112. The Predictions of Jesus Concerning His Death in General; Their Relatio... (Chapter 1. Relation of Jesus to The Idea of A Suffering and Dying Messiah;...) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Strauss, David Friedrich)

IF in this manner we subtract from the declarations of Jesus concerning his approaching fate, attributed to him in the Gospels, all which regards the particular circumstances of this catastrophe; there still remains on the part of Jesus the general announcement, that suffering and death awaited him, and also that this part of his career was a fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies relative to the Messiah. As, however, the principal passages cited from the Old Testament, which treat of suffering and death, are only by mistake referred to the Messiah, while others, ^{P.637} as Dan. ix. 26; Zech. xii. 10, have not this signification: the orthodox, above all, must again beware of attributing so false an interpretation of these prophecies, to the supernatural principle in Jesus. That instead of this, Jesus might possibly, by a purely natural combination, have educed the general result, that since he had made the hierarchy of his nation his implacable enemies, he had, in so far as he was resolved not to swerve from the path of his destination, the worst to fear from their revenge and authority (John x.11ff.); that from the fate of former prophets (Matt. v. 12; xxi.33ff.; Luke xiii. 33 f.), and isolated passages bearing such an interpretation, he might prognosticate a similar end to his own career, and accordingly predict to his followers that earlier or later a violent death awaited him - this it would be a needless overstraining of the supernaturalistic view any longer to deny, and the rational mode of considering the subject should be admitted.

It may appear surprising if, after this admission, we still put the question, whether, according to the New Testament representation, it be probable that Jesus actually uttered such a prediction, since, certainly, a general announcement of his violent death is the least which the Gospel accounts appear to contain. But our meaning in the question is this: is the sequel, especially the conduct of the disciples, so described in the Gospels, as to be reconcileable with a prior disclosure of Jesus relative to the sufferings which awaited him?

Now the express statements of the evangelists do not merely tend to show that the disciples did not understand the discourses of Jesus on his coming death, in the sense that they did not know how to adjust these facts in their own minds, or to make them tally with their preconceived ideas concerning the Messiah, - a difficulty which drew from Peter the first time that Jesus announced his death, the exclamation: "Be it far from you, Lord, this shall not be to you;" for we find the words of Mark (ix. 32), But they understood not that saying, ol ds i'iyvoovv rb prjpa, thus amplified in Luke: and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not (ix. 45); and the latter evangelist on another occasion says: "and they understood none of these things, and this saying was: .)" expressions which appear to imply that the disciples absolutely did not understand what the words of Jesus meant.

Accordingly, the condemnation and execution of Jesus fall upon them as a blow for which they are entirely unprepared, and consequently annihilate all the hopes which they had fixed on him as the Messiah (Luke xxiv. 20 f.) "The chief priests and our rulers have crucified him." But ^{P.638} we trusted that he was the one who would have redeemed Israel."

Now, had Jesus spoken of his death to the disciples with such perfect openness (napprjaia, Mark viii. 32), they must necessarily have understood his clear words and detailed discourses, and had he besides shown them that his death was foreshadowed in the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, and was consequently a part of the Messiah's destination (Luke xviii. 31; xxii. 37), they could not, when his death actually ensued, have so entirely lost all belief in his Messiahship. It is true that the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist is wrong in his attempt to show in the conduct of Jesus, as described by the evangelists, indications that his death was unexpected even to himself; but, looking merely at the conduct of the disciples, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion which that writer draws, namely, that to judge by that conduct, Jesus cannot have made any antecedent disclosure to his disciples concerning his death; on the contrary, they appearto the very last moment to have held the common opinion on this matter, and only to have adopted the characteristics of suffering and death into their conception of the Messiah, after the death of Jesus had unexpectedly come upon them. At all events we have before us the following dilemma: either the statements of the evangelists as to the inability of the disciples to understand the predictions of Jesus, and their surprise at his death, are unhistorically exaggerated; or the decided declarations of Jesus concerning the death which awaited him, were composed ex evendi, indeed, it becomes doubtful whether he even in general predicted his death as a part of his Messianic destiny. On both sides, the legend might be led into unhistorical representations. For the fabrication of a prediction of his death in general, there were the same reasons which we have above shown to be an adequate motive for attributing to him a prognostication of the particular features of his passion: to the fiction of so total a want of compreension in the disciples, an inducement might be found, on the one hand, in the desire to exhibit the profoundness of the mystery of a suffering Messiah revealed by Jesus, through the inability of the disciples to understand it; on the other, in the fact that in the Gospel tradition the disciples were likened to unconverted Jews and heathens, to whom anything was more intelligible than the death of the Messiah.

In order .to decide between these alternatives, we must first examine whether, prior to the death of Jesus, and independently of that event, the Messianic ideas of the age included the characteristics of suffering and death. If already in the lifetime of Jesus it was the Jewish opinion that the Messiah must die a violent death, then it is highly probable that Jesus imbibed this idea as a part of his convictions, and communicated it to his disciples; who, in that case, could so much the less have remained uninstructed on this point, and overwhelmed by the actual result, in the degree alleged ^{P.639} by the evangelists. If, on the contrary, that idea was not diffused among his countrymen before the death of Jesus, it still remains possible that Jesus might arrive at that idea by his private reflection; but it is a prior possibility that the disciples were the first to adopt the characteristics of suffering and death into their conception of the Messiah, after they had been taught by the issue.

The question whether the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was already diffused among the Jews in the time of Jesus, is one of the most difficult points of discussion among theologians, and one concerning which they are the least agreed. And the difficulty of the question does not he in the interests of party, so that it might be hoped that with the rise of impartial investigation, the subject would cease to be perplexed; for, as Staudlin has aptly shown, both the orthodox and the rationalist interest may alternately tend in each direction, and we in fact find theologians of both parties on both sides, The difficulty lies in the deficiency of information, and in the uncertainty of that which we do possess. If the Old Testament contained the doctrine of a suffering and dying Messiah, it might certainly thence be inferred with more than mere probability, that this doctrine existed among the Jews in the time of Jesus: as, however, according to the most recent researches, the Old Testament, while it doe indeed contain the doctrine of an expiation of the sins of the people to take place at the Messianic era (Ezek. xxxvi. 25; xxxvii. 23; Zach. xiii. 1; Dan. ix. 24.). has no trace of this expiation being effected by the suffering and death of the Messiah: there is no decision of the question before us to be expected from this quarter. The apocryphal books of the Old Testament he nearer to the time of Jesus; but as these are altogether silent concerning the Messiah in general, there can be no discussion as to their.containing that special feature. Again, if we turn to Philo and Josephus, the two authors who wrote soonest after the period in question, we find the latter silent as to the Messianic hopes of his nation; and though the former does indeed speak of Messianic times, and a Messiah-like hero, he says nothing ofi sufferings on his part. Thus there remain, as sources of information on this point, only the New Testament and the later Jewish writings.

In the New Testament, almost everything is calculated to give the impression, that a suffering and dying Messiah was unthought-of among the Jews who were contemporary with Jesus. To the majority of the Jews, we are told, the doctrine of a crucified ^{P.640} Messiah was a skandalon, and the disciples were at a loss to understand Jesus in his repeated and explicit announcements of his death. This does not look as if the doctrine of a suffering Messiah had been current among the Jews of that period; on the contrary, these circumstances accord fully with the declaration which the fourth evangelist puts into the mouth of the Jewish multitude, (xii. 34), namely, that they had heard in the law (nomoj) that the Christ abides for ever. Indeed, for a general acceptation of the idea of a suffering Messiah among the Jews of that period, even those theologians who take the affirmative side in this argument do not contend; but, admitting that the hope of a worldly Messiah whose reign was to endure for ever, was the prevalent one, they only maintain (and herein the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist agrees with them), that a less numerous party, according to Standlin, the Essenes; according to Hengstenburg, the better and more enlightened prt of the people in general-held the belief that the Messiah would appear in a humble guise, and only enter into glory through suffering and death. In support of this they appeal especially to two passages; one out of the third, and one out of the fourth gospel. When Jesus is presented as an infant in the temple at Jerusalem, the aged Simeon, among other prophecies, particularly concerning the opposition which her son would have to encounter, says to Mary: Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also (Luke ii. 35.); words which seem to describe her maternal sorrow at the death of her son, and consequently to represent the opinion, that a violent death awaited the Messiah, as one already current before Christ. Still more plainly is the idea of a suffering Messiah contained in the words which the fourth gospel makes the Baptist utter on seeing Jesus: Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world (i. 29.)! This, viewed in its relation to Isa. liii., would in the mouth of the Baptst likewise tend to prove, that the idea of expiatory suffering on the part of the Messiah was in existence before the time of Jesus. But both these passages have been above shown to be unhistorical, and from the fact that the primitive Christian legend was led, a considerable time after the issue, to attribute to persons whom it held divinely inspired, a foreknowledge of the divine decree with respect to the death of Jesus, it can by no means be concluded, that this insight really existed prior to the death of Jesus. In conclusion, it is urged, that at least the evangelists and apostles refer to the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah in the Old Testament; from which it is thought warrantable to conclude, that this interpretation of the Old Testament passages connected with our present subject, was not unprecedented among the Jews. Certainly Peter (Acts iii. 18 f.; 1 Pet. i. 11 f.) and Paul (Acts xxvi. 22 f.; 1 Cor. xv. 3.) appeal to Moses and the

^{641} prophets as annunciators of the death of Jesus, and Philip, in his interview with the Ethiopian eunuch, interprets a passage in Isa. liii. of the sufferings of the Messiah: but as those teachers of the Church spoke and wrote all this after the event, we have no assurance that they did not assign to certain Old Testament passages a relation to the sufferings of the Messiah, solely in consequence of that event, and not by adopting a mode of interpretation previously current among their Jewish contemporaries.

If, according to this, the opinion that the idea in question already existed among the countrymen of Jesus during his lifetime, has no solid foundation in the New Testament; we must proceed to inquire whether that idea may not be found in the later Jewish writings. Among the earliest writings of this class now extant, are the Chaldee paraphrases of Onkelos and Jonathan; and the Targum, of the latter, who, according to rabbinical tradition, was a pupil of Hillel the elder, is commonly cited as presenting the idea of a suffering Messiah, because it refers the passage, Isa. Iii. 13. - liii. 12, to the Messiah. But with respect to the interpretation of this passage in the Targum of Jonathan, it is the singular fact, that while the prophecies which it contains are in general interpreted Messian-ically, yet so often as suffering and death are spoken of, either these ideas are avoided with marked design, and for the most part by some extremely forced expedient, or are transferred to a different subject, namey, the people of Israel: a significant proof that to the author, suffering and violent death appeared irreconcileable with the idea of the Messiah, But this, we are told, is the beginning of that aberration from the true sense of the sacred text, into which the later Jews were seduced by their carnal disposition, and their hostility to Christianity: the more ancient interpreters, it is said, discovered in this passage of Isaiah a suffering and dying Messiah. It is true that Abenezra, Abarbanel and others, testify that many ancient teachers referred Isa. liii. to the Messiah: but some of their statements leave it by no means clear that those more ancient interpretations are not as partial as that of Jonathan; and in relation to ^{P.642} all of them it remains uncertain, whether the interpreters of whom they speak reach as far back as the age of Jonathan, which is highly improbable with respect to those parts of the book Sohar wherein the passage in question is referred to a suffering Messiah. The writing which, together with that of Jonathan, may be regarded as the nearest to the time of Jesus, namely, the apocryphal fourth book of Esdras, drawn up, according to the most probable computation, shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus, does indeed mention the death of the Messiah: not however as a painful one, but only as a death which, after the long duration of the Messianic kingdom, was to precede the general resurrection. The idea of great calamities, the birth-throes, as it were, of the Messiah, (Matt. xxiv. 8), which would usher in the Messianic times, was undoubtedly disseminated before Christ; and equally early there appears to have been placed in the front of these ills, which wer to press upon the people of Israel in particular, the Antichrist, whom the Christ would have to oppose (2 Thess. ii. 3 f.); but since he was to annihilate this adversary in a supernatural manner, with the spirit of his mouth, this involved no suffering for the Messiah. Nevertheless, there are to be found passages in which a suffering of the Messiah is spoken of, and in which this suffering is even represented as vicarious, on behalf of the people: but first, this is only a suffering, and no death of the Messiah; secondly, it befals him either before his descent into earthly life, in his pre-ex-istence, or during the concealment in which he keeps himself from his birth until his appearance as Messiah: ft lastly, the antiquity of these ideas is doubtful, and according to certain indications, they could only be dated after the destruction of the Jewish state by Titus. Meanwhile, Jewish writings are by no means destitute of passages, in whih it is directly asserted that a Messiah would perish in a violent manner: but these passages relate, not to the proper Messiah, the offspring of David, but to another, from among the posterity of Joseph and Ephraim, who was appointed to hold a subordinate position in relation to the former. This Messiah ben Joseph was to precede the Messiah ben David, to unite the ten tribes of the former kingdom of Israel with the two tribes of the kingdom of Judah, but after this to perish by the sword in the battle with Gog and Magog: a catastrophe to which Zech. xii. 10. was referred. But of this second, dying Messiah, any certain traces are lacking ^{P.643} before the Babylonian Gemara, which was compiled in the fifth and sixth centuries after Christ, and the book Sohar, the age of which is extremely doubtful.

Although, according to this, it cannot be proved, and is even not probable, that the idea of a suffering Messiah already existed among the Jews in the time of Jesus: it is still possible that, even without such a precedent, Jesus himself, by an observation of circumstances, and a comparison of them with Old Testament narratives and prophecies, might corne to entertain the belief that suffering and death were a part of the office and destination of the Messiah; and if so, it would be more natural that he should embrace this conviction gradually in the course of his public ministry, and that he should chiefly have confined his communications on the subject to his intimate friends, than that he should have had this conviction from the beginning, and have expressed it before indifferent persons, indeed enemies. The latter is the representation of John; the former, of the Synoptics.

In relation also to the declarations of Jesus concerning the object and effects of his death, we can, as above in relation to the announcement of the death itself, distinguish a more natural, from a more suprariatural point of view. When Jesus in the fourth gospel likens himself to the true shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep (x. 11, 15); this may have the perfectly natural sense, that he is determined not to swerve from his office of shepherd and teacher, even though, in the prosecution of it, death should threaten him (the moral necessity of his death); the foreboding expression in the same gospel (xii. 24), that except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, but if it die it brings forth much fruit, admits of an equally rational explanation, as a figurative representation of the victorious power which martyrdom gives to an idea and conviction (the moral efficacy of his death): lastly, that which is so often repeated in the Gospel of John, namely, that it is good fo the disciples that Jesus should go away, for without his departure the comforter will not come to them, who will glorify him in them, may be supposed to express the perfectly natural consideration of Jesus, that without the removal of his sensible presence, the hitherto so material ideas of the disciples would not be spiritualized (the psychological efficacy of his death).The words of Jesus at the institution of the sacramental supper, belong-more to the supernaturalistic mode of view. For if that which the intermediate evangelists make him say on this occasion-that the cup presented is the blood of the new testament, (Mark xiv. 24), and the new testament in his blood, (Luke xxii. 20), might appear to signify no more than that, as by the bloody sacrifice at Sinai was sealed the covenant of this ancient people with God, so by his (the ^{P.644} Messiah's) blood would be sealed in a higher sense the community of the new covenant, gathering round him: in the account of Matthew, on the contrary, when he makes Jesus add, that his blood "will be shed for many for the remission of sins," the idea of the covenant sacrifice is blended with that of an expiatory sacrifice: and also in the two other evangelists by the addition: which is shed "for many," or "for you," the transition is made from the covenant sacrifice to the expiatory sacrifice. Further, when in the first gospel (xx. 28.) Jesus says, he must give his life a ransom for many, this is doubtless to be referred to Isa. liii., where, according to a notion current among the Hebrews (Isa. 43. 3; Prov. xxi. 18), the death of the servant of God is supposed to have a propitiatory relation to the rest of mankind.

Thus Jesus might by psychological reflection come to the conviction that such a catastrophe would be favourable to the spiritual development of his disciples, and that it was indispensable for the spiritualizing of their Messianic ideas, indeed, in accordance with national conceptions, and by a consideration of Old Testament passages, even to the idea that his Messianic death would have an expiatory efficacy. Still, what the Synoptics make Jesus say of his death, as a sin offering, might especially appear to belong rather to the system which was developed after the death of Jesus; and what the fourth evangelist puts into his mouth concerning the Paraclete, to have been conceived ex eventu: so that, again, in these expressions of Jesus concerning the object of his death, there must be a separation of the general from the special.