Note 14 — Chapter I · RELATION OF JESUS TO THE IDEA OF A SUFFERING AND DYING MESSIAH; HIS DISCOURSES ON HIS DEATH, RESURRECTION, AND SECOND ADVENT.

It may appear surprising if, after this admission, we still put the question, whether, according to the New Testament representation, it be probable that Jesus actually uttered such a prediction? since, certainly, a general announcement of his violent death is the least which the evangelical accounts appear to contain, but our meaning in the question is this: is the sequel, especially the conduct of the disciples, so described in the gospels, as to be reconcilable with a prior disclosure of Jesus relative to the sufferings which awaited him? Now the express statements of the Evangelists do not merely tend to show that the disciples did not understand the discourses of Jesus on his coming death, in the sense that they did not know how to adjust these facts in their own minds, or to make them tally with their preconceived ideas concerning the Messiah,—a difficulty which drew from Peter the first time that Jesus announced his death, the exclamation: Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee;—for we find the words of Mark (ix. 32), But they understood not that saying, οἱ δὲ ἠγνόουν τὸ ρῆμα, thus amplified in Luke: and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not, καί ἠν παρακεκαλυμμένον ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἵνα μὴ αἴσθωνται αὐτό (ix. 45); and the latter Evangelist on another occasion says: and they understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things that were spoken, καὶ αὐτοὶ οὐδὲν τούτων συνῆκαν, καὶ ἠν τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο κεκρυμμένον ἀπ’ αὐτων, καὶ οὐκ ἐγίνωσκον τὰ λεγόμενα (xviii. 34): expressions which appear to imply that the disciples absolutely did not understand what the words of Jesus meant. In accordance with this, the condemnation and execution of Jesus fall upon them as a blow for which they are entirely unprepared, and consequently annihilate all the hopes which they had fixed on him as the Messiah (Luke xxiv. 20 f., The chief priests and our rulers have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel). But had Jesus spoken of his death to the disciples with such perfect openness (παῤῥησίᾳ, Mark viii. 32), they must necessarily have understood his clear words and detailed discourses, and had he besides shown them that his death was foreshadowed in the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, and was consequently a part of the Messiah’s destination (Luke xviii. 31, xxii. 37), they could not, when his death actually ensued, have so entirely lost all belief in his messiahship. It is true that the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist is wrong in his attempt to show in the conduct of Jesus, as described by the Evangelists, indications that his death was unexpected even to himself; but, looking merely at the conduct of the disciples, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion which that writer draws, namely, that to judge by that conduct, Jesus cannot have made any antecedent disclosure to his disciples concerning his death; on the contrary, they appear to the very last moment to have held the common opinion on this matter, and only to have adopted the characteristics of suffering and death into their conception of the Messiah, after the death of Jesus had unexpectedly come upon them.14 At all events we have before us the following dilemma: either the statements of the Evangelists as to the inability of the disciples to understand the predictions of Jesus, and their surprise at his death, are unhistorically exaggerated; or the decided declarations of Jesus concerning the death which awaited him, were composed ex eventu, nay, it becomes doubtful whether he even in general predicted his death as a part of his messianic destiny. On both sides, the legend might be led into unhistorical representations. For the fabrication of a prediction of his death in general, there were the same reasons which we have above shown to be an adequate motive for attributing to him a prognostication of the particular features of his passion: to the fiction of so total a want of comprehension in the disciples, an inducement might be found, on the one hand, in the desire to exhibit the profoundness of the mystery of a suffering Messiah revealed by Jesus, through the inability of the disciples to understand it; on the other, in the fact that in the evangelical tradition the disciples were likened to unconverted Jews and heathens, to whom anything was more intelligible than the death of the Messiah.