Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (811 page)

* Vid. Fritzsche, ut sup.

† Paulus, exeg. Handb. 2, s. 415 Ff. ; Ammon, bibl. Theol. 2, s. 377 f. ; Kaiser, bibl. Theol. I, s. 246. Fritzsche also, ut sup. and Weisse, I, s. 423, partly admit this.

‡ Bertholdt, Einleitung in d. N. T. 1305 ff. ; Wegscheider, Einl. in das Evang. Johannis, s. 271 f.the passion and death of Jesus were to him past events, and therefore clearly present to his mind, nevertheless makes Jesus predict them in obscure expressions, — this has its foundation in the entire manner of this writer whose fondness for the enigmatical and mysterious here happily met the requirement, to give an unintelligible form to prophecies which were not understood.

There were sufficient inducements for the Christian legend thus to put into the mouth of Jesus, after the event, a prediction of the particular features of his passion, especially of the ignominious crucifixion. The more the Christ crucified became
to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness
(I Cor. i. 23), the more need was there to remove this offence by every possible means; and as, among subsequent events, the resurrection especially served as a
retrospective
cancelling of that shameful death; so it must have been earnestly desired to take the sting from that offensive catastrophe
beforehand
also, and this could not be done more effectually than by such a minute prediction. For as the most unimportant fact, when prophetically announced, gains importance, by thus being made a link in the chain of a higher knowledge: so the most ignominious fate, when it is predicted as part of a divine plan of salvation, ceases to be ignominious; above all, when the very person over whom such a fate impends, also possesses the prophetic spirit, which enables him to foresee and foretell it, and thus not only suffers, but participates in the divine prescience of his sufferings, he manifests himself as the
ideal
power over those suffering. But the fourth Evangelist has gone still farther on this track; he believes it due to the honour of Jesus to represent him as also the
real
power over his sufferings, as not having his life taken away by the violence of others, but as resigning it voluntarily (x. 17 f.) : a representation which indeed already finds some countenance in Matt. xxvi. 53, where Jesus asserts the possibility of praying to the Father for legions of angels, in order to avert his sufferings.

§ 112. THE PREDICTIONS OF JESUS CONCERNING HIS DEATH IN GENERAL; THEIR RELATION TO THE JEWISH IDEA OF THE MESSIAH: DECLARATIONS OF JESUS CONCERNING THE OBJECT AND EFFECTS OF HIS DEATH.

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, 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. 11 ff. ) ; that from the fate of former prophets (Matt. v. 12, xxi. 33 ff ; 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 supranaturalistic 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 evangelical 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 reconcilable 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 thee, Lord, this shall not be unto
thee; — for we find the words of Mark (ix. 32 ),
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(ix. 45) ; and the latter Evangelist on another occasion says:
and they understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things that were spoken
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(xviii. 34) : expressions which appear to imply that the disciples absolutely did not understand what the words of Jesus meant. In accordance with this, 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 pnests and our rulers have crucified him.

* Daniel, übersetzt und erklärt von Bertholdt, 2, s. 541 ff., 660 ff. ; Rosenmüller, Schol. in V. T. 7, 4, p. 339 ff.

† De Wette, de morte Christi expiatoria, in his Opusc. Theol., p. 130; Hase, L. J. § 106.
But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel
). But had Jesus spoken of his death to the disciples with such perfect
openness
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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 Wolfenbüttel 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 appear to 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 eventu,
nay, 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 comprehension in the disciples, an inducement might be found, on the one hand, in the desire to exhibit the profound 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 evangelical 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