Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (857 page)

^*
Apol. i. 35.

^†
Adv. Marcion, ut sup.assuming the character of the ungodly: which they would surely have taken care to avoid. Only the Christian legend, if it once applied the Psalm to the sufferings of Jesus, and especially to his last hours, could attribute these words to the Jewish rulers, and find therein the fulfilment of a prophecy.

The two first Evangelists do not tell us that any one of the twelve was present at the crucifixion of Jesus: they mention merely several Galilean women, three of whom they particularize: namely, Mary Magdalene; Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses; and, as the third, according to Matthew, the mother of the sons of Zebedee, according to Mark, Salome, both which designations are commonly understood to relate to the same person (Matt. v.
55
f.; Mark v. 40 f.): according to these Evangelists the twelve appear not yet to have reassembled after their flight on the arrest of Jesus.
^*
In Luke, on the contrary, among
all his acquaintance,
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whom he represents as beholding the crucifixion (v. 49) the twelve would seem to be included: but the fourth gospel expressly singles out from among the disciples the one
whom Jesus loved,
i.e. John, as present, and among the women, together with Mary Magdalene and the wife of Cl eopas, names instead of the mother of James and John, and the mother of Jesus himself. Moreover, while according to all the other accounts the acquaintances of Jesus stood
afar off ,
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according to the fourth gospel John and the mother of Jesus must have been in the closest proximity to the cross, since it represents Jesus as addressing them from the cross, and appointing John to be his substitute in the filial relation to his mother (v. 25 ff.). Olshausen believes that he can remove the contradiction which exists between the synoptical statement and the presupposition of the fourth gospel as to the position of the friends of Jesus, by the conjecture that at first they did indeed stand at a distance, but that subsequently some approached near to the cross: it is to be observed, however, in opposition to this, that the synoptists mention that position of the adherents of Jesus just at the close of the scene of crucifixion and death, immediately before the taking down from the cross, and thus presuppose that they had retained this position until the end of the scene; a state of the case which cannot but be held entirely consistent with the alarm which filled the minds of the disciples during those days, and still more with feminine timidity. If the heroism of a nearer approach might perhaps be expected from maternal tenderness: still, the total silence of the synoptists, as the interpreters of the common evangelical tradition, renders the historical reality of that particular doubtful. The synoptists cannot have known anything of the presence of the mother of Jesus at the cross, otherwise they would have mentioned her as the chief person, before all the other women; nor does anything appear to have been known of a more intimate relation between her and John: at least in the Acts (i. 12 f.) the mother of Jesus is supposed to be with the twelve in general, his brothers, and the women of the society. It is at least not so easy to understand how the memory of that affecting presence and remarkable relation could be lost, as to conceive how the idea of them might originate in the circle from which the fourth gospel proceeded. If this circle be imagined as one in which the Apostle John enjoyed peculiar veneration, on which account our gospel drew him out of the trio of the more confidential associates of Jesus, and isolated him as the beloved disciple : it will appear that nothing could be more strikingly adapted to confirm this relation than the statement that Jesus bequeathed, as it were, the dearest legacy, his mother (in reference to whom, as well as to the alleged beloved disciple, it must have been a natural question, whether she had left the side of Jesus in this last trial), to John, and thus placed this disciple in his stead, — made him
vicarius Christi.

As the address of Jesus to his mother and the favourite disciple is peculiar to the fourth gospel: so, on the other hand, the exclamation,
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me
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;
is only found in the two first gospels (Matt. v. 46; Mark v. 34). This exclamation, with the mental state from which it proceeded, like the agony in Gethsemane, constitutes in the opinion of the church a part of the vicarious suffering of Christ. As however in this instance also it was impossible to be blind to the difficulties of the supposition, that the mere corporeal suffering, united with the external depression of his cause, overwhelmed Jesus to such a degree that he felt himself forsaken by God, while there have been both before and after him persons who, under sufferings equally severe, have yet preserved composure and fortitude: the opinion of the church has here also, in addition to the natural corporeal and spiritual affliction, supposed as the true cause of that state of mind in Jesus, a withdrawal of God from his soul, a consciousness of the divine wrath, which it was decreed that he should bear in the stead of mankind, by whom it was deserved as a punishment.
^†
How, presupposing the dogma of the church concerning the person of Christ, a withdrawal of God from his soul is conceivable, it is the part of the defenders of this opinion themselves, to decide. Was it the human nature in him which felt so forsaken? Then would its unity with the divine have been interrupted, and thus the very basis of the personality of Christ, according to the above system, removed. Or the divine? In that case the second person in the Godhead would have been separated from the first. As little can it have been the God-man, consisting of both natures, that felt forsaken by God, since the very essence of this is the unity and inseparableness of the divine and the human. Thus urged by the self-contradiction of this supranaturalistic explanation, to fall

^*
Justin, Apol. 1. 50, and elsewhere, even speaks of apostacy and denial on the part of all the disciples after the crucifixion.

^†
Vid. Calvin, Comm. in harm. evv. in Matth. xxvii. 46; Olshausen, in loc.back on the natural mode of accounting for the above exclamation by the sense of external suffering, and yet repelled from the idea that Jesus should have been so completely subdued by this, commentators have attempted to mollify the sense of the exclamation. It consists of the opening words of Ps. xxii., a passage which is classical for this last scene in the life of Jesus. Now this psalm begins with a complaining description of the deepest suffering, but in the course of its progress soars into joyful hope of deliverance; hence it has been supposed that the words which Jesus immediately utters do not give his entire experience, and that in thus reciting the first verse he at the same time quotes the whole psalm and especially its exulting close, just as if he meant to say: It is true that I, like the author of this psalm, appear now forsaken of God, but in me, as in him, the divine succour will only be so much the more glorified.
^*
But if Jesus uttered this exclamation with a view to the bystanders, and in order to assure them that his affliction would soon be merged in triumph, he would have chosen the means the least adapted to his purpose, if he had uttered precisely those words of the Psalm which express the deepest misery; and instead of the first verse he would rather have chosen one from the 10th to the 12th, or from the 20th to the end. If however in that exclamation he meant merely to give vent to his own feeling, he would not have chosen this verse if his actual experience in these moments had been, not what is there expressed, but what is described in the succeeding verses. Now if this experience was his own, and if, all supernatural grounds of explanation being dismissed, it proceeded from his external calamities; we must observe that one who, as the gospels narrate of Jesus, had long included suffering and death in his idea of the Messiah, and hence had regarded them as a part of the divine arrangements, could scarcely complain of them when they actually arrived as an abandonment by God; rather, on the above supposition, we should be led to think that Jesus had found himself deceived in the expectations which he had previously cherished, and thus believed himself forsaken by God in the prosecution of his plan.
^†
But we could only resort to snch conjectures if the above exclamation of Jesus were shown to have an historical foundation. In this respect the silence of Luke and John would not, it is true, be so serious a difficulty in our eyes, that we should take refuge in explanations like the following: John suppressed the exclamation, lest it should serve to countenance the Gnostic opinion, by admitting the inference that the Æon which was insusceptible of suffering, departed from Jesus in that moment.
^‡
But the relation of the words of Jesus to the 22nd Psalm does certainly render this particular suspicious. If the Messiah was once conceived of as suffering, and

^*
Thus Paulus, Gratz, in loc. Schleiermacher, Glaubenslebre, 2, s, 154, Anm.

^†
Such is the inference drawn by the author of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, von Zweck Jesu und seiner Jünger, s. 153.

‡ Schneckenburger, Beiträge, s. 66 f.

^§
According to Olshausen, s 495
,
there is no syllable in this speech by which such a meaning is intimated; on the contrary, a secret horror had already diffused itself over the minds of the scoffers, and they trembled at the thought that Elias might appear in the storm. But when one who attempts to give a beverage to Jesus is dissuaded under the pretext of waiting to see
if Elias would come to save film,
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this pretext is plainly enough shown to be meant in derision, and hence the horror and trembling belong only to the unscientific animus of the biblical commentator, which makes him contemplate the history of the passion above all else, as a
mysterium tremendum,
and causes him to discover even in Pilate a depth of feeling which is nowhere attributed to this Roman in the gospels.if that psalm was used as a sort of programme of his suffering — for which it was by no means necessary as an inducement that Jesus should have really quoted one of its verses on the cross : — the opening words of the psalm which are expressive of the deepest suffering must appear singularly adapted to be put into the mouth of the crucified Messiah. In this case the derisive speech
^§
of the bystanders,
he calleth for Elias,
etc., can have had no other origin than this — that the wish for a variety of taunts to complete this scene after the model of the psalm, was met by the similarity of sound between the
h
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in the exclamation lent to Jesus, and the name of Elias which was associated with the Messiah.*

Concerning the last words which the expiring Jesus was heard to utter, the Evangelists differ. According to Matthew and Mark, it was merely a
loud voice,
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with which he departed
(v. 50,
37); according to Luke it was the petition:
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,
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(v. 46); while according to John it was on the brief expression:
it is finished,
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that he bowed his head and expired (v. 30). Here it is possible to reconcile the two first Evangelists with one or other of the succeeding ones by the supposition, that what the former describe indefinitely as a loud cry, and what according to their representation might be taken for an inarticulate expression of anguish, the others, with more particularity, give in its precise verbal form. It is more difficult to reconcile the two last gospels. For whether we suppose that Jesus first commended his soul to God, and hereupon cried:
it is finished;
or vice versa; both collocations are alike opposed to the intention of the Evangelists, for the expression of Luke
,
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cannot be rendered, as Paulus would have it, by:
soon
after he had said this, he expired; and the very words of the exclamation in John define it as the last utterance of Jesus ; the two writers forming different conceptions of the closing words. In the account of Luke, the common form of expression for the death of Jesus:
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(he delivered up his spirit)
appears to have been interpreted as an actual commending of his soul to God on the part of Jesus, and to have been further developed with reference to the passage Ps. xxxi.
5: (Lord) into thy hands I commend my spirit,
(
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(LXX.), — a passage which from the strong resemblance of this Psalm to the 22nd would be apt to suggest itself.
^*
Whereas the author of the fourth gospel appears to have lent to Jesus an expression more immediately proceeding from his position in relation to his messianic office, making him express in the word
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is finished
the completion of his work, or the fulfilment of all the prophecies (with the exception, of course, of what could only be completed and fulfilled in the resurrection).