t ]L I B K ^ R Y Theological Seniina r,y , PRINCETON, N. J, >Shflf Scc;;ont.Q2..7.S. J5oo/, fjo y.3. ^ ? THEOLOGICAL TRANSLATION FUND LIBRARY. VOL. XIV. KEIM'S HISTORY OF JESUS OF NAZARA. VOL. III. THE HISTOEY JESUS OF NAZAEA, FEEELY INVESTIGATED IN ITS CONNECTION WITH THE NATIONAL LIFE OF ISRAEL, AND RELATED IN DETAIL. v^ DR. THEODOR KEIM. TRANSLATED BY ARTHUR RANSOM. VOL. IIL WILLIAMS A]^D I^OEGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON: And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 1877. - LONDON : PRINTKD BY C. GREEN AND SON, 178, STRAND. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Preface .... Introduction .... The Galilean Spring-time I. — The First Preaching A. The Initial Sermon B. The Watchword of Jesus . C. The Kingdom of Heaven . D. The Eepentance tliat admits to the Kingdom Heaven E. The Method of Jesus r. The Localities in wMch Jesus preached . XL — The Works of Jesus A. Critical Difficulties B. The Fundamental Facts . C. The Order and the Beginning of the Works of D. Healing The Healinc of the Possessed III. — The Disciples, and among Them Jesus' Life and Teaching A. The Calling of the Disciples B. The Sermon on the Mount C. The Private Life of Jesus . of 10 12 12 39 48 92 122 134 152 155 170 197 226 250 250 281 335 CONTENTS. PAGE IV. — Successful Results and Apostolic Mission . 350 A. The Belief of the People and the Opposition of the Teachers ..... 350 B. The Election of the Twelve . . .369 C. The Mission of the Twelve . . .393 PEEFACE TO THE SECOND (GERMAN) VOLUME. I OWE the reader solid productions, rather than long prefaces. The promise made in the first volume, to issue the remainder of the work in small portions as rapidly as possible, has not, strictly speaking, been broken ; yet I did not anticipate a three years' delay. I can, therefore, fully understand the many friendly inquiries which have been made, as well as G. Eosch's Catili- nariau Quousque tandem in the Studien. But the labour proved to be much greater than I had expected, and far exceeded my time and strength, much of which was consumed by my treatises on Chronology, the Herods, the death of Jesus, and John the Presbyter, which formed the peaceful retinue or defensive escort of the first volume. Moreover, it soon became apparent that the atomic character of the material and the views made it impossible to carry on the work satisfactorily without re- nouncing the plan of issuing it in fragments before the whole had been prepared. The necessary point of preparedness is now arrived at, and the responsibility at present lies with the printer. A second confession must here be made. Another reason why the work has taken three years is, that the " solid productions " could not be compressed into two volumes. The Galilean year of teaching has filled one volume ; the Jerusalemitic journey and the history of the passion, with their momentous questions Viii PREFACE TO THE SECOND (GERMAN) VOLUME. and archaeological riches, will require a third. The printing is so arranged that the whole shall be presented to the public in four divisions of from eighteen to twenty sheets each, issued at short intervals : of these divisions, the first two — the Galilean Springtime and the Galilean Storms — are partly ready and partly in preparation. I believe I have remained faithful to my promise to investi- gate freely and to narrate fully, and on this very account it has been necessary to increase the size of the book. I neither was willing nor did I dare to give mere empty results, as it is now everywhere the fashion to do, at the expense of thoroughness and trustworthiness. This history is too important for either the writer or the reader to neglect for a moment the inquiry after, and the clear and intelligible establishment of, the truth. Hence the painstaking earnestness with which the copious annotations have been multiplied ; hence also the juxtaposition of the ana- lytical and the historical-constructive methods in the text itself. While here and there complaints have been made that the first volume was too much occupied with investigation, that it led the impatient reader like Israel through the wilderness, — on the other hand, even laymen — not merely theologians — whom I believe capable of forming a correct judgment, have requested me to continue in the same manner, since it enables them to arrive at an independent opinion of their own. When firm ground is once to some extent secured, much of the laborious preparatory work can be dispensed with, and the simple, concise, transparent his- torical truth can be exhibited alone. No change will be found in my critical and historical principles and conclusions. With reference to the critical and historical question, tlie radical school of criticism has recently exhibited an arrogant attitude towards me; and after ten years' practice in remaining silent, I must PREFACE TO THE SECOND (GERMAN) VOLUME. ix now, for the sake of the cause, speak out. " After -the melan- choly issue of the latest attempts to compose a life of Jesus," Volkmar imagines that in his Evangelicn (1870) he has attained "a positively certain" result, "a positively certain" though very brief life of Jesus. But though this book claims to be a bold and decisive advance upon its predecessors, it does in truth, with its fresh resolution of the life of Jesus into a variegated play of symbols and allegories not dreamt of by even Origen and Bonaventura, represent merely a great anachronism in the face of the progress made by this science during the last thirty years. Scarcely anywhere can we find more that is arbitrary and uncertain, more frequent repetitions of the chilling " perhaps " and " possibly," of the restless " but," terms so calculated to rob the reader of comfort and trust, in a word, more that is unsubstantial and unsatisfying, than in this book, whose cliief strength lies in its rigid consistency, and in the i^roof it affords that rash criticism is as dangerous as dogmatism. Unfortu- nately, I shall be compelled to devote many notes to the special provocations offered by the statements and omissions of this book; though I am convinced that its conclusions, and its poetical Mark sobered down by weak and prosaic successors, as Matthew and Luke are said to be, are no longer really dangerous opponents. The difference of opinion between Ewald and myself, not only as to the Gospels, but also as to the name Nazara, still continues : I am not in a position to sacrifice to the discoverer of an incomparably more important, buried name — to which he himself refers — the name the explanation of which he himself justifies. The sermon of the prophet in his own home will afford an opportunity of looking at this subject again. I might make some alteration in the dogmatic representations of the first volume — which, however, do not belong to my jDrovince — but X PREFACE TO THE SECOND (GERMAN) VOLUME. the concluding passages of my work will afford me an opjior- tunity of doing this. My expectation that the book would bring upon me many bitter reproaches, has been in several ways fulfilled. Of the loss of temporal favour, I witnessed a choice instance in the same year; while the cuts and thrusts of criticism have not been wanting. On the one hand, the Erlanger Zeitschrift, and in it the indefatigable Hofmann, has contended that the miracu- lous conception, so evidently the main point, is still, like Peter, throned upon a rock. I have found the evidence weak, and the tone undignified. On the other hand, the opposite party have sought to prove that they are superior not only to affection and good manners, but also to knowledge and truth. But I wrote neither in their interest nor in my own ; I wrote in the service of history and to the honour of the Lord— that is, of Him who is historical. Such assailants will also cause me no pain in the future, and I shall assume towards them an attitude of increased indifference. At the same time, I should be guilty of concealing the truth if I were unwilling to acknowledge that I have derived much encouragement from a far larger number of friendly criticisms, both favourable and unfavourable. I would here gratefully mention names representative of the most diverse theological tendencies — Distelbarth, Ewald, Feuerlein, Haus- rath, Heer, H. Hirzel, Kesselring, Krauss, Langhans, A. Schaffer, A. Schweizer, C. Schwarz, Seydel, Tholuck, Weizsiicker, Ziegler. I can scarcely now recall all the writers ; and the names of the anonymous critics in foreign publications have seldom reached me. May God grant to the truth of the Gospel a sure, vigorous, triumphant resurrection ! May He make manifest, above the weaknesses and infirmities of the workman, the pure and perfect truth ! After the tumult of war, in the midst of which we at PREFACE TO THE SECOND (GERMAN) VOLUME. xi present stand, missing more sadly and indignantly than ever the fruits of Christianity, may God open the eternal reign of the blessings of the life of Jesus — peace on earth, brotherly love, and human nobleness ! And if I may breathe into these lines one other wish out of the depths of my heart, it is this : May the German nation, at this moment standing forth so solemnly, so enthusiastically, so determinedly, as the armed champion of God fighting for the highest good of mankind, for right, virtue, and truth, for the culture that is pure against that which is meretricious — may she be permitted to fulfil her destiny, to attain in every intellectual province as well as in the religious, the real, liberty-giving truth, instead of the half-truths which both impart and take ^away blessing, and which the crafty defenders of the past are still forcing upon her ! While old, dead worlds are setting, her proud mission is to be the apostle of progress, no longer merely in the^canonics of battles, or of national right, or of political economy, but also in the religion of Jesus, the re- ligion of humility, of freedom, of humanity. And should the two nations, in the future, emulate each other in such a contest, then the fall of tens of thousands will be — to borrow an expres- sion of Paul's (Rom. xi. 12) — the riches of the world and life from the dead. TH. KEIM. Zarich, August, 1870. INTRODUCTION The stations of the teaching-year of Jesus — a period brief when reckoned by its days, but infinite when estimated by its achievements — are plainly marked out. We see the happy blossoming-time in Galilee; then an increasingly portentous series of Galilean struggles ; and, finally, the decisive journey to Jerusalem, voluntarily undertaken and carried out with heroic courage.^ This order of development is presented to us by the Gospels themselves, and most perceptibly by the first Gospel, which, in violent contrasts and with inflexible consistency, ex- hibits the sudden bursting forth of those tragical and endless struggles of Jesus from the very bosom of a good and hopeful spring-time of teaching, and their inevitable issue in the death at Jerusalem ; while the other sources colour the beginning more or less with the soberer and darker tints of the end, and thus more or less tone down or overlook the turning-point in the middle.^ This three-fold division lies more in the material than ^ Among recent writers, Weizsiicker, in spite of his preference for John, has adopted this division, pp. 331 sq. Pressense, pp. 387, 388. Weizsacker : (1) the earlier working in Galilee; (2) the later Galilean period; (3) the Jerusalemitic period. Hase also (pp. 95, 182, 212) gives the three periods : (1) the acceptable year of the Lord ; (2) the year of struggle ; (3) passion and glorification. Many recent writers give the life of Jesus, as Paulus and Ammon did formerly, variously in a mere series of co-ordinated sections ; comp. Schleiermacher, Kenan, Strauss. Renan has, like Matthew, twenty-eight chapters. ^ Matt. iv. — X. shows the beginnings, xi. — xvi. the struggles. In xvi. 21, tlie narrative passes on to the stage of the passion. Luke exhibits, in iv. 16 — 30, and particularly in the four conflicts of v. 17 — vi. 11, the struggles as taking place at the very beginning ; Mark does the same, ii. 1 — iii. 6. On the other hand, the great turn- ing-point is completely obliterated by both. See Vol. I. pp. 102, 119 sq. VOL. III. B ^ INTRODUCTION. in the form of our Gospels, which, in a remarkable manner — an evidence of the literary and spiritual elevation on which this primitive historiography already stands — have all passed in one way or another from the three-fold to a two-fold division that, looking beyond the more minute local, temporal, actual stages of this life, seeks to strike, as it were, the vital nerve of its activity in the very centre. In Matthew, the great turning-point of the Galilean activity of Jesus lies in the determination to suffer, which Jesus formed in the remotest northern part of Galilee, and w^hich he afterwards carried out in the south, in Jerusalem. In Mark, it lies in the same district, in Jesus' double Messianic confession— through the cross to glory. In Luke, it is found a step later, at the commencement of the solemn journey of death from Galilee to Jerusalem. In John, it is found later still, in the Jerusalemitic transition from the glory of Jesus' life to the glory of his death.^ All these representations and divisions are in truth evidently governed by the same fundamental thought, namely, the clear and distinct exhibition of the significant dividing-line between life and death in this Messianic career ; but the conception of Matthew and Mark is plainly the most profound, since it places the great turning-point in the first thought of Jesus, and does not postpone it, as do Luke and John, until the thought is carried into execution. The question may suggest itself, whether the written history of the teaching-year of Jesus ought simply to abide by this ancient and venerable division. There is no force in the doubt which Holsten in particular has recently made current by the revival of the old objections of the Platonist Celsus : as if the predictions of the passion and the so intentionally strong em- phasizing of those predictions belonged, not to . history, but to dogmatics, to the desire and the invention of the Evangelists, who were kicking against the pricks of tlie incomprehensible death of the Messiah. For this is an arbitrary assumption, con- ^ Matt. xvi. 21, comp. iv. 17; Mark viii. 27—31; Luke ix. 51; John xiii. 1. Comp. Vol. I. pp. 71 sqq., 102, 156. INTRODUCTION. 3 tradicted by facts.^ Jesus was actually persecuted ; iu the per- secution, he resolved to submit to death ; and in this resolve to die — which did not haunt him merely in his last hours — he rose solemnly to the highest point of his Messianic conception, of his Messianic working. So far we might abide by the ancient pragmatism. And we abide by it, with one allowable deviation. This resolve to die is not merely — as the Gospels chiefly repre- sent it — the starting-point of a new series of developments ; it is, above all, the terminus, the ripe fruit of the Galilean struggles that those authors have themselves described; and it is im- possible for us to isolate cause and effect. If we regard the Galilean struggles, including the resolve to die, as the second part, then the carrying out of that resolve, the journey to Jeru- salem and the Jerusalemitic catastrophe — which Luke and John have exhibited as the second great epoch, and Matthew and Mark have emphatically introduced as at least the second division of the second great epoch dated from the north of Galilee — must be regarded as an independent third part.^ But the Gospels give rise to considerable perplexity by their tendency to make divisions. It behoves us to acknowledge this once for all, and as far as possible to dispose of the difficulty. The sources give, namely, not only the great fundamental divi- sion, they give also subdivisions, subsections, even diurnal records. But these subordinate divisions are altogether different in the earlier Gospels from what they are in the later ones ; and in the former they are also — at least as to the greater part of the Galilean period — multiform, contradictory, and, even when they harmonize, not always trustworthy. We find the commence- ment of the ministry, the choosing of the Apostles, the mission of the disciples, the teaching by parables, the disputation con- cerning the commandments, in epoch-making, leading positions ; 1 Holsten, Zum Evangdium d. Petrus u. d. Paulus, 1868, pp. 152 sqq. Origen, Con. Cel. 2, 13 sqq. Comp., on the other hand, my remarks in the Prot. K.-Z. 1868, No. 8. Further details when speaking of Csesarea. "^ Matt. xix. 1 ; Mark x. 1. Their first subdivision is the Galilean conclusion, Matt. xvi. — xviii. b2 4 INTRODUCTION. and we find again, in these different subdivisions, diurnal series of sayings, and particularly of actions.^ But there is nowhere a satisfactory harmony in the order of events ; and at the same time we discover — at first not without concern — that neither in great things nor in small is it so easy as it is found, however, to be by the modern partizans of the second or the fourth Gospel, to give preference to one source over another, since, notwith- standing the most sincere intention of restoring the actual course of the history— an intention with which every Evangelist is to be credited, and which Luke has even avowed — this scattered material has been necessarily differently arranged, the arrange- ment having been regulated only by the writer's preference and supposition, by the calculation of probability and by artificial juxtaposition.^ Thus, for example, it is equally improbable that the ministry of Jesus opened, as Matthew says it did, with a great Sermon on the Mount and a cycle of great deeds, as that it opened with Luke and Mark's series of conflicts with Judaism and Pharisaism, together with a smaller but yet copious series of miracles. In the former, we have the Jewish-Christian view of Christianity; in the latter, the freer Gentile-favouring view; the former requiring on the first public appearance of Jesus an ex- planation of his attitude towards the Law, and the latter, an early breaking through the national limitations. The several series of actions, which with tolerable uniformity, though differ- 1 Comp. the analysis of the Gospels and the table of the Gospels, in Vol. I. For the diurnal series, see especially Matt. viii. 1 sqq. ; Luke iv. 31 sqq. ; Mark i. 16 sqq. Luke has the advantage of a looser sequence, iv. 31, 33, v. 1, 12, 17, vi. 1, 6, 12, &c. Mark also, throughout his book, loosely connects events by numberless— about 80 — ands; yet at the very beginning, in chap, i., he bursts upon us with a number of immediate chronological sequences {tvd'noQ). ^ Whilst recently many have thought themselves able to restore even to the very day the chronological order, according to Mark (or John) — comp. Schenkel, Hausrath, Holtzmann— Schleiermacher was unprejudiced enough to deny the possibility of doing this even in the case of his favourite John, on account of the "tendency" which existed in that Gospel {Lehen J. 168). Comp. generally the critical introduction to the Synoptics in Vol. L especially pp. 112, 113 ; or merely the single example of the em- bassy from John (Luke vii. 18), and the answer of Jesus, that "the dead are raised up," immediately following the narrative of the dying servant of the centurion, and the bier of the young man of Nain. IKTEODUCTIOy. 5 ences of detail, are exhibited by all these Gospels, bring into view another very influential law of this ancient historiography : the law of material relationship. The Gospels themselves and, according to plain evidences, their sources before them, have variously introduced into the confusion of the scattered material the arrangement most helpful to the memory and best capable of producing an impression, and in this way have brought together allied sayings and allied narratives.^ Hence the groups of doc- trinal sayings, of controversial sayings, of Sabbath conflicts, of miracles small and great. Naturally, the distinction between the earlier and the later Galilean periods was not strictly main- tained ; and even the distinction between the Galilean and the Jerusalemitic periods was to some extent — less in the actions than in the sayings — broken down.^ This arrangement of the material is, in all cases, a source of perplexity to the modern historian. If it be consistently carried out, then it gives rise to no deception as to the chronology ; but it thus lays the restora- tion of the chronology as a heavy and even impossiV)le task upon the shoulders of posterity. If it be inconsistently carried out, if it alternate with a chronological arrangement, or if it profess itself to be a chronological arrangement, then it creates for itself and posterity an endless and mischievous confusion. And this mischievous confusion exists in the Gospels. They possess both modes of arrangement, and have to a great extent — Matthew most of all — treated the arrangement according to matter as an arrangement according to time. Jesus gave mi&sionary instruc- tions to his disciples at different times, but they are all brought together into connection with the missionary effort in Galilee ; he often spoke in parables, but seven parabolical addresses are ^ In the sources of our Gospels there already stood together the now everywhere connected narratives of the jiaralytic, of the publicans, and of fasting ; two Sabbath controversies ; the storm and the Gadarenes ; Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood. " Thus it is certain that many passages in the Sermon on the Mount and the mission speech (Matt. v. — vii. x.) can belong only to the last times of Jesns, and Luke and Mark have placed many things later, especially in the Jerusalemitic eschatological address. Upon this point, the later divisions of this work must be referred to. 6 INTRODUCTION. crowded together into one day.^ He disputed with the scribes concerning Beelzebub and concerning signs from heaven; he engaged in controversy as to despising the publicans and as to the sanctity of fasting : it is made to appear that one of these controversies immediately followed the other.^ He twice pro- faned the Sabbath, according to the opinions of the Scribes, by allowing his disciples to pluck the ears of corn, and by healing the man with a withered hand: we are told that he went directly from the corn-field into the synagogue in order to heal the man.^ He often wrought miracles; but miracle after miracle is crowded into one or two days, another sick man coming as soon as the former one goes away healed, while other days are without miracles, or are not mentioned at all.* In this respect, Luke and Mark sometimes agree with Matthew, and sometimes do not. But even in Luke and Mark there is repeatedly a four- fold sequence — four miracles and four greater miracles, four con- troversies and four exhibitions of weakness on the part of the disciples.^ "With few exceptions, the order of events up to the solemn Galilean turning-point in the career of Jesus, when occurrences become more definite and characteristic, is open to question.® In this fatal condition of things, several prominent authors on both sides — Schleiermacher on the one hand, Strauss on the other, neither of them without followers — have felt compelled to refrain from attempting to construct a history of the ministry of Jesus with a chronological development, the Jerusalemitic cata- strophe excepted; and to content themselves with simply placing ^ Matt. X. xiii. ' Matt. rii. 22, 38, ix. 9—17; Luke xi. 14—16, v. 27—39; Mark ii. 14—22. * Matt. xii. 1, 9; also Mark ii. 23, iii. 1. On the other hand, Luke rightly sepa- rates the two, vi. 1, 6. * See especially Matt. viii. ix. » Comp. the table at end of Vol. I. ' The call of the disciples and the healing of Peter's mother-in-law are about the only consecutive events in the beginning of the Gospels, the historical sequence of which is probable. The later chronological sequences are much more tenable, especially from Matt. xv. 1, onwards. INTRODUCTION. 7 in juxtaposition the inner and outer relations of the life of Jesus, and by this means more logically re-arranging the primitive groups of events.^ And this method is instructive in and of itself, and not merely because it is accidentally expedient. By bringing together all naturally allied facts, it succeeds up to a certain point in exhibiting a perfect, distinct, well-rounded and complete picture of the teaching, the actions, the daily life, the places and journeys and dates, the circle of disciples, the popular agitation, and the opponents ; while a different treatment, with its chronological sequence of events which would nevertheless remain uncertain, would be in danger of scattering and dissipat- ing, instead of gathering together, the manifold material. Looked at more closely, however, this method is seen to be a destruction rather than a restoration of history. History is development ; and the greatest spiritual movement which the world has ever seen could not find expression in already stereotyped forms, either on the part of the great actor himself, or on that of his adherents and opponents. And this history actually does exhibit a develop- ment of its own. That development is not confined to the crowning of the Galilean ministry of Jesus with a journey to Jerusalem, a Messianic entry, and the crucifixion of the despised King of the Jews. It has already been in progress : Jesus him- self grows in knowledge, in revelation, and in working ; around him spring up belief and unbelief ; and it is altogether impos- sible to place primly side by side, like dried plants in a herba- rium, the things that existed and could exist only successively, and that shaped themselves only in the midst of sharply-defined conditions, in the midst of fierce conflicts and grand complica- tions, as the dissolution of an older era, and perhaps as an open contradiction to it. Jesus dedicated himself to the Jews, and he dedicated liimself to the Gentiles ; he sought his Messiah ship in his life, and he sought it in his death : but he did not exhibit both attitudes at one and the same time, and the transition from the one standpoint to the other was made only under the force ^ Com p. especially Schleiermacher's Leben J. 165, &c. Strauss, xsiv. 8 INTRODUCTION. and pressure of definite liistoidcal situations.'^ Therefore when we renounce the history of this life, we obtain nothing but an unfaithful, indistinct, colourless representation of it, a represen- t^ion necessarily exhausting itself in monotonous abstractions.^ Such a representation is an offence against this history which possesses in so liigh a degree life, movement, progress, conflict, and dramatic organism ; it ceases to be an offence only when, in agreement with the fourth Gospel, one thinks seriously, and yet in contradiction to the truth, of a Christ complete from the beginning in purpose and knowledge, and consistent with him- self even in his antitheses and contradictions, and when one also thinks of a world of unbelief and belief fully developed from the first. Schleiermacher and his followers have held fast substan- tially to this Johannine Christ. The present age has advanced beyond him, and having recognized the progressive, struggling, human Christ of the earlier Gospels as well as of modern culture, it cannot possibly remain stationary at half-way, and sketch afresh — even if merely, like Strauss, from mistrust of the sources — an unprogressive Christ. The present age must compel the sources to give it the living and acting Christ, to narrate a real history of Jesus. Whatever -may be the actual character of the epochs, periods, and diurnal records exhibited in detail by the Gospels, so much is certain, viz., that traces of development in the activity of Jesus, proofs of it, great and small, plain and obscure, external and internal, are profusely scattered throughout those sources ; ^ This progressive character is certainly not admitted by every one, and to the ohjections of Corner and of Hofmann (Gesch. Chr. pp. 11, 27, 30, 35, &c.), those of Herzog {R. K XXI. p. 204), and Wieseler {Beitrdge, 1869, p. 15), are to be added. Beyschlag also {CJiristol. p. 89) speaks of the morbid striving of the age to discover development. In truth, the objections have but little force, as will be shown in con- nection with the separate details. * For instance, nothing can easily be more preposterous than the course pursued by Neander, who {L. J. 1st ed. pp. 145 sqq.) anticipates the teaching of Jesus as a whole and gives a history afterwards, briefly mentions, in the description of the Jerusalemitic catastrophe, the disputations with the opponents, but refers for details to a previous place (p. 557) : this is simply violently destroying history and its dramatic develop- introduction: 9 and that it is exactly the obscure, occasional, involuntary, and hidden evidences that establish the most positive advances.^ And when one has secured these most trust-worthy guides, then will the intentional way-posts of the Evangelists — their periods and their diurnal records — grow in value in proportion as they harmonize with or do not contradict the former. Thus it is pos- sible to construct a real history, the sayings and doings and inci- dents of which distribute themselves into stages, are developed by stages ; a history whose incidents, thus pointing both back- wards and forwards, and by no means excluding general views and organic central-points, instead of destroying the unity of this life, create a vivid, individual, multiform character, perhaps not wanting in involved and knotty points, but at least without the insipidity and unreality of an abstraction. It is possible that this history cannot now, in all its parts, be composed of mathe- matical certainties, but only of probabilities ; yet even a history composed of probabilities, and accused perhaps of arbitrariness by the blind and their leaders, will be better, more grateful, more edifying, than the untrue history of tradition or the dead history of unsubstantial speculation — the history the beating of whose heart, the development and growth and activity of whose life, have ceased. ^ Certainly one cannot find, in these internal indications, a mode of conception so objective, so dependent on the letter or on the assumed calendar-days, as that of Wieseler {Bdtrdgc, 1869, Preface, and p. 15). He finds this and nothing else. imi fart. THE GALILEAN SPRING-TIME. The second century, not without an intentional symbolism, fixed the first public appearance of Jesus in the spring, or, according to the fourth Gospel, about Easter. It is not known for certain whether this assumption rests upon tradition ; but in itself it is not only pretty and ingenious, it harmonizes also with the indications in the Gospels, which, in the Sermon on the Mount, paint before our eyes the boisterous storms, the soft breezes, and flowery splendour of spring, and the gladsome life of nature. In the Sabbath controversies, we see the corn-fields white and bending to the harvest ; and in the parables, the com- pletion of the harvest. On the one hand, the early part of the year is before us ; on the other, the summer. There is nothing to prevent us from placing the first public appearance of Jesus in the beginning of the spring of A.D. 34. His early ministry possessed a spring-like character: he stood forth with a full unquestioning faith in his mission and in his nation — in his nation as a whole, and not in a mere Johannine remnant ; and a childlike, genuinely Galilean faith hastened to greet him. His conviction of the nearness of the kingdom of heaven gave to his words a joyous ring ; his utterances were full of encouragement and benediction, and — contrary to the inference drawn by many from Mark — were harsh to no one. His healing hand, the help- mate of his mouth, wrought powerfully in its own strength and THE GALILEAN SPRING-TIME. 11 by means of the deexD sympathy that was awakened. Life sprang up throughout the fruitful fields of Galilee. In the presence of the wonderful phenomenon of the new Teacher, and in the pre- sence of the streaming forth of the fervent love of the people and of the disciples, contradiction, astonished and affrighted, retired as winter before the spring.^ Such is the general impres- sion produced by what we know of the first teaching period of Jesus, and by his earliest and most characteristic utterances. Among the Gospels, Matthew most fully exliibits this first Galilean sunshine; but Mark and Luke also, notwithstanding their premature introduction of conflict, spread out before us vivid pictures of the first happy, unresting activity and growth by the Lake of Gennesareth and in Capernaum ; and in John, there is a succession of joyous feasts and harvests of gladness by the Jordan, at Jerusalem, in Samaria, and in Galilee, even though from the very beginning the narrator points solemnly and sadly to the lurking unbelief, and to the reticent mistrust of Jesus towards even the faith that welcomes him.^ ^ In Vol. II., the spring of A.D. 34 is already given as the time of the first public appearance of Jesus, and an appeal is made to Clem. Horn. 1, 6, -where the same period of the year is fixed upon. This testimony is confirmed by one somewhat older in the fourth Gospel (ii. 13 sqq., iv. 35) ; comp. Hitzig, Geschichie Israels, 1869, II. p. 567. Kecently, H. Sevin {Zur Chronol. d. L. J. Dissert. 1870), takes my chro- nology as his basis, but relies too much on Mark iii. 21, vii. 1. Further details at the proper place. 2 Matt. iv. 12— X. 42; Luke iv. 14— v. 16; then conflicts, v. 17— vi. 11, &c. Similarly Mark. John ii, 1 — iv. 54 ; the first conflict, ii. 18 sqq. ; the mistrust of Jesus, ii. 23 sqq. 12 THE FIRST PREACHING. Division I.— THE FIEST PEEACHING. A. — The so-called Sermon on the Mount, Jesus opened liis ministry by publicly challenging the atten- tion of the whole nation, from that time forth entirely renouncing his temporal occupation.'^ This is the expression of, or the impression produced by, the earlier Gospels, in which Jesus is represented as standing forth in the synagogues and wherever he could find hearers, preaching the kingdom; and then imme- diately afterwards as already assuming the right to speak wdth authority, and as collecting his more intimate disciples and sharing with them the shelter and sustenance of their homes.^ This representation is preferable to that of the fourth Gospel, which first describes the collecting of the disciples, and makes this to be followed by a kind of private and retired life among them and his mother and brothers in Cana and Capernaum; and then passes by degrees, through the larger yet still private gather- ing at the marriage at Cana, to the first public ministry at the Passover in Jerusalem.^ According to all that we know, this latter account is unhistorical, since Jesus neither collected his disciples in the wilderness where John was, nor led his mother and brothers about with him as companions or as sharers in his sentiments, nor attended the marriage-feast at Cana, nor cele- brated the Passover in Jerusalem. This Gospel is moreover in- consistent with itself, for it is by no means clear why Jesus, after having been fully introduced to the people in the wilderness of ^ Mark vi. 3 is no proof of a continued engagement in his handicraft. See, on the other hand, Luke viii. 3. 2 Matt. iv. 17 sqq., viii. 14 sqq. ; Mark i. 14 sqq. Luke separates the first public appearance and the call of the disciples yet more widely, iv. 14 sqq., v. 1 sqq. ; cer- tainly, according to iv. 38, inaccurately. * John i. 35 — ii. 13 sqq. THE SO-CALLED SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 13 John, should afterwards for several weeks retire again into private life. Nor is it the actual intention of this source to establish an initial period of private teaching, though the acci- dental grouping of its first incidents may suggest this ; but its purpose is rather — not to speak of other motives — after an un- obtrusive Galilean prelude, to reserve the full revelation of Jesus, the real and proper entering upon office, for Jerusalem.^ Thus the often-repeated assumption — an assumption made by Schleier- macher and defended by Eenan and Ewald — of a commencement of the ministry of Jesus in the houses of a few either related or intimately associated fishermen, whose hospitality he enjoyed, and who were the first he convinced and won, must be laid aside as groundless.^ Though this modest beginning may appear more consistent with ordinary human experience, and therefore more credible, and may harmonize in a remarkable manner with the missionary career of a later founder of religion, whom Eenan is so ready to bring in for the sake of comparison; though the three Gospels may have exaggerated the initial participation of the people, Luke having done this most of all, he speaking even of a rapidly spreading renown ; yet we would far rather say that this first public appearance of Jesus before the great unlimited public is alone worthy of him, for only in such an initial public ministry does the man who is firmly convinced of his mission and of the need of the people, the determined divine hero, reveal himself; whilst an initial wooing of individuals woidd make him look like a timid novice or an anxious and uncertain experi- ^ The earlier tradition had to be satisfied by placing the beginning of the activity of Jesus in Galilee, ii. 1 sqq. (marriage at Cana) ; but the full and public prophetic ministry was made to begin at the central-point, Jerusalem (comp. above, I. p. 178), ii. 13 sqq. The necessity of placing at the beginning the testimony to the Messiah borne by those who were specially called, i. e. the Apostles, and the great symbolic miracle of the wine, which demanded a private social gathering, helped to make it appear as if an initial period of privacy were described. ^ Renan, p. 104 : Un petit cercle d'auditeurs. Jouissant encore de peu d'autorite. Comp. p. 149. Ewald, p. 331 : There appear to have existed in Kaphar-Nahum several houses in close proximity, the inmates of which were on friendly terms. Similarly Hausrath, Ncut. Zeityesch. 1868, pp. 383, 388. Comp., on the other hand, p. 356. 14 THE FIRST PREACHING. menter with his own strength and with the good-will of the people, or even like a little, narrow-minded schemer.^ It is also evident that the successor of the Baptist could, like the latter, address himself only to the nation, and not merely to his friends or to an Essene-like brotherhood, and that the man who pro- claimed the kingdom could not restrict the great and compre- hensive kingdom of God to a single house and a single room. It was the inalienable right of every adult Jew to make such a public appearance as a teacher in the streets, in the houses, even in the synagogues. No diploma, no examination, after the modern pattern, was needed by the teachers as their authoriza- tion. No diploma was possessed by even those who came out of the learned schools of Jerusalem ; they were content with the honour of being spoken of by the people as the disciples of HiUel or of Shammai.^ Even this legitimation from the lips of the people was, however, wanting to Jesus, and it now and then necessarily happened that he was reproached with this lack. It is true that, so far as we know, he was not thus reproached by the Scribes, although they notoriously recognized no learning except the true understanding and observance of the old tradi- tion. It was the people themselves who, in their unlimited respect for the great teachers of Israel, and in their astonished mistrust of a wisdom which seemed to them neither conceivable nor trustworthy when not connected with a school, thus re- proached him, though they did not exactly despise his doctrinal addresses.^ But in spite of the high reputation of the schools, this objection could not command the field; even the Jewish teachers in Rome and in Assyria were not recognized because of their Jerusalemitic training, but because they possessed or pre- •^ Liike iv. 14. 2 As Hillel was recognized as the disciple of Sbemaia and Abtalion ; see above, I. p. 349. ^ Matt. xiii. 54; John vii. 15. Superstition in the old tradition, Matt. v. 21, xv. 1. Jerome, Pesach. f. 33, 1 : At quamvis per totum diem dissertaret (Hillel), doc- trinam ejus non receperunt, donee tandem diceret : sic audivi a Shemaja atque Abta- lione. Lightfoot, p. 305. inE SO-CALLED SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 15 tended to possess an exact acquaintance with the Law; and Jewish merchants, Galilean experts in the Law, and even im- posters, officiated as missionaries in Adiabene and Eome.i But men had learnt from the Old Testament that in every age God magnified the little and the despised, as in the cases of Israel, David, and Solomon ; and that He called His prophets from the flock and the plough. In the most recent times, neither Judas the Galilean nor John the Baptist had been, properly speaking, a Scribe. Thus it is intelligible that Jesus himself, as a matter of course, bore the titles of Scribe, Teacher, Eabbi, though he had not — as Ammon supposed — studied in Nazara, or — as Paulus held— received authority to teach from the Essenes ; and that not only the people and the disciples, but also the Pharisees and the Scribes, addressed him by such names.^ The general cha- racter of Jewish life was less artificial and conventional, and more religious, than the life of to-day ; the deed made the man, and God sent forth His mouthpiece when it pleased Him. The man who spoke with more power than the Scribes, and who was able to move his hearers strongly and to impart comfort — as did John and Jesus, and others after them — was recognized as some- thing more than a teacher : men called him a prophet. We should accept with the deepest gratitude an inaugural sermon by Jesus, if we could become possessed of one so easily, so authentically written or printed, as are the sermons of the 1 Comp. Josephus, Ant. 18, 3, 5 ; 20, 2, 3. ^ SiSdaKoXoc and ^aOtjTi^g, Matt. x. 24 sq., xxiii, 8. Also pa^lStl, xxiii. 7; Kaet]yTiT7}g, ver. 10 ; ypa^ijxaTEVQ (even of the disciples), Matt. xiii. 52. Addressed by the Scribes as Si^daKokoq, Matt. viii. 19, ix. 11, xxii. 16. Very common among the Rabbis were abi (my father), rahbi (great one or elder), mori from moreh (teacher). Comp. the degrees : Major est Rabbi quam Rab et major est Rabban quam Rabbi et major est qui nomine suo vocatur quam Rabban (whence Rabbuni, see Mark and John). According to the Rabbis, the title Rabban came into use with Gamaliel the elder (the teacher of Paul), and his son Simeon (others call Simeon Hillel's son). But when Griitz (followed by Volkmar) makes the Rabbi-title subsequent to. the de- struction of Jerusalem, not only is he contradicted by Jost and Herzfeld, but also nothing is more certain than the very old use of the address " my Rab," which '^alone appears in the New Testament, and is not to be confounded with the objective' iJi^e. Comp. Lightfoot, p. 357. Wetst. p. 482. Ewald, pp. 25, 305. Herzog, xii. p. 471. 16 THE FIRST PREACHING. present day. A first authentic utterance of Jesus would remove a thousand difficulties, and would place his whole personality, his knowledge, purpose, capability, in an enviably clear light. And indeed it would appear as if we were not to be without this firm and established inaugural utterance. With a certain eager impatience we hasten past the few introductory words witli which, according to the Evangelists, Jesus first opened his mind : " Eepent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand !" They, are too brief for us, too meagre ; they have been already made too familiar by the Baptist ; or, if they are full of a new meaning, they are too obscure. We pass over also the first public appearance in the synagogue at Capernaum, which, though probably derived from the earliest tradition, has nevertheless been reported too meagrely. We turn our eyes towards a less meagre report which Matthew — and Luke also, and why not, in some sense, even John ? — promises to give us.^ There can be no doubt that Matthew has given so significant a position to the Sermon on the Mount because he found in it the original programme of Jesus, to a certain extent the pro- gramme that explained the outline sketched in the utterance^ " Eepent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." It is true he allows the " commencement of the ministry of Jesus to precede the sermon ; and this precedence of the commencement of the ministry is proved afresh by the gathering of the multitudes round him from every part of the Jewish territory, attracted by his fame, which had already spread abroad throughout Syria. But the very haste with which he hurries over the commence- ment in order to come to the Sermon on the Mount ; the im- posing gathering together of all Israel ; the wide compass, the important contents, of the sermon itself ; finally, the numerous retinue of Messianic deeds by which the sermon is accompanied ; all this shows that it is Matthew's purpose to give here the 1 Matt. iv. 17, V. 1 sqq. The appearance in the synagogue, Luke iv. 31, Mark i. 21, may belong to the earliest tradition, whilst Matthew postpones it in favour of the Sei-mon on the Mount, and transfers the brief remark upon the impression pro- duced to the end of that sermon. THE SO-CALLED SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 17 definitive inaugural sermon.^ It is admitted on all sides, even by Baur and Strauss, that this address undoubtedly contains a great number of genuine, vigorous, and striking utterances of Jesus, a veritable microcosm of the new higher conception of the universe which he, a sudden incarnation of God, presented to mankind for all time. It contains indeed — if we notice more closely the period in which we here find ourselves — a treasure of such original and pregnant sayings of Jesus as he actually delivered in the spring-time of his teaching.2 But it is impossible to approach this treasure with that positive certainty winch would sensibly lay hold of and handle the first great utterances of the Lord, and would embrace and enjoy as a sweet booty the complete substance of this address, without the renunciation of a single sentence. At the very threshold of the sacred year of teaching, we begin unwillingly to use the critical pruning-knife ; but this is as necessary as a surgical operation often is to a living organism, and it will lead to the clearing away of obscuri- ties and obstructions. We need not very deeply regret that the second Gospel has omitted this address as completely as the fourth. Even the con- tradiction of the third Gospel, which places it somewhat later, may be explained or passed over. These differences are quite intelligible. Mark, from the beginning to the end, notoriously prefers actions to sayings, for the sayings were too Jewish, too legalistic, for him ; and the suspicious hiatus which his exag- gerated scenery— far surpassing that of Matthew and Luke- does not hide, the hiatus in the third chapter from which the Sermon on the Mount has simply fallen out, has been noticed by Ewald, Schenkel, and Holtzmann.^ Still less than Mark, ^ iv. 24 sqq. Galilee, Decapolis, Judsea with Jerasalem, and Persea, are men- tioned. Syria comprehends, not the whole province (Bleak, Hilgenfeld, Meyer), nor even Ccelo-Syria, but the Palestinian Syria. Herodotus, 2, 104; Josephus, Cont. Ap. 1, 22; Philo, Vit. Mos. 2, 10; Hilgenfeld, Zeitschrift, 1867, p. 370. 2 Baur, Das Christenth. der drei ersten Jahrb. 1853, pp. 25 sqq. ; Strauss, pp. 204 sqq. ' Vol. I. p. 121. Mark's preference for actions, i. 27, iii, 7 sqq., vi. 7, &c. • indifiFerence to sayings, iv. 2, 33, vi, 34, vii. 8, 13, &c. VOL. III. C 18 TEE FIRST FRE ACHING. could the fourth Evangelist proclaim a legalistic religion which in his age was defunct ; and for the same reason, the Pauline Luke had already toned down the religion of the Sermon on the Mount into mere morality. This depreciation of the importance of the sermon explains its later position in Luke; moreover, Luke was doubly compelled to remove the Sermon on the Mount farther forward, because he had placed an initial sermon at Nazara at the commencement of Jesus' ministry, and wished to treat the Sermon on the Mount as one delivered on the occasion of choosing the disciples.^ The best-grounded suspicions are aroused rather by Matthew himself, and are afterwards confirmed and strengthened by Luke and Mark. The author was conscious of, but has by no means mastered, the difficulty occasioned by his placing in the begin- ning what did not actually occur in the beginning. He gives an exaggerated description of the concourse of the people, enume- rating all the districts of Palestine, with the exception of Samaria, as sending their contingents to the crowds that gathered round the new preacher and worker of miracles — Galilee andDecapolis in the north, Judaea with Jerusalem and Persea in the south. But immediately after the sermon, the position of affairs is remarkably simplified : instead of streaming multitudes, there appears a much more limited surrounding ; the activity of Jesus is confined to the Galileans, nay, to the immediate neighbour- hood of Capernaum, where his miracles very gradually occasion a concourse of the people from a more modest extent of country .^ Luke and Mark give the same impression ; and they have the advantage of representing the gathering together of the multi- tudes as taking place, not before, but after the sermon. From the above, it would follow that the Sermon on the Mount does not belong to the beginning, but to a later period. There is a still better reason for placing it later. Wliether that sermon 1 Vol. I. p. 100. ^ Comp. iv. 25, vii. 28, viii. 1, and viii. 14 sqq. Hilgenfeld, in his Zeitschrift, 1867, p. 370. THE SO-CALLED SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 19 were deHvered earlier or later, the hearers of the actual Sermon on the Mount were never those great masses of people, but quite other persons, such as could not have appeared on the scene until somewliat later. It is true that Matthew— as well as Luke —converts the whole nation into hearers, and Luke brings in other nationaHties as well.^ And yet these authors cannot conceal the fact— Luke being the most conscious and the most perplexed— that the essential kernel of those instructions was received by merely the wider circle of the disciples of Jesus. It was upon his disciples that Jesus looked, it was they whom he pronounced blessed, it was they whom he instructed concern- ing the Law and the Prophets and the Pharisees. Hence the designation of his hearers as the successors of the prophets, as disciples of the teacher, as the salt of the earth, as the light of the world, as the pattern people in the nation to the glory of God.2 But this intimate circle of disciples to whom the Sermon on the Mount belongs, must have been gradually formed, and must have gradually acquired its distinctive significance as the salt of the earth and the light of the world ; and Matthew him- self cannot disguise the fact that at the period at which he fixes the sermon, scarcely any members of the circle had been gathered together ; wliHe Luke, placing the sermon somewhat later, is jus- tified in regarding the gathering together of the disciples as in the main accompHshed, as being indeed confirmed and sealed by the Sermon on the Mount, which serves the office of consecra- 1 Luke vi. 17, differing from Matt. iv. 25, mentions even the inhabitants of the coast of Tyre and Sidon, therefore heathen Phoenicians. Alark iii. 8 makes the further addition of Idumsea. " Matt. V. 1 sqq., 13 sqq., vi. 9 (comp. Luke xi. 1) ; Luke vi. 17, 20, 40 sqq. In these passages there is no trace of a special circle of Apostles (to whom Luke repre- sents the address as being directed). In Matt. vii. 21, 24, the people seem to be in the speaker's mind ; less distinctly in v. 23, vii. 11. The same is the case in Luke VI. 17, 24, sqq, 27, 41, 46. These additions are to be found chiefly outside of the nucleus of the Sermon on the Mount. Luke vi. 24 sqq. is an arbitrary alteration. The wider circle of disciples often mentioned, comp. Tholuck, Bergpr. pp. 14, 15- Weiss, Jahrb. deutsch. Th. 1864, pp. 54, 64. On the other hand, Hilgenfeld {Zeit- schrift, 1867, p. 372) thinks only of the Twelve. C 2 20 THE FIRST PllE ACHING. tion-address of the Apostles.'^ Finally, the contents of the ser- mon show traces of a somewhat later date. It is true that the references to the scanty harvest of the kingdom, to the judgment of the Messiah, to the false prophets and successors of Jesus, at the close of the sermon, prove nothing to the point, since these passages, belonging to the last days of Jesus, are not to be reckoned as part of the original Sermon on the Mount. But even the proper nucleus of the sermon, the great attack upon Pharisaic legalism, does not belong to the very beginning of Jesus' public ministry. Jesus at first neither protested against the suspicion of rebelling against the Law and the Prophets, nor could he have so far departed from the peculiar circumspection and discretion which he as a teacher otherwise exhibited, as to place before his disciples — to say nothing of the nation at large — those bellicose, more than Johauninely sharp and bitter theses against the prevalent and fashionable hypocritical piety of the age. To regard those theses as forming parts of an address to the people at large, would be to invert the proper relation of things : Jesus could not thus violently make the spiritual autho- rities obnoxious to the people, and as a matter of fact he himself stood for some time in a pacific relation to those authorities, and only gradually, and not at once along the whole line, opened l)attle with them. Can any one imagine that a bitter conflict of the widest dimensions and the fullest publicity was followed by petty skirmishes over details ? And, even when we adopt the more correct conclusion that the Sermon on the Mount was addressed to the disciples alone, and not to the general public, ^ In Matt. iv. 18 sqq. only four disciples are as yet called. Others called, viii. 19 sqq., ix. 9, therefore later. In Luke also only four or five disciples are called pre- vious to the Sermon on the Mount, v. 1 — 11, 27 ; he purposely represents others as being called just before the journey to Jerusalem and before the choosing of the Seventy, ix. 57 sqq. Nevertheless, since the Sermon on the Mount shows the exist- ence of disciples, he speaks of a great multitude of disciples as being present on that occasion, vi. 17. Recognizing the necessity of the case, he has not shrunk from doing violence to history by hastily introducing disciples and the Twelve and the choosing of the Twelve immediately before the Sermon on the Mount. And Mark has followed hJra. THE SO-CALLED SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 21 there still remains, though somewhat weakened, the impossibility that the greater conflict should have preceded the lesser; for even the disciples had to be slowly weaned from Pharisaism, and in the case of Jesus himself the greater attacks, the general system of his polemics, had naturally to be developed out of the lesser.i From all this it follows that the Sermon on the Mount was no inaugural sermon, but a later doctrinal sermon for the circle of the disciples, as Augustine supposed ; but Matthew has converted it, not without doing violence to its sense and to the — as yet — much more modest actual attitude of Jesus, into an inaugural sermon to the people. And he has done this because many passages at least might have belonged to the first popular sermon ; but rather because its spirit is so characteristic and, with the addition of the fine utterances of Jesus about child- hood, is more or less the epitome and the expression of the new Christian consciousness.^ While Mark leaves the difficulty where it was, by merely mentioning the first synagogue-sermon in Capernaum in passing, Luke increases our perplexity by giving us an inaugural address of Jesus in Nazara, the town of his childhood and youth. It is true that even Luke does not regard this as literally the first address in Galilee, but in a general way assumes that other discourses had been already delivered ; it is, however, the first sermon whose analysis he gives, and whose solemn character, ^ The disciples Pharisaic, Matt. xvii. 10; system of polemics, comp. xv. 1 sqq., xxiii. 1 sqq. * The premature insertion of this sermon has been recently deduced particularly from the synoptical comparison with Luke and Mark (comp. Holtzmann, Weizsiicker). Hilgenfeld has been led, chiefly by the contents and the listeners, to the conclusion that the sermon ought to stand immediately after the choosing of the Twelve, Matt. x. ; Zeitschrift, 1867, pp. 371, 372. He has not given prominence, however, to the weighty fact that Jesus could not so early have placed himself in opposition to the Law in the presence of the people. Among the ancients, Augustine in particular (De com^. cv. 2, 19) regarded Matthew's Sermon on the Mount as intended for the disciples (that of Luke for the people). Following Augustine, Chemnitz {Harm. ev. 1. p. 412) regarded it as a consecration-address for the Apostles (= Luke), although he (1. p. 414) and most of the later writers, including Tholuck {Berypredig, 3rd ed. 1815, pp. 14 sqq.) and Bleek (I. pp. 220 sqq.), have never excluded the people. Comp. above, p. 19,, note 2. 22 THE FIRST PREACEINO. important contents, and momentous issue, lead him to give it a dominant position.^ According to Luke's narrative, Jesus, on the Sabbath, in the synagogue of his native town, intimated, by standing up, to the president of the synagogue and to the congregation, that he wished to speak. The minister of the synagogue handed to him the prophet Isaiah, which was probably then being read. Jesus unrolled the book and found — according to the tenor of the nar- rative, by divine guidance rather than by his own choice or the direction of others — the comforting words of Isaiah (Ixi. 1, 2), in which the prophet proclaims to the exiled nation their delivery by the Persians, and announces his own commission as the anointed of God to carry good news to the poor, to preach deliverance to the captives and sight to the bHnd, to set at liberty the bruised, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.2 Wlien he had given back the book, and amid the strained attention of the listeners had sat down — as was the custom of teachers — to expound, he said : This day is this Scrip- ture ftdfilled in your ears ; thereby openly declaring himself to be the herald of the great good time, the spiritually anointed prophet, and, more tlian that, the Messiah. The address which followed, but which the Evangelist does not report, excited the astonishment of the assembly; the sober, working-day experi- ence of the hearers, however, counteracted its influence, and at its close, when it was customary to express approval or disap- proval, the question was raised, " Is he not Joseph's son ?" The question at once disclosed to Jesus the abortive issue of his address ; he began again to speak, but instead of words of con- solation he administered rebuke : " Surely ye will say to me, 1 Mark i. 21, 22; Luke iv. 16—30, comp. rers. 14, 15. On the form of the word Nazara, see Vol. II. ; and again below, on Matt. xiii. 54. 2 Non legunt in lege nisi stantes. On the other hand, the book of Esther, legat vel stans V. sedens. Lightfoot, p. 508. The minister is the chassan (custos) halceneset, who had charge of the synagogue and the books ; or his under-servant. Buxt. p. 730, The books were rolls, megillut, hence dvaTrrvaaio, to unroll, opp. eiXiWoi ; comp. Winer, Schreibkunst. THE SO-CALLED SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 23 Physician, heal thyself; before thou helpest others, procure for thyself a position, authority ; repeat, here at home, the wonders of Capernaum \^ But no prophet is well received in his native place. Elijah, at the time of the famine, was sent, not to Israel, but to a widow in the Phoenician Sarepta ; Elisha did not heal the leprosy of his own people, but of Naaman the Syrian." Thus, at the very beginning, he pointed out, in the unbelief of Nazara, the unbelief of Israel, and anticipated the belief of the Gentile world. This completed the breach : the pride of his native town was doubly incensed. The child of Nazara had appealed to the heathen world, which even in Galilee was regarded with genuinely Jewish contempt. He was led to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, to the "precipice" which is stiU pointed out, in order that, in the spirit of antique justice, he might be hurled from it. But he went forth through the midst of the people, and took with him his gospel to Capernaum.^ This narrative gives a vivid and highly coloured picture of Jesus' first public appearance. But it is more ingenious than real. The other Gospels by no means represent Jesus as begin- ning in his native town, and as fixing his residence in Caper- naum after having broken with Nazara ; but as making his first appearance in Capernaum, and as wisely avoiding liis native place, which did not yet know how to appreciate him. Not until after he had achieved success did he go to Nazara. Even the source made use of by Luke must have placed this carefully- considered procedure much later, long after the opening of the ministry in Capernaum ; this is certain from the demand made by the Nazarenes for the deeds done at Capernaum, a demand which Luke derived from his source, though his new arrange- 1 Hetzer: "Healer, heal thyself !" In the Talmud : Medice, cura propriam claudi- cationem. Lightfoot, p. 510. Also in the classics, Cicero, Ep. 4, 5 : Mali raedici, qui ipsi se curare non possunt. Wetst. p. 681. ^ KaraKgnt^^viaiioQ, Ps. cxli. 6. 2 Chron. xxv. 12. Persons who were to be stoned were also generally thrown down backwards from a scaffold about twice as high as a man, Lightfoot, p. 354. Winer, Lebenstrafcn, Steinigung. Sepp, Plbjcrhuch, II. p. 87. As to the spot, see Robinson, III. p. 423. He estimates the hill-side as from forty to fifty feet high, near the Maronite church. See above. Vol. II. 24 THE FIRST PREACHING. ment of the narrative rather required him to suppress it alto- gether. The other Gospels, Matthew and Mark, have moreover, at this later date, an occurrence which is certainly similar, yet much simpler. They are silent as to the contents of the sermon; they make Jesus reply to the rejection of the son of Joseph by merely referring to the common lot of prophets ; they know of no attempt upon the life of Jesus, but simply of his refusal to perform miracles.^ It would be absurd to suppose that there were two distinct public appearances at ISTazara, each running in the same groove ; and the author, prudently remaining silent as to a second appearance, has refrained from making such a suppo- sition.- Moreover, the possibility of the formation of the fuller and more definite account out of the simpler and earlier, is undeniable ; even Luke himself may have skilfully and boldly constructed out of the then existing materials at once a picture of the opening, and a programme of the future course, of the ministry of Jesus. This assumption is strongly supported by the text. "VYe may overlook the minor dijSiculties, namely, that Jesus had only to stand up in order to become at once both reader and expounder of the Holy Scriptures to the congregation; that instead of tm-n- ing to the Law, which always occupied the first position, he turned or was forced to turn to the Prophets, and precisely to that so serviceable prophet Isaiah, and to the most welcome of all the Messianic passages that tradition has ever placed in his mouth ; and that instead of abiding by the letter of the passage, he, by addition or omission, introduced arbitrary alterations of his own.2 But we are most astounded by the explanations of 1 Matt. xiii. 54 sqq. ; Mark vi. 1 sqq. Volkmar (Ev. p. 70) ventures to give it as his opinion that Matthew made use of Luke, but omitted the sermon at Nazara. ® Yet StoxT, Paulus, Wieseler, even Ewald and Meyer, have found two accounts; most modern writers, especially Schleiermacher, De Wette, Kem, Baur, Bleek, and Kostlin, hold the two to be identical. 3 Reader and expounder were generally distinct. See above, YoL II. Lightfoot, p. 281. Instance of a person's being asked to speak, Acts xiii. 15. The passing by XhQparasheh \Wiq lection from the Pentateuch) is generally explained by supposing it had been already read, and that the haphtkareh (prophetic passage) was about to be TEE SO-CALLED SERMON OX THE MOUNT. 25 Jesus. For, in his sermon, he proclaimed the fulfilment of the prediction, the advent of the kingdom of God, and even of tlie Messiah, though at that time there was not a trace of any of these gifts of God to be seen, and though, according to the most certain evidence we possess, he, as a wise and prudent man, at first veiled everything, and kept the kingdom and the Messiah of the kingdom in the obscurity of the future. This sermon makes him at the outset prefer the Gentiles to the Jews, which he could not possibly have done at the very time of his assumption of the Jewish Messiahship, and which later became a fact only as the issue of severe conflicts, and even then in a merely qualified sense. It makes him speak irritatingly, and threaten and break with the Jews before he had scarcely ceased uttering words of blessing, and though he had cautiously omitted from his text the reference to the " day of vengeance." And it represents him as not having found, in the presence of a very conceivable and pardonable initial astonishment, the repose, gentleness, and patience, out of which on other occasions he was not surprised by even the most disturbing experiences. The picture is, in every respect, a distorted one : the end is trans- posed to the beginning, and this inversion does violence, not only to the narrative, but also to the person and character of Jesus himself, since that which was justified at a later period — whether the subject in question be the Messiahship or the rejec- tion of Judaism— becomes inconsiderate and precipitate, pas- sionate and even vindictive, when placed at the beginning. The displeasure of the ISTazarenes is thus justified rather than not : the false prophet ought to die, and he remains alive only through a miracle — two details, again, which are unhistorical, since the read. But this is not readily suggested. John, Jesus, the whole of the New Testa- ment, seize upon Isaiah. Jesus does it in Matt. xiii. 14, xv. 7. Matthew alludes to the passage in question in xi. 5. Luke leaves out of the passage from Isaiah (the blind, according to the LXX.) laaaaQai r. avvrtTpififi. t. Kapd.; also the conclusion k. I'lfikpav ai'Ta7roS6(THO(j. On the other hand, there is inserted from Isaiah, Iviii. 6, cLTToar. TeOp. iv d) j3. avrov Trdvroiv SsffTro^ei; Daniel iii. 33, t] jSatTtXft'a aliTov, /3. alwvioc; 1 Sam. viii. 7 (after the declaration of the people's will to have a king), ifii i^ovSfvojKaai, tov jx)) jSaaiXivffai tn avrwv. — Lord of the world, Lord of the nation, Exodus xix. 5, 6, Xabg Trepiovaioc airb ttcivtuv TU)f i9vG>v. efii) yap kari Tzaua r) yij. vj-ttig 6t tOEaQk /xoi (SaviXeiov tepuTEV^a {mamlechet hohanim) kuI lOvog liyiov ; comp. ib. iv. 22 sq., vi. 6 ; 1 Kings viii. 15 sq. ^ Comp. Exodus xix. 5; Deut. v. 1 sqq., vi. 1 sqq., xxviii. 1 sqq. ^ Comp. Zech. xiv. 9, iarai kvqwq fig fiaaiXea eirt iraffav rrjv yt)v. Also verse 16. 44 THE FIRST PREACHING. tained by those who appeal to the fact that the Eabbis, in their awe of the name of God, were glad to make use of the word heaven.^ The idea of heaven is essential to the new name, which is, far more than the "kingdom of God," quite intrin- sically a name of antithesis, of opposition, but also of assurance of eternal victory over the earth, united into a gigantic, demoniacal, universal monarchy, as a contrast to the ideal of the people of God. Israel, powerless for centuries, in each successive century only more and more helpless in the grasp of the empires of the world, and at the very date of the composition of the book of Daniel (B.C. 167) captive and bound in the hands of the suc- cessors of Alexander the Great, impatiently awaited that whicli was to overthrow the kingdoms of the earth, viz., the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom as wide and even wider than the other kingdoms, as durable and even more durable than they — nay, eternal. The four great human kingdoms which rose out of the earth and ultimately out of the infernal depths of the sea, which got possession of, devoured, and trampled down all the lands under heaven, lifting themselves up to the stars of heaven only to fall one after another, one by means of another, were to be finally succeeded by the kingdom of the God of heaven, who, in the clouds of heaven, would solemnly invest His saints with regal power, and amid signs in heaven and upon earth would give to them the whole earth, the kingdoms of all the kings under heaven, all races and tongues, as an unchangeable, perma- nent, and eternal empire.^ ^ De Wette, Bihl. DogmatlJc, 3rd ed. 1831, § 204 : SJiamaim is equivalent to elohini (maaseh sh. = God's work). Such expressions as the name, honour, help, punishment, of heaven, are used instead of the name, &c., of God (Lightfoot, p. 263 ; Ewald, p. 25, comp. p. 35) ; but, according to what follows, this explanation does not suffice for the expression, " kingdom of heaven." * Dan. ii. 39, (BaffiXda rptTtj, i) Kvpuvasi Trafftjg r>;c yyjc ', vii. 17 sqq., TiaaaptQ ^aaiKuai avaGrrjaovrai ini Trjg yijQ (Chald, min-ara) ; ib. 3, naa. Oj)pia jxi-yaXa dvefiaivov Ik r/jc OaXaaarji^ (comp. Rev. xiii. 1 ; Hitzig, on Dan. vii. 2); ib. 23, fiaaCKtia TiTCipTt] tarai iv ry yy, ijTig VTrepe^ti ndaag rag (SaatXuaQ Kai KaTa(pciyiTai raaav ri)v ytiv; iv. 14, 22, 29; v. 21, »'; /3. twv avOpioTrwv ; vii. 27, t) /3. tCjv (3. tS)v viroKciTo) itavTog tov ovpavov; viii. 10, iniyaXvvOt] hojg Tt]g ^ci/ajuewf rov oi'pavov] ii. 37, 6 Btog tov ohpai'ov ; vii. 13, i^ov jitTci twv I'f^iXuJv tov ovpavov THE WATCHWORD OF JESUS. 45 Under the influence of tlie favourite book of Daniel, and kept alive by protracted hardships and oppression under the Greeks and Komans, to whom it has been supposed that the prophetic book was open as early as the time of Alexander the Great, this prospect, this hope of the kingdom of God, of the heavenly kingdom, had been handed down from generation to generation through the last two centuries to the days of the Baptist. The literature of these later ages, even the Alexandrian literature (the Book of Wisdom in particular), has preserved a number of traces of this hope ; the Pharisees called God the only Lord and Commander of Israel, to the exclusion of the Herods and the Eomans ; Judas the Galilean, the turbulent predecessor of the Baptist, added the decisive last word to the Pharisaic teaching against the Eoman rule, and, declaring that a human ruler by the side of God was not to be tolerated, he sought, sword in hand, to realize the ideal of Daniel, to supersede the eartlily sovereignty of the Ptomans by the sovereignty of God.^ Finally, the old conception of Daniel's was exactly seized upon and carried through the land by John the Baptist, who was great through the revival of the sacred name, but greater still through his faith in the near approach of the fact itself, and through his resolve to prepare the way for the divine redemption by a judg- ment not executed by a human arm, but dependent upon human repentance.^ MQ vioQ avSp. ipxofiivoQ, Kai ahrip io69ij rj jSaaiXfirr, e^ovrtia alioviog; verse 18, TrapaXryipovTai tj]v /3. aytoi vipiarov ; verse 27, Kal i) (3. ruii' fiaa. twv viroKdru) Travrbg r. ovpavov tS69r) ayioiQ v\piffTOV — (iamXda atmnos ; vi. 27, ttoie? m^fitia Kai repara ev rq) ovpav(p Kal tirl rJ/G y'^C- Renan also traces the expression back to Daniel, pp. 78, 79. ^ Comp. Vol. I. pp. 261, 317 sqq., 346 sqq. Jos. Ajit. 18, 1, 6, fiovov yy^fiova Kai SecnroTijv tov Oebv VTrsi\t](p6TEg (Pharisees). B. J. 2, 8, 1, (ca/ci^oij/, €i juerd tov Beov olffovffi 6vr}Tovg SeoTTorag (Judas the Galilean). Wisdom, x. 10, ^ainXiia Oeov ; V. 17, fSnaiXnov einrpsTTHag, SidSiJua KaWovg ; i. 14, ^Sov fiaaiXeiov ini yiig. Often said of God, Kvpiog, (iaaiKEvg. The whole conception perhaps an Alexandrian abstraction. * We gain a clearer idea of the Baptist's position when we look to Isaiah ix. — xi. for the foundation of his addresses in the wilderness. Though the expression "kingdom of heaven" is not found literally in the book of Daniel (many passages in the Rabbis, Lightfoot, p. 264 ; Wetstein, p. 256), yet the exact idea and almost the 46 THE FIRST PREACHING. Verbally, Jesus is nothing more than the literal repeater of the Baptist's watchword ; but a fictitious transference of this watch- word from John to Jesus is naturally much less probable than such a transference from Jesus to John.'^ Whether the meaning attached to this cry by Jesus was the same as that attached to it by John or not, two very important results followed from tliis initial utterance. In the first place, Jesus hid his party colour from no one. Cautiously as he may have separated his first appearance and ministry from the Baptist as to both locality and form, prudently as he refrained at first from mentioning the names of the Baptist and of the Baptist's princely suppressor, yet he so thoroughly recognized the correctness of the Baptist's fundamental conception, its appropriateness to the age, its deep hold upon the age, upon the thought and speech and conscience of the nation, that he perpetuated this cry as a sacred, unassail- able, divinely prescribed utterance; and notwithstanding his competency to be the creator of a new phrase, he persisted in the use of the old one, at the risk of exposing himself, on the one hand, to the charge of being a mere disciple of John's, and, on the other hand, yet more to the venomous enmity against the revolutionary Johannine tendency.^ In the second place, by following John in preaching the nearness of the kingdom and in preparing the nation for the kingdom by means of repentance, he refuted at the very outset that conjecture of modern inquiry which opposes the paucity of its sceptical findings to the profusion of the initial sayings, and seeks to establish itself out of the sources themselves — the conjecture, namely, that Jesus at first stood forth only as a clever utterer of detached sayings, maxims, and aphorisms, belonging to different provinces very expression are to be found there, as Lightfoot, Bertholdt, Ammon, De Wette, and Renan have shown. ^ See above, Vol. II. Comi). Strauss, p. 197. The second according to Weisse, I. p. 315, Hofmann, Holtzmann, and others. * Jesus does not speak publicly of John until the later Galilean period. Matt. xi. Still more openly at the very beginning of his last visit to Jerusalem, xxi. Of Antipas, Luke xiii. 32. THE WATCHWORD OF JESUS. 47 of daily life, or at most to the province of an illuminated legal- ism.^ The undoubted repetition of the kingdom-cry of the Baptist shows that Jesus never occupied himself merely with isolated questions ; that, as to his thinking and his purposes, he never lost himself in the periphery, in scattered details, in un- systematic trilling with minutia3 ; that, just as his determined self-consciousness was inseparably bound up with the ultimate and highest questions, so in his preaching he had before his mind's eye a complete world, a theoretical world, which he wished to make clearly known, and a practical world which, with the profoundest earnestness and the boldest courage, he en- deavoured to fashion ; and hence that all the individual questions were merged in the cardinal question, How will the kingdom of heaven come ? But since the complete independence of Jesus from first to last, and liis express claim to be the bringer of '' news," compel us to conclude that he possessed something peculiar to himself, what, then, was the peculiarity in his preaching of the kingdom and of repentance which distinguished him from John?^ The fact that the inaugural utterances have been found to be un- available, by no means leaves us with nothing but the mere assertion of this pecuharity, and with the explanation either undiscoverable or intangible. We have not merely a number of Jesus' utterances concerning the kingdom which belong or which may belong to the first period of his ministry, though by accident they have been preserved to us only in his later addresses, as, e.g., the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, in which the complete originality of his standpoint is apparent; it is easy also to discover unmistakable fundamental features of his conception of the universe, features which remain the same amid all the variety of details, and which first make clearly intelligible the 1 Renan, pp. 71, 81 : Premiers aphorismes de Jesus, on which account he is, quite consistently, classed with the Scribes, Simeon the Just, Antigonus of Socho, Jesus Sirach, Hillel, &c. Comp. also Holtzmann, Syn. Ev. 1863, pp. 130, &c. » Matt. xiii. 52. 48 THE FIRST PREACHING. cUhut of Jesus and the rise of a new Messianic movement. Among those features may with certainty be reckoned the un- qualified, unreserved faith in God, the recognition of God as the Father of mankind, the voluntary renunciation of earthly things and of anxiety about what is earthly, the rising to the apprecia- tion of the higher moral truths of the Law — features which we find, sometimes broadly laid down and sometimes only indicated, in the Sermon on the Mount, and which afterwards re-appear again and again. ^ Eelying on the basis of these thought-kernels, it will be possible to describe Jesus' kingdom of heaven. Who- ever wishes to rebut the charge of making an arbitrary selection from the sayings of Jesus, is bound to offer at least some proofs that, as has been or will be pointed out in other departments, so in this department also there existed, or may have existed, de- velopment, differences between the earlier and the later. C. — The Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus announced the kingdom of heaven." Now and then he substituted for that title the expression, "kingdom of the Father," or "kingdom of God," or quite simply, "the kingdom;" at a later period he also called it his own kingdom.^ The more recent ^ That the fundamental conception in v. 3 sqq. is one of the earliest, follows from its purely anticipatory teaching with reference to the kingrlom of heaven, and also from the peculiar tone of blessing and of glad tidings that marked Jesus' earliest style of preaching. This is of course not the place to give proofs of the date of the individual passages ; the proofs must be sought in the general course of the history itself. ^ Fleck, Be regno Christi, 1826, De regno divino, 1829, are out of date. On the other hand, comp. Weiffenbach, QucE Jesu in regno coslesti dignitas sit. Syn. sententia e-vponttur, Giessen, 1868, p. 5. ^ fiaaikiia ovpmnov, thirty-two times in Matthew : iii. 2, iv. 17, v. 3, 10, 19 (twice), 20, vii. 21, viii. 11, x. 7, xi. 11, 12, xiii. 11, 24, 31, 33, 44, 45, 47, 52, xvi. 19, xviii. 1, 3, 4, 23, xix. 12, 14, 23, xx. 1, xxiii. 13, xxv. 1. The finir. nvpai'wv in the Sin., John iii. 5, is hardly original, but a correction from Matt, xviii. 3 ; comp. Clement, Horn. 11, 26. (3aff. GfoS stands four times in Matthew: xii. 28, xix. 24, xxi. 31, 43. In vi. 33, the reading, according to Sin. and Vat. (thus also Tisch. ), ought to be r^)' (Saa. Kai Tt)v SiKai. abrov. In xix. 24, the reading f3a(T. Ofoii should be retained (contrary to Tisch.) on the authority of the best MSS., and also as the more difficult reading (instead of the repeated /3. r. oi., xiii, 41, xx. 21. Simply /3arov. 1, Amicitia, neeessitado, similitudo cum Diis. Ti^oaofiowv ti 6ea>, Plutarch, De gen. Socr. 11 ; De ser. num. vindicta, 5. tlKwv 9eov, after Diogenes the Cynic, Lucian, Pro imag. 28. vioq 9iov, Epict. Diss. 2, 5, 10. Comp. Zeller, Phil. Griech. III. 1, p. 402. Zeus, irarijp dvSpixiv re Oi&v r£, Iliad, 1, 544. » Seneca, De ira, 2, 27 ; De bene/. 6, 23 ; 2, 29 ; 4, 5 ; EpisL 73, 95. 3 Seneca, De henef. 2, 29 ; 4, 4, 26 ; 7, 31 ; 6, 23 ; De clem. 1, 7 ; Exdat. 31, 110. Comp. especially the passage which recalls Matt. v. 45, De henef. 4, 26 : Si Deos imitaris, da et ingratis beneficia ; nam et sceleratis sol oritur et piratis patent maria. Comp. also the passages in Plutarch, De superstil. 4, 6, 13 ; De defect, orac. 7, &c. •* Seneca, E2nst. 73; comp. 31, 06, 41, 95. 72 THE FIRST PREACHING. it which has the sweetest sound is never actually a truth, a vivi- fying, joy-producing faith, but only a transient effervescent inspi- ration, or a pretty display of rhetoric intended merely to ward off the reproach that " the gods were without heart and head." It was never the expression of sincere faith, because the neces- sary basis was wanting ; on the one hand, belief in the Godhead sank into a faith in heroic men ; on the other hand, faith in human nature was lost in the terrified belief in gloomy destiny ; and over the double abyss only fancy played with the platitudes about " the paternal gods " and " godlike men," phrases which were scarcely tolerated in prosperity, and were answered by scorn and suicide in adversity.'^ The religion of the Old Testament stands much higher in this respect. While it speaks distinctly of the Godhead and of the absolute dej^endence of the creature, it nevertheless does not sacrifice the dignity of man. In the completest realism, it har- bours the highest idealism. It believes in the image of God, in the legal relationship between God and His nation, and calls the latter the son of God, His first-born, His bride, and His spouse. It also describes the relationship between God and the king of Israel as that, of Father and son.^ In the most troublous times, it clings to the conviction that Israel cannot perish, because the honour of God was bound up with that of Israel.^ On the con- trary, it anticipates a future in which the spirit and the power and the authority of God in the world will be concentrated in the chosen king of Israel, and the nation shall enjoy to the last, both sacerdotally and regally, the presence of the glory of God.* Thus in the later writings particularly, in the second part of Dc mort. Claud, lud. 8 : Stoicus Deus nee cor n. caput habet. The comfortless scepticism everywhere in Seneca himself. In the form of despair, Pliny, Hist. nat..2, 5. ^ Image, Gen. i. 26 sq. ; Wisdom ii. 23 ; legal relation. Exodus xix. 5 sq. ; son, first-born. Exodus iv. 22; Hosea xi. 1 ; bride, spouse, Hosea ii. 19 ; Jer. iii. 20; Ezekiel xvi. 8 ; king = son, 2 Sam. vii. 14 ; Psalm ii. 7, 12 (comp. Hitzig on the passage). 8 Deut. iv. 31 sqq. ; Joel ii. 27 ; Isaiah xl. 27, Ii. 5 sqq., Ixiii. 16, Ixiv. 12. ^ Isaiah xi. 1 sqq., ix. 6 sqq., Ixi. 6, Ixvi. 21 ; Joel ii. 28 sqq. THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 73 Isaiah, in the Psalms, the paternal designation of God appears more prominently and with a fuller significance than in the earlier wiitings. It is the nation that cries to God in Isaiah, " Thou art our Father, though Abraham knoweth us not, and Israel (Jacob) doth not acknowledge us."^ But the individual member of the nation also takes the great name into his mouth : " Thou art my Father, my God, and my Saviour." And the word is used with reference to the pious : " Like as a father pitieth his children, so God pitieth them that fear Him."- In the time of the composition of the Book of Sirach, in the time of Philo and of the composition of the Book of Wisdom, when the choicest teachings of the Jewish and Greek views of the universe were already being placed side by side, the name becomes much more frequent ; man appears simply as the bearer of the features of relationship to the Father, and the pious man and the philoso- pher are called the true sons of God, and are said to be of equal birth with, and companions of, the Logos, the second God.^ Slowly but surely did the new and higher conception of the universe thus penetrate into Jewish soil, the conception which was to be crowned by the teaching of Jesus ; the epithet "son of God " passed from being a national to be a personal title, from being a title of protection to be one of relationship, from being a mere title to be a reality. But surely, as these conceptions grew and progressed in Israel, and undoubtedly as Jesus himself was injfluenced by them, it is nevertheless easy to recognize the timidity with which they advanced as compared with the un- hesitating confidence that marked the utterances of Jesus, and to see also in that timidity the evidence of an impure admixture with the earlier belief in God which refused to be broken down until it was broken down by Jesus.* When Isaiah or the 1 Isaiah Ixiii. 16, Ixiv. 8 ; Jer. iii. 4, 19 ; Mai. ii. 10 ; Deut. xxxii. 5, 6. * Psalm bcxxix. 26, ciii. 13. 3 Ecclus. xxiii. 1, li. 14 [A. V. verse 10] ; Wisdom ii. 1-3 sqq., v. 5, xi. 11 [A. V. verse 10], xvi. 21. Philo, see above, Vol. I. pp. 289 sqq. * That Jesus was affected by these influences, see Matt. viii. 12, xv. 26, xxi. 28, 74 ' THE FIRST PREACHING. Psalms attempt to explain and illustrate the conception, they invariably decline into a description of the Lord, the Creator and Protector on the one hand, and of human dust and divine handiwork on the other ; or, like the Hellenes, they treat the conception of "the Father" as a mere figure borrowed from human relationships.^ In the book of Sirach, also, the Father is only like a father; he is in truth the Lord and the God. To Philo, He is the maker and fashioner of the world and of men ; and to the divine threat to punish Solomon after the manner of men, Philo is compelled to add the explanation that it was uttered solely for the instruction of the multitude.^ It was just the same among the Eabbis.^ The prevailing conception of the Old Testament to the end is that of the Lord and his servants ; the higher conception is imperfectly developed in thought, in faith, and in practice ; it awaits its perfection, its deliverance, and the deliverer came in the person of Jesus. A careful consideration of all this will enable us to realize the general character of Jesus' preaching of the kingdom of heaven : it is on the whole a preaching of joy and jubilee for mankind, whether we have regard to what it at once offered or to what it promised iri the immediate future. It is a preaching of salva- tion, deliverance, life, blessedness, in very deed a good and joyous message, as Jesus himself, borrowing Isaiah's words, calls it.* Hence the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount pours out a shower of beatitudes ; and only the morose world-hating Ebionite of Luke's source is able to break up the eight beati- ^ Isaiah Ixiii. 16, Ixiv. 8 ; Psalm Ixxxix. 26. The Creator- conception also in Hosea viii. 14; Mai. ii. 10; Deut. xxxii. 6. Mere comparison, Deut. i. 31, viii. 5; Psalm ciii. 13 ; Isaiah xlix. 15, Ixvi. 13 ; comp. 2 Sam. vii. 14 ; Ecclus. iv. 10. » Ecclus. ir. 10, xxiii. 1, li. 14 [A. V. verse 10]. Philo, see above, Vol. I. pp. 292 sq. ; comp. particularly Q. Deus s. immut. p. 301, irpog rj)v rwv voXkHv SiSaaKoKiav tlaaytrai. Similarly, Josephus, Ant. 4, 8, 24. ^ Israel the spouse of God, mother, sister, dove, Schottgen, p. 129. Plrhe Ah. 3, 14 : Dilecti sunt Israelitse ex eo quod vocati sunt filii Dei. Comp. above, Vol. I. p. 340, note 1. Also Lightfoot, Gfrorer, Tholuck, Kamphausen on the Sermon on the Mount. Wittichen, Idee Vaters, 1865, Idee d. Mencken, 1868. * Matt. xi. 5, x.\vi. 13, xxiv. 14 ; Isaiah xl. 9, Ixi. 1. THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 75 tudes into four blessings and four woes, with the result that the bitterness of the second quartette completely neutralizes the sweetness of the first. In this respect, the cry of Jesus differs altogether from that of his predecessor, the Baptist, with which however it challenges comparison rather than with that of Moses and the Scribes, with which Luther has ingeniously classed it. John also preached salvation, a Messiah, and a Messianic commu- nity ; and Luke even converts the Baptist into an Evangelist ; yet John preached above all the divine severity and anger, fire and judgment, and he never used the term blessedness for the salva- tion of the saved out of the fire. So far did he still stand on the ground of Moses, Elijah, and Ezra, that he believed in the severe and jealous God and the unworthy trembling servant, who in the day of the Lord with difficulty finds grace and mercy. In this respect it is a spiritual world of a different character which is proclaimed by him who, judging from his initial cry, appears to be following completely in the footsteps of the Baptist. It is true, resemblances to the Baptist are not altogether wanting : Jesus also describes the day of the coming of the kingdom of heaven as a day of storm and tempest, of judgment and fire, and he therefore, like John, insists upon repentance ; but, neverthe- less, the joyous, blissful glance and tone everywhere predomi- nate, especially in the early period ; and in the Sermon on the Mount the beatitudes and the new and exalted features of the service of God are very characteristically placed first, while the anxieties, the terrors of the future are placed last, as if men- tioned merely by way of admonition.^ There remain the questions. When did Jesus expect the king- dom of heaven, and ivhy did he so expect it ? By pointedly announcing the kingdom as approaching and God as drawing nigh, Jesus kept the kingdom of heaven suspended between the future and the present, and at once denied that the kingdom had already appeared among the Jews even in the most brilHant ^ Matt. vii. 24 sqq. Cast into the fire, later, xiii. 40. 76 THE FIRST PREACHING. periods of the history of Israel.^ The references to the future predominate. The beatitudes point entirely to future prosperity. The opening sentence, " Theirs is the kingdom of heaven," sounds indeed as if he would offer and confer something present, some- thinrr already actual, tangible; but the explanations follow, — " They shall inherit the earth, they shall be comforted, be filled, obtain mercy, see God, be called the children of God." This future tense pervades the whole sermon : the coming of the kingdom is prayed for ; a future admission into the kingdom of heaven is spoken of, and a future decision of the Lord of the kin-Tdom with reference to such admission ; and finally reference is made to future catastrophes. This mode of expression is con- tinued also elsewhere than in the Sermon on the Mount.^ At the same time, the kingdom is at hand, as the watchword of Jesus directly shows, and as is suggested and indicated by the "constant repetition of the name, by the continuous looking for coming blessings and calamities, by the admonition to be pre- pared, and by the prayer for the advent of the kingdom.^ But how is it that the kingdom appears to be future and yet close at hand ? These two facts are not to be explained merely by Jesus' imitation of the Baptist, nor yet merely by his foresight, reticence, or prudence ; but by his own peculiar conception of the kingdom and his own innermost self-consciousness. For here he follows John with as little servility as elsewhere ; and he never acts from motives that are merely prudential, though he might keep alive the Messianic agitation by means of the phrase that had become proverbial, or mislead those who were lying in wait by concealing the immediately impending cata- 1 With r/yyiKf, comp. besides higgia (see above, p. 42, end of note), the Hebrew haroh, Tcirhat elohim, Isaiah Iviii. 2 (the LXX., erroneously, lyyi^eu' 9E(p); comp. Psalm Ixxiii. 28. The watchword, harob hajom, Joel ii. 1 ; Isaiah xiii. 6 ; Ezekiel vii. 7 ; Zeph. i. 14 ; comp. Isaiah xl. 9, 10. The sentences referring to the future show plainly that the kingdom had not previously existed ; it was at most only pre- pared for, Matt. viii. 11, 12, xxi. 33. « Matt. V. 3 sqq., 19 sq., \-i. 10, vii. 21 sqq., viii. 11, x. 7. 3 Matt. iv. 17, V. 3 sqq., vi. 13, vii. 24 .sqq. THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEX. 77 strophe, or repeatedly wiu for himself and the people a short pro- bation. His reason for teaching the futurity of the kingdom was on the whole that of John : like him, Jesus could not make the kingdom of heaven dependent on the actions of men, not even on his own actions, but simply on God's omnipotent wuU that causes the times to go and come, that would bring to pass the storm and the sunshine of the last days, the blessings together with the " things added," and the judgment.^ But his motives for directing attention to the near approach of the kingdom of heaven w^ere certainly different from those of the Baptist. The latter regarded it as a point of honour with God no longer to suffer the degradation of His people ; Jesus knew nothing of any question of honour on the part of God with reference to the nation, but to him it was a question of the heart between God and His human creatures. He felt it to be a necessity that the fatherliness of God, in which he believed, should be j)ractically revealed without delay, without a cold, hard, procrastinating waiting until perfection were actually attained, and that the human filial yearning with its ardour and its pangs should find speedy satisfaction. This view of the motive of Jesus' proclama- tion of the nearness of the kingdom certainly strikes the most vital part of his preaching and of his idea of the universe ; and when it is remembered that Jesus found already upon the scene the susceptible minds which the Baptist had been anxious to prepare to enter into possession immediately and at once of the gifts of their Father, and first of all His forgiveness — viz., the poor in spirit, the long-suffering, the meek, those that hungered after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace- makers — his preaching of the near, the immediate future of the kingdom of heaven, a future so near that it impinges upon the present, becomes much more intelligible. And yet more fully is this the case, when it is also remembered that he saw the sun- beams of the Divine fatherliness already breaking through the clouds with light and warmth, and enlightening and cheering his 1 Cbmp. Matt. vi. 33, xi. 26, xix. 2G. 78 THE FIRST PRE AC HI XG. hearers themselves, at the very moment when he was beginning to proclaim it.^ But we must not forget a last and mysterious point : in a most forcible and unquestionable manner, the kingdom of heaven was transferred from a distant to an immediate future, to the very present, by the self-consciousness of the man who did not, like John, vaguely and without sure guidance grope after the coming deliverer, but who knew that he himself w^as that deliverei-, though he veiled himself before the people, and though the Divine Providence veiled him in part even from himself We have already sought this higher self-consciousness of Jesus at his bap- tism, among other reasons because thus alone can we explain his public appearance together with and after John, and because, as Weisse also sees, there is no point in the ministry of Jesus that can dispense with this self-consciousness ; but chiefly because it is impossible to describe his beginnings — the beginnings of a ministry as brief as it was intense — as an uncertain groping and feeling after and experimenting, without disparagement to his person and his work.- That from the beginning to the end he was pleased to speak of liimself only as a scribe, a teacher, a leader, or in. some sort as a prophet and indefinitely a lord, is no proof of the absence of this higher self-consciousness ; he thus spoke of himself out of humility, and it was out of discretion that he hid his real character, and because he waited for the verdict of God and of men.^ He nevertheless gave early indica- tions of his higher nature by calling himself greater than the temple, a lord of the Sabbath, and one who was authorized to exercise the divine prerogative of forgiving sins. In the Sermon on the Mount, he speaks of himself, with his disciples, as being ^ Matt. V. 3 sqq., 45 sqq., vii. 21, xii. 50. * Gomp. above, Vol. II. A gradual and late-developed consciousness of Messiah- ship, in Strauss, Schenkel, Weifltenbach. On the other hand, Weisse, I. p. 318; Hausrath, I. p. 424 ; Holtzmann, II. p. 353 ; comp. Albaric, Pressense (p. 327) ; my Oesch. Chr. p. 80. * Teacher, Matt. x. 24 sq., xxiii. 8, 10 (ciSaaKaXor, Kn0j)yr)TriQ), xxvi. 18 ; scribe, xiii. 52 ; lord, x. 24; prophet, v. 12, x. 41, xiii. 57, xxiii. 37; Luke xiii. 33 sq. THE KIXGDOM OF HE A VEX. 79 the salt of the earth, a light of the world, a fiilfiller, not a destroyer, of Moses and the prophets, of the religious basis of the nation of Israel.' And especially did he sum up his claims at the beginning in that mysterious name by which he preferred to designate himself to the last — the name by which Volkmar thinks he was first designated by Mark, or perhaps by Peter — the name of Son of Man} It may be objected to our appealing to this name, that the condition of our sources prevents us from guaranteeing Jesus' employment of this name at the beginning of his ministry, and that, in the most favourable case, the name is obscure and equivocal, and may have had in the mouth of Jesus himself an elastic and varying meaning, at first signifying but little, and afterwards more. But an exact historical investi- gation destroys the first objection, and with it in the main the second also and the third.^ For it is above all certain that, in his later Galilean period, Jesus regarded this name as designating what he had been from the beginning and had shown himself to be. Wlien speaking of his first appearance, he says, " The Son of Man came eating and drinking;" and when taking a retro- 1 Matt. xii. 6, 8, ix. 6, v. 13, 14, 17. ' For earlier treatises on this conception, see Schleusner, Lex. gnec. lat. in N. T. 3rd ed. II. pp. 1174 sq. In recent times, Scholten, De appellat. tov v. t. a. 1809 ; Bohme, Verstich, das Geheimniss des M. zu entlmllen, 1839 ; Gass, De utroque I. X. nomine, 1840 ; Nebe, Uehe?- den Begriff des Namens, 6 v. r. a. 1860. The most important in recent times are, Baur, Die Bedeutimg des AusdrucJcs Menschensokyx, in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift, 1860, pp. 274 sqq. ; ib. N. T. Theol. 1864, pp. 75 sqq. ; Hilgenfeld, in his Zeitschrift, 1863, pp. 327 sqq. ; Colani, /. Chr. et les croyances messianiqites, 2nd ed. 1864, pp. 112 sqq. ; Holtzmann, in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift, 1865, p. 212 ; Beyschlag, Christologie, 1866 ; Nandres, /. Chr. lefils de Vhomme, 1867 ; Schulze, Vom Menschensohn und vom Logos, 1867 ; Weiflfenbach, I.e. pp. 11 sqq.; Wittichen, Die Idee des Menschen, 1868; Ewald, 3rd ed. pp. 304 .sq. ; Hase, 5th ed. p. 154 ; Schenkel, p. 374. Review of the literature on the subject, e. g. in Bleek, Synopse, I. p. 358 ; Holtzmann, I. c. pp. 212 sqq. ; the Commentaries of De Wette and Meyer ; Volkmar, Ev. pp. 199, 450. ^ Baur held (A^. T. Theol. p. 81 ; comp. p. 75) that the name was used with a varying meaning, since he thought it possible that Jesus at a later period first adopted the Messiah title of Daniel ; comp. also Colani, p. 80 ; Strauss, p. 227. But Weiz- sacker (1864, p. 429), and Nandres after him (pp. 34 sqq.), believe that Jesus used it with a varying meaning, because they find in the epithet itself only a designation of himself as a prophet (if not also implying a prophetic self-consciousness), after the manner of Ezekiel. 80 THE FIRST PREACHIXa. spect of the whole of his ministry, he asks his disciples, " What do men say that the Son of Man is ?"^ And the significant say- ings with reference to the eagerness of certain persons to follow him, to which he gave utterance previous to the completion of the number of the twelve Apostles, and the sayings against the Scribes uttered in the prelude of his controversies with the Pharisees — "The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head;" " the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins ;" " the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath " — belong unquestionably to the early part of his ministry.- It is true that the difficulties offered by the idea are consider- able, and on this account the want of unanimity on the part of expositors is not quite the humiliating spectacle which Bey- schlag says it is.^ One might have supposed that the more frequently the name appeared in the New Testament, the less would be the obscurity that gathered round its meaning. Cer- tainly, it occurs only four times in the New Testament outside of the Gospels, and is never used by Paul, — a remarkable indica- tion, as much of the independence of the development of the apostolic period, as of that of the evangelical tradition in the midst of the subsequent current of history. In the Gospels, however, it appears seventy-eight times, or, omitting the parallel passages, fifty times, or again, omitting John's Gospel, thirty-nine times. By far the larger number of instances occur in Matthew and Luke, only about a dozen in Mark and John, the later books which form the transition stage to the complete cessation of the name in the New Testament.^ It is exactly on account of the 1 Matt. xi. 19, xvi. 13. lu Luke (Lx. 18) and Mark (viii. 27), certainly, it is only, " Who say men that / am ?" * Matt. ix. 6, viii. 20, xii. 8. The early date of these passages will afterwards be shown more in detail in the history of the miracles and the controversies. The earliest formal use of the name in each Gospel, Matt. viii. 20 ; Mark ii. 10 ; Luke V. 24 (comp. vi. 22) ; John i. 51. 3 Christol. N. T. 1866, p. 21. •* Passages outside of the Gospels : Acts vii. 56 ; Rev. i. 13, xiv. 14 ; Heb. ii. 6. In the Gospels, Matthew has twenty-nine passages, Luke twenty-five, Mark thirteen, and John eleven. (Nandres, p. 33, erroneously gives Matthew thirty-two, and Mark THE KIXGDOM OF HEAVEN. 81 great number of passages that the name occurs in so many rela- tions and in so many different lights that the meaning seems to become intangible, though the two later Evangelists attempt — yet inadequately — to point it out. If we turn to the Old Testa- ment, in which the first roots of the name are to be sought, we find there notoriously different significations ; and if we take counsel of the ancient and modern expositors of the Old and New Testaments, we meet with a still more marked variety of opinions.^ In the examination of such a strange and evidently genuinely Eastern name, it is advisable to make the Old Testament our starting-point. There we often find this expression, in both the singular and the plural, used to designate and describe human nature ; hence, in the well-known parallelism of Hebrew verses, " man " and " son of man " are frequently used interchangeably. Since this descriptive phrase inserts the individual in the chain of the race and of the conditions and limitations of human nature, it acquires not merely a poetical character, but also a categorical pointedness : it expresses more exactly than any other the physical and even the physi co-ethical littleness and infirmity of human nature in antithesis to God, and also again — as a kind of completion of the contrast — in antithesis to the undeservedly high dignity to which the exalted God raises the work of His hand by revelation and grace.^ This contrast is fourteen. Grimm, in his Lexicon, overlooks Matt. xxiv. 30 (bis) ; Mark viii. 31 ; John viii. 28, xii. 23). Ten passages are peculiar to Matthew and Luke : Matt. x. 23, xiii. 37, 41, ivi. 13, 27, 28, xix. 28, xxiv. 30, xxv. 31, xxvi. 2 ; Luke vi. 22, ix. 22, 26, xii. 8, xvii. 22, xviii. 8, xix. 10, xxi. 36, xxii. 48, xxiv. 7. Mark has only ii. 28 peculiar to itself (viii. 31, 38 = Luke). All the passages in John are peculiar to that book. From the absence of the name in Paul and the Revelations, Volkmar (p. 199) infers its unhistorical character ! 1 Mark (ii. 10) delineates the Son of Man as the representative of human interests ; John (v. 27) as the incarnate representative of the supremacy and judicial rights of God over mankind : neither is an altogether incorrect description, yet neither is quite complete. With reference to Mark ii. 10, read in the light of Matt. xii. 7 sq., I would remark provisionally that Mark rationalizes subjectively, and that the character of " re- presentative of human interests " is contained also in the older expression of Matthew. * Comp. Num. xxiii. 19 ; Deut. xxxii. 8 ; 2 Sara. vii. 14 ; Ps. viii. 4, xi. 4, xii. 1, 8, xiv. 2, xxi. 10, xc. 3 ; Is. Ivi. 12; Job xvi. 21, xxv. 6 (equals oanpia, VOL. III. G 82 THE FIRST PREACUINQ. notably depicted in the eighth Psalm, and in the book of Ezekiel, which represents God as in tlie habit of addressing the prophet as "Thou son of man !"i This contrast of lowness and majesty had already acquired in these passages a character of mysterious- ness, the appearance of a special, individual and unique, privi- leged position. This was still more the case in the great predic- tion in the book of Daniel of the kingdom of the saints or of the people of God, which was to supplant the four great secular kingdoms: after God, as judge, has deprived the four terrible beasts of their power, one " like a son of man " is to be carried in the clouds of heaven to the throne of God and invested with regal authority over the whole earth.^ He who is like a son of man, that is, according to the ancient signiticance of the expres- sion, which must not be forgotten, he who is weak as contrasted with the strong beasts, but who also is superior spiritually and through the fellowship of God — he is, in the sense of the whole book, the people of God as a whole, and not an individual. But tlie literalness of Jewish exposition, and the tendency to look for a personal deliverer of the nation, made it easy to conceive of him as an individual, as the Messiah of tlie future. In this sense the passage has been understood, not only by Christen- dom, but also by the Jewish books of Enoch and Ezra, and by the later Eabbinical Judaism. It must be confessed, however, that the pre-Christian date of the books of Enoch and Ezra, especially of those parts of the book of Enoch that treat of the Messianic Son of Man, is strongly contested.^ o-(fwXr;5), &c. Besides the physical littleness (comp. Ps. viii.), the moral is also imli- cated, Num. xxiii. 19. 1 Ez. ii. 1, 3, iii. 1, 3, 4, 10, 25, xl. 4. ' Ke-bar senash, Coq v\hc, avQphnrov, Dan. vii. 13. Just the same in Rev. i. 13, xiv. 14. =* Ordinarily only the characteristic of "humanity " (Volkmar, p. 198) in antithesis to the kingdoms of the beasts is made prominent ; but here, as elsewhere in the Old Testament, the idea of weakness which is strength in God, is not to be excluded, at least in Dan. iv. 14 [Auth. Vers, verse 17] shephal anashim expressly appears. That the " Son of Man " of Daniel is a personification of the nation of saints (Hitzig, Hof- mann, and later writers), follows from the language of the chapter (vii.) itself; Ewald, THE KIXODOM OF HE A VEX. 83 As regards Jesus himself, in -his use of this expression he does not by any means presuppose that his contemporaries had attached to it any unalterable categorical meaning, any indelibly impressed signification. This is evident from his complete reti- cence as to higher titles, and from his later questions addressed to the disciples on the subject of their conception of his cha- racter—nay, as Matthew says, of their conception of what he was as the Son of Man. It is also expressly proved by the fourth Gospel, and is not contradicted by the rejection by the judges at Jerusalem of his appeal to the entire prophecy of Daniel.^ As given in the first and fourth Gospels, the name of " Son of ]\Ian " expressed a vaguer, less palpable, more variable, and— as Weisse says — less definitely stamped conception than did the well- known and, by Jesus, long-avoided title of the JMessianic Son of on the other hand (with him, e.'■ «•> ('^^ ^"-''Q ^ov ©Eoii, rvTr(;j Kal ev aapKi h. 100 : Son of Man because of his birth by the virgin, — mediately Son of David, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham — therefore, however, not properly a man of men (c. 48). Ignatius, E]^^- 20, 6 Kara adpKa ek yei'oi'g AajSic, 6 V. a. Kai i'. 9eov. Irenseus, 3, 19, 3, filius Dei, quoniam ex Maria habuit sec. hominem generationem, factus est filius hominis ; 4, 33, 11, verbum caro erit et fil. Dei fil. hominis; 3, 10, 2, &c. Similarly, later writers, comp. Holtzmann, p. 214. - The higher nature, the ideal of humanity, the second Adam, held by Herder, Neander, Olshausen, Weisse, Hofmann, Beyschlag (the last finding even pre-existence), and others. The lower character, Hugo firotius, Wilke (comp. Schleiennacher, like- ness to men, p. 293), Baur, and othei-s. See following note. Comp. Holtzmann, pp. 214 sqq. ; Schulze, pp. 65 sqq. 3 Baur holds intrinsically the view of Grotius, that Jesus is, to express it in a few words, the one qui nihil humani a se alienum putat, 1860, p. 280 ; 1864, p. 81. Somewhat similarly Strauss ; also Schenkel ; recently Scholten, who, in Ev. nach Joh. 1867, p. 236, says that the only thing which attracted Jesus to the vocation of Mes- siah was the desire to be a man and to bring in the kingdom of humanity. Holtz- mann (i)p. 233 sq.) has given prominence to the characteristic of glory, and— after Schleiermacher — especially to the judicial attitude of Jesus (according to Mark ii. 10 ; John V. 27) ; and passages like Matt. viii. 20 he has explained— under the ju.st blame of Nandres (p. 25)— by admitting that the strongest contradictions met in Jesus. Then again, by speaking (though without consistency) of a peculiar central po.sition among men, of the universal and human meaning of the name, he (p. 235) atone and the same time bridges the space between himself and Baur, as well as between his own view and the perfected man of Naudrcs. 92 . THE FIRST f RE AC HI KG. views, much less the obscure intermixture of them. It is the task of modern science to buiki up the truth out of these anti- theses and confusions.^ The Son of Man as the Messiah who, though veiled, is yet fully conscious of himself, of his greatness, and of his vocation, — this title, this fact, is a fresh guarantee of the strength of Jesus' faith in the immediate nearness of the kingdom of heaven, and explains his coniidence : the kingdom was where he was, or it was waiting only for him to unveil himself, for God to unveil him. But his knowledge that he was the Messiah, and his express will — avowed in this, as Ewald calls it, most modest and most loveable name — to be the human Messiah, not merely a ruling, lordly Son of God after the gross Jewish ideal, but an associate of men, an intercessor for and a helpfvd servant among men, — this knowledge, this will, throws a fresh and fascinating light upon the genuinely human character and the spiritual as well as moral fundamental conception of the kingdom of heaven which he always preached ; it promises, for the progress of his work, every gift, every qualification needed to guide man to the fulfilment of its unsatisfied longings, to the actual vision of its eternal ideal ^ and finally it shows the lingering and apparently so decisively important anticipation of regal glory to be a cloudy phantom of the imagination, whose features and outlines, be- gotten of the ideal poetry of a sensuous national genius, are already yielding to the sober, earnest self-knowledge of Jesus ; for, in truth, his authority lay in his serviceableness. D. — The Eepentance that admits to the Kingdom of Heaven. Since the kingdom of heaven is at the door, Jesus, like John, insists upon repentance as the human preparation which does not indeed make and bring into existence that kingdom, but ' The antitheses are best brought together by De Wette, Colani, Hilgenfeld (Zeit- ^thrift, 186:3, yi>. 327 sqq. ; comp. 18''5, p. 40). THE REPENTANCE THAT ALMITS TO HEAVEN. 93 which renders man fit and worthy to receive it. There is, how- ever, a great difference between the two demands for repentance. In point of fact, Jesus does not preach repentance so much as righteousness ; he addresses not merely sinners, but the righteous also ; he brings to the righteous benediction instead of humilia- tion ; finally — and this is the most noticeable dissimilarity — his insistance upon repentance and righteousness belongs to quite a different world, is dictated by quite a different spirit, from the Johannine. In harmony with all this, the form of Jesus' appeal is decidedly less harsh, violent, and impetuous than that of the Baptist's. These differences can be understood only in connec- tion with Jesus' new conception of the kingdom of heaven. 'V\1iere heaven and earth have a tendency to approach each other, as they do in Jesus' preaching of the kingdom, then on the side both of God and of man negation must give way to affirmation, anger to love, sorrow to joy, remorse to activity; and there everything that has an affinity to God goes forth to meet the Diviue Visitant, not in garments of mourning but in holiday raiment, and proud of being like him and of becoming like him. In requiring repentance — literally, a change of mind — univer- sally and before all other things, Jesus assumes the previous existence of the dark shadows of failure, sin, guilt.^ He unre- lentingly tears away all title and claim to moral goodness from the earth, not merely from the mass of his contemporaries, but also from the pretentious magnates of virtue among tlie pious teachers, and finally also from himself when the belief of men is, as it were, too soon ready to call him good. He denies this ^ fXETcn'ota, fisravoflv, alteration, change of mind. The vovq is the intelligent and moral personality, similarly as in Paul, Comp. Matt. xv. 1(3 sq., xvi. 9, 11, xxiv. 15. The ethical feature is yet more distinctly prominent in the idea fpovelv, xvi. 23 ; but elsewhere the change is conceived as immediately connected with the intellectual func- tion, xiii. 15. Comp. also the ideas ivQv^iiianQ, ix. 4 ; ciaXoyiaiiol, xv. 19. The seat of all these functions is the heart, icapoia, ix. 4, xiii. 15, xv. 19. — Holtzmann (II. pp. 353 sqq. ) finds in Mark evidence to show that Jesus only gradually laid aside the impetuosity of John's appeal. 94 THE FIRS 7' PliEACHIXa. claim even to the heavens, for he does not call the angels good, although they do the will of God : the only being that is good is He who is over all, God.^ He charges the earth and men with sin and evil dispositions ; he calls men unclean, perverse, dark and blind, lustful, selfish, worldly in thought, word, and deed, corrupt and dry trees, dead and lost.^ Nay, the whole gene- ration is perverse, evil, adulterous, contemptuous or deceitful towards God, a brood of vipers ; the whole world is without light, without salt, a theatre of offences.^ In the sinfulness of their nature all men are alike and are all obnoxious to the Divine chastisement, which here and there, in isolated instances, is inflicted, a solemn earnest of what is to come.* Here are splin- ters, there beams ; here great, there small, debts ; but debtors, sinners, are all men, and all must cry for forgiveness, all must turn or j^erish.^ These strong utterances are, however, qualified. There are in the world not merely sinners characterized simply by a greater or less degree of sinfulness ; there are good men and evil men, righteous and unrighteous, upright and perverse, men who have not strayed and men who have strayed, healthy and diseased. There are trees that are sound and others that are corrupt, trees that are green and others that are dry, eyes that are good and others that are evil, a good soil and a rocky soil. And it is by no means the case that the good kind exists only in a few speci- mens, and the bad in the remaining many : on one occasion, the Lord, with the view of eulogizing the love of God towards His 1 Matt. xix. 17 (comp. vii. 11), xii. 34, vi. 10. ^ Sinful, Matt. ix. 2, 13, xxvi. 45; evil-disposed, vii. 11, vi. 22, xii. 39 ; iinclean, XV. 20, xvi. 6 ; perverse, xvii. 17 ; dark and blind, vi. 23, xv. 14, xxiii. 16, &c., Luke iv. 18 ; lustful. Matt. v. 28 ; selfish, worldly, xvi. 25 sq. ; corrupt, dry, vii. 17, xii. 33, Luke xxiii. 31 ; dead, lost, Matt. viii. 22, x. 6, Luke xv. 24. ^ Matt. xvii. 17, xii. 34, 39, 45 ; without light, without salt, v. 13 sq. ; offences, xviii. 7. ^ Luke xiii. 1 sqq. 5 Matt. vii. 3, xviii. 23 sqq. (comp. vi. 12) ; Luke vii. 4 sqq. Conversion, Matt. xiii. 15, xviii. 3. THE REPEXTAXCE THAT ADMITS TO HE A VEX. 95 wandering children, speaks of ninety-nine wlio had not wandered.^ We have here, clearly, not simply isolated passages, but an anti- thesis running through the whole of Jesus' teaching, an anti- thesis which can be found even in the fourth Gospel, though there it rests only on the basis of a philosophically coloured theory of the universe.^ It is therefore impossible to suppress this prevailing antithesis of the two classes, though dogmatists are glad to attempt so to do, and please many by making the attempt. By the terms " the good " and " the righteous," Jesus certainly does not signify merely either those that are good in the popular and inexact sense of the word, or indeed those that are righteous in appearance, such as in fact he often dis- covers and exposes among his antagonists ; for his judgment is independent and severe. Neither does he refer to the good merely in idea without any question as to whether such really exist ; nor to those that shall be good in the future after they have heard and profited by his preaching and his call to repent- ance.^ For the good upon whom God causes His sun to shine and His rain to fall as He does upon the bad, and those that have not wandered, over whom God rejoices less than over the returning wanderers, must be as real existences as those that walk by their side, particularly since God Himself stands to- wards them in an actual and not merely a supposititious relation of sympathy. Moreover, the righteous upon whom God's sun has already long smiled, cannot be merely the righteous men of the future.* And the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, tlie pure-hearted, whom Jesus pronounces blessed in the lieginning of 1 Righteous and unrighteous, Matt. v. 45, ix. 13, xii. 35 (comp. x. 41), xiii. 17, xxiii. 35, Luke xv. 7 ; upright and perverse, Matt. vi. 22, xvii. 17 ; strayed, xviii. 13; sound, ix. 12, Luke v. 31 ; trees, Matt. vii. 17 sq., xii. 33, Luke xxiii. 31 ; eyes. Matt. vi. 22 ; soil, xiii. 5 ; the ninety-nine, xviii. 13. 2 Comp. the good and bad in the fourth Gospel (iii. 19 sqq.) as a fixed and universal antithesis. 3 Good in the popular sense, Luke xviii, 18 sqq. ; apparently righteous, Matt. vi. 2, Luke xvi. 15, xviii. 9, xx. 20 ; righteous in idea, Matt. ix. 13, or indeed xviii. 13 ; the good men of the future, v. 3 sqq., xiii. 43. * Matt. V. 45, xviii. 13. 96 THE FIES'T PREACHIXG. the Sermon on the Mount, and to whom he promises reward instead of punishment, and the diligent merchantmen who seek goodly pearls, — all these must have been prepared for his coming, like the cliildren that stand round him, of whom he requires no conversion, and to whom, as to the humble, he promises the kingdom of heaven.^ Truly, Jesus is not to be measured here by modern theories, which in order to honour him and to place at his feet a humanity that is in need of salvation, have, with mechanical definiteness, with only partial consistency with experience, without regard to the honour of the Creator, and finally without regard also to the honour of the Prince of man- kind, established the unqualified sinfulness and lost condition of all men. Jesus, although he sees the shadows of the world as it is more clearly than M'e, does not darken them in order to make himself appear brighter ; he rejoices in the light that shines in the darkness ; he calls it light and not darkness ; and, finding many in whom the light overcomes the darkness, he derives from that light, from those souls with their possession and their longing, encouragement to hope for a kingdom of heaven in the world ; and he finds his triumph in being the leader and guide to salva- tion of both the good and the evil. It is true we may be perplexed by the apparent contradiction which lies in the best attested utterances of Jesus, in which he in one place calls all men sinners, and in another carefully dis- tinguishes between the righteous and the sinful. "We may also be perplexed by the call to repentance which he seems to address to all, and which yet, as if on second thoughts and as it were out of timidity, he withdraws with reference to the good. In Luke, at least, he speaks distinctly of righteous persons who need no repentance and have never broken a divine commandment ; and he speaks of his mission to call, not the righteous, but sinners to repentance, or, as Matthew has it, generally to call them.- We might seek to escape from the difficulty by supposing that Jesus ^ Matt. V. 3 sqq., xiii. 45, xviii. 1 sqq. * Luke XT, 7, 29. Comp. also tbe difference between Luke v. .32 and Matt. ix. 13. THE REPEXTAXCE THAT ADMITS TO HEAVEN. 97 relinquished his call to repentance, and finally his whole ministry, M'ith reference to the righteous whom he learnt to recognize and whom he could leave to themselves, and confined his efforts to sinners, to the poor lost multitude whose miseries and hopeful penitence were bequeathed to him as an inheritance by John, and w^hose claim upon his assistance Jesus so often touchingly acknowledged, and summarized in the sentence : The Son of Man is come to seek and to save the lost.^ These difficulties, however, present nothing that is insur- mountable, and such a way of escape as that above suggested would only lead us astray. An absolute contradiction in the genuine utterances of Jesus is an impossibility, — at least it is not to be assumed unnecessarily. A limitation of the call to repentance, nay, of the call in general, to sinners, woidd funda- mentally destroy the genuinely Johannine and national character of the initial attitude of Jesus, as well as the breadth and sanc- tity of his ideas. It would come into direct collision with his actual appeal to the waiting pious, with the claim he made upon those who had not wandered, with his faith in the fulfilment, in his own person and performances, of the holy longing and seeking of prophets and righteous men, and with his express designation of his disciples and followers as righteous.^ As must be seen at once, its introduction into his teaching could be effected only by violence. The elucidation and reconciliation of the difficulties in question lie in the words of Jesus himself. He pronounces all men to be sinners, blotting out as it were all distinction, espe- cially when his purpose is to rebuke the vain arrogance of the creature towards God, and to humble man in the presence of the Pure and Holy One : in this relation, he finds no one good, every one is more or less a debtor, every one, even the righteous dis- ciple, must plead for mercy.^ This, in a word, is the meaning of 1 Matt. ix. 11 sqq., x. 6, xv. 24, xviii. 12 sqq., xxi. 32; Luke xv. 4 sqq., xix. 10 (this last pis.sage in Matt, xviii. 11 is spurious and interpolated). * Matt. V. 3 sqq., xviii. 12 sqq., xiii. 17, 45, x. 41 sq. ' Matt. xix. 16 sqq., xviii. 23 sqq., vi. 12, 14 sq., v. 7. The Jew.s distinguish between those who are righteous through repentance (haah teshuhah) and those who VOL. III. H 98 THE FIRST FRE ACHING. the well-known passage, " I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." This passage has often been misunderstood, in the way in which it was misunderstood by Luke, who preserved the coming of Jesus for the righteous as well as for sinners, by supposing that he really called the former, though not to the repentance to which he called the latter. But in fact this passage neither recognizes the practically righteous, nor excludes them from the calling, though an exclusion has been inferred from the circumstance that Jesus had been previously speaking figura- tively of those who, being really whole, needed no physician. This passage, richly figurative and allusive, excludes from the appli- cation of the calling merely the category of the righteous, the con- ception and presumption of complete righteousness, the Pharisaic self-rigliteousness ; and it requires the practically righteous, and yet more those who pretend to be righteous, such as they stand before him, to remove themselves from the category of the righteous in the completest and most solemn sense at the very threshold of the calling, and to place themselves in the category of sinners in order through the calling to find righteousness in a new and true manner.^ The greatness of the doctrine of Jesus is seen in the fact that he does not become one-sided in the carry- ing out of this most fully authorized and most tenaciously held point of view, but that by the side of this genuinely religious and humbling abolition of human distinctions, and of this exhibi- tion of the fundamental difference between God and His crea- are perfectly and sinlessly righteous {zaddik gamur). Much vaunting ; yet there is also the sentence, Major poen. q. justitia. Lightfoot, pp. 541 sqq. ; Schottgen, p;). 293 sqq. ^ Matt. ix. 1.3 and Luke v. 32. The above is not to be illustrated by immediately identifying "the whole" in Matt. ix. 12 with the category of "righteous" in verse 13. When Jesus says that the whole or the strong need not a physician, he uses this prover- bial expression (comp. Wetstein, p. 358 ; Zeller in Hilgenfeld's ZeiUchrift, 1867, p. 203) to justify his coming to the aid of the spiritually sick, i. e. of sinners ; but he does not by any means say (1) that spiritually whole persons exist in the sense in which physi- cally whole persons exist, (2) that the Pharisees are such, (3) that he withdraws his ministry from thos^better pei-sons. He therefore says "righteous" categorically, and not "the righteous." More in detail when treating of the conflicts with the Phari- THE EEPEXTAXCE THAT ADMITS TO HE A FEN. 99 tures, there runs unalterably, indelibly, and with equal authorita- tiveness, the genuinely ethical preservation of the moral estimate and standard by which men are divided into good and bad : all are bad or have something bad in them, and yet there are good among the bad, good to whom sin is not wanting, but in whom, nevertlieless, the good and not the bad rules. Thus Jesus remained consistent with himself, by requiring repentance of all, yet requiring it differently of the good than of sinners. In the case of the latter, repentance involved sorrow, a turning in every sense, a true revolution of sentiment ; in the case of the former, the righteous and those that loved righteous- ness, it implied sorrow on account of the little progi'ess made in the already commenced right course, and an eager pursuit after the, as yet, unattained perfection. The one conversion he demanded of the nation, which, in case of impenitence, he threatened with a worse fate than that of Sodom and Gomorrha ; the other he required of the disciples, whose mutual jealousy he reproved by the example of the child which he placed in their midst, and by the warning that if they remained as they were they would not see the kingdom of heaven.^ "VVliere can we better seize this meaning of the utterances of Jesus — his relative relinquishment of repentance in the case of the righteous — than in the double reading in Luke and Matthew of the saving of the lost ? Luke says there is greater joy in heaven than over the ninety-nine righteous that need no repentance ; Matthew says that to the shepherd the one strayed sheep, which he seeks and finds, is of more moment than the ninety-nine that have not strayed.2 Therefore the persons who, in Luke, need no repent- ance, are they who, in IMattliew, have not strayed ; they are not exactly such as are absolutely sinless, not exactly such as are altogether superior to repentance, as Luke, or rather his source tinged with Jewish self-righteousness, uncautiously, nay erro- neously, asserts, but thfiy are the men who have not broken with ' Luke xiii. 1 sqq. ; Matt, xviii. 1 sqq. Comp. justification by works, xii. 37. - JIatt. xviii. 12 sqq. and Luke xv. 7. II 2 100 THE FIRST PREACHING. the good, they are the good on the way to higher goodness ; they do not stand in need of moral revohition, but — to use Kant's expression — of moral reparation (moralische Atishesserung) ; they are the non-sinners and sinners of Jesus, the repentance-free and the repentant. It is this higher class of mourners that he has in view in the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. The poor in spirit — i. e. those who are conscious of their poverty — and the quietly waiting, the mourning, to whom he promises the heavenly and the terrestrial kingdom and consolation, are, in the first place, according to Old Testament phraseology, the suffering, mourning, waiting pious of every kind, marked by outward or inward need, and hence the external consolation of a prosperous terrestrial kingdom is not withheld from them ; but chiefly, according to the expressions themselves and the whole spirit of the context as Avell as of the teaching of Jesus in general, they are they who in the depth of their souls are agitated concerning spiritual ques- tions, are internally dissatisfied with their inner state, are sor- rowful, but are yet hopefully anticipating divine redemption. And thus the three beatitudes of the poor are followed by the fourth beatitude of those that hunger and thirst after righteous- ness and are to be filled ; and then by the fifth and following beatitudes of the virtues which in the friends of righteousness already exist in their rudiments and yet are ever struggling after perfection.^ All this is the repentance which he preaches to the pious of Israel, and which he would fain find already among them : not absolute conversion, but a humble recognition of the imperfections of their higher life, an eager longing for perfection in virtue, and a waiting upon God, who creates perfection in those that sigh for it. Finally, though Jesus, moving among these two classes of men, seems to devote his efforts preferably to the grosser sinners — a point upon which the Gospel of the Hebrews already has its doubts — we are as little justified in finding in that a one-sided- ness of conception of his vocation, as we are in finding a one- ^ Matt. V. 3 — 11. More in detail when treating of the Sermon on the Mount. THE REPENTANCE THAT ADMITS TO HEAFEN. 101 sidedness of liis predilections.^ His natural sympathy, as so many of his cordial and encouraging utterances show, is with the righteous who thirst for God and for the bliss-giving waters of righteousness ; the need and want in the masses, and the mass of want in each one arousing the sympathy of infinite compassion, together with the swelling of a glad high hope, drove him to- wards the sinners.^ In such a sense then are the well-known sayings to be understood : The Son of INIan is come to seek and to save that wdiich is lost ; the Shepherd, heaven itself, rejoices more over one strayed but recovered sheep than over ninety-nine that have not strayed.^ Since Jesus requires repentance of both righteous and un- righteous, he necessarily holds it possible for even sinners to comply with the requirement. Sin is the work and institution neither of God, nor of any other superhuman cause ; but rather — so purely moral is the view of Jesus — it is the deed of the man who errs, who degrades himself, who grows in wickedness, who loses himself.* The original institution of God is in many things the antithesis to the transformations effected by men. The clear eye is the healthy original nature of man ; the evil eye, wliich fills the human body with darkness, is a horrible cor- ruption which criminates itself and the man who possesses it.^ It is true that God punishes man with moral incapacity, but only when man has exhausted his power of resistance and his folly ; it is true that Satan seeks and obtains entrance into the soul of man, but only when that soul has prepared itself for ^ Eligam raihi bonos, Hilgenfekl, 4, 16. ^ The righteous, comp. Matt. v. 6 sqq., xii. 49, xiii. 17, 45 ; need and compassion, ix. 12, 36 sq., x. 6, xv. 24; hopes, xxi. 32, xviii. 12 ; Luke xviii. 9 sqq. 3 Luke xix. 10 (Matt, xviii. 11); Matt, xviii. 12; Luke xv. 4 sqq. Perhaps many, in view of these passages, would prefer thus to interpret Matt. xi. 1 3 : I am come not so much to call the righteous as rather sinners (comp. above, p. 98). The strong negation, however, excludes this interpretation. * The independent action of man, Matt. xii. 33 sq. ; faults, xviii. 21 ; degradation, vi. 22 sq., xii. 45 ; growth, xiii. 30 ; losing of self, xvi. 26 and Luke ix. 25. * Matt. vi. 22 sq. Comp. the expressive, " From the beginning it was not so," xix. 8. 102 THE FIRST PREACHING. him ; it is true that the world is seductive, but the dislike to what is good with which it inspires man implies a previously existing tendency to good, on account of which it fails to gain the mastery in every one ; and finally it is true that the com- munity draws the individual into its vicious current, but the individual member of the community nevertheless voluntarily fills up the measure of his nation's iniquity.^ The man, every individual, is the creator of his own moral life and of his own fate. He has the choice of one of two masters ; he can train his life's tree well or ill ; and the definitive chooser resides in the depth and freedom of the heart.^ Out of the treasure of the heart the good man brings good, the evil man evil ; out of the heart proceed good and evil thoughts, words, and works ; a man is compassionate or harsh according to the condition of his heart ; and in the heart the good and the evil sowers sow their seed.^ By this voluntary activity of the heart, by this great Either — Or of the thoughts and determinations, man fixes his own destiny, acquires an internal definite relation to the good or to the evil, makes a hearth, a world, a treasure of good and evil, out of which whatever is therein shapes itself into words and works with moral, and apparently physical, necessity, just like the corrupt sap of a corrupt tree. " A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit." "How can ye who are evil speak what is good ? " " If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great (dominating and controlling every action of life) is that dark- ness ! " * And yet here also there still is responsibility, liberty ; to the experienced and advanced sinner are addressed such words ^ God, Matt. xiii. 11 &qq. ; Satan, xiii. 25, xii. 44 ; world, xviii. 7; community, xxiii. 31. sq. * Matt. vi. 24, xii. 3.3 ; comp. vii. 16 sqq. Meyer's interpretation .of xii. 33 is a distorted one : " Either admit that I am good and my fruit good." The context and vii. 16 sqq. speak plainly enough (comp. ku^ttovq ttoihv, vii. 17). Matt. xii. 34 sq., xv. 19 ; words, works, ib. and vii. 16 sqq. ; compassion, xviii. Za ; hardness of heart, xix. 8 ; the sower, xiii. 19 sqq. * Matt. xii. 33 sqq., vii. 16 sqq., vi. 23, comp. xv. 19. THE REPENTANCE THAT ADMITS TO HEAVEN. 103 as, "Why act thus ?" and "Woe !" and " Either — or 1" and " Ye would not !"^ In fact, in proportion as Jesus lovingly and con- descendingly — in contrast with the Pharisees — fixes his gaze upon the vilest sinner, in proportion as he looks into that sin- ner's heart rather than upon the hopeless desolation of the out- ward life, does he discover everywhere the remains of a better and a higher nature, the clear or the dawning consciousness of a distinction between soul and body, of the value of the soul, of obligation towards God, of the impurity of sin ; he discovers this consciousness in the "evil generation," among publicans and sinners ; even among the Gentiles he sees the affection of the family and of friendship, among harlots on the banks of the Jordan he finds repentance and faith, among all an unrest of the soul that is without God yet is seeking Him ; in the barrenest field he finds a soil ready to receive the nobler seed which the Good Sower scatters.^ He is sharp-sighted enough to recognize the smallest, the most languishing blossom of goodness ; and he is great enough to despair of no one in whom there yet remains one spark of good, or even the mere power to put forth one higher effort of will. It is true that he never omits to teach that no progress can be made without the assistance of God, without divine grace, calling, and election, — and herein he shows himself to be a true Israelite ; but it is not until later, when sadly reflecting upon the futility of his efforts, that he utters the appalling doctrine of the Old Testament, that God gives His grace to one and withholds it from another — nay, that He robs the non-possessor of any lingering remains of goodness, that He is a hardener of the hardened.^ In this comi^lete and emphatic recognition of man's power of ^ Why? Matt. ix. 4; woe ! xviii. 7, xxiii. 13 sqq., xxvi. 24 ; either — or, vi. 24, xii. 33 ; not willing, xxiii. 37 ; responsibility, to the very word, xii. 36 sq. '^ The remains, eomp. the fine narrative of the woman that was a sinner, Luke vii. 36 sqq. ; recognition of the distinction between soul and body, Matt. vi. 25, comp. X. 28 ; value, xvi. 25 sq. ; obligation, vi. 24 ; impurity, vi. 22, xv. 20 ; love, v. 46 sq. ; repentance, xxi. 32; unrest, xi. 28 sq., xiii. 44 sq. ; soil, xiii. 19 sqq. 3 Matt. xiii. 11, xvi. 17, xix. 11 sq., 26; hardening, xiii. 12 sqq. 104 TEE FIRST PREACHINa. independent action even in the case of the sinner, we discover first of all the preacher of repentance who appeals to the human will, and not at once to the help of God ; and in the next place, we discover the ethical, heroic character of the general teaching of Jesus, and his jealous maintenance of the dignity of man on principle as well as on the ground of his experience of human life. But in the practical teacher we still see at the same time the acute theorist who recognizes the limitations of the liberty which he defends, the ban of the law of sin which man lays upon himself and which can be taken off only by God, and even then only by means of a moral revolution. How often has this problem of evil been attacked by tlie most gifted minds and left unsolved ? In the Old Testament the prophets, in the ISTew Testament Paul and John, have toiled at this problem ; later, Augustine and Pelagius, together with their successors down to the time of the Eeformation, have endeavoured to serve the truth by their untenable one-sidednesses, which have sometimes done violence to the divine grace, sometimes yet more to human free- dom. Jesus has not solved every question : he was a preacher to the people rather than a dogmatist ; but the most important fundamental- outlines, the perpetuity and the limits of human freedom, the efficacious and yet not irresistible divine assistance — these eternal questions of moral speculation have been handled by him with elastic acuteness and ease, with a stricter adherence to both facts and principles than by any other, and therefore generally with truthful penetration. Hence, on the ground of this recognition and on the ground of these presentiments, be- lieving in God and in men, he preached to all — Ptepent ! Eepentance is regarded by Jesus as a work to be performed by man with divine assistance. Hence his appeal first to men, Eepent ; hence also his complaint. The Ninevites, the publicans and sinners repent, but ye have no repentance !^ God, however, performs His part ; He sends His messengers, prophets and more than prophets; He speaks through preaching and miracle, in ' Matt. iv. 17, xi. 20 sqq., xii. 41, xxi. 32. THE REPENTANCE THAT ADMITS TO HEAVEN. 105 order that men may turn and believe, may be willing or indeed not willing.^ The fourth Gospel is the first to speak of a new birth through water and spirit, altogether from above, altogether from God ; in that Gospel the whole world lies involved in an infinite antithesis of what is beneath and what is above, of flesh and spirit, earth and heaven, world and God.^ Jesus has scarcely once described with anything more than mere passing references the separate parts of repentance, the change of sentiment and the actual turning, or the new birtli itself, the virtue of repentance on the one hand, the virtue of believing obedience and of moral result on the other.^ It is not his purpose to describe, he aims at practical results ; and lie brings about those results by forcing the penitent disposition by threatening, by producing shame, and by exciting hope. He utters threats based on the unalter- ableness of the decisions of the day of judgment, and on the power of God, who can irremediably destroy body and soul in hell; he awakens shame by pointing to the horrible darkness and impurity wrought by sin in man, in that high, God-related nature, and to the mercy of God even towards those that despise Him ; he causes hope to dawn by placing before the eyes of men riches instead of poverty, satisfaction instead of the sense of want, the word of forgiveness instead of judgment.* But in ^ Matt. xi. 18 sqq., xii. 39 sqq., xxi. 32, 34 sqq., xxiii. 37. * Corap. John iii. 3 sqq.; above, pp. 27 sq. The more detailed proof belongs to the treatment of the Johannine system of doctrine. ^ M^.TCivoia, usually translated repentance, signifies as such chiefly the change of sentiment (comp. Rom. ii. 4 sq.), which bears immediate "fruit" in an altered coupe of life (comp. Matt. iii. 8). The other part of repentance i.s the conversion, crrpa- (prirai, Matt, xviii. 3, also dvayevvr^Oiji'ai ; it is this at least in the view of the Apostles. Justin, Ap. I. 61 : dv firj dvaytvvi]6iJTe, oh fii] ihiXOijre dq rfjv (iaa. r- ohp. Comp. Clem. Horn. 11, 26, which remind us at once [dvay. uc?ari ^wvri) of John iii. 3 sq. There can be scarcely any doubt of the more genuine character of the formula in Justin and even in the Homilies than of that in John, for in the former it is shorter and simpler, while in John it is deprived of its earlier meaning— which meaning nevertheless still shines through it (ver.se 4)— of being born again, not of a birth from above. In John, dvo)Qiv always means the latter (iii. 11 sq., 31, viii. 32). Contrition, fit-an't\taOai, Matt. xxi. 29, 32 ; TrtvOdv, v. 4 ; the obedience of faith, Tri(TTtQ with diicainavvt], xxi. 32 ; result, xvi. 24. " Matt. V. 25 sq., x. 28, xi. 22 sq., xii. 36, 41, &c. ; ib. vi. 26, xv. 20, r. 45 ; ib. V. 3 .sqq. ; Luke xv. 11 sqq. ; Matt. vi. 12, 14 sq., xviii. 12 sqq. 106 THE FIRST PREACHIKG. such utterances there is ever clearly to be seen what he regards as the essence of sin, and also what he regards as the essence of repentance. In antithesis to the sinner's self-seeking and world- liness, to his contempt of God shown in ingratitude, unbelief, indolence, contumacy, accompanied by arrogance, ill-will, and violence towards his fellow-creatures, the spiritual nucleus of repentance is self-renunciation and child -like seK- abasement before God and man, in particular the determination of the will to a child-like trust in God as well as to the rendering of a debtor's service to Him.^ This fundamental conception of re- pentance, of turning from self and from the world with its enjoy- ments, but also from its hireling life and its wretchedness, is beautifully described in Luke's parable of the Lost Son who goes fortli from the father self-sufficient, but who, " coming to him- self," resolves to return to his father.^ This is in fact the spirit of the repentance taught by Jesus, — not merely, as in John's teaching, the terror of the servant in anticipation of the punish- ment which will be inflicted by the approaching lord, but the contrition of the child in the presence of his father. The profounder, the more spiritual and soul-probing, this inner process in the sense of Jesus is, so much the less is it bound up with an external course of action, with external works and signs, in the manner insisted on by John. Here is no making use of the water of the Jordan or of the Lake of Galilee, in order by its coolness and its suffusion and its washing to intensify the con- sciousness of a solemn break with and cleansing from impurity ; here, no confession, no fasting, no giving away of unjustly acquired wealth, is demanded. It is evident that Jesus allows the mourners to fast, but he has nowhere requu^ed it ; and we ^ Self-seeking and worldliness, contempt of God, Matt. vi. 24, xvi. 26 ; Luke xvi. 15 ; ingratitude, Luke vi. 35, xvii. 18 ; unbelief, Matt. xvii. 17, comp. vi. 30 ; indolence, xx. 6; contumacy, xxi. 28 sqq., comp. vi. 24; arrogance towards men, xviii. 28 sqq., xx. 25, xxiv. 49, xv. 19, xxiii. 12 ; ill-will, xx. 10 sqq. On the other hand, humility, Tanuvovv lavrbv wc TraiSia, xviii. 4, xxiii. 12, comp. ^iKpoi, vrjirioi. ' ATrac)vi}aa