Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (844 page)

When Jesus made no answer to the allegations of the witnesses, he was asked, according to the two first Evangelists, by the high priest, — in the third gospel, without the above cause, by the Sanhedrim, — whether he actually maintained that he was the Messiah (the Son of God)? To this question, according to the two former, he

^*
Thus Schieiermacher, über den Lukas, s. 295.

^†
Schieiermacher, ut sup. ; comp. Fritzsche, in loc. Matth.

^‡
Vol. II. § 67. Vol. III. § 114.at once replies in the affirmative, in the words
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, thou hast said,
and
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, I am
, and adds that hereafter or immediately (
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) they would see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the divine power, and coming in the clouds of heaven; according to Luke, on the other hand, he first declares that his answer will be of no avail, and then adds that hereafter the Son of man shall sit on the right hand of the power of God; whereupon all eagerly ask: Art thou then the Son of God? and he replies in the affirmative. Thus Jesus here expresses the expectation that by his death he will at once enter into the glory of sitting as Messiah at the right hand of God, according to Ps. cx. 1, which he had already, Matt. xxii. 44, interpreted of the Messiah. For even if he at first perhaps thought of attaining his messianic glorification without the intervention of death, because this intervention was not presented to him by the ideas of the age; if it was only at a later period, and as a result of circumstances, that the foreboding of such a necessity began to arise and gradually to acquire distinctness in his mind; now, a prisoner, forsaken by his adherents, in the presence of the rancorously hostile Sanhedrim, it must, if he would retain the conviction of his messiahship, become a certainty to him, that he could enter into his messianic glorification by death alone. When, according to the two first Evangelists, Jesus adds to the
sitting on the right hand of power,
the
coming in the clouds of heaven,
he pródicts, as on an earlier occasion, his speedy advent, and in this instance he decidedly predicts it as a return. Olshausen maintains that the
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of Matthew ought to be referred only to
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, because it would not suit
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, since it is not to be conceived that Jesus could then have represented himself as about to come in the clouds: a purely dogmatical difficulty, which does not exist in our point of view, but which cannot in any point of view warrant such an offence against grammatical interpretation as this of Olshausen. On the above declaration of Jesus, according to Matthew and Mark the high priest rends his clothes, declaring Jesus convicted of blasphemy, and the council pronounces him guilty of death; and in Luke also, all those assembled observe that now there is no need of any further witness, since the criminal declaration has been uttered by Jesus in their own hearing.*

To the sentence is then added in the two first Evangelists the maltreatment of Jesus, which John, who here mentions no sentence, represents as following the appeal of Jesus to the publicity of his work, while Luke places it before the trial; more probably because it was not any longer precisely known when this maltreatment occurred, than because it was repeated at various times and under various circumstances. In John the maltreatment is said to proceed from an
attendant,
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,
in Luke, from
the men that held Jesus,
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.; in Mark, on the contrary, those who began to spit in the face of Jesus (
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must have been some of those (
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) who had just before condemned him, since he distinguishes the
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, servants,
from them; and in Matthew also, who, without introducing a new nominative proceeds merely with
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, then began they,
it is plainly the members of the Sanhedrim themselves who descend to such unworthy conduct: which Schleiermacher justly considers improbable, and in so far prefers the representation of Luke to that of Matthew.* In John the maltreatment consists in a
blow on the cheek with the palm of the hand,
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,
which an attendant gives Jesus on account of a supposed insolent answer to the high priest; in Matthew and Mark, in spitting on the face (
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,
and blows on the head and cheek, to which it is added, in Luke also, that he was blindfolded, then struck on the face, and scoffingly asked to attest his messianic second sight by telling who was the giver of the blow.† According to Olshausen, the spirit of prophecy did not scorn to predict these rudenesses in detail, and at the same time to describe the state of mind which the Holy One of God opposed to the unholy multitude. He correctly adduces in relation to this scene Isa. 1. 6 f.; (LXX.):
I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting,
etc.,
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. (comp. Mic. iv. 14); and for the manner in which Jesus bore all this, the well-known passage Isa. liii. 7, where the servant of God is represented as enduring maltreatment in silence. But the interpretation of these passages in Isaiah as prophecies concerning the Messiah is equally opposed to the context in both instances : ‡ consequently the agreement of the result with these passages must either have been the effect of human design, or purely accidental. Now it is certain that the servants and soldiers in their maltreatment had not the intention of causing prophecies to be fulfilled in Jesus; and it will hardly be chosen to suppose that Jesus affected silence with this view; while to deduce from mere chance a coincidence which certainly, as Olshausen says, extends to minutiæ, is always unsatisfactory. Probable as it is from the rude manners of that age, that Jesus was maltreated when a prisoner, and moreover that amongst other things he received just such insults as are described by the Evangelists: it is yet scarcely to be denied, that their descriptions are modelled on prophecies which, when once Jesus appeared as a sufferer and maltreated person, were applied to him; and however consistent it may be with the character of Jesus that he should have borne this maltreatment patiently, and repelled improper questions by a dignified silence: the Evangelists would scarcely have noticed this so often and so solicitously,
^§
if it had not been their intention thus to exhibit the fulfilment of Old Testament oracles.