Note 18 — Chapter IV · JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.1

From all this it might appear that Jesus was restrained merely by external motives, from the open declaration of his Messiahship, and that his own conviction of it existed from the first in equal strength; but this conclusion cannot be maintained in the face of the consideration above mentioned, that Jesus began his career with the same announcement as the Baptist, an announcement which can scarcely have more than one import—an exhortation to prepare for a coming Messiah. The most natural supposition is that Jesus, first the disciple of the Baptist, and afterwards his successor, in preaching repentance and the approach of the kingdom of heaven, took originally the same position as his former master in relation to the messianic kingdom, notwithstanding the greater reach and liberality of his mind, and only gradually attained the elevation of thinking himself the Messiah. This supposition explains in the simplest manner the prohibition we have been considering, especially that annexed to the confession of Peter. For as often as the thought that he might be the Messiah suggested itself to others, and was presented to him from without, Jesus must have shrunk, as if appalled, to hear confidently uttered that which he scarcely ventured to surmise, or which had but recently become clear to himself. As, however, the Evangelist often put such prohibitions into the mouth of Jesus unseasonably (witness the occasion mentioned, Matt. viii. 4, when, after a cure effected before a crowd of spectators, it was of little avail to enjoin secrecy on the cured),18 it is probable that evangelical tradition, enamoured of the mysteriousness that lay in this incognito of Jesus,19 unhistorically multiplied the instances of its adoption.