Читать книгу The Life of Jesus Critically Examined - David Friedrich Strauss - Страница 49

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According to Luke, the angel who appears to Mary, in the first place informs her only that she shall become pregnant, without specifying after what manner: that she shall bring forth a son and call his name Jesus; He shall be great, and shall he called the Son of the Highest (υἱὸς ὑψίστου); and God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever. The subject, the Messiah is here treated precisely in the language common to the Jews, and even the term Son of the Highest, if nothing further followed, must be taken in the same sense; as according to 2 Sam. vii. 14, Ps. ii. 7 an ordinary king of Israel might be so named; still more, therefore, the greatest of these kings, the Messiah, even considered merely as a man. This Jewish language reflects in addition a new light upon the question of the historic validity of the angelic apparition; for we must agree with Schleiermacher that the real angel Gabriel would hardly have proclaimed the advent of the Messiah in a phraseology so strictly Jewish:24 for which reason we are inclined to coincide with this theologian, and to ascribe this particular portion of the history, as also that which precedes and relates to the Baptist, to one and the same Jewish-christian author. It is not till Mary opposes the fact of her virginity to the promises of a son, that the angel defines the nature of the conception: that it shall be by the Holy Ghost, by the power of the Highest; after which the appellation υἱὸς θεοῦ receives a more precise metaphysical sense. As a confirmatory sign that a matter of this kind is nowise impossible to God, Mary is [127]referred to that which had occurred to her relative Elizabeth; whereupon she resigns herself in faith to the divine determination respecting her.

In Matthew, where the main point is to dissipate Joseph’s anxiety, the angel begins at once with the communication, that the child conceived by Mary is (as the Evangelist had already stated of his own accord, chap. i. 18), of the Holy Ghost (πνεῦμα ἅγιον); and hereupon the Messianic destination of Jesus is first pointed out by the expression, He shall save his people from their sins. This language may seem to sound less Jewish than that by which the Messianic station of the child who should be born, is set forth in Luke; it is however to be observed, that under the term sins (ἁμαρτίαις) is comprehended the punishment of those sins, namely, the subjection of the people to a foreign yoke; so that here also the Jewish element is not wanting; as neither in Luke, on the other hand, is the higher destination of the Messiah left wholly out of sight, since under the term to reign, βασιλεύειν, the rule over an obedient and regenerated people is included. Next is subjoined by the angel, or more probably by the narrator, an oracle from the Old Testament, introduced by the often recurring phrase, all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet [v. 22]. It is the prophecy from Isaiah (chap. vii. 14) which the conception of Jesus after this manner should accomplish: namely, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel—God-with-us.

The original sense of this passage in Isaiah is, according to modern research,25 this. The prophet is desirous of giving Ahaz, who, through fear of the kings of Syria and Israel, was disposed to make a treaty with Assyria, a lively assurance of the speedy destruction of his much dreaded enemies; and he therefore says to him: suppose that an unmarried woman now on the point of becoming a wife26 shall conceive; or categorically: a certain young woman is, or is about to be with child (perhaps the prophet’s own wife); now, before this child is born, the political aspect of affairs shall be so much improved, that a name of good omen shall be given to the child; and before he shall be old enough to use his reason, the power of these enemies shall be completely annihilated. That is to say, prosaically expressed: before nine months shall have passed away, the condition of the kingdom shall be amended, and within about three years the danger shall have disappeared. Thus much, at all events, is demonstrated by modern criticism, that, under the circumstances stated by Isaiah in the introduction to the oracle, it is only a sign having reference to the actual moment and the near future, which could have any meaning. How ill chosen, according to Hengstenberg’s27 interpretation, is the prophet’s language: As certainly as the day shall arrive when, in fulfilment of the covenant, the Messiah shall be born, so impossible is it that the people among whom he shall arise, or the family whence he shall spring, shall pass away. How ill-judged, on the part of the prophet, to endeavour to make the improbability of a speedy deliverance appear less improbable, by an appeal to a yet greater improbability in the far distant future!—And then the given limit of a few years! The overthrow of the two kingdoms, such is Hengstenberg’s explanation, shall take place—not in the immediately succeeding years, before the child specified shall have acquired the use of [128]his reason, but—within such a space of time, as in the far future will elapse between the birth of the Messiah and the first development of his mental powers; therefore in about three years. What a monstrous confounding of times! A child is to be born in the distant future, and that which shall happen before this child shall know how to use his reason, is to take place in the nearest present time.

Thus Paulus and his party are decidedly right in opposing to Hengstenberg and his party, that the prophecy of Isaiah has relation, in its original local signification, to the then existing circumstances, and not to the future Messiah, still less to Jesus. Hengstenberg, on the other hand, is equally in the right, when in opposition to Paulus he maintains, that the passage from Isaiah is adopted by Matthew as a prophecy of the birth of Jesus of a virgin. Whilst the orthodox commentators explain the often recurring that it might be fulfilled (ἵνα πληρωθη), and similar expressions as signifying: this happened by divine arrangement, in order that the Old Testament prophecy, which in its very origin had reference to the New Testament occurrence, might be fulfilled;—the rationalistic interpreters, on the contrary, understand merely: this took place after such a manner, that it was so constituted, that the Old Testament words, which, originally indeed, had relation to something different, should admit of being so applied; and in such application alone do they receive their full verification. In the first explanation, the relation between the Old Testament passage and the New Testament occurrence is objective, arranged by God himself: in the last it is only subjective, a relation perceived by the later author; according to the former it is a relationship at once precise and essential: according to the latter both inexact and adventitious. But opposed to this latter interpretation of New Testament passages, which point out an Old Testament prophecy as fulfilled, is the language, and equally so the spirit of the New Testament writers. The language: for neither can πληροῦσθαι signify in such connexion anything than ratum fieri, eventu comprobari, nor ἵνα ὅπως anything than eo consilio ut, whilst the extensive adoption of ἵνα ἐκβατικὸν has arisen only from dogmatic perplexity.28 But such an interpretation is altogether at variance with the Judaical spirit of the authors of the Gospels. Paulus maintains that the Orientalist does not seriously believe that the ancient prophecy was designedly spoken, or was accomplished by God, precisely in order that it should prefigure a modern event, and vice versa; but this is to carry over our sober European modes of thought into the imaginative life of the Orientals. When however Paulus adds: much rather did the coincidence of a later event with an earlier prophecy assume only the form of a designed coincidence in the mind of the Oriental: he thus, at once, annuls his previous assertion; for this is to admit, that, what in our view is mere coincidence, appeared to the oriental mind the result of design; and we must acknowledge this to be the meaning of an oriental representation, if we would interpret it according to its original signification. It is well known that the later Jews found prophecies, of the time being and of the future, everywhere in the Old Testament; and that they constructed a complete image of the future Messiah, out of various, and in part falsely interpreted Old Testament passages.29 And the Jew believed he saw in the application he gave to the Scripture, however perverted it might be, an actual fulfilment of the prophecy. In the words of Olshausen: it is a mere dogmatic prejudice to attribute to this formula, when used by the New Testament writers, an altogether different sense from that [129]which it habitually bears among their countrymen; and this solely with the view to acquit them of the sin of falsely interpreting the Scripture.

Many theologians of the present day are sufficiently impartial to admit, with regard to the Old Testament, in opposition to the ancient orthodox interpretation, that many of the prophecies originally referred to near events; but they are not sufficiently rash, with regard to the New Testament, to side with the rationalistic commentators, and to deny the decidedly Messianic application which the New Testament writers make of these prophecies; they are still too prejudiced to allow, that here and there the New Testament has falsely interpreted the Old. Consequently, they have recourse to the expedient of distinguishing a double sense in the prophecy; the one relating to a near and minor occurrence, the other to a future and more important event; and thus they neither offend against the plain grammatical and historical sense of the Old Testament passage on the one hand, nor distort or deny the signification of the New Testament passage on the other.30 Thus, in the prophecy of Isaiah under consideration, the spirit of prophecy, they contend, had a double intention: to announce a near occurrence, the delivery of the affianced bride of the prophet, and also a distinct event in the far distant future, namely the birth of the Messiah of a virgin. But a double sense so monstrous owes its origin to dogmatic perplexity alone. It has been adopted, as Olshausen himself remarks, in order to avoid the offensive admission that the New Testament writers, and Jesus himself, did not interpret the Old Testament rightly, or, more properly speaking, according to modern principles of exegesis, but explained it after the manner of their own age, which was not the most correct. But so little does this offence exist for the unprejudiced, that the reverse would be the greater difficulty, that is, if, contrary to all the laws of historical and national development, the New Testament writers had elevated themselves completely above the modes of interpretation common to their age and nation. Consequently, with regard to the prophecies brought forward in the New Testament, we may admit, according to circumstances, without further argument, that they are frequently interpreted and applied by the evangelists, in a sense which is totally different from that they originally bore.

We have here in fact a complete table of all the four possible views on this point: two extreme and two conciliatory; one false and one, it is to be hoped, correct.

1. Orthodox view (Hengstenberg and others): Such Old Testament passages had in their very origin an exclusive prophetic reference to Christ, for the New Testament writers so understand them; and they must be in the right even should human reason be confounded.

2. Rationalistic view (Paulus and others): The New Testament writers do not assign a strictly Messianic sense to the Old Testament prophecies, for this reference to Christ is foreign to the original signification of these prophecies viewed by the light of reason; and the New Testament writings must accord with reason, whatever ancient beliefs may say to the contrary.

3. Mystical conciliatory view (Olshausen and others): The Old Testament passages originally embody both the deeper signification ascribed to them by the New Testament writers, and that more proximate meaning which common sense obliges us to recognize: thus sound reason and the ancient faith are reconcilable.

4. Decision of criticism: Very many of the Old Testament prophecies had, originally, only an immediate reference to events belonging to the time: but they came to be regarded by the men of the New Testament as actual [130]predictions of Jesus as the Messiah, because the intelligence of these men was limited by the manner of thinking of their nation, a fact recognized neither by Rationalism nor the ancient faith.31

Accordingly we shall not hesitate for a moment to allow, in relation to the prophecy in question, that the reference to Jesus is obtruded upon it by the Evangelists. Whether the actual birth of Jesus of a virgin gave rise to this application of the prophecy, or whether this prophecy, interpreted beforehand as referring to the Messiah, originated the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin, remains to be determined.