Note 6 — Chapter V · THE ASCENSION.

The promises which Jesus gives to his adherents in parting from them, are in Matthew, where they are directed exclusively to the eleven, limited simply to the assurance that he, to whom as the exalted Messiah all power was delivered both in heaven and on earth, would be invisibly with them during the present age, αἰὼν, until at the consummation συντέλεια of this term, he should enter into permanent visible communion with them: precisely the expression of the belief which was formed in the first Christian community, when the equilibrium was recovered after the oscillations caused by the death of Jesus.—In Mark, the last promises of Jesus seem to be gathered from the popular opinion concerning the gifts of the Christians, which was current at the period of the composition of this gospel. Of the signs, σημεία, which are here promised to believers in general, the speaking with (new) tongues, λαλεῖν γλώσσαις (καιναῖς) in the sense intended 1 Cor. xiv., not in the manner described in Acts ii. which is a mythical modification,6 actually appeared in the primitive church; as also the casting out of devils δαιμόνια ἐκβάλλειν; and it may even be conceived that sick persons were cured in a natural manner by faith in the laying on of hands, ἐπίθεσις χειρων by a Christian: on the contrary the taking up of serpents ὄφεις αἴρειν (comp. Luke x. 19) and the power of drinking poisons with impunity, have never had any existence except in the superstitious belief of the vulgar, and such signs of discipleship would have been the last to which Jesus would have attached any value.—In Luke, the object of the last promise of Jesus is the power from on high δύναμις ἐξ ὕψους, which according to the promise of the Father, ἐπαγγελία τοῦ πατρὸς, he would send on the apostles, and the impartation of which they were to await in Jerusalem (xxiv. 49); and in Acts i. 5 ff. Jesus more precisely designates this impartation of power as a baptism with the Holy Spirit, πνεῦμα ἅγιον, which in a few days would be granted to the disciples in order to qualify them for the announcement of the gospel. These passages of Luke, which place the impartation of the Holy Spirit in the days after the ascension, seem to be in contradiction with the statement of the fourth gospel, that Jesus communicated the Holy Spirit to his disciples in the days of his resurrection, nay, on his very first appearance in the circle of the eleven. In John xx. 22 f. we read, that Jesus, appearing among the disciples when the doors were closed, breathed on them and said: Receive ye the Holy Ghost, λάβετε πνεῦμα ἅγιον, wherewith he connected the authority to remit and retain sins.