CHAPTER I.

RELATION OF JESUS TO THE IDEA OF A SUFFERING AND DYING MESSIAH; HIS DISCOURSES ON HIS DEATH, RESURRECTION, AND SECOND ADVENT.

§ 111.

DID JESUS IN PRECISE TERMS PREDICT HIS PASSION AND DEATH?

According to the gospels, Jesus more than once, and while the result was yet distant, [1605] predicted to his disciples that sufferings and a violent death awaited him. Moreover, if we trust the synoptical accounts, he did not predict his fate merely in general terms, but specified beforehand the place of his passion, namely, Jerusalem; the time, namely, the approaching passover; the persons from whom he would have to suffer, namely, the chief priests, scribes and Gentiles; the essential form of his passion, namely, crucifixion, in consequence of a judicial sentence; and even its accessory circumstances, namely, scourging, reviling, and spitting (Matt. xvi. 21, xvii. 12, 22 f., xx. 17 ff., xxvi. 12 with the parall., Luke xiii. 33). Between the synoptists and the author of the fourth gospel, there exists a threefold difference in relation to this subject. Firstly and chiefly, in the latter the predictions of Jesus do not appear so clear and intelligible, but are for the most part presented in obscure figurative discourses, concerning which the narrator himself confesses that the disciples understood them not until after the issue (ii. 22). In addition to a decided declaration that he will voluntarily lay down his life (x. 15 ff.), Jesus in this gospel is particularly fond of alluding to his approaching death under the expressions ὑψοῦν, ὑψοῦσθαι, to lift up, to be lifted up, in the application of which he seems to vacillate between his exaltation on the cross, and his exaltation to glory (iii. 14, viii. 28, xii. 32); he compares his approaching exaltation with that of the brazen serpent in the wilderness (iii. 14), as, in Matthew, he compares his fate with that of Jonah (xii. 40); on another occasion, he speaks of going away whither no man can follow him (vii. 33 ff., viii. 21 f.), as, in the synoptists, of a taking away of a bridegroom, which will plunge his friends into mourning (Matt. ix. 15 parall.), and of a cup, which he must drink, and which his disciples will find it hard to partake of with him (Matt. xx. 22 parall.). The two other differences are less marked, but are still observable. One of them is, that while in John the allusions to the violent death of Jesus run in an equal degree through the whole gospel; in the synoptists, the repeated and definite announcements of his death are found only towards the end, partly immediately before, partly during, the last journey; in earlier chapters there occurs, with the exception of the obscure discourse on the sign of Jonah (which we shall soon see to be no prediction of death), only the intimation of a removal (doubtless violent) of the bridegroom. The last difference is, that while according to the three first Evangelists, Jesus imparts those predictions (again with the single exception of the above intimation, Matt. ix. 15) only to the confidential circle of his disciples; in John, he utters them in the presence of the people, and even of his enemies.

In the critical investigation of these evangelical accounts, we shall proceed from the special to the general, in the following manner. First we shall ask: Is it credible that Jesus had a foreknowledge of so many particular features of the fate which awaited him? and next: Is even a general foreknowledge and prediction of his sufferings, on the part of Jesus, probable? in which inquiry, the difference between the representation of John and that of the synoptists, will necessarily come under our consideration.

There are two modes of explaining how Jesus could so precisely foreknow the particular circumstances of his passion and death; the one resting on a supernatural, the other on a natural basis. The former appears adequate to solve the problem by the simple position, that before the prophetic spirit, which dwelt in Jesus in the richest plenitude, his destiny must have lain unfolded from the beginning. As, however, Jesus himself, in his announcements of his sufferings, expressly appealed to the Old Testament, the prophecies of which concerning him must be fulfilled in all points (Luke xviii. 31, comp. xxii. 37, xxiv. 25 ff.; Matt. xxvi. 54): so the orthodox view ought not to despise this help, but must give to its explanation the modification, that Jesus continually occupied with the prophecies of the Old Testament, may have drawn those particularities out of them, by the aid of the spirit that dwelt within him. [1606] According to this, while the knowledge of the time of his passion remains consigned to his prophetic presentiment, unless he be supposed to have calculated this out of Daniel, or some similar source; Jesus must have come to regard Jerusalem as the scene of his suffering and death, by contemplating the fate of earlier prophets as a type of his own, the Spirit telling him, that where so many prophets had suffered death, there, à fortiori, must the Messiah also suffer (Luke xiii. 33); that his death would be the sequel of a formal sentence, he must have gathered from Isa. liii. 8, where a judgment ‏מִשְׁפִּט‎ is spoken of as impending over the servant of God, and from v. 12, where it is said that he was numbered with the transgressors, ἐν τοῖς ἀνόμοις ἐλογίσθη (comp. Luke xxii. 37); that his sentence would proceed from the rulers of his own people, he might perhaps have concluded from Ps. cxviii. 22, where the builders, αἰκοδομοῦντες who reject the corner-stone, are, according to apostolic interpretation (Acts iv. 11), the Jewish rulers; that he would be delivered to the Gentiles, he might infer from the fact, that in several plaintive psalms, which are susceptible of a messianic interpretation, the persecuting parties are represented as ‏רְשָׁעִים‎, i.e. heathens; that the precise manner of his death would be crucifixion, he might have deduced, partly from the type of the brazen serpent which was suspended on a pole, Num. xxi. 8 f. (comp. John iii. 14), partly from the piercing of the hands and feet, Ps. xxii. 17, LXX.; lastly, that he would be the object of scorn and personal maltreatment, he might have concluded from passages such as v. 7 ff. in the Psalm above quoted, Isa. l. 6, etc. Now if the spirit which dwelt in Jesus, and which, according to the orthodox opinion, revealed to him the reference of these prophecies and types to his ultimate destiny, was a spirit of truth: this reference to Jesus must admit of being proved to be the true and original sense of those Old Testament passages. But, to confine ourselves to the principal passages only, a profound grammatical and historical exposition has convincingly shown, for all who are in a condition to liberate themselves from dogmatic presuppositions, that in none of these is there any allusion to the sufferings of Christ. Instead of this, Isa. l. 6, speaks of the ill usage which the prophets had to experience; [1607] Isa. liii. of the calamities of the prophetic order, or more probably of the Israelitish people; [1608] Ps. cxviii. of the unexpected deliverance and exaltation of that people, or of one of their princes; [1609] while Ps. xxii. is the complaint of an oppressed exile. [1610] As to the 17th verse of this Psalm, which has been interpreted as having reference to the crucifixion of Christ, even presupposing the most improbable interpretation of ‏כארי‎ by perfoderunt, this must in no case be understood literally, but only figuratively, and the image would be derived, not from a crucifixion, but from a chase, or a combat with wild beasts; [1611] hence the application of this passage to Christ is now only maintained by those with whom it would be lost labour to contend. According to the orthodox view, however, Jesus, in a supernatural manner, by means of his higher nature, discovered in these passages a pre-intimation of the particular features of his passion; but, in that case, since such is not the true sense of these passages, the spirit that dwelt in Jesus cannot have been the spirit of truth, but a lying spirit. Thus the orthodox expositor, so far as he does not exclude himself from the light dispensed by an unprejudiced interpretation of the Old Testament, is driven, for the sake of his own interest, to adopt the natural opinion; namely, that Jesus was led to such an interpretation of Old Testament passages, not by divine inspiration, but by a combination of his own.

According to this opinion, [1612] there was no difficulty in foreseeing that it would be the ruling sacerdotal party to which Jesus must succumb, since, on the one hand, it was pre-eminently embittered against Jesus, on the other, it was in possession of the necessary power; and equally obvious was it that they would make Jerusalem the theatre of his judgment and execution, since this was the centre of their strength; that after being sentenced by the rulers of his people, he would be delivered to the Romans for execution, followed from the limitation of the Jewish judicial power at that period; that crucifixion was the death to which he would be sentenced, might be conjectured from the fact that with the Romans this species of death was a customary infliction, especially on rebels; lastly, that scourging and reviling would not be wanting, might likewise be inferred from Roman custom, and the barbarity of judicial proceedings in that age.—But viewing the subject more nearly, how could Jesus so certainly know that Herod, who had directed a threatening attention to his movements (Luke xiii. 31), would not forestall the sacerdotal party, and add to the murder of the Baptist, that of his more important follower? And even if he felt himself warranted in believing that real danger threatened him from the side of the hierarchy only (Luke xiii. 33); what was his guarantee that one of their tumultuary attempts to murder him would not at last succeed (comp. John viii. 39, x. 31), and that he would not, as Stephen did at a later period, without any further formalities, and without a previous delivery to the Romans, find his death in quite another manner than by the Roman punishment of crucifixion? Lastly, how could he so confidently assert that the very next plot of his enemies, after so many failures, would be successful, and that the very next journey to the passover would be his last?—But the natural explanation also can call to its aid the Old Testament passages, and say: Jesus, whether by the application of a mode of interpretation then current among his countrymen, or under the guidance of his own individual views, gathered from the passages already quoted, a precise idea of the circumstances attendant on the violent end which awaited him as the Messiah. [1613] But if in the first place it would be difficult to prove, that already in the lifetime of Jesus all these various passages were referred to the Messiah; and if it be equally difficult to conceive that Jesus could independently, prior to the issue, discover such a reference; so it would be a case undistinguishable from a miracle, if the result had actually corresponded to so false an interpretation; moreover, the Old Testament oracles and types will not suffice to explain all the particular features in the predictions of Jesus, especially the precise determination of time.

If then Jesus cannot have had so precise a foreknowledge of the circumstances of his passion and death, either in a supernatural or a natural way: he cannot have had such a foreknowledge at all: and the minute predictions which the Evangelists put into his mouth must be regarded as a vaticinium post eventum. [1614] Commentators who have arrived at this conclusion, have not failed to extol the account of John, in opposition to that of the synoptists, on the ground that precisely those traits in the predictions of Jesus which, from their special character, he cannot have uttered, are only found in the synoptists, while John attributes to Jesus no more than indefinite intimations, and distinguishes these from his own interpretation, made after the issue; a plain proof that in his gospel alone we have the discourses of Jesus unfalsified, and in their original form. [1615] But, regarded more nearly, the case does not stand so that the fourth Evangelist can only be taxed with putting an erroneous interpretation on the otherwise unfalsified declarations of Jesus: for in one passage, at least, he has put into his mouth an expression which, obscurely, it is true, but still unmistakably, determines the manner of his death as crucifixion; and consequently, he has here altered the words of Jesus to correspond with the result. We refer to the expression ὑψωθῆναι, to be lifted up: in those passages of the fourth gospel where Jesus speaks in a passive sense of the Son of Man being lifted up, this expression might possibly mean his exaltation to glory, although in iii. 14, from the comparison with the serpent in the wilderness, which was well known to have been elevated on a pole, even this becomes a difficulty; but when, as in viii. 28, he represents the exaltation of the Son of Man as the act of his enemies (ὅταν ὑψώσητε τὸν υἱὸν τ. ἀ.), it is obvious that these could not lift him up immediately to glory, but only to the cross; consequently, if the result above stated be admitted as valid, John must himself have framed this expression, or at least have distorted the Aramæan words of Jesus, and hence he essentially falls under the same category with the synoptical writers. That the fourth Evangelist, though the passion and death of Jesus were to him past events, and therefore clearly present to his mind, nevertheless makes Jesus predict them in obscure expressions,—this has its foundation in the entire manner of this writer, whose fondness for the enigmatical and mysterious here happily met the requirement, to give an unintelligible form to prophecies which were not understood.

There were sufficient inducements for the Christian legend thus to put into the mouth of Jesus, after the event, a prediction of the particular features of his passion, especially of the ignominious crucifixion. The more the Christ crucified became to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness (1 Cor. i. 23), the more need was there to remove this offence by every possible means; and as, among subsequent events, the resurrection especially served as a retrospective cancelling of that shameful death; so it must have been earnestly desired to take the sting from that offensive catastrophe beforehand also, and this could not be done more effectually than by such a minute prediction. For as the most unimportant fact, when prophetically announced, gains importance, by thus being made a link in the chain of a higher knowledge: so the most ignominious fate, when it is predicted as part of a divine plan of salvation, ceases to be ignominious; above all, when the very person over whom such a fate impends, also possesses the prophetic spirit, which enables him to foresee and foretell it, and thus not only suffers, but participates in the divine prescience of his sufferings, he manifests himself as the ideal power over those suffering. But the fourth Evangelist has gone still farther on this track; he believes it due to the honour of Jesus to represent him as also the real power over his sufferings, as not having his life taken away by the violence of others, but as resigning it voluntarily (x. 17 f.): a representation which indeed already finds some countenance in Matt. xxvi. 53, where Jesus asserts the possibility of praying to the Father for legions of angels, in order to avert his sufferings.

§ 112.

THE PREDICTIONS OF JESUS CONCERNING HIS DEATH IN GENERAL; THEIR RELATION TO THE JEWISH IDEA OF THE MESSIAH: DECLARATIONS OF JESUS CONCERNING THE OBJECT AND EFFECTS OF HIS DEATH.

If in this manner we subtract from the declarations of Jesus concerning his approaching fate, attributed to him in the gospels, all which regards the particular circumstances of this catastrophe; there still remains on the part of Jesus the general announcement, that suffering and death awaited him, and also that this part of his career was a fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies relative to the Messiah. As, however, the principal passages cited from the Old Testament, which treat of suffering and death, are only by mistake referred to the Messiah, while others, as Dan. ix. 26; Zech. xii. 10, have not this signification: [1616] the orthodox, above all, must again beware of attributing so false an interpretation of these prophecies, to the supernatural principle in Jesus. That instead of this, Jesus might possibly, by a purely natural combination, have educed the general result, that since he had made the hierarchy of his nation his implacable enemies, he had, in so far as he was resolved not to swerve from the path of his destination, the worst to fear from their revenge and authority (John x. 11 ff.); that from the fate of former prophets (Matt. v. 12, xxi. 33 ff.; Luke xiii. 33 f.), and isolated passages bearing such an interpretation, he might prognosticate a similar end to his own career, and accordingly predict to his followers that earlier or later a violent death awaited him—this it would be a needless overstraining of the supranaturalistic view any longer to deny, and the rational mode of considering the subject should be admitted. [1617]

It may appear surprising if, after this admission, we still put the question, whether, according to the New Testament representation, it be probable that Jesus actually uttered such a prediction? since, certainly, a general announcement of his violent death is the least which the evangelical accounts appear to contain, but our meaning in the question is this: is the sequel, especially the conduct of the disciples, so described in the gospels, as to be reconcilable with a prior disclosure of Jesus relative to the sufferings which awaited him? Now the express statements of the Evangelists do not merely tend to show that the disciples did not understand the discourses of Jesus on his coming death, in the sense that they did not know how to adjust these facts in their own minds, or to make them tally with their preconceived ideas concerning the Messiah,—a difficulty which drew from Peter the first time that Jesus announced his death, the exclamation: Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee;—for we find the words of Mark (ix. 32), But they understood not that saying, οἱ δὲ ἠγνόουν τὸ ρῆμα, thus amplified in Luke: and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not, καί ἠν παρακεκαλυμμένον ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἵνα μὴ αἴσθωνται αὐτό (ix. 45); and the latter Evangelist on another occasion says: and they understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things that were spoken, καὶ αὐτοὶ οὐδὲν τούτων συνῆκαν, καὶ ἠν τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο κεκρυμμένον ἀπ’ αὐτων, καὶ οὐκ ἐγίνωσκον τὰ λεγόμενα (xviii. 34): expressions which appear to imply that the disciples absolutely did not understand what the words of Jesus meant. In accordance with this, the condemnation and execution of Jesus fall upon them as a blow for which they are entirely unprepared, and consequently annihilate all the hopes which they had fixed on him as the Messiah (Luke xxiv. 20 f., The chief priests and our rulers have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel). But had Jesus spoken of his death to the disciples with such perfect openness (παῤῥησίᾳ, Mark viii. 32), they must necessarily have understood his clear words and detailed discourses, and had he besides shown them that his death was foreshadowed in the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, and was consequently a part of the Messiah’s destination (Luke xviii. 31, xxii. 37), they could not, when his death actually ensued, have so entirely lost all belief in his messiahship. It is true that the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist is wrong in his attempt to show in the conduct of Jesus, as described by the Evangelists, indications that his death was unexpected even to himself; but, looking merely at the conduct of the disciples, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion which that writer draws, namely, that to judge by that conduct, Jesus cannot have made any antecedent disclosure to his disciples concerning his death; on the contrary, they appear to the very last moment to have held the common opinion on this matter, and only to have adopted the characteristics of suffering and death into their conception of the Messiah, after the death of Jesus had unexpectedly come upon them. [1618] At all events we have before us the following dilemma: either the statements of the Evangelists as to the inability of the disciples to understand the predictions of Jesus, and their surprise at his death, are unhistorically exaggerated; or the decided declarations of Jesus concerning the death which awaited him, were composed ex eventu, nay, it becomes doubtful whether he even in general predicted his death as a part of his messianic destiny. On both sides, the legend might be led into unhistorical representations. For the fabrication of a prediction of his death in general, there were the same reasons which we have above shown to be an adequate motive for attributing to him a prognostication of the particular features of his passion: to the fiction of so total a want of comprehension in the disciples, an inducement might be found, on the one hand, in the desire to exhibit the profoundness of the mystery of a suffering Messiah revealed by Jesus, through the inability of the disciples to understand it; on the other, in the fact that in the evangelical tradition the disciples were likened to unconverted Jews and heathens, to whom anything was more intelligible than the death of the Messiah.

In order to decide between these alternatives, we must first examine whether, prior to the death of Jesus, and independently of that event, the messianic ideas of the age included the characteristics of suffering and death. If already in the lifetime of Jesus it was the Jewish opinion that the Messiah must die a violent death, then it is highly probable that Jesus imbibed this idea as a part of his convictions, and communicated it to his disciples; who, in that case, could so much the less have remained uninstructed on this point, and overwhelmed by the actual result, in the degree alleged by the Evangelists. If, on the contrary, that idea was not diffused among his countrymen before the death of Jesus, it still remains possible that Jesus might arrive at that idea by his private reflection; but it is a prior possibility that the disciples were the first to adopt the characteristics of suffering and death into their conception of the Messiah, after they had been taught by the issue.

The question whether the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was already diffused among the Jews in the time of Jesus, is one of the most difficult points of discussion among theologians, and one concerning which they are the least agreed. And the difficulty of the question does not lie in the interests of party, so that it might be hoped that with the rise of impartial investigation, the subject would cease to be perplexed; for, as Stäudlin has aptly shown, [1619] both the orthodox and the rationalistic interest may alternately tend in each direction, and we in fact find theologians of both parties on both sides. [1620] The difficulty lies in the deficiency of information, and in the uncertainty of that which we do possess. If the Old Testament contained the doctrine of a suffering and dying Messiah, it might certainly thence be inferred with more than mere probability, that this doctrine existed among the Jews in the time of Jesus: as, however, according to the most recent researches, the Old Testament, while it does indeed contain the doctrine of an expiation of the sins of the people to take place at the messianic era (Ezek. xxxvi. 25, xxxvii. 23; Zech. xiii. 1; Dan. ix. 24), has no trace of this expiation being effected by the suffering and death of the Messiah [1621]: there is no decision of the question before us to be expected from this quarter. The apocryphal books of the Old Testament lie nearer to the time of Jesus; but as these are altogether silent concerning the Messiah in general, [1622] there can be no discussion as to their containing that special feature. Again, if we turn to Philo and Josephus, the two authors who wrote soonest after the period in question, we find the latter silent as to the messianic hopes of his nation; [1623] and though the former does indeed speak of messianic times, and a messiah-like hero, he says nothing of sufferings on his part. [1624] Thus there remain, as sources of information on this point, only the New Testament and the later Jewish writings.

In the New Testament, almost everything is calculated to give the impression, that a suffering and dying Messiah was unthought-of among the Jews who were contemporary with Jesus. To the majority of the Jews, we are told, the doctrine of a crucified Messiah was a σκανδαλὸν, and the disciples were at a loss to understand Jesus in his repeated and explicit announcements of his death. This does not look as if the doctrine of a suffering Messiah had been current among the Jews of that period; on the contrary, these circumstances accord fully with the declaration which the fourth Evangelist puts into the mouth of the Jewish multitude, ὄχλος (xii. 34), namely, that they had heard in the law (νόμος) that Christ abideth for ever, ὅτι ὁ Χριστὸς μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. [1625] Indeed, for a general acceptation of the idea of a suffering Messiah among the Jews of that period, even those theologians who take the affirmative side in this argument do not contend; but, admitting that the hope of a worldly Messiah whose reign was to endure for ever, was the prevalent one, they only maintain (and herein the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist agrees with them) [1626], that a less numerous party,—according to Stäudlin, the Essenes; according to Hengstenberg, the better and more enlightened part of the people in general—held the belief that the Messiah would appear in a humble guise, and only enter into glory through suffering and death. In support of this they appeal especially to two passages; one out of the third, and one out of the fourth gospel. When Jesus is presented as an infant in the temple at Jerusalem, the aged Simeon, among other prophecies, particularly concerning the opposition which her son would have to encounter, says to Mary: Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also (Luke