Note 24 — Chapter I · RELATION OF JESUS TO THE IDEA OF A SUFFERING AND DYING MESSIAH; HIS DISCOURSES ON HIS DEATH, RESURRECTION, AND SECOND ADVENT.

If, according to this, the opinion that the idea in question already existed among the countrymen of Jesus during his lifetime, has no solid foundation in the New Testament; we must proceed to inquire whether that idea may not be found in the later Jewish writings. Among the earliest writings of this class now extant, are the Chaldee paraphrases of Onkelos and Jonathan; and the Targum of the latter, who, according to rabbinical tradition, was a pupil of Hillel the elder,24 is commonly cited as presenting the idea of a suffering Messiah, because it refers the passage, Isa. lii. 13-liii. 12, to the Messiah. But with respect to the interpretation of this passage in the Targum of Jonathan, it is the singular fact, that while the prophecies which it contains are in general interpreted messianically, yet so often as suffering and death are spoken of, either these ideas are avoided with marked design, and for the most part by some extremely forced expedient, or are transferred to a different subject, namely, the people of Israel: a significant proof that to the author, suffering and violent death appeared irreconcilable with the idea of the Messiah.25 But this, we are told, is the commencement of that aberration from the true sense of the sacred text, into which the later Jews were seduced by their carnal disposition, and their hostility to Christianity: the more ancient interpreters, it is said, discovered in this passage of Isaiah a suffering and dying Messiah. It is true that Abenezra, Abarbanel and others, testify that many ancient teachers referred Isa. liii. to the Messiah:26 but some of their statements leave it by no means clear that those more ancient interpretations are not as partial as that of Jonathan; and in relation to all of them it remains uncertain, whether the interpreters of whom they speak reach as far back as the age of Jonathan, which is highly improbable with respect to those parts of the book Sohar, wherein the passage in question is referred to a suffering Messiah.27 The writing which, together with that of Jonathan, may be regarded as the nearest to the time of Jesus, namely, the apocryphal fourth book of Esdras, drawn up, according to the most probable computation, shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus,28 does indeed mention the death of the Messiah: not however as a painful one, but only as a death which, after the long duration of the messianic kingdom, was to precede the general resurrection.29 The idea of great calamities, the birth-throes, as it were, of the Messiah (‏חבלי המשח‎, comp. ἀρχὴ ὠδίνων, Matt. xxiv. 8), which would usher in the messianic times, was undoubtedly disseminated before Christ;30 and equally early there appears to have been placed in the front of these ills, which were to press upon the people of Israel in particular, the Antichrist, ἀντίχριστος, whom the Christ, Χριστὸς would have to oppose (2 Thess. ii. 3 ff.):31 but since he was to annihilate this adversary in a supernatural manner, with the spirit of his mouth, τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ στόματος αὑτοῦ, this involved no suffering for the Messiah. Nevertheless, there are to be found passages in which a suffering of the Messiah is spoken of, and in which this suffering is even represented as vicarious, on behalf of the people:32 but first, this is only a suffering, and no death of the Messiah; secondly, it befals him either before his descent into earthly life, in his pre-existence,33 or during the concealment in which he keeps himself from his birth until his appearance as Messiah:34 lastly, the antiquity of these ideas is doubtful, and according to certain indications, they could only be dated after the destruction of the Jewish state by Titus.35 Meanwhile, Jewish writings are by no means destitute of passages, in which it is directly asserted that a Messiah would perish in a violent manner: but these passages relate, not to the proper Messiah, the offspring of David, but to another, from among the posterity of Joseph and Ephraim, who was appointed to hold a subordinate position in relation to the former. This Messiah ben Joseph was to precede the Messiah ben David, to unite the ten tribes of the former kingdom of Israel with the two tribes of the kingdom of Judah, but after this to perish by the sword in the battle with Gog and Magog: a catastrophe to which Zech. xii. 10 was referred.36 But of this second, dying Messiah, any certain traces are wanting before the Babylonian Gemara, which was compiled in the fifth and sixth centuries after Christ, and the book Sohar, the age of which is extremely doubtful.37