Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (822 page)

Sieffert, likewise, regards the grounds on which Olshausen seeks to free the assertions of Jesus concerning his return from the imputation of error, as inadequate; nevertheless he holds it an impossibility to the Christian consciousness, to ascribe an erroneous expectation to Jesus.§ In no case would this furnish a warrant,

^*
Hengstenberg, Christologie des A. T., I, a, s. 305 ff.

^†
Exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 403. Comp. also Kern, Hauptthatsachen, ut sup. s. 137.

^‡
Bibi. Comm. 1, s. 865 ff.

^§
Ueber den Ursprung u. s. f., s. 119. Weisse advances a similar opinion, ut sup.arbitrarily to sever from each other those elements in the discourse of Jesus which refer to the nearer event, from those which in our view refer to the more remote one: rather, if we had reasons for holding such an error on the part of Jesus inconceivable, we must deny in general that the discourses on the second advent, in which those two sets of materials are so inextricably interwoven, originated with him. But, looking from the orthodox point of view, the question is not what will it satisfy the Christian consciousness of the present day to believe or not to believe concerning Christ? but, what stands written concerning Christ? and to this the above consciousness must accommodate itself as it best may. Considering the subject rationally, however, a feeling resting on presuppositions, such as the so-called Christian consciousness, has no voice in matters of science; and as often as it seeks to intermeddle with them, is to be reduced to order by the simple reprimand:
mulier taceat in ecciesia!
^*

But have we no other grounds for questioning that Jesus really uttered the predictions contained in Matt. xxiv. and xxv. parall.? In pursuing this inquiry, we may first take our stand on the assertion of supranaturalistic theologians, that what Jesus here predicts, he could not know in the natural way of reasonable calculation, but only in a supernatural manner.† Even the main fact, that the temple would be destroyed and Jerusalem laid waste, could not, according to this opinion, be so certainly foreknown. Who could conjecture, it is asked, that the Jews would carry their frantic obstinacy so far as to render such an issue inevitable? Who could calculate, that precisely such emperors, would send such procurators, as would provoke insurrection by their baseness and pusillanimity? Still more remarkable is it, that many particular incidents which Jesus foretold actually occurred. The wars, pestilence, earthquakes, famines, which he prophesied, may be shown in the history of the succeeding times; the persecution of his followers really took place; the prediction that there would be false prophets, and even such as would, by promises of miracles, allure the people into the wilderness (Matt. xxiv, 11, 24
ff. parall.), may be compared with a strikingly similar passage from Josephus, describing the last times of the Jewish state ;
^‡
the
encompassing of Jerusalem with armies,
mentioned by Luke, with the
trench,
c
a
r
a
x
,
which he elsewhere (xix. 43 f.) speaks of as being cast about the city, may be recognized in the circumstance recorded by Josephus, that Titus caused Jerusalem to be enclosed by a wall ;
^§
lastly it may also excite astonishment that the declarations,
there shalt not be left one stone upon
5 Compare also my Streitschriften, I, I, conclusion.

6 Comp. e.g. Gratz, Comm. zum Matth. 2, 444 ff.

7
Antiq. xx. viii. 6 (comp. bell. jud. ii. xiii. 4.):
And now these impostors and deceivers persuaded the multitude to follow them into the wilderness, and pretended that they would exhibit manifest wonders and signs that should be performed by the providence of God. And many that were prevailed on by them, suffered the punishments of their folly; for Felix brought them back, and then punished them.

8 Bell. jud. v. xii. i, 2.
another,
o
u
k
a
f
e
q
h
s
e
t
a
i
l
i
q
o
V
e
p
i
l
i
q
w
,
in relation to the temple, and
they shall lay thee even with the ground,
e
d
r
a
f
i
o
u
s
i
s
e
, (Luke xix. 44), in relation to the city, were fulfilled to the letter.*

When on the orthodox point of view, from the impossibility of foreseeing such particulars in a natural manner, it is concluded that Jesus had a supernatural insight into the future ; this conclusion is here attended not only with the same difficulty as above, in connection with the announcement of his death and resurrection, but with another also. In the first place, according to Matthew (xxiv. 15), and Mark (xiii. 14), Jesus represented the first stage of the catastrophe as a fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniel concerning an
abomination of desolation,
and consequently referred Dan. ix. 27
(comp. xi. 31, xii. 11) to an event at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. For what Paulus maintains, — namely, that Jesus here only borrows an expression from Daniel, without regarding that declaration of the prophet as a prophecy concerning something which in his time (the time of Jesus) was still future — is here rendered especially inconceivable by the addition :
let him that readeth understand.
Now it may be regarded as an established point in the modern criticism and explanation of the Old Testament, that the above passages in Daniel have reference to the desecration of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes
^†
consequently, the interpretation of them which the Evangelists here lend to Jesus is a false one. But to proceed to the difficulty which is peculiar to the prophecy in Matt. xxiv., xxv.: only one side of it, that relating to Jerusalem, has been fulfilled ; the other, that relating to the return of Jesus and the end of the world, remains unfulfilled. Such a half-true prophecy as this cannot have been drawn by Jesus from his higher nature, and he must have been left in this matter to his human faculties. But that he should be able, by means of these, to foresee a result, dependent on so many fortuities as was the destruction of Jerusalem, with its particular circumstances, appears inconceivable; and hence the conjecture arises, that these discourses, in the definiteness which they now possess, were not uttered prior to the issue, consequently not by Jesus, but that they may have been put into his mouth as prophecies
after
the issue. Thus Kaiser, for example, is of opinion that Jesus threatened a terrible fate to the temple and the nation by means of the Romans, conditionally, in case the nation did not accept salvation from the Messiah, and described this fate in prophetic types; but that the unconditional form and the more Precise delineations were given to his discourse
post eventum.
Credner also infers, from the circumstances, that incidents accompanying the destruction of Jerusalem are put into the mouth of Jesus as prophecies, that the three first gospels cannot have been composed

^*
More ample comparisons of the results mentioned by Josephus and others, with the prophecy, see in Credner, Einleit. in das N. T. I, s. 207
.

^†
Bertholdt, Daniel ühersetzt und erklärt, 2, s. 668 ff. ; Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 340 f. ; De Wette, Einleit. in das A. T., § 254 ff.before this event
^*
it must certainly be supposed that the prophecy, as we have it in the two first gospels, was formed immediately after or even during the issue, since here the appearance of the Messiah is predicted as an event that would immediately succeed the fall of Jerusalem, which in later years could no longer be the expectation. As this immediate chronological connexion of the two catastrophes is not so expressly made by Luke, it has been supposed that this Evangelist gives the prophecy as it was modified by experience, that the Messiah’s advent and the end of the world had in nowise followed close on the destruction of Jerusalem.
^†

In opposition to these two opinions, that the prophecy in question had a supernatural source, and that it
was only made after the issue; it is sought, in a third quarter, to show that what is here predicted, Jesus might really have known in a natural way.
^‡
While, on the one hand, it is held in the highest degree astonishing that the result should have so closely corresponded with the most minute features of the prophecy of Jesus; on the other hand, there are expositors by whom this correspondence is called in question.
The encompassing of Jerusalem with armies,
say they, is precisely what Titus, according to Josephus, pronounces impossible to be effected ;
^§
it is predicted that a
trench
c
a
r
a
x
would be cast about the city, while Josephus informs us, that after the first attempt at forming an
embankment
c
w
m
a
had been rendered useless, by an act of incendiarism on the part of the besieged,
^||
Titus desisted from his scheme; of false Messiahs, arising in the interval between the death of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem, history says nothing; the commotions among nations, and the natural phenomena, in that period, are far from being so important as they are here represented; but above all, in these prophecies, especially as they are given in Matthew and Mark, it is not the destruction of Jerusalem which is predicted, but solely that of the temple: plain divergencies of the prophecy from the result, which would not exist, if either a supernatural glance into the future, or a
vaticinium post eventum
were concerned.

According to these theologians, we are on the wrong track in seeking the counterpart of these prophecies forwards, in the result; since it was backwards, on types presented in the past, that the authors looked. A mass ot such types was furnished by the Jewish conception of the circumstances

^*
Kaiser, bibl. Theol. i, s. 247;
Credner, Einl. in das N. T. I, s. 2o6 f.

^†
De Wette, Einl. in das N. T., § 97, 101. Exeg. Handb. I, I, s. 204, I, 2,
s. 103.

^‡
Paulus, Fritzsche, Dc Wette in loc.

§ B. j
.
V. xii. i :
To encompass the
whole city round with his army, was not very easy, by reason of its magnitude and the difficulty of the situation; and on other accounts dangerous.

|| B. j. V. xi. 1 ff., xii. 1.which would precede the advent of the Messiah. False prophets and Messiahs, war, famine and pestilence, earthquakes and commotions in the heavens, prevalent corruption of manners, persecution of the faithful servants of Jehovah, were held to be the immediate harbingers of the messianic kingdom. Moreover, in the prophets there are descriptions of the tribulation which would presage and accompany the day of the coming of Jehovah (Isa. xiii. 9 ff.; Joel i. 15, ii. 1 ff. 10 ff., iii. 3 ff., iv. 15 f.; Zeph.i. 14 ff.; Hagg. ii. 7; Zech. xiv. 1 ff.; Mat. iii. 1 ff), or which would precede the messianic kingdom of the saints (Dan. vii. — xii.), as also expressions in later Jewish writings,* so analogous with our evangelical prediction, as to put it beyond question, that the description which it gives of the time of the Messiah’s advent is drawn from a circle of ideas which had long been current among the Jews.

Another question is, whether the principal feature in the picture before us, the destruction of the temple and the devastation of Jerusalem, as introductory to the coming of the Messiah, may also be shown to have made part of the popular conception in the time of Jesus. In Jewish writings we find the notion, that the birth of the Messiah would coincide with the destruction of the sanctuary :
^†
but this idea was obviously first formed after the fall of the temple, in order that a fountain of consolation might spring out of the lowest depth of misery. Josephus finds in Daniel, together with what relates to Antiochus, a prophecy of the annihilation of the Jewish state by the Romans :
^‡
but as this is not the primary object in any of the visions in Daniel, Josephus might first make this interpretation after the issue, in which case it would prove nothing as to the time of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is conceivable, that already in the time of Jesus, the Jews might attribute to the prophecies of Daniel a reference to events yet future, although these prophecies in fact related to a far earlier period; and they might do so on the same grounds as those on which the Christians of the present age still look forward to the full realization of Matt. xxiv. and xxv. As immediately after the fall of the kingdom made of iron mixed with clay, and of the horn that speaks blasphemies and makes war against the saints, the coming of the Son of man in the clouds, and the commencement of the everlasting kingdom of the saints, is prophesied, while this result had not by any means succeeded the defeat of Antiochus: there was an inducement still to look to the future, not only for the heavenly kingdom, but also, since they were made immediately to precede it, for the calamities caused by the kingdom