The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity

IV.
THE MESSIAH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The earliest writings of the New Testament, the genuine letters of Paul, written not far from the year 60, thirty years more or less after the received date of the crucifixion of Jesus, take up and continue the line of Jewish tradition. No traces exist of literature produced between the opening of the century and the epistolary activity of the apostle of the Gentiles. The times were unfavorable to the production and the preservation of literary work. The earliest gospels, even granting their genuineness and authenticity, cannot be assigned to so early a period, cannot be crowded back beyond the year 70, and must probably be placed later by ten, fifteen, twenty years. They bear evidently on their pages the impress of ideas which Paul made current. Their authors, when not disciples of his school, respected it and had regard to its claim. The gospel of Luke betrays, in its whole structure the shaping hand of a Pauline adherent. Its catholicity, its anti-Judaic spirit, its frequent and approving mention of Samaritans, its doctrine of demons and powers of the infernal world, its constant recognition in precept and parable of the claims of the heathen on the salvation of the Christ, are a few of the plain marks of a genius foreign to that of Palestine. The gospel of Mark is similarly though not so eminently or so minutely characterized. Even the gospel of Matthew contains deposits from this formation. The language of one verse in the eleventh chapter, – "All things are delivered unto me of My Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him," confesses in every word, its Pauline origin. The passage lies like a boulder on a common.

Though concerned with a period anterior to the apostle's conversion, with events whereof he had no knowledge, and with a life from which he professed to derive only his impulse, the gospels are written, not in the style of chronicles or memoirs, but in the style of disquisitions rather. Far from being the artless, guileless, unstudied compositions they have passed for, they are imbued with an atmosphere of reflection, are ingeniously elaborate and, in parts painfully studied. They are meditated biographies, in which the biographical material is selected and qualified by speculative motives. Nevertheless, these are the only fragments presumably of historical character that we possess. The period that Paul's ministry supposes must be searched for in these after-minded books. Hence arise grave literary difficulties. Several points must be borne in mind; the absence of any contemporaneous account of the ministry of Jesus; the utter dearth of early memoranda; the advanced age of the evangelists at the time they wrote, even on the common reckoning, and the effect of age in weakening recollection, suggesting fancies, raising queries, inflaming imaginations, making the mind receptive of theories and marvels; the influence on the disciples and on the intellectual world of a man so powerful as Paul, and the altered speculative climate of the later apostolic age. The literary laws forbid under these circumstances our reading the gospel narratives as authentic histories – constrain us in fact to read them, in some sort, as disquisitions, making allowance as we go along, for the infusion of doctrinal elements.

The actual Jesus is, thus understood, inaccessible to scientific research. His image cannot be recovered. He left no memorial in writing of himself; his followers were illiterate; the mind of his age was confused. Paul received only traditions of him, how definite we have no means of knowing, apparently not significant enough to be treasured, nor consistent enough to oppose a barrier to his own speculations. The character of Jesus is a fair subject for discussion and conjecture; but at this stage in a literary study such discussion and conjecture would be out of place. We have at present simply to inquire into the character of the Messianic hope as it was illustrated in the ante-Pauline period. This task is less difficult, and may be accomplished without detriment to moral or spiritual qualities which Jesus may have possessed.

The earliest phase of the Messianic hope in the New Testament must have corresponded with prevalent expectations of Israel in the early period of our first century. What that was has been described. The "Son of Man" of Matthew, Mark and Luke, their Pauline elements being eliminated, meets the requirements in every respect, and in no particular transcends them. He is a radical Pharisee who has at heart the enfranchisement of his people. He is represented as being a native of Galilee, the insurgent district of the country; nurtured, if not born in Nazareth, one of its chief cities; reared as a youth amid traditions of patriotic devotion, and amid scenes associated with heroic dreams and endeavors. The Galileans were restless, excitable people, beyond the reach of conventionalities, remote from the centre of power ecclesiastical and secular, simple in their lives, bold of speech, independent in thought, thorough-going in the sort of radicalism that is common among people who live "out of the world," who have leisure to discuss the exciting topics of the day, but too little knowledge, culture, or sense of social responsibility to discuss them soundly. Their mental discontent and moral intractability were proverbial. They were belligerents. The Romans had more trouble with them than with the natives of any other province. The Messiahs all started out from Galilee, and never failed to collect followers round their standard. The Galileans more than others, lived in the anticipation of the Deliverer. The reference of the Messiah to Galilee is therefore already an indication of the character he is to assume.

Another indication, equally pointed, is the brief association with Bethlehem, the city of David, and the pains taken to connect the Messiah with the royal line. The early traditions go out of their way to prove this. A labored genealogy is invented to show the path of his descent. Prophecy and song are called in to ratify his lineage. Inspired lips repeat ancient psalms announcing the glory that is to come to the House of David. An angel promises Mary that her son shall have given unto him "the throne of his father, David, and shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever." The Messiah is called the "Son of David;" an appellation that carried the idea of temporal dominion and no other. The legends respecting the massacre of the children in Bethlehem and the flight into Egypt, belong to the same circle of prediction.

Another indication to the same purpose is the patient effort to represent the Messiah as fulfilling Old Testament anticipations. "That the scripture might be fulfilled" is the reiterated explanation of his ordinary actions. The earliest records miss no occasion for declaring the Messiah's fidelity to the law of Moses. Among the first words put into his mouth is the earnest protestation: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to establish;" and this statement is followed by a detailed contrast between the literal and the spiritual interpretation of the law, precisely in the vein of the prophets who held themselves to be the true friends of the code which the priests and formalists perverted. There is nothing in this criticism disrespectful to the commandments, or beyond the mark of orthodox scripture.

The visit to the Baptist, who, entertaining the popular notion of the Messiah, and believing in his speedy advent, welcomed Jesus to the vacant position; Jesus' response to the call, and acceptance of the role, are in the same vein. Let it not be forgotten that the later misgivings of the Baptist were raised by the apparent failure of the Messiah to justify expectation; that John, from his prison, sends a sharp message, and that the Messiah, instead of correcting the precursor's crude idea, simply bids him be patient and construe the signs in faith.

The story of the Temptation in the Wilderness, closely patterned after incidents in the career of Moses, is calculated to join the two closely by similarity of experience. That the Messiah should be tempted is quite within the circle of later Jewish conceptions, as the literature of the Talmud proves.

The story of the Transfiguration derives its point from the circumstance that the spirits with whom the chosen one held communion were Moses and Elias, the law-giver and the prophet of the old dispensation.

The phrase "Kingdom of Heaven," so frequent on the Messiah's lips, had but one meaning, which was universally understood. It described a temporal rule, the reign of a prince of David's line. No class of people accepted the phrase in any different sense. The Christ nowhere corrects the vulgar opinion, or places his own in opposition to it. The evangelist intends to convey the idea that he is in full accord with the general feeling.

The questions put to the Messiah and the answers given to them are additional evidence of this assent; the question, for example, concerning the obligation to pay tribute to the Roman government, a test question touching the very heart of Jewish patriotism, and the cautious reply, calculated to evade the peril of a categorical declaration which was felt to be called for, and to be due. The rejoinder of the Christ is designed to satisfy the popular expectation without raising popular uproar. It is the answer of a patriot, but not of a zealot. Had the Messiah not corresponded to the image in the Jewish imagination, the inquiry might have been summarily dismissed. Its evasion proves not that the Christ transcended the average expectation, but that he shared it. The version of the incident given in Matthew XVII, confirms this judgment; for according to that account the Messiah privately admits the exemption from tribute, and then provides miraculously for its payment, "lest we should give offence."

The nature of the excitement caused by the Messiah is another evidence of the spirit in which he wrought. Everywhere he is greeted as the Messiah, the son of David; everywhere the multitudes flock to him, as to the expected king. His intimate friends are never disabused of the notion that they, if they continue firm in their allegiance, will hold places of honor at his right hand. He reminds them of the stringency of the conditions, but does not condemn the idea. An ambitious mother presents her two sons as candidates for preferment, asking for them seats at his right and left hand, on his coming to glory. He rebukes the selfishness of the ambition, says that seats of honor are for those that earn them, not for those that desire them, adding that he has no authority to assign places even to the worthiest; but he does not discountenance the notion that he shall sit in glory, that there will be places of honor on either side of him, or that the faithful servants will occupy them. Indeed, his reply confirms that anticipation.

The multitude, impressed by his claim, desire to make him a king. He removes himself; not because he repudiates all right to the office, he nowhere hints that, and in places he more than hints the contrary, – but because he is not prepared to avow his pretension. The time is not ripe for a manifesto.

The writers about this period take especial pains to limit the conception of the Messiah within the boundaries of the average patriotic ideal. They make him declare to the twelve disciples, as he sends them forth, that before they shall have carried their message to the cities of Israel the Son of Man would announce himself. On a later occasion he is made to say: "There are some here who will not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his glory." Declarations like these are pointedly inconsistent with an intellectual or moral idea of the kingdom. The notion of progress, instruction, regenerating influence, gradual elevation through the power of character, is precluded. The kingdom is to come in time, suddenly, unexpectedly, by a shock of supernatural agency, at the instant the Lord wills; the Son of Man himself knows not when, for it is not dependent on his activity as a reformer, his success as a teacher, or his influence as a person, but on the decree of Jehovah.

The attempt on the popular feeling in Jerusalem, strangely called the triumphal entrance of the Messiah into the holy city, is unintelligible except as a political demonstration; whether projected by the Christ or by his followers, or by the Christ urged by the importunate expectations of his followers, whether undertaken hopefully or in desperation, it nowhere appears that it was made in any moral or spiritual interest. All the incidents of the narrative point to a political end, the public assertion of the Christ's Messianic claim. The ass, used instead of the chariot or the horse by royalty on state occasions, and especially alluded to by the prophet Zechariah in connexion with the coming of Zion's King; the palm branches and hosannahs, emblems of sacred majesty; the cries of the attendant throng loudly proclaiming the Messiah; the Galileaan composition of the crowd, marking the revolutionary temper of it; the blank reception of the pageant by the citizens who were too wary to commit themselves to the chances of collision with the Roman authorities; the complete failure of the demonstration in the heart of conservative Judæa; the bearing of the Christ himself as of one conscious of a sublime but perilous mission; all these things find ready explanation by the popular conception of the Messiah, as a national deliverer, but are unintelligible on any other theory.

The unspiritual character of the Messiah's attitude is made yet more apparent as the history draws to a close. The violent purging of the temple can only by great vigor of interpretation be made to bear any save a national complexion. It was the assertion of Jehovah's right to his own domain; an indignant, passionate assertion; the declaration of a zealot whose zeal overrode considerations of wisdom.

The Christ's bearing before his Roman judge is of the same strain; the proud silence of the arraigned prince; the bold assertion of kingliness, when challenged; the stately defiance of the pagan's wrath; the appeal to supernatural support; the prediction of angelic succor in the hour of need, in strict accordance with the apocalyptic expressions thrown out at the last supper, and reverberated in tremendous rhetoric on the Mount of Olives and in the palace of the high priest, expressions in full and literal harmony with the Jewish conceptions of the Christ's relations with the angelic world, wholly in the spirit of Daniel, Enoch, and other apocryphal writings, leave no doubt on the mind that this personage moved within the limits of the common Messianic conception. Pilate condemns him reluctantly, feeling that he is a harmless visionary, but is obliged to condemn him as one who persistently claimed to be the "King of the Jews," an enemy of Cæsar, an insurgent against the empire, a pretender to the throne, a bold inciter to rebellion. The death he undergoes is the death of the traitor and mutineer, the death that would have been decreed to Judas the Gaulonite, had he been captured instead of slain in battle, and that was inflicted on thousands of his deluded followers. The bitter cry of the crucified as he hung on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" disclosed the hope of deliverance that till the last moment sustained his heart, and betrayed the anguish felt when the hope was blighted; the sneers and hootings of the rabble expressed their conviction that he had pretended to be what he was not.

The miracles ascribed to the Christ, so far from being inconsistent with the ordinary conception of the Messianic office, were necessary to complete that conception. It was expected that the Messiah would work miracles. This was one of his prerogatives; a certificate of his commission from Jehovah, and an instrument of great service in carrying out his designs. To the Jew of that, as of preceding periods, to the crude theist of all periods, the belief in miracles was and is easy. In such judgment, the will of God is absolute, and when should that will be exerted if not at providential crises of need, or in furtherance of his servants' work? The special miracles attributed to the Christ of the earliest New Testament literature are, as Strauss conclusively shows, patterned after performances which met satisfactorily the demands of the Jewish imagination; being either repetitions of ancient marvels, or concrete expressions of ideal faith. The miracles of this Christ are precisely adjusted to the exigencies of his calling, in no respect transcending or falling short of that standard.

The moral precepts put into the Messiah's mouth are also what he might be expected to utter. The teachings of the sermon on the Mount are echoes, and not altogether awakening or inspiring echoes, of ancient ethical law. The beatitudes do not exceed in beauty of sentiment or felicity of phrase, lovely passages that gem the pages of prophet, psalmist and sage. Portions of the morality are harsh, ungracious, intemperate, almost inhuman as compared with the mellow grandeur of the older law. Several of the parables, if taken in an ethical sense, contain moral injunctions or insinuations that are quite unjustifiable; the parable, for example, of the laborers in the vineyard, the last of whom, though they have worked but one hour, receive the same compensation as the early comers, who had borne the burden and heat of the day; – the parable of the steward, which, literally construed, palliates abuse of trusts; – the parable of Dives and Lazarus, which teaches the evil lesson that felicity or infelicity hereafter is consequent on fortune or misfortune here. These and other parables are deprived of their dangerous moral tendency by being removed from the ethical category, and made to convey lessons of a different kind. Read the story of the laborers in the vineyard as intended to justify Jehovah in granting the same spiritual favors to the newly called Gentiles as to the descendants of Abraham who, from the first, answered to the call addressed to them: – read the story of the steward as conveying an explanation of the Pauline policy in making capital with the Gentiles by offering to them on easy terms the promises that the Jews showed themselves unworthy of, and rejected: – read the story of Dives and Lazarus as containing the idea that the "poor in spirit," the outcast, to whom the mansions of the Lord's house, the patrimony of Abraham had never been opened, the people who had nothing but faith, – whom even pagan dogs commiserated, – should enjoy the blessedness of the Messiah's kingdom rather than those who claimed a prescriptive right to it on the ground of descent or privilege, – and the difficulty of reconciling them with moral principle is avoided. These parables and others of like tenor, do not belong to the first layer of Messianic tradition, but to the second deposit made by the Apostle Paul.

To the same period belong other parables that contain larger ideas than the Jewish Messiah of the first generation could entertain. Such are the story of the net cast into the sea and gathering in of every kind, that is, "Greeks and Romans, barbarians, Scythians, bond and free," not Hebrews only, – the miscellaneous haul being impartially examined – sweetness of quality, not forms of scale being made the condition of acceptance; – the story of the good Samaritan, designed to place people reckoned idolators and miscreants on a higher spiritual level than anointed priests of whatever order, who postponed mercy to sacrifice. Could the Jewish Messiah attribute to Samaritans a grace that was the highest adornment of faithful Jews? The story of the prodigal son belongs to the same category. The elder brother, who has always been at home, dutiful but ungracious niggardly and covetous, is the Jew who has never left the homestead of faith, but has stayed there, confidently expecting the Messianic inheritance as the reward of his conventional orthodoxy. The younger brother is the Gentile, the infidel, the pagan apostate, who throws off the parental authority and reduces himself to spiritual beggary. He spends all; he contents himself with refuse; is more heathenish than the heathen themselves; swinish in his habits. Yet this spiritual reprobate, by his unseemly behavior, forfeits no privilege. The "mansion" of the Father's house is still open to him when he shall choose to return. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob waits and watches for the penitent; sees him a great way off; runs to meet him; throws his arms about his neck; reinstates him in his place; celebrates his arrival by feasting, and puts him above the elder brother who had been working in the field while the prodigal had been rioting in the city. Such a lesson from the lips of the Jewish Messiah would have been astonishing indeed. It would have gone far towards overturning his claim. We know that some years later the lesson was inculcated as a cardinal doctrine by Paul and regarded as a heresy by the Christ's personal disciples, and it is in accordance with literary laws to refer to this later period the ideas that were native to it.

The religious beliefs imputed to the Messiah we are sketching, are the ordinary beliefs of his age and people. His faith is the faith of the Pharisees. His idea of God is the national idea softened, as it always had been, by a gentle mind. It thinks as his countrymen thought about Providence, fate and freedom, good and evil, destiny, the past and the future of his race. He believes in the resurrection and the judgment, the blessedness that is in store for the faithful Israelite, the misery that awaits the unworthy children of Abraham. His moral classifications are the technical classifications of the enthusiastic patriot, who confounded national with rational principles of judgment. He believes in good and bad angels, in guardian spirits and demoniacal possession. A Pharisee of the narrow literal school he is not. His allegiance to the Mosaic law is spiritual, not slavish; his faith in the perpetuity of the temple worship is unencumbered with formalism; he discriminates between the priestly office and the priestly character, between the form and the essence of sacrifice; yet is he capable of lurid feelings and bitter thoughts towards the Pharisees of another school; he cannot enter into the mind of the Sadducee; and the scribe is a person he cannot respect. On this side his intolerance occasionally breaks forth with inconsiderate heat. He calls his opponents "blind guides," "hypocrites," "whited sepulchres," and threatens them with the wrath of the Eternal.

The Messiah's essential conception of his office does not differ materially from that of his countrymen. He is no military leader; he puts no confidence in the sword; he incites to no revolt. But he does not trust to intellectual methods for his success; the success that he anticipates is not such as follows the promulgation of ideas, or the establishment of moral convictions. He looks for demonstrations of power, not human but super-human. The hosts that surround him, and are reckoned on to sustain him, are the hosts of heaven, marshalled under the Lord and prepared to sweep down upon the Lord's foes when the hour of conflict shall strike. He will not draw the sword himself, or allow his followers to gird on weapons of war; but he is more than willing to avail himself of legions irresistible in might. James Martineau has touched this point with a master hand: "The non-resistant principle meant no more in the early church than that the disciples were not to anticipate the hour fast approaching of the Messiah's descent to claim his throne. But when that hour struck there was to be no want of 'physical force' no shrinking from retribution as either unjust or undivine. The 'flaming fire,' the 'sudden destruction,' the 'mighty angels,' the 'tribulation and anguish,' were to form the retinue of Christ, and the pioneers of the kingdom of God. The new reign was to come with force, and on nothing else in the last resort was there any reliance; only the army was to arrive from heaven before the earthly recruits were taken up. 'My kingdom,' said Jesus, 'is not of this world, else would my servants fight;' an expression which implies that no kingdom of this world can dispense with arms, and that he himself, were he the head of a human polity, would not forbid the sword: but while 'legions of angels' stood ready for his word, and only waited till the Scripture was fulfilled, and the hour of darkness was passed, to obey the signal of heavenly invasion, the weapon of earthly temper might remain in its sheath."

It is not affirmed here that the actual Jesus corresponded to this Messianic representation; that he filled it and no more; that it correctly and adequately reported him. It may possibly present only so much of him as the average of his contemporaries could appreciate. They may be right who are of opinion that the fourth evangelist comes nearer to the historical truth than the first. That the earliest New Testament conception of the Messiah has been correctly portrayed in the preceding sketch may be granted without prejudice to the historical Jesus. They only who assume the identity of this Hebrew Messiah with the man of Nazareth, need place him in the niche that is here made for the Messiah. There are others more noble. Let each decide for himself, on the evidence, to which he belongs. Some will decide that the first account of a wonderful person must, from the nature of the case, be the falsest; others will decide that in the nature of things it must be the truest. Whichever be the decision the literary image remains unimpaired. Whether time should be judged requisite to emancipate the living character from the associations of its environment, and bring it into full view; or whether on the other hand time should be regarded as darkening and confusing the image, for the reason that it allows the growth of legends and distorting theory, is a question that will be touched by-and-by. For the present it suffices to show what the earliest representation was, and to trace its descent from the traditions of the race. The materials are adequate for this, whether for more or not. The form of Jesus may be lost, but the form of the Messiah is distinct.