xxvi. 52), but on the legions of angels, which his heavenly Father

could send him (Matt. xxvi. 53). Wherever he speaks of coming in his messianic glory, he depicts himself surrounded by angels and heavenly powers (Matt. xvi. 27, xxiv. 30 f., xxv. 31; John i. 52); before the majesty of the Son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven, all nations are to bow without the coercion of the sword, and at the sound of the angel’s trumpet, are to present themselves, with the awakened dead, before the judgment-seat of the Messiah and his twelve apostles. All this Jesus would not bring to pass of his own will, but he waited for a signal from his heavenly Father, who alone knew the appropriate time for this catastrophe (Mark xiii. 32), and he apparently was not disconcerted when his end approached without his having received the expected intimation. They who shrink from this view, merely because they conceive that it makes Jesus an enthusiast, [793] will do well to reflect how closely such hopes corresponded with the long cherished messianic idea of the Jews, [794] and how easily, in that day of supernaturalism, and in a nation segregated by the peculiarities of its faith, an idea, in itself extravagant, if only it were consistent, and had, in some of its aspects, truth and dignity, might allure even a reasonable man beneath its influence.

With respect to that which awaits the righteous after judgment,—everlasting life in the kingdom of the Father,—it is true that Jesus, in accordance with Jewish notions, [795] compares it to a feast (Matt. viii. 11, xxii. 2 ff.), at which he hopes himself to taste the fruit of the vine (Matt. xxvi. 29), and to celebrate the Passover (Luke xxii. 16); but his declaration that in the αἰὼν μέλλων the organic relation between the sexes will cease, and men will be like the angels (ἰσάγγελοι, Luke xx. 35 ff.), seems more or less to reduce the above discourses to a merely symbolical significance.

Thus we conclude that the messianic hope of Jesus was not political, nor even merely earthly, for he referred its fulfilment to supernatural means, and to a supermundane theatre (the regenerated earth): as little was it a purely spiritual hope, in the modern sense of the term, for it included important and unprecedented changes in the external condition of things: but it was the national, theocratic hope, spiritualized and ennobled by his own peculiar moral and religious views.

§ 67.

THE RELATION OF JESUS TO THE MOSAIC LAW.

The Mosaic institutions were actually extinguished in the church of which Jesus was the founder; hence it is natural to suppose that their abolition formed a part of his design:—a reach of vision, beyond the horizon of the ceremonial worship of his age and country, of which apologists have been ever anxious to prove that he was possessed. [796] Neither are there wanting speeches and actions of Jesus which seem to favour their effort. Whenever he details the conditions of participation in the kingdom of heaven, as in the Sermon on the Mount, he insists, not on the observance of the Mosaic ritual, but on the spirit of religion and morality; he attaches no value to fasting, praying, and almsgiving, unless accompanied by a corresponding bent of mind (Matt. vi. 1–18); the two main elements of the Mosaic worship, sacrifice and the keeping of sabbaths and feasts, he not only nowhere enjoins, but puts a marked slight on the former, by commending the scribe who declared that the love of God and one’s neighbour was more than whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as one not far from the kingdom of God (Mark xii. 23 f.), [797] and he ran counter in action as well as in speech to the customary mode of celebrating the Sabbath (Matt. xii. 1–13; Mark ii. 23–28, iii. 1–5; Luke vi. 1–10, xiii. 10 ff., xiv. 1 ff.; John v. 5 ff., vii. 22, ix. 1 ff.), of which in his character of Son of Man he claimed to be Lord. The Jews, too, appear to have expected a revision of the Mosaic law by their Messiah. [798] A somewhat analogous sense is couched in the declarations attributed by the fourth Evangelist to Jesus (ii. 19); Matthew (xxvi. 61) and Mark (xiv. 58) represent him as being accused by false witnesses of saying, I am able to destroy (John, destroy) the temple of God (Mark, that is made with hands), and to build it in three days (Mark, I will build another made without hands). The author of the Acts has something similar as an article of accusation against Stephen, but instead of the latter half of the sentence it is thus added, and (he, i.e. Jesus) shall change the customs which Moses delivered us; and perhaps this may be regarded as an authentic comment on the less explicit text. In general it may be said that to one who, like Jesus, is so far alive to the absolute value of the internal compared with the external, of the bent of the entire disposition compared with isolated acts, that he pronounces the love of God and our neighbour to be the essence of the law (Matt. xxii. 36 ff.),—to him it cannot be a secret, that all precepts of the law which do not bear on these two points are unessential. But the argument apparently most decisive of a design on the part of Jesus to abolish the Mosaic worship, is furnished by his prediction that the temple, the centre of Jewish worship (Matt. xxiv. 2 parall.), would be destroyed, and that the adoration of God would be freed from local fetters, and become purely spiritual (John iv. 21 ff.).

The above, however, presents only one aspect of the position assumed by Jesus towards the Mosaic law; there are also data for the belief that he did not meditate the overthrow of the ancient constitution of his country. This side of the question has been, at a former period, and from easily-conceived reasons, the one which the enemies of Christianity in its ecclesiastical form, have chosen to exhibit; [799] but it is only in recent times that, the theological horizon being extended, the unprejudiced expositors of the church [800] have acknowledged its existence. In the first place, during his life Jesus remains faithful to the paternal law; he attends the synagogue on the sabbath, journeys to Jerusalem at the time of the feast, and eats of the paschal lamb with his disciples. It is true that he heals on the sabbath, allows his disciples to pluck ears of corn (Matt. xii. 1 ff.), and requires no fasting or washing before meat in his society (Matt. iv. 14, xv. 2). But the Mosaic law concerning the sabbath simply prescribed cessation from common labour, ‏מְלָאכָה‎ (Exod. xx. 8 ff., xxxi. 12 ff., Deut. v. 12 ff.), including ploughing, reaping (Exod. xxxiv. 21), gathering of sticks (Num. xv. 32 ff.), and similar work, and it was only the spirit of petty observance, the growth of a later age, that made it an offence to perform cures, or pluck a few ears of corn. [801] The washing of hands before eating was but a rabbinical custom; [802] in the law one general yearly fast was alone prescribed (Lev. xvi. 29 ff., xxiii. 27 ff.) and no private fasting required; hence Jesus cannot be convicted of infringing the precepts of Moses. [803] In that very Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus exalts spiritual religion so far above all ritual, he clearly presupposes the continuation of sacrifices (Matt. v. 23 f.), and declares that he is not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil (Matt. v. 17). Even if πληρῶσαι, in all probability, refers chiefly to the accomplishment of the Old Testament prophecies, οὐκ ἦλθον καταλῦσαι must at the same time be understood of the conservation of the Mosaic law, since in the context, perpetuity is promised to its smallest letter, and he who represents its lightest precept as not obligatory, is threatened with the lowest rank in the kingdom of heaven. [804] In accordance with this, the apostles adhered strictly to the Mosaic law, even after the feast of Pentecost; they went at the hour of prayer into the temple (Acts iii. 1), clung to the synagogues and to the Mosaic injunctions respecting food (x. 14), and were unable to appeal to any express declaration of Jesus as a sanction for the procedure of Barnabas and Paul, when the judaizing party complained of their baptizing Gentiles without laying on them the burthen of the Mosaic law.

This apparent contradiction in the conduct and language of Jesus has been apologetically explained by the supposition, that not only the personal obedience of Jesus to the law, but also his declarations in its favour, were a necessary concession to the views of his cotemporaries, who would at once have withdrawn their confidence from him, had he announced himself as the destroyer of their holy and venerated law. [805] We allow that the obedience of Jesus to the law in his own person, might be explained in the same way as that of Paul, which, on his own showing, was a measure of mere expediency (1 Cor. ix. 20, comp. Acts xvi. 3). But the strong declarations of Jesus concerning the perpetuity of the law, and the guilt of him who dares to violate its lightest precept, cannot possibly be derived from the principle of concession; for to pronounce that indispensable, which one secretly holds superfluous, and which one even seeks to bring gradually into disuse, would, leaving honesty out of the question, be in the last degree injudicious.

Hence others have made a distinction between the moral and the ritual law, and referred the declaration of Jesus that he wished not to abrogate the law, to the former alone, which he extricated from a web of trivial ceremonies, and embodied in his own example. [806] But such a distinction is not found in those striking passages from the Sermon on the Mount; rather in the νόμος and προφῆται, the law and the prophets, we have the most comprehensive designation of the whole religious constitution of the Old Testament, [807] and under the most trivial commandment, and the smallest letter of the law, alike pronounced imperishable, we cannot well understand anything else than the ceremonial precepts. [808]

A happier distinction is that between really Mosaic institutes, and their traditional amplifications. [809] It is certain that the sabbath cures of Jesus, his neglect of the pedantic ablutions before eating, and the like, ran counter, not to Moses, but to later rabbinical requirements, and several discourses of Jesus turn upon this distinction. Matt. xv. 3 ff., Jesus places the commandment of God in opposition to the tradition of the elders, and Matt. xxiii. 23, he declares that where they are compatible, the former may be observed without rejecting the latter, in which case he admonishes the people to do all that the scribes and Pharisees enjoin; where, on the contrary, either the one or the other only can be respected, he decides that it is better to transgress the tradition of the elders, than the commandment of God as given by Moses (Matt. xv. 3 ff.). He describes the mass of traditional precepts, as a burthen grievous to be borne, which he would remove from the oppressed people, substituting his own light burthen and easy yoke; whence it may be seen, that with all his forbearance towards existing institutions, so far as they were not positively pernicious, it was his intention that all these commandments of men, as plants which his heavenly Father had not planted, should be rooted up (xv. 9, 13). The majority of the Pharisaical precepts referred to externals, and had the effect of burying the noble morality of the Mosaic law under a heap of ceremonial observances; a gift to the temple sufficed to absolve the giver from his filial duties (xv. 5), and the payment of tithe of anise and cummin superseded justice, mercy, and faith (xxiii. 23). Hence this distinction is in some degree identical with the former, since in the rabbinical institutes it was their merely ceremonial tendency that Jesus censured, while, in the Mosaic law, it was the kernel of religion and morality that he chiefly valued. It must only not be contended that he regarded the Mosaic law as permanent solely in its spiritual part, for the passages quoted, especially from the Sermon on the Mount, clearly show that he did not contemplate the abolition of the merely ritual precepts.

Jesus, supposing that he had discerned morality and the spiritual worship of God to be the sole essentials in religion, must have rejected all which, being merely ritual and formal, had usurped the importance of a religious obligation, and under this description must fall a large proportion of the Mosaic precepts; but it is well known how slowly such consequences are deduced, when they come into collision with usages consecrated by antiquity. Even Samuel, apparently, was aware that obedience is better than sacrifice (1 Sam. xv. 22), and Asaph, that an offering of thanksgiving is more acceptable to God than one of slain animals (Ps. 1.); yet how long after were sacrifices retained together with true obedience, or in its stead! Jesus was more thoroughly penetrated with this conviction than those ancients; with him, the true commandments of God in the Mosaic law were simply, Honour thy father and thy mother, Thou shalt not kill, etc., and above all, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself. But his deep-rooted respect for the sacred book of the law, caused him, for the sake of these essential contents, to honour the unessential; which was the more natural, as in comparison with the absurdly exaggerated pedantry of the traditional observances, the ritual of the Pentateuch must have appeared highly simple. To honour this latter part of the law as of Divine origin, but to declare it abrogated on the principle, that in the education of the human race, God finds necessary for an earlier period an arrangement which is superfluous for a later one, implies that idea of the law as a schoolmaster, νόμος παιδαγωγὸς (Gal. iii. 24), which seems first to have been developed by the Apostle Paul; nevertheless, its germ lies in the declaration of Jesus, that God had permitted to the early Hebrews, on account of the hardness of their hearts (Matt. xix. 8 f.), many things which, in a more advanced state of culture, were inadmissible.

A similar limitation of the duration of the law is involved in the predictions of Jesus (if indeed they were uttered by Jesus, a point which we have to discuss), that the temple would be destroyed at his approaching advent (Matt. xxiv. parall.), and that devotion would be freed from all local restrictions (John iv.); for with these must fall the entire Mosaic system of external worship. This is not contradicted by the declaration that the law would endure until heaven and earth should pass away (Matt. v. 18), for the Hebrew associated the fall of his state and sanctuary with the end of the old world or dispensation, so that the expressions, so long as the temple stands, and so long as the world stands, were equivalent. [810] It is true that the words of Jesus, Luke xvi. 16, ὁ νόμος καὶ οἱ προφῆται ἕως Ἰωάννου, seem to imply, that the appearance of the Baptist put an end to the validity of the law; but this passage loses its depreciatory sense when compared with its parallel, Matt xi. 13. On the other hand, Luke xvi. 17 controls Matt. v. 18, and reduces it to a mere comparison between the stability of the law, and that of heaven and earth. The only question then is, in which of the gospels are the two passages more correctly stated? As given in the first, they intimate that the law would retain its supremacy until, and not after, the close of the old dispensation. With this agrees the prediction, that the temple would be destroyed; for the spiritualization of religion, and, according to Stephen’s interpretation, the abolition of the Mosaic law, which were to be the results of that event, were undoubtedly identified by Jesus with the commencement of the αἰὼν μέλλων of the Messiah. Hence it appears, that the only difference between the view of Paul and that of Jesus is this: that the latter anticipated the extinction of the Mosaic system as a concomitant of his glorious advent or return to the regenerated earth, while the former believed its abolition permissible on the old, unregenerated earth, in virtue of the Messiah’s first advent. [811]

§ 68.

SCOPE OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS. RELATION TO THE GENTILES.

Although the church founded by Jesus did, in fact, early extend itself beyond the limits of the Jewish people, there are yet indications which might induce a belief that he did not contemplate such an extension. [812] When he sends the twelve on their first mission, his command is, Go not into the way of the Gentiles—Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. x. 5 f.). That Matthew alone has this injunction, and not the two other synoptists, is less probably explained by the supposition that the Hebrew author of the first gospel interpolated it, than by the opposite one, namely, that it was wilfully omitted by the Hellenistic authors of the second and third gospels. For, as the judaizing tendency of Matthew is not so marked that he assigns to Jesus the intention of limiting the messianic kingdom to the Jews; as, on the contrary, he makes Jesus unequivocally foretell the calling of the Gentiles (viii. 11 f., xxi. 33 ff., xxii. 1 ff., xxviii. 19 f.): he had no motive for fabricating this particularizing addition; but the two other Evangelists had a strong one for its omission, in the offence which it would cause to the Gentiles already within the fold. Its presence in Matthew, however, demands an explanation, and expositors have thought to furnish one by supposing the injunction of Jesus to be a measure of prudence. [813] It is unquestionable that, even if the plan of Jesus comprehended the Gentiles as well as the Jews, he must at first, if he would not for ever ruin his cause with his fellow-countrymen, adopt, and prescribe to the disciples, a rule of national exclusiveness. This necessity on his part might account for his answer to the Canaanitish woman, whose daughter he refuses to heal, because he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. xv. 24), were it not that the boon which he here denies is not a reception into the messianic kingdom, but a temporal benefit, such as even Elijah and Elisha had conferred on those who were not Israelites (1 Kings xvii. 9 ff.; 2 Kings v. 1 ff.)—examples to which Jesus elsewhere appeals (Luke iv. 25 ff.). Hence the disciples thought it natural and unobjectionable to grant the woman’s petition, and it could not be prudential considerations that withheld Jesus, for a time, from compliance. That an aversion to the Gentiles may not appear to be his motive, it has been conjectured [814] that Jesus, wishing to preserve an incognito in that country, avoided the performance of any messianic work. But such a design of concealment is only mentioned by Mark (vii. 25), who represents it as being defeated by the entreaties of the woman, contrary to the inclinations of Jesus; and as this Evangelist omits the declaration of Jesus, that he was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, we must suspect that he was guided by the wish to supply a less offensive motive for the conduct of Jesus, rather than by historical accuracy. Had Jesus really been influenced by the motive which Mark assigns, he must at once have alleged it to his disciples instead of a merely ostensible one, calculated to strengthen their already rigid exclusiveness. We should therefore rather listen to the opinion that Jesus sought, by his repeated refusal, to prove the faith of the woman, and furnish an occasion for its exhibition, [815] if we could find in the text the slightest trace of mere dissimulation; and none of a real change of mind. [816] Even Mark, bent as he was on softening the features of the incident, cannot have thought of a dissimulation of this kind; otherwise, instead of omitting the harsh words and making the inadequate addition, and would have no man know it, he would have removed the offence in the most satisfactory manner, by an observation such as, he said this to prove her (comp. John vi. 6). Thus it must be allowed that Jesus in this case seems to share the antipathy of his countrymen towards the Gentiles, nay, his antipathy seems to be of a deeper stamp than that of his disciples; unless their advocacy of the woman be a touch from the pencil of tradition, for the sake of contrast and grouping.

This narrative, however, is neutralized by another, in which Jesus is said to act in a directly opposite manner. The centurion of Capernaum, also a Gentile (as we gather from the remarks of Jesus), has scarcely complained of a distress similar to that of the Canaanitish woman, when Jesus himself volunteers to go and heal his servant (Matt. viii. 5). If, then, Jesus has no hesitation, in this instance, to exercise his power of healing in favour of a heathen, how comes it that he refuses to do so in another quite analogous case? Truly if the relative position of the two narratives in the gospels have any weight, he must have shown himself more harsh and narrow at the later period than at the earlier one. Meanwhile, this single act of benevolence to a Gentile, standing as it does in inexplicable contradiction to the narrative above examined, cannot prove, in opposition to the command expressly given to the disciples, not to go to the Gentiles, that Jesus contemplated their admission as such into the messianic kingdom.

Even the prediction of Jesus that the kingdom of heaven would be taken from the Jews and given to the Gentiles, does not prove this. In the above interview with the centurion of Capernaum, Jesus declares that many shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with the patriarchs in the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom (obviously the Jews), for whom it was originally designed, will be cast out (Matt. viii. 11 f.). Yet more decidedly, when applying the parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard, he warns his countrymen that the kingdom of God shall be taken from them, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matt. xxi. 43). All this may be understood in the sense intended by the prophets, in their promises that the messianic kingdom would extend to all nations; namely, that the Gentiles would turn to the worship of Jehovah, embrace the Mosaic religion in its entire form, and afterwards be received into the Messiah’s kingdom. It would accord very well with this expectation, that, prior to such a conversion, Jesus should forbid his disciples to direct their announcement of his kingdom to the Gentiles.

But in the discourses concerning his re-appearance, Jesus regards the publication of the gospel to all nations as one of the circumstances that must precede that event (Matt. xxiv. 14; Mark xiii. 10); and after his resurrection, according to the synoptists, he gave his disciples the command, Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them, etc. (Matt. xxviii. 19; Mark xvi. 15; Luke xxiv. 47); i.e. go to them with the offer of the Messiah’s kingdom, even though they may not beforehand have become Jews. Not only, however, do the disciples, after the first Pentecost, neglect to execute this command, but when a case is thrust on them which offers them an opportunity for compliance with it, they act as if they were altogether ignorant that such a direction had been given by Jesus (Acts x., xi.). The heathen centurion Cornelius, worthy, from his devout life, of a reception into the messianic community, is pointed out by an angel to the Apostle Peter. But because it was not hidden from God, with what difficulty the apostle would be induced to receive a heathen, without further preliminary, into the Messiah’s kingdom, he saw it needful to prepare him for such a step by a symbolical vision. In consequence of such an admonition Peter goes to Cornelius; but to impel him to baptize him and his family, he needs a second sign, the pouring out of the Holy Ghost on these uncircumcised. When, subsequently, the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem call him to account for this reception of Gentiles, Peter appeals in his justification solely to the recent vision, and to the Holy Ghost given to the centurion’s family. Whatever judgment we may form of the credibility of this history, it is a memorial of the many deliberations and contentions which it cost the apostles after the departure of Jesus, to convince themselves of the eligibility of Gentiles for a participation in the kingdom of their Christ, and the reasons which at last brought them to a decision. Now if Jesus had given so explicit a command as that above quoted, what need was there of a vision to encourage Peter to its fulfilment? or, supposing the vision to be a legendary investiture of the natural deliberations of the disciples, why did they go about in search of the reflection, that all men ought to be baptized, because before God all men and all animals, as his creatures, are clean, if they could have appealed to an express injunction of Jesus? Here, then, is the alternative: if Jesus himself gave this command, the disciples cannot have been led to the admission of the Gentiles by the means narrated in Acts x., xi.; if, on the other hand, that narrative is authentic, the alleged command of Jesus cannot be historical. Our canon decides for the latter proposition. For that the subsequent practice and pre-eminent distinction of the Christian Church, its accessibility to all nations, and its indifference to circumcision or uncircumcision, should have lain in the mind of its founder, is the view best adapted to exalt and adorn Jesus; while that, after his death, and through the gradual development of relations, the church, which its Founder had designed for the Gentiles only in so far as they became Jews, should break through these limits, is in the simple, natural, and therefore the probable course of things.

§ 69.

RELATION OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS TO THE SAMARITANS. HIS INTERVIEW WITH THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA.

There is the same apparent contradiction in the position which Jesus took, and prescribed to his disciples, towards the inhabitants of Samaria. While in his instructions to his disciples (Matt. x. 5), he forbids them to visit any city of the Samaritans, we read in John (iv.) that Jesus himself in his journey through Samaria laboured as the Messiah with great effect, and ultimately stayed two days in a Samaritan town; and in the Acts (i. 8), that before his ascension he charged the disciples to be his witnesses, not only in Jerusalem and in all Judea, but also in Samaria. That Jesus did not entirely shun Samaria, as that prohibition might appear to intimate, is evident from Luke ix. 52 (comp. xvii. 11), where his disciples bespeak lodgings for him in a Samaritan village, when he has determined to go to Jerusalem; a circumstance which accords with the information of Josephus, that those Galileans who journeyed to the feasts usually went through Samaria. [817] That Jesus was not unfavourable to the Samaritans, nay, that in many respects he acknowledged their superiority to the Jews, is evident from his parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke x. 30 ff.); he also bestows a marked notice on the case of a Samaritan, who, among ten cleansed, was the only one that testified his gratitude (Luke xvii. 16); and, if we may venture on such a conclusion from John iv. 25, and subsequent records, [818] the inhabitants of Samaria themselves had some tincture of the messianic idea.

However natural it may appear that Jesus should avail himself of this susceptible side of the Samaritans, by opportunely announcing to them the messianic kingdom; the aspect which the four Evangelists bear to each other on this subject must excite surprise. Matthew has no occasion on which Jesus comes in contact with the Samaritans, or even mentions them, except in the prohibition above quoted; Mark is more neutral than Matthew, and has not even that prohibition; Luke has two instances of contact, one of them unfavourable, the other favourable, together with the parable in which Jesus presents a Samaritan as a model, and his approving notice of the gratitude of one whom he had healed; John, finally, has a narrative in which Jesus appears in a very intimate and highly favourable relation to the Samaritans. Are all these various accounts well founded? If so, how could Jesus at one time prohibit his disciples from including the Samaritans in the messianic plan, and at another time, himself receive them without hesitation? Moreover, if the chronological order of the Evangelists deserve regard, the ministry of Jesus in Samaria must have preceded the prohibition contained in his instructions to his disciples on their first mission. For the scene of that mission being Galilee, and there being no space for its occurrence during the short stay which, according to the fourth Evangelist, Jesus made in that province before the first Passover (ii. 1–13), it must be placed after that Passover; and, as the visit to Samaria was made on his journey, after that visit also. How, then, could Jesus, after having with the most desirable issue, personally taught in Samaria, and presented himself as the Messiah, forbid his disciples to carry thither their messianic tidings? On the other hand, if the scenes narrated by John occurred after the command recorded by Matthew, the disciples, instead of wondering that Jesus talked so earnestly with a woman (John iv. 27), ought rather to have wondered that he held any converse with a Samaritan. [819]

Since then of the two extreme narratives at least, in Matthew and John, neither presupposes the other, we must either doubt the authenticity of the exclusive command of Jesus, or of his connexion with the inhabitants of Samaria.

In this conflict between the gospels, we have again the advantage of appealing to the Book of Acts as an umpire. Before Peter, at the divine instigation, had received the firstfruits of the Gentiles into the Messiah’s kingdom, Philip the deacon, being driven from Jerusalem by the persecution of which Stephen’s death was the commencement, journeyed to the city of Samaria, where he preached Christ, and by miracles of all kinds won the Samaritans to the faith, and to the reception of baptism (Acts viii. 5 ff.). This narrative is a complete contrast to that of the first admission of the Gentiles: while in the one there was need of a vision, and a special intimation from the Spirit, to bring Peter into communication with the heathens; in the other, Philip, without any precedent, unhesitatingly baptizes the Samaritans. And lest it should be said that the deacon was perhaps of a more liberal spirit than the apostle, we have Peter himself coming forthwith to Samaria in company with John,—an incident which forms another point of opposition between the two narratives; for, while the first admission of the Gentiles makes a highly unfavourable impression on the mother church at Jerusalem, the report that Samaria had received the word of God meets with so warm an approval there, that the two most distinguished apostles are commissioned to confirm and consummate the work begun by Philip. The tenor of this proceeding makes it not improbable that there was a precedent for it in the conduct of Jesus, or at least a sanction in his expressions.

The narrative in the fourth Gospel (iv.) would form a perfect precedent in the conduct of Jesus, but we have yet to examine whether it bears the stamp of historical credibility. We do not, with the author of the Probabilia, stumble at the designation of the locality, and the opening of the conversation between Jesus and the woman; [820] but from v. 16 inclusively, there are, as impartial expositors confess, [821] many grave difficulties. The woman had entreated Jesus to give her of the water which was for ever to extinguish thirst, and Jesus immediately says, Go, call thy husband. Why so? It has been said that Jesus, well knowing that the woman had no lawful husband, sought to shame her, and bring her to repentance. [822] Lücke, disapproving the imputation of dissimulation to Jesus, conjectures that, perceiving the woman’s dulness, he hoped by summoning her husband, possibly her superior in intelligence, to create an opportunity for a more beneficial conversation. But if Jesus, as it presently appears, knew that the woman had not at the time any proper husband, he could not in earnest desire her to summon him; and if, as Lücke allows, he had that knowledge in a supernatural manner, it could not be hidden from him, who knew what was in man, that she would be little inclined to comply with his injunction. If, however, he had a prescience that what he required would not be done, the injunction was a feint, and had some latent object. But that this object was the penitence of the woman there is no indication in the text, for the ultimate effect on her is not shame and penitence, but faith in the prophetic insight of Jesus (v. 19). And this was doubtless what Jesus wished, for the narrative proceeds as if he had attained his purpose with the woman, and the issue corresponded to the design. The difficulty here lies, not so much in what Lücke terms dissimulation,—since this comes under the category of blameless temptation (πειράζειν), elsewhere occurring,—as in the violence with which Jesus wrests an opportunity for the display of his prophetic gifts.

By a transition equally abrupt, the woman urges the conversation to a point at which the Messiahship of Jesus may become fully evident. As soon as she has recognised Jesus to be a prophet, she hastens to consult him on the controversy pending between the Jews and Samaritans, as to the place appropriated to the true worship of God (v. 20). That so vivid an interest in this national and religious question is not consistent with the limited mental and circumstantial condition of the woman, the majority of modern commentators virtually confess, by their adoption of the opinion, that her drift in this remark was to turn away the conversation from her own affairs. [823] If then the implied query concerning the place for the true worship of God, had no serious interest for the woman, but was prompted by a false shame calculated to hinder confession and repentance, those expositors should remember what they elsewhere repeat to satiety, [824] that in the Gospel of John the answers of Jesus refer not so much to the ostensible meaning of questions, as to the under current of feeling of which they are the indications. In accordance with this method, Jesus should not have answered the artificial question of the woman as if it had been one of deep seriousness; he ought rather to have evaded it, and recurred to the already detected stain on her conscience, which she was now seeking to hide, in order if possible to bring her to a full conviction and open avowal of her guilt. But the fact is that the object of the Evangelist was to show that Jesus had been recognised, not merely as a prophet, but as the Messiah, and he believed that to turn the conversation to the question of the legitimate place for the worship of God, the solution of which was expected from the Messiah, [825] would best conduce to that end.

Jesus evinces (v. 17) an acquaintance with the past history and present position of the woman. The rationalists have endeavoured to explain this by the supposition, that while Jesus sat at the well, and the woman was advancing from the city, some passer-by hinted to him that he had better not engage in conversation with her, as she was on the watch to obtain a sixth husband. [826] But not to insist on the improbability that a passer-by should hold a colloquy with Jesus on the character of an obscure woman, the friends as well as the enemies of the fourth gospel now agree, that every natural explanation of that knowledge on the part of Jesus, directly counteracts the design of the Evangelist. [827] For, according to him, the disclosure which Jesus makes of his privity to the woman’s intimate concerns, is the immediate cause, not only of her own faith in him, but of that of many inhabitants of the city (v. 39), and he obviously intends to imply that they were not too precipitate in receiving him as a prophet, on that ground alone. Thus in the view of the Evangelist, the knowledge in question was an effluence of the higher nature of Jesus, and modern supranaturalists adhere to this explanation, adducing in its support the power which John attributes to him (ii. 24 f.), of discerning what is in man without the aid of external testimony. [828] But this does not meet the case; for Jesus here not only knows what is in the woman,—her present equivocal state of mind towards him who is not her husband,—he has cognizance also of the extrinsic fact that she has had five husbands, of whom we cannot suppose that each had left a distinct image in her mind traceable by the observation of Jesus. That by means of the penetrative acumen with which he scrutinized the hearts of those with whom he had to do, Jesus should also have a prophetic insight into his own messianic destiny, and the fortunes of his kingdom, may under a certain view of his person appear probable, and in any case must be deemed in the highest degree dignified; but that he should be acquainted, even to the most trivial details, with the adventitious history of obscure individuals, is an idea that degrades him in proportion to the exaltation of his prophetic dignity. Such empirical knowingness (not omniscience) would moreover annihilate the human consciousness which the orthodox view supposes to co-exist in Jesus. [829] But the possession of this knowledge, however it may clash with our conception of dignity and wisdom, closely corresponds to the Jewish notion of a prophet, more especially of the Messiah; in the Old Testament, Daniel recites a dream of Nebuchadnezzar, which that monarch himself had forgotten (Dan. ii.); in the Clementine Homilies, the true prophet is ὁ πάντοτε πάντα εἰδώς· τὰ μὲν γεγονότα ὡς ἐγένετο, τὰ δὲ γινόμενα ὡς γίνεται, τὰ δέ ἐσόμενα ὡς ἔσται; [830] and the rabbins number such a knowledge of personal secrets among the signs of the Messiah, and observe that from the want of it, Bar-Cocheba was detected to be a pseudo-Messiah. [831]

Farther on (v. 23) Jesus reveals to the woman what Hase terms the sublimest principle of his religion, namely, that the service of God consists in a life of piety; tells her that all ceremonial worship is about to be abolished; and that he is the personage who will effect this momentous change, that is, the Messiah. We have already shown it to be improbable that Jesus, who did not give his disciples to understand that he was the Messiah until a comparatively late period, should make an early and distinct disclosure on the subject to a Samaritan woman. In what respect was she worthy of a communication more explicit than ever fell to the lot of the disciples? What could induce Jesus to send roaming into the futurity of religious history, the contemplation of a woman, whom he should rather have induced to examine herself, and to ponder on the corruptions of her own heart? Nothing but the wish to elicit from her, at any cost, and without regard to her moral benefit, an acknowledgment, not only of his prophetic gifts, but of his Messiahship; to which end it was necessary to give the conversation the above direction. But so contracted a design can never be imputed to Jesus, who, on other occasions, exemplifies a more suitable mode of dealing with mankind: it is the design of the glorifying legend, or of an idealizing biographer.

Meanwhile, continues the narrative (v. 27), the disciples of Jesus returned from the city with provisions, and marvelled that he talked with a woman, contrary to rabbinical rule. [832] While the woman, excited by the last disclosure of Jesus, hastens homeward to invite her fellow-citizens to come and behold the Messiah-like stranger, the disciples entreat him to partake of the food they have procured; he answers, I have meat to eat that ye know not of (v. 32). They, misunderstanding his words, imagine that some person has supplied him with food in their absence: one of those carnal interpretations of expressions intended spiritually by Jesus, which are of perpetual recurrence in the fourth gospel, and are therefore suspicious. Then follows a discourse on sowing and reaping (v. 35 ff.), which, compared with v. 37, can only mean that what Jesus has sown, the disciples will reap. [833] We admit that this is susceptible of the general interpretation, that the germ of the kingdom of God, which blossomed and bore fruit under the cultivation of the apostles, was first deposited in the world by Jesus: but it cannot be denied that a special application is also intended. Jesus foresees that the woman, who is hastening towards the city, will procure him an opportunity of sowing the seed of the gospel in Samaria, and he promises the disciples that they at a future time shall reap the fruits of his labours. Who is not here reminded of the propagation of Christianity in Samaria by Philip and the apostles, as narrated in the Acts? [834] That, even abstracting all supernaturalism from our idea of the person of Jesus, he might have foreseen this progress of his cause in Samaria from his knowledge of its inhabitants, is not to be denied; but as the above figurative prediction forms part of a whole more than improbable in an historical point of view, it is equally liable to suspicion, especially as it is easy to show how it might originate without any foundation in fact. According to the prevalent tradition of the early church, as recorded in the synoptical gospels, Jesus laboured personally in Galilee, Judea, and Perea only,—not in Samaria, which, however, as we learn from the Acts, embraced the gospel at no remote period from his death. How natural the tendency to perfect the agency of Jesus, by representing him to have sown the heavenly seed in Samaria, thus extending his ministry through all parts of Palestine; to limit the glory of the apostles and other teachers to that of being the mere reapers of the harvest in Samaria; and to put this distinction, on a suitable occasion, into the mouth of Jesus!

The result, then, of our examination of John’s Samaritan narrative is, that we cannot receive it as a real history: and the impression which it leaves as a whole tends to the same conclusion. Since Heracleon and Origen, [835] the more ancient commentators have seldom refrained from giving the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria an allegorical interpretation, on the ground that the entire scene has a legendary and poetic colouring. Jesus is seated at a well,—that idyllic locality with which the old Hebrew legend associates so many critical incidents; at the identical well, moreover, which a tradition, founded on Gen. xxxiii. 19, xlviii. 22; Josh. xxiv. 32, reported to have been given by Jacob to his son Joseph; hence the spot, in addition to its idyllic interest, has the more decided consecration of national and patriarchal recollections, and is all the more worthy of being trodden by the Messiah. At the well Jesus meets with a woman who has come out to draw water, just as, in the Old Testament, the expectant Eliezer encounters Rebekah with her pitcher, and as Jacob meets with Rachel, the destined ancestress of Israel, or Moses with his future wife. Jesus begs of the woman to let him drink; so does Eliezer of Rebekah; after Jesus has made himself known to the woman as the Messiah, she runs back to the city, and fetches her neighbours: so Rebekah, after Eliezer has announced himself as Abraham’s steward, and Rachel, after she has discovered that Jacob is her kinsman, hasten homeward to call their friends to welcome the honoured guest. It is, certainly, not one blameless as those early mothers in Israel, whom Jesus here encounters; for this woman came forth as the representative of an impure people, who had been faithless to their marriage bond with Jehovah, and were then living in the practice of a false worship; while her good-will, her deficient moral strength, and her obtuseness in spiritual things, perfectly typify the actual state of the Samaritans. Thus, the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria is only a poetical representation of his ministry among the Samaritans narrated in the sequel; and this is itself a legendary prelude to the propagation of the gospel in Samaria after the death of Jesus.

Renouncing the event in question as unhistorical, we know nothing of any connexion formed by Jesus with the Samaritans, and there remain as indications of his views regarding them, only his favourable notice of an individual from among them (Luke xvii. 16); his unpropitious reception in one of their villages (Luke ix. 53); the prohibition with respect to them, addressed to his disciples (Matt. x. 5); the eulogistic parable (Luke x. 30 ff.); and his valedictory command, that the gospel should be preached in Samaria (Acts i. 8). This express command being subsequent to the resurrection of Jesus, its reality must remain problematical for us until we have examined the evidence for that capital fact; and it is to be questioned whether without it, and notwithstanding the alleged prohibition, the unhesitating conduct of the apostles, Acts viii., can be explained. Are we then to suppose on the part of the apostolic history, a cancelling of hesitations and deliberations that really occurred; or on the part of Matthew, an unwarranted ascription of national bigotry to Jesus; or, finally, on the part of Jesus, a progressive enlargement of view?