| 51. An Attempt At a Criticism and Mythical Interpretation of the Narratives | ||||
IF then a more intelligible representation of the scene at the baptism of Jesus is not to be given, without doing violence to the Gospel text, or without supposing it to be partially erroneous, we are necessarily driven to a critical treatment of the accounts; and indeed, according to Schleiermacher, this is the prevalent course in relation to the above point in the Gospel history. From the narrative of John, as the pure source, it is sought to derive the synoptic accounts, as turbid streams. In the former, it is said, there is no opening heaven, no heavenly voice; only the descent of the Spirit is, as had been promised, a divine witness to John that Jesus is the Messiah; but in what manner the Baptist perceived that the Spirit rested on Jesus, he does not tell us, and possibly the only sign may have been the discourse of Jesus. {P.249} | ||||
One cannot but wonder at Schleiermacher's assertion, that the manner in which the Baptist perceived the descending spirit is not given in the fourth Gospel, when here also the expression "like a dove", tells it plainly enough; and this particular marks the descent as a visible one, and not a mere inference from the discourse of Jesus. Usteri, indeed, thinks that the Baptist mentioned the dove, merely as a figure, to denote the gentle, mild spirit which he had observed in Jesus. But had this been all, he would rather have compared Jesus himself to a dove, as on another occasion he did to a lamb, than have suggested the idea of a sensible appearance by the picturesque description, I saw the Spirit descending from, heaven like a dove. It is therefore not true in relation to the dove, that first in the more remote tradition given by the synoptic writers, what was originally figurative, was received in a literal sense; for in this sense it is understood by John, and if he have the correct account, the Baptist himself must have spoken of a visible dove-like appearance, as Bleek, Neander, and others, acknowledge. | ||||
While the alleged distinction in relation to the dove, between the first three evangelists and the fourth, is not to be found; with respect to the voice, the difference is so wide, that it is inconceivable how the one account could be drawn from the other. For it is said that the testimony which John gave concerning Jesus, after the appearance: "This is the Son of God" (John i. 34), taken in connection with the preceding words: "He that sent me, to baptize, the same said to me etc." , became, in the process of tradition, an immediate heavenly declaration, such as we see in Matthew: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Supposing such a transformation admissible, some instigation to it must be shown. | ||||
Now in Isaiah xlii. 1, the Lord says of his servant: "Behold (my servant,) my beloved in whom my soul delights" words which, excepting those between the parentheses, are almost literally translated by the declaration of the heavenly voice in Matthew. We learn from Matt. xii.17ff. that this passage was applied to Jesus as the Messiah; and in it God himself is the speaker, as in the synoptic account of the baptism. | ||||
Here then was what would much more readily prompt the fiction of a heavenly voice, than the expressions of John. Since, therefore, we do not need a misapprehension of the Baptist's language, to explain the story of the divine voice, and since we cannot use it for the derivation of the allusion to the dove; we must seek for the source of our narrative, not in one of the Gospel documents, but beyond the New Testament, in the domain of cotemporary ideas, founded on the Old Testament, the total neglect of which has greatly diminished the value of Schleiermacher's critique on the New Testament. {P.250} To regard declarations concerning the Messiah, put by poets into the mouth of the Lord, as real, audible voices from heaven, supposed such vocal communications to fall to the lot of distinguished rabbis, and of the Messianic prejudices, which the early Christians both shared themselves, and were compelled, in confronting the Jews, to satisfy. In the passage quoted from Isaiah, there was a divine declaration, in which the present Messiah was pointed to as it were with the finger, and which was therefore specially adapted for a heavenly annunciation concerning him. How could the spirit of Christian legend be slow to imagine a scene, in which these words were audibly spoken from heaven of the Messiah? But we detect a further motive for such a representation of the case by observing, that in Mark and Luke, the heavenly voice addresses Jesus in the second person, and by comparing the words which, according to the Fathers, were given in the old and lost Gospels as those of the voice. Justin, following his Memoirs of the Apostles, thus reports them: "You are my Son, this day have I begotten you." In the Gospel of the Hebrews, according to Epiphanius, this declaration was combined with that which our Gospels contain. | ||||
Clement of Alexandria and Augustine seem to have read the words even in some copies of the latter; and it is at least certain that some of our present manuscripts of Luke have this addition. Here were words uttered by the heavenly voice, drawn, not from Isaiah, but from Psalm ii. 7, a passage considered Messianic by Jewish interpreters; in Heb. i. 5, applied to Christ; and, from their being couched in the form of a direct address, containing a yet stronger inducement to conceive it as a voice sent to the Messiah from heaven. | ||||
If then the words of the psalm were originally attributed to the heavenly voice, or if they were only taken in connection with the passage in Isaiah, (as is probable from the use of the second person, av el, in Mark and Luke, since this form is presented in the psalm, and not in Isaiah,) we have a sufficient indication that this text, long interpreted of the Messiah, and easily regarded as an address from heaven to the Messiah on earth, was the source of our narrative of the divine voice, heard at the baptism of Jesus. To unite it with the baptism, followed as a matter of course, when this was held to be a consecration of Jesus to his office. | ||||
We proceed to the descent of the spirit in the form of a dove. | ||||
In this examination, we must separate the descent of the Spirit from the form of the dove, and consider the two particulars apart. That the Divine Spirit was to rest in a peculiar measure on the Messiah, was an expectation necessarily resulting from the notion, that the Messianic times were to be those of the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh (Joel iii. 1 ff.); and in Isaiah xi. 1 f. it was expressly said | ||||
{P.251} of the stem of Jesse, that the spirit of the Lord would rest on it in all its fulness, as the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of might, and of the fear of the Lord. The communication of the Spirit, considered as an individual act, coincident with the baptism, had a type in the history of David, on whom, when anointed by Samuel the spirit of God came from that day forward (1 Sam. xvi. 13). Further, in the Old Testament phrases concerning the imparting of the Divine Spirit to men, especially in that expression of Isaiah, there already lay the germ of a symbolical representation; for that Hebrew verb is applied also to the halting of armies, or, like the parallel Arabic word, even of animals. | ||||
The imagination, once stimulated by such an expression, would be the more strongly impelled to complete the picture, by the necessity for distinguishing the descent of the Spirit on the Messiah, in the Jewish view, from the mode in which it was imparted to the prophets (e.g. Isaiah Ixi. 1) in the Christian view, from its ordinary communication to the baptized (e. g. Acts xix. 1 ff.). The position being once laid down, that the Spirit was to descend on the Messiah, the question immediately occurred: How would it descend? This was necessarily decided according to the popular Jewish idea, which always represented the Divine Spirit under some form or other. In the Old Testament, and even in the New (Acts ii. 3), fire is the principal symbol of the Holy Spirit; but it by no means follows that other sensible objects were not similarly used. In an important passage of the Old Testament (Gen. i. 2), the Spirit of God is described as "hovering" a word which suggests, as its sensible representation, the movement of a bird, rather than of fire. Thus the expression in, Deut. xxxii. 11 is used of the hovering of a bird over its young. But the imagination could not be satisfied with the general figure of a bird; it must have a specific image, and every thing led to the choice of the dove. | ||||
In the east, and especially in Syria, the dove is a sacred bird, and it is so for a reason which almost necessitated its association with the Spirit moving on the face of the primitive waters (Gen. i. 2). | ||||
The brooding dove was a symbol of the quickening warmth of nature it thus perfectly represented the function which, in the Mosaic cosmogony, is ascribed to the Spirit of God, the calling forth of the world of life from the chaos of the first creation. Moreover, when the earth was a second time covered with water, it is a dove, sent by Noah, which hovers over its waves, and which, by plucking an olive leaf, and at length finally disappearing, announces the renewed possibility of living on the earth. Who then can wonder that in Jewish writings, the Spirit hovering over the primeval {P.252} waters is expressly compared to a dove, and that, apart from the narrative under examination, the dove is taken as a symbol of the Holy Spirit? How near to this lay the association of the hovering dove with the Messiah, on whom the dove-like spirit was to descend, is evident, without our having recourse to the Jewish writings, which designate the Spirit hovering over the waters, Gen. 1. 2, as the Spirit of the Messiah, and also connect with him its emblem, the Noachian dove. | ||||
When, in this manner, the heavenly voice, and the Divine Spirit down-hovering like a dove, gathered from the contemporary Jewish ideas, had become integral parts of the Christian legend concerning the circumstances of the baptism of Jesus; it followed, of coarse, that the heavens should open themselves, for the Spirit, once embodied, must have a road, before it could descend through the vault of heaven. | ||||
The result of the preceding inquiries, viz, that the alleged miraculous circumstances of the baptism of Jesus have merely a mythical value, might have been much more readily obtained, in the way of inference from the preceding chapter; for if, according to that, John had not acknowledged Jesus to be the Messiah, there could have been no appearances at the baptism of Jesus, demonstrative to John of his Messiahship. We have, however, established the mythical character of the baptismal phenomena, without presupposing the result of the previous chapter; and thus the two independently obtained conclusions may serve to strengthen each other. | ||||
Supposing all the immediate circumstances of the baptism of Jesus unhistorical, the question occurs, whether the baptism itself be also a mere myth. Fritzsche seems not disinclined to the affirmative, for he leaves it undecided whether the first Christians knew historically, or only supposed, in conformity with their Messianic expectations, that Jesus was consecrated to his Messianic office by John, as his Forerunner. This view may be supported by the observation, that in the Jewish expectation, which originated in the story of David, combined with the prophecy of Malachi, there was {P.253} adequate inducement to assume such a consecration of Jesus by the Baptist, even without historical warrant; and the mention of John's baptism in relation to Jesus (Acts i. 22,) in a narrative, itself traditional, proves nothing to the contrary. Yet, on the other hand, it is to be considered, that the baptism of Jesus by John furnishes the most natural basis for an explanation of the Messianic project of Jesus. When we have two contemporaries, one of whom announces the proximity of the Messiah's kingdom, and the other subsequently assumes the character of Messiah; the conjecture arises, even without positive information, that they stood in a relation to each other, that the latter owed his idea to the former. If Jesus had the Messianic idea excited in him by John, yet, as is natural, only so far that he also looked forward to the advent of the Messianic individual, whom he did not, in the first instance, identify with himself; he would most likely submit himself to the baptism of John. this would probably take place without any striking occurrences; and Jesus, in no way announced by it as the Baptist's superior, might, as above remarked, continue for some time to demean himself as his disciple. | ||||
If we take a comparative retrospect of our Gospel documents, the pre-eminence which has of late been sought for the fourth Gospel, appears totally unmerited. The single historical fact, the baptism of Jesus by John, is not mentioned by the fourth evangelist, who is solicitous about the mythical adjuncts alone, and these he in reality gives no more simply than the synoptic writers, his omission of the opening heaven excepted; for the divine speech is not wanting in his narrative, if we read it impartially. In the words, i. 33: "He that sent me to baptize with water, said to me, The one on whom you will see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he who baptizes with the Holy Ghost," we have not only substantially the same purport as, that conveyed by the heavenly voice in the synoptic Gospels, but also a divine declaration; the only difference being, that here John is addressed exclusively, and prior to the baptism of Jesus. This difference originated partly in the importance, which the fourth evangelist attached to the relation between the Baptist and Jesus, and which required that the criteria of the Messianic individual, as well as the proximity of his kingdom, should have been revealed to John at his call to baptize; and it. might be partly suggested by the narrative, in 1 Sam. xvi., according to which Samuel, being sent by the Lord to anoint a king selected from the sons of Jesse, is thus admonished by the Lord, on the entrance of David; Arise and anoint him, for this is he (v. 12.). The descent of the Spirit, which in David's case follows his consecration, is, by the fourth evangelist, made an antecedent sign of the Messiahship of Jesus. {P.254} | ||||