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THE MESSAGE
OF
THE SON OF MAN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
CLUE : A Guide through Greek to Hebrew
Scripture (Diatessarica — Part I).
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THE MESSAGE
OF
THE SON OF MAN
BY
Edwin A. Abbott
" Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ; and
let them have dominion..." Genesis i. 26.
"What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son
of man that thou visitest him?... Thou madest him to have
dominion...; thou hast put all things under his feet."
Psalms viii. 4 — 6.
"What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son
of man that thou visitest him ?. . . Thou didst put all things in
subjection under his feet — But now we see not yet all things
subjected to him." The Epistle to the Hebrews ii. 6 — 8.
"Till at the last arose the man
*****
*****
Move upward, working out the beast."
In Memoriam, cxvii.
"See that thou do naught as a beast. Else, thou hast lost
the man." Epictetus.
LONDON
Adam and Charles Black
1909
©ambtfoge :
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
TO
"THE SONS OF MAN"
IS DEDICATED
THIS ATTEMPT TO HELP THEM
TO UNDERSTAND THE MESSAGE
OF
"THE SON OF MAN"
PREFACE
If we had to select from the gospels two or three
phrases that seemed fittest to give a clue to the mean-
ing of Christ's deepest doctrine, " the Son of Man "
would seem to claim a place in the selection.
It is applied to Christ in all the four gospels, and
that frequently, and near the end, as well as near the
beginning, of His career. It never proceeds from a
friend, never from an enemy, never from an evangelist
or neutral relator, but practically always from our Lord
Himself. This self-appellation is connected, sometimes
with a claim to authority ; sometimes with a recognition
that the Claimant has been rejected ; sometimes with
predictions that He is destined to suffer and to die and
to be raised up ; sometimes with descriptions of a
future Coming in glory. If we could understand why
He chose this unvarying title to describe Himself amid
such various circumstances, we might gain more insight
into His conception of the nature of His mission.
Some have replied, in effect, " He chose it because
He had in view the words of Daniel, 'Behold, one like
the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven,' and
vii
PREFACE
' the Son of man ' was regarded by the Jews as a
Messianic title, and as equivalent to ' Christ, the Son
of God.'" But such a reply merely illustrates the need
of referring, or at all events approximating, to original
authorities. The quotation given above from Daniel
is given from the Authorised Version. The Revised
Version gives "one like unto a son of man," without
the definite article, and without a capital letter to
" son." This is in accordance with the original. The
meaning is simply "one like a human being." No
early Jewish literature recognises "the Son of man"
as a Messianic title. There are many such titles, but
this is not one of them.
Others point to the Book of Enoch where the term
is used for the first time as follows, "And there I saw
One who had a head of days... and with Him was
another being whose countenance had the appearance
of a man and his face was full of graciousness, like one
of the holy angels. And I asked the angel who went
with me... concerning that son of man, who he was...."
Printing " Son of Man " with capital letters, they may
argue that here we find "that Son of Man" (which
they regard as " the Son of Man ") used absolutely as
a recognised Messianic title.
But this passage, as has been shewn by the author
in a previous work 1 , rather disproves, than proves, that
1 For the reference, and for references to other passages quoted in
the text, see the notes at the end of the volume.
PREFACE
" the Son of Man " was a recognised Messianic title.
The character, so to speak, seems to the writer of
Enoch to require introduction. He is first introduced
as "a man" in a phrase borrowed from Ezekiel ("the
appearance of a man "). Not till then is he referred to
as "that son of man," where "son of man" seems
borrowed from Daniel, and it appears better to
print "that son of man" (not "that Son of Man")
meaning "that human being whom I mentioned just
now, and who, though human, is with God."
The present treatise invites the general reader to
take a brief and comprehensive view of the results of
a long and detailed investigation into the meaning of
Christ's self-appellation, in which the investigator starts
from the hypothesis that Jesus was more likely to be
influenced by the Jewish scriptures than by the Jewish
apocrypha. The latter should certainly be called in to
our aid, but, in the author's judgment, not until the
former have been fully utilised.
We shall begin by asking, "Was the title 'son of
man' given in the Old Testament to any person or
persons ? If to one, what do we know about him ?
If to more than one, what characteristics had they in
common ? "
The answer is, that Ezekiel was called "son of
man " by a voice from heaven nearly a hundred times,
and Daniel once. And these two prophets had this in
common, that in their prophetic visions the former saw
ix
PREFACE
" the appearance of a man," and the latter " one like a
son of man," above, or near, the Throne in heaven.
The observant reader will not fail to note the
similarity between the expressions of Ezekiel and
Daniel and those brought together by the imitative
writer of the passage above quoted from the apocryphal
Book of Enoch — " the appearance of a man," and "that
son of man."
Further, the two prophets had also this in common,
that each of them saw, in a vision, what the Hebrew
Bible calls four "living things." This our English
Versions translate, in Ezekiel, four " living creatures."
But in Daniel they translate it four "beasts." In
Ezekiel, the "appearance of a man" is regarded as
controlling the four living creatures like a charioteer ;
in Daniel, the four beasts are four conflicting empires
whose dominion is taken away and given to the figure
that is " like a son of man." But in both prophecies
Man appears to be regarded as dominating the Beast.
Passing from Ezekiel and Daniel we have next to
ask, " Does the Bible elsewhere represent ' man ' or
' the son of man ' as exercising dominion over non-
human nature ? And, in particular, does this repre-
sentation occur in any portion of the scriptures that is
alleged in any of our gospels to have been quoted by
our Lord ? " The answer to both these questions is,
Yes. In the first place, this thought occurs in Genesis,
" Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ;
PREFACE
and let them have dominion..." and then follows an
enumeration of their non-human subjects.
In the next place, it occurs in the eighth Psalm,
"What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son
of man that thou visitest him ? For thou hast made
him but little lower than God, and crownest him with
glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion
over the works of thy hands, thou hast put all things
under his feet."
This Psalm contains words quoted by our Lord,
" Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou
established strength," and there are perhaps other
allusions to it in the words of Christ. The Epistle to
the Hebrews and the First Epistle to the Corinthians
apply it to Christ, the former expressly quoting the
passage mentioning "the son of man."
Another passage likely to have been much in our
Lord's mind occurs at the beginning of Isaiah's
description of the " despised and rejected of men," of
whom the prophet says that his "form" was "marred,"
and he adds, " more than the sons of man!' This
adds a new thought, but one by no means incompatible
with a spiritual view of the Psalm above quoted,
namely, that although " the son of man " is to be
exalted above the beasts, he is to be exalted through
suffering.
The words of Isaiah, taken with those of the
Psalmist, and illustrated by the Pauline doctrine of the
first Adam, who is earthy, and the second Adam, who
xi
PREFACE
is spiritual, may remind us of Tennyson's description
of the world as being
"The seeming prey of cyclic storms
Till at the last arose the man ;
* * * * *
The herald of a higher race
And of himself in higher place.''
The context warns us that man must expect to be
"crown'd with attributes of woe, like glories," and it
concludes thus :
" Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die."
This has been anticipated by Epictetus, " See that
thou do naught as a beast. Else, thou hast lost the
man." It will be one of the objects of this treatise
to shew that Epictetus also has been anticipated by
Hebrew theology.
As regards Ezekiel (and this also applies to
Daniel) the best explanation of the appellation "son of
man " given to him from heaven appears to be that it
is intended to encourage him in his mission. He is
called "son of man" just after he has seen the heavens
opened and a vision of " the appearance of a man "
controlling the Universe. It is as though the Voice said,
" I manifest myself to thee as Man, and thou art in my
likeness, ' son of man.' "
This treatise will attempt to shew that a similar
sense of the unity between God and Man underlies
Christ's self-appellation.
Believing, in accordance with Hebrew theology,
xii
PREFACE
that Man, in the invisible plan and purpose of the
Most High, was designed in the image of God, Jesus
was always looking back to that "image," that divine
archetype, the Humanity of God.
Believing also, in accordance with the same
theology, that Man, in the visible, initial, and rudi-
mentary outcome of that creative plan, had fallen away
from the image of the Creator and was passing through
ages of development and purification under His shaping
and refining hand in order that he might be conformed
to the divine likeness, Jesus was always looking forward
to that future conformation, that second Adam, who
would redeem the failure of the first, and who would
vindicate the Divinity of Man.
This Humanity of God and this Divinity of Man
Christians believe that Christ combined within Himself.
If so, it was open to Him to call Himself either Son
of God, or Son of Man. Why choose the latter ?
The answer may be found by asking another
question. After being called by a Voice from heaven
Son of God, and after being tempted by Satan to
turn stones into bread, why did He reply with a
quotation, not about the characteristics of the Son of
God but about the characteristics of Man, "Man shall
not live by bread alone " ?
Again, when the new convert, Nathanael, rap-
turously hailed his Master, not only as "King of
Israel " but also as " Son of God," why did Jesus
tacitly put aside the high title of " Son of God " and
xiii
PREFACE
turn the disciple's attention to what we should call the
lower title, " Ye shall see the heaven opened and the
angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of
Man " ?
Perhaps some one may reply, " This is from the
fourth gospel, and that gospel does not profess to give
Christ's exact words. Probably Jesus never said this."
Assume that He did not. Still there remains a question
of profound interest for thosewho believe that John often
expresses what Jesus meant, where Mark, Matthew,
and Luke merely approximate to the expression of
what Jesus said: — What did John suppose Jesus to
have meant when he put into His mouth such a reply
to Nathanael ? Why did John represent Him as
apparently putting the title Son of Man above the
title Son of God ?
Reasons will be given for concluding that the
unknown evangelist's motive was somewhat as fol-
lows ; it was not that he underrated the humanity of
God, but — being imbued with the spirit of John the
beloved disciple whose gospel he set forth — he felt
that Jesus, in His doctrine, thought it needful to lay a
greater stress on the divinity of Man. All teachers
proceed from the known to the unknown. Jesus was
the great Teacher, and He taught, what the Johannine
Epistle teaches in effect, "If ye do not love the son of
man whom ye have seen, how can ye love God whom
ye have not seen ? "
A formal study of the Jewish Law and of Jewish
xiv
PREFACE
tradition appears to have led the leaders of religious
thought in Palestine, during the days of John the
Baptist and Jesus, to fall away from the high standard
of Hillel into a comparatively non-human or even
inhuman sphere where they talked too much about
God and thought too little about Man.
In His reply to Nathanael Jesus seems to have
implied this among other things : " Do not be so ready
to talk about God, or to call a prophet the Son of God.
The heavens shall be opened for you as they were
opened for Ezekiel — alone among the prophets of Israel.
Then you shall see angels of God ascending and
descending on the Son of Man. And the Son of Man
then revealed to you on earth will be greater than
the Son of God in heaven, yes, and greater than God
in heaven, as you at present conceive of God."
This, though not so clearly expressed by the three
earliest gospels, appears to be the lesson conveyed by
Christ's self-appellation in all of them. We Christians
must take our stand on the solid rock of Christ's
Person in our hearts. He, Son of Man, is also Son of
God. We must not separate the two in thought.
But in practice we must begin with lovingkindness to
Man first and the love of God second. The latter is
the higher. But we must begin from the lower.
Readers familiar with other treatises on " The Son
of Man " may be surprised at finding, in this rather
lengthy preface, no mention of the Aramaic phrase by
PREFACE
which Jesus may have expressed it, and of its various
shades of meaning in Aramaic as distinct from
Hebrew.
This subject will be touched on in the following
pages, but it is omitted here because the evidence is
scanty, inconsistent, and inconclusive ; and inferences
about it, whatever they may be, do not materially
affect the argument above stated, which is based
broadly on Hebrew and Jewish thought and is not
dependent on minute verbal distinctions or conjectures.
At the same time it may be well to mention one
fact in connection with this part of the subject, which
bears on Ezekiel's above-mentioned appellation "son
of man," and which reveals an agreement between
Hebrew and Aramaic.
The Hebrew is ben adam, "son of Adam" or "son
of man," for adam means either " man " or "Adam."
Now it is well known that after the Captivity,
when Aramaic speech supplanted Hebrew speech
among the Jews, the Hebrew Bible became unintelli-
gible to them, somewhat as the Latin Vulgate has
become unintelligible to illiterate Italians. Conse-
quently, when the scripture was read in synagogues, it
became the custom first to read out the written
Hebrew text in Hebrew and then to interpret it orally
in Aramaic.
Let us imagine Jesus as a child sitting in the
synagogue and hearing the reading of Ezekiel ; how
he was sent forth to prophesy (some say when he was
xvi
PREFACE
thirty years old) ; how " the heavens were opened " ;
how he saw the motion of " the Spirit " ; how " Spirit "
{sic) came to him ; how he was called " son of man "
and sent to preach to his countrymen ; and how he was
carried in the air to Jerusalem, and afterwards carried
to the top of a mountain — with several other experiences
not unlike those that befell Jesus Himself later in life.
Our business is, not with all these similarities of
experience — which will be discussed later on — but with
the appellation of Ezekiel that the child Jesus would
hear in Aramaic, corresponding to the Hebrew ben
adam.
In Aramaic, "man," according to high authorities,
is never represented by adam. The Hebrew adam
(they say) when found in Aramaic, always means the
patriarch Adam. The interpreter, therefore, after
rendering ben by the Aramaic bar ("son of," familiar
to us in Simon Bar Jonah, or Simon son of John)
ought to have rendered adam by the Aramaic word
commonly corresponding to the Hebrew "man (adam)."
But such evidence as we have goes to shew that
the child Jesus would not have heard this. We have,
it is true, no written Aramaic interpretation of scripture
so early as the first century ; but we have one of early
date called the Targum (i.e. Interpretation) of Jonathan.
This calls Ezekiel " Bar Adam," that is, " son of
Adam."
This does not contradict, but it amplifies, the
possibilities of the meaning above suggested for
a. m. xvii 2
PREFACE
Christ's self-appellation. For in the doctrine of such
a Teacher the personification of the human race in
Adam, found also in the Pauline Epistles, would not
be likely to be dropped if suggested by the name He
had chosen.
If Jesus called Himself "son of Adam," and if this
has been rendered in Greek " son of man,'' that would
only be in analogy with the Greek rendering of
Ezekiel's appellation. There are several passages in
the Scriptures where the Hebrew appears to mean
'* Adam " but the Greek has " men."
This is easily made clear. When adam means the
patriarch in Hebrew, it cannot have the article. When
it means "the [creature called] man," or "the [race of]
man," it can have the article ; and the meaning then is
shewn by the article to be the whole race of man, that
is, mankind, or men.
The Hebrew Psalms have two ways of expressing
mankind. Sometimes they speak of " the sons of the
adam" that is, of " mankind." But much more often
they speak of "the sons of adam" apparently meaning
"the sons, or descendants, of Adam."
The former may be loosely said to "come to the
same thing" as the latter. But the two may not
convey the same thought. However, the Greek makes
no distinction between the two. Nor do our English
Versions, which have " the children of men " (or " the
sons of men ") for both Hebrew phrases.
If Jesus called Himself " son of Adam," we should
xviii
PREFACE
be justified in treating it as probably intended to be
distinguished from " son of David," the popular name
for the Messiah. Such a title would also explain the
Pauline thought of Adam the Last coming to save the
descendants of Adam the First — a thought assuredly
not to be found in the Talmud. But our present
purpose is to deal with thoughts rather than with
words, and to shew that the gospel instances of Christ's
self-appellation harmonize with the uses of the appella-
tion in the Old Testament so as to justify the conclu-
sion that He meant by it Man in his right relation to
God, or the divinity of Man inseparable from the
Humanity of God.
Men were to be born again from above, and to be
brought, like babes and sucklings, into the Family of
the Nursing Father, into the sphere of this divine
Humanity. But, though they were to be born from
above, from heaven, they were also to be born below,
on earth, and this, through Him who might be called
the Chief of the " babes and sucklings," the Represen-
tative of the " little ones."
Thus we shall find a close connection between our
Lord's self-appellation and His mission. It was not
as a new teacher, nor as a new prophet, nor as the
greatest of the sons of Israel, nor as the son of David,
nor as the Son of God, that Jesus desired to be known
when He first came forth from the Jordan to preach
good tidings to the world. It was, if we may so say,
as a new human being, the new Man, filled through and
xix 2 2
PREFACE
through with a new human spirit, which He felt Him-
self destined ultimately to infuse into the hearts of all
the sons of man that were willing to receive it.
Scriptural references, and a few brief notes, will be
found at the end of the volume. Part I, called A
Summary of the Evidence, summarises the evidence
that will be given much more fully in a larger and
more abstruse work, now in the press, entitled The
Son of Man. Part II, called A Harmony of the Facts,
is identical with the last chapter of that treatise. The
larger work will contain technical footnotes which
would have been unsuitable for the general reader.
These have been cancelled, or reduced to a minimum
and placed at the end of the present volume.
One reason for publishing the smaller work before
the larger is the hope that criticisms of the former may
help the author to correct, in the latter, any inaccuracies
or obscurities that may be detected in the exposition
of his hypothesis, and to meet any unforeseen objections
that may be brought against the hypothesis as a whole.
EDWIN A. ABBOTT.
Welhide, Well Walk,
Homestead.
12 May, 1909.
CONTENTS
PART I
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
CHAPTER
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
ezekiel, why called "son of man"
" The son of man " in the Eighth Psalm .
"One like unto a son of man" in Daniel
"The Son of man" not a Messianic title
before Christian times .
"Son of man" and "Son of God"
"More than the sons of man" in Isaiah
"The Son of man" having "authority"
"The Son of man" to be despised and to
"suffer"
"The Son of man" to be "raised up"
"On the third day".
"The Son of man coming" with "angels,"
"clouds," and "power" .
"The Son of man" in "glory"
page
3
6
ii
15
24
3i
35
39
47
56
61
68
CONTENTS
PART II
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Jesus and the Temple 73
II The Builder . 81
III Building on the Rock 86
IV Building with authority .... 91
V The Servant, Ransom, and Sacrifice . . 98
VI The Conqueror 103
VII The Judge and the Paraclete ... 108
VIII The Exorcist as described by Mark . . 116
IX The Person and the Spirit as described
by John 119
X Postscript. On the limits of this investi-
gation 125
APPENDIX
Passages in the gospels illustrating the meaning
of "the son of man" 133
NOTES 159
XXll
PART I
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
CHAPTER I
EZEKIEL, WHY CALLED "SON OF MAN"
" SON of man " is not infrequently used generically or
indefinitely in the Old Testament, as in the words " What is
man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that
thou visitest him ? " But individually and definitely, no one
is called " son of man " in the Old Testament except Ezekiel,
nearly a hundred times, and Daniel, once.
There are some remarkable parallelisms between Ezekiel
and Jesus. The heavens are said to have been " opened " for
both. The Spirit came to both. Ezekiel was carried to
Jerusalem and back ; and was afterwards set down on a
mountain. Jesus, too, in the Temptation, was carried to
Jerusalem and afterwards to the top of a mountain. Ezekiel
predicts the destruction of the temple then standing and the
construction of a new one. So does Jesus.
In all these respects Ezekiel stands alone among the
Hebrew prophets. He also stands alone, not of course in the
mention of God's Spirit, but in the emphasis that he lays on
the One Spirit that animates every part of the Chariot of the
Universe, and on the need of a " new heart " and " new
spirit " (expressions peculiar to him) which must be imparted
to Israel.
Other resemblances might be mentioned less important,
or less certain, as, for example, the fact — a fact at least in
Origen's opinion, for which there is much to be said — that
3
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
Ezekiel, like Jesus, began to prophesy in the official " thirtieth
year," and the undisputed fact that Ezekiel is bidden to " bear
the iniquity" of Judah. But the parallelisms previously
mentioned suffice to make it probable that in assuming the
self-appellation of "son of man," Jesus had in view some-
thing of a spiritual nature common to Him and to Ezekiel
alone among the prophets.
Two explanations were given in ancient times of the
reason why Ezekiel was called " son of adam " — for that is
the exact phrase, ben adam. One was, that it was intended to
teach the prophet modesty, as much as to say, "Be not puffed
up by thy visions, for thou art but a son of adam, who is
himself the son of adamah, that is, earth."
Another was, that it was intended to encourage the
prophet to stand up for Humanity against the non-human
powers, by saying to him, in effect, when he fell prostrate on
the ground, " Though thou art a son of man {adam, that is,
Adam, earthy man) yet thou art also made in the image, and
gifted with the spirit, of One like a man {adam) whom thou
hast seen above. He is not of earth, but rides upon the
throne in the heaven of heavens controlling the Beasts, the
Living Creatures, and impressing even upon them the
influence of ' the likeness of a man {adam).' He is guiding
the universe to His fore-ordained fulfilment. His son art
thou. He is with thee. Therefore be strong, son of adam,
stand upon thy feet."
This second explanation accords best with the prophetic
precedents of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Both of these need, and
receive, encouragement, not rebuke or discouragement, before
they set out on their several missions. So, too, when Daniel
is affrighted and falls on his face, he is encouraged with the
words, " Understand, O son of adam."
It is true that " the son of adam " is sometimes used in
Biblical passages that describe man's weakness and imperfec-
tion when he departs from God or differs from God. Indeed
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
it is used by Balaam and by the profane friends of Job in
a positively bad sense. But this does not represent the
fundamental Hebrew theology, in which "adam" and "the
son of adam " are regarded as God's creatures created in His
image and for His glory, and destined to be conformed to His
likeness.
Was it from Ezekiel that Paul borrowed his conception of
the Messiah as "the Last Adam" and "the Second Man,"
which, though but once definitely mentioned, appears else-
where as " the One Man " and " the New Man," sometimes as
a Person, sometimes as a Body, or Church, sometimes as a
spiritual atmosphere, or Spirit? Nothing like this can be
found in Jewish literature till the Middle Ages. Whence,
then, did Paul derive it, if not from Ezekiel ?
This cannot be fully discussed here. But the most
reasonable conclusion seems to be that he derived it, not
from Ezekiel directly, but from Ezekiel indirectly, coming to
him through Christian tradition (or through express revela-
tion as in the case of the Eucharist) about the meaning of
Christ's self-appellation " Son of Man," probably in the form
"Son of Adam," of which he, the Apostle of the Gentiles, that
is to say, of the sons of Adam, would be quick to realise the
significance 1 .
1 For references to passages quoted in the text, see the Notes at the
end of the volume.
The evidence here summarised will be given more fully and with foot-
notes of a technical character, in a treatise now in the press, entitled
The Son of Man, as explained on p. xx of Preface.
CHAPTER II
"THE SON OF MAN" IN THE EIGHTH PSALM
The book of Genesis describes Adam and Eve as
succumbing to the temptation of the serpent although they
had been created to have " dominion " over every living thing
that moves on the earth. But there is added a mysterious
prediction that their offspring shall in some way bring
retribution on the serpent. That implied a future and more
complete " dominion " of the sons of Adam.
Isaiah speaks of "a little child" as leading the wild beasts.
That, if not taken as mere hyperbole, might mean that the
Child, Israel, would convert the Gentiles to the religion of
Jehovah, or else that the Child, that is, Humanity, would ulti-
mately obtain the dominion over the Beast in human nature.
The eighth Psalm seems to blend literal with allegorical
poetry in its description of this dominion. The Psalmist
appears to have been meditating on God's loving-kindness
towards His last-created offspring, Man, externally and
superficially weak, and more helpless than the beasts, yet so
fashioned — by God's mysterious shaping of the inward parts,
the heart and the brain — that he has attained dominion over
the strongest of the brute creation. Full of this thought,
he exclaims, "Jehovah, our Lord, how excellent is thy
name in all the earth, who hast set thy glory above the
heavens ! Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast
thou established strength, that thou mightest still the enemy
and the avenger."
6
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
It will be remembered that Jesus, in Matthew's account
of Christ's entry into Jerusalem, quotes some of these last
words. Also, according to Luke as well as Matthew, He
thanks God for revealing the truths of the gospel to " babes."
And it is needless to dwell on the prominence that He gave
to " little ones," and to the need of becoming as " little
children" in order to enter the Kingdom of God.
These facts should induce us to attach additional im-
portance to the Psalmist's next words from the Christian
point of view, " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy
fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ;
what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of
adam {ben adani) that thou visitest him ? "
We are familiar with such questionings in modern times.
They are based on the tendency, innate in our lower nature,
to think that God must attach to material vastness or force
the same importance that we attach to it. We need to be
constantly reminded of Elijah's lesson, going out of the cave
of our individual darkness into the presence of the Lord of
the Universe, and learning over again that the Lord is " not
in the earthquake " and " not in the fire," but that He speaks
through a " still small voice."
Jewish comments on this Psalm represent jealous angels
as uttering this exclamation " What is man ? " and as com-
plaining that man has been unfairly favoured and placed
above them. The Psalm recognises that human " strength,"
when developed by God out of the human weakness of babes
and sucklings, is a part of the glory of the Most High.
So Paul, under sore trial, declares that he will " glory in
his weaknesses," because he has heard the voice of God saying
to him " The power [i.e. the Power of God] is accomplished
in weakness." Also the Epistle to the Hebrews says of the
heroes of Israel, " Out of weakness they were made powerful."
The same Epistle takes the " dominion " of " the son of man,"
mentioned in this Psalm, as destined to be fulfilled in
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
Christ, although some of the expressions are manifestly
terrestrial : " Thou hast made him but little lower than God
(Elohim) and crownest him with glory and honour. Thou
madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen,
yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the
fish of the sea, whatsoever passeth through the paths of the
seas."
The nature of this dominion over "the beasts of the
field " (as distinct from " sheep and oxen ") is not here
clearly defined. But another Psalm says, " He shall give his
angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways... thou
shalt tread upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and the
serpent shalt thou trample under feet'.' Apparently God makes
this promise to the man, whoever he is, who is in close
communion with God, and who, as the first verse of the
Psalm says, " dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High "
and " shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."
This kind of sovereignty of "the son of man" over " beasts"
appears to be in Christ's thought in several passages of the
gospels. Luke has it — as we shall see, if only we recognise
the identity between God-given " dominion " and " authority "
— in the promise made by Jesus to the Seventy Apostles or
Missionaries, " Behold I have given you authority to tread
upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy"
At the same time He adds a warning : " Howbeit in this
rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you ; but rejoice
that your names are written in heaven."
The " serpents and scorpions " may be the slanders of
the adversaries of the faith, as when God says to Ezekiel,
" Be not afraid though briers and thorns be with thee and
thou dost dwell among scorpions!' But they may be also the
various slanders and suggestions of the Devil (i.e. Slanderer)
or Satan (i.e. Enemy or Adversary) in the heart of man,
urging him to revolt from the Man to the Beast.
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
The Greek for Beast (in the sense of "wild-beast") is often
applied to a " serpent," and might be used for a devil, demon,
or unclean spirit. Matthew and Luke, describing the tempta-
tion of Jesus by Satan, omit Mark's '' He was with the wild-
beasts." Perhaps they took it as a repetition of " He was
with ' the power of the enemy,' " i.e. " with Satan."
In Luke, immediately after giving to His last-appointed
Seventy Apostles '• authority to tread on serpents and
scorpions and over all the power of the enemy," Jesus turns
to thank God for revealing the Gospel unto " babes," though
it is hidden from the wise and understanding. And the
ecstatic tone in which the Psalm of the Babes and Sucklings
acknowledges God's " glory " — " O Jehovah, our Lord, how
excellent is thy name in all the earth, who hast set thy glory
above the heavens " — is not unlike the tone of Luke's version
of Christ's words at this crisis : " In that same hour Jesus
rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth "
In effect, Jesus here praises the excellent Name of the
Father for exalting the " babes '' whose names are " written in
heaven," and to whom He has given power over serpents and
scorpions. And we can hardly fail to notice other parallel-
isms between the Psalm and the Gospel — not Luke's gospel
alone here but the Synoptic Gospel as a whole — parallelisms
not only in respect of thought, but also in respect of what
may be called technical terms of Christ's theology.
The Psalm connects God's "excellent name" and the
"glory above the heavens," with "babes and sucklings,"
because of " adversaries " and because of God's purpose to
"still the enemy and the avenger."
First, as regards " babes," we find the Synoptic Gospel
everywhere assuming that the " excellent name " of God in
heaven is that of the Father. This implies that the "excellent
name '' for men on earth is that of children. And on almost
the only occasion on which the three Synoptists agree in
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
introducing Jesus as saying " my name," they describe Him
as connecting Himself with "a little child." Those who
receive such a little child in His (the Son's) name are said to
receive also the Father.
As regards " the enemy and the avenger," we find Jesus,
in Luke — just before He declares that He has given His
disciples authority to tread on " serpents and scorpions," and
over " all the power of the enemy " — exclaiming " I beheld
Satan (i.e. the adversary) fallen as lightning from heaven."
Elsewhere Jesus calls His casting-out of unclean spirits, in
effect, a casting-out of Satan.
These facts indicate that Christ's doctrine of " the
Kingdom of Heaven '' or " Kingdom of God " fundamentally
agreed with the Psalmist's doctrine of the " dominion " of the
" son of man " — if the latter was taken in a spiritual sense.
For such a " dominion " implied a complete heartfelt recogni-
tion, in Man, of the excellent Name, that is, the Divine
Essence or Reality, the Fatherhood of God. This would
make the human will one with the divine will, and the Son of
Man a veritable Son of God, exalted "above the heavens,"
and, by this exaltation, exalting the glory of the Father.
10
CHAPTER III
"ONE LIKE UNTO A SON OF MAN" IN DANIEL
DANIEL, after beholding a vision of four winds and four
beasts conflicting for supremacy, says, "I beheld till thrones
were placed, and one that was ancient of days did sit." Then
he describes how " the judgment was set," in which the
dominion of the beasts was taken away. Then he adds, " I
saw in the night visions, and, behold, there came with the
clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even
to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before
him. And there was given him dominion...." A subsequent
interpretation explains the four beasts as " four kings," whose
kingdom is to be taken away and given " to the people of the
saints of the Most High!' It is important to note that, instead
of " like unto a son of man " the Authorised Version has
' like the Son of man '' (printing " son " with a capital letter)
and that this is erroneous.
In noting this error, and in comparing this vision of "one
like unto a son of man " with that in which Ezekiel saw
" a likeness as the appearance of a man," we must not entirely
pass over the fact that this portion of Daniel is written in
Aramaic. In Aramaic the word for " man " is different from
the Hebrew "adam," and the Hebrew "man" often corre-
A. M. II •?
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
sponds to the Aramaic " son of man." On this point the
reader will find a note at the end of the volume. All that
can be said here is that the Aramaic form for "man" does not
justify the rendering of our Authorised Version " the Son of
man." The meaning, according to rule, should be that given
in our Revised Version, " a son of man" and this would
naturally correspond to '' a man" in Ezekiel.
But this verbal correspondence must not conceal the very
great difference of thought between the two visions. Ezekiel
sees one Person, Daniel sees two. Ezekiel sees a " throne,"
Daniel sees " thrones." This plurality of " thrones " caused
sharp controversies between Jewish Rabbis in the second
century. R. Akiba thought that an additional throne was
provided for David, but was sharply rebuked by his
contemporaries.
The unknown writer of Daniel appears to have regarded
the Ancient of Days as representing God in heaven, and the
figure " like unto a son of man " as the spiritual Israel, the
representative of elect humanity, who is to be brought near
the throne, accompanied by all the holy ones of God, the
saints, clothed in the clouds that reflect the glory of the Sun
of Righteousness. Reasons for this view will be given else-
where.
In our gospels— the three, but not the fourth, which
never mentions " clouds " — great confusion has arisen from
the obscurity of the phrase " with the clouds of heaven,"
which is inaccurately rendered by the Septuagint and which
appears in various forms in our gospels. Also the Revelation
of John, describing " one like unto a son of man " (where the
margin of the Revised Version follows the Authorised in
giving " the Son of man ") adds, in his description, character-
istics that Daniel assigns to the Ancient of Days. But
amidst these and other confusions it appears that Jesus
accepted this vision of Daniel's as describing the fulfilment of
the Psalmist's prediction, namely, that " the son of man "
12
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
would receive " dominion " from God. He also accepted
Daniel's view of some kind of corporate judgment passed by-
collective elect humanity made one in a Person.
This is distinct from Ezekiel's vision and supplementary
to it. Ezekiel sees One Spirit like that of Humanity
controlling the ordered universe. Daniel sees a world
temporarily possessed by transitory powers of disorder and
violence. These he sees succeeded by a reign of righteous-
ness when the Ancient of Days intervenes to judge, and
oppressed Humanity is at last promoted to its place near
the throne of judgment.
The two visions are complementary. Everything that
grows appears to the eyes of mortals, in some stages of
its growth, to be misshapen and imperfect, till it reaches what
we mortals are pleased to call its maturity or fulfilment, that
is to say, the stage we like best. And to us, as Bacon says,
things seem to move calmly in their places but violently to
their places.
Both Daniel and Ezekiel were captive exiles, and both
might naturally have been expected to see the world out of
joint and things " moving violently to their places." This, in
effect, was what Daniel did see in his four separate visions of
the four conflicting beasts. But Ezekiel, soaring in spirit
to the heaven of heavens, saw the four in one Chariot, con-
trolled by One Charioteer.
Jesus combined both these conceptions. The former, that
of Daniel, received prominence in the Synoptic gospels ; the
latter, that of Ezekiel, in the Johannine. Jesus sometimes
quotes Daniel very definitely and distinctly, as in phrases
about "the abomination of desolation," and about the
"coming," in connection with "clouds." Ezekiel He does not
quote quite so clearly. Yet there is good reason for sup-
posing that His deepest thoughts (like those of the author of
Revelation) went out to the latter much more than to the
former ; that He looked forward, as Ezekiel looked forward,
13 3—2
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
to the time when there should be " one flock " and " one
shepherd " ; and that He saw, and even more clearly than
Ezekiel, the Chariot of the Universe moving forward in its
unchecked and undeviating course.
14
CHAPTER IV
"THE SON OF MAN" NOT A MESSIANIC TITLE
BEFORE CHRISTIAN TIMES
Rabbi Akiba explained the plural "thrones" in Daniel
by saying " One for Him [that is, for God], the other for
David," where it is worth noting that Akiba does not call
the Messiah " Son of David " but " David." This agrees with
Ezekiel and Hosea. Ezekiel twice speaks of " David " as
destined to be the " one shepherd " of united Israel. Hosea
says that in the latter days " The sons of Israel shall return
and seek the Lord their God and David their king." Pre-
sumably there would be, for Jews, little difference between
" David " (i.e. the representative of David) and " the Son of
David " (i.e. the second David) as Messianic titles.
However, for expressing this opinion, Akiba (as has been
remarked above) was severely rebuked by his contemporaries.
But the expression indicates two facts, not matters of
opinion : — first, that Daniel's Vision was not regarded by
Jews in the second century as meaning a definite person
known (in the phrase of our Authorised Version) as " the
Son of man"; secondly, that it was then taken to mean simply
one like a human being, who might be David, or Hezekiah, or
Elijah, or a new Prophet, or the Messiah in an altogether
new personality.
How is it, then, that we find in Enoch and the Second
Esdras mention made of " the son of man," and " that son of
IS
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
man," in such a way as to convey the impression that a
definite personality is intended, as we might speak of the
Advocate, or the Comforter? The quotation from Enoch
given in the Preface (p. viii) supplies the best answer to this
question : — " It is because the writers of these books, following
Daniel in his conception of one like a son of man who was to
receive dominion, after introducing the Deliverer indefinitely
as being like a human being, subsequently refer to him repeatedly
in a brief form as ' the, or that, son of man', meaning ' the
person like a human being whom I mentioned above'. " The
necessity of such a condensation is almost obvious.
But perhaps, as my readers may not have easy access to
Enoch, it will be well to shew them how the writer gradually
glides into the use of " that " or " the," in connection with the
title.
It is first stated that Enoch sees, along with God, one
who has "the appearance of a man." This is Ezekiel's
phrase. Amazed at seeing a human appearance, a mere man,
in such a position, Enoch asks the angel accompanying him
who this human being is, and, to express " human being," he
uses " son of man," part of the phrase used by Daniel : — " I
asked the angel... concerning that son of man, who he was,
and whence he was, and why he went with the Head of Days
[i.e. with God]."
The angel in his reply defines the " human being " or " son
of man'' by saying, in effect, that he is the man preeminent in
righteousness and in the favour and election of God : " This
is the son of man who hath righteousness, with whom dwelleth
righteousness, and who... etc." Then the angel speaks of him
as " this son of man whom thou hast seen " and afterwards
describes in detail what " he " will do, but the title is not
repeated till some way on, when Enoch speaks of him as
" that son of man!'
It appears then that Enoch — and a similar argument
applies to the Second Esdras — affords no basis for the con-
16
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
elusion that " the Son of man " was already in Christ's time
a familiar term for " the Messiah."
If indeed " the Son of man '' had been a recognised
Messianic title in our Lord's days, it would have followed
that, when He applied this phrase to Himself, He would have
been understood as claiming to be Messiah. But He is not
so understood. On the contrary, on the first occasion when
Christ in the three Synoptic gospels assumes this title and
declares that " the son of man " has authority to forgive sins,
no one is described in the context as understanding that
Jesus thereby claimed to be " the Christ of God" Nay,
more, Matthew actually inserts a statement that the people
glorified God because He had given such authority to " men."
No doubt, Matthew does not mean to say that the
multitude regarded this authority as being given to all " men."
But he may have intended to describe them as vaguely
feeling that Jesus claimed this authority for the "son of Adam,
or Man," as including others beside Himself. And this inter-
pretation would be justified if He meant "man in his right
relation to God," that is to say, Himself and those who could
receive Him ; "Man," as "man" will become, when conformed
to the divine image of Humanity in which he was created.
Other evidence, in great abundance, points to the same
conclusion, namely, that Jesus, in calling Himself "son of
man," was using not a familiar but an unfamiliar title, a
spiritual or mystical term — like many other spiritual terms
often used by Him — intended to lead the disciples on to
spiritual conceptions. " If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly,"
say the Jews to Jesus in the fourth gospel. But He will not
" tell " them this " plainly." If they cannot be led on from
accepting Him as mere " son of man " to accepting Him as
" Christ," it would appear that He prefers them not to
accept Him (for it would be a mere accepting in name) in the
latter character.
Accordingly Matthew represents Jesus as saying to the
17
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
disciples, " Who say men that I, the son of man, am ? " and
then " Who say ye that I am?" Now, if the first question
had meant " Who say men that I, the Christ, am ? " there
would have been no great merit in Peter's confession when he
answered " Thou art the Christ." It would have been a mere
dutiful assent, " Dost thou not call thyself the Son of Man,
that is, the Christ of God ? And hast thou not often called
thyself by that title ? Who are we, thy disciples, that we
should deny thy word? Thou art, as thou sayest, the Christ
of God."
But as a fact, Peter meant " Thou callest thyself merely
son of man, but we feel that we have none other near the
throne of God but thee. Thou must needs be, yea, thou art,
the Christ, the Son of God." He reached this leap from
" son of man " to Son of God by faith and divine blessing, and
because Christ's doctrine had been daily preparing him to
recognise the divinity of human nature when conformed to
the divine will. But it was a leap. " The son of man " did
not mean, before Christ's time, " the Son of God."
Most clear and emphatic of all the gospels is the fourth,
in bringing out the perplexity caused to the Jews by the
reiteration of this apparently commonplace yet mystical
title, which it will be well to print in inverted commas when
uttered by them, because it is not a phrase of theirs but of
Christ's. It is in a passage toward the close of Christ's public
teaching. He has just said, " I, if I be lifted up from the
earth, will draw all men unto myself." The multitude
answer, " We have heard out of the Law that the Christ
abideth for ever, and how sayest thou, ' the son of man '
must be lifted up ? Who is this ' son of man ' ? "
As a fact, Jesus had here said " I," not " the son of man."
But the multitude is exhibited dramatically, and perhaps not
quite fairly — in this its last utterance on the stage — as
committing a slight verbal inaccuracy owing to the fact that
Jesus has been habitually calling Himself " the son of man"
18
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
and that He has previously spoken in public of " the son of
man " as destined to be " lifted up."
When the crowd says " The Christ abideth for ever,"
that is, literally, " for the age," they probably assume that
their Messiah will "abide" reigning over Israel for the
complete Messianic " age " on earth, and that this is incom-
patible with being " lifted up from the earth"
They base this assumption of an earthly reign " for ever "
on " the Law," that is, the Scriptures ; and our Revised
Version in its margin refers to four passages in the Prophets
and the Psalms, all of which connect " for ever" with "David,"
or in one instance, with the words " a priest after the order of
Melchizedek," which, though some Jewish traditions connect
with Abraham, others connect with David.
The admission that the multitude could not have spoken
quite so inaccurately nor Jesus quite so obscurely does not
invalidate our conclusion that the author of the fourth gospel
intends this question " Who is this ' son of man ' ? " to be
a final and crucial instance of the popular misunderstanding of
Christ 's self -appellation, as well as of His nature. And that
the people did misunderstand both, is, we contend, a historical
fact.
What Christ actually said about the exaltation, or lifting
up, of " the son of man," was probably more like what He is
reported as saying in the Synoptists, where He quotes the
words, attributed to David, " The Lord said unto my Lord,
Sit thou on my right hand," and asks how these — if they
apply to the Messiah — can be reconciled with the view that
the Messiah is David's son. But this Synoptic passage
points to the same conclusion as the Johannine — namely, that
when Jesus spoke of "the son of man at the right hand of
God," He meant something entirely different from what the
people meant by it.
The difference may be illustrated by the contrast between
the warlike traditions of Israel concerning Egypt and Assyria
19
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
and those which are found in the following passage of Isaiah :
" In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with
Assyria in the midst of the earth ; for that the Lord of hosts
hath blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and
Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance."
Israel is to conquer Egypt and Assyria, but to conquer them
by bringing them to the knowledge of the true God, the God
of kindness and truth. It is to be a conquest effected by the
gentleness of the lamb rather than by the ferocity of the lion.
The Revelation of John, the beloved disciple of the Lord,
takes up this antithesis between the lion and the lamb, and
uses it in order to trace a continuity between the Old
Dispensation and the New. " Weep not," says the angel to
the Seer, " the lion that is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of
David, hath overcome." Nothing could sound more patriotic.
But the next verse speaks of " a Lamb," and we find that the
" Lion " is the " Lamb."
This " Lamb " is mentioned in connection with " the right
hand " of God. But how ? As " sitting on the right hand "
and waiting for enemies to be made His " footstool " ? No,
but as taking " from the right hand of him that sitteth on the
throne " a sealed book, " a book written within and on the
back." So Ezekiel received from " a hand " a " roll of a book,
written within and without." The " book," says the prophet,
contains " lamentations and mourning and woe."
It is the record and riddle of the sorrows and sufferings
through which the Old has passed, and must yet pass, into
the New. In the Gospel, the fourth evangelist writes, in the
name of Jesus, " In the world ye have tribulation, but be
of good cheer, I have overcome (lit. conquered} the world" \ and
in Revelation, John writes concerning Jesus that He, the
Lion, " hath overcome (lit. conquered) to open the book" and,
immediately afterwards, that the Lion is " a Lamb, standing,
as though it had been slain."
The thought of this antithesis between the Old and the
20
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
New, and of their being reconciled in the Son of Man,
pervades both the Revelation of John and the Johannine
gospel, and often explains the latter, where the writer, though
identifying himself with the disciple whom Jesus loved,
seems to be unfairly representing Jesus as deliberately
perplexing the Jews when He might have used plain speech.
Revelation speaks of " the Song of Moses and of the Lamb,"
and that phrase is a key to the whole Book. The Song of
Moses near the Red Sea says " The Lord is a Man of War '' ;
the Song of the " ten thousand times ten thousand " near the
Sea of Glass says " Worthy is the Lamb that hath been
slain." It is paradoxical to say that the two songs are one.
But this paradox is ever present with the Johannine
writer of the fourth gospel as being a profound truth. It is
always in his mind that no one can understand how God the
Man of War can be in effect represented by " the Lamb that
hath been slain," unless he has taken into his heart the
humanity represented by the Son of Man and has felt, in its
constraining power, a force able to pull down all transitory
empires and kingdoms and to set up one eternal kingdom
in their place.
It is probably in the fourth gospel, when spiritualising
the language of the Revelation of John, that we shall find
the closest approximation in the New Testament to Christ's
actual thought about the work of the Son of Man at the
right hand of God. But how different is this glimpse of the
actuality from the literal notion of a descendant of David
waiting till God shall have pulverised the Gentiles and
established a world-wide dominion of the House of Judah !
The Johannine author, in his endeavour to shew the great
gulf that divided the thought of Jesus from the thought of His
countrymen, dramatically paraphrases the language of both.
The people, he says, completely misunderstood the true
nature of that dominion of the Second Adam, or Son of
Man, or Man, which God designed when He created Man,
21
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
and which the Son of Man was to accomplish. They failed
to understand the divine purpose, because they failed to
understand by loving, and to love by understanding, human
nature. This failure he sums up by making the multitude
exclaim " Who is this ' son of man ' ? "
Yet it is impossible not to feel some sympathy with the
multitude. " Should not we, too, have been mystified, if we
had been in their place ? " is a question that we may well ask.
And the answer is, " Probably, yes." " Then ought we not to
feel some impatience or resentment, not indeed against
Christ, if we are Christians, but against the fourth evangelist,
who represents Christ as mystifying people ? "
That is a much more difficult question to answer. Perhaps
the evangelist might defend himself somewhat in this way:
" It was so decreed. ' What I do,' said Jesus to Peter, ' thou
knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.' The same
thing was true of what Jesus said, as of what He did. It
was a seed that died for a time that it might live hereafter.
This is the nature of a seed, and this was the nature of the
Lord's words and deeds ; all of which were spiritual, because
He spoke according to the truth of His nature, which
was spiritual. You speak of ' mystifying.' Is that the right
word ? If it is, ought we not to give it a new meaning, or look
at it in a new light? Was not Peter ' mystified' for his good ?
"No doubt, the Lord Jesus might from the beginning
have descended from heaven robed in a visible splendour
of kindness and truth that should convert and conquer all
the world while He proclaimed Himself to them as their
Saviour and Messiah. Then there would have been no
mystifying, no darkness, no twilight, but all day. The Lord
God decreed otherwise. The evening was to come before
the morning : ' And there was evening, and there was morn-
ing, ONE DAY.'"
One word may be added as to the notion that the
multitude, in this passage, mean by this disputed phrase what
22
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
they might have expressed by " Son of David " or " Christ."
According to that view, we might paraphrase their question
thus : " We have heard out of the Law that the Messiah
abideth for ever on earth, and how sayest thou that the Son
of Man must be lifted up? We all know that the Son of
Man means the Messiah. But what sort of a ' Son of Man '
is this, who is not to abide on earth and to reign over us on
earth but to be ' lifted up ' ? "
The answer is obvious. If they all " knew that the Son
of Man means the Messiah," how is it that, after Jesus has
repeatedly and publicly called Himself " the Son of Man,''
they say to Him " If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly " ?
It would also obviously have been more natural that they
should have mentioned "the Son of Man" instead of "the
Christ " (" we have heard out of the Law that the Son of
Man abideth "). Lastly, the hypothesis requires not only
that " the Son of Man " should be one of many Messianic
titles, but also that it should be one familiar to the Jews
("we all know"). But this is not the case. It is non-existent,
in this use, so far as we know at present, in the whole of
Hebrew and early Jewish literature.
23
CHAPTER V
"SON OF MAN" AND "SON OF GOD"
When Satan says to Jesus in the Temptation, " If thou
art the Son of God, command that these stones become
bread," Jesus replies, " It is written, Man shall not live by-
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God." Here the Hebrew has " the adam " meaning
" the [creature called] man," and the Jerusalem Targum has
" the son of man."
The point, however, for us to notice is that, whereas " the
Son of God" is the title mentioned by Satan, " Man " is the
title mentioned by Jesus, as applying to Himself and as
determining His course, namely, to live " by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
This should be considered in connection with the other
instances in which Jesus is called " the Son of God" in the
Synoptic gospels, at least before the Passion. The title
always proceeds from " devils " or persons possessed — up till
the time of Peter's Confession.
Luke gives the first instance. It is in a description of
Jesus as performing a number of acts of healing and
exorcism. The parallel Matthew says nothing about the
unclean spirits as recognising Christ's origin, but adds that
Christ's action fulfilled the words of Isaiah, " Himself took our
infirmities and carried our diseases." But Mark says " He
would not suffer the devils to speak because they knew him'.'
24
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
Luke agrees. But he expands the last clause into " Because
they knew him to be the Christ" and he says, just before, that
the devils exclaimed as they came out, " Thou art the Son of
God."
This indicates that, if Jesus had chosen to call Himself
"the Son of God," all would have understood that He
claimed to be " the Christ," and that He not only did not
choose this name for Himself, but also forbade others to give
it to Him, at all events at the beginning of His career.
One reason for this is suggested in the Epistle of James,
which says that " the devils " believe in a God, " and tremble."
" Fear " is the feeling at first inspired in the demoniac
possessed by the " Legion," who exclaims " What have we to
do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God ? "
Fear is also indicated in Mark's (and Luke's) very first
case of exorcism where the demoniac exclaims, " What have
we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth ? Art thou come to
destroy us ? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of
God."
In another passage, Mark, describing other demoniacs who
cried "Thou art the Son of God," says that Jesus "used to
rebuke them much (or, many times) in order that they might
not make him known." The parallel Matthew agrees, but
omits the cry, and also omits Mark's " much (or, often),"
which implies that the cry was a common one, and that
Christ's repression of it was frequent and strenuous.
In Matthew, after the stilling of the storm by Jesus, it
is said that, according to the Revised Version, "they that were
in the boat worshipped him, saying, Of a truth, thou art the
Son of God." But the parallel Mark says simply " they were
sore amazed in themselves," and adds, " for they understood
not concerning the loaves, but their heart was hardened."
Here, however, the Greek text of Matthew does not say
exactly " the Son of the [One] God " but " God's Son," which
is not exactly the same thing. It is ambiguous. All those
25
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
who call God Father must necessarily call themselves " God's
sons." In the fourth gospel Jesus argues that the Jews are
unreasonable for taxing Him with blasphemy in this respect,
" Say ye of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the
world, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am [a] son of the
[One] God ? "
It should be observed that, in the fourth gospel, Jesus had
not verbally said in the preceding context, " I am God's Son,"
but " I and the Father are one." Still earlier He had said,
" My Father worketh even until now, and I work," on which
the comment is, " For this cause, therefore, the Jews sought
the more to kill him because he not only brake the sabbath,
but also called God his own Father, making himself equal
with God."
The hostility of the Jews is based on their assumption
that man is not in the image of God, and that Jesus, being
nothing more than what is commonly called " a mere man " —
that is, not a Son of God like Apollo or Bacchus — neverthe-
less aimed at " equality with God," as though, to use the
Pauline phrase, it were " a prize to be caught at " — " For a
good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy ; and because
thou, being a man, makest thyself God."
On the other hand the conduct of Jesus is based on the
assumption that man is already in the image of God, and,
when perfected by the Spirit that He felt within Himself,
will be completely conformed to God's likeness. There is no
rivalry, or "catching at a prize," in the perfect love that
brings Man into union with God, and the Son into union
with the Father, so that the Son can say " I and the Father
are one."
Hence, there is no difference (according to the fourth
gospel) between the Son of God and the Son of Man, except
in respect, so to speak, of a double official aspect. The Son
is always the Son. The Spirit of Sonship is always in Him.
But " the Son of God " is the more appropriate title for Him,
26
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
in respect of His divine life-giving power, when He raises the
dead ; " the Son of Man," or even " son of man " without
" the," may be more appropriate, in respect of His humanity,
when He executes judgment over the other sons of man,
knowing their nature because He Himself has been one of
them : " The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and
they that hear shall live. For, as the Father hath life in
himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in
himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment
because he is son of man."
Thus we may understand the very remarkable passage
where the fourth gospel introduces Christ's first mention
of " the son of man " coming immediately after a disciple's
mention of " the Son of God." It occurs in Christ's first
utterance to what may be called the nucleus of the Church —
a little group of five or six disciples that had gathered round
Jesus in the first week of His public life. Nathanael is the
last of these, and it is to Nathanael that the promise — for it
is a promise — is specially addressed.
The passage is full of allusions which can only be touched
on here. Nathanael is called by Jesus an " Israelite without
guile." " Israelite '' must have been in Aramaic (as it is in
the ancient Syriac and in the modern Hebrew versions) "a
son of Israel." " Israel " is the name given to Jacob, the
Supplanter, after he had seen God face to face ; and some
(including probably Origen) connected the name etymo-
logically with the act of " seeing." What Jacob had " seen "
in Bethel was a rudimentary vision of " angels of God
ascending and descending" on a ladder set up on the earth,
of which " the top reached to heaven."
With this premised, we can better understand what Jesus
replies to Nathanael when the latter, astonished at His
insight into his thoughts under "the fig-tree," exclaims
" Rabbi, thou art the Son of God." The reply is at once an
encouragement and a rebuke. Jesus does not say, as to
a. m. 27 4
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
Peter, " Blessed art thou, Nathanael, for flesh and blood hath
not revealed this unto thee, but my Father." Nor on the
other hand does He expressly " rebuke " Nathanael as He
rebuked the demoniacs.
But He tacitly rebukes him : " Thou shalt see greater
things than these." So much for Nathanael by himself.
Then, including in His promise the whole of the little
group, He adds " Ye shall see the heaven opened and the
angels of God ascending and descending on the son of
man."
How are we to write the phrase on this its first Johannine
occurrence ? As a title or name, with capital letters, " the
Son of Man " ? Or as an eastern expression for " man " —
with implied allusion to what is said about "man's son " or
"son of Adam " in the Scriptures — without capital letters,
" the son of man " ?
Sometimes it is difficult to choose. For, during the
period when Jesus was, so to speak, converting the phrase
•' son of man " meaning " man," into the title " Son of Man "
meaning " Man," we cannot tell whether He meant by it
" what you call ' the son of man,' " that is, " man," or " what /
call 'the son of man,' " that is, " Man." We may illustrate the
difference by the line in Paracelsus : —
"Progress is
The law of life, man is not Man as yet."
Here, however, it seems best to write the phrase without
capitals, as being no title as yet, but meaning, to the disciples,
merely " man." The context appears to imply that Nathanael
has been too free in talking about " the Son of God," and
that he has yet to learn, as also have the other disciples, the
potential divinity of " man " or " the son of man " to whom
angels are but as servants and ministers of God's gifts.
Possibly, too, as has been said above, there is an analogy
between "son of Israel," "son of God," and "son of Adam,"
which last may have been Christ's expression for what might
28
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
be called in Greek, as being a title, " (the) Son of (the) Man."
But it is not necessary to believe this in order to be convinced
that, by " son of man," Jesus means a great deal more than a
mere Messianic title.
The kind of title that contemporary Jews would have
liked their Messiah to claim may be illustrated by the one
given to a Jewish leader who headed a revolt during the
reign of Hadrian, soon after the fourth gospel was written, and
who numbered among his adherents the great Rabbi Akiba.
The name of his father, or of his home, was Cosiba, and he
was often called Barcosiba or Ben Cosiba. But owing to the
similarity between Cosiba and the Hebrew word meaning
a star in the prediction in Numbers about the " star " that
would "come out of Jacob," R. Akiba called him Bar
Cochba, " Son of a Star."
" Son of adam," on the other hand, meaning " son of
earthy man " and implying lowliness and liability to death,
might well seem to Rabbis a title that conveyed the thought
of humiliation. And accordingly R. Abbahu (about 280 A.D.)
appears to jibe at Jesus for calling Himself by so humiliating
a title. Playing on another passage in Numbers, he suggests
that if the Pretender chose to call himself by this title, his
natural end was to suffer for it and, as he says, " to rue it."
Our conclusion is, that among many causes for the choice
of Christ's self-appellation, one was His recoil from the title of
Son of God, as it was frequently given to Him at the outset
of the gospel by demoniacs or lunatics, and perhaps some-
times (so the fourth gospel suggests) by enthusiastic admirers
or converts like Nathanael. This is perfectly compatible
with the belief that Jesus knew that He was really Son of
God and that He had been called thus by a Voice from
heaven.
The whole tenor of all the gospels indicates that in His
use of words Jesus was always looking to the thing, or reality,
underlying the word. His countrymen talked freely of the
29 4—2
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
Son of God and also of worshipping God, but they did not
know what " Son," or "God," or "worship" meant. Their
heart was far from Him. Such knowledge is from the heart
more than from the head, and Jesus quoted against them the
words from Isaiah, " their heart is far distant from me."
The mission of the Son from the Father in heaven was
to teach the realities corresponding to these names. This
could not be done by defining but only by personifying.
Worship means a righteous love, trust, and awe, carried to
the highest limits possible in the mind of the worshipper. It
was the object of Jesus to impart the faculty of such a
worship to His disciples and to decoy them, so to speak, into
worshipping God the Father in heaven by constraining them
to worship unconsciously the Man, or Son of Man, on earth.
3°
CHAPTER VI
"MORE THAN THE SONS OF MAN" IN ISAIAH
We have seen that the eighth Psalm speaks of the
dominion destined for " the son of man " by God as though
it were already achieved, " Thou hast put all things under his
feet.'' The Epistle to the Hebrews quotes this, and says, in
effect, " It is not yet accomplished ; we see not yet all things
subjected to him." It proceeds to say, that it was through
suffering and death that Jesus, as representative of the sons of
man, attained in His own person to a dominion over death
for the other sons of man ; for it " became " God " in bringing
many sons unto glory to make the chief-and-leader of their
salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that
sanctifieth [i.e. Jesus] and they that are sanctified are all from
One [i.e. God] ; for which cause he [i.e. Jesus] is not ashamed
to call them brethren."
What is the argument ? Why did it " become " God to
inflict " suffering " on the chief-and-leader of those " sons "
whom Jesus is bringing to " glory " ?
The argument is based on an axiom assumed here, and
stated elsewhere in this Epistle, that " whom the Lord loveth
he chasteneth...God dealeth with you as sons ; for what son is
t/iere whom his father chasteneth not f " This again is based
on a fundamental passage in Deuteronomy concerning the
relations between Jehovah and His Son, Israel, in the wilder-
3i
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
ness, "And he... suffered thee to hunger... that he might make
thee know that man (Jer. Targ. the son of man) doth not live
by bread alone, but by everything that proceedeth out of the
mouth of the Lord doth man live... And thou shalt consider
in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord
thy God chasteneth thee!'
In the story of Christ's Temptation in the Wilderness, the
first of these two groups of italicised words is put into the
mouth of Jesus both by Matthew and by Luke. Can we
doubt that the second group would also be in His mind, not
only then but throughout all His efforts to bring the other
sons of man into the glory of His Father ? It is assumed
that man cannot be raised up to his right position above the
beasts except by " chastening." " Man that is in honour and
understandeth not" — that is, understandeth not that all
" honour " cometh from God and through God's preparation —
" is like unto the beasts that perish." This preparation in-
cludes "chastening" or "suffering." It is through "suffering"
that all the sons of man are " perfected," and He, their
Chief and Leader to salvation, the paramount Son of Man,
was bound not only to pass through suffering, but to be the
paramount Sufferer that He might be the paramount Chief
and Leader.
The reader will note how this Epistle, which begins with a
contrast between " prophets " and " Son," insists on the
sonship as the link uniting the Firstborn — "the heir of all
things," through whom God " made the worlds " — to the later
born sons of man whom the Firstborn sanctifies " For both
he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all from
One," that is, from one common Father. Hence we realise
how natural it is for the writer of the fourth gospel to pass
from "son of man" to "son of God," and to "Son" absolutely.
It is the spirit of sonship that is everything. Jesus is, as
Luke says, " son of Adam son of God " ; so also are other
" sons of Adam." The former sanctifies, the latter are
32
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
sanctified; but all are "from One," and all must be "perfected
through suffering."
The doctrine of Isaiah concerning the Suffering Servant
was interpreted by Jews as referring to Israel smitten by God,
and scattered among the nations, in order to disseminate the
gospel of Jehovah while suffering for the sins of the world.
By Christians it was interpreted as referring to Jesus.
How did Jesus Himself interpret it ?
Probably as referring to the spiritual Israel, which He
identified with the figure like a son of man in Daniel, and the
spirit of which He felt within Himself. But He identified it
with no narrow Judaistic or Israelitic sectarianism. He saw
the vision, as Ezekiel saw it, as " son of Adam," and He felt
that the spiritual Israel, whom Daniel saw in the act of being
brought near to the throne of the Ancient of Days, was not
a mere glorified Jacob or Supplanter, but a Person purified
by suffering so as to be " pure in heart " and to " see God " as
Jacob saw God in Penuel. He was to be a genuine repre-
sentative of the seed of Abraham, in whom " all the families
of the earth," that is to say, all the sons of Adam, were to be
blessed. Hence He might be called a genuine " son of
Adam " — not of the lower Adam whose son was Cain, but of
the higher Adam, the Adam unalterably decreed by God, from
the beginning, to be perfected in the end.
Isaiah never calls the Suffering Servant, directly, " a son
of man." Nor is there any reason why he should. For he
does not, like Ezekiel and Daniel, see a human figure in
the heaven or near the throne. To such a paradox Daniel
might well call attention — " One like unto a son of man and
yet so high ! " Isaiah's view is different. He sees the sufferer
on earth, not yet " perfected." But still he too, sees a
paradox, though of a different kind. It is the contrast
between the reality and the appearance ; between the
Servant really " exalted," and the Servant, in the eyes of the
world, " despised and rejected." The Servant ends by
33
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
dividing the spoil with the strong, but he is introduced as
one " whose visage was marred more than any man, and his
form more than the sons of man!'
Such are some of the salient points of Hebrew thought
concerning the educative or perfective view of " suffering "
for the sons of man, and concerning the axiom that all the
sons of God must be thus educated or perfected. They
suffice to suggest a rough outline of our Lord's doctrine, of
which probably but a few fragmentary traits exist in the
Synoptists, but much more, and much of great value, in the
systematic expositions of the fourth gospel.
34
CHAPTER VII
"THE SON OF MAN" HAVING "AUTHORITY"
The career of " the son of man " in the Synoptic gospels
may be roughly said to exhibit three phases. First, He is
seen claiming and partially exercising on earth that authority
or dominion which was shadowed forth in the eighth Psalm.
Secondly, He is seen partially rejected and predicting future
rejection, with His Passion or Suffering, in the language of
Isaiah and Hosea. Thirdly, He is seen predicting a future
Coming with dominion and in glory, accompanied by angels,
and with some mention of clouds that recalls the language of
Daniel.
Roughly, we may say that the Johannine gospel exhibits
the same three phases but in entirely different language.
First, "authority," which in the Synoptists appears to be
divergently interpreted, is by J ohn carefully denned. Secondly,
the Synoptic language about the Passion describing a martyr's
humiliation and death, is replaced by words signifying a
martyr's exaltation and glory. Thirdly, no mention is made
of " angels " or " clouds " in the ultimate Coming of Christ,
but only of a " glory " that has nothing to do with material
splendour. It is the glory of the divine Love making Man
35
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
and God one through the Son in the unity of the Father, the
Son, and the Spirit.
To begin with the phase of authority. The Synoptists
represent Jesus as claiming for " the son of man " " authority"
to forgive sins. Also, at the outset of His public life, they
describe Him as exercising " authority," but in such terms as
to leave it in doubt whether it is of the kind belonging to an
authoritative teacher or to an exorcist having "authority"
over unclean spirits.
John, at the outset of his gospel, speaks of " authority to
become children of God," and, later on, he represents Jesus as
saying that He has " authority " to lay down His life as well
as to take it again. Also he says that the Son has received
" authority to do judgment," not although, but " because" He
is " son of man."
Again, whereas the Synoptists say that " the son of man"
is " lord of the sabbath," implying that He has authority
over it, John represents Jesus as defending His healing on the
sabbath, not because He has authority, or " is lord,'' over the
sabbath, but because " my Father worketh hitherto and I
work," that is to say, because He sees the Father working on
sabbath and weekday from the beginning, and He, the Son,
must needs imitate the Father in works of kindness.
These contrasts shew that John felt it necessary to
explain " authority," and especially " authority to forgive."
It was not " power " — a word that John never uses — a power
to forgive those whom one wishes to forgive and not to
forgive the rest. It consisted in an insight into the will of
God the Father and into the souls of the sons of man, so as
to distinguish those who could, from those who could not,
receive forgiveness ; and it implied in the forgiver a painful
bearing of the sins of the forgiven.
A full forgiveness implied not only a casting out of the
unclean spirit of sin but also the bringing in of a clean heart
and a new spirit of righteousness. The Synoptic gospels
36
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
imply in a parable that Jesus is the Stronger entering into the
house of the Strong (that is to say, into the house of Sin or
Satan) and binding him. They also expressly and repeatedly
say that Jesus was in the habit of casting out devils. John
never uses the metaphor of the Stronger Man. Nor does he
ever describe Jesus as casting out devils. Nor does he
mention forgiving till after Christ's resurrection, when the
Spirit is imparted by Him to the disciples in order that they
may forgive.
But, as we have seen above, Satan and Satanic powers are
described in the Bible as destructive beasts of various kinds,
and it is part of the dominion of the Son of Man and His
" little ones " to trample upon the Beast in its various forms.
John sums up the agencies of the Beast in the metaphor
of the Wolf, and describes the Good Shepherd as contending
against the Wolf and as having "authority" to lay down His
life for the sheep, and to take it again. Later on, he re-
presents Jesus as saying " I have conquered the world."
Thus " authority " is perceived in John from the first to be
a painful though a royal attribute. It belongs to kings and
champions of Humanity. It is the power of perpetually
giving oneself for others, as God the Father does. " Forgiv-
ing '' is a kind of " giving," namely, the giving of Life.
Combining the Synoptic with the Johannine metaphor we
may say that the Son of Adam enters into the House of Sin
and "lays down his life'' in conflict. Then He receives it
again, and, in addition, carries away as Conqueror, in His
train, the captive sons of Adam, whom He leads forth to
a life of righteousness, having rescued or ransomed them
from their sinful selves.
This stupendous and mysterious process, represented by
the Passion on the Cross, corresponds to a minor Passion or
Suffering — minor, but still profoundly mysterious and wonder-
fully great — necessary in every act of human forgiveness where
the forgiver, or minister of forgiveness, performs the action in
37
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
the spirit of Christ. There is a Pauline " spending and
being spent," even where there is no actual laying down
of life.
38
CHAPTER VIII
"THE SON OF MAN" TO BE DESPISED AND
TO "SUFFER"
The Evangelists all represent Christ as being con-
tumeliously treated by the Pharisees and called an agent of
Beelzebub, but Mark does not connect the treatment with the
title of the Son of Man. Matthew and Luke say that the
Son of Man was called " a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber,' -
apparently because He ate and drank with publicans and
sinners. Elsewhere they represent Jesus as saying " Foxes
have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of
Man hath not where to lay his head." He seems to mean
that the rulers of this world, the beasts and birds of prey,
from the meanest to the mightiest, from Herod the fox of
Galilee to the mighty eagle of Rome — all these could make
themselves at home under the shadow of the Prince of this
world. But the Son of Man could not thus find a home.
John expresses the same thought, not indeed mentioning
the term, nor even speaking of the Son, but implying
sonship, and says, in effect, that the Jews would have
accepted Him if He had come in His own name and sought
His own glory, for they understood that kind of glory,
" seeking glory from one another " ; but they called Him
" a Samaritan " and said that He had " a devil " because He
honoured His father. In other words, the self-assertive
spirit, and the narrow spirit of quasi-patriotic nationalism,
39
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
were wanting I'm Jesus (from the point of view of His
countrymen).
With these, He might have obtained the recognition of the
Jewish rulers. Without these, He was rejected as a demoniac,
or as a deceiver. He could find no home among His people.
There is probably an allusion to this homelessness of the Son
of Man, in John's description of Christ's breathing His last
upon the cross. The expression " lay his head " occurs, in
the whole of the Bible, only in the passage quoted above, and
once in John. The latter passage describes how Jesus, who
had found no place to lay His head in rest during His life on
earth, found it at last when He rested it in death, on the
bosom of the Father.
As regards the Synoptic predictions of the Suffering, or
Passion, the most probable explanation of the omissions and
divergences of the evangelists is that our Lord was in the
habit of quoting Isaiah's prophecy about the Suffering
Servant, combined with Hosea's prophecy about Israel smitten
by Jehovah but raised up on the third day.
The hypothesis of such an origin, besides explaining
many great difficulties in the Synoptic texts as a whole, is
also supported by very strong evidence bearing on a particular
Synoptic clause, namely, the "delivering up" of Jesus, that is,
delivering up to death. The word is ambiguous, for it might
mean " delivered up " by Judas Iscariot, and " deliver up " is
clearly thus used sometimes in the gospels. But the Epistle
to the Romans says that Jesus " was delivered up " for our
trespasses but raised for our justification, in such a context as
to make it clear that the writer is referring not to the act of
Judas but to the act of God, and that he is referring to,
or quoting, the word " delivered up " used by the Septuagint
in the last verse of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah describing
the Suffering Servant of Jehovah.
Here we stand on solid ground. For we can have no
doubt that such a tradition as this, reiterated in all the
40
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
Synoptists and also found in an early and authoritative
Pauline Epistle, must represent, if any Synoptic tradition
does at all, not indeed what Jesus actually said, but a Greek
equivalent of what He said. What He actually said we must
seek in the Hebrew of Isaiah. There, instead of "was
delivered up," we find "made intercession."
The inadequacy of the Greek rendering must not be
exaggerated. The Hebrew presents difficulties which the
translators may have endeavoured to evade by a paraphrase,
using " delivered up " as though it implied the delivering up
of a hostage, ransom, or sacrifice. In the Pauline Epistle —
when read in the light of Pauline doctrine generally about
the Father delivering up the Son, or the Son delivering up
Himself, for the salvation of mankind — there is no very
serious inadequacy.
But in the gospels, if interpreted as " delivered up by
Judas," the word is seriously, we may almost say fatally,
inadequate. It is perhaps for this reason that " delivered
up " is not placed by John in the mouth of Jesus when
repeatedly predicting the Passion, but only on the very eve of
the Passion, and then in the words " One of you will deliver
me up," where it is clear that the speaker is referring not
to the act of God but to the act of man. In the predictions
of His Passion, which are frequent in the fourth gospel,
Jesus, as we shall see later on, uses a different phraseology
from that of the Synoptists, and one that affirms, and
reiterates, its intercessory character.
Another Synoptic phrase in these predictions of the
Passion of the Son of Man, is that He will be " killed " (or, in
Matthew, once, " crucified "). This comes immediately before
the words " raised up on the third day," which occur in
Hosea. Turning to Hosea we find in the preceding context
no mention of a word that necessarily means " killed," but
only of a word, " smitten," that might mean " smitten unto
death," thereby acquiring the meaning of " killed."
4i
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
It is rendered " killed " about a dozen times in the
Septuagint, but not in the Hosea passage under consideration.
There indeed an examination of the full context shews that
the prophet is speaking of the whole nation so that "smitten"
cannot mean " killed." But, apart from that full context, the
words " smitten and raised up on the third day,'' if taken from
Hosea and applied to an individual, might very well be
misunderstood as meaning " killed and raised up from the
dead on the third day."
The fact that Jesus was actually " killed " would naturally
predispose evangelists to believe that the ambiguous word
really meant " killed." Thus, too, we might explain Matthew's
"crucified." It may be merely another concrete interpretation
of the general and obscure term " smitten." Some may have
said " It meant killed!' Matthew — that is to say, the author
of the tradition found in the gospel that we call by the name
of Matthew — may have said, " It meant a particular kind of
killing, as we know by the result. It meant crucified"
Such misinterpretations and divergences would explain
John's avoidance of any such word as " kill '' or " crucify " in
connection with Christ's predictions of the Passion.
How then, if at all, does John express these Synoptic
traditions about being " delivered up " and being " killed " or
" crucified " ?
He does it by entirely departing from the letter of the
older Greek gospels in order to go back to the spirit of the
Hebrew types and prophecies appropriated by our Lord.
More especially he desires to emphasize the voluntary and
intercessory nature of Christ's death, and the inward glory
concealed beneath the outward humiliation. This permeates
the Hebrew prophecy but is lost or greatly obscured in the
Synoptic representations of it.
How should John attain this object ? As regards the
portion taken from Hosea, the obvious way to a prosaic
mind would have been to return to Hosea's actual word and
42
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
to represent Jesus as saying that the Son of Man would be
" smitten" while adding that this would be for the sake
of others.
But, if he had done this, would the Western Churches have
understood it ? It is true that Mark and Matthew represent
Jesus, in Gethsemane, as quoting from Zechariah the words
" I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered."
But Luke omitted this. And was not Luke substantially-
right? For the Hebrew of Zechariah said " Smite',' not "I
will smitel' so that Jesus would appear not to have used
exactly these words. And, even if Luke had substituted the
correct Hebrew, would not the Churches of the West have
asked, " Who gave the command to ' smite ' ? Surely not
God ? " Was it possible to answer these questions without
putting a stumbling-block in the way of faith ?
It was possible, if the evangelists could have been allowed
to combine the quotation from Hosea with another from
Isaiah, " Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our
sorrows : yet did we esteem him stricken, smitten by God, and
afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities."
This might have helped to explain the mystery, so far as
the mystery of sin and pain can be, in this world, explained.
The Messiah was to be " smitten " by God, in appearance,
and in men's estimation; but in fact He was not to be smitten,
so to speak, by God's heart, but only by His hand and by the
agents of His hand. The sins and sinners of this world were
to be permitted to " smite " their Saviour — that He might
save them ! On a smaller scale God might be said to have
" smitten Job," because He permitted him to be smitten by
the Adversary, for the ultimate exaltation of Job himself, and
for an example of patience to all the world.
But, though the "smiting" in Isaiah was doubtless in
Christ's mind when He quoted the "smiting" from Hosea,
the Synoptic evangelists did not allow themselves to interpo-
a. m. 43 5
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
late such an explanation. John, therefore, may well have
thought that Luke was justified in his omission of this difficult
passage, only — and this is a great and perpetually recurring
difference between these two evangelists — John deemed it
desirable to insert some substitute for what Luke omitted, and
thus to bring out the voluntary and intercessory character of
Christ's acceptance of the suffering of the Cross and also its
glorious nature.
For this purpose he represents Jesus as using the word
"lifted up" to predict "the death by which he was going to die."
As the serpent of brass was lifted up in the wilderness, so the
Son of Man is to be "lifted up" in order that He may give life
to those who look on Him. There is a play here on the double
meaning of "lifted up." In the Bible, and in Jewish literature,
it is sometimes quaintly used for being " hanged," but the
Bible also speaks thus of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, " He
shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high." John,
in his use of "lifted up," conveys these two meanings, cruci-
fixion and enthroning.
Another Johannine form of the prediction is that the Son
of Man was to be "glorified." Why not ? The death was to
be a glorious one. If Jesus fulfilled Isaiah's prediction, He was
to be " wounded for our transgressions " and " bruised for our
iniquities." Or, according to the Parable of the Good Shepherd,
He was to " lay down " His life, fighting against the Wolf, not
for His own life but for the life of others. What could be
more champion-like, more king-like, more glorious, than this ?
It was the height of " glory," and so accordingly John calls it.
Here it should be added that Mark and Matthew make
up, to some extent, for their omission of the intercessory
feature in the predictions of the Passion, by representing
Jesus as saying that the Son of Man came not to be ministered
unto but to minister and "to give his soul (or, life) as a ransom
in the place of many."
The parallel Luke omits this, and simply emphasizes the
44
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
" ministering " by distinguishing " him that sitteth at meat "
from " him that ministereth," that is, from the servant waiting
at table, and by representing Jesus as saying to the disciples,
at the Last Supper, " I am in the midst of you as he that
ministereth." Why does Luke omit the mention of the
"ransom"? Perhaps because of its difficulty, which is obvious
as soon as one puts the question, " To whom is the ' ransom '
paid?"
John intervenes. And here, for once, he seems at first
sight to support Luke against Mark and Matthew by empha-
sizing Christ's " ministering " among the Twelve. He repre-
sents Jesus, at the Last Supper, as actually divested of His
garments like a servant, and as waiting on the Twelve while
they sit at meat. But John also suggests an expiatory
character in the ministering, by the picture of Jesus symboli-
cally wiping off, on the napkin with which He is girded, the
impurities on the feet of the disciples.
Elsewhere, without mentioning ransom, John meets,
indirectly at all events, one difficult question, " Does Christ
ransom sinners from Satan ? " He answers, " Yes, and No."
If the wolf receives a ransom from the shepherd when the
latter sheds his blood for the flock, then, and in that sense,
and in no other, is a ransom paid. But the truth is that we
are not so much ransomed as bought — bought or ransomed
out of chaos and disorder and sin by receiving Christ's flesh
and blood, Christ's self, into our being.
Somewhat similarly — but only somewhat, for the metaphor
is much colder — a sculptor might be said to put a portion of
his soul, his living self, into a block of marble, thereby to
release from it an imprisoned life that shall breathe life and
beauty, for ages to come, into the hearts of other sculptors,
who shall in return release other lives.
From another point of view, a verbal similarity may be
found in the Hebrew narrative (not in the English Version) of
the blessing of Abraham by Melchizedek. There our English
45
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
Version, in its text, describes both the Priest and the Patriarch
as calling the Most High God " Possessor of heaven and
earth." But in its margin the Version gives "Maker!' The
Hebrew Lexicon, however, gives as the meaning of the word
" get," " acquire," " buy " ; and it places, next to this passage,
one from Deuteronomy, where the English text itself has
"bought" in a passage describing Jehovah as "buying" Israel,
"Is not he thy Father that hath bought thee?" God the
Father is " the Buyer " of the Universe, because He gives from
Himself both when He creates and when He sustains. So
the Son " buys " us with a price, the price of His blood, both
when He creates us anew to a new life and when He sustains
us in the new life. We may say He buys us from our sinful
selves, or from our lower nature, or from something else ; at
all events He " buys " us. That is the doctrine implied by
John and expressly taught by Paul.
46
CHAPTER IX
"THE SON OF MAN" TO BE "RAISED UP"
THE combination of " raising up " and " on the third day "
occurs in the Old Testament nowhere except in Hosea
concerning repentant Israel, " Come, and let us return unto the
Lord... he hath smitten and he will bind us up. After two
days will he revive us : on the third day he will raise us up,
and we shall live before him!'
Against the supposition that Jesus applied these words to
Himself, there might be raised the following objections, each
of which needs to be met.
" In the first place," it may be urged, " the resurrection in
Hosea is not what we should call a real resurrection, that is,
the physical restoration to life of a man's dead body. It
means a national deliverance from sin and a restoration to
that life which can nowhere be found except in the presence
and favour of God (' we shall live before Him '). This,'' it
may be said, " is quite different from what Jesus actually
predicted. Hosea does not insert 'from the dead.' Jesus does."
But Jesus does not insert " from the dead " — not at least
in His earliest predictions. To that point we shall return
presently. Meantime, it may suffice to say that, even if the
Synoptic gospels did represent Jesus as inserting it from the
first, we could not confidently trust them as to the exact
words in which He " actually predicted " His being " raised
47
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
up," when we know — or at all events have very solid ground
for believing — that they have inadequately represented what
He " actually predicted " about His intercessory sufferings.
Still less can we trust the exact accuracy of the Synoptic
traditions about " raised up on the third day " when we pass
to their versions of another tradition (or the tradition of two
of them) about " raised up after three days," and when we
compare it with a Johannine tradition about " raising up in
three days." For the Synoptists give us the impression that
the words were not really uttered by Jesus, but were part
of a false charge brought against Him. But the fourth
gospel says that such words were really uttered, only mis-
understood — misunderstood by everybody, even by the dis-
ciples. The Synoptists say that " the raising up " referred to
the Temple. The fourth gospel does not deny this, but says
that the Temple meant Christ's " body."
That Jesus actually said something about the " raising up "
of a "temple" in "three days" is indicated clearly, though
indirectly, by the Synoptic accounts of Christ's trial before the
high priest, and, we may almost say, not in spite of, but by
reason of, their divergences, confusions, and omissions — which
serve to shew the scandal and difficulty that attached to the
tradition and to explain why the Synoptists might naturally
have wished to omit it, or soften it down, or explain it away.
The divergences, briefly put, are as follows. Mark and
Matthew both make mention of "false witness." But they
report the accusation that Jesus said (Mark) " I will destroy"
or (Matthew) " / am able to destroy " in connection with the
Temple. They add, as part of the accusation, that He spoke
about (Mark) "building another" or (Matthew) " building [it
again]" after an interval of "three days." Mark distinctly
reports this as "false witness"; Matthew leaves a loop-hole
for supposing that the previous charges were false but that
this one may not have been wholly false. Luke omits all
mention of the charge.
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A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
That Jesus said " Destroy," or " Ye are destroying," and
that the false witnesses reported it as " I will destroy," can
hardly be regarded as strange, in view of the fact that
Zechariah says " Smite the shepherd," and that Jesus is re-
ported in the gospels as quoting it in the form " / will smite."
The conclusion is almost irresistible that Jesus did say
something of this kind about the Temple ; that His words
were misunderstood ; and that Luke omitted them because
they had been misunderstood and because they were liable to
be used against the Christians in a perverted form. Jesus may
have said to the priests " Destroy ye," that is, " Go on in your
evil courses, and do your best to destroy this visible temple
made by hands, since it must needs be so." Or He may have
said, as the decree of the Lord, " I will destroy this temple."
Either of these things is possible and easily credible. But that
the charge should have been a mere invention of enemies is,
we may almost say, incredible.
Assuming, then, that Jesus spoke about the " raising up " of
a " temple," what meaning are we to assign to it ? We appear
to be doing no more than justice to the consistency of His
spiritual doctrine by supposing that He did not mean what
Ezekiel meant, a more splendid temple of Solomon, or any
material structure. He meant THE PLACE where such spiritual
sacrifice is offered up as pleases God. Isaiah said that the
Holy One who "inhabiteth eternity" dwelleth also "with him
that is of a contrite and humble spirit." The Psalmist declared
that such a heart and spirit are " the sacrifices of God." Jesus
Himself (according to Matthew) on two occasions quoted
against the Pharisees the words of Hosea " I will have mercy
(or, kindness) and not sacrifice," thus indicating that Man,
when good and kind, is God's temple, God's PLACE.
But man when at his best — or, as Browning might put it,
" man when Man," that is to say, " Man in his right attitude to
God " — has been repeatedly defined above as being identical
with what is denoted by Christ's title, the Son of Man. Hence
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A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
we are led to the conclusion that Jesus, when He spoke of
" raising up a temple," meant " raising up the Son of Man."
Accordingly John says that Jesus " spake of the Temple
of his body," and that " when he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he spake this; and they believed
the scripture and the word that Jesus had said."
All that we know of Johannine as well as Pauline thought
shews that Christ's " body " does not mean merely the post-
resurrectional form in which the Saviour manifested Himself
to His disciples. It means also Christ's Church, His disciples.
When He died, their faith too, died, for the time. When He
was raised up, He was able to raise them up, and they lived
with Him. " The hour cometh and now is," said Jesus, "when
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God ; and they
that hear shall live." One fulfilment of this prophecy came to
pass when Christ, having been raised from the dead by the
Spirit, imparted His Spirit to the disciples.
According to this view, we are to regard Jesus, when He
went up to Jerusalem, as encouraging His disciples in the
language of Hosea, saying, in effect, " Let us go up unto the
Lord to offer such sacrifice as may please Him."
It may be urged, as an objection, that this adoption of the
words of Hosea represents Jesus as conscious of sin and of a
necessity that He should be " smitten " because of sin. But
that is not so.
We must not confuse Christ's self-identification with a
sinful people as though it implied His self-identification with
their sin. It is our fault if we do not realise the fact that
Jesus loved His countrymen no less than Moses, who was
ready to be blotted out of the book of life for the sake of
Israel, though He differed from Moses in knowing that the
Father could not blot out of the book of life the name of any
single human soul unjustly, not even to save all the souls of
the sons of man. We are to suppose that Jesus, like all the
great Hebrew prophets but in a greater degree, identified
5°
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
Himself with Israel. He knew it was necessary that He, as
being Israel, should be " smitten." But He knew also that it
was not possible that He, as being the Son, should not be
" raised up in three days."
And now to return to a previous objection, namely, that
no " resurrection from the dead" is contemplated by Hosea
and that Hosea does not insert "from the dead" whereas Jesus
does insert this clause.
It is quite true that Jesus " does insert this clause." But
how ? Never in any passage recorded by the three Synoptists,
never in any direct prediction of His Passion, never in con-
nection with " three days " or " the third day," never in any
context that implies the usual allusion to Hosea, but only in
a precept, uttered by Jesus (according to Mark and Matthew)
to three of the disciples while descending from the Mount of
Transfiguration, bidding them not to disclose the vision " until
the Son of Man arose (or, was raised) from tlie dead'' Mark
adds that the disciples " questioned with one another what the
arising from the dead might mean." Matthew omits this.
Luke records no precept, but simply says that the disciples
did not disclose what they had seen ; he says nothing about
resurrection.
Neither Luke nor John anywhere represents the Saviour
as predicting during His lifetime that He would be raised
from the dead. But Luke represents Jesus, after His death, as
" opening the mind " of disciples " that they might understand
the scriptures" and he continues, " And he said to them, Thus
it is written that the Christ should suffer and arise from the
dead on the third day." Also John says " When, therefore, he
was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he
had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that
Jesus had said."
But what, according to John, had "Jesus said"? Nothing
at all, in definite words, about Himself or about His being
raised from the dead, but only about a " temple " to be " raised
5 1
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
in three days." The disciples, however, taught by the actual
result, recognised that Jesus meant — and here it should be
noted that "meant" is liable to be confused with "said" both
in Hebrew and in Greek — that His body or He Himself would
be raised up from the dead according to the scriptures. This
accordingly became a current tradition : " He meant, or said,
that He would be raised from the dead in three days, according
to the scriptures."
Luke's representation appears to agree with what John
says about the resurrection of the " body." Only, instead of
saying that the disciples " remembered " it, or that the Spirit
of Jesus (as John says elsewhere) " brought to their remem-
brance " the saying of Jesus and " guided them into all the
truth " of it, Luke adopts a tradition that represented Jesus
Himself, after His resurrection, in a visible form, as com-
municating to the disciples this interpretation of His past
words and of the scriptures, when they were "gathered
together" and He bade them "handle" Him.
Other passages might be quoted, shewing how the failure
of the disciples to believe that Christ was to be raised from the
dead is explained as arising, not from their disbelief in His
words, but from their ignorance of the scriptures in general,
" For as yet they knew not the scripture how that it must needs
be that he should arise from the dead." And again Jesus says
to two disciples, not, " Why were ye so slow to believe your
Master?" but " O, fools, and slow of heart to believe all the
sayings that the prophets have said. Must it not needs have
been that the Christ should suffer these things [first] and [then]
enter into his glory ? "
But the special importance of the Johannine passage about
" three days " and the Lucan passage (quoted above with it)
about "the third day" is this, that both of them combine
"raising up" and "three days" with mention of "scriptures,"
and that the passage of Hosea under consideration is the only
one, in the scriptures, that contains this combination. Also
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A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
the Epistle to the Corinthians in a passage that reads like an
ancient form of Evidence on the Resurrection, says, " He was
raised up on the third day according to the scriptures!' The
impression left on us is that " the third day " was originally
understood to be part of the scriptural prophecy. If so, it
would seem certain that the tradition originally referred to
Hosea.
All these facts confirm the conclusion that the omission of
" from the dead " was not an accident ; that Jesus predicted a
"smiting" and a "raising up" on "the third day" in the language
of Hosea ; and that, when the ambiguous " smiting " came to
be rendered " killed," the words "from the dead" were occasion-
ally inserted after " raising up " to make the meaning clear,
but that this liberty was rarely taken in the earliest traditions.
Moreover the tenor of the gospels as a whole, and in particular
the prayer in Gethsemane, indicate that the precise nature and
the exact duration of the " smiting " were not revealed to Jesus
along with the revelation of the " smiting " itself. If that was
so, then we must suppose that, although He knew that the
Father would " raise " Him up, the details were hidden.
Whether the intervention was to come to Him as to Isaac, or
as to Jonah, or in some way that was without precedent in
scripture, though predicted in scripture — this was not revealed.
The objection, then, that Hosea's prophecy contemplated
a joint, corporate, or national resurrection, and that Christ's
predictions did not, may be met with a direct negative to the
latter assertion. Jesus was a patriot, loving His country with
an exceeding love, and longing to make the whole house of
Israel a nation of priests and kings that they might be His
instruments in raising up the fallen House of Adam. He did
not think of Himself as " raised up " by God apart from Israel
or apart from Adam.
At the same time we do not deny that Jesus conceived of
this raising up of " the son of man '' as destined to be accom-
plished in Himself, by some divine intervention, speedily, and
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A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
personally. He, Jesus of Nazareth, was to be rescued from
the jaws of death, possibly like Isaac, but more probably like
Jonah, who cried unto the Lord " out of the belly of Sheol,"
and said, " I will look again toward thy holy temple."
It is very hard for us to grasp the thought of such a
breadth of spiritualism, combined with such an intensity of
patriotism, as we find in the great Hebrew prophets. Yet we
must make the effort. For these same characteristics we may
expect to find, developed to their highest, in Jesus Christ. And
if we could bring ourselves by an effort of imagination to realise
the feelings of Isaiah and Hosea towards their children who
represent for them national vicissitudes ; and to see Jeremiah
wearing the yoke on his neck as the yoke of his people ; and
Ezekiel lying on his left side to " lay the iniquity of the
house of Israel upon it," and going through all the signs of a
siege in his own person, and recognising the fall of the Temple
in the death of his wife, " the desire of his eyes " — we should
then at least apprehend the possibility that Jesus might
sometimes speak of the raising up of Israel, and of the true
temple of God, in connection with the raising up of Himself,
or of His own " body."
Indeed, this very phrase last mentioned is almost identical
with what Isaiah appears to say, though in obscure language,
" Thy dead shall live ; my dead body, tliey shall arise" This
has been paraphrased as follows, " The Gentiles, being dead
in their sins, shall, with my dead body, when it rises again,
rise again also from their death. Nay, they shall rise again,
my body — that is, as part of myself, and my body mystical."
On the other hand, a tradition in the Babylonian Talmud
suggests that the " dead " here mentioned by Isaiah may be
those whom Ezekiel caused — in a vision — to live again in the
valley of dry bones. But the point is not that "the dead" are
those of Israel or those of the Gentiles, but that they are
identified by the prophet with his own "body" rising from the
dead.
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A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
What Isaiah thus said, and what Jeremiah and Ezekiel
did, should prepare us for anticipating that our Lord also
would say and do — as a Jewish patriot and a prophet, still
more perhaps as a Jewish Messiah — many things strange to
western and modern thought and not to be strictly inter-
preted by western and modern canons of interpretation.
.55
CHAPTER X
-'ON THE THIRD DAY"
THOSE who deny the existence of any allusion to Hosea
in Christ's words about being " raised on the third day '' may
argue that He simply and miraculously predicted what
actually and miraculously came to pass on that day, namely,
His bodily resurrection. " It is true that Christ thought of
His body as the Temple, and spoke of it as ' this temple ' in
the fourth gospel. It is true also that the Temple means the
Church of Christ. But He merely thought of the literal future
event, which He exactly foreknew, namely, that His body, in
the literal sense, would be raised on the third day, in the literal
sense. There is a coincidence of words, but no connection in
thought, no allusive connection, between the words of Jesus
and those of Hosea. Nor is there any traditional or Biblical
connection between ' third day ' and ' temple.' "
The former part of this objection might be met in two
ways, by an appeal to authority, or by an appeal to common
sense. Many of my readers will probably think the latter
appeal sufficiently strong. It is incredible that such a strange
combination as " raised up on the third day " should be
repeatedly used by Jesus, and often in connection with the
scriptures, without any allusion to its unique use in the
scriptures.
The latter part of the objection is met by a consensus of
facts indicating that Hebrew thought, from a very early date,
56
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
recognised an association of "the third day,'' if not with
" temple," at all events with the essential characteristic of a
temple, the offering of sacrifice.
The connection is sometimes mystical, but it may have
also been practical. Hosea addressed his prophecies to the
Northern Kingdom, that is, Israel (not Judah). This would
include Galilee. Josephus tells us that it was a journey of
" three days " from Galilee to Jerusalem. The title of Hosea's
prophecy tells us that he prophesied under Hezekiah, and it
was in Hezekiah's time that a message was sent to the
remnants of the northern tribes, inviting them to come up to
the Passover at Jerusalem. Such an invitation the Prophet
may have urged his countrymen to accept, at the same time
adding God's warning as to the right kind of offering, " I will
have mercy and not sacrifice.'' Jesus is said by Matthew to
have quoted these last words twice ; and the saying " on the
third day he will raise us up" comes, in Hosea, almost
immediately before them.
Again, looking at the matter mystically, and believing that
Jesus regarded as a temple or church any gathering of faith-
ful souls, even though it were but " two or three," when united
in the Name of the Father, we cannot but think that in His
view, Abraham and Isaac went as it were to a " temple " on
Mount Moriah. For they went " both of them together" that
is, as a Jewish tradition says, "with one heart," to offer a
sacrifice of supreme faith in which the father virtually sacrificed
himself with his son. Now the preceding context says that
Abraham " on the third day lifted up his eyes and saw the
place afar off."
Philo, commenting on this passage, connects "the third
day" with the offering up to God of that "tribute," or "perfect
debt," which constitutes a perfect sacrifice. He is probably
alluding to the precept given to Abraham " Be thou perfect"
and he says, in his abstract fashion, that the Mind is
"perfected" and pays the "perfect-debt" to the ''perfecting"
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A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
God when it comes " on the third day " to " the place " that
God prescribed.
With this we may compare a combination of " perfected"
with " the third day" in a very different author, Luke : "I cast
out devils and perform cures to-day and to-morrow, and the
third day I am perfected" This refers to Christ's sacrifice on
the Cross in Jerusalem, as is shewn by the following words,
" Howbeit, I must go on my way to-day and to-morrow, and
the next day, for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of
Jerusalem."
In order to connect this with Hosea it remains to shew
that Jesus uttered these words in Galilee whence Jerusalem
would be distant "a three days' journey." This is made
almost certain by an immediately preceding saying of the
Pharisees, " Get thee out, and go hence, for Herod would fain
kill thee." Herod was the tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, and
it appears reasonable to infer that the words meant, in effect,
" Get thee out, and go from Galilee."
Origen and Jerome both interpreted the prophecy of Hosea
as fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ. But the earliest
Christian interpretations of " the third day " might naturally
be influenced by what was believed to have happened literally
in the rising again of " the body " of the Saviour. And sub-
sequently, Greek and Roman Christians — without Origen 's
knowledge, or even Jerome's knowledge, of Hebrew thought
and tradition — could hardly be expected to realise the
intensity of feeling with which Jesus identified His "body"
with the nation of Israel and the Temple of God.
We may perhaps be helped to understand our Lord's
meaning, when He first uttered to His disciples the prediction
of " the third day," by comparing it (as Origen compares the
saying of Hosea) with the words of Moses before the Exodus,
"Let us go. ..three days' journey into the wilderness, and sacri-
fice unto the Lord Our God" only supposing them to be
addressed, not to Pharaoh, but to Israel, encouraging the
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A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
timorous people to go forth through unknown trials and
temptations to the ultimate presence of God.
Or, still better, Christ's reiterated predictions — saying, in
effect, that He must go up to Jerusalem, and be delivered up
as a sacrifice, and be smitten, and be raised up on the third
day — may be compared with the confidence of Abraham,
" on the third day." As Origen suggests, the Patriarch was
aware that an insoluble problem might be put to him, "If you
are going to sacrifice Isaac, how can you come back with
him ? " He could not solve it. But he believed that God
could solve it. Hence, while taking Isaac away with him
from the servants to his apparent death, he dared to say to
them " We will worship and come again to you." He left it
to God to "see" to the solution of the insoluble, "as it is said
to this day, In the mount of the Lord it will be seen."
It was apparently in a similar conviction that our Lord
uttered the prediction that " the son of man " would be
" raised up on the third day." He did not think of Himself
apart from the Father, or apart from the sons of man whom
He came to save. He was also conscious of a Spirit within
Himself, which could not possibly be " holden " by the bonds
of '' death," and could not return to the Father until it had
accomplished the Father's will.
Our conclusion, so far as it is negative, is, that variations
of Christ's prophecy concerning His resurrection arose, partly,
perhaps, out of His own variations of the words, as He drew
near the end, but partly also out of various western interpreta-
tions of eastern language, most of which ignored the national
significance of the prophecy.
Some of these diverged to what might seem to us a purely
individualistic exposition, connecting the thought with Jonah.
Yet even Jonah may well have been regarded by a Jewish
prophet as the type of Israel sent forth by Jehovah to preach
the gospel to the Gentiles, and raised from the belly of Sheol
for that purpose after he had lain in it three days and
a. m. 59 6
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
three nights. No doubt the literal "three days and three
nights " is inconsistent with Hosea's literal " after two days "
and " on the third day." But these literal inconsistencies
would hardly have prevented any later Jewish prophet or
Messiah from applying both prophecies to the same event in
a spiritual sense.
So far as it is positive, our conclusion is, that John is a
safer guide than Mark and Matthew, and much safer than
Luke, to what Christ actually thought — whatever may have
been the precise words that He said — about His resurrection.
Hosea did not mention the temple, and therefore Jesus may
not have mentioned it, as a rule, when He spoke of His being
raised up " on the third day." But we conclude that He
habitually thought of the temple, and that on at least one
occasion He spoke of it ; and this, in such terms as to convey
to His enemies the impression that He actually believed
Himself to be able, and perhaps to be destined, to destroy the
standing structure and to raise up another.
60
CHAPTER XI
"THE SON OF MAN COMING" WITH "ANGELS,"
"CLOUDS," AND "POWER"
PASSING to the third phase of the career of " the son of
man," that of victory, we find all the Synoptists connecting it
with "angels," "clouds," and "power." They add "glory,"
but of that we will speak in the next chapter. The language, at
all events so far as regards the "clouds," is borrowed from
Daniel, but not correctly. Daniel speaks of " one like unto a
son of man," who is " brought near " to the Throne, " with the
clouds of heaven." The Synoptists (except in one passage of
Mark) do not give correctly the difficult preposition " with!'
Many questions arise — not one of which can be more than
touched on here — as to the nature and time of the Coming, the
nature of the angels, the meaning of " clouds, 1 ' whether literal
or symbolical, and the meaning of the notion of accompaniment
implied in "with" — whether it implies merely a scenic train
of triumph, or has some spiritual significance.
The evidence, which is necessarily too technical and detailed
to give here, points to the following conclusions.
The " Coming,'' although doubtless contemplated as made
visible to the human eye, was rather of the nature of a self-
revealing or self-manifesting than a motion from place to
place. It was a coming into the heart. The Targum often
speaks of God's " being manifested, or revealed',' or "revealing
Himself I' where the Bible speaks of His " coming." The Epistle
6 1 6 — 2
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
of John says, "We know that if he [i.e. God] shall be manifested
we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is," and the
Epistle to the Colossians, " When Christ shall be manifested,
[he who is] our life, then also ye, with him, will be manifested
in glory." This appears to refer to the Coming of the King-
dom, when the righteous shall shine forth in glory, and, as
Clement of Rome says, "shall be manifested in the visitation of
the Kingdom of God."
As regards the "clouds," evidence can be brought from
Jewish literature as well as from Origen and others to
shew that they symbolize the whole army of the prophets
and holy ones of the Chosen People, lit up by the glory
of the Sun of Righteousness, and accompanying Israel,
or the Messiah, toward the throne in heaven. And some
connection of this kind, between " clouds," and " saints,"
appears to be implied in the first Epistle to the Thessalonians.
Probably, too, "power," which often means in Hebrew as well
as in English "an armed host," has that meaning here,
referring to the army of the " holy ones," or " saints " of the
Elect.
But a great difficulty presents itself in the mention of the
" angels," or " holy angels," mentioned by the Synoptists as
though they were assessors with the Messiah in judgment.
For Paul says to the Corinthians, " Know ye not that we shall
judge angels ? " but never speaks of " angels " as themselves
judging men, or even taking part in the judgment. Moreover
the first Epistle to the Thessalonians speaks of " the Coming
of our Lord with all his holy ones," — or, as our Revised
Version has it, " with all his saints," this being its habitual
rendering of the Pauline " holy ones."
It is true that the second Epistle to the Thessalonians
(which is perhaps not quite so safe an authority as the first)
speaks of "the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven render-
ing vengeance with the angels of his power in flaming fire." But
these appear to be similar to the " evil angels " or " angels of
62
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
evil" mentioned by the Psalmist as sent against the Egyptians.
Milton might perhaps call them "slavish officers of vengeance."
In any case they do not appear to be identical with "the holy
angels." The same context speaks of the time " when he [i.e.
Christ] shall come to be glorified in his holy ones (or, saints)."
It can also be shewn that a confusion between "holy ones"
and " angels " might very easily arise, and has in some cases
actually occurred.
The conclusion arrived at, after a detailed analysis of the
evidence, is, that "the angels'' connected in the Synoptic
gospels with Christ's Coming, were originally " the holy ones "
or "the saints" (not "angels" in the ordinary sense); that these
are also represented by " the clouds of heaven " ; and that
Jesus had in view the dominion of "the saints" personified by
" one like unto a son of man," which was predicted by Daniel.
This corporate kingdom was implied by the preposition "with"
When " with " was changed to " above " or " in," the notion of
a joint or corporate dominion of the Messiah with His saints
vanished out of the words.
This misunderstanding appears to have led to various
interpretations, explanations, and divergences in the Synop-
tists. Some evangelists might regard the "angels" as executors
of wrath, and as distinct from the " holy ones " or " saints "
who are participators in glory and co-assessors in judgment.
Some might suppose that there were two acts of Coming,
one, in wrath, to destroy ; one, in peace, to reign.
As regards the time of the Coming there is also great
divergence, and one most remarkable omission, as follows : —
Mark and Matthew say that the time is not known to anyone,
not even to the angels, not even to " the Son," but only to
"the Father." This absolute use of "the Son" and "the
Father," almost non-occurrent in Mark and Matthew, throws
doubt on the passage. Luke omits this saying.
Passing from the three gospels to the fourth, we find John
adopting his usual course of departing entirely from the
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A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
Synoptic language — so much so that he nowhere in his gospel
mentions " cloud," or even " power." But he implies the
presence of the " clouds," Christ's followers, whom He will
draw with Himself, or through Himself, to the throne of the
Father in whose bosom He Himself eternally is.
As for " power," the power of a conquering king, what
can be stronger than the words " In the world ye have
tribulation. But be of good cheer, I have conquered the
world " ?
As to " the angels," John nowhere mentions them collec-
tively except once, and then, not at the close, nor in
connection with victory, or judgment, or coming again, but at
the very outset of the gospel, and in connection with the
very first mention of " the son of man '' on whom (it is said)
"the angels of God" will be seen "ascending and descending."
Subsequently John describes the multitude as mistaking the
Voice of the Father from heaven, some for that of thunder,
some for that of " an angel " ; and he speaks of " two angels "
as seen by Mary Magdalene in the tomb of the risen Saviour.
These three are all the Johannine instances of the word.
This subordination of angels is in accordance with the
best Hebrew and Jewish theology and with the doctrine of the
Pauline Epistles, which is, as has been said above, that the
"holy ones" or "saints" are to judge "angels," not that
" angels " are to judge them or other human beings. The
authority to judge could hardly (it would seem) be given to
an angel, if it is correctly said in the fourth gospel to be
given to the Son "because he is son of man."
The assessorship of " the holy ones " is also implied in
the fourth gospel. Or, to speak more exactly, John includes
it in a broader view of their abiding unity with the Son who
made them one with Himself. This is variously expressed in
the New Testament. Paul says to the Thessalonians that
" we" — that is, the saints living and departed — are to be "ever
with the Lord." Revelation says that they are to "follow the
64
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
Lamb whithersoever he goeth." The fourth gospel expresses
this still more strongly in the prayer of the Son to the
Father, " that they may all be one, even as thou, Father, [art]
in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us." This is
a prayer — Jesus says — not for the apostles alone but " for
them also that are to believe on me through their word," that
is, for all the holy ones or saints, of the Church of Christ.
If therefore Christ is to come to judge, we are apparently
justified in saying that He cannot come without them.
Concerning the " coming," John is systematically vague
as to the time of it, and definite as to the nature of it. The
Logos, or Word, is always " coming into the world." When-
ever it comes, it gives light and life to those who receive it,
but judgment to those who flee from it and reject it. John
nowhere contradicts the Marcan tradition that the time of the
Coming is not known " even to the Son." But he gives us
the impression that whatever the Son may not know on the
subject is not worth knowing, or else that the time of the
Coming depends on the Son Himself and is left by Him an
open question.
The very last words of Christ uttered on earth refer
to this subject, but refer to it as if it were unimportant.
They are addressed to Peter (in answer to his question
about the beloved disciple), " If I will that he tarry till I
come, what [is that] to thee ? follow thou me." This
seems to say, " Leave speculations about things not in
your hands, and turn to practice, which is in your hands."
This sounds like a version, applied to the New Law, of
the great saying in Deuteronomy about the Old Law:
" The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but the
things that are revealed belong unto us."
But if John is vague as to the time, he is most definite
and practical as to the nature, of the Lord's Coming. It is of
two kinds. For the lovers of darkness it is the Coming of a
convicting Spirit which will convict the world of error. For
65
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
the lovers of light, who love the Son, and who keep His word
by loving one another, it is the Coming of that same One,
yet Plural, Power, which at the beginning said, " Let US
make man," and which now again says WE, speaking through
the Son as follows, " If any one love me he will keep my
Word, and my Father will love him, and WE will come unto
him, and make our abiding place with him."
It is implied by the preceding context that this WE is not
exactly the Father and the Person whom Jesus began by
calling " the son of man." Nor is that Person merely " the
son of man " in a new character, working in a new phase or
aspect. The Son describes it as " Another, a Paraclete," that
is to say, " One called in to help." Just before this, He says,
" Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the
Father may be glorified in the Son." Just after it, He says,
" I will not leave you orphans, I come unto you."
The discourse in which these utterances find a place
begins with the words, " Now is the Son of Man glorified and
God is glorified in him." This is the last mention of the
title. " The Son of Man " is, so to speak, on the point of
retiring into the background while " the Son of God," or " the
Son," comes forward to take its place. But the disciples are
unwilling to give up their Master under His old human title.
They feel as though they will be " orphans " without it. To
prevent this, " Another, a Friend called in to help " is to be
sent by Him. That this is " Another Self" is indicated by
its identity with " I " — •" / will not leave you orphans, / come
unto you." It is the Spirit of Sonship which whosoever has
can never feel an " orphan."
We may illustrate this promise of the divine Spirit by
what Epictetus represents Zeus as saying to Man : — " I have
given thee some portion of OURSELVES." This is similar on
the surface, but with how great a dissimilarity of thought
beneath ! For this Epictetian gift of a " portion " of the
divine nature is " the faculty that deals with mental impulses
66
A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
and repulsions, with inclinations and declinations, and, in
a word, with the imaginations and impressions of the mind."
But the Johannine gift of Christ is not regarded as "a portion."
It is the presence of the One Eternal God in the heart of
man revealed as Father and Son in a Spirit of Love. And
it is this Johannine '* coming in love " which corresponds to
the Synoptic " coming in glory!'
67
CHAPTER XII
"THE SON OF MAN" IN "GLORY"
This word, " love " — combined with the word " glory '' at
the conclusion of the last chapter — brings us naturally to the
crowning proof of the spiritual accuracy of the fourth gospel,
in giving the tenor of Christ's doctrine, as compared with
the greater verbal accuracy of the three gospels, in reporting
His isolated sayings. For the sum of Christ's doctrine about
God's "glory" appears to have been this — that it consists
in righteous love. The Gospel reduces to practice in the
person of the Son the old Hebrew theory of the personality
of the true God, as being the Nursing Father, whose glory it
is to love and to give at His own cost ; whereas it is the
glory of the false gods, " thieves and robbers," the " foxes "
and vultures, the " wolf," the *' serpents and scorpions," the
" beasts " of various kinds, to hate, and to seize, and to
oppress, and to destroy.
This truth peeps out, even in Mark, here and there in
short answers to the question, " who is the greatest ? " and in
sayings about " the rulers of this world " as contrasted with
rulers in the Christian community. The truth is also latent
in the Synoptic doctrine about receiving "little children," that
is, the "babes and sucklings," whom Christ loves, and repre-
sents, and sends to represent Himself.
But the Synoptists do not adequately set it forth,
especially in view of the fact that they write in Greek, and
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A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
use, for " glory," a word that most naturally means " seeming,"
" opinion," or " reputation," and is seldom used to represent,
in the highest sense, "worthy renown." And this inadequacy
seriously impairs the spiritual profit of their reports of
Christ's sayings about the Coming of the Son of Man in
"glory."
Mark's clearest lesson on the subject is in his account of
the petition of the sons of Zebedee, " Grant that we may sit,
one on thy right hand and one on thy left, in thy glory?
Jesus replies, " Ye know not what ye ask," and proceeds to
ask whether they can drink His " cup " and be baptized with
His "baptism." That ought to have been instructive as to
the meaning of Christ's "glory." But Matthew has "king-
dom " instead of " glory," and Luke omits the whole incident.
John deals systematically and consecutively with the
word. Beginning in his prologue, he strikes the Hebrew
note, above mentioned, by his first use of the term as being
" the glory as of the only-begotten from the FatJier" ; then he
hastens to tell us that it consisted of "grace and truth" that is
to say, of God's gracious giving and God's truthful adherence
to promises, described in Genesis as God's " kindness and
truth." Then, without actually mentioning the Nursing
Father, he suggests Him thus : "No man hath seen God at any
time ; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath declared him."
This is not the place to shew, in detail, how system-
atically the exposition, here commenced, is continued through
the gospel, both in negative and in positive forms. Negatively,
the wrong glory, "the glory of men,'' is described as that
which men seek for themselves or receive from one another.
Positively, the right glory is suggested in the mysterious
mention of " the son of man " as being " glorified " on the
cross, or through the cross. And finally, in the Last
Prayer, it is indicated that the true " glory " is the Eternal
Love between the Father and the Son ; as to which the Son
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A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE
prays to the Father for His disciples, "That they may behold
my glory, which thou hast given me ; for thou lovedst me
before the foundation of the world."
Briefly, the Johannine doctrine amounts to this, that the
glory of God the Father consists in making men willing and
able to love Him and one another. To effect this came the
Son of God, as " son of man," that is, as a human being,
raising the standard of human love by constraining a few —
at first only a very few — to receive Him into their hearts.
Receiving Him, they received, along with Him, a new kind of
love, that kind of love with which He loved them, a new
faculty of loving Man, and, through Man, God.
At first the new faculty was not fully developed. In the
minds of the disciples, a great gulf at first divided God in
heaven (whom they feared rather than loved, so that they did
not rightly worship Him) from Him who called Himself " the
son of man " on earth — whom they loved, trusted and
reverenced, without any touch of unworthy fear, in such
a manner, and to such a degree, that unconsciously they
almost paid Him what might be called that pure and righteous
worship which is due to God alone.
But the gulf was bridged by death. Under the mysterious
and awe-inspiring influence of that instrumentality of God,
He who had called Himself " son of man " now appeared,
revealed in the glory of His Spirit, the Spirit of love, as
being the Son of God. Now, they worshipped Him accord-
ingly as Son of God, and as one with the Father in heaven.
But they could not cast out from their worship that new
element of love, the love that they had learned to feel for
Him as " son of man " on earth. Thus, along with their higher
revelation of the meaning of " son of man," they received
also a higher standard of worship, a higher conception of God,
and a deeper insight into the unity of that which is divinely
human and humanly divine.
70
PART II
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
CHAPTER I
JESUS AND THE TEMPLE
The evidence 1 , of which a summary has been given in
Part I of this work, indicates that Christ's self-appellation
" son of man 2 " was suggested by more causes than one, and
was used with more meanings than one, or with different
shades of meaning corresponding to developments of the
purpose of Christ's career ; but always pointing back to the
thought of " Man according to God's intention," or " divine
Humanity."
An attempt will now be made to shew that this explana-
tion harmonizes with the leading characteristics of Christ's life
and with our knowledge of His environment and antecedents.
We must endeavour to realise some of these, or at all
events the narratives that profess to describe them. Let us
imagine ourselves in the midst of a congregation in a Galilaean
synagogue listening to a new prophet or teacher. He declares
that the words of Isaiah, which he has just read aloud to us,
1 This and the following chapters are almost identical with the last
chapter of a larger work by the author entitled The Son of Man, now in
the press. But the footnotes in the latter have been cancelled, or greatly
condensed and placed at the end, in the present volume.
" The evidence " above mentioned means the evidence collected in the
larger work.
2 " Son of man.'' In this and the following chapters, " son of
man" is very frequently printed in inverted commas and without
capitals, so as to help the reader to keep an open mind as to the meaning
of the title.
73
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
are fulfilled in him ; that the Spirit of the Lord is on him ;
and that he has been anointed to fulfil good news, to proclaim
release for the captives and liberty for the oppressed, "to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
At this point, according to Luke, Jesus stops, having read
only what amounts to a verse and a half in our English
Version. It was usual to read mme, even when the reading
was accompanied with interpretation. Perhaps Luke gives us
merely the opening words of the Lesson. But even supposing
Jesus to have read no more, we must suppose — if we are to
imagine ourselves Jews in the presence of a Jewish teacher —
that both speaker and hearers were familiar with the words of
the fourth verse, predicting that in the happy future men
would " build the old wastes " and repair " the desolations of
many generations."
What meaning should we, Galilaeans, and what would the
Teacher, be likely to attach to the words " release," " captives,"
" liberty," " build " ? Neither in the days of Isaiah, nor in those
of Jesus, was Judah captive, or the Temple destroyed. Yet
in Christ's time the Galilaeans, under the yoke of Herod and
under the shadow of Rome, felt, vaguely perhaps, that in
more ways than one, the nation needed "liberty" and
"building."
Among other indications of dissatisfaction with what may
be called the Established Church of the Jews, is the existence
of the sect of the Essen es, which had arisen about a century
and a half before the birth of Christ. Their piety is attested
by Philo, Josephus, and Pliny. Yet these men, according to
Josephus, though sending offerings to the Temple, performed
sacrifices " with an essential difference (or, incompatibility) of
purificatory rites," so that they were " excluded from the
national Temple-court and performed their sacrifices by them-
selves." What would be the new prophet's attitude towards
the Temple ? And how would he propose to " build the old
wastes"?
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A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
According to Luke, Jesus, on reaching the age of twelve,
was taken up to Jerusalem by "his parents" to the feast of
the Passover. On the return journey, being missed and
sought by them, and found in the Temple, hearing the Rabbis
and asking them questions, He said, " How is it that ye
sought me ? Knew ye not that I must be in the [house] of
my Father?"
According to John, when the man, Jesus, began His public
life — as distinct from His manifestation at Cana to the small
circle of His disciples — He went up to the Temple and to the
Passover, but with very different feelings from those assigned
to the boy Jesus, in Luke. The Temple, indeed, He still calls
" my Father's house." But He is in no mood now for " asking
questions." He declares that it has been made " a house of
traffic," and He purifies it by expelling the traffickers. The
disciples, after His resurrection — recalling the fervour that
had then brought Him into collision with the rulers of the
people, ending in His death — " remembered that it was written,
The zeal for thine house shall devour me."
These two narratives, even though it may be impossible to
accept them as accurate in detail and as historical proofs, may
be regarded as illustrations (when taken with their contexts)
of a fact, capable of being proved by a multitude of passages
but too often forgotten, namely, that Jesus was what would
commonly be called a zealot and a mystic, wholly absorbed
in God, and that He was also absorbed — as we might expect
a pious Jew to be — in zeal for God's Temple.
But it was for the Temple as God's house, not for the
temple rebuilt in effect by Herod and desecrated by priestly
monopolies. " Doves," says a Jewish tradition, " were at one
time sold at Jerusalem for pence of gold. Whereupon Rabban
Simeon Ben Gamaliel said, ' By this temple, I will not lie
down this night, unless they be sold for pence of silver'...
whereby doves were sold that very day for two farthings." If
Mary had been compelled to pay in " pence of gold " for her
a. m. 75 7
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
" doves " at the purification, it was an oppression likely to be
often mentioned in the household, and very likely to make a
profound impression on the boyhood and manhood of Jesus.
All the evangelists agree that He protested against desecration
of some kind arising out of the sacrifices. The three Synoptists
say that He predicted that the polluted building would be
destroyed ; John says that He uttered the mysterious words,
"Destroy this temple," and that He really "spake of the
temple of his body"; Mark afterwards says that He. was
accused of threatening to destroy the then standing temple
and to " build another not made with hands " ; Matthew omits
"another" and "not made with hands"; John speaks of
" raising another," and he, though omitting " not made with
hands," seems to imply it, or something like it, in his inter-
pretation (" his body "). Luke omits the whole.
These verbal minutiae might be passed over by an impatient
critic as not rewarding study. But they may be of the very
greatest importance. For all these passages in Matthew, Mark,
and John, contain a mention of an interval of " three days" and
indicate (as has been shewn above) an allusion to Hosea's
prophecy about repentant Israel on "the third day? Israel was
apparently regarded by Jesus as the type of the true "temple"
of the Lord. Mark (and perhaps Matthew) misunderstood
this. John understood and endeavoured to explain it.
It is not, perhaps, unnatural that Luke, taking "temple"
and " three days " literally and believing the words to embody
a false accusation, omitted them, both in his record of the
trial and afterwards in his account of the crucifixion. But
the gospel evidence is very strong for their retention, and it is
confirmed by the Pauline metaphors about the Church as
being " the body " of Christ. The most natural explanation
of these, and of the way in which they are introduced in
the several epistles, is that they are not an addition to,
but an exposition of, some actual doctrine of Christ con-
cerning the Temple as represented by a Person.
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A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
The way for such a doctrine had been prepared by Isaiah's
words " I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that
is of a contrite and humble spirit," and by the words of the
Psalmist concerning " the sacrifices of God " as being " a
broken spirit " or " a broken and a contrite heart " ; for the
prophet implied that if "the high and lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity " may be said to inhabit any other place
at all, that place is a human being, a son of man ; and the
Psalmist adds that in such a temple " the sacrifices of God "
are offered.
But none of the prophets or psalmists had done much
more than touch lightly and negatively on the inadequacy of
the temple, or of any temple, to be called a house of Him
that inhabiteth eternity. And Ezekiel — whose position with
regard to the temple then standing and about to fall, was in
many respects parallel to that of Jesus — seemed rather to
emphasize the importance of the material structure. For he
devotes several chapters to measurements for the new building,
concerning which the voice of " a man " says to him " Son of
man, this is the place of my throne... where I will dwell in
the midst of the children of Israel for ever."
Later on, however, Zechariah seems to indicate an un-
willingness to admit that the New Jerusalem should be
"measured" since it was to be inhabited "village fashion,"
that is, " without walls." Early Jewish tradition comments on
this, and on Ezekiel's new name for Jerusalem, " The name of
the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there (Jehovah-
Shammah)." This it slightly alters so as to be " The Lord is
her name (shmah),'' adding, " Three are called by the name of
the Holy One, blessed be He, and these are they, the
Righteous, Messiah, and Jerusalem." By "the Righteous "is
meant the class described by Isaiah thus, " Every one that is
called by my name, and whom I have created for my glory ;
I have formed him, yea, I have made him" ; but there is an
77 7—2
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
evident reference to "Israel," or "Jacob," who is previously-
described as "called," "created," and "formed," by God.
This tradition somewhat softens the paradox of the
astonishing Pauline statement that " all Israel will be saved."
The Jewish notions — or at all events expressions — of person-
ality and of nationality seem to have been different from ours.
Ibn Ezra explains the above-mentioned class of " the
Righteous " as " all that belong to the people of the Lord,"
and says " I have formed it, namely, that nation."
In the book of Revelation we shall find the precept
" Measure the temple of God and the altar," but it is added
" and them that worship therein " ; and no actual " measuring "
(like that in Ezekiel) is recorded then or subsequently. Later
on, however, when the New Jerusalem descends from heaven,
numbers are given, twelve thousand furlongs in length,
breadth, and height (the city being a cube) and the wall
" one hundred and forty-four cubits, the measure of a man,
that is, of an angel." This mysterious description appears to
refer to the one hundred and forty-four thousand human
beings previously sealed from the twelve tribes of Israel-
Whatever may be the origin of these details, they must not
be regarded as the product of mere Christian fancy, any more
than the "living stones" mentioned in the first epistle of
Peter. Christian influence is at work in the shaping, but the
rough hewing came from Hebrew and Jewish thought, of
which there is a trace in Zechariah.
It is this humanised ideal of a Temple that constitutes
the great difference between Jesus and Ezekiel, in contrast to
the many parallels between them. Ezekiel not only lays
stress on the statistical arrangements for a new material
structure, but also, in at least two passages, says that Jehovah
is "there," meaning "in Jerusalem," or "in Palestine," in a
literal and local sense. But the Temple, in the Gospel of
Jesus, is seen to mean men and women, sinners many of
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them, built into the walls of a new House of God established
on the Rock of faith. Ezekiel had been called from heaven
"son of man," and it had been given to him to discern the
" appearance of a man " above the throne in heaven ; but it
had not been given to him to perceive, or at least to teach,
that " the son of man " has authority on earth to build up a
City and a Temple to God far surpassing the earthly city he
had conceived, about which he had prophesied that its name
should be "the Lord is there."
Jesus, too, believed that "the Lord" would be "there."
But when He thought of the presence of the Lord, He had in
view the Psalmist's description of Jerusalem " as a city that is
bound neighbourly together in itself, whither the tribes go up,
even the tribes of the Lord, for a testimony unto Israel, to
give thanks unto the name of the Lord." It was the
" neighbourly " temper, the fellowship between man and man,
the dominating spirit of the true " son of man," that was to
build the sons of man into a " City of the Great King " ; and
it was the contrast between His ideal City and Temple and
the existing city and temple that led Jesus to describe the
Wisdom of God as deserting it, or Himself as deserting it,
until the citizens should repent. Christ's teaching is not to
be understood unless we see Him as one with eyes fixed on
"the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and
maker is God," and that God, a Father. Through the Spirit
of Sonship, " the son of man " is to be seen building up the
city of the sons of man, " as a city that is builded neighbourly
together," on the basis of the unity of God, and the unity of
Man in God.
If we regard Christ as keeping in constant view the City
of the New Jerusalem as the City of Unity, we shall better
understand — what may sometimes sound repellent to modern
readers — the extreme bitterness of His invective against the
Pharisees.
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The Pharisees, who called themselves " Chaberim," that is,
Neighbours, and who contrasted themselves with those whom
they contemptuously called " the People of the Earth," who
were not Neighbours, had probably begun with good
motives ; but they had ended by narrowing the precepts about
neighbourly duty to a select few who prided themselves on
ceremonial cleanness, and despised the rest of the nation, the
majority. Thus they were destroying the unity of the nation.
They had caused it to be no longer " as a city that is bound-
neighbourly in itself." And the more they proselytized in
that spirit, so much the more they swelled the numbers of
their own oligarchy, or clique, to the detriment of the true
brotherhood of Israel. In the eyes of Jesus, some of these
Chaberim would probably seem to be breaking down the
walls of the City of God, or even building up a City of
Satan.
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CHAPTER II
THE BUILDER
FROM the Building we pass to the Builder. No exclusive
stress must be laid on any one of the many Christian
metaphors that describe the Church as Christ's Bride or
Body, and Christ Himself as the Husband, the Cornerstone,
the Builder, or the Rock. Rather we must endeavour to fix
our thoughts on the radical thought that originated all these
metaphors. The Building appears to be an assembly of
human souls filled with the spirit of beneficent love — love of
the Father in heaven and of the brethren on earth. The
question for us is, Why should the Builder call himself " son
of man "?
We have connected the title with Ezekiel. But it is not
quite enough to say that Ezekiel, the only prophet that
described the measurement for the new temple, was also the
only prophet that was habitually called " son of man." That,
if given as the sole reason, would suggest that our Lord was
acting in an imitative spirit quite alien from His nature.
Still, we may regard Jesus as keeping in view the coincidence
between the two mentions of humanity in Ezekiel, when God
first revealed Himself to the prophet as "the appearance of a
man " in heaven, and then addressed the prophet as being, so
to speak, akin to Himself, " son of man " on earth A second
coincidence, though not of verbal exactness, is subsequently
recorded when Ezekiel says, " A man (vir) stood by me " — the
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Supernatural Measurer — " and he said unto me, ' Son of man
(hominis), this is the place of my throne.' "
A more fundamental reason, however, seems to be implied
in the opening of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which describes
how God having revealed Himself partially in the prophets
spoke at last completely in a Son, who, though Man, was
superior to angels. Concerning this Son (says the Epistle)
the Psalmist wrote "What is man that thou art mindful of
him and the son of man that thou visitest him?" It is to
Him, and not to angels, that the world to come is to be
"subjected" as the Psalmist predicts ("thou didst put all
things in subjection under his feet").
After the writer of the Epistle has thus connected the
incarnate Son with " the son of man " in the eighth Psalm, he
goes on to explain the reason for the incarnation thus : " It
became him for whom are all things... in bringing many sons
unto glory, to make the chief-and-leader of their salvation
perfect through sufferings ; for both he that sanctifieth and
they that are sanctified are all of one ; for which cause he is
not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy
name among my brethren... and again, Behold, I and the
children that God hath given me. Since then the children are
sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner
partook of the same... for verily not of angels doth he take
hold [to save them] but of the seed of Abraham " — where, by
" the seed of Abraham," the writer seems to mean the elect
among " the nations of the earth," who are to be " blessed " in
Abraham, according to the promise in Genesis.
This passage seems to go to the root of Christ's doctrine.
It does not say " bringing many to glory," or " bringing many
men to glory," but " bringing many sons to glory " ; for it is as
" sons," and by a spiritual sonship, that men must be brought
to God. This explains the double fitness of the title "son
of man." It was better than " man," because it implied that
the bearer of the title had a filial duty to perform for " man."
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It was better, for the present, than "Son of God," because
" son of man " laid stress on His human co-partnership with
those whom He "was not ashamed to call brethren." Both
He and they were " all of one," that is, all sons of God. But
the present need was that He should be loved and followed
as the true " son of man," as " chief-and-leader " of the sons
of man, able to build His brethren into the Temple of the
redeemed, who are converted from sons of man into perfected
sons of God.
Such a " chief-and-leader " of the sons of man, not ashamed
to call them brethren, might carry his fellow-soldiers with
him in a way impossible for any angel. Placing himself at
their head, he might make them feel that they are his limbs,
his body. Or he might be said to draw his followers into
himself, or to breathe his spirit into them. Whatever metaphor
we may choose to express the deed, the doer makes them one
with himself. Then, being himself Son of God, and one with
God, such a son of man draws the other sons of man into
unity with his Father and their Father in heaven. Such
appears to be the argument of the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews. And it seems to be in conformity with Christ's
doctrine and with our own experience of the links between
human beings. It is expressed in the fourth gospel by the
words " I ascend unto my Father and your Father," that is to
say, " unto my Father, whom, through me, you have been led
to recognise as your Father."
The Epistle and the Psalm, taken together, help us to
understand how natural it may have been for Jesus — even
after He had been proclaimed " Son of God " from heaven —
to put aside that title when given to Him by others, and to
insist on calling Himself " man " or " son of man.'' To the
Tempter's " If thou be the Son of God," He is said to have
replied with a text about the duty of " man " — or in Aramaic,
"son of man." In Mark and Luke when the "devils" call
Him "the Holy One of God," or "the Son of God," He
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rebukes them. In the fourth gospel, to Nathanael's "Thou
art the Son of God" He replies that Nathanael shall see
" greater things '' than those that have caused this outburst of
confession, "Ye shall see the angels of God ascending and
descending on the son of man." To be " son of man " as Christ
conceived it, was to be greater than Son of God as Nathanael
conceived it.
There is also another point of view from which we may
find a fitness in the appellation " son of man " for the Builder
of the Temple. For in Hebrew there is a connection, not
found in English, between the thought of building up a
temple and building up a family. Rachel, when childless,
hopes to be " built up " with children. The Lord promises to
" build a sure house " for David, that is, to continue a succession
of his children. The Jews themselves applied to David, as the
youngest son of Jesse, the words of the Psalmist, which Jesus
apparently quotes about Himself, " The stone that the builders
rejected...." Jesus is said by Matthew to have spoken about
building a Church ; and this — if it was to fulfil the prediction
of Isaiah quoted by our Lord Himself as Mark reports it —
was to be a house of prayer " for all the nations," not for Jews
only but for all the sons of man. When therefore He took
on Himself the task of building this New Temple, on a larger
scale and with an ampler purpose than that which David had
in view, it might well follow that, not "son of David," but
"son of Adam or Man," was a more fitting title for the
Builder.
Returning for a moment to the Epistle to the Hebrews,
we may venture to think that perhaps it was hardly adequate
to say of the Son's relation to mankind, as the writer says,
"He was not ashamed to call them brethren." So far as men
contained the image of the Father according to which the
first man, Adam, was made, so far He was bound to " honour
all men " as the Petrine Epistle says.
We have seen above that whereas our English version of
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Ezekiel represents the prophet as habitually called "son of
adam " in the sense " son of man," the Aramaic Targum retains
the Hebrew "adam" apparently meaning the Patriarch, so
that the prophet is called, in the Aramaic, "son of Adam."
If Jesus used the title in that sense, then He might imply that
He undertook the duty of a descendant towards an ancestor,
as well as towards ideal humanity. He, as the second Adam,
was also son of the first Adam, bearing, and undoing, the
curse that had fallen on His progenitor.
85
CHAPTER III
BUILDING ON THE ROCK
Matthew, at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount,
and Luke in his parallel version, imply that Jesus bade His
disciples build upon the Rock. According to Matthew, He
also played on the word Rock, Petra, in connection with His
question "Who say men that the son of man is?" Peter,
when the question was put to the disciples, replied " Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God." On this Jesus said,
" Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in
heaven... .Thou art petros (i.e. rock-stone) and on this petra
(rock) will I build my Church."
What is the connection between recognising "the son of
man '' and being a " rock " or " rock -stone "? A Jewish tradi-
tion may help us to an answer. It likens the Creator to a
king, desirous of building, but unable to find a firm foundation,
until at last he discovered a petra beneath the swamp ; even
so God passed over the preceding generations as unsound till
He saw Abraham, and said, " I have found a petra!' The
tradition continues, " Therefore He called Abraham ' rock,' as
it is said (Is. li. i) ' Look unto the rock whence ye were hewn,'
and He called Israel ' rocks.'"
We shall best understand this use of Rock if we regard
it as applied in the Psalms to God, the Rock of our Salvation,
as being our steadfast standing-place, amid the deep waters
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and the mire of perplexity and trouble ; or as being our rocky
refuge and fortress protecting us from enemies.
But we must not put entirely aside the use of the term in
Jewish tradition, to signify the Rock from which Israel was
supplied with water, concerning which Paul says " They drank
of a Spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was
Christ." It occurs frequently in the Song of Moses where the
title is introduced absolutely thus, "The Rock, his work is
perfect."
In this last sentence the word for "perfect" is the same
as that in the precept to Abraham " Walk before me and be
thou perfect"; and the two sentences suggest that, although
" Rock " does not occur in the revelation to Abraham, yet the
above-quoted Jewish tradition — about the "rock" and the
"swamp" — was right in connecting the Patriarch with the
thought of the Rock and with the building of the Church of
Israel. Abraham was not himself the Rock of Salvation.
But he was the first (in Hebrew tradition) to receive into
himself that Rock, and to be made one with it. The Rock
was God, revealed as unchangeable Kindness, or, as Scripture
calls it, "kindness and truth," that is, kindness, not only in
word, but also in deeds making words good.
It may seem a strange metaphor — "to receive a Rock."
But it is impossible to express the versatile Hebrew con-
ceptions of God without strange, and sometimes conflicting,
metaphors. Origen seems to imply the thought of " receiving
the Rock " when he says that " all the imitators of Christ
become a Rock even as He is a Rock," and he speaks of " a
Peter " or " a rock-stone," as a generic term for anyone that
has " made room for the building up of the Church in himself
from the Word." Using another metaphor, the epistle of
Peter speaks of Jesus as " a living stone," to whom we are to
come " as living stones " and to be " built up," as " a spiritual
house." Then, passing into literal statement, the writer adds
" to be a holy priesthood."
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The same passage implies that these " living stones " are
" babes " feeding on " milk " — " As newborn babes, long for the
spiritual milk...\i ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, to
whom coming, a living stone.. "\ But this astonishing tran-
sition becomes less astonishing when we remember that the
Stone or Rock gave " water " and " honey " and " oil " to
Israel. And Philo, commenting on this food-producing Rock,
says that it is " the Wisdom of God, who (fern.) is the Nurse
and Foster Mother and Rearer of those who seek after life
incorruptible." Thus the metaphor of the Rock runs into the
metaphor of the Nursing Father.
In Christ's doctrine, we cannot doubt that "the Rock"
implied "steadfastness in beneficence," that is, "truthfulness
in kindness." These two words, "kindness and truth," were
words that would "never pass away," remaining an eternal
revelation of God the All-Sufficing. This revelation had been
given to Abraham, who, as the fourth gospel says, " saw " the
"day" of Christ. It was also impressed on the minds of
many of Abraham's descendants through the faith of their
ancestor, and through that of his lineal and spiritual repre-
sentatives, the heroes of Israel.
But it was intended to be impressed deeper and deeper,
and not merely by a vision of " the day " of " the son of man "
but by " the son of man " Himself, when recognised, as by Peter,
to be " the Son of the living God." This explains why Jesus
closes the Sermon on the Mount with the parable of the
Rock. He had bidden the disciples become " perfect," as
Abraham the faithful had been commanded to become " per-
fect." Now He reminds them of the Rock, who was not only
kind in word but also " true " to His word in deeds, and He
bids them build upon that Rock, whose " work " is " perfect,''
by "doing," as well as "hearing," His commandments.
In the Psalms it is written, " When the earth and all the
inhabitants thereof are dissolved, I have set up the pillars
of it." The " I " is explained by Jewish tradition as being
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"Israel," setting up the pillars at Sinai when the nation bound
itself to observe the Law. The second sentence of the Sayings
of the Jewish Fathers — one of great antiquity even if not of
the antiquity usually assigned to it — says that the Universe is
stayed on the Law, the Worship, and the bestowal of Kind-
nesses. The doctrine of Jesus is that the Universe is stayed
on the Love of God brought home to the hearts of the sons
of man so as to make them one with God; and His action was
to impart this love to the sons of man by inducing them first
to love and trust and draw near to Him, as " son of man," so
that they might be thereby unconsciously led into the nature
of the Son of God, and be drawn upwards in the glory of the
Son to the glory of the Father.
How then, in brief, can we define the Rock on which
Christ built and bade us build ? Was it really anything more
than a profound belief in the humanity of God ? Yes, because
mere humanity is compatible with a weakness of intellect and
deficiency of power that would be incompatible with what we
feel to be a fit human representation of divine nature.
But what more ? An indefinable " more." We cannot define
any person. Least of all persons can Christ be defined.
What was it in Christ that called forth from Peter his
passionate outburst of conviction ? How far was the apostle
moved by the moral and spiritual beauty of Christ's teaching?
How far by His marvellous acts of faith healing? How far
by fulfilment of prophecy? How far by His direct pronounce-
ments of forgiveness of sin? How far by His direct influence
resulting in a sense of forgiveness ? We cannot say.
We must confess that Peter could probably have given no
better account of the reasons that induced him to hail " the
son of man " as " the Son of the living God " than that which
he gives in the fourth gospel, " Thou hast words of eternal
life." We are obliged — as so often — to mix our metaphors,
and to say " It was not really the Rock, but the water from
the spiritual Rock that flowed into the hearts of Peter and
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the rest, and forced them by inmost experience to confess that
this 'son of man' gave them a new sense of being sons of God,
so that in Him they felt themselves drawn near to the Father
in heaven." But in saying this, we are passing from the Rock
of protection to the Rock of nourishment in the Pauline
Epistles. In effect, we are saying, "They drank of a Spiritual
Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ."
90
CHAPTER IV
BUILDING WITH AUTHORITY
We have been led to the conception of Jesus as a Builder
of a Temple on a Rock. The Temple is the spiritual house
of His Father in heaven and consists of human souls. The
Rock may be variously regarded as the Father, or as the Son
through whom the Father is revealed, or as man's faith in the
Father through the Son. And the Son works under the title
of " son of man " on earth to reveal to the sons of man their
Father in heaven. We have now to consider the art of build-
ing, the means by which the Builder proposed to effect the
work, and how this art and these means harmonized with His
self-adopted title, " son of man."
" Builders of Jerusalem " was a name given by Jewish
tradition to the Council of the Sanhedrin. It seems to imply
authority of some kind. Jeremiah receives a commission to
prophesy in the words, " See, I have set thee over the nations
and kingdoms to pluck up and break down.. Jo build and to
plant." This, too, implies authority. In considering Jesus as
one " building " with " authority," it may be of use to compare
the Talmudic ideal of the " Builders of Jerusalem " with the
prophetic ideal of " building " as indicated by Jeremiah, and
to compare both with the "building" contemplated by our
Lord.
The former, the Talmudic ideal, is indicated by the Sayings
of the Jewish Fathers. The Book opens as follows : " Moses
received [the] Law from Sinai and delivered it to Joshua, and
Joshua to Elders, and Elders to Prophets, and Prophets
a. m. 91 8
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delivered it to the Men of the Great Synagogue. They said
three things (lit. words), ' Be [ye] deliberate in decision,' and
' Raise up (lit. cause to stand) many disciples,' and ' Make a
fence for [? the] Law.' " Then follows this saying, " Simon the
Righteous was of the remnants of the Great Synagogue. He
used to say, ' On three things (lit. words) the world is made to
stand, on the Law, and on the Service [in the Temple], and
on the bestowal of Kindnesses.' "
In this Talmudic view, the Building is first regarded as
the Law, round which a " fence " must be made, so that no
one may come near to the sacred structure, much less violate
it. The second saying points to the structure of " the world "
as based on three pillars, of which the Law is one, but "the
bestowal of kindnesses " is another.
The third saying indicates both the wrong motive and the
right motive for obedience to the Law. " Antigonus of Soko
received from Simon the Righteous. He used to say, 'Be not
as servants that minister to the Master with a view to receive
recompense ; but be as servants that minister to the Master
without a view to receive recompense ; and let the fear of
Heaven be upon you.' " It may seem somewhat strange that
" fear," not " love," should be enjoined as the motive. But it
must be remembered that the " fear " of the Lord means such
a reverence for God's goodness as is compatible with perfect
joy, as in the saying " the fear of the Lord maketh a merry
heart."
The thirteenth of the Sayings of the Fathers brings us to
Hillel and the times of our Lord's childhood, " Hillel and
Shammai received from them [i.e. from their predecessors].
Hillel said, ' Be of the disciples of Aaron ; loving peace and
pursuing peace ; loving [all] creation, and bringing them nigh
to the Law.' "
This phrase " loving all creation," especially when read in
the light of the anecdotes about Hillel, indicates that kind of
feeling which we sometimes regard as peculiarly Christian and
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as absent from all the Pharisees. It goes well with the saying
assigned to Simon the Righteous, that the world is in part
" based on the bestowal of kindnesses " ; but Hillel has over
Simon this advantage that he takes the word " love/' which
belongs to the Great Commandment of the Law, and widens
it so as to include not only " neighbours," but '' creation."
Unhappily this saying of Hillel's does not appear to have
been developed or taken up by his successors. Nothing like
it appears in the sequel of the Sayings, where the last saying
in the first book runs thus, "On three things the world stands ;
on Judgment, and on Truth, and on Peace.'' Jesus may well
have known Hillel's saying, and may be tacitly insisting on it
in the Parable of the Good Samaritan ; but the Pharisees
of His day seem to have fallen far below that standard. On
the whole, it is not unfair to the Pharisees after Hillel to say
that they did not, most of them, build up a spiritual life in the
hearts of their pupils. What they built up was a fabric of
rules upon rules, cautions upon cautions, for the most part
affecting nothing but external conduct.
This scribal "building" of the Talmudists, a building up
of rules, contrasts with the alleged prophetic " building " and
" casting down " of nations and kingdoms apparently contem-
plated by Jeremiah. But the scribal "building" was at all
events a fact. Was the prophetic " building " a fact ? Origen
says, bluntly, No. " Jeremiah," he declares, " did not do these
things." He refers the words to Christ, giving them a spiritual
meaning, that is, building up the Church and casting down
the strongholds of Satan. Jerome dissents. He says that
" many " take Jeremiah's words as uttered in the character of
Christ, but that they must really have been uttered in the
character of Jeremiah, who (he says) elsewhere assumes equal
authority, describing himself as receiving from the Lord a cup,
which he makes the nations to drink. Jerome appears to be
right. It is, of course, Jehovah, not Jeremiah, that casts down
and builds up. But the prophet has, from the first, identified his
93 8—2
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own word with the action of the " hand " of the Lord (" Then
the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth "). This
extraordinary identification of words with deeds is facilitated
by the double meaning of the Hebrew noun, which signifies
both " word " and " deed."
Passing to our Lord's action, we find that it implied a
" casting down " as well as a " building up." For a " casting
down of kingdoms " in a spiritual sense, means a " casting
down of the strongholds of Satan," or a shaking off of the
yoke of sin. This is implied in a sinner's repentance ; and,
according to Mark, Christ's first command was "repent."
" Believe in the gospel " comes second.
The same evangelist's comment on Christ's first teaching
was that "he taught with authority and not as the scribes";
and the comment of the multitude is, "What is this? A
new teaching ! With authority he commandeth even the
unclean spirits and they obey him." Jesus Himself, according
to the Synoptists, implies that this casting out of evil spirits
is an attack on the Kingdom of Evil, and that He is the
" stronger" man entering into the house of the " strong" man,
Satan. John describes Him as exclaiming " Now shall the
prince of this world be cast out." According to Luke, when
Jesus heard of the casting out of evil spirits by the Seventy,.
He declared that He beheld Satan " fallen from heaven " ;
and the first lesson of Scripture that He read in the synagogue
contained the words " to set at liberty them that are bruised,"
which implies that captives were to be freed. There was to
be actual " liberty," actual " release," not mere proclamation of
future " release." Before a new Israel could be built up, the
powers of captivity must be cast down by the weapons of
spiritual warfare described by Paul as " mighty before God to
the casting down of strongholds."
It appears, then, that Jeremiah and Jesus both have king-
doms in view; and both are conscious that their words are
God's words and are, in fact, deeds, because the words on
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earth announce decrees (amounting to accomplishments) in
heaven. But Jeremiah mainly contemplates the visible
enemies of Israel, the visible Babylon, and the visible return
from captivity to a visible Jerusalem. Jesus sees all these
things invisibly : — Satan, and the kingdom of Satan, and the
invisible building of a New Jerusalem.
Another difference, and an immense one, is, that whereas
Jeremiah's " casting down " and " building up " were not to be
accomplished till many years had elapsed, some of the corre-
sponding acts of Jesus were accomplished simultaneously with
the utterance of the words. Jesus spoke, and Satan was cast
out, leaving an insane man henceforth sane, or a daughter of
Abraham, bound by Satan for eighteen years, henceforth free.
Many, very many, are the acts of miraculous power over
non-human nature in the Old Testament ; but few, very few
indeed, are the miraculous acts of healing, and there is some-
thing appropriate in their falling (in the New Testament) to
the lot of one who called Himself " the son of man," being the
realisation of the " man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."
Concerning Him Isaiah says, " He hath borne our griefs and
carried our sorrows," or as Matthew says, " Himself took our
infirmities and bare our diseases." Isaiah also mysteriously
says that He was to be conspicuous among mankind for
the " marring " of His " visage " : " His visage was so marred
more than any man, and his form more than the sons of man''
In this respect, then, He was to be the " son of man."
It is nowhere written in the New Testament that " the son
of man has authority to bear griefs and carry sorrows," or to
" bear diseases " ; but it is implied in the above-mentioned
"first lesson" from Isaiah, "the Lord hath anointed me... to
bind up the broken-hearted." What a prophet is " anointed "
to do, he has " authority " to do. And if he receives, in effect,
authority to heal "the broken-hearted" among the sons of
man by "bearing" their " griefs," it seems fit that He should
emphasize His power of suffering what they suffer, by calling
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Himself one of themselves, " son of man." Moreover, Isaiah
implies that these "sorrows," or "diseases," include "iniquities."
In causing His Servant to suffer, the Lord " hath laid on him
the iniquity of us all."
Thus, from the prophetic mention of "anointing" a prophet
that he may heal " the broken-hearted," we are led to the
Synoptic mention of the " authority " claimed by Jesus— who
might on this occasion call Himself with special emphasis
" the son of man " because He felt Himself pre-eminent among
the sons of man in the power of sympathizing with repentant
sinners — to heal the soul by " forgiving." In the Acts of the
Apostles, Peter; when declaring that in every nation he that
feareth God and worketh righteousness is acceptable to Him,
describes " JesUs of Nazareth, how that God ahointed him with
the Holy Spirit and with power ; who went about doing good
and healing all that were oppressed by the devil ; for God was
with him." It is not clear whether the speaker refers to acts
of physical healing, or acts of spiritual healing, or acts of
exorcism. Probably he includes all these. And the passage
is instructive as suggesting how difficult or impossible it must
have been in some cases to distinguish one from the other.
Peter assumes that all these acts were performed by Jesus
because He was "anointed" for them and "God was with him."
We may add that He was not only "anointed" but also made
"son of man" for this purpose. If He had not been "son of
man," but angel or seraph or cherub or a non-human god, He
might, of course, have remitted punishment for sin, but He
could not (so far as we can see) have forgiven sin — in the true
Christian sense of the word "forgive" — because He would not
have known temptation to sin and would not have been able
to " bear " sin.
Going back to Jeremiah and the greater Hebrew prophets,
We perceive in them the rudiments of the authority given to
the Messiah. Jeremiah had authority, because his mouth had
been touched by " the hand " of the Lord, to pronounce the
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doom and casting down of empires of oppression and the
building up of the oppressed. Isaiah's lips had been touched
with fire, and he had been anointed with the Spirit, that he
might proclaim liberty to them that were bound. The
Spirit had " entered into" Ezekiel that he might prophesy the
gift of the new heart and the new spirit, and might measure
out the plan of the Temple for the City that was to be called
" The Lord is there." The last of these three great prophets
was expressly called " son of man." But neither to him nor
to any Hebrew prophet was it given to achieve that building
of the sons of man into a City at unity with itself for which
all the higher prophecies prepared the way.
On Jesus, the very fulness of the Spirit had descended,
and He had been proclaimed by a Voice from heaven, not
a prophet, but " my Son." Yet He preferred to call Himself
"son of man," and it was on the strength of this that He
claimed " authority " to build up and to cast down, because, as
" son of man," He could enter into the human heart and cast
out Satan from it, and not only pronounce, but also perform,
a forgiveness of sins, building up in the man a temple for God
of which it might be said, " The Lord is there."
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CHAPTER V
THE SERVANT, RANSOM, AND SACRIFICE
The processes of " casting down" and "building up," when
applied to the building of Christ's Church, have been found
to imply " healing " and " forgiveness of sins.'' " Healing "
and " forgiveness of sins '' imply a " bearing of diseases and
infirmities " on the part of the Healer and the Forgiver. He
spends Himself, and is spent, for the sake of the suffering and
the sinful. This is a painful service, to be performed for the
sons of man by no one but a son of man capable of human
suffering. In the Synoptists, Jesus says, "The son of man
came, not to be ministered unto but to minister."
But the work of Jesus could not consist simply in driving
out an evil spirit, nor in the mere forgiveness of past sin.
The Double Tradition of Matthew and Luke describes a man
out of whom an evil spirit was driven only to make room for
seven evil spirits worse than the first, because the man's heart
was left " empty." In the fourth gospel, Jesus says to a man
whom He has healed, "Sin no longer, lest a worse thing befall
thee." There was need not only to cast out an evil spirit but
also to infuse a good one.
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That Christ did infuse a good and powerful spirit into
many of His disciples will be admitted — in some form or
other — by all historical students. Very many may deny that
Jesus uttered the words " Receive ye the Holy Spirit." Some
may assert that " spirit " does not exist and therefore cannot
be " infused," or " inbreathed," or, in any way, imparted. But
even these last will not deny — what the Friar implies in
Shakespeare — that often, when a departed soul has not been
valued "to its worth," the "idea" of the misprized life "creeps
into the study of imagination " of the survivors, and comes to
them " more full of life " than ever, and " apparelled " with
increased power to mould them according to its will.
Call this, if you please, " influence," not " spirit." Still it
will remain a fact. Say that Moses " influenced " the seventy
elders, and that Elijah " influenced " Elisha. Or deny that
Moses and Elijah existed at all. Still it will remain certain
that Jesus believed in their " influence." Consequently it will
remain probable that He believed Himself to be capable of
exerting a similar " influence " — which amounts to saying, in
Hebrew or Aramaic, that He believed Himself able to impart
a portion of His Spirit to His disciples. The probability is
confirmed by the Transfiguration, even for those who regard
it as proving no more than the fact that Jesus, in a vision,
perceived the "influence'' of Moses and the "influence" of
Elijah. It is also confirmed by Christ's allusions to the
prophecies of Hosea and Isaiah, as well as by the full
expositions of the doctrine of the Spirit in the fourth gospel.
As for "sacrifice," the word is never used by Christ except
in the quotation "I will have kindness and not sacrifice." But
it has been pointed out that Christ's repeated prediction that
"the son of man" was to be "delivered up" meant, in fact,
that " the son of man " was to " make intercession " for the sins
of men in accordance with Isaiah's prophecy of the Suffering
Servant. And in these predictions, the title " son of man," or
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" son of Adam " — in the sense of a mortal born to suffering —
was appropriate to the humiliations and sufferings mentioned
both in the Synoptic and in the prophetic contexts —
particularly the context of Isaiah, which speaks of the sufferer
as destined to be conspicuous among " the sons of man " for
his aspect of humiliation.
That Jesus uttered some predictions of this kind is not
discredited by John's omission of them. But that the
predictions were not precisely of the kind given by the
Synoptists is indicated by the Synoptic misunderstanding of
"delivered up," and confirmed by the fact that John substitutes
other predictions about the lifting up of "the son of man"
like the brazen serpent in the wilderness, and the giving of
the flesh and blood of " the son of man " for the life of the
world.
The conclusion that John knew the Synoptic predictions
but regarded them as inadequate expressions of Christ's
actual words is further confirmed by John's omission of the
prediction that " the son of man " would be " killed " or (as
Matthew alone has it) "crucified." The evidence points to
the conclusion that Jesus actually predicted neither "killing"
nor "crucifying" but only that He should be "smitten" —
which might or might not mean "smitten to death? Nor does
even this prediction appear to have been made till the execution
of John the Baptist, after which Jesus began to teach that the
same end that had befallen John might also befall Himself.
Luke says that Moses and Elijah (whom Jesus identifies with
the Baptist) conversed with Jesus about His approaching
death. From that time we may suppose that Jesus saw it to
be the Father's will that He, too, should be "smitten"
according to the prophecy of Zechariah about the *' smiting "
of " the shepherd," and that His sheep should be " scattered."
Mark and Matthew agree that Jesus applied to Himself
this prophecy of Zechariah, and it agreed with the words in
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Isaiah about the Servant " we esteemed him stricken, smitten
of God, afflicted." Hosea, also, says " He hath smitten and
he will bind us up ; after two days will he cause us to live ;
on the third day he will raise us up and we shall live
before him." But in none of these prophecies does "smitten"
necessarily mean "smitten to death? It might mean "smitten
almost to death " or " brought down to the verge of death."
It would seem that the Synoptists identified Hosea's pre-
dictions about being "smitten and raised up on the third day"
with Christ's predictions about being " killed and raised up on
the third day," interpreting "smitten " as "killed." The Hebrew
"smite" sometimes undeniably has that meaning. They were
therefore within their right in so interpreting it. But this
interpretation makes it difficult to understand Christ's prayer
in Gethsemane (supposing it to have been correctly reported)
that the cup might " pass " from Him. The prayer suggests
an ignorance of the moment and manner in which the Father
would intervene in behalf of His Son, as He was declared in
the Scripture to have intervened for Isaac and for Jonah.
This is quite consistent with an absolute certainty that the
Father would at some time and in some way intervene.
If we suppose that Jesus knew He was to be " smitten," but
did not know whether He was to be " smitten to death '' ; if He
knew that He was to be " raised up in two days," or " on the
third day," but did not know more precisely the length of the
interval indicated by the Hebrew idiom, except that it meant
" a little while " — then, while we can understand, as perfectly
honest, the Synoptic erroneous rendering " shall be killed " for
" shall be smitten," we can also understand why John refused
to repeat — and yet would not obtrusively correct — what he
judged to be an error.
As to " sacrifice," then, the fact appears to be that although
the Synoptists are right from a verbal and Greek point of
view in attributing to Christ a prediction (" shall be delivered
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up ") based on the language of the Septuagint, they have not
expressed the spiritual essence of Christ's meaning. This John
has indirectly expressed in other ways, as, for example, when
he describes " the son of man " as giving His flesh and blood
"for the life of the world," and "the Good Shepherd" as
"laying down his life for the sheep."
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CHAPTER VI
THE CONQUEROR
The Synoptists all agree in making Christ's predictions of
the Passion terminate with the prediction that He would arise
or be raised up on the third day, or, after three days. But
they do not, in their contexts, indicate what was to happen
next.
Was He to live on, in the flesh and on earth, for some
days, months, or years, and then, after all, to die? Or was
He to live on earth for a time, either in the flesh or in
some semblance of the flesh, and then ascend to heaven ? Or
was He to ascend at once on the third day, or after three
days? Elsewhere the Synoptists state that men would see
the Messiah " coming " on clouds, or at all events in some
manner of " coming " connected with clouds. Was that
" coming " to be " on the third day " ? Apparently not. Then,
if not, what was to happen meanwhile ? This the Synoptists
do not say.
The historical fact appears to be that they did not say,
because Jesus did not say. On the other hand, if Jesus, as
we have reason to believe, followed the prophecies of Isaiah
and Hosea, He implied a great deal more than the Synoptists
either imply or express.
For, if the Synoptic " shall be delivered ttp " corresponded to
Isaiah's "shall make intercession" then what Jesus actually
said implied something of an intercessional character which
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would extend to the context, including the act of "rising
again " or " being raised up." When we speak of Christ's
" intercession," we generally think of Him as being at the
right hand of God, or in the immediate presence of God.
Hosea, too, after the words " on the third day he will raise
us up," adds " we shall live before him" that is, in the presence
of God. This, if interpreted materialistically or locally, might
be taken to mean before, or near, the throne of God; if
spiritually, it would mean that Jesus would continue to work
in a new spiritual sphere that might be described as the
immediate presence of God. This would imply, not merely a
renewed life after death, but a higher life — a life that, so far
from being destroyed, had been strengthened by death. Thus
the Messiah would indeed, as Isaiah says, "divide the spoil
with the strong because he poured out his soul unto death."
In a word, He would be Death's Conqueror. He would be,
in truth, "lifted up."
All this is missing in the Synoptists. If indeed we could
assert that any one of them described an Ascension, we could
call that an attempt to supply the defect. But it is not
described except in the Mark-Appendix, and in a corrupt
version of Luke. The latter, when compared with the Acts
and with passages in Mark and Matthew, suggests that the
earliest evangelists had some difficulty in explaining what
immediately followed Christ's Resurrection, and when, and
how, He ascended to heaven. The correct text of Luke
probably says no more than that Jesus, after blessing the
disciples, " was separated from them."
This expression naturally caused great difficulty. It was
all the greater because the Greek word, a rare one in the
LXX, would probably be most familiar to Greek-speaking
Christians in a proverb about "separating friends," and the
natural meaning of the word is " make a breach between."
No one can be surprised that so difficult a reading was para-
phrased, or supplemented, so as to soften away its harshness.
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But these various corruptions only bring out more clearly the
fact that Luke's gospel described not an ascension but a
separation.
John insists, in many passages, on the ascension of " the
son of man," sometimes as being a " lifting up " in triumph,
sometimes as being an " ascending " of the Son to the Father,
or to " the place where he was before." The first Johannine
mention of "the son of man" is connected with angels as-
cending and descending. Later on, comes a statement that
" the son of man " is to be " lifted up " like the brazen serpent.
The last mention of " the son of man '' is in connection with a
" lifting up " which is to draw all men to Jesus. In His own
person, Jesus generally speaks (in the fourth gospel) of "going,"
or "going home," to the Father, and He assures the disciples
that when He thus goes to the Father He will not leave them
"orphans" but will come to them, and send another self to
them, and abide in them, and they in Him. His message, on
the morning of the Resurrection, sent through Mary to the
disciples, is " I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my
God and your God."
The Ascension, according to the fourth gospel, would seem
to have taken place after Christ's appearance to Mary, when
He said, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to the
Father," and before the appearance to Thomas, when He
offered Himself to be touched, and probably also before His
appearance to the ten disciples. There is no account of the
Ascension in the fourth gospel as there is in the Acts of the
Apostles ; but the result of it is the same as in the Acts, the
gift of the Spirit.
This Johannine Ascension to heaven, followed by descent
to earth with the gift of the Spirit to comfort and strengthen
the sorrowing disciples, constitutes a genuine conquest of
death, quite different from being merely raised from the dead.
As Jesus uses the past tense (" Now hath the son of man been
glorified (or, was glorified)") concerning the future Passion, so
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He uses the past to indicate the future conquest : " Be of good
cheer, I have conquered the world." The only other use of
"conquer" in the gospels is in Luke's description of the
" strong man " conquered by the " stronger " who enters into
his house and takes from him his armour. The " strong man "
is " the world," or " the prince of this world." An application
of this to the Passion might teach that Jesus, entering into the
House of Death, and suffering death, thereby conquered and
bound Death, while at the same time, in a sense, " ransoming "
Death's prisoners.
This suggests an answer to the question, " What intervened
between Christ's resurrection and ascension ?" The first epistle
of Peter appears to reply that He " preached unto the spirits
in prison." Origen challenges " the opinions of most writers "
upon one aspect of this question, and the gospels indicate an
early silence or difference of opinion about it. The fourth
gospel gives us no clue to the Lord's doings in the interval
between His manifestations. Nor does it at this stage mention
" the son of man."
But it suggests a reason why the title is to be henceforth
dropped ; it also, like the epistle to the Hebrews, represents
Jesus as " not ashamed " to call by the name of " brethren "
those who have believed in Him as "son of man"; lastly, it
takes up the unique cry of Jesus, " my God " — omitted by
Luke, but assigned to Jesus by Mark and Matthew (" My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?") and represents
Jesus as using the words in a phrase of reassurance: " Go unto
my brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and
your Father, and my God and your God."
This says, in effect, " My work, as son of man, is now
completed; I have brought you into the circle of my brethren,
sons of man like myself. Thereby I have drawn you into the
family of God, where God is revealed as Man, and yet as God,
revealed as Father through the Son, and yet also as the ONE
GOD who is in us and in whom we are."
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The complement of this tradition, in which Jesus appears
to say " I am not God," is the confession of Thomas, " My
Lord, and my God!' That these exact words were uttered by
Thomas in the exact circumstances described by the fourth
gospel may not unreasonably be doubted ; and yet a doubter
may reasonably believe that the gospel accurately describes
the way in which " the son of man," ascending to heaven, led
His disciples to say "Whom have we in heaven but thee?"
and thus constrained them to worship Him as One with the
Father, — and all the more, not the less, because He " counted
it not a prize to be on an equality with God."
A. M. 107
CHAPTER VII
THE JUDGE AND THE PARACLETE
All the evangelists agree that after the Resurrection there
was to be some kind of " coming,'' or " coming again," both to
the world and to the disciples, on the part of " the son of man "
or "the Son." But the Synoptists lay stress on the public
" coming " of " the son of man " with " power " or with
"clouds,'' in such a way as to imply the judgment prophesied
by Daniel ; John lays stress on the private return of Jesus to
the disciples individually as well as collectively, no longer as
"son of man," but as "another self" called Paraclete, that is,
a " friend called in to aid in an emergency " — which we may
paraphrase as " a friend in need." John does not exclude the
public " coming,'' nor the Synoptists the private one ; but they
differ in the aspect of the two subjects as well as in the
emphasis laid on them.
John assuredly did not deny that the Lord would come
" with power " — in a sense. But he did deny it in the sense in
which " power " is mostly used by men of the world, to denote
mechanical or military or political " power," or brute force.
And so common is this sense that John abstains altogether
from the use of the word. " Power," or " mighty-work," in the
Synoptists, is applied to Christ's miracles. John must have
known this. Nor would he deny that the miracles were
" powers." But he felt perhaps that they were signs of some-
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thing more than power, signs of something that could not be
exactly denned either as Power or as Wisdom or as Goodness,
being a Personality that was indefinable. At all events he
calls them " signs."
Similarly as to the Lord's " coming in power," he gives us
the essence of the word instead of the word itself. Perhaps
he thought of Zechariah's antithesis, in the building of the
New Temple, "Not by power (R.V. might), but by my
spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." The prophet might have
written, " Not by man's power, but by my power, which is the
power of the spirit" and the Pauline epistles repeatedly exhibit
this thought of the connection between " spirit " and "power."
That the Son will come '" with power " is implied by all that
is said in the fourth gospel about the Spirit and about the
"greater works" that the disciples will do with the Spirit's
help.
But what is there, if anything, in the Synoptic gospels,
and what in historical fact, to correspond to the full Johannine
doctrine about the twofold office of the Spirit, whom John
calls the Advocate or Paraclete, who is to be the Teacher of
the disciples and the Convincer, or Convictor, of the world ?
In the Synoptists, there appears at first sight to be
nothing, except one brief passage variously reported by the
three. It contains a promise that, when the disciples are
brought to trial before kings and rulers, they shall be inspired
(or, according to Luke, " taught " what to say) by " the Holy
Spirit," or "the Spirit of" their "Father." This promise is
placed in all the three gospels immediately after a precept
not to be " anxious beforehand " (or " anxious ") what they
should say in their defence when arraigned as Christians. It
therefore suggests the thought of an Advocate. But two
small points in Mark or Matthew are omitted in the parallel
Luke — ist, that the divine speaker is (Matthew) "in" the
disciples, 2nd, that He is distinct from them (Mark and
Matthew "not ye").
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It is true that Luke supplements this in a passage
peculiar to himself contained in his version of the Discourse
on the Last Days: — "Settle it therefore in your minds not to
practise beforehand [your] defending yourselves; for I will give
you a mouth and wisdom that all your adversaries shall not
be able to withstand or gainsay." This partly supplies the
defect. For the " mouth " and the " wisdom " must be in the
disciples. But it is at some sacrifice. For the personality of
the Advocate is gone. The result is that, in one of Luke's
traditions, the Holy Spirit is mentioned as an external teacher;
in the other, as no Spirit at all, nothing but organs or faculties
in the disciples.
John intervenes, in language that requires close study to
appreciate its significance. First, he draws out the meaning
of " not ye!' It means, in effect, " not ye but another, a heavenly
Helper? This use of "Another" to indicate reverentially a
divine Helper, is very frequent in Epictetus. John uses it
thus here. Then he expresses the thought of Advocate by
using the word Paraclete, which means Advocate and some-
thing more — " a friend called in to aid." Then he describes
the nature and office of the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth,
which is to guide the disciples into truth and also to convict
or convince the world. While thus defining the office of the
Spirit along with that of the Father and the Son, he meets
the question suggested by Luke's traditions, namely, "Does
Jesus give this ' mouth,' or does the Spirit of the Father
speak in the disciples?" The answer is, in effect, that the
three Persons have all in common, so that what one gives, or
does, the others give or do.
Now comes the question whether all this Johannine doctrine
is a mere amplification and exposition of this one Synoptic
passage, or whether it is an attempt to give the substance of
a great mass of doctrine actually uttered by Christ, but
nowhere expressed by Mark except in this somewhat narrow
promise of a special Advocate to Christians on their trial
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before rulers. That the latter view is more probable will
appear from the following considerations.
In the prophets, and in the contexts of passages either
quoted by Jesus or likely to be most in His thoughts, God's
Spirit, Breath, or Word, is sometimes described as coming like
a breath of fire from His mouth and bringing destruction to
the evil or purifying away the evil from the good. Instead of
a flame, the metaphor of a dart, arrow, or sword, is some-
times employed, called in the Psalms a " two-edged " sword,
in such a way as to suggest the " two-edged sword " of the
Holy Spirit. This sword is mentioned in the Book of
Revelation and the Epistle to the Hebrews, where apparently
the epithet " two-edged " alludes to the Spirit's twofold work,
confirming the good in goodness, while convicting the bad of
badness that they may repent and be purified.
It will be observed that in Isaiah, although the Servant of
the Lord says "He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword"
yet afterwards, when the Lord Himself is described as coming,
His "breastplate" is mentioned, and His "helmet," but no
" sword." The reason seems to be that (as in the New
Testament) " the sword " is that of the " Spirit," or " Breath,"
and Isaiah expresses this in the words " he shall come as
a rushing stream, which the breath of the Lord driveth."
These identifications of " Spirit " with " fire '' and with
" sword " are of importance in comparing John's very various
and copious expositions of the nature and office of the
Spirit, with the comparative silence of Matthew and Luke —
who, however, indicate allusion to the subject in the Baptist's
doctrine about baptism with the Holy Spirit " and with fire,"
and in their tradition that Jesus said that He had not come
to send peace upon the earth but " a sword," where Luke has
" division," and where Luke's context adds " I have come to
send fire upon the earth."
The historical fact appears to be that Jesus actually used
these Hebrew metaphors about the twofold action of the
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Holy Spirit, and that they were disused in many churches
owing to their ambiguity. John nowhere speaks of " fire " in
connection with the mention (or the thought) of " spirit," nor
does he ever mention " sword " in a metaphorical sense. But
he compensates for this by enlarging on the twofold office
of the Spirit which appears to correspond in some respects
with Philo's description of " the flaming sword " of the Logos,
chastening in prosperity but encouraging in adversity, and
also with Philo's description of the conscience as Convictor.
Christ's doctrine about not sending peace but a sword
"on the earth" (Luke "in the earth") should probably be
studied in the light of the Pauline precept " mortify therefore
your members that are on the earth" that is, " kill the flesh so
far as it rebels against the Spirit." This is Origen's view, and
it throws light on the Synoptic precept about "losing" "one's
own soul," or " life,*" and on Luke's precept to " hate one's
own soul," to which John adds " in this world." All these
are ramifications of the radical doctrine that Christ's " peace "
is not the peace of this world : " My peace I give unto you,
not as the world giveth give I unto you." He does not desire
to give us any peace except that which is obtained by a
victory of the sword of the Spirit over the flesh.
These and other facts lead to the conclusion that Jesus
taught doctrine about the Holy Spirit much more frequently
than might be inferred from the Synoptists, but that He
expressed His thought with great variety of phrase. Some-
times He may have indicated the Spirit by "the Son of Man,"
or by " the Son," meaning the Spirit of Sonship toward God,
or the Spirit of humanity judging the evil and guiding the
good.
Take, for example, the startling saying of Jesus (in the
form reported by Matthew and Luke as distinct from Mark)
in the trial before the Sanhedrin, that "henceforth" they
should see " the son of man seated at the right hand of the
power," or " seated at the right hand of the power of God."
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It seems to imply that they had converted a gentle Messiah
who would gladly have befriended them, into a justly stern
Messiah, expectant at the right hand of God, before whom
they must "henceforth - ' stand as "enemies." At the very
moment when they were sentencing "the son of man" to
death on earth, " the son of man " was actually to be seen — if
only they had eyes to see — seated at the right hand of God,
waiting till His "enemies" should be made His "footstool."
The conception of " the son of man " as henceforth to be
replaced by another self, a Spirit of truth, who will convict
the world of judgment, agrees with another Johannine
passage where Jesus says, " If any man shall hear my words
and not keep [them], I (emph.) judge him not, for I came not
to judge the world but to save the world. He that continueth
rejecting me and not receiving my words, hath him that
judgeth him. The word that I spake — that shall judge him in
the last day." The meaning seems to be that those who,
under cover of obedience to the letter of a written Law,
persistently reject the claims of humanity and the considera-
tion of human motives, convert the revelation of the humane
God as the all-sufficing Spirit — the Spirit that imparts from
itself subsistence for all the myriads of humanity according
to their several needs, the Spirit that is ever present and yet
ever "coming," ever changing and yet ever the same — into
a past unalterable " word " (" the word that I spake "). This
will judge them, like the letter of that Law which they, the
Law-worshippers themselves, have converted into an idol.
What then is the fact — so far as we can infer it — about
Christ's doctrine of the Spirit, and what is the explanation of
the Synoptic and the Johannine treatment of it ?
The fact appears to be that Christ's doctrine, in essence,
was wholly about the Spirit. From the beginning, He taught
nothing that was not a teaching, and did nothing that was
not a doing, in the sphere (so to speak) of the Spirit. How
could it be otherwise ? John the Baptist had predicted that
"3
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
Jesus would " baptize with the Spirit." Jesus assumed this.
Matthew represents Jesus as also assuming that, whenever
He cast out a devil, He cast it out " with the Spirit of God "
— " If I with tlie Spirit of God cast out devils." Even those
who deny that Jesus did this must believe that Jesus believed
that He did it.
But the fact also appears to be that Jesus very rarely
mentioned the word " Spirit!' In the passage, for example,
just quoted, the parallel Luke, instead of " with the Spirit of
God," has, " with the finger of God!' And as to baptizing
with the Spirit, which (according to the Baptist) was to be
the work of Christ's life, it is impossible to find in the
Synoptists (apart from the Baptist's prediction) a single
passage that contains the precise phrase " baptize with the
Spirit." The thought indeed is expressed, but very diver-
gently, and often obscurely, in doctrine about " turning and
becoming as little children," or "receiving the kingdom of
God as little children " — or perhaps, sometimes, " receiving a
little child" in the name of Christ. Apart from the words
recently under consideration, where the Spirit was regarded
as an Advocate, the only passage in which Mark mentions the
Holy Spirit in Christ's doctrine is one in connection with
exorcism, where the sin against " the Holy Spirit " is distin-
guished from sin against " the Son of Man."
Our conclusion is that the omissions and obscurities in
Mark's gospel, on the subject of the Spirit, having been only
partially and inadequately remedied by isolated metaphorical
traditions in Matthew and Luke, induced John to try to set
forth a clear and systematic account of the thought that
consistently underlay our Lord's work of *' baptizing with the
Spirit" The exposition of this thought, beginning from the
Dialogue with Nicodemus — who is a type of the mind that
materialises metaphor — extends through the Dialogue with
the Samaritan woman, and is traceable in the Dialogue on the
Manna and in the public " cry " of Jesus about the Holy
114
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
Spirit which as yet " was not." It finds its climax in the
promise of the gift of the Paraclete, and in the fulfilment of
the promise after Christ's Resurrection. In all this doctrine
there are probably not six consecutive words that actually
issued from Christ's lips. And yet it contains much more of
Christ's thought than is to be found by modern readers in the
approximation to Christ's actual words that has been
probably preserved in Luke's strange phrase " I will give you
a mouth and wisdom!'
"5
CHAPTER VIII
THE EXORCIST AS DESCRIBED BY MARK
The passages just quoted about " the Spirit " — apparently
called by Luke " a mouth and wisdom " but by John " Para-
clete " or " Spirit of truth " who is to " guide " the disciples
" into all the truth '' — afford a convenient occasion for a
caution against underestimating the fourth gospel because, as
some might say, it has " a spiritual bias."
The charge is true, and its truth does, it must be confessed,
diminish the value of that gospel. But, as sometimes stated,
it is allowed to diminish the value of the fourth gospel too much
as compared with the three. For it is also true to say that
Mark (with Matthew and Luke so far as they follow Mark)
has " a non-spiritual bias." John while endeavouring to bend
the tradition back to the truth, sometimes bends it too far
back ; but he bends it in the right direction.
To justify this charge against Mark would be an easy
task. Mark begins, it is true, by saying, as all the evangelists
do, that the Spirit descended on Jesus. He also adds that
whereas the Baptist baptized with water, Jesus (according to
the Baptist's prediction) was to baptize with the Holy Spirit.
But there he practically stops, so far as concerns doctrine
about the Spirit. Mark's omissions of this subject are all the
more remarkable because of his insertions of other subjects.
In contrast with this insignificant place assigned to doctrine
116
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
about the Spirit, how large and disproportionate a space is
given to narratives, or discourses, about casting out unclean
spirits ! No doubt this disproportion represented a popular
view, which regarded Jesus mainly as an exorcist. But was
it the true view ? Must it not be confessed by all that Jesus
— whether Messiah or Dreamer — lived, taught, worked, and
died, in the belief that He possessed the Spirit in a peculiar
degree, or form, distinguishing Him from John the Baptist,
and from preceding Hebrew prophets ?
Again, another fact, not disputed by serious students of
history, consists of Christ's peculiar influence over disciples,
and over some that were not disciples — what some would call
in these days a magnetic power — not that the name would
explain anything — sometimes suddenly exerted, testifying to
a strong personality. One might guess this, perhaps, from
Mark's account of the call of Peter, in obedience to the
summons, " Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."
But the sequel in Mark weakens the impression that might
suggest such a guess. For the crowds are subsequently
represented as marvelling at Christ's "authority" in such
close connection with exorcism as to suggest that they marvel
simply because " he commandeth even the unclean spirits and
they obey him " ; and there is no word from Mark to correct,
or to suggest a correction of, the popular view. Nor after-
wards does Mark give us more than a few faint suggestions of
Christ's personal power.
To shew that Jesus had power over the spirits of maniacs
and lunatics, Mark affords reiterated evidence. That He had
power over the spirit of the storm to which He exclaimed
" Be silent ! Be thou muzzled !," Mark's narrative — if we could
accept it as prose history and not as poetic legend reduced to
prose — would also prove. But, that Jesus had a unique power
of impressing His personality on others besides lunatics, and,
through them, on a wider circle — on this fact Mark lays com-
paratively little stress. And yet on this fact Christianity, so
117
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
far as it has been a success, has been always based, and by
this fact the history of the world has been stupendously —
"guided," as Christians would say; or "modified," as non-
Christians would confess.
118
CHAPTER IX
THE PERSON AND THE SPIRIT AS DESCRIBED
BY JOHN
As regards both these fundamental facts, relating to the
Person and the Spirit, John gives us an account by far superior
to that of Mark, and, in the opinion of the present writer,
superior to that of any of the Synoptists, in its power to
explain the successes and the failures of Christianity, in
accordance with moral and historical experience.
John alone strikes the right note — right psychologically
at all events, whether he be right or not in his details — when
he describes the first two disciples as being converted to Jesus,
before a single sign or miracle had been wrought, because
"they came and saw where he abode, and abode with him
that day." Or rather he does not describe their conversion ;
he assumes it. And then he hastens on to describe how
Andrew "first" brought his brother to Jesus, and Jesus
" looked intently " on him, and said, in effect, that at present
Andrew's brother was only " Simon son of John," according
to the flesh, but that a time would come when he should be
"Cephas," "Peter," Stone.
Then, while still no miracle has been wrought, Philip is
commanded to "follow" Him. It is not said that Philip
follows. That, again, is assumed. But it is said that Philip
at once tries to convert Nathanael to "Jesus of Nazareth,
Joseph's son."
119
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
Nathanael objects — "Nazareth" (not "Joseph's son") being
a stumbling-block to him. Thereupon, to meet this objection
against Christ's claims — the first objection raised against them
in the history of the Christian Church, or rather, an objection
raised not against Christ's claims, but against the claims made
for Christ by a zealous disciple and based on Moses and the
Prophets — there is wrought for Nathanael a nondescript
wonder: "When thou wast under the fig-tree," says Jesus,
"I saw thee."
The evangelist does not include this wonder in his seven
" signs " or " miracles," and he represents Jesus as apparently
considering it a small thing relatively to the " greater things "
that Nathanael was afterwards to see. Supposing it to be
historically true, some would explain it as a specimen of
" thought-reading," not so remarkable as hundreds of instances
well attested in our days. But on reflection we must perceive
that it is not the mere coincidence of the seer's insight with
Nathanael's thought that takes Nathanael by storm ; it is (in
part at least) the kind of thought. If, for example, Nathanael
"under the fig-tree" had been looking up and numbering his
figs, and if Jesus had mentioned to him their precise number,
we feel sure that such a coincidence as that would not have
been represented (in such a work as the fourth gospel) as
eliciting the confession, " Thou art the Son of God."
What it was that Nathanael was revolving in his mind we
are not told. But reasons might be given for thinking that he
is to be regarded as passing through some temptation con-
nected with the mysteries of Providence, such as the Jews
believed to be suggested in that vision of Ezekiel about the
Beasts and the Man which they called the Chariot. If so,
Jesus may be supposed to have perceived by divine intuition
the nature of Nathanael's trial, and to have uttered the words
" I saw thee," with such a sympathetic force as to suggest
" My heart and soul were with thee to give thee strength." In
that case it becomes much easier to understand Nathanael's
120
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
cry " Thou art the Son of God " — addressed to Jesus, not as a
mere Seer of things hidden, but as a divine Helper.
According to this view, Jesus penetrated Nathanael's heart
and strengthened it against temptation because He Himself
was human, a " son of man," and knew what it was to be
tempted, while also knowing that " the son of man " lives on
everything that comes forth from the Father, and that angels
of God ascend and descend upon humanity when the human
spirit is in unity with God.
It is not necessary to urge the hypothesis that Jesus on
this occasion had in view the vision of Ezekiel and the human
controlling Power. Even without that, the context indicates
that the evangelist wishes to turn our thoughts from con-
ventional notions about God to spiritual thoughts about Man,
and to shew us that divine Man, so to speak, is greater than
human God.
Philip has appealed to personal experience, " Come and
see." Nathanael comes, sees, and is conquered — conquered, it
would seem, not by the evidence of thought-reading alone, but
by the strong power of the spirit of man on man, or, as it
might be expressed in Aramaic, of " son of man " on " son of
man." At all events, whereas Nathanael called his new Master
Son of God, the Master, in reply, bade him expect to see
higher revelations of divine truth than those which had called
forth from him the confession " Thou art the Son of God," if
only his eyes could discern "the heaven opened" and "the
angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man."
With the same tone of recognition of the force of the
personality and spirit of Jesus, the fourth gospel, later on,
describes even the servants of the chief priests as saying to
their masters " Never man so spake." And the reason given
by Peter for the impossibility of his departure from Jesus
is given in the exclamation "Lord, to whom shall we go?
Thou hast words of eternal life."
No doubt the Synoptists too, on one occasion, represent
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Jesus as attaching infinite importance to His own words : —
" Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall surely
not pass away." Nothing could well be stronger than this.
But the context gives the impression that the " words " do not
deal generally with eternal principles of right and wrong, but
contain a prediction relating to a special event, namely, the
destruction of Jerusalem, without any such general reference.
Taken thus, as referring to Jerusalem, this strong saying would
mean no more than that the prediction would " surely not pass
away" unfulfilled.
The fourth gospel is not liable to such a misinterpretation
of what Jesus said about His " words." It gives what appears
to be historically a more accurate impression, namely, that
whenever Jesus spoke thus about them, He meant " words of
eternal life," words creating a new spiritual standard ; words
that might raise up those who were willing to be helped by
them, but cast down those who were unwilling ; words " for
the fall and rising again of many," not " in Israel " alone but
in the whole of mankind ; such words as have had authority
to move empires because they have had authority to move
the mind of man, coming from "the son of man."
This Johannine recognition of the power of Person and
Spirit, as well as of Word, is in accordance with Hebrew
theology, which speaks of God as revealing Himself through
men to men as " the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,"
and which subsequently describes Moses as transmitting his
spirit to the elders, and Elijah as assenting (on certain con-
ditions) to the petition of Elisha that a twofold portion of the
prophetic spirit of the former should fall on the latter. It is
possible to accept the essence of the old Hebrew doctrine as
containing truth exemplified daily before our eyes, in the
influence exerted by good men and good women, without
accepting as literal all the metaphorical or materialistic ex-
pressions in which the truth has been enfolded in the Hebrew
Scriptures.
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
This doctrine of the power of Person and Spirit underlies
both the beginning and the end of the fourth gospel. There
is, so to speak, a personal relation in the divine Family above,
corresponding to a personal relation in a human family that
is to be established by Jesus below. In the Prologue, the
Logos above is said to have been in the beginning " towards "
God, an expression made more definite afterwards as "the
only begotten Son who is in (lit. to) the bosom of the Father."
Then the gospel proceeds to reveal this personality through
the pen of an unnamed evangelist whom we ultimately find to
be a disciple specially loved by Jesus, and described as " lying
in the bosom of Jesus." This disciple — it is mysteriously
hinted — may possibly " tarry " till the Lord shall come, as
though to represent Him on earth. And the book concludes
with a protest, as it were, against books, declaring that the
world could not find room for the books that might be con-
tinually written to set forth the acts of the Person whom this
very book has been attempting to describe.
Here for the first time we find a writer of a life of Christ
recognising that the Spirit of the life is beyond the power of
any writing to express. It is what Jesus calls, in the Johannine
Revelation, "a new name. ..which no one knowethbut he that
receiveth it " ; or it is " the name of my God, and the name of
the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which cometh down
out of heaven from my God, and mine own new name '' ; or,
as the Seer himself says concerning the Word of God, it is " a
name written which no one knoweth but he himself."
In these passages, the Johannine Revelation appears to
be attempting to convey a conception of the many-sided
nature of the Word, the Son — who is also the New Jerusalem,
and whose " body," as the gospel says, is the Temple — and at
the same time to express that only the Son Himself, and
those who are in the Son, know this " new name." For the
Name is not a collection of syllables used as an amulet or
charm. It implies a vital Thought of the nature of a Person
a.m. 123 10
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
exerting influence. That Person is the Son, and the Name
is, not the letters that make up the word "son," but the feeling
or spirit of sonship. The Son is only to be known in what
we may personify as the Spirit of Sonship, and, as Matthew
and Luke say, " no one knoweth the Father but the Son and
he to whom the Son willeth to reveal him."
Why does John represent Jesus as saying, directly, " I am
the way," " I am the light of the world," " I am the truth,"
" I am the life," and so on, but never as saying, directly,
" I am the Son '' ?
Perhaps the reason is that all the foregoing self-appella-
tions were merely titles, whereas " the Son " was His "proper
name!' Now we learn nothing from hearing " a proper name"
unless we know something about the person to whom the
name belongs. And the evangelist's conviction was that the
reason why Peter and his companions were led into the new
Spirit of Sonship and became partakers of the new Name,
was, that they had taken the person, the man, Jesus of
Nazareth, into their hearts, and felt Him to be enthroned
there as the representative, and Son, of God. If this was
indeed the view of the evangelist, it must be admitted to be
nearer to historical fact than anything that we can find clearly
described in the earliest of the Synoptic gospels. For thus it
was that the Church was founded in Galilee. And thus also,
by personal channels — the flame of the human and humanis-
ing Spirit passing from soul to soul — there has come down to
our days, along with a great mass of nominal or corrupt
Christianity, a true and lineal offspring of the Church
established on the Rock, that is, on the practical recognition
of God as our Father, loving us with that kind of love which
was first brought into the world by " the son of man."
124
CHAPTER X
POSTSCRIPT ON THE LIMITS OF THIS
INVESTIGATION
The inferences drawn from the evidence of which a
summary has been given in Part I of this work have been
limited — or at least it has been the author's desire to limit
them — to what might be reasonably inferred as historical
facts bearing on Christ's doctrine of " the son of man " and
on kindred subjects, such as " son," " man," " God," " man in
the image of God," " man becoming perfect like God," " man
becoming the child of God," " God the Nursing Father and
Redeemer," " man the little one or babe," " God giving to
man," and " man receiving from God."
Reviewing all the documentary data, and comparing the
inferences from them with what might be inferred a priori
from the antecedents and environment of a Jewish Messiah
in the first century, we have concluded that Jesus, as a fact,
possessed a power of communicating to men, on certain
occasions and conditions, a spiritual sense of relief from
sin, and a bodily relief from disease, which many would call a
divine power, and which He Himself regarded as an
"authority" corresponding to His visions or thoughts about
God and man.
These " visions or thoughts about God and man " we have
endeavoured to trace back to corresponding though but
125 10 — 2
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
rudimentary visions or thoughts recorded in the Old Testa-
ment. Our conclusion has been that Jesus saw what the
greatest of the ancient prophets saw, only more amply,
clearly, and continuously. Ezekiel now and then had
glimpses — and, in an inferior sphere, the writer whom we call
Daniel had an imitative glimpse — of One like a man, or son
of man, near the throne in heaven ; Jesus had a perpetual
vision of such a son of man in heaven corresponding to another
son of man on earth — another, yet the same in God's
intention — struggling upwards through imperfection and
corruption to the " glory above the heavens." To be exalted
to this glory the human being was destined by the will of the
Father when the time should come for all things non-human
and inhuman to be subjected to humanity.
" But all this," it may be replied, "is vision, not fact. The
important point is, not what Jesus thought, or saw in vision,
but whether what he thought was true, and whether what he
saw in vision was real. We all know what he thought''
This book 1 is written in the conviction that we do not all
know what He thought; that we are very far from knowing it;
that God has provided us with means for knowing it better,
as the generations advance ; and that, if we could know it
better, we should be drawn more powerfully towards it.
To attempt to prove the truth of what He thought (so far
as we imagine that we have already ascertained the nature of
what He thought) would require a different treatise on
different lines. It would be necessary to shew the harmony
of what we suppose Jesus to have thought with the facts of
the external world, and with the facts of our inner being.
We should aim at shewing that Christ's doctrine, or our
conception of Christ's doctrine, affords us insight into the
problems of existence, or, at all events, gives us will, wisdom,
1 " This book," here and in the following sentences, refers to the larger
work from which Part 1 1 of the present volume is extracted.
126
A HARMONY OF THE FACTS
and power, to grapple with these problems, and to live our
best life and to die our best death. That would be proof of
a kind, and of an evidential kind, though not based on
unmixed logic.
But that is not the object of this book. If it were, it
would be otherwise entitled. It might be called the Ascent of
Worship through Illusion to the Truth, and in such a work it
would be in place to attempt to shew that all things past,
present, and future, are most reasonably as well as most
helpfully explained by the hypothesis of a Light shining in;
Darkness and sphered in clouds of Illusion, which Light is
the Eternal Word of God, whom we worship in Christ, and
hope to worship better, when clouds and illusions gradually
pass away.
The present treatise is, in some respects, more humble in
its object. It takes merely one of the many illusions which
surround upward-climbing Christian humanity, and en-
deavours to dispel it — the illusion that " We all know what
Christ thought."
Not indeed that the author attempts, or ever dreamed of
attempting, to set forth all that Christ thought, or even all
that He thought about the special subject dealt with in these
pages. But, taking up one phrase of Christ's doctrine, the
book aims at shewing, from His use of it, that He had views,
and corresponding influences or powers, simpler and yet
deeper, more natural and yet more spiritual, than most
students of Christ's history have hitherto supposed.
Those who are not Christians may call Christ's views
dreams. Some, while admitting that He had strange in-
fluences and powers, may assert that such influences and
powers prove nothing, and that, being based on dreams, they
are destined in the end to vanish like dreams. But a step
forward — towards a reasonable aspiration that may engender
a reasonable hope and ultimately a reasonable faith — will
have been taken even by Agnostics raising these objections,
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if, at the very moment when they raise them, they cannot
help confessing, " And yet these dreams have worked great
things that were not dreams. We call St Paul's 'constraining
love of Christ' a dream, but we do not call St Paul's
Cathedral a dream. Are the Christian Churches and nations
less solid historical realities than their cathedrals ? And after
all, may it not be true that the only way for mankind out of
its present social and national perils, the only security for the
establishment of the kingdom of the Man over the Beast, is to
be found in the recognition — not half-hearted as at present, but
full, spontaneous, and natural — of the reality of some such
dreams as were dreamed by the great and good and marvel-
lous Galilaean? No one can prove their reality. But then no
one — in the strict logical sense of the term 'prove,' and
without some vast unproved and unprovable assumption —
can prove any reality. If there is any reality, may it not
well be this?"
Some Christian critics may raise an a priori objection of
an opposite kind. To them " what Christ thought," so far as
it can ever be ascertained, may seem to have been so
accurately ascertained by ancient authority, and so definitely
fixed, that nothing of importance can ever be added to, or
taken from, what is taught as Christ's doctrine by the
Church.
Without entering into the thorny questions at once
suggested by "the Church," and by the many meanings of
which the term is susceptible, this a priori objection may be
met by an a priori answer, namely, that, in these days of
marvellous scientific revelation and historical revelation, it
seems as it were but a fair and reasonable expectation, a part
of the symmetrical and harmonious development of things,
that there should be some proportionate revelation of the
divine guidance in human evolution.
Science reveals to us Man in the making, developed from
the Beast ; now advancing in the scale of humanity, now
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degenerating, now disappearing, but on the whole advancing.
But, while the good in Man advances, the evil advances too.
The Beast is perceived in the back-ground ever threatening
to return and lord it over the Man — as in prehistoric times,
but with the Beast more powerful than before, because now,
Man, if he succumbs, will subject himself to the evil after
having known the good, so that henceforth, if he serves, he
will serve with the consciousness of a retributive feebleness
and a merited degradation, obeying that which he knows he
ought to command.
To avert this impending horror, " pure " science can do
nothing by what are commonly called, in a restricted sense,
scientific discoveries. What is it to us that our analysis of an
atom appears to be on the point of revealing something like
a solar system, if the solar system may contain an inner
revelation of a system of conflict, with ultimate dissolution as
its goal ? But " mixed " science (if we may borrow an
epithet from the mathematicians) may be of great use.
" Mixed " science may help us, through the scientific study of
human history and the scientific study of the documents that
record it, to infer the reasonableness of a faith that the Being
whom in our English Prayer Book we mostly adore under
the title of "Almighty" — a title never applied to God by
Jesus— may, like the atom, be of a much less sharply
definable, but much more vastly comprehensive and many-
sided nature than we had hitherto supposed. Such science
may also teach us something more of the marvellous laws of
human thought and of the influence of what we call man's
spirit upon the spirits of his brother men.
Then we may understand that God is not merely the
I AM but the WILL BE and the WAS ; that, in order to be
the same in this ubiquitously and constantly moving Universe,
He Himself is always in motion or rather motion is always in
Him ; that He is not only Father, but also, as the Hebrew
theology taught, Nursing Father ; that He may be best
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thought of as at once Father and Mother revealed through
the Son ; that all the actions and attributes of God are best
thought of by us as having impressed on them (to use
Ezekiel's phrase) " the likeness of a man " ; that of all these
divine attributes the one at once most human and most
divine is Love ; that, along with Love, in this present
chequered, imperfect, and sinful phase of the evolving world,
there must needs go pity and even pain — pain in the heart of
God for the sins of His children ; and that an essential part
of the mission of the Son of Man was to constrain us to
believe in this otherwise incredible pity and pain of God,
that through it we might draw nearer to the apprehension of
His eternal Love.
130
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
PASSAGES IN THE GOSPELS ILLUSTRATING THE
MEANING OF "THE SON OF MAN"
The passages are given according to the text 1 of the
Revised Version (even where that text is not followed in the
preceding pages). But " the son of man " is printed in italics
and without capitals. The object of this is to call the reader's
attention to the term, while at the same time helping him to
keep an open mind as to its meaning, by not printing it
" Son of man '' or " Son of Man." The passages are arranged
thus : —
I. Those common to the three gospels (there being none
common to four) of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Mark is
placed to the left, as being the earliest of the three, and
Mark's order is followed.
These include all the instances where Mark mentions
" the son of man " and some where he (or the parallel Matthew
or Luke) illustrates without mentioning it.
These are frequently described as belonging to "the Triple
Tradition."
II. Those common to the two gospels of Matthew and
Luke. Matthew is placed to the left as being the earlier of
the two; but Luke's order is followed because he professed to
1 Slight variations may occasionally occur, e.g. in the first quotation given
below, "But, that" (for "But that") for the sake of clearness.
133
APPENDIX
write (Lk. i. 3) " in [chronological] order," whereas Matthew
groups according to subject matter, as in the Sermon on the
Mount.
These are frequently described as belonging to "the
Double Tradition."
There is no collection of parallel passages peculiar to
Mark and Matthew or to Mark and Luke important enough
to be recognized as a separate Double Tradition. Such as
there are, will be given in the Triple Tradition.
III. Passages peculiar to Matthew.
IV. Passages peculiar to Luke.
V. Passages peculiar to John. John has no passages in
common with any of the three earlier evangelists.
i34
APPENDIX
PART I
THE TRIPLE TRADITION OF MARK, MATTHEW,
AND LUKE
Mk ii. 10
But, that ye may
know that the son
of man hath power
(marg. authority) on
earth to forgive sins. . . .
Mk ii. 27—8
And he said unto
them, The sabbath
was made for man,
and not man for the
sabbath : so that the
son of man is lord
even of the sabbath.
Mk iii. 28 — 9
Verily I say unto
you, All their sins
shall be forgiven unto
the sons of men 1 , and
their blasphemies
wherewith soever they
shall blaspheme: but
whosoever shall blas-
pheme against the
Holy Spirit hath
never forgiveness, but
Mt. ix. 6
But, that ye may
know that the son
of man hath power
(marg. authority) on
earth toforgive sins. . . .
Mt. xii. 7—8
But if ye had
known what this
meaneth, I desire
mercy, and not sacri-
fice, ye would not
have condemned the
guiltless. For the
son of man is lord of
the sabbath.
Mt. xii. 31 — 2
Therefore I say
unto you, Every sin
and blasphemy shall
be forgiven unto men
(some anc. auth., unto
you men) ; but the
blasphemy against
the Spirit shall not
be forgiven. And
whosoever shall speak
a word against the
Lk. v. 24
But, that ye may
know that the son
of man hath power
(marg. authority) on
earth to forgive sins. . . .
Lk. vi. 5
And he said unto
them, The son of man
is lord of the sabbath.
Lk. xii. 10
And every one who
shall speak a word
against the son of man,
it shall be forgiven
him : but unto him
that blasphemeth
against the Holy
Spirit it shall not be
forgiven.
1 "Sons of men" is printed in italics to point out a possible confusion between
t and "son of man" which is in Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark.
135
APPENDIX
is guilty of an eternal
sin.
son of man, it shall
be forgiven him; but
whosoever shall speak
against the Holy
Spirit, it shall not be
forgiven him, neither
in this world (marg.
age) nor in that which
is to come.
Mk viii. 27
And in the way, he
asked his disciples,
saying unto them,
Who do men say that
I am?
Mk viii. 31
And he began to
teach them, that the
son of man must
suffer many things,
and be rejected by
the elders, and the
chief priests, and the
scribes, and be killed,
and after three days
rise again.
Mk viii. 38 — ix. 1
For whosoever
shall be ashamed of
me and of my words
in this adulterous and
sinful generation, the
son of man also shall
Mt. xvi. 13
...he asked his
disciples, saying, Who
do men say that the
son of man is? (many
anc. auth., that I the
son of man am) ?
Mt. xvi. 21
From that time
began Jesus (some
anc. auth., Jesus
Christ) to shew unto
his disciples, how
that he must go unto
Jerusalem, and suffer
many things of the
elders and chief
priests and scribes,
and be killed, and
the third day be
raised up.
Mt. xvi. 27 — 8
For the son of man
shall come in the
glory of his Father
with his angels ; and
then shall he render
unto every man ac-
136
Lk. ix. 18
...the disciples
were with him : and
he asked them, saying,
Who do the multi-
tudes say that I am ?
Lk. ix. 22
saying, The son
of man must suffer
many things, and be
rejected of the elders
and chief priests and
scribes, and be killed,
and the third day be
raised up.
Lk. ix. 26 — 7
For whosoever
shall be ashamed of
me and of my words,
of him shall the son
of man be ashamed,
when he cometh in
APPENDIX
be ashamed of him,
when he cometh in
the glory of his
Father with the holy
angels.
And he said unto
them, Verily I say
unto you, There be
some here of them
that stand [by], which
shall in no wise taste
of death, till they see
the kingdom of God
come with power 1 .
cording to his deeds his own glory, and
{lit. doing). [the glory] of the
Father, and of the
holy angels.
Verily I say unto
you, There be some
of them that stand
here, which shall in
nowise taste of death,
till they see the son of
man coming in his
kingdom.
But I tell you of a
truth, There be some
of them that stand
here, which shall in
nowise taste of death,
till they see the king-
dom of God.
Mk ix. 9 — 10
And ... he charged
them that they should
tell no man what
things they had seen,
save when the son of
man should have
risen again from the
dead s . And they
kept the saying,
questioning among
themselves what the
rising again from the
dead should mean.
Mt. xvii. 9
And. . Jesus com-
manded them, saying,
Tell the vision to no
man, until the son of
man be risen from
the dead 2 .
Lk. ix. 36
And they held
their peace, and told
no man in those days
any of the things
which they had seen.
Mk ix. 11 — 13
And they asked
him, saying, The
scribes say that Elijah
Mt. xvii. 10 — 13
And his disciples
asked him, saying,
Why then say the
Lk. om.
but comp. Lk. i. 17
And he shall go
(someone, auth., come
1 Compare also, in the Double Tradition, Mt. x. 32 — 3 parall. Lk. xii. 8 — 9;
and, in Matthew's Single Tradition, Mt. xxv. 31.
2 This is the only instance in which Jesus adds " from the dead" to the word,
"risen" or raised" in His predictions of His Passion (see p. 51 foil.).
137
APPENDIX
mustfirst come (marg.
[How is it] that the
scribes say. . .come ?).
And he said unto
them, Elijah indeed
cometh first, and
restoreth all things :
and how is it written
of the son of man,
that he should suffer
many things and be
set at nought? But
I say unto you, that
Elijah is come, and
they have also done
unto him whatsoever
they listed, even as
it is written of him.
scribes that Elijah
must first come ?
And he answered
and said, Elijah in-
deed cometh, and
shall restore all
things: but I say
unto you, that Elijah
is come already,
and they knew him
not, but did unto
him whatsoever they
listed. Even so shall
the son of man also
suffer of them. Then
understood the dis-
ciples that he spake
unto them of John
the Baptist.
nigh) before his face
in the spirit and
power of Elijah.
Mk ix. 30 — 32
And they. . .passed
through Galilee; and
he would not that
any man should know
it. For he taught his
disciples, and said
unto them, The son of
man is 1 delivered up
into the hands of
men, and they shall
kill him ; and when
he is killed, after
three days he shall
rise again. But they
understood not the
saying, and were
afraid to ask him.
Mt. xvii. 22 — 3
And while they
abode {some anc.
auth., were gathering
themselves together)
in Galilee, Jesus said
unto them, The son
of man shall be de-
livered up into the
hands of men ; and
they shall kill him,
and the third day he
shall be raised up.
And they were ex-
ceeding sorry.
Lk. ix. 43—5
But while all were
marvelling at all the
things which he did,
he said unto his dis-
ciples, Let these
words sink into your
ears : for the son of
man shall be delivered
up into the hands of
men. But they un-
derstood not this
saying, and it was
concealed from them,
that they should not
perceive it : and they
were afraid to ask
him about this saying.
1 Better "is [to be] delivered up."
138
APPENDIX
Mk x. 29 —
Jesus said, Verily
I say unto you, There
is no man that hath
left house, or bre-
thren....
Mt. xix. 28—9
And Jesus said
unto them, Verily I
say unto you, that ye
which have followed
me, in the regenera-
tion when the son of
man 1 shall sit on the
throne of his glory,
ye also shall sit upon
twelve thrones, judg-
ing the twelve tribes
of Israel. And every
one that hath left
houses, or brethren. . . .
Lk. xviii. 29
And he said unto
them, Verily I say
unto you, There is
no man that hath
left house
Mk x. 32 — 4
And they were...
going up to Jerusalem
...And he took again
the twelve, and began
to tell them the
things that were to
happen unto him,
[saying], Behold, we
go up to Jerusalem :
and the son of man
shall be delivered
unto the chief priests
and the scribes : and
they shall condemn
him to death, and
shall deliver him unto
the Gentiles : and
Mt. xx. 17 — 19
And as Jesus was
goingup to Jerusalem,
he took the twelve
disciples apart, and...
he said unto them,
Behold, we go up to
Jerusalem ; and the
son of man shall be
delivered unto the
chief priests and
scribes ; and they
shall condemn him
to death, and shall
deliver him unto the
Gentiles to mock,
and to scourge, and
to crucify : and the
Lk. xviii. 31 — 2
And he took unto
him the twelve, and
said unto them, Be-
hold, we go up to
Jerusalem, and all
the things that are
written by (marg.
through) the prophets
shall be accomplished
unto the son of man.
For he shall be de-
livered up unto the
Gentiles, and shall be
mocked and shame-
fully entreated and
spit upon : and they
shall scourge and kill
1 This passage of Matthew belongs strictly to the Double Tradition of
Matthew and Luke, where the reader will find it parall. to Lk. xxii. 28 — 30.
But it is inserted here to give a specimen of Matthew's method of grouping
traditions.
A. M.
*39
n
APPENDIX
they shall mock him,
and shall spit upon
him, and shall scourge
him, and shall kill
him ; and after three
days he shall rise
again.
third day he shall be
raised up.
him : and the third
day he shall rise
again.
Mk x. 43— s
But it is not so
among you : but
whosoever would be-
come great among
you, shall be your
minister (marg. ser-
vant) : and whosoever
would be first among
you, shall be servant
(lit. bondservant) of
all. For verily the
son of man came not
to be ministered unto,
but to minister, and
to give his life a ran-
som for many.
Mt. xx. 26—8
Not so shall it be
among you : but who-
soever would become
great amongyou shall
be your minister
(marg. servant); and
whosoever would be
first among you shall
be your servant (lit.
bondservant): even as
the son of man came
not to be ministered
unto, but to minister,
and to give his life a
ransom for many.
Lk. xxii. 26 — 7
But ye [shall] not
[be] so : but he that
is the greater among
you, let him become
as the younger; and
he that is chief, as he
that doth serve. For
whether is greater, he
that sitteth at meat
(lit. reclineth), or he
that serveth ? is not
he that sitteth at meat
(lit. reclineth)? but I
am in the midst of
you as he that serveth.
Mk xiii. 24 — 7
But in those days
...the stars shall be
falling from heaven,
and the powers that
are in the heavens
shall be shaken.
And then shall they
see the son of man
coming in clouds
Mt. xxiv. 29 — 31
But immediately. . .
the stars shall fall
from heaven, and the
powers of the heavens
shall be shaken : and
then shall appear the
sign of the son of man
in heaven 1 : and then
shall all the tribes of
Lk. xxi. 25 — 28
And there shall
be signs in... stars;...
men fainting (marg.
expiring) for fear, and
for expectation... for
the powers of the
heavens shall be
shaken. And then
shall they see the son
1 Mt. xxiv. 30a "the sign of the son of man" is repeated under Matthew's
Single Tradition.
140
APPENDIX
with great power and
glory. And then
shall he send forth
the angels, and shall
gather together his
elect....
the earth mourn, and
they shall see the son
of man coming on the
clouds of heaven
with power and great
glory. And he shall
send forth his angels
...and they shall
gather together his
elect....
of man coming in a
cloud with power and
great glory. But
when these things
begin to come to
pass....
Mk xiii. 35
Watch therefore ;
for ye know not when
the lord of the house
cometh, whether at
even... or at cock-
crowing, or in the
morning ; lest coming
suddenly he find you
sleeping. And what
I say unto you I say
unto all, Watch 1 .
Mt. xxiv. 42 — 4
Watch therefore :
for ye know not on
what day your Lord
cometh. But... if the
master of the house
had known in what
watch. . . .Therefore be
ye also ready : for in
an hour that ye think
not the son of man
cometh.
Lk. xii. 37 — 40
Blessed are those
servants {lit. bond-
servants) whom the
lord when he cometh
shall find watching.
But... if the master of
the house had known
in what hour... .Be
ye also ready ; for in
an hour that ye think
not the son of man
cometh.
Lk. xxi. 36
But watch ye at
every season, mak-
ing supplication... to
stand before the son
of man.
Mk xiv. 1 Mt. xxvi. 2 — 3 Lk. xxii. 1 — 2
Now after two days Ye know that after Now the feast of
was [the feast of] the two days the passover unleavened bread
passover and the un- cometh, and the son drew nigh, which is
1 The parallel passages of Matthew and Luke will be found repeated in the
Double Tradition of Matthew and Luke where they come more appropriately than
here. Lk. xxi. 36 is repeated under Luke's Single Tradition.
141
II-
APPENDIX
leavened bread : and
the chief priests and
the scribes sought....
of man is delivered
up to be crucified.
Then were gathered
together the chief
priests....
called the Passover.
And the chief priests
and the scribes
sought....
Mk xiv. 21
For the son of man
goeth, even as it
is written of him :
but woe unto that
man through whom
the son of man is
betrayed 1 !
Mt. xxvi. 24
The son of man
goeth, even as it is
written of him : but
woe unto that man
through whom the
son of man is be-
trayed ' !
Lk. xxii. 22
For the son of man
indeed goeth, as it
hath been deter-
mined : but woe unto
that man through
whom he is betrayed 1 .
Mk xiv. 41 — 2
And he cometh the
third time, and saith
unto them, Sleep on
now, and take your
rest : it is enough ;
the hour is come ;
behold, the son of
man is betrayed 2 into
the hands of sinners.
Arise, let us be going :
behold, he that be-
tray eth" me is at
hand.
Mt. xxvi. 45 — 6
Then cometh he
to the disciples, and
saith unto them,
Sleep on now, and
take your rest : be-
hold, the hour is at
hand, and the son of
man is betrayed 2 into
the hands of sinners.
Arise, let us be going :
behold, he is at hand
that betrayeth 1 ' me.
Lk. om.
Mk xiv. 45 — 6 om.
Mt. xxvi. 50
And Jesus said
unto him, Friend,
Lk. xxii. 48
But Jesus said
unto him, Judas,
1 In these three passages, the Greek for "betrayed" is the same as that for
"delivered up."
2 In these two passages, the Greek for "betrayed" is the same as that for
" delivered up."
142
APPENDIX
[do] that for which betrayest thou the
thou art come. son of man with a
kiss 1 ?
Mk xiv. 61 — 4
Again the high
priest asked him, and
saith unto him, Art
thou the Christ, the
Son of the Blessed?
And Jesus said, I
am: and ye shall see
the son of man sitting
at the right hand of
power 11 , and coming
with the clouds of
heaven. And the
high priest rent his
clothes and saith,...
Ye have heard the
blasphemy....
Mt. xxvi. 63 — 5
And the high priest
said unto him, I ad-
jure thee by the living
God, that thou tell
us whether thou be
the Christ, the Son of
God. Jesus saith
unto him, Thou hast
said: nevertheless I
say unto you, Hence-
forth ye shall see the
son of man sitting at
the right hand of
power 2 , and coming
on the clouds of
heaven. Then the
high priest rent his
garments, saying, He
hath spoken blas-
phemy....
Lk. xxii. 67 — 71
saying, If thou art
the Christ, tell us.
But he said unto
them, If I tell you,
ye will not believe :
and if I ask [you], ye
will not answer. But
from henceforth shall
the son of man be
seated at the right
hand of the power of
God. And they all
said, Art thou then
the son of God?
And he said unto
them, Ye say that I
am (marg. Ye say
[it], because I am).
And they said, What
further need have we
of witness?...
Mk xvi. 6 — 7
Behold, the place
where they laid him !
But go, tell his dis-
ciples and Peter, He
goeth before you into
Mt. xxviii. 6 — 7
Come, see the
place where the Lord
lay (many anc. auth.,
where he lay). And
go quickly and tell
Lk. xxiv. 6 — 7
Remember how he
spake unto you when
he was yet in Galilee,
saying that the son of
man must be de-
1 This passage is repeated in the Single Tradition of Luke. It is placed here
for the sake of the illustration that it receives from the fact that Mark omits it, and
Matthew deviates from it.
2 Better "the power.'' This some might interpret as "the Power," i.e. the
Almighty, or God, others as "the power of God," which Luke has.
143
APPENDIX
Galilee : there shall
ye see him, as he
said unto you.
his disciples... and lo
he goeth before you
into Galilee ; there
shall ye see him : lo,
I have told you.
livered up into the
hands of sinful men,
and be crucified, and
the third day rise
again '.
1 This passage belongs strictly to the single tradition of Luke, where it will be
found. But it is placed here, ist, to illustrate the use of "the son of man" in
quotations by others of what Jesus said ; 2nd, to shew the apparent confusion, in
the context, arising from a mention of " Galilee " in slightly different circumstances.
144
APPENDIX
PART II
THE DOUBLE TRADITION OF MATTHEW AND LUKE 1
Mt.
v. II
Blessed are ye when [men]
shall reproach you, and persecute
you, and say all manner of evil
against you falsely, for my sake.
Lk. vi. 22
Blessed are ye, when men
shall hate you, and when they
shall separate you [from their
company], and reproach you,
and cast out your name as evil,
for the son of maris sake.
Mt. xi. 18 — 19
For John came neither eating
nor drinking, and they say, He
hath a devil {lit. demon). The
son of man came eating and
drinking, and they say, Behold,
a gluttonous man, and a wine-
bibber, a friend of publicans and
sinners ! And wisdom is (marg.
was) justified by her works (many
anc. anth., children).
Lk. vii. 33—4
For John the Baptist is come
eating no bread nor drinking
wine ; and ye say, He hath a
devil (lit. demon). The son of
man is come eating and drinking;
and ye say, Behold, a gluttonous
man, and a winebibber, a friend
of publicans and sinners. And
wisdom is (marg. was) justified of
all her children.
Mt. viii. 19 — 20
And there came a scribe (lit.
one scribe), and said unto him,
Master (marg. Teacher) I will
follow thee whithersoever thou
goest. And Jesus saith unto
him, The foxes have holes, and
the birds of the heaven [have]
Lk. ix. 57—8
And as they went in the way,
a certain man said unto him, I
will follow thee whithersoever
thou goest. And Jesus said
unto him, The foxes have holes,
and the birds of the heaven
[have] nests (lit. lodging-places) ;
1 There is no collection of parallels peculiar to Mark and Matthew, or to
Mark and Luke, important enough to be collected as a separate Double Tradition.
Such as there are, will be found in the Triple Tradition.
As to the reasons for following Luke's order instead of Matthew's, see p. 133.
145
APPENDIX
nests (lit. lodging-places) ; but
the son of man hath not where to
lay his head.
but the son of man hath not
where to lay his head.
Mt. xii. 40
For as Jonah was three days
and three nights in the belly of
the whale (lit. sea-monster), so
shall the son of man be three
days and three nights in the
heart of the earth.
Lk. xi. 30
For even as Jonah became a
sign unto the Ninevites, so shall
also the son of man be to this
generation.
Mt. x. 32 — 3
Everyone therefore who shall
confess me (lit. in me) before
men, him (lit. in him) will I also
confess before my Father which
is in heaven. But whosoever
shall deny me before men, him
will I also deny before my Father
which is in heaven 1 .
Lk. xii. 8—9
And I say unto you, Everyone
who shall confess me (lit. in me)
before men, him (lit. in him)
shall the son of man also confess
before the angels of God : but
he that denieth me in the presence
of men shall be denied in the
presence of the angels of God.
Mt. xii. 32
...speak a word against the
son of man... 2 .
Lk. xii. 10
...speak a word against the
son of man 2 .
Mt. xxiv. 43 — 4
But know this (marg. But this
ye know) that if the master of
the house had known in what
watch the thief was coming, he
would have watched, and would
not have suffered his house to be
broken through (lit. digged
Lk. xii. 39 — 40
But know this (marg. But this
ye know) that if the master of
the house had known in what
hour the thief was coming, he
would have watched, and not
have left his house to be broken
through (lit. digged through).
1 Comp. Mk via. 38 — ix. 1 "the son of man also shall be ashamed... until they
see the kingdom of God come with power," and the parall. Mt. xvi. 27,
Lk. ix. 26 — 7 (pp. 136-7).
2 See also the Triple Tradition, parall. to Mk iii. 28 — 9.
146
APPENDIX
through). Therefore be ye also
ready : for in an hour that ye
think not the son of man cometh.
Be ye also ready: for in an hour
that ye think not the son of man
cometh.
Mt. xxiv. 26 — 7
If therefore they shall say unto
you, Behold, he is in the wilder-
ness ; go not forth : Behold, he
is in the inner chambers; believe
[it] (marg. [them]) not. For as
the lightning cometh forth from
the east, and is seen even unto
the west ; so shall be the coming
(lit. presence) of the son of man.
Lk. xvii. 23 — 4
And they shall say to you, Lo,
there ! Lo, here ! go not away,
nor follow after [them] : for as the
lightning, when it lighteneth out
of the one part under the heaven,
shineth unto the other part under
heaven ; so shall the son of man
be in his day. {Some anc. auth.
omit in his day.)
Mt. xxiv. 37 — 9
And as [were] the days of
Noah, so shall be the coming
(lit. presence) of the son of man.
For as in those days... they were
eating and drinking... until... the
flood came and took them all
away ; so shall be the coming
(lit. presence) of the son of man.
Lk. xvii. 26 — 7, 30
And as it came to pass in the
days of Noah, even so shall it be
also in the days of the son of
man. They ate, they drank...
until... the flood destroyed them
all. Likewise even as it came to
pass in the days of Lot... after
the same manner shall it be in
the day that the son of man is
revealed.
Mt. xviii. 10 — 12
. . . their angels do always behold
the face of my Father which is
in heaven [many authorities, some
ancient, insert ver. 1 1 For the son
of man came to save that which
was lost] How think ye? if any
man have a hundred sheep . . .
Lk. xix. 9 — 11
...he also is a son of Abraham.
For the son of man came to seek
and to save that which was lost.
And as they heard these things ' . . .
This is repeated in the Single Tradition of Luke.
147
APPENDIX
Mt. xix. 28 Lk. xxii. 28 — 30
Verily I say unto you, that ye But ye are they which have
which have followed me, in the continued with me in my tempta-
regeneration when the son of man tions ; and I appoint unto you
shall sit on the throne of his that ye may eat and drink
glory, ye also shall sit upon at my table in my kingdom; and
twelve thrones, judging the twelve ye shall sit on thrones judging
tribes of Israel. the twelve tribes of Israel.
148
APPENDIX
PART III
THE SINGLE TRADITION OF MATTHEW
Mt. x. 23. But when they persecute you in this city, flee into
the next: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone through
the cities of Israel, till the son of man be come.
Mt. xiii. 37. And he answered and said, He that soweth the
good seed is the son of man....
Mt. xiii. 40 — 41. As therefore the tares are gathered up and
burned with fire ; so shall it be in the end of the world (marg. the
consummation of the age). The son of man shall send forth his
angels, and they shall gather....
Mt. xvi. 13. Jesus... asked his disciples, saying, Who do men
say that the son of man is ? {many anc. auth., that I the son of man
am) 1 .
Mt. xvi. 27 — 8. ...and then shall he render unto every man
according to his deeds (lit. doing). Verily I say unto you, There be
some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death,
till they see the son of man coming in his kingdom 2 .
[Mt. xviii. 11. R.V. marg. "Many auth., some ancient, insert
For the son of man came to save that which was lost 3 ."]
Mt. xix. 28. "Verily I say unto you, that ye. ..when the son of
man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit... 4 ."
1 See also the Triple Tradition, parallel to Mk viii. 27.
2 See also the Triple Tradition where this is parallel to Mk viii. 38 and ix. 1.
3 See also the Double Tradition, Mt. xviii. 10 — 12, Lk. xix. 9 — 11.
4 See also the Double Tradition, Mt. xix. 28, Lk. xxii. 28 — 30; and the Triple
Tradition, parallel to Mk. x. 29 foil.
149
APPENDIX
Mt. xxiv. 30 a. And then shall appear the sign of the son of man
in heaven : and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn 1 .
Mt. xxv. 31 — 2. But when the son of man shall come in his
glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of
his glory : and before him shall be gathered all the nations....
Mt. xxvi. 2. Ye know that after two days the passover cometh,
and the son of man is delivered up to be crucified 2 .
1 See also the Triple Tradition, parallel to Mk xiii. 24 — 7.
2 See also the Triple Tradition, parallel to Mk xiv. 1 .
*5°
APPENDIX
PART IV
THE SINGLE TRADITION OF LUKE
Lk. vi. 22. ...when they shall cast out your name as evil for the
son of man's sake 1 .
Lk. ix. 54 — 6. ...James and John. ..said, Lord, wilt thou that
we bid fire to come down from heaven, and consume them (Many
anc. auth. add even as Elijah did) ? But he turned, and rebuked
them. (Some anc. auth. add and said, Ye know not what manner of
spirit ye are of. Some, but fewer, add also For the son of man came
not to destroy men's lives, but to save [them]).
Lk. xii. 8. Every one who shall confess me (lit. in me) before
men, him (lit. in him) shall the son of man also confess 2 ....
Lk. xvii. 22. And he said unto the disciples, The days will
come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the son of man,
and ye shall not see it.
Lk. xvii. 28 — 30. Likewise even as it came to pass in the days
of Lot after the same manner shall it be in the day that the son
of man is revealed 3 .
Lk. xviii. 6 — 8. And the Lord said... And shall not God avenge
his elect...? I say unto you that he will avenge them speedily.
Howbeit, when the son of man cometh, shall he find faith (marg. the
faith) on the earth ?
Lk. xix. 10. ...forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For
the son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost 4 .
1 See the Double Tradition, where this is parallel to Mt. v. 11.
2 See the Double Tradition, where this is parallel to Mt. x. 32 — 3.
3 See the Double Tradition, where this is parallel to Mt. xxiv. 37 — 9.
4 See the Double Tradition, where this is parallel to a bracketed passage in
Mt. xviii. 10 — 11.
APPENDIX
Lk. xxi. 36. But watch ye at every season, making supplication,
that ye may prevail to escape all these things that shall come to pass,
and to stand before the son of man '.
Lk. xxii. 48. But Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the
son of man with a kiss 2 ?
Lk. xxiv. 6 — 7. Remember how he spake unto you when he
was yet in Galilee, saying that the son of man must be delivered up
into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day
rise again 3 -
1 See the Triple Tradition, where this is parallel to Mk xiii. 35.
2 See the Triple Tradition, where this is parallel to Mk xiv. 45 — 6 omitting,
Mt. xxvi. 50 deviating.
3 See the Triple Tradition, where this is parallel to Mk xvi. 6 — 7.
152
APPENDIX
PART V
THE SINGLE TRADITION OF JOHN
Jn i. 51. And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending
and descending upon the son of man.
Jn iii. 13. And no man hath ascended into heaven, but he that
descended out of heaven, [even] the son of man, which is in heaven
\many anc. auth. omit " which is in heaven "].
Jn iii. 14 — 15. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up : that whosoever
believeth may in him have eternal life.
Jn v. 26 — 7. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so
gave he to the Son also to have life in himself: and he gave him
authority to execute judgment, because he is the son of man (marg.
a son of man).
Jn vi. 27. Work not for the meat which perisheth, but for the
meat which abideth unto eternal life, which the son of man shall give
unto you : for him the Father, [even] God, hath sealed.
Jn vi. 53. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh
of the son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves.
Jn vi. 6t — 2. Doth this cause you to stumble? [What] then if
ye should behold the son of man ascending where he was before ?
Jn viii. 28. Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the son
of man, then shall ye know that I am [he] and [that] I do (marg.
I am, or, I am [he] : and I do) nothing of myself, but as the Father
taught me, I speak these things.
Jn ix. 35 — 7. Jesus heard that they had cast him [i.e. the blind
man] out ; and finding him, he said Dost thou believe on the Son of
153
APPENDIX
God {many anc. auth., the son of man 1 ) ? He answered and said,
And who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him ? Jesus said unto
him Thou hast both seen him, and he it is that speaketh with thee.
Jn xii. 23. The hour is come, that the son of tnan should be
glorified.
Jn xii. 34. The multitude therefore answered him, We have
heard out of the law that the Christ abideth for ever : and how
sayest thou, The son of man must be lifted up ? who is this son of
man?
Jn xiii. 31 — 2. When therefore he (Judas) was gone out, Jesus
saith, Now is (marg. was) the son of man glorified, and God is
(marg. was) glorified in him ; and God shall glorify him in himself,
and straightway shall he glorify him.
1 Westcott and Hort give "the son of man" in their text without any marginal
alternative.
154
NOTES
A. M. 12
NOTES
DEDICATION AND PREFACE
PAGE
v " THE SONS OF man." This is more literal than " the sons of
men," or " the children of men," which, in our English Versions of
the Bible, is the usual rendering of the Hebrew "the sons of adam"
(an ambiguous expression meaning either " the sons of Adam " or
" the sons of man," see p. xviii). The Dedication is intended to
remind (or inform) the reader of the similarity in Hebrew between
" the son of man, or Adam " and " the sons of man, or Adam!'
vii Practically always. The only exceptions are Lk. xxiv. 7, Jn xii.
34 ; behold, one like... Dan. vii. 13.
viii Enoch, § 46 (ed. Charles, to whose work I am very greatly in-
debted though not able to agree with all his conclusions), see the
Author's Notes on New Testament Criticism (A. and C. Black),
2998 (li) foil.
ix Daniel once, Dan. viii. 17.
x The appearance of a man, Ezek. i. 26 ; one like a son of man,
Dan. vii. 13 ; a vision, Ezek. i. 4 — 27, Dan. vii. 2 — 28 ; let us make,
Gen. i. 26.
xi Quoted by our Lord, Mt. xxi. 16 (from the LXX), comp. Mt. xi. 25,
see also Heb. ii. 6 — 8 and 1 Cor. xv. 27 ; Isaiah's description, Is. liii.
3, Hi. 14 ; the sons of man, or, of Adam, see note above, on the
Dedication.
xii The man, see In Memoriam cxvii, Epict. ii. 9, 3.
xiii Man shall not live, Mt. iv. 4, Lk. iv. 4 (quoting Deut. viii. 3).
xiv Ye shall see, Jn i. 51.
xv Hillel, see pp. 92 — 3 ; Aramaic phrase, see also pp. 11 — 12
and the note on p. 11 below (p. 159).
xvii " The Spirit? Ezek. i. 12 ; " Spirit," Ezek. ii. 2 (but R.V. and
Targum " the spirit "). The difference is too technical for discussion
here ; later on, see p. 3 foil.
xix Not in the Talmud, see Dalman's Words of fesus p. 248.
157 12—2
NOTES
PART I
PAGE
3 What is man, Ps. viii. 4 ; parallelisms, Ezek. i. 1, ii. 2, viii. 3, xl. 2
etc. ; new heart and new spirit, Ezek. xi. 19, xviii. 31, xxxvi. 26; other
resemblances, Ezek. i. 1, iv. 6 1 .
4 The likeness of a man, Ezek. i. 5 ; understand, O son of adam,
Dan. viii. 17.
5 The profane friends of Job. Matthew Arnold takes the opinion
of these profane friends as being what " Israel knew." See Litera-
ture and Dogma chap. i. 3 " All this, which scientific theology loses
sight of, Israel, who had but poetry and eloquence, and no system,
and who did not mind contradicting himself, knew. ' Is it any
pleasure to the Almighty, that thou art righteous? (Job xxii. 3).'
What a blow to our ideal of that magnified and non-natural man,
' the moral and intelligent Governor' ! Say what we can about God,
say our best, we have yet, Israel knew, to add instantly : ' Lo, these
are fringes of his ways ; but how little a portio7i is heard of him
(Job xxvi. 14) !' Yes, indeed, Israel remembered that, far better than
our bishops do."
It is no very great exaggeration to say that this is as absurd as it
would be to quote Iago and Othello in two consecutive sentences to
shew what " Shakespeare knew " or what " England knew.'' The
first of these quotations is the utterance of Eliphaz the Temanite to
whom God subsequently says (Job xli. 7), "My wrath is kindled
against thee and against thy two friends ; for ye have not spoken of
me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath."
No doubt we should do ill to call God as Matthew Arnold
sarcastically says, "the moral and intelligent Governor" of the
universe. But the reason would be, not that it is too anthro-
pomorphic but that it is not anthropomorphic or affectionate enough.
" Holy," " righteous," "loving," and " Father," would be better.
In a bad sense, see Notes on N. T. Criticism, 2998 (iv), (x) ; Middle
Ages, see Dalman's Words of Jesus pp. 247 — 8.
6 Prediction, Gen. iii. 15 ; a little child, Is. xi. 6.
7 Babes, little ones etc, Mt. xxi. 16, Lk. x. 21, Mt. xi. 25, Mk ix. 37,
Mt. xviii. 2 — 5 etc. ; Jewish comments, see Notes on N. T. Criticism,
2998 (xi) foil. ; the power, 2 Cor. xii. 9 ; similarly "the name" some-
times means the Name of God; out of weakness, Heb. xi. 34; the
same epistle, Heb. ii. 6 foil.
1 The eighth Psalm, the first chapter of Ezekiel, and some other passages of
Scripture, are so frequently referred to that the references will not be always
repeated.
IS8
NOTES
PAGE
8 He shall give his angels charge, Ps. xci. 1 1 — 13 ; scorpions, Lk. x.
19, Ezek. ii. 6.
9 With the wild beasts, Mk i. 13.
10 My name, Mk ix. 37, Mt. xviii. 5, Lk. ix. 48; elsewhere, Mk iii. 23,
Mt. xii. 26, Lk. xi. 18.
11 This vision. For the visions of Daniel and Ezekiel referred to in
this chapter, see Dan. vii. and Ezek. i. passim, and especially
Dan. vii. 13 "one like unto a son of man" (see Preface pp. vii — viii.)
and Ezek. i. 26 "a likeness as the appearance of a man."
In Aramaic. On " son of man " in Aramaic, as corresponding to
" man " in Hebrew, and on the forms and meanings of the Aramaic
term, see Prof. Driver's article in Hastings' Dictionary (" Son of
Man").
The Aramaic usage may be illustrated by the ancient Syriac on
which see Prof. Burkitt's Evangelion da-mepharreshe, vol. ii. p. 272.
While describing the attempts of the Syrian translators to render the
gospel phrase, he says concerning one of them that it "does not occur
in Syriac, except as a rendering of the gospel phrase — " He also
points out that the translators sometimes substitute a Syriac word
corresponding to the Latin vir for the correct word corresponding to
the Latin homo (so as to make Christ "Alius viri"!) and that
Dan. vii. 13 is translated in the (Peshitta) Syriac version "son of
men " (for " a son of a man "). " We can only suppose," he adds,
"that the meaning of the Greek was incomprehensible."
It would also be " incomprehensible," probably, to most Jews
familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures in which the phrase " son of the
man (ha-adam) " never occurs in the singular.
This " incomprehensibility " can be explained if we suppose that
Jesus called Himself " Bar-Adam," Son of Adam (the name given in
the Aramaic Targum to Ezekiel), and if this was translated by the
Greek evangelists as though "Adam" meant "the man."
On Aramaic renderings of the Hebrew " son of man," and on
their occasional inconsistency, see the Author's Notes on NT.
Criticism, 2998 (iii) foil. On the perplexity and divergent inter-
pretations of the earliest Christian commentators, see ib. (xxxiv) foil.
12 R. Akiba, see the Bab. Talmud, Chag. 14 a, Sanhedr. 38 b ; the
clouds, see p. 61 foil. Origen's view of "the clouds," and the
Pauline view, will be discussed in detail in The Son of Man (see
above, p. xx) ; adds. ..characteristics, compare Rev. i. 13 — 14 with
Dan. vii. 9.
13 Calmly etc., Bacon's Essays xi. 108.
14 One shepherd, Ezek. xxxiv. 23, xxxvii. 24, Jn x. 16.
15 Ezekiel and Hosea, see the preceding note, and Hos. iii. 5 ; the
Second Esdras, see Notes on N.T.C., 2998 (Iv) g.
159
NOTES
PAGE
17 Authority to forgive, Mk ii. 10, Mt. ix. 6, Lk. v. 24 ; to men,
Mt. ix. 8 ; "Man" as "man" will become, see p. 28 "man is not
Man as yet " ; tell us plainly, Jn x. 24.
18 Who say men etc., Mt. xvi. 13 foil. ; lifted up etc., Jn xii. 32 — 4,
comp. iii. 14.
19 Quotes. ..David, Mk xii. 36 — 7, Mt. xxii. 43 — 5, Lk. xx. 42 — 4,
comp. Ps. ex. 1.
20 In that day, Is. xix. 24 — 5 ; a Lamb, Rev. v. 6 — 13 ; a roll of
a book, Ezek. ii. 9 — 10 ; overcome, Jn xvi. 33, Rev. v. 5.
21 The song of Moses, Rev. xv. 3, comp. Exod. xv. 1 — 3 ; worthy is
the lamb, Rev. v. 12.
22 What I do, Jn xiii. 7 ; one day, Gen. i. 5 R.V., where A.V. has
"the first day." The text lent itself to, and received, mystical
interpretations.
24 Man shall not live, Mt. iv. 4, Lk. iv. 4 quoting Deut. viii. 3 ; the
first instance, Lk. iv. 41 parall. to Mk i. 34, comp. Mt. viii. 17.
25 Tremble, Jas. ii. 19 ; fear, Mk v. 7, Mt. viii. 29, Lk. viii. 28 ;
Mk i. 24, Lk. iv. 34; another passage, Mk iii. n — 12, Mt. xii. 16 ;
they that were in the boat, Mt. xiv. 32 — 3, comp. Mk vi. 5 1 — 2.
26 / am [a] son of the [One] God, Jn x. 36. Here the omission of the
definite article before " son," and its insertion before " God," make
the meaning perfectly clear. Where the definite article is omitted
before both nouns, there is ambiguity ; but in Mt. xiv. 33 "thou art
God's Son (lit. of God Son)," Jn xix. 7 " He ought to die because
he made himself Son of God," some kind of supernatural sonship is
implied by the contexts. This supernaturalness is still more definite
when the article is inserted before both nouns, as in Jn i. 49 " Thou
art the Son of the [One] God." It should be noted that Hebrew
does not usually attempt to express these distinctions ; at all events
Delitzsch gives the same Hebrew in Mt. xiv. 33, Jn x. 36, and xix. 7.
The fourth evangelist seems to be attempting to shew how Christ's
spiritual claims to sonship and unity with God were misunderstood
and despiritualised, at first even by such disciples as Nathanael, and
to the last by the Jews.
I and the Father, Jn x. 30 ; my Father worketh, Jn v. 17 ;
equality with God, Philipp. ii. 6, comp. Jn x. 33 and v. 18.
27 The dead shall hear etc., Jn v. 25—7 ; first mention, Jn i. 47—51 ;
Israel, Gen. xxxii. 28 foil. ; a ladder, Gen. xxviii. 12.
29 Cosiba, see Schiirer 1. ii. 298, comp. Numb. xxiv. 17; another
passage, Numb, xxiii. 19 "the son of man that he should repent."
The words are twisted about by R. Abbahu, see Notes on N.T.C.,
2998 (xviii).
30 Their heart, Is. xxix. 13 (LXX) quoted in Mk vii. 6, Mt.
xv. 8.
160
NOTES
PAGE
31 More than the sons of man, Is. Hi. 14 ; the Epistle to the Hebrews,
Heb. ii. 6— 11, and Heb. xii. 6 — 7, comp. Deut. viii. 3 — 5.
32 Man that is in honour, Ps. xlix. 20 ; heir of all things, Heb. i.
1 — 2 ; son of Adam, Lk. iii. 38.
33 Penuel, Gen. xxxii. 30 — 1 ; the Suffering Servant, Is. Iii. 13 — 14,
liii. passim.
36 Authority, see, in the Synoptists, Mk ii. 10, Mt. ix. 6, Lk. v. 24,
Mk i. 22 — 7, Mt. vii. 29, Lk. iv. 32 — 6 : and in John, i. 12, x. 18,
v. 27 ; lord of the sabbath, Mk ii. 28, Mt. xii. 8, Lk. vi. 5, comp.
Jn v. 9 — 17.
37 The Strong, Mk iii. 27, Mt. xii. 29, Lk. xi. 21 — 2; / have
conquered, Jn xvi. 33.
39 A gluttonous man, Mt. xi. 19, Lk. vii. 34; foxes have holes,
Mt. viii. 20, Lk. ix. 58 ; glory, Jn v. 43 — 4 ; a Samaritan etc.,
Jn viii. 48 — 9.
40 Lay his head, Mt. viii. 20, Lk. ix. 58, Jn xix. 30 ; see fohannine
Grammar, 2644 (i), quoting Origen's Commentary ; Hoseds pro-
phecy, Hos. vi. 1 — 2 ; was delivered up, Rom. iv. 25, printed by
Westcott and Hort as referring to Is. liii. 12 (LXX) and quoted by
Jerome on Is. liii. 12, seethe Author's Paradosis, passim.
41 Made intercession, Is. liii. 12 ; killed, Mk viii. 31, Mt. xvi. 21,
Lk. ix. 22 etc. ; crucified, Mt. xx. 19 ; smitten, Hos. vi. 2.
43 / will smite, Mk xiv. 27, Mt. xxvi. 31, comp. Zech. xiii. 7 smite
(imperative) ; the quotation from Hosea, i.e. Hos. vi. 1 — 2, see pp. 40,
42, and 47 where it is given at full length ; smitten by God,
Is. liii 4 — 5.
44 — 5 Was going to die, Jn xii. 33, ambiguous. " Was going " might
imply (1) intention, (2) destiny, comp. Jn vi. 6, 15, vii. 35, xiv. 22;
lifted up, Jn iii. 14, xii. 32, Is. Iii. 13, and see fohannine Grammar,
2211 b, c, 2642 b ; glorified, Jn xii. 23 ; ransom, Mk x. 45, Mt. xx. 28,
compare Lk. xxii. 27, Jn xiii. 3 — 5, on which see Notes on N.T.
Criticism, 2963 — 4 giving Origen's comment.
46 Possessor, Maker, Buyer, Gen. xiv. 19 — 22, and Deut. xxxii. 6, see
Gesen. Oxf., 888—9 ; taught by Paul, see 1 Cor. vi. 20, vii. 23
"bought," also Gal. iii. 13, iv. 5 (lit.) "bought out," i.e. redeemed.
47 Raising up, and on the third day, Hos. vi. I — 2.
48 On the third day. ..after three days, compare Mk viii. 31, ix. 31,
x. 34 "after three days," with Mt. xvi. 21, xvii. 23, xx. 19, Lk. ix. 22,
xviii. 33 "(on) the third day," and Jn ii. 19 foil., "in three days" ;
false witness etc., Mk xiv. 56 — 8, Mt. xxvi. 60 — 1, comp. Mk xv. 29,
Mt. xxvii. 40.
49 Smite the shepherd, see p. 43 ; inhabiteth eternity, Is. lvii. 15 ;
the sacrifices of God, Ps. Ii. 17; mercy (or, kindness) and not sacrifice,
Mt. ix. 13, xii. 7, quoting Hos. vi. 6.
161
NOTES
PAGE
49 PLACE is a frequent Talmudic name of God, and though Jesus
would not be likely to use the term, He would be likely to adopt the
thought implied in the name, that is, that God is independent of
place, all things living in Him. Comp. Gen. xxviii. 1 1 R.V. marg.
" Heb. the place," afterwards called Bethel, " House of God."
50 The Temple of his body, Jn ii. 21 — 2 ; the hour cometh, Jn v. 25.
51 From the dead, Mk ix. 9 — 10, Mt. xvii. 9 (not in Lk. ix. 36),
comp. Lk. xxiv. 45 — 6, Jn ii. 22.
52 Meant or said, see Johannine Grammar, 2467 foil, or Notes on
N.T.C., 2837 (iii) a, 2874 /; handle, Lk. xxiv. 39; other passages,
Jn xx. 9, Lk. xxiv. 26 ; the Epistle, I Cor. xv. 4.
54 Like Jonah, comp. Jon. ii. 2 — 4; in the great Hebrew prophets,
see Is. viii. 18 (quoted in Heb. ii. 13), Hos. i. 6 — 9, Jer. xxvii. 2,
xxviii. 10 foil., Ezek. iv. 4 foil., xxiv. 16 — 21 ; my dead body, Is. xxvi.
19, commented on in Horae Hebraicae on Jn xii. 24 ; the Babylonian
Talmud, Sanhedr. 90 b.
56 Authority. Jerome, on Hos. vi. 2, blends Christ's active with
His passive fulfilment. " Percutit ergo Dominus...Vivificat post
dies duos et die tertio resurgens ab inferis omne hominum secum
suscitat genus." Origen {Horn. Exod. v. 2) quoting Hos. vi. 2,
makes the whole fulfilment passive, " Prima dies nobis passio
Salvatoris est, et secunda, qua descendit in infernum, tertia autem
resurrectionis est dies." Both writers imply that the passage points
to Christ. On the various Jewish interpretations, and especially Ibn
Ezra, who interprets "in two days" as "in a short time," see
Paradosis, 1306.
57 The Northern Kingdom. Hos. i. 2 — 5 " the land " refers to
Israel ; a journey of three days, Josephus, Life § 52 ; Hezekiah, see
2 Chr. xxx. 6 — 11 ; quoted... twice, see p. 49 ; both of them together,
Gen. xxii. 8. One Targum (Jer. 1) has "both of them in heart
entirely as one," another (Jer. 11) " both of them together with
a contrite heart " ; on the third day, Gen. xxii. 4, see Philo i. 457 ;
be thou perfect, Gen. xvii. 1 (comp. Mt. v. 48 " Be ye therefore
perfect (R.V. Ye therefore shall be perfect) as your heavenly Father
is perfect ").
58 The third day I am perfected, Lk. xiii. 32 ; 07'igen and Jerome,
see above, note to p. 56 ; the words of Moses, Exod. iii. 18.
59 We will worship, Gen. xxii. 5 ; as it is said, Gen. xxii. 14 ; could
not be holden, comp. Acts ii. its,; Jonah, Mt. xii. 40, Jon. i. 17. Origen
has left no comment on Jon. iii. 3 " three days' journey," but Jerome's
(which suggests indebtedness to Origen) takes the "three days"
as referring to Christ's sending the apostles to baptize in the name
of the Three Persons, and Jon. iii. 4 " one day " as referring to the
One God.
162
NOTES
PAGE
61 With the clouds (Dan. vii. 13). This occurs in Mk xiv. 62, but
not exactly in Mk xiii. 26, Mt. xxiv. 30, xxvi. 64, Lk. xxi. 27, which
have a different preposition.
62 Shall be manifested, 1 Jn iii. 2, Col. iii. 4, Clem. Rom. § 50 ; some
connection, I Thess. iv. 17 ; shall judge angels, I Cor. vi. 3 ; holy ones
or saints, 1 Thess. iii. 13; the angels of his power, 2 Thess. i. 7;
angels of evil, Ps. lxxviii. 49.
63 Milton, Comus 1. 218 "Him to whom all things ill Are but as
slavish officers of vengeance " ; the same context, 2 Thess. i. 10 ;
not " 'angels" in the ordinary sense. The proof of this is too technical
to be given here. It will be given in The Son of Man (see above
p. xx) ; not even to the Son, Mk xiii. 32, Mt. xxiv. 36 ; almost non-
occurrent. It does not occur elsewhere in Mk, but it occurs in
Mt. xi. 27 (parall. to Lk. x. 22).
64 These three... Johannine instances, Jn i. 51, xii. 29, xx. 12 ; because
he is son of man, Jn v. 27 ; ever with the Lord, 1 Thess. iv. 17.
65 Follow the Lamb, xiv. 4 ; may be all one, Jn xvii. 20 — 21 ; always
"coming? Jn i. 9 ; follow thou me, Jn xxi. 22 ; the secret things,
Deut. xxix. 29.
66 If any one love me, Jn xiv. 23 ; Another, a Paraclete etc., Jn xiv.
16 — 18, see fohannine Grammar, 2352 — 3, 2630, 2793; glorified,
Jn xiii. 31; some portion of ourselves, Epict. I. i. 12.
69 In thy glory, Mkx. 37 ; the parall. Mt. xx. 21 has "in thy kingdom'';
fohn...in his prologue, Jn i. 14, 15, 18, comp. Jn v. 44.
70 That they may behold, Jn xvii. 24.
163
NOTES
PART IP
PAGE
74 The Lesson. See Is. lxi. I — 4, and comp. Lk. iv. 18 — 19, on which
see Horae Hebraicae as to the length of a reading ; incompatibility,
see Joseph. Ant. xviii. 1. 5. That the meaning is "incompatibility,"
not " superiority," is indicated by Philo ii. 370 and other passages.
75 Jesus. ..the Temple, Lk. ii. 43 — 9, Jn ii. 13 — 17; monopolies, comp.
Hor. Heb. on Mt. xxi. 12.
76 Predicted, Mk xiii. 2, Mt. xxiv. 2, Lk. xxi. 6 ; destroy this temple etc.,
Jn ii. 19 — 22 ; build another etc., Mk xiv. 58, comp. Mt. xxvi. 61,
Lk. om. ; shewn above, see Part I, chapters ix and x ; Luke... omitted
them, Lk. xxii. 66 foil. (comp. Mk xiv. 56 — 9, Mt. xxvi. 59 — 61) and
Lk. xxiii. 35 (comp. Mk xv. 29, Mt. xxvii. 40).
77 A contrite spirit, Is. lvii. 15, comp. Ps. Ii. 17 ; the place of my
throne, Ezek. xliii. 7 (see pp. 81 — 2) ; without walls, Zech. ii. 2 — 4 ;
Jewish tradition, see Yalkut on Zech. ad. loc. ; the Lord is there,
Ezek. xlviii. 35; I have formed him, Is. xliii. 7, 1.
78 All Israel, Rom. xi. 26 ; measure the temple, Rev. xi. I ; the
■measure of a man, Rev. xxi. 10 — 17; the twelve tribes, Rev. vii. 4;
living stones, 1 Pet. ii. 5 ; Jehovah. ..there, Ezek. xxxv. 10, xlviii. 35.
79 As u city. ..bound neighbourly, Ps. cxxii. 3 — 4. The Heb. verb
rendered " bound-neighbourly " is chdbar. Hence Chaberim,
"neighbours," mentioned on p. 80, on which see Schiirer II. ii. 8,
22 — 5 ; City of the Great King, Mt. v. 35 ; the Wisdom of God,
compare Lk. xi. 49 foil, and xiii. 34 — 5, with Mt. xxiii. 34 — 9 ; the city
which hath the foundations, Heb. xi. 10.
81 The two mentions of humanity, Ezek. i. 26, ii. I ; a second
coincidence, Ezek. xliii. 7.
82 The Epistle to the Hebrews, Heb. i. 1 foil., ii. 5 — 16; in Abraham,
Gen. xviii. 18.
83 My Father and your Father, Jn xx. 17 ; Son of God etc., see
Part I chapter V.
84 Building etc., Gen. xxx. 3, 1 S. ii. 35, Ps. cxviii. 22 ; for all the
nations, Mk xi. 17 quoting Is. Ivi. 7 (LXX), the parall. Mt. xxi. 13,
Lk. xix. 46 omit " for all the nations " ; not ashamed, Heb. ii. n;
honour all men, 1 Pet. ii. 17 ; seen above, p. xvii.
86 Upon the Rock, Mt. vii. 24 — 5, Lk. vi. 47 — 8 ; petros...petra,
Mt. xvi. 13 — 17 ; a Jewish tradition, see Levy iv. 32 b.
1 References to passages already frequently given in Part I will not invariably
be repeated in the following pages.
164
NOTES
PAGE
87 The Rock, I Cor. x. 4 (on which see Wetstein), Deut. xxxii. 4 ;
be thou perfect, Gen. xvii. 1 ; kindness (preferable to "mercy") see the
Author's Apologia pp. 28—31 ; Origen, see Horn. Jer. xvi. 3, and
Cels. vi. 77 ; a living stone etc., 1 Pet. ii. 2 — 5.
88 Honey etc., Deut. xxxii. 13, Ps. lxxxi. 16; Philo, i. 213 ; Abraham,
Jn viii. 56 "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day ; and he
saw it, and was glad " ; bidden the disciples, Mt. v. 48 ; Jewish
tradition, see Midrash and Rashi on Ps. lxxv. 3.
89 Words of eternal life, Jn vi. 68.
91 The Sanhedrin, Exod R. (on Exod. xv. 1); to build and to plant
Jer. i. 10.
92 A merry heart, Ecclus. i. 12.
93 Origen, see Horn. Jer. xiv. 5 ; Jerome, on Jer. i. 9 — 10 : comp.
Jer. xxv. 17 "Then took I the cup at the Lord's hand, and made all
the nations to drink, unto whom the Lord had sent me."
94 Touched my mouth, Jer. i. 9; repent, Mk i. 15 ; taught with
authority, Mk i. 22, 27 ; the prince of this world, Jn xii. 31 ; fallen
from heaven, Lk. x. 18.
95 Isaiah. ..Matthew..., Is. liii. 4, comp. Mt. viii. 17 ; above-mentioned
"first lesson," see p. 74.
96 Hath laid on him, Is. liii. 6 ; in the Acts of the Apostles, Acts x.
35-8.
97 Entered into Ezekiel, Ezek. ii. 2 ; the Lord is there, see pp. 77—8.
98 Not to be ministered unto, see p. 44 foil. ; left empty, Mt. xii. 44,
comp. Lk. xi. 25 ; sin 710 longer, Jn v. 14, the present imperative
implies that the man has been a sinner and is warned not to continue
in sin.
99 Receive ye, Jn xx. 22; Shakespeare, Much Ado, IV. I. 220 foil. ;
in the quotation... sacrifice, seep. 49; delivered up... make intercession,
see Part I chapter vm, especially pp. 40 — 41.
100 Killed. ..smitten.. .crucified, see Part I chapters VIII and IX.
101 A little while, comp. Jn xvi. 16 — 19.
104 Was separated (R.V. parted) from them, Lk. xxiv. 51. R.V. text
continues " and was carried up into heaven," but these words are
(R.V. marg.) omitted by "some ancient authorities" and doubly
bracketed by Westcott and Hort ; a proverb, Prov. xvii. 9 "he that
harpeth on a matter separateth chief friends."
105 Going, or going home, see Johannine Vocabulary , 1652 — 64 ;
Now hath the son of man been glorified, Jn xiii. 31, see Johannine
Grammar, 2446.
106 / have conquered, Jn xvi. 33 ; Luke's description, Lk. xi. 22 ; the
spirits in prison, 1 Pet. iii. 19 ; my God, Mk xv. 34, Mt. xxvii. 46,
Lk. om., comp. Jn xx. 17 "my God and your God."
165
NOTES
PAGE
107 My Lord and my God, Jn xx. 28 ; Whom have we in heaven but
thee? comp. Ps. lxxiii. 25 ; counted it not a prize, Philipp. ii. 6.
108 Another self, Jn xiv. 16, see p. no.
109 Signs, see Johannine Vocabulary, 1686 e; spirit and power, Zech.
iv. 6, Rom. i. 4, xv. 13, 19, 1 Cor. ii. 4, v. 4 etc. ; greater works, Jn xiv.
12 ; 0tz« brief passage variously reported, Mk xiii. n, Mt. x. 19 — 20,
Lk. xii. 12, comp. Lk. xxi. 14 — 15.
110 A mouth and wisdom, Lk. xxi. 14 — 15 ; Another, Jn xiv. 16, see
/oh. Gram., 2791—5.
111 Bri?iging destruction. ..or purifying. The best illustration of this
twofold meaning is in Exod. iii. 2 — 3 ; two-edged sword, Ps. cxlix. 5 — 6,
comp. Rev. i. 16, ii. 12, Heb. iv. 12 "The Word of God is. ..sharper
than any two-edged sword. ..and quick to discern the thoughts and
intents of the heart"; in Isaiah, Is. xlix. 2 foil., lix. 17 — 21 ; and with
fire, Mt. iii. n, Lk. iii. 16; not. ..peace, Mt. x. 34, Lk. xii. 49 — 51,
comp. Lk. xxii. 36 "buy a sword."
112 Philo's description, i. 565, ii. 247 ; your )nembers...on the earth,
Col. iii. 5 quoted by Origen on Jer. xii. n, where he says "Behold
the earth (i.e. the earthly element) in thyself"; Luke's precept,
Lk. xiv. 26 ; John adds " in this world" Jn xii. 25 ; my peace, Jn xiv.
27 ; henceforth, inserted by Mt. xxvi. 64, Lk. xxii. 69, omitted by
parall. Mk xiv. 62.
113 Made his footstool, comp. Ps. ex. 1 quoted by Jesus previously in
Mk xii. 36, Mt. xxii. 44, Lk. xx. 42 — 3, as referring to the Messiah ;
if any man shall hear etc., Jn xii. 47 — 8, " continueth rejecting " is
an attempt to express the present participle.
114 With the Spirit of God, Mt. xii. 28, parall. to Lk. xi. 20 "with the
finger of God"; sin against the Holy Spirit, Mk iii. 28 — 9, comp.
Mt. xii. 31—2, Lk. xii. 10. [Note also Mk xii. 36 "David said.. .in the
Holy Spirit," Mt. xxii. 43 " in the Spirit," Lk. xxii. 40 " in the book
of Psalms "] ; the public " cry," Jn vii. 37—9 " Jesus stood and cried
saying, ' If any man thirst....' But this spake he of the Spirit,.. .for
the Spirit was not yet [given]."
117 Marvelling. ..in connection with exorcism, Mk i. 22 — 3, 27 ; be thou
muzzled!, Mk iv. 39 literally translated. R.V. renders it here
" Be still " and in Mk i. 25 (to an unclean spirit) " Hold thy peace."
119 foil. On chapter ix, it has not been thought necessary to give the
references to all the passages quoted from the fourth gospel.
122 Heaven and earth, Mk xiii. 31, Mt. xxiv. 35, Lk. xxi. 33 (in the
Discourse on the Last Days) ; for the fall and rising again, Lk. ii. 34,
comp. Jn vi. 63, 68, xii. 48, xv. 3.
123 Johannine Revelation, Rev. ii. 17, iii. 12, xix. 12.
124 No one knoweth the Father, Mt. xi. 27, Lk. x. 22.
166
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of subtle and acute exposition of the Gospel narratives, but its central
interest is in the study of a human soul in its inner conflict.. ..No
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noble-minded book : it will enlarge the sympathies of every reader :
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