi 
 ykStfraa fLoyiXakmv, the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, the tongue of the dumb 
 shall sing (Isa. xxxv. 5, 6), was in existence, and according to Matt. xi. 5, was 
 interpreted literally. 
 
 If the narratives of Mark which we have just considered, seem at the first 
 glance to be favourable to the natural explanation, the narrative of John, chap, 
 ix., must, one would think, be unfavourable and destructive to it ; for here the 
 question is not concerning a blind man, whose malady having originated acci- 
 dentally, might be easier to remove, but concerning a man born blind. Never- 
 theless, as the expositors of this class are sharp-sighted, and do not soon lose 
 courage, they are able even here to discover much in their favour. In the 
 first place, they find that the condition of the patient is but vaguely described, 
 however definite the expression, blind from his birth, Tv(f>X.ov «« yeverrj^ may 
 seem to sound. The statement of time which this expression includes, Paulus, 
 it is true, refrains from overthrowing (though his forbearance is unwilling and 
 in fact incomplete) : hence he has the more urgent necessity for attempting to 
 shake the statement as to quality. Tu<^A.os is not to signify total blindness,' 
 and as Jesus tells the man to go to the pool of Siloam, not to get himself led 
 thither, he must have still had some glimmering of eye-sight, by means of which 
 he could himself find the way thither. Still more help do the rationalistic: 
 commentators find for themselves in the mode of cure adopted by Jesus. He 
 says beforehand (v. 4) he must work the works of him that sent him while 
 it is day, eus ijfiep" io'ra'i for in the night no man can work; a sufficient 
 proof that he had not the idea of curing the blind man by a mere word, 
 which he might just as well have uttered in the night — that, on the contrary, 
 he intended to undertake a medical or surgical operation, for which certainly 
 daylight was required. Further, the clay^ jriyXos, which Jesus made with 
 his spittle, and with which he anointed the eyes of the blind man, is still 
 more favourable to the natural explanation than the expression yrwas having 
 spit, in a former case, and hence it is a fertile source of questions and con- 
 jectures. Whence did John know that Jesus took nothing more than spittle: 
 and dust to make his eye-salve. Was he himself present, or did he understand 
 it merely from the narrative of the cured blind man ? The latter could not: 
 with his then weak glimmering of sight, correctly see what Jesus took : perhaps 
 Jesus while he mixed a salve out of other ingredients accidentally spat upon 
 the ground, and the patient fel} into the error of supposing that the spittle 
 made part of the salve. Still more : while or before Jesus put something on 
 the eyes, did he not also remove something by extraction or friction, or other- 
 
 F F 
 
450 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 95. 
 
 wise effect a change in the state of these organs ? This would be an essential 
 fact which might easily be mistaken by the blind man and the spectators for 
 a merely accessory circumstance. Lastly, the washing in the pool of Siloam 
 which was prescribed to the patient was perhaps continued many days — was a 
 protracted cure by means of the bath — and the words ^\6e ^Xeirwv he came 
 seeing, do not necessarily imply that he came thus after his first bath, but that 
 at a convenient time after the completion of his cure, he came again seeing. ^^ 
 
 But, to begin at the beginning, the meaning here given to ^/tepa and vv^ is 
 too shallow even for Venturini,*® and especially clashes with the context (v. 5), 
 which throughout demands an interpretation of the words with reference to the 
 speedy departure of Jesus. ^'' As to the conjecture that the clay was made of 
 medicinal ingredients of some kind or other, it is the more groundless, since it 
 cannot be said here, as in the former case, that only so much is stated as the 
 patient could learn by his hearing or by a slight glimmering of light, for, on 
 this occasion, Jesus undertook the cure, not in private, but in the presence of 
 his disciples. Concerning the further supposition of previous surgical oper- 
 ations, by which the anointing and washing, alone mentioned in the text, are 
 reduced to mere accessories, nothing more is to be said, than that by this 
 example we may see how completely the spirit of natural explanation despises 
 all restraints, not scrupling to pervert the clearest words of the text in support 
 of its arbitrary combinations. Further, when, from the circumstance that 
 Jesus ordered the blind man to go- to the pool of Siloam, it is inferred that he 
 must have had a share of light, we may remark, in opposition to this, that 
 Jesus merely told the patient whither he should go (uVaycv) ; how he was to 
 go, whether alone or'with a guide, he left to his own discretion. Lastly, when 
 the closely connected words he went his way, therefore, and washed and came 
 seeing, air^XOev ovv Koi ivuj/aTo Kal ^A.6e j8A.ewo)v (v. -7 ; comp. v. 1 1) are stretched 
 out into a process of cure lasting several weeks, it is just as if the words vefii, 
 vidi, vici, were translated thus : After my arrival I reconnoitred for several 
 days, fought battles at suitable intervals, and finally remained conqueror. 
 
 Thus here also the natural explanation will not serve us, and we have still 
 before us the narrative of a man born blind, miraculously cured by Jesus. 
 That the doubts already expressed as to the reality of the cures of the blind, 
 apply with increased force to the case of a man born blind, is self-evident. 
 And they are aided in this instance by certain special critical reasons. Not 
 one of three first Evangelists mentions this cure. Now, if in the formation of 
 the apostolic tradition, and in the selection which it made from among the 
 miracles of Jesus, any kind of reason was exercised, it must have taken 
 the shape of the two following rules : first, to choose the greater miracles 
 before those apparently less important; and secondly, those with which 
 edifying discourses were connected, before those which were not thus dis- 
 tingui^ed. Irithe first respect, it is plain that the cure of a man blind from 
 his birth, as the incomparably more difficult miracle, was by all means to be 
 chosen rather than that of a man in whom blindness had supervened, and 
 it is not to be conceived why, if Jesus really gave sight to a man born blind, 
 nothing of this should have entered into the evangelical tradition, and from 
 thence into the synoptical gospels. It is true that with this consideration of 
 the magnitude of the miracles, a regard to the edifying nature of the discourses 
 connected with them might not seldom come into collision, so that a less 
 striking, but from the conversations which it caused, a more instructive 
 miracle, might be preferred to one more striking, but presenting less of the 
 
 " Paulus, Comm. 4, s. 472. 
 "' Naturliche Gesch. 3, s. 215. 
 " Vid. Tholuck and Liicke, in loc. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS — CURES OF THE BLIND. 451 
 
 latter kind of interest. But the cure of the blind man in John is accompanied 
 by very remarkable conversations, first, of Jesus with the disciples, then, of the 
 cured man with the magistrates, and lastly of Jesus with the cured man, such 
 as there is no trace of in the synoptical cures of the blind ; conversations in 
 which, if not the entire course of the dialogue, at least some aphoristic pearls 
 (as v. 4, 5, 39), were admirably suited to the purpose of three first Evangelists. 
 These writers, therefore, could not have failed to introduce the cure of the 
 man born blind into their histories, instead of their less remarkable and less 
 edifying cures of the blind, if the former had made a part of the evangelical 
 tradition whence they drew. It might possibly have remained unknown to the 
 general Christian tradition, if it had taken place at a time and ui;der circum- 
 stances which did not favour its promulgation — if it had been effected in a re- 
 mote corner of the country, without further witnesses. But Jesus performed 
 this miracle in Jerusalem, in the circle of his disciples ; it made a great sensa- 
 tion in the city, and was highly offensive to the magistracy, hence the affair must 
 have been known if it had really occurred ; and as we do not find it in the com- 
 mon evangelical tradition, the suspicion arises that it perhaps never did occur. 
 
 But it will be said, the writer who attests it is the Apostle John. This, how- 
 ever, is too improbable, not only on account of the incredible nature of the con- 
 tents of the narrative, which could thus hardly have proceeded from an eye- 
 witness, but also from another reason. The narrator interprets the name 
 of the pool, Siloam, by the Greek dTreoTaX/teVos (v. 7 ) ; a false explanation, 
 for one who is sent is called O-lpZ', whereas U>W according to the most probable 
 interpretation signifies a waterfall.''* The Evangelist, however, chose the above 
 interpretation, because he sought for some significant relation between the 
 name of the pool, and the sending thither of the blind man, and thus seems to 
 have imagined that the pool had by a special providence received the name of 
 Sent, because at a future time the Messiah, as a manifestation of his glory, was 
 to send thither a blind man.^^ Now, we grant that an apostle might give a 
 grammatically incorrect explanation, in so far as he is not held to be inspired, 
 and that even a native of Palestine might mistake the etymology of Hebrew 
 words, as the Old Testament itself shows ; nevertheless, such a play upon words 
 looks more like the laboured attempt of a writer remote from the event, than ' 
 of an eye-witness. The eye-witness would have had enough of important 
 matters in the miracle which he had beheld, and the conversation to which he 
 had listened ; only a remote narrator could fall into the triviality of trying 
 to extort a significant meaning from the smallest accessory circumstance. 
 Xholuck and Liicke are highly revolted by this allegory, which, as the latter 
 expresses himself, approaches to absolute folly, hence they are unwilling to 
 admit that it proceeded from John, and regard it as a gloss. As, however, all 
 critical authorities, except one of minor importance, present this particular, 
 such a position is sheer arbitrariness, and the only choice left us is. either 
 with Olshausen, to edify ourselves by this interpretation as an apostolic one,'" 
 or, with the author of the Probabilia, to number it among the indications that 
 the fourth gospel had not an apostolic origin.*' 
 
 The reasons which might prevent the author of the fourth gospel, or the 
 tradition whence he drew, from resting contented with the cures of the blind 
 narrated by the synoptical writers, and thus induce the one or the other to 
 frame the history before us, are already pointed out by the foregoing remarks, 
 
 " Vid. Paulus and Liicke, in loc. 
 "' Thus Euthymius and Paulas, in loc. 
 
 "' B. Comm. 2, s. 230, where, however, he refers the dTreoroX/i^i'Os to the outflow of the 
 spirit proceeding from God. 
 " S. 93- 
 
452 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 96. 
 
 The observation has been already made by others, that the fourth Evangelist 
 has fewer miracles than the synoptical writers, but that this deficiency in num- 
 ber is compensated by a superiority in magnitude. ^^ Thus while the other 
 Evangelists have simple paralytics cured by Jesus, the fourth gospel has one 
 who had been lame thirty-eight years ; while, in the former, Jesus resuscitates 
 persons who had just expired, in the latter, he calls back to life one who had 
 lain in the grave four days, in whom therefore it might be presumed that de- 
 composition had begun ; and so here, instead of a cure of simple blindness, 
 we have that of a man born blind, — a heightening of the miracle altogether 
 suited to the apologetic and dogmatic tendency of this gospel. In what way 
 the author, or the particular tradition which he followed, might be led to depict 
 the various details of the narrative, is easily seen. The act of spitting, Trryav, 
 was common in magical cures of the eyes ; clay, TnyXos, was a ready substitute 
 for an eye-salve, and elsewhere occurs in magical proceedings ; ^* the command 
 to wash in the pool of Siloam may have been an imitation of Elisha's order, 
 that the leper Naaman should bathe seven times in the river Jordan. The 
 conversations connected with the cure partly proceed from the tendency of the 
 Gospel of John already remarked byStorr, namely, to attest and to render as 
 authentic as possible both the cure of the man, and the fact of his having been 
 born blind, whence the repeated examination of the cured man, and even of 
 his parents ; .partly they turn upon the symbolical meaning of the expressions, 
 d/i'nd and seeing, day and night, — a meaning which it is true is not foreign to 
 the synoptical writers, but which specifically belongs to the circle of images in 
 favour with John. 
 
 § 96. 
 
 CURES OF PARALYTICS. DID JESUS REGARD DISEASES AS PUNISHMENTS? 
 
 An important feature in tbe history of the cure of the man born blind has 
 been passed over, becaus.e it can only be properly estimated in connexion 
 with a corresponding one in the synoptical narratives of the cure of a paralytic 
 (Matt. ix. I 'ff. ; Mark ii. i ff. ; Luke v. 1 7 ff.), which we have in the next 
 place to consider. Here Jesus first declares to the sick man : a<f>emvTai a-oi al 
 a/xapTi'at crov, thy sins are forgiven thee, and then as a proof that he had 
 authority to forgive sins, he cures him. It is impossible not to perceive in 
 this a reference to the Jewish opinion, that any evil befalling an individual, 
 and especially disease, was a punishment of his sins ; an opinion which, 
 presented in its main elements in the Old Testament (Lev. xxvi. 14 ff. ; Deut. 
 xxviii. 15 ff. ; 2 Chron. xxL 15, 18 f.) was expressed in the most definite 
 manner by the later Jews.i Had we possessed that synoptical narrative only, 
 we must have believed that Jesus shared the opinion of his cotemporary 
 fellow-t^ountrymen on this subject, since he proves his authority to forgive 
 sins (as the cause of disease) by an example of his power to cure disease (the 
 consequence of sin). But, it is said, there are other passages where Jesus 
 directly contradicts this Jewish opinion ; whence it follows, that what he then 
 says to the paralytic was a mere accommodation to the ideas of the sick man, 
 intended to promote his cure.* 
 
 ' The principal passage commonly adduced in support of this position, is 
 the introduction to the history of the man born blind, which was last con- 
 
 *^ Kbster, Immanuel, s. 79 ; Bretschneider, Probab., s. 122. 
 '^ Wetstein, in loc. 
 
 1 Nedarim f. xli. I. (Schbttgen, I, p. 93): Dixit R. Chija fit. Abba: nullus agrotus 
 a morbo sno sanaiur, donee ipsi omnia peccaia remissa si7it. 
 « Hase, L. J. § 73. Fritzsche, in Matt., p. 335. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES OF PARALYTICS. 453 
 
 sidered (John ix. 1-3). Here the disciples, seeing on the road the man 
 whom they knew to have been blind from his birth, put to Jesus the question, 
 whether his blindness was the consequence of his own sins, or of those of 
 his parents ? The case was a peculiarly difficult one on the Jewish theory of 
 retribution. With respect to diseases which attach themselves to a man in 
 his course through life, an observer who has once taken a certain bias,, may 
 easily discover or assume some peculiar delinquencies on the part of this man 
 as their cause. With respect to inborn diseases, on the contrary,, though the 
 old Hebraic opinion (Exod. xx.- 5 ; Deut. v. 9 ; 2 Sam. iii. 29), it is true, 
 presented the explanation that by these the sins of the fathers were visited 
 on their posterity : yet as, for human regulations, the Mosaic law itself 
 ordained that each should suffer for his own sins alone (Deut. xxiv. 16 ; 2 
 Kings xiv. 6) ; and as also, in relation to the penal justice of the Divine 
 Being, the prophets predicted a similar dispensation (Jer. xxxi. 3a; Ezek. 
 xviii. 19 f.); rabbinical acumen resorted to the expedient of supposing, that 
 men so afflicted might probably have sinned in their mother's- worn b,^ and 
 this was doubtless the notion which the disciples had in view in their question 
 V. 2. Jesus says, in answer, that neither for his own sin nor for that of his 
 parents, did this man come into the world blind ; but in order that by the 
 cure which he, as the Messiah, would effect in him, he might be an instrument 
 in manifesting the miraculous power of God. This is generally understood 
 as if Jesus repudiated the whole opinion,, that disease and other evils were 
 essentially punishments of sin. But the words of Jesus are expressly limited 
 to the case before him ; he simply says, that this particular misfortune had 
 its foundation, not in the guilt of the individual, but in higher providential 
 designs. The supposition that his expressions had a more general sense, and 
 included a repudiation of the entire Jewish opinion, could only be warranted 
 by other more decided declarations from him to that effect. As, on the 
 contrary, according to the above observations) a narrative is found in the 
 synoptical gospels which, simply interpreted, implies the concurrence of Jesus 
 in the prevalent opinion, the question arises : which is easier, to regard the 
 expression of Jesus in the synoptical narratives as an accommodation, or that 
 in John as having relation solely to the case immediately before him ? — a 
 question which will be decided in favour of the latter alternative by every one 
 who, on the one hand, knows the difficulties attending the hypothesis of 
 accommodation as applied to the expressions of Jesus in the gospels, and on 
 the other, is clear-sighted enough to perceive, that in the passage in question 
 in the fourth gospel, there is not the slightest intimation that the declaration 
 of Jesus had a more^general meaning. 
 
 It is true that according to correct principles of intepretation, one Evange- 
 list ought not to be explained immediately by another, and in the present 
 case it is very possible that while the synoptical writers ascribe to Jesus the 
 common opinion of his age, the more highly cultivated author of the fourth 
 gospel may make him reject it : but that he also confined the rejection of the 
 current opinion on the part of Jesus to that single case, is proved by the 
 manner in which he represents Jesus as speaking on another occasion. 
 When, namely, Jesus says to the man who had been lame thirty-eight years 
 (John V.) and had just been cured, /AiyxeVt d|u,aprav£, im /x^ xeipov tC aot 
 ■vkv-qTOJ. (v. 14), Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee ; this is equivalent 
 to his saying to the paralytic whom he was about to cure, d<^e<ovTat o-oi al 
 
 3 Sanhedr. f. xci. 2, and Bereschith Rabba f. xxxviii. I. (Lightfoot, p. 1050) : Antonius 
 interrogavU Kabbi (Judam) : a quonam teifipore incipit mains affectus prcevalere in homine ? 
 an a tempore formationis ejus [inutero), an a tempore processionis ejus [ex utero)? Dicit ei 
 Kabbi : a tempore formationis ejus. 
 
454 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 96. 
 
 dfiapTtai a-av, thy sins are forgiven thee : in the one case disease is removed, in 
 the other threatened, as a punishment of sin. But here again the expositors, 
 to whom it is not agreeable that Jesus should hold an opinion which they 
 reject, find a means of evading the direct sense of the words. Jesus, say 
 they, perceived that the particular disease of this man was a natural conse- 
 quence of certain excesses, and warned him from a repetition of these as 
 calculated to bring on a more dangerous relapse.* But an insight into the 
 natural connexion between certain excesses and certain diseases as their 
 consequence, is far more removed from the mode of thinking of the age m 
 which Jesus lived; than the notion of a positive connexion between sin in 
 general and disease as its punishment; hence, if we are nevertheless to ascribe 
 the former sense to the words of Jesus, it must be very distinctly conveyed in 
 the text. , But the fact is that in the whole narrative there is no intimation of 
 any particular excess on the part of the man ; the words /^lyKcri a>apTaj>c, 
 relate only to sin in general, and to supply a conversation of Jesus with the 
 sick man, in which he is supposed to have acquainted the former with the 
 connexion between his sufferings and a particular sin,^ is the most arbitrary 
 fiction. What exposition ! for the sake of evading a result which is dogmati- 
 cally unwelcome, to extend the one passage (John ix.) to a generality of 
 meaning not really belonging to it, to elude the other (Matt, ix.) by the 
 hypothesis of accommodation, and forcibly to affix to a third (John v.) a 
 modern idea ; whereas if the first passagebe only permitted to say no more than 
 it actually says, the direct meaning of the other two may remain unviolated ! 
 But another passage, and that a synoptical one, is adduced in vindication 
 of the superiority of Jesus to the popular opinion in question. This passage 
 is Luke xiii. i ff., where Jesus is told of the Galileans whom Pilate had caused 
 to be slain while they were in the act of sacrificing, and of others who were 
 killed by the falling of a tower. From what follows, we must suppose the 
 informants to have intimated their opinion that these calamities were to be 
 regarded as a divine visitation for the peculiar wickedness of the parties so 
 signally destroyed. Jesus replied that they must not Suppose those men to 
 have been especially sinful ; they themselves were in no degree better, and 
 unless they repented would meet with a similar destruction. Truly it is not 
 clear how in these expressions of Jesus a repudiation of the popular notion 
 can be found. If Jesus wished to give his voice in opposition to this, he 
 must either have said : you are equally great sinners, though you may not 
 perish bodily in the same manner; or : do you believe that those men perished 
 on account of their sins? No ! the contrary may be seen in you, who, not- 
 withstanding your wickedness, are not thus smitten with death. On the 
 contrary, the expressions of Jesus as given by Luke can only have the follow- 
 ing se/ise : that those men have already met with such calamities is no 
 evidence of their peculiar wickedness, any more than the fact that you have 
 been hitherto spared the like, is an evidence of your greater worth ; on the 
 contrary, earlier or later, similar judgments falling on you will attest your 
 equal guilt : — whereby the supposed law of the connexion between the sin 
 and misfortune of every individual is confirmed, not overthrown. This vulgar 
 Hebrew opinion concerning sickness and evil, is indeed in contradiction with 
 that esoteric view, partly Essene, partly Ebionite, which we have found in the 
 introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the rich man, and 
 elsewhere, and according to which the righteous in this generation are the 
 suffering, the poor and the sick ; but both opinions are clearly to be seen in 
 the discourses of Jesus by an unprejudiced exegesis, and the contradiction 
 
 * Faulus Coram. 4, s. 264 ; Liicke, 2, s. 22. 
 ' This is done by Tholuck, in loc. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES OF THE PARALYTICS. 455 
 
 which we find between them authorizes us neither to put a forced construction 
 on the one class of expressions, nor to deny them to have really come from 
 Jesus, since we cannot calculate how he may have solved for himself the 
 opposition between two ideas of the world, presented to him by different 
 sides of the Jewish culture of that age. 
 
 As regards the above-mentioned cure, the synoptical writers make Jesus 
 in his reply to the messengers of the Baptist, appeal to the fact that the lame 
 walked (Matt. xi. 5), and at another time the people wonder when, among 
 other miracles, they see the maimed to be whole and the lame to walk (Matt. 
 XV. 31). In the place of the la7ne, xw^oi, paralytics, TrapaXvnKol, are else- 
 where brought forward (Matt. iv. 24), and especially in the detailed histories 
 of cures relating to this kind of sufferers (as Matt. ix. i ff. parall., viii. 5, 
 parall.), trapaX.vTiKol, and not x'"<^oi, are named. The sick man at the pool of 
 Bethesda (John v. 5) belongs probably to the x«)A.ois spoken of in v. 3 ; there 
 also irjpol, withered, are mentioned, and in Matt. xii. 9 ff. parall. we find the 
 cure of a man who had a withered hand. As however the three last named 
 cures will return to us under different heads, all that remains here for our 
 examination is the cure of the paralytic Matt. ix. i ff. parall. 
 
 As the definitions which the ancient physicians give of paralysis, though 
 they all show it to have been a species of lameness, yet leave it undecided 
 whether the lameness was total or partial ; ^ and as, besides, no strict adhe- 
 rence to medical technicalities is to be expected from the Evangelists, we must 
 gather what they understand by paralytics from their own descriptions of such 
 patients. In the present passage, we read of the paralytic that he was borne 
 on a bed KXiv-q, and that to enable him to arise and carry his bed was an un- 
 precedented wonder irapaSofov, whence we must conclude that he was lame, 
 at least in the feet. While here there is no mention of pains, or of an acute 
 character of disease, in another narrative (Matt. viii. 6) these are evidently 
 presupposed when the centurion says that his servant is sick of the palsy, 
 grievously tormented, pipX-qrai — fl-apaXuTiKos, SeivSs l3a<Tavi^6fji.evos ; so that 
 under paralytics in the gospels we have at one time to understand a lameness 
 without pain, at another a painful, gouty disease of the limbs.'' 
 
 In the description of the scene in which the paralytic (Matt. ix. i ff. parall.) 
 is brought to Jesus, there is a remarkable gradation in the three accounts. 
 Matthew says simply, that as Jesus, after an excursion to the opposite shore, 
 returned to Capernaum, there was brought to him a paralytic, stretched on a 
 bed. Luke describes particularly how Jesus, surrounded by a great multitude, 
 chiefly Pharisees and scribes, taught and healed in a certain house, and how 
 the bearers, because on account of the press they could not reach Jesus, let 
 the sick man down to him through the roof. If we call to mind the structure 
 of oriental houses, which had a flat roof, to which an opening led from the 
 upper story ; ^ and if we add to this the rabbinical manner of speaking, in 
 which to the via per portum (D*nna ini) was opposed the via per tectum 
 (TJJ "I'll) as a no less ordinary way for reaching the we/mSov upper story or 
 chamber,^ we cannot under the expression KoBikvax &a rutv Kepdfiav, to let down 
 through the tiling, understand anything else than that the bearers —who, either 
 by means of stairs leading thither directly from the street, or from the roof of 
 a neighbouring house, gained access to the roof of the house in which Jesus 
 
 was, let down the sick man with his bed, apparently by cords, through the 
 
 opening already existing in the roof. Mark, who, while with Matthew he 
 
 ' See the examples in Wetstein, N. T. i, s. 284, and in Wahl's Clavis. 
 ' Comp. Winer, Realw., and Fritzsche, in Matt. p. 194. _. 
 8 Winer, ut sup. Art. Dach. 
 " Lightfoot, p. 6oi. 
 
45 6 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 96. 
 
 places the scene at Capernaum, agrees with Luke in the description of the 
 great crowd and the consequent ascent to the Joof, goes yet further than LukCj 
 not only in determining the number of the bearers to be four, but also in 
 making them, regardless of the opening already existing, uncover the roof and 
 let down the sick man through an aperture, newly broken. 
 
 If we ask here also in which direction, upwards or downwards, the climax 
 may most probably have been formed, the narrative of Mark, which stands at 
 the summit, has so many difficulties that it can scarcely be regarded as nearest 
 the truths For not only have opponents asked, how could the roof be broken 
 open without injury to those beneath ? i" but Olshausen himself admits that 
 the disturbance of the roof, covered with tiles, partakes of the extravagant.^^ 
 To avoid this, many expositors suppose that Jesus taught either in the inner 
 court,'^ or in the open air in front of the house, i** and that the bearers only 
 broke down a part of the parapet in order to let down the sick man more con- 
 veniently. But both the phrase, 8ta t&v Kepd/Mwy, in Luke, and the expressions 
 of Mark, render this conception of the thing impossible, since here neither 
 can trreyj; mean parapet, nor aTroa-Teyd^w the breaking of the parapet, while 
 iiopvTTM can only mean the breaking of a hole. Thus the disturbance of the 
 roof subsists, but this is further rendered improbable on the ground that it 
 was altogether superfluous, inasmuch as there was a door in every roof. 
 Hence help has been sought in the supposition that the bearers indeed used 
 the door previously there, but because this was too narrow for the bed of the 
 patient, they widened it by the removal of the surrounding tiles. 1* Still, how- 
 ever, there remains the danger to those below, and the words imply an opening 
 actually made, not merely widened. 
 
 But dangerous and superfluous as such- a proceeding would be in reality, 
 it is easy to explain how Mark, wishing further to elaborate the narrative of 
 Luke, might be led to add such a feature. Luke had said that the sick man 
 was let down, so that he descended in the midst before Jesus, iixirpocrOcv tov 
 'hjo-ov. How could the people precisely hit upon this place, -unless Jesus 
 accidentally stood under the door of the roof, except by breaking open the 
 roof above the spot where they knew him to be {airea-Tiyaa-av t^v orc-yiyv ottou 
 ^v) ? ^^ This trait Mark the more gladly seized because it was adapted to 
 place in the strongest light the zeal which confidence in JesUs infused into 
 the people, and which was to be daunted by no labour. This last interest 
 seems to be the key also to Luke's departure from Matthew. In Matthew, 
 who makes the bearers bring the paralytic to Jesus in the ordinary way, 
 doubtless regarding the laborious conveyance of the sick man on his bed as 
 itself a proof of their faith, it is yet less evident wherein Jesus sees their faith. 
 If the original form of the history was that in which it appears in the first 
 gospel, the temptation might easily arise to make the bearers devise a more 
 conspicuous means of evincing their faith, which, since the scene was already 
 described as happening in a great crowd, might appear to be most suitably 
 found in the uncommon way in which they contrived to bring their sick man 
 to Jesus. 
 
 But even the account of Matthew we cannot regard as a true narrative of a 
 fact. It has indeed been attempted to represent the result as a natural one, 
 
 w Woolston, Disc. 4. 
 " I, s. 310 f. 
 
 '' Koster, Immanuel, s. 166, Anm. 66. 
 
 '^ This appears to be the meaning of Paulus, L. J, i, a, s. 238, Otherwise exeg. Ilandb. 
 I, b, s. 505. 
 " Thus Lightfoot, Kuinol, Olshausen, in loc. 
 ^» Vid. Fritzsche, in Marc, p. 52- 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— INVOLUNTARY CURES. 457 
 
 by explaining the state of the man to be a nervous weakness, the worst 
 symptom of which was the idea of the sick man that his disease must continue 
 as a punishment of his sin ; ^^ reference has been made to analogous cases of 
 a rapid psychical cure of lameness ; i' and a subsequent use of long-continued 
 curative means has been supposed.^s gm the first and last expedients are 
 purely arbitrary ; and if in the alleged analogies there may be some truth, yet 
 it is always incomparably more probable that histories of cures of the lame 
 and paralytic in accordance with messianic expectation, should be formed by 
 the legend, than that they should really have happened. In the passage of 
 Isaiah already quoted (xxxv. 6), it was promised in relation to the messianic 
 time : iken shall the lame man leap as a hart, rorc dXeirai is cXa^os o x'^Xo^, 
 and in the same connexion, v. 3, the prophet addresses to the feedle knees 
 yovara ■irapa\eXv[i,eva the exhortation, jBe strong, ia-xva-are, which, with the 
 accompanying particulars, must have been understood literally, of a miracle 
 to be expected from the Messiah, since Jesus, as we have already mentioned, 
 among other proofs that he was the ipxofnevoi adduced this : xu)A.oi ircpnTaTovo-t, 
 the lame walk. 
 
 § 97- 
 
 INVOLUNTARY CURES. 
 
 Occasionally in their general statements concerning the curative power of 
 Jesus, the synoptical writers remark, that all kinds of sick people only sought 
 to touch Jesus, or to lay hold on the hem of his garment, in order to be healed, 
 and that immediately on this slight contact, a cure actually followed (Matt, 
 xiv. 36 ; Mark iii. 10, vi. 56 ; Luke vi. 19). In these cases Jesus operated, 
 not, as we have hitherto always seen, with a precise aim towards any particular 
 sufferer, but on entire masses, without taking special notice of each indivi- 
 dual ; his power of healing appears not here, as elsewhere, to reside in his 
 will, but in his body and its coverings ; he does not by his own voluntary act 
 dispense its virtues, but is subject to have them drjiwn from him without his 
 consent. 
 
 Of this species of cure again a detailed example is preserved to us, in the 
 history of the woman who had an issue of blood, which all the synoptical 
 writers give, and interweave in a peculiar manner with the history of the re- 
 suscitation of the daughter of Jairus, making Jesus cure the woman on his way 
 to the ruler's house (Matt. ix. 20 ff. ; Mark v. 25 ff. ; Luke viii. 43 ff.). On 
 comparing the account of the incident in the several Evangelists, we might in 
 this mstance be tempted to regard that of Luke as the original, because it 
 seems to offer an explanation of the uniform connexion of the two histories. 
 As, namely, the duration of the woman's sufferings is fixed by all the narrators 
 at twelve years, so Luke, whom Mark follows, gives twelve years also as the 
 age of the daughter of Jairus ; a numerical similarity which might be a sufS- 
 cient inducement to associate the two histories in the evangelical tradition. 
 But this reason is far too isolated by itself to warrant a decision, which can 
 oiily proceed from a thorough comparison of the three narratives in their 
 various details. Matthew describes the woman simply as -^w^ ai/x.oppooBo-a 
 SeoSe/ca hy), which signifies that she had for twelve years been subject to an 
 important loss of blood, probably in the form of excessive menstruation. 
 
 18 Paulus, exeg. Handb. i, b, s. 498, 501.' 
 
 '? Bengel, Gnomon, i, 245, ed. 2. Paulus, s. 502, again takes an obvious fable in Livy 
 ii. 36 for a history, capable of a natural explanation. 
 18 Paulus, ut sup. s. 501. 
 
45 8 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 97. 
 
 Luke, the reputed physician, shows himself here in no degree favourable to 
 his professional brethren, for he adds that the woman had spent all her living 
 on physicians without obtaining any help from them. Mark, yet inore un- 
 favourable, says that she had suffered many things of many physicians, and 
 was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. Those who surround Jesus when 
 the woman approaches him are, according to Matthew, his disciples, according 
 to Mark and Luke, a thronging multitude. After all the narrators have de- . 
 scribed how the woman, as timid as she was believing, came behind Jesus and 
 touched the hem of his garment, Mark and Luke state that she was imme- 
 diately healed, but that Jesus, being conscious of the egress of curative power, 
 asked 7vho touched me ? The disciples, astonished, ask in return, how he can 
 distinguish a single touch amidst so general a thronging and pressure of the 
 crowd. According to Luke, he persists in his assertion ; according to Mark, 
 he looks inquiringly around him in order to discover the party who had 
 touched him : then, according to both these Evangelists, the woman approaches 
 trembling, falls at His feet and confesses all, whereupon Jesus gives her the 
 tranquillizing assurance that her faith has made her whole. Matthew has not 
 this complex train of circumstances ; he merely states that after the touch 
 Jesus looked round, discovered the woman, and announced to her that her 
 faith had wrought her cure. 
 
 This difference is an important one, and we neen not greatly wonder that 
 it induced Storr to suppose two separate cures of women afflicted in the same 
 manner.' To this expedient he was yet more decidedly determined by the 
 still wider divergencies in the narrative of the resuscitation of the daughter of 
 Jairus, a narrative which is interlaced with the one before us ; it is, however, 
 this very interlacement which renders it totally impossible to imagine that 
 Jesus, twice, on both occasions when he was on his way to restore to life the 
 daughter of a Jewish ruler {apxw), cured a woman who had had an issue of 
 blood twelve years. While, on this consideration; criticism has long ago 
 •decided for the singleness of the fact on which the narratives are founded, it 
 has at the same time given the preference to those of Mark and Luke as the 
 most vivid and circumstantial.* But, in the first place, if it be admitted that 
 Mark's addition dX\a fiaXKov eJs to xelpov (XOova-a, but rather grew worse, is 
 merely a finishing touch from his own imagination to the expression ovk Ifryycrev 
 inr' ovSevos depaTrevdrjvai neither could be healedof any, which he found in Luke ; 
 there seems to be the same reason for regarding this particular of Luke's as 
 an inference of his own by which he has amplified the simple statement 
 alfwppoova-a ScoSexa err], which Matthew gives without any addition. If the ; 
 woman had been ill twelve years, she must, it was thought, during that period 
 have frequently had recourse to physicians : and as, when contrasted with 
 the inefficiency of the physicians, the miraculous power of Jesus, which in- 
 stantarieously wrought a cure, appeared in all the more brilliant a light ; so 
 in the legend, or in the imagination of the narrators, there grew up these 
 additions. What if the same observation applied to the other differences ? 
 That the woman according to Matthew also, only touched Jesus from behind, 
 implied the effort and the hope to remain concealed ; that Jesus immediately 
 looked round after her, implied that he was conscious of her touch. This 
 hope on the part of the woman became the more accountable, and this con- 
 sciousness on the part of Jesus the more marvellous, the greater the crowd 
 that surrounded Jesus and pressed upon him ; hence the companionship of the 
 disciples in Matthew is by the other two Evangelists changed into a thronging 
 
 ' Ueber den Zweck der evang. Geschichte und der Briefe Job., s. 351 f. 
 ? Schulz, ut sup. s. 317 ; Olshausen, i, s. 322. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— INVOLUNTARY CURES. 459 
 
 of the multitude (j8A.cirets tov o^Xov a-wOki^ovTo. o-e). Again, Matthew mentions 
 that Jesus looked round after the woman touched him ; on this circumstance 
 the supposition might be founded that he had perceived her touch in a peculiar 
 manner ; hence the scene was further worked up, and we are shown how 
 Jesus, though pressed on all sides, had yet a special consciousness of that 
 particular touch by the healing power which it had drawn from him ; while 
 the simple feature e7rio-rpa(^ets /cai ISuiv air^v, he turned him about, and when he 
 saw her, in Matthew, is transformed into an inquiry and a searching glance 
 around upon the crowd to discover the woman, who then is represented as 
 coming forward, trembling, to make her confession. Lastly, on a comparison 
 of Matt. xiv. 36, the point of this narrative, even as given in the first gospel, 
 appears to lie in the fact that simply to touch the clothes of Jesus had in itself 
 a healing efficacy. Accordingly, in the propagation of this history, there was 
 a continual effort to make the result follow immediately on the touch, and 
 to represent Jesus as remaining, even after the cure, for some time uncertain 
 with respect to the individual who had touched him, a circumstance which is 
 in contradiction with that superior knowledge elsewhere attributed to Jesus. 
 Thus, under every aspect, the narrative in the first gospel presents itself as 
 the earher and more simple, that of the second and third as a later and more 
 embellished formation of the legend. 
 
 As regards the common substance of the narratives, it has in recent times 
 beeil a difficulty to all theologians, whether orthodox or rationalistic, that the 
 curative power of Jesus should have been exhibited apart from his volition. 
 Paulus and Olshausen agree in the opinion,'' that the agency of Jesus is thus 
 reduced too completely into the domain of physical nature ; that Jesus would 
 then be like a magnetiser who in operating on a nervous patient is conscious 
 of a diminution of strength, or like a charged electrical battery, which a mere 
 touch will discharge. Such an idea of Christ, thinks Olshausen, is repugnant 
 to the Christian consciousness, which determines the fulness of power resident 
 in Jesus to have been entirely under the governance of his will ; and this will 
 to have been guided by a knowledge of the moral condition of the persons to 
 be healed. It is therefore supposed that Jesus fully recognized the woman 
 even without seeing her, and considering that she might be spiritually won 
 over to him by this bodily succour, he consciously communicated to her an 
 influx of his curative power ; but in order to put an end to her false shame 
 and constrain her to a confession, he behaved as if he knew not who had 
 touched him. But the Christian consciousness, in cases of this kind, means 
 nothing else than the advanced religious culture of our age, which cannot 
 appropriate the antiquated ideas of the Bible. Now this consciousness must 
 be neutral where we are concerned, not with the dogmatical appropriation, 
 but purely with the exegetical discovery of the biblical ideas. The interfer- 
 pnce of this alleged Christian consciousness is the secret of the majority of 
 exegetical errors, and in the present instance it has led the above named 
 commentators astray from the evident sense of the text. For the question of 
 Jesus in both the more detailed narratives rts 6 ai/fa/xci/os /^ou ; who touched 
 me ? repeated as it is in Luke, and strengthened as it is in Mark by a search- 
 ing glance around, has the appearance of being meant thoroughly in earnest ; 
 and indeed it is the object of these two Evangelists to place the miraculous 
 nature of the curative power of Jesus in a particularly clear light by showing 
 that the mere touching of his clothes accompanied by faith, no previous 
 knowledge on his part of the person who touched, nor so much as a word 
 
 ' Exeg. Handb. I, b, s. 524 f. ; bibl. Comm. I, s. 324 f. ; comp. Koster, Imnianuel, s. 
 201 ff. 
 
460 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 97. 
 
 from him, being requisite, was sufficient to obtain a cure. Nay, even origin- 
 ally, in the more concise account of Matthew, the expressions -irpoa-eXOova-a 
 oTTurOev ^xj/aTo having come behind him, she touched, and ima-Tpa<t>€h koi 180)1/ 
 avTtiv he turned him about, and when he saw her, clearly imply that Jesus knew 
 the woman only after she had touched him. If then, it is not to be proved 
 that Jesus had a knowledge of the woman previous to her cure and a special 
 will to heal her j nothing remains for those who will not admit an involuntary 
 exhibition of curative power in Jesus, but to suppose in him a constant 
 general will to cure, with which it was only necessary that faith on the part of 
 the diseased person should concur, in order to produce an actual cure. But 
 that, notwithstanding the absence of a special direction of the will to the cure 
 of this woman on the part of Jesus, she was restored to health, simply by her 
 faith, without even touching his clothes, is assuredly not the idea of the 
 Evangelists. On the contrary, it is their intentioii to substitute for an indi- 
 vidual act of the will on the part of Jesus, the touch on the part of the sick 
 person ; this it is which, instead of the former, brings into action the latent 
 power of Jesus : so that the materialistic character of the representation is not 
 in this way to be avoided. 
 
 A step further was necessary to the rationalistic interpretation, which not 
 only with modern supranaturalism regards as incredible the unconscious efflux 
 of curative power from Jesus, but also denies in general any efflux of such 
 power, and yet wishes to preserve unattainted the historical veracity of the 
 Evangelists. According to this system, Jesus was led to ask who touched 
 him, solely because he felt himself held back in his progress ; the assertion 
 that consciousness of a departure of power, Swa/xts cleA-floBo-a, was the cause 
 of his question, is a mere inference of the two narrators, of whom the one, 
 Mark, actually gives it as his own observation ; ' and it is only Luke who 
 incorporates it with the question of Jesus. The cure of the woman was 
 effected by means of her exalted confidence, in consequence of which when 
 she touched the hem of Jesus she was seized with a violent shuddering in her 
 whole nervous system, which probably caused a sudden contraction of the 
 relaxed vessels ; at the first moment she could only believe, not certainly 
 know that she was cured, and only by degrees, probably after the use of 
 means recommended to her by Jesus, did the malady entirely cease.* But 
 who can represent to himself the timid touch of a sick woman whose design 
 was to remain concealed, and whose faith rendered her certain of obtaining 
 a cure by the slightest touch, as a grasp which arrested the progress of Jesus, 
 pressed upon as he was, according to Mark and Luke, by the crowd ? Fur- 
 ther, what a vast conception of the power of confidence is demanded by the 
 opinion, that it healed a disease of twelve years' duration without the concur- 
 rence of any real force on the part of Jesus ! Lastly, if the Evangelists are 
 supposed to have put into the mouth of Jesus an inference of their own (that 
 healing efficacy had gone out of him) — if they are supposed to have described 
 a gradual cure as an instantaneous one ; then, with the renunciation of these 
 particulars all warrant for the historical reality of the entire narrative falls to 
 the ground, and at the same time all necessity for troubling ourselves with 
 the natural interpretation. 
 
 In fact, if we only examine the narrative before us somewhat more closely, 
 and compare it with kindred anecdotes, we cannot remain in doubt as to its 
 proper character. As here and in some other passages it is narrated of Jesus, 
 that the sick were cured by the bare touch of his clothes : so in the Acts we 
 
 * Paulus, exeg. Handb. I, b, s. 524 f. 530. L. J. i, a, s. 244 f. ; Venturini, 2, s. 204 ff. ; 
 Kbster, ut sup. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— INVOLUNTARY CURES. 46 1 
 
 are told that the handkerchiefs a-ovSdpia and aprons cniji,iKiv6ia of Paul cured all 
 kinds of sick persons to whom they were applied (xix. 1 1 f.), and that the 
 very shadow of Peter was believed to have the same efficacy (v. 15) j while 
 the apocryphal gospels represent a mass of cures to have been wrought by 
 means of the swaddling bands of the infant Jesus, and the water in which he 
 was washed.5 In reading these last histories, every one knows that he is in 
 the realm of fiction and legend ; but wherein are the cures wrought by the 
 pocket-handkerchiefs of Paul to be distinguished from those wrought by the 
 swaddling bands of Jesus, unless it be that the latter proceeded from a child, 
 the former from a man ? It is certain that if the story relative to Paul were 
 not found in a canonical book, every one would deem it fabulous, and yet 
 the credibility of the narratives should not be concluded from the assumed 
 origin of the book which contains them, but on the contrary, our judgment 
 of the book must be founded on the nature of its particular narratives. But 
 again, between these cures by the pocket-handkerchiefs and those by the 
 touch of the hem of the garment, there is no essential distinction. In both 
 cases we have the contact of objects which are in a merely external connexion 
 with the worker of the miracle ; with the, single difference, that this connexion 
 is with regard to the pocket-handkerchiefs an interrupted one, with regard to 
 the clothes a continuous one ; in both cases again, results which, even accord- 
 ing to the orthodox view, are only derived from the spiritual nature of the 
 men in question, and are to be regarded as acts of their will in virtue of its 
 union with the divine, are reduced to physical effects and effluxes. The sub- 
 ject thus descends from the religious and theological sphere to the natural 
 and physical, because a man with a power of healing resident in his body, 
 and floating as an atmosphere around him, would belong to the objects of 
 natural science, and not of religion. But natural science is riot able to 
 accredit such a healing power by sure analogies or clear definitions ; hence 
 these cures, being driven from the objective to the subjective region, must 
 receive their explanation from psychology. Now psychology, taking into 
 account the power of imagination and of faith, will certainly allow the possi- 
 bility that without a real curative power in the reputed miracle-worker, solely 
 by the strong confidence of the diseased person that he possesses this power, 
 bodily maladies which have a close connexion with the nervous system may 
 be cured : but when we seek for historical vouchers for this possibility, criti- 
 cism, which must here be called to aid, will soon show that a far greater 
 number of such cures has been invented by the faith of others, than has been 
 performed by the parties alleged to be concerned. Thus it is in itself by no 
 means impossible, that through strong faith in the healing power residing 
 even in the clothes and handkerchiefs of Jesus and the apostles, many sick 
 persons on touching these articles were conscious of real benefit ; but it is at 
 least equally probable, that only after the death of these men, when their 
 fame in the church was ever on the increase, anecdotes of this kind were 
 believingly narrated, and it depends on the nature of the accounts, for which 
 of the two alternatives we aire to decide. In the general statement in the 
 Gospels and the Acts, which speak of whole masses having been cured in the 
 above way, this accumulation at any rate is traditional. As to the detailed 
 history which we have been examining, in its representation that the woman 
 had suffered twelve years from a very obstinate disease, and one the least 
 susceptible of merely psychical influence, and that the cure was performed by 
 power consciously emitted from Jesus, instead of by the imagination of the 
 patient : so large a portion betrays itself to be mythical that we can no longer 
 discern any historical elements, and must regard the whole as legendary. 
 ' Vid. Evangelium infantise arabicum, ap. Fabricius and Thilo. 
 
462 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 98. 
 
 It is not difficult to see what might give rise to this branch of the evangeli- 
 cal miraculous legend, in distinction from others. The faith of the popular 
 mind, dependent on the senses, and incapable of apprehending the divine 
 through the medium of thought alone, strives perpetually to draw it down into 
 material existence. Hence, according to a later opinion, the saint must con- 
 tinue to work miracles when his bones are distributed as relics, and the body 
 of Christ must be present in the transubstantiated host ; hence also, according 
 to an idea developed much earlier, the curative power of the men celebrated 
 in the New Testament must be attached to their body and its coverings. 
 The less the church retained of the words of Jesus, the more tenaciously she 
 clung to the efficacy of his mantle, and the further she was removed from the 
 free spiritual energy of the apostle Paul, the more consolatory was the idea of 
 carrying home his curative energy in a pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 §98- 
 
 CURES AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 The cures performed at a distance are, properly speaking, the opposite of 
 these involuntary cures. The latter are effected by mere corporeal contact 
 without a special act of the will ; the former solely by the act of the will with- 
 out corporeal contact, or even local proximity. But there immediately arises 
 this (Objection : if the curative power of Jesus was so material that it dispensed 
 itself involuntarily at a mere touch, it cannot have been so spiritual that the 
 simple will could convey it over considerable distances ; or conversely, if it 
 was so spiritual as to act apart from bodily presence, it cannot liave been so 
 material as to dispense itself independently of the will. Since we have pro- 
 nounced the purely physical mode of influence in Jesus to be improbable, 
 free space is left to us for the purely spiritual, and our decision on the latter 
 will therefore depend entirely on the examination of the narratives and the 
 facts themselves. 
 
 As proofs that the curative power of Jesus acted thus at a distance, 
 Matthew and Luke narrate to us the cure of the sick servant of a centurion 
 at Capernaum, John that of the son of a nobleman /3oo-iA.tKos, at the same 
 ])lace (Matt. viii. 5 ff. ; Luke vii. i ff. ; John iv. 46 ff.) ; and again Matthew 
 (xv. 22 ff.), and Mark (vii. 25 ff.), that of the daughter of the Canaanitish 
 woman. Of these examples, as in the summary narration of the last there is 
 nothing peculiar, we have here to consider the two first only. The common 
 opinion is, that Matthew and Luke do indeed narrate the same fact, but John 
 one distinct from this, since his narrative differs from that of the two others 
 in the fallowing particulars : firstly, the place from which Jesus cures, is in 
 the syndptical gospels the place where the sick man resides, Capernaum, — in 
 John a different one, namely, Cana; secondly, the time at which the synop- 
 tists lay the incident, namely, when Jesus is in the act of returning home after 
 his Sermon on the Mount, is different from that assigned to it in the fourth 
 gospel, which is immediately after the return of Jesus from the first passover 
 and his ministry in Samaria ; thirdly, the sick person is according to the 
 former the slave, according to the latter the son of the suppliant ; but the 
 most important divergencies are those which relate, fourthly, to the suppliant 
 himself, for in the first and third gospels he is a military person (an 
 £(ca.ToVTapxos)i in the fourth a person in office at court (/Soo-iXikos), according 
 to the former (Matt. v. 10 ff.), a Gentile, according to the latter without 
 doubt a Jew ; above all, the synoptists make Jesus eulogize him as a pattern 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES AT A DISTANCE. 463 
 
 of the most fervent, humble faith, because, in the conviction that Jesus could 
 cure at a distance, he prevented him from going to his house ; whereas in 
 John, on the contrary, he is blamed for his weak faith which required signs 
 and wonders, because he thought the presence of Jesus in his house necessary 
 for the purpose of the cure.^ 
 
 These divergencies are certainly important enough to be a reason, with 
 those who regard them from a certain point of view, for maintaining the dis- 
 tinction of the fact lying at the foundation of the synoptical narratives from 
 that reported by John : only this accuracy of discrimination must be carried 
 throughout, and the diversities between the two synoptical narratives them- 
 selves must not be overlooked. First, even in the designation of the person 
 of the patient they are not perfectly in unison; Luke calls him SoCXos evTi/x.os, 
 a servant who was dear to the centurion ; in Matthew, the latter calls him 
 o iraw 11.0V, which may equally mean either a son or a servant, and as the 
 centurion when speaking (v. 9) of his servant, uses the word SoCXos, while the 
 cured individual is again (v. 13) spoken of as 6 ttcum auroS, it seems most 
 probable that the former sense was intended. With respect to his disease, 
 the man is described by Matthew as TrapoA-vriKos Seti/Ss ^atravi^ofievcK a para- 
 lytic grievously tormented ; Luke is not only silent as to this species of disease, 
 but he is thought by many to presuppose a different one, since after the 
 indefinite expression Kaxajs c^uv, being ill, he adds, ^/xeAAe TeXfurav, was ready 
 to die, and paralysis is not generally a rapidly fatal malady." But the most 
 important difference is one which runs through the entire narrative, namely, 
 that all which according to Matthew the centurion does in his own person, is 
 in Luke done by messengers, for here in the first instance he makes the 
 entreaty, not personally, as in Matthew, but through the medium of the 
 Jewish elders, and when he afterwards wishes to prevent Jesus from entering 
 his house, he does not come forward himself, but commissions some friends 
 to act in his stead. To reconcile this difference, it is usual to refer to the 
 rule : quod quis per aliumfacit, etc.-^ If then it be said, and indeed no other 
 conception of the matter is possible to expositors who make such an appeal, 
 — Matthew well knew that between the centurion and Jesus everything was 
 transacted by means of deputies, but for the sake of brevity, he employed the 
 figure of speech above alluded to, and represented him as himself accosting 
 Jesus : Storr is perfectly right in his opposing remark, that scarcely any 
 historian would so perseveringly carry that metonymy through an entire 
 narrative, especially in a case where, on the one hand, the figure of speech is 
 by no means so obvious as when, for example, that is ascribed to a general 
 which is done by his soldiers ; and where, on the other hand, precisely this ' 
 point, whether the person acted for himself or through others, is of some 
 consequence to a full estimate of his character* With laudable consistency, 
 therefore, Storr, as he believed it necessary to refer the narrative of the \fourth 
 gospel to a separate fact from that of the first and third, on account of the 
 important differences ; so, on account of the divergencies which he found 
 between the two last, pronounces these also to be narratives of two separate 
 events. If any one wonder that at three different times so entirely similar a 
 cure should have happened at the same place (for according to John also, the 
 patient lay and was cured at Capernaum), Storr on his side wonders how it 
 can be regarded as in the least improbable that in Capernaum at two different 
 
 1 See the observations of Paulus, Liicke, Tholuck, and Olshausen, in loc. 
 
 2 Schleiermaclier, uber den Lukas, s. 92. 
 
 8 Augustin, de consens. evang. i. 20; Paulus, exeg. Handb. I, b, s. 709; Koster, 
 Immanuel, s. 63. 
 * Ueber den Zweck Jesu, u. s. f., s. 351. 
 
464 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 97. 
 
 periods two centurions should have had each a sick servant, and that again 
 at another time a nobleman should have had a sick son at the same place ; 
 that the second centurion (Luke) should have heard the history of the first, 
 have applied in a similar manner to Jesus, and sought to surpass his example 
 of humility, as the first centurion (Matthew), to whom the earlier history of 
 the nobleman (John) was known, wished to surpass the weak faith of the 
 latter ; and lastly, that Jesus cured all the three patients in the same manner 
 at a distance. But the incident of a distinguished official person applying to 
 Jesus to cure a dependent or relative, and of Jesus at a distance operating on 
 the latter in such a manner, that about the time in which Jesus pronounced 
 the curative word, the patient at home recovered, is so singular in its kind 
 that a threefold repetition of it may be regarded as impossible, and even the 
 supposition that it occurred twice only, has difficulties ; hence it is our task 
 to ascertain whether the three narratives may not be traced to a single 
 root. 
 
 Now the narrative of the fourth Evangelist which is most generally held to 
 be distinct, has not only an affinity with the synoptical narratives in the out- 
 line already given ; but in many remarkable details either one or the other of 
 the synoptists agrees more closely with John than with his fellow synoptist. 
 Thus, while in designating the patient as iraTs, Matthew may be held to 
 accord with the uios of John, at least as probably as with the SoBXos of Luke ; 
 Matthew and John decidedly agree in this, that according to both the func- 
 tionary at Capernaum applies in his own person to Jesus, and not as in Luke 
 by deputies. On the other hand, the account of John agrees with that of 
 Luke in its description of the state of the patient ; in neither is there any 
 mention of the paralysis of which Matthew speaks, but the patient is de- 
 scribed as near death, in Luke by the words ■^/xeXA.e. rekevrav, in John by 
 ■^jueXXev airo6vri(TKav, in addition to which it is incidentally implied in the 
 latter, v. 52, that the disease was accompanied by a fever, impiTO's. In the 
 account of the manner in which Jesus effected the cure of the patient, and in 
 which his cure was made known, John stands again on the side of Matthew 
 in opposition to Luke. While namely, the latter has' not an express assur- 
 ance on the part of Jesus that the servant was healed, the two former make 
 him say to the officer, in very similar terms, the one, vrraye, koX us cirttrTcro-as 
 ■yeviy^^TO) crot, Go thy way, and as thou hg,st believed so shall it be done unto 
 thee, the other, Tropfvov, 6 i>ios <tov t,fj, Go thy way, thy son liveth ; and the con- 
 clusion of Matthew also, koI ld.6-q 6 TraZs airoS iv tij &pa eKeivrj, has at least in 
 its form more resemblance to the statement of John, that by subsequent 
 inquiry the father ascertained it to be iv iKeLvg ty wpa, at the same hour in 
 which Jesus had spoken the word that his son had begun to amend, than to 
 the statement of Luke, that the messengers when they returned found the- 
 sick m^ restored to health. In another point of this conclusion, however, 
 the agiipement with John is transferred from Matthew again to Luke. In 
 both Luke and John, namely, a kind of embassy is spoken of, which towards 
 the close of the narrative comes out of the house of the officer ; in the former 
 it consists of the centurion's friends, whose errand it is to dissuade Jesus from 
 giving himself unnecessary trouble ; in the latter, of servants who rejoicingly 
 meet their master and bring him the news of his son's recovery. Unques- 
 tionably where three narratives are so thoroughly entwined with each other 
 as these, we ought not merely to pronounce two of them identical and allow 
 one to stand for a distinct fact, but must rather either distinguish all, or blend 
 all into one. The latter course was adopted by Semler, after older examples,^ 
 
 ' Vid. Lucke, i, s. 552. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES AT A DISTANCE. 465 
 
 and Tholuck has at least declared it possible. But with such expositors the 
 next object is so to explain the divergencies of the three narratives, that no 
 one of the Evangelists may seem to have said anything false. With respect 
 to the rank of the applicant, they make the ^amXiKo^ in John a military 
 officer, for whom the iKaTovTapxo^ of the two others would only be a more 
 specific designation ; as regards the main point, however, namely, the conduct 
 of the applicant, it is thought that the different narrators may have repre- 
 sented the event in different periods of its progress ; that is, John may have 
 given the earlier circumstance, that Jesus complained of the originally weak 
 faith of the suppliant, the synoptists only the later, that he praised its rapid 
 growth. We have already shown how it has been supposed possible, in a yet 
 easier manner, to adjust the chief difference between the two synoptical 
 accounts relative to the mediate or immediate entreaty. But this effort to 
 explain the contradictions between the three narratives in a favourable man- 
 ner is altogether vain. There still subsist these difficulties : the synoptists 
 thought of the applicant as a centurion, the fourth Evangelist as a courtier ; 
 the former as strong, the latter as weak in faith ; John and Matthew imagined 
 that he applied in his own person to Jesus ; Luke, that out of modesty he 
 sent deputies. '^ 
 
 Which then represents the fact in the right way, which in the wrong ? If ^ 
 we take first the two synoptists by themselves, expositors with one voice 
 declare that Luke gives the more correct account. First of all, it is thought 
 improbable that the patient should have been, as Matthew says, a paralytic, 
 since in the case of a disease so seldom fatal the modest centurion would 
 scarcely have met Jesus to implore his aid immediately on his entrance into 
 the city : '' as if a very painful disease such as is described by Matthew did 
 not render desirable the quickest help, and as if there were any want of 
 modesty in asking Jesus before he reached home to utter a healing word. 
 Rather, the contrary relation between Matthew and Luke seems probable 
 from the observation, that the miracle, and consequently also the disease of 
 the person cured miraculously, is never diminished in tradition but always 
 exaggerated; hence the tormented paralytic would more probably be heightened 
 into one ready to die, /itXXoyv TtXtvrav, than the latter reduced to a mere j 
 sufferer. But especially the double message in Luke is, according to Schleier- 
 macher, a feature very unlikely to have been invented. How if, on the con- 
 trary, it very plainly manifested itself to be an invention ? While in Matthew 
 the centurion, on the offer of Jesus to accompany him, seeks to prevent him 
 by the objection : Zord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my 
 roof, in Luke he adds by the mouth of his messenger, wherefore neither^ 
 thought I myself worthy to come unto thee, by which we plainly discover the 
 conclusion on which the second embassy was founded. If the man declared 
 himself unworthy that Jesus should come to him, he cannot, it was thought, 
 have held himself worthy to come to Jesus ; an exaggeration of his humility 
 by which the narrative of Luke again betrays its secondary character. The 
 first embassy seems to have originated in the desire to introduce a previous 
 recommendation of the centurion as a motive for the promptitude with which 
 Jesus offered to enter the house of a Gentile. The Jewish elders, after having 
 informed Jesus of the case of disease, add that lie was worthy for whom he 
 should do this, for he loveth our nation and has built us a synagogue : a recom- 
 mendation the tenor of which is not unlike what Luke (Acts x. 22) makes the 
 
 * Fritzsche, in Matth. p. 310 : discrepat autem Lucas ita a Matthcei narratione, ut cen- 
 turionem non ipsum venissiad jesum) sed per legates cum eo egisse tradat ; quibus dissidenti- 
 bus pacem obtradere, boni nego interpretis esse. 
 
 ' Schleiermacher, ut sup. s. 92 f. 
 
 G G 
 
466 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 98. 
 
 messengers of Cornelius say to Peter to induce him to return with them, 
 namely, that the centurion was a just man, and one that feareth God, and in 
 good report among all the nation of the Jews. That the double embassy can- 
 not have been original, appears the most clearly from the fact, that by it the 
 narrative of Luke loses all coherence. In Matthew all hangs well together : 
 the centurion first describes to Jesus the state of the sufferer, and either leaves 
 it to Jesus to decide what he shall next do, or before he prefers his request 
 ' Jesus anticipates him by the offer to go to his house, which the centurion 
 declines in the manner stated. Compare with this his strange conduct in 
 Luke : he first sends to Jesus by the Jewish elders the request that he will 
 come and heal his servant, but when Jesus is actually coming, repents that 
 he has Qccasionedthim to do so, and asks only for a miraculous word from 
 Jesus. , The supposition that the first request proceeded solely from the 
 elders and not from the centurion * runs counter to the express words of the. 
 Evangelist, who by the expressions : direo-TeiXe — Trpetr/Swepous — ipayrSiv avTov, ■ 
 he sent— the elders — beseeching him, represents the prayer as coming from the 
 centurion himself; and that the latter by the word i\Ba>v meant only that 
 Jesus should come into the neighbourhood of his house, but when he saw, 
 that Jesus intended actually to enter his house, declined this as too great a 
 favour, — is too absurd a demeanour to attribute to a man who otherwise 
 appears sensible, and of whom for this reason so capricious a change of mind 
 as is implied in the text of Luke, was still less to be expected. The whole 
 diflnculty would have been avoided, if Luke had put into the mouth of the 
 first messengers, as Matthew in that of the centurion, only the entreaty, 
 direct or indirect, for a cure in general ; and then after Jesus had offered to 
 go to the house where the patient lay, had attributed to the same messengers 
 the modest rejection of this offer. But on the one hand, he thought it, 
 requisite to furnish a motive for the resolution of Jesus to go into the Gen- 
 tile's house ; and on the other, tradition presented him with a deprecation of 
 this personal trouble on the part of Jesus : he was Unable to attribute the 
 prayer and the deprecation to the same persons, and he was therefore obliged 
 -to contrive a;second embassy. Hereby, however, the contradiction was only 
 ^parently avoided, since both embassies are sent by the centurion. Perhaps 
 also the centurion who was unwilling that Jesus should take the trouble to 
 •enter his house, reminded Luke of the messenger who warned Jairus not to 
 'trouble the master to enter his house, likewise after an entreaty that he would 
 come into the house ; and as the messenger says to Jairus, according to him 
 and Mark, //.■^ o-Ku'We tov SiSao-KaXor, trouble not the master (Luke viii. 49), 
 ko here he puts into the mouth of the second envoys, t^ie words, Kvpit frnj 
 a-KvXkov, Lord, trouble not thyself, although such an order, has a reason only 
 in the case of Jairus, in whose house the state of things had been changed 
 since thky first summons by the death of his daughter, and none at all in that 
 of the centurion whose servant still remained. in the same state. 
 
 Modern expositors are deterred from the identification of all the three 
 narratives, by the fear that it may present John in the light of a narrator who 
 has not apprehended the scene with sufficient accuracy, and has even mis- 
 taken its main drift,^ Were they nevertheless to venture on a union, they 
 would as far as possible vindicate to the fourth gospel the most original 
 account of the facts ; a position of which we shall forthwith test the security, 
 by an examination of the intrinsic character of the narratives. That the sup- 
 pliant is according to the fourth Evangelist a ^Sao-iXtKos, while according to 
 the two others he is an iKarovrapxo^, is an indifferfefit particular from which 
 " Kuihol, in Matt., p. 221 f. 
 » Tholuck, in loc. ; Hase, § 68, Anm. 2. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES AT A DISTANCE. 467 
 
 we can draw ik) conclusion on either side ; and it may appear to be the same 
 with the divergency as to the relation of the diseased person to the one who 
 entreats his cure. If, however, it be asked with reference to the last point, 
 from which of the three designations the other two could most easily have 
 arisen ? it can scarcely be supposed that the vios of John became in a de- 
 scending line, first the doubtful term irats, and then 80CA.0S ; and even the 
 reverse ascending order is here less probable than the intermediate alterna- ' 
 tive, that out of the ambiguous Trais (=1^3) there branched off in one direc- 
 tion the sense of servant, as in Luke ; in the other, of son, as in John. We 
 have already remarked, that the description of the patient's state in John, as 
 well as in Luke, is an enhancement on that in Matthew, and consequently of 
 later origin. As regards the difference in the locality, from the point of view 
 now generally taken in the comparative criticism of the gospels, the decision 
 would doubtless be, that in the tradition from which the synoptical writers 
 drew, the place from which Jesus performed the miracles was confounded 
 with that in which the sick person lay, the less noted Cana being absorbed 
 in the celebrated Capernaum ; whereas John, being an eye-witness, retained 
 the more correct details. But the relation between the Evangelists appears 
 to stand thus only when John is assumed to have been an eye-witness ; if the 
 critic seeks, as he is bound to do, to base his decision solely on the intrinsic 
 character of the narratives, he will arrive at a totally different result. Here 
 is a narrative of a cure performed at a distance, in which the miracle appears 
 the greater, the wider the distance between the curer and the cured. Would 
 oral tradition, in propagating this narrative, have the tendency to diminish 
 that distance, and consequently the miracle, so that in the account of John, 
 who makes Jesus perform the cure at a place from which the nobleman does 
 not reach his son until the following day, we should have the original narra- 
 tive, in that of the synoptists on the contrary, who represent Jesus as being 
 in the same town with the sick servant, the one modified by tradition? Only 
 the converse of this supposition can be held accordant with the nature of the 
 legend, and here again the narrative of John manifests itself to be a tra- 
 ditional one. Again, the preciseness with which the hour of the patient's 
 recovery is ascertained in the fourth gospel has a highly fictitious appearance.' 
 The simple expression of Matthew, usually found at the conclusion of his- 
 tories of cures : he was healed in the self-same hour, is.dilated into an inquiry 
 on the part of the father as to the hour in which the son began to amend, an 
 answer from the servants that yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left 
 him, 'and lastly the result, that in the very hour in which Jesus had said, 
 Thy son liveth, the recovery took place. This is a solicitous accuracy, a 
 tediousness of calculation, that seems to bespeak tfie anxiety of the narrator 
 to establisli the miracle, rather than to show the real course of the event. In 
 represeriting the ^amXiKos as conversing personally with Jesus, the fourth 
 gospel' has preserved the original simplicity of the narrative better than the 
 third-l^though as has been remarked, the servants who come to meet their 
 master*in the former seem to be representatives ,tof Luke's second embassy. 
 But in the main point of difference, relative to the character of the applicant, 
 it t^ight be thought that, even according to our own standard, the preference 
 must be given to John before the two other narrators. For if that narrative 
 is the more legendary, which exhibits an effort at aggrandizement or embel- 
 lishment, it might be said that the applicant whose faith is in John rather 
 weak, is in Luke embellished into a model of faith. It is not, however, on 
 embe'llishment in general that legend or the inverJtive narrator is bent, but on 
 embellishment in subservience to their grand object, whjch in the gospels is 
 the glorification of Jesus; and viewed in this light, the.embellishment will in 
 
468 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 98. 
 
 two respects be found on the side of John. First, as this Evangelist con- 
 tinually aims to exhibit the pre-eminence of Jesus, by presenting a contrast to 
 it in the weakness of all who are brought into communication with him, so 
 here this purpose might be served by representing the suppliant as weak rather 
 than strong in faith. The reply, however, which he puts into the mouth of 
 Jesus, Unless ye see signs and wonders yt; will not believe, has proved too 
 severe, for which reason it reduces most of our commentators to perplexity. 
 Secondly, it might seem unsuitable that Jesus should allow himself to be 
 diverted from his original intention of entering the house in which the patient 
 was, and thus appear to be guided by external circumstances j it might be 
 regarded as more consistent with his character that he should originally re- 
 solve to effect the cure at a distance instead of being persuaded to this by 
 another. If then, as tradition said, the suppliant did nevertheless make a 
 kind of remonstrance, this must have had an opposite drift to the one in the 
 synoptical gospels, namely, to induce Jesus to a journey to the house where 
 the patient lay. 
 
 In relation to the next question, the possibility and the actual course of the 
 incident before us, the natural interpretation seems to find the most pliant 
 material in the narrative of John. Here, it is remarked, Jesus nowhere says 
 that he will effect the patient's cure, he merely assures the father that his son 
 is out of danger (0 utds o-ov ^ij), and the father, when he finds that the favour- 
 able turn of his son's malady coincides with the time at which he was con- 
 versing with Jesus, in no way draws the inference that Jesus had wrought 
 the cure at a distance. Hence, this history is only a proof that Jesus by 
 means of his profound acquaintance with semeiology, was able, on receiving 
 a description of the patient's state, correctly to predict the course of his 
 disease ; that such a description is not here given is no proof that Jesus had 
 not obtained it ; while further this proof of knowledge is called a o-tj/aeioi/ 
 (v. 54) because it was a sign of a kind of skill in Jesus which John had not 
 before intimated, namely,, the ability to predict the cure of one dangerously 
 ill.^" But, apart from the misinterpretation of the word o-iy/ietov, and the in- 
 terpolation of a conversation not intimated in the text ; this view of the 
 matter would place the character and even the understanding of Jesus in the 
 most equivocal light. For if we should pronounce a physician imprudent, 
 who in the case of a patient believed to be dying of fever, should even from 
 his own observation of the symptoms, guarantee a cure, and thus risk his 
 reputation : how much more rashly would Jesus have acted, had he, on the 
 mere description of a man who was not a physician, given assurance that a 
 disease was attended with no danger ? We cannot ascribe such conduct to 
 him, because it would be in direct contradiction with his general conduct, and 
 the impression which he left on his cotemporaries. If then Jesus merely 
 predicted the cure without effecting it, he must have been assured of it in a 
 more certain manner than by natural reasoning, — he must have known it in a 
 supernatural manner. This is the turn given to the narrative by one of the 
 most recent commentators on the gospel of John. He puts the question, 
 whether we have here a miracle of knowledge or of power ; and as there is no 
 mention of an immediate effect from the words of Jesus, while elsewhere in 
 the fourth gospel the superior knowledge of Jesus is especially held up to our 
 view, he is of opinion that Jesus, by means of his higher nature, merely knew 
 that at that moment the dangerous crisis of the disease was past.i^ But if 
 our gospel frequently exhibits the superior knowledge of Jesus, this proves 
 nothing to the purpose, for it just as frequently directs our attention to his 
 
 " Paulus, Comm. 4, s. 253 f. ; Venturini, 2, s. 140 ff. ; comp. Hase, § 68. 
 " Liicke, I, s. 550 f. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES AT A DISTANCE. 469 
 
 superior power. Further, where the supernatural knowledge of Jesus is con- 
 cerned, this is plainly stated (as i. 49, ii. 25, vi. 64), and hence if a super- 
 natural cognizance of the already effected cure of the boy had been intended, 
 John would have made Jesus speak on this occasion as he did before to 
 Nathanael, and tell the father that he already saw his son on his bed in an 
 ameliorated state. On the contrary, not only is there no intimation of the 
 exercise of superior knowledge, but we are plainly enough given to under- 
 stand that there was an exercise of miraculous power. When the sudden 
 cure of one at the point of death is spoken of, the immediate question is, 
 What brought about this unexpected change ? and when a narrative which 
 elsewhere makes miracles follow on the word of its hero, puts into his mouth 
 an assurance that the patient lives, it is only the mistaken effort to diminish 
 the marvellous, which can prevent the admission, that in this assurance the 
 author means to give the cause of the cure. 
 
 In the case of the synoptical narratives, the supposition of a mere predic- 
 tion will not suffice, since here the father (Matt. v. 8) entreats the exercise of 
 healing power, and Jesus (v. 13), accedes to this entreaty. Hence every way 
 would seem to be closed to the natural interpretation (for the distance of 
 Jesus from the patient made all physical or psychical influence impossible), if 
 a single feature in the narrative had not presented unexpected help. This 
 feature is the comparison which the centurion institutes between himself and 
 Jesus. As he need only speak a word in order to see this or that command 
 performed by his soldiers and servants, so, he concludes, it would cost Jesus 
 no more than a word to restore his servant to health. Out of this comparison 
 it has been found possible to extract an intimation that as on the side of the 
 centurion, so on that of Jesus, human proxies were thought of. According to 
 this, the centurion intended to represent to Jesus, that he need only speak a 
 word to one of his disciples, and the latter would go with him and cure his 
 servant, which is supposed to have forthwith happened. '^ But as this would 
 be the first instance in which Jesus had caused a cure to be wrought by his 
 disciples, and the only one in which he commissions them immediately to 
 perform a particular cure, how could this peculiar circumstance be silently 
 ])resupposed in the otherwise detailed narrative of Luke? Why, since this 
 narrator is not sparing in spinning out the rest of the messenger's speech, 
 does he stint the few words which would have explained all — the simple ad- 
 dition after ehrl Aoyui, speak the word, of hi tS>v fiaO-qTSyvj to one of thy disciples, 
 or something similar ? But, above all, at the close of the narrative, where 
 the result is told, this mode of interpretation falls into the greatest perplexity, 
 not merely through the silence of the narrator, but through his positive state- 
 ment. Luke, namely, concludes with the information that when the friends 
 of the centurion returned into the house, they found the servant already 
 recovered. Now, if Jesus had caused the cure by sending with the messen- 
 gers one or more of his disciples, the patient could only begin gradually to 
 be better after the disciples had come into the house with the messengers ; 
 he could not have been already well on their arrival. Paulus indeed sup- 
 poses that the messengers lingered for some time listening to the discourse of 
 Jesus, and that thus the disciples arrived before them ; but how the former 
 could so unnecessarily linger, and how the Evangelist could have been silent 
 on this point as well as on the commission of the disciples, he omits to ex- 
 plain. Whether instead of the disciples, we hold that which corresponds on 
 the side of Jesus to the soldiers of the centurion to be demons of disease, ^^ 
 
 '2 Paulus, exeg. Handb. i, b, s. 710 f. ; Natiirliche Geschichte, 2 s. 285 fF. 
 *•• Clem, homil. ix. 21 ; Fritzsche, in Matth., 313. 
 
47D, PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 98.^ 
 
 ministering angels,^* or merely the word and the curative power of Jesns ; ^^ 
 in any case there remains to us a miracle wrought at a distance. 
 
 This kind of agency on the part of Jesus is, according to the admission 
 even of such commentators as have not generally any repugnance to the 
 miraculous, attended with special diflSculty, because from the want of the per- 
 sonal presence of Jesus, and its beneficial influence on the patient, we are 
 deprived of every possibility of rendering the cure conceivable by means of an 
 analogy observable in nature.i" According to Olshausen, indeed, this distant 
 influence has its analogies; namely, in animal magnetism." I will not 
 directly contest this, but only point out the limits within which, so far as my 
 knowledge extends, this phenomenon confines itself in the domain of animal 
 magnetism. According to our experience hither,to, the cases in which one 
 person can exert an influence over another at a distance are only two : first, 
 the magnetizer or an individual in magnetic relajtion to him can act thus on 
 the somnambule, but thi^ distant action must always be preceded by immediate 
 contact, — a preliminary which is not supposed in the relation of Jesus to the 
 patient in our narrative ; secondly, such an influence is found to exist in 
 persons who are themselves sornnambules, or otherwise under a disordered 
 state of the nerves : neither of which descriptions can apply to Jesus. If thus 
 such a cure of distant persons as is ascribed to Jesus in our narratives, far 
 outsteps the extreme limits of natural causation, as exhibited in magnetism and 
 the kindred phenomena ; then must Jesus have been, so far as the above nar- 
 ratives can lay claim to historical credit, a supernatural being. But before we 
 admit him to have been so really, it is worth our while as critical inquirers, to 
 examine whether the narrative under consideration could not have arisen 
 without any historical foundation ; especially as by the very fact of the various 
 forms which it has taken in the different gospels it shows itself to contain 
 legendary ingredients. And here it is evident that the miraculous cures of 
 Jesus by merely touching the patient, such as we have examples of in that of 
 the leper, Matt. viii. 3, and in that of the blind men. Matt. ix. 29, might by a 
 natural climax rise, first into the cure of persons when in his presence, by a 
 mere word, as in the case of the demoniacs, of the lepers, Luke xvii. 14, and 
 other sufferers ; and then into the cure even of the absent by a word ; of 
 which there is a strongly marked precedent in the Old Testament. In 2 
 Kings v. 9 ff. we read that when the Syrian general Naaman came before the 
 dwelling of the prophet Elisha that he might be cured of his leprosy, the 
 prophet came not out to meet him, but sent to him by a servant the direction 
 to wash himself seven times in the river Jordan. At this the Syrian was so 
 indignant that he was about to return home without regarding the direction 
 of the prophet. He had expected, he said, that the prophet would come to 
 him, and caUing on his God, strike his hand over the leprous place; that 
 without any personal procedure of this kind, the prophet merely directed him 
 to -go to the river Jordan and wash, discouraged and irritated him, since if 
 water were the thing required, he might have had it better at home than here 
 in Israel. By this Old Testament history we see what was ordinarily expected 
 from a prophet, namely, that he should be able to cure when present by 
 bodily contact ; that he could do so without contact, and at a distance, was 
 not presupposed. Elisha effected the cure of the leprous general in the latter 
 manner (for the washing was not the cause of cure here, any more than in 
 John ix., but the miraculous power of the prophet, who saw fit to annex its 
 mfluence to this external act), and hereby proved himself a highly distin- 
 
 >■' Wetstein, N. T. i, p. 349 ; comp. Olshausen, in loc. 
 
 " Koster, Immanuel, s. 195, Anm. 
 
 •s LUcke, 1,5.550. w Bibl. Comm. i; s. 268. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS — CURES ON THE SABBATH. 4/1 
 
 guished prophet : ought then the Messiah in this particular to fall short of the 
 prophet? Thus our New Testament narrative is manifested to be a necessary 
 reflection of that Old Testament story. As, there, the sick person will not 
 believe in the possibility of his cure unless the prophet comes out of his house ; 
 so here according to one edition of the story the applicant likewise doubts the 
 possibility of a cure, unless Jesus will come into his house ; according to the 
 other editions, he is convinced of the power of Jesus to heal even without 
 this ; and all agree that Jesus, like the prophet, succeeded in the performance 
 of this especially difficult miracle. 
 
 § 99- 
 
 CURES ON THE SABBATH. 
 
 Jesus, according to the gospels, gave great scandal to the Jews by not 
 seldom performing his curative miracles on the sabbath. One example of 
 this is common to the three synoptical writers, two are peculiar to Luke, and 
 two to John. 
 
 In the narrative common to the three synoptical writers, two cases of sup- 
 posed desecration of the sabbath are united ; the plucking of the ears of corn 
 by the disciples (Matt. xii. i parall.), and the cure of the man with the 
 withered hand by Jesus (v. 9 ff. parall.). After the conversation which was 
 occasioned by the plucking of the corn, and which took place in the fields, the 
 two first Evangelists continue as if Jesus went from this scene immediately into 
 the synagogue of the same place, to which no special designation is given, 
 and there, on the occasion of the cure of the man with the withered hand, 
 again held a dispute on the observance of the sabbath. It is evident that 
 these two histories were originally united only on account of the similarity 
 in their tendency ; hence it is to the credit of Luke, that he has expressly 
 separated them chronologically by the words iv Irepa crappdrio, on another 
 Sabbath.^ The further inquiry, which narrative is here the more original ? we 
 may dismiss with the observation, that if the question which Matthew puts 
 into the mouth of the Pharisees, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days ? is 
 held up as a specimen of invented dialogue;^ we may with equal justice 
 characterize m the same way the question lent to Jesus by the two inter- 
 mediate Evangelists; while their much praised^ description of Jesus calling to 
 the man to stand forth in the midst, and then casting reproving glances around, 
 may be accused of having the air of dramatic fiction. 
 
 The narratives all agree in representing the affliction under which the patient 
 laboured, as a x^'P fw"> o'^ itr]pafifi€vr]. Indefinite as this expression is, it is 
 treated too freely when it is understood, as by Paulus, to imply only that the 
 hand was injured by heat,* or even by a sprain, according to Venturini's sup- 
 position.' For when, in order to determine the signification in which this 
 term is used in the New Testament we refer, as it is proper to do, to the Old 
 Testament, we find ( I Kings xiii. 4) a hand which, on being stretched out, 
 i^pdvOrj (B'?''?'!), described as incapable of being drawn back again, so that 
 we must understand a lameness and rigidity of the hand ; and on a com- 
 parison of Mark ix. 18, where the expression ^paivicrdat to be withered or 
 wasted away is applied to an epileptic, a drying up and shrinking of that 
 
 ' Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 80 f. 
 
 2 Schneckenburger, iiber den Ursprung, u. s. f., s. 50. 
 
 s Schleiermacher, ut sup. 
 
 ■* Exeg. Handb. 2, s. 48 ff. 
 
 ' Natiirliche Geschichte, 2, s. 421. 
 
472 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 99, 
 
 member.6 Now from the narrative before us a very plausible argument may 
 be drawn in favour of the supposition, that Jesus employed natural means in 
 the treatment of this and other diseases. Only such cures, it is said, were 
 prohibited on the sabbath as were attended with any kind of labour; thus, if 
 the Pharisees, as it is here said, expected Jesus to transgress the sabbatical 
 laws by effecting a cure, they must have known that he was not accustomed 
 to cure by his mere word, but by medicaments and surgical operations.^ As, 
 however, a cure merely by means of a conjuration otherwise lawful, was for- 
 bidden on the sabbath, a fact which Paulus himself elsewhere adduces ; * as 
 moreover there was a controversy between the schools of Hillel and Schammai, 
 whether it were permitted even to administer consolation to the sick on the 
 sabbath ; ^ and as again, according to an observation of Paulus, the more 
 ancient rabbins were stricter on the point of sabbatical observance than those 
 whose writings on this subject have come down to us ; ^^ so the cures of Jesus, 
 even supposing that he used no natural means, might by captious Pharisees 
 be brought under the category of violations of the sabbath. The principal 
 objection to the rationalistic explanation, namely, the silence of the Evan- 
 gelists as to natural means, Paulus believes to be obviated in the present case 
 by conceiving the scene thus : at that time, and in the synagogue, there was 
 indeed no application of such means ; Jesus merely caused the hand to be 
 shown to him, that he might see how far the remedies hitherto prescribed by 
 him (which remedies however are still a bare assumption) had been service- 
 able, and he then found that it was completely cured; for the expression 
 airoKaTifTTaB-q^ used by all the narrators, implies a cure completed previously, 
 not one suddenly effected in the passing moment. It is true that the context 
 seems to require this interpretation, since the outstretching of the hand prior 
 to the cure would appear to be as little possible, as in i Kings xiii. 4, the act 
 of drawing it back : nevertheless the Evangelists give us only the word of 
 Jesus as the source of the cure ; not natural means, which are the gratuitous 
 addition of expositors. ^1 
 
 Decisive evidence, alike for the necessity of viewing this as a miraculous 
 cure, and for the possibility of explaining the origin of the anecdote,' is to be 
 obtained by a closer examination of the Old Testament narrative already 
 mentioned, i Kings xiii. iff. A prophet out of Judah threatened Jeroboam, 
 while offering incense on his idolatrous altar, with the destruction of the altar 
 and the overthrow of his false worship ; the king with outstretched hand com- 
 manded that this prophet of evil should be seized, when suddenly his hand 
 dried up so that he could not draw it again towards him, and the altar was rent. 
 On the entreaty of the king, however, the prophet besought Jehovah for the re- 
 storation of the hand, and its full use was again granted.' ^ Paulus also refers to 
 this narrative in the same connexion, but only for the purpose of applying to it his 
 natural method of explanation ; he observes that Jeroboam's anger may have 
 produced a transient convulsive rigidity of the muscles and so forth, in the 
 hand just stretched out with such impetuosity. But who does not see that 
 
 ' Winer, b. Realw. I, s. 796. 
 
 ' Paulus, ut sup. s. 49, 54 ; Koster, Immanuel, s. 185 f. 
 
 ' Ut sup. s. 83, ex Tract. Schabbat. 
 
 ' Schabbat, f. 12, ap. Schottgen, i. p. 123. 
 
 "• See the passage last cited. 
 
 '1 Fritzsche, in Matt., p. 427 ; in Marc, p. 79. 
 
 "^ I Kings xiii. 4, LXX : Kal.lSoi i^pdvSri Matth. xii. 10 : koJ ISoi) AvOpavos ^v tV 
 
 T] x^ip airov, X^'P" ^X"" ivp^" (Mark, i^ripamikvipi.) 
 
 6 : Kal iwiaTpeipe ri/v x^fpo toO jSairiX^Ms 13 : rbre X^yet tQ &i>6piSntif (lerea/ov rijv 
 
 Trpbs airbv, koI iyivero xaSiis rb vpirepoii, X^T"* <">v' Kal i^irewe' Ktd iroKaTetrrdOTi 
 
 iyiiis lis ^ dXXi;. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS — CURES ON THE SABBATH. 473 
 
 we have here a legend designed to glorify the monotheistic order of prophets, 
 and to hold up to infamy the Israelitish idolatry in the person of its founder 
 Jeroboam? The man of God denoiinces on the idolatrous altar quick 
 and miraculous destruction ; the idolatrous king impiously stretches forth his 
 hand against the man of God ; the hand is paralyzed, the idolatrous altar falls 
 asunder into the dust, and only on the intercession of the prophet is the king 
 restored. Who can argue about the miraculous and the natural in what is so 
 evidently a mythus ? And who can fail to perceive in our evangelical nar- 
 rative an imitation of this Old Testament legend, except that agreeably to the 
 spirit of Christianity the withering of the hand appears, not as a retributive 
 miracle, but as a natural disease, and only its cure is ascribed to Jesus ; 
 whence also the outstretching of the hand is not, as in the case of Jeroboam, 
 the criminal cause of the infliction, continued as a punishment, and the 
 drawing of it back again a sign of cure ; but, on the contrary, the hand which 
 had previously been drawn inwards, owing to disease, can after the completion 
 of the cure be again extended. That, in other instances, about that period, 
 the power of working cures of this kind was in the East ascribed to the 
 favourites of the gods, may be seen from a narrative already adduced, in which, 
 together with the cure of blindness, the restoration of a diseased hand is 
 attributed to Vespasian.'^ 
 
 But this curative miracle does not appear independently and as an object 
 by itself : the history of it hinges on the fact that the cure was wrought on the 
 Sabbath, and the point of the whole lies in the words by which Jesus vindi- 
 cates his activity in healing on the Sabbath against the Pharisees. In Luke 
 and Mark this defence consists in the question, Is it lawful to do good on the 
 sabbath days, or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it ? in Matthew, in a part 
 of this question, together with the aphorism on saving the sheep which might 
 fall into the pit on the sabbath. Luke, who has not this saying on the present 
 occasion, places it (varied by the substitution of ovos ■^ /JoSs, an ass or an ox 
 for Trpo^arov sheep, and of ^pio.p, well or /// for ^oOwo's, ditch) in connexion 
 with the cure of an vSpwmKoi a man who had the dropsy (xiv. 5) ; a narrative 
 which has in general a striking similarity to the one under consideration, 
 Jesus takes food in the house of one of the chief Pharisees, where, as in the 
 other instance in the synagogue, he is watched (here, ^vav iTa.pa.Ti]paip.aioi, 
 there, Traper-jpovv). A dropsical person is present ; as, there, a man .with a 
 withered hand. In the synagogue, according to Matthew, the Pharisees ask 
 Jesus, £1 e$ea-Tt row o-a^/Satri Oepwircvetv ; Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath 
 days ? According to Mark and Luke, Jesus asks them whether it be lawful 
 to save life, etc. : so, here, he asks them, £i l^eoTt t<3 a-a^^axia Gepamvav ; Is 
 it lawful to heal on the sabbath 1 whereupon in both histories the interrogated 
 parties are silent (in that of the withered hand, Mark : ol Se ia-iunrwy ; in that 
 of the dropsical patient, Luke : 01 Se rjo-vxaa-av). Lastly, in both histories we 
 have the saying about the animal fallen into a pit, in the one as an epilogue 
 to the cure, in the other (that of Matthew) as a prologue. A natural explan- 
 ation, which has not been left untried even with this cure of the dropsy, 1* 
 seems more than usually a vain labour, where, as in this case, we have before 
 us no particular narrative, resting on its own historical basis, but a mere 
 variation on the theme of the sabbath cures, and the text on the endangered 
 domestic animal, which might come to one (Matthew) in connexion with the 
 cure of a withered hand, to another (Luke) with the cure of a dropsical 
 patient, and to a third in a different connexion still ; for there is yet a third 
 story of a miraculous cure with which a similar saying is associated. Luke, 
 
 " Tacit. Hist. iv. 81. 
 
 " Paulus, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 341 f. 
 
474 PART ri. CHAPTER IX. § 99. 
 
 namely, narrates (xiii. 10 ff.) the cure of a woman bowed down by demoniacal 
 influence, as having been performed by Jesus on the sabbath ; when to the 
 indignant remonstrance of the ruler of the synagogue, Jesus replies by 
 asking, whether every one does not loose his ox or ass from the stall on the 
 ■sabbath, and lead him away to watering? a question which is undeniably a 
 variation of the one given above. So entirely identical does this history ap- 
 pear with the one last named, that Schleiermacher comes to this conclusion : , 
 since in the second there is no reference to the first, and since consequently 
 the repetition is not excused by confession, the two passages Luke xiii. 10, 
 and xiv. 5, cannot have been written one after the other by the same author.i^ 
 
 Thus we have here, not three different incidents, but only three different 
 frames in which legend has preserved the memorable and thoroughly popular 
 aphorism on the domestic animal, to be rescued or tended on the sabbath. 
 Yet, unless we would deny to Jesus so original and appropriate an argument, 
 there must lie at the foundation a cure of some kind actually performed by 
 him on the sabbath j not, however, a miraculous one. We have seen that 
 Luke unites the saying with the cure of a demoniacal patient : now it might 
 have been uttered by Jesus on the occasion of one of those cures of demon- 
 iacs of which, under certain limitations, we have admitted the natural pos- 
 sibility. Or, when Jesus in cases of illness among his followers applied the 
 usual medicaments without regard to the sabbath, he may have found this 
 appeal to the practical sense of men needful for his vindication. Or lastly, 
 if there be some truth in the opinion of rationalistic commentators that Jesus, 
 according to the oriental and more particularly the Essene custom, occupied 
 himself with the cure of the body as well as of the soul, he may, when com- 
 plying with a summons to the former work on the sabbath, have had occasion 
 for such an apology. But in adopting this last supposition, we must not, 
 with these commentators, seek in the particular supernatural cures which the 
 gospels narrate, the natural reality; on the contrary, we must admit that this 
 is totally lost to us, and that the supernatural has usurped its place. 1® Fur- 
 ther, it cannot have been cures in general with which that saying of Jesus was 
 connected ; but any service performed by him or his disciples which might 
 be regarded as a rescuing or preservation of life, and which was accompanied 
 by external labour, might in his position with respect to the Pharisaic party, 
 furnish an occasion for such a defence. 
 
 Of the two cures on the sabbath narrated in the fourth gospel, one has- 
 already been considered with the cures of the blind ; the other (v. i ff.) might 
 have been numbered among the cures of paralytics, but as the patient is 
 not so designated, it was admissible to reserve it for our present head. Iil' 
 the porches of the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, Jesus found a man who, 
 as it subsequently appears, had been lame for thirty-eight years ; this sufferer 
 he enables by a word to stand up and carry horiie his bed, but, as it was the 
 sabbath, he thus draws down on himself the hostility of the Jewish hier- 
 archy. Woolston 17 and many later writers have thought to get clear of this 
 history in a singular manner, by the supposition that Jesus here did not cure 
 a real sufferer but merely unmasked a hypocrite.^^ The sole reason which 
 can with any plausibility be urged in favour of this notion, is that the cured 
 
 15 Ut sup. s. 196. 
 
 '8 Winer (bibl. Realw. i, s. 796) says : We should be contented to refrain from seeking a 
 natural explanation in individual cases (of the cures of Jesus), and ever bear in mind that the 
 banishment of the miraculous out of the agency of Jesus can never be effected so long as the 
 gospels are regarded historically. 
 
 " Disc. 3. 
 
 " Paulus, Comm. 4, s. 263 ff. L. J. \, a, s. 298. 
 
MIRACLES OF JESUS— CURES ON THE SABBATH. 475 
 
 man points out Jesus to his enemies as the one who had commanded him to 
 carry his bed on the sabbath (v. 15; comp. 11 ff.), a circumstance which is 
 only to be explained on the ground that Jesus had enjoined what was un- 
 welcome. But that notification to the Pharisees might equally be given, 
 either with a friendly intention, as in the case of the man born blind (John 
 ix. II, 25), or at least with the innocent one of devolving the defence of the 
 alleged violation of the sabbath on a stronger than himself.i^ The Evangelist 
 at least gives it as his opinion that the man was really afflicted, and suffered 
 from a wearisome disease, when he describes him as having had an infirmity 
 thirty-eight years, TptaKovra koI oktui trq ix.'^v iv rrj aa-Bfvda, (v. 5) : for the 
 forced interpretation once put on this passage by Paulus, referring the thirty- 
 eight years to the man's age, and not to the duration of his disease, he has 
 not even himself ventured to reproduce.^" On this view of the incident it is 
 also impossible to explain what Jesus says to the cured man on a subsequent 
 meeting (v. 14) : Behold thou art made whole ; sin no more lest a worse thing 
 come unto thee. Even Paulus is compelled by these words to admit that the 
 man had a real infirmity, though only a trifling one : — in other words he is 
 compelled to admit the inadequacy of the idea on which his explanation of 
 the incident is based, so that here again we retain a miracle, and that not of 
 the smallest. 
 
 In relation to the historical credibility of the narrative, it may certainly be 
 held remarkable that so important a sanative institution as Bethesda is de- 
 scribed to be by John, is not mentioned either by Josephus or the rabbins, 
 especially if the popular belief connected a miraculous cure with this pool : '^^ 
 but this affords nothing decisive. It is true that in the description of the 
 pool there lies a fabulous popular notion, which appears also to have been 
 received by the writer (for even if v. 4 be spurious, something similar is con- 
 tained in the words kiVijo-is tov liSaTos, v. 3, and Tapa)(dyj, v. 7). But this 
 proves nothing against the truth of the narrative, since even an eye-witness 
 and a disciple of Jesus may have shared a vulgar error. To make credible, 
 however, such a fact as that a man who had been lame eight-and-thirty years, 
 so that he was unable to walk, and completely bed-ridden, should have been 
 perfectly cured by a word, the supposition of psychological influence will not 
 suffice, for the man had no knowledge whatever of Jesus, v. 13 ; nor will any 
 physical analogy, such as magnetism and the like, serve the purpose : but if 
 such a result really happened, we must exalt that by which it happened above 
 all the limits of the human and the natural. On the other hand, it ought 
 never to have been thought a difficulty^^ that from among the multitude of 
 the infirm waiting in the porches of the pool, Jesus selected one only as the 
 object of his curative power, since the cure of him whose sufferings had been 
 of the longest duration was not only particularly adapted, but also sufficient, 
 to glorify the miraculous power of the Messiah. Nevertheless, it is this very 
 trait which suggests a suspicion that the narrative has a mythical character. 
 On a great theatre of disease, crowded with all kinds of sufferers, Jesus, the 
 exalted and miraculously gifted physician, appears and selects the one who is 
 afflicted with the most obstinate malady, that by his restoration he may pre- 
 sent the most brilliant proof of his miraculous power. We have already 
 remarked that the fourth gospel, instead of extending the curative agency of 
 Jesus over large masses and to a great variety of diseases, as the synoptical 
 gospels do, concentrates it on a few cases which proportionately gain in in- 
 
 i« Vid. Liicke and Tholuck, in loc. 
 
 "" Comp. with Coram. 4, s. 290, his Leben Jesu, i, a, s. 298. 
 
 21 Bretschneider, Probab., s. 69. 
 
 22 As by Hase, L. J. § 92. 
 
476 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § lOO. 
 
 tensity : thus here, in the narrative of the cure of a man who had been lame 
 thirty-eight years, it has far surpassed all the synoptical accounts of cures per- 
 formed on persons with diseased limbs, among whom the longest sufferer is 
 described in Luke xiii. ii, only as a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity 
 eighteen years. Without doubt the fourth Evangelist had received some inti- 
 mation (though, as we have gathered from other parts of his history, it was 
 far from precise) of cures of this nature performed by Jesus, especially of that 
 wrought on the paralytic, Matt. ix. 2 if. parall., for the address to the patient, 
 and the result of the cure are in this narrative in John almost verbally the 
 same as in that case, especially according to Mark's account. 2* There is even 
 a vestige in this history of John, of the circumstance that in the synoptical 
 narrative the cure appears in the light of a forgiveness of sins : for as Jesus 
 in the latter consoles the patient, before the cure, with the assurance, thy sins 
 are forgiven thee, so in the former, he warns him, after the cure, in the words, 
 sin no more, etc. For the rest, this highly embellished history of a miraculous 
 cure was represented as happening on the sabbath, probably because the 
 command to take up the bed which it contained appeared the most suitable 
 occasion for the reproach of violating the sabbath. 
 
 § 100. 
 
 REStJSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 
 
 The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead 
 to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely 
 to Luke, and one to John. 
 
 The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resusci- 
 tation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the 
 woman who had an issue of blood (Matt. ix. 18 f. 23 — 26 ; Mark v. 22 ff. ; 
 Luke viii. 41 ff.). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, 
 the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally as a^xwi 
 eis a certain ruler, without any name ; the two others as a ruler of the syn- 
 agogue named Jairus : the latter moreover describes the girl as being twelve 
 years old, and Luke states that s^e was the only child of her father ; par- 
 ticulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that 
 according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to 
 Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life ; whereas accord- 
 ing to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the 
 point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and 
 first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with 
 the information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to 
 trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation 
 also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other 
 Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as 
 witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these diver- 
 gencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, 
 among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler 
 (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and 
 
 23 Mark ii. 9: (ri ianv, eiKoirirepov, John v. S : lyeipiu, ipoy riv KpiBBardv c-ov, 
 
 elireiv ) lyeipai, Kal &piv aou t6v Kpd.^- xal irepiirarei. 
 
 jSnToc Kal irepiTrdret ; 
 
 1 1 : — fyeipa xal S,pov rhv Kpdppardv aov 
 Kal lyiraye els rhv oTk6v ami. 
 
 12 : /rai ip/ipBri eiSeus, Koi Upas rhv Kpdp. 9 : Kal eie^us iyivero iyiiis i AvSpuwos, Kal 
 
 Parol' e^TJXSev eyarHoy vivTav. 9ipe rbv Kp&pparov alrroO Kal irepiewdTa. 
 
MIRACLES — RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 477 
 
 Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.^ But that, as Storr supposes, and 
 as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a 
 girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue im- 
 mediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability 
 by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar 
 things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that 
 the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect 
 agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the 
 expression of Matthew opri eTeXeuriyo-e mean, as Kuinol maintains,^ est morti 
 proxima, nor can that of Mark, ccrp^aTos 1-xj^l, or of Luke dTre'^i/ijo-Ke,, imply that 
 death had already taken place : not to mention that according to both, the 
 fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.* 
 Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the ac- 
 counts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accu- 
 racy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and 
 only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to 
 the representation of an eye-witness ;* while others regard this want of particu- 
 larity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.* Now 
 that Mark and Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is 
 silent, and also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, 
 will just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual 
 favourable one ; since the designation of persons by name, as we have before 
 remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For example, the 
 woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica in the tradition of 
 John Malala;* the Canaanitish woman that of Justa in the Clementine 
 Homilies :'' and the two thieves crucified with Jesus, the names of Gestas and 
 Demas in the Gospel of Nicodemas.^ Luke's /^ovoyei'^s {one only daughter) 
 only serves to make the scene more touching, and the €tS>v SoiSe/ta twelve 
 years of age, he, and after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of 
 the woman with the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the 
 maiden is spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others 
 as only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who 
 have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to the 
 disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation serves to 
 aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the death of the girl 
 is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in Matthew to have oc- 
 curred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of the miracle. Nay, it is 
 the reverse ; for the miraculous power of Jesus appears greater in the former, 
 not indeed objectively, but subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast 
 and surprise. There, where Jesus is in the first instance intreated to restore 
 the dead to life, he does no more than what was desired of him ; here, on the 
 contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he actually 
 brings that person to life again, he does more than the interested parties seek 
 or understand. There, where the power of awaking the dead is presupposed 
 
 > Ueber den Zweck des Evang. und der Briefe Joh., s. 351 ff. 
 
 ' Coram, in Matth. p. 263. Observe his argumentation: verba [N.B. Matthae{\: dpn 
 ireSethriffej', non possunt latine reddi: jam mortua est: nam, auctore [N.B. Luca\ patri 
 adhuc cum Christo colloquenti nuntiabat servus, filiam jam exspirasse ; ergo {atutore 
 MatthaeoTinondummortuaerai, cum pater ad Jesumaccederet. 
 
 Compare, on the subject of these vain attempts at reconciliation, Schleiermacher, iiber den 
 Lukas, s. 132, and Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 347 f. 
 
 * Olshausen, in loc. , , , ^ c 
 
 5 Schleiermacher, ut sup. s. 131 if. : Schulz, iiber d. Abendmahl, s. 316 1. 
 
 6 Vid. Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N. T. 2, p. 449 ff- 
 
 7 Homil. ii. I9- ° Cap. x. 
 
478 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § lOO. 
 
 by the father to belong to Jesus, the extraordinary nature of such a power is 
 less marked than here, where the father at first only presupposes the power of 
 healing the sick, ahd when death has supervened, is diverted from any 
 further hope. In the description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in 
 the house where the corpse lay, Matthew's brevity is at least clearer than the 
 diffuse accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus, 
 having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the 
 funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would 
 be no funeral there ; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us 
 besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from 
 the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. 
 That a greater number of spectators would have been physically or psycholog- 
 ically an impediment to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition 
 that the event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the 
 exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded parties, 
 whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have been the very 
 means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that the two later synop- 
 tists, in opposition to the concluding statement of Matthew that the fame of 
 this event went abroad in the whole land, represent Jesus as enjoining the 
 strictest silence on the witnesses : so that on the whole it rather appears that 
 Mark and Luke regarded the incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest' 
 relatives and the most favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the differ- 
 ence on which Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists, 
 namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the hand, 
 they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time uttered, the 
 former even in the original language ; — can either have no weight at all, or it 
 must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when 
 recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words as ^ irais iyeipov, maiden, 
 I say unto thee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard 
 the ToXiBa. Kov/xi of Mark as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a 
 peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he 
 translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of pre- 
 senting the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing 
 its mysteriousness, as we have befdre observed with reference to the i<t><f>a6b. 
 in the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly 
 abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the 
 narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether 
 the one who originally related it, also put it into writing : a task to which 
 only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal." 
 
 In relation to the facts of the case, the natural interpretation speaks with 
 more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has on its side 
 the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not really dead, but merely 
 in a sleep-like swoon ; and not only rationalists, like Paulus, and semi-rationa- 
 lists, like Schleiermacher, but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshausen, 
 believe, on the strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resusci- 
 tation of the dead.i" The last-named commentator attaches especial import- 
 ance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the words ovk 
 airWave, is not dead, are followed by a\)\Ja. KoBeiha, but skepeth, is of opinion 
 that the former expression cannot be interpreted to mean merely, she is not 
 
 * Ut sup. s. 129. 
 
 " Paulus, exeg. Handb. I, b, s. 526, 31 f. ; Schleiermacher, ut sup. s. 132 ; Olshausedi, 
 I, s. 327. Even. Neander does not express himself decidedly against this interpretation of 
 the words of Jesus ; while with regard to the girl's real condition, he thinks the supposition 
 of a merely apparent death probable. L. J. Cbr., s. 343. Comp. 338 f. 
 
MIRACLES — RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 479 
 
 dead, since I have resolved to restore her to lifej strange criticism, — 
 for it is precisely this addition which shows that she was only not dead 
 in so far as it was in the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference 
 is also made to the declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus, John xi. 14, 
 Aa^apos aire'^ave, Lazarus is dead, which is directly the reverse of the passage 
 m question, ovk airiOave TO Kopda-tov, the damsel is not dead. But Jesus had 
 before said of Lazarus, aunj ^ do-^eVeta ovk eo-ri xpos Oavarov, this sickness is not 
 unto death (v. 4), and Ad^apos o ^i\os y^fiMv K(.Ko'ni.-ifTax, our friend Lazarus 
 sletpeth (v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also, who was really dead, we 
 have just as direct a denial of death, and affirmation of mere sleep, as in the 
 jiarrative before us. Hence Fritzsche is undoubtedly right when he para- 
 phrases the words of Jesus in our passage as follows : puellam ne pro mortua 
 habetote, sed dormire existimatote quippe in vitam mox redituram. Moreover, 
 Matthew subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say, viKpol lyeipovrat, the dead are 
 raised up ; and as he mentions no other instance' of resuscitation by Jesus, 
 he must apparently have had this in his mind.^' 
 
 But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view of 
 the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may pre- 
 sent themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the 
 indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a 
 swoon might easily be mistaken for death is not to be denied. But how was 
 Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular 
 case ? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, 
 nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circum- 
 stances of the girl's illness (as the natural explanation supposes) : we must 
 still ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having 
 seen the girJ, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, 
 decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic 
 interpretation of his words ? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, 
 unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a 
 supernatural way :^^ to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic 
 point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulusj between the ex- 
 pressions, iKpa.Tq<T€ T^s xeipos aur^s, he took her by the hand, and ■qycpOi] to 
 Kopdcnov, the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in 
 Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the words ei^eios and 
 napaxpvi^a in the Other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, 
 and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied. '^ 
 Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly maintains that in the 
 opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus (and we might 
 add, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power) was the means of 
 restoring the girl to life. 
 
 In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 if.) the natural 
 explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of 
 Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic com- 
 mentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that 
 Jesus speaks to the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no 
 one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained 
 or guessed to be capable of hearing.^* $ut this rule would prove that all the 
 dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as other- 
 wise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do 
 
 " Comp. deWette, exeg. Handb. i, i,s. 95; Weisse, die ev. Geschichte, i, s. 503. 
 
 " Comp. Neander. L. J., s. 342. 
 
 1' Natiirlicfie Geschichte, 2, s. 212. 
 
 " Paulus, exeg. Handb. i, b, s. 716, Anm. and 719 f. 
 
480 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 100. 
 
 (John V. 28; comp. i Thess. iv. 16); it would therefore ' prove too much. 
 Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain 
 sense to be living ; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the 
 voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even to the ears from which 
 life has departed. We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad 
 custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours 
 after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the 
 grave ; ^^ but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was 
 here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even 
 without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral proces- 
 sion, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to 
 be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, 
 that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under 
 the gate of the city, and as, they impeded each other, halted for a while : — 
 directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still 
 when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the 
 case, which he had learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, 
 approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which 
 he intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her, IVeep 
 noO^ But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a 
 mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her 
 even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling 
 the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation ! Now the 
 latter Jesus does not attempt : hence unless we would allow him to appear 
 altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and 
 for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and 
 causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of 
 Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed 
 some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a 
 previous application of medicaments,^'' spoke the words, which helped com- 
 pletely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening 
 measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words : 
 veavto-KE, croi Xeym, iyipOrjTi, Young man, I say unto t/iee arise I resemble 
 rather the authoritative command 0f a miracle worker than the attempt of a 
 physician to restore animation ; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth 
 was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, 
 could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the 
 narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of 
 this deed ? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to 
 regard the result ; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the 
 result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it ; and 
 if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in 
 which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they 
 are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the Evan- 
 gelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation of the dead, and that 
 according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.** 
 
 In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar to John (chap, xi.), 
 the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being carried to his grave, 
 but has been already buried several days. Here one would have thought 
 there was little hope of effecting a natural explanation ; but the arduousness 
 
 »* Ibid, ut sup. s. 723. Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. I, 2, s. 47. 
 
 '6 Thus Hase also, L. J. § 87. 
 
 " Venturini, a, s. 293. 
 
 " Comp. Schleiermacher, ut sup. s. 103 f. 
 
MIRACLES — RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 48 1 
 
 of the task has only stimulated the ingenuity and industry of the rationalists 
 in developing their conception of this narrative. We shall also see that 
 together with the rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the rationa- 
 lists, — which, maintaining the historical integrity of the evangelical narrative 
 throughout, assumes the responsibility of explaining every part naturally, 
 there has appeared another system, which distinguishes certain features of the 
 narrative as additions after the event, and is thus an advance towards the 
 mythical explanation. 
 
 The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in the 
 former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man who has lain 
 in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this possibility is strengthened 
 in the present instance by the known custom of the Jews ; propositions which 
 we shall not abstractedly controvert. From this they proceed to a supposi- 
 tion which we perhaps ought not to let pass so easily,!^ namely, that from the 
 messenger whom the sisters had sent with the news of their brother's illness, 
 Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease ; 
 and the answer which he gave to the messenger. This sickness is not unto 
 death (v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn 
 from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not 
 fatal. Such a view of his friend's condition would certainly accord the best 
 with his conduct in remaining two days in Perasa after the reception of the 
 message (v. 6) ; since, according to that supposition, he could not regard his 
 presence in Bethany as a matter of urgent necessity. But how comes it that 
 after the lapse of these two days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 
 8), but also has quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain 
 knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then plainly (v. 
 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the natural explanation 
 is lost, and the break is only rendered more conspicuous by the fiction of a 
 second messenger,^" after the lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that 
 Lazarus had expired in the interim. For the author of the gospel at least 
 cannot have known of a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned 
 him, since the omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, 
 obliging us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus 
 in a supernatural manner. Jesus, when he had resolved to go to Bethany, 
 said to the disciples, Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that 1 may awake him out of 
 sleep (Ke/cot/Ai/Tat — i^vTrvicroi — v. 11); this the naturalists explain by the suppo- 
 sition that Jesus must in some way have gathered from the statements of the 
 messengers who announced the death of Lazarus, that the latter was only in 
 a state of lethargy. But we can as little here as in the former case impute to 
 Jesus the foolish presumption of giving, before he had even seen the alleged 
 corpse, the positive assurance that he yet lived.^*^ From this point of view, 
 it is also a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15) lam glad for your 
 sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe (tva iruTTeva-riTi). Paulus 
 explains these words to imply that Jesus feared lest the death, had it happened 
 in his presence, might have shaken their faith in him ; but, as Gabler ^* has 
 remarked, irLa-Tevu) cannot mean merely the negative : not to lose faith, which 
 would rather have been expressed by a phrase such as : Xva, fir] iKXii-n-rj 17 
 TTioTts v/jlCiv, that your faith fail not (see Luke xxii. 32) ; and moreover we 
 
 >9 Paulus, Comp. 4, s. 535 ff. ; L. J. i, b, s. SS ff- 
 
 5» In the translation of the text in his I^ben /esU, 3, b, s, 46, Paulus appears to suppose, 
 beside the message mentioned in the gospel, three subsequent messages. 
 
 2' Comp. C. Ch. Flatt, etwas zur Vertheidigung des Wanders der Wlederbelebung des 
 Lazarus, in Siiskind's Magazin, I4tes Stuck, s. 93 fF. 
 
 22 Journal fur auserlesene theol. Literatur, 3, 2, s. 26 r, Anm. 
 
 H H 
 
482 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 100. 
 
 nowhere find that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah 
 was incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, .of a friend, in 
 his presence. 
 
 From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat 
 more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that Martha's address 
 to Jesus (v. 21 f), Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but 
 I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, he will give it thee, 
 aSXa. Koj, vvv otSa, on, otra av alrrjcrri rov Ocov, Scutrci trot o ^£0S, appears evidently 
 to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to 
 life. , , However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows, Thy brother shall rise 
 again, a.vaffTt\<Tf.Ta.i. 6 dSeXc^ds crou, she answers despondingly. Yes, at the last 
 day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retro- 
 spectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general 
 sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, 
 she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, 
 the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha 
 there uses is not TncrTfvto but olSa, and the turn of phrase : I know that this 
 will happen if thou only wiliest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of 
 petition, and is here the more unmistakable, because the object of the en- 
 treaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently 
 means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even 
 now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. 
 Martha's change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in 
 her first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very 
 surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very hasty dispo- 
 sition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the 
 foregoing assurance of Jesus (v, 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would 
 reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when 
 he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply 
 to the resurrection at the last day (ayaa-Tya-ercu), she gives a half impatient 
 half-desponding reply. ^^ But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the 
 , yet more indefinite one (v. 25 f.), lam the resurrection and the life, is thought 
 favourable to the rationalistic view : Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the 
 expectation of an extraordinary result^ hence he consoles Martha merely with 
 the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in 
 him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had 
 before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must 
 then have altered his opinion in the interim — a change for, which no cause is 
 apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to 
 Martha, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the 
 glory of God? evidently alluding to v. 23, in which therefore he must have 
 meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect. That he 
 does not declare this distinctly, and that he again veils the scarcely uttered 
 promise in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, 
 is the effect, of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and 
 extend her sphere of thought.^* 
 
 When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her 
 wee|)ing moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural in- 
 terpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he were 
 already certain of his friend's resurrection, he would not have approached his 
 grave with the most fervent joy, since he was conscious of being able to call 
 
 23 Flatt, ut sup. 102 f. ; De Wette, in loc. ; Neander, s. 351 f, 
 2* Flatt, ut sup. ; Lucke.ThoIuck and De Wette, in loc. 
 
MIRACLES — RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 483 
 
 him again living from the grave in the next moment ? In this view the words 
 eve^pi/A^o-aro (v. 33) and s/n^Spt/iw/nci/os (v. 38) are understood of a forcible 
 repression of the sorrow caused by the death of his friend, which subsequently 
 found vent in tears {iSaspva-ev). But both by its etymology, according to 
 which it signifies /y-if;«(»/-if in aliquem or in se, and by the analogy of its use in 
 the New Testament, where it appears only in the sense of increpare aliquem 
 (Matt. ix. 30; Mark i. 43, xiv. 5), £/t|8pt/*aoreai is determined to imply an 
 emotion of anger, not of sorrow ; where it is united, not with the dative of 
 another person, but with t<5 irvev/JLan and iv iavriS, it must be understood of a 
 silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be very appropriate in v. 
 38, where it occurs the second time ; for in the foregoing observation of the 
 Jews, Cou/d not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that 
 even this man should not have died? there lies an intimation that they were 
 scandalized, the prior conduct of Jesus perplexing them as to his present 
 demeanour, and vice versa. But where the word t/uySpt/tao-^ai is first used 
 v. 33, the general weeping seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a 
 melancholy, rather than an angry emotion : yet even here a strong disapproval 
 of the want of faith (oXiyoTrio-Tta) which was manifested was not impossible. 
 That Jesus then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation 
 against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy, not 
 that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that the Jews 
 (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among themselves, 
 Behold, how he loved him t appears to be rather against than for those who 
 regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of his friend, and 
 sympathy with the sisters ; for, as the character of the narrative of John in 
 general would rather lead us to expect an opposition between the real import 
 of the demeanour of Jesus, and the interpretation put upon it by the specta- 
 tors, so in particular the Jews in this gospel are always those who either mis- 
 understand or pervert the words and actions of Jesus. It, is true that the 
 mild character of Jesus is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which 
 displeasure on his part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest 
 would imply J ^^ but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the 
 Christ of John's gospel. He who gave to the ;3atrtA.iKos, when preferring the 
 inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son, the 
 rebuke. Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he who, when 
 some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the sixth chapter, 
 assailed them with the cutting question, Doth this offend you ? and Will j e 
 also go away ? (vi. 61, 67); he who repulsed his own mother, when at the 
 wedding at Cana she complained to him of the want of wine, with the harsh 
 reply. What have I to do with thee. Woman 1 (ii. 4) — who thus was always 
 the most displeased when men, not comprehending his higher mode of 
 thought or action, showed themselves desponding or importunate, — would 
 here find peculiar reason for this kind of displeasure. If this be the true 
 interpretation of the passage, and if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus 
 which Jesus here exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural 
 explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from tliis particular 
 feature ; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a momentary emotion 
 produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite reconcilable with the fore- 
 knowledge of the resurrection.^^ ^^^ jj^^ could the words of the Jews v. 37, 
 serve, as rationalistic commentators think, to excite in Jesus the hope that 
 God would now perhaps perform something extraordinary for him ? The 
 
 2' Liicke, 2, s. 388. 
 
 ^* Flatt, ut sup. s. 104 f. ; Liicke, ut sup. 
 
484 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § lOO. 
 
 Jews did not express the hope that he could awake the dead, but only the 
 conjecture that he might perhaps have been able to preserve his friend's life ; 
 Martha therefore had previously said more when she declared her belief that 
 even now the Father would grant him what he asked ; so that if such hopes 
 were excited in Jesus from without, they must have been excited earlier, and 
 especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to appeal as 
 the proof that they did not yet exist. 
 
 Even supranaturalists admit tnat the expression of Martha when Jesus 
 commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave, Kvpie, ^8?? 
 o^u (v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor 
 consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have 
 been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial.^'' But niore 
 weight must be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections 
 of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40) : Saiti I not unto thee 
 that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God? How could he 
 say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus ? 
 According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who 
 have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestjation of 
 the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen 
 here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, 
 unless it were his restoration to life ? and what could be the sense of the 
 words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was 
 already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest 
 decay ? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the words rrjv 
 So^av Tov Oiov in our present passage we need only refer to v. 4, where Jesus 
 had said that the sickness of Lazarus was not unto death, irpos Bavwrov, hut for 
 the glory of God, inrep t^s 8o^?;s tov 6eov. Here the first member of the anti- 
 thesis, not unto death, clearly shows that the Zo^a. tov Biov signifies the glorifi- 
 cation of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his 
 resurrection : a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the most 
 critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be 
 fulfiUed.^^ After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead 
 man, Come forth 1, he thanks the Father for having heard hjs prayer. This 
 is adduced, in the rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof 
 that he did not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into 
 the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was not 
 to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the character of 
 John's gospel. These ought to have remembered how common it is in this 
 gospel, as for example in the expression glorify thy son, to represent that which 
 is yet to be effected or which is only just begun, as already performed ; and 
 in the present instance it is especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining 
 fulfilment, that it is spoken of as having already happened. And what inven- 
 tion does it further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in 
 Lazarus the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come 
 to life again ! Between the removal of the stone, says Paulus, and the 
 thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising result was 
 accomplished ; then must Jesus, yet some steps removed from the grave, have 
 discerned that, Lazarus was living. By what means ? and how so quickly and 
 unhesitatingly ? and why did he and no one else discern it ? He may have 
 discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is conjectured. But how easily 
 might he deceive himself with respect to a dead body lying in a dark cavern : 
 
 "' Flatt, s. 106 ; Olshausen, 2, s. 269. 
 " Flatt, s. 97 f. 
 
MIRACLES — RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 485 
 
 how precipitate was he, if without having examined more nearly, he so quickly 
 and decidedly declared his conviction that Lazarus lived ! Or, if the move- 
 ments of the supposed corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could 
 they escape the notice of the surrounding spectators? Lastly, how could 
 Jesus in his prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his 
 divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only dis- 
 covered, the resuscitation of Lazarus? As arguments for the natural possi- 
 bility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four days, the 
 rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the particular circumstances 
 of the supposed death, the rapidity of interment among the Jews, afterwards 
 the coolness of the cave, the strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the 
 reanimating draught of warm air, which on the rolling away of the stone 
 streamed into the cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more 
 than the lowest degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree 
 of improbability: and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts the 
 result must remain irreconcilable.^** 
 
 These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural 
 interpretation of this chapter ; hence it has been sought to neutralize them, 
 still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that they did not pro- 
 ceed from Jesus, but may have been added ex eventu by the narrator. Paulus 
 himself found the words cfuTrvto-u avrov (v. 11) quite too decided, and therefore 
 ventured the conjecture that the narrator, writing with the result in his mind, 
 had omitted a qnaXifying perhaps, which Jesus had inserted.*" This expedient 
 has been more extensively adopted by Gabler. Not only does he partake 
 the opinion of Paulus as to the above expression, but already in v. 4, he is 
 inclined to lay the words wep t^s So^jjs tov 6eov for the glory of God, to the 
 account of the Evangelist: again v. 15, he conjectures that in the words 
 yaxpm St' v^iSs, Iva. Trurreva-riTe, on ovk rnxrjv iKei, 1 am glad for your sakes that I 
 was not there, to the intetit ye may believe, there is a slight exaggeration resulting 
 from John's knowledge of the issue ; lasdy, even in relation to the words of 
 Martha v. 22, dXKh. koX vvv otSa k. t. X. he admits the idea of an addition from 
 the pen of the writer. ^1 By the adoption of this expedient, the natural inter- 
 pretation avows its inability by itself to cope with the difficulties in John's 
 narrative. For if, in order to render its application possible, it is necessary 
 to expunge the most significant passages, it is plain that the narrative in its 
 actual state does not admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the 
 passages, the incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation 
 is confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen ; but from the above 
 observations it is clear, that if all the features in this narrative which are really 
 opposed to the natural view of the entire event were ascribed to the Evange- 
 list, it would in the end be little short of the whole that must be regarded as 
 his' invention. Thus, what we have done with the two first narratives of 
 resuscitations, is with the last and most remarkable history of this kind, 
 effected by the various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, 
 to reduce the subject to the alternative : that we either receive the event as 
 supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical narrative ; or, 
 
 29 Compare on this subject, especially Flatt and LUcke. 
 
 30 Comm. 4, s. 437 ; in the L. J. i, b, s. S7. and 2, b, s. 46, this conjecture is no longer 
 
 ^"3? XJt sup s. 272fr. Even Neander shows himself not disinclined to such a conjecture as 
 far as regards v 4 (s. 349). As Gabler believes that these expressions cannot have come 
 from Tesus, but only from John, so Dieffenbach, in Bertholdt's Krit. Journal, 5, s. jff., 
 maintains that they cannot have proceeded from John, and as he holds that the rest of the 
 gospel is the production of that apostle, he pronounces those passages to be mterpolations. 
 
486 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § lOO. 
 
 if we .find it incredible as such, deny that the narrative has an historical 
 character. 
 
 In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision, with respect to all the 
 three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the kind of miracles 
 which we have now before us. We have hitherto been ascending a ladder of 
 miracles ; first, cures of mental disorders, then, of all kinds of bodily maladies, 
 in which, however, the organization of the sufferer was not so injured as to 
 cause the cessation of consciousness and life ; and now, the revivification of 
 bodies, from which the life has actually departed. This progression in the 
 marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We have 
 indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental derangement, in 
 which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond the nervous system, 
 which is immediately connected with mental action, might have been removed, 
 even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere word, look, and influence of 
 Jesus : but the more deeply the malady appeared to have penetrated into the 
 entire corporeal system, the more inconceivable to us was a cure of this kind. 
 Where in insane persons the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging mad- 
 ness, or where in nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest 
 itself in periodical epilepsy ; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent 
 benefit could be conferred by that mental influence ; and this was yet more 
 difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the mind, as. in 
 leprosy, blindness, lameness, etc. And yet, up to this point, there was a.lways 
 something present, to which the miraculous power of Jesus could apply itself; 
 there was still a consciousness in the objects, on which to make an impression 
 — a nervous life to be stimulated. Not so with the dead. The corpse from 
 which life and consciousness have flown has lost the last fulcrum for the power 
 of the miracle worker ; it perceives him no longer — receives no impression 
 from him ; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred 
 on him anew. But to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper sense, is 
 a creative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a man, we must con- 
 fess to be beyond our power. 
 
 But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections, there is an 
 evident climax. Woolston has remarked with justice, that it seems as if each 
 of these narratives were intended to supply what was wanting in the pre- 
 ceding.'^ The daughter of Jairus is restored to life on the same bed on which 
 she had just expired ; the youth of Nain, when already in his coffin, and on 
 his way to interment ; lastly, Lazarus, after four days' abode in the tomb. In 
 the first history, a word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen 
 under the powers of the grave ; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the 
 imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried out 
 of the city towards his grave ; but in the third, Lazarus, who had been some 
 time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest manner as an inhabit- 
 ant of the nether world : so that, if the reality of the death could be doubted 
 in the first instance, this would become more difficult in the second, and in 
 the third, as good as impossible.'* With this gradation, there is a corre- 
 sponding increase in the difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable ; 
 if, indeed, when the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of 
 inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the resur- 
 rection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather be possible 
 in the case of one just departed, and yet having some remains of vital warmth, 
 than in that of a corpse, cold and being carried to the grave ; and again, in 
 
 82 Disc. 5. 
 
 88 Bretschneider, Probab., s. 61. 
 
MIRACLES— RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 487 
 
 this, rather than in the case of one who had already lain four days in the 
 grave, and in which decay is supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect 
 to which, this supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied. 
 
 But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each 
 succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less 
 attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one 
 element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is 
 especially conspicuous in the second. As a motive by which Jesus was in- 
 duced to raise the young man at Nain, the narrative mentions compassion 
 for the mother (v. 13). Together with this we are to include, according to 
 Olshausen, a reference to the young man himself. For, he observes, man as 
 a conscious being can never be treated as a mere instrument, which would be 
 the case here, if the joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of 
 Jesus in raising the youth.^* This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not 
 that it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the dead, 
 but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For the conclusion, 
 that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas, is not allowable or 
 fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the Evangelists, is totally inadmissible. 
 We should rather (presupposing the purity of the character of Jesus) conclude 
 that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, 
 they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a 
 consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual 
 condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the 
 contrary, we find no indication ; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal 
 awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was 
 expected, is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even 
 Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and 
 hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely 
 these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other 
 generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that 
 these men, once dead, should remain so ? But then, it should seem, he must 
 have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston's objection 
 there remains no answer but this : as it was positively known concerning 
 celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled 
 up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which 
 she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, 
 in relation to which she was not under the same control. 
 
 The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only 
 rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression : but the 
 third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct 
 of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, 
 is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the 
 death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would 
 come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not 
 set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so ? That it 
 was not because lie thought the illness attended with no danger, has been 
 already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That 
 indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the 
 Evangelist (v. 5). What then? Liicke conjectures that Jesus was then occu- 
 pied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Persea, which he was not willing 
 to interrupt for the sake of Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less 
 important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher 
 
 »* I, s. 276 f. 
 
488 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § lOO. 
 
 call as a teacher.^* But he might here have very well done the one, and not 
 have left the other undone ; he might either have left some disciples to carry 
 forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured 
 Lazarus, whether through the medium of a disciple, or by the power of his 
 will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause 
 for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on 
 the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the Evange- 
 list, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. Now another motive 
 is clearly indicated, as Olshausen has remarked, in the declaration of Jesus, 
 V. IS, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for 
 the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his 
 friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly 
 allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might 
 procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olshausen on the 
 whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine 
 themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of 
 Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition 
 of the family at Bethany and of his disciples ; ^^ since, according to expres- 
 sions, such as tva So^aa-drj 6 vios r. 0. (v. 4), his design was rather the messianic 
 one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though 
 principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Liicke exclaims : by no 
 means ! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act 
 thus arbitrarily and capriciously ; s'? and De Wette also observes, that Jesus 
 in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles."* The 
 former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, preoccupation 
 elsewhere, detained Jesus ; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and 
 which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other ex- 
 pedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus 
 cannot have acted thus ; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in deny- 
 ing that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus : nothing 
 remains but with the author of the Probabilia,** from this incongruity of the 
 Christ in John's gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to 
 conclude that the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is unhistorical. 
 
 The alleged conduct of the disciples also, v. 12 f., is such as to excite 
 surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal 
 among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could 
 they, when he said of Lazarus, Ae sleeps, I will awake him, KeKoi/Aijrai, k^mrv'una 
 amav, think that he referred to a natural sleep ? One would not awake a 
 patient out of a healthy sleep ; hence it must have immediately occurred to 
 the disciples that here sleep (Kot)u.ijcrts) was spoken of in the same sense as in 
 the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the 
 deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth Evange- 
 list's favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. 
 If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a 
 sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately 
 spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunder- 
 standing corresponding to that figure of speech.*" 
 
 '' Comm. 2, s. 376. Also Neander, s. 346. 
 
 '* Tholuck, s. 202 ; Olshausen, 2, s. 260. 
 
 8' Utsup. 
 
 '8 Andachtsbuch, i, s. 292 f. Exeg. Handb. i, 3, s. 134. 
 
 »» S. 59 f. 79. 
 
 *» Comp. de Wette, exeg. Handb. i, 3, s. 135. 
 
MIRACLES— RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 489 
 
 The observation of the Jews, v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing 
 the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the 
 cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who 
 had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the 
 death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and in- 
 adequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the 
 dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of 
 actual death ? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this 
 of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee ; neither 
 could those events remain unknown in the capital,*' especially as we are 
 are expressly told that the fame of them went abroad into all that land, 
 throughout alljudma, and throughout all the country round about. To the real 
 Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth Evange- 
 list makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he 
 knew nothing of the above events : for that the reference belongs to him, and 
 not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them refer 
 to the very cure which he had last narrated. 
 
 A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth 
 of Jesus, V. 41 f. After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, 
 that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he 
 uttered this special thanksgiving only for 'the sake of the people around him, 
 in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his 
 address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned 
 one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense 
 of the words such as Liicke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part 
 would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his 
 prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent 
 prayer) ; they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for 
 a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish 
 granted, so that the wish and the thanks were coincident-; that is, to speak 
 generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, 
 fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these 
 reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could 
 be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the 
 necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act 
 could have taken place on the part of Jesus ; yet, if there be any truth in this 
 explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must 
 have made the position of the people his own, and thus in that moment have 
 prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf *2 But, here, scarcely 
 has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no 
 need of his own ; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold 
 accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. 
 He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no 
 case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own ; 
 since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless 
 
 " This is what Neander maintains, L. J. Chr., ». 354. He objects that the fourth Evange- 
 list must in any case have known of resuscitations of the dead by Jesus, even supposing the 
 narrative in question to be an unhistorical exaggeration. But this objection K refuted by the 
 observation, that, as an inducement to the formation of such a narrative, the general tradition 
 that Jesus had raised the dead would be sufficient, and an acquaintance with particular 
 instances as exemplars was not at all requisite. 
 
 <" This argument applies also to De Wette, who, while acknowledging that such ati idea 
 would be unsuitable in the viouth of Jesus, supposes nevertheless that it was really in his 
 mind. 
 
490 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 100. 
 
 they suppose the speaker's whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus 
 make his prayer ineffective by this addition ? If he felt impelled to lay before 
 God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in 
 silence ; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence 
 read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, 
 to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, 
 needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which 
 the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty ; because it might 
 possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a 
 too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently 
 the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers 
 of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. 
 But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus : it 
 could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt 
 by one critic, who has hence proposed to throw v. 42 out of the text, as an 
 unauthenticated addition by a latter hand.*' But as this judgment is destitute 
 of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by 
 Jesus, we mast conclude that the Evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in 
 order to explain the preceding, v. 41 ; and to this opinion Liicke has showa 
 himself not altogether disinclined.** Assuredly we have here words, which 
 are only lent to Jesus by the Evangelist : but if it be so with these words, what 
 is our security that it is so only with these ? In ,a gospel in which we have 
 already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers — 
 in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points, — the 
 difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not 
 belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the 
 class of historical compositions.*^ 
 
 As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, 
 it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of 
 the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears 
 in three Evangelists ; the two others are each related by one Evangelist only : *" 
 and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in 
 relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the 
 youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax. 
 
 That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke's gospel 
 alone; — especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscita- 
 tion of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative, — is a difficulty 
 in more than one respect.*^ Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a 
 dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles 
 according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, 
 it could not have been too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a 
 second instance ; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for 
 example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far 
 less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting 
 instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the 
 dead. But admitting that the two first Evangelists had some reason, no longer 
 to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they 
 ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather 
 
 *^ Dieffenbach, iiber einige wahrscheinliche Interpolationen jm Evangelium Johannis, in 
 Beitholdt's krit. Journal, 5, s. 8 f. 
 ■** Coram, i. Job., ite Aufl., 2, s. 310. 
 *° Thus the author of the Probabilia also argues, p. 61. 
 •■» Disc. 5. 
 *'' Comp. Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, a. 103 ff. 
 
MIRACLES — RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 49 1 
 
 than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above 
 observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless 
 they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the 
 others ; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as 
 early as iii. 7, or 20, leaped from Luke vi. 12 (17) to Matt. xii. 15 ; and only 
 at iv- 35.(21 ff.) returns to Luke viii. 22 (16 ff.);*^ thus passing over the 
 resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second 
 question : how can the resurrection of the youth, if 'it really happened, have 
 remained unknown to the author of the first gospel ? Even apart from the 
 supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught 
 with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were pre- 
 sent many of his disciples, f/.a$r]TaL iKavol ; the place, Nain, according to the 
 account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot 
 have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus ; *^ 
 lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). 
 Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the 
 life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture 
 to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus 
 of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places 
 where they might hope for the richest harvests, — to Capernaum and Jerusa- 
 lem ; events which, like the resuscitation in question, occuired in other places, 
 could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception of 
 the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most important 
 deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of 
 anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period ; secondly, 
 (and these two objections are essentially connected,) there lies at its founda- 
 tion the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once 
 fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as 
 lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort 
 to the spot : instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabit- 
 ants of the air, flying far away from the place which. gave them birth, roam- 
 ing everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original 
 locality. We see the same thing happen daily ; inumerable histories, both 
 true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most widely different 
 places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged 
 locality, the accident; by no means can the locality .be the substance, to 
 which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleier- 
 macher's supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident 
 of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, 
 and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel : the fact of this author's 
 ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really 
 happen. 
 
 But this ground of doubt falls with incomparably greater weight, on the 
 narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus in the fourth gospel. If the authors 
 or collectors of the three first gospels knew of this, they could not, for more 
 than one reason, avoid introducing it into their writings. For, first, of all the 
 resuscitations effected by Jesus, nay, of all his miracles, this resurrection of 
 Lazarus, if not the most wonderful, is yet the one in which -the marvellous 
 presents itself the most obviously and strikingly, and which therefore, if its 
 historical reality can be established, is a pre-eminently strong proof of the 
 extraordinary endowments of Jesus as a divine messenger ; s" whence the 
 
 ■■8 Saunier, iiber die quellen des Markus, S..66 ff. 
 
 ■« Comp. Winer bibl. Realw. d. A. 
 
 '" Let the reader recollect the well-known expression of Spinoza. 
 
492 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § lOO. 
 
 Evangelists, although they had related one or two other instances of the kind, 
 could not think it superfluous to add this also. But, secondly, the resurrection 
 of Lazarus had, according to the representation of John, a direct influence in 
 the development of the fate of Jesus ; for we learn from xi. 47 ff., that the 
 increased resort to Jesus, and the credit which this event procured him, led 
 to that consultation of the Sanhedrim in which the sanguinary counsel of 
 Caiaphas was given and approved. Thus the event had a double importance 
 — pragmatical as well as dogmatical; consequently, the synoptical writers 
 could not have failed to narrate it, had it been within their knowledge. 
 Nevertheless, theologians have found out all sorts of reasons why those 
 Evangelists, even had the fact been known to them, should refrain from its 
 narration. Some have been of opinion that at the time of the composition of 
 the three first gospels, the history was still in every mouth, so that to make a 
 written record of it was superfluous ; " others, on the contrary, have con- 
 jectured that it was thought desirable to guard against its further publication, 
 lest danger should accrue to Lazarus and his family, the former of whom, 
 according to John xii. 10, was persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy on account 
 of the miracle which had been preformed in him ; a caution for which there 
 was no necessity at the later period at which John wrote his gospel.^^ It is 
 plain that these two reasons nullify each other, and neither of them is in itself 
 worthy of a serious refutation.; yet as similar modes of evading a difficulty are 
 still more frequently resorted to than might be supposed, we ought not to 
 think some animadversion on them altogether thrown away. The proposition, 
 that the resurrection of Lazarus was not recorded by the synoptists because it 
 was generally known in their circle, proves too much ; since on this rule, 
 precisely the most important events in the life of Jesus, his baptism, death, 
 and resurrection, must have remained unwritten. Moreover, writings, which 
 like our gospels, originate in a religious community, do not serve merely to 
 make known the unknown ; it is their office also to preserve what is already 
 known. In opposition to the other explanation, it has been remarked by 
 others, that the publication of this history among those who were not natives 
 of Palestine, as was the case with those for whom Mark and Luke wrote, 
 could have done no injury to Lazarus ; and even the author of the first gospel, 
 admitting that he wrote in and for Palestine, could hardly have withheld a fact 
 in which the glory of Christ was so peculiarly manifested, merely out of con- 
 sideration to Lazarus, who, supposing the more improbable case that he was 
 yet living at the time of the composition of the first gospel, ought not. Christian 
 as he doubtless was, to refuse to suffer for the name of Christ ; and the same 
 observation would apply to his family. The most dangerous time for Lazarus 
 according to John xii. 10, was that immediately after his resurrection, and a 
 narrative which appeared so long after, could scarcely have heightened or 
 renewed this danger ; besides, in the neighbourhood of Bethany and Jerusalem 
 whence danger was threatened to Lazarus, the event must have been so well- 
 known and remembered that nothing was to be risked by its publication. ^^ 
 
 '^ Whitby, Annot. in loc. 
 
 "^ Thus Grotius and Herder ; Olshausen also adopts this explanation under the form of 
 conjecture, 2, s. 256 f. , Anm. 
 
 5» See these arguments dispersed in Paulus and Liicke on this chapter ; in Gabler, ut sup. 
 p. 238 ff. ; and Hase, L. J. § 119.— A new reason why Matthew in particular is silent on 
 the resurrection of Lazarus, has been excogitated by Heydenreich (iiber die Unzulassigkeit 
 der raythischen Auffassung, 2tes Stuck, s. 42). The Evangelist, he says, omitted it, because 
 It required to be represented and treated with a tenderness and liveliness of feeling, of which 
 he did not think himself capable. Hence, the modest man chose to avoid the history 
 altogether rather than to deprive it by his manner of narration, oi its proper pathos and 
 sublimity. — Idle modesty truly ! 
 
MIRACLES— RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 493 
 
 It appears then that the resurrection of Lazarus, since it is not narrated by 
 the synoptists, cannot have been known to them ; and the question arises, 
 how was this ignorance possible ? Hase gives the mysterious answer, that 
 the reason of this omission lies hid in the common relations under which the 
 synoptists in general were silent concerning all the earlier incidents in Judsea ; 
 but this leaves it uncertain, at least so far as the expressions go, whether we 
 ought to decide to the disadvantage of the fourth gospel or of its predecessors. 
 The latest criticism of the gospel of Matthew has cleared up the ambiguity in 
 Hase's answer after its usual manner, determining the nature of those common 
 relations which he vaguely adduces, thus : Every one of the synoptists, by his 
 ignorance of a history which an apostle must have known, betrays himself to 
 be no apostle.^* But this renunciation of the apostolic origin of the first 
 gospel, does not by any means enable us to explain the ignorance of its 
 author and his compeers of the resurrection of Lazarus. For besides the 
 remarkable character of the event, its occurrence in the very heart of Judaea, 
 the great attention excited by it, and" its having been witnessed by the 
 apostles, — all these considerations render it incomprehensible that it should 
 not have entered into the general tradition, and from thence into the synopti- 
 cal gospels. . It is argued that these gospels are founded on Galilean legends, 
 i.e. oral narratives and written notices by the Galilean friends and compa- 
 nions of Jesus ; that these were not present at the resurrection of Lazarus, and 
 therefore did not include it in their memoirs ; and that the authors of the 
 first gospels, strictly confining themselves to the Galilean sources of informa- 
 tion, likewise passed over the event."' But there was not such a wall of par- 
 tition between Galilee and Judsea, that the fame of an event like the resurrec- 
 tion of Lazarus could help sounding over frpm the one to the other. Even 
 if it did not happen during a feast time, when (John iv. 45) many Galileans 
 might be eye-witnesses, yet the disciples, who were for the greater part Gali- 
 leans, were present (v. 16), and must, so soon as they returned into Galilee 
 after the resurrection of Jesus, have spread abroad the history throughout this 
 province, or rather, before this, the Galileans who kept the last passover 
 attended by Jesus, must have learned the event, the report of which was so 
 rife in the city. Hence eveij Liicke finds this explanation of Gabler's un- 
 satisfactory ; and on his own side attempts to solve the enigma by the obser- 
 vation, that the original evangelical tradition, which the synoptists followed, did 
 not represent the history of the Passion mainly in a pragmatical light, and 
 therefore gave no heed to this event as the secret motive of the murderous 
 resolve against Jesus, and that only John, who was initiated into the secret 
 history of the Sanhedrim, was in a condition to supply this explanatory fact. 5" 
 This view of the case would certainly appear to neutralize one reason why the 
 synoptists must have noticed the event in question, namely, that drawn from 
 its pragmatical importance ; but when it is added, that as a miracle regarded 
 in itself, apart from its more particular circumstances, it might easily be lost 
 among 'the rest of those narratives from which we have in the three first 
 gospels a partly accidental selection,— we must reply, that the synoptical 
 selection of miracles appears to be an accidental one only when that is at 
 once assumed which ought first to be proved : namely, that the miracles in 
 the fourth gospel are historical : and unless the selection be casual to a degree 
 inconsistent with the slightest intelligence in the compilers, such a miracle 
 cannot have been overlooked. ^^ 
 
 5' Schneckenburger, iiber den Urspr., s. 10. 
 
 *■' Gabler, ut sup. s. 240 f. ; also Neander, s. 357. 
 
 S6 Comm. z. Job. 2, s. 402. Ten- 1, - t . .1 
 
 sr Comp. De Wette, exeg. ^andb. I, 3, s. 139. In Sclileiermacher s Lectures on the 
 
494 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § lOO. 
 
 It has doubtless been these and similar considerations, which have led the 
 latest writers on the controversy concerning the first gospel, to complain of 
 the one-sidedness with which the above question is always answered to the 
 . disadvantage of the synoptists, especially Matthew, as if it were forgotten that 
 an answer dangerous to the fourth gospel lies just as near at hand. *® For 
 our own part, we are not so greatly alarmed by the fulminations of Lucke, as 
 to be deterred from the expression of our opinion on the subject. This 
 theologian, even in his latest editions, reproaches those who, from the silence 
 of the synoptical writers, conclude that this narrative is a fiction and the 
 gospel of John not authentic, with an unparalleled lack of discernment, and a 
 total want of insight into the mutual relations of our gospels (that is, into 
 those relations viewed according to the professional conviction of theologians, 
 which is unshaken even by the often well-directed attacks of the author of the 
 Probabilia). We, nevertheless, distinctly declare that we regard the history of 
 the resurrection of Lazarus, not only as in the highest degree improbable in 
 itself, but also destitute of external evidence ; and this whole chapter, in con- 
 nexion with those previously examined, as an indication of the unauthenticity 
 of the fourth gospel. 
 
 If it is thus proved that all the three evangelical histories of resuscitations 
 are rendered more or less doubtful by negative reasons : all that is now 
 wanting to us is positive proof, that the tradition of Jesus having raised the 
 dead might easily be formed without historical foundation. According to 
 rabbinical, s^ as well as New Testament passsages (e.g. John v. 28 f., vi. 40, 
 44; I Cor. XV. ; i Thess. iv. 16), the resuscitation of the dead was expected 
 of the Messiah at his coming. Now the irapovcria, the appearance of the 
 Messiah Jesus on earth, was in the view of the early church broken by his 
 death into two parts ; the first comprised his preparatory appearance, which 
 began with his human birth, and ended with the resurrection and ascension ; 
 the second was to commence with his future advent on the clouds of heaven, 
 in order to open the aUav ixeXXoiv, the age to come. As the first appearance of 
 Jesus had wanted the glory and majesty expected in the Messiah, the great 
 demonstrations of messianic power, and in particular the general resurrection 
 of the dead, were assigned to his second, and as yet future appearance on 
 earth. Nevertheless, as an immediate pledge of what was to be anticipated, 
 even in the first advent some fore-splendours of the second must have been 
 visible in single instances ; Jesus must, even in his first advent, by awaking 
 some of the dead, have guaranteed his authority one day to awake all the 
 dead ; he must, when questioned as to his messiahship, have been able to 
 
 Life of Jesus (if I may be permitted to refer to a worii not yet printed), the silence in 
 question is explained in the following manner. The synoptical Evangelists in general were 
 ignorant of the relations of Jesus with the family of Hethany, because perhaps the apostles 
 did not wish an intimate personal connection of this kind to pass into the general tradition, 
 from which those Evangelists drew ; and ignorance of the relations of Jesus with the family 
 in general, of course included ignorance of this particular fact connected with them. But 
 what motive could the apostles have for such reserve ? Are we to infer secret, or even, with 
 Venturini, tender ties? Must not such a private relation in the case of Jesus have presented 
 much to edify us ? The intimations which John and Luke afford us on this subject contain 
 in fact much of this description, and from the narrative which the latter gives of the visit of 
 Jesus to Martha and Mary, we see also that the apostles, in furnishing their accounts, were 
 by no m'feans averse to allow something of these relations to appear, so far as they could 
 retain a general interest. Now in this light, the resurrection of Lazarus, as a pre-eminent 
 miracle, was incomparably more valuable than that visit with its single aphorism " One 
 tiling is needful," and involved less of the private relations of Jesus with the family of 
 Bethany ; the supposed effort to keep these secret, could not therefore have hindered the 
 promulgation of the resurrection of Lazarus. 
 
 *' Kern, iiber den Ursprung des Evang. Matth., Tiibing. Zeitschrift, l8'?4, 2, s.lio. 
 
 69 Bertholdt. Christol. Jud. § 35. 
 
MIRACLES — RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 495 
 
 adduce among other criteria the fact that the dead were raised up by him 
 (Matt. xi. 5), and he must have imparted the same power to his disciples 
 (Matt. xi. 8, comp. Acts ix. 40, xx. 10) ; but especially as a close prefigur- 
 ation of the hour in which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and 
 shall come forth (John v. 28 f.), he must have cried with a loud voice, Come 
 forth I to one who had lain in the grave four days (John xi. 17, 43). For the 
 origination of detailed narratives of single resuscitations, there lay, besides, the 
 most appropriate types in the Old Testament. The prophets Elijah and 
 Elisha (i Kings xvii. 17 ff. ; 2 Kings iv. 18 if.) had awaked the dead, and to 
 these instances Jewish writings appealed as a type of the messianic time.®" 
 The object of the resuscitation was with both these prophets a child, but a 
 boy, while in the narrative common to the synoptists we have a girl ; the two 
 prophets revived him while he lay on the bed, as Jesus does the daughter of 
 Jairus ; both entered alone into the chamber of death, as Jesus excludes all 
 save a few confidential friends ; only, as it is fitting, the Messiah needs not 
 the laborious manipulations by which the prophets attained their object. 
 Elijah in particular raised the son of a widow, as Jesus did at Nain ; he met 
 the widow of Zarephath at the gate (but before the death of her son) as Jesus 
 met the widow of Nain, under the gate of the city (after the death of her son) ; 
 lastly, it is in both instances told in the same words how the miracle-worker 
 restored the son to the mother. ""^ Even one already laid in his grave, like 
 Lazarus, was restored to life by the prophet Elisha ; with this difference, how- 
 ever, that the prophet himself had been long dead, and the contact of his 
 bones reanimated a corpse which was accidentally thrown upon them (2 
 Kings xiii. 21). There is yet another point of similarity between the resusci- 
 tations of the dead in the Old Testament and that of Lazarus ; it is that Jesus, 
 while in his former resuscitation he utters the authoritative word without any 
 preliminary, in that of Lazarus offers a prayer to God, as Elisha, and more 
 particularly Elijah, are said to have done. While Paulus extends to these 
 narratives in the Old Testament, the natural explanation which he has applied 
 to those in the New, theologians of more enlarged views have long ago re- 
 marked, that the resurrections in the New Testament are nothing more than 
 mythi, which had their origin in the tendency of the early Christian church, 
 to make her Messiah agree with the type of the 'prophets, and with the 
 messianic ideal.®* 
 
 ^" See the passages quoted from Tanchuma, Vol. I. § 14. 
 
 ^ I Kings xvii. 23, LXX. Koi ihwmv airh tj iturrpl airov, Luke vii. 15 : /to! ^wxev 
 avTQif T^ li''OTpi ai/ToO, 
 
 '^ Thus the author of the Abhandlung iiber die verschiedenen Riicksichten, in welchen der 
 Biograph Jesu arbeiten kann, in Bertholdt's krit. Journ., 5, a. 237 f., Kaiser, bibl. Theol. i, 
 s. 202.— A resuscitation strikingly similar to that of the young man at Nain is narrated by 
 Philostratus, of Apollonius ofTyana. " As according to Luke, it was a young man, the 
 only son of a widow, who was being carried out of the city ; so, in Philostratus, it is a 
 voung maiden already betrothed, whose bier Apollonius meets. The command to set down 
 the bier, the mere touch, and a few words, are sufEcient here, as there, to bring the dead to 
 life" (Baur, Apollonius v. Tyana und Christus, s. 145). I should like to know whether 
 Paulus, or any other critic, would be inclined to explain this naturally ; if, however, it 
 ought to be regarded as an imitation of the evangelical narrative (a conclusion which can 
 hardly be avoided), we must have a preconceived opinion of the character of the books of 
 the New Testament, to evade the consequence, that the resuscitations of the dead which 
 they contain are only less designed imitations of those in the Old Testament ; which are 
 themselves to be derived from the belief of antiquity, that a victorious power over death was 
 imparted to the favourites of the gods (Hercules, Esculapius, etc.), and more immediately, 
 from the Jewish idea of a prophet. 
 
496 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 101. 
 
 § lOI. 
 ANffCDOTES HAVING RELATION TO THE SEA. 
 
 As in general, at least according to the representations of the three first 
 Evangelists the country around the Galilean sea was the chief theatre of the 
 ministry of Jesus ; so a considerable number of his miracles have an imme- 
 diate reference to the sea. One of this class, the miraculous draught of fishes 
 granted to Peter, has already presented itself for our consideration ; besides 
 this, there are the piiraculous stilling of the storm which had arisen on the sea 
 while Jesus slept, in the three synoptists ; Matthew, Mark, and John ; the 
 summary of most of those, the walking of Jesus on the sea, likewise during a 
 storm, in incidents which the appendix to the fourth gospel places after the 
 resurrection ; and lastly, the anecdote of the coin that was to be angled for by 
 Peter, in Matthew. 
 
 The first-named narrative (Matt. viii. 23 ff. parall.) is intended, according 
 to the Evangelist's own words, to represent Jesus to us as him whom the winds 
 and the sea obey, o\ avE/xoi koI yj 6dXacrcra iiraKovovmv. Thus, to follow out the 
 gradation in the miraculous which has been hitherto observed, it is here pre- 
 supposed, not merely that Jesus could act on the human mind and living 
 body in a psychological and magnetic manner ; or with a revivifying power 
 on the human organism when it was forsaken by vitality ; nay, not merely as 
 in the history of the draught of fishes earlier examined, that he could act 
 immediately with determinative power, on irrational yet animated existences, 
 but that he could act thus even on inanimate nature. The possibility of 
 finding a point of union between the alleged supernatural agency of Jesus, 
 and the natural order of phenomena, here absolutely ceases : here, at the 
 latest, there is an end to miracles iii the wider and now more favoured sense ; 
 and we come to those which must be taken in the narrowest sense, or to the 
 miracle proper. The purely supranaturalistic view is therefore the first to 
 suggest itself. Olshausen has justly felt, that such a power over external 
 nature is not essentially connected with the destination of Jesus for the human 
 race and for the salvation of man ; whence he was led to place the natural 
 phenomenon which is here controlled by Jesus in a relation to sin, and there- 
 fore to the office of Jesus. Storms, he says, are the spasms and convulsions of 
 nature, and as such the consequences of sin, the fearful effects of which are 
 seen even on the physical side of existence.^ But it is only that limited ob- 
 servation of nature which in noting the particular forgets the general, that can 
 regard storms, tempests, and similar phenomena' (which in connexion with 
 the whole have their necessary place and beneficial influence) as evils and 
 departure from original law : and a theory of the world in which it is seriously 
 upheld, that before the fall there were no storms and tempests, as, on the 
 other hand, no beasts of prey and poisonous plants, partakes — one does not 
 know whether to say, of the fanatical, or of the childish. But to what pur- 
 pose, if the above explanation will not hold, could Jesus be gifted with such 
 a power over nature ? As a means of awakening faith in him, it was inade- 
 quate and superfluous : because Jesus found individual adherents without 
 any demonstration of a power of this kind, and general acceptance even this 
 did not procure him. As little can it be regarded as a type of the original 
 dominion of man over external nature, a dominion which he is destined to re- 
 attain ; for the value of this dominion consists precisely in this, that it is a 
 mediate one, achieved by the progressive reflection and the united efforts of 
 
 ' BibL Coram, i, s. 2S7. 
 
MIRACLES — ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE SEA. 497 
 
 ages, not an immediate and magical dominion, which costs no more than a 
 word. Hence in relation to that part of nature of which we are here speaking 
 the compass and the steam-vessel are an incomparably truer realization of 
 man's dominion over the ocean, than the allaying of the waves by a mere 
 word. But the subject has another aspect, since the dominion of man over 
 nature is not merely external and practical, but also immanent or theoretical, 
 that is, man even when externally he is subjected to the might of the elements, 
 yet is not internally conquered by them ; but, in the conviction that the 
 powers of physical nature can only destroy in him that which belongs to his 
 physical existence, is elevated in the self-certainty of the spirit above the 
 possible destruction of the body. This spiritual power, it is said, was 
 exhibited by Jesus, for he slept tranquilly in the midst of the storm, and when 
 awaked by his trembling disciples, inspired them with courage by his words. 
 But for courage to be shown, real danger must be apprehended : now for 
 Jesus, supposing him to be conscious of an immediate power over nature, 
 danger could in no degree exist : therefore he could not here give any proof 
 of this theoretical power. 
 
 In both respects the natural explanation would find only the conceivable 
 and the desirable attributed to Jesus in the evangelical narrative ; namely, on 
 the one hand, an intelligent observation of the state of the weather , and on 
 the other, exalted courage in the presence of real peril. When we read that 
 Jesus commanded the winds hriTHLav toli di/e/iots, we are to understand simply 
 that he made some remark on the storm, or some exclamations at its violence : 
 and his calming of the sea we are to regard only as a prognostication, founded 
 on the observation of certain signs, that the storm would soon subside. His 
 address to the disciples is said to have proceeded, like the celebrated saying 
 of Cassar, from the confidence that a man who was to leave an impress on the 
 world's history, could not so lightly be cut short in his career by an accident. 
 That those who were in the ship regarded the subsidence of the storm as the 
 effect of the words of Jesus, proves nothing, for Jesus nowhere confirms their 
 inference.^ Biit neither does he disapprove it, although he must have 
 observed the impression which, in consequence of that inference, the result 
 had made on the people ; s he must therefore, as Venturini actually supposes, 
 have designedly refrained from shaking their high opinion of his miraculous 
 power, in order to attach them to him the more firmly. But, setting this al- 
 together aside, was it likely that the natural presages of the storm should have 
 been better understood by Jesus, who had never been occupied on the sea, 
 than by , Peter, James, and John, who had been at home on it from their 
 youth upwards ? * 
 
 It remains then that, taking the incident as it is narrated by the Evangelists, 
 we must regard it as a miracle ; but to raise this from an exegeiical result to. a 
 real fact, is, according to the above remarks extremely difficult : whence there 
 arises a suspicion against the historical character of the narrative. Viewed 
 more nearly however, and taking Matthew's account as the basis, there is 
 nothing to object to the narrative until the midtlle of v. 26. It might really 
 have happened that Jesus in one of his frequent passages across the Gali- 
 lean sea, was sleeping when a storm arose ; that the disciples awaked him 
 with alarm, while he, calm and self-possessed, said to them, IVAy are ye fear- 
 ful, O ye of little faith? What follows— the commanding of the waves, which 
 
 2 Thus Paulus, exeg. Handb., i, b, s. 468 ff. ; Venturini, ^, s. 166 S. ; Kaiser, bibl; , 
 Theol., i,s. 197. Hase, also, § 74, thinks this view probable. 
 
 » Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 363, who for the rest here offers bat a weak defence ayamst the 
 natural explanation. 
 
 ■• Hase, ut sup. 
 
 I I 
 
498 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § lOI. 
 
 Mark, with his well-known fondness for such authoritative words, reproduces 
 as if he were giving the exact words of Jesus in a Greek translation (a-idnra, 
 ■n-f<l)ifiui(To !) — might have been added in the propagation of the anecdote from 
 one to another. There was an inducement to attribute to Jesus such a com- 
 mand over the winds and the sea, not only in the opinion entertained of his 
 person, but also in certain features of the Old Testament history. Here, in 
 poetical descriptions of the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, 
 Jehovah is designated as he who rebuked the Red Sea, eirenfLria-e ry iprvBpS. 
 eaXda-a-y (Psa. cvi. 9 ; LXX. comp. Nahura i. 4), so that it retreated. Now, 
 as the instrument in this partition of the Red Sea was Moses, it was natural 
 to ascribe to his great successor, the Messiah, a similar function ; accordingly 
 we actually find from rabbinical passages, that a drying up of the sea was ex- 
 pected to be wrought by God in the messianic times, doubtless through the 
 agency of the Messiah, as formerly through that of Moses.^ That instead of 
 drying up the sea Jesus is said only to produce a calm, may be explained, on 
 the supposition that the storm and the composure exhibited by Jesus on the 
 occasion were historical, as a consequence of the mythical having combined 
 itself with this historical element ; for, as according to this, Jesus and his 
 disciples were on board a ship, a drying up of the sea would have been out 
 of place. 
 
 Still it is altogether without any sure precedent, that a mythical addition 
 should be engrafted on the stem of a real incident, so as to leave the latter 
 totally unmodified. And there is one feature, even in the part hitherto 
 ■ assumed to be historical, which, more narrowly examined, might just as 
 probably have been invented by the legend as have really happened. That 
 Jesus, before the storm breaks out, is sleeping, and even when it arises, does 
 not immediately awake, is not his voluntary deed, but chance ; ® it is this very 
 chance, however, which alone gives the scene its full significance, for Jesus 
 sleeping in the storm is by the contrast which he presents, a not less emblematical 
 image than Ulysses sleeping when, after so many storms, he was about to land 
 on his island home. Now that Jesus really slept at the time that a storm 
 broke out, may indeed have happened by chance in one case out of ten ; but 
 in the nine cases also, when this did not happen, and Jesus only showed 
 himself calm and courageous during the storm, I am inclined to think that 
 the legend would so far have understood her interest, that, as she had repre- 
 sented the contrast of the tranquillity of Jesus with the raging of the elements 
 to the intellect, by means of the words of Jesus, so she would depict it for the 
 imagination, by means of the image of Jesus sleeping in the ship (or as Mark 
 has it,'' on a pillow in the hinder part of the ship). If then that which may 
 possibly have happened in a single case, must certainly have been invented by 
 the legend m nine cases ; the expositor must in reason prepare himself for the 
 undeniable possibility, that we have before us one of the nine cases, instead 
 of that single case.^ If then it be granted that nothing further remains as an 
 historical foundation for our narrative, than that Jesus exhorted his disciples 
 to show the firm courage of faith in opposition to the raging waves of the sea, 
 
 "■ Vid. Vol. I, § 14, note 9. 
 
 " Neander alters the fact, when he describes Jesus as falling asleep in the midst of the 
 fury of the storm and the waves, and thus manifesting a tranquillity of soul which no terror 
 of nature could disturb (s. 362). Luke says expressly, as they sailed he fell asleep : and there 
 came down a storm, etc., TfKibnnuiv Si airrHv a(t>tnrvu<re Kol Kari^ij XafXa^ K. t. \., and accord- 
 ing to the representation of the other Evangelists also, the sleeping of Jesus appears to have 
 preceded the breaking out of the storm, since otherwise the timorous disciples would not 
 have awaked him — they would rather not have allowed him to go to sleep. 
 
 ' Comp Saunier, Uber die Quellen des Markus, s. 82. 
 
 " This may serve as an answer to Tholuck's accusation, Glaubwiirdlgkeit, a. 113. 
 
MIRACLES — ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE SEA. 499 
 
 it is certainly possible that he may once have done this in a storm at sea ; but 
 just as he said : if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye may say to this 
 mountain, Be thou removed, and cast into the sea (Matt. xxi. 21), or to this 
 tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea (Luke 
 xvii. 6), and both shall be done (/cat vTrrJKova-o' av v/uv, Luke) : so he might, 
 not merely on the sea, but in any situation, make use of the figure, that to 
 him who has faith, winds and waves shall be obedient at a word {on koX toIs 
 
 avefioK iiriTaa-<rei Koi tm iiSart, Kal viraKOvova-iv avTiS, Luke). If we now take 
 
 into account what even Olshausen remarks, and Schneckenburger has shown,^ 
 that the contest of the kingdom of God with the world was in the early times 
 of Christianity commonly compared to a voyage through a stormy ocean ; we 
 see at once, how easily legend might come to frame such a narrative as the 
 above, on the suggestions afforded by the parallel between the Messiah and 
 Moses, the expressions of Jesus, and the conception of him as the pilot who 
 steers the little vessel of the kingdom of God through the tumultuous waves 
 of the world. Setting this aside, however, and viewing the matter only 
 generally, in relation to the idea of a miracle-worker, we find a similar power 
 over storms and tempests, ascribed, for example, to Pythagoras. "^^ 
 
 We have a more complicated anecdote connected with the sea, wanting in 
 Luke, but contained in John vi. 16 fF., as well as in Matt. xiv. 22 ff., and 
 Mark vi. 45 fT., where a storm overtakes the disciples when sailing by night, 
 and Jesus appears to their rescue, walking towards them on the sea. Here, 
 again, the storm subsides in a marvellous manner on the entrance of Jesus 
 into the ship ; but the peculiar difficulty of the narrative lies in this, that the 
 body of Jesus appears so entirely exempt from a law which governs all other 
 human bodies without exception, namely, the law of gravitation, that he not 
 only does not sink under the water, but does not even dip into it ; on the 
 contrary, he walks erect on the waves as on firm land. If we are to represent 
 this to ourselves, we must in some way or other, conceive the body of Jesus 
 as an ethereal phantom, according to the opinion of the Docetse ; a conception 
 which the Fathers of the Church condemned as irreligious, and which we 
 must reject as extravagant. Olshausen indeed says, that in a superior cor- 
 poreality, impregnated with the powers of a higher world, such an appearance 
 need not create surprise : ^^ but these are words to which we can attach no 
 definite idea. If the spiritual activity of Jesus which refined and perfected 
 his corporeal nature, instead of being conceived as that which more and more 
 completely emancipated his body from the psychical laws of passion and 
 sensuality, is understood as if by its means the body was exempted from the 
 physical law of gravity : — this is a materialism of which, as in a former case, 
 it is difficult to decide whether it be more fantastical or childish. If Jesus 
 did not sink in the water, he must have been a spectre, and the disciples in 
 our narrative would not have been wrong in taking him for one. We must 
 also recollect that on his baptism in the river Jordan, Jesus did not exhibit 
 this property, but was sublnerged like an ordinary man. Now had he at that 
 ' time also the power of sustaining himself on the surface of the water, and 
 only refrained from using it ? and did he thus increase or reduce his specific 
 gravity by an act of his will? or are we to suppose, as Olshausen would 
 
 ' Ueber den Ursprung, u. 0. (., s. 68 f. 
 
 '" According to Jamblich. vita Pyth, 135, ed. Kiessllng, there were narrated of Pytha- 
 goras, ivi/uov pialuv xoXafSK re x'^o'^ws irapavrlKa Karevir^ffeis Kal KviiAfav iroTO/ifwc re koX 
 edXaaaluv direvdiaaiiol irpbs eiimpij tSiv iraipwv Sid^acriv, instantaneous tranquillizings of 
 violent winds and hailstorms, and sooihings of the waves of rivers and seas, to afford easy 
 transit to his companions. Comp. Porphyr. v. p. 29 same ed. 
 
 " Ut sup. =. 491. 
 
500 PART n. CHAPTER IX. § 10 1. 
 
 perhaps say, that at the time of his baptism he had not attained so far in the 
 process of subtilizing his body, as to be freely borne up by the water, and that 
 tie only reached this point at a later period ? These are questions which 
 Olshausen justly calls absurd : nevertheless they serve to open a glimpse into 
 the abyss of absurdities in which we are involved by the supranaturalistic 
 interpretation, and particularly by that which this theologian gives of the 
 narrative before us. 
 
 To avoid these, the natural explanation has tried many expedients. The 
 boldest is that of Paulus, who maintains that the text does not state that 
 Jesus walked on the water ; and that the miracle in this passage is nothing 
 but a philological mistake, since TreptTraretv iiri rijs daXda-a-rj'i is analogous to 
 the expression crTpaToireSeveLv IttI rrji BaXdatrrj^, Exod. xiv. 2, and signifies 
 to walk, as the other to encamp, over the sea, that is, on the elevated sea- 
 shore. ^^ According to the meaning of the words taken separately, this ex- 
 planation is possible : its real applicability in this particular instance, however, 
 miist be determined by the context. Now this represents the disciples as 
 having rowed twenty-five or thirty furlongs (John), or as being in the midst 
 of the sea (Matthew and Mark), and then it is said that Jesus came towards 
 the ship, and so near that he could speak to them, ■n-epi'Tt-arSiv iirl r^s OaXdcra-r]?. 
 How could he do this if he remained on the shore ? To obviate this ob- 
 jection, Paulus conjectures that the disciples in that stormy night probably 
 only skirted the shore ; but the words iv fjJcra rijs ^aXacro-i/s, in the midst of 
 the sea, though not, we grant, to be construed with mathematical strictness, 
 yet, even taken according to the popular mode of speaking, are too decidedly 
 opposed to such a supposition for it to be worth our further consideration. 
 But this mode of interpretation encounters a fatal blow in the passage where 
 Matthew says of Peter, that having come down out of ike ship he walked on the 
 
 water, Kara^a? a.7ro Tov ■TrXoiov irspieiraTqcrev ctti to. -uSara (v. 29) ; for as it is 
 
 said shortly after that Peter began to sink {KarairovTiificrdai), walking merely 
 on the shore cannot have been intended here ; and if not here, neither can it 
 have been intended in the former instance relating to Jesus, the expressions 
 being substantially the same.^^ 
 
 But if Peter, in his attempt to walk upon the waters, 7repnrp.Telv iirl to. ^Sara, 
 began to sink, may we not still suppose that both he and Jesus merely swam 
 in the sea, or waded through its shallows ? Both these suppositions have 
 actually been advanced.^* But the act of wading must have been expressed 
 by TrepiTrareiv Sia rrji 6aXacr(r7j?, and had that of swimming been intended, one 
 or other of the parallel passages would certainly have substituted the precise 
 expression for the ambiguous one : besides, it must be alike impossible either 
 to swim from twenty-five to thirty furlongs in a storm, or to wade to about the 
 middle of the sea, which certainly was beyond the shallows ; a swimmer could 
 not easily be taken for a spectre ; and, lastly, the prayer of Peter for special 
 permission to imitate Jesus, and his failure in it from want of faith, point to 
 something supernatural. ^^ 
 
 The reasoning on which the natural mode of interpretation rests ' here, as 
 elsewhere, has been enunciated by Paulus in connexion with this passage in 
 a form which reveals its fundamental error in a particularly happy manner. 
 The question, he says, in such cases is always this : which is more probable, 
 
 " Paulus, Memorabilien, 6, Stuck, No. V. ; exeg. Handb. 2, s. 238 ff. 
 
 " Against the extremely arbitrary expedient which Paulus has here adopted, see Storr, 
 Opusc. acad. 3, p. 288. 
 
 " The former by Bolten, Bericht des Matthaus, in loc ; the latter in Henke's neuem 
 Magazin, 6, 2, s. 327 ff. 
 
 '= Comp. Paulus and Fritzsche, in loc. 
 
MIRACLES— ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE SEA. SOI 
 
 that the evangelical writer should use an expression not perfectly exact, or 
 that there should be a departure from the course of nature ? It is evident 
 that the dilemma is falsely stated, and should rather be put thus : Is it more 
 probable that the author should express himself inaccurately (rather, in direct 
 contradiction to the supposed sense), or that he should mean to narrate a 
 departure from the course of nature? For only what he means to narrate is 
 the inimediate point of inquiry ; what really happened is, even according to 
 the distinction of the judgment of a writer from the fact that he states, on 
 which Paulus everlastingly insists, an altogether different question. Because 
 according to our views a departure from the course of nature cannot have 
 taken place, it by no means follows, that a writer belonging to the primitive 
 age of Christianity could not have credited and narrated such a case ; ^^ and 
 therefore to abolish the miraculous, we must not explain it away from the 
 narrative, but rather inquire whether the narrative itself, either in whole or in 
 part, must not be excluded from the domain of history. In relation to this 
 inquiry, first of all, each of our three accounts has peculiar features which in 
 an historical light are suspicious. 
 
 The most striking of these features is found in Mark v. 48, where he says of 
 Jesus that he came walking on the sea towards the disciples, and would have 
 passed by them, koX rfieK^ irapiKOiiv airrov's, but that he was constrained by their 
 anxious cries to take notice of them. With justice Fritzsche interprets Mark's 
 meaning to be, that it was the intention of Jesus, supported by divine power, 
 to walk across the whole sea as on firm land. But with equal justice Paulus 
 asks, Could anything have been more useless and extravagant than to perform 
 so singular a miracle without any eye to witness it ? We must not however 
 on this account, with the latter theologian, interpret the words of Mark' as 
 implying a natural event, namely, that Jesus, being on the land, was going to 
 pass by the disciples who were sailing in a ship not far from the shore, for the 
 miraculous interpretation of the passage is perfectly accordant with the spirit 
 of our Evangelist. Not contented with the representation of his informant, 
 that Jesus, on this one occasion, adopted this extraordinary mode of progress 
 with special reference to his disciples, he aims by the above addition to 
 convey the idea of walking on the water being so natural and customary with 
 Jesus, that without any regard to the disciples, whenever a sheet of water lay 
 in his road, he walked across it as unconcernedly as if it had been dry land. 
 But such a mode of procedure, if habitual with Jesus, would presuppose most 
 decidedly a subtilization of his body such as Olshausen supposes ; it would 
 therefore presuppose what is inconceivable. Hence this particular of Mark's 
 presents itself as one of the most striking among those by which the second 
 Evangelist now and then approaches to the exaggerations of the apocryphal 
 gospels. 1'' 
 
 In Matthew, the miracle is in a different manner, not so much heightened 
 as complicated ; for there, not only Jesus, but Peter also makes an experiment 
 in walking on the sea, not indeed altogether successful. This trait is ren- 
 dered suspicious by its intrinsic character, as well as by the silence of the two 
 other narrators. Immediately on the word of Jesus, and in virtue of the faith 
 which he has in the beginning, Peter actually succeeds in walking on the 
 water for some time, and only when he is assailed by fear and doubt does he 
 begin to sink. What are we to think of this ? Admitting that Jesus, by means 
 
 '■^ See the excellent passage in Fritzsche, Comm. in Matth., p. 505. 
 
 " Mark's inclination to exaggerate shows itself also in his concluding sentence, v. 51, 
 (comp. vii. 37) : and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure and wondered ; 
 which will scarcely be understood to import, as Paulus supposes (2, s. 266), a disapproval of 
 the excessive astonishment. 
 
502 PART II. CHAPTER IX, § lOI. 
 
 of his etberealized body, could walk on the water, how could he command 
 Peter, who was not gifted with such a body, to do the same ? or if by a mere 
 ;word he could give the body of Peter a dispensation from the law of gravita- 
 tion, can he have been a man ? and if a God, would he thus lightly cause a 
 suspension of natural laws at the caprice of a man ? or, lastly, are we to 
 suppose that faith has the power instantaneously to lessen the specific gravity 
 of the body of a believer ? Faith is certainly said to have such a power in 
 the figurative discourse of Jesus just referred to, according to which the 
 believer is able to remove mountains and trees into the sea, — and why not 
 also himself to walk on the sea? The moral that as soon as faith falters, 
 power ceases, could not be so aptly presented by either of the two former 
 figures as by the latter, in the following form : as long as a man has faith he 
 is able to walk unharmed on the unstable sea, but no sooner does he give 
 way to doubt than he sinks, unless Christ extend to him a helping hand. 
 The fundamental thought, then, of Matthew's episodical narrative is, that 
 Peter was too confident in the firmness of his faith, that by its sudden failure 
 he incurred great danger, but was rescued by Jesus ; a thought which is 
 actually expressed in Luke xxii. 31 f., where Jesus says to Simon : Satan hath 
 desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat ; but I have prayed for thee 
 that thy faith fail not. These words of Jesus have reference to Peter's coming 
 denial ; this was the occasion when his faith, on the strength of which he had 
 just before offered to go with Jesus to prison and to death, would have 
 wavered, had not the Lord by his intercession, procured him new strength. 
 If we add to this the above-mentioned habit of the early Christians to repre- 
 sent the persecuting world under the image of a turbulent sea, we cannot 
 fail, with one of the latest critics, to perceive in the description of Peter 
 courageously volunteering to walk on the sea, soon, however, sinking from 
 faintheartedness, but borne up by Jesus, an allegorical and mythical represen- 
 tation of that trial of faith which this disciple who imagined himself so strong, 
 met so weakly, and which higher assistance alone enabled him to surmount. ^^ 
 But the account of the fourth gospel also is not wanting in peculiar features, 
 which betray an unhistorical character. It has ever been a cross to harmon- 
 ists, that while according to Matthew and Mark, the ship was only in the 
 middle of the sea when Jesus reached it : according to John, it immediately 
 after arrived at the opposite shore ; that while, according to the former, Jesus 
 actually entered into the ship, and the storm thereupon subsided : according 
 to John, on the contrary, the disciples did indeed wish to take him into the 
 ship, but their actually doing so was rendered superfluous by their immediate 
 arrival at the place of disembarkation. It is true that here also abundant 
 methods of reconciliation have been found. First, the word ^^eXov, they 
 wished, added to \o.^wi, to receive, is said to be a mere redundancy of ex- 
 pression ; then, to signify simply the joyfulness of the reception, as if it 
 had been said, e^eXoi/res l\a,^ov; then, to describe the first impression which 
 the recognition of Jesus made on the disciples, his reception into the ship, 
 which really followed, not being mentioned.'^ But the sole reason for such 
 an interpretation lies in the unauthorized comparison with the synoptical 
 accounts : in the narrative of John, taken separately, there is no ground for 
 it, nay, it is excluded. For the succeeding sentence : ei^etos to icKolav eyevcTo 
 £iri T^s yfp, eis ^v vTr^yov, immediately the ship was at the land whither they 
 went, though it is united, not by 8e but by xai, can nevertheless only be taken 
 antithetically, in the sense that the reception of Jesus into the ship, notwith- 
 
 " Schneckenburger, iiber den Urspning u. s. f., s. 68 f. ; Weisse, die evang. Gesoliichte, 
 I, s. szi. 
 '' Vid. Liicke and Tholuck. 
 
MIRACLES — ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE SEA. 503 
 
 standing the readiness of the disciples, did not really take place, because they 
 were already at the shore. In consideration of this difference, Chrysostom 
 held that there were two occasions on which Jesus walked on the sea. He 
 says that on the second occasion, which John narrates, Jesus did not enter 
 into the ship, in order that the viiracle might be greater Iva. to ^au/xa /aei^ov 
 ipydcrrirai.^'' This view we may transfer to the Evangelist, and say : if Mark 
 has aggrandized the miracle, by implying that Jesus intended to walk past 
 the disciples across the entire sea ; so John goes yet farther, for he makes 
 him actually accomplish this design, and without being taken into the ship, 
 arrive at the opposite shore. ^* Not only, however, does the fourth Evangelist 
 seek to aggrandize the miracle before us, but also to establish and authenticate 
 it more securely. According to the synoptists, the sole witnesses were the 
 disciples, who saw Jesus come towards them, walking on the sea : John adds 
 to these few immediate witnesses, a multitude of mediate ones, namely, the 
 people who were assembled when Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves 
 and fishes. These, when on the following morning they no longer find Jesus 
 on the same spot, make the calculation, that Jesus cannot have crossed the 
 sea by ship, for he did not get into the same boat with the disciples, and no 
 other boat was there (v. 22) ; while, that he did not go by land, is involved 
 in the circumstance that the people when they have forthwith crossed the sea, 
 find him on the opposite shore (v. 25), whither he could hardly have arrived 
 by land in the short interval. Thus in the narrative of the fourth gospel, as 
 all natural means of passage are cut off from Jesus, there remains for him 
 only a supernatural one, and this consequence is in fact inferred by the 
 multitude in the astonished question which they put to Jesus, when they find 
 him on the opposite shore : Rabbi, when earnest thou hither J As this chain 
 of evidence for the miraculous passage of Jesus depends on the rapid trans- 
 portation of the multitude, the Evangelist hastens to procure other boats aXKa 
 irXoidpia for their service (v. 23). Now the multitude who take ship (v. 22, 
 26 ff.) are described as the same whom Jesus had miraculously fed, and these 
 amounted (according to v. 10) to about 5000. If only a fifth, nay, a tenth of 
 these passed over, there needed for this, as the author of the Probabilia has 
 justly observed, a whole fleet of ships, especially if they were fishing boats ; 
 but even if we suppose them vessels of freight, these would not all have been 
 bound for Capernaum, or have changed their destination for the sake of 
 accommodating the crowd. This passage of the multitude, therefore, appears 
 only to have been invented,^^ on the one hand, to confirm by their evidence 
 the walking of Jesus on the sea ; on the other, as we shall presently see, to 
 gain an opportunity for making Jesus, who according to the tradition had 
 gone over to the opposite shore immediately after the multiplication of the 
 loaves, speak yet further with the multitude on the subject of this miracle. 
 
 After pruning away these offshoots of the miraculous which are peculiar to 
 the respective narratives, the main stem is still left, namely, the miracle of 
 Jesus walking on the sea for a considerable distance, with all its attendant 
 improbabilities as above exposed. But the solution of these accessory 
 particulars, as it led us to discover the causes of their unhistorical origm, has 
 facilitated the discovery of such causes for the main narrative, and has thereby 
 
 20 Homil. in Joann. 43. . /• i. • 1 ■ t 1, 
 
 SI In De Wette's objection, that the opinion of an exaggeration of the miracle in jonn, 
 is discountenanced by the addition that they were immediately at the land (ex. Handb. 1,3, 
 s 70) there appears to me only a misunderstanding ; but his assertion that in John t e 
 manner in which Jesus goes over the sea is not represented as a miracle (s. 78), is to me 
 thoroughly incomprehensible. 
 22 Bretschneider, Probab., p. 81. 
 
S04 PART IL CHAPTER IX. § lOI. 
 
 rendered possible the solution of this also. We have seen, by an example 
 already adduced, that it was usual with the Hebrews and early Christians, to 
 represent the power of God over nature, a power which the human spirit 
 when united to him was supposed to share, under the image of supremacy 
 over the raging waves of the sea. In the narrative of the Exodus this 
 supremacy is manifested by the sea being driven out of its place at a sign, so 
 that a dry path is opened to the people of God in its bed ; in the New 
 Testament, narrative previously considered, the sea is not removed out of its 
 place, but only so far laid to rest that Jesus and his disciples can cross it in 
 safety in their ship : in the anecdote before us, the sea still remains in its 
 place as in the second, but there is this point of similarity to the first, that 
 the passage is made on foot,, not by ship, yet as a necessary consequence of 
 the other particular, on the surface of the sea, not in its bed. Still more 
 immediate inducements to develop in such a manner the conception of the 
 power of the miracle-worker over the waves, may be found both in the Old 
 Testament, and in the opinions prevalent in the time of Jesus. Among the 
 miracles of Elisha, it is not only told that he divided the Jordan by a stroke 
 of his mantle, so that he could go through it dry shod (2 Kings ii. 14), but 
 also that he caused a piece of iron which had fallen into the water to swim 
 (2 Kings vi. 6) ; an ascendancy over the law of gravitation which it would be 
 imagined the miracle-worker might be able to evince in relation to his own 
 body also, and thus to exhibit himself, as it is said of Jehovah, Job ix. 8, LXX., 
 TTcpnraTwv <i)s eir i8a.<j)ov^ Itti OoXaa-a-f)'!, walking upon i fie sea as upon a pavement. 
 In the time of Jesus much was told of miracle-workers who could walk on 
 the water. Apart from conceptions exclusively Grecian,^^ the Greco-oriental 
 legend feigned that the hyperborean Abaris possessed an arrow, by means of 
 which he. could bear himself up in the air, and thus traverse rivers, seas, and 
 abysses,^* and popular superstition attributed to many wonder-workers the 
 power of walking on water. ^^ Hence the possibility that with all these 
 elements and inducements existing, a similar legend should be formed con- 
 cerning Jesus, appears incomparably stronger, than that a real event of this 
 kind should have occurred : — and with this conclusion we may dismiss the 
 subject. 
 
 The manifestation ^a.vipm<Ti<i of Jesus at the sea of Tiberias cttI t^s QaXacrayp 
 T^s TtjSepitiSos narrated John xxi. has so striking a resemblance to the sea 
 anecdotes hitherto considered, that although the fourth gospel places it in the 
 period after the resurrection, we are induced, as in an earlier instance we 
 brought part of it under notice in connexion with the narrative of Peter's 
 draught of fishes, so here to institute a comparison between its other features, 
 and the narrative of Jesus walking on the sea. In both cases, Jesus is 
 perceived by the disciples in the twilight of early morning ; only in the latter 
 instance he does not, as in the former, walk on the sea, but stands on the 
 shore, and the disciples are in consternation, not because of a storm, but 
 because of the fruitlessness of their fishing. In both instances they are afraid 
 of him ; in the one, they take him for a spectre, in the other, not one of them 
 ventures to ask him who he is, knoming that it is the Lord. But especially 
 the scene with Peter, peculiar to the first gospel, has its corresponding one 
 in the present passage. As, there, when Jesus walking on the sea makes 
 himself known to his disciples, Peter entreats permission to go to him on the 
 water : so here, as soon as Jesus is recognized standing on the shore, Peter 
 throws himself into the water that he may reach him the shortest way by 
 
 ^^ See the passages in Wetstein, p. 417 f. 
 
 2* Jamblich, vita Pythagorse, 136 ; comp. Porphyr. 29. 
 
 ^'' Lucian. Philopseudes, 13. 
 
MIRACLES — ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE SEA. 505 
 
 swimming. Thus, that which in the earlier narrative was the miraculous act 
 of walking on the sea, becomes in the one before us, in relation to Jesus, the 
 simple act of standing on the shore, in relation to Peter, the natural act of 
 swimming; so that the latter history sounds almost like a rationalistic 
 paraphrase of the former : and there have not been wanting those who have 
 maintained that at least the anecdote about Peter in the first gospel, is a 
 traditional transformation of the incident in John xxi. 7 into a miracle.^'' 
 Modern criticism is restrained from extending this conjecture to the anecdote 
 of Jesus walking on the sea, by the fact that the supposed apostolic fourth 
 gospel itself has this feature in the earlier narrative (vi. 16 ff.). But from 
 our point of view it appears quite possible, that the history in question either 
 came to the author of this gospel in the one form, and to the author of the 
 appendix in the other ; or that it came to the one author of both in a double 
 form, and was inserted by him in separate parts of his narrative. Meanwhile, 
 if the two histories are to be compared, we ought not at once to assume that 
 the one, John xxi., is the original, the other. Matt. xiv. parall., the secondary ; 
 we must first ask which of the two bears intrinsic marks of one or the other 
 character. Now certainly if we adhere to the rule that the more miraculous 
 narrative is the later, that in John xxi appears, in relation to the manner in 
 which Jesus approaches the disciples, and in which Peter reaches Jesus, to 
 be the original. But this rule is connected in the closest manner with 
 another; namely, that the more simple narrative is the earlier, the more 
 complex one the later, as the conglomerate is a later formation than the 
 homogeneous stone ; and according to this rule, the conclusion is reversed, 
 and the narrative in John xxi. is the more traditional, for in it the particulars 
 mentioned above are interwoven with the miraculous draught of fishes, while 
 in the earlier narrative they form in themselves an independent whole. It is 
 indeed true, that a greater whole may be broken up into smaller parts ; but 
 such fragments have not at all the appearance of the separate narratives of 
 the draught of fishes and the walking on the sea, since these, on the contrary, 
 leave the impression of being each a finished whole. From this interweaving 
 with the miracle of the draught of fishes, — to which we must add the circum- 
 stance that the entire circle of events turns upon the risen Jesus, who is 
 already in himself a miracle, — it is apparent how, contrary to the general 
 rule, the oft-named particulars could lose their miraculous character, since by 
 their combination with other miracles they were reduced to mere accessories, 
 to a sort of natural scafiblding. If then the narrative in John xxi. is entirely 
 secondary, its historical value has already been estimated with that of the 
 narratives which furnished its materials. 
 
 If, before we proceed further, we take a retrospect of the series of sea- 
 anecdotes hitherto examined, we find, it is true, that the two extreme 
 anecdotes are altogether dissimilar, the one relating mainly to fishing, the 
 other to a storm ; nevertheless, on a proper arrangement, each of them 
 appears to be connected with the preceding by a common feature. The 
 narrative of the call of the fishers of men (Matt. iv. 18 ff. par.) opens the 
 series ; that of Peter's draught of fishes (Luke v. i ff.) has in common with 
 this the saying about the fishers of men, but the fact of the draught of fishes 
 is peculiar to it ; this fact reappears in John xxi., where the circumstances 
 of Jesus standing on the shore in the morning twilight, and the swimming 
 of Peter towards him, are added ; these two circumstances are in Matt. xiv. 
 22 ff". parall. metamorphosed into the act of walking on the sea on the part of 
 Jesus and of Peter, and at the same time a storm, and its cessation on the 
 
 -^ Schneckenburger, fiber den Uispr., s. 68. 
 
506 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § lOI. 
 
 entrance of Jesus into the ship, are introduced ; lastly, in Matt. viii. 23 ff. 
 parall., we have an anecdote single in its kind, namely, that of the stilling of 
 the storm by Jesus. 
 
 We come to a history for which a place is less readily found in the fore- 
 going series, in Matt. xvii. 24 ff. It is true that here again there is a direction 
 of Jesus to Peter to go and fish, to which, although it is not expressly stated, 
 we must suppose that the issue corresponded : but first, it is only one fish 
 which is to be caught, and with an angle ; and secondly, the main point is, 
 that in its mouth is to be found a piece of gold to serve for the payment of 
 the temple tribute for Jesus and Peter, from the latter of whom this tax had 
 been demanded. This narrative as it is here presented has peculiar diffi- 
 culties, which Paulus well exhibits, and which Olshausen does not deny. 
 Fritzsche justly remarks, that there are two miraculous particulars pre- 
 supposed : first, that the fish had a coin in its mouth ; secondly, that Jesus 
 had a foreknowledge of this. On the one hand, we must regard the former 
 of these particulars as extravagant, and consequently the latter also ; and on 
 the other, the whole miracle appears to have been unnecessary. Certainly, 
 that metals and -other valuables haye been found in the bodies of fish is else- 
 where narrated,^'' and is not incredible ; but that a fish should have a piece 
 of money in its mouth, and keep it there while it snapped at the bait — this 
 even Dr. Schnappinger ^* found inconceivable. Moreover, the motive of 
 Jesus for performing such a miracle could not be want of money, for even if 
 at that time there was no store in the common fund, still Jesus was in 
 Capernaum, where he had many friends, and where consequently he could 
 have obtained the needful money in a natural way. To exclude this possi- 
 bility, we must with Olshausen confound borrowing with begging, and regard 
 it as inconsistent with the decorum divinum which must have been observed 
 by Jesus. Nor after so many proofs of his miraculous power, could Jesus 
 think this additional miracle necessary to strengthen Peter's belief in his 
 messiahship. 
 
 Hence we need not wonder that rationalistic commentators have attempted 
 to free themselves at any cost from a mii-acle which even Olshausen pro- 
 nounces to be the most difficult in the evangelical history, and we have only 
 to see how they proceed in this undertaking. The pith of the natural 
 explanation of the fact lies in the interpretation of the word ewp^oreis, thou 
 shaltfind, in the command of Jesus, not of an immediate discovery of a stater 
 in the fish, but of a mediate acquisition of this sum by selling what was 
 caught.*^ It must be admitted that the above word may bear this significa- 
 tion also ; but if we are to give it this sense instead of the usual one, we must 
 in the particular instance have a clear intimation to this effect in the context. 
 Thus, if it were said in the present passage : Take the first fine fish, carry it 
 to the market, ko-kv. ebp-^a-cK orar^pa, and there thou shalt find a stater, this 
 explanation would be in place ; as however instead of this, the word cwpijo-ets 
 is preceded by a.voL^a.% to crrofm avrov, when tfiou hast opened his mouth, — as, 
 therefore, no place of sale, but a place inside the fish, is mentioned, as that 
 on the opening of which the coin is to be obtained, — we can only understand 
 an immediate discovery of the piece of money in this part of the fish.^" 
 Besides, to what purpose would the opening of the fish's mouth be mentioned, 
 unless the desideratum were to be found there? Paulus sees in this only the 
 injunction to releas_e the fish from the hook without delay, in order to keep 
 
 ^' See the examples in Wetstein, in loc. 
 
 ^^ Dieh. Schrift des n. Bundes, i, s. 314, 2te Aufl. 
 
 2i> Paulus, ex. Handb. 2, 502 ff. Comp. Hase, L. J. § in. 
 
 ^^ Comp. Storr, in Flatt's Magazin, 2, s. 68 ff. 
 
MIRACLES — FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 507 
 
 it alive, and thus to render it more saleable. The order to open the month 
 of the fish might indeed, if it stood alone, be supposed to have the extraction 
 of the hook as its object and consequence ; but as it is followed by rfpiycreis 
 arar^pa, thou shalt find a stater, it is plain that this is the immediate end of 
 opening the mouth. The perception that, so long as the opening of the fish's 
 mouth is spoken of in this passage, it will be inferred that the coin was to 
 be found there, has induced the rationalistic commentators to try whether 
 they could not refer the word orTo/Aa, mouth, to another subject than the fish, 
 and no other remained than the fisher, Peter. But as o-To/ta appeared to be 
 connected with the fish by the word avroS, which immediately followed it, 
 Dr. Paulus, moderating or exaggerating the suggestion of a friend, who 
 proposed to read dvfievp^treis, instead of — amov, evprja-ws — allowed airov to 
 remain, but took it adverbially, and translated the passage thus : thou hast 
 then only to open thy mouth to offer the fish for sale, and thou wilt on the 
 spot (avTov) receive a stater as its price. But, it would still be asked, how 
 could a single fish fetch so high a price in Capernaum, where fish were so 
 abundant? Hence Paulus understands the words, tov avajSavra TrpSyrov i)(0vv 
 apov, take up the fish that first cometh up, collectively thus : continue time after 
 time to take the fish that first comes to thee, until thou hast caught as many 
 as will be worth a stater. 
 
 If the series of strained interpretations which are necessary to a natural ex- 
 planation of this narrative throw us back on that which allows it to contain a 
 miracle ; and if this miracle appear to us, according to our former decision, 
 both extravagant and useless, nothing remains but to presume that here also 
 there is a legendary element. This view has been combined with the admis- 
 sion, that a real but natural fact was probably at the foundation of the legend : 
 namely, that Jesus once ordered Peter to fish until he had caught enough to 
 procure the amount of the temple tribute ; whence the legend arose that the 
 fish had the tribute money in its mouth.^' But, in our opinion, a more likely 
 source of this anecdote is to be found in the much-used theme of a catching 
 of fish by Peter, on the one side, and on the other, the well-known stories of 
 precious things having been found in the bodies of fish. Peter, as we learn 
 from Matt, iv., Luke v., John xxi., was the fisher in the evangelical legend to 
 whom Jesus in various forms, first symbolically, and then literally, granted the 
 rich draught of fishes. The value of the capture appears here in the shape of 
 a piece of money, which, as ■similar things are elsewhere said to have been 
 found in the belly of fishes, is by an exaggeration of the marvel said to be 
 found in the mouth of the fish. That it is the stater, required for the temple 
 tribute, might be occasioned by a real declaration of Jesus concerning his re- 
 lation to that tax ; or conversely, the stater which was accidentally named in 
 the legend of the fish angled for by Peter, might bring to recollection the 
 temple tribute, which amounted to that sum for two persons, and the declar- 
 ation of Jesus relative to this subject. 
 
 With this tale conclude the sea anecdotes. 
 
 § 102. 
 
 THE MIRACULOUS MULTIPLICATION OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES. 
 
 As, in the histories last considered, Jesus determined and mitigated the 
 motions of irrational and even of inanimate existences ; so, in the narratives 
 which we are about to examine, he exhibits the power of multiplying not only 
 
 8' Kaiser, bibl. Theol. I, s. 200. Comp. Hase, ut sup. 
 
508 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § I02. 
 
 natural objects, but also productions of nature which had been wrought upon 
 by art. 
 
 That Jesus miraculously multiplied prepared articles of food, feeding a great 
 mulftitude of men with a few loaves and fishes, is narrated to us with singular 
 unanimity by all the Evangelists (Matt. xiv. 13 ff. ; Mark vi. 30 ff. ; Luke ix. 
 10 ff. ; John vi. i ff.). And if we believe the two first, Jesus did not do this 
 merely once ; for in Matt. xv. 32 ff. ; Mark viii. i ff. we read of a second 
 multiplication of loaves and fishes, the circumstances of which are substan- 
 tially the same as those of the former. It happens somewhat later ; the place 
 is rather differently described, and the length of time during which the multi- 
 tude stayed with Jesus is differently stated ; moreover, and this is a point of 
 greater importance, the proportion between the stock of food and the number 
 of men is different, for, on the first occasion, five thousand men are satisfied 
 with five loaves and two fishes, and, on the second, four thousand with seven 
 loaves and a few fishes ; on the first twelve baskets are filled with the frag- 
 ments, on the second only seven. Notwithstanding this, not only is the sub- 
 stance of the two histories exactly the same — the satisfying of a multitude of 
 people with disproportionately small means of nourishment ; but also the de- 
 scription of the scene in the one, entirely corresponds in its principal features 
 to that in the other. In both instances, the locality is a solitary region in the 
 vicinity of the Galilean sea ; Jesus is led to perform the miracle because the 
 people have lingered too long with him ; he manifests a wish to feed the 
 people from his own stores, which the disciples regard as impossible; the 
 stock of food at his disposal consists of loaves and fishes ; Jesus makes the 
 people sit down, and, after giving thanks, distributes the provisions to them 
 through the medium of the disciples ; they are completely satisfied, and yet a 
 disproportionately great quantity of fragments is afterwards collected in bas- 
 kets ; lastly, in the one case as in the other, Jesus after thus feeding the multi- 
 tude, crosses the sea. 
 
 This repetition of the same event creates many difficulties. The chief of 
 these is suggested by the question : Is it conceivable that the disciples, after 
 they had themselves witnessed how Jesus was able to feed a great multitude 
 with a small quantity of provision, should nevertheless on a second occasion 
 of the same kind, have totally forgotten the first, and have asked, Whence 
 should we have so much bread in the wilderness as to fetd so great a multitude ? 
 To render such an obliviousness on the part of the disciples probable, we are 
 reminded that they had, in just as incomprehensible a manner, forgotten the 
 declarations of Jesus concerning his approaching sufferings and death, when 
 these events occurred ; 1 but it is equally a pending question, whether after 
 such plain predictions from Jesus, his death could in fact have been so unexpec- 
 ted to the disciples. It has been supposed that a longer interval had elapsed 
 between the two miracles, and that during this there had occurred a number of 
 similar cases, in which Jesus did not think fit to afford miraculous assistance : ^^ 
 but, on the one hand, these are pure fictions ; on the other, it would remain 
 just as inconceivable as ever, that the striking similarity of the circumstances 
 
 ' Olshausen, i, s. 512. This theologian, in the note on the same page, observes, that 
 according to the words, fVe have taken no bread. Matt. xvi. 7, the disciples, even after the 
 second feeding, were not alive to the fact, that there was no necessity for providing them- 
 selves with food for the body in the neighbourhood of the Son of Man. But this instance is 
 not to the point, for the circumstances are here altogether different. That from the miracu- 
 lous feeding of the people when they were accidentally belated in the wilderness, the disciples 
 did not draw the same convenient conclusion with the biblical commentator, can only re- 
 dound to their honour. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
MIRACLES — FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 509 
 
 preceding the second feeding of the multitude to those preceding the first, 
 should not have reminded even one of the disciples of that former event. 
 Paulus therefore is right in maintaining, that had Jesus once already fed the 
 multitude by a miracle, the disciples, on the second occasion, when he. ex- 
 pressed his determination not to send the people away fasting, would confi- 
 dently have called upon him for a repetition of the former miracle. 
 
 In any case then, if Jesus on two separate occasions fed a multitude with 
 disproportionately small provision, we must suppose, as some critics have 
 done, that many features in the narrative of the one incident were transferred 
 to the other, and thus the two, originally unlike, became in the course of oral 
 tradition more and more similar ; the incredulous question of the disciples 
 especially having been uttered only on the first occasion, and not on the 
 second.^ It may seem to speak in favour of such an assimilation, that the 
 fourth Evangelist, though in his numerical statement he is in accordance with 
 the first narrative of Matthew and Mark, yet has, in common with the second, 
 the circumstances that the scene opens with an address of Jesus and not of 
 the disciples, and that the people come to Jesus on a mountain. But if the 
 fundamental features be allowed to remain, — the wilderness, the feeding of the 
 people, the collection of the fragments, — it is still, even without that question 
 of the disciples, sufficiently improbable that the scene should have been 
 repeated in so entirely similar a manner. If, on the contrary, these general 
 features be renounced in relation to one of the histories, it is no longer ap- 
 parent, how the veracity of the evangelical narratives as to the manner in 
 which the second multiplication of loaves and fishes took place can be ques- 
 tioned on all points, and yet their statement as to \k\s.fact of its occurrence be 
 maintained as trustworthy, especially as this statement is confined to Matthew 
 and his imitator Mark. 
 
 Hence later critics have, with more* or less* decision, expressed the opin- 
 ion, that here one and the same fact has been doubled, through a mistake of 
 the first Evangelist, who was followed by the second. They suppose that 
 several narratives of the miraculous feeding of the multitude were current 
 which presented divergencies from each other, especially in relation to num- 
 bers, and that the author of the first gospel, to whom every additional history 
 of a miracle was a welcome prize, and who was therefore little qualified for 
 the critical reduction of two different narratives of this kind into one, intro- 
 duced both into his collection. This fully explains how on the second occar 
 sion the disciples could again express themselves so incredulously : namely, 
 because in the tradition whence the author of the first gospel obtained the 
 second history of a miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes, it was the 
 first and only one, and the Evangelist did not obliterate this feature because, 
 apparently, he incorporated the two narratives into his writing just as he read 
 or heard them. Among other proofs that this was the case, may be mentioned 
 the constancy with which he and Mark, who copied him, not only in the 
 account of the events, but also in the subsequent allusion to them (Matt. xvi. 
 9 f. ; Mark viii. 19 f.), call the baskets in the first feeding, Ko'^ti/ot, in the 
 second o-TruptScs.^ It is indeed correctly maintained, that the Apostle Matthew 
 could not possibly take one event for two, and relate a new history which 
 
 « Gratz, Comm. z. Matth. 2, s. 90 f. ; Sieffert, iiber den Ursprung, s 97. 
 
 * Thiesz, Krit. Commentar, I, s. 168 ff. ; Schulz. iiber das Abendmahl, s. 311. Comp. 
 Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 523. 
 
 * Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 14S ; Sieffert, ut sup. s. 95 ff. ; Hase, § 97. Nean- 
 der is undecided, L. J. Chr., .1. 372 ff., Anm. 
 
 * Comp. Saunier, ut sup. s. 105. 
 
$10 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 102. 
 
 never happened : '' but this proposition does not involve the reality of the 
 second miraculous feeding of the multitude, unless the apostolic origin of the 
 first gospel be at once presupposed, whereas this yet remains to be proved. 
 Paulus further objects, that the duplication of the history in question could be 
 of no advantage whatever to the design of the Evangelist ; and Olshausen, 
 developing this idea more fully, observes that the legend would not have left 
 the second narrative as simple and bare as the first. But this argument, that 
 a narrative cannot be fictitious, because if it were so it would have been more 
 elaborately adorned, may very properly be at once dismissed, since its limits 
 being altogether undefined, it might be repeated under all circumstances, and 
 in the end would prove fable itself not sufficiently fabulous. But, in this case 
 particularly, it is totally baseless, because it presupposes the narrative of the 
 first feeding of the multitude to be historically accurate ; now, if we have 
 already in this a legendary production, the other edition of it, namely, the 
 second history of a miraculous feeding, needs not to be distinguished by 
 special traditionary features. But not only is the second narrative not embel- 
 lished as regards the miraculous, when compared with the first ; it even di- 
 minishes the miracle, for, while increasing the quantity of provision, it reduces 
 the number of those whom it satisfied : and this retrogression in the marvel- 
 lous is thought the surest proof that the second feeding of the multitude really 
 occurred ; for, it is said, he who chose to invent an additional miracle of this 
 kindj would have made it surpass the first, and instead of five thousand men 
 would have given, not four, but ten thousand.^ This argument, also, rests on 
 the unfounded assumption that the first narrative is of course the historical 
 one ; though Olshausen himself has the idea that the second might with prob- 
 ability be regarded as the historical basis, and the first as the legendary copy, 
 and then the fictitious would have the required relation to the true — that of 
 exaggeration. But when in opposition to this, he observes, how improbable 
 it is that an unscrupulous narrator would place the authentic fact, being the 
 less imposing, last, and eclipse it beforehand by the false one, — that such a 
 writer would rather seek to outdo the truth, and therefore place his fiction last, 
 as the more brilliant, — he again shows that he does not comprehend the 
 mythical view of the biblical narratives, in the degree necessary for forming a 
 judgment on the subject. For there is no question here of an unscrupulous 
 narrator, who would designedly surpass the true history of the miraculous 
 multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and least of all is Matthew pronounced 
 to be such a narrator : on the contrary, it is held that with perfect honesty, 
 one account gave five thousand, another four, atid that, with equal honesty, 
 the first Evangelist copied from both ; and for the very reason that he went 
 to work innocently and undesignedly, it was of no importance to him which- 
 of the two histories stood first and which last, the more important or the less 
 striking one ; but he allowed himself to be determined on this point by acci- 
 dental circumstances, such as that he found the one connected with incidents 
 which appeared to him the earlier, the other with such as he supposed to be 
 the later. A similar instance of duplication occurs in the Pentateuch in rela- 
 tion to the histories of the feeding of the Israelites with quails, and of the 
 production of water out of the rock, the former of which is narrated both in 
 Exod. xvi. and Num. xi., the latter in Exod. xvii. and again in Num. xx., 
 in each instance with an alteration in time, place, and other circumstances.' 
 Meanwhile, all this yields us only the negative result that the double narratives 
 
 ' Paulus, ex. Handb. 2, s. 315 ; Olshausen, ut sup. 
 
 * Olshausen, s. 513. 
 
 ' See the proof in De Wette, Kritik der mos. Gescli., s. 220 ff., 314 ff. 
 
MIRACLES — FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 5 II 
 
 of the first gospels cannot have been founded on two separate events. To 
 determine which of the two is historical, or whether either of them deserves 
 that epithet, must be the object of a special inquiry. 
 
 To evade the pre-eminently magical appearance which this miracle presents, 
 Olshausen gives it a relation to the moral state of the participants, and sup- 
 poses that the miraculous feeding of the multitude was effected through the 
 intermediation of their spiritual hunger. But this is ambiguous language, 
 which, on the first attempt to determine its meaning, vanishes into nothing. 
 For in cures, for example, the intermediation here appealed to consists in the 
 opening of the patient's mind to the influence of Jesus by faith, so that when 
 faith is wanting, the requisite fulcrum for the miraculous power of Jesus is also 
 wanting : here therefore tlie intermediation is real. Now if the same kind of 
 intermediation took place in the case before us, so that on those among the 
 multitude who were unbelieving the satisfying power of Jesus had no influence, 
 then must the satisfaction of hunger here (as, in the above cases, the cure) 
 be regarded as something effected by Jesus directly in the body of the hungry 
 persons, without any antecedent augmentation of the external means of 
 nourishment. But such a conception of the matter, as Paulus justly remarks, 
 and as even Olshausen intimates, is precluded by the statement of the Evan- 
 gelists, that real food was distributed among the multitude ; that each enjoyed 
 as much as he wanted ; and that at the end the residue was greater than the 
 original store. It is thus plainly implied that there was an external and objec- 
 tive increase of the provisions, as a preliminary to the feeding of the multitude. 
 Now, this cannot be conceived as effected by means of the faith of the people 
 in a real manner, in the sense that that faith co-operated in producing the 
 multiplication of the loaves. The intermediation which Olshausen here sup- 
 poses, can therefore have been only a teleological one, that is, we are to under- 
 stand by it, that Jesus undertook to multiply the loaves and fishes for the sake 
 of producing a certain moral condition in the multitude. But an intermedia- 
 tion of this kind affords me not the slightest help in forming a conception of 
 the event ; for the question is not why, but how it happened. Thus all which 
 Olshausen believes himself to have done towards rendering this miracle more 
 intelligible, rests on the ambiguity of the expression, intermediation ; and the 
 inconceivableness of an immediate influence of the will of Jesus on irrational 
 nature, remains chargeable upon this history as upon those last examined. 
 
 But there is another difficulty which is peculiar to the narrative before us. 
 We have here not merely, as hitherto, a modification or a direction of natural 
 objects, but a multiplication of them, and that to an enormous extent. No- 
 thing, it is true, is more familiar to our observation than the growth and multi- 
 plication of natural objects, as presented to us in the parable of the sower, 
 and the grain of mustard seed, for example. But, first, these phenomena do 
 not take place without the co-operation of other natural agents, as earth, water, 
 air, so that here, also, according to the well-known principle of physics, there 
 is not properly speaking an augmentation of the substance, but only a change 
 in the accidents ; secondly, these processes of growth and multiplication are 
 carried forward so as to pass through their various stages in corresponding 
 intervals of time. Here, on the contrary, in the multiplication of the loaves 
 and fishes by Jesus, neither the one rule nor the other is observed : the bread 
 in the hand of Jesus is no longer, like the stalk on which the corn grew, in 
 communication with the maternal earth, nor is the multiplication gradual, but 
 sudden. 
 
 But herein, it is said, consists the miracle, which in relation to the last pomt 
 especially, may be called the acceleration of a natural process. That which 
 comes to pass in the space of three quarters of a year, from seed-time to har- 
 
512 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § I02. 
 
 vest, was here effected in the minutes which were required for the distribution 
 of the food ; for natural developments are capable of acceleration, and to how 
 great an extent we cannot determine.^" ' It would, indeed, have been an ac- 
 celeration of a natural process, if in the hand of Jesus a grain of corn had borne 
 fruit a hundred-fold, and brought it to maturity, and if he had shaken the 
 multiplied grain out of his hands as they were filled again and again, that the 
 people might grind, knead, and bake it, or eat it raw from the husk in the wil- 
 derness where they were ; — or if he had taken a living fish, suddenly called 
 forth the eggs from its body, and converted them into full-grown fish, which 
 then the disciples or the people might have boiled or roasted, this, we should 
 say, would have been an acceleration of a natural process. But it is not corn 
 that he takes into his hand, but bread ; and the fish also, as they are distributed 
 in pieces, must have been prepared in some way, perhaps, as in Luke xxiv. 
 42, comp. John xxi. 9, broiled or salted. Here then, on both sides, the pro- 
 duction of nature is no longer simple and living, but dead and modified by 
 art : so that to introduce a natural process of the above kind, Jesus must, in 
 the first place, by his miraculous power have metamorphosed the bread into 
 corn again, the roasted fish into raw and living ones ; then instantaneously 
 have effected the described multiplication; and lastly, have restored the 
 whole from the natural to the artificial state. Thus the miracle would be 
 composed, ist, of a revivification, which would exceed in miraculousness all 
 other instances in the gospels ; secondly, of an extremely accelerated natural 
 process ; and thirdly, of an artificial process, effected invisibly, and likewise 
 extremely accelerated, since all the tedious proceedings of the miller and 
 baker on the one hand, and of the cook on the other, must have been accom- 
 plished in a moment by the word of Jesus. How then can Olshausen deceive 
 himself and the believing reader, by the agreeably sounding expression, acceler- 
 ated natural process, when this nevertheless can designate only a third part of 
 the fact of which we are speaking ? '^ 
 
 But how are we to represent such a miracle to ourselves, and in what stage 
 of the event must it be placed ? In relation to the latter point, three opinions 
 are possible, corresponding to the number of the groups that act in our narra- 
 tive ; for the multiplication may have taken place either in the hands of Jesus, 
 or in those of the disciples who dispensed the food, or in those of the people 
 who received it. The last idea appears, on the one hand, puerile even to ex- 
 travagance, if we are to imagine Jesus and the apostles distributing, with 
 great carefulness, that there might be enough for all, little crumbs which in 
 the hands of the recipients swelled into considerable pieces : on the other 
 hand, if would have been scarcely a possible task, to get a particle, however 
 small, for every individual in a multitude of five thousand men, out of five 
 loaves, which, according to Hebrew custom, and particularly as they were 
 carried by a boy, cannot have been very large; and still less out of two fishes. 
 Of the two other opinions I think, with Olshausen, the one most suitable is 
 that which supposes that the food was augmented under the creative hands of 
 Jesus, and that he time after time dispensed new quantities to the disciples. 
 We may then endeavour to represent the matter to ourselves in two ways : 
 first we may suppose that as fast as one loaf or fish was gone, a new one came 
 out of the hands of Jesus, or secondly, that the single loaves and fishes grew, 
 so that as one piece was broken off, its loss was repaired, until on a calcula- 
 
 '<• Thus Olshausen, in loc. after Pfenninger. Comp. Hase, § 97. 
 
 " This lamentable observation of mine, according to Olshausen, has its source in some- 
 thing worse than intellectual incapacity, namely, in my total disbelief in a living God : other- 
 wise assuredly it would not have appeared so great a difficulty to me that the Divine causal- 
 ity should have superseded human operations (s. 479, der 3ten Aufl.). 
 
MIRACLES — FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 513 
 
 tion the turn came for the next loaf or fish. The first conception appears to 
 be opposed to the text, which as it speaks of fragments ix rmv ireVre aprav, of 
 the five loaves (John vi. 13), can hardly be held to presuppose an increase of 
 this number ; thus there remains only the second, by the poetical description 
 of which Lavater has done but a poor service to the orthodox view.^^ For 
 this miracle belongs to the class which can only appear in any degree credible 
 so long as they can be retained in the obscurity of an indefinite conception : ^^ 
 no sooner does the light shine on them, so that they can be examined in all 
 their parts, than they dissolve like the unsubstantial creations of the mist. 
 Loaves, which in the hands of the distributors expand like wetted sponges, — 
 broiled fish, in which the severed parts are replaced instantaneously, as in the 
 living crab gradually, — plainly belong to quite another domain than that of 
 reality. 
 
 What gratitude then do we not owe to the rationalistic interpretation, if it 
 be true that it can free us, in the easiest manner, from the burden of so un- 
 heard-of a miracle ? If we are to believe Dr. Paulus,^* the Evangelists had no 
 idea that they were narrating anything miraculous, and the miracle was first 
 conveyed into their accounts by expositors. What they narrate is, according 
 to him, only thus much : that Jesus caused his small store of provisions to be 
 distributed, and that in consequence of this the entire multitude obtained 
 enough to eat. Here, in any case, we want a middle term, which would dis- 
 tinctly inform us, how it was possible that, although Jesus had so little food to 
 offer, the whole multitude obtained enough to eat. A very natural middle 
 term however is to be gathered, according to Paulus, out of the historical 
 combination of the circumstances. As, on a comparison with John vi. 4, the 
 multitude appear to have consisted for the greater part of a caravan on its 
 way to the feast, they cannot have be3n quite destitute|of provisions, and prob- 
 ably a few indigent persons only had; exhausted their stores. In order then 
 to induce the better provided to share their food with those who were in want, 
 Jesus arranged that they should have a meal, and himself set the example of 
 imparting what he and his disciples could spare from their own little store ; 
 this example was imitated, and thus the distribution of bread by Jesus having 
 led to a general distribution, the whole multitude were satisfied. It is true 
 that this natural middle term must be first mentally interpolated into the 
 text ; as, however, the supernatural middle term which is generally received 
 is just as little stated expressly, and both alike depend upon inference, the 
 reader can hardly do otherwise than decide for the natural one. Such is the 
 reasoning of Dr. Paulus : but the alleged identity in the relation of the two 
 middle terms to the text does not in fact exist. For while the natural explan- 
 ation requires us to suppose a new distributing subject (the better provided 
 among the multitude), and a new distributed object (their provisions), to- 
 gether with the act of distributing these provisions : the supranatural explan- 
 ation contents itself with the subject actually present in the text (Jesus and 
 his disciples), with the single object there given (their little store), a,nd the 
 described distribution of this ; and only requires us to supply from our imagin- 
 ation the means by which this store could be made sufficient to satisfy the 
 hunger of the multitude, namely its miraculous augmentation under the hands 
 of Jesus (or of his disciples). How can it be yet maintained that neither of 
 the two middle terms is any more suggested by the text than the other? That 
 the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes is not expressly men- 
 
 12 Jesus Messias, 2, Bd. No. 14, I S and 20. , , , . , 
 
 " For this reason Neander (s. 377) passes over the miracle with a few entirely general re- 
 marks. 
 " Exeg. Handb. 2, s. 205 fF. 
 
 K K 
 
514 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § I02, 
 
 tioned, is explained by the consideration that the event itself is one of which 
 no clear conception can be formed, and therefore it is best conveyed by the 
 result alone. But how will the natural theologian account for nothing being 
 said of the distribution, called forth by the example of Jesus, on the part of 
 those among the multitude who had provisions ? It is altogether arbitrary to 
 insert that distribution between the sentepces, He gave them to the disciples, 
 and the disciples to the multitude (Matt. xiv. 19), and, they did all eat and were 
 filled (v. 20) j while the words, koX tovs Suo ix^"'"' ifiipia-e jracri, and the two 
 Wishes divided he among them all (Mark vi. 41), plainly indicate that only the 
 two fishes — and consequently only the five loaves — were the object of distri- 
 bution for all.i6 But the natural explanation falls into especial embarrassment 
 when it comes to the baskets which, after all were satisfied, Jesus caused to be 
 filled with the fragments that remained. The fourth Evangelist says : aw-fffayov 
 ovv, KOI iye/jiKTav SdiSexa KO(j>LVOvi Kkaa-fiaTuiv €k tGv Trivre apriav rStv Kpidivmv, a 
 {■n-€plcra-€va:e rots jiefipwKocrLv, therefore they gathered them together, and filled 
 twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over 
 and above unto them that had eaten (vi. 13). This seems clearly enough to 
 imply that out of those identical five loaves, after five thousand men had been 
 satisfied by them, there still remained/ragments enough to fill twelve baskets, 
 — more, that is, than the amount of the original store. Here, therefore, the 
 natural expositor is put to the most extravagant contrivances in order to evade 
 the miracle. It is true, when the synoptists simply say that the remnants of 
 the meal were collected, and twelve baskets filled with them, it might be 
 thought from the point of view of the natural explanation, that Jesus, out of 
 regard to the gift of God, caused the fragments which the crowd had left from 
 their own provisions to be collected by his disciples. But as, on the one 
 hand, the fact that the people allowed the remains of the repast to lie, and 
 did not appropriate them, seems to indicate that they treated the nourishment 
 presented to them as the property of another ; so, on the other hand, Jesus, 
 when, without any preliminary, he directs his disciples to gather them up, 
 appears to regard them as his own property. Hence Paulus understands the 
 words \pa.v K. T. X. of the synoptists, not of a collection first jnade after the 
 meal, of that which remained when the people had been satisfied, but of the 
 overplus of the httle store belonging to Jesus and the disciples, which the 
 latter, after reserving what was necessary for Jesus and themselves, carried 
 round as an introduction and inducement to the general repast. But how, 
 when the words h^ayov /cat ixoprdcrdTjo-av TravTes, they did all eat and were filled, 
 are immediately followed by kui ripav, and they took up, can the latter member 
 of the verse refer to the time prior to the meal ? Must it not then have 
 necessarily been said at least ^pa.v yap, for they took up ? Further, how, after 
 it had just been said that the people did eat and were filled, can to Trepio-creil- 
 a-av, that which remained, especially succeeded as it is in Luke by airoZs, to 
 them, mean anything else than what the people had left ? Lastly, how is it 
 possible that out of five loaves and two fishes, after Jesus and his disciples had 
 reserved enough for themselves, or even without this, there could in a natural 
 manner be twelve basketsyf//«rf for distribution among the people? But still more 
 strangely does the natural explanation deal with the narrative of John. Jesus 
 here adds, as a reason for gathering up the fragments, Iva. p.ri n djrdXijTat, that 
 nothing be lost ; hence it appears impossible to divest the succeeding statement 
 that they filled twelve baskets with the remains of the five loaves, of its relation 
 to the time after the meal ; and in this case, it would be impossible to get 
 clear of a miraculous multiplication of the l9aves. Paulus therefore, although 
 
 '° pishausen, in loc. 
 
MIRACLES — FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. S15 
 
 the words a-wrjyayov oSv KoX eye/Attrav Soj8e/fa Kocftivovj K. t. A.., therefore they 
 gathered them, together and filled twelve baskets, etc., form a strictly coherent 
 whole, chooses rather to detach o-m'-qyayov ovv, and, by a still more forced 
 construction than that which he employed with the synoptical text, makes the 
 narrative pass all at once, without the slightest notice, into the pluperfect, and 
 thus leap back to the time before the meal. 
 
 Here, then, the natural explanation once more fails to fulfil its task : the 
 text retains its miracle, and if we have reason to think this incredible, we 
 must inquire whether the narrative of the text deserves credence. The agree- 
 ment of all the four Evangelists is generally adduced in proof of its distin- 
 guished credibility : but this agreement is by no means so perfect, There are 
 minor differences, first between Matthew and Luke ; then between these two 
 and Mark, who in this instance again embellishes ; and lastly, between the 
 synoptists collectively and John, in the following points: according to the 
 synoptists, the scene of the event is a desert place, according to John, a 7noun- 
 tain\ according to the former, the scene opens with an address from the 
 disciples, according to John, with a question from Jesus (two particulars in 
 which, as we have already remarked, the narrative of John approaches that of 
 the second feeding in Matthew and Mark) ; lastly, the words which the three 
 first Evangelists put into the mouth of the disciples indefinitely, the fourth in 
 his individualizing manner ascribes to Philip and Andrew, and the same Evan- 
 gelist also designates the bearer of the loaves and fishes as a boy (TraiSdpiov). 
 These divergencies however may be passed over as less essential, that we may 
 give our attention only to one, which has a deeper hold. While, namely, 
 according to the synoptical accounts, Jesus had been long teaching the people 
 and healing their sick, and was only led to feed them by the approach of 
 evening, and the remark of the disciples that the people needed refreshment : 
 in John, the first thought of Jesus, when he lifts up his eyes and sees the people 
 gathering round him, is that which he expresses in his question to Philip : 
 Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat? or rather, as he asked this 
 merely to prove Philip, well knowing himself what he would do, he at once 
 forms the resolution of feeding the multitude in a miraculous manner. But 
 how could the design of feeding the people arise in Jesus immediately on 
 their approach ? They did not come to him for this, but for the sake of his 
 teaching and his curative power. He must therefore have conceived this de- 
 sign entirely of his own accord, with a view to establish his miraculous power 
 by so signal a demonstration. But did he ever thus work a miracle without 
 any necessity, and even without any inducement, — quite arbitrarily, and 
 merely for the sake of working a miracle ? I am unable to describe strongly 
 enough how impossible it is that eating should here have been the first 
 thought of Jesus, how impossible that he could thus obtrude his miraculous 
 repast on the people. Thus in relation to this point, the synoptical narrative, 
 in which there is a reason for the miracle, must have the preference to that of 
 John, who, hastening towards the miracle, overlooks the requisite motive for 
 it, and makes Jesus create instead of awaiting the occasion for its perform- 
 ance. An eye-witness could not narrate thus ; ^^ and if, therefore, the account 
 of that gospel to which the greatest authority is now awarded, must be rejected 
 as unhistorical ; so, with respect to the other narratives, the difficulties of the 
 fact itself are sufficient to cast a doubt on their historical credibility, especially 
 if in addition to these negative grounds we can discover positive reasons which 
 render it probable that our narrative had an unhistorical origin. 
 
 '° Against Neander's attempt at reconciliation, compare De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, 3, s. 
 77- 
 
Sl6 ■ PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 102. 
 
 Such reasons are actually found both within the evangelical history itself, 
 and beyond it in the Old Testament history, and the Jewish popular belief. 
 In relation to the former source, it is worthy of remark, that in the synoptical 
 gospels as well as in John, there are more or less immediately appended to the 
 feeding of the multitude by Jesus with literal bread, figurative discourses of 
 Jesus on bread and leaven : namely, in the latter, the declarations concerning 
 the bread of heaven, and the bread of life which Jesus gives (John vi. 27 ff.) ; 
 in the former, those concerning the false leaven of the Pharisees and Saddu- 
 cees, that is, their false doctrine and hypocrisy. i'' (Matt. xvi. 5 fif. ; Mark viii. 
 14 ff. ; comp. Luke xii. i) ; and on both sides, the figurative discourse of 
 Jesus is erroneously understood of literal bread. It would not then be a very 
 strained conjecture, that as in the passages quoted we find the disciples and 
 the people generally, understanding literally what Jesus meant figuratively ; so 
 the same mistake was made in the earliest Christian tradition. If, in figura- • 
 tive discourses, Jesus had sometimes represented himself as him who was able 
 to give the true bread of life to the wandering and hungering people, perhaps 
 also placing in opposition to this, the leaven of the Pharisees : the legend, 
 agreeably to its realistic tendency, may have converted this into the fact of a 
 miraculous feeding of the hungry multitude in the wilderness by Jesus. The 
 fourth Evangelist makes the discourse on the bread of heaven arise out 
 of the miracle of the loaves : but the relation might very well have been the 
 reverse, and the history owe its origin to the discourse, especially as the ques- 
 tion which introduces John's narrative, Whence shall we buy bread that these 
 may eat ? may be more easily conceived as being uttered by Jesus on the first 
 sight of the people, if he alluded to feeding them with the word of God (comp. 
 John iv. 32 ff.), to appeasing their spiritual hunger (Matt. v. 6), in order to 
 exercise (Trapd^iav) the higher understanding of his disciples, than if he really 
 thought of the satisfaction of their bodily hunger, and only wished to try 
 whether his disciples would in this case confide in his miraculous pow^er. The 
 synoptical narrative is less suggestive of such a view ; for the figurative dis- 
 course on the leaven could not by itself originate the history of the miracle. 
 Thus the gospel of John stands alone with reference to the above mode of de- 
 rivation, and it is more agreeable to the character of this gospel to conjecture 
 that it has applied the narrative of a miracle presented by tradition to the 
 production of figurative discourses in the Alexandrian taste, than to suppose 
 that it has preserved to us the original discourses out of which the legend spun 
 that miraculous narrative. 
 
 If then we can discover, beyond the limits of the New Testament, very 
 powerful causes for the origination of our narrative, we must renounce the 
 attempt to construct it out of materials presented by the gospels themselves. 
 
 '7 This indication has been recently followed up by Weisse. He finds the key to the his- 
 tory of the miraculous multiplication of the loaves, in the question addressed by Jesus to the 
 disciples when they misunderstand his admonition against the leaven of the Pharisees and 
 Sadducces. He asks them whether they did not remember how many baskets they had been 
 able to fill from the five and again from the seven loaves, and then adds, //ow is it that ye 
 do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, etc. (Matt. xvi. 11). Now, says 
 Weisse, the parallel which Jesus here institutes between his discourse on the leaven, and the 
 history of the feeding of the multitude, shows that the latter also is only to be interpreted 
 parabolically (s. 511 ff.). But the form of the question of Jesus : irio-ous Koifilvovi {a-rvplSas) 
 eXa/Sere ; how many baskets ye took up, presupposes a real event ; we can form no conception, as 
 we have already remarked in relation to the histoiy of the temptation, of a parable in which 
 Jesus and his disciples would have played a principal part ; moreover, the inference which 
 Jesus would convey is, according to the text, not that because the present narrative was 
 figurative, so also must be the interpretation of the subsequent discourse, but that after the 
 earlier proof how superfluous was any solicitude about physical bread where Jesus was at 
 hand, it wasabsurd to understand his present discourse as relating to such. 
 
MIRACLES — FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. S17 
 
 And here the fourth Evangelist, by putting into the mouth of the people a 
 reference to the manna, that bread of heaven which Moses gave to the fathers 
 in the wilderness (v. 31), reminds us of one of the most celebrated passages 
 in the early history of the Israelites (Exod. xvi.), which was perfectly adapted 
 to engender the expectation that its antitype would occur in the Messianic 
 times ; and we in fact learn from rabbinical writings, that among those func- 
 tions of the first Goel which were to be revived in the second, a chief place 
 was given to the impartation of bread from heaven."^ If the Mosaic manna 
 presents itself as that which was most likely to be held a type of the bread 
 miraculously augmented by Jesus; the fish which Jesus also multiplied 
 miraculously, may remind us that Moses gave the people, not only a substi- 
 tute for bread in the manna, but also animal food in the quails (Exod. xvi. 8, 
 xii. 13 ; Num. xi. 4 ff.). On comparing these Mosaic narratives with our 
 evangelical ones, there appears a striking resemblance even in details. The 
 locality in both cases is the wilderness ; the inducement to the miracle here 
 as there, is fear lest the people should suffer from want in the wilderness, or 
 perish from hunger ; in the Old Testament history, this fear is expressed by 
 the people in loud murmurs, in that of the New Testament, it results from the 
 shortsightedness of the disciples, and the benevolence of Jesus. The direc- 
 tion of the latter to his disciples that they should give the people food, a 
 direction which implies that he had already formed the design of feeding 
 them miraculously, may be paralleled with the command which Jehovah gave 
 to Moses to feed the people with manna (Exod. xvi. 4), and with quails 
 (Exod. xvi. 12 ; Num. xi. 18-20). But there is another point of similarity 
 which speaks yet more directly to our present purpose. As, in the evan- 
 gelical narrative, the disciples think it an impossibility that provision for so 
 great a mass of people should be procured in the wilderness, so, in the Old 
 Testament history, Moses replies doubtingly to the promise of Jehovah to 
 satisfy the people with flesh (Num. xi. 21 f ). To Moses, as to the disciples, 
 the multitude appears too great for the possibility of providing sufficient food 
 for them ; as the latter ask, whence they should have so much bread in the 
 , wilderness, so Moses asks ironically whether they should slay the flocks and 
 the herds (which they had not). And as the disciples object, jthat not even 
 the most impoverishing expenditure on their part would thoroughly meet the 
 demand, so Moses, clothing the idea in another form, had declared, that to 
 satisfy the people as Jehovah promised, an impossibility must happen (the 
 fish of. the sea be gathered together for them); objections which Jehovah 
 there, as here Jesus, does not regard, but issues the command that the people 
 should prepare for the reception of the miraculous food. 
 
 But though these two cases of a miraculous supply of nourishment are thus 
 analogous, there is this essential distinction, that in the Old Testament, in 
 relation both to the manna and the quails, it is a miraculous procuring of 
 food not previously existing which is spoken of, while in the New Testament 
 it is a miraculous augmentation of provision already present, but inadequate ; 
 so that the chasm between the Mosaic narrative and the evangelical one is 
 too great for the latter to have been derived immediately from the former. 
 If we search for an intermediate step, a very natural one between Moses and 
 the Messiah is afforded by the prophets. We read of Elijah, that through 
 him and for his sake, the little store of meal and oil which he found ,in the 
 possession of the widow of Zarephath was miraculously replenished, or rather 
 was made to suffice throughout the duration of the famine (i Kings xvii. 
 8-16). This species of miracle is developed still further^ and with a greater 
 
 w vid. Vol. I. § 14. 
 
Sl8 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 102. 
 
 resemblance to the evangelical narrative, in the history of Elisha (2 Kings iv. 
 42 ff.). As Jesus fed five thousand men in the wilderness with five loaves and 
 two fishes, so this prophet, during a famine, fed a hundred men with twenty 
 loaves, (which like those distributed by Jesus in John, are called barley 
 loaves,) together with some ground corn (??"??, LXX. iraXa^as) ; a dispro- 
 portion between the quantity of provisions and the number of men, which his 
 servant, like the disciples in the other instance, indicates in the question : 
 What.' should I set this before a hundred men? Elisha, like Jesus, is not 
 diverted from his purpose, but commands the servant to give what he has to 
 the people ; and as in the New Testament narrative great stress is laid on the 
 collection of the remaining fragments, so in the Old Testament it is specially 
 noticed at the close of this story, that notwithstanding so many had eaten of 
 the store, there was still an overplus. ^^ The only important difference here 
 is, that on the side of the evangelical narrative, the number of the loaves is 
 smaller, and that of the people greater; but who does not know that in 
 general the legend does not easily imitate, without at the same time surpass- 
 ing, and who does not see that in this particular instance it was entirely 
 suited to the posidon of the Messiah, that his miraculous power, compared 
 with that of EHsha, should be placed, as it regards 'the need of natural means, 
 in the relation of five to twenty, but as it regards the supernatural perform- 
 ance, in that of five thousand to one hundred ? Paulus indeed, in order to 
 preclude the inference, that as the two narratives in the Old Testament are to 
 be understood mythically, so also is the strikingly similar evangelical narra- 
 tive, extends to the former the attempt at a natural explanation which he has 
 pursued with the latter, making the widow's cruse of oil to be replenished by 
 the aid of the scholars of the prophets, and the twenty loaves suffice for one 
 hundred men by means of a praiseworthy moderation ; ^^ a mode of explana- 
 tion which is less practicable here than with the New Testament narrative, 
 in proportion as, by reason of the greater remoteness of these anecdotes, they 
 present fewer critical (and, by reason of their merely mediate relation to 
 Christianity, fewer dogmatical) motives for maintaining their historical 
 veracity. 
 
 Nothing more is wanting to complete the mythical derivation of this history 
 of the miraculous feeding of the multitude, except the proof, that the later 
 Jews also believed of particularly holy men, that by their means a small 
 amount of provision was made sufficient, and of this proof the disinterested 
 industry of Dr. Paulus as a collector, has put us in possession. He adduces 
 a rabbinical statement that in the time of a specially holy man, the amall 
 quantity of shew-bread more than sufficed for the supply of the priests.^^ To 
 be consequent, this commentator should try to explain this story also 
 natilrally, — by the moderation of the priests, for instance : but it is not in the 
 canon, hence he can unhesitatingly regard it as a fable, and he only so far 
 admits its striking similarity to the evangelical narrative as to observe, that in 
 consequence of the Jewish belief in such augmentations of food, attested by 
 that rabbinical statement, the New Testament narrative may in early times 
 
 '' 2 Kings iv. 43, LXX. j H Sd tovto John vi. 9 : dXXi toCto t£ ianv eU 
 
 iyJjTiOv iKar&j/ dvSpujp ; Toaoirovs ; 
 
 Ibid. V. 44 : KoX l^ayov, Kal KwrtXiTov Matt. xiv. 20 : /col ^ipayov wivres, Kal 
 
 KOTqi t4 ^TJiia Kvplav. ix'>l"'^<'9il'^a.v, Kal fjpav ri ircpuraevov rCiv 
 
 KkatTjldTlav, n. T. X. 
 
 ^'' Exeg. Handb. 2, s. 237 f. . 
 
 "' Joma f. 39, i : Tempore Simeonis justi benediciio erat super dtios panes pentecostales et 
 super decern panes %po6eacm, ut singuli sacerdotes, qui pro rata parte acciperent quantitatent 
 olivoe, ad salietatem comederent, into ut adhuc reliquia superessent. 
 
MIRACLES — TURNING WATER INTO WINE. Sip 
 
 have been understood by judaizing Christians in the same (miraculous) sense. 
 But our examination has shown that the evangelical narrative was designedly 
 composed so as to convey this sense, and if this sense was an element of the 
 popular Jewish legend, then is the evangelical narrative without doubt a pro- 
 duct of that legend.-^. 
 
 § I03- 
 
 JESUS TURNS WATER INTO WINE. 
 
 Next to the history of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, may be 
 ranged the narrative in the fourth gospel (ii. i fF.), of Jesus at a wedding in 
 Cana of Galilee turning water into wine. According to Olshausen, both 
 miracles fall under the same category, since in both a substratum is present, 
 the substance of which is modified.^ But he overlooks the logical distinction, 
 that in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the modification is one of 
 quantity merely, an augmentation of what was already existing, without any 
 change of its quality (bread becomes more bread, but remains bread) ; 
 whereas at the wedding in Cana the substratum is modified in quality — out of 
 a certain substance there is made not merely more of the same kind, but 
 something else (out of water, wine) ; in other words, a real transubstantiation 
 takes place. It is true there are changes in quality which are natural results, 
 and the instantaneous effectuation of which by Jesus would be even more 
 easy to conceive, than an equally rapid augmentation of quantity ; for 
 example, if he had suddenly changed must into wine, or wine into vinegar, 
 this would only have been to conduct in an accelerated manner the same 
 vegetable substratum, the vinous juice, through various conditions natural to 
 it. The miracle would be already heightened if Jesus had imparted to the 
 juice of another fruit, the apple for instance, the quality of that of the grape, 
 although even in this his agency would have been within the limits of the 
 same kingdom of nature. But here, where water is turned into wine, there is 
 a transition from one kingdom of nature to another, from the elementary to 
 the vegetable ; a miracle which as far exceeds that of the multiplication of 
 the loaves, as if Jesus had hearkened to the counsel of the tempter, and 
 turned stones into bread.* 
 
 To this miracle, as to the former, Olshausen, after Augustine,^ applies his 
 definition of an accelerated natural process, by which we are to understand 
 that we have here simply the occurrence, in an accelerated manner, of that 
 which is presented yearly in the vine in a slow process of development. 
 This mode of viewing the matter would have some foundation, if the sub- 
 stratum on which Jesus operated had been the same out of which wine is 
 wont to be naturally produced ; if he had taken a vine in his hand, and 
 suddenly caused it to bloom, and to bear ripe grapes, this might have been 
 called an accelerated natural process. Even then indeed we should still 
 have no wine, and if Jesus were to produce this also from the vine which he 
 took into his hand, he must add an operation which would be an invisible 
 substitute for the winepress, that is, an accelerated artificial process; so that 
 
 22 Comp. De Wette, ex Handb. I, I, s. I33 f. 
 
 » Bibl. Comm. 2, s. 74. , . ^ , . . . , . ■, 
 
 2 Neander is of opinion that an analogy may be found for this miracle yet more easily 
 than for that of the loaves— in the mineral springs, the water of which is rendered so potent 
 by natural agencies, that it produces effects which far exceed those of ordinary water, and in 
 part resemble those of wine ! (s. 369. ) , . . 
 
 * In Toann. tract. 8 : Ipse vinum fecit in nuptiis, qui omm anno hoc facit tn vittbus. 
 
520 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 103. 
 
 on this supposition the category of the accelerated natural process would 
 already be insufficient. In fact, however, we have no vine as a substratum 
 for this production of wine, but water, and in this case we could only speak 
 with propriety of an accelerated natural process, if by any means, however 
 gradual, wine were ever produced out of water. Here it is urged, that 
 certainly out of water, out of the moisture produced in the earth by rain and 
 the like, the vine draws its sap, which in due order it applies to the produc- 
 tion of the grape, and of the wine therein contained ; so that thus yearly, by 
 means of a natural process, wine does actually come out of water.* But 
 apart from the fact that water is only one of the elementary materials which 
 are required for the fructification of the vine, and that to this end, soil, air, 
 and light, must concur ; it could not be said either of one, or of all these 
 elementary materials together, that they produce the grape or the wine, nor, 
 consequently, that Jesus, when he produced wine out of water, did the same 
 thing, only more quickly, which is repeated every year as a gradual process : 
 on the contrary, here again there is a confusion of essentially distinct logical 
 categories. For we may place the relation of the product to the producing 
 agent, which is here treated of, under the category of power and manifesta- 
 tion, or of cause and effect : never can it be said that water is the power or 
 the cause, which produces grapes and wine, for the power which gives 
 existence to them is strictly the vegetable individuality of the vine-plant, to 
 which water, with the rest of the elementary agencies, is related only as the 
 soUcitation to the power, as the stimulus to the cause. That is, without the 
 co-operation of water, air, etc., grapes certainly cannot be produced, any 
 more than without the vine plant ; but the distinction is, that in the vine the 
 grape, in itself or in its germ, is already present, and water, air, etc., only 
 assist in its development ; whereas in these elementary substances, the grape 
 is present neither actu nox potentiA ; they can in no way produce the fruit out 
 of themselves, but only out of something else — the vine. To turn water into 
 wine is not then to make a cause act more rapidly than it would act in a 
 natural way, but it is to make the effect appear without a cause, out of a mere 
 accessory circumstance ; or, to refer more particularly to organic nature, it is 
 to call forth the organic product without the producing organism, out of the 
 simple inorganic materials, or rather out of one of these materials only. This 
 is about the same thing as to make bread, out of earth without the interven- 
 tion of the corn plant, flesh out of bread without a previous assimilation of It 
 by an animal body, or in the same immediate manner, blood out of wine. 
 If the supranaturalist is not here contented with appealing to the incompre- 
 hensibleness of an omnipotent word of Jesus, but also endeavours, with 
 Olshausen, to bring the process which must have been contained in the 
 miracle in question nearer to his conception, by regarding it in the light of a 
 natural process ; he must not, in order to render the matter more probable, 
 suppress a part of the necessary stages in that process, but. exhibit them all. 
 They would then present the following series : ist, to the water, as one only 
 of the elementary agents, Jesus must have added the power of the other 
 elements above named ; 2ndly (and this is the chief point), he must have 
 procured, in an equally invisible manner, the organic individuality of the vine ; 
 3rdly, he must have accelerated, to the degree of instantaneousness, the 
 natural process resulting from the reciprocal action of these objects upon one 
 another, the blooming and fructification of the vine, together with the ripen- 
 ing of the grape; 4thly, he must have caused the artificial process of pressing, 
 
 ■* Thus Augustine, ut sup. approved by Olshausen : sicut enim, quod miserunt ministri in 
 hydnas in vinum conversum est opere Domini, sic et quod nubes fundunt, in vinum conver- 
 titurejusdem opere Domini. 
 
MIRACLES — TURNING WATER INTO WINE. 521 
 
 and so forth, to occur invisibly and suddenly ; and lastly, he must again have 
 accelerated the further natural process of fermentation, so as to render it 
 momentary. Thus, here again, the designation of the miracle as an accele- 
 rated natural process, would apply to two stages only out of five, the other 
 three being such as cannot possibly be brought under this point of view, 
 though the two first, especially the second, are of greater importance even 
 than belonged to the stages which were neglected in the application of this 
 view to the history of the miraculous feeding : so that the definition of an 
 accelerated natural process is as inadequate here as there.^ As, however, 
 this is the only, or the extreme category, under which we can bring such 
 operations nearer to our conception and comprehension ; it follows that if 
 this category be shown to be inapplicable, the event itself is inconceivable. 
 
 Not only, however, has the miracle before us been impeached in relation 
 to possibility, but also in relation to utility and fitness. It has been urged 
 both in ancient ^ and modern '' times, that it was unworthy of Jesus that he 
 should not only remain in the society of drunkards, but even further their in- 
 temperance by an exercise of his miraculous power. But this objection 
 should be discarded as an exaggeration, since, as expositors justly observe, 
 from the words after men have well drunk, otov /jLeOvarOuia-L (v. 10), which Ike 
 ruler of the feast apxiTpUXivoi uses with reference to the usual course of things 
 at such feasts, nothing can with certainty be deduced with respect to the 
 occasion in question. We must however still regard as valid an objection, 
 which is not only pointed out by Paulus and the author of the Probabilia,* 
 6ut admitted even by Llicke and Olshausen to be at the first glance a press- 
 ing difficulty : namely, that by this miracle Jesus did not, as was usual with 
 him, relieve any want, any real need, but only furnished an additional incite- 
 ment to pleasure ; showed himself not so much helpful as courteous ; rather, 
 so to speak, performed a miracle of luxury, than of true beneficence. If it 
 be here said that it was a sufficient object for the miracle to confirm the faith 
 of the disciples,^ which according to V. 11 was its actual effect; it must be 
 remembered that, as a general rule, not only had the miracles of Jesus, con- 
 sidered with regard to their form, i.e. as extraordinary results, something 
 desirable as their consequence, for instance, the faith of the spectators ; but ' 
 also, considered with regard to their matter, i.e. as consisting of cures, multi- 
 plications of loaves, and the like, were directed to some really beneficent end. 
 In the present miracle this characteristic is wanting, and hence Paulus is not 
 wrong when he points out the contradiction which would lie in the conduct 
 of Jesus, if towards the tempter he rejected every challenge to such miracles 
 as, without" being materially beneficent, or called for by any pressing necessity, 
 could only formally produce faith and astonishment, and yet in this instance 
 performed a miracle of that very nature.^" 
 
 The supranaturalist was therefore driven to maintain that it was not faith 
 in general which Jesus here intended to produce, but a conviction entirely 
 special, and only to be wrought by this particular miracle. Proceeding on 
 this supposition, nothing was more natural than to be reminded by the 
 opposition of water and wine on which the miracle turns, of the opposition 
 between him who baptized with water (Matt. iii. 11), who at the same time 
 
 * Even Lucke, I, s. 405, thinks the analogy with the above natural process deficient and 
 unintelligible, and does not know how to console himself better than by the consideration, 
 that a similar inconvenience exists in relation to the miracle of the loaves. 
 
 « Chrysost. horn, in Joann. 21. 
 
 ' Woolston, Disc. 4. 
 
 8 P. 42. 
 
 9 Tholuck, in loc. 
 
 >» Coram. 4, s. 151 f. 
 
522 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § IO3. 
 
 came neither eating nor drinking (Luke i. 15 ; Matt. xi. 18), ^nd him who, as 
 he baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, so he did not deny himself 
 the ardent, animating fruit of the vine, and was hence reproached with being 
 a wine-bibber oivoiroVi;? (Matt. xi. 19); especially as the fourth gospel, in which 
 the narrative of the wedding at Cana is contained, manifests in a peculiar 
 degree the tendency to lead over the contemplation from the Baptist to Jesus. • 
 On these grounds Herder,ii and after him some others,'^ have held the 
 opinion, that Jesus by the above miraculous act intended to symbolize to his 
 disciples, several of whom had been disciples of the Baptist, the relation of 
 his spirit and office to those of John, and by this proof of his superior power, 
 to put an end to the offence which they might take at his more liberal mode 
 of life. But here the reflection obtrudes itself, that Jesus does not avail 
 himself of this symbolical miracle, to enlighten his disciples by explanatory 
 discourses concerning his relation to the Baptist; an omission which even the 
 friends of this interpretation pronounce to be surprising. ^^ How needful such 
 an exposition was, if the miracle were not to fail of its special object, is evi- 
 dent from the fact, that the narrator himself, according to v. 11, understood 
 it not at all in this light, as a symbolization of a particular maxim of Jesus, 
 but quite generally, as a manifestation (jiavdpuxTK of his glorj'.^* Thus if that 
 special lesson were the object of Jesus in performing the miracle before us, 
 then the author of the fourth gospel, that is, according to the supposition of 
 the above theologians, his most apprehensive pupil, misunderstood him, and 
 Jesus delayed in an injudicious manner to prevent this misunderstanding; or 
 if both these conclusions are rejected, there still subsists the difficulty, that 
 Jesus, contrary to the prevailing tendency of his conduct, sought to attain 
 the general object of proving his miraculous power, by an act for which 
 apparently he might have substituted a more useful one. 
 
 Again, the disproportionate quantity of wine with which Jesus supplies the 
 guests,, must excite astonishment. Six vessels, each containing from two to 
 three /Aerpi^Tas, supposing the Attic /lETpijT^s, corresponding to the Hebrew 
 bat/i, to be equivalent to ij Roman amphora,, or twenty-one Wirtemberg 
 measures,* would yield 252-378 measures.'^ What a quantity for a com- 
 pany who had already drunk freely ! What enormous vessels ! exclaims Dr. 
 Paulus, and leaves no effort untried to reduce the statement of measures in 
 the text. With a total disregard of the rules of the language, he gives to the 
 preposition ava. a collective meaning, instead of its proper distributive one, so 
 as to make the six water pots (vSpiai) contain, not each, but altogether, from 
 two to three /icTpr/ras ; and even Olshausen consoles himself, after Semler, 
 with' the fact, that it is nowhere remarked that the water in all the vessels was 
 turned into wine. But these are subterfuges ; they to whom the supply of so 
 extravagant and dangerous a quantity of wine on the part of Jesus is in- 
 credible, must conclude that the narrative is unhistorical. 
 
 Peculiar difficulty is occasioned by the relation in which this narrative 
 places Jesus to his mother, and his mother to him. According to the express 
 statement of the Evangelist, the turning of water into wine was the beginning 
 
 '1 Von Gottes Sohn u. s. f. nach Johannes Evangelium, s. 131 f. 
 
 " C. Ch. Flatt, iiber die Verwandlung des Wkssers in Wein, in Siiskind's Magazin, 14. 
 Stiick, s. 86 f. ; Olshausen, ut sup. s. 75 f. ; comp. Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 372. 
 
 '* Olshausen, ut sup. 
 
 " Lucke also thinks this symbolical interpretation too. far-fetched, and too little sup- 
 ported by the tone of the narrative, s. 406. Comp. De Wette, ex. Handb. i, 3, s. 37. 
 
 * [A Wirtemburg wine Maas, or measure, is equal to about 3J pints English, or more 
 exactly 3-32.— Tr.] 
 
 15 Wurm, de ponderum, mensurarum etc. rationibus, ap. Rom.,.et Grsec, p. 123, 126. 
 Comp. LUcke, in loc. 
 
MIRACLES— TURNING WATER INTO WINE. 5^3 
 
 of the miracles of Jesus, apxri rStv crqii.diiiv ; and yet his mother reckons so 
 confidently on his performing a miracle here, that she believes it only 
 necessary to point out to him the deficiency of wine, in order to induce him 
 to afford supernatural aid; and even when she receives a discouraging answer, 
 she is so far from losing hope, that she enjoins the servants to be obedient to 
 the directions of her son (v. 3, 5). How is this expectation of a miracle on 
 the part of the mother of Jesus to be explained? Are we to refer the 
 declaration of John, that the metamorphosis of the water was the first miracle 
 of Jesus, merely to the period of his public life, and to presuppose as real 
 events, for his previous years, the apocryphal miracles of the Gospels of the 
 Infancy? Or, believing that Chrysostom was right in regarding this as too 
 uncritical,!'' are we rather to conjecture that Mary, in consequence of her 
 conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, a conviction wrought in her by the 
 signs that attended his birth, expected miracles from him, and as perhaps on 
 some earher occasions, so now on this, when the perplexity was great, desired 
 from him a proof of his power ? ^"^ Were only that early conviction of the 
 relatives of Jesus that he was the Messiah somewhat more probable, and 
 especially the extraordinary events of the childhood, by which it is supposed 
 to have been produced, better accredited ! Moreover, even presupposing the 
 belief of Mary in the miraculous power of her son, it is still not at all clear 
 how, notwithstanding his discouraging answer, she could yet confidently ex- 
 pect that he would just on this occasion perform his first miracle, and feel 
 assured that she positively knew that he would act precisely so as to require 
 the assistance of the servants.'^s This decided knowledge on the pare of 
 Mary, even respecting the manner of the miracle about to be wrought, appears 
 to indicate an antecedent disclosure of Jesus to her, and hence Olshausen 
 supposes that Jesus had given his mother an intimation concerning the 
 miracle on which he had resolved. But when could this disclosure have 
 been made ? Already as they were going to the feast ? Then Jesus must 
 have foreseen that there would be a want of wine, in which case Mary could 
 not have apprised him of it as of an unexpected embarrassment. Or did 
 Jesus make the disclosure after her appeal, and consequently in connexion 
 with the words : What have I to do with thee, woman, etc. ? But with this 
 answer, it is impossible to conceive so opposite a declaration to have been 
 united ; it would therefore be necessary, on Olshausen's view, to imagine that 
 Jesus uttered the negative words aloud, the affirmative in an undertone, 
 merely for Mary : a supposition which would give the scene the appearance 
 of a comedy. Thus it is on no supposition to be understood how Mary 
 could expect a miracle at all, still less precisely such an one. The first 
 diflficulty might indeed be plausibly evaded, by maintaining that Mary did 
 not here apply to Jesus in expectation of a miracle, but simply that she 
 might obtain her son's advice in the case, as she was wont to do in all diffi- 
 cult circumstances : " his reply however shows that he regarded the words of 
 his mother as a summons to perform a miracle, and moreover the direction 
 which Mary gave to the servants remains on this supposition totally unex- 
 plained. 
 
 The answer of Jesus to the intimation of his mother (v. 4) has been just as 
 often blamed with exaggeration ^o as justified on insufficient grounds. How- 
 
 " Homil. in Joann. in loc. 
 
 1' Tliolack, in loc. , r • , r ,t i.- n 
 
 '8 This argument is valid against Neander also, who appeals to the faith of Mary chietiy 
 as a result of the solemn inauguration at the baptism (s. 370). 
 " Hess, Gesch. Jesu, i, s. 135. Comp. also Calvin, in loc. 
 2" E.g. by Woolston, ut sup. 
 
524 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 103. 
 
 ever truly it may be urged that the Hebrew phrase, "i?) *?"no, to which the 
 Greek n e/Aot koL aol corresponds, appears elsewhere as an expression of 
 gentle blame, e.g. 2 Sam. xvi. 10 ; ^^ or that with the entrance of Jesus on his 
 special office his relation to his mother as regarded his actions was dis- 
 solved : 2^ it nevertheless remains undeniable, that it was fitting for Jesus to 
 be modestly apprised of opportunities for the exercise of his miraculous 
 power, and if one who pointed out to him a case of disease and added an 
 entreaty for help, did not deserve reprehension, as little and even less did 
 Mary, when she brought to his knowledge a want which had arisen, with a 
 merely implied entreaty for assistance. The case would have been different 
 had Jesus considered the occasion not adapted, or even unworthy to have a 
 miracle connected with it ; he might then have repelled with severity the 
 implied summons, as an incitement to a false use of miraculous power (in- 
 stanced in the history of the temptation) ; as, on the contrary, he immediately 
 after showed by his actions that he held the occasion worthy of a miracle, it 
 is absolutely incomprehensible how he could blame his mother for her inform- 
 ation, which perhaps only came to him a few moments too soon.^' 
 
 Here again it has been attempted to escape from the numerous difficulties 
 of the supranatural view, by a natural interpretation of the history. The 
 commentators who advance this explanation set out from the fact, that it was 
 the custom among the Jews to make presents of oil or wine at marriage 
 feasts. Now Jesus, it is said, having brought with him five new disciples as 
 uninvited guests, might foresee a deficiency of wine, and wished out of 
 pleasantry to present his gift in an unexpected and mysterious manner. The 
 80^0 (glory) which he manifested by this proceeding, is said to be merely his 
 humanity, which in the proper place did not disdain to pass a jest ; the b-iVtis, 
 {faith) which he thereby excited in his disciples, was a joyful adherence to a 
 man who exhibited none of the oppressive severity which had been antici- 
 pated in the Messiah. Mary was aware of her son's project, and warned him 
 when it appeared to her time to put it in execution ; but he reminded her 
 playfully not to spoil his jest by over-haste. His causing water to be drawn, 
 seems to have belonged to the playful deception which he intended ; that all 
 at once wine was found in the vessels instead of water, and that this was re- 
 garded as a miraculous metamorphosis, might easily happen at a late hour of 
 the night, when there had already been considerable drinking ; lastly, that 
 Jesus did not enlighten the wedding party as to the true state of the case, 
 was the natural consequence of his wish not himself to dissipate the delusion 
 which he had playfully caused."* For the rest, how the plan was effected, by 
 what arratigements on the part of Jesus the wine was conveyed in the place 
 of the water, this, Paulus thinks, is not now to be ascertained ; it is enough 
 for us to know that all happened naturally. A^s however, according to the 
 opinion of this ej^positor, the Evangelist was aware, in a general manner, that 
 the whole occurrence was natural, why has he given us no intimation to that 
 effect ? Did he wish to prepare for the reader the same surprise that Jesus 
 had prepared for the spectators ? still he must afterwards have solved the 
 enigma, if he did not intend the delusion to be permanent. Above all, he 
 ought not to have used the misleading expression, that Jesus by this act 
 manifested forth his glory (t^v So'fav avTov, v. 11), which, in the phraseology 
 of this gospel, qan only mean his superior dignity ; he ought not to have 
 called the mcident a sign (a-rniaov), by which something supernatural is im- 
 
 '1 Flatt, ut sup. s. 90 ; Tholuck, in loc. 
 
 '^ Olshausen, in loc. 
 
 ^' Comp. also the Probabilia, p. 41 f. 
 
 " Paulus, Comm. 4, s. 150 ff. ; L. J. i, d, s. 169 ff. ; Naturliche Gesch. 2, s. 61 ff. 
 
MIRACLES — TURNING WATER INTO WINE. 525 
 
 plied ; lastly, he ought not, by the expression, the water that was made wine 
 (to ^8(op oTi'oi' •ypyevrj/AEVoi', v. 9), and Still less by the subsequent designation 
 of Cana as the place where he made the water wine {oirov iiroirjo-ev vSwp oTvov), 
 to have occasioned the impression, that he approved the miraculous con- 
 ception of the event.*5 xhe author of the Natural History sought to elude 
 these difficulties by the admission, that the narrator himself, John, regarded 
 the event as a miracle, and meant to describe it as such. Not to mention, 
 however, the unworthy manner in which he explains this error on the part of 
 the Evangelist,^^ it is not easy to conceive of Jesus that he should have kept 
 his disciples in the same delusion as the rest of the guests, and not have 
 given to them at least an explanation concerning the real course of the event. 
 It would therefore be necessary to suppose that the narrator of this event was 
 not one of the disciples of Jesus : a supposition which goes beyond the sphere 
 of this system of interpretation. But even admitting that the narrator him- 
 self, whoever he may have been, was included in the same deception with 
 those who regarded the affair as a miracle, in which case his mode of repre- 
 sentation and the expressions which he uses would be accounted for ; still the 
 procedure of Jesus, and his mode of acting, are all the more inconceivable, if 
 no real miracle were on foot. Why did he with refined assiduity arrange the 
 presentation of the wine, so that it might appear to be a miraculous gift ? 
 Why, in particular, did he cause the vessels in which he intended forthwith 
 to present the wine, to be filled beforehand with water, the necessary removal 
 of which could only be a hindrance to the secret execution of his plan ? 
 unless indeed it be supposed, with Woolston, that he merely imparted to the 
 water the taste of wine, by pouring into it some liquor. Thus there is a 
 double difficulty ; on the one hand, that of imagining how the wine could be 
 introduced into the vessels already filled with water ; on the other, that of 
 freeing Jesus from the suspicion of having wished to create the appearance of 
 a miraculous transmutation of the water. It may have been the perception 
 of these difficulties which induced the author of the Natural History entirely 
 to sever the connexion between the water which was poured in, and the wine 
 which subsequently appeared, by the supposition that Jesus had caused the 
 water to be fetched, because there was a deficiency of this also, and Jesus 
 wished to recommend the beneficial practice of washing before and after 
 meals, but that he afterwards caused the wine to be brought out of an ad- 
 joining room where he had placed it : — a conception of the matter which 
 requires us either to suppose the intoxication of all the guests, and especially 
 of the narrator, as so considerable, that they mistook the wine brought out of 
 the adjoining room, for wine drawn out of the water vessels ; or else that the 
 deceptive arrangements of Jesus were contrived with very great art, which is 
 inconsistent with the straightforwardness of character elsewhere ascribed to 
 him. 
 
 In this dilemma between the supranatural and the natural interpretations, 
 of which, in this case again, the one is as insufficient as the other, we should 
 be reduced, with one of the most recent commentators on the fourth gospel, 
 to wait "until it pleased God, by further developments of judicious Christian 
 reflection, to evolve a solution of the enigma to the general satisfaction ; " ^7 
 did we not discern an outlet in the fact, that the history in question is found 
 in John's gospel alone. Single in its kind as this miracle is, if it were also 
 the first performed by Jesus, it must, even if all the twelve were not then with 
 Jesus, have yet been known to them all ; and even if among the rest of the 
 
 25 Compare on this point, Flatt, ut sup. s. 77 ff. and Liicke, in loc. 
 2« He makes the word iMcBiaKiadat, v. 10, refer to John also. 
 W Lucke, s. 407. 
 
526 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § IO3. 
 
 Evangelists there were no apostle, still it must have passed into the general 
 Christian tradiction, and from thence into the synoptical memoirs : conse- 
 quently, as John alone has it, the supposition that it arose in a region of 
 tradition unknown to the synoptists, seems easier than the alternative, that 
 it so early disappeared out of that from which they drew ; the only question 
 is, whether we are in a condition to show how such a legend could arise with- 
 out historical grounds. Kaiser points for this purpose to the extravagant 
 spirit of the oriental legend, which has ever been so fertile in metamorphoses : 
 but this source is so wide and indefinite, that Kaiser finds it necessary also to 
 suppose a real jest on the part of Jesus, ^^ and thus remains uneasily suspended 
 between the mythical and the natural explanations, a position which cannot 
 be escaped from, until there can be produced points of mythical connexion 
 and origin more definite and exact. Now in the present case we need halt 
 neither at the character of eastern legend in general, nor at metamorphoses in 
 general, since transmutations of this particular element of water are to be 
 found within the narrower circle of the ancient Hebrew history. Besides 
 some narratives of Moses procuring for the Israelites water out of the flinty 
 rock in the wilderness (Exod. xvii. i ff. ; Num. xx. i ff.) — a bestowal of water 
 whiich, after being repeated in a modified manner in the history of Samson 
 (Judges, XV. 18 f,), was made a feature in the messianic expectations ; ^'— -the 
 first transmutation of water ascribed to Moses, is the turning of all the water 
 in Egypt into blood, which is enumerated among the so-called plagues 
 (Exod. vii. 17 ff.). Together with this mutatio in deterius, there is in the 
 history of Moses a mutatio in melitts, also effected in water, for he made bitter 
 water sweet, under the direction of Jehovah (Exod. xiv. 23 ff.^") j as at a later 
 era, Elisha also is said to have made unhealthy water good and innoxious 
 (2 Kings ii. 19 ff.^*).. As, according to the rabbinical passage quoted, the 
 bestowal of water, so also, according to this narrative in John, the transmuta- 
 tion of water appears to have been transferred from Moses and the pro- 
 phets to the Messiah, with such modifications, however, as lay in the 
 nature of the case. If namely, on the one hand, a change of water for the 
 worse, like that Mosaic transmutation into blood — if a miracle of this retribu- 
 tive kind might not seem well suited to the mild spirit of the Messiah as 
 recognised in Jesus : so on the other hand, such a change for the better as, 
 like the removal of bitterness or noxiousness, did not go beyond the species of 
 water, and did not, like the change into blood, alter the substance of the 
 water itself, might appear insufficient for the Messiah ; if then the two con- 
 ditions be united, a change of water for the better, which should at the same 
 time be a specific alteration of its substance, must almost of necessity be a 
 change into wine. Now this is narrated by John, in a manner not indeed in 
 accordance with reality, but which must be held all the more in accordance 
 with the spirit of his gospel. For the harshness of Jesus towards his mother 
 is, historically considered, incredible ; but it is entirely in the spirit of the 
 fourth gospel, to place in relief the exaltation of Jesus as the divine Logos by 
 such demeanour towards suppliants (as in John iv. 48), and even towards his 
 mother. 82 Equally in the spirit of this gospel is it also, to exhibit the firm 
 
 "8 Bibl. Theol. i, s. 200. 
 
 '" In the passages cited Vol. I. § 14, out of Midrasch Koheleth, it is said among otlier 
 things: G oil primus— ascendere feeit puteum : sic quoque Gael pcstremus ascendere faciet 
 aquas, etc. 
 
 so A natural explanation of this miracle is given by Josephus in a manner worthy of notice, 
 Antiq. iii. I, 2. 
 
 »' Wemay also remind the reader of the transmutation of water into oil, which Eusebius 
 (H. E. vi. g.) narrates of a Christian bishop. 
 
 ^^ Compare the Probabilia, ut sup. 
 
MIRACLES — CURSING THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 527 
 
 faith which Mary maintains notwithstanding the negative answer of Jesus, by- 
 making her give the direction to the servants above considered, as if she had 
 a preconception even of the manner in which Jesus would perform his miracle, 
 a preconception which is historically impossible."* 
 
 § 104. 
 
 JKSUS CURSES A BARREN FIG-TREE. 
 
 The anecdote of the fig-tree which Jesus caused to wither by his word, 
 because when he was hungry he found no fruit on it, is peculiar to the two 
 first gospels (Matt. xxi. 18 ff. ; Mark xi. 12 ff.), but is narrated by them with 
 divergencies which must affect our view of the fact. One of these divergencies 
 of Mark from Matthew, appears so favourable to the natural explanation, that, 
 chiefly in consideration of it, a tendency towards the natural view of the 
 miracles of Jesus has been of late ascribed to this Evangelist; and for the sake 
 of this one favourable divergency, he has been defended in relation to the 
 other rather inconvenient one, which is found in the narrative before us. 
 
 If we were restricted to the manner in which the first Evangelist states the 
 consequence of the curse of Jesus : and immediately the fi%-tree withered away 
 KoL iitipavdr] Trapaxprjfji.a 7] (rvic^, it would be difficult here to carry out a natural 
 explanation ; for even the forced interpretation of Paulus, which makes the 
 word irapaxprifiia (immediately') only exclude further human accession to the 
 fact, and not a longer space of time, rests only on an unwarranted transference 
 of Mark's particulars into the narrative of Matthew. In Mark, Jesus curses 
 the fig-tree on the morning after His entrance into Jerusalem, and not till the 
 following morning the disciples remark, in passing, that the tree is withered. 
 Through this interim, which Mark leaves open between the declaration of 
 Jesus and the withering of the tree, the natural explanation of the whole 
 narrative insinuates itself, taking its stand on the possibility, that in this 
 interval the tree might have withered from natural causes. Accordingly, JesDS 
 is supposed to have remarked in the tree, besides the lack of fruit, a condition 
 from which he prognosticated that it would soon wither away, and to have 
 uttered this prediction in the words : No one will ever again gather fruit from 
 thee. The heat of the day having realized the prediction of Jesus with un- 
 expected rapidity, and the disciples remarking this the next morning, they 
 then first connected this result with the words of Jesus on the previous morn- 
 ing, and began to regard them as a curse : an interpretation which, indeed, 
 Jesus does not confirm, but impresses on the disciples, that if they have only 
 some self-reliance, .they will be able, not only to predict such physiologically 
 evident results, but also to know and effect things far more difficult.^ But 
 even admitting Mark's statement to be the correct one, the natural explan- 
 
 .33 pe Wette thinks the analogies adduced from the Old Testament too remote ; according 
 to him, the metamorphosis of wine into water by Bacchus, instanced by Wetstein, would be 
 nearer to the subject, and not far from the region of Greek thought, out of which the gospel 
 of John arose. The most analogous mythical derivation of the narrative would be to regard 
 this supply of wine as the counterpart to the supply of bread, and both as corresponding to 
 the bread and wine in the last supper. But, he continues, the mythical view is opposed, i, 
 by the not yet overthrown authenticity of the fourth gospel ; 2, by the fact that the narrative 
 bears less of a legendary than a subjective impress, by the obscurity that rests upon it, and 
 its want of one presiding idea, together- with the abundance of practical ideas worthy of Jesus 
 which it embodies. By these observations De Wette seems to intimate his approval of a 
 natural explanation, built on the self-deception of John ; an explanation which Is encumbered 
 with the difficulties above noticed. 
 I Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 157 ff. 
 
528 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § IO4. 
 
 ation still remains impossible. For the words of Jesus in Mark (v. 14) : 
 lirfKeri. e/c a-ov eis tov alCiva /iiyScis Kapirov <i>a.yoi. No man eat fruit of thee here- 
 after for ever, if they had been meant to imply a mere conjecture as to what 
 would probably happen, must necessarily have had a potential signification 
 given to them by the" addition of av ; and in the expression of Matthew : 
 //.TjKm Ik o-oS KapTTos yei/iyrat, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever, the 
 command is not to be mistaken, although Paulus would only find in this also 
 the expression of a possibility. Moreover the circumstance that Jesus 
 addresses the tree itself, as also the solemn d^Tov all!)va,for ever, which he 
 adds, speaks against the idea of a mere prediction, and in favour of a curse ; 
 , Paulus perceives this fully, and hence with unwarrantable violence he interprets 
 the words Xiya airy he saith to it, as if they introduced a saying^ merely in 
 reference to the tree, while he depreciates the expression eis tov auoya, by the 
 translation : in time to come. But even if we grant that the Evangelists, owing 
 to their erroneous conception of the incident, may have somewhat altered the 
 words of Jesus, and that he in reality only prognosticated the withering of the 
 tree ; still, when the prediction was fulfilled, Jesus did nevertheless ascribe 
 the result to his own supernatural influence. For in speaking of what he has 
 done in relation to the fig-tree, he uses the verb iroielv (v. 21 Matt.); which 
 cannot except by a forced interpretation, be referred to a. mere prediction. 
 But more than this, he compares what he has done in relation to the fig-tree, 
 with the removal of mountains ; and hence, as this, according to every 
 , possible interpretation, is an act of causation, so the other must be regarded 
 as an influence on the tree. In any case, when Peter spoke of the fig-tree as 
 having been cursed by Jesus (v. 21 Mark), either the latter must have contra- 
 dicted the construction thus put on his words, or his silence must have 
 implied his acquiescence. If then Jesus in the issue ascribes the withering 
 of the tree to his influence, he either by his address to it designed to produce 
 an effect, or he ambitiously misused the accidental result for the sake of 
 deluding his disciples ; a dilemma, in which the words of Jesus, as they are 
 given by the Evangelists, decidedly direct us to the former alternative. 
 
 Thus we are inexorably thrown back from the naturalistic attempt at an 
 explanation, to the conception of the supranaturalists, pre-eminently difficult 
 as this is in the history before us. We pass over what might be said against 
 the physical possibility of such an influence as is there presupposed ; not, 
 indeed, because, with Hase, we could comprehend it through the medium 
 of natural magic,^ but because another difficulty beforehand excludes the 
 inquiry, and does not allow us to come to the consideration of the physical 
 possibility. This decisive difficulty relates to the moral possibility of such 
 an act on the part of Jesus. The miracle he here performs is of a punitive 
 character. Another example of the kind is not found in the canonical 
 accounts of the life of Jesus ; the apocryphal gospels alone, as has been above 
 remarked, are full of such miracles. In one of the synoptical gospels tKere 
 is, on the contrary, a passage often quoted already (Luke ix. 55 f.), in which 
 it is declared, as the profound conviction of Jesus, that the employment of 
 miraculous power in order to execute punishment or to take vengeance, is 
 contrary to the spirit of his vocation ; and the same sentiment is attributed 
 to Jesus by the Evangelist, when he applies to him the words of Isaiah : He 
 shall not break a bruised reed, etc. (Matt. xii. 20). Agreeably to this principle, 
 and to his prevalent mode of action, Jesus must rather have given new life to 
 a withered tree, than have made a green one wither ; and in order to compre- 
 hend his conduct on this occasion, we must be able to show reasons which 
 
 » L. J. § 128. 
 
MIRACLES — CURSING THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 529 
 
 he might possibly have had, for departing in this instance from the above 
 prmciple, which has no mark of unauthenticity. The occasion on which he 
 enunciated that principle was when, on the refusal of a Samaritan village to 
 exercise hospitality towards Jesus and his disciples, the sons of Zebedee asked 
 f pr- u^^"^ 'hey should not rain down fire on the village, after the example 
 °v,- u u ■ -^^^"^ replied by reminding them of the nature of the spirit to 
 which they belonged, a spirit with which so destructive an act was incompat- 
 ible. In our present case Jesus had not to deal with men who had treated 
 him with injustice, but with a tree which he happened not to find in the 
 desired state. Now, there is here no special reason for departing from the 
 above rule; on the contrary, the chief reason which in the first case might 
 possibly have moved Jesus to determine on a judicial miracle, is not present 
 in the second. The moral end of punishment, namely, to bring the punished 
 person to a conviction and acknowledgment of his error, can have no 
 existence in relation to a tree ; and even punishment in the light of retribution 
 IS out of the question when we are treating of natural objects destitute of 
 volition.^ For one to be irritated against an inanimate object, which does 
 not happen to be found just in the desired state, is with reason pronounced 
 to be a proof of an uncultivated mind ; to carry such indignation to the de- 
 struction of the object is regarded as barbarous, and unworthy of a reasonable 
 being j and hence Woolston is not wrong in maintaining, that in any other 
 person than Jesus, such an act would be severely blamed.* It is true that 
 when a natural object is intrinsically and habitually defective, it may very 
 well happen, that it may be removed out of the way, in order to put a better 
 in its place ; a measure, however, for which, in every case, only the owner has 
 the adequate motive and authority (comp. Luke xiii. 7). But that this tree, 
 because just, at that time it presented no fruit, would not have borne any in 
 succeeding years, was by no means self-evident : — nay, the contrary is implied 
 in the narrative, since the form in which the curse of Jesus is expressed, that 
 fruit shall never more grow on the tree, presupposes, that without this curse 
 the tree might yet have been fruitful. 
 
 Thus the evil condition of the tree was not habitual but temporary ; still 
 further, if we follow Mark, it was not even objective, or existing intrinsically 
 in the tree, but purely subjective, that is, a result of the accidental relation of 
 the tree to the momentary wish and want of Jesus. For according tO' an 
 addition which forms the second feature pecuhar to Mark in this narrative, 
 it was not then the time of figs (v. 13) ; it was not therefore a defect, but, on 
 the contrary, quite in due order, that this tree, as well as others, had no figs 
 on it, and Jesus (in whom it is already enough to excite surprise that he ex- 
 pected to find figs on the tree so out of season) might at least have reflected, 
 when he found none, on the groundlessness of his expectation, and have 
 forborne so wholly unjust an act as the cursing of the tree. Even some of the 
 fathers stumbled at this addition of Mark's and felt that it rendered the con- 
 ■ duct of Jesus enigmatical ; s and to descend to later times, Woolston's 
 
 ' Augustin. de verbis Domini in ev. sec. Joann., sermo 44 : Quid arbor fecerat, fructum 
 non afferendo ? qua culpa arboris infacunditas ? - 
 
 * Disc. 4. 
 
 ' Orig. Comm. in Matt., Tom. xvi. 29 : '0 5k MipKos dvaypdfas tA xari, rbv rbvov, 
 i,ireiJ,<l)alv6v n is irpos to pijTov irpoaidiiKe, iroi.ijaas, Sti, — 01) y&p ^k Kaipds ffiiKav. — EifTroi yi,p 
 hv Tts" el fi^ 6 Katpbs a'lfKtav ^v, ttws ^\6ev 6 'I. ws eiip^aujv ti^v aOry, Kal ttcDs diKalus elwev 
 airy' /ajxin els rbv aldva ck ffoO fiijBels Kapirbv (pdyu ; comp. Augustin ut sup. Mafk, in re- 
 lating this event, adds something which seems not to tally well with his statement, when he 
 observes that it was not the season for figs. It might be urged : if it was not the season for 
 figs, why should Jesus go and look for fruit on the tree, and how could he, with justite, say 
 to it. Let no man eat fruit of thee for ever ? 
 
 L L 
 
530 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 104. 
 
 ridicule is not unfounded, when he says that if a Kentish countryman were to 
 seek for fruit in his garden in spring, and were to cut down the trees which 
 had none, he would be a common laughing-stock. Expositors have attempted 
 to free themselves from the difificulty which this addition introduces, by a 
 motley series of conjectures and interpretations. One the one hand, the 
 wish that the perplexing words did not stand in the text, has been turned 
 into the hypothesis that they may probably be a subsequent gloss.® On the 
 other hand, as, if an addition of this kind must stand there, the contrary 
 statement, namely, that it was then the time of figs, were rather to be desired, in 
 order to render intelligible the expectation of Jesus, and his displeasure when 
 he found it deceived ; it has been attempted in various ways to remove the 
 negative out of the proposition. One expedient is altogether violent, ov 
 being read instead of ov, a point inserted after rjv, and a second rjv supplied 
 after (tvkwv, so that the translation runs thus : udi enim turn versabatur 
 (Jesus), tempus ficuum erat ; ^ another expedient, the transformation of the 
 sentence into an interrogatory one, nonne enim, etc., is absurd.^ A third ex- 
 pedient is to understand the words Katpos ctvkodv as implying the time of the fig- 
 gathering, and thus to take Mark's addition as a statement that the figs were 
 not yet gathered, i.e. were still on the trees,^ in support of which interpreta- 
 tion, appeal is made to the phrase Katpos tSv Kapitwi (Matt. xxi. 34). But 
 this expression strictly refers only to the antecedent of the harvest, the exist- 
 ence of the fruits in the fields or on the trees ; when it stands in an affirmative 
 proposition, it can only- be understood as referring to the consequent, namely, 
 the possible gathering of the fruit, in so far as it also includes the antecedent, 
 the existence of the fruits in the field : hence eo-ti xaipos Kapirwv can only mean 
 thus much : the (ripe) fruits stand in the fields, and are therefore ready to be 
 gathered. In like manner, when the above expression stands in a negative 
 proposition, the antecedent, the existence of the fruits in the field, on the 
 trees, etc., is primarily denied, that of the consequent only secondarily and 
 by implication ; thus ovk &tti Kaipoi trvKiav, means : the figs are not on the 
 trees, and therefore not ready to be gathered ; by no means the reverse : they 
 are not yet gathered, and therefore are still on the trees. But this unex- 
 ampled figure of speech; by which, while according to the words the antece- 
 dent is denied, according to the sense only the consequent is denied, and the 
 antecedent aifirmed, is not all which the above explanation entails upon us ; 
 it also requires the admission of another figure which is sometimes called 
 synchisis, sometimes hyperbaton. For, as a statement that the figs were 
 then still on the trees, the addition in question does not show the reason why 
 Jesus found none on that tree, but why he expected the contrary ; it ought 
 therefore, say the advocates of this explanation, to stand, not after he found 
 nothing but leaves, but after he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon ; 
 a transposition, however, which only proves that this whole explanation runs 
 counter to the text. Convinced, on the one hand, that the addition of Mark 
 denies the prevalence of circumstances favourable to the existence of figs 
 on that tree, but, on the other hand, still labouring to justify the expectation 
 of Jesus, other expositors have sought to give to that negation, instead of the 
 general sense, that it was not the right season of the year for figs, a fact of 
 which Jesus must unavoidably have been aware, the particular sense, that 
 special circumstances only not necessarily known to Jesus, hindered the 
 fruitfulness of the tree. It would have been a hindrance altogether special, 
 
 * Toupii emendd. in Suidam, I, p. 330 f. 
 
 ' Heinsius and others, ap. Fritzsche, in loc. 
 ' Maji Obs., ib. 
 
 * Dahme, in Henke's n. Magazin, 2. Bd. 2. Heft, s. 252. Kuinbl, in Marc, p. 150 f. 
 
MIRACLES— CURSING THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 531 
 
 if the soil in which the tree was rooted had been an unfruitful one ; hence, 
 according to some, the words Katpos a-vK(Dv actually signify a soil favourable to 
 figsP Others with more regard to the verbal meaning of Katpos, adhere it is 
 true to the interpretation of it as favourable time, but instead of understanding 
 the statement of Mark universally, as referring to a regular, annual season, in 
 which figs were not to be obtained, they maintain it to mean that that par- 
 ticular year was from some incidental causes unfavourable to figs.i* But the 
 immediate signification of /caipos is the right, in opposition to the wrong 
 season, not a favourable season as opposed to an unfavourable one. Now, 
 when any one, even in an unproductive year, seeks for fruits at the time in 
 which they are wont to be ripe, it cannot be- said that it is the wrong season 
 for fruit ; on the contrary, the idea of a bad year might be at once conveyed 
 by the statement, that when the time for fruit came, ore ^X^ev 5 Kaipos tusv 
 KafyTTwv, there was none to be found. In any case, if the whole course of the 
 year were unfavourable to figs, a fruit so abundant in Palestine, Jesus must 
 almost as necessarily have known this as that it was the wrong season ; so that 
 the enigma remains, how Jesus could be so indignant that the tree was in a 
 condition which, owing to circumstances known to him, was inevitable. 
 
 But let us orily remember who it is to whom we owe that addition. It is 
 Mark, who, in his efforts after the explanatory and the picturesque, so fre- 
 quently draws on his own imagination ; and in doing this, as it has been long 
 ago perceived, and as we also have had sufficient opportunities of observing 
 on our way, he does not always go to work in the most considerate manner. 
 Thus, here, he is arrested by the first striking particular that presents itself, 
 namely, that the tree was without fruit, and hastens to furnish the explana- 
 tion, that it was not the time for figs, not observing that while he accounts 
 physically for the barrenness of the tree, he makes the conduct of Jesus 
 morally inexplicable. Again, the above-mentioned divergency from Matthew 
 in relation to the time within which the tree withered, far from evincing more 
 authentic information,^^ or a tendency to the natural explanation of the 
 marvellous on the part of Mark, is only another product of the same drama- 
 tising effort as that which gave birth to the above addition. The idea of a 
 tree suddenly withering at a word, is difficult for the imagination perfectly to 
 fashion ; whereas it cannot be called a bad dramatic contrivance, to lay the 
 process of withering behind the scenes, and to make the result be first 
 noticed by the subsequent passers by. For the rest, in the assertion that it 
 was then (a few days before Easter) no time for figs, Mark is so far right, as 
 it regards the conditions of climate in Palestine, that at so early a time of the 
 year the new figs of the season were not yet ripe, for the early fig or boccore 
 is not ripe until the middle or towards the end of June ; while the proper 
 fig, the kermus, ripens only in the month of August. On the other hand, 
 there might about Easter still be met with here and there, hanging on the 
 tree, the third fruit of the fig-tree, the late kermus, which had remained from 
 the previous autumn, and through the winter : ^^ as we read in Josephus that 
 a part of Palestine (the shores of the Galilean sea, more fruitful, certainly, 
 than the country around Jerusalem, where the history in question occurred, 
 produces figs uninterruptedly during ten months of the year, &vkov 8eKa ft,rj(rlv 
 aSiaXevTTTios )(ppvjya.^*' 
 
 1" Vid. Kuinol, in loc. 
 
 1' Paulus, exeg. Handb., 3, a, s. 175 ; Olshausen, b, Coram, i, s. 782. 
 •2 As Sieffert thinks, Ueber den Urspr., s. 113 ff. Compare my reviews, in the Charak- 
 teristiken und Kritiken, s. 272. 
 
 18 Vid. Paulus, ut sup. s. 168 f. ; Winer, b. Realw. d. A. Feigenbaum. 
 " Bell. Jud. III. A. 8. 
 
532 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § 104. 
 
 But even when we have thus set aside this perplexing addition of Mark's, 
 that the tree was not really defective, but only appeared so to Jesus ip con- 
 sequence of an erroneous expectation : there still subsists, even according to 
 Matthew, the incongruity that Jesus appears to have destroyed a natural 
 object on account of a deficiency which might possibly be merely tem- 
 porary. He cannot have been prompted to this by economical considera- 
 tions, since he was not the owner of the tree ; still less can he have been 
 actuated by moral views, in relation to an inanimate object of nature ; hence 
 the expedient has been adopted of substituting the disciples as the proper 
 object on which Jesus here intended to act, and of regarding the tree, and 
 what Jesus does to it, as a mere means to his ultimate design. This is the 
 symbolical interpretation, by which first the fathers of the church, and of 
 late the majority of orthodox theologians among the moderns, have thought 
 to free Jesus from the charge of an unsuitable action. According to them, 
 anger towards the tree which presented nothing to appease his hunger, was 
 not the feeling of Jesus, in performing this action ; his object not simply the 
 extermination of the unfruitful plant : on the contrary, he judiciously availed 
 himself of the occasion of finding a barren tree, in order to impress a truth 
 on his disciples more vividly and indelibly than by words. This truth may 
 either be conceived under a special form, namely, that the Jewish nation 
 which persisted in rendering no pleasing fruit to God and to the Messiah, 
 would be destroyed ; or under the general form, that every one who was as 
 destitute of good works as this tree was of fruit, had to look forward to a 
 similar condemnation. 1* Other commentators however with reason maintain, 
 that if Jesus had had such an end in view in the action, he must in some 
 way have explained himself on the subject ; for if an elucidation was necessary 
 when he delivered a parable, it was the more indispensable when he per- 
 formed a symbolical action, in proportion as this, without such an indica- 
 tion of an object lying beyond itself, was more likely to be mistaken for an 
 object in itself ; ^^ it is true that, here as well as elsewhere, it might be supposed, 
 that Jesus probably enlarged on what he had done, for the instruction of his 
 disciples, but that the narrators, content with the miracle, have omitted the 
 illustrative discourse. If however Jesus gave ah interpretation of his act in the 
 alleged symbolical sense, the Evangelists have not merely been silent con- 
 cerning this discourse, but have inserted a false one in its place ; for they 
 represent Jesus, after his procedure with respect to the tree, not as being 
 silent, but as giving, in answer to an expression of astonishment on the part 
 of his disciples, an explanation which is not the above symbolical one, but a 
 different, nay, an opposite one. For when Jesus says to them that they need not 
 wonder at the withering of the fig-tree, since with only a little faith they will 
 be able to effect yet greater things, he lays the chief stress on his agency in 
 the matter, not on the condition and the fate of the tree as a symbol : there- 
 fore, if his design turned upon the latter, he would have spoken to his dis- 
 ciples so as to contravene that design ; or rather, if he so spoke, that cannot 
 have been his design. For the same reason, falls also Sieffert's totally unsup- 
 ported hypothesis, that Jesus, not indeed after, but before that act, when on 
 the way to the fig-tree, had held a conversation with his disciples on the 
 actual condition and future lot of the Jewish nation, and that tQ this con- 
 versation the symbolical cursing of the tree was a mere key-stone, which 
 explained itself : for all comprehension of the act in question which that 
 
 '5 Ullman, iiber die Unsiindlichkeit Jesu, in his Studien, i, s. 50 ; Sieffert, ut sup. s. 
 IIS ff. ; Olshausen, i, s. 783 f. ; Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 378. 
 '^ Paulus, ut sup. s. 170; Hase, L. J. § 128 ; also Sieffert, utsup. 
 
MIRACLES — CURSING THE BARREN FIG-TREE. .533 
 
 introduction might have facilitated, must, especially in that age when there was 
 so strong a bias towards the miraculous, have been again obliterated by the 
 subsequent declaration of Jesus, which regarded only the miraculous side of 
 the fact. Hence UUmann has judged rightly in preferring to the symbolical 
 interpretation, although he considers it admissible, another which had pre- 
 viously been advanced : ^^ namely, that Jesus by this miracle intended to 
 give his followers a new proof of his perfect power, in order to strengthen 
 their confidence in him under the approaching perils. Or rather, as a special 
 reference to coming trial is nowhere exhibited, and as the words of Jesus 
 contain nothing which he had not already said at an earlier period 
 (Matt. xvii. 20; Luke xvii. 6), Fritzsche is more correct in expressing the 
 view of the Evangelists quite generally, thus ; Jesus used his displeasure at 
 the unfruitfulness of the tree, as an occasion for performing a miracle, the 
 object of which was merely the general one of all his miracles, namely to 
 attest his Messiahship.'^* Hence Euthymius speaks entirely in the spirit of 
 the narrators, as described by Fritzsche,!^ when he forbids all investigation 
 into the special end of the action, and exhorts the reader only to look at it 
 in general as a miracle.^" But it by no means follows from hence that we 
 too should refrain from all reflection on the subject, and believingly receive 
 the miracle without further question ; on the contrary, we cannot avoid 
 observing, that the particular miracle which we have now before us, does not 
 admit of being explained as a real act of Jesus, either upon the general 
 ground of performing miracles, or from any peculiar object or motive what- 
 ever. Far from this, it is in every respect opposed both to his theory and his 
 prevailing practice, and on this account, even apart from the question of its 
 physical possibility, must be pronounced more decidedly, than any other, to 
 be such a miracle as Jesus cannot really have performed. 
 
 It is incumbent on us, however, to adduce positive proof of the existence 
 of such causes as, even without historical foundation, might give rise to a 
 narrative of this kind. Now in our usual source, the Old Testament, we do, 
 indeed, find many figurative discourses and narratives about trees, and fig- 
 trees in particular ; but none which has so specific an affinity to our narrative, 
 that we could say the latter is an imitation of it. But we need not search 
 long in the New Testament, before we find, first in the mouth of the Baptist 
 (Matt. iii. 10), then in that of Jesus (vii. 19), the apothegm of the tree, 
 which, becaiise it bears no good fruit, is cut down and cast into the fire ; 
 and further on (Luke xiii. 6 ff.) this theme is dilated into the fictitious history 
 of a, man who for three years in vain seeks for fruit on a fig-tree in his vine- 
 yard, and on this account determines to cut it down, but that the gardener 
 intercedes for another year's respite. It was already an idea of some fathers 
 of the church, that the cursing of the fig-tree was only the parable of the 
 barren fig-tree carried out into action.^* It is true that they held this opinion 
 in the sense of the explanation before cited, namely, that Jesus himself, as he 
 had previously exhibited the actual condition and the approaching catastrophe 
 
 " Heydenreich, in the Theol. Nachrichten, 1814, Mai., s. 121 ff. 
 
 '« Comm. in Matt. p. 637. 
 
 " Comm. , in Marc. p. 481 : Male — w. dd. in eo haserunt, quod Jesus sine ratione innocentem 
 ficum aridam reddidisse videretur, mirisque argutiis usi sunt, ut aliquod hujus rei consilium 
 fuisse ostenderent. Nimirum apostoli, evangelists et omneg primi temporis Christiani, qua 
 erant ingeniorum simplicitate, quid quantumque Jesus portentose fecisse diceretur, curarunt 
 tantummodo, non quod Jesu in edendo miraculo consilium fuerit., subtiliter et argute qucesi- 
 
 verunt. 
 
 2" Mi) ixpipoXoyoS Siari Teniulip^iu t6 (fnrrbv, ipalriov 6v dXX4 ynii/o;/ Spa t6 Bav/M, Kcd 
 SatJ/iofe rbv dav/mrmpySv. 
 
 '^ Ambroslus, Comm. in Luc, in loc. Neander adopts this opinion, ut sup. 
 
'534 PART II. CHAPTER IX. § IO4. 
 
 of the Jewish people in a figurative discourse, intended on the occasion in 
 question to represent them by a symbolical action ; which, as we have seen, 
 is inconceivable. Nevertheless, we cannot help conjecturing, that we have 
 before us one and the same theme under three different modifications : first, 
 in the most concentrated form, as an apothegm ; then expanded into a 
 parable ; and lastly realized as a history. But we do not suppose that what 
 Jesus twice described in words, he at length represented by an action ; in 
 our opinion, it was tradition which converted what it met with as an apothegm 
 and a parable into a real incident. That in the real history the end of the 
 tree is somewhat different from that threatened in the apothegm and parable, 
 namely, withering instead of being cut down, need not amount to a difficulty. 
 For had the parable once become a real history, with Jesus for its subject, 
 and consequently its whole didactic and symbolical significance passed into 
 the external act, then must this, if it were to have any weight and interest, 
 take the form of a miracle, and the natural destruction of the tree by means 
 of the axe must be transformed into an immediate withering on the word of 
 Jesus. It is true that there seems to be the very same objection to this con- 
 ception of the narrative which allows its inmost kernel to be symbolical, as to 
 the one above considered ; namely, that it is contravened by the words of 
 Jesus which are appended to the narrative. But on our view of the gospel 
 histories we are warranted to say, that with the transformation of the parable 
 into a history, its original sense also was lost, and as the miracle began to be 
 regarded as constituting the pith of the matter, that discourse on miraculous 
 power and faith, was erroneously annexed to it. Even the particular cir- 
 cumstance that led to the selection of the saying about the removal of the 
 mountain for association with the narrative of the fig-tree, may be shown 
 with probability. The power of faith, which is here represented by an 
 effectual command to a mountain : Be thou removed and be thou cast into 
 the sea, is elsewhere (Luke xvii. 6) symbolized by an equally effectual com- 
 mand to a species of fig-tree (o-v/ca/^ivos) : Be thou plucked up by the root, 
 and be thou planted in the sea. Hence the cursing of the fig-tree, so soon 
 as its withering was conceived to be an effect of the miraculous power of 
 Jesus, brought to mind the tree or the mountain which was to be transported 
 by the miraculous power of faith, and this saying became appended to that 
 fact. Thus, in this instance, praise is due to the third gospel for having pre- 
 served to us the parable of the barren (7vm\, and the apothegm of the avKo.^ixvo'i 
 to be transplanted by faith, distinct and pure, each in its original form and 
 significance ; while the two other synoptists have transformed the parable 
 into a history, and have misappUed the apothegm (in a somewhat altered 
 form) to a false explanation of that pretended history. ^^ 
 
 ^2 Conceptions of the narrative in the main accordant with that here given, may be found 
 in De Wette, exeg. Handb., I, i, s. 176 f. ; i, 2, s. 174 f., and Weisse, die evang. Gesch., 
 I, s. 576f. . S . 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS, AND HIS LAST JOURNEY TO 
 
 JERUSALEM. 
 
 § I05- 
 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS CONSIDERED AS A MIRACULOUS EXTERNAL 
 
 EVENT. 
 
 The history of the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain could not be 
 ranged with the narratives of miracles which we have hitherto examined ; not 
 only because it relates to a miracle which took place in Jesus instead of a 
 miracle performed by him ; but also because it has the character of an epoch 
 in the life of Jesus, which on the score of resemblance could only be associ- 
 ated with the baptism and resurrection. Hence Herder has correctly desig- 
 nated these three events as the three luminous points in the life of Jesus, 
 which attest his heavenly mission.^ 
 
 According to the impression produced by the first glance at the synoptical 
 narrative (Matt. xvii. i ff. ; Mark ix. 2 ff. ; Luke ix. 28 ff.) — for the history is 
 not found in the fourth gospel — we have here a real, external, and miraculous 
 event. Jesus, six or eight days after the first announcement of his passion, 
 ascends a mountain with his three most confidential disciples, who are there 
 witnesses how all at once his countenance, and even his clothes, are illumin- 
 ated with supernatural splendour ; how two venerable forms from the realm 
 of spirits, Moses and Elias, appear talking with him ; and lastly, how a 
 heavenly voice, out of the bright cloud, declares Jesus to be the Son of God, 
 to whom they are to give ear. 
 
 These few points in the history give rise to a multitude of questions, by the 
 collection of which Gabler has done a meritorious service.^ In relation to 
 each of the three phases of the event — the light, the apparition of the dead, 
 and the voice — both its possibility, and the adequacy of its object, may be 
 the subject of question. First, whence came the extraordinary light with 
 which Jesus was invested ? Let it be remembered that a metamorphosis of 
 Jesus is spoken of (/x,eTa/j.op(l>u)6ri c/ATrpoo-^ev avrSyif) : now this would appear to 
 imply, not a mere illumination from without, but an irradiation from within, 
 a transient effulgence, so to speak, of the beams of the divine glory through 
 the veil of humanity. Thus Olshausen regards this event as an important 
 crisis in the process of purification and glorification, through which he sup- 
 poses the corporeality of Jesus, to have passed, during his whole life up to the 
 
 ' Vom Erloser der Menschen nach unsern drei ersten Evangelien, s. 114. 
 2 In a treatise on the history- of the Transfiguration, in his neuesten theol. Journal, i. Bd. 
 5. Stiick, s. 517 ff. Comp. Bauer, hebr. Mythol. 2, s. 233 ff. 
 
536 PART II. CHAPTER X. § 105. 
 
 time of his ascension.' But without here dilating further on our previous 
 arguments, that either Jesus was no real man, or the purification which he 
 underwent during his life, must have consisted in something else than the 
 illumination and subtilization of his body ; it is in no case to be conceived 
 how his clothes, as well as his body, could participate in such a process of 
 transfiguration. If, on this account, it be rather preferred to suppose an 
 illumination from without, this would not be a metamorphosis, which however 
 is the term used by the Evangelists : so that no consistent conception can be 
 formed of this scene, unless indeed we choose, with Olshausen, to include 
 both modes, and think of Jesus as both radiating, and irradiated. But even 
 supposing this illumination possible, there still remains the question, what 
 purpose could it serve ? The answer which most immediately suggests itself 
 is : to glorify Jesus ; but compared with the spiritual glory which Jesus created 
 for himself by word and deed, this physical glorification, consisting in the 
 investing of his body with a brilliant light, must appear very insignificant, nay, 
 almost childish. If it be said that, nevertheless, such a mode of glorifying 
 Jesus was necessary for the maintenance of weak faith r we reply that in that 
 case, it must have been effected in the presence of the multitude, or at least 
 before the entire circle of the disciples, not surely before just the select three 
 who were spiritually the strongest ; still less would these few eye-witnesses 
 have been prohibited from communicating the event , precisely during the 
 most critical period, namely, until after the resurrection. — These two questions 
 apply with enhanced force to the second feature in our history, the apparition 
 of the two dead men. Can departed souls become visible to the living ? and 
 if, as it appears, the two men of God presented themselves in their former 
 bodies, only transfigured, whence had they these — according to biblical ideas 
 — before the universal resurrection? Certainly in relation to Elijah, who 
 ■went up to heaven without laying aside his body, this difficulty is not so great ; 
 Moses, however, died, and his corpse was buried. But further, to what end 
 are we to suppose that these two illustrious dead appeared ? The evangelical 
 narrative, by representing the forms as talking with Jesus, o-uXXaXowres tA 'I., 
 seems to place the object of their appearance in Jesus ; and if Luke be cor- 
 rect, it had reference more immediately to the approaching sufferings and 
 death of Jesus. But they could not have made the first announcement of 
 these events to him, for, according to the unanimous testimony of the synop- 
 tists, he had himself predicted them a week before (Matt. xvi. 21 paralL). 
 Hence it is conjectured, that Moses and 51ias only informed Jesus more 
 minutely concerning the particular circumstances and conditions of his 
 death : * but, on the one hand, it is not accordant with the position which 
 the gospels assign to Jesus in relation to the ancient prophets, that he should 
 have needed instruction froTfi them ; and on the other hand, Jesus had al- 
 ready foretold his passion so circumstantially, that the more special revelations 
 from the wbrld of spirits could only have referred to the particulars of his 
 being delivered to the Gentiles, and the spitting in his face, of which he does 
 not speak till a subsequent occasion (Matt. xx. 19 ; Mark x. 34). If, how- 
 ever, it be suggested, that the communication to be made to Jesus consisted 
 not so much in information, as in the conferring of strength for his approach- 
 ing sufferings : we submit that at this period there is not yet any trace of a 
 state of mind in Jesus, which might seem to demand assistance of this kind ; 
 while for his later sufferings this early strengthening did not suffice, as is 
 evident from the fact, that in Gethsemane a ,new impartation is necessary. 
 
 ° Bibl. Comm. i, s. S34 f- 
 * Olshausen, ut sup. s. 537. 
 
TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS. 537 
 
 Thus we are driven, though already in opposition to the text, to try whether 
 we cannot give the appearance a relation to the disciples ; but first, the object 
 of strengthening faith is too general to be the motive of so special a dispensa- 
 tion ; secondly, Jesus, in the parable of the rich man, must on this supposi- 
 tion have falsely expounded the principle of the divine government in this 
 respect, for he there says that he who will not hear the writings of Moses and 
 the prophets, — and how much more he who will not hear the present Christ ? 
 — would not be brought to believe, though one should return to him from 
 the dead : whence it must be inferred that such an apparition, at least to that 
 end, is not permitted by God. The more special object, of convincing the 
 disciples that the doctrine and fate of Jesus were in accordance with Moses 
 and the prophets, had been already partly attained ; and it was not completely 
 attained until after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the outpouring 
 of the Spirit : the transfiguration not having formed any epoch in their en- 
 lightenment on this subject. — Lastly, the voice out of the bright cloud (with- 
 out doubt the Shechinah) is, like that at the baptism, a divine voice : but 
 what an anthropomorphic conception of the Divine Being must that be, which 
 admits the possibility of real, audible speech on his part! Or if it be said, 
 that a communication of God to the spiritual ear, is alone spoken of here,^ 
 the scene of the transfiguration is reduced to a vision, and we are suddenly 
 transported to a totally different point of view. 
 
 § io6. 
 
 THE NATURAL EXPLANATION OF THE NARRATIVE IN VARIOUS FORMS. 
 
 It has been sought to escape from the difficulties of the opinion which 
 regards the transfiguration of Jesus as not only a miraculous, but also an 
 external event, by confining the entire incident to the internal experience of 
 the parties concerned. In adopting this position, the miraculous is not at 
 once relinquished ; it is only transferred to the internal workings of the 
 human mind, as being thus more simple and conceivable. Accordingly it is 
 supposed, that by divine influence the spiritual nature of the three apostles, 
 and probably also of Jesus himself, was exalted to a state of ecstasy, in which 
 they either actually entered into intercourse with the higher world, or were 
 able to shadow forth its forms to themselves in the most vivid manner ; that 
 is, the event is regarded ^^.s a vision. ^ But the chief support of this interpre- 
 tation, namely, that Matthew himself, by the expression opa/x,a, vision (v. 9), 
 describes the event as merely subjective and visionary, gives way so soon as 
 it is remembered, that neither is there anything in the signification of the 
 word opajxa which determines it to refer to what is merely mental, nor is it 
 exclusively so applied even in the phraseology of the New Testament, for we 
 also find it, as in Actsvii. 31, used to denote something perceived externally. '■* 
 As regards the fact itself, it is improbable, and at least without scriptural pre- 
 cedent, that several persons, as, here, three or four, should have had the same 
 very complex vision ; ^ to which it may be added, that on this view of the 
 subject also, the whole difficult question recurs concerning the utiUty of such 
 a miraculous dispensation. 
 
 * Olshausen, I, s. 539 ; comp. s. 178. 
 
 ' Thus Tertull. adv. Marcion, iv. 22 ; Herder, ut sup. 1 15 f., with whom also Gratz agrees. 
 Comm. z. Matth. 2, s. 163 f., 169. 
 
 2 Comp. Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 552 ; OlshausenS I, s. 523. 
 ' Olshausen, ut sup. 
 
538 PART II. CHAPTER X. § I06. 
 
 To avoid the above difficulty, others, still confining the event to the in- 
 ternal experience of the parties, regard it as the product of a natural activity 
 of soul, and thus explain the whole as a dream.* During or after a prayer 
 offered by Jesus, or by themselves, in which mention was made of Moses and 
 Elias, and their advent as messianic forerunners desired, the three disciples, 
 according to this interpretation, slept, and (the two names mentioned by Jesus 
 yet sounding in their ears) dreamed that Moses an"d Elias were present, and 
 that Jesus conversed with them : an illusion which continued during the first 
 confused moments after their awaking. As the former explanation rests on 
 the opafia of Matthew, so it is alleged in support of this, that Luke describes 
 the disciples as /leavy with sleep, ^eySapij/nei'oi hmm, and only towards the end 
 of the scene as fully awake, Siaypt^yoprja-avTei (v. 32). The hold which the 
 third Evangelist here presents to the natural explanation, has been made a 
 reason for assigning to his narrative an important superiority over that of the 
 two other Evangelists ; recent critics pronouncing that by this and other 
 particulars, which bring the event nearer to natural possibility, the account in 
 Luke evinces itself to be the original, while that of Matthew, by its omission 
 of those particulars, is proved to be the traditionary one, since with the eager- 
 ness for the miraculous which characterized that age, no one would fabricate 
 particulars calculated to diminish the miracle, as is the case with the sleepi- 
 ness of the disciples. 5 This mode of conclusion we also should be obliged to 
 adopt, if in reality the above features could only be understood in the spirit 
 of the natural interpretation. But we have only to recollect how in another 
 scene, wherein the sufferings, which according to Luke were announced at 
 the transfiguration, began to be accomplished, and wherein, according to the 
 same Evangelist, Jesus likewise held communication with a heavenly appari- 
 tion, namely, in Gethsemane, the disciples, in all the synoptical gospels, again 
 appear asleep, Ka^evSoj/res (Matt. xxvi. 40 paralL). If it be admitted, that the 
 merely external, formal resemblance of the two scenes, might cause a narrator 
 to convey the trait of the slumber into the history of the transfiguration, there 
 is a yet stronger probability that the internal import of the trait might appear 
 to him appropriate to this occasion also, for the sleeping of the disciples at 
 the very moment when their master was going through his most critical ex- 
 perience, exhibits their infinite distance from him, their inability to attain his 
 exalted level ; the prophet, the recipient of a revelation, is among ordinary 
 men like a watcher among the sleeping : hence it followed, of course, that as 
 in the deepest suffering, so here also in the highest glorification of Jesus, the 
 disciples should be represented as heavy with sleep. Thus this particular, so 
 far from furnishing aid to the natural explanation, is rather intended by a 
 contrast to heighten the miracle which took place in Jesus. We are, there- 
 fore, no longer warranted in regarding the narrative in Luke as the original 
 one, and in building an explanation of the event on his statement ; on the 
 contrary; we consider that addition, in connexion with the one already men- 
 tioned (v. 31), a sign that his account is a traditionary and embellished one,* 
 and must rather adhere to that of the two other Evangelists. 
 
 Not only, however, does the interpretation which sees in the transfiguration 
 only a natural dream of the apostles, fail as to its main support, but it has 
 
 * Rau, symbola ad illustrandam Evv. de metamorphosi J. Chr. narrationem ; Gabler, ut 
 sup. s. 539 ff. ; Kuinbl, Coram, z. Matth. p. 459 ff. ; Neander, L. J. Chr. s. 474 f. 
 
 * Schulz, uber das Abendmahl, s. 319 ; Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 148 f. ; comp. 
 also Koster, Immanuel, s. 60 f. 
 
 " Bauer has discerned this, ut sup. s. 237 ; Fritzsche, p. 556 ; De Wette, exeg. Handb. 
 
 1, 2, s. 56 f. ; Weisse, die evang. Gesch. i, s. 536 ; and Paulus also partly, exeg. Handb. 
 
 2, s. 447 f. 
 
TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS. 539 
 
 besides a multitude of internal difficulties. It presupposes only the three 
 disciples to have been dreaming, leaving Jesus awake, and thus not included 
 in the illusion. But the whole tenor of the evangelical narrative implies that 
 Jesus as well as the disciples saw the appearance ; and what is still more 
 decisive, had the whole been a mere dream of the disciples, he could not 
 afterwards have said to them : Tell the vision to no man, since by these words 
 he rriust have confirmed in them the belief that they had witnessed something 
 special and miraculous. Supposing however that Jesus had no share in the 
 dream, it still remains altogether unexampled, that three persons should in a 
 natural manner have had the same dream at the same time. This the friends 
 of the above interpretation have perceived, and hence have supposed that the 
 ardent Peter, who indeed is the only speaker, alone had the dream, but that 
 the narrators, by a synecdoche attributed to all the disciples what in fact 
 happened only to one. But from the circumstance that Peter here, as well 
 as elsewhere, is the spokesman, it does not follow that he alone had the 
 vision, and the contrary can by no figure of speech be removed from the clear 
 words of the Evangelists. But the explanation in question still more plainly 
 betrays its inadequacy. Not only does it require, as already noticed, that the 
 audible utterance of the name of Moses and Elias on the part of Jesus, should 
 be blended with the dream of the disciples ; but it also calls in the aid of a 
 storm, which by its flashes of lightning is supposed to have given rise in them 
 to the idea of supernatural splendour, by its peals of thunder, to that of con- 
 versation and heavenly voices, and to have held them in this delusion even 
 for some time after they awaked. But, according to Luke, it was on the 
 waking of the disciples (Staypijyop^crai/Tes 8c etSoi/ K. T. \.) that they saw the 
 two men standing by Jesus : this does not look like a mere illusion protracted 
 from a dream into waking moments ; hence Kuinol introduces the further 
 supposition, that, while the disciples slept, there came to Jesus two unknown 
 men, whom they, in awaking, connected with their dream, and mistook for 
 Moses and Elias. By giving this turn to the circumstances, all those occur- 
 rences which on the interpretation based on the supposition of a dream, 
 should be regarded as mere mental conceptions, are again made external 
 realities : for the idea of supernatural brilliancy is supposed to have been pro- 
 duced by a flash of lightning, the idea of voices, by thunder, and lastly, the 
 idea of two persons in company with Jesus, by the actual presence of two 
 unknown individuals. AH this the disciples could properly perceive only 
 when they were awake ; and hence the supposition of a dream falls to the 
 ground as superfluous. 
 
 Therefore, since this interpretation, by still retaining a thread of connexion 
 between the alleged character of the event and a mental condition, has the 
 peculiar difficulty of making three partake in the same dream, it is better 
 entirely to break this thread, and restore all to thfe external world : so that we 
 now have a natural external occurrence before us, as in the first instance we 
 had a supernatural one. Something objective presented itself to the disciples ; 
 thus it is explained how it could be perceived by several at once : they deceived 
 themselves when awake as to what they saw ; this was natural, because they 
 were all born within the same circle of ideas, were in the same frame of mind, 
 and in the same situation. According to this opinion, the essential fact in 
 the scene on the mountain, is a secret interview which Jesus had preconcerted, 
 and with a view to which he took with him the three most confidential of his 
 disciples. Who the two men were with whom Jesus held this interview, 
 Paulus does not venture to determine ; Kuinol conjectures that they were 
 secret adherents of the same kind as Nicodemus ; according to Venturini, 
 they were Essenes, secret allies of Jesus. Before these were arrived, Jesus 
 
S40 PART II. CHAPTER X. § 107. 
 
 prayed, and the disciples, not being invited to join, slept; for the sleep 
 noticed by Luke, though it were dreamless, is gladly retained in this inter- 
 pretation, since a delusion appears more probable in the case of persons just 
 awaking. On hearing strange voices talking with Jesus, they awake, see Jesus, 
 who probably stood on a higher point of the mountain than they, enveloped 
 in unwonted brilliancy, proceeding from the first rays of morning, which, per- 
 haps reflected from a sheet of snow, fell on Jesus, but were mistaken by them 
 in the surprise of the moment for a supernatural illumination ; they perceive 
 the two men, whom, for some unknown reasons, the drowsy Peter, and after 
 him the rest, take for Moses and Elias ; their astonishment increases when 
 they see the two unknown individuals disappear in a bright morning cloud, 
 which descends as they are in the act of departing, and hear one of them pro- 
 nounce out of the cloud the words : oJtos ia-nv k. t. A.., which they under 
 these circumstances unavoidably regard as a voice from heaven.'' This ex- 
 planation, which even Schleiermacher is inclined to favour,^ is supposed, hke 
 the formerj to find a special support in Luke, because in this Evangelist the 
 assertion that the two men are Moses and Elias, is much less confidently 
 expressed than in Matthew and Mark, and, more as a mere notion of the 
 drowsy Peter. For while the two first Evangelists directly say : <3<^67;o-ov 
 avTois M(i)o^s Koi 'H\tas {(Aere appeared unto them Moses and Elias), Luke 
 more warily, as it seems, speaks of arSpes hvo, oltivk ^&av Momt^s icat 'HXias 
 {two men, who were Moses and Elias), the first designation being held to con- 
 tain the objective fact, the second its subjective interpretation. But this 
 interpretation is obviously approved by the narrator, from his choice of the 
 word otTives ^crav, instead of cSofav elvai ; that he first speaks of two men, and 
 afterwards gives ^hem their names, cannot have been to leave another inter- 
 pretation open to the reader, but only to imitate the mysteriousness of the 
 extraordinary scene, by the indefiniteness of his first expression. While this 
 explanation has thus as little support in the evangelical narratives as those 
 previously considered, it has at the same time no, fewer difficulties in itself. 
 The disciples must have been so far acquainted with the appearance of the 
 morning beams on the mountains of their native land, as to be able to dis- 
 tinguish them from a heavenly glory ; how they came to have the idea that 
 the two unknown individuals were Moses and Elias, is not easy to explain on 
 any of the former views, but least of all on this ; — why Jesus, when Peter, by 
 his proposal about the building of the three tabernacles, gave him to under- 
 stand the delusion of the disciples, did not remove it, is incomprehensible, 
 and this difficulty has induced Paulus to resort to the supposition, that Jesus 
 did not hear the address of Peter ; — the whole conjecture about secret aUies 
 of Jesus has justly lost all repute ; and lastly, the one of those allies who 
 spoke the words to the disciples out of the cloud, must have permitted him- 
 self tp use an unworthy mystification. 
 
 § 107- 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE TRANSFIGURATION CONSIDERED AS A MYTHUS. 
 
 Thus here, as in every former instance, after having run, through the circle 
 of natural explanations, we are led back to the supernatural ; in which, how- 
 ever, we are precluded from resting by difficulties equally decisive. Since 
 
 ' Paulus, exeg. Handb., 2, 436 ff.; L. J. i, b, s. 7 ff. ; Natiirliche Geschichte, 3, s. 
 256 ff. 
 ' Ut sup. 
 
TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS. 54 1 
 
 then the text forbids a natural interpretation, while it is impossible to maintain 
 as historical the supernatural interpretation which it sanctions, we must apply 
 ourselves to a critical examination of its statements. These are indeed said 
 to be especially trustworthy in the narrative before us, the fact being narrated 
 by three Evangelists, who strikingly agree even in the precise determination of 
 the time, and being moreover attested by the Apostle Peter (2 Pet. i. 17). * 
 The agreement as to the time (the eight days ri/iepai ok™ of Luke meaning, 
 according to the usual reckoning, the same as the six days ■^/lepai ef of the 
 other Evangelists) is certainly striking ; and besides this, all the three nar- 
 rators concur in placing immediately after the transfiguration the cure of the 
 demoniacal boy, which the disciples had failed to effect. But both these 
 points of agreement may be accounted for, by the origin of the synoptical gos- 
 pels from a fixed fund of evangelical tradition, in relation to which, we need not 
 be more surprised that it has grouped together many anecdotes in a particular 
 manner without any objective reason, than that it has often preserved ex- 
 pressions in which it might have varied, through all the three editions. ^ The 
 attestation of the history by the three synoptists is, however, very much weak- 
 ened, at least on the ordinary view of the relation which the four gospels bear 
 to each other, by the silence of John ; since it does not appear why this 
 Evangelist should not have included in his history an event which was so 
 important, and which moreover accorded so well with his system, nay, exactly 
 realized the declaration in his prologue (v. 14) : We beheld his glory, the glory 
 as of the only begotten of the Father. The worn-out reason, that he might 
 suppose the event to be sufficiently known through his predecessors, is, over 
 and above its general invalidity, particularly unavailable here, because no one 
 of the synoptists was in this instance an eye-witness, and consequently there 
 must be many things in their narratives which one who, like John, had par- 
 ticipated in the scene, might rectify and explain. Hence another reason has 
 been sought for this and similar omissions in the fourth gospel ; and such an 
 one has been supposed to be found in the anti-gnostic, or, more strictly, the 
 anti-docetic tendency which has been ascribed to the gospel, in common with 
 the epistles, bearing the name of John. It is, accordingly, maintained that 
 in the history of the transfiguration, the splendour which illuminated Jesus, 
 the transformation of his appearance into something more than earthly, might 
 give countenance to the opinion that his human form was nothing but an un- 
 substantial veil, through which at times his true, superhuman nature shone 
 forth ; that his converse with the spirits of ancient prophets might lead to the 
 conjecture, that he was himself perhaps only a like spirit of some Old Testa- 
 ment saint revisiting the earth ; and that, rather than give nourishment to 
 such erroneous notions, which began early to be formed among gnosticising 
 Christians, John chose to suppress this and similar histories. ^ But besides 
 that it does not correspond with the apostolic plainness of speech (Trapprja-La) to 
 suppress important facts in the evangelical history, on account of their possible 
 abuse by individuals, John, if he were guided by the above consideration 
 must at least have proceeded with some consistency, and have excluded from 
 the circle of his accounts all narratives which, in an equal degree with the 
 one in question, were susceptible of a docetic misinterpretation. Now, here, 
 every one must at once be reminded of the history of the walking of Jesus on 
 the sea, which is at least equally calculated with the history of the transfigura- 
 tion, to produce the idea that the body of Jesus was a mere phantom, but which 
 John nevertheless records. It is true that the relative importance of events 
 
 ' Paulus, exeg. liandb., s. 446 ; Gratz, 2, s. 165 f. 
 8 Comp. De Wette, Einleitung in das N. T. § 79. 
 ^ Thus Schneckenburger, Beitrage, s. 62 ff. 
 
542 PART II. CHAPTER X. § 107. 
 
 might introduce a distinction ; so that of two narratives with an equally 
 •strong docetic aspect, John rnight include the one on account of its superior 
 weight, while he omitted the less! important. But no one will contend that 
 the walking of Jesus on the sea surpasses, or even equals, in importance the 
 history of the transfiguration. John, if he were intent on avoiding what 
 wore a docetic appearance, must on every consideration have suppressed the 
 first history before all others. As he has not done so, the above principle 
 cannot have influenced him, and consequently can never be advanced as a 
 reason for the designed omission of a history in the fourth gospel ; rather it 
 may be concluded, and particularly in relation to the event in question, that 
 the author knew nothing, or at least nothing precise, of that history. * It is 
 true that this conclusion can form an objection to the historical character of 
 the narrative of the transfiguration, to those only who suppose the fourth 
 gospel to be the work of an apostle ; so that from this silence we cannot 
 argue against the truth of the narrative. On the other hand, the agreement 
 of the synoptists proves nothing in its favour, since we have already been 
 obliged to pronounce unhistorical more than one narrative in which three, 
 nay, all four gospels agree. Lastly, as regards the alleged testimony of Peter, 
 from the more than doubtful genuineness of the second Epistle of Peter, the 
 passage which certainly refers to our history of the transfiguration is renounced 
 as a proof of its historical truth even by orthodox theologians. ^ 
 
 On the_other hand besides the difficulties previously enumerated, lying in the 
 miraculous contents of the narrative, we have still a further ground for doubt 
 in relation to the historical validity of the transfiguration : namely, the conver- 
 sation which, according to the two first Evangelists, the disciples held with 
 Jesus immediately after. In descending from the mountain, the disciples ask 
 Jesus : ri ovv oi ypa/jL/xareii Xeyouonv, on 'HA.tav Set iXOiiv TrpHyrov ; Why then 
 say the scribes that Elias must first come ? (Matt. v. 10). This sounds just as 
 if something had happened, from which they necessarily inferred that Elias 
 would not appear ; and not in the least as if they were coming directly from 
 a scene in which he had actually appeared ; for in the latter case they would 
 not have asked a question,. as if unsatisfied, but must rather have indicated 
 their satisfaction by the remark, eikotus ovv 01 ypa/A/taTeis Xeyovortj/ k. t. A,. 
 Truly then do the scribes say, etc. ^ Hence, expositors interpret the question 
 of the disciples to refer, not to the absence of an appearance of Elias in 
 general, but to the absence of a certain concomitant in the scene which they 
 had just witnessed. The doctrine of the scribes, namely, had taught them to 
 anticipate that Elias on his second appearance would exert a reforming in- 
 fluence on the life of the nation ; whereas in the appearance which they had 
 just beheld he had presently vanished again without further activity. '' This 
 explanation would be admissible if the words dTroKaTao-T^o-ci travTa (ivill restore 
 all things) stood in the question of the disciples ; instead of this, however, it 
 stands in both narratives (Matt. v. 11 ; Mark v. 12) only in the answer of 
 Jesus : so that the disciples, according to this supposition, must, in the most 
 contradictory manner, have been silent as to what they really missed, the 
 restoration of all things, and only have mentioned that which after the fore- 
 going appearance they could not have missed, namely, the coming of Elias. 
 
 * Neander, because he considers the objective reaUty of the transfiguration doubtful, also 
 finds the silence of the fourth Evangelist a difficulty in this instance (s. 475 f. ). 
 
 ' Olshausen, s. 533, Anm. 
 
 * Vid. Rau, in the Programme quoted in Gabler, neuestes theolog. Journal, I, 3, s. 506 ; 
 De Wette, in loc. Matth. 
 
 1 Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 553 ; Olshausen, i, 3. 541. Still less satisfactory expedients in 
 Gabler, ut sup. and in Matthai, Religionsgl. det Apostel, 2, s. 596. 
 
TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS. 543 
 
 As, however, the question of the disciples presupposes no previous appearance 
 of Elias, but, on the contrary, expresses the feeling that such an appearance 
 was wanting, so the answer which Jesus gives them has the same purport. 
 For when he replies : the scribes are right in saying that Elias must come 
 before the Messiah ; but this is no argument against my Messiahship, since 
 an Elias has already preceded me in the person of the Baptist, — when he 
 thus seeks to guard his disciples against the doubt which might arise from 
 the expectation of the scribes, by pointing out to them the figurative Elias 
 who had preceded him, — it is impossible that an appearance of the actual 
 Elias can have previously taken place ; otherwise Jesus must in the first place 
 have referred to this appearance, and only in the second place to the Baptist.* 
 Thus the immediate connexion of this conversation with that appearance 
 cannot be historical, but is rather owing solely to this point of similarity ; — 
 that in both mention is made of Elias. ^ But not even at an interval, and after 
 the lapse of intermediate events, can such a conversation have been preceded 
 by an appearance of Elias ; for however long afterwards, both Jesus and the 
 three eye-witnesses among his disciples must have remembered it, and could 
 never have spoken as if such an appearance had not taken place. Still further, 
 an appearance of the real Elias cannot have happened even after such a con- 
 versation, in accordance with the orthodox idea of Jesus. For he, too, ex- 
 cxplicitly declares his opinion that the literal Elias was not to be expected, 
 and that the Baptist was the promised Elias ; if therefore, nevertheless, an 
 -appearance of the real Elias did subsequently take place, Jesus must have 
 been mistaken ; a consequence which precisely those who are most concerned 
 for the historical reality of the transfiguration, are the least in a position to 
 admit. If then the appearance and the conversation directly exclude each 
 •other, the question is, which of the two passages can better be renounced ? 
 Now the purport of the conversation is so confirmed by Matt. xi. 14, comp. 
 Luke i. 1 7, while the transfiguration is rendered so improbable by all kinds 
 of difficulties, that there cannot be much doubt as to the decision. Accor- 
 -ding to this, it appears here as in some former cases, that two narratives 
 proceeding from quite different presuppositions, and having arisen also in 
 different times, have been awkwardly enough combined : the passage con- 
 taining the conversation proceeding from the probably earlier opinion, that 
 the prophecy concerning Elias had its fulfilment in John ; whereas the 
 narrative of the transfiguration doubtless originated at a later period, when it 
 was not held sufficient that in the messianic time of Jesus, Elias should only 
 have appeared figuratively, in the person of the Baptist, — when it was thought 
 fitting that he should also have shown himself personally and literally, if in 
 no more than a transient appearance before a few witnesses (a public and 
 more influential one being well known not to have taken place).^" 
 r In order next to understand how such a narrative could arise in a legendary ■ 
 manner, the first feature to be considered, on the examination of which that 
 -of all the rest will most easily follow, is the sun-like splendour of the coun- 
 tenance of Jesus, and the bright lustre of his clothes. To the oriental, and 
 more particularly to the Hebrew imagination, the beautiful, the majestic, is 
 the luminous ; the poet of the Song of Songs compares his beloved to the 
 hues of morning, to the moon, to the sun (vi. 9) ; the holy man supported 
 by the blessing of God, is compared to the sun going forth in his might (Judg. 
 V. 31); and above all the future lot of the righteous is likened to the splen- 
 
 • This even Paulus admits, 2, s. 442. 
 ' Schleiermacher, uber den Lukas, s. 149. 
 "• This is an answer to Weisse's objection, 5. 539. 
 
544 PART II. CHAPTER X. § I07. 
 
 dour of the sun and the stars (Dan. xii. 3 ; Matt. xiii. 43).^^ Hence, not only 
 does God appear clothed in light, and angels with resplendent countenances 
 and shining garments (Ps. 1. 2, 3 ; Dan. vii. 9 f., x. 5, 6 ; Luke xxiv. 4 ; Rev. 
 i. 13 ff.), but also the pious of Hebrew antiquity, as Adam before the fall, and 
 among subsequent instances, more particularly Moses and Joshua, are repre- 
 sented as being distinguished by such a splendour ; '^ and the later Jewish 
 tradition ascribes celestial splendour even to eminent rabbins in exalted 
 moments. 1' But the most celebrated example of this kind is the luminous 
 countenance of Moses, which is mentioned, Exod. xxxiv. 29 ff., and as in 
 other points, so in this, a conclusion was drawn from him in relation to the 
 Messiah, a niinori ad majus. Such a mode of arguing is indicated by the 
 Apostle Paul, 2 Cor. iii. 7 ff., though he opposes to Moses, the minister of the 
 letter, StaKovos roxi ypa/x/Aafos, not Jesus, but, in accordance with the occasion 
 of his epistle, the apostles and Christian teachers, ministers of the spirit, 
 hia.Kavav'i tov ■nrevfj.aTO's, arid the glory, 8d|a, of the latter, which surpassed the 
 glory of Moses, is an object of hope, eXms, to be attained only in the future 
 life. But especially in the Messiah himself, it was expected that there would 
 be a splendour which would correspond to that of Moses, nay, outshine it ; 
 and a Jewish writing which takes no notice of our history of the transfiguration, 
 argues quite in the spirit of the Jews of the first Christian period, when it 
 urges that Jesus cannot have been the Messiah, because his countenance had 
 not the splendour of the countenance of Moses, to say nothing of a higher 
 splendour.^* Such objections, doubtless heard by the early Christians from 
 the Jews, and partly suggested by their own minds, could not but generate in 
 the early church a tendency to introduce into the life of Jesus an imitation of 
 that trait in the life of Moses, nay, in one respect to surpass it, and instead 
 of a shining countenance that might be covered with a veil, to ascribe to him 
 a radiance, though but transitory, which was diffused even over his garments. 
 
 That the illumination of the countenance of Moses served as a type for the 
 transfiguration of Jesus, is besides proved by a series of particular features. 
 Moses obtained his splendour on Mount Sinai : of the transfiguration of Jesus 
 also the scene is a mountain ; Moses, on an earlier ascent of the mountain, 
 which might easily be confounded with the later one, after which his coun- 
 tenance became luminous, had taken with him, ^besides the seventy elders, 
 three confidential friends, Aaron, Nadab, and Ahihu, to participate in the 
 vision of Jehovah (Exod. xxiv. i, 9-11); so Jesus takes with him his three 
 most confidential disciples, that, so far as their powers were adequate, they 
 might be witnesses of the sublime spectacle, and their immediate object was, 
 according to Luke v. 28, to pray, Trpoo-evfao-^at : just as Jehovah calls Moses 
 with the three companions and the elders, to come on the mountain, that 
 they might worship at a distance. As afterwards, when Moses ascended Sinai 
 with Joshua, the glory of the Lord, Sd^a Kuptov, covered the mountain as a 
 
 " Comp. Jalkut Simeoni, p. 2 f. x. 3, (ap. Wetstein, p. 435) : Fades justorum fiituro 
 tempon similes erunt soli et luncs, ccelo et stellis, fulguri, etc, 
 
 >2 Bereschith Rabba, xx. 29, (ap. Wetstein) : Vestes lucis vestes Adami primi. Pococke, 
 ex Nachmanide (ibid.) : Fulgida facta fuitfacies Mosis instar solis, fosua instar luna ; quod 
 idem affirmarunt veteres de Adamo. 
 
 " In Pirke Elieser, ii. there is, according to Wetstein, the following statement : inter 
 docendum radios ex facie ipsius, ut olim e Mosis facie, prodiisse, adeo ut non dignosceret guis 
 utrum dies esset an nox. 
 
 " Nizzachon vetus, p. 40, ad Exod. xxxiv. 33 (ap. Wetstein) : Ecce Moses magister master 
 felicis memorice, qui homo merus erat, quia Deus de facie adfaciem cum eo locutus est, ■vultum 
 tarn lucentem retulit, ut]Judsi vererentur accedere : quanto igitur magis de ipsa divinitate hoc 
 tenere oportet, atque fesu faciem ob uno orbis cardine ad alterum fulgorem diffundere conve- 
 niebat ? At non prieditus fuit ullo splendore, sed reliquis mortalibus fuit simillimus. Qua 
 propter constat, non esse in eum credendum. ' 
 
TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS. 545 
 
 cloud, vifjiiKr], (v. 15 f. LXX.) ; as Jehovah called to Moses out of the cloud, 
 until at length the latter entered into the cloud (v. 16-18) : so we have in 
 our narrative a irigki cloud, ve<l)iKrj <^a)Tos, which overshadows Jesus and the 
 heavenly forms, a voice out of the cloud, ipwvy] Ik -rrji vc^eXijs, and in Luke an 
 entering, da-eXeelv, of the three into the cloud. The first part of the address 
 pronounced by the voice out of the cloud, consists of the messianic declar- 
 ation, composed out of Ps. ii. 7, and Isa. xlii. i, which had already sounded 
 from heaven at the baptism of Jesus ; the second part is taken from the 
 words with which Moses, in the passage of Deuteronomy quoted earlier 
 (xviii. 15), according to the usual interpretation, announces to the people the 
 future Messiah, and admonishes them to obedience towards him.'^ 
 
 By the transfiguration on the mount Jesus was brought into contact with 
 his type Moses, and rfas it had entered into the anticipation of the Jews that 
 the messianic time, ax;cording to Isa. lii. 6 ff., would have not merely one, but 
 several forerunners,'^ and that among others the ancient lawgiver especially 
 would appear in the time of the Messiah : " so no moment was more appro- 
 priate for his appearance than that in which the Messiah was being glorified 
 on a mountain, as he had himself once been. With him was then naturally 
 associated the prophet, who, on the strength of Mai. iii. 23, was the most 
 decidedly expected to be a messianic forerunner, and, indeed, according to 
 the rabbins, to appear contemporaneously with Moses. If these two men 
 appeared to the Messiah, it followed as a matter of course that they conversed 
 with him ; and if it were asked what was the tenor of their conversation, 
 nothing would suggest itself so soon as the approaching sufferings and death 
 of Jesus, which had been announced in the foregoing passage, and which 
 besides, as constituting emphatically the messianic mystery of the New Testa- 
 ment, were best adapted for the subject of such a conversation with beings of 
 another world : whence one cannot but wonder how Olshausen can maintain 
 that the mythus would never have fallen upon this theme of conversation. 
 According to this, we have here a mythus,^* the tendency of which is twofold : 
 first, to exhibit in the life of Jesus an enhanced repetition of the glorification 
 of Moses ; and secondly, to bring Jesus as the Messiah into contact with his 
 two forerunners,- — by this appearance of the lawgiver and the prophet, of the 
 founder and the reformer of the theocracy, to represent Jesus as the perfecter 
 of the kingdom of God, and the fulfilment .of the law and the prophets ; and 
 besides this, to show a confirmation of his messianic dignity by a heavenly 
 
 voice." 
 
 " From this parallel with the ascent of the mountain by Moses may perhaps be derived 
 the interval — the rj/Upai If — by which the two first Evangelists separate the present event from 
 the discourses detailed in the foregoing chapter. For the history of the adventures of Moses 
 on the mountain begins with a like statement of time, it being said that after the cloud had 
 covered the mountain six days, Moses was called to Jehovah (v. 16). Although the point of 
 departure was a totally different one, this statement of time might be retained for the open- 
 ing of the scene of transfiguration in the history of Jesus. 
 
 " Vide Bertholdt, Christologia Judasorum, § 15, s. 60 ff. 
 
 " Debarim Rabba, iii. (Wetstein) : Dixit Deus S. B. Mosi: pervitam tuam, quemadmo- 
 dum vitam tuam fosuisti pro Israelitis in hoc mundo, Ha tempore futuro, quando Eliam 
 prophetam ad ipsos mittam, vos quo eodem tempore venietis. Comp. Tanchuma f. xlii. I, 
 ap. Schottgen i, s. 149. 
 
 1' This narrative is pronounced to be a mythus by De Wette, Kritik der mos. Gesch. s. 
 250; comp. exeg. Handb., i, i, s. 146 f. ; Bertholdt, Christologia Jud. § 15, not. 17; 
 Credner, Einleitung in das N. T. I, s. 241 ; Schulz, uber das Abendmahl, s. 319, at least 
 admits that there is more or less of the mythical in the various evangelical accounts of the 
 transfiguration, and Fritzsche, in Matt. p. 448 f. and 456 adduces the mythical view of this 
 event not without signs of approval. Compare also Kuinol, in Matth., p. 459, and Gratz, 2, 
 ». 161 if. 
 
 '9 Plato also in the Symposion (p. 223, B, ff. Steph.), glorifies his Socrates by arranging 
 
 M M 
 
546 PART II. CHAPTER X. § Io8. 
 
 Before we part with our subject, this example may serve to shows with 
 peculiar clearness, how the natural system of interpretation, while it seeks to 
 preserve the historical certainty of the narratives, loses their ideal truth — 
 sacrifices the essence to the form : whereas the mythical interpretation, by 
 renouncing the historical body of such narratives, rescues and preserves the 
 idea which resides in them, and which alone constitutes their vitality and 
 spirit. Thus if, as the natural explanation would have it, the splendour 
 around Jesus was an accidental, optical phenomenon, and the two appearances 
 either images of a dream or unknown men, where is the significance of the 
 incident ? where the motive for preserving in the memory of the church an 
 anecdote so void of ideas, and so barren of inference, resting on a common 
 delusion and superstition ? On the contrary, while according to the mythical 
 interpretation, I do not, it is triie, see in the evangelical narrative any real 
 event, — I yet retain a sense, a purpose in the narrative, know to what senti- 
 ments and thoughts of the first Christian community it owes its origin, and 
 why the authors of the gospels included so important a passage in their 
 memoirs.^" 
 
 § io8. 
 
 DIVERGING ACCOUNTS CONCERNING THE LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO 
 
 JERUSALEM. 
 
 Shortly after the transfiguration on the mountain, the Evangelists make 
 Jesus enter on the fatal journey which conducted him to his death. With 
 respect to the place from whence he set out on this journey, and the route 
 which he took, the evangelical accounts differ. The synoptists agree as to 
 the point of departure, for they all represent Jesus as setting out from Galilee 
 (Matt. xix. I ; Mark x. i ; Luke ix. 51; in this last passage, Galilee is not 
 indeed expressly named, but we necessarily infer it to be the supposed locality 
 from what precedes, in which only Galilee and districts in Galilee are spoken 
 of, as well as from the journey through Samaria, mentioned in the succeeding 
 passage) : ^ but concerning the route which Jesus chose from thence to Judaea, 
 they appear to be at variance. It is true that the statements of two of them 
 
 in a natural manner, and in a comic spirit, a similar group to that which the Evangelists here 
 present in a supernatural manner, and in a tragic spirit. After a bacchanalian entertainment, 
 Socrates outwatches his friends, who lie sleeping around him : as here the disciples around 
 their master ; with Socrates there are awake two noble forms alone, the tragic and the comic 
 poet, the two elements of the early Grecian life, which Socrates united in hiitiself : as, with 
 Jesus, the lawgiver and prophet, the two pillars of the Old Testament economy, which in a 
 higher manner were combined in Jesus ; lastly, as in Plato both Agathon and Aristophanes 
 at length sleep, and Socrates remains alone in possession of the field : so in the gospel, 
 Moses and Elias at last vanish, and the disciples see Jesus left alone. 
 
 20 Weisse, not satisfied with the interpretation found by me in the mythus, and labouring 
 besides to preserve an historical foundation for the narrative, understands it as a figurative 
 representation in the oriental manner, by one of the three eye-witnesses, of the light which 
 at that time arose on them concerning the destination of Jesus, and especially concerning his 
 relation to the Old Testament theocracy and to the messianic prophecies. According to him, 
 the high mountain symbolizes the height of knowledge which the disciples then attained ; the 
 metamorphosis of the form of Jesus, and the splendour of his clothes, are an image of their 
 intuition of the spiritual messianic idea ; the cloud which overshadowed the appearance, 
 signifies the dimness and indefiniteness in which the new knowledge faded away, from the 
 inability of the disciples yet to retain it ; the proposal of Peter to build tabernacles, is the 
 attempt of this apostle at once to give a fixed dogmatical form to the sublime intuition. 
 Weisse is fearful (s. 543) that this his conception of the history of the transfiguration may 
 also be pronounced mythical : I think not ; it is too manifestly allegorical. 
 
 ' Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 160. 
 
LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM. 547 ■ 
 
 on this point are so obscure, that they might appear to lend some aid to the 
 harmonizing exegesis. Mark says in the clearest and most definite manner 
 that Jesus took his course through Pergea ; but his statement, Ife came into the 
 coasts of Judaa on the further side of Jordan, Ipxerai ck to. Spia rv? 'louSaias 8ia 
 Tov irepav tov 'Iop8a,vov, is scarcely anything more than the mode in which he 
 judged it right to explain the hardly intelligible expression of Matthew, whom 
 he follows in this chapter. What it precisely is which the latter intends by the 
 words, Ife departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judma beyond 
 Jordan, /Acrijpev ctiro tIjs PaXtXatas koX ^Xflei/ eis ra opta t^s 'louSatas ■Kipo.v tov 
 'lopSdvov, is in fact not at all evident. For if the explanation : he came into 
 that part of Judaea which lies on the opposite side of the Jordan,^ clashes alike 
 with geography and grammar, so the interpretation to which the comparison 
 of Mark inclines the majority of commentators, namely, that Jesus came into 
 Judaea through the country on the farther side of the Jordan,^ is, even as 
 modified by Fritzsche, not free from grammatical difficulty. In any case, 
 however, thus much remains : that Matthew, as well as Mark, makes Jesus 
 take the most circuitous course through Persea, while Luke, on the other 
 hand, appears to lead him the more direct way through Samaria. It is true 
 that his expression, xvii. ii, where he says that Jesus, on his journey to 
 Jerusalem, passed through the midst of Samaria and Galileee, hvqpxeTo Sta 
 p.k<Tov ^afmpeias kol TaktXaiai, is scarcely clearer than the one just cited from 
 Matthew. According to the customary meaning of words, he seems to state 
 that Jesus first crossed Samaria, and then Galilee, in order to arrive at Jeru- 
 salem. But this is an inversion of the true order ; for if he set out from a 
 place in Galilee, he must first traverse the rest of Galilee, and not until then 
 could he enter Samaria. Hence the words 8iepxea-6ai 8ia /xia-ov k. t. X. have 
 been interpreted to mean a progress along the boundary between Galilee and 
 Samaria,* and Luke has been reconciled with the two first Evangelists by the 
 supposition, that Jesus journeyed along the Galilean-Samarian frontier, until 
 he reached the Jordan, that he then crossed this river, and so proceded through 
 Peraea towards Judsea and Jerusalem. But this latter supposition does not 
 agree with Luke ix. 51 if. ; for we learn from this passage that Jesus, after his 
 departure from Galilee, went directly to a Samaritan village, and here made an 
 unfavourable impression, because his face was as though he would go to Jeru- 
 salem, OTt TO Trpoa-iOTTov avTOv ^v iropevofjievov eis 'lepouo-oX^/i. Now this seems 
 clearly to indicate that Jesus took his way directly from Galilee, through 
 Samaria, to Judaea. We shall therefore be on the side of probability, if we 
 judge this statement to be an artificial arrangement of words, to which the 
 writer was led by his desire to introduce the narrative of the ten lepers, one 
 of whom was a Samaritan ; ^ and consequently admit that there is here a 
 divergency between the synoptical gospels.® Towards the end of the journey 
 of Jesus, they are once more in unison, for according to their unanimous 
 statement, Jesus arrived at Jerusalem from Jericho (Matt. xx. 29, parall.) ; a 
 place which, we may observe, lay more in the direct road for a Galilean com- 
 ing through Peraea, than for one coming through Samaria. 
 
 Thus there is indeed a difference between the synoptists with regard to the 
 way taken by Jesus ; but still they agree as to the first point of departure, and 
 
 2 Kuinol and Gratz, in loc. 
 ' Thus e.g. Lightfoot, in loc. 
 
 * Wetstein, Olshausen, in loc, Schleiennacher, ut sup. s. 164, 214. 
 » Vid. De Wette, in loc. 
 
 * Fritzsche, in Marc. p. 415 : Marcus MaUhai, xix. i, se auctpritati h. I. adstringit, 
 dicitque, [esum e Galihea (cf. ix. 'i'i) profectum esse per Peraeam. Sed auctore Luca, xvii. 11, 
 injudceam contendit per Samarium iiinere brevissimo. 
 
548 PART II. CHAPTER X. § I08. 
 
 the last stage of the road ; the account of John, however, diverges from them 
 in both respects. According to him, it is not Galilee from whence Jesus sets 
 out to attend the last passover, for so early as before the feast of tabernacles 
 of the previous year, he had left that province, apparently for the last time 
 (vii. I, lo) ; that between this feast and that of the dedication (x. 22) he had 
 returned thither, is at least not stated; after the latter feast, however, he 
 betook himself to Peraea, and remained there (x. 40) until the illness and 
 death of Lazarus recalled him into Judaea, and into the immediate vicinity of 
 Jerusalem, namely, to Bethany (xi. 8 fF.). On account of the machinations of 
 his enemies, he quickly withdrew from thence again, but, because he intended 
 to be present at the coming Passover, he retired no further than to the little 
 city of Ephraim, near to the wilderness (xi. 54) ; and from this place, no 
 mention being made of a residence in Jericho (which, besides, did not lie in 
 the way from Ephraim, according to the situation usually assigned to the 
 latter city), he proceeded to Jerusalem to the feast. 
 
 So total a divergency necessarily gave unwonted occupation to the harmon- 
 ists. According to them, the departure from Galilee mentioned by the 
 synoptists, is not the departure to the last Passover, but to the feast of dedica- 
 tion ; "^ though Luke, when he says, wAen the time came that he should be 
 received up, iv T(3 avft/irK-qpovtrOai. ras ■^/Jiipa? t^s avaXriij/eui's avrov (ix. 5 1 )> incon- 
 trovertibly marks it as the departure to that feast on which the sufferings and 
 death of Jesus awaited him, and though all the synoptists make the journey 
 then begun end in that triumphal entry into Jerusalem which, according to 
 the fourth gospel also, took place immediately before the last passover.*, If, 
 according to this, the departure from Galilee narrated by the synoptists is 
 regarded as that to the feast of dedication, and the entrance into Jerusalem 
 which they mention as that to the subsequent passover ; they must have 
 entirely passed over all which, on this supposition, lay between these two 
 points, namely, the arrival and residence of Jesus in Jerusalem during the 
 feast of dedication, his journey from thence into Peraea, from Peraea to 
 Bethany, and from Bethany to Ephraim. If from this it should appear to 
 follow that the synoptists were ignorant of all these particulars : our harmon- 
 ists urge, on the contrary, that Luke makes Jesus soon after his journey out of 
 Galilee, encounter scribes, who try to put him to the proof (x. 25 fF.) ; then 
 shows him in Bethany in the vicinity of Jerusalem (x. 38 fF.) j hereupon 
 removes him to the frontiers of Samaria and Galilee (xvii. 11) ; and not until 
 then, makes him proceed to the passover in Jerusalem (xix. 29 fF.) : all which 
 plainly enough indicates, that between that departure out of Galilee, and the 
 final entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus made another journey to Judaea and 
 Jerusalem, and from thence back again. ^ But, in the first place, the presence 
 of the scribes proves absolutely nothing ; and in the second, Luke makes no 
 mention of Bethany, but only of a visit to Mary and Martha, whom the fourth 
 Evangehst places in that village : from which, however, it does not follow that 
 the third also supposed them to dwell there, and consequently imagined Jesus 
 when at their home, to be in, the vicinity of Jerusalem. Again, from the fact 
 that so very long after his departure (ix. si-xvii. 11), Jesus first appears on 
 the frontier between Galilee and Samaria, it only follows that we have before 
 us no orderly progressive narrative. But, according to this harmonizing view, 
 even Matthew was aware of those intermediate events, and has indicated them 
 for the more attentive reader : the one member of his sentence, he departed 
 from Galilee, fJxTrjpev Sltto t^s TaXiXatas, intimates the journey of Jesus to the 
 
 ' Paulus, 2, s. 293, 554. Comp. Olshausen, i, s. 583. 
 * Schleiermacher, jit sup. s. 159. 
 ' Paulus, 2, s. 294 ff. 
 
LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM. 549 
 
 feast of dedication, and thus forms a separate whole ; the other, and came into 
 the coasts of Judcea beyond Jordan, koX rjXBev ets ra opia ■nj's 'lovSatas irepav toB 
 'lopSavou, refers to the departure of Jesus from Jerusalem into Persea (John x. 
 40), and opens a new period. In adopting this expedient, however, it is 
 honourably confessed that without the data gathered from John, no one would 
 have thought of such a dismemberment of the passage in Matthew.^" In 
 opposition to such artifices, no way is open to those who presuppose the 
 accuracy of John's narrative, but that adopted by the most recent criticism ; 
 namely, to renounce the supposition that Matthew, who treats of the journey 
 very briefly, was an eye-witness ; and to suppose of Luke, whose account of it 
 is very full, that either he or one of the collectors of whose labours he availed 
 himself, mingled together two separate narratives, of which one referred to the 
 earlier journey of Jesus to the feast of dedication, the other to his last journey 
 to the passover, without suspecting that between the departure of Jesus out of 
 Galilee, and his entrance into Jerusalem, there fell yet an earlier residence in 
 Jerusalem, together with other journeys and adventures.^^ 
 
 We may now observe how in the course of the narrative concerning the last 
 journey or journeys to Jerusalem, the relation between the synoptical gospels 
 and that of John is in a singular manner reversed. As in the first instance, 
 we discovered a great blank on the side of the former, in their omission of a 
 mass of intermediate events which John notices ; so now, towards the end of 
 the account of the journey, there appears on the side of the latter, a similar, 
 though smaller blank, for he gives no intimation of Jesus having come through 
 Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. It may indeed be said, that John might 
 overlook this passage through Jericho, although, according to the synoptists, 
 it was distinguished by a cure of the blind, and the visit to Zacchaeus ; but, 
 it is to be asked, is there in his narrative room for a passage through Jericho ? 
 This city does not lie on the way from Ephraim to Jerusalem, but consider- 
 ably to the eastward ; hence help is sought in the supposition that Jesus made 
 all kinds of minor excursions, in one of which he came to Jericho, and from 
 hence went forward to Jerusalem. ^^ 
 
 In any case a remarkable want of unity prevails in the evangelical accounts 
 of the last journey of Jesus ; for according to the common, synoptical tradi- 
 tion, he journeyed out of Galilee by Jericho (and, as Matthew and Mark say, 
 through Persea, as Luke says, through Samaria) ; while according to the fourth 
 gospel, he must have come hither from Ephraim : statements which it is im- 
 possible to reconcile. 
 
 § 109. 
 
 DIVERGENCIES OF THE GOSPELS, IN RELATION TO THE POINT FROM WHICH 
 JESUS MADE HIS ENTRANCE INTO JERUSALEM. 
 
 Even concerning the close of the journey of Jesus — concerning the last 
 station before he reached Jerusalem, the Evangelists are not entirely in unison. 
 While from the synoptical gospels it appears, that Jesus entered Jerusalem 
 on the same day on which he left Jericho, and consequently without halting 
 long at any intervening place (Matt. xx. 34, xxi. i ff. parall.) : the fourth 
 gospel makes him go from Ephraim only so far as Bethany, spend the night 
 there, and enter Jerusalem only on the following day (xii. i, 12 ff.). In order 
 
 i» Paulus, utsup. 295f., 584 f. 
 
 " Schleiermacher, ut sup. s. 161 f. ; Sieffert, uber den Urspr., s, 104 ff. With the former 
 agrees, in relation to Luke, Olshausen, ut sup. 
 
 '2 Tholuck, Comm. z. Joh., s. 227; Olshausen, I, s. 771 f. 
 
5 so PART II. CHAPTER X. § 109. 
 
 to reconcile the two accounts it is said : we need not wonder that the synop- 
 tists, in their summary narrative, do not expressly touch upon the spending of 
 the night in Bethany, and we are not to infer from this that they intended to 
 deny it ; there exists, therefore, no contradiction between them and John, 
 but what they present in a compact form, he exhibits in detail. ^ But while 
 Matthew does not even name Bethany, the two other synoptists mention this 
 place in a way which decidedly precludes the supposition that Jesus spent the 
 night there. They. narrate that when Jesus came near to Bethphage and, 
 Bethany-^ a>s yjyyio-tv ets B7i6<l>ay^ koI BT/^avtW, he caused an ass to be fetched 
 from the next village, and forthwith rode on this into the city. Between 
 events s6 connected it is impossible to imagine a night interposed ; on the 
 contrary, the narrative fully conveys the impression that immediately on the 
 message of Jesus, the ass was surrendered by its owner, and that immediately 
 after the arrival of the ass, Jesus prepared to enter the city. Moreover, if 
 Jesus intended to remain in Bethany for the night, it is impossible to discover 
 his motive in sending for the ass. For if we are to suppose the village to 
 which he sent to be Bethany, and if the animal on which he purposed to ride 
 would not be required until the following morning, there was no need for him 
 to send forward the disciples, and he might conveniently have waited until 
 he arrived with them in Bethany ; the other alternative, that before he had 
 reached Bethany, and ascertained whether the animal he required might not 
 be found there, he should have sent beyond this nearest village to Bethphage, 
 in order there to procure an ass for the following morning, is altogether 
 destitute of probability ; and yet Matthew, at least, says decidedly that the 
 ass was procured in Bethphage. To this it may be added, that according to 
 the representation of Mark, when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, the evening 
 otj/ia, had already commenced (xi. 11), and consequently it was only possible 
 for him to take a cursory survey of the city and the temple, after which he 
 again returned to Bethany. It is not, certainly, to be proved that the fourth 
 gospel lays the entrance in the morning ; but it must be asked, why did not 
 Jesus, when he only came from so near a place as Bethany, set out earlier 
 from thence, that he might have time to do something worth speaking of in 
 Jerusalem ? The late arrival of Jesus in the city, as stated by Mark, is evi- 
 dently to be explained only by the longer distance from Jericho thither ; if he 
 came from Bethany merely, he would scarcely set out so late, as that after he 
 had only looked round him in the city, he must again return to Bethany, in 
 order on the following day to set out earlier, which nothing had hindered him 
 from doing on this day. It is true that, in deferring the arrival of Jesus in 
 Jerusalem until late in the evening, Mark is not supported by the two other 
 synoptists, for these represent Jesus as undertaking the purification of the 
 temple on the day of his arrival, and Matthew even makes him perform cures, 
 and give answers to the high priests and scribes (Matt. xxi. 12 ff.) : but even 
 without this statement as to the hour of entrance, the arrival of Jesus near to 
 the above villages, the sending of the disciples, the bringing of the ass, and 
 the riding into the city, are too closely consecutive, to allow of our inserting 
 in the narrative of the synoptists a night's residence in Bethany. 
 
 If then it remains, that the three first Evangelists make Jesus proceed 
 directly from Jericho, without any stay in Bethany, while the fourth makes 
 him come to Jerusalem from Bethany only, they must, if they are mutually 
 correct, speak of two separate entrances,; and this has been recently main- 
 tained by several critics.^ According to them, Jesus first (as the synoptists 
 
 ' Tholuck and Olshausen, ut sup. 
 
 * Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 92 if., 98 ff. ; Schleiermacher, fiber den Lukas, s. 244 f. 
 
LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM. 551 
 
 relate) proceeded directly to Jerusalem with the caravan going to the feast, 
 and on this occasion there happened, when he made himself conspicuous by 
 mounting the animal, ari unpremeditated demonstration of homage on the 
 part of his fellow-travellers, which converted the entrance into a triumphal 
 progress. Having retired to Bethany in the evening, on the following morn- 
 ing (as John relates) a great multitude went out to meet him, in order to 
 convey him into the city, and as he met with them on the way from Bethany, 
 there was a repetition on an enlarged scale of the scene on the foregoing day, 
 — this time preconcerted by his adherents. This distinction of an earlier 
 entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem before his approach was known in the city, 
 and a later, after it was learned that he 'was in Bethany, is favoured by the 
 difference, that according to the synoptical narrative, the people who render 
 homage to him are only going before TrpoayovTes, and following a.Ko\ovOovvrei 
 (Matt. v. 9), while according to that of John, they are meeting\\vx\vKavrf)(Ta.vT(.<; 
 (v. 13, 18). If however it be asked : why then among all our narrators, does 
 each give only one entrance, and not one of them show any trace of a second ? 
 The answer in relation to John is, that this Evangelist is silent as to the first 
 entrance, probably because he was not present on the occasion, having 
 possibly been sent to Bethany to announce the arrival of Jesus.^ As, how- 
 ever, according to our principles, if it be assumed of the author of the fourth 
 gospel, that he is the apostle named in the superscription, the same assump- 
 tion must also be made respecting the author of the first : we ask in vain, 
 whither are we then to suppose that Matthew was sent on the second entrance, 
 that he knew nothing to relate concerning it ? since with the repeated depar- 
 ture from Bethany to Jerusalem, there is no conceivable cause for such an 
 errand. In relation to John indeed it is a pure invention ; not to insist, that 
 even if the two Evangelists were not personally present, they must yet have 
 learned enough of an event so much talked of in the circle of the disciples, 
 to be able to furnish an account of it. Above all, as the narrative of the 
 synoptists does not indicate that a second entrance had taken place after the 
 one described by them : so that of John is of such a kind, that before the 
 entrance which it describes, it is impossible to conceive another. For accord- 
 ing to this narrative, the day before the entrance which it details (conse- 
 quently, according to the given supposition, on the day of the synoptical 
 entrance), many Jews went from Jerusalem to Bethany, because they had 
 heard of the arrival of Jesus, and now wished to see him and Lazarus whom 
 he had restored to hfe (v. 9, comp. 12). But how could they learn on the 
 day of the synoptical entrance, that Jesus was at Bethany ? On that day 
 Jesus did indeed pass either by or through Bethany, but he proceeded 
 directly to Jerusalem, whence, according to all the narratives, he could have 
 returned to Bethany only at so late an hour in the evening, that Jews who 
 now first went from Jerusalem, could no longer hope to be able to see him.* 
 But why should they take the trouble to seek Jesus in Bethany, when they 
 had on that very day seen him in Jerusalem itself? Surely in this case it 
 must have been said — not merely, that they came not for Jesus' sake only, but 
 that they might see Lazarus also, oi Sia, tov 'Iiycrovv /lov or oAA' tva Kai tov 
 Aaiapov tSuo-i, — but rather that they had indeed seen Jesus himself in Jeru- 
 salem but as they wished to see Lazarus also, they came therefore to Bethany : 
 whereas the Evangelist represents these people as coming from Jerusalem 
 partly to see Jesus; he cannot therefore have supposed that Jesus might have 
 been seen in Jerusalem on that very day. Further, when it is said in John, 
 
 ' Schleiermacher, ut sup. 
 
 * Comp. Liicke, 2, s. 432, Anm. 
 
552 PART 11. CHAPTER X. § IO9. 
 
 that on the following day it was heard in Jerusalem that Jesus was coming (v. 
 12), this does not at all seem to imply that Jesus had already been there the 
 day before, but rather that the news had come from Bethany, of his intention 
 to enter on this day. So also the reception which is immediately prepared 
 for him, alone has its proper significance when it is regarded as the glori- 
 fication of his first entrance into the metropolis ; it could only have been 
 appropriate on his second entrance, if Jesus had the day before entered un- 
 observed and unhonoured, and it had been wished to repair this omission on 
 the following day — not if the first entrance had already been so brilliant. 
 Moreover, on the second entrance every feature of the first must have been 
 repeated, which, whether we refer it to a preconceived arrangement on the 
 part of Jesus, or to an accidental coincidence of circumstances, still remains 
 improbable. With respect to Jesus, it is not easy to understand how he 
 could arrange the repetition of a spectacle which, in the first instance signifi- 
 cant, if acted a second time would be flat and unmeanihg f on the other 
 hand, circumstances must have coincided in an unprecedented manner, if on 
 both occasions there happened the same demonstrations of homage on the 
 part of the people, with the same expressions of envy on the part of his 
 opponents ; if, on both occasions, too, there stood at the command of Jesus 
 an ass, by riding which he brought to mind the prophecy of Zechariah. We 
 might therefore call to our aid Sieffert's hypothesis of assimilation, and sup- 
 pose that the two entrances, originally more different, became thus similar by 
 traditional intermixture : were not the supposition that two distinct events lie 
 at the foundation of the evangelical narratives, rendered improbable by an- 
 other circumstance. 
 
 On the first glance, indeed, the supposition of two entrances seems to find 
 support in the fact, that John makes his entrance take place the day after the 
 meal in Bethany, at which Jesus was anointed under memorable circum- 
 stances ; whereas the two first synoptists (for Luke knows nothing of a meal 
 at Bethany in this period of the life of Jesus) make their entrance precede 
 this meal : and thus, quite in accordance with the above supposition, the 
 synoptical entrance would appear the earlier, that of John the later. This 
 would be very well, if John had not placed his entrance so early, and the 
 synoptists their meal at Bethany so late, that the former cannot possibly have 
 been subsequent to the latter. According to John, Jesus comes six days 
 before the passover to Bethany, and on the following day enters Jerusalem 
 (xiii. I, 12); on the other hand, the meal at Bethany, mentioned by the 
 synoptists (Matt. xxvi. 6 ff. parall.), can have been at the most but two days 
 before the passover (v. 2) ; sothat if we are to suppose the synoptical entrance 
 prior to the meal and the entrance in John, there must then have been after 
 all this, according to the synoptists, a second meal in Bethany. But between 
 the two meals thus presupposed, as between the two entrances, there would 
 have been the most striking resemblance even to the minutest points ; and 
 against the interweaving of two such double incidents, there is so strong a 
 presumption, that it will scarcely be said there were two entrances and two 
 meals, which were originally far more dissimilar, but, from the transference 
 of features out of the one incident into the other by tradition, they have be- 
 come as similar to each other as we now see them : on the contrary, here if 
 anywhere, it is easier, when once the authenticity of the accounts is given up, 
 to imagine that tradition has varied one incident, than that it has assimilated 
 two.^ 
 
 ' Hase, L. J. § 124. 
 
 ' Comp. De Welte, exeg. Handb. I, i, s. 172. 
 
LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM. SS3 
 
 § no. 
 
 MORE PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE ENTRANCE. ITS OBJECT AND 
 
 HISTORICAL REALITY. 
 
 While the fourth gospel first makes the multitude that streamed forth to 
 meet Jesus render him their homage, and then briefly states that Jesus 
 mounted a young ass which he had obtahied ; the synoptists commence their 
 description of the entrance with a minute account of the manner in which 
 Jesus came by the ass. When, namely, he had arrived in the neighbourhood 
 of Jerusalem, towards Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, he 
 sent two of his disciples into the village lying before them, telling them that 
 when they came there they would .find — Matthew says, an ass tied, and a colt 
 with her ; the two others, a colt whereon never man sat — which they were to 
 loose and bring to him, silencing any objections of the owner by the obser- 
 vation, the Lord hath need of him (or them). This having been done, the 
 disciples spread their clothes, and placed Jesus — on both the animals, accord- 
 ing to Matthew; according to the two other synoptists, on the single 
 animal. 
 
 The most striking part of this account is obviously the statement of Matthew, 
 that Jesus not only required two asses, though he alone intended to ride, but 
 that he also actually sat on them both. It is true that, as is natural, there are 
 not wanting attempts to explain the formeir particular, and to do away with 
 the latter. Jesus, it is said, caused the mother animal to be brought with the 
 colt, on which alone he intended to ride, in order that the young and still 
 sucking animal might by this means be made to go more easily ; ^ or else the 
 mother, accustomed to her young one, followed of her own accord : ^ but a 
 young animal, yet unweaned, would scarcely be given up by its owner to be 
 ridden. A sufficient motive on the part of Jesus in sending for the two 
 animals, could only be that he intended to ride both, which Matthew appears 
 plainly enough to say ; for his words imply, not only that the clothes were 
 spread, but also that Jesus was placed on the two animals (eTravu) airtov). But 
 how are we to represent this to ourselves ? As an alternate mounting of the 
 one and the other, Fritzsche thinks : •'' but this, for so short a distance would 
 have been a superfluous inconvenience. Hence commentators have sought 
 to rid themselves of the singular statement. Some, after very weak authorities, 
 and in opposition to all critical principles, read in the words relative to the 
 spreading of the clothes, hr avTov (rw ttSAov), upon it (the colt), instead of 
 tVavo) axTTmr, Upon them ; and then in the mentioning that Jesus placed him- 
 self thereon, refer the Ijrai/o) avrSj/ to the clothes which were spread on one 
 of the animals.* Others, thinking to escape the difficulty without an alter- 
 ation of the reading, characterize Matthew's statement as an enallage numeri,^ 
 by which, according to Winer's explanation, it is meant that the Evangelist, 
 using an inaccurate mode of expression, certainly speaks of both the animals, 
 but only in the sense in which we say of him who springs from one of two 
 horses harnessed together, that he springs from the horses.^ Admitting this 
 expedient to be sufficient, it again becomes incomprehensible why Jesus, who 
 
 ^ Paulus, 3, a, s. 115 ; Kuinol, in Matth., p. 541. 
 
 " Olshausen, I, s. 776. 
 
 ' Comm. in Matth., p. 630. His expedient is approved by De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, 
 
 I, s. 173- 
 * Paulus, ut sup. s. 143 I. 
 
 ° Glassius, phil. sacr., p. 172. Thus also Kuinol and Gratz, in loc. 
 « N. T. Gramm., s. 149. 
 
554 PART II. CHAPTER X. §110. 
 
 according to this only meant to use one animal, should have sent for two. 
 The whole statement becomes the more suspicious, when we consider that it 
 is given by the first EvangeUst alone ; for in order to reconcile the others 
 with him it will not suffice to say, as we ordinarily read, that they name only 
 the foal as being that on which Jesus rode; and that while omitting the ass 
 as an accessory fact, they do not exclude it. 
 
 But how was Matthew led into this singular statement ? Its true source 
 has been pointed out, though in a curious manner, by those who conjec- 
 ture, that Jesus in his instructions to the two disciples, and Matthew in 
 his original writing, following the passage of Zechariah (ix. 9), made use of 
 several expressions for the one idea of the ass, which expressions were by the 
 Greek translator of the first gospel misconstrued to mean more than one 
 animal.'' Undoubtedly it was the accumulated designations of the ass in the 
 above passage : nioinN"t3 "i^JJI "^^^U, v'7rot,vyiov /cat ttIoXov veov, LXX. which 
 occasioned the duplication of it in the first gospel ; for the and which in the 
 Hebrew was intended in an explanatory sense, was erroneously understood 
 to denote an addition, and hence instead of : an ass, that is, an ass's foal, 
 was substituted : an ass together with an ass's foal? But this mistake cannot 
 have originated with the Greek translator, who, if he had found throughout 
 Matthew's narrative but one ass, would scarcely have doubled it purely on the 
 strength of the prophetic passage, and as often as his original spoke of one 
 ass, have added a second, or introduced the plural number instead of the 
 singular; it must rather have been made by one whose only written source 
 was the prophetic passage, out of which, with the aid of oral tradition, he 
 spun his entire narrative, i.e. the author of the first gospel ; who hereby, as 
 recent criticism correctly maintains, irrecoverably forfeits the reputation of an 
 eye-witness ? ^ 
 
 If the first gospel stands alone in this mistake, so, on the other hand, the, 
 two intermediate Evangelists have a feature peculiar to themselves, which it 
 is to the advantage of the first to have avoided. We shall merely point out 
 in passing the prolixity witfi which Mark and Luke (though they, as well as 
 Matthew, make Jesus describe to the two disciples, how they would find the 
 ass, and wherewith they were to satisfy the owner), yet do not spare them- 
 selves or the reader the trouble of almost verbally repeating every particular 
 as having occurred (Mark v. 4 ff. ; Luke v. 32 if.) ; whereas Matthew, with 
 more judgment, contents himself with the observation, and the disciples went 
 and did as Jesus commanded them. This, as affecting merely the form of the 
 narrative, we shall not dwell on further. But it concerns the substance, that, 
 according to Mark and Luke, Jesus desired an animal whereon yet never man 
 sat, i<j> o ovSeis TTumore avOpumtiw iKoBuTi : a particular of which Matthew 
 knows nothing. One does not understand how Jesus could designedly in- 
 crease the difficulty of his progress, by the choice of a hitherto unridden 
 animal, which, unless he kept it in order by divine omnipotence (for the 
 most consummate human skill would not suffice for this on the first riding), 
 must inevitably have occasioned much disturbance to the triumphal pro- 
 cession, especially as we are not to suppose that it was preceded by its 
 mother, this circumstance having entered into the representation of the first 
 Evangelist only. To such an inconvenience Jesus would assuredly not have 
 exposed himself without a cogent reason : such a reason however appears to 
 lie sufficiently near in the opinion of antiquity, according to which, to use 
 
 ' Eichhorn, allgem. Bibliothek, 5, a. 896 f. ; comp. Bolten, Bericht des Matthaus, s, 
 
 317 f- 
 ' Vide Fritzsche, in loc. This is admitted by Neander also, s. 550, Aran. 
 ' Schulz, liber das Abendmahl, s. 310 f. ; Sieffert, iiber den Urspr., s. 107 f. 
 
LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM. 555 
 
 Wetstein's expression, animalia, usibus humanis nondum mancipata, sacra 
 habebantur ; so that thus Jesus, for his consecrated person, and the high 
 occasion of his messianic entrance, may have chosen to use only a sacred 
 ammal. But regarded more closely, this reason will appear frivolous, and 
 absurd also ; for the spectators had no means of knowing that the ass had 
 never been ridden before, except by the unruliness with which he may have 
 disturbed the peaceful progress of the triumphal train." If we are thus 
 unable to comprehend how Jesus could seek an honour for himself in mount- 
 mg an animal which had never yet been ridden ; we shall, on the contrary, 
 find it easy to comprehend how the primitive Christian community might 
 early believe it due to his honour that he should ride only on such an animal, 
 as subsequently _ that he should lie only in an unused grave. The authors 
 of the intermediate gospels did not hesitate to receive this trait into their 
 memoirs, because they indeed, in writing, would not experience the same 
 inconvenience from the undisciplined animal, which it must have caused to 
 Jesus in riding. 
 
 The two difficulties already considered belong respectively to the first 
 Evangelist, and the two intermediate ones : another is common to them all, 
 namely, that which lies in the circumstance that Jesus so confidently sends 
 two disciples for an ass which they would find in the next village, in such and 
 such a situation, and that the issue corresponds so closely to his prediction. 
 It might here appear the most natural, to suppose that he had previously 
 bespoken the ass, and that consequently it stood ready for him at the hour 
 and place appointed ; 1^ but how could he have thus bespoken an ass in Beth- 
 phage, seeing that he was just come from Jericho ? Hence even Paulus in 
 this instance finds something else more probable : namely, that about the 
 time of the feasts, in the villages lying on the high road to Jerusalem, many 
 beasts of burden stood ready to be hired by travellers ; but in opposition to 
 this it is to be observed, that Jesus does not at all seem to speak of the first 
 animal that may happen to present itself, but of a particular animal. Hence 
 we cannot but be surprised that Olshausen describes it as only the probable 
 idea of the narrator, that to the Messiah making his entrance into Jerusalem, 
 the providence of God presented everything just as he needed it ; as also 
 that the same expositor, in order to explain the ready compliance of the 
 owners of the animal, finds it necessary to suppose that they were friends of 
 Jesus ; since this trait rather serves to exhibit the as it were magical power 
 which resided in the name of the Lord, at the mention of which the owner 
 of the ass unresistingly placed it at his disposal, as subsequently the inhabit- 
 ant of the room gave it up at a word from the Master (Matt. xxvi. 18 parall.). 
 To this divine providence in favour of the Messiah, and the irresistible power 
 of his name, is united the superior knowledge by means of which Jesus here 
 clearly discerns at distant fact which might be available for the supply of his 
 wants. 
 
 Now admitting this to be the meaning and design of the Evangelists, such 
 a prediction of an accidental circumstance might certainly be conceived as 
 
 '" That the above motive will not suffice to explain the conduct of Jesus, Paulus has also 
 felt ; for only the despair on his part of finding a more real and special motive, can account 
 for his becoming in this solitary instance mystical, and embracing the explanation of Justin 
 Martyr, whom he elsewhere invariably attacks, as the author of the perverted ecclesiastical 
 interpretations of the Bible. According to Justin, the ass designated iito^yiov {that is under 
 the yoke), is a symbol of the Jews ; the ass' never yet ridden, of the Gentiles (Dial. c. Tryph. 
 S3) ; and Paulus, adopting this idea, endeavours to make it probable that Jesus, by mount- 
 ing an animal which had never before been ridden, intended to announce himself as the 
 founder and ruler of a new religious community. Exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 116 ff. 
 
 " Naturliche Gesch. 3, a. 566 f. ; Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 550, Anm. 
 
5S6 PART II. CHAPTER X. § IIO. 
 
 the effect of a magnetic clairvoyance.^^ But, on the one hand, we know 
 full well the tendency of the primitive Christian legend to create such proofs 
 of the superior nature of her Messiah (witness the calling of the two pairs of 
 brethren ; but the instance most analogous has been just alluded to, and is 
 hereafter to be more closely examined, namely, the manner in which Jesus 
 causes the room to be bespoken for his last supper with the twelve) ; on the 
 other hand, the dogmatic reasons drawn from prophecy, for displaying the 
 far-seeing of Jesus here as precisely the knowledge of an ass being tied at a 
 certain place, are clearly obvious ; so that we cannot abstain from the conjec- 
 ture, that we have here nothing more than a product of the tendency which 
 characterized the Christian legend, and of the effort to base Christian belief 
 on ancient prophecy. In considering, namely, the passage quoted in the 
 first and fourth gospels from Zechariah, where it is merely said that the meek 
 and lowly king will come riding on an ass, in general ; it is usual to overlook 
 another prophetic passage, which contains more precisely the tied ass of the 
 Messiah. This passage is Gen. xlix. ii, where the dying Jacob says to Judah 
 concerning the Shiloh, np'B', Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt 
 unto the choice vine, Becr/Jievtav Trpo? a/jLTrekov tov irZkov avrov xai rrj ekiKi tov 
 TToiXov TTJi ovov avTov. Justln Martyr understands this passage also, as well as 
 the one from Zechariah, as a prediction relative to the entrance of Jesus, and 
 hence directly asserts that the foal which Jesus caused to be fetched was 
 bound to a vine.^^ In like manner the Jews not only held the general inter- 
 pretation that the Shiloh was the Messiah, as may be shown already in the 
 Targum,!* but also combined the passage relative to the binding of the ass 
 with that on the riding of it into Jerusalem.i^ That the above prophecy of 
 Jacob is not cited by any one of our Evangelists, only proves, at the utmost, 
 that it was not verbally present to their minds when they were writing the 
 narrative before us : it can by no means prove that the passage was not an 
 element in the conceptions of the circle in which the anecdote was first 
 formed. The transmission of the narrative through the hands of many who 
 were not aware of its original relation to the passage in Genesis, may cer- 
 tainly be argued from the fact that it no longer perfectly corresponds to the 
 prophecy. For a perfect agreement to exist, Jesus, after he had, according 
 to Zechariah, ridden into the city on the ass, must on dismounting, have 
 bound it to a vine, instead of causing it to be unbound in the next village 
 (according to Mark, from a door by the way-side) as he actually does. By 
 this means, however, there was obtained, together with the fulfilment of those 
 two prophecies, a proof of the supernatural knowledge of Jesus, and the 
 magical power of his name ; and in relation to the former point, it might be 
 remembered in particular, that Samuel also had once proved his gifts as a 
 seer by the prediction, that as Saul was returning homeward, two men would 
 meet him with the information that the asses of Kis his father were found 
 (i Sam. X. 2). The narrative in the fourth gospel, having no connection with 
 the Mosaic passage, says nothing of the ass being tied, or of its being fetched 
 by the disciples, and merely states with reference to the passage of Zechariah 
 alone : Jesus, having found a young ass, sat thereon (v. 14).'^ 
 
 ''' Weisse, s. 573. 
 
 '' Apol. i. 32 : t6 5i defrinsiuf vpbs dfiireXov rbv irwXov airoS — aiii^oKov SijKitmKhv 9iv tUv 
 ycvri<roiiiviov rijj Xpurrifi Kcd tuv (it' aiiroO Trpax6')i<rof/,ivm>. irwXos ydp tis Spov elcT'iiKa Iv nri 
 eiffdStp Kdj/ifji irpbs AfiTreKof dedefi^os Bv iKiXevaev Ayayeiv a^r^ k. t. X. Binding his colt to a 
 vine — ivas a symbol indicative of what would happen to Christ ; Jor there stood at the entrance 
 of a certain village, bound to a vine, an ass's colt, which he ordered them to bring to him, etc. 
 
 '* Vid. Schottgen, horse, ii. p. 146. 
 
 " Midrasch Rabba, f. xcviii. 
 
 '' On account of this silence of the fourth Evangelist, even Neander (ut sup.) is in this 
 
LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM. 557 
 
 The next feature that presents itself for our consideration, is the homage 
 which is rendered to Jesus by the populace. According to all the narrators 
 except Luke, this consisted in cutting down the branches of trees, which, 
 according to the synoptists, were strewed in the way, according to John (who 
 with more particularity mentions palm branches), were carried by the multi- 
 tude that met Jesus ; further, according to all except John, in the spreading 
 ot clothes in the way. To this were added joyous acclamations, of which all 
 have, with unimportant modifications, the words evXoyri^ivo^ 6 epv(5«,£i/os iv 
 oyo/iOTt Kvptov, Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord; all except 
 Luke the <L<ravvi, Hosanna ; and all, the greeting as King, or Son of David 
 The first, from Ps. cxviii. 26, nin; DB'5 N2n ^na, was, it is true, a customary 
 55^,„?L^^^"'^''°" "^o persons visiting the feasts, and even the second, 
 N3 nu K'ln, taken from the preceding verse of the same psalm, was a usual cry 
 at the feast of tabernacles and the passover;" but the addition t& vlii Aav28, 
 to the Son of David, and o Paa-iXaii toS 'lo-pa^A., the King of Israel, shows 
 that the people here apphed these general forms to Jesus especially as the 
 Messiah, bid him welcome in a pre-eminent sense, and wished success to his 
 undertaking. In relation to the parties who present the homage, Luke's 
 account is the most circumscribed, for he so connects the spreading of the 
 clothes in the way (v. 36) with the immediately preceding context, that he 
 appears to ascribe it, as well as the laying of the clothes on the ass, solely to 
 the disciples, and he expressly attributes the acclamations to the whole multi- 
 tude of the disciples only (a.i:av to ttA.'^^os rum fiAxQifTwv) ; whereas Matthew and 
 Mark make the homage proceed from the accompanying mass of people. 
 This difference, however, can be easily reconciled ; for when Luke speaks of 
 the multitude of the disciples, ■irkr\Qo% tZv /j-aOajrlov, this means the wider circle 
 of the adherents of Jesus, and, on the other hand, the very great tnultitude 
 irXeiCTTos 0x^.05 in Matthew, only means all those who were favourable to him 
 among the multitude. But while the synoptists remain within the limits of 
 the company who were proceeding to the feast, and who were thus the fellow- 
 travellers of Jesus, John, as above noticed, makes the whole solemnity pro- 
 ceed from those who go out of Jerusalem to meet Jesus (v. 13), while he 
 represents the multitude who are approaching with Jesus as testifying to the 
 former the resurrection of Lazarus, on account of which, according to John, 
 the solemn escort of Jesus into Jerusalem was prepared (v. 17 f). This 
 cause we cannot admit as authentic, inasmuch as we have found critical 
 reasons for doubting the resurrection of Lazarus : but with the alleged cause, 
 the fact itself of the escort is shaken; especially if we reflect, that the dignity 
 of Jesus might appear to demand that the inhabitants of the city of David 
 should have gone forth to bring him in with all solemnity, and that it fully 
 harmonizes with the prevailing characteristics of the representation of the 
 fourth gospel, to describe, before the arrival of Jesus at the feastj how in- 
 tently the expectations of the people were fixed upon him (vii. 11 fF., xi. 56). 
 
 Title last trait in the picture before us, is the displeasure of the enemies 
 of Jesus at the strong attachment to him, exhibited by the people on this 
 occasion. According to John (v. 1 9), the Pharisees said to each other : we 
 see from this that the (lenient) proceedings which we have hitherto adopted 
 are of no avail; all the world is following him (we must interpose, with 
 forcible measures). According to Luke (v. 39 f.), some Pharisees addressed 
 Jesus as if they expected him to impose silence on his disciples ; on which 
 
 instance inclined to admit, that a more simple event, owing to the disproportionate impor- 
 tance subsequently attached to it, was unhistorically modi6ed. 
 " Comp. Paulus, in loc. 
 
JSS PART II. CHAPTER X. § IIO. 
 
 he answers, that if these were silent, the stones would cry out. While in 
 Luke and John this happens during the progress, in Matthew it is only after 
 Jesus has arrived with the procession in the temple, and when the children, 
 even here, continue to cry, Hosanna to the Son of David, that the high 
 priests and scribes direct the attention of Jesus to the impropriety, as it 
 appears to them, whereupon he repulses them with a sentence out of Ps. 
 viii. 3. {Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praisi) 
 (v. 15 f.) ; a sentence which in the original obviously relates to Jehovah, but 
 which Jesus thus applies to himself. The lamentation of Jesus over Jeru- 
 salem, connected by Luke with the entrance, will come under our considera- 
 tion further on. 
 
 John, and more particularly Matthew by his phrase toSto 8e okov yiyovev, 
 tva TrXrjpwdy k. t. A.., All this was done that it might be fulfilled, etc. (v. 4), 
 unequivocally express the idea that the design, first of God, inasmuch as he 
 ordained this scene, and next of the Messiah, as the participant in the Divine 
 counsels, was, by giving this character to the entrance, to fulfil an ancient 
 prophecy. If Jesus saw in the passage of Zechariah (ix. 9),^^ a prophecy 
 concerning himself as the Messiah, this cannot have been a knowledge result- 
 ing from the higher principle within him ; for, even if this prophetic passage 
 ought not to be referred to an historical prince, as Uzziah,!" or John Hyrca- 
 nus,^" but to a messianic individual,^! still the latter, though a pacific, must 
 yet be understood as a temporal prince, and moreover as in peaceful posses- 
 sion of Jerusalem — thus as one altogether different from Jesus. But it 
 appears quite possible for Jesus to have come to such an interpretation in 
 a natural way, since at least the rabbins with decided unanimity interpret 
 the passage of Zechariah of the Messiah. ^^ Above all, we know that the 
 contradiction which appeared to exist between the insignificant advent here 
 predicted of the Messiah, and the brilliant one which Daniel had foretold, 
 was at a later period commonly reconciled by the doctrine, that according as 
 the Jewish people showed themselves worthy or the contrary, their Messiah 
 would appear in a majestic or a lowly form.^^ Now even if this distinction 
 did not exist in the time of Jesus, but only in general a reference of the 
 passage Zech. ix. 9 to the Messiah : still Jesus might imagine that now, on 
 his first appearance, the prophecy of Zechariah must be fulfilled in him, but 
 hereafter, on his second appearance, the prophecy of Daniel. But there is 
 
 '8 The citation given by Matthew is a combination of a passage from Isaiah with that of 
 Zechariah. For the words Tell ye the daughter of Zion, etirare rg BvyaTpl Xiiiv, are from 
 Isa. Ixii. II ; the rest from Zechariah ix. 9, where the LXX. has with some divergency: 
 ISod o ^aa-iKeis (rov ipxerai ffoi Skaios Kal a-dij^wy airrhs Trpats Kal ^n/SejSTjKibs iirl inroi^yiov Kal 
 TrfiXoy v^ov. 
 
 " Hitzig, iiber die Abfassungszeit der Orakel, Zach; ix.-xiv. in the Theol. Studien, 1830, 
 I, s. 36 ff. refers the preceding verse to the warlike deeds of this king, and the one in ques- 
 tion to his pacific virtues. 
 
 ^^ Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 121 ff. 
 
 2' Rosenmiiller, Schol. in V. T. 7, 4, s. 274 ff. 
 
 "2 In the passage cited' Introd., § 14, from Midrasch Coheleth, the description, /aw/^»- ^; 
 insidens asino in Zechariah, is in the very first instance referred to the GoH postremus. This 
 ass of the Messiah was held identical with that of Abraham and Moses, vid. Jalkut Rubeni 
 f. Ixxix. 3, 4, ap. Schottgen, i. s. 169; comp. Eisenmenger, entdecktes Judenthum, 2, ». 
 697 f. 
 
 23 Sanhednn f. xcvm. i (ap. Wetstein) : Dixit R. Alexander : R. Josua f. Levi duobus 
 inter se coUatis locis tanquam contrariis visis objecit: scribitur Dan. vii. 1%: et ecce cum 
 nubihtis cosli velut filius hominis venit. Et scribitur Zach. ix. 9 : pauper et insidens asino. 
 Verum hac duo loca ita inter se concUiari possunt : nempe, si justitia sua mereantur Israel- 
 itce, Messias veniet cum nubibus cceli: si autem non mereantur, veniet pauper, et vehetur 
 asino. 
 
LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM. 559 
 
 a third possibility; namely, that either an accidental riding into Jerusalem 
 on an ass by Jesus was subsequently interpreted by the Christians in this 
 '^^'^1^^'^' °^ ^^^^' ^^^^ ^"^ messianic attribute should be wanting to him, the 
 °^^ '^^Tative of the entrance was freely composed after the two prophecies 
 and the dogmatic presupposition of a superhuman knowledge on the part of 
 
THIRD PART. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE PASSION, DEATH AND 
 RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 
 
 N N 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 RELATION OF JESUS TO THE IDEA OF A SUFFERING AND DYING 
 MESSIAH; HIS DISCOURSES ON HIS DEATH, RESURRECTION, 
 AND SECOND ADVENT, 
 
 DID JESUS IN PRECISE TERMS PREDICT HIS PASSION AND DEATH? 
 
 According to the gospels, Jesus more than once, and while the result was 
 yet distant,^ predicted to his disciples that sufferings and a violent death 
 awaited him. Moreover, if we trust the synoptical accounts, he did not 
 predict his fate merely in general terms, but specified beforehand the place 
 of his passion, namely, Jerusalem ; the time, namely, the approaching pass- 
 over ; the persons from whom he would have to snffer, namely, the chief 
 priests, scribes and Gentiles ; the essential form of his passion, namely, cruci- 
 fixion, in consequence of a judicial sentence ; and even its accessory circum- 
 stances, namely, scourging, reviling, and spitting (Matt. xvi. 21, xvii. 12, 22 f, 
 XX. 17 ff., xxvi. 12 with the parall., Luke xiii. 33). Between the synoptists and 
 the author of the fourth gospel, there exists a threefold difference in rela- 
 tion to this subject. Firstly and chiefly, in the latter the predictions of Jesus 
 do not appear so clear and intelligible, but are for the most part presented in 
 obscure figurative discourses, concerning which the narrator himself confesses 
 that the disciples understood them not until after the issue (ii. 22). In addition 
 to a decided declaration that he will voluntarily lay down his life (x. 15 ff.), 
 Jesus in this gospel is particularly fond of alluding to his approaching death 
 under the expressions vij/ovv, {nj/ova-Oai, to lift up, to be lifted up, in the application 
 of which he seems to vacillate between his exaltation on the cross, and his exal- 
 tation to glory (iii. 14, viii. 28, xii. 32) ; he compares his approaching exaltation 
 with that of the brazen serpent in the wilderness (iii. 14), as, in Matthew, he 
 compares his fate with that of Jonah (xii. 40) ; on another occasion, he speaks 
 of going away whither no man can follow him (vii. 33 ff., viii. 21 f), as, in 
 the synoptists, of a taking away of a bridegroom, which will plunge his friends 
 into mourning (Matt. ix. 15 parall.), and of a cup, which he must drink, and 
 which his disciples will find it hard to partake of with him (Matt. xx. 22 
 parall.). The two other differences are less marked, but are still observable. 
 One of them is, that while in John the allusions to the violent death of Jesus 
 run in an equal degree through the whole gospel ; in the synoptists, the re- 
 peated and definite announcements of his death_are found only towards the 
 
 ' His predictions concerning particular circumstances of his passion, uttered shortly before 
 its occurrence, in the last days days of his life, can only be considered farther on, in the 
 history of those days. 
 
564 PART III. CHAPTER I. § III. 
 
 end, partly immediately before, partly during, the last journey ; in earlier 
 chapters there occurs, with the exception of the obscure discourse on the sign 
 of Jonah (which we shall soon see to be no prediction|[of death), only the inti- 
 mation of a removal (doubtless violent) of the bridegroom. The last diflFerence 
 is, that while according to the three first EvangeUsts, Jesus imparts those pre- 
 dictions (again with the single exception of the above intimation, Matt. ix. 15) 
 only to the confidential circle of his disciples ; in John, he utters them in the 
 presence of the people, and even of his enemies. 
 
 In the critical investigation of these evangelical accounts, we shall proceed 
 from the special to the general, in the following manner. First we shall ask : 
 Is it credible that Jesus had a foreknowledge of so many particular features of 
 the fate which awaited him ? and next : Is even a general foreknowledge and 
 prediction of his sufferings, on the part of Jesus, probable? in which inquiry, 
 the difference between the representation of John and that of the synoptists, 
 will necessarily come under our consideration. 
 
 There are two modes of explaining how Jesus could so precisely foreknow 
 the particular circumstances of his passion and death ; the one resting on a 
 supernatural, the other on a natural basis. The former appears adequate to 
 solve the problem by the simple position, that before the prophetic spirit, which 
 dwelt in Jesus in the richest plenitude, his destiny must have lain unfolded 
 from the beginning. As, however, Jesus himself, in his announcements of his 
 sufferings, expressly appealed to the Old , Testament, the prophecies of which 
 concerning him must be fulfilled in all points (Luke xviii. 31, comp. xxii. 37, 
 xxiv. 25 ff. ; Matt. xxvi. 54) : so the orthodox view ought not to despise this 
 help, but must give to its explanation the modification, that Jesus continually 
 occupied with the prophecies of the Old Testament, may have drawn those 
 particularities out of them, by the aid of the spirit that dwelt within him.* 
 According to this, while the knowledge of the time of his passion remains 
 consigned to his prophetic presentiment, unless he be supposed to have cal- 
 culated this out of Daniel, or some similar source ; Jesus must have come 
 to regard Jerusalem as the scene of his suffering an^ death, by contemplating 
 the fate of eariier prophets as a type of his own, the Spirit telling him, that 
 where so many prophets had suffered death, there, d, fortiori, must the Messiah 
 also suffer (Luke xiii. 33); that his death would be the sequel of a formal 
 sentence, he must have gathered from Isa. liii. 8, where a. judgment ^^^^ is 
 spoken of as impending over the servant of God, and from v. 12, where it 
 is said that he was nuinbered with the transgressors, hi tws dvo/iois k\a^'uiBi\ 
 (comp. Luke xxii. 37) ; that his sentence would proceed from the rulers of 
 his own people, he might perhaps have concluded from Ps. cxviii. 22, where 
 the builders, okoSo/ioBvTcs who reject the corner-stone, are, according to apos- 
 tolic interpretation (Acts iv. 11), the Jewish rulers; that he would be de- 
 livered to the Gentiles, he might infer from the fact, that in several plaintive 
 psalms, which are susceptible of a messianic interpretation, the persecuting 
 parties are represented as D'5??'"?, i. e. heathens ; that the precise manner of 
 his death would be crucifixion, he might have deduced, partly from the type 
 of the brazen serpent which was suspended on a pole. Num. xxi. 8 f. (comp. 
 John iii. 14), partly from the piercing of the hands and feet, Ps. xxii. 17, 
 LXX. ; lastly, that he would be the object of scorn and personal maltreatment, 
 he might have concluded from passages such as v. 7 ff. in the Psalm above 
 quoted, Isa. 1. 6, etc. Now if the spirit which dwelt in Jesus, and which, 
 according to the orthodox opinion, revealed to him the reference of these 
 prophecies and types to his ultimate destiny, was a spirit of truth : this refer- 
 
 ' Comp. Olshausen, bibl. Coram., I, s. 528. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS RELATING TO HIS DEATH. 5^5 
 
 ence to Jesus must admit of being proved to be the true and original sense 
 of those Old Testament passages. But, to confine ourselves to the principal 
 passages only, a profound grammatical and historical exposition has convinc- 
 ingly shown, for all who are in a condition to liberate themselves from dog- 
 matic presuppositions, that in none of these is there any allusion to the suf- 
 ferings of Christ. Instead of this, Isa. 1. 6, speaks of the ill usage which 
 the prophets had to experience ; ^ Isa. liii. of the calamities of the prophetic 
 order, or more probably of the Israelitish people;* Ps. cxviii. of the un- 
 expected dehverance and exaltation of that people, or of one of their princes -^ 
 while Ps. xxii. is the complaint of an oppressed exile.^ As to the 17th verse 
 of this Psalm, which has been interpreted as having reference to the crucifixion 
 of Christ, even 'presupposing the most improbable interpretation of ''"i'<3 by 
 perfoderunt, this must in no case be understood literally, but only figuratively, 
 and the image would be derived, not from a crucifixion, but from a chase, or 
 a combat with wild beasts -^ hence the application of this passage to Christ is 
 now only maintained by those with whom it would be lost labour to contend. 
 According to the orthodox view, however, Jesus, in a supernatural manner, 
 by means of his higher nature, discovered in these passages a pre-intimation 
 of the particular features of his passion ; but, in that case, since such is not 
 the true sense of these passages, the spirit that dwelt in Jesus cannot have 
 been the spirit of truth, but a lying spirit. Thus the orthodox expositor, so 
 far as he does not exclude himself from the light dispensed by an unpre- 
 judiced interpretation of the Old Testament, is driven, for the sake of his own 
 interest, to adopt the natural opinion ; namely, that Jesus was led to such an 
 interpretation of Old Testament passages, not by divine inspiration, but by a 
 combination of his own. 
 
 According to this opinion,** there was no difficulty in foreseeing that it 
 would be the ruling sacerdotal party to which Jesus must succumb, since, on 
 the one hand, it was pre-eminently embittered against Jesus, on the other, it 
 was in possession of the necessary power ; and equally obvious was it that 
 they would make Jerusalem the theatre of his judgment and execution, since 
 this was the centre of their strength ; that after being sentenced by the 
 rulers of his people, he would be delivered to the Romans for execution, 
 followed from the limitation of the Jewish judicial power at that period ; that 
 crucifixion was the death to which he would be sentenced, might be conjec- 
 tured from the fact that with the Romans this species of death was a custom- 
 ary infliction, especially on rebels ; lastly, that scourging and reviling would 
 not be wanting, might likewise be inferred from Roman custom, and the bar- 
 barity of judicial proceedings in that age. — But viewing the subject more 
 nearly, how could Jesus so certainly know that Herod, who had directed a 
 threatening attention to his movements (Luke xiii. 31), would ^not forestall 
 the sacerdotal party, and add to the murder of the Baptist, that of his more 
 important follower ? And even if he felt himself warranted in believing that 
 real danger threatened him from the side of the hierarchy only (Luke xui. 
 33) j what was his guarantee that one of their tumultuary attempts to murder 
 him would not at last succeed (comp. John viii. 39, x. 31), and that he 
 would not, as Stephen did at a later period, without any further formalities, 
 and without a previous delivery to the Romans, find his death in quite 
 
 3 Gesenius, Jesaias, iii. 137 ff. ; Hitzig, Comm. zu. Jes., s- S50- 
 
 * Gesenius, ut sup. s. 158 ff. ; Hitzig, s. 577 ff. ; Vatke, bibl. Theol. i, s. 528 ff. 
 
 5 De Wette, Comm. zuden Psalmen, s. 514 fif. ; 3te -A""- 
 
 » Ibid. s. 224 ff. ,^^ . , 
 
 ' Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 677 ff., and De Wette in loc. 
 
 « See this view developed by Fritzsche, Comm. mMarc, p. 381 f. 
 
S66 PART III. CHAPTER I. § III. 
 
 another manner than by the Roman punishment of crucifixion ? Lastly, how 
 could he so confidently assert that the very next plot of his aiemies, after so 
 many failures, would be successful, and that the very next journey to the pass- 
 over would be his last? — But the natural explanation also can call to its aid 
 the Old Testament passages, and say : Jesus, whether by the application of 
 a mode of interpretation then current among his countrymen, or under the 
 guidance of his own individual views, gathered from the passages already 
 quoted, a precise idea of the circumstances attendant on the violent end which 
 awaited him as the Messiah.^ But if in the first place it would be difficult to 
 prove, that already in the lifetime of Jesus all these various passages were 
 referred to the Messiah ; and if it be equally difficult to conceive that Jesus 
 could independently, prior to the issue, discover such a reference ; so it would 
 be a case undistinguishable from ^a miracle, if the result had actually corre- 
 sponded to so false an interpretation ; moreover, the Old Testament oracles 
 and types will not suffice to explain all the particular features in the predic- 
 tions of Jesus, especially the precise determination of time. 
 
 If then Jesus cannot have had so precise a foreknowledge of the circum- 
 stances of his passion and death, either in a supernatural or a natural way : 
 he cannot have had such a foreknowledge at all : and the minute predictions 
 which the Evangelists put into his mouth must be regarded as a vaticinium post 
 eventum}^ Commentators who have arrived at this conclusion, have not 
 failed to extol the account of John, in opposition to that of the synoptists, on 
 the ground that precisely those traits in the predictions of Jesus which,|from 
 their special character, he cannot have uttered, are only found in the synop- 
 tists, while John attributes to Jesus no more than indefinite intimations, and 
 distinguishes these from his own interpretation, made after the issue ; a plain 
 proof that in his gospel alone we have the discourses of Jesus unfalsified, 
 and in their original form.^^ But, regarded more nearly, the case does not 
 stand so that the fourth Evangelist can only be taxed with putting an erroneous 
 interpretation on the otherwise unfalsified > declarations of Jesus : for in one 
 passage, at least, he has put into his mouth an expression which, obscurely, 
 it is true, but still unmistakably, determines the manner of his death as 
 crucifixion ; and consequently, he has here altered the words of Jesus to 
 correspond with the result. We refer to the expression vij/oiOijvac, to be lifted 
 up : in those passages of the fourth gospel where Jesus speaks in a passive 
 sense of the Son of Man being lifted up, this expression might possibly mean 
 his exaltation to glory, although in iii. 14, from the comparison with the ser- 
 pent in the wilderness, which was well known to have been elevated on a pole, 
 even this becomes a difficulty ; but when, as in viii. 28, he represents the 
 . exaltation of the Son of Man as the act of his enemies (orai' inj^dxrriTe tov vlbv 
 T. a.), it is obvious that these could not lift him up immediately to glory, but 
 only to the cross ; consequently, if the result above stated be admitted as 
 valid, John must himself have framed this expression, or at least have distorted 
 the Aramaean words of Jesus, and hence he essentially falls under the same 
 category with the synoptical writers. That the fourth Evangelist, though the 
 passion and death of Jesus were to him past events, and therefore clearly pre- 
 sent to his mind, nevertheless makes Jesus predict them in obscure expres- 
 sions, — this has its foundation in the entire manner of this writer, whose fond- 
 
 ' Vid. Fritzsche, ut sup. 
 
 "• Paulus, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 41S ff- ! Ammon, bibl. Theol. 2, s. 377 f. ; Kaiser, bibl. 
 Theol. I, s. 246. Fritzsdhe also, ut sup. and Weisse, i, s. 423, partly admit this. 
 
 " Bertholdt, Einleitung in d. N. T. 1305 ff. ; Wegscheider, Einl. in das Evang. Johannis, 
 s. 271 f. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS RELATING TO HIS DEATH. 567 
 
 ness for the enigmatical and mysterious here happily met the requirement, 
 to give an unintelligible form to prophecies which were not understood. 
 
 There were sufficient inducements for the Christian legend thus to put into 
 the mouth of Jesus, after the event, a prediction of the particular features 
 of his passion, especially of the ignominious crucifixion. The more the Christ 
 crucified became to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness (i 
 Cor. i. 23), the more need was there to remove this offence by every possible 
 means ; and as, among subsequent events, the resurrection especially served 
 as a retrospective cancelling of that shameful death ; so it must have been 
 earnestly desired to take the sting from that offensive catastrophe beforehand 
 also, and this could not be done more effectually than by such a minute 
 prediction. For as the most unimportant fact, when prophetically announced, 
 gains importance, by thus being made a link in the chain of a higher know- 
 ledge : so the most ignominious fate, when it is predicted as part of a divine 
 plan of salvation, cases to be ignominious ; above all, when the very person 
 over whom such a fate impends, also possesses the prophetic spirit, which 
 enables him to foresee and foretell it, and thus not only suffers, but participates 
 in the divine prescience of his sufferings, he manifests himself as the ideal power 
 over those suffering. But the fourth Evangelist has gone still farther on this 
 track; he believes it due to the honour of Jesus to represent him as also the 
 real power over his sufferings, as not having his life taken away by the vio- 
 lence of others, but as resigning it voluntarily (x. 17 ,f.) : a representation 
 which indeed already finds some countenance in Matt. xxvi. 53, where Jesus 
 asserts the possibility of praying to the Father for legions of angels, in order 
 to avert his sufferings. 
 
 § 112. 
 
 THE PREDICTIONS OF JESUS CONCERNING HIS DEATH IN GENERAL; THEIR 
 RELATION TO THE JEWISH IDEA OF THE MESSIAH : DECLARATIONS OF 
 JESUS CONCERNING THE OBJECT AND EFFECTS OF HIS DEATH. 
 
 If in this manner we subtract from the declarations of Jesus concerning his 
 approaching fate, attributed to him in the gospels, all which regards the 
 particular circumstances of this catastrophe ; there still remains on the part 
 of Jesus the general announcement, that suffering and death awaited him, 
 and also that this part of his career was a fulfilment of the Old Testament 
 prophecies relative to the Messiah. As, however, the principal passages cited 
 from the Old Testament, which treat of suffering and death, are only by 
 mistake referred to the Messiah, while others, as Dan. ix. 26; Zech. xii. 10, 
 have not this signification : ^ the orthodox, above all, must again beware of 
 attributing so false an interpretation of these prophecies, to the supernatural 
 principle in Jesus. That instead of this, Jesus might possibly, by a purely 
 natural combination, have educed the general result, that since he had made 
 the hierarchy of his nation his implacable enemies, he had, in so far as he was 
 resolved not to swerve from the path of his destination, the worst to fear from 
 their revenge and authority (John x. 1 1 ff.) ; that from the fate of former 
 prophets (Matt. v. 12, xxi. 33 ff. ; Luke xiii. 33 f.), and isolated passages 
 Ijearing such an interpretation, he might prognosticate a similar end to his 
 own career, and accordingly predict to his followers that earlier or later a 
 violent death awaited him — this it would be a needless overstraining of 
 
 » Daniel, iibersetzt und erklsUt von Bertholdt, 2, s. 541 ff., 660 ff. ; Rosenmiiller, Schol. 
 in V. T. 7, 4, p. 339 ff- 
 
568 PART III. CHAPTER I. § 112. 
 
 the supranaturalistic view any longer to deny, and the rational mode of con- 
 sidering the subject should be admitted.^ 
 
 It may appear surprising if, after this admission, we still put the question, 
 whether, according to the New Testament representation, it be probable that 
 Jesus actually uttered such a prediction? since, certainly, a general an- 
 nouncement of his violent death is the least which the evangelical accounts 
 appear to contain, but our meaning in the question is this : is the sequel, 
 especially the conduct of the disciples, so described in the gospels, as to be 
 reconcilable with a prior disclosure of Jesus relative to the sufferings which 
 awaited him ? Now the express statements of the EvangeUsts do not merely 
 tend to show that the disciples did not understand the discourses of Jesus 
 on his coming death, in the sense that they did not know how to adjust these 
 facts in their own minds, or to make them tally with their preconceived ideas 
 concerning the Messiah, — a difficulty which drew from Peter the first time 
 that Jesus announced his death, the exclamation : Be it far from thee. Lord, 
 this shall not be unto thee ; — ^for we find the words of Mark (ix. 32), But they 
 understood not that saying, ol Sc iffvotmv to prj/m, thus amplified in Luke : and 
 it was hid from them, that they perceived if not, kox rfv TrapaKeKakvfj.fi.evov o-t 
 aurSi/ tva ixtj atcr6wvTai avTo (ix. 45) ; and the latter Evangelist on another 
 occasion says : and they understood none of these things, and this saying was 
 hid from them, neither knew they the things that were spoken, koX a,\noi oiSev 
 TOVTcuv (TvvrJKav, koi rjv to p^jua tovto K£Kprv[JifjLevov air avrSsv, Kai ovk lyiviacKov 
 TO, Xiyofiueva (xviii. 34) : expressions which appearHio imply that the disciples 
 absolutely did not understand what the words of Jesus meant. In accordance 
 with this, the condemnation and execution of Jesus fall upon them as a blow 
 for which they are entirely unprepared, and consequently annihilate all the 
 hopes which they had fixed on him as the Messiah (Luke xxiv. 20 f., The 
 chief priests and our rulers have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been 
 he which should have redeemed Israel). But had Jesus spoken of his death to 
 the disciples with such perfect openness (irappijo-ta, Mark viii. 32), they must 
 necessarily have understood his clear words arid detailed discourses, and had 
 he besides shown them that his death was foreshadowed in the messianic 
 prophecies of the Old Testament, and was consequently a part of the 
 Messiah's destination (Luke xviii. 31, xxii. 37), they could not, when his 
 death actually ensued, have so entirely lost all belief in his messiahship. It 
 is true that the Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist is wrong in his attempt to show 
 in the conduct of Jesus, as described by the Evangelists, indications that his 
 ideath was unexpected even to himself; but, looking merely at the conduct 
 of the disciples, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion which that writer draws, 
 namely, that to judge by that conduct, Jesus cannot have made any ante- 
 cedent disclosure to his disciples concerning his death ; on the contrary, they 
 appear to the very last moment to have held the common opinion on this 
 matter, and only to have adopted the characteristics of suffering and death 
 into their conception of the Messiah, after the death of Jesus had un- 
 expectedly come upon them.* At all events we have before us the following 
 dilemma : either the statements of the Evangelists as to the inability of the 
 disciples to understand the predictions of Jesus, and their surprise at his 
 death, are unhistorically exaggerated; or the decided declarations of Jesus 
 concerning the death which awaited him, were composed ex eventu, nay, it 
 becomes doubtful whether he even in general predicted his death as a part 
 of his messianic destiny. On both sides, the legend might be led into 
 
 • ^ De Wette, de morte Christi expiatoria, in his Opusc. Theol., p. 130 ; Hase, L. J. § 106. 
 ' Vom Zweck Jesu und seiner Junger, s. 114 ff. 153 f. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS RELATING TO HIS DEATH. 569 
 
 unhistorical representations. For the fabrication of a prediction of his death 
 in general, there were the same reasons which we have above shown to be an 
 adequate motive for attributing to him a prognostication of the particular 
 features of his passion : to the fiction of so total a want of comprehension 
 m the disciples, an inducement might be found, on the one hand, in the 
 desire to exhibit the profoundness of the mystery of a suffering Messiah 
 revealed by Jesus, through the inability of the disciples to understand it ; on 
 the other, in the fact that in the evangelical tradition the disciples were 
 likened to unconverted Jews and heathens, to whom anything was more 
 intelhgible than the death of the Messiah. 
 
 In order to decide between these alternatives, we must first examine 
 whether, prior to the death of Jesus, and independently of that event, the 
 messianic ideas of the age included the characteristics of suffering and death. 
 If already in the Ufetime of Jesus it was the Jewish opinion that the Messiah 
 must die a violent death, then it is highly probable that Jesus imbibed 
 this idea as a part of his convictions, and communicated it to his disciples ; 
 who, in that case, could so much the less have remained uninstructed 
 on this point, and overwhelmed by the actual result, in the degree alleged by 
 the Evangelists. If, on the contrary, that idea was not diffused among his 
 countrymen before the death of Jesus, it still remains possible that Jesus might 
 arrive at that idea by his private reflection; but it is a prior possibility 
 that the disciples were the first to adopt the characteristics of suffering and 
 death into their conception of the Messiah, after they had been taught by 
 the issue. 
 
 The question whether the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was 
 already diffused among the Jews in the time of Jesus, is one of the most 
 difficult points of discussion among theologians, and one concerning which 
 they are the least agreed. And the diflnculty of the question does not lie in 
 the interests of party, so that it might be hoped that with the rise of impartial 
 investigation, the subject would cease to be perplexed ; for, as Staudlin has 
 aptly shown,* both the orthodox and the rationalistic interest may alternately 
 tend in each direction, and we in fact find theologians of both parties on 
 both sides. 5 The difficulty lies in the deficiency of information, and in the 
 uncertainty of that which we do possess. If the Old Testament contained 
 the doctrine of a suffering and dying Messiah, it might certainly thence be 
 inferred with more than mere probability, that this doctrine existed among 
 the Jews in the time of Jesus : as, however, according to the most recent 
 researches, the Old Testament, while it does indeed contain the doctrine of 
 an expiation of the sins of the people to take place at the messianic era 
 (Ezek. xxxvi. 25, xxxvii. 23 ; Zech. xiii. i ; Dan. ix. 24), has no trace of this 
 expiation being effected by the suffering and death of the Messiah ^ : there is 
 no decision of the question before us to be expected from this quarter. The 
 apocryphal books of the Old Testament lie nearer to the time of Jesus ; but 
 as these are altogether silent concerning the Messiah in general,' there can 
 be no discussion as to their containing that special feature. Again, if we 
 turn to Philo and Josephus, the two authors who wrote soonest after the 
 
 r * Ueber den Zweck und die Wirkungen des Todes Jesu, in the Gottingischen Bibliothek, 
 1, 4, s. 252 ff. . , , . 
 
 * See the list in De Wette, ut sup. s. 6 ff. The most important voices for the existence 
 of the idea in question in the time of Jesus, have been noticed by Staudlin in the above 
 treatise, i, s. 233 ff., and by Hengstenberg, Christologie des A. T., i, a, s. 270 ff., b, ». 
 290 ff. J for the opposite opinion, by De Wette, ut sup. p. i ff. 
 
 8 Comp. De Wette, blbl. Dogm, § 201 f. ; Baumgarten Crusius, bibl. Theol..§ S4. 
 
 ^ Vid. De Wette, ut sup. § 189 ff. 
 
570 PART in. CHAPTER I. § U2. 
 
 period in question, we find the latter silent as to the messianic hopes of his 
 nation ;^ and though the former does indeed speak of messianic times, and 
 a messiah-like hero, he says nothing of sufferings on his part.* Thus there 
 remain, as sources of information on this point, only the New Testament and 
 the later Jewish writings. 
 
 In the New Testament, almost everything is calculated to give the im- 
 pression, that a suffering and dying Messiah was unthought-of among the 
 Jews who were contemporary with Jesus. To the majority of the Jews, we 
 are told, the doctrine of a crucified Messiah was a o-KavSoAoV, and the dis- 
 ciples were at a loss to understand Jesus in his repeated and explicit 
 announcements of his death. This does not look as if the doctrine of a 
 suffering Messiah had been current among the Jews of that period ; on the 
 contrary, these circumstances accord fully with the declaration which the 
 fourth Evangelist puts into the mouth of the Jewish multitude, oxA.os (xii. 34), 
 namely, that they had heard in the law (vo/ws) that Christ abideth for ever, 
 on 6 XptoTos fjnevei ets toV almva.^" Indeed, for a general acceptation of the 
 idea of a suffering Messiah among the Jews of that period, even those 
 theologians who take the affirmative side in this argument do not contend; 
 but, admitting that the hope of a worldly Messiah whose reign was to endure 
 for ever, was the prevalent one, they only maintain (and herein the Wolfen- 
 biittel Fragmentist agrees with them)'!, that a less numerous party, — accord- 
 ing to Staudlin, the Essenes ; according to Hengstenberg, the better and 
 more enlightened part of the people in general — held the behef that the 
 Messiah would appear in a humble guise, and only enter into glory through 
 suffering and death. In support of this they appeal especially to two 
 passages ; one out of the third, and one out of the fourth gospel. When 
 Jesus is presented as an infant in the temple at Jerusalem, the aged Simeon, 
 among other prophecies, particularly concerning the opposition which her 
 son would have to encounter, says to Mary : Yea, a sword shall pierce through 
 thine own soul also (Luke ii. 35) ; words which seem to describe her maternal 
 sorrow at the death of her son, and consequently to represent the opinion, 
 that a violent death awaited the Messiah, as one already current before 
 Christ. Still more plainly is the idea of a suffering Messiah contained in the 
 words which the fourth gospel makes the Baptist utter on seeing Jesus : 
 Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world (i. 29) ! This, 
 viewed in its relation to Isa. liii., would in -the mouth of the Baptist likewise 
 tend to prove, that the idea of expiatory suffering on the part of the Messiah 
 was in existence before the time of Jesus. But both these passages have 
 been above shown to be unhistorical, and from the fact that the primitive 
 Christian legend was led, a considerable time after the issue, to attribute to 
 persons whom it held divinely inspired, a foreknowledge of the divine decree 
 with respect to the death of Jesus, it can by no means be concluded, that 
 this insight really existed prior to the death of Jesus. In conclusion, it is 
 urged, that at least the Evangelists and apostles refer to the idea of a suffer- 
 ing and dying Messiah in the Old Testament ; whence it is thought warrant- 
 able to conclude, that this interpretation of the Old Testament passages 
 connected with our present subject, was not unprecedented among the Jews. 
 Certainly Peter (Acts iii. 18 f. ; i Pet. i. ir f.) and Paul (Acts xxvi. 22 f. ; 
 
 * Comp. De Wette, ut sup. § 193. 
 » Gfrorer, Philo, I, s. 495 ff. 
 
 '" A passage to this effect out of the law (*i5/4os) properly so called, would be difficult to 
 find : De Wette, de morte, p. 72, refers to Isa. ix. 5 ; Liicke, in loc. to Ps. ex. 4 ; Dan. 
 vii. 14, ii. 44. 
 
 " Vom Zweck Jesu und seiner Junger, s. 179 f. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS RELATING TO HIS DEATH. 57 1 
 
 I Cor. XV. 3) appeal to Moses and the prophets as annunciators of the death 
 of Jesus, and Philip, in his interview with the Ethiopian eunuch, interprets a 
 passage in Isa. liii. of the sufferings of the Messiah : but as those teachers 
 of the church spoke and wrote all this after the event, we have no assurance 
 that they did not assign to certain Old Testament passages a relation to the 
 sufferings of the Messiah, solel)r1n consquence of that event, and not by 
 adopting a mode of interpretation previously current among their Jewish 
 cotemporaries.i* 
 
 If, according to this, the opinion that the idea in question already existed 
 among the countrymen of Jesus during his lifetime, has no solid foundation 
 in the New Testament ; we must proceed to inquire whether that idea may 
 not be found in the later Jewish writings. Among the earliest writings of 
 this class now extant, are the Chaldee paraphrases of Onkelos and Jonathan ; 
 and the Targum of the latter, who, according to rabbinical tradition, was a 
 pupil of Hillel the elder, i^ is commonly cited as presenting the idea of a 
 suffering Messiah, because it refers the passage, Isa. lii. 13-liii. 12, to the 
 Messiah. But with respect to the interpretation of this passage in the 
 Targum of Jonathan, it is the singular fact, that while the prophecies which 
 it contains are in general interpreted messianically, yet so often as suffering 
 and death are spoken of, either these ideas are avoided with marked design, 
 and for the most part by some extremely forced expedient, or are transferred 
 to a different subject, namely, the people of Israel : a significant proof that 
 to the author, suffering and violent death appeared irreconcilable with the 
 idea of the Messiah.^* But this, we are told, is the commencement of 
 that aberration from the true sense of the sacred text, into which the later 
 Jews were seduced by their carnal disposition, and their hostility to 
 Christianity : the more ancient interpreters, it is said, discovered in this 
 passage of Isaiah a suffering and dying Messiah. It is true that Abenezra, 
 Abarbanel and others, testify that many ancient teachers referred Isa. liii. to 
 the Messiah : *^ but some of their statements leave it by no means clear that 
 those more ancient interpretations are not as partial as that of Jonathan; 
 and in relation to all of them it remains uncertain, whether the interpreters 
 of whom they speak reach as far back as the age of Jonathan, which is highly 
 improbable with respect to those parts of the book Sohar, wherein the 
 passage in question is referred to a- suffering Messiah.^^ The writing which, 
 together with that of Jonathan, may be regarded as the nearest to the time 
 
 '2 Vid. De Wette, de morte Chr. p. 73 f. 
 
 " Comp. Gesenius, Jesaias 2, Th. s. 66 ; De Wette, Einleitung in das A. T. § 59, 3te 
 Ausg. 
 
 '* Literal translation according to Hitzig, Targum of Jonathan : Quemadmodum 
 
 lii. 14: — As many were amazed at liim, so per multos dies ipsum exspectdrunt 
 disfigured, not human, was his appearance, Israelitae, quorum contabuit inter 
 and his form not that of the children of gentes adspectus et splendor {et evanuit) t 
 men, etc. filiis hominum, etc. 
 
 liii. 4: — But he tore our infirmities, and Idcirco pro delictis tiostris ipse depre- 
 
 charged himself with our sorrows, and we cabitur, et iniquitates nostra propter^ 
 esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and eum condonabuntur, licet nos^ reputati 
 afflicted. simus contusi, plagis affecti et afflicti. 
 
 Origen also relates, c. Celsus, i. 55, how a person esteemed a wise man among the Jews, 
 Xryi/tci'os ira/)i 'louSaiois i7o06s, maintained, in opposition to his Christian interpretation 
 of the passage in Isaiah, that this was prophesied concerning the whole nation, which had been 
 dispersed and afflicted, in order that many might become proselytes, roCra TerrpotfniTevffeaj. <is 
 irepl ivis tov S\ov MoS, xal yevo/iivov iv rf dia<riropa, Kal rXiiyhros, ti/a TroXXoi vposifKvToi. 
 
 y^viavToi, , 1 T_ o 
 
 " Vid. Schottgen, 2, s. i8z f. ; Eisenmenger, entdecktes Judenthum, 2, s. 75S. 
 »6 Ap. Schottgen, 2 s. 181 f. 
 
572 PART III. CHAPTER I. § 112. 
 
 of Jesus, namely, the apocryphal fourth book of Esdras, drawn up, according 
 to the most probable computation, shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem 
 under Titus, i'' does indeed mention the death of the Messiah : not however 
 as a painful one, but only as a death which, after the long duration of the 
 messianic kingdom, was to precede the general resurrection. ^^ The idea of 
 great calamities, the birth-throes, as it were, of the Messiah (IT'CJ'Dn »?3n, 
 comp. apxri ciStVmv, Matt. xxiv. 8), which would usher in the messianic times, 
 was undoubtedly disseminated before Christ ; ^^ and equally early there 
 appears to have been placed in the front of these ills, which were to press 
 upon the people of Israel in particular, the Antichrisi, avTi'x/oio-Tos, whorh the 
 Christ, XptcTTos would have to oppose (2 Thess. ii. 3 ff.) : '^ but since he was 
 to annihilate this adversary in a supernatural manner, with the spirit of his 
 mouth, riS ■m/f.vjj.o.TL tov aro/iaTOi a-£roS, this involved no suffering for the 
 Messiah. Nevertheless, there are to be found passages in which a suffering 
 of the Messiah is spoken of, and in which this suffering is even represented 
 as vicarious, on behalf of the people : ^^ but first, this is only a suffering, and 
 no death of the Messiah ; secondly, it befals him either before his descent 
 into earthly life, in his pre-existence,^^ or during the concealment in which he 
 keeps himself from his birth until his appearance as Messiah : ^^ lastly, the 
 antiquity of these ideas is doubtful, and according to certain indications, 
 they could only be dated after the destruction of the Jewish state by Titus.^* 
 Meanwhile, Jewish writings are by no means destitute of passages, in which 
 it is directly asserted that a Messiah would perish in a violent manner : but 
 these passages relate, not to the proper Messiah, the offspring of David, but 
 to another,, from among the posterity of Joseph and Ephraim, who was 
 appointed to hold a subordinate position in relation to the former. This 
 Messiah ben Joseph was to precede the Messiah ben David, to unite the ten 
 tribes of the former kingdom of Israel with the two tribes of the kingdom 
 of Judah, but after this to perish by the sword in the battle with Gog and 
 Magog : a catastrophe to which Zech. xii. 10 was referred.^" But of this 
 second, dying Messiah, any certain traces are wanting before the Babylonian 
 Gemara, which was compiled in the fifth and sixth centuries after Christ, and 
 the book Sohar, the age of which is extremely doubtful.^" 
 
 Although, according to this, it cannot be proved, and is even not probable, 
 that the idea of a suffering Messiah already existed among the Jews in the ' 
 time of Jesus : it is still possible that, even without such a precedent, Jesus 
 himself, by an observation of circumstances, and a comparison of them with 
 Old Testament narratives and prophecies, might come to entertain the belief 
 that suffering and death were a part of the office and destination of the 
 Messiah ; and if so, it would be more natural that he should embrace this 
 conviction gradually in the course of his public ministry, and that he should 
 
 '' De Wette, de morte Chr. expiatoria, ut sup. s. 50. 
 '' vii. 29. 
 
 " Schottgen, 2, s. 509 ff. ; Schmidt, Christologische Fragmente, in his Bibliothek, 
 I, s. 24 ff. ; Bertholdt, Christol. Jud., § 13. 
 2° Schmidt, ut sup. ; Bertholdt, ut sup., § 16. 
 ^' Pesikta in Abkath Rochel, ap. Schmidt, s. 48 f. 
 
 22 Sohar, P. II. Ixxxv. 2, ap. Schmidt, § 47 f. 
 
 23 Gemara Sanhedrin, f. xcviii. I ; ap. De Wette, de morte Chr., p. 95 f., and' ap. 
 Hengstenberg, s. 292. 
 
 2* Sohar, P. II. f. Ixxx.ii. 2 ; ap. De Wette, s. 94 : Cum Israelita essent in terra sancta, 
 per cultus religiosos et sacrificia qua faciebanto, omnes illos morbos el peenas e mundo, 
 sustulerunt ; nunc vera Messias debet auferre em ai hominibus, 
 
 ^ Vid. Bertholdt, ut sup. § 17. 
 
 26 De Wette, de morte Chr., p. 112; comp. 53 ff. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS RELATING TO HIS DEATH. 573 
 
 chiefly have confined his communications on the subject to his intimate 
 friends, than that he should have had this conviction from the beginning, and 
 have expressed it before indifferent persons, nay enemies. The latter is the 
 representation of John ; the former, of the synoptists. 
 
 In relation also to the declarations of Jesus concerning the object and 
 effects of his death, we can, as above in relation to the announcement of the 
 death itself, distinguish a more natural, from a more supranatural point of 
 view. When Jesus in the fourth gospel likens himself to the true shepherd, 
 who lays down his life for the sheep (x. 11, 15) : this may have the perfectly 
 natural sense, that he is determined not to swerve from his office of shepherd 
 and teacher, even though, in the prosecution of it, death should threaten him 
 (the moral necessity of his death) ; ^'^ the foreboding expression in the same 
 gospel (xii. 24), that excepi a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it 
 abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit, admits of an equally 
 rational explanation, as a figurative representation of the victorious power which 
 martyrdom givfcs to an idea and conviction (the moral efficacy of his death) ;^8 
 lastly, that which is so often repeated in the Gospel of John, — namely, that it 
 is good for the disciples that Jesus should go away, for without his departure 
 the comforter, Trapa.Kkrp-o'i will not come to them, who will glorify him in 
 them, — may be supposed to express the perfectly natural consideration of 
 Jesus, that without the removal of his sensible presence, the hitherto so ma- 
 terial ideas of his disciples would not be spirituaUzed (the psychological 
 efficacy of his death).^^ The words of Jesus at the institution of the sacra- 
 mental supper, belong more to the supranaturalistic mode of view. For if 
 that which the intermediate Evangelists make him say on this occasion — that 
 the cup presented is th^ blood of the new testament, to aifia t^s /catv^s SiaO'qKrj's 
 (Mark xiv. 24), and the new testament in his blood, rj Kaivr] SiaO-qK-r) ev to! ai/xaTt 
 avTov (Luke xxii. 20), — might appear to signify no more than that, as by the 
 bloody sacrifice at Sinai was sealed the covenant of this ancient people with 
 God, so by his (the Messiah's) blood would be sealed in a higher sense the 
 community of the new covenant, gathering round him : in the account of 
 Matthew, on the contrary, when he makes Jesus add, that his blood will be 
 shed for many for the remission of sins, cis oA^&nv afiapnZv, the idea of the 
 covenant sacrifice is blended with that of expiatory sacrifice : and also in the 
 two other Evangelists by the addition : which is shed for many, or for you, to 
 ■ttf.pt, iroAAcov, vtt\p v^utv e'/cxwdjucvoi', the transition is made from the covenant 
 sacrifice to the expiatory sacrifice. Further, when in the first gospel (xx. 28) 
 Jesus says, he must give his life a ransom for many, SoSvai t^v tj/vxrjv avrov 
 Xvrpov olvtI ttoXXSiv, this is doubtless to be referred to Isa. liii., where, ac- 
 cording to a notion current among the Hebrews (Isa. xliii. 3; Pro v. xxi. 18), 
 the death of the servant of God is supposed to have a propitiatory relation 
 to the rest of mankind. 
 
 Thus Jesus might by psychological reflection come to the conviction that 
 such a catastrophe would be favourable to the spiritual development of his 
 disciples, and that it was indispensable for the spiritualizing of their messianic 
 ideas, nay, in accordance with national conceptions, and by a consideration 
 of Old Testament passages, even to the idea that his messianic death would 
 have an expiatory efficacy. Still, what the synoptists make Jesus say of his 
 death, as a sin offering, might especially appear to belong rather to the system 
 which was developed after the death of Jesus; and what the fourth Evangelist 
 puts into his mouth concerning the Paraclete, to have been conceived ex 
 
 " Hase, L. J. § 108. 
 
 28 Ibid. 
 
 "9 Ibid, and § 109. 
 
574 PART III. CHAPTER I. §113. 
 
 eveniu : so that, again, in these expressions of Jesus concerning the object of 
 his death, there must be a separation of the general from the special. 
 
 S US- 
 PRECISE DECLARATIONS OF JESUS CONCERNING HIS FUTURE RESURRECTION. 
 
 According to the evangelical accounts, Jesus predicted his resurrection in 
 words not less clear than those in which he announced his death, and also 
 fixed the time of its occurrence with singular precision. As often as he said 
 to his disciples, the Son of Man will be crucified, he added : And the third 
 day he shall rise again, Koi rrj TpLng '^fJi^tp^ avao-njo-erai, or eye/a^ijo-erai (Matt, 
 xvi. 21, xvii. 23, XX. 19 parall. comp. xvii. 9, xxvi. 32 parall.). 
 
 But of this announcement also it is said, that the disciples understood it 
 not j so little, that they even debated among themselves what the • rising from 
 the dead should mean, ri ka-ri to Ik vexpiav dvoor^j/ai (Mark ix. 10); and in 
 consistency with this want of comprehension, they, after the death of Jesus, 
 exhibit no trace of a recollection that his resurrection had been foretold to 
 them, no spark of hope that this prediction would be fulfilled. When the 
 friends of Jesus had taken down his body from the cross, and laid it in the 
 grave, they undertook (John xix. 40) — or the women reserved to themselves 
 (Mark xvi. i ; Luke xxiii. 56) — the task of embalming him, which is only per- 
 formed in the case of those who are regarded as the prey of corruption ; 
 when, on the morning which, according to the mode of reckoning in the New 
 Testament, opened the day which had been predetermined as that of the 
 resurrection, the women went to the grave, they were so far from thinking of 
 a predicted resurrection, that they were anxious about the probable difficulty 
 of rolling away the stone from the grave (Mark xvi. 3) ; when Mary Magdalene, 
 and afterwards Peter, found the grave empty, their first thought, had the resur- 
 rection been predicted, must have been, that it had now actually taken place : 
 instead of this, the former conjectures that the body may have been stolen (John 
 XX. 2), while Peter merely wonders, without coming to any definite conjecture 
 (Luke xxiv. 12); when the women told the disciples of the angelic appari- 
 tion which they had witnessed, and discharged the commission given them by 
 the angel, the disciples partly regarded their words as idle tales, X^pos (Luke 
 xxiv. 11), and were partly moved to fear and astonishment {k^itrrqtrav ^/iSs, 
 Luke xxiv. 22fF.)j when Mary Magdalene, and subsequently the disciples 
 going to Emmaus, assured the eleven, that they had themselves seen the risen 
 one, they met with no credence (Mark xvi. 11, 13), and Thomas still later 
 did not believe even the assurance of his fellow-apostles (John xx. 25); lastly, 
 when Jesus himself appeared to the disciples in Galilee, all of them did not 
 even then cast off doubt {oi 8e eSto-Tao-av, Mark xxviii. 17). All this we must, 
 with the Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist.^ find incomprehensible, if Jesus had so 
 clearly and decidedly predicted his resurrection. 
 
 It is true, that as the conduct of the disciples, after the death of Jesus, 
 speaks against such a prediction on the part of Jesus, so the conduct of his 
 enemies appears to speak for it. For when, according to Matt, xxvii. 62 ff., 
 the chief priests and Pharisees entreat Pilate to set a watch at the grave of 
 Jesus, they allege as a reason for their request, that Jesus while yet alive had 
 said : After three days J will rise again, //.era Tpels ij/^iepas eyeipofuu. But this 
 
 • See his animated and impressive treatise, vom Zweck, u. s. {., s. 121 ff. Comp.Briefe 
 iiber den Rationalismus, s. 224 ff., and De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, i, s. 143. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS RESURRECTION. 575 
 
 narrative of the first gospel, which we can only estimate at a future point in 
 our investigation, at present decides nothing, but only falls to one side of the 
 dilemma, so that we must now say : if the disciples really so acted after the 
 death of Jesus, then neither can he have decidedly foretold his resurrection, 
 nor can the Jews in consideration of- such a prediction have placed a watch 
 at his grave; or, if the two latter statements be true, the disciples cannot 
 have so acted. 
 
 It has been attempted to blunt the edge of this dilemma, by attributing to 
 the above predictions, not the literal sense, that the deceased Jesus would 
 return' out of the grave, but only the figurative sense that his doctrine and 
 cause, after having been apparently crushed, would again expand and flourish.* 
 As the Old Testament prophets, it was said, represent the restoration of the 
 Israelitish people to renewed prosperity, under the image of a resurrection 
 from the dead (Isa, xxvi. 19 ; Ezek. xxxvii.) ; as they mark the short interval 
 within which, under certain conditions, this turn of things was to be expected, 
 by the expression : in two or three days will Jehovah revive the smitten one, 
 and raise the dead (Hos. vi. 2),* a statement of time which Jesus also uses 
 indefinitely for a short interval (Luke xiii. 32) : so by the declaration that he 
 will rise on the third day after his death, ttj Tpiry 17/tepa dvao-r^vai, he intends 
 to say no more than that even though he may succumb to the power of his 
 enemies and be put to death, still the work which he has begun will not come 
 to an end, but will in a short time go forward with a fresh impetus. This 
 merely figurative mode of speaking adopted by Jesus, the apostles, after Jesus 
 had actually risen in the body, understood literally, and regarded them as 
 prophecies of his personal resurrection. Now that in the prophetic passages 
 adduced, the expressions n'^n Dip and l^.^O have only the alleged figurative 
 sense, is true ; but these are passages the whole tenor of which is figurative, 
 and in which, in particular, the depression and death which precede the 
 revivification are themselves to be understood only in a figurative sense. 
 Here, on the contrary, all the foregoing expressions : TrapaSCSoa-Oat, KaraKplv- 
 io-Oai, a-Tavpova-dai., diroKTavea-Oai k. t. \. (to be delivered, condemned, crucified, 
 killed, etc.) are to be understood literally; hence all at once, with the words 
 €yep6^vai and dvaa-TTJvai, to enter on a figurative meaning, would be an unpre- 
 cedented abruptness of transition; not to mention that passages such as 
 Matt. xxvi. 32, where Jesus says : After J am risen again I will go before you 
 into Galilee, fi.era to eyepOyjval. /*£ Trpoafo) -u/^Ss ets ti)v TaXiXaiav, can have no 
 meaning at all unless iyeipea-Oai, be understood literally. In this closely con- 
 secutive series of expressions, which must be taken in a purely literal sense, 
 there is then no warrant, and even no inducement, to understand the state- 
 ment of time which is connected with them, otherwise than also literally, and 
 in its strictly etymological meaning. Thus if Jesus really used these words, 
 and in the same connexion in which they are given by the Evangelists, he 
 cannot have meant to announce by them merely the speedy victory of his 
 cause ; his meaning must have been, that he himself would return to life in 
 three days after his violent death.* 
 
 As however Jesus, judging from the conduct of his disciples after his death, 
 cannot have announced his resurrection in plain words : other commentators 
 have resigned themselves to the admission, that the Evangelists, after the 
 
 « Thus especially Herder, vom Erloser der Menschen, s. 133 ff. Briefe uber den Ration- 
 alismus, s. 227. Comp. Kuinol, Comm. in Matth., p. 444f- ,> . a 
 
 8 LXX. : iyuiffei. v/ms fieri. Siio ri/iipas- h rg ^/i^/)f tt, Tplr-g l^avaffTricro/ieea, ml f^tro/ieSo 
 
 ^'"*'c°omp"suskind, einige Bemerkungen uber die Frage, ob Jesus seine Auferstehung 
 bestimmt vorhergesagt habe? in Flatt's Magazin, 7, s. 2036: 
 
576 PART III. CHAPTER I. § 114- 
 
 issue, gave to the discourses of Jesus a definiteness which, as uttered by him, 
 they did not possess ; that they have not merely understood literally, what 
 Jesus intended "figuratively, of the revival of his cause after his death, but in 
 accordance with their erroneous interpretation, have so modified his words 
 that, as we now read them, we must certainly understand them in a literal 
 sense ; ^ yet that not all the discourses of Jesus are altered in this manner ; 
 here and there his original expressions still remain. 
 
 § 114- 
 
 FIGURATIVE DISCOURSES, IN WHICH JESUS IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE 
 ANNOUNCED HIS RESURRECTION. 
 
 According to the fourth gospel, Jesus, at the very commencement of his 
 ministry, in figurative language, referred his enemies, the Jews, to his future 
 resurrection (ii. 19 ff.). On his first messianic visit to Jerusalem, and when, 
 after the abuse of the market in the temple had provoked him to that exhibi- 
 tion of holy zeal of which we have formerly spoken, the Jews require a sign 
 from him, by which he should legitimatize his claim to be considered a ines- 
 senger of God, who had authority to adopt such violent measures, Jesus gives 
 them this answer. Destroy this temple, and after three days I will raise it up, 
 A.i5(raT€ Tov vojov tovtov, kox hi Tpi(riv ij/tepais iyepS> avTov. The Jews took 
 these words in the sense, which, since they were spoken in the temple, was 
 the most natural, and urged, in reply to Jesus, that as it had taken forty years 
 to build this temple, he would scarcely be able, if it were destroyed, to rebuild 
 it in three days ; but the Evangelist informs us, that this was not the meaning 
 of Jesus, and that he here spoke (though indeed the disciples were not 
 aware of this until after his resurrection), of the temple of his body, vaps toZ 
 a-riafiwroi airrot? : i.e. under the destruction and rebuilding of the temple, he 
 alluded to his death and resurrection. Even if we admit, what however the 
 most moderate expositors deny,i that Jesus could properly (as he is also re- 
 presented to have done in Matthew xii. 39 fF.) when the Jews asked him for a 
 visible and immediate sign, refer them to his resurrection as the greatest, and 
 for his enemies the most overwhelming miracle in his history : still he must 
 have done this in terms which it was possible for them to understand (as in 
 the above passage of Matthew, where he expresses himself quite plainly). 
 But the expressions of Jesus, as here given, could not possibly be understood 
 in this sense. For when one who is in the temple,, speaks of the destruction 
 of this temple, every one will refer his words to the building itself. Hence 
 Jesus, when he uttered the words, this temple, tov vaov tovtov, must have 
 pointed to his body with his finger ; as, indeed, is generally presupposed by 
 the friends of this interpretation.^ But, in the first place, the Evangelist says 
 nothing of such a gesture, notwithstanding that it lay in his interest to notice 
 this, as a support of his interpretation. In the second place, Gabler has 
 with justice remarked, how ill-judged and ineffective it would have been, by 
 the addition of a mere gesture to give a totally new meaning to a speech, 
 which verbally, and therefore logically, referred to the temple. If, however, 
 Jesus used this expedient, the motion of his finger could not have been un- 
 observed ; the Jews must rather have demanded from him how he could be 
 so arrogant as to call his body the temple, vaos ; or even if not so, still, pre- 
 
 ^ Paulus, ut sup. 2, s. 415 ff. ; Hase, L. J. § 109. 
 
 ' E.g. Lucke, I, s. 426 ; comp., on the contrary, Tholuck, in loc. 
 
 2 Vid. Tholuck, ut sup. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS RESURRECTION. 577 
 
 supposing that action, the disciples could not have remained in the dark 
 concerning the meaning of his words, until after the resurrection. ^ 
 
 By these difficulties modern exegetists have felt constrained to renounce 
 John's explanation of the words of Jesus, as erroneous and made ex eventu, 
 and to attempt to penetrate, independently of the Evangelist's explanation, 
 into the sense of the enigmatical saying which he attributes to Jesus.* The 
 construction put upon it by the Jews, who refer the words of Jesus to a real 
 destruction and rebuilding of the national sanctuary, cannot be approved 
 without imputing to Jesus an extravagant example of vain-glorious boasting, 
 at variance with the character which he elsewhere exhibits. If on this 
 account search be made for some figurative meaning which may possibly be 
 assigned to the declaration, there presents itself first a passage in the same 
 gospel (iy. 21 ff.) where Jesus announces to the woman of Samaria, that the 
 time is immediately coming, in which the Father will no longer be wor- 
 shipped exclusively in Jerusalem {kv 'Upoa-oXv/iois), but will, as a Spirit, receive 
 spiritual worship. Now in the present passage also, the destruction of the 
 temple might, it is said, have signified the abolition of the temple-service at 
 Jerusalem, supposed to be the only valid mode of worship. This interpreta- 
 tion is confirmed by a narrative in the Acts (vi. 14). Stephen, who, as it 
 appears, had adopted the above expressions of Jesus, was taxed by his 
 accusers with declaring, t/iaif Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and 
 shall change the customs which Moses delivered, on 'Iijo-oCs 6 Na^wpaios oStos 
 KaraXva-u Tov rowov tovtov, koL oAAa^et to. Wt), a irapeSoiKe MwiJcr^s : in which 
 
 words a change of the Mosaic religious institutions, without doubt a spirituali- 
 zation of them, is described as a sequel to the destruction of the temple. To 
 this may be added a passage in the synoptical gospels. Nearly the same 
 words which in John are uttered by Jesus himself, appear in the two first 
 gospels (Matt. xxvi. 60 f ; Mark xiv. 57 f.) as the accusation of false witnesses 
 against him ; and here Mark, in addition, designates the temple which is to 
 be destroyed, as one made with hands, yf-ipoTroayro^^ and the new one which is 
 to be built, as another, made without hands, aKko<i, axapoTrohiTO's, whereby he 
 appears to indicate the same contrast between a ceremonial and a spiritual 
 religious system. By the aid of these passages, it is thought, the declaration 
 in John may be explained thus : the sign of my authority to purify the temple, 
 is my ability in a short time to introduce in the place of the Jewish cere- 
 monial worship, a spiritual service of God ; i.e. I am authorized to reform the 
 old system, in so far as I am qualified to found a new one. It is certainly a 
 trivial objection to this explanation, that in John the object is not changed, 
 as in Mark, where the temple which is to be built is spoken of as another 
 (aAAos), but instead of this, is indicated by the word outo?, as the same with 
 the one destroyed ; ^ since, indeed, the Christian system of religion in relation 
 to the Jewish, may, just as the risen body of Jesus in relation to the dead 
 one, be conceived as at once identical and different, inasmuch as in both 
 cases the substance is the same, while the transitory accidents only are 
 supposed to be removed. But it is a more formidable objection which 
 attaches itself to the determination of time, h> rpia-lv 17/Aepats. That this 
 expression is also used indefinitely and proverbially, in the sense of a short 
 
 3 Henke, Joannes apostolus nonnuUorum Jesu apophthegmatum in evang. suo et ipse 
 interpres. ' In Pott's and Ruperti's Sylloge Comm. theol. i, s. 9; Gabler, Recension des 
 Henke'schen Programms im neuesten theol. Journal, 2, i, s. 88 ; Liicke, in loc. 
 
 * Thus, besides Henke in the above Programm, Herder, von Gottes Sohn nach Johannes 
 Evang., s. 13S f. ; Paulus, Comm. 4, s. 165 f. ; L. J. I, a, s. 173 f. ; Lucke, and De Wette, 
 in loc. 
 
 5 Storr, in Flatt's Magazin, 4, s. 199. 
 
 O O 
 
578 PART III. CHAPTER I. § 114- 
 
 interval of time in general, is not adequately proved by the two passages 
 which are usually appealed to with this view ; for in them the third day, by 
 being placed in connexion with the second and first (Hos. vi. 2 : D1*? Q?9**? 
 'P^fn ; Luke xiii. 32 : a~^fi,epov koI avpiov koI rfj TpiTrj) is announced as a 
 merely relative and proximate statement, whereas in our passage it stands 
 alone, and thus presents itself as an absolute and precise determination of 
 time.® 
 
 Thus alike invited and repelled by both explanations,'' theologians take 
 refuge in a double sense, which holds the middle place either between the 
 interpretation of John and the symbolical one last stated,* or between the 
 interpretation of John and that of the Jews ; » so that Jesus either spoke at 
 once of his body which was to be killed and again restored to life, and of the 
 modification of the Jewish religion which was to be effected, chiefly by means 
 of that death and resurrection ; or, in order to repel the Jews, he challenged 
 them to destroy their real temple, and on this condition, never to be fulfilled, 
 promised to build another, still, however, combining with this ostensible sense 
 for the multitude, an esoteric sense, which was only understood by the dis- 
 ciples after the resurrection, and according to which vaos denoted his body. 
 But such a challenge addressed to the Jews, together with the engagement 
 appended to it, would have been an unbecoming manifestation of petulance, 
 and the latent intimation to the disciples, a useless play on words ; besides 
 that, in general, a double meaning either of the one or the other kind is 
 unheard of in the discourse of a judicious man.^o As, in this manner, the 
 possibility of explaining the passage in John might be entirely despaired of, 
 the author of the Probabilia appeals to the fact that the synoptists call the 
 witnesses, who allege before the judgment seat that Jesus had uttered that 
 declaration, ij/evSo/idfyrvpa's, false witnesses ; whence he concludes, that Jesus 
 never said what John here attributes to him, and thus gains an exemption 
 from the explanation of the passage, since he regards it as a figment of the 
 fourth Evangelist, whose object was both to explain the calumniations of the 
 accusers, and also to nullify them by a mystical interpretation of his words. ^"^ 
 But, on the one hand, it does not follow, from the fact that the synoptists call 
 the witnesses false, that, in the opinion of the Evangelists, Jesus had never 
 said anything whatever of that whereof they accused him ; for he might only 
 have said it somewhat differently (Xijo-aTc, not Xvo-w), or have intended it in a 
 different sense (figuratively instead of literally) : on the other hand, if he said 
 nothing at all of this kind, it is difficult to explain how the false witnesses 
 should come to choose that declaration, and especially the remarkable phrase, 
 
 ev rpidiv i]\x,ipavi. 
 
 if, according to this, on every interpretation of the expression, except the 
 inadmissible one relative to the body of Jesus, the words ev rpi<j\v ■^p.epcu.? 
 form a difficulty : a resource might be found in the narrative of the Acts, as 
 being free from that determination of time. For here Stephen is only accused 
 of saying, on 'I. 6 Na^. oSros KardXvtrct toi/ totov tovtov {tov ayiov), koI 
 dAAalet TO. iOrj a irape&wKe Moiijcnjs. What is false in this allegation (for the 
 witnesses against Stephen also are described as i^dprvpes t/feDSeis), might be the 
 
 ' Tholuck and Olshausen, in loc. 
 
 ' Hence Neander remains suspended in indecision between the two, s. 395 f. 
 
 8 Thus Kern, die Hauptthatsachen der evang. Gesch., Tiib. Zeitschrift, 1836, 2, s. 128. 
 
 ' Thus Olshausen. 
 
 '» Kern says, indeed, that a similar doubleness of meaning is found elsewhere in signifi- 
 cant discourse ; but he refrains from adducing an example. 
 " Probab., p. ?3 ff. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS RESURRECTION. 579 
 
 second proposition, which speaks in Hteral terms of a changing of the insti- 
 tutes of Moses, and instead of this, Stephen, and before him Jesus, may very 
 probably have said in the figurative signification above developed, Koii Trdkiv 
 oucoSo/x'^crct ( — (70)) auTov, Or koI aXXov {a^^apoiroirjTov) oiKoSo/jL'^crei ( — (TO)). 
 
 Meanwhile, this expedient is not at all needfiil, so far as any insurmount- 
 able difficulty in the words h> rpurlv -^fiipai^, is concerned. As the number 
 3 is used proverbially, not only in connexion with 2 or 4 (Prov. xxx. 15, 18, 
 21, 29 ; Wis. xxiii. 21, xxvi. 25), but also by itself (Wis. xxv. i, 3) ; so the 
 expression, in three days, if it were once, in combination with the second and 
 first day, become common as an indefinite statement of time, might probably 
 at length be applied in the same sense when standing alone. Whether the 
 expression should signify a long or a short period would then depend on the 
 connexion : here, in opposition to the construction of a great and elaborate 
 building, to the real, natural erection of which, as the Jews directly remark, 
 a long series of years was required, the expression can only be understood as 
 denoting the shortest tirae.*^ A prediction, or even a mere intimation of the 
 resurrection, is therefore not contained in these words. 
 
 As, here, Jesus is said to have intimated his resurrection beforehand, by 
 the image of the destroying and rebuilding of the temple, so, on another 
 occasion, he is supposed to have quoted the type of the prophet Jonah with 
 the same intention (Matt. xii. 39 fF., comp. xvi. 4 ; Luke xi 29 ff.). When 
 the scribes and Pharisees desired to see a sign from him, Jesus is said to 
 have repulsed their demand by the reply, that to so evil a generation yevca no 
 sign shall be given, but the sign of the prophet Jonah, to o-ij/iEiov 'lum rov 
 Trpo<l>-qTov, which, in the first passage of Matthew, Jesus himself explains thus : 
 as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, iv- rfj KotXCa 
 Tov kiJtous, so also the Son of man will pass three days and three nights in the 
 heart of the earth, hv ry xapSta t^s y^s. In the second passage, in which 
 Matthew attributes this declaration to Jesus, he does not repeat the above 
 interpretation ; while Luke, in the parallel passage, explains it simply thus : 
 Jvr as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this 
 generation. Now against the possibility of Jesus having himself given the 
 interpretation of the sign of Jonah which Matthew puts into his mouth, v. 40, 
 a variety of objections may be urged. It is indeed scarcely a tenable argu- 
 ment, that Jesus cannot have spoken of three days and three nights, which 
 he would pass in the heart of the earth, because he only lay in the grave one 
 day and two nights : ^^ since the phraseology of the New Testament decidedly 
 has the peculiarity of designating the abode of Jesiis in the grave as of three 
 days' duration, because it touched upon the evening of the day before the 
 Sabbath, and the morning of the day after it ; and if this one day, together 
 with two nights, were once taken for three whole days, it would only be a 
 round way of expressing this completeness, to add to the days the nights also, 
 which, besides, would naturally follow in the comparison with the three days 
 and three nights of Jonah. 1* But if Jesus gave the explanation of the sign 
 of Jonah which Matthew attributes to him, this would, have been so clear a 
 prediction of his resurrection, that for the same reasons which, according to 
 the above observations, are opposed to the literal predictions of that event, 
 we must conclude that Jesus cannot have given., this explanation. At all 
 events it must have led the disciples who, according to v. 49, were present, to 
 question Jesus, and in that case it is not to be understood why he did not 
 make the subject perfectly. clear, and thus announce his resurrection in plain 
 
 '2 Comp. Neander, s. 396, Anm. 
 
 1^ Paulus, exeg. Handb. in loc. 
 
 ^* Comp. Fritzsche and Olshausen, in loc. 
 
580 PART III. CHAPTER I. § 1 14. 
 
 words. But if he cannot have done this, because then the disciples could 
 not have acted after his death as they are said to have done in the evangelical 
 accounts : neither can he, by that comparison of the fate which awaited him 
 with that of Jonah, have called forth from his disciples a question, which, if 
 proposed to him, he must have answered ; but which, judging from the sequel, 
 he cannot have answered. 
 
 On these grounds, modern critics have pronounced the explanation of the 
 a-rifitiov Imva in Matthew to be an interpretation made posf eventum by the 
 Evangelist, and by him falsely attributed to Jesus.^s According to them, 
 Jesus indeed directed the attention of the Pharisees to the sign of Jonah, but 
 only in the sense in which Luke makes him explain it : namely, that as Jonah 
 himself, by his mere appearance and preaching of repentance, without mira- 
 cles, had sufficed as a sign from God to the Ninevites ; so his own cotempor- 
 aries, instead of craving for miracles, should be satisfied with his person and 
 preaching. This interpretation is the only one which accords with the tenor 
 of the discourse of Jesus — even in Matthew, and more particularly with the 
 parallel between the relation of the Ninevites to Jonah, and that of the queen 
 of the south to Solomon. As it was the wisdom of Solomon, <to<j>m '^oXojx&vo^, 
 by which the latter felt herself attracted from the ends of the earth : so, in 
 Jonah, even according to the expression of Matthew, it was solely his preach- 
 ing, Krifyuyix.a, which brought the Ninevites to repentance. It might be sup- 
 posed that the future tense in Luke : o^tms lo-rai koX o uios t. d. rij yevea 
 ravrg ((nj/tctoi/), So shall also the Son of Man be to this generation {a sign), 
 cannot be referred to Jesus and his preaching as manifested at that moment, 
 but only to something future, as his resurrection : but this in reality points 
 either to the future jud^ent Kpia-K, in which it will be made manifest, that as 
 Jonah was reckoned a sign to the Ninevites, so was the Son of Man to the 
 Jews then living ; or to the fact that when Jesus spoke these words, his 
 appearance had not yet attained its consummation, and many of its stages lay 
 yet in futurity. Nevertheless, it must have been at an early period, as we see 
 from the first gospel, that the fate of Jonah was placed in a typical relation to 
 the death and resurrection of Jesus, since the primitive church anxiously 
 searched through the Old Testament for types and prophecies of the offensive 
 catastrophe which befel their Messiah. 
 
 There are still some expressions of Jesus in the fourth gospel, which have 
 been understood as latent prophecies of the resurrection. The discourse on 
 the corn of wheat, xii. 24, it is true, too obviously relates to the work of Jesus 
 as hkely to be furthered by his death, to be here taken into further considera- 
 tion. But in the farewell discourses in John there are some declarations, 
 which many are still inclined to refer to the resurrection. When Jesus says : 
 / tvill not leave you comfortless, I will come unto you ; yet a little time, and the 
 world sees me no more, but ye see me ; a little while, and ye shall not see me, 
 and again a little while and ye shall see me, etc. (xiv. 18 ff., xvi. 16 ff.) ; many 
 believe that these expressions — with the relation between /w.tKpoi' xat iraXiv 
 /iLKpav, a little while, and again a little while ; the opposition between 
 ifi-ijiavi^eiv rfiuv (Toh /ia^ip-ais) /cat ov)(i t<3 Kotr/xo), manifest to you (the disciples) 
 and not to the world ; the words iraXiv oil/o/iai and oiJ/ea-Oe, I shall see you 
 again, and ye shall see, which appear to indicate a strictly personal interview 
 — can be referred to nothingelse than the resurrection, which was precisely 
 such a reappearance after a short removal, and moreover a personal reappear- 
 ance granted to the friends of Jesus alone. ^^ But this promised reappearance 
 
 " Paulus, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 97 ff. SchuU, iiber das Abendm., s. 317 f. 
 " Siiskind, ut sup. s. 184 ff. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS RESURRECTION. 581 
 
 is at the same time described by Jesus in a manner which will not suit the 
 days of the resurrection. If the words because I live, ort eyi) lu> (xiv. 19), 
 denote his resurrection, we are at a loss to know what can be meant by the 
 succeeding clause, ye shall live also, kol vfiu<; fi;o-ecr6e. Again, Jesus says that 
 on that reappearance his disciples will know his relation to the Father, and 
 will no more need to ask anything of him (xiv. 20, xvi. 23) : yet even on the 
 very last day of their intercourse with him after the resurrection, they ask a 
 question of him (Acts i. 6), and one which from the point of view of the 
 fourth gospel is altogether senseless. Lastly, when he promises that to him 
 who loves him, he and the Father will come, and make their abode with him, 
 it is perfectly clear that Jesus here speaks not of a corporeal return, but of 
 his spiritual return, through the TrapciKXijTos." Nevertheless, even this ex- 
 planation has its difficulties, since, on the other hand, the expressions jctf shall 
 see me, oi/feo-^e /te, and / shall see you, oi/fo/*o6 vjx.a.%, will not entirely suit that 
 purely spiritual return : hence we must defer the solution of this apparent 
 contradiction until we can give a more complete elucidation of the discourses 
 ill which these expressions occur. In the meantime we merely observe, that 
 the farewell discourses in John, being admitted, even by the friends of the 
 fourth gospel, to contain an intermixture of the Evangelist's own thoughts, are 
 the last source from which to obtain a proof on this subject. 
 
 After all, there might seem to be a resource in the supposition, that though 
 Jesus did not indeed speak of his future resurrection, it was not the less fore- 
 known by him. Now if he had a foreknowledge of his resurrection, either he 
 obtained it in a supernatural manner, by means of the prophetic spirit, the 
 higher principle that dwelt within him — by means of his divine nature, if that 
 be preferred : or he knew it in a natural manner, by the exercise of his human 
 reason. But a supernatural foreknowledge of that event, as well as of his 
 death, is inconceivable, owing to the relation in which Jesus places it to the 
 Old Testament. Not merely in passages such as Luke xviii. 31 (which, as 
 prophecies, can no longer have an historical value for us after the result of 
 our last inquiry), does Jesus represent his resurrection, together with his 
 passion and death, as a fulfilment of all things that are written by the prophets 
 
 concerning the Son of man, irdvriov tS>v •ye-yjoa/i/icvo)!' 81a. ru>v Trpo(j>'qTU)V T(3 vis 
 
 Tov avOptinrov ; but even after the issue, he admonishes his disciples that they 
 ought to believe all that the prophets have spoken, em nafriv oh iXa.X,r)crav ol 
 ■7rpo<j>rJTai, namely, that Christ ought to have suffered these things and to enter 
 into his glory, ravra eSei TiraOdiv tov 'KpLcrrbv, koI eurekdeiv eis t^v So^dv avTov 
 (Luke xxiv. 25 f.). According to the sequel of the narrative, Jesus forthwith 
 expounded to these disciples (going to Emmaus) all the passages of scripture 
 relating to himself, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, dp^dfievos diro 
 MoKTems Kal diro ■komtusv tS>v Trpo^TjTuiv, to which farther on (v. 44) the psalms 
 are added ; but no single passage is given us as having been interpreted by 
 Jesus of his resurrection, except that it would follow from Matt. xii. 39 f., 
 that he regarded the fate of the prophet Jonah as a type of his own ; and 
 regarding the subsequent apostolic interpretation as an echo of that of Jesus, 
 it might be concluded, that he, as afterwards the apostles, found such prophe- 
 cies chiefly in Ps. xvi. 8 ff. (Acts ii. 25 fif., xiii. 35); Isa. liii. (Acts viii. 32 ff.); 
 Isa. Iv. 3 (Acts xiii. 34), and possibly also in Hos. vi. 2. But the fate of 
 Jonah has not even an external similarity to that of Jesus ; and the book 
 which narrates his history carries its object so completely in itself, that who- 
 ever may ascribe to it or to one of its particulars, a typical relation to events 
 in futurity, assuredly mistakes its true sense and the design of its author. 
 
 " Vid. Liicke, in loc. 
 
S82 PART III. CHAPTER I. § II5. 
 
 Isa. Iv. 3 is so obviously irrelevant that one can scarcely conceive hO'W the 
 passage could be brought into special connexion with the resurrection of 
 Jesus. Isa. liii. refers decidedly to a collective subject perpetually restored 
 to life in new members. Hosea vi. has a figurative reference, not to be mis- 
 taken, to the people and state of Israel. Lastly, the principal passage, 
 Ps. xvi. can only be interpreted of a pious man, who by the help of Jehovah 
 hopes to escape from the danger of death, not in the sense that he, like Jesus, 
 would rise again from the grave, but that he would not be laid there — that is, 
 obviously, not for the present, and with the understanding, that when his 
 time should come, he must pay the tribute of nature : ^^ which, again, will not 
 apply to Jesus. Thus if a supernatural principle in Jesus — a prophetic spirit 
 —caused him to discover a pre-intimation of his resurrection in these Old 
 Testament histories and passages ; then, as no one of them really contained 
 such a pre-intimation, the spirit in him cannot have been the spirit of truth, 
 but must have been a lying spirit, the supernatural principle in him, not a 
 divine, but a demoniacal principle. If, in order to avoid this consequence, 
 supranaturalists who are accessible to a rational interpretation of the Old 
 Testament, resort to their only remaining expedient, of regarding the fore- 
 knowledge of Jesus concerning his resurrection as purely natural and human : 
 we must reply, that the resurrection, conceived as a miracle, was a secret of 
 the divine counsels, to penetrate into which, prior to the 'issue, was an im- 
 possibility to a human intelhgence ; while viewed as a natural ' result, it was a 
 chance the last to be calculated upon, apart from the supposition of an 
 apparent death planned by Jesus and his colleagues. 
 
 Thus the foreknowledge, as well as the prediction of the resurrection, was 
 attributed to Jesus only after the issue ; and in fact, it was an easy matter, 
 with the groundless arbitrariness of Jewish exegesis, for the disciples and the 
 anthors of the New Testament to discover in the Old, types and prophecies 
 of the resurrection. Not that they did this with crafty design, according to 
 the accusation of the Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist, and others of his class : but 
 as he who has looked at the sun, long sees its image wherever he may turn 
 his gaze ; so they, blinded by their enthusiasm for the new Messiah, saw him 
 on every page of the only book they read, the Old Testament, and in the 
 conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, founded in the genuine feeling that 
 he had satisfied their deepest need — a conviction and a feeling which we also 
 still honour — they laid hold on supports which have long been broken, and 
 which can no longer be made tenable by the most zealous efforts of an exe- 
 gesis which is behind the age. 
 
 § "S- 
 
 THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS SECOND ADVENT. CRITICISM OF THE 
 DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS. 
 
 Not only did Jesus, according to the evangelical accounts, predict that he 
 should return to life three days after his death j but also that at a later period, 
 in the midst of the calamities which would issue in the destruction of the 
 temple in Jerusalem, he should come in the clouds of heaven, to close the 
 present period of the world, and by a general judgment, open the future age 
 (Matt. xxiv. and xxv. ; Mark. xiii. ; Luke xvii. 22-37, xxi. 5-36). 
 
 As Jesus for the last time went out of the temple (Luke has not this cir- 
 cumstance), and his disciples (Luke says indefinitely, some) admiringly drew 
 
 " Vid. de Wette, Comm. iiberdie Psalmen, s. 178. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS SECOND ADVENT. 583 
 
 his attention to the magnificent building, he assured them that all which they 
 then looked on, would be destroyed from its foundations (Matt. xxiv. i, 2, 
 parall.). On the question of the disciples, when this would happen, and 
 what would be the sign of the Messiah's coming, which in their idea was 
 associated with such a crisis (v. 3), Jesus warns them not to be deceived by 
 persons falsely giving themselves out to be the Messiah, and by the notion 
 that the expected catastrophe must follow immediately on the first prog- 
 nostics ; for wars and rumours of war, risings of nation against nation and 
 kmgdom against kingdom, famine, pestilence, and earthquakes in divers 
 places, would be only the beginning of the sorrows which were to precede 
 the advent of the Messiah (v. 4-8). They themselves, his adherents, must 
 first suffer hatred, persecution, and the sword ; perfidy, treachery, deception 
 by false prophets, lukewarmness and general corruption of morals, would pre- 
 vail among men ; but at the same time the news of the Messiah's kingdom 
 must be promulgated through the whole world. Only after all this, could the 
 end of the present period of the world arrive, until when, he who would par- 
 take of the blessedness of the future must endure with constancy (v. 9-14). 
 A nearer presage of this catastrophe would be the fulfilment of the oracle of 
 Daniel (ix. 27), the standing of the abomination of desolation in the holy 
 place (according to Luke xxi. 20, the encompassing of Jerusalem with armies). 
 When this should take place, it would be high time for the most precipitate 
 flight (according to Luke, because the devastation of Jerusalem would be at 
 hand, an event which he more nearly particularizes in the address of Jesus to 
 the city, xix. 43 f. : thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee 
 round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, 
 and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon 
 another). At this juncture, all who should have hindrances to rapid departure 
 would be deserving of compassion, and it would be in the highest degree 
 desirable that the recommended flight should not fall in an unfavourable 
 season; for then would commence unexampled tribulation (according to 
 Luke, v. 24, consisting chiefly in many of the people of Israel perishing by 
 the sword, in others being carried away captive, and in Jerusalem being 
 trodden down of the Gentiles for a predetermined period) : a tribulation 
 which only the merciful abridgment of its duration by God, for the sake of 
 the elect, could render supportable (v. 15-22). At this time would arise 
 false prophets and Messiahs, seeking to delude by miracles and signs, and 
 promising to show the Messiah in this or that place : whereas a Messiah who 
 was concealed anywhere, and must be sought out, could not be the true one ; 
 for his advent would be like the lightning, a sudden and universal revelation, 
 of which the central point would be Jerusalem, the object of punishment on 
 account of its sin (v. 23-28). Immediately after this time of tribulation, the 
 darkening of the sun and moon, the falling of the stars, and the shaking of all 
 the powers of heaven would usher in the appearance of the Messiah, who, to 
 the dismay of the dwellers on the earth, would come with great glory in the 
 clouds of heaven, and immediately send forth his angels to gather together 
 his elect from all the corners of the earth (v. 29-31). By the fore-named 
 signs the approach of the described catastrophe would be as certainly dis- 
 cernible as the approach of summer by the budding of the fig-tree ; the exist- 
 ing generation would, by all that was true, Uve to witness it, though its more 
 precise period was known to God only (v. 32-36). But, after the usual manner 
 of mankind (what follows, Mark and Luke partly have not at all, partly not 
 in this connexion), they would allow the advent of the Messiah, as formerly 
 the deluge, to overtake them in thoughtless security (v. 37-39) : and yet it 
 would be an extremely critical period, in which those who stood in the closest 
 
584 PART III. CHAPTER I. § US- 
 
 relation to each other, would be delivered over to entirely opposite destinies 
 (v. 40, 41). Hence watchfulness would be requisite, as in all cases where the 
 period of a decisive issue is uncertain : an admonition which is then illustrated 
 by the image of the master of the house and the thief (v. 43, 44) ; of the 
 servant to whom his lord, when about to travel, entrusted the rule of his house 
 (v. 45-51); of the wise and foolish virgins (xxv. 1-13) : and lastly, of the 
 talents (v. 14-30). Hereupon follows a description of the solemn judgment, 
 which the Messiah would hold over all nations, and in which, according as 
 the duties of humanity were observed or neglected, he would award blessed- 
 ness or misery (v. 3 1-46). ^ 
 
 Thus in these discourses Jesus announces that shortly (evOem, xxiv. 29), 
 after that calamity, which (especially according to the representation in Luke's 
 gospel) we must identify with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, 
 and within the term of the cotemporary generation (^ yivea. avrrj, v. 34), he 
 would visibly make his second advent in the clouds, and terminate the exist- 
 ing dispensation. Now as it will soon be eighteen centuries since the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem, and an equally long period since the generation cotem- 
 porary with Jesus disappeared from the earth, while his visible return and the 
 end of the world which he associated with it, have not taken place : the 
 announcement of .Jesus appears so far to have been erroneous. Already in 
 the first age of Christianity, when the return of Christ was delayed longer than 
 had been anticipated, there arose, according to 2 Peter iii. 3 f., scoffers, ask- 
 ing : where is the promise, of his coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all 
 things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. In modern 
 times, the inference which may apparently be drawn from the above considera- 
 tion, to the disadvantage of Jesus and the apostles, has been by no one more 
 pointedly expressed than by the Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist. No promise 
 throughout the whole scriptures, he thinks, is on the one hand more definitely 
 expressed, and on the other, has turned out more flagrantly false, than this, 
 which yet forms one of the main pillars of Christianity. And he does not see 
 in this a mere error, but a premeditated deception on the part of the apostles 
 (to whom, and not to Jesus himself, he attributes that promise, and the dis- 
 courses in which it is contained) ; a deception induced by the necessity of 
 alluring the people on whose contributions they wished to subsist, by the 
 promise of a speedy reward : and discernible by the boldness of their at- 
 tempts to evade the doubts springing from the protracted delay of the return 
 of Christ : Paul, for example, in the second epistle to the Thessalonian?, 
 sheltering himself in obscure phrases ; and Peter, in his second epistle, re- 
 sorting to the preposterous expedient of appealing to the divine mode of 
 reckoning time, in which a thousand years are equal to one day.* 
 
 Such inferences from the discourse before us would inflict a fatal wound on 
 
 ' Compare, on the import and connexion of this discourse, Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 695 ff; 
 De Wette, exeg. Handb., i, i, s. 197 ff; Weizel, die unchristliche Unsterblichkeltslehre, in 
 the theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1836, a. 599 ff. — In agreement with these commentators I 
 append the following division of the passage in Matthew : 
 I. Signs of the end, Ti\os, xxiv. 4-14. 
 a. More remote signs, (Ae beginning of sorrows, dpxh dSlvan, 4-8. 
 i. More immediate signs, the actual sorrows, 9-14. 
 II. The end, riXos, itself, xxiv. 15-25, 46. 
 
 a. Its commencement with the destruction of Jerusalem, and the great tribulation 
 
 SXi^is vfhich accompanies it, 15-28. 
 i. Its culminating point : the advent of the Messiah, together with the assembling of 
 his elect, 29-31. (Here follow retrospective observations and warnings, xxiv. 
 32-xxv. 30.) 
 c. Close of the riXos with the messianic judgment, 31-46. 
 * Vom Zweck Jesu und seiner Jiinger, s. 184, 201 ff., 207 ff. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS SECOND ADVENT. 585 
 
 Christianity ; hence it is natural that exegetists should endeavour by all means 
 to obviate them. And as the whole difficulty consists in Jesus having appar- 
 ently placed an event now long past, in immediate chronological connexion 
 with one still future, three expedients are possible : either to deny that Jesus 
 in part spoke of, something now past, and to allege that he spoke solely of 
 what is still future ; or to deny that a part of his discourse relates to some- 
 thing still future, and thus to refer the entire prediction to what is already 
 lying in the past ; or lastly, to admit that the discourse of Jesus does indeed 
 partly refer to something which is still future to us, but either to deny that he 
 places the two series of events in immediate chronological succession, or to 
 maintain that he has also noticed what is intermediate. 
 
 Some of the Fathers of the Church, as Irenseus and Hilary — yet living in 
 the primitive expectation of the return of Christ, and at the same time not so 
 practised in regular exegesis, as to be incapable of overlooking certain diffi- 
 culties attendant on a desirable interpretation — referred the entire prediction, 
 from its commencement in Matt. xxiv. to its end in Matt, xxv., to the still 
 iuture return of Christ to judgment.^ But as this interpretation admits that 
 Jesus in the commencement of his discourse uses the destruction of Jerusalem 
 as a type of the final catastrophe, it virtually nullifies itself For what does 
 that admission signify, but that the discourse of Jesus, in the first instance, 
 produces the impression that he spoke of the destruction of Jerusalem, i.e. of 
 something now past, and that only more extended reflection and combination 
 can give it a relation to something still lying in futurity ? 
 
 To modern rationahsm, based as it was on naturalistic principles, the hope 
 of the second advent of Christ was in every form annihilated. Hence, not 
 scrupling at any exegetical violence for the sake of removing from scripture 
 what was discordant with its preconceived system, it threw itself on the oppo- 
 site side, and hazarded the attempt to refer the discourses in question, in their 
 entire tenor, solely to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the events which 
 immediately preceded and followed it.* According to this interpretation, the 
 end spoken of is only the cessation of the Judeo-Gentile economy of the 
 world ; what is said of the advent of Christ in the clouds,, is only a figurative 
 description of the promulgation and triumph of his doctrine ; the assembling 
 of the nations to judgment, and the sending of some into blessedness, and 
 others into condemnation, is an image of the happy consequences which 
 would result from embracing the doctrine and cause of Jesus, and the evil 
 consequences attendant on indifference or hostility to them. But in this 
 explanation there is a want of similarity between ■ the symbols and the ideas 
 represented, which is not only unprecedented in itself, but particularly incon- 
 ceivable in this case ; since Jesus is here addressing minds of Jewish culture, 
 and must therefore be aware that what he said of the Messiah's advent in the 
 clouds, of the judgment, and the end of the existing period of the world, 
 would be understood in the most literal sense. 
 
 It thus appears that the discourse of Jesus will not as a whole, admit of 
 being referred either to the destruction of the Jewish state, or to the events at 
 the end of the world ; it would therefore be necessarily referred to something 
 distinct from both, if this twofold impossibility adhered alike to all its parts. But 
 the case is not so ; for while, on the one hand, what is said Matt. xxiv. 2, 3, 
 15 ff. of the devastation of the temple, cannot be referred to the end of the 
 
 ^ The former adv. hceres. v. 25 ; the latter, Comm. in Matth. in loc. Compare on the 
 different interpretations of this passage the list in Schott, Commentarius in eos J, Ckr. ser- 
 mones, qui de reditu ejus ad judicium — agunt, p. 73 ff. 
 
 * Bahrdt., Uebersetzung des N. T., 1, s. 1103, 3te Ausg. ; Eckermann, Handb. der Glau- 
 benslehre, 2, s. 579, 3, s. 427, 437, 709 ff; and others in Schott, ut sup. 
 
S86 PART III. CHAPTER I. §115. 
 
 world : on the other hand, what is predicted xxv. 31 ff. of the judgment to be 
 held by the Son of Man, will not suit the destruction of Jerusalem. As, 
 according to this, in the earlier part of the discourse of Jesus, the destruction 
 of Jerusalem is the predominant subject, but in the subsequent part, the end 
 of all things : it is possible to make a division, so as to refer the former to the 
 more proximate event, the latter to the more remote one. This is the middle 
 path which has been taken by the majority of modern exegetists, and here the 
 only question is : where is the partition to be made ? As it must present a 
 space of time within which the whole period from the destruction of Jerusalem 
 to the last day may be supposed to fall, and which therefore would include 
 many centuries, it must, one would think, be plainly indicated, so as to be 
 easily and unanimously found. It is no good augury for the plan, that this 
 unanimity does not exist, — that, on the contrary, the required division is made 
 in widely different parts of the discourse of Jesus. 
 
 Thus much on the one hand appeared to be decided : that at least the 
 close of the 25th chapter, from v. 31, with its description of the solemn 
 tribunal which the Messiah, surrounded by his angels, would hold over all 
 nations, cannot be referred to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. Hence 
 many theologians believed that they could fix the boundary here, retaining the 
 relation to the end of the Jewish state until xxv. 30, and at this point making 
 the transition to the end of the world.^ On the very first glance at this ex- 
 planation, it must appear strange that the great chasm which it supposes to 
 exist between v. 30 and 31, is marked simply by a Se. Moreover, not only 
 are the darkening of the sun and moon, earthquakes, and falling of the stars, 
 understood as a mere image of the subversion of the Jewish state and wor- 
 ship ; but when xxiv. 31, it is said of the Messiah, that he will come in the 
 clouds, this is supposed to mean, invisibly ; with power — only observable by 
 the effects he produces ; with great glory — with such as consists in the con- 
 clusions which may be drawn from those effects ; while the angels who gather 
 together the nations by the sound of the trumpet, are supposed to represent 
 the apostles preaching the gospel.^ Quite erroneously, appeal is made, in 
 support of this merely figurative meaning, to the prophetic pictures of the 
 divine day of judgment, Isa. xiii. 9 ff., xxiv. 18 ff. ; Jer. iv. 23 f. ; Ezek. 
 xxxii. 7 ff. ; Joel iii. 3 ff. ; Amos viii. 9 ; farther, to descriptions ^ such as 
 Judges V. 20 ; Acts ii., xvii. ff. In those prophetic passages, real echpses of 
 the sun and moon, earthquakes, and the like, are intended, and are described 
 as prodigies which will accompany the predicted catastrophe ; the song of 
 Deborah, again, celebrates a real participation of heaven in the battle against 
 Sisera, a participation which in the narrative, iv. 1 5, is ascribed to God him- 
 self, in the song, to his heavenly hosts ; lastly, Peter expects, that the out- 
 pouring of the spirit will be succeeded by the appearances in the heavens, 
 promised among the signs of the great day of the Lord. 
 
 The attempt to effect a division near the end of the discourse, at xxv. 30, 
 failing, from its rendering much that goes before incapable of explanation ; 
 the next expedient is to retreat as far towards the commencement as possible, 
 by considering how far it is inevitable to recognise a relation to the immediate 
 future. The first resting place is after xxiv. 28 ; for what is said, up to this 
 point, of war and other calamities, of the abomination in the temple, of the 
 
 = This is the opinion of Lightfoot, in loc, Flatt, Comm. de notions vocis ^airCKda tuv 
 oipavQi', in Velthusen's und A. Sammlung 2, 461 ff. ; Jahn, Erklavung der Weissagungen 
 Jesu von der Zerstorung Jerusalems u. s. w., in Bengel's Archiv. 2, i, s. 79 ff., and others, 
 cited in Schott, s. 75 f. 
 
 * Thus especially Jahn, in the treatise above cited. 
 
 ? Kern, Hauptthatsachen der evang. Geschichte, TUb. Zeitschr. 1836, 2, s. 140 ff. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS SECOND ADVENT. 58/ 
 
 necessity for speedy flight, in order to escape unprecedented misery, cannot 
 be divested of a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem without the greatest 
 violence : while what follows concerning the appearance of the Son of Man 
 in the clouds, etc., just as imperatively demands an application to the last 
 day.* But in the first place, it appears incomprehensible how the enormous 
 interval, which on this explanation also is supposed to fall between the one 
 portion of the discourse and the other, can be introduced between two verses, 
 of all others, which Matthew connects by an adverb expressive of the shortest 
 possible time (cu^eus). It has been sought to remove this inconvenience by 
 the assertion that evOcw's does not here signify the quick succession of the one 
 incident on the other, but only the unexpected occurrence of an event, and 
 that consequently, what is here said amounts merely to this : suddenly, at 
 some period (how distant is undetermined) after the calamities attendant on 
 the destruction of Jerusalem, the Messiah will visibly appear. Such an inter- 
 pretation of ci^ecos is, as Olshausen correctly perceives, merely a desperate 
 resource : but even were it otherwise, it would afford no real aid, since not 
 only does Mark in his parallel passage, v. 24, by the words, t'n those days, 
 after that tribulation, iv eKeCvais rais ^/xepats jnera ttjv 6\iij/iv iKeivqv, place the 
 events which he proceeds to mention in uninterrupted chronological succession 
 with those which he had before detailed ; but also, shortly after this point in 
 each of the narratives (Matt. v. 34 parall.), we find the assurance that all this 
 will be witnessed by the existing generation. As thus the opinion, that from 
 V. 29, everything relates to the return of Christ to judge the world, was 
 threatened with annihilation by v. 34; the word ycvea, as the Wolfenbiittel 
 Fragmentist^ complains, was put to the torture, that it might cease to bear 
 witness against this mode of division. At one time it is made to signify the 
 Jewish nation ; ^° at another the adherents of Jesus ; 11 and of both the one 
 and the other Jesus is supposed to say that it will (how many generations 
 hence being left uncertain) be still in existence on the arrival of that cata- 
 strophe. So to explain the verse in question, that it may not contain a 
 determination of time, is even maintained to be necessary on a consideration 
 of the context, v. 35 : for as in this Jesus declares it impossible to determine 
 the period of that catastrophe, he cannot immediately before have given such 
 a determination, in the assurance that his cotemporaries would yet live to see 
 all of which he had been speaking. But this alleged necessity so to interpret 
 the word yevea, has long been dissipated by the distinction between an inexact 
 indication of the space of time, beyond which the event will not be deferred 
 (ycvea), and the precise determination of the epoch (vi^ipa koL wpa) at which it 
 will occur ; the former Jesus gives, the latter he declares himself unable to 
 give.i^ But the very possibihty of interpreting ycvea in the above manner 
 vanishes, when it is considered, that in connexion with a verb of time, and 
 without anything to imply a special application, yevea cannot have any other 
 than its original sense : i.e. generation, age ; that in a passage aimmg to 
 determine the signs of the Messiah's advent, it would be very unsuitable to 
 introduce a declaration which, instead of giving any information concernmg 
 the arrival of that catastrophe, should rather treat of the duration of the 
 Jewish nation, or of the Christian community, of which nothing had^preriously 
 been said: that, moreover, already at v. 33, in the words ip^^U orav iSr,T^ 
 ■Trdvra ravTa, yivoicr^Te k. r. \., Ye, when ye shall SEK all these things, know, 
 
 8 Thus Storr, Opusc. acad. 3, s. 34 ff. ; Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 346 f. 40Z f. 
 
 9 Ut sup. s. 188. 
 
 i" Storr, ut sup. =. 39. "o "• 
 
 " Paulus, in loc. 
 
 12 Vid. Kuinbl in Matt., s. 649. 
 
588 PART III. CHAPTER I. § US. 
 
 etc., it is presupposed that the parties addressed would witness the approach 
 of the event in question ; and lastly, that in another passage (Matt. xvi. 28 
 parall.) the certainty of living to see the coming of the Son of man is asserted 
 not simply of this generation, yeveu, avrr), but of some standing here, Ttv« t5i/ 
 (SSe co-TijKoVuv, whereby it is shown in the most decisive manner, that m the 
 present passage also, Jesus intended by the above expression the race of his 
 cotemporaries, who were not to have become extinct before that catastrophe 
 should occur." Unable to deny this, and yet anxious to separate as widely 
 as possible the end of the world here announced, and the age of Jesus, others 
 would find in the declaration before us nothing more than this : the events 
 hitherto described will begin to be fulfilled in the present age, though their 
 complete fulfilment may yet be deferred many centuries." But when already 
 at v. 8 the subject is said to be the beginning of the tribulation, while from 
 V. 14 we have a description of the end of the present period of the world, 
 which that tribulation would introduce, and it is here (v. 34) said, the existing 
 generation shall not pass away, cms av Travra ravra. yh-rfrai, until all these things 
 be fulfilled : we must inevitably understand by Travra ravra, all these things, 
 not merely the beginning, but also the last-mentioned events at the end of the 
 world. 
 
 Thus there is still at v. 34 something which must be referred to an event 
 very near to the time of Jesus : hence the discourse of Jesus cannot from so 
 early a point as v. 29, refer to the end of the world, an epoch so far distant ; 
 and the division must be made somewhat farther on, after v. 35 or 42.^^ But 
 on this plan, expressions are thrown into the first part of the discourse, which 
 resist the assigned application to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem ; — 
 the glorious advent of Christ in the clouds, and the assembling of all nations 
 by angels (v. 30 I.) must be regarded as the same extravagant figures, which 
 formerly forbade our acceptance of another mode of division. 
 
 Thus the declaration v. 34 which, together with the preceding symbolical 
 discourse on the fig tree (v. 32 f.), and the appended asseveration (v. 35), 
 must refer to a very near event, has, both before and after it, expressions which 
 can only relate to the more distant catastrophe : hence it has appeared to some 
 as a sort of oasis in the discourse, having a sense isolated from the immediate 
 context. Schott, for instance, supposes that, up to v. 26, Jesus had been 
 speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem ; that at v. 27 he does indeed make 
 a transition to the events at the end of the present period of the world ; but 
 that at V. 32, he reverts to the original subject, the destruction of Jerusalem; 
 and only at v. 36 proceeds again to speak of the end of the world. ^^ But this 
 is to hew the text in pieces, out of desperation. Jesus cannot possibly have 
 spoken with so little order and coherence ; still less can he have so linked his 
 sentences together as to give no intimation of such abrupt transitions. 
 
 '° Comp. the Wolfenbiittel Fragraentist, ut sup. s. 190 ff. Schott, ut sup. s. 127 ff. 
 
 '* Kern, ut sup. s. 141 f. That Jesus conceived the epoch at which he spoke to be 
 separated from the end of the world by a far longer interval than would elapse before the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, Kem thinks he can prove in the shortest way from v. 14, of the 
 24th chapter of Matthew, where Jesus says, And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached 
 in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come. For such a 
 promulgation of Christianity, he thinks, it is " beyond contradiction " that a far longer space 
 of time than these few lustrums would be requisite. As it happens, the apostle Paul himself 
 presents the contradiction, when he represents the gospel as having been already preached to 
 that extent before the destruction of Jerusalem, e.g. Col. i. 5 : toC iiarftetdov, (6) toC 
 jrapovTos — iv iravrl t$ Kbaiuf — (23) — toS KiipvxOivTos iv irdir'g tj Krlaa ry iiirb rhv oipavbv. 
 Comp. Rom. x, 13. 
 
 '^ The former is chosen by Siiskind, vermischte Aufsatze, s. 90 ff. ; the latter by Kuinol, 
 in Matth., p. 653 ff. 
 
 '* See his Commentarius, in loc. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS SECOND ADVENT. 589 
 
 Nor is this imputed to him by the most recent critics. According to them, 
 it is the Evangelist who has joined together, not in the best order, distinct 
 and heterogeneous declarations of Jesus. Matthew, indeed, admits Schulz, 
 imagined that these discourses were spoken without intermission, and only 
 arbitrariness and violence can in this respect sever them from each other ; 
 but hardly did Jesus himself deliver them in this consecutive manner, and 
 with this imprint of unity. '^'^ The various phases of his coming, thinks 
 Sieffert, his figurative appearance at the destruction of Jerusalem, and his 
 literal appearance at the last day, though they may not have been expressly 
 discriminated, were certainly not positively connected by Jesus; but subjects 
 which he spoke of in succession were, from their obscurity, confused together 
 by the Evangelist.^® And as in this instance there recurs the difference 
 between Matthew and Luke, that what Matthew represents as being spoken 
 on a single occasion, Luke distributes into separate discourses ; to which it is 
 also to be added, that much of what Matthew gives, Luke either has not, or 
 has it in a different form : therefore Schleiermacher^^ believed himself war- 
 ranted to rectify the composition of Matthew by that of Luke, and to maintain 
 that w^hile in Luke the two separate discourses, xvii. 22 ff. and xxi. 5 ff., have 
 each their appropriate connexion and their indubitable application, in Matthew 
 (chap. xxiv. and xxv.), by the blending of those two discourses, and the 
 introduction of portions of other discourses, the connexion is destroyed, and 
 the application obscured. According to this, the discourse, Luke xxi., taken 
 alone, contains nothing which outsteps the reference to the capture of Jeru- 
 salem and the accompanying events. Yet here also (v. 27) we find the 
 declaration. Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, tot£ oij/ovTai 
 Tov vlov Tov avdpmrov ipxafji-evov iv ve<j>iXri ; and when Schleiermacher explains 
 this as a mere image representing the revelation of the religious significance 
 of the poUtical and natural events before described, he falls into a violence of 
 interpretation which overturns his entire opinion as to the mutual relation of 
 these accounts. If, then, in the connexion of the end of all things with the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, Matthew by no means stands alone, but is coun- 
 tenanced by Luke — to say nothing of Mark, whose account in this instance 
 is an extract from Matthew : we may, it is true, conclude, that as in other 
 discourses of Jesus, so perhaps in this also, many things which were uttered 
 at different times are associated • but there is nothing to warrant the supposi- 
 tion, that precisely what relates to the two events, which in our idea are so 
 remote from each other, is the foreign matter, especially since we see, from 
 the unanimous representation of the remaining New Testament writings, that 
 the primitive church expected, as a speedy issue, the return of Christ, together 
 with the end of the present period of the world (i Cor. x. 11, xv. 51 ; Phil, 
 iv. 5 ; I Thess. iv. 15 ff. ; James v. 8 ; i Pet. iv. 7 ; i John ii. 18 ; Rev. 1. i, 
 3, iii. II, xxii. 7, 10, 12, 20). 
 
 Thus it is impossible to evade the acknowledgment, that m this discourse, 
 if we do not mutilate it to suit our own views, Jesus at first speaks of the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, and farther on and until the close, of his return at 
 the end of all things, and that he places the two events in immediate 
 connexion. There remains, therefore, but one expedient for vindicating the 
 correctness of his announcement, namely, on the one hand, to assign the 
 coming of which he speaks to the future, but, on the other hand, to bring it 
 at the same time into the present— instead of a merely future, to make it a 
 
 " Ueber das Abendmahl, ;.. 31S f- ^ , ^ ai w- 
 
 18 Ueber den Ursprung des ersten kanon. Evangel., s. 119 ff. Also Weisse, ut sup. 
 
 19 Ueber den Lukas, s. 215 ff., 265 ff Here also his opinion is approved by Neander, 
 s. 562. 
 
590 PART III. CHAPTER I. § US- 
 
 perpetual coming. The whole history of the world, it is said, since the first 
 appearance of Christ, is an invisible return on his part, a spiritual judgment 
 which he holds over mankind. Of this, the destruction of Jerusalem (in our 
 passage until v. 28) is only the first act; in immediate succession (ev^ecos, v. 
 29 £f.) comes the revolution effected among mankind by the publication of the 
 gospel ; a revolution which is to be carried on in a series of acts and epochs, 
 until the end of all things, when the judgment gradually effected in the history 
 of the world, will be made known by an all-comprehending, final revelation.*" 
 But the famous utterance of the poet,* spoken from the inmost depth of 
 modern conviction, is ill-adapted to become the key of a discourse, which 
 more than any other has its root in the point of view proper to the ancient 
 world. To regard the judgment of the world, the coming of Christ, as some- 
 thing successive, is a mode of conception in the most direct opposition to that 
 of the New Testament. The very expressions by which it designates that 
 catastrophe, as that day or the last day, eKeivr) or icrxaTij Vf-^P'^i show that it is 
 to be thought of as momentary ; the crui/rcAeta toS aiSvos, end of the age (v. 3), 
 concerning the signs of which the apostles inquire, and which Jesus elsewhere 
 (Matt. xiii. 39) represents under the image of the harvest, can only be the 
 final close of the course of the world, not something which is gradually 
 effected during this course; when Jesus, compares his coming to lightning 
 (xxiv. 27), and to the entrance of the thief in the night (v. 43), he represents 
 it as one sudden event, and not as a series of events. ^^ If we consider in 
 addition to this the extravagant figures, which it is not less necessary to 
 suppose on this interpretation, than on the above-mentioned reference of the 
 24th chapter to the destruction of Jerusalem, ^^ it will appear necessary to 
 abstain from this expedient, as from all the previous ones. 
 
 Thus the last attempt to discover in the discourse before us the immense 
 interval which, looking from our position in the present day, is fixed between 
 the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of all things, having failed ; we are 
 taught practically that that interval lies only in our own conception, which we are 
 not justified in introducing into the text. And when we consider that we owe 
 our idea of that interval only to the experience of many centuries, which have 
 elapsed since the destruction of Jerusalem : it cannot be difficult to us to 
 imagine how the author of this discourse, who had not had this experience, 
 might entertain the belief that shortly after the fall of the Jewish sanctuary, 
 the world itself, of which, in the Jewish idea, that sanctuary was the centre, 
 would also come to an end, and the Messiah appear in judgment. 
 
 "o Olshausen, bibl. Comm. i, s. 865 ; Kern, ut sup. s. 138 ff. Comp. Steudel Glaubensl. 
 s. 479 ff- 
 
 [* " Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht : " Schiller. Tr.] 
 
 21 Comp. especially Weizel, die Zeit des jiingsten Tags u. s. f. in den Studien der evang. 
 Geistlichkeit WUrterabergs, 9, 2, s. 140 ff., 154 ff. 
 
 22 According to Kern, the appearing of the Son of Man in the clouds, signifies "the 
 manifestation of everything which forms so great an epoch in the development of the history 
 of mankind, that from it, the ^ency of Christ, who is the governing power in the history of 
 mankind, may be as clearly recognised as if the sign of Christ were seen in the heavens. 
 The mourning of all the tribes of the earth is to be understood of the sorrow with which men 
 will be visited, owing to the judgment, Kpl<ris, which accompanies the propagation of the 
 kingdom of Christ, as consisting in an expulsion of ungodliness out of the world, and the 
 annihilation of the old man." Still further does Weisse allow himself to be carried away by 
 the allegorizing propensity : Christ "commiserates those who are with child and who^gjve 
 suck, i.e. those who would still labour and produce in the old order of things • he further 
 pities those whose flight falls in the winter, i.e. in a rude, inhospitable period, which bears, 
 tib fruit for the spirit." (Die evang. Gesch. 2, s. 592.) 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS SECOND ADVENT. SQI 
 
 § ii6. 
 ORIGIN OF THE DISCOURSES ON THE SECOND ADVENT. 
 
 The result just obtained involves a consequence, to avoid which has been 
 the object of all the futile attempts at explanation hitherto examined': if, 
 namely, Jesus conceived and declared that the fall of the Jewish sanctuary 
 would be shortly followed by his visible return and the end of the world, while 
 it is now nearly 1800 years since the one catastrophe, and yet the other has 
 not arrived; it follows that in this particular he was mistaken. Hence 
 expositors, who so far yield to exegetical evidence, as to agree with us in the 
 above conclusion concerning the meaning of the discourse before us, seek 
 from dogmatical considerations to evade this legitimate consequence. 
 
 Hengstenberg, as is well known, has advanced, in relation to the history of 
 the Hebrew prophets, the following theory, which has met with approval from 
 other expositors. To the spiritual vision of these men, he says, future things 
 presented themselves not so much through the medium of time as of space — 
 as it were, in great pictures ; and thus, as is the case in paintings or perspective 
 views, the most distant object often appeared to them to stand immediately 
 behind the nearest, foreground and background being intermingled with each 
 other : and this theory of a perspective vision we are to apply to Jesus, es- 
 pecially in regard to the discourse in question.^ But we may here cite the 
 appropriate remark of Paulus,* that as one, who in a perspective externally 
 presented, does not know how to distinguish distances, labours under an 
 optical delusion, i.e. errs : so likewise in an internal perspective of ideas, if 
 such there be, the disregard of distances must be pronounced an error ; con- 
 sequently this theory does not show that the above men did not err, but rather 
 explains how they easily might err. 
 
 Even Olshausen considers this theory, which he elsewhere adopts, in- 
 sufficient in the present case to remove all appearance of error on the part of 
 Jesus ; and he therefore seeks to derive special grounds of justification, from 
 the particular nature of the event predicted.^ In the first place he regards it 
 as indispensable to the full moral influence of the doctrine of Christ's return, 
 that this catastrophe should be regarded as possible, nay probable, at any 
 moment. This consideration may indeed justify such enunciations as Matt, 
 xxiv. 37 S., where Jesus admonishes to watchfulness, because no one can 
 know how soon the decisive moment may arrive ; but by no means such as 
 xxiv. 34, where he declares that within the term of the existing generation, all 
 will be fulfilled. For one whose mind is in a healthy state, conceives the 
 possible as possible, the probable as probable ; and if he wishes to abide 
 by the truth, he so exhibits them to others : he, on the contrary, by whom the 
 merely possible or probable is conceived as the real, is under a mistake ; and 
 he who, without so conceiving it himself, yet for a moral or religious object, 
 so represents it to others, permits himself to use a pious fraud. Olshausen 
 further avails himself of a position already noticed, namely, that the opinion 
 that the advent of Christ is at hand, is a true one, inasmuch as the entire 
 history of the world is a coming of Christ ; though not so as to exclude his 
 final coming at the end of all things. But if it is proved that Jesus represented 
 his literal, final coming as near at hand, while, in fact, only his figurative per- 
 petual comiijg occurred in the period indicated : he has confused these two 
 
 ' Hengstenberg, Christologie des A. T., i, a, s. 305 ff. 
 
 * Exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 403. Comp. also Kern, Hauptthatsachen, ut sup. s. 137. 
 
 3 Bibl. Comm. I, s. 865 ff. 
 
592 PART III. CHAPTER I. § Il6. 
 
 modes of his coming. The last -argument which Olshausen adduces — that 
 because the acceleration or delay of the return of Christ depends on the con- 
 duct of men, consequently on their free-will, his prophecy is only to be under- 
 stood conditionally— stands or falls with the first ; for to represent something 
 conditional as unconditional is to create a false impression. 
 
 Sieffert, likewise, regards the grounds on which Olshausen seeks to free the 
 assertions of Jesus concerning his return from the imputation of error, as in- 
 adequate; nevertheless he holds it an impossibility to the Christian con- 
 sciousness, to ascribe an erroneous expectation to Jesus.* In no case would 
 this furnish a warrant, arbitrarily to sever from each other those elements in 
 the discourse of Jesus which refer to the nearer event, from those which in 
 our view refer to the more remote one : rather, if we had reasons for holding 
 such an error on the part of Jesus inconceivable, we must deny in general 
 that the discourses on the second advent, in which those two sets of materials 
 are so inextricably interwoven, originated with him. But, looking from the 
 orthodox point of view, the question is not : what will it satisfy the Christian 
 consciousness of the present day to believe or not to beheve concerning 
 Christ ? but, what stands written concerning Christ ? and to this the above 
 consciousness must accommodate itself as it best may. Considering the sub- 
 ject rationally, however, a feeling resting on presuppositions, such as the so- 
 called Christian consciousness, has no voice in matters of science ; and as 
 often as it seeks to intermeddle with them, is to be reduced to order by the 
 simple reprimand : mulier taceat in ecclesicL I ^ 
 
 But have we no other grounds for questioning that Jesus really uttered the 
 predictions contained in Matt. xxiv. and xxv. parall. ? In pursuing this in- 
 quiry, we may first take our stand on the assertion of supranaturalistic theo- 
 logians, that what Jesus here predicts, he could not know in the natural way 
 of reasonable calculation, but only in a, supernatural manner.* Even the main 
 fact, that the temple would be destroyed and Jerusalem laid waste, could not, 
 according to this opinion, be so certainly foreknown. Who could conjecture, 
 it is asked, that the Jews would carry their frantic obstinacy so far as to render 
 such an issue inevitable ? Who could calculate, that precisely such emperors, 
 would send such procurators, as would provoke insurrection by their baseness 
 and pusillanimity ? Still more remarkable is it, that many particular incidents 
 which Jesus foretold actually occurred. The wars, pestilence, earthquakes, 
 famines, which he prophesied, may be shown in the history of the succeeding 
 times; the persecution of his followers really took place ; the prediction that 
 there would be false prophets, and even such as would, by promises of 
 miracles, allure the people into the wilderness (Matt, xxiv, ii, 24 ff. parall.), 
 may be compared with a strikingly similar passage from Josephus, describing 
 the last times of the Jewish state;'' the encompassing of Jerusalem with 
 armies, mentioned by Luke, with the trench, xapa^, which he elsewhere (xix. 
 43 f.) speaks of as being cast about the city, may be recognized in the circum- 
 stance recorded by Josephus, that Titus caused Jerusalem to be enclosed by 
 a wall ; * lastly it may also excite astonishment that the declarations, there shall 
 not be left one stone upon another, ovk axjieO'^a-erai \i5os €iri \i6io, in relation to 
 
 ■• Uebei den Ursprung u. s. f., s. 119. Weisse advances a similar opinion, ut sup. 
 
 " Compare also liiy Streitschriften, i, i, conclusion. 
 
 ' Comp. e.g. Gratz, Comm. zum Matth. 2, 444 ff. 
 
 ' Antiq. xx. viii. 6 (comp. bell. jud. ii. xiii. 4.) : And now these impostors and deceivers 
 persuaded the multitude to follow them into the wilderness, and pretended that they would 
 exhibit manifest wonders and signs that should be performed by the providence of God. And 
 many that were prevailed on by them, suffered the punishments of their folly ; for Felix 
 brought them back, and then punished them. 
 
 * Bell. jud. V. xii. i, 2. 
 
D-ISCOUR&ES, OF JESUS ON HIS SECOND ADVENT. S93 
 
 the temple, and they shall lay thee even with the ground, eSa.<j}Lovcri o-e, (Luke 
 xix. 44), in relation to the city, were fulfilled to the letter.^ 
 
 When on the orthodox point of view, from the impossibility of foreseeing 
 such particulars in a natural manner, it is concluded that Jesus had a super- 
 natural insight into the future ; this conclusion is here attended not only with 
 the same difficulty as above, in connection with the announcement of his 
 death and resurrection, but with another also. In the first place, according 
 to Matthew (xxiv. 15), and Mark (xiii. 14), Jesus represented the first stage of 
 the catastrophe as a fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniel concerning an 
 abomination of desolation, and consequently referred Dan. ix. 27 (comp. xi. 31, 
 xii. 11) to an event at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. For 
 what Paulus maintains, — namely, that Jesus here only borrows an expression 
 from Daniel, without regarding that declaration of the prophet as a prophecy 
 concerning something which in his time (the time of Jesus) was still future — • 
 is here rendered especially inconceivable by the addition : let him that readeth 
 understand. Now it may be regarded as an established point in the modern 
 criticism and explanation of the Old Testament, that the above passages in 
 Daniel have reference to the desecration of the temple by Antiochus 
 Epiphanes ; i" consequently, the interpretation of them which the Evangelists 
 here lend to Jesus is a false one. But to proceed to the difficulty which is 
 peculiar to the prophecy in Matt, xxiv., xxv. : only one side of it, that relating 
 to Jerusalem, has been fulfilled ; the other, that relating to the return of 
 Jesus and the end of the world, remains unfulfilled. Such a half-true prophecy 
 as this cannot have been drawn by Jesus from his higher nature, and he must 
 have been left in this matter to his human faculties. But that he should 
 be able, by means of these, to foresee a result, dependent on so many for- 
 tuities as was the destruction of Jerusalem, with its particular circumstances, 
 appears inconceivable ; and hence the conjecture arises, that these discourses, 
 in the definiteness which they now possess, were not uttered prior to the 
 issue, consequently not by Jesus, but that they may have been put into his 
 mouth as prophecies after the issue. Thus Kaiser, for example, is of opinion 
 that Jesus threatened a terrible fate to the temple and the nation by means of 
 the Romans, conditionally, in case the nation did not accept salvation from 
 the Messiah, and described this fate in prophetic types ; but that the uncon- 
 ditional form and the more precise delineations were given to his discourse 
 post eventum. Credner also infers, from the circumstances, that incidents ac- 
 companying the destruction of Jerusalem are put into the mouth of Jesus as 
 prophecies, that the three first gospels cannot have been composed before this 
 event. 1* It must certainly be supposed that the prophecy, as we have it in 
 the two first gospels, was . formed immediately after or even during the issue, 
 since here the appearance of the Messiah is predicted as an event that would 
 immediately succeed the fall of Jerusalem, which in later years could no longer 
 be the expectation. As this immediate chronological connexion of the two 
 catastrophes is not so expressly made by Luke, it has been supposed that this 
 Evangelist gives the prophecy as it was modified by experience, that the 
 Messiah's advent and the end of the world had in nowise followed close on 
 the destruction of Jerusalem.!^ , 
 
 In opposition to these two opinions, that the prophecy in question had a 
 
 8 More ample comparisons of the results mentioned by Josephus and others, with the 
 prophecy, see in Credner, Einleit. in das N. T. i, s. 207. _ 
 
 >" Bertholdt, Daniel Ubersetzt und erklart, 2, s. 668 ff. ; Paulus, exeg, Handb. 3, a, s. 
 -!40 f. ; De Wette, Einleit. in das A. T., § 254 ff. . 
 
 11 Kaisei-, bibl; Xlieol. i, s. 247 ; Credner, Einl. in das N. T. r, s. 206 f. 
 
 12 De Wette, Einl. in das N. T., § 97, loi. Exeg. Handb. i, I, s. 204, I, 2, s. 103. 
 
 P P 
 
594 PART III. CHAPTER I. § Il6. 
 
 supernatural source, and that it was only made after the issue ; it is sought, 
 in a third quarter, to show that what is here predicted, Jesus might really have 
 known in a natural way.** While, on the one hand, it is held in the highest 
 degree astonishing that the result should have so closely corresponded with 
 the most minute features of the prophecy of Jesus ; on the other hand, there 
 are expositors by whom this correspondence is called in question. The 
 encompassing of Jerusalem with armies, say they, is precisely what Titus, 
 according to Josephus, pronounces impossible to be effected j'* it is pre- 
 dicted that a trench x^-p"-^ would be cast about the city, while Josephus in- 
 forms us, that after the first attempt at forming an embankment X"'/*'^ had been 
 rendered useless, by an act of incendiarism on the part of the besieged,^^ 
 Titus desisted from his scheme ; of false Messiahs, arising in the interval 
 between the death of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem, history says 
 nothing ; the commotions among nations, and the natural phenomena, in that 
 period, are far from being so important as they are here represented ; but 
 above all, in these prophecies, especially as they are given in Matthew and 
 Mark, it is not the destruction of Jerusalem which is predicted, but solely 
 that of the temple : plain divergencies of the prophecy from the result, which 
 would not exist, if either a supernatural glance into the future, or a vaticinium 
 post eventum were concerned. 
 
 According to these theologians, we are on the wrong track in seeking the 
 counterpart of these prophecies forwards, in the result ; since it was back- 
 wards, on types presented in the past, that the authors looked. A mass of 
 such types was furnished by the Jewish conception of the circumstances which 
 would precede the advent of the Messiah. False prophets and Messiahs, 
 war, famine and pestilence, earthquakes and commotions in the heavens, 
 prevalent corruption of manners, persecution of the faithful servants of 
 Jehovah, were held to be the immediate harbingers of the messianic kingdom. 
 Moreover," in the prophets there are descriptions of the tribulation which 
 would presage and accompany the day of the coming of Jehovah (Isa. xiii. 
 9 ff. ; Joel i. 15, ii. i ff. 10 ff., iii. 3 fF., iv. 15 f. ; Zeph. i. 14 S. ; Hagg. ii. 
 7 ; Zech. xiv. i ff. ; Mai. iii. i ff), or which would precede the messianic 
 kingdom of the saints (Dan. vii.-xii.), as also expressions in later Jewish 
 writings,^" so analogous with our evangelical prediction, as to put it beyond 
 question, that the description which it gives of the time of the Messiah's 
 advent is drawn from a circle of ideas which had long been current among 
 the Jews. 
 
 Another question is, whether the principal feature in the picture before us, 
 the destruction of the temple and the devastation of Jerusalem, as introduc- 
 tory to the coming of the Messiah, may also be shown to have made part of 
 the popular conception in the time of Jesus. In Jewish writings we find the 
 notion, that the birth of the Messiah would coincide with the destruction of 
 the sanctuary : i'' but this idea was obviously first formed after the fall of the 
 temple, in order that a fountain of consolation might spring out of the lowest 
 depth of misery. Josephus finds in Daniel, together with what relates to 
 Antiochus, a prophecy of the annihilation of the Jewish state by the 
 Romans : 1* but as this is not the primary object in any of the visions in 
 
 " Paulus, Fritzsche, De Wette in loc. 
 
 1* B. j. V. xii. I : To encompass the whole city round with his army, was not very easy, 
 by reason of its magnitude and the difficulty of the situation ; arid on other accounts 
 dangerous. 
 
 " B. j. V, xi. r ff., xii. I. 
 
 '" Vid. Schottgen, 2, s. 509 ff. ; Bertholdt, § 13 ; Schmidt, Biblioth. I, s. 24 ff. 
 
 " Vid. Schottgen, 2, s. 525 f. 
 
 " Antiq. X. xi. 7. After having interpreted the little horn of Antiochus, he briefly 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS SECOND ADVENT. 595 
 
 Daniel, Josephus might first make this interpretation after the issue, in which 
 case it would prove nothing as to the time of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is 
 conceivable, that already in the time of Jesus, the Jews might attribute to 
 the prophecies of Daniel a reference to events yet future, although these 
 prophecies in fact related to a far earlier period ; and they might do so on 
 the same grounds as those on which the Christians of the present age still 
 look forward to the full realization of Matt. xxiv. and xxv. As immediately 
 after the fall of the kingdom made of iron mixed with clay, and of the horn 
 that speaks blasphemies and makes war against the saints, the coming of the 
 Son of man in the clouds, and the commencement of the everlasting kingdom 
 of the saints, is prophesied, while this result had not by any means succeeded 
 the defeat of Antiochus : there was an inducement still to look to the future, 
 not only for the heavenly kingdom, but also, since they were made immedi- 
 ately to precede it, for the calamities caused by the kingdom of iron and clay ; 
 among which calamities, by analogy with what was predicted of the horn, 
 the desecration of the temple was conspicuous. But while the prophecy in 
 Daniel includes only the desecration of the temple and the interruption of 
 the worship, together with (the partial '^) destruction of the city : in the dis- 
 course before us complete destruction is predicted to the temple — and like- 
 wise to the city, not merely in Luke, where the expressions are very marked, 
 but undoubtedly in the two other Evangelists also, as appears to be indicated 
 by the exhortation to hasty iiight from the city ; — which prediction of total 
 destruction, as it is not contained in the type, can apparently have been 
 gathered only from the result. But in the first place, the description in 
 Daniel with the expressions DOB' and riTitf^n (ix. 26 f., xii. 11), which the 
 LXX. translates by ep^/Acocns, desolation, and hia.<^Qapw, I destroy, may easily be 
 also understood of a total destruction ; and secondly, if once, in connexion 
 with the sins of the nation, the temple and city had been destroyed and the 
 people carried away captive, every enthusiastic Israelite, to whom the religious 
 and moral condition of his fellow-countrymen appeared corrupt and irremedi- 
 able, might thenceforth expect and predict a repetition of that former judgment. 
 According to this, even those particulars in which, as we have seen in the 
 foregoing section, Luke surpasses his fellow-narrators in definiteness, are not 
 of a kind to oblige us to suppose, either a supernatural foreknowledge, or a 
 vaticinium post eventum : on the contrary, all may be explained by a close 
 consideration of what is narrated concerning the first destruction of Jerusalem 
 in 2 Kings xxv. ; 2 Chron. xxxvi. ; and Jer. xxxix. 52. 
 
 There is only one point which Jesus, as the author of this discourse, could 
 not have gathered from any types, but must have drawn entirely from himself: 
 namely, the declaration that the catastrophe which he described would arrive 
 within the present generation. This prediction we must hesitate to derive 
 from a supernatural knowledge, for the reason, already noticed, that it is only 
 
 adds : /« the very same manner Daniel also wrote concerning the government of the Romans, 
 and that our country should be made desolate by them. He doubtless supposed that the fourth, 
 iron monarchy, Dan. ii. 40, represented the Romans, since, besides attributing it to a 
 dominion over all the earth, he explains its destniction by the stone as something still future, 
 Ant. X. A. 4 : Daniel did also declare the meaning of the stone to the King ; but I do not think 
 proper to relate it, since I have only undertaken to describe things past or things present, but 
 not thinos that are future. Now Daniel ii. 44 interprets the stone to mean the heavenly 
 kingdoni whicli would destroy the iron one, but would itself endure for ever,— a messianic 
 particular on which Josephus does not choose to dilate. But that, correctly interpreted, the 
 iron legs of the image signify the Macedonian empire, and the feet of iron mixed with clay, 
 the Syrian empire which sprang out of the Macedonian, see DeWette, Einleit. in das N. T., 
 
 § ZS4- . .. 
 
 i« Vid. Joseph., Antiq. xu. v. 
 
596 PART III. CHAPTER I. § 1 16. 
 
 half fulfilled : while the other side of the fact, the striking fulfilment of at least 
 the one half of the prophecy, might incline us to distrust the supposition of a 
 merely natural calculation, and to regard this determination of time as a 
 feature introduced into the discourse of Jesus after the issue. Meanwhile, it 
 is clear from the passages cited at the conclusion of the last section, that (he 
 apostles themselves expected the return of Christ to take place within their 
 lifetime; and it is not improbable that Jesus also believed that this event, 
 together with the ruin of the city and temple, which according to Daniel was 
 to precede it, was very near at hand. The more general part of the expecta- 
 tion, namely, the appearing at some future time in the clouds of heaven, to 
 awake the dead, to sit in judgment, and to found an everlasting kingdom, 
 would necessarily, from a consideration of Daniel, where such a conning is 
 ascribed to the Son of man, be contemplated by Jesus as a part of his own 
 destiny, so soon as he held himself to be the Messiah ; while, with regard to 
 the time, it was natural that he should not conceive a very long interval as 
 destined to elapse between his first messianic coming in humiliation, and his 
 second, in glory. 
 
 One objection to the genuineness of the synoptical discourses on the second 
 advent, is yet in reserve ; it has, however, less weight in our point of view 
 than in that of the prevalent criticism of the gospels. This objection is de- 
 rived from the absence of any detailed description of the second advent of 
 Jesus in the Gospel of John.^" It is true that the fundamental elements of the 
 doctrine of Christ's return are plainly discoverable in the fourth gospel also.^i 
 Jesus therein ascribes to himself the offices of the future judgment, and the 
 awaking of the dead (John v. 2 1-30) ; which last is not indeed numbered 
 among the concomitants of the advent of Christ in the synoptical gospels, but 
 not seldom appears in that connexion elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g. 
 I Cor. XV. 23 ; I Thess. iv. 16). When Jesus, in the fourth gospel, some- 
 times denies that he is come into the world for judgment (iii. 17, viii. 15, 
 xii. 47), this refers only to his first presence on earth, and is limited by oppo- 
 site declarations, in which he asserts that he is come into the world for judg- 
 ment (ix. 39, comp. viii. 16), to the sense that the object of his mission is not 
 to condenm but to save, and that his judgment is not individual or partial ; 
 that it consists, not in an authoritative sentence proceeding subjectively from 
 himself, but in an objective act proceeding from the intrinsic tendency of 
 things, a doctrine which is significantly expressed in the declaration, that him 
 who hears his word without believing he judges not, but the word, which he 
 has spoken, shall judge him in ihe .last day (6 \ayo^, ov eXoAijo-ct,, Kpivu airov iv 
 ry io-xa-Trj rjiiipq., xii. 48). Further^ when the Jesus of John's gospel says of 
 the believer : ov KpLvtrai, he is not judged, £is Kpia-iv oik ip^erai, he shall not 
 come into judgment (iii. 18, v. 24), this is bo be understood of a judgment 
 with a condemnatory issue ; when on the contrary, it is said of the unbeliever : 
 ^817 KSKpLTat, he is judged already (iii. 1,8), this only means that the assigning 
 of the merited lot to each is not reserved until the future judgment at the end 
 of all things, since each one in his imwarid disposition bears within himself the 
 fate which is his due. This does not exclude a future solemn act of judg- 
 ment, wherein that which has at present only a latent existence will be made 
 matter of awful revelation ; for in the very passage last quoted we find the 
 consignment to condemnation, and elsewhere the awarding of future blessed- 
 ness (v, 28 i., vi. 39 f., 54), associated with the last day and the resurrection. 
 
 2» Vid. Hase, L. J,, § 130. 
 
 *' The passages bearing on this subject are collected and explained in Schott, Commen- 
 tarius, etc., p. 364 ff. Comp. Lilcke, in loc. and Weizel, urchrlstl. Unsterblichkeitslehre, 
 in the Theol. Studlen, 1836, s. 626 ff. 
 
DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS SECOND ADVENT, 597 
 
 In like manner, Jesus says in Luke also, in the same connexion in which he 
 describes his return as a still future, external catastrophe, xvii. 20 f. : The 
 kingdom of God cometh not with observation ; neither shall they say, lo here I or, 
 lo there 1 for behold the kingdom of God is within you. A certain interpreta- 
 tion of the words uttered by the Jesus of John's gospel, supposes him even to 
 intimate that his return was not far distant. The expressions already men- 
 tioned in the farewell discourses, in which Jesus promises his disciples not to 
 leave them comfortless, but, after having gone to the Father, shortly (xvi. 16) 
 to come again to them (xiv. 3, 18), are not seldom understood of the return 
 of Christ at the last day ; 22 but when we hear Jesus say of this same return, 
 that he will therein reveal himself only to his disciples, and not to the world 
 (xiv. 19, comp. 22), it is impossible to think of it as the return to judgment, 
 in which Jesus conceived that he should reveal himself to good and bad with- 
 out distinction. There is a particularly enigmatical allusion to the coming 
 of Christ in the appendix to the fourth gospel, chap. xxi. On the question of 
 Peter as to what will become of the apostle John, Jesus here replies. If I will 
 that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? (v. 22) whence, as it is added, 
 the Christians inferred that John would not die, since they supposed the 
 coming (ipxia-Oai) here spoken of, to be the final return of Christ, in which 
 those who witnessed it were to be changed, without tasting death (i Cor. xv. 
 51 f). But, adds the author correctively, Jesus did not say, the disciple 
 would not die, but only, if he willed that he should tarry till he tame, what 
 was that to Peter ? Hereby the Evangelist may have intended to rectify the 
 inference in two ways. Either it appeared to him erroneous to identify the 
 remaining until Jesus came, with not dying, i.e. to take the coming of which 
 Jesus here spoke for the last, which would put an end to death ; and in that 
 case he must have understood by it an invisible coming of Christ, possibly in 
 the destruction of Jerusalem : ^3 or, he held it erroneous that what Jesus had 
 only said hypothetically — even if he willed the given case, that was no con- 
 cern of Peter's — should be understood categorically, as if such had really been 
 the will of Jesus ; in which case the epxo/jiat. would retain its customary 
 sense.** 
 
 If, according to this, all the main features of the doctrine of the second 
 advent are put into the mouth of Jesus in the. fourth gospel also, still we no- 
 where find anything of the detailed, graphic description of the external event, 
 which we read in the synoptical gospels. This relation between the two 
 representations, creates no slight difficulty on the ordinary view of the origin 
 of the gospels, and especially that of the fourth. If Jesus really spoke of his 
 return so fully and solemnly as the synoptists represent him to have done, and 
 treated of the right knowledge and observation of the signs as something of 
 the highest importance ; it is inconceivable that the author of the fourth gos- 
 jjel could pass over all this, if he were an immediate disciple of Jesus^ The 
 usual mode of accounting for such an omission, by the supposition that he 
 believed this part of the teaching of Jesus to be sufficiently known from the 
 synoptical gospels, or from oral tradition, is the more inadequate here in pro- 
 portion as all which bears a prophetic character, especially when relating to 
 events at once so much longed for and dreaded, is exposed to misinterpreta- 
 tion ; as we may see from the rectification just noticed, which the author of 
 John xxi. found it necessary to apply to the opinion of his contemporaries 
 concerning the promise given by Jesus to John. Thus, in the present case, 
 an explanatory word would have been highly seasonable and useful, especi- 
 
 22 Vid. Tholuck, in loc. 
 
 23 Comp. Tholuck, ut sup. 
 
 2* Thus Liicke, and also Tholuck, in loc. ; Schott, p. 409. 
 
598 PART III. CHAPTER I. § Il6. 
 
 ally as the representation of the first gospel, which made the end of all things 
 follow immediately on the destruction of Jerusalem, must be the more an oc- 
 casion of doubt and offence the nearer the latter event came, and in a still 
 greater degree when it was past. And who was more capable of affording 
 such enlightenment than the favourite disciple, particularly if, according to 
 Mark xiii. 3, he was the only Evangelist who had been present at the dis- 
 course of Jesus on this subject ? Hence, here again, a special reason for his 
 silence is sought in the alleged destination of his gospel for non-judaical, 
 idealizing Gnostics, whose point of view those descriptions would not have 
 suited, and were therefore omitted.^^ But precisely in relation to such 
 readers, it would have been a culpable compliance, a confirmation in their 
 idealizing tendency, had John, out of deference to them, suppressed the real 
 side of the return of Christ. The apostle must rather have withstood the pro- 
 pensity of these people to evaporate the external, historical part of Christi- 
 anity, by giving due prominence to it ; as, in his epistle, in opposition to their 
 Docetism, he lays stress on the corporeality of Jesus : so, in opposition to 
 their idealism, he must have been especially assiduous to exhibit in the return 
 of Christ the external facts by which it would be signalized. Instead of this, 
 he himself speaks nearly like a Gnostic, and constantly aims, in relation to the 
 return of Christ, to resolve the external and the future into the internal and 
 the present. Hence there is not so much exaggeration, as Olshausen sup- 
 poses, in the opinion of Fleck, that the representation of the doctrine of Jesus 
 concerning his return in the synoptical gospels, and that given in the fourth, 
 exclude each other ; ^^ for if the author of the fourth gospel be an apostle, 
 the discourses on the second advent which the three first Evangelists attribute 
 to Jesus, cannot have been so delivered by him, and vice versS.. We, how- 
 ever, as we have said, cannot avail ourselves of this argument, having long 
 renounced the ijre-supposition that the fourth gospel had an apostolic origin. 
 But, on our point of view, we can fully explain the relation which the repre- 
 sentation of the fourth gospel bears to that of the synoptists. In Palestine, 
 where the tradition recorded by the three first gospels was formed, the doc- 
 trine of a solemn advent of the Messiah which was there prevalent, and which 
 Jesus embraced, was received in its whole breadth into the Christian belief : 
 whereas in the Hellenistic-theosophic circle in which the fourth gospel arose, 
 this idea was divested of its material envelopment, and the return of Christ 
 became the ambiguous medium between a real and an ideal, a present and a 
 future event, which it appears in the fourth gospel. 
 
 '^ Olshausen, I, s. 870. 
 
 ^* Fleck, de regno divino, p. 483. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS ; TREACHERY OF JUDAS ; 
 LAST SUPPER WITH HIS DISCIPLES. 
 
 § 117- 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE RELATION OF JESUS TO HIS ENEMIES. 
 
 In the three first gospels the principal enemies of Jesus are the Pharisees and 
 scribes,! ^,,1,0 saw in him the most ruinous opponent of their institutions ; to- 
 gether with the chief priests and elders, who, as the heads of the external 
 temple-worship and the hierarchy founded upon it, could have no friendly 
 feeling towards one who on every opportunity represented as the main point, 
 the internal service of God with the devotion of the mind. Elsewhere we 
 find among the enemies of Jesus the Sadducees'(Matt. xvi. i, xxii. 23 ff. 
 parall. comp. Matt. xvi. 6 ff. parall.), to whose materialism much in his 
 opinions must have been repugnant ; and the Herodian party (Mark iii. 6 ; 
 Matt. xxii. 16 parall.) who, having been unfavourable to the Baptist, were 
 naturally so to his successor. The fourth gospel, though it sometimes men- 
 tions the chief priests and Pharisees, the most frequently designates the ene- 
 mies of Jesus by the general expression : ot 'IovSolol, the Jews ; an expression 
 which proceeds from a later, Christian point of view. 
 
 The four Evangelists unanimously relate, that the more defined machina- 
 tions of the Pharisaic-hierarchical party against Jesus, took their rise from an 
 offence committed by the latter against the prevalent rules concerning the 
 observation of the sabbath. When Jesus had cured the man with the withered 
 hand, it is said in Matthew : the Pharisees went out, and held a council against 
 him, how they might destroy him (xii. 14, comp. Mark iii. 6 ; Luke vi. 11) ; 
 and in like manner John observes, on the occasion of the Sabbath cure at the 
 pool of Bethesda : therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and after mentioning 
 a declaration of Jesus, proceeds thus : therefore the Jews sought the more to kill 
 him (v. 16, 18). 
 
 But immediately after this commencing point, the synoptical account of the 
 relation in question diverges from that of John. In the synoptists, the next 
 offence is given by the neglect of washing before meals on the part of Jesus 
 and his disciples, with the sharp invectives which, when called to account on 
 the subject, he launched forth against the spirit of petty observance, and the 
 hypocrisy and spirit of persecution with which it was united in the Pharisees 
 and lawyers ; after all which it is said, that the latter conceived a deep ani- 
 mosity against him, and tried to sift him and entrap him by dangerous ques- 
 tions, in order to obtain grounds of accusation against him (Luke xi, 37-54, 
 
 ' Winer's bibl. Realworterb. 
 
 599 
 
600 PART III. CHAPTER tt. § 1 1/. 
 
 comp. Matt. xv. i flf. ; Mark vii. i fif.). On his last journey to Jerusalem, the 
 Pharisees gave Jesus a warning against Herod (Luke xiii. 31), which appar- 
 ently had no other object than to induce him to leave the country.^ The next 
 important cause of offence to the hierarchical party, was the striking homage 
 paid to Jesus by the people on his entrance into Jerusalem, and the purifica- 
 tion of the temple which he immediately undertook : but they were still with- 
 held from any violent measures towards him by the strength of his interest 
 with the people (Matt. xxi. 15 f. ; Mark ix. 18 ; Luke xix. 39, 47 f.), which 
 was the sole reason why they did not possess themselves of his person, after 
 the severe manner in which he had characterized them, in the parable of the 
 husbandmen of the vineyard (Matt. xxi. 45 f. parall.). After these events, it 
 scarcely needed the anti-Pharisaic discourse Matt, xxiii. to make the chief 
 priests, the scribes and elders, i.e. the Sanhedrim, assemble in the palace of 
 the high priest, shortly before the passover, for a consultation, that they might 
 take Jesus by subtlety and kill him (Matt. xxvi. 3 ff. parall.). 
 
 In the fourth gospel, also, the great number of the adherents of Jesus 
 among the people is sometimes, it is true, described as the reason why his 
 enemies desired to seize him (vii. 32, 44, comp. iv. i fF.), and his solemn en- 
 trance into Jerusalem embitters them here also (xii. 19) ; sometimes their 
 murderous designs are mentioned without any motive being stated (vii. i, 19, 
 25, viii. 40) : but the main cause of offence in this gospel, lies in the declar- 
 ations of Jesus concerning his exalted dignity. Even on the occasion of the 
 cure of the lame man on the Sabbath, what chiefly irritated the Jews was that 
 Jesus justified it by appealing to the uninterrupted agency of God as his 
 Father, which in their opinion was a blasphemous making of himself equal 
 with God, lo-ov kavTov iroLilv TtS Oeio (v. 18) ; when he spoke of his divine 
 mission, they sought to lay hold on him (vii. 30, comp. viii. 20) ; on his < 
 asserting that he was before Abraham, they took up stones to cast at him 
 (viii. ,59); they did the same when he declared that he and the Father were 
 one (x. 31), and when he asserted that the Father was in him and he in the 
 Father, they again attempted to seize him (x. 39). But that which, according 
 to the fourth gospel, turns the scale, and causes the hostile party to take a for- 
 mal resolution against Jesus, is the resuscitation of Lazarus. When this act 
 was reported to the Pharisees, they and the- chief priests convened a council 
 of the Sanhedrim, in which the subject of deliberation was, that if Jesus con- 
 tinued to perform so many signs, (rrijxfla, all would at length adhere to him, 
 and then the Roman power would be exerted to the destruction of the Jewish 
 nation ; whereupon the high priest Caiaphas pronounced the momentous 
 decision, that it was better for one man to die for the people than for the 
 whole nation to perish. His death was now determined upon, and it was 
 enjoined on every one to point out his abode, that he might be arrested (xi. 
 46 ff). 
 
 With regard to this difference modern criticism observes, that we should 
 not at all comprehend the tragical turn of the fate of Jesus from the synop- 
 tical accounts, and that John alone opens to us a glance into the manner in 
 which, step by step, the breach between the hierarchical party and Jesus was 
 widened; in short, that in this point also the representation of the fourth 
 gospel shows itself a pragmatical one, which that of the other gospels is not.^ 
 But what it is in which the Gospel of John exhibits superiority in gradation 
 and progress, it is difficult to see, since the very first definite statement con- 
 cerning the incipient enmity (v. 18) contains the extreme of the offence (icrov 
 iavTov iroilov tw 6e(S, making himself equal with God) and the extreme of the 
 
 ° Schneckenburger, iiber den Uispr., s. 9 f. Liicke, i, s. 133, 159, 2, s. 402. 
 
THE ENEMIES OF JESUS. 6or 
 
 enmity (e^ijrow airov airoKTeivai, they sought to kill him) ; so that all which is 
 narrated further concerning the hostility of the Jews is mere repetition, and 
 the only fact which presents itself as a step towards more decided measures 
 is the resolution of the Sanhedrim, chap. xi. This species of gradation, 
 however, is not wanting in the synoptical account also : here we have the 
 transition from the indefinite laying wait for Jesus, and the communing what 
 might be done to him (Luke xi. 54, vi. 11), or as it is more precisely given in 
 Matthew (xii. 14), ancj in Mark (iii. 6), the taking counsel how they might 
 destroy him, to the definite resolve as to the manner (SoAu) and the time (/uiy 
 kv TTJ ioprrfj Matt. xxvi. 4f. parall.). — But it is especially made a reproach to 
 three first Evangelists, that in passing over the resurrection of Lazarus, they 
 have omitted that incident which gave the final impulse to the fate of Jesus.'' 
 If we, on the contrary, in virtue of the above result of our criticism of this 
 miraculous narrative, must rather praise the synoptists, that they do not 
 represent as the turning point in the fate of Jesus, an incident which never 
 really happened : so the fourth Evangelist, by the manner in which he relates 
 the murderous resolve to which it was the immediate inducement, by no 
 means manifests himself as one whose authority can be held by us a sufficient 
 warrant for the truth of his narrative. The circumstance that he ascribes to 
 the high priest the gift of prophecy (without doubt in accordance with a 
 superstitious idea of his age*), and regards his speech as a prediction of the 
 death of Jesus, would certainly not by itself prove that he could not have 
 been an apostle and eye-witness.^ But it has with justice been held a diffi- 
 culty, that our Evangelist designates Caiaphas as the high priest of thai year, 
 apxiepevs tov eviavTov iKeCvov (xi. 49), and thus appears to suppose that this 
 dignity, like many Roman magistracies, was an annual one ; whereas it was 
 originally held for life, and even in that period of Roman ascendancy, was 
 not a regular annual office, but was transferred as often as it pleased the arbi- 
 trariness of the Romans. To conclude on the authority of the fourth gospel, 
 in opposition to the general custom, and notwithstanding the silence of Jose- 
 phus, that Annas and Caiaphas, by a private agreement, held the office for a 
 year by turns,^ is an expedient to which those may resort whom it pleases ; to 
 take iviavTov indefinitely for xpovov,"^ is, from the twofold repetition of the 
 same expression, v. 51 and xviii. 13, inadmissible; that at that period the 
 high priesthood was frequently transferred from one to another, and some 
 high priests were not allowed to remain in their office longer than a year,* did 
 not justify our author in designating Caiaphas as the high priest of a particular, 
 year, when in fact he filled that post for a series of years, and certainly through- 
 out the duration of the public agency of Jesus ; lastly, that John intended 
 to say that Caiaphas was high priest in the year in which Jesus died, without 
 thereby excluding earlier and later years, in which he also held the office,^ is 
 an equally untenable position. For if the time in which an incident occurs 
 is described as a certain year, this mode of expression must imply, that either 
 the incident the date of which is to be determined, or the fact by which that 
 date is to be determined, is connected with the term of a year. Thus either 
 the author of the fourth gospel must have been of the opinion, that from the 
 death of Jesus, to which this decision of Caiaphas was the initiative step, a 
 
 ^ Comp. besides the critics above cited, Hug, Enleit. in das N. T. 2, s. 215. 
 
 * For tlie most correct views on this point see Liiclte, 2, s. 407 ff. 
 ' As the author of the Probabilia thinks, ». 94. 
 
 * Hug, ut sup. s. 221. 
 ' Kuinol, in loc. 
 
 8 Paulus, Comm. 4, s. 579 f. 
 " Liicke, in loc. 
 
6o2 PART III. CHAPTER II. § II 8. 
 
 plenitude of spiritual gifts, including tlie gift of prophecy to the high priest of 
 that period, was dispensed throughout that particular year,!" and no longer; 
 or, if this be a far-fetched explanation, he must have imagined that Caiaphas 
 was high priest for the term of that year only. Liicke concludes that as, 
 according to Josephus, the high priest of that period held his office for ten 
 years successively, therefore John cannot have meant, by the expression 
 dpxtepevs Tov eviavTov eKeivov, that the office of high priest was an annual one ; 
 whereas the author of the Probabilia, on the ground that the evidence of this 
 meaning in the words of the gospel, is far more certain than that John is its 
 author, reverses this proposition, and concludes, that as the fourth gospel 
 here presents an idea concerning the duration of the office of high priest 
 which could not be entertained in Palestine, therefore its author cannot have 
 been a native of Palestine.^* 
 
 Of the further statements also, as to the points in which Jesus gave offence 
 to the hierarchy of his nation, those which the synoptists have alone, or in 
 common with John, are credible ; those which are peculiar to the latter, not 
 so. Among those which are common to both sides, the solemn entrance of 
 Jesus into Jerusalem, and the strong attachment of the people to him, were 
 equally natural causes of offence with his discourses and actions in opposition 
 to the sabbatical institutions, in whatever the latter may have consisted : on 
 the contrary, the manner in which, according to the fourth gospel, the Jews 
 take offence at the declarations of Jesus concerning himself as the Son of 
 God, is, according to our earlier analysis,!^ as inconceivable, as it is consistent 
 with the common order of things that the polemical tone towards the Phari- 
 sees which the first Evangelists all lend to Jesus, should irritate the party 
 attacked. Thus no new or more profound insight into the causes and motives 
 of the reaction against Jesus, is to be obtained from the fourth gospel : but 
 the information which the synoptists have preserved to us fully suffices to 
 make that fact intelligible. 
 
 § "8. 
 
 JESUS AND HIS BETRAYER. 
 
 Although it had been resolved in the council of the chief priests and elders, 
 tliat the feast time should be allowed to pass over before any measures were 
 taken against Jesus, because any act of violence against him in these days 
 might easily excite an insurrection, on the part of his numerous adherents 
 among the visitants to the feast (Matt. xxvi. 5 ; Mark xiv. 2) : yet this con- 
 sideration was superseded by the facility with which one of his disciples offered 
 to deliver him into their hands. Judas, surnamed 'lo-Kapitunjs, doubtless on 
 account of his origin from the Jewish city of Keriothi (Josh. xv. 25), went, 
 according to the synoptists, a few days before the passover, to the heads of 
 the priesthood, and volunteered to deliver Jesus quietly into their hands, for 
 which service they promised him money, according to Matthew, thirty pieces 
 of silver (apyvpLa, Matt. xxvi. 14 ff. parall.). Of such an antecedent transac- 
 
 '" Lightfoot, in loc. 
 
 " Probabil., ut sup, 
 
 '2 Vol. II. § 62. 
 
 ' Olshausen gives us more precise information concerning the descent of the traitor, 
 when he says (bibl. Coram, 2, s. 458 Anm.) : "Perhaps the passage, Gen. xlix. 17, £>aii 
 shall be a serpent, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall 
 baclanard, is a prophetic intimation of the treachery of Judas, whence we might conclude 
 tliat he was of the tribe of Dan," 
 
TREACHERY OF JUDAS. 603 
 
 tion between Judas and the enemies of Jesus, the fourth gospel not only says 
 nothing, but appears moreover to represent the matter as if Judas had not 
 formed the determination of betraying Jesus to the priesthood, until the last 
 supper, ^and had then promptly put it into execution. The same entering 
 (eio-eXeeiv) of Satan into Judas, which Luke (xxii. 3) places before his first 
 interview with the chief priests, and before any preparation had been made 
 for Jesus and his disciples to eat the passover together, is represented by the 
 author of the fourth gospel as occurring at this meal, before Judas left the 
 company (xiii. 27) : a proof, as it appears, that in the opinion of this Evan- 
 gelist, Judas now made his first traitorous visit. He does indeed observe, 
 before tlie meal (xiii. 2), that the devil had put it into the heart of Judas to 
 betray Jesus, and this rov Sta^SdXou ^f.ffKrqKoro'i cts t-^v KapSiav is commonly 
 regarded as the parallel of Luke's eicnyX^e a-arava^ (Satan entered into him), 
 being understood to imply the formation of the treacherous resolve, in conse- 
 quence of which Judas went to the chief priests : but if he had previously 
 been in treaty with them, the betrayal was already completed, and it is then 
 not easy to perceive what can be meant by the words eio-^Xflei/ eis avrov 
 o-aTams on the occasion of the last meal, since the summoning of those who 
 were to seize Jesus was no new diabolical resolution, but only the execution 
 of that which had already been embraced. The expression in John v. 27 
 only obtains an entirely consistent sense in distinction from v. 2, when the 
 fidXXeiv ek rrjv KapSiav in the latter, is understood of the rising of the thought, 
 the (i<reXOeLv in the former, of the ripening of this thought into resolution, 
 the supposition that Judas had pledged himself to the chief priests before the 
 meal being thus excluded.^ In this manner, however, the statement of the 
 synoptists that Judas, some time before the perpetration of his treacherous 
 act, made a bargain with the enemies of Jesus, stands in contradiction with 
 that of John, that he only put himself in league with them immediately before 
 the deed; and here Liicke decides in favour of John, maintaining it to be 
 after his departure from the last supper (xiii. 30), that Judas made that appli- 
 cation to the chief priests which the synoptists (Matt. xxvi. i4f. parall.) place 
 before the meal.^ But this decision of Liicke's is founded solely on deference 
 to the presupposed authority of John ; for even if, as he remarks, Judas could 
 very well obtain an interview with the priests when night had commenced : 
 still, regarding the matter apart from any presuppositions, the probability is 
 beyond comparison stronger on the side of the synoptists, who allow some 
 time for the affair, than on that of John, according to whom it is altogether 
 sudden, and Judas, truly as if he were possessed, rushes out when it is already 
 night to treat with the priests, and immediately hurry to the deed. 
 
 Concerning the motives which induced Judas to league himself with the 
 enemies of Jesus, we learn from the three first gospels. no more than that he 
 received money from the chief priests. This would indicate that he was 
 actuated by covetousness, especially according to the narrative in Matthew, 
 where Judas, before he promises to betray Jesus, puts the question. What 
 will ye give me? Clearer light is thrown on this subject by the statement of 
 the fourth gospel (xii. 4ff.), that on the occasion of the meal in Bethany, 
 Judas was indignant at the anointing, as an unnecessary expenditure,— that 
 he carried the purse, and acted the thief in that office ; whence it might be 
 supposed that the avarice of Judas, no longer satisfied by his peculations on 
 the funds of the society, hoped to reap a more considerable harvest by 
 
 2 That, according to the account in John, Judas first went to the chief priests from the 
 meal, is acknowledged by Lightfoot also (horse, p. 465), but he on this account regards the 
 meal described by John as earlier than the synoptical one. 
 
 s Coram, z. Joh. 2, s. 484. 
 
604 PART III. CHAPTER II. § Il8. 
 
 betraying Jesus to the rich and powerful sacerdotal party. We must hold 
 ourselves under obligation to the author of the fourth gospel, that by the 
 preservation of these particulars, which are wanting in the other Evangelists, 
 he has ihade the act of Judas somewhat more comprehensible, — so soon as 
 his statements are shown to have an historical foundation. We have shown 
 above, however, how improbable it is that, had that censure really proceeded 
 from Judas, the legend should have lost this trait;* how probable, on the 
 other hand, a legendary origin of it, it is easy to discern. The meal at 
 Bethany stood in the evangelical tradition near to the end of the life of Jesus, 
 an end brought about by the treachery of Judas ; — how easily might the 
 thought arise in some one, that the narrow-minded censure of a noble prodi- 
 gality could only come from the covetous Judas? That the censure at the 
 same time turned upon the propriety of selling the ointment for- the benefit 
 of the poor, could in the mouth of Judas be only a pretext, behind which he 
 concealed his selfishness : but advantage to himself from the sale of the oint- 
 ment could not be expected by him, unless he allowed himself to purloin 
 some of the money saved ; and this again he could not do unless he were the 
 purse-bearer. If it thus appear possible for the statement that Judas was a 
 thief and had the bag, to have had an unhistorical origin : we have next tci 
 inquire whether there are any reasons for supposing that such was actually 
 the case. 
 
 Here we must take into consideration another point on which thesynoptists 
 and John differ, namely, the foreknowledge of Jesus that Judas would betray 
 him. In the synoptical gospels, Jesus first manifests this knowledge at the 
 last supper, consequently at a time in which the deed of Judas had virtually 
 been perpetrated ; and apparently but a short time before, Jesus had so little 
 presentiment that one of the twelve would be lost to him, that he promised 
 them all, without exception, the honour of sitting on twelve thrones of judg- 
 ment in the palingenesia (Matt. xix. 28). According to John, on the contrary, 
 Jesus declares shortly before the time of the last passover but one, conse- 
 quently a year before the result, that one of the twelve is a devil, Sid/ioXo^, 
 meaning, according to the observation of the Evangelist, Judas, as his future 
 betrayer (vi. 70) ; for, as it had been observed shortly before (v. 64), Jesus 
 knew from the beginning, — who should betray him. According to this, Jesus 
 knew from the commencement of his acquaintance with Judas, that this dis- 
 ciple would prove a traitor ; and not merely did he foresee this external issue, 
 but also, since he knew what was in man (John ii. 25), be must have pene- 
 trated the motives of Judas, namely, covetousness and love of money. And, if 
 so, would he have made him purse-bearer, i.e. placed him in a position in which 
 his propensity to seek gain by any means, even though dishonest, must have 
 had the most abundant nourishment ? Would he have made him a thief by 
 giving him opportunity, and thus, as if designedly, have brought up in him 
 a betrayer for himself.? Considered simply in an economical point of view, 
 who entrusts a purse to one of whom he knows that he robs it ? Then, in 
 relation to the idea of Jesus as a moral teacher, who places the weak in a 
 situation which so constantly appeals to his weak point, as to render it certain 
 that he will sooner or later give way to the temptation? No truly: Jesus 
 assuredly did not so play with the souls immediately entrusted to him, did not 
 exhibit to them so completely the opposite of what he taught them to pray 
 for, lead us not into temptation (Matt. vi. 13), as to have made Judas, of whom 
 he foreknew that he would become his betrayer out of covetousness, the 
 purse-bearer of his society ; or, if he gave him this office, he cannot have had 
 such a foreknowledge. 
 
 < Vol. II. § 89. 
 
TREACHERY OF JUDAS. 605 
 
 In order to arrive at a decision in this alternative, we must consider that 
 foreknowledge separately, and inquire whether, apart from the treasurership 
 of Judas, it be probable or not? We shall not enter on the question of the 
 psychological possibility, because there is always freedom of appeal to the 
 divme nature of Jesus ; but with regard to the moral possibility it is to be 
 asked, whether presupposing that foreknowledge, it be justifiable in Jesus to 
 have chosen Judas among the twelve, and to have retained him within this 
 circle? As it was only by this vocation that his treachery as such could be 
 rendered possible ; so Jesus appears, if he foresaw this treachery, to have 
 designedly drawn him into the sin. It is urged that intercourse with Jesus 
 afforded Judas the possibility of escaping that abyss : ^ but Jesus is supposed 
 to have foreseen that this possibility would not be realized. It is further said 
 that even in other circles the evil implanted in Judas would not the less have 
 developed itself in a different form : a proposition which has a strong tinge of 
 fatahsm. Again, when it is said to be of no avail to a man that the evil, the 
 germ of which lies within him, should not be developed, this appears to lead 
 to consequences which are repudiated by the apostle Paul, Rom. iii. 8, vi. if 
 And regarding the subject in relation to feeling merely, — how could Jesus 
 endure to have a man, of whom he knew that he would be his betrayer, and 
 that all instruction would be fruitless to him, as his constant attendant through- 
 out the whole period of his public life ? Must not the presence of such a 
 person have every hour interfered with his confidential intercourse with the 
 rest of the twelve ? Assuredly they must have been weighty motives, for the 
 sake of which Jesus imposed on himself anything so repugnant and diiificult. 
 Such motives or objects must either have had relation to Judas, and thus have 
 consisted in the design to make him better — which however was precluded 
 by the decided foreknowledge of his crime ; or they must have had relation 
 10 Jesus himself and his work, i.e. Jesus had the conviction that if the work 
 of redemption by means of his death were to be effected, there must be one to 
 betray him.^ But for the purpose of redemption, according to the Christian 
 theory, the death of Jesus was the only indispensable means : whether this 
 should be brought about by a betrayal, or in any other way, was of no mo- 
 ment, and that the enemies of Jesus must, earlier or later, have succeeded in 
 getting him into their power without the aid of Judas, is undeniable. That 
 the betrayer was indispensable in order to bring about the death of Jesus 
 exactly at the passover, which was a type of himself ^ — with such trivialities 
 it will scarcely be attempted to put us off in these days. 
 
 If then we are unable to discover any adequate motive which could induce 
 Jesus advertently to receive and retain in his society his betrayer in the 
 person of Judas ; it appears decided that he cannot beforehand have known 
 him to be such. Schleiermacher, in order that he may not infringe on the 
 authority of John by denying this foreknowledge, prefers doubting that Jesus 
 chose the twelve purely by his own act, and supposes that this circle was 
 rather formed by the voluntary adherence of the disciples : since it would be 
 more easy to justify the conduct of Jesus, if he merely refrained from rejecting 
 Tudas when he spontaneously offered himself than if he drew him to himself by 
 free choice.® But hereby the authority of John is still endangered, for it is he 
 who makes' Jesus say to the twelve : Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen 
 you (xv. 16, comp. vi. 76) ; moreover, even dismissing the idea of a decided act 
 of election,' still for any one to remain constantly with Jesus there needed his 
 
 5 See these and the following reasons in Olshausen, 2, s. 458 if. 
 
 * Olshausen, ut sup. 
 
 ' Such an argument may be gathered from what Olshausen says, 2, a. 387, 388. 
 
 8 Ueber den Liikas, s. 88. 
 
6o6 PART III. CHAPTER II. § 1 19. 
 
 permission and sanction, and even these he could not, acting humanly, give to 
 a man of whom he knew that, by means of this relation to himself, he would be 
 enabled to mature the blackest crime. It is said, however, that Jesus put him- 
 self entirely into the Divine point of view, and admitted Judas into his society, 
 for the sake of the possibility of reformation which he yet foreknew would 
 never be realised; but this would be a Divine inhumanity, — not the conduct 
 of the God-man. If, according to this, it is extremely difficult to maintain as 
 historical the statement of the fourth gospel, that Jesus from the beginning 
 knew Judas to be his betrayer : so it is equally easy to discern what even with- 
 out historical foundation might lead to such a representation. 
 
 It would be natural to suppose, that the fact of Jesus being betrayed by 
 one of his own disciples, would be injurious to him in the eyes of his enemies, 
 even if we did not know that Celsus, in the charactei- of a Jew, reproached 
 Jesus that he was betrayed by one of those whom he called his disciples, on u<^' 
 &v (ovd/Att^E fjLadrjTuiv irpovSodri, as a proof that he was less able to attach his 
 followers to himself than every robber-chief.^ Now as the injurious conse- 
 quences to be drawn from the ignominious death of Jesus, appeared to' be 
 most completely obviated by the assertion that he had long foreknown his 
 death : so, the arguments against Jesus derived from the treachery of Judas, 
 might seem to be most effectually repelled by the statement, that he had 
 penetrated into the character of the traitor from the first, and could have 
 escaped what his treason prepared for him ; since this would involve the 
 inference that he had exposed himself to the effects of his faithlessness by his 
 own free will, and out of higher considerations.^" This method included a 
 second advantage, which attaches to the enunciator of every prediction 
 alleged to be fulfilled, and which the fourth Evangelist naively makes his 
 Jesus express, when, after the exposure of the betrayer, he puts into his 
 mouth the words : JVow I tell you before it come, that when it is come to pass, 
 ye may believe that I am he (xiii. 19)— In fact, the best motto for every 
 vaticinium post eventum. These two objects were the more completely 
 attained, the earlier the period in the life of Jesus to which this foreknowledge 
 was referred ; whence it is to be explained why the author of the fourth 
 gospel, not satisfied with the ordinary representation, that Jesus predicted his 
 betrayal by Judas at the last supper, placed his knowledge on this subject in 
 the commencement of the connexion between him and Judas.i^ 
 
 This early knowledge on the part of Jesus concerning the treachery of 
 Judas being dismissed as unhistorical, there would be room for the statement 
 that Judas carried the purse of the society ; since this particular only appeared 
 incompatible with the above foreknowledge, while, if Jesus was in general 
 mistaken in Judas, he might, under this error, have entrusted the funds to 
 him. But by the proof that the representation of John, in relation to the 
 knowledge of Jesus concerning his betrayer, is a fictitious one, its credibility 
 in this matter is so shaken, that no confidence can be placed in the other 
 statement. If the author of the fourth gospel has embellished the relation 
 between Jesus and Judas on the side connected with Jesus, he can scarcely 
 
 ' Orig. c. Cels., ii. 11 f, 
 
 '" Comp. Probabil., p. 139, 
 
 " Still farther back we find, not the knowledge of Jesus concerning his betrayer, but an 
 important meeting between them, in the apocryphal Evangelium infantia arabicum, c. 
 XXXV. ap. Fabricius I, p. 197 f., ap. Thilo, i, p. 108 f. Here a demoniacal boy, who in his 
 attacks bit violently at everything around him, is brought to the child Jesus, attempts to 
 bite him, and because he cannot reach him with his teeth gives him a blow on the right side, 
 whereupon the child Jesus weeps, while Satan comes out of the boy in the form of a furious 
 dbg. Hie autempuer, quijesum percussit et ex quo Satanas sitb forma cants eximt,fuit 
 Judas IscharioUs, quiillum Judceis prodidit. 
 
TREACHERY OF JUDAS. 607 
 
 have left the side of Judas unadorned ; if he has introduced the fact, that 
 Jesus was betrayed, by making Jesus foresee this part of his destiny, his 
 other statement, that Judas had beforehand exhibited his avarice by a dis- 
 honest use of the common purse, may easily be only an introduction to the 
 fact, that Jesus was betrayed by Judas. 
 
 But even though we renounce the information given by John concerning 
 the character and motives of Judas : we still retain, in the forementioned 
 statement of the synoptists, the most decided intimation that the chief motive 
 of his deed was covetousness. 
 
 § 119- 
 
 DIFFERENT OPINIONS CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JUDAS, AND THE 
 MOTIVES OF HIS TREACHERY. 
 
 From the earliest to the latest times there have been persons, who have 
 held opinions at issue with this view of the New Testament writers concern- 
 ing the motives of Judas, and with their entirely reprobatory judgment upon 
 them (comp. Acts i. 16 ff.) ; and this divergency has arisen partly out of an 
 exaggerated supranaturalism, and partly out of a rationalistic bias. 
 
 An over-strained supranaturalism, proceeding from the point of view pre- 
 sented in the New Testament itself, namely, that the death of Jesus, decreed 
 in the D-ivine plan of the world for the salvation of mankind, might even 
 regard Judas, by whose treachery the death of Jesus was brought about, as a 
 blameless instrument in the hand of Providence, a co-operator in the re- 
 demption of mankind. He might be placed in this light by the supposition 
 that he had knowledge of that Divine decree, and that its fulfilment was the 
 object at which he aimed in betraying Jesus. We actually find this mode of 
 viewing the subject on the part of the gnostic sect of the Cainites, who, 
 according to the ancient writers on heresies, held that Judas had liberated 
 himself from the narrow Jewish opinions of the other disciples and attained 
 to the gnosis, and accordingly betrayed Jesus because he knew that by his 
 death the kingdom of the inferior spirits who ruled the world would be over- 
 thrown.^ Others in the early church admitted that Judas betrayed Jesus out 
 of covetousness; maintaining, however, that he did not anticipate the death 
 of Jesus as a consequence of his betrayal, but supposed that he would, as he 
 had often previously done, escape from his enemies by an exertion of his 
 supernatural power : ^ an opinion which forms the transition to the modern 
 methods of justifying the traitor. 
 
 As the above mentioned supranaturalistic exaltation of Judas by the 
 Cainites immediately proceeded from their antagonistic position with respect 
 to Judaism, in virtue of which they had made it a principle to honour all who 
 were blamed by the Jewish authors of the Old Testament, and the judaizing 
 authors of the New, and vice vers^ : so Rationalism especially in its first 
 indignation at the long subjection of the reason to the fetters of authority, 
 
 ' Iren. adv. hser. I. 35 : Judam proditorem — solum prcB ceteris cognoscentem veritatem 
 ferfecisse froditionis mysterium, per quern et terrena et ccelestia omnia dissoluta dicunt, 
 Epiphan. xxxviii. 3 : Sovte Cainites say, that Judas betrayed Jesus because he regarded him as 
 a wicked mun Tovtjpbv, who meant to destroy the good law : dWoi Si tuv airav, oixt (j>anv, 
 dXXi iryaBbv airbv dvra irapiSoixe Kark ttiv iirovpAviov yiiOsaui lyi'U<rai> ydp, tjniffiv, oi ApxovTes, 
 8n, ii,v 6 Xpurris irapaSoS^ aravpip, KevoSrai airuv tj ivBeviis SCiva/ur Kal tovt6, ^n yvoii o 
 'lovSas, iavevae xal wdvra iKlv-qaev lliffre irapaSoilvai airbv, d.yaBbv ipyoii Troi^ffas Tjiuv els 
 auTtiplav. Kal Set r/pAs iwaiveh xal &ToSiS6vai. air^ rbv lirai.voi', Sn di' airov KareaKevAaBri thjSv 
 i] ToS aravpov aurripia koX tj Sii, Trfi TMairris iTroBiaeui twv S,va i,voKd\v\j/is. 
 
 ' Theophylact, in Matth. xxvii. 4. 
 
6o8 PART III. CHAPTER II. § I19. 
 
 felt a certain delight both in divesting of their nimbus those biblical person- 
 ages who according to its views had been too zealously deified by orthodoxy, 
 and also in defending and elevating those who were condemned or de- 
 preciated by the latter. Hence, in the Old Testament, the exaltation of 
 Esau over Jacob, of Saul over Samuel ; in the New, of Martha over Mary, 
 the eulogiums on the doubting Thomas, and now the apology even for the 
 traitor Judas. According to some, he became a criminal out of injured 
 honour : the manner in which Jesus reproved him at the meal at Bethany, 
 and, in general, the inferior degree of regard which he experienced in com- 
 parison with other disciples, converted his love for his teacher into hatred and 
 revenge." Others have preferred the conjecture preserved by Theophylact, 
 that Judas may have, hoped to see Jesus this time also escape from his 
 enemies. Some have taken up this idea in the supranaturalistic sense, supposing 
 it to be the expectation of Judas that Jesus would set himself at liberty by an 
 exertion of his miraculous power ; * others consistently with their point of 
 view have supposed that Jndas may probably have expected that if Jesus were 
 taken prisoner the people would raise an insurrection in his favour and set 
 him at liberty.^ These opinions represent Judas as one who, in common with 
 the other disciple^, conceived the messianic kingdom as an earthly and 
 political one, and hence was discontented that Jesus so long abstained from 
 availing himself of the popular favour, in order to assume the character of the 
 messianic ruler. Instigated either by attempts at bribery on the part of the 
 Sanhedrim, or by the humour of their plan to seize Jesus in secret after the 
 feast, Judas sought to forestall this project, which must have been fatal to 
 Jesus, and to bring about his arrest before the expiration of the feast time, in 
 which he might certainly hope to see Jesus liberated by an insurrection, by 
 which means he would be compelled at last to throw himself into the arms of 
 the people, and thus take the decisivfi step towards the establishment of his 
 dominion. When he heard Jesus speak of the necessity of his being captured, 
 and of his rising again in three days, he understood these expressions as an 
 intimation of the concurrence of Jesus in his plan ; under this mistake, he 
 partly failed to hear, and partly misinterpreted, his additional admonitory 
 discourse ; and especially understood the words : What thou doest, do 
 quickly, as an actual encouragement to the execution of his design. He took 
 the thirty pieces of silver from the priests either to conceal his real intentions 
 under the appearance of covetousness, and thus to lull every suspicion on 
 their part ; or, because, while he expected an exaltation to one of the first 
 places in the kingdom of his master, he was not unwilling to combine with it 
 even that small advantage. But Judas had miscalculated in two points : 
 first, in not considering that after the feasting of the paschal night, the people 
 would not be early on the alert for an insurrection ; secondly, in overlooking 
 the probability, that the Sanhedrim would hasten to deliver Jesus into the 
 hands of the Romans, from whom a popular insurrection would hardly 
 suffice to deliver him. Thus Judas is supposed to be either an honest man 
 misunderstood,^ or a deluded one, who however was of no common character, 
 but exhibited even in his despair the wreck of apostolic greatness ; "^ or, he 
 is supposed, by evil means, indeed, to have sought the attainment of an 
 
 » Kaiser, bibl. Theol. I, s. 249. Klopstock gives a similar representation in his Messias. 
 
 * K. Ch. L. Schmidt, exeg. Beitr'age, i, Thl. 2ter Versuch, s. 18 ff. ; comp. Schmidt's 
 Bibliothek, 3, i, s. 163 ff. 
 
 5 Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 451 ff. L. J. i, b, s. 143 ff. ; Hase, L. J., § 132. Comp. 
 Theile, zur Biographic Jesu, § 33. 
 
 * Schmidt, ut sup. 
 ' Hase. 
 
TREACHERY OF JUDAS. 609 
 
 object, which was nevertheless good.** Neander imagines the two opposite 
 opinions concerning Jesus, the supernatural and the natural, to have pre- 
 sented themselves to the mind of Judas in the form of a dikmma, so that he 
 reasoned thus : if Jesus is the Messiah, a delivery into the hands of his 
 enemies will, owing to his supernatural power, in no way injure him, but 
 will, on the contrary, serve to accelerate his glorification : if, on the other 
 hand, he is not the Messiah, he deserves destruction. According to this, the 
 betrayal was merely a test, by which the doubting disciple meant to try the 
 messiahship of his master.^ 
 
 Among these views, that which derives the treachery of Judas from 
 wounded ambition, is the only one which can adduce a positive indication in 
 its favour : namely, the repulse which the traitor drew 0h himself from Jesus 
 at the meal in Bethany. But against such an appeal to this reproof we have 
 already, on another occasion, applied the remark of the most recent criticism, 
 that its mildness, especially as compared with the far more severe rebuke 
 administered to Peter, Matt. xvi. 23, must forbid our attributing to it such an 
 effect as the rancour which it is supposed to have engendered in Judas ; ^^ 
 while that in other instances he was less considered than his fellow-disciples, 
 we have nowhere any trace. 
 
 All the other conjectures as to what was properly the motive of the deed of 
 Judas, can only be supported by negative grounds, i.e. grounds which make 
 it improbable in general that his project had a bad aim, and in particular, 
 that his motive was covetousness ; a positive proof, that he intended to 
 further the work of Jesus, and especially that he was actuated by violent 
 political views of the Messiah's kingdom, is not to be discovered. — That 
 Judas had in general no evil designs against Jesus is argued chiefly from the 
 fact, that after the delivery of Jesus to the Romans, and the inevitableness of 
 his death had come to his knowledge, he fell into despair ; this being re- 
 garded as a proof that he had expected an opposite result. But not only 
 does the unfortunate result of crime, as Paulus thinks, but also its fortunate 
 result, that is, its success, " exhibit that which had before been veiled under 
 a thousand extenuating pretexts, in all the blackness of its real form." Crime 
 once become real, once passed into act, throws off the mask which it might 
 wear while it remained merely ideal, and existed in thought alone ; hence, as 
 little as the repentance of many a murderer, when he sees his victim lie before 
 him, proves that he did not really intend to commit the murder ; so little 
 can the anguish of Judas, when he saw Jesus beyond rescue, prove that he 
 had not beforehand contemplated the death of Jesus as the issue of his deed. 
 
 But, it is further said, covetousness cannot have been the motive of Judas ; 
 for if gain had been his object, he could not be blind to the fact that the 
 continued charge of the purse in the society of Jesus, would yield him more 
 than the miserable thirty pieces of silver (from 20 to 25 thalers,* of our 
 money), a sum which among the Jews formed the compensation for a wounded 
 slave, being four months' wages. But these thirty pieces of silver are in vain 
 sought for in any other narrator than Matthew. John is entirely silent as to 
 any reward offered to Judas by the priests ; Mark and Luke speak indefinitely 
 of money apyvpLov, which they had promised him ; and Peter in the Acts (i. 18) 
 merely mentions a reward, pxtTBU, which Judas obtained. Matthew, however, 
 who alone has that definite sum, leaves us at the same time in no doubt as to 
 the historical value of his statement. After relating the end of Judas (xxvii. 
 9 f.), he cites a passage from Zechariah (xi. 12 f. ; he ascribes it by mistake 
 
 » Paulus. ' Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 578 f. 
 
 1" Vol. II. § 88 ; comp. Hase, ut sup. 
 
 r* The German Thaler (Rixthaler) is equivalent to about three shillings. Tr.] 
 
 Q Q 
 
6lO PART III. CHAPTER II. § II9. 
 
 to Jeremiah), wherein likewise thirty pieces of silver appear as a price at 
 which some one is valued. It is true that in the prophetic passage the thirty 
 pieces of silver are not given as purchase money, but as hire ; he to whom 
 they are paid is the prophet, the representative of Jehovah, and the smallness 
 of the sum is an emblem of the slight value which the Jews set upon the 
 divine benefits so plentifully bestowed on them.ii gut how easily might 
 this passage, where there was mention of a shamefully low price (ironically a 
 goodly price ifJ'jO '^'1% at which the Israelites had rated the speaker in the 
 prophecy, remind a Christian reader of his Messiah, who, in any case, had 
 been sold for a paltry price compared with his value, and hence be led to 
 determine by this passage, the price which was paid to Judas for betraying 
 Jesus.'^ Thus the thirty pieces of silver, rpiaKovra apyvpia, present no support 
 to those who would prove that it could not be the reward which made Judas a 
 traitor ; for they leave us as ignorant as ever how great or how small was the 
 reward which Judas received. Neither can we, with Neander, conclude that 
 the sum was trifling from Matt, xxvii. 6 ff. ; Acts i. 18, where it is said that 
 a Jie/d, dypos or x^P'O"; ^^^ purchased with the reward assigned to the 
 treachery of Judas ; since, even apart from the historical value of that state- 
 ment, hereafter to be examined, the two expressions adduced may denote a 
 larger or a smaller piece of land, and the additional observations of Matthew, 
 that it was destined to bury strangers in, vs rat^^i/ Tots feVois will not allow us 
 to think of a very small extent. How the same theologian can discover in 
 the statement of the two intermediate Evangelists, that the Jewish rulers had 
 promised Judas money, apyvpiov, an intimation that the sum was small, it is 
 impossible to conceive.-^— Far more weighty is the observation above made with 
 a different aim, that Jesus would scarcely have appointed and retained as purse- 
 bearer one whom he knew to be covetous even to dishonesty ; whence 
 Neander directly infers that the fourth Evangelist, when he derived the re- 
 mark of Judas at the meal in Bethany from his covetousness, put a false 
 construction upon it, in consequence of the idea which ultimately prevailed 
 respecting Judas, and especially added the accusation, that Judas robbed the 
 common fund, out of his own imagination.^^ But in opposition to this it is 
 to be asked, whether in Neander's point of view it "he admissible to impute 
 to the apostle. John, who is here understood to be the author of the fourth 
 gospel, so groundless a calumny — for such it would be according to Neander's 
 supposition ; and, in our point of view, it would at least be more natural to 
 conclude, that Jesus indeed knew Judas to be -fond of money, but did not 
 until the last believe him to be dishonest, and hence did not consider him 
 unfit for the post in question. Neander observes in conclusion : if Judas 
 could be induced by money to betray Jesus, he must have long lost all true 
 faith in him. This indeed follows of necessity, and must be supposed in 
 every view of the subject ; but this extinction of faith could of itself only lead 
 him to go iack, aireX-Oeiv cis to. omcrat (John vi. 66) ; in order to prompt him 
 to meditate treachery there must be a further, special incitement, which, in- 
 trinsically, might just as well be covetousness, as the views which are 
 attributed to him by Neander and others. 
 
 That covetousness, considered as such an immediate motive, suffices to 
 explain the deed of Judas, I will not maintain; I only contend that any 
 other motives are neither stated nor anywhere intimated in the gospels, and 
 that consequently every hypothesis as to their existence is built on the air.^* 
 
 " Rosemnuller, Schol. in V. T. 7, 4, s. 318 ff. 
 
 •' Even Neander thinks this a possible origin of the above statement in the first gospel, s. 
 574, Anm. 
 " L. J. Chr., s. 573. " Comp. also Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 759 f. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 6 II 
 
 § 120. 
 PREPARATION FOR THE PASSOVER. 
 
 On the first day of unleavened bread, in the evening of which the paschal 
 lamb was to be slain, consequently, the day before the feast properly speak- 
 ing, which however commenced on that evening, i.e. the 14th of Nisan, Jesus, 
 according to the two first Evangelists, in compliance with a question ad- 
 dressed to Him by the disciples, sent — Matthew leaves it undecided which 
 and how many, Mark says, two disciples, whom Luke designates as Peter and 
 John— to Jerusalem (perhaps from Bethany), to bespeak a place in which 
 he might partake of the passover with them, and to make the further arrange- 
 ments (Matt. xxvi. 17 fif. parall.). The three narrators do not altogether agree 
 as to the directions which Jesus gave to these disciples. According to all, he 
 sends them to a man of whom they had only to desire, in the name of their 
 master SiSdo-xaXos, a place in which to celebrate the passover, in order at once 
 to have their want supplied : but first, this locality is more particularly de- 
 scribed by the two intermediate Evangelists than by Matthew, namely as a 
 large upper room, which was already furnished and prepared for the reception 
 of guests; and secondly, the manner in which they were to find the owner, 
 is described by the former otherwise than by the latter. Matthew makes 
 Jesus merely say to the disciples, that they were to go to such a man, irpos tov 
 Seiva : the others, that, being come into the city, they would meet a man 
 bearing a pitcher of water, whom they were to follow into the house which he 
 should enter, and there make their application to the owner. 
 
 In this narrative there have been found a multitude of difficulties, which 
 Gabler has assembled in a special treatise. "^ At the very threshold of the 
 narrative it occasions surprise, that Jesus should not have thought of any 
 preparation for the passover until the last day, nay, that he should even then 
 have needed to be reminded of it by the disciples, as the two first Evangelists 
 tell us : for owing to the great influx of people at the time of the passover 
 (2,700,000, according to Josephus),^ the accommodations in the city were soon 
 disposed of, and the majority of the strangers were obliged to encamp in tents 
 before the city. It is the more remarkable, then, that, notwithstanding all 
 this the messengers of Jesus find the desired chamber disengaged, and not only 
 so, but actually kept in reserve by the owner and prepared for a repast, as if 
 he had had a presentiment that it would be bespoken by Jesus. And so 
 confidently is this reckoned on by Jesus that he directs his disciples to ask 
 the owner of the house, — not whether he can obtain from him a room in 
 which to eat the passover,, but merely — where the guest-chamber appropriated 
 to this purpose may be ? or, if we take Matthew's account, he directs them to 
 say to him that he will eat the passover at his house ; to which it must be 
 added that, according to Mark and Luke, Jesus even knows what kind of 
 chamber will be assigned him, and in what part of the house it is situated. 
 But the way in which, according to these two Evangelists, the two disciples 
 were to find their way to the right house, is especially remarkable. The 
 words iTrayere eis Ty\v irohv ■Jtph'i rov Seiva in Matthew (v. 18), sound as if Jesus 
 had named the person to whom the disciples were to go, but that the narrator 
 either would not or could not repeat it : whereas in the two other Evan- 
 gelists, Jesus indicates the house into which they were to enter, by means of 
 
 * Ueber die Anordnung des letzten Paschamahls Jesu, in his neust. theol. Journal, 2, j, 
 s. 441 ff. 
 
 2 Bell. jud. vi.ix. 3. 
 
6l2 PART III. CHAPTER II. § I20. 
 
 a person whom they would meet carrying a vessel of water. Now how could . 
 Jesus in Bethany, or wherever else he might be, foreknow this accidental 
 circumstance, unless, indeed, it had been pre-concerted that at this particular 
 time a servant from the house should appear with a vessel of water, and thus 
 await the messengers of Jesus ? To the rationalistic expositors everything in 
 our narrative appeared to point to a preconcerted arrangement; and this 
 being presupposed, they believed that all its difficulties would at once be 
 solved. The disciples, dispatched so late, could only find a room disengaged if 
 it had been previously bespoken by Jesus; he could only direct them to address 
 the owner of the house so categorically, if he had already previously made an 
 arrangement with him ; this would explain the precise knowledge of Jesus as 
 to the locality, and, lastly, (the point from which this explanation sets out), 
 his certainty that the disciples would meet a man carrying water from that 
 particular house. This circumlocutory manner of indicating the house, which 
 might have been avoided by the simple mention of the owner's name, is sup- 
 posed to have been adopted by Jesus, that the place where he intended to 
 keep the passbver might not be known before the time to the betrayer, who 
 would otherwise perhaps have surprised him there, and thus have disturbed 
 the repast.' 
 
 But such is not at all the impression produced by the evangelical narrative. 
 Of a preconcerted arrangement, of a previous bespeaking of the apartment, it 
 says nothing ; on the contrary, the words, they found as he had said unto them, 
 in Mark and Luke, seem intended to convey the idea that Jesus was able to 
 predict everything as they afterwards actually found it ; a solicitous foresight 
 is nowhere indicated, but rather a miraculous foreknowledge. Here, in fact, 
 as above in the procuring of the animal for the entrance into Jerusalem, we 
 have a twofold miracle : first, the fact that everything stands ready to supply 
 the wants of Jesus, and that no one is able to withstand the power of his 
 name:; secondly, the ability of Jesus to take cognizance of distant circum- 
 stances, and to predict the merest fortuities.* It must create surprise that, 
 forci:bly as this supranaturalistic conception of the narrative before us urges 
 itself upon the reader, Olshausen himself seeks to elude it, by arguments which 
 would nullify most of the histories of miracles, and which we are accustomed 
 to hear only from rationalists. To the impartial expositor, he says,^ the nar- 
 rative does not present the slightest warrant for a miraculous interpretation 
 (we almost fancy otdrselves transported into the commentary of Paulus) ; if 
 the narrators intended to recount a miracle, they must have expressly 
 observed that no previous arrangement had been made (precisely the rational- 
 istic demand — if a cure were meant to be recognised as a miracle, the appli- 
 cation of natural means must have been expressly denied) ; moreover the 
 object of such a miracle is not to be discerned, a strengthening of the faith 
 of the disciples was not then necessary, nor was it to be effected by this un- 
 important miracle, after the more exalted ones which had preceded it : — 
 grounds on which the thoroughly similar narrative of the procuring of the ass 
 for tlie entrance, which Olshausen upholds as a miracle, would be equally 
 excluded from the sphere of the supernatural. 
 
 The present narrative, indeed, is so strikingly allied to the earlier one just 
 
 ' Thus Gabjer, ut sup. ; Paulus, exeg. Handb., 3, b, s. 781 ; Kern, Hauptthatsachen, 
 Tub. Zeitschr. 1836, 3, s. 3 f. ; Neander, s. 583. 
 
 * Beza, in Matth. xxvi. 18, correctly, save that he supposes too special a reference to the 
 approaching sufferings of Jesus, thus represents the object of this prediction : ut magis (U 
 magis intelUgerent discipuU, nihil temere in urbe magistro eventurum, sed qua ad niinulissi- 
 mas usque circumstantias fenitus perspecta haberet. 
 
 * Bib], Comm. 2, s. 385 f. Comp. in opposition to this De Wette, in loc. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 613 
 
 mentioned, that in relation to their historical reality, the same judgment must 
 be passed on both. In the one as in the other, Jesus has a want, the speedy 
 supply of which is so cared for by God, that Jesus foreknows to the minutest 
 particular the manner in which it is to be supplied ; in the one he needs a 
 guest chamber, as in the other an animal on which to ride ; in the one as in 
 the other, he sends out two disciples, to bespeak the thing required ; in the 
 one he gives them as a sign by which to find the right house — a man carrying 
 water whom they are to meetj as in the other they have a sign in the circum- 
 stance of the ass being tied where two roads meet ; in the one as in the 
 other, he directs his disciples simply to mention him to the owner, in the one 
 case as the master, SiSao-xaXos, in the other, as the lord, Kvpioi, in order to 
 ensure unhesitating compliance with his demand ; in both instances the 
 result closely corresponds to his prediction. In the narrative more imme- 
 diately under our consideration, as in the earlier one, there is wanting an 
 adequate object, for the sake of which so manifold a miracle should have been 
 ordained ; while the motive which might occasion the development of the 
 miraculous narrative in the primitive Christian legend is obvious. An Old 
 Testament narrative, to which we have already had occasion to refer in con- 
 nexion with the earlier miracle, is still more strikingly recalled by the one 
 before us. After disclosing to Saul that he was destined to be King of Israel, 
 Samuel, as a sign of the truth of this more remote announcement, foretells 
 whom Saul will meet on his return homewards : namely, first two men with the 
 informatiqn that his father's asses are found ; then three others, who will be 
 carrying animals for sacrifice, bread and wine, and will offer him some of the 
 bread, etc. (i Sam. x. i ff.) : whence we see by what kind of predictions the 
 Hebrew legend made its prophets attest their inspiration. 
 
 As regards the relation of the gospels to each other, the narrative of 
 Matthew is commonly placed far below that of the two other synoptists, and 
 regarded as the later and more traditional.^ The circumstance of the man 
 carrying water, especially, is held to have belonged to the original fact, but 
 to have been lost in tradition before the narrative reached Matthew, who 
 inserted in its place the enigmatical vTrdyert w/dos tov SeZi/a, ga to such a man. 
 But we have seen, on the contrary, that the Seim presents no difificulty ; while 
 the circumstance of the water-bearer is in the highest degree enigmatical 
 Still less is the omission of Matthew to designate the two commissioned dis- 
 ciples as Peter and John, an indication that the narrative of the third gospel 
 is the more original one. For when Schleiermacher says that this trait might 
 easily be lost in the course of transmission through several hands, but that it 
 could scarcely have been added by a later hand,— the latter half of his pro- 
 position, at least, is without foundation. There is little probability that Jesus 
 should have assigned so purely economical an office to the two most eminent 
 disciples; whereas it is easy to conceive that in the first instance it was 
 simply narrated, as by Matthew, that Jesus sent the disciples or some disciples, 
 that hereupon the number was fixed at two, perhaps from the narrative of the 
 procuring of the ass, and that at length, as the appointment had relation to a 
 task which was ultimately of high importance,— the preparing of the last 
 meal of Jesus,— these places were filled by the two chief apostles, so that in 
 this instance even Mark appears to have kept nearer to the original fact, since 
 he has not adopted into his narrative the names of the two disciples, which 
 are presented by Luke. 
 
 6 Schulz, iiber das Abendmahl, s. 321 ; Schleiermacher, uber den Lukas, s. 280 ; Weisse, 
 
 "^'^ Vid!^TSue!'ii'ber Tit letzte Mahlzeit Jesu, in Winer's and Eagelhardt's neuem Icrit. 
 Journal,' z, s. 169, Anm., and zur Biographic Jesu, § 31. 
 
6l4 PART III. CHAPTER II. § 121. 
 
 § 121. 
 DIVERGENT STATEMENTS RESPECTING THE TIME OF THE LAST SUPPER. 
 
 Not only does the fourth Evangelist omit all mention of the above arrange- 
 ments for the paschal meal ; he also widely diverges from the synoptists in 
 relation to the meal itself. Independently of the difference which runs 
 throughout the description of the scene, and which can only be hereafter 
 considered, he appears, in regard to the time of the meal, to represent it as 
 occurring before the passover, as decidedly as it is represented by the synop- 
 tists to be the paschal meal itself. 
 
 When we read in the latter, that the day on which the disciples were 
 directed by Jesus to prepare for the meal, was already the first day of un- 
 leavened bread, rj irptarr] r&v a^vfitov, when the passover must be killed, kv y eSet 
 OvecrOai to Tracrxa (Matt. xxvi. 17 parall.) : we cannot suppose the meal in 
 question to have been any other than the paschal ; further, when the disciples 
 ask Jesus, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover 1 icov 
 6eA,ets eToi/Aacrw/Aei/ o-ot i^ayciv ro tta,<T)(a. ; when it is hereupon said of the 
 disciples, that they made ready the passover, yiroCfLaa-av to irdaxo- (Matt. v. 19 
 parall.), and of Jesus, that when evening was come, he sat down with the twelve, 
 oij/Cas ■ycvo/iei'ijs a,v€K€iTo /xiTa tZv ScoSexa (v. 20) : the meal to which they here 
 sat down appears to be marked out even to the superfluity as the paschal, even 
 if Luke (xxii. 15) did not make Jesus open the repast with the words : With 
 desire I have desired to eat this passover with you, iTn6v/ji,ia eVe^v/xi^tra tovto to 
 Trda-xa <^ayeti' fieff vjjmiv, — When, on the Other hand, the fourth gospel com- 
 mences its narrative of the last meal with the statement of time : before the 
 feast of the passover, irpo Se rijs toprrj's tov Trda-xa, (xiii. 1) ; the supper, hiiirvov, 
 which is mentioned immediately after (v. 2), appears also to happen before 
 the passover; especially as throughout John's description of this evening, 
 ivhich, especially in relation to the discourses accompanying the meal, is very 
 ample,, there is not any notice or even allusion, to indicate that Jesus was on 
 this occasion celebrating the passover. Further, when Jesus after the meal 
 addresses the traitor with the summons, what thou doest, do quickly, this is 
 misunderstood by the rest of the disciples to mean, Buy those things that we 
 have need of against the feast, eisr^v iopTtjv (v. 29). Now the requirements for 
 the feast related chiefly to the paschal meal, and consequently the meal just 
 concluded cannot have been the paschal. Again, it is said, xviii. 28, that on 
 the following morning, the Jews would not enter the Gentile prsetorium, lest 
 they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover, Iva [j.-^ /iiavOSia-iv, 
 dXX' tva, <l>a.yoi(n to Trdtrxa : whence it would seem that the paschal meal was 
 yet in prospect. To this it may be added that this same succeeding day, on 
 which Jesus was crucified, is called the preparation of the passover, wapaa-Kajr/ 
 Tovirda-xa, i.e. the day on the evening of which the paschal lamb was to be 
 eaten ; moreover, when it is said of the second day after the meal in question, 
 being that which Jesus passed in the grave : that sabbath day was an high day, 
 ■r\v yap p.eyd\ri r] r)p.ipa. iKeivovTov ara/SfiaTov (xix. 31); this peculiar Solemnity 
 appears to have proceeded from the circumstance, that on that sabbath fell 
 the first day of the passover, so that the paschal lamb was not eaten on the 
 evening on which Jesus was arrested, but on the evening of his burial. 
 
 These divergencies are so important, that many expositors, in order to pre- 
 vent the Evangelists from falling into contradiction with each other, have 
 here also tried the old expedient of supposing that they do not speak of the 
 same thing — that John intends to describe an altogether different repast from 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 6l$ 
 
 that of the synoptists. According to this view, the Bttirvov of John was an 
 ordinary evening meal, doubtless in Bethany ; on this occasion Jesus washed 
 the disciples' feet, spoke of the betrayer, and after Judas had left the com- 
 pany, added other discourses of a consoling and admonitory tendency, until 
 at length, on the morning of the 14th of Nisan, he summoned the disciples to 
 depart from Bethany and proceed to Jerusalem, in the words : Arise, let us go 
 hence (xiv. 31). Here the synoptical account may be interposed, since it 
 represents the two disciples as being sent forward to Jerusalem to prepare for 
 the paschal meal, and then records its celebration, concerning which John 
 is silent, and only takes up the thread of the narrative at the discourses de- 
 livered after the pa.schal meal (xv. i ff.).^ But this attempt to avoid contra- 
 diction by referring the respective narratives to totally different events, is 
 counteracted by the undeniable identity of many features in the two meals. 
 Independently of isolated particulars which are found alike in both accounts, 
 it is plain that John, as well as the synoptists, intends to describe the last 
 meal of which Jesus partook with his disciples. This is implied in the intro- 
 duction to John's narrative ; for the proof which is there said to be given of 
 Jesus having loved his own unto the end, ets reXos, may be the most suitably 
 referred to his last moments of companionship with them. In like manner, 
 the discourses after the meal point to the prospect of immediate separation ; 
 and the meal and discourses are, in John also, immediately followed by the 
 departure to Gethsemane and the arrest of Jesus. It is true that, according 
 to the above opinion, these last-named incidents are connected only with 
 those discourses which were delivered on the occasion of the later meal, 
 omitted by John (xv. 17) : but that between xiv. 31 and xv. i the author of 
 the fourth gospel intentionally omitted the whole incident of the paschal 
 meal, is a position which, although it might appear to explain with some 
 plausibility the singular cyeipecrSe, aya>fjiev ivrevOev, Arise, let us go hence, no one 
 will now seriously maintain. But even admitting such an ellipsis, there still 
 remains the fact that Jesus (xiii. 38) foretells to Peter his denial with this 
 determination of time : oi yu.^ aXcKTiap cfxavrjcrri, the cock shall not crow, which 
 he could only make use of at the last meal, and not, as is here presupposed, 
 at an earlier one.^ 
 
 Thus this expedient must be relinquished, and it must be admitted that all 
 the Evangelists intend to speak of the same meal, namely, the last of which 
 Jesus partook with his disciples. And in making this admission, the fairness 
 which we owe to every author, and which was believed to be due in a peculiar 
 degree to the authors of the Bible, appeared to demand an enquiry whether, 
 although they represent one and the same event with great divergencies in 
 several respects, yet nevertheless both sides may not be correct. To obtain 
 an afifirmative result of this inquiry it must be shown, as regards the time, 
 either that the three first Evangelists, as well as the fourth, do not intend to 
 describe a paschal meal, or that the latter, as well as the former, does so m- 
 
 In an ancient Fragment ^ it is sought to solve the problem in the first 
 method, by denying that Matthew places the l£tst meal of Jesus at the proper 
 time for the paschal meal, the evening of the 14th of Nisan, and his passion 
 on the first day of the feast of the passover, the isth of Nisan ; but one does 
 
 ' Thus Lightfoot. hor^e, p. 463 ff- ! Hess, Geschichte Jesu, 2, s. 273 ff. ; also Venturini 
 
 ^' a' An^^'ufficient outlet from this difficulty is pointed out by Lightfoot,_ p. 482 f. 
 
 3 Fragm. ex Claudii ApoUinaris libro de Paschate, m Chrou. Paschal, ed. du Fresne. 
 Paris, 1688, p. 6 f. prsef. 
 
6l6 , PART III. CHAPTER II. § 121, 
 
 not see how the express indications respecting the passover in the synoptists 
 can be neutralized. 
 
 Hence it has been a far more general attempt in recent times, to draw John 
 to the side of the other Evangelists.* His expression before the feast of the 
 passover, irpo t^s ioprrjg toC irdtrxa (xiii. i), was thought to be divested of its 
 difficulty by the observation that it is not immediately connected with the 
 supper SciTTi/ov, but only with the statement that Jesus knew that his hour was 
 come, and that he loved his own unto the end ; it. is only in the succeeding 
 verse that there is any mention of the meal, to which therefore that determin- 
 ation of time does not refer. But to what then can it refer ? to the knowledge 
 that his hour was come ? this is only an incidental remark ; or to the love 
 which endured to the end ? but to this so special a determination of time can 
 only refer, if an external proof of love be intended, and such an one is pre- 
 sented in his conduct at the meal, which consequently remains the point to 
 which that determination of the day must apply. It is therefore conjectured 
 further that the words tt/oo t^s lopr^s were used out of accommodation to the 
 Greeks for whom John wrote : since that people did not, like the Jews, begin 
 their day with the evening, the meal taken at the beginning of the first day of 
 the passover, would appear to them to be taken on the evening before the 
 passover. But what judicious writer, if he supposes a misconstruction possible 
 on the part of the reader, chooses language which can only serve to encourage 
 that misconstruction ? A still more formidable difficulty is presented by xviii. 
 28, where the Jews, on the morning after the imprisonment of Jesus, will not 
 enter the judgment hall lest they should be defiled, but that they may eat the 
 passover, aXK ha </)aya)o-t to -iraxT-^fo.. Nevertheless it was supposed that pas- 
 sages such as Deut. xvi. \, 2, where all the sacrifices to be killed during the 
 time of the passover are denoted by the expression nos, authorise the inter- 
 pretation of TO vdcrxa- in this place of the remaining sacrifices to be offered 
 during the paschal week, and especially of the Chagiga, which was to be con- 
 sumed towards the end of the first feast day. But as Mosheim has correctly 
 remarked, from the fact that the paschal lamb, together with the rest of the 
 sacrifices to be offered during the feast of the passover was designated Trd<r)(a, 
 it by no means follows that these can be so designated with the exclusion of 
 the paschal lamb.^ On the other hand, the friends of the above view have 
 sought to show the necessity of their mode of interpretation, by observing 
 that for the eating of the passover which was celebrated late in the evening, 
 consequently at the commencement of the succeeding day, the entering of a 
 Gentile house in the morning, being a defilement which lasted only through 
 tlie current day, would have been no disqualification ; but that it would have 
 been such for the partaking of the Chagiga, which was eaten in the afternoon, 
 consequently on the same day on which the defilement was contracted ; so 
 that only this, and not the passover, can have been intended. But first, we 
 do not know whether entrance into a Gentile house was a defilement for the 
 day merely ; secondly, if such were the case, the Jews, by a defilement con- 
 tracted in the morning, would still have disqualified themselves from partici- 
 pating in the preparatory proceedings, which fell on the afternoon of the 14th 
 of Nisan ; as, for example, the slaying of the lamb in the outer court of the 
 temple. Lastly, in order to interpret the passage xix. 14 in consistency 
 with their own view, the harmonists understand ihe preparation of the passover, 
 TrapacTKfvrj ToC iracrxa, to mean the day of preparation for the sabbath in the 
 Easter week ; a violence of interpretation which at least finds no countenance 
 
 * See especially Tholuck and Olshausen, in loc. ; Kern, Hauptthatsachen, TUb. Zeitschr. 
 1836, 3, s. S ff. 
 ' Diss, de verS notione coeiiEe Domini, annexed to Cudworth, syst. intell., p. 22, not. I. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 617 
 
 in xix. 31, where the irapaa-Ktv^ is said to be the preparation for the sabbath, 
 since from this passage it only appears, that the Evangelist conceived the first 
 day of the passover as occurring that year on the sabbath.* 
 
 These difficulties, which resist the reference of the narrative in John to a 
 real paschal meal, appeared to be obviated by a presupposition derived from 
 Lev. xxiii. 5 ; Num. ix. 3 ; and a passage in Josephus ; ^ namely, that the 
 paschal lamb was eaten, not on the evening from the 14th to the isth, but on 
 that from the 13th to the 14th of Nisan, so that between the paschal meal and 
 the first feast day, the isth of Nisan, there fell a working day, the 14th. On 
 this supposition, it would be correct that the day following the last paschal 
 meal taken by Jesus, should be called, as in John xix. 14, tke preparation of 
 the passover, Trapaa-Kivrj Tov Trda-xa, because it was actually a day of preparation 
 for the feast day ; it would also be correct that the following sabbath should 
 be called fieyaXri (xix. 31), since it would coincide with the first day of the 
 feast.^ But the greatest difficulty, which lies in John xviii. 28, remains un- 
 solved ; for on this plan the words, tAat they might eat the passover, Iva <pdyiiicrL 
 TO Trdtrxa, must, since the paschal meal would be already past, be understood 
 of the unleavened bread, which was eaten also during the succeeding feast 
 days : an interpretation which is contrary to all the usages of language. If to 
 this it be added, that the supposition of a working day falling between the 
 passover and the first feast day, has no foundation in the Pentateuch and 
 Josephus, that it is decidedly opposed to later custom, and is in itself ex- 
 tremely improbable; this expedient cannot but be relinquished.^ 
 
 Perceiving the impossibility of efifecting the reconciliation of the synoptists 
 with John by this simple method, other expositors have resorted to a more 
 artificial expedient. The appearance of the Evangelists having placed the 
 last meal of Jesus on different days, is alleged to have its truth in the fact, 
 that either the Jews or Jesus celebrated the passover on another than the 
 usual day. The Jews, say some, in order to avoid the inconvenience arising 
 from the circumstance, that in that year the first day of the passover fell on a 
 Friday, so that two consecutive days must have been solemnized as a sabbath, 
 deferred the paschal meal until the Friday evening, whence on the day of the 
 crucifixion they had still to beware of defilement ; Jesus, however, adhering 
 strictly to the law, celebrated it at the prescribed time, on the Thursday even- 
 ing : so that the synoptists are right when they describe the last meal of Jesus 
 as an actual celebration of the passover ; and John also is right when he re- 
 presents the Jews as, the day after, still looking forward to the eating of the 
 paschal lamb.*" In this case, Mark would be wrong in his statement, that on 
 the day when they killed the passover, ore to irao-xa Wvov (v. 12), Jesus also 
 caused it to be prepared ; but the main point is, that though in certain cases 
 the passover was celebrated in a later month, it was still on the isth day ; 
 there is nowhere any trace of a transference to a later day of the same month. 
 —It has therefore been a more favourite supposition that Jesus anticipated the 
 usual time of eating the passover. From purely personal motives, some have 
 thought, foreseeing that at the proper time of the paschal supper he should be 
 already lying in the grave, or at least not sure of life until that period, he, like 
 
 6 See these counter observations particularly in LUcke and de Wette, in loc. ; in Sieffert 
 Uber den Ursprung, s. 127 if., and Winer, bibl. Realworterb. 2, ». 238 ff. 
 
 8 Fritzsche,'vomOsterlamm; more recently. Ranch, in the theol. Studien und Kritiken, 
 
 '^^ Corap. dI Wette, theol. Studien und Krit. 1834, 4. =■ 939 f- 5 Tholuck. Comm. z. Job. 
 s. 24s f. ; Winer, ut sup. 
 10 Calvin, in Matth. xxvi. 17. 
 
6l8 PART III. CHAPTER II. § 121. 
 
 those Jews who were prevented from journeying to the feast, and like all the 
 Jews of the present day, without a sacrificed Iamb, and with mere substitutes 
 for it, celebrated a commemorative passover, Tracrxa p-vrip^veuTiKov.^^ But in 
 the first place, Jesus would not then, as Luke says, have kept the passover on 
 the day on which the passover must be killed, Iv ■^ cSei Bwa-Oai to Tracr^^a; and 
 secondly, in the merely commemorative celebration of the passover, though 
 the prescribed locality (Jerusalem) is dispensed with, the regular time (the 
 evening from the 14th to the 15th Nisan) is inviolably observed : whereas in 
 the case of Jesus the reverse would hold, and he would have celebrated the 
 passover at the usual place, but at an unusual time, which is without example. 
 To shield the alleged transposition of the passover by Jesus from the charge 
 of being unprecedented and arbitrary, it has been maintained that an entire 
 party of his cotemporaries joined in celebrating the passover earlier than the 
 great body of the nation. It is known that the Jewish sect of the Caraites or 
 Scripturalists differed from the Rabbinites or Traditionalists especially in the 
 determination of the new moon, maintaining that the practice of the latter in 
 fixing the new moon according to astronomical calculation was an innovation, 
 whereas they, true to the ancient, legal practice, determined it according to 
 an empirical observation of the phase of the new luminary. Now in the time 
 of Jesus, we are told, the Sadducees, from whom the Caraites are said to have 
 sprung, determined the time of the new moon, and with it that of the festival 
 of the passover, which was dependent upon it, differently from the Pharisees ; 
 and Jesus, as the opponent of tradition and the friend of scripture, favoured 
 their practice in this matter.i^ But not to insist that the connexion of the 
 Caraites with the ancient Sadducees is a mere conjecture ; it was a well- 
 founded objection put forth by the Caraites, that the determination of the 
 new moon by calculation did not arise until after the destruction of the temple 
 by the Romans ; so that at the time of Jesus such a difference cannot have 
 existed ; nor is there besides any indication to be discovered that at that time 
 the passover was celebrated on different days by different parties. ^^ Suppos- 
 ing, however, that the above difference as to the determining of the new moon 
 already prevailed in the time of Jesus, the settling of it according to the phase, 
 which Jesus is supposed to have followed, would rather have resulted in a 
 later than an earlier celebration of the passover ; whence some have actually 
 conjectured that more probably Jesus followed the astronomical calculation.^* 
 Besides what may thus be separately urged against every attempt at an 
 amicable adjustment of the differences between the Evangelists, as to the time 
 of the last supper ; there is one circumstance which is decisive against all, and 
 which only the most recent criticism has adequately exposed. With respect, 
 namely, to this contradiction, the case is not so that among passages for the 
 most part harmonious, there appear only one or two statements of an appar- 
 ently inconsistent sense, of which it might be said that the author had here 
 used an inaccurate expression, to be explained from the remaining passages : 
 but, that all the chronological statements of the synoptists tend to show that 
 Jesus must have celebrated the passover, all those of John, on the contrary, 
 that he cannot have celebrated it.^' Thus there stand opposed to each other 
 two differing series of evangelical passages, which are manifestly based on two 
 different views of the fact on the part of the narrators : hence', as Sieffert re- 
 
 '' Grotius, in Matth. xxvi. 18. 
 '^ Iken, Diss, philol. theol., vol. 2, p. 416 ff. 
 " Vid. Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 486 ff. 
 " Michaelis, Anm. zu Joh. 13. 
 
 15 Sieffert, ut sup. ; Hase, L. J., § 124 ; De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, 3, s. 149 ff; Theile, 
 zur Biographie Jesu, § 31. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 619 
 
 marks, to persist in disputing the existence of a divergency between the Evan- 
 gelists, can no longer be regarded as scientific exposition, but only as unscien- 
 tific arbitrariness and obstinacy. 
 
 Modern criticism is therefore constrained to admit, that on one side or the 
 other there is an error; and, setting aside the current prejudices in favour of 
 the fourth gospel, it was really an important reason which appeared to necessi- 
 tate the imputation of this error to the synoptists. The ancient Fragmen- 
 attnbuted to ApoUinaris, mentioned above, objects to the opinion that Jesus 
 suffered on the great day of unleavened bread, rfj jj-tyakri ■fjfiipa tS,v d^v/^wv Itto- 
 0ev, that this would have been contrary to the law d(rw><^wi/os Vu vdjuo. ; and in 
 recent times also it has been observed, that the day following t'he last' meal of 
 Jesus is treated on all sides so entirely as a working day, that it cannot "be 
 supposed the first day of the passover, nor, consequently, the meal of the pre- 
 vious evening, the paschal meal. Jesus does not solemnize the day, for he 
 goes out of the city, an act which was forbidden on the night of the passover ; 
 nor do his friends, for they begin the preparations for his burial, and only 
 leave them unfinished on account of the arrival of the next day, the sabbath ; 
 still less do the members of the Sanhedrim keep it sacred, for they not only 
 send their servants out of the city to arrest Jesus, but also personally under- 
 take judicial proceedings, a trial, sentence, and accusation before the Procu- 
 rator ; in general, there appears, throughout, only the fear of desecrating the 
 following day, which commenced on tlie evening of the crucifixion, and no- 
 where any solicitude about the current one : clear signs that the synoptical 
 representation of the meal as a paschal one, is a later error, since in the re- 
 maining narrative of the synoptists themselves, there is evidence, not easy to 
 be mistaken, of the real fact, that Jesus was crucified before the passover.'"* 
 These observations are certainly of weight. It is true that the first, relative 
 to the conduct of Jesus, might perhaps be invalidated by the contradiction 
 existing between the Jewish decisions as to the law cited ; " while the last 
 and strongest may be opposed by the fact, that trying and giving sentence on 
 the sabbaths and feast days was not only permitted among the Jews, but 
 there was even a larger place for the administration of justice on such da)s, 
 on account of the greater concourse of people ; so, also, according to the New 
 Testament itself, the Jews sent out officers to seize Jesus on the great day 
 riixipa fueydX-q of the Feast of Tabernacles (John vii. 44 f.), and at the Feast 
 of Dedication they were about to stone him (John x. 31), while Herod caused 
 Peter to be imprisoned during the days of unleavened bread ; though indeed he 
 intended to defer the public sentencing and execution until after the passover 
 (Acts xii. 2 f.). In proof that the crucifixion of Jesus might take place on the 
 feast of the passover, it is urged that the execution was performed by Roman 
 soldiers ; and that moreover, even according to Jewish custom, it was usual 
 to reserve the execution of important criminals for a feast time,^n order to 
 make an impression on a greater multitude.'* But only thus much is to be 
 proved : that during the feast time, and thus during the passover, on the five 
 intermediate and less solemn days, criminals were tried and executed,— not 
 that this was admissible also on the first and last days of tlie passover, which 
 
 '^ Theile, in Winer's Krit. Journal, 2, s. 157 ff- ; Sieffert and Liicke, ut sup. 
 
 '• Pesachin f. Ixv. 2, ap. Lightfoot, p. 654 : Paschale prima lenetur quispiam ad pemoc- 
 tationem. Gloss. : Faschatizans tenetur ad pernoctandum in Hierosolynia node prima. On 
 the other hand, Tosaphoth ad tr. Pesachin 8 : In Paschate Aegyptiaco dicitur: nemo exeat — 
 usque ad mane. Sed sic non fuit in sequentibus generationibus, — quibus comedebatur id uno 
 loco et pernoctabant in alio. Comp. Schneckenburger, Beitiage, s. 9. 
 
 1' Iract. Sanhedr. f. Ixxxix. i, ap. Schottgen, i. p. 221 ; comp. Paulus, ut sup. s.492. 
 
620 PART III. CHAPTER II. § 121. 
 
 ranked as sabbaths ; ^^ and thus we read in the Talmud that Jesus was cruci- 
 fied on the noa 315?, i.e. the evening before the passover.^" It would be 
 another thing if, as Dr. Baur strives to prove, the execution of criminals, as a 
 sanguinary expiation for the people, belonged to the essential significance of 
 the passover, as a feast of expiation, and hence the custom, noticed by the 
 Evangelists, of liberating a prisoner at the feast had been only the reverse 
 side to the execution of another, presenting the same relation as that between 
 the two goats and the two sparrows in the Jewish ofFeriilgs of atonement and 
 purification.*^ 
 
 It is certainly very possible that the primitive Christian tradition might be 
 led even unhistorically to associate the last supper of Jesus with the paschal 
 lamb, and the day of his death with the feast of the passover. As the 
 Christian supper represented in its form, the passover, and in its import, the 
 death of Jesus : it was natural enough to unite these two points — to place the 
 execution of Jesus on the first day of the passover, and to regard his last 
 meal, at which he was held to have founded the Christian supper, as the 
 paschal meal. It is true that presupposing the author of the first gospel to 
 have been an apostle and a participator in the last meal of Jesus, it is difficult 
 to explain how he could fall into such a mistake. At least it is not enough 
 to say, with Theile, that the more the last meal partaken with their master 
 transcended all paschal meals in interest to the disciples, the less would they 
 concern themselves as to the time of it, whether it occurred on the evening of 
 the passover, or a day earlier.-^ For the first Evangelist does not leave this 
 undetermined, but speaks expressly of a paschal meal, and to this degree a 
 real participator, however long he might write after that evening, could not 
 possibly deceive himself. Thus on the above view, the supposition that the 
 first Evangelist was an eye-witness must be renounced, and he must be held, 
 in common with the two intermediate ones, to have drawn his materials from 
 tradition.*' The difficulty arising from the fact, that all the synoptists, and 
 consequently all those writers who have preserved to us the common evan- 
 gelical tradition, agree in such an error,** may perhaps be removed by the 
 observation, that just as generally as in the Judseo-Christian communities, in 
 which the evangelical tradition was originally formed, the Jewish passover 
 was still celebrated, so generally must the effort present itself to give that 
 feast a Christian import, by referring it to the death and the last meal of 
 Jesus. 
 
 But it is equally easy, presupposing the correctness of the synoptical deter- 
 mination of time, to conceive how John might be led erroneously to place the 
 death of Jesus on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, and his last meal on 
 the previous evening. If, namely, tliis Evangdist found in the circumstance 
 that the legs of the crucified Christ were not broken, a fulfilment of the words 
 Not a bone of him shall be broken, octtoIi/ ov awTpifii^a-tTai ■ airio (Exod. xii. 
 46) : this supposed relation between the death of Jesus and the paschal 
 lamb might suggest to him the idea, that at the same time in which the 
 paschal lambs were killed, on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, Jesus 
 
 '' Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 763 f. ; comp. 755 ; Liicke, 2, s. 614. 
 ^'' Sanhedr. f. xliii. I, ap. Schottgen, ii. p. 700. 
 
 2' Ueber die urspriingliche Bedeutung des Passahfestes u. s. w. , Tiibinger, ZeitsChrift f. 
 Theol. 1832, I, s. 90 ff. 
 
 22 Ut sup. s. 167 ff. 
 
 23 Sieffert, ut sup. s. 144 ff. ; Liicke, s. 628 ff. ; Theile, zur Biogr. Jesu, § 31 ; De Wette, 
 exeg. Handb. i, 3, s. 149 ff. ; comp. Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 580 ff. Anm. 
 
 2* Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 763 ; Kern, iiber den Urspr. des Ev. Matth. in der Tiib. Zeit- 
 schrift, 1S34, 2, 3. 98. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 621 
 
 suflFered on the cross and gave up the ghost ; ^^ in which case the meal taken 
 the evening before was not the paschal meal.^s 
 
 Thus we can conceive a possible cause of error on both sides, and since 
 the internal difficulty of the synoptical determination of time, namely, the 
 manifold violations of the first day of the passover, is in some degree removed 
 by the observations above cited, and is counterpoised by the agreement of 
 three Evangelists : our only course is to acknowledge an irreconcilable con- 
 tradiction between the respective accounts, without venturing a decision as to 
 which is the correct one. 
 
 § 122. 
 
 DIVERGENCIES IN RELATION TO THE OCCURRENCES AT THE LAST MEAL OF 
 
 JESUS. 
 
 Not only in relation to the time of the last meal of Jesus, but also in re- 
 lation to what passed on that occasion, there is a divergency between the 
 Evangelists. The chief difference lies between the synoptists and the fourth 
 gospel : but, on a stricter comparison, it is found that only Matthew and 
 Mark closely agree, and that Luke diverges from them considerably, though 
 on the whole he is more accordant with his predecessors than with his 
 successor. 
 
 Besides the meal itself, the following features are common to all the 
 accounts : that, during the meal, the coming betrayal by Judas is spoken of; 
 and that, during or after the meal, Jesus predicts to Peter his denial. As 
 minor differences we may notice, that in, John, the mode of indicating the 
 traitor is another and more precise than that described by the other Evan- 
 gelists, and has a result of which the latter are ignorant ; and that, further, in 
 the fourth gospel the meal is followed by prolonged farewell discourses, which 
 ai;e not found in the synoptists : but the principal difference is, that while 
 according to the synoptists Jesus instituted the Lord's supper at this final meal, 
 in John he instead of this washes the disciples' feet. 
 
 The three synoptists have in common the instituting of the Lord's supper, 
 together with the announcement of the betrayal, and the denial ; but there 
 exists a divergency between the two first and the third as to the order of 
 these occurrences, for in the former the announcement of the betrayal stands 
 first, in the latter, the instituting of the Supper ; while the announcement of 
 Peter's denial, in Luke, apparently takes place in the room in which the re- 
 past had been held, in the two other Evangelists, on the way to the Mount 
 of Olives. Again, Luke introduces some passages which the two first Evan- 
 gelists either do not give at all, or not in this connexion : the contention for 
 pre-eminence and the promise of the twelve thrones, have in their narratives 
 a totally different position ; while what passes in Luke on the subject of the 
 swords is in them entirely wanting. 
 
 In his divergency from the two first Evangelists, Luke makes some approxi- 
 mation to the fourth. As John, in the washing of the disciples' feet, presents 
 a symbolical act having reference to ambitious contention for pre-eminence, 
 accompanied by discourses on humility : so Luke actually mentions a con- 
 tention for pre-eminence, and appends to it discourses not entirely without 
 affinity with those in John ; further, it is in common with John that Luke 
 makes the observations concerning the betrayer occur at the opening of the 
 
 25 Comp. Suicer, thesaur. 2, s. 613. • , 
 
 28 Another view as to the cause of the error in the fourth gospel is given in the Probabilia, 
 s. 100 ff. ; comp. Weisse, die evang. Gesch. i, a. 446 f. Anm. 
 
622 PART III. CHAPTER 11. § 122. 
 
 repast, and after a symbolical act ; and lastly, that he represents the announce- 
 ment of Peter's denial as having been delivered in the room where the repast 
 had been held. 
 
 The greatest difficulty here naturally arises from the divergency, that the 
 institution of the Lord's supper, unanimously recorded by the synoptists, is 
 wanting in John, who iij its stead relates a totally different act of Jesus, 
 namely, the washing of the disciples' feet. Certainly, by those who, in similar 
 cases, throughout the whole previous course of the evangelical narrative, have 
 found a sufficient resource in the supposition, that it was the object of John 
 to supply the omissions of the earlier gospels, the present difficulty is sur- 
 mounted as well, or as ill, as any other. John, it is said, saw that the insti- 
 tution of the Supper was already narrated in the three first Evangelists in a 
 way which fully agreed with his own recollection ; hence he held a repetition 
 of it superfluous.! But if, among the histories already recorded in the three 
 first gospels, the fourth Evangelist really intended to reproduce only those in 
 the representation of which he found something to rectify or supply : why 
 does he give another edition of the history of the miraculous feeding,' in 
 which he makes no emendation of any consequence, and at the same time 
 omit the institution of the Lord's supper? For here the divergencies between 
 the synoptists in the arrangement of the scene, and the turn given to the 
 words of Jesus, and more especially the circumstance that they, according to 
 his representation, erroneously, make that institution occur on the evening of 
 the passover, must have appeared to him a reason for furnishing an authentic 
 account. In consideration of this difficulty, the position that the author of 
 the fourth gospel was acquainted with the synoptical writings, and designed to 
 complete and rectify them, is. now, indeed, abandoned; but it is still main- 
 tained that he was acquainted with the common oratl tradition, and supposed 
 it known to his readers also, and on this ground, it is alleged, he passed over 
 tlie institution of the Supper as a history generally known.* But that it should 
 be the object of an evangelical writing to narrate only the less known, 
 omitting the known, is an idea which cannot be consistently entertained. 
 Written records imply a mistrust of oral tradition ; they are intended not 
 merely as a supplement to this, but also as a means of fixing and preserving it, 
 and hence the capital facts, being the most spoken of, and therefore the most 
 exposed to misrepresentation, are precisely those which written records can 
 the least properly omit. Such a fact is the founding of the Lord's supper, 
 and we find, from a comparison of the different New Testament accounts, that 
 the expressions with which Jesus instituted it must have early received 
 additions or mutilations; consequently, it is the last particular which John 
 should have omitted. But, it is further said, the narrating of the institution 
 of the Lord's supper was of no importance to the object of the fourth gospel. ** 
 How so ? With regard to its general object, the convincing of its readers 
 ihax Jesus is the Christ the Son of God {xsi. 31), was it of no importance to 
 communicate a scene in which he appears as the founder of a new covenant, 
 Katvrj hiaJd-qK-q ? and in relation to the special object of the passage in question, 
 namely, the exhibiting of the love of Jesus as a love which endured unto the 
 end (xiii. i), would it have contributed nothing to mention how he offered 
 his body and blood as meat and drink to his followers, and thus realized his 
 words in John vi. ? But, it is said, John here as elsewhere, only concerns 
 himself with the more profound discourses of Jesus, for which reason he 
 passes over the institution of the Supper, and begins his narrative with the 
 
 * Paulus, 3, b, s. 499; Olshausen, 2, s. 294. 
 
 ^ Lucke, 2, s. 4S4 f. ; Neaiider, L. J. Chr., s. 583, Anm. 
 
 * Olshausen, ut sup. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 623 
 
 discourse connected with the washing of the disciples' feet.* Nothing, how- 
 ever, but the most obdurate prejudice in favour of the fourth gospel, can 
 make this discourse on humility appear more profound than what Jesus says 
 of the partaking of his body and blood, when instituting the Lord's supper. 
 
 But the main point is that harmonists should show us in what part of John's 
 narrative, if we are to believe that he presupposed Jesus to have instituted 
 the Supper at this last meal, he can have made the alleged omission — that 
 they should indicate the break at which that incident may be suitably intro- 
 duced. On looking into the different commentaries, there appears to be 
 more than one place excellently adapted to such an insertion. According to 
 Olshausen, the end of the 13th chapter, after the announcement of Peter's 
 denial, presents the interval in which the institution of the Supper must be 
 supposed to occur ; herewith the repast closed, and the succeeding discourses 
 from xiv. i were uttered by Jesus after the general rising from table, and 
 while standing in the chamber.^ But, here, it appears as if Olshausen, for 
 the sake of obtaining a resting place between xiii. 38 and xiv. i, had resigned 
 himself to the delusion of supposing that the words Arise, let us go hence, at 
 which he makes Jesus rise from table and deliver the rest of his discourse 
 standing, are found at the end of the 13th chapter, whereas they do not 
 occur until the end of the 14th. Jesus had been speaking of going whither 
 his disciples could not follow him, and had just rebuked the rashness of Peter, 
 in volunteering to lay down life for his sake, by the prediction of his denial : 
 here, at xiv. i tf., he calms the minds of the disciples, whom this prediction 
 had disturbed, exhorting them to faith, and directing their attention to the 
 blessed effects of his departure. — Repelled by the firm coherence of this 
 part of the discourse, other commentators, e.g. Paulus, retreat to xiii. 30, 
 and are of opinion that the institution of the Supper may be the most fitly 
 introduced after the withdrawal of Judas, for the purpose of putting his 
 treachery into execution, since this circumstance might naturally excite in 
 Jesus those thoughts concerning his death which lie at the basis of the insti- 
 tution.^ But even rejecting the opinion of Liicke and others, that ore e^iyX^e, 
 when he went out, should be united to Xcyei 6 'It/o-oCs, Jesus said, it is un- 
 questionable that the words of Jesus v. 31, Now is ike Son of man glorified, 
 etc., and what he says farther on (v. 33) of his speedy departure, have an 
 immediate reference to the retiring of Judas. For the verb So^a^civ in the 
 fourth gospel always signifies the glorification of Jesus, to which he is to be led 
 by suffering ; and with the departure of the apostate disciple to those who 
 brought suffering and death on Jesus, his glorification and his speedy death 
 were°decided.— The verses 31-33 being thus inseparably connected with v. 
 30 ; the next step is to carry the institution of the Supper somewhat lower, 
 and place it where this connexion may appear to cease : accordingly, Liicke 
 makes it fall between v. 33 and 34, supposing that after Jesus (v. 31-33) had 
 composed the minds of the disciples, disturbed and shocked by the departure 
 of the traitor, and had prepared them for the sacred meal, he, at v. 34 f , 
 annexes to the distribution of the bread and wine the new commandment of 
 love But as it has been elsewhere remarked,'' since at v. 36 Peter asks 
 Jesus, in allusion to v. 33, whither he will go, it is impossible that the Supper 
 can have been instituted after the declaration of Jesus v. 33 ; for otherwise 
 Peter would have interpreted the expression / go, wayw, by the body given 
 aS>^LaSiS6iJL,vov and the blood shed a^a « x"""/^'""". or m any case would 
 
 * Sieffert, iiber den Urspr., s. 152. 
 6 Bibl. Comm. 2, s. 310, 381 f. 
 « Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 497. 
 ' Meyer, Comm. iiber den Joh., in loc. 
 
624 PART III. CHAPTER II. § 122. 
 
 rather have felt prompted to ask the meaning of these latter expressions. — 
 Acknowledging this, Neander retreats a verse, and inserts the Supper between 
 V. 32 and 33 ; * but he thus violently severs the obvious connexion between 
 the words eiOvi So^ao-et avTov shall straightway glorify him in the former 
 verse, and the words h-i /iLKpov /xeO' vfLiov el/j,!. yet a little while I am with you 
 in the latter. — It is, therefore, necessary to retreat still farther than Neander, 
 or even Paulus : but as from v. 30 up to v. iS, the discourse turns uninter- 
 ruptedly on the traitor, and this discourse again is inseparably linked to the 
 washing of the disciples' feet and the explanation of that act, there is no 
 place at which the institution of the Supper can be inserted until the begin- 
 ning of the chapter. Here, however, according to one of the most recent 
 critics, it may be inserted in a way which perfectly exonerates the author of 
 the gospel from the reproach of misleading his reader by an account which is 
 apparently continuous, while it nevertheless passes over the Supper. For, 
 says this critic, from the very commencement John does not profess to nar- 
 rate anything of the meal itself, or what was concomitant with it, but only 
 what occurred after the meal ; inasmuch as the most natural interpretation of 
 SetTTi/ov yevofjLevov is : after the meal was ended, while the words iydperai Ik tov 
 SeiTTvov, he riseth from supper, plainly show that the washing of the disciples' 
 feet was not commenced until after the meal.^ But after the washing of the 
 feet is concluded, it is said of Jesus, that he sat down again (dvaTreo-uv iraXw 
 v. 12), consequently the meal was not yet ended when he commenced that 
 act, and by the words he riseth from supper, it is meant that he rose to wash 
 the disciples' feet from the yet unfinished meal, or at least after the places 
 had been taken preparatory to the meal. Again, Senri/ou ■yevo/tci/ou does not 
 mean : after a meal was ended, any more than the words tov 'I. yevofjuevov iv 
 "ByjOavia (Matt. xxvi. 6) mean : after Jesus had been in Bethany: as the latter 
 expression is intended by Matthew to denote the time during the residence 
 of Jesus in Bethany, so the former is intended by John to denote the course 
 of the meal itself.^" Hence he thereby professes to inform us of every re- 
 markable occurrence connected with that meal, and in omitting to mention 
 the institution of the Lord's supper, which was one of its features, he incurs 
 the reproach of having given a deficient narrative, nay of having left out pre- 
 cisely what is most important. — Instead of this highest extremity of John's 
 account, Kern has recently taken the lowest, and has placed the institution 
 of the Supper after the words, Arise, let us go hence, xiv. 31 ; " whereby he 
 assigns to it the improbable and indeed unworthy position, of an act only 
 occurring to Jesus when he is preparing to depart. 
 
 Thus, viewing the subject generally, there is no conceivable motive why 
 John, if he spoke of this last evening at all, should have omitted the insti- 
 tution of the Lord's supper ; while, on descending to a particular consider- 
 ation, there is in the course of his narrative no point where it could be 
 inserted : hence nothing remains but to conclude that he does not mention 
 it because it was unknown to him. But as a means of resisting this con- 
 clusion, theologians, even such as acknowledge themselves unable to explain 
 the omission of the institution, rely on the observation, that a rite, so univer- 
 sally prevalent in the primitive church as was the Lord's supper, cannot 
 possibly have been unknown to the fourth Evangelist, whoever he may have 
 been.i2 Certainly, he knew of the Lord's supper as a Christian rite, for this 
 
 8 L. J.Chr., s. 587, Anm. 
 
 9 Sieffert, s. 152 ff. 
 
 "• Comp. Liicke, s. 468. 
 
 " Die Hauptthatsachen der evang. Gesch.Tiib. Zeitschr. 1836, 3, s. 12. 
 
 " Hase, L. ]., § 133 ; Kern, Hauptthatsachen, s. 11 ; Theile, zur Biographic Jesu, § 31. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 625 
 
 may be inferred from his 6th chapter, and unavoidably he must have known 
 of it; it may, however, have been unknown to him under what circumstances 
 Jesus formally instituted this observance. The referring of so revered an 
 usage to the authority of Jesus himself was an object of interest to this 
 Evangelist ; but from unacquaintance with the synoptical scene, and also 
 from a partiality for the mysterious, which led him to put into the mouth of 
 Jesus expressions unintelligible at the moment, and only to be explained by 
 the issue, he effected this purpose, not by making Jesus actually institute the 
 rite, but by attributing to him obscure expressions about the necessity of 
 eating his flesh and drinking his blood, which, being rendered intelligible only 
 by the rite of the Lord's supper introduced into the church after his death, 
 might be regarded as an indirect institution of that rite. 
 
 As John omits the institution of the Lord's supper, so the synoptists omit 
 the washing of the disciples' feet : but it cannot be maintained with equal 
 decision that they were therefore ignorant of this incident ; partly on account 
 of its inferior importance and the more fragmentary character of this part of 
 the synoptical narrative ; and partly because, as has been above remarked, 
 the contention for pre-eminence in Luke v. 24 ff. has appeared to many ex- 
 positors to be connected with the washing of the disciples' feet, as the induce- 
 ment to that action on the part of Jesus. 1* But as regards this contention 
 for pre-eminence, we have shown above, that being unsuited to the tenor of 
 the scene before us, it may owe its position only to a fortuitous association of 
 ideas in the narrator : 1* while the washing of the disciples' feet, in John,, 
 might appear to be a legendary development of a synoptical discourse on 
 humility. In Matthew (xx. 26 ff.) Jesus admonishes his disciples that he 
 among them who would be great must be the minister Sio'kovos of the others, 
 just as he himself came not to be ministered unto but to minister hi.aK.ovifi^va.1, 
 dWa BiaKov^a-ai ; and in Luke (xxii. 27) he expresses the same thought in the 
 question : Whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat or he that that serveth ? 
 Tts yap /uet^cDi/; 6 dvaKeifj.evo?, ^ 6 BiaKovZv ; and adds, l>ut I am among you as 
 he that serveth, iylb 8e d/u iv fxea-io v/xCiv us 6 SiaKovUv. Now it is certainly 
 probable that Jesus might see fit to impress this lesson on the^ disciples 
 through the medium of their senses, by an actual serving SiaKovelv among 
 them, while they played the part of those sitting at meat (avaK£i>€voi) ; but it 
 is equally probable, since the synoptists are silent respecting such a measure, 
 that either the legend, before it reached the fourth Evangelist, or this writer 
 himself, spun the fact out of the dictum.is Nor is it necessary to suppose 
 that the above declaration came to him as having been uttered at the last 
 meal of Jesus, in accordance with the representation of Luke ; for it naturally 
 resulted from the expressions dvaKela-OaL (to redine at meat), and SiaKorar {to 
 serve), that this symbolizing of the relation which they denote should be 
 attached to a meal, and this meal might on easily conceivable grounds appear 
 to be the most appropriately represented as the last. 
 
 According to Luke's representation, Jesus on this occasion addresses the 
 disciples as those who had continued with him in his temptations, and as a 
 reward for this fidelity promises them that they shall sit with him at table m 
 his kingdom, and seated on thrones, judge the twelve tribes of Israel 
 fv 28-to). This appears incongruous with a scene in which he had imme- 
 diately before announced his betrayal by one of the twelve, and m which he 
 
 " Sieffert, s. 153 ; Paulus and Olshausen, in loc. For the opposite opinion comp. 
 De Wette, l', i, s. 222, I, 2, s. 107. 
 
 " The "njL^ure as to the origin of this, anecdote in the Probabilia, s. 70 f. is too far- 
 fetched, j^ j^ 
 
626 PART III. CHAPTER II. § 1 2 3. 
 
 immediately after predicted his denial by another ; at a time, moreover, in 
 which the temptations Treipaa-fiM properly so called, were yet future. After 
 what we have already observed in relation to the entire character of the scene 
 in Luke, we can hardly seek the reason for the insertion of this fragment of 
 a discourse, in anything else than a fortuitous association of ideas, in which 
 the contention about rank among the disciples might suggest the rank pro- 
 mised to them by Jesus, and the discourse on sitting at table and serving, 
 the promise that the disciples should sit at table with Jesus in his messianic 
 kingdom. 18 
 
 In the succeeding conversation Jesus says to his disciples figuratively, that 
 now it will be necessary to buy themselves swords, so hostilely will they be 
 met on all sides, but is understood by them literally, and is shown two swords 
 already in the possession of the society. Concerning this passage I am in- 
 clined to agree with Schleiermacher, who is of opinion that Luke introduced 
 it here as a prelude to Peter's use of the sword in the ensuing narrative. *''' 
 
 The other divergencies in relation to the last meal will come under review 
 in the course of the following investigations. 
 
 § 123- 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE BETRAYAL AND THE DENIAL. 
 
 In the statement that Jesus from the beginning knew who would be his 
 betrayer, the fourth gospel stands alone ; but all four of the Evangelists con- 
 cur in testifying that at his last meal he predicted his betrayal by one of his 
 disciples. 
 
 But in the first place there is this difference : while according to Matthew 
 and Mark the discourse respecting the betrayer opens the scene, and in par- 
 ticular precedes the institution of the Lord's supper (Matt. xxvi. 2 1 ff. ; 
 Mark xiv. 18 fF.) ; Luke represents Jesus as not speaking of the betrayer until 
 after the commencement of the meal, and the institution of the commemora- 
 tive rite (xxii. 21 ff.); and in John what relates to the betrayer goes forward 
 during and after the washing of the disciples' feet (xiii. 10-30). The intrinsi- 
 cally trivial question, which Evangelist is here right, is extremely important to 
 theologians, because its decision involves the answer to another question, 
 namely, whether the betrayer also partook of the ritual Supper. It neither 
 appeared consistent with the idea of that supper as a feast of the most intimate 
 love and union, that a virtual alien like Judas should participate in it, nor did 
 it seem to accord with the love and compassion of the Lord, that he should 
 have permitted an unworthy disciple by this participation to aggravate his 
 guilt. 1 So undesirable a view of the facts was believed to be avoided by 
 following the arrangement of Matthew and Mark, and making the designation 
 of the betrayer precede the institution of the Supper : for as it was known 
 from John, that as soon as Judas saw himself detected and exposed, he with- 
 drew from the company, it would thence appear that Jesus did not institute 
 the Supper until after the retirement of the traitor.* But this expedient is 
 founded on nothing but an inadmissible incorporation of the narrative of 
 John with that of the synoptists. For the withdrawal of Judas is mentioned 
 only by the fourth Evangelist ; and he alone needs the supposition of such a 
 circumstance, because, according to him, Judas now first entered into his 
 
 •» Comp. De Wette, in loc. 
 " Ueber den Lukas, s. 275. 
 
 ' Olshausen, 2, s. 38a 
 
 ' Thus Lucke, Paulus, Olshausen. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 627 
 
 transactions witli the enemies of Jesus, and thus, in order to come to terms 
 T^\ '■^^"^' ^"^ obtain the requisite force, needed a somewhat longer time. 
 In the synoptists there is no trace of the betrayer having left the company ; 
 on the contrary, everything in their narrative appears to imply that Judas, 
 first on the general departure from the room in which the repast had been 
 taken, mstead of going directly to the garden, went to the chief priests, of 
 whom he at once, the agreement having been made beforehand, received the 
 necessary force for the arrest of Jesus. Thus whether Luke or Matthew be 
 right m the arrangement of the scene, all the synoptists intimate that Judas 
 did not leave the company before the general departure, and consequently 
 that he partook of the ritual Supper. 
 
 But also as to the manner in which Jesus pointed out his betrayer, there 
 exists no slight divergency between the Evangelists. In Luke Jesus only 
 makes the brief remark that the hand of his betrayer is with him on the table, 
 whereupon the disciples ask among themselves, who it can be that is capable 
 of such a deed ? In Matthew and Mark he says, first, that one of those, 
 who are present will betray him ; and when the disciples individually ask him, 
 Lord, is It I ? he replies : Ae that dippeth his hand with vie in the dish ; until 
 at last, after a woe has been denounced on the traitor, according to Matthew, 
 Judas also puts that question, and receives an affirmative answer. In John, 
 Jesus alludes to the betrayer during and after the washing of the disciples' 
 feet, in the observations, that not all the disciples present are clean, and that 
 on the contrary the scripture must be fulfilled : he that eateth bread with me, 
 hath lifted up his heel against me. Then he says plainly, that one of them 
 will betray him ; the disciples look inquiringly at each other, wondering of 
 whom he speaks, when Peter prompts John, who is lying next to Jesus, to ask 
 who is the traitor? Jesus replies, he to whom he shall give a sop, which he 
 immediately does to Judas, with an admonition to hasten the execution of his 
 project ; whereupon Judas leaves the company. 
 
 Here again the harmonists are at once ready to incorporate the diiferent 
 scenes with each other, and render them mutually consistent. According to 
 them, Jesus, on the question of each disciple whether he were the traitor, 
 first declared aloud that one of his companions at table would betray him 
 (Matthew) ; hereupon John asked in a whisper which of them he meant, and 
 Jesus also in a whisper made the answer, he to whom he should give the sop 
 (John) ; then Judas, likewise in a whisper, asked whether it were he, and 
 Jesus in the same manner replied in the affirmative (Matthew); lastly, after 
 an admonition from Jesus to be speedy, the betrayer left the company (John).^ 
 But that the question and answer interchanged between Jesus and Judas were 
 spoken in a whisper, Matthew, who alone communicates them, gives no inti- 
 mation, nor is this easily conceivable without presupposing the improbable 
 circumstance, that Judas reclined on the one side of Jesus, as John did on 
 the other : if, however, the colloquy were uttered aloud, the disciples could not, 
 as John narrates, have so strangely misunderstood the words, what thou doest, 
 do quickly, — and the supposition of a stammering question on the side of 
 Judas, and a low-toned answer from Jesus, cannot be seriously held a satis- 
 factory explanation.* Nor is it probable that Jesus, after having already made 
 the declaration : he who dippeth with me in the dish will betray me, would 
 for the more precise indication of the traitor have also given him a sop ; it is 
 rather to be supposed that these are but two different modes of reporting the 
 same particular. But when once this is admitted, as it is by Paulus and 
 
 8 Kuinol, in Matth., p. 707- . ^. „ 
 
 * This is Olshausen's expedient, 2, s. 402. Against it see biettert, s. 148. f. 
 
628 PART III. CHAPTER II. § 1 23. 
 
 Olshausen, so much is already renounced either in relation to the one narra- 
 tive or the other, that it is inconsistent to resort to forced suppositions, in 
 order to overcome the difficulty involved in the explicit answer which Matthew 
 makes Jesus give to the traitor ; and it should rather be allowed that we have 
 before us two divergent accounts, of which the one was not so framed that 
 its deficiencies might be supplied by the other. 
 
 Having, with Sieffert and Fritzsche, attained this degree of insight, the only 
 remaining question is : to which of the two narratives must we give the pre- 
 ference as the original? Sieffert has answered this question very decidedly 
 in favour of John ; not merely, as he maintains, because he shares in the 
 prejudice which attributes to that Evangelist the character of an eye-witness ; 
 but also because his narrative is in this part, by its intrinsic evidence of truth- 
 fulness, and the vividness of its scenes, advantageously distinguished from 
 that of Matthew, which presents no indications of an autoptical origin. For 
 example, while John is able to describe with the utmost minuteness the 
 manner in which Jesus indicated his betrayer : the narrative of the first gospel is 
 such as to induce the conjecture that its author had only received the general 
 information, that Jesus had personally indicated his betrayer.^ It certainly 
 cannot be denied, that the direct answer which Jesus gives to Judas in Mat- 
 thew (v. 25) has entirely the appearance of having been framed, without 
 much fertility of imagination, to accord with the above general information ; 
 and in so far it must be regarded as inferior to the more indirect, and there- 
 fore more probable mode of indicating the traitor, in John. But in relation 
 to another feature, the result of the comparison is different. In the two first 
 Evangelists Jesus says : he who has dipped or who dippeth with me, 6 cfi/Sai^as 
 or c/ijSaiTTo/iEi'os j«.€t' i/j-ov : in John, he /o whom 1 shall give a sop when I have 
 dipped it, cS cyo) ^•o.^om to \^m[d<w imBuxro} ; a difference in which the greater 
 preciseness of the indication, and consequently the inferior probability, is on 
 the side of the fourth gospel. In Luke, Jesus designates the traitor merely 
 as one of those who are sitting at meat with him ; and as regards the expres- 
 sion o i/j-Pdij/w K. T. \. in Matthew and Mark, the interpretation given of it by 
 Kuinol and Henneberg,* who suppose it to mean one of the party at table, 
 leaving it uncertain which, is not so mistaken as Olshausen represents it to be. 
 For, first, to the question of the several disciples, is it I ? Jesus might see fit 
 to return an evasive answer ; and secondly, the above answer, as Kuinol has 
 correctly remarked, stands in the relation of an appropriate climax to the 
 previous declaration : one of you shall betray me (v. 21), since it presents that 
 aggravating circumstance of the betrayal, fellowship at table. Even if the 
 authors of the two first gospels understood the expression in question to im- 
 ply, that Judas in particular dipped his hand in the dish with Jesus, and 
 hence supposed this second declaration to have indicated him personally : 
 still the parallel passage in Luke, and the words els «« tSv SuSexa, one of the 
 twelve, which in Mark precede o i^^mri^hevo'i, show that originally the second 
 expression was merely an amplification of the former, though from the wish 
 to have a thoroughly unequivocal designation of the betrayer on the part of 
 Jesus, it was early interpreted in the other more special sense. When, however, 
 a legendary exaggeration of the preciseness of the indication is once admitted, 
 the manner in which the fourth gospel describes that indication must be in- 
 cluded in the series of progressive representations, and according to Sieffert, 
 it must have been the original from which all the rest proceeded. But if we 
 beforehand renounce the affirmative reply to Judas, o-it e'jras, thou hast said, 
 
 ° Ut sup. s. 147 ff. 
 
 «• Comm. uboF die Geschi. des. Leideps und Todes Jesu,. m l0c. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 629 
 
 in Matthew, the mode of designation in John is the most definite of all ; for 
 the intimation : one of my companions at table, is comparatively indefinite, 
 and even the expression : he who dippeth with me in the dish, is a less direct 
 sign of the traitor, than if Jesus had himself dipped the morsel and presented 
 it to him. Now is it in the spirit of the ancient legend, if Jesus really gave 
 the more precise designation, to lose its hold of this, and substitute one less 
 precise, so as to diminish the miracle of the foreknowledge exhibited by 
 Jesus ? Assuredly not ; but rather the very reverse holds true. Hence we 
 conclude that Matthew, together with the unhistorically precise, has yet at 
 the same time preserved the historically less precise ; whereas John has en- 
 tirely lost the latter and has retained only the former. 
 
 After thus renouncing what is narrated of a personal designation of the 
 traitor by Jesus, as com'postd post eventum, there yet remains to'usthe general, 
 precognition and prediction on the part of Jesus, that one of his disciples 
 and companions at table would betray him. But even this is attended with 
 difficulties. That Jesus received any external notification of treason brooding 
 against him in the circle of his confidential friends, there is no indication in 
 the gospels : he appears to have gathered this feature of his destiny also out 
 of the scriptures alone. He repeatedly declares that by his approaching 
 betrayal the scripture will be fulfilled (John xiii. 18, xvii. 12; comp. Matt, 
 xxvi. 24 parall.), and in the fourth gospel (xiii. 18), he cites as this scripture, 
 ypoL(j>r], the words : He that eateth bread with me, hath lifted up his heel 
 against me, 6 Tpiiiywv fj,€T £fi.ov tov aprov iinjpev eV ifik t^v irripvav avrov, from 
 
 Ps. xli. 10. This passage in the Psalms refers either to the well-known per- 
 fidious friends of David, Ahithophel and Mephibosheth, or, if the Psalm be 
 not the composition of David, to some unknown individuals who stood in a 
 similar relation to the poet.''' There is so httle trace of a messianic signifi- 
 cance, that even Tholuck and Olshausen acknowledge the above to be the 
 original sense. But according to the latter, in the fate of David was imaged 
 that of the Messiah ; according to the former, David himself, under a divine 
 impulse often used expressions concerning himself, which contained special 
 allusions to the fate of Jesus. When, however, Tholuck adds : David him- 
 self, under the influence of inspiration, did not always comprehend this more 
 profound sense of his expressions ; what is this but a confession that by the 
 interpretation of such passages as relating to Christ there is given to them 
 another sense than that in which their author originally intended them ? 
 Now that Jesus deduced from this passage of the 41st Psalm, that it would 
 be his lot to be betrayed by a friend, in the way of natural reflection, is the 
 more inconceivable, because there is no indication to be discovered that this 
 Psalm was interpreted messianically among the Jews : while that such an 
 interpretation was a result of the divine knowledge in Jesus is impossible, 
 because it is a false interpretation. It is rather to be supposed, that the 
 passage in question was applied to the treachery of Judas only after the issue. 
 It is necessary to figure to ourselves the consternation which the death of the 
 Messiah must have produced in the minds of his first adherents, and the sohci- 
 tous industry with which they endeavoured to comprehend this catastrophe ; 
 and to remember that to a mind of Jewish culture, to comprehend a fact or 
 doctrine was not to reconcile it with consciousness and reason, but to bring 
 it into harmony with scripture. In seeking such a result, the primitive Chris- 
 tians found predicted in the oracles of the Old Testament, not only the death 
 of the Messiah, but also his falling by means of the perfidy of one of his 
 friends, and even the subsequent fate and end of this traitor (Matt. xxvu. 9 f. ; 
 
 ' See De Wette, in loc. 
 
630 PART III. CHAPTER 11. § 1 23. 
 
 Acts i. 20) ; and as the most striking Old Testament authority for the betrayal, 
 there presented itself the above passage from Ps. xli., where the author com- 
 plains of maltreatment from one of his most intimate friends. These vouchers 
 from the Old Testament might be introduced .by the writers of the evangelical 
 history either as reflections from themselves or others by way of appendix to 
 their narrative of the result, as is done by the authors of the first gospel and 
 the Acts, where they relate the end of Judas : or, what would be more im- 
 pressive, they might put them into the mouth of Jesus himself before the 
 issue, as is done by the author of. the fourth gospel in the present instance. 
 The Psalmist had meant by *PD? ?5i< one who generally was accustomed to 
 eat bread with him : but this expression might easily come to be regarded as 
 the designation of one in the act of eating bread with the subject of the 
 l^rophecy : and hence it seemed appropriate to choose as the scene for the 
 delivery of the prediction, a meal of Jesus with his disciples, and for the sake 
 of proximity to the end of Jesus to make this meal the last. For the rest, the 
 precise words of the psalm were not adhered to, for instead of o rpiiywv /^er' 
 e/AoB Tov affTov, he who eateth bread with me, was substituted either the 
 synonymous phrase jncr' e/iov hr\ rtfi rpairiCv^, with me on the table, as in 
 Luke ; or, in accordance with the representation of the synoptists that this 
 last was a paschal meal, an allusion to the particular sauce used on that occa- 
 sion : o e/i/SaTTTOjuevos p-er i/j^ ets to rpv^Xiov, he who dippeth with me in the 
 dish, as in Mark and Matthew. This, at first entirely synonymous "with the 
 expression o rpwywv k. t. A., as a designation of some one of his companions 
 at table, was soon, from the desire for a personal designation, misconstrued 
 to mean that Judas accidentally dipped his hand into the dish at the same 
 moment with Jesus, and at length the morsel dipped into the dish by Judas 
 at the same time with Jesus, was by the fourth Evangelist converted into the 
 sop presented by Jesus to his betrayer. 
 
 There are other parts also of this scene in John, which, instead of having 
 a natural character, as Sieffert maintains, must rather be pronounced artificial. 
 The manner in which Peter has to use the intervention of the disciple leaning 
 on Jesus' bosom, in order to obtain from the latter a more definite intimation 
 concerning the betrayer, besides being foreign to the synoptists, belongs to 
 that unhistorical colouring which, as we have above shown, the fourth gospel 
 gives to the relation of the two apostles. Moreover, to disguise an indication 
 of Judas in the evil character of the traitor, beneath an action of friendliness, 
 as that of giving him thS sop, must retain something untruthful and revolting, 
 whatever may be imagined of objects which Jesus might have in view, such 
 as the touching of the traitor with compunction even at that hour. Lastly, 
 the address. What thou doest, do quickly, after all that can be done to soften 
 it,8 is still harsh, — a kind of braving of the impending catastrophe ; and rather 
 than resort to any refinements in order to justify these words as spoken by- 
 Jesus, I prefer agreeing with the author of the Probabilia, who sees in them 
 the effort of the fourth Evangelist to improve on the ordinary representation, 
 according to which Jesus foreknew the betrayal and refrained from pre- 
 venting it, by making him even challenge the traitor to expedite his under- 
 taking.^ 
 
 Besides the betrayal, Jesus is said to have predicted the denial by Peter, 
 and to have fixed the precise time of its occurrence, declaring that before the 
 cock should crow (Mark says twice) on the following morning, Peter would 
 
 ' Vid. Liicke and Tholuck, in loc. 
 
 ^ P. 62 : reliqui quidem nan-ant evangelists servatorem scivisse proditionis consilium, nee 
 impedivisse ; ipsum vera excitdsse Judam ad proditionem nemo eorum dicit, neque convenit hoc 
 Jesu. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 63 1 
 
 deny him thrice (Matt. xxvi. 33 ff. parall.): which prediction, according to the 
 gospels, was exactly accomplished. It is here observed on the side of 
 Rationalism, that the extension of the prophetic gift to the cognizance of 
 such merely accessory circumstances as the crowing of cocks, must excite 
 astonishment ; as also that Jesus, instead of warning, predicts the result as 
 inevitable : i" a feature which calls to mind the Fate of the Greek tragedy, in 
 which a man, in spite of his endeavour to avoid what the oracle has predicted 
 of him, nevertheless fulfils its inexorable decree. Paulus will not admit 
 either oi (jxovqtTu cn^ixepov SXiKTiop, or aTrapvetcr^ai, or rpts, to have been spoken 
 in their strict verbal signification, but gives to the entire speech of Jesus only 
 this indecisive and problematical sense : so easily to be shaken is the imagined 
 firmness of this disciple, that between the present moment and the early 
 morning, events may arise which would cause him more than once to stumble 
 and be unfaithful to his master. But this is not the right mode of removing 
 the difficulty of the evangelical narrative. The words attributed to Jesus so 
 closely agree with the subsequent event, that the idea of a merely fortuitous 
 coincidence is not to be here entertained. Occurring as they do in a tissue of 
 prophecies post evenium, we must rather suppose that after Peter had really 
 denied Jesus more than once during that night, the announcement of such a 
 result was put into the mouth of Jesus, with the common marking of time by 
 the crowing of the cock,^! and the reduction of the instances of denial to 
 three. That this determination of time and number was permanent in the 
 evangelical tradition (except that Mark, doubtless arbitrarily, for the sake of 
 balancing the (krice denying by another number, speaks of the fwice crowing 
 of the cock), appears to be explained without any great difficulty by the 
 familiarity of the expressions early chosen, and the ease with which they could 
 be retained in the memory. 
 
 Just as little claim to be regarded as a real prophecy has the announcement 
 of Jesus to the rest of his disciples that they will all of them be offended 
 because of him in the coming night, that they will forsake him and disperse 
 (Matt. xxvi. 31 parall., comp. John xvi. 32); especially as the Evangelists 
 themselves, in the words : For it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the 
 sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad, point out to us the Old Testament 
 passage (Zech. xiii. 7), which, first sought out by the adherents of Jesus for 
 the satisfaction of their own difficulties as to the death of their master, and 
 the melancholy consequences which immediately ensued, was soon put into 
 the mouth of Jesus as a prophecy of these consequences. 
 
 § 124- 
 
 THE INSTITUTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 
 
 It was at the last meal, according to the synoptists, with whom the Apostle 
 Paul also agrees (i Cor. xi. 23 ff.), that Jesus gave to the unleavened bread and 
 the wine which, agreeably to the custom of the pascha feast,i he as head of 
 the family, had to distribute among his disciples, a relation to his speedily 
 approaching death. During the repast, we are told, he took bread and after 
 giving thanks, broke it and gave it to his disciples with the declaration ■ Thts 
 Tmybody, roCro i<rrc ro aS>^<i ,^ov, to which Paul and Luke add : whzch zs 
 given or broken for you, rb i^lp ii^v U6^.vov or K\<i/.c.ov ; in hke manner, 
 
 " Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b. =• 538- L. J. i, b, s. 192. Hase, L. J., § 137- 
 '\ S; '^^^^^S^X:^^o., hor.. p. 474ff., and Paulus, exeg. Handb. 
 3, b, s-Sii ff. 
 
632 PART III, CHAPTER II. § 1 24. 
 
 according to Paul and Luke after supper, he presented to them a cup of wine 
 with the words : This is my blood of the new testament, toBto co-ti to at/ia /^ou, 
 TO rijs Katvijs SiaS^Kijs, or, according to Paul and Luke : the new testament in 
 my blood, which is shed for many, ox for you, koxv^ Siadi^Kr] iv t<3 alfmri fiov, to 
 mpL iroXXGv, or iirlp vp.S>v, iKx^vofLivov, to which Matthew adds : for the remis- 
 sion of sins, eis &<i>t<Ti.v a/jiapTiZv, and Paul, what he and Luke ' previously give 
 in reference to the bread : Do this, rovro mLelre (Paul, with the wine, as oft 
 as ye drink it, huiKt.% h/ irlvtyre), in remembrance of me, ets tt]v if^^v avd/j-vrjo-iv. 
 
 The controversy between the different confessions as to the meaning of 
 these words, — whether they signify a transmutation of bread and wine into 
 the body and blood of Christ, or a presence of the body and blood of Christ 
 with and beneath those elements, or lastly, the symbolizing of the body and 
 blood of Christ by bread and wine,— may be pronounced obsolete, and ought 
 not to be any longer pursued, at least exegetically, because it is founded on a 
 misplaced distinction. It is only when transmitted- to a modern age, and to 
 the occidental mind, in which the forms of thought are more abstract, that 
 what the ancient oriental understood by the words, toSto Ioti, divides itself 
 into the above variety of possible significations ; and if we would obtain a 
 correct conception of the idea which originally suggested the expression, we 
 must cease to discriminate thus. To explain the words in question as imply- 
 ing a transmutation of the substance, is to go too far, and to be too definite ; 
 to understand them of an existence cum et sub specie, etc., is too much of a re- 
 finement ; while to translate them : this signifies, is too limited and meagre 
 an interpretation. To the writers of our gospels, the bread in the commemo- 
 rative supper was the body of Christ : but had they been asked, whether the 
 bread were transmuted, they would have denied it ; had they been spoken to 
 of a partaking of the body with and under' the form of bread, they would not 
 have understood it ; had it been inferred that consequently the bread merely 
 signified the body, they would not have been satisfied. 
 
 Thus to dispute farther on this point is a fruitless labour : it is a more 
 interesting question, whether Jesus merely intended this peculiarly significant 
 distribution of bread and wine as a parting demonstration of attachment to 
 his disciples, or whether he designed that it should be celebrated by his 
 disciples in memory of him after his departure. If we had only the account 
 of the two first Evangelists, — this is admitted even by orthodox theologians,^^ 
 there would be no solid ground for the latter supposition ; but the words. Do 
 this in rememberance of me, which are added by Paul and Luke, appear deci- 
 sive of the fact that Jesus purposed the founding of a commemorative meal, 
 which, according to Paul, the Christians were to celebrate, until he should come, 
 axpi-i 01) av eXOrj. Concerning this very addition, however, it has been of late 
 conjectured that it may not have been originally uttered by Jesus, but that in 
 the celebration of the Lord's supper in the primitive church, the presiding 
 member of the community, in distributing the elements, may have exhorted 
 the rest to continue the repetition of this meal in remembrance of Christ, and 
 that from this primitive Christian ritual the above words were added to the 
 address of Jesus.^ This conjecture should not be opposed by an exaggerated 
 estimate of the authority of the Apostle Paul, such as that of Olshausen, who 
 infers from the words, I have received of the Lord, TrapeXa/Soi/ Airo toB Kvpiov, 
 that he here delivers an immediate revelation from Christ, nay, that Christ 
 himself speaks through him : since, as even Siiskind has admitted, and as 
 
 ^ Siiskind, in the treatise : Hat Jesus das Abendmahl als einen mnemonischen Ritus 
 angeordnet? in his Magazin 11, s. i ff. 
 ^ Paulus, exeg. Handb, 3, b, s. 527. 
 
LAST SUPPER WITH THE DISCIPLES. 633 
 
 Schulz has recently shown in the most convincing manner,* the phrase 
 TapaAa/x^aveiv Atto tivos cannot signify an immediate reception, but only a 
 mediate transmission from the individual specified. If, however, Paul had 
 not that addition from Jesus himself, still Siiskind thinks himself able to prove 
 that It must have been communicated, or at least confirmed, by an apostle, 
 and IS of opinion, in the manner of his school, that by a series of abstract 
 distmctions, he can define certain boundary lines which must in this case 
 prevent the intrusion of an unhistorical tradition. But the severe attention to 
 evidence which characterizes our own day, ought not to be expected from 
 an infant religious society, between the distant portions of which there was 
 not yet any organized connexion, or for the most part any other than oral 
 communication. On the other hand, however, we must not be induced to 
 regard the words tovto ■n-oietTc k. t. k. as a later addition to the address of 
 Jesus, on false grounds, such as, that it would have been repugnant to the 
 humility of Jesus to found a rite in remembrance of himself; ^ nor must we 
 rate too highly the silence of the two first Evangelists, in opposition to the 
 testimony of Paul 
 
 Perhaps this point may be decided by means of another more general 
 question, namely, what led Jesus to make this peculiarly significant distribu- 
 tion of bread and wine among his disciples ? Orthodox theologians seek to 
 remove as far as possible from the person of Jesus, as divine, all progress, 
 and especially a gradual or sudden origination of plans and resolutions not 
 previously present in his mind : hence, according to them, there lay in Jesus 
 from the beginning, together with the foreknowledge of his destiny, and his 
 entire plan, the design to institute this supper, as a commemorative rite to be 
 observed by his church ; and this opinion may at least appeal for support, to 
 the allusions implying that he already contemplated the institution a year be- 
 forehand, attributed to Jesus in the sixth chapter of the fourth gospel. 
 
 This is certainly an insecure support, for, as a previous enquiry has shown, 
 those allusions, totally unintelligible before the institution of the Supper, can- 
 not have proceeded from Jesus, but only from the Evangelist.^ Further, as, 
 viewing the subject generally, it appeared to annul the reality of the human 
 nature in Jesus, to suppose that all lay foreseen and prepared in him from the 
 first, or at least from the commencement of his mature age ; Rationalism has 
 maintained, on the contrary, that the idea of the symbolical act and words in 
 question did not arise in Jesus until the last evening. According to this view, 
 at the sight of the broken bread and the outpoured wine, Jesus had a fore- 
 boding of his near and violent death ; he saw in the former an image of his 
 body which was to be put to death, and in the latter of his blood which was 
 to be shed ; and this momentary impression was communicated by him to his 
 disciples.'' But such a tragical impression could only be felt by Jesus if he 
 contemplated his death as a near event. That he did so with a greater dis- 
 tinctness at the last meal, is thought to be proved by the assurance which, 
 according to all the synoptists, he gave to his disciples, that he would no more 
 drink of the fruit of the vine until he drank it new in the kingdom of his 
 Father ; whence, as there is no ground for supposing a vow of abstinence on 
 his part, he must have foreseen that his end would arrive within the next few 
 days, if, however, we observe how in Luke this assurance in relation to the 
 wine' is preceded by the declaration of Jesus, that he will no more eat the 
 passover until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God, it appears probable that 
 
 * Ueber das Abendmahl, s. 217 ffi 
 
 = Kaiser, bibl. fheol. 2, a, s. 39 ; Stephani, das h. Abendmahl, s. 61. 
 
 6 Vol. II. § 81. 
 
 7 Paulus, ut sup. a. 519 ff. ; Kaiser, ut sup. s. 37 ff. 
 
634 PART III. CHAPTER II. § I24. 
 
 originally \h& fruit of the vine zk^o was understood not as wine in general, but 
 as specially the beverage of the passover ; of which a trace may perhaps be 
 discovered in the expression of Matthew and Mark — this fruit of the vine, 
 TovTov Tov yevvrjfjiaroi t^s afiTreXov. Meals in the messianic kingdom were, in 
 accordance with the ideas of the age, often spoken of by Jesus, and he may 
 have expected that in that kingdom the Passover would be observed with 
 peculiar solemnity. When therefore he declares that he will no more partake 
 of this meal in the present age, aliiiv, but only in the future ; first, this does 
 not apply to eating and drinking in general, and hence does not mean that 
 his sojourn in this pre-messianic world was to have an end within the next 
 few days, but only within the space of a year ; nor, secondly, does it neces- 
 sarily involve the idea that this change was to be introduced by his death, for 
 he might even yet expect that the kingdom of the Messiah would commence 
 during his life. 
 
 Meanwhile, to deny every presentiment of his end on the part of Jesus in 
 these last days of his life, is on the one hand, not warranted by our previous 
 examination ; and on the other, would compel us to doubt the institution of 
 the ritual Supper by Jesus, which we can hardly do in opposition to the testi- 
 mony of Paul. It is moreover easily conceivable, that the continually 
 increasing involvement of his relation to the Jewish hierarchy, might at length 
 bring to Jesus the conviction that his death was inevitable, and that in a 
 moment of emotion he might even fix the next passover as the term which 
 he should not survive. Thus each of the supposed cases appears possible : 
 either that, owing to a thought suggested by the impressiveness of the moment, 
 at the last passover which he celebrated with his disciples, he made bread and 
 wine the symbols of his body which was to be slain and his blood which was 
 to be shed ; or that for some time previously he had embraced the design of 
 bequeathing such a commemorative meal to his adherents, in which case he 
 may very probably have uttered the words preserved by Paul and Luke. But 
 before this intimation of the death of Jesus had been duly appropriated by the 
 disciples, and received into their conviction, they were overtaken by the actual 
 catastrophe, for which, therefore, they might be regarded as wholly unpre- 
 pared, 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, 
 CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. 
 
 § 125- 
 AGONY OF JESUS IN THE GARDEN. 
 
 According to the synoptical narratives, Jesus, immediately after the con- 
 clusion of the meal and the singing of the Hallel, it being his habit during 
 this feast time to spend the night out of Jerusalem (Matt. xxi. 17; Luke 
 xxii. 39), went to the Mount of Olives, into a garden xwp'W (in John, k^ttos) 
 called Gethsemane (Matt. xxvi. 30, 36 parall.). John, who gives the addi- 
 tional particular that the garden lay over the brook Kedron, does not repre- 
 sent him as departing thither until after a long series of valedictory discourses 
 (xiv.-xvii.), of which we shall hereafter have to speak again. While John 
 makes the arrest of Jesus follow immediately on the arrival of Jesus in the 
 garden, the synoptists insert between the two that scene which is usually 
 designated the agony of Jesus. 
 
 Their accounts of this scene are not in unison. According to Matthew and 
 Mark, Jesus takes with him his three most confidential disciples, Peter and 
 the sons of Zebedee, leaving the rest behind, is seized with fearfulness and 
 trembling, tells the three disciples that he is sorrowful even unto death, and 
 admonishing them to remain wakeful in the mean time, removes to a dis- 
 tance from them also, that he may offer a prayer for himself, in which, with 
 his face bent to the earth, he entreats that the cup of suffering may pass 
 from him, but still resigns all to the will of his Father. When he returns to 
 the disciples, he finds them sleeping, again admonishes them to watchfulness, 
 then removes from them a second time, and repeats the former prayer, after 
 which he once more finds his disciples asleep. For the third time he retires 
 to repeat the prayer, and returning, for the third time finds the disciples 
 sleeping, but now awakes them, in order to meet the coming betrayer. Of 
 the number three, which thus doubly figures in the narrative of the two first 
 Evangelists, I^uke says nothing ; according to him, Jesus retires from all the 
 disciples, after admonishing them to watch, for the distance of about a stone's 
 cast, and prays kneeling, once only, but nearly in the same words as in the 
 other gospels, then returns to the disciples and awakes them, because Judas 
 is approaching with the multitude. But, on the other hand, Luke in his 
 single scene of prayer, has two circumstances which are foreign to the other 
 narrators, namely, that while Jesus was yet praying, and immediately before 
 the most violent mental struggle, an angel appeared to strengthen him, and 
 that during the agony dywvca which ensued, the sweat of Jesus was as it were 
 
 great drops of Mood falling to the ground. 
 
 635 
 
636 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 125. 
 
 From the earliest times this scene in Gethsemane has been a stumbling- 
 block, because Jesus therein appears to betray a weakness and fear of death 
 which might be considered unworthy of him. Celsus and Julian, doubtless 
 having in their minds the great examples of a dying Socrates and other 
 heathen sages, expressed contempt for the fear of death exhibited by Jesus ; ^ 
 Vanini bojdly extolled his own demeanour in the face of execution as superior 
 to that of Jesus ; ^ and in the Evangelium Nicodemi, Satan concludes from 
 this scene that Christ is a mere man.^ The supposition resorted to in this 
 apocryphal book, that the trouble of Jesus was only assumed in order to en- 
 courage the devil to enter into' a contest with him,* is but a confession of 
 inability to reconcile a real truth of that kind with the ideal of Jesus. Hence 
 appeal has been made to the distinction between the two natures in Christ ; 
 the sorrowfulness and the prayer for the removal of the cup having been 
 ascribed to the human nature, the resignation to the will of the Father, to the 
 divine.^ As however, in the first place, this appeared to introduce an in- 
 admissible division in the nature of Jesus ; and in the second place, even a 
 fear experienced by his human nature in the prospect of approaching bodily 
 sufferings appeared unworthy of him : his consternation was represented as 
 being of a spiritual and sympathetic character — as arising from .the wicked- 
 ness of Judas, the danger which threatened his disciples, and the fate which 
 was impending over his nation.® The effort to free the sorrow of Jesus from 
 all reference to physical suffering, or to his own person, attained its highest 
 pitch in the ecclesiastical tenet, that Jesus by substitution was burthened with 
 the guilt of all mankind, and vicariously endured the wrath of God against 
 that guilt.'' Some have even supposed that the devil himself wrestled with 
 Jesus.* 
 
 But such a cause for the trouble of Jesus is not found in the tex:t ; on the 
 contrary, here as elsewhere (Matt. xx. 22 f. parall.), the cup 7roTi^pi.ov for the 
 removal of which Jesus prays, must be understood of his own bodily suffer- 
 ings and death. Moreover, the above ecclesiastical opinion is founded on an 
 unscriptural conception of the vicarious office of Jesus. It is true that even 
 in the conception of the synoptists, the suffering of Jesus is a vicarious one 
 for the sins of many ; but the substitution consists, according to them, not in 
 
 ^ Orig. c. Cels. ii. 24 : \4yec (6 K^\(ros)' ri oSif Trorvtarat., Kal dSiperai, koI rbv toO SK^dpov 
 ^b^ov etxerai Tra/jaSjoayneTx, Xiyuv k. t. \. ; He says (i.e. Celsus) : Why then does he supplicate 
 help, and bewail himself, and pray for escape from the fear of death, saying, etc. Julian, in 
 a Fragment of Tlieodore of Mopsuestia, ap. Miinter, Fragm. Patr. grsec. Fasc. I, p. 121 : 
 dWct KoX roiaOra irfOiyeix^Tal, tp'^atv, 6 'I., ola &d'\t.os &vBpuiros,' (yvfitpopb^v tfiipeiv 6^/c6X<t;s oil 
 Svvdfj£vos, Kai (iir &yy^\ov, Beds &v, ^ptirxiierai. Jesus, says he, also presents such petitions as 
 a wretched mortal watdd offer, when unable to bear a calamity with serenity ; and although 
 divine, he is strengthened by an angel. 
 
 ' Gramond. hist. Gall. ab. exc. Henr. IV. L. iii. p. 211 : Ludlius Vanini — dum in 
 patibulum trahitur — Christo illudit in hsc eadem verba : illi in extremis prse timore im- 
 bellis sudor : ego imperterritus morior. 
 
 * Evang. Nicod. c. xx. ap. Thilo, i, s. 702 ff. : kyii yhp otSa, Sti &v9pair6i ian, xal ■ijicovtta 
 aijrou \4yoPTOV Sti ireptXinrbs iariv i] ^v^-fj fiov ?ws davdrov, 
 
 * Ibid. s. 706. Hades replies to Satan : el Sk Xeyeis, Sn iJKOvaas airoS ^o/Sou/ievou tou 
 davarov, wal^av ffe Kal yeKCjv ^<p7j rovro, deXwi/, ha (re d.pirdff'g iv X^''P^ Svyarf. 
 
 ' Orig. i;. Cels. ii. 25. 
 
 * Hieron. Coram, in Matth. in loc. : Contristabalur non timore patiendi, qui ad hoc 
 venerat, ut paleretur, sed propter infelicissimum Judam, et scandalum omnium apostolorum, 
 et rejectionem populi Judceorum, et eversionem miserce Hierusalem. 
 
 '' Calvin, Comm. in harm, evangg. Matth. xxvi. 37: Non — mortem horruit simpliciter, 
 quatenus transitus est e mundo sed quia formidabile Dei tribunal illi erat ante oculos, judex 
 ipse incomprehensibiii vindicta armatus, peccata vera nostra, quorum, onus illi erat impost- 
 lum, sua ingenii mole eum premebant. Comp. Luther's. Hauspostille, die erste Passions- 
 predigt. 
 
 e Lightfoot, p. 884 f. 
 
RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. 637 
 
 Jesus having immediately borne these sins and the punishment due to man- 
 kmd on account of them, but in a personal suffering being laid upon him on 
 account of those sins, and in order to remove their punishment. Thus, as on 
 the cross, it was not directly the sins of the world, and the anger of God in 
 relation to them, which afflicted him, but the wounds which he received, and 
 his whole lamentable situation, wherein he was indeed placed for the sins of 
 mankind : so, according to the idea of the Evangelists, in Gethsemane also, it 
 was riot immediately the feeling of the misery of humanity which occasioned 
 his dismay, but the presentiment of his own suffering, which, however, was 
 encountered in the stead of mankind. 
 
 From the untenable ecclesiastical view of the agony of Jesus, a descent has 
 in more modern times been made to coarse materialism, by reducing what it 
 was thought hopeless to justify ethically, as a mental condition, to a purely 
 physical one, and supposing that Jesus was attacked by some malady in 
 Gethsemane ; ^ an opinion which Paulus, with a severity which he should 
 only have more industriously applied to his own explanations, pronounces to 
 be altogether unseemly and opposed to the text, though he does not regard 
 as improbable Heumann's hypothesis, that in addition to his inward sorrow, 
 Jesus had contracted a cold in the clayey ground traversed by the Kedron.^" 
 On the other hand, the scene has been depicted in the colours of modern 
 sentimentalism, and the feelings of friendship, the pain of separation, the 
 thoughts of parting, have been assigned as the causes which so lacerated the 
 mind of Jesus : ^^ or a confused blending of all the different kinds of sorrow, 
 selfish and sympathetic, sensual and spiritual, has been presupposed. ^^ 
 Paulus explains ei Swarov eo-Ti, TrapeXOerm to TroTrjpiov {if it be possible, let this 
 cup pass from me) as the expression of a purely moral anxiety on the part of 
 Jesus, as to whether it were the will of God that he should give himself up 
 to the attack immediately at hand, or whether it were not more accordant 
 with the Divine pleasure, that he should yet escape from this danger : thus 
 converting into a mere inquiry of God, what is obviously the most urgent 
 prayer. 
 
 While Olshausen falls back on the ecclesiastical theory, and authoritatively 
 declares that the supposition of external corporeal suffering having called 
 forth the anguish of Jesus, ought to be banished as one which would anni- 
 hilate the essential characteristics of his mission ; others have more correctly 
 acknowledged that in that anguish the passionate wish to be delivered from 
 the terrible sufferings in prospect, the horror of sensitive nature in the face of 
 annihilation, are certainly apparent. ^^ With justice also it is remarked, in 
 opposition to the reproach which has been cast on Jesus, that the speedy 
 conquest over rebellious nature removes every appearance of sinfulness;^* 
 that, moreover, the shrinking of physical nature at the prospect of annihila- 
 tion belongs to the essential conditions of life ; ^^ nay, that the purer the 
 human nature in an individual, the more susceptible is it in relation to suffer- 
 ing and annihilation ; ^^ that the conquest over suffering intensely appreciated 
 is greater than a stoical or even a Socratic insensibility.^'' 
 
 » Thiess, Krit. Coram, s. 418 ff. 
 i» Ut sup. s. 549, 554 f., Anm. 
 
 1' Schuster, zur Erlauterung des N. T., in Eichhom's Biblioth. 9, s. 1012 ff. 
 " Hess, Gesch. Jesu, 2, s. 322 ff. ; Kuinol, in Matth., p. 719. 
 
 1' UUmann, iiber die UnsUndlichkeit Jesu, in his Studien, i, s. 61. Haseit, ib. 3, i, s. 
 65 ff 
 
 1* Ullmann, ut sup. 
 
 " Hasert, ut sup. 
 
 '8 Luther, in der Predigt vom Leiden Christi im Garten. 
 
 " Ambrosius in Luc.,, Tom. x. $5. 
 
638 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 25. 
 
 With more reason, criticism has attacked the peculiar representation of the 
 third gospel. The strengthening angel has created no little difficulty to the 
 ancient church on dogmatical grounds, — to modern exposition on critical 
 grounds. An ancient scholium on the consideration, that he who was adored 
 and glorified with fear and trembling by all the celestial powers, did^ not ^ need 
 the strengthening of the angel, on rijs laryyo% rov ayyiXov ovk iTreoeero 6 virb 
 TTocrri'S eirovpavLov hwifjuuK (t>6pa> kol rpofito Trpo(TKVvov/j.evoi Kai oofa^o/iei'O?, 
 interprets the evurxvav ascribed to the angel as a declaring strong, i.e. as the 
 offering of a doxology ; i^ while others, rather than admit that Jesus could 
 need to be strengthened by an angel, transform the ayyeXos ivia-x"<^v into an 
 evil angel, who attempted to use force against Jesus.i^ The orthodox also, . 
 by founding a distinction between the state of humiliation and privation in 
 Christ and that of his glorification, or in some similar way, have long blunted 
 the edge of the dogmatical difficulty : but in place of this a critical objection 
 has been only so much the more decidedly developed. In consideration of 
 the suspicion which, according to our earlier observations, attaches to every 
 alleged angelic appearance, it has been sought to reduce the angel in this 
 narrative first into a man,2<' and then into an image of the composure vfhich 
 Jesus regained.^i But the right point in the angelic appearance for criticism 
 to grapple with, is indicated by the circumstance that Luke is the only Evan- 
 gelist from whom we learn it.^^ If, according to the ordinary presupposition, 
 the first and fourth gospels are of apostolic origin ; why this silence as to the 
 angel on the part of Matthew, who is believed to have been in the garden, 
 why especially on the part of John, who was among the three in the nearer 
 neighbourhood of Jesus ? If it be said : because sleepy as they were, and at 
 some distance, and moreover under cover of the night, they did not observe 
 him : it must be asked, whence are we to suppose that Luke received this 
 information ? 23 That, assuming the disciples not to have themselves ob- 
 served the appearance, Jesus should have narrated it to them on that even- 
 ing, there is, from the intense excitement of those hours and the circumstance 
 that the return of Jesus to his disciples was immediately followed by the 
 arrival of Judas, little probability ; and as little, that he communicated it to 
 them in the days after the resurrection, and that nevertheless this information 
 appeared worthy of record to none but the third Evangelist, who yet received 
 it only at second hand. As in this manner there is every presumption against 
 the historical character of the angelic appearance ; why should not this also, 
 like all appearances of the same kind which have come under our notice, 
 especially in the history of the infancy of Jesus, he interpreted by us mythi- 
 cally ? Gabler has been before us in advancing the idea, that in the primi- 
 tive Christian community the rapid transition from the most violent mental 
 conflict to the most tranquil resignation, which was observable in Jesus on 
 that night, was explained, agreeably to the Jewish mode of thought, by the 
 intervention of a strengthening angel, and that this explanation may have 
 mingled itself with the narrative : Schleiermacher, too, finds it the most 
 probable that this moment, described by Jesus himself as one of hard trial, 
 was early glorified in hymns by angelic appearances, and that this embellish- 
 
 " In Matthaei's N. T., p. 447. 
 " Lightfoot, ut sup. 
 
 ^^ Venturini, 3, 677, and conjecturally Paulus also, s. 561. 
 ^^ Eichhom, allg. Bibl. i, s. 628 ; Thiess, in loc. 
 
 ^^ Comp. on this subject and the following, Gabler, neust. theol. Journal, i, 2, s. 109 ff. 
 3, s. 217 ff. 
 "' Comp. Julian, ap. Theod. of Mopsuestia in Miinter's Fragm. Pair, i, p. 121 f. 
 
RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OIJVES. 639 
 
 ment, originally intended in a merely poetical sense, was received by the 
 narrator of the third gospel as historical.^* 
 
 The other feature peculiar to Luke, namely, the bloody sweat, was early 
 felt to be no less fraught with difficulty than the strengthening by the angel. 
 At least it appears to have been this more than anything else, which occa- 
 sioned the exclusion of the entire addition in Luke, v. 43 and 44, from many 
 ancient copies of the gospels. For as the orthodox, who according to Epi- 
 phanius^* rejected the passage, appear to have shrunk the most from the 
 lowest degree of fear which is expressed by the bloody sweat : so to the 
 docetic opinions of some who did not receive this passage, ^^ this was the only 
 particular which could give offence. Thus in an earlier age, doubts were 
 raised respecting the fitness of the bloody sweat of Jesus on dogmatical con- 
 siderations : while in more modern times this has been done on physiological 
 grounds. It is true that authorities are adduced for instances of bloodv 
 sweat from Aristotle ^"^ down to the more recent investigators of nature ; ^^ 
 but such a phenomenon is only mentioned as extremely rare, and as a 
 symptom of decided disease. Hence Paulus points to the uxtA {as it "were), 
 as indicating that it is not directly a bloody sweat which is here spoken of, 
 but only a sweat which might be compared to blood : this comparison, how- 
 ever, he refers only to the thick appearance of the drops, and Olshausen also 
 agrees with him thus far, that a red colour of the perspiration is not neces- 
 sarily included in the comparison. But in the course of a narrative which is 
 meant as a prelude to the sanguinary death of Jesus, it is the most natural to 
 take the comparison of the sweat to drops of blood, in its full sense. Fur- 
 ther, here, yet more forcibly than in relation to the angelic appearance, the 
 question suggests itself : how did Luke obtain this infoi-mation ? or to pass by 
 all questions which must take the same form in this instance as in the pre- 
 vious one, how could the disciples, at a distance and in the night, discern the 
 falling of drops of blood ? According to Paulus indeed it ought not to be 
 said that the sweat fell, for as the word KarajSaivovrf's, falling, refers not to 
 i8/Do)s, sweat, but to the 6po\i.^oi atfuaro?, drops of blood, which are introduced 
 merely for the purpose of comparison, it is only meant chat a sweat as. thick 
 and heavy as falling drops of blood stood on the brow of Jesus. But whether 
 it be said : the sweat fell like drops of blood to the earth, or : it was like 
 drops of blood falling to the earth, it comes pretty much to the same thing ; 
 at least the comparison of a sweat standing on the brow to blood falling on 
 the earth would not be very apt, especially if together with the falling, we 
 are to abstract also the colour of the blood, so that of the words, as it were 
 
 drops of blood falling on the ground, iLo-et Spo/tySot ot/iaros KaTaftaivovTe^ ets 
 
 TBI/ w, only oio-et eponPoi, as it were drops, would properly have any de- 
 cided meaning. Since then we can neither comprehend the circumstance, 
 nor conceive what historical authority for it the narrator could have had, let 
 us with Schleiermacher, rather take this feature also as a poetical one con- 
 strued historically by the Evangelist, or better still, as a mythical one, the 
 origin of which may be easily explained from the tendency to perfect the 
 conflict in the garden as a prelude to the sufferings of Jesus on the cross, by 
 showing that not merely the psychical aspect of that suffering was fore- 
 st Ueber den Lukas, s. 288 ; comp. De Wette, in loc. and Theile, zur. Biogr. Jesu, § 32. 
 Neander also appears willing silently to abandon this trait and the following one. 
 25 Ancoratus, 31. 
 28 Vid. Wetstein, s. 807. 
 
 2' De part, animal, iii. IS- . , . t h c 
 
 28 Vid. ap. Michaelis, not. in loc, and Kuinol, m Luc, p. 691 1. 
 
640 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 26. 
 
 shadowed in the mental trouble, but also its physical aspect, in the bloody 
 sweat. 
 
 As a counterpoise to this peculiarity of Luke, his two predecessors have, 
 as we have said, the twofold occurrence of the number three, — the three 
 disciples taken apart, and the three retirements and prayers of Jesus. It has 
 indeed been contended that so restless a movement liither and thither, so 
 rapid an alternation of retirement and ret-urn, is entirely suited to the state of 
 mind in which Jesus then was,*^ and also, that in the repetition of the prayer 
 there is correctly shown an appropriate gradation; a more and more complete 
 resignation to the will of the Father.^" But that the two narrators count the 
 retirements of Jesus, marking them by the expressions tK Sevripov and «k 
 rpLTov, at once shows that the number three was a point of importance to 
 them ; and when Matthew, though he certainly gives in the second prayer an 
 expression somewhat different from that of the first, in the third makes Jesus 
 only repeat /he same words, rov avrov Xoyov, and when Mark does this even 
 the second time, — ^this is a significant proof that they were embarrassed how 
 to fill up the favourite number three with appropriate matter. According to 
 Olshausen, Matthew, with his three acts of this conflict, must be right in 
 opposition to Luke, because these three attacks made on Jesus through the 
 medium of fear, correspond to the three attacks through the medium of desire, 
 in the history of the temptation. This parallel is well founded ; it only leads 
 to an opposite result to that deduced by Olshausen. For which is more 
 probable ; that in both cases the threefold repetition of the attack had an 
 objective ground, in a latent law of the kingdom of spirits, and hence is to be 
 regarded as really historical ; or that it had merely a subjective ground in the 
 manner of the legend, so that the occurrence of this number here, as certainly 
 as above in the history of the temptation, points to something mythical ? ^^ 
 
 If then we subtract the angel, the bloody sweat, and the precisely threefold 
 repetition of the retirement and prayer of Jesus, as mythical additions, there 
 remains so far, as an historical kernel, the fact, that Jesus on that evening in 
 the garden experienced a violent access of fear^ and prayed that his sufferings 
 might be averted, with the reservation nevertheless of an entire submission 
 to the will of God : and at this point of the inquiry, it is not a little surpris- 
 ing, on the ordinary view of the relation between our gospels, that even this 
 fundamental fact of the history in question, is wanting in the Gospel Of John. 
 
 § 126. 
 
 RELATION OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL TO THE EVENTS IN GETHSEMANE. THE 
 FAREWELL DISCOURSES IN JOHN, AND THE SCENE FOLLOWING THE 
 ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE GREEKS. 
 
 The relation of John to the synoptical narratives just considered has, when 
 regarded more closely, two aspects : first, he has not what the synoptists pre- ' 
 sent ; and secondly, instead of this he has something which it is difficult to 
 reconcile with their statements. 
 
 As regards the first and negative side, it has to be explained how, on the 
 ordinary supposition concerning the author of the fourth gospel and the cor- 
 rectness of the synoptical account, it happens that John, who according to the 
 
 ^^ Paulus, ut sup. s. 549. 
 
 »» Theile, in Winer's and Engelhardt's krit. Journal, 2, s. 353 ; Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 
 616 f. 
 
 '» Comp. Weisse, die evang. Gesch. I, s. 611. 
 
RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. 641 
 
 two first gospels was one of the three whom Jesus took with him, to be the 
 more immediate witnesses of his conflict, passes in silence over the whole 
 event ? It will not suffice to appeal to his sleepiness during the scene ; for, 
 if this was a hindrance to its narration, all the Evangelists must have been 
 silent on the subject, and not John alone. Hence the usual expedient is 
 tried here also, and he is said to have omitted the scene because he found it 
 already presented with sufficient care in the writings of the synoptists.i But 
 between the two first synoptists and the third there is here so important a 
 divergency, as to demand most urgently that John, if he took their accounts 
 into consideration, should speak a mediating word in this difference. If how- 
 ever, John had not the works of his predecessors lying before him, he might 
 still, it is said, suppose that history to be sufficiently familiar to his readers as 
 a part of evangelical tradition.^ But as this tradition was the source of the 
 divergent representations of the synoptists, it must itself have early begun to " 
 exhibit variations, and to narrate the fact first in one way, then in another : 
 consequently on this view also there was a call on the author of the fourth 
 gospel to rectify these wavering accounts. Hence of late an entirely new 
 supposition has been adopted, namely, that John omits the events in Geth- 
 semane lest, by the mention of the strengthening angel, he should give any 
 furtherance to the Ebionitish opinion that the higher nature in Christ was an 
 angel, which united itself with him at baptism ; and now as it might be inferred, 
 again departed from him before the hour of suffering.^ But — not to urge that 
 we have already found any hypothesis of this nature inadequate to explain the 
 omissions in the Gospel of John — if this Evangelist wished to avoid any in- 
 dication of a close relation between Jesus and angels, he must also have ex- 
 cluded other passages from his gospel : above all, as Liicke remarks,* the 
 declaration concerning the ascending and descending of angels upon him, i. 52 ; 
 and also the idea, given indeed only as the conjecture of some bystanders, 
 that an angel spake to him, ayy«\os airip XeXoA-iyKei/, xii. 29. If, however, he on 
 any ground whatever, found special matter of hesitation in the appearance of 
 the angel in the garden : this would only be a reason for omitting the inter- 
 vention of the angel, with Matthew and Mark, and ' not for excluding the 
 whole scene, which was easily separable from this single particular. 
 
 If the mere absence of the incident from the narrative of John is not to be 
 explained, the difficulty increases when we consider what this Evangelist 
 communicates to us instead of the scene in the garden, concerning the mental 
 condition of Jesus during the last hours previous to his arrest. In the same 
 place which the synoptists assign to the agony in the garden, John, it is true, 
 has nothing, for he makes the capture of Jesus follow at once on his arrival 
 in the garden : but immediately before, at and after the last meal, he has dis- 
 courses inspired by a state of mind, which could hardly have as a sequel 
 scenes like those which according to the synoptical narratives occurred in the 
 garden. In the farewell discourses in John, namely, xiv.-xvii. Jesus speaks 
 precisely in the tone of one who has already inwardly triumphed over ap- 
 proaching suffering ; from a point of view in which death is quenched in the 
 beams of the glory which is to come after ; with a divine peace which is 
 cheerful in the certainty of its immovability : how is it possible that immedi- 
 ately after, this peace should give place to the most violent mental emotion, 
 this tranquillity, to a trouble even unto death, and that from victory achieved 
 he should sink again into doubtful contest, in which he needed strengthening 
 
 > Olshausen, 2, s. 429. 
 
 ' Liicke, 2, s. 591. 
 
 ' Schneckenburger, Beitrage, s. 65 f. 
 
 * Coram. I, s. 177 f. 
 
 S S 
 
642 PART in. CHAPTER III. § 126. 
 
 by an angel? In those farewell discourses^ he appears throughout as one 
 who from the plenitude of his inward serenity and confidence, comforts his 
 trembling friends : and yet he now. seeks spiritual aid from the drowsy dis- 
 ciples, for he requests them to watch with him ; there, he is so certain of the 
 salutary effects oE his afproaching death, as to assure his followers, that it is 
 well for them that he should go away, else, the Comforter irapdKX.T]TO's would 
 not come to, them : here, he again doubts whether his death be really the will 
 of the Father ; there, he exhibits a consoiousness which under the necessity of 
 death, inasmuch as it comprehends that necessity, recovers freedom, so that 
 his will to die is one with the divine will that he should die : here, these two 
 wills are so at variance, that the subjective;, submissively indeed, but painfully, 
 bows to the absolute. And these two opposite states of miqd are not even 
 separated by any. intervening incident of an appalling character, but only by 
 the short space of tinoe which elapsed during the walk from Jerusalem to th e 
 Mount of Olives, across the Kedron : just as if, in that brook^ as in another 
 Lethe, Jesus had lost all remembrance of the foregoing discourses. 
 
 It is true that we are here referred to the alternation of mental states, 
 which naturally becomes more rapid in proportion as the decisive moment 
 approaches ; * toi the fact that not seldom in. the life of believers there occurs 
 a sudden withdrawal of the higher sustenance of the soul, an abandonment of 
 them by God, which alone tenders the victory neveFtheless achieved truly 
 great and admirable.^ But this latter opinion at once betrays its unintelli- 
 gent origin from a purely imaginative species of thought (to which the soul can 
 appear like a lake, ebbing or flowing according as the floodgates of the con- 
 ducting canals are opened or closed), by the contradictions in which it is on 
 all sides involved. The triumph of Christ over the fear of death is said only 
 to appear in its true magnitude, when we consider, that while a Socrates could 
 only conquer because he remained in the full possession of his mental 
 energies, Christ was able to triumph over all the^ powers of darkness, even 
 when forsaken by God and the fulness of his spirit, by his merely human soul 
 ijruxr]' — but is not this the rankest Pelagianisra, the most flagrant contradic- 
 tion, of the doctrine of the church, as of sound philosophy, which alike main- 
 tain that without God, man can do no good thing, that only by ' his armour 
 can man repel the shafts of the wicked one ? To escape from thus contra- 
 dicting the results of sober reflection, the imaginative thinker is driven to 
 contradict himself, by' supposing that in the strengthening angel (which, 
 incidentally, contrary to the verbal significance of the text, is reduced to a 
 merely internal vision of Jesus) there was imparted to Jesus, when wrestling 
 in the extremity of his abandonment, an influx of spiritual strength ; so that 
 he thus would not, as it was at first vaunted, have conquered without, but 
 only with Divine aid ; if, in accordance with Luke, the angel be supposed to 
 have appeared prior to the last, most violent part of the conflict, in order to 
 strengthen Jesus for this ultimate trial. But rather than fall into so evident 
 a self-contradiction, Olshausen prefers covertly to contradict the text, and 
 hence transposes the order of the incidents, assuming, without further pre- 
 liminary, that the strengthening came after the third prayer, consequently 
 after the victory had been already gained, whence he is driven to the extreme 
 arbitrariness of interpreting the phrase : koL -yei/o'/tevos ev aytaviq. eKreviarfpov 
 irpo<njux«To, and being in an agony he frayed, as the pluperfect ^-^e had 
 prayed. 
 
 But setting aside this figurative representation of the cause which produced 
 
 ' Lucke, 2, s. 392 ff. 
 ' Olshausen, 2, s. 4219 f. 
 
RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. 643 
 
 the sudden change of mood in Jesus ; such a change is in itself hurthened 
 with many difficulties. Correctly speaking, what here took place in Jesus was 
 not a mere change, but a relapse of the most startling kind. In the so-called 
 sacerdotal prayer, John xvii. especially, Jesus had completely closed his 
 account with the Father ; aU fear in relation to what awaited him lay so far 
 behind the point which he had here attained, that he spent not a single word 
 on his own suffering, and only spoke of the afiliotions which threatened his 
 friends ] the chief subject of his communion with the Father was the glory 
 into which he was about to enter, and the blessedness which he hoped to 
 have obtained for his followers : so that his departure to the scene of his 
 arrest has entirely the character of an accessory fact, merely consummating 
 by external realization what was already inwardly and essentially effected. 
 Now if Jesus after this closing of his account with God, once more opened it ; 
 if after having held himself already victor, he once more sank into anxious 
 conflict : must he not have laid himself open to the remonstrance : why didst 
 thou not, instead of indulging in vain anticipations of glory, rather occupy 
 thyself betimes with earnest thoughts of the coming trial, that by such a pre- 
 paration, thou raightest spare thyself perilous surprise on its approach ? why 
 didst thou utter the words of triumph before thou hadst fought, so as to be 
 obliged with shame to cry for help at the on-coming of the battle ? In fact 
 after the assurance of already achieved victory expressed in the farewell dis- 
 courses, and especially in the final prayer, the lapse into such a state of mind 
 as that described by the synoptists, would have been a very humiliating 
 declension, which Jesus could not have foreseen, otherwise he would not have 
 expressed himself with so much confidence ; and which, therefore, would prove 
 that he was deceived in himself, that he held himself to be stronger than he . 
 actually found himself, and that he had given utterance to this too high self- 
 valuation, not without a degree of presumption. Those who regard this as 
 inconsistent with the equally judicious and modest character which Jesus 
 manifests on other occasions, will find themselves urged to the dilemma, that 
 either the farewell discourses in John, at least the final prayer, or else the 
 events in Gethsemane, cannot be historical. 
 
 It is to be regretted that in coming to a decision in this case, theologians 
 have set out rather from dogmatical prejudices than from critical grounds. 
 Usteri's assertion, at least, that the representation given in John of the state 
 of mind of Jesus in his last hours is the only correct one, while that of the 
 synoptists is unhistorical,'' is only to be accounted for by that author's then 
 zealous adherence to the paragraphs of Schleiermacher'9 Dogmatik, wherein 
 the idea of the impeccability of Jesus is carried to an extent which excludes 
 even the slightest degree of confl,ict ; for that, apart from such presuppositions, 
 the representation given in John of the last hours of Jesus, is the more 
 natural and appropriate, it might be difficult to prove. On the contrary, 
 Bretschneider might rather appear to be right, when he claims the superiority 
 in naturalness and intrinsic evidence of truth for the synoptists : ^ were it not 
 that our confidence in the decisions of this writer is undermined, by his dis- 
 like for the dogmatical and metaphysical purport of the discourses assigned 
 to this period in John — a. dislike which appears to indicate that his entire 
 polemic against John originated in the discoiidance between his own critical 
 philosophy of reflection, and the. speculative doctrine of the fourth gospel. 
 
 John, indeed, as even the author of the Probabilia remarks, has not wholly 
 passed over the anxiety of Jesus in relation to his approaching death ; he has 
 
 ' Cpmmenmip qt^lKcsi^,, qu* Evang^UijRO, Joannis ge|i)iipum e?se— ostsn^ijur, p. S7 ff- 
 8 Probab., p'. 33 ff- 
 
644 PART III, CHAPTER III. § 1 26. 
 
 only assigned to it an earlier epoch, John xii. 27 ff. The scene with which 
 John connects it takes place immediately after the entrance of Jesus into 
 Jerusalem, when certain Greeks, doubtless proselytes of the gate, who had 
 come among the multitude to the feast, wished to have an interview with hirn. 
 With all the diversity of the circumstances and of the event itself, there is 
 yet a striking agreement between what here occurs and what the synoptists 
 place in the last evening of the life of Jesus, and in the seclusion of the 
 garden. As Jesus here declares to his disciples, my soul is troubled even unto 
 death, TrepiXuTrds eo-rtv ^ i/fu^^ /xou Iw'i 6a.va.Tov (Matt. xxvi. 38): SO there he 
 says : Now is my soul troubled^ vvv •^ t/'vx'? /'■oi' TerdpaKTai (John xii, 27) ; as 
 he here prays, that if it be possible, this hourmay pass from him, Iva., el Swarov 
 ia-ri, rraptkOTj air' airov rj &pa (Mark xiv. 35) : so there he entreats : Father, 
 save me from this hour,_^a.Tip, a-Sxrov px Ik t^s <Spas Taur);s (John xii. 27) ; as 
 here he calms himself by the restriction : nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou 
 wilt, aXX' oi n eyo) Oekw, aXKa ri <r!s (Mark xiv. 36) : SO there, by the reflec- 
 tion : but for this cause came I to this hour, aXKa, 81a. toSto y\\Bov eis t^v S)pav 
 Tttv'njv (John xii. 27) ; iastly, as here an angel appears strengthening Jesus, 
 ayycXos huryywv (Luke xxii. 43) : so there something happens which occasions 
 the bystanders to obsero'e that an angel spake to him, ayyekoi air<3 X^XaX^Kev 
 (John xii. 29). This similarity has induced many of the more modern theo- 
 logians, to pronounce 4hfi incident in John xii. 27 ff., and that in Gethsemane 
 identical ; and after this admission the only question was, on which side the 
 reproach of inaccurate .narration, and more especially of erroneous position, 
 ought to fall. 
 
 Agreeably to the tendency of the latest criticism of the gospels, the burthen 
 of error in this matter has been more immediately cast on the synoptists. 
 The true occasion of the mental conflict of Jesus is said to be found only in 
 John, namely, in the approach of those Greeks who intimated to him through 
 Philip and Andrew their wish for an interview with him. These persons 
 doubtless wished to make the proposal that he should leave Palestine and 
 carry forward his work among the foreign Jews ; such a proposal held out to 
 him the enticement of escape from the threatening danger, and this for some 
 moments placed him in a state of doubt and inward conflict, which however 
 ended by his refusing to admit the Greeks to his presence." Here we have 
 the effects of a vision rendered so acute by a double prejudice, both critical 
 and dogmatical, as to read statements between the lines of the text; for 
 of such an intended proposal on the part of the Greeks, there is no trace in 
 John ; and yet, even allowing that the Evangelist knew nothing of the plan of 
 the Greeks from these individuals themselves, there must have been some 
 intimation in the discourse of Jesus that his emotion had reference to such a 
 proposal. Judging from the context, the request of the Greeks had no other 
 motive than that the solemn entrance of Jesus, and the popular rumour con- 
 cerning him, had rendered them curious to see and know the celebrated man ; 
 and this desire of theirs was not connected with the emotion which Jesus 
 experienced on the occasion, otherwise than that it led Jesus to think of the 
 speedy propagation of his kingdom in the Gentile world, and of its indis- 
 pensable condition, namely, his death. Here, however, the idea of his death 
 is only mediately and remotely presented to the soul of Jesus ; hence it is 
 the more difficult to conceive how it could affect him so strongly, as that he 
 should feel himself urged to beseech the Father for delivery from this hour ; 
 and if he were ever profoundly moved by the presentiment of death, the 
 
 Goldhorn, iiber das Schweigen des Job. Evangeliums iiber den Seelenkampf Jesu in 
 Gethsemane, in Tzschirner's Magazln. f. christl. Prediger, 1, 2, s. i if. 
 
RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. 645 
 
 synoptists appear to place this fear in a more suitable position, 'in immediate 
 proximity to the commencement of his sufferings. The representation of 
 John is also deficient in certain circumstances, presented by the synoptists, 
 which appear to vindicate the trouble of Jesus. In the solitude of the 
 garden and the gloom of night, such an ebullition of feeling is more con- 
 ceivable; and its unrepressed utterance to his most intimate and worthy 
 friends is natural and justifiable. But according to John that agitation 
 seized Jesus in the broad daylight, in a concourse of people ; a situation in 
 which it is ordinarily more easy to maintain composure, or in which at least it) 
 is usual, from the possibility of misconstruction, to suppress the more pro- 
 found emotions. 
 
 Hence it is more easy to agree with Theile's opinion, that the author of the 
 fourth gospel has inserted the incident, correctly placed by the synoptists, im 
 a false position.'^' Jesus having said, as an introduction to the answer which 
 he returned to the request of the Greeks, that they might see the man who had 
 been so glorified by his entrance into the city : Yes, the hour of my glorifica- 
 tion is come, but of glorification by death (xii. 23 i.) : this led the narrator 
 astray, and induced him, instead of giving the real answer of Jesus to the 
 Greeks together with the result, to make Jesus dilate on the intrinsic necessity 
 of his death, and then almost unconsciously to interweave the description of 
 the internal conflict which Jesus had to experience in virtue of his voluntary 
 sacrifice, whence he subsequently, in its proper place, omits this conflict. 
 There is nothing strange in Theile's opinion, except that he supposes it pos- 
 sible for the Apostle John to have made such a transposition. That the 
 scene in Gethsemane, from his having been asleep while it was passing, was 
 not deeply imprinted on his mind, and that it was besides thrust into the 
 background of his memory by the crucifixion which shortly followed, might 
 have been considered explanatory of an entire omission, or a merely summary 
 account of the scene on his part, but by no means of an incorrect position. 
 If notwithstanding his sleepiness at the time, he had taken any notice of the 
 event, he must at least have retained thus much — that that peculiar state of 
 mind in Jesus befel him close upon the commencement of his sufferings, in 
 the night and in privacy : how could he ever so far belie his memory as to 
 make the scene take place at a much earlier period, in the open day, and 
 among many people ? Rather than thus endanger the authenticity of the 
 Gospel of John, others, alleging the possibility that such a state of mind 
 might occur more than once in the latter part of the life of Jesus, deny the 
 identity of the two scenes." 
 
 Certainly, between the synoptical representation of the mental conflict of 
 Jesus and that given in John, besides the external difference of position, there 
 exist important internal divergencies ; the narrative in John containing 
 features which have no analogy with anything in the synoptical account of 
 the events in Gethsemane. it is true that the petition of Jesus in John for 
 for deliverance from iAi's hour, is perfectly in unison with his prayer in the 
 synoptists : but, on the other hand, there is no parallel to the additional 
 prayer in John : Father, glorify thy name, Trarep, ho^aa-ov a-ov to ovofta (xii. 
 28) : further, though in both accounts an angel is spoken of, yet there is no 
 trace in the synoptists of the heavenly voice which in the fourth gospel occa- 
 sions the belief that an angel is concerned. Such heavenly voices are not 
 found in the three first gospels elsewhere than at the baptism and again at 
 the transfiguration ; of which latter scene the prayer of Jesus in John : 
 
 " Vid. the Review of Usteri's Comm. crit., in Winer's, and Engelhardt's n. Icrit. Jour, 
 nal, 2, s. 359 ff. 
 
 »' Hase, L. J., § 134 : UicU, 2, s. 591 f., Anm. 
 
646 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 26. 
 
 Father, glorify thy name, may remind us. In the synoptical ^ description of 
 the transfiguration, it is true the expressions S6ia,glofy and So^a^av, to glorify, 
 are not found : but the Second Epistle to Peter represents Jesus as receiving 
 in the transfiguration honour and glory, riixrjv koI Sdfav, and the heavenly 
 voice as coming from the excellent glory, /ieyttXoirpcTr^s Sofa (i. 17 f-)- Ihns 
 in addition to the two narratives already considered, there pf-esents itself a 
 third as a parallel; since the scene in John xii. 27 ff. is on the one side, by 
 the trouble of ^irit and the angel, allied to the occurrences in Gethsemane^ 
 while on the other side, by the prayer for glorification and the confirmatory 
 voice from heaven, it has some affinity with tlie history of the transfiguration. 
 And here two cases are possible : either that the narrative of John is the 
 simple root, the separation of which into its constituent elements has given 
 rise in a traditional manner to the two synoptibal anecdotes tof the trans- 
 figuration and the agony in the garden ; or that these last are the original 
 formations, from the fusing and intermingling of which in the legend the 
 narrative of John is the mixed product : between which cases only the intrinsic 
 character of the narratives can decide. That the synoptical narratives of the 
 transfiguration and the agony in the garden are clear pictures, with strongly 
 marked features, can by itself prove nothing ; since, as we have sufficiently 
 shown, a narrative of legendary origin may just as well ptsssess these char- 
 acteristics as one of a purely historical nature. Thus if the narrative in John 
 were merely less clear and definite, this need not preverit it from being re- 
 garded as the original, simple sketch, from which the embellishing hand of 
 tradition had elaborated those more highly coloured pictures. But the fact 
 is that the narrative in John is wanting not only in definiteness, but in agree- 
 ment with the attendant circumstances and with itself. We have no intimation 
 what was the answer of Jesus to the Greeks^ or what became of those per- 
 sons themselves ; no appropriate motive is given for the sudden anguish of 
 Jesus and his prayer for glorification. Such a mixture of heterogeneous 
 parts is always the sign of a secondary product, of an alluvial conglomera- 
 tion ; and hence we seem warranted to conclude, that in the narrative of John 
 the two synoptical anecdotes of the transfiguration arid the agony in the 
 garden ar;e blended together. If, as is apparently the case, the legend when 
 it reached the fourth Evangehst presented these two incidents in faded colours,'" 
 atid in indistinct outline : it would be easy for him, since his idea of glorifica- 
 tion (So^d^av) had the double aspect of suffering and exaltation, to confuse 
 the two; what he gathered from the narrative of the agony in the garden, 
 of a prayer of Jesus to the Father, he might connect with the heavenly 
 voice in the history of the transfiguration, making this an answer to the 
 prayer ; to the voice, the more particular import of which, as given by the 
 synoptists, was unknown to him, he gave, in accordance, with his general 
 notion of this incident as a glory Sofa conferred on Jesus, the import : / have 
 both glorified and will glorify again, xat eSdfoo-a,. kox TfdhJi/ 8of ao-ft), and to 
 make it correspond with this divine response, he had to unite with the prayer 
 of Jesus for delivek-ance that for glorification also ; the strengthening angel, 
 of which the fourth Evangelist had perhaps also heard something, was in- 
 cluded in the opinion of the people as to the source of the heavenly voice ; 
 in regard to the time, John placed his narrative about midway between the 
 transfiguration and the agony in the garden, and from ignorance of the origi- 
 nal circumstances the choice in this respect was infelicitous. 
 
 If we here revert to the question from which we set out^ whether we are rather 
 
 " Against the oBFertce which it has pleased Tholuck (Glanbw. s. 41) to take at this ex- 
 pression (Verwischen), comp. the Aphorismen zur Apologie des Dr. Strauss und beiiits 
 Werkes, s. 69 f. 
 
RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. '64/ 
 
 to retain the farewell discourses in John as thorotighly historical, and re- 
 nounce the synoptioal representation of the scene in Gethsemane, Or vice 
 versa : we shall be more inclined^ considering the result of the inquiry just 
 instituted, to embrace the latter alternative. The difficulty, that it is scarcely 
 conceivable how John could accurately remember these long discourses of 
 Jesus, Paulus has thought to solve, by the conjecture, that the apostle, 
 probably on the next Sabbath, while Jesus lay in the grave, recalled to his 
 mind the conversations of the previous evening, and perhaps also wrote them 
 down.^^ But in that period of depression, which John also shared, he would 
 be scarcely in a condition to reproduce these discourses without obscuring 
 their peculiar hue of unclouded serenity ; on the contrary, as the author of 
 the Wolfenbiittel fragments observes, had the narrative of the weirds and deeds 
 of Jesus been committed to writing by the Evangelists in the couple of days 
 after the death of Jesus, when they had no longer any hope, all promises 
 would have been excluded from their gospels. 1* Hence even Liicke, in con- 
 sideration of the mode of expression in the farewell discourses, and parti- 
 cularly in the final prayer, being so peculiarly that of J-ohn, has relinquished 
 the position that Jesus spoke in the very words which John puts into his 
 mouth, i.e. the authenticity of these discourses in the strictest sense ; but 
 only to maintain the more firmly their authenticity in the wider sense, i.e. the 
 genuineness of the substantial thoughts.'^. Even this, however, has been 
 attacked by the author of the Probabilia, for he asks, with especial re- 
 ference to chap, xvii., whether it be conceivable that Jesus in the anticipation 
 of violent death, had nothing of more immediate concern than to commune 
 with God on the subject of his person, the works he had already achieved, 
 and the glory to be expected ? and whether it be not rather highly probable that 
 the prayelr flowed only from the mind of the writer, and was intended by him as 
 a confirmation of his doctrine of Jesus as the incarnate word Aoyos, and of the 
 dignity of the apostles ? '^ This representation is so far true that the final 
 prayer in question resembles not an immediate outpouring of soul, but a 
 product of reflection — is rather a discourse on Jesus than a discourse from. 
 him. It presents everywhere the mode of thought of one Who stands far in 
 advance of the circumstances of which he writes, and hence already sees the 
 form of Jesus in the glorifying haze of distance ; an illusion which he heightens 
 by putting his own thoughts^ which had sprung from an advanced develop- 
 ment of the Christian community, into the mouth of its Founder prior to its 
 actual existence. But in the preceding farewell discourses also there are 
 many thoughts which appear to have taken their shape from an experience 
 of the event. Their entire tone may be the most naturally explained by the 
 supposition, that they are the work of one to whom the death of Jesus was 
 already a past event, the terrors of which had melted away in its blessed 
 consequences, and in the devotional contemplation of the church. In par- 
 ticular, apart from what is said of the return of Christ, that era in the Christian 
 cause 'which is generally called the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, is pre- 
 dicted in the declarations concerning the Paraclete, and the judgment 
 which he frould hold over the world (xiv. 16 ff 25^ xv. 26, xvi. 7 ff. 13 fi".), 
 with a distinctness which seems to indicate light borrowed from the issue. 
 
 In relation however, to the fact that the farewell discourses involve the 
 decided foreknowledge of the immediately approaching result, the suff'erings 
 and death of Jesus (xiii. 18 ff.-, 33> 38, xiv. 30 f. xvi. S & 16, 32 f.), the 
 
 1" L. J. I, b, s.i6sf. 
 
 " Vom Zweck J. und seiner Junger, a. 124. 
 
 15 2, s. 588 f. 
 
 18 Utsup. 
 
648 PART III. CHAPTER rfl. § 1 26. 
 
 narrative of John stands on the same ground with the synoptical one, since 
 this also rests on the presupposition of the most exact prescience of the hour 
 and moment when the sufferings will commence. It was not only at the last 
 meal and on the departure to the Mount of OHves, that this foreknowledge 
 was shown, according to the three first gospels, for in them as well as in John, 
 Jesus predicts that the denial of Peter will take place before the cock crow; 
 not only does the agony in the garden rest on the foreknowledge of the im- 
 pending sufferings, but at the end of this conflict Jesus is able to say that 
 now, at this very minute, the betrayer is in the act of approaching (Matt, 
 xxvi. 45 f.). Paulus, it is true, maintains that Jesus saw from a distance the 
 troop of guards coming out of the city, which, as they had torches, was cer- 
 tainly possible from a garden on the Mount of Olives : but without being 
 previously informed of the plans of his enemies, Jesus could not know 
 that he was the object of pursuit ; and at any rate the Evangelists narrate 
 the words of Jesus as a proof of his supernatural knowledge. But if ac- 
 cording to our previous inquiry, the foreknowledge of the catastrophe in 
 general could not proceed from the higher principle in Jesus, neither could 
 that of the precise moment when it would commence; while that he in 
 a natural way, by means of secret friends in the Sanhedrim, or otherwise, was 
 apprised of the fatal blow which the Jewish rulers with the help of one of 
 his disciples were about to aim at him in the coming night, we have no 
 trace in our Evangelical accounts, and we are therefore not authorized to pre- 
 suppose anything of the kind. On the contrary, as the above declaration of 
 Jesus is given by the narrators as a proof of his higher knowledge, either we 
 must receive it as such, or, if we cannot do this, we must embrace the 
 negative inference, that they are here incorrect in narrating such a proof; 
 and the positive conclusion on which this borders is, not that that knowledge 
 was in fact only a natural one, but, that the evangelical narrators must have 
 had an interest in maintaining a supernatural knowledge of his approaching 
 sufferings on the part of Jesus ; an interest the nature of which has been 
 already unfolded. 
 
 The motive also for heightening the prescience, into a real presentiment, 
 and thus for creating the scene in Gethsemane, is easy of discovery. On the 
 one hand, there cannot be more a obvious proof thiat a foreknowledge of an 
 event or condition has existed, than its having risen to the vividness of a 
 presentiment ; on the other hand, the suffering must appear the more awful, if 
 the mere presentiment extorted from him who was destined to that suffering, 
 anguish even to bloody sweat, and prayer for deliverance. Further, the 
 sufferings of Jesus were exhibited in a higher sense, as voluntary, if before 
 they came upon him externally, he had resigned himself to them internally ; 
 and lastly, it must have gratified primitive Christian devotion, to withdraw 
 the real crisis of these sufferings from the profane eyes to which he was ex- 
 posed on the cross, and to enshrine it as a mystery only witnessed by a narrow 
 circle of the initiated. As materials for the formation of this scene, besides 
 the description of the sorrow and the prayer which were essential to it, there 
 presented itself first the image of a cup Trirr^piov, used by Jesus himself as a 
 designation of his sufferings (Matt. xx. 22 f.) ; and secondly, Old Testament 
 ^ passages, in Psalms of lamentation, xlii. 6, 12, xliii. 5, where in the LXX. 
 the xjwxr) ireplkviroi (soul exceeding sorrowful) occurs, and in addition to this 
 the expression Ims Savarou {unto death) the more naturally suggested itself, 
 since Jesus was here really about to encounter death. This representa- 
 tion must have been of early origin, because in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 (v. 7) there is an indubitable allusion to this scene. — Thus Gabler said too 
 little when he pronounced the angelic appearance, a mythical garb of the fact 
 
ARREST OF JESUS. 649 
 
 that Jesus in the deepest sorrow of that night suddenly felt an accession of 
 mental strength ; since rather, the entire scene in Gethsemane, because it 
 rests on presuppositions destitute of proof, must be renounced. 
 
 Herewith the dilemma above stated falls to the ground, since we must pro- 
 nounce unhistorical not only one of the two, but both representations of the 
 last hours of Jesus before his arrest. The only degree of distinction between 
 the historical value of the synoptical account and that of John is, that the 
 former is a mythical product of the first era of traditional formation, the 
 latter of the second, — or more corrctly, the one is a product of the second 
 order, the other of the third. The representation common to the synoptists 
 and to John, that Jesus foreknew his sufferings even to the day and hour of 
 their arrival, is the first modification which the pious legend gave to the real 
 history of Jesus ; the statement of the synoptists , that he even had an ante- 
 cedent experience of his sufferings, is the second step of the mythical ; while, 
 that although he foreknew them, and also in one instance had a foretaste of 
 them (John xii. 27 ff.), he had yet long beforehand completely triumphed 
 over them, and when they stood immediately before him, looked them in 
 the face with unperturbed serenity — this representation of the fourth gospel 
 is the third and highest grade of devotional, but unhistorical embellish- 
 ment. 
 
 § 127. 
 
 ARREST OF JESUS. 
 
 In Strict accordance with the declaration of Jesus that even now the be- 
 trayer is at. hand, Judas while he is yet speaking approaches with an armed 
 force (Matt. xxvi. 47 parall., comp. John xvii. 3). This band, which accord- 
 ing to the synoptists came from the chief priests and elders,^ was according to 
 Luke led by the captains of the temple or/paTT^yois toC i«poS, and hence was 
 probably a detachment of the soldiers of the temple, to whom, judging from 
 the word oy\.(K, and from staves ivkoi being mentioned among the weapons, 
 was apparently joined a tumultuous crowd : according to the representation 
 of John, who, together with the servants or officers of the chief priests and 
 Pharisees, vTrripeTaK t5v apxiipUv KoX ^apia-aCav, speaks of a dand cnreipa, and 
 a captain xiXio/>«°s> without mentioning any tumultuary force, it appears as if 
 the Jewish magistrates had procured as a support a detachment of Roman 
 
 soldiery.! ^ , , , . ^ 
 
 According to the three first Evangelists, Judas steps forth and kisses Jesus, 
 in order by this preconcerted sign to indicate him to the approaching band 
 as the individual whom they were to seize : according to the fourth gospel, 
 on the contrary, Jesus advances apparently out of the garden {^^^W^v) to 
 meet them, and presents himself as the person whom they seek. In order to 
 reconcile this divergency, some have conceived the occurrences thus : Jesus, 
 to prevent his disciples from being taken, first went towards the multitude, 
 and made himself known; hereupon Judas stepped forth, and mdicated him 
 bv the kiss 2 But had Jesus already made himself known, Judas might have 
 spared the kiss ; for that the people did not believe the assertion of Jesus 
 that he was the man whom they sought, and still waited for its confirmation 
 by the kiss of the bribed disciple, is a supposition incompatible with the 
 
 1 Vid. Lucke, in loc. ; Hase, L. J., § I35- 
 
 2 Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 567. 
 
6SO PART III. CHAPTER III; § 1 27. 
 
 statement of the fourth gospel that the words I am he, made so strong an 
 impression on them that they went backward a.nd fell to the •ground. Hence 
 others have inverted the order of the scene, imagining that Judas firlst stepped 
 forward and distinguished Jesus by the kiss, and that then, before the crowd 
 could press into the garden, Jesus himself advanced andlnade himsdfknowii.^ 
 But if Judas had already indicated him by the kiss, and he had so well under- 
 stood the object of the kiss as is implied in his answer to it, Luke v. 48 : 
 there was ho need for him still to make himself kttowh, seeing that he was 
 already Ibade known ; to do so for the protectioti of the disciples was equally 
 superfluous, since he must have inferred from the traitor's kiss, that it was 
 intended to single him out and carry him away from his followers ; if he did 
 so merely to show his courage, this was almost theatrical : while, in general, 
 the idea that Jesus, between the kiss of Judas, and the entrance of the crowd, 
 which was certainly immediate, advanced towards the latter with questions 
 and answers, thirows iiito his demeanour a degree of hulty and Jjrecipitancy 
 so ill suited to his citcuiiistahces, that the Evangelist-scan scarcely have tneant 
 such ah infei'ehce to be drawn. It should therefore be acknowledged that 
 neither of the two rejjresehtations is designed as a supplement to the other,* 
 since each has a dilferent conception of the ftianneir in Which Jestis was 
 made known, and in which Judas was active in the affair. That Judas was 
 guide to them that took Jesus, oSi^yos rois crvXXa;8oi)o-t rov 'Itjo-ovv (Acts i. 16), 
 all the Evangelists agree. But while according to the synoptical account the 
 task of Judas includes not only the pointing out of the place, but also the dis- 
 tinguishing of the person by the kiss, John makes the agency of Judas end 
 with the indication of the place, and represents him after the arrival on the 
 spot as standing inactive among the crowd (eid-rijKei 8c koX 'lovSas — /a€t av^usv, 
 V. 5). Why John does not assign to Judas the task of personally indicating 
 Jesus, it is easy to see : because, namely, he would have Jesus appear, not 
 as one delivered up, but as delivering himself up. So that his sufferings 
 may be manifested in a higher degree as undertaken vbluhtarily. We have 
 only to remember how the earliest opponents of Christianity imputed the re- 
 tirement of Jesus out of the city into the distant garden, as an ignominious 
 flight from his enemies,* in order to find it conceivable that there arose among 
 the Christians at an early period the inclination to transcend the common 
 evangelical tradition in representing his demeanour on his arrest in the light 
 of a voluntary self-resignation. 
 
 In the synoptists the kiss of Judas is followed by the cutting question bt 
 Jesus to the traitor ; in John, after Jesus has uttered the iyto iifii., I am he, it 
 is stated that under the influence of these commanding words, the multitude 
 who had come out to seize him went backward and fell to the ground, so that 
 Jesus had to repeal his declaration and as it were encourage the people to 
 seize him. Of late it has been denied that there was any miracle here : the 
 impression of the personality of Jesus, it is said, acted psychologically on those 
 among the crowd who had already often seen and heard Jesus; and in sup- 
 port of this opinion reference is made to the examples of this kind in the life 
 
 ' Lucke, 2, s. 599 ; Hase, ut sup. ; Olshausen, -2.. s. 435. 
 
 * How can Luckfe explain the omission of the kiss of Judas in the Gospel of John from its 
 having been too notorious a fact? and how can he adduce as an analogous instance the omis- 
 sion of the transaction between the betrayer and the Sanhedrim by John? for this, as some- 
 thing passing behind the scenes, might very well be left out, but by no means an incident 
 which, like that kiss, happened so conspicuously in the foreground and centre of the scene. 
 
 6 So says the Jew of Celsus, Orig. c. Cels. ii. 9 : kiruh^ ^tm.% eXiy^avre^ airbv koX 
 KaTnyvivTes iiffTiov/iev KoKA^eadai, Kprn-Tb/ievoi likv Kcd SiadiSpda-KWV iiroveiSuTTiraTa ia\ii>. 
 When we, having eonvieted and condemtted him, had determi'ned that he should svffer ^punish- 
 ment ; concealing himself, and -endeavouring lo escape, he experienced a most shameful capture. 
 
ARREST OF JESUS. . 651 
 
 of Marius, Coligny^ and others.^ But neither in the synoptical account, ac- 
 count, according to which there needed the indication of Jesus by the kiss, 
 nor in that of John, according to which there needed the declaration of Jesus, 
 I am he, does Jesus appear to be known to the crowd, at least in such a 
 manner as to exercise any profound influence over them ; while the above 
 examples only show that sometimes the powerful impression of a man's per- 
 sonality has paralyzed the murderous hands of an individual or of a few, but 
 not that a whole detachment of civil officers and soldiers has been made, not 
 merely to draw back, but to fall to the ground. It answers no purpose for 
 Liicke to make first a fe* fall down and then the whole crowd, except that of 
 rendering it impossible to imagine the scene with gravity. Hence we turn to 
 the old theologians, who here unanimously acknowledge a miracle. The 
 Christ who by word of his mouth cast down the hostile multitude, is no other 
 than he who according to 2 Thess. ii. 8, shall consume the Antichrist with 
 the spirit of his mouth, i.e. not the historical Christ, but the Christ of the 
 Jewish and primitive Christian imagination. The author of the fourth gospel 
 especially, who had so often remarked how the enemies of Jesus and their 
 creatures Were unable to lay hands on him, because his hour was not yet 
 come (vii. 30, 32, 44 fF., viii. 20), had an inducement, now, when the hour was 
 come, to represent the ultimately successful attempt as also failing at the first 
 in a thoroughly astounding manner; especially as this fully accorded with the 
 interest by which he is governed throughout the description of this whole 
 scene — the demonstrating that the capture of Jesus was purely an act of his 
 own free will. When jesus lays the soldiers prostrate by the power of his 
 word, he gives theiii a proof of what he cOuld do, if to liberate himself were 
 his object ; and when he allows himself to be seized immediately after^ this 
 appears as the most purely voluntary self-sacrifice. Thus in the fourth gospel 
 Jesus gives a practical proof of that power, Whith in the first he only ex- 
 presses by words, when he says to one of his disciples : Thinkest thou that f 
 caftnot now pray to my Father, arid he shall presently give me twelve legions oj 
 avgels {v. S3) ? 
 
 After this, the author of the fourth gospel very inappropriately holds up the 
 solicitude which Jesus manifested that his disciples should not be taken 
 captive with him, as a fulfilment of the declaration of Jesus (xvii. 12), that he 
 had lost none of those intrusted to him by the Father ; a declaration which 
 was previously more suitably referred to the spiritual preservation of his 
 disciples. As the next feature in the scene, all the Evahgelists agree, that 
 when the soldiers began to lay hands on Jesus, one of his disciples drew his 
 sword, and cut off the ear of the high priest's servant, an act which met with 
 a reproof from Jesus. Still Luke and John have each a peculiar trait. Not 
 to mention that both particularize the ear as the right ear, while their two 
 predecessors had left this point undetermined ; the latter not only gives tlie 
 iiame of the wounded servant, but states that the diSciple who wounded him- 
 was Peter. Why the synoptists do not name Peter, it has been sought tu" 
 
 m 
 
 « Lucke, 2, s. 597 f. ; Olshausen, 2, s. 435 ; Tholuck, s. 299. fhe reference to the 
 ...urderer of Coligny is, however, unwarranted, as any one will find who will look into the 
 book incorrectly cited by Tholuck : Serrdni cdmmentatoHum de statu religioms et reip. m 
 resno Gallia, L. x. p. 32, b. The murderer was not in the least withheld from the prosecu- 
 tion of his design by the firmness of the noble old man. Comp. also Schiller, Werke, I 
 Bd s 182 f 384 ; Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopadie, 7 Band, s. 452 f. Such inaccuracit 
 in the department of modern history cannot indeed excite surprise in a writer who elsewhere 
 (Glaubwiirdigkeit, s. 437) speaks of the duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe's father, as the 
 brother of Louis XVL How can a knowledge so diversified as that of Dr. Tholuck be 
 always quite accurate. 
 
652 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 12/. 
 
 explain in different ways. The supposition that they wished to avoid com- 
 promising the apostle, who at the time of the composition of their gospels was 
 yet living,'' belongs to the justly exploded fictions of an exegesis framed on 
 the false principle of supplying conjecturally all those links in the chain of 
 natural causation which are wanting in the gospels. That these Evangelists 
 elsewhere for the most part omit names,* is too sweeping an accusation as 
 regards Matthew, though he does indeed leave unnamed indifferent persons, 
 such as Jairus, or Bartimaeus ; but that the real Matthew, or even the common 
 evangelical tradition, thus early and generally should have lost the name from 
 an anecdote of Peter, so thoroughly accordant with the part played by this 
 apostle, can scarcely be considered very probable. To me, the, reverse would 
 be much more conceivable, namely, that the anecdote was originally current 
 without the mention of any name (and why should not a less distinguished 
 adherent of Jesus — for from the synoptists it is not necessarily to be inferred 
 that it was one of the twelve — whose name was therefore the more readily for- 
 gotten, have had courage and rashness enough to draw his sword at that 
 crisis ?), but a later narrator thought such a mode of conduct particularly 
 suited to the impetuous character of Peter, and hence ascribed it to him by a 
 combination of his own. On this supposition, we need not appeal, in sup- 
 port of the possibility that John could know the servant's name, to his ac- 
 quaintance with the household of the high priest,^ any more than to a 
 peculiar acquaintance of Mark with some inhabitants of Jericlio, in explana- 
 tion of his obtaining the name of the blind man. 
 
 The distinctive trait in Luke's account of this particular is, that Jesus heals 
 the servant's ear, apparently by a miracle. Olshausen here makes the com- 
 placent remark, that this circumstance best explains how Peter could escape 
 uninjured — astonishment at the cure absorbed the general attention : while 
 according to Paulus, Jesus by touching the wounded ear (dt/fa/tevos)^ only 
 meant to examine it, and then told what must be done for the purpose of 
 healing (tao-aro avTov) ; had he cured it by a miracle there must have been 
 some notice of the astonishment of the spectators. Such pains-taking inter- 
 pretations are here especially needless, since the fact that Luke stands alone 
 in giving the trait in question, together with the whole tenor of the scene, 
 tells us plainly enough what opinion we are to form on the subject. Should 
 Jesus, who had removed by his miraculous power so much suffering of which 
 he was innocent, leave uncured suffering which one of his disciples out of 
 attachment to him, and thus indirectly he himself, had caused ? This must 
 soon have been found inconceivable, and hence to the stroke of the sword of 
 Peter was united a miraculous cure on the part of Jesus — the last in the evan- 
 gelical history. 
 
 Here, immediately before he is led away, the synoptists place the remon- 
 strance which Jesus addressed to those who had come to take him prisoner : 
 that though, by his daily public appearance in the temple he had given the 
 best opportunity for them to lay hands upon him, yet — a bad augury for the 
 purity of their cause^they came to a distance to seek him with as many 
 preparations, as against a thief? In the fourth gospel, he is made to say 
 something similar to Annas, to whose inquiries concerning his disciples and 
 his doctrine, he replies by referring him to the publicity of his entire agency, 
 to his teaching in the temple and synagogue (xviii. 20 f.). Luke, as if he had 
 gathered from both, that Jesus had said something of this kind to the high 
 priest, and also at the time of his arrest, represents the chief priests and elders 
 
 ' Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 570. 
 
 ? Ibid. 
 
 ' As Lixcke, Tholuck and Olshausen, in loc. 
 
JESUS BEFORE THE HIGH PRIEST. 653 
 
 themselves as being present in the garden, and Jesus as here speaking to them 
 in the above manner, which is certainly a mere blunder.'" 
 
 According to the two first Evangelists, all the disciples now fled. Here 
 Mark has the special particular, that a young man with a linen cloth cast 
 about his naked body, when he was in danger of being seized, left the linen 
 cloth and fled naked. Apart from the industrious conjectures of ancient and 
 even modern expositors, as to who this young man was ; this information of 
 Mark's has been regarded as a proof of the very early origin of this gospel, on 
 the ground that so unimportant an anecdote, and one moreover to which no 
 name is attached, could have no interest except for those who stood in close 
 proximity to the persons and events." But this inference is erroneous ; for 
 the above trait gives even to us, at this remote distance of time, a vivid idea 
 of the panic and rapid flight of the adherents of Jesus, and must therefore 
 have been welcome to Mark, from whatever source he may have received it, 
 or how late soever he may have written. 
 
 § 128. 
 
 EXAMINATION OF JESUS BEFORE THE HIGH PRIEST. 
 
 From the place of arrest the syrioptists state Jesus to have been led to the 
 high priest, whose name, Caiaphas, is, however, only mentioned by Matthew ; 
 while John represents him as being led in the first instance to Annas, the 
 father-in-law of the existing high priest ; and only subsequently to Caiaphas 
 (Matt. xxvi. 57 ff. parall. ; John xviii. 12 ff.). The important rank of Annas 
 renders this representation of John as conceivable as the silence of the 
 synoptists is explicable, on the ground that the ex-high priest had no power 
 of deciding in this cause. But it is more surprising that, as must be believed 
 from the first glance, the fourth Evangelist merely gives some details of the 
 transaction with Annas, and appears entirely to pass by the decisive trial 
 before the actual high priest, except that he states Jesus to have been led 
 away to Caiaphas. There was no more ready expedient for the harmonists 
 than the supposition, which is found e.g. in Euthymius, that John, in con- 
 sistency with the supplementary character of his gospel, perserved the examina- 
 tion before Annas as being omitted' by the synoptists, while he passed by that 
 before Caiaphas, because it was described with sufficient particularity by his 
 predecessors.! This opinion, that John and the synoptists speak of two 
 entirely distinct trials, has a confirmation in the fact that the tenor of the 
 respective trials is totaly diff'erent. In that which the synoptists describe, 
 according to Matthew and Mark, the false witnesses first appear agamst 
 Jesus ■ the high priest then asks him if he really pretends to be the Messiah, 
 and on receiving an affirmative answer, declares him guilty of blasphemy, and 
 worthy of death, whereupon follows maltreatment of his person. In the trial 
 depicted by John, Jesus is merely questioned concernmg his disciples and his 
 doctrine, he appeals to the publicity of his conduct, and after having been 
 maltreated for this reply by an attendant (iTr^ptV^s), is sent away without the 
 oassine of any sentence. That the fourth Evangelist should thus give no 
 particulars concerning the trial before Caiaphas is the more surprising since 
 m the one before Annas, if it be this which he narrates, according to his own 
 representation nothing was decided, and consequently the grounds for the 
 
 >» Schleieimacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 290. 
 11 Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 576, 
 1 Paulus, ut sup. s. 577 ; Olshausen, 2, s. 244. 
 
6S4 PART in. CHAPTER III. § 1 28. 
 
 condemnation of Jesus by the Jewish authorities, and the sentence itself, are 
 altogether wanting in his gospel. To explain this by the sMpplementary object 
 of John is to impute to him tooT irrational a mode of procedure ; for if he 
 omitted facts because the other Evangelists had already given them, without 
 intimating that he did so purely for that reason, he could only reckon on intro- 
 ducing confusion, and entailing on himself the suspicion of having given a 
 false narrative, He can hardly have had the opinion that the trial before 
 Annas was the principal one, and that therefore it was allowable to omit the 
 other, since he reports no judgment as having been passed in the former ; 
 but if he knew the trial before Caiaphas to have been the principal one, and 
 yet gave no more particular information concerning it, this also was a highly 
 singula!? course for him to take. 
 
 Thus the yery simplest view' of the case seems at once to point to the 
 attempt to discover in the account of the fouirth gospel indications that it 
 also is to be understood of the trial before Caiaphas. What affords the 
 strongest presumption of the identity of the two trials is the identity of an 
 incident concomitant with both, John as well as the synoptists making Peter 
 deny Jesus during the trial detailed. It is further remarkable that after Annas 
 has been spoken of, at v. 13, as the father-in-law of Caiaphas, there follows at 
 v. 14, a more precise designation of CaiapKas as the author of the fatal 
 counsel, recorded in John xi. 50, although apparently the Evangelist proceeds 
 to narrate a trial held, not before Caiaphas,. but before Annas. Moreover in 
 the description of the trial itself, there is mention throughout, of the palace 
 and of questions from the hi^h priest, a title which John nowhere else applies 
 to Annas, but only to Caiaphas. But that in accordance with the above 
 supposition, the Evangelist from v. 15, should be describing something which 
 passed before Caiaphas, appears impossible from v. 24, for it is there first said 
 that Annas sent Jesus to Caiaphas, so that he must until then have been 
 before Annas. With ready thought this difficulty was first met by removing 
 the 24th verse to the place where it was wanted, namely, after v. 13, and 
 laying the blame of its present too late position on the negligence of tran- 
 scribers.^ As, however, this transposition, being destitute of any critical 
 authority, must appear an arbitrary and violent expedient for getting rid of the 
 difficulty, it was next tried whether the statement in v. 24, without being 
 actually moved from its place, might not receive such an interpretation as to 
 come in point of sense after v. 13 ; i.e., the word amiimiXGi was taken as a 
 pluperfect, and it was supposed that John intended here to supply retro- 
 spectively what he had forgotten to observe at v. 13, namely, that Annas 
 immediately sent Jesus to Caiaphas, so that the trial just described was con- 
 ducted by the l?itter. * As the general possibility of such an mdllage temporum 
 is admissible, the only question is whether it be accordant with the style of 
 the present writer, and whether it be intimated in the context. In the latter 
 respect it is certainly true that if nothing important had occurred in the 
 presence of Annas, the Evangelist, in annexing to his notice of the relation- 
 ship of Annas to Caiaphas the more precise designation of the latter, might 
 be drawn on to speak without further preface of the trial before Caiaphas, 
 and might afterwards, by way of appendix, at some resting place, as here at 
 theclose of the transactions of the high priest with Jesus, intimate the trans- 
 ition which he had made. An accurate Greek writer certainly in this case, 
 if he did not use the pluperfect, would at least have made evident the 
 explanatory reference to what had preceded, by the addition of a yap to the 
 
 * Thus e.g. Erasmus, in Joe, 
 
 » Thus Winer, N. T. GrAmija., § 41, 5 ; Tholufik *pd Ljicke, in loc. 
 
JESUS BEFORE THE HIGH PRIEST. 655 
 
 aonst. Our Eva,ngelist, however, in whom the characteristic of the Hellen- 
 istic writers to connect their propositions but loosely, in accordance with the 
 genms of the Hebrew language, is very strongly marked, might perhaps have 
 mtroduced that supplementary observation even without a particle, or, accor- 
 dmg to the ordinary reading, by ow, which is not merely indicative that a 
 subject IS continued, but also thai; it is resumed.* If these considerations be 
 held to establish th^t he also intended to narrate the trial before Caiaphas : 
 it is clear from the aspect of his account taken by itself, as well as from the 
 previous comparison with the synoptical one, that his narrative cannot be 
 complete. 
 
 We turn, therefore, to the account of the synoptists, and among them also, 
 namely, between the two first and the third, we find numerous divergencies. 
 According to the former, when Jesus was brought into the palace of the high 
 priest, the scribes and elders were already assembled, and while it was still 
 night proceeded to hold a trial, in which first witnesses appeared, and then 
 the high priest addressed to him the decisive question, on the answer to 
 which the assembly declared him worthy of death (in John also the trial goes 
 forward in the night, but there is no intimation of the presence of the great 
 council). According to the representation of the third gospel, on the other 
 hand, Jesus throughout the night is merely kept under guard in the high 
 priest's palace, and maltreated by the underlings ; and, when at the break of 
 day the Sanhedrim assembles, no witnesses appear, but the high priest pre- 
 cipitates the sentence by the decisive question. Now, that in the depth of the 
 night, while Judas was gone out with the guard, the members of the council 
 should have assembled themselves for the reception of Jesus, might be regarded 
 as improbable, and in so far, the preference might be given to the represen- 
 tation of the third gospel, which makes them assemble at daybreak only : ^ 
 were it not that Luke himself neutralizes this advantage by making the high 
 priests and elders prt;sent at the arrest ; a zeal which might well have driven 
 them straightway to assemble for the sake of accelerating the conclusion. But 
 in the account of Matthew and Mark also there is this singularity, that after 
 they have narrated to us the whole trial together with the sentence, they 
 yet (xxvii. i and xv. i) say : when the morning was come, they, took counsel, 
 ■Kpm.a% h\ yeva/jievrii arviJi^ovX.iov tKal3ov, thuis making it appear, if not that the 
 members of the Sanhedrim reassembled in the morning, which could hardly 
 be, seeing that they had been together the whole night ; yet that they now 
 first came to a definite resolution against Jesus, though, according to these 
 same Evangelists, this had already been done in the nocturnal council. ^ It 
 may be said that to the sentence of death already passed in the night, was 
 added in the morning the resolution to deliver Jesus to Pilate : but according 
 to the then existing state of the law, this followed as a matter of course, and 
 needed no special resolution. That Luke and John omit the production of 
 the false witnesses, is to be regarded as a deficiency in their narrative. For 
 from the coincidence of John ii. 19 and Acts vi. 14 with Matthew and Mark, 
 it is highly probably that the declaration about the destriiction and rebuilding 
 of the temple was really uttered by Jesus ; while that that declaration should 
 be used as an article of accusation against him on his trial was an almost 
 necessary result. The absence of this weighty point in Luke, Schleiermacher 
 explains by the circumstance, that the author of this passage in the third 
 gospel had indeed followed the escort which conducted Jesus from the garden, 
 but had with UQOSt others been excluded from the palace <?f th^ high priest, 
 
 * Winer, Gramm., § 57, 4. 
 
 ' Thus Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 295. 
 
 ' Schleiermacher, ut sup. j comp. Fmtzsphe, in loc. Matth. 
 
6S6 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 128. 
 
 and consequently narrated what occurred there merely from hearsay. But, 
 not to anticipate future points, the single trait of the cure of the servant's ear 
 suffices to preclude our attributing to the author of this portion of Luke's 
 gospel so close a proximity to the fact. It rather appears that the above 
 declaration came to the third Evangelist under the form of an article of 
 accusation against Stephen, instead of Jesus ; while the fourth has it only as 
 a declaration from Jesus, and not as an article of accusation against him. This 
 subject having however necessarily come under our observation at an earlier 
 point of our inquiry, it is needless to pursue it further here.'' 
 
 When Jesus made no answer to the allegations of the witnesses, he was 
 asked, according to the two first Evangelists, by the high priest,— in the third 
 gospel, without the above cause, by the Sanhedrim, — whether he actually 
 maintained that he was the Messiah (the Son of God) ? To this question, 
 according to the two former, he at once replies in the affirmative, in the 
 words <rv eiTras, f/tou hast said, and eyu etyni, / am, and adds that hereafter or 
 immediately (dir' apn) they would see the Son of man sitting on the right 
 hand of the divine power, and coming in the clouds of heaven ; according to 
 Luke, on the other hand, he first declares that his answer will be of no avail, 
 and then adds that hereafter the Son of man shall sit on the right hand of the 
 power of God ; whereupon all eagerly ask : Art thou then the Son of God ? 
 and he replies in the affirmative. Thus Jesus here expresses the expectation 
 that by his death he will at once enter into the glory of sitting as Messiah at 
 the right hand of God, according to Ps. ex. i, which he had already, Matt. 
 xxii. 44, interpreted of the Messiah. For even if he at first perhaps thought 
 of attaining his messianic glorification without the intervention of death, 
 because this intervention was not presented to him by the ideas of the age ; 
 if it was only at a later period, and as a result of circumstances, that the fore- 
 boding of such a necessity began to arise and gradually to acquire distinctness 
 in his mind ; now, a prisoner, forsaken by his adherents, in the presence of 
 the rancorously hostile Sanhedrim, it must, if he would retain the conviction 
 of his messiahship, become a certainty to him, that he could enter into his 
 messianic glorification by death alone. When, according to the two first 
 Evangelists, Jesus adds to the sitting on the right hand of power, the coming in 
 the clouds of heaven, he predicts, as on an earlier occasion, his speedy advent, 
 and in this instance he decidedly predicts it as a return. Olshausen maintains 
 that the air' a.pn of Matthew ought to be referred only to Ka9i^fievov k. t. A.., 
 because it would not suit ipxofxevov k. t. A.., since it is not to be conceived that 
 Jesus could then have represented himself as about to come in the clouds : a 
 purely dogmatical difficulty, which does not exist in our point of view, but 
 which cannot in any point of view warrant such an offence against gram- 
 matical interpretation as this of Olshausen. On the above declaration of 
 Jesus, accordmg to Matthew and Mark the high priest rends his clothes, 
 declaring Jesus convicted of blasphemy, and the council pronounces him 
 guilty of death ; and in Luke also, all those assembled observe that now there 
 is no need of any further witness, since the criminal declaration has been 
 uttered by Jesus in their own hearing. 
 
 To the sentence is then added in the two first Evangelists the maltreatment 
 of Jesus, which John, who here mentions no sentence, represents as following 
 the appeal of Jesus to the publicity of his work, while Luke places it before 
 the trial ; more probably because it was not any longer precisely known when 
 this maltreatment occurred, than because it was repeated at various times and 
 under various circumstances. In John the maltreatment is said to proceed 
 
 'Vol. II. §67. Vol. III. § 114. 
 
JESUS BEFORE THE HIGH PRIEST. 657 
 
 from an attendant, vTrf\f>iTt]<i, in Luke, from the men that held Jesus, avSpes 
 <rovi-)(avTf.% tov "I. ; in Mark, on the contrary, those who began to spit in the 
 face of Jesus (xal ^pfavro tivcs ifiTrrueiv airu) must have been some of those 
 (irai'Tes) who had just before condemned him, since he distinguishes the 
 virripiTa<s, servants, from them ; and in Matthew also, who, without introducing 
 a new nominative proceeds merely with tote ^p^avro, then began they, it is 
 plainly the members of the Sanhedrim themselves who descend to such un- 
 worthy conduct : which Schleiermacher justly considers improbable, and in 
 so far prefers the representation of Luke to that of Matthew.^ In John the 
 maltreatment consists in a blow on the cheek with the palm of the hand, pama-fm, 
 which an attendant gives Jesus on account of a supposed insolent answer to 
 the high priest ; in Matthew and Mark, in spitting on the face (evenruo-av eis 
 TO irpoa-inTzov avrov), and blows on the head and cheek, to which it is added, 
 in Luke also, that he was blindfolded, then struck on the face, and scoffingly 
 asked to attest his messianic second sight by telling who was the giver of the 
 blow.^ According to Olshausen, the spirit of prophecy did not scorn to pre- 
 dict these rudenesses in detail, and at the same time to describe the state of 
 mind which the Holy One of God opposed to the unholy multitude. He 
 correctly adduces in relation to this scene Isa. 1. 6 f. j (LXX.) ; I gave my 
 back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair : / hid not 
 my face from shame and spitting, etc., tov j/Stov /aov SeSioKa eis ndariyai, ras 8e 
 orta-yovas fjiov cts paTTtcr/xaTa, to Se Trpocroiirov fiov ovk aTrearpe^j/a airo aur)(yvi^'S 
 ilLtnvoriiATuiv k- t. X. (comp. Mic. iv. 14) ; and for the manner in which Jesus 
 bore all this, the well-known passage Isa. hii. 7, where the servant of God is 
 represented as enduring maltreatment in silence. But the interpretation of 
 these passages in Isaiah as prophecies concerning the Messiah is equally 
 opposed to the context in both instances : i" consequently the agreement of 
 the result with these passages must either have been the effect of human 
 design, or purely accidental. Now it is certain that the servants and soldiers 
 in their maltreatment had not the intention of causing prophecies to be ful- 
 filled in Jesus ; and it will hardly be chosen to suppose that Jesus affected 
 silence with this view; while to deduce from mere chance a coincidence 
 which certainly, as Olshausen says, extends to minutiae, is always unsatis- 
 factory. Probable as it is from the rude manners of that age, that Jesus was 
 maltreated when a prisoner, and moreover that amongst other things he 
 received just such insults as are described by the Evangelists : it is yet 
 scarcely to be denied, that their descriptions are modelled on prophecies 
 which, when once Jesus appeared as a sufferer and maltreated person, were 
 applied to himj and however consistent it may be with the character of 
 Jesus that he should have borne this maltreatment patiently, and repelled 
 improper questions by a dignified silence : the Evangelists would scarcely 
 have noticed this so often and so solicitously,^' if it had not been their mten- 
 tion thus to exhibit the fulfilment of Old Testament oracles. 
 
 8 MaUhew does not mention the blindfolding, and appears to imagine that Jesus named! 
 the person who maltreated him, whom he saw, but did not otherwise know. 
 "> Vid. Gesenius, in loc. , , , , 
 
 •1 Matth. xxvi. 63 ; comp. Mark xiv. 61 : 6 5^ I. eo-iuTro. 
 
 Matth. xxvii. 12 : oM^;' dire/c/jfraro. , .s, « .- 
 
 Matth. xxvii. 14 ; comp. Mark xv. 5 : rai oiK ixeKplvaro avTH irpis ovU Iv pntia, wan 
 
 ffavfui^eiv rbv ^ye/iica \Uy.. _ _ 
 
 Luke xxiii. 9 : ouVos 5k oiSiv iweKptvaTo avT(ji. 
 John xix. 9:65^ 'I. d-irdxpirty oix ISwKev air^ 
 
 T T 
 
6s 8 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 29. 
 
 s 129. 
 
 THE DENIAL OF PETER. 
 
 The two first Evangelists state, that at the moment in which Jesus was led 
 away from the garden, all the disciples forsook him and fled j but in their 
 accounts, as well as in those of Luke and John, Peter is said to have followed 
 him at a distance, and to have obtained admission with the escort into the 
 court of the high priest's palace : while, according to the synoptists, it is 
 Peter alone who gives this proof of courage and attachment to Jesus, which 
 however soon enough issues in the deepest humiliation for him ; the fourth 
 Evangelist gives him John for a companion, and moreover represents the 
 latter as the one who, by means of his acquaintance with the high priest, 
 procures admittance for Peter into his palace ; a divergency which, with the 
 whole peculiar relation in which this gospel places Peter with respect to John, 
 has been already considered. ^ 
 
 According to all the Evangelists, it was in this court, ai\^, that Peter, in- 
 timidated by the inauspicious turn in the fortunes of Jesus, and the high 
 priest's domestics by whom he was surrounded, sought to allay the repeatedly 
 expressed suspicion that he was one of the followers of the arrested Galilean, 
 by reiterated asseverations that he knew him not. But, as we have already 
 intimated, in relation to the owner of this habitation, there exists an apparent 
 divergency between the fourth gospel and the synoptists. In John, to judge 
 from the first glance at his narrative, the first denial (xviii. 17) happens during 
 the trial before Annas, since it stands after the statement that Jesus was led 
 to Annas (v. 13), and before the verse in which he is said to have been sent 
 to Caiaphas (v. 24), and only the two further acts of denial (v. 25-27), in so 
 far as they follow the last-named statement, and as immediately after them 
 the delivery to Pilate is narrated (v. 28), appear in John also to have occurred 
 during the trial before Caiaphas and in his palace. But to this supposition 
 of a different locality for the first denial and the two subsequent ones, there is 
 a hindrance in the account of the fourth gospel itself. After the mention of 
 the first denial, which happened at the door of the palace (of Annas appar- 
 ently), it is said that the night being cold the servants and officers had made 
 a fire of coals, and Peter stood with them and warmed himself, rjv Se koI /act' 
 aurSi' 6 Ilerpos ottojs kol dep/iaivofji.evo's (v. 18). Now, when farther on, the 
 narrative of the second and third denial is opened with nearly the same 
 words : And Simon Peter stood and warmed himself, ^v 8e lift-uyv IleTjoos eo-Tws 
 Kttt fiep/iaivo/xevos (v. 25) : this cannot be understood otherwise than as an 
 allusion to the previously noticed circumstances of the fire of coals, and of 
 Peter's standing by it to warm himself, and hence it must be inferred that the 
 Evangelist intended to represent the second and third denial as having 
 occurred by the same fire, consequently, on the above supposition, likewise in 
 the house of Annas. It is true that the synoptists speak of a fire in the court 
 of the palace of Caiaphas also (Mark v. 54; Luke v. 55), at which Peter 
 warmed himself (here, however, sitting, as in John standing) : but it does not 
 thence follow that John also imagined a similar fire to have been in the court 
 of the actual high priest, and according to the supposition on which we have 
 hitherto proceeded, he only mentions such a fire in the house of Annas. 
 They who regard as too artificial an expedient the conjecture of Euthymius, 
 that the dwellings of Annas and Caiaphas perhaps had a common court, and 
 that consequently Peter could remain standing by the same fire after Jesus 
 
 ' Vol. II. § 74. 
 
DENIAL OF PETER. 659 
 
 had been led away from the former to the latter, prefer the supposition that 
 the second and third denial occurred, according to John, not after, but during 
 the leading away of Jesus from Annas to.Caiaphas.^ Thus on the presup- 
 position that John narrates a trial before Annas, the difference between the 
 gospels in relation to the locality of the denial remains a total one ; and in 
 this irreconcilable divergency, some have decided in favour of John, on the 
 ground that the scattered disciples had only fragmentary information concern- 
 ing this scene,— that Peter himself being a stranger in Jerusalem did not 
 know in which palace he had, to his misfortune, entered ; but that he, and 
 after him the first Evangelists, supposed the denials to have taken place in 
 the court of Caiaphas ; whereas John, from his more intimate acquaintance 
 with the city and the high priest's palace, was able to rectify this mistake.* 
 But even admitting the incredible supposition that Peter erroneously believed 
 himself to have denied Jesus in the palace of Caiaphas, still John, who in 
 these days was in the society of Peter, would certainly at once have corrected 
 his assertion, so that such an erroneous opinion could not have become fixed 
 in his mind. Hence it might be preferred to reverse the attempt, and to 
 vindicate the synoptists at the expense of John : were it not that the observa- 
 tions contained in the foregoing section (according to which John, after having 
 merely mentioned that Jesus was led away to Annas, may speak from v. 15 
 of what occurred in the palace of Caiaphas), present a possible solution of this 
 contradiction also. 
 
 In relation to the separate acts of denial, all the Evangelists agree in 
 stating that there were three of them, in accordance with the prediction of 
 Jesus ; but in the description of the several instances they are at variance. 
 First, as it regards place and persons ; according, to John the first denial 
 is uttered on the very entrance of Peter, to a damsel that kept the door, 
 iraxlLaKi] 6vpwp6<i (v. 17); in the synoptists, in the inner court, where Peter 
 sat at the fire, to a datnsel, vaiSla-Kri (Matt. v. 69 f. parall). The second takes 
 place, in John (v. 25), and also in Luke, who at least notices no change of 
 position (v. 58), at the fire: in Matthew (v. 71) and Mark (v. 68 ff.), after 
 Peter was gone out into the porch, irvkuiv, irpoai'h.ov ; further, in John it is 
 made to several persons ; in Luke, to one ; in Matthew to another damsel 
 than the one to whom he made the first denial ; in Mark, to the same. The 
 third denial happened, according to Matthew and Mark, who mention no 
 change of place after the second, likewise in the porch ; according to Luke 
 and John, since they likewise mention no change of place, undoubtedly still 
 in the inner court, at the fire ; further, according to Matthew and Mark, to 
 many bystanders, according to Luke to one : according to John, to one who 
 happens to be a relative of the servant who had been wounded in the garden. 
 As regards the conversation which passed on this occasion, the suspicious 
 queries are at one time addressed to Peter himself, at another to the by- 
 standers, in order to point him out to their observation, and in the two first 
 instances they are given by the different Evangelists with tolerable agreement, 
 as merely expressing the opinion that he appeared to be one of the adherents 
 of the man recently taken prisoner. But in the third instance, where the 
 parties render a motive for their suspicion, they according to the synoptists 
 mention his Galilean dialect as a proof of its truth ; while in John the relative 
 of Malchus appeals to his recollection of having seen Peter m the garden. 
 Now the former mode of accounting for the suspicion is as natural, as the 
 second together with the designation of the individual who adduced it as a 
 
 2 Thus Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 289 ; Olshausen, 2, s. 445. 
 
 3 Thus Paulus, ut sup. s. 577 f. 
 
660 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 29. 
 
 relative of Malchus, appears artificial, and fabricated for the sake of firmly 
 interweaving into the narrative the connexion of the sword-stroke given in the 
 garden with the name of Peter.* In the answers of Peter there is the diver- 
 gency, that according to Matthew he already the second time fortifies his 
 denial by an oath, while according to Mark this is not the case until the third 
 denial, and in the two other Evangelists this circumstance is not mentioned 
 at all; moreover, Matthew, to preserve a gradation, adds on the^third denial 
 that Peter began to curse KaTavadefji.aTi^eiv as well as to swear ofirieiv, a re- 
 presentation which when compared with the other gospels may appear 
 exaggerated. 
 
 So to adjust these very differently narrated denials in such a manner that 
 no Evangelist may be taxed with having given an incorrect or even a merely 
 inexact account, was no light labour for the harmonists. Not only did the 
 older, supranaturalistic expositors, such as Bengel, undertake this task, but 
 even recently, Paulus has given himself much trouble to bring the various 
 acts of denial recounted by the Evangelists into appropriate order, and thus 
 to show that they have a natural sequence. According to him, Peter denies 
 the Lord, 
 
 1. Before the portress (ist denial in John) ; 
 
 2. Before several standing at the fire (2nd in John) ; 
 
 3. Before a damsel at the fire (ist in the synoptists) ; 
 
 4. Before one who has no particular designation (and in Luke) ; 
 
 5. On going out into the porch, before a damsel (2nd in Matthew and 
 
 Mark. Out of this denial Paulus should in coilsistency have made 
 two, since the damsel, who points out Peter to the bystanders, is 
 according to Mark the same as the one in No. 3, but according to 
 Matthew another) ; 
 
 6. Before the relative of Malchus (3rd in John) ; 
 
 7. Before one who professes to detect him by his Galilean dialect (3rd in 
 
 Luke), and who forthwith 
 
 8. is seconded by several others, to whom Peter yet more strongly affirms 
 
 that he knows not Jesus (3rd in Matthew and Mark). 
 Meanwhile by such a discrimination of the accounts out of respect to the 
 veracity of the Evangelists, there was 'incurred the danger of impeaching the 
 yet more important veracity of Jesus ; for he had spoken of a threefold 
 denial : whereas, on the plan of discrimination, according to the more or less 
 consequent manner in wliich it is carried out, Peter would have denied Jesus 
 from 6 to 9 times. The old exegesis found help in the canon : abnegatio ad 
 plures plurium interrogationes facta uno faroxysmo, pro unci, numeratur.^ But 
 even granting such a mode of reckoning admissible, still, as each of the four 
 narrators for the most part notices a greater or less interval between the 
 separate denials which he recounts; in each instance, denials related by 
 different Evangelists, e.g. one narrated by Matthew, one by Mark, and so 
 forth, must have occurred in immediate succession : a supposition altogether 
 arbitrary. Hence of late it has been a more favourite expedient to urge that 
 the thrice rpli in the mouth of Jesus was only a round number intended to 
 express a repeated denial, as also that Peter, once entangled in the confusion 
 to a supposed necessity for falsehood, would be more likely to repeat his 
 asseverations to 6 or 7 than merely to three inquirers.^ But even if, according 
 to Luke (v. 59 f.), the interval from the first denial to the last be estimated as 
 more than an hour, still such a questioning from all kinds of people on all 
 
 ■• Comp. Weisse, die evang. Geschichte, i, s. 609. 
 
 * Bengel, in the Gnomon. 
 
 * Paulus, ut sup. s. 578. 
 
DENIAL OF PETER. 66 1 
 
 Sides, as well as the ultimate impunity of Peter amid so general a suspicion, is 
 extremely improbable ; and when expositors describe the state of mind of 
 Peter during this scene as a complete stupefaction,^ they rather present the 
 condition which befals the reader who has to arrange his ideas in such a 
 crowd of continually repeated questions and answers having an identical 
 meaning— like the incessant and lawless beating of a watch out of order. 
 Olshausen has justly discarded the attempt to remove such diflferences as a 
 fruitless labour : nevertheless he, on the one hand, immediately proceeds to a 
 forced reconciliation of the divergencies at some points of the narrative ; and 
 on the other, he maintains that there were precisely three denials, whereas 
 Paulus again has evinced a more correct disternment in pointing out the 
 premeditated effort of the Evangelists to show that the denial was threefold. 
 What on that evening happened repeatedly (not, however, eight or nine times), 
 was represented as having happened precisely three times, in order to furnish 
 the closest fulfilment to the prediction of Jesus, which was understood in its 
 strictest literality. 
 
 The termination, and as it were the catastrophe, of the whole history of the 
 denial is, in all the narratives, according to the prediction of Jesus, introduced 
 by the crowing of the cock. In Mark, it crows after the first denial (v. 68), 
 and then a second time after the third ; in the other Evangelists only once, 
 after the last act of denial. While John concludes his account with this par- 
 ticular, Matthew and Mark proceed to tell us that on hearing the cock crow, 
 Peter remembered the words of Jesus and wept ; but Luke has an additional 
 feature peculiar to himself, namely, that on the crowing of the cock Jesus 
 turned and looked at Peter, whereupon the latter, remembering the prediction 
 of Jesus, broke out into bitter weeping. Now according to the two first 
 Evangelists, Peter was not in the same locality with Jesus : for he is said to 
 have been without £$m (Matt. v. 69) ox beneath kcitcu (Mark v. 66) in the court 
 iv Ty avX-g, and it is thus implied that Jesus was in an inner or upper apartment 
 of the palace : it must be asked, therefore, how could Jesus hear the denial of 
 Peter, and thereupon turn to look at him ? In relation to the latter part of 
 the difficulty, the usual answer is that Jesus was at that moment being led from 
 the palace of Annas to that of Caiaphas, and looked significantly at the weak 
 disciple in passing^ But of such a removal of Jesus Luke knows nothing ; 
 and his expression, the Lord turned and looked on Peter, koi a-rpacjieh 6 Kuptos 
 tVey8A.ei/f£ T<3 niTpio, would not so well imply that Jesus looked at Peter in 
 passing, as that he turned round to do so when standing; besides, the above 
 supposition will not explain how Jesus became aware that his disciple had 
 denied him, since in the tumult of this evening he could not well, as Paulus 
 thinks, have heard when in a room of the palace the loud tones of Peter in the 
 court. It is true that the express distinction of the places in which Jesus and 
 Peter were is not found in Luke, and according to him Jesus also might hav-e 
 had to remain some time in the court : but first, the representation of the other 
 Evangelists is here more probable: secondly, Luke's own narrative of the denial 
 does not previously create the impression that Jesus was in the immediate 
 vicinity. But hypotheses for the explanation of that look of Jesus might 
 have been spared, had a critical glance been directed to the origin of the 
 incident. The unaccountable manner in which Jesus, who in the whole pre- 
 vious occurrence is kept behind the scene, here all on a sudden casts a glance 
 upon it, ought itself, together with the silence of the other Evangelists, to have 
 been taken as an indication of the real character of this feature in Luke's nar- 
 
 ' Hess, Geschichte Jesu, 2, s. 343. 
 
 « Paulus and Olshausen, in loc. ; Schleiermacher, ut sup. 289 ; Neander, s. 622, Anm. 
 
662 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 130. 
 
 rative. When also it is added, that as Jesus looked on Peter the latter 
 remembered the words which Jesus had earlier spoken to him concerning his 
 coming denial ; it might have been observed that the glance of Jesus is nothing 
 else than the sensible image of Peter's remorseful recollection. The narrative 
 of John, which is in this case the simplest, exhibits the fulfilment of _the pre- 
 diction of Jesus objectively, by the crowing of the cock ; the two first Evan- 
 gelists add to this the subjective impression, which this coincidence made on 
 Peter ; while Luke renders this again objective, and makes sorrowful remem- 
 brance of the words of the master, with the force of a penetrating glance, pierce 
 the inmost soul of the disciple.^ 
 
 § 130- 
 
 THE DEATH OF THE BETRAYER. 
 
 On hearing that Jesus was condemned to death, Judas, according to the 
 first gospel (xxvii. 3 ff.), was smitten with remorse, and hastened to the chief 
 priests and elders to return to them the thirty pieces of silver, with the declara- 
 tion that he had betrayed an innocent person. When however the latter 
 scornfully retorted that on him alone rested all responsibility for that deed, 
 Judas, after casting down the money in the temple, impelled by despair, went 
 away and hanged himself. Hereupon the Sanhedrists, holding it unlawful to 
 l)ut the money returned by Judas into the treasury, since it was the price of 
 blood, bought with it a potter's field as a burying place for strangers. To this 
 particular the Evangelist appends two remarks : first, that from this mode of 
 purchase, the piece of ground was called \!at field of blood up to his time : and 
 secondly, that by this course of things an ancient prophecy was fulfilled. — The 
 rest of the Evangelists are silent concerning the end of Judas ; but on the 
 other hand we find in the Acts of the Apostles (i. 16 ff.) some information on 
 this subject which in several points diverges from that of Matthew. Peter, 
 when about to propose the completion of the apostolic number by the choice 
 of a new colleague, thinks proper, by way of preliminary to remind his hearers 
 of the manner in which the vacancy in the apostolic circle had arisen, i.e. of 
 the treachery and the end of Judas ; and in relation to the latter he says, that 
 the betrayer purchased himself a field with the reward of his crime, but fell 
 headlong, and burst asunder in the midst, so that all his bowels gushed out, 
 which being known in all Jerusalem, the piece of ground was called aKeA.Sa/ia, 
 i.e. the field of blood. In addition to this, the narrator makes Peter observe 
 that these occurrences were a fulfilment of two passages in the Psalms. 
 
 Between these two accounts there exists a double divergency : the one per- 
 taining to the manner of the death of Judas, the other to the statement when and 
 by whom the piece of ground was bought. As regards the former, Matthew de- 
 clares that Judas laid violent hands on himself out of remorse and despair : 
 whereas in the Acts nothing is said^of remorse on the part of the traitor, and his 
 death has not the appearance of suicide, but of an accident, or more accur- 
 ately, of a calamity decreed by heaven as a punishment ; further, in Matthew 
 he inflicts death on himself by the cord : according to the representation of 
 Peter, it is a fall which puts an end to his life, by causing a horrible rupture of 
 the body. 
 
 How active the harmonists of all times have been in reconciling these 
 divergencies, may be seen in Suicer 1 and Kuinol : here we need only briefly 
 adduce the principal expedients for this purpose. As the divergency lay 
 
 ° Comp. de Wette, in loc. 
 ' Thesaurus, vid. aTrirfxw, 
 
DEATH OF THE BETRAYER. 663 
 
 cluefly in the words aTn^y^aro, he hanged himself, in Matthew, and irpr;i/^s 
 ytvoit.^o'i, falling headlong, in Luke, the most obvious resource W3.s to see 
 whether one of these expressions could not be drawn to the side of the other. 
 1 his has been tried with ajrjjyfaTo in various ways ; this word being interpreted 
 at one time as signifying only the torments of a guilty conscience,^ at another, 
 a disease consequent on these,' at another, any death chosen out of melancholy 
 and despair ; * and to this it has been thought that the statement -irprivrj^ 
 yci'd/u,6i/os K. T. X. in the Acts added the more precise information, that the kind 
 of death to which Judas was driven by an evil conscience and despair was 
 precipitation from a steep eminence. Others on the contrary have sought to 
 accommodate the meaning of Trpijv^s yevofievo^ to awi/jy^aTo, understanding it 
 merely to express as a circumstance what ain^y$aTo expresses as an act : and 
 accordingly maintaining that if the latter should be rendered se suspendit, the 
 former should be translated by suspensusfi From repugnance to the obvious 
 violence of this attempt, others, sparing the natural meaning of the expressions 
 on both sides, have reconciled the divergent accounts by the supposition that 
 Matthew narrates an earlier, the author of the Acts a later, stage of the events 
 which marked the end of Judas. Some of the ancient commentators indeed 
 separated these two stages so widely as to see in Matthew's statement 
 (dinjyfaTo) only an unsuccessful attempt at self-destruction, which from the 
 bough whereon he suspended himself having broken, or from some other 
 cause, Judas outlived, until the judgment of heaven overtook him in the 
 wpr/v^s yGiofixvo<;, falling headlong.^ But since Matthew evidently intends in his 
 expression a.irt)yto-To to narrate the last moments of the traitor : the two epochs, 
 the account of which is supposed to be respectively given by Matthew and the 
 Acts, have in later times been placed in closer proximity, and it has been held 
 that Judas attempted to hang himself to a tree on an ^eminence, but as the 
 rope gave way or the branch broke, he was precipitated into the valley over 
 steep cliffs and sharp bushes, which lacerated his body.'' The author of a 
 treatise on the fate of Judas in Schmidt's Bibliothek* has already remarked as 
 a surprising circumstance, how faithfully according to this opinion, the two 
 narrators have shared the information between them : for it is not the case 
 that one gives the less precise statemeiit, the other the more precise ; but that 
 one of them narrates precisely the first part of the incident without touching 
 on the second, the other, the second without intruding on the first ; and Hase 
 justly maintains that each narrator knew only the state of the fact which he 
 has presented, since otherwise he could not have omitted the other half.^ 
 
 After thus witnessing the total failure of the attempts at reconciliation in re- 
 lation to the first difference ; we have now to inquire whether the other, relative 
 to the acquisition of the piece of ground, can be more easily adjusted. It 
 consists in this : according to Matthew, it is the members of the Sanhedrim 
 
 ' Grotius. 
 
 ^ Heinsius. 
 
 ■* Perizonius. „ , . . „ . ... 
 
 5 Thus the Vulgate and Erasmus. See in opposition to all these interpretations, Kuinol, 
 
 in Matth., p. 473 ff. „ .,,,,,. i 0/ a \ 
 
 8 CEcnmenius on the Acts, I. : 6 'loiiSaj ovk ivavidave rrf iyxi'V, &>->- ^ire^fu, rarei/ex^eis 
 Trprf ToO dxo7r«7^^oi. Comp. Theophylact, on Matth. xxvii. and a Schol. ' k.iro\^vapiov ap. 
 
 ^^'"-Thus, after Casaubon, Paulus, 3, b,. s. 457 t; Kuinol, in Matth. 747 f;; Winer, b. 
 Realw Art Tudas, and with some indecision Olshausen, 2, s. 455 f. Even Fntzsche is be- 
 come so weary on the long way to these last chapters of Matthew, that he contents himself 
 with this reconciliation, and, on the presupposition of it, maintains that the two accounts 
 concur amicissime. 
 
 8 2 Band, 2 Stuck, s. 248 f. 
 
 " L J § 132. Comp. Theile, zur Biographic J esu, § 33. 
 
664 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 13O. 
 
 who, after the suicide of Judas, purchase a field with the money which he had 
 left behind (from a potter moieover— a particular which is wanting in the Acts); 
 whereas, according to the Acts, Judas himself purchases the piece of ground, 
 and on this very spot is overtaken by sudden death ; and from this dififer- 
 ence there results another, namely, that according to the latter account, it was 
 the blood of the betrayer shed on the piece of ground, according to the former, 
 the blood of Jesus cleaving to the purchase money, which caused the ground 
 to be named the field of blood, oypos or x«)piov ai/iaTos. Now here Matthew's 
 manner of expressing himself is so precise, that it cannot well be twisted so as 
 to favour the other narrative ; but the word kK.Ti\<Ta.To (he purchased ox acquired) 
 in the Acts presents inviting facilities for its adaptation to Matthew. By the 
 reward of treachery, Judas acquired a field— such, it is said, is the meaning in 
 the Acts— not immediately, but mediately; since by returning the money he 
 gave occasion for the purchase of a piece of ground ; not for himself, but for 
 the Sanhedrim or the public good.i" But however numerous tlie passages 
 adduced in which Kraa-Oai has the signification : to acquire for another, still in 
 such instances it is necessary that the other party for whom one acquires 
 should be specified or intimated, and when this is not the case, as in the pas- 
 sage in the Acts, it retains the original meaning : to acquire for one's self." 
 This Paulus felt, and hence gave the facts the following turn : the terrible fall 
 of Judas into a hme pit was the cause of this piece of ground being purchased 
 by the Sanhedrim, and thus Peter might very well say of Judas ironically, that 
 in death by the fall of his corpse he had appropriated to himself a fine 
 property.^* But in the first place this interpretation is in itself strained ; and 
 in the second, the passage cited by Peter from the Psalms :. let his habitation be 
 desolate, yevr/Oi^oi ^ £7ravA.is avTov efyqfws, shows that he thought of the piece of 
 ground as the real property of Judas, and as being judicially doomed to deso- 
 lation as the scene of his death. 
 
 • According to this, neither the one difference nor the other admits of a favour- 
 able reconciliation ; indeed the existence of a real divergency was admitted 
 even by Salmasius, and Hase thinks that he can explain this discrepancy, 
 without endangering the apostolic origin of the two statements, from the 
 violent excitement of those days, in consequence of which only the general 
 fact that Judas committed suicide was positively known, and concerning the 
 more particular circumstances of the event, various reports were believed. 
 But in the Acts nothing is said of suicide, and that two apostles, Matthew and 
 Peter (if the first gospel be supposed to proceed from the former, the discourse 
 in the Acts from the latter), should have remained so entirely in the dark con- 
 cerning the death of their late colleague, a death which took place in their im- 
 mediate vicinity, that one of them represented him as dying by accident, the 
 other voluntarily, is difficult to believe.- That therefore only one of the two 
 accounts can be maintained as apostolic, has been correctly perceived by the 
 author of the above-mentioned treatise in Schmidt's Bibliothek. And in 
 choosing between the two he has proceeded on the principle that the narrative 
 the least tending to glorification is the more authentic ; whence he gives the 
 preference to the account in the Acts before that in the first gospel, because 
 the former has not the glorifying circumstances of the remorse of Judas, and 
 his confession of the innocence of Jesus. But, it is ever the case with two con- 
 tradictory narratives, not only that if one stands it excludes the other, but also 
 that if one falls it shakes the other : hence, if the representation of the facts 
 which is attested by the authority of the Apostle Matthew be renounced, there 
 
 " Vid. Kuinol, inMatth., p. 748. 
 
 " Vid. Schmidt's Biblioth., ut sup. s. 251 f. 
 
 *' Paulus, 3, b, s. 457 f. ; Fritzsche, p. 799. 
 
DEATH OF THE BETRAYER. 66$ 
 
 is no longer any warrant for the other, which professedly rests on the testimony 
 of the Apostle Peter. 
 
 If then we are to treat the two narratives on the same footing, namely as 
 legends, with respect to which it is first to be discovered how far their his- 
 torical nucleus extends, and how far they consist of traditional deposits ; we 
 must, in order to be clear on the subject, consider the data which form the 
 roots of the two narratives. Here we find one which is common to both, with 
 two others of which each has one peculiarly to itself. The datum common 
 to both narratives is, that there was in Jerusalem a piece of ground which was 
 called the fidd of blood, dypos or -jfuiplov a'/xaros, or in the original tongue, ac- 
 cording to the statement of the Acts, dKcXSa/io,. As this information is con- 
 currently given by two narratives in other respects totally divergent, and as, 
 besides, the author of the first gospel appeals to the actual practice of his day 
 in proof that the field was called by this name : we cannot well doubt the 
 existence of a piece of ground so named. That it really had a relation to the 
 betrayer of Jesus is less certain, since our two narratives give different accounts 
 of this relation : the one stating that Judas himself bought the .property, the 
 other that it was not purchased until after his death, with the thirty pieces of 
 silver. We can therefore draw no further conclusion than that the primitive 
 Christian legend must have early attributed to that field of blood a relation to 
 the betrayer. But the reason wherefore this relation took various forms is to 
 be sought in the other datum from which our narratives proceed, namely, in 
 the Old Testament passages, which the authors cite (from diff'erent sources, 
 however), as being fulfilled by the fate of Judas. 
 
 In the passage of the Acts, Ps. Ixix. 25, and Ps. cix. 8, are quoted in this 
 manner. The latter is a psalm which the first Christians from among the 
 Jews could not avoid referring to the relation of Judas to Jesus. For not 
 only does the author, alleged to be David, but doubtless a much later indi- 
 vidual,^* dilate from the opening of the psalm on such as speak falsely and 
 insidiously against him, and return him hatred for his love, but from v. 6, 
 where the curses commence, he directs himself against a particular person, so 
 that the Jewish expositors thought of Doeg, David's calumniator with Saul, 
 and the Christians just as naturally of Judas. From this psalm is gathered 
 the verse which, treating of the transfer of one office to another, appeared 
 perfectly to suit the case of Judas. The other psalm, it is true, speaks more 
 vaguely of such as hate and persecute the author without cause, yet this also 
 is ascribed to David, and is so similar to the other in purport and style, that 
 it might be regarded as its parallel, and if curses might be applied to the 
 betrayer out of the former, they might be so out of the latter.^* Now if Judas 
 had actually bought with the wages of his treachery a piece of land, which 
 from being the scene of his horrible end, subsequently remained waste : it 
 was a matter of course to refer to him precisely those passages in this psalm 
 which denounce on the enemies the desolation of their habitation etravAts 
 As, however, from the divergency of Matthew, the fact that Judas himself 
 bought that piece of ground and came to his end upon it, is doubtful: while, 
 it can scarcely be supposed that the piece of land on which the betrayer of 
 Jesus met his end would be so abhorrent to the Jews that they would let it 
 lie waste as a land of blood ; it is more probable that this name had another 
 oriein no longer to be discovered, and was interpreted by the Christians in 
 accordance with their own ideas; so that we must not derive the application 
 of the passage in the Psalms, and the naming of that waste piece of land, from 
 
 " W?er Srts'of "hi°N. T. alsp we find passages from this psalm messianically applied : 
 as V. 4, John XV. 25. v. 9 5 John ii- 17 5 and Johnxix. 28 f., probably v. 21. 
 
(£6 PART III. CHAPTER III., § 1 3 1. 
 
 an actual possession of it by Judas, but on the contrary, we must refer to 
 those two causes the existence of the legend, which ascribes such a possession 
 to Judas. For if the two psalms in question were once applied to the be- 
 trayer, and if in one of them the desolation of his £n-ai;Xts(LXX.) was denounced, 
 he must have previously been in possession of such an cTrauXts, and this it 
 was thought, he would probably have purchased with the reward of his 
 treason. Or rather, that out of the above psalms the desolation of the iira.vkK 
 was a particular specially chosen, appears to have been founded on the natural 
 presupposition, that the curse would be chiefly manifested in relation to some- 
 thing which he had acquired by the wages of his iniquity ; added to the 
 circumstance that among the objects anathematized in the psalm, the one most 
 capable of being bought was the hrav\i%. This conception of the facts was 
 met in the most felicitous manner by the aKeX8a/,ia lying near Jerusalem, 
 which, the less was known of the origin of its name and of the horror attached 
 to it, might the more easily be applied by the primitive Christian legend to its 
 own purposes, and regarded as the desolate habitation, eTrauXis riprnxafiivri, of 
 I he betrayer. 
 
 Instead of these passages from the Psalms, the first gospel cites as being 
 fulfilled by the last acts of Judas, a passage which it attributes to Jeremiah, 
 but to which nothing corresponding is to be found except in Zech. xi. 12 f., 
 whence it is now pretty generally admitted that the Evangelist substituted one 
 name for the other by mistake. ^^ How Matthew might be led by the funda- 
 mental idea of this passage — an unreasonably small price for the speaker in 
 the prophecy — to an application of it to the treachery of Judas, who for a 
 paltry sum had as it were sold his master, has been already shown. ^^ Now 
 the prophetic passage contains a command from Jehovah to the author of the 
 prophecy, to cast the miserable sum with which he had been paid, into the 
 house of the Lord, and also "iV.i'n''^, which, it is added, was done. The 
 person who casts down the money is in the prophecy the same with the 
 speaker, and consequently with him who is rated at the low price, because 
 the suiii here is not purchase money but hire, and hence is received by the 
 person so meanly estimated, who alone can cast it away again : . in the appli- 
 cation of the Evangelist, on the contrary, the sum being considered as purchase 
 money, another than the one so meanly estimated was to be thought of as 
 receiving and casting away the sum. If the one sold for so paltry a price 
 was Jesus : he who received the money and finally rejected it could be no 
 other than his betrayer. Hence it is said of the latter, that Ae cast down the 
 pieces of silver in the temple Iv tu vaw corresponding to the phrase ini< ^v^'^J 
 nin*. n'3 in the prophetic passage, although these very words happen to be 
 absent from the extremely mutilated citation of Matthew. But in apposition 
 to the nirT. n*?, wherein the money was cast, there stood besides "iXi'n-^t*. 
 The LXX. translates : eh to xmvcvr^piov, into the melting furnace ; now, it is 
 with reason conjectured that the pointing should be altered thus : "lyi'D^S, 
 and the word rendered : into the treasury ; *'' the author of our gospel adhered 
 to the literal translation by xcpa/icu's potter. But what the potter had to do 
 here, — why the money should be given to him, must at first have been as in- 
 comprehensible to him as it is to us when we adhere to the common reading. 
 Here however there occurred to his recollection the field of blood, to whicli, 
 as we gather from the Acts, the Christian legend gave a relation to Judas, and 
 
 '* Still for other conjectures see Kuinbl, in loc. 
 '" § 119- 
 
 " Hitzig, in Ullmann's and Umbreit's Sludien, 1830, i, s. 35 ; Gesenius, Worterbuch ; 
 comp. Rosenmiiller's Scholia in V. T. 7, 4, s. 320 ff. ' 
 
DEATH OF THE B"ETRAYER. 667 
 
 hence resulted the welcome combination, that it was probably that field for 
 which the thirty pieces of silver were to be given to the potter. As, however,, 
 it was impossible to conceive the potter as being in the temple when receiving 
 the money, and yet according to the prophetic passage the pieces of silver 
 were cast into the temple : a separation was made between the casting into- 
 the temple and the payment to the potter. If the former must be ascribed to 
 Judas, if he had thus once cast away the money, he himself could no longer pur- 
 chase the piece of ground from the potter, but this must be done by another party, 
 with the money which Judas had cast away. Who this party must be followed, 
 of course : if Judas gave up the money, he would give it up to those from 
 whom he had received it ; if he cast it into the temple, it would fall into the 
 hands of the rulers of the temple : thus in both ways it would revert to the 
 Sanhedrim. The object of the latter in purchasing the ground was perhaps- 
 drawn from the use to which that waste place was actually appropriated. 
 Lastly, if Judas cast away again the reward of his treachery, this, it must be 
 inferred, could only be out of remorse. To make Judas manifest remorse, 
 and thus win from the traitor himself a testimony to the innocence of Jesus,, 
 was as natural to the conception of the primitive Christian community, as to 
 convert Pilate, and to make Tiberius himself propose in the Roman senate 
 the deification of Christ,^* But how would the remorse of Judas further 
 manifest itself? A return to the right on his part, was not only unattested by 
 any facts, but was besides far too good a lot for the traitor : hence repentance 
 must have become in him despair, and he must have chosen the end of the 
 well-known traitor in the history of David, Ahithophel, of whom it is said, 2- 
 Sam. xvii. 23 : a.vk<m\ koL d.TnjX.6iv — kolI aTrjy^aTo, he arose, and went — ani 
 hanged himself, as of Judas here : dvexwprjcre kol d.TreX6i)v orrfiy^aTo, he de- 
 parted, and went and hanged himself. 
 
 A tradition referred to Papias appears to be allied to the narrative in the 
 Acts rather than to that of Matthew. OEcumenius, quoting the above col- 
 lector of traditions, says, that Judas, as an awful example of impiety, had his 
 body distended to such a degree, that a space where a chariot could pass was 
 no longer sufficiently wide for him, and that at last being crushed by a chariot, 
 he burst asunder and all his bowels were pressed out.i" The latter statement 
 doubtless arose from a misconstruction of the ancient legend ; for the chariot 
 was not originally brought into immediate contact with the body of Judas,, 
 but was merely used as a measure of his size, and this was afterwards errone- 
 ously understood as if a chariot in passing had crushed the swollen body of 
 Judas. Hence, not only in Theophylact and in an ancient Scholium,^^' 
 without any distinct reference to Papias, but also in a Catena with an express 
 citation of his iirfyvo-eis, we actually find the fact narrated without that addi- 
 tion.21 The monstrous swelling of Judas, spoken of in this passage, might, it 
 
 " TertuU Apologet. 0. xxi. : Ea omnia super Christo Pilatus, et ipse javi pro sua con- 
 scientia Christianus, Ccesari turn Tiberio nunciavit. c. v.: Tiberius ergo, cujus tempore- 
 nomen Christianum in seculum introit, annundatum sibi ex Syria Palastina, quod lUic 
 ventatem illius Divinitatis revelaveraf, detulit ad Senatum cum prmrogativa suffrage sm. 
 Senalus, quia nan ipse probaverat, respuit. For further details on this subject, see Fabricius, 
 Cod. Apocr. N. T. i, p. 214 ff., 298 ff. ; comp. 2, p. 505. , , „ , , , ,, 
 
 »« CEcumen. ad Act. i. : toCto S^ ffa<l>iaTepov lirTopet Hairlas, ludwov tou diroffrbXov 
 imem-hr iiiy«- do-e/Setes iTrbSayp-a iv roiri^ tQ K6<riup wepien-Arvreo loidas. np7!(reei! yap M 
 toitoStov t^v a&pica, fitrre ^^ Siva^eoL SieXSetc, d^fTTS ^?.«tos Supxoit.€i>-n,, uH ttjs afi.&^r,'- 
 eirlea-dri, ibffre t4 lyKara airou iKKevadiji'ai. 
 
 2° Tn'MTnt'er's Fragm. Patr. I, p. 17 ff- F°^ the rest the passage is of very similar tenor 
 with that of CEcumenius, and is partly an exaggeration of it : touto Si Ga4,i<JT€pov urropei 
 nairlcL,, 6 'lo>i.yvov ^e7,T^s,\kywv oirm iv tv Teriprip tvs i^vyv<reo,s rwy Kvpi.a.Kiov\6y(ov 
 fUya Si aaepelas iirdSety/m iv TO&nf rep Kdff/Mp TepieT(iTr,<r€v lovSar irptiffBels iirl toitoi/tox T-nv 
 
668 PAKT in. CHAPTER III. §1^1. 
 
 is supposed, originally be only an explanation of the displacing and protrusion 
 of the viscera, and in like manner the dropsy into which Theophylact repre- 
 sents him as falling might be regarded as an explanation of this swellmg : 
 when, however, in Ps. cix., applied in the Acts to Judas, amongst other 
 maledictions, we read: i3"lR5 D!'?3 ("^^i?,) ^^?1 LXX: t'ur^XOev (n Kardpa) 
 io-ei vSmp eis to, tyKara avToC, SO let it {cursing) come into his bowels like water 
 (v. 18) : it appears possible that the dropsical disease, vooros vSepiKri, may have 
 been also taken from this passage; as also one of the features in the monstrous 
 description which Papias gives of the condition of Judas, namely, that from 
 the enormous sweUing of his eyelids he could no longer see the light of day, 
 might remind us of v. 23 in the other psalm applied to Judas, where, among 
 the curses this is enumerated : Let their eyes be darkened that they see not, 
 a-KOTurO'^aa-av oi 6<l)6aXfji,ol avrwv rov fiy] pXiirav, a hindrance to sight, which 
 when once the swollen body of Judas was presupposed, must necessarily 
 assume the form of a swelling up of the eyelids. If then the tradition which 
 is allied to the account in Actsi. developed its idea of the end of Judas chiefly 
 in correspondence with the ideas presented in these two psalms ; and if in 
 that passage of the Acts itself the account of the connexion of Judas with 
 the piece of ground is derived from the same source : it is no farfetched 
 conjecture that what is said in the Acts concerning the end of the betrayer 
 may have had a similar origin. That he died an early death may be historical; 
 but even if not so, in Psalm cix. in the very same verse (v. 8), which contains 
 the transfer of the office, eTna-Koirrj, to another, an early de^th is predicted for 
 the betrayer in the words : Let his days be few, yar-qdrp-tacrav at ■17/x.epai auroB 
 oXt^yat, and it might also be believed that the death by falling headlong also 
 was gathered from Ps. Ixix. 22, where it is said: Let their table become a snare 
 before them, yarr]6r(ru> rj rpaire^a avrSiv — ek <7KavSaA.ov (EfRIDp). 
 
 Thus we scarcely know with certainty concerning Judas even so much as 
 that he came to a violent and untimely death, for if, as was natural, after his 
 departure from the community of Jesus, he retired, so far as the knowledge of 
 its members was concerned, into an obscurity in which all historical informa- 
 tion as to his further fate was extinguished : the primitive Christian legend might 
 without hindrance represent as being fulfilled in him all that the prophecies 
 and types of the Old Testament threatened to the false friend of the Son of 
 David, and might even associate the memory of his crime with a well-known 
 desecrated place in the vicinity of Jerusalem. ^^ 
 
 (Ta'pKa, fiffre yiw)8^ tnrbBev &,fw.^a p^Sius dtepx^Tai., ixeTvov SivaaSai, SieXOeiv, dXXct ynijSJ airiv 
 [iivov Tbv 6yK0v r^s /ce^aX^s airrov' Tct piv ykp ^e^apa rwv d^daXfioiv aiiroO (Cod. Venet. ; 
 ^affl roffOVTOv i^oidijcTaL, (lis airbv liiv Ka9d\ov t6 0ws fi^ ^Xeiretf] fiTjSk (/irb larpov SLoirrpas 
 6(j>Biivai K. T. X. Merct ttoXXois 5^ ^aaavovs Kal n/iapLas iv ISliji, <j>aal, X'^P^V reXevr'^trapTos 
 K. T. X. Papias, the disciple of John, gives a clearer account of this {in the fourth section of 
 his exegesis of our Lord's words) as follows : Judas moved about in this world a terrible ex- 
 ample of impiety, being swollen in body to such a degree that where a chariot could easily 
 pass he was not able to find a passage, even for the bulk of his head. His eyelids, thev say, 
 were so swelled out that he could not see the light, nor could his eyes be made visible even by the 
 physician' sdioptra, etc. After suffering many torments and judgments, dying, as they say, in 
 his own field, etc. 
 
 22 Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, i, 5. 231 f. ; i, 4, s. 10 f. 
 
JESUS BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD. 669 
 
 § 131. 
 JESUS BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD. 
 
 According to all the Evangelists it was in the morning when the Jewish 
 magistrates, after having declared Jesus worthy of death/ caused him to be 
 led away to the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate (Matt, xxvii. i ff. parall. ; 
 John xviii. 28). According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus was bound prepar- 
 atory to his being conducted before Pilate, according to John xviii. 12, im- 
 mediately on his arrest in the garden ; Luke says nothing of his being bound. 
 To this measure of sending him to Pilate they were compelled, according to 
 John xviii. 31, by the circumstance that the Sanhedrim was deprived of the 
 authority to execute the punishment of death (without the concurrence of the 
 Roman government) : ^ but at all events the Jewish rulers must in this instance 
 have been anxious to call in the agency of the Romans, since only their power 
 could afford security against an uproar among the people OopvjSo's iv t<S \aiS, 
 which the former feared as a result of the execution of Jesus during the feast 
 time (Matt. xxvi. 5 parall.). 
 
 Arrived at the Prsetorium, the Jews, according to the representation of the 
 fourth gospel, remained without, from fear of Levitical defilement, but Jesus 
 was led into the interior of the building : so that Pilate must alternately have 
 come out when he would speak to the Jews, and have gone in again when he 
 proceeded to question Jesus (xviii. 28 ff.). The synoptists in the sequel re- 
 present Jesus as in the same locality with Pilate and the Jews, for in them 
 Jesus immediately hears the accusations of the Jews, and answers them in the 
 presence of Pilate. Since they, as well as John, make the condemnation take 
 place in the open air (after the condemnation they represent Jesus as being 
 led into the Praetorium, Matt, xxvii. 27, and Matthew, like John, xix. 13, de- 
 scribes Pilate ascending the judgment seat p^ix-a, which according to Josephus ' 
 stood in the open air), without mentioning any change of place in connexion 
 with the trial : they apparently conceived the whole transaction to have passed 
 on the outer place, and supposed, in divergency from John, that Jesus himself 
 was there. 
 
 The first question of Pilate to Jesus is according to a,ll the gospels : Art 
 thou the king of the Jews ? a-v d 6 jSao-tXeus tZv 'lovSaioiv, i.e. the Messiah ? In 
 the two first Evangelists this question is not introduced by any accusation on 
 the part of the Jews (Matt. v. 11 ; Mark v. 2) ; in John, Pilate, stepping out 
 
 • According to Babl. Sanhedrin, ap. Lightfoot, p. 486, this mode of procedure would liave 
 been illegal. It is there said -.Judicia de capitalibus finiunt eodem die si smt ad absoluhomm ; 
 si vera sint ad damnationem, finiuntur die sequente. 
 
 ■' Besides this passage of John : vidf oAk i^eanv diroKTeu/ai oi^Se^a, // « not lawful for 
 as to put any man to death, there is no other authority for the existence of this slate of 
 things than an obscure and variously interpreted tradition, Avoda Zaraf. ym. 2 (Lightfoot, 
 p 112:! f.) : Rabh Cahna dicit, cum cegrotaret R. Tsmael bar Jose, miserunt adeum,duentes : die 
 nobi, SDomine, duo aut tna, qua aliquando dixisti nobis nomine Jatris tuu piatiis—- 
 guadra^inta annis ante excidium templi migravit Synednumet sedit in tabernis. Qmdsibi 
 lull aJc traditio ? Rabh Isaac, bar Abdimi dicit: non jiidu&nint Judicia mulctatwa. Dixit 
 R Nachman bar Isaac: ne dicat, quod non judic&rtmt juduut vmktativa sed quod non 
 judic&runt judicia capitalia. With this may be compared moreover the information given 
 iy Tos^hus. Antiq. xx. ix. I, that it was not lawful for Ananus (the high priest) to assemble 
 VheS^hMHrnwUhout the consent of the procurator. On the other hand the execution of 
 SteDhm (Acts vii.) without the sanction of the Romans might seem to speak to the contrary ; 
 KL wt at'lJmuLaryact, undertaken perhaps in the confidence that Pilate was absent. 
 Compare on this point Liicke, 2, s. 631 iif. 
 
 s De bell. Jud. II. ix. 3. 
 
6jO PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 3 1. 
 
 of the Prsetorium, asks the Jews what accusation they have to bring against 
 Jesus (xviii. 29), on which they insolently reply : If he were not a malefactor, 
 we would not have delivered him up unto thee : an answer by which they could 
 not expect to facilitate their obtaining from the Roman a ratification of their 
 sentence,* but only to embitter him. After Pilate, with surprising mildness, 
 has rejoined that they may take him and judge him according to their law — 
 apparently not supposing a crime involving death — and the Jews have opposed 
 to this permission their inability to administer the punishment of death : the 
 procurator re-enters and addresses to Jesus the definite question : Art thou 
 the king of the Jews 1 which thus here likewise- has no suitable introduction. 
 This is the case only in Luke, who first adduces the accusations of the San- 
 hedrists against Jesus, that he stirred up the people and encouraged them to 
 refuse tribute to Csesar, giving himself out to be Christ a king, Xpia-rbv jSacriXea 
 (xxiii. 2). 
 
 If in this manner the narrative of Luke enables us to understand how 
 Pilate could at once put to Jesus the question whether he were the king of 
 the Jews ; it leaves us in all the greater darkness as to how Pilate, immedi- 
 ately on the affirmative answer of Jesus, could without any further inquiries 
 declare to the accusers that he found no fault in the accused. He must first 
 have ascertained the grounds or the want of grounds for the charge of exciting 
 the populace, and also have imformed himself as to the sense in which Jesus 
 claimed the title of king of the Jews, before he could pronounce the words : / 
 ^nd no fault in this man. In Matthew and Mark, it is true, to the affirmation 
 of Jesus that he is the king of the Jews is added his silence, in opposition to 
 the manifold accusations of the Sanhedrists — a silence which surprises Pilate : 
 and this is not followed by a precise declaration that no fault is to be found 
 in Jesus, but, merely by the procurator's attempt to set Jesus at liberty by 
 coupling him with Barabbas ; still what should move him even to this attempt 
 does not appear from the above gospels. On the other hand, this point is 
 sufficiently clear in the fourth gospel. It is certainly surprising that when 
 Pilate asks whether he be really the King of the Jews, Jesus should reply by 
 the counter-question, whether he say this of himself or at the suggestion of 
 another. In an accused person, however conscious of innocence, such a 
 question cannot be held warrantable, and hence it has been sought in every 
 possible way to give the words of Jesus a sense more consonant with pro- 
 priety : but the question of Jesus is too definite to be a mere repulse of the 
 accusation as absurd,^ and too indefinite to be regarded as an inquiry, whether 
 the Procurator intended the title /SocriXevs t5v \<mlaimv in the Roman sense 
 ' {a^' eauToC) or in the Jewish (a\\oi croi cTttov).^ And Pilate does not so un- 
 derstand it, but as an unwarrantable question to which it is a mark of his in- 
 dulgence that he replies ; — in the first instance, it is true, with some impatience, 
 by the second counter-question, whether he be a Jew, and thus able of him- 
 self to have information concerning a crime so specifically Jewish ; but here- 
 upon he good-naturedly adds that it is the Jews and their rulers by whom 
 Jesus has been delivered to him, and that he is therefore at liberty to speak 
 more particularly of the crime which these lay to his charge. Now on his 
 Jesus gives Pilate an answer which, added to the impression Of his whole 
 appearance, might certainly induce in the Procurator a conviction of his in- 
 nocence. He replies, namely, that his kingdom ^aa-iXeia is not of this ivorld 
 Ik toS Koa-fiov tovtov, and adduces as a proof of this, the peaceful, passive con- 
 duct of his adherents on his arrest (v. 36). On the further question of Pilate, 
 
 ■• As Liicke supposes, s. 631. 
 
 * Calvin, in loc. 
 
 * Liicke and Tholuck, in loc. 
 
JESUS BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD. 67 1 
 
 whether, since Jesus has thus ascribed to himself a kingdom, although no 
 earthly one, he then claims to be a king ? he replies that certainly he is so, 
 but only in so far as he is born to be a witness to the truth : whereupon 
 follows the famous question of Pilate : IVAai is truth ? rt iarai aX-rfiv.a.; Al- 
 though in this latter reply of Jesus we cannot but be struck by its presenting 
 the peculiar hue of thought which characterizes the author of the fourth gos- 
 pel, in the use of the idea of truth dX^flcia, as we were before surprised at the 
 unwarrantable nature of the counter-question of Jesus ; still this account in 
 John renders it conceivable how Pilate could immediately step forth and de- 
 clare to the Jews that he found no fault in Jesus. But another point might 
 easily create suspicion against this narrative of John. According to him the 
 trial of Jesus went forward in the interior of the Prsetorium, which no Jew 
 would venture to enter ; who then are we to suppose heard the conversation of 
 the Procurator with Jesus, and was the informant who communicated it to the 
 author of the fourth gospel ? The opinion of the older commentators that 
 Jesus himself narrated these conversations to his disciples after the resurrec- 
 tion is renounced as extravagant ; the more modern idea that perhaps Pilate 
 himself was the source of the information concerning the trial, is scarcely less 
 improbable, and rather than take refuge, with Liicke, in the supposition that 
 Jesus remained at the entrance of the Praetorium, so that those standing im- 
 mediately without might with some attention and stillness (?) have heard the 
 conversation, I should prefer appealing to the attendants of the Procurator, 
 who would scarcely be alone with Jesus. Meanwhile it is easily conceivable 
 that we have here a conversation, which owes its origin solely to the Evange- 
 list's own combination, and in this case we need not bestow so much labour in 
 ascertaining the precise sense of Pilate's question : what is truth ? since this 
 would only be an example of the fourth Evangelist's favourite form of dialogue, 
 the contrast of profound communications on the part of Jesus, with questions 
 either of misapprehension or of total unintelligence on the part of the hearers, 
 as xii. 34, the Jews ask who is this Son df man ? rts ia-nv ovto^ 5 utos t. a. ; 
 so here Pilate : what is truth ? n ia-nv oK-qOeta ; 7 
 
 Before the introduction of Barabbas, which in all the other Evangelists 
 comes next in order, Luke has an episode peculiar to himself. On the de- 
 claration of Pilate that he finds no guilt in the accused, the chief priests and 
 their adherents among the multitude persist in asserting that Jesus stirred up 
 the people by his agency as a teacher from Galilee to Jerusalem : Pilate 
 notices the word Galilee, asks whether the accused be a Galilean, and when 
 this is confirmed, he seizes it as a welcome pretext for ridding himself of the 
 ungrateful business, and sends Jesus to the Tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Anti- 
 pas, at that time in Jerusalem in observance of the feast ; perhaps also design- 
 ing as a secondary object, what at least was the result, to conciliate the petty 
 prince by this show of respect for his jurisdiction. This measure, it is said, 
 gave great satisfaction to Herod, because having heard much of Jesus, he had 
 long been desirous to see him, in the hope that he would perhaps perform a 
 miracle. The Tetrarch addressed various questions to him, the Sanhedrists 
 urged vehement accusations against him, but Jesus gave no answer ; where- 
 upon Herod with his soldiers betook themselves to mockery, and at length, 
 after arraying him in a gorgeous robe, sent him back to Pilate (xxui. 4 If.). 
 This narrative of Luke's, whether we consider it in itself or in its relation to 
 the other gospels, has much to astonish us. If Jesus as a Galilean really be- 
 longed to the jurisdiction of Herod, as Pilate, by delivering the accused to 
 him, appears to acknowledge : how came Jesus (and the question is equally 
 
 ' Comp. Kaiser, bibl. Theol. i, s. 252. 
 
672 PART III. CHAPTER III. §131. 
 
 difficult whether we regard him as the sinless Jesus of the orthodox system, or 
 as the one who in the history of the tribute-penny manifested his subjection 
 to the existing authorities) to withhold from him the answer which was his 
 due ? and how was it that Herod, without any further procedures, sent him 
 away again from his tribunal ? To siy, with Olshausen, that the interrogation 
 before Herod had elicited the fact that Jesus was not born in Nazareth and 
 Galilee, but in Bethlehem, and consequently in Judaea, is on the one hand an 
 inadmissible appeal to the history of the birth of Jesus, of the statements in 
 which there is no further trace in the whole subsequent course of Luke's gos- 
 pel ; and on the other hand, a totally accidental birth in Judaea, such as that 
 represented by Luke, the parents of Jesus, and even Jesus himself, being both 
 before and after resident in Galilee, would not have constituted Jesus a 
 Judaean ; but above all we must ask, through whom was the Judsean origin of 
 Jesus brought to light, since it is said of Jesus that he gave no answer, while 
 according to all the information we possess, that origin was totally unknown 
 to the Jews ? It would be preferable to explain the silence of Jesus by the 
 unbecoming manner of Herod's interrogation, which manifested, not the 
 seriousness of the judge, but mere curiosity; and to account for his being 
 ' sent back to Pilate by the fact, that not only the arrest, but also a part of the 
 ministi7 of Jesus had occurred within the jurisdiction of Pilate. But why do 
 the rest of the Evangelists say nothing of the entire episode ? Especially 
 when the author of the fourth gospel is regarded as the Apostle John, it is not 
 easy to see how this omission can be explained. The common plea, that he 
 supposed the fact sufficiently known from the synoptists, will not serve here, 
 since Luke is the sole Evangelist who narrates the incident, and thus it does 
 not appear to have been very widely spread ; the conjecture, that it may prob- 
 ably have appeared to him too unimportant,* loses all foundation when it is 
 considered that John does not scorn to mention the leading away to Annas, 
 which nevertheless was equally indecisive ; and in general, the narrative of 
 these events in John is, as Schleiermacher himself confesses, so consecutive 
 that it nowhere presents a break in which such an episode could be inserted. 
 Hence even Schleiermacher at last takes refuge in the conjecture tliat pos- 
 sibly the sending to Herod may have escaped the notice of John, because it 
 happened on an opposite side to that on which the disciple stood, through a 
 back door ; and that it came to the knowledge of Luke because his informant 
 had an acquaintance in the household of Herod, as John had in that of 
 Annas : the former conjecture, however, is figuratively as well as literally 
 nothing more than a back door ; the latter, a fiction which is but the effort of 
 despair. Certainly if we renounce the presupposition that the author of the 
 fourth gospel was an apostle, we lose the ground of attack against the narra- 
 tive of Luke, which in any case, sance Justin knows of the consignment to 
 Herod,^ is of very early origin. Nevertheless, first, the silence of the other 
 Evangelists in a portion of their common history, in which, with this excep- 
 tion, there prevails an agreement as to the principal stages in the development 
 of the fate of Jesus ; and secondly, the internal difficulties of the narrative, 
 remain so suspicious, that it must still be open to us to conjecture, that the 
 anecdote arose out of the effort to place Jesus before all the tribunals that 
 could possibly be gathered together in Jerusalem ; to make every authority 
 not hierarchical, though treating him with ignominy, still either explicitly or 
 tacitly acknowledge his innocence ; and to represent him as maintaining his 
 equable demeanour and dignity before all. If this be probable with respect 
 
 ' Sclileiei-macher, iiber den Lukas, s. 291. 
 ' Dial, cum Tryi.)h. 103. 
 
JESUS BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD. 673 
 
 to the present narrative, in which the third Evangelist stands alone, a similar 
 conjecture concerning the leading away to Annas, in which we have seen that 
 the fourth Evangelist stands alone, would only be warded off by the circum- 
 stance that this scene is not described in detail, and hence presents no inter- 
 nal difficulties. 
 
 After Jesus, being sent back by Herod, was returned upon his hands, Pilate, 
 according to Luke, once more called together the Sanhedrists and the people, 
 and declared, alleging in his support the judgment of Herod as accordant 
 with his own, his wish to dismiss Jesus with chastisement ; for which purpose 
 he might avail himself of the custom of releasing a prisoner at the feast of the 
 passover.*" This circumstance, which is somewhat abridged in Luke, is more 
 fully exhibited in the other Evangelists, especially in Matthew. As the privi- 
 lege to entreat the release of a prisoner belonged to the people, Pilate, well 
 knowing that Jesus was persecuted by the rulers out of jealousy, sought to 
 turn to his advantage the better disposition of the people towards him ; and in 
 order virtually to oblige them to free Jesus, whom, partly out of mockery of 
 the Jews, partly to deter them from his execution as degrading to themselves, 
 he named the Messiah or King of the Jews, he reminded them that their 
 choice lay between him and a notable prisoner, Sia-fjuos eirttny/xos, Barabbas,''' 
 whom John designates as a robber, Ajjotj;?, but Mark and Luke as one who 
 was imprisoned for insurrection and murder. This plan however failed, for 
 the people, suborned, as the two first Evangelists observe^ by their rulers, with 
 one voice desired the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus. 
 
 As a circumstance which had especial weight with Pilate in favour of Jesus, 
 and moved him to make the proposal relative to Barabbas as urgently as pos- 
 sible, it is stated by Matthew that while the procurator sat on his tribunal, his 
 wife,^* in consequence of a disturbing dream, sent to him a warning to incur 
 no responsibility in relation to that just man (xxvii. 19). Not only Paulus, 
 but even Olshausen, explains this dream as a natural result of what Pilate's 
 wife might have heard of Jesus and of his capture on the preceding evening ; 
 to which may be added as an explanatory conjecture, the notice of the Evan- 
 gelium Nicodemi, that she was pious, Oeoa-e^ris, and judaizing, iov^at^ovcTa.^^ 
 Nevertheless, as constantly in the New Testament, and particularly in the 
 Gospel of Matthew, dreams are regarded as a special dispensation from heaven, 
 so this assuredly in the opinion of the narrator happened non sine numine ; 
 and hence it should be possible to conceive a motive and an object for the 
 dispensation. If the dream were really intended to prevent the death of 
 Jesus, taking the orthodox point of view, in which this death was necessary 
 for the salvation of man, we must be led to the opinion of some of the 
 ancients, that it may have been the devil who suggested that dream to the 
 wife of the procurator, in order to hinder the propitiatory death ; " if on the 
 
 '» It is doubted whether this custom, of which we should have known nothing but for the 
 N. T., was of Roman or Jewish origin ; comp. Fritzsche and Paulus, mloc., and Baur uber 
 die ursprungliche Bedeutung des Passahfestes, u. s f. , Tub. Zeitschr. f. Theol. 1832 i s 94. 
 
 " According to one reading, the full name of this man was /esus Bamiias, which we 
 mention here .Serely because Olshausen finds it " remarkable." Bar Abba meamng Son of 
 Turner, Olshausen exclaims : All that was essential in the Saviour appears in the mur- 
 derer ^caricature! and he quotes as applicable to this case the verse :&^^; tn kumams 
 jlZTpolntia rebus. For our own part, we can only see in this idea of Olshausen's a lusus 
 
 ''"T^tC^%7lnt Nicodemi and in later ecclesiastical historians she is called Procula 
 
 np6K%v Comp. Thilo. Cod. Apocr. N. T., p. 522. Paulus, exeg. Handb., 2, h, s. 640 f. 
 
 13 Cao. II. s. 520, ap. Thilo. , , 
 
 ■ 14 Wt. ad Philippens. iv. : 0o;3« Si rh y6vci.iOv, iv dpetpo^s aM Kara.Tapa.TTWV Kalvaveiv 
 
 . nstalrh KorA Tiy fravpdu. ( TAe devil) terrifies the woman, troubling her mher dreams, 
 
 ZTendZmJstlp^^aLp to the things //the Lss. The Jews in the Evang. Nic^odemi, c. 
 
674 PART in. CHAPTER III. § 13 1. 
 
 contrary, the dream were not intended to prevent the death of Jesus, its object 
 must have been limited to Pilate or his wife. But as far as Pilate was con- 
 cerned, so late a warning could only aggravate his guilt, without sufficing to 
 deter him from the step already half taken ; while that his wife was converted 
 by means of this dream, as many have supposed, ^^ is totally unattested by his- 
 tory or tradition, and such an object is not intimated in the narrative. But, 
 as the part which Pilate himself plays in the evangelical narrative is such as to 
 exhibit the blind hatred of the fellow-countrymen of Jesus in contrast with 
 the impartial judgment of a Gentile ; so his wife is made to render a testimony 
 to Jesus, in order that, not only out of the mouth oi babes and sucklings (Matt. 
 xxi. 1 6), but also out of the mouth of a weak woman, praise might be pre- 
 pared for him ; and to increase its importance it is traced to a significant 
 dream. To give this an appearance of probability, similar instances are ad- 
 duced from profane history of dreams which have acted as presentiments and 
 warnings before a sanguinary catastrophe : ^^ but the more numerous are these 
 analogous cases, the more is the suspicion excited that as the majority of 
 these, so also the dream in our evangelical passage, may have been fabricated 
 after the event, for the sake of heightening its tragical effect. 
 
 When the Jews, in reply to the repeated questions of Pilate, vehemently 
 and obstinately demand the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus, 
 the two intermediate Evangelists represent him as at once yielding to their 
 desire ; but Matthew first interposes a ceremony and a colloquy (xxvii. 24 if.). 
 According to him Pilate calls for water, washes his hands before the people, 
 and declares himself innocent of the blood of this just man. The washing 
 of the hands, as a protestation of purity from the guilt of shedding blood, was 
 a custom specifically Jewish, according to Deut. xxi. 6 f.^' It has been thought 
 improbable that the Roman should have here intentionally imitated this Jewish 
 custom, and hence it has been contended, that to any one who wished so 
 solemnly to declare his innocence nothing would more readily suggest itself 
 than the act of washing the hands.^* 3^; that an individual, apart from any 
 allusion to a known usage, should invent extemporaneously a symbolical act, 
 or even that he should merely fall in with the custom of a foreign nation, would 
 require him to be deeply interested in the fact which he intends to symbolize. 
 That Pilate, however, should be deeply interested in attesting his innocence 
 of the execution of Jesus, is not so probable as that the Christians should have 
 been deeply interested in thus gaining a testimony to the innocence of their 
 Messiah : whence there arises a suspicion that perhaps Pilate's act of washing 
 his hands owes its origin to them alone. This conjecture is confirmed, when 
 we consider the declaration With which Pilate accompanies his symbolical act : 
 / am innocent of the blood of this just man, dSGds «i/u.i diro tov at/jmro^ tov SiKaCov 
 TovTov.^ For that the judge should publicly and emphatically designate as a. just 
 man, SUau)^, one whom he was nevertheless delivering over to the severest inflic- 
 tion of the law, — this even Paulus finds so contradictory that he here, contrary to 
 his usual mode of exposition, supposes that the narrator himself expresses in 
 these words his own interpretation of Pilate's symbolical act. It is surprising 
 that he is not also struck by the equal improbability of the answer which is attri- 
 b,uted to the Jews on this occasion. After Pilate has declared himself guiltless 
 
 II. p. 524, explain the dream as a result of the magic arts of Jesus : y6ris i<rn — ISoi dveipowefi- 
 irra (ireji.^e Trpbs ttjv yvjiaiKd aov, He is a magician— see, he has sent messages in a dream to 
 
 '* E.g. Theophylact,.vld. Thilo, p. 523. 
 
 " Vid. Paulus and Kuinbl, inloc. They especially adduce the dream of Caesar's wife 
 the night before his assassination. 
 " Comp, Sota, viii. 6. 
 ^' Fritzsche, in Matth,, p. 808. 
 
JESUS BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD. 675 
 
 of the blood of Jesus, and by the addition : see ye to it, has laid the responsi- 
 bility on the Jews, it is said in Matthew that all the people ttSs o Aaos, cried : 
 His blood be on us and on our children, to <u.jt,a. auroC e<^' ij/^Ss koi to. rcKva ■q/iiov. 
 But this is obviously spoken from the point of view of the Christians, who in 
 the miseries which shortly after the death of Jesus fell with continually increas- 
 ing weight on the Jewish nation, saw nothing else than the payment of the 
 debt of blood which they had incurred by the crucifixion of Jesus : so that this ■ 
 whole episode, which is peculiar to the first gospel, is in the highest degree 
 suspicious. 
 
 According to Matthew and Mark, Pilate now caused Jesus to be scourged, 
 preparatory to his being led away to crucifixion. Here the scourging appears 
 to correspond to the virgis cadere, which according to Roman usage preceded 
 the seacri percutere, and to the scourging of slaves prior to crucifixion. '^ In Luke 
 it has a totally different character. While in the two former EvangeUsts it is 
 said : When he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified, tov Se 'I. 
 (^paycXXucras TrapeSwKev Iva a-TavpwOy: in Luke, Pilate repeatedly (v. 16 and 22) 
 makes the proposal : having chastised him I will let him go, -Kaiheuaos airov 
 airoXva-w : i. e. while there the scourging has the appearance of a mere accessory 
 of the crucifixion, here it appears to be intended as a substitute for the cruci- 
 fixion : Pilate wishes by this chastisement to appease the hatred of the enemies 
 of Jesus, and induce them to desist from demanding his execution. Again, 
 while in Luke the scourging does not actually take place, — because the Jews 
 will in nowise accede to the repeated proposal of Pilate : in John the latter 
 causes Jesus to be scourged, exhibits him to the people with the purple robe 
 and the crown of thorns and tries whether his pitiable aspect, together with 
 the repeated declaration of his innocence, will not mollify their embittered 
 minds : this, however, proving also in vain (xix. i ff.). Thus there exists .a 
 contradiction between the Evangelists in relation to the scourging of Jesus, 
 which is not to be conciliated after the method of Paulus, namely by para- 
 phrasing the words tov 'I. ^payeWucras TrapiSoKcv iva oTavpoiOrj in Matthew 
 and Mark thus : Jesus, whom he had already before scourged in order to 
 save him, suffered this in vain, since he was still delivered over to crucifixion. 
 But, acknowledging the difference in the accounts, we must only ask, which 
 of the two has the advantage as regards historical probability ? Although it 
 is certainly not to be proved that scourging before crucifixion was a Roman 
 custom admitting no exception : still, on the other hand, it is a purely harmon- 
 istic effort to allege, that scourging was only made to precede crucifixion in 
 cases where the punishment was intended to be particularly severe,^" and that 
 consequently Pilate, who had no wish to be cruel to Jesus, can only have 
 caused him to be scourged with the* special design which Luke and John 
 mention, and which is also to be understood in the narratives of their pre- 
 decessors. It is far more probable that in reality the scourging only took 
 place as it is described by the two first Evangelists, namely, as an introduc- 
 tion to the crucifixion, and that the Christian legend (to which that side of 
 Pilate's character, in virtue of which he endeavoured in various ways to save 
 Jesus, was particularly welcome as a testimony against the Jews) gave such 
 a turn even to the fact of the scourging as to obtain from it a new attempt 
 at release on the part of Pilate. This use of the fact is only incipient in the 
 third gospel, for here the scourging is a mere proposal of Pilate : whereas in 
 the fourth, the scourging actually takes place, and becomes an additional act 
 in the drama. 
 
 1' Comp. in particular the passages cited by Wetstein, on Matth. xxvii. 26. 
 "" Paulus, ut sup. s. 647. 
 
676 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 131. 
 
 With the scourging is connected in the two first gospels and the fourth, the 
 maltreatment and mockery of Jesus by the soldiers, who attired him in a purple 
 robe, placed a crown of thorns on his head,^' put, according to Matthew, a 
 reed in his hand, and in this disguise first greeted him as King of the Jews, 
 and then smote and maltreated him.^^ Luke does not mention any derision 
 on the part of the soldiers here, but he has something similar in his narrative 
 of the interrogation of Jesus before Herod, for he represents this prince with 
 his men of war, <jvv toI^ crrpaTtviKKTiv avrov, as mocking Jesus, and sending 
 him back to Pilate in a gorgeous robe, icrO^'s XafiTrpd. Many suppose that this 
 was the same purple robe which was afterwards put on Jesus by the soldiers 
 of Pilate ; but it must rather have been thrice that Jesus had to wear this 
 disguise, if we take the narrative of John into the account and at the same 
 time refuse to attribute error to any of the synoptists : first in the presence 
 of Herod (Luke) ; secondly, before Pilate brought Jesus forth to the Jews, 
 that he might excite their compassion with the words ; Behold the man, iSc o 
 avdpa'Tros (John) ; thirdly, after he was delivered to the soldiers .for crucifixion 
 (Matthew and Mark). This repetition is as improbable as it is probable that 
 the one disguising of Jesus, which had come to the knowledge of the Evan- 
 gelists, was assigned by them to different places and times, and ascribed to 
 different persons. 
 
 While in the two first gospels the process of trial is already concluded before 
 the scourging, and in the third, on the rejection of his proposal to scourge 
 and release Jesus by the Jews, Pilate forthwith delivers him to be crucified : 
 in the fourth Evangelist the scene of the trial is further developed in the 
 following manner. When even the exhibition of Jesus scourged and disguised 
 avails nothing, but his crucifixion is obstinately demanded, the procurator 
 is incensed, and cries to the Jews, that they may take him and crucify him 
 thettiselves, for he finds no fault in him. The Jews reply that according tp 
 their law he must die, since he had made himself the Son of God mos Beov ; a 
 remark which affects Pilate with a superstitious fear, whence he once more 
 leads Jesus into the Prsetorium, and inquires concerning his origin (whether 
 it be really heavenly), on which Jesus gives him no answer, and when the 
 procurator seeks to alarm him by reminding him of the power which he 
 possesses over his life, refers to the higher source from whence he had this 
 power. Pilate, after this reply, seeks (yet more earnestly than before) to 
 release Jesus ; but at last the Jews hit upon the right means of making him 
 accede to their will, by throwing out the intimation that, if he release Jesus 
 who has opposed himself to Caesar as an usurper, he cannot be Casar' s friend. 
 Thus, intimidated by the possibility of his being calumniated to Tiberius, he 
 mounts the tribunal, and, since he cannot prosecute his will, betakes himself 
 to derision of the Jews in the question, whether they then wish that he should 
 crucify their king ? Whereupon they, keeping to the position which they had 
 last taken with such evident effect, protest that they will have no king but 
 Csesar. The procurator now consents to deliver Jesus to be crucified, for 
 which purpose, as the two first Evangelists remark, the purple mantle was 
 removed, and he was again attired in his own clothes. 
 
 >" From the explanation of Paulus, s. 649 f., it appears highly probable that the ari^iava^ 
 il &Ka.veCiv was not a crown of sharp thorns, but one taken from the nearest hedge, in order 
 to deride Jesus by the vilissima corona, spineola (Plin. H. N. xxi. 10). 
 
 =2 A similar disguising of a man, in derision of a third party, is adduced by Wetstein, 
 (p. 533 f.) from Philo, in Flaccum. 
 
CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. 6^^ 
 
 § 132- 
 
 THE CRUCIFIXION. 
 
 Even concerning the progress of Jesus to the place of crucifixion there is a 
 divergency between the synoptists and John, for according to the latter Jesus 
 himself carried his cross thither (xix. 17), while the former state that one 
 Simon a Cyrenian bore it in his stead (Matt, xxvii. 32 paralL). The com- 
 mentators indeed, as if a real agreement were assumed as a matter of coarse, 
 reconcile these statements thus : at first Jesus himself endeavoured to bear 
 the cross, but as the attempt made it obvious that he was too much exhausted, 
 it was laid on Simon.^ But when John says : And he bearing his cross went 
 forth into — Golgotha, where they crucified him, koL fiaxTralwv tov cnavpov airov 
 liriKdev eis — VoKyoda: ottov avrov icrravpoiaav : he plainly presupposes that the 
 cross was borne by Jesus on the way thither.^ But the statement so unani- 
 mously given by the synoptists respecting the substitution of Simon appears 
 the less capable of being rejected, the more difficult it is to discover a motive 
 which might lead to its fabrication. On the contrary, this individual trait 
 might very probably have remained unknown in the circle in which the fourth 
 gospel had its origin, and the author might have thought that, according to the 
 general custom, Jesus must have carried his cross. All the synoptists desig- 
 nate this Simon as a Cyrenian, i.e. probably one who had come to Jerusalem 
 to the feast, from the Libyan city of Cyrene, where many Jews resided.^ 
 According to all, the carrying of the cross was forced upon him, a circum- 
 stance which can as litde be urged for as against the opinion that he was 
 favourable to Jesus.* According to Luke and Mark, the man came directly 
 out of the country, am aypov, and as he attempted to pass by the crowd 
 advancing to the place of crucifixion, he was made use of to relieve Jesus. 
 Mark designates him yet more particularly as the father of Alexander and 
 Rufus, who appear to have been noted persons in the primitive church (comp. 
 Rom. xvi. 13 ; Acts xix. 33 (?) ; i Tim. i. 20 (?) ; 2 Tim. iv. 14 (?) )fi 
 
 On the way to the place of execution, according to Luke, there followed 
 Jesus, lamenting him, a great company, consisting especially of women, whom 
 he however admonished to weep rather for themselves and their children, 
 in prospect of the terrible time, which would soon come upon them (xxiii. 
 27 ff.). The details are taken partly from the discourse on the second advent, 
 Luke xxi. 23 ; for as there it is said, Ovai St rais iv yacrrpl i)(ovcraii, Kol tols 
 drjXa^ovcrai^, iv iiaivaLs rats ■^fiipcug, SO here Jesus says, that the days are 
 coming in which ai crreipai, Koi KoiXiai at ovk iyivvrjaav, /cat fiaarol ot ovk 
 iO-^kaq-av, will be pronounced blessed ; partly from Hosea x. 8, for the words 
 Tore ap^ovrai kiyeiv rots opetn k.t. X. (then shall they begin to say to the moun- 
 tains, etc.) are almost exactly the Alexandrian translation of that passage. 
 
 The place of execution is named by all the Evangelists Golgotha, the 
 Chaldaic ^S^PIpl, and they all interpret this designation by KpavCov tottos the 
 place of a skull, or Kpaviav a skull (Matt. v. 33 parall.). From the latter name 
 it might appear that the place was so called because it resembled a skull in 
 form ; whereas the former interpretation, and indeed the nature of the case, 
 
 • Thus Paulus, Kuinol, Tholuck and Olshausen in their Commentaries ; Neander, L. J, 
 Chr., s. 634. 
 
 2 Fritzsche, in Marc. 684 : Significat Joannes, Jesum suam crucem portavisse, donee aa 
 CalvaricE locum pei-venisset. 
 
 3 Joseph., Antiq. xiv. vii. 2. 
 
 * It is used in the former way by Grotius ; in the latter, by Olshausen, 2. s. 481, 
 s Comp. Paulus, Fritzsche, and De Wette, in kc. 
 
678 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 32. 
 
 renders it probable that it owed its name to its destination as a place of exe- 
 cution, and to the bones and skulls of the executed which were heaped up 
 there. Where this place was situated is not known, but doubtless it was out 
 of the city ; even that it was a hill, is a mere conjecture.^ 
 
 The course of events after the arrival at the place of execution is narrated 
 by Matthew (v. 34 ff.) in a somewhat singular order. First, he mentions the 
 beverage offered to Jesus ; next, he says that after they had nailed him to 
 the cross, the soldiers shared his clothes among them ; then, that they sat 
 down and watched him ; after this he notices the superscription on the cross, 
 and at length, and not as if supplying a previous omission, but with a particle 
 expressive of succession in time (totc), the fact that two thieves were crucified 
 with him. Mark follows Matthew, except that instead of the statement about 
 the watching of the cross, he has a determination of the time at which Jesus 
 was crucified : while Luke more correctly relates first the crucifixion of the 
 two malefactors with Jesus, and then the casting of lots for the clothes ; and 
 the same order is observed by John. But it is inadmissible on this account 
 to transpose the verses in Matthew (34, 37, 38, 35, 36), as has been pro- 
 posed ;' and we must rather abandon the author of the first gospel to the 
 charge, that in his anxiety not to omit any of the chief events at the cruci- 
 fixion of Jesus, he has neglected the natural order of time.^ 
 
 As regards the mode of the crucifiicion there is now scarcely any debated 
 point, if we except the question, whether the feet as well as the hands were 
 nailed to the cross. As it lay in the interest of the orthodox view to prove 
 the affirmative : so it was equally important to the rationalistic system to 
 maintain the negative. From Justin Martyr ^ down to Hengstenberg i" and 
 Olshausen, the orthodox find in the nailing of the feet of Jesus to the cross 
 a fulfilment of the prophecy Ps. xxii. 17, which the LXX. translates : wpv^av 
 X«pas fiov Koi TToSas, but it is doubtful whether the original text really speaks 
 of piercing, and in no case does it allude to crucifixion : moreover the 
 passage is nowhere apphed to Christ in the New Testament. To the rational- 
 ists, on the contrary, it is at once more easy to explain the death of Jesus 
 as a merely apparent death, and only possible to conceive how he could 
 walk immediately after the resurrection, when it is supposed that his feet 
 were left unwounded ; but the case should rather be stated thus : if the 
 historical evidence go to prove that the feet also of Jesus were nailed, it 
 must be concluded that the resuscitation and the power of walking shortly 
 after, either happened supernaturally or not at all. Of late there have stood 
 opposed to each other two learned and profound investigations of this point, 
 the one by Paulus against, the other by Bahr, in favour of — the nailing of 
 the feet.*^ From the evangelical narrative, the former opinion can princi- 
 pally allege in its support, that neither is the above passage in the Psalms 
 anywhere used by the Evangelists, though dn the presupposition of a nailing 
 of the feet it was so entirely suited to their mode of accounting for facts, nor 
 in the history of the resurrection is there any mention of wounds in the feet, 
 together with the wounds in the hands and side (John xx. 20, 25,,, 27). The 
 
 ^ Vid. Paulus and Fritzsche, in loc. Winer, bibl. Realw. art. Golgotha. 
 
 ' Wassenbergh, Diss, de trajectionibus N. T. in Balcknaer's scholse in 11. quosdam N. T. 
 2, p. 31. [ 
 
 » Comp. Schleiermacher, ilber den Lukas, s. 295 ; Wilier, N. T. Grarom., s. 226, and 
 Fritzsche, in Matt., p. 814. 
 
 ' ApoL i. 35. Dial. c. Tryph. xcvii. 
 
 " Christologie des A. T. i, a, s. 182 ff. 
 
 >' Paulus, exeg. Handbuch 3, b, s. 669-754 ; Bahr, in Tholuck's liter. Anzeiger fur christl. 
 Theol. 1835, No. 1-6. Comp. also Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 636, Anm. 
 
^ CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. 679 
 
 Other opinion appeals not without reason to Luke xxiv. 39, where Jesus invites 
 the disciples to behold his hands and his feet (iSere ras )(£ipas /iov xat Tois 
 irdSas fjiov): it is certainly not here said that the feet were pierced, but it is 
 difficult to understand how Jesus should have pointed out his feet merely, 
 to produce a conviction of the reality of his body. The fact that among 
 the fathers of the church, those who, living before Constantine, might be 
 acquainted with the mode of crucifixion from personal observation, as Justin 
 and Tertullian, suppose the feet of Jesus to have been nailed, is of weight. 
 It might indeed be concluded from the remark of the latter : Qui {Christus) 
 solus a populo tarn insigniter crucifixus est,^^ that for the sake of the passage 
 in the Psalms these fathers supposed that in the crucifixion of Christ his 
 feet also were pierced by way of exception ; but, as Tertullian had before 
 called the piercing of the hands and feet the propria atrocia cruets, it is 
 plain that the above words imply, not a special manner of crucifixion, but 
 the special manner of death by crucifixion, which does not occur in the Old 
 Testament, and by which therefore Jesus was distinguished from all the 
 characters therein celebrated. Among the passages in profane writers, the 
 most important is that of Plautus, in which, to mark a crucifixion as extra- 
 ordinarily severe, it is said : offigantur bis pedes, bis brachia^^ Here the 
 question is : does the extraordinary feature lie in the bis, so that the nailing 
 of the feet as well as of the hands only once is presupposed as the ordinary 
 usage ; or was the bis qffigere of the hands, i.e. the nailing of both the hands, 
 the usual practice, and the nailing of the feet an extraordinary aggravation 
 of the punishment ? Every one will pronounce the former alternative to be 
 the most accordant with the words. Hence it appears to me at present, that 
 the balance of historical evidence is on the side of those who maintain that 
 the feet as well as the hands of Jesus were nailed to the cross. 
 
 It was before the crucifixion, according to the two first Evangelists, that 
 there was offered to Jesus a beverage, which Matthew (v. 34) describes as 
 vinegar mingled with gall, 0^0% i/ato. xp^V^ /xe/uy/terov, Mark (v. 23) as wine 
 mingled with myrrh, ixT\mpvia-[Lkvov olvov, but which, according to both, Jesus 
 (Matthew says, after having tasted it) refused to accept. As it is not under- 
 stood with what object gall could be mixed with the vinegar, the x°^^ of 
 Matthew is usually explained, by the aid of the iaji.vfivuT\i.ivov of Mark, as 
 implying bitter vegetable ingredients, especially myrrh ; and then either oivov 
 wine is actually substituted for ofos vinegar, or the latter is understood as 
 sour wine ;i* in order that the beverage offered to Jesus may thus appear to 
 have been the stupefying draught consisting of wine and strong spices, which, 
 according to Jewish usage, was presented to those about to be executed, for 
 the purpose of blunting their susceptibility to pain." But even if the text 
 admitted of this reading, and the words of this interpretation, Matthew would 
 assuredly protest strongly against the real gall and the vinegar being thus 
 explained away from his narrative, because by this means he would lose 
 the fulfilment of the passage in the psalm of lamentation elsewhere used 
 messianically : (LXX.) xai eScoxav «ts to ^ptofi-a. fiov xo^V^, "a' «« Tr/v Sti/rav ixov 
 tTTOTurav fte o|os, they gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they 
 gave me vinegar to drink (Ps. Ixix. 21). Matthew incontestably means, m 
 accordance with this prophecy, real gall with vinegar, and the comparison 
 
 " Adv. Marcion, iii. 19. 
 
 1' Mostellaria, ii. i. 
 
 X Vid. Kuinol, Paulus, in loc. ^. . „ ^, . . r, a , 
 
 »5 Sanhedrim, f. xliii. i, ap. Wetstem, p. 635 : Dixit R. Chaja, f. R. Ascher, dixisse 
 R Chasdam : exeunti, ut capUe plectatur, dant bibendum granum turis in poculo mni, ut 
 akenetur mens ejus, sec. d. Prni. xxxi. 6 : date siceram pereunti et vinum amaris anima. 
 
68o PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 32. 
 
 with Mark is only calculated to suggest the question, whether it be more 
 probable that Mark presents the incident in its original form, which Matthew 
 has remodelled into a closer accordance with the prophecy ; or that Matthew 
 originally drew the particular from the passage in the Psalm, and that Mark 
 so modified it as to give it an appearance of greater historical probability ? 
 
 In order to come to a decision on this question we must take the two 
 other Evangelists into consideration. The presentation to Jesus of a drink 
 mingled with vinegar is mentioned by all four, and even the two who have 
 the vinegar mingled with gall, or the myrrhed wine, as the first drink offered 
 to Jesus, mention afterwards the offering of simple vinegar. According to 
 Luke, this offering of vinegar, ofos ■7rpoa-(j)epeiv, was an act of derision com- 
 mitted by the soldiers not very long after the crucifixion, and before the 
 commencement of the darkness (v. 36 f.) ; according to Mark, shortly before 
 the end, three hours after the darkness came on, one of the bystanders, oi\ 
 hearing the cry of Jesus : my God, my God, etc., presented vinegar to him, 
 likewise in derision, by means of a sponge fixed on a reed (v. 36) ; according 
 to Matthew, .one of the bystanders, on the same cry, and in the same manner, 
 presented vinegar to him, but with a benevolent intention, as we gather from 
 the circumstance that the scoffers wished to deter him from the act (v. 48 f.);'^ 
 whereas in John it is on the exclamation : / Mrsf, that some fill a sponge 
 with vinegar from a vessel standing near, and raise it on a stem of hyssop to 
 the mouth of Jesus (v. 29). Hence it has been supposed that there were 
 three separate attempts to give a beverage to Jesus : the first before the 
 crucifixion, with the stupefying drink (Matthew and Mark) ; the second after 
 the crucifixion, when the soldiers in mockery [offered him some of their 
 ordinary beverage, a mixture of vinegar and water called Jiosea ^7 (Luke) ; and 
 the third, on the complaining cry of Jesus (Matt, Mark and Johri).^^ But 
 if the principle of considering every divergent narrative as a separate event be 
 once admitted, it must be consistently carried out : if the beverage mentioned 
 by Luke must be distinguished from that of Matthew and Mark on account 
 of a difference in the time, then must that of Matthew be distinguishedfrom 
 that of Mark on account of the difference in the design ; and, again, the 
 beverage mentioned by John must not be regarded as the same with that of 
 the two first synoptists, since it follows a totally different exclamation. Thus 
 we should obtain in all five instances in which a drink was offered to Jesus, 
 and we should at least, be at a loss to understand why Jesus after vinegar 
 had already been thrice presented to his lips, should yet a fourth time have 
 desired to drink. If then we must resort to simplification, it is by no means 
 only the beverage in the two first gospels, and that in the fourth, which, on 
 account of the agreement in the time and manner of presentation, are to be 
 understood as one ; but also that of Mark (and through this the others) must 
 be pronounced identical with that of Luke, on account of their being alike 
 offered in derision. Thus there remain two instances of a drink being offered 
 to Jesus, the one before the crucifixion, the other after ; and both have a 
 presumptive support from history, the former in the Jewish custom of giving 
 a stupefying draught to persons about to be executed, the other in the Roman 
 custom, according to which the soldiers on their expeditions, — and the com- 
 pleting an execution was consideted as such, — were in the habit of taking 
 with them their ^osca. But together with this possible historical root, there 
 is a possible prophetic one in Ps. Ixix., and the two have an opposite 
 
 '* Vid. Fritzsche, in loc. 
 " Comp. Paulus, in loc. 
 '8'Thus Kuinol, in Luc, p. 710 f. ; Tholiick, s. 316. 
 
CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. 68 1 
 
 influence : the latter excites a suspicion that the narrative may not have 
 anything historical at its foundation ; the former throws doubt on the ex- 
 planation that the whole story has been spun out of the prophecies. 
 
 On once more glancing over the various narratives, we shall at least find 
 that their divergencies are precisely of a nature to have arisen from a various 
 application of the passage in the Psalms. The eating of gall and the drinking 
 of vinegar being there spoken of, it appears as if in the first instance the 
 former particular had been set aside as inconceivable, and the fulfilment of 
 tlie prophecy found in the circumstance (very possibly historical, since it is 
 mentioned by all the four Evangelists), that Jesus had vinegar presented to 
 him when on the cross. This might either be regarded as an act of com- 
 passion, as by Matthew and John, or of mockery, with Mark and Luke. In 
 this manner the words : they gave me vinegar to drink, iiroTia-dv /te ofos, were 
 indeed literally fulfilled, but not the preceding phrase : in my thirst, cis rr)v 
 Sul/av fiov ; hence the author of the fourth gospel might think it probable that 
 Jesus actually complained of thirst, i.e.'cried, I thirst, Suj/S), an exclamation, 
 which he expressly designates as a fulfilment of the scripture, ypa-^, by 
 which we are doubtless to understand the above passage in the Psalms (comp. 
 Ps. xxii. 1 6); nay, since he introduces the iva reXetcofl^ j\ ypo-<l>v> that the 
 scripture might be fulfilled, by ctSo)? 6 'Ii/crols, oTuravTa ^81/ TirikecrTai, Jesus, 
 knowing that all things were now accomplished, he almost appears to mean that 
 the fulfilment of the prophecy was the sole object of Jesus in uttering that 
 exclamation : but a man suspended on the cross in the agonies of death is 
 not the one to occupy himself with such typological trifling — this is only the 
 part of his biographer who finds himself in perfect ease. Even this addition, 
 however, only showed the fulfilment of one half of the messianic verse, that 
 relating to the vinegar : there still remained what was said of the gall, which, 
 as the concentration of all bitterness, was peculiarly adapted to be placed in 
 relation to the suffering Messiah. It is true that the presentation of the gall, 
 XoX-y, as meat, ^pSifm, which the prophecy strictly taken required, was still 
 suppressed as inconceivable : but it appeared to the first Evangelist, or to 
 the authority which he here follows, quite practicable to introduce the gall as 
 an ingredient in the vinegar, a mixture which Jesus might certainly be unable 
 to drink, from its unpalatableness. More concerned about historical prob- 
 ability than prophetic connexion, the second Evangelist, with reference to 
 a Jewish custom, and perhaps in accordance with historical fact, converted 
 the vinegar mingled with gall, into wine mingled with myrrh, and made Jesus 
 reject this, doubtless from a wish to avoid stupefaction. As however the 
 narrative of the vinegar mingled with gall reached these two Evangelists in 
 company with the original one of the presentation of simple vinegar to Jesus ; 
 they were unwilling that this should be excluded by the former, and hence 
 placed the two side by side. But in making these observations, as has been 
 before remarked, it is not intended to deny that such a beverage may have 
 been offered to Jesus before the crucifixion, and afterwards vmegar also, smce 
 the former was apparently customary, and the latter, from the thirst which 
 tormented the crucified, natural : it is merely intended to show, that the 
 Evangelists do not narrate this circumstance, and under such various forms, 
 because they knew historically that it occurred in this or that manner, but 
 because they were convinced dogmatically that it must have occurred accord- 
 ing to the above prophecy, which however they applied m different ways.is 
 
 During or immediately after the crucifixion Luke represents Jesus as 
 
 '9 Comp. also Bleek, Comm. zum Hebiaerbrief, 2, s. 312, Anm. ; De Wette, exeg, 
 Handb. i, 3, s. 198. 
 
682 PART. III. CHAPTER III. § 1 32. 
 
 saying : Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (v. 34); an 
 intercession which is by some limited to the soldiers who crucified him, 2* 
 by others, extended to the real authors of his death, the Sanhedrists and 
 Pilate.^* However accordant such a prayer may be with the principles con- 
 cerning love to enemies elsewhere inculcated by Jesus (Matt. v. 44), and 
 , however great the internal probability of Luke's statement viewed in this 
 light : still it is to be observed, especially as he stands alone in giving this 
 particular, that it may possibly have been taken from the reputed messianic 
 chapter, Isa. liii., where in the last verse, the same from which the words : 
 he was numbered with the transgressors, /icra dvo/xuv IXoyurOri are borrowed, 
 it is said : B'lEL* D^ypspl. [he made intercession for the transgressors), which the 
 LXX. erroneously translate 8ta ras avo/itas avrSyv irapeSodTj, he was delivered 
 for their transgressions, but which already the Targum Jonathan renders by 
 pro peccatis (it should be peccatoribus) deprecatus est. 
 
 All the Evangelists agree in stating that two malefactors ovo KaKov/yyou 
 (Matthew and Mark call them kycrra^ thieves) were crucified, one on each side 
 of Jesus ; and Mark, if his 28th verse be genuine, sees in this a literal fulfil- 
 ment of the words : he was numbered with the transgressors, which, according 
 to Luke xxii. 37, Jesus had the evening before quoted as a prophecy about to 
 be accomplished in him. Of the further demeanour of these fellow-sufferers, 
 John says nothing ; the two first Evangelists represent them as reviling Jesus 
 (Matt, xxvii. 44 ; Mark xv. 32) : whereas Luke narrates that only one of them 
 was guilty of this offence, and that he was rebuked by the other (xxiii. 39 ff.). 
 In order to reconcile this difference, commentators have advanced the sup- 
 position, that at first both criminals reviled Jesus, but that subsequently one 
 of them was converted by the marvellous darkness ; ^^ more modern ones 
 have resorted to the supposition of an enallage numeri : ^^ but without doubt 
 those only are right who admit a real difference between Luke and his pre- 
 decessors.^ It is plain that the two first Evangelists knew nothing of the 
 more precise details which Luke presents concerning the relation of the two 
 malefactors to Jesus. , He narrates, namely, that when one of them derided 
 Jesus by calling upon him, if he were the Messiah, to deliver himself and 
 them, the other earnestly rebuked such mockery of one with whom he was 
 sharing a like fate, and moreover as a guilty one with the guiltless, entreating 
 for his own part that Jesus would remember him when he should come into 
 his kingdom ^aa-iXeia : whereupon Jesus gave him the promise that he should 
 that very day be with him in Paradise iv t<o 7rapa8da-<o. In this scene there 
 is nothing to create difficulty, until we come to the words which the second 
 malefactor addresses to Jesus. For to expect from one suspended on the 
 cross a future coming to establish the messianic kingdom, would presuppose 
 the conception of the whole system of a dying Messiah, which before the 
 resurrection the apostles themselves could not comprehend, and which there- 
 fore, according to the above representation of Luke, a thief must have been 
 beforehand with them in embracing. This is so improbable, that it cannot 
 excite surprise to find many regarding the conversion of the thief on the cross 
 as a miracle,^' and the supposition which commentators call in to their aid, 
 
 ^° Kuinol, in Luc. p. 710. 
 
 ^' Olshausen, p. 484; Neander, s. 637. 
 
 ^' Thus Chrysostom and others. 
 
 *' Beza and Grotius. 
 
 «■* Paulus, s. 763; Winer, N. T. Gramm., s. 143; Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 817. 
 
 '* Vid. Thilo, Cod. apocr. i, s. 143. Further apocryphal information concerning the two 
 malefactors crucified with Jesus is to be found in the evang. infant, arab. c. xxiii. ap. Thilo, 
 p. 92 f. ; comp. the note p. 143 ; in the evang. Nicod. c. ix. 10, Thilo, p. 581 ff. ; c. xxvi. 
 p. 766 ff. 
 
CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. 683 
 
 namely, that the man was no common criminal, but a political one, perhaps 
 concerned in the insurrection of Barabbas,^*' only serves to render the incident 
 still more inconceivable. For if he was an Israelite inclined to rebellion, and 
 bent on liberating his nation from the Roman yoke, his idea of the Messiah 
 was assuredly the most incompatible with the acknowledgment as such, ot 
 one so completely annihilated in a political view, as Jesus then was. Hence 
 we are led to the question, whether we have here a real history and not 
 rather a creation of the legend ? Two malefactors were crucified with Jesus : 
 thus much was indubitably presented by history (or did even this owe its 
 origin to the prophecy, Isa. liii. 12 ?). At first they were suspended by the 
 side of Jesus as mute figures, and thus we find them in the narrative of the 
 fourth Evangelist, into whose region of tradition only the simple statement, 
 that they were crucified with Jesus, had penetrated. But it was not possible 
 for the legend long to rest contented with so slight a use of them : it opened 
 their mouths, and as only insults were reported to have proceeded from the 
 bystanders, the two malefactors were at first made to join in the general 
 derision of Jesus, without any more particular account being given of their 
 words (Matt, and Mark). But the malefactors admitted of a still better use. 
 If Pilate had borne witness in favour of Jesus ; if shortly after, a Roman cen- 
 turion — nay, all nature by its miraculous convulsions — had attested his exalted 
 character : so his two fellow-sufferers, although criminals, could not remain 
 entirely impervious to the impression of his greatness, but, though one of 
 them did indeed revile Jesus agreeably to the original form of the legend, the 
 other must have expressed an opposite state of feeling, and have shown faith 
 in Jesus as the Messiah (Luke). The address of the latter to Jesus and his 
 answer are besides conceived entirely in the spirit of Jewish thought and ex- 
 pression ; for according to the idea then prevalent, paradise was that part of 
 the nether world which was to harbour the souls of the pious in the interval 
 between their death and the resurrection : a place in paradise and a favour- 
 able remembrance in the future age were the object of the Israelite's petition 
 to God, as here to the Messiah ; ^7 and it was believed concerning a man 
 distinguished for piety that he could conduct those who were present at the 
 hour of his death into paradise.^^ 
 
 To the cross of Jesus was afSxed, according to the Roman custom,**' a 
 superscription imypo.^^ (Mark and Luke), or a title rirXoi (John) which con- 
 tained Ais accusation rrjv airiav avTov (Matthew and Mark), consisting 
 according to all the Evangelists in the words : o ySao-tXeus tSv 'lotiSaiW, the 
 King of the Jews. Luke and John state that this superscription was couched 
 in three different tongues, and the latter informs us that the Jewish rulers 
 were fully alive to-the derision which this form of superscription reflected on 
 their nation, and on this account entreated Pilate, but in vain, for an altera- 
 tion of the terms (v. 21 f.). 
 
 Of the soldiers, according to John four in number, who crucified Jesus, the 
 Evangelists unanimously relate that they parted the clothes of Jesus among 
 themselves by lot. According to the Roman law de bonis damnatorum s" the 
 vestments of the executed fell as spolia to the executioners, and in so far that 
 
 26 Paulus and Kuinol, in loc. ■ i , i?j. ■ 
 
 " Confessio Tudaei segroti, ap. Wetstein, p. 820 -.—da porhonem meant m horto _ Edems, 
 et memento mei m scculo futtiro, quod absconditum est justis. Other passages are given, ib., 
 
 ^'"s'cetuboth, f. ciii. ap. Wetstein, p. 819 : Quo die Rabbi moriturus erat, venit vox dtecelo, 
 dixitque : quiprasms aderit morienti Rabbi, ille intrabit in paradisum. 
 
 " Vid. Wetstein, in loc. Matth. r .1. ^ ^ • -n 1 
 
 8" Quoted in Wetstein, p. 536 ; compare, however, the correction of the text in i'aulus, 
 
 ex. handb. 3, b, s. 751. 
 
684 PA.RT III. CHAPTER III. § 1 3 2. 
 
 Statement of the Evangelists has a point of contact with history. But, like 
 most of the features in this last scene of the life of Jesus, it has also a point 
 of contact with prophecy. It is true that in Matthew the quotation of the 
 passage Ps. xxii. i8 is doubtless an interpolation; but on the other hand the 
 same quotation is undoubtedly genuine in John (xix. 24) : iva ^ y/jow^^ irXT^prndy 
 ri keyova-a- (verbally after the LXX.) SCe/xepLO-avro TO, Ifidnd /lov eauTow, /cai 
 iirl Tov liJLana-fji.6v /iov e/8aXov icXijpov, iMt the scripture might be fulfilled which 
 saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. 
 Here also, according to the assertion of orthodox expositors, David the author 
 of the psalm, under divine guidance, in the moments of inspiration chose 
 such figurative expressions as had a literal fulfilment in Ghrist.^i Rather we 
 must say, David, or whoever else may have been the author of the psalm, as 
 a man of poetical imagination used those expressions as mere metaphors to 
 denote a total defeat ; but the petty, prosaic spirit of Jewish interpretation, 
 which the Evangelists shared without any fault of theirs, and from which 
 orthodox theologians, by their own fault however, have not perfectly liberated 
 themselves after the lapse of eighteen centuries, led to the belief that those 
 words must be understood literally, and in this sense must be shown to be 
 fulfilled in the Messiah. Whether the Evangelists drew the circumstance _ of 
 the casting of lots for the clothes more from historical information which 
 stood at their command, or from the prophetic passage which they variously 
 interpreted, must be decided by a comparison of their narratives. These 
 present the divergency, that while according to the synoptists all the clothes 
 were parted by lot, as is evident from the words : 8ie/Aep«ravTo to. l/jLana airov, 
 j3aAAovT£s Kk^pov, they parted his garments, casting lots, in Matthew (v. 35), and 
 the similar turn of expression in Luke (v. 34), but still more decidedly from 
 the addition of Mark : tw ti &pi\, what every man should take (v. 24) : in John 
 it is the coat or tunic, yyrutv, alone for which lots are cast, the other garments 
 being parted equally (v. 23 f.). This divergency is commonly thought of 
 much too lightly, and is tacitly treated as if the synoptical representation were 
 related to that of John as the indefinite to the definite. Kuinol in considera- 
 tion of John translates the words Sicjuepiitavro /SoXXovr^s of Matthew thus : 
 partim dividebant, partim in sortem conjiciebant : but the meaning is not to be 
 thus distributed, for the Sie/tepi^avro, they parted, states what they did, the 
 )3aAAoi/Tes Kkrfpav, casting lots, how they did it : besides Kuinol passes in total 
 silence over the words Ti<i tL ap-r/, because they undeniably imply that lots 
 were cast for several articles : while according to John the lots had reference 
 only to one garment. If it be now asked, which of the two contradictory 
 narratives is the correct one, the answer given from the point of view to which 
 the comparative criticism of the gospels has at present attained is, that the 
 eye-witness John gives the correct particulars, but the synoptists had merely 
 received the indefinite information, that in parting the clothes of Jesus the 
 soldiers made use of the lot, and this, from unacquaintance with the more 
 minute particulars, they understood as if lots had been cast for all the gar- 
 ments of Jesus. 33 But not only does the circumstance that it is John alone 
 who expressly cites the passage in the Psalms prove that he had an especial 
 view to that passage : but, in general, this divergency of the Evangelists is 
 precisely what might be expected from a difference in the interpretation of 
 that supposed prophecy. When the psalm speaks of the parting of the 
 garments and a casting of lots for the vesture : the second particular is, 
 according to the genius of the Hebrew language which abounds in parallel- 
 
 ^1 Tlioluck, in loc. 
 
 '" E. G. Theile, zur Biographie Jesu, § 36, Anin. 13. 
 
CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. 685, 
 
 ism, only a more precise definition of the first, and the synoptists, correctly 
 understanding this, make one of the two verbs a participle. One however 
 who did not bear in mind this peculiarity of the Hebrew style, or had an 
 interest in exhibiting the second feature of the prophecy as specially fulfilled, 
 might understand the and, which in reality was indicative only of more pre- 
 cise definition, as denoting addition, and thus regard the casting, of lots and 
 the distribution as separate acts. Then the t/x,aT«r/Aos (t^'l^?) which was 
 originally a synonyme of t/iotTta (^''1^?) must become a distinct garment, the 
 closer particularization of which, since it was not in any way conveyed in the 
 word itself, was left to choice. The fourth Evangelist determined it to be the 
 XiTuv, tunic, and because he believed it due to his readers to show some cause 
 for a mode of procedure with respect to this garment, so diiferent from the 
 equal distribution of the others, he intimated that the reason why it was 
 chosen to cast lots for the tunic rather than to divide it, probably was that it 
 had no seam (appat^os) which might render separation easy, but was woven 
 in one piece (■u(/)ai'Tos 81' oKav). ^^ Thus we should have in the fourth Evan- 
 gelist exactly the same procedure as we have found on the side of the first, in 
 the history of the entrance into Jerusalem : in both cases the doubling of a 
 trait originally single, owing to a false interpretation of the 1 in the Hebrew 
 parallelism ; the only difference being that the first Evangelist in the passage 
 referred to is less arbitrary than the fourth is here, for he at least spares us 
 the tracing out of the reason why two asses must then have been required for 
 one rider. The more evident it thus becomes that the representation of the 
 point in question in the different Evangelists is dependent on the manner in 
 which each interpreted that supposed prophecy in the Psalms : the less does. 
 a sure historical knowledge appear to have had any share in their representa- 
 tion, and hence we remain ignorant whether lots were cast on the distribution 
 of the clothes of Jesus, nay whether in general a distribution of clothes took 
 place under the cross of Jesus ; confidently as Justin appeals in support of 
 this very particular to the Acts of Pilate, which he had never seen. 3* 
 
 Of the conduct of the Jews who were present at the crucifixion of Jesus, 
 John tells us nothing ; Luke represents the people as standing to look on, 
 and only the rulers apxovTfs and the soldiers as deriding Jesus by the sum- 
 mons to save himself if he were the Messiah, to which the latter adds the 
 offer of the vinegar (v. 35 ff.) ; Matthew and Mark have nothing here of 
 mockery on the part of the soldiers, but in compensation they make not only 
 the chief priests, scribes, and elders, but also the passers by, ■n-apawopeuo/ievoi^ 
 vent insults against Jesus (v. 39 ff., 29 fif.). The expressions of these people 
 partly refer to former discourses and actions of Jesus ; thus, the sarcasm : 
 TAou that destroyest the temple and buildest it again in three days, save thyself 
 (Matt, and Mark), is an allusion to the words of that tenor ascribed to Jesus; 
 while the reproach : he saved others, himself he cannot save, or save thyself (in 
 all three), refers to his cures. Partly however the conduct of the Jews to- 
 wards Jesus on the cross, is depicted after the same psalm of which Ter- 
 tuUian justly says that it contains totam Christi passionem.^^ When it is said 
 in Matthew and Mark : And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their 
 heads and saying: oX Se TrapairopEuo/xevot ijSkaa-cji^fwvv avrbv, kivovvtk ras 
 KtAaXh.^ airoiv Kal Xiyovrer. (Luke says of the rulers &pxovtk they derided him 
 iilfivKT'^pi^ov), this is certainly nothing else than a mere reproduction of what 
 
 83 ExDOsitors observe in connexion with this particular, that the coat of the Jewish high 
 priest was also of this kind. Jos. Antiq. iii. vii. 4-The same view of the above difference 
 has been already presented in the Probabilia, p. 80 f. 
 
 3* Apol. i. 35- 
 
 85 Adv. Marcion, ut sup. 
 
686 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 32. 
 
 Stands in Ps. xxii. 8 (LXX.) : All they that see me laugh me to scorn, they 
 shoot out the lip and shake the head : iro.vTK ol dewpovvrh fie iiefWKTrjpicrdv fit, 
 iXdX.TQ(rav iv x«'^«<'''i', iKivrjo-av Ki<j}aX.^v ; and the words which are hereupon 
 lent to the Sanhedrists in Matthew: He trusted in God; let him deliver him 
 now if he will have him, irhroi&ev im. tov Oeov, pva-dcrOu) vvv avrbv, el Oiku avrov, 
 are the same with those of the following verse in that Psalm : He trusted in 
 the Lord that he would deliver him -. let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in 
 him, ^\7r«r€V em Kijptov, pva-daOm avTOV a-uta-dTW avrov, on Oika avrov. Now 
 though the taunts and shaking of the head on the part of the enemies of Jesus 
 may, notwithstanding that the description of them is drawn according to the 
 above Old Testament passage, still very probably have really happened : it is 
 quite otherwise with the words which are attributed to these mockers. Words 
 which, like those above quoted, are in the Old Testameut put into the mouth 
 of the enemies of the godly, could not be adopted by the Sanhedrists without 
 their voluntarily assuming the character of the ungodly : which they would 
 surely have taken care to avoid. Only the Christian legend, if it once applied 
 the Psalm to the sufferings of Jesus, and especially to his last hours, could 
 attribute these words' to the Jewish rulers, and find therein the fulfilment of a 
 prophecy. 
 
 The two first Evangelists do not tell us that any one of the twelve was 
 present at the crucifixion of Jesus : they mention merely several Galilean 
 women, three of whom they particularize : namely, Mary Magdalene ; Mary 
 the mother of James the Less and of Joses ; and, as the third,' according to 
 Matthew, the mother of the sons of Zebedee, according to Mark, Salome, 
 both which designations are commonly understood to relate to the same 
 person (Matt. v. 55 f.; Mark v. 40 f.): according to these Evangelists the 
 twelve appear not yet to have reassembled after their flight on the arrest of 
 Jesus. 8" In Luke, on the contrary, among all his acquaintance, Travres 01 
 yvmj-Toi avrov, whom he represents as beholding the crucifixion (v. 49) the 
 twelve would seem to be included : but the fourth gospel expressly singles out 
 from among the disciples the one whom Jesus loved, i.e. John, as present, and 
 among the women, together with Mary Magdalene and the wife of Cleopas, 
 names instead of the mother of James and John, and the mother of Jesus 
 himself. Moreover, while "according to all the other accounts the acquain- 
 tances of Jesus stood afar off, fmKp66iv, according to the fourth gospel John 
 and the mother of Jesus must have been in the closest proximity to the cross, 
 since it represents Jesus as addressing them from the cross, and appointing 
 John to be his substitute in the filial relation to his mother (v. 25 ff.). 01s- 
 hausen believes that he can remove the contradiction which exists between 
 the synoptical statement and the presupposition of the fourth gospel as to the 
 position of the friends of Jesus, by the conjecture that at first they did indeed 
 stand at a distance, but that subsequently some approached near to the cross : 
 it is to be observed, however, in opposition to this, that the synoptists mention 
 that position of the adherents of Jesus just at the close of the scene of cruci- 
 fixion and death, immediately before the taking down from the cross, and 
 thus presuppose that they had retained this position until the end of the 
 scene ; a state of the case which cannot but be held entirely consistent with 
 the alarm which filled the minds of the disciples during those days, and still 
 more with feminine timidity. If the heroism of a nearer approach might 
 perhaps be expected from maternal tenderness : still, the total silence of the 
 synoptists, as the interpreters of the common evangelical tradition, renders the 
 
 "Justin, Apol. i. so, and elsewhere, even speaks of apostacy and denial on the part of 
 all the disciples after the crucifixion. 
 
CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. 687 
 
 historical reality of that particular doubtful. The synoptists cannot have 
 known anything of the presence of the mother of Jesus at the cross, other- 
 wise they would have mentioned her as the chief person, before all the other 
 women ; nor does anything appear to have been known of a more intimate 
 relation between her and John : at least in the Acts (i. 12 f.) the mother of 
 Jesus is supposed to be with the twelve in general, his brothers, and the 
 women of the society. It is at least not so easy to understand how the mem- 
 ory of that affecting presence and remarkable relation could be lost, as to 
 conceive how the idea of them might originate in the circle from which the 
 fourth gospel proceeded. If this circle be imagined as one in which the 
 Apostle John enjoyed peculiar veneration, on which account our gospel drew 
 him out of the trio of the more confidential associates of Jesus, and isolated 
 him as the beloved disciple : it will appear that nothing could be more 
 strikingly adapted to confirm this relation than the statement that Jesus 
 bequeathed, as it were, the dearest legacy, his mother (in reference to whom, 
 as well as to the alleged beloved disciple, it must have been a natural 
 question, whether she had left the side of Jesus in this last trial), to John, 
 and thus placed this disciple in his stead, — made him vicarius Christi. 
 
 As the address of Jesus to his mother and the favourite disciple is peculiar 
 to the fourth gospel: so, on the other hand, the exclamation, My God, my 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ^\i, ^A,t, A.a/ta <Ta/3ax'^avt ; is only found in the 
 two first gospels (Matt. v. 46 ; Mark v. 34). This exclamation, with the men- 
 tal state from which it proceeded, like the agony in Gethsemane, constitutes in 
 the opinion of the church a part of the vicarious suffering of Christ. As how- 
 ever in this instance also it was impossible to be blind to the difficulties of the 
 supposition, that the mere corporeal suffering, united with the external depres- 
 sion of his cause, overwhelmed Jesus to such a degree that he felt himself 
 forsaken by God, while there have been both before and after him persons 
 who, under sufferings equally severe, have yet preserved composure and forti- 
 tude : the opinion of the church has here also, in addition to the natural 
 corporeal and spiritual affliction, supposed as the true cause of that state of 
 mind in Jesus, a withdrawal of God from his soul, a consciousness of the divine 
 wrath, which it was decreed that he should bear in the stead of mankind, by 
 whom it was deserved as a punishment.^'' How, presupposing the dogma of 
 the church concerning the person of Christ, a withdrawal of God from his soul 
 is conceivable, it is the part of the defenders of this opinion themselves, to 
 decide. Was it the human nature in him which felt so forsaken ? Then 
 would its unity with the divine have been interrupted, and thus the very basis 
 of the personality of Christ, according to the above system, removed. Or the 
 divine? In that case the second person in the Godhead would have been 
 separated from the first As little can it have been the God-man, consisting 
 of both natures, that felt forsaken by God, since the very essence of this is the 
 unity and inseparableness of the divine and the human. Thus urged by the 
 self-contradiction of this supranaturalistic explanation, to fall back on the 
 natural rhode of accounting for the above exclamation by the sense of external 
 suffering, and yet repelled from the idea that Jesus should have been so com- 
 pletely subdued by this, commentators have attempted to mollify the sense of 
 the exclamation. It consists of the opening words of Ps. xxii., a passage 
 ■which is classical for this last scene in the life of Jesus. Now this psalm be- 
 gins with a complaining description of the deepest suffering, but in the course 
 of its progress soars into joyful hope of deliverance ; hence it has been sup- 
 posed that the words which Jesus immediately utters do not give his entire 
 
 3' Vid. Calvin, Comra. in harm. evv. in Matth. xxvii. 46 ; Olshausen, in loc. 
 
688 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 3 2. 
 
 experience, and that in thus reciting the first verse he at the same time quotes 
 the whole psalm and especially its exulting close, just as if he meant to say : 
 It is true that I, like the author of this psalm, appear now forsaken of God, 
 but in me, as in him, the divine succour will only be so much the more glorified.'^ 
 But if Jesus uttered this exclamation with a view to the bystanders, and in 
 order to assure them that his affliction would soon be merged in triumph, he 
 would have chosen the means the least adapted to his purpose, if he had 
 uttered precisely those words of the Psalm which express the deepest misery ; 
 and instead of the first verse he would rather have chosen one from the loth 
 to the 1 2th, or from the 20th to the end. If however in that exclamation 
 he meant merely to give vent to his own feeling, he would not have chosen 
 this verse if his actual experience in these moments had been, not what is 
 there expressed, but what is described in the succeeding verses. Now if this 
 experience was his own, and if, all supernatural grounds of explanation being 
 dismissed, it proceeded from his external calamities ; we must observe that one 
 who, as the gospels narrate of Jesus, had long included suffering and death in 
 his idea of the Messiah, and hence had regarded them as a part of the divine 
 arrangements, could scarcely complain of them when they actually arrived as 
 an abandonment by God ; rather, on the above supposition, we should be led 
 to think that Jesus had found himself deceived in the expectations which he 
 had previously cherished, and thus believed himself forsaken by God in the 
 prosecution of his plan,''^ But we could only resort to snch conjectures if the 
 above exclamation of Jesus were shown to have an historical foundation. In 
 this respect the silence of Luke and John would not, it is true, be so serious a 
 difficulty in our eyes, that we should take refuge in explanations like the 
 following : John suppressed the exclamation, lest it should serve to counte- 
 nance the Gnostic j opinion, by admitting the inference that the ^on which 
 was insusceptible of suffering, departed from Jesus in that moment.'"' But 
 thei relation of the words of Jesus to the 22nd Psalm does certainly render this 
 particular suspicious. If the Messiah was once conceived of as suffering, and 
 if that psalm was used as a sort of programme of his suffering — for which it 
 was by no means necessary as an inducement that Jesus should have really 
 quoted one of its verses on the cross :^-the opening words of the psalm which 
 are expressive of the deepest sufifering must appear singularly adapted to be 
 put into the mouth of the crucified Messiah. In this case the derisive speech*' 
 of the bystanders, he calleth for Elias, etc., can have had no other origin than 
 this — that the wish for a variety of taunts to complete this scene after the 
 model of the psalm, was met by the similarity of sound between the ^A,i in the 
 exclamation lent to Jesus, and the name of Elias which was associated with 
 the Messiah. 
 
 Concerning the last words which the expiring Jesus was heard to utter, the 
 Evangelists differ. According to Matthew and Mark, it was merely a loud 
 
 ^ Thus Paulus, Gratz, in loc. Schleiermacher, Glaubenslelire, 2, s. 154, Anni. 
 
 ^' Such is the inference drawn by the author of the Woifenbiittel Fragments, von Zweck 
 Jesu und seiner Tiinger, s. 153. 
 
 *° Schneckenburger, Beitrage, s. 66 f. 
 
 *> According to Olshausen, s. 495, there is no syllable in this speech by which such a 
 meaning is intimated ; on the contrary, a secret horror had already diffused itself over the 
 minds of the scoffers, and they trembled at the thought that Elias might appear in the storm. 
 But when one who attempts to give a beverage to Jesus is dissuaded under the pretext of 
 waiting to see if Elias would come to save him, d Ipxerai. 'EXlas, tnlnruv airbv, this pretext is 
 plainly enough shown to be meant in derision, and hence the horror and trembling belong 
 only to the unscientific animus of the biblical commentator, vphich makes him contemplate the 
 history of the passion above all else, as a mysterium tremendum, and causes him to discover 
 even in Pilate a depth of feeling vifhich is nowhere attributed to this Roman in the gospels. 
 
CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. 689 
 
 voice, (jxovri [jLeydXr], with which he departed (v. 50, 37) ; according to Luke it 
 was the petition : Father, into thy hands T commend my spirit, wdrtp, ih x"/o<w 
 (Tov TrapaOj^a-ofi.ai to Tri/eB/u.^ fxov (v. 46) ; while according to John it was on tlie 
 brief expression : // is finished, TeTcAeo-rai, that he bowed his head and expired 
 (v. 30). Here it is possible to reconcile the two first Evangelists with one or 
 other of the succeeding ones by the supposition, that what the former describe 
 indefinitely as a loud cry, and what according to their representation might be 
 taken for an inarticulate expression of anguish, the others, with more particu- 
 larity, give in its precise verbal form. It is more difficult to recoiciletbe two 
 last gospels. For whether we suppose that Jesus first commended his soul to 
 God, and hereupon cried : it is finished ; or vice versa; both collocations are 
 alike opposed to the intention of the Evangelists, for the expression of Luke 
 KIM. TavTo. etiro)!/ l^eTri/evcrev cannot be rendered, as Paulus would have it, by : 
 soon after he had said this, he expired ; and the very words of the exclamation 
 in John define it as the last utterance of Jesus ; the two writers forming differ- 
 ent conceptions of the closing words. In the account of Luke, the common 
 form of expression for the death of Jesus : TrapeSioKE to Tryevfia (he delivered up 
 his spirit) appears to have been interpreted as an actual commending of his 
 soul to God on the part of Jesus, and to have been further developed with 
 reference to the passage Ps. xxxi. 5 : {Lord) into thy hands I commend my 
 spirit, (ku/dic) £ts 'nelpa.'i trav ■7Ta.paBy\iT0\i.a.\. to Trvev/xa \x.ov (LXX.), — a passage 
 which from the strong resemblance of this Psalm to the 22 nd would be apt to 
 suatgest itself. -i^ Whereas the author of the fourth gospel appears to have lent 
 to Jesus an expression more immediately proceeding from his position in rela- 
 tion to his messianic office, making him express in the word reTeAecn-at it is 
 finished the completion of his work, or the fulfilment of all the prophecies 
 (with the exception, of course, of what could only be completed and fulfilled 
 in the resurrection). 
 
 Not only these last words, however, but also the earlier expressions of Jesus 
 on the cross, will not admit of being ranged in the succession in which they 
 are generally supposed. The speeches of Jesus on the cross are commonly 
 reckoned to be seven ; but so many are not mentioned by any single Evange- 
 list, for the two first have only one : the exclamation my God, my God, etc. 
 ^\t, ^A.t, K. T. A,. Luke has three ; the prayer of Jesus for his enemies, the pro- 
 mise to the thief, and the commending of his spirit into the hands of the 
 Father ; John has likewise three, but all different : the address to his mother 
 and the disciple, with the exclamations, I thirst Snj/u) and Ji is finished TeTeXea-Tai. 
 Now the intercessory prayer, the promise and the recommendation of Mary to 
 the care of the disciple, might certainly be conceived as following each other : 
 but the Biij/!o and the rjXX come into collision, since both exclamations are 
 followed by the same incident, the offering of vinegar by means of a sponge 
 on a reed. When to this we add the entanglement of the TeTeXea-rai with the 
 Trarep k. t. k., it should surely be seen and admitted, that no one of the Evan- 
 gelists, in attributing words to Jesus when on the cross, knew or took mto con- 
 sideration those lent to him by the others ; that on the contrary each depicted 
 this scene in his own manner, according as he, or the legend which stood at his 
 command, had developed the conception of it to suit this or that prophecy or 
 
 A special difficulty is here caused by the computation of the hours. Accord- 
 ing to all the synoptists the darkness prevailed from the sixth hour until the 
 ninth hour, airh iKTri<; <5pas £«s S,pas evvd.Tr,9 (in our reckoning, from twelve at 
 midday to three in the afternoon); according to Matthew and Mark, it was 
 
 *" Credner, Einleitung in das N. T. i, s. 198. 
 
690 PART III. CHAPTER III. § 1 32. 
 
 about the ninth hour that Jesus complained of being forsaken by God, and 
 shortly after yielded up the ghost ; according to Mark it was the third hour 
 (Spa Tpm; (nine in the morning) when Jesus was crucified (v. 25). On the 
 other hand, John says (xix. 14) that it was about the sixth hour (when accord- 
 ing to Mark Jesus had already hung three hours on the cross) that Pilate first 
 sat in judgment over him. Unless we are to suppose that the sun-dial went 
 backward, as in the time of Hezekiah, this is a contradiction which is not to 
 be removed by a violent alteration of the reading, nor by appealing to the AtJ-el 
 {about) in John, or to the inability of the disciples to take note of the hours 
 under such afflictive circumstances ; at the utmost it might perhaps be cancelled 
 if it were possible to prove that the fourth gospel throughout proceeds upon 
 another mode of reckoning time than that used by the synoptists.*' 
 
 *' Thus Rettig, exegetische Analekten, in UUmann's und Umbreit's Studien, 1830, I, s. 
 106 ff.; Tholuck, Glaubwiirdigkeit, s. 307 if.; comp. on the various attempts at reconciliation 
 Liicke and De Wette, in loc. Joh. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 
 
 § 133- 
 
 PRODIGIES ATTENDANT ON THE DEATH OF JESUS. 
 
 According to the evangelical accounts, the death of Jesus was accompanied 
 by extraordinary phenomena. Three hours before, we are told, a darkness 
 diffused itself, and lasted until Jesus expired (Matt, xxvii. 45 parall.) ; in the 
 moment of his death the veil of the temple was torn asunder from the top to 
 the bottom, the earth quaked, the rocks were rent, the graves were opened, 
 and many bodies of departed saints arose, entered into the city, and appeared 
 to many (Matt v. 51 fif. parall.). These details are very unequally distributed 
 among the Evangelists : the first alone has them all ; the second and third 
 merely the darkness and the rending of the veil : while the fourth knows 
 nothing of all these marvels. 
 
 We will examine them singly according to their order. The darkness 
 a-KOTO's which is said to have arisen while Jesus hung on the cross, cannot have 
 been an ordinary eclipse of the sun, caused by the interposition of the moon 
 between his disc and the earth,' since it happened during the Passover, and 
 consequently about the time of the full moon. The gospels however do not 
 directly use the terms eKXeti/^w rov ■^Xiov {eclipse of the ««), the two first speaking 
 only of darkness o-koto^ in general ; and though the third adds with somewhat 
 more particularity : kol ea-KOTia-drj 6 ^Atos, and the sun was darkened, still this 
 might be said of any species of widely extended obscuration. Hence it was 
 an explanation which lay near at hand to refer this darkness to an atmospheric, 
 instead of an astronomical cause, and to suppose that it proceeded from ob- 
 scuring vapours in the air, such as are especially wont to precede earthquakes.^ 
 That such obscurations of the atmosphere may be diffused over whole countries, 
 is true; but not only is the statement that the one in question extended kirX ■n-S.a-av 
 or o\r]v rrjv yrjv, i.e., according to the most natural explanation, over the entire 
 globe, to be subtracted as an exaggeration of the narrator : ' but also the pre- 
 supposition, evident in the whole tenor of their representation, that the dark- 
 ness had a supernatural cause, appears destitute of foundation from the want 
 of any adequate object for such a miracle. Since then, with these accessory 
 features the event does not in itself at once carry the conviction of its credi- 
 bility, it is natural to inquire if it have any extrinsic confirmation. The fathers 
 
 ' The Evang. Nicodemi makes the Jews very absurdly maintain : tAere happened an eclipse 
 of the sun in the ordinary course IkXci^is ijXlov yi-yove Kard, rit elwBds, c. xi. p. 592, ap. 
 
 s Thus Paulus and Kuinbl, in loc; Hase, L. J. § 143 ; Neander, L. J. Chr. s. 639 f. 
 ' Comp. Fritzsche and De Wette, in loc. Matth. 
 
 691 
 
692 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 33. 
 
 of the church appeal in its support to the testimony of heathen writers, among 
 whom Phlegon especially in his xpoviKois is alleged to have noticed the above 
 darkness : * but on comparing the passage preserved by Eusebius, which is 
 apparently the one of Phlegon alluded to, we find that it determines merely 
 the Olympiad, scarcely the year, and in no case the season and day of this 
 darkness.^ More modern apologists appeal to similar cases in ancient history, 
 of which Wetstein in particular has made a copious collection. He adduces 
 from Greek and Roman writers the notices of the eclipses of the sun which 
 occurred at the disappearance of Romulus, the death of Csesar,^ and similar 
 events ; he cites declarations which contain the idea that eclipses of the sun 
 betoken the fall of kingdoms and the death of kings ; lastly he points to Old 
 Testament passages (Isa. 1. 3 ; Joel iii. 20 ; Amos viii. 9 ; comp. Jen xv. 9) 
 and rabbinical dicta, in which either the obscuring of the light of day is de- 
 scribed as the mourning garb of God,'' or the death of great teachers compared 
 with the sinking of the sun atjmid-day,* or the opinion advanced that at the 
 death of exalted hierarchical personages, if the last honours are not paid to them, 
 the sun is wont to be darkened.^ But these parallels, instead of being supports 
 to the credibility of the evangelical narrative, are so many premises to the con- 
 clusion, that we have here also nothing more than the mythical offspring of uni- 
 versally prevalent ideas, — a Christian legend, which would make all nature put 
 on the weeds of mourning to solemnize the tragic death of the Messiah.^" 
 
 The second prodigy is the rending of the veil of the temple, doubtless the 
 inner veil before the Holy of Holies, since the word n3'"i|, used to designate 
 this, is generally rendered in the LXX. by KaraireTacr/^a. It was thought 
 possible to interpret this rending of the veil also as a natural event, by regard- 
 ing it as an effect of the earthquake. But, as Lightfoot has already justly 
 observed, it is more conceivable that an earthquake should rend stationary 
 fixed bodies such as the rocks subsequently mentioned, than that it should 
 tear a pliant, loosely hung curtain. Hence Paulus supposes that the veil of 
 the temple was stretched and fastened not only above but also below and at 
 the sides. But first, this is a mere conjecture : and secondly, if the earth- 
 quake shook the walls of the temple so violently, as to' tear a veil which even 
 though stretched, was still pliant : such a convulsion would rather have caused 
 a part of the building to fall, as is said to have been the case in the Gospel of 
 the Hebrews : ^^ unless it be chosen to add, with Kuinol, the conjecture that 
 the veil was tender from age, and might therefore be torn by a slight con- 
 cussion. That our narrators had no such causes in their minds is proved by 
 the fact that the second and third Evangelists are silent concerning the earth- 
 quake, and that the first does not, mention it until after the rending of the 
 veil. Thus if this event really happened we must regard it as a miracle. 
 Now the object of the divine Providence in effecting such a miracle could 
 
 * Tertull. Apolqget. c. xxi. ; Orig. c. Cels. ii. 33, 59. 
 
 5 Euseb. can. chron. ad. 01. 202, Anm. 4 ; comp. Paulus, s. 765 ff. 
 
 ' Serv. ad Virgil. Georg. 1. 465 ff. : Constat, occiso Casare in Senatupridie Idus Martins, 
 solis fuisse defectum ab hora sexta usque ad noctem. 
 ' Eclia R. iii. 28. 
 
 * R. Bechai Cod. Hakkema : Cum insignis Rabbinus fato concederet, dixit quidam : iste 
 dies gravis est Israeli, ut cum sol occidit ipso meridie. 
 
 ' Succa, f. xxix. I : Dixerunt doctores : quatuor de causis sol deficit : prima, ob patrem 
 doniusjudicii mortuiim, cui exequice nonfiunt ut decet, etc. 
 
 w Vid. Fritzsche, in loc. ; comp. also De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, i, s. 238 ; Theile, zur 
 Biogi-. Jesu, § 36. 
 
 1' Hieron. ad Hedib. ep. cxlix. 8 (comp. his Comm. in loc.) : In evangelio autem, guod 
 hebraicis Uteris scriplum est, kgimus, non velum templi scissum, sed superliminare templi 
 mirce magnitudinis corruisse. 
 
DEATH OF JESUS. 693 
 
 only have been this : to produce in the Jewish cotemporaries of Jesus a deep 
 impression of the importance of his death, and to furnish the first promulga- 
 tors of the gospel with a fact to which they might appeal in support of their 
 cause. But, as Schleiermacher has shown, nowhere else in the New Testa- 
 ment, either in the apostolic epistles or in the Acts, or even in the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, in connexion with the subject of which it could scarcely fail to 
 be suggested, is this event mentioned : on the contrary, with the exception of 
 this bare synoptical notice, every trace of it is lost ; which could scarcely have 
 been the case if it had really formed a ground of apostolical argument. 
 Thus the divine purpose in ordaining this miracle must have totally failed ; 
 or, since this is inconceivable, it cannot have been ordained for this object — 
 in other words, since neither any other object of the miracle, nor yet a mode 
 in which the event might happen naturally can be discovered, it cannot have 
 happened at all. In another way, certainly, a peculiar relation of Jesus to the 
 veil of the temple is treated of in the Epistle to the Hebrews. While before 
 Christ, only the priests had access into the holy place, and into the Holy of 
 Holies only the high priest might enter once in the year with the blood of 
 atonement ; Christ, as the eternal high priest, entered by his own blood into 
 the holy place within the veil, into the Holy of Holies in heaven, whereby he 
 became \he forerunner, irpo8po/x,os, of Tlhristians, and opened access to them 
 also, founding an eternal redemption, aim/iov XvTptoa-iv (vi. 19 f., ix. 6, 12, x. 
 19 f.). Even Paulus finds in these metaphors so close an affinity to our 
 narrative, that he thinks it possible to number the latter among those fables 
 which according to Henke's definitions are to be derived e figurato genere 
 dicendi ;'^^ at least the event, even if it really happened, must have been 
 especially important to the Christians on account of its symbolical signifi- 
 cance, as interpreted by the images in the Epistle to the Hebrews : namely, 
 that by Christ's death the veil of the Jewish worship was rent asunder, and 
 access to God opened to all by means o^ worship in the Spirit. But if, as has 
 been shown, the historical probability of the event in question is extremely 
 weak, and on the other hand, the causes which might lead to the formation of 
 such a narrative without historical foundation very powerful ; it is more con- 
 sistent, with Schleiermacher, entirely to renounce the incident as historical, on 
 the ground that so soon as it began to be the practice to represent the office 
 of Christ under the images which reign throughout the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 nay, in the very earliest dawn of this kind of doctrine, on the first reception 
 of the Gentiles, who were left free from the burthen of Jewish observances, 
 and who thus remained without participation in the Jewish sacrifices, such 
 representations nmst have entered into the Christian hymns (and the evangelical 
 narratives). ^^ 
 
 On the succeeding particulars of the earthquake and the rending of the 
 ropks, we can only pronounce a judgment in connexion with those already 
 examined. An earthquake by which rocks are disparted, is not unprecedented 
 as a natural phenomenon : but it also not seldom occurs as a poetical or 
 mythical embellishment of the death of a distinguished man ; as, for example, 
 on the death of Caesar, Virgil is not content with eclipsing the sun, but also 
 makes the Alps tremble with unwonted commotion.^* Now as we have only 
 been able to view the prodigies previously mentioned in the latter light, and 
 as, besides, the historical validity of the one before us is weakened by the fact 
 that it rests solely on the testimony of Matthew ; we mu^ pronounce upon 
 
 1^ The possibility of this is admitted by Neander also, but with the presupposition of some 
 fact as a groundwork (s. 640 f.). 
 
 i» Ueber den Lukas, s. 293. Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb., i, i, s. 240. 
 " Georg. i. 463 ff. 
 
694 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 3 3. 
 
 this also in the words of Fritzsche : Messice obitum atrocibus osteniis, quibus, 
 quantus vir quummaxime exspirasset, orbi terrarum indicaretur, illustrem esse 
 oportebaty° 
 
 The last miraculous sign at the death of Jesus, likewise peculiar to the first 
 Evangelist, is the opening of the graves, the resurrection of many dead persons, 
 and their appearance in Jerusalem. To render this incident conceivable is a 
 matter of unusual difficulty. It is neither in itself clear how it is supposed to 
 have fared with these ancient Hebrew [saints, dytots,^^ after their resurrec- 
 tion ; 17 nor is anything satisfactory to be discovered concerning a 'possible 
 object for so extraordinary a dispensation-^^ Purely in the resuscitated them- 
 selves the object cannot apparently have lain, for had it been so, there is no 
 conceivable ground why they should be all awaked precisely in the moment 
 of the death of Jesus, and not each at the period prescribed by the course of 
 his own development. But if the conviction of others was the object, this 
 was still less attained than in the miracle of the rending of the veil, for not 
 only is any appeal to the apparition of the saints totally wanting in the 
 apostolic epistles and discourses, but also among the Evangelists, Matthew is 
 the only one by whom it is recorded. A special difficul'ty arises from the 
 position which the determination of time : after his {resurrection, //.eTo. rr/v 
 eyepa-iv airov, occupies between the apparently consecutive stages of the 
 event. For if we connect these words with what precedes, and thus suppose 
 that at the moment of the death of Jesus, the deceased saints were only re- 
 animated, and did not come out of their graves until after his resurrection, — 
 this would have been a torment for the damned rather than a guerdon for the 
 holy ; if, on the contrary, we unite that determination of time to what follows, 
 and thus interpret the Evangelist's meaning to be, that the resuscitated saints 
 did indeed come out of their graves immediately on their being reanimated at 
 the moment that Jesus died, but did not go into the city until after his resur- 
 rection, — any reason for the latter particular is sought in vain. It is but an 
 inartificial way of avoiding these difficulties to pronounce the whole passage 
 an interpolation, without any critical grounds for such a decision. ^^ A more 
 dexterous course is pursued by the rationalistic expositors, when they en- 
 deavour to subtract the miraculous from the event, and by this means in- 
 directly to remove the other difficulties. Here, as in relation to the rending 
 of the veil, the earthquake is regarded as the chief agent : this, it is said, laid 
 open several tombs, particularly those of some prophets, which were found 
 empty, because the bodies had either been removed by the shock, or become 
 decomposed, or fallen a prey to wild beasts. After the resurrection of Jesus, 
 those who' were friendly to him in Jerusalem being filled with thoughts of 
 resurrection from the dead, these thoughts, together with the circumstance of 
 
 '* When Hase, § 143, writes : " The earth trembled, mourning for her greatest Son," we 
 see how the historian in speaking of this feature, which he maintains to be historical, in- 
 voluntarily becomes a poet ; and when in the second edition the author qualifies the phrase 
 by the addition of an " as it were : " it is further evident that his historical conscience had 
 not failed to reproach him for the license. 
 
 '^ Only such must be here thought of, and not sectatores Christi, as Kuinbl maintains. In 
 the Evang. Nicodemi, c. xvii., there are indeed adherents of Jesus, namely, Simeon (Luke 
 ii.) and his two sons, among those who come to life on this occasion ; but the majority in 
 this apocryphal book also, and as well in the dTO^o/ai IIiXiiTov (Thilo, p. 810), according to 
 Epiphanius, orat. in sepulchrum Chr. 275, Ignat. ad Magnes. IX. and others (comp. Thilo, 
 p. 780 ff.), are Old Testament persons, as Adam and Eve, the patriarchs and prophets. 
 
 '' Comp. the various opinions in Thilo, p. 783 f. 
 
 '' Comp. especially Eichhorn, Einl. in d. N. T. i, s. 446 ff. 
 
 '9 Strolh, von Interpolationen im Evang. Matth. In Eichhorn's Repertorium, 9, s. 139. 
 It is hardly a preferable expedient to regard the passage as an addition of the Greek trans- 
 lator. See Kern, Ueber den Urspr. des Evang. Matth. s. 25 and 100. 
 
DEATH OF JESUS. 695 
 
 the graves being found empty, excited in them dreams and visions in which 
 they believed that they beheld the pious ancestors who had been interred in 
 those graves. ^f* But the fact of the graves being found empty would scarcely, 
 even united with the news of the resurrection of Jesus, have sufficed to pro- 
 duce such visions, unless there had previously prevailed among the Jews the 
 expectation that the Messiah would recall to life the departed saints of Israel. 
 If however this expectation existed, it would more probably give birth to the 
 legend of a resurrection of the saints coincident with the death of Jesus than 
 to dreams; whence Hase wisely discards the supposition of dreams, and 
 attempts to find a sufficient explanation of the narrative in the emptiness of 
 the graves on the one hand, and the above Jewish expectation on the other. ^^ 
 But on a nearer view it appears that if once this Jewish idea existed there 
 needed no real opening of the graves in order to give rise to such a mythus : 
 accordingly Schneckenburger has left the emptiness of the graves out of his ■ 
 calculation.''^ When, however, he yet speaks of visionary appearances which 
 were seen by the adherents of Jesus- in Jerusalem, under the excitement pro- 
 duced by his resurrection, he is not less inconsequent than Hase, when he 
 omits the dreams and yet retains the laying open of the graves ; for these two 
 particulars being connected as cause and effect, if one of them be renounced 
 as unhistorical so also must the other. 
 
 In opposition to this view it is remarked, not without an appearance of 
 reason, that the above Jewish expectation does not suffice to explain the 
 origin of such a mythus. ^^ The actual expectation may be more correctly 
 stated thus. From the epistles of Paul (i Thess. iv. 16 ; comp. i Cor. xv. 
 22 f.) and more decidedly from the Apocalypse (xx. 4 f.), we gather that the 
 first Christians anticipated, as a concomitant of the return of Christ, a re- 
 surrection of the saints, who would thenceforth reign with Christ a thousand 
 years ; only at the end of this period, it was thought, would the rest of the 
 dead arise, and from this second resurrection the former was distinguished as 
 the first resurrection 17 a.va.tTTo.a-i'; 17 Tcpiarr], or tAe resurrection of the just ruiv 
 StKatW (Luke xiv. 14?), in place of which Justin has the holy resurrection rj 
 dyta dvoo-Tao-ts.^* But this is the Christianized form of the Jewish idea; for 
 the latter referred, not to the return, but to the first advent of the Messiah, 
 and to a resurrection of Israelites only.^s Now in the statement of Matthew 
 likewise, that resurrection is assigned to the first appearance of the Messiah ; 
 for what reason, however, it is there connected with his death, there is certainly 
 no indication in the Jewish expectation taken in and by itself, while in the 
 modification introduced by the adherents of Jesus there would appear rather 
 to have lain an inducement to unite the resurrection of the saints with his 
 own ; especially as the connecting of it with his death seems to be in contra- 
 diction with the primitive Christian idea elsewhere expressed, that Jesus was 
 'Ca& first-begotten from the dead, ■Kf>uyTOTOKo% ck t&v veKpu>v (Col. i. 18 ; Rev. 1. 5), 
 the first fruits of them that sleep, airapy^ rtov KcKoi/Aij/AeVwv (i Cor. xv. 20). But 
 we do not know whether this idea was universal, and if some thought it due 
 to the messianic dignity of Jesus to regard him as the first who rose from the 
 dead there are obvious motives which might in other cases lead to the re- 
 presentation that already at the death of Jesus there was a resurrection of 
 
 2» Thus Paulus and Kuinol, in loc. The latter calls this explanation a mythical one. 
 ii' Leben Jesu, § 148. 
 22 Ueber den Urspr. s. 67. 
 28 Paulus, exeg. Handb., 3, b. s. 798. 
 
 2* Dial. c. Tryph. cxiii. a- j • 
 
 ••' See the collection of passages relative to this subject in Schottgen, 2, p. S7° "• 5 f^"" i" 
 Bertholdt's Christologia, § 35. 
 
696 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 33. 
 
 saints. First there was an external motive : among the prodigies at the death 
 of Jesus an earthquake is mentioned, and in describing its violence it was 
 natural to add to the rending of the rocks another feature which appears else- 
 where in accounts of violent earthquakes,^'' namely, the opening of the graves : 
 here then was an inviting hinge for the resurrection of the saints. But there 
 was also an internal motive : according to the ideas early developed in the 
 Christian community, the death of Jesus was the specially efficacious point in 
 the work of redemption, and in particular the descent into Hades connected 
 with it (1 Pet. iii. 19 f.) was the means of delivering the previously deceased 
 from this abode ; ^^ hence from these ideas there might result an inducement 
 to represent the bonds of the grave as having been burst asunder for the 
 ancient saints precisely in the moment of the death of Jesus. Besides, by 
 this position, yet more decidedly than by a connexion with the resurrection 
 of Jesus, the resuscitation of the righteous was assigned to the first appear- 
 ance of the Messiah, in accordance with the Jewish idea, which might very 
 naturally be echoed in such a narrative, in the Judaizing circles of primitive 
 Christendom ; while at the same time Paul and also the author of the 
 Apocalypse already assigned the Jirst resurrection to the second and still 
 future advent of the Messiah. It was then apparently with reference to this 
 more developed idea, that the words after his resurrection were added as a 
 restriction, probably by the author of the first gospel himself. 
 
 The synoptists conclude their description of the events at the death of 
 Jesus, with an account of the impression which they made more immediately 
 on the Roman centurion whose office it was to watch the crucifixion. Accord- 
 ing to Luke (v. 47) this impression was produced by to yevo^t-ivov (what was 
 done), i.e., since he had beforehand mentioned the darkness, by the departure 
 of Jesus with an audible prayer, that being the particular which he had last 
 noticed ; indeed Mark, as if expoundit(g Luke, represents the exclamation : 
 truly this man was the Son of God as being called forth from the centurion 
 by the circumstance that Jesus so cried out, and gave up the ghost, ovnm icpafas 
 i$iin>evatv (v. 39). Now in Luke, who gives a prayer as the last utterance of 
 Jesus, it is possible to conceive that this edifying end might impress the 
 centurion with a favourable opinion of Jesus : but how the fact of his expiring 
 with a loud cry could lead to the inference that he was the Son of God, will 
 in no way appear. Matthew however gives the most suitable relation to the 
 words of the centurion, when he represents them as being called forth by the 
 earthquake and the other prodigies which accompanied the death of Jesus : 
 were it not that the historical reality of this speech of the centurion must 
 stand or fall with its alleged causes. In Matthew and Mark this officer 
 expresses the conviction that Jesus is in truth the Son of God, in Luke, that 
 he is a righteous man. The Evangelists in citing the former expression 
 evidently intend to convey the idea that a Gentile bore witness to the 
 Messiahship of Jesus ; but in this specifically Jewish sense the words cannot 
 well have been understood by the Roman soldier : we might rather suppose 
 that he regarded Jesus as a son of God in the heathen sense, or as an inno- 
 cent man unjustly put to death, were it not that the credibility of the whole 
 synoptical account of the events which signalized the death of Jesus being 
 shaken, this, which forms the top stone as it were, must also be of doubtful 
 security ; especially when we look at the narrative of Luke, who besides the 
 impression on the centurion adds that on the rest of the spectators, and makes 
 them return to the city with repentance and mourning — a trait which appears 
 
 ^' See the passages collected by Wetstein. 
 
 "? See this idea further developed in the Evang. Nlcod. c xviii. ff. 
 
DEATH OF JESUS. 697. 
 
 to represent, not so probably what the Jews actually felt and did, as what in 
 the opinion of the Christians they ought to have felt and done. 
 
 § '34- 
 
 THE WOUND BY A SPEAR IN THE SIDE OF JESUS. 
 
 ^ AVhile the synoptists represent Jesus as hanging on the cross from the wpa 
 evvariy, i.e. three in the afternoon, when he expired, until the oi/fi'a, i.e. pro- 
 bably about six in the evening, without anything further happening to him : 
 the fourth Evangelist interposes a remarkable episode. According to him, the 
 Jews, in order to prevent the desecration of the coming sabbath^ which was a 
 peculiarly hallowed one, by the continued exposure of the bodies on the cross, 
 besought the Procurator that their legs might be broken and that they might 
 forthwith be carried away. The soldiers, to whom this task was committed, 
 executed it on the two criminals crucified with Jesus ; but when they perceived 
 in the latter the signs of life having already become extinct, they held such a 
 measure superfluous in his case, and contented themselves with thrusting a 
 spear into his side, whereupon there came forth blood and water (xix. 31- 
 37); . 
 
 This event is ordinarily regarded as the chief voucher for the reality of the 
 - death of Jesus, and in relation to it the proof to be drawn from the synoptists 
 is held inadequate. According to the reckoning which gives the longest space 
 of time, that of Mark, Jesus hung on the cross from the third to the ninth 
 hour, that is, six hours, before he died ; if, as to many it has appeared pro- 
 bable, in the two other synoptists the commencement of the darkness at 
 the sixth hour marks also the commencement of the crucifixion, Jesus, 
 according to them, hung only three hours living on the cross ; and if we pre- 
 suppose in John the ordinary Jewish mode of reckoning the hours, and 
 attribute to him the same opinion as to the period of the death of Jesus, it 
 follows, since he makes Pilate pronounce judgment on him only about the 
 sixth hour, that Jesus must have died after hanging on the cross not much 
 more than two hours. But crucifixion does not in other cases kill thus 
 speedily. This may be inferred from the nature of the punishment, which 
 does not consist in the infliction of severe wounds so as to cause a rapid loss 
 of blood, but rather in the stretching of the limbs, so as to produce a gradual 
 rigidity ; moreover it is evident from the statements of the Evangelists them- 
 selves, for according to them Jesus, immediately before the moment which 
 they regard as the last, had yet strength to utter a loud cry, and the two 
 thieves crucified with him were still alive after that time ; lastly, this opinion 
 is supported by examples of individuals whose life has lasted for several days 
 on the cross, and who have only at length expired from hunger and similar 
 causes.^ Hence fathers of the church and older theologians advanced the 
 opinion, that the death of Jesus, which would not have ensued so quickly in 
 a natural way, was accelerated supernaturally, either by himself or by God : ^ 
 physicians and more modern theologians have appealed to the accumulated 
 corporeal and spiritual sufferings of Jesus on the evening of the night pirior 
 to his crucifixion ; ' but they also for the most part leave open the possibility 
 that what appeared to the Evangelists the supervention of death itself, was 
 
 > The instances are collected in Paulus, exeg. Ilandb., 3, b. s. 781 ff. ; Winer, bibl. 
 Realworterb. I, s. 672ff. ; and Hase, §144. , , , „ , 
 
 2 According to TertuUian by the former, according to Grotius by the latter ; see Paulus, 
 
 3 Thus Gruner and others ap. Paulus, s. 782 ff. ; Hase, ut sup. ; Neander, L. J. Chr. s. 
 647. 
 
698 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 34. 
 
 only a swoon produced by the stoppage of the circulation, and that the wound 
 with the spear in the side first consummated the death of Jesus. 
 
 But concerning this wound itself, the place, the instrument, and the manner 
 of fits infliction— concerning its object and effects, there has always been a 
 great diversity of opinion. The instrument is called by the Evangelist a 
 ^oyXV> which may equally signify either the light javelin or the heavy lance ; 
 so that we are left in uncertainty as to the extent of the wound. The manner 
 in which the wound was inflicted he describes by the verb vvcra-eiv, which some- 
 times denotes a mortal wound, sometimes a slight scratch, nay, even a thrust 
 which does not so much as draw blood ; hence we are ignorant of the depth 
 of the wound : though since Jesus, after the resurrection, makes Thomas lay 
 only his fingers in the print of the nails, but, in or even merely on the wound 
 in the side, his hand (John xx. 27), the stroke of the spear seems to have 
 made a considerable wound. But the question turns mainly on the place in 
 which the wound was made. This John describes as the -irkevpa. side, and 
 certainly if the spear entered the left side between the ribs and penetrated 
 into the heart, death must inevitably have ensued : but the above expressiqn 
 may just as properly imply the right side as the left, and in either side any 
 spot from the shoulder to the hip. Most of these points indeed would be at 
 once decided, if the object of the soldier had been to kill Jesus, supposing he 
 should not be already dead ; in this case he would doubtless have pierce^ . 
 Jesus in the most fatal place, and as deeply as possible, or rather, have brokeii 
 his legs, as was done to the two thieves : but since he treated Jesus otherwise 
 than his fellow sufferers, it is evident that in relation to him he had a different 
 object, namely, in the first place to ascertain by this stroke of the spear, 
 whether death had really taken place — a conclusion which he believed might 
 securely be drawn from the flowing of blood and water out of the wound. 
 
 But this result of the wound is in fact the subject on which there is the 
 least unanimity. The fathers of the Church, on the ground that blood no 
 longer flows from corpses, regarded the i^od and water, alfjM koI uSiop, which 
 flowed from the corpse of Jesus as a miracle, a sign of his superhuman nature.* 
 More modern theologians, founding on the same experience, liave interpreted 
 the expression as a hendiadys, implying that the blood still flowed, and that 
 this was a sign that death had not yet, or not until now taken place.* As, 
 however, blood is itself a fluid, the waier v8<j>p added to the dlood at/ji,a. cannot 
 signify merely the fluid state of the latter, but must denote a peculiar admix- 
 ture which the blood flowing from the side of Jesus contained. To explain 
 this to themselves, and at the same time obtain the most infallible proof of 
 death, others have fallen on the idea that the water mixed with the blood 
 came out of the pericardium, which had been pierced by the spear, and in 
 which, especially in such as die under severe anguish, a quantity of fluid is 
 said to be accumulated.^ But — besides that the piercing of the pericardium 
 is a mere supposition — on the one hand, the quantity of such fluid, where no 
 dropsy exists, is so trifling, that its emission would not be perceptible ; and on 
 the other hand, it is only a single small spot in front of the breast where the 
 pericardium can be so struck that an emission outward is possible : in all other 
 cases, whatever was emitted would be poured into the cavity of the thorax.'' 
 
 * Orig. c. Cels. ii. 36 : tiSv fikv oiiv &\\i>iv veKpwv (ritindTiav t4 at/10 ir/iyvvTm, Kal 
 KoBapbv oiK diro/i^e?' toO Si /cari t6ii 'li](rovv veicpoS triifinTos rb irapaSo^ov, Kai irepl t6 veKpbv 
 <ru>iia 9jv atfia Kal iiSup d.Trb tuv v\evpav irpoxvBiv. Comp. Euthymius in loc. iK vexpov yap 
 iaiBpiiiTTov, Khv /xvpiaKis KiJf g ris, ovk i^Xeitrerai at/ia. iirep(pvis tovto rb vpayim, KoX rpavus 
 diSaffKov, Stti, iivip S,v6paTov 6 vvyeis. 
 
 * Schuster, in Eichhorn's Bibl. 9, s. 1036 ff. 
 
 ' Gruner, Comm. de morte J. Chr. vera, p. 47 ; Tholuck, Comm. z.. Joh. s. 318. 
 ' Comp. Hase, ut sup. 
 
DEATH OF JESUS. 699 
 
 Without doubt the idea which was present in the Evangelist's mind was rather 
 the fact, which may be observed in every instance of blood-letting, that the 
 blood, so soon as it has ceased to take part in the vital process, begins to 
 divide itself into placenta and serum ; and he intended by representing this 
 separation as having already taken place in the blood of Jesus, to adduce a 
 proof of his real death.^ But whether this outflow of blood and water in per-' 
 ceptible separation be a possible proof of death, — whether Hase and Winer 
 be right when they maintain that on deep incisions in corpses the blood 
 sometimes flows in this decomposed state ; or the fathers, when they deem 
 this so unprecedented that it must be regarded as a miracle in Jesus, — this 
 is another question. A distinguished anatomist has explained the state of the 
 fact to me in the following manner : ^ Ordinarily, within an hour after death 
 the blood begins to coagulate in the vessels, and consequently no longer to 
 flow on incisions ; only by way of exception in certain species of death, as 
 nervous fevers, or suffocation, does the blood retain its fluidity in the corpse. 
 Now if it be chosen to place the death on the cross under the category of 
 suffocation — which, however, from the length of time that crucified persons 
 have often remained alive, and in relation to Jesus especially, from his being 
 said to have spoken to the last, appears impracticable ; or if it be supposed 
 that the wound in the side followed so quickly on the instant of death that it 
 found the blood still fluid, — a supposition which is discordant with the narra- 
 tives, for they state Jesus to have been already dead at three in the afternoon, 
 while the bodies must have been taken away only at six in the evening : then, 
 if the spear struck one of the larger blood vessels, blood would have flowed, 
 but without water \ if, however, Jesus had already been dead about an hour, 
 and his corpse was in the ordinary state : nothing at all would have flowed. 
 Thus either blood or nothing : in no case blood and water, because the seru?n 
 and placenta are not separated in the vessels of the corpse as in the basin 
 after blood-letting. Hardly then had the author of this trait in the fourth 
 gospel himself seen the at/ia koa. vSwp flowing out of the side of Jesus, as a sign 
 that his death had taken place ; rather, because after blood-letting he had seen 
 the above separation take place in the blood as it lost its vitality, and because 
 he was desirous to show a certain proof of the death of Jesus, he represented 
 those separate ingredients as flowing out of his wounded corpse. 
 
 The Evangelist assures us, with the most solicitous earnestness, that this 
 really happened to Jesus, and that his account is trustworthy, as being founded 
 on personal observation (v. 35). According to some, he gives this testimony 
 in opposition to docetic Gnostics, who denied the true corporeality of Jesus i^" 
 but wherefore then the mention of the water ? According to others, on ac- 
 count of the noteworthy fulfilment of two prophecies by that procedure with 
 respect to the body of Jesus.^^ But, as Liicke himself says, though John 
 does certainly elsewhere, even in subordinate ppints, seek a fulfilment of 
 prophecy, he nowhere attaches to it so extraordinary a weight as he would 
 here have done according to this supposition. Hence it appears the most 
 natural supposition that the Evangelist intended by those assurances to con- 
 firm the truth of the death of Jesus,'^ and that he merely appended the refer- 
 
 * Winer, ut sup. , r„, , , 
 
 " Comp. the similar statement of an anatomist in De Wette, in loc. and I holuck ut sup. 
 
 "> Wetstein and Olshausen, in loc. ; comp. Hase, ut sup. 
 
 1' Liicke, in loc. 
 
 '2 Thus Less, Auferstehungsgeschichte, s. 95 f. ; Tholuck, in loc. According to Weisse 
 (die evang. Gesch. i, s. 102, 2, s. 237 ff.) the Evangelist referred to a passage of the 
 apostolic epistle, under a misapprehension of its meaning, namely, to I John v. 6 : oSris 
 isTiv b iXeiiy dl SSaros koX aX/mros, 'I. Xp. ■ oiiK iv T(f iidan fibvov, dXV h Tip iiSoTi /faJ 
 Tif aiiMTi. 
 
700 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 34. 
 
 ence to the fulfilment of Scripture as a secondary illustrative addition. The 
 absence of an historical indication, that so early as the period of the composi- 
 tion of the fourth gospel, there existed a suspicion that the death of Jesus was 
 only apparent, does not suffice, in the paucity of information at our command 
 concerning that period, to prove that a suspicion so easy of suggestion had 
 not actually to be combated in the circle in which the above gospel arose, 
 and that it may not have given occasion to the adduction of proofs not only 
 of the resurrection of Jesus, but also of his death.i* Even in the Gospel of 
 Mark a similar effort is visible. When this Evangelist, in narrating Joseph's 
 entreaty for the body of Jesus, says : And Pilate mamelled if he were already 
 dead (v. 44) : this suggests the idea that he lent to Pilate an astonishment 
 which he must have heard expressed by many of his cotemporaries concerning 
 the rapidity with which the death of Jesus had ensued; and when he proceeds 
 to state that the procurator obtained from the centurion certain infornnation 
 that Jesus had been some time dead, TraXai avedave : it appears as if he wished, 
 in silencing the doubt of Pilate, to silence that of his cotemporaries also ; but 
 in that case he can have known nothing of a wound with a spear, and its con- 
 sequences, otherwise he would not have left unnoticed this securest warrant' 
 of death having really taken place : so that the representation in John has 
 the appearance of being a fuller development of a tendency of the legend 
 already visible in Mark. 
 
 This view of John's narrative is further confirmed by his citation of Old 
 Testament passages, as fulfilled in this event. In the stroke of the spear he 
 sees the fulfilment of Zech. xii. 10 (better translated by John than by the 
 LXX.), where Jehovah says to the Israelites -IliJT "W^ m m 'il^'^n] they shall 
 look on him whom they have pierced, in the sense, that they will one day re- 
 turn to him whom they had so grievously offended." The word IB?, to pierce, 
 understood literally, expresses an act which appears more capable of bemg 
 directed against a man than against Jehovah : this interpretation is supported 
 by the variation in the reading 1*'?S; and it must have been confirmed by the 
 succeeding context, which proceeds in the third person thus : and ihey shall 
 mourn for him, as one moumeth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for 
 him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born. Hence the Rabbins inter- 
 preted this passage of the Messiah ben Joseph, who would be pierced by the 
 sword in battle,'^ and the Christians might refer it, as they did so many pas- 
 sages in Psalms of lamentation, to their Messiah, at first imderstanding the 
 piercing either figuratively or as implying the nailing of the hands (and feet) 
 in crucifixion (comp. Rev. i. 7) ; until at last some one, who desired a more 
 decisive proof of death than crucifixion in itself afforded, interpreted it as a 
 special piercing with the spear. 
 
 If then this trait of the piercing with the spear proceeded from the com- 
 bined interests of obtaining a proof of death, and a literal fulfilment of a 
 prophecy : the rest must be regarded as merely its preparatory groundwork. 
 The piercing was only needful as a test of death, if Jesus had to be early 
 taken down from the cross, which according to Jewish law (Deut. xxi. 22 ; 
 Josh. viii. 29, X. 26, f. — an exception occurs in 2 Sam. xxi. 6 ff.^") must in any 
 case be before night ; but in particular in the present instance (a special 
 circumstance which John alone notes), before the commencement of the 
 passover. If Jesus died unusually soon, and if the two who were crucified 
 
 " Comp. Kaiser, bibl. Theol. i, s. 253. 
 
 '* Roseninuller,. Schol. in V. T. 7, 4, p. 340. 
 
 '» Vid. ap. Rosenmiiller, in loc. ; Schbttgen, 2, p. 221 ; Bertholdt, § 17, not. 12. 
 
 '^ Comp. Joseph, b. j. iv. v. 2. Sanhedrin, vi. 5, ap. Lightfoot, p. 499. 
 
BURIAL OF JESUS. 701 
 
 with him were yet to be taken down at the same time, the death of the latter 
 must be hastened by violent means. This might be done likewise by means 
 of a stroke of the spear: but then the piercing, which in Zech. xii. 10 was 
 predicted specially of the Messiah, would equally happen to others. Thus 
 m their case it would be better to choose the breaking of the legs, which 
 would not, indeed, instantaneously superinduce death, but which yet made 
 it ultimately certain as a consequence of the mortification produced by the 
 fracture. It is true that the crurifragium appears nowhere else in connexion 
 with crucifixion among the Romans, but only as a separate punishment for 
 slaves, prisoners of war, and the like." But it was not the less suitable in a 
 prophetic point of view ; for was it not said of the Paschal lamb with which 
 Jesus was elsewhere also compared (i Cor. v. 7) : not a bone of him shall be 
 broken (Exod. xii. 46) ? so that both the prophecies were fulfilled, the one 
 determining what should happen exclusively to Jesus, the other what should 
 happen to his fellow-sufferers, but not to him. 
 
 § 135- 
 
 BURIAL OF JESUS. 
 
 According to Roman custom the body of Jesus must have remained sus- 
 pended until consumed by the weather, birds of prey, and corruption ; 1 
 according to the Jewish, it must have been interred in the dishonourable 
 burying place assigned to the executed : ^ but the evangelical accounts in- 
 form us that a distinguished adherent of the deceased begged his body of the 
 procurator, which, agreeably to the Roman law,^ was not refused, but was 
 immediately delivered to him (Matt, xxvii. 57 parall.). This man, who in all 
 the gospels is named Joseph, and said to be derived from Arimathea, was 
 according to Matthew a rich man and a disciple of Jesus, but the latter, as 
 John adds, only in secret ; the two intermediate Evangelists describe him as 
 an honourable member of the high council, in which character, Luke remarks, 
 he had not given his voice for the condemnation of Jesus, and they both 
 represent him as cherishing messianic expectations. That we have here a 
 personal description gradually developed into more and more preciseness is 
 evident. In the first gospel Joseph is a disciple of Jesus — and such must 
 have been the man who under circumstances so unfavourable did not hesitate 
 to take charge of his body ; that, according to the same gospel, he was a rich 
 man avOpomos wkova-io? already reminds us of Isa. liii. 9, where it is said 
 rnb3 TCT-ns] "51? D'^'B'rnS ]B'.l which might possibly be understood of a 
 burial with the rich, and thus become the source at least of this predicate of 
 Joseph of Arimathea. That he entertained messianic ideas, as Luke and 
 Mark add, followed of course from his relation to Jesus ; that he was a coun- 
 sellor, ySouXerr^s, as the same Evangelists declare, is certainly a new piece of 
 information : but that as such he could not have concurred in the condemna- 
 tion of Jesus was again a matter of course ; lastly, that he had hitherto kept 
 his adherence to Jesus a secret, as John observes, accords with the peculiar 
 position in relation to Jesus which this Evangelist gives to certain exalted 
 adherents, especially to Nicodemus, who is subsequently associated with 
 Joseph. Hence it must not be at once supposed that the additional particu- 
 
 " Vid. Lipsiiis, de cruce, L. II. cap. t4. 
 ' Comp. Winer, I, s. 802. 
 * Sanhedrin, ap. Lightfoot, p. 499. 
 ' Ulpian, xlviii. 24, i ff. 
 
702 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 135. 
 
 lars which each succeeding Evangelist gives, rest on historical information 
 which he possessed over and above that of his predecessors. 
 
 While the synoptists represent the interment of Jesus as being performed 
 by Joseph alone, with no other beholders than the women, John, as we have 
 observed, introduces Nicodemus as an assistant ; a particular, the authenticity 
 of which has been already considered in connexion with the first appearance 
 of Nicodemus.* This individual brings spices for the purpose of embalming 
 Jesus ; a mixture of myrrh and aloes, in the quantity of about a hundred 
 pounds. In vain have commentators laboured to withdraw from the word 
 XCrpa, which John here uses, the signification of the Latin /il>ra, and to sub- 
 stitute a smaller weight : ^ the above surprising quantity is, however, satisfac- 
 torily accounted for by the remark of Olshausen, that the superfluity was a 
 natural expression of the veneration of those men for Jesus. In the fourth 
 gospel the two men perform the office of embalming immediately after the 
 taking down of the body from the cross, winding it in linen clothes after the 
 Jewish practice ; in Luke the women, on their return home from the grave of 
 Jesus, provide spices and ointments,' in order to commence the embalming 
 after the sabbath (xxiii. 56, xxiv. i) ; in Mark they do not buy the sweet spices 
 apwixara until the sabbath is past (xvi. i) ; while in Matthew there is no men- 
 tion of an embalming of the body of Jesus, but only of its being wrapped in 
 a c/ean linen doth (xxvii. 59). 
 
 Here it has been thought possible to reconcile the difference between Mark 
 and Luke in relation to the time of the purchase of the spices, by drawing 
 over one of the two narrators to the side of the other. It appeared the 
 most easy .to accommodate Mark to Luke by the supposition of an enallage 
 temporum ; his verb riyopacrav, they bought, used in connexion with the day 
 after the sabbath, being taken as the pluperfect, and understood to imply, in 
 accordance with the statement of Luke, that the women had the spices in 
 readiness from the evening of the burial.® But against this reconciliation it 
 has already been remarked with triumphant indignation by the Fragmentist, 
 that the aorist, standing between a determination of time and the statement 
 of an object, cannot possibly signify anything else than what happened at 
 that time in relation to that object, and thus the words rjyopaa-av apiLfwra, 
 they bought sweet spices , placed between Siayevoiievcm tov a-ap^drov, The sabbath 
 being past, and fva QSovaax aXeuj/wa-iv airrov, that they might come and anoint 
 him, can only signify a purchase made after the sabbath had elapsed.'' Hence 
 Michaelis, who undertook to vindicate the histories of the burial and resurrec- 
 tion from the charge of contradiction urged by the Fragmentist, betook him- 
 self to the opposite measure, and sought to conform Luke to Mark. When 
 Luke writes : vn-oo-Tpei/'ao-at h\ yfToLp.a<yav aputfiara Kal fjivpa, and they returned, 
 and bought sweet spices and ointments, he does not, we are told, mean that they 
 had made this purchase immediately after their return, and consequently on 
 the evening of the burial : on the contrary, by the addition xai to p.\v va-^^wrov 
 ri<TV)(a(rav Kara ttjv evToXrjv, and rested the sabbath day, according to the com- 
 mandment, he himself gives us to understand that it did not happen until the 
 sabbath was past, since between their return from the grave and the com- 
 mencement of the sabbath at six in the evening, there was no time left for the 
 purchase.* But when Luke places his ^olfmcrav (they prepared) between 
 
 * Vol. II. § 80. 
 
 ^ Michaelis, Begrabniss- und Auferstehungsgeschichte, s. 68 fF. 
 ' Thus Grotius ; Less, Auferstehungsgeschichte, s. 165. 
 
 "> See the fifth Fragment, in Lessing's viertem Beitrag zur Geschichte und Literatur, s. 
 467 f. Comp. concerning these differences also Lessing's Duplik. 
 ° Michaelis, ut sup. s. 102 ff. 
 
BURIAL OP JESUS. 703 
 
 iin-ocrrpe'i^ao-ai (being returned) and ^o-uxacrav {they rested), this can as little 
 signify something occurring after the rest of the sabbath, as in Mark the 
 similarly placed word ■^■yopao-av can signify something which had happened 
 before the sabbath. Hence more recent theologians have perceived that 
 each of these two Evangelists must be allowed to retain the direct sense of 
 his words ; nevertheless they have believed it possible to free both the one 
 and the other from the appearance of error by the supposition that the spices 
 prepared before the sabbath were not sufficient, and that the women, agree- 
 ably to Mark's statement, really bought an additional stock after the sabbath. ^ 
 But there must have been an enormous requirement of spices if first the 
 hundred pounds weight contributed by Nicodemus had not sufficed, and on 
 this account the women on the evening before the sabbath had laid ready 
 more spices, and then these too were found insufficient, so that they had to 
 buy yet more on the morning after the sabbath. 
 
 Thus however, in consistency, it is necessary to solve the second contra- 
 diction which exists between the two intermediate Evangelists unitedly and 
 the fourth, namely, that according to the latter Jesus was embalmed with a 
 hundred weight of ointment before being laid in the grave, while according to 
 the former the embalming was deferred until after the sabbath. But as far as 
 the quantity was concerned, the hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes were 
 more than enough : that which was wanting, and had to be supplied after the 
 sabbath, could only relate to the manner, i.e. that the spices had not yet been 
 applied to the body in the right way — because the process had been inter- 
 rupted by the arrival of the sabbath.^" But, if we listen to John, the inter- 
 ment of Jesus on the evening of his death was performed Ka^ois c^os eo-ri toTs 
 'lovSatois €UTa<f)ia^€iv, as the manner of the Jeuis is to bury, i.e. rite, in due 
 form, the corpse being wound in the linen clothes 666via with the spices /Aera 
 Tmv ap<j)fid.Tti)v (v. 40), which constituted the whole of Jewish embalming, so 
 that according to John nothing was wanting in relation to the manner;" not 
 to mention that if the women, as Mark and Luke state, bought fresh spices 
 and placed them in readiness, the embalming of Nicodemus must have been 
 defective as to quantity also. Thus in the burial of Jesus as narrated by 
 John nothing objective was wanting : nevertheless, it has been maintained 
 that subjectively, as regarded the women, it had not been performed, i.e. 
 they were ignorant that Jesus had already been embalmed by Nicodernus and 
 Joseph. 12 One is astonished that such a position can be advanced, since the 
 synoptists expressly state that the women were present at the interment of 
 Jesus, and beheld, not merely the place (irov rCOerai, Mark), but also the 
 manner in which he was interred (is ereOr], Luke). 
 
 There is a third divergency relative to this point between Matthe\y and the 
 rest of the Evangelists, in so far as the former mentions no embalming either 
 before or after the sabbath. This divergency, as it consists merely in the 
 silence of one narrator, has been hitherto little regarded, and even the Frag- 
 mentist admits that the wrapping of the body in a clean hnen cloih, mentioned 
 by Matthew, involves also the Jewish method of embalming. But m this 
 instance there might easily be drawn an argument ex silentio. When we read 
 in the narrative of the anointing at Bethany the declaration of Jesus, that the 
 woman by this deed bad anointed his body for burial (Matt. xxvi. 12 parall.) : 
 this has indeed its significance in all the narratives, but a peculiarly striking 
 
 " Kuinol, in Luc. p. 721- 
 1" Thus Tholuck, in loc. 
 
 " See the Fragments, ut sup. s. 469 If. , ^ .. , , ^, , . , , ., • 
 
 18 Michaelis, ut sup. s. 99 f. ; Kuinol and Lucke leave open the choice between this 
 expedient and the former. 
 
704 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 135. 
 
 one in Matthew, according to whose subsequent narrative no ^anointing took 
 place at the burial of Jesus.i^ and this fact appears to be the only sufficient 
 explanation of the special importance which the Evangelical tradition attached 
 to the action of the woman. If he who was revered as the Messiah did not, 
 under the pressure of unfavourable circumstances, receive at his burial the 
 due honour of embalmment : then must the thoughts of his adherents revert 
 with peculiar complacency to an event in the latter part of his life, in which a 
 humble-minded female votary, as if foreboding that this honour would be 
 denied to him when dead, rendered it to him while yet living. Viewed in this 
 light the different representation of the anointing in. the other Evangelists 
 would have the appearance of a gradual development of the legend. In Mark 
 and Luke it still remains, as in Matthew, that the corpse of Jesus is not really 
 embalmed : but, said the legend, already outstepping the narrative of the first 
 gospel, the embalming was designed for him,— this intention was the motive 
 for the resort of the women to his grave on the morning after the sabbath, 
 and its execution was only prevented by the resurrection. In the fourth 
 gospel, on the other hand, this anointing, from being first performed on him 
 by anticipation while he was yet living, and then intended for him when 
 dead, resolved itself into an actual embalming of his body after death : in 
 conjunction with which, however, after the manner of legendary formations, _ 
 the reference of the earlier anointing to the burial of Jesus was left standinjr. 
 
 The body of Jesus, according to all the narrators, was forthwith deposited 
 in a tomb hewn out of a rock, and closed with a great stone. Matthew de- 
 scribes this tomb as xaivov, new ; an epithet which Luke and John more closely 
 determine by stating that no man had yet been laid therein. We may observe 
 in passing, that there is as much reason for suspicion with respect to this new- 
 ness of the grave, as with respect to the unridden ass in the history of the 
 entrance of Jesus, since here in the same way as there, the temptation lay 
 irresistibly near, even without historical grounds, to represent the sacred re- 
 ceptacle of the body of Jesus as never having been polluted by any corpse. 
 But even in relation to this tomb the Evangelists exhibit a divergency. Ac- 
 cording to Matthew it was the property of Joseph, who had himself caused it 
 to be hewn in the rock ; and the two other synoptists also, since they make 
 Joseph unhesitatingly dispose of the grave, appear to proceed on the same pre- 
 supposition. According to John, on the contrary, Joseph's right of property 
 in the grave was not the reason that Jesus was laid there; but because time 
 jiressed, he was deposited in the new sepulchre, which happened to be in a 
 neighbouring garden. Here again the harmonists have tried their art on both 
 sides. Matthew was to be brought into agreement with John by the obser- 
 vation, that a manuscript of his gospel omits the avrdv {his own) after 
 /xv)7/A£i(u ; while an ancient translation read, instead of o ikaToii-rjo-ev {which he 
 had hewn), — i^v XtKaToiJi.-qfx,e.vov {which was hewn) : 1* as if these alterations 
 were not obviously owing already to harmonizing efforts. Hence the oppo- 
 site side has been taken, and it has been remarked that the words of John by 
 no means exclude the possibility that Joseph may have been the owner of the 
 tomb, since both reasons — the vicinity, and the fact that the grave belonged 
 to Joseph— may have co-operated.i^ But the contrary is rather the truth : 
 namely, that the vicinity of the grave when alleged as a motive, excludes the 
 fact of possession : a house in which I should take shelter from a shower, 
 because it is near, would not be my own ; unless indeed I were the owner of 
 
 " Comp. De Wette, in loc. Matth. 
 
 " Michaelis, ut sup. a. 45 ff. 
 
 " Kuinol, in Matth. p. 786; Hase, § 145; Tholuck, Comm. s. 320. 
 
THE WATCH AT THE GRAVE OF JESUS. 70$ 
 
 two houses, one near and one more distant, of which the latter was my proper 
 awelling : and in like manner a grave, in which a person lays a relative or 
 inend who does not himself possess one, because it is near, cannot be his 
 own, unless he possess more than one, and intend at greater leisure to convey 
 tne deceased into the other ; which however in our case, since the near grave 
 was from its newness adapted above all others for the interment of Jesus, is 
 not easily conceivable. If according to this the contradiction subsists, there 
 does not appear in the narratives themselves any ground for decision in 
 favour of the one or of the other. ^^ 
 
 § 136. 
 
 THE WATCH AT THE GRAVE OF JESUS. 
 
 On the following day, the Sabbath,^ the chief priests and Pharisees, ac- 
 cording to Matthew (xxvii. 62 ff.) came to Pilate, and with reference to the 
 prediction of Jesus, that he should rise again after three days/ requested him 
 to place a watch by his grave, lest his disciples should take occasion from the 
 expectation which that prediction had awakened, to steal his body and then 
 spread a report that he was risen again. Pilate granted their request; and ac- 
 cordingly they went away, sealed the stone, and placed the watch before the 
 grave. The subsequent resurrection of Jesus (we must here anticipate so 
 far), and the angelic appearances which accompanied it, so terrified the guards, 
 that they became as dead men, uktv. veKpol, — forthwith, however, hastened to 
 the city and gave an account of the event to the chief priests. The latter, 
 after having deliberated on the subject in an assembly with the elders, bribed 
 the soldiers to pretend that the disciples had stolen the body by night ; 
 whence, the narrator adds, this report was disseminated, and was persisted in 
 up to his time (xxviii. 4, 1 1 ff.). 
 
 In this narrative, peculiar to the first gospel, critics have found all kinds of 
 difificulties, which have been exposed with the most acumen by the author of 
 the Wolfenbiittel Fragments, and after him by Paulus.^ The difficulties lie 
 first of all in this : that neither the requisite conditions of the event, nor its 
 necessary consequences, are presented in the rest of the New Testament 
 history. As- regards the former, it is not to be conceived how the Sanhedrists 
 could obtain the information, that Jesus was to return to life three days after 
 his death : since there is no trace of such an idea having existed even among 
 his disciples. They say : We remember that that deceiver said, while he was 
 yet alive, etc. If we are to understand from this that they remembered to 
 have heard him speak to that effect; Jesus, according to the evangelical 
 accounts, never spoke plainly of his resurrection in the presence of his 
 enemies ; and the figurative discourses which remained unintelligible to his 
 confidential disciples, could still less be understood by the Jewish hierarchs, 
 
 '* A confusion of the k^ttos garden near to the place of execution, where according to 
 John Jesus was buried, with the garden of Gethsemaiie, where he was taken prisoner, 
 appears to have given rise to the statement of the Evang. Nicodemi, that Jesus was crucified 
 h Tifi K-fiTif, Sirov iviiurBri in the garden where he^ was apprehended. C. ix. p. 580, ap. Thilo. 
 
 ' T^ iwaipiov, iJTis iarl /ieri. rtiv vapacrKev^v (the next day, that followed the day of the pre- 
 paration), is certainly a singular periphrasis for the sabbath, for it is a strangely inappropriate 
 mode of expression to designate a solemn day, as the day after the previous day : neverthe- 
 less we must abide by this meaning so long as we are unable to evade it in a more natural 
 manner than Schneckenburger in his chronology of the Passion week, Beitrage, s. 3 ff. 
 
 2 The former, ut sup. s. 437 ff. ; the latter in the exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 837 ff. Comp. 
 Kaiser, bibl. Theol. i, s. 253. 
 
 y Y 
 
706 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 36. 
 
 wlio were less accustomed to his mode of thought and expressioa If, how- 
 ever, the Sanhedrists merely intend to say, that they had heard from others 
 of his having given s*fch a promise : this intelligence could only have 
 proceeded from the disciples ; but as these had not, either before or after the 
 death of Jesus, the slightest anticipation of his resurrection, they could not 
 have excited such an anticipation in others ; — not to mention that we have 
 been obliged to reject as unhistorical the whole of the predictions of the 
 resurrection lent to Jesus in the gospels. Equally incomprehensible with this 
 knowledge on the part of the enemies of Jesus, is the silence of his friends, 
 the Aposdes and the other Evangelists besides Matthew, concerning a cir- 
 cumstance so favourable to their cause. It is certainly applying too modern 
 a standard to the conduct of the disciples to say with the Wolfenbiittel Frag- 
 mentist, that they must have entreated from Pilate a letter under his seal m 
 attestation of the fact that a watch had been set over the grave : but it must 
 be held surprising that in none of the apostolic speeches is there anywhere an 
 appeal to so striking a fact, and that even in the gospels, with the exception 
 of the first, it has left no discoverable trace. An attempt has been made to 
 explain' this silence from the consideration, that the bribing of the guards by 
 the Sanhedrim had rendered an appeal to them fruitless : * but truth is not so 
 readily surrendered to such obvious falsehoods, and at all events, when the 
 adherents of Jesus had to defend themselves before the Sanhedrim, the men- 
 tion of such a fact must have been a powerful weapon. The cause is already 
 half given up when its advocates retreat to the position, that the disciples pro- 
 bably did not become acquainted with the true cause of the event imme- 
 diately, but only later, when the soldiers began to betray the secret.* For 
 even if the guards in the first instance merely set afloat the tale of the theft, 
 and thus admitted that they had been placed by the grave, the adherents of 
 Jesiis could already construe for themselves the real state of the case, and 
 might boldly appeal to the guards, who must have been witnesses of some- 
 thing quite different from the theft of a corpse. But lest we be told of the 
 invalidity of an argument drawn from the merely negative fact of silence, there 
 is something positive narrated concerning a part of the adherents of Jesus, 
 namely, the women, which is not reconcilable with the fact of a watch being 
 placed at the grave. Not only do the women who resort to the grave on the 
 morning after the Sabbath, intend to complete the embalming which they 
 could not hope to be permitted to do, if they knew that a watch was placed 
 before the grave, and that this was besides sealed : ^ but according to Mark 
 their whole perplexity on their way to the grave turns upon the question, who 
 will roll away the stone for them from the grave ; a clear proof that they knew 
 nothing of the guards, since these either would not have allowed them to 
 remove the stone, however light, or if they would have allowed this, would 
 also have helped them to roll away a heavier one ; so that in any case the 
 difficulty as to the weight of the stone would have been superfluous. But 
 that the placing of the watch should have remained unknown to the women is, 
 from the attention which everything relative to the end of Jesus excited in 
 Jerusalem (Luke xxiv. 18), highly improbable. 
 
 But within the narrative also, every feature is full of difficulties, for, accord- 
 ing to the expression of Paulus, no one of the persons who appear in it, acts 
 in accordance with his character. That Pilate should have granted the re- 
 
 \ 
 
 ' Michaelis, Begrabniss- und Auferstehungsgeschichte, s. 206 ; Olshausen 2, s. 506. 
 ■' Michaelis, ut sup. 
 
 5 Olshausen overlooks the latter point when he (ut sup.) says the watch had not received 
 the command to prevent the completion of the interment. 
 
THE WATCH AT THE GRAVE OF JESUS. ^0^ 
 
 quest of the Jewish magistrates for a watch, I will not say without hesitation, 
 but so entirely without ridicule, must be held surprising after his previous 
 conduct ; ^ such minor particulars might however be merely passed over by 
 Matthew in his summary mode of recounting the incidents. It is more 
 astonishing that the guards should have been so easily induced to tell a false- 
 hood which the severity of Roman discipline made so dangerous, as that they 
 had failed in their duty by sleeping on their post j especially as, from the bad 
 understanding which existed between the Sanhedrim and the procurator, they 
 could not know how far the mediation promised by the former would avail. 
 But the most inconceivable feature is the alleged conduct of the Sanhedrim. 
 The difficulty which lies in their going to the heathen procurator on the 
 Sabbath, defiling themselves by approaching the grave, and placing a watdh, 
 has certainly been overstrained by the Fragmentist ; but their conduct, when 
 the guards, returning from the grave, apprised them of the resurrection of 
 Jesus, is truly impossible. They believe the assertion of the soldiers that 
 Jesus had arisen out of his grave in a miraculous manner. How could the 
 council, many of whose members were Sadducees, receive this as credible ? 
 Even the Pharisees in the Sanhedrim, though they held in theory the possi- 
 bility of a resurrection, would not, with the mean opinion which they enter- 
 tained-of Jesus, be inclined to believe in his resurrection ; especially as the 
 assertion in the mouth of the guards sounded just hke a falsehood invented 
 to screen a failure in duty. The real Sanhedrists, on hearing such an asser- 
 tion from the soldiers, would have replied with exasperation : You lie ! you 
 ' have slept and allowed him to be stolen ; but you will have to pay dearly 
 for this, when it comes to be investigated by the procurator. But instead of 
 this, the Sanhedrists in our gospel speak them fair, and entreat them thus : 
 Tell a lie, say that you have slept and allowed him to be stolen : moreover, 
 they pay them richly for the falsehood, and promise to exculpate them to .the 
 procurator. This is evidently spoken entirely on the Christian presupposition 
 of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus ; a presupposition however which is 
 quite incorrectly attributed to the members of the Sanhedrim. It is also a 
 difficulty, not merely searched out by the Fragmentist, but even acknowledged 
 by orthodox expositors,'' that the Sanhedrim, in a regular assembly, and after 
 a formal consultation, should have resolved to corrupt the soldiers and put a 
 lie into their mouths. That in this manner a college of seventy men should 
 have officially decided on suggesting and rewarding the utterance of a false- 
 hood, is, as Olshausen justly observes, too widely at variance with the de- 
 corum, the sense of propriety, inseparable from such an assembly. The 
 expedient of supposing that it was merely a private meeting, since only the 
 chief priests and elders, not the scribes, are said to have embraced the resolu- 
 tion of bribing the soldiers,^ would involve the singularity, that in this 
 assembly the scribes were absent, while in the shortly previous interview with the 
 procurator, where the scribes are represented by the Pharisees who formed 
 their majority, the elders were wanting : whence it is evident rather that, it 
 being inconvenient invariably to designate the Sanhedrim by a full enumera- 
 tion of its constituent parts, it was not seldom indicated by the mention of 
 only some or one of these. If it therefore remains that according to Matthew 
 the high council must in a formal session have resolved on bribing the 
 guards: such an act of baseness could only be attributed to the council as 
 
 « Olshausen indeed is here still so smitten with awe, that he supposes Pilate to have been 
 penetrated with an indescribable feeling of dread on hearing this communication from the 
 Sanhedrists, s. 505. 
 
 ' Olshausen, s 506. 
 
 8 Michaelis, ut sup. s. 198 f. 
 
708 PART III. CHAPTER IV, § 136. 
 
 such, by the rancour of the primitive Christians, among whom our anecdote 
 arose. 
 
 These difficulties in the present narrative of the first gospel have been felt 
 to be so pressing, that it has been attempted to remove them by the suppo- 
 position of interpolation ; " which has lately been moderated into the opinion, 
 that while the anecdote did not indeed proceed from the Apostle Matthew 
 himself, it was not however added by a hand otherwise alien to our gospel, 
 but was inserted by the Greek translator of the Hebrew Matthew.^" Against 
 the former supposition the absence of all critical authority is decisive ; the 
 appeal of those who advance the other opinion to the unapostolic character of 
 the anecdote, would not warrant its separation from the context of the main 
 narrative, unless that narrative itself were already proved to be of apostolic 
 origin ; while the anecdote is so far from presenting any want of connexion 
 with the rest, that, on the contrary, Paulus is right in his remark that an inter- 
 polator (or inserting translator) would scarcely have given himself the trouble 
 to distribute his interpolation in three different places (xxvii. 62-66 ; xxviii. 
 4, 11-15), but would have compressed it into one passage, or at most two. 
 Neither can the question be settled so cheaply as Olshausen imagines, when he 
 concludes that the entire narrative is apostohc and correct, save that the Evan- 
 gelist erred in representing the corruption of the guards as being resolved on 
 in full council, whereas the affair was probably managed in secret by Caiaphas 
 alone : as if this assembly of the council were the sole difficulty of the narra- 
 tive, and as if, when errors had insinuated themselves in relation to this par- 
 ticular, they might not extend to others also.^^ 
 
 Paulus correctly points out how Matthew himself, by the statement : ttnd 
 this saying is commonly reported among the Jews to this day, — indicates a cal- 
 umnious Jewish report as the source of his narrative. But when this theolo- 
 gian expresses the opinion that the Jews themselves propagated the story, that 
 they had placed a watch at the grave of Jesus, but that the guards had per- 
 mitted his body to be stolen : this is as perverted a view as that of Hase, when 
 he conjectures that the report in question proceeded first of all from the 
 friends of Jesus, and was afterwards modified by his enemies. For as regards 
 the former supposition, Kuinol has already correctly remarked, that Matthew 
 merely designates the assertion respecting the theft of the corpse as a Jewish 
 report, not the entire narrative of the placing of a watch ; neither is there any 
 reason to be conceived why the Jews should have fabricated such a report as 
 that a watch was set at the grave of Jesus : Paulus says, it was hoped thereby 
 to render the assertion that the body of Jesus was stolen by his disciples more 
 easy of acceptation with the credulous : but those must indeed have been 
 very credulous who did not observe, that the placing of the watch was the very 
 thing to render a furtive removar of the body . of Jesus improbable. Paulus 
 appears to represent the matter to himself thus:: the Jews wished to obtain 
 witnesses as it were to the accusation of a theft, and for this purpose fabricated 
 the story of the guard being placed by the grave. But that the guards with 
 open eyes quietly beheld the disciples of Jesus carry away his body, no one 
 could credit : while, if they saw nothing of this, because they slept, they gave 
 no testimony, since they could then only by inference arrive at the conclusion, 
 tha,t the body might have been stolen : a conclusion which could be drawn 
 just as well without them. Thus in no way can the watch have belonged to 
 the Jewish basis of the present narrative ; but the report disseminated among 
 
 ® Stroth, in Eichhorn's Repertorium, 9, s. 141. 
 
 " Kern, iiber den Urspiung des Ev. Matth. Tiib. Zeitschrift, 1834, 2, s. 100 f. : comp. 
 123. Compare my Review, Jahrbucher f. wiss. Kritik, Nov. 1834 ; now in the Charak- 
 teristiken u. Kritiken, s. 280. *' Hase, L. J., § 145. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 709 
 
 the Jews consisted, as the text also says, merely in the assertion that the dis- 
 ciples had stolen the body. As the Christians wished to oppose this calumny, 
 there was formed among them the legend of a watch placed at the grave of 
 Jesus, and now they could boldly confront their slanderers with the question : 
 how can the body have been carried away, since you placed a watch at the 
 grave and sealed the stone ? And because, as we have ourselves proved in 
 the course of our inquiry, a legend is not fully convicted of groundlessness 
 until it has been shown how it could arise even without historical grounds : 
 It was attempted on the side of the Christians, in showing what was supposed 
 to be the true state of the case, to expose also the origin of the false legend, 
 by deriving the falsehood propagated among the Jews from the contrivance of 
 the Sanhedrim, and their corruption, of the guards. Thus the truth is pre- 
 cisely the reverse of what Hase says, namely, that the legend probably arose 
 among the friends of Jesus and was modified by his enemies :— the friends 
 first had an inducement to the fiction of the watch, when the enemies had 
 already spoken of a theft. ^^ 
 
 § 137- 
 
 FIRST TIDINGS OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 That the first news of the grave of Jesus being opened and empty on the 
 second morning after his burial, came to the disciples by the mouth of women, 
 is unanimously stated by the four Evangelists : but in all the more particular 
 circumstances they diverge from each other, in a way which has presented the 
 richest material for the polemic of the Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist, and on the 
 other hand has given abundant work to the harmonists and apologists, with- 
 out there having been hitherto any successful attempt at a satisfactory media- 
 tion between the two parties.' 
 
 Leaving behind the difference which is connected with the divergencies in 
 the history of the burial, as to the object of the women in resorting to the 
 grave, — namely, that according to the two intermediate Evangelists they 
 intended to embalm the body of Jesus, according to the two others merely to 
 pay a visit to the grave, — we find, first, a very complicated divergency relative 
 to the number of the women who made this visit. Luke merely speaks . 
 indefinitely of many women ; not alone those whom he describes xxiii. 55, 
 as having come with Jesus from Galilee, and of whom he mentions by name, 
 Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, but also certain 
 others with them, t\.v\% avv aurais (xxiv. i). Mark has merely three women; 
 two of those whom Luke also names, but as the third, Salome instead of 
 Joanna (xvi. i). Matthew has not this third woman, respecting whom the 
 two intermediate Evangelists differ, but merely the two Maries concerning 
 whom they agree (xxviii. i). Lastly, John,has only one of these, Mary Magda- 
 lene (xx. i). The time at which the women go to the grave is likewise not de- 
 termined with uniformity; for even if the words of Matthew, In the end of the 
 sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, 61/fe o-a^^aTojv, 
 Tt) €Tn<l>(j)a-Kov<rg ets /t'ttf a-a^^driav, make no difference, ^ still the addition of 
 Mark : at the rising of the sun, a.va.Tf.iKa.vro<i rov tjXiou, are in contradiction with 
 the expressions when it was yet dark, o-kotIom eTLova-r]^, in John, and very early 
 in the morning, opdpov/Sadio^, in Luke. — In relation to the circumstances in 
 which the women first saw the grave there may appear to be a difference, at 
 
 '2 Comp. Theile, zur Biogr. Jesu, § 37 ; Weisse, die Evang. Gesch. 2, s. 343 f. 
 1 Comp. Theile, ut sup. 
 " Comp. Fritzsche, in loc, and Kern, Tub. Zeitschr. 1834, 2, s. 102 f. 
 
710 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 37. 
 
 least between Matthew and the three other Evangelists. According to the 
 latter, as they approach and look towards the grave, they see that the stone 
 has already been rolled away by an unknown hand : whereas the narrative of 
 the first Evangelist has appeared to many to imply that the women themselves 
 beheld the stone rolled away by an angel. — Manifold are the divergencies as 
 to what the women further saw and learned at the grave, According to Luke 
 they enter into the grave, find that the body of Jesus is not there, and are 
 hence in perplexity, until they see standing by them two men in shining gar- 
 ments, who announce to them his resurrection. In Mark, who also makes 
 them enter into the grave, they see only one young man in a long white gar- 
 ment, not standing, -but sitting on the right side, who gives them the same 
 intelligence. In Matthew they receive this information before they enter into 
 the grave, from the angel, who after rolling away the. stone had sat upon it. 
 Lastly, according to John, Mary Magdalene, as soon as she sees the stone 
 taken away, and without witnessing any angelic appearance, runs back into 
 the city. — Moreover the relation in which the disciples of Jesus are placed 
 with respect to the first news of his resurrection is a different one in the 
 different gospels. According to Mark, the women, out of fear, tell no one of 
 the angelic appearance which they have beheld ; according to John, Mary 
 Magdalene has nothing more to say to John and Peter, to whom she ■ hastens 
 from the grave, than that Jesus is taken away ; according to Luke, the women 
 leport the appearance to the disciples in general, and not merely to two of 
 them ; while according to Matthew, as they were in the act of hastening to 
 the discipleSj Jesus himself met them, and they were able to communicate 
 this also to the disciples. In the two first gospels nothing is said of one of 
 the disciples himself going to the grave on hearing the report of the women ; 
 according to Luke, Peter went thither, found it empty and returned wonder- 
 ing, and from Luke xxiv. 24 it appears that other disciples besides him wenj 
 thither in a similar manner ; according to the fourth gospel Peter was accom- 
 panied by John, who on this occasion was convinced of the resurrction of 
 Jesus. Luke says that Peter made his visit- to the sepulchre after he had 
 already been informed by the women of the angelic appearance ; but in the 
 fourth gospel the two disciples go to the grave before Mary Magdalene can 
 have told them of such an appearance ; it was only when she had proceeded 
 a second time to the grave with the two disciples, and when they had returned 
 home again, that, stooping into the sepulchre, she saw, according to this 
 gospel, two angels in white, sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet, 
 where the body of Jesus had lain, by whom she was asked, why she wept ? and 
 on turning round she beheld JeSus himself; a particular of which there is a 
 fragmentary notice in Mark v. 9, with the additional remark, that she com- 
 municated this news to his former companions. 
 
 It has been thought possible to reconcile the greater part of these diver- 
 gencies by supposing, instead of one scene variously described, a multiplicity 
 of different scenes ; for which purpose the ordinary grammatical and other 
 artifices of the harmonists were pressed into the service. That Mark might 
 not contradict the o-kotios en orja-rj^ while it was yet dark of John, the apolo- 
 gists did not scruple to translate the words dvaTeiXavTos toS iiXLao by orituro 
 sole; the contradiction between Matthew and the rest, when the former 
 appears to say that the women saw the stone rolled away by the angel, seemed 
 to be more easy of solution, not indeed by supposing, with Michaelis,* that 
 Kal iSov {and beholdt) denotes a recurrence to a previous event, and that 
 
 ' Kuinol, in Marc. p. 194 f. 
 ■* Michaelis, ut sup. s. 112. • 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 71I 
 
 a7r(Kv\ur€ has the signification of a pluperfect (an expedient which has been 
 justly combated by modem criticism in opposition to Lessing, who was 
 mchned to admit it) ; * but by understanding the ^kOe v. i to express a yet 
 unfinished progress of the women towards the grave, in which case the /cat 
 iSov and what follows may, in accordance with its proper meaning, relate 
 something that happened after the departure of the women from their home, 
 but before their arrival at the grave. ^ In relation to the number and the 
 visit of the women, it was in the first place urged that even according to 
 John, although he mentions only Mary Magdalene by name,— several women 
 must have accompanied her to the grave, since he makes her say after her 
 return to the two disciples : we know not where they have laid him ; ' a 
 plural, which certainly intimates the presence of other but unspecified persons, 
 with whom Mary Magdalene, whether at the grave itself or on her return, had 
 conversed on the subject before she came to the Apostles. Thus, it is said, 
 Mary Magdalene went to the grave with the other women, more or fewer of 
 whom are mentioned by the other Evangelists. As however she returned 
 without having, like the other women, seen an angel, it is supposed that she 
 ran back alone as soon as she saw the stone rolled away : which is accounted 
 for by her impetuous temperament, she having been formerly a demoniac * 
 While she hastened back to the city, the other women saw the appearances 
 of which the synoptists speak. — To all it is maintained, the angels appeared 
 within the grave ; for the statement in Matthew that one sat outside on the 
 stone, is only a pluperfect : when the women came he had already withdrawn 
 into the sepulchre, and accordingly, after their conversation with him, the 
 women are described as departing from the sepulchre, e^eX^ovcrai Ik toI 
 fj.vriiJ.€iov (v. 8) : 3 in which observation it is only overlooked that between the 
 first address of the angel and the above expression, there stands his invitation to 
 the women to come with him into the grave and see the place where Jesus had 
 lain. In relation to the difference that according to the two first Evangelists 
 the womtn see only one angel, according to the third, two, even Calvin resorts 
 to the miserable expedient of supposing a synecdoche, namely that all the 
 Evangelists certainly knew of two angels, but Matthew and Mark mention 
 only the one who acted as speaker. Others make different women see 
 different appearances : some, of wchom Matthew and Mark speak, seeing only 
 one angel ; the others, to whom Luke refers, and who came earlier or perhaps 
 later than the above, seeing two ; '" but Luke makes the same two Maries 
 who, according to his predecessors, had seen only one angel, narrate to the 
 Apostles an appearance of two atigels. It is also said that the women returned 
 in separate groups, so that Jesuj^ight meet those of whom Matthew speaks 
 without being seen by those of Luke ; and though those of Mark at first tell 
 no one from fear, the rest, and they themselves afterwards, might communi- 
 cate what they had seen to the disciples.ii — On hearing the report brought 
 by several women, Peter, according to Luke, straightway goes to the grave, 
 
 ^ Schneckenburger, iiber den Urspr. des ersten kanon. Evang., s. ,62 f. Comp. the 
 Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist in Lessing's viertem Beitrag, s. 472 ff. On the other hand, 
 Lessing's Duplik, Werke, Donaubscji. Ausg. 6. Thl. s. 394 f. 
 
 8 De Wette, in loc. 
 
 ' Michaelis, s. 150 if. 
 
 8 Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 825. 
 
 8 Michaelis, s. 117- . ,.^, ,. ^v u r ^i. 
 
 " Michaelis, s. 146.— Celsus stumbled at this difference respecting the number of the 
 angels and Origen replied that the Evangelists mean different angels : Matthew and Mark 
 the one who had rolled away the stone, Luke and John those who were commissioned to 
 give information to the women, c. Cels. v. 56. 
 
 " Paulus, in loc. Matth. 
 
712 . PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 37. 
 
 finds it empty and turns away wondering. But according to the hypothesis 
 which we are now detailing, Mary Magdalene had run back a considerable 
 time before the other women, and had brought with her to the grave Peter 
 and John. Thus Peter, first on hearing the imperfect intelligence of Mary 
 Magdalene that the grave was empty, must have gone thither with John ; and 
 subsequently, on the account of the angelic appearance brought by the other 
 women, he must have gone a second time alone : in which case it would be 
 particularly surprising that while his companion arrived at a belief in the 
 resurrection of Jesus on the very first visit, he himself had not attained 
 further than wonder even on the second. Besides, as the Fragmentist has 
 already ably shown, the narrative in the third gospel of the visit of Peter 
 alone, and that in the fourth of the visit of Peter and John, are so strikingly 
 similar even in words,'^ that the majority of commentators regard them as 
 referring to a single visit, Luke having only omitted to notice the companion 
 of Peter : in support of which opinion they can appeal to Luke xxiv. 24. 
 But if the visit of the two Apostles, occasioned by the return of Mary 
 Magdalene, be one and the same with that occasioned by the return of the 
 other women, then the return of the women is also not a double one ;. if 
 however they returned in company with each other, we have a contradiction. 
 After the two Apostles are returned without having seen an angel, Mary, who 
 remains behind, as she looks into the grave, all at once sees two. What a 
 strange playing at hide and seek must there have been on the part of the 
 angels, according to the harmonistic combination of these narratives ! First 
 only one shows himself to one group of women, to another group two show 
 themselves ; both forthwith conceal themselves from the disciples ; but after 
 their departure both again become visible. To remove these intermissions 
 Paulus has placed the appearance presented to Mary -Magdalene before the 
 arrival of the two disciples : but by this violent transposition of the order 
 chosen by the narrator, he has only confessed the impossibility of thus 
 incorporating the various Evangelists with each other. Hereupon, as Mary 
 Magdalene raises herself from looking into the grave and turns round, she 
 sees Jesus standing behind her. According to Matthew, Jesus appeared to 
 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, when they had already set out on their 
 way to. the city, consequently when they were at some distance from the 
 grave. Thus Jesus would have first appeared to Mary Magdalene alone, 
 close to the grave, and a second time when she was on her way from thence, 
 in the company of another woman. In order to avoid the want of purpose 
 attaching to the repetition of anjappearance of Jesus after so short an interval, 
 commentators have here called in the above supposition, that Mary Magda- 
 lene had previously separated herself from the women of whom Matthew 
 speaks : *' but in that case, since Matthew has besides Mary Magdalene only 
 the other Mary, it would have been only one woman to whom Jesus appeared 
 on the way from the grave : whereas Matthew throughout speaks of several 
 
 (dinjVTTycrei' avrais). 
 
 '* I subjoin the table sketched by the Fragmentist (at sap. s. 477 f.) : 
 "I. Luke xxiv. 12 : Peter ran to the grave, lSpa/j,ev. 
 
 John XX. 4 : Peter and John ran, irpexov. • 
 
 2. Luke V. 12 : Peter looked in, irapaxiyl/au 
 John V. 5 : John looked in, wapaKiij/as. 
 
 3. Luke V. 12 : Peter saw the clothes lying alone, pXiirei. r4 dOdna xel/ieva /iiva. 
 John V. 6, 7 : Peter saw the clothes lie, and the napkin not lying with the clothes : 
 
 fieiapst T& 606vM Ketfier/a, (tai rb (rovSapiov oi neri tQv dOovlav Keiiiemv. 
 
 4. Luke V. 12 : Peter went home, Ajr^XBe rpis ^auTOK. 
 
 John V. 10 : Peter and John went home again, iirijXSov iriXir rpos iavrois." 
 " Kuinol, in Matth., p. 860 f. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 713 
 
 To escape from this restless running to and fro of the disciples and the 
 women, this phantasmagoric appearance, disappearance, and reappearance of 
 the angels, and tlje useless repetition of the appearances of Jesus before the 
 same person, which result from this harmonistic method, we must consider 
 each Evangelist by himself: we then obtain from each a quiet picture with 
 simple dignified features ; one visit of the women to the grave, or according 
 to John, two ; one angelic appearance ; one appearance of Jesus, according to 
 John and Matthew ; and one visit to the grave by one or two of the disciples, 
 according to Luke and John. 
 
 But with the above difficulties of the harmonistic method of incorporation 
 as to the substance, there is associated a difficulty as to form, in the question, 
 how comes it, under the presuppositions of this mode of viewing the gospels, 
 that from the entire series of occurrences, each narrator has selected a sepa- 
 rate portion for himself, — that of the many visits and appearances not one 
 Evangelist relates all, and scarcely one the same as his neighbour, but for the 
 most part each has chosen only one for representation, and each again a 
 different one ? The most plausible answer to this question has been given by 
 Griesbach in a special treatise on this subject. 1* He supposes that each 
 Evangelist recounts the resurrection of Jesus in the manner in which it first,, 
 became known to him : John received the first information from Mary 
 Magdalene, and hence he narrates only what he learned from her ; to 
 Matthew (for without doubt the disciples, as strangers visiting the feast, 
 resided in different quarters of the city), the first news was communicated by 
 those women to whom Jesus himself appeared on their way from the grave,, 
 and hence he relates only what these had experienced. But here this explan- 
 ation already founders on the facts, that in Matthew, of the women who- 
 see Jesus on their way homeward, Mary Magdalene is one ; and that in John, 
 Mary Magdalene, after her second visit to the grave, in which Jesus- 
 appeared to her, no longer went to John and Peter alone, but to the disciples 
 in general, and communicated to them the appearance she had seen and the 
 commission she had received : so that Matthew in any case must also have 
 known of the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene.^^ Further, when,, 
 according to this hypothesis, Mark narrates the history of the resurrection as. 
 he had learned it in the house of his mother who lived in Jerusalem (Acts 
 xii. 12) ; Luke, as he had received it from Joanna, whom he alone mentions : 
 we cannot but wonder at the tenacity with which, according to this, each, 
 must have clung to the narrative which he had happened first to receive,, 
 since the resurrection of Jesus must have been the subject of all others on 
 which there was the most lively interchange of narratives among his adherents,. 
 so that the ideas concerning the first tidings of the event must have found 
 their level. To remove these difficulties, Griesbach has further supposed,, 
 that the disciples had it in their intention to compare the discordant accounts 
 of the women and reduce them to order ; when, however, the resuscitated 
 Jesus himself appeared in the midst of them, they neglected this, because 
 they now no longer founded their faith on the assertions of the women, but 
 on the appearances which they had themselves witnessed : but the more the 
 information of the women fell into the background, the less conceivable is it, 
 how in the sequel each could so obstinately cling to what this or that woman, 
 had chanced first to communicate to him. , , • j ^ ir 
 
 If then the plan of incorporation will not lead to the desired end,'" we 
 '* Progr de fontibus, unde Evangelistae suas de resurrectione Domini narrationes 
 hauserintT ' Opusc. acad. ed. Gabler, Vol. 2, p. 241 ff. 
 
 15 Comp. Schneckenburger, ut sup. s. 64 f., Anm. fu-ij„„„ j„<, 
 
 1= On this subject comp De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, I, s. 245 ; Ammon, Fortbildung des 
 Christenthums zur Weltreligion, '2, I, s. 6 ; Theile, zur Biogr. Jesu, § 37- 
 
.714 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 37. 
 
 must try that of selection, and inquire whether we must not adhere to one of 
 the four accounts, as pre-eminently apostolic, and by this rectify the others ; 
 in which inquiry here as elsewhere, from the essential equality of the external 
 •evidence, only the internal character of the separate narratives can decide. 
 
 From the number of those accounts concerning the first intelligence of the 
 ^resurrection of Jesus which have any claim to the rank of autoptical testi- 
 monies, modern criticism has excluded that of the first gospel ; ^\ and we 
 •cannot, as in other instances, complain of this disfavour as an injustice. For 
 in many respects the narrative of the first gospel here betrays itself to have 
 been carried a step farther in traditional development than that of the other 
 gospels. First, that the miraculous opening of the grave is seen by the 
 women— if indeed Matthew intends to say this — could scarcely, had it really 
 been the case, have been so" entirely lost from remembrance as it is in 
 :the other Evangelists, but might very well be formed gradually in tradition ; 
 further, that the rolling away of the stone was effected by the angel, evi- 
 dently rests only on the combination of one who did not know any better 
 means of answering the question, how the great stone was removed from 
 the grave, and the guards taken out of the way, than to use for both purposes 
 the angel presented to him in the current narratives of the appearance 
 witnessed by the women; to. which he added the earthquake as a further 
 •embellishment of the scene. But besides this, there is in the narrative 
 of Matthew yet another trait, which has anything but an historical aspect. 
 After the angel has already announced the resurrection of Jesus to the 
 women, and charged them to deliver to the disciples the message that they 
 should go into Galilee, where they would see the risen one : Jesus himself 
 meets them and repeats the message which they are to deliver to the 
 ■disciples. This is a singular superfluity. Jesus had nothing to add to the 
 purport of the message which the angel had given to the women ; hence 
 ihe could only wish to confirm it and render it more authentic. But to the 
 women it needed no further confirmation, for they were already filled with 
 £reai joy by the tidings of the angel, and thus were believing ; while for 
 the disciples even,that confirmation did not suffice, for they remained in- 
 •credulous even to the account of those who assured them that they had 
 seen Jesus, until they had seen him themselves. Thus it appears that 
 two different narrations, as to the first news of the resurrection, have here 
 ^ become entangled with each other; the one representing angels, the other 
 Jesus himself, as the medium by which the women were informed of the 
 event and sent with a message to the disciples : — the latter evidently the 
 later tradition. 
 
 The pre-eminence in originality denied to the narrative of Matthew, is here 
 as elsewhere awarded to that of John. Traits so characteristic, says Liicke, 
 as that on the visit to the grave the other disciple went faster than Peter and 
 •came to the spot before him, attest the authenticity of the gospel even to the 
 most sceptical. But the matter has yet another aspect. It has been already 
 remarked, at an earlier point of our inquiry, that this particular belongs to 
 the effort, which the fourth gospel exhibits in a peculiar manner, to place 
 John above Peter. "^^ We may now discuss the point with more particularity, 
 by comparing the account in Luke already mentioned of the visit of Peter 
 to the grave, with the account in the fourth gospel of the visit of the two 
 ■disciples. According to Luke (xxiv. 12), Peter runs to the grave : according 
 to John (xx. 3 ff.), Peter and the favourite disciple go together, but so that 
 
 '' Schulz, iiber das Abendmahl, s, 321 f . ; Schneckenburger, ut sup. s. 61 ff. 
 " Vol. II. § 74. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 715 
 
 the latter runs faster, and comes first to the grave. In the third gospel, 
 Jr^^eter stoops down, looks into the sepulchre, and sees the linen clothes : in 
 me tourth, John does this, and sees the same. In the third gospel, nothing 
 IS said of an entering into the grave : but the fourth makes Peter enter first, 
 and look more closely at the linen clothes, then John also, and the latter 
 with the result that he begins to believe in the resurrection of Jesus." That 
 in these two narratives we have one and the same incident, has been above 
 shown probable from their similarity even in the expressions. Thus the only 
 question is : which is the original narrative, the one nearest to the fact? If 
 that of John : then must his name have been gradually lost out of the narra- 
 tive m the course of tradition, and the visit to the grave ascribed to Peter 
 only ; which, since the importance of Peter threw all others into the shade, 
 is easily conceivable. We might rest contented with this conclusion, regarding 
 these two parallel narratives by themselves : but in connexion with the whole 
 suspicious position which the fourth gospel assigns to John in relation to 
 Peter, the contrary relation of the two narratives must here again be held the 
 more probable. As in the entrance into the high priest's palace, so in the 
 visit to the grave of Jesus, only in the fourth gospel is John given as a com- 
 panion to Peter ; as in the former case it is he who gains an entrance for 
 Peter, so in '-the latter he runs before him and casts the first glance into the 
 grave, a circumstance which is repeatedly mentioned. That afterwards Peter 
 is the first to enter into the grave, is only an apparent advantage, which is 
 allowed him out of deference to the common idea pf his position : for after 
 him John also enters, and with a result of which Peter could not boast, 
 namely, that he believed in the resurrection of Jesus, and thus was the first 
 who attained to that degree of faith. From this effort to make John the 
 first-born among the believers in the resurrection of Jesus may also be ex- 
 plained the divergency, that according to the narrative of the fourth gospel 
 alone, Mary Magdalene hastens back to the two disciples before she has yet 
 seen an angel. For had she beforehand witnessed an angelic appearance, 
 which she would not any more than the women in Matthew have mistrusted, 
 she would have been the first believer, and would have won the precedence 
 of John in this respect ; but this is avoided by representing her as coming to 
 the two disciples immediately after perceiving the emptiness of the grave, and 
 under the disquietude excited in her by this circumstance. This presupposi- 
 tion serves also to explain why the fourth gospel makes the woman returning 
 from the grave go, not to the disciples in general, but only to Peter and 
 John. As, namely, the intelligence which, according to the original narra- 
 tive, was brought to all the disciples, occasioned, according to Luke, only 
 Peter to go to the grave, and as moreover, according to Mark (v. 7), the 
 message of the women was destined more especially for Peter : the idea might 
 easily be formed, that the news came to this disciple alone, with whom the 
 object of the fourth Evangelist would then require that he should associate 
 John. Only after the two disciples had come to the grave, and his John had 
 attained faith, could the author of the fourth gospel introduce the appearances 
 of the angel and of Jesus himself, which were said to have been granted to 
 the women. That instead of these collectively he names only Mary Magda- 
 lene—although as has been earlier remarked, he xx. 2 presupposes at least a 
 subsequent meeting between her and other women — this might certainly, 
 under other circumstances, be regarded as the original representation, whence 
 the synoptical one arose by a process of generahzation : but it might just as 
 
 •9 Concerning this sense of MirTcvcrev, and its not being contradicted by oSvu y&p -Ijdeurav 
 tV ypaH" «• T- ^- (v. 9). see the correct view in Liicke, in loc. 
 
7i6 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 37. 
 
 well be the case that the other women, being less known, were eclipsed by 
 Mary Magdalene. The description of the scene between her and Jesus, with 
 the non-recognition of him at the first moment, etc., certainly does honour to 
 the ingenuity and pathos of the author ; ^o but here also there is an unhis- 
 torical superfluity similar to that in Matthew. For here the angels have not, 
 as in the other Evangelists, to announce the resurrection to Mary Magdalene, 
 and to make a disclosure to her ; but they merely ask her, Wky weepestthou ? 
 whereupon she complains to them of the disappearance of the body of Jesus, 
 but, without waiting, for any further explanation, turns round and sees Jesus 
 standing. Thus as in Matthew the appearance of Jesus, since it is not 
 represented as the principal and effective one, is a superfluous addition to 
 that of the angel : so here the angelic appearance is an idle, ostentatious 
 introduction to the appearance of Jesus. 
 
 If we turn to the third account, that of Mark, to ascertain whether he may 
 not perhaps be the nearest to the fact : we find it so incoherent, and composed 
 of materials so little capable of being fitted together, that such a relation is 
 not to be thought of. After it has been already narrated that early in the 
 morning of the day succeeding the Sabbath the women came to the grave of 
 Jesus, and were informed by an angel of his resurrection, but out of fear said 
 nothing to any one of the appearance which they had seen (xvi. i-S) : at v. 9, 
 as if nothing had previously been said either of the resurrection or of the 
 time at which it happened, the narrator proceeds : Now when Jesus was risen 
 early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of 
 whom he had cast seven devils, avaa-Tws 8e xpoii irpuyrg ara^^ariov k^aviq irp&Tov 
 Mapia TTJ MaySaXrjvrj. This Statement also does not suit the . foregoing 
 narrative, because this is not formed on the supposition of an appearance 
 specially intended for Mary Magdalene : on the contrary, as she is said to be 
 informed by an angel of the resurrection of Jesus, together with two other 
 women, Jesus could not have appeared to her beforehand ; while afterwards, 
 on her way to the city, she was in company with the other women, when, ac- 
 cording to Matthew, they were all actually met by Jesus. Whether on this 
 account we are to regard the end of the gospel of Mark, from v. 9, as a later 
 addition,^! is indeed doubtful, from the want of decisive critical grounds, and 
 still more from the abruptness of the conclusion e^o/SoSvTo yap, for they were 
 afraid, which the gospel would then present : but in any case we have here a 
 narrative which the author, without any clear idea of the state of the fact and 
 the succession of the events, hastily compiled out of the heterogeneous elements 
 of the current~legend, which he knew not how to manage. 
 
 In the narrative of Luke there would be no special difficulty : but it has a 
 suspicious element in common with the others, namely, the angelic appearance, 
 and moreover, in a twofold form. What had the angels to do in this scene? 
 Matthew tells us : to roll away the stone from the grave ; on which it has 
 already been remarked by Celsus, that according to the orthodox presupposi- 
 tion, the Son of God could find no such aid necessary for this purpose : ^^ 
 he might indeed find it suitable and becoming. In Mark and Luke the angels 
 appear more as having to impart information and commissions to the women : 
 but as, according to Matthew and John, Jesus himself appeared immediately 
 after, and repeated those commissions, the delivery of them by angels was 
 superfluous. Hence, nothing remains but to say : the angels belonged to the 
 
 '" Weisse is of a different opinion, ut sup. s. 355, Anm. 
 
 " As Paulus, Fritzsche, Credner, Einleitung, i,§ 49. Comp. DeWette, exeg. Handb. i, 
 2, s. 199 f. A middle view in Hug, Einl. in d. N. T. 2, § 69. 
 
 ^^ Orig. c. Cels. v. 52 : 6 yhp tov 9eo0 Trais, cis iow^v. oix iSivaro ivot^aj. riv Td(f)OV, iW 
 iSei^Br] &\\ov iToKiv/iaovTos tV irirpav. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 717 
 
 ernbellishment of the great scene, as celestial attendants who had to open to 
 the Messiah the door by which he meant to issue forth ; as a guard of honour 
 on the spot from which the once dead had just departed with recovered life. 
 But here occurs the question : does this species of pomp exist in the real court 
 of God, or only in the childish conception formed of it by antiquity? 
 
 Hence commentators have laboured in various ways to transform the angels 
 in the history of the resurrection into natural appearances. Setting out from 
 the account of the first gospel in which the angel is said to have a form or 
 countenance like lightning, Ilia, is Larpann], and to effect the rolling away of the 
 stone and the prostration of the guards, while an earthquake is connected 
 with his appearance : it no longer lay far out of the way to think of a flash of 
 lightning, which struck the stone with force sufficient to shatter it, and cast 
 the guards to the earth ; or of an earthquake which, accompanied by flames 
 bursting out of the ground, produced the same effect ; in which case the 
 flames and the overwhelming force of the phenomenon were taken by the 
 watching soldiers for an angel. ^s But partly the circumstance that the angel 
 seated himself on the stone after it had been rolled away, partly, and still more 
 decidedly, the statement that he spoke to the women, renders this hypothesis 
 insufficient. Hence an effort has been made to complete it by the supposition 
 that the sublime thought, Jesus is risen ! which on the discovery that the 
 grave was empty began to arise in the women and gradually to subdue their 
 first doubts, was ascribed by them, after the oriental mode of thought and 
 language, to an angel.^* But how comes it that in all the gospels the angels 
 are represented as clothed in white, shining garments ? Is that too an oriental 
 figure of speech? The oriental may indeed describe a good thought which 
 occurs to him as being whispered to him by an angel : but to depict the cloth- 
 ing and aspect of this angel, passes the bounds of the merely figurative even 
 among orientals. In the description of the first gospel the supposed lightning 
 might be called to aid, in the conjecture that the effect thereby produced on the 
 senses of the women was ascribed by them to an angel, which, with reference to 
 that lightning, they depicted as one clothed in shining garments. But, according 
 (to the other Evangelists, the rolling away of the stone, ex hypothesi by the light- 
 ening, was not seen by the women ; on the contrary, when they went or looked 
 into the grave, the white forms appeared to them in a perfectly tranquil position. 
 According to this, it must have been something within the grave which sug- 
 gested to them the idea of white-robed angels. Now in the grave, according 
 to Luke and John, there lay the white linen clothes in which the body of Jesus 
 ihad been wrapt : these, which were recognized simply as siich by the more 
 •composed and courageous men, might, it is said, by timid and excited women, 
 in the dark grave and by the deceptive morning twilight, be easily mistaken 
 for angels.^5 But how should the women, who must have expected to find in 
 the grave a corpse enveloped in white, be prompted by the sight of these 
 ■clothes to a thought so strange, and which then lay so remote from their anti- 
 cipations, as that they might be an angel who would announce to them the 
 resurrection of their deceased master ? It has been thought in another 
 .quarter quite superfluous here to advance so many ingenious conjectures as to 
 what the angels may have been, since, among the four narratives, two ex- 
 pressly tell us what they were : namely, natural men, Mark calling his angel 
 
 2' Schuster, in Eichhorn's allg. Biblioth. 9, s. 1034 ff. : Kuinbl, in Matth., p. 779. 
 
 2* Friedrich, iiber die Engel in der Auferstehungsgeschichte. In Eichhorn's allg. Bibl. 6, 
 £. 700 ff. Kuinol, ut sup. .,,„,, 
 
 25 Thus a treatise in Eichhorn's allg. Bibl. 8, s. 629 ff., and in Schmidts Bibl. 2, s. 545 
 i. ; also Bauer, hebr. Myth. S, s. 259. 
 
71 8 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 138. 
 
 a young man, veavia-Kov, Luke his two angels, fwo men, av^pm Suo.^^ Whom 
 then are we to suppose these men to have been ? Here again the door is 
 opened for the supposition of secret colleagues of Jesus, who must have been 
 unknown even to the two disciples : — these men seen at the grave may have 
 been the same who met him in the so-called Transfiguration, perhaps Essenes, 
 white being worn by this sect, — or whatever else of the like conjectures the 
 antiquated pragmatism of a Bahrdt or Venturini has to offer. Or will it 
 rather be chosen to suppose a purely accidental meeting ? or, lastly, with 
 Paulus, to leave the matter in an obscurity, from the midst of which, so soon 
 as it is endeavoured to clear it up by definite thoughts, the two forms of the 
 secret colleagues iijvariably present themselves ? A correct discernment will 
 here also rather recognize the forms of the Jewish popular conception, by 
 which the primitive Christian tradition held it necessary to glorify the resur- 
 rection of its Messiah : a recognition, which at once solves in the most simple 
 manner the differences in the number and modes of appearance of those 
 celestial beings.^'' 
 
 Herewith, however, it is at the same time acknowledged that we can suc- 
 ceed no better with the plan of selection than with that of incorporation ; but 
 must rather confess, that in all the evangelical accounts of these first tidings 
 of th& resurrection, we have before us nothing more than traditional reports.^* 
 
 § 138- 
 
 APPEARANCES OF THE RISEN JESUS IN GALILEE AND IN JU0EA, INCLUDING 
 THOSE MENTIONED BY PAUL AND BY APOCRYPHAL WRITINGS. 
 
 The most important of all the differences in the history of the resurrection 
 turns upon the question, what locality did Jesus design to be the chief theatre 
 of his appearances after the resurrection ? The two first gospels make Jesus, 
 before his death, whein retiring to the Mount of Olives, utter this promise to 
 his disciples : After I am risen again T will go before you into Galilee (Matt. 
 xxvi. 32 ; Mark xiv. 28) ; the same assurance is given to the women by the 
 angels on the morning of the resurrection, with the addition : there shall ye see 
 him (Matt, xxviii. 7 ; Mark xvi. 7) ; and in Matthew, besides all this, Jesus in 
 his own person commissions the women to say to the disciples : that they go into 
 Galilee, and there shall they see m^ (xxviii. 10). In Matthew the journey of the 
 disciples into Galilee, with the appearance of Jesus which they there witnessed 
 (the only one to the disciples recorded by this Evangelist), is actually narrated 
 in the sequel. Mark, after describing the amazement into which the women 
 were thrown by the angelic appearance, breaks oif in the enigmatical manner 
 already mentioned, and appends some appearances of Jesus, which, — as the 
 first happens immediately after the resurrectioii, and therefore necessarily in 
 Jerusalem, and no change of place is mentioned before the succeeding ones, 
 while the earlier direction to go into Galilee is lost sight of, — must all be re- 
 garded as appearances in and around Jerusalem. John knows nothing of a 
 direction to the disciples to go into Galilee, and makes Jesus show himself to 
 
 *° Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 829, 55, 60, 62. 
 
 " Fritzsche, in Marc, in loc, Nemo—quispiam primi temporis Christianis tarn dignm 
 ■uideri foterat, guide Messia in vitam reverse nuntium ad homines perferret, quam angelus, 
 Dei minister, divinorumque consiliorum. interpres et adjutor. Then on the differences in 
 relation to the number of the angels, etc. : Nimirum insperato Jesu Messia in vitam reditui 
 miracida adjecere alii alia, quce Evangelistce religiose, quemadmodum ab suis auctorilms 
 acceperant. Uteris manddruht. 
 
 28 Kaiser, bibl. Theol. i, s. 254 ff. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 7I9, 
 
 the disciples on the evening of the day of resurrection, and again eight days- 
 after, m Jerusalem; the concluding chapter, however, which forms an appen- 
 dix to his gospel, describes an appearance by the Sea of Galilee. In Luke, on. 
 the other hand, not only is there no trace of an appearance in Galilee, Jeru- 
 salem with Its environs being made the sole theatre of the appearances of 
 Christ which this gospel relates ; but there is also put into the mouth of Jesus^ 
 when on the evening after the resurrection, he appears to the assembled 
 disciples in Jerusalem, the injunction : tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem (in the 
 Acts 1. 4, more definitely expressed by the negative, that they should not depart 
 from Jerusalem), until ye be endued with power from on high (xxiv. 49). Here 
 two questions inevitably arise : ist, how can Jesus have directed the disciples 
 to journey into Galilee, and yet at the samejtime have commanded them to re- 
 main in Jerusalem until Pentecost? and 2ndly, how could he refer them to a 
 promised appearance in Galilee, when he had the intention of showing himself 
 to them that very day in and near Jerusalem ? 
 
 The first contradiction which presents itself more immediately between 
 Matthew and Luke, has by no one been more pointedly exhibited than by the 
 Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist. If, he writes, it be true, as Luke says, that Jesus- 
 appeared to his disciples in Jerusalem on the day of his resurrection, and 
 comnianded them to remain there, and not to depart thence until Pentecost :. 
 then is it false that he commanded them within the same period to journey 
 into Galilee, that he might appear to them there, and vice versa.^ The 
 harmonists indeed affected to regard this objection as unimportant, and only 
 remarked briefly, that the injunction to remain in a city was not equivalent ta 
 an arrest, and did not exclude walks and excursions in the neighbourhood ; 
 and that Jesus merely forbade the removal of residence from Jerusalem, and 
 the going out into all the world to preach the gospel, before the given term 
 should arrive.^ But the journey from Jerusalem to Galilee is not a mere 
 walk, but the longest expedition which the Jew could make within the limits 
 of his own country ; as little was it an excursion for the apostles, but rather a 
 return to their home : while what Jesus intended to prohibit to the disciples- 
 in that injunction cannot have been the going out into all the world to preach 
 the gospel, since they would have no impulse to do this before the outpouring 
 of the Spirit ; nor can it have been the removal of residence from Jerusalem, 
 since they were there only as strangers visiting at the feast : rather Jesus must 
 have meant to deter them from that very journey which it was the most natural 
 for them to take, i.e. firom the return to their native province Galilee, after the 
 expiration of the feast days. Besides this — and even Michaelis confesses him- 
 self obliged to wonder here — if Luke does not mean by that prohibition of 
 Jesus to exclude the journey into Galilee, why is it that he alludes to this 
 by no single word ? and in like manner, if Matthew knew that his direction 
 to go into Galilee was consistent with the command to remain in the 
 metropolis, why has he omitted the latter, together with the appearances in 
 Jerusalem? This is certainly a plain proof that the accounts of the two 
 Evangelists are based on a different idea as to the theatre on which the risen 
 Jesus appeared. 
 
 In this exigency of having to reconcile two contradictory commands given 
 on the same day, the comparison with the Acts presented a welcome help by 
 indicating a distinction of the times. Here, namely, the command of Jesus 
 that the disciples should not leave Jerusalem is placed in his last appearance, 
 forty days after the resurrection, and immediately before the ascension : at 
 
 1 In Lessing's Beitragen, ut sup. s. 485. 
 
 * Michaelis, s. 259 f. ; Kuinbl, in Luc, p. 743. 
 
720 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 38. 
 
 the close of the gospel of Luke it is likewise in the last interview, terminating 
 in the ascension, that the above command is given. Now though from the 
 summary representation of the gospel taken by itself, it must be believed that 
 all occurred on the very day of the resurrection : we nevertheless see, it is 
 said, from the history of the Acts by the same author, that between v. 43 and 
 44 in the last chapter of his gospel we must interpose the forty days from the 
 resurrection to the ascension. Herewith, then, the apparent contradiction 
 between these two commands vanishes : for one who in the first instance in- 
 deed enjoins a journey into Galilee, may very well forty days later, after this 
 journey has been made, and the parties are once more in the metropolis, 
 now forbid any further removal from thence.^ But as the dread of admitting 
 a contradiction between different New Testament authors is no ground for 
 departing from the natural interpretation of their expressions : so neither can 
 this be justified by the apprehension that the same author may in different 
 writings contradict himself; since if the one were written somewhat later than 
 the other, the author may in the interim have been on many points otherwise 
 informed, than when he composed his first work. That this was actually the 
 case with Luke in relation to that part of the life of Jesus which followed his 
 resurrection, we shall have reason to be convinced when we come to the his- 
 tory of the ascension : and this conclusion removes all ground for interposing 
 nearly five weeks between the e<^a-y«v, v. 43, and eiTre 8e, v. 44, in defiance of 
 their obviously immediate connexion ; at the same time, however, it does away 
 with the possibility of reconciling the opposite commands of Jesus in Matthew 
 and Luke by a distinction of times. 
 
 Meanwhile, even admitting that this contradiction might be in some way 
 or other removed, still, even without that express command which Luke men- 
 tions, the mere facts as narrated by him and his predecessor and successor, 
 remain irreconcilable with the injunction which Jesus gives to the disciples 
 in Matthew. For, asks the Fragmentist, if the disciples collectively twice saw 
 him, spoke with him, touched him, and ate with him, in Jerusalem ; how can 
 it be that they must have had to take the long journey into Galilee in order 
 to see him ? * The harmonists, it is true, boldly reply : when Jesus causes 
 his disciples to be told that they will see him in Galilee, it is by no means 
 said that they will see him nowhere else, still less that they will not see him in 
 Jerusalem.5 But, the Fragmentist might rejoin, after his manner : as little as 
 one who says to me, go to Rome, there you shall see the Pope, can mean 
 that the Pope will indeed first come through my present place of residence, 
 so as to be seen by me here, but afterwards I must yet go to Rome, in order 
 to see him again there : so little would the angel in Matthew and Mark, if he 
 had had ainy anticipation of the appearance in Jerusalem on the very same 
 day, have said to the disciples : go into Galilee, there will Jesus show himself 
 to you ; but rather : be comforted, you shall yet see him here in Jerusalem 
 before evening. Wherefore the reference to the more remote event, when there 
 was one of the same kind close at hand? wherefore an appointment by means of 
 the women, for the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee, if the latter foresaw that 
 he should on the same day personally speak with the disciples? With reason 
 does the latest criticism insist on what Lessing had previously urged ; ^ namely, 
 that no rational person would make an appointment with his friends through 
 a third party for a joyful reunion at a distant place, if he were certain of seeing 
 
 " Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 299 f. ; Paulus, s. 910. 
 ■* Ut sup. s. 486. 
 
 5 Griesbach, Vorlesungen iiber Hermeneutik des N. T., mit Anwendung auf die Leidens 
 und Auferstehungsgeschichte Christi, herausgegeben von Steiner, s. -jia 
 « Duplik, Werke, 6 Bd. s. 352. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 72 1 
 
 them repeatedly on the same day in their present locality.'' If thus the angel 
 and Jesus himself, when they in the morning by means of the women directed 
 the disciples to go into Galilee, cannot yet have known that he would show him- 
 self to them on the evening of the same day in and near Jerusalem : he must 
 in the morning have still held the intention of going immediately into Galilee, 
 but in the course of the day have embraced another purpose. According to 
 Paulus,8 an indication of such an original intention is found in Luke, in the 
 travelling of Jesus towards Emmaus, which lay in the direction of Gajjlee ; 
 while the reason for the alteration of plan is supposed by the same expositor, 
 with whom in this instance Olshausen agrees," to have been the belief of the 
 disciples, as more particularly manifested to Jesus on occasion of the JQ'urney 
 to Emmaus. How so erroneous a calculation on the part of Jesus cab con- 
 sist with the orthodox view of his person, is Olshausen's care ; but even 
 regarding him in a purely human character, there appears no sufficient, reason 
 for such a change of mind. Especially after Jesus had been recognised by 
 the two disciples going to Emmaus, he might be certain that the testimony of 
 the men would so accredit the assertion of the women, as to lead the dis- 
 ciples with at least a glimmering ray of faith and hope into Galilee. But in 
 general, if a change of mind and a diversity of plan, in Jesus before and after 
 that change, really existed : why does no one Evangelist take any notice of 
 such a retractation ? Why does Luke speak as if he knew nothing of the 
 original plan ; Matthew, as if he knew nothing of a subsequent alteration ; 
 John, as if the principal theatre of the appearances of the risen Jesus had 
 been Jerusalem, and he had only by way of supplement at length showed 
 himself in Galilee ? Lastly, why does Mark speak so as to make it evident 
 that, having gathered the original direction to go into Galilee from Matthew, 
 and the succeeding appearances in Jerusalem and its environs from Luke or 
 elsewhere, he was unable, nor did he even make the attempt, in any way to 
 reconcile them ; but placed them together as he found them, rough hewn and 
 contradictory. 
 
 According to this we must agree with the latest criticism of the gospel of 
 Matthew, in acknowledging the contradiction between it and the rest in rela- 
 tion to the locality of the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection : but, it 
 must be asked, can we also approve the verdict of this criticism when it at 
 once renounces the representation of the first gospel in favour of that of the 
 other Evangelists.*" If, setting aside all presuppositions as to the apostolic 
 origin of this or that gospel, we put the question : which of the two divergent 
 accounts is the best adapted to be regarded as a traditional modification and 
 development of the other? we can here refer, not merely to the general 
 nature of the accounts, but also to a single point at which the two touch each 
 other in a characteristic manner. This is the address of the angel to the 
 women, in which according to all the synoptists Galilee is mentioned, but in 
 a different way. In Matthew the angel, as has been already noticed, says of 
 Jesus : hegoeth before you into Galilee,— lo, I have told you (xxviii. 7), irpodyei 
 itxas ek rrjv Ta\iXaCav—i8ov elirov vfuv. In Mark he says the same, except 
 that instead of the latter addition, by which in Matthew the angel seeks to 
 impress his own words on the women, he has the expression : as he said unto 
 you, Ka(9a)s d-Kiv vfuv, with which he refers to the earlier prediction of Jesus 
 concerning this circumstance. If we first compare these two representations : 
 the confirmatory / have told you, ti-Kov ifuv, might easily appear superfluous 
 
 ' Schneckenburger, iiber den Urspr. des ersten kanon. Evang., s. 17 f. 
 
 " Exeg. Handb. 3, b. s. 835. 
 
 » Bibl. Comm. 2, s. 524. . , - , c u 1 , 
 
 1" This is done by Schulz, iiber das Abendm. s. 321 ; Schneckenburger, ut sup. 
 
 z z 
 
722 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 138. 
 
 and nugatory ; while on the other hand the reference to the earlier predic- 
 tion of Jesus by he said, eiTrev, might seem more appropriate, and on this 
 the conjecture might be founded that perhaps Mark has here the correct and 
 original phrase, Matthew a variation not unaccompanied by a misunderstand- 
 ing." But if we include the account of Luke in the comparison, we find here, 
 as. in Mark, the words : remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in 
 Galilee, iJLv^a-Orjre, m eXdXrja-iv vfuv in £iv ev ry TaXiXaiq., a reference to an 
 earlier prediction of Jesus, not however referring to Galilee, but delivered in 
 Galilee. Here the question occurs : is it, more probable that Galilee, from 
 being the designation of the locality in which the prophecy of the resurrection 
 was uttered, should at a later period be erroneously converted into a desig- 
 nation of the locality where the risen one would appear ; or the contrary ? In 
 order to decide this, we must ascertain in which of the two positions the men- 
 tion of Galilee is the more intrinsically suited to the context. Now that on 
 the announcement of the resurrection it was an important point whether and 
 where the risen Jesus was to be seen, is self-evident ; it was of less moment, 
 in referring to an earlier prediction, to specify where this prediction was 
 uttered. Hence from this comparison of the passages it might already be 
 held more probable that it was originally said, the angels directed the dis- 
 ciples to go into Galilee, there to see the risen one (Matt.) ; but afterwards, 
 when the narratives of the appearances of Jesus in Judea had gradually sup- 
 planted those in Galilee, a different turn was given to the mention of Galilee 
 in the address of the angel, so as to make it imply that already in Galilee 
 Jesus had predicted his resurrection (Luke) ; whereupon Mark appears to 
 have taken a middle course, since he with Luke refers the eittov (changed into 
 iurev) to Jesus, but with Matthew retains Galilee as the theatre, not of the 
 earlier prediction of Jesus, but of the coming appearance. 
 
 If we next take into consideration the general character of the two nar- 
 ratives and the nature of the case, there exist the same objections to the 
 supposition that Jesus after his resurrection appeared several times to ■ his 
 disciples in and near Jerusalem, but that the remembrance of this fact' was 
 lost, and the same arguments in favour of the opposite supposition, as we 
 have respectively applied to the analogous alternatives in relation -to the 
 various journeys to the feasts and Judaean residences of Jesus. *^ That the 
 appearances of the risen Jesus in Jerusalem should undesignedly, that is, by 
 a total obliteration of them from the minds of individuals, have sunk into 
 oblivion in Galilee, where according to this presupposition the tradition of 
 Matthew was formed, is difficult to conceive, both from the pre-eminent im- 
 portance of these appearances, which, as for example those before the assem- 
 bled eleven and before Thomas, involved the surest attestations of the reality 
 of his resurrection, and also from the organizing influence of the community 
 in Jerusalem ; while that the Judaean appearances of Jesus were indeed known 
 in Galilee, but intentionally suppressed by the author of the first gospel, in 
 order to preserve the honour for his province alone, would presuppose an 
 exclusivism, an opposition of the Galilean Christians to the church at Jerusa- 
 lem, of which we have not the slightest historical trace. The other contrary 
 possibility, that perhaps originally only Galilean appearances of the risen 
 Jesus were known, but that tradition gradually added appearances in Judea 
 and Jerusalem, and that at length these completely supplanted the former, 
 may on. many grounds be heightened into a probability. First, as respects 
 
 " On which account Michaelis, s. 118 f., is'of opinion that elTrej' was the original reading 
 in Matthew also. Comp. Weisse, die Evang. Gesch. 2, s. S47 f. 
 '" Vol. I. § 57. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 723 
 
 the time, the tidings of the resurrection of Jesus were the more striking, the 
 more immediately his appearances followed on his burial and resurrection : if 
 however he first appeared in Galilee, such an immediate sequence of the 
 events could not exist ; further, it was a natural idea that the resurrection of 
 j€sus must have been attested by appearances in the place where he died ;. 
 lastly, the objection that Jesus after his pretended resurrection only appeared 
 to his own friends, and in a corner of Galilee, was in some degree repelled 
 when it could be alleged that on the contrary, he walked as one arisen fromi 
 the dead in the metropolis, in the midst of his furious enemies, though 
 indeed he was neither to be taken nor seen by them. But when once several 
 appearances of Jesus were laid in Judea and Jerusalem, the appearances iw 
 Galilee lost their importance, and might thenceforth either be appended in ar 
 subordinate position, as in the fourth gospel, or even be entirely overlooked', 
 as in the third. This result, drawn from the possible mode of legendary for- 
 mation, not being opposed, as in the inquiry concerning the theatre of the 
 ministry of the living Jesus, by a contrary one drawn from the circumstances 
 and designs of Jesus : we may, in contradiction to the criticism of the day, 
 decide in favour of the first gospel, whose account of the appearance of tlie 
 risen Jesus recommends itself as the more simple and free from difficulty.!^ 
 
 As regards the appearances of the risen Jesus taken singly, the first gospel 
 has two : one on the morning of the resurrection to the women (xxviii. 9 f.), 
 and one, the time of which is undetermined, before the disciples in Galilee 
 (xxviii. 16 f.). Mark, in what is indeed a merely summary statement, enume- 
 rates three : the first, to Mary Magdalene on the morning of the resurrection 
 (xvi. 9 f.); a second, to two disciples going into the country (xvi. 12) ; and a 
 third, to the eleven as they sat at meat, doubtless in Jerusalem (xvi. 14). 
 Luke narrates only two appearances : that before the disciples going to 
 Emmaus on the day of the resurrection (xxiv. 13 ff.), and the last, before the 
 eleven and other disciples in Jerusalem, according to xxiv. 36 S., on the 
 evening of the same day, according to the Acts i. 4 ff. forty days later ; but 
 when the travellers to Emmaus, on rejoining the apostles, are greeted by them, 
 before Jesus has appeared in the midst of them, with the information : the 
 Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon (xxiv. 34) : here a third ap- 
 pearance is presupposed, which was granted to Peter alone. John has four 
 such appearances : the first, to Mary Magdelene at the grave (xx. 14 ff.) ; the 
 second to the disciples when the doors were shut (xx. 19 ff.) ; the third, like- 
 wise in Jerusalem, eight days later, when Thomas was convinced (xx. 26 ff.) ; 
 the fourth, of which the time is unspecified, at the Galilean sea (xxi.). But here 
 we have also to take into consideration a statement of the Apostle Paul, who 
 I Cor. XV. 5 ff., if we deduct the appearance of Christ granted to himself, 
 enumerates five appearances after the resurrection, without however giving 
 any precise description of them : one to Cephas ; one to the twelve ; one 
 before more than five hundred brethren at once ; one to James ; and lastly, 
 one before all the apostles. 
 
 Now how shall we make an orderly arrangement of these various appear- 
 ances ? The right of priority is, in John, and still more expressly in Mark, 
 claimed for that to Mary Magdalene. The second must have been the meet- 
 ing of Jesus with the women returning from the grave, in Matthew ; but as 
 Mary Magdalene was likewise among these, and there is no indication that 
 she had previously seen Jesus, these two appearances cannot be regarded as 
 
 " The opinion that the true locality of the appearances of the risen Jesus before the 
 disciples was Galilee, is concurred in by Weisse, 2, s. 358 ff. ; but in accordance with his 
 fundamental supposition concerning the synoptical gospels, he gives the preference to the 
 narrative of Mark before that of Matthew. 
 
724 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 38. 
 
 distinct, but rather as one under two different garbs. Paul, who in the above 
 named passage speaks as if he meant to enumerate all the'appearances of the 
 resuscitated Christ, of which he knew, omits the one in question ; but it may 
 perhaps be said in explanation of this, that he did not choose to adduce the 
 testimony of women. As the order in which he enumerates his Christo- 
 phanies, to judge from the succession of elra and emiTa and the conclusion 
 . with eaxarov, appears to be the order of time : ^* according to him the appear 
 ance before Cephas was the first that happened before a man. This would 
 agree well with the representation of Luke, in which the journeyers to Em- 
 maus, on rejoining the disciples in Jerusalem, are met by them with the 
 information that Jesus is really arisen and has appeared to Simon, which 
 might possibly be the case before his interview with those two disciples. As 
 the next appearance, however, according to Luke, we must number that last 
 named, which Paul would not mention, perhaps because he chose to adduce 
 ( nly those which were seen by apostles, and from among the rest only those 
 which happened before great masses of witnesses, or more probably, because 
 it was unknown to him. Mark xvi. 1 2 f. evidently refers to the same appear- 
 ance; the contradiction, that while in Luke the assembled disciples meet 
 those coming from Emmaus with the believing exclamation : i/ie Lord is risen, 
 etc., in Mark the disciples are said to have remained incredulous even to the 
 account of those two witnesses, probably proceeds from nothing more than 
 an exaggeration of Mark, who will not lose his hold of the contrast between 
 the most convincing appearances of Jesus and the obstinate unbelief of the 
 disciples. The appearance on the way to Emmaus is in Luke immediately 
 followed by that in the assembly of the eleven and others. This is generally 
 held to be identical with the appearance before the twelve mentioned by Paul, 
 and with that which. John narrates when Jesus on the evening after the 
 resurrection entered while the doors were closed among the disciples, out of 
 whose number, however, Thomas was wanting. It is not fair lo urge in 
 opposition to this identification the eleven of Luke, as at variance with the 
 statement of John that only ten apostles were present, any more than the 
 twelve of Paul, from which number Judas at least must be deducted ; more- 
 over the similar manner in which the two Evangelists describe the entrance 
 of Jesus by icn-q Iv fjiecrio avrSiv and Io-tt; ew to fi-iaav, and the greeting cited 
 m both instances : elpriv-q i/uv, appear to indicate the identity of the two 
 appearances ; nevertheless, if we consider that the handling of the body of 
 Jesus, which in John first happens eight days later, and the eating of the 
 broiled fish, which John assigns to the still later appearance in Galilee, are 
 connected by Luke with that scene in Jerusalem on the day of the jesurrec- 
 tion : it is evident that either the third Evangelist has here compressed 
 several incidents into one, or the fourth has divided one into several-^which- 
 ever alternative may be chosen. This appearance before the apostles in 
 Jerusalem however, as has been above remarked, according to Matthew 
 could not have happened, since this Evangelist makes the eleven journey to 
 Galilee in order to see Jesus. Mark, and Luke in his gospel, annex the as- 
 cension to this appearance, and thus exclude all subsequent ones. As the 
 next appearance, the apostle Paul has that before five hundred brethren, 
 which is generally regarded as the same with the one which Matthew places 
 on a mountain in Galilee -.^^ but at this only the eleven are stated to have 
 been present, and moreover the discourse of Jesus on the occasion, consist- 
 ing principally of oflScial instructions, appears more suited to this narrow 
 circle. Paul next adduces an appearance to James, of which there is also an 
 
 " Vid Billroth's Commentar, in loc. 
 
 '5 Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b. s. 897 ; Olshausen, 2, s. 541. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 725 
 
 apocryphal account, in the Hebrew gospel of Jerome, according to which 
 however it must have been the first of all.is Here there would be space for 
 that appearance in which, according to the fourth gospel eight days after the 
 resurrection of Jesus, Thomas was convinced ; wherewith Paul would closely 
 agree, if his expression, to all the apostles, toTs dTroo-ToAots irSo-iv (v. 7), which 
 he uses in relation to this appearance, were really to be understood of a full 
 assembly of the eleven in distinction from the earlier one, when Thomas was 
 not preseiit : which however, as Paul, according to the above presupposition, 
 had described this also as an appearance before the twelve, is impossible ; on 
 the^ contrary, the apostle intends as well by the hitl^Ko., twelve, as, by 01 
 d7rdflrToA.oi. TravTcs, all the apostles, the collective body of apostles (whose 
 proper number was then indeed incomplete by one man), in opposition to 
 the individuals (Cephas and James) of whom in each case he had just before 
 spoken, as having witnessed a Christophany. If however we were neverthe- 
 less to regard the fifth appearance of Jesus according to Paul as identical 
 with the third in John : it would only be the more clearly evident that the 
 fourth of Paul, before the five hundred brethren, cannot have been the one 
 in Galilee recorded by Matthew. For as, in John, the third took place in 
 Jerusalem, the fourth in Galilee : Jesus and the apostles must in that case 
 have gone into Galilee after the first appearances in Jerusalem, and have met 
 on the mountain ; then have returned to Jerusalem where Jesus showed him- 
 self to Thomas ; then again have proceeded into Galilee where the appear- 
 ance by the sea occurred ; and lastly, have once more returned to Jerusalem 
 for the ascension. In order to avoid this useless journeying backwards and 
 forwards, and yet to be able to combine those two appearances, Olshausen 
 lays the appearance before Thomas in Galilee : an inadmissible violence, 
 since not only is there no mention of a change of place between this and the 
 foregoing, which is by implication represented as happening in Jerusalem, 
 but the place of assembly is in both instances described in the same manner; 
 nay the addition, the doors being shut, will not allow the supposition of any 
 other locality than Jerusalem, because in Galilee, where there was less excite- 
 ment against Jesus from the enmity of the priesthood, there cannot be sup- 
 posed to have been the same reason for that precaution, in the fear of the 
 Tews. Thus, first where the Judean appearances close with that happening 
 eight days after the resurrection, we should obtain room to insert the Galilean 
 appearances of Matthew and John. But these have the peculiar position, 
 that each claims to be the first, and that of Matthew at the same time the 
 last." By the tenor of his whole narrative, and expressly by adding, after 
 the statement that the disciples went to a mountain in Galilee, the words: 
 where Jesus had appointed them, ov ird^aTo avrots 'I-, Matthew marks this 
 appearance as the one to which Jesus had referred on the morning of the 
 resurrection, first by the angel, and then in his own person ; but no one con- 
 certs a second meeting in a particular place, leaving the first undetermined : 
 consequently, as an unforeseen earlier meeting is incompatible with the evan- 
 
 18 Hieron de viris illustr. ii. : Evangdium quoqtie, quod appellatur secundum Hehraos,— 
 tost resurrectionem Salvatoris refert : Dominus autem, postquam dedisset sindonem servo 
 mcerdoiis (apparently in relation to the watch at the grave, which 1^ here represented as a 
 sacerdotal instead of a Roman guard ; vid. Credner, Beitiage zur Einl. m das N. T. s. 406 
 f 1 ivit ad Tacobum et apparuit ei. Juraverat enim Jacobus, se non comesturum panem ab 
 ilia kora aua biberat calicem Domini, donee videret eum resurgentum a dormientibus (on the 
 inconceivableness of such a vow, despairing as the disciples were, comp. Michaehs, s 122). 
 Kursusaue tost iaululum: Afferte, ait Dominus, mensam et panem. Statimque additur : 
 lulit panem et benedixit ac /regit, et dedit Jacobo justo et dixit ei : frater mi, comede panem 
 tuum, quia resurrexit filius hominis a dormientibus. 
 
 " Lessing, Duplik, s. 449 ff- 
 
726 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 38. 
 
 gelical idea of Jesus,^^ that meeting, since it was the concerted one, was also 
 tlie first in Galilee. If thus the appearance at the sea of Tiberias in John, 
 cannot possibly be placed before that on the mountain in Matthew : so the 
 latter will just as little suffer the other to follow it, since it is a formal leave- 
 taking of Jesus from his disciples. Moreover, it would be more than ever 
 difficult to understand how the appearance in John could be made out, in 
 accordance with the Evangelist's own statement, to be the third (jsavepioa-K of 
 the risen Christ before his disciples (xxi. 14), if that of the first gospel must 
 also be supposed to precede it. Meanwhile, even allowing the priority to the 
 former, this numerical notice of John remains sufficiently perplexing. We 
 might, it is true, deduct the appearances before the women, because, though 
 John himself narrates that to Mary Magdalene, he does not take it into his 
 account ; but if we number that to Cephas as the first, and that on the way to 
 Emmaus as the second ; then this Galilean appearance, as the third, would 
 fall between the above and that before the eleven on the evening of the 
 resurrection, which would presuppose a rapidity of locomotion totally im- 
 possible ; nay, if that appearance before the assembled eleven is the same 
 with the one at which, according to John, Thomas was absent, the third 
 appearance of John would fall before his first. Perhaps, however, when we 
 consider the expression : showed himself to his disciples, iKJiavepadr/ rots /laOrj- 
 rais avTov, we ought to understand that John only numbers such appearances 
 as happened before several disciples at once, so that those before Peter and 
 James should be deducted. In that case, we must number as the first, the 
 appearance to the two disciples going to Emmaus ; as the second, that before 
 the assembled eleven on the evening of the resurrection : and thus in the 
 eight days between this and the one before Thomas, the journey into Galilee 
 would fall somewhat more conveniently, — but also the third appearance of 
 John would fall before his second. Perhaps, then, the author of the fourth 
 gospel held the two disciples whom Jesus met on the way to Emmaus too 
 small a number, to entitle this Christophany to rank as a <j>avepova-6ai Tots 
 /AaflijTats. On this supposition the entrance of Jesus among the assembled 
 disciples in the evening would be the first appearance ; hereupon the five 
 hundred brethren to whom Jesus showed himself at once would surely hi 
 numerous enough to be taken into the reckoning: so that the Galilean 
 appearance of John, that is, his third, must be inserted after this, but then it 
 would still fall before that to Thomas and «// the apostles, which John enu- 
 merates as the second. Perhaps, however, the appearance of Jesus before 
 the five hundred is to be placed later, so that after that entrance of Jesus 
 among the assembled disciples would first follow the scene with Thomas, 
 after this the appearance at the sea of Galilee, and only then the sight of 
 Jesus granted to the five hundred. But if the appearance before Thomas is 
 to be reckoned the same with the fifth in Paul's enumeration, this apostle 
 must have reversed the order of his two last appearances, a transposition for 
 which there was no reason : on the contrary, it would have been more natural 
 to place last the appearance before the five hundred brethren, as the most 
 important. Thus nothing remains but to say : John understood under the 
 word ixaOriTah merely a greater or a smaller assembly of the apostles ; but 
 among the five hundred there was no apostle; hence he omitted these also, 
 and thus correctly numbered the appearance at the sea of Tiberias as the 
 third : if indeed this could have happened before the one on the mountain in 
 Galilee, which, we have seen, to be inconceivable. The above expedients 
 resorted to by way of accommodation are in part ridiculous enough : but Kern 
 has lately surpassed them all by a suggestion which he advances with great 
 " As Kern admits, Hauptthats. Tub. Zeitschr. 1836, 3, s. 57. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 727 
 
 confidence, namely, that John here intends to number, not the appearances, 
 but the da) s on which appearances took place, so that tovto ^Sj; rpiTov t(\>a.v- 
 epiLOri o 'I. Tois /iaflijrals, iAis t's now the third time that Jesus showed himself 
 to the disciples, means : now had Jesus already appeared to his disciples on 
 three separate days : namely, four times on the day of the resurrection ; then 
 once eight days after ; and now again some days later. i^ Renouncing such 
 expedients, nothing remains but to acknowledge that the fourth Evangelist 
 numbers only those appearances of Jesus to his disciples, which he had him- 
 self narrated ; and the reason of this can scarcely have been that the rest, 
 from some cause or other, appeared to him less important, but rather that he 
 knew nothing of them.^" And again, Matthew with his last Galilean appear- 
 ance, can have known nothing of the two in Jerusalem recorded by John ; 
 for if in the first of these ten apostles had been convinced of the reality of 
 the resurrection of Jesus, and in the second Thomas also : it could not have 
 been that at that later appearance on the mountain in Galilee some of the 
 eleven (for only these are represented by Matthew as going thither) still 
 doubted (01 Se eSio-rao-av, v. 17). Lastly, if Jesus here delivered to his dis- 
 ciples the final command to go into all the world teaching and baptizing, and 
 gave them the promise to be with them until the end of the existing age, 
 which is manifestly the tone of one who is taking leave : he cannot subse- 
 quently, as is narrated in the introduction to the Acts, have communicated to 
 them his last commands and taken leave of them at Jerusalem. According 
 to the conclusion of the gospel of Luke, this farewell departure on the con- 
 trary occurs much earlier than can be supposed in accordance with Matthew ; 
 and in the close of the gospel of Mark, where Jesus is represented as parting 
 from his disciples in Jerusalem on the very day of his resurrection, partly the 
 same words are put into his mouth as, according to Matthew, are spoken in 
 Galilee, and in any case later than on the day of the resurrection. The fact, 
 that the two books of the same author, Luke, diverge so widely from each 
 other in relation to the time during which Jesus appeared to his disciples 
 after his resurrection, that one determines this time to have been a single 
 day, the other, forty days, cannot be taken into more particular consideration 
 until we have reached a farther point of our inquiry. 
 
 Thus the various evangelical writers only agree as to a few of the appear- 
 ances of Jesus after his resurrection ; the designation of the locality in one 
 excludes the appearances narrated by the rest ; the determination of time in 
 another leaves no space for the narratives of his fellow Evangelists ; the 
 enumeration of a third is given without any regard to the events reported by 
 his predecessors ; lastly, among several appearances recounted by various 
 narrators, each claims to be the last, and yet has nothing in common with the 
 others. Hence nothing but wilful blindness can prevent the perception that 
 no one of the narrators knew and presupposed what another records ; that 
 each again had heard a different account of the matter ; and that consequently 
 at an early period, there were current only uncertain and very varied reports 
 concerning the appearances of the risen Jesus. ^^ _ 
 
 This conclusion, however, does not shake the passage m the first Epistle to 
 the Corinthians which, (it being undoubtedly genuine,) was written about the 
 year qo after Christ, consequently not 30 years after his resurrection. On 
 this authority we must believe that many members of the primitive church 
 
 19 Hauptthatsachen, ut sup. s. 47. „;..,. r- , t, ., , 
 
 2» Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. I, 3, s. 205, 2lo ; Weisse, die evang. Gesch. 2, s. 
 
 '^°" Comp. Kai.ser, bidl. Theol. i, s. 254 ff. ; Ue Wette ut sup. ; Amnion, Fortbildung, Zs 
 1, Kap. I ; Weisse, die Evang. Gesch.,' 2, 7 tes Buch. 
 
728 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 39. 
 
 who were yet living at the time when this epistle was written, especially the 
 apostles, were convinced that they had witnessed appearances of the risen 
 Christ. Whether this involves the admission that some, objective reality lay 
 at the foundation of these appearances, will hereafter become the subject of 
 inquiry ; concerning the present point, the divergencies of the Evangelists, 
 especially in relation to the locality, thei passage of Paul offers nothing deci- 
 sive, since he has given no particular description of any of those appearances. 
 
 § 139- 
 
 QUALITY OF THE BODY AND LIFE OF JESUS AFTER THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 But how are we to represent to ourselves this continuation of the life of 
 Jesus after the resurrection, and especially the nature of his body in this 
 period ? In order to answer this question we must once more cast a glance 
 over the separate narratives of his appearances when risen. 
 
 According to Matthew, Jesus on the morning of the resurrection meets 
 {aT^vT7i<^ev) the women as they are hastening back from the grave ; they re- 
 cognize him, embrace his feet in sign of veneration, and he speaks to them. 
 At the second interview on the Galilean mountain the disciples see him 
 (tSovTEs), but some still doubt, and here also Jesus speaks to them. Of the 
 manner in which he came and went, we have here no precise information. 
 
 In Luke, Jesus joins the two disciples who are on their way from Jerusalem 
 to the neighbouring village of Emmaus ( eyyio-as a-vveTropevero auTots) ; they 
 do not recognize him on the way, a circumstance which Luke attributes to a 
 subjective hindrance produced in them by a higher influence (ol 6(t>6a\fioi 
 avTMv iKparovvTo, tov /j,^ hnyv&vai avrov), and only Mark, who compresses this' 
 event into few words, to an objective alteration of his form (cV kTipa fiopcfrfj). 
 On the way Jesus converses with the two disciples, after their arrival in the 
 village complies with their invitation to accompany them to their lodging, sits 
 down to table with them, and proceeds according to his wont to break and dis- 
 tribute bread. In this moment the miraculous spell is withdrawn from the eyeS' 
 of the disciples, and they know him : 1 but in the same moment he becomes in- 
 visible to them (oi4>avTog lyevero air amu)v). Just as suddenly as he here 
 vanished, he appears to have shown himself immediately after in the assembly 
 of the disciples, when it is said that he all at once stood in the midst of them 
 (lo-nj ev /xeVo) avrSi'), and they, terrified at the sight, supposed that they saw a 
 spirit. To dispel this alarming idea, Jesus showed them his hands and feet,'and 
 invited them to touch him, that by feeling \as flesh and bones then might con- 
 vince themselves that he was no spectre ; he also caused a piece of broiled fish 
 and of honeycomb to be brought to him, and ate it in their presence. The 
 appearance to Simon is in Luke described by the expression wc^^i; ; Paul in 
 the first Epistle to the Corinthians uses the same verb for all the Chris- 
 tophanies there enumerated, and Luke in the Acts comprises all the appear- 
 ances of the risen Jesus during the forty days under the expressions otcto 
 vop.a/o's (i. 3) and e/i^av^ yevicrOaj, (x. 40). In the same manner Mark 
 describes the appearance to Mary Magdalene by itjiavri, and those to the 
 disciples on the way to Emmaus and to the eleven by i^avepwOrj. John de- 
 scribes the appearance at the sea of Tiberias by ifftavepuia-ev iavrov, and to all 
 the Christophanies narrated by him he applies the word icjiavepuiOrj. Mark 
 and Luke add, as the close of the earthly life of the risen Jesus, that he was 
 
 ' That it was the marks of the nails in the hand, which became visible in the act of break- 
 ing bread, by which Jesus was recognized (Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b. s. 882 ; Kuinol, in 
 Luc. p. 734.) is without any intimation in the text. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 729 
 
 taken away from before the eyes of the disciples, and (by a cloud, according 
 to Acts i. 9) carried up to heaven. ■ 
 
 In the fourth gospel Jesus first stands laehind Mary Magdalene as she is 
 turning away from the grave ; she however, does not recognize him even when 
 he speaks to her, but takes him for the gardener, until he (in the tone so 
 famihar to her) calls her by her name. When on this she attempts to mani- 
 fest her veneration, Jesus prevents her by the words : Touch vie not, /X17 (uou 
 aTTTov, and sends her with a message to the disciples. The second appear- 
 ance of Jesus in John occurred under peculiarly remarkable circumstances. 
 The disciples were assembled, from fear of the hostile Jews, with closed doors : 
 when all at once Jesus came and stood in the midst of them, greeted them, 
 and presented— apparently to their sight only— his hands and feet, that they 
 might recognize him as their crucified master. When Thomas, who was not 
 present, refused to be convinced by the account of his fellow disciples of the 
 reality of this appearance, and required for his satisfaction himself to see and 
 touch the wounds of Jesus : the latter, in an appearance eight days after, 
 granted him this proof, making him touch the marks of the nails in his hands 
 and the wound in his side. Lastly, at the appearance by the sea of Galilee, 
 Jesus stood on the shore in the morning twilight, without being known by the 
 disciples in the ship, asked them for fish, and was at length recognized by 
 John, through the rich draught of fishes which he procured them ; still, how 
 ever, the disciples, when come to land, did not venture to ask him whether it 
 were really he. Hereupon he distributed among them bread and fish, ot 
 which he doubtless himself partook, and finally held a conversation with John 
 and Peter.2 
 
 Now the general ideas which may be formed of the life of Jesus after his 
 resurrection are two : either it was a natural and perfectly human life, and 
 accordingly his body continued to be subject to the physical and organic laws; 
 or his life was already of a higher, superhuman character, and his body super- 
 natural and transfigured : and the accounts, taken unitedly, present certain 
 traits to which, on the first view, each of these two ideas may respectively 
 appeal. The human form with its natural members, the possibility of being 
 known by means of them, the continuance of the marks of the wounds, the 
 human speech, the acts of walking and breaking bread, — all these appear to 
 speak in favour of a perfectly natural life on the part of Jesus even after the 
 
 ^ The part of this conversation which relates to John, has ah-eady (§ 116) been considered. 
 In that relating to Peter, the thrice repeated question of Jesus : Lowest thou me ? has reference, 
 according to the ordinary opinion, to his as often repeated denial ; but to the words ; When 
 thou wast youngs thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest, but when thou 
 shall be old, thou shall stretch forth thy hatids, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee 
 whither thou wouldest not, Bre ^s veilyrepos, e^uivvves (reai^rdv Kal irepLeirdrets Swov ^^eXes" Srap 
 5^ yripiarp, iKTeveis tcls x^'P"^' """ '^"^ fiXXos (re fiirei Kal otrei dwov ov di\ei.s (v. 18 f.), the 
 Evangelist himself gives the interpretation, that Jesus spoke them to Peter, signifying by 
 what death he should glorify God. He must here have alluded to the crucifixion, which, 
 according to the ecclesiastical legend (Tertull. de prsscr. hasr. xxxvi. Euseb. H. E. ii. 25) 
 was the death suffered by this apostle, and to which in the intention of the Evangelist the 
 words Follow me, v. 20 and 22 (i.e. follow me in the same mode of death) also appear to 
 point. But precisely the main feature in this interpretation, the stretching forth of the hands, 
 is here so placed as to render a reference to crucifixion impossible, namely, before the 
 leading away against the will ; on the other hand, the girding, which can only signify bind- 
 ing for the purpose of leading away, should stand before the stretching forth of the hands on 
 the cross. If we set aside the interpretation which, as even Liicke (s. 703) admits, is given 
 to the words of Jesus «x eveniu by the narrator : they appear to contain nothing.more than 
 the commonplace of the helplessness of age contrasted with the activity of youth, for even 
 the phrase, shall carry thee' whither thou wouldest not, does not outstep this comparison. But 
 the author of John xxi. , whether the words were known to him as a declaration of Jesus or 
 otherwise, thought them capable of being applied in the manner of the fourth gospel, as a 
 latent prophecy of the crucifixion of Peter. 
 
730 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 39. 
 
 resurrection. If it were possible still to demur to this, and to conjecture, 
 that even a higher, heavenly corporeality might give itself such an aspect and 
 perform such functions : all doubts must be quelled by the further statement, 
 that Jesus after the resurrection consumed earthly food, and allowed himself 
 to be touched. Such things are indeed ascribed even to higher beings in old 
 myths, as for example, eating to the heavenly forms from whom Abraham 
 receivqd a visit (Gen. xviii. 8), and palpability to the God that wrestled with 
 Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 24 if.) : but it must nevertheless be insisted that in reality 
 both these conditions can only belong to material, organized bodies. Hence 
 not only the rationalists, but even orthodox expositors, consider these 
 particulars as an irrefragable proof that the body and life of Jesus after the 
 resurrection must be regarded as remaining still natural and human.' This 
 opinion is further supported by the remark, that in the state of the risen Jesus 
 there is observable precisely the same progress as might be expected in the 
 gradual, natural cure of a person severely wounded. In the first hours after 
 the resurrection he is obliged to remain in the vicinity of the grave ; in the 
 afternoon his strength suffices for a walk to the neighbouring village of 
 Emmaus ; and only later is he able to undertake the more distant journey 
 into Galilee. Then also in the permission to touch his body there exists the 
 remarkable gradation, that on the morning of the resurrection Jesus forbids 
 Mary Magdalene to touch him, because his wounded body was as yet too 
 suffering and sensitive ; but eight days later, he himself invites Thomas to 
 touch his wounds. Even the circumstance that Jesus after his resurrection 
 was so seldom with his disciples and for so short a time, is, according to this ex- 
 ])lanation, a proof that he had brought from the grave his natural, human body, 
 for such an one would necessarily feel so weak from the wounds and torture 
 of the cross, as always after short periods of exertion to require longer inter- 
 vals of quiet retirement. 
 
 But the New Testament narratives, as we have seen, also contain particulars 
 which favour the opposite idea of the corporeality of Jesus after the resurrec- 
 tion : hence the advocates of the opinion hitherto detailed must undertake so 
 to interpret these apparently antagonistic features that they may no longer 
 present a contradiction. Here it may seem that the very expressions by 
 which the appearances of Jesus are ordinarily introduced, as ut<j>6j], used of 
 the appearance in the burning bush (Exod. iii. 2, LXX.) ; oirravd/xevos, of the 
 appearance of the angel in Tobit xii. 19; iffxivri, o( the angelic appearances 
 in Matt, i, and ii., may seem already to point to something supernatural. As 
 still more decided indications, the idea of a natural going and coming which 
 may be presupposed in some scenes, is contradicted in others by a sudden 
 appearance and disappearance ; the supposition of an ordinary human body 
 is opposed by the frequent non-recognition on the part of friends, nay, by the 
 express mention of another form, l-ripa. f-op^^ ; above all, the palpability of 
 the body of Jesus appears to be opposed by the capability which, according 
 to the first impression from the text, is lent to him in John, namely, that of 
 entering through closed doors. But, that Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus at 
 first for the gardener, is thought even by commentators who ordinarily are 
 not difi&dent of the miraculous, to be most probably accounted for by the 
 supposition that Jesus had borrowed clothes from the gardener, who very 
 likely dwelt near to the grave; moreover, say these writers, both in this 
 instance and in the journey to Emmaus, the disfiguration of the countenance 
 of Jesus by the sufferings of crucifixion may have contributed to prevent his 
 
 ' Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b. s. 834 ff. ; L. J. i, b. s. 265 ff. ; Ammon, ut sup. ; Hase, 
 L- J- § 149; Michaelis, ut sup., s. 251 f. Comp. also Neander, L. J. Chr. s. 650. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS 73 1 
 
 being recognized, and these two circumstances are alone to be understood 
 from the expression iripa /xop^^, another form, in Mark.* As to the disciples 
 going to Emmaus, in the joyful astonishment caused by the sudden recogni- 
 tion of him whom they had believed dead, Jesus, it is said, may easily have 
 withdrawn from them unobserved in the most natural manner ; which, how- 
 ever, they, to whom the whole fact of the resuscitation of Jesus was a miracle, 
 might regard as a supernatural disappearance.^ Nor, we are told, do the 
 expressions : ecm/ h/ jxia-ia avrSiv or ets TO [t.i<Tov he stood in the midst of them, 
 especially in John, where they are accompanied by the ordinary words ^\0£v 
 he came, and Ipx^rax. he cofnes, imply anything supernatural, but merely the 
 startling arrival of one who had just been spoken of, without his being ex- 
 pected ; and the assembled disciples took him for a spirit, not because he 
 entered in a miraculous manner, but because they could not believe in the real 
 resuscitation of their deceased master.^ Lastly, even the trait which is 
 supposed to be decisive against the opinion that the body of the risen Jesus 
 was a natural and human one,— the coming when the doors were shut tpxea-Oai 
 OvpZv KeKkatriieviov in John, — has long been interpreted even by orthodox theo- 
 logians so as no longer to present any obstacle to that opinion. We will not 
 discuss explanations such as that of Heumann, according to which the doors 
 were not those of the house in which the disciples were assembled, but the 
 doors of Jerusalem in general, and the statement that they were shut is an 
 intimation of its having been that hour of the night in which it was customary 
 to close the doors, while the fear of the Jews represents the motive, not for 
 the closing of the doors, but for the assembling of the disciples. Apart from 
 these expedients, Calvin himself pronounces the opinion that the body of the 
 risen Jesus passed fer medium ferrum et assures, to be pueriles arguiia, for 
 which the text gives no occasion, since it does not say that Jesus entered per 
 januas clausas, but only that he sud'denly appeared among his disciples, cum 
 clausce essent janiicE.'' Still Calvin upholds the entrance of Jesus of which 
 John here speaks as a miracle, which must consequently be supposed to con- 
 sist in this, that Jesus entered cum fores clause fuissent, sed qua Domino 
 veniente subito patuerunt ad nutum divince majestatis ejus.^ While more modern 
 orthodox divines only contend for the less definite position, that m the 
 entrance of Jesus some miracle took place, its precise character being un- 
 ascertained : 9 Rationalism has found means entirely to banish the miraculous 
 from the event The closed doors, we .are told, were opened to Jesus by 
 human hands ; which John omits to notice, only because it is understood as a 
 matter of course, nay, it would have been absurd of him to say : they opened 
 the doors for him, and he went in.w , ^ „ . . ,t,„„i„ 
 
 But in thus interpreting the words ipx^ra.i tu>v Ovpoiv KeK\eLa-p,evwv, tneoio- 
 gians have been by no means unprejudiced. Least of all Calvm ; for when 
 he says, the papists maintain a real penetration of the body of Jesus through 
 closed doors in order to gain support for their tenet that the body of Christ 
 is immense, and contained in no place, ut corpus Ghnsti tmmensum esse, 
 nulloque lo^ contineri obtineant : it is pkin that he combats that mterpreta ion 
 of the words of John merely to avoid giving any countenance to the offensive 
 * Tholuck, in loc, comp. Paulus, exeg. Handb 3, b. s. 866, 881. A similar natural ex- 
 planation has lately been adopted by LUcke, from Hug. 
 
 5 Paulus, ut sup. s. 8S2. 
 
 6 Paulus, ut sup. 883, 93 ; Lucke, 2, s. 684 f. 
 
 7 Calvin, Comm. in Job. in loc, p. 363 f- ed Tholuck. 
 
 5 Thus Suicer, Thes. s. v. Bipa. ; cpmp. Michaehs, ». 265. 
 
 :. ''^^i:%o^^:i:'^'^^^^^^^^<^> =• 3°5 ; P-l-, s. 83s. comp. moke, 2. 
 s. 683 ff. 
 
732 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 39. 
 
 doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's body. The more modern expositors, on 
 the other hand, were interested in avoiding the contradiction which to our 
 perceptions is contained in the statement, that a body can consist of solid 
 matter, and yetf-pass without hindrance through other solid matter: but as 
 we know not whether this was also a contradiction in the view of the New 
 Testament writers, the apprehension of it gives us no authority to discard that 
 interpretation, providing it be shown to be in accordance with the text. We 
 might certainly, on a partial consideration, understand the expression the doors 
 being shut, tZsv Ovpmv KeKXeurfievuiv, as an intimation of the anxious state into 
 which the discipleis were thrown by the death of Jesus. But already the 
 circumstance that this particular is repeated on the appearance of Jesus 
 before Thomas excites doubts, since if the above was the only meaning, it 
 was scarcely worth while to repeat the observation. ^^ But as in fact in this 
 second instance the above cause for the closing of the doors no longer exists, 
 while the words riov 6vpS>y Ke/cA.et(r/AeV«)v are immediately united with epxerai, he 
 comes : what was before the most apparent meaning, namely, that they are 
 intended to determine the manner of the coming of Jesus, is here heightened 
 into a probability. 1^ Further, the repeated statement that Jesus came when 
 the doors were closed is again followed by the words eori; eZs to fiecrov, which 
 even in connexion with ^X6ev, to which they are related as a more precise 
 determination, imply that Jesus suddenly presented himself, without his 
 approach having been seen : whence it is undeniably evident that the writer 
 here speaks of a coming without the ordinary means, consequently, of a 
 miraculous coming. But did this miracle consist in passing through the 
 boards of the doors? This is combated even by those who espouse the 
 cause of miracles in general, and they confidently appeal to the fact, that it 
 is nowhere said, he entered through the closed doors hih. tS>v Bvpmv k^kXho-- 
 fx-ivov}^ But the Evangelist does not mean to convey the precise notion that 
 Jesus, as Michaelis expresses himself, passed straight through the pores of 
 the wood of which the doors were made; he merely means that the doors 
 were shut and remained so,' and nevertheless Jesus suddenly stood in the 
 chamber, — walls, doors, in' short all material barriers, forming no obstacle 
 to his entrance. Thus in reply to their unjust demand of us, to show them 
 in the text of John a precise determination which is quite away from the 
 intention of this writer, we must ask them to explain why he has not noticed 
 the (miraculous) opening of the doors, if he presupposed such a circumstance ? 
 In relation to this point Calvin very infelicitously refers to Acts xii. 6 ff., 
 where it is narrated of Peter, that he came out of the closed prison ; no one, 
 he says, here supposes that the doors remained closed, and that Peter pene- 
 trated through wood and iron. Assuredly not ; because here it is expressly 
 said of the iron gate of the prison which led into the city, that it opened to 
 him of its own accord {y. 10). This observation serves to give so lively and 
 graphic an idea of the miracle, that our Evangelist would certainly not, in two 
 instances, have omitted a similar one, if he had thought of a miraculous open- 
 ing of the doors. 
 
 Thus in this narrative of John the supernatural will not admit of being 
 removed or diminished : nor is the natural explanation more satisfactory in 
 relation to the expressions by which Luke describes the coming and going of 
 Jesus. For if, according to this Evangelist, his coming was a standing in the 
 midst of the disciples, a-T^vai iv /leVm tSv im6r)TSiv, his going a becoming invisible 
 to them, a^avTos ytVecrSai ttTr' avT&v: the concurrence of these two representa- 
 
 " Vid. Tholuck and De Wette, in loc. 
 
 12 Comp. Olshausen, 2, s. 531, Anra. 
 
 1' Thus, besides Calvin, LUcke, ut sup. ; Olshausen, 530 . 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 733 
 
 tions, taken in connexion with the terror of the disciples and their mistaking 
 him for a spirit, will hardly allow the supposition of anything else than a 
 miraculous appearance. Besides, if we might perhaps form some idea how 
 Jesus could enter in a natural manner without being observed into a room 
 filled with men : we should still be at a loss to imagine how it could be 
 possible for him, when he sat at table at Emmaus, apparently with the two 
 disciples alone, to withdraw himself from them unobserved, and so that they 
 were not able to follow him.^^ 
 
 That Mark, under the words hipa /j-opcjir] understands a form miraculously 
 altered, ought never to have been denied ; i" tijjt j^is is a point of minor 
 importance, because it involves only the narrator's own interpretation of the 
 circumstance which had been already stated, but with a different explanation, 
 by Luke: namely,, that the two disciples did not know Jesus. That Mary 
 Magcjalene took Jesus for the gardener, was hardly, in the view of the 
 Evangelist, the consequence of his having borrowed the gardener's clothes : 
 rather, the spirit of the narrative would require us to explain her not knowing 
 him by supposing that her eyes were Aeid {KpaTiia-Oai, Luke xxiv. 16), or that 
 Jesus had assumed another form ; while her taking him for the gardener 
 might then be simply accounted for by the fact that she met the unknown 
 man in the garden. Nor are we authorized by the evangelical narratives to 
 suppose a disfiguration of Jesus by the sufferings of the cross, and a gradual 
 healing of his wounds. The words Touch me not in John, if they were to be 
 regarded as a prohibition of a touch as painful, would be in contradiction, not 
 merely with Matthew, according to whom Jesus on the same morning — that 
 of the resurrection — allowed the women to embrace his feet, but also with 
 Luke, according to whom he on the same day invited the disciples to handle 
 him ; and we must then ask, which representation is correct ? But there is 
 nothing at all in the context to intimate that Jesus forbade Mary to touch 
 him for fear of pain ; he may have done so from various motives : concerning 
 which, however, the obscurity of the passage has hitherto precluded any 
 decision.!" 
 
 But the most singularly perverted inference is this : that the infrequent and 
 brief interviews of Jesus with his disciples after the resurrection are a proof 
 that he was as yet too weak for long and multipHed efforts, and consequently 
 was undergoing a natural cure. On this very supposition of his needing 
 bodily tendance, he should have been not seldom, but constantly, with his 
 disciples, who were those from whom he could the most immediately expect 
 such tendance. For where are we to suppose that he dwelt in the long in- 
 tervals between his appearances? in solitude? in the open air? in the 
 wilderness and on mountains ? That was no suitable abode for an invahd, 
 and nothing remains but to suppose that he must have been concealed among 
 secret colleagues of whom even his disciples knew nothing. But thus to 
 conceal his real abode even from his own disciples, to show himself to them 
 only seldom, and designedly to present and withdraw himself suddenly, would 
 be a kind of double dealing, an affectation of the supernatural, which would 
 exhibit Jesus and his cause in a light foreign to the object itself so far as it 
 lies before us in our original sources of information, and only thrown upon it 
 by the dark lantern of modern, yet already obsolete, conceptions. The 
 
 i< Olshausen. ut sup. s. 530. 
 
 " Comu Fritzsche, in Marc. p. 725. 
 
 i" See the various explanations in Tholuck and Lucke, of whom the latter finds an altera- 
 tion of the reading necessary. Even Weisse's interpretation of the words (2, s. 395 ff.), 
 although I agree with the general tenor of the explanation of which it forms a part, I must 
 regard as a failure. 
 
734 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 39. 
 
 opinion of the Evangelists is no other than that the risen Jesus, after those 
 short appearances among his followers, withdrew like a higher being into 
 invisibility, from which, on fitting occasions, he again stept forth.i'' 
 
 Lastly, on the presupposition that Jesus by his resurrection returned to a 
 purely natural existence, what conception must be formed of his end ? In 
 consistency he must be supposed, whether at the end of a longer ^^ or a 
 shorter time after his resuscitation, to have died a natural death ; and accord- 
 ingly Paulas intimates that the too intensely affected body of Jesus, notwith- 
 standing it had recovered from the death-like rigidity produced by crucifixion, 
 was yet completely worn out by natural maladies and consuming fever.'** 
 That this is at least not the view of the Evangelists concerning the end of 
 Jesus is evident, since two of them represent him as taking leave of his 
 disciples like an immortal, the others as being visibly carried up to heaven. 
 Thus before the ascension, at the latest, if until then Jesus had retained a 
 natural human body, it must have undergone a change which qualified him 
 to dwell in the heavenly regions ; the sediment of gross corporeality must 
 have fallen to the earth, and only its finest essence have ascended. But of 
 any natural remains of the ascended Jesus the Evangelists say nothing ; and 
 as the disciples who were spectators of his ascension must have observed 
 them had there been such, nothing is left for the upholders of this opinion 
 but the expedient of certain theologians of the Tiibingen school, who regard 
 as the residuum of the corporeality of Jesus, the cloud which enveloped him 
 in his ascension, and in which what was material in him is supposed to have 
 been dissolved and as it were evaporated.^" As thus the Evangelists neither 
 represent to themselves the end of the earthly life of Jesus after the resurrec- 
 tion as a natural death, nor mention any change undergone by his body at 
 the ascension, and moreover narrate of Jesus in the interval between the 
 resurrection and ascension things which are inconceivable of a natural body : 
 they cannot have represented to themselves his life after the resurrection as 
 natural, but only as supernatural, nor his body as material and organic, but 
 only as transfigured. 
 
 In the point of view held by the Evangelists, this conception is not con- 
 tradicted even by those particulars which the friends of the purely natural 
 opinion respecting the life of the risen Jesus are accustomed to urge in their 
 support. That Jesus ate and drank was, in the circle of ideas within which 
 the gospels originated, as far from presupposing a real necessity, as the meal 
 of which Jehovah partook with two angels in the tent of Abraham : the power 
 of eating is here no proof of a necessity for eating.^i That he caused himself 
 to be touched, was the only possible mode of refuting the conjecture that an 
 incorporeal spectre had appeared to the disciples; moreover, divine exist- 
 ences, not merely in Grecian, but also (according to the passage above 
 quoted, Gen. xxxii. 24) in Hebrew antiquity, sometimes appeared palpable, 
 in distinction from unsubstantial shades, though they otherwise showed them- 
 selves as little bound by the laws of materiality as the palpable Jesus, when 
 
 " Comp. on this subject especially Weisse, ut sup. s. 339 ff. 
 
 1* Brennecke, biblischer Beweis, dass Jesus nach seiner Auferstehung noch 27 Jahre 
 leibhaftig auf Erden gelebt, und zum Wohle der Menschheit in der Stille fortgewirkt habe. 
 1819. 
 
 1^ Ut sup. s. 793, 925. Comp. Briefe iiber den Rationalisraus, s. 240. 
 
 2» Noch etwas iiber die Frage : warum haben die Apostel Matthaus und Johannes nicht 
 ebenso wie die zwei Evangelisten Markus und Lukas die Himmelfahrt ausdiTicklich erzahlt ? 
 In Siiskind's Magazin; 17, s. 165 ff. 
 
 2' Joann. Damasc. de f. orLh. 4, i : e/ koX kyeiaaro ^piSxreus /terA t^v i,v&<rTa<nv, AX)i oi 
 vbiuf (picreiiis' 06 yip ^veivturev olKovofdas Si rpdirif, t6 dXijWs Tna-Toifievos r^s dvao-rdffeus, is 
 air'/j ianv ij (r4/)| i] TradoCira Kal ivaiTTaaa. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 735 
 
 he suddenly vanished, and was able to penetrate without hindrance into a 
 room of which the door was closed.** 
 
 It is quite another question, whether on our more advanced position, and 
 with our more correct knowledge of nature, those two different classes of 
 particulars can be held compatible with each other. Here we must certainly 
 say : a body which consumes visible food, must itself be visible ; the con- 
 sumption of food presupposes an organism, but an organism is organized 
 matter, and this has not the property of alternately vanishing and becoming 
 visible again at will.^a More especially, if the body of Jesus was capable of 
 being felt, and presented perceptible flesh and bones, it thus exhibited the 
 impenetrability of matter, proper to it as solid : if on the other hand he was 
 able to pass into closed houses and rooms, unhindered by the interposi- 
 tion of walls and doors, he thus proved that the impenetrability of solid 
 matter did not belong to him. Since then according to the evangelical 
 accounts he must at the same time have had and not have had the same 
 property : the evangelical representation of the corporeality of Jesus after the 
 resurrection is manifested to be contradictory. And this contradiction is not 
 of such a kind that it is divided among the different narrators; bat the 
 account of one and the same Evangelist includes those contradictory features 
 within itself. The brief account of Matthew, it is true, implies in the em- 
 bracing of the feet of Jesus by the women (v. 9) only the attribute of palpa- 
 bility, without at the same time presenting an opposite one ; with Mark the 
 case is reversed, his statement that Jesus appeared in another form (v. 12) 
 implying something supernatural^ while on the other hand he does not de- 
 cidedly presuppose the opposite ; in Luke, on the other hand, the permission 
 to touch his body and the act of eating speak as decidedly in favour of 
 organic materiality, as the sudden appearance and disappearance speak 
 against it ; but the members of this contradiction come the most directly 
 into collision in John, where Jesus, immediately after he has entered into the 
 closed room unimpeded by walls and doors,** causes the doubting Thomas 
 to touch him. 
 
 § 140- 
 
 DEBATES CONCERNING THE REALITY OF THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION 
 
 OF JESUS. 
 
 The proposition : a dead man has returned to life, is composed of two 
 such contradictory elements, that whenever it is attempted to maintain the 
 
 "^^ The vagueness of the conception which lies at the foundation of the evangelical accounts 
 is well expressed by Origan, when he says of Jesus : koX ^v 7e /leri ttji' dvdffTcuriv alrroD 
 wa-irepd iv neBoplip nvl T^s iraxiriiTOS toC vpb tov Trd^ous a-ii/MTOs, i<al toO yvp^iiv TOMirov 
 a^iMTOs (balveaeai ^l'vx¥- ^fi^^ '^^ resurrection, he existed in a form which held the tnean 
 between the materiality of his body before his passion, and the state of the soul when altogether 
 destitute of stich body (c. Ct\s. \i. 62). .,,,..■,• t 1 
 
 «' Hence even Kern admits that he knows not how to reconcile that particular in l^uke 
 ■with the rest, and regards it as of later, traditional origin (Hauptthats., ut sup. s. 50). But 
 what does this admission avail him, since he still has, from the narrative of John, the quality 
 ofnaloabilitv which equally with the act of eating belongs to the "conditions of earthly 
 life the relations of the material world," to which the body of the risen Jesus, according to 
 Kern's own presupposition, " was no longer subjected " ? , .,. „ ,-,.,, 
 
 2* Many fathers of the church and orthodox theologians held the capability thus exhibited 
 hv Tesus of penetrating through closed doors, not altogether reconcileable with the repre- 
 sentation that for the purpose of the resurrection the stone was rolled away from the grave, 
 and hence maintained : resurrexit Christus clauso sepulchre, sive nondum ab ostw sepulchri 
 revolutoper angelum lapide. Quenstedt, theol. didact. polem. 3, p. 542. 
 
736 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § I40. 
 
 one, the other threatens to disappear. If he has really returned to life, it is 
 natural to conclude that he was not wholly dead ; if he was really dead, 
 it is difficult to believe that he has really become living.^ 
 
 When we form a correct opinion of the relation between soul and body, 
 not abstractly separating the two, but conceiving them at once in their 
 identity, the soul as the interior of the body, the body as the exterior of the 
 soul, we know not how to imagine, to say nothing of comprehending, the 
 revivification of a dead person. What we call the soul is the governing 
 centre which holds in combination the powers and operations of the body ; 
 its function, or rather the soul itself, consists in keeping all other processes 
 of which the body is susceptible in uriinterrupted subjection to the superior 
 unity of the process of organic life, which in man is the basis of his spiritual 
 nature : so, soon as this regulating power ceases to act, the supremacy in the 
 various parts of the body is assumed by these other, inferior principles, whose 
 work in its prosecution is corruption. When once these have acceded to the 
 dominion, they will not be inclined to render it back to their former monarch, 
 the soul ; or rather this is impossible, because, quite apart from the question 
 of the immortality of the human spirit [Geist), the soul {Seek) as such ceases 
 in the same moment with its dominion and activity, which constitute its 
 existence ; consequently, in a revivification, even if resort be had to a miracle, 
 this must consist in the direct creation of a new soul. 
 
 Only in the dualism which has become popular on the subject of the 
 relation between body and soul, is there anything to favour the opinion of 
 the possibility of a revivification properly so called. In this system, the soul 
 in its relation to the body is represented as like a bird, which, though it may 
 for a time have flown out of the cage, can yet be once more caught and 
 replaced in its former abode ; and it is to such figures that an imaginative 
 species of thought cleaves, in order to preserve the notion of revivification. 
 But even in this dualistic view, the inconceivability of such an event is rather 
 concealed than really diminished. For in the most abstract separation, the 
 co-existence of the body and soul cannot be held as indifferent and lifeless 
 as that of a box and its contents ; on the contrary, the presence of the soul 
 in the body produces effects, which again are the conditions whereby that 
 presence is rendered possible. Thus so soon as the soul has forsaken the 
 body, there is a cessation in the latter of those activities which according to 
 the dualistic idea were the immediate expressions of the influence of the soul ; 
 at the same time, the organs of these activities — brain, blood, etc., begin to 
 stagnate ; a change which is coincident with the moment of death. Thus 
 if it could occur to the departed soul, or be imposed on it by another, 
 to re-enter its former dwelling-place : it would find this dwelling, even after 
 the first moments, uninhabitable in its noblest parts, and unfit for use. To 
 restore, in the same way as an infirm member, the most immediate organs of 
 its activity, is an impossibility to the soul, since in order to effect anything 
 in the body it has need of the service of these very organs : thus the soul, 
 although remanded into the body, must suffer it to decay, from inabihty to 
 exercise any influence over it ; or there must be added to the miracle of its 
 reconveyance into the body, the second miracle of a restoration of the lifeless 
 bodily organs : an immediate interposition of God in the regular course of 
 nature, irreconcileable with enlightened ideas of the relation of God to the 
 world. 
 
 Hence the cultivated intellect of the present day has very decidedly stated 
 the following dilemma : either Jesus was not really dead, or he did not really 
 rise again. 
 
 ' Comp. Schleiermacher's Weihnachtsfeier, s. 117 f. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 737 
 
 Rationalism has principally given its adhesion to the former opinion. The 
 short time that Jesus hung on the cross, together with the otherwise ascer- 
 tained tardiness of death by crucifixion, and the uncertain nature and effects 
 of the wound from the spear, appeared to render the reality of the death 
 doubtful. That the agents in the crucifixion, as well as the disciples them- 
 selves, entertained no such doubt, would be explained not only by the general 
 difficulty of distinguishing deep swoons and the rigidity of syncope from real 
 death, but also from the low state of medical science in that age ; while at 
 least one example of the restoration of a crucified person appeared to render 
 conceivable a resuscitation in the case of Jesus also. This example is found 
 in Josephus, who informs us that of three crucified acquaintances whose 
 release he begged from Titus, two died after being taken down from the 
 cross, but one survived.^ How long these people had hung on the cross 
 Josephus does not mention ; but from the manner in which he connects them 
 with his expedition to Thekoah, by stating that he saw them on his return 
 from thence, they must probably have been crucified during this expedition, 
 and as this, from the trifling distance of the above place from Jerusalem, 
 might possibly be achieved in a day, they had in all probability not hung on 
 the cross more than a day, and perhaps a yet shorter time. These three 
 persons, then, can scarcely have hung much longer than Jesus, who, according 
 to Mark, was on the cross from nine in the morning till towards six in the 
 evening, and they were apparently taken down while they still showed signs 
 of life ; yet with the most careful medical tendance only one survived. Truly 
 it is difficult to perceive how it can hence be shown probable that Jesus, who 
 when taken from the cross showed all the signs of death, should have come 
 to life entirely of himself, without the application of medical skill. ^ 
 
 According to a certain opinion, however, these two conditions — some 
 remains of conscious life, and careful medical treatment — were not wanting 
 in the case of Jesus, although they are not mentioned by the Evangelists. 
 Jesus, we are told, seeing no other way of purifying the prevalent messianic 
 idea from the admixture of material and political hopes, exposed himself to 
 crucifixion, but in doing so relied on the possibiUty of procuring a speedy 
 removal from the cross by early bowing his head, and of being afterwards 
 restored by the medical skill of some among his secret colleagues ; so as to 
 inspirit the people at the same time by the appearance of a resurrection.* 
 Others have at least exonerated Jesus from such contrivance, and have 
 admitted that he really sank into a deathlike slumber ; but have ascribed to 
 liis disciples a preconceived plan of producing apparent death by means of 
 a potion, and thus by occasioning his early removal from the cross, securing 
 
 * Joseph, vita, 75 : Tt/jufieds 5^ liird TItov Kaltrapos aiv KepeaXt<p Kal xi^^ois iTirevnv els 
 Kiifiiii' nvk Oexiiav 'Keyofi.hriv, irpbs Karavbriinv, el tSwos iiririSeioi iiTTi. x^P"-""- S^atrBai, 
 (is ixeWev iiroorp^^wv eldai' ToWois alxf^aXuTOvs AveffTavpuninovs, Kal rpeis yvaplvas irvviiBeLs 
 liol yevopAvovs, ijKyn<ra tV ^j/vx^v, Kal jnerct SaKpvwv irpoffcXffiic HItv eCiroy. ^ "0 S' ei9is 
 iKiXevtrev KaSaipeSivras airrois Sepairelas imp^XeardTiis rvxeiv. Kal oi fiiv Uo reXevTUtriv 
 eeparev6iievoi, 6 Si rplros (iri<rev. And when I was sent by Titus Casar with Cerealius and 
 I 000 horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit 
 for a camp, as 1 came back, I saw many captives crucified: and remembered three of them 
 as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in 
 my eyes to Titus, and told him of them ; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, 
 and to have the greatest care takm of them, in order to thHr recovery ; yet two of them died 
 under the physician's hands, while the third recovered. For the arguments of Paulus on this 
 passage, see exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 786 ; and in the Appendix, s. 929 ft . 
 
 » Bretschneider, iiber den angeblichen Scheintod Jesu am Kreuze, m UUmanns und 
 Umbreit's Studien, 1832, 3, s. 625 ff. ; Hug, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Verfahrens bei 
 derTodesstrafederKreuzigung, FreiburgerZeitschr. 7,5.144 ff. ,, . , ■„ , 
 
 < Bahrdt, Ausfiihrung des Plans und Zwecks Jesu. Comp. on the other hand, Paulus, 
 exeg. Handb. 3, b, 793 f- 
 
 3 ^ 
 
738 PART IIL CHAPTER IV. § I40. 
 
 his restoration to life.^ But of all this our evangelical sources give no 
 intimation, and for conjecturing such details we have no ground. Judicious 
 friends of the natural explanation, who repudiate such monstrous productions 
 of a system which remodels history at will, have hence renounced the sup- 
 position of any remains of conscious life in Jesus, and have contented them- 
 selves, for the explanation of his revivification, with the vital force which 
 remained in his still young and vigorous body, even after the cessation of 
 consciousness ; and have pointed out, instead of premeditated tendance by 
 the hands of men, the beneficial influence which the partly oleaginous sub- 
 stances applied to his body must have had in promoting the healing of his 
 wounds, and, united with the air in the cave, impregnated with the perfumes 
 of the spices, in reawakening feeling and consciousness in Jesus ; ® to all 
 which was added as a decisive impulse, the earthquake and the lightning 
 which on the morning of the resurrection opened the grave of JesusJ Others 
 have remarked, in opposition to this, that the cold air in the cave must have 
 had anything rather than a vivifying tendency ; that strong aromatics in a con- 
 fined space would rather have had a stupefying and stifling influence ; * and 
 the same effect must have been produced by a flash of lightning bursting 
 into the grave, if this were not a mere figment of rationalistic expositors. 
 
 Notwithstanding all these improbabilities, which are against the opinion 
 that Jesus came to life after a merely apparent death by the operation of 
 natural causes, this nevertheless remains so far possible, that if we had secure 
 evidence of- the resuscitation of Jesus, we might, on the strength of such 
 certainty as to the result, supply the omissions in the narrative, aiid approve 
 the opinion above presented, — with the rejection, however, of all precise 
 conjectures. Secure evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, would be the 
 attestation of it in a decided and accordant manner by impartial witnesses. 
 But the impartiality of the alleged witnesses for the resurrection of Jesus, is 
 the very point which the opponents of Christianity, from Celsus down to the 
 Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist, have invariably called in question. Jesus showed 
 himself to his adherents only : why not also to his enemies, that they too 
 might be convinced, and that by their testimony posterity might be precluded 
 from every conjecture of a designed fraud on the part of his disciples ? ^ I 
 cannot certainly attach much weight to the replies by which apologists have 
 sought to repel this objection, from that of Origen, who says : Christ avoided 
 the judge who condemned him, and his enemies, that they might not be smitten 
 ■with blindness ; ^^ to the opinions of the modern theologians, who by their 
 vacillation between the assertion that by such an appearance the enemies 
 of Jesus would have been compelled to believe, and the opposite one, that 
 they would not have believed even on such evidence, — mutually confute one 
 another." Nevertheless, it can still be urged in reply to that objection,, that 
 
 " Xenodoxien, in der Abh. : Joseph und Nikodemus. Comp. on the other hand Klaiber's 
 Studien der wurtemberg. Geistlichkeit, 2, 2, s. 84 ff. 
 
 • Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 785 ff. L. J. i, b, s. 281 ff. 
 
 ' Schuster, in Eichhom's allg. Biblioth. 9, s. 1053. 
 
 ' Winer, bibl. Realw. i , s. 674. 
 
 ' Orig. c. Cels. ii. 63 : Meri raOra 6 EA(ros o4k cfaoTo^poviiTws ri yeypamiha KaKoKoywv, 
 tfrntXv, Sti ixfiV"! «Jte/> ^•'tus Beiav {Siva/uv iK<p'Srat ijeeKev 'I., airdis.Tols iirr]pe6.<raa-i Kal 
 T$ KaradiKdiravn Kal SXus irS,<nv 6ipSrjvat.—6J : oi ykp—iirl tout' Mfi^Bti t^iv ipxiir, 
 iva XdSg. Comp. the Wolfenbuttel Fragmentist, in Lessing, ^. 450, 60, 92 ff. ; Woolston, 
 Disc. 6. Spinoza, ep. 23, ad Oldenburg, p. 558 f. ed. Gfrorer. 
 
 ^ Ut sup. 67 : i^ielSero yiip Kal toB KOToSudrai'Tos xal tuv lirtipeaffivruv 6 Xpurris, iva 
 ji^ iraraxSwrtv dopacrlf. 
 
 " Comp. Mosheim, in his translation of the work of Origen against Celsus, on the 
 passage above quoted ; Michaelis, Anm. zum fiinften Fragment, s. 407. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 739 
 
 the adherents of Jesus, from their hopelessness, which is both unanimously 
 attested by the narratives, and is in perfect accordance with the nature of 
 the case, here rise to the rank of impartial witnesses. If they had expected 
 a resurrection of Jesus and we had then been called upon to believe it on 
 their testimony alone : there would certainly be a possibility and perhaps 
 also a probability, if not of an intentional deception, yet of an involuntary 
 self-delusion on their part ; but this possibility vanishes in proportion as the 
 disciples of Jesus lost all hope after his death. Now even if it be denied 
 that any one of the gospels proceeded immediately from a disciple of Jesus, 
 it is still certain from the epistles of Paul and the Acts that the Apostles 
 themselves had the conviction that they had seen the risen Jesus. We might 
 theri rest satisfied with the evangelical testimonies in favour of the resur- 
 rection, were but these testimonies in the first place sufficiently precise, and 
 in the second, in agreement with themselves and with each other. But in 
 fact the testimony of Paul, which is intrinsically consistent and is otherwise 
 most important, is so general and vague, that taken by itself, it does not 
 carry us beyond the subjective fact, that the disciples were convinced of 
 the resurrection of Jesus ; while the more fully detailed narratives of the 
 gospels, in which the resurrection of Jesus appears as an objective fact, 
 are, from the contradictions of which they are convicted, incapable of being 
 used as evidence, and in general their account of the life of Jesus after his 
 resurrection is not one which has connexion and unity, presenting a clear 
 historical idea of the subject, but a fragmentary compilation,^^ which presents 
 a series of visions, rather than a continuous history. 
 
 If we compare with this account of the resurrection of Jesus, the precise 
 and internally consistent attestation of his death : we must incline to the 
 other side of the dilemma above stated, and be induced to doubt the reality 
 of the resurrection rather than that of the death. Hence Celsus chose this 
 alternative, deriving the alleged appearance of Jesus after the resurrection, 
 from the self-delusion of the disciples, especially the women, either dreaming 
 or waking; or from what appeared to him still more probable, intentional 
 deception : ^* and more modern writers, as, for example, the' Wolfenbiittel 
 Fragmentist, have adopted the accusation of the Jews in Matthew, namely, 
 that the disciples stole the. body of Jesus, and afterwards fabricated, 5 with 
 slender agreement, stories of his resurrection and subsequent appearances." 
 This suspicion is repelled by the remark of Origen, that a spontaneous false- 
 hood on the part of the disciples could not possibly have animated them to 
 so unflinching an announcement of the resurrection of Jesus amid the greatest 
 perils ; 1* and it is a just argument of modern apologists that the astonishing 
 revolution from the deep depression and utter hopelessness of the disciples 
 at the death of Jesus, to the strong faith and enthusiasm with which they 
 proclaimed him as the Messiah on the succeeding Pentecost, would be 
 inexplicable unless in the interim something extraordinarily encouraging had 
 taken place — something, in fact, which had convinced them of his resur- 
 
 " Hase L T § 149 ; Diss. : librorum sacrorum de J. Chr. a mortuis revocato atque in 
 calum sublato narratiomm coUatis vulganbus ilia atate Judaorum de morte opiniombut 
 interpretari conatus est C. A. Frege, p. 12 f. ; Weisse, die evang. Gesch. 2, s. 362 ff. 
 
 "Oris c Cels. ii. SS : t£s toCto eWe (the pierced hands of Jesus, and, in general, his 
 appearances 'after the resurrection), yvv^ wdpourrpos.iSis ^ari, ical^ tk «XXos ™>. iK r«s 
 airHs yrnirelas, *-o( Kard nva SMeaiv dveipiiiai, ^ Karh tV airov poi\va>.v Sbl,-o ^evKavvi^ 
 <bavra<nweeU, Stio Si> fwplo^i <njp.^k?r,KeV ■?, Strep ^SXKov, iKir\jia.i Tois \oiwois tj reparetf 
 rairv BeX-fiffd!, Kai «ii tov roioirov ^eiaimros &<popiii}i> SXKois dyiprats vapa(rx,eiv. 
 
 " The 5th Fragment, in Lessing's 4th Beitrag. Woolston, Disc. 8. 
 
 >5 Ut sup. 56. 
 
740 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 46. 
 
 rection.i* But that this cause of conviction was precisely a real appearance 
 of the risen Jesus — that, indeed it was necessarily an external event at all — 
 is by no means proved. If we chose to remain on supranatural ground, we 
 might with Spinoza suppose that a vision was produced by miraculous means 
 in the minds of the disciples, the object of which was to make evident to 
 them, in a manner accordant with their powers of comprehensioa and the 
 ideas of their age, that Jesus by his virtuous life had risen from spiritual 
 death, and that to those who followed his example he would grant a similar 
 resurrection." With one foot at least on the same ground stands the sup- 
 position of Weisse, that the departed spirit of Jesus really acted on the 
 disciples whom he had left behind ; in connexion with which he refers to 
 the apparitions of spirits, the impossibility of which remains unproved.*® 
 In order to escape from the magic circle of the supernatural, others have 
 searched for natural external causes which might induce the belief that Jesus 
 had risen and had been seen after his resurrection. The first impetus to 
 this opinion, it has been conjectured, was given by the circumstance that on 
 the second morning after the burial his grave was found empty, the linen 
 clothes which lay in it being taken first for angels and then for an appearance 
 of the risen Jesus himself : '® but if the body of Jesus was not reanimated, 
 how are we to suppose that it came out of the grave? Here it would 
 be necessary to recur to the supposition of a theft: unless the intimation 
 of John, that Jesus on account of haste was laid in a strange grave, were 
 thought available for the conjecture that perhaps the owner of the grave 
 caused the corpse to be removed : which however the disciples must sub- 
 sequently have learned, and which in any case has too frail a foundation 
 in the solitary statement of the fourth gospel. 
 
 Far more fruitful is the appeal to the passage of Paul (i Cor. xv. 5 ff.), as 
 the most appropriate starting point in this inquiry, and the key to the com- 
 prehension of all the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection. ^o When 
 Paul there places the Christophany which occurred to himself in the same 
 series with the appearances of Jesus in the days after his resurrection : this 
 authorizes us, so far as nothing else stands in the way of such an inference, 
 to conclude that, for aught the Apostle knew, those earlier appearances were 
 of the same nature with the one experienced by himself. Now with respect 
 to the latter as narrated to us in the Acts (ix. 1 ff., xxii. 3 ff., xxvL 12 ff.), 
 it is no longer possible, after the analysis of Eichhorn ^i and Ammon,** 
 to retain it as an external, objective appearance of the real Christ ; even 
 
 '8 UUmann, Was setz die Stiftung der Christlkheri Kirche durch einen Gekreuzigten 
 voraus? In his Studien, 1832, 3, s. 589 f. (Rolir) ; Briefe iiber den Rationalismus, s. 28, 
 236. Faulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 826 f. ; Hase, § 146. 
 
 »' Spinpza, ut sup. : Apostolos omnes onmino credidisse, quod Christus a merte resumxerit, 
 a ad cctlum revera ascendent— ego non nego. Nam ipse etiam Abrahamus credidit, quod 
 Dots apud ipsum pransus fuerit—cum tamen hcec et plura alia hujusmodi apparitiones 
 seu revelationes fiierint, captui. et opinionibus eorum hominum accommodaUe, quibtis Dens 
 mentem suam iisdem revelare mluit. Concludo Hague Christi a mortuis resurrectionem revera 
 spiritualem, et solis fideliius ad eorum captum revelaia fuisse, .nempe quod Christus atemitate 
 donatus fuit, et a mortuis (mortuos hie intelligo eo sensu, quo Christus dixit: sinite mortuos 
 sepelire mortuos suos) surrexit, simul atque vita et morte singularis sanctitatis exemplum dedit, 
 et eatenus discipulos suos a mortuis suscitat, quatenus ipsi hoc vita ejus et mortis exemplum 
 sequuntur. 
 
 18 Die evang. Gesch. 2, s. 426 ff. 
 
 " Versuch Uber die Auferstehung Jesu, in Schmidt's Bibliothek, 2, 4, s. 'ii'i ff. 
 
 !» Ibid., s. 537 ; Kaiser, bibl. Theol. i, s. 258 f. ; Frege, ut sup. p. n. 
 
 " In his allg. Bibliothek, 6,1, s. Iff V V- i 
 
 "2 Coram, exeg. de repentina Sauli— conversione. In his opusc. theol. ; Fbrtbildune des 
 Christenth. 2, I, Kap. 3. Cdirip. also my Streitschriften, 2tes Heft, ». 52 ff. 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 741 
 
 NeanderS' does not positively dare to maintain more than an internal 
 mfluence of Chnst on the mind of Paul, only appending in a very beseeching 
 manner the supposition of an external appearance ; and even that internal 
 influence he himself renders superfluous by detailing the causes which might 
 in a natural manner produce such a revolution in the disposition of the man 
 thus : the favourable impression of Christianity, of the doctrine, life and 
 conduct of Its adherents, which he had here and there received, especially 
 on the occasion of the martyrdom of Stephen, threw his mind into a state of 
 excitement and conflict, which he might indeed for a time forcibly repress, 
 perhaps even by redoubled zeal against the new sect, but which must at last 
 find vent in a decisive spiritual crisis, concerning which it need not surprise 
 us that in an oriental it took the form of a Christophany. If according to 
 this we have in the Apostle Paul an example, that strong impressions from 
 the infant Christian community might carry an ardent mind that had long 
 striven against it, to a pitch of exaltation which issued in a Christophany, 
 and a total change of sentiment : surely the impression of the sublime 
 personality of Jesus would suffice to inspire into his immediate disciples, 
 struggling with the doubts concerning his messiahship which his death had 
 excited in them, the experience of similar visions. They who think it 
 necessary and desirable in relation to the Christophany of Paul to call in 
 the aid of external natural phenomena, as thunder and lightning, may also 
 seek to facilitate the explanation of the appearances of the risen Jesus which 
 his immediate disciples believed themselves to have previously had, by the 
 supposition of similar incidents. 2* Only it must be observed that, as Eich- 
 horn's explanation of the event in the life of Paul proved a failure from his 
 maintaining as historical every single detail in the New Testament narrative, 
 as the blindness of Paul and his cure, the vision of Ananias, and so on, which 
 he could only transform into natural occurrences by a very strained interpre- 
 tation : so it would inevitably render impossible the psychological explanation 
 of the appearances of Jesus, to acknowledge as historical all the evangelical 
 narratives concerning them, especially those of the tests which Thomas 
 applied by touching the wounds of Jesus, and which Jesus himself afforded 
 by taking material nourishment ; and indeed these narratives, from the 
 contradiction which they are shown to present, have not the slightest claim 
 to such a character. The two first gospels, and our chief informant in this 
 matter, the Apostle Paul, tell us nothing of such tests, and it is quite natural 
 that the Christophanies which, in the actual experience of the women and 
 Apostles, may. have floated before them as visions of much the same character 
 as that which Paul had on the way to Damascus, when once received into 
 tradition, should by reason of the apologetic effort to cut off all doubts as to 
 their reality, be continually more and more consolidated so that the mute 
 appearances became speaking ones, the ghostlike form was exchanged for 
 one that ate, and the merely visible body was made palpable also. 
 
 Here hbwever there presents itself a distinction, which seems at once to 
 render the event in the. history of- Paul unavailable for the explanation of 
 those earlier appearances. To the Apostle Paul, namely, the idea that Jesus 
 had risen and appeared to many persons was delivered as the belief of the sect 
 which he persecuted ; he had only to receive it into his conviction and to 
 vivify it in his imagination until it became a part of his own experience : the 
 earlier disciples, on the contrary, had before them as a fact merely the death 
 of their Messiah,— the notion of a resurrection on his part they could nowhere 
 
 i" Gesch. der Pfianzung und Leitung der Christl. Kirche durch die Apostel, I, s. 75 ff. 
 2< This is done in the treatise in Schmidt's Bibliothek, and by Kaiser, ut sup. 
 
742 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § I40. 
 
 gather, but must, according to our conception of the matter, have first pro- 
 duced it ; a problem which appears to be beyond all comparison more difficult 
 than that subsequently presented to the Apostle Paul. In order to form a 
 correct judgment on this subject, we must transport ourselves yet more com- 
 pletely into the situation and frame of mind into which the disciples of Jesus 
 were thrown by his death. During several years' intercourse with them he had 
 constandy impressed them more and more decidedly with the belief that he 
 was the Messiah ; but his death, which they were unable to reconcile with 
 their messianic ideas, had for the moment annihilated this belief. Now 
 when, after the first shock was past, the earlier impression began to revive : 
 there spontaneously arose in them the psychological necessity of solvmg the 
 contradiction between the ultimate fate of Jesus and their earlier opmion of 
 him — of adopting into their idea of; the Messiah the characteristics of 
 suflfering and death. As, however, with the Jews of that age to comprehend 
 meant nothing else than to derive from the sacred scriptures : they turned to 
 these, to ascertain whether they might not perhaps find in them intimations of 
 a suffering and dying Messiah. ' Foreign as the idea of such a Messiah is to 
 the Old Testament, the disciples, who wished to find it there, must nevertheless 
 have regarded as intimations of this kind, all those [poetical and prophetic 
 passages which, like Isa. liii., Ps. xxii.; represented the mail of God as afflicted 
 and. bowed down even to death. Thus Luke states as the chief occupation of 
 the risen Jesus in his interview with the disciples, that beginning at Moses and 
 all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concern- 
 ing himself, i. e. that Christ ought to have suffered such things (xxiv. 26 f., 44 ff.). 
 When they had in this manner received into their messianic idea ignominy, 
 suffering and death, the.ignominiously executed Jesus was not lost, but still re- 
 mained to them : by his death he had only entered into his messianic glory 
 (Luke xxiv. 26) in which he was invisibly with them always, even unto the md 
 of the world {MiLtt. xxviii. 20). , But how could he fail, out of this glory, in 
 which he lived, to give tidings of himself to his followers ? and how could they, 
 when their mind was opened to the hitherto hidden doctrine of a dying 
 Messiah contained in the scriptures, and when in_moments of unwonted inspir- 
 ation their hearts burned within them (Luke xxiv. 32),-^how could they avoid 
 conceiving this to be an influence shed on them by their glorified Christ, an 
 opening of their understanding by him (v. 45), nay, an actual conversing with 
 him ? *^ Lastly, how conceivable is it that in individuals, especially women, 
 these impressions were heightened, in a purely subjective manner, into actual 
 vision ; that on others, even on jwhole assemblies, something or other of an 
 objective nature, visible or audible, sometimes perhaps the sight of an un- 
 known person, created the impression of a revelation or appearance of Jesus : 
 a height of pious enthusiasm which is wont to appear elsewhere in religious 
 societies peculiarly oppressed and persecuted. But if the crucified Messiah 
 had truly entered into the highest form of blessed existence, he ought hot to 
 have left his body in the grave : and if in precisely such Old Testament 
 passages as admitted of a typical relation to the sufferings of the Messiah, 
 there was at the same time expressed the hope : thou wilt not leave my soul 
 in hell, neither ivilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption (Ps. xvi. 10 ; Acts' 
 ii. 27); while in Isa. liii. 10, he 'who had been represented as, led to the 
 slaughter and buried, was yet promised a prolongation of his days : what was 
 more natural to the disciples than to reinstate theirearlier Jewish ideas, which 
 the death of Jesus had disturbed, namely, that the Christ remaineth for ever 
 (John xii. 34), through the medium of an actual revivificati«Hi of their dead 
 
 •" Comp. Weisse, ut sup. p. 398 ff". ' 
 
RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 743 
 
 master, and, as it-was a messianic attribute one day to call the dead bodily 
 rection? ^^^^^' ^° *""^S'"^ ^^®° ^^ returning to life in the manner of a resur- 
 
 Meanwhile, if the body of Jesus was interred in a known place, and could 
 there (so ,far as we are not at liberty to suppose a theft, or an accidental re- 
 moval) be sought for and exhibited : it is difficult to conceive how the dis- 
 ciples m Jerusalem itself, and not quite two days after the interment, could 
 believe and declare that Jesus was risen, without refuting themselves, or 
 meeting with refutation from their adversaries, (to whom however they appear 
 to have made the first disclosure as to the resurrection of their Messiah at 
 Pentecost,) by ocular demonstration at the grave. »« Now it is here that the 
 narrative of the first gospel, which has been unjustly placed below the others, 
 presents an explanatory and satisfactory indication. According to this gospel 
 also the risen Jesus does indeed appear in Jerusalem, but only to the women, 
 and [so entirely as a mere preparation for a succeeding interview, nay, so 
 superfluously, that we have already questioned the truth of this appearance, 
 and pronounced it to be a later modification of the legend of the angelic 
 appearance, which Matthew nevertheless also included in his narrative.^'' The 
 sole important appearance of Jesus after the resurrection occurs, according 
 to Matthew, in Galilee, whither an angel, and Jesushimselfon the last evening 
 of his life and on the morning of the resurrection, most urgently directed his 
 disciples, and where the fourth gospel also, in its appendix, places an appear- 
 ance of the resuscitated Jesus. That the disciples, dispersed by their alarm, 
 at the execution of their Messiah, should return to their home in Galilee, 
 where they had no need, as in the metropolis of Judea, the seat of the enemies 
 of their crucified Christ, to shut the doors /or fear of tAe Jews, vf as natural. 
 Here was the place where they gradually began to breathe freely, and where 
 their faith in Jesus, which had been temporarily depressed, might once more 
 expand with its former vigour. But here also, where no body lay in the grave 
 to contradict bold suppositions, might gradually be formed the idea of the 
 resurrection of Jesus ; and when this conviction had so elevated the courage 
 and enthusiasm of his adherents that they ventured to proclaim it in the me- 
 tropolis, it was no longer possible by the sight of the body of Jesus either to 
 convict themselves, or to be convicted by others. 
 
 According to the Acts, it is true, the disciples so early as on the next 
 Pentecost, seven weeks after the death of Jesus, appeared in Jerusalem with 
 the announcement of his resurrection, and were themselves already convinced 
 of it on the second morning after his burial, by appearances whch they wit- 
 nessed. But how long will it yet be, until the manner in which the author of 
 the Acts places the first appearance of the disciples of Jesus with the announce- 
 ment of the new doctrine, precisely on the festival of the announcement of 
 the old law, be recognized as one which rests purely on dogmatical grounds ; 
 which is therefore historically worthless, and in no way binds us to assign so 
 short a duration to that time of quiet preparation in Galilee ? As regards the 
 other statement — it might certainly require some time for the mental state of 
 the disciples to become exalted in the degree necessary, before this or that 
 individual amongst them could, purely as an operation of his own mind, make 
 present to himself the risen Christ in a visionary manner ; or before whole 
 assemblies, in moments of highly wrought enthusiasm, could believe that they 
 heard him in every impressive sound, or saw him in every striking appearance : 
 but it would nevertheless be conceived, that, as it was not possible that he 
 
 " Comp. Friedrich, in Eichhorn's Biblioth. 7, s. 223. 
 »' Comp. also Schmidt's Biblioth. 2, s. 548. 
 
744 PART III. CHAPTER IV. § 1 40. 
 
 should be held by the bonds of death (Acts ii. 24), he had passed only a short 
 time in the grave. As to the more precise determination of this interval, if it 
 be held an insufficient explanation, l5iat the sacred number three would be the 
 first to suggest itself ; there is a further idea which might occur, — whether or 
 not it be historical that Jesus was buried on the evening before a sabbath, — 
 namely, that he only remained in the grave during the rest of the sabbath, and 
 thus rose on ike morning after the sabbath irpmi ■n-pdry a-a^fidTio which by the 
 known mode of reckoning might be reconciled with the round number of three 
 days.2* 
 
 When once the idea of a resurrection of Jesus had been formed in this 
 manner, the great event could not be allowed to have happened so simply, 
 but must be surrounded and embellished with all the pomp which the Jewish 
 imagination furnished. The chief ornaments which stood at command for 
 this purpose, were angels : hence these must open the grave of Jesus, must, 
 after he had come forth from it, keep watch in the empty place, and deliver to 
 the women, who (because without doubt women had had the first .visions) 
 must be the first to go to the grave, the tidings of what had happened. As it 
 was Galilee where Jesus subsequently appeared to them, the journey of the 
 disciples thither, which was nothing else than their return home, somewhat 
 hastened by fear, was derived from the direction of an angel ; nay, Jesus him- 
 self must already before his death, and, as Matthew too zealously adds, once 
 more after the resurrection also, have enjoined this journey on the disciples. 
 But the further these narratives were propagated by tradition, the more must 
 the difference between the locality of the resurrection itself and the appear- 
 ances of the risen one, be allowed to fall out of sight as inconvenient ; and 
 since the locality of the death and resurrection was not transferable, the ap- 
 pearances were gradually placed in the same locality as the resurrection, — in 
 Jerusalem, which as the more brilliant theatre and the seat of the first Chris- 
 tian Church, was especially appropriate for them.^^ 
 
 ^' May the three days' abode of Jonah in the whale have had any influence on this deter- 
 mination of time ? or the passage in Hosea quoted above, §111, note 3? The former is in- 
 deed only placed in this connexion in one gospel, and the latter is nowhere used in the N. T. 
 
 ™ Compare with this explanation the one given by Weisse, in the 7th chapter of his work 
 above quoted. He agrees with the above representation in regarding the death of Jesus as 
 real, and the narratives of the grave being found empty as later fabrications ; the point in 
 which he diverges is that above mentioned — that in his view the appearances of the risen 
 Jesus are not merely psychological and subjective, but objective magical facts. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ASCENSION. 
 
 § 141- 
 THE LAST COMMANPS AND PROMISES OF JESUS. 
 
 In the last interview of Jesus with his disciples, which according to Mark and 
 Luke closed with the ascension, the three first Evangelists (the fourth has 
 something similar on the very first interview) represent Jesus as delivering 
 testamentary commands and promises, which referred to the establishment 
 and propagation of the messianic kingdom of earth. 
 
 With regard to the commands, Jesus in Luke (xxiv. 47 f. ; Acts i. 8) in 
 parting from his disciples appoints them to be witnesses of his messiahship, 
 and charges them to preach repentance and remission of sins in his name from 
 Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the earth. In Mark (xvi. 15 f ) he en- 
 joins them to go into all the world and bring to every creature the glad 
 tidings of the messianic kingdom founded by him ; he who believes and is 
 baptized will be saved, he who believeth not, will (in the future messianic 
 judgment) be condemned. In Matthew (xxviii. 19 f.) the disciples are also 
 commissioned to make disciples of all nations trmna. to Wv-q, and here baptism 
 is not mentioned incidentally merely, as in Mark, but is made the subject of 
 an express command by Jesus, and is besides more precisely described as a 
 baptism in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, ek to 
 ovofw, rov Trarpos koI tov vlov /cat tov ayiov irviv fiaroi. 
 
 The impediments to the supposition that Jesus delivered to his disciples 
 • the express command to carry the announcement of the gospel to the Gentiles, 
 have been already pointed out in an eariier connexion.^ But that this more 
 definite form of baptism proceeded from Jesus, is also opposed by the fact, 
 that such an allocation of Father, Son, and Spirit does not elsewhere appear, 
 except as a form of salutation in apostolic epistles (2 Cor. xiii. 14 : the grace 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, etc.) ; while as a more definite form of baptism it is 
 not to be met with throughout the whole New Testament save in the above 
 passage of the first gospel : for' in the apostolic epistles and even in Jhe Acts, 
 baptism is designated as a ^amit,av d% XpiaTov Itjo-ovv, or ck to ovofm roy 
 Kvolov^Itjo-ov baptising in Christ Jesus, or in the name of the Lord Jesus, or their 
 equivalent (Rom. vi. 3 ; Gal. iii. 27; Acts ii. 38, viii. 16, x. 48, xix. 5), and 
 the same threefold reference to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is only found 
 in ecclesiastical writers, as, for example, Justin.^ Indeed the formula in 
 Matthew sounds so exactly as if it had been borrowed from the ecclesiastical 
 
 1 Vol. II. § 68. 
 « Apol. i. 61. 
 
 745 
 
746 PART III. CHAPTER V. § 14I. ' 
 
 ritual, that there is no slight probability in the supposition that it was trans- 
 ferred from thence into the mouth of Jesus. But this does not authorize us 
 to throw the passage out of the text as an interpolation,* since, if everything in 
 the gospels which cannot have happened to Jesus, or which cannot have been 
 done or spoken by him in the manner there described, were to be pro- 
 nounced foreign to the original text, the interpolations would soon become 
 too numerous. So far it is with justice that others have defended the 
 genuineness of the baptismal formula ; * but their grounds for the assertion 
 that it was delivered in this manner by Jesus himself are insufficient : the 
 two opinions then resolve themselves into a third, namely, that this more 
 definite form of baptism does indeed belong to the original context of the 
 first gospel, but without having been so delivered by Jesus. ^ Jesus had, 
 during his life, predicted in divers ways the propagation of his kingdom 
 beyond the limits of the Jewish nation, perhaps also had intimated the intro- 
 duction of baptism to be his will ; and — whether it be the fact that, as we 
 learn in the fourth gospel, the disciples already practised baptism in the life- 
 time of Jesus, or that they first made this rite a sign of reception into the new 
 messianic society after his death,"— in any case it was entirely in the manner 
 of the legend to place the injunction to baptize, as well as to go out into all 
 the world, in the mouth of the departing Christ as a last declaration of his 
 will. 
 
 The promises which Jesus gives to his adherents in parting from them, are 
 in Matthew, where they are directed exclusively to the eleven, limited simply 
 to the assurance that he, to whom as the exalted Messiah all power was de- 
 livered both in heaven and on earth, would be invisibly with them during the 
 present age, alwr, until at the consummation o-wriXaa of this term, he should 
 enter into permanent visible communion with them : precisely the expression of 
 the belief which was formed in the first Christian community, when the equili- 
 brium was recovered after the oscillations caused by the death of Jesus.: — In 
 Mark, the last promises of Jesus seem to be gathered from the popular opinion 
 concerning the gifts of the Christians, which was current at the period of the 
 composition of this gospel. Of the signs, a-qixaa, which are here promised to 
 believers in general, the speaking with (new) tongues, \ittXeiv yXioa-a-aj.% (Kaivats) 
 in the sense intended i Cor. xiv., not in the manner described in Acts ii. 
 which is a mythical m9dification,® actually appeared in the primitive church ; 
 a.s also the casting out 0/ devils Saifiona iK^aXXuv ; and it may even be con- 
 ceived that sick persons were cured in a natural manner by faith in the laying 
 on of hands,, iirWea-i's xet/><i'»' by a Christian : on the contrary the taking up of 
 serpents o^(.i.% aipetv (comp. Luke x. 19) and the power of drinking poisons' 
 with impunity, have never had any existence except in the superstitious belief 
 of the vulgar, and such signs of discipleship would have been the last to 
 which Jesus would have attached any value. — In Luke, the object of the last 
 promise of Jesus is the power from on high Svya/us ef vi^ovs, which according 
 to the promise of the Father, iirayyekCa tov Trarpos, he would send on the 
 apostles, and the impartation of which they were to await in Jerusalem (xxiv. 
 49); and in Acts i. 5 ff. Jesus more precisely designates this impartation of 
 power as a baptism with the Ifoiy Spirit, Trvev/ia ayiov, which in a few days 
 would be granted to the disciples in order to qualify them for the announce- 
 ment of the gospel. These passages of Luke, which place the impartation of 
 
 ' As is done by Teller, im excurs. 2, ad Burneti I.de fide et offic. Christ, p. 262. 
 * The work of Beckhaus, iiber die Aechtheit der sbg. Taufformel, 1794, met with 
 general approval. 
 
 ' Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. i, i, s.;.246. 
 
 ' Comp. Baur, in the Tiibinger Zeilschriftjiir Theologie, Jahrgang 1830, 2, s. 75 ff. 
 
ASCENSION OF JESUS. 747 
 
 the Holy Spirit in the days after the ascension, seem to be in contradiction 
 with the statement of the fourth gospel, that Jesus communicated the Holy Spirit 
 to his disciples m the days of his resurrection, nay, on his very first appear- 
 ance in the circle of the eleven. In John xx. 22 f. we read, that Jesus, ap- 
 pearing among the disciples when the dOors were closed, breathed on them 
 and said : Heeewe ye the Holy Ghost, Xdl^cTe nreC/ta S.ywv, wherewith he con- 
 nected the authority to remit and retain sins. 
 
 If this were the only passage relating to the impartation of the Spirit, every 
 one would beheve that the disciples had it commuicated to them by Jesus 
 when he was personally present among them, and not first after his exaltation 
 to heaven. But in accordance with the harmonizing interest, it has been con- 
 cluded, first by Theodore of Mopsuestia, and recently by Tholuck,'' that the 
 word Xa^ere, receive, in John, must be taken in the sense of \-^\\/ta-0i, ye shall: 
 receive, because according to Luke the Holy Spirit was not imparted to the 
 disciples until later, at Pentecost. But as if he wished to preclude such a 
 wresting of his words, the Jesus of John adds to them the symbolical action 
 of breathing on the disciples, which unmistakably represents the receiving of 
 the Holy Spirit as a present fact,* It is true that expositors have found out a 
 way of eluding even this act of breathing, by attributing to it the following 
 signification : as certainly as Jesus now breathes upon them, so certainly will 
 they at a future time receive the Holy Ghost.^ But the act of breathing upon 
 a person is as decided a symbol of a present impartation as the laying on of 
 hands, and as those on whom the apostles laid their hands were immediately 
 filled with the Spirit (Acts viii. 17, xix. 6), so, according to the above narra- 
 tive, the author of the fourth gospel must have thought that the Apostles on 
 that occasion received the Spirit from Jesus. In order to avoid the necessity 
 of denying, in opposition to the clear meaning of John, that an impartation of 
 the Spirit actually took place immediately after the resurrection, or of coming 
 into contradiction with Luke, who assigns the outpouring of the Spirit to a 
 later period, expositors now ordinarily suppose that the Spirit was granted to 
 the Apostles both at the earlier and the later period, the impartation at Pente- 
 cost being only an increasing and perfecting of the former."" Or more cor- 
 rectly, since Matthew x. 20 speaks of the Spirit of the Father as already 
 sustaining the disciples in their first mission : it is supposed that they were 
 first endowed with some extraordinary power before that mission, in the life- 
 time of Jesus ; that on the occasion in question, shortly after his resurrection^ 
 he heightened this power ; but that all the fulness of the Spirit was not poured 
 out upon them until Pentecost. "" What constitutes the distinction between 
 these steps, and especially in what the increase of the gifts of the Spirit con- 
 sisted in the present instance, is, however, as Michaelis has already remarked, 
 not easy to discern. If in the first instance the apostles were endowed with 
 the power of working miracles (Matt. x. i, 8) together with the gift of speak- 
 ing freely (irappijo-ia) before tribunals (v. 20), it could only be a more correct 
 insight into the spirituality of his kingdom that Jesus communicated to them 
 by breathing on them ; but of this they were still destitute immediately before 
 the ascension, when, according to Acts i. 6, they asked whether, with the 
 impartation of the Spirit, within the next few days, would be associated the 
 restoration of the kingdom to Israel. If however it be supposed that each 
 
 ^ Coram, z. Joh., s. 332. 
 
 « Lucke, Coram, z. Joh. 2, s. 686 ; De Wette, s. 204. 
 
 » Less, Auferstehungsgeschichte, s. 281 ; Kumol, m loc. 
 
 '" Liiclce s. 687. 
 
 " Vid. a'p. Michaelis, Begrabniss- und Auferstehungsgeschichte, s. 268 ; Olshausen, 2, s. 
 
 533- 
 
748 PART III. CHAPTER V, §141. 
 
 successive impartation of the Spirit conferred no new powers on the disciples, 
 fcut was merely an addition in measure to that which was already present in 
 all its diversified powers : ^^ it must still be held surprising that no Evangelist 
 mentions, together with an earlier impartatioUj a later amplification ; but 
 instead of this, besides an incidental mention of the Spirit as enabling the dis- 
 ciples to defend themselves before tribunals, in Luke (xii. 12), — which, since 
 it is not here, as in Matthew, connected with a mission, may be regarded 
 merely as a reference to the time after the later outpouring of the Spirit, — each 
 ■of the Evangelists mentions only one impartation, and represents this as the 
 first and last. This is, indeed, a clear proof that, to place in juxtaposition three 
 impartations and to regard them as so many different degrees, is only an 
 effort to harmonize the gospels by introducing into them what is foreign to 
 the text. 
 
 Thus there are in the New Testament three distinct opinions concerning 
 the impartation of the Spirit to the disciples of Jesus ; and in two respects 
 they form a climax. As regards the time, Matthew places the impartation 
 the earliest — within the period of the natural life of Jesus ; Luke, the latest — 
 in the time after his complete departure from the earth ; John in an inter- 
 mediate position — in the days of the resurrection. As regards the conception 
 of the fact, it is the simplest in Matthew, the least perceptible to the senses, 
 for he has no special and external act of impartation ; John already has such a 
 feature, in the act of breathing on the disciples ; while with Luke, in the Acts, 
 the gentle breathing has become a violent storm, which shakes the house, and 
 with which other miraculous appearances are united. These two series of gra- 
 dations stand in opposite relations to historical probability. That. the Spirit 
 ■7rvivft.a, which, whether it be regarded as natural or as supernatural, is in either 
 case the animating power of the messianic idea in its Christian modification, 
 was communicated to the adherents of Jesus so early as Matthew narrates, 
 is contradicted by his own representation, for according to him, that Chris- 
 tian rnodification — the introduction of the characteristics of suffering and 
 -death into the idea of the Messiah, — was not comprehended by the disciples 
 long after the mission described in Matt. x. ; and as the discourse of instruc- 
 tions there given contains other particulars also, which will only suit later 
 times and circumstances : it is easy to imagine that the promise in question 
 may have been erroneously referred to that earlier period. Only after the 
 death and resurrection of Jesus can we conceive what the New Testament 
 ■calls the irveu/aa ayiav to have been developed in the disciples, and in so far 
 the representation of John stands nearer to reality than that of Matthew ; but, 
 as certainly the revolution in the sentiments of the disciples described in the 
 foregoing section, had not taken place so early as two days after the cruci- 
 fixion : the account of John does not approach so near to the truth as that of 
 Luke, who allows an interval of at least fifty days for the formation of the 
 Tiew opmions m the disciples. The position of the narratives with respect to 
 historical truth is reversed by the other climax. For in proportion as a nar- 
 rative represents the impartation of a spiritual power as perceptible to the 
 -senses, the formation of a sentiment which might spring from natural causes as 
 miraculous, the origin of a faculty which can only have been developed gradu- 
 ally, as instantaneous : in the same proportion does such a narrative diverge 
 from the truth ; and in this respect, Matthew would stand at the least distance 
 from the truth, Luke at the greatest. If we therefore recognise in the repre- 
 presentation of the latter the most mature product of tradition, it may be 
 ■wondered how tradition can have wrought in two opposite ways : receding 
 
 " This is Tholuck's opinion, ut sup. 
 
ASCENSION OF JESUS. 749 
 
 from the truth in relation to the determination of the manner and form of 
 the impartation, approaching the truth in relation to the determination of the 
 time. But this is explained as soon as it is considered, that in the changes 
 in the determination of the time, tradition was not guided by critical inquiry 
 after truth— this might well have caused surprise, — but by the same tendency 
 that_ led to the other alteration, namely, to present the impartation of the 
 Spirit as a single miraculous act. If Jesus was said to have shed the Spirit 
 on his disciples by a special act : it must seem appropriate to assign this act 
 to his state of glorification, and thus either with John to place it after the 
 resurrection, or with Luke after the ascension ; indeed the fourth Evangelist 
 expressly remarks that in the lifetime of Jesus, the Spirit was not yet given, 
 because Jesus was not yet glorified (vii. 39). 
 
 This interpretation of the opinion of the fourth Evangelist concerning the 
 impartation of the Spirit to the disciples, is attested as the correct one by the 
 fact, that it throws unexpected light on an obscurity in his gospel with respect 
 to which we were previously unable to come to a decision. In relation to 
 the farewell discourses of Jesus, it was not possible to settle the dispute,, 
 whether what Jesus there says of his return is to be referred to the days of 
 his resurrection, or to the outpouring of the Spirit, because the description of 
 that return as a seeing again seemed to speak as decidedly for the former, a& 
 the observation that in that time they would no longer ask him anything, and 
 would understand him fully, for the latter : a dispute which is decided in the 
 most welcome manner, if it can be shown to be the opinion of the narrator 
 that the impartation of the Spirit fell in the days of the resurrection.'* At first 
 indeed it might be thought, that this impartation, especially as in John it is 
 connected with the formal appointment of his disciples as his envoys, and the 
 communication of the authority to remit and retain sins (comp. Matt, xviii. 
 18), would have been more appropriate at the close than the commencement 
 of the appearances of the risen Jesus, and in a full assembly of the Apostles, 
 than in one from which Thomas was absent ; but on this account to suppose 
 with Olshausen that the Evangelist for the sake of brevity merely appends the 
 impartation of the Spirit to the first appearance, though it really belonged to 
 a later interview, is an inadmissible violence ; and we must rather allow, that 
 the author of the fourth gospel regarded this first appearance of Jesus as the 
 principal one, and the one eight days later as merely supernumerary in favour 
 of Thomas. The appearance chap. xxi. is also a supplement, which the 
 author, when he wrote his gospel, either had not known, or at least did not 
 recollect. 
 
 §142. 
 
 THE SO-CALLED ASCENSION CONSIDERED AS A SUPERNATURAL AND AS A 
 
 NATURAL EVENT. 
 
 The ascension of Jesus is reported to us in the New Testament in three 
 diiferent narratives, which in point of fulness of detail and picturesqueness of 
 description form a progressive series. Mark, who in the last portion of his 
 gospel is in general very brief and abrupt, only says, that after Jesus had 
 spoken to the disciples for the last time, he was received up (di/eXi/^ei;) into 
 heaven and sat on the right hand of God (xvi. 19). With scarcely more 
 definiteness it is said in the gospel of Luke that Jesus led his disciples out as 
 far as Bethany, cfco lus eis Bjy^avtW, and while he here with uplifted hands 
 
 •' Comp. Weisse, die evang. Geschichte, 2, s, 418. 
 
75° PART III. CHAPTER V. § 1 42. 
 
 gave them his blessing, he was parted from them (Sieemy), and carried up into 
 heaven (dvE^E/Dcro) ; whereupon the disciples fell down and worshipped him, 
 and forthwith returned to Jerusalem with great joy (xxiv. 50 ff.). In the 
 introduction to the Acts, Luke gives more ample details concerning this 
 scene. On the mount of Olives, where Jesus dehvered to his disciples his 
 last commands and promises, he was taken up before their eyes {Itrqpdrj), and 
 a cloud received him out of their sight. While the disciples were watching 
 him, as he went up into heaven on the clondj there suddenly stood by them 
 two men in white apparel, who induced them to desist from thus gazing after 
 him by the assurance, that the Jesus now taken from them would come again 
 from heaven in the same manner as he had just ascended into heaven ; on 
 which they were satisfied, and returned to Jerusalem (1. i- 1 2). 
 
 The first impression from this narrative is clearly this : that it is intended 
 as a description of a miraculous event, an actual exaltation of Jesus into 
 heaven, as the dwelling-place of God, and an attestation of this by angels ; as 
 orthodox theologians, both ancient and modern, correctly maintain. The 
 only question is, whether they can also help us to surmount the difficulties 
 which stand in our way when we attempt to form a conception of such an 
 event ? One main diflSculty is this : how can a palpable body, which has 
 still^w^ and bones, and eats material food, be qualified for a celestial abode ? 
 how can it so far liberate itself from the laws of gravity, as to be capable of an 
 ascent through the air? and how can it be conceived that God gave so 
 preternatural a capability to Jesus by a miracle ? ^ The only possible reply 
 to these questions is, that the grosser elements which the body of Jesus still 
 retained after the resurrection, were removed before the ascension, and only 
 the finest essence of his corporeaUty, as the integument of the soul, was taken 
 by him into heaven.^ But as the disciples who were present at the ascension 
 observed no residuum of his body which he had left behind, this leads either 
 to the above mentioned absurdity of an evaporation of the body of Jesus, or 
 to Olshausen's process of subtilization which, still incomplete even after the 
 resurrection, was not perfected until the moment of the ascension ; a process 
 which must have been conducted with singularly rapid retrograde transitions 
 in these last days, if the body of Jesus, when penetrating into the closed room 
 where the disciples were assembled, is to be supposed immaterial ; immedi- 
 ately after when Thomas touched him, material ; and lastly, in the ascension, 
 again immaterial The other difficulty lies in the consideration, that accord- 
 ing to a just idea of the world, the seat of God and of the blessed, to which 
 Jesus is supposed to have been exalted, is not to be sought for in the upper 
 regions of the air, nor, in general, in any determinate place ; — such a locality 
 <:ould only be assigned to it in the childish, limited conceptions of antiquity. 
 We are well aware that he who would attain to God and the circle of the 
 blessed would make a superfluous circuit, if he thought it necessary for this 
 purpose to soar aloft into the higher regions of the firmament ; and the more 
 intimately Jesus was acquainted with God and divine thjngs, the farther cer- 
 tainly would he be from making such a circuit, or from being caused to make 
 it by God.* Thus there would be no other resource than to suppose a 
 divine accommodation to the idea of the world in that age, and to say : God 
 in order to convince the disciples of the return of Jesus into the higher 
 world, although this world is in reality by no means to be sought for in the 
 
 1 Gabler, in the neuesten theol. Journal 3, s. 417, and in the Vorrede zu Griesbach's 
 opusc. acad. p. xcvi. comp. Kumbl, in Marc. , p. 222. 
 ' Seller, ap. Kuinol, ut. sup. s. 223. 
 * Comp. Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 921 ; De Wette, Religioii und Theologie, s. i6l. 
 
ASCENSION OF JESUS. 751 
 
 upper air, nevertheless prepared the spectacle of such an exaltation.* But 
 this is to represent God as theatrically arranging an illusion. 
 
 As an attempt to set us free from such difficulties and absurdities, the 
 natural explanation of this narrative must needs be welcome.* This distin- 
 guishes in the evangelical accounts of the ascension, what was actually beheld, 
 and what was inferred by reasoning. Certainly, when it is said in the Acts : 
 while they beheld, he was taken up, ^keirovroiv airfiv iir^pdri : the exaltation to 
 heaven seems here to be represented as a fact actually witnessed. But the 
 Rationalists tell us that we are not to understand iirfipOy), as signifying an 
 ■elevation above the earth, but only that Jesus, in order to bless the disciples, 
 ■drew up his form and thus appeared more elevated to them. They then 
 bring forward the word Sieo-n;, he was parted from them, in the conclusion of 
 Luke's gospel, and interpret it to mean that Jesus in taking leave of his dis- 
 ciples removed himself farther from them. Hereupon, they continue, in the 
 rsame way as on the mount of Transfiguration, a cloud was interposed between 
 Jesus and the disciples, and together with the numerous olive-trees on the 
 mount, concealed him from their sight ; a result which, on the assurance ot 
 two unknown men, they regarded as a reception of Jesus into heaven. But, 
 when Luke in the Acts immediately connects kirlipB-q with the statement, and 
 M cloud received him, koI vetftiXrj ujreXaySev avrov : he imphes that the taking up 
 was an introduction to the being received by the cloud ; which it would not 
 be if it were a mere drawing up of the body, but only if it were an exaltation 
 •of Jesus above the earth, since only in this case could a cloud float under, 
 carry, and envelop him, which is the idea expressed by vwiXafSev. Again, in 
 the Gospel of Luke, the fact that he was parted from them is represented as 
 something which took place while he blessed them, h> to euAoyeti' airov airous ; 
 now no one when pronouncing a benediction on another, will remove from 
 him : whereas it appears very suitable, that Jesus while communicating his 
 blessing to the disciples should be carried upward, and thus, while rising, have 
 continued to extend over them his outstretched hand as a symbol of his 
 blessing. Thus the natural explanation of the disappearance in the cloud 
 falls to the ground of itself; while in the supposition that the two individuals 
 ■clothed in white apparel were natural men, Paulus only disguises a final and 
 strongly marked essay of the opinion espoused by Bahrdt and Venturini, that 
 several epochs in the life of Jesus, especially after his crucifixion, were brought 
 about by the agency of secret colleagues. And Jesus himself— what, accord- 
 ing to this opinion, must we suppose to have become of him after this last 
 separation from his disciples ? Shall we, with Bahrdt, dream of an Essene 
 lodge into which he retired after the completion of his work? and with 
 ■Brennecke appeal, in proof that Jesus long continued silently to work for the 
 welfare of mankind, to his appearance for the purpos^ of the conversion of 
 Paul ? But taking the narrative of the Acts as historical, this was connected 
 with circumstances and effects which could be produced by no natural man, 
 ■even though a member of a secret order. Or shall we with Paulus suppose, 
 that shortlv after the last interview 'the body of Jesus sank beneath the 
 iniuries it had received? This could not well have happened m the very 
 next moments after he had appeared still active among his disciples, so that 
 the two men who joined them might have been witnesses of his decease - 
 •who, even admitting this, would not have spoken in accordance with the 
 truth ; but if he continued to live for any length of time he must have had 
 
 *Kern Hauptthatsachen, Tiib. Zeitschrift, 1836,3,8.5?, Corap. Steudel (Glaubens- 
 lehre s 323, wCsupposes'the ascension to have been a vision which God produced m the 
 Sples.^ ^Xkainst thf comp. my Streitschnften I s 152 ff 
 
 » See especially Paulus, ut sup. s. 91° ff- ! L. J- I, D, s. 31s n. 
 
752 PART JII. CHAPTER V. § 1 43. 
 
 the intention to remain for that period in the concealment of a secret society ; 
 and to this must then be supposed to belong the two men clothed in white, 
 who, doubtless with his previous sanction, persuaded the disciples that he had 
 ascended into heaven.^ But this is a mode of representation, from which 
 in this instance as in every other, a sound judgment must turn away with 
 aversion. 
 
 § 143- 
 
 INSUFFICIENCY OF THE NARRATIVES OF THE ASCENSION. MYTHICAL CON- 
 CEPTION OF THOSE NARRATIVES. 
 
 Among all the New Testament histories of miracles, the ascension least 
 demanded such an expenditure of perverted acumen, since the attestations to 
 its historical vahdity are peculiarly weak,— not only to us who, having no 
 risen Jesus, can consequently have no ascended one, but apart from all prior 
 conclusions and in every point of view. Matthew and John, who according 
 to the common idea were the two eyewitnesses among the Evangelists, do not 
 mention it ; it is narrated by Mark and Luke alone, while in the rest of the 
 New Testament writings decided allusions to it are wanting. But this 
 absence of allusions to the ascension in the rest of the New Testament is 
 denied by orthodox expositors. When, say they, Jesus in Matthew (xxvi. 64), 
 declares before the high priest, that hereafter the Son of Man will be seen 
 sitting at the right hand of God : this presupposes an exaltation thither, con- 
 sequently an ascension; when in John (iii. 13), he says, no one hath as- 
 cended into heaven but the Son of Man who came from heaven, and at 
 another time (vi. 62) tells the disciples that they will hereafter see him 
 ascend where he was before ; further, when on the morning of the resurrection 
 he declares that he is not yet ascended to his Father, implying that he is 
 about to do so (xx, 17) : there could hardly be more explicit allusions to the 
 ascension ; again, when the apostles in. the Acts so often speak of an exalta- 
 tion of Jesus to the right hand of God (ii. 33, v. 31, comp. vii. 56), and 
 Paul represents him as ascended up far above all heavens ava^a.'s wrepavia ttovtiuv 
 tS>v ovpavwv (Ephes. iv. 10), Peter, as gone into heaven TropevOth ets ovpavbv 
 (i Pet. iii. 22) : there can be no doubt that they all knew of his ascension.^ 
 All these passages, however, with the exception perhaps of John vi. 62, where 
 a SEEING the Son of Man ascend, Bmypiiv ava^aXvovTa tov vlov toB avOpumou, 
 is spoken of, contain only in general his exaltation to heaven, without inti- 
 mating that it was an external, visible fact, that took place in the presence of 
 the disciples. Rather, when we find Paul in i Cor. xv. 5 fF. ranking the ap- 
 pearance of Jesus to himself, .which occurred long after the alleged ascension, 
 with the Christophanies before this epoch, so entirely without any pause or in- 
 dication of a distinction : we must doubt, not merely that all the appearances 
 which he enumerates besides his own can have occurred before the ascension,* 
 but whether the Apostle can have had any knowledge at all of an ascension as 
 an external fact which closed the earthly life of Jesus. ■ As to the author of 
 the fourth gospel, — in his metaphorical language, we are not compelled by 
 the word OewplrjTe, any more than by the oi/reo-^c in relation to the angels 
 ascending and descending upon Jesus, i. 52, to ascribe to him a knowledge of 
 
 ^ Briefe liber den Rationalismus, s. 146, Anm. 28. 
 
 1 Seiler, ap. Kuinol, ut sup. s. 221; Olshausen, s. 591 f. Comp. Griesbach, locorum 
 N. T. ad ascensionem Christi in coelum spectantium sylloge. In his opusc. acad. ed. Gabler, 
 vol. 2, s. 484 if. 
 
 * Schneckenburger, iiber den Urspr. u. s. f, s. 19. 
 
ASCENSION OF JESUS. 753 
 
 the visible ascension of Jesus, of which he gives no intimation at the conclu- 
 sion of his gospel. 
 
 Commentators have, it is true, taken all possible pains to explain the want 
 of a narrative of the ascension in the first and fourth gospels, in a way which 
 may not prove inimical either to the authority of the writings, or to the 
 historical value of the fact. They maintain that the Evangelists who are silent 
 on the subject, held it either unnecessary, or impossible, to narrate the 
 ascension. They held it unnecessary, say these expositors, either intrinsi- 
 cally, from the minor importance of the event ; ^ or extrinsically, on the con- 
 sideration that it was generally known as a part of the evangelical tradition ; * 
 John in particular supposed it to be known from Mark and Luke ; ^ or lastly, 
 both Matthew and John omitted it as not belonging to the earthly life of 
 Jesus, to the description of which their writings were exclusively devoted.^ 
 But we must contend, on the contrary, that the life of Jesus, especially that 
 enigmatical life which he led after his return from the grave, absolutely re- 
 quired such a close as the ascension. Whether it were generally known or 
 not, whether it were important or unimportant, — the simple aesthetic interest 
 which dictates even to an uncultivated author, that a narrative should be 
 wound up with a conclusion, must have led every evangelical writer who knew 
 of the ascension to mention it, though it were but summarily at the end of his 
 history, in order to avoid the strange impression left by the first gospel and 
 still more by the fourth, as narratives losing themselves in vague obscurity. 
 Hence our apologists resort to the supposition that the first and fourth 
 EvangeUsts held it impossible to give an account of the ascension of Jesus, 
 because the eyewitnesses, however long they might gaze after him, could still 
 only see him hovering in the air and encircled by the cloud, not entering 
 heaven and taking his place on the right hand of God.'' Bat in the ideas of 
 the ancient world, to which heaven was nearer than to us, an entrance into 
 the clouds was in itself a real ascent into heaven, as we see from the stories 
 of Romulus and Elijah. 
 
 Thus it is undeniable that the above Evangelists were ignorant of the 
 ascension : but the conclusion of the most recent criticism, that this ignor- 
 ance is a reproach to the first Evangelist as a sign of his unapostolic charac- 
 ter,8 is the less in place here, because the event in question is rendered sus- 
 picious not merely by the silence of two Evangelists, but also by the want of 
 agreement between those who narrate it. Mark is at variance with Luke, 
 nay, Luke is at variance with himself. In the account of the former, it 
 appears as if Jesus had ascended into heaven immediately from the meal m 
 which he appeared to the eleven, consequently from out of a house in 
 Jerusalem : for the phrases : he appeared with the eleven as they sat at meat, 
 and upbraided them— and he said— So then after the Lord had spoken imto 
 them he was received up into heaven, etc., dvaK«/A«Vo6s— ^avcpwflj?- ko., a.i/«6«7e 
 — Kai ei-Kt.v—0 mv olv lo^pios, fLerh. to A.a\^o-ai airois, <iveA,,<^eij k. t. A. have an 
 immediate dependence on each other, and it is only by violence that a change 
 of place or a distinction of time can be introduced.* Now an ascent into 
 
 ' EltTritzs'hl!' weary at the conclusion of his labour, writes in Matth., p. 835 = 
 MatthcBUS Jesu in ccelum aHtum nan commemoravit, qmfpe nemtm tgnotum. 
 
 e Thftrea^e- Waru'^'habennichtalle Evangelisten die Himmelfahrt Jesu ausdrucklich 
 miterzahlt? in Flatt's Magazin, 8, s. 67. 
 
 ' The above-named Treatise in Flatt s Magazin. 
 
 « Schneckenburger, ut sup. s. 19 U 
 
 » As by Kuinol, p. 208 f; 217. ^ 
 
754 PART III. CHAPTER V. § 143. 
 
 heaven directly out of a room is certainly not easy to imagine; hence Luke 
 represents it as taking place in the open air. In his gospel he makes Jesus 
 immediately before his ascension, lead out his disciples as far as Bethany lus 
 ek BrjOaviav, but in the Acts he places the scene on the mount called Olivet 
 opos TO KdA.oi;>evoi' eXatGva ; this, however, cannot be imputed to him as a con- 
 tradiction, since Bethany lay in the neighbourhood of the mount of Oliyes.^o 
 But there is a more important divergency in his statement of time ; for in his 
 gospel, as in Mark, we are left to infer that the ascension took place on the 
 same day with the resurrection : whereas in the Acts it is expressly remarked, 
 that the two events were separated by an interval of forty days. It has 
 already been remarked that the latter determination of time must have come 
 to the knowledge of Luke in the interim between the composition of the 
 gospel and that of the Acts. The more numerous the narratives of appear- 
 ances of the risen Jesus, and the more various the places to which they were 
 assigned : the less would the short space of a day suffice for his life on earth 
 after the resurrection ; while the determination of the lengthened period 
 which had become necessary to forty days precisely, had its foundation in the 
 part which this number is known to have played in the Jewish, and already 
 in the Christian legend. The people of Israel were forty years in the wilder- 
 ness ; Moses was forty days on mount Sinai ; he and Elias fasted forty 
 days ; and Jesus himself previous to the temptation remained the same length 
 of time without nourishment in the wilderness. As, then, all these mysterious 
 intermediate states and periods of transition were determined by the number 
 forty: this number presented itself as . especially appropriate for the deter- 
 mination of the mysterious interval between the resurrection and ascension of 
 Jesus.'' 
 
 As regards the description of the event itself, it might be thought admis- 
 sible to ascribe the silence .of Mark, and of Luke in his gospel, concerning the 
 cloud and the angels, purely to the brevity of their narratives ; but since Luke 
 at the close of his gospel narrates circumstantially enough the conduct of the 
 disciples — how they fell down and worshipped the ascended Jesus, and re- 
 turned to the city with great joy; so he would doubtless have pointed out the 
 information communicated to them by angels as the immediate source of their 
 joy, had he known anything of such a particular at the time when he com- 
 posed his first writing. Hence this feature seems rather to have been gradu- 
 ally formed in tradition, in order to render due honour to this last point also 
 in the life of Jesus, and to present a confirmation of the insufficient testimony 
 of men as to his exaltation into heaven by the moutli of two heavenly wit- 
 nesses. 
 
 As, according to this, those who knew of an ascension of Jesus, had by no 
 means the same idea of its particular circumstances : there must have been in 
 general two different modes of conceiving the close of the life of Jesus ; some 
 regarding it as a visible ascension, others not so.'^ When Matthew makes 
 Jesus before the tribunal of the high priest predict his exaltation to the right 
 hand of the divine power (xxvi. 64), and after his resurrection declare that 
 now all power .is given to him in heaven and earth (xxviii. 18) ; and neverthe- 
 less has nothing of a visible ascension, hut on the contrary puts into the mouth 
 
 '° NevectheleBs CQmp. iDe Wette Oin the Acts, i. 12. 
 
 " Vid, Vol. i., % .56, and the authors there cited. The reference to a reckoning in Daniel, 
 in Paulus, exeg. Ha'ndib. 3, h- s, ^23, appears to me too artificial. 
 
 '' On this subject comp. es()eciaUy Ammon, Ascensus J. C, in coelum historia biblica. In 
 his opusc. nov. p. 43 ft Fortbildung des Christenth. 2, i, s. 13 ff. ; also Kaiser, bibl. Theol. 
 I, s. 83 ff. ; de Wette, exeg, Handb. i, i, s. 247 ; Weisse, die evang. Gesch. 2, p. 375 ft 
 
ASCENSION OF JESUS. . 755 
 
 'iL\^nlff «^- ^'f"''^",^e = ^f"" -^ith you alway, even unto the end of the world. 
 
 Test do^rhtl. 1"^^°^'^^^; o^i which his representation is founded/is that 
 Father thl!h /T'^^'^'^^^- °° ^'^ resurrection, ascended invisibly to the 
 that ont n?!- f ""^ ^'^^ remaining invisibly with his followers ; and 
 
 h msHf in rf ■ f°"f^^!">ent he, as often as he found it expedient, revealed 
 S whl^ ^^P^^"'^\ ^^^ '^""^ ^^^"^ '^ to be discerned in the Apostle 
 «0f AfTh!V." •'.?'■• "^T ^^ "nd'stinguishingly places the appearance to him- 
 rt^L t ■ ""^^f-^:^ ascended into heaven, in one series with the earlier 
 L-hnstophanies ; and also the author of the fourth gospel and the rest of the 
 iNew lestament writers only presuppose what must necessarily be presupposed 
 according to the messianic passage : Sit thou at my right hand, Ps. ex. i : that 
 Jesus was exalted to the right hand of God ; without deciding anything as to 
 the manner of the exaltation, or representing to themselves the ascension as 
 a visible one. The imagination of the primitive Christians must however have 
 telt a strong temptation to depict this exaltation as a brilliant spectacle. 
 When It was once concluded that the Messiah Jesus had arrived at so exalted 
 a position, It would appear desirable to gaze after him, as it were, on his way 
 thither. If It was expected, in accordance with the prophecy of Daniel, that 
 his future return from heaven would be a visible descent in the clouds : this 
 would naturally suggest that his departure to heaven should be represented 
 as a visible ascent on a cloud ; and when Luke makes the two white-apparelled 
 angels, who joined the disciples after the removal of Jesus, say: this same 
 Jesus, zvho is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye 
 have seen him go into heaven (Acts i. 11) : we need only take the converse of 
 this declaration in order to have before us the genesis of the conception of the 
 ascension of Jesus ; for the mode of conclusion was this : as Jesus will at some 
 future time return from heaven in the clouds, so he must surely have departed 
 thither 13 in the same manner. 
 
 Compared with these primary incentives, the Old Testament precedents 
 which the ascension of Jesus has in the translation of Enoch (Gen. v. 24; 
 comp. Wis. xliv. xd, xlix. 16 ; Heb. xi. 5), and especially in the ascension of 
 Elijah (2 Kings ii. 11; comp. Wis. xlviii. gj i Mace. ii. 58), together with 
 the Grecian and Roman apotheoses of Hercules and Romulus, recede into 
 the background. Apart from the question whether the latter were known to 
 the second and third Evangelists ; the statement relative to Enoch is too 
 vague ; while the chariot and horses of fire that transported Elijah were not 
 adapted to the milder spirit of Christ. Instead of this the enveloping cloud 
 and the removal while holding a farewell conversation, may appear to have 
 been borrowed from the later representation of the removal of Moses, which 
 however in other particulars has considerable divergencies from that of Jesus.'* 
 Perhaps also one trait in the narrative of the Acts may be explained out of 
 the history of Elijah. When this prophet, before his translation, is entreated 
 by his servant Elisha that he will bequeath him a double measure of his spirit : 
 Elijah attaches to the concession of this boon the condition : if thou see me 
 when J am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee ; but if not, it shall not be 
 so ; whence we might perhaps gather the reason why Luke (Acts i. 9) lays 
 
 " This is also.Hase's opinion, L. J. § ijo. 
 
 1* Joseph. Antiq. iv., viii. 48, it is said of Moses : And as he was going to embrace Eleazar 
 and Joshua, and was still discoursing with them, a cloud stood over him on a sudden, and he 
 disappeared in a certain valley, although he wrote in the holy books that he died, which was 
 done out of fear, lest they should venture to say that because of his extraordinary virtue, he 
 went to God. Philo, however, vita Mosis, opp. ed. Mangey, vol. ii. p. 179, makes the soul 
 only of Moses ascend into heaven. 
 
7S6 • TART III. CHAPTER V. § 143. 
 
 Stress on the fact that the disciples beheld Jesus as he went up {pXiTrovrutv 
 avrdv hrfipB-q) : namely, because, according to the narrative concerning 
 Elijah, this was necessary, if the disciples were to receive the spirit of their 
 master. 
 
CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. 
 THE DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 
 
 §144- 
 NECESSARY TRANSITION FROM CRITICISM TO DOGMA. 
 
 The results of the inquiry which we have now brought to a close, have appar- 
 ently annihilated the greatest and most valuable part of that which the Chris- 
 tian has been wont to believe concerning his Saviour Jesus, have uprooted all 
 the animating motives which he has gathered from his faith, and withered all 
 his consolations. The boundless store of truth and life which for eighteen 
 centuries has been the aliment of humanity, seems irretrievably dissipated ; 
 the most sublime levelled with the dust, God divested of his grace, man of 
 his dignity, and the tie between heaven and earth broken. Piety turns away 
 with horror from so fearful an act of desecration, and strong in the impreg- 
 nable self-evidence of its faith, pronounces that, let an audacious criticism 
 attempt what it will, all which the Scriptures declare, and the Church believes 
 of Christ, will still subsist as eternal truth, nor needs one iota of it to be re- 
 nounced. Thus at the conclusion of the criticism of the history of Jesus, there 
 presents itself this problem : to re-establish dogmatically that which has been 
 destroyed critically. 
 
 At the first glance, this problem appears to exist merely as a challenge ad- 
 dressed by the believer to the critic, not as a result of the moral requirements 
 of either. The believer would appear to need no re-establishment of the 
 faith, since for him it cannot be subverted by criticism. The critic seems to I 
 require no such re-establishment, since he is able to endure the annihilation 
 resulting from his own labours. Hence it might be supposed that the critic, I 
 when he seeks to rescue the dogma from the flames which his criticism has 
 kindled, acts falsely in relation to his own point of view, since, to satisfy the 
 believer, he treats what is valueless for himself as if he esteemed it to be a 
 jewel ; while in relation to the believer, he is undertaking a superfluous task, 
 in labouring to defend that which the latter considers in no way endangered. 
 
 But on a nearer view the case appears otherwise. To all belief, not built 
 on demonstration, doubt is inherent, though it may not be developed ; the 
 most firmly believing Christian has within him the elements of criticism as a 
 latent deposit of unbelief, or rather as a negative germ of knowledge, and only 
 by its constant repression can he maintain the predominance of his faith, 
 which is thus essentially a re-established faith. And just as the believer is 
 intrinsically a sceptic or critic, so, on the other hand, the critic is intrinsically 
 a believer. In proportion as he is distinguished from the naturalistic theo- 
 logian and the free-thinker,— in proportion as his criticism is conceived in the 
 spirit of the nineteenth century,— he is filled with veneration for every rehgion, 
 
7S8 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § 14S. 
 
 and especially for the substance of the sublimest of all religions, the Christian, 
 which he perceives to be identical with the deepest philosophical truth ; and 
 hence, after having in the course of his criticism exhibited only the differences 
 between his conviction and the historical belief of the Christian, he will feel 
 urged to place that identity in a just light. 
 
 Further, our criticism, though in its progress it treats of details, yet on be- 
 coming part of our internal conviction, resolves itself into the simple element 
 of doubt, which the believer neutralizes by an equally simple w/i?, and then 
 spreads anew in undiminished luxuriance all the fulness of his creed. But 
 hereby the decisions of criticism are only dismissed, not vanquished, and that 
 which is believed is supported by no intermediate proof, but rests absolutely 
 on its own evidence. - Criticism cannot but direct itself against this absence 
 of intermediate proof, and thus the controversy which seemed ended is re- 
 newed, and we are thrown back to the beginning of our inquiry ; yet with a 
 difference which constitutes a step forward in the discussion. Hitherto our 
 criticism had for its object the data of Christianity, as historically presented 
 in the evangelical records ; now, these data having been called in question in 
 their historical form, assume that of a mental product, and find a refuge in the 
 soul of the believer ; where they exist, not as a simple history, but as a re- 
 flected history, that is, a confession of faith, a received dogma. Against this 
 dogma, presenting itself totally unsupported by evidence, criticism must in-, 
 deed awake, as it does against all deficiency of proof, in the character of a 
 negativing power, and a contender for intermediate proof : it will, however, 
 no longer be occupied with history, but with doctrines. Thus our historical 
 criticism is followed up by dogmatical criticism, and it is only after the faith 
 has passed through both these trials, that it is thoroughly tested and consti- 
 tuted science. 
 
 This second process through which the faith has to pass, ought, like the 
 first, to be made the subject of a distinct work : I shall here merely give a 
 sketch of its most important features, that I may not terminate an historical 
 criticism without pointing out its ultimate object, which can only be arrived 
 at by dogmatical criticism as a sequel. 
 
 § 145- 
 
 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE ORTHODOX SYSTEM. 
 
 The dogmatic import of the life of Jesus implicidy received, and developed 
 on this basis, constitutes the orthodox doctrine of the Christ. 
 
 Its fundamental principles are found in the New Testament. The root of 
 faith in Jesus was the conviction of his resurrection. He who had been put 
 to death, however great during his life, could not, it was thought, be the 
 Messiah : his miraculous restoration to life proved so much the more strongly 
 that he was the Messiah. Freed by his resurrection from the kingdom of 
 shades, and at the same time elevated above the sphere of earthly humanity, 
 he was now translated to the heavenly regions, and had taken his place at the 
 right hand of God (Acts ii. 32 ff., iii. 15 ff., v. 30 ff. ; and elsewhere). Now, 
 his death appeared to be the chief article in his messianic destination ; accord- 
 ing to Isa. liii., he had suffered for the sins of his people and of mankind 
 (Acts viii. 32 ff. ; comp. Matt. xx. 28 ; John i. 29, 36 ; 1 John ii. 2) ; his blood 
 poured out on the cross, operated like that which on the great day of atone- 
 ment the high priest sprinkled on the mercy-seat (Rom. iii. 25) ; he was the 
 pure lamb by whose blood the believing are redeemed (i Pet. i. 18 f.) ; the 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 759 
 
 eternal, sinless high priest, who by the offering of his own body, at once 
 effected that, which the Jewish high priests were unable to effect, by their per- 
 petually repeated sacrifices of animals (Heb. x. lo ff., etc.). But, thenceforth, 
 the Messiah who was exalted to the right hand of God, could not have been 
 a common man : not only was he anointed with the divine spirit in a greater 
 measure than any prophet (Acts iv. 27, x. 38) ; not only did he prove himself 
 to be a divine messenger by miracles and signs (Acts ii. 22) ; but also, accord- 
 ing as the one idea or the other was most readily formed, either he was super- 
 naturally engendered by the Holy Spirit (Matt, and Luke i.), or he had 
 descended as the Word and Wisdom of God into an earthly body (John i.). 
 As, before his appearance on the earth, he was in the bosom of the Father, in 
 divine majesty (John xvii. 5) : so his descent into the world of mortals, and 
 still more his submission to an ignominious death, was a voluntary humilia- 
 tion, to which he was moved by hjs love to mankind (Phil. ii. 5 ff.). The 
 risen and ascended Jesus will one day return to wake the dead and judge the 
 world (Acts i. 11, xvii. 31) ; he even now takes charge of his church (Rom. 
 viii. 34 ; I John ii. i), participating in the government of the world, as he 
 originally did in its creation (Matt, xxviii. 18 ; John i. 3, 10 ; Col. i. 16 (.). 
 In addition to all this, every trait in the image of the Messiah as sketched by 
 the popular expectation, was attributed with necessary or gratuitous modifi- 
 cations to Jesus ; nay, the imagination, once stimulated, invented new 
 characteristics. 
 
 How richly fraught with blessing and elevation, with encouragement and 
 consolation, were the thoughts which the early Church derived from this view 
 of the Christ ! By the mission of the Son of God into the world, by his de- 
 livery of himself to death for the sake of the world, heaven and earth are 
 reconciled (2 Cor. v. 18 ff. ; Eph. i. 10 ; Col. i. 20) ; by this most stupendous 
 sacrifice, the love of God is securely guaranteed to man (Rom. v. 8 ff., viii. 
 31 ff. ; I John iv. 9), and the brightest hopes are revealed to him. Did the 
 Son of God become man? Then are men his brethren, and as such the 
 children of God, and heirs with Christ to the treasure of divine bliss (Rom. 
 viii. 16 f., 29). The servile relation of man to God, as it existed under the 
 law, has ceased ; love has taken the place of the fear of the punishment 
 threatened by the law (Rom. viii. 15 ; Gal. iv. i ff.). Believers are redeemed 
 from the curse of the law by Christ's sacrifice of himself, inasmuch as he 
 suffered a death on which the law had laid a curse (Gal. iii. 13). Now, there 
 is no longer imposed on us the impossible task of satisfying all the demands 
 of the law (Gal. iii. 10 f.) — a task which, as experience shows, no man fulfils 
 (Rom. i. i8-iii. 20), which, by reason of his sinful nature, no man can fulfil 
 (Rom. v. 12 ff.), and which only involves him who strives to fulfil it, niore and 
 more deeply in the most miserable conflict with himself (Rom. vii. 7 ff.) : 
 whereas he who believes in Christ, and confides in the atoning efficacy of his 
 death, possesses the favour of God ; not by works and qualifications of his 
 own, but by the free mercy of God, is the man who throws himself on that 
 mercy just before God, by which all self-exaltation is excluded (Rom. iii. 
 ^i fi") As the Mosaic law is no longer binding on the believer, he being 
 dead to it with Christ (Rom. vii. i ff.) ; as, moreover, by the eternal and all- 
 sufficient sacrifice of' Christ, the Jewish sacrificial and priestly service is 
 abolished (Heb.); therefore the partition wall which separated the Jews and 
 Gentiles is broken down : the latter, who before were aliens and strangers to 
 the theocracy, without God and without hope in the world, are now invited to 
 participate in' the new covenant, and free access is opened to them to the 
 paternal God ; so that the two portions of mankind, formerly separated by 
 hostile opinions, are now at peace with each other, members in common of 
 
76o CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § 145. 
 
 the body of Christ — stones in the spiritual building of his Church (Eph. ii. 
 II if.). But to have justifying faith in the death of Christj is, virtually, to die 
 with him spiritually — that is, to die to sin ; and as Christ arose from the dead 
 to a new and immortal life, so must the believer in him arise from the death 
 of sin to a new life of righteousness and holiness, put off the old man and put 
 on the new (Rom. vi. i ff.). In this, Christ himself aids him by his Spirit, 
 who fills those whom he inspires with spiritual strivings, and makes them ever 
 more and more free from the slavery of sin (Rom. viii. i ff.). Nor alone 
 spiritually, will the Spirit of Christ animate those in whom he dwells, but cor- 
 poreally also,' for at the end of their earthly course, God, through Christ, will 
 resuscitate their bodies, as he did the. body of Christ (Rom. viii. 11). Christ, 
 whom the bonds of death and the nether world could not hold, has vanquished 
 both for us, and has delivered the believer from the fear of these dread powers 
 which rule over mortality (Rom. viii. 38 f. ; i Cor. xv. 55 ff. ; Heb. ii. 14 f.). 
 His resurrection not only confers atoning efficacy on his death (Rom. iv. 25), 
 but at the same time is the pledge of our own future resurrection, of our share 
 in Christ in a future life, in his messianic kingdom, to the blessedness of which 
 he will, at his second advent, lead all his people. Meanwhile, we may con- 
 sole ourselves that we have in him an Intercessor, who from his own experi- 
 ence of the weakness and frailty of our nature, which he himself assumed, and 
 in which he was in all points tempted as we are, but without sin, knows how 
 much indulgence and aid we need (Heb. ii. 17 f., iv. 15 f.). 
 
 The expediency of describing in compendious forms the riches of their faith 
 in Christ, was early felt by his followers. They celebrated him as Christ that 
 died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who 
 also maketh intercession for us, XpwrTos o aitoBavm/, fiaXXov 8« koI iyepOeh, os 
 Kol eoTiv iv Se^ta tov 6iov, os Kal ivrvyxava vwep tj/xGv (Rom. viii. 34) ; or with 
 more particularity ss Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David 
 according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according 
 to the Spirit of holinesss, by the resurrection from the dead, 'I. X. 6 Kvpios, 
 •ytvo/icros eK (TirepfjMTOi AajSiS Kara crdpKa, 6pL(r6els vloi deov ev Swdfiei Kara 
 TiTcCyLia ayitixrvvTi's, ef Ai'ttcrrao-etos veKp&v (Rom. i. 3 f.) ; and as confessedly, the 
 great mystery of godliness, ofwXoyovfihms fieya t^s evcre^ctas /uiar-^piov, the 
 following propositions were presented : God was manifest in the flesh, justified 
 in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, 
 received up into glory, 6e6s l^avipiBi) iv crapKi, eStKatufl^ iv wvev/jian, u><l>6r) dyy- 
 ekois, iKTjpvxOri iv idvecnv, iinaTevdri iv Koa-fjua, avik-q^Ori iv 86iy (l Tim. iii. 16). 
 
 The baptismal formula (Matt, xxviii. 19), by its allocation of Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost, presented a sort of framework in. which to arrange the 
 materials of the new faith. On this basis was constructed in the first cen- 
 turies what was called the rule of faith, regula fidei, which in divers forms, 
 some more concise, others more diffuse, some more popular, others more 
 subtle, is found in the different fathers.^ The more popular form at length 
 settled into what is called the creed of the apostles. This symbol, in that 
 edition of it which is received in the evangelical church, has in its second and 
 most elaborate article on the Son, the following points of belief : et {credo) in 
 Jesum Christum, filium ejus (Deipatris) unicum, Dominum nostrum ; qui con- 
 ceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria virgine ; p'assus sub Pontio Pilato, 
 crucifixus, mortuus et sepultus, descendit ad inferna ; iertia die resurrexit a mor- 
 tuis, ascendit ad ccelos, sedet ad dextram Deipatris omnipotentis ; inde venturus 
 est, judicare vivos et mortuos. 
 
 ' Iren adv. hser. i. 10. TertuU. de prasscr. hser. xiii. adv. Prax. ii. de veland. virg. i. 
 Orig. de principp. prooem. iv 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 761 
 
 Chlkfl^" "^"^ '^'' ?°P"^f ^"™ °^ *^^ confession of faith in relation to 
 occa oierh^'f^' also framed a more rigorous and minute theological digest, 
 Dobs Ti^ f^,^'^^'^''f^\ ^nd controversies which early arosi on certain 
 S ■;?./■%"" '"f '>^"' °f ^"^^ Christian faith, that t/ie Word was 
 lllLS^ ^^°' ""''^ ^y^-^ro or, God was manifested in the flesh, 6.6, 
 23 tlemTr' TZ^^^'l^'^^ °" ^'l^''^^^' one questioning the Godhead, 
 
 I is tn^ TA ' ^f ^^^•^^'he veritable union of the tw^o natures, 
 that sect of *t ;.^°«t''''°' ^1 ^'' Ebionites, denied the Godhead, or like 
 thltelL/.nnH •^''^if .'^"''^.°°""^*'^'^^ ™^"hood of Christ, s;parated 
 mZ.WH '°^^f "^^'^ly fr°"" 'he Christian community, which on her part 
 7oTt/ 5^i-f "^f f '""'"'■^ '■^'^^ '^" '"'^'''^'^ "f God and man shouldunite 
 tint Z^Prf'''^^'"^ ]'':""'"y ^y '"'"''' "/« P^-oP^^ relationship to each, and 
 that while he represented man to God, he should reveal God to man, I8« rov 
 ^€<r.r,v B.ovT.Ko.,^vQp^^„ h,K iSca, ^pb,'iKar4povs oUet6rr,ros d, AvXCav Kal 
 Of^ovocav To,;s a,,foT,pov, <rvvayayc2v, Kal Oei ,^\v 7rapa<Tr^,raL rov ^vOp^'irov, 
 avOpmroLs b. yv<opiaai top O.ov.^ But when it was merely the plenitude of the 
 fK"^?u'"K^-°'' u^ other, which was contested,-as when Anus maintained 
 tnat the bemg who became man in Christ was indeed divine, but created, and 
 subordinate to the supreme God; when, while ascribing to Christ a human 
 body, he held that the place of the soul was occupied by that superior being ; 
 when Apollmaris mamtamed that not only the body of Jesus was truly human, 
 ■ but his soul also, and that the divine being only served in the stead of the 
 third principle in man, the voS? {understanding) ;—\htst were opinions to 
 which It was easier to give a Christian guise. Nevertheless the Church re- 
 jected the Arian idea of a subordinate God become man in Jesus, for this 
 reason among others less essential, that on this theory the image of the God- 
 head would not have been manifested in Christ ; s and she condemned the 
 idea of Anus and Apollinaris, that the human nature of Christ had not the 
 human ^vxr) (soul), or the human yoSs {understanding), for this reason chiefly, 
 that only by the union of the divine, with an entire human nature, could the 
 human race be redeemed.* 
 
 Not only might the one or the other aspect of the nature of Christ be de- 
 faced or put out of sight, but in relation also to the union of the two, there 
 might be error, and again in two opposite directions. The devout enthusiasm 
 of many led them to believe, that they could not draw too closely the newly- 
 entwined bond between heaven and earth ; hence they no longer wished to 
 distinguish between the Godhead and manhood in Christ, and since he had 
 appeared in one person, they acknowledged in him only one nature, that of 
 the Son of God made flesh. Others, more scrupulous, could not reconcile 
 themselves to such a confusion of the divine and the human : it seemed to 
 them blasphemous to say that a human mother had given birth to God : hence 
 they maintained that she had only borne the man whom the Son of God 
 selected as his temple; and that in Christ there were two natures, united 
 indeed so far as the adoration of his followers was concerned, but distinct as 
 regarded their essence. To the Church, both these views appeared to en- 
 croach on the mystery of the incarnation : if the two natures were held to be 
 permanently distinct, then was the union of the divine and human, the vital 
 point of Christianity, destroyed ; if a mixture of the two were admitted, then 
 neither nature in its individual quality was capable of a union with the other, 
 and thus again no true unity would be attained. Hence both the.se opinions 
 
 * Iren. adv. hser. iii. xviii. 7. 
 3 Athanas. contra Arianos, orat. 2, 33. 
 
 ■* Gregor. Naz. Or. 51, p. 740, B. : rh ycLp i,irp6s\riirTov dOepdirev/iov. 6 Sf '^voitcu Tiy Seijj, 
 TOUTO KcU txtb^eTai.. 
 
762 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § 145. 
 
 were condemned, the latter in the person of Eutyches, the former, not with 
 equal justice, in that of Nestorius ; and as the Nicene creed established the 
 true Godhead of Christ, so that of Chalcedon established his true and perfect 
 manhood, and the union of the two natures in one undivided person.^ When 
 subsequently there arose a controversy concerning the will of Christ, analo- 
 gous to that concerning his nature, the Church, in accordance with its pre- 
 vious decisions, pronounced that in Christ, as the God-man, there were two 
 wills, distinct but not discordant, the' human will being subordinate to the 
 divine.® 
 
 In comparison with the controversies, on the being and essence of Christ, 
 the other branch of the faith, the doctrine of his work, was developed in tran- 
 quillity. The most comprehensive view of it was this : the Son of God, by 
 assuming the human nature, gave it a holy and divine character '' — above all 
 he endowed it with immortality ; ^ while in a moral view, the mission of the 
 Son of God, into the world being the highest proof of the love of God, was 
 the most efficacious means of awakening a return of love in the human breast^ 
 To this one great effect of the appearance of Christ, were annexed collateral 
 benefits : his salutary teaching, his sublime exa?nple, were held up to view,!" 
 but especial importance was attached to the violent death which he suffered. 
 The idea of substitution, already given in the New Testament, was more fully 
 developed : the death of Jesus was regarded, now as a ransom paid by him 
 to the devil for the liberation of mankind, who had fallen into the power of 
 the evil one through sin ; now as a means devised by God for removing guilt, 
 and enabling him to remit the punishment threatened to the sins of man, 
 without detriment to his truthfulness, Christ having taken that punishment on 
 himself.!' The latter idea was worked up Anselm, in his book entitled Cur 
 Deus homo, into the well known theory of satisfaction, by which the doctrine 
 of Christ's work of redemption is placed in the closest connexion with that of 
 his person. Man owes to God perfect obedience ; but the sinner — and such 
 are all men — withholds from God the service and honour which are His due. 
 Now God, by reason of his justice, cannot suffer an offence against his 
 honour : therefore, either man must voluntarily restore to God that which is 
 
 ^ — iva. KoX rhv airbv himXtr^eiv uito rhv xipiov ij/uiv 'I. X. (rv/u/)ilivas diravTes iKdi,Sd(rKO/iiy, 
 T^Xeiox rbv airbv h Beirrin, Kal TiXeiov rdv airbv iv i.v0pu>vlyrrin, debv AXijSfis icaX S.vdponrov 
 dXi/^ajs Tbv aOrbt/ iK ^vXV^ "KoyLKys Kal o'djfiaros, bfioaiHa-cov T(p irafpl Karii T'qv. debrriTa., koX OfiO' 
 orfirtoi' Tbv airbv jjplv Karb, t^v 6,vBpii>wlyn]Ta, Karb, v&vto, S/wiov ij/ilv X'^P^^ a/iaprias' irpb aidvav 
 piv eK ToB warpbs •yevvqdivTa Karb, rfiv Bebnyra, iir i<rxaT(i}i> Si tuv iip.epQv rbv avrbp SI fi/ias 
 Kal Sib, rijv ^p^ripav ffUTTiplav iK Maplas rrjs TapBivov t^s BeorSKOv Karb, tt]V avBpujrr&TriTa, Iva 
 Kal rbv airbv Xpurrbv, viov, Kipiov, p^voyevrj, ix Sio tpiaeitiv davyxirtuSy ArpiTmas, iSiatpiras, 
 d^w/jijTWS yvcapL^bfievot'' oida/Mov rijs rSjv ^iffeojv Sta^opas AvripTjp^vTis 5ia r^v ^vtaffLvj ffw^ofU- 
 vijs Si fiSXKov rij! iSibrryros ixaripas (piaeus, Kal els li/ irpbawwOv Kal idav iwb(iTa,<nv a-wrpe- 
 Xoiat)^' oiK ih Sio irpbiruira p^pi^jp-evov ^ Siaipoi/ievov, dXV ^va xal rov airbv vlbv Kal /iovoyevfj, 
 Beov \6yoVf Kipiov 'I. X. 
 
 * The 6th GEcumeincal Synod of Constantinrtple declared : Sio (pviriKb, BeX-^para oix 
 iirevavrla, — AXV iirbptevov rb avBptiirivov airoS S4Xripa —Kal iworair(rbp,svov rcfi BeLip a&rov kcU 
 iravaBeve? BeKi}pn.ri 
 
 ' Athanas. da incarn. 54 : ourds hrjvBptSi-n-qaev, iva rip.ets BeoTroitiBuptev. Greg. Nyt. Orat. 
 cass. 35 : rbre re Kare/dx^V Tp^s to Belov, iva rb iip^repov rij irpbs rb Beiov iirt.p.i^ig. yivqrai, 
 Beiov. Joann. Damasc. de f. orth. iii. 20 : ir&vra i,vk\a^ev (rd aSid^Xi/ rb. vaBri rov avBpiiirou b 
 X.) 'iva irdi/ra d-yido-i;. Greg. Naz. or. ii. 23 f. Hilar. Pictav. detrin. ii. 24 : humani generis 
 causa Deifilius natus ex virgine est — ut homo factus ex virgine naturam in se carnis acciperet 
 perque hujus qdmixtionis societatem sanctijicatum in eo unwersi generis humani corpus exist- 
 eret. For other expressions of the kind, see Miihscher, Dogmengesch., herausg. von Colin, 
 r, § 97, Anm. 10. 
 
 * Miinscher, § 96, Anm. 5,.s. 423 f. 
 ' Augustin, de Catechiz. rudib. 7. 
 
 "• Vid. Mijnscher, § 96. 
 
 " Ibid. § 97. 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 763 
 
 Sthio t^VuT^ ^°' ^°™P!«te satisfaction, render to him more than he has 
 ismlXT}{u°\^°'^ """'' ^' ^ punishment take from man that which 
 norahlP foT .1' / h^PP'"ess for which he was originally created. Man is 
 Perform in JrH^^ !TV'u ^°' ^' ^° °r^ *« God all the duties that he can 
 K h to covrn!l" '° ^i^ 'T ^'"' ^^ P" have no overplus of merit, where- 
 tTon hv tC i r.. "'V ^" '^^ °'^^' h^"<i' that God should obtain ktisfac- 
 InnHnLl '^^''=''°" "^ .^f^^al punishment, is opposed to his unchangeable 
 wa^ «rTa^n n'"^ "^"''f him actually to lead man to that bliss for which he 
 Znr,W ^ f "''^- ■ 7^"' h°^^^^'-' "^^""o' happen consistently with 
 _r^ .K'rf-\'u'"^e*="°" be made for man, and according to the 
 measure of that which has been taken from God, something be rendered to 
 him, greater than all else except God. But this can be none other than God 
 himself; and as, on the other hand, man alone can satisfy for man : it must 
 therefore be a God-man who gives satisfaction. Moreover this cannot consist 
 m active obedience, m a sinless life, because every reasonable being owes this 
 to God on his own behalf; but to suffer death, the wages of sin, a sinless 
 UA '\"°r ™'^' ^"'^ 'hus the satisfaction for the sins of man consists in 
 the death of the God-man, whose reward, since he himself, as one with God, 
 cannot be rewarded, is put to the account of man. 
 
 This doctrinal system of the ancient church concerning the person and 
 work of Christ, passed also into the confessions of the Lutheran churches, and 
 was still more elaborately developed by their theologians.12 With regard to 
 the person of Christ, they adhered to the union of the divine and human 
 natures in one person : according to them, in the act of this union, uniiio 
 personalis, which was simultaneous with the conception, it was the divine 
 nature of the Son of God which adopted the human into the unity of its per- 
 sonality ; the state of union, the unio personalis, was neither essential, nor yet 
 merely accidental, neither mystical nor moral, still less merely verbal, but a 
 real and supernatural union, and eternal in its duration. From this union 
 with the divine nature, there result to the human nature in Christ certain pre- 
 eminent advantages : namely, what at first appears a deficiency, that of being 
 in itself impersonal, and of having personality only by its union with the 
 divine nature ; further, impeccability, and the possibility of not dying. Be- 
 sides these special advantages, the human nature of Christ obtains others also 
 from its union with the divine. The relation of the two natures is not a dead, 
 external one, but a reciprocal penetration, a ire.piy(i>py]tTi% ; an union not like 
 that of two boards glued together, but like that of fire and metal in glowing 
 iron, or of the body and soul in man. This communion of natures, communio 
 tiaturarum, is manifested by a communication of properties, communicaiio 
 idiomatum, in virtue of which the human nature .participates in the advantages 
 of the divine, and the divine in the redeeming work of the human. This re- 
 lation is expressed in the propositions concerning the person, proposition ibus 
 personalibus, and those concerning the properties, idiomaticis ; ttie former are 
 propositions in which the concrete of the one nature, i.e. the one nature as 
 conceived in the person of Christ, is predicated of the other, as in 1 Cor. xv. 
 47: the second man is the Lord front heaven ; the latter are propositions in 
 wliich determinations of one or the other nature, are referred to the entire 
 person {genus idiomaticum), or in which acts of the entire person are referred 
 to one or the other nature {genus apotelesmaticwni), or lastly, in which attri- 
 butes of the one nature are transferred to the other, which however is only 
 12 Comp. Form. Concord., Epit. und Sol. decl. VIII. p. 605 ff. and 761 fF. ed. Hase. 
 Chemniz, de duabus naturis in Christo libellus, and loci tlieol., loc. 2, de filio ; Gerhard. 
 II. th. 1, p. 64off. (ed. 1615); Quenstedt, theol. didact. polem. P. 3, c. 3. Comp. De 
 Wette, bibl. Dogm. § 64 ff. 
 
764 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § 146. 
 
 possible from the divine to the human, not from the human to the divine 
 (genus auchemdHmni). • /-u ■ 
 
 In passing through the successive stages of the work of redemption, Christ 
 with his person endowed with two natures, experienced, according to the ex- 
 pression of the dogmatical theologians, founded on Phil. ii. 6 ff., two states, 
 statum exinanitionis, and statum exaltationis. His human nature in its union 
 with the divine, participated from the moment of conception in divine proper- 
 ties : but as during his earthly life Jesus made no continuous use of them.that 
 life to the time of his death and burial, is regarded as a state of humiliation : 
 whereas, with the resurrection, or even with the descent into hell, commenced 
 the state of exaltation which was consummated by the sessio ad dextram patris. 
 
 As to the work of Christ, the doctrine of our Church attributes to him a 
 triple office. As prophet, he has revealed to man the highest truth, the divine 
 decree of redemption, confirming his testimony by miracles ; and he still un- 
 ceasingly controls the announcement of this truth. As high priest, he has, on 
 the one hand, by his irreproachable life, fulfilled the law in our stead {obedien- 
 tia activa) ; on the other, he has borne, in his sufferings and death, the 
 punishment which impended over us (pbedientia passiva), and now perpetually 
 intercedes for us with the Father. Lastly, as king, he governs the world, and 
 more particularly the Church, which he will lead from the conflicts of earth to 
 the glory of heaven, completing its destiny by the general resurrection and 
 the last judgment. 
 
 § 146. 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Reformed Church did not go thus far with the Lutherans in their 
 doctrine of the person of Christ, for they did not admit the last and boldest 
 consequence drawn by the latter from the union of the manhood and God- 
 head — t\it communicatio idiomatum, or communication of properties.. The 
 Lutherans themselves did not hold that the properties of the human nature 
 were communicated to the divine, nor that all the properties of the divine ■ 
 nature, eternity for example, could be communicated to the human ■} and 
 this gave occasion on the part of the Reformed Church, to the following ob- 
 jection : the communication of properties must be reciprocal and complete, 
 or it is none at all ; moreover, by the communication of the properties of an 
 infinite nature to a finite one, the latter is not less annihilated as to its essence 
 than an infinite nature would be, were it to receive the properties of a finite 
 one.^ When the Lutherans sought shelter in the position, that the proper- 
 ties of the one nature were only so far shared by the other, as according to its 
 character is possible, utiper suam indolem potest^ they in fact did away al- 
 together with the communicatio idiomatum ; and indeed this doctrine has been 
 explicitly given up even by orthodox theologians since Reinhard. 
 
 But the simple root of this complicated exchange of properties, the union of 
 the divine and human natures in one person, has also met with contradiction. 
 
 The Socinians denied it on the ground that two natures, each of which 
 alone constitutes a person, cannot be united to form a single person, especi- 
 ally when they possess properties so opposite, as where the one is immortal, 
 
 ' See the Oratio appended to the locus de pers. et offic. Chr. Gerhard, utsup. p. 719 ff. 
 
 ^ Vid. Gerhard, Il.th.l, p. 685 ff. ; Marheineke, Instit. symb. § 71 f. 
 
 ' Reinhard, Vorles. iiber die Dogm. s, 354, conformably to the proposition urged by the 
 Reformed against the Lutherans : Nulla natura in se ipsam recipit contradictoria, Planck, 
 Gesch. des protest. Lehrbegriffs, Bd. 6, s. 782. 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 765 
 
 the other mortal, the one uncreated, the other created ; * and the Rationalists 
 agree with them, insisting more particularly that the formulae of the Church, 
 in which the above union is defined, are almost entirely negative, thus present- 
 mg no conception to the mind, and that in a Christ, who by the aid of a divine 
 nature dwelling within him, withstood evil and kept himself from sin, the man 
 who is destitute of such aid can have no true example.^ 
 
 The essential and tenable points of the rationalistic objections to this doc- 
 trine, have been the most acutely perceived and arranged by Schleiermacher, 
 who, on this subject as on many others, has brought the negative criticism of 
 the dogmas of the Church to completeness." Before all else he finds it a dif- 
 ficulty, that by the expression, divine nature and human nature, divinity and 
 humanity are placed under one category, and what is more, under the category 
 of nature, which essentially denotes only a limited being, conceived by means 
 of its opposite. Further, while ordinarily one nature is common to many in- 
 dividuals or persons, here one person is supposed to partake of two different 
 natures. Now if by person be meant the permanent conscious unity of a living 
 being, and by nature, the sum of the laws which govern the conditions of life in 
 that being : it is not to be conceived, how two opposite systems of conditions 
 can have but one centre. The absurdity of this doctrine becomes, according 
 to Schleiermacher, especially evident in the supposition of two wills in Christ, 
 since, for consistency, two wills must be associated with two understandings, 
 and as the understanding and will constitute the personality, Christ would on 
 this supposition be inevitably divided into two persons. It is true that 
 the two wills are supposed always to will in unison : but, on the one hand, 
 there results from this only a moral, not a personal unity ; on the other hand, 
 this unison of wills is not possible in relation to the divine and the human will, 
 since the latter, which from its very essence can only exercise itself on par- 
 ticulars as they present themselves in succession, can as little will the same 
 with the former, whose object is the whole in its development, as the human 
 understanding, which acts by reasoning, can think the same with the divine 
 understanding, which acts intuitively. Hence it evidently follows also that a 
 communication of properties between the two natures is not to be admitted. 
 
 The doctrine of the work of Christ did not escape a similar criticism. 
 Passing over what has been objected in point of form to the division of this 
 work into three offices, the ideas of revelation and miracles, under the head 
 of the prophetic office, were chiefly called in question. _ It was argued that 
 these ideas agreed neither objectively with just conceptions of God and the 
 world in their reciprocal relation, nor subjectively with the laws of the human 
 intellect ; that the perfect God could not have created a world which from 
 time to time needed the extraordinary interposition of the Creator, nor more 
 particularly a human nature which was incapable of attaining its destination 
 by the development of its innate faculties ; that the immutable Bemg could 
 not operate on the world first in this manner, then m that, at one time 
 mediately at another immediately, but that he must always have operated on 
 it in the same manner, namely, in himself and on the whole immediately, but 
 
 * Fausti Socini de Christi natura disputatio. Opp. Bibl. Fr. Pol. i, p. 784; Catech. 
 Racov 6. 96 ff. Comp. Marheineke, Instit. symb. § 96. . SpmoEa also, ep. 21, ad Olden- 
 W,; hnn ed Gfrorerfp. 554 says : Quod qumdam ecclesia hts adduut, quod Deus naturam 
 ^Lnam^suS^rit"J»dx^esse,me, quid dicantnescire ; irno,ut vemmfatear, non 
 JZTsabsur7rmihil^quividentur, guam si quis mihi dueret,quod arculus naturam quad- 
 
 r<^tiindu^Jt R,tionalismus, s. 378 ^ ; Wegscheider Inst, theol. § I28 ; Bret- 
 
 Schneider, Ha"db. der Dogm. 2, § I37 ff- ; also Kant, Rehg. mnerhalb der Gran.en der 
 blossen Veraunft. 2tes St. 2ter Absch. b. 
 » Glaubenslehre, 2, §§ 96-98. 
 
•]66 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § 146. 
 
 for us and on individuals mediately ; that to admit an interruption of the 
 order of nature, and of the development of humanity, would be to renounce 
 all rational thought, while, in the particular case in question, a revelation or 
 miracle is not confidently to be recognized as such, since, in order to be sure 
 that certain results have not proceeded from the powers of nature and the 
 faculties of the human mind, a perfect knowledge of the resources of both 
 would be requisite, and of such a knowledge man is not possessed.'' 
 
 But the main difficulty lay in the office of high priest, attributed to Jesus— 
 in the doctrine of the atonement. That which especially drew forth ob- 
 jections was the human aspect which in Anselm's system was given to the 
 relation of God to the Son of man. As it well becomes man to forgive 
 offences without exacting vengeance, so, thought Socinus, might God forgive 
 the offences committed against him by men, without satisfaction.* To meet 
 this objection Hugo Grptius argued, that not as in consequence of personal 
 injuries, but to maintain the order of the moral world inviolable, or in virtue 
 of \\\%justitia rectoria, God cannot forgiye sins without satisfaction.'' Never- 
 theless, granting the necessity for satisfaction, it did not appear to be met 
 by the death of Jesus. While Anselm, and still more decidedly Thomas 
 Aquinas,!" spoke of a satisfaciio superabundans, Socinus denied that Christ 
 had even borne as much punishment as men have deserved ; for every 
 individual man having deserved eternal death, consequently, as many sub- 
 stitutes as sinners ought to have suffered eternal death ; whereas in this case, 
 the single Christ has suffered merely temporal death, and that as an introduc- 
 tion to the highest glory ; nor did this death attach to his divine nature, so 
 that it might be said to have infinite value, but only to his human nature. 
 On the other hand, Duns Scotus,>i in opposition to Thomas, and subse- 
 quently Grotius and the Arminians (equi-distant- from orthodoxy and Socini- 
 anism), adopted the expedient of maintaining, that the merit of Christ was 
 indeed in itself finite like its subject, his human nature, and hence was inade- 
 quate as a satisfaction for the sins of the world ; but that God accepted it as 
 adequate out of his free grace. But from the admission that God can content 
 himself with an inadequate satisfaction, and thus can forgive a part of the 
 guilt without satisfaction, it follows necessarily, that he must also be able thus 
 to forgive the whole. Besides these more precise definitions, however, the 
 fundamental idea of the whole fabric, namely, that one individual can take 
 upon himself the punishment due to the sins of anothpr, has been attacked 
 as an ignorant transference of the conditions of a lower order of relation to a 
 higher. Moral transgressions, it has been said, are not transmissible obliga- 
 tions ; it is not with them as with debts of money, which it is immaterial to 
 the creditor who pays, provided they are paid ; rather it is essential to the 
 punishment of sin, that it should fall on the guilty only.i^ If, according to 
 this, the so-called passive obedience of Christ cannot have been vicarious, 
 still less can his active obedience have been so, since as man he was bound to 
 renderthis on his own behalf.'^ 
 
 In relation to the kingly office of Christ, the hope of his second advent to 
 
 ' Spinoza, tract, theol. polit. c. vi. p. 133. ed. Gfrorer, andep. 23, ad Oldenburg, p. 558 f. 
 Briefe iiber den Rat., 4ter, ster, 6ter, I2ter. Wegscheider, §§ 11, 12. Schleiennacher, §§ 
 
 14- 47- 
 
 ' Prseject. theol. c. xv. 
 
 ' In the work : defensio fidei cath. de satisfactione Chr. adv. F. Socinujn. 
 
 10 Summa, P. 3, Q. 48, A. 7. 
 
 Ji Comra. in Sentt. L. 3, Dist. 19. 
 
 1* See, besides Socinus, XCaiit, Relig. innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 2tes 
 StiicW, Iter Abschn., c. 
 
 1* Tollner, Der thatige Gehorsam Christ! untersucht. 1768, 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. "jQj 
 
 judge the world lost ground in the sentiment of the Church, in proportion as 
 the opinion obtained, that every individual enters on a state of complete re- 
 tribution immediately after death, for this opinion made the general judgment 
 appear superfluous.!* 
 
 § 147- 
 
 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF RATIONALISM. 
 
 The Rationalists, rejecting the doctrine of the Church concerning Christ, 
 his person, and his work, as self-contradictory, useless, nay, even hurtful to 
 the true morality of the religious sentiment, propounded in its stead a system 
 which, while it avoided all contradictions, yet in a certain sense retained for 
 Jesus the character of a divine manifestation, which even, rightly considered, 
 placed him far higher, and moreover embodied the strongest motives to 
 practical piety. "^ 
 
 According to them, Jesus was still a divine messenger, a special favourite 
 and charge of the Deity, inasmuch as, furnished by the disposition of Provi- 
 dence with an extraordinary measure of spiritual endowment, he was born in 
 an age and nation, and guided in a career, the most favourable to his deve- 
 lopment into that for which he was destined ; and, especially, inasmuch as he 
 was subjected to a species of death that rendered possible his apparent 
 resurrection, on which depended the success of his entire work, and was en- 
 compassed by a series of circumstances which actually brought that resurrec- 
 tion to pass. The Rationalists hold that their idea of the Christ is not 
 essentially below the orthodox one, as regards his natural endowments ami 
 his external destiny, for in their view also he is the greatest man that ever 
 trod the earth — a hero, in whose fate Providence is in the highest degree 
 glorified : while, as regards the internal development and free agency of 
 Jesus, they believe their doctrine essentially to surpass that of the Churcli. 
 The Christ of the Church, they contend, is a mere automaton, whose man- 
 hood lies under the control of his Godhead like a lifeless instrument, which 
 acts with moral perfection because it has no power to sin, and for this reason 
 can neither have moral merit, nor be the object of affection and reverence : 
 according to the rationalistic view, on the contrary, Jesus had implanted in 
 him by God the natural conditions only of that which he was ultimately to 
 become, and his realization of this destiny was the result of his own spon- 
 taneity. His admirable wisdom he acquired by the judicious application of 
 his intellectual powers, and the conscientious use of all the aids within his 
 reach ; his moral greatness, by the zealous culture of his moral dispositions, 
 the restraint of his sensual inclinations and passions, and a scrupulous obedi- 
 ence to the voice of his conscience : and on these alone rested all that was 
 exalted in his personality, all that was encouraging in his example. 
 
 As regards the work of Jesus, the rationalistic view is, that he has endeared 
 himself to mankind by this above all else, that he has taught theni a religion 
 to which for its purity and excellence is justly ascribed a certain divine power 
 and dignity; and that he has illustrated and enforced this religion by the 
 brilliant example of his own life. This prophetic office of Christ is with 
 Socinians and Rationalists the essence of his work, and to this they refer all 
 the rest, especially what the doctrine of the Church comprehends under the 
 office of high priest. With them the so-called active obedience has value 
 
 " Wegscheider, § 199. . „ , „ • r -i. j t. ,■ r - «• 
 
 ' Compare with what follows especially the Bnefe uber den Rationalismus, s. 372 ff. ; 
 
 Wegscheider, §§ 128, 133, 140. 
 
768 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § 148. 
 
 solely as an example ; and "the death of Jesus conduces to the forgiveness of 
 sins,, solely by furthering the reformation of the sinner in one of these two 
 ways : either, as a confirmation of his doctrine, and a type of the devoted 
 fulfilment of duty, it serves to kindle a zeal for virtue ; or, as a proof of the 
 love of God to man, of his inclination to pardon the converted sinner, it 
 invigorates moral courage.^ 
 
 If Christ was no more, and did no more, than this rationalistic doctrine 
 supposes, it is not easy to see how piety has come to make him her special 
 object, or dogmatism to lay down special propositions concerning him. 
 Consistent Rationalists have in fact admitted, that what the orthodox dogma 
 calls Christology, forms no integral part of the rationalistic system, since this 
 system consists indeed of a religion which Christ taught, but not of a religion 
 of which he is the object ; that, viewing Christology as the doctrine of the 
 Messiah, it is merely an accommodation to the Jewish mind, — that even 
 taken in a more noble sense, as the doctrine of the life, the actions, and the 
 fate of Jesus as a divine messenger, it does not belong to a system of faith, 
 for the universal truths of religion are as little connected with our ideas con- 
 cerning the person of him who first enunciated them, as are the philosophical 
 propositions in the systems of Leibnitz and Wolf, of Kant, Fichte, and 
 Schelling, with the opinions we may happen to form of the persons of their 
 authors ; that what relates to the person and work of Jesus belongs, not to 
 religion itself, but to the history of religion, and must either be prefixed to a 
 system of religious doctrine as an historical introduction, or appended to it 
 as an elucidatory sequel.* Accordingly Henke, in his Lineaments, has re- 
 moved Christology from its wonted position as an integral part of systematic 
 theology, and has placed it as a subdivision under the head of anthropology. 
 
 Thus, however. Rationalism enters into open war with the Christian faith, 
 for it seeks, to thrust into the background, nay, to banish from the province 
 of theology, that which is its essential point, and corner-stone. But this very 
 opposition is decisive of the insufficiency of the rationalistic system, proving 
 that it does not perform what is demanded from every system of religious 
 doctrine : namely, first, to give adequate expression to the faith which is the 
 object of the doctrine ; and secondly, to place this expression in a relation, 
 whether positive or negative, to science. Now the Rationalists, in the effort 
 to bring <the faith into harmony with science, restrict its expression ; for a 
 Christ who is only a distinguished man, creates indeed no difficulty to the 
 understanding, but is not the Christ in whom the Church believes. 
 
 § 148. 
 
 THE ECLECTIC CHRISTOLOGY OF SCHLEIERMACHER. 
 
 It is the effort of this theologian to avoid both these ungrateful results, and 
 without prejudice to the faith, to form such a conception of the doctrine of the 
 Christ as may be proof against the attacks of science.^ On the one hand, he 
 has adopted in its fullest extent the negative criticism directed by Rationalism 
 against the doctrine of the Church, nay, he has rendered it even more search- 
 ing ; on the other hand, he has sought to retain what Rationalism had lost, 
 
 " For the different views, see Bretschneider, Dogm. 2, s. 353, systematische Entwicklune, 
 § 107. 
 
 » Rolir, Briefe, s. 36, 40Siff. 
 
 ' Schleiermacher, on his Glaubenslehre, to Dr. Liicke, 2tes Sendschreiben, Studien. 2, -x. 
 s. 48iff. ' "" 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 769 
 
 the essential part of positive Christianity : and thus he has saved many in 
 Uiese days from the narrowness of Supranaturalism, and the emptiness of 
 Rationahsm. This simplification of the faith Schleiermacher effects in the 
 following manner : he does not set out, with the Protestant, from the doctrine 
 of Scripture, nor with the Catholic from the decision of the chiirch, for in 
 both these ways he would have to deal with a precise, developed system, 
 which, having originated in remote centuries, must come into colUsion with the 
 science of the present day ; but he sets out from the consciousness of the 
 Christian, from that internal experience resulting to the individual . from his 
 connexion with the Christian community, and he thus obtains a material 
 which, as its basis is feeling, is more flexible, and to which it is easier to give 
 dialectically a form that satisfies science. 
 
 As a member of the Christian church— this is the point of departure in 
 the Christology of Schleiermacher 2 — I am conscious of the removal of my 
 sinfulness, and the impartation of absolute perfection : in other words, in 
 communion with the church, I feel operating upon me the influence of a sin- 
 less and perfect principle. This influence cannot proceed from the Christian 
 ■community as an effect of the reciprocal action of its members on each other ; 
 for to every one of these sin and imperfection are inherent, and the co- 
 operation of impure beings can never produce anything pure as its. result. It 
 must be the influence of one who possessed that sinlessness and perfection as 
 personal qualities, and who moreover stands in such a relation to the 
 ■Christian community, that he can impart these qualities to its members : that 
 is, since the Christian church could not exist prior to this impartation, it must 
 be the influence of its founder. As Christians, we find something operated 
 Avithin us ; hence, as from every effect we argue to its cause, we infer the 
 influence of Christ, and from this again, the nature of his person, which must 
 have had the powers necessary to the exertion of this influence. 
 
 To speak more closely, that which we experience as members of the 
 Christian church, is a strengthening of our consciousness of God, in its 
 relation I to our sensuous existence; that is, it is rendered easier to us to 
 deprive the senses of their ascendancy within us, to make all our impressions 
 the servants of the religious sentiment, and all our actions its offspring. 
 According to what has been stated above, this is the effect wrought in us by 
 •Christ, who imparts to us the strength of his consciousness of God, frees us 
 from the bondage of sensuality and sin, and is thus the Redeemer. In the 
 feeling of the strengthened consciousness of God which the Christian possesses 
 "by his communion with the Redeemer, the obstructions of his natural and 
 social life are not felt as obstructions to his consciousness of God ; they do 
 not interrupt the blessedness which he enjoys in his inmost religious life ; what 
 has been called evil, and divine chastisement, is not such for him : and as it 
 is Christ who by receiving him into the communion of his blessedness, frees 
 him therefrom, the office of expiation is united to that of redemption. 
 
 In this sense alone is the doctrine of the church concerning the threefold 
 office of Christ to be interpreted. He is a prophet, in that by the word—by 
 the setting forth of himself, and not otherwise,— he could draw mankind 
 towards himself, and therefore the chief object of his doctrine was his own 
 .person : he is at once a high priest and a sacrifice, in that he, the sinless one, 
 from whose existence, therefore, no evil could be evolved, entered into com- 
 munion with the life of sinful humanity, and endured the evils^which adhere 
 to it that he might take us into communion with his sinless and blessed life : 
 in other words, deliver us from the power and consequences of sin and evil, 
 
 * Glaubenslehre, 2, §§ 92-105. 
 
 3 C 
 
770 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § 1 48. 
 
 and present us pure before God ; lastly, he is a king, in that he brings these 
 blessings to mankind in, the form of an organized society, of which he is the 
 head. 
 
 From this which Christ effects, we gather what he is. If we owe to him 
 the continual strengthening of the consciousness of God within us, this 
 consciousness must have existed in him in. absolute strength, so that it, or 
 God in the form of the consciousness, was the only operative force within 
 him, and this. is the sense of the expression of the church — God became mar^. 
 in Christ. If, further, Christ works in us a more and more complete. conquest 
 over sensuality, in himself there must have been an absolute conquest over it ; 
 in no moment of his life can the sensual consciousness have disputed the 
 victory with his consciousness of God ; never can a vacillation or struggle 
 have had place within him : in other words, the human nature in him was 
 sinless, and in the stricter sense, that, in virtue of the essential predominance- 
 within him of the higher powers over the lower, it was impossible for him to> 
 sin. By this peculiarity of his nature he is the Archetype, the actualization of 
 the ideal of humanity, which his church can only approach, never surpass ; 
 yet must he, — for otherwise there could be no true fellowship between hinrv 
 and us, — :have.been developed under the ordinary conditions of human life ;: 
 the ideal must in him have been perfectly historical, each phasis of hi.s 
 actual life must have borne the impress of the ideal ; and this is the proper 
 sense of the church formula, that the divine and human nature were in him 
 united into one person. 
 
 Only thus far can the doctrine of the Christ be deduced from the ex- 
 perience of the Christian, and .thus far, according to Schleierniacher, it is not 
 opiposed to science : whatever in the dogma of the church goes beyond this, — 
 as, for example, the supernatural conception of Jesus, and his miracles, also 
 the facts of the. resurrection and ascension, and the prophecies of his second 
 coming to judge the world, — ought not to be brought forward as integral 
 parts of the doctrine of the Christ. For he from whose influence upon us 
 comes all the strengthening of our consciousness of God, may have been the 
 Christ, though he should not have risen bodily from the dead, and ascended 
 into heaven, etc. : so that we believe these facts, not because they are in- 
 volved in our internal [experience, but only because they are stated in. 
 Scripture ; not so much, therefore, in a religious and dogmatical, as in ai> 
 historical manner. 
 
 This Christology is undeniably a beautiful effort of thought, and as we shall 
 presently see, does the utmost towards rendering the union of the divine anci 
 the human in Christ conceivable ; but if its author supposed that he kept the 
 faith unmutilated and science unoffended, we are compelled to pronounce 
 that he was in. both points deceived.* 
 
 Science opeiis its attack on the proposition, that the ideal man was 
 historically manifested in the person of Christ. It did not escape Schleier- 
 macher himself that this was a dangerous point. No sooner has he put forth 
 the above proposition, than he reflects on the difficulty of supposing that the 
 ideal should be realized in one historical individual ; since, in other cases, we 
 never find the ideal realized in a single appearance, but only in an entire cycle- 
 of appearances, which reciprocally complete each other. It is true that this 
 theologian does not hold the character of Chrjst, as the ideal man, to extend 
 to the manifold, relations of human life, so as to be the archetype for all the 
 
 s This opinion has been already put forth in the most noted reviews of Schleiermacher's- 
 system; coiiip. Braniss, iiber Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre ; H. Schmid, iiber Scftl.. 
 Glaubensl. s. 263 ff. ; Baur, die christl. Gnosis, s. 626 ff., and the Review of Rosenkranz,. 
 Jahrb. fiir wiss. Kritik, 1831. 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 7/1 
 
 science, art, and policy, that are developed in human society ; he confines it 
 to the domain of the consciousness of God. But, as Schmid has justly 
 observed, this does not alter the case, for the consciousness of God' also, 
 being, in its development and manifestation, subject to the conditions of 
 hniteness and imperfection; the supposition that even in this department 
 exclusively, the ideal was manifested in a single historical individual, involves 
 a violation of the laws of nature by a miracle. This, however, is far from 
 a arming Schleiermacher ; on the contrary, he maintains that this is the 
 place, and the only place, in which the Christian doctrine must necessarily 
 admit a miracle, since the originating of the person of Christ can only be 
 conceived as the result of a special divine act of creation. It is true, he 
 limits the miraculous to the first introduction of Christ into the series of 
 existences, and allows the whole of his further development to have been 
 subject to all the conditions of finite existence : but this concession cannot 
 repair the breach, which the supposition only of one miracle makes in the 
 scientific theory of the world. Still less can any help be derived from vao-u'e 
 analogies like the following : as it is still possible that matter should begin to 
 agglomerate and thence to revolve in infinite space ; so science must admit, 
 that there may be in the domain of spiritual life an appearance, which in like 
 manner we can only explain as the commencement, the first pdint, in a higher 
 process of development.* 
 
 This comparison suggests the observation made by Braniss, namely, that 
 it would be contrary to the laws of all development to regard thfe initial 
 member of a series as the greatest — to suppose that in Christ, the founder of 
 that community, the object of which is the strengthening of the consciousness 
 of God, the strength of this consciousness was absolute, a perfection which is 
 rather the infinitely distant goal of the progressive development of the 
 community founded by him. Schleiermacher does indeed attribute to Chris- 
 tianity perfectibility in a certain sense : not as a capability of surpassing 
 Christ in his nature, but solely in the conditions of its manifestation. His 
 view is this : the limitation, the imperfection of the relations of Christ, the 
 language in which he expressed himself, the nationality within which he was 
 placed, modified his thoughts and actions, but in their form alone ; their 
 essence remained nevertheless the perfect ideal. Now if Christianity in its 
 progressive advancement in doctrine and practice, rejects more and more of 
 those temporal and national limitations by which the actions and teaching of 
 Jesus were circumscribed ; this is not to surpass Christ, it is rather to give a 
 more perfect expression of his inner life. But, as Schmid has satisfactorily 
 shown, an historical individual is that which appears of him, and no more ;, 
 his internal nature is known by his words and actions, the condition of his 
 age and nation are a part of his individuality, and what lies beneath this 
 phenomenal existence as the essence, is not the nature of this individual, but 
 the human nature in general, which in particular beings operates only under 
 the limitations of their individuality, of time, and of circumstances. Thus to 
 surpass the historical appearance of Christ, is to rise nearer, not to his 
 nature, but to the idea of humanity in general ; and if we are to suppose that 
 it is still Christ whose nature is more truly expressed, when with the rejection 
 of the temporal and national, the essential elements of his doctrine and life 
 are further developed : it would not be difficult, by a similar abstraction, to- 
 represent Socrates, as the one who in this manner cannot be surpassed. 
 
 As neither an individual in general, nor, in particular, the commencing 
 point in an historical series, can present the perfect ideal : so, if Christ be 
 
 * 2t^ Sendschreiben.C-^'-^ 
 
772 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § I48. 
 
 regarded decidedly as man, the archetypal nature and development which 
 Schleiermacher ascribes to him, cannot be brought to accord with the laws 
 of human existence. Impeccability, in the sense of the impossibility of 
 sinning, as it is supposed, to exist in Christ, is a quality totally incompatible 
 with the human nature ; for to man, in consequence of his agency being 
 liable to guidance by the motives of the senses as well as of the reason, the 
 possibility of sinning is essential. And if Christ was entirely free from in- 
 ward conflict, from all vacillation of the spiritual life between good and evil, 
 he could not be a man of like nature with us ; for the action and re-action 
 between the spiritual nature in general and the external world, and, in par- 
 ticular, between the superior religious atid moral powers, and the operations of 
 the mind in subordination to the senses, necessarily manifests itself as a 
 conflict, ° 
 
 If, on the one side, the Christology in question is far from satisfying 
 science, it is equally far, on the other side, from satisfying the faith. We will 
 not enter into those points in which, instead of the decisions of the church, 
 it at leasts offers acceptable substitutes (concerning which, however, it may 
 be doubted whether they are a full compensation).^ , Its disagreement with 
 the faith is the most conspicuous in the position, that the facts of the resur- 
 rection and ascension do not form essential parts of the Christian faith. For 
 the belief in the resurrection of Christ is the foundation stone, without which 
 the Christian church could not have been built; nor could the cycle of 
 Christian festivals, which are the external representation of the Christian 
 faith, now suffer a more fatal mutilation than by the removal of the festival of 
 Easter : the Christ who died could not be what he is in the belief of the 
 church, if he were not also the Christ who rose again. 
 
 Thus the doctrine of Schleiermacher concerning the person and conditions 
 of Christ, betrays a twofold inadequacy, not meeting the requirements either 
 of the faith of the church, or of science. It is, clear, however, from his 
 doctrine of the work of Christ, that in order to satisfy the former so far as is 
 here done, such a contradiction of the latter was quite unnecessary, and an 
 easier course might have been pursued. For resting merely on a backward 
 inference from the inward experience of the Christian as the effect, to the 
 person of Christ as the cause, the Christology of Schleiermacher has but a 
 frail support, since it cannot be proved that that inward experience is not to 
 be explained without the actual existence of such a Christ. Schleiermacher 
 himself did not overlook the probable objection that the church, induced 
 merely by the relative excellence of Jesus, conceived an ideal of absolute 
 perfection, and transferred this to the historical Christ, from which combina- 
 tion she continually strengthens and vivifies her consciousness of God-: but 
 he held this objection to be precluded by the observation, that sinful 
 humanity, by reason of the mutual dependence of the will and the under- 
 standing, is incapable of conceiving an immaculate ideal. But, as it has been 
 aptly remarked, if Schleiermacher claims a miracle for the origination of his 
 real Christ, we have an equal right to claim one for the origination of the 
 ideal of a Christ in the human soul.'' Meanwhile, it is not true that sinful 
 human nature is incapable of conceiving a sinless ideal. If by this ideal be 
 understood merely a general conception, then the conception of the perfect and 
 the sinless is as necessarily co-existent with the consciousness of imperfection 
 and sinfulness as the conception of infinity with that of flniteness ; since the two 
 
 * Schmid, ut sup. 
 
 * Comp. Rosenkranz, ut sup. s. 935 fF. 
 ' Baur, ut sup. s. 653. 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 773 
 
 ideas conditionate one another, and the one is not possible without the otlier. 
 If, on the other hand, by this ideal be meant a concrete image, the conception 
 ot a character in which all the individual features are portrayed, it may be 
 admitted that a sinful individual or age cannot depict such an image without 
 blemish ; but of this inability the age or individual itself is not conscious, not 
 havmg any superior standard, and if the image be but slightly drawn, if it 
 leave room for the modifications of increased enlightenment, it may continue 
 to be regarded as immaculate even by a later and more clear-sighted age, so 
 long as this age is inclined to view it under the most favourable light. 
 
 We may now estimate the truth of the reproach, which made Schleier- 
 macher so indignant, namely, that his was not an historical, but an ideal 
 Christ. It is unjust in relation to the opinion of Schleiermacher, for he 
 firmly believed that the Christ, as construed by him, really lived ; but it is 
 just in relation to the historical state of the facts, because such a Christ never 
 existed but in idea ; and in this sense, indeed, the reproach has even a stronger 
 bearing on the system of the church, because the Christ therein presented 
 can still less have existed. Lastly, it is just in relation to the consequence 
 of Schleiermacher's system, since to effect what Schleiermacher makes him 
 effect, no other Christ is necessary, and, according to the principles of 
 Schleiermacher respecting the relation of God to the world, of the super- 
 natural to the natural, no other Christ is possible, than an ideal one : — ^and 
 in this sense the reproach attaches specifically to Schleiermacher's doctrine, 
 for according to the premises of the orthodox doctrine, an historical Christ 
 is both possible and necessary. 
 
 § 149- 
 
 CHRISTOLOGY INTERPRETED SYMBOLICALLY. KANT. DE WETTE. 
 
 The attempt to retain in combination the ideal in Christ with the historicaI<- 
 having failed, these two elements separate themselves : the latter falls as a 
 natural residuum to the ground, and the former rises as a pure sublimate into 
 the ethereal world of ideas. Historically, Jesus can have been nothing more 
 than a person, highly distinguished indeed, but subject to the limitations in- 
 evitable to all that is mortal : by means of his exalted character, however, he 
 exerted so powerful an influence over the religious sentiment, that it' consti- 
 tuted him the ideal of piety ; in accordance with the general rule, that an 
 historical fact or person cannot become the basis of a positive religion until it 
 is elevated into the sphere of the ideal.^ 
 
 Spinoza made this distinction when maintainin^that to know the historical 
 Christ is not necessary to felicity, but only to know the ideal Christ, namely^ 
 the eternal wisdom of God, which is manifested in all things, in the human 
 mind particularly, and in a pre-eminent degree in Jesus Christ— that wisdom 
 which alone teaches man what is true and false, good and bad.^ 1 
 
 According to Kant, also, it ought not to be made a condition of salva-\A^^ 
 tion to believeythat there was once a man who by his holiness and merit gave f^' 
 satisfaction for himself and for all others ; for of this the reason tells us 
 
 1 Thus Schmid.ut sup. s. 267. ,..,,. 
 
 2 Ep. 21 ad Oldenburg. Opp. ed. Gfrbrer, p. 556 -.—dico, ad salutem non esse ommiiff 
 necesse Christtun secundum caniem noscere ; sed ed mtenio illp filio Dei, h. e. Dei leterna 
 satien'tia nuce sese in omnibus rebus, et maxime in metite humana, et omnium maxime «» 
 Christo fesu manifestavit, longe aliter sentiendiim. Nam nemo absque hac ad statum bealUu- 
 dinis potest fei-venire, utpote quce sola docet, quid vertnn et falsum, bonum et malum sit. 
 
774 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § I49. 
 
 nothing; but it is the duty of men universally to elevate themselves to the 
 ideal of moral perfection deposited in the reason, and to obtain moral strength 
 by the contemplation of this ideal. Such moral faith alone man is bound. to> 
 exercise, and not historical faith. 2 
 
 Taking his stand on this principle, Kant proceeds to interpret the doctrines 
 of the Bible and the church as symbols of the ideal. It is humanity, or the 
 rational part of this system of things, in its entire moral perfection, that could 
 alone make a world the object of divine Providence, and the end of creation. 
 This idea of a humanity well-pleasing to God, has existed in God from all 
 eternity ; it proceeds from his essence, and is therefore no created thing, but 
 his eternal Son, the Word, through whom, that is, for whose sake, all things 
 were created, and in whom God loved the world. As this idea of moral per- 
 fection, has not man for its author, as it has been introduced into him even 
 without his being able to conceive how his nature can have been susceptible 
 of such an idea, it may be said to have come down to us from heaven, and to 
 have assumed the human nature, and this union with us may be regarded as 
 an abasement of the Son of God. This ideal of moral perfection, so far as it 
 is compatible with the condition of a being dependent on necessities and in- 
 clinations, can only be conceived by us under the form of a man. Now just 
 as we can obtain no idea of the amount of a force, but by calculating the 
 degree of resistance which it can overcome, so we can form no estimate of 
 the strength of the moral disposition, but by imagining hard conflicts in which 
 it can triumph : hence the man who embodies the perfect ideal must be one 
 who would voluntarily undertake, not only to perform every duty of man on 
 his own behalf, and by precept and example to disseminate the good and the 
 true around him as extensively as possible ; but also, though tempted by the 
 .strongest allurements, to submit, to all sufferings, even to the most ignominious 
 death, for the welfare of mankind. 
 
 In a practical relation this idea has its reality completely within itself, and 
 it needed no exemplification in experience in order to become a model bind- 
 ing on us, since it is enshrined as such in our reason. Nay, this ideal remains 
 essentially confined to the reason, because it cannot be adequately repre- 
 sented by any example in outward experience, since such an example would 
 not fully disclose the inWard disposition, but would only admit of our forming 
 dubious inferences thereon. Nevertheless, as all men ought to be conformed 
 to this ideal, and consequeritly must be capable of such conformity, it is 
 always possible in experience that a man may appear, who in his teaching, 
 course of life, and sufferings, may present an example of a man well-pleasing 
 to God : but even in this manifestation of the God-man, it would not properly 
 be that which is obvious to the senses, or can be known by experience, which 
 would be the object of saving faith ; but the ideal lying in the reason, which 
 we should attribute to this manifestation of the God-man, because he appeared 
 to us to be conformed to it — that is, indeed, so far only as this can be conr 
 eluded from outward experience. Inasmuch as all of us, though naturally 
 generated men, feel bound, and consequently able, ourselves to present such 
 an example, we have no reason to regard that exemplification of the ideal 
 man as supernaturally generated, nor does he need the attestation of miracles ; 
 for besides the moral faith in the idea, nothing further is requisite than the 
 historical conviction that his life was conformed to that idea, in order to 
 accredit him as its personification. 
 
 He who is conscious of such a moral disposition, as to have a well-founded 
 confidence, that under temptations and sufferings similar to those which are 
 
 ^ Religion innerhalb der Granzen der blossen Vernunft. diittes Stiick, ite Abthl. vii. 
 
DOGMATIC lilPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 775 
 
 attributed to the ideal man, as a touchstone of his moral disposition, he would 
 adhere unalterably to this exemplar, and faithfully follow his steps, such a 
 man alone is entitled to consider himself an object of the divine complacency. 
 10 elevate himself to such a state of mind, man must depart from evil, cast 
 OH the old man, crucify the flesh ; a change which is essentially connected 
 with a series of sorrows and sufferings. These the former man has deserved 
 as a punishment, but they fall on the new: for the regenerated man, who 
 takes them on himself, though physically and in his empirical character, as a 
 teing determined by the senses, he remains the former man ; is morally, as 
 an intellectual being, with his changed disposition, become a new: man. 
 Having by this change taken upon him the disposition of the Son of God, 
 that which is strictly a substitution of the new man for the old, may be repre- 
 sented, by a personification of the idea, as a substitution of the Son of God, 
 and It may be said, that the latter himself, as a substitute, bears for man, for 
 all who practically believe in him, the guilt of sin ; as a redeemer, satisfies 
 supreme justice by suffering and death ; and as an intercessor, imparts the 
 hope of appearing justified before the; judge: the suffering which the new 
 man, in dying to the old, must perpetually incur through life, being conceived 
 in the representative of mankind, as a death suffered once for all.* 
 
 Kant, like Schleiermacher (whose Christology in many respects recalls that 
 of Kant),^ carries his appropriation of the Christology of the church no 
 further than the death of Christ: of his resurrection and ascension, he says, 
 that they cannot be available to religion within the limits of pure reason, 
 because they would involve the materiality of all existences. Still, in another 
 light, he employs these facts as symbols of the ideas of the reason ; as images 
 of the entrance into the abode of blessedness, that is, into communion with 
 all the good : while Tieftrunk has yet more decidedly given it as his opinion, 
 that without the resurrection, the history of Jesus would terminate in a re- 
 volting catastrophe ; that the eye would turn away with melancholy and dis- 
 satisfaction from an event, in which the pattern of humanity fell a victim to 
 impious rage, and in which the scene closed with a death as unmerited as 
 sorrowful ; that the history requires to be crowned with the fulfilment of the 
 expectation towards which the moral contemplations of every one are ir- 
 resistibly drawn — -with the passage into a compensating immortality.^ 
 
 In the same manner, De Wette ascribed to the evangelical history, as to 
 every history, and particularly to the history of religion, a symbolical, ideal 
 character, in virtue of which it is the expression and image of the human 
 mind and its various operations. The history of the miraculous conception 
 of Jesus represents the divine origin of religion; the narratives of his miracles, 
 the independent force of the human mind, and the sublime doctrine of 
 spiritual self-reliance ; his resurrection is the image of the victory of truth, a 
 fore-shadowing of the future triumph of good over evil ; his ascension, the 
 symbol of the eternal majesty of religion. The fundamental religious ideas 
 which Jesus enunciated in his teaching, are expressed with equal clearness in 
 his history. This history is an expression of devoted enthusiasm,, in the 
 courageous ministry of Jesus, and in the victorious power of his appearance ; 
 of resignation, in his contest with the wickedness of men, in the rnekncholy 
 of his premonitory discourses, and above all in his death. Christ on the 
 cross is the image of humanity purified by self-sacrifice ; we ought all to 
 crucify ourselves with him, that we may rise with him to new life. Lastly, 
 
 * Ut sup. 2tes Stiick, iter Abschn. 3tes St'uck,'ite"Abthlg. 
 
 ^ This is shown by Baur, christl. Gnosis, s. 660 S. 
 
 " Censur des christl. protestantischen Lehrbegrififs, 3, a. 180. 
 
776 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § 149. 
 
 the idea of devotion was the key-note in the history of Jesus, every moment 
 of his life being dedicated to the thought of his heavenly Father. '^ 
 
 At an earlier period, Horst presented this symboHcal view of the history of 
 Jesus with singular clearness. Whether, he says, all that is narrated of Christ 
 happened precisely so, historically, is a question indifferent to us, nor can it 
 now be settled. N,ay, if we would be candid with ourselves, that which was 
 once sacred history for the Christian believer, is, for the enlightened portion 
 of our cotem'poraries, only fable : the narratives of the supernatural birth of 
 Christ, of his miracles, of his resurrection and ascension, must be rejected by 
 us as at variance with the inductions of our intellect. Let them however 
 only be no longer interpreted irierely by the understanding as history, but by 
 the feelings and imagination, as poetry; and it will be found that in these 
 narratives nothin'g is invented arbitrarily, but all springs from the depths and 
 divine impulses of the human miiid. Considered from this point of view, we 
 may annex to the history of Christ all that is important to religious trust, 
 animating to the pure dispositions, attractive to the tender feelings. That 
 history is a beautiful, sacred poem of the human race — a poem in which are 
 embodied all the wants of our religious instinct; and this is the highest 
 honour of Christianity, and the strongest proof of its universal applicability. 
 The history of the gospel is in fact the history of human nature conceived 
 ideally, and exhibits to us in the life of anundividual, what man ought to be, 
 and, united with him by following his doctrine and example, can actually 
 become. It is not denied that what to us can appear only sacred poetry, was 
 to Paul, John, Matthew and Luke, fact and certain history. But it was the 
 very same internal cause which made the narratives of the gospel sacred fact 
 and history to them, which makes those narratives to us a sacred mythus and 
 poetry. The points of view only are different : human nature, and in it the 
 religious impulse, remains ever the same. Those first Christians needed in 
 their world, for the animating of the religious and moral dispositions in the 
 men of their time, history and fact, of which, however, the inmost kernel 
 consisted of ideas : to us, the facts are become superannuated and doubtful, 
 and only for the sake of the fundamental ideas, are the narratives of those' 
 facts an object of reverence.* 
 
 This view was met immediately on the part of the church by the reproach, 
 that instead of the riches of divine reality which faith discovers in the history 
 of Christ, it palmed upon us a collection of empty ideas and ideals ; instead 
 of a consolatory work effected, an overwhelming obligation. For the cer- 
 tainty, that God once actually united himself with human nature, the admoni- 
 tion that man ought to obtain divine dispositions, offers a poor compensation : 
 for the peace which the redemption completed by Christ brings to the be- 
 liever, it is no equivalent to put before him the duty of freeing himself from 
 sin. By this system, man is thrust out of the reconciled world in which 
 Christianity places him, into an unreconciled world, out of a world of happi- 
 ness into a world of misery ; for where reconciliation has yet to be effected, 
 where happiness has yet to be attained, there is at present enmity and un- 
 happiness. And, in truth, the hope of entire deliverance from these conditions, 
 is, according to the principles of this system, which only admits an infinite 
 approximation towards the idea, a deceptive one ; for that which is only to be 
 reached in an endless progression, is in fact unattainable. 
 
 But not the faith alone, science also in its newest development, has found 
 
 ' Religion iind Theologie, 2ter Abschnitt, Kap. 3 ; comp. bibl. Dogmatik, § 255 ; kirch- 
 liche, § 64 ff. 
 
 ' Xdeen iiber Mythologie u. s. w. in Henke's neuer Magazin, b. s. 454 ff. Comp. Henke'& 
 Museum, 3, s. 455. 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. TJf 
 
 this system unsatisfactory. Science has perceived that to convert ideas 
 MHiply into an obligatory possibility, to which no reality corresponds, is in 
 fact to annihilate them ; just as it would be to render the infinite finite, to- 
 represent it as that which lies beyond the finite. Science has conceived that 
 the mfinite has its existence in the alternate production and extinction of the 
 finite ; that the idea is realised only in the entire series of its manifestations > 
 that nothing can come into existence which does not already essentially exist > 
 and, therefore, that it is not to be required of man, that he should reconcile 
 himself with God, and assimilate his sentiments to the divine, unless this. 
 reconciliation and this assimilation are already virtually effected. 
 
 § 150- 
 
 THE SPECULATIVE CHRISTOLOGY. 
 
 Kant had already said that the good principle did not descend from 
 heaven merely at a particular time, but had descended on mankind invisibly 
 from the commencement of the human race ; and Schelling laid down the 
 proposition : the incarnation of God is an incarnation from eternity.^ But 
 while the former understood under that expression only the moral instinct, 
 which, with its ideal of good, and its sense of duty, has been from the be- 
 ginning implanted in man ; the latter understood under the incariiate Son of 
 God the finite itself, in the form of the human consciousness, which in its 
 contradistinction to the infinite, wherewith it is nevertheless one, appears as a 
 suffering God, subjected to the conditions of time. 
 
 In the most recent philosophy this idea has been further developed in the 
 following manner.'"' When it is said of God that he is a Spirit, and of man 
 that he also is a Spirit, it follows that the two are not essentially distinct. To 
 speak more particularly, it is the essential property of a spirit, in the distribu- 
 tion of itself into distinct personalities, to remain identical with itself, to 
 possess itself in another than itself. Hence the recognition of God as a spirit , 
 implies, that God does not remain as a fixed and immutable Infinite encom- 
 passing the Finite, but enters into it, produces the Finite, Nature, and the 
 human mind, merely as a limited manifestation of himself, from which h& 
 eternally returns into unity. As man, considered as a finite spirit, limited to 
 his finite nature, has not truth ; so God, considered exclusively as ah infinite 
 spirit, shut up in his infinitude, has not reality. The infinite spirit is real only 
 when it discloses itself in finite spirits ; as the finite spirit is true only when it 
 merges itself in the infinite. The true and real existence of spirit, therefore, 
 is neither in God by himself, nor in man by himself, but in the God-man > 
 neither in the infinite alone, nor in the finite alone, but in the interchange of 
 impartation and withdrawal between the two, which otj the part of, God is 
 revelation, on the part of man religion. 
 
 If God and man are in themselves one, and if religion is the human side 06 
 this unity : then must this unity be made evident to man in religion, arid be- 
 come in him consciousness and reality. Certainly, so long as man knows not 
 that he is a spirit, he cannot know that God is man : while he is under the 
 guidance of nature only, he will deify nature ; when he has learned to submit 
 
 ' Vorlesungen iiber die Methode des akadesiisGhen Studiums, s. 192. 
 
 2 Hegel's Phanoraenologie des Geistes, s. 561 ff. ; Vorlesungen iiber die Philos. der 
 Relie 2 s 234 ff. Marheineke, Grundlehren der christl. Dogmatik. s. 174 ff. Rosenkranz,, 
 Encyklo'padie der theol. Wissenschaften, s. 38ff., 148 ff. ; comp. my Streitschriften, ates. 
 Heft, s. 76 ff. 
 
778 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § ISO. 
 
 himself to law, and thus to regulate his natural tendencies by. external means, 
 he will set God before him as a lawgiver. But when, in the vicissitudes of 
 the world's history, the natural state discloses its corruptions, the legal its 
 misery j the former will experience the need of a God who elevates it above 
 itself, the latter, of a God who descends to its level. Man being once matute 
 enough to receive as his religion the truth that God is man, and man of a 
 divine race; it necessarily follows, since religion is the form in which the 
 truth presents itself 'to the popular mind, that this truth must appear, in a 
 guise intelligible to all, as a fact obvious to the senses : in other words, there 
 must appear a human individual who is recognised as the visible God. This 
 God-man uniting in a single being the divine essence and the human person- 
 ality, it may be said of him that he had the Divine Spirit for a father and a 
 woman for his mother. His personality reflecting itself not in himself, but in 
 the absolute substancej having the will to- exist only for God, and not at all 
 for itself, he is sinless and perfect. As a man of Divine essence, he is the 
 power that subdues nature, a worker of miracles ; but as God in a human mani- 
 festation, he is dependent on nature, subject to its necessities and sufferings — 
 is in a state of abasement. Must he even pay the last tribute to nature ? does 
 not the fact that the human nature is subject to death preclude the idea that 
 that nature is one with the divine ? No : the God-man dies, and thus proves 
 that the incarnation of God is real, that the infinite spirit does riot scorn to 
 descend into the lowest depths of the finite, because he knows how to find ^ 
 way of return into himself, because in the most entire alienation of himself, 
 he can retain his identity. Further, the God-man, in so far as he is a spirit 
 reflected in his infinity, stands contrasted with men, in so far a"s they are 
 limited to their finiteness : hence opposition and contest result, and the death 
 of the God-Man becomes a violent one, inflicted by the hands of sinners; so 
 that to physical degradation is added the moral degradation of ignominy and 
 accusation of crime. If God then finds a passage from heaven to the grave, 
 so must a way be discoverable for man from the, grave to heaven : the death of 
 the prince of life is the life of mortals. By his entrance into the world as 
 God-man, God showed him'self reconciled to man; by his dying, in which act 
 he cast off the limitations of mortality, he showed moreover the way in which 
 he perpetually effects that reconciliation : namely, by remaining, throughout 
 his manifestation of himself under the limitations of a natural existence, and 
 his suppression of that existence, identical with himself. Inasmuch as the 
 death of the God-man is merely the cessation of his state of alienation from 
 the infinite, it is in fact an exaltation and return to God, and thus the death is 
 necessarily followed by the resurrection and ascension. 
 
 The God-man, who during his life stood before his coteraporaries as an in- 
 dividual distinct from themselves, and perceptible by the senses, is by death 
 takdn out of their sight ; he enters into their imagination and memory : the 
 unity of the divme and human in him, becomes a part of, the general 
 consciousness;- and the chiirch must repeat spiritually, in the souls of its 
 members, those events of his life which he experienced externally. The be- 
 liever, finding himself environed with the conditions of nature, must, like 
 Christ, "die to nature— but only inwardly, as Christ did outwardly, — must 
 spiritually crucify himself and be buried with Christ, that by the virtual sup- 
 pression of his oWn sensible existence, he may become, in so far as he is a 
 spirit, identical with himself, and participate in the bliss and glory of 
 Christ. 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. ^J^C) 
 
 / LAST DILEMMA. 
 
 Thus by a liigher mode of argumentation, from the idea of God and man 
 m their reciprocal relation, the truth of the coni:eption. which the church 
 lorms ot Christ appears to be confirmed, and we seem to be reconducted to 
 tne orthodox point of view, though by an inverted patli : for while there, the 
 truth of the conceptions of the church concerning Christ is deduced from 
 the correctness of the evangelical history ; here, the veracity of the history is 
 deduced from the truth of those conceptions. That which is rational is also 
 real; the adea is not merely the moral imperative of Kant, but also an actu- 
 ahty. Proved to be an idea of the reason, the unity of the divine and human 
 nature must also have an historical existence. The unity of God with man, 
 says Marhemeke,! was really and visibly manifested in the person of Jesus 
 Christ ; m him, according to Rosenkranz,^ the divine power over nature was 
 concentrated, he could not act otherwise than miraculously, and the working 
 of miracles, which surprises us, was to him natural. His resurrection, says 
 Conradi,^ is the necessary sequel of the completion of his personality, and so 
 little ought it to surprise us, that, on the contrary, we must rather have been 
 surprised if it had not happened. 
 
 But do these deductions remove the contradictions which have exhibited 
 themselves in the doctrine of, the church, concerning the person and work of 
 Christ ? We need only to compare the structures, which Rosenkranz in his 
 Review has passed on Schleierraacher's criticism of the Christology ; of tlie 
 church, with what the same author proposes as a substitute in his Encyclo- 
 paedia, in order to perceive, that the general propositions on the unity of the 
 divine and human natures, do not in the least serve to explain the appearance of 
 a person, in whom this unity existed individually, in an exclusive manner. 
 Through I may conceive that the divine spirit in a state of renunciation and 
 xibaseraent becomes the human, and that the human nature in its return into 
 and above itself becomes the divine ; this does not help me to conceive more 
 ■easily, how the divine and human natures can have constituted the distinct 
 and yet united portions of an historical person. Though I may see the human 
 mind in its unity with the divine, in the course of the world's history, more 
 and more completely establish itself as the power which subdues nature ; 
 this is quite another thing, than to conceive a single man endowed with such 
 power, for individual, voluntary acts. Lastly, from the truth, that the sup- 
 pression of the natural existence is the resurrection of the spirit, can never be 
 deduced the bodily resurrection of an individual. 
 
 We should thus have fallen back again to Kant's point of view, which we 
 have ourselves found unsatisfactory : for if the idea have no corresponding 
 reality, it is an empty obligation and ideal. But do we then deprive the idea 
 of all reality ? By no means : we reject only that which does not follow from 
 the premises.* If reality is ascribed to the idea of the unity of the divine, and 
 human natures, is this equivalent to the admission that this unity must 
 actually have been once manifested, as it never had been, and never more 
 will be, in one individual ? This is indeed not the mode in which Idea 
 realizes itself; it is not wont to lavish all its fulness on one exemplar, and 
 
 1 Dogmatik, § 326. 
 
 2 Encyklopadie, s. 160. 
 
 3 Selbstbewiisstsein und Offenbarung, s. 295 f. Comp. Bauer, Recens. des L. J., 
 Jalirbiicher f. wiss. Kridk, 1836, Mai, s. 699 ff. 
 
 ■* Compare with this my Streitschriften, 3 Heft, s. 68 ff. 125, 
 
78o CONCLUDING DISSERTATION. § IJI. 
 
 be niggardly towards all others'— to express itself perfectly in that one indivi- 
 dual, and imperfectly in all the rest : it rather loves to distribute its riches 
 among a multiplicity of exemplars which reciprocally comple|e each other— 
 in the alternate appearance and suppression of a series of individuals. And 
 is this no true realization of the idea? is not the idea of the unity of the 
 divine and human natures a real one in a far higher sense, when I regard the 
 whole race of mankind as its realization, than when I single out one man as 
 such a realization ? is not an incarnation of God from eternity, a truer one 
 than an incarnation limited to a particular point of time. 
 
 This is the key to the whole of Christology, that, as subject of the predicate 
 which the church assigns to Christ, we place, instead of an individual, an idea ;. 
 but an idea which has an existence in reality, not in the mind only, like that 
 of Kant. In an individual, a God-man, the properties and functions which 
 the church ascribes to Christ contradict themselves ; in the idea of the race, 
 they perfectly agree. Humanity is the union of the two natures— God be- 
 come man, the infinite manifesting itself in the finite, and the finite spirit re- 
 membering its infinitude ; it is the child of the visible Mother and the in- 
 visible Father, Nature and Spirit ; it is the worker of miracles, in so far as in 
 the course of human history the spirit more and more completely subjugates- 
 nature, both within and around man, until it lies before him as the inert mat- 
 ter on which he exercises his active power;^ it is the sinless existence, for the 
 course of its development is a blameless one, pollution cleaves to the indivi- 
 dual only, and does not touch the race or its history. It is Humanity that 
 dies, rises, and ascends to heaven; for from the negation of its phenomerial 
 life there ever proceeds a higher spiritual life ; from the suppression of its 
 mortality as a personal, national, and terrestrial spirit, arises its union with 
 the infinite spirit of the heavens. By faith in this Christ, especially in his- 
 death and resurrection, man is justified before God ; that is, by thd kindling 
 within him of the idea of Humanity, the individual man participates^ in the 
 divinely human life of the species. Now the main element of that idea is,. 
 that the negation of the merely natural and sensual life, which is itself the 
 negation of the spirit (the negation of negation, therefore), is the sole way to 
 true spiritual life. '' 
 
 This alone is the absolute sense of Christology : that it is annexed to the 
 person and history of one individual, is a necessary result of the historical' 
 form which Christology has taken. '' Schleiermacher was quite right when he 
 foreboded, that the speculative view would not leave much more of the his- 
 torical person of the Saviour than was retained by the Ebionites. The pheno- 
 menal history of the individual, says Hegel, is only a starting point for the- 
 mind. Faith, in her early stages, is governed by the senses, and therefore 
 contemplates a temporal history ; what she holds to be true is the external,, 
 ordinary event, the evidence for which is of the historical, forensic kind — a 
 fact to be proved by the testimony of the senses, and the moral confidence 
 inspired by the witnesses. But mind having once taken occasion by this 
 external fact, to bring under its consciousness the idea of humanity as one- 
 with God, sees in the history only the presentation of that idea ; the object 
 of faith is completely changed ; instead of a sensible, empirical fact, it has 
 
 * With this should be compared the explanation in the Streitschriften, ut sup. s. 119. 
 
 * Of this also there is an explanation in the Streitschriften, 3, s. 166 f. 
 
 'I Herein lies the answer to the objection which Schaller (der historische Christus und die- 
 Philosophie, s. 64 fF.) has made to the above view ; namely, that it teaches only a substantial, 
 not a personal unity of man with God. That unity which exists in the determination of the- 
 race has already been present in individuals separately, according to the different measure- 
 of their religious development, and thus the substantial unity has become, in different 
 degrees, a personal unity. 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF jESUS. 78 1 
 
 become a spiritual and divine idea, \yhich has its confirmation no longer in 
 history but in philosophy. When the mind has thus gone beyond the sen- 
 sible history, and entered into the domain of the absolute, the former ceases 
 to be essential ; it takes a subordinate place, above which the spiritual truths 
 suggested by the history stand self-supported ; it becomes as the faint image 
 of a dream which belongs only to the past, and does not, like the idea, share 
 the permanence of the spirit which is absolutely present to itself.^ Even 
 Luther subordinated the physical miracles to the spiritual, as the truly great 
 miracles. And shall we interest ourselves more in the cure of some sick 
 p'eople in Galilee, than in the miracles of intellectual and moral life belonging 
 to the history of the world — in the increasing, the almost incredible dominion 
 of man over nature — in the irresistible force of ideas, to which no unintelli- 
 gent matter, whatever its magnitude, can oppose any enduring resistance? 
 Shall isolated incidents, in themselves trivial, be more to us than the universal 
 order of events, simply because in the latter we presuppose, if we do not per- 
 ceive, a natural cause, in the former the contrary ? This would be a direct 
 contravention of the more enlightened sentiments of our own day, justly and 
 conclusively expressed by Schleiermacher. The interests of pity, says this 
 theologian, can no longer require us so to conceive a fact, that by its depend- 
 ence on God it is divested of the conditions which would belong to it as a 
 link in the chain of nature ; for we have outgrown the notion, that tlie divine 
 omnipotence is more completely manifested in tlie interruption of the order 
 of nature, than in its preservation.^ Thus if we know the incarnation, death 
 and resurrection, the duplex negatio affirmat, as the eternal circulation, the 
 infinitely repeated pulsation of the divine life ; what special importance can 
 attach to a single fact, which is but a mere sensible image of this unending 
 process ? Our age demands to be led in Christology to the idea in the fact, 
 to the race in the individual : a theology which, in its doctrines on the Christ, 
 stops short at him as an individual, is not properly a theology, but a homily. 
 
 In what relation, then, must the pulpit stand to theology,— nay, how is the 
 continuance of a ministry in the church possible when theology has reached 
 this stage? This is the difficult question which presents itself to us in con- 
 clusion. 
 
 § 152. 
 
 TIELATION OF THE CRITICAL AND SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY TO THE CHURCH. 
 
 Schleiermacher has said, that when he reflected on the approaching crisis 
 in theology, and imagined himself obliged to choose one of two alternatives, 
 either to surrender the Christian history, like every common history, as a spoil 
 to criticism, or to hold his faith in fee to the speculative system ; his decision 
 was, that for himself, considered singly, he would embrace the latter, but 
 that, regarding himself as a member of the church, and especially as one of 
 its teachers, he should be induced rather to take the opposite course. For 
 the idea of God and of man on which, according to the speculative system, 
 the truth of the Christian .faith rests, is indeed a precious jewel, but it can be 
 possessed only by a few, and he would not wish to be that privileged indi- 
 vidual in the church, who alone among thousands held the faith on its true 
 grounds. As a member of the church, he could have no satisfaction but in 
 
 * Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic der Religion, 2, s. 263 ff. Compare the collection of 
 the several propositions of Hegel on the person of Christ and the evangelical history, in my 
 Streitschriften, 3 Heft, s. 76. 
 
 * Glaubenslehre, i,s. 47. 
 
782 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION; § 152. 
 
 perfect equality, in the consciousness that all receive alike, both in kind and 
 manner, from the same source. And as a teacher and spokesman to the- 
 church, he could not possibly attempt the task of elevating old and young, 
 without distinction, to the idea of God and of man : he must rather attack 
 their faith as a groundless one, or else endeavour to strengthen and confirm, 
 it while knowing it to be groundless. As thus in the matter of religion an 
 impassable gulf would be fixed between two parties 'in the churcii, the 
 speculative theology threatens us with the distinction of an esoteric and exo- 
 teric doctrine, which ill accords with the declaration of Christ, that all shall ■ 
 be taught of God. The scientific alone have the foundation of the faith : the 
 unscientific have only the faith, and receive it only by means of tradition. If 
 the Ebionitish view, on. the contrary, leave but little of Christ, yet this little 
 is equally attainable by all, and we are thereby secured from the hierarchy 
 of speculation, which ever tends to merge itself in the hierarchy of Rome.i 
 
 Here we see presented, under the form of thought belonging to a cultivated 
 mind, the same opinion which is now expressed by many in a less cultivated 
 fashioh : namely, that the theologian who is at once critical and speculative, 
 must in relation to the church; be a hypocrite. The real state of the case is 
 this. The church refers her Christology to an individual who existed histori- 
 cally at a certain" period : the speculative theologian to an idea which only 
 attains existence in the totality of individuals ; by the church the evangelical 
 narratives are received as history : by the critical theologian, they are regarded 
 for the most part as mere mythi. If he would continue to impart instruction 
 to the church, four ways are open to him : 
 
 First, the attempt already excluded by the above observations of Schleier- 
 macher, namely, to elevate the church to his own point of view, and for it, 
 also, to resolve the historical into the ideal :— an attempt which must neces- 
 sarily fail, because to the Church all those premises are wanting on which the 
 theologi^in rests his speculative conclusions ; and upon which, therefore, only 
 an enthusiast for interpretation would venture. 
 
 The second and opposite measure would be, to transport himself to the 
 point of view of the church, and for the sake of imparting edification ecclesi- 
 astically, to descend from the sphere of the ideal into the region of the popular 
 conception. This expedient is commonly understood and judged too 
 narrowly. The difference between the theologian and the church is regarded 
 as a total one ; it is thought, that in answer to the question, whether he 
 believes in the history of Christ, he ought to say exactly, no ; whereas he says, 
 yes : and this is a falsehood. It is true, that if in the discourses and instruc- 
 tions of the spiritual teacher, the main interest were an historical oiie, this 
 would be a' correct representation of the case : but, in fact, the interest'is'a 
 religious one,^t is essential religion which is here communicated under the 
 form of a history ; hence he who does not believe in the history as such, may 
 yet appreciate the religious truths therein contained, . equally with one who- 
 does also receive the history as such : the distinction is one of form merely, 
 and does not affect the substance. Hence it is an evidence of an uncultivated 
 mind, to denounce as a hypocrite a theologian who pteaches, for example, on. 
 the' resurrection of Christ, since, though he may not believe in the reality of 
 that event as a single sensible fact, he may, nevertheless, hold to be true the 
 representation of the process of spiritual life, which the resurrection of Christ 
 aifords. Strictly considered, however, this identity of the substantial truth, 
 
 ' In the 2ten Sendschreiben on his Glaubenslehre. 
 
DOGMATIC IMPORT OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 783 
 
 exists only in the apprehension of him who knows how to distinguish Ihe- 
 substance from the form of reUgion, i.e., of the theologian, not of the churchy 
 to whom he speaks. The latter can conceive no faith in the dogmatical 
 truth of the resurrection of Christ, for example, apart from a conviction of its 
 historical reality: and if it come to discover that the theologian has not this 
 conviction, and yet preaches on the resurrection, he must appear in the eyes 
 of the church a hypocrite, and thus the entire relation between the theologian 
 and the church would be virtually cancelled. 
 
 In this case, the theologian, though in himself no hypocrite, would appear 
 such to the church, and would be conscious of this misconstruction. If) not- 
 withstanding this, he should continue to instruct the church under the form 
 of its own conceptions, he would ultimately appear a hypocrite to himself 
 also, and would be driven to the thirdj<^desperate course^ of forsaking the 
 ministerial office. It avails nothing to say^he has only, to descend from the 
 pulpiL^nd mount the professor's chair, ^vliere he will not be. under the neces- 
 sity of withholding his scientific opinions from such as are destined to science 5. 
 for if he, whom the course of his own intellectual culture has obliged to 
 renounce the ministerial office, should by his instructions lead many to the 
 same point, and thus render them also incapable of that office, the original 
 evil would only be multiplied. On the other hand, it could not be held good 
 for the church, that all those who pursue criticism and speculation to the 
 results above presented, should depart from their position as teachers. Fo» 
 no clergyman would any longer meddle with such inquiries, if he thus ran the 
 risk of being led to results which would oblige him to abanddn the minis- 
 terial office ; criticism and philosophy would fall into the hands of those whO' 
 are not professed theologians, and to -the theologian nothing would remain 
 but the faith, which then could not possibly long resist the attacks of the 
 critical and speculative laity. But where truth is concerned, the possible 
 consequences have no weight ; hence the above remark ought not to be made. 
 Thus much, however, may be maintained in relation to the real question : he 
 whom his theological studies have led to an intellectual position, respecting 
 which he must believe, that he has attained the truth, that he has penetrated 
 into the deepest mysteries of theology, cannot feel either inclined or bound 
 just at this point in his career to abandon theology : on the contrary, such a 
 step would be unnatural, nay, impossible. 
 
 He will therefore seek another expedient ; and as such there presents itself 
 a fourth, which is not, like the two first, one-sided, nor like the third, merely 
 negative, but which offers a positive mode of reconciling the two extremes — 
 the consciousness of the theologian, and that of the church. In his dis' 
 courses to the church, he will indeed adhere to the forms of the popular 
 conception, but on every opportunity he will exhibit their spiritual significance, 
 which to him constitutes their sole truth, and thus prepare — though such a 
 result is only to be thought of as an unending progress — the resolution of 
 those forms into their original ideas in the consciousness of the church also-. 
 Thus, to abide by the example already chosen, at the festival of Easter, he 
 •will indeed set out from the sensible fact of the resurrection of Christ, but 
 he will dwell chiefly on the being buried and rising again with Christ, which 
 the Apostle himself has strenuously inculcated. This very course every 
 preacher, even the most orthodox, strictly takes, as often as he draws a moral 
 from the evangelical text on which he preaches : for this is nothing else than 
 the transition from the externally historical to the inward and spiritual. It is- 
 true, we must not overlook the distinction, that the orthodox preacher builds- 
 
784 CONCLUDING DISSERTATION, § 1 52. 
 
 his moral on the text in such a way, that the latter remains as an historical 
 foundation ; whereas, with the speculative preacher, the transition from the 
 biblical history or the church doctrine, to the truth which he thence derives, 
 has the negative effect of annihilating the former. Viewed more closely, 
 however, the transition of the orthodox preacher from the evangelical text to 
 the moral application, is not free from this negative tendency ; in proceeding 
 from the history to the doctrine he implies at least thus much : the history is- 
 not enough, it is not the whole truth, it must be transmuted from a past fact 
 into a present one, from an event external to you, it must become your own 
 intimate experience : so that with this transition, the case is the same as with 
 the proof of the existence of God, in which the cosmical existence, which is 
 the point of departure, apparently remains as a foundation, but is in fact 
 negatived as a true existence, and merged in the absolute. Nevertheless,! 
 there remains a marked distinction between these two propositions : since; 
 and in so far as, this has happens, so and so is your duty and your consola- 
 tion — and : this is indeed related as having happened once, but the truth is, 
 that it always so happened, and both in and by you ought to happen. At 
 least, the community will not receive both as identical ; and thus, here again, 
 in every excess or diminution which the more or less spontaneous relation of 
 the teacher to critical theology, together with the variety in the degrees of 
 culture of the community, introduces, — the danger is incurred that the com- 
 munity may discover this difference, and the preacher appear to it, and con- 
 sequently to himself, a hypocrite. 
 
 In this difficulty, the theologian may find himself driven either directly to 
 «tate his opinions, and attempt to elevate the people to his ideas : or, since 
 this attempt must necessarily fail, carefully to adapt himself to the conception 
 of the community ; or, lastly, since, even on this plan, he may easily betray 
 himself, in the end to leave the ministerial professioil. 
 
 We have thus admitted the difficulty with which the critical and speculative 
 views are burthened, with reference to the relation of the clergyman to the 
 church ; we have exhibited the collision into which the theologian falls, when 
 it is asked, what course remains for him in so far as he has adopted such 
 views ? and we have shown that our age has not arrived at a certain decision 
 on this subject. But this collision is not the effect of the curiosity of an in- 
 .dividual ; it is necessarily introduced by the progress of time and the develop- 
 tnent of Christian theology ; it surprises and masters the individual, without 
 his being able to guard himself from it. Or rather he can do this with slight 
 labour, if he abstain from study and thought, or, if not from these, from 
 freedom of speech and writing. Of such there are already enough in our day, 
 and there was no need to make continual additions to their number through 
 the calumniation of those whd have expressed themselves in the spirit of 
 advanced science. But there are also a few, who, notwithstanding such 
 attacks, freely declare what can no longer be concealed — and time will show 
 whether by the one party or the other, the Church, Mankind, and Truth are 
 best served. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Butler Si Tanner, The Selwood Priotins Works, Frame, ana London. 
 

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