Footnotes (continued 2)

271.

The statement of Mark that Jesus, coming out of the north, appeared for a moment again in Decapolis and Capernaum, and then started off to the north once more (Mark vii. 31-viii. 27), may here provisionally be left out of account since it stands in relation with the twofold account of the feeding of the multitude. So too the enigmatic appearance and disappearance of the people (Mark viii. 34-ix. 30) may here be passed over. These statements make no difference to the fact that Jesus really broke off his work in Galilee shortly after the Mission of the Twelve, since they imply at most a quite transient contact with the people.

272.

On the theory of the successful and unsuccessful periods in the work of Jesus see the “Sketch,” p. 3 ff., “The four Pre-suppositions of the Modern Historical Solution.”

273.

Weisse found that there was no hint in the sources of the desertion of the people, since according to these, Jesus was opposed only by the Pharisees, not by the people. The abandonment of the Galilaean work, and the departure to Jerusalem, must, he thought, have been due to some unrecorded fact which revealed to Jesus that the time had come to act in this way. Perhaps, he adds, it was the waning of Jesus' miracle-working power which caused the change in His attitude, since it is remarkable that He performed no further miracles during His sojourn at Jerusalem.

274.

The most logical attitude in regard to it is Bousset's, who proposes to treat the mission and everything connected with it as a “confused and unintelligible” tradition.

275.

Joel iii. 13, “Put in the sickle for the harvest is ripe!” In the Apocalypse of John, too, the Last Judgment is described as the heavenly harvest: “Thrust in thy sickle and reap; for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped” (Rev. xiv. 15 and 16). The most remarkable parallel to the discourse at the sending forth of the disciples is offered by the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch: “Behold, the days come, when the time of the world shall be ripe, and the harvest of the sowing of the good and of the evil shall come, when the Almighty shall bring upon the earth and upon its inhabitants and upon their rulers confusion of spirit and terror that makes the heart stand still; and they shall hate one another and provoke one another to war; and the despised shall have power over them of reputation, and the mean shall exalt themselves over them that are highly esteemed. And the many shall be at the mercy of the few ... and all who shall be saved and shall escape the before-mentioned (dangers) ... shall be given into the hands of my servant, the Messiah.” (Cap. lxx. 2, 3, 9. Following the translation of E. Kautzsch.) The connexion between the ideas of harvest and of judgment was therefore one of the stock features of the apocalyptic writings. And as the Apocalypse of Baruch dates from the period about a.d. 70, it may be assumed that this association of ideas was also current in the Jewish apocalyptic of the time of Jesus. Here is a basis for understanding the secret of the Kingdom of God in the parables of sowing and reaping historically and in accordance with the ideas of the time. What Jesus did was to make known to those who understood Him that the coming earthly harvest was the last, and was also the token of the coming heavenly harvest. The eschatological interpretation is immensely strengthened by these parallels.

276.

With what right does modern critical theology tear apart even the discourse in Matt. xi. in order to make the “cry of jubilation” into the cry with which Jesus saluted the return of His disciples, and to find lodgment for the woes upon Chorazin and Bethsaida somewhere else in an appropriately gloomy context? Is not all this apparently disconnected material held together by an inner bond of connexion—the secret of the Kingdom of God which is imminently impending over Jesus and the people? Or, is Jesus expected to preach like one who has a thesis to maintain and seeks about for the most logical arrangement? Does not a certain lack of orderly connexion belong to the very idea of prophetic speech?

277.

If, therefore, Jesus at a later point predicted to His disciples His resurrection, He means by that, not a single isolated act, but a complex occurrence consisting of His metamorphosis, translation to heaven, and Parousia as the Son of Man. And with this is associated the general eschatological resurrection of the dead. It is, therefore, one and the same thing whether He speaks of His resurrection or of His coming on the clouds of heaven.

278.

The title of Baldensperger's book, The Self-consciousness of Jesus in the Light of the Messianic Hopes of His Time, really contains a promise which is impossible of fulfilment. The contemporary “Messianic hopes” can only explain the hopes of Jesus so far as they corresponded thereto, not His view of His own Person, in which He is absolutely original.

279.

Even Baldensperger's book, Die messianisch-apokalyptischen Hoffnungen des Judentums (1903), passes at a stride from the Psalms of Solomon to Fourth Ezra. The coming volume is to deal with the eschatology of Jesus. That is a “theological,” but not an historical division of the material. The second volume should properly come in the middle of the first.

280.

The fact that in the Psalms of Solomon the Messiah is designated by the ancient prophetic name of the Son of David is significant of the rising influence of the ancient prophetic literature. This designation has nothing whatever to do with a political ideal of a kingly Messiah. This Davidic King and his Kingdom are, in their character and the manner of their coming, every whit as supernatural as the Son of Man and His coming. The same historical fact was read into both Daniel and the prophets.

281.

Enoch is an offshoot of the Danielic apocalyptic writings. The earliest portion, the Apocalypse of the Ten Weeks, is independent of Daniel and of contemporary origin. The Similitudes (capp. xxxvii.-lxix.), which, with their description of the Judgment of the Son of Man, are so important in connexion with the thoughts of Jesus, may be placed in 80-70 b.c. They do not presuppose the taking of Jerusalem by Pompey.

282.

The Psalms of Solomon are therefore a decade later than the Similitudes.

283.

The Apocalypse of Baruch seems to have been composed not very long after the Fall of Jerusalem. Fourth Ezra is twenty to thirty years later.

284.

The Psalms of Solomon form the last document of Jewish eschatology before the coming of the Baptist. For almost a hundred years, from 60 b.c. until a.d. 30, we have no information regarding eschatological movements! And do the Psalms of Solomon really point to a deep eschatological movement at the time of the taking of Jerusalem by Pompey? Hardly, I think. It is to be noticed in studying the times of Jesus that the surrounding circumstances have no eschatological character. The Fall of Jerusalem marks the next turning-point in the history of the apocalyptic hope, as Baruch and Fourth Ezra show.

285.

Jesus promises them expressly that at the appearing of the Son of Man they shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. xix. 28). It is to their part in the judgment that belong also the authority to bind and to loose which He entrusts to them—first to Peter personally (Matt. xvi. 19) and afterwards to all the Twelve (Matt. xviii. 18)—in such a way, too, that their present decisions will be somehow or other binding at the Judgment. Or does the “upon earth” refer only to the fact that the Messianic Last Judgment will be held on earth? “I give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. xvi. 19). Why should these words not be historical? Is it because in the same context Jesus speaks of the “church” which He will found upon the Rock-disciple? But if one has once got a clear idea from Paul, a Clement, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Shepherd of Hermas, what the pre-existing “church” was which was to appear in the last times, it will no longer appear impossible that Jesus might have spoken of the church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. Of course, if the passage is given an uneschatological reference to the Church as we know it, it loses all real meaning and becomes a treasure-trove to the Roman Catholic exegete, and a terror to the Protestant.

286.

That he could be taken for the Baptist risen from the dead shows how short a time before the death of the Baptist His ministry had begun. He only became known, as the Baptist's question shows, at the time of the mission of the disciples; Herod first heard of Him after the death of the Baptist. Had he known anything of Jesus beforehand, it would have been impossible for him suddenly to identify Him with the Baptist risen from the dead. This elementary consideration has been overlooked in all calculations of the length of the public ministry of Jesus.

287.

That had been rightly remarked by Colani. Later, however, theology lost sight of the fact because it did not know how to make any historical use of it.

288.

Psal. Sol. xv. 8.

289.

That the baptism of John was essentially an act which gave a claim to something future may be seen from the fact that Jesus speaks of His sufferings and death as a special baptism, and asks the sons of Zebedee whether they are willing, for the sake of gaining the thrones on His right hand and His left, to undergo this baptism. If the baptism of John had had no real sacramental significance it would be unintelligible that Jesus should use this metaphor.

290.

The thought of the Messianic feast is found in Isaiah lv. 1 ff. and lxv. 12 ff. It is very strongly marked in Isa. xxv. 6-8, a passage which perhaps dates from the time of Alexander the Great, “and Jahweh of Hosts will prepare upon this mountain for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things prepared with marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. He shall destroy, in this mountain, among all peoples, the veil which has veiled all peoples and the covering which has covered all nations. He shall destroy death for ever, and the Lord Jahweh shall wipe away the tears from off all faces; and the reproach of His people shall disappear from the earth.” (The German follows Kautzsch's translation.) In Enoch xxiv. and xxv. the conception of the Messianic feast is connected with that of the tree of life which shall offer its fruits to the elect upon the mountain of the King. Similarly in the Testament of Levi, cap. xviii. 11. The decisive passage is in Enoch lxii. 14. After the Parousia of the Son of Man, and after the Judgment, the elect who have been saved “shall eat with the Son of Man, shall sit down and rise up with Him to all eternity.” Jesus' references to the Messianic feast are therefore not merely images, but point to a reality. In Matt. viii. 11 and 12 He prophesies that many shall come from the East and from the West to sit at meat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Matt. xxii. 1-14 the Messianic feast is pictured as a royal marriage, in Matt. xxv. 1-13 as a marriage feast. The Apocalypse is dominated by the thought of the feast in all its forms. In Rev. ii. 7 it appears in connexion with the thought of the tree of life; in ii. 17 it is pictured as a feeding with manna; in iii. 21 it is the feast which the Lord will celebrate with His followers; in vii. 16, 17 there is an allusion to the Lamb who shall feed His own so that they shall no more hunger or thirst; chapter xix. describes the marriage feast of the Lamb. The Messianic feast therefore played a dominant part in the conception of blessedness from Enoch to the Apocalypse of John. From this we can estimate what sacramental significance a guarantee of taking part in that feast must have had. The meaning of the celebration was obvious in itself, and was made manifest in the conduct of it. The sacramental effect was wholly independent of the apprehension and comprehension of the recipient. Therefore, in this also the meal at the lake-side was a true sacrament.

291.

Weisse rightly remarks that the task of the historian in dealing with Mark must consist in explaining how such “myths” could be accepted by a chronicler who stood so relatively near the events as our Mark does.

292.

It is to be noticed that the cry of Jesus from the cross, “Eli, Eli,” was immediately interpreted by the bystanders as referring to Elias.

293.

From this difficulty we can see, too, how impossible it was for any of them to have “arrived gradually at the knowledge of the Messiahship of Jesus.”

294.

For the hypothesis of the two sets of narratives which have been worked into one another, see the “Sketch of the Life of Jesus,” 1901, p. 52 ff., “After the Mission of the Disciples. Literary and historical problems.” A theory resting on the same principle was lately worked out in detail by Johannes Weiss, Das älteste Evangelium (The Earliest Gospel), 1903, p. 205 ff.

295.

It is typical of the constant agreement of the critical conclusions in thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology that Wrede also observes: “The transfiguration and Peter's confession are closely connected in content” (p. 123). He also clearly perceives the inconsistency in the fact that Peter at Caesarea Philippi gives evidence of possessing a knowledge which he and his fellow-disciples do not show elsewhere (p. 119), but the fact that it is Peter, not Jesus, who reveals the Messianic secret, constitutes a very serious difficulty for Wrede's reading of the facts, since this assumes Jesus to have been the revealer of it.

296.

“After these years shall my Son, the Christ, die, together with all who have the breath of men. Then shall the Age be changed into the primeval silence; seven days, as at the first beginning so that no man shall be left. After seven days shall the Age, which now sleeps, awake, and perishability shall itself perish.”

297.

Difficult problems are involved in the prediction of the resurrection in Mark xiv. 28. Jesus there promises His disciples that He will “go before them” into Galilee. That cannot mean that He will go alone into Galilee before them, and that they shall there meet with Him, their risen Master; what He contemplates is that He shall return with them, at their head, from Jerusalem to Galilee. Was it that the manifestation of the Son of Man and of the Judgment should take place there? So much is clear: the saying, far from directing the disciples to go away to Galilee, chains them to Jerusalem, there to await Him who should lead them home. It should not therefore be claimed as supporting the tradition of the Galilaean appearances. We find it “corrected” by the saying of the “young man” at the grave, who says to the women, “Go, tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before you into Galilee. There shall ye see Him as He said unto you.” Here then the idea of following in point of time is foisted upon the words “he goeth before you,” whereas in the original the word has a purely local sense, corresponding to the καὶ ἦν προάγων αὐτοὺς ὁ Ιησοῦς in Mark x. 32. But the correction is itself meaningless since the visions took place in Jerusalem. We have therefore in this passage a more detailed indication of the way in which Jesus thought of the events subsequent to His Resurrection. The interpretation of this unfulfilled saying is, however, wholly impossible for us: it was not less so for the earliest tradition, as is shown by the attempt to give it a meaning by the “correction.”

298.

Here it is evident also from the form taken by the prophecy of the sufferings that the section Mark viii. 34 ff. cannot possibly come after the revelation at Caesarea Philippi, since in it, it is the thought of the general sufferings which is implied. For the same reason the predictions of suffering and tribulation in the Synoptic Apocalypse in Mark xiii. cannot be derived from Jesus.

299.

Weisse and Bruno Bauer had long ago pointed out how curious it was that Jesus in the sayings about His sufferings spoke of “many” instead of speaking of “His own” or “the believers.” Weisse found in the words the thought that Jesus died for the nation as a whole; Bruno Bauer that the “for many” in the words of Jesus was derived from the view of the later theology of the Christian community. This explanation is certainly wrong, for so soon as the words of Jesus come into any kind of contact with early theology the “many” disappear to give place to the “believers.” In the Pauline words of institution the form is: My body for you (1 Cor. xi. 24). Johannes Weiss follows in the footsteps of Weisse when he interprets the “many” as the nation (Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, 2nd ed., 1909, p. 201). He gives however, quite a false turn to this interpretation by arguing that the “many” cannot include the disciples, since they “who in faith and penitence have received the tidings of the Kingdom of God no longer need a special means of deliverance such as this.” They are the chosen, to them the Kingdom is assured. But a ransom, a special means of salvation, is needful for the mass of the people, who in their blindness have incurred the guilt of rejecting the Messiah. For this grave sin, which is, nevertheless, to some extent excused as due to ignorance, there is a unique atoning sacrifice, the death of the Messiah. This theory is based on a distinction of which there is no hint in the teaching of Jesus; and it takes no account of the predestinarianism which is an integral part of eschatology, and which, in fact, dominated the thoughts of Jesus. The Lord is conscious that He dies only for the elect. For others His death can avail nothing, nor even their own repentance. Moreover, He does not die in order that this one or that one may come into the Kingdom of God; He provides the atonement in order that the Kingdom itself may come. Until the Kingdom comes even the elect cannot possess it.

300.

One might use it as a principle of division by which to classify the lives of Jesus, whether they make Him go to Jerusalem to work or to die. Here as in so many other places Weisse's clearness of perception is surprising. Jesus' journey was according to him a pilgrimage to death, not to the Passover.

301.

“That ye enter not into temptation” is the content of the prayer that they are to offer while watching with Him.

302.

As long ago as 1880, H. W. Bleby (The Trial of Jesus considered as a Judicial Act) had emphasised this circumstance as significant. The injustice in the trial of Jesus consisted, according to him, in the fact that He was condemned on His own admission without any witnesses being called. Dalman, it is true, will not admit that this technical error was very serious. But the really important point is not whether the condemnation was legal or not; it is the significant fact that the High Priest called no witnesses. Why did he not call any? This question was obscured for Bleby and Dalman by other problems.

303.

That would have been to utter a heresy which would alone have sufficed to secure His condemnation. It would certainly have been brought up as a charge against Him.

304.

When it is assumed that the Messianic claims of Jesus were generally known during those last days at Jerusalem there is a temptation to explain the absence of witnesses in regard to them by supposing that they were too much a matter of common knowledge to require evidence. But in that case why should the High Priest not have fulfilled the prescribed formalities? Why make such efforts first to establish a different charge? Thus the obscure and unintelligible procedure at the trial of Jesus becomes in the end the clearest proof that the public knew nothing of the Messiahship of Jesus.