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THE CRADLE OF THE CHRIST.
A STUDY IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.
BY OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM.
NEW YORK:
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
182 FIFTH AVENUE.
1877.
COPYRIGHT,
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
1877.
PREFACE.
The literary intention of this volume is sufficiently declared in the
opening paragraph, and need not be foreshadowed in a preface; but as the
author's deeper motive may be called in question, he takes the liberty
to say a word or two in more particular explanation. The thought has
occurred to him on reading over what he has written, as a casual reader
might, that, in his solicitude to make his positions perfectly clear,
and to state his points concisely, he may have laid himself open to the
charge of carrying on a controversy under the pretence of explaining a
literature. Such a reproach, his heart tells him, would be undeserved.
He disclaims all purpose and desire to weaken the moral supports of any
form of religion; as little purpose or desire to undermine Christianity,
as to revive Judaism. It is his honest belief that no genuine interests
of religion are compromised by scientific or literary studies; that
religion is independent of history, that Christianity is independent of
the New Testament. He is cordially persuaded that the admission of
every one of his conclusions would leave the institutions of the church
precisely, in every spiritual respect, as they are; and in thus
declaring he has no mental reserve, no misty philosophical meaning that
preserves expressions while destroying ideas; he uses candid,
intelligible speech. The lily's perfect charm suffers no abatement from
the chemist's analysis of the slime into which it strikes its slender
root; the grape of the Johannisberg vineyards is no less luscious from
the fact that the soil has been subjected to the microscope; the fine
qualities of the human being, man or woman, are the same on any theory,
the bible theory of the perfect Adam, or Darwin's of the anthropoid ape.
The hero is hero still, and the saint saint, whatever his ancestry. We
reject the inference of writers like Godfrey Higgins, Thomas Inman, and
Jules Soury, who would persuade us that Christianity must be a form of
nature-worship, because nature-worship was a large constituent element
in the faiths from which it sprung; why should we not reject the
inference of those who would persuade us that Christianity is doomed
because the four gospels are pronounced ungenuine? Christianity is a
historical fact; an institution; it stands upon its merits, and must
justify its merits by its performances; first demonstrating its power,
afterward pressing its claim; vindicating its title to exist by its
capacity to meet the actual conditions of existence, and then asking
respect the ground of good service. The church that arrogates for itself
the right to control the spiritual concerns of the modern world must not
plead in justification of its pretension that it satisfied the
requirements of devout people of another hemisphere, two thousand years
ago. The religion that fails to represent the religious sentiments of
living men will not support itself by demonstrating the genuineness of
the New Testament, the supernatural birth of Jesus, or the inspiration
of Paul. Other questions than these are asked now. When a serious man
wishes to know what Christianity has to say in regard to the position of
woman in modern society, a quotation from a letter to the christians in
the Greek city of Corinth, is not a satisfactory reply. Christianity
must prove its adaptation to the hour that now is; its adaptation to
days gone by, is not to the purpose.
The church of Rome had a glimpse of this, and revealed it when it took
the ground that the New Testament did not contain the whole revelation;
that the source of inspiration lay behind that, used that as one of its
manifestations, and constantly supplied new suggestions as they were
needed. Cardinal Wiseman did not hesitate to admit that the doctrine of
trinity was not stated in the New Testament, though undoubtedly a belief
of the church. It would have been but a step further in the same
direction, if Dr. Newman should declare that the critics might have
their way with the early records of the religion, which, however curious
as literary remains, were not essential to the constitution or the work
of the church. Strauss and Renan may speculate and welcome; the mission
of the church being to bless mankind, their labors are innocent. A
church that does not bless mankind cannot be saved by Auguste Nicolas; a
church that does bless mankind cannot be injured by Ernest Renan.
Leading protestant minds, without making so much concession as the
church of Rome, have practically accepted the position here maintained.
It is becoming less common, every day, to base the claims of
Christianity on the New Testament. The most learned, earnest, and
intelligent commend their faith on its reasonableness, confronting
modern problems in a modern way. St. George Mivart quotes no scripture
against the doctrine of evolution. No one reading Dr. McCosh on the
development hypothesis, would suppose him to be a believer in the
inspiration of the bible. He reasons like a reasonable man, meeting
argument with argument, feeling disposed to confront facts with
something harder than texts. The well instructed christian, if he enters
the arena of scientific discussion at all, uses scientific weapons, and
follows the rules of scientific warfare. The problems laid before the
modern world are new; scarcely one of them was propounded during the
first two centuries of our era; not one was propounded in modern terms.
The most universal of them, like poverty, vice, the relations of the
strong and the weak, present an aspect which neither church, Father, nor
Apostle would recognize. Whatever bearing Christianity has on these
questions must be timely if it is to be efficacious.
The doctrine of christian development, as it is held now by
distinguished teachers of the christian church, implying as it does
incompleteness and therefore defect in the antecedent stages of progress
points clearly to the apostolic and post apostolic times as ages of
rudimental experience, tentative and crude. Why should not the
entertainers of this doctrine calmly surrender the records and remains
of the preparatory generations to antiquarian scholars who are willing
to investigate their character? No discovery they can make will alter
the results which the centuries have matured. They will simply more
clearly exhibit the process whereby the results have been reached.
We may go further than this, and maintain that the unreserved
abandonment to criticism of the literature and men of the early epochs
would be a positive advantage to Christianity, for thereby the religion
would be relieved from a serious embarrassment. The duty, assumed by
christians, of vindicating the truth of whatever is found in the New
Testament imposes grave difficulties. It is safe to say that a very
large part of the disbelief in Christianity proceeds from doubts raised
by Strauss, Renan, and others who have cast discredit on some portions
of this literature. Christians have their faith shaken by those authors;
and doubtless some who are not christians are prejudiced against the
religion by books of rational criticism. The romanist, failing to
establish by the New Testament, or by the history of the first two
centuries, the primacy of Peter, the supremacy of Rome, the validity of
the sacraments, the divine sanction of the episcopacy, loses the convert
whom the majestic order of the papacy might attract. The protestant,
failing to prove by apostolic texts his cardinal dogmas,
pre-destination, atonement, election, must see depart unsatisfied, the
inquirer whom a philosophical exposition might have won. The necessity
of justifying the account of the miraculous birth of Jesus repels the
doubter whom a purely intellectual conception of incarnation might have
fascinated; and the obligation to believe the story of a physical
resurrection is an added obstacle to the reception of a spiritual faith
in immortality. Scholarship has so effectually shown the impossibility
of bringing apostolical guarantee for the creed of christendom, that the
creed cannot get even common justice done it while it compromises itself
with the beliefs of the primitive church. The inspiration of the New
Testament is an article that unsettles. Naturally it is the first point
of attack, and its extreme vulnerability raises a suspicion of weakness
in the whole system. The protestant theology, as held by the more
enlightened minds, is capable of philosophical statement and defence;
but it cannot be stated in New Testament language, or defended on
apostolical authority. The creed really has not a fair chance to be
appreciated. Its power to uphold spiritual ideas, and develop spiritual
truths; its speculative resources as an antagonist of scientific
materialism, animal fatalism, and sensualism, are rendered all but
useless. Powerful minds are fettered, and good scholarship is wasted in
the attempt to identify beginnings with results, roots with fruits.
This is a consideration of much weight. When we remember how much time
and concern are given to the study of the New Testament for
controversial or apologetic purposes, to establish its genuineness,
maintain its authority, justify its miracles, explain away its
difficulties, reconcile its contradictions, harmonize its differences,
read into its texts the thoughts of later generations, and then reflect
on the lack of mind bestowed on the important task of recommending
religious ideas to a world that is spending enormous sums of
intellectual force on the problems of physical science and the arts of
material civilization, the close association of the latest with the
earliest faith seems a deplorable misfortune. If there ever was a time
when the purely spiritual elements in the religion of the foremost races
of mankind should be developed and pressed, the time is now; and to miss
the opportunity by misplacing the energy that would redeem it is
anything but consoling to earnest minds.
Thus might reason a full believer in the creed of christendom, a devoted
member of the church; Greek, Roman, German, English. The man of letters
viewing the situation from his own point, will, of course, feel less
intensely the mischiefs entailed by the error; but the error will be to
him no less evident. It is sometimes, in war, an advantage to lose
outworks that cannot be defended without fatally weakening the line,
drawing the strength of the garrison away from vulnerable points, and
exposing the centre to formidable assault. The present writer, though no
friend to the christian system, believes himself to be a friend of
spiritual beliefs, and would gladly feel that he is, by his essay,
rather strengthening than weakening the cause of faith, by whatever
class of men maintained.
CONTENTS.
I. FALSE POSITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
II. THE MESSIAH.
III. THE SECTS.
IV. THE MESSIAH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
V. THE FIRST CHRISTIANS.
VI. PAUL'S NEW DEPARTURE.
VII. THE LAST GOSPEL.
VIII. THE WESTERN CHURCH.
IX. JESUS.
AUTHORITIES.
I.
FALSE POSITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
The original purpose of this little volume was to indicate the place of
the New Testament in the literature of the Hebrew people, to show in
fact how it is comprehended in the scope of that literature. The plan
has been widened to satisfy the demands of a larger class of readers,
and to record more fully the work of its leading idea. Still the
consideration of the New Testament literature is of primary importance.
The writer submits that the New Testament is to be received as a natural
product of the Hebrew genius, its contents attesting the creative power
of the Jewish mind. He hopes to make it seem probable to unprejudiced
people, that its different books merely carry to the last point of
attenuation, and finally exhaust the capacity of ideas that exerted a
controlling influence on the development of that branch of the human
family. To profundity of research, or originality of conclusion, he
makes no claim. He simply records in compact and summary form, the
results of reading and reflection, gathered in the course of many years,
kept in note books, revised year by year, tested by use in oral
instruction, and reduced to system by often repeated manipulation. The
resemblance of his views, in certain particulars, to those set forth by
German critics of the school of Strauss or of Baur, he is at no pains to
conceal. His deep indebtedness to them, he delights to confess. At the
same time he can honestly say that he is a disciple of no special
school, writes in the interest of no theory or group of theories, but
simply desires to establish a point of literary consequence. All polemic
or dogmatical intention he disavows, all disposition to lower the
dignity, impair the validity, or weaken the spiritual supports of
Christianity. His aim, truly and soberly speaking, is to set certain
literary facts in their just relation to one another.
It has not been customary, nor is it now customary to assign to the New
Testament a place among the literary productions of the human mind. The
collection of books bearing that name has been, and still is regarded by
advocates of one or another theory of inspiration, as of exceptional
origin, in that they express the divine, not the human mind; being
writings super-human in substance if not in form, containing thoughts
that could not have occurred to the unaided intelligence of man, neither
are amenable to the judgment of uninspired reason. To read this volume
as other volumes are read is forbidden; to apply to it ordinary
critical methods is held to be an impertinence; to detect errors or
flaws in it, as in Homer, Plato, Thucydides, is pronounced an
unpardonable arrogance. A book that contains revelations of the supreme
wisdom and will must be accepted and revered, must not be arraigned.
Criticism has therefore, among believers chiefly we may almost say
solely, been occupied with the task of establishing the genuineness and
authenticity of the writings, harmonizing their teachings, arranging
their contents, explaining texts in accordance with the preconceived
theory of a divine origin, vindicating doubtful passages against the
objections of skeptics, and extracting from chapter and verse the sense
required by the creed. Literature has been permitted to illustrate or
confirm points, but has not been called in to correct, for that would be
to judge the infinite by the finite mind.
In accordance with this accepted view of the New Testament as a
miraculous book, students of it have fallen into the way of surveying it
as a detached field, unconnected by organic elements with the
surrounding territory of mind; have examined it as if it made no part of
an extensive geological formation, as men formerly took up an aerolite
or measured a boulder. The materials of knowledge respecting the book
have been sought within the volume itself, neither Greek, Roman, German
nor Englishman presuming to think that a beam from the outside world
could illumine a book
Which gives a light to every age,
Which gives, but borrows none.
The rationalists it is needless to say, avoided this error, but they
betrayed a sense of the peril arising from it, in the polemical spirit
that characterized much of their writing. In Germany, the tone of
rationalism was more sober and scientific than elsewhere, because
biblical questions were there discussed in the scholastic seclusion of
the University, in lectures delivered by learned professors to students
engaged in pursuits purely intellectual. The lectures were not addressed
to an excitable multitude, as such discourses are, to a certain extent,
in France or England, and particularly in America, and consequently
stirred no religious passions. The books published were read by a small
class of specialists who studied them as they would treatises in any
other department of ancient literature. Nearly half a century ago the
disbelief in miracles, portents, and supernatural interventions, was
entertained and published by German university professors; stories of
prodigies were discredited on the general ground of their incredibility,
and the books that reported them were set down as untrustworthy,
whatever might be the evidence of their genuineness. A miraculous
narrative was on the face of it unauthentic. Efforts were accordingly
made to bring the New Testament writings within the categories of
literature. Criticism began the task by applying rules of "natural"
interpretation to the legendary portions, thus abolishing the
supernatural peculiarity and leaving the merely human parts to justify
themselves. The method was the best that offered, but it was
unscientific; "unnaturally natural;" confused from the necessity of
supplementing knowledge by conjecture, and faulty through the amount of
arbitrary supposition that had to be introduced. Attention was directed
to the historical or biographical aspect of the books, and only
incidentally to their literary character, as productions of their age.
The method pursued by Strauss was strictly scientific and literary,
though on the surface it seemed to be concerned with biographical
details. By treating the narratives of miracles as mythical rather than
as legendary, as intellectual and dogmatic rather than as fanciful or
imaginary creations, and by tracing their origin to the traditionary
beliefs of the Old Testament, he ran both literatures together as one,
showing the new to be a continuation or reproduction of the old. The
construction, otherwise, of the New Testament literature concerned him
but incidentally. The first "Life of Jesus," published in part in 1835,
was devoted to the discussion of the gospels as books of history. The
second--a revision--was published in 1864, contained a much larger
proportion of literary matter in the form of documentary discussion,
made frequent references to Baur, and other writers of the Tuebingen
School, and attached great weight to their conclusions. In the "Old and
the New Faith," published nearly ten years later, the main conclusions
of Baur are adopted as the legitimate issue of literary criticism,
though without attempt at formal reconciliation with his own original
view.
Baur's method was original with himself. He finds the key to the secret
of the composition of the first three Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles
and portions of other books, in the quarrel between Paul and Peter
feelingly described in the second chapter of the letter to the
Galatians. The "synoptical" Gospels, he contends, and with singular
ingenuity argues, are the results of that controversy between the broad
and the narrow churches; are not, therefore, writings of historical
value or biographical moment, but books of a doctrinal character, not
controversial or polemical,--mediatorial and conciliatory rather than
aggressive,--but written in a controversial interest, and intelligible
only when read by a controversial light. Baur called his the
"historical" method, as distinguished from the dogmatical, the textual,
the negative; because his starting point was a historical fact, namely,
the actual dispute recorded, in language of passionate earnestness, by
one of the parties to it, and distinctly confessed in the attitude of
the other. But Baur's method has a still better title to be called
literary, for it is concerned with the literary composition of the New
Testament writings, and with the dispute as accounting for their
existence and form. His studies on the fourth Gospel, and on the life
and writings of the Apostle Paul, are admirable examples of the
unprejudiced literary method; by far the most intelligent, comprehensive
and consistent ever made; simply invaluable in their kind. They contain
all that is necessary for a complete _rationale_ of the New Testament
literature. These, taken in connection with his "History of the
First Three Centuries," his "Origin of the Episcopate," his
"Dogmengeschichte," put the patient and attentive student in possession
of the full case. But Baur lacked constructive talent of a high order,
and has been less successful than inferior men in embracing details in a
wide generalization.
Renan adopts the method of the early rationalists, but applies it with a
freedom and facility of which they were incapable. He takes up the
Gospels as history, and sifts the literature in order to get at the
history. He claims to possess the historical sense, by virtue of which
he is able to separate the genuine from the ungenuine portions of the
Gospels. It is a point with him to show how the character of Jesus was
moulded by the spirit of his age, and by the literature on which he was
nurtured; but his treatment of the evangelical narratives as a mass of
biographical notes reflecting, with more or less correctness, the
personality of Jesus, is not quite compatible with a rational or even a
literary treatment of them as a continuation of the traditions of the
Hebrew people. The constructive force being centred in Jesus himself,
the full recognition of the creative genius of the Hebrew mind, which
was illustrated in Jesus and his age, was precluded. Renan is in a
measure compelled to make Jesus a prodigy--an exceptional person, who
baffles ordinary standards of judgment; and in so doing distorts the
connection between him, the generations that went before, and the
generations that came after. Strauss does more justice to the New
Testament literature, in attempting only its partial explanation. Baur
does more justice to it in seeking a literary explanation of the
writings as they are. Renan picks and chooses according to our arbitrary
criterion, which capriciously disports itself over a field covered with
promiscuous treasures.
Lord Amberley's more recent attempt reveals the weakness of the common
procedure. Without the learning of Strauss, the perspicacity of Baur, or
the brilliant audacity of Renan, he strays over the field, making
suggestions neither profound nor original, and rather obliterating the
distinct impressions his predecessors have made than making new ones of
his own. His chapter on Jesus will illustrate the confusion that must
issue from a false method, which does not deserve to be called a method
at all.
Books have been written about the New Testament by the
thousand--libraries of books; but they merely supplant and refute one
another. Each is entitled to as much consideration as the rest, and to
no more. The old materials are turned over and over; the texts are
subjected to new cross-examinations; the chapters and incidents are
shuffled about with fresh ingenuity; new suppositions are started; new
combinations are made; but all with no satisfactory result. Whether it
be Auguste Nicolas, who reconstructs the Gospels to justify the
predispositions of Romanism; or Edmond de Pressense, who does the same
service for liberal Protestantism; or Henry Ward Beecher, who constructs
a Christ out of the elements of an exuberant fancy; or William Henry
Furness, who is certain that "naturalness" furnishes the touchstone of
historical truth; the conclusion is about equally inconclusive.
The literary method avoids the dogmatical embarrassments incident to the
supernatural theory; offers easy solutions of difficult problems;
connects incidents with their antecedents; interprets dark sayings by
the light of association; and places fragments in the places where they
belong. An exhaustive application of this treatment would probably
explain every passage in the New Testament writings. A partial
application of it like the present will indicate at least some of the
capacities of the method.
The literary treatment differs from the dogmatical represented by the
older theologians who used the New Testament as a text book of doctrine;
from the purely exegetical or critical, which consisted in the impartial
examination of its separate parts; from the destructive or decomposing
treatment pursued by the so-called "rationalism;" and from the
"historical," as employed by Baur and the "Tuebingen school." It is in
some respects more comprehensive and positive than either of these,
while in special points it adopts all but the first. Every other method
presents a controversial face, and is something less than scientific, by
being to a certain degree inhospitable. This consults only the laws
which preside over the literary expression given to human thoughts.
It has been customary with christians to widen as much as possible the
gulf between the Old and the New Testaments, in order that Christianity
might appear in the light of a fresh and transcendent revelation,
supplementing the ancient, but supplanting it. The most favorable view
of the Old Testament regards it as a porch to the new edifice, a
collection of types and foregleams of a grandeur about to follow. The
Old Testament has been and still is held to be preparatory to the New;
Moses is the schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. The contrast of Law
with Gospel, Commandment with Beatitude, Justice with Love, has been
presented in every form. Christian teachers have delighted to exhibit
the essential superiority of Christianity to Judaism, have quoted with
triumph the maxims that fell from the lips of Jesus, and which, they
surmised, could not be paralleled in the elder Scriptures, and have put
the least favorable construction on such passages in the ancient books
as seemed to contain the thoughts of evangelists and apostles. A more
ingenuous study of the Hebrew Law, according to the oldest traditions,
as well as its later interpretations by the prophets, reduces these
differences materially by bringing into relief sentiments and precepts
whereof the New Testament morality is but an echo. There are passages in
Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, even tenderer in their humanity than
anything in the gospels. The preacher from the Mount, the prophet of the
Beatitudes, does but repeat with persuasive lips what the law-givers of
his race proclaimed in mighty tones of command. Such an acquaintance
with the later literature of the Jews as is readily obtained now from
popular sources, will convince the ordinarily fair mind that the
originality of the New Testament has been greatly over-estimated. Even a
hasty reading of easily accessible books, makes it clear that Jesus and
his disciples were Jews in mind and character as well as by country and
race; and will render it at least doubtful whether they ever outgrew
the traditions of their birth. Paul's claim to be a Hebrew of the
Hebrews, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, "circumcised the eighth day, of
the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin," is found to be more than
justified by his writings; and even John's exalted spirituality proves
to be an aroma from a literature which Christianity disavows. The
phrases "Redemption," "Grace," "Faith," "Baptism," "Salvation,"
"Regeneration," "Son of Man," "Son of God," "Kingdom of Heaven," are
native to this literature, and as familiar there as in gospel or
epistle. The symbolism of the Apocalypse, Jewish throughout, with its
New Jerusalem, its consecration of the number twelve,--twelve
foundations, twelve gates, twelve stars, twelve angels,--points to
deeper correspondences that do not meet the eye, but occur to
reflection. We remember that the New Testament constantly refers to the
Old; that great stress is laid on the fulfilment of ancient prophecies;
that Jesus explicitly declares, at the opening of his ministry, that he
came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to reaffirm and
complete them, saying with earnest force "till heaven and earth pass,
not one jot or tittle shall in any wise pass from the law until all be
fulfilled." We discover that his criticisms bore hard on the casuists
who corrupted the law by their glosses, but were made in the interest of
the original commandment, which had been caricatured. In a word, so
completely is the space between the old dispensation and the new bridged
over, that the most delicate and fragile fancies, the lightest imagery,
the daintiest fabrics of the intellectual world are transported without
rent or fracture, across the gulf opened by the captivity, and the
deserts caused by the desolating quarrels that attended the new attempts
at reconstruction, while the massive ideas that lie at the foundation of
Hebraic thought, wherever found, are landed without risk or confusion in
the new territory. Between the Jewish and the Christian scriptures there
is not so much as a blank leaf.
If this can be made apparent without over-stating the facts, everything
in the New Testament, from the character of Jesus, and the constitution
of the primitive church, to the later development by Paul, and the
latest by John, must be subjected to a revision, which though fatal to
Christianity's claim to be a special revelation, will restore dignity to
the Semitic character, and consistency to the development of historic
truth. Better still, it will heal the breach between two great
religions, and will contribute to that disarmament of faiths from which
good hearts anticipate most important results. Of all this hints only
can be given in a short essay like this; but if the hints are suggestive
in themselves or from their arrangement, a service will be rendered to
the cause of truth that may deserve recognition.
II.
THE MESSIAH.
The period of the captivity in Babylon, which is commonly regarded as a
period of sadness and desolation, a blank space of interruption in the
nation's life, was, in reality, a period of intense mental activity;
probably the highest spiritual moment in the history of the people.
Dispossessed of their own territory, relieved of the burden and freed
from the distraction of politics, their disintegrating tribal feuds
terminated by foreign conquest, living, as unoppressed exiles, in one of
the world's greatest cities, with opportunities for observation and
reflection never enjoyed before, having unbroken leisure in the midst of
material and intellectual opulence, the true children of Israel devoted
themselves to the task of rebuilding spiritually the state that had been
politically overthrown. The writings that reflect this period,
particularly the later portions of Isaiah, exhibit the soul of the
nation in proud resistance against the unbelief, the disloyalty, the
worldliness, that were demoralizing the less noble part of their
countrymen. The duty was laid on them to support the national
character, revive the national faith, restore the national courage, and
rebuild the national purpose. To this end they collected the traditions
of past glory, gathered up the fragments of legend and song, reanimated
the souls of their heroes and saints, developed ideas that existed only
in germ, arranged narratives and legislation, and constructed an ideal
state. There is reason to believe that the real genius of the people was
first called into full exercise, and put on its career of development at
this time; that Babylon was a forcing nursery, not a prison cell;
creating instead of stifling a nation. The astonishing outburst of
intellectual and moral energy that accompanied the return from the
Babylonish captivity attests the spiritual activity of that "mysterious
and momentous" time. When the hour of deliverance struck, the company of
defeated, disheartened, crushed, to all seeming, "reckless, lawless,
godless" exiles came forth "transformed into a band of puritans." The
books that remain from those generations, Daniel, the Maccabees, Esdras,
are charged with an impetuous eloquence and a frenzied zeal.
The Talmud, that vast treasury of speculation on divine things, had its
origin about this period. Recent researches into that wilderness of
thought reveal wonders and beauties that were never till recently
divulged. The deepest insights, the most bewildering fancies, exist
there side by side. The intellectual powers of a race exhausted
themselves in efforts to penetrate the mysteries of faith. The fragments
of national literature that had been rescued from oblivion, were
pondered over, scrutinized, arranged, classified, with a superstitious
veneration that would not be satisfied till all the possibilities of
interpretation had been tried. The command to "search the scriptures"
for in them were the words of eternal life, was accepted and faithfully
obeyed. "The Talmud" says Emanuel Deutsch, "is more than a book of laws,
it is a microcosm, embracing, even as does the Bible, heaven and earth.
It is as if all the prose and poetry, the science, the faith and
speculation of the old world were, though only in faint reflections,
bound up in it _in nuce_." The theme of discussion, conjecture,
speculation, allegory was, from first to last, the same,--the relation
between Jehovah and his people, the nature and conditions of salvation,
the purport of the law, the bearing of the promises. The entire field of
investigation was open, reaching all the way from the number of words in
the Bible to the secret of infinite being. No passage was left unexposed
with all the keenness that faith aided by culture could supply; and when
reason reached the end of its tether, fancy took up the work and
threaded with unwearied industry the mazes of allegory.
Among the problems that challenged solution was the one touching the
Messiah, his attributes and offices, his nature and his kingdom. This
theme had inexhaustible capacities and infinite attraction, for it was
but another form of the theme of national deliverance which was
uppermost in the Hebrew mind.
The history of the Messianic idea is involved in the obscurity that
clouds the early history of Israel; and this again is embarrassed with
the extreme difficulty of deciding the antiquity of the Hebrew
scriptures. At what moment was Israel fully persuaded of its
providential destiny? That is the question. For the germs of the
Messianic idea were contained in the bosom of that persuasion. That the
idea was slow in forming must be conceded under any estimate of its
antiquity; for its development depended on the experiences of the
nation, and these experiences underwent in history numerous and violent
fluctuations. The hope of a deliverer came with the felt need of
deliverance, and the consciousness of this need grew with the soreness
of the calamity under which the nation groaned, as the character of it
was determined by the character of the calamity. The national
expectation was necessarily vague at first. It rested originally on the
tradition of a general promise given to Abraham that his descendants
should be a great and happy nation, blessing and redeeming the nations
of the earth; that their power should be world-wide, their wealth
inexhaustible, their peace undisturbed, their moral supremacy gladly
acknowledged. "The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against
thee to be smitten before thy face; they shall come out against thee one
way, and flee before thee seven ways. The Lord shall command the
blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thy
hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God
giveth thee. The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself,
as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the
Lord, and walk in his ways; and all people of the earth shall see that
thou art called by the name of the Lord."
As a promise made by Jehovah must be kept, the anticipation of its
fulfilment became strong as the prospect of it grew dim. The days of
disaster were the days of expectation. The prophets laid stress on the
condition, charged the delay upon lukewarmness, and urged the necessity
of stricter conformity with the divine will; but the people, oblivious
of duty, held to the pledge and cherished the anticipation. When the
national hope assumed the concrete form of faith in the advent of an
individual, when the conception of the individual became clothed in
supernatural attributes, is uncertain. Probably the looked-for deliverer
was from the first regarded as more than human. It could hardly be
otherwise, as he was to be the representative and agent of Jehovah, an
incarnation of his truth and righteousness. The Hebrews easily
confounding the human with the super-human, were always tempted to
ascribe supernatural qualities to their political and spiritual leaders,
believing that they were divinely commissioned, attested and furthered;
and the person who was to accomplish what none of them had so much as
hopefully undertaken, would naturally be clothed by an enthusiastic
imagination, with attributes more than mortal. The poets depicted the
stories of the future restoration in language of extraordinary splendor.
Joel, some say eight hundred years before Jesus, two hundred years
before the first captivity, foreshadows the restoration, but without any
portraiture of the victorious Prince. A century and a half later we will
suppose, the first Isaiah speaks of the providential child of the
nation, on whose shoulder the government shall rest, whose name shall be
called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty Potentate, Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace; whose dominion shall be great, who shall fix and
establish the throne and kingdom of David, through justice and equity
for ever, and in peace without end; a lineal descendant from David, a
sprout from his root.
"The spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon him,
"The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
"The spirit of counsel and might,
"The spirit of knowledge and fear of Jehovah.
"Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,
"And faithfulness the girdle of his reins;
"To him shall the nation repair,
"And his dwelling place shall be glorious."
The second Isaiah, supposed to have written during the exile and not
long before its termination, associates the hope of restoration and
return with king Cyrus, on whose clemency the Jews built great
expectations, intimating even that he might be the promised deliverer.
"He saith of Cyrus: 'He is my shepherd; he shall perform all my
pleasure.' He saith of Jerusalem: 'She shall be built;' and of the
temple: 'Her foundation shall be laid.'"
In the book of Daniel, by some supposed to have been written during the
captivity, by others as late as Antiochus Epiphanes (B. C., 175), the
restoration is described in tremendous language, and the Messiah is
portrayed as a supernatural personage, in close relation with Jehovah
himself. He is spoken of as a man, yet with such epithets as only a
Jewish imagination could use in describing a human being. Heinrich
Ewald, in the fifth volume of his history of the people of Israel,
devotes twenty-three pages to an account of the development of the
national expectation of a Messiah, which he calls "the second
preparatory condition of the consummation in Jesus." After alluding to
Joel's fervent anticipation, and Isaiah's description of the glory that
was to come through the King, in whom the spirit of pure divinity
penetrated, animated and glorified everything, so that his human nature
was exalted to the God-like power, whose actions, speech, breath even
attested deity, he says: "It is not to be questioned that this most
exalted form of the conception of the anticipated Messiah appeared in
the midst of the latter period of this history, when before the great
victory of the Maccabees, the eternal hopes of Israel were disturbed in
their foundations along with its political prospects, and the advent of
a King of David's line seemed wholly impossible. At this time the
deathless hope became more interior and imperishable in this new,
glorious, celestial idea, and the Messiah presented himself before
prophetic vision as existing from all eternity, along with the
indestructible prerogatives of Israel, which were thought of as existing
in an ideal realm, ready to manifest themselves visibly when the hour of
destiny should come. And we are able, on historical grounds, to assume
that the deep-souled author of the book of Daniel, was the man who first
sketched the splendid shape of the Messiah, and the superb outline of
his kingdom, in his far-reaching, keen, suggestive, luminous phrases;
while immediately after him the first composer of our book of Enoch
developed the traits furnished him, with an equal warmth of language and
a spiritual insight, not deeper perhaps, but quieter and more
comprehensive." Ewald supposes the book of Enoch to have been written at
various intervals between 144 and 120 (B. C.) and to have been
completed in its present form in the first half of the century that
preceeded the coming of Christ. The book was regarded as of authority by
Tertullian, though Origen and Augustine classed it with apocryphal
writings. In it the figure of the Messiah is invested with super-human
attributes. He is called "The Son of God," "whose name was spoken before
the sun was made;" "who existed from the beginning in the presence of
God," that is, was pre-existent. At the same time his human
characteristics are insisted on. He is called "Son of Man," even "Son of
Woman," "The Anointed," "The Elect," "The Righteous One," after the
style of earlier Hebrew anticipation. The doctrines of angelic orders
and administrations, of Satan and his legions, of resurrection and the
final judgment, though definitely shaped, perhaps by association with
Persian mythologies, lay concealed in possibility within the original
thought of ultimate supremacy which worked so long and so actively,
though so obscurely, in the mind of the Jewish race.
The books of Maccabees, belonging, according to Ewald, to the last half
century before Christ, contain significant hints of the future beliefs
of Israel. In the second chapter of II. Maccabees, verses 4-9, we read:
"It is also found in the records that Jeremy the prophet, being warned
of God, commanded the tabernacle and the ark to go with him, as he went
forth into the mountain where Moses climbed up and saw the heritage of
God. And when Jeremy came thither he found a hollow cave wherein he laid
the tabernacle and the ark and the altar of incense, and then stopped
the door. And some of those that followed him came to mark the way, but
they could not find it; which, when Jeremy perceived, he blamed them,
saying: As for that place it shall be unknown until the time that God
gather his people again together, and receive them unto mercy. Then
shall the Lord show them these things, and the glory of the Lord shall
appear, and the cloud also, as it was showed unto Moses." Is it a
stretch of conjecture on the tenuous thread of fancy to find this
reappearance described in Revelations XI., 19, in these words: "And the
temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in the temple the
ark of his covenant; and there were lightnings, and voices, and
thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail?" In the twenty-first
chapter the seer describes himself as "carried away in the spirit to a
great and high mountain" and shown "that great city the Holy Jerusalem,
descending out of heaven, from God." And he heard a great voice out of
heaven, saying: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men; He will
dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God himself shall be
with them, their God." The heavenly Jerusalem that came from the clouds
is the heavenly city, the germ whereof was carried up and hidden in the
cloud by Jeremy, the prophet. The apocryphal books of the Old Testament
lodge the ancient Hebraic idea in the very heart of the New.
The earliest phases of the Messianic hope were the most exalted in
spirituality. As the fortunes of the people became entangled with those
of other states, and the heavy hand of foreign oppression was laid upon
them, the anticipation lost its religious and assumed a political
character. The Messiah assumed the aspect of a temporal prince, no other
conception of him meeting the requirements of the time. The dark days
had come again, and were more threatening than ever. Sixty-three years
before the birth of Jesus, Pompey the Great, returning from the East,
flushed with victory, approached Jerusalem. The city shut its gates
against him, but the resistance, though stubborn, was overcome at last,
and Judaea was, with the rest of the world, swept into the mass of the
Roman empire. The conqueror, proud but magnanimous, spared the people
the last humiliation. He respected no national scruples, perhaps made a
point of disregarding them; he even penetrated into the Holy of Holies,
a piece of sacrilegious audacity that no Gentile had ventured on before
him; but he was considerate of the national spirit in other respects,
and left the State, in semblance at least, existing. He quelled the
factions that distracted the country, repaired the ruin caused in the
city by the siege, restored the injured temple, and departed leaving the
country in the hands of native rulers, the Empire being thrown into the
background. In the background, however, it lurked, a vast power, holding
Judaea dependent and tributary. The Jewish state was closely bounded and
sharply defined; a portion of its wealth was absorbed in taxes. An iron
arm repressed the insurgent fanaticism that ever and anon broke out in
zeal for Jehovah. The loyalty that was kept alive by religious
traditions and was only another name for religious enthusiasm, was not
allowed expression. Still the even pressure of imperial power was not
cruelly felt, and by the better portion of the people was preferred to
ceaseless discord and anarchy. The lower orders, easily roused to
fanaticism, provoked the Roman rule to more evident and stringent
dominion. Julius Caesar, passing by on his way to Egypt, paused, saw the
situation, and increased the authority of Antipater, his representative,
whom he raised to the dignity of Procurator of Judaea. The rule of
Antipater was, in the main, just, and commended itself to the rational
friends of the Jewish State. He rebuilt the wall which the assaults of
war had thrown down, pacified the country, and earned by his general
moderation the praise of the patriotic. But Antipater, besides being the
representative of a Gentile despotism, was of foreign race, an Idumaean,
of the abhorred stock of Edom. Spiritual acquiescence in the rule of
such a prince was not to be expected.
Antipater was the founder of the Herodian dynasty. Whatever may have
been the ulterior designs which the princes of this dynasty had at
heart, whether they meditated an Eastern Empire centering in Palestine,
Jerusalem being the great metropolis, a purpose kept secret in their
breasts till such time as events might justify them in throwing off the
dominion of Rome which they had used as an assistance in their period of
weakness; or whether they hoped to combine Church and State in Judaea in
such a way that each might support the other; or whether, in their
passion for splendor, they plotted the subversion of religion by the
pomp of pagan civilization; the practical result of their dominion was
the exasperation of the Hebrew spirit.