THE LIFE OF JESUS. CHAPTER IX. SUnd-rf Book Number .WMJBM^ ..^..H^ss^aUloM^ Number: ,4-1071 W MIRACLES OP JESUS. This edition is printed on a liisili-qualitv. acid-free paper tluil meets specification reuuiremcnts for fine book paper referred § 91. JESUS CONSIDEKED AS A \VOEKEE OF MIRACLES. THAT the, Jewish people in the time,of Jesus expected miracles from the Messiah is in itself natural, since the Messiah was a second Moses and the greatest of the prophets, and to Moses and the prophets the national legend attributed miracles of all kinds: by later Jewish writings it is rendered probable ;* by our gospels, certain. When Jesus on one occasion had (without natural means) cured a blind and dumb demoniac, the people were hereby led to ask: Is not this the son of David? (Matt. xii. 23,) a proof that a miraculous power of healing was regarded as an attribute of the Messiah. John the Baptist, on hearing of the works of Jesus, (;-P7«), sent to him with the inquiry, Art thou he that should come, (<-'p,W£l'°?) ? Jesus, in proof of the affirmative, merely appealed again to his miracles (Matt. xi. 2 ff. parall). At the Feast of Tabernacles, which was celebrated by Jesus in Jerusalem, many of the people believed on him, saying, in justification of their faith, When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than these ivhich this man hath done (John vii. 31)? But not only was it predetermined in the popular expectation that the Messiah should work miracles in general,-the particular kinds of miracles which he was to perform were fixed, also in * See tlie passages quoted, Introil. g 14, notes !), 10, to which may be added 4 Esdr. xiii. 50, (Faliric. Cod. pseudepigr. V. T. ii. p. 280,) and Sohar Exod. fol. iii. col. 12, (Schottgen, boras, ii. p. 541, also in liertholilt's Christol. \ 33, note 1.) 452 THE IJFE OP JESUS. accordance with Old Testament types and declarations. Moses dispensed meat and drink to the people in a supernatural manner (Exod. xvi. 17): the same was expected, as the rabbins explicitly say, from the Messiah. At the prayer of Elisha, eyes were in one case closed, in another, opened supernaturally (2 Kings Yi.): the Messiah also was to open the eyes of the "blind. By this prophet and his master, even the dead had been, raised (1 Kings xvii.; 2 Kings iv.) : hence to the Messiah also power over death could not be wanting.* Among the prophecies, Isai. xxxv. 5, 6 (comp. xlii. 7) was especially influential in forming this portion of the messianic idea. It is here said of the messianic times: Then, shall the eyes of the Hind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. These words, it is true, stand in Isaiah in a figurative connexion, but they were early understood literally, as is evident from the circumstance that Jesus describes his miracles to the messengers of John (Matt. xi. 5) with an obvious allusion to this prophetic passage. Jesus, in so far as he had given himself out and was believed to be the Messiah, or even merely a prophet, had to meet this expectation when, according to several passages already considered (Matt. xii. 38; xvi. 1. parall.), his Pharisaic enemies required a sign from him ; when, after the violent expulsion, of the traders and money-changers from the Temple, the Jews desired from him a sign that should legitimate such an assumption of authority (John ii. 18); and when the people in the synagogue of Capernaum, on his requiring faith in himself as the sent of God, made it a condition of this faith that he should show them a sign (John vi. 30). According to the Gospels, Jesus more than satisfied this demand made by his cotcmporaries on the Messiah. Not only does a considerable part of the evangelical narratives consist of descriptions of his miracles; not only did his disciples after his death especially call to their own remembrance and to that of the Jews the dvvdfieic (miracles) ar/asla (signs') and -ripa-a (wonders) wrought by him (Acts ii. 22 ; comp. Luke xxiv. 19): but the people also were, even during his life, so well satisfied with this aspect of his character that many believed on linn in consequence (John ii. 23; comp. vi. 2), contrasted him with the Baptist who gave no sign (John x. 41), and even believed that he would not be surpassed in this respect by the future Messiah (John vii. 31). The above demands of a sign do not appear to prove that Jesus had performed no miracles, especially as several of them occur immediately after important miracles, e. g., after the cure of a demoniac, Matt. xii. 38 ; and after the feeding of the live thousand, John vi. 30. This position indeed creates a difficulty, for how the Jews could deny to these two acts the character of proper signs it is not easy to understand; the power of expelling demons, in particular, being rated very highly (Luke x. 17). The sign de- MIKACtES OP JESUS. 453 rnanded on these two occasions must therefore be more precisely defined according to Luke xi. 16 (comp. Matt. xvi. 1; Mark viii. 11), as a sign from heaven, or^eiov tf ovpavov, and we must understand it to be the specifically messianic siyn of the Son of Man in heaven, OTjuelov rov viov rov di'Oowrrov iv rw ovpavu (Matt. xxiv. 30). It however it be preferred to sever the connexion between these demands of a sign and the foregoing miracles, it is possible that Jesus may have wrought numerous miracles, and yet that some hostile Pharisees, who had not happened to be eye-witnesses of any of them, may still have desired to see one for themselves. That Jesus censures the seeking for miracles (John iv. 48) and refuses to comply with any one of the demands for a sign, does not in itself prove that lie might not have voluntarily worked miracles in other cases, when they appeared to him to be more seasonable. When in relation to the demand of the Pharisees, Mark viii. 12, he declares that there shall be no sign given to this generation, ry yevep ravrrj, or Matt. xii. 39 f.; xvi. 4; Luke xi. 29 f., that there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet, it would appear that by this generation yevea, which in Matthew and Luke he characterizes as evil and adulterates, he could only mean the Pharisaic part of his cotemporaries who were hostile to him, and that he intended to declare, that to these should be granted either no sign at all, or merely the sign of Jonas, that is, as he interprets it in Matthew, the miracle of his resurrection, or as modern expositors think, the impressive manifestation of his person and teaching. But if we take the words ov 6oOi}aeT™™.A* 4',,iu, ,,,;+u +i,~ f.,^ *i-* :- -n,~ 454 THE LIFE OF JESUS. preaching and epistles of the apostles, a couple of general notices exceptcd (Acts ii. 22; x. 38 f.), the miracles of Jesus appear to be unknown, and everything is built on his resurrection: on which the remark may be ventured that it could neither have been so unexpected nor could it have formed so definite an epoch, if Jesus had previously raised more than one dead person, and had wrought the most transcendent miracles of all kinds. This then is the question: Ought we, on account of the evangelical narratives of miracles, to explain away that expression of Jesus, or doubt is authenticity; or ought we not, rather, on the strength of that declaration, and the silence of the apostolic writings, to become distrustful of the numerous histories of miracles in the Gospels ? This can only be decided by a close examination of these narratives, among which, for a reason that will be obvious hereafter, we give the precedence to the expulsions of demons. § 92. THE DEMOJIIACS, CONSIDERED GENERALLY. AViHLE in the fourth gospel, the expressions tfcwfidwov e%etv to have a demon, and daipovi^onsvoc;, being a demoniac, appear nowhere except in the accusations of the Jews against Jesus, and as parallels to fiaiveoOai, to be mad (via. 48 f.; x. 20 f.; comp. Mark iii. 22, 30 ; Matt. xi. 18): the synoptists may be said to represent demoniacs as the most frequent objects of the curative powers of Jesus. When they describe the commencement of his ministry in Galilee, they give the demoniacs daiftowfo/ievouc* a prominent place among the sufferers whom Jesus healed (Matt. iv. 24; Mark i. 34), and in all their summary notices of the ministry of Jesus in certain districts, demoniacs play a chief part (Matt. viii. 16 f. ; Mark i. 39; iii. 11 f.; Luke vi. 18). The power to cast out devils is before any thing else imparted by Jesus to his disciples (Matt. x. 1, 8; Mark iii. 15; vi. 7 ; Luke ix. 1), who to their great joy succeed in using it according to their wishes (Luke x. 17, 20; Mark vi. 13). Besides these summary notices, however, several cures of demoniacs are narrated to us in detail, so that we can form a tolerably accurate idea of their peculiar condition. In the one whose cure in the synagogue at Capernaum is given by the evangelists as the first of this kind (Mark i. 23 ff.; Luke iv. 33 ft'.), we find, on the one hand, a disturbance of the self-consciousness, causing the possessed individuals to speak in the person of the demon, which appears also in other demoniacs, as for example, the Gadarenes (Matt. viii. 29 f. parall.); on the other hand, spasms and convulsions with savage cries. This spasmodic state has, in the demoniac who is also called a lunatic (Matt. xvii. 14 fT. parall.), reached the stage of manifest epilepsy; for sudden falls, often in dangerous places, cries, gnashing * That the G&i]viy Matthew are only a particular >-- -*• .i.-----:.,......,1,,,^ ,m!»iodt/ finm.jLrwl to be governed by the changes of the moon, MIEACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 455 of the teeth, and foaming, are known symptoms of that malady. The other aspect of the demoniacal state, namely, the disturbance of the self-consciousness, amounts in the demoniac of Gadara, by whose lips a demon, or rather a plurality of these evil spirits, speaks as a subject, to misanthropic madness, with attacks of maniacal fury against himself and others, f Moreover, not only the insane and epileptic, but the dumb (Matt. ix. 32; Auke xi. 14; Matt. xii. 22, the dumb demoniac is also Hind) ancFthose suffering from a gouty contraction of the body (Luke xiii. 11 ff.), are by the evangelists designated more or less precisely as demoniacs. The idea of these sufferers presupposed in the gospels and shared by their authors, is that a wicked, unclean spirit (daipoviov, nvevjia dtcdOapror') or several, have taken possession of them (hence their condition is described by the expressions daifioviov, K%EIV, dcupovi-£ea6ai, to have a demon, to be a demoniac), speak through their organs, (thus Matt. viii. 31, 01 daijj,ov£(; irapeKa^ovv avrov Aeycwrec,) and put their limbs in motion at pleasure, (thus Mark ix. 20, ~o -rrvevpa landpa^ev av~bv^ until, forcibly expelled by a cure, they depart from the patient (t-ff/MAAsiv, ^ep^eadai). According to the representation of the evangelists, Jesus also held this view of the matter. It is true that when, as a means of liberating the possessed, lie addresses the demons within them (as in Mark ix. 25; Matt. viii. 32; Luke iv. 35), we might with PaulusJ regard this as a mode of entering into the fixed idea of these more or less insane persons, it being the part of a psychical physician, if he would produce any effect, to accommodate himself to this idea, however strongly he may in reality be convinced of its groundlessness. But this is not all; Jesus, even in his private conversations with his disciples, not only says nothing calculated to undermine the notion of demoniacal possession, but rather speaks repeatedly on a supposition of its truth; as e. g. in Matt. x. 8, where he gives the commission, Oast out devils; in Luke x. 18 ff.; and especially in Matt. xvii. 21, parall., where lie says, This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. Again, in a purely theoretical discourse, perhaps also in the more intimate circle of his disciples, Jesus gives a description quite accordant with the idea of his cotemporarics of the departure of the unclean spirit, his wandering in the wilderness, and his return with a reinforcement (Matt. xii. 43 ft.). With these facts before us, the attempt made by generally unprejudiced inquirers, such as Wiuer,§ to show that Jesus did not share the popular opinion on demonical possession, but merely accommodated his language to their understanding, appears to us a mere adjustment of his ideas by our own. A closer examination of the last-mentioned passage will suffice to remove every thought of a mere accommodation on the part of Jesus. It is true that commentators have sought to evade all that is conclusive in this passage, by * Compare the passages of ancient physicians, ap. Winer, bibl. Realworterbueh. 1. 456 THE LIFE' OF JESUS. ~xv\j interpreting it figuratively, or even as a parable,* in every explanation of which (if we set aside 'such as that given l>y Olshausenf after Galmct,) the essential idea is, that superficial conversion to the cause of .Jesus is followed by a relapse into aggravated sin. J But, I would fain know, what justifies us in abandoning the literal interpretation of this discourse V In the propositions themselves there is no indication of a figurative meaning, nor is it rendered probable by the general style of teaching used by Jesus, for he nowhere else presents moral relations in the garb of demoniacal conditions: on the contrary, whenever he speaks, as here, of the departure of evil spirits, (;. g. in Matt. xvii. 21, he evidently intends to be understood literally. But does the context favour a figurative interpretation ? Luke (xi. 24 ft.) places the discourse in question after the defence of Jesus against the Pharisaic accusation, that he cast out devils by Beelzebub: a position which is undoubtedly erroneous, as we have seen, but which is a proof that he at least understood Jesus to speak literally-of real demons. Matthew also places the discourse near to the above accusation and defence, but he inserts between them the demand of a sign, together with its refusal, and he makes Jesus conclude with the application, Even so sfirdl.it lie also unto this wicked generation. This addition, it is true, gives the discourse a figurative application to the moral and religions condition of his co-temporaries, but only thus: Jesus intended the foregoing description of the expelled and returning demon literally, though he made a secondary use of this event as an image of the moral condition of his cotemporaries. At any rate Luke, who has not the same addition, gives the discourse of Jesus, to use the expression of Paulus, as a warning against demoniacal relapses. That the majority of theologians in the present day, without decided support on the part of Matthew, and in decided contradiction to Luke, advocate the merely figurative interpretation of this passage, appears to be founded in an aversion to ascribe to Jesus so strongly developed a demonology, as lies in his words literally understood. But this is not to be avoided, even leaving the above passage out of consideration. In Matt. xii. 25 f. 29, Jesus speaks of a kingdom and household of the devil, in a manner which obviously outsteps the domain of the merely figurative; but above all, the passage already quoted, Luke x. 18--20, is of such a nature as to compel even Paulus, who is generally so fond of lending to the hallowed personages of primitive Christian history the views of the present age, to admit that the kingdom of Satan was not merely a symbol of evil to Jesus, and that he believed in actual demoniacal possession. For he says very justly, that as Jesus here speaks, not to the patient or to the people, but to those who themselves, according to his instructions, cured demoniacs, his * Gratz, Comm. z. Matth. S. Gli>. f B. Comm. 1, S. 42-1. According to this, tha -1-*~" trt tin* .lavish tjeonle, who before the exile were possessed by the devil in ' •'•- + Tlma Fritzsche, MIEACLES OF JESUS----DEMONIACS. 457 words are not to be explained - as a mere accommodation, when he confirms their belief that the spirits are subject unto them, and describes their capability of curing the malady in question, as a power over the power of the cnsmjjj^ In answer also to the repugnance of those with whose enlightenment a belief in demoniacal possession is inconsistent, to admit that Jesus held that belief, the same theologian justly observes that the most distinguished mind may retain a false idea, prevalent among his cotemporaries, if it happen to lie out of his peculiar sphere of thought, f Some light is thrown on the evangelical conception of the demoniacs, by the opinions on this subject which we find in writers more or less cotemporary. The general, idea that evil spirits had influence on men, producing melancholy, insanity, and epilepsy, was early prevalent among the GreelcsJ as well as the Hebrews : § but the more distinct idea that evil spirits entered into the human body and took possession of its members was not developed until a considerably later period, and was a consequence of the dissemination of the oriental, particularly the Persian pncuinatology among both Hebrews and Greeks. j| Hence we find in Joscplms the expressions Saifibvia rot? $&aiv eiadvofieva^ eyKaOe&neva** (demons entering into the living, settling themselves there), and the same ideas in Lucianff and Pliilostratus.JJ Of the nature and origin of these spirits nothing is expressly stated in the gospels, except that they belong to the household of Satan (Mafr. xii. 26 ft', parall.), whence the acts of one of them are directly ascribed to Satan (Luke xiii. 16.). But from «Josephtts,§§ Justin MartyrJIJ] and Pliilostratus,T1" with whom rabbinical writings agree,*** we learn that these demons were the disembodied souls of wicked men ; and modern theologians have not scrupled to attribute this opinion on their origin to the New Testament also.ftt Justin *_Exeg. Hand!,. 2, S. T.flG. f t't sup, I. B. S. 483, 2, S. 90. } Hence the words tei/tovav. Ko.noSa.tu.tn.-iiv were used as synonymous with ,«£vlay,toAa)'. fiaivec^ai. Hippocrates had to combat the opinion that epilepsy was the cft'ect of demonical influence. Vid. Wet-ftein, S. 282 If § Let the reader compare the fT!!T> fiXlS !"!"") Fill, which made Saul melancholy, * T 1 •• •• T T ' •* ' 1 Sam. xvi. 14. Its influence on Saul is expressed by -iCl^sa || Vid. Creuzer, Sym-lolik. 8. S. CO f.; Baur, Apollonius von Tynna and Christus, S. 144. ^f Bell. jud. vii. vi. S. ** Antiq. vi. xi. 2. On the state of Saul. ft Philopseud. 1C. §§ Vitie S^f;;^ « ^^^^^^'^^^^^ ±rlSf L" 458 THE LIFE OP JESUS. and;the Rabbins move nearly particularize, as spirits that torment the living, the souls of the giants, the offspring of those angels who -allied themselves to the daughters of men: the rabbins further add the souls of these who perished in the deluge, and of those who participated in building the tower of Babel ;* and with this agree the Clementine Homilies, for according to them also, these souls of the giants having become demons, seek to attach themselves, as the stronger, to human souls, and to inhabit human bodies.t As, however, in the continuation of the passage first cited, Justin endeavours to convince the heathens of immortality from their own ideas, the opinion which he there expresses, of demons being the souls of the departed in general, can scarcely be regarded as his, especially as his pupil Tatian expressly declares himself against it;+ while Jo-sephus affords no criterion as to the latent idea of the New Testament, since his Greek education renders it very uncertain whether he presents the doctrine of demoniacal possession in its original Jewish, or in a Grecian form. If it must be admitted that the Hebrews owed their doctrine of demons to Persia, we know that the Deves of the Zend mythology were originally and essentially wicked beings, existing prior to the human race; of these two characteristics, Hebraism as such might be induced to expunge the former, which pertained to Dualism, but could have no reason for rejecting the latter. Accordingly, in the Hebrew view, the demons were the fallen angels of Gen. vi., the souls of their offspring the giants, aud of the great criminals before and immediately after the deluge, whom the popular imagination gradually magnified into superhuman beings. But in the ideas of the Hebrews, there lay no motive for descending beyond the circle of these souls, who might be conceived to form the court of Satan. Such a motive was only engendered by the union of the Graico-roman culture with the Hebraic : the former had no Satan, and consequently no retinue of spirits devoted to his service, but it had an abundance of Manes, Lemures, and the like,-all names for disembodied souls that disquieted the living. Now, the combination of these Gratco-roman ideas with the above-mentioned Jewish ones, seems to have been the source of the demonology of Josephus, of Justin, and also of the later rabbins: but it does not follow that the same mixed view belongs to the New Testament. Rather, as this Grgecised form of the doctrine in question is nowhere positively put forth by the evangelical writers, while on the contrary the demons are in some passages represented as the household of Satan: there is nothing to contravene the inference to be drawn from the unu;;_vedly Jewish character of thought which reigns in the synop- even were it implied, is totally different from that of demonical possession. Here it would lie a good spirit who had entered into a prophet for the strengthening of his powers, as according to a Inter Jewish idea the soul of Seth. was united to that of Moses, and again the souls of .Moses and Aaron to that of Samuel (Eisenmenger. tit sup.); but from this it n-AiiM w Tin means follow, that it was possible for wieiud spirits to enter into the living. J- IT.,.,,;, ,.;;; 1 rt f . ix. 9 f. J Oat. MIRACLES OP JESUS-DEMONIACS. 459 tical "-ospels on all otnW subjects (apart from Christian modifications): namely, that we must attribute to them the pure and original Jewish conception of the doctrine of demons. It is well known that the older theology, moved by a regard for the authority of Jesus and the evangelists, espoused the belief in the reality of demoniacal possession. The new theology, on the contrary, especially since the time of .Sender,* in consideration of the similarity between the condition of the demoniacs in the New Testament and many naturally diseased subjects of our own day, has begun to refer the malady of the former also to natural causes, and to ascribe the evangelical supposition of supernatural causes, to the prejudices of that age. In modern days, on the occurrence of epilepsy, insanity, and even a disturbance of the self-consciousness resembling the condition of the possessed described in the New Testament, it is no longer the custom to account for them by the supposition of demoniacal influence: and the reason of this seems to be, partly that the advancement in the knowledge of nature and of mind has placed at command a wider range of facts and analogies, which may serve to explain the above conditions naturally; partly that the contradiction, involved in the idea of demoniacal possession, is beginning to be at least dimly perceived. For,-apart from the difficulties which the notion of the existence of a devil and demons entails,-whatever theory may be held as to the relation between the self-consciousness and the bodily organs, it remains absolutely inconceivable how the union between the two could be so far dissolved, that a foreign self-consciousness could gain an entrance, thrust out that which belonged to the organism, and usurp its place. Hence for every one who at once regards actual phenomena with enlightened eyes, and the New Testament narratives with orthodox ones, there results the contradiction, that what now proceeds from natural causes, must in the time of Jesus have been caused supcr-naturally. In order to remove this inconceivable difference between the conditions of one age and another, avoiding at the same time any imputation on the New Testament, Olsliausen, whom we may fairly take as the representative of the mystical theology and philosophy of the present day, denies both that all states of the kind in question ^liavc now a natural cause, and that they had in the time of Jesus invariably a supernatural cause. With respect to our own time he asks, if the apostles were to enter our mad-houses, how would they name many of the inmates? We answer, they would to a certainty name many of them demoniacs, by reason of their participation in the ideas of their people and their age, not by reason of their apostolic illumination; and the official who acted as their conductor feee his Commentfitlo de davnoni'icis quorum in Ar. T.Jit mentio, and his minute consideration of demonical cases. So early as the time of Origen, physicians gave natural explanations of the state of those supposed to be possessed. Orig. in Matlh. xvii. 15. 460 THE LIFK OP JESUS. aou would very properly endeavour to set them right: whatever names therefore they might give to the inmates of our asylums, our conclusions as to the naturalness of the disorders of those inmates would not bo at all affected. With respect to the time of Jesus, this theologian maintains that the same forms of disease were, even "by the Jews, in one case held demoniacal, in another not so, according to the difference in their origin: for example, one who had become insane through an organic disorder of the brain, or dumb through an injury of the tongue, was not looked on as a demoniac, but only those, the cause of whose condition was more or less psychical. Of such a distinction in the time of Jesus, Olshausen is manifestly bound to give us instances. Whence could the Jews of that age have acquired their knowledge of the latent natural causes of these conditions-whence the criterion by which to distinguish an insanity or imbecility originating in a malformation of the brain, from one purely psychical V Was not their observation limited to outward phenomena, and those of the coarsest character? The nature of their •. i.~ 4.1,•..„ . 4-1,p sts,to Of an epileptic with his sud- l'ui^v v~j - phenomena, and those of the coarsest ciiaraeici ; jm^ ,„....._ . distinctions scorns to be this: the state of an epileptic with his sudden falls and convulsions, or of a maniac in his delirium, especially if, from the reaction of the popular idea respecting himself he speaks in the person of another, seems to point to an external influence which governs him ; and consequently, so soon as the belief in demoniacal possession existed among the people, all such states were referred to this cause, as we find them to be in the New Testament: whereas in dumbness and gouty contraction or lameness, the influence of an external power is less decidedly indicated, so that these afflictions were at one time ascribed to a possessing demon, at another not so. Of the former case we find an example in the dumb persons already mentioned, Matt. ix. 82; xii. 22, and in the woman who was bowed down, Luke xiii. 11; of the latter, in the man v~ho was deaf and luid an impediment in his speech, Mark vii. 32 ff., and in the many paralytics mentioned in the gospels. The decision for the one opinion or the other was however certainly not founded on an investigation into the origin of the disease, but solely on its external symptoms. If then the Jews, and with them the evangelists, referred the two chief classes of these conditions to demoniacal influence, there remains for him who believes himself bound by their opinion, without choosing to shut out the lights of modem science, the glaring inconsistency of considering the same diseases as in one age natural, in another supernatural. Bui the most formidable difficulty for Olshausen, in his attempted mediation between the Judaical dcmonology of the New Testament and the intelligence of our own day, arises from the influence of the latter on his own mind-an influence which renders him adverse to the idea of personal demons. This theologian, initiated in the philosophy of the present age, endeavours to resolve the host of demons, - T,,..4-nv««v.t nvn. regarded as distinct individuals, 1 i MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 461 stance, which indjd sends forth from itself separate powers, not, however to subsiW as independent individuals, but to return as accidents into the unity of the substance. This cast of thought we have already observed in the opinions of Olshausen concerning angels, and it appears still more decidedly in his demonology. Personal demons-are too repugnant, and as Olshausen himself expresses it,* the comprehension of two subjects in one individual is too inconceivable, to rind a ready acceptation. Hence it is everywhere with vague generality that a kingdom of evil and darkness is spoken of; and though a personal prince is given to it, its demons are understood to be mere effluxes, and operations, by which the evil principle manifests itself. But the most vulnerable point of Olshausen's opinion concerning demons is this: it is too much for him to believe that Jesus asked the name of the demon in the Gadarene; since he himself doubts the personality of those emanations of the kingdom of darkness, it cannot, he thinks, have been thus decidedly supposed by Christ ;^hence he understands the question, What is thy name? (Mark v. 9.) to be addressed, not to the demon, but to the man,t plainly in opposition to the whole context, for the answer, Legion, appears to be in no degree the result of a misunderstanding, but the right answer-the one expected by Jesus. If, however, the demons are, according to Olshausen's opinion, impersonal powders, that which guides them and determines their various functions is the, law which governs the kingdom of darkness in relation to the kingdom of light. On this theory, the worse a man is morally, the closer must be the connexion between him and the kingdom of evil, and the closest conceivable connexion-the entrance of the power of darkness into the personality of the man, i. e. possession-must always occur in the most wicked. But historically this is not so: the demoniacs in the gospels appear to be sinners only in the sense that all sick persons need forgiveness of sins; and the greatest sinners (Judas for example) are spared the infliction of possession. The common opinion, with its personal demons, escapes this contradiction. It is true that this opinion also, as we find for instance in the Clementine Homilies, firmly maintains it to be by sin only that man subjects himself to the ingress of the demon ;J but here there is yet scope for the individual will ot the demon, who often, from motives not to be calculated, passes by the worst, and holds in chase the less wicked. § On the contrary, it the demons are considered, as by Olshausen, to be the actions of the power of evil in its relation to the power of goodness; this relation being regulated by laws, every thing arbitrary and accidental is excluded. Hence it evidently costs that theologian some pains to disprove the consequence, that according to his theory the pos- * S. 295 f. f S. 302, after (he example of Taulus, exeg. Handbucli, 1. B. S. 474. } Homil. viii. 1'J. | Thus Asmodeus chooses Sara and her husband as olijects of torment and destruction, not because either the former or the latter v.-pn- nnrti..,ii.,.•!.- ™;..i,n,i i...' 462 THE LIFE OP JESUS. sessed must always be the most wicked. Proceeding from the apparent contest of two powers in the demoniacs, he adopts the position that the state of demonical possession does not appear in those who entirely give themselves up to evil, and thus maintain an internal unity of disposition, hut only in those in whom there exists a struggle against sin.* In that case, however, the above state, being reduced to a purely moral phenomenon, must appear far move frequently ; every violent inward struggle must manifest itself under this form, and especially those who ultimately give themselves up ~i ™,,at "hpfore arriving at this point, pass through a period of ~' - 44,01-nfove adds a physical * MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 463 to evil must, oeiore um,,,.^ ... conflict, that is of possession. Olshausen therefore f the demoniacal state. But since such disorders of the nervous system may occur without any moral fault, who does not see that the state which it is intended to ascribe to demoniacal power as its proper source, is thus referred chiefly to natural causes, and that therefore the argument defeats its own object ? Hence Olshauscn. quickly turns away from this side of the question, and lingers on the comparison of the <5a£fiow£6/j,evf (demoniac) with the irovTjpbg (icickect); whereas he ought rather to compare the former with the epileptic and insane, for it is only by this means that any light can be thrown on the nature of possession. This shifting of the question from the ground of physiology and psychology to that of morality and religion, renders the discussion concerning the demoniacs, one of the most useless which Olshausen's work contains.t Let us then relinquish the ungrateful attempt to modernize the New Testament conception of the demoniacs, or to judaize our modern ideas ;-let us rather, in relation to this subject, understand the statements of the New Testament as simply as they are given, without allowing our investigations to be restricted by the ideas therein presented, which belonged to the age and nation of its writers.£ The method adopted for the cure of the demoniacal state was, especially among the Jews, in conformity with what we have ascertained to have been the idea of its nature. The cause of the malady-was not supposed to be, as in natural diseases, an impersonal object or condition, such as an impure fluid, a morbid excitement or debility, but a self-conscious being; hence it was treated, not mechanically or chemically, but logically, i. e. by words. The demon was enjoined to depart; and to give effect to this injunction, it was coupled with the names of beings who were believed to have power over demons. Hence the main instrument against demoniacal pos- * « 994. t It fills S. 289-298. J I have endeavoured to present helps towards 5- ~'ioaMnn in several essays, which are now incorpo- -!.,. ^.unnambuUsmus, session was conjuration,* either in the name of God, or of angels, UK of some other potent being, e. g. the Messiah (Acts xix. 18), with certain forms which were said to be derived from Solomon,! In addition to this, certain roots,}: stones, § fumigations and amulets || were used, in obedience to traditions likewise believed to have been handed down from Solomon. Now as the cause of the malady was not seldom really a psychical one, or at least one lying in the nervous system, which may be acted on to an incalculable extent by moral instrumentality, this psychological treatment was not altogether illusory; for by exciting in the patient the belief that the demon by which he was possessed, could not retain his hold before a form of conjuration, it might often effect the removal of the disorder. Jesus himself admits that the Jewish exorcists sometimes succeeded in working such cures (Matt. xii. 27). But we read of Jesus that without conjuration by any other power, and without the appliance of any further means, he expelled the demons by his word. The most remarkable cures of this kind, of which the gospels inform us, we are now about to examine. § 93. CASES OF THE EXPULSION OF DEMON'S BY JESUS, CONSIDERED SINGLY. AMONG- the circumstantial narratives which are given us in the three first gospels of cures wrought by Jesus on demoniacs, three are especially remarkable : the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, that of the Gadarcnes possessed by a multitude of demons, and lastly, that of the lunatic whom the disciples were unable to cure. In John, the conversion of water into wine is the first miracle performed by Jesus after his return from the scene of his baptism into Galilee; but in Mark (i. 23 ff.) and Luke (iv. 33 ft'.) the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum has this position. Jesus had produced a deep impression by his teaching, when suddenly, a demoniac who was present, cried out in the character of the demon that possesed him, that lie would have nothing to do with him, that he knew him to be the Messiah who was come to destroy them-the demons ; whereupon Jesus commanded the demon to hold his peace and come out of the man, which happened amid cries and convulsions on the part of the demoniac, and to the great astonishment of the people at the power thus exhibited by Jesus. Here we might, with rationalistic commentators, represent the case to ourselves thus: the demoniac, during a lucid interval, entered the synagogue, was impressed by the powerful discourse of Jesus, and overhearing one of the audience speak of him as the Messiah, was seized with the idea, that the unclean spirit by which he was * See the passage quoted from Lucian, page 457, note (ft). f Joseph. Antiq. viii. t Joseph, ut sup. | Gittin, f. Ixvii. 2. || Justin. Mart. dial. c. Tryph. Ixxxv. 464 THE LIFE OF JESUS. •4D* possessed, could not maintain itself in the presence of the holy Messiah ; whence he fell into a paroxysm, and expressed his awe of Jesus in the character of the demon. When Jesus perceived this, what was more natural than that he should make use of the man's persuasion of his power, and command the demon to come out of him, thus laying hold of the maniac by his fixed idea; which, according to the laws of mental hygiene, might very probably have a favourable effect. It is under this view that Paulus regards the occasion as that on which the thought of using his messianic fame as a means of curing such sufferers, first occurred to Jesus.* But many difficulties oppose themselves to this natural conception of the case. The demoniac is supposed to learn that Jesus was the Messiah from the people in the synagogue. On this point the text is not merely silent, but decidedly contradicts such an opinion. The demon speaking through the man evidently proclaims his knowledge of the Messiahship of Jesus, in the words, old a ae -if d K. r. X., not as information casually imparted by man, but as an intuition of his demoniacal nature. Further, when Jesus cries, Hold thy peace! he refers to what the demon had just uttered concerning his mes-siahship; for it is related of Jesus that he suffered not the demons to speak because they knew him (Mark i. 34; Luke iv. 41), or because they made him knowrii (Mark iii. 12.). If then Jesus believed that by enjoining silence on the demon he could hinder the promulgation of his messiahship, he must have been of opinion, not that the demoniac had heard something of it from the people in the synagogue, but contrariwise that the latter might learn it from the demoniac ; and this accords with the fact, that at the time of the first appearance of Jesus, in which the evangelists place the occurrence, no one had yet thought of him as the Messiah. If it be asked, how the demoniac could discover that Jesus was the Messiah, apart from any external communication, Olshausen presses into his service the preteruaturaHy heightened activity of the nervous system, which, in demoniacs as in somnambules, sharpens the prescntient power, and produces a kind of clear-sightedness, by means of which such a man might very well discern the importance of Jesus as regarded the whole realm of spirits. The evangelical narrative, it is true, does not ascribe that knowledge to a power of the patient, but of the demon dwelling within him, and this is the only view consistent with the Jewish ideas of that period. The Messiah was to appear, in order to overthrow the demoniacal kingdom (d-oAtaat fyiac, comp. 1 John iii. 8; Luke x. 18 f.)[ and to cast the devil and his angels into the lake of tire (Matt. xxv. 41; llev. xx. 10.) :J it followed of course that the demons would recognize him who was to pass such a sentence on them.§ This, how- * Exeg. Handb. i. (i. S. 422 ; L. J. 1, a, S. 128. + Bibl. Coimn. i. '2U(5. % Comp. Bevtholdt, Cliristol. Jud. §§ 36-11. \ According - •• - ._: a t, iwtlmldt. n, 185.) Satan recognizes in the MIRACLES OP JESUS-DEMONIACS. 465 ever, might be deducted, as an admixture of the opinion of the narrator, without damage to the rest of the narrative; but it must first be granted admissible to ascribe so extensive a prescntient power to demoniacal subjects. Now, as it is in the highest degree improbable that a nervous patient, however intensely excited, should recognize Jesus as the Messiah, at a time when he was not believed to be such by any one else, perhaps not even by himself; and as on the other hand this recognition of the .Messiah bv the demon so entirely agrees with the popularvideas ;-we must conjecture that on this point the evangelical tradition is not in perfect accordance with historical truth, but has been attuned to those ideas.* There was the more inducement to this, the more such a recognition of Jesus on the part oi the demons would redound to his glory. As when adults disowned him, praise was prepared for him out of the mouth of babes (Matt. xxi. 16.)-1-as he was convinced that if men were silent, the very stones would cry out (Luke xix. 40.): so it must appear fitting, that when his people whom he came to save would not acknowledge him, he should have the involuntary homage of demons, whose testimony, since they had only ruin to expect from him, must be.impartial, and from their higher spiritual nature, was to be relied on. In the above history of the-cure of a demoniac, we have a case of the simplest kind; the cure of the possessed Gadarencs on the contrary (Matt. viii. 28 if.; Mark v. 1 ff. ; Luke via. 26 if.) is a very complex one, for in this instance we have, together with several divergencies of the evangelists, instead of one demon, many, and instead of a simple departure of these demons, their entrance into a herd of swine. After a stormy passage across the sea of Galilee to its eastern shore, Jesus meets, according to Mark and Luke, a demoniac who lived among the tombs,f and was subject to outbreaks of terrific fury against himself | and other,?; according to Matthew, there were two. It is astonishing how Ions harmonists have resorted to miserable expedients, such as that Mark and Luke mention only one because he was particularly distinguished by wildness, or Matthew two, because he included the attendant who guarded the maniac,§ rather than admit an essential difference between the two narratives. Since this step lias been gained, the preference has been given to the state- In spexe- 7. * Paulus. L. J, 1, a, . MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 467 meets u«. According to Matthew, the possessed, when they see Jesus, cry: What have we to do with theef Art thou come to torment us /-according to Luke, the demoniac falls at the teet ot Jesus and says beseechingly, Torment me not; and lastly, according to Mark, he runs from a distance to meet Jesus, falls at his feet and adjures him by God not to torment him. Thus we have again a climax: in Matthew, the demoniac, striken with terror, deprecates the unwelcome approach of Jesus ; in Luke, he accosts Jesus, when arrived, as a suppliant; in Mark, he eagerly runs to meet Jesus, while yet at a distance. Those commentators who here take Mark's narrative as the standard one, are obliged themselves to admit, that the hastening of a demoniac towards Jesus whom he all the while dreaded, is somewhat of a contradiction; and they endeavour to relieve themselves of the difficulty, by the supposition that the man set oft' to meet Jesus in a lucid moment, when he wished to be freed from the demon, but being heated by running,* or excited by the words of Jesus, f he fell into the paroxysm in which, assuming the character of the demon, he entreated that the expulsion might be suspended. But in the closely consecutive phrases of Mark, Seeing-he ran-and -icorshijrped-and cried--and said ISuv-'iSpatte-nal TrpoaeitvvTjae-nai, Kpd^ag-eiTre, there is no trace of a change in the state of the demoniac, and the improbability of his representation subsists, for one really possessed, if he had recognised the Messiah .at a distance, would have anxiously avoided, rather than have approached him ; and even setting this aside, it is impossible that one who believed himself to be possessed by a demon inimical to God, should adjure Jesus by God, as Mark makes the demoniac do.J If then his narrative cannot be the original one, that of Luke which is only so far the simpler that it docs not represent the demoniac as running towards Jesus and adjuring him, is too closely allied to it to be regarded as the nearest to the fact. That of Matthew is without doubt the purest, for the terror-stricken question, Art thou come to destroy us before the time ? is better suited to a demon, who, as the enemy of the Messiah's kingdom, could expect no forbearance from the Messiah, than the entreaty for clemency in Mark and Luke; though Philostratus, in a narrative which might be regarded as an imitation of this evangelical one, has chosen the latter form.§ From the course of the narratives hitherto, it would appear that the demons, in this as in the first narrative, addressed Jesus in the manner described, before anything occurred on his part; yet the two intermediate evangelists go on to state, that Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. When did Jesus do this? The most natural answer would be: before the * Katiirliche Gescliichtc, 2, 174, f Paulus, exeg. Ilanclb., 1, S. 473 ; Olshausen, 8, 301', | Tliis even Failing S. -174, and Olsliaus™, S.'iiO:-!, find surprising. § It is tha narrative of tins manner in which Apollonius of Tyana unmasked a demon reninusaX vitt 468 THE LIFE OF JESUS. man spoke to him. Now in Luke the address of the demoniac is so closely connected with the word -xpoa£-eaE, lie fell down, and then again with dvaKpd^ag, having cried out, that it seems necessary to place the command of Jesus before the cry and the prostration, and hence to consider it as their cause. Yet Luke himself rather gives the mere sight of Jesus as the caxi.se of those demonstrations on the part of the demoniac, so that his representation leaves us in perplexity as to where the command of Jesus should find its place. The case is still worse in Mark, for here a similar dependence of the successive phrases thrusts back the command of Jesus even before the word tdpape, ke ran, so that we should have to imagine rather strangely that Jesus cried to the demon, t-^eWe, Come out, from a distance. Thus the two intermediate evangelists are in an error with regard either to the consecutive particulars that precede the command or to the command itself, and our only question is, where may the error be most probably presumed to lie? Here Schleiermachcr himself admits, that if in the original narrative an antecedent command of Jesus had been spoken of, it would have been given in its proper place, before the prayer of the demons, and as a quotation of the precise words of Jesus; whereas the supplementary manner in which it is actually inserted, with its abbreviated and indirect form (in Luke; Mark changes it after his usual style, into a direct address), is a strong foundation for the opinion that it is an explanatory addition furnished by the narrator from his own conjecture.* And it is an extremely awkward addition, for it obliges the reader to recast his conception of the entire scene. At first the pith of the incident seems to be, that the demoniac had instantaneously recognised and supplicated Jesus ; but the narrator drops this original idea, and reflecting that the prayer of the demon must have been preceded by a severe command from Jesus, he corrects his previous omission, and remarks that Jesus had given his command in the first instance. To their mention of this command, Mark and Luke annex the question put by Jesus to the demon: What is thy name? In reply, a multitude of demons make known their presence, and give as their name, Legion. Of this episode Matthew has nothing. In the above addition we have found a supplementary explanation of the former part of the narrative: what if this question and answer were an anticipatory introduction to the sequel, and likewise the spontaneous production of the legend or the narrator1/ Let us examine the reasons that render it probable: the wish immediately expressed by the demons to enter the herd of swine, does not in Matthew pro-suppose a multitude of demons in cacii of the two * Tit. snp, S. 1-8. When, however, lie accounts fur this in. or.'cct supplement of Luke's by supposing that his informant, being engaged in the vessel, had remained behind, and thus had missed the commencement of ttie scene ^'ith tile demoniac, this is too l.>i,^n,-f,rl .in exercise of ingenuity, and pre-supposes th.! antiquated opinion, that tlieie \va3 " ' '-'.-•:........I'd,,, c,,,.t< wlueli MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 469 possessed, since we cannot know whether the Hebrews were not able to believe that even two demons only could possess a whole herd of swine: but a later writer might well think it requisite to make the number of the evil spirits equal the number of the swine. Now, what a herd is in relation to animals, an army or a division of an army is in relation to men, and superior beings, and as it was required to express a large division, nothing could more readily suggest itself than the Roman legion, which term in Matt. xxvi. b'A, is applied to angels, as here to demons. But without further considering this more precise estimate of the evangelists, we must pronounce it inconceivable that several demons had set up their habitation in one individual. _ For even if we had attained so fur as to conceive how one demon by a subjection of the human consciousness could possess himself of a human organization, imagination would still fail us to conceive that many personal demons could at once possess one man. For as possession means nothing else, than that the demon constitutes himself the subject of the consciousness, and as consciousness can in reality have but one focus, one central point: it is under every condition absolutely inconceivable that several demons should at the same time take possession of one man. Manifold possession could only exist in the sense of an alternation of possession by various demons, and not as here in that of a whole arinv of them dwellinir at once in one man, and at once departing ti O A O from him. All the narratives agree in this, that the demons (in order, as Mark says, not to be sent out of the country, or according to Luke, into the deep,) entreated of Jesus permission to enter into the herd of swine feeding near; that this was granted them by Jesus; and that forthwith, owing- to their influence, the whole herd of swine (Mark, we must not ask on what authority, fixes their number at about two thousand) were precipitated into the sea and drowned. If we adopt here the point of view taken in the gospel narratives, which throughout suppose the existence of real demons, it is yet to be asked : how can demons, admitting even that they can take possession of men,--how, we say, can they, being at all events intelligent spirits, have and obtain the wish to enter into brutal forms V Everv rcligion and philosophy which rejects the transmigration of souls, must, for the same reason, also deny the possibility of this passage ot the demons into swine: and Olshausen is quite right in classing the swine of Gadara in the New Testament with Balaam's ass in the, Old, as a similar scandal and stumbling block,'* This theologian, however, rather evades than overcomes the difficulty, by the observation, that we are here to suppose, not an entrance of the individual demons into the individual swine, but merely an influence ot all the evil spirits on the swine collectively. For the expression, eweMelv elg -ovy xolpovg, to enter into the swine, as it stands opposed to the expression, e&AJOeiv iic rov dvOpunov, to go out of the )/utn, 470 THE LIFE OF JESUS. •XI \J cannot possibly mean otherwise than that the demons were to assume the same relation to the swine which they had borne to the possessed man; besides, a mere influence could not preserve them from banishment oat of the country or into the deep, but only an actual habitation of the bodies of the animals: so that the scandal and stumbling block remain. Thus the prayer in question cannot possibly have been offered by real demons, though it might by Jewish maniacs, sharing the ideas of their people. According to these ideas it is a torment to evil spirits to be destitute of a corporeal envelopment, because without a body they cannot gratify their sensual desires ;* if therefore they were driven out of men they must wish to enter into the bodies of brutes, and what was better suited to an impure spirit TTvevfta dudOaprov^ than an impure animal £wov andOaprov, like a swine ?f So far, therefore, it is possible that the evangelists might correctly represent the fact, only, in accordance with their national ideas, ascribing to the demons what should rather have been referred to the madness of the patient. But when it is further said that the demons actually entered the swine, do not the evangelists affirm an evident impossibility ? Paulus thinks that the evangelists here as everywhere else identify the possessed men. with the possessing demons, and hence attribute to the latter the entrance into the swine, while in tact it was only the former, who, in obedience to their iixed idea, rushed upon the hcrd.f It is true that Matthew's expression anT\Wov et? TOVI; ^oipot'c, taken alone, might be understood of a mere rushing towards the swine; not only however, as Paulus himself must admit, docs the word eloe^Qov-eg in the two other evangelists distinctly imply a real entrance into the swine ; but also Matthew has like them before the word diri}X6ov, they entered, the expression K&XOovret; ol <5aiju.oi>£c, the demons coming out (sc. £K TWV dvOp&TTMv out of the men): thus plainly enough distinguishing the demons who entered the swine from the men. § Thus our evangelists do not in this instance merely relate what actually happened, in the colours which it took from the false lights of their age: they have here a particular, which cannot possibly have happened in the. manner they allege. A new difficulty arises from the effect which the demons are said to have produced in the swine. Scarcely had they entered them, when they compelled the whole herd to precipitate themselves into the sea. It is reasonably asked, what then did the demons gain by entering into the animals, if they immediately destroyed the bodies of which they had taken possession, and thus robbed themselves of the temporary abode for which they had so earnestly entreated ? || The conjecture, that the design of the demons in destroying the * Clem. Horn. ix. 10. f Fritzsche, in Matth. p. 322. According to Kisenmenger, 2, 447 IV., the Jews held that demons generally had a predileetion for impure places, and =- T»n,,,t 1;,,!,„„! f x 2. (Wetstein) we find this observation : Animt i'lolotru.rttM, qua " '-> <<«-• Winer, bibl. I'.ualw.. MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 471 swine was to incense the minds of their owners against Jesus, which is said to have been the actual result,* is too far-fetched; the other conjecture that the demoniacs, rushing with cries on the herd, together with the flight of their keepers, terrified the swine and chased them into the water, f-even if" it were not opposed as wejiave seen to the text,-would not suffice to explain the drowning of a herd of swine amounting to 2,000, according to Mark; or only a numerous herd, according to the general statement of Matthew. The expedient of supposing, that in truth it was only a part of the herd that was drowned,}: has not the slightest foundation in the evangelical narrative. The difficulties connected with this point are multiplied by the natural reflection that the drowning of the herd would involve O no slight injury to the owners, and that of this injury Jesus was the mediate author. The orthodox, bent on justifying Jesus, suppose that the permission to the demons to enter into the swine was necessary to render the cure of the demoniac possible, and, they argue, brutes are assuredly to be killed that man may live ;§ but they "do not perceive that they thus, in a manner most inconsistent with their point of view, circumscribe the power of Jesus over the demoniacal kingdom. Again, it is supposed, that the swine probably belonged to Jews, and that Jesus intended to punish them for their covetous transgression of the law, || that he acted with divine authority, which often sacrifices individual o;ood to higher objects, and bv liffhtninar, • 1 T ' 1 G, ° hail and inundations causes destruction to the property ol many men,T in which case, to accuse God of injustice would be absurd.** But to adopt this expedient is to confound, in a way the most inadmissible on the orthodox system, Christ's state of humiliation with his state of exaltation: it is to depart, in a spirit of mysticism, from the wise doctrine of Paul, that he was made under the law, yevo-[isvog v-b vofiov (Gal. iv. 4.), and that he made himself of no reputation eav-ov KK&VUOE (Phil. ii. 7): it is to make Jesus a being altogether foreign to us, since in relation to the moral estimate of his actions, it lifts him above the standard of humanity. Nothing remains therefore, but to take the naturalistic supposition of the rushing of the demoniacs among the swine, and to represent the consequent destruction of the latter, as something unexpected by Jesus, for which therefore he is not responsible :ft in the plainest contradiction to the evangelical account, which makes Jesus, even if not directly cause the issue, foresee it in the most decided manner.Jt Thus there appears to attach to Jesus the charge of an injury done to the property of another, and the opponents of Christianity have long ago made this use of the narrative. §§ It must be admitted that Pythagoras in a similar case acted far more justly, for when he lib- * Olshausen, S. 307. f Paulus, S. 474. { Paulus, S. 485 ; Winer, ut sup. % Olsliausen, ut sup. || Ibid. f Ullmann. tiber die Unsuudlichkeit Jesu, in seinen Studien, 1, ], S. ol f. it Paulas. Jf Ullmann. §§ E. g. AVoolston, Disc. I ** Olsliausen. ut sup. n. 32 ff. r 472 THE LIFE OF JESUS. crated some fish from the net, he indemnified the fishermen who had taken them.* Thus the narrative before us is a tissue of difficulties, of which those relating to the swine are not the slightest. It is no wonder therefore that commentators began to doubt the thorough historical truth of this anecdote earlier than that of most others in the public life of Jesus, and particularly to sever the connexion between the destruction of the swine and the expulsion of the demons by Jesus. Thus Krug thought that tradition had reversed the order of these two facts. The swine according to him were precipitated into the sea before the landing of Jesus, by the storm which rased durinar his O ' J O O voyage, and when Jesus subsequently wished to cure the demoniac, cither he himself or one of his followers persuaded the man that his demons were already gone into those swine and had hurled them into the sea; which was then believed and reported to be the fact.t K. Ch. L. Schmidt makes the swine-herds go to meet Jesus on his landing; during which interim many of the untended swine fall into the sea; and as about this time Jesus had commanded the demon to depart from the man, the bystanders imagine that the two events^ stood in the relation of cause and effect. The prominent part which is played in these endeavours at explanation, by the accidental coincidence of many circumstances, betrays that maladroit mixture of the. mythical system of interpretation with the natural which characterizes the earliest attempts, from the mythical point of view. Instead of inventing a natural foundation, for which we have nowhere any warrant, and which in no degree explains the actual narrative in the gospels, adorned as it is with the miraculous; we must rather ask, whether in the probable period of the formation of the evangelical narratives, there are not ideas to be found from which the story of the swine in the history before us might be explained ? We have already adduced one opinion of that age bearing on this point, namely, that demons are unwilling to remain without bodies, and that they have a predilection for impure places, whence the bodies of swine must be best suited to them: this does not however explain why they should have precipitated the swine into the water. But we are not destitute of information, that will throw light on this also. Joscphus tells us of a Jewish conjuror who cast out demons by forms and means derived from Solomon, that in order to convince the bystanders of the reality of his expulsions, he sat a vessel of water in the neighbourhood of the possessed person, so that the departing demon must throw it down and thus give ocular proof to the spectators that he was out of the man. § In like manner it is narrated of Appollonius of Tyana, that he commanded a demon which possessed a young man, to depart with a visible sign whereupon the demon entreated that he might overturn a statue "- «>•»- r,*. „** Pvthaa. no. 36, ed. Kiesslmg. f In the Abhandlung iiber Ge-•-•-->. M,,«0,,m. i. 3. s. 410 ff. MIRACLES OP JESUS-DEMONIACS. 473 that stood near at hand; which to the'great astonishment of the spectators actually ensued, in the very moment that the demon went out of the youth.* If then the agitation of some near object, without visible contact, was held the surest proof of the reality of an expulsion of demons: this proof could not be wanting to Jesus; nay, while in the case of Eleazar, the object being only a little (junpov} removed from the exerciser and the patient, the possibility of deception was not altogether excluded, Matthew notices in relation to Jesus, more emphatically than the two other evangelists, the fact that the herd of swine was feeding a good way off (juucpav), thus removing the last remnant of such a possibility. That the object to which Jesus applied this proof, was from the first said to be a herd of swine, immediately proceeded from the Jewish idea of the ralation between unclean spirits and animals, but it furnished a welcome opportunity for satisfying another tendency of the legend. Not only did it behove Jesus to cure ordinary demoniacs, such as the one in the history first considered: he must have succeeded in the most difficult cures of this kind. It is the evident object of the present narrative, from the very commencement, with its startling description of the fearful condition of the Gadarene, to represent the cure as one of extreme difficulty. But to make it more complicated, the possession must be, not simple, but manifold, as in the case of Mary Magdalene, out of wkom were cast seven demons (Luke viii. 2.), or in the demoniacal relapse in which the expelled demon returns with seven worse than himself (Matt. xii. 45); whence the number of the demons was here made, especially by Mark, to exceed by far the probable number of a herd. As in relation to an inanimate object, as a vessel of water or a statue, the influence of the expelled demons could not be more clearly manifested by any means, than by its falling over contrary to the law of gravity; so in animals it could not be more surely attested in any way, than by their drowning themselves contrary to their instinctive desire of life. Only by this derivation of our narrative from the confluence of various ideas and interests of the age, can we explain the above noticed contradiction, that the demons first petition for the bodies of the swine as a habitation, and immediately after of their own accord destroy this habitation. The petition grew, as we have said, out of the idea that demons shunned incorporeality, the destruction, out of the ordinary test of the reality of an exorcism;-what wonder if the combination of ideas so heterogeneous produced two contradictory features in the narrative ? The third and last circumstantially narrated expulsion of a demon has the peculiar feature, that in the first instance the disciples in vain attempt the cure, which Jesus then effects with ease. The three synoptists (Matt. xvii. 14 ff.; Mark ix. 14ff.; Lukeix. 37 ff.) unanimously state that Jesus, having descended with his three most confidential disciples from the Mount of the Transtip-m-ntinn frmn/I 476 THE LIFE OF JESUS. declaration is totally unsuitable, as we shall presently see; and if we are unwilling to content ourselves with ignorance of the occasion on which it was uttered, we must accept its connexion in Matthew as the original one, for it is perfectly appropriate to a failure of the disciples in an attempted cure. Mark has sought to make the scene more effective by other additions, "besides this episode with the father ; he tells us that the people ran together that they might observe what was passing, that after the expulsion of the demon the boy was as one dead, insomuch that many said, he is dead; but that Jesus, taking him by the hand, as lie does elsewhere with the dead (Matt. ix. 25), lifts him up and restores him to life. After the completion of the cure, Luke dismisses the narrative with a brief notice of the astonishment of the people ; but the two first synoptists pursue the subject by making the disciples, when alone with Jesus, ask him why they were not able to cast out the demon? In Matthew, the immediate reply of Jesus accounts for their incapability by their unbelief; but in Mark, his answer is, This kind (joeth not out but by prayer and fading, which Matthew also adds after the discourse on unbelief and the power of faith. This seems to be an unfortunate connexion of Matthew's; for if fasting and praying were necessary for the cure, the disciples, in case they had not previously fasted, could not have cast out the demon even if they had possessed the firmest faith.* Whether these two reasons given by Jesus for the inability of the disciples can be made consistent by the observation, that fasting and prayer are means of strengthening faith :\ or whether we are to suppose with Schleicr-macher an association of two originally unrelated passages, we will not here attempt to decide. That such a spiritual and corporeal discipline on the part of the exorcist should have effect on the possessed, has been held surprising: it has been thought with Porphyry, J that it would rather be to the purpose that the patient should observe this discipline, and hence it has been supposed that the ^po- *"••* «•:„„, i s 1f)1. S I'aulus, cxeg. Handb. 2, 8 MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 477 scribed discipline, gradually recovered. But we need only observe the same form of expression where it elsewhere occurs as the final sentence in narratives of cures, to be convinced of the impossibility of such an interpretation. When, for example, the story of the woman who had an issue of blood closes with the remark (Matt. ix. 22.) aal sawdrj f/ yvvfj dnb rfc upat; KKBIVT/^ this will hardly be translated, et exinde mulier paidatim servabatur : it can only mean : scrvata est (et servatam se prcefaiif) ab illo temporis momenta, Another point to which Paulus appeals as a proof that Jesus here commenced a cure which was to be consummated by degrees, is the expression of Luke, direduKev airbv -<3 -rrarpl avrov, he delivered him again to his father, which, he argues, would have been rather superfluous, if it were not intended to imply a recommendation to special care. But the more immediate signification of dnodidupt, is not to deliver or give up, but to give back; and therefore in the above expression the only sense is: puerum, quern sanandum accepcrat, sanatum reddidit, that is, the boy who had fallen into the hands of a strange power-of the demon-was restored to the parents as their own. Lastly, how arbitrary is it in Paulus to take the expression eimopeiieTai, ffoeth out, (Matt. v. 21) in the closer signification of a total departure, and to distinguish this from the preliminary departure which followed on the bare word of Jesus (v. 18)! Thus in this case, as in every other, the gospels present to us, not a cure which was protracted through days and weeks, but a cure which was instantaneously completed by one miracle: hence the fasting and prayer cannot be regarded as a prescription for the patient. With this whole history must be compared an analogous narrative in 2 Kings iv. 29 ff. Here the prophet Elisha attempts to bring a dead child to life, by sending his staff by the hands of his servant Gehazi, who is to lay it on the face of the child; but this measure does not succeed, and Elisha is obliged in his own person to come and call the boy to life. The same relation that exists in this Old Testament story between the prophet and his servant, is seen in the New Testament narrative between the Messiah and his disciples: the latter can do nothing without their master, but what was too difficult for them, he effects with certainty. Now this feature is a clue to the tendency of both narratives, namely, to exalt their master by exhibiting the distance between him and his most intimate disciples; or, if we compare the evangelical narrative before us with that of the demoniacs of Gadara, we may say: the latter case was made to appear one of extreme cllfiiculty in itself; the former, by the relation in which the power of Jesus, which is adequate to the occasion, is placed to the power of the disciples, which, however great in other instances, was here insufficient. Of the other more briefly narrated expulsions of demons, the cure of a dumb demoniac and of one who was blind also, has been already sufficiently examined in connexion with the accusation of a league with Beelzelmh- »* »i< +1,, 478 THE LIFE OF JESUS. down, ill our general considerations on the demoniacs. The cure of the possessed daughter of the Canaanitisli woman (Matt. xv. 22 ff.; Mark vii. 25 ft'.) has no further peculiarity than that it was wrouo'ht by the word of Jesus at a distance: a point of which we shall speak later. According to the evangelical narratives, the attempt of Jesus to expel the demon succeeded in every one of these cases. Paulus remarks that cures of this kind, although they contributed more than any thing else to impress the multitude with veneration for Jesus, were yet the easiest in themselves, and even I)e AVette sanctions a psychological explanation of the cures of demoniacs, though of no others.* With these opinions we cannot but agree ; for if we regard the real character of the demoniacal state as a species of madness accompanied by a convulsive tendency of the nervous system, we know that psychical and nervous disorders are most easily wrought upon by psychical influence;-an influence to which the surpassing dignity of Jesus as a prophet, and eventually even as the Messiah himself, presented all the requisite conditions. There is, however, a marked gradation among these states, according as the psychical derangement has more or less fixed itself corporeally, and the disturbance of the nervous system has become more or less habitual, and shared by the rest of the organization. AVe may therefore lay down the following rule: the more strictly the malady was confined to mental derangement, on which the word of Jesus might have an immediate moral influence, or in a comparatively slight disturbance of the nervous system, on which he would be able to act powerfully through the medium of the mind, the more possible was it for Jesus by his word Aoyw (Matt. via. 16.), and instantly irapaxp^a (Luke xiii. 13.), to put an end to such states: on the other hand, the more the malady had already confirmed itself, as a bodily disease, the. more difficult is it to believe that Jesus was able to relieve it in a purely psychological manner and at the first moment. From this rule results a second: namely, that to any extensive psychological influence on the part of Jesus the full recognition of his dignity as a prophet was requisite; whence it follows that at times and in. districts where he had long had that reputation, he could effect more in this way than where Tic had it not. If we apply these two measures to the cures in the gospels, we shall find that the first, viz. that of the demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, is not, so soon as we cease to consider the evangelist's narrative of it circumstantially correct, altogether destitute of probability. It is true that the words attributed to the demon seem to imply an intuitive knowledge of Jesus; but this may be probably accounted for by the supposition that the widely-spread fame of Jesus in that country, and his powerful discourse in the synagogue, had impressed the demoniac with the belief, if not that J esus ....." " «,a . T.. .T. 1. R. 9. 223; De Wiitte, bibl. Dogm. J MIKACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 479 was the Messiah, as the evangelists say, at least that he must be a prophet: a belief that would give effect to his words. As regards the state of this demoniac we are only told of his fixed idea, (that he was possessed,) and of his attacks of convulsions ; his malady may therefore have been of the. less rooted kind, and accessible to psychological influence. The cure of the Gadarcnes is attended with more difficulty in both points of view. Firstly, Jesus was comparatively little known on the eastern shore; and secondly, the state of these demoniacs is described as so violent and dcepseated a mania, that a word from Jesus could hardly suffice to put an end to it. Here therefore the natural explanation of Paulus will not suffice, and if we are to regard the narrative as having any foundation in fact, •we must suppose that the description of the demoniac's state, as well as other particulars, has been exaggerated by the legend. The same judgment must be passed in relation to the cure of the boy who was lunatic, since an epilepsy which had existed from infancy (Mark v. 21) and the attacks of which were so violent and regular, must be too deeply rooted in the system for the possibility of so rapid and purely psychological a cure to be credible. That even dumbness and a contraction of many years' duration, which we cannot with Paulus explain as a mere insane imagination that speech or an erect carriage was not permitted,*-that these afflictions should disappear at a word, no one who is not committed to dogmatical opinions can persuade himself! Lastly, least of all is it to be conceived, that even without the imposing influence of his presence, the miracle-worker could effect a cure at a distance, as Jesus is said to have done on the daughter of the Canaanitish woman. Thus in the nature of things there is nothing to prevent the admission, that Jesus cured many persons who suffered from supposed demoniacal insanity or nervous disorder, in a psychical manner, by the ascendency of his manner and words (if indeed Venturini f and Kaiser £ are not right in their conjecture, that patients of this class often believed themselves to be cured, when in fact the crisis only by their disorder had been broken by the influence of Jesus; and that the evangelists state them to have been cured because they learned nothing further of them, and thus know nothing of their probable relapse). But while granting the possibility of many cures, it is evident that in this field the legend has not been idle, but has confounded the easier cases, which alone could be cured psychologically with the most difficult and complicated, to which sn"h a treatment was totally inapplicable. § Is the refusal of a sign on the part of Jesus rcconcilcable with such a manifestation of power as we have above defined,-or must even such cures as can be explained psychologically, but which in his age must have seemed miracles, be ^ * Excg. Ilandb. in loc, f Xaturliche Goschichte, 2, S. 429. J Bill. Thcol. 1, oi 190, Q Among the transient disorders on which Jesus may have acted psychologically, we may perhaps mimbi'r thp fWoi-Af i>..to-'-.""*'.....••- '.......•-' ' ' ' '' ' 480 THE LIFE OF JESUS. denied in order to make that refusal comprehensible ? We will not here put this alternative otherwise than as a question. If in conclusion we cast a glance on the gospel of John, we find that is does not even mention demoniacs and their cure by Jesus. This omission lias not seldom been turned to the advantage of the apostle John, the alleged author, as indicating a superior degree of enlightenment.* If however this apostle did not believe in the reality of possession by devils, he must have had, as the author of the fourth gospel, according to the ordinary view of his relation to the synoptical writers, the strongest motives for rectifying their statements, and preventing the dissemination of what he held to be a false opinion, by setting the cures in question in a true light. But how could the apostle John arrive at the rejection of the opinion that the above diseases had their foundation in demoniacal possession ? According to Josephus it was at that period a popular Jewish opinion, from which a Jew of Palestine who, like John, did not visit a foreign land until late in life, would hardly be in a condition to liberate himself; it was, according to the nature of things and the synoptical accounts, the opinion of Jesus himself, John's adored master, irom whom the favourite disciple certainly would not be inclined to swerve even a hair's breadth. But if John shared with his cotemporarics and with Jesus himself the notion of real demoniacal possession, and if the cure of demoniacs formed the principal part, nay, perhaps the true foundation of the alleged miraculous powers of Jesus: how comes it that the apostle nevertheless makes no mention of them in his gospel? That he passed over them because the other evangelists had collected enough of such histories, is a supposition that ought by this time to be relinquished, since he repeats more than one history of a miracle which they had already given; and if it be said that he repeated these because they needed correction,-we have seen, in our examination of the cures of demoniacs, that in many, a reduction of them to their simple historical elements would be very much in place. There yet remains the supposition that, the histories of demoniacs being incredible or offensive to the cultivated Greeks of Asia Minor, among whom John is said to have written, he left them out of his gospel for the sake of accommodating himself to their ideas. But we must ask, covdd or should an apostle, out of mere accommodation to the refined ears of his auditors, withhold so essential a feature of the agency of Jesus? Certainly this silence, supposing the authenticity of the three first gospels, rather indicates an author who had not been an eye-witness of the ministry of Jesus; or, according to our view, at least one who had not at his command the original tradition of Palestine, but only a tradition modified by Hellenistic influence, in which the expulsions of demons, being less accordant with the higher culture of the Greeks, * It is so more or less by Eichhorn, in the allg. Biuliothek, 4, S. 435 ; Herder, von ".....- * ' ° •"«• '•>" WoftB. hiliL % MIRACLES OP JESUS-CUKES OF LEPERS. 481 •were either totally suppressed or kept so far in the background that they might have escaped the notice of the author of the gospel. T" § 94. CUKES OF LEPERS. AMONG the sufferers whom Jesus healed, the leprous play a prominent paft, as might have been anticipated from the tendency of the climate of Palestine to produce cutaneous disease. When, accord-. ing to the synoptical writers, Jesus directs the attention of the Baptist's messengers to the actual proofs which he had given of his Messiahship (Matt. ix. 5), he adduces, among these, the cleansing of lepers ; when, on the first mission of the disciples, he empowers them to perform all kinds of miracles, the cleansing of lepers is numbered among the first (Matt. x. 8.), and two cases of such cures are narrated to us ill detail. One of these cases is common to all the synoptical writers, but is placed by them in two different connexions: namely, by Matthew, immediately after the delivery of the sermon on the mount (viii. 1 ff.); .by the other evangelists, at some period, not precisely marked, at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee (Mark i. 40 ff.; Luke v. 12 if.). According to the narratives, a leper comes towards Jesus, and falling on his knees, entreats that he may be cleansed; this Jesus effects by a touch, and then directs the leper to present himself to the priest in obedience to the law, that he may be pronounced clean (Lev. xiv. 2 ff.). The state of the man is in Matthew and Mark described simply by the word Aerrpoc, a leper; but in Luke more strongly, by the words, 7rA?;p?/c AtTrpoc, full of leprosy. Paulus, indeed, regards the being thus replete with leprosy as a symptom that the patient was curable (the eruption and peeling of the leprosy on the entire skin being indicative of the healing crisis); and accordingly, that commentator represents the incident to himself in the following manner. The leper applied to Jesus in his character of Messiah for an opinion on his state, and, the result being favourable, for a declaration that he Avas clean (d #£/l«f, dvvaoai pe icaOapiaai), which might either spare him an application to the priest, or at all events give him a consolatory hope in making that application. Jesus expressing himself ready to make the desired examination, (0eAw,) stretched out his hand, in order to feel the patient, without allowing too near an approach while he was possibly still capable of communicating contagion; and after a careful examination, he expressed, as its result, the conviction that the patient was no longer in a contagious state (Kaeapia&7)Ti), whereupon quickly and easily (ei>0ea>c) the leprosy actually disappeared.* _ Here, in the first place, the supposition that the leper was precisely at the crisis of healing is foreign to the text, which in the 482 THE LIFE OF JESUS. two first evangelists speaks merely of leprosy, while the TrAj/p?;? AeTrpa? of the third can mean nothing else than the Old Testament expression s^os s"1'^, (Exod. iv. 6; Num. xii. 10; 2 Kings v. 27.), which, according to the connexion in every instance, signifies the worst stage of leprosy. That the word KaOapifav in the Hebraic and Hellenistic use of the Greek language, might also mean merely to pronounce clean is not to be denied, only it must retain the signification throughout the passage. But that after having narrated that Jesus had said, He thou clean, KuBapiodrjTi, Matthew should have added ita} evOeus inadaplaOrj K. r. X. in the sense that thus the sick man was actually pronounced clean by Jesus, is, from the absurd tautology such an interpretation would introduce, so inconceivable, that we must here, and consequently throughout the narrative, understand the word K.aQapl&a~ai of actual cleansing. It is sufficient to remind the reader of the expressions AeTrpoi naQa-pifrv-ai, the lepers are cleansed, (Matt. xi. 5,) and AeTT-poif nada-pi&re cleanse the lepers (Matt. x. 8.), where neither can the latter word signify merely to pronounce clean, nor can it have another meaning than in the narrative before us. But the point in which the natural interpretation the most plainly betrays its weakness, is the disjunction of 0eAo>, I will, from KaOapiadnrt,, be thou clean. Who can persuade himself that these words, united as they are in all the three narratives, were separated by a considerable pause- that 0eAw was spoken during or more properly before the manipulation, xaOapio6r]Ti after, when all the evangelists represent the two words as having been uttered by Jesus without separation, whilst he touched the leper? Surely, if the alleged-sense had been the original one, at least one of the evangelists, instead of the words, fi^a-o av-ov b 'Irjaovi; Aryw StAw, KaOapiaOrj-ri, Jesus touched him, saying, I will, be thou clean, would have substituted the more accurate expression 6 'I. diiEKpiva-o 6&M, nal di/jafiswf avrov el~e-jca6apiad3]ri.. Jesus answered, I will; and having touched him, said: be thou clean. But if KadapiaOvn was spoken in one breath with .0tAw, so that Jesus announces the cleansing simply as a result of his will without any intermediate examination, the former word cannot possibly signify a mere declaration of cleanness, to which a previous examination would be requisite, and it must signify an actual making clean. It follows, therefore, that the word aTTread/u in this connexion is not to be understood of an exploratory manipulation, but, as in all other narrativ.es of the same class, of a curative touch. In support of his natural explanation of this incident, Paulus appeals to the rule, that invariably the ordinary and regular is to be presupposed in a narrative where the contrary is not expressly indicated.* But this rule shares the ambiguity which is characteristic of the entire system of natural interpretation, since it leaves undecided what is ordinary and regular in. our estimation, and what MIRACLES OF JESUS-CURES OF LEPEHS. 483 was so in the ideas of the author whose writings are to be explained. Certainly, if I have a Gibbon before me, I must in his narratives presuppose only natural causes and occurrences when he Joes not expressly convey the contrary, because to a writer of his cultivation, the supernatural is at the utmost only conceivable as a rare exception. But the case is altered when I take up an Herodotus, in whose mode of thought the intervention of higher powers is by no means unusual and out of rule; and when I am considering a collection of anecdotes which are the product of Jewish soil, and the object of which is to represent an individual as a prophet of the highest rank-as a man in the most intimate connexion with the Deity, to meet with the supernatural is so completely a thing of course, that the rule of the rationalists must here be reversed, and we must say: where, in such narratives, importance is attached to results which, regarded as natural, would have no importance whatever,-there, supernatural causes must be expressly excluded, if we are not to presuppose it the opinion of the narrator that such causes were in action. Moreover, in the history before us, the extraordinary character of the incident is sufficiently indicated by the statement, that the leprosy left the patient immediately on the word of Jesus. Paulus, it is true, contrives, as we have already observed, to interpret this statement as implying a gradual, natural healing, on the ground that svOeu^, the word by which the evangelists determine the time of the cure, signifies, according to the different connexions in which it may occur, in one case im.mediately, in another merely soon, and unobstructedly. Granting this, are we to understand the words eiiBsuq efe/3aAev avrbv, which follow in close connexion in Mark (v. 43), as signifying that soon and without hindrance Jesus sent the cleansed leper away ? Or is the word to be taken in a different sense in two consecutive verses ? We conclude, then, that in the intention of the evangelical writers the instantaneous disappearance of the leprosy in consequence of the word and touch of Jesus, is the fact on which their narratives turn. Now to represent the possibility of this to one's self is quite another task than to imagine the instantaneous release of a man under the grasp of a fixed idea, or a permanently invigorating impression on a nervous patient. Leprosy, from the thorough derangement of the animal fluids of which it is the symptom, is the most obstinate and malignant of cutaneous diseases;. and that a skin corroded by this malady should by a word and touch instantly become pure and healthy, is, from its involving the immediate effectuation of what would require a long course of treatment, so inconceivable,* that every one who is free from certain prejudices (as the critic ought^always to be) must involuntarily be reminded by it of the realm of fable. And in the fabulous region of oriental and more particularly of Jewish legend, the sudden appearance and disappearance of leprosy presents itself the first thing. When Jehovah 484 THE LIFE OF JESUS. endowed Hoses, as a preparation for his mission into Egypt, with the power of working all kinds of signs, amongst other tokens of this gift lie commanded him to put his hand into his bosom, and when he drew it out again, it was covered with leprosy; again he was commanded to put it into his bosom, and on drawing it out a second time it was once more clean (Exod. iv. 6, 7.). Subsequently, on account of an attempt at rebellion against Moses, his sister Miriam was suddenly stricken with leprosy, but on the intercession of Moses was soon healed (Num. xii. 10 fF.). Above all, among the miracles of the prophet Elisha the cure of a leper plays an important part, and to this event Jesus himself refers (Luke iv. 27.). The Syrian General Naaman, who suffered from leprosy, applied to the Israelitish prophet for his aid ; the latter sent to him the direction to wash seven times in the river Jordan, and on Naaman's observance of this prescription the leprosy actually disappeared, but was subsequently transferred by the prophet to his deceitful servant Gehazi (2 Kings v.). I know not what we ought to need beyond these Old Testament narratives to account for the origin of the evangelical anecdotes. What the first Goel was empowered to do in the fulfilment of Jehovah's commission, the second Goel must also be able to perform, and the greatest of prophets must not fall short of the achievements of any one prophet. If then, the cure of leprosy was without doubt included in the Jewish idea of the Messiah; the Christians, who believed the Messiah to have really appeared in the person of Jesus, had a yet more decided inducement to glorify his history by such traits, taken from the mosaic and prophetic legend ; with the single difference that, in accordance with the mild spirit of the New Covenant (Luke ix. 55 f.) they dropped the punitive side of the old miracles. Somewhat more plausible is the appeal of the rationalists to the absence of an express statement, that a miraculous cure of the leprosy is intended in the narrative of the ten lepers, given by Luke alone (xvii. 12 ff.). Here neither do the lepers expressly desire to be cured, their words being only, Have mercy on us,' nor does Jesus utter a command directly referring to such a result, for he merely enjoins them to show themselves to the priests: and the rationalists avail themselves of this indirectness in his reply, as a help to their supposition, that Jesus, after ascertaining the state of the patients, encouraged them to subject themselves to the examination ot the priests, which resulted in their being pronounced clean, and the Samaritan returning to thank Jesus for his encouraging advice.* But mere advice docs not call forth so ardent a demonstration of gratitude as is here decribcd by the \vords l-neaev t-~i Trpoffw-oi', he fell down on his face; still less could Jesus desire that because his advice had had a favourable issue, all the ten should have returned, and returned to glorify God-for what? that he had enabled Jesus to a-ivc them such good advice ? No : a more real service is here prc- MIUACLES OF JESUS-CURES OF LEPERS. 485 supposed; and this the narrative itself implies, both in attributing the return of the Samaritan to his discovery that lie was healed lldav on IdOif), and in makin<^Jesus indicate the reason why thanks were to be expected from alf^Ty the words : ov%l ol 6&K,a eKaOapia-Orjaav • Were there not ten cleansed? Both these expressions can only bv an extremely forced interpretation be made to imply, that because the lepers saw the correctness of the judgment of Jesus in pronouncing them clean, one of them actually returned to thank him, and the others ought to have returned. But that which is most decisive against the natural explanation is this sentence: And as they went the>/ were cleansed, «' ™ vndyeiv avrovc; iicaOapiaOrjaav. If the narrator intended, according to the above interpretation, merely, to say: the lepers having gone to the priest, and showed themselves to him, were pronounced clean ; he must at least have said: iropev-dfvTeg kKaQapiaOnaav, having made the journey, they were cleansed, whereas the deliberate choice of the expression ev TW vrrdyeiv (while in the act of going], incontestably shows that a healing effected during the journey is intended. Thus here also we have a miraculous cure of leprosy, which is burdened with the same difficulties as the former anecdote; the origin of which is, however, as easily explained. But in this narrative there is a peculiarity which distinguishes it from the former. Here there is no simple cure, nay, the cure does not properly form the main object of the narrative: this lies rather in the different conduct of the cured, and the question of Jesus, were there not ten cleansed, &c., (v. 17.) forms the point of the whole, which thus closes altogether morally, and seems to have been narrated for the sake of the instruction conveyed.* That the one who appears as a model of thankfulness happens to be a Samaritan, cannot pass without remark in the narrative of the evangelist who alone has the parable of the Good Samaritan. As there two Jews, a priest and a Lcvite, show themselves pitiless, while a Samaritan, on the contrary, proves cxemplarily compassionate: so here, nine unthankful Jews stand contrasted with one thankful Samaritan. May it not be then (in so far as the sudden cure of these lepers cannot be historical) that we have here, as well as there, a parable pronounced by Jesus, in which he intended to represent gratitude, as m the other case compassion, in the example of a Samaritan ? It would then be with the present narrative as some have maintained it to be with the history of the temptation. But in relation to this we hayc both shown, and given the reason, that Jesus never made himself immediately figure in a parable, and this he must have done if e "<''" S1V™ a narrative of ten lepers once healed by him. If then we are not inclined to relinquish the idea that something originally parabolie is the germ of our present narrative, we must represent 'lie case to ourselves thus : from the legends of cures performed by Jesus on lepers, on the one hand; and'on the other, from parables 111 which Jesus (as in that of the commssionntp Snms,,-;t,,r,\ v,™,,™^ 486 THE LIFE OP JESUS. individuals of this hated race as models of various virtues, the Christian legend wove this narrative, which is therefore partly an account of a miracle and partly a parable. § 95. CUKES OF THE BLIND. ONE of the first places among the sufferers cured by Jesus is filled (also agreeably to the nature of the climate)* by the blind, of whose cure again we read not only in the general descriptions which are given by the evangelists (Matt. xv. oO f.; Luke vii. 21.), and by Jesus himself (Matt. xi. 5.), of his messianic works, but also in some detailed narratives of particular cases. We have indeed inore. of these cures than of the kind last noticed, doubtless because blindness, as a malady affecting the most delicate and complicated of organs, admitted a greater diversity of treatment. One of these cures of the blind is common to all the synoptical Avriters; the others (with the exception of the blind and dumb demoniac in Matthew, whom we need not here reconsider) are respectively peculiar to the first, second, and fourth evangelists. The narrative common to all the three synoptical writers is that of a cure of blindness wrought by Jesus at Jericho, on his last journey to Jerusalem (Matt. xx. 2i). parall.): but there are important differences both as to the object of the cure, Matthew having two blind men, the two other evangelists only one; and also as to its locality, Luke making it take place on the entrance of Jesus into Jericho, Matthew and Mark on his departure out of Jericho. Moreover the touching of the eyes, by which, according to the first evangelist, Jesus effected the cure, is not mentioned by the two other narrators. Of these differences the latter may be explained by the observation, that though Mark and Luke are silent as to the touching, they do not therefore deny it: the first, relative to the number cured, presents a heavier difficulty. To remove this it has been said by those who give the prior authority to Matthew, that one of the two blind men was possibly more remarkable than the other, on which account he alone was retained in the first tradition; but Matthew, as an eye-witness, afterwards supplied the second blind man. On this supposition Luke and Mark do not contradict Matthew, for they nowhere deny that another besides their single blind man was healed; neither does Matthew contradict them, for where there are two, there is also one.j But when the simple narrator speaks of one individual in whom something extraordinary has happened, and even, like Mark, mentions his name, it is plain that he tacitly contradicts the statement that it happened in two individuals-to contradict it expressly there was no occasion. Let us turn then to the other side and, taking the singular number of Mark and Luke as the orie-inal one, conjecture that the informant of Matthew (the latter MIRACLES OP JESUS-CURES OF THE BLIND. 487 beino- scarcely on this hypothesis an eye-witness) probably mistook the blind man's guide foijjtsecond blind man.* Hereby a decided contradiction is admitted, while to account for it an extremely improbable cause is superfluously invented. The third difference relates to the place; Matthew and Mark have iKiropevopevav dnb, as they departed from, Luke, kv ™ eyyigeiv «'$• 'lept^w, as they came nigh to Jericho. If there be any whom the words themselves fail to convince that this difference is irreconcileable, let them read the forced attempts to render these passages consistent with each other which have been made by commentators from Grotius down to Paulus. Hence it was a better expedient -which the older harmonists! adopted, and which has been approved by some modern critics.J In consideration of the last-named difference, they here distinguished two events, and held that Jesus cured a blind man first on his entrance into Jericho (according to Luke), and then again on his departure from that place (according to Matthew and Luke). Of the other divergency, relative to the number, these harmonists believed that they had disencumbered themselves by the supposition that Matthew connected in one event the two blind men, the one cured on entering and the other on leaving Jericho, and gave the latter position to the cure of both. But if so much weight is allowed to the statement of Matthew relative to the locality of the cure, as to make it, in conjunction with that of Mark, a reason for supposing two cures, one at each extremity of the town, I know not why equal credit should not be given to his numerical statement, and Storr appears to me to proceed more consistently when, allowing equal weight to both differences, he supposes that Jesus on his entrance into Jericho, cured one blind man (Luke) and subsequently on his departure, two (Matthew). § The claim of Matthew is thus fully vindicated, but on the other hand that of Mark is denied. For if the latter be associated with Matthew, as is here the case, for the sake of his locality, it is necessary to do violence to his numerical statement, which taken alone would rather require him to be associated with Luke; so that to avoid impeaching either of his statements, which on this system of interpretation is not admissible, his narrative must be equally detached from that of both the other evangelists. Thus we should have three distinct cures of the blind at Jericho: 1st, the cure of one blind man on the entrance of Jesus, -nd, that of another on his departure, and 3rd, the cure of two blind men, also during the departure; in all, of four blind men. Now to separate the' second and third cases is indeed difficult. For it will not be maintained that Jesus can have gone out by two different gates at the same time, and it is nearly as difficult to imagine that having merely set out with the intention of leaving Jericho, he re- . * Paulus> exeg. Handb. 3, a, S. 44. f Schulz, Anmerkungen zu Michaelis, 2, S. *"•'• t Sieffert. ut sun S inj. a TT-I-- j- ™ - • -• - - - 488 THE LIFE OP JESUS. turned again into the town, and not until afterwards took his final departure. But, viewing the case more generally, it is scarcely an admissible supposition, that three incidents so entirely similar thus fell together in a group. The accumulation of cures of the blind ia enough to surprise us; but the behaviour of the companions of Jesus is incomprehensible ; for after having seen in the first instance, on entering Jericho, that they had acted in opposition to the designs of Jesus by rebuking the blind man for his importunity, since Jesus called the man to him, they nevertheless repeated this conduct on the second and even on the third occasion. Storr, it is true, is not disconcerted by this repetition in at least two incidents of this kind, for he maintains that no one knows whether those who had enjoined silence on going out of Jericho were not altogether different, persons from those who had done the like on entering the town: indeed, supposing them to be the same, such a repetition of conduct which Jesus had implicitly disapproved, however unbecoming, was not therefore impossible, since even the disciples who had been present at the first, miraculous feeding, yet asked, before the second, whence bread could be had for such a multitude ?-but this is merely to argue the reality of one impossibility from that of another, as we shall presently see when we enter on the consideration of the two miraculous feedings. Further, not only the conduct of the followers of Jesus, but also almost every feature of the incident must have been repeated in the most extraordinary manner. In the one case as in the other, the blind men cry, Have mercy upon us, (or me,) t/t,ou son of David ; then (after silence has been enjoined on them by the spectators) Jesus commands that they should be brought to him : he next asks what they will that he should do to them ; they answer, that we may receive our sight; he complies with their wish, and they gratefully follow him. That all this was so exactly repeated thrice, or even twice, is an improbability amounting to an impossibility; and we must suppose, according to the hypothesis adopted by Sieflfert in such cases, a legendary assimilation of different facts, or a traditionary variation of a single occurrence. If, in order to arrive at a decision, it be asked: what could more easily happen, when once the intervention of the legend is presupposed, than that one and the same history should be told first of one, then of several, first of the entrance, then of the departure? it will not be necessary to discuss the other possibility, since this is so incomparably more probable that there cannot be even a momentary hesitation in embracing it as real. But in thus reducing the number of the facts, we must not with Sieffert stop short at two, for in that case not only do the difficulties with respect to the repetition of the same incident remain, but we fall into a want of logical sequency in admitting one divergency (in the number) as unessential, for the sake of removing another (in the locality). If it be further asked, supposing only one •---•.i-..A *„ ;,„ !,„,.„ T^vrntrvl. which of the several narratives is the MIRACLES OF JESUS--CURES OF THE BLIND. 489 comin0' to a decision; for Jesus might just as well meet a blind man on enterin0' as on leaving Jericho. The difference in the number is more likely to furnish us with a basis for a decision, and it will be in favour of Mark and Luke, who have each only one blind man ; not, it is true, for the reason alleged by Schleiermacher,* namely, that Mark by his mention of the blind man's name, evinces a more accurate acquaintance with the circumstances : for Mark, from his propensity to individualize out of his own imagination, ought least of all to be trusted with respect to names which are given by him alone. Our decision is. founded on another circumstance. It seems probable that Matthew was led to add a second blind man by his recollection of a previous cure of two blind men narrated by him alone (ix. ?7 ff.). Here, likewise when Jesus is in the act of departure,-from the place, namely, where he had raised the ruler's daughter,-two blind men follow him, (those at Jericho arc sitting by the way side,) and in a similar manner cry for mercy of the Son of David, who here also, as in the other instance, according to Matthew, immediately cures them by touching their eyes. With these similarities there are certainly no slight divergencies; nothing is here said of an injunction to the blind men to be silent, on the part of the companions of Jesus; and, while at Jericho Jesus immediately calls the blind men to him, in the earlier case, they come in the first instance to him when he is again in the house; further, while there he asks them, what they will have him to do to them ? here he asks, if they believe him able to cure them ? Lastly, the prohibition to tell what had happened, is peculiar to the earlier incident. The two narratives standing in this relation to each other, an assimilation of them might have taken place thus: Matthew transferred the two blind men and the touch of Jesus from the first anecdote to the second ; the form of the appeal from the blind men, from the second to the first. The two histories, as they arc given, present but few data for a natural explanation. Nevertheless the rationalistic commentators have endeavoured to frame such an explanation. When Jesus in the earlier occurrence asked the blind men whether they had confidence _in his power, he wished, say they, to ascertain whether their trust m him would remain firm during the operation, and whether they would punctually observe his further prescriution :t h.ivino- tlmn fntrn.^/l J.T- I - 1 eordinc, toVentnr n"+ T "'"' ll", louncl li curable, ac- ^ assured the , ff+ W;T CaTd b7 tbe fme dust of tllat ^unt y,) «>easue o eilfSr I'"' ^ ^ 8honld be acc°rdi»S to the Jesus removed t1 i fIIereuP°n Panlus merely savs briefly, that ]'^eima™ue?to 7 On1t° ^ vision' but lle als~* detail WbV«toiirf STtllT1S Slmilar t0 what is dcscribed * 7 Ventmmi, who makes Jesus anoint the eyes of the blind * Ut snn S OOT . „ - _ 490 THE LIFE OF JESUS. men with a strong water prepared beforehand, and thus cleanse them from the irritating dust, so that in a short time their sight returned. But this natural explanation has not the slightest root in the text; for neither can the faith (TTICTT(C) required from the patient imply anything else than, as in all similar cases, trust in the miraculous power of Jesus, nor can the word TJT/XITO he touched, signify a surgical operation, but merely that touch which appears in so many of the evangelical curative miracles, whether as a sign or a conductor of the healing power of Jesus ; of further prescriptions for the completion of the cure there is absolutely nothing. It is not otherwise with the cure of the blind at Jericho, where, moreover, the two middle evangelists do not even mention the touching of the eyes. If then, according to the meaning of the narrators, the blind instantaneously receive their sight as a consequence of the simple word or touch of Jesus, there are the same difficulties to be encountered here as in the former case of the lepers. For a disease of the eyes, however slight, as it is only engendered gradually by the reiterated action of the disturbing cause, is still less likely to disappear on a word or a touch; it requires very complicated treatment, partly surgical, partly medical, and this must be pre-eminently the case with blindness, supposing it to be of a curable kind. How should we represent to ourselves the sudden restoration of vision to a blind eye by a word or a touch ? as purely miraculous and magical ? That would be to give up thinking on the subject. As magnetic ? There is no precedent of magnetism having influence over a disease of this nature. Or, lastly, as psychical ? But blindness is something so independent of the mental life, so entirely corporeal, that the idea of its removal at all, still less of its sudden removal by means of a mental operation is not to be entertained. We must therefore acknowledge that an historical conception of these narratives is more than merely difficult to us: and we proceed to inquire whether we cannot show it to be probable that legends of this kind should arise un- historically. We have already quoted the passage in which, according to the •first and third gospels, Jesus in reply to the messengers of the Baptist who had to ask him whether he were the t-p^ofievoc, (he that should come,} appeals to his works. Now he here mentions in the •very first place the cure of the blind, a significant proof that this particular miracle was expected from the Messiah, his words being-taken from Is. xxxv. 5, a prophecy interpreted messianically; and in a rabbinical passage above cited, among the wonders which Jehovah is to perform in the messianic times, this is enumerated, that he oculos ccecorum aperiet, id quod per Elisam fecit* Now Elisha did not cure a positive blindness, but merely on one occasion opened the eyes of his servant to a perception of the superscnsual world, and on another, removed a blindness which had been inflicted on his /n -v-.^r, ,.; -i 7-20V That MIKACLES OF JESUS--CUBES OF THE BLIND. 491 these deeds of Elisha were conceived, doubtless with reference to the passage of Isaiah, as a real opening of the eyes of the blind, is proved by the above rabbinical passage, and hence cures of the blind were expected from the Messiah.* Now if the Christian community, proceeding as it did from the bosom of Judaism, held Jesus to be the messianic personage, it must manifest the tendency to ascribe to him every messianic predicate, and therefore the one in question. The narrative of the cure of a blind man at Bethsaida, and that of the cure of a man th-at was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, which are both peculiar to Mark, (viii. 22 ff.; vii. 32 ff.), and which we shall therefore consider together, are the especial favourites of all rationalistic commentators. If, they exclaim, in the other evangelical narrative of cures, the accessory circumstances by which the facts might be explained were but preserved as they are here, we could prove historically that Jesus did not heal by his mere word, arid profound investigators might discover the natural means by which his cures were effected If And in fact chiefly on the ground of these narratives, in connexion with particular features in other parts of the second gospel, Mark has of late been represented, even by theologians who do not greatly favour this method of interpretation, as the patron of the naturalistic system.f In the two cures before us, it is at once a good augury for the rationalistic commentators that Jesus takes both the patients apart from the multitude, for no other purpose, as they believe, than that of examining their condition medically, and ascertaining whether it were susceptible of relief. Such an examination is, according to these commentators, intimated by the evangelist himself, when he describes Jesus as putting his fingers into the ears of the deaf man, by which means he discovered that the deafness was curable, arising probably from the hardening of secretions in the ear, and hereupon, also with the finger, he removed the hindrance to hearing. Not only are the words, he puts hisjingers into his ears, t!/3a/ls rovg dciK-vkovg ejcra wra, interpreted as denoting a surgical operation, but the words, he touched his tongue r^aro rrjg yAwaajj?, arc supposed to imply that 492 THE LIFE OF JESUS. Jesus cut the ligament of tlic tongue in the degree necessary to restore the pliancy which the organ had lost. In like manner, in the case of the blind man, the words, when lie Jiadput his hands upon M?n, emBels rug xelpa<; avru, are explained as probably meaning that Jesus by pressing the eyes of .the patient removed the crytallinc lens which had become opaque. A further help to this mode of interpretation is found in the circumstance that both to the tongue of the man who had an impediment in his speech, and to the eyes of the blind man, Jesus applied spittle. Saliva has in itself, particularly in the opinion of ancient physicians,* a salutary effect on the eyes: as, however, it in no case acts so rapidly as instantaneously to cure blindness and a defect in the organs of speech, it is conjectured, with respect to both instances, that Jesus used the saliva to moisten some medicament, probably a caustic powder; that the blind man only heard the spitting and saw nothing of the mixture of the medicaments, and that the deaf man, in accordance with the spirit of the age, gave little heed to the natural means, or that the legend did not preserve them. In the narrative of the deaf man the cure is simply stated, but that of the blind man is yet further distinguished, by its representing the restoration of lus sight circumstantially, as gradual. After Jesus had touched the eyes of the patient as above mentioned, lie asked him if he saw auyht; not at, all, observes Paulus, in the manner of a miracle-worker, who is sure of the result, but precisely in the manner of a physician, who after performing an operation endeavours to ascertain if the patient is benefited. The blind man answers that he sees, but first indistinctly, so that men seem to him like trees. Here apparently the rationalistic commentator may triumphantly ask the orthodox one : if divine power for the working of cures stood at the command of Jesus, why did he not at once cure the blind man perfectly? If the disease presented an obstacle which he was not able to overcome, is it not clear from thence that his power was a finite, ordinarily human power'? Jesus once more puts his hands on the eyes of the blind man, in order to aid the effect of the first operation, and only then is the cure completed.t The complacency of the rationalistic commentators in these narratives of Hark is liable to be disturbed by the frigid observation, that, here also, the circumstances which are requisite to render the natural explanation possible are not given by the evangelists themselves, but are interpolated by the said commentators. For in both-cures Mark furnishes the saliva only; the efficacious powder is infused by Paulus and Ycnturini: it is they alone who make the introduction of the fingers into the ears first a medical examination and then an operation; and it is they alone who, con-traryto the signification of language, explain the words «7rmOt'ra< raq * Hilly, II. X. xxviii., 7, and other passages in Wetstein. t Taulus. ut sup. .. „.„ „ ,,„„ ,v x'.,n-,.ii,.i,,, r,i>s<-liiclitt', a, S. ijl ft". 210 f.; Kiistcr, Iimuamid, S. MIRACLES OP JESUS-CUKES OF THE BUND. 493 %elpaf i~l Tovg 6- more is to be said, than that by this example we may see how completely the spirit of natural explanation despises all retraints, not scrupling to pervert the clearest words of the text in support of its arbitrary combinations. Further, when, from the circumstance that Jesus ordered the blind man to go to the pool of Siloam, it is inferred that he must have had a share of light, we may remark, in opposition to this, that Jesus merely told the patient whither he should go (vTrdyeiv)- hoio he was to go, whether alone or with a guide, he left to his own discretion. Lastly, when the closely connected words he went his way, therefore, and washed and came seeing, dnfjWsv ovv KUI evi-ipa-o nal TjXQe flkenuv (v. 7; comp. v. 11) are stretched out into a process of cure lasting several weeks, it is just as if the words, veni, vidi, vici were translated thus : After my arrival I reconnoitred for several days, fought battles at suitable intervals, and finally remained conqueror. Thus here also the natural explanation will not serve us, and we have still before us the narrative of a man born blind, miraculously cured by Jesus. That the doubts already expressed as to the reality of the cures of the blind, apply with increased force to the case of a man born blind, is self-evident. And they are aided in this instance by certain special critical reasons. Not one of the three first evangelists mentions this cure. Now, if in the formation of the apostolic tradition, and in the selection which it made from among the miracles of Jesus, any kind of reason was exercised, it must have taken the shape of the two following rules: first, to choose the greater miracles before those apparently less important; and secondly, those with which edifying discourses were connected, before those which were not thus distinguished. In the first respect, it is plain that the cure of a man blind from his birth, as the incomparably more difficult miracle, was by all means to be chosen rather than that of a man in whom blindness had supervened, and it is not to be conceived why, if Jesus really gave sight to a man born blind, nothing of this should have entered into the evangelical tradition, and from thence into the synoptical gospels. It is true that with this consideration of the magnitude of the miracles, a regard to the edifying nature of the discourses connected with them might not seldom come into collision, so that a less striking, but from the conversations which it caused, a more instructive miracle, might be preferred to one more striking, but presenting loss of the latter kind of interest. Jiut the cure of the blind man in John is accompanied by very remarkable conversations, first, of Jesus with the disciples, then, of tne cured man with the magistrates, and lastly of Jesus with the tTl ,"lan' suc'1 as tuerc is no trace °f m tlie synoptical cures of ,. "*lnd; conversations in which, if not the entire course of the 498 THE LIFE OF JESUS. rably suited to tlie purpose of the three first evangelists. These writers therefore, could not have failed to introduce the euro of the man bom "blind into their histories, instead of their less remarkable and less edifying cures of the blind, if the former had made a part of the evangelical tradition whence thev drew. It might possibly o »/ o fi-t «/ have remained unknown to the general Christian tradition, if it had taken place at a time and under circumstances which did not favour its promulgation-if it had been effected in a remote corner of the country, without further witnesses. But Jesus performed this miracle in Jerusalem, in the circle of his disciples ; it made a great sensation in the city, and was highly offensive to the magistracy, hence the affair must have been known if it had really occurred; and as we do not find it in the common evangelical tradition, the suspicion arises that it perhaps never did occur. But it will be said, the writer who attests it is the apostle John. This, however, is too improbable, not only on account of the incredible nature of the contents of the narrative, which could thus hardly have proceeded from an eye-witness, but also from another reason. The narrator interprets the name of the pool, Siloam, by the Greek direaTatyeros (v. 7); a false explanation, for one who is sent, is called iW'3, whereas ftVj according to the most probable interpretation signifies a waterfall.* The evangelist, however, chose the above interpretation, because he sought for some significant relation between the name of the pool, and the sending thither of the blind man, and thus seems to have imagined that the pool had by a special providence received the name of /Sent, because at a future time the Messiah, as a manifestation of his glory, was to send thither a blind man.t Now, we grant that an apostle might give a grammatically incorrect explanation, in so far as he is not held to be inspired, and that even a native of Palestine might mistake the etymology of Hebrew words, as the Old Testament itself shows; nevertheless, such a play upon words looks more lik&jiie laboured attempt of a writer remote from the event, than of an eyewitness. The eye-witness would have had enough of important matters in the miracle which he had beheld, and the conversation to which lie had listened; only a remote narrator could fall into the triviality of trying to extort a significant meaning from the smallest •/ v O O » i IT accessory circumstance. Tholuck and Lticke are highly revolted by this allegory, which, as the latter expresses himself, approaches to absolute folly, hence they arc unwilling to admit that it proceeded from John, and regard it as a gloss. As, however, all critical authorities, except one of minor importance, present this particular, such a position is sheer arbitrariness, and the only choice left us is either, with Olshausen, to edify ourselves by this interpretation as an apostolic one,J or, with the author of the 1'roU.bilia, to number * Vid. Paulus and Lilcke, in loc. f Thus Euthymius and Faulus, in loc. J B. Conun. ** '- *•- **.......t+4rtlir of th(> snirit pvoceed- MIEACLES OF JESUS-CURES OF PARALYTICS. 499 it among the indications that the fourth gospel had not an apostolic origin.* The reasons ...which might prevent the author of the fourth gospel, or the tradition whence he drew, from resting contended with the cures of the blind narrated by the synoptical writers, and thus induce the one or the other to frame the history before us, are already pointed out by the foregoing remarks. The observation has been already made by others, that the fourth evangelist has fewer miracles than the synoptical writers, but that this deficiency in number is compensated by a superiority in magnitude.! Thus while the other evangelists have -simple paralytics cured by Jesus, the fourth gospel has one who had been lame thirty-eight years; while, in the former, Jesus resuscitates persons who had just expired, in the latter, he calls back to life one who had lain in the grave four days, in whom therefore it might be presumed that decomposition had begun; and so here, instead of a cure of simple blindness, we have that of a man born blind,-a heightening of the ' ' O O miracle altogether suited to the apologetic and dogmatic tendency of this gospel. In what way the author, or the particular tradition which he followed, might be led to depict the various details of the narrative, is easily seen. ' The act of spitting, irrveiv, was common in magical cures of the eyes; clay, 7n?Abc, was a ready substitute for an eyc-salvc, and elsewhere occurs in magical proceedings ;£ the command to wash in the pool of Siloam may have been an imitation of Elislia's order, that the leper Naaman should bathe seven times in the river Jordan. The conversations connected with the cure partly proceed from the tendency of the gospel of John already remarked by Storr, namely, to attest and to render as authentic as possible both the cure of the man, and the fact of his having been bom blind, whence the repeated examination of the cured man, and even of his parents; partly they turn upon the symbolical meaning of the expressions, Uind and seeing, day and night,-a meaning which it is true is not foreign to the synoptical writers, but which specifically belongs to the circle of images in favour with John. § 96. CUEES OF PARALYTICS-DID JESUS REGARD DISEASES AS •PUNISHMENTS ? AN important feature in the history of the cure of the man born thud has been passed over, because it can only be properly estimated in connexion with a corresponding one in the synoptical narratives of the cure of a paralytic (Matt. ix. 1 ff.; Mark ii. 1 ff.; -Luke v. 17 ff.), which we have in the next place to consider. Here •Jesus first declares to the sick man: diptuvrai aoial d^iapriai. aov, thy sins are forgiven t/iee, and then as a proof that he had au- * S. 93. t Koster, Immanu<9, S. 79; Bretschneider, Probab. S. 122. J Wctstein, 500 THE LIFE OF JESUS. thority to forgive sins, he cures him. It is impossible not tc perceive in this a reference to the Jewish opinion, that any evil befalling an individual, and especially disease, was a punishment of his sins ; an opinion which, presented in its main elements in the Old Testament, (Lev. xxvi. 14 ff.; Deut. xxviii. 15 ff.; 2 Chron. xxi. 15. 18 f.) was expressed in the most definite manner by the later Jews.* Had we possessed that synoptical narrative only, we must have believed that Jesus shared the opinion of his cotemporary fellow-countrymen on this subject, since he proves his authority to forgive sins (as the cause of disease) by an example of his power to cure disease (the consequence of sin). But, it is said, there are other passages where Jesus directly contradicts this Jewish opinion; whence it follows, that what he then says to the paralytic was a mere accommodation to the ideas of the sick man, intended to promote his cure.f The principal passage commonly adduced in support of this position, is the introduction to the history of the man born blind, which was last considered (John ix. 1-3.). Here the disciples, seeing on the road the man whom they knew to have been blind from his birth, put to Jesus the question, whether his blindness was the consequence of his own sins, or of those of his parents? The case was a peculiarly difficult one on the Jewish theory of retribution. With respect to diseases which attach themselves to a man in his course through life, an observer Avho has once taken a certain bias, may easily discover or assume some peculiar delinquencies on the part of this man as their cause. With respect to inborn diseases, on the contrary, though the old Hebraic opinion (Exod. xx. 5; Deut. v. 9; 2 Sam. iii. 29.), it is true, presented the explanation that by these the sins of the fathers were visited on their posterity: yet as, for human regulation, the Mosaic law itself ordained that each should suffer for his own sins alone (Deut. xxiv. 1.6; 2 Kings xiv. 6); and as also, in relation to the penal justice of the Divine Being, the prophets predicted a similar dispensation (Jer. xxxi. 30; Ezek. xviii. 19 f.); rabbinical acumen resorted to the expedient of supposing, that men so afflicted might probably have sinned in their mothers womb,J and this was doubtless the notion which the disciples had in view in their question v. 2. Jesus says, in answer, that neither for his own sin nor for that of his parents, did this man come into the world blind; but in order that by the cure which he, as the Messiah, would effect in him, he might be an instrument in manifesting the miraculous power of God. This is generally understood as if Jesus repudiated the whole opinion, that disease and other evils were essentially punishments * Nedarim f. xli. 1. (Scliottgen, I, p. 03.): JDirit It. Chijafi'. Abba: mtllns aegro- tus a morbo s«o sanatur, donee ?"/>.si omnia peccata remissa fti/tt. 7 llase, L. J. $ 73. Fritzsehe, in Matth. p. 335. J Smihedr. f. xci. 2, and Beresdutli Itabba f. xxxviii. 1. (Lightfoot p. 1050.) : Antoninus iiiterroyacit Itabbi (Judinn): a tjnonam tempoiv inctpit ......'•-' •'-• '• •"-•'•"•<> mi " fpmnni-c, format ioni* cius (in ulero'), an fi hwjwt MIRACLES OF JESUS-CURES OF PARALYTICS. 501 of sin. But the words of Jesus are expressly limited to the case before him; -lie simply says, that this particular misfortune had i^s foundation, not in»the guilt of the individual, but in higher providential designs. The supposition that his expressions had a more general sense, and included a repudiation of the entire Jewish opinion, could only be warranted by other more decided declarations from him to that effect. As, on the contrary, according to the above observations, a narrative is found in the synoptical gospels which, simply interpreted, implies the concurrence of Jesus in the prevalent opinion, the question arises: which is easier, to regard the expression of Jesus in the synoptical narratives as an accommodation, or that in John as having relation solely to the case immediately before him 1-a question which will be decided in favour of the latter alternative by every one who, on the one hand, knows the difficulties attending the hypothesis of accommodation as applied to the expressions of Jesus in the gospels, and on the other, is clear-sighted enough to perceive, that in the passage in question in the fourth gospel, there is not the slightest intimation that the declaration of Jesus had a more general meaning. It is true that according to correct principles of interpretation, one evangelist ought not to be explained immediately by another, and in the present case it is very possible that while the synoptical writers ascribe to Jesus the common opinion of his age, the more highly cultivated author of the fourth gospel may make him reject it: but that he also confined the rejection of the current opinion on the part of Jesus to that single case, is proved by the manner in which he represents Jesus as speaking on another occasion. When, namely, Jesus says to the man who had been lame thirty-eight years (John v.) and had just been cured, firjtcKTi, dfj-dprave, 'iva pfj x&pov rl aoi yevij-ai (v. 14), /Sin no more, lest a icorse t/dng come unto thee; this is equivalent to his saying to the paralytic whom he was about to cure, d(f>KUvrai aoi al d/j.apriai aov, t/ty sins are forgiven thee: in the one case disease is removed, in the other threatened, as a punishment of sin. But here again the expositors, to whom it is not agreeable that Jesus should hold an opinion which they reject, find a means of evading the direct sense of the words. Jesus, say they, perceived that the particular disease of this man was a natural consequence of certain excesses, and warned him from a repetition of these as calculated to bring on a more dangerous relapse.* But an insight into the natural connexion between certain excesses and certain diseases as their consequence, is far more removed from the mode of thinking of the age in which Jesus lived, than the notion of a positive connexion between sin in general and disease as its punishment; hence, if we are nevertheless to ascribe the former sense to the words of Jesus, it must be very distinctly conveyed in the text. But the fact is that in the whole narrative there is no intimation of any particular excess on the part of the man; the 9 502 THE LIFE OF JESUS. MIKACLES OF JESUS-CURES OF PARALYTICS. 503 words pr)Ken dfidprave, relate only to sin in general, and to supply a conversation of Jesus with the sick man, in which he is supposed to have acquainted the former with the connexion between his sufferings and a particular sin,* is the most arbitrary fiction. What exposition 1 for the sake of evading a result which is dogmatically unwelcome, to extend the one passage (John ix.) to a generality of meaning not really belonging to it, to elude the other (Matt, ix.) by the hypothesis of accommodation, and forcibly to affix to a third (John v.) a modern idea; whereas if the first passage be only permitted to say no more than it actually says, the direct meaning of the other two may remain uiiviolated! But another passage, and that a synoptical one, is adduced in vindication of the superiority of Jesus to the popular opinion in question. This passage is Luke xiii. 1 ff., where Jesus is told of the Galileans whom Pilate had caused to be slain while they were in the act of sacrificing, and of others who were killed by the falling of a tower. From what follows, we must suppose the informants to have intimated their opinion that these calamities were to be regarded as a divine visitation for the peculiar wickedness of the parties so signally destroyed. Jesus replied that they must not suppose those meu to have been especially sinful; they themselves were in 110 degree better, and unless they repented would meet with a similar destruction. Truly it is not clear how in these expressions of Jesus a repudiation of the popular notion can be found. If Jesus wished to give his voice in opposition to this, he must either have said: you are equally great sinners, though you may not perish bodily in the same manner; or: do you believe that those men perished on account of their sins ? No! the contrary may be seen in you, who, notwithstanding your wickednesss, are not thus smitten with death. On the contrary, the expressions of Jesus as given by Luke can only have the following sense: that those men have already met with such calamities is no evidence of their peculiar wickedness, any more than the fact that you have been hitherto spared the like, is an evidence of your greater worth; on the contrary, earlier or later, similar judgments falling on you will attest your equal guilt:-whereby the supposed law of the connexion between tlic sin and misfortune of every individual is continued, not overthrown. This vulgar Hebrew opinion concerning sickness and evil, is indeed in contradiction with that esoteric view, partly Essenc, partly Ebionitc, which we have found in the introduction to the sermon on the mount, the parable of the rich man, and elsewhere, and according to which the righteous in this generation are the suffering, the poor and the sick; but both opinions are clearly to be seen in the discourses of Jesus by an unprejudiced exegesis, and the contradiction which we find between them authorizes us neither to put a forced construction on the one class of expressions, nor to deny them to have really come from Jesus, since we cannot calculate how he may have solved for himself the opposition between two ideas of the world, presented to him by different sides of the Jewish culture of that age. » As regards the above-mentioned cure, the synoptical writers make Jesus in his reply to the messengers of the Baptist, appeal to the fact that the lame walked (Matt. xi. 5), and at another time the people wonder when, among other miracles, they sec the maimed to be whole and the lame to walk (Matt. xv. 31). In the place of the lane, %wAot, paralytics irapaX.vnK.ol, are elsewhere brought forward (Matt. iv. 24), and especially in the detailed histories of cures relating to this kind of sufferers, (as Matt. ix. 1 ff. parall. viii. 5, parall.) -xapakuTiKol, and not %w/loi, are named. The sick man at the pool of Bethesda (John v. 5) belongs probably to the X^olf spoken of in v. 3; there also ^fjpol, withered, are mentioned, and in Matt. xii. 9 ff. parall. we find the cure of a man who had a withered hand. As however the three last named cures will return to us under different heads, all that remains here for our examination is the cure of the paralytic Matt. ix. 1 ff. parall. As the definitions which the ancient physicians give of paralysis, though they all show it to have been a species of lameness, yet leave it undecided whether the lameness was total or pxrtial;* and as, besides, no strict adherence to medical technicalities is to be expected from the evangelists, we must gather what they understand by paralytics from their own descriptions of such patient?. In the present passage, we read of the paralytic that he was bone on a bed tcMvi], and that to enable him to arise and carry his bed was an unprecedented wonder niipddo^ov, whence we must conclude that he was lame, at least in the feet. While here there is no mention of pains, or of an acute character of disease, in another narrative (Matt. viii. 6) these are evidently presupposed when the centurion says that his servant is sick of the pcdsy., grievously twnanted, /3e^A?/Tat-rrapa-AvTi/cof, duvCx; J3aaauifrpei.a$ ; so that under paralytics in the gospels we have at one time to understand a lameness without pain, at another a painful, gouty, disease of the limbs,t In the description of the scene in whlcn tlfe paralytic, (Matt. ix. 1 ft. parall.) is brought to Jesus, there is a remarkable gradation in the three accounts. Matthew says simply, that as Jesus, after an excursion to the opposite shore, returned to Capernaum, there was brought to him a paralytic, stretched on a bed. Luke describes particularly how Jesus, surrounded by a great multitude, chiefly Pharisees and scribes, taught and healed in a certain house, and how the bearers, because on account of the press they could not reach Jesus, let the sick man down to him through the roof. If we call to mind the structure of oriental houses, which had a flat roof, to which an opening led from the upper story ;J and if we add to this the rabbinical manner of speaking, in which to the via per portam (i-nnns * See the examples in Wetstein. K. T.. 1. S. 284, and in Wahl's Clavis. \ Conip 504 THE LIFE OP JESUS. I'll) was opposed the via per tectum (~\M -it) as a no less ordinary way for reaching the iwepaiov upper story or chamber,* we cannot under the expression Kadi&vat &a TGJI> KEpdjuwv, £ic.ke' '' ^' <")'r>2' "i" Fi'itzsche, in Matth. p. 310: discrepat autem Lucas iff <« km narration?, ut cetiturionem non ijisum venisse nd Jesum, sed per legatos cum to ifisse tradat; yiiibiis dissidentibas aacem obtnulere, boni n(oo interpretis esse. 1 Schleier-"wiclicr, ut sup. S. 92 f. 514 THE LIFE OF JESUS. in the least improbable that in Capernaum at two different periods two centurions should have had each a sick servant, and that again at another time a nobleman should have had a sick son at the same place; that the second centurion (Luke) should have heard the history of the first, have applied in a similar manner to Jesus, and sought to surpass his example of humility, as the first centurion (Matthew), to whom the earlier history of the nobleman (John) was known, wished to surpass the weak faith of the latter; and lastly, that Jesus cured all the three patients in the same manner at a distance. But the incident of a distinguished official person applying to Jesus to cure a dependent or relative, and of Jesus at a distance operating on the latter in such a manner, that about the time in which Jesus pronounced the curative word, the patient at home recovered, is so singular in its kind that a threefold repetition of it may be regarded as impossible, and even the supposition that it occurred twice only, has difficulties; hence it is our task to ascertain whether the three narratives may not be traced to a single root. Now the narrative of the fourth evangelist which is most generally held to be distinct, has not only an affinity with the synoptical narratives in the outline already given; but in many remarkable details either one or the other of the synoptists agrees more closely with John than with his fellow synoptist. Thus, while in designating the patient as ™tf, Matthew may be held to accord with the via; of John, at least as probably as with the SovXog of Luke; Matthew and John decidedly agree in this, that according to both the functionary at Capernaum applies in his own person to Jesus, and not as in Luke by deputies. On the other hand, the account of John agrees with that of Luke in its description of the state of the patient; in neither is there any mention of the paralysis of which Matthew speaks, but the patient is described as near death, in Luke by the words r/fieAAe rekevrav, in John by r/fie/LAev dTroOvrjaiieiv, in addition to which it is incidentally implied in the latter v. 52 that~the disease was accompanied by a fever, Trvperkf. In the account of the manner in which Jesus effected the cure of the patient, and in which his cure was made known, John stands again on the side of Matthew in opposition to Luke. While namely, the latter has not an express assurance on the part of Jesus that the servant was healed, the two former make him say to the officer, in very similar terms, the one, v-xaye, Kal «f i~iorevaag yev^QyjTO) trot, Go thy way, and as thou hast believed so shall it be done unto thee, the other, -nopevov, b vlbg aov fg, Go thy way, thy son liveth ; and the conclusion of Matthew also, Kal la.Bi{b -rral^ avrov kv ry wpa e/cetvfl, has at least in its form more resemblance to the statement of John, that by subsequent inquiry the father ascertained it to be iv kneiv^ TTJ wpa, at the same hour in which Jesus had spoken the word that his son had begun tr> nmencl. than to the statement of Luke, that, the messengers when 1 - -1U- TV, oTinftlpr MIRACLES OF JESUS-CURES AT A DISTANCE. 515 ferred from Matthew again to Luke. In both Luke and John, namely, a kind of embassy is spoken of, which towards the close of the narrative comes out of the house of the officer; in the former it consists of the centurion's friends, whose errand it is to dissuade Jesus from giving himself unnecessary trouble; in the latter, of servants who rejoicingly meet their master and bring him the news of his son's recovery. Unquestionably where three narratives are so thoroughly entwined with each other as these, we ought not merely to pronounce two of them identical and allow one to stand for a distinct fact, but must rather either distinguish all, or blend all into one. The latter course was adopted by Semler, after older examples,* and Tholuck has at least declared it possible. But with such expositors the next object is so to explain the divergencies of the three narratives, that no one of the-evangelists may seem to have said any thing false. With respect to the rank of the applicant, they make the pamfaKQt; in John a military officer, for whom the KKarovrap^og of the two others would only be a more specific designation; as regards the main point, however, namely the conduct of the applicant, it is thought that the different narrators may have represented the event in different periods of its progress ; that is, John may have given the earlier circumstance, that Jesus complained of the originally weak faith of the suppliant, the synoptists only the later, that he praised its rapid growth. We have already shown how it has been supposed possible, in a yet easier manner, to adjust the chief difference between the two synoptical accounts relative to the mediate or immediate entreaty. But this effort to explain the contradictions between the three narratives in a favourable manner is altogether O vain. There still subsist these difficulties : the synoptists thought of the applicant as a centurion, the fourth evangelist as a courtier; the former as strong, the latter as weak in faith ; John and Matthew imagined that he applied in his own person to Jesus; Luke, that out of modesty he sent deputies, f Which then represents the fact in the right way, which in the wrong ? If we take first the two synoptists by themselves, expositors with one voice declare that Luke gives the more correct account. 1'irst of all, it is thought improbable that the patient should have been as Matthew says, a paralytic, since in the case of a disease so seldom fatal the modest centurion would scarcely have met Jesus to implore his aid immediately on his entrance into the city:J as if a very painful disease such as is described by Matthew did not render desirable the quickest help, and as if there were any want of modesty in asking Jesus before he reached home to utter a healing word. Rather, the contrary relation between Matthew and Luke seems probable from the observation, that the miracle, and conse- 516 THE LIFE OF JESUS. quently also the disease of the person cured miraculously, is never diminished in tradition but always exaggerated; hence the tormented paralytic would more probably be heightened into one ready to die, fieAAwv -reXevrav, than the latter reduced to a mere sufferer. But especially the double message in Luke is, according to Schleier-macher, a feature very unlikely to have been invented. How if, on the contrary, it very plainly manifested itself to be an invention? While in Matthew the centurion, on the offer of Jesus to accompany him, seeks to prevent him by the objection: .Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, in Luke he adds by the mouth of his messenger, wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee, by which we plainly discover the conclusion on which the second embassy was founded. If the man declared himself unworthy that Jesus should come to him, he cannot, it was thought, have held himself worthy to come to Jesus; an exaggeration of his humility by which the narrative of Luke again betrays its secondary character. The first embassy seems to have originated in the desire to introduce a previous recommendation of the centurion as a motive for the promptitude with which Jesus offered to enter the house of a Gentile. The Jewish elders after having informed Jesus of the case of disease, add, that he was worthy for whom he should do this, for he loveth our nation and has built us a synagogue: a recommendation the tenor of which is not unlike what Luke (Acts x. 22) makes the messengers of Cornelius say to Peter to induce him to return with them, namely, that the centurion was a just man, and one that feareth God, and in good report among all the nation of the Jews. That the double embassy cannot have been original, appears the most clearly from the fact, that by it the narrative of Luke loses all coherence. In Matthew all hangs well together: the centurion first describes to Jesus the state of the sufferer, and either leaves it to Jesus to decide what he shall next do, or before he prefers his request Jesus anticipates him by the offer to go to his house, which the centurion declines in the manner stated. Compare with this his strange conduct in Luke: he first sends to Jesus by the Jewish elders the request that he will come and heal his servant, but when Jesus is actually coming, repents that he has occasioned him to do so, and asks only for a miraculous word from Jesus. The supposition that the first request, proceeded solely from the elders and not from the centurion* runs counter to the express words of the evangelist, who by the expressions: dn&-<7Tsi/le-npeafivTepovg-tpwrwv avrbv, he sent-the elders-beseeching him, represents the prayer as corning from the centurion himselt; and that the latter by the word eWuv meant only that Jesus should come into the neighbourhood of his house, but when he saw that Jesus intended actually to enter his house, declined this as too great a favour,-is too absurd a demeanour to attribute to a man who otherwise appears sensible, and of whom for this reason so capri- - • " . .v _ OO1 f MIRACLES OF JESUS-CURES AT A DISTANCE. 517 cious a change of mind as is implied in the text of Luke, was still less to be expected. The whole difficulty would have been avoided, if Luke had put into the mouth of the first messengers, as Matthew in that of the centurion, only the entreaty, direct or indirect, for a cure in general; and then after Jesus had offered to go to the house where the patient lay, had attributed to the same messengers the modest rejection of this offer. But on the one hand, he thought it requisite to furnish a motive for the resolution of Jesus to go into the Gentile's house; on the other, tradition presented him with a deprecation of this personal trouble on the part of Jesus: he was unable to attribute the prayer and the deprecation to the same persons, and he was therefore obliged to contrive a second embassy. Hereby, Irowever, the contradiction was only apparently avoided, since both embassies are sent by the centurion. Perhaps also the centurion who was unwilling that Jesus should take the trouble to enter his house, reminded Luke of the messenger who warned Jairus not to trouble the master to enter his house, likewise after an entreaty that he would come into the house; and as the messenger says to Jairus, according to him and Mark, pi] OKVAAS TOV 6i6daKa-hov, trouble not the master (Luke viii. 49.), so here he puts into the mouth of the second envoys, the words, Kvpie p) OKVA^OV, .Lord, trouble not thyself, although such an order has a reason only in the case of Jairus, in whose house the state of things had been changed since the first summons by the death of his daughter, and none at all in that of the centurion whose servant still remained in the same state. Modern expositors are deterred from the identification of all the three narratives, by the fear that it may present John in the light of a narrator who has not apprehended the scene with sufficient accuracy, and has even mistaken its main drift.* Were they nevertheless to venture on a union, they would as far as possible vindicate to the fourth gospel the most original account of the facts; a position of which we shall forthwith test the security, by an examination o± the iristrinsic character of the narratives. That the suppliant is according to the fourth evangelist a fiaaikiKog, while according to the two others he is an iicarovrap^of, is an indifferent particular from winch we can draw no conclusion on either side; and it may appear to be the same with the divergency as to the relation of the diseased person to the one who entreats his cure. If however, it be asked with reference to the last point, from which of the three designations the other two could most easily have arisen ? it can scarcely be supposed that the vlbg of John became in a descending line, first the doubtful term rate, and then (JovAoc ; and even the reverse ascending order is here less probable than the intermediate alternative, that °«t of the ambiguous 7ra7c (= isa) there branched off in one direction the sense of servant, as in Luke; in the other, of son, as in John. We have already remarked, that the description of the pa- 518 THE LIFE OF JESUS. tient's state in John, as well as in Luke, is an enhancement on that in Matthew, and consequently of later origin. As regards the difference in the locality, from the point of view now generally taken in the comparative criticism of the gospels, the decision would doubtless be, that in the tradition from which the synoptical writers drew, the place from which Jesus performed the miracles was confounded with that in which the sick person lay, the less noted Cana being absorbed in the celebrated Capernaum : whereas John, being an eyewitness, retained the more correct details. But the relation between the evangelists appear to stand thus only when John is assumed to have been an eye-witness; if the critic seeks, as he is bound to do, to base his decision solely on the instrinsic character of the narratives, he will arrive at a totally different result. Here is a narrative of a cure performed at a distance, in which the miracle appears the greater, the wider the distance between the curer and the cured. Would oral tradition in propagating this narrative, have the tendency to diminish that, distance, and consequently the miracle, so that in the account of John, who makes Jesus perform the cure at a place from which the nobleman does not reach his son until the following day, we should have the original narrative, in that of the synoptists on the contrary, who represent Jesus as being in the same town with the sick servant, the one modified by tradition'? Only the converse of this supposition can be held accordant with the nature of the legend, and here asrain the narrative of John mani- O ' o fests itself to be a traditional one. Again, the preciseness with which the hour of the patient's recovery is ascertained in the fourth gospel has a highly fictitious appearance. The simple expression of Matthew, usually found at the conclusion of histories of cures : /ie was healed in the self-same- hour, is dilated into an inquiry on the part of the father as to the hour in which the son began to amend, an answer from the servants that yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him, and lastly the result, that in the very hour in which Jesus had said, Thy son liveth, the recovery took place. This is a solicitous accuracy, a tediousuess of calculation, that seems to bespeak the anxiety of the narrator to establish the miracle, rather than to show the real course of the event. In representing the j3~ -'-- ,i:..--i ---• ->• •• -.. * • 520 THE LIFE OF JESUS. I?A\/ conduct, and the impression which he left on his coternporaries. If then Jesus merely predicted the cure without effecting it, he must have been assured of it in a more certain manner than by natural reasoning,-he must have known it in a supernatural manner. This is the turn given to the narrative by one of the most recent commentators on the gospel of John. lie puts the question, whether we have here a miracle of knowledge or of power; and as there is no mention of an immediate effect from the words of Jesus, while' elsewhere in the fourth gospel the superior knowledge of Jesus is especially held up to our view, he is of opinion that Jesus, by means of his higher-nature, merely knew that at that moment the danger--r j.i.« ,1 ;„„„<,„ waa -nasf.* But jf our gospel frequently LJV-MV^A. Jt- «.*----------7 cerned, this is plainly stated (as i. 49, ii. iio, vi. o-i,j ami ucu^o ^ a supernatural cognizance of the already effected cure of the boy had been intended, John would have made Jesus speak on this occasion as he did before to Nathanael, and tell the father that he already saw his son on his bed in an ameliorated state. On the .contrary, not only is there no intimation of the exercise of superior knowledge, but we are plainly enoxigh given to understand that there was an exercise of miraculous power. When the sudden cure of one at the point of dtat/i is spoken of, the immediate question is, What brought about this unexpected change ? and when a narrative which elsewhere makes miracles follow on the word of its hero, puts into his mouth an assurance that the patient lives, it is only the mistaken effort to diminish the marvellous, which can prevent the admission that in this assurance the author means to give the cause of the cure. In the case of the synoptical narratives, the supposition of a mere prediction Avill not suffice, since here the father (Matt. v. 8) entreats the exercise of healing power, and Jesus (v. 13,) accedes to this entreaty. Hence every way would seem to be closed to the natural interpretation (for the distance of Jesus from the patient made all physical or psychical influence impossible), if a single feature in the narrative had not presented unexpected help. This feature is the comparison which the centurion institutes between himself and Jesus. As he need only speak a word in order to see this or that command performed by his soldiers and servants, so, he concludes, it would cost Jesus no more than a word to restore his servant to health. Out of this comparison it has been found possible to extract an intimation that as on the side of the centurion, so on that of Jesus, human proxies were thought of. According to this, the centurion intended to represent to Jesus, that he need only speak n -.I-^T/I +n niio, of his tlisciyiles, and the latter would go with him and MIRACLES OF JESUS-CURES AT A DISTANCE. 521 cure his servant, which is supposed to have forthwith happened.* But as this would be the first instance in which Jesus had caused a cure to be wrought by his disciples, and the only one in which he commissions them immediately to perform a particular cure, how could this peculiar circumstance be silently presupposed in the otherwise detailed narrative of Luke ? Why, since this narrator is not sparing in spinning out the rest of the messenger's speech, docs he stint the few words which would have explained all-the simple addition after eiTte A.6yu, speak the word, of evl ruv fiaOrj-uv, to one of tky disciples, or something similar ? But, above all, at the close of the narrative, where the result is told, this mode of interpretation falls into the greatest perplexity, not merely through the silence of the narrator, but through his positive statement. Luke, namely, concludes with the information that when the friends of the centurion returned into the house, they found the servant already recovered. Now, if Jesus had caused the cure by sending with the messengers one or more of his disciples, the patient could only begin gradually to be better after the disciples had come into the house with the messengers; he could not have been already well on their arrival. Paulus indeed supposes that the messengers'lingered for some time listening to the discourse of Jesus, and that thus the disciples arrived before them ; but how the former could so unnecessarily linger, and how the evangelist could have been silent on this point as well as on the commission of the disciples, he omits to explain. Whether instead of the disciples, we hold that which corresponds on the side of Jesus to the soldiers of the centurion to be demons of disease,! ministering- angels, f or merely the word and the curative power of Jesus ;§ in any case there remains to us a iniracle wrought at a distance. This kind of agency on the part of Jesus is, according to the admission even of such commentators as have not generally any repugnance to the miraculous, attended with special difficulty, because irom the want of the personal presence of Jesus, and its beneficial influence on the patient, we are deprived of every possibility of rendering the cure conceivable by means of an analogy observable in nature. || According to Olshausen, indeed, this distant influence has its analogies; namely, in animal magnctism.li I will not directly contest this, but only point out the limits within which, so far as my knowledge extends, this phenomenon confines itself in the do-mam oi animal magnetism. According to our experience hitherto, the cases in which one person can exert an influence over another at a distance are only two: first, the magnetizer or an individual ni magnetic relation to him can act thus on the somnambulc, but this distant action must always be preceded by immediate contact,- * Paulug, exeg. JIamUmcli, ]. B. S. 710 f.; Katurliche Gcschichte, 2, S. 285 ff. " Y''m- homil- ix- 21; Fritzsche, in Matth. 313. J Wetstein, N. T. ], p. 349 ; comp. Co. 'aUSf1' "' 10C- ? K"*, on another sabbath.* The further inquiry, which narrative is hero the more original ? we may dismiss with the observation, that if the question which Matthew puts into the mouth of the Pharisees, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? is held up as a specimen of invented dialogue ;f we may with equal justice characterize in the same way the question lent to Jesus by the two intermediate evangelists; while their much praised* deserip-tion of Jesus calling to the man to stand forth in the midst, and then casting reproving glances around, may be accused of having the air of dramatic fiction. The narratives all agree in representing the affliction under which the patient laboured, as a XSV &IP°-> or K^rjpa^KVi]. Indefinite as this expression is, it is treated too freely when it is understood, as by Paulus, to imply only that the hand was injured by heat,§ or even by a sprain, according to Venturini's supposition. || For when, m order to determine the signification in which this term is used in the New Testament we refer, as it is proper to do, to the Old Testament, we iind (1 Kings, xiii. 4.) a hand which, on being stretched out, KsqpdvO?) (aaipn), described as incapable of being drawn back again, so that we must understand a lameness and rigidity of the n . * Scl>leiermachcr, ttber den Lukaa. S. 80 f. f Schneckenburger, tiber den Urspr.. "• 8- I. S. 50. t Sollli-iormonV,.. ...-..- o T»__~.....,_»..'_ .. -- ' ' 524 THE LIFE OF JESUS. hand; and on a comparison of Mark ix. 18, where the expression fypaivKaOai to be withered or wasted away is applied to an epileptic, a drying Tip and shrinking of that member.* Now from the narrative before us a very plausible argument may be drawn in favour of the supposition, that Jesus employed natural means in the treatment of tins and other diseases. Only such cures, it is said, were prohibited on the sabbath as were attended with any kind of labour; thus, if the Pharisees, as it is here said, expected Jesus to transgress the sabbatical laws by effecting a cure, they must have known that he was not accustomed to cure by his mere word, but by medicaments and surgical operations.t As, however, a cure merely by means of a conjuration otherwise lawful, was forbidden on the sabbath, a fact which Paulus himself elsewhere adduces :+ as moreover there was a controversy between the schools of Ilillcl and Schamrnai, whether it were permitted even to administer consolation to the sick on the sabbath ;§ and as again, according to an observation of Paulus, the more ancient rabbins were stricter on the point of sabbatical observance than those whose writings on this subject have come down to us:|| so the cures of Jesus, even supposing that he used no natural means, might by captious Pharisees be brought under the category of violations of the sabbath. The principal objection to the rationalistic explanation, namely, the silence of the evangelists as to natural means, Paulus believes to be obviated in the present case by conceiving the scene thus : at that time, and in the synagogue, there was indeed 110 application of such means; Jesus merely caused the hand to be shown to him, that he might see how far the remedies hitherto prescribed by him (which remedies however are still a bare assumption) had been serviceable, and he then found that it was completely cured; for the expression dTronareordOr], used by all the narrators, implies a cure completed previously, not one suddenly effected in the passing moment. It is true that the context seems to require this interpretation, since the outstretching of the hand prior to the cure would appear to be as little possible, as in 1 Kings xiii. 4. the act of drawing it back: nevertheless the evangelists give O O O us only the word of Jesus as the source of the cure, not natural means, which arc the gratuitous addition of expositors.*! Decisive evidence, alike for the necessity of viewing this as a miraculous cure, and for the possibility of explaining the origin ot the anecdote, is to be obtained by a closer examination of the Old Testament narrative already mentioned, 1 Kings xiii. 1 ff. A prophet out of Judah threatened Jeroboam, while ottering incense on his idolatrous altar, with the destruction of the altar and the overthrow of his false worship; the king with outstretched hand commanded that this prophet of evil should be seized, when suddenly his hand dried up so that he could not draw it again towards him, and the - •""•..-. ,M, -11 .,„!,.. i s 7!)n T Puulus, ut sup. S. 49, 54; Kuster, Inunanucl, MIRACLES OF JESUS-CURES ON THE SABBATH. 525 altar was rent. On the entreaty of the king, however, the prophet • besought Jehovah for the restoration of the hand, and its full use was again granted.* Paulus also refers to this narrative in the same connexion, but only for the purpose of applying to it his natural method of explanation ; he observes that Jeroboam's anger may have produced a transient convulsive rigidity of the muscles and so forth, in the hand just stretched out with such impetuosity. But who does not see that we have a legend designed to glorify the monotheistic order of prophets, and to hold up to infamy the Israelitish idolatry in the person of its founder Jeroboam ? The man of God denounces on the idolatrous altar quick and miraculous destruction; the idolatrous king impiously stretches forth his hand against the man of God ; the hand is paralyzed, the idolatrous altar falls asunder into the dust, and only on the intercession of the prophet is the king restored. Who can argue about the miraculous and the natural in what is so evidently a mytlrus ? And who can fail to perceive in our evangelical narrative an imitation of this Old Testament legend, except that agreeably to the spirit of Christianity the withering of the hand appears, not as a retributive miracle, but as a natural disease, and only its cure is ascribed to Jesus; whence also the outstretching of the hand is riot, as in the case of Jeroboam, the criminal cause of the infliction, continued as a punishment, and the drawing of it back again a sign of cure; but, on the contrary, the hand which had previously been drawn inwards, owing to disease, can after the completion of the cure be again extended. That, in other instances, about that period, the power of working cures of this kind was in the East ascribed to the favourites of the gods, may be seen from a narrative already adduced, in which, together with (he cure of blindness, the restoration of a diseased hand is attributed to Vespasian, f But this curative miracle does not appear independently and as an object by itself: the history of it hinges on the fact that the cure was wrought on the Sabbath, and the point of the whole lies in the words by which Jesus vindicates his activity in healing on the sabbath against, the Pharisees. In Luke and Mark this defence consists in the^ question, Is it lawful to do good on the sablath days, or to °c fl ^oi}f, an ass or an ox for ~pul3arov sheep, and of tppeap, well orjJti for (366vvof, ditch,} in connexion with the cure of an vdpumuibs a man who had the dropsy (xiv. 5.); a narrative which has in 1 Kings xiii, 4, LXX : Kal ISov fypuvdlvxeipaitrt' *' ljXX: Kal M ,Matth. xii. 10: rai idov Mp^oc f/V (> : , Ml Imorpede 'rf,v reioa nrii pn •> • ~"\ .?'Pa.^uv ^,1™ (Mark. ifrpa/j/xv,jv). ^ 0*^, Kai ^ToRT^;^ ™ • 'J?" *>%.* "v9^ *™™4 526 THE LIFE OP JESUS. two general a striking similarity to the one under consideration. Jesus takes food in the house of one of the chief Pharisees, where, as in the other instance in the synagogue, he is watched (here, fjaav -rrapa-TT/poi'fifivot, there, naperfipovv}. A dropsical person is present; as, there, a man with a withered hand. In the synagogue, according to Matthew, the Pharisees ask Jesus, d tfecrrt TO?? adfifiaat OeparreiJeiv ; fs 'it lawful to heal on the sabbath days ? According to Mark and Luke, Jesus aks them whether it he lawful to save life, &c.: so, here, he asks them, el K^eari, TW traftSaru Oepanevsiv • J~$ it lawful to heal on the sabbath ? whereupon in both histories the interrogated parties are silent (in that of the withered hand, Mark : ot <5t ecnwirwv ; in that of the dropsical patient, Luke: ol (5e ^av^aaav). Lastly, in both histories we have the saying about the animal fallen into a pit, in the one as an epilogue to the cure, in the other (that of Matthew) as a prologue. A natural explanation, which has not been left untried even with this cure of the dropsy,'* seems more than usually a vain labour, where, as in this case, we have before us no particular narrative, resting on its own historical basis, but a mere variation on the theme of the sabbath cures, and the text on the endangered domestic animal, which might come to one (Matthew) in connexion with the cure of a withered hand, to another (Luke) with the cure of a dropsical patient, and to a third in a different connexion still; for there is yet a third story of a miraculous cure with which a similar saying is associated. Luke, namely, narrates (xiii. 10 ff.) the cure of a woman bowed down by demoniacal influence, as having been performed by Jesus on the sabbath ; when to the indignant remonstrance of the ruler of the synagogue, Jesus replies by asking, whether every one docs not. loose his ox or ass from the stall on the sabbath, and lead him away to watering? a question which is undeniably a variation of the one given above. So entirely identical does this history appear with the one last named, that Schlcier-machcr comes to this conclusion: since in the second there is no reference to the first, and since consequently the repetition is not excused by confession, the two passages Luke xiii. 10, and xiv. 5, cannot have been written one after the other by the same author.^ Tims we have here, not three different incidents, but only three different frames in which legend has preserved the memorable and thoroughly popular aphorism on the domestic animal, to be rescued or tended on the sabbath. Yet, unless we would deny to Jesus so original and appropriate an argument, there must lie at the foundation a cure of some kind actually performed by him on the sabbath; not, however, a miraculous one. AVe have seen that Luke unites the saying with the cure of a demoniacal patient : now it might have been uttered by Jesus on the occasion of one of those cures of demoniacs of which, under certain limitations, we have admitted the •no-hivsil Tiossibility. Or, when Jesus in cases of illness among his _-i_ ,.,;ti..nr\ +!,,> Av 532 THE LIFE OF JESUS. can either have no weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words as i\ ~ai(; kyelpov, maiden, I say unto t/iee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard the ra/UGd KOVJU of Mark as an indication, that this evangelist drew from a peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting the life-giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to the trjx}>aOd in the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it, also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal.* In relation to the facts of the ease, the natural interpretation speaks with more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has on its side the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not really dead, but merely in a sleep-like swoon; and not only rationalists, like Paulus, and seniirationalists, like Schleiermacher, but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshauscu, believe, on the strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resuscitation of the dead.f The last-named commentator attaches especial importance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the words OVK d-XKOave, is not dead, are followed by a/.Aa KaOKvdd, but sieejjeth, is of opinion that the former expression cannot be interpreted to mean merely, she is not dead, since I have resolved to restore her to life, strange criticism,-for it is precisely this addition which shows that she was only not dead, in so far as it was in the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference is also made to the declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus, John xi. 14, Aa^apo^ drtiOave, Lazarus is dead, which is directly the reverse of the passage in question, OVK d-nsOave. TO Kopdoiov the damsel is not dead. But Jesus had before said of Lazarus, aurrj •/; daQivua OVK Hart, -rrpof Oavarov, this sickness is not unto death (v. 4.), and ^d^apot; v <£iAof TJJMV Keiwi-[irjTai, our friend Lazarus sleepet/i (v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also, who was really dead, we have just as direct a denial of death, and affirmation of mere sleep, as in the narrative before us. Hence Fritzsclie is undoubtedly right when he paraphrases the words of Jesus in our passage as follows ;j)ucllam nc p>\> i/iortua habetote, sed dor mire, existiinatote, quippe in vitam i/iox reditiiram. Moreover. Matthew, subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say, veicpoi ry«-povrai, the dead are raised up; and as he mentions no other instance * Ut sup. S. 12!). f Paulus, cxcg. llandb. 1. B. S. 520, 31 f,; Schleiermarhcr, »t Blip. S. 1 •>'.> ; Olshausen, lt S. ;>j?7. Even Neamler does not express himself >!<•' i'ledly against this interpretation of the \vorils of Jesus; while ^vith regard to the p;ir': '.• > .' ron- "•-II 1 l' !•!... -..HI MIRACLES----RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 533 of resuscitation by Jesus, he must apparently have had this in his mind.* But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view7 of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death, is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the girl's illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still ask, how- could he build so much on this information as, without having seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic interpretation of his words ? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a supernatural way :f to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions, kupdr-qoe TIJC xapog avrr^, lie took her l>y t/ie hand, and i}yf:pOi] rb Kopdaior, the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the words evdi^s and -apa-^pfju-a in the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied-! Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshauscn justly maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus, (and we might acid, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power,) was the means of restoring the girl to life. In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that Jesus speaks to the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of hearing.§ But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they wdl do (John v. 28; comp. 1 Thess. iv. 16); it would there-ore prove too much. Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the voice of him who quickens c dead can penetrate even to the ears from which life has departed. i r * C°'!1)X Do Wette fxeg. Hanclb. 1, 1, S. 95 ; Weisse, die ev. Geschichte, 1, S. 503. h_ "''. ''ander. L-J. S. 842. 1 Natiirlir.hf r,,.s(.hu.),tr. •>. S 919 H P«,,l,,« «™~ r MIRACLES-RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 535 534 THE LIFE OF JESUS. We must indeed admit tlie possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among tlie Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave ;* but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each other, halted for a while:- directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had learned during tiie pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which lie intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her, Weep not.^ But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation' Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a previous application of medicaments,! spoke the words, which helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words: veaviaKe, ffot Aeyw, LjipGi]Tt,. Youny man, I say unto t/tee arise ! resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous « T>o,,in. „.,„„ Handb. ut sup. S. 723. Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. 1. 2, S. 47. resuscitation of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.* In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar to John (chap, xi.), the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being carried to his grave, but has been already buried several days. Here one Avould have thought there was little hope of effecting a natural explanation; but the arduousness of the task has only stimulated the ingenuity and industry of the rationalists in developing their conception of this narrative. We shall also see that together with the rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the rationalists,-which, maintaining the historical integrity of the evangelical narrative throughout, assumes the responsibility of explaining every part naturally, there has appeared another system, which distinguishes certain features of the narrative as additions after the event, and is thus an advance towards the mythical explanation. The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in the former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man who has lain in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this possibility is strengthened in the present instance by the known custom of the Jews; propositions which we shall not abstractedly controvert. From this they proceed to a supposition which we perhaps ought not to let pass so easily, f namely, that from the messenger whom the sisters had sent with the news of their brother's illness, Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and the answer which he gave to the messenger, This sickness is not unto death, (v. 4,) is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not fatal. Such a view of his friend's condition would certainly accord the best with his conduct in remaining two days in Perasa after the reception of the message (v. 6); since, according to that supposition, he could not regard his presence in Bethany as a matter of urgent necessity. But how comes it that after the lapse of these two days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 8), but also has quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then plainly (v. 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the natural explanation is lost, and the break is only rendered more conspicuous by the fiction of a second messenger,! after the lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that Lazarus had expired in the interim. For the author of the gospel at least cannot have known of a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned him, since the omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, obliging us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus in a supernatural manner. * Comp. Schleiermacher, ut sup. S. 103 f. f Paulus, Comm. 4, S. 535 ff.; L. J. J- B. S. 55 ff. I In the translation of the text in his Leben Jesu, 2. B. S. 46, Paulus appears to suppose, besides the message mentioned in the gospel, Ihreit subsequent messages. 536 THE LIFE OF JESUS. Jesus, when lie had resolved to go to Bethany, said to the disciples, J^azarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep (KeKoijirjrai-kgvxvlou-v. 11); this the naturalists explain by the supposition that Jesus must in the same way have gathered from the statements' of the messengers who announced the death of La-zams, that the latter was only in a state of lethargy. But we can as little here as in a former case impute to Jesus the foolish presumption of giving, "before he had even seen the alleged corpse, the positive assurance that he yet lived.* From this point of view, it is also a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15) f am glad for your sake A that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe (Iva 7r«7Tev(T7;Tf). Paulus explains these words to imply that Jesus feared lest the death, had it happened in his presence, might have shaken their faith in him ; "but, as Galilert has remarked, Ttia-evu cannot mean merely the negative: not to lose faith, which would rather have been expressed by a phrase such as: Iva p) t/c/UtTn? ?; iricrrt? i'n&v, that your fait ft fail -not (see Luke xxii. 32.); and moreover we nowhere find that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah was incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, of a friend, in his presence. From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat more favourable to'the natural explanation. It is true that Martha's address to Jesus (v. 21 f.), Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoever-thou wilt ask of God, he will (jive it thee, dAAd not vvv olda, on, oaa av air-fay ~bv OKOV, fiuaet aoi b 0ebf, appears evidently to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows, Thy brother «li'ill r>*e aytiii, dvaari'ioerai b adeAfyoi; aov, she answers de-spondingly, Yes, at the last day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha there uses is not -lo-evu but oida, and the turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only wiliest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more unmis-takcablc, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha's change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her iirst reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere * Corny. C. Ch. Halt, etwas zur YiTthcidigung des Wunders dor Wiederlwlcbung '!..« T.ninnis. in Sii.-kinds Magazin, lltcs Stuck, S. 93 ff. f Journal fiir auserleseno MIRACLES----RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 537 manifests a very hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the last clay (dvaa-rijaerai), she gives a half-impatient, half-desponding reply.* But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet more indefinite one (v. 25 £), I am the resurrection and the life, is thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awak-ino- Lazarus, he must then have altered his opinion in the interim--a change for which no cause is apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to Martha, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God? evidently alluding to v. 23, in which therefore lie must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect. That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he again, veils the scarcely uttered promise, in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of thought.f When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her weeping moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural interpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he were already certain of his friend's resurrection, he would not have approached his grave with the most fervent joy, since lie was conscious of being able to call him again living from the grave in the next moment ? In this view the words hepptprjoa-o (v. 33) and epftpipu^ievog (v. 38) are understood of a forcible repression of the sorrow caused by the death of his friend, which subsequently found vent in tears (eddKpvaev). But both by its etymology, according to which it signifies fremere in aliquem or in se, and by the analogy of its use in the New Testament, where it appears only in the sense of increpare-aliquem (Matt. ix. 30; Mark i. 43; xiv. O.), ep.j3pi^.aa6ai is determined to imply an emotion of anger, not cf sorrow; where it is united, not with the dative of another person, but with rw itvevpcm and ev iavTu, it must be understood of a silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be very appropriate in v. 38, where it occurs the second time; for in the foregoing observation of the Jews, Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? there lies an intimation that they were scandalized, the prior conduct of Jesus perplexing them as to his present demeanour, and vice * Flatt. nt sun 1 f . r»Q \V, 538 THE LIFE OF JESUS. versa. But where the word Epj3pifjtaa0ai is first used v. 33, the general weeping seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a melancholy, rather than an angry emotion: yet even here a strong disapproval of the want of faith (6;UyoTMOTia) which was manifested was not impossible. That Jesus then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy, not that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that the Jews (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among themselves, Behold, how he loved him ! appears to be rather against than for those who regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of his friend, and sympathy with the sisters ; for, as the character of the narrative of John in general would rather lead us to expect an opposition between the real import of the demeanour of Jesus, and the interpretation put upon it by the spectators, so in particular the Jews in this gospel are always those who either misunderstand or pervert the words and actions of Jesus. It is true that the mild character of Jesus is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which displeasure on his part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest would imply ;* but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the Christ of John's gospel. He who gave to the /Boat/Usbf, when preferring the inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son, the rebuke, Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he who, when some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the sixth chapter, assailed them with the cutting questions, Doth this offend you? and Will ye also go away? (v. 61, 57.); he who repulsed his own mother, when at the wedding at Cana she complained to him of the want of wine, with the harsh reply, What have I to do with thee, Woman? (ii. 4.)-who thus was always the most displeased when men, not comprehending his higher mode of thought or action, showed themselves desponding or importunate,-would here find peculiar reason for this kind of displeasure. If this be the true interpretation of the passage^nd if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus which Jesus here exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from this particular feature; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a momentary emotion produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite reconcileable with the foreknowledge of the resurrection. \ And how could the words of the Jews v. 37, serve, as rationalistic commentators think, to excite in Jesus the hope that God would now perhaps perform something extraordinary for him 1 The Jews did not express the hope that he could awake the dead, but only the conjecture that he might perhaps have been able to preserve his friend's life; Martha therefore had previously said more when she declared her belief that even now the Father would grant him what he asked; so that if such " -i'-*• *^IIT TYmat. have, been ex- MIEACLES-RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 539 cited earlier, and especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to appeal as the proof that they did not yet exist. Even supranaturalists admit that the expression of Martha when Jesus commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave, Kvpte, f]^i] ofa (v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial.* But more weight must be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40): Said I not unto thee thai if thou wouldst believe thou shouldsi see the glory of God? How could he say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus ? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life ? and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay ? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the words rfjv do^av -ov deov in our present passage we need only refer to v. 4, where Jesus had said that the sickness of Lazarus was not unto death, •n-p&f 6dva-rov, but for the glory of God, vrrep -ny? S6^i]<; rov Oeov. Here the first member of the antithesis, not unto death, clearly shows that the <56fa rov 6eov signifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the most, critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be fulfilled.! After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead man, Come forth ! lie thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. This is adduced, in the rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof that he did not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was not to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the character of John's gospel. These ought to have remembered how common it is in this gospel, as for example in the expression glorify thy son, to represent that which is yet to be effected or which is only just begun, as already performed; and in the present instance it is especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining fulfilment, that it is spoken of as having already happened. And what invention does it further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in Lazarus the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come to life again! Between the removal of the stone, says i aulus, and the thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising result was accomplished ; then must Jesus, yet some * Flatt. S. 106 : Olsh.ii 9, 9KO 4- TTlott « Q7 540 THE LIFE OF JESUS, steps removed from the grave, have discerned that Lazarus was liv*-ing. By what means ? and how so quickly and unhesitatingly ? and why did he and no one else, discern it ? He may have discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is conjectured. But how easily might he deceive himself with respect to a dead body lying in a dark cavern: how precipitate was he, if without having examined more nearly, he so quickly and decidedly declared his conviction, that Lazarus lived! Or, if the movements of the supposed corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could they escape the notice of the surrounding spectators ? Lastly, how could Jesus in his prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only discovered, the resuscitation of Lazarus ? As arguments for the natural possibility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four days, the rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the particular circumstances of the supposed death, the rapidity of interment among the Jews, afterwards the coolness of the cave, the strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the reanimating draught of warm air which on the rolling awav of the stone streamed into the cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more than the lowest degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree of improbability : and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts the result must remain irreconcilcablc.* These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural interpretation of this chapter; hence it has been sought to neutralize them, still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that they did not proceed from Jesus, but may have been added ex cventu by the narrator. Paulus himself found the words e^v-viau ai-Tov (y. 11) quite too decided, and therefore ventured the conjecture that the narrator, writing with the result in his mind, had omitted a qualifying perhaps, which Jesus had inserted.\ This expedient has been more extensively adopted by Gabler. Not only does he par- ' i1-~ ~V~,,« "-"wfnacnnn lint alvfiatlv tne ywi'ij uj ui/«, LW m^ ..,.„„„,.__ __ . ^ conjectures that in the words %atpw 61 ijuaic, 'iva Ttiarevorire, on OVK' fmrjv KKel, f am glad for your aakes that I was not there, to the intent he may believe, there is a slight exaggeration resulting from John's knowledge of the issue ; lastly, even in relation to the words of Martha v. 22, d/U,u KOI vvv oida a. r. A. he admits the idea of an addition from the pen of the writer4 By the adoption of this expedient, the natural interpretation avows its inability by itself to MIRACLES-RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 541 cope with the difficulties in John's narrative. For if, in order to render its application possible, it is necessary to expunge the most significant passages, it is plain that the narrative in its actual state does not admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the passages, the incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation is confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen; but from the above observations it is clear, that if all the features in this narrative which are really opposed to the natural view of the entire event were ascribed to the evangelist, it would in the end be little short of the whole that must be regarded as his invention. Thus, what we have done with the two first narratives of resuscitations, is with the last and most remarkable history of this kind, effected by the various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, to reduce the subject to the alternative: that we either receive the event as supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical narrative ; or, if we find it incredible as such, deny that the narrative has an historical character. In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision with respect to all the three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the kind of miracles which we have now before us. We have hitherto been ascending a ladder of miracles ; first, cures of mental disorders, then, of all kinds of bodily maladies, in which, however, the organization of the sufferer was not so injured as to cause the cessation of consciousness and life; and now, the rcvivification of bodies, from which the life has actually departed. This progression in the marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We have indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental derangement, in which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond the nervous system, which is immediately connected with mental action, might have been removed, even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere word, look, and influence of Jesus : but the more deeply the malady appeared to have penetrated into the entire corporeal system, the more inconceivable to ITS was a cure of this kind. Where in insane persons the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging madness, or where in nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest itself.in periodical epilepsy; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent benefit could be conferred by that mental influence; and this was yet more difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the mind, as in leprosy, blindness, lameness, &e. And yet, up to this point, there was always something present, to which the miraculous power of Jesus could apply itself; there was still a consciousness in the objects, on winch to make an Jiiipression-a nervous life to be stimulated. Not so with the dead. J-he corpse from which life and consciousness have flown has lost |lie last fulcrum for the power of the miracle worker; it perceives Juni^ no longer-receives no impression from him ; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred on him anew. *>ut to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper sense, is a ere- 542 THE LIFE OF JESUS. ative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a man, we must confess to be beyond our power. But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections, there is an evident climax. Woolston has remarked with is restored 10 me uu me a^m^ ^.^ „„ ,,„.___ the youth of Nain, when already in his coffin, and on. his way to interment; lastly, Lazarus, after four days' abode in the tomb. In the first history, a word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen under the powers of the grave; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried out of the city towards his grave; but in the third, Lazarus, who had been some time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest manner as an inhabitant of the nether world: so that, if the reality of the death could be doubted in the first instance, this would become more difficult in the second, and in the third, as good as impossible.! With this gradation, there is a corresponding increase in the difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable; if, indeed, when the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the resurrection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather be possible in the case of one just departed, and yet having some remains of vital warmth, than in that of a corpse, cold and being carried to the grave; and again, in this, rather than in the case of one who had already lain four days in the grave, and in which decay is supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect to which, this supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied. But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second. As a motive by which Jesus was induced to raise the young man at Nain, the narrative mentions compassion for the mother (v. 13). Together with this we are to include, according to Olshausen, a reference to the young man himself. For, he observes, man as a conscious being can never be treated as a mere instrument, which would be the case here, if the joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of Jesus in raising the youth. J This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not that it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the dead, but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For the conslusion, that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas, is not allowable or fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the evangelists, is totally inadmissible. We should rather (presupposing the purity of the character of Jesus) -- - j. ».„.. „,,.,„;.,„,. ivni,ai,.8. 61. t 1, S. 276 f. MIRACLES-KESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 543 conclude that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was expected is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other generally useful man? It is said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so ? But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston's objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control. The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression : but the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so ? That it was riot because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the evangelist (v. 5). What then ? Liicke conjectures that Jesus was then occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Pera;a, which he was not willing to interrupt for the sake ot Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher call as a teacher. But he might here have very well done the one, and ^not have left the other undone; he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus, whether through the medium ot a disciple, or by the power of his will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. Now 544 THE LIFE OF JESUS. another motive is clearly indicated, as Olsliausen lias remarked, in the declaration of Jesus, v. 15, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olsliausen on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his disciples ;* since, according to expressions, such as 'tva So^aoBTj b vlbg ~. 6. (y. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lucke exclaims: by no means! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously;! and De Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles.^ The former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, pre-occupation elsewhere, detained Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus: nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia,§ from this incongruity of the Christ in John's gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the fourth evangelist is unhistorical. The alleged conduct of the disciples also, v. 12 £, is such as to excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus, he sleeps, I will awake him, KSKoi^-ai, efynviou avrov, thiuk that he referred to a natural sleep ? One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep; hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here sleep (KOIJUTJCK?) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth evangelist's favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that figure of speech. || * Tholuck, S. 202 ; Olshausen, 2, 8. 260. + Ut sup. J Andachtsbuch, 1, S. 292 •• - *^ i«r_^. -------- HT.,,,,11, 1 MIEACLES----KESUSC1TATIONS OF THE DEAD. 545 The observation of the Jews, v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death ? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee ; neither could those events remain unknown in the capital,* especially as we are expressly told that the fame of them went abroad into all that land, throughout all Judcea, and throughout all the country round about. To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them .refer to the very cure which he had last narrated. A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus, v. 41 f. After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Lucke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so th'at the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of. these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have token place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus ia 546 THE LIFE OF JESUS. that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf.* But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless they suppose the speaker's whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition ? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throw v. 42 out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a later hand.t But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding, v. 41; and to this opinion Lucke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.^: Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is oar security that it is so only with these ?--In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers-in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,-the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions^ As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears in three evangelists; the two * This argument applies also to Da Wette, who, while acknowledging that such an idea would be unsuitable in the mouth of Jesus, supposes nevertheless that it was really in *" ' -J 4- in-fu-rtti^cli. uber einige wahrscheinliche Interpolation^!} im Evangelium • • -<•.. i.,fl 9 s. 310. MIRACLES-RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 547 others are each related by one evangelist only:* and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax. That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke's gospel alone;-especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative,-is a difficulty in more than one respect, f Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but lie had, as early as iii. 7. or 20. leaped from Luke vi. 12. (17.) to Matt. xii. 15; and only at iv. 35. (21 ff.) returns to Luke viii. 22. (16 ff.); thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel ? Even apart trom the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples, [tadrj-al luavol • the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus ;J lastly, the fame ot the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Sehlciermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the iiehcst harvest,-to Capernaum arid Jerusalem; events which, like ie resuscitation in question, occurred in other places, could not so •easily become common property. But first, this conception of the C:«o is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most im- <*»e Quell'80' r>' * C°mp' s,l'hk'iermacher. aber deQ Lukas, S. 103 ff. } Saunier, tiber 548 THE LIFE OF JESUS. portant deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period ; secondly, (and these two objections arc essentially connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot: instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of the air, flying far ..away from the place which gave them birth, roaming everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original locality. We see the same thing happen daily ; innumerable histories, both true and false, arc represented as having occurred at the most widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher's supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author's ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen. But this ground of doubt falls with incomparably greater weight, on the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus in the fourth gospel. If the authors or collectors of the three first gospels knew of this, they could not, for more than one reason, avoid introducing it into their writings. For, first, of all the resuscitations effected by Jesus, nay, of all his miracles, this resurrection of Lazarus, if not the most wonderful, is yet the OTIC in which the marvellous presents itself the most obviously and strikingly, and which therefore, if its historical reality can be established, is a pre-eminently strong proof of the extraordinary endowments of Jesus as a divine messenger ;* whence the evangelists, although they had related one or two other instances of the kind, could not think it superfluous to add this also. But, secondly, the resurrection of Lazarus had, according to the representation of John, a direct influence in the development of the fate of Jesus; for we learn from xi, 47 ff., that the increased resort to Jesus, and the credit which this event procured him, led to that consultation of the Sanhedrim in which the sanguinary counsel of Caiaphas was given and approved. Thus the event had a double importance-pragmatical as well as dogmatical ; consequently, the synoptical writers could not have failed to narrate it, had it been within their knowledge. Nevertheless, theologians have found out all sorts of reasons why those evangelists, even had the fact been known to them, should refrain from its narration. Some have been of opinion that at the time of the composition of the three first gospels, the history was still in every MIRACLES-RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 549 mouth, so that to make a written record of it was superfluous ;* others, on the contrary, have conjectured that it was thought desirable to guard against its further publication, lest danger should accrue to Lazarus and his family, the former of whom, according to John xii. 10., was persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy on account of the miracle which had been performed in him; a caution for which there was no necessity at the later period at which John wrote his gospel, f It is plain that these two reasons nullify each other, and neither of them is in itself worthy of a serious refutation: yet as similar modes of evading a difficulty are still more frequently resorted to than might be supposed, we ought not to think some animadversion on them altogether thrown away. The proposition, that the resurrection of Lazarus was not recorded by the synoptists because it was generally known in their circle, proves too much; since on this rule, precisely the most important events in the life of Jesus, his baptism, death, and resurrection, must have remained unwritten. Moreover, writings, which, like our gospels, originate in a religious community, do not serve merely to make known the unknown; it is their office also to preserve what is already known. In opposition to the other explanation, it has been remarked by others, that the publication of this history among those who were not natives of Palestine, as was the case with those for whom Mark and Luke wrote, could have done no injury to Lazarus; and even the author of the first gospel, admitting that he wrote in and for Palestine, could hardly have withheld a fact in which the glory of Christ was so peculiarly manifested, merely out of consideration to Lazarus, who, supposing the more improbable case that he was yet living at the time of the composition of the first gospel, ought not, Christian as he doubtless was, to refuse to suffer for the name of Christ; and the same observation would apply to his family. The most dangerous time for Lazarus according to John xii. 10, was that immediately after his resurrection, and a narrative which appeared so long after, could scarcely have heightened or renewed this danger; besides, in the neighbourhood of Bethany arid Jerusalem whence danger was threatened to Lazarus, the event must have been so well-known and remembered that nothing was to be risked by its publication.! It appears then that the resurrection of Lazarus, since it is not narrated by the synoptist, cannot have been known to them ; and the question arises, how was this ignorance possible ? llase gives * Whitl.v ePrive it liy trulv I THE LIFE OF JESUS. the mysterious answer, that the reason of this omission lies hid in the common relations under which the synoptists in general were silent concerning all the earlier incidents in Judeea; but this leaves it uncertain, at least so far as the expressions go, whether we ought to decide to the disadvantage of the fourth gospel or of its predecessors. The latest criticism of the gospel of Matthew has cleared up the ambiguity in Ilase's answer after its usual manner, determining the nature of those common relations which he vaguely adduces, thus: Every one of the synoptists, by his ignorance af a history which an apostle must have known, betrays himself to be no apostle.* But this renunciation of the apostolic origin of the first gospel, does not by any means enable us to explain the ignorance of its author and his compeers of the resurrection of Lazarus. For besides the remarkable character of the event, its occurrence in the very heart of Judrca, the great attention excited by it, and its having been witnessed by the apostles,-all these considerations render it incomprehensible that it should not have entered into the general tradition, and from thence into the synoptical gospels. It is argued that these gospels are founded on Galilean legends, i. e. oral narratives and written notices by the Galilean friends and companions of Jesus; that these were not present at the resurrection of Lazarus, arid therefore did not include it in their memoirs ; and that the authors of the first gospels, strictly confining themselves to the Galilean sources of information, likewise passed over the event.t But there was not such a wall of partition between Galilee and Judcca, that the fame of an event like the resurrection of Lazarus could help sounding over from the one to the other. Even if it did not happen during a feast time, when (John iv. 45.) many Galileans might be eye-witnesses, yet the disciples, who were for the greater part Galileans, were present (v. 16), and must, so soon as they returned into Galilee after the resurrection of Jesiis, have spread abroad the history throughout this province, or rather, before this, the Galileans who kept the last passover attended by Jesus, must have learned the event, the report of which was so rife in the city. Hence even Lucke finds this explanation, of Gabler's unsatisfactory; and on his own side attempts to solve the enigma by the observation, that the original evangelical tradition, which the synoptist followed, did not represent the history of the passion mainly in a pragmatical light, and therefore gave no heed to this event as the secret motive of the murderous resolve against Jesus, and that only John, who was initiated into the secret history of the Sanhedrim, was in a condition to supply this explanatory fact.J This view of the case would certainly appear to neutralize one reason why the synoptists must have noticed the event in question, namely, that drawn from its pragmatical importance; but when it is added, that as a miracle regarded in itself, apart from its more particular circumstances, it might easily be lost among the .!-„.«» r.Kor Am Ursnr. S. 10. f Gabler, ut sup. 8. 240 f.; also N»- MIRACLES-RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD. 551 rest of those narratives from which we have in the three first gospels a partly accidental selection,-we must reply, that the synoptical selection of miracles appears to be an accidental one only when that is at once assumed which ought first to be proved: namely that the miracles in the fourth gospel are historical; and unless the selection be casual to a degree inconsistent with the slightest intelligence in the compilers, such a miracle cannot have been overlooked.* It lias doubtless been these and similar considerations, which have led the latest writers on the controversy concerning the first gospel, to complain of the one-sidedness with which the above question is always answered to the disadvantage of the synoptists, especially Matthew, as if it were forgotten that an answer dangerous to the fourth gospel lies just as near at hand.f For our own part, we are not so greatly alarmed by the fulminations of Liicke, as to be deterred from the expression of our opinion on the subject. This theologian, even in his latest editions, reproaches those who, from the silence of the synoptical writers, conclude that this narrative is a fiction and the go,=pel of John not authentic, with an unparalleled lack of discernment, and a total want of insight into the mutual relations of our gospels (that is, into those relations viewed according to the professional conviction of theologians, which is unshaken even by the often well-directed attacks of the author of the Probabilia). We, nevertheless, distinctly declare that we regard the history of the resurrection of Lazarus, not only as in the highest degree improbable in itself, but also destitute of external evidence; and this whole chapter, in connexion with those previously examined, as an indication of the unauthcnticity of the fourth gospel. If it is thus proved that all the three evangelical histories of resuscitations are rendered more or less doubtful by negative reasons: all that is now wanting to us is positive proof, that the tradition of Jesus having; raised the dead might easily be formed without his- O O J toncal foundation. According to rabbinical, f as well as New Testa- * Comp. De Wette, exeg. Hautlb. 1, 3, S. 139. In Schleiermacher's Lectures on the Life of Jesus, (if I may be permitted to refer to a work not yet printed,) the silence in question is explained in the following manner. The synoptical evangelists in general were ignorant of the relations of Jesus with the family of Bethany, because perhaps the apostles did not wish an intimate personal connexion of this kind to pass into the general tradition, from which those evangelists drew; and ignorance of the relations of Jesus with the family in general, of course included ignorance of this particular fact connected with then or eve have presented much to edify us ter""l'-e-' Tta'n. 'n **? m"ch °l.this desc»Pti°i>, and from the narrative which the lat- im. But what motive could the apostles have for such reserve ? Are we to infer secret, even, with Venturini, tender ties ? Must not such a private relation in the case of Jesus The intimations which John and Luke afford us on ter gives of the visit of Jesus to Martha and Mary, we see also that the apostles, in furnishing their accounts, were by no means averse to allow something of these relations to appear so far as they could retain a general interest. Now in this light, the resurrection ot^ Lazarus, as a pre-eminent miracle, was incomparably more valuable than that visit with its single aphorism ''One thing is needful," and involved less of the private relations of Jesus with the family of Bethany ; the supposed effort to keep these secret, could not therefore have hindered, the promulgation of the resurrection of Lazarus. t Kern, ilber den L'rsnr. dcs KV.TTKT M«nti T,-,i>;n,. 7o,-f0 .!,,.;<•» to-n o o HA 552 THE LIFE OF JESUS. ment passages (e. g. John v. 28 f.; vi. 40, 44; 1 Cor. xv; 1 Thess. iv. 16), the resuscitation of the dead was expected of the Messiah at his coming. Now the impovaia, the appearance of the Messiah Jesus on earth, was in the view of the early church broken by his death into two parts ; the first comprised his preparatory appearance, which began with his human birth, and ended with the resurrection and ascension ; the second was to commence with his future advent on the clouds of heaven, in order to open the aluv ^eAAwv, the age to come. As the first appearance of Jesus had wanted the glory and majesty expected in the Messiah, the great demonstrations of messianic power, and in particular the general resurrection of the dead, were assigned to his second, and as yet future appearance on earth. Nevertheless, as an immediate pledge of what was to be anticipated, even in the first advent some fore-splendours of the second must have heen visible in single instances; Jesus must, even in his first advent, by awaking some of the dead, have guaranteed his authority one day to awake all the dead; he must, when questioned as to his messiah-ship, have been able to adduce among other criteria the fact that the dead were raised up by him (Matt. xi. 5.), and he must have imparted the same power to his disciples (Matt. xi. 8, comp. Acts ix. 40; xx. 10.); but especially as a close prefiguration of the hour in ivhich all tliat are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth (John v. 28 f.), he must have cried with a loud voice, Come forth! to one who had lain in the grave four days (John xi. 17, 43). For the origination of detailed narratives of single resuscitations, there lay, besides, the most appropriate types in the Old Testament. The prophets Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings xvii. 17 if.; 2 Kings iv. 18 ff.) had awaked the dead, and to these instances Jewish writings appealed as a type of the messianic time.* The object of the resuscitation was with both these prophets a child, but a boy, while in the narrative common to the synoptists we have a girl; the two prophets revived him while he lay on the bed, as Jesus does the daughter of Jairus; both entered alone into the chamber of death, as Jesus excludes all save a few confidential friends; only, as it is fitting, the Messiah needs not the laborious manipulations by which the prophets attained their object. Elijah in particular raised the son of a widow, as Jesus did at Nain; he met the widow of Zarephath at the gate (but before the death of her son) as Jesus met the widow of Nain, under the gate of the city (after the death of her son); lastly, it is in both instances told in the same words how the miracle-worker restored the son to the mother.t Even one already laid in his grave, like Lazarus, was restored to life by the prophet Elisha; with this difference, however, that the prophet himself had been long dead, and the contact of his bones reanimated a corpse, which was accidently thrown upon them (2 Kings xiii. 21). There is yet another point of similarity between the re- MIRACLES-ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE SEA. 553 suscitations of the dead in the Old Testament and that of Lazarus; it is that Jesus, while in his former resuscitation he utters the authoritative word without any preliminary, in that of Lazarus offers a prayer to God, as Elisha, and more particularly Elijah, are said to have clone. While Paulus extends to these narratives in the Old Testament, the natural explanation which he has applied to those in the New, theologians of more enlarged views have long ago remarked, that the resurrections in the New Testament are nothing more than mytln, which had their origin in the tendency of the early Christian church, to make her Messiah agree with the type of the prophets, and with the messianic ideal.* § 101. ANECDOTES HAVING RELATIONS TO THE SEA. As in general, at least according to the representations of the three first evangelists, the country around the Galilean sea was the chief theatre of the ministry of Jesus; so a considerable number of his miracles have an immediate reference to the sea. One of this class, the miraculous draught of fishes granted to Peter, has already presented itself for our consideration ; besides this, there are the miraculous stillinW. are then^lves o ho ,1 " f/ deS'S"ed lml^ticns of those in the Old Testament; ov« death W!ls impart °lot'i, ° Mief °f anticluity. that » victorious power n'°« imm,• .1.. _i_,.m „„,} ,,ri,OT, nw;1ijP(i bv his trembling disciples, MIEACLES-ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE SEA. 555 inspired them with courage by his words. But for courage to be shown, real danger must be apprehended: now for Jesus, supposing him to be conscious of an immediate power over nature, danger could in no degree exist: therefore he could not here give any proof of this theoretical power. In both respects the natural explanation would find only the conceivable and the desirable attributed to Jesus in the evangelical narrative ; namely, on the one hand, an intelligent observation of the state of the weather, and on the other, exalted corn-age in the presence of real peril. When we read that Jesus commanded the winch imn/iav rol? di'Kj-iotg, we are to understand simply that he made some remark on the storm, or some exclamations at its violence: and his calming of the sea we are to regard only as a prognostication, founded on the observation of certain signs, that the storm would soon subside. His address to the disciples is said to have proceeded, like the celebrated saying of Cassar, from the confidence that a man who was to leave an impress on the world's history, could not so lightlv be cut short in his career by an accident. That those who were in the ship regarded the subsidence of the storm as the effect of the words of Jesus, proves nothing, for Jesus nowhere confirms their inference.* But neither does he disapprove it, although he must have observed the impression which, in consequence of that inference, the result had made on the people ;f he must therefore, as Venturini actually supposes, have designedly refrained from shaking their high opinion of his miraculous power, in order to attach them to him the more firmly. But, setting this altogether aside, was it likely that the natural presages of the storm should have been better understood by Jesus, who had never been occupied on the sea, than by Peter, James, and John, who had been at home on it from their youth upwards ? J It remains then that, taking the incident as it is narrated by the evangelists, we must regard it as a, miracle: but to raise this from an exegetical result to a real fact, is, according to the above remarks, extremely difficult: whence there arises a suspicion against the historical character of the narrative. Viewed more nearly however, and taking Matthew's account as the basis, there is nothing to object to the narrative until the middle of v. 26. It might really have happened that Jesus in one of his frequent passages across the Galilean sea, was sleeping when a storm arose: that the disciples awaked him with alarm, while he, calm and self-possessed, said to them, Why are ye fecu-fill, O ye of little fait/if What follows-the commanding of the graves, which Mark with his well-known fondness for such authoritative words, reproduces as if he were giving the exact words, oi Jesus in a Greek translation (aiwTra, nefiipuao!)-might have * Thus 1'aulus, exeg. Handb., 1. B. S. 4GS ff.; Venturini, 2, S. 100 ff,; Kaiser, bibl. iiicol. 1, S, 11)7. Hase, also, | 74, thinks this view probable. f Meander, L. ,1, Chr., S, " ,; wll° for the rest here oilers but a weak dnf™<» arainst tii» iv,f,,,-,,i „*-„!.,„.,.;„- 556 THE LIFE OP JESUS. been added in the propagation of the anecdote from one to another. There was an inducement to attribute to Jesus suc'h a command over the winds and the sea, not only in the opinion entertained of his person, Lut also in certain features of the Old Testament history. i'~-1 '1"-""-!"+ir,r,o nf +IIP nnssacTR of the Israelites through ^-eripjoK -in epuu^u, ^,™^vl, ^ „„.___„ 7 ... so that it retreated. Now, as the instrument in tliis p;ir'l;;«H of tin; lied Sea was Moses, it was natural to ascribe to his great successor, the Messiah, a similar function ; accordingly we actually find from rabbinical passages, that a drying up of the sea was expected to be wrought by God in the messianic times, doubtless through the agency of the Messiah, as formerly through that of Moses.* That instead of drying up the sea Jesus is said only to produce a Calm, may be explained, on the supposition that the storm and the composure exhibited by Jesus on the occasion were historical, as a consequence of the mythical having combined itself with this historical clement; for, as according to this, Jesus and his disciples were on board a ship, a drying up of the sea would have been out of place. Still it is altogether without any sure precedent, that a mythical addition should be engrafted on the stem of a real incident, so as to leave the latter totally unmodified. And there is one feature, even in the part hitherto assumed to be historical, which, more narrowly examined, might just as probably have been invented by the legend as have really happened. That Jesus, before the storm breaks out, is sleeping, and even when it arises, docs not immediately awake, is not his voluntary deed, but chance ;t it. is this very chance, however, which alone gives the scene its full significance, for Jesus sleeping in the storm is by the contrast which he presents, a not less emblematical image than Ulysses sleeping when, after so many storms, he was about to land on his island home. Now that Jesus really slept at the time that a storm broke out, may indeed have happened by chance in one case out of ten; but in the nine cases also, when this did not happen, and Jesus only showed himself calm and courageous during the storm, I am inclined to think that the legend would so far have understood her interest, that, as she had represented the contrast of the tranquillity of Jesus with the raging of the elements to the intellect, by means of the words of Jesus, so she would depict it for the imagination, by means of the image of Jesus sleeping in the ship (or as Mark has it,J on a pillow in the hinder part of the ship). If then that which may possibly have hap- •5- Xeandcr alters the fact, when he describes Jesus as • •- ' •'.......•'•".• .nn.l thus mauifestin:' * Vid, pag. CO note *. f Xeandcr alters the fact, vlien no cictcnuci, „„.-..„ .... falling asleep in the midst of the fury of the ytorm ami the wave;*, and thus manifesting •A tranquillity nf soul \\liich no terror of nature.' could disturb (S, ;!(!^.). Luke says expressly, as iluij sitilfl In-j\ll «*/«/>.• and rf/terc camt d/fu a .s'urw,, ^v,, TTAfwrwv (^t avr&V ueprTn'wGt" itfil Kuriiihi /u/Xa'j1 K. r. ?.., and according to the representation of the other evan-o-MUt* M!SO. the sleeping of Jesus appears to have preceded the breaking out of the storm, - •'•-••1 l''">-HI..V would rather not MIRACLES-ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE SEA. 557 pciied in a single case, must certainly have been invented by the le.fentl in nine cases ; the expositor must in reason prepare himself for the undeniable possibility, that we have before us one of the nine cases, instead of that single case.* If then it be granted that nothing further remains as an historical foundation for our narrative, than that Jesus exhorted his disciples to show the firm courage of faith in opposition to the raging waves of the sea, it is certainly possible that he may once have done this in a storm at sea; but just as he said : if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye may say to this mountain, Be thou removed and cast into the sea (Matt. xxi. 21.), or to this tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea (Luke xvii. 6.), and both shall be done (KM vn-fj-KOVOEV av viuv, Luke): so he might, not merely on the sea, but in any situation, make use of the figure, that to him who has faith, winds and waves shall be obedient at a word (on not rolg av^iou; imrdaoet Kal rS> vdari, KOI v-anovovaiv avru, Luke). If we now take into account what even Olshauscn remarks, and Schneckenburger has shown,! that the contest of the kingdom of God with the world was in the early times of Christianity commonly compared to a voyage through a stormy ocean ; we see at once, how easily legend might come to frame such a narrative as the above, on the suggestions afforded by the parallel between the Messiali and Moses, the expressions of Jesus, and the conception of him as the pilot who steers the little vessel of the kingdom of God through the tumultuous waves o ~ of the world. Setting this aside, however, and viewing the matter only generally, in relation to the idea of a miracle-worker, we find a similar power over storms and tempests, ascribed, for example, to Pythagoras.J We have a more complicated anecdote connected with the sea, wanting in Luke, but contained in John vi. 16 if., as well as in Matt. xiv. '22 ft'., and Mark vi, 45 ff., where a storm overtakes the disciples when sailing by night, and Jesus appears to their rescue, walking towards them on the sea. Here, again, the storm subsides m a marvellous manner on the entrance of Jesus into the ship; but the peculiar difficulty of the narrative lies in this, that the body of Jesus appears so entirely exempt from a law which governs all other human bodies without exception, namely, the law of gravitation, that he not only docs not sink under the water, but docs not even dip uito it; on the contrary, he walks erect on the waves as on firm land, it we are to represent this to ourselves, we must in some way or other, conceive the body of Jesus as an etherial phantom, according to the opinion of the IJocetaj; a conception which, the Fathers of ; Tin t TJober *nKT,"f S^T" 'A ™^CV> **UMti°n. Glaubwflrdigkeit, S. 110, li,,,, Lrspi. U, s. i. [,, 08 f, i Aecordini: to Jamlilirh. vita P,-n, i «.-. Ji i.-.-,.., 558 THE LIFE OP JESUS. W\j the Church condemned as irreligious, and which we must reject as extravagant. Olshausen indeed says, that in a superior corporeality, impregnated with the powers of a higher world, such an appearance need not create surprise :* but these are words to which we can attach no definite idea. If the spiritual activity of Jesus which refined and perfected his corporeal nature, instead of being conceived as that which more and more completely emancipated his body from the psychical laws of passion and sensuality, is understood as if by its means the body was exempted from the physical law of gravity:- this is a materialism of which, as in a former case, it is difficult to decide whether it be more fantastical or childish. If Jesus did not sink in the water, he must have been a spectre, and the disciples in our narrative would not have been wrong in taking him for one. We must also recollect that on his baptism in the river Jordan, Jesus did not exhibit this property, but was submerged like an ordinary man. Now had he at that time also the power of sustaining himself on the surface of the water, and only refrained from using it ? and did he thus increase or reduce his specific gravity by an act of his will ? or arc we to suppose, as Olshausen would perhaps say, that at the time of his baptism he had not attained so far in the process of subtilizing his body, as to be freely borne up by the water, and that he only reached this point at a later period ? These are questions which Olshausen justly calls absurd: nevertheless they serve to open a glimpse into the abyss of absurdities in which \ve are involved by the supranaturalistic interpretation, and particularly by that which this theologian gives of the narrative before us. To avoid these, the natural explanation has tried many expedients. The boldest is that, of Paulus, who maintains that the text does not state that Jesus walked on the water; and that the miracle in this passage is nothing but a philological mistake, since -xepinaTelv t~l rrft QaAaaaric is analogous to the expression a-pa-orredevEiv iril T?;? (;aA«crCT7)c, Exod. xiv. 2, and signifies to walk, as the other to encamp, over the sea, that is, on the elevated sea-shore.t According to the meaning of the words taken separately, this explanation is possible : its real applicability in this particular instance, however, must be determined by the context. Now this represents the disciples as having rowed twenty-five or thirty furlongs (John), or as being in the midst of the sea (Matthew and Mark), and then it is said that Jesus came towards the ship, and so near that he could speak to them, •nepi^aruv erri rrjf OaMautjc. How could he do this if he remained on the shore ? To obviate this objection, Paulus conjectures that the disciples in that stormy night probably only skirted the shore; but the words ev fitaw TTJC Oalaa s v>f »• + r'----- "---'......' " '• 560 THE LIFE OP JESUS- accounts lias pcculiai features which in an historical light are suspicious. The most striking of these features is found in Mark v. 48, where lie says of Jesus that he came walking on the sea towards the disciples, and would have passed by them, Km rfteXe napeWelv av-rovc, but that he was constrained by their anxious cries to take notice of them. With justice Fritz ache interprets Mark's meaning to be, that it was the intention of Jesus, supported by divine power, to walk across the whole sea as on firm land. But with equal justice Pau-1ns asks, Could anything have been more useless and extravagant than to perform go singular a miracle without any eye to witness it? We must not however on this account, with the latter theologian, interpret the words of Mark as implying a natural event, namely, that Jesus, being on the land, was going to pass by the disciples who were sailing in a ship not far from the shore, for the miraculous interpretation of the passage is perfectly accordant with the spirit of our evangelist. Isot contented with the representation of his informant, that Jesus, on this one occasion, adopted this extraordinary mode of progress with special reference to his disciples, he aims by the above, addition to convey the idea of walking on the water being so natural and customary with Jesus, that without any regard to the disciples, whenever a sheet of water lay in his road, he walked across it as unconcernedly, as if it had been dry land. But such a mode of procedure, if habitual with Jesus, would presuppose most decidedly a subtilization of his body such as Olshausen supposes; it would therefore presuppose what is inconceivable. Hence tins particular of Mark's presents itselt as one of the most striking among those, by winch the second evangelist new and then approaches to tin: exaggerations of the apocryphal gospels.* In Matthew, the miracle is in a different manner, not so much Heightened as complicated; for there, not only Jesus, but Peter also makes an experiment in walking on the sea, not indeed altogether successful. This trait is rendered suspicious by its intrinsic character, as well as by the silence of the two other narrators. Immediately fin the word of Jesus, and in virtue of the faith which he has in the beginning, Peter actually succeeds in walking on the water for some time, and only when he is assailed.by fear and doubt does lie begin to sink. What are we to think of this? Admitting that Jesus, by means of his ethcrialized body, could walk on the water, ho\v could he command Peter, who was not gifted with such a body, to do the same ? or if by a mere word he could give the body of Peter a dispensation from the law of gravitation, can he have been a man ? and if a God, would he thus lightly cause a suspension of natural laws at the caprice of a man ? or lastly, are we to suppose * Mark's inclination to exaggerate shows itself also in his concluding sentence, v, 51, (comp, vii. 37) : und Ikfy u-n-Q sore amazc.d in th^ntsdi:es Icyoud ineasuru and wond^rc.d ; ,,.i,;,.v, ,,.;n 0,-,irr-plv !« understood to import, as Paulus supposes (2, SiiiGG), a disapproval MIRACLES-ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE SEA. 561 that faith lias the power instantaneously to lessen the specific gravity of the body of a believer ? Faith is certainly said to have such a power in the figurative discourse of Jesus just referred to, according to which,.the believer is able to remove mountains and trees into the sea.-and why not also himself to walk on the sea? The moral that as soon as faith falters, power ceases, could not be so aptly presented by either of the two former figures as by the latter, in the following form: as long as a man has faith he is able to walk unharmed on the unstable sea, but no sooner does lie give way to doubt than he sinks, unless Christ extend to him a helping hand. The fundamental thought, then, of Matthew's episodical narrative is, that Peter was too confident in the firmness of his faith, that by its sudden failure he incurred great danger, but was rescued by Jesus; a thought which is actually expressed in Luke xxii. 31 f. where Jesus says to Simon: Satan hath desired, to have you that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thce that thy faith fail not, These words of Jesus have reference to Peter's coming denial: this was the occasion when his faith, on the strength of which lie had just before offered to go with Jesus to prison and to death, would have wavered, had not the Lord by his intercession, procured him new strength.- If we add to this the above-mentioned habit of the early Christians to represent the persecuting world under the image of a turbulent, sea, we cannot fail, with one of the latest critics, to perceive in the description of Peter courageously volunteering to walk on the sea. soon, however, sinking from faintheartedness, but borne up by Jesus, an allegorical and mythical representation of that trial of faith which this disciple who imagined himself so strong, met so weakly, and which higher assistance alone enabled him to surmount.* But the account of the fourth gospel also is not wanting in peculiar features, which betray an unhistorical character. It lias ever been a cross to harmonists, that while according to Matthew and Mark, the ship was only in the middle of the sea when Jesus reached it: according to John, it immediately after arrived at the opposite shore; that while, according to the former, Jesus actually entered into the ship, and the storm thereupon subsided: according to John, on the contrary, the disciples did indeed wish to take him into the ship, but their actually doing so was rendered superfluous by their immediate arrival at the place of disembarkation. It is true that here also abundant methods of reconciliation have been found. First, the word j/fleAov, they wished, added to Aa/Mv, to receive, is said to be a mere redundancy of expression ; then, to signify simply the Joyfulncss of the reception, as if it had been said, it>KAOv-ef eAa/Sov-; then, to describe the first impression which the recognition of Jesus made on the disciples, his reception into the ship, which really followed, not being mentioned.f But the sole reason for such an inter- * Schucckenburger, ubcr den Urspr. u, s, f. $• 68 f,: Weisse. die evans. Gcschichte. 'i Si 521. 4 v;.i i ii..i.- --'•••• • • 562 THE LIFE OF JESUS. pretation lies in the unauthorized comparison with the synoptical accounts: in the narrative of John, taken separately, there is no ground for it, nay, it is excluded. For the succeeding sentence: ei-Ot'wf TO rcXolov iyivE-o t~l rfjf yijs, etc i]v vTTijyov, immediately t/ie (. r,. Rl 564 THE LIFE OF JESUS. clan,* the Greco-oriental legend feigned that the hyperborean Abaris possessed an arrow, by means of which he could bear himself up in the air, and thus traverse rivers, seas, and abysses,! and popular superstition attributed to many wonder-workers the power of walking on water.J Hence the possibility that with all these elements and inducements existing, a similar legend should be formed concerning Jesus, appears incomparably stronger, than that a real event of this kind should have occurred:-and with this conclusion we may dismiss the subject. The manifestatioji in inn } Die h. Schvift das ncuen Bundes, 1, S. MIRACLES-ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE SEA. 567 as that on the opening of which the coin is to be obtained,-we can only understand an immediate discovery of the piece of money in this part of the fish.* Besides, to what purpose would the opening of the fish's mouth be mentioned, unless the desideratum were to be found there ? Paulus sees in this only the injunction to release the fish from the hook without delay, in order to keep it alive, and thus to render it more saleable. The order to open the mouth of the fish might indeed, if it stood alone, be supposed to have the extraction of the hook as its object and consequence; but as it is followed by evpijoeig ararrjpa, thou shalt find a stater, it is plain that this is the immediate end of opening the mouth. The perception that, so long as the opening of the fish's mouth is spoken of in this passage, it will be inferred that the coin was to be found there, has induced the rationalistic commentators to try whether they could not refer the word aro/j.a, mouth, to another subject than the fish, and no other remained than the fisher, Peter. But as urofia appeared to be connected with the fish by the word avrov, which immediately followed it, Dr. Paulus, moderating or exaggerating the suggestion of a friend, who proposed to read dvOevprjaug, instead of-avrov, evp^aeif-allowed avrov to remain, but took it adverbially, and translated the passage thus: thou hast then only to open thy mouth to offer the fish for sale, and thou wilt on the spot (avTOv) receive a stater as its price. But, it would still be asked, how could a single fish fetch so high a price in Capernaum, where fish were so abundant ? Hence Paulus understands the words, TOV dvafUdvra rcp&rov l^Ovv dpov, take up the fisJi that first cometh. v.p, collectively thus: continue time after time to take the fish that first comes to tliee, until thou hast caught as many as will be worth a stater. If the series of strained interpretations which are necessary to a natural explanation of this narrative throw us back on that which allows it to contain a miracle; and if this miracle appear to us, according to our former decision, both extravagant and useless, nothing remains but to presume that here also there is a legendary clement. This view has been combined with the admission, that a real but natural fact was probably at the foundation of the legend: namely, that Jesus once ordered Peter to fish until he had caught enough to procure the amount of the temple tribute; whence the legend arose that the fish had the tribute money in its mouth, f But, in our opinion, a more likely source of this anecdote is to be found in the much-used theme of a catching of fish by Peter, on the one side, and on the other, the well-known stories of precious things having been found in the bodies of fish. Peter, as we learn jroiu Matt, iv., Luke v., John xxi., was the fisher in the evangelical |«gend to whom Jesus in various forms, first symbolically, and then htcrally, granted the rich draught of fishes. The value of the * Comp. Storr, in Halt's Magazin, 2, S. G8 ff. \ Kaiser, bibl. Theol. 1. S. 200 568 THE LIFE OF JESUS. capture appears here in the shape of a piece of money, which, as similar things are elsewhere said to have been found in the belly of fishes, is by an exaggeration of the marvel said to be found in the mouth of the fish. That it is the stater, required for the temple tribute, might be occasioned by a real declaration of Jesus concerning his relation to that tax; or conversely, the stater which was accidentally named in the legend of the fish angled for by Peter, might bring to recollection the temple tribute, which amounted to that sum for two persons, and the declaration of Jesus relative to this subject. With this tale conclude the sea anecdotes. § 102. THE MIRACULOUS MULTIPLICATION OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES. As, in the histories last considered, Jesus determined and mitigated the motions of irrational and even of inanimate existences; so, in the narratives which we are about to examine, he exhibits the power of multiplying not only natural objects, but also productions of nature which had been wrought upon by art. That Jesus miraculously multiplied prepared articles of food, feeding a great multitude of men with a few loaves and fishes, is narrated to us with singular unanimity by all the evangelists (Matt, xiv. 13 ff.; Mark vi. 30 ff.; Luke ix. 10 ff.; John vi. 1 ff.). And if we believe the two first, Jesus did not do this merely once; for in. Matt. xv. 32 ff.; Mark viii. 1 ff. we read of a second multiplication of loaves and fishes, the circumstances of which are substantially the same as those of the former. It happens somewhat later; the place is rather differently described, and the length of time during which the multitude stayed with Jesus is differently stated; moreover, and this is a point of greater importance, the proportion between the stock of food and the number of men is different, for, on the first occasion, five thousand men are satisfied with five loaves and two fishes, and, on the second,, four thousand with seven loaves and a few fishes; on the first twelve baskets arc filled with the fragments, on the second only seven. Notwithstanding this, not only is the substance of the two histories exactly the same-the satisfying of a multitude of people with disproportionately small means of nourishment; but also the description ot the scene in the one, entirely corresponds in its principal features to that in the other. In both instances, the locality is a solitary region in the vicinity of the Galilean sea; Jesus is led to perform the miracle because the people have lingered too long with him; he manifests a wish to feed the people from his own stores, which the disciples..regard as impossible; the stock of food at his disposal consists of loaves and fishes ; Jesus makes the people sit down, - - •' - -ll...~t-irrll MIRACLES-FEEDIXG THE MULTITUDE. 569 the medium of the disciples; they are completely satisfied, and yet a disproportionately great quantity of fragments is afterwards collected in baskets ; lastly, in the one case as in the other, Jesus after thus feeding the multitude, crosses the sea. This repetition of the same event creates many difficulties.. The chief of these is suggested by the question : Is it conceivable that the disciples, after they had themselves witnessed how Jesus was able to feed a great multitude with a small quantity of provision, should nevertheless on a second occasion of the same kind, have totally forgotten the first, and have asked, Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness as to feed so great a multitude ? To render such an obliviousness on the part of the disciples probable, we are reminded that they had, in just as incomprehensible a manner, forgotten the declarations of Jesus concerning his approaching sufferings and death, when these events occurred ;* but it is equally a pending question, whether after such plain predictions from Jesus, his death could in fact have been so unexpected to the disciples. It has been supposed that a longer interval had elapsed between the two miracles, and that during this there had occurred a number of similar cases, in which Jesus did not think fit to afford miraculous assistance:! but, on the one hand, these are pure fictions; on the other, it would remain just as inconceivable as ever, that the striking similarity of the circumstances preceding the second feeding of the multitude to those preceding the first, should not have reminded even one of the disciples of that former event. Paulus therefore is right in maintaining, that had Jesus once already fed the multitude by a miracle, the disciples, on the second occasion, when he expressed his determination not to send the people away fasting, would confidently have called upon him for a repetition of the former miracle. In any case (hen, if Jesus on two separate occasions fed a multitude with disproportionately small provision, we must suppose, as some critics have done, that many features in the narrative of the one incident were transferred to the other, and thus the two, originally unlike, became in the course of oral tradition more and more similar ; the incredulous question of the disciples especially having been uttered only on the first occasion, and not on the second.^ It may seem to speak in favour of such an assimilation, that the fourth evangelist, though in his numerical statement he is in accordance with the first narrative of Matthew and Mark, yet has, in common with the second, the circumstances that the scene opens with an address 570 THE LIFE OP JESUS. MIKACLES-FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 571 of Jesus and not of the disciples, and that the people come to Jesus on a mountain. But if the fundamental features be allowed to remain,-the wilderness, the feeding of the people, the collection of the fragments,-it is still, even without that question of the disciples, sufficiently improbable that the scene should have been repeated in so entirely similar a manner. If, on the contrary, these general features be renounced in relation to one of the histories, it is no longer apparent, how the veracity of the evangelical narratives as to the manner in which the second multiplication of loaves and fishes took place can be questioned on all points, and yet their statement as to \\\&fact of its occurrence be maintained as trustworthy, especially as this statement is confined to Matthew and his imitator Mark. Hence later critics have, with more* or lessf decision, expressed the opinion, that here one and the same fact has been doubled, through a mistake of the first evangelist, who was followed by the second. They suppose that several narratives of the miraculous feeding of the multitude were current which presented divergencies from each other, especially in relation to numbers, and that the author of the first gospel, to whom every additional history of a miracle was a welcome prize, and who was therefore little qualified for the critical reduction of two different narratives of this kind into one, introduced both into his collection. This fully explains how on the second occasion the disciples could again express themselves so incredulously ; namely, because in the tradition whence the author of the first gospel obtained the second history of a miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes, it was the first and only one, and the evangelist did not obliterate this feature because, apparently, he incorporated the two narratives into his writing just as he read or heard them. Among other proofs that this was the case, may be mentioned the constancy with which he and Mark, who copied him, not only in the account of the events, but also in the subsequent allusion to them (Matt. xvi. 9 f.; Mark viii. 19 f.), call the baskets in the first feeding, KO^LVOI, in the second a-rTvpidsg. It is indeed correctly maintained, that the apostle Matthew could not possibly take one event for two, and narrate a new history which never happened :§ but this proposition does not involve the reality of the second miraculous feeding of the multitude, unless the apostolic origin of the first gospel be at once presupposed, whereas this yet remains to be proved. Paulus further objects, that the duplication of the history in question could be of no advantage whatever to the design of the evangelist; and Olshausen, developing this idea more fully, observes that the legend would not have left the second narrative as simple and bare as the first. But this argument, that a narrative cannot be fictitious, because if it were so it would have been more Comp. * Thiesz, krit. Commentar. 1, S. 168 ff.; Schulz, fiber das Abendmahl, S. 311. i. Fritzsctiej in Matth. p. 523. "j* Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, S. 145 ; Sieffert, • - -- - • * • • ' T T ^-,1 ci o-r.i ,v A „„, + r'nmn • elaborately adorned, may very properly be at once dismissed, since its limits being altogether undefined, it might be repeated under all circumstances, and in the end would prove fable itself not sufficiently fabulous. But, in this case particularly, it is totally baseless, because it presupposes the narrative of the first feeding of the multitude to be historically accurate: now, if we have already in this a legendary production, the other edition of it, namely the second history of a miraculous feeding, needs not to be distinguished by special traditionary features. But not only is the second narrative not embellished as regards the miraculous, when compared with the first; it even diminishes the miracle, for. while increasing the quantity of provision, it reduces the number of those whom it satisfied: and this retrogression in the marvellous is thought the surest proof that the second feeding of the multitude really occurred; for, it is said, he who chose to invent an additional miracle of this kind, would have made it surpass the first, and instead of five thousand men would have given, not four, but ten thousand.* This argument, also, rests on the unfounded assumption that the first narrative is of course the historical one; though Olshausen himself has the idea that the second might with probability be regarded as the historical basis, and the first as the legendary copy, and then the fictitious would have the required relation to the true- that of exaggeration. But when in opposition to this, he observes, how improbable it is that an unscrupulous narrator would place the authentic fact, being the less imposing, last, and eclipse it beforehand by the false one,-that such a writer would rather seek to outdo the truth, and therefore place his fiction last, as the more brilliant,-he again shows that he does not comprehend the mythical view of the biblical narratives, in the degree necessary for forming a judgment on the subject. For there is no question here of an unscrupulous narrator, who would designedly surpass the true history of the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and least of all is Matthew pronounced to be such a narrator: on the contrary, it is held that with perfect honesty, one account gave five thousand, another four, and that, with equal honesty, the first evangelist copied from both; and for the very reason that he went to work innocently and undesignedly, it was of no importance to him which ot the two histories stood first and which last, the more important or the less striking one; but he allowed himself to be determined on this point by accidental circumstances, such as that he found the one connected with incidents which appeared to him the earlier, the other with such as he supposed to be the later. A similar instance of duplication occurs in the Pentateuch in relation to the histories of the feeding of the Israelites with quails, and of the production of water out of the rock, the former of which is narrated both in Exod. xvi. and Numb, xi., the latter in Exod. xvii. and again in Numb. xx., in each instance with an alteration in time, place, and other 572 THE LIFE OF JESUS. circumstances.* Meamvliile, all this yields us only the negative result that the double narratives of the first gospels cannot have been founded on two separate events. To determine which of the two is historical, or whether cither of them deserves that epithet, must be, the object of a special inquiry. To evade the pre-eminently magical appearance which this miracle presents, Olshausen gives it a relation to the moral state of the participants, and supposes that the miraculous feeding of the multitude was effected through the intermediation of their spiritual hunger. But this is ambiguous language, which, on the first attempt to determine its meaning, vanishes into nothing. For in cures, for example, the intermediation here appealed to consists in the opening of the patient's mind to the influence of Jesus by faith, so that when faith is wanting, the requisite fulcrum for the miraculous power of Jesus is also wanting: here therefore the intermediation is real. Now if the same kind of intermediation took place in the case before us, so that on those among the multitude who were unbelieving the ' O O satisfying power of Jesus had no influence, then must the satisfaction of hunger here, (as, in the above cases, the cure,) be regarded as something effected by Jesus directly in the body of the hungry persons, without any antecedent augmentation of the external means of nourishment. But such a conception of the matter, as Paulus justly remarks, and as even Olshauscn intimates, is precluded by the statement of the evangelists, that real food was distributed amona; the O J O multitude; that each enjoyed as much as he wanted; and that at the end the residue was greater than the original store. It is thus O O plainly implied that there was an external and objective increase of the provisions, as a preliminary to the feeding of the multitude. Now, this cannot be conceived as effected by means of the faith of the people in a real manner, in the sense that that faith co-operated in producing the multicipation of the loaves. The intermediation which Olshausen here supposes, can therefore have been only a teleological one, that is, we are to understand by it, that Jesus undertook to multiply the loaves and fishes for the sake of producing a certain moral condition in the multitude. But an intermediation of this kind affords me not the slightest help in forming a conception of the event; for the question is not u'/i.y, but how it happened. Thus all which Olshauscn believes himself to have done towards rendering this miracle more intelligible, rests on the ambiguity of the expression, intermediation ; and the inconceivableness of an immediate influence of the will of Jesus on irrational nature, remains chargeable upon this history as upon those last examined. But there is another difficulty which is peculiar to the narrative before us. We have here not merely, as hitherto, a modification or a direction of natural objects, but a multiplication of them, and that to an enormous extent. Nothing, it is true, is more familiar to our observation than the growth and multiplication of natural objects, as MIKACLES-FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 573 presented to us in the parable of the sower, and the grain of mustard seed, for example. But, first, these phenomena do not take place without the co-operation of other natural agents, as earth, water, air, so that here, also, according to the well known principle of physics, there is not properly speaking an augmentation of the substance, but only a change in the accidents ; secondly, these processes of growth and multiplication are carried forward so as to pass through their various stages in corresponding intervals of time. Here, on the contrary, in the multiplication of the loaves and fishes by Jesus, neither the one rule nor the other is observed: the bread in the hand of Jesus is no longer, like the stalk on which the corn grew, in communication with the maternal earth, nor is the multiplication gradual, but sudden. But herein, it is said, consists the miracle, which in relation to the last point especially, may be called the acceleration of a natural process. That which conies to pass in the space of three quarters of a year, from seed-time to harvest, was here effected in the minutes which were required for the distribution of the food ; for natural developments are capable of acceleration, and to how great an extent we cannot determine.* It would, indeed, have been an acceleration of a natural process, if in the hand of Jesus a grain of corn had borne fruit a hundredfold, and brought it to maturity, and if he had shaken the multiplied grain out of his hands as they were filled again and again, that the people might grind, knead, and bake it, or eat it raw from the husk in the wilderness where they were ;-or if he had taken a living fish, suddenly called forth the eggs from its body, and converted them into full-grown fish, which then the disciples or the people might have boiled or roasted, this, we should say, would have been an acceleration of a natural process. But it is not corn that he takes into his hand, but bread ; and the fish also, as they are distributed in pieces, must have been prepared in some way, perhaps, as in Luke xxiv. 42, comp. John xxi. 9, broiled or salted. Here then, on both sides, the production of nature is no longer simple and living, but dead and modified by art: so that to introduce a natural process of the above kind, Jesus must, in the first place, by his miraculous power have metamorphosed the bread into corn again, the roasted fish into raw and living ones ; then instantaneously have effected the described multiplication : and lastly, have restored the whole from the natural to the artificial state. Thus the miracle would be composed, 1st, of a revivification, which would exceed in miraculousness all other instances in the gospels ; ?ndly, of an extremely accelerated natural process; and 3rdly, of an artificial process, effected invisibly, and likewise extremely accelerated, since all the tedious proceedings of the miller and baker on the one hand, and 01 the. cook on the other, must have been accomplished in a moment by the word of Jesus. How then can Olshauscn deceive himself and the believing reader, by the agreeably sounding expression, ac- * Tims HI,,!,,,,.<,„., :~ i- -<•*- ™.....! « - ------ 574 THE LIFE OF JESUS. MIBACLES-FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 575 celerated natural process, when this nevertheless can designate only a third part of the fact of which we are speaking ?* But how are we to represent such a miracle to ourselves, and in what stage of the event must it be placed ? In relation to the latter point, three opinions are possible, corresponding to the number of the groups that act in our narrative; for the multiplication may have taken place cither in the hands of Jesus, or in those of the disciples who dispensed the food, or in those of the people who received it. The last idea appears, on the one hand, puerile even to extravagance, if we are to imagine Jesus and the apostles distributing, with great carefulness, that there might be enough for all, little crumbs which in the hands of the recipients swelled into considerable pieces: on the other hand, it would have been scarcely a possible task, to get a particle, however small, for every individual in a multitude of five thousand men, out of five loaves, which according to Hebrew custom, and particularly as they were carried by a boy, cannot have been very large ; and still less out of two fishes. Of the two other opinions I think, with Olshausen, the one most suitable is that which supposes that the food was augmented under the creative hands of Jesus, and that he time after time dispensed new quantities to the disciples. We may then endeavour to represent the matter to ourselves in two ways : first we may. suppose that as fast as one loaf or fish was gone, a new one came out of the hands of Jesus, or secondly, that the single loaves and fishes grew, so that as one piece was broken off, its loss was repaired, until on a calculation the turn came for the next loaf or fish. The first conception appears to be opposed to the text, which as it speaks of fragments en. ruv TTKVTS apruv, of the Jive loaves (John vi. 13.), can hardly be held to presuppose an increase of this number; thus there remains only the second, by the poetical description of which Lavater has done but a poor service to the orthodox view.f For this miracle belongs to the class which can only appear in any degree credible so long as they can be retained in the obscurity of an indefinite conception :J no sooner does the light shine on them, so that they can be examined in all their parts, than they dissolve like the unsubstantial creations of the mist. Loaves, which in the hands of the distributors expand like wetted sponges,-broiled fish, in which the severed parts arc replaced instantaneously, as in the living crab gradually,-plainly belong to quite another domain than that of reality. What gratitude then do we not owe 1o the rationalistic interpretation, if it be true that it can free us, in the easiest manner, from the burden of so unheard-of a miracle ? If we are to believe Dr. Pau-lus,§ the evangelists had no idea that they were narrating anything * This lamentable observation of mine, according to Olshausen, has its source in something worse than intellectual incapacity, namely, in my total disbelief in a living God ; otherwise assuredly it would not have appeared so great a difficulty to me that tb.3 Divine causality should have superseded human operations (S. 47U, der 3ten Auttage). i Jesus Messias, 2. B. No. 14, 15 and '-'0. J For this reason Neander (S. 377) passes P miraculous, and the miracle was first conveyed into their accounts by expositors. What they narrate is, according to him, only thus much: that Jesus caused his small store of provisions to be distributed, and that in consequence of this the entire multitude obtained enough to eat. Here, in any case, we want a middle term, which would distinctly inform us, how it was possible that, although Jesus had so little food to offer, the whole multitude obtained enough to eat. A very natural middle term however is to be gathered, according to Paulus, out of the historical combination of the circumstances. As, on a comparison with John vi. 4, the multitude appear to have consisted for the greater part of a caravan on its way to the feast, they cannot have been quite destitule of provisions, and probably a few indigent persons only had exhausted their stores. In order then to induce the better provided to share their food with those who were in want, Jesus arranged that they should have a meal, and himself set the example of imparting what he and his disciples could spare from their own little store; this example was imitated, and thus the distribution of bread by Jesus having led to a general distribution, the whole multitude were satisfied. It is true that this natural middle term must be first mentally interpolated into the text; as, however, the supernatural middle term which is generally received is just as little stated expressly, and both alike depend upon inference, the reader can hardly do otherwise than decide for the natural one. Such is the reasoning of Dr. Paulus : but the alleged identity in the relation of the two middle terms to the text docs not in fact exist. For while the natural explanation requires us to suppose a new distributing subject, (the better provided among the multitude,) and a new distributed object, (their provisions,) together with the act of distributing these provisions: the su pranatural explanation contents itself with the subject actually present in the text, (Jesus and his disciples,) with the single object there given, (their little store.) and the described distribution of this; and only requires us to supply from our imagination the means by which this store could be made sufficient to satisfy the hunger of the multitude, namely its miraculous augmentation under the hands of Jesus (or of his disciples). How can it be yet maintained that neither ot the two middle terms is any more suggested by the text than the other? That the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes is not expressly mentioned, is explained by the consideration that tlie event itsclt is one of which no clear conception can be formed, and therefore it is best conveyed by the result alono. But how will the ^ natural theologian account for nothing being said of the distribution, called forth by the example of Jesus, on the part of those among the multitude who had provisions ? It is altogether arbitrary to insert^ that distribution between the sentences, He gave them to the diaciples, and the disciples to the multitude (Matt. xiv. 19), and, t/uy did all eat and were filled (v. 20); while the words, KOI 576 THE LIFE OP JESUS. them all (Mark vi. 41,) plainly indicate that only the two fishes- and consequently only the live loaves-were the object of distribution for all.* But the natural explanation falls into especial embarrassment when it corncs to the baskets which, after all were satisfied, Jesus caused to be filled with the fragments that remained. The fourth evangelist says: avvr/yayov ovv, nal eytfuaav dude/ia K.O-v KpiOivuv, a £~epiaaevas TO?? fiEppuKoaiv, therefore they gathered them together, and fitted twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and, above unto them thai had eaten (vi. 13). This seems clearly enough to imply that out of those identical five loaves, after live thousand men had been satisfied by them, there still remained fragments enough to fill twelve baskets,-more, that is, than the amount of the original store. Here, therefore, the natural expositor is put to the most extravagant contrivances in order to evade the miracle. It is true, when the synoptists simply say that the remnants of the meal were collected, and twelve baskets filled with them, it might be thought from the point of view of the natural explanation, that Jesus out of regard to the gift of God, caused the fragments which the crowd had left from their own provisions to be collected by his disciples. But as, on the one hand, the fact that the people allowed the remains of the repast to lie, and did not appropriate them, seems to indicate that they treated the nourishment presented to them as the property of another; so, on the other hand, Jesus, when, without any preliminary, he directs his disciples to gather them up, appears to regard them as his own property. Hence Paulus understands the words ripav K, r. A of the synoptists, not of a collection first made after the meal, of that which remained when the people had been satisfied, but of the overplus of the little store belonging to Jesus and the disciples, which- the latter, after reserving what was necessary for Jesus and themselves, carried round as an introduction and inducement to the general repast. But how, when the words Ifyayov «al ix,opTdaOr]tiav ndv~e<;, they did all eat and were filled, are immediately followed by nal fjpav, and they took iip, can the latter member of the verse refer to the time prior to the meal ? Must it not than have necessarily been said at least fjpav jap, for they took up? Farther, how, after it had just been said that the people did eat and were filled, can r'c -nepiaaevaav, tliat which remained, especially succeeded as it is in Luke by avrotf, to them, mean anything else than what the people had left? Lastly, how is it possible, that out of five loaves and two fishes, after Jesus and his disciples had reserved enough for themselves, or even without this, there could in a natural manner be twelve baskets filled for distribution among the people ? But still more strangely does the natural explanation deal with the narrative of John. Jesus here adds, as a reason for gathering up the fragments, Iva jj,fj -n a^oXrirai, 1 -i ---------:™»,^OO;!,IA tn ilivnst the suc- HIKACLES-FEEDING THE MULTITUDE. 577 seeding statement that they filled twelve baskets with the remains of the five loaves, ofjts relation to the time after the meal; and in this case, it would be impossible to get clear of a miraculous multiplication of the loaves. Paulus therefore, although the words avvff yayov ovv KOI iyepaav dudeKa Kofovovg K. r. A., therefore they galh ered them together and filled twelve baskets, &c., form a strictly coherent whole, chooses rather to detach avwf/yayov ovv, and, by a still more forced construction than that which he employed with the synoptical text, makes the narrative pass all at once, without the slightest notice, into the pluperfect, and thus leap back to the time before the meal. Here, then, the natural explanation once more fails to fulfil its task: the text retains its miracle, and if we have reason to think this incredible, we must inquire whether the narrative of the text deserve credence. The agreement of all the four evangelists is generally adduced in proof of its distinguished credibility: but this agreement is by no means so perfect. There are minor differences, first between Matthew and Luke; then between these two and Mark, who in this instance again embellishes; and lastly, between the synoptists collectively and John, in the following points : according to the synoptists, the scene of the event is a desert place, according to John, a mountain ; according to the former, the scene opens with an address from the disciples, according to John, with a question from Jesus (two particulars in which, as we have already remarked* the narrative of John approaches that of the second feeding in Matthew and Mark); lastly, the words which the three first evangelists put into the mouth of the disciples indefinitely, the fourth in his individualizing manner ascribes to Philip and Andrew, and the same evangelist also designates the bearer of the loaves and fishes as a boy (rraiddpiov^. These divergencies however may be passed over as less essential, that we may give our attention only to one, which has a deeper hold. While, namely, according to the synoptical accounts, Jesus had been long teaching the people and healing their sick, and was only led to feed them by the approach of evening, and the remark of the disciples that the people needed refreshment: in John, the first thought of Jesus, when he lifts up his eyes and sees the people gathering round him, is that which he expresses in his question to Philip: Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat? or rather, as he asked this merely to prove Philip, well knowing hinisell what he would do, he at once forms the resolution of feeding the multitude in a miraculous manner. But how could the design of feeding the people arise in Jesus immediately on their approach ? They did not come to him for this, but for the sake of his teaching and his curative power. He must therefore have conceived tins design entirely of his own accord, with a view to establish his miraculous power by so signal a demonstration. But did he ever thus work a miracle without any necessity, and even without any lm]nr.r.,^-n.,4. _..!». i -, -i i .-, „ , 578 THE LIFE OF JESUS. a miracle ? I am unable to describe strongly enough how impossible it is that eating should here have been the first thought of Jesus, how impossible that he could thus obtrude his miraculous repast on the people. Thus in relation to this point, the synoptical narrative, in which there is a reason tor the miracle, must have the preference to that of John, who, hastening towards the miracle, overlooks the requisite motive for it, and makes Jesus create instead of awaiting the occasion for its performance. An eye witness could not narrate thus ;* and if, therefore, the account of that gospel to which the greatest authority is now awarded, must be rejected as unhistorical; so, with respect to the other narratives, the difficulties of the fact itself are sufficient to cast a doubt on their historical credibility, especially if in addition to these negative grounds we can discover positive reasons which render it probable that our narrative had an unhistorical origin. Such reasons are actually found both within the evangelical history itself, and beyond it in the Old Testament history, and the Jewish popular belief. In relation to the former source, it is worthy of remark, that in the synoptical gospels as well as in John, there are more or less immediately appended to the feeding of the multitude by Jesus with literal bread, figurative discourses of Jesus on bread and leaven: namely, in the latter, the declarations concerning the bread of heaven, and the bread of life which Jesus gives (John vi. 27 fF.); in the former, those concerning the false leaven of the Pharisees and Sadclucees, that is, their false doctrine and hypocrisyf (Matt. xvi. 5 ff.: Mark viii. 14 ff.; comp. Luke xii. 1.); and on both sides, the figurative discourse of Jesus is erroneously understood of literal bread. It would not then be a very strained conjecture, that as in the passages quoted we find the disciples and the people generally, understanding literally what Jesus meant figuratively ; so the same mistake was made in the earliest Christian tradition. If, in figurative discourses, Jesus had sometimes represented himself as him who was able to give the true bread of life to the wandering and hungering people, perhaps also placing in opposition to this, the * Against Xeanrler'e attempt at reconciliation, compare De Wette, exeg. Handb. 1, 3, fi. 77. T This indication has been recently followed up by Weisse. He finds the key iU> the history of the miraculous multiplication of the loaves, in the question addressed by Jesus to the disciples when they misunderstand his admonition against the leaven of the I'luirisees and Sadducecs. lie asks them whether they did not remember, how many baskers they had been able to fill from the live and again from the seven loaves, and then adds, Ifnoi it it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, &c., (Malt, xvi. 11.). Now, says Weisse, the parallel which Jesus here institutes between his discourse on the leaven, and the history of the feeding of the multitude, shows that the latter also is only to be interpreted parabolically (S. 511 ft'.). But the form of the question of Jesus : Troaorc no6ivov<; ((TTnjpuSaf) tUi^ST?; how m *./»//» «,.w. panes pealecosta- 582 THE LIFE OP JESUS. UOi- belief in such augmentations of food, attested by that rabbinical statement, the New Testament narrative may in early times have been understood by judaizing Christians in the same (miraculous) sense. But our examination has shown that the evangelical narrative was designedly composed so as to convey this sense, and if this sense was an element of the popiilar Jewish legend, then is the evangelical narrative without doubt a product of that legend. § 103. JESUS TURNS WATER INTO WINE. NEXT to the history of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, may be ranged the narrative in the fourth gospel (ii. 1 ff.), of Jesus at a wedding in Cana of Galilee turning water into wine. According to Olshausen, both miracles fall under the same category, since in both a substratum is present, the substance of which is modified.* But he overlooks the logical distinction, that in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the modification is one of quantity merely, an augmentation of what was already existing, without any change of its quality (bread becomes more bread, but remains bread); whereas at the wedding in Cana the substratum is modified in quality-out of a certain substance there is made not merely more of the same kind, but something else (out of water, wine) ; in other words, a real transubstantiation takes place. It is true there are changes in quality which are natural results, and the instantaneous effectuation of which by Jesus would be even more easy to conceive, than an equally rapid augmentation of quantity; for example, if he had suddenly changed must into wine, or wine into vinegar, this would only have been to conduct in an accelerated manner the same vegetable siibstratum, the vinous juice, through various conditions natu-. ral to it. The miracle would be already heightened if Jesus had imparted to the juice of another fruit, the apple for instance, the-quality of that of the grape, although even in this his agency would have been within the limits of the same kingdom of nature. But here, where water is turned into wine, the.re is a transition from one kingdom of nature to another, from the elementary to the vegetable; a miracle which as far exceeds that of the multiplication of the loaves, as if Jesus had hearkened to the counsel of the tempter, and turned stones into bread.] To this miracle as to the former, Olshausen, after Augustine,§ applies his definition of an accelerated natural process, by which we are to understand that we have here simply the occurrence, in an ac- * Comp. Be Wette, exeg. Handbuch, 1, 1, S. 133 f. f Bibl. Comm. 2, S. 74. | Meander is of opinion that an analogy may be found for this miracle yet more easily than for that of the loaves-in the mineral springs, the water of which is rendered so po- i -------:„,. *i,,,t-it-nroiluces effects which far exceed those of ordinary water, • <> - T-.., ,,;,,mn fecit MIRACLES-'TURNING WATER INTO WINE. 583 celerated manner, of that which is presented yearly in the vine in a slow process of development. This mode of viewing the matter would have some foundation, if the substratum on which Jesus operated had been the same out of which wine is wont to be naturally produced; if he Jiad taken a vine in his hand, and suddenly caused it to bloom, and to bear ripe grapes, this might have been called an accelerated natural process. Even then indeed we should still have no wine, and if Jesus were to produce this also from the vine which lie took into his hand, he must add an operation which would be an invisible substitute for the wine-press, that is, an accelerated artificial process ; so that on this supposition the category of the accelerated natural process would already be insufficient. In fact, however, we have no vine as a substratum for this production of wine, but water, and in this case we could only speak with propriety of an accelerated natural process, if by any means, however gradual, wine were ever produced out of water. Here it is urged, that certainly out of water, out of the moisture produced in the earth by rain and the like, the vine draws its sap, which in due order it applies to the production of the grape, and of the wine therein contained ; so that thus yearly, by means of a natural process, wine does actually come out of water.* But apart from the fact that water is only one of the elementary materials which are required for the fructification of the vine, and that to this end, soil, air, and light, must concur; it could not be said either of one, or of all these elementary materials together, that they produce the grape or the wine, nor, consequently, that Jesus, when he produced wine out of water, did the same thing, only more quickly, which is repeated every year as a gradual process : on the contrary, here again there is a confusion of essentially distinct logical categories. For we may place the relation of the product to the producing agent, which is here treated of, under the category of power and manifestation, or of cause and effect: never can it be said that water is the power or the cause, which produces grapes and wine, for the power which gives existence to them is strictly the vegetable individuality of the vine-plant, to which water, with the rest of the elementary agencies, is related only as the solicitation to the power, as the stimulus to the cause. That is, without the co-operation of water, air, &c., grapes certainly cannot be produced, any more than without the vine-plant; but the distinction is, that in the vine the grape, in itself or in its germ, is already present, and water, air, &c., only assist in its development; whereas in these elementary substances, the grape is present neither actu nor potentia; they can in no way produce the fruit out of themselves, but only out of something else-the vine. To turn water into wine is not then to make a cause act more rapidly than it would act in a natural way, but it is to make the effect appear without a cause, out of a mere accessory , llms Augustine, ut sup, approved by Olshausen : sicut enim, quod miseru.nl ministri 18 Al/dntU. in fi'mim /•/»>.•*-•- -'--------r>._.•--• ..•-.. . - - - - • 584 THE LIFE OF JESUS. circumstance ; or, to refer more particularly to organic nature, it is to call forth the organic product without the producing organism, out of the simple inorganic materials, or rather out of one of those materials only. This is about the same thing as to make bread out of earth without the intervention of the corn plant, flesh out of bread without a previous assimilation of it by an animal body, or in the same immediate manner, blood out of wine. If the supranaturalist is not here contented with appealing to the incomprehcnsibleness of an omnipotent word of Jesus, but also endeavours, with Olshausen, to bring the process which must have been contained in the miracle in question nearer to his conception, by regarding it in the light ot a natural process; he must not, in order to render the matter more probable, suppress a part of the necessary stages in that pioccss, but exhibit them all. They would then present the following series: 1st, to the water, as one only of the elementary agents, Jesus must have added the power of the other elements above named, 2ndly, (and this is the chief point,) he must have procured, in an equally invisible manner, the organic individuality of the vine; 3rdly, he must have accelerated, to the degree of instantaneousness, the natural process resulting from the reciprocal action of these objects upon one another, the blooming and fructification of the vine, together with the ripening of the grape; 4thly, he must have caused the artificial process of pressing, and so forth, to occur invisibly and suddenly; and lastly, he must again have accelerated the further natural process of fermentation, so as to render it momentary. Thus, here as;ain, the designation of the miracle as an accelerated natural O O process, would apply to two stages only out of five, the other three being such as cannot possibly be brought under this point of view, though the two first, especially the second, are of greater importance even than belonged to the stages which were neglected in the application of this view to the history of the miraculous feeding : so that the definition of an accelerated natural process is as inadequate here as there.* As, however, this is the only, or the extreme category, under which we can bring such operations nearer to our conception and comprehension; it follows that if this category be shown to be inapplicable, the event itself is inconceivable. Not only, however, has the miracle before us been impeached in relation to possibility, but also in relation to utility and fitness. It has been urged both in ancient! and modern^ times, that it was unworthy of Jesus that he should not only remain in the society of drunkards, but even further their intemperance by an exercise ot his miraculous power. But this objection should be discarded as an exaggeration, since, as expositors justly observe, from the words after men have icell'drwik o-av nedvoOuai (v. 10), which the ruler of the * Even LUcke, 1, S. 40r>, thinks the analogy with the above natural process deficient • -!.....«„ „„„„„!„ himself better than by the considera- MIRACLES----TURNING WATEB INTO WINE. 58,5 feast upxi-'piKMvoc; uses with reference to the usual course of things at such feasts, nothing can with certainty be deduced with respect to the occasion in question. We must however still regard as valid an objection, which is not only pointed out by Paulus and the author of the Probabilia,* but admitted even by Lucke and Olshausen to bo at the first glance a pressing difficulty : namely, that by this miracle Jesus did not, as was usual with him, relieve any want, any real no-id, but only furnished an additional incitement to pleasure; showed himself not so much helpful as courteous ; rather, so to speak, performed a miracle of luxury, than of true beneficence. If it be here said that it was a sufficient object for the miracle to confirm the faith of the disciples,f which according to v. 11 was its actual effect; it must be remembered that, as a general rule, not only had the miracles of Jesus, considered with regard to their form, i. e. as extraordinary results, something desirable as their consequence, for instance, the faith of the spectators; but also, considered with regard to their matter, i. e. as consisting of cures, multiplications of loaves, and the like, were directed to some really beneficent end. In the present miracle this characteristic is wanting, and hence Paulus is not wrong when he points out the contradiction which would lie in the conduct of Jesus, if towards the tempter he rejected every challenge to such miracles as, without being materially beneficent, or called for by any pressing necessity, could only formally produce faith and astonishment, and yet in. this instance performed a miracle of that very nature. { The supranaturalist was therefore driven to maintain that it was not faith in general which Jesus here intended to produce, but a conviction entirely special, and only to be wrought by this particular miracle. Proceeding on this supposition, nothing was more natural than to be reminded by the opposition of water and wine on which the miracle turns, of the opposition between him who baptized with water (Matt. iii. 11), who at the same time came neither eating nor drinking (Luke i. 15; Matt. xi. 18.), and him who, as he baptized with the iloly Ghost and with fire, so he did not deny himself the ardent, animating fruit of the vine, and was hence reproached with being a wine-bibber oivono-ris (Matt. xi. 19); especially as the fourth gospel, in which the narrative of the wedding at Cana is contained, manifests in a peculiar degree the tendency to lead over the contemplation from the Baptist to Jesus. On these grounds Hcrder,§ and after him some others,! have held the opinion, that Jesus by the above miraculous act intended to symbolize to his disciples, several of whom had been disciples of the Baptist, the relation of his spirit and office to those of John, and by this proof of his superior power, to put an end to the offence which they might take at * T. 42. | Tholuck, in loc. J Comm. 4, S. 151 f. {j Von Gottes Sohn u. s. f. nach Johannes Evaiigdium, S. 181 {. \\ C. Ch. Flatt, tiber die Verwandlung des Was-scrs in wan, in Snakind's Jlac-azin. U. Stfink. S. Rfi f. • nki>n,,«,.r, ,,t *„„ s if. t . 586 THE LIFE OF JESUS. his more liberal mode of life. But here the reflection obtrudes itself, that Jesus does not avail himself of this symbolical miracle, to enlighten his disciples by explanatory discourses concerning his relation to the Baptist; an omission which even the friends of this interpretation pronounce to be surprising.* How needful such an exposition was, if the miracle were not to fail of its special object, is evident from the fact, that the narrator himself, according to v. 11, understood it not at all in this light, as a symbolization of a particular maxim of Jesus, but quite generally, as a manifestation (pavipuai^ of his glory.t Thus if that special lesson were the object of Jesus in performing the miracle before us, then the author of the fourth gospel, that is, according to the supposition of the above theologians, his most apprehensive pupil, misunderstood him, and Jesus delayed in an injudicious manner to prevent this misunderstanding; or if both these conclusions are rejected, there still subsists the difficulty, that Jesus, contrary to the prevailing tendency of his conduct, sought to attain the general object of proving his miraculous power, by an act for which apparently he might have substituted a more useful one. Again, the disproportionate quantity of wine with which Jesus supplies the guests, must excite astonishment. Six vessels, each containing from two to three fJ-erpij-ag, supposing the Attic ^srprjTj^, corresponding to the Hebrew bat/i, to be equivalent to ll Roman amphorce, or twenty-one Wirtemburg measures,! would yield 252- 378 measures.§ What a quantity for a company who had already drunk freely! "What enormous vessels! exclaims Dr. Paulus, and leaves no effort untried to reduce the statement of measures in the text. With a total disregard of the rules of the language, he gives to the preposition dva a collective meaning, instead of its .proper distributive one, so as to make the six water pots (ySplaC) contain, not each, but altogether, from two to three fierpTj-dc;; and e^yen Ols-hausen consoles himself, after Semler, with the fact, that it is nowhere remarked that the water in all the vessels was turned into wine. But these are subterfuges; they to whom the Supply of so extravagant and dangerous a quantity of wine on the part of Jesus is incredible, must conclude that the narrative is unhistorical. Peculiar difficulty is occasioned by the relation in. which this narrative places Jesus to his mother, and his mother to him. According to the express statement of the evangelist, the turning of water into wine was the beginning of the miracles of Jesus, «P%*) TUV arifjiMuv; and yet his mother reckons so confidently on his performing a miracle here, that she believes it only necessary to point out to him the deficiency of wine, in order to induce him to afford * Olshausen, ut sup. f Liicke also thinks this symbolical interpretation too farfetched, and too little supported by the tone of the narrative, S. 406. Comp. De Wette, J1- •« a a "-^ t r\ Wirtemlmrg wine Maas, or measure, is equal to about - -----™,,rarnnl MIRACLES-TURNING WATER INTO WINE. 687 supernatural aid; and even when she receives a discouraging answer, she is so far from losing hope, that she enjoins the servants to be obedient to the directions of her son (v. 3, 5). How is this expectation of a miracle on the part of the mother of Jesus to be explained? Are we to refer the declaration of John, that the metamorphosis of the water was the first miracle of Jesus, merely to the period of his public life, and to presuppose as real events, for his previous years, the apocryphal miracles of the Gospel of the infancy? Or, believing that Chrysostom was right in regarding this as too uncritical,* are we rather to conjecture that Mary, in consequence of her conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, a conviction wrought in her by the signs that attended his birth, expected miracles from him, and as perhaps on some earlier occasions, so now on this, when the perplexity was great, desired from him a proof of his power ?f Were only that early conviction of the relatives of Jesus that he was the Messiah somewhat more probable, and especially the extraordinary events of the childhood, by which it is supposed to have been produced, better accredited! Moreover, even presupposing the belief of Mary in the miraculous power of her son, it is still not at all clear how, notwithstanding his discouraging answer, she could yet confidently expect that he would just on this occasion perform his first miracle, and feel assured that she positively knew that he would act precisely so as to require the assistance of the servants. J This decided knowledge on the part of Mary, even respecting the manner of the miracle about to be wrought, appears to indicate an antecedent disclosure of Jesus to her, and hence Olshausen supposes that Jesus had given his mother an intimation concerning the miracle on which he had resolved. But when could this disclosure have been made ? Already as they were going to the feast ? Then Jesus must have foreseen that there would be a want of wine, in which case Mary could not have apprised him of it as of an unexpected embarassmcnt Or did Jesus make the disclosure after her appeal, and consequently in connexion with the words: W/iat have I to do vjith. tkee, u-oman, &c. ? But with this answer, it is impossible to conceive so opposite a declaration to have been united; it would therefore be neccssarv, on Olshausen's view, to imagine that Jesus uttered the nagative words aloud, the affirmative in an under tone, merely for Mary: a supposition which would give the scene the appearance of a comedy. Thus it is on no supposition to be understood how Mary could expect a miracle at all, still less precisely such an one. The first difficulty might indeed be plausibly evaded, by maintaining that Mary did not here apply to Jesus in expectation oi a miracle, but simply that she might obtain her son's advice in the case, as she was wont to do in all difficult circumstances: § his * Homil. in Joatm. ir. loc. f Tholuck, in loc. \ This argument is valid against Neander also, who appeals to the faith of Mary chiefly as a result of the solemn inauguration at the baptism, ;(S. 370) 2 Hess, Gesch. Jesu, 1, S. 135. Comp. also Calvin, in loc. * 588 THE LIFE OF JESUS. reply however shows that he regarded the words of his mother as a summons to perform a miracle, and moreover the direction which Mary gave to the servants remains on this supposition totally unexplained. The answer of Jesus to the intimation of his mother (v. 4) has been just as often blamed with exaggeration* as justified on insufficient grounds. However truly it may be iirged that the Hebrew phrase, -?i •Virg, to which the Greek TL t-uol KM aol corresponds, appears elsewhere as an expression of gentle blame, e. g. 2 Sam. xvi. 10 :f or that, with the entrance of Jesus on his special office his relation to his mother as regarded his actions was dissolved:]: it nevertheless remains undeniable, that it was fitting for Jesus to be '•!-- c- ±1*0 o^oi-niar. nf Ivis miraculous OL LLCSCiy^ -iv.j/iv^^.*..,^...., _. less did Mary, when she brought to his knowledge a want which had arisen, with a merely implied intrcaty for assistance. The case would have been different had Jesus considered the occasion not adapted, or even unworthy to have a miracle connected with it; he might then have repelled with severity the implied summons, as an incitement to a false use of miraculous power (instanced in the history of the temptation); as, on the contrary, he immediately after showed by his actions that he held the occasion worthy of a miracle, it is absolutely incomprehensible how he could blame his mother for her information, which perhaps only came to him a few moments too soon.S Here again it has been attempted to escape from the numerous difficulties of the supranatural view, by a natural interpretation of the history. The commentators who advance this explanation set out from the fact, that it was the custom among the Jews to make presents of oil or wine at marriage feasts. Now Jesus, it is said, having brought with him live new disciples as uninvited guests, might foresee a deficiency of wine, and wished out of pleasantry to present his gift in an unexpected and mysterious manner. The 8o^a ((/lory) which he manifested by this proceeding, is said to be merely his humanity, which in the proper place did not disdain to pass a jest: the ^in-ii;, {fuitfi) which he thereby excited in his disciples, was a joyful adherence to a man who exhibited none ot the oppressive severity which had been anticipated in the Messiah. Mary was aware of her son's project, and warned him when it appeared to her time to put it in execution; but he reminded her playfully not ill his jest by over-haste. ' -i-«>« His causing water to spoil his jest by over-haste. His causing water to be drawn, seems to have belonged to the playful deception which he intended; that all at once wine was found in the vessels instead of water, and that this was regarded as a miraculous metamorphosis, might easily happen at a late hour of the night, when there had already been - • • • ' - >• «».- ,,t «,,n. S. 90: Tholiick, in loc, J Ols- MIRACLES-TUKNIXG WATER INTO WINE. 589 considerable drinking; lastly, that Jesus did not enlighten the wed-din; authenticity of the fourth gospel; 2, by the fact that the narra Gary than a subjective, impress, by the obscurity that rets upoi presulinj " -----"• - -;><' *>>« abundance of practical ideas i a subjective, impress, by uie uur>ni..v ----- : idea, together with the abundance of practical ideas '•>-Wntto «i><.,na to intimate •ad and wine in the last . the not yet overthrown ive bears less of a legen-n it, and its want of one worthy of Jesus wh.ch it idea together with the abundance m I"---"-. ••;" H ' roval of a natural -- B^,MS^ MIRACLES-CURSING THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 593 For the words of Jesus in Mark (v. 14): p?«en iic aov elf rov aluva [irjdelt; Kaprrbv (f>dyoi, Jfo man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever, if they had been meant to imply a mere conjecture as to what would probably happen, must necessarily have had a potential signification given to them by the addition of av- and in the expression of Matthew: p?«£Tt SK aov /caprrof jtvrfTai, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever, the command is not to be mistaken, although Paulus would only find in this also the expression of a possibility. Moreover the circumstance that Jesus addresses the tree itself, as also the solemn dq rbv aluva, for ever, which he adds, speaks against the idea of a mere prediction, and in favour of a curse; Paulus perceives this fully, and hence with unwarrantable violence lie interprets the words Aeyet avry he saith to it, as if they introduced a saying merely in reference to the tree, while he depreciates the expression «OT> Tt (if Trpof To fitjmv 7rpooei9v//fe, voa/aa;, on-ov yilp tjv naipbf OVKUV.-Etnoc yup av rif d ,<«) o Kaipbf ninuv }/v, xuc qhtisv 6 'I. ijf evprjaurv n ev auTr/, /cat trwf &Kaiof entv avn) /a/>tm elf TOV aluva in not /jijdtlc napruv tjiuyy • comp. Augustin ut sup. Mark, *" ri:'at'»y this emit, adds something whieh seems not to tal'y well with his statement, when . octrees that it was not the season for Jigs. It might be urged: if it was not the season Jl"'j'«js, why should Jesus go and louk for fruit on the tree, and hoto could he, -with justice, say . |j Dalimc. in Henke's 596 THE LIFE OF JESUS. phrase /coipbf TUV itapnuv (Matt. xxi. 34.). But this expression strictly refers only to the antecedent of the harvest, the existence of the fruits in the fields or on the trees; when it stands in an affirmative proposition, it can only be understood as referring to the consequent, namely, the possible gathering of the fruit, in so far as it also includes the antecedent, the existence of the fruits in the field : hence eon naipbq nap-tiv can only mean thus much : the (ripe) fruits stand in the fields, and are therefore ready to be gathered. In like mannei, when the above expression stands in a negative proposition, the antecedent, the existence of the fruits in the field, on the trees, &c., is primarily denied, that of the consequent only secondarily and by implication; thus ova KOTI luupb/; OVKUW, means: the figs are not on the trees, and therefore not ready to be gathered, by no means the reverse: they are not yet gathered, and therefore are still on the trees. But this unexampled figure of speech, by which, while according to the words, the antecedent is denied, according to the sense only the consequent is denied, and the antecedent affirmed, is not all which the above explanation entails upon us; it also requires the admission of another figure which is sometimes called •syuchisis, sometimes hypcrbaton. For, as a statement that the figs were then still on the trees, the addition in question docs not show the reason why Jesus found none on that tree, but why he expected the contrary; it ought therefore, say the advocates of this explanation, to stand, not after he found nothing but leaves, but after lie came, if haply he might find any thing thereon,' a transposition, however, which only proves that this whole explanation runs counter to the text. Convinced, on the one hand, that the addition of Mark denies the prevalence of circumstances favourable to the existence of figs on that tree, but, on the other hand, still labouring to justify the expectation of Jesus, other expositors have sought to give to that negation, instead of the general sense, that it was not the right season of the year for figs, a fact of which Jesus must unavoidably have been aware, the particular sense, that special circumstances only, not necessarily known to Jesus, hindered the fruitful-ness of the tree. It would have been a hindrance altogether special, if the soil in which the tree was rooted had been an unfruitful one; hence, according to some, the words ncupbg avuuv actually signify a soil favourable to figs.* Others with more regard to the verbal meaning of Kotpoc, adhere it is true to the interpretation of it as favourable time, but instead of understanding the statement of Mark universally, as referring to a regular, annual season, in which figs were not to be obtained, they maintain it to mean that that particular year was from some incidental causes unfavourable to iigs.f But the immediate signification of naipbi; is the right, in opposition to the wrong season, not a favourable season as opposed to an unfavourable one. Now, when any one, even in an unproductive year, seeks for 1 ............ • ™-'.......- «..-.iK ft n s l7Si Olsliansen, b. Corain. MIRACLES-CURSING THE BAEBEN FIG-TREE. 597 fruits at the time in which they are wont to be ripe, it cannot be said that it is the wrong season for fruit; on the contrary, the idea of a bad year might be at once conveyed by the statement, that when the time for fruit came, ore fjhOev b naipb^ ru>v Kap-rruv, there was none to be found. In any case, if the whole course of the year were unfavourable to figs, a fruit so abundant in Palestine, Jesus must almost as necessarily have known this, as that it was the wrong season; so that the enigma remains, how Jesus could be so indignant that the tree was in a condition which, owing to circumstances known to him, was inevitable. But let us only remember who it is, to whom we owe that addition. It is Mark, who, in his efforts after the explanatory and the picturesque, so frequently draws on his own imagination; and in doing this, as it has been long ago perceived, and as we also have had sufficient opportunities of observing on our way, he does not always go to work in the most considerate manner. Thus, here, he is arrested by the first striking particular that presents itself, namely, that the tree was without fruit, and hastens to furnish the explanation, that it was not the time for figs, not observing that while he accounts physically for the barrenness of the tree, he makes the conduct of Jesus morally inexplicable. Again, the above-mentioned divergency from Matthew in relation to the time within which the tree withered, far from evincing more authentic information,* or a tendency to the natural explanation of the marvellous on the part of Mark, is only another product of the same dramatising effort as that which gave birth to the above addition. The idea of a tree suddenly withering at a word, is difficult for the imagination perfectly to fashion; whereas it cannot be called a bad dramatic contrivance, to lay the process of withering behind the scenes, and to make the result be first noticed by the subsequent passers by. For the rest, in the assertion that it was then, (a few clays before Easter), no time for figs, Mark is so far right, as it regards the conditions of climate in Palestine, that at so early a time of the year the new figs of the season were not yet ripe, for the early fig or boccore is not ripe until the middle or towards the end of June; while the proper fig, the kcrmus, ripens only in the month of August. On the other hand, there might about Easter still be met with here and there, hanging on the tree, the third fruit of the fig-tree, the late kermus, which had remained from the previous autumn, and through the winter ;f as we read in Josephus that a part of Palestine (the shores of the Galilean sea, more fruitful, certainly, than the country around Jerusalem, where the history in question occurred,) ^produces figs uninterruptedly daring ten months of the year, OVK.OV 6ina \it\alv ttwa^eirrrwf ^op^yet.t But even when we have thus set. aside this perplexing addition * As Sieffcrt thinks, iiber den Urapr. S. 113 ff. Compare my reviews, in the Ch»-rakteristiken and Kritiken, S. 272. f Vid. Paulus, ut sup. S. 168 f.; Winer, b. Reahv. d. A. P,^n-,,^l..,----- 4. I, 11 T 1 FT* 598 THE LIFE OF JESUS. of Mark's, that tlie tree was not really defective, but only appeared so to Jesus in consequence of an erroneous expectation: there still subsists, even according to Matthew, the incongruity that Jesus appears to have destroyed a natural object on account of a deficiency which might possibly be merely temporary. He cannot have been prompted to this by economical considerations, since he was not the owner of the tree; still less can he have been actuated by moral views, in relation to an inanimate object of nature; hence the expedient has been adopted of substituting the disciples as the proper object on which Jesus here intended to act, and of regarding the tree and what Jesus does to it, as a mere means to his ultimate design. This is the symbolical interpretation, by which first the fathers of the church and of late'the majority of orthodox theologians among the moderns, have thought to free Jesus from the charge of an unsuitable action. According to them, anger towards the tree which presented nothing to appease his hunger, was not the feeling of Jesus, in performing this action; his object, not simply the extermination of the unfruitful plant: on the contrary, he judiciously availed himself of the occasion of finding a barren tree, in order to impress a truth on his disciples more vividly and indelibly than by words. This truth may either be conceived under a special form, namely, that the Jewish nation which persisted in rendering no pleasing fruit to God and to the Messiah, would be destroyed; or under the general form, that every one who was as destitute of good works as this tree was of fruit, had to look forward to a similar condemnation.* Other commentators however with reason maintain, that if Jesus had had such an end in view in the action, he must in some way have explained himself on the subject; for it an elucidation was necessary when he delivered a parable, it was the more indispensable when he performed a symbolical action, in proportion as this, without such an indication of an object lying beyond itself, was more likely to be mistaken for an object in itself ;t it is true that, here as well as elsewhere, it might be supposed, that Jesus probably enlarged 011 what he had done, for the instruction of his disciples, but that the narrators, content with the miracle, have omitted the illustrative discourse. If however Jesus gave au interpretation of his act in the alleged symbolical sense, the evangelists have not merely been silent concerning this discourse, but have inserted a false one in its place ; for they represent Jesus, after his procedure with respect to the tree, not as being silent, but as giving, in answer to an expression of astonishment on the part ot his disciples, an explanation which is not the above symbolical one, but a different, nay, an opposite one. For when Jesus says to them that they need not wonder at the withering of the fig-tree, since with " ' ' n •" 1 -1--1- •"•- -.(*•„„«• -.rot m-pntpv thinsrs. that tney neeu 1101 \vuuuci m, mi, »>L^U>...Q _. - 0 only a little faith they will be able to effect yet greater things, lie * Ullmann, uber die Unsundllchkeit Jesu, in his Studien, 1, S. 60 ; Sieffcrt, ut sup. *" " "'-'........- •" « TKR f • Xpnndp.r. L. J. Chr. S. 378. f Paulus, ut sup. S. MIRACLES-CtJBSING THE BARREN FIG-TEEE. 599 lays the chief stress on his agency in the matter, not on the condition and the fate of the tree as a symbol: therefore, if his design turned upon the latter, he would have spoken to his disciples so as to contravene that design; or rather, if he so spoke, that cannot have been his design. For the same reason, falls also Sieffert's totally unsupported hypothesis, that Jesus, not indeed after, but before that act, when on the way to the fig-tree, had held a conversation with his disciples on the actual condition and future lot of the Jewish nation, and that to this conversation the symbolical cursing of the tree was a mere key-stone, which explained itself: for all comprehension of the act in question which that introduction might have facilitated, must, especially in that age when there was so stronf a bias towards the miraculous, have been again obliterated by the subsequent declaration of Jesus, which regarded only the miraculous side of the fact. Hence Ullmann has judged rightly in preferring to the symbolical interpretation, although he considers it admissible, another which had previously been advanced :* namely, that Jesus by this miracle intended to give his followers a new proof of his perfect power, in order to strengthen their confidence in him under the approaching perils. Or rather, as a special reference to coming trial is nowhere exhibited, and as the words of Jesus contain nothing which he had not already said at an earlier period (Matth. xvii. 20; Luke xvii. 6), Fritzsche is more correct in expressing the view of the evangelists quite generally, thus: Jesus used his displeasure at the unfruitfulness of the tree, as an occasion for performing a miracle, the object of which was merely the- general one of all his miracles, namely, to attest his Messiahship.t Hence Euthymius speaks entirely in the spirit of the narrators, as described by Fritzscne.J when he forbids all investigation into the special end of the action, and exhorts the reader only to look at it in general as a miracle.§ But it by no means follows from hence that we too should refrain from all reflection on the subject, and believ-ingly receive the miracle without further question; on the contrary, we cannot avoid observing, that the particular miracle which we have now before us, docs not admit of being explained as a real act of Jesus, either upon the general ground of performing miracles, or from any peculiar object or motive whatever. Far from this, it is in every respect opposed both to his theory and his prevailing practice, and on this account, even apart from the question of its physical possibility, must be pronounced more decidedly than any other, to be such a miracle as Jesus cannot really have performed. * Ileydenreich, in the Theol. Nachrichten, 1SU, Mai, S. 121 ff. f Comra. iu Matt. p. 637. t Comm. in Marc. p. 481: Male-vv. dd. in eo hceserunt, quod Jesus sine ratione innocentem ficum aridam reddidisse videretur, mirisque argutiis usi sunt, ut aliquod kujus ret consil'mm fuisse ostenderent. Nimirum apostoli, evangelistic et omnes primi temporis Christian^ qua erani ingeniorum simplicitate, quid quantmnque Jesus portentose fecisse di-ceretur, cururunt tantummodo, non quod Jesu. in edendo miraculo consil'mm fuel-it, subtiliter ft argute (/Ufptirermit. 3 M?7 aKpiilo^oyov Atari TCT/uuoVTai TO tivrbv. uvairiov ov uA/lu 600 THE LIFE OF JESUS. It is incumbent on us, however, to adduce positive proof of the existence of such causes as, even without historical foundation, might give rise to a narrative of this kind. Now in our usual source, the Old Testament, we do, indeed, find many figurative discourses and narratives about trees, and fig-trees in particular; but none which has so specific an affinity to our narrative, that we could say the latter is an imitation of it. But we need not search long in the New Testament, before we find, first in the mouth of the Baptist (Matt, iii. 10.), then in that of Jesus (vii. 19.), the apothegm of the tree, which, because it bears no good fruit, is cut down and cast into the fire; and farther on (Luke xiii. 6 ff.) this theme is dilated into the fictitious history of a man who for three years in vain seeks for fruit on a fig-tree in his vineyard, and on this account determines to cut it down, but that the gardener intercedes for another year's respite. It was already an idea of some Fathers of the church, that the cursing of the fig-tree was only the parable of the barren fig-tree carried out into action.* It is true that they held this opinion in the sense of the explanation before cited, namely, that Jesus himself, as he had previously exhibited the actual condition and the approaching catastrophe of the Jewish people in a figurative discourse, intended on the occasion in question to represent them by a symbolical action; which, as we have seen, is inconceivable. Nevertheless, we cannot help conjecturing, that we have before us one and the same theme under three different modifications: first, in the most concentrated form, as an apothegm; then expanded into a parable; and lastly realized as a history. But we do not suppose that Avhat Jesus twice described in words, he at length represented by an action; in our opinion, it was tradition which converted what it met with as an apothegm and a parable, into a real incident. That in the real history the end of the tree is somewhat different from th_at threatened in the apothegm and parable, namely, withering instead of being cut down, need not amount to a difficulty. For had the parable once become a real history, with Jesus for its subject, and consequently its whole didactic and symbolical significance passed into the external act, then must this, if it were to have any weight and interest, take the form of a miracle, and the natural destruction of the tree by means of the axe, must be transformed into an immediate withering on the word of Jesus. It is true that there seems to be the very same objection to this conception of the narrative which allows its inmost kernel to be symbolical, as to the one above considered; namely, that it is contravened by the words of Jesus which are appended to the narrative. But on our view of the gospel histories we are warranted to say, that with the transformation of the parable into a history, its original sense also was lost, and as the miracle began to be regarded as constituting the pith of the matter, that discourse on miraculous power and faith, was ei-roneously annexed <-~ if Ty tlie root, and be thou planted in the sea. Hence the cursing of the fig-tree, so soon as its Avithering was conceived to be an effect of the miraculous power of Jesus, brought to mind the tree or the mountain which was to be transported by the miraculous power of faith, and this saying became appended to that fact. Thus, in this instance, praise is due to the third gospel for having preserved to us the parable of the barren CVKTJ, and the apothegm of the ovnd\uvoq to be transplanted by faith, distinct and pure, each in its original form and significance; while the two other synoptists have transformed the parable into a history, and have misapplied the apothegm (in a somewhat altered form) to a false explanation of that pretended history.*