The Life of Jesus of Nazareth by Rush Rhees

when his dictum stood opposed to that which had been said to them of old time.

231. In this freedom from the bondage of tradition Jesus was not alone. John the Baptist’s message had been as simple and unsupported by appeal to the elders. Jesus and John both revived the method of the older prophets, and it is in large measure due to this that the people distinguished them clearly from their ordinary teachers, and held them both to be prophets. One thing involved in this authoritative method was a frank appeal to the conscience of men. So completely had the scribes substituted memory of tradition for appeal to the simple sense of right, that they were utterly dazed when Jesus undertook to settle questions of Sabbath observance and ceremonial cleanliness by asking his hearers to use their religious common sense, and consider whether a man is not much better than a sheep, or whether a man is not defiled rather by what comes out of his mouth than by what enters into it (Matt. xii. 12; Mark vii. 15). Jesus was for his generation the great discoverer of the conscience, and for all time the champion of its dignity against finespun theory and traditional practice. All his teaching has this quality in greater or less degree. It appears when by means of the parable of the Good Samaritan he makes the lawyer answer his own question (Luke x. 25-37), when he bids the multitude in Jerusalem “judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John vii. 24), when he asks his inquisitors in the temple whose image and superscription the coin they used in common business bears (Mark xii. 16). His whole work in Galilee was proof of his confidence that in earnest souls the conscience would be his ally, and that he could impress himself on them far more indelibly than any sign from heaven could enforce his claim.

232. Jesus was not only independent of the traditions of the scribes, he was also very free at times with the letter of the Old Testament. When by a word he “made all meats clean” (Mark vii. 19), he set himself against the permanent validity of the Levitical ritual. When the Pharisees pleaded Moses for their authority in the matter of divorce, Jesus referred them back of Moses to the original constitution of mankind (Matt. xix. 3-9). His general attitude to the Sabbath was not only opposed to the traditions of the scribes, it also disregarded the Old Testament conception of the Sabbath as an institution. Yet Jesus took pains to declare that he came not to set aside the old but to fulfil it (Matt. v. 17). The contrasts which he draws between things said to them of old and his new teachings (Matt. v. 21-48) look at first much like a doing away of the old. Jesus did not so conceive them. He rather thought of them as fresh statements of the idea which underlay the old; they fulfilled the old by realizing more fully that which it had set before an earlier generation. He was the most radical teacher the men of his day could conceive, but his work was clearing rubbish away from the roots of venerable truth that it might bear fruit, rather than rooting up the old to put something else in its place.

233. The Old Testament was for Jesus a holy book. His mind was filled with its stories and its language. In the teachings which have been preserved for us he has made use of writings from all parts of the Jewish scriptures–Law, Prophets, and Psalms. The Old Testament furnished him the weapons for his own soul’s struggle with temptation (Matt. iv. 4, 7, 10), it gave him arguments for use against his opponents (Mark xii. 24-27; ii. 25-27), and it was for him an inexhaustible storehouse of illustration in his teaching. When inquirers sought the way of life he pointed them to the scriptures (Mark x. 19; see also John v. 39), and declared that the rising of one from the dead would not avail for the warning of those who were unmoved by Moses and the prophets (Luke xvi. 31). When Jesus’ personal attitude to the Old Testament is considered it is noticeable that while his quotations and allusions cover a wide range, and show very general familiarity with the whole book, there appears a decided predominance of Deuteronomy, the last part of Isaiah, and the Psalms. It is not difficult to see that these books are closer in spirit to his own thought than much else in the old writings; his use of the scripture shows that some parts appealed to him more than others.

234. Jesus as a teacher was popular and practical rather than systematic and theoretical. The freshness of his ideas is proof that he was not lacking in thorough and orderly thinking, for his complete departure from current conceptions of the kingdom of God indicates perfect mastery of ethical and theological truth. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that so much of his profoundest teaching seems to have been almost accidental. The most formal discourse preserved to us is the sermon on the mount, in which human conduct is regulated by the thought of God as Father and Searcher of hearts. For the rest the great ideas of Jesus have utterance in response to specific conditions presented to him in his ministry. His most radical sayings concerning the Sabbath followed a criticism of his disciples for plucking ears of grain as they passed through the fields on the Sabbath day (Mark ii. 23-28); his authority to forgive sins was announced when a paralytic was brought to him for healing (Mark ii. 1-12); so far as the gospels indicate, we should have missed Jesus’ clearest statement of the significance of his own death but for the ambitious request of James and John (Mark x. 35-45). Examples of the occasional character of his teaching might be greatly multiplied. He did not seek to be the founder of a school; important as his teachings were, they take a place in his work second to his personal influence on his followers. He desired to win disciples whose faith in him would withstand all shocks, rather than to train experts who would pass on his ideas to others. His disciples did become experts, for we owe to them the vivid presentation we have of the exalted and unique teaching of their Master; but they were thus skilful because they surrendered themselves to his personal mastery, and learned to know the springs of his own life and thought.

235. Nothing in the teaching of Jesus is more remarkable than his confidence that men who believed in him would adequately represent him and his message to the world. The parable of the Leaven seems to have set forth his own method. We owe our gospels to no injunction given by him to write down what he said and did. He impressed himself on his followers, filled them with a love to himself which made them sensitive to his ideas as a photographic plate is to light, teaching them his truth in forms that did not at first show any effect on their thought, but were developed into strength and clearness by the experiences of the passing years. Christian ethics and theology are far more than an orderly presentation of the teaching of Jesus; in so far as they are purely Christian they are the systematic setting forth of truth involved, though not expressed, in what he said and did in his ministry among men. His ideas were radical and thoroughly revolutionary. His method, however, had in it all the patience of God’s working in nature, and the hidden noiseless power of an evolution is its characteristic. Hence it was that he chose to teach some things exclusively in figure. So great and unfamiliar a truth as the gradual development of God’s kingdom was unwelcome to the thought of his time. He made it, therefore, the theme of many of his parables; and although the disciples did not understand what he meant, the picture remained with them, and in after years they grew up to his idea.

236. Jesus’ use of illustration is one of the most marked features of his teaching. In one sense this simply proves him to be a genuine Oriental, for to contemplate and present abstract truths in concrete form is characteristic of the Semitic mind. In the case of Jesus, however, it proves more: the variety and homeliness of his illustrations show how completely conversant he was alike with common life and with spiritual truth. There is a freedom and ease about his use of figurative language which suggests, as nothing else could, his own clear certainty concerning the things of which he spoke. The fact, too, that his mind dealt so naturally with the highest thoughts has made his illustrations unique for profound truth and simple beauty. Nearly the whole range of figurative speech is represented in his recorded words, including forms like irony and hyperbole, often held to be unnatural to such serious speech as his.

237. Another figure has become almost identified with the name of Jesus,–such abundant and incomparable use did he make of it. Parable was, however, no invention of his, for the rabbis of his own and later times, as well as the sages and prophets who went before them, made use of it. As distinguished from other forms of illustration, the parable is a picture true to actual human life, used to enforce a religious truth. The picture may be drawn in detail, as in the story of the Lost Son (Luke xv. 11-32), or it may be the concisest narration possible, as in the parable of the Leaven (Matt. xiii. 33); but it always retains its character as a narrative true to human experience. It is this that gives parable the peculiar value it has for religious teaching, since it brings unfamiliar truth close home to every-day life. Like all the illustrations used by Jesus, the parable was ordinarily chosen as a means of making clear the spiritual truth which he was presenting. Illustration never finds place as mere ornament in his addresses. His parables, however, were sometimes used to baffle the unteachable and critical. Such was the case on the occasion in Jesus’ life when attention is first called in the gospels to this mode of teaching (Mark iv. 1-34). The parable of the Sower would mean little to hearers who held the crude and material ideas of the kingdom which prevailed among Jesus’ contemporaries. It was used as an invitation to consider a great truth, and for teachable disciples was full of suggestion and meaning; while for the critical curiosity of unfriendly hearers it was only a pointless story,–a means adopted by Jesus to save his pearls from being trampled under foot, and perhaps also to prevent too early a decision against him on the part of his opponents.

238. In nothing is Jesus’ ease in handling deepest truth more apparent than in his use of irony and hyperbole in his illustrations. In his reference to the Pharisees as “ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance” (Luke xv. 7), and in his question, “Many good works have I shewed you from the Father, for which of these works do you stone me?” (John x. 32), the irony is plain, but not any plainer than the rhetorical exaggeration of his accusation against the scribes, “You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel” (Matt, xxiii. 24), or his declaration that “it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Mark x. 25), or his charge, “If a man cometh unto me and hateth not his own father and mother … he cannot be my disciple” (Luke xiv. 26). The force of these statements is in their hyperbole. Only to an interpretation which regards the letter above the spirit can they cause difficulty. In so far as they remove Jesus utterly from the pedantic carefulness for words which marked the scribes they are among the rare treasures of his teachings. The simple spirit will not busy itself about finding something that may be called a needle’s eye through which a camel can pass by squeezing, nor will it seek a camel which could conceivably be swallowed, nor will it stumble at a seeming command to hate those for whom God’s law, as emphasized indeed by Jesus (Mark vii. 6-13), demands peculiar love and honor. The childlike spirit which is heir of God’s kingdom readily understands this warning against the snare of riches, this rebuke of the hypocritical life, and this demand for a love for the Master which shall take the first place in the heart.

239. Jesus sometimes used object lessons as well as illustrations, and for the same purpose,–to make his thought transparently clear to his hearers. The demand for a childlike faith in order to enter the kingdom of God was enforced by the presence of a little child whom Jesus set in the midst of the circle to whom he was talking (Mark ix. 35-37). The unworthy ambitions of the disciples were rebuked by Jesus’ taking himself the menial place and washing their feet (John xiii. 1-15).

240. The simplicity and homeliness of Jesus’ teaching are not more remarkable than the alertness of mind which he showed on all occasions. The comment of the fourth gospel, “he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man” (ii. 25), doubtless refers to his supernatural insight, but it also tells of his quick perception of what was involved in each situation in which he found himself. Whether it was Nicodemus coming to him by night, or the lawyer asking, “Who is my neighbor?” or a dissatisfied heir demanding that his brother divide the inheritance with him, or a group of Pharisees seeking to undermine his power by attributing his cures to the devil, or trying to entrap him by a question about tribute, Jesus was never caught unawares. His absorption in heavenly truth was not accompanied by any blindness to earthly facts. He knew what the men of his day were thinking about, what they hoped for, to what follies they gave their hearts, and what sins hid God from them. He was eminently a man of the people, thoroughly acquainted with all that interested his fellows, and in the most natural, human way. Whatever of the supernatural there was in his knowledge did not make it unnatural. As he was socially at ease with the best and most cultivated of his day, so he was intellectually the master of every situation. This appears nowhere more strikingly than in his dealing with his pharisaic critics. When they were shocked by his forgiveness of sins, or offended by his indifference to the Sabbath tradition, or goaded into blasphemy by his growing influence over the people, or troubled by his disciples’ disregard of the traditional washings, or when later they conspired to entrap him in his speech,–from first to last he was so manifestly superior to his opponents that they withdrew discomfited, until at length they in madness killed, without reason, him against whom they could find no adequate charge. His lack of “learning” (John vii. 15) was simply his innocence of rabbinic training; he had no diploma from their schools. In keenness of argument, however, and invincibleness of reasoning, as well as in the clearness of his insight, he was ever their unapproachable superior. His reply to the charge of league with Beelzebub is as merciless an exposure of feeble malice as can be found in human literature. He was as worthy to be Master of his disciples’ thinking as he was to be Lord of their hearts.

241. In the teaching of Jesus two topics have the leading place,–the Kingdom of God, and Himself. His thought about himself calls for separate consideration, but it may be remarked here that as his ministry progressed he spoke with increasing frankness about his own claims. It became more and more apparent that he sought to be Lord rather than Teacher simply, and to impress men with himself rather than with his ideas. Yet his ideas were constantly urged on his disciples, and they were summed up in his conception of the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven. This was the topic, directly or indirectly, of far the greater part of his teaching. The phrase was as familiar to his contemporaries as it is common in his words; but his understanding of it was radically different from theirs. He and they took it to mean the realization on earth of heavenly conditions (kingdom of heaven), or of God’s actual sovereignty over the world (kingdom of God); but of the God whose will was thus to be realized they conceived quite differently. Strictly speaking there is nothing novel in the idea of God as Father which abounds in the teaching of Jesus. He never offers it as novel, but takes it for granted that his hearers are familiar with the name. It appears in some earlier writers both in and out of the Old Testament. Yet no one of them uses it as constantly, as naturally, and as confidently as did Jesus. With him it was the simple equivalent of his idea of God, and it was central for his personal religious life as well as for his teaching. “My Father” always lies back of references in his teaching to “your Father.” This is the key to what is novel in Jesus’ idea of the kingdom of God. His contemporaries thought of God as the covenant king of Israel who would in his own time make good his promises, rid his people of their foes, set them on high among the nations, establish his law in their hearts, and rule over them as their king. The whole conception, while in a real sense religious, was concerned more with the nation than with individuals, and looked rather for temporal blessings than for spiritual good. With Jesus the kingdom is the realization of God’s fatherly sway over the hearts of his children. It begins when men come to own God as their Father, and seek to do his will for the love they bear him. It shows development towards its full manifestation when men as children of God look on each other as brothers, and govern conduct by love which will no more limit itself to friends than God shuts off his sunlight from sinners. From this love to God and men it will grow into a new order of things in which God’s will shall be done as it is in heaven, even as from the little leaven the whole lump is leavened. Jesus did not set aside the idea of a judgment, but while his fellows commonly made it the inauguration, he made it the consummation of the kingdom; they thought of it as the day of confusion for apostates and Gentiles, he taught that it would be the day of condemnation of all unbrotherliness (Matt. xxv. 31-46). This central idea–a new order of life in which men have come to love and obey God as their Father, and to love and live for men as their brothers–attaches to itself naturally all the various phases of the teaching of Jesus, including his emphasis on himself; for he made that emphasis in order that, as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, he might lead men unto the Father.

III

Jesus’ Knowledge of Truth

242. The note of authority in the teaching of Jesus is evidence of his own clear knowledge of the things of which he spoke. As if by swift intuition, his mind penetrated to the heart of things. In the scriptures he saw the underlying truth which should stand till heaven and earth shall pass (Matt. v. 18); in the ceremonies of his people’s religion he saw so clearly the spiritual significance that he did not hesitate to sacrifice the passing form (Mark vii. 14-23); such a theological development as the pharisaic doctrine of the resurrection he unhesitatingly adopted because he saw that it was based on the ultimate significance of the soul’s fellowship with God (Mark xiii. 24-27); he reduced religion and ethics to simplicity by summing up all commandments in one,–Thou shalt love (Matt. xxii. 37-40); and at the same time insisted as no other prophet had done on the finality of conduct and the necessity of obedience (Matt. vii. 21-27). His penetration to the heart of an idea was nowhere more clear than in his doctrine of the kingdom of God as realized in the filial soul, and as involving a judgment which should take cognizance only of brotherliness of conduct. It would not be difficult to show that all these different aspects of his teaching grew naturally out of his knowledge of God as his Father and the Father of all men; they were the fruit, therefore, of personal certainty of ultimate and all-dominating truth.

243. If the knowledge of Jesus had been shown only in matters of spiritual truth, it would still have marked him as one apart from ordinary men. There were other directions, however, in which he surpassed the common mind. The fourth gospel declares that “he knew what was in man” (ii. 25), and all the evangelists give evidence of such knowledge. Not only the designation of Judas as the traitor, and of Peter as the one who should deny him, before their weakness and sin had shown themselves, but also Jesus’ quick reading of the heart of the paralytic who was brought to him for healing, and of the woman who washed his feet with her tears (Mark ii. 5; Luke vii. 47), and his knowledge of the character of Simon and Nathanael (John i. 42, 47,) as well as his sure perception of the intent of the various questioners whom he met, indicate that he had powers of insight unshared by his fellow men.

244. Furthermore, the gospels state explicitly that Jesus predicted his own death from a time at least six months before the end (Matt. xvi. 21), and they indicate that the idea was not new to him when he first communicated it to his disciples (Matt. xvi. 23; Mark ii. 20). He viewed his approaching death, moreover, as a necessity (Mark viii. 31-33), yet he was no fatalist concerning it. He could still in Gethsemane plead with his Father, to whom all things are possible, to open to him some other way of accomplishing his work (Mark xiv. 36). The old Testament picture of the suffering and dying servant of Jehovah (Isa. liii.) was doubtless familiar to Jesus. Although it was not interpreted Messianically by the scribes, Jesus probably applied it to himself when thinking of his death; yet the predictions of the prophets always provided for a non-fulfilment in case Israel should turn unto the Lord in truth (see Ezek. xxxiii. 10-20). Moreover, the contradiction which Jesus felt between his ideas and those cherished by the leaders of his people, whether priests or scribes, was so radical that his death might well seem inevitable; yet it was possible that his people might repent, and Jerusalem consent to accept him as God’s anointed. Neither prophecy, nor the actual conditions of his life, therefore, would give Jesus any fatalistic certainty of his coming death. In Gethsemane his heart pleaded against it, while his will bowed still to God in perfect loyalty. It is not for us to explain his prediction of death by appealing to the connection which the apostolic thought established between the death of Christ and the salvation of men, for we are not competent to say that God could not have effected redemption in some other way if the repentance of the Jews had, humanly speaking, removed from Jesus the necessity of death. All that can be said is that he knew the prophetic picture, knew also the hardness of heart which had taken possession of the Jews, and knew that he must not swerve from his course of obedience to what he saw to be God’s will for him. Since that obedience brought him into fatal opposition to human prejudice and passion, he saw that he must die, and that such a death was one of the steps in his establishment of God’s kingdom among men. So he went on his way ready “not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark x. 45).

245. With his prediction of his death the gospels usually associate a prophecy of his speedy resurrection. As has been already remarked (sect. 210), it is being generally recognized that if Jesus believed that he was the Messiah, he must have associated with the thought of death that of victory over death, which for all Jewish minds meant a resurrection from the dead. Jesus certainly taught that his death was part of his Messianic work, it could not therefore be his end. The prediction of the resurrection is the necessary corollary of his expectation of death; and it may reverently be believed that his knowledge of it was intimately involved with his certainty that it was as Messiah that he was to die.

246. From the time when he began to tell his disciples that he must die, Jesus began also to teach that his earthly ministry was not to finish his work, but that he should return in glory from heaven to realize fully all that was involved in the idea of God’s kingdom. His predictions resemble in form the representations found in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch; and the understanding of them is involved in difficulties like those which beset such apocalyptic writings. In general, apocalypses were written in times of great distress for God’s people, and represented the deliverance which should usher in God’s kingdom as near at hand. One feature of them is a complete lack of perspective in the picture of the future. It may be that this fact will in part account for one great perplexity in the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus. In the chief of these (Mark xiii. and parallels), predictions of the destruction of Jerusalem are so mingled with promises of his own second coming and the end of all things that many have sought to resolve the difficulty by separating the discourse into two different ones,–one a short Jewish apocalypse predicting the destruction of Jerusalem and the coming of the Son of Man within the life of that generation; the other, Jesus’ own prediction of the end of all things, concerning which he warns his disciples that they be not deceived, but watch diligently and patiently for God’s full salvation. The difficulties of this discourse as it stands are so great that any solution which accounts for all the facts must be welcomed. So far as this analysis seeks to remove from the account of Jesus’ own words the references to a fulfilment of the predictions within the life of that generation, it is confronted by other sayings of Jesus (Mark ix. 1) and by the problem of the uniform belief of the apostolic age that he would speedily return. That belief must have had some ground. What more natural than that words of Jesus, rightly or wrongly understood, led to the common Christian expectation? Some such analysis may yet establish itself as the true solution of the difficulties; it may be, however, that in adopting the apocalyptic form of discourse, Jesus also adopted its lack of perspective, and spoke coincidently of future events in the progress of the kingdom, which, in their complete realization at least, were widely separated in time. In such a case it would not be strange if the disciples looked for the fulfilment of all of the predictions within the limit assigned for the accomplishment of some of them.

247. Whatever the explanation of these difficulties, the gospels clearly represent Jesus as predicting his own return in glory to establish his kingdom,–a crowning evidence of his claim to supernatural knowledge. It is all the more significant, therefore, that it is in connection with his prediction of his future coming that he made the most definite declaration of his own ignorance: “Of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark xiii. 32). This confession of the limitation of his knowledge is conclusive. Yet it is not isolated. With his undoubted power to read “what was in man,” he was not independent of ordinary ways of learning facts. When the woman was healed who touched the hem of his garment, Jesus knew that his power had been exercised, but he discovered the object of his healing by asking, “Who touched me?” and calling the woman out from the crowd to acknowledge her blessing (Mark v. 30-34); when the centurion urged Jesus to heal his boy without taking the trouble to come to his house, Jesus “marvelled” at his faith (Matt. viii. 10); when he came to Bethany, assured of his Father’s answer to his prayer for the raising of Lazarus, he asked as simply as any other one in the company, “Where have ye laid him?” (John xi. 34). It should not be forgotten that his knowledge of approaching death, resurrection, and return in glory did not prevent the earnest pleading in Gethsemane, and it may be that his reply to the ambition of James and John, it “is not mine to give” (Mark x. 40), is a confession of ignorance as well as subordination to his Father.

248. The supernatural knowledge of Jesus, so far as its exercise is apparent in the gospels, was concerned with the truths intimately related to his religious teaching or his Messianic work. There is no evidence that it occupied itself at all with facts of nature or of history discovered by others at a later day. When he says of God that “he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good” (Matt. v. 45), there is no evidence that he thought of the earth and its relation to the sun differently from his contemporaries; it is probable that his thought anticipated Galileo’s discovery no more than do his words. Much the same may be said with reference to the purely literary or historical questions of Old Testament criticism, now so much discussed. If it is proved by just interpretation of all the facts that the Pentateuch is only in an ideal sense to be attributed to Moses, and that many of the psalms inscribed with his name cannot have been written by David, the propriety of Jesus’ references to what “Moses said” (Mark vii. 10), and the validity of his argument for the relative unimportance of the Davidic descent of the Messiah, will not suffer. Had Jesus had in mind the ultimate facts concerning the literary structure of the Pentateuch, he could not have hoped to hold the attention of his hearers upon the religious teaching he was seeking to enforce, unless he referred to the early books of the Old Testament as written by Moses. Jesus did repeatedly go back of Moses to more primitive origins (Mark x. 5, 6; John vii. 22); yet there is no likelihood that the literary question was ever present in his thinking. This phase of his intellectual life, like that which concerned his knowledge of the natural universe, was in all probability one of the points in which he was made like unto his brethren, sharing, as matter of course, their views on questions that were indifferent for the spiritual mission he came to fulfil. If this was the case, his argument from the one hundred and tenth Psalm (Mark xii. 35-37) would simply give evidence that he accepted the views of his time concerning the Psalm, and proceeded to use it to correct other views of his time concerning what was of most importance in the doctrine of the Messiah. The last of these was of vital importance for his teaching; the first was for this teaching quite as indifferent a matter as the relations of the earth and the sun in the solar system.

249. A more perplexing difficulty arises from his handling of the cases of so-called demoniac possession. He certainly treated these invalids as if they were actually under the control of demons: he rebuked, banished, gave commands to the demons, and in this way wrought his cures upon the possessed. It has already been remarked that the symptoms shown in the cases cured by Jesus can be duplicated from cases of hysteria, epilepsy, or insanity, which have come under modern medical examination. Three questions then arise concerning his treatment of the possessed. 1. Did he unquestioningly share the interpretation which his contemporaries put upon the symptoms, and simply bring relief by his miraculous power? 2. Did he know that those whom he healed were not afflicted by evil spirits, and accommodate himself in his cures to their notions? 3. Does he prove by his treatment that the unfortunates actually were being tormented by diabolical agencies, which he banished by his word? The last of these possibilities should not be held to be impossible until much more is known than we now know about the mysterious phenomena of abnormal psychical states. If this is the explanation of the maladies for Jesus’ day, however, it should be accepted also as the explanation of similar abnormal symptoms when they appear in our modern life, for the old hypothesis of a special activity of evil spirits at the time of the incarnation is inadequate to account for the fact that in some quarters similar maladies have been similarly explained from the earliest times until the present day. If, however, he knew his people to be in error in ascribing these afflictions to diabolical influence, he need have felt no call to correct it. If the disease had been the direct effect of such a delusion, Jesus would have encouraged the error by accommodating himself to the popular notion. The idea of possession, however, was only an attempt to explain very real distress. Jesus desired to cure, not to inform his patients. The notion in no way interfered with his turning the thought of those he healed towards God, the centre of help and of health. He is not open, therefore, to the charge of having failed to free men from the thraldom of superstition if he accommodated himself to their belief concerning demoniac possession. His cure, and his infusion of true thoughts of God into the heart, furnished an antidote to superstition more efficacious than any amount of discussion of the truth or falseness of the current explanation of the disease. On the other hand, if we are not ready to conclude that the action of Jesus has demonstrated the validity of the ancient explanation, we may acknowledge that it would do no violence to his power, or dignity, or integrity, if it should be held that he did not concern himself with an inquiry into the cause of the disease which presented itself to him for help, but adopted unquestioningly the explanation held by all his contemporaries, even as he used their language, dress, manner of life, and in one particular, at least, their representation of the life after death (Luke xvi. 22–Abraham’s bosom). His own confession of ignorance of a large item of religious knowledge (Mark xiii. 32) leaves open the possibility that in so minor a matter as the explanation of a common disease he simply shared the ideas of his time. In this case, when one so afflicted came under his treatment, he applied his supernatural power, even as in cases of leprosy or fever, and cured the trouble, needing no scientific knowledge of its cause. If accommodation or ignorance led Jesus to treat these sick folk as possessed, it does not challenge his integrity nor his trustworthiness in all the matters which belong properly to his own peculiar work.

250. There is one incident in the gospels which favors the conclusion that Jesus definitely adopted the current idea,–the permission granted by him to the demons to go from the Gadarene into the herd of swine, and the consequent drowning of the herd (Mark v. 11-13). On any theory this incident is full of difficulty. Bernhard Weiss (LXt II. 226 ff.) holds that Jesus accommodated himself to current views, and that the man, having received for the possessing demons permission to go into the swine, was at once seized by a final paroxysm, and rushed among the swine, stampeding them so that they ran down the hillside into the sea.

251. In recent years the view has been somewhat widely advocated that his power over demoniacs was to Jesus himself one of the chief proofs of his Messiahship. His words are quoted: “If I, by the Spirit of God, cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you” (Matt. xii. 28); and “I beheld Satan falling as lightning from heaven” (Luke x. 18). The first of these is in the midst of an _ad hominem_ reply of Jesus to the charge that he owed his power to a league with the devil (Matt. xii. 28); and the second was his remark when the seventy reported with joy that the demons were subject unto them (Luke x. 18). The gospels, however, trace his certainty of his Messiahship to quite other causes, primarily to his knowledge of himself as God’s child, then to the Voice which, coming at the baptism, summoned him as God’s beloved Son to do the work of the Messiah. Throughout his ministry Jesus exhibits a certainty of his mission quite independent of external evidences,–“Even if I bear witness of myself, my witness is true; for I know whence I came and whither I go” (John viii. 14).

Jesus’ Conception of Himself

252. When Jesus called forth the confession of Peter at CÃ¦sarea Philippi he brought into prominence the question which during the earlier stages of the Galilean ministry he had studiously kept in the background. This is no indication, however, that he was late in reaching a conclusion for himself concerning his relation to the kingdom which he was preaching. From the time of his baptism and temptation every manifestation of the inner facts of his life shows unhesitating confidence in the reality of his call and in his understanding of his mission. This is the case whether the fourth gospel or the first three be appealed to for evidence. It is generally felt that the Gospel of John presents its sharpest contrast to the synoptic gospels in respect of the development of Jesus’ self-disclosures. A careful consideration of the first three gospels, however, shows that the difference is not in Jesus’ thought about himself.

253. The first thing which impressed the people during the ministry in Galilee was Jesus’ assumption of authority, whether in teaching or in action (Mark i. 27; Matt. vii. 28, 29). His method of teaching distinguished him sharply from the scribes, who were constantly appealing to the opinion of the elders to establish the validity of their conclusions. Jesus taught with a simple “I say unto you.” In this, however, he differed not only from the scribes, but also from the prophets, to whom in many ways he bore so strong a likeness. They proclaimed their messages with the sanction of a “Thus saith the Lord;” he did not hesitate to oppose the letter of scripture as well as the tradition of the elders with his unsupported word (Matt. v. 38, 39; Mark vii. 1-23). His teaching revealed his unhesitating certainty concerning spiritual truth, and although he reverenced deeply the Jewish scriptures, and knew that his work was the fulfilment of their promises, he used them always as one whose superiority to God’s earlier messengers was as complete as his reverence for them. He was confident that what they suggested of truth he was able to declare clearly; he used them as a master does his tools.

254. More striking than Jesus’ independence in his teaching is the calmness of his self-assertion when he was opposed by pharisaic criticism and hostility. He preferred to teach the truth of the kingdom, working his cures in such a way that men should think about God’s goodness rather than their healer’s significance. Yet coincidently with this method of his choice he did not hesitate to reply to pharisaic opposition with unqualified self-assertion and exalted personal claim. Even if the conflicts which Mark has gathered together at the opening of his gospel (ii. 1 to iii. 6) did not all occur as early as he has placed them, the nucleus of the group belongs to the early time. Since the people greatly reverenced his critics, he felt it unnecessary to guard against arousing undue enthusiasm by this frank avowal of his claims. He consequently asserted his authority to forgive sins, his special mission to the sick in soul whom the scribes shunned as defiling, his right to modify the conception of Sabbath observance; even as, later, he warned his critics of their fearful danger if they ascribed his good deeds to diabolical power (Mark iii. 28-30), and as, after the collapse of popularity, he rebuked them for making void the word of God by their tradition (Mark vii. 13). His attitude to the scribes in Galilee from the beginning discloses as definite Messianic claims as any ascribed by the fourth gospel to this early period.

255. These facts of the independence of Jesus in his teaching and his self-assertion in response to criticism confirm the impression that his answer to John the Baptist (Matt. xi. 2-6) gives the key to his method in Galilee. In John’s inquiry the question of Jesus’ personal relation to the kingdom was definitely asked. The answer, “Blessed is he whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling in me,” showed plainly that Jesus was in no doubt in the matter, although for the time he still preferred to let his ministry be the means of leading men to form their conclusions concerning him. What he brought into prominence at CÃ¦sarea Philippi, therefore, was that which had been the familiar subject of his own thinking from the time of his baptism.

256. In the ministry subsequent to the confession of Peter the self-disclosures of Jesus became more frequent and clear. His predictions of his approaching death were at the time the greatest difficulty to his disciples; when considered in their significance for his own life, however, they prove that his conviction of his Messiahship was as independent of current and inherited ideas as was his teaching concerning the kingdom. When he came to see that death was the inevitable issue of his work, he at once discovered in it a divine necessity; it does not seem to have shaken in the least his certainty that he was the Messiah. Associated with this conception of his death is the conviction which appears in all the later teachings, that in rejecting him his people were pronouncing their own doom. Because she would not accept him as her deliverer, Jerusalem’s “house was left unto her desolate” (Luke xiii. 35). His sense of his supreme significance appears most clearly in some of the later parables, such as The Marriage of the King’s Son (Matt. xxii. 1-14) and The Wicked Husbandmen (Matt. xxi. 33-44), which definitely connect the condemnation of the chosen people with their rejection of God’s Son. Two other sayings in the first three gospels express the personal claim of Jesus in the most exalted form,–his declaration on the return of the seventy: “All things have been delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth who the Son is save the Father, and who the Father is save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him” (Luke x. 22; Matt. xi. 27); and his confession of the limits of his own knowledge: “But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark xiii. 32). The confession of ignorance, by the position given to the Son in the climax which denied that any save the Father had a knowledge of the time of the end, is quite as extraordinary as the claim to sole qualification to reveal the Father.

257. The similarity of these last two sayings to the discourses in the fourth gospel has often been remarked; the likeness is particularly close between them and the claims of Jesus recorded in the fifth chapter of John. It is interesting to note that in the incident which introduces the discourse in that chapter Jesus shows that he preferred, after healing the man at the pool, to avoid the attention of the multitudes, precisely as in Galilee he sought to check too great popular excitement by withdrawing from Capernaum after his first ministry there (Mark i. 35-39), and enjoining silence on the leper who had been healed by him (Mark ii. 44). When, however, he found himself opposed by the criticism of the Pharisees he spoke with unhesitating self-assertion and exalted personal claim, even as he did in like situations in Galilee. During his earlier ministry in Judea he had not shown this reserve. The cleansing of the temple, although it was no more than any prophet sure of his divine commission would have done, was a bold challenge to the people to consider who he was who ventured thus to criticise the priestly administration of God’s house. In his subsequent dealings with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman Jesus manifested a like readiness to draw attention to himself. From the time of the feeding of the multitudes all four of the gospels represent him as asserting his claims, with this difference, however, that in John it is the rule rather than the exception to find sayings similar to the two in which the self-assertion in the other gospels reaches its highest expression. Although the method of Jesus varied at different times and in different localities, yet it is evident that he stood before the people from the first with the consciousness that he had the right to claim their allegiance as no one of the prophets who preceded him would have been bold to do.

258. During the course of his ministry Jesus used of himself, or suffered others to use with reference to him, many of the titles by which his people were accustomed to refer to the Messiah. Thus he was named “the Messiah” (Mark viii. 29; xiv. 61; John iv. 26); “the King of the Jews” (Mark xv. 2; John i. 49; xviii. 33, 36, 37); “the Son of David” (Mark x. 47, 48; Matt. xv. 22; xxi. 9, 15); “the Holy One of God” (John vi. 69; compare Mark i. 24); “the Prophet” (John vi. 14; vii. 40). It is evident that none of these titles was common; they represent, rather, the bold venture of more or less intelligent faith on the part of men who were impressed by him. There are two names, however, that are more significant of Jesus’ thought about himself,–“the Son of God” and “the Son of Man.”

259. The latter of these titles is unique in the use Jesus made of it. Excepting Stephen’s speech (Acts vii. 56), it is found in the New Testament only in the sayings of Jesus, and its precise significance is still a subject of learned debate. The expression is found in the Old Testament as a poetical equivalent for Man, usually with emphasis on human frailty (Ps. viii. 4; Num. xxiii. 19; Isa. li. 12), though sometimes it signifies special dignity (Ps. lxxx. 17). Ezekiel was regularly addressed in his visions as Son of Man (Ezek. ii. 1 and often; see also Dan. viii. 17), probably in contrast with the divine majesty.

260. In one of Daniel’s visions (vii. 1-14) the world-kingdoms which had oppressed God’s people and were to be destroyed were symbolized by beasts that came up out of the sea,–a winged lion, a bear, a four-headed winged leopard, and a terrible ten-horned beast; in contrast with these the kingdom of the saints of the Most High was represented by “one like unto a son of man,” who came with the clouds of heaven (vii. 13, 14). Here the language is obviously poetic, and is used to suggest the unapproachable superiority of the kingdom of heaven to the kingdoms of the world. The expression “one like unto a son of man” is equivalent, therefore, to “one resembling mankind.” The vision in Daniel had great influence over the author of the so-called Similitudes of Enoch (Book of Enoch, chapters xxxvii. to lxxi.). He, however, personified the “one like unto a son of man,” and gave the title “the Son of Man” to the heavenly man who will come at the end of all things, seated on God’s throne, to judge the world. This author used also the titles “the Elect One” and “the Righteous One” (or “the Holy One of God”), but “the Son of Man” is the prevalent name for the Messiah in these Similitudes.

261. The facts thus stated do not account for Jesus’ use of the expression. Many of his sayings undoubtedly suggest a development of the Daniel vision resembling that in the Similitudes. This does not prove that Jesus or his disciples had read these writings, though it does suggest the possibility that they knew them. It is probable, however, that the apocalypses gave formulated expression to thoughts that were more widely current than those writings ever came to be. The likeness between the language of Jesus and that found in the Similitudes may therefore prove no more than that the Daniel vision was more or less commonly interpreted of a personal Messiah in Jesus’ day.

262. Much of the use of the title by Jesus, however, is completely foreign to the ideas suggested by Enoch and Daniel. Besides apocalyptic sayings like those in Enoch (Mark viii. 38 and often), the name occurs in predictions of his sufferings and death (Mark viii. 31 and often), and in claims to extraordinary if not essentially divine authority (Mark ii. 10, 28 and parallels); it is also used sometimes simply as an emphatic “I” (Matt. xi. 19 and often). Whatever relation Jesus bore to the Enoch writings, therefore, the name “the Son of Man” as he used it was his own creation.

263. Students of Aramaic have in recent years asserted that it was not customary in the dialect which Jesus spoke to make distinction between “the son of man” and “man,” since the expression commonly used for “man” would be literally translated “son of man.” It is asserted, moreover, that if our gospels be read substituting “man” for “the Son of Man” wherever it appears, it will be found that many supposed Messianic claims become general statements of Jesus’ conception of the high prerogatives of man, while in other places the name stands simply as an emphatic substitute for the personal pronoun. Thus, for instance, Jesus is found to assert that authority on earth to forgive sins belongs to man (Mark ii. 10), and, toward the end of his course, to have taught simply that he himself must meet with suffering (Mark viii. 31), and will come on the clouds to judge the world (Mark viii. 38). The proportion of cases in which the general reference is possible is, however, very small; and even if the equivalence of “man” and “son of man” should be established, most of the statements of Jesus in which our gospels use the latter expression exhibit a conception of himself which challenges attention, transcending that which would be tolerated in any other man. The debate concerning the usage in the language spoken by Jesus is not yet closed, however, and Dr. Gustaf Dalman (WJ I. 191-197) has recently argued that the equivalence of the two expressions holds only in poetic passages, precisely as it does in Hebrew, and that our gospels represent correctly a distinction observed by Jesus when they report him, for instance, as saying in one sentence, “the Sabbath was made for man” (Mark ii. 27), and in the next, “the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” The antecedent probability is so great that the dialect of Jesus’ time would be capable of expressing a distinction found in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and in the Syriac of the second-century version of the New Testament, that Dalman’s opinion carries much weight.

264. Many of those who look for a distinct significance in the title “the Son of Man,” find in it a claim by Jesus to be the ideal or typical man, in whom humanity has found its highest expression. It thus stands sharply in contrast with “the Son of God,” which is held to express his claim to divinity. So understood, the titles represent truth early recognized by the church in its thought about its Lord. Yet it must be acknowledged that the conception “the ideal man” is too Hellenic to have been at home in the thought of those to whom Jesus addressed his teaching. If the phrase suggested anything more to his hearers than the human frailty or the human dignity of him who bore it, it probably had a Messianic meaning like that found in the Similitudes of Enoch. A hint of this understanding of the name appears in the perplexed question reported in John (xii. 34): “We have heard out of the law that the Messiah abideth forever; and how sayest thou, The Son of Man must be lifted up? who is this Son of Man?” Here the difficulty arose because the people identified the Son of Man with the Messiah, yet could not conceive how such a Messiah could die. In fact, if the conception of the Son of Man which is found in Enoch had obtained any general currency among the people, either from that book or independently of it, it was so foreign to the earthly condition and manner of life of the Galilean prophet, that it would not have occurred to his hearers to treat his use of the title as a Messianic claim until after that claim had been published in some other and more definite form. Their Son of Man was to come with the clouds of heaven, seated on God’s throne, to execute judgment on all sinners and apostates; the Nazarene fulfilled none of these conditions. The name, as used by Jesus, was probably always an enigma to the people, at least until he openly declared its Messianic significance in his reply to the high-priest’s question at his trial (Mark xiv. 62), and gave the council the ground it desired for a charge of blasphemy against him.

265. What did this title signify to Jesus? His use of it alone can furnish answer, and in this the variety is so great that it causes perplexity. “The Son of Man came eating and drinking” is his description of his own life in contrast with John the Baptist (Matt. xi. 18, 19). “The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head” was his reply to one over-zealous follower (Matt. viii. 20). Unseemly rivalry among his disciples was rebuked by the reminder that “even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister” (Mark x. 42-45). When it became needful to prepare the disciples for his approaching death he taught them that “the Son of Man must suffer many things … and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark viii. 31). On the other hand, the paralytic’s cure was made to demonstrate that “the Son of Man hath authority upon the earth to forgive sins” (Mark ii. 10). Similarly it is the Son of Man who after his exaltation shall come “in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mark viii. 38). In these typical cases the title expresses Jesus’ consciousness of heavenly authority as well as self-sacrificing ministry, of coming exaltation as well as present lowliness; and the suffering and death which were the common lot of other sons of men were appointed for this Son of Man by a divine necessity. The name is, therefore, more than a substitute for the personal pronoun; it expresses Jesus’ consciousness of a mission that set him apart from the rest of men.

266. We do not know how Jesus came to adopt this title. Its association with the predictions of his coming glory shows that he knew that in him the Daniel vision was to have fulfilment. The predictions of suffering and death, however, are completely foreign to that apocalyptic conception, being akin rather, as Professor Charles has suggested, to the prophecies of the suffering servant in the Book of Isaiah (Book of Enoch, p. 314-317). Moreover, it may not be fanciful to find in his claims to heavenly authority a hint of the thought of the eighth Psalm, “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet” (see Dalman WJ I. 218). Although the name expresses a consciousness of dignity, vicarious ministry, and authority, similar to thoughts found in Daniel, Isaiah, and the Psalms, it was not deduced from these scriptures by any synthesis of diverse ideas. It rather indicates that Jesus in his own nature realized a synthesis which no amount of study of scripture would ever have suggested. He drew his conception of himself from his own self-knowledge, not from his Messianic meditations. On his lips, then, “the Son of Man” indicates that he knew himself to be the Man whom God had chosen to be Lord over all (compare Dalman as above). The lowly estate which contradicted the Daniel vision prevented Jesus’ hearers from recognizing in the title a Messianic claim; for him, however, it was the expression of the very heart of his Messianic consciousness.

267. If Jesus gave expression to his official consciousness when he used the name “the Son of Man,” the title “the Son of God” may be said to express his more personal thought about himself. It is necessary to distinguish between the meaning of this title to the contemporaries of Jesus and his own conception of it. In the popular thought “the Son of God” was the designation of that man whom God would at length raise up and crown with dignity and power for the deliverance of his people. This meaning followed from the Messianic interpretation of the second Psalm, in which the theocratic king is called God’s son (Ps. ii. 7). In another psalm, which Jesus himself quotes (John x. 34), magistrates and judges are called “sons of the Most High” (lxxxii. 6). Another Old Testament use casts light on this,–the designation of Israel as God’s son, his firstborn (Ex. iv. 22; Hos. i. 10), with which may be compared a remarkable expression in the so-called Psalms of Solomon (xviii. 4), “Thy chastisement was upon us [that is, Israel] as upon a son, firstborn, only begotten.” In all these passages that which constitutes a man the son of God is God’s choice of him for a special work, while Israel collectively bears the title to suggest God’s fatherly love for the people he had taken for his own. The Messianic title, therefore, described not a metaphysical, but an official or ethical, relation to God. It is certainly in this sense that the high-priest asked Jesus “Art thou the Messiah the son of the Blessed?” (Mark xiv. 61), and that the crowd about the cross flung their taunts at him (Matt, xxvii. 43), and the demoniacs proclaimed their knowledge of him (Mark iii. 11; v. 7). The name must be interpreted in this sense also in the confession of Nathanael (John i. 49); moreover, it was not the coupling of the names “Messiah” and “son of the living God” in Peter’s confession that gave it its great significance for Jesus. In all of these cases there is no evidence that there has been any advance over the theocratic significance which made the title “the Son of God” fitting for the man chosen by God for the fulfilment of his promises.

268. The case is different with the name by which Jesus was called at his baptism (Mark i. 11). The difference here, however, arises not from anything in the name as used on this occasion, but from that in Jesus which acknowledged and accepted the title. With Jesus the consciousness that God was his Father preceded the knowledge that as “his Son” he was to undertake the work of the Messiah. The force of the call at the baptism is found in the response which his own soul gave to the word “Thou art my Son.” The nature of that response is seen in his habitual reference to God as in a peculiar sense _his_ Father. The name “Father” for God was used by him in all his teaching, and there is no evidence that he or any of his hearers regarded it as a novelty. Psalm ciii. 13 and Isaiah lxiii. 16 indicate that the conception was natural to Jewish thinking. The unique feature in Jesus’ usage is his careful distinction between the general references to “your Father” and his constant personal allusions to “my Father.” Witness the reply to his mother in the temple (Luke ii. 49); his word to Peter, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. xvi. 17), his solemn warning, “Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. vii. 21), and the promise, “Every one who shall confess me before men … him will I also confess before my Father” (Matt. x. 32). In the fourth gospel the same intimate reference is common: so, for example, the temple is “my Father’s house” (ii. 16), the Sabbath cure is defended because “my Father worketh even until now” (v. 17), the cures are done “in My Father’s name” (x. 25), “I am the vine, and my Father is the husbandman” (xv. 1). This mode of expression discloses a consciousness of unique filial relation to God which is independent of, even as it was antecedent to, the consciousness of official relation.

269. The full name “the Son of God” was seldom applied by Jesus to himself, the only recorded instances being found in the fourth gospel (v. 25; ix. 35?; x. 36; xi. 4). He frequently acquiesced in the use of the title by others in addressing him (for example, John i. 49; Matt. xvi. 16; xxvi. 63f.; Mark xiv. 61f.; Luke xxii. 70); but for himself he preferred the simpler phrase “the Son.” This mode of expression occurs often in John, and is found also in the two passages, already noticed, in which the other gospels give clearest expression to the extraordinary self-assertion of Jesus (Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22; and Mark xiii. 32). In the first of them his claim to be the only one who can adequately reveal God is founded on the consciousness that the relation between himself and God is so intimate that God alone adequately knows him, whom men were so ready to set at nought, and he alone knows God. This relation, in which he and God stand together in contrast with all other men, is expressed by the unqualified names, “the Father” and “the Son.” In the second passage Jesus confessed the limitation of his knowledge, but again in such a way as to set himself and God in contrast not only with men, but also with “the angels in heaven.” Such assertions as these indicate that he who, knowing his full humanity, chose the title “the Son of Man” to express his consciousness that he had been appointed by God to be the Messiah, was yet aware in his inner heart that his relation to God was even closer than that in which he stood to men.

270. There is no word in John which goes beyond the two self-declarations of Jesus which crown the record of the other evangelists, yet in the fourth gospel the same claim to unique relation to God is more frequently and frankly avowed. The most unqualified assertion of intimacy–“I and the Father are one” (x. 30)–states what is clearly implied throughout the gospel (so xiv. 6-11; xvi. 25; and particularly xvii. 21, “that they may be one, even as we are one”). It has often been said, and truly, that this claim to unity with the Father, taken by itself, signifies no more than perfect spiritual and ethical harmony with God. Yet when the words are considered in their connection, and more particularly when the two supreme self-declarations in the synoptic gospels are associated with them, they express a sense of relation to God so utterly unique, so strongly contrasting the Father and the Son with all others, that we cannot conceive of any other man, even the saintliest, taking like words upon his lips.

271. These titles in which Jesus gave expression to his official and his personal consciousness present clearly the problem which he offers to human thought. Jesus stands before us in the gospels as a man aware of completest kinship with his brethren, yet conscious at the same time of standing nearer to God than he does to men.

272. It is highly significant that the gospel which records most fully the claim of Jesus to be more closely related to God than he was to men, most fully records also his definite acknowledgment of dependence on his Father, and of that Father’s supremacy over him and all others. “The Son can do nothing of himself” (John v. 19), “I speak not from myself” (xiv. 10), “my Father is greater than all” (x. 29), “the Father is greater than I” (xiv. 28),–these confessions join with the common reference to God as “him that sent me” (v. 30 and often) in giving voice to his own spirit of reverence. It appears as clearly in his habitual submission to his Father’s will,–“My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to accomplish his work” (John iv. 34); “I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me” (John vi. 38). This submission reached its fulness in the prayer of Gethsemane, recorded in the earlier gospels,–“Father, all things are possible unto thee; remove this cup from me: howbeit not what I will, but what thou wilt” (Mark xiv. 36). Jesus was a man of prayer; not only in Gethsemane, but also throughout his ministry he habitually sought his Father in that communion in which the soul of man finds its light and strength for life’s duty. When he was baptized (Luke iii. 21), after the first flush of success in Capernaum (Mark i. 35), before choosing the twelve (Luke vi. 12), before the question at CÃ¦sarea Philippi (Luke ix. 18), at the transfiguration (Luke ix. 29), on the cross (Luke xxiii. 46),–at all the crises of his life he turned to God in prayer. Moreover, prayer was his habit, for it was after a night of prayer which has no connection with any crisis reported for us (Luke xi. 1), that he taught his disciples the Lord’s prayer in response to their requests. The prayer beside the grave of Lazarus (John xi. 41, 42) suggests that his miracles were often, if not always (compare Mark ix. 29), preceded by definite prayer to God. His habit of prayer was the natural expression of his trust in God. From the resistance to the temptations in the wilderness to the last cry, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” his life is an example of childlike faith in God.

273. Yet throughout his life of obedience and trust Jesus never gave one indication that he felt the need of penitence when he came before God. He perceived as no one else has ever done the searching inwardness of God’s law, and demanded of men that they tolerate no lower ambition than to be like God, yet he never breathed a sigh of conscious failure, or gave sign that he blushed when the eternal light shone into his own soul. He was baptized, but without confession of sin. He challenged his enemies to convict him of sin (John viii. 46). Such a challenge might have rested on a man’s certainty that his critics did not know his inner life; but hypocrisy has no place in the character of Jesus. The reply to the rich young ruler, “Why callest thou me good?” (Mark x. 18), even if it was a confession that freedom from past sin was still far less than that absolute goodness that God alone possesses, simply sets in stronger light his silence concerning personal failure, and his omission in all his praying to seek forgiveness. It is probable, however, that that reply deals not with the “good” as the “ethically perfect,” but as the “supremely beneficent,” so that Jesus simply reminded the seeker after life that God alone is the one to be approached as the Gracious and Merciful One by sinful men (see Dalman WJ I. 277). Thus the reply becomes a fresh expression of the reverence of Jesus, and still further emphasizes his failure to confess his sinfulness.

274. In all this thought about himself Jesus stands before us as a man, conscious of his close kinship with his fellows. Like them he hungered and thirsted and grew weary, like them he longed for friendship and for sympathy, like them he trusted God and prayed to God and learned still to trust when his request was denied. He stands before us also as a man conscious of being anointed by God for the great work which all the prophets had foretold, and of being fully equipped with authority and power and the promise of unapproachable dignity. Of deep religious spirit and great reverence for the scriptures of his people, he yet used these scriptures as a master does his tools, to serve his work rather than to instruct him in it. He drew his knowledge from within and from above, and proclaimed his own fulfilment of the scriptures when he filled them with new meaning. A man always devout, always at prayer, he is never seen, like Isaiah, prostrate before the Most High, crying, “I am undone” (Isa. vi. 5). In his moments of greatest seriousness and most manifest communion with heaven he looked to God as his nearest of kin, and felt himself a stranger on the earth fulfilling his Father’s will. He felt heaven to be his home not simply by God’s gracious promise, but by the right of previous possession. His kinship with men was a condescension, his natural fellowship was with God.

275. The miracles with which the gospels have filled the record of Jesus’ life have caused perplexity to many, and they belong with other mysterious things recorded for us in the story of the past or occurring under the incredulous observation of our scientific generation. They all pale, however, before the unaccountable exception presented to universal human experience by this Man of Nazareth. It confronts us when we think of the unschooled Jew who, in his thought of God, rose not only above all of his generation, but higher than all who had gone before him, or have come after, one who built on the foundation of the past a superstructure of religion new, and simple, and clearly heavenly. It confronts us when we think of this Man who believed that it was given to him to establish the kingdom that should fill the whole earth, and who had the boldness and the faith to ignore the opposition of all the world’s wisdom and of all its enthroned power, and to fulfil his task as the woman does who hides her leaven in the meal, content to wait for years, or millenniums, until his truth shall conquer in the realization of God’s will on earth even as it is done in heaven. It confronts us when we consider that the Man who has shown his brethren what obedience means, who has taught them to pray, who has been for all these centuries the Way, the Truth, the Life, by whom they come to God, habitually claimed without shadow of abashment or slightest hint of conscious presumption, a nature, a relation to God, a freedom from sin, that other men according to the measure of their godliness would shun as blasphemy. If the personal claim was true, and not the blind pretence of vanity, the Jesus of the gospels is the exception to the uniform fact of human nature, but he is no longer unaccountable; and if his claim was true, his knowledge of the absolute religion, and his choice of the irresistible propaganda, are no less extraordinary, but they are not unaccountable. Paul, whose life was transformed and his thinking revolutionized by his meeting with the risen Jesus, thought on these things and believed that “the name which, is above every name” was his by right of nature as well as by the reward of obedience (Phil. ii. 5-11). John, who leaned on Jesus’ breast during his earthly life, and who meditated on the meaning of that life through a ministry of many decades, came to believe that he whom he had seen with his eyes, heard with his ears, handled with his hands, was, indeed, “the Word made flesh” (John i. 14), through whom the very God revealed his love to men. Through all the perplexities of doubt, amidst all the obscurings of irrelevant speculations, the hearts of men to-day turn to this Jesus of Nazareth as their supreme revelation of God, and find in him “the Master of their thinking and the Lord of their lives.”

“Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and know that thou art the Holy One of God.”

Appendix

Books of Reference on the Life of Jesus

1. A concise account of the voluminous literature on this subject maybe found at the close of the article JESUS CHRIST by Zockler in _Schaff-Herzog, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge_. Of the earlier of the modern works it is well to mention David Friedrich Strauss, _Das Leben Jesu_ (2 vols. 1835), in which he sought to reduce all the gospel miracles to myths. August Neander, _Das Leben Jesu Christi_, 1837, wrote in opposition to the attitude taken by Strauss. Both of these works have been translated into English. Ernst Renan, _Vie de JÃ©sus_ (1863, 16th ed. 1879), translated, _The Life of Jesus_ (1863), is a charming, though often superficial and patronizing, presentation of the subject. For vivid word pictures of scenes in the life of Jesus his book is unsurpassed. Renan’s inability to appreciate the more serious aspects of the work of Christ appears constantly, while his effort to discover romance in the life of Jesus is offensive. More important than any of these is Theodor Keim, _Geschichte Jesu von Nazara_ (1867-72, 3 vols.), translated, _The History of Jesus of Nazara_ (1876-81, 6 vols.). The author rejects the fourth gospel and holds that Matthew is the most primitive of the synoptic gospels; he does not reject the supernatural as such, but reduces it as much as possible by recognizing a legendary element in the gospels. When the work is read with these peculiarities in mind, it is one of the most stimulating and spiritually illuminating treatments of the subject.

2. Critically more trustworthy, and exegetically very valuable, is Bernhard Weiss, _Das Leben Jesu_ (3d ed. 1889, 2 vols.), translated from the first ed., _The Life of Christ_ (1883, 3 vols.). It is more helpful for correct understanding of details than for a complete view of the Life of Jesus. Rivalling Weiss in many ways, yet neither so exact nor so trustworthy, though more interesting, is Willibald Beyschlag, _Das Leben Jesu_ (3d ed. 1893, 2 vols.). The most important discussion in English is Alfred Edersheim, _The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah_ (1883 and later editions, 2 vols.). This is valuable for its illustration of conditions in Palestine in the time of Jesus by quotations from the rabbinic literature. The material used is enormous, but is not always treated with due criticism, and the book should be read with the fact in mind that most of the rabbinic writings date from several centuries after Christ. SchÃ¼rer (see below) should be used wherever possible as a counter-balance. Dr. Edersheim follows the gospel story in detail; his book is, therefore, a commentary as well as a biography.

3. Albert RÃ©ville, _Jesus de Nazareth_ (1897, 2 vols.), aims to bring the work of Renan up to date, and to supply some of the lacks which are felt in the earlier treatise. The book is pretentious and learned. In some parts, as in the treatment of the youth of Jesus, and of the sermon on the mount, it is helpfully suggestive. The Jesus whom the author admires, however, is the Jesus of Galilee. The journey to Jerusalem was a sad mistake, and the assumption of the Messianic rÃ´le a fall from the high ideal maintained in the teaching in Galilee. In criticism M. RÃ©ville accepts the two document synoptic theory, and assigns the fourth gospel to about 140 A.D. He rejects the supernatural, explaining many of the miracles as legendary embellishments of actual events.

4. The most important treatment of the subject is the article JESUS CHRIST by William Sanday in the _Hastings Bible Dictionary_ (1899). It is of the highest value, discussing the subject topically with great clearness and with a rare combination of learning and common sense. S. T. Andrews, _The Life of Our Lord_ (2d ed. 1892), is a thorough and very useful study of the gospels, considering minutely all questions of chronology, harmony, and geography. It presents the different views with fairness, and offers conservative conclusions. G. H. Gilbert, _The Student’s Life of Jesus_ (1896), is complete in plan and careful in treatment, while being very concise. Dr. Gilbert faces the problems of the subject frankly, and his treatment is scholarly and reverent. James Stalker, _The Life of Jesus Christ_ (1880), is a short work whose value lies in the good conception which it gives of the ministry of Jesus viewed as a whole. In simplicity, insight, and clearness the book is a classic, though now somewhat out of date. _Studies in the Life of Christ_, by A.M. Fairbairn (1882), is of great value for the topics considered. The title indicates that the treatment is fragmentary. The long treatises of Farrar (1875, 2 vols.) and Geikie (1877, 2 vols.) are useful as commentaries on the words and works of Jesus. Farrar often interprets most helpfully the essence of an incident, and Geikie furnishes a mass of illustrative material from rabbinic sources, though with less criticism than even Edersheim has used. Neither of these works, however, deals with the fundamental problems of the composition of the gospels, nor are they satisfactory on other perplexing questions, for example, the miraculous birth.

5. The most important accessory for the study of the life of Jesus is Emil SchÃ¼rer, _Geschichte des JÃ¼dischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi_ (2d ed. 1886, 1890, 2 vols. A 3d ed. of 2d part in 2 vols., 1898), translated, _A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ_ (1885-6, 5 vols.). The political history of the Jews from 175 B.C. to 135 A.D., and the intellectual and religious life of the times in which Jesus lived, with the Jewish literature of Palestine and the dispersion, are all treated with thoroughness and masterful learning. W. Baldensperger, _Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit_ (2d ed. 1892), furnishes in the first part a survey of the Messianic hopes of the Jews which is in many respects the most satisfactory account that is accessible. The second part discusses the problem of Jesus’ conception of himself in a reverent and learned way. George Adam Smith, _The Historical Geography of the Holy Land_ (1894), is indispensable for the study of the physical features of the land as they bear on its history, and on the work of Jesus. The maps are the best that have yet appeared.

6. Discussions of the Teaching of Jesus in works on Biblical Theology have much that is important for the study of Jesus’ life. The most significant is H. H. Wendt, _Die Lehre Jesu_ (1886, 2 vols.). The second volume has been translated _The Teaching of Jesus_ (1892, 2 vols.); the first volume of the original work is an elaborate discussion of the sources, and has not been done into English. Reference may be made especially to H. J. Holtzmann, _Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Theologie_ (1897, 2 vols.), and also to G. H. Gilbert, _The Revelation of Jesus_ (1899). Gustaf Dalman, _Die Worte Jesu_ (1898), of which the first volume only has appeared, is a study of the meaning of the most significant expressions used in the gospel records of the teaching of Jesus, made with the aid of thorough knowledge of Aramaic usage and of the language of post-canonical Jewish literature.

7. A good synopsis or Harmony of the gospels is most useful. The best _Harmony is_ that of Stevens and Burton (1894), which exhibits the divergencies of the parallel accounts in the gospels as faithfully as the agreements. A good synopsis of the Greek text of the first three gospels is Huck, _Synapse_ (1892). Robinson’s _Greek Harmony of the Gospels_, edited by M. B. Biddle, using Tischendorf’s text, has also valuable notes discussing questions of harmony.

Abbreviations

AndLOL Andrews, The Life of Our Lord, 2d ed., 1892. BaldSJ Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, 2d ed., 1892. BeysLJ Beyschlag, Das Leben Jesu, 3d ed., 2 vols., 1893. BovonNTTh Bovon, ThÃ©ologie du Nouveau Testament, 1892. DalmanWJ Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, I., 1898. EdersLJM Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 2 vols., 1883.
FairbSLX Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ, 1882. GilbertLJ Gilbert, The Student’s Life of Jesus, 1896. GilbertRJ Gilbert, The Revelation of Jesus, 1899. HoltzNtTh Holtzmann, Neutestamentliche Theologie, 2 vols., 1897. KeimJN Keim, The History of Jesus of Nazara, 6 vols., 1876-81. RÃ©villeJN RÃ©ville, JÃ©sus de Nazareth, 2 vols., 1897. SandayHastBD Sanday, the article JESUS CHRIST in the Hastings Bible Dictionary, 1899.
SchÃ¼rerJPTX SchÃ¼rer, The History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, 1885-86. Division I. vols. i. and ii.; Division II. vols. i., ii., and iii.
SmithHGHL Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 1894. SB Stevens and Burton, Harmony of the Gospels, 1894. WeissLX Weiss, The Life of Christ, 3 vols., 1883. WendtLJ Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu, 2 vols., 1886. WendtTJ Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, 2 vols., 1892. EnBib Encyclopedia Biblica, 1899.
HastBD Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, 1898. SBD^2 Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, revision of the first volume of the original English edition, 1893.

References

Part I.–Preparatory

The Historical Situation

8. Read SandayHastBD II. 604-609. On the Land, its physical characteristics, its political divisions, its climate, its roads, and its varying civilization, SmithHGHL is unsurpassed. Its identifications of disputed localities are cautions. Robinson, _Biblical Researches in Palestine_, and Thomson, _The Land and the Book_, give fuller detail concerning particular localities, but no such general view as Smith.

9. On Political conditions, SchÃ¼rerJPTX I. i. and ii. is the fullest and most trustworthy treatise. More concise essays are Oscar Holtzmann, _Nt. Zeitgeschichte_ (1895), 57-118; S. Mathews, _History of NT Times in Palestine_ (1899), 1-158; Riggs, _Maccabean and Roman Periods of Jewish History_ (1900), especially Â§Â§ 206-234, 257-267, 276-282. On the Religious Life and Parties in Palestine, SchÃ¼rerJPTX II. i. and ii.; O. Holtzmann, _NtZeitg_, 136-177; Mathews, _NT Times_, see index; Riggs, _Mac. and Rom. Periods_, Â§Â§ 235-256; Muirhead, _The Times of Christ_ (1898), 69-150. In addition Wellhausen, _Die PharisdÃ¤er und die SadducÃ¤er_ (1874); on the _Essenes_, Conybeare in HastBD I. 767-772, also Lightfoot, _Colossians_, 80-98, 347-419; Wellhausen, _Isr. u. jÃ¼d. Geschichte_^3 (1897), 258-262; on the Samaritans, A. Cowley, in _Expos_. V. i. 161-174; Jew. Quar. Rev. VIII. (1896) 562-575.

10. On the Messianic hope, SchÃ¼rerJPTX II. ii. 126-187; BaldSJ 3-122; Muirhead, _Times of Xt._, 112-150; Briggs, _Messiah of the Gospels_ (1894), 1-40; WendtTJ I. 33-84; Mathews, _NT Times_, 159-169; Riggs, _Mac. and Rom. Periods_, Â§Â§ 251-256.

11. On the language of Palestine see Arnold Meyer, _Jesu Muttersprache_ (1896); DalmanWJ I. 1-57; SchÃ¼rerJPTX II. i. 8-10, 47-51; Neubauer, _Studia Biblica_, I. 39-74.

12. On Jewish literature dating near the times of Jesus see SchÃ¼rerJPTX II. iii.; BaldSJ. 3-122; EdersLJM I. 31-39; Deane, _Pseudepigrapha_ (1891); Thomson, _Books which influenced our Lord_, etc. (1891); and special editions, such as Alexandre, _Sibylline Oracles_ (1869); Deane, _The Wisdom of Solomon_ (1881); Charles, _The Book of Enoch_ (1893), _The Apocalypse of Baruch_ (1896), _The Assumption of Moses_ (1897), and _The Book of Jubilees_ (1895); Charles and Morfill, _The Secrets of Enoch_ (1896); Ryle and James, _The Psalms of the Pharisees_ [Psalms of Solomon] (1891); Bensly and James, _Fourth Esdras_ (1895); Charles, EnBib I. 213-250; HastBD I. 109f.; Porter, HastBD I. 110-123; James, EnBib I. 249-261.

The Sources

13. On the sources outside the gospels see Anthony, _Introduction to the Life of Jesus_, 19-108; KeimJN I. 12-59; BeysLJ I. 59-72; GilbertLJ 74-78; Knowling, _Witness of the Epistles_; Stevens, _Pauline Theol_. 204-208; Sabatier, _Apostle Paul_, 76-85. On Josephus as a source see also SchÃ¼rerJPTX I. ii. 143-149; RÃ©villeJN I. 272-280. On the individual gospels see Burton, _The Purpose and Plan of the Four Gospels_ (Univ. Chic. Press, 1900); Bruce, _With Open Face_, 1-61; Weiss, _Introduction to N.T._, II. 239-386; JÃ¼licher, _Einleitung i. d. NT_, 189-207. On Matthew, Burton Bib. Wld. I. 1898, 37-44, 91-101; on Mark, Swete, _Comm. on Mark_, ix-lxxxix; on Luke, Plummer, _Comm. on Luke_, xi-lxx; Mathews, Bib. Wld. 1895, I. 336-342, 448-455; on John, Burton, Bib. Wld. 1899, I. 16-41, 102-105; Westcott, _Comm. on John_, v-lxxvii; Rhees in Abbott’s _The Bible as Literature_, 281-297. On the synoptic question see Sanday SBD^2, 1217-1243, and Expositor, Feb.-June, 1891; Woods, _Studia Biblica_, II. 59-104; Salmon, _Introduction_^7, 99-151, 570-581; Stanton in HastBD II. 234-243; JÃ¼licher, _Einl._ 207-227. A. Wright, _Composition of the Four Gospels_ (1890) and _Some NT Problems_ (1898), defends the oral tradition theory in a modified form. On possible dislocations in John see Spitta, _Urchristentum_, I. 157-204; Bacon, Jour. Bib. Lit. 1894, 64-76; Burton, Bib. Wld. 1899, I. 27-35. For the history of opinion see specially H. J. Holtzmann, _Einl._^3 340-375. On the Johannine question see Sanday, Expositor, Nov. 1891-May 1892; SchÃ¼rer, Cont. Rev. Sept. 1891; Watkins SBD^2 1739-1764; Burton, Bib. Wld. 1899, I. 16-41; Reynolds in HastBD II. 694-722; Zahn, _Einl._ II. 445-564 (defends Johannine authorship); JÃ¼licher, _Einl._ 238-250 (rejects Johannine authorship). For the history of opinion see Watkins, _Bampton Lecture_ for 1890; Holtzmann, _Einl._^3 433-438. P. Ewald, _Hauptproblem der evang. Frage_, argues the authenticity of the fourth gospel from the one-sidedness of the synoptic story. See also Jour. Bib. Lit. 1898, I. 87-102.

14. RÃ©ville proposes to reconstruct Jos. Ant. xviii. 3. 3 thus: “‘At that time appeared Jesus, a wise man, who did astonishing things. That is why a good number of Jews and also of Greeks attached themselves to him.’ Then follows some phrase probably signifying that these adherents had committed the error of proclaiming him Christ, and then ‘denounced by the leading men of the nation, this Jesus was condemned by Pilate to die on the cross. But those who had loved him before persevered in their sentiment, and still to-day there exists a class of people who take from him their name Christians.'”

15. On the testimony of Papias (Euseb. _Ch. Hist_. iii. 39. 4) see Lightfoot, Cont. Rev. 1875, II. 379 ff., and McGiffert’s notes in his _Eusebius_, 170 ff.

16. For a collection of probably genuine Agrapha see Ropes, _Die Spruche Jesu_, 154-161, and Amer. Jour. Theol. 1897, 758-776; Resch, _Agrapha_, gives a much longer list. He is criticised by Ropes. On lost and uncanonical gospels see Salmon, _Intr._^7 173-190, 580-591; Kruger, _Early Christian Literature_, 50-57. For the recently discovered Gospel of Peter see Swete, _The Gospel of Peter_; and on the so-called _Sayings of Jesus_ found in Egypt in 1896 see Harnack, _Expositor_, V. vi. 321-340, 401-416, and essay by Sanday and Lock. _Apocryphal Gospels_ are most conveniently found in _Ante-nicene Fathers_, VIII. 361-476.

III

The Harmony of the Gospels

17. The Diatessaron of Tatian is translated with notes by Hill, _The Earliest Life of Christ_. See also _Ante-nic. Fathers_, IX. 35-138.

18. For the extreme position concerning Doublets see Holtzmann, _Hand-commentar zum NT_ I. passim. E. Haupt, Studien u. Kritiken, 1884, 25, remarks that Jesus must often have repeated his teaching in essentially the same form.

Chronology

19. For data and discussion of the various problems see Wieseler, _Chronological Synopsis_; Lewin, _Fasti Sacra; _ KeimJN II. 379-402; AndLOL 1-52; SchÃ¼rerJPTX I. ii. 30-32, 105-143; O. Holtzmann, _NtZeitg_, 118-124, 125-127, 131-132; Turner HastBD I. 403-415; Ramsay, _Was Christ born at Bethlehem_; and von Soden in EnBib. I. 799-812. For patristic opinion concerning the length of Jesus’ ministry, see HastBD I. 410. For the argument for a one-year ministry, see KeimJN II. 398; O. Holtzmann, _NtZeitg_, 131f. For two years, see Wieseler, _Chron. Synop_. 204-220; WeissLX I. 389-392; Turner, in HastBD. For three years, see AndLOL 189-198; note by Robertson in Broadus, _Harmony of the Gospels_, 241-244. Compare RÃ©villeJN II. 227-231; Zahn, _Einl._ II. 516f.

The Early Years

20. On the problem of the Virgin birth see GilbertLJ 79-89; WeissLX I. 211-233; Swete, _Apos. Creed_, 42-55; Bruce, _Apologetics_, 407-413; Ropes, Andover Rev. 1893, 695-712; FairbSLX 30-45; Godet, _Comm. on Luke_, Rem. on chaps. I. and II.; BovonNTTh I. 198-217. These maintain historicity. The other side: BeysLJ I. 148-174; Meyer, _Comm. on Matt_., Rem. on 1.18; Keim JN II. 38-101; RÃ©ville, New World, 1892, 695-723, and JN I. 361-408; HoltzmannNtTh I. 409-415. On the early years of Jesus see EdersLJM I. 217-254; WeissLX I. 275-293; Hughes, _Manliness of Xt_, 35-60; WendtTJ I. 90-96; Stapfer, _Jesus Christ before his Ministry; _ FairbSLX 46-63; BeysLJ II. 44-65; RÃ©villeJN I. 409-438.

21. For some of the early legends concerning the birth and childhood of Jesus, see the so-called _Protevangelium of James_, the _Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew_, and the _Gospel of Thomas_, Ante-nic. Fathers, VIII. 361-383, 395-398. For Jewish calumnies see Laible, _J. X. im Thalmud_, 9-39.

22. On the two genealogies see AndLOL 62-68; WeissLX I. 211-221; Godet on Luke, iii. 23-38. These refer Luke’s genealogy to Marv. Hervey SBD^2 1145-1148, Plummer on Luke, iii. 23, EdersLJM I. 149, GilbertLJ 81f., with the early fathers (see Plummer), refer both to Joseph. For the view that they are unauthentic see Holtzmann, _Hand-comm._ I. 39-41; Bacon in HastBD II. 137-141.

23. On the “brethren” of Jesus see Mayor, HastBD I. 320-326; AndrewsLOL 111-123. These make the brethren sons of Joseph and Mary. Lightfoot, _Galatians_^10, 252-291, regards them as sons of Joseph by a former marriage.

John the Baptist

24. On the character and work of John the Baptist see KeimJN II. 201-266 and references in the index under John the Baptist. Keim’s is much the most satisfactory treatment; it is, moreover, Keim at his best. See also Ewald, _Hist, of Israel_, VI. 160-200; WeissLX I. 307-316; FairbSLX 64-79; W. A. Stevens, Homil. Rev. 1891, II. 163 ff.; Bebb in HastBD II. 677-680; Wellhausen _Isr. u. judische Geschichte_, 342f.; Feather, _Last of the Prophets_. Reynolds, _John the Baptist_, obscures its excellencies by a vast amount of irrelevant discussion.

25. On the existence of a separate company of disciples of John see Mk. ii. 18, Mt. ix. 14, Lk. v. 33; Mk. vi. 29, Mt. xiv. 12; Mt. xi. 2f., Lk. vii. 18f.; Lk. xi. 1; Jn. i. 35f.; iii. 25; Ac. xix. 1-3. Consult Lightfoot, _Colossians_, 400 ff.; Baldensperger, _Der Prolog des vierten Evangeliums_, 93-152.

VII

The Messianic Call

26. On the baptism of Jesus see WendtTJ I. 96-101; EdersLJM I. 278-287; BaldSJ 219-229. WeissLX I. 316-336 says that the baptism meant for Jesus, already conscious of his Messiahship, “the close of his former life and the opening of one perfectly new” (322); KeimJN II. 290-299 makes it an act of consecration, but eliminates the Voice and Dove; BeysLJ I. 215-231 thinks that Jesus, conscious of no sin, yet not aware of his Messiahship, sought the baptism carrying “the sins and guilt of his people on his heart, as if they were his own” (229). Against Beyschlag see E. Haupt in Studien u. Kritiken, 1887, 381. Baldensperger shows clearly that the Messianic call was a revelation to Jesus, not a conclusion from a course of reasoning.

27. On the temptation see WendtTJ I. 101-105; WeissLX I. 337-354; EdersLJM I. 299-307; FairbairnSLX 80-98; BaldSJ 230-236; BeysLJ I. 231-237; KeimJN II. 317-329. All these see in temptation the necessary result of the Messianic call at the baptism.

28. The locality of the baptism of Jesus cannot be determined. Tradition has fixed on one of the fords of the Jordan near Jericho, see SmithHGHL 496, note 1. On the probable location of Bethany (Bethabarah) (Jn. i. 28) see discussion in AndLOL 146-151; EnBib 548; and especially Smith’s note as above.

29. On the anointing of Jesus with the Holy Spirit see WeissLX I. 323-336; BeysLJ I. 230f. For the influence of the Spirit in the later life of Jesus see Mk. i. 12; Mt. iv. 1; Lk. iv. 1; iv. 14, 18, 21; Mk. iii. 29, 30; Mt. xii. 28; Jn. iii. 34; compare Ac. i. 2; x. 38. Clearly these refer not to the ethical and religious indwelling of the Divine Spirit (comp. Rom. i. 4), but to the special equipment for official duty. This is the OT sense, see Ex. xxxi. 2-5; Jud. iii. 10; I. Sam. xi. 6; Isa. xi. 1f.; xlii. 1; lxi. 1; and consult Schultz, _Old Test. Theol._ II. 202f. Jesus seems to have needed a like divine equipment, notwithstanding his divine nature. See GilbertLJ 121f.

30. How this Messianic anointing is to be related to the doctrine of Jesus’ essential divine nature cannot be determined with certainty. It must not be forgotten, however, that it is a _datum_ for Christology, and that it cannot be explained away. It indicates one of the particulars in which Jesus was made like unto his brethren. What was involved when the Son of God “emptied himself and was made in the likeness of men” (Phil. ii. 7) we can only vaguely conceive. Two views of early heretical sects seem rightly to have been rejected. The Docetic view, held by some Gnostics of the 2d cent., dates the incarnation from the baptism, but distinguishes Christ from the human Jesus, who only served as a vehicle for the manifestation of the Son of God; the Christ descended on Jesus at the baptism, ascending again to heaven from the cross, compare Mt. iii. 16 and xxvii. 50 in the Greek; see Schaff _Hist. of Xn Church_^2, II. 455f. The recently discovered Gospel of Peter presents this view, Gosp. Pet. Â§ 5. The Nestorian view represents that the baptism was, in a sense, Jesus’ “birth from above” (Jn. iii. 3, 5); thus the incarnation was first complete at the baptism though the Logos had been associated with Jesus from the beginning. See Schaff, _Hist, of Xn Church_^2, III. 717 ff.; Conybeare, _History of Xmas_, Amer. Jour. Theol. 1899, 1-21.

31. The traditional locality of the temptation is a mountain near Jericho called _Quarantana_, see AndLOL 155; the tradition seems to date no further back than the crusades. It is, however, probable that the “wilderness” (Mt. iv. 1, Mk. i. 12, Lk. iv. 1) is the same wilderness mentioned in connection with John’s earlier life and work (Mt. iii. 1, Mk. i. 4), the region W and NW of the Dead Sea, see SmithHGHL 317. Others (Stanley, _Sinai and Palestine_, 308; EdersLJM I. 300, 339 notes) hold that the temptation took place in the desert regions SE of the sea of Galilee; this is possibly correct, though the record in the gospels suggests the wilderness of Judea. On the source of the temptation story see WeissLX I. 339 ff.; BeysLJ I. 234; Bacon, Bib. Wld. 1900, I. 18-25.

VIII

The First Disciples

32. SandayHastBD II. 612f.; GilbertLJ 144-157; WeissLX I. 355-387; AndLOL 155-165; EdersLJM I. 336-363; BeysLJ II. 129-148 (assigns here a considerable part of the synoptic account of work in Capernaum).

33. _The early confessions_. On the genuineness of the Baptist’s testimony to “the Lamb of God” see M. Dods in _Expos. Gk. Test_. I .695f.; Westcott, _Comm. on John_, 20; EdersLJM 1. 342 ff.; WeissLX 1. 362f. (thinks the evangelist added “who taketh away the sin of the world”); Holtzmann, _Hand-comm._ IV. 38f. holds that the evangelist has put in the mouth of the Baptist a conception which was first current after the death of Jesus. On the confessions of Nathanael and the others, see Jour. Bib. Lit. 1898, 21-30.

34. _Cana_ is probably the modern Khirbet Kana, eight miles N of Nazareth. A rival site is Kefr Kenna, three and one-half miles NE from Nazareth. See EnBib and HastBD, also AndLOL 162-164.

35. _The miracles of Jesus_ are challenged by modern thought. It is customary in reading other documents than the N.T. instantly to relegate the miraculous to the domain of legend. Miracles, however, are integral parts of the story of Jesus’ life, and those who attempt to write that life eliminating the supernatural are constrained to recognize that he had marvellous power as an exorcist and healer of some forms of nervous disease. So E. A. Abbott, _The Spirit on the Waters_, 169-201. Our knowledge of nature does not warrant a dogmatic definition of the limits of the possible; see James, _The Will to Believe_, vii.-xiii., 299-327. The question is confessedly one of adequate evidence. The evidence for the supreme miracle–the transcendent character of Jesus–is clear, see Part III. chap. iv.; and the miraculous element in the story of his life must be considered in view of this supreme miracle. In association with him his miracles gain in credibility. In estimating the evidence for them their dignity and worthiness is important. What the devout imagination would do in embellishing the story of Jesus is exhibited in the apocryphal gospels; the miracles of the canonical gospels are of an entirely different type, which commends them as authentic. By definition a miracle is an event not explicable in terms of ordinary human experience. It is therefore futile to attempt to picture the miracles of Jesus in their occurrence, for the imagination has no material except that furnished by ordinary experience. For our day the miracles are of importance chiefly for the exhibition they give of the character of Jesus; they can be studied with this in view without regard to the curious question how they happened. Read SandayHastBD II. 624-628; and see Fisher, _Grounds of Christian and Theistic Belief, _ chaps, iv.–vi., _Supernatural Origin of Christianity_^3, chap, xi.; Bruce, _Miraculous Element in the Gospels; Apologetics_, 409 ff.; Illingworth, _Divine Immanence_; Rainy, Orr, and Dods, _The Supernatural in Christianity_.

Part II.–The Ministry

General Survey

36. SandayHastBD II. 609f.; GilbertLJ 136-143; AndLOL 125-137; BeysLJ I. 256-295.

The Early Ministry in Judea

37. SandayHastBD II. 612^b-613^b; WeissLX II. 3-53; EdersLJM I. 364-429; BeysLJ II. 147-168; GilbertLJ 158-179.

38. On _the chronological significance of John iv_. 35 see AndLOL 183; WeissLX II. 40; Wieseler, _Synop_. 212 ff, who find indication that the journey was in December. EdersLJM I. 419f.; Turner in HastBD I. 408, find indication of early summer. Some treat iv. 35 as a proverb with no chronological significance; so Alford, _Comm. on John_.

39. Geographical notes. _Aenon_ near Salim has not been identified. Most favor a site in Samaria, seven miles from a place named Salim, which lay four miles E of Shechem, see Conder, _Tent Work in Palestine_, II. 57, 58; Stevens, Jour. Bib. Lit. 1883, 128-141. But can John have been baptizing in Samaria? WeissLX II. 28 says “it is perfectly impossible that he [John] can have taken up his station in Samaria.” Other suggestions are: some place in the Jordan valley (but then why remark on the abundance of water, Jn. iii. 23?); near Jerusalem; and in the south of Judea. See AndLOL 173-175. _Sychar_ is the modern ‘Askar, about a mile and three-quarters from Nablus (Shechem), and half a mile N of Jacob’s well. See SmithHGHL 367-375.

40. General questions. _Was the temple twice cleansed?_ (see sect. 116). Probably not. The two reports (Jn. ii. 13-22; Mk. xi. 15-18 Â¶s) are similar in respect of Jesus’ indignation, its cause, its expression, its result, and a consequent challenge of his authority. They differ in the time of the event (John assigns to first Passover, synoptics to the last) and in a possibly greater sternness in the synoptic account. These differences are no greater than appear in other records of identical events (compare Mt. viii. 5-13 with Lk. vii. 2-10), while the repetition of such an act would probably have been met by serious opposition. If the temple was cleansed but once, John indicates the true time. At the beginning of the ministry it was a demand that the people follow the new leader in the purification of God’s house and the establishment of a truer worship. At the end it could have had only a vindictive significance, since the people had already signified to the clear insight of Jesus that they would not accept his leadership. For two distinct cleansings see the discussion in AndLOL 169f., 437; EdersLJM I. 373; Plummer on Luke xix. 45f. For one cleansing at the end see KeimJN V. 113-131. For one cleansing at the beginning see WeissLX II. 6 ff.; BeysLJ II. 149 ff.; GilbertLJ 159 ff.

41. _The journey to Galilee_. Do John (iv. 1-4, 43-45) and Mark (i. 14 = Mt. iv. 12; Lk. iv. 14) report the same journey? Both are journeys from the south introducing work in Galilee; yet the reasons given for the journey are different (compare Jn. iv. 1-3 with Mk. i. 14). If the Pharisees had a hand in John’s “delivering up” (Mk. i. 14; comp. Jos. Ant. xviii. 5. 2), the same hostile movement may have impelled Jesus to leave Judea. He may not have heard of John’s imprisonment until after his departure, or some time before he opened his new ministry in Galilee. See GilbertLJ 173f. AndLOL 176-182 argues against the identification.

42. _The nobleman’s son_ (Jn. iv. 46-54). Is this a doublet of Mt. viii. 5-13; Lk. vii. 2-10? John differs from synoptics in the time, the place, the disease, the suppliant, his plea, and Jesus’ attitude. Matthew and Mark differ from each other concerning the bearers of the centurion’s messages to Jesus. John’s account is similar to synoptic superficially, but is probably not a doublet. Compare Syro-PhÅnician’s daughter (Mk. vii. 29f.). See GilbertLJ 202; Meyer on John iv. 51-54; Plummer on Luke vii. 10. WeissLX II. 45-51 identifies. Read SandayHastBD II. 613.

III and IV

The Ministry in Galilee

43. Read SandayHastBD II. 613-630; GilbertLJ 180-283. Consult WeissLX II. 44 to III. 153; EdersLJM I. 472 to II. 125; BeysLJ II. 140-147,168-294. See AndLOL 209-363 for discussion of details, and KeimJN III. 10 to IV. 346 for an illuminating, though not unprejudiced, topical treatment.

44. Geographical notes. _Capernaum_. The site is not clearly identified, two ruins on the NW of Sea of Galilee are rival claimants,–Tell Hum and Khan Minyeh. Tell Hum is advocated by Thomson, _Land and Book, Central Pal. and PhÅnicia_ (1882), 416-420; Khan Minyeh, by SmithHGHL 456, EnBib I. 696 ff. Latter is probably correct. See AndLOL 224-237.

_Bethsaida_. The full name is Bethsaida Julias, located at entrance of Jordan into the Sea of Galilee. SmithEnBib I. 565f., SmithHGHL 457f., shows that there is no need of the hypothesis of a second Bethsaida to meet the statement in Mk. vi. 45, or that in Jn. i. 44. See also AndLOL 230-236. Ewing HastBD I. 282f. renews the argument for two Bethsaidas.

_Chorazin_ was probably the modern Kerazeh, about one mile N of Tell Hum, and back from the lake. See SmithEnBib I. 751; SmithHGHL 456; AndLOL 237f.

45. _The mountain of the sermon on the mount_ (Mt. v. 1; Lk. vi. 12) probably refers to the Galilean highlands as distinct from the shore of the lake. More definite location is not possible. See AndLOL 268f.; EdersLJM I. 524. The traditional site, the Horns of Hattin, is a hill lying about seven miles SW from Khan Minyeh, which has near the top a level place (Lk. vi. 17) flanked by two low peaks or “horns.”

46. _The country of the Gerasenes, Gadarenes, or Gergesenes_. Gadarenes is the best attested reading in Mt. viii. 28, Gerasenes in Mk. v. 1 and Lk. viii. 26; Gergesenes has only secondary attestation. Gadara is identified with Um Keis on the Yarmuk, some six miles SE of the Sea of Galilee. This cannot have been the site of the miracle, though it is possible that Gadara may have controlled the country round about, including the shores of the sea. Gerasa is the name of a city in the highlands of Gilead, twenty miles E of Jordan, and thirty-five SE of the Sea of Galilee, and it clearly cannot have been the scene of the miracle. Near the E shore of the sea Thomson discovered the ruins of a village which now bears the name Khersa. The formation of the land in the neighborhood closely suits the narrative of the gospels. This is now accepted as the true identification. See Thomson _Land and Book, Central Palestine_, 353-355; SBD^2 1097-1100; HastBD II. 159f.; AndLOL 296-300. The name “Gadarenes” may indicate that Gadara had jurisdiction over the region of Khersa; the names “Gerasenes” and “Gergesenes” may be derived directly and independently from Khersa, or may be corruptions due to the obscurity of Khersa.

47. _The feeding of the five thousand_ took place on the E of the sea, in a desert region, abundant in grass, and mountainous, and located in the neighborhood of a place named Bethsaida. Near the ruins of Bethsaida Julias is a plain called now Butaiha, “a smooth, grassy place near the sea and the mountains,” which meets the requirements of the narrative. See AndLOL 322f.

48. _The return of Jesus from the regions of Tyre “through Sidon”_ (Mk. vii. 31) avoided Galilee, crossing N of Galilee to the territory of Philip and “_the Decapolis_.” This latter name applies to a group of free Greek cities, situated for the most part E of the Jordan. Most of the cities of the group were farther S than the Sea of Galilee; some, however, were E and NE of that sea, hence Jesus’ approach from CÃ¦sarea Philippi or Damascus could be described as “through Decapolis.” See SmithHGHL 593-608; En Bib I. 1051 ff.; SchÃ¼rerJPTX II. i. 94-121.

49. Of _Magadan_ (Mt. xv. 39) or _Dalmanutha_ (Mk. viii. 10) all that is known is that they must have been on the W coast of the Sea of Galilee. They have never been identified, though there are many conjectures. See SBD^2, HastBD, and En Bib.

50. _CÃ¦sarea Philippi_ was situated at the easternmost and most important of the sources of the Jordan, it is called Panias by Jos. Ant. xv. 10.3, now Banias. Probably a sanctuary of the god Pan. Here Herod the Great built a temple which he dedicated to CÃ¦sar; Philip the Tetrarch enlarged the town and called it CÃ¦sarea Philippi. See SBD^2; HastBD; EnBib.

51. _The mountain of the transfiguration_. The traditional site, since the fourth century, is Tabor in Galilee. Most recent opinion has favored one of the shoulders of Hermon, owing to the supposed connection of the event with the sojourn near CÃ¦sarea Philippi. WeissLX III. 98 points out that there is no evidence that Jesus lingered for “six days” (Mk. ix. 2) near that town, and that therefore the effort to locate the transfiguration is futile. GilbertLJ 274 thinks that Mk. ix. 30 is decisive in favor of a place outside Galilee; he therefore holds to the common view that Hermon is the true locality. See AndLOL 357f.

52. General questions. _Was Jesus twice rejected at Nazareth?_ (comp. Lk. iv. 16-30 with Mk. vi. 1-6^a; Mt. xiii. 54-58). Here are two accounts that read like independent traditions of the same event; they agree concerning the place, the teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, the astonishment of the Nazarenes, their scornful question, and Jesus’ rejoinder. Luke makes no reference to the disciples (Mk. vi. 1) nor to the working of miracles (Mk. vi. 5); Matthew and Mark, on the other hand, say nothing of an attempt at violence. These differences are no more serious, however, than appear in the two accounts of the appeal of the centurion to Jesus (Mt. viii. 5-8; Lk. vii. 3-7). Moreover, Lk. iv. 23 indicates a time after the ministry in Capernaum had won renown, which agrees with the place given the rejection in Mark. The general statement (Lk. iv. 14f.) suggests that the visit to Nazareth is given at the beginning as an instance of “preaching in their synagogues.” The three accounts probably refer to one event reported independently. For identification see WeissLX III. 34; Plummer on Luke iv. 30; GilbertLJ 254f. For two rejections see Godet’s supplementary note on Lk. iv. 16-30; Meyer on Mt. xiii. 53-58; EdersLJM I. 457, note 1; Wieseler, _Synopsis_, 278. BeysLJ I. 270 identifies but prefers Luke’s date.

53. _Were there two miraculous draughts of fish?_ Lk. v. 1-11 is sometimes identified with Jn. xxi. 3-13. So WendtLJ I. 211f., WeissLX II. 57f., and Meyer on Luke v. 1-11. Against the identification see Alford, Godet, and Plummer on the passage in Luke. The two are alike in scene, the night of bootless toil, the great catch at Jesus’ word. They differ in personnel, antecedent relations of the fishermen with Jesus, the effect of the miracle on Peter, and the subsequent teaching of Jesus, as well as in time. These differences make identification difficult.

54. _Where in the synoptic story should the journey to the feast in Jerusalem_ (Jn. v.) _be placed?_ There is nothing in John’s narrative to identify the feast, although it is his custom to name the festivals to which he refers (Passover, ii. 13, 23; vi. 4; xi. 55; xii. 1; Tabernacles, vii. 2; Dedication, x. 22). Even if John wrote “the feast,” rather than “a feast” (the MSS. vary, A B D and seven other uncials omit the article), it would be impossible to decide between Passover and Tabernacles. The omission of the article suggests either that the feast was of minor importance, or that its identification was of no significance for the understanding of the following discourse. Since a year and four months probably elapsed between the journey into Galilee (Jn. iv. 35) and the next Passover mentioned in John (vi. 4), v. 1 may refer to any one of the feasts of the Jewish year. The commonest interpretation prefers Purim, a festival of a secular and somewhat hilarious type, which occurred on the 14th and 15th of Adar, a month before the Passover. It is difficult to believe that this feast would have called Jesus to Jerusalem. See WeissLX II. 391; GilbertLJ 137-139, 142, 234-235. Against this interpretation see EdersLJM II. 765. Edersheim advocates the feast of Wood Gathering on the 15th of Ab–about our August. On this day all the people were permitted to offer wood for the use of the altar in the temple, while during the rest of the year the privilege was reserved for special families. See LJM II 765f.; Westcott, _Comm. on John_, add. note on v. 1, argues for the feast of Trumpets, or the new moon of the month Tisri,–about our September,–which was celebrated as the beginning of the civil year. Others have suggested Pentecost, fifty days after the Passover; the day of Atonement–but this was a fast, not a feast; and Tabernacles. The majority of those who do not favor Purim prefer the Passover, notwithstanding the difficulty of thinking that John would refer to this feast simply as “a feast of the Jews.” Read AndLOL 193-198, remembering that the question must be considered independently of the question of the length of Jesus’ ministry. The impossibility of determining the feast renders the adjustment of this visit to the synoptic story very uncertain. It may be that there was some connection between the Sabbath controversy in Galilee (Mk. ii. 23-28) and the criticism Jesus aroused in Jerusalem (Jn. v.). If so, one of the spring feasts, Passover or Pentecost, would best suit the circumstances; but this arrangement is quite uncertain.

55. _Do the five conflicts of Mk. ii. 1 to iii. 6 belong at the early place in the ministry of Jesus to which that gospel assigns them_? It is commonly held that they do not, and the argument for a two-year ministry rests on this assumption (see SandayHastBD II. 613). Holtzmann, _Hand-commentar_ I. 9f., remarks that at least for the cure of the paralytic and for the call and feast of Levi (Mk. ii. 1, 13, 15) the evangelist was confident that he was following the actual order of events; note the call of the fifth disciple, Mk. ii. 13, between the call of the four, Mk. i. 16-20, and that of the twelve, iii. 16-19. The question about fasting may owe its place (Mk. ii. 18-22) to association with the criticism of Jesus for eating with publicans (Mk. ii. 16). In like manner the second Sabbath conflict (Mk. iii. 1-6) may be attached to the first (ii. 23-28) as a result of the identity of subject, for it is noteworthy that Mark records only these two Sabbath conflicts; moreover, the plot of Herodians and Pharisees to kill Jesus strongly suggests a later time for the actual occurrence of this criticism. The first Sabbath question, however, may belong early, as Mark has placed it. Weiss, Markusevangelium, 76, LX II. 232 ff., places these conflicts late. Edersheim, LJM II. 51 ff., discusses the Sabbath controversies after the feeding of the multitudes. RÃ©villeJN II. 229 places the first of them early.

56. _The sermon on the mount._ Luke (vi. 12-19 = Mk. iii. 13-19^a indicates the place in the Galilean ministry; Matthew has therefore anticipated in assigning it to the beginning. The identity of the two sermons (Mt. v. 1 to vii. 27; Lk. vi. 20-49) is shown by the fact that each begins with beatitudes, each closes with the parables of the wise and foolish builders, each is followed by the cure of a centurian’s servant in Capernaum (Mt. viii. 5-13; Lk. vii. 1-10), and the teachings which are found in each account are given in the same order. Matthew is much fuller than Luke, many teachings given in the sermon in Matthew being found in later contexts in Luke. Much of the sermon in Matthew, however, evidently belonged to the original discourse, and was omitted by Luke, perhaps because of less interest to Gentile than to Jewish Christians. The following sections are found elsewhere in Luke, and were probably associated with the sermon by the first evangelist: Mt. v. 25, 26; Lk. xii. 58, 59; Mt. vi. 9-13; Lk. xi. 2-4; Mt. vi. 19-34; Lk. xii. 21-34; xi. 34-36; xvi. 13; Mt. vii. 7-11; Lk. xi. 9-13; Mt. vii. 13, 14; Lk. xiii. 24. The first evangelist’s habit of grouping may explain also the presence in his sermon of teachings which he himself has duplicated later, thus: Mt. v. 29, 30 = xviii. 8,9; v. 32 = xix. 9, comp. Mk. x. 11, ix. 43-47, Lk. xvi. 18; Mt. vi. 14, 15 = Mk. xi. 25. Matthew vii. 22, 23 has the character of the teachings which follow the confession at CÃ¦sarea Phillipi, and is quite unlike the other early teachings. It may belong to the later time, for it was natural for the early Christians to associate together teachings which the Lord uttered on widely separated occasions. The sermon as originally given may be analyzed as follows: The privileges of the heirs of the kingdom of God, Mt. v. 3-13; Lk. vi. 20-26; their responsibilities, Mt. v. 13-16; the relation of the new to the old, Mt. v. 17-19; the text of the discourse, Mt. v. 20; the new conception of morality, Mt. v. 21-48; Lk. vi. 27-36; the new practice of religion, Mt. vi. 1-8, 16-18; warning against a censorious spirit, Mt. vii. 16-20; Lk. vi. 43-46; the wise and foolish builders, Mt. vii. 24-27; Lk. vi. 47-49.

57. _The discourse in parables._ Matthew gives seven parables at this point (xiii.), Mark (iv. 1-34) has three, one of them is not given in Matthew, Luke (viii. 4-18) gives in this connection but one,–the Sower. Many think that the Tares of Matthew (xiii. 24-30, 36-43) is a doublet of Mark’s Seed growing secretly (iv. 26-29); so Weiss LX II. 209 note, against which view see WendtLJ I. 178 f., and Bruce, _Parabolic Teaching of Xt_, 119. Matthew has probably made here a group of parables, as in chapters v. to vii. he has made a group of other teachings. The interpretation of the Tares, and of the Draw-net (xiii. 40-43, 49, 50), may indicate that these parables were spoken after Jesus began to teach plainly concerning the end of the world (Mk. viii. 31 to ix. 1), Luke gives the Mustard Seed and Leaven in another connection (xiii. 18-21), and it may be that Matthew has taken them out of their true context to associate them with the other parables of his group; yet in popular teaching it must be recognized that illustrations are most likely to be repeated in different situations. On the parables see Goebel, _The Parables of Jesus_ (1890), Bruce, _The Parabolic Teaching of Christ_, 3d ed. (1886), JÃ¼licher, _Die Gleichnissreden Jesu_ (2 vols. 1899), and the commentaries on the gospels.

58. _The instructions to the twelve_. Mt. ix. 36 to xi. 1. x. 1, 5-14 corresponds in general with Mk. vi. 7-11; Lk. ix. 1-5. The similarity is closer, however, between x. 7-15 and Lk. x. 3-12–the instructions to the seventy (see sect. A 68). The rest of Mt. x. (16-42) is paralleled by teachings found in the closing discourses in the synoptic gospels, and in teachings preserved in the section peculiar to Luke (ix. 51 to xviii. 14. See SB sects. 88-92, footnotes). It is probable that here the first evangelist has made a group of instructions to disciples gathered from all parts of the Lord’s teachings; such a collection was of great practical value in the early time of persecution.

59. _Did Jesus twice feed the multitudes_? All the gospels record the feeding of the five thousand (Mt. xiv. 13-23; Mk. vi. 30-46; Lk. ix. 10-17; Jn. vi. 1-15), Matthew (xv. 32-38) and Mark (viii. 1-9) give also the feeding of the four thousand. The similarities are so great that the two accounts would be regarded as doublets if they occurred in different gospels. The difficulty with such an identification is chiefly the reference which in both Matthew (xvi. 9, 10) and Mark (viii. 19, 20) Jesus is said to have made to the two feedings. The evangelists clearly distinguished the two. In view of this fact the differences between the accounts become important. These concern the occasion of the two miracles, the number fed, the nationality of the multitudes (compare Jn. vi. 31 and Mk. vii. 31), the number of loaves and of baskets of broken pieces (the name for basket is different in the two cases, and is preserved consistently in Mk. viii. 19, 20; Mt. xvi. 9, 10). See GilbertLJ 259-262, Gould, and Swete, on Mk. viii. 1-9; Meyer, Alford, on Mt. xv. 32-38. WeissLX II. 376f., BeysLJ I. 279f., WendtLJ I. 42, Holtzmann _Hand-comm._ I. 186 ff., identify the accounts. See also SandayHastBD II. 629.

60. _Did Peter twice confess faith in Jesus as Messiah_? Synoptics give his confession at CÃ¦esarea Philippi (Mk. viii. 27-30; Mt. xvi. 13-20; Lk. ix. 18-21). John, however, gives a confession earlier at Capernaum (vi. 66-71). WeissLX III. 53 identifies the two, placing that in John at CÃ¦sarea Philippi, since there is no evidence that all of the long discourse of Jn. vi. was spoken in Capernaum the day after the feeding of the five thousand. This may be correct, yet the marked recognition which Jesus gave to the confession at CÃ¦sarea Philippi does not demand that he first at that time received a confession of his disciples’ faith. The confession in Jn. vi. 68, 69 declared that the twelve were not shaken in their faith by the recent defection of many disciples. At CÃ¦sarea Philippi the confession was made after the revulsion of popular feeling had been made fully evident, and after the twelve had had time for reaction of enthusiasm consequent upon the growing coldness of the multitudes and active opposition of the leaders. The confession of CÃ¦sarea Philippi holds its unique significance, whether or not Jn. vi. 68 is identified with it.

61. _The journey to Tabernacles_ (Jn. vii.). Where in the synoptic story should it be placed? Lk. ix. 51 ff. records the final departure from Galilee. The journey of Jn. vii. is the last journey from Galilee given in John. Yet the two are very different. In John, Jesus went in haste, unpremeditatedly, in secret, and unaccompanied, and confronted the people with himself unexpectedly during the feast. In Luke (Mk. x. 1 and Mt. xix. 1 are so general that they give no aid) he advanced deliberately, with careful plans, announcing his coming in advance, accompanied by many disciples, with whom he went from place to place, arriving in Jerusalem long after he had set out. The two journeys cannot be identified. John seems to keep Jesus in the south after the Tabernacles, but his account does not forbid a return to Galilee between Tabernacles and Dedication (x. 22). After the hurried visit to Tabernacles, Jesus probably went back to Galilee, and gathered his disciples again for the final journey towards his cross–for the visit to Jerusalem had given fresh evidence of the kind of treatment he must expect in the capital (Jn. vii. 32, 45-52; viii. 59). See AndLOL 369-379. Andrews suggests that the feast occurred before the withdrawal to CÃ¦sarea Philippi (376); this is possible, but it seems more natural to place it during the sojourn in Capernaum after the return from the north (Mk. ix. 33-50). See SB, sects. 82-85.

62. On the phenomena and interpretation of _Demoniac Possession_ see J. L. Nevius, _Demon Possession and allied Themes_; Conybeare, Jew. Quar. Rev. VIII. (1896) 576-608, IX. (1896-7) 59-114, 444-470, 581-603; J. Weiss in _ReÃ¤lencyklopÃ¤die_,^3 Hauck-Herzog, IV. 408-419; Binet, _Alterations of Personality_, 325-356; James, _Psychology, _ I. 373-400; and the articles on DEMONS in EnBib and HastBD.

The Journey through Perea to Jerusalem

63. Read SandayHastBD II. 630-632; see GilbertLJ 298-310: WeissLX III. 157-223; KeimJN V, 1-64; BeysLJ I. 287-294. II. 333-419; AndLOL 365-420; EdersLJM II. 126-360.

64. This journey began sometime between Tabernacles and Dedication (October and December) of the last year of Jesus’ life, and continued until the arrival in Bethany six days before the last Passover.

65. Geographical notes. _Perea_–a part of the domain of Antipas–was the Jewish territory E of the Jordan. Its northern limit seems to have been marked by Pella (Jos. Wars, iii 3. 3) or Gadara (Wars, iv. 7. 3), and its E boundary was marked by Philadelphia (Ant. xx. 1. 1); it extended S to the domain of Aretas, king of Arabia. The population was mixed, though predominatingly Jewish. Cities of the Decapolis, however, lay within the limits of Perea, and introduced Greek life and ideas to the people. On the highlands back from the Jordan it was a fertile and well populated land. See SmithHGHL 539f.; SchÃ¼rerJPTX II. i. 2-4.

66. On _Bethany and Jericho_ see BDs and, for the latter, SmithHGHL 266 ff.

67. _Ephraim_, (John xi. 54) is generally identified with the Ephron of II. Chron. xiii. 19 (Jos. Wars, iv. 9. 9). Robinson located it at et Taiyibeh, 4 m. NE of Bethel, and 14 from Jerusalem. See HastBD l. 728; SBD^2 975.

68. General questions. _The mission of the seventy_. Luke records two missions, that of the twelve (ix. 1-6), and that of the seventy (x. 1-24). Many regard these as doublets, similar to the two feedings in Mark. So WeissLX II. 307 ff., BeysLJ I. 275, WendtLJ I. 84f. In favor of this conclusion emphasis is given to the fact that in Jewish thought seventy symbolized the nations of the world as twelve symbolized Israel. It is suggested that in his search for full records Luke came upon an account of the mission of disciples which had already been modified in the interests of Gentile Christianity, and failing to recognize its identity with the account of the mission furnished by Mark, he added it in his peculiar section. The similarity of the instructions given follows from the nature of the case. A second sending out of disciples is suitable in view of the entrance into a region hitherto unvisited. As Dr. Sanday has remarked, the sayings connected by Luke with this mission bear witness to the authenticity of the account. There is therefore no need to identify the two missions. See particularly SandayHastBD II. 614, also GilbertLJ 226-230, Plummer’s _Comm. on Luke_, 269 ff. Luke probably gives the correct place for the thanksgiving, self-declaration, and invitation of Jesus, in which the synoptists approach most nearly to the thought of John (Lk. x. 21, 22; Mt. xi. 25-30). The return of the seventy (Lk. x. 17-20) followed the woes addressed to the unbelieving cities (Lk. x. 13-16; Mt. xi. 20-24).

69. _The destination of the seventy_. It is customary to think of them as sent to the various cities of Perea (see AndLOL 381-383). Were it not for the words “whither he himself was about to come” (Lk. x. I), it would be natural to conclude that they were sent E to Gerasa and Philadelphia, and S to the regions of the Dead Sea. If John’s account is accepted, Jesus spent not a little time of the interval between his departure from Galilee and his final arrival in Bethany in and near Jerusalem. It may be that after the withdrawal from the Dedication he went far into the Perean districts. But John x. 40 is against it. The question must be left unanswered. The messengers may have visited places in all parts of Palestine.

The Controversies of the Last Week

70. See GilbertLJ 311-335; WeissLX III. 224-270; AndLOL 421-450; KeimJN V. 65-275; BeysLJ II. 422-434; EdersLJM II. 363-478; SandayHastBD II 632f.

71. _The supper at Bethany_. John is definite, “six days before the passover” (xii. I). Synoptists place it after the day of controversy, on

The Life of Jesus of Nazareth by Rush Rhees (page 4)