the prediction of the sufferings in some measure intelligible, modern
theology has to ignore the prediction of the resurrection which is bound
up with them, for this is “dogmatic.” That is, however, not permissible.
We must, as Wrede insists, take the words as they are, and must not even
indulge in ingenious explanations of the “three days.” Therefore, the
resolve to suffer and to die are dogmatic; therefore, according to him,
they are unhistorical, and only to be explained by a literary hypothesis.
But the thoroughgoing eschatological school says they are dogmatic, and
therefore historical; because they find their explanation in
eschatological conceptions.
Wrede held that the Messianic conception implied in the Marcan narrative
is not the Jewish Messianic conception, just because of the thought of
suffering and death which it involves. No stress must be laid on the fact
that in Fourth Ezra vii. 29 the Christ dies and rises again, because His
death takes place at the end of the Messianic Kingdom.(296) The Jewish
Messiah is essentially a glorious being who shall appear in the last time.
True, but the case in which the Messiah should be present, prior to the
Parousia, should cause the final tribulations to come upon the earth, and
should Himself undergo them, does not arise in the Jewish eschatology as
described from without. It first arises with the self‐consciousness of
Jesus. Therefore, the Jewish conception of the Messiah has no information
to give us upon this point.
In order to understand Jesus’ resolve to suffer, we must first recognise
that the mystery of this suffering is involved in the mystery of the
Kingdom of God, since the Kingdom cannot come until the πειρασμός has
taken place. This certainty of suffering is quite independent of the
historic circumstances, as the beatitude on the persecuted in the sermon
on the mount, and the predictions in the discourse at the sending forth of
the Twelve, clearly show. Jesus’ prediction of His own sufferings at
Caesarea Philippi is precisely as unintelligible, precisely as dogmatic,
and therefore precisely as historical as the prediction to the disciples
at the time of their mission. The “must be” of the sufferings is the
same—the coming of the Kingdom, and of the Parousia, which are dependent
upon the πειρασμός having first taken place.
In the first period Jesus’ thoughts concerning His own sufferings were
included in the more general thought of the sufferings which formed part
of the mystery of the Kingdom of God. The exhortations to hold steadfastly
to Him in the time of trial, and not to lose faith in Him, certainly
tended to suggest that He thought of Himself as the central point amid
these conflicts and confusions, and reckoned on the possibility of His own
death as much as on that of others. Upon this point nothing more definite
can be said, since the mystery of Jesus’ own sufferings does not detach
itself from the mystery of the sufferings connected with the Kingdom of
God until after the Messianic secret is made known at Caesarea Philippi.
What is certain is that, for Him, suffering was always associated with the
Messianic secret, since He placed His Parousia at the end of the pre‐
Messianic tribulations in which He was to have His part.
The suffering, death, and resurrection of which the secret was revealed at
Caesarea Philippi are not therefore in themselves new or surprising.(297)
The novelty lies in the form in which they are conceived. The tribulation,
so far as Jesus is concerned, is now connected with an historic event: He
will go to Jerusalem, there to suffer death at the hands of the
authorities.
For the future, however, He no longer speaks of the general tribulation
which He is to bring upon the earth, nor of the sufferings which await His
followers, nor of the sufferings in which they must rally round Him. In
the predictions of the passion there is no word of that; at Jerusalem
there is no word of that. This thought disappears once for all.
In the secret of His passion which Jesus reveals to the disciples at
Caesarea Philippi the pre‐Messianic tribulation is for others set aside,
abolished, concentrated upon Himself alone, and that in the form that they
are fulfilled in His own passion and death at Jerusalem. That was the new
conviction that had dawned upon Him. He must suffer for others ... that
the Kingdom might come.
This change was due to the non‐fulfilment of the promises made in the
discourse at the sending forth of the Twelve. He had thought then to let
loose the final tribulation and so compel the coming of the Kingdom. And
the cataclysm had not occurred. He had expected it also after the return
of the disciples. In Bethsaida, in speaking to the multitude which He had
consecrated by the foretaste of the Messianic feast, as also to the
disciples at the time of their mission, He had turned their thoughts to
things to come and had adjured them to be prepared to suffer with Him, to
give up their lives, not to be ashamed of Him in His humiliation, since
otherwise the Son of Man would be ashamed of them when He came in glory
(Mark viii. 34‐ix. 1).(298)
In leaving Galilee He abandoned the hope that the final tribulation would
begin of itself. If it delays, that means that there is still something to
be done, and yet another of the violent must lay violent hands upon the
Kingdom of God. The movement of repentance had not been sufficient. When,
in accordance with His commission, by sending forth the disciples with
their message, he hurled the fire‐brand which should kindle the fiery
trials of the Last Time, the flame went out. He had not succeeded in
sending the sword on earth and stirring up the conflict. And until the
time of trial had come, the coming of the Kingdom and His own
manifestation as Son of Man were impossible.
That meant—not that the Kingdom was not near at hand—but that God had
appointed otherwise in regard to the time of trial. He had heard the
Lord’s Prayer in which Jesus and His followers prayed for the coming of
the Kingdom—and at the same time, for deliverance from the πειρασμός. The
time of trial was not come; therefore God in His mercy and omnipotence had
eliminated it from the series of eschatological events, and appointed to
Him whose commission had been to bring it about, instead to accomplish it
in His own person. As He who was to rule over the members of the Kingdom
in the future age, He was appointed to serve them in the present, to give
His life for them, the many (Mark x. 45 and xiv. 24), and to make in His
own blood the atonement which they would have had to render in the
tribulation.
The Kingdom could not come until the debt which weighed upon the world was
discharged. Until then, not only the now living believers, but the chosen
of all generations since the beginning of the world wait for their
manifestation in glory—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the countless
unknown who should come from the East and from the West to sit at tables
with them at the Messianic feast (Matt. viii. 11). The enigmatic πολλοί
for whom Jesus dies are those predestined to the Kingdom, since His death
must at last compel the Coming of the Kingdom.(299)
This thought Jesus found in the prophecies of Isaiah, which spoke of the
suffering Servant of the Lord. The mysterious description of Him who in
His humiliation was despised and misunderstood, who, nevertheless bears
the guilt of others and afterwards is made manifest in what He has done
for them, points, He feels, to Himself.
And since He found it there set down that He must suffer unrecognised, and
that those for whom He suffered should doubt Him, His suffering should,
nay must, remain a mystery. In that case those who doubted Him would not
bring condemnation upon themselves. He no longer needs to adjure them for
their own sakes to be faithful to Him and to stand by Him even amid
reproach and humiliation; He can calmly predict to His disciples that they
shall all be offended in Him and shall flee (Mark xiv. 26, 27); He can
tell Peter, who boasts that he will die with Him, that before the dawn he
shall deny Him thrice (Mark xiv. 29‐31); all that is so set down in the
Scripture. They must doubt Him. But now they shall not lose their
blessedness, for He bears all sins and transgressions. That, too, is
buried in the atonement which He offers.
Therefore, also, there is no need for them to understand His secret. He
spoke of it to them without any explanation. It is sufficient that they
should know why He goes up to Jerusalem. They, on their part, are thinking
only of the coming transformation of all things, as their conversation
shows. The prospect which He has opened up to them is clear enough; the
only thing that they do not understand is why He must first die at
Jerusalem. The first time that Peter ventured to speak to Him about it, He
had turned on him with cruel harshness, had almost cursed him (Mark viii.
32, 33); from that time forward they no longer dared to ask Him anything
about it. The new thought of His own passion has its basis therefore in
the authority with which Jesus was armed to bring about the beginning of
the final tribulation. Ethically regarded, His taking the suffering upon
Himself is an act of mercy and compassion towards those who would
otherwise have had to bear these tribulations, and perhaps would not have
stood the test. Historically regarded, the thought of His sufferings
involves the same lofty treatment both of history and eschatology as was
manifested in the identification of the Baptist with Elias. For now He
identifies His condemnation and execution, which are to take place on
natural lines, with the predicted pre‐Messianic tribulations. This
imperious forcing of eschatology into history is also its destruction; its
assertion and abandonment at the same time.
Towards Passover, therefore, Jesus sets out for Jerusalem, solely in order
to die there.(300) “It is,” says Wrede, “beyond question the opinion of
Mark that Jesus went to Jerusalem because He had decided to die; that is
obvious even from the details of the story.” It is therefore a mistake to
speak of Jesus as “teaching” in Jerusalem. He has no intention of doing
so. As a prophet He foretells in veiled parabolic form the offence which
must come (Mark xii. 1‐12), exhorts men to watch for the Parousia,
pictures the nature of the judgment which the Son of Man shall hold, and,
for the rest, thinks only how He can so provoke the Pharisees and the
rulers that they will be compelled to get rid of Him. That is why He
violently cleanses the Temple, and attacks the Pharisees, in the presence
of the people, with passionate invective.
From the revelation at Caesarea Philippi onward, all that belongs to the
history of Jesus, in the strict sense, are the events which lead up to His
death; or, to put it more accurately, the events in which He Himself is
the sole actor. The other things which happen, the questions which are
laid before Him for decision, the episodic incidents which occur in those
days, have nothing to do with the real “Life of Jesus,” since they
contribute nothing to the decisive issue, but merely form the anecdotic
fringes of the real outward and inward event, the deliberate bringing down
of death upon Himself.
It is in truth surprising that He succeeded in transforming into history
this resolve which had its roots in dogma, and really dying alone. Is it
not almost unintelligible that His disciples were not involved in His
fate? Not even the disciple who smote with the sword was arrested along
with Him (Mark xiv. 47); Peter, recognised in the courtyard of the High
Priest’s house as one who had been with Jesus the Nazarene, is allowed to
go free.
For a moment indeed, Jesus believes that the “three” are destined to share
His fate, not from any outward necessity, but because they had professed
themselves able to suffer the last extremities with Him. The sons of
Zebedee, when He asked them whether, in order to sit at His right hand and
His left, they are prepared to drink His cup and be baptized with His
baptism, had declared that they were, and thereupon He had predicted that
they should do so (Mark x. 38, 39). Peter again had that very night, in
spite of the warning of Jesus, sworn that he would go even unto death with
Him (Mark xiv. 30, 31). Hence He is conscious of a higher possibility that
these three are to go through the trial with Him. He takes them with Him
to Gethsemane and bids them remain near Him and watch with Him. And since
they do not perceive the danger of the hour, He adjures them to watch and
pray. They are to pray that they may not have to pass through the trial
(ἵνα μὴ ἔλθητε εἰς πειρασμόν) since, though the spirit is willing, the
flesh is weak. Amid His own sore distress He is anxious about them and
their capacity to share His trial as they had declared their willingness
to do.(301)
Here also it is once more made clear that for Jesus the necessity of His
death is grounded in dogma, not in external historical facts. Above the
dogmatic eschatological necessity, however, there stands the omnipotence
of God, which is bound by no limitations. As Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer
had taught His followers to pray for deliverance from the πειρασμός, and
as in His fears for the three He bids them pray for the same thing, so now
He Himself prays for deliverance, even in this last moment when He knows
that the armed band which is coming to arrest Him is already on the way.
Literal history does not exist for Him, only the will of God; and this is
exalted even above eschatological necessity.
But how did this exact agreement between the fate of Jesus and His
predictions come about? Why did the authorities strike at Him only, not at
His whole following, not even at the disciples? He was arrested and
condemned on account of His Messianic claims. But how did the High Priest
know that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah? And why does he put the
accusation as a direct question without calling witnesses in support of
it? Why was the attempt first made to bring up a saying about the Temple
which could be interpreted as blasphemy in order to condemn Him on this
ground (Mark xiv. 57‐59)? Before that again, as is evident from Mark’s
account, they had brought up a whole crowd of witnesses in the hope of
securing evidence sufficient to justify His condemnation; and the attempt
had not succeeded.
It was only after all these attempts had failed that the High Priest
brought his accusation concerning the Messianic claim, and he did so
without citing the three necessary witnesses. Why so? Because he had not
got them. The condemnation of Jesus depended on His own admission. That
was why they had endeavoured to convict Him upon other charges.(302)
This wholly unintelligible feature of the trial confirms what is evident
also from the discourses and attitude of Jesus at Jerusalem, viz. that He
had not been held by the multitude to be the Messiah, that the idea of His
making such claims had not for a moment occurred to them—lay in fact for
them quite beyond the range of possibility. Therefore He cannot have made
a Messianic entry.
According to Havet, Brandt, Wellhausen, Dalman, and Wrede the ovation at
the entry had no Messianic character whatever. It is wholly mistaken, as
Wrede quite rightly remarks, to represent matters as if the Messianic
ovation was forced upon Jesus—that He accepted it with inner repugnance
and in silent passivity. For that would involve the supposition that the
people had for a moment regarded Him as Messiah and then afterwards had
shown themselves as completely without any suspicion of His Messiahship as
though they had in the interval drunk of the waters of Lethe. The exact
opposite is true: Jesus Himself made the preparations for the Messianic
entry. Its Messianic features were due to His arrangements. He made a
point of riding upon the ass, not because He was weary, but because He
desired that the Messianic prophecy of Zech. ix. 9 should be secretly
fulfilled.
The entry is therefore a Messianic act on the part of Jesus, an action in
which His consciousness of His office breaks through, as it did at the
sending forth of the disciples, in the explanation that the Baptist was
Elias, and in the feeding of the multitude. But others can have had no
suspicion of the Messianic significance of that which was going on before
their eyes. The entry into Jerusalem was therefore Messianic for Jesus,
but not Messianic for the people.
But what was He for the people? Here Wrede’s theory that He was a teacher
again refutes itself. In the triumphal entry there is more than the
ovation offered to a teacher. The jubilations have reference to “Him who
is to come”; it is to Him that the acclamations are offered and because of
Him that the people rejoice in the nearness of the Kingdom, as in Mark,
the cries of jubilation show; for here, as Dalman rightly remarks, there
is actually no mention of the Messiah.
Jesus therefore made His entry into Jerusalem as the Prophet, as Elias.
That is confirmed by Matthew (xxi. 11), although Matthew gives a Messianic
colouring to the entry itself by bringing in the acclamation in which He
was designated the Son of David, just as, conversely, he reports the
Baptist’s question rightly, and introduces it wrongly, by making the
Baptist hear of the “works of the Christ.”
Was Mark conscious, one wonders, that it was not a Messianic entry that he
was reporting? We do not know. It is not inherently impossible that, as
Wrede asserts, “he had no real view concerning the historical life of
Jesus,” did not know whether Jesus was recognised as Messiah, and took no
interest in the question from an historical point of view. Fortunately for
us! For that is why he simply hands on tradition and does not write a Life
of Jesus.
The Marcan hypothesis went astray in conceiving this Gospel as a Life of
Jesus written with either complete or partial historical consciousness,
and interpreting it on these lines, on the sole ground that it only brings
in the name Son of Man twice prior to the incident at Caesarea Philippi.
The Life of Jesus cannot be arrived at by following the arrangement of a
single Gospel, but only on the basis of the tradition which is preserved
more or less faithfully in the earliest pair of Synoptic Gospels.
Questions of literary priority, indeed literary questions in general, have
in the last resort, as Keim remarked long ago, nothing to do with the
gaining of a clear idea of the course of events, since the Evangelists had
not themselves a clear idea of it before their minds; it can only be
arrived at hypothetically by an experimental reconstruction based on the
necessary inner connexion of the incidents.
But who could possibly have had in early times a clear conception of the
Life of Jesus? Even its most critical moments were totally unintelligible
to the disciples who had themselves shared in the experiences, and who
were the only sources for the tradition.
They were simply swept through these events by the momentum of the purpose
of Jesus. That is why the tradition is incoherent. The reality had been
incoherent too, since it was only the secret Messianic self‐consciousness
of Jesus which created alike the events and their connexion. Every Life of
Jesus remains therefore a reconstruction on the basis of a more or less
accurate insight into the nature of the dynamic self‐consciousness of
Jesus which created the history.
The people, whatever Mark may have thought, did not offer Jesus a
Messianic ovation at all; it was He who, in the conviction that they were
wholly unable to recognise it, played with His Messianic self‐
consciousness before their eyes, just as He did at the time after the
sending forth of the disciples, when, as now, He thought the end at hand.
It was in the same way, too, that He closed the invective against the
Pharisees with the words “I say unto you, ye shall see me no more until ye
shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matt.
xxiii. 39). This saying implies His Parousia.
Similarly He is playing with His secret in that crucial question regarding
the Messiahship in Mark xii. 35‐37. There is no question of dissociating
the Davidic Sonship from the Messiahship.(303) He asks only how can the
Christ in virtue of His descent from David be, as his son, inferior to
David, and yet be addressed by David in the Psalm as his Lord? The answer
is; by reason of the metamorphosis and Parousia in which natural
relationships are abolished and the scion of David’s line who is the
predestined Son of Man shall take possession of His unique glory.
Far from rejecting the Davidic Sonship in this saying, Jesus, on the
contrary, presupposes His possession of it. That raises the question
whether He did not really during His lifetime regard Himself as a
descendant of David and whether He was not regarded as such. Paul, who
otherwise shows no interest in the earthly phase of the existence of the
Lord, certainly implies His descent from David.
The blind man at Jericho, too, cries out to the Nazarene prophet as “Son
of David” (Mark x. 47). But in doing so he does not mean to address Jesus
as Messiah, for afterwards, when he is brought to Him he simply calls Him
“Rabbi” (Mark x. 51). And the people thought nothing further about what he
had said. When the expectant people bid him keep silence they do not do so
because the expression Son of David offends them, but because his clamour
annoys them. Jesus, however, was struck by this cry, stood still and
caused him, as he was standing timidly behind the eager multitude, to be
brought to Him. It is possible, of course, that this address is a mere
mistake in the tradition, the same tradition which unsuspectingly brought
in the expression Son of Man at the wrong place.
So much, however, is certain: the people were not made aware of the
Messiahship of Jesus by the cry of the blind man any more than by the
outcries of the demoniacs. The entry into Jerusalem was not a Messianic
ovation. All that history is concerned with is that this fact should be
admitted on all hands. Except Jesus and the disciples, therefore, no one
knew the secret of His Messiahship even in those days at Jerusalem. But
the High Priest suddenly showed himself in possession of it. How? Through
the betrayal of Judas.
For a hundred and fifty years the question has been historically discussed
why Judas betrayed his Master. That the main question for history was
_what he betrayed_ was suspected by few and they touched on it only in a
timid kind of way—indeed the problems of the trial of Jesus may be said to
have been non‐existent for criticism.
The traitorous act of Judas cannot have consisted in informing the
Sanhedrin where Jesus was to be found at a suitable place for an arrest.
They could have had that information more cheaply by causing Jesus to be
watched by spies. But Mark expressly says that Judas when he betrayed
Jesus did not yet know of a favourable opportunity for the arrest, but was
seeking such an opportunity. Mark xiv. 10, 11, “And Judas Iscariot, one of
the twelve, went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them. And when
they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he
sought how he might conveniently betray him.”
In the betrayal, therefore, there were two points, a more general and a
more special: the general fact by which he gave Jesus into their power,
and the undertaking to let them know of the next opportunity when they
could arrest Him quietly, without publicity. The betrayal by which he
brought his Master to death, in consequence of which the rulers decided
upon the arrest, knowing that their cause was safe in any case, was the
betrayal of the Messianic secret. Jesus died because two of His disciples
had broken His command of silence: Peter when he made known the secret of
the Messiahship to the Twelve at Caesarea Philippi; Judas Iscariot by
communicating it to the High Priest. But the difficulty was that Judas was
the sole witness. Therefore the betrayal was useless so far as the actual
trial was concerned unless Jesus admitted the charge. So they first tried
to secure His condemnation on other grounds, and only when these attempts
broke down did the High Priest put, in the form of a question, the charge
in support of which he could have brought no witnesses.
But Jesus immediately admitted it, and strengthened the admission by an
allusion to His Parousia in the near future as Son of Man.
The betrayal and the trial can only be rightly understood when it is
realised that the public knew nothing whatever of the secret of the
Messiahship.(304)