Note 11 — Chapter IV · JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.1

There is a difficulty involved in the form of the question, put by Jesus to his disciples: τίνα με λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἶναι, τον υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου; i.e. what opinion have the people of me, the Messiah? This, when compared with the sequel, seems a premature disclosure; hence expositors have variously endeavoured to explain away its primâ facie meaning. Some (e.g. Beza) understand the subordinate clause, not as a declaration of Jesus concerning his own person, but as a closer limitation of the question: For whom do the people take me? for the Messiah? But this would be a leading question, which, as Fritzsche well observes, would indicate an eagerness for the messianic title, not elsewhere discernible in Jesus. Others, therefore, (as Paulus and Fritzsche,) give the expression υἱὸς τ. ἀ. a general signification, and interpret the question thus: Whom do men say that I, the individual addressing you, am? But this explanation has been already refuted in the foregoing section. If, then, we reject the opinion that the υἱὸς τ. ἀ. is an addition which the exuberant faith of the writer was apt to suggest even in an infelicitous connexion, we are restricted to De Wette’s view (exeg. Handb. 1, 1, s. 86 f.), namely, that the expression, ὁ υἱὸς τ. ἀ. was indeed an appellation of the Messiah, but an indirect one, so that it might convey that meaning, as an allusion to Daniel, to Jesus and those already aware of his Messiahship, while to others it was merely the equivalent of, this man. ↑