Note 21 — Chapter I · RELATION OF JESUS TO THE IDEA OF A SUFFERING AND DYING MESSIAH; HIS DISCOURSES ON HIS DEATH, RESURRECTION, AND SECOND ADVENT.

In the New Testament, almost everything is calculated to give the impression, that a suffering and dying Messiah was unthought-of among the Jews who were contemporary with Jesus. To the majority of the Jews, we are told, the doctrine of a crucified Messiah was a σκανδαλὸν, and the disciples were at a loss to understand Jesus in his repeated and explicit announcements of his death. This does not look as if the doctrine of a suffering Messiah had been current among the Jews of that period; on the contrary, these circumstances accord fully with the declaration which the fourth Evangelist puts into the mouth of the Jewish multitude, ὄχλος (xii. 34), namely, that they had heard in the law (νόμος) that Christ abideth for ever, ὅτι ὁ Χριστὸς μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.21 Indeed, for a general acceptation of the idea of a suffering Messiah among the Jews of that period, even those theologians who take the affirmative side in this argument do not contend; but, admitting that the hope of a worldly Messiah whose reign was to endure for ever, was the prevalent one, they only maintain (and herein the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist agrees with them)22, that a less numerous party,—according to Stäudlin, the Essenes; according to Hengstenberg, the better and more enlightened part of the people in general—held the belief that the Messiah would appear in a humble guise, and only enter into glory through suffering and death. In support of this they appeal especially to two passages; one out of the third, and one out of the fourth gospel. When Jesus is presented as an infant in the temple at Jerusalem, the aged Simeon, among other prophecies, particularly concerning the opposition which her son would have to encounter, says to Mary: Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also (Luke ii. 35); words which seem to describe her maternal sorrow at the death of her son, and consequently to represent the opinion, that a violent death awaited the Messiah, as one already current before Christ. Still more plainly is the idea of a suffering Messiah contained in the words which the fourth gospel makes the Baptist utter on seeing Jesus: Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world (i. 29)! This, viewed in its relation to Isa. liii., would in the mouth of the Baptist likewise tend to prove, that the idea of expiatory suffering on the part of the Messiah was in existence before the time of Jesus. But both these passages have been above shown to be unhistorical, and from the fact that the primitive Christian legend was led, a considerable time after the issue, to attribute to persons whom it held divinely inspired, a foreknowledge of the divine decree with respect to the death of Jesus, it can by no means be concluded, that this insight really existed prior to the death of Jesus. In conclusion, it is urged, that at least the Evangelists and apostles refer to the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah in the Old Testament; whence it is thought warrantable to conclude, that this interpretation of the Old Testament passages connected with our present subject, was not unprecedented among the Jews. Certainly Peter (Acts iii. 18 f.; 1 Pet. i. 11 f.) and Paul (Acts xxvi. 22 f.; 1 Cor. xv. 3) appeal to Moses and the prophets as annunciators of the death of Jesus, and Philip, in his interview with the Ethiopian eunuch, interprets a passage in Isa. liii. of the sufferings of the Messiah: but as those teachers of the church spoke and wrote all this after the event, we have no assurance that they did not assign to certain Old Testament passages a relation to the sufferings of the Messiah, solely in consequence of that event, and not by adopting a mode of interpretation previously current among their Jewish cotemporaries.23