Chapter 18

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).

IV

Jesus' Conception of Himself

252. When Jesus called forth the confession of Peter at Cæsarea 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 Cæsarea 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.