Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (823 page)

^*
Vid. Schöttgen, 2, s. 509 ff.
; Bertholdt, § 13; Schmidt, Biblioth. I, s. 24 ff.

^†
Vid. Schöttgen, 2, s. 525 f.

^‡
Antiq. X. xi. 7. After having interpreted the little horn of Antiochus, he briefly adds:
In the very same manner Daniel also wrote concerning the government of the Romans, and that our country should be made desolate by
them.
He doubtless supposed that the fourth, iron monarchy, Dan. ii. 40, represented the Romans, since, besides attributing it to a dominion over all the earth, he explains its destruction by the stone as somehing still future, Ant. X. x. 4 :
Daniel did also declare the meaning of the stone to theKing but 1 donot think proper to relate it, since I have only undertaken to describe things past or things present, out not things that are future.
Now Daniel ii. 44 interprets the stone to mean the heavenly kingdom, which would destroy the iron one, but would itself endure for ever, — a messianic particular, on which Josephus does not choose to dilate. But that, correctly interpreted, the iron legs of the image signify the Macedonian empire, and the feet of iron mixed with clay, the Syrian empire which sprang out of the Macedonian, see De Wette, Einleit. in das N. T., §
254of iron and clay; among which calamities, by analogy with what was predicted of the horn, the desecration of the temple was conspicuous. But while the prophecy in Daniel includes only the desecration of the temple and the interruption of the worship, together with (the partial
^*
) destruction of the city: in the discourse before us complete destruction is predicted to the temple — and likewise to the city, not merely in Luke, where the expressions are very marked, but undoubtedly in the two other Evangelists also, as appears to be indicated by the exhortation to hasty flight from the city ; — which prediction of total destruction, as it is not contained in the type, can apparently have been gathered only from the result. But in the first place, the description in Daniel with the expressions [
Heb. letters
]
shamem
and [
Heb. letters
]
hishkhiyth
(ix. 26
f., xii. 11), which the LXX. translates by
e
r
h
m
w
s
i
V
, desolation,
and
d
i
a
f
q
e
i
r
w
,
I destroy,
may easily be also understood of a total destruction; and secondly, if once, in connexion with the sins of the nation, the temple and city had been destroyed and the people carried away captive, every enthusiastic Israelite, to whom the religious and moral condition of his fellow-countrymen appeared corrupt and irremediable, might thenceforth expect and predict a repetition of that former judgment. According to this, even those particulars in which, as we have seen in the foregoing section, Luke surpasses his fellow-narrators in definiteness, are not of a kind to oblige us to suppose, either a supernatural foreknowledge, or a
vaticinium post eventum:
on the contrary, all may be explained by a close consideration of what is narrated concerning the first destruction of Jerusalem in 2 Kings xxv.; 2 Chron. xxxvi.; and Jer. XXXIX. 52
.

There is only one point which Jesus, as the author of this discourse, could not have gathered from any types, but must have drawn entirely from himself: namely, the declaration that the catastrophe which he described would arrive within the present generation. This prediction we must hesitate to derive from a supernatural knowledge, for the reason, already noticed, that it is only half fulfilled : while the other side of the fact, the striking fulfilment of at least the one half of the prophecy, might incline us to distrust the supposition of a merely natural calculation, and to regard this determination of time as a feature introduced into the discourse of Jesus after the issue. Meanwhile, it is clear from the passages cited at the conclusion of the last section, that the apostles themselves expected the return of Christ to take place within their lifetime; and it is not improbable that Jesus also believed that this event, together with the ruin of the city and temple, which according to Daniel was to precede it, was very near at hand. The more general part of the expectation, namely, the appearing at some future time in the clouds of heaven, to awake the dead, to sit in judgment, and to found an everlasting kingdom, would necessarily, from a consideration of Daniel, where such a coming is ascribed to the Son of man, be contemplated by Jesus as a part of his own destiny, so soon as he held

^*
Vid. Joseph., Antiq. xii. v.himself to be the Messiah; while, with regard to the time, it was natural that he should not conceive a very long interval as destined to elapse between his first messianic coming in humiliation, and his second, in glory.

One objection to the genuineness of the synoptical discourses on the second advent, is yet in reserve; it has, however, less weight in our point of view than in that of the prevalent criticism of the gospels. This objection is derived from the absence of any detailed description of the second advent of Jesus in the Gospel of John.
^*
It is true that the fundamental elements of the doctrine of Christ’s return are plainly discoverable in the fourth gospel also.† Jesus therein ascribes to himself the offices of the future judgment, and the awaking of the dead (John v. 22 — 30); which last is not indeed numbered among the concomitants of the advent of Christ in the synoptical gospels, but not seldom appears in that connexion elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g. I
Cor. xv. 23; I Thess. iv. 16). When Jesus, in the fourth gospel, sometimes denies that he is come into the world for judgment (iii. 27, viii. 15, xii. 47), this refers only to his first presence on earth, and is limited by opposite declarations, in which he asserts that he is come into the world for judgment (ix. 39, comp. viii. i6), to the sense that the object of his mission is not to condemn but to save, and that his judgment is not individual or partial; that it consists, not in an authoritative sentence proceeding subjectively from himself, but in an objective act proceeding from the intrinsic tendency of things, a doctrine which is significantly expressed in the declaration, that him who hears his word without believing
he
judges not, but
the word, which he has spoken, shall judge him in the last day
(
o
l
o
g
o
V
o
n
e
l
a
l
h
s
a
,
k
r
i
n
e
i
a
u
t
o
n
e
n
t
h
e
s
c
a
t
h
h
m
e
r
a
,
xii
48). Further, when the Jesus of John’s gospel says of the believer:
o
u
k
r
i
n
e
t
a
i
, he is not judged,
e
i
V
k
r
i
s
i
n
o
u
k
e
r
c
e
t
a
i
,
he shall not come into judgment
(iii. i8, v. 24), this is to be understood of a judgment with a condemnatory issue; when on the contrary, it is said of the unbeliever:
h
d
h
k
e
k
r
i
t
a
i
, he is judged already
(iii. i8), this only means that the assigning of the merited lot to each is not reserved until the future judgment at the end of all things, since each one iii his inward disposition bears within himself the fate which is his due. This does not exclude a future solemn act of judgment, wherein that which has at present only a latent existence will be made matter of awful revelation; for in the very passage last quoted we find the consignment to condemnation, and elsewhere the awarding of future blessedness (v. 28 f., vi. 39 f., 54) associated with the last day and the resurrection.

In like manner, Jesus says in Luke also, in the same connexion in which he describes his return as a still future, external catastrophe, xvii. 20 f.
The kingdom of God cometh not with observation;

^*
VicI. Hase. L. J., § 130.

^†
The passages bearing on this subject are collected and explained in Schott,
~Commentarius,
etc., p. 364 ff. Comp. Lücke, in loc. and Weizel, urchristl. Unsterblichkeitslehre, in the Theol. Studien, 1836, s. 626 ff.
neither shall they say, lo here! or, lo
there! for behold the kingdom of God is within you.
A certain interpretation of the words uttered by the Jesus of John’s gospel, supposes him even to intimate that his return was not far distant. The expressions already mentioned in the farewell discourses, in which Jesus promises his disciples not to leave them comfortless, but, after having gone to the Father, shortly (xvi. i6) to come again to them (xiv. 3, 18), are not seldom understood of the return of Christ at the last day;
^*
but when we
hear Jesus say of this same return, that he will therein reveal himself only to his disciples, and not to the world (xiv. 19, comp. 22),
it is impossible to think of it as the return to judgment, in which Jesus conceived that he should reveal himself to good and bad without distinction. There is a particularly enigmatical allusion to the coming of Christ in the appendix to the fourth gospel, chap. xxi. On the question of Peter as to what will become of the apostle John, Jesus here replies, if
I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?
(v. 22) whence, as it is added, the Christians inferred that John would not die, since they supposed the
coming
(
e
r
c
e
s
q
a
i
)
here spoken of; to be the final return of Christ, in which those who witnessed it were to be changed, without tasting death (i Cor. xv. 51). But, adds the author correctively, Jesus did not say, the disciple would not die, but only, if he willed that he should tarry till he came, what was that to Peter? Hereby the Evangelist may have intended to rectify the inference in two ways. Either it appeared to him erroneous to identify the remaining until Jesus came, with not dying, i.e. to take the coming of which Jesus here spoke for the last, which would put an end to death; and in that case he must have understood by it an invisible coming of Christ, possibly in the destruction of Jerusalem
^†
or, he held it erroneous that what Jesus had only said hypothetically — even if he willed the given case, that was no concern of Peter’s — should be understood categorically, as if such had really been the will of Jesus; in which case the
e
r
c
o
m
a
i
would retain its customary sense.
^‡

If, according to this, all the main features of the doctrine of the second advent are put into the mouth of Jesus in the fourth gospel also, still we nowhere find anything of the detailed, graphic description of the external event, which we read in the synoptical gospels. This relation between the two representations, creates no slight difficulty on the ordinary view of the origin of the gospels, and especially that of the fourth. If Jesus really spoke of his return so fully and solemnly as the synoptists represent him to have done, and treated of the right knowledge and observation of the signs as something of the highest importance ; it is inconceivable that the author of the fourth gospel could pass over all this, if he were an immediate disciple of Jesus. The usual mode of accounting for such an omission, by the supposition that he believed this part of the teaching