Note 36 — Chapter IV · JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.1

Among the discourses of Jesus there is one especially worthy of note in Matt. xix. 28 (comp. Luke xxii. 30). In reply to the question of Peter, We have left all and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? Jesus promises to his disciples that in the παλιγγενεσία, when the Son of man shall sit on his throne, they also shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. That the literal import of this promise formed part of the tissue of the messianic hopes cherished by the Jews of that period, is not to be controverted. It is argued, however, that Jesus spoke figuratively on this occasion, and only employed familiar Jewish images to convey to the apostles an assurance, that the sacrifices they had made here would be richly compensated in their future life by a participation in his glory.36 But the disciples must have understood the promise literally, when, even after the resurrection of Jesus, they harboured anticipations of worldly greatness; and as Jesus had had many proofs of this propensity, he would hardly have adopted such language, had he not intended to nourish their temporal hopes. The supposition that he did so merely to animate the courage of his disciples, without himself sharing their views, imputes duplicity to Jesus;—a duplicity in this case quite gratuitous, since, as Olshausen justly observes, Peter’s question would have been satisfactorily answered by any other laudatory acknowledgment of the devotion of the disciples. Hence it appears a fair inference, that Jesus himself shared the Jewish expectations which he here sanctions: but expositors have made the most desperate efforts to escape from this unwelcome conclusion. Some have resorted to an arbitrary alteration of the reading;37 others to the detection of irony, directed against the disproportion between the pretensions of the disciples, and their trivial services,38 others to different expedients, but all more unnatural than the admission, that Jesus, in accordance with Jewish ideas, here promises his disciples the dignity of being his assessors in his visible messianic judgment, and that he thus indicates the existence of a national element in his notion of the Messiah’s kingdom. It is observable, too, that in the Acts (i. 7), Jesus, even after his resurrection, does not deny that he will restore the kingdom to Israel, but merely discourages curiosity as to the times and seasons of its restoration.