me _ ete eee ee ee e eigrnnetone wire ’ a weenie Sete Sicha my iw aw Vere” ape soar Saate SO No tena sr oe ll ete Ried a eae sate SS ani . pr taje sneer Peele ela at Fain He tele le tpn te eal ete Ge ci etwe ty ane = relagy . mee ee Oe He ee eee pean = eee a Sn DUKE UNIVERSITY DIVINITY SCHOOL LIBRARY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/eschatologyofjesO1 muir fee PE SCHATOLOGY Chee SUS OR THE KINGDOM COME AND COMING A BRIEF STUDY OF OUR LORD'S APOCALYPTIC LANGUAGE IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS Delivered under the ‘‘Constitution of the A. B. Bruee Leetureship’’ in the United Free Chureh College, Glasgow, by Rev. LEWIS A. MUIRHEAD, B.D., Minister of St. Luke’s Chureh C NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON 3 AND 5 West 187 STREET 1904 Dee TL IN MEMORIAM SACRAM ALEXANDRI BALMAIN BRUCE, D.D., _ SCIENTL NOVI TESTAMENTI IN COLLEGIO GLASGUENSI LIBER ECCLESLE SCOTICANA PROFESSORIS, AB AN. MDCCCLXXV AD AN. MDCCCXCIX, DOCTI, DILECTI, DESIDERATI, IN REBUS PRAESENTIBUS POTIUS QUAM IN PR2TERITIS a VERA QUERENTIS, DISCIPULUS MAGISTRO, IPSI DISCIPULO, HUNC DEDICAVIT LIBELLUM, UNUS EX PERMULTIS QUI, ILLIUS FRETI AUXILIO, INTUEBANTUR GLORIAM DEI IN HOMINE, JESU SAG - EXCERPT FROM THE “DEED OF CONSTITUTION OF THE BRUCE LECTURESHIP.” “THE object of the Lectureship shall be to promote the study of the New Testament among those who have passed through the usual theological curriculum in the Glasgow College of the United Free Church of Scotland. The Lectureship shall be given for three years ordinarily to an a/wmnus of the College at Glasgow. The Lecturer shall be required, during his tenure of office, to deliver three or four Lectures in the College to the New Testament Classes on such subject as may have received the approval of the Trustees. The intention is that in these Lectures original con- tributions should be made, or, at least, the result of original work given, with a view to the promotion of New Testament learning ; all branches of New Testament Science, Philological, Historical, and Doctrinal, to have equal consideration.” AUTHOR'S PREFACE: HE excerpt from the ‘‘ Deed of Constitution of the Bruce Lectureship,” given above (p. vii), explains sufficiently the genesis of this book; but it does not justify the act of pub- lishing. For the latter, therefore, I am alone responsible. I have acted in the belief that the publication of the Lectures would be accept- able to the Trustees of the Lectureship, and a suitable, though insufficient, acknowledgment of their generous confidence in appointing, as first Lecturer under the Trust, one who possesses no claim to such an honour, beyond what he shares with very many,—that of reverent affec- tion for his first and best theological teacher, and of a genuine interest in the study of the New Testament, especially the Synoptic Gospels. It seemed right also that the young theological 1x Fe Ae ee , am rf A . AUTHOR’S PREFACE students, for whom mainly the Lectures were intended, should have the opportunity of reading in full what could actually be delivered only in part. Wishing to speak as a learner to learners, I have thought it best to retain the lecture-form. The book is simply the manuscript, used in the delivery of the Lectures, printed. I have added some footnotes and appendixes, in the hope that some readers, at least, may be roused to pursue the study of an important and, in this country, practically new subject beyond the limits of these four Lectures. The title, Eschatology of Jesus, calls for some explanation. It expresses an ideal, rather than a performance that has been even attempted. Those, if there be any, who expect from the book the statement of a “ programme,” stamped with the authority of our Lord, of what is to happen after death, will suffer inevitable, but, perhaps, not altogether unprofitable, disappoint- ment, from its perusal. Unless I am altogether wrong, our Lord had less in common with an average Jewish apocalyptist of His time or before it, than we are apt to suppose. There AUTHOR’S PREFACE xi were certain great general features of Jewish Apocalypse, such as those I have tried to indi- cate in Lecture II., that appealed to Him ; but I have a strong impression that Jesus was not, even in the degree that may be predicable of His greatest Apostle, Paul, a Person with a “ pro- gramme” of what was to happen in the other world, or. even One, who had definite ideas as to the Zow or when of the collapse or trans- formation of this world. If I had thought it right to follow entirely my own inclination in this matter, the title I should have chosen would have been Jesus Revelator, or, in English, /eszs, The Seer. The reader will, therefore, kindly understand that in the title, actually chosen, the emphasis lies not on Lschatology, but on Jesus. My desire in all the Lectures has been to indicate not any series of events announced by Jesus as destined to take place in the Unseen World, but rather what I conceive to have been the attitude of mind, towards the entire range of subjects, commonly denoted eschatological, of One who knew Himself to be the Man appointed “to finish transgression and bring in an ever- wl Bo ts f Ce ye é Da xii AUTHOR’S PREFACE lasting righteousness.” Jesus has revealed the supremacy of righteousness and holy love; but I am not aware that He has said or done any- thing, that makes it less absolutely true than it was before He came, that ‘‘we know not what we shall be.” Even those, who accept this view of things, as probably true, may be disposed to complain that no attempt has been made to test its validity by a treatment in detail of sayings of Jesus, that seem to deal directly with. such subjects as Death, Judgment, Resurrection, and the Intermediate State. My answer is, that I was concerned to present certain aspects of a great subject, which I believe to be of pecu- _liarly urgent interest to the modern student of the Gospels, and that it was hardly possible to do more, than has been attempted, within the limits of four Lectures. If this little book were fortunate enough to encounter a demand much beyond the present issue, I should gratefully recognise in the circumstance a call to attempt a treatment of the subject, that might be, in at least some ways, worthier of the title. AUTHOR’S PREFACE xiii I have tried in the text and footnotes to indicate the books, from which I have derived most help. I should like to add, here, that, in connection with Lecture I. and Lecture III., I am conscious of owing most to Haupt, whose Eschatologische Aussagen 1 venture to think, on the whole, the best book, that has been written on the subject of the Lectures. In regard to Lecture IJ., my principal obligations are to my old teacher and friend, the venerable Professor A. Hilgenfeld, of Jena, whose /ddzsche Apokalyptik remains, after forty-six years, the standard work on the subject of Jewish Apoca- lypse. In regard to Lecture IV., I have learnt most from Fiebig’s Der Menschensohn, Jesu Selbst- bezerchnung, and I desire, so far as it may be necessary, respectfully to commend the work of this, evidently young but exceedingly competent, Aramaic scholar to those of his English-speaking contemporaries, who are better able than I am to judge of its merit from a strictly philological standpoint. For other matters connected with the book, I owe many thanks to many friends for much xiv AUTHOR’S PREFACE unsought but generously given encouragement. I desire, among my own contemporaries, to mention especially my almost life-long friend, the Rev. James T. Ferguson, of Cupar, Fife, and the friend of us both, Professor T. B. Kilpatrick, of Winnipeg, Canada, both of whom, in connection with these Lectures, have done me the rare service of giving unasked counsel, such as I have found it altogether good to follow. I desire to express my thanks to the Trustees of the Bruce Lectureship, especially to my former colleague in Broughty Ferry, Professor James Denney, to whose unfailing kindness and cour- tesy towards a temporary usurper of his profes- sorial chair I owe most that was pleasurable in the experiences, in Glasgow, of the first Bruce Lecturer. Among my juniors I desire especially to mention my dear friend, the Rev. F. J. Rae, of Newport, Fife, to whom I owe the suggestion, embodied in the ‘Contents and Summary,” and the Rev. A. Morris Stewart, of Arbroath, who revised the printed proofs of the Lectures with a care, equalled only by that which Mr. Ferguson bestowed upon the manuscript. AUTHOR’S PREFACE xv These Lectures were written in the highlands of Perthshire, during a summer holiday in August 1903; and I desire, in publishing them, to remember the kindness, if I may not mention the name, of an “elect lady” of those parts, who enabled me to do the necessary desk-work in circumstances of quiet and comfort, which, but for her gracious forethought, would have been impossible. My sincere thanks are due to the Publisher for the unfailing courtesy and patience, with which he has met the demands of an unusually troublesome author. BROUGHTY FERRY, January 1904. CONTENTS AND SUMMARY. LECTURE I. PAGES 3) Jo 3-12 THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF OUR ENQUIRY INTRODUCTION The Subjects of the Lectures. General Subject : the Apocalyptic Element in the Gospels. General Problem: how reconcile Eschatology and Ethics of Jesus ? J. Weiss’s Predigt Jesu, interesting but paradoxical. Yet raises Questions not to be evaded. ~~ Did Jesus hold the Ideas as well as use the Language of Apocalypse ? Examples of the Problem, broadly stated . : af) TONE This Lecture states the Presuppositions of our Enquiry— I. Critical Presuppositions, Synoptic Problem—Pro- bability. II. Presuppositions relating to Evangelists—Fact. III. Relating to Jesus—Moral Certainty. I. WE ASSUME AS PROBABLE : : : Oy) eee 1. Double Origin Hypothesis, Primitive Mark, and Zogéa. 13-15 Differences between Matthew and Luke. And of both from Mark. 2. No Synoptic Gospel necessarily later than 80 A.D. 2) E5=18 Mark and Matthew considerably earlier. Priority means, as a rule, greater Accuracy in Minutiz. Example in three Accounts of the Voice at Baptism. 3. The Fourth Gospel uniquely Valuable . 2 . 18-21 Even with reference to the History of Jesus. But contains rather Discourses than Incidents. XViii CONTENTS AND SUMMARY The Discourses rather reflective Reproductions than Reports. Hence this Gospel only of Secondary Value in a Study of the Words of Jesus. II. WE ASSUME AS FACT . . . v 1. Separate Eschatological Soke in Syaaghe Gospels bear stamp of Accurate Reports . : They are Parabolical, Paradoxical, and Pictoual Sometimes also Definite and apparently Fallacious Promises. Instances of the latter: Matt. x. 23, xvi. 28. Principle: the more Definite the Unfulfilled promise, the Truer the Report. 2. Arrangement of Eschatological Sayings often Erroneous Illustrated in the passage, Luke xvii. 20-xviii. 8. Incoherent Sequences to be ascribed to Evangelists, not to Jesus. 3. The Evangelists misunderstand, but do not intentionally misrepresent . —. The feeling of the Last Time omedes the New! Testament. ~~ The “Great Eschatological Discourse,” Mark xiii. = Matt. xxiv. ~~ Report dominated by Assumption that Fall of Jeru- salem =End of World. This explains Incoherence, and also Centrality of part about Jerusalem. ‘* Little Apocalypse” necessary. Theory Unproven and Un- III. WE ASSUME AS MORAL CERTAINTY : - I. Jesus’ Ignorance no Hindrance to Messianic Works 7 Rather the Sign of His Walk by Faith. 2. Jesus not chargeable with Intellectual Inconsistency Cannot be ignorant of the ‘‘ Day” and the ‘‘ Hour.” And yet certain that all must happen ‘‘ within this Generation.” 3. Elusiveness as well as Vividness in His Sayings : This quality is acknowledged in His Z¢hzca/ Sayings. Why should it not be also in His Zschatological? PAGES 21-47 21-25 26-35 35-47 47-53 47-48 48-50 50-53 CONTENTS AND SUMMARY LECTURE II. THE Main FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE CON- SIDERED IN THEIR AFFINITY TO THE MIND OF JESUs . INTRODUCTION Apocalypse and Prophecy, Seer and Prophet. The Prophet believes in Political Future for Israel. —and I shrink, in this reference, from sug- gesting even probabilities. On the other hand, I venture to think it more than a probability that He appreciated to the full the unique religious quality of the book; and, while He did not read it apart from older Scriptures, whose touch with life was in the nature of the case more direct if not more real, I hope in the fourth Lecture (on the title ‘‘Son of Man”) to give reason for saying, that the vision of the final glory, that held His 80 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS imagination all through His ministry, was that which finds expression in this book. If this be so, I think we must add, that Jesus found something in the Book of Daniel, that responded with peculiar emphasis to His own knowledge of God and the Kingdom, that both was, and was to be, entrusted to Himself. What this was is, perhaps, better defined as the ¢van- scendence of the Kingdom than as the transcend- ence of God. To Jesus indeed, in His filial knowledge of God, His consciousness of a unique call and a cor- responding endowment, and the perfect repose of His Spirit upon the holy and loving will of His Father in heaven, the Kingdom that was His Father's gift was a present reality ; but we must not overlook the fact that all through His preach- ing—not simply in eschatological discourses de- livered towards the close of His life—He pre- sented the Kingdom in a futuristic aspect. Joh. Weiss has, I think, in some degree mis- placed the importance of this fact ; yet there are, perhaps, few passages in modern literature on the Gospels, that can so well bear re-reading and MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 381 pondering as the part of Weiss’s book, in which he depicts the sense of the imminence of the Kingdom of God, which Jesus carried with Him all through His ministry. There is much, also, that is convincing in his protest against the confidence, with which many commentators, on the evidence rather of their own modern thoughts than of the Gospels, have insisted that a main idea of Jesus was, that the Kingdom of God is a thing of slow and imperceptible growth—in short, a develop- ment. No doubt, this idea is strongly suggested to us by the parabolic teaching, especially by such parables as the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, but that is partly explicable by the fact that, with or without a reference to these parables, we think of every kind of progress as proceeding in this way. I fully admit that parables like the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, and the Seed growing secretly in the ground, prove that Jesus contemplated and wished to prepare the disciples for long intervals of apparent Divine inaction in the preparation of the Kingdom, and I should agree that there is room enough in this blank for all that is of worth in our ideas of evolution. 6 82 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS At the same time, I think it must be allowed that the evidence of the Gospels is against the supposition, that Jesus’ conception of the Kingdom had much or any kinship with the modern idea, that human society is a vast organism, whose progress is necessarily slow and complicated. I think we must say that Jesus habitually thought, not of the analogy of the Kingdom to anything in this world, or even of its relations to men’s higher activities (as if it were in some sense a product of them), but rather of its unique and Divine transcendence. It wasa thing of mysteries that could not be known by those, who had no savour of the things of God, and, while it was the good pleasure of the Father to give it to His believing children, the treasures of it belonged solely to God, and the times of it were known — only to Him. I believe we must make more than Weiss is disposed to do of the passages, in which Jesus speaks of the Kingdom as something already present. The fact, that the Kingdom is not of this world, did not conflict with the fact, that it was already in substance given to those MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 83 who had faith to receive it. But neither, on the other hand, did the fact, that it was already in substance given and present to the faithful in His own person and work, interfere with the certainty that there would be a future and glorious mani- festation of it, that would strike the eye of the world. This futuristic aspect of the Kingdom was certainly present to the mind of Jesus. It neces- sarily receives a certain prominence both in His general preaching and in His exhortations (especially towards the close) to the little flock of disciples ; but I cannot agree that it dominated His entire view of the life of faith in the way Weiss represents. The formula, Zhe Kingdom of God has come near (implying that it is still future), was the natural formula for evangelistic preaching. It had the advantage of embracing the two elements of grace and judgment that must enter into all preaching directed to a general audience. It conveyed good news to believing hearts prepared to receive it, and to those, who neither possessed the Kingdom nor thought of it, it conveyed warning. For to say, The Kingdom 84 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS has come near, meant: Repent, or else prepare for instant judgment. But Jesus was not simply an evangelist. He was the pastor of faithful souls. His thoughts were more than could be well expressed in a formula, whose natural effect was to turn atten- tion from the affairs of the present. He taught the duties of citizenship to those to whom, as to Himself, the Kingdom was already present in the inner experience of faith. He offered a yoke of precepts to those who came to Him, and with it the rest of faith in a Father in heaven, whose love covered the wants of to-day and excluded anxiety about to-morrow. If we chose to put it in modern technical language, we might say that the tran- scendent God was to Him also the immanent God. But transcendent He was all the same, and, just because He was transcendent, therefore He was all-sufficient—as for the future, so also for the present. 4. I venture to claim for the apocalyptic literature—at least as represented by the Book of Daniel—that it contained the suggestion of a new view of the world. MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 85 Of purpose I say simply the suggestion, be- cause I believe that any evidence that could be adduced as to the views of the average believing Jew, who nourished his faith upon apocalyptic writings, would go to show, that he could not, and did not, define his expecta- tion otherwise than as a Jewish empire of the world with its centre at Jerusalem. This state of the case is not surprising. We may even say that it was inevitable. For, in point of fact, the testimony of the apocalyptist ceases with the announcement of the altogether wonderful advent of the Kingdom. He is certain that power will be taken from those, who are ignorant of the law of God or who despise it, and given to those who know it and keep it. He is certain of this, in spite of the most adverse circumstances, national and individual. For the advent of the Kingdom is a pure wonder. It is wrought by Him whose habitation is heaven and who rules the angelic hosts, and it has nothing to do with the arm of flesh. The apocalyptist sees the advent of the Kingdom, but, if we may put it so, he does not see the Kingdom itself, and, if he is 86 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS wise like Daniel, he does not utter more than he sees. Hence, perhaps, in the main the curious fact, that a personal Head of the Kingdom other than Jehovah Himself—in other words, the Messiah—is by no means necessarily a part of the vision of the Advent common to all apocalypses ; and even when He does appear He is sometimes no more than a formal Figure, receiving, like the symbolic ‘one like unto ’ a son of man” in Daniel vii. 13, the King- dom from the Ancient of Days, but not even performing the work of judgment upon the nations. Reserving further reference to this point to the fourth Lecture, I wish, at present, only to point out that, in spite of this almost total indefiniteness in the apocalyptic vision of the Kingdom, two things regarding it are perfectly plain from the general mode and circumstances of the apocalyptic presentation. A. The one is that the sphere of the King- dom’s realisation is this earth, The Kingdom, no doubt, comes from heaven, but it is given to men on earth. I am wholly inclined to MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 87 agree with Titius,* whose four books regarding the Final Salvation contain the most courageously elaborate systematisation of eschatological ideas as they appear in the New Testament, that is likely to be attempted in our generation—that it is a fundamental mistake to suppose that an apocalyptist has necessarily any quarrel with the earth or the world as such. The earth may be renewed and transformed, and the powers even of the upper sphere may be shaken in the process (see Mark xiii. 24f., and parallels) ; but, after all, the earth remains the place to which the Kingdom comes. B. The other thing is that the Kingdom is one. In other words, it is a world - empire. No other view of it is possible. The whole 1 Die neutestamentliche Lehre von der Seligkeit und thre Bedeutung fur die Gegenwart, Erster Theil: Jesu Lehre vom Reiche Gottes. Mohr, 1895. The other three parts deal respect- ively with the Pauline, Johannine, and Catholic (Ecclesiastical) conceptions of the final salvation. Titius is confident that Jesus expected the end of the world in His own time, but he holds that the expectation did not so possess His mind as not to pass readily, through His surrender to His Father’s will, into the larger reality. Such, at least, is the general impression of his views on the subject of Lecture III. (Part III.) I have received from a too cursory reading of what seems, in many ways, an important book. 88 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS apocalyptic literature belongs to a period when, practically speaking, small kingdoms are no more. It is a day of empires, and the world is one. Now, I venture to think that this aspect of things reveals one of the points, at which the apocalyptic mode of presentation, as seen particularly in Daniel, must have possessed a certain attraction for our Lord. The Gospels inform us clearly enough that the imperial idea had for Him the attraction of a temptation, but it is not difficult to see that, while He rejected the showy forms of empire that had come and gone in this world, He believed in an empire of men, founded not upon the self-assertion of superior races or individuals, but upon their self- sacrifice, and maintained, not by force of arms, but by the eternal strength of righteousness and the overflowing omnipotence of humility and love. The world was far enough away from such a Kingdom. But such a Kingdom would come to the world in the good time of God. The power was already there in Himself and in all who believed with Him in a Father in heaven, to whom all things were possible. MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 89 5. Too little space is left me to do more than touch, in closing this Lecture, on the point that lies nearest to the hearts of us all—the new view of life. We can hardly enter here, to much purpose, on so great a subject as that of the various adumbrations to the doctrine of individual immortality contained in the Old Testament. The details and qualifications of what I am about to assert, you, who enjoy the instruction on the Old Testament that is to be had in this College, know, or will soon know, incomparably better than I could tell you. I wish only at present to call attention to the general fact that, outside of the Book of Daniel, the Old Testament hardly teaches, and seldom even surely suggests, a doctrine of immortality, which implies a con- quest of death by individual personalities. Rarest of all is the suggestion of a resurrection of the body. This state of the case is explicable, in the main, by the fact that the unit for Old Testament faith is the nation rather than the individual. To the nation are given the pledges 90 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS of the eternal faithfulness, in whose blessings the individual shares only as a member of the holy covenant people. Clearly, the immortality of a nation may easily enough seem to be vouchsafed by its continuity from generation to generation ; and it is instructive to notice that in the two passages that are perhaps most com- monly cited to instance the Old Testament idea of resurrection—Hosea vi. 2 and Ezekiel XXXvii.—the conception, clearly, is that of the resurrection of a nation. So far as I am aware, there is, outside of Daniel, only one passage in the Old Testament, that speaks directly of a bodily resurrection of individuals, taken singly. I mean Isaiah xxvi. 19; and of it it has to be said, that it occurs in a section of the Book of Isaiah (chapters xxiv.—xxvii.),! that is clearly of 1 See, e.g., Duhm’s Commentary (Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, Gottingen, 1892). Duhm remarks of the section, Isa. xxiv.-xxvii. : “It is considered on all hands of-a-piece and spurious. Indeed, Isaiah could as well have written the Book of Daniel as this piece” (p. 148). Dr. G. A. Smith allows the apocalyptic character of chap xxiv., and says that chaps. xxv.—xxvil. “ may naturally be held to be a continuation” of it. For, though historical allusions are, in the latter chapters, numerous, “they contradict one another, to the perplexity of the most acute critics” (“Isaiah” in the Bz- positors Bible, vol. i. pp. 416 and 428). MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE g1 the nature of an apocalypse. In Daniel xii. 2 the conception of a bodily resurrection of indi- viduals is distinctly expressed, and it became henceforward, in more or less limited form, a constant feature of apocalyptic books. The form of the doctrine, prevalent in the time of our Lord, and developed since the time of the Book of Daniel, is that of a twofold resurrection : (1) a resurrection of the faithful members of the covenant nation—a “resurrection of the just,” and (2) a general resurrection, preliminary to judgment in which all participate. Putting out of account the little Apocalypse in Isaiah, we may say that the peculiar interest of the idea of resurrection in Daniel, above all apocalypses, is that we see it there, as it were, in the moment of birth. There is no growth upon it of reflection and convention. The freshness of the conception is, however, also its limitation. There is no sign that the apo- calyptist contemplated a resurrection of all the past generations of faithful Israelites; and his words expressly exclude the idea of a unzversal resurrection. His message is to the generation 92 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS that has seen the distress out of the midst of which his book is written. He speaks to those, who are living through the agony, and, if the modern commentators are right, he definitely predicts the end of the Syrian oppression in three and a half years (Dan. xii. 7). Before this time, however, there will be distress such as was never known since there was a nation, and many of those who saw the beginning of it — whether faithful or unfaithful—shall before the end sleep the sleep of death. The seer’s certainty of a resurrection is his certainty that death will neither rob those, who kept the covenant, of their share in the bliss of the coming Kingdom, nor shield those, who broke it, from the sting of reproach. The beauty and restraint of his language have seldom been equalled, and never (one may surely say) surpassed. ‘‘ Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlast- ing life, and some to shame and everlasting con- tempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.” MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 93 It would be wholly unwarrantable to assert that, when our Lord clearly perceived and accepted the will of His Father that He should accom- plish the Kingdom by way of suffering and death in Jerusalem, He fed His faith, that He would conquer death both for Himself and His followers, exclusively, or even perhaps mainly, on the Book of Daniel. The narrative of His encounter with the Sadducees, when they produced their fatuous puzzle of the woman with the seven husbands, would be alone sufficient to refute any such idea, and to prove that to Jesus the Old Testament Scriptures as a whole conveyed the pledge of the will and power of God to raise the dead who had lived unto Him. But there is, I venture to think, warrant for saying that, especi- ally in the last days of His life in the flesh, the testimony of this book was much to Him. There are really no facts better attested in the Gospels than that, a day or two before His death, Jesus spoke prophetically to some of the leading dis- ciples of the disasters that awaited the Jewish nation and capital in the near future ; that, at more than one point in this discourse, He quoted the 94 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS Book of Daniel ;* and that, in general, the circum- stances of distress, which are depicted in the discourse, are closely similar to those in which, as we now know, the canonical Apocalypse was written. All this did not happen by chance. There was behind it, I venture to think, the recog- nition of a peculiar suitableness in the testimony of this book to a situation that was about to emerge, and that, to His vision of faith, already existed. The seer in Daniel contemplated a condition of the national fortunes, that seemed to him, in a secular sense, desperate. He had no vision, like that common to the former prophets, of a restored city and Temple, or even, perhaps, of the resurrection of a nation; and yet he knew that God would give the Kingdom to those, who kept His covenant; and he testified that death itself would not rob the faithful of their reward. In His discourse to the disciples Jesus had in view a condition of secular affairs, resulting from the nation’s unfaithfulness to God, equally hopeless ; and when, speaking to the disciples, He cited 1 Mark xiii. 14-26; cp. Dan. xi. 31, vii. 13. MAIN FEATURES OF JEWISH APOCALYPSE 95 Daniel, I understand Him to have meant, in effect, mainly that the pledge of deliverance, given in that ancient time to the faithful, was still valid. Perhaps it may seem to you to add a point of persuasiveness to this view of things, if I close, by setting side by side a verse of Daniel and two reported sayings of Jesus, not specially apocalyptic in form. In Daniel xii. 1, we read: ‘‘ There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.” “Rejoice not,” said Jesus to a group of evangelists who were filled with gladness at the success of their first mission and knew nothing of the evil days to come, “that the spirits are subject unto you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke x. 20). And again: “Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give youthe Kingdom” (Luke xii. 32). ae wan Se ive p<) a ee oe =a a aera By 6S Fr = ee BECTURE IIb THE DOCTRINE OF JESUS CONCERNING _ THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KING- DOM, CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO HIS ETHICAL DOCTRINE AND HIS MESSIANIC CONSCIOUSNESS. ee SS een See LECTURE 1fk HE DOCTRINE OF JESUS CONCERNING THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KING- DOM, CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO mS EPHICAL ‘DOCERINE AND, His MESSIANIC CONSCIOUSNESS. E enter, now, on a discussion that is full of perplexity, and in regard to whose issues in detail many views are possible. It would be very easy to occupy this Lecture with an attempt to mediate between the conflicting views of learned men, whom one would like to see atone. At the risk of incurring a verdict of neglect of duty, I propose to continue the plan of asking you to look at the subject, as directly as possible, with your own eyes. It is, I fear, an inevitable misfortune that you should, for the present, look at it also through mine. Our general object is to ascertain, if possible, the 99 100 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS mind of Jesus regarding the Consummation of the Kingdom. What did He actually think regarding the end of the world (as we know it), and the coming of the Kingdom? Can we state His doctrine to ourselves in any helpful way, apart from the pictures He usually employed; recognising, on the one hand, that, in the nature of the case, the pictures cannot be taken literally, and, on the other, that the pictorial language is a chief, if not the sole, authority? How does that doctrine stand to His ethical doctrine of the Kingdom, and to His own Messiahship ? I propose (as it were by anticipation) to summarise the teaching under three heads, each stating a contrast. I. The Kingdom of God, in its contrast with the collapsing world-order. II. The Messiah, in His contrast to the Prince of this world. III. The Kingdom come, in its contrast to the Kingdom coming. Shortly: The Kingdom, The Messiah, The Time, THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 1o1 Perhaps, as we state these heads, and remember that our subject is the Eschatology of Jesus, we are conscious of a certain meagreness in the material offered to our thought. It seems to vanish, like the apocalyptist’s vision, to a point of glory. We see the heavens, and they are blue, but blank. The reason of this (I wish to say it at once) is, that we are trying, for the moment, to do what jis really impossible, namely, to consider the eschatological teaching of Jesus apart from His ethical teaching. When spiritual things are set forth in pictures, their spiritual reality is, in some respects, rather veiled than revealed. The apocalyptic pictures of the glorious coming Kingdom and the evil collapsing world may exist in the imagination, quite apart from any corresponding inner thought regarding the conduct of men, and the appeal to them of the Divine goodness and love. In reality, no such things exist, as the pictures in themselves suggest. They are as unthinkable as, say, an object held in the hand that has only one side. The Kingdom of God has, so to speak, its other side in the motives and conduct of good men; 102 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS and the collapsing world is quite as much the world made dy evil men, as the fate prepared for them. In the thought of Jesus these two sides of the one reality—-we may call them the ethical and the eschatological— were never separate, though the emphasis He laid upon the transcendent character of the reality, and His unique power of speaking in pictures, tend, to a certain extent, to veil the fact from us. Nothing is more important in this investigation than to keep before us, not merely the reasonable hypothesis that this was so, but the certainty that it must have been so. Our investigation could have no conceivable interest for us unless we thought of the Kingdom (and were sure that Jesus also thought of it) as, in spite of its tran- scendence, an object of possible, and even in a substantial sense of actual, experience. We approach our subject, therefore, necessarily with the idea .that, while Jesus certainly spoke of the Kingdom as something still to come, He could not have done so, in any sense inconsistent with the belief and experience that it was already in a real way present. THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 103 I. The text, which probably expresses to us most naturally Jesus’ thought of the transcendence of the Kingdom above the world-order, is that, in which He says to Pilate: ‘‘My Kingdom is not of this world. If My Kingdom were of this world, My servants would be striving that I should not be delivered to the Jews, but now is My Kingdom not from thence’”—z.e., it does not come from that quarter, the world, but from heaven (John xviii. 36). But, remembering that these words occur in the Fourth Gospel, we may prefer to look for the expression of the same thought in the Synoptic Gospels. We find it in the passage, Mark xii. 13 ff, and parallels, containing the incident of the tribute money, that bore the image of Czsar. The Pharisees wished to know whether He, whom the people seemed ready to accept as the Messiah, found anything offensive in this sign of the subjection of the Messianic people to a foreign yoke. It is best for our present purpose to look away from the sinister motive of the Pharisees, and the rebuke it doubtless received in the answer of Jesus. Apart from this, the words of Jesus 104 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS seem clearly to mean: Why should not one be both a subject of Cesar, and a subject of God in the Messianic Kingdom? Where there are no points of contact, there can be no collision. The natures of the two jurisdictions are entirely distinct. Jesus was not concerned to say here what, according to the Fourth Gospel, He said in effect to Pilate—that the power of Czsar also was, in its own way, a trust from God. It was enough to have dealt with the point actually submitted, and wholly characteristic of Him to have said nothing to blunt the edge of the distinction between the things of Cesar and the things of God. One who was about to submit to death, at the hand of the world-power, in order to bring in the Kingdom of Heaven, could say no word in favour of political rebellion. If the Roman dominion was wrong, let them bear the wrong patiently, following a King who entered on His glory and theirs through suffering. The most patent proof that Jesus thought of the Kingdom as a transcendent thing, lies of course in His use of the apocalyptic imagery ; THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 105 but I give the first place to the evidence of such a passage as that just referred to, because it is connected clearly with a practical situation. It is easy to move, in imagination, with the apocalyptic Seer in the heavenly regions, where all things are possible; but the essential point for us to deter- mine is, whether or not Jesus took seriously the thought imbedded in the apocalyptic pictures. As to what the thought is, there is no doubt. He Himself has referred us to the Book of Daniel, especially chap. vii. Here we have the contrast of the four kingdoms, whose symbols are beasts that rise out of the sea, with the final Kingdom, whose symbol is ‘‘one like unto a son of man” (verse 13). The four beasts represent the powers that have been successively the political masters of the chosen people, and of the world (as known to them) from the Babylonian exile to the apocalyptist’s own time. In origin, nature, and duration they are the opposite of the King- dom, whose symbol is a human form. In origin they are from beneath. He is from above. In nature they are savage and pitiless, torn, even while they last, with their own violence. The 106 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS heavenly kingdom is humane. Its rulers are the saints, the worshippers of Jehovah, who keep His law. As to time, the dominion of the beasts is taken away after a season, but to the “one like unto a son of man” is given a universal and lasting dominion. We shall have occasion in the next Lecture to point out that the vision of the Seer, however impressive, has limitations, which could not have attached to the vision of Jesus. Yet we have only to compare it with the passage, in which the Master deals with the request of the sons of Zebedee for places of power in the Messianic Kingdom, to see how entirely the essential thoughts of the Daniel Apocalypse lent them- selves to the mind of Jesus. We see also how entirely in earnest our Lord is with the distinction marked in the apocalyptic name, ‘‘ Kingdom of the Heavens.” The apocalyptic language is of course, in its way, the most forcible expression of this contrast ; but then, it is language of the imagination, which leaves us asking for the corresponding reality. We do not ask in vain. In the request of the THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 107 sons of Zebedee, Jesus saw and condemned the desire for honour and power, that should be be- stowed, as a mere gift, apart from service. Here precisely is the point, where the absolute difference between this perishing world and the lasting heavenly Kingdom can be stated, in terms of the human conscience and experience. It looks like a childish insistence on what is obvious, and yet, in view of the emphasis which writers like J. Weiss have laid on what has’ been called the biblical realism, it seems necessary to say that Jesus did not attach any sort of im- portance to the /oca/ contrast of earth and heaven. The essential distinction lay for Him, as it lies for us, in a region, contained indeed in time and space, in its manifestation conditioned by them, but, in its own nature, independent of them. This region (we must call it by some name) has two sides, and it touches us simultaneously with both. If we define these sides by refer- ence to their analogues in ourselves, we shall say that the one is the side of religious faith, the other that of moral experience. These two sides were always to Jesus — what they 108 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS are to the modern Christian thinker — mutu- ally inclusive. He knew nothing of religion without morality, or of morality without re- ligion. The only difference between Him and a modern thinker is that, so far as we know, He never contemplated either side of this unity in its abstract separateness from the other. He certainly never contemplated the modern mon- strosity of a secular morality divorced from all hope of the Hereafter. In any case, He knew nothing of a shall de of the future, the vision of which was dissociated in His mind from an ought to be of the present. In other words, His ethical always kept pace with His eschatological teaching. We see this very clearly in the incident of the sons of Zebedee. Jesus had often spoken of the Kingdom of God in the future sense, and He had spoken of it as a gift. Why might not supremacy in it be simply gzvez to two par- ticular individuals— James and John? Jesus’ reply is to turn to the sons of Zebedee the side of His thought which they had neglected. They had asked, practically, for the kind of a ee 8D ee, THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 109 thing that is seen every day in this world— power possessed and exercised apart from moral fitness ; and they had done so in implicit faith in the promise of Jesus regarding the Kingdom that should be. Jesus says to them, in effect, that they are presupposing in the Kingdom precisely the thing that shall not be. By implication, also, His answer contains the thought that it is just its indifference or opposition to what ought to be that makes the sentence of perishing passed upon the world-order so certain. Could we find clearer proof than this incident affords, that, in the teach- ing of our Lord, ethical principle dominated apoca- lyptic imagery, and not, as J. Weiss would almost have it, vzce versa? For all that, we must be sure that we do no injustice to that element in Jesus’ teaching, which Weiss very properly emphasises, namely, the ¢van- scendence of the Kingdom of God, and its gracious character. These two qualities seem to be cor- relative. If the Kingdom is transcendent, in the sense of being removed from the conditions of the natural order of this world, it is scarcely con- ceivable that it should be a mere product of IIO THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS the best actions of the best men. “I ‘cannot find anything in the language of Jesus to warrant the views of those who make Him responsible for the philosophical paradox that the Kingdom is both gift of God and product of men. v It is common to cite Matthew vi. 33, as if it contained this paradox. This, I venture to think, is unwarranted. Jesus is speaking not about producing the King- dom, but about an attitude of spirit suitable to its reception. Y Moral effort no more produces the Kingdom than anxious toil produces food and raiment; true as it is, in each case, that the effort and the toil are necessary. What Jesus seems to say is: ‘“‘Do not worry over things like food and raiment, as if these were all the worth of life, and God had no care for the interests they represent. Donot even worry over the Kingdom. Show only by the way you live—your regard for justice and mercy and faith, and your compara- tive indifference to the things which the men of this ‘age’ value—that what you supremely desire is the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Scxavocdvn = possibly, rather, 7us¢zfication) ; do this, and not only will this supreme Divine good be given THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 11 to your desire, but the lesser temporal goods will be thrown into the bargain (pocteOjcerar).” At the same time, the philosophic interpreters are wholly right in the perception that there is very close affinity between the condition of receiv- ing the thing (expressed in “seek ye”) and the thing itself, namely, the Kingdom of God; and, if writers like J. Weiss compel attention to the transcendent nature of the Kingdom as something wholly beyond the compass of human production— beyond even the productive power of the good will of a good man—writers of the modern philo- sophical type are also useful. They compel us to include in our definition of the Kingdom of God—and indeed to put in its very centre— a reference to the motives of conduct. After all, the renewed heaven and earth, of which the apocalyptist speaks, do not constitute the Kingdom that is not of this world. They are only its circumference. It takes nothing from the transcendence of the Kingdom, and it is the first step towards making it an object of real interest and aspiration, to say, that it is a power that acts primarily on the human will, and only i i THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS secondarily upon things that are independent of that will; just as it does not take from the glory of God, but only expresses it, to say that He is primarily holy love, and only secondarily sovereign power. It is worth remarking, by the way, that it is probably to this fact we are to look for the explanation of the practical disappearance of the phrase, Kingdom of God, from all the books of the New Testament outside the Synoptic Gospels, except the Apocalypse. The few occasions? on which, for example, Paul uses the phrase, may perhaps imply that it was still, in his time, the phrase which the early Christians were accus- tomed to use as a comprehensive description of the grace of God in the gospel; but when Paul said, “The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink ; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in 1JIn his commentary on “Romans” in the Exfositors Greek Testament (in. loc., Rom. xiv. 17), Dr. Denney points out that, out of seven other passages, where Kingdom of God occurs in the Pauline writings, there are szz, in which it is clearly used in the transcendent sense—in one case (2 Tim. iv. 18) with the epithet, heavenly—against one (1 Cor. iv. 20), where it is used in a sense akin to that in the Synoptic Gospels. The six are: 1 Cor. vi. 9f., xv. 50; Gal. v. 21; 1 Thess. ii. 12 ; 2 Thess. i. 5; 2 Tim. iv. 18. THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 113 the Holy Ghost” (Rom. xiv. 17), he gave prob- ably a sufficient reason for dispensing with the phrase in most places, where he had occasion to speak of just these things. It can hardly, I think, be doubted that to the average mind of the first century, whether Jewish ‘or Gentile, the phrase would inevitably carry with it a medley of political and apocalyptic images, and so would easily lend itself to a fanatical use. If that were so, Jesus must have been aware of it; and it is a remarkable fact—a sign perhaps of His unique calm foresight—that, in spite of all the dangers of misunderstanding, He retained the phrase in habitual use. He not only said Kingdom of God, but, according to Matthew, He used the more distinctively Jewish and apocalyptic phrase, Kzugdom of the Heavens. In this study we must be ruled by His example, and we may close this paragraph by attempting a definition of the Kingdom of God in Jesus’ sense. We can neither define it, in the spirit of Hellenism, as a new order of society, in which their proper supreme place is given to justice and piety,—it may be this, but it is more,—nor can we define it, in the 8 = 114 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS spirit of Jewish Apocalypse, as a system of things in which the happiness of good men is secured against all limitation or disaster, arising from causes operating in this world. It may be this also, but this is not the centre. The rules of right definition are, that it be sufficiently comprehensive and that it proceed from the centre. These conditions will, I venture to think, be fulfilled, if we say that the Kingdom of God is the sum of all the good things belonging to the supernatural life of God's children, and that these good things are, primarily, powers of holy truth and love acting on the human conscience and will, II. Our second topic in this Lecture is Jesus’ Conception of His own Person—in other words, His Messianic Consciousness. This subject will naturally enter into the discussion proposed for next Lecture—that, namely, regarding the title ‘Son of Man.” Here it may be sufficient briefly to indicate how inextricably the doctrine of the Kingdom of God is, in the Gospels, bound up with the consciousness that Jesus is the Person, THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 115 who brings the Kingdom to earth, and establishes it there. The Gospels persistently use words, or represent Jesus as using them, which imply that He stood in a unique relation to God, His Father, and to men, His brethren, in virtue of which He was the dispenser, to those who believed in Him, of the supernatural blessings of the heavenly Kingdom. Not the most sceptical student of the Gospels dreams of denying that, from their point of view, the doctrines of the Kingdom of God and of the double trusteeship of Jesus (that towards God and that towards men) stand or fall together. “To the Evangelists, and the New Testament generally, the Kingdom has its King—not simply God, but Jesus whom God has chosen; and the King— He whom God has chosen—has the Kingdom. ~There may be a question as to how precisely the Kingship is to be understood. That is a question of interpretation. There may be a still graver question, as to its precise historic equivalent in the consciousness of Jesus Himself. But, indubitably, to all the New Testament writers, Jesus is the King; and, from their point of view, 116 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS it is practically one and the same thing to say, God reigns and Jesus reigns. It is obvious that we touch here on a matter of vital importance to our present study. _ If the testi- mony of the Gospels is to be, zz the main, accepted or rejected, it must be at this point and no other. For the centre of gravity in the Gospels is not, after all, the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. That phrase might, a fvio7vz, be considered as simply specialising a commonplace of philosophy, or apocalyptic, or political theory, peculiarly ger- mane to the Jewish mind. The centre of gravity is not even what, in the view of the Gospels, Jesus ¢aught regarding the Kingdom. Doubtless, He taught much to which the universal conscience of men will always respond. The centre of gravity in the Gospels is, without a doubt, what they teach regarding the peculiar relation of Jesus to the Kingdom. In other words, it is not their doctrine of the Kingdom, but their doctrine of the King. I will pause here only to say that it must be towards this point we must look for the reconciliation of the apparent dualism between THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 117 the Kingdom, conceived as present, and the Kingdom conceived as future. It is in the con- sciousness of Jesus, if anywhere, that we may hope to find a point, at which the present will be seen to carry the future securely in its bosom, and the future will seem to be as the present. In other words, if we are able to see that what characterises Jesus is the double consciousness,— that He is the Messiah, z.e., the Person appointed to effectuate the Kingdom, and that He can bring His work to its glorious consummation only through a career of patient suffering and service,—there can be no need to puzzle over the paradox of Kingdom that zs, and yet is to be. The real puzzle is, not the ¢hzmg but the Person. iT We come snow to! the | very - critical question: What did Jesus actually think and teach regarding the ¢zme of the consummation ? I regard the data for settling this question, so far as it can be settled, as mainly the following :— 1. There is our axiom of moral certainty, that Jesus could not have said, in one compass of 118 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS reference, that He did not know the day and hour of the consummation, but that, yet, all the signs of it would be accomplished in that generation. No doubt, the earlier Evangelists would be able to reconcile these two statements. Probably they felt no difficulty about them, or, if they did feel a difficulty, they had a solution, Perhaps they were helped by a certain literalism: “ He said, indeed, that He did not know the day nor the Zour, but that has nothing to do with the certainty He expressed that all would happen within our own generation.” It cannot be said that this was in any way an unnatural position for the first generation of Christians to take up. It is probably nearer the truth to say, that it was an inevitable position. They saw the collapse of the Jewish State, and they felt the world sinking beneath their feet. If they felt any difficulty, it was not with the saying, All will happen in this generation, but with the other. With us the position is precisely the reverse. The explanation natural to the Evangelists is for us impossible and preposterous. If Jesus did not know the “day” nor the “hour,” THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 119 neither did He know the ¢zme—whether “this generation” or the next. 2. I am disposed to claim, as a second datum in this discussion, that there are no two sayings in the Gospels better attested than Mark xiii. verses 30 and 32 (cp. Matt. xxiv. verses 34 and 36, Luke xxi. 32). For purposes of reference, we may call the former ‘This generation,” and the latter ‘‘“Not even the Son.” The canon, which Professor Schmiedel has laid down in his remarkable article ‘Gospels,’ in the Lucyclo- pedia Biblica, that those sayings of Jesus are to be considered genuine, which have the appear- ance of running counter to the view of His Divine dignity, which the Evangelists were con- cerned to uphold, is no doubt far from being the only canon for detecting genuineness. But it is unquestionably a vadzd canon. If Jesus had not actually said, ‘‘ Not even the Son,” no conceiv- able motive would have induced reporters, whose tendency was to believe in His literal omniscience, to represent Him as saying it. And just because He most certainly said, ‘‘Not even the Son,” ’ the other saying, ‘This generation,” must have 120 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS presented to the Evangelists an aspect of diffi- culty. On critical principles, this very difficulty is a strong guarantee that the saying is genuine. We may, therefore, take it as certain that in some connection or another Jesus said, with emphasis, “‘ Zhzs generation shall not pass till all these things be done.” The question is: In what connection, or with what precise meaning ? I am disposed to think that no answer to this question, other than conjectural, is possible ; and, if we exclude (as I have ventured to do) the view that Jesus could have meant to say, that the end of the world-order and the consummation of glory would, for certain, happen during the lifetime of the generation to whom He spoke, the question in what particular reference He uttered the saying, “This generation,” while it remains interesting, ceases to be momentous. The answer, z.é., even if attainable, does not strike one as likely to shed any fresh or important light upon the mind of Jesus. Yet it is worth remembering that the saying in question is not, or at any rate need not be regarded as, an isolated utterance. It may be THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 121 considered rather as one of a class of which there are, at least, three other examples in the Gospels. The first is Matt. x. 23, where Jesus says to His missionaries: ‘‘ Verily I say unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, until the Son of Man be come.” The second is Mark ix. 1— cp. Matt. xvi. 28, “The Son of Man coming in His Kingdom,” and Luke ix. 27, “ Until they see the Kingdom of God”—“ Verily I say unto you, that there are some of those standing here, who shall not taste death, until they see the Kingdom of God having come (éAnAv@viav) in power.” And the third is Mark xiv. 62—cp. Matt. xxvi. 64, * From henceforth,” and Luke xxii. 69, ‘‘From now the Son of Man shall be sitting ”—“ Ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” These sayings are, practically, on the same foot- ing of certainty with ‘‘ This generation,” and they are sayings of the same kind. A c/ass of sayings undoubtedly possesses an interest, which can hardly belong to an isolated utterance. To find a clue to a class of sayings, suggests the revelation of a mental attitude of Jesus towards a wide range of 122 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS things. Suppose we found it impossible to say, in regard to any one of these sayings taken by itself, what Jesus mast have meant, we may still be able, looking at them collectively, to reach a point of view from which we may see clearly what He may have meant by any one of them in particular, or even by ad of them taken together. This collective clue, it seems to me, begins to emerge, as we bring into view the data I have now to mention. 3. We may describe them generally as the pervasive data, meaning by this that they do not consist of isolated utterances, but are expressive rather of a tone, that pervades the Gospels, either in whole, or in great part. (2) First, there is the undoubted fact that the preaching of Jesus began with an alarm note taken up from John the Baptist, to which He added, or (if it is preferred) which He converted into, a note of good news. Here is how it is put in Mark i. 4: ‘‘After John had been delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the good news of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, the THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 123 Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” The point to which I ask attention, is that the note sounded in these words is pervasive. Whether or not Jesus had definite convictions regarding the end or transformation of the world in a physical sense, He was suve that the Kingdom of God was at hand. It was not a surmise, it was more than a prophecy. The Kingdom had really come upon that genera- tion. There were choice souls, who saw the proof of its powers in works of healing, and there was One, to whom it was given to move the finger of God and to see Satan fall from heaven.* In other words, the Kingdom was not only coming, it had in substance really arrived. We are inquiring as to likelihoods concerning what Jesus may have said about the end of the world. If He said, continually, the Kingdom is coming, from the point of view of One who already experienced and exercised its powers, He must have had a corresponding persuasion that the worldly order, in so far as it was opposed to the 1 See especially Luke xi. 20(cp. Matt. xii. 28 f.), xvii. 20 f., x. 17 ff. 124 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS Kingdom, was about to collapse. The casting out of the unclean demons, that made the bodies of men the habitation of disease and corruption, was a sure sign that the Prince of this world would be cast out. Certainty regarding this latter crisis was the negative side of His certainty as to the power and will of God to give the Kingdom to His poor ones, and to satisfy the hungry with the bread of righteousness. Now, this must have given to the speech and bearing of Jesus a certain other-worldliness. His disciples, He said, were to rejoice in nothing but that their names were written in heaven. I consider it certain that He must have given both to them and to others the impression that He reckoned the days of this world, as they knew it, to be numbered. The question, important for us to ask, is: Did He become a kind of speaking Apocalyptist, and commit Himself in any degree to calcu- lations as to physical details? My answer is, that it would take a good deal more evidence than is contained in the eschatological utterances reported in the Gospels, to make it seem in the THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 125 least degree likely that He did anything of the kind. There is no reason to doubt the testimony of the Synoptists, that He described the collapse of the world in terms suggested by the canonical Scriptures." There is the same propriety or even inevitableness in His doing this, as there is in His shaping the figure of the glorified Messiah according to the vision in Daniel. It is also according to probability, I should say it was inevitable, that He should have made the cosmi- cal catastrophe, or transformation, practically co- incident with the manifestation of the Son of Man in the glory of the clouds. —The transformation of the world and the coming of the Kingdom are correlates in His mind. ~ But, then, it is pre- cisely of the time of the concluding glory that He confesses ignorance ; and, if He was ignorant of the one term in this correlation, He was ignorant also of the other. It seems to me that, on Zfzs point, this is about as far as we can go with certainty. We may take it for certain, that Jesus did not bind Himself to the assertion, that the end of the world and 1 Cp., e.g., Mark xiii. 24f. with Joel 11. 30f. and Hag. ii. 21. 126 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS the supreme manifestation of the Messianic glory would take place within the lifetime of His own generation. Those, who choose to go beyond this, and to say that, while not formally expressing it, Jesus privately believed it, and sometimes in speaking to the disciples seemed to assume it, certainly provide an adequate explanation of the fact that the first generation of Christians held this expectation. But it is an explanation, to which we should resort only under stress of necessity. The natural and reverent supposition surely is, that the vision of Jesus, even on earth, was not limited in ¢4zs, or perhaps in amy respect, in quite the same way as that of His most faith- ful followers. The utmost, it seems to me, which we can allow ourselves to say, in the direction of the opinion in question, is, that there is no sure evidence that Jesus sought to undermine the assumption of His followers, that the final glory would be manifested in their day ; and even this we may fairly qualify with the remembrance, that a main motive of the principal eschato- logical discourse, reported by the Synoptists, is THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 127 to warn the disciples against premature expec- tations. But we have still to face the “‘ This generation ” saying, and the class of sayings of which the testimony before Caiaphas is the most remarkable instance. I propose to deal with the difficulties raised by these sayings in connection with the two data of the class Jervasive which remain to be men- tioned. (4) I venture, then, to mark as the sure datum, in whose light we must find a context for the “This generation” saying, the fact that, at least towards the close of His ministry, Jesus appeared as a prophet of judgment against Jerusalem and the Jewish nation. The question, at what point in His career Jesus took this attitude, is clearly con- nected with a question, which need not concern us here, namely, whether He perceived from the first, or only a little before the occasion of the solemn interrogation of the disciples at Caesarea Philippi, the necessity of His own death. Personally, I incline to the latter view, although it involves the disallowance of an absolutely pervasive character 128 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS to the datum with which we are dealing. We are seeking for things that are certain, and there is nothing more certain in the evangelic record than that, before the end of His ministry, Jesus uttered over Jerusalem the wail of a patriot and the woe of a prophet. We may define the certainty more closely. His prophetic woe connected itself directly with nothing political There is no likelihood in, certainly no evidence for, the idea that Jesus even once in public discourse took up the burden of His people on its political side, and en- larged on the hopelessness and folly of rebellion against the Roman power. We may safely say that no minister of God ever left secondary things more strictly alone. The point at which He levelled the thunderbolt of the judgment of truth 1 The strongest statement of the opposite case, with which I am acquainted, is that of Dr. James Denney in the chapter in his Death of Christ (Hodder & Stoughton, 1902), which deals with the Synoptic testimony (especially the baptism of Jesus and the saying about the Bridegroom being taken away). There is perhaps hardly evidence to warrant us in saying more than that from the first (the Baptism and Temptation) Jesus faced the osszbzlity, if not the likelihood, of a tragic issue to His earthly mission. From the beginning, the Shepherd identified Himself with His “lost sheep.” Their fate would be His—as God might will—even unto death. ; \ ; ' THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 129 was not the political fanaticism that was fer- menting in the nation, but the pretentiousness and externalism of its religion. It was not simply that the Pharisaic ideas of the righteousness and worship, which God required, were inadequate. They were ideas, that led, more or less directly, to the evasion of the Divine will. The worship which embodied them was not only a slighting of God ; it was apostacy. For evasion is apostacy in its most subtle form. In one sense the datum with which we are dealing may be termed pervasive. Jesus was never in two minds about the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. From the first He regarded it as something to be not only exceeded, but corrected. As it stood, it had nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. It is at least possible, I should be disposed to say probable, that He hoped at first for the con- version of His people apart from any purga- torial fire of disaster and revolution. Might there not be in the prophetic word alone a force suffi- cient to detach the Jewish people, and especially their leaders, from an unfruitful and mischievous 9 130 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS legalism? In suffering He learned that His people did not know the day of their visitation. He read the judgment of His nation in their re- jected blessing. From this moment all His words about His nation were cast in the mould of a prophecy of doom. . Jerusalem was tumbling to its destruction. It was not only credible but certain that the end was near. It was His way to speak in pictures and to quote Scripture. It is to me, therefore, entirely credible, that apart from a descent into secondary political details, speaking simply as a prophet and as the Messiah, He should have pointed dramatically to the Temple and said: ‘“‘ By and by, yea within this generation, not one stone shall be left upon another. By and by, even you shall see Jeru- salem hedged in with heathen armies, as in the days of Isaiah and Jeremiah. By and by, you shall see in this temple the ‘abomination of desolation’ of which we read in Daniel; and shall know that Jerusalem is no safe place for the chosen ones of God.” No doubt, this prophecy had a literal fulfil- 1 Dan. Xi. 31 5 ep: vill. 13. THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 131 ment. It was a case, in which picture and reality ran inevitably together. But surely we may say that what occupied the mind of Jesus was not a series of probable, or even certain, historical and political events, but rather simply the certainty He had from His Father, that, if His own days on earth were numbered, so also were those of the nation and the system, that were casting Him forth. For, in fact, He saw already what the men of that generation were to see in sensible forms. To Him, the Temple, as it stood, represented a dead system, that would fall by its own weight. The Jewish religion was no acceptable service. It was a heathen mummery.’ The Abomination, that made desolate, stood already in the Holy Place. Let that old Temple be destroyed, and in two or three days*—let alone a generation—God would raise up another, indestructible, and not made with hands. It seems to me, then, that we are on entirely safe ground, when we regard the so-called great escha- tological discourse (Mark xiii.= Matthew xxiv.) 1 Matt. vi. 7. 2 Hos. vi. 2; cp. Mark xiv. 58, John ii. 19. 132 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS as mainly a number of utterances, regarding the hastening decay of the Jewish legal system, which the Evangelists have strung together with, in the main, real insight, but also with some natural misconception, and with an obvious desire to point the moral of things that were happening at the time they wrote. ‘‘ Not one stone upon another,” “the Abomination of desolation,” “ Jerusalem com- passed with armies” (this only in Luke xxi. 20), “this generation,” “where the carcass, there the vultures,” are vivid plastic utterances, saying only the one thing, viz., that the nation and system which reject God are already rejected by Him, that what Zas been in this regard will be again, and that the sensible proof of it will be swift and sure. There is no warrant to speak of any of these utterances, at least in their essential features,—not even ‘‘ Jerusalem compassed with armies,’ —as prophecies Jost eventum. But neither is it altogether right for us to treat them as the Evangelists did. There is, to say the least, not sufficient evidence to warrant us in assuming, as they assumed, that Jesus regarded the fall of the THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 133 Jewish State as an event indistinguishable in time or essence from the end of the world. And, even if we consider ourselves warranted in assuming that His imagination in its earthly limitation necessarily placed the latter event within the compass of His own generation, or that His prophetic vision was closely conformed to the canonical model and looked straight across the valley of present trouble to the mountain of the Lord and the eternal light (Isa. ii. 2 ff.), these somewhat precarious tenets do not carry us the length of saying that, in spite of His assurance that He was ignorant of the “day” and “hour” of the Son of Man, in spite of His statements that the Kingdom would be preached to all nations and would be given to those who bore its fruits, in spite of His careful warnings against false Christs and premature expectations, He gave the disciples the solemn assurance that every symptom of the consummation, and the con- summation itself, would fall within their own time. It seems to me that, even if we had in the Gospels a much more ample testimony in favour of 134 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS the assertion that He said any such thing (instead of a verse or two, representing the natural miscon- ception of men who wrote within a generation from Jesus’ death, and felt the world, as they had known it, sinking beneath their feet), we should have a right to feel that the thing asserted was incredible. And we should profitably re- member that in a discussion, regarding any fact of real importance in the life of Jesus, the decisive factor is not any arithmetical balance between reports of what He said and reports of what seems the opposite, but rather our certainty— arising from our knowledge of His character— of what He must have thought and meant. It is useful to remember that, even in matters of criticism, the supreme evidence is Jesus Himself —Jesus as we know Him here and now, Jesus as we know Him in God’s providence and by God’s Spirit through these Gospels. (c) There remains, however, still something to be said—as it were—from the other side. Suppose we grant that Jesus neither expressly nor in thought synchronised the fall of the Jewish State and the collapse or final transformation THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 135 of the world, it by no means follows that He considered the demolition of the Jewish system simply as a woful event in a wholly indefinite series of preparations for a far-off end. The Gospels give us, it seems to me, irresistibly the impression that Jesus must have attached, and that with emphasis, some sort of finality— in relation to the whole world and the coming of the Kingdom—to the downfall of the Jewish State; in particular, the downfall of Jewish legalism and religious supremacy. Quite apart from specially eschatological texts, this impression comes to us along with our feeling of the deadliness of the conflict, in which Jesus found Himself engaged with the religious authori- ties of Jerusalem. The conflict was deadly, not simply in its murderous issue on the Cross, but in the passionate tension of His own spirit. If we might put it exegetically, the finality is to be found rather in chapter xxiii. than in chapter xxiv. of Matthew’s Gospel. We may perhaps say that chapter xxiv. is scenery, and chapter SxS text, One gets from chapter xxiii. the impression 136 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS that, to Jesus’ mind, there was no sin in the world worth speaking about compared with the sin of His own nation. They bear the fate and the guilt of the rest of the world. They bar the entrance of others into the Kingdom. Children of hell, they draw their proselytes into closer folds of flame. Murderers and children of murderers, they bear the guilt of all the “righteous blood shed upon the earth.” And Jesus did not speak of these things as a mere spectator, or even as a prophet like Jeremiah, in whose bones the word burned. He spoke as One, who saw and felt the power of murder and hell let loose upon Himself. We may well feel that we have no measure for the moral passion of Jesus. It takes us probably as far beyond our depth as the mystery of His unique Sonship. But the records permit us in some degree to see the perspective, in which He viewed His environ- ment in relation to the purpose of God. Four things stand out clearly : i. Firstly, there is His recognition of the © peculiar favour shown to Israel. The Jews ’ “a a «4 a he L “4 i) oe): THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 137 were the vineyard of the Lord, planted and cherished with peculiar care. They were the heirs of the Kingdom. To them God sent the prophets, and, last of all, His own Son. li. Secondly, there is His recognition of the failure of Israel. The vineyard was fruitless. Those, who garnished the tombs of the prophets, were the children of those who murdered them. They would reveal their kinship in the murder of the Son. This act would fill the cup of iniquity to the full. No greater resistance of the Divine will was possible upon earth. Hence. there can be no hesitation in ad- mitting that to Jesus, in the last weeks of His life, the near advent of the day of judg- ment for the Jewish nation, involving it in many- sided ruin, was solemn and terrible certainty. He saw this ruin. He painted it in sensible forms. He had a vision of the demolished Temple, and Jerusalem compassed with armies. The prophecy had in it no artificial apocalyptic reckoning. It came purely from the spirit and supremacy of His holiness. iii. Now, if we put, side by side with this 138 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS prophecy, His clear recognition of the Pro- vidence that had placed Israel in a position of superior spiritual advantage in relation to the rest of the world, we shall not hesitate to say, thirdly (even if there were not chapter and verse for it in the great eschatological discourse), that He must have judged that, in compassing its own ruin, Israel was hastening catastrophe for the whole 1 world. When, in the Fourth Gospel,’ Jesus represents His death, on its spiritual side, as a contest for possession in the world between Himself and the Prince of Dark- ness, we need not settle the question as to the strict historicity of the Zogza in John before being certain that the thought, thus expressed, is true to the mind of Jesus. On its negative side, the thought is clearly that the world has reached its last stage of corruption. Some sort of cosmical collapse or transformation must there- fore be in near prospect. Taken in itself, the conception of such a collapse awes and overwhelms the imagination. “The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall 1 John xvi. 11; cp. Luke xxii. 53. ee THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 139 not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken” (Mark xiii. 24f.). The imagery is impressive, without being in the least degree extravagant. It is to me wholly credible that, when our Lord was depicting the fall of the Jewish nation in terms that touched literal as well as spiritual fact, He should have added just such an impressive indication, through Scriptural symbols, of the fact that such a catastrophe would shake the whole world. Only here, it seems to me, we have the right to say that, to His own consciousness, the words used had no relation to literal fact, or, at any rate, no such relation to it as the imagery, in which He depicted the destruction of Jerusalem. It will hardly be called mere conjecture to say that One, who had found instances of faith among Gentiles such as He had not found in Israel, did not think so badly of the rest of the world as He did of His own nation. Did He not say in so many words that the Kingdom would be taken from the Jews and given to a nation yielding its fruits ?* 1 Matt. xxi. 41, 43. 140 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS It will hardly seem a straining of matters to say, that He found relief for His despair of the Jews in His hope for the Gentiles. iv. Hence, fourthly, while it seems true to say that the act of submissive faith, in which He looked forward to His own violent death, carried with it the conviction that the nation, which compassed His murder, stood within measurable distance of its own irretrievable fall, it is at least as true to say, that He conceived His death, on its positive side, as setting free a power, which should begin straightway to work for the redemption of the world. His certainty, in this reference, had little in common with the equipment of an apocalyptic writer. It was no uncertain light reflected from a past artificially treated as future. It was a cer- tainty peculiar to Himself, and proceeding from His consciousness of being the Executor of God’s purpose. When He accepted the decree of death, He knew that He had reached the last stage in the fulfilment of that purpose. It was verily the Last Time. His death would bring life to the world. a It appears to me, therefore, that the sayings, —5 > a + > 2 i Se bo eee THE CONSUMMATION OF THE KINGDOM 141 in which He seems to depict the collapse of the world, represent simply the obverse side of His conviction—a conviction of which the most precious thing in the universe, viz., His own life, was the pledge—that, behind the veil of His flesh rent in the sacrifice for sin, there opened out for humanity a new and glorious career, in which it should be seen, even by the men of that generation, to start forward, vested in measureless powers of truth and holiness and love. No criticism will ever shake the evidence that Jesus Zad this conviction. Doubtless, the verbal testimonies to it are not frequent in our authori- ties. There are things of which men will hardly speak, for which yet, perchance, they are found willing to die. Jesus was no speaking apocalyptist. His hope for humanity was written on the heart broken for sin and offered to God. His prophecy for a redeemed world is to be read out of His prophecy for Himself. ‘Ye shall see,” He said before Caiaphas, “the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven,” rude yy y THE ESCHATOLOGY — F borrowed metaphor! Yes, but He who used metaphor has, as it happens, the thing, wh meaning and worth the world, even at this d at is only in process of learning. LE CLURE LV: THE TITLE “SON OF MAN.” 143 BECTURE fv. fee Eth: “SON. OF. MAN.’ N about forty? different occasions, according to the Synoptists, Jesus spoke of Himself in the third person under the title “Son of Man.” The title was used only by Himself. It was assigned without explanation, and it occasioned no surprise. It was Jesus’ own way of expressing the dignity of One, who did the work of the Messiah. In other words, the Synoptists convey the impression—and they intend to convey it— that throughout His public ministry Jesus called Himself by a title, that had Messianic significance 1 The best monographs in English on the subject of this Lecture are probably Dr. Driver's article “Son of Man” in Hastings’ Bzdle Dictionary, and the corresponding article of Professor N. Schmidt in the Excyc. Bibl. 1am far from agreeing with the findings of the latter, and I attach more value than Dr. Driver does to those of Fiebig. 2 See Appendix C, I. 10 146 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS” at least for Himself, and was associated in His mind with the “one like unto a son of man,” who comes with the clouds in Daniel’s vision of the final Kingdom. It would be too much to say that the Synoptists represent our Lord’s general hearers, or even the disciples, as clearly under- standing the official meaning of the title. Their silence on the point, taken along with their re- presentation of the perplexity of the multitude about Jesus, is evidence rather to the contrary. On the other hand, there is no hint that the per- plexity of the people had anything to do with Jesus’ use of the title “Son of Man.” It is as if the narrators intended to say that what the title © meant to Jesus, tat, so far as they could under- stand it, it meant also to His hearers. The title is peculiar to the Gospels. Except in the record of Stephen’s martyrdom,} and in two passages of the Apocalypse of John,’ it does not occur in the other books of the New Testament. The exceptions, moreover, are more apparent than real. Stephen’s words are of the nature of a citation of Jesus’ own testimony to 1 Acts vil. 56. 2 Rev. i. 13, xiv. 14. THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 147 Caiaphas.* He means to say that that testimony is being verified in his own experience. The phraseology of the Apocalypse is obviously modelled on Daniel, and does not suggest a title. Up to less than ten years ago the problem con- nected with this title, while of course profound, was in form simple. All that was asked was, What did Jesus mean by calling Himself the Son of Man? Nowadays, at least for the moment, things wear a different aspect. We are apt to lose sight of the profundity of the problem in its plurality. For the question is no longer one, but three. The Fzrs¢ question is: (1) Did Jesus really call Himself by any such title? or, rather, Could He have done so in the language He presumably used—viz., Aramaic? When we have answered this question affirmatively, we are then permitted to ask, Secondly: (2) Did He do so habitually, and throughout the whole course of His ministry, as the Gospels seem to represent? Finally: On the understanding that we have mastered the difficulties which have led some scholars to answer the first question in the 1Cp. Luke xxii. 69 with Acts vii. 56. 148 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS negative, we are permitted to ask the one question that had any existence or interest for scholars like, say, Ewald or Keim: (3) What did Jesus mean by calling Himself the Son of Man ? I. In regard to question 1, the negative position has been taken, so far as I am aware, on philo- logical grounds only. It has been asserted with confidence by Lietzmann* and Wellhausen® that Jesus could not have used in Aramaic any phrase of self-designation of which “the Son of Man,” in the emphatic, significant sense of our Greek Gospels, would be the proper translation ; and even a critic like Fiebig,* whose phenomenal researches in docu- ments illustrating Aramaic usage have led him on this question to essentially conservative results, goes so far with the negative critics as to allow that the proper rendering of the phrase Jesus used —Bar énashi’, or Barnashi’—is simply 0 avOpamos 1 Der Menschensohn, ein Beitrag zur neutestamentlichen Theologie. Mohr, 1896. 2 Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten, Heft vi. Berlin, 1899. : 3 Der Menschensohn Jesu Selbstbezeichnung mit besonderer Beriick- sichtigung des aramdischen Sprachgebrauchs fiir “ Mensch.” Mohr, 19ol. THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 149 (=The Man). Clearly, a position like Fiebig’s does not, in any way, compromise the trust- worthiness of the Gospels. If it is really the case that Jesus spoke of Himself in the third person, and that He did so repeatedly and in such terms as eventually to convey to the circle:of believers the double idea that the King- dom of God was adapted to the needs of men, and that He Himself was the altogether unique Man indicated in prophecy and chosen to pos- sess the Kingdom and administer its blessings, it cannot be said that our Gospels are on this matter really misleading. If, on the other hand, we follow Lietzmann and Wellhausen, it is at the cost of a pretty severe shock to our sense of the trustworthiness of the Gospels. We commit what Wellhausen himself describes as a ‘‘Gewaltstreich,” or our de force. Briefly (but not, I hope, unfairly stated), the posi- tion of Lietzmann and Wellhausen is something like this: The natural and practically the only equivalent for 6 vids tod avOpémov in Aramaic would be Barnash, or, in the status emphaticus, Barnisha’. But it is clear from the usage of Aramaic, as 150 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS seen even in the Book of Daniel, and more indubitably in the Talmudic writings, that this phrase, even in the status emphaticus, is too in- definite in meaning to be usedasatitle. It means, according to the context, a@ man, some one, any one, men generally, but never, with any emphasis, the particular man. It is preposterous to sup- pose that Jesus habitually spoke of Himself in the third person as Somebody. ‘How did the misrepresentation, or, at least, the misunderstanding, of the Greek evangelists arise? There is a substratum of history in it. Jesus more than once (the Gospels themselves allow it) referred to the consummation of the Kingdom in terms of Daniel’s vision (Dan. vii. 13). Without any special intention of referring to Himself," He spoke of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven. Believers of course applied the prophecy to Jesus Himself, and ’ the phrase ‘Son of Man” appealed especially to Gentile converts with a tinge of Greek philosophical culture. It was believed almost 1 Wellhausen notices, ¢.g., that the form of the saying in Mark xiii. 26 is far from suggesting a personal reference. —a Gee See * PT oe eat or a a a 4. THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” I51 from the first that Jesus had spoken of Himself latterly as the Son of Man of Daniel's vision. Out of this there grew easily the tradition, fostered by the humanism of Gentile believers, that Jesus habitually spoke of Himself in the taird person as the Messianic Son of Man, even in connections that suggested anything but the Messianic glory. It became in fact the custom— we can see it at work in the structure of our Gospels '—even where the oral or written tradi- tion made Jesus say simply J or me—for an Evangelist to substitute 6 or tov 0. 7. a. It is obvious that the main prop of this critical structure is a philological presupposition in refer- ence to the Aramaic language—or a particular dialect or period of that language—which even one, who is, alas, only a layman in such matters, must be allowed to pronounce, on the showing of the authorities themselves, to be highly precarious. I fully concede Holtzmann’s? right to say that the questions raised or suggested by Wellhausen 1Cp., e.g., Mark viii. 27 with Matthew xvi. 14. Matthew has tov v. T.a. where Mark has simply pe. * Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie. Leipzig (Mohr), 1897. PPO: Ae TY Oe SO eae ee a eee ee ee a CEN eee eo or el ee 152 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS and others in reference to the phrase Son of Man are among the most perplexing of all connected with the New Testament. But there are many reasons, quite apart from the trustworthiness of the Gospels, for refusing to cut the knot in the way proposed by Wellhausen. Let me briefly mention three of these, remarking that I attach decisive importance only to the third. 1. While it is highly probable, it is not certain that in His public discourses Jesus habitually used Aramaic. Preaching to the mixed popu- lations of Galilee and the Decapolis, it is probable that He sometimes, and possible that He habztually, used Greek. The efforts recently made by Dal- man,” Arnold Meyer,® and others, to give us the probable Aramaic equivalents of some of the 1 The most strenuous advocate of the theory that Jesus used Greek in public discourse was the late Professor Roberts, of St. Andrews. The argument is conducted with great erudition, and may be studied, with profit perhaps, specially by those who too readily assume that the weight of probability is all on the other side. (Greek the Language of Christ and His Apostles (2nd ed.), Longmans, 1888 ; A Short Proof that Greek was the Language of Christ Gardner, Paisley, 1893.) 2 Die Worte Jesu. Leipzig (J. C. Hinrich), 1898 (English Trans- lation, T. & T. Clark). 3 Die Muttersprache Jesu. Mohr, 1896. THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 153 sayings of Jesus, are certainly interesting. But, even granting that they are occasionally success- ful in showing the halting or even misleading quality of the Greek equivalent of some proverb, we cannot be certain that it is not Jesus Himself who is responsible for the halt. Must not this ministering ‘““Son of Man” have known some- thing of the limitations imposed by the necessity of addressing men of foreign race and speech? It is perhaps possible to be satisfied in one’s own mind that the Carpenter of Nazareth, who recog- nised that His mission was confined to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” spoke habitually in private, and, where it was possible, in public, in the native tongue of His people, and still to admit it as only probable, and not “proven,” that it is His translators (and not He Himself) who are responsible for the Greek form of His sayings which we find in our Gospels. I agree, however, with Dr. Driver, that the sup- position that Jesus may have used Greek is only the last fortress in the line of defence against the attack of Wellhausen. We are far from being under constraint to let the proposition pass, that 154 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS Jesus could not have said in Aramaic what is fairly rendered by Zhe Man, or even The Son of Man. 2. Suppose we allow that, in the dialect of Aramaic which Jesus used, Barnasha was too indefinite an expression to convey the meaning, which the Greek evangelists intend, there was, according to Lietzmann himself, at least one other word, Gadhra’, occurring no less than ten times in the document, in which Lietzmann finds 1 The document is known as the Evangeliarium Hierosoly- mitanum (Z.e., The Jerusalem Lectionary of the Gospels, used presumably in public worship by the Christians of Jerusalem). Lietzmann informs us that this document “speaks specially the Galilzan dialect” of Aramaic (of. czt., p. 32), and that in it xyn3 (darnash@) is, except in ten passages (all but one in the Gospel of Matthew), the standing equivalent for 6 dv@pwmos of the Greek Gospels. In most of the ten passages there is no special need for the definite article, but of at least one of them—Matt. xxvi. 72, Peters “I know not ¢he man”—this cannot be said. Would Lietzmann say that in this instance Galilean Aramaic could have said darnasha’ instead of gabhra’? The ten passages are: Matt. XViii. 12, 23, xix. 5, IO, xx. I, xxii. 2, xxv. 14, 24, xxvi. 72; Luke vi. Io. It seems to me that, if Lietzmann allows that darnasha@’ could have been used at Matt. xxvi. 72, he goes a long way towards surrender of his case. Professor Schmidt, speaking of the usage in the Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum, remarks that gabhra@’ is used in the sense of husband in Matt. xix. 5, 10, adding that it occurs “also in Matt. xxvi. 72 as a synonym for darnasha’” (Encyc. Bibl. p. 4707). See, however, Appendix C, It. ‘ THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” iss some of his principal illustrations of the dialect Jesus is supposed to have used, to which the same objection may, possibly, not apply. It is worth noting that the Hebrew equivalent of this word occurs in Job xvi. 21* as rhythmical parallel to ben ’adhim (=son of man). 3. But I come to what I venture to consider, in this reference, the decisive point. It is allowed, on all hands, that the passage Daniel vii. 13 is, so to speak, the starting-point of the titular use of the phrase “‘ Son of Man” that appears in our Gospels. That is to say, the expression is fundamentally a quotation. Let us suppose that Jesus thought of the text in Daniel, and came consciously so near it as to use the phrase Barnasha@ (cp. - kbhar énaish, Dan. vii. 13); and let us go so far with the negative philologists as to suppose that, according to the usage of Aramaic in His day, the expression would not convey to anyone, who did not think of the passage in Daniel, either that Jesus was speaking of the Messiah, or referring to Himself, or indicating any one man in particular,— 1 Unless, as Driver thinks probable (“‘ Daniel,” Cambridge Bible, p- 103, n. 2), we are to read here oy j3), z.e., “and defween a man,” etc. 156 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS it may still be the case that, in rendering the ex- pression by o &. r. a., the Greek evangelists were true both to the meaning of Jesus and to the standard of linguistic propriety that is applicable to the case. For, clearly, it lies in the situation, that, as regards the phrase Barnasha’, the standard is not what might properly be said in the language, as it was in Jesus’ day, but rather what might properly be said in the language of the Book of Daniel. For my part, being in the hands of the Doctz, I am disposed to admit at least the probability that, apart from a reference to the passage in Daniel, the expression Barnash@ could not bear the very definite meaning intended in ov.7. a, For, though none of the passages, which scholars like Lietzmann and Fiebig are able to cite, are earlier than, say, the middle of the second century a.p., it is obvious that the process whereby both the patronymic prefix dav and the emphatic suffix @ came to lose distinctive force was not accom- plished in a day or a year. The undoubted usage of the second century a.D. is strong evidence for the Zrobadle usage of the first century A.D. But, on the other hand, it is weak evidence for the THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 157 probable usage of the second century 3.c.—the time of the Book of Daniel. I am glad to be able to quote so high an authority as Dalman for the assertion that the usage of biblical Aramaic, as seen in the Book of Daniel, in regard to the expressions man and son of man, is essentially the same with the usage of biblical Hebrew. In particular (according to Dalman), the Aramaic bar 'énash@ is precisely on the footing of the Hebrew dex ‘adhaim. In both dialects the plural “sons of men” (Heb. dex ha ’adhim), in the sense of men generally (the bearers of human nature), is of frequent occurrence ;* but, apart from the special case of the Book of Ezekiel, where ben ‘adhim is the regular appellation of the prophet, the use of the singular is rare except in poetry, and it rarely stands by itself. It occurs as parallel to the synonymous maz. Thus, ‘What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him?” (‘édsh, parallel 1£.g., Genesis xi. 5, and frequently. For a Greek equivalent of this usage, cp. Mark iii. 28. Wellhausen suggests that this latter verse contains the original saying of which Matthew xii. 32 (“against the Son of Man”) is a gloss due to misunderstanding of the Aramaic. (Art. in Skzzzen u. Vorard., already referred to.) 158 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS ben ’adhim), Ps. viii. 4; or, “God is not a man (sk) that He should lie, or a son of man (dex ‘adhaim) that He should repent,” Num. xxiii. 19. Everyone sees that “ man” and “son of man” in such passages are synonymous. There is a reduplication of one idea, and yet most people will feel that the reduplication is more than a poetic form. Ifa Hebrew said of any individual in a half-poetical strain, “He is a man, yea, and a son of man,” what he would intend to express would be that the individual in question possessed in a marked degree the characteristic of humanity, of which the speaker was thinking at the time. What the characteristic was would of course de- pend upon the context. If the context indicated, as in the 8th Psalm, a contrast between man and God, the characteristic of man would be weakness, insignificance, perishableness. But if the context pointed, as in Daniel vii. 13, to the contrast be- tween man and wild beast, the characteristics of the individual, of whom max or son of man was predicated, would be such as gentleness, amenableness to the law of the right, humility, mercy. Now, it seems certainly to be the case THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 159 that, in later Aramaic, the prefix, denoting soz, lost all force. Barnash or —@ was written as one word. It occurred constantly in prose. It was the word—in actual usage almost the only word— employed to express the indefinite @ man, or any one (Gr. ts). It had not of itself power to suggest, like the Hebrew dex ‘adhaim in, say, the appellation of Ezekiel, an emphasis upon human characteristics. Had this process of attenuation fairly com- menced, or was it even accomplished by the time of the Book of Daniel? Was Barnash even then no more than the Greek ws? If I understand him aright, Dalman says zo. The Book of Daniel was, he holds, written originally entirely in Hebrew,’ and just as at vil. 4 the Hebrew would say W382 (£e ’énosh) where the Aramaic says wana (he ’éndash), so at vii. 13 the Hebrew would say 01N71323 (£bhen-adhaim) where the Aramaic says 38 123 (kbhar ’énash). That is to say, both in Hebrew and in biblical Aramaic ‘“‘son of man” is poetical, but all the same it emphasises human characteristics. 1 See above, p. 67, note 2. 160 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS Fiebig, on the other hand, gives a partially affirmative answer to our question. He argues that the £e’énash of Daniel vii. 4, and the kéhar ‘énash of Daniel vii. 13, prove that in the prose usage of Aramaic, in the time of the Book of Daniel, these expressions were exactly synony- mous and interchangeable. But this is not to be understood as a concession to Wellhausen. On the contrary he argues that, if biblical Ara- maic could say indifferently ’éxash and bar ’énash for @ man (with emphasis upon the human char- acteristics), the likelihood is that it could also say indifferently ’éxa@sha and bar’énasha@ for the man, It would be hazardous for a layman to attempt to umpire between two such authorities, and for- tunately it is not necessary. It is not a matter of any importance whether 6 dv@pwrros or 0 vies Tov av@pérov is the more exact rendering of the ex- pression Jesusused. There is, perhaps, an element of unverifiable conjecture in both sets of assertion. On the one side, we may ask Dalman whether, apart from the special instance of the appellation of Ezekiel, he can quote a single case in biblical ” Hebrew where “son of man” is used alone— THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 161 apart from its parallel “man” or its equivalent.’ And, on the other hand, we may grant to Fiebig the likelihood that in the prose Aramaic of the time of the Book of Daniel the expressions ’éxash and dar ’énash were synonymous and interchange- able, and still ask him whether this was altogether the case in writings of an exceptionally solemn and prophetic character. Is it not likely that the longer patronymic form had, to the first readers of Daniel, just what it has to us English readers of to-day, a power, somewhat superior to that of the single word, man, of emphasising the human characteristics ? Is it altogether far-fetched to point out that at verse 4 of Daniel vii. the human features 1 In Ps. cxlvi. 3 the parallel to 03972 (son of man) is 0°23 (nobles). In his note on Daniel vii. 13 (Cambridge Bible, p. 102 f.), Driver gives fourteen examples from the Old Testament of the usage of Hebrew in reference to 077732 (or wi3y7]3, Ps. cxliv. 3) in the singular. In not one of the fourteen does the patronymic form stand alone, z.e., without a parallel word. This circumstance gives, it must be allowed, a certain impressiveness to the unique usage of “son of man” in Ezekiel, where it occurs over ninety times as the appellation of the prophet. There is no clear reference to Ezekiel in “son of man” in the Gospels, yet we may perhaps go so far with Weizsacker as to say that the usage in Ezekiel could hardly be absent from the mind of Jesus. 11 162 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS of the lion that had eagle’s wings are, in the nature of the case, external, and therefore com- paratively unreal? The essential feature in the first four symbols is not man, but deast. But at verse 13 the one and essential feature is humanity. Whether or not we can agree with such high authorities as Hilgenfeld? and Riehm? in saying that the ‘‘one like unto a son of man” who rides on the clouds is to the author of Daniel a real individual, ze, the Messiah, and not merely a symbol of the final Kingdom, it cannot escape us that symbol and reality tend naturally to coincide in the mind of the writer; and, for a reader who came to this passage with the expectation of an individual Messiah—the Jewish exegesis of the passage, as seen insome of the later Apocalypses * and in the words of our Lord Himself, proves it —the coincidence was inevitable. In any case, whether or not we think that the writer means, at this point, to conduct his readers 1 Of. cit. 2 Messianic Prophecy. TY. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1900. See long note, p. 193 ff. 3 Especially Enoch and Fourth Ezra. See Enoch xlvi. 1, xlviii. 2 ff., Ixii. 5, 7, Ixix. 27, 29, and Fourth Ezra xiii. 1 ff., xii. 32 ff THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 163 out of the realm of symbolism to the conception of an individual glorious Man, who is the head of the final Kingdom given to the saints, it is clear that the distinguishing and all-comprehensive feature of the final Kingdom is humanzty. The writer means his symbol, if it is only a symbol, to convey that the glory of the final Kingdom is the glory of humanity—humanity in touch with God and harmonised with itself and all the world through obedience to His law. Is it straining matters to suppose that the writer, as it were, lingered over his description of the final Figure? While the other figures had in their size and fierceness the semblance of power but not the reality, ¢zs one, so far as he himself was con- cerned, though he had all the reality had none of the semblance. He was in essence and origin only a man, yea a son of man. The point, then, that I am disposed to emphasise in connection with this philological discussion is, that while laymen, like most of us, are bound to defer to the authority of specialists, so far as to” accept their verdict on the meaning or force of an expression in the ordinary usage of a language, 164 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS we must allow place to considerations other than strictly philological, when we are dealing with the language of a great author like the writer of Daniel, or, let it be said with reverence, with the language of a great Personality like that of our Lord. We must remember that the thoughts of such persons — the remark applies of course pre-eminently to our Lord—move with freedom, not simply among the average conceptions of their own time, but also in the great conceptions and to some extent also in the language of the past. They are not slaves of the past, nor are they mere scholars. Their language is simple and clear, but there is often more in it than the average man is likely to comprehend. The something more is the suggestion and trans- formation of the past. They are scribes “in- structed unto the Kingdom,” and they bring forth from their treasure an original blending of things “new and old” (Matt. xiii. 52). A word, before passing from this question, on the support that is claimed for the negative verdict in the silence of the rest of the New Testament in regard to this title. If Jesus really THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 165 used the title, and used it so constantly as the Gospels represent, why is there no certain trace of it in the Apostolic Epistles? Why does no apostle refer frankly to Jesus as the ‘Son of Man,” adding, for the convenience of readers, the explanatory parenthesis: As we know our Lord called Himself. The absence of such a reference in the shorter writings hardly raises any question, but is it not surprising in the comparatively voluminous Paul? Lietzmann and Wellhausen say: Paul was not aware that Jesus used any such title. The explanation is certainly simple and sufficient. But is it true? The silence of the Epistles is certainly at first sight surprising ; and the surprise would be dis- concerting, were not its spell broken by the reflection that the silence of the Evangelists themselves is not less remarkable. No Evan- gelist, speaking of Jesus, refers even once to Him as ‘‘the Son of Man.” It is hardly possible that this entire absence from other lips of a title, which, unless the Gospels entirely mislead, was continually on the lips of Jesus, can be accidental. 166 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS It has been suggested in regard to the Evangelists, that they wish by their silence to give its due of impressiveness to the fact that the title is original to Jesus. It is His own form of self-designation. It contains, if we could only understand it, the secret of His peculiar self-consciousness. It is, in lan- guage used as early as 1838 by H. Weisse,* “ein ungestempelter Begriff’? =‘an unstamped conception,” which can bear inscription only from one hand. It represents, to quote the same authority, a new and “second power of human- ity,” realised only by Jesus. As regards the Apostles, it has been suggested that their silence is due to dogmatic reasons. Jesus is to them the Son of God, revealed in power through His resurrection from the dead. He is to Paul the glorious Figure met on the road to Damascus. These explanations are certainly suggestive and finely conceived; but perhaps it may be found, particularly in reference to the former, that something less will do. It may be sufficient 1 Die evangelische Geschichte, 1838, vol. i. p. 319 ff. (reference given by Lietzmann). THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 167 to say, with Dalman,* that o vids rod dv@parov does not occur oftener than is necessary in the New Testament, for the simple reason that the New Testament is written in Greek. The phrase Barnish#, applied distinctively to Jesus, might have, to Jewish-Christian ears, a certain appro- priateness, for its growth in that distinctive sense was easily traceable; and even where, through ignorance, the steps were not traced, the percep- tion of the meaning would be quick and almost intuitive. No doubt, the stages of the growth could be made apparent in Greek also, but the phrase could hardly have in that language the same naturalness. A preacher to an audience mainly Gentile could hardly have used it without the awkwardness of an explanation, and one, so cosmopolitan and practical as the Apostle Paul, might well have hesitated to cumber his sermons or his writings with a phrase, whose natural meaning to Greek ears would be that the person referred to was the son of some particular man. This reason of abstinence would gather strength the more the Church progressed in time and space 1 Op. cit. a 168 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS away from the primitive Jewish community. If this explanation seems to us to hit the fact, we shall know what to make of the suggestion that ‘“Son of Man” in the Gospels is practically the invention of Gentile believers and writers. As regards the alleged ignorance, on the part of the writers of the Epistles, of any Messianic significance in the phrase ‘‘Son of Man,” it may be pointed out that, at best, the allegation can have only the precarious worth of an argument from silence; and that, as we have just seen, a silence that may be otherwise sufficiently explained. But, apart from this, I am inclined to agree with those who maintain that the assertion of ignorance is, as regards Paul and the writer to the Hebrews, directly falsified through their Messianic use of Psalm viii. The Psalm is cited at some length by the writer to the Hebrews (ii. 5 ff.), and is alluded to quite unmistakably? in 1 Cor. xv. 27 f. The peculiarity of both passages is, that a Messianic reference is assumed in the words that describe the glory, to 1 Tf verse 25 is a reminiscence of Ps. cx. 14, verse 27 is still more certainly a reminiscence of Ps. viii. 64. Cp., also, Eph. i. 22. THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 169 which, in spite of his apparent insignificance, man has been exalted by the Creator. It is not always easy for us to see what it is in a particular passage that has suggested a Messianic reference to a New Testament writer. Probably we sometimes do the writer a wrong when we suppose him to have a theory of some passage from which he cites a phrase. It is the isolated phrase, not the entire passage, that is to him Messianic in meaning, and therefore in Divine intention. But, in this case, the writer to the Hebrews quotes the Messianic passage in full. He has the whole passage clearly in view, and he deliberately assumes that it is Messianic. It seems to me we are bound to account for so extraordinary a judgment. What could have led this polished and logical writer to suppose that the Psalmist was thinking of anything more than the place of man in the scheme of creation? The answer is: the phrase “son of man.” Nothing could prevent the writer from seeing, just as clearly as we do, that the first reference of the passage is to man as such—the ordinary bearer of human nature. But then the Psalmist speaks not only 170 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS of “men,” he refers also to ‘‘the Son of Man,” and He, we know (so argues the apostolic writer), was the Lord Jesus. In presence of ¢hzs reference, the inferior reference disappears from the writer’s mind. II]. To make up our minds that Jesus called Himself the “Son of Man,” meaning in His own mind that He was the Figure in Daniel's vision, to whom, on behalf of the saints, the final Kingdom was given, does not settle the question, whether He used the title so frequently as the Gospels represent. We have still to ask, Did He use the title from the first? Did He do it freely before disciples and multitude alike? Was He generally, or even partially, understood to be claiming the Messiahship? Did He use the title, as the Gospels represent, in connections that suggest the very reverse of the Messianic glory, pointing to a career of humiliation, suffering, and death ? This is a formidable array of difficult and closely inter-connected questions. It may be well to indicate what seems to me the right starting- point of an endeavour to answer them. { 4 +‘ THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 171 I consider it best to start from the general impression regarding this title “Son of Man,” which everyone who reads the Gospels, on the assumption that they are in the main true, carries away from them. This impression is, I think, two-fold—(1) Jesus had a striking way of re- ferring to Himself, in the third person, as the Son of Man. It impressed His hearers, and was meant to impress them. It was intended as a means of education, especially for His disciples. (2) The title was mysterious as well as suggestive. It meant more to Jesus than it could mean even to the disciples. The disciples did not complain of the mystery. It belonged to the situation. The mystery of the Master’s speech was part of the mystery of Himself. I start from this general impression, not be- cause I think it corresponds exactly with the facts. On the contrary, it is an impression which, as may appear by and by, needs to be very con- siderably modified. Yet I start from it, because I think it impossible that it can be entirely misleading. The spirit of the Master is in the records of the disciples. These surprise, they 172 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS awaken reflection, they carry beyond depth, but they do not mislead. Let it be observed that it is no part of this first general impression that, in calling Himself Sox of Man, Jesus was wso facto proclaiming Himself to be the Messiah. This arises partly from the fact, that we are ex- pressly told that Jesus did not announce Himself to be the Messiah at all till near the close of His ministry. He did not announce it even to the disciples. He drew it from the depths of their own consciousness before the last months. It arises also from the fact that, not even to this day, is the mind of the general reader familiar with the equation: The “Son of Man” =the “Messiah.” We are all familiar with the equa- tion: The “Son of David” =the ‘ Messiah.” We share this familiarity with tke multitude who heard Jesus in Galilee and Judea. But we share also with them ignorance of anything peculiarly Messianic in the phrase “Son of Man.” I agree, at least partly, with those who say that this phrase was not a current designation of the Messiah. It seems to me that all, who do THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 173 not wish to part company with the Evangelists, must be of this opinion. All the Synoptists agree that Jesus did not directly mention His Messiahship to the disciples till the scene at Czsarea Philippi, and that then He charged them to tell no man that He was “the Christ.” On the other hand, they represent Jesus as calling Himself “Son of Man” practically at all times and to all ears. I can see no reason to doubt that both these representations correspond with the facts; and I infer from them that, where Jesus used the phrase, it was by no means inevitable for the average man to suppose that He meant thereby to proclaim Himself the Messiah. Some years ago, almost simultaneously with the publication of Lietzmann’s book, I committed myself in print to the opinion that, while the general populace did not associate Messiahship with the phrase ‘Son of Man,” the same could prebably not be said of the learned class, re- presented in the Gospels by the Scribes and Pharisees. I also hazarded the opinion that the view of Dr. Charles, according to which the Book 174 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS of Similitudes* in the cycle of Apocalypses bear- ing the name of Fxoch, including the passages where the Messiah appears with the title “Son of Man,” is of pre-Christian origin, is prob- ably correct. I cannot say that I have learnt anything from the philological discussion that has happened in the interval, that inclines me to depart from these opinions. But I do not con- sider that a judgment in the one way or the other, as to either of these matters, need affect our view of the motive or effect of Jesus’ use of the title. It is wholly probable that the habit of identifying the Figure of Daniel’s vision with the Messiah- to-come, and of referring to Him in some abbre- viated phrase like “the or that Son of Man,” ? 1 So the section of Zzoch including chapters xxxvi.—Ixx. is usually called. For a brief account of the post-canonical Jewish Messianic literature, see the closing chapter of my Z7zmes of Christ (T. & T. Clark)—especially the footnote, p. 140ff., summarising the argu- ment against the theory that the “Son of Man” passages in the Book of Similitudes are due to Christian interpolation. An ex- haustive list of modern books, and editions of Jewish documents, bearing specially on the Messianic Hope, will be found in the second English edition of Riehm’s Messianic Prophecy (T. & T. Clark, 1900). See especially, in the last-named work, Appendix F. 2 Those, who wish to investigate this point, would do well to consult two articles of Prof. Schmiedel, of Ziirich, 27 ve “Son of THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 175 had by the time of our Lord long been formed among Jewish scholars. But the philological dis- cussion, as conducted especially by Fiebig, seems to me to bring out pretty clearly the result that the mere phrase Garnash@ would not, in many of the connections in which it may have been used by Jesus, and in some of those in which it is actually attested to have been used, even to scholarly ears at all necessarily, or even naturally, suggest a literary reference to the Book of Man,” in the Protestantische Monatshefte for July and August, 1898. Schmiedel suggests that the variation between the de- monstratives zie and ¢haf, as applied to the Figure called “Son of Man” in the Book of Similitudes, may indicate that this book was written at a time when the practice of referring to the Figure in Dan. vii. 13, by means of the brief formula, “The Son of Man,” had hardly become a habit. The fact that Lwoch, written doubtless originally in Aramaic, is extant, chiefly, in an Ethiopic Version, makes it difficult to reach precise knowledge on the point. The latter of Schmiedel’s two articles has a certain historic interest, in the fact that it was written chiefly to combat the view Wellhausen had expressed, in the second edition of his /svael. u. Sid. Gesch., to the effect that Jesus had called Himself Zhe Man in the sense that “‘ He thought nothing human foreign to Himself.” Even in the second edition Wellhausen denied that the title had anything to do with Jewish Messianism ; but Schmiedel wrote his article in ignorance of the fact that, in the third edition of his Gesch., Wellhausen had departed even from the humanistic view of “Son of Man” and gone over to the negations of Lietzmann. 176 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS Daniel, or any claim on the part of the speaker to be the Messiah. From an exhaustive study and citation of relevant passages, in all the available Aramaic documents, Fiebig shows that, in the ordinary usage of Aramaic, since at least as early as the second century a.D., the phrases Barnash and the determinate Barnasha were practically on the same footing. Each might mean indifferently, according to the context, a man, the man, men generally, some one, any one. If this result is sound, and if, as all the Aramaic scholars seem to agree, the equivalent of 6 viss rod dvOparov must have been Barnash@ (or, conceivably, just Barniash), a very suggestive light is thrown upon the phenomena of our Gospels. I have said that even the average English reader gets the impres- sion of something ambiguous and half-hidden as well as instructively suggestive in the title ‘Son of Man,” and that an impression so general and natural can hardly be misleading. Did not Jesus really wish to educate all susceptible souls in the appreciation of His person and aims? He Himself regarded the Messiahship, at least in the THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 177 broad lines in which it seemed to be depicted in the Psalms and Prophets, as the Divinely given interpreter of His office, career, and destiny. He was the Messiah—the Prophet, the King, even the Priest who was to come. But the Gospels clearly attest that He was unwilling to declare Himself as the Christ. The necessity for reticence lay in the situation. He did not wish to encourage false hopes, but He did wish to educate all who might be responsive in true ones. If the Gospels are veracious, there must have been a time, when He sought for some descriptive phrase, which had not, in itself for ordinary ears, any Messianic associations, but which yet might be large enough to reflect the total Messianic idea in the counsel and word of God. If the Gospels are veracious, He found that phrase in the equivalent in His own language for ‘Son of Man.” If the Aramaic scholars are right, where they speak with one voice, that equivalent was Garnasha@. I think we may ask, with some confidence of having got hold of this perplexing matter by the right end, Could He have chosen any word that more exactly suited the situation ? 12 178 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS In particular, at present, we may notice that the phrase exactly suits the necessity of not declaring His Messiahship, and yet of contain- ing points of contact with Scriptural words and ideas. Suppose we experiment for a little with this key in the actual locks of some Gospel passages. Wellhausen and Lietzmann hold that the sup- posed habit of Jesus of speaking of Himself as the Son of Man is partly due to a misunderstanding of the Greek translators of Jesus’ words. In con- firmation of their views, they appeal particularly to two passages, both of which are certainly well adapted to their purpose. The one is Mark ii. 27f. Suppose that Jesus said, ‘“‘ The Sabbath was made for darnash, therefore darnash is lord of the Sabbath,” not only a regard for language but a regard for logic would require us to translate, ‘“‘“The Sabbath was made for man, therefore man is lord of the Sabbath.” The reason that led our Evangelists to change man in the second clause to Sox of Man would be obvious enough. Was it credible that Jesus could have used words capable of meaning that THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 179 any man had the right to set aside the Sabbath law? The other passage is Mark ii. 1 ff, and the parallel in Matthew ix. 2 ff. Was it not clearly the purpose of Jesus to show the Pharisees, who had asked, Who can forgive sins but God only? that, in certain circumstances (not specified), even a man on earth could do the same? Evidently the multitude, according to Matthew, understood His words in this way: “ They were afraid, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men” (Matt. ix. 8). It so happens that in Mark’s Gospel, which, on our hypothesis, is, generally speaking, more strictly chronological than the other two, these two passages are the only ones in which “Son of Man” occurs before the record of the scene at Czsarea Philippi. Anyone who holds so strongly as does, ¢.g., Baldensperger,’ that “Son of Man” was in the 1 Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit. 2nd ed., Strassburg (Heitz u. Miindel), 1892. The first volume of a wholly revised and greatly enlarged edition of this important work appeared this year (1903). Since this Lecture was written, I have had the opportunity of observing that, at p. 143 (footnote), the author modifies his formerly expressed 180 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS time of our Lord a current designation of the Messiah, is in regard to these passages shut up to two alternatives. Either they are due to misunderstanding arising in the very plausible way just explained, or the incidents narrated are chronologically misplaced. Jesus could not, be- fore the scene at Czsarea Philippi, have used words, even in the hearing of the disciples,—let alone a general audience including, according to Luke, Pharisees and Scribes “out of every village of Galilee and Judzea and Jerusalem ” (Luke v. 17), —tantamount to a declaration of His Messiah- ship. It may be allowed that neither of these alternatives is “violent.” On the one hand, it was characteristic of Jesus to say paradoxical things, and, on the other, no modern scholar pins his faith to any particular view of the order of events in the ministry of Jesus. If these were opinion as to the currency of “Son of Man” as a Messianic title. He admits that the spontaneous use of the expression was confined to “the narrower apocalyptic circles,” and that, while the usage found its way into wider Jewish circles, it had there only a limited circulation, and, after the appropriation of the title by the Christians, no circulation at all. Noa et THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 181 the only passages that could occasion difficulty to Baldensperger on the one side or Wellhausen on the other, I should be disposed to say that each of these critics had a real hold of the truth in this matter, though each approached it in his own way, and each was wrong in neglecting the view of the other. I should be quite willing to concede to Wellhausen that the primary thought in the one passage is that human need overrides all particular rules of Sabbath observance, and that the primary thought in the other passage is that the right to forgive is not possessed exclusively by God in heaven, but may in certain circumstances be exercised by a man on earth; and I should also concede to Baldensperger that in both cases there was in Jesus’ own mind a distinct reference to the Messianic Son of Man, and also that some suspicion of that reference was possible, or even probable, in the case of some of the Scribes. But it is obvious that the keys which these scholars bring to this problem, while they fit the locks of some passages, are quite useless in regard to others. What is 182 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS Wellhausen to do with the passages where the meaning man (in general) does not fit the con- text, “Foxes have holes,” etc. (Matt. viii. 20), ‘John came neither eating nor drinking,” ete. (xi. 19)? Wellhausen admits the personal re- ference in such passages, but does not seem to see how far the admission carries him in the direction of the position he rejects. On the other hand, what is Baldensperger to do with the fact that there is not the slightest hint in the Gospels that Jesus (until just the end) refrained from using the designation ‘‘Son of Man” in public? Rather they give, inevitably, the impression that Jesus used the title freely from the first and irrespective of His audience. For my own part, I am satisfied that this impression corresponds with the facts, so far as correspondence is possible. So far as corre- spondence ts possible—for, just owing to the fact that we have the words of Jesus in Greek, and not in His native Aramaic, a perfect corre- spondence is, in this particular case, peculiarly impossible. We may add that it is unnecessary and undesirable. I mean specially that, while THE TITLE “SON OF MAN”. 183 the Greek, 6 vids Tod dvOpérov, is entirely true to the mind of Jesus, whose thought was always directed to the Chosen One of God to whom the final Kingdom should be given (for whom, therefore, Barnaisha@ had the force suggested in our Gospels of a Divinely revealed title), it could not be true to the average understanding, or want of understanding, of the term, on the part of His audience. I learn from the Aramaic scholars, that Barnasha# (and, referring especially to Fiebig’s labours, and speaking as a mere layman, | confess that the evidence appears to me over- whelming) was an indefinite and ambiguous expression, not capable in itself of suggesting or conveying that the speaker referred to himself. There are, as we have seen, some passages where the personal reference in the understanding of the hearer was inevitable; and there are others, like “Barnash@ is Lord of the Sabbath,” where, while perhaps natural enough, it is by no means 1 Whether uttered in connection with a transgression of the Sabbath conventions on the part of the disciples, or rather, as has been suggested, in connection with a similar transgression on Jesus’ own part. Cp. the parallel, Luke vi. 5. 184 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS inevitable. Also there are sayings, especially those which refer clearly to the last time, where the understanding of a Messianic reference, at least on the part of the literary class among Jesus’ hearers, was, to say the least, possible; but there is perhaps only one saying—that in which, before the Sanhedrin, He quoted the actual words of Daniel vii. 13—in which such an understanding was inevitable. It has, more- over, to be remembered that many of the sayings are not apocalyptic, and contain no reference to the Messianic glory, or even to the final state in general. Take, eg., the saying already referred to, ‘“Foxes have holes,” etc. Matthew tells us that Jesus said these words to a Scribe. He was perhaps one of those accessible Scribes, to another of whom Jesus said that he was not far from the Kingdom of Heaven. The Scribe could have no doubt that Jesus was speaking of Him- self. Also, he must have felt, in a remark- able degree, the attraction of Jesus’ personality. Accustomed to teach, he felt that no man ever taught like this man. Yet it is by no means Pay ae ee | THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 185 certain, or even perhaps likely, that Jesus’ speak- ing of Himself in the third person, and saying Barnashi, \ed the Scribe to the idea that He was claiming to be the Messiah. Let me now refer to a class of passages in which, not the multitude or the learned class, but simply the disciples, are concerned, and in which the ambiguity of the expression Barnuash@ ap- pears in a somewhat different light. The time is just after the scene at Czsarea Philippi. The disciples know by this time, we may surely suppose, the difference between the Barnasha’, who may be anybody, and the 4arnasha’, who was only Jesus Himself. But they have not hitherto associated anything Messianic with this phrase. Now, for the first time, the intention of Jesus in His use of the phrase comes home to them. It is part of a conviction which Jesus Himself stamps as a Divine revelation, having first drawn it from their hearts that the Barnash@ of His constant speech is none other than the “one like unto a dar ’énash,’ whom Daniel saw coming with the clouds of heaven (Daniel vii. 13). For the moment their sense of discouragement 186 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS vanishes. The King is about to take off the veil and appear in His glory. But just at this point He begins to utter with definiteness the prophecy of His shameful sufferings and death. Three times, with growing definiteness, He speaks of the betrayal, ignominy, and death of the “Son of Man.” As often, we read words to the effect that the sayings are to the disciples unintelligible. ow, suppose for a moment that Jesus had never spoken of Himself in the third person; suppose, ze, He had not adopted a style of speech, which had, as we might say, unconsciously educated the disciples in the idea that He was another person from what He seemed, even the Chosen One of God to whom belonged the Kingdom and the glory; suppose He had been to them only Jesus of Nazareth, a Prophet “ mighty in word and deed,” and also a beloved Master, taking them further along the lines of John the Baptist, but just speaking of Himself, like other prophets, as J or me; and suppose at this crisis He had said to them, “I have it from God that I am about to be betrayed into the hands of the THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 187 Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate, and that ignominy and death await me which yet I shall survive,”— would it have been possible for us, in that case, to accept, as at all like the truth, the statement of the Evangelists that the saying was to the disciples unintelligible? What was there incon- ceivable in the idea that their Master would share the fate of many a prophet before Him and of John the Baptist in His own day ? Clearly, the amazing thing was, not that such an oracle should be given about a holy prophet and a beloved Master, but that it should be given about the glorious and heavenly “Son of Man.” For a moment, I venture to think, the question crossed their mind—the indefiniteness of the expression Barnasha@ made it the more possible : Does He mean that, after all, He is not the Messiah? Is this why He speaks in the third person—Himself one person, the Son of Man who is to come with the clouds another person ? They were tossed in amazement from one horn to the other of this dilemma—the glorious Son of Man suffering and dying, Jesus of that Son of Man. In such a state of the case it is 188 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS certainly not putting it strongly, when one Evangelist says, ‘‘They w«nzderstood not the saying, and were afraid to ask Him” (Mark ix. 32); and again, “They were amazed” (Mark x. 32); and another adds, “It was hid from them” (Luke ix. 45). Our view, then, is that the equivalent of ‘Son of Man” in our Gospels was an indefinite ex- pression, having in itself no power to convey either that the speaker referred to himself or that he meant the Messiah. When it was used in an obviously apocalyptic connection, as, ¢.g., in the saying about the Son of Man coming in the glory of His Father with the angels, it would inevitably suggest to the average Jewish hearer the Messianic Personage, 7.¢., one appointed by Jehovah to do His work of judgment in the earth and bring in the Kingdom, and would probably also suggest Daniel vil. 13. But it would by no means necessarily suggest that the person so speaking was himself claiming to be the Messiah. Apart from the private discourses of Jesus to the disciples after the catechising at Caesarea Philippi, there is, I believe, only one saying in the Gospels X THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 189 where the three associations—that with Jesus Him- self, that with the Messiah, and that with the Son of Man in Daniel—would for the hearers of Jesus inevitably coincide. I mean the passage in which, in answer to Caiaphas, He acknowledged that He was ‘“‘the Christ,” and said, ‘‘ Ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” If this is a correct view of the facts, it is clear that enquiry as to when Jesus degan to use the expression Soz of Man, or as to how oftex He used it, is superfluous. We have every right to take our stand on the natural supposition that He used it as freely, frequently, and habitually as the Gospels represent. III. There still remain to us, at least formally, the questions : A. Why did Jesus employ this objective mode of speech? B. What did He mean by “Son of Man”? A. The former question has two sides—the one relating to Jesus Himself, the other to the disciples. 1..Why did Jesus speak of His Messiahship 190 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS as if it were a thing outside of Himself? Why, e.g., did He not say simply Z or me in all cases where He wished His hearers to understand that He meant Himself, but did not wish or expect that they should understand Him to mean the Messiah ? The answer I venture to give is, that in a very real sense Jesus habitually placed His Messiahship outside the sphere of His ordinary human self-consciousness. If the fact of the Messiah in Jesus came as a revelation from the Father to His disciples, it does not seem to be saying anything more than is said in the story of His baptism to affirm that it was equally a revelation to Himself. It was a voice from heaven that said to Him—partly in the words of the 2nd Psalm—‘ Thou art My Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” He had a vision of the Spirit of God descending upon Himself. His calling, therefore, did not proceed from a consciousness of powers born with Him and natural to His humanity. It came from a con- sciousness of special power lent to His human nature, and constituting, in the first instance, a THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” I9I temptation to it. In the crisis of the Temptation the power obtained the right place in His life, through the conviction that what came so directly from God was to be used only according to His specially revealed will. If it was true even of godly men in general that they ‘“‘lived” by every word that came from the mouth of God, it was singularly true of the chosen “Son of Man.” His Messiahship was, indeed, to Jesus the most real thing in the universe. It included all duty and destiny, but it was also a Divine mystery, a matter of faith. The details of it could not be anticipated. They must be learnt on the road of revelation. The Son of Man must go as it was written of Him in the word that spoke in the past, and spoke still. He must walk by faith, and learn obedience even through suffering. It would be easy to offend in the effort to report our Lord’s own sense of His calling, but it is surely not going beyond the most authoritative record we possess to say that He distinguished, to a certain degree, between Jesus of Nazareth and the Son of Man who was to come with the clouds. 192 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS It could never be an ordinary thing, however habitual to His consciousness, that He was the Man to whom should be given the final and everlasting Kingdom. He, who should in His thought and faith habitually unite these opposites, must, in the first instance, as habitually do justice to their difference. Hence this fact in His life, and this witness in His biography, of the constant presence to His spirit of a will, a way, a destiny other than His own—something that was His and yet not His, because so purely and continuously a gift and revelation of God. Is it too subtle to suggest that the phrase He uses— “Son of Man,” taken in its Scriptural connections (especially Dan. vii. 13)—is peculiarly suited to ex- press both the union and the separation of these two things,—ordinary humanity and supernatural calling?* Jesus knows Himself to belong to humanity, yet to Him, even as Son of Man, 1 I am disposed to agree with those, who find in the appellation “Son of man,” applied to Ezekiel, the expression of essentially the same paradox. The elevation is indefinitely lower and the range of vision indefinitely more contracted, but the central truth is the same. See especially Ezek. ii. 1 f., and the highly instructive sum- mary of the opinions of numerous learned men as to the meaning of “Son of Man” in Driver’s article in Hastings’ Dictionary. THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 193 there is given a dignity and destiny more than human. 2. We can hardly be wrong in supposing that part of the motive of the objective habit of speech, which we are considering, lay in the desire of Jesus to educate the disciples. If the Messiahship was something in reference to which He must Himself take the reverential attitude of a learner, it was surely in keeping with this that He real- ised the necessity of guarding His disciples against casual and insufficient ideas of it. I am disposed to trace to real reminiscence the impression we get from the Fourth Gospel, that those, who attached themselves to Jesus from the circle of John the Baptist, did so with the con- viction and confession that He was “ Son of God” and “ King of Israel.” These were undoubtedly popular and recognised titles of the Messiah, and were, on the lips of the people, of precisely the same import as the title “Son of David,” which, according to the Synoptists,* Jesus was at pains to reject for reasons which were confounding, if not convincing, to the Scribes. While He could 1 Matt. xxii. 41 ff.; Mark xii. 35 ff.; Luke xx. 41 ff. 13 194 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS not expressly reject “ Son of God,” or even “ King of Israel,” it is, perhaps, a fair inference from the Synoptics that He did not encourage the disciples, any more than He did the demoniacs, in the use of even the former. The Messiahship was His own secret and His Father’s. His desire was to impart it to the disciples in the way that would obtain for it a worthy reception, or, at any rate, a secure lodging in their minds. The evidence of His reserve in regard to the use of popular titles is quite distinct in the Synoptic Gospels, and we may perhaps express the motive of it in terms borrowed from the Fourth Gospel. It was a special instance of His sanctifying Himself, that the disciples also might be sanctified in truth. The method implied in this reserve was success- ful. If we cannot say that the disciples received the truth of Jesus’ Messiahship “ worthily,” in the sense that it remained with them disentangled from all misconception, it is still certain that, when it came to them, it came to stay. It remained in spite of misconception and the offence of the Cross. B. Is it possible at this time of day, after THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 195 much speech on the matter from many mighty men, to say anything that will really help us to understand what Jesus meant by calling Himself the “Son of Man”? There is a certain attractive capaciousness in the suggestion of an “unge- stempelter Begriff.” It may be inevitable, and therefore permissible, for those to whom Jesus Christ is to-day the ever-living power of God, to find in the title ““Son of Man” the expression of His total significance in history and individual experience. We may, perhaps, even say that the title was to Jesus Himself an ‘‘ungestempelter Begriff,” on which, in His earthly life, He was only beginning to stamp the impression of Him- self. On the other hand, such capaciousness has its dangers. There is apt to be room in it for everything but clear thought. We are bound, surely, to assume that, when Jesus chose to designate Himself by this title, it had to His own mind the edge of a definite interest and meaning. There was a thought that had a definite starting- point, and proceeded in a definite direction in a line of progress that may be assumed to be traceable. 196 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS Let me close with a word—(1) On the starting- point ; (2) on the line of progress. 1. Though great authorities can be quoted to the contrary, I venture to think it not open to serious: question that the starting-point was Daniel vii. 13, “1 saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like a son of man came in the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before Him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a Kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” In confessing His Messiahship be- fore the Sanhedrin, Jesus partially quoted these words ; and in more than a dozen other passages in the Gospels, where He speaks of the final judgment, or generally of the last things, the general reference to the Canonical Apocalypse is, perhaps, as unmistakable. Now, Daniel vii. 13f. is the only passage, which there is any evidence that Jesus had expressly in mind when He used the title THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 197 “Son of Man.” We are not asking at present what Jesus may have put into the conception “Son of Man,” or even what He did actually put into it in process of time. We are asking only: What, for certain, did He put into it, and what did He start with? With all respect for investigators like Keim and Weizsiacker, it seems to me only a darkening of counsel to introduce, at this stage, any other reference than to the passage in Daniel, in its main suggestion and meaning. It is altogether likely that the 8th Psalm (Keim) and the appellation ‘Son of Man” given to Ezekiel (Weizsicker) frequently came to His mind. They would serve to link into one chain of Divine truth and purpose the passage in Daniel and the whole series of passages, par- ticularly in the Psalms and in Deutero-Isaiah, which emphasised the weakness of flesh and blood and spoke of the sufferings of the right- eous “Servant” of Jehovah, who was also His orl, Yet it is not the weakness of a mere “son of man,” but the transcendent glory and ever- lasting dominion of ¢e Son of Man of the last 198 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS days, who reigns in the power of righteousness, that dominate the vision and thought of Jesus. His Messiahship is a hope, not a literal possession. It is a thing primarily of God's appointment for Him, and only secondarily and therefore of His own choice for Himself. There is not, even for Him, any glory in human weak- ness and suffering, as such. The glory lies in what is to follow. Only, what is to follow is just that which to His faith is most real. 2. But, while the vision in Daniel supplied the starting-point and dominant factor of the thought of Jesus, it does not follow, and it is not the fact, that He was confined either to or by the letter of the representation in that book. It needs no very critical eye to see that the letter of Daniel and the letter of our Lord’s eschatological sayings in the Gospels do not coincide. Thus, in Daniel, the Son of Man does not exist at all, but only “one like unto @ son of man,” who does not appear to be a living individual, but only a symbolic repre- sentation of the “Saints of the Most High,” z., the law-abiding Jews, who receive the everlasting Kingdom when the kingdoms of brute force, with THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 199 all their ‘‘abominations of desolation,” have passed away. It is not, indeed, necessary to suppose—there is to my mind strong evidence to the contrary —that the transformation of the symbol to a living person is, in the form of it, original to Jesus. It is probable that Jewish commentators had already found the individual Messiah in their Canonical Apocalypse. But, if we may judge from the Sox of Man passages in the Book of Similt- tudes and the analogous passage in Fourth Ezra (chap. xiii.), the Messianic Son of Man of the rab- binical conception was not more, but rather less, living than the symbolic Figure in Daniel. He may be dressed faultlessly in garments borrowed from Canonical Scriptures, but withal He is a mere lay figure with functions chiefly formal and passive. Jesus has the same fondness for the Old Testament, but with Him the garments of Old Testament phrase are chosen with discrimination. They are enlarged or contracted according to need, and fit a living person. He is entirely faithful to the great thoughts of Scripture, and even to their general form. ‘It is written” is 200 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS always much to Him, but the mere letter of what is written does not trouble Him. One sees this both in what He adds to the representation in Daniel, and in what He sub- tracts from it. The vision of the Seer in Daniel seems to be that of a final Kingdom, in which law- abiding Jews exercise an eternal but righteous and merciful dominion over all other peoples. Jesus spoke, indeed, of the Jews as the children of the Kingdom, but He never taught that either membership or rule in it would be confined to them. The true heirs of the Kingdom might come from all quarters of heaven, and the children might be shut out. Again, in Daniel, the human Figure (in the interpretation the ‘Saints of the Most High”) simply receives the Kingdom. It is, perhaps, natural that in the dream-world of Apocalypse the human agents should appear mainly in an attitude of passivity. Both for Himself and His followers Jesus uses with sincerity the language to Himself. It is His Father’s good pleasure to “give” His little flock the Kingdom. But, even where it 5] of passivity. All power is “ given’ THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 201 would have been most natural for Him simply to quote verbatim the language of written Apocalypse, He rarely, if ever, does so. Thus the Son of Man in Daniel displays activity merely in coming with the clouds of heaven. He is a mere wonder. He is brought to the Ancient of Days, and is given dominion, and that is the end. The Son of Man, in Jesus, has the reality, not the mere semblance, of power. He has angels whom He sends forth from the four winds of heaven, to gather in the peoples to judgment. His own voice wakes the dead. He is Himself Advocate or else Accuser, before God, of the assembled multitudes; and, when the case is finished, the Accuser and Advocate becomes the Judge, and the Judge becomes the King.* One has only to read the 25th chapter of Matthew to see how far the thought of Jesus travels from the scenery of Jewish Apocalypse. The judgment, in Jesus’ teaching, is no mere 1Cf. especially Matt. xiii. 41, xxiv. 30f., xxv. 31 ff., x. 32f. The conception of the Son of Man calling the dead to judgment appears formally only in John (see John v. 27 ff.), but it is entirely in line with the apocalyptic utterances in the Synoptics, and is modelled closely on Daniel xii. 2. 202 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS gorgeous vindication of supreme but undefined rights vested in a chosen people; it is rather the emphasis of truths all men know. The Seer of the Gospels faces an audience, and searches the conscience of men and women He knows. The audience’ feels that, whoever the “Son of Man” may be, He will not judge otherwise than Jesus of Nazareth. By the distance that separates one, who is a mere wandering teacher, despised and disliked by the authorities, and with a mere handful of faithful followers, from One who rides upon the clouds and summons the nations to judgment, we may measure the originality of the Person who could not only think these two in one, but live upon the faith that they were by God's will one in Himself. , We may define the faith more closely. Jesus did not rest in a vague belief that a humble or earthly lot befitted the chosen Saviour of God's poor ones. He came to believe and to teach that the Messiah could save His people, only through the extreme suffering of rejection and death at the hands of His nation and the Gentiles. THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 203 The ‘‘Son of Man,” therefore, in the mature mind of Jesus, is the Person who unites a career of utmost service and suffering with a sure prospect of transcendent glory. And herein we touch at once the depth and the height of His origin- ality. On the negative side of things nothing is more certain in our information regarding Jewish conceptions of the Messiah, in or near the time of our Lord, than that they did not include the idea that He should suffer vicariously for the sins of His people. It is no mere rhetoric to say that, from the apostolic period to the present day, the Cross has been to the Jews a stumbling-block. No doubt, in the early Christian centuries, one finds in Jewish circles—elicited probably by con- troversy with Christians—the idea of a dying Messiah, and even the idea of merit available for others in the righteous Sufferer. But a glance at the passages, where these ideas appear, shows the fallaciousness of the hope of finding in them points of contact with Christian doctrine. Thus in Fourth Ezra (circa 70 a.v.) the Messiah dies, but His death is only an incident in an eschatological programme, which assigned to 204 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS the Messiah no other function than that of living for 400 years with the godly previous to a final judgment executed by Jehovah Himself. Again, the Zargum of Jonathan (fourth century A.D.), perhaps the most authoritative document of what may be called Patristic Judaism, admits a reference to the Messiah in Isaiah liii., but care- fully excludes from the scope of the reference what would be to Christians just the most relevant passages." But, apart from Jewish documents, our Synoptic Gospels alone offer the most satisfactory proof that, so far as even the best of His own con- temporaries were concerned, the idea that the Messianic Son of Man should give His life a ransom for many was absolutely original to Jesus, and His own secret, until He began, with so 1 For the details, see especially Dalman’s brochure, Jesaja 53 erortert, 2nded., 56 pp. Leipzig: Faber, 1891. The author deals throughout with the rabbinical exegesis. Seealso Dr. G. A. Smith’s “Tsaiah” in the Exfosztors Bible, vol. ii. p. 281, note—especially the reference to Bredenkamp. The latter quotes a Rabbi of the sixteenth century as saying, with reference to Isa. lili. : “ Our Masters have, with one voice, held as established, and handed down, that here it is ‘King Messiah,’ who is spoken of.” Cp., also, Webers /Jiidische Theologie, 2nd ed., § 63, p. 292 ff. Dérffling u. Franke, Leipzig, 1897. THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 205 indifferent success, to make it plain at Czsarea Philippi. Those, who cling to the idea that the Fourth Gospel is as literally true to history as the Synoptics, have, in this reference, their own difficulties with the Johannine testimony—that two of His first disciples were introduced to Jesus as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. For us it may be sufficient to say that this testimony must be interpreted? in harmony with the undoubted and indubitable 1 There seems to be no good reason, why such an interpretation, as that suggested long ago by the late distinguished author of Ecce Homo, should not be accepted. John was looking for the Messiah. Among the crowds, who came to the baptism of repent- ance, was One unlike all the others—an Innocent One among the guilty. It is hardly conceivable that John should have failed to see anything unique in Jesus at their short but solemn meeting, or that he said nothing memorable about it to his own disciples. If he could describe zmsel/f from the pages of Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. xl. 3), why might he not also from the same source (Isa. liii. 7) record his impression of Jesus? It is surely credible that one, whom Jesus characterised as “more than a prophet,” should throw off a couple of phrases (“Lamb of God” and “bearing sins”) suggested by Scriptures, that were constantly in his mind, and that these phrases should suit the facts regarding Jesus’ Person and Office, in ways of which the speaker himself was not conscious. One may believe all this, however, and still hold that there is an idealising element, in the portrayal of the Baptist in the Gospel of John, that is absent from the Synoptics. See Mr. Morris Stewart’s Temptation of Jesus, p. 213 ff. Melrose, 1903. 206 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS testimony of the Synoptists to the effect that the idea of the Messianic sufferings and death is one that wakes no echo in the heart of any Jewish contemporary of our Lord, not excepting even His disciples. Unless we regard the story of the Transfigura- tion as proof to the contrary, there is no hint in the Gospels that Jesus reached the conviction of the necessity and efficacy of His death by way of supernatural apocalypse. Yet we may be certain that, psychologically speaking, this truth came to Him not otherwise than the older truth that He was the Chosen and Beloved Son of God. His destiny to be the suffering Messiah was as much a mystery to Himself as His destiny to be the glorious Messiah of Daniel’s vision. And the proof may lie for us in the fact that, here also, He uses the objective mode of speech, and speaks of the Son of Man who goes as it is written. It was not mere thinking out of the matter that brought Him to this conclusion. His vicarious death was a Divine revelation—a thing apart in His consciousness quite as much as the voice which He alone heard at His baptism: Thou art THE TITLE “SON OF MAN” 207 My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. To say this is not to deny His originality. It is to assert it. The only originality that belonged to Him, or that He would have claimed, was the originality of an obedient faith in God—the unique Father of the unique Son. We may perhaps agree here that there is no originality, for any of us, worth having or using, _ other than an originality like—however also un- like—to that of the “Son of Man.” 09) i ms n a) Za (x) Ay Ay a APPENDIX. A. LECTURE I. The passage, Luke 17%, at p. 29.—There is a question here, both of the “lower” and the “higher” criticism. 1. The question of the lower criticism con- cerns the meaning of the preposition, évtds. Does it mean w2zthzm in the sense of Ps. 39? (LXX, Ps. 383: ’"EdcpyavOn 1) Kapdia ov évtos mov): “My heart was hot wzthin me.” Or, does it mean zm the midst of, év péow,' with a sense akin to that in Judg. 12°, where, eg., at ver. 32 the LXX read: kat xat@xnocev 0 “Aaonp év péow tov Xavavaiod. Grammatically, both meanings are possible (see Grimm’s Dzctzonary of N.T. Greek, at word évtds). Hence, on both sides, interpreters support the rendering they prefer by considerations drawn from the context, or from their general views of the doctrine of Jesus. Those who adopt the rendering “within you,” favoured by both the A.V. and the R.V., are naturally influenced by the idea that it is the quality of nwardness that distinguishes the Kingdom, as Jesus conceived it, from that of which the Pharisees thought. On the other hand, it is contended, withsome justice, that Jesus would hardly have said: “ The Kingdom of God is within you,” to the Pharisees. 1 Cp. Luke 22”. 2i1r 212 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 2. Thus, on both sides, the question is passed on to the criticism that must bear heavier responsibilities than those that run on lines of grammar. I agree, on the whole, with those who translate “among you,” and it seems to me that at p. 86,n. 1, of his Dze Predigt Jesu, J. Weiss makes a point against Dalman, who supports the rendering, “ within you” (= zu cordibus vestris), in the contention, that, in an Aramaic original, the equiva- lent of évytés would be, on Dalman’s own showing, not 132 (4g0), in, but ‘22 (benz), between or among. On the other hand, it may well be that the ambiguity attaching to the Greek work évtés is intentional. Jesus may have hesitated to say to the Pharisees : “ The Kingdom of God is wzthin you,’ and yet may have wished to use an expression that might some day penetrate even them with the idea that the Kingdom was spiritual, and must be discerned from wzthin. In any case, the cautious student should not too readily surrender this logion to interpreters, whose tendency is to make more of the apocalyptic element in the Gospels than the facts warrant. It is significant that J. Weiss, who cannot be accused of minimising this element, yet contends that Luke 17” should be interpreted in the light of Matt. 12%, and the parallel, Luke 11, the meaning of which is plain. His interpretation of eta wapatnpycews in a subjective rather than an objective sense seems to me both relevant and suggestive. It gives the meaning: The Kingdom of God does not come, and will not come, in the manner expected by those, who wait for it with the eyes of the apocalyptic reckoner and visionary. Just as, at Mark 12% and parallels, Jesus repudiates connection with the political hopes associated with the APPENDIX B 213 popular Messianic title, “Son of David,” so here, with equal emphasis, He disallows the attitude of those who dealt, on whatever Scriptural authority, in apocalyptic reckonings, looking for a sign from the physical heavens, but blind to the real signs of the times. Doubtless, there was an insincere element in the question of the Pharisees. The passage should be read along with Matt: ro, Mark 84%; Luke 1254, APPENDIX B. LECTURE II. Affinity between the Phraseology of Jesus and that of the Jewish Apocalypses, at p. 62.—The principal examples of parallelism between the eschatological discourse in Mark 13 (= Matt. 24) and passages in Jewish apocalypses, which Haupt cites in support of his contention that we are warranted in asserting no more than that our Lord used some phrases, that were more or less current in writings of the apocalyptic class and in popular language, are as follows (of. cit, p. 47ff.) :— 1. Beginning of Sorrows, and Sign of the Son of Man. —Speaking of Fourth Ezra, he remarks: “ Matt. 24° recalls not only 4 Ezra 5°, popule commovebuntur, but also zbzd. 9°#-: Quando videbttur in seculo moto locorum, populorum turbatio, gentium cogitationes, ducum incon- stantia, principum turbatio ... sicut omne quod factum est in seculo initium habet, pariter et consummationem, et consummatio est manifesta, sic et Altissimt tempora: initia manifesta in prodigiis et virtutibus, et consum- 214 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS matio in actu et in signis. Here we note, along with a number of kindred ideas, especially the difference between the dpyyn @divev and the final onpetoy of the Son of Man. The following words in Ezra 9 make the parallel even more striking: Et erit, omnis qui salvus factus fuerit et qui poterit effugere per opera sua vel per fidem, in qua credidit, ts relinquetur de predictis periculis et videbit salutare meum. The words, guz poterit effugere, recall Luke 21%, ‘that ye may be accounted worthy,’ etc., and the concluding words recall even more forcibly Matt. 243%, ‘he that shall endure,’ etc.” And yet, Haupt goes on to remark, we cannot, so far as the Gospels are concerned, entertain the idea of literary dependence. Not only is Fourth Ezra later than Mark, its date being about 90 A.D. (so Gunkel in Kautzsch’s Pseudepigraphen, vol. ii. p. 352); but in the fact that we find the same thought of the remnant, who escape all the prophesied dangers and see the salvation of the Lord, expressed with considerable similarity of phrase in Ezra 6%, we may see a proof that both the idea and the phrase were widely circulated in the apocalyptist’s time. Matt. 24° may, further, be com- pared with Baruch 708. I quote from Charles’s edition, Apocalypse of Baruch (A. & C. Black, 1896): “And it will come to pass that whosoever gets safe out of the war will die in the earthquake, and whosoever gets safe out of the earthquake will be burned by the fire, and whosoever gets safe out of the fire will be destroyed by famine.” Here the preliminary woes, except the five, are the same with those mentioned in Matthew. The date of Baruch, according to Kautzsch (of. czz., vol. il. p. 407), is after 70 and not later than 96 A.D. 2. Betrayal and Hatred among Friends, Matt. 24” . APPENDIX B 215 compared with 4 Ezra 6% and 5°: Evzt zm clo tempore debellabunt amict amicos ut inimici. Amici omnes semet ipsos expugnabunt. Compare also Baruch 70°: “ They will hate one another, and provoke one another to fight.” 3. Abounding Iniquity, Matt. 24% compared with 4 Ezra 5%: Multiplicabttur iniustitia super hanc quam tu vides et super quam audistz. Also, zbzd. 51°: Multz- plicabitur iniustitia et incontinentia super terram. And zbid. 7%: Quando intustitia multiplicata est. Compare also, in Charles’s translation, Enoch 917: “And then when unrighteousness . . . in all kinds will increase, a great chastisement from heaven will come upon them all.” Charles fixes the date of this section of Enoch at 166-161 B.c. This would move it back more than two centuries from the time of 4 Ezra, and goes to confirm Haupt’s contention that the idea and the phrase might be in the minds and on the lips of Jesus and His disciples, quite apart from any knowledge of a written extra-canonical apocalypse. 4. The Shortening of the Time of A ffiiction, Matt. 24”. —The Efzstle of Barnabas, a Christian document, which Lightfoot is disposed to date at 70-79 A.D. (Lightfoot— Harmer, The Apostolic Fathers, p. 241), refers at 4? to Enoch: “The last offence is at hand, concerning which the Scripture speaketh, as Enoch saith. For to this end, the Master (Sea7rdTns) hath cut the seasons and the days short (cuvrétunkev Tods Karpovs Kal Tas Hépas), that His beloved might hasten and come to His inheritance” (Lightfoot’s translation). Words closely like any of the above occur, so far as I am aware, nowhere in any known MS. of Enoch; but, according to Charles (The Book of Enoch, p. 38) the passage here referred to is Debs SN | 216 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS Enoch 89°, The section of Enoch, in which this passage occurs, he dates at only a few years later than Daniel. There is the same representation of heathen oppressors under the symbol of wild beasts. They tear in pieces the sheep, z.e., the Jews, who for their sins are delivered to lions and tigers (Assyrians and Chaldees ?), etc., by the seventy “shepherds” or angels (so most interpreters) to whom they are entrusted. The writer wishes to convey that Jehovah will punish the “shep- herds” who have gone beyond His commands as to the number of sheep they have allowed to be destroyed. At ver. 60, after Enoch has wept and entreated for the sheep, Jehovah says to the shepherds, “I will deliver them over unto you duly numbered, and will tell you which of them are to be destroyed,—and these destroy ye.” The shepherds destroyed many more than were prescribed. But a scribe was set to watch them, and Enoch saw till the scribe’s record was laid before the Lord of the sheep, and the seventy shepherds were seized and found guilty, and a new house was miracu- lously provided for all the sheep that were left, and “all the beasts of the earth and the birds of heaven did homage to them” (Enoch go” 2"¢ 3°), Enoch, on the whole, is a book which no average man will read through gladly even once, and, as I have referred once or twice to my handbook, The Times of Christ (T. & T. Clark), I may take here the opportunity of saying that I am not so sure now as I was in 1896 that this apocalyptic book had any interest for Jesus, or that it was even known toHim. Yet, anyone who wishes to study the mere ¢echnique of Jewish apocalypse will probably be helped rather than hin- dered by the exceeding tameness of the imagery, to APPENDIX B 217 find most that he wants in such a book as Enoch, chaps. 83—90. To the head of the Shortened Time belongs the passage in Baruch 20%, where the words run: “ Behold, the days will come, and the times will hasten more than the former, and the seasons will speed on more than those that are past, and the years will pass more quickly than the present. Therefore have I now taken away Zion, that I may the more speedily visit the world in its season” (Charles’s translation). 5. False Prophets and Deceptive Signs and Wonders, Matt. 24*4 compared with Baruch 48**: “ And there will be many rumours and tidings not a few, and the works of portents will be shown, and promises not a few will be recounted, and some of them will prove idle, and some of them will be confirmed ” (Charles’s translation). In regard to all these resemblances of idea and phrase between the Gospels and Jewish apocalypses, and in regard to others which he cites further on, Haupt admits that we cannot speak of mere coincidence; but the effort to build upon them the conclusion, that our Lord’s conception of the consummated kingdom was confined within the framework of the average pious expectation of His time, he characterises as a twofold error: (1) that of failing to recognise the independent attitude adopted by Jesus to the religious tradition of His fellow-countrymen ; and (2) that of overlooking the pervasively pictorial character of our Lord’s mode of speech (of. cit, p. 49). I have written the Lectures under the conviction that Haupt’s position, as so stated, is sound, though, as regards the theory of the Lzttle Apocalypse, touched in Lecture I., 1 am not prepared to go beyond the Scottish 218 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS verdict of “Not proven.” A verdict the one way or the other, in the latter matter, does not touch our estimate of Him who is the Truth; it touches only our judgment regarding the literary method and spiritual perception of the Evangelists. They were surely men of their time, in a sense or degree not predicable of Jesus. APPENDIX © LECTURE TV. I. “ Son of Man” in the Synoptic Gospels,“ On about forty different occasions, etc.” p. 145. The following conspectus of the passages will be useful to the student. I have marked with the letters af. the passages that are clearly of the apocalyptic class, referring, ze., to the final glory of the Messiah. MATTHEW. 870, Son of man lay his head. 19%, In the regeneration, when, af. 9°. Power to forgive. 2018, We go up to Jerusalem. 10%, Gone over cities until, a. 20°, Not to be ministered unto. 111%, Eating and drinking. 247", As the lightning, so, af. 128. Lord of the Sabbath. 24°°, Then!shall appear the sign, af. ; 12°, A word against. twice. 12”, Jonah three days. 2487 and 89. Noah, so shall also coming, 13°”, He that soweth the good. ap. ; twice. 13". Angels to gather tares. 2444, Think not cometh, af. 1618, Who do men say. 2518, Watch, for know neither day, af. 1627, Come in glory of Father, af. | 25°. When Son of man shall come, 167, Some not taste death, af, ap. 17°. Tell vision to no man, af. 267. After two days the Feast. 172, Suffer like Elias (John the| 26™. Goeth, as it is written ; twice. Baptist). 26%, Sleep on now. 17”. Betrayed into hands of men. 26°, Hereafter shall ye see, a. 18, Come to save lost. Analysis of Matthew ; Thirty-two occurrences on twenty-nine occasions. Of the thirty-two, fourteen are apocalyptic; of the fourteen, eight are in chaps. 24 and 25. It is perhaps doubtful whether 17° and the parallel Mark 9? should be considered apocalyptic. i © APPENDIX C 219 MARK. 2), Power to forgive. 10%. We go up to Jerusalem. 2°38, Lord of the Sabbath. 1o*, Not to be ministered unto. 8°, Began to teach—Cczs. Phil. 13°. Then shall they see, a. 8°85, Son of man be ashamed, af. 1471, Goeth, as it is written ; twice. 9°. Tell no man till, af. 14%. Sleep on now. 9". Written of, that must suffer. 14°, Before Caiaphas, af. 9. He taught Hisdisciples and said. Analysis of Mark: Fourteen occurrences on thirteen occasions: all but three of the fourteen, namely 8%, 8°, 9%, clearly represented in Matt. 8° and 8%, are, however, represented by Luke 9” 27428, LUKE. 574. Power to forgive. |17™. Days of the Son of man, af. 6°. Lord of the Sabbath. | 17°. Lightning, af. 7. Eating and drinking. | 174, Even thus in the day, a. 977. Son of man must suffer. | 188. Find faith in the earth, af. 9*. Son of man be ashamed, af. _| 18*4. We go up to Jerusalem. 9. Let these sayings sink. | 19°. To seek and save. [9° Not to destroy—Westcott and 2177. Then shall they see, a. Hort and R.V. reject. ] 21°86, Stand before the Son of man, a. 9°8, Foxes have holes. | 22%. Goeth as determined. 11°, Sign of Jonah.: 22%. Betrayest thou with a kiss. 128. Son of man confess, af. | 228°. Before Sanhedrin, a. 12)°, Word against. ‘24. Reminder at the tomb. Analysis of Luke: Twenty-two occurrences on as many occasions: nine of the twenty-two apocalyptic. Final Analysis, Matthew, Mark, and Luke: Subtracting three from Matthew’s thirty-two, namely, the repetitions in 245929459 and 26%, reckoning Mark 9*! peculiar to Mark, and Luke 9%, 128, 17%, 188, 19!°, 218, 22%, 247 peculiar to Luke, and adding to these Luke 97 294 26 as representing Mark 8*! 4248, we obtain exactly the number forty, mentioned in the beginning of Lecture IV. ABPEN DISC: LECTURE IV.—continued. Il.—Lzetzmann and the word Gabhra@ (under No. 2 of the propositions contra the Lietzmann—Wellhausen position), p. 154.—-The statement under this head in 220 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS Lecture IV. is hardly detailed enough to seem relevant. I have no expert knowledge of Aramaic, or its various dialects, whether considered geographically (Lietzmann), or historically (Dalman); but I have been at pains to study the dicta of the authorities, so far as they relate to the matter under discussion. Relying on informa- tion, supplied largely by themselves, I maintain with confidence that Wellhausen and Lietzmann have, of course without intention, misled the discussion re- garding “Son of Man” in the Gospels. Lietzmann has done so, especially in two ways :— 1. He has gone beyond the warrant of the facts in speaking as if barnash@ and gabhr@ were absolutely synonymous expressions. No doubt, as they both mean, in general, man, they are used naturally and frequently as synonymous; but it does not follow that barnasha@ might have been used in every case, where we find gadhra. Thus in the Ev. Hieros., at Matt. 19°94! sabhra@’ is used in the sense of husband. Lietzmann will hardly maintain that it would have been natural in later Aramaic to say dbarna@sha@ for man as distinct from woman. If he said so, he would surely give away almost entirely his case against “Son of Man” in the Gospels, which depends mainly on the zzdefinzteness of the expression darnash@. On the other side, it is by no means clear that gabhr@ ever lent itself to the same degree of indefiniteness of meaning, that was possible (witness the Talmudic usage) in the case of barnash@. For instance, in a sentence beginning, “ If azyone—’, a Talmudic writer, unless he were actually commenting on a canonical Hebrew text, and, out of conventional reverence, using Hebrew, would express anyone by barnash, or even APPENDIX C 221 barnasha ; but it would be, I venture to think, as unnatural for him to use gabhr@ as it would be for a Hebrew writer to use gebher instead of ’adham. For an example of this kind of sentence, see in Dalman (of. cit, p. 202, Germ. ed.) the famous in- stance of the Talmudic commentator on Num. 23%, who quotes R. Abbahu, a Jew of Cesarea, circa 280 A.D., as saying (evidently in controversy with the Christians): “If anyone says, ‘I am God,’ he lies; ‘I am the Son of Man, he will finally regret it; ‘I am going up to heaven,’ he has said it, but will not carry it out.” The commentator uses Hebrew, and says, “adham for anyone, and ben ’adham for the Son of Man. If Dalman’s view of the passage is correct, the latter expression contains a clear refer- ence to the Christian use of “Son of Man” as a title denoting the divinity of Jesus.? 1 Schmidt, proposes to excise the words meaning He wll finally regret it, and to read after Ze “es: ‘‘I am a son of man (2.¢., a man), and I am going up to heaven.” This, certainly, suits the fact that R. Abbahu has made no attempt to paraphrase the titular ‘‘Son of Man” of the Greek Gospels. If he had intended a title, would he not have attempted some Hebrew equivalent of the Aramaic-Christian terminus technicus, breh dhe gabhr@ ox breh dhe bharnashd ? Even on Schmidt’s view, the reference to Jesus in this interesting Talmudic passage as the person who says he is ben °adham and is going up to heaven, is, as Schmidt admits, indubit- able (Excyc. Bibl., vol. iv. p. 4706). Schmidt supposes that R. Abbahu wishes to point satirically to the contrast between Jesus’ confession that He was only a den ’adham, and the enormous claim in John 14% and Acts 1°. I observe that the late revered Professor Franz Delitzsch, who died before the philological discussion regarding ‘‘Son of Man” arose, has, in his Hebrew Version of the New Testament (Ackermann & Glaser, Leipzig, 1880), rendered ‘‘ Son of Man” in the Gospels uniformly by de ha ’adham. If, as I believe to be the case, this expression (z.¢., the definite article with the singular, *a¢dham, after den) occurs nowhere in the O.T., it may be con- sidered sufficiently peculiar to serve the purpose of a Hebrew-Christian equivalent for the Aramaic-Christian fermznus technicus, breh dhe gabhra’. 222 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 2. Lietzmann has gone beyond the facts in the emphasis he has laid on the zudefiniteness of barnasha. _ No doubt, as proved by the Syriac Versions of the Gospels (Cureton and Peshito) and by the Talmudic usage, barnasha may be indefinite enough; but it may also be fairly definite, if not emphatic. 1 have no access to the Ev. Hizeros., but I owe the reader of p. 154,n. 1, of this book an apology for not having learnt sooner from the exasperating small print of the Encyc. Bibl. (vol. iv. p. 4707) that barnash@ 1s used as the synonym of gadhrad in the instance noted. For, while at Matt. 267 the Av. Hzeros. uses gabhr@, where Peter says, “I know not the man,” at ver. 74, where the same words occur, darnasha@ is used. Furthermore, the Av. Hizeros. is singularly exact in distinguishing between darnash and the emphatic barnash@. Thus, in numerous passages, the former is used exclusively as the rendering of av@pwros (eg., Matt. 8°, 19°, Mark 8°), and darnadshd@ as exclusively for 6 avOpwros. There seems even, according to Prof. Schmidt, to be a distinction in this document between barnash and the simple ‘éa@sh, as in a series of passages, where both occur, the latter is used ex- clusively in the sense of anyone. Again: Prof. Schmidt points out the inaccuracy of Lietzmann’s statement that at Luke 5” the &v. Hieros. renders dvO@pwmos tis by W3 NWI (barnasha@ hadh). What is so rendered is not av@pwros tus, but the vocative, dv@pwre, which, quite according to correct usage, is rendered in Aramaic by the emphatic. But, at Luke 15! (5 for 15 is a misprint of the Eucyc. Bib/.), avOpwtos tis is rendered by 19 W272 (darnash hadh). APPENDIX C 223 As regards the’ titular use of “Son of Man” in our Greek Gospels, it does not in the least affect the . view, which, following mainly Fiebig, I have taken in Lecture IV., to point out, that, so far as is known, none of the Aramaic translations of the Gospels rendered 0 vids Tod avOpeémov by the simple darnasha’. In the Av. Hzeros. the equivalent used is chiefly 72 N21 1 (Greh dhé gabhr@), lit., “his son that of the man”; but sometimes the extraordinary form, 7 73 NwIna (dreh dhé bharnisha@), lit.. “his son that of the son of man,” appears. In the view, advocated in Lecture IV., it is allowed that the titular “Son of Man” of our Gospels is true only of the mznd of Jesus, who, when He used the third person in speaking of Himself, always thought of the glorious Figure in Dane 7") It could not, in the nature of the case; and in the immediate intention of Jesus, express the average understanding, or rather want of under- standing, of His words, on the part either of the multitude or the disciples. Yet the titular rendering in the Gospels zs true to the main fact of the Gospel history, namely, Jesus’ consciousness of Himself, as the Man of prophecy, the Head of the Final Kingdom, to whom, on His own behalf and that of His brethren, all power was given. Once this truth was attained, it was felt, by Aramaic-speaking as well as other Christians, that it ought to be preserved by some such terminus technicus as the 6 vids tod avOpwrrov of the Greek Gospels. Naturally, there was some difficulty in finding a good equivalent. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the expression “Son of Man,” used as a title and applied to one individual, is an unnatural expression in every language under 224 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS the sun. But, perhaps all the more on this account, it has been felt by Christians that this unique phrase corresponds to the unique fact of Jesus. Breh dhé gabhr@ is a literal translation, in the Aramaic of the second century, of 6 vids tod avOpmmov. If some preferred the extraordinary form breh dhé bharnasha, the reason may have been, partly, the desire to avoid seeming to imply that Jesus was the son of some particular man (so Schmidt), and, partly, the desire to preserve a literary contact with the dar "nash of Dan. 7%. I make Lietzmann welcome to the assump- tion that, even in the time of Jesus, the simple ex- pression, Jarnasha, could not have been understood as a title, and I do not share the anxiety of Driver to prove that dreh dhé ’nadsh@ is at least a grammatical possibility and may have been used by Jesus. My thesis is: that Jesus used the indefinite expression, but that, inevitably and in due time, He stamped it with the definiteness of Himself. Printed by Morrison & Gis Limitep, Edinburgh ire) ' Gc) 7 N ° is) | o% A DiveS. 23229 M953 ISSUED TO Sige eS Wat Div.8. 232.9 M953 32674 TUL D01348103K yeorsve 0G maui aa \