Chapter 19.- Thoroughgoing Scepticism and Thoroughgoing Eschatology (The Quest of the Historical Jesus) (Studies on Bible & Early Christianity)

The coincidence between the work of Wrede ^[246] and the "sketch of the life of Jesus" is not more surprising in regard to the time of their appearance than in regard to the character of their contents. They appeared upon the self-same day, their titles are almost identical, and their agreement in the criticism of the modern historical conception of the life of Jssus extends sometimes to the very phraseology. And yet they are written from quite different standpoints, one from the point of view of literary criticism, the other from that of the historical recognition of eschatology. It seems to be the fate of the Marcan hypothesis that at the decisive periods its problems should always be attacked simultaneously and independently from the literary and the historical sides, and the results declared in two different forms which corroborate each other. So it was in the case of Weisse and Wilke; so it is again now, when, retaining the assumption of the priority of Mark, the historicity of the hitherto accepted view ofthe life of Jesus, based upon the Marcan narrative, is called in question.

Wrede names as his real predecessors on the same lines Bruno Bauer, Volkmar, and the Dutch writer Hoekstra (�De Christologie van het canonieke Marcus-Evangelie, vergeleken met die van de beide andere synoptische Evangelien," Theol. Tijdischrift, v, 1871)..

In a certain limited degree the work of Ernest Havet (Le Christianisme et ses origines) has a claim to be classed in the same category. His scepticism refers principally to the entry into Jerusalem and the story of the passion.

The meaning of that is that the literary and the eschatological view, which have hitherto been marching parallel, on either flank, to the advance of modern theology, have now united their forces, brought theology to a halt, surrounded it, and compelled it to give battle.

That in the last three or four years so much has been written in which this enveloping movement has been ignored does not alter the real position of modern historical theology in the least. The fact is deserving of notice that during this period the study of the subject has not made a step in advance, but has kept moving to and fro upon the old lines with wearisome iteration, and has thrown itself with excessive zeal into the work of popularisation, simply because it was incapable of advancing.

And even if it professes gratitude to Wrede for the very interesting historical point which he has brought into the discussion, and is also willing to admit that thoroughgoing eschatology has advanced the solution of many problems, these are mere demonstrations which are quite inadequate to raise the blockade of modern theology by the allied forces. Supposing that only a half-nay, only a third-of the critical arguments which are common to Wrede and the "Sketch of the Life of Jesus" are sound, then the modern historical view of the history is wholly ruined.

The reader of Wrede's book cannot help feeling that here no quarter is given; and any one who goes carefully through the present writer's "Sketch" must come to see that between the modern historical and the eschatological Life of Jesus no compromise is possible.

Thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology may, in their union, either destroy, or be destroyed by modern historical theology; but they cannot combine with it and enable it to advance, any more than they can be advanced by it.

We are confronted with a decisive issue. As with Strauss's "Life of Jesus," so with the surprising agreement in the critical basis of these two schools-we are not here considering the respective solutions which they offer-there has entered into the domain of the theology of the day a force with which it cannot possibly ally itself. Its whole territory is threatened. It must either reconquer it step by step or else surrender it. It has no longer the right to advance a single assertion until it has taken up a definite position in regard to the fundamental questions raised by the new criticism.

Modern historical theology is no doubt still far from recognising this. It is warned that the dyke is letting in water and sends a couple of masons to repair the leak; as if the leak did not mean that the whole masonry is undermined, and must be rebuilt from the foundation.

To vary the metaphor, theology comes home to find the broker's marks on all the furniture and goes on as before quite comfortably, ignoring the fact it will lose everything if it does not pay its debts.

The critical objections which Wrede and the "Sketch" agree in bringing against the modern treatment of the subject are as follows.

In order to find in Mark the Life of Jesus of which it is in search modern theology is obliged to read between the lines a whole host of things, and those often the most important, and then to foist them upon the text by means of psychological conjecture. It is determined to find evidence in Mark of a development of Jesus, a development of the disciples, and a development of the outer circumstances; and professes in so doing to be only reproducing the views and indications of the Evangelist. In reality, however, there is not a word of all this in the Evangelist, and when his interpreters are asked what are the hints and indications on which they base their assertions they have nothing to offer save argumenta e silentio.

Mark knows nothing of any development in Jesus, he knows nothing of any paedagogic considerations which are supposed to have determined the conduct of Jesus towards the disciples and the people; he knows nothing of any conflict in the mind of Jesus between a spiritual and a popular, political Messianic ideal; he does not know, either, that in this respect there was any difference between the view of Jesus and that of the people; he knows nothing of the idea that the use of the ass at the triumphal entry symbolised a non-political Messiahship; he knows nothing of the idea that the question about the Messiah's being the Son of David had something to do with this alternative between political and non-political; he does not know, either, that Jesus explained the secret of the passion to the disciples, nor that they had any understanding of it; he only knows that from first to last they were in all respects equally wanting in understanding; he does not know that the first period was a period of success and the secnd a period of failure; he represents the Pharisees and Herodians as (from iii. 6 onwards) resolved upon the death of Jesus, while the people, down to the very last day when He preached in the temple, are enthusiastically loyal to Him.

All these things of which the Evangelist says nothing-and they are the foundations of the modern view-should first be proved, if proved they can be; they ought not to be simply read into the text as something self-evident. For it is just those things which appear so self-evident to the prevailing critical temper which are in reality the least evident of all.

Another hitherto self-evident point-the "historical kernel" which it has been customary to extract from the narratives-must be given up, until it is proved, if it is capable of proof, that we can and ought to distinguish between the kernel and the husk. We may take all that is reported as either historical or unhistorical, but, in respect of the definite predictions of the passion, death, and resurrection, we ought to give up taking the reference to the passion as historical and letting the rest go; we may accept the idea of the atoning death, or we may reject it, but we ought not to ascribe to Jesus a feeble, anaemic version of this idea, while setting down to the account of the Pauline theology the interpretation of the passion which we actually find in Mark.

Whatever the results obtained by the aid of the historical kernel, the method pursued is the same; "it is detached from its context and transformed into something different." "It finally comes to this," says Wrede, "that each critic retains whatever portion of the traditional sayings can be fitted into his construction of the facts and his conception of historical possibility and rejects the rest." The psychological explanation of motive, and the psychological connexion of the events and actions which such critics have proposed to find in Mark, simply do not exist. That being so, nothing is to be made out of his account by the application of a priori psychology. A vast quantity of treasures of scholarship and erudition, of art and artifice, which the Marcan hypothesis has gathered into its storehouse in the two generations of its existence to aid it in constructing its life of Jesus has become worthless, and can be of no further service to true historical research. Theology has been simplified. What would becme of it if that did not happen every hundred years or so? And the simplification was badly needed, for no one since Strauss had cleared away its impedimenta.

Thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology, between them, are compelling theology to read the Marcan text again with simplicity of mind. The simplicity consists in dispensing with the connecting links which it has been accustomed to discover between the sections of the narrative (pericopes), in looking at each one separately, and recognising that it is difficult to pass from one to the other. <> The material with which it has hitherto been usual to solder the sections together into a life of Jesus will not stand the temperature test. Exposed to the cold air of critical scepticism it cracks; when the furnace of eschatology is heated to a certain point the solderings melt. In both cases the sections all fall apart.

Formerly it was possible to book through-tickets at the supplementary-psychological-knowledge office which enabled those travelling in the interests of Life-of-Jesus construction to use express trains, thus avoiding the inconvenience of having to stop at every little station, change, and run the risk of missing their connexion. This ticket office is now closed. There is a station at the end of each section of the narrative, and the connexlons are not guaranteed.

The fact is, it is not simply that there is no very obvious psychological connexion between the sections; in almost every case there is a positive break in the connexion. And there is a great deal in the Marcan narrative which is inexplicable and even self-contradictory.

In their statement of the problems raised by this want of connexion Wrede and the "Sketch" are in the most exact agreement. That these difficulties are not artificially constructed has been shown by our survey of the history of the attempts to write the Life of Jesus, in the course of which these problems emerge one after another, after Bruno Bauer had by anticipation grasped them all in their complexity.

How do the demoniacs know that Jesus is the Son of God? Why does the blind man at Jericho address Him as the Son of David, when no one else knows His Messianic dignity? How was it that these occurrences did not give a new direction to the thoughts of the people in regard to Jesus? How did the Messianic entry come about? How was it possible without provoking the interference of the Roman garrison of occupation? Why is it as completely ignored in the subsequent controversies as if it had never taken place? Why was it not brought up at the trial of Jesus? "The Messianic acclamation at the entry into Jerusalem," says Wrede, "is in Mark quite an isolated incident. It has no sequel, neither is there any preparation for it beforehand."

Why does Jesus in Mark iv. 10-12 speak of the parabolic form of discourse as designed to conceal the mystery of the Kingdom of God, whereas the explanation which He proceeds to give to the disciples has nothing mysterious about it? What is the mystery of the Kingdom of God? Why does Jesus forbid His miracles to be made known even in cases where there is no apparent purpose for the prohibition?

Why is His Messiahship a secret and yet no secret, since it is known, not only to the disciples, but to the demoniacs, the blind man at Jericho, the multitude at Jerusalem-which must, as Bruno Bauer expresses it, "have fallen from heaven"-and to the High Priest?

Why does Jesus first reveal His Messiahship to the disciples at Caesarea Philippi, not at the moment when He sends them forth to preach? How does Peter know without having been told by Jesus that the Messiahship belongs to his Master? Why must it remain a secret until the "resurrection"? Why does Jesus indicate His Messiahship only by the title Son of Man? And why is it that this title is so far from prominent in primitive Christian theology?

What is the meaning of the statement that Jesus at Jerusalem discovered a difficulty in the fact that the Messiah was described as at once David's son and David's Lord? How are we to explain the fact that Jesus had to open the eyes of the people to the greatness of the Baptist's office, subsequently to the mission of the Twelve, and to enlighten the disciples themselves in regard to it during the descent from the mount of transfiguration? Why should this be described in Matt. xi. 14 and 15 as a mystery difficult to grasp (�If ye can receive it"... "He that has ears to hear, let him hear�)? What is the meaning of the saying that he that is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than the Baptist? Does the Baptist, then, not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven? How is the Kingdom of Heaven subjected to violence since the days of the Baptist? Who are the violent? What is the Baptist intended to understand from the answer of Jesus?

What importance was attached to the miracles by Jesus Himself? What office must they have caused the people to attribute to Him? Why is the discourse at the sending out of the Twelve filled with predictions of persecutions which experience had given no reason to anticipate, and which did not, as a matter of fact, occur? What is the meaning of the saying in Matt. x. 23 about the imminent coming of the Son of Man, seeing that the disciples after all returned to Jesus without its being fulfilled? Why does Jesus leave the people just when His work among them is most successful, and journey northwards? Why had He, immediately after the sending forth of the Twelve, manifested a desire to withdraw Himself from the multitude who were longing for salvation?

How does the multitude mentioned in Mark viii. 34 suddenly appear at Caesarea Philippi? Why is its presence no longer implied in Mark ix. 30? How could Jesus possibly have travelled unrecognised through Galilee, and how could He have avoided being thronged in Capernaum although He stayed at "the house"?

How came He so suddenly to speak to His disciples of His suffering and dying and rising again, without, moreover, explaining to them either the natural or the moral "wherefore"? "There is no trace of any attempt on the part of Jesus," says Wrede, "to break this strange thought gradually to His disciples... the prediction is always flung down before the disciples without preparation, it is, in fact, a characteristic feature of these sayings that all attempt to aid the understanding of the disciples is lacking."

Did Jesus journey to Jerusalem with the purpose of working there, or of dying there? How comes it that in Mark x. 39, He holds out to the sons of Zebedee the prospect of drinking His cup and being baptized with His baptism? And how can He, after speaking so decidedly of the necessity of His death, think it possible in Gethsemane that the cup might yet pass from Him? Who are the undefined "many," for whom, according to Mark x. 45 and xiv. 24, His death will serve as a ransom? ^[247]

How came it that Jesus alone was arrested? Why were no witness called at His trial to testify that He had given Himself out to be the Messiah? How is it that on the morning after His arrest the temper of the multitude seems to be completely changed, so that no one stirs a finger to help Him?

In what form does Jesus conceive the resurrection, which He promises to His disciples, to be combined with the coming on the clouds of heaven to which He points His judge? In what relation do these predictions stand to the prospect held out at the time of the sending forth of the Twelve, but not realized, of the immediate appearance of the Son of Man?

What is the meaning of the further prediction on the way to Gethsemane (Mark xiv. 28) that after His resurrection He will go before the disciples into Galilee? How is the other version of this saying (Mark xvi. 7) to be explained, according to which it means, as spoken by the angel, that the disciples are to journey to Galilee to have their first meeting with the risen Jesus there, whereas, on the lips of Jesus, it betokened that, just as now as a sufferer He was going before them from Galilee to Jerusalem, so, after His resurrection, He would go before them from Jerusalem to Galilee? And what was to happen there?

These problems were covered up by the naturalistic psychology as by a light snow-drift. The snow has melted, and they now stand out from the narratives like black points of rock. It is no longer allowable to avoid these questions, or to solve them, each by itself, by softening them down and giving them an interpretation by which the reported facts acquire a quite different significance from that which they bear for the Evangelist. Either the Marcan text as it stands is historical, and therefore to be retained, or it is not, and then it should be given up. What is really unhistorical is any softening down of the wording, and the meaning which it naturally bears.

The sceptical and eschatological schools, however, go still farther in company.

If the connexion in Mark is really no connexion, it is important to try to discover whether any principle can be discovered in this want of connexion. Can any order be brought into the chaos? To this the answer is in the affirmative.

The complete want of connexion, with all its self-contradictions, is ultimately due to the fact that two representations of the life of Jesus, or, to speak more accurately, of His public ministry, are here crushed into one; a natural and a deliberately supernatural representation. A dogmatic element has intruded itself into the description of this Life-something which has no concern with the events which form the outward course of that Life. This dogmatic element is the Messianic secret of Jesus and all the secrets and concealments which go along with it.

Hence the irrational and self-contradictory features of the presentation of Jesus, out of which a rational psychology can make only something which is unhistorical and does violence to the text, since it must necessarily get rid of the constant want of connexion and self-contradiction which belongs to the essence of the narrative, and portray a Jesus who was the Messiah, not one who at once was and was not Messiah as the Evangelist depicts Him. When rational psychology conceives Him as one who was Messiah, but not in the sense expected by the people, that is a concession to the self-contradictions of the Marcan representation; which, however, does justice neither to the text nor to the history which it records, since the Gospel does not contain the faintest hint that the contradiction was of this nature.

Up to this point-up to the complete reconstruction of the system which runs through the disconnectedness, and the tracing back of the dogmatic element to the Messianic secret-there extends a close agreement between thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology. The critical arguments are identical, the construction is analogous and based on the same principle. The defenders of the modern psychological view cannot, therefore, play off one school against the other, as one of them proposed to do, but must deal with them both at once. They differ only when they explain whence the system that runs through the disconnectedness comes. Here the ways divide, as Bauer saw long ago. The inconsistency between the public life of Jesus and His Messianic claim lies either in the nature of the Jewish Messianic conception, or in the representation of the Evangelist. There is, on the one hand, the eschatological solution, which at one stroke raises the Marcan account as it stands, with all its disconnectedness and incnsistencies, into genuine history; and there is, on the other hand, the literary solution, which regards the incongruous dogmatic element as interpolated by the earliest Evangelist into the tradition and therefore strikes out the Messianic claim altogether from the historical Life of Jesus. Tertium non datur.

But in some respects it really hardly matters which of the two "solutions" one adopts. They are both merely wooden towers erected upon the solid main building of the consentient critical induction which offers the enigmas detailed above to modern historical theology. It is interesting in this connexion that Wrede's scepticism is just as constructive as the eschatological outline of the Life of Jesus in the "Sketch."

Bruno Bauer chose the literary solution because he thought that we had no evidence for an eschatological expectation existing in the time of Christ.

Wrede, though he follows Johannes Weiss in assuming the existence of a Jewish eschatological Messianic expectation, finds in the Gospel only the Christian conception of the Messiah. "If Jesus," he thinks, "really knew Himself to be the Messiah and designated Himself as such, the genuine tradition is so closely interwoven with later accretions that it is not easy to recognise it." In any case, Jesus cannot, according to Wrede, have spoken of His Messianic Coming in the way which the Synoptists report. The Messiahship of Jesus, as we find it in the Gospels, is a product of Early Christian theology correcting history according to its own conceptions.

It is therefore necessary to distinguish in Mark between the reported events which constitute the outward course of the history of Jesus, and the dogmatic idea which claims to lay down the lines of its inward course. The principle of division is found in the contradictions.

The recorded events form, according to Wrede, the following picture. Jesus came forward as a teacher, ^[248] first and principally in Galilee. He was surrounded by a company of disciples, went about with them, and gave them instruction. To some of them He accorded a special confidence. A larger multitude sometimes attached itself to Him, in addition to the disciples. He is fond of discoursing in parables. Besides the teaching there are the miracles. These make a stir, and He is thronged by the multitudes. He gives special attention to the cases of demoniacs. He is in such close touch with the people that He does not hesitate to associate even with publicans and sinners. Towards the Law He takes up an attitude of some freedom. He encounters the opposition of the Pharisees and the Jewish authorities. They set traps for Him and endeavour to bring about His fall. Finally they succeed, when He ventures to show Himself not only on Judaean soil, but in Jerusalem. He remains passive and is condemned to death. The Roman dministration supports the Jewish authorities.

"The texture of the Marcan narrative as we know it," continues Wrede, "is not complete until to the warp of these general historical notions there is added a strong weft of ideas of a dogmatic character, the substance of which is that "Jesus, the bearer of a special office to which He was appointed by God," becomes "a higher, superhuman being." If this is the case, however, then "the motives of His conduct are not derived from human characteristics, human aims and necessities." "The one motive which runs throughout is rather a Divine decree which lies beyond human understanding. This He seeks to fulfil alike in His actions and His sufferings. The teaching of Jesus is accordingly supernatural." On this assumption the want of understanding of the disciples to whom He communicates, without commentary, unconnected portions of this supernatural knowledge becomes natural and explicable. The people are, moreover, essentially "non-receptive of revelation."

"It is these motifs and not those which are inherently historical which give movement and direction to the Marcan narrative. It is they that give the general colour. On them naturally depends the main interest, it is to them that the thought of the writer is really directed. The consequence is that the general picture offered by the Gospel is not an historical representation of the Life of Jesus. Only some faded remnants of such an impression have been taken over into a supra-historical religious view. In this sense the Gospel of Mark belongs to the history of dogma."

The two conceptions of the Life of Jesus, the natural and the supernatural, are brought, not without inconsistencies, into a kind of harmony by means of the idea of intentional secrecy. The Messiahship of Jesus is concealed in His life as in a closed dark lantern, which, however, is not quite closed-otherwise one could not see that it was there-and allows a few bright beams to escape.

The idea of a secret which must remain a secret until the resurrection of Jesus could only arise at a time when nothing was known of a Messianic claim of Jesus during His life upon earth: that is to say, at a time when the Messiahship of Jesus was thought of as beginning with the resurrection. But that is a weighty piece of indirect historical evidence that Jesus did not really profess to be the Messiah at all.

The positive fact which is to be inferred from this is that the appearances of the risen Jesus produced a sudden revolution in His disciples' conception of Him. "The resurrection" is for Wrede the real Messianic event in the Life of Jesus.

Who is responsible, then, for introducing this singular feature, so destructive of the real historical connexion, into the life of Jesus, which was in reality that of a teacher? It is quite impossible, Wrede argues, that the idea of the Messianic secret is the invention of Mark. "A thing like that is not done by a single individual. It must, therefore, have been a view which was current in certain circles, and was held by a considerable number, though not necessarily perhaps by a very great number of persons. To say this is not to deny that Mark had a share and perhaps a considerable share in the creation of the view which he sets forth... the motifs themselves are doubtless not, in part at least, peculiar to the Evangelist, but the concrete embodiment of them is certainly his own work; and to this extent we may speak of a special Marcan point of view which manifests itself here and there. Where the line is to be drawn between what is traditional and what is individual cannot always be determined even by acareful examination directed to this end. We must leave it commingled, as we find it."

The Marcan narrative has therefore arisen from the impulse to give a Messianic form to the earthly life of Jesus. This impulse was, however, restrained by the impression and tradition of the non-Messianic character of the life of Jesus, which were still strong and vivid, and it was therefore not able wholly to recast the material, but could only bore its way into it and force it apart, as the roots of the bramble disintegrate a rock. In the Gospel literature which arose on the basis of Mark the Messianic secret becomes gradually of more subordinate importance and the life of Jesus more Messianic in character, until in the Fourth Gospel He openly comes before the people with Messianic claims.

In estimating the value of this construction we must not attach too much importance to its a priori assumptions and difficulties. In this respect Wrede's position is much more precarious than that of his precursor Bruno Bauer.

According to the latter the interpolation of the Messianic secret is the personal, absolutely original act of the Evangelist. Wrede thinks of it as a collective act, representing the new conception as moulded by the tradition before it was fixed by the Evangelist. That is very much more difficult to carry through. Tradition alters its materials in a different way from that in which we find them altered in Mark. Tradition transforms from without. Mark's way of drawing secret threads of a different material through the texture of the tradition, without otherwise altering it, is purely literary, and could only be the work of an individual person.

A creative tradition would have carried out the theory of the Messianic secret in the life of Jesus much more boldly and logically, that is to say, at once more arbitrarily and more consistently.

The only alternative is to distinguish two stages of tradition in early Christianity, a naive, freely-working, earlier stage, and a more artificial later stage confined to a smaller circle of a more literary character. Wrede does, as a matter of fact, propose to find in Mark traces of a simpler and bolder transformation which, leaving aside the Messianic secret, makes Jesus an openly-professed Messiah, and is therefore of a distinct origin from the conception of the secret Christ. To this tradition may belong, he thinks, the entry into Jerusalem and the confession before the High Priest, since these narratives "naively" imply an openly avowed Messiahship.

The word "naively" is out of place here; a really naive tradition which intended to represent the entry of Jesus as Messianic would have done so in quite a different way from Mark, and would not have stultified itself so curiously as we find done even in Matthew, where the Galilaean Passover pilgrims, after the "Messianic entry," answer the question of the people of Jerusalem as to who it was whom they were acclaiming, with the words "This is the Prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galileo" (Matt. xxi. 11).

The tradition, too, which makes Jesus acknowledge His Messiahship before His judges is not "naive" in Wrede's sense, for, if it were, it would not represent the High Priest's knowledge of Jesus' Messiahship as something so extraordinary and peculiar to himself that he can cite witnesses only for the saying about the Temple, not with reference to Jesus' Messianic claim, and bases his condemnation only on the fact that Jesus in answer to his question acknowledges Himself as Messiah - and Jesus does so, it should be remarked, as in other passages, with an appeal to a future justification of His claim. The confession before the council is therefore anything but a "naive representation of an openly avowed Messiahship."

The Messianic statements in these two passages present precisely the same remarkable character as in all the other cases to which Wrede draws attention.

We have not here to do with a different tradition, with a clear Messianic light streaming in through the window-pane, but, just as elsewhere, with the rays of a dark lantern. The real point is that Wrede cannot bring these two passages within the lines of the theory of secrecy, and practically admits this by assuming the existence of a second and rather divergent line of tradition. What concerns us is to note that this theory does not suffice to explain the two facts in question, the knowledge of Jesus' Messiahship shown by the Galilaean Passover pilgrims at the time of the entry into Jerusalem, and the knowledge of the High Priest at His trial.

We can only touch on the question whether any one who wished to date back in some way or other the Messiahship into the life of Jesus could not have done it much more simply by making Jesus give His closest followers some hints regarding it. Why does the re-moulder of the history, instead of doing that, have recourse to a supernatural knowledge on the part of the demoniacs and the disciples? For Wrede rightly remarks, as Bruno Bauer and the "Sketch" also do, that the incident of Caesarea Philippi, as represented by Mark, involves a miracle, since Jesus does not, as is generally supposed, reveal His Messiahship to Peter; it is Peter who reveals it to Jesus (Mark viii. 29). This fact, however, makes nonsense of the whole theory about the disciples' want of understanding. It will not therefore fit into the concealment theory, and Wrede, as a matter of fact, feels obliged to give up that theory as regards this incident. "This scene," he remarks, "can hardly have been created by Mark himself." It also, therefore, elongs to another tradition.

Here, then, is a third Messianic fact which cannot be brought within the lines of Wrede's "literary" theory of the Messianic secret. And these three facts are precisely the most important of all: Peter's confession, the Entry into Jerusalem, and the High Priest's knowledge of Jesus' Messiahship! In each case Wrede finds himself obliged to refer these to tradition instead of to the literary conception of Mark. ^[249] This tradition undermines his literary hypothesis, for the conception of a tradition always involves the possibility of genuine historical elements.

How greatly this inescapable intrusion of tradition weakens the theory of the literary interpolation of the Messiahship into the history, becomes evident when we consider the story of the passion. The representation that Jesus was publicly put to death as Messiah because He had publicly acknowledged Himself to be so, must, like the High Priest's knowledge of His claim, be referred to the other tradition which has nothing to do with the Messianic secret, but boldly antedates the Messiahship without employing any finesse of that kind. But that strongly tends to confirm the historicity of this tradition, and throws the burden of proof upon those who deny it. It is wholly independent of the hypothesis of secrecy, and in fact directly opposed to it. If, on the other hand, in spite of all the difficulties, the representation that Jesus was condemned to death on account of His Messianic claims is dragged by main force into the theory of secrecy, the question arises: What interest had the persons who set up the literry theory of secrecy, in representing Jesus as having been openly put to death as Messiah and in consequence of His Messianic claims? And the answer is: "None whatever: quite the contrary." For in doing so the theory of secrecy stultifies itself. As though one were to develop a photographic plate with painful care and, just when one had finished, fling open the shutters, so, on this hypothesis, the natural Messianic light suddenly shines into the room which ought to be lighted only by the rays of the dark lantern.

Here, therefore, the theory of secrecy abandoned the method which it had hitherto followed in regard to the traditional material. For if Jesus was not condemned and crucified at Jerusalem as Messiah, a tradition must have existed which preserved the truth about the last conflicts, and the motives of the condemnation. This is supposed to have been here completely set aside by the theory of the secret Messiahship, which, instead of drawing its delicate threads through the older tradition, has simply substituted its own representation of events. But in that case why not do away with the remainder of the public ministry? why not at least get rid of the public appearance at Jerusalem? How can the crudeness of method shown in the case of the passion be harmonised with the skilful conservatism towards the non-Messianic tradition which it is obvious that the "Marcan circle" has scrupulously observed elsewhere?

If according to the original tradition, of which Wrede admits the existence, Jesus went to Jerusalem not to die, but to work there, the dogmatic view, according to which He went to Jerusalem to die, must have struck out the whole account of His sojourn in Jerusalem and His death in order to put something else in its place. What we now read in the Gospels concerning those last days in Jerusalem cannot be derived from the original tradition, for one who came to work, and, according to Wrede "to work with decisive effect," would not have cast all His preaching into the form of obscure parables of judgment and minatory discourses. That is a style of speech which could be adopted only by one who was determined to force his adversaries to put him to death. Therefore the narrative of the last days of Jesus must be, from beginning to end, a creation of the dogmatic idea. And, as a matter of fact, Wrede, here in agreement with Weisse, "sees grounds for asserting that the sojourn at Jerusalem is presented to us in the ospels in a very much abridged and weakened version."

That is a euphemistic expression, for if it was really the dogmatic idea which was responsible for representing Jesus as being condemned as Messiah, it is not a mere case of "abridging and weakening down," but of displacing the tradition in favour of a new one.

But if Jesus was not condemned as Messiah, on what grounds was He condemned?

And, again, what interest had those whose concern was to make the Messiahship a secret of His earthly life, in making Him die as Messiah, contrary to the received tradition? And what interest could the tradition have had in falsifying history in that way? Even admitting that the prediction of the passion to the disciples is of a dogmatic character, and is to be regarded as a creation of primitive Christian theology, the historic fact that He died would have been a sufficient fulfilment of those sayings. That He was publicly condemned and crucified as Messiah has nothing to do with the fulfilment of those predictions, and goes far beyond it.

To take a more general point: what interest had primitive theology ln dating back the Messiahship of Jesus to the time of His earthly ministry? None whatever. Paul shows us with what complete indifference the earthly life of Jesus was regarded by primitive Christianity. The discourses in Acts show an equal indifference, since in them also Jesus first becomes the Messiah by virtue of His exaltation. To date the Messiahship earlier was not an undertaking which offered any advantage to primitive theology, in fact it would only have raised difficulties for it, since it involved the hypothesis of a dual Messiahship, one of earthly humiliation and one of future glory. The fact is, if one reads through the early literature one becomes aware that so long as theology had an eschatological orientation and was dominated by the expectation of the Parousia the question of how Jesus of Nazareth "had been" the Messiah not only did not exist, but was impossible. Primitive theology is simply a theology of the future, with no nterest in history! It was only with the decline of eschatological interest and the change in the orientation of Christianity which was connected therewith that an interest in the life of Jesus and the "historical Messiahship" arose.

That is to say, the Gnostics, who were the first to assert the Messiahship of the historical Jesus, and who were obliged to assert it precisely because they denied the eschatological conceptions, forced this view upon the theology of the Early Church, and compelled it to create in the Logos Christology an un-Gnostic mould in which to cast the speculative conception of the historical Messiahship of Jesus; and that is what we find in the Fourth Gospel. Prior to the anti-Gnostic controversies we find in the early Christian literature no conscious dating back of the Messiahship of Jesus to His earthly life, and no theological interest at work upon the dogmatic recasting of His history. ^[250] It is therefore difficult to suppose that the Messianic secret in Mark, that is to say, in the very earliest tradition, was derived from primitive theology. The assertion of the Messiahship of Jesus was wholly independent of the latter. The instinct which led Bruno Bauer to explain the Messianic secret as the literary inventionof Mark himself was therefore quite correct. Once suppose that tradition and primitive theology have anything to do with the matter, and the theory of the interpolation of the Messiahship into the history becomes almost impossible to carry through. But Wrede's greatness consists precisely in the fact that he was compelled by his acute perception of the significance of the critical data to set aside the purely literary version of the hypothesis and make Mark, so to speak, the instrument of the literary realisation of the ideas of a definite intellectual circle within the sphere of primitive theology.

The positive difficulty which confronts the sceptical theory is to explain how the Messianic beliefs of the first generation arose, if Jesus, throughout His life, was for all, even for the disciples, merely a "teacher," and gave even His intimates no hint of the dignity which He claimed for Himself. It is difficult to eliminate the Messiahship from the "Life of Jesus," especially from the narrative of the passion; it is more difficult still, as Keim saw long ago, to bring it back again after its elimination from the "Life" into the theology of the primitive Church. In Wrede's acute and logical thinking this difficulty seems to leap to light.

Since the Messianic secret in Mark is always connected with the resurrection, the date at which the Messianic belief of the disciples arose must be the resurrection of Jesus. "But the idea of dating the Messiahship from the resurrection is certainly not a thought of Jesus, but of the primitive Church. It presupposes the Church's experience of the appearance of the risen Jesus."

The psychologist will say that the "resurrection experiences," however they may be conceived, are only intelligible as based upon the expectation of the resurrection, and this again as based on references of Jesus to the resurrection. But leaving psychology aside, let us accept the resurrection experiences of the disciples as a pure psychological miracle. Even so, how can the appearances of the risen Jesus have suggested to the disciples the idea that Jesus, the crucified teacher, was the Messiah? Apart from any expectations, how can this conclusion have resulted for them from the mere "fact of the resurrection"? The fact of the appearance did not by any means imply it. In certain circles, indeed, according to Mark vi. 14-16, in the very highest quarters, the resurrection of the Baptist was believed in; but that did not make John the Baptist the Messiah. The inexplicable thing is that, according to Wrede, the disciples began at once to assert confidently and unanimously that He was the Messiah and would befor long appear in glory.

But how did the appearance of the risen Jesus suddenly become for them a proof of His Messiahship and the basis of their eschatology? That Wrede fails to explain, and so makes this "event" an "historical" miracle which in reality is harder to believe than the supernatural event.

Any one who holds "historical" miracles to be just as impossible as any other kind, even when they occur in a critical and sceptical work, will be forced to the conclusion that the Messianic eschatological significance attached to the "resurrection experience" by the disciples implies some kind of Messianic eschatological references on the part of the historical Jesus which gave to the "resurrection" its Messianic eschatological significance. Here Wrede himself, though without admitting it, postulates some Messianic hints on the part of Jesus, since he conceives the judgment of the disciples upon the resurrection to have been not analytical, but synthetic, inasmuch as they add something to it, and that, indeed, the main thing, which was not implied in the conception of the event as such.

Here again the merit of Wrede's contribution to criticism consists in the fact that he takes the position as it is and does not try to improve it artificially.

Bruno Bauer and others supposed that the belief in the Messiahship of Jesus had slowly solidified out of a kind of gaseous state or had been forced into primitive theology by the literary invention of Mark. Wrede, however, feels himself obliged to base it upon an historical fact, and, moreover, the same historical fact which is pointed to by the sayings in the Synoptics and the Pauline theology. But in so doing he creates an almost insurmountable difficulty for his hypothesis.

We can only briefly refer to the question what form the accounts of the resurrection must have taken if the historic fact which underlay them was the first surprised apprehension and recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus on the part of the disciples. The Messianic teaching would necessarily in that case have been somehow or other put into the mouth of the risen Jesus. It is, however, completely absent, because it was already contained in the teaching of Jesus during His earthly life. The theory of Messianic secrecy must therefore have re-moulded not merely the story of the passion, but also that of the resurrection, removing the revelation of the Messiahship to the disciples from the latter in order to insert it into the public ministry! Wrede, moreover, will only take account of the Marcan text as it stands, not of the historical possibility that the "futuristic Messiahship" which meets us in the mysterious utterances of Jesus goes back in some form to a sound tradition.

Further he does not take the eschatological character of the teaching of Jesus into his calculations, but works on the false assumption that he can analyse the Marcan text in and by itself and so discover the principle on which it is composed. He carries out experiments on the law of crystallisation of the narrative material in this Gospel, but instead of doing so in the natural and historical atmosphere he does it in an atmosphere artificially neutralised, which contains no trace of contemporary conceptions. ^[251] Consequently the conclusion based on the sum of his observations has in it something arbitrary. Everything which conflicts with the rational construction of the course of the history is referred directly to the theory of the concealment of the Messianic secret. But in the carrying out of that theory a number of self-contradictions, without which it could not subsist, must be recognised and noted.

Thus, for example, all the prohibitions, ^[252] whatever they may refer to, even including the command not to make known His miracles, are referred to the same category as the injunction not to reveal the Messianic secret. But what justification is there for that? It presupposes that according to Mark the miracles could be taken as proofs of the Messiahship, an idea of which there is no hint whatever in Mark. "The miracles," Wrede argues, "are certainly used by the earliest Christians as evidence of the nature and significance of Christ.

... I need hardly point to the fact that Mark, not less than Matthew, Luke, and John, must have held the opinion that the miracles of Jesus encountered a wide-spread and ardent Messianic expectation."

In John this Messianic significance of the miracles is certainly assumed; but then the really eschatological view of things has here fallen into the background. It seems indeed as if genuine eschatology excluded the Messianic interpretation of the miracles. In Matthew the miracles of Jesus have nothing whatever to do with the proof of the Messiahship, but, as is evident from the saying about Chorazin and Bethsaida, Matt. xi. 20-24, are only an exhibition of mercy intended to awaken repentance, or, according to Matt. xii. 28, an indication of the nearness of the Kingdom of God. They have as little to do with the Messianic office as in the Acts of the Apostles. ^[253] In Mark, from first to last, there is not a single syllable to suggest that the miracles have a Messianic significance. Even admitting the possibility that the "miracles of Jesus encountered an ardent Messianic expectation," that does not necessarily imply a Messianic significance in them. To justify that conclusion requires the pre-supposition that he Messiah was expected to be some kind of an earthly man who should do miracles. This is presupposed by Wrede, by Bruno Bauer, and by modern theology in general but it has not been proved, and it is at variance with eschatology, which pictured the Messiah to itself as a heavenly being in a world which was already being transformed into something supra-mundane.

The assumption that the clue to the explanation of the command not to make known the miracles is to be found in the necessity of guarding the secret of the Messiahship is, therefore, not justified. The miracles are connected with the Kingdom and the nearness of the Kingdom, not with the Messiah. But Wrede is obliged to refer everything to the Messianic secret, because he leaves the preaching of the Kingdom out of account.

The same process is repeated in the discussion of the veiling of the mystery of the Kingdom of God in the parables of Mark iv. The mystery of the Kingdom is for Wrede the secret of Jesus' Messiahship. "We have learned in the meantime," he says, "that one main element in this mystery is that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. If Jesus, according to Mark, conceals his Messiahship, we are justified in interpreting the musthrion thV basileiaV tou qeou in the light of this fact."

That is one of the weakest points in Wrede's whole theory. Where is there any hint of this in these parables? And why should the secret of the Kingdom of God contain within it as one of its principal features the secret of the Messiahship of Jesus?

"Mark's account of Jesus' parabolic teaching," he concludes, "is completely unhistorical," because it is directly opposed to the essential nature of the parables. The ultimate reason, according to Wrede, why this whole view of the parables arose, was simply "because the general opinion was already in existence that Jesus had revealed Himself to the disciples, but concealed Himself from the multitude."

Instead of simply admitting that we are unable to discover what the mystery of the Kingdom in Mark iv. is, any more than we can understand why it must be veiled, and numbering it among the unsolved problems of Jesus' preaching of the Kingdom, Wrede forces this chapter inside the lines of his theory of the veiled Messiahship.

The desire of Jesus to be alone, too, and remain unrecognised (Mark vii. 24, and ix. 30 ff.) is supposed to have some kind of connexion with Messiahship. He even brings the multitude, which in Mark x. 47 ff. rebukes the blind beggar at Jericho who cried out to Jesus, into the service of his theory... on the ground that the beggar had addressed Him as Son of David. But all the narrative says is that they told him to hold his peace-to cease making an outcry-not that they did so because of his addressing Jesus as "Son of David."

In an equally arbitrary fashion the surprising introduction of the "multitude" in Mark viii. 34, after the incident of Caesarea Philippi, is dragged into the theory of secrecy. ^[254] Wrede does not feel the possibility or impossibility of the sudden appearance of the multitude in this locality as an historical problem, any more than he grasps the sudden withdrawal of Jesus from His public ministry as primarily an historical question. Mark is for him a writer who is to be judged from a pathological point of view, a writer who, dominated by the fixed idea of introducing everywhere the Messianic secret of Jesus, is always creating mysterious and unintelligible situations, even when these do not directly serve the interests of his theory, and who in some of his descriptions, writes in a rather "fairy-tale" style. When all is said, his treatment of the history scarcely differs from that of the fourth Evangelist.

The absence of historical prepossessions which Wrede skilfully assumes in his examination of the connexion in Mark is not really complete. He is bound to refer everything inexplicable to the principle of the concealment of the Messiahship, which is the only principle that he recognises in the dogmatic stratum of the narrative, and is consequently obliged to deny the historicity of such passages, whereas in reality the veiling of the Messiahship is only involved in a few places and is there indicated in clear and simple words. He is unwilling to recognise that there is a second, wider circle of mystery which has to do, not with Jesus' Messiahship, but with His preaching of the Kingdom, with the mystery of the Kingdom of God in the wider sense, and that within this second circle there lie a number of historical problems, above all the mission of the Twelve and the inexplicable abandonment of public activity on the part of Jesus which followed soon afterwards. His mistake consists in endeavouring by violent methds to subsume the more general, the mystery of the Kingdom of God, under the more special, the mystery of the Messiahship, instead of inserting the latter as the smaller circle, within the wider, the secret of the Kingdom of God.

As he does not deal with the teaching of Jesus, he has no occasion to take account of the secret of the Kingdom of God. That is the more remarkable because corresponding to one fundamental idea of the Messianic secret there is a parallel, more general dogmatic conception in Jesus' preaching of the Kingdom.

For if Jesus in Matt. x. gives the disciples nothing to take with them on their mission but predictions of Peering; if at the very beginning of His ministry He closes the Beatitudes with a blessing upon the persecuted; if in Mark viii. 34 ff. He Warns the people that they will have to choose between life and life, aetween death and death; if, in short, from the first, He loses no opportunity of preaching about suffering and following Him in His sufferings; that is just as much a matter of dogma as His own sufferings and predictions of sufferings. For in both cases the necessity of suffering, the necessity of facing death, is not "a necessity of the historical situation," not a necessity which arises out of the circumstances; it is an assertion put forth without empirical basis, a prophecy of storm while the sky is blue, since neither Jesus nor the people to whom He spoke were undergoing any persecution; and when His fate overtook Him not even the disciples were involved in it. It is distinctly remarkable that, except for a few meagre references, the enigmatic character of Jesus' constant predictions of suffering has not been discussed in the Life-of-Jesus literature. ^[255]

What has now to be done, therefore, is, in contradistinction to Wrede, to make a critical examination of the dogmatic element in the life of Jesus on the assumption that the atmosphere of the time was saturated with eschatology, that is, to keep in even closer touch with the facts than Wrede does, and moreover, to proceed, not from the particular to the general, but from the general to the particular, carefully considering whether the dogmatic element is not precisely the historical element. For, after all, why should not Jesus think in terms of doctrine, and make history in action, just as well as a poor Evangelist can do it on paper, under the pressure of the theological interests of the primitive community.

Once again, however, we must repeat that the critical analysis and the assertion of a system running through the disorder are the same in the eschatological as in the sceptical hypothesis, only that in the eschatological analysis a number of problems come more clearly to light. The two constructions are related like the bones and cartilage of the body. The general structure is the same, only that in the case of the one a solid substance, lime, is distributed even in the minutest portions, giving it firmness and solidity, while in the other case this is lacking. This reinforcing substance is the eschatological world-view.

How is it to be explained that Wrede, in spite of the eschatological school, in spite of Johannes Weiss, could, in critically investigating the connecting principle of the life of Jesus, simply leave eschatology out of account? The blame rests with the eschatological school itself, for it applied the eschatological explanation only to the preaching of Jesus, and not even to the whole of this, but only to the Messianic secret, instead of using it also to throw light upon the whole public work of Jesus, the connexion and want of connexion between the events. It represented Jesus as thinking and speaking eschatologically in some of the most important passages of His teaching, but for the rest gave as uneschatological a presentation of His life as modern historical theology had done. The teaching of Jesus and the history of Jesus were set in different keys. Instead of destroying the modern-historical scheme of the life of Jesus, or subjecting it to a rigorous examination, and thereby undertaking the performance of a highly valuable service to criticism, the eschatological theory confined itself within the limits of New Testament Theology, and left it to Wrede to reveal one after another by a laborious purely critical method the difficulties which from its point of view it might have grasped historically at a single glance. It inevitably follows that Wrede is unjust to Johannes Weiss and Johannes Weiss towards Wrede. ^[256]

It is quite inexplicable that the eschatological school, with its clear perception of the eschatological element in the preaching of the Kingdom of God, did not also hit upon the thought of the "dogmatic" element in the history of Jesus. Eschatology is simply "dogmatic history"-history as moulded by theological beliefs-which breaks in upon the natural course of history and abrogates it. Is it not even a priori the only conceivable view that the conduct of one who looked forward to His Messianic "Parousia" in the near future should be determined, not by the natural course of events, but by that expectation? The chaotic confusion of the narratives ought to have suggested the thought that the events had been thrown into this confusion by the volcanic force of an incalculable personality, not by some kind of carelessness or freak of the tradition.

A very little consideration suffices to show that there is something quite incomprehensible in the public ministry of Jesus taken as a whole. According to Mark it lasted less than a year, for since he speaks of only one Passover-journey we may conclude that no other Passover fell within the period of Jesus' activity as a teacher. If it is proposed to assume that He allowed a Passover to go by without going up to Jerusalem, His adversaries, who took Him to task about hand-washings and about rubbing the ears of corn on the Sabbath, would certainly have made a most serious matter of this, and we should have to suppose that the Evangelist for some reason or other thought fit to suppress the fact. That is to say, the burden of proof lies upon those who assert a longer duration for the ministry of Jesus.

Until they have succeeded in proving it, we may assume something like the following course of events. Jesus, in going up to a Passover came in contact with the movement initiated by John the Baptist in Judaea, and, after the lapse of a little time-if we bring into the reckoning the forty days' sojourn in the wilderness mentioned in Mark i. 13, a few weeks later-appeared in Galilee proclaiming the near approach of the Kingdom of God. According to Mark He had known Himself since His baptism to be the Messiah, but from the historical point of view that does not matter, since history is concerned with the first announcement of the Messiahship, not with inward psychological processes. ^[257]

This work of preaching the Kingdom was continued until the sending forth of the Twelve; that is to say, at the most for a few weeks. Perhaps in the saying "the harvest is great but the labourers are few," with which Jesus closes His work prior to sending forth the disciples, there lies an allusion to the actual state of the natural fields. The flocking of the people to Him after the Mission of the Twelve, when a great multitude thronged about Him for several days during His journey along the northern shore of the lake, can be more naturally explained if the harvest had just been brought in.

However that may be, it is certain that Jesus, in the midst of His initial success, left Galilee, journeyed northwards, and only resumed His work as a teacher in Judaea on the way to Jerusalem! Of His "public ministry," therefore, a large section falls out, being cancelled by a period of inexplicable concealment; it dwindles to a few weeks of preaching here and there in Galilee and the few days of His sojourn in Jerusalem. ^[258]

But in that case the public life of Jesus becomes practically unintelligible.

The explanation that His cause in Galilee was lost, and that He was obliged to flee, has not the slightest foundation in the text. ^[259] That was recognised even by Keim, the inventor of the successful and unsucessful periods in the life of Jesus, as is shown by his suggestion that the Evangelists had intentionally removed the traces of failure from the decisive period which led up to the northern journey. The controversy over the washing of hands in Mark vii. 1-23, to which appeal is always made, is really a defeat for the Pharisees. The theory of the "desertion of the Galilaeans," which appears with more or less artistic variations in all modern Lives of Jesus, owes its existence not to any other confirmatory fact, but simply to the circumstance that Mark makes the simple statement: "And Jesus departed and went into the region of Tyre" (vii. 24) without offering any explanation of this decision.

The only conclusion which the text warrants is that Mark mentioned no reason because he knew of none. The decision of Jesus did not rest upon the recorded facts, since it ignores these, but upon considerations lying outside the history. His life at this period was dominated by a "dogmatic idea" which rendered Him indifferent to all else... even to the happy and successful work as a teacher which was opening before Him. How could Jesus the "teacher" abandon at that moment a people so anxious to learn and so eager for salvation? His action suggests a doubt-whether He really felt Himself to be a "teacher." If all the controversial discourses and sayings and answers to questions, which were so to speak wrung from Him, were subtracted from the sum of His utterances, how much of the didactic preaching of Jesus would be left over?

But even the supposed didactic preaching is not really that of a "teacher," since the purpose of His parables was, according to Mark iv. 10-12, not to reveal, but to conceal, and of the Kingdom of God He spoke only in parables (Mark iv. 34).

Perhaps, however, we are not justified in extending the theory of concealment, simply because it is mentioned in connexion with the first parable, to all the parables which He ever spoke, for it is never mentioned again. It could hardly indeed be applied to the parables with a moral, like that, for instance, of the pearl of great price. It is equally inapplicable to the parables of coming judgment uttered at Jerusalem in which He explicitly exhorts the people to be prepared and watchful in view of the coming of judgment and of the Kingdom. But here too it is deserving of notice that Jesus, whenever He desires to make known anything further concerning the Kingdom of God than just its near approach, seems to be confined, as it were by a higher law, to the parabolic form of discourse. It is as though, for reasons which we cannot grasp, His teaching lay under certain limitations. It appears as a kind of accessory aspect of His vocation. Thus it was possible for Him to give up His work as a teacher even at the moment when it promised the greatest success.

Accordingly the fact of His always speaking in parables and of His taking this inexplicable resolution both point back to a mysterious presupposition which greatly reduces the importance of Jesus' work as a teacher.

One reason for this limitation is distinctly stated in Mark iv. 10-12, viz. predestination! Jesus knows that the truth which He offers is exclusively for those who have been definitely chosen, that the general and public announcement of His message could only thwart the plans of God, since the chosen are already winning their salvation from God. Only the phrase, "Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand" and its variants belong to the public preaching. And this, therefore, is the only message which He commits to His disciples when sending them forth. What this repentance, supplementary to the law, the special ethic of the interval before the coming of the Kingdom (Interimesethik) is, in its positive acceptation, He explains in the Sermon on the Mount. But all that goes beyond that simple phrase must be publicly presented only in parables, in order that those only, who are shown to possess predestination by having the initial knowledge which enables them to understand the parables, may receive a more advanced knowledge, which is imparted to them in a measure corresponding to their original degree ot knowledge: "To him that has will be given, and from him that has not will be taken away even that which he has" (Mark iv. 24-25).

The predestinarian view goes along with the eschatology. It is pushed to its utmost consequences in the closing incident of the parable of the marriage of the King's son (Matt. xxii. 1-14) where the man who, in response to a publicly issued invitation, sits down at the table of the King, but is recognised from his appearance as not called, is thrown out into perdition. "Many are called but few are chosen."

The ethical idea of salvation and the predestinarian limitation of acceptance to the elect are constantly in conflict in the mind of Jesus. In one case, however. He finds relief in the thought of predestination. When the rich young man turned away, not having strength to give up his possessions for the sake of following Jesus as he had been commanded to do, Jesus and His disciples were forced to draw the conclusion that he, like other rich men, was lost, and could not enter into the Kingdom of God. But immediately afterwards Jesus makes the suggestion, "With men it is impossible, but not with God, for with God all things are possible" (Mark x. 17-27). That is, He will not give up the hope that the young man, in spite of appearances, which are against him, will be found to have belonged to the Kingdom of God, solely in virtue of the secret all-powerful will of God. Of a "conversion" of the young man there is no question.

In the Beatitudes, on the other hand, the argument is reversed; the predestination is inferred from its outward manifestation. It may seem to us inconceivable, but they are really predestinarian in form. Blessed are the poor in spirit! Blessed are the meek! Blessed are the peacemakers!-that does not mean that by virtue of their being poor in spirit, meek, peace-loving, they deserve the Kingdom. Jesus does not intend the saying as an injunction or exhortation, but as a simple statement of fact: in their being poor in spirit, in their meekness, in their love of peace, it is made manifest that they are predestined to the Kingdom. By the possession of these qualities they are marked as belonging to it. In the case of others (Matt. v. 10-12) the predestination to the Kingdom is made manifest by the persecutions which befall them in this world. These are the light of the world, which already shines among men for the glory of God (Matt. v. 14-15).

The kingdom cannot be "earned"; what happens is that men are called to it, and show themselves to be called to it. On careful examination it appears that the idea of reward in the sayings of Jesus is not really an idea of reward, because it is relieved against a background of predestination. For the present it is sufficient to note the fact that the eschatologico-predestinarian view brings a mysterious element of dogma not merely into the teaching, but also into the public ministry of Jesus.

To take another point, what is the mystery of the Kingdom of God? It must consist of something more than merely its near approach, and something of extreme importance; otherwise Jesus would be here indulging in mere mystery-mongering. The saying about the candle which he puts upon the stand, in order that what was hidden may be revealed to those who have ears to hear, implies that He is making a tremendous revelation to those who understand the parables about the growth of the seed. The mystery must therefore contain the explanation why the Kingdom must now come, and how men are to know how near it is. For the general fact that it is very near had already been openly proclaimed both by the Baptist and by Jesus. The mystery, therefore, must consist of something more than that.

In these parables it is not the idea of development, but of the apparent absence of causation which occupies the foremost place. The description aims at suggesting the question, how, and by what power incomparably great and glorious results can be infallibly produced by an insignificant fact without human aid. A man sowed seed. Much of it was lost, but the little that fell into good ground brought forth a harvest-thirty, sixty, an hundredfold-which left no trace of the loss in the sowing. How did that come about?

A man sows seed and does not trouble any further about it-cannot indeed do anything to help it, but he knows that after a definite time the glorious harvest which arises out of the seed will stand before him. By what power is that effected?

An extremely minute grain of mustard seed is planted in the earth and there necessarily arises out of it a great bush, which cannot certainly have been contained in the grain of seed. How was that?

What the parables emphasise is, therefore, so to speak, the in itself negative, inadequate, character of the initial fact, upon which, as by a miracle, there follows in the appointed time, through the power of God, some great thing. They lay stress not upon the natural, but upon the miraculous character of such occurrences.

But what is the initial fact of the parables? It is the sowing.

It is not said that by the man who sows the seed Jesus means Himself. The man has no importance. In the parable of the mustard seed he is not even mentioned.

All that is asserted is that the initial fact is already present, as certainly present as the time of the sowing is past at the moment when Jesus speaks. That being so, the Kingdom of God must follow as certainly as harvest follows seed-sowing. As a man believes in the harvest, without being able to explain it, simply because the seed has been sown; so with the same absolute confidence he may believe in the Kingdom of God.

And the initial fact which is symbolised? Jesus can only mean a fact which was actually in existence-the movement of repentance evoked by the Baptist and now intensified by His own preaching. That necessarily involves the bringing in of the Kingdom by the power of God; as man's sowing necessitates the giving of the harvest by the same Infinite Power. Any one who knows this sees with different eyes the corn growing in the fields and the harvest ripening, for he sees the one fact in the other, and awaits along with the earthly harvest the heavenly, the revelation of the Kingdom of God.

If we look into the thought more closely we see that the coming of the Kingdom of God is not only symbolically or analogically/but also really and temporally connected with the harvest. The harvest ripening upon earth is the last! With it comes also the Kingdom of God which brings in the new age. When the reapers are sent into the fields, the Lord in Heaven will cause His harvest to be reaped by the holy angels.

If the three parables of Mark iv. contain the mystery of the Kingdom of God, and are therefore capable of being summed up in a single formula this can be nothing else than the joyful exhortation: "Ye who have eyes to see, read, in the harvest which is ripening upon earth, what is being prepared in heaven!" The eager eschatological hope was to regard the natural process as the last of its kind, and to see in it a special significance in view of the event of which it was to give the signal.

The analogical and temporal parallelism becomes complete if we assume that the movement initiated by the Baptist began in the spring, and notice that Jesus, according to Matt. ix. 37 and 38, before sending out the disciples to make a speedy proclamation of the nearness of the Kingdom of God, uttered the remarkable saying about the rich harvest. It seems like a final expression of the thought contained in the parables about the seed and its promise, and finds its most natural explanation in the supposition that the harvest was actually at hand.

Whatever may be thought of this attempt to divine historically the secret of the Kingdom of God, there is one thing that cannot be got away from, viz. that the initial fact to which Jesus points, under the figure of the sowing, is somehow or other connected with the eschatological preaching of repentance, which had been begun by the Baptist.

That may be the more confidently asserted because Jesus in another mysterious saying describes the days of the Baptist as a time which makes preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of God. "From the days of John the Baptist," He says in Matt. xi. 12, "even until now, the Kingdom of Heaven is subjected to violence, and the violent wrest it to themselves." The saying has nothing to do with the entering of individuals into the Kingdom; it simply asserts, that since the coming of the Baptist a certain number of persons are engaged in forcing on and compelling the coming of the Kingdom. Jesus' expectation of the Kingdom is an expectation based upon a fact which exercises an active influence upon the Kingdom of God. It was not He, and not the Baptist who "were working at the coming of the Kingdom"; it is the host of penitents which is wringing it from God, so that it may now come at any moment.

The eschatological insight of Johannes Weiss made an end of the modern view that Jesus founded the Kingdom. It did away with all activity, as exercised upon the Kingdom of God, and made the part of Jesus purely a waiting one. Now the activity comes back into the preaching of the Kingdom, but this time eschatologically conditioned. The secret of the Kingdom of God which Jesus unveils in the parables about confident expectation in Mark iv., and declares in so many words in the eulogy on the Baptist (Matt. xi.), amounts to this, that in the movement to which the Baptist gave the first impulse, and which still continued, there was an initial fact which was drawing after it the coming of the Kingdom, in a fashion which was miraculous, unintelligible, but unfailingly certain, since the sufficient cause for it lay in the power and purpose of God.

It should be observed that Jesus in these parables, as well as in the related saying at the sending forth of the Twelve, uses the formula, "He that has ears to hear, let him hear" (Mark iv. 23 and Matt. xi. 15) thereby signifying that in this utterance there lies concealed a supernatural knowledge concerning the plans of God, which only those who have ears to hear-that is, the foreordained-can detect. For others these sayings are unintelligible.

If this genuinely "historical" interpretation of the mystery of the Kingdom of God is correct, Jesus must have expected the coming of the Kingdom at harvest time. And that is just what He did expect. It is for that reason that He sends out His disciples to make known in Israel, as speedily as may be, what is about to happen. That in this He is actuated by a dogmatic idea, becomes clear when we notice that, according to Mark, the mission of the Twelve followed immediately on the rejection at Nazareth. The unreceptiveness of the Nazarenes had made no impression upon Him; He was only astonished at their unbelief (Mark vi. 6). This passage is often interpreted to mean that He was astonished to find His miracle-working power fail Him. There is no hint of that in the text. What He is astonished at is, that in His native town there were so few believers, that is, elect, knowing as He does that the Kingdom of God may appear at any moment. But that fact makes no difference whatever to the nearness of the coming of theKingdom.

The Evangelist, therefore, places the rejection at Nazareth and the mission of the Twelve side by side, simply because he found them in this temporal connexion in the tradition. If he had been working by "association of ideas," he would not have arrived at this order. The want of connexion, the impossibility of applying any natural explanation, is just what is historical, because the course of the history was determined, not by outward events, but by the decisions of Jesus, and these were determined by dogmatic, eschatological considerations.

To how great an extent this was the case in regard to the mission of the Twelve is clearly seen from the "charge" which Jesus gave them. He tells them in plain words (Matt. x. 23), that He does not expect to see them back in the present age. The Parousia of the Son of Man, which is logically and temporally identical with the dawn of the Kingdom will take place before they will have completed a hasty journey through the cities of Israel to announce it. That the words mean this and nothing else, that they ought not to be in any way weakened down, should be sufficiently evident. This is the form in which Jesus reveals to them the secret of the Kingdom of God. A few days later, He utters the saying about the violent who, since the days of John the Baptist, are forcing on the coming of the Kingdom.

It is equally clear, and here the dogmatic considerations which guided the resolutions of Jesus become still more prominent, that this prediction was not fulfilled. The disciples returned to Him; and the appearing of the Son of Man had not taken place. The actual history disavowed the dogmatic history on which the action of Jesus had been based. An event of supernatural history which must take place, and must take place at that particular point of time, failed to come about. That was for Jesus, who lived wholly in the dogmatic history, the first "historical" occurrence, the central event which closed the former period of His activity and gave the coming period a new character. To this extent modern theology is justified when it distinguishes two periods in the Life of Jesus; an earlier, in which He is surrounded by the people, a later in which He is "deserted" by them, and travels about with the Twelve only. It is a sound observation that the two periods are sharply distinguished by the attitude of Jesus. To xplain this difference of attitude, which they thought themselves bound to account for on natural historical grounds, theologians of the modern historical school invented the theory of growing opposition and waning support.

Weisse, no doubt, had expressed himself in direct opposition to this theory. ^[260]

Keim, who gave it its place in theology, was aware that in setting it up he was going against the plain sense of the texts. Later writers lost this consciousness, just as in the first and third Gospel the significance of the Messianic secret in Mark gradually faded away; they imagined that they could find the basis of fact for the theory in the texts, and did not realise that they only believed in the desertion of the multitude and the "flights and retirements" of Jesus because they could not otherwise explain historically the alteration in His conduct, His withdrawal from public work, and His resolve to die.

The thoroughgoing eschatological school makes better work of it.

They recognise in the non-occurrence of the Parousia promised in Matt x. 23, the "historic fact," in the estimation of Jesus, which in some way determined the alteration in His plans, and His attitude towards the multitude.

The whole history of "Christianity" down to the present day, that is to say, the real inner history of it, is based on the delay of the Parousia, the non-occurrence of the Parousia, the abandonment of eschatology, the progress and completion of the "de-eschatologising" of religion which has been connected therewith. It should be noted that the non-fulfilment of Matt. x. 23 is the first postponement of the Parousia. We have therefore here the first significant date in the "history of Christianity"; it gives to the work of Jesus a new direction, otherwise in explicable.

Here we recognise also why the Marcan hypothesis, in constructing its view of the Life of Jesus, found itself obliged to have recourse more and more to the help of modern psychology, and thus necessarily became more and more unhistorical. The fact which alone makes possible an understanding of the whole, is lacking in this Gospel. Without Matt. x. and xi. everything remains enigmatic. For this reason Bruno Bauer and Wrede are in their own way the only consistent representatives of the Marcan hypothesis from the point of view of historical criticism, when they arrive at the result that the Marcan account is inherently unintelligible. Keim, with his strong sense of historical reality, rightly felt that the plan of the Life of Jesus should not be constructed exclusively on the basis of Mark.

The recognition that Mark alone gives an inadequate basis, is more important than any "Ur-Markus" theories, for which it is impossible to discover a literary foundation, or find an historical use. A simple induction from the "facts" takes us beyond Mark. In the discourse-material of Matthew, which the modern-historical school thought they could sift in here and there, wherever there seemed to be room for it, there lie hidden certain facts-facts which never happened, but are all the more important for that. - Why Mark describes the events and discourses in the neighbourhood of the mission of the Twelve with such careful authentication is a literary question which the historical study of the life of Jesus may leave open; the more so since, even as a literary question, it is insoluble.

The prediction of the Parousia of the Son of Man is not the only one which remained unfulfilled. There is the prediction of sufferings which is connected with it. To put it more acurately, the prediction of the appearing of the Son of Man in Matt. x. 23 runs up into a prediction of sufferings, which, working up to a climax, forms the remainder of the discourse at the sending forth of the disciples. This prediction of sufferings has as little to do with objective history as the prediction of the Parousia.

Consequently, none of the Lives of Jesus, which follow the lines of a natural psychology, from Weisse down to Oskar Holtzmann, can make anything of it. ^[261]

They either strike it out, or transfer it to the last "gloomy epoch" of the life of Jesus, regard it as an unintelligible anticipation, or put it down to the account of "primitive theology," which serves as a scrap-heap for everything for which they cannot find a place in the "historical life of Jesus."

In the texts it is quite evident that Jesus is not speaking of sufferings after His death, but of sufferings which will befall them as soon as they have gone forth from Him. The death of Jesus is not here pre-supposed, but only the Parousia of the Son of Man, and it is implied that this will occur just after these sufferings and bring them to a close. If the theology of the primitive Church had remoulded the tradition, as is always being asserted, it would have made Jesus give His followers directions for their conduct after His death. That we do not find anything of this kind is the best proof that there can be no question of a remoulding of the Life of Jesus by primitive theology. How easy it would have been for the Early Church to scatter here and there through the discourses of Jesus directions which were only to be applied after His death! But the simple fact is that it did not do so.

The sufferings of which the prospect is held out at the sending forth are doubly, trebly, nay four times over, unhistorical. In the first place-and this is the only point which modern historical theology has noticed-because there is not a shadow of a suggestion in the outward circumstances of anything which could form a natural occasion for such predictions of, and exhortations relating to, sufferings. In the second place-and this has been overlooked by modern theology because it had already declared them to be unhistorical in its own characteristic fashion, viz, by striking them out-because they were not fulfilled. In the third place-and this has not entered into the mind of modern theology at all-because these sayings were spoken in the closest connexion with the promise of the Parousia and are placed in the closest connexion with that event. In the fourth place, because the description of that which is to befall the disciples is quite without any basis in experience, A time of general dissension will begn, in which brothers will rise up sgainst brothers, and fathers against sons and children against their Parents to cause them to be put to death (Matt. x. 21). And the disciples Mall be hated of all men for His name's sake." Let them strive to hold out to the "end," that is, to the coming of the Son of Man, in order that they may be saved (Matt. x. 22).

But why should they suddenly be hated and persecuted for the name of Jesus, seeing that this name played no part whatever in their preaching? That is simply inconceivable. The relation of Jesus to the Son of Man, the fact, that is to say, that it is He who is to be manifested as Son of Man, must therefore in some way or other become known in the interval; not, however, through the disciples, but by some other means of revelation. A kind of supernatural illumination will suddenly make known all that Jesus has been keeping secret regarding the Kingdom of God and His position in the Kingdom. This illumination will arise as suddenly and without preparation as the spirit of strife.

And as a matter of fact Jesus predicts to the disciples in the same discourse that to their own surprise a supernatural wisdom will suddenly speak from their lips, so that it will be not they but the Spirit of God who will answer the great ones of the earth. As the Spirit is for Jesus and early Christian theology something concrete which is to descend upon the elect among mankind only in consequence of a definite event-the outpouring of the Spirit which, according to the prophecy of Joel, should precede the day of judgment-Jesus must have anticipated that this would occur during the absence of the disciples, in the midst of the time of strife and confusion.

To put it differently; the whole of the discourse at the sending forth of the Twelve, taken in the clear sense of the words, is a prediction of the events of the "time of the end," events which are immediately at hand, in which the supernatural eschatological course of history will break through into the natural course. The expectation of sufferings is therefore doctrinal and unhistorical, as is, precisely in the same way, the expectation of the pouring forth of the Spirit uttered at the same time. The Parousia of the Son of Man is to be preceded according to the Messianic dogma by a time of strife and confusion-as it were, the birth-throes of the Messiah-and the outpouring of the Spirit. It should be noticed that according to Joel ii. and iii. the outpouring of the Spirit, along with the miraculous signs, forms the prelude to the judgment; and also, that in the same context, Joel iii. 13, the judgment is described as the harvest-day of God. ^[262] Here we have a remarkable parallel to the

The most remarkable parallel to the discourse at the sending forth of the disciples is offered by the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch: "Behold, the days come, when the time of the world will be ripe, and the harvest of the sowing of the good and of the evil will come, when the Almighty will bring upon the earth and upon its inhabitants and upon their rulers confusion of spirit and terror that makes the heart stand still; and they will hate one another and provoke one another to war; and the despised will have power over them of reputation, and the mean will exalt themselves over them that are highly esteemed. And the many will be at the mercy of the few... and all who will be saved and will escape the before-mentioned (dangers)... will be given into the hands of my servant, the Messiah. (Cap. lxx. 2, 3, 9. Following the translation of E.

Kautzsch.) The connexion between the ideas of harvest and of judgment was therefore one of the stock features of the apocalyptic writings. And as the Apocalypse of Baruch dates from the period about A.D. 70, it may be assumed that this association of ideas was also current in the Jewish apocalyptic of the time of Jesus. Here is a basis for understanding the secret of the Kingdom of God in the parables of sowing and reaping historically and in accordance with the ideas of the time.

What Jesus did was to make known to those who understood Him that the coming earthly harvest was the last, and was also the token of the coming heavenly harvest. The eschatological interpretation is immensely strengthened by these parallels. saying about the harvest in Matt. ix. 38, which forms the introduction to the discourse at the sending forth of the disciples.

There is only one point in which the predicted course of eschatological events is incomplete: the appearance of Elias is not mentioned.

Jesus could not prophesy to the disciples the Parousia of the Son of Man without pointing them, at the same time, to the pre-eschatological events which must first occur. He must open to them a part of the secret of the Kingdom of God, viz. the nearness of the harvest, that they might not be taken by surprise and caused to doubt by these events.

Thus this discourse is historical as a whole and down to the smallest detail precisely because, according to the view of modern theology, it must be judged unhistorical. It is, in fact, full of eschatological dogma. Jesus had no need to instruct the disciples as to what they were to teach; for they had only to utter a cry. But concerning the events which should supervene, it was necessary that He should give them information. Therefore the discourse does not consist of instruction, but of predictions of sufferings and of the Parousia.

That being so, we may judge with what right the modern psychological theology dismisses the great Matthaean discourses off-hand as mere "composite structures." Just let any one try to show how the Evangelist when he was racking his brains over the task of making a "discourse at the sending forth of the disciples," half by the method of piecing it together out of traditional sayings and "primitive theology," and half by inventing it, lighted on the curious idea of making Jesus speak entirely of inopportune and unpractical matters; and of then going on to provide the evidence that they never happened.

The foretelling of the sufferings that belong to the eschatological distress is part and parcel of the preaching of the approach of the Kingdom of God, it embodies the secret of the Kingdom. It is for that reason that the thought of suffering appears at the end of the Beatitudes and in the closing petition of the Lord's Prayer. For the peirasmoV which is there in view is not an individual psychological temptation, but the general eschatological time of tribulation, from which God is besought to exempt those who pray so earnestly for the coming of the Kingdom and not to expose them to that tribulation by way of putting them to the test.

There followed neither the sufferings, nor the outpouring of the Spirit, nor the Parousia of the Son of Man. The disciples returned safe and sound and full of a proud satisfaction; for one promise had been realised-the power which had been given them over the demons.

But from the moment when they rejoined Him, all His thoughts and efforts were devoted to getting rid of the people in order to be alone with them (Mark vi.30-33). Previously, during their absence. He had, almost in open speech, taught the multitude concerning the Baptist concerning that which was to precede the coming of the Kingdom, and concerning the judgment which should come upon the impenitent, even upon whole towns of them (Matt. xi. 20-24), because, in spite of the miracles which they had witnessed, they had not recognised the day of grace and diligently used it for repentance. At the same time He had rejoiced before them over all those whom God had enlightened that they might see what was going forward; and had called them to His side (Matt. xi. 25-30).

And now suddenly, the moment the disciples return, His one thought is to get away from the people. They, however, follow Him and overtake Him on the shores of the lake. He puts the Jordan between Himself and them by crossing to Bethsaida. They also come to Bethsaida. He returns to Capernaum. They do the same. Since in Galilee it is impossible for Him to be alone, and He absolutely must be alone, He "slips away" to the north. Once more modern theology was right: He really does flee; not, however, from hostile Scribes, but from the people, who dog His footsteps in order to await in His company the appearing of the Kingdom of God and of the Son of Man-to await it in vain. ^[263]

In Strauss's first Life of Jesus the question is thrown out whether, in view of Matt. x. 23, Jesus did not think of His Parousia as a transformation which should take place during His lifetime. Ghillany bases his work on this possibility as on an established historical fact. Dalman takes this hypothesis to be the necessary correlative of the interpretation of the self-designation Son of Man on the basis of Daniel and the Apocalypses.

If Jesus, he argues, designated Himself in this futuristic sense as the Son of Man who comes from Heaven, He must have assumed that He would first be transported thither. "A man who had died or been rapt away from the earth might perhaps be brought into the world again in this way, or one who had never been on earth might so descend thither." But as this conception of transformation and removal seems to Dalman untenable in the case of Jesus, he treats it as a reductio ad absurdum of the eschatological interpretation of the title.

But why? If Jesus as a man walking in a natural body upon earth, predicts to His disciples the Parousia of the Son of Man in the immediate future, with the secret conviction that He Himself was to be revealed as the Son of Man, He must have made precisely this assumption that He would first be supernaturally removed and transformed. He thought of Himself as any one must who believes in the immediate coming of the last things, as living in two different conditions: the present, and the future condition into which He is to be transferred at the coming of the new supernatural world. We learn later that the disciples on the way up to Jerusalem were entirely possessed by the thought of what they should be when this transformation took place. They contend as to who will have the highest position (Mark ix. 33); James and John wish Jesus to promise them in advance the thrones on His right hand and on His left (Mark x. 35-37).

He, moreover, does not rebuke them for indulging such thoughts, but only tells them how much, in the present age, of service, humiliation, and suffering is necessary to constitute a claim to such places in the future age, and that it does not in the last resort belong to Him to allot the places on His left and on His right, but that they will be given to those for whom they are prepared; therefore, perhaps not to any of the disciples (Mark x. 40). At this point, therefore, the knowledge and will of Jesus are thwarted and limited by the predestinarianism which is bound up with eschatology.

It is quite mistaken, however, to speak as modern theology does, of the "service" here required as belonging to the "new ethic of the Kingdom of God."

There is for Jesus no ethic of the Kingdom of God, for in the Kingdom of God all natural relationships, even, for example, the distinction of sex (Mark xii. 25 and 26), are abolished. Temptation and sin no longer exist. All is "reign," a "reign" which has gradations -Jesus speaks of the "least in the Kingdom of God"-according as it has been determined in each individual case from all eternity, and according as each by his self-humiliation and refusal to rule in the present age has proved his fitness for bearing rule in the future Kingdom.

For the loftier stations, however, it is necesasry to have proved oneself in persecution and suffering. Accordingly, Jesus asks the sons of Zebedee whether, since they claim these thrones on His right hand and on His left, they feel themselves strong enough to drink of His cup and be baptized with His baptism (Mark x. 38). To serve, to humble oneself, to incur persecution and death, belong to "the ethic of the interim" just as much as does penitence. They are indeed only a higher form of penitence.

A vivid eschatological expectation is therefore impossible to conceive apart from the idea of a metamorphosis. The resurrection is only a special case of this metamorphosis, the form in which the new condition of things is realised in the case of those who are already dead. The resurrection, the metamorphosis, and the Parousia of the Son of Man take place simultaneously, and are one and the same act. ^[264] It is therefore quite indifferent whether a man loses his life shortly before the Parousia in order to "find his life," if that is what is ordained for him; that signifies only that he will undergo the eschatological metamorphosis with the dead instead of with the living.

The Pauline eschatology recognises both conceptions side by side, in such a way, however, that the resurrection is subordinated to the metamorphosis. "Behold, I shew you a mystery," he says in 1 Cor. xv. 51 ff.; "we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed.

The apostle himself desires to be one of those who live to experience the metamorphosis and to be clothed with the heavenly mode of existence (2 Cor. v. 1 ft.). The metamorphosis, however, and the resurrection are, for those who are "in Christ," connected with a being caught up into the clouds of heaven (1 Thess. iv. 15 ft.). Therefore Paul also makes one and the same event of the metamorphosis, resurrection, and translation.

In seeking clues to the eschatology of Jesus, scholars have passed over the eschatology which lies closest to it, that of Paul. But why? Is it not identical with that of Jesus, at least in so far that both are "Jewish eschatology"? Did not Reimarus long ago declare that the eschatology of the primitive Christian community was identical with the Jewish, and only went beyond it in claiming a definite knowledge on a single point which was unessential to the nature and course of the expected events, in knowing, that is, who the Son of Man should be? That Christians drew no distinction between their own eschatology and the Jewish is evident from the whole character of the earlier apocalyptic literature, and not least from the Apocalypse of John! After all, what alteration did the belief that Jesus was the Son of Man who was to be revealed make in the general scheme of the course of apocalyptic events?

From the Rabbinic literature little help is to be derived towards the understanding of the world of thought in which Jesus lived, and His view of His own Person. The latest researches may be said to have made that clear. A few moral maxims, a few halting parables-that is all that can be produced in the way of parallels. Even the conception which is there suggested of the hidden coming and work of the Messiah is of little importance. We find the same ideas in the mouth of Trypho in Justin's dialogue, and that makes their Jewish character doubtful. That Jesus of Nazareth knew Himself to be the Son of Man who was to be revealed is for us the great fact of His self-consciousness, which is not to be further explained, whether there had been any kind of preparation for it in contemporary theology or not.

The self-consciousness of Jesus cannot in fact be illustrated or explained; all that can be explained is the eschatological view, in which the Man who possessed that self-consciousness saw reflected in advance the coming events, both those of a more general character, and those which especially related to Himself. ^[265]

The eschatology of Jesus can therefore only be interpreted by the aid of the curiously intermittent Jewish apocalyptic literature of the period between Daniel and the Bar-Cochba rising. What else, indeed, are the Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline letters, the Christian apocalypses than products of Jewish apocalyptic, belonging, moreover, to its greatest and most nourishing period?

Historically regarded, the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul are simply the culminating manifestations of Jewish apocalyptic thought. The usual representation is the exact converse of the truth. Writers describe Jewish eschatology in order to illustrate the ideas of Jesus. But what is this "Jewish eschatology" after all?

It is an eschatology with a great gap in it, because the culminating period, with the documents which relate to it, has been left out. The true historian will describe the eschatology of the Baptist, of Jesus, and of Paul in order to explain Jewish eschatology. It is nothing less than a misfortune for the science of New Testament Theology that no real attempt has hitherto been made to write the history of Jewish eschatology as it really was-that is, with the inclusion of the Baptist, of Jesus, and of Paul. ^[266]

All this has had to be said in order to justify the apparently self-evident assertion that Mark, Matthew, and Paul are the best sources for the Jewish eschatology of the time of Jesus. They represent a phase which even in detail is self-explanatory, of that Jewish apocalyptic hope which manifested itself from time to time. We are, therefore, justified in first reconstructing the Jewish apocalyptic of the time independently out of these documents, that is to say, in bringing the details of the discourses of Jesus into an eschatological system, and then on the basis of this system endeavouring to explain the apparently disconnected events in the history of His public life.

The lines of connection which run backwards towards the Psalms of Solomon, Enoch, and Daniel, and forwards towards the apocalypses of Baruch and Enoch, are extremely important for the understanding of certain general conceptions. On the other hand, it is impossible to over-emphasise the uniqueness of the point of view from which the eschatology of the time of the Baptist, of Jesus, and of Paul presents itself to us.

In the first place, men feel themselves so close to the coming events that they only see what lies nearest to them, the imaginative development of detail entirely ceases. In the second place, it appears to us as though seen, so to speak, from within, passed through the medium of powerful minds like those of the Baptist and Jesus. That is why it is so great and simple. On the other hand, a certain complication arises from the fact that it now intersects actual history. All these are original features of it, which are not found in the Jewish apocalyptic writings of the preceding and following periods, and that is why these documents give us so little help in regard to the characteristic detail of the eschatology of Jesus and His contemporaries.

A further point to be noticed is that the eschatology of the time of Jesus shows the influence of the eschatology of the ancient prophets in a way which is not paralleled either before or after. Compare the

The coming volume is to deal with the eschatology of Jesus. That is a "theological," but not an historical division of the material. The second volume should properly come in the middle of the first.

Synoptic eschatology with that of the Psalms of Solomon. In place of the legal righteousness, which, since the return from the exile, had formed the link of connexion between the present and the future, we find the prophetic ethic, the demand for a general repentance, even in the case of the Baptist. In the Apocalypses of Baruch and Ezra we see, especially in the theological character of the latter, the persistent traces of this ethical deepening of apocalyptic.

But even in individual conceptions the apocalyptic of the Baptist, and of the period which he introduces, reaches back to the eschatology of the prophetic writings. The pouring forth of the spirit, and the figure of Elias, who comes again to earth, play a great role in it. The difficulty is indeed, consciously felt of combining the two eschatologies, and bringing the prophetic within the Danielic. How, it is asked, can the Son of David be at the same time the Danielic Son-of-Man Messiah, at once David's son and David's Lord?

It is inadequate to speak of a synthesis of the two eschatologies. What has happened is nothing less than the remoulding, the elevation, of the Daniel-Enoch apocalyptic by the spirit and conceptions belonging to the ancient prophetic hope.

A great simplification and deepening of eschatology begins to show itself even in the Psalms of Solomon. The conception of righteousness which the writer applies is, in spite of its legal aspect, of an ethical, prophetic character. It is an eschatology associated with great historical events, the eschatology of a Pharisaism which is fighting for a cause, and has therefore a certain inward greatness. ^[267] Between the Psalms of Solomon and the appearance of the Baptist there lies the decadence of Pharisaism. At this point there suddenly appears an eschatological movement detached from Pharisaism, which was declining into an external legalism, a movement resting on a basis of its own, and thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of the ancient prophets.

The ultimate differentia of this eschatology is that it was not, like the other apocalyptic movements, called into existence by historical events. The Apocalypse of Daniel was called forth by the religious oppression of Antiochus;^[268] the Psalms of Solomon by the civil strife at Jerusalem and the first appearance of the Roman power under Pompey; ^[269]

Fourth Ezra and Baruch by the destruction of Jerusalem. ^[270] The apocalyptic movement in the time of Jesus is not connected with any historical event. It cannot be said, as Bruno Bauer rightly perceived that we know anything about the Messianic expectations of the Jewish people at that time. ^[271] On the contrary, the indifference shown by the Roman administration towards the movement proves that the Romans knew nothing of a condition of great and general Messianic excitement among the Jewish people. The conduct of the Pharisaic party also, and the indifference of the great mass of the people, show that there can have been no question at that time of a national movement. What is really remarkable about this wave of apocalyptic enthusiasm is the fact that it was called forth not by external events, but solely by the appearance of two great personalities, and subsides with their disappearance, without leaving among the people generally any trace, except a feeling of hatred towards the new sect.

The Baptist and Jesus are not, therefore, borne upon the current of a general eschatological movement. The period offers no events calculated to give an impulse to eschatological enthusiasm. They themselves set the times in motion by acting, by creating eschatological facts. It is this mighty creative force which constitutes the difficulty in grasping historically the eschatology of Jesus and the Baptist. Instead of literary artifice speaking out of a distant imaginary past, there now enter into the field of eschatology men, living, acting men. It was the only time when that ever happened in Jewish eschatology.

There is silence all around. The Baptist appears, and cries: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Soon after that comes Jesus, and in the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign.

These considerations regarding the distinctive character of the Synoptic eschatology were necessary in order to explain the significance of the sending forth of the disciples and the discourse which Jesus uttered upon that occasion.

Jesus' purpose is to set in motion the eschatological development of history, to let loose the final woes, the confusion and strife, from which will issue the Parousia, and so to introduce the supra-mundane phase of the eschatological drama. That is His task, for which He has authority here below. That is why He says in the same discourse, "Think not that I am come to send peace on the earth; I am not come to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. x. 34).

It was with a view to this initial movement that He chose His disciples. They are not His helpers in the work of teaching; we never see them in that capacity, and He did not prepare them to carry on that work after His death. The very fact that He chooses just twelve shows that it is a dogmatic idea which He has in mind. He chooses them as those who are destined to hurl the firebrand into the world, and are afterwards, as those who have been the comrades of the unrecognised Messiah, before He came to His Kingdom, to be His associates in ruling and judging it. ^[272]

But what was to be the fate of the future Son of Man during the Messianic woes of the last times? It appears as if it was appointed for Him to share the persecution and the suffering. He says that those wh will be saved must take their cross and follow Him (Matt. x. 38), that His followers must be willing to lose their lives for His sake, and that only those who in this time of terror confess their allegiance to Him will be confessed by Him before His heavenly Father (Matt. x. 32). Similarly, in the last of the Beatitudes, He had pronounced those blessed who were despised and persecuted for His sake (Matt. v. 11, 12). As the future bearer of the supreme rule He must go through the deepest humiliation. There is danger that His followers may doubt Him. Therefore, the last words of His message to the Baptist, just at the time when He had sent forth the Twelve, is, "Blessed is he whosoever will not be offended in me" (Matt. xi. 6).

If He makes a point of familiarising others with the thought that in the time of tribulation they may even lose their lives. He must have recognised that this possibility was still more strongly present in His own case. It is possible that in the enigmatic saying about the disciples fasting "when the bridegroom is taken away from them" (Mark ii. 20), there is a hint of what Jesus expected. In that case suffering, death, and resurrection must have been closely united in the Messianic consciousness from the first. So much, however, is certain, viz. that the thought of suffering formed part, at the time of the sending forth the disciples, of the mystery of the Kingdom of God and of the Messiahship of Jesus, and that in the form that Jesus and all the elect were to be brought low in the peirasmoV at the time of the death-struggle against the evil world-power which would arise against them; brought down, it might be, even to death. It mattered as little in His own case as in that of others whether at the time of the Parousia He should be one of those who should be metamorphosed, or one who had died and risen again. The question arises, however, how this self-consciousness of Jesus could remain concealed. It is true the miracles had nothing to do with the Messiahship, since no one expected the Messiah to come as an earthly miracle-worker in the present age. On the contrary, it would have been the greatest of miracles if any one had recognised the Messiah in an earthly miracle-worker. How far the cries of the demoniacs who addressed Him as Messiah were inteligible by the people must remain an open question. What is clear is that His Messiahship did not become known in this way even to His disciples.

And yet in all His speech and action the Messianic consciousness shines forth.

One might, indeed, speak of the acts of His Messianic consciousness. The Beatitudes, nay, the whole of the Sermon on the Mount, with the authoritative "I" for ever breaking through, bear witness to the high dignity which He ascribed to Himself. Did not this "I" set the people thinking?

What must they have thought when, at the close of this discourse, He spoke of people who, at the Day of Judgment, would call upon Him as Lord, and appeal to the works that they had done in His name, and who yet were destined to be rejected because He would not recognise them (Matt. vii. 21-23)?

What must they have thought of Him when He pronounced those blessed who were persecuted and despised for His sake (Matt. v. 11, 12)? By what authority did this man forgive sins (Mark ii. 5 ff.)?

In the discourse at the sending forth of the disciples the "I" is still more prominent. He demands of men that in the trials to come they will confess Him, that they will love Him more than father or mother, bear their cross after Him, and follow Him to the death, since it is only for such that He can entreat His Heavenly Father (Matt. x. 32 ff.). Admitting that the expression "Heavenly Father" contained no riddle for the listening disciples, since He had taught them to pray "Our Father who are in Heaven," we have still to ask who was He whose yea or nay should prevail with God to determine the fate of men at the Judgment?

And yet they found it hard, nay impossible, to think of Him as Messiah. They guessed Him to be a prophet; some thought of Elias, some of John the Baptist risen from the dead, as appears clearly from the answer of the disciples at Caesarea Philippi. ^[273] The Messiah was a supernatural personality who was to appear in the last times, and who was not expected upon earth before that.

At this point a difficulty presents itself. How could Jesus be Elias for the people? Did they not hold John the Baptist to be Elias? Not in the least! Jesus was the first and the only person who attributed this office to him. And, moreover, He declares it to the people as something mysterious, difficult to understand-"If ye can receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come. He that has ears to hear, let him hear" (Matt. xi. 14, 15). In making this revelation He is communicating to them a piece of supernatural knowledge, opening up a part of the mystery of the Kingdom of God. Therefore He uses the same formula of emphasis as when making known in parables the mystery of the Kingdom of God (Mark iv.).

The disciples were not with Him at this time, and therefore did not learn what was the role of John the Baptist. When a little later, in descending from the mount of transfiguration He predicted to the three who formed the inner circle of His followers the resurrection of the Son of Man, they came to Him with difficulties about the rising from the dead-how could this be possible when, according to the Pharisees and Scribes, Elias must first come?-whereupon Jesus explains to them that the preacher of repentance whom Herod had put to death had been Elias (Mark ix. 11-13).

Why did not the people take the Baptist to be Elias? In the first place no doubt because he did not describe himself as such. In the next place because he did no miracle! He was only a natural man without any evidence of supernatural power, only a prophet. In the third place, and that was the decisive point, he had himself pointed forward to the coming of Elias. He who was to come, he whom he preached, was not the Messiah, but Elias.