Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (810 page)
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Authors: George Eliot
» •”.....THE LIFE OF JESUS.
CHAPTER I.
RELATION OF JESUS TO THE IDEA OF A SUFFERING AND DYING MESSIAH; HIS DISCOURSES ON HIS DEATH, RESURRECTION, AND SECOND ADVENT.
§ 111. DID JESUS IN PRECISE TERMS PREDICT HIS PASSION AND DEATH ?
According to the gospels, Jesus more than once, and while the result was yet distant,* predicted to his disciples that sufferings and a violent death awaited him. Moreover, if we trust the synoptical accounts, he did not predict his fate merely in general terms, but specifically beforehand the place of his passion, namelt Jerusalem; the time, namely, the approaching passover; the persons from whom he would have to suffer, namely, the chief priests, scribes and Gentiles; the essential form of his passion, namely, crucifixion, in consequence of a judicial sentence; and even its accessory circumstances, namely, scourging, reviling, and spitting (Matt. xvi. 21, xvii. 12, 22 f:, xx. 17 ff., xxvi. 12 with the parall., Luke xiii. 33). Between the synoptists and the author of the fourth gospel, there exists a threefold difference in relation to this subject. Firstly and chiefly, in the latter the predictions of Jesus do not appear so clear and intelligible, but are for the most part presented in obscure figurative discourses, concerning which the narrator himself confesses that the disciples understood them not until after the issue (ii. 22). In addition to a decided declaration that he will voluntarily lay down his life (x. 15 ff.), Jesus in this gospel is particularly fond of alluding
*
His predictions concerning particular circumstances of his passion, uttered shortly before its occurrence, in the last days days of his life, can only be considered farther on, in the history of those days.to his approaching death under the expressions
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to lift up, to be lifted up,
in the application of which he seems to vacillate between his exaltation on the cross, and his exaltation to glory (iii. 14, viii. 28, xii. 32) ; he compares his approaching exaltation with that of the brazen serpent in the wilderness (iii. 14), as, in Matthew, he compares his fate with that of Jonah (xii. 40) ; on another occasion, he speaks of going away whither no man can follow him (vii. 33 ff., viii. 21 f.), as, in the synoptists, of a taking away of a bridegroom, which will plunge his friends into mourning (Matt. ix. 15 parall.), and of a cup, which he must drink, and which his disciples will find it hard to partake of with him (Matt. xx. 22 parall. ). The two other differences are less marked, but are still observable. One of them is, that while in John the allusions to the violent death of Jesus run in an equal degree through the whole gospel; in the synoptists, the repeated and definite announcements of his death.are found only towards the end, partly immediately before, partly during, the last journey; in earlier chapters there occurs, with the exception of the obscure discourse on the sign of Jonah (which we shall soon see to be no prediction,of death), only the intimation of a removal (doubtless violent) of the bridegroom. The last difference is, that while according to the three first Evangelists, Jesus imparts those predictions (again with the single exception of the above intimation, Matt. ix. 15) only to the confidential circle of his disciples; in John, he utters them in the presence of the people, and even of his enemies.
In the critical investigation of these evangelical accounts, we shall proceed from the special to the general, in the following manner. First we shall ask : Is it credible that Jesus had a foreknowledge of so many particular features of the fate which awaited him? and next: Is even a general foreknowledge and prediction of his sufferings, on the part of Jesus, probable? in which inquiry, the difference between the representation of John and that of the synoptists, will necessarily come under our consideration.
There are two modes of explaining how Jesus could so precisely foreknow the particular circumstances of his passion and death; the one resting on a supernatural, the other on a natural basis. The former appears adequate to solve the problem by the simple position, that before the prophetic spirit, which dwelt in Jesus in the richest plenitude, his destiny must have lain unfolded from the beginning. As, however, Jesus himself, in his announcements of his sufferings, expressly appealed to the Old, Testament, the prophecies of which concerning him must be fulfilled in all points (Luke xviii. 31, comp. xxii. 37, xxiv. 25 ff ; Matt. xxvi. 54) : so the orthodox view ought not to despise this help, but must give to its explanation the modification, that Jesus continually occupied with the prophecies of the Old Testament, may have drawn those particularities out of them, by the aid of the spirit that dwelt within him.* According to this,
*
Comp.
Olshausen, bibl. Comm., I, s. 528.while the knowledge of the time of his passion remains consigned to his prophetic presentiment, unless he be supposed to have calculated this out of Daniel, or some similar source; Jesus must have come to regard Jerusalem as the scene of his suffering and death, by contemplating the fate of earlier prophets as a type of his own, the Spirit telling him, that where so many prophets had suffered death, there,
à fortiori
must the Messiah also suffer (Luke xiii. 33) ; that his death would be the sequel of a formal sentence, he must have gathered from Isa. liii. 8, where a
judgment
[
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mishpat
is spoken of as impending over the servant of God, and from v. 12, where it is said that he was
numbered with the transgressors,
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(comp. Luke xxii. 37) ; that his sentence would proceed from the rulers of his own people, he might perhaps have concluded from Ps. cxviii. 22, where the
builders,
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who reject the corner-stone, are, according to apostolic interpretation (Acts iv. 11), the Jewish rulers; that he would be delivered to the Gentiles, he might infer from the fact, that in several plaintive psalms, which are susceptible qf a messianic interpretation, the persecuting parties are represented as [
Heb. letters
]
resha’iym
, i. e. heathens; that the precise manner of his death would be crucifixion, he might have deduced, partly from the type of the brazen serpent which was suspended on a pole, Num. xxi. 8 f. (comp. John iii. 14), partly from the piercing of the hands and feet, Ps. xxii. 17, LXX. ; lastly, that he would be the object of scorn and personal maltreatment, he might have concluded from passages such as v. 7 ff. in the Psalm above quoted, Isa. l. 6, etc. Now if the spirit which dwelt in Jesus, and which, according to the orthodox opinion, revealed to him the reference of these prophecies and types to his ultimate destiny, was a spirit of truth : this reference to Jesus must admit of being proved to be the true and original sense of those Old Testament passages. But, to confine ourselves to the principal passages only, a profound grammatical and historical exposition has convincingly shown, for all who are in a condition to liberate themselves from dogmatic presuppositions, that in none of these is there any allusion to the sufferings of Christ. Instead of this, Isa. l. 6, speaks of the ill usage which the prophets had to experience;
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Isa. liii. of the calamities of the prophetic order, or more probably of the Israelitish people ;† Ps. cxviii. of the unexpected deliverance and exaltation of that people, or of one of their princes ;
‡
while Ps. xxii. is the complaint of an oppressed exile.
§
As to the 17th verse of this Psalm, which has been interpreted as having reference to the crucifixion of Christ, even presupposing the most improbable interpretation of [
Heb. letters
]
k’ry
by
perfoderunt,
this must in no case be understood literally, but only figuratively, and the image would be derived, not from a crucifixion,
*
Gesenius, Jesaias, 111. 137 ff. ; Hitzig, Comm. zu. Jes., s. 550.
† Gesenius, ut sup. s. 158 ff. ; Hitzig, s. 577 ff. ; Vatke, bibl. Theol. I, s. 528 ff.
‡ De Wette, Comm. zu den Psalmen, s. 514 ff. ; 3te Aufl.
§ Ibid. s. 224 ff.but from a chase, or a combat with wild beasts .
*
hence the application of this passage to Christ is now only maintained by those with whom it would be lost labour to contend. According to the orthodox view, however, Jesus, in a supernatural manner, by means of his higher nature, discovered in these passages a pre-intimation of the particular features of his passion; but, in that case, since such is not the true sense of these passages, the spirit that dwelt in Jesus cannot have been the spirit of truth, but a lying spirit. Thus the orthodox expositor, so far as he does not exclude himself from the light dispensed by an unprejudiced interpretation of the Old Testament, is driven, for the sake of his own interest, to adopt the natural opinion; namely, that Jesus was led to such an interpretation of Old Testament passages, not by divine inspiration, but by a combination of his own.
According to this opinion,
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there was no difficulty in foreseeing that it would be the ruling sacerdotal party to which Jesus must succumb, since, on the one hand, it was pre-eminently embittered against Jesus, on the other, it was in possession of the necessary power; and equally obvious was it that they would make Jerusalem the theatre of his judgment and execution, since this was the centre of their strength; that after being sentenced by the rulers of his people, he would be delivered to the Romans for execution, followed from the limitation of the Jewish judicial power at that period; that crucifixion was the death to which he would be sentenced, might be conjectured from the fact that with the Romans this species of death was a customary infliction, especially on rebels; lastly, that scourging and reviling would not be wanting, might likewise be inferred from Roman custom, and the barbarity of judicial proceedings in that age. But viewing the subject more nearly, how could Jesus so certainly know that Herod, who had directed a threatening attention to his movements (Luke xiii. 3 I ), would not forestall the sacerdotal party, and add to the murder of the Baptist, that of his more important follower? And even if he felt himself warranted in believing that real danger threatened him from the side of the hierarchy only (Luke xiii. 33) ; what was his guarantee that one of their tumultuary attempts to murder him would not at last succeed (comp. John viii. 39, x. 31), and that he would not, as Stephen did at a later period, without any further formalities, and without a previous delivery to the Romans, find his death in quite another manner than by the Roman punishment of crucifixion ? Lastly, how could he so confidently assert that the very next plot of his enemies, after so many failures, would be successful, and that the very next journey to the passover would be his last? — But the natural explanation also can call to its aid the Old Testament passages, and say: Jesus, whether by the application of a mode of interpretation then current among his countrymen, or under the guidance of his own individual views,
* Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 677 ff., and De Wette in loc.
† See this view developed by Fritzsche, Comm. in Marc., p. 381 f.gathered from the passages already quoted, a precise idea of the circumstances attendant on the violent end which awaited him as the Messiah.* But if in the first place it would be difficult to prove, that already in the lifetime of Jesus all these various passages were referred to the Messiah; and if it be equally difficult to conceive that Jesus could independently, prior to the issue, discover such a reference; so it would be a case undistinguishable from a miracle, if the result had actually corresponded to so false an interpretation; moreover, the Old Testament oracles and types will not suffice to explain all the particular features in the predictions of Jesus, especially the precise determination of time.
If then Jesus cannot have had so precise a foreknowledge of the circumstances of his passion and death, either in a supernatural or a natural way: he cannot have had such a foreknowledge at all: and the minute predictions which the Evangelists put into his mouth must be regarded as a
vaticinium post eventum.
† Commentators who have arrived at this conclusion, have not failed to extol the account of John, in opposition to that of the synoptists, on the ground that precisely those traits in the predictions of Jesus which, from their special character, he cannot have uttered, are only found in the synoptists, while John attributes to Jesus no more than indefinite intimations, and distinguishes these from his own interpretation, made after the issue; a plain proof that in his gospel alone we have the discourses of Jesus unfalsified, and in their original form.‡ But, regarded more nearly, the case does not stand so that the fourth Evangelist can only be taxed with putting an erroneous interpretation on the otherwise unfalsified declarations of Jesus : for in one passage, at least, he has put into his mouth an expression which, obscurely, it is true, but still unmistakably, determines the manner of his death as crucifixion; and consequently, he has here altered the words of Jesus to correspond with the result. We refer to the expression
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to be lifted up:
in those passages of the fourth gospel where Jesus speaks in a passive sense of the Son of Man being lifted up, this expression might possibly mean his exaltation to glory, although in iii. 14, from the comparison with the serpent in the wilderness, which was well known to have been elevated on a pole, even this becomes a difficulty; but when, as in viii. 28, he represents the exaltation of the Son of Man as the act of his enemies (
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), it is obvious that these could not lift him up immediately to glory, but only to the cross; consequently, if the result above stated be admitted as valid, John must himself have framed this expression, or at least have distorted the Aramaean words of Jesus, and hence he essentially falls under the same category with the synoptical writers. That the fourth Evangelist, though