Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (824 page)

^*
Vid. Tholuck, in loc.

^†
Comp. Tholuck, ut sup.

^‡
Thus Lücke, and also Tholuck, in loc.;
Schott, p. 409.of Jesus to be sufficiently known from the synoptical gospels, or from oral tradition, is the more inadequate here in proportion as all which bears a prophetic character, especially when relating to events at once so much longed for and dreaded, is exposed to misinterpretation; as we may see from the rectification just noticed, which the author of John xxi. found it necessary to apply to the opinion of his contemporaries concerning the promise given by Jesus to John. Thus, in the present case, an explanatory word would have been highly seasonable and useful, especially as the representation of the first gospel, which made the end of all things follow immediately on the destruction of Jerusalem, must be the more an occasion of doubt and offence the nearer the latter event came, and in a still greater degree when it was past. And who was more capable of affording such enlightenment than the favourite disciple, particularly if, according to Mark xiii. 3, he was the only Evangelist who had been present at the discourse of Jesus on this subject? Hence, here again, a special reason for his silence is sought in the alleged destination of his gospel for non-judaical, idealizing Gnostics, whose point of view those descriptions would not have suited, and were therefore omitted.* But precisely in relation to such readers, it would have been a culpable compliance, a confirmation in their idealizing tendency, had John, out of deference to them, suppressed the real side of the return of Christ. The apostle must rather have withstood the propensity of these people to evaporate the external, historical part of Christianity, by giving due prominence to it; as, in his epistle, in opposition to their Docetism. he lays stress on the corporeality of Jesus: so, in opposition to their idealism, he must have been especially assiduous to exhibit in the return of Christ the external facts by which it would be signalized. Instead of this, he himself speaks nearly like a Gnostic, and constantly aims, in relation to the return of Christ, to resolve the external and the future into the internal and the present. Hence there is not so much exaggeration, as Olshausen supposes, in the opinion of Fleck, that the representation of the doctrine of Jesus concerning his return in the synoptical gospels, and that given in the fourth, exclude each other
^†
for if the author of the fourth gospel be an apostle, the discourses on the second advent which the three first Evangelists attribute to Jesus, cannot have been so delivered by him, and vice versa. We, however, as we have said, cannot avail ourselves of this argument, having long renounced the pre-supposition that the fourth gospel had an apostolic origin. But, on our point of view, we can fully explain the relation which the representation of the fourth gospel bears to that of the synoptists. In Palestine, where the tradition recorded by the three first gospels was formed, the doctrine of a solemn advent of the Messiah which was there prevalent, and which Jesus embraced, was received in its whole breadth into the Christian belief: whereas in the Hellenistic-theosophic circle in which the fourth

^*
Olshausen, i, s. 870.

^†
Fleck, de regno divino, p. 483.gospel arose, this idea was divested of its material envelopment, and the return of Christ became the ambiguous medium between a real and an ideal, a present and a future event, which it appears in the fourth gospel.

PART III

CHAPTER II.

MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS; TREACHERY OF JUDAS;

LAST SUPPER WITH HIS DISCIPLES.

§ 117. DEVELOPMENT OF THE RELATION OF JESUS TO HIS ENEMIES.

In the three first gospels the principal enemies of Jesus are the Pharisees and scribes,
^*
who saw in him the most ruinous opponent of their institutions; together with the chief priests and elders, who, as the heads of the external temple-worship and the hierarchy founded upon it, could have no friendly feeling towards one who on every opportunity represented as the main point, the internal service of God with the devotion of the mind. Elsewhere we find among the enemies of Jesus the Sadducees (Matt. xvi. 1, xxii. 23 ff
.
parall., comp. Matt. xvi. 6 ff. parall.), to whose materialism much in his opinions must have been repugnant; and the Herodian party (Mark iii. 6; Matt. xxii. 16 parall.) who, having been unfavourable to the Baptist, were naturally so to his successor. The fourth gospel, though it sometimes mentions the chief priests and Pharisees, the most frequently designates the enemies of Jesus by the general expression:
o
i
I
o
u
d
a
i
o
i
the Jews;
an expression which proceeds from a later, Christian point of view.

The four Evangelists unanimously relate, that the more defined machinations of the Pharisaic-hierarchical party against Jesus, took their rise from an offence committed by the latter against the prevalent rules concerning the observation of the sabbath. When Jesus had cured the man with the withered hand, it is said in Matthew:
the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him
(xii. 14, comp. Mark iii. 6; Luke vi. 11); and in like manner John observes, on the occasion of the Sabbath cure at the pool of Bethesda:
therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus,
and after mentioning a declaration of Jesus, proceeds thus:
therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him
(v. 16, 18).

^*
Winer’s bibl. Realwörterb.But immediately after this commencing point, the synoptical account of the relation in question diverges from that of John. In the synoptists, the next offence is given by the neglect of washing before meals on the part of Jesus and his disciples, with the sharp invectives which, when called to account on the subject, he launched forth against the spirit of petty observance, and the hypocrisy and spirit of persecution with which it was united in the Pharisees and lawyers; after all which it is said, that the latter conceived a deep animosity against him, and tried to sift him and entrap him by dangerous questions, in order to obtain grounds of accusation against him (Luke xi. 37 — 54, comp. Matt. xv. i ff.; Mark vii. i ff.). On his last journey to Jerusalem, the Pharisees gave Jesus a warning against Herod (Luke xiii. 3 which apparently had no other object than to induce him to leave the country. The next important cause of offence to the hierarchical party, was the striking homage paid to Jesus by the people on his entrance into Jerusalem, and the purification of the temple which he immediately undertook: but they were still withheld from any violent measures towards him by the strength of his interest with the people (Matt. xxi. 15 ff.; Mark ix. i8; Luke xix. 39, 47 f.), which was the sole reason why they did not possess themselves of his person, after the severe manner in which he had characterized them, in the parable of the husbandmen of the vineyard (Matt. xxi. 45 f. parall.). After these events, it scarcely needed the anti-Pharisaic discourse Matt. xxiii. to make the chief priests, the scribes and elders,
i.e.
the Sanhedrim, assemble in the palace of the high priest, shortly before the passover, for a consultation,
that they might take Jesus by subtlety and kill him
(Matt. xxvi. 3 ff. parall.).

In the fourth gospel, also, the great number of the adherents of Jesus among the people is sometimes, it is true, described as the reason why
his enemies desired to seize him (vii.
32,
44, comp. iv. 1 ff.
),
and his solemn entrance into Jerusalem embitters them here also (xii. 19) ; sometimes their murderous designs are mentioned without any motive being stated (vii. 1, 19, 25, viii. 40): but the main cause of offence in this gospel, lies in the declarations of Jesus concerning his exalted dignity Even on the occasion of the cure of the lame man on the Sabbath, what chiefly irritated the Jews was that Jesus justified it by appealing to the uninterrupted agency of God as his Father, which in their opinion was a blasphemous
making of himself equal with God,
i
s
o
n
e
a
u
t
o
n
p
o
i
e
i
n
t
w
q
e
w
(v.
18); when he spoke of his divine mission, they sought to lay hold on him (vii. 30, comp. viii 20
)
on his asserting that he was before Abraham, they took up stones to cast at him (viii.
59);
they did the same when he declared that he and the Father were one (x. 31), and when he asserted that the Father was in him and he in the Father, they again attempted to seize him (x. 39). But that which, according to the fourth gospel, turns the scale, and causes the hostile party to take a formal resolution against Jesus, is the resuscitation of Lazarus. When this act was reported to the Pharisees, they and the chief priests convened a council of the Sanhedrim, in which the subject of deliberation was, that if Jesus continued to perform so many
signs,
s
h
m
e
i
a
, all would at length adhere to him, and then the Roman power would be exerted to the destruction of the Jewish nation; whereupon the high priest Caiaphas pronounced the momentous decision, that it was better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish. His death was now determined upon, and it was enjoined on every one to point out his abode, that he might be arrested (xi. 46 ff.).

With regard to this difference modern criticism observes, that we should not at all comprehend the tragical turn of the fate of Jesus from the synoptical accounts, and that John alone opens to us a glance into the manner in which, step by step, the breach between the hierarchical party and Jesus was widened; in short, that in this point also the representation of the fourth gospel shows itself a pragmatical one, which that of the other gospels is not.
^*
But what it is in which the Gospel of John exhibits superiority in gradation and progress, it is difficult to see, since the very first definite statement concerning the incipient enmity (v. 18) contains the extreme of the offence
(
i
s
o
n
e
a
u
t
o
n
p
o
i
e
i
n
t
w
q
e
w
, making himself equal with God
)
and the extreme of the enmity (
e
z
h
t
o
u
n
a
u
t
o
n
a
p
o
k
t
e
i
n
a
i
,
they sought to kill him:);
so that all which is narrated further concerning the hostility of the Jews is mere repetition, and the only fact which presents itself as a step towards more decided measures is the resolution of the Sanhedrim, chap. xi. This species of gradation, however, is not wanting in the synoptical account also: here we have the transition from the indefinite
laying wait
for Jesus, and the
communing what might be done to him
(Luke xi. 54, vi. ii), or as it is more precisely given in Matthew (xii. 14), and in Mark (iii. 6), the
taking counsel how
they
might destroy him,
to the definite resolve as to the manner (
d
o
l
w
)
and the time (
m
h
e
n
t
h
e
o
r
t
h
Matt. xxvi. 4 f. parall.). — But it is especially made a reproach to three first Evangelists, that in passing over the resurrection of Lazarus, they have omitted that incident which gave the final impulse to the fate of Jesus.† If we, on the contrary, in virtue of the above result of our criticism of this miraculous narrative, must rather praise the synoptists, that they do not represent as the turning point in the fate of Jesus, an incident which never really happened : so the fourth Evangelist, by the manner in which he relates the murderous resolve to which it was the immediate inducement, by no means manifests himself as one whose authority can be held by us a sufficient warrant for the truth of his narrative. The circumstance that he ascribes to the high priest the gift of prophecy (without doubt in accordance with a superstitious idea of his age‡ ), and regards his

^*
Schneckenburger, über den Urspr., s. 9 f. Lücke, I, s. 133, 159, 2, s. 402.

^†
Comp. besides the critics above cited, Hug, Enleit. in das N. T.
2,
s. 215.

^‡
For the most correct views on this point see Lücke, 2, s. 407 ff.speech as a prediction of the death of Jesus, would certainly not by itself prove that he could not have been an apostle and eye-witness.* But it has with justice been held a difliculty, that our Evangelist designates Caiaphas as the
high priest of that year,
a
r
c
i
e
r
e
u
V
t
o
u
e
n
i
a
u
t
o
u
e
k
e
i
n
o
u
(xi. 49), and thus appears to suppose that this dignity, like many Roman magistracies, was an annual one; whereas it was originally held for life, and even in that period of Roman ascendancy, was not a regular annual office, but was transferred as often as it pleased the arbitrariness of the Romans. To conclude on the authority of the fourth gospel, in opposition to the general custom, and notwithstanding the silence of Josephus, that Annas and Caiaphas, by a private agreement, held the office for a year by turns,† is an expedient to which those may resort whom it pleases; to take
e
n
i
a
u
t
o
u
indefinitely for
c
r
o
n
o
u
,‡ is, from the twofold repetition of the same expression, v.
51 and xviii. 13, inadmissible; that at that period the high priesthood was frequently transferred from one to another, and some high priests were not allowed to remain in their office longer than a year,§ did not justify our author in designating Caiaphas as the high priest of a particular year, when in fact he filled that post for a series of years, and certainly throughout the duration of the public agency of Jesus; lastly, that John intended to say that Caiaphas was high priest in the year in which Jesus died, without thereby excluding earlier and later years, in which lie also held the office,|| is an equally untenable position. For if the time in which an incident occurs is described as a certain year, this mode of expression must imply, that either the incident the date of which is to be determined, or the fact by which that date is to be determined, is connected with the term of a year. Thus either the author of the fourth gospel must have been of the opinion, that from the death of Jesus, to which this decision of Caiaphas was the initiative step, a plenitude of spiritual gifts, including the gift of prophecy to the high priest of that period, was dispensed throughout that particular year,
^¶
and no longer; or, if this be a far-fetched explanation, he must have imagined that Caiaphas was high priest for the term of that year only. Lücke concludes that as, according to Josephus, the high priest of that period held his office for ten years successively, therefore John cannot have meant, by the expression
a
r
c
i
e
r
e
u
V
t
o
u
e
n
i
a
u
t
o
u
e
k
e
i
n
o
u
,
that the office of high priest was an annual one; whereas the author of the Probabilia, on the ground that the evidence of this meaning in the words of the gospel, is far more certain than that John is its author, reverses this proposition, and concludes, that as the fourth gospel here presents an idea concerning the duration of the office of high priest which could not be entertained in Palestine, therefore its author cannot have been a native of Palestine.*