225. One class only in the community failed of his sympathy,--the

self-righteous hypocrites, who thought that godliness consisted in

scrupulous regard for pious ceremonies, and that zeal was most laudable

when directed to the removal of motes from their brothers' eyes. For these

Jesus had words of rebuke and burning scorn. It has been common with some

to emphasize his friendship for the poor as if he chose them for their

poverty, and the unlettered for their ignorance. Yet Jesus had no faster

friends than the women who followed from Galilee and ministered to him of

their substance, and the two sanhedrists, Joseph whose new tomb received

his body, and Nicodemus whose liberality provided the spices which

embalmed him; for these, and not the Galilean fishermen, were faithful to

the last at the cross and at the grave. In no home did Jesus find a fuller

or more welcome friendship than in Bethany, where all that is told us of

its conditions suggests the opposite of poverty. The rich young ruler, who

showed his too great devotion to his possessions, would hardly have sought

out Jesus with his question, if he was known as the champion of poverty as

in itself essential to godliness. The demand made of him surprised him,

and was suited to his special case. Jesus saw clearly the difficulties

which wealth puts in the way of faith, but he recognized the power of God

to overcome them, and when Zaccheus turned disciple, the demand for

complete surrender of possessions was not repeated. On the contrary Jesus

taught his disciples that even "the unrighteous mammon" should be used to

win friends (Luke xvi. 9), so ministering unto some of "the least of these

my brethren" (Matt. xxv. 40). The beatitude in Luke's report of the

sermon on the mount (Luke vi. 20) was not for the poor as poor simply, but

for those poor folk lightly esteemed who had spiritual sense enough to

follow Jesus, while the well-to-do as a class were content with the

"consolation" already in hand. Jesus' interest was in character, wherever

it was manifest, whether in the repentance of a chief of the publicans, or

in the widow woman's gift of "all her living;" whether it appeared in the

hunger for truth shown by Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, or in the woman

that was a sinner who washed his feet with her tears. He was the great

revealer of the worth of simple humanity, in man, woman, or child. Our

world has never seen another who so surely penetrated all masks or

disguising circumstances and found the man himself, and having found him

loved him.

226. This sympathy for simple manhood was manifested in a genuine interest

in the common life of men in business, pleasure, or trouble. It is

significant that the first exercise of his miraculous power should have

been to relieve the embarrassment of his host at a wedding feast.

Doubtless we are to understand that the miracle had a deeper purpose than

simply supplying the needed wine (John ii. 11); but the significant thing

is that Jesus should choose to manifest his glory in this way. It shows a

genuine appreciation of social life quite impossible to an ascetic like

the Baptist. The same appears in the way Jesus allowed his publican

apostle to introduce him to his former associates, to the great scandal of

the Pharisees; for a feast at which Jesus and a number of publicans were

the chief guests accorded not with religion as they understood it. Jesus,

however, seems to have found it a welcome opportunity to seek some of his

lost sheep. The illustrations which he used in his teaching were often his

best introduction to the common heart, for they were drawn from the

occupations of the people who came to listen; while the aid Jesus gave to

his disciples in their fishing showed not only his power, but also his

respect for their work, a respect further proved when he called them to be

fishers of men.

227. Beyond this interest in life's joy and its occupations was that

unfailing sympathy with its troubles which drew the multitudes to him. He

was far more than a healer; he studied to rid the people of the idea that

he was a mere miracle-monger. He healed them because he loved them, and he

asked of those who sought his help that they too should feel the personal

relation into which his power had brought them. This seems to be in part

the significance of his uniform demand for faith. Doubtless Mary, out of

whom he had cast seven devils, and Simon the leper, who seems to have

experienced his power to heal, are only single instances of many who found

in him far more than at first they sought. No further record remains of

the paralytic who carried off his bed, but left the burden of his sins

behind, nor of the woman who loved much because she had been forgiven

much, nor of the Samaritan whose life he uncovered that he might be able

to give her the living water. Some who had his help for body or heart may

have gone away forgetful, after the fashion of men, but in the company of

those who were bold to bear his name after his resurrection there must

have been many who could not forget.

228. Jesus' interest in common life was genuine, and he entered into it

with his heart. The incident of the anointing of his feet as he sat a

guest in a Pharisee's house shows that he was keenly sensitive to the

treatment he received at the hands of men. He had nothing to say of the

slights his host had shown him, until that host began mentally to

criticise the woman who was ministering to him in her love and penitence.

Then with quiet dignity Jesus mentioned the several omissions of courtesy

which he had noticed since he came in, contrasting the woman's attention

with Simon's neglect (Luke vii. 36-50). One of the saddest things about

Gethsemane was Jesus' vain pleading with his disciples for sympathy in his

awful hour. They were too much dazed with awe and fear to lend him their

hearts' support. He recognized indeed that it was only a weakness of the

flesh; yet he craved their friendship's help, and repeatedly asked them to

watch with him, for his soul was exceeding sorrowful. In contrast with

this disappointment stands the joy with which Jesus heard from Peter the

confession which proved that the falling off of popular enthusiasm had not

shaken the loyalty of his chosen companions,--"Blessed art thou, Simon

Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood have not revealed it unto thee, but my

Father which is in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 17). There is the sorrow of

loneliness as well as rebuke in his complaint, "O faithless generation,

how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear with you?" (Mark ix.

19), and the lamentation over Jerusalem comes from a longing heart (Luke

xiii. 34).

229. The independence of human sympathy which Jesus often showed is all

the more glorious for the evidence the gospels give of his longing for

it. When he put the question to the twelve, "Would ye also go away?" (John

vi. 67), there is no hint in his manner that their defection with the rest

would turn him at all from faithfully fulfilling the task appointed to him

by his Father. In fact only now and then did he allow his own hunger to

appear. Ordinarily he showed himself as the friend longing to help, but

not seeking ministry from others; he rather sought to win his disciples to

unselfishness by showing as well as saying that he came not to be

ministered unto but to minister. He washed the feet of his disciples to

rebuke their petty jealousies, but we have no hint that he showed that he

felt personal neglect. His own heart was full of "sorrow even unto death,"

but his word was, "Let not your heart be troubled;" he asked in vain for

the sympathy of his nearest friends in Gethsemane, yet when the band came

to arrest him he pleaded, "Let these, the disciples, go their way."

II

The Teacher with Authority

230. To his contemporaries Jesus was primarily a teacher. The name by

which he is oftenest named in the gospels is Teacher,--translated Master

in the English versions and the equivalent of Rabbi in the language used

by Jesus (John i. 38). People thought of him as a rabbi approved of God by

his power to work miracles (John iii. 2), but it was not the miracles that

most impressed them. The popular comment was, "He taught them as one

having authority, and not as the scribes" (Matt. vii. 29). Two leading

characteristics of the scribes were their pride of learning, and their

bondage to tradition. In fact the learning of which they were proud was

knowledge of the body of tradition on whose sanctity they insisted; their

teaching was scholastic and pedantic, an endless citing of precedents and

discussion of trifles. To all this Jesus presented a refreshing contrast.

In commending truth to the people, he was content with a simple "verily,"

and in defining duty he rested on his unsupported "I say unto you," even

when his dictum stood opposed to that which had been said to them of old

time.

231. In this freedom from the bondage of tradition Jesus was not alone.

John the Baptist's message had been as simple and unsupported by appeal to

the elders. Jesus and John both revived the method of the older prophets,

and it is in large measure due to this that the people distinguished them

clearly from their ordinary teachers, and held them both to be prophets.

One thing involved in this authoritative method was a frank appeal to the

conscience of men. So completely had the scribes substituted memory of

tradition for appeal to the simple sense of right, that they were utterly

dazed when Jesus undertook to settle questions of Sabbath observance and

ceremonial cleanliness by asking his hearers to use their religious common

sense, and consider whether a man is not much better than a sheep, or

whether a man is not defiled rather by what comes out of his mouth than by

what enters into it (Matt. xii. 12; Mark vii. 15). Jesus was for his

generation the great discoverer of the conscience, and for all time the

champion of its dignity against finespun theory and traditional practice.

All his teaching has this quality in greater or less degree. It appears

when by means of the parable of the Good Samaritan he makes the lawyer

answer his own question (Luke x. 25-37), when he bids the multitude in

Jerusalem "judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous

judgment" (John vii. 24), when he asks his inquisitors in the temple whose

image and superscription the coin they used in common business bears (Mark

xii. 16). His whole work in Galilee was proof of his confidence that in

earnest souls the conscience would be his ally, and that he could impress

himself on them far more indelibly than any sign from heaven could enforce

his claim.

232. Jesus was not only independent of the traditions of the scribes, he

was also very free at times with the letter of the Old Testament. When by

a word he "made all meats clean" (Mark vii. 19), he set himself against

the permanent validity of the Levitical ritual. When the Pharisees pleaded

Moses for their authority in the matter of divorce, Jesus referred them

back of Moses to the original constitution of mankind (Matt. xix. 3-9).

His general attitude to the Sabbath was not only opposed to the traditions

of the scribes, it also disregarded the Old Testament conception of the

Sabbath as an institution. Yet Jesus took pains to declare that he came

not to set aside the old but to fulfil it (Matt. v. 17). The contrasts

which he draws between things said to them of old and his new teachings

(Matt. v. 21-48) look at first much like a doing away of the old. Jesus

did not so conceive them. He rather thought of them as fresh statements of

the idea which underlay the old; they fulfilled the old by realizing more

fully that which it had set before an earlier generation. He was the most

radical teacher the men of his day could conceive, but his work was

clearing rubbish away from the roots of venerable truth that it might bear

fruit, rather than rooting up the old to put something else in its place.

233. The Old Testament was for Jesus a holy book. His mind was filled with

its stories and its language. In the teachings which have been preserved

for us he has made use of writings from all parts of the Jewish

scriptures--Law, Prophets, and Psalms. The Old Testament furnished him the

weapons for his own soul's struggle with temptation (Matt. iv. 4, 7, 10),

it gave him arguments for use against his opponents (Mark xii. 24-27; ii.

25-27), and it was for him an inexhaustible storehouse of illustration in

his teaching. When inquirers sought the way of life he pointed them to the

scriptures (Mark x. 19; see also John v. 39), and declared that the rising

of one from the dead would not avail for the warning of those who were

unmoved by Moses and the prophets (Luke xvi. 31). When Jesus' personal

attitude to the Old Testament is considered it is noticeable that while

his quotations and allusions cover a wide range, and show very general

familiarity with the whole book, there appears a decided predominance of

Deuteronomy, the last part of Isaiah, and the Psalms. It is not difficult

to see that these books are closer in spirit to his own thought than much

else in the old writings; his use of the scripture shows that some parts

appealed to him more than others.

234. Jesus as a teacher was popular and practical rather than systematic

and theoretical. The freshness of his ideas is proof that he was not

lacking in thorough and orderly thinking, for his complete departure from

current conceptions of the kingdom of God indicates perfect mastery of

ethical and theological truth. It is all the more remarkable, therefore,

that so much of his profoundest teaching seems to have been almost

accidental. The most formal discourse preserved to us is the sermon on the

mount, in which human conduct is regulated by the thought of God as Father

and Searcher of hearts. For the rest the great ideas of Jesus have

utterance in response to specific conditions presented to him in his

ministry. His most radical sayings concerning the Sabbath followed a

criticism of his disciples for plucking ears of grain as they passed

through the fields on the Sabbath day (Mark ii. 23-28); his authority to

forgive sins was announced when a paralytic was brought to him for

healing (Mark ii. 1-12); so far as the gospels indicate, we should have

missed Jesus' clearest statement of the significance of his own death but

for the ambitious request of James and John (Mark x. 35-45). Examples of

the occasional character of his teaching might be greatly multiplied. He

did not seek to be the founder of a school; important as his teachings

were, they take a place in his work second to his personal influence on

his followers. He desired to win disciples whose faith in him would

withstand all shocks, rather than to train experts who would pass on his

ideas to others. His disciples did become experts, for we owe to them the

vivid presentation we have of the exalted and unique teaching of their

Master; but they were thus skilful because they surrendered themselves to

his personal mastery, and learned to know the springs of his own life and

thought.

235. Nothing in the teaching of Jesus is more remarkable than his

confidence that men who believed in him would adequately represent him and

his message to the world. The parable of the Leaven seems to have set

forth his own method. We owe our gospels to no injunction given by him to

write down what he said and did. He impressed himself on his followers,

filled them with a love to himself which made them sensitive to his ideas

as a photographic plate is to light, teaching them his truth in forms that

did not at first show any effect on their thought, but were developed into

strength and clearness by the experiences of the passing years. Christian

ethics and theology are far more than an orderly presentation of the

teaching of Jesus; in so far as they are purely Christian they are the

systematic setting forth of truth involved, though not expressed, in what

he said and did in his ministry among men. His ideas were radical and

thoroughly revolutionary. His method, however, had in it all the patience

of God's working in nature, and the hidden noiseless power of an evolution

is its characteristic. Hence it was that he chose to teach some things

exclusively in figure. So great and unfamiliar a truth as the gradual

development of God's kingdom was unwelcome to the thought of his time. He

made it, therefore, the theme of many of his parables; and although the

disciples did not understand what he meant, the picture remained with

them, and in after years they grew up to his idea.

236. Jesus' use of illustration is one of the most marked features of his

teaching. In one sense this simply proves him to be a genuine Oriental,

for to contemplate and present abstract truths in concrete form is

characteristic of the Semitic mind. In the case of Jesus, however, it

proves more: the variety and homeliness of his illustrations show how

completely conversant he was alike with common life and with spiritual

truth. There is a freedom and ease about his use of figurative language

which suggests, as nothing else could, his own clear certainty concerning

the things of which he spoke. The fact, too, that his mind dealt so

naturally with the highest thoughts has made his illustrations unique for

profound truth and simple beauty. Nearly the whole range of figurative

speech is represented in his recorded words, including forms like irony

and hyperbole, often held to be unnatural to such serious speech as his.

237. Another figure has become almost identified with the name of

Jesus,--such abundant and incomparable use did he make of it. Parable

was, however, no invention of his, for the rabbis of his own and later

times, as well as the sages and prophets who went before them, made use of

it. As distinguished from other forms of illustration, the parable is a

picture true to actual human life, used to enforce a religious truth. The

picture may be drawn in detail, as in the story of the Lost Son (Luke xv.

11-32), or it may be the concisest narration possible, as in the parable

of the Leaven (Matt. xiii. 33); but it always retains its character as a

narrative true to human experience. It is this that gives parable the

peculiar value it has for religious teaching, since it brings unfamiliar

truth close home to every-day life. Like all the illustrations used by

Jesus, the parable was ordinarily chosen as a means of making clear the

spiritual truth which he was presenting. Illustration never finds place as

mere ornament in his addresses. His parables, however, were sometimes used

to baffle the unteachable and critical. Such was the case on the occasion

in Jesus' life when attention is first called in the gospels to this mode

of teaching (Mark iv. 1-34). The parable of the Sower would mean little to

hearers who held the crude and material ideas of the kingdom which

prevailed among Jesus' contemporaries. It was used as an invitation to

consider a great truth, and for teachable disciples was full of suggestion

and meaning; while for the critical curiosity of unfriendly hearers it was

only a pointless story,--a means adopted by Jesus to save his pearls from

being trampled under foot, and perhaps also to prevent too early a

decision against him on the part of his opponents.

238. In nothing is Jesus' ease in handling deepest truth more apparent

than in his use of irony and hyperbole in his illustrations. In his

reference to the Pharisees as "ninety and nine just persons which need no

repentance" (Luke xv. 7), and in his question, "Many good works have I

shewed you from the Father, for which of these works do you stone me?"

(John x. 32), the irony is plain, but not any plainer than the rhetorical

exaggeration of his accusation against the scribes, "You strain out a gnat

and swallow a camel" (Matt, xxiii. 24), or his declaration that "it is

easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to

enter into the kingdom of God" (Mark x. 25), or his charge, "If a man

cometh unto me and hateth not his own father and mother ... he cannot be

my disciple" (Luke xiv. 26). The force of these statements is in their

hyperbole. Only to an interpretation which regards the letter above the

spirit can they cause difficulty. In so far as they remove Jesus utterly

from the pedantic carefulness for words which marked the scribes they are

among the rare treasures of his teachings. The simple spirit will not busy

itself about finding something that may be called a needle's eye through

which a camel can pass by squeezing, nor will it seek a camel which could

conceivably be swallowed, nor will it stumble at a seeming command to hate

those for whom God's law, as emphasized indeed by Jesus (Mark vii. 6-13),

demands peculiar love and honor. The childlike spirit which is heir of

God's kingdom readily understands this warning against the snare of

riches, this rebuke of the hypocritical life, and this demand for a love

for the Master which shall take the first place in the heart.

239. Jesus sometimes used object lessons as well as illustrations, and

for the same purpose,--to make his thought transparently clear to his

hearers. The demand for a childlike faith in order to enter the kingdom of

God was enforced by the presence of a little child whom Jesus set in the

midst of the circle to whom he was talking (Mark ix. 35-37). The unworthy

ambitions of the disciples were rebuked by Jesus' taking himself the

menial place and washing their feet (John xiii. 1-15).

240. The simplicity and homeliness of Jesus' teaching are not more

remarkable than the alertness of mind which he showed on all occasions.

The comment of the fourth gospel, "he needed not that any one should bear

witness concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man" (ii. 25),

doubtless refers to his supernatural insight, but it also tells of his

quick perception of what was involved in each situation in which he found

himself. Whether it was Nicodemus coming to him by night, or the lawyer

asking, "Who is my neighbor?" or a dissatisfied heir demanding that his

brother divide the inheritance with him, or a group of Pharisees seeking

to undermine his power by attributing his cures to the devil, or trying to

entrap him by a question about tribute, Jesus was never caught unawares.

His absorption in heavenly truth was not accompanied by any blindness to

earthly facts. He knew what the men of his day were thinking about, what

they hoped for, to what follies they gave their hearts, and what sins hid

God from them. He was eminently a man of the people, thoroughly acquainted

with all that interested his fellows, and in the most natural, human way.

Whatever of the supernatural there was in his knowledge did not make it

unnatural. As he was socially at ease with the best and most cultivated

of his day, so he was intellectually the master of every situation. This

appears nowhere more strikingly than in his dealing with his pharisaic

critics. When they were shocked by his forgiveness of sins, or offended by

his indifference to the Sabbath tradition, or goaded into blasphemy by his

growing influence over the people, or troubled by his disciples' disregard

of the traditional washings, or when later they conspired to entrap him in

his speech,--from first to last he was so manifestly superior to his

opponents that they withdrew discomfited, until at length they in madness

killed, without reason, him against whom they could find no adequate

charge. His lack of "learning" (John vii. 15) was simply his innocence of

rabbinic training; he had no diploma from their schools. In keenness of

argument, however, and invincibleness of reasoning, as well as in the

clearness of his insight, he was ever their unapproachable superior. His

reply to the charge of league with Beelzebub is as merciless an exposure

of feeble malice as can be found in human literature. He was as worthy to

be Master of his disciples' thinking as he was to be Lord of their hearts.

241. In the teaching of Jesus two topics have the leading place,--the

Kingdom of God, and Himself. His thought about himself calls for separate

consideration, but it may be remarked here that as his ministry progressed

he spoke with increasing frankness about his own claims. It became more

and more apparent that he sought to be Lord rather than Teacher simply,

and to impress men with himself rather than with his ideas. Yet his ideas

were constantly urged on his disciples, and they were summed up in his

conception of the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven. This was the

topic, directly or indirectly, of far the greater part of his teaching.

The phrase was as familiar to his contemporaries as it is common in his

words; but his understanding of it was radically different from theirs. He

and they took it to mean the realization on earth of heavenly conditions

(kingdom of heaven), or of God's actual sovereignty over the world

(kingdom of God); but of the God whose will was thus to be realized they

conceived quite differently. Strictly speaking there is nothing novel in

the idea of God as Father which abounds in the teaching of Jesus. He never

offers it as novel, but takes it for granted that his hearers are familiar

with the name. It appears in some earlier writers both in and out of the

Old Testament. Yet no one of them uses it as constantly, as naturally, and

as confidently as did Jesus. With him it was the simple equivalent of his

idea of God, and it was central for his personal religious life as well as

for his teaching. "My Father" always lies back of references in his

teaching to "your Father." This is the key to what is novel in Jesus' idea

of the kingdom of God. His contemporaries thought of God as the covenant

king of Israel who would in his own time make good his promises, rid his

people of their foes, set them on high among the nations, establish his

law in their hearts, and rule over them as their king. The whole

conception, while in a real sense religious, was concerned more with the

nation than with individuals, and looked rather for temporal blessings

than for spiritual good. With Jesus the kingdom is the realization of

God's fatherly sway over the hearts of his children. It begins when men

come to own God as their Father, and seek to do his will for the love

they bear him. It shows development towards its full manifestation when

men as children of God look on each other as brothers, and govern conduct

by love which will no more limit itself to friends than God shuts off his

sunlight from sinners. From this love to God and men it will grow into a

new order of things in which God's will shall be done as it is in heaven,

even as from the little leaven the whole lump is leavened. Jesus did not

set aside the idea of a judgment, but while his fellows commonly made it

the inauguration, he made it the consummation of the kingdom; they thought

of it as the day of confusion for apostates and Gentiles, he taught that

it would be the day of condemnation of all unbrotherliness (Matt. xxv.

31-46). This central idea--a new order of life in which men have come to

love and obey God as their Father, and to love and live for men as their

brothers--attaches to itself naturally all the various phases of the

teaching of Jesus, including his emphasis on himself; for he made that

emphasis in order that, as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, he might lead

men unto the Father.

III

Jesus' Knowledge of Truth

242. The note of authority in the teaching of Jesus is evidence of his own

clear knowledge of the things of which he spoke. As if by swift intuition,

his mind penetrated to the heart of things. In the scriptures he saw the

underlying truth which should stand till heaven and earth shall pass

(Matt. v. 18); in the ceremonies of his people's religion he saw so

clearly the spiritual significance that he did not hesitate to sacrifice

the passing form (Mark vii. 14-23); such a theological development as the

pharisaic doctrine of the resurrection he unhesitatingly adopted because

he saw that it was based on the ultimate significance of the soul's

fellowship with God (Mark xiii. 24-27); he reduced religion and ethics to

simplicity by summing up all commandments in one,--Thou shalt love (Matt.

xxii. 37-40); and at the same time insisted as no other prophet had done

on the finality of conduct and the necessity of obedience (Matt. vii.

21-27). His penetration to the heart of an idea was nowhere more clear

than in his doctrine of the kingdom of God as realized in the filial soul,

and as involving a judgment which should take cognizance only of

brotherliness of conduct. It would not be difficult to show that all these

different aspects of his teaching grew naturally out of his knowledge of

God as his Father and the Father of all men; they were the fruit,

therefore, of personal certainty of ultimate and all-dominating truth.

243. If the knowledge of Jesus had been shown only in matters of spiritual

truth, it would still have marked him as one apart from ordinary men.

There were other directions, however, in which he surpassed the common

mind. The fourth gospel declares that "he knew what was in man" (ii. 25),

and all the evangelists give evidence of such knowledge. Not only the

designation of Judas as the traitor, and of Peter as the one who should

deny him, before their weakness and sin had shown themselves, but also

Jesus' quick reading of the heart of the paralytic who was brought to him

for healing, and of the woman who washed his feet with her tears (Mark ii.

5; Luke vii. 47), and his knowledge of the character of Simon and

Nathanael (John i. 42, 47,) as well as his sure perception of the intent

of the various questioners whom he met, indicate that he had powers of

insight unshared by his fellow men.

244. Furthermore, the gospels state explicitly that Jesus predicted his

own death from a time at least six months before the end (Matt. xvi. 21),

and they indicate that the idea was not new to him when he first

communicated it to his disciples (Matt. xvi. 23; Mark ii. 20). He viewed

his approaching death, moreover, as a necessity (Mark viii. 31-33), yet he

was no fatalist concerning it. He could still in Gethsemane plead with his

Father, to whom all things are possible, to open to him some other way of

accomplishing his work (Mark xiv. 36). The old Testament picture of the

suffering and dying servant of Jehovah (Isa. liii.) was doubtless

familiar to Jesus. Although it was not interpreted Messianically by the

scribes, Jesus probably applied it to himself when thinking of his death;

yet the predictions of the prophets always provided for a non-fulfilment

in case Israel should turn unto the Lord in truth (see Ezek. xxxiii.

10-20). Moreover, the contradiction which Jesus felt between his ideas and

those cherished by the leaders of his people, whether priests or scribes,

was so radical that his death might well seem inevitable; yet it was

possible that his people might repent, and Jerusalem consent to accept him

as God's anointed. Neither prophecy, nor the actual conditions of his

life, therefore, would give Jesus any fatalistic certainty of his coming

death. In Gethsemane his heart pleaded against it, while his will bowed

still to God in perfect loyalty. It is not for us to explain his

prediction of death by appealing to the connection which the apostolic

thought established between the death of Christ and the salvation of men,

for we are not competent to say that God could not have effected

redemption in some other way if the repentance of the Jews had, humanly

speaking, removed from Jesus the necessity of death. All that can be said

is that he knew the prophetic picture, knew also the hardness of heart

which had taken possession of the Jews, and knew that he must not swerve

from his course of obedience to what he saw to be God's will for him.

Since that obedience brought him into fatal opposition to human prejudice

and passion, he saw that he must die, and that such a death was one of the

steps in his establishment of God's kingdom among men. So he went on his

way ready "not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his

life a ransom for many" (Mark x. 45).

245. With his prediction of his death the gospels usually associate a

prophecy of his speedy resurrection. As has been already remarked (sect.

210), it is being generally recognized that if Jesus believed that he was

the Messiah, he must have associated with the thought of death that of

victory over death, which for all Jewish minds meant a resurrection from

the dead. Jesus certainly taught that his death was part of his Messianic

work, it could not therefore be his end. The prediction of the

resurrection is the necessary corollary of his expectation of death; and

it may reverently be believed that his knowledge of it was intimately

involved with his certainty that it was as Messiah that he was to die.

246. From the time when he began to tell his disciples that he must die,

Jesus began also to teach that his earthly ministry was not to finish his

work, but that he should return in glory from heaven to realize fully all

that was involved in the idea of God's kingdom. His predictions resemble

in form the representations found in the Book of Daniel and the Book of

Enoch; and the understanding of them is involved in difficulties like

those which beset such apocalyptic writings. In general, apocalypses were

written in times of great distress for God's people, and represented the

deliverance which should usher in God's kingdom as near at hand. One

feature of them is a complete lack of perspective in the picture of the

future. It may be that this fact will in part account for one great

perplexity in the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus. In the chief of these

(Mark xiii. and parallels), predictions of the destruction of Jerusalem

are so mingled with promises of his own second coming and the end of all

things that many have sought to resolve the difficulty by separating the

discourse into two different ones,--one a short Jewish apocalypse

predicting the destruction of Jerusalem and the coming of the Son of Man

within the life of that generation; the other, Jesus' own prediction of

the end of all things, concerning which he warns his disciples that they

be not deceived, but watch diligently and patiently for God's full

salvation. The difficulties of this discourse as it stands are so great

that any solution which accounts for all the facts must be welcomed. So

far as this analysis seeks to remove from the account of Jesus' own words

the references to a fulfilment of the predictions within the life of that

generation, it is confronted by other sayings of Jesus (Mark ix. 1) and by

the problem of the uniform belief of the apostolic age that he would

speedily return. That belief must have had some ground. What more natural

than that words of Jesus, rightly or wrongly understood, led to the common

Christian expectation? Some such analysis may yet establish itself as the

true solution of the difficulties; it may be, however, that in adopting

the apocalyptic form of discourse, Jesus also adopted its lack of

perspective, and spoke coincidently of future events in the progress of

the kingdom, which, in their complete realization at least, were widely

separated in time. In such a case it would not be strange if the disciples

looked for the fulfilment of all of the predictions within the limit

assigned for the accomplishment of some of them.

247. Whatever the explanation of these difficulties, the gospels clearly

represent Jesus as predicting his own return in glory to establish his

kingdom,--a crowning evidence of his claim to supernatural knowledge. It

is all the more significant, therefore, that it is in connection with his

prediction of his future coming that he made the most definite declaration

of his own ignorance: "Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even

the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father" (Mark xiii. 32).

This confession of the limitation of his knowledge is conclusive. Yet it

is not isolated. With his undoubted power to read "what was in man," he

was not independent of ordinary ways of learning facts. When the woman was

healed who touched the hem of his garment, Jesus knew that his power had

been exercised, but he discovered the object of his healing by asking,

"Who touched me?" and calling the woman out from the crowd to acknowledge

her blessing (Mark v. 30-34); when the centurion urged Jesus to heal his

boy without taking the trouble to come to his house, Jesus "marvelled" at

his faith (Matt. viii. 10); when he came to Bethany, assured of his

Father's answer to his prayer for the raising of Lazarus, he asked as

simply as any other one in the company, "Where have ye laid him?" (John

xi. 34). It should not be forgotten that his knowledge of approaching

death, resurrection, and return in glory did not prevent the earnest

pleading in Gethsemane, and it may be that his reply to the ambition of

James and John, it "is not mine to give" (Mark x. 40), is a confession of

ignorance as well as subordination to his Father.

248. The supernatural knowledge of Jesus, so far as its exercise is

apparent in the gospels, was concerned with the truths intimately related

to his religious teaching or his Messianic work. There is no evidence

that it occupied itself at all with facts of nature or of history

discovered by others at a later day. When he says of God that "he maketh

his sun to rise on the evil and the good" (Matt. v. 45), there is no

evidence that he thought of the earth and its relation to the sun

differently from his contemporaries; it is probable that his thought

anticipated Galileo's discovery no more than do his words. Much the same

may be said with reference to the purely literary or historical questions

of Old Testament criticism, now so much discussed. If it is proved by just

interpretation of all the facts that the Pentateuch is only in an ideal

sense to be attributed to Moses, and that many of the psalms inscribed

with his name cannot have been written by David, the propriety of Jesus'

references to what "Moses said" (Mark vii. 10), and the validity of his

argument for the relative unimportance of the Davidic descent of the

Messiah, will not suffer. Had Jesus had in mind the ultimate facts

concerning the literary structure of the Pentateuch, he could not have

hoped to hold the attention of his hearers upon the religious teaching he

was seeking to enforce, unless he referred to the early books of the Old

Testament as written by Moses. Jesus did repeatedly go back of Moses to

more primitive origins (Mark x. 5, 6; John vii. 22); yet there is no

likelihood that the literary question was ever present in his thinking.

This phase of his intellectual life, like that which concerned his

knowledge of the natural universe, was in all probability one of the

points in which he was made like unto his brethren, sharing, as matter of

course, their views on questions that were indifferent for the spiritual

mission he came to fulfil. If this was the case, his argument from the one

hundred and tenth Psalm (Mark xii. 35-37) would simply give evidence that

he accepted the views of his time concerning the Psalm, and proceeded to

use it to correct other views of his time concerning what was of most

importance in the doctrine of the Messiah. The last of these was of vital

importance for his teaching; the first was for this teaching quite as

indifferent a matter as the relations of the earth and the sun in the

solar system.

249. A more perplexing difficulty arises from his handling of the cases of

so-called demoniac possession. He certainly treated these invalids as if

they were actually under the control of demons: he rebuked, banished, gave

commands to the demons, and in this way wrought his cures upon the

possessed. It has already been remarked that the symptoms shown in the

cases cured by Jesus can be duplicated from cases of hysteria, epilepsy,

or insanity, which have come under modern medical examination. Three

questions then arise concerning his treatment of the possessed. 1. Did he

unquestioningly share the interpretation which his contemporaries put upon

the symptoms, and simply bring relief by his miraculous power? 2. Did he

know that those whom he healed were not afflicted by evil spirits, and

accommodate himself in his cures to their notions? 3. Does he prove by his

treatment that the unfortunates actually were being tormented by

diabolical agencies, which he banished by his word? The last of these

possibilities should not be held to be impossible until much more is known

than we now know about the mysterious phenomena of abnormal psychical

states. If this is the explanation of the maladies for Jesus' day,

however, it should be accepted also as the explanation of similar abnormal

symptoms when they appear in our modern life, for the old hypothesis of a

special activity of evil spirits at the time of the incarnation is

inadequate to account for the fact that in some quarters similar maladies

have been similarly explained from the earliest times until the present

day. If, however, he knew his people to be in error in ascribing these

afflictions to diabolical influence, he need have felt no call to correct

it. If the disease had been the direct effect of such a delusion, Jesus

would have encouraged the error by accommodating himself to the popular

notion. The idea of possession, however, was only an attempt to explain

very real distress. Jesus desired to cure, not to inform his patients. The

notion in no way interfered with his turning the thought of those he

healed towards God, the centre of help and of health. He is not open,

therefore, to the charge of having failed to free men from the thraldom of

superstition if he accommodated himself to their belief concerning

demoniac possession. His cure, and his infusion of true thoughts of God

into the heart, furnished an antidote to superstition more efficacious

than any amount of discussion of the truth or falseness of the current

explanation of the disease. On the other hand, if we are not ready to

conclude that the action of Jesus has demonstrated the validity of the

ancient explanation, we may acknowledge that it would do no violence to

his power, or dignity, or integrity, if it should be held that he did not

concern himself with an inquiry into the cause of the disease which

presented itself to him for help, but adopted unquestioningly the

explanation held by all his contemporaries, even as he used their

language, dress, manner of life, and in one particular, at least, their

representation of the life after death (Luke xvi. 22--Abraham's bosom).

His own confession of ignorance of a large item of religious knowledge

(Mark xiii. 32) leaves open the possibility that in so minor a matter as

the explanation of a common disease he simply shared the ideas of his

time. In this case, when one so afflicted came under his treatment, he

applied his supernatural power, even as in cases of leprosy or fever, and

cured the trouble, needing no scientific knowledge of its cause. If

accommodation or ignorance led Jesus to treat these sick folk as

possessed, it does not challenge his integrity nor his trustworthiness in

all the matters which belong properly to his own peculiar work.

250. There is one incident in the gospels which favors the conclusion that

Jesus definitely adopted the current idea,--the permission granted by him

to the demons to go from the Gadarene into the herd of swine, and the

consequent drowning of the herd (Mark v. 11-13). On any theory this

incident is full of difficulty. Bernhard Weiss (LXt II. 226 ff.) holds

that Jesus accommodated himself to current views, and that the man, having

received for the possessing demons permission to go into the swine, was at

once seized by a final paroxysm, and rushed among the swine, stampeding

them so that they ran down the hillside into the sea.

251. In recent years the view has been somewhat widely advocated that his

power over demoniacs was to Jesus himself one of the chief proofs of his

Messiahship. His words are quoted: "If I, by the Spirit of God, cast out

demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you" (Matt. xii. 28); and "I

beheld Satan falling as lightning from heaven" (Luke x. 18). The first of

these is in the midst of an _ad hominem_ reply of Jesus to the charge that

he owed his power to a league with the devil (Matt. xii. 28); and the

second was his remark when the seventy reported with joy that the demons

were subject unto them (Luke x. 18). The gospels, however, trace his

certainty of his Messiahship to quite other causes, primarily to his

knowledge of himself as God's child, then to the Voice which, coming at

the baptism, summoned him as God's beloved Son to do the work of the

Messiah. Throughout his ministry Jesus exhibits a certainty of his mission

quite independent of external evidences,--"Even if I bear witness of

myself, my witness is true; for I know whence I came and whither I go"

(John viii. 14).

IV

Jesus' Conception of Himself

252. When Jesus called forth the confession of Peter at Cæsarea Philippi

he brought into prominence the question which during the earlier stages of

the Galilean ministry he had studiously kept in the background. This is no

indication, however, that he was late in reaching a conclusion for himself

concerning his relation to the kingdom which he was preaching. From the

time of his baptism and temptation every manifestation of the inner facts

of his life shows unhesitating confidence in the reality of his call and

in his understanding of his mission. This is the case whether the fourth

gospel or the first three be appealed to for evidence. It is generally

felt that the Gospel of John presents its sharpest contrast to the

synoptic gospels in respect of the development of Jesus' self-disclosures.

A careful consideration of the first three gospels, however, shows that

the difference is not in Jesus' thought about himself.

253. The first thing which impressed the people during the ministry in

Galilee was Jesus' assumption of authority, whether in teaching or in

action (Mark i. 27; Matt. vii. 28, 29). His method of teaching

distinguished him sharply from the scribes, who were constantly appealing

to the opinion of the elders to establish the validity of their

conclusions. Jesus taught with a simple "I say unto you." In this,

however, he differed not only from the scribes, but also from the

prophets, to whom in many ways he bore so strong a likeness. They

proclaimed their messages with the sanction of a "Thus saith the Lord;" he

did not hesitate to oppose the letter of scripture as well as the

tradition of the elders with his unsupported word (Matt. v. 38, 39; Mark

vii. 1-23). His teaching revealed his unhesitating certainty concerning

spiritual truth, and although he reverenced deeply the Jewish scriptures,

and knew that his work was the fulfilment of their promises, he used them

always as one whose superiority to God's earlier messengers was as

complete as his reverence for them. He was confident that what they

suggested of truth he was able to declare clearly; he used them as a

master does his tools.

254. More striking than Jesus' independence in his teaching is the

calmness of his self-assertion when he was opposed by pharisaic criticism

and hostility. He preferred to teach the truth of the kingdom, working his

cures in such a way that men should think about God's goodness rather than

their healer's significance. Yet coincidently with this method of his

choice he did not hesitate to reply to pharisaic opposition with

unqualified self-assertion and exalted personal claim. Even if the

conflicts which Mark has gathered together at the opening of his gospel

(ii. 1 to iii. 6) did not all occur as early as he has placed them, the

nucleus of the group belongs to the early time. Since the people greatly

reverenced his critics, he felt it unnecessary to guard against arousing

undue enthusiasm by this frank avowal of his claims. He consequently

asserted his authority to forgive sins, his special mission to the sick in

soul whom the scribes shunned as defiling, his right to modify the

conception of Sabbath observance; even as, later, he warned his critics of

their fearful danger if they ascribed his good deeds to diabolical power

(Mark iii. 28-30), and as, after the collapse of popularity, he rebuked

them for making void the word of God by their tradition (Mark vii. 13).

His attitude to the scribes in Galilee from the beginning discloses as

definite Messianic claims as any ascribed by the fourth gospel to this

early period.

255. These facts of the independence of Jesus in his teaching and his

self-assertion in response to criticism confirm the impression that his

answer to John the Baptist (Matt. xi. 2-6) gives the key to his method in

Galilee. In John's inquiry the question of Jesus' personal relation to the

kingdom was definitely asked. The answer, "Blessed is he whosoever shall

find none occasion of stumbling in me," showed plainly that Jesus was in

no doubt in the matter, although for the time he still preferred to let

his ministry be the means of leading men to form their conclusions

concerning him. What he brought into prominence at Cæsarea Philippi,

therefore, was that which had been the familiar subject of his own

thinking from the time of his baptism.

256. In the ministry subsequent to the confession of Peter the

self-disclosures of Jesus became more frequent and clear. His predictions

of his approaching death were at the time the greatest difficulty to his

disciples; when considered in their significance for his own life,

however, they prove that his conviction of his Messiahship was as

independent of current and inherited ideas as was his teaching concerning

the kingdom. When he came to see that death was the inevitable issue of

his work, he at once discovered in it a divine necessity; it does not seem

to have shaken in the least his certainty that he was the Messiah.

Associated with this conception of his death is the conviction which

appears in all the later teachings, that in rejecting him his people were

pronouncing their own doom. Because she would not accept him as her

deliverer, Jerusalem's "house was left unto her desolate" (Luke xiii. 35).

His sense of his supreme significance appears most clearly in some of the

later parables, such as The Marriage of the King's Son (Matt. xxii. 1-14)

and The Wicked Husbandmen (Matt. xxi. 33-44), which definitely connect the

condemnation of the chosen people with their rejection of God's Son. Two

other sayings in the first three gospels express the personal claim of

Jesus in the most exalted form,--his declaration on the return of the

seventy: "All things have been delivered unto me of my Father, and no man

knoweth who the Son is save the Father, and who the Father is save the

Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him" (Luke x. 22;

Matt. xi. 27); and his confession of the limits of his own knowledge: "But

of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven,

neither the Son, but the Father" (Mark xiii. 32). The confession of

ignorance, by the position given to the Son in the climax which denied

that any save the Father had a knowledge of the time of the end, is quite

as extraordinary as the claim to sole qualification to reveal the Father.

257. The similarity of these last two sayings to the discourses in the

fourth gospel has often been remarked; the likeness is particularly close

between them and the claims of Jesus recorded in the fifth chapter of

John. It is interesting to note that in the incident which introduces the

discourse in that chapter Jesus shows that he preferred, after healing the

man at the pool, to avoid the attention of the multitudes, precisely as in

Galilee he sought to check too great popular excitement by withdrawing

from Capernaum after his first ministry there (Mark i. 35-39), and

enjoining silence on the leper who had been healed by him (Mark ii. 44).

When, however, he found himself opposed by the criticism of the Pharisees

he spoke with unhesitating self-assertion and exalted personal claim, even

as he did in like situations in Galilee. During his earlier ministry in

Judea he had not shown this reserve. The cleansing of the temple, although

it was no more than any prophet sure of his divine commission would have

done, was a bold challenge to the people to consider who he was who

ventured thus to criticise the priestly administration of God's house. In

his subsequent dealings with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman Jesus

manifested a like readiness to draw attention to himself. From the time of

the feeding of the multitudes all four of the gospels represent him as

asserting his claims, with this difference, however, that in John it is

the rule rather than the exception to find sayings similar to the two in

which the self-assertion in the other gospels reaches its highest

expression. Although the method of Jesus varied at different times and in

different localities, yet it is evident that he stood before the people

from the first with the consciousness that he had the right to claim

their allegiance as no one of the prophets who preceded him would have

been bold to do.

258. During the course of his ministry Jesus used of himself, or suffered

others to use with reference to him, many of the titles by which his

people were accustomed to refer to the Messiah. Thus he was named "the

Messiah" (Mark viii. 29; xiv. 61; John iv. 26); "the King of the Jews"

(Mark xv. 2; John i. 49; xviii. 33, 36, 37); "the Son of David" (Mark x.

47, 48; Matt. xv. 22; xxi. 9, 15); "the Holy One of God" (John vi. 69;

compare Mark i. 24); "the Prophet" (John vi. 14; vii. 40). It is evident

that none of these titles was common; they represent, rather, the bold

venture of more or less intelligent faith on the part of men who were

impressed by him. There are two names, however, that are more significant

of Jesus' thought about himself,--"the Son of God" and "the Son of Man."

259. The latter of these titles is unique in the use Jesus made of it.

Excepting Stephen's speech (Acts vii. 56), it is found in the New

Testament only in the sayings of Jesus, and its precise significance is

still a subject of learned debate. The expression is found in the Old

Testament as a poetical equivalent for Man, usually with emphasis on human

frailty (Ps. viii. 4; Num. xxiii. 19; Isa. li. 12), though sometimes it

signifies special dignity (Ps. lxxx. 17). Ezekiel was regularly addressed

in his visions as Son of Man (Ezek. ii. 1 and often; see also Dan. viii.

17), probably in contrast with the divine majesty.

260. In one of Daniel's visions (vii. 1-14) the world-kingdoms which had

oppressed God's people and were to be destroyed were symbolized by beasts

that came up out of the sea,--a winged lion, a bear, a four-headed winged

leopard, and a terrible ten-horned beast; in contrast with these the

kingdom of the saints of the Most High was represented by "one like unto a

son of man," who came with the clouds of heaven (vii. 13, 14). Here the

language is obviously poetic, and is used to suggest the unapproachable

superiority of the kingdom of heaven to the kingdoms of the world. The

expression "one like unto a son of man" is equivalent, therefore, to "one

resembling mankind." The vision in Daniel had great influence over the

author of the so-called Similitudes of Enoch (Book of Enoch, chapters

xxxvii. to lxxi.). He, however, personified the "one like unto a son of

man," and gave the title "the Son of Man" to the heavenly man who will

come at the end of all things, seated on God's throne, to judge the world.

This author used also the titles "the Elect One" and "the Righteous One"

(or "the Holy One of God"), but "the Son of Man" is the prevalent name for

the Messiah in these Similitudes.

261. The facts thus stated do not account for Jesus' use of the

expression. Many of his sayings undoubtedly suggest a development of the

Daniel vision resembling that in the Similitudes. This does not prove that

Jesus or his disciples had read these writings, though it does suggest the

possibility that they knew them. It is probable, however, that the

apocalypses gave formulated expression to thoughts that were more widely

current than those writings ever came to be. The likeness between the

language of Jesus and that found in the Similitudes may therefore prove no

more than that the Daniel vision was more or less commonly interpreted of

a personal Messiah in Jesus' day.

262. Much of the use of the title by Jesus, however, is completely foreign

to the ideas suggested by Enoch and Daniel. Besides apocalyptic sayings

like those in Enoch (Mark viii. 38 and often), the name occurs in

predictions of his sufferings and death (Mark viii. 31 and often), and in

claims to extraordinary if not essentially divine authority (Mark ii. 10,

28 and parallels); it is also used sometimes simply as an emphatic "I"

(Matt. xi. 19 and often). Whatever relation Jesus bore to the Enoch

writings, therefore, the name "the Son of Man" as he used it was his own

creation.

263. Students of Aramaic have in recent years asserted that it was not

customary in the dialect which Jesus spoke to make distinction between

"the son of man" and "man," since the expression commonly used for "man"

would be literally translated "son of man." It is asserted, moreover, that

if our gospels be read substituting "man" for "the Son of Man" wherever it

appears, it will be found that many supposed Messianic claims become

general statements of Jesus' conception of the high prerogatives of man,

while in other places the name stands simply as an emphatic substitute for

the personal pronoun. Thus, for instance, Jesus is found to assert that

authority on earth to forgive sins belongs to man (Mark ii. 10), and,

toward the end of his course, to have taught simply that he himself must

meet with suffering (Mark viii. 31), and will come on the clouds to judge

the world (Mark viii. 38). The proportion of cases in which the general

reference is possible is, however, very small; and even if the

equivalence of "man" and "son of man" should be established, most of the

statements of Jesus in which our gospels use the latter expression exhibit

a conception of himself which challenges attention, transcending that

which would be tolerated in any other man. The debate concerning the usage

in the language spoken by Jesus is not yet closed, however, and Dr. Gustaf

Dalman (WJ I. 191-197) has recently argued that the equivalence of the two

expressions holds only in poetic passages, precisely as it does in Hebrew,

and that our gospels represent correctly a distinction observed by Jesus

when they report him, for instance, as saying in one sentence, "the

Sabbath was made for man" (Mark ii. 27), and in the next, "the Son of Man

is lord even of the Sabbath." The antecedent probability is so great that

the dialect of Jesus' time would be capable of expressing a distinction

found in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and in the Syriac of the

second-century version of the New Testament, that Dalman's opinion carries

much weight.

264. Many of those who look for a distinct significance in the title "the

Son of Man," find in it a claim by Jesus to be the ideal or typical man,

in whom humanity has found its highest expression. It thus stands sharply

in contrast with "the Son of God," which is held to express his claim to

divinity. So understood, the titles represent truth early recognized by

the church in its thought about its Lord. Yet it must be acknowledged that

the conception "the ideal man" is too Hellenic to have been at home in the

thought of those to whom Jesus addressed his teaching. If the phrase

suggested anything more to his hearers than the human frailty or the

human dignity of him who bore it, it probably had a Messianic meaning like

that found in the Similitudes of Enoch. A hint of this understanding of

the name appears in the perplexed question reported in John (xii. 34): "We

have heard out of the law that the Messiah abideth forever; and how sayest

thou, The Son of Man must be lifted up? who is this Son of Man?" Here the

difficulty arose because the people identified the Son of Man with the

Messiah, yet could not conceive how such a Messiah could die. In fact, if

the conception of the Son of Man which is found in Enoch had obtained any

general currency among the people, either from that book or independently

of it, it was so foreign to the earthly condition and manner of life of

the Galilean prophet, that it would not have occurred to his hearers to

treat his use of the title as a Messianic claim until after that claim had

been published in some other and more definite form. Their Son of Man was

to come with the clouds of heaven, seated on God's throne, to execute

judgment on all sinners and apostates; the Nazarene fulfilled none of

these conditions. The name, as used by Jesus, was probably always an

enigma to the people, at least until he openly declared its Messianic

significance in his reply to the high-priest's question at his trial (Mark

xiv. 62), and gave the council the ground it desired for a charge of

blasphemy against him.

265. What did this title signify to Jesus? His use of it alone can furnish

answer, and in this the variety is so great that it causes perplexity.

"The Son of Man came eating and drinking" is his description of his own

life in contrast with John the Baptist (Matt. xi. 18, 19). "The Son of

Man hath not where to lay his head" was his reply to one over-zealous

follower (Matt. viii. 20). Unseemly rivalry among his disciples was

rebuked by the reminder that "even the Son of Man came not to be

ministered unto but to minister" (Mark x. 42-45). When it became needful

to prepare the disciples for his approaching death he taught them that

"the Son of Man must suffer many things ... and be killed, and after three

days rise again" (Mark viii. 31). On the other hand, the paralytic's cure

was made to demonstrate that "the Son of Man hath authority upon the earth

to forgive sins" (Mark ii. 10). Similarly it is the Son of Man who after

his exaltation shall come "in the glory of his Father with the holy

angels" (Mark viii. 38). In these typical cases the title expresses Jesus'

consciousness of heavenly authority as well as self-sacrificing ministry,

of coming exaltation as well as present lowliness; and the suffering and

death which were the common lot of other sons of men were appointed for

this Son of Man by a divine necessity. The name is, therefore, more than a

substitute for the personal pronoun; it expresses Jesus' consciousness of

a mission that set him apart from the rest of men.

266. We do not know how Jesus came to adopt this title. Its association

with the predictions of his coming glory shows that he knew that in him

the Daniel vision was to have fulfilment. The predictions of suffering and

death, however, are completely foreign to that apocalyptic conception,

being akin rather, as Professor Charles has suggested, to the prophecies

of the suffering servant in the Book of Isaiah (Book of Enoch, p.

314-317). Moreover, it may not be fanciful to find in his claims to

heavenly authority a hint of the thought of the eighth Psalm, "Thou madest

him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things

under his feet" (see Dalman WJ I. 218). Although the name expresses a

consciousness of dignity, vicarious ministry, and authority, similar to

thoughts found in Daniel, Isaiah, and the Psalms, it was not deduced from

these scriptures by any synthesis of diverse ideas. It rather indicates

that Jesus in his own nature realized a synthesis which no amount of study

of scripture would ever have suggested. He drew his conception of himself

from his own self-knowledge, not from his Messianic meditations. On his

lips, then, "the Son of Man" indicates that he knew himself to be the Man

whom God had chosen to be Lord over all (compare Dalman as above). The

lowly estate which contradicted the Daniel vision prevented Jesus' hearers

from recognizing in the title a Messianic claim; for him, however, it was

the expression of the very heart of his Messianic consciousness.

267. If Jesus gave expression to his official consciousness when he used

the name "the Son of Man," the title "the Son of God" may be said to

express his more personal thought about himself. It is necessary to

distinguish between the meaning of this title to the contemporaries of

Jesus and his own conception of it. In the popular thought "the Son of

God" was the designation of that man whom God would at length raise up and

crown with dignity and power for the deliverance of his people. This

meaning followed from the Messianic interpretation of the second Psalm, in

which the theocratic king is called God's son (Ps. ii. 7). In another

psalm, which Jesus himself quotes (John x. 34), magistrates and judges are

called "sons of the Most High" (lxxxii. 6). Another Old Testament use

casts light on this,--the designation of Israel as God's son, his

firstborn (Ex. iv. 22; Hos. i. 10), with which may be compared a

remarkable expression in the so-called Psalms of Solomon (xviii. 4), "Thy

chastisement was upon us [that is, Israel] as upon a son, firstborn, only

begotten." In all these passages that which constitutes a man the son of

God is God's choice of him for a special work, while Israel collectively

bears the title to suggest God's fatherly love for the people he had taken

for his own. The Messianic title, therefore, described not a metaphysical,

but an official or ethical, relation to God. It is certainly in this sense

that the high-priest asked Jesus "Art thou the Messiah the son of the

Blessed?" (Mark xiv. 61), and that the crowd about the cross flung their

taunts at him (Matt, xxvii. 43), and the demoniacs proclaimed their

knowledge of him (Mark iii. 11; v. 7). The name must be interpreted in

this sense also in the confession of Nathanael (John i. 49); moreover, it

was not the coupling of the names "Messiah" and "son of the living God" in

Peter's confession that gave it its great significance for Jesus. In all

of these cases there is no evidence that there has been any advance over

the theocratic significance which made the title "the Son of God" fitting

for the man chosen by God for the fulfilment of his promises.

268. The case is different with the name by which Jesus was called at his

baptism (Mark i. 11). The difference here, however, arises not from

anything in the name as used on this occasion, but from that in Jesus

which acknowledged and accepted the title. With Jesus the consciousness

that God was his Father preceded the knowledge that as "his Son" he was to

undertake the work of the Messiah. The force of the call at the baptism is

found in the response which his own soul gave to the word "Thou art my

Son." The nature of that response is seen in his habitual reference to God

as in a peculiar sense _his_ Father. The name "Father" for God was used by

him in all his teaching, and there is no evidence that he or any of his

hearers regarded it as a novelty. Psalm ciii. 13 and Isaiah lxiii. 16

indicate that the conception was natural to Jewish thinking. The unique

feature in Jesus' usage is his careful distinction between the general

references to "your Father" and his constant personal allusions to "my

Father." Witness the reply to his mother in the temple (Luke ii. 49); his

word to Peter, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my

Father which is in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 17), his solemn warning, "Not every

one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven,

but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven" (Matt. vii.

21), and the promise, "Every one who shall confess me before men ... him

will I also confess before my Father" (Matt. x. 32). In the fourth gospel

the same intimate reference is common: so, for example, the temple is "my

Father's house" (ii. 16), the Sabbath cure is defended because "my Father

worketh even until now" (v. 17), the cures are done "in My Father's name"

(x. 25), "I am the vine, and my Father is the husbandman" (xv. 1). This

mode of expression discloses a consciousness of unique filial relation to

God which is independent of, even as it was antecedent to, the

consciousness of official relation.

269. The full name "the Son of God" was seldom applied by Jesus to

himself, the only recorded instances being found in the fourth gospel (v.

25; ix. 35?; x. 36; xi. 4). He frequently acquiesced in the use of the

title by others in addressing him (for example, John i. 49; Matt. xvi. 16;

xxvi. 63f.; Mark xiv. 61f.; Luke xxii. 70); but for himself he preferred

the simpler phrase "the Son." This mode of expression occurs often in

John, and is found also in the two passages, already noticed, in which the

other gospels give clearest expression to the extraordinary self-assertion

of Jesus (Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22; and Mark xiii. 32). In the first of

them his claim to be the only one who can adequately reveal God is founded

on the consciousness that the relation between himself and God is so

intimate that God alone adequately knows him, whom men were so ready to

set at nought, and he alone knows God. This relation, in which he and God

stand together in contrast with all other men, is expressed by the

unqualified names, "the Father" and "the Son." In the second passage Jesus

confessed the limitation of his knowledge, but again in such a way as to

set himself and God in contrast not only with men, but also with "the

angels in heaven." Such assertions as these indicate that he who, knowing

his full humanity, chose the title "the Son of Man" to express his

consciousness that he had been appointed by God to be the Messiah, was yet

aware in his inner heart that his relation to God was even closer than

that in which he stood to men.

270. There is no word in John which goes beyond the two self-declarations

of Jesus which crown the record of the other evangelists, yet in the

fourth gospel the same claim to unique relation to God is more frequently

and frankly avowed. The most unqualified assertion of intimacy--"I and the

Father are one" (x. 30)--states what is clearly implied throughout the

gospel (so xiv. 6-11; xvi. 25; and particularly xvii. 21, "that they may

be one, even as we are one"). It has often been said, and truly, that this

claim to unity with the Father, taken by itself, signifies no more than

perfect spiritual and ethical harmony with God. Yet when the words are

considered in their connection, and more particularly when the two supreme

self-declarations in the synoptic gospels are associated with them, they

express a sense of relation to God so utterly unique, so strongly

contrasting the Father and the Son with all others, that we cannot

conceive of any other man, even the saintliest, taking like words upon his

lips.

271. These titles in which Jesus gave expression to his official and his

personal consciousness present clearly the problem which he offers to

human thought. Jesus stands before us in the gospels as a man aware of

completest kinship with his brethren, yet conscious at the same time of

standing nearer to God than he does to men.

272. It is highly significant that the gospel which records most fully the

claim of Jesus to be more closely related to God than he was to men, most

fully records also his definite acknowledgment of dependence on his

Father, and of that Father's supremacy over him and all others. "The Son

can do nothing of himself" (John v. 19), "I speak not from myself" (xiv.

10), "my Father is greater than all" (x. 29), "the Father is greater than

I" (xiv. 28),--these confessions join with the common reference to God as

"him that sent me" (v. 30 and often) in giving voice to his own spirit of

reverence. It appears as clearly in his habitual submission to his

Father's will,--"My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to

accomplish his work" (John iv. 34); "I am come down from heaven, not to do

mine own will, but the will of him that sent me" (John vi. 38). This

submission reached its fulness in the prayer of Gethsemane, recorded in

the earlier gospels,--"Father, all things are possible unto thee; remove

this cup from me: howbeit not what I will, but what thou wilt" (Mark xiv.

36). Jesus was a man of prayer; not only in Gethsemane, but also

throughout his ministry he habitually sought his Father in that communion

in which the soul of man finds its light and strength for life's duty.

When he was baptized (Luke iii. 21), after the first flush of success in

Capernaum (Mark i. 35), before choosing the twelve (Luke vi. 12), before

the question at Cæsarea Philippi (Luke ix. 18), at the transfiguration

(Luke ix. 29), on the cross (Luke xxiii. 46),--at all the crises of his

life he turned to God in prayer. Moreover, prayer was his habit, for it

was after a night of prayer which has no connection with any crisis

reported for us (Luke xi. 1), that he taught his disciples the Lord's

prayer in response to their requests. The prayer beside the grave of

Lazarus (John xi. 41, 42) suggests that his miracles were often, if not

always (compare Mark ix. 29), preceded by definite prayer to God. His

habit of prayer was the natural expression of his trust in God. From the

resistance to the temptations in the wilderness to the last cry, "Father,

into thy hands I commend my spirit," his life is an example of childlike

faith in God.

273. Yet throughout his life of obedience and trust Jesus never gave one

indication that he felt the need of penitence when he came before God. He

perceived as no one else has ever done the searching inwardness of God's

law, and demanded of men that they tolerate no lower ambition than to be

like God, yet he never breathed a sigh of conscious failure, or gave sign

that he blushed when the eternal light shone into his own soul. He was

baptized, but without confession of sin. He challenged his enemies to

convict him of sin (John viii. 46). Such a challenge might have rested on

a man's certainty that his critics did not know his inner life; but

hypocrisy has no place in the character of Jesus. The reply to the rich

young ruler, "Why callest thou me good?" (Mark x. 18), even if it was a

confession that freedom from past sin was still far less than that

absolute goodness that God alone possesses, simply sets in stronger light

his silence concerning personal failure, and his omission in all his

praying to seek forgiveness. It is probable, however, that that reply

deals not with the "good" as the "ethically perfect," but as the

"supremely beneficent," so that Jesus simply reminded the seeker after

life that God alone is the one to be approached as the Gracious and

Merciful One by sinful men (see Dalman WJ I. 277). Thus the reply becomes

a fresh expression of the reverence of Jesus, and still further emphasizes

his failure to confess his sinfulness.

274. In all this thought about himself Jesus stands before us as a man,

conscious of his close kinship with his fellows. Like them he hungered and

thirsted and grew weary, like them he longed for friendship and for

sympathy, like them he trusted God and prayed to God and learned still to

trust when his request was denied. He stands before us also as a man

conscious of being anointed by God for the great work which all the

prophets had foretold, and of being fully equipped with authority and

power and the promise of unapproachable dignity. Of deep religious spirit

and great reverence for the scriptures of his people, he yet used these

scriptures as a master does his tools, to serve his work rather than to

instruct him in it. He drew his knowledge from within and from above, and

proclaimed his own fulfilment of the scriptures when he filled them with

new meaning. A man always devout, always at prayer, he is never seen, like

Isaiah, prostrate before the Most High, crying, "I am undone" (Isa. vi.

5). In his moments of greatest seriousness and most manifest communion

with heaven he looked to God as his nearest of kin, and felt himself a

stranger on the earth fulfilling his Father's will. He felt heaven to be

his home not simply by God's gracious promise, but by the right of

previous possession. His kinship with men was a condescension, his natural

fellowship was with God.

275. The miracles with which the gospels have filled the record of Jesus'

life have caused perplexity to many, and they belong with other mysterious

things recorded for us in the story of the past or occurring under the

incredulous observation of our scientific generation. They all pale,

however, before the unaccountable exception presented to universal human

experience by this Man of Nazareth. It confronts us when we think of the

unschooled Jew who, in his thought of God, rose not only above all of his

generation, but higher than all who had gone before him, or have come

after, one who built on the foundation of the past a superstructure of

religion new, and simple, and clearly heavenly. It confronts us when we

think of this Man who believed that it was given to him to establish the

kingdom that should fill the whole earth, and who had the boldness and the

faith to ignore the opposition of all the world's wisdom and of all its

enthroned power, and to fulfil his task as the woman does who hides her

leaven in the meal, content to wait for years, or millenniums, until his

truth shall conquer in the realization of God's will on earth even as it

is done in heaven. It confronts us when we consider that the Man who has

shown his brethren what obedience means, who has taught them to pray, who

has been for all these centuries the Way, the Truth, the Life, by whom

they come to God, habitually claimed without shadow of abashment or

slightest hint of conscious presumption, a nature, a relation to God, a

freedom from sin, that other men according to the measure of their

godliness would shun as blasphemy. If the personal claim was true, and not

the blind pretence of vanity, the Jesus of the gospels is the exception to

the uniform fact of human nature, but he is no longer unaccountable; and

if his claim was true, his knowledge of the absolute religion, and his

choice of the irresistible propaganda, are no less extraordinary, but they

are not unaccountable. Paul, whose life was transformed and his thinking

revolutionized by his meeting with the risen Jesus, thought on these

things and believed that "the name which, is above every name" was his by

right of nature as well as by the reward of obedience (Phil. ii. 5-11).

John, who leaned on Jesus' breast during his earthly life, and who

meditated on the meaning of that life through a ministry of many decades,

came to believe that he whom he had seen with his eyes, heard with his

ears, handled with his hands, was, indeed, "the Word made flesh" (John i.

14), through whom the very God revealed his love to men. Through all the

perplexities of doubt, amidst all the obscurings of irrelevant

speculations, the hearts of men to-day turn to this Jesus of Nazareth as

their supreme revelation of God, and find in him "the Master of their

thinking and the Lord of their lives."

"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we

have believed and know that thou art the Holy One of God."

Appendix

Books of Reference on the Life of Jesus

1. A concise account of the voluminous literature on this subject maybe

found at the close of the article JESUS CHRIST by Zockler in

_Schaff-Herzog, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge_. Of the earlier of

the modern works it is well to mention David Friedrich Strauss, _Das Leben

Jesu_ (2 vols. 1835), in which he sought to reduce all the gospel miracles

to myths. August Neander, _Das Leben Jesu Christi_, 1837, wrote in

opposition to the attitude taken by Strauss. Both of these works have been

translated into English. Ernst Renan, _Vie de Jésus_ (1863, 16th ed.

1879), translated, _The Life of Jesus_ (1863), is a charming, though often

superficial and patronizing, presentation of the subject. For vivid word

pictures of scenes in the life of Jesus his book is unsurpassed. Renan's

inability to appreciate the more serious aspects of the work of Christ

appears constantly, while his effort to discover romance in the life of

Jesus is offensive. More important than any of these is Theodor Keim,

_Geschichte Jesu von Nazara_ (1867-72, 3 vols.), translated, _The History

of Jesus of Nazara_ (1876-81, 6 vols.). The author rejects the fourth

gospel and holds that Matthew is the most primitive of the synoptic

gospels; he does not reject the supernatural as such, but reduces it as

much as possible by recognizing a legendary element in the gospels. When

the work is read with these peculiarities in mind, it is one of the most

stimulating and spiritually illuminating treatments of the subject.

2. Critically more trustworthy, and exegetically very valuable, is

Bernhard Weiss, _Das Leben Jesu_ (3d ed. 1889, 2 vols.), translated from

the first ed., _The Life of Christ_ (1883, 3 vols.). It is more helpful

for correct understanding of details than for a complete view of the Life

of Jesus. Rivalling Weiss in many ways, yet neither so exact nor so

trustworthy, though more interesting, is Willibald Beyschlag, _Das Leben

Jesu_ (3d ed. 1893, 2 vols.). The most important discussion in English is

Alfred Edersheim, _The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah_ (1883 and

later editions, 2 vols.). This is valuable for its illustration of

conditions in Palestine in the time of Jesus by quotations from the

rabbinic literature. The material used is enormous, but is not always

treated with due criticism, and the book should be read with the fact in

mind that most of the rabbinic writings date from several centuries after

Christ. Schürer (see below) should be used wherever possible as a

counter-balance. Dr. Edersheim follows the gospel story in detail; his

book is, therefore, a commentary as well as a biography.

3. Albert Réville, _Jesus de Nazareth_ (1897, 2 vols.), aims to bring the

work of Renan up to date, and to supply some of the lacks which are felt

in the earlier treatise. The book is pretentious and learned. In some

parts, as in the treatment of the youth of Jesus, and of the sermon on the

mount, it is helpfully suggestive. The Jesus whom the author admires,

however, is the Jesus of Galilee. The journey to Jerusalem was a sad

mistake, and the assumption of the Messianic rôle a fall from the high

ideal maintained in the teaching in Galilee. In criticism M. Réville

accepts the two document synoptic theory, and assigns the fourth gospel to

about 140 A.D. He rejects the supernatural, explaining many of the

miracles as legendary embellishments of actual events.

4. The most important treatment of the subject is the article JESUS CHRIST

by William Sanday in the _Hastings Bible Dictionary_ (1899). It is of the

highest value, discussing the subject topically with great clearness and

with a rare combination of learning and common sense. S. T. Andrews, _The

Life of Our Lord_ (2d ed. 1892), is a thorough and very useful study of

the gospels, considering minutely all questions of chronology, harmony,

and geography. It presents the different views with fairness, and offers

conservative conclusions. G. H. Gilbert, _The Student's Life of Jesus_

(1896), is complete in plan and careful in treatment, while being very

concise. Dr. Gilbert faces the problems of the subject frankly, and his

treatment is scholarly and reverent. James Stalker, _The Life of Jesus

Christ_ (1880), is a short work whose value lies in the good conception

which it gives of the ministry of Jesus viewed as a whole. In simplicity,

insight, and clearness the book is a classic, though now somewhat out of

date. _Studies in the Life of Christ_, by A.M. Fairbairn (1882), is of

great value for the topics considered. The title indicates that the

treatment is fragmentary. The long treatises of Farrar (1875, 2 vols.) and

Geikie (1877, 2 vols.) are useful as commentaries on the words and works

of Jesus. Farrar often interprets most helpfully the essence of an

incident, and Geikie furnishes a mass of illustrative material from

rabbinic sources, though with less criticism than even Edersheim has used.

Neither of these works, however, deals with the fundamental problems of

the composition of the gospels, nor are they satisfactory on other

perplexing questions, for example, the miraculous birth.

5. The most important accessory for the study of the life of Jesus is Emil

Schürer, _Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi_ (2d

ed. 1886, 1890, 2 vols. A 3d ed. of 2d part in 2 vols., 1898), translated,

_A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ_ (1885-6, 5

vols.). The political history of the Jews from 175 B.C. to 135 A.D., and

the intellectual and religious life of the times in which Jesus lived,

with the Jewish literature of Palestine and the dispersion, are all

treated with thoroughness and masterful learning. W. Baldensperger, _Das

Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der messianischen Hoffnungen seiner

Zeit_ (2d ed. 1892), furnishes in the first part a survey of the Messianic

hopes of the Jews which is in many respects the most satisfactory account

that is accessible. The second part discusses the problem of Jesus'

conception of himself in a reverent and learned way. George Adam Smith,

_The Historical Geography of the Holy Land_ (1894), is indispensable for

the study of the physical features of the land as they bear on its

history, and on the work of Jesus. The maps are the best that have yet

appeared.

6. Discussions of the Teaching of Jesus in works on Biblical Theology have

much that is important for the study of Jesus' life. The most significant

is H. H. Wendt, _Die Lehre Jesu_ (1886, 2 vols.). The second volume has

been translated _The Teaching of Jesus_ (1892, 2 vols.); the first volume

of the original work is an elaborate discussion of the sources, and has

not been done into English. Reference may be made especially to H. J.

Holtzmann, _Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Theologie_ (1897, 2 vols.),

and also to G. H. Gilbert, _The Revelation of Jesus_ (1899). Gustaf

Dalman, _Die Worte Jesu_ (1898), of which the first volume only has

appeared, is a study of the meaning of the most significant expressions

used in the gospel records of the teaching of Jesus, made with the aid of

thorough knowledge of Aramaic usage and of the language of post-canonical

Jewish literature.

7. A good synopsis or Harmony of the gospels is most useful. The best

_Harmony is_ that of Stevens and Burton (1894), which exhibits the

divergencies of the parallel accounts in the gospels as faithfully as the

agreements. A good synopsis of the Greek text of the first three gospels

is Huck, _Synapse_ (1892). Robinson's _Greek Harmony of the Gospels_,

edited by M. B. Biddle, using Tischendorf's text, has also valuable notes

discussing questions of harmony.

Abbreviations

AndLOL Andrews, The Life of Our Lord, 2d ed., 1892.

BaldSJ Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, 2d ed., 1892.

BeysLJ Beyschlag, Das Leben Jesu, 3d ed., 2 vols., 1893.

BovonNTTh Bovon, Théologie du Nouveau Testament, 1892.

DalmanWJ Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, I., 1898.

EdersLJM Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 2 vols.,

1883.

FairbSLX Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ, 1882.

GilbertLJ Gilbert, The Student's Life of Jesus, 1896.

GilbertRJ Gilbert, The Revelation of Jesus, 1899.

HoltzNtTh Holtzmann, Neutestamentliche Theologie, 2 vols., 1897.

KeimJN Keim, The History of Jesus of Nazara, 6 vols., 1876-81.

RévilleJN Réville, Jésus de Nazareth, 2 vols., 1897.

SandayHastBD Sanday, the article JESUS CHRIST in the Hastings Bible

Dictionary, 1899.

SchürerJPTX Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Time of

Jesus Christ, 1885-86. Division I. vols. i. and ii.; Division

II. vols. i., ii., and iii.

SmithHGHL Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 1894.

SB Stevens and Burton, Harmony of the Gospels, 1894.

WeissLX Weiss, The Life of Christ, 3 vols., 1883.

WendtLJ Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, 2 vols., 1886.

WendtTJ Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, 2 vols., 1892.

EnBib Encyclopedia Biblica, 1899.

HastBD Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, 1898.

SBD^2 Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, revision of the first volume

of the original English edition, 1893.

References

Part I.--Preparatory

I

The Historical Situation

8. Read SandayHastBD II. 604-609. On the Land, its physical

characteristics, its political divisions, its climate, its roads, and its

varying civilization, SmithHGHL is unsurpassed. Its identifications of

disputed localities are cautions. Robinson, _Biblical Researches in

Palestine_, and Thomson, _The Land and the Book_, give fuller detail

concerning particular localities, but no such general view as Smith.

9. On Political conditions, SchürerJPTX I. i. and ii. is the fullest and

most trustworthy treatise. More concise essays are Oscar Holtzmann, _Nt.

Zeitgeschichte_ (1895), 57-118; S. Mathews, _History of NT Times in

Palestine_ (1899), 1-158; Riggs, _Maccabean and Roman Periods of Jewish

History_ (1900), especially §§ 206-234, 257-267, 276-282. On the Religious

Life and Parties in Palestine, SchürerJPTX II. i. and ii.; O. Holtzmann,

_NtZeitg_, 136-177; Mathews, _NT Times_, see index; Riggs, _Mac. and Rom.

Periods_, §§ 235-256; Muirhead, _The Times of Christ_ (1898), 69-150. In

addition Wellhausen, _Die Pharisdäer und die Sadducäer_ (1874); on the

_Essenes_, Conybeare in HastBD I. 767-772, also Lightfoot, _Colossians_,

80-98, 347-419; Wellhausen, _Isr. u. jüd. Geschichte_^3 (1897), 258-262;

on the Samaritans, A. Cowley, in _Expos_. V. i. 161-174; Jew. Quar. Rev.

VIII. (1896) 562-575.

10. On the Messianic hope, SchürerJPTX II. ii. 126-187; BaldSJ 3-122;

Muirhead, _Times of Xt._, 112-150; Briggs, _Messiah of the Gospels_

(1894), 1-40; WendtTJ I. 33-84; Mathews, _NT Times_, 159-169; Riggs, _Mac.

and Rom. Periods_, §§ 251-256.

11. On the language of Palestine see Arnold Meyer, _Jesu Muttersprache_

(1896); DalmanWJ I. 1-57; SchürerJPTX II. i. 8-10, 47-51; Neubauer,

_Studia Biblica_, I. 39-74.

12. On Jewish literature dating near the times of Jesus see SchürerJPTX

II. iii.; BaldSJ. 3-122; EdersLJM I. 31-39; Deane, _Pseudepigrapha_

(1891); Thomson, _Books which influenced our Lord_, etc. (1891); and

special editions, such as Alexandre, _Sibylline Oracles_ (1869); Deane,

_The Wisdom of Solomon_ (1881); Charles, _The Book of Enoch_ (1893), _The

Apocalypse of Baruch_ (1896), _The Assumption of Moses_ (1897), and _The

Book of Jubilees_ (1895); Charles and Morfill, _The Secrets of Enoch_

(1896); Ryle and James, _The Psalms of the Pharisees_ [Psalms of Solomon]

(1891); Bensly and James, _Fourth Esdras_ (1895); Charles, EnBib I.

213-250; HastBD I. 109f.; Porter, HastBD I. 110-123; James, EnBib I.

249-261.

II

The Sources

13. On the sources outside the gospels see Anthony, _Introduction to the

Life of Jesus_, 19-108; KeimJN I. 12-59; BeysLJ I. 59-72; GilbertLJ 74-78;

Knowling, _Witness of the Epistles_; Stevens, _Pauline Theol_. 204-208;

Sabatier, _Apostle Paul_, 76-85. On Josephus as a source see also

SchürerJPTX I. ii. 143-149; RévilleJN I. 272-280. On the individual

gospels see Burton, _The Purpose and Plan of the Four Gospels_ (Univ.

Chic. Press, 1900); Bruce, _With Open Face_, 1-61; Weiss, _Introduction to

N.T._, II. 239-386; Jülicher, _Einleitung i. d. NT_, 189-207. On Matthew,

Burton Bib. Wld. I. 1898, 37-44, 91-101; on Mark, Swete, _Comm. on Mark_,

ix-lxxxix; on Luke, Plummer, _Comm. on Luke_, xi-lxx; Mathews, Bib. Wld.

1895, I. 336-342, 448-455; on John, Burton, Bib. Wld. 1899, I. 16-41,

102-105; Westcott, _Comm. on John_, v-lxxvii; Rhees in Abbott's _The Bible

as Literature_, 281-297. On the synoptic question see Sanday SBD^2,

1217-1243, and Expositor, Feb.-June, 1891; Woods, _Studia Biblica_, II.

59-104; Salmon, _Introduction_^7, 99-151, 570-581; Stanton in HastBD II.

234-243; Jülicher, _Einl._ 207-227. A. Wright, _Composition of the Four

Gospels_ (1890) and _Some NT Problems_ (1898), defends the oral tradition

theory in a modified form. On possible dislocations in John see Spitta,

_Urchristentum_, I. 157-204; Bacon, Jour. Bib. Lit. 1894, 64-76; Burton,

Bib. Wld. 1899, I. 27-35. For the history of opinion see specially H. J.

Holtzmann, _Einl._^3 340-375. On the Johannine question see Sanday,

Expositor, Nov. 1891-May 1892; Schürer, Cont. Rev. Sept. 1891; Watkins

SBD^2 1739-1764; Burton, Bib. Wld. 1899, I. 16-41; Reynolds in HastBD II.

694-722; Zahn, _Einl._ II. 445-564 (defends Johannine authorship);

Jülicher, _Einl._ 238-250 (rejects Johannine authorship). For the history

of opinion see Watkins, _Bampton Lecture_ for 1890; Holtzmann, _Einl._^3

433-438. P. Ewald, _Hauptproblem der evang. Frage_, argues the

authenticity of the fourth gospel from the one-sidedness of the synoptic

story. See also Jour. Bib. Lit. 1898, I. 87-102.

14. Réville proposes to reconstruct Jos. Ant. xviii. 3. 3 thus: "'At that

time appeared Jesus, a wise man, who did astonishing things. That is why a

good number of Jews and also of Greeks attached themselves to him.' Then

follows some phrase probably signifying that these adherents had committed

the error of proclaiming him Christ, and then 'denounced by the leading

men of the nation, this Jesus was condemned by Pilate to die on the cross.

But those who had loved him before persevered in their sentiment, and

still to-day there exists a class of people who take from him their name

Christians.'"

15. On the testimony of Papias (Euseb. _Ch. Hist_. iii. 39. 4) see

Lightfoot, Cont. Rev. 1875, II. 379 ff., and McGiffert's notes in his

_Eusebius_, 170 ff.

16. For a collection of probably genuine Agrapha see Ropes, _Die Spruche

Jesu_, 154-161, and Amer. Jour. Theol. 1897, 758-776; Resch, _Agrapha_,

gives a much longer list. He is criticised by Ropes. On lost and

uncanonical gospels see Salmon, _Intr._^7 173-190, 580-591; Kruger, _Early

Christian Literature_, 50-57. For the recently discovered Gospel of Peter

see Swete, _The Gospel of Peter_; and on the so-called _Sayings of Jesus_

found in Egypt in 1896 see Harnack, _Expositor_, V. vi. 321-340, 401-416,

and essay by Sanday and Lock. _Apocryphal Gospels_ are most conveniently

found in _Ante-nicene Fathers_, VIII. 361-476.

III

The Harmony of the Gospels

17. The Diatessaron of Tatian is translated with notes by Hill, _The

Earliest Life of Christ_. See also _Ante-nic. Fathers_, IX. 35-138.

18. For the extreme position concerning Doublets see Holtzmann,

_Hand-commentar zum NT_ I. passim. E. Haupt, Studien u. Kritiken, 1884,

25, remarks that Jesus must often have repeated his teaching in

essentially the same form.

IV

Chronology

19. For data and discussion of the various problems see Wieseler,

_Chronological Synopsis_; Lewin, _Fasti Sacra; _ KeimJN II. 379-402;

AndLOL 1-52; SchürerJPTX I. ii. 30-32, 105-143; O. Holtzmann, _NtZeitg_,

118-124, 125-127, 131-132; Turner HastBD I. 403-415; Ramsay, _Was Christ

born at Bethlehem_; and von Soden in EnBib. I. 799-812. For patristic

opinion concerning the length of Jesus' ministry, see HastBD I. 410. For

the argument for a one-year ministry, see KeimJN II. 398; O. Holtzmann,

_NtZeitg_, 131f. For two years, see Wieseler, _Chron. Synop_. 204-220;

WeissLX I. 389-392; Turner, in HastBD. For three years, see AndLOL

189-198; note by Robertson in Broadus, _Harmony of the Gospels_, 241-244.

Compare RévilleJN II. 227-231; Zahn, _Einl._ II. 516f.

V

The Early Years

20. On the problem of the Virgin birth see GilbertLJ 79-89; WeissLX I.

211-233; Swete, _Apos. Creed_, 42-55; Bruce, _Apologetics_, 407-413;

Ropes, Andover Rev. 1893, 695-712; FairbSLX 30-45; Godet, _Comm. on Luke_,

Rem. on chaps. I. and II.; BovonNTTh I. 198-217. These maintain

historicity. The other side: BeysLJ I. 148-174; Meyer, _Comm. on Matt_.,

Rem. on 1.18; Keim JN II. 38-101; Réville, New World, 1892, 695-723, and

JN I. 361-408; HoltzmannNtTh I. 409-415. On the early years of

Jesus see EdersLJM I. 217-254; WeissLX I. 275-293; Hughes, _Manliness of

Xt_, 35-60; WendtTJ I. 90-96; Stapfer, _Jesus Christ before his Ministry;

_ FairbSLX 46-63; BeysLJ II. 44-65; RévilleJN I. 409-438.

21. For some of the early legends concerning the birth and childhood of

Jesus, see the so-called _Protevangelium of James_, the _Gospel of

Pseudo-Matthew_, and the _Gospel of Thomas_, Ante-nic. Fathers, VIII.

361-383, 395-398. For Jewish calumnies see Laible, _J. X. im Thalmud_,

9-39.

22. On the two genealogies see AndLOL 62-68; WeissLX I. 211-221; Godet on

Luke, iii. 23-38. These refer Luke's genealogy to Marv. Hervey SBD^2

1145-1148, Plummer on Luke, iii. 23, EdersLJM I. 149, GilbertLJ 81f.,

with the early fathers (see Plummer), refer both to Joseph. For the view

that they are unauthentic see Holtzmann, _Hand-comm._ I. 39-41; Bacon in

HastBD II. 137-141.

23. On the "brethren" of Jesus see Mayor, HastBD I. 320-326;

AndrewsLOL 111-123. These make the brethren sons of Joseph and

Mary. Lightfoot, _Galatians_^10, 252-291, regards them as sons of Joseph

by a former marriage.

VI

John the Baptist

24. On the character and work of John the Baptist see KeimJN II. 201-266

and references in the index under John the Baptist. Keim's is much the

most satisfactory treatment; it is, moreover, Keim at his best. See also

Ewald, _Hist, of Israel_, VI. 160-200; WeissLX I. 307-316; FairbSLX 64-79;

W. A. Stevens, Homil. Rev. 1891, II. 163 ff.; Bebb in HastBD II. 677-680;

Wellhausen _Isr. u. judische Geschichte_, 342f.; Feather, _Last of the

Prophets_. Reynolds, _John the Baptist_, obscures its excellencies by a

vast amount of irrelevant discussion.

25. On the existence of a separate company of disciples of John see Mk.

ii. 18, Mt. ix. 14, Lk. v. 33; Mk. vi. 29, Mt. xiv. 12; Mt. xi. 2f., Lk.

vii. 18f.; Lk. xi. 1; Jn. i. 35f.; iii. 25; Ac. xix. 1-3. Consult

Lightfoot, _Colossians_, 400 ff.; Baldensperger, _Der Prolog des vierten

Evangeliums_, 93-152.

VII

The Messianic Call

26. On the baptism of Jesus see WendtTJ I. 96-101; EdersLJM I. 278-287;

BaldSJ 219-229. WeissLX I. 316-336 says that the baptism meant for Jesus,

already conscious of his Messiahship, "the close of his former life and

the opening of one perfectly new" (322); KeimJN II. 290-299 makes it an

act of consecration, but eliminates the Voice and Dove; BeysLJ I. 215-231

thinks that Jesus, conscious of no sin, yet not aware of his Messiahship,

sought the baptism carrying "the sins and guilt of his people on his

heart, as if they were his own" (229). Against Beyschlag see E. Haupt in

Studien u. Kritiken, 1887, 381. Baldensperger shows clearly that the

Messianic call was a revelation to Jesus, not a conclusion from a course

of reasoning.

27. On the temptation see WendtTJ I. 101-105; WeissLX I. 337-354; EdersLJM

I. 299-307; FairbairnSLX 80-98; BaldSJ 230-236; BeysLJ I.

231-237; KeimJN II. 317-329. All these see in temptation the necessary

result of the Messianic call at the baptism.

28. The locality of the baptism of Jesus cannot be determined. Tradition

has fixed on one of the fords of the Jordan near Jericho, see SmithHGHL

496, note 1. On the probable location of Bethany (Bethabarah) (Jn. i. 28)

see discussion in AndLOL 146-151; EnBib 548; and especially Smith's note

as above.

29. On the anointing of Jesus with the Holy Spirit see WeissLX I. 323-336;

BeysLJ I. 230f. For the influence of the Spirit in the later life of Jesus

see Mk. i. 12; Mt. iv. 1; Lk. iv. 1; iv. 14, 18, 21; Mk. iii. 29, 30; Mt.

xii. 28; Jn. iii. 34; compare Ac. i. 2; x. 38. Clearly these refer not to

the ethical and religious indwelling of the Divine Spirit (comp. Rom. i.

4), but to the special equipment for official duty. This is the OT sense,

see Ex. xxxi. 2-5; Jud. iii. 10; I. Sam. xi. 6; Isa. xi. 1f.; xlii. 1;

lxi. 1; and consult Schultz, _Old Test. Theol._ II. 202f. Jesus seems to

have needed a like divine equipment, notwithstanding his divine nature.

See GilbertLJ 121f.

30. How this Messianic anointing is to be related to the doctrine of

Jesus' essential divine nature cannot be determined with certainty. It

must not be forgotten, however, that it is a _datum_ for Christology, and

that it cannot be explained away. It indicates one of the particulars in

which Jesus was made like unto his brethren. What was involved when the

Son of God "emptied himself and was made in the likeness of men" (Phil.

ii. 7) we can only vaguely conceive. Two views of early heretical sects

seem rightly to have been rejected. The Docetic view, held by some

Gnostics of the 2d cent., dates the incarnation from the baptism, but

distinguishes Christ from the human Jesus, who only served as a vehicle

for the manifestation of the Son of God; the Christ descended on Jesus at

the baptism, ascending again to heaven from the cross, compare Mt. iii. 16

and xxvii. 50 in the Greek; see Schaff _Hist. of Xn Church_^2, II. 455f.

The recently discovered Gospel of Peter presents this view, Gosp. Pet. §

5. The Nestorian view represents that the baptism was, in a sense, Jesus'

"birth from above" (Jn. iii. 3, 5); thus the incarnation was first

complete at the baptism though the Logos had been associated with Jesus

from the beginning. See Schaff, _Hist, of Xn Church_^2, III. 717 ff.;

Conybeare, _History of Xmas_, Amer. Jour. Theol. 1899, 1-21.

31. The traditional locality of the temptation is a mountain near Jericho

called _Quarantana_, see AndLOL 155; the tradition seems to date no

further back than the crusades. It is, however, probable that the

"wilderness" (Mt. iv. 1, Mk. i. 12, Lk. iv. 1) is the same wilderness

mentioned in connection with John's earlier life and work (Mt. iii. 1, Mk.

i. 4), the region W and NW of the Dead Sea, see SmithHGHL 317. Others

(Stanley, _Sinai and Palestine_, 308; EdersLJM I. 300, 339 notes) hold

that the temptation took place in the desert regions SE of the sea of

Galilee; this is possibly correct, though the record in the gospels

suggests the wilderness of Judea. On the source of the temptation story

see WeissLX I. 339 ff.; BeysLJ I. 234; Bacon, Bib. Wld. 1900, I. 18-25.

VIII

The First Disciples

32. SandayHastBD II. 612f.; GilbertLJ 144-157; WeissLX I. 355-387; AndLOL

155-165; EdersLJM I. 336-363; BeysLJ II. 129-148 (assigns here a

considerable part of the synoptic account of work in Capernaum).

33. _The early confessions_. On the genuineness of the Baptist's testimony

to "the Lamb of God" see M. Dods in _Expos. Gk. Test_. I .695f.; Westcott,

_Comm. on John_, 20; EdersLJM 1. 342 ff.; WeissLX 1. 362f. (thinks the

evangelist added "who taketh away the sin of the world"); Holtzmann,

_Hand-comm._ IV. 38f. holds that the evangelist has put in the mouth of

the Baptist a conception which was first current after the death of Jesus.

On the confessions of Nathanael and the others, see Jour. Bib. Lit. 1898,

21-30.

34. _Cana_ is probably the modern Khirbet Kana, eight miles N of Nazareth.

A rival site is Kefr Kenna, three and one-half miles NE from Nazareth. See

EnBib and HastBD, also AndLOL 162-164.

35. _The miracles of Jesus_ are challenged by modern thought. It is

customary in reading other documents than the N.T. instantly to relegate

the miraculous to the domain of legend. Miracles, however, are integral

parts of the story of Jesus' life, and those who attempt to write that

life eliminating the supernatural are constrained to recognize that he had

marvellous power as an exorcist and healer of some forms of nervous

disease. So E. A. Abbott, _The Spirit on the Waters_, 169-201. Our

knowledge of nature does not warrant a dogmatic definition of the limits

of the possible; see James, _The Will to Believe_, vii.-xiii., 299-327.

The question is confessedly one of adequate evidence. The evidence for the

supreme miracle--the transcendent character of Jesus--is clear, see Part

III. chap. iv.; and the miraculous element in the story of his life must

be considered in view of this supreme miracle. In association with him his

miracles gain in credibility. In estimating the evidence for them their

dignity and worthiness is important. What the devout imagination would do

in embellishing the story of Jesus is exhibited in the apocryphal gospels;

the miracles of the canonical gospels are of an entirely different type,

which commends them as authentic. By definition a miracle is an event not

explicable in terms of ordinary human experience. It is therefore futile

to attempt to picture the miracles of Jesus in their occurrence, for the

imagination has no material except that furnished by ordinary experience.

For our day the miracles are of importance chiefly for the exhibition they

give of the character of Jesus; they can be studied with this in view

without regard to the curious question how they happened. Read

SandayHastBD II. 624-628; and see Fisher, _Grounds of Christian and

Theistic Belief, _ chaps, iv.--vi., _Supernatural Origin of

Christianity_^3, chap, xi.; Bruce, _Miraculous Element in the Gospels;

Apologetics_, 409 ff.; Illingworth, _Divine Immanence_; Rainy, Orr, and

Dods, _The Supernatural in Christianity_.

Part II.--The Ministry

I

General Survey

36. SandayHastBD II. 609f.; GilbertLJ 136-143; AndLOL 125-137; BeysLJ I.

256-295.

II

The Early Ministry in Judea

37. SandayHastBD II. 612^b-613^b; WeissLX II. 3-53; EdersLJM I. 364-429;

BeysLJ II. 147-168; GilbertLJ 158-179.

38. On _the chronological significance of John iv_. 35 see AndLOL 183;

WeissLX II. 40; Wieseler, _Synop_. 212 ff, who find indication that the

journey was in December. EdersLJM I. 419f.; Turner in HastBD I. 408, find

indication of early summer. Some treat iv. 35 as a proverb with no

chronological significance; so Alford, _Comm. on John_.

39. Geographical notes. _Aenon_ near Salim has not been identified. Most

favor a site in Samaria, seven miles from a place named Salim, which lay

four miles E of Shechem, see Conder, _Tent Work in Palestine_, II. 57, 58;

Stevens, Jour. Bib. Lit. 1883, 128-141. But can John have been baptizing

in Samaria? WeissLX II. 28 says "it is perfectly impossible that he [John]

can have taken up his station in Samaria." Other suggestions are: some

place in the Jordan valley (but then why remark on the abundance of water,

Jn. iii. 23?); near Jerusalem; and in the south of Judea. See AndLOL

173-175. _Sychar_ is the modern 'Askar, about a mile and three-quarters

from Nablus (Shechem), and half a mile N of Jacob's well. See SmithHGHL

367-375.

40. General questions. _Was the temple twice cleansed?_ (see sect. 116).

Probably not. The two reports (Jn. ii. 13-22; Mk. xi. 15-18 ¶s) are

similar in respect of Jesus' indignation, its cause, its expression, its

result, and a consequent challenge of his authority. They differ in the

time of the event (John assigns to first Passover, synoptics to the last)

and in a possibly greater sternness in the synoptic account. These

differences are no greater than appear in other records of identical

events (compare Mt. viii. 5-13 with Lk. vii. 2-10), while the repetition

of such an act would probably have been met by serious opposition. If the

temple was cleansed but once, John indicates the true time. At the

beginning of the ministry it was a demand that the people follow the new

leader in the purification of God's house and the establishment of a truer

worship. At the end it could have had only a vindictive significance,

since the people had already signified to the clear insight of Jesus that

they would not accept his leadership. For two distinct cleansings see the

discussion in AndLOL 169f., 437; EdersLJM I. 373; Plummer on Luke xix.

45f. For one cleansing at the end see KeimJN V. 113-131. For one cleansing

at the beginning see WeissLX II. 6 ff.; BeysLJ II. 149 ff.; GilbertLJ 159

ff.

41. _The journey to Galilee_. Do John (iv. 1-4, 43-45) and Mark (i. 14 =

Mt. iv. 12; Lk. iv. 14) report the same journey? Both are journeys from

the south introducing work in Galilee; yet the reasons given for the

journey are different (compare Jn. iv. 1-3 with Mk. i. 14). If the

Pharisees had a hand in John's "delivering up" (Mk. i. 14; comp. Jos. Ant.

xviii. 5. 2), the same hostile movement may have impelled Jesus to leave

Judea. He may not have heard of John's imprisonment until after his

departure, or some time before he opened his new ministry in Galilee. See

GilbertLJ 173f. AndLOL 176-182 argues against the identification.

42. _The nobleman's son_ (Jn. iv. 46-54). Is this a doublet of Mt. viii.

5-13; Lk. vii. 2-10? John differs from synoptics in the time, the place,

the disease, the suppliant, his plea, and Jesus' attitude. Matthew and

Mark differ from each other concerning the bearers of the centurion's

messages to Jesus. John's account is similar to synoptic superficially,

but is probably not a doublet. Compare Syro-Phœnician's daughter (Mk. vii.

29f.). See GilbertLJ 202; Meyer on John iv. 51-54; Plummer on Luke vii.

10. WeissLX II. 45-51 identifies. Read SandayHastBD II. 613.

III and IV

The Ministry in Galilee

43. Read SandayHastBD II. 613-630; GilbertLJ 180-283. Consult WeissLX II.

44 to III. 153; EdersLJM I. 472 to II. 125; BeysLJ II. 140-147,168-294.

See AndLOL 209-363 for discussion of details, and KeimJN III. 10 to IV.

346 for an illuminating, though not unprejudiced, topical treatment.

44. Geographical notes. _Capernaum_. The site is not clearly identified,

two ruins on the NW of Sea of Galilee are rival claimants,--Tell Hum and

Khan Minyeh. Tell Hum is advocated by Thomson, _Land and Book, Central

Pal. and Phœnicia_ (1882), 416-420; Khan Minyeh, by SmithHGHL 456, EnBib

I. 696 ff. Latter is probably correct. See AndLOL 224-237.

_Bethsaida_. The full name is Bethsaida Julias, located at entrance of

Jordan into the Sea of Galilee. SmithEnBib I. 565f., SmithHGHL

457f., shows that there is no need of the hypothesis of a second Bethsaida

to meet the statement in Mk. vi. 45, or that in Jn. i. 44. See also AndLOL

230-236. Ewing HastBD I. 282f. renews the argument for two Bethsaidas.

_Chorazin_ was probably the modern Kerazeh, about one mile N of Tell Hum,

and back from the lake. See SmithEnBib I. 751; SmithHGHL 456;

AndLOL 237f.

45. _The mountain of the sermon on the mount_ (Mt. v. 1; Lk. vi. 12)

probably refers to the Galilean highlands as distinct from the shore of

the lake. More definite location is not possible. See AndLOL 268f.;

EdersLJM I. 524. The traditional site, the Horns of Hattin, is a hill

lying about seven miles SW from Khan Minyeh, which has near the top a

level place (Lk. vi. 17) flanked by two low peaks or "horns."

46. _The country of the Gerasenes, Gadarenes, or Gergesenes_. Gadarenes is

the best attested reading in Mt. viii. 28, Gerasenes in Mk. v. 1 and Lk.

viii. 26; Gergesenes has only secondary attestation. Gadara is identified

with Um Keis on the Yarmuk, some six miles SE of the Sea of Galilee. This

cannot have been the site of the miracle, though it is possible that

Gadara may have controlled the country round about, including the shores

of the sea. Gerasa is the name of a city in the highlands of Gilead,

twenty miles E of Jordan, and thirty-five SE of the Sea of Galilee, and

it clearly cannot have been the scene of the miracle. Near the E shore of

the sea Thomson discovered the ruins of a village which now bears the name

Khersa. The formation of the land in the neighborhood closely suits the

narrative of the gospels. This is now accepted as the true identification.

See Thomson _Land and Book, Central Palestine_, 353-355; SBD^2 1097-1100;

HastBD II. 159f.; AndLOL 296-300. The name "Gadarenes" may indicate that

Gadara had jurisdiction over the region of Khersa; the names "Gerasenes"

and "Gergesenes" may be derived directly and independently from Khersa, or

may be corruptions due to the obscurity of Khersa.

47. _The feeding of the five thousand_ took place on the E of the sea, in

a desert region, abundant in grass, and mountainous, and located in the

neighborhood of a place named Bethsaida. Near the ruins of Bethsaida

Julias is a plain called now Butaiha, "a smooth, grassy place near the sea

and the mountains," which meets the requirements of the narrative. See

AndLOL 322f.

48. _The return of Jesus from the regions of Tyre "through Sidon"_ (Mk.

vii. 31) avoided Galilee, crossing N of Galilee to the territory of Philip

and "_the Decapolis_." This latter name applies to a group of free Greek

cities, situated for the most part E of the Jordan. Most of the cities of

the group were farther S than the Sea of Galilee; some, however, were E

and NE of that sea, hence Jesus' approach from Cæsarea Philippi or

Damascus could be described as "through Decapolis." See SmithHGHL 593-608;

En Bib I. 1051 ff.; SchürerJPTX II. i. 94-121.

49. Of _Magadan_ (Mt. xv. 39) or _Dalmanutha_ (Mk. viii. 10) all that is

known is that they must have been on the W coast of the Sea of Galilee.

They have never been identified, though there are many conjectures. See

SBD^2, HastBD, and En Bib.

50. _Cæsarea Philippi_ was situated at the easternmost and most important

of the sources of the Jordan, it is called Panias by Jos. Ant. xv. 10.3,

now Banias. Probably a sanctuary of the god Pan. Here Herod the Great

built a temple which he dedicated to Cæsar; Philip the Tetrarch enlarged

the town and called it Cæsarea Philippi. See SBD^2; HastBD; EnBib.

51. _The mountain of the transfiguration_. The traditional site, since the

fourth century, is Tabor in Galilee. Most recent opinion has favored one

of the shoulders of Hermon, owing to the supposed connection of the event

with the sojourn near Cæsarea Philippi. WeissLX III. 98 points out that

there is no evidence that Jesus lingered for "six days" (Mk. ix. 2) near

that town, and that therefore the effort to locate the transfiguration is

futile. GilbertLJ 274 thinks that Mk. ix. 30 is decisive in favor of a

place outside Galilee; he therefore holds to the common view that Hermon

is the true locality. See AndLOL 357f.

52. General questions. _Was Jesus twice rejected at Nazareth?_ (comp. Lk.

iv. 16-30 with Mk. vi. 1-6^a; Mt. xiii. 54-58). Here are two accounts that

read like independent traditions of the same event; they agree concerning

the place, the teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, the astonishment

of the Nazarenes, their scornful question, and Jesus' rejoinder. Luke

makes no reference to the disciples (Mk. vi. 1) nor to the working of

miracles (Mk. vi. 5); Matthew and Mark, on the other hand, say nothing of

an attempt at violence. These differences are no more serious, however,

than appear in the two accounts of the appeal of the centurion to Jesus

(Mt. viii. 5-8; Lk. vii. 3-7). Moreover, Lk. iv. 23 indicates a time after

the ministry in Capernaum had won renown, which agrees with the place

given the rejection in Mark. The general statement (Lk. iv. 14f.) suggests

that the visit to Nazareth is given at the beginning as an instance of

"preaching in their synagogues." The three accounts probably refer to one

event reported independently. For identification see WeissLX III. 34;

Plummer on Luke iv. 30; GilbertLJ 254f. For two rejections see Godet's

supplementary note on Lk. iv. 16-30; Meyer on Mt. xiii. 53-58; EdersLJM I.

457, note 1; Wieseler, _Synopsis_, 278. BeysLJ I. 270 identifies but

prefers Luke's date.

53. _Were there two miraculous draughts of fish?_ Lk. v. 1-11 is sometimes

identified with Jn. xxi. 3-13. So WendtLJ I. 211f., WeissLX II. 57f., and

Meyer on Luke v. 1-11. Against the identification see Alford, Godet, and

Plummer on the passage in Luke. The two are alike in scene, the night of

bootless toil, the great catch at Jesus' word. They differ in personnel,

antecedent relations of the fishermen with Jesus, the effect of the

miracle on Peter, and the subsequent teaching of Jesus, as well as in

time. These differences make identification difficult.