Note 237 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus, v. 41 f. After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Lücke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so that the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have taken place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus in that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf.237 But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless they suppose the speaker’s whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throw v. 42 out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a latter hand.238 But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the Evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding, v. 41; and to this opinion Lücke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.239 Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the Evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is our security that it is so only with these? In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers—in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,—the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions.240