We cannot have failed to note in reviewing the designations applied in the course of Mark’s narrative to our Lord, a tendency of them all when applied to Him to grow in richness of content. The term Lord is merely an honorific address, equivalent to our ‘ Sir’: but when applied to Jesus it seems to expand in significance until it ends by implying supreme authority. The term ‘ Messiah is a mere term of office and might be applied to anyone solemnly set apart for a service: but when applied to Jesus it takes on fuller and fuller significance until it ends by assimilating Him to the Divine Being Himself. He who simply reads over Mark’s narrative, noting the designations he applies to our Lord, accordingly, will not be able to doubt that Mark conceived of Jesus not merely as officially. the representative of God but as Himself a superhuman person, or that Mark means to present Jesus as Him- self so conceiving of His nature and personality. The evidence of this is very copious, but also often rather subtle; and, in endeavoring to collect and appreciate it, we might as well commence with some of the plainest items, although this method involves a somewhat unordered presentation of it.

Let us look, then, first at that remarkable passage (13³²) in which Jesus acknowledges ignorance of the time of His (second) coming.¹ Here, in the very act of admitting limitations to His knowledge, in themselves astonishing, He yet asserts for Himself not merely a superhuman but even a superangelic rank in the scale of being.

In any possible interpretation of the passage, He separates Himself from the “ angels in heaven” (note the enhancing definition of locality, carrying with it the sense of the exaltation of these angels above all that is earthly) as belonging to a different class from them, and that a superior class. To Jesus as He is reported, and presumably to Mark reporting Him, we see, Jesus “the Son” stands as definitely and as incomparably above the category of angels, the highest of God’s creatures, as to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whose argument may be taken as a x commentary upon this passage (Heb 1⁴ 2⁸). Nor is this passage singular in Mark in exalting Jesus in dignity and authority above the angels. Already in the account of the temptation at the opening of His min- istry we find the angels signalized as ministering to

A similar implication, as has already been pointed out, is embedded in the title Son of Man,” which Mark represents as our Lord’s stated self-designation. “The appeal involved in it to Daniel 7¹³,¹⁴ is a definite! as sertion for the Messiah of a heavenly as distinguished from an earthly origin, with all the suggestions of preéxistence, divine exaltation and authority, and endless sovereignty necessarily connected with a heavenly origin. It would be impossible to frame a Messianic conception on the basis of this vision of Daniel and to suppose the Messiah to be in His person a mere man deriving His origin from the earth.² This is sufficiently illustrated indeed by the history of the Messianic ideal among the Jews. There is very little evidence among the Jews before or contemporary with our Lord, of resort to Daniel 7¹³,¹⁴ as a basis for Messianic hopes: 7: sie. (but wherever this occurs it is the conception of a preexistent, heavenly monarch who is to judge the world “in righteousness which is derived from this passage.³ No other conception, in fact, could be derived from Daniel, where the heavenly origin of the eternal King is thrown into the sharpest contrast with the lower

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Mark’s Conception of Our Lord 39

Note: source of the preceding bestial rulers. Judaism may not have known how to reconcile this heavenly origin of the Messiah with His birth as a human being, and may have, therefore, when so conceiving the Messiah, sacrificed His human condition entirely to His heavenly nature and supposed Him to appear upon the earth as a developed personality.⁴ That our Lord does not feel this difficulty or share this notion manifests, in the matter of His adoption of the title Son of Man as His favorite Messianic self-designation, His independence of whatever Jewish tradition may be supposed to have formed itself. But His adoption of the title at all, with its obvious reference to the vision I< X of Daniel,⁵ necessarily carried with it the assertion of v heavenly origination and nature. This in turn carried with it, we may add, the conception that He had “come” to earth upon a mission, Jesus’ a conception which does not fail to find independent expression in such passages, ¹⁰a4 1³8 5¹⁷ 1⁴⁵ For, that the assertions in these passages that He came forth” tol preach, that He ‘ came” not to save the righteous but sinners, that He “came” not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life as a ransom for many, ll refer to His divine mission (cf. also 11⁹,¹⁰), lies on their face. It is suggested by the pregnancy of the

Note: Cf. Dalman, 131: “Judaism has never known anything of a preexistence peculiar to the Messiah, antecedent to His birth as a human being.” “He is to make His appearance on earth as a fully developed personality.” See p. 301: “The celestial preéxistence of Messiah, as stated in the Similitudes of Enoch and in 2 [4] Esdr 13, 14, excluding— so at least it seems—an earthly origin, implies, apart from the incentive contributed by Dan 7¹³, his miraculous superhuman appearance.” CF. p. 2357 et seq.

Note: Cf. Dalman, pp. 257 et seq.

expressions themselves, and the connections in which they are employed; and it is supported by the even more direct language of some of the parallels. In themselves these expressions may not necessarily involve the idea of preéxistence (cf. 9¹¹ and Jno 1⁷ of John the Baptist); but they fall readily in with it, and so far suggest it that when supported by other forms of statement implying it, they cannot well be taken in any other sense.⁴

Note: Cf. Swete, on Mk 1³⁸: “For to this end came I forth (Mark), is interpreted for us by Luke, ‘ Because to this end was I sent. Came I forth does not refer to His departure from Capernaum (v. 35), but to His mission from the Father (Jno 8⁴² 13²⁰)”; and on Mk 10⁴⁵: “For ἦλθον in reference to our Lord’s entrance into the world, cf. 1³⁸ 2¹⁷; it is used also of the Baptist (9¹¹sed, Jno 17) regarded as a divine messenger “—whence we observe that it does not of itself imply preéxistence. Meyer, on 1³⁸, notes that this view is held by Euthymius Zigabenus, Maldonatus, Grotius, Bengel, Lange and others,— conf. Baumgarten-Crusius; he himself does not hold it. Cf. Meyer, on Mt 3¹¹: “His coming as such is always brought forward with great emphasis by Mark and Luke.” Holtzmann on 1³⁸ thinks the reference is to the departure from Capernaum, while Luke’s phrase (4⁴³) is a transition to the Johannine form of expression (e.g. 8⁴²).

It is, however, above all in the picture which Jesus Himself draws for us of the Son of Man that we Jesus’ see His superhuman nature portrayed. For the figure thus brought before us ¹is distinctly a superhuman one; one which is not only in the future to be seen sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of. heaven (14⁶²)—in clouds with great power and glory i (13²⁶), even in the glory of His Father with the holy angels (8³⁸) who do His bidding as the Judge of all the earth, gathering His elect for Him (13²⁶) while He punishes His enemies (8³⁸); but which in the pres- ent world itself exercises functions which are truly divine,—for who is Lord of the Sabbath but the God who instituted it in commemoration of His own rest (2²⁸), and who can forgive sins but God only (2¹⁰ cf. verse 7)? The assignment to the Son of Man of the function of Judge of the world and the ascription to Him of the right to forgive sins are, in each case, but another way of saying that He is a divine person; for these are divine acts.⁸ conviction on His part of preéxistence, though they do not in themselves unsupportedly avail to prove it. The language might be employed consistently of a divine mission without preéxistence; but it seems to be employed here with deeper implications.

8. On the forgiveness of sins as a divine act, cf. Dalman, Words, 262 and 314, 315. As against J. Weiss, Dalman notes that it is a fact i “that Judaism never from O. T. times to the present day, has ventured ito make any such assertion in regard to the Messiah”’ as that the “Lord hath power to forgive sins.” Cf. Briggs, The Messiah of the Gospels, 83, 84. On the judgment of the world as a divine act, cf. Bousset, Jesus, 203-205. Dr. Stanton, Jewish and Christian Messiah, 291, says: “The Judge in that last judgment is on Jewish ground nowhere the Messiah. The assignment of this office to Him is the most significant new feature (in the Christian doctrine of the Messiah.” But this is because Dr. Stanton considers the Similitudes of Enoch post-Christian (cf. pp. 61,

We have already had occasion to point out the uniqueness and closeness of the relation to God which 15 indicated by the designation ‘ Son of God as ascribed to Jesus. In the;,3r3ble of Mark 12 not only is it emphasized that God has but one such son (verse 6), but He is as such expressly contrasted with all God’s “servants”’ (verses 2 and 4) and expressly signalized as God’s “heir” (verse 7). As we read this parable the mind inevitably reverts again to the representation of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which in its doctrine of the Son (cf. Heb 1⁴ 3⁶ etc.), might almost appear a thetical exposition of it. And in the immediate recognition of Jesus as the Son of God by the evil spirits—‘ as soon as ever they caught sight of Him ⁹ —we can scarcely fail to see a testimony from the spiritual world to a sonship in Jesus surpassing that of mere appointment to an earthly office and function and rooted in what lies beyond this temporal sphere. It is noteworthy also that when responding to the adjuration of the high priest to declare whether He were the Christ, the Son of the Blessed,’ Jesus points apparently to His exaltation at the right hand of power and His coming with the clouds of heaven, which they were to see, as the warranty for His acceptance of the designation: as much as to say that to be the Christ, the Son of the Blessed,’ involves session at the right hand of God and the eternal dominion promised in Daniel (Mk 14⁶²). And it is noticeable farther that immediately upon our Lord’s acceptance of the ascription the high priest accused Him of blasphemy (14⁶³), which appears to be an open indication that to claim to be ‘ the Son of the Blessed was all one with claiming to be a divine person.¹⁰ Even the heathen centurion’s enforced conviction, as he witnessed the circumstances of Jesus’ death, that this man certainly was ‘a Son of God,’ appears to be recorded for no other reason (15³⁹) than to make plain that the supernaturalness of Jesus’ person was such as necessarily to impress any observer. No doubt a heathen centurion is but a poor witness to Jesus’ essential nature; and no doubt his designation of Him as ‘“a son of God” must needs be taken in a sense consonant with his standpoint as a heathen.⁵ But it manifests how from his own standpoint Jesus’ death impressed him—as the death, to wit, of one of superhuman dignity. And its record seems to round out the total impression which Mark appears to wish to make in his use of the phrase, viz., that the superhuman dignity of Jesus was perforce recognized and testified to by all classes and by every variety of witness. The spiritual denizens of another world (1²⁴ 1³⁴ 3¹¹ 5⁷), the appointed guardians of the spiritual life of Israel (14⁶¹), Jesus Himself (12⁶ 13³² 14⁶²), God in Heaven (1¹¹ 97), and even the heathen man who gazed upon Him as He hung on the cross, alike certify to His elevation, as the Son

Note: Cf. Meyer and Swete on Mk 3¹¹1. ¹⁰W. C. Allen, on Mt 26⁶³, remarks: “Wellhausen argues that the claim to be the Messiah could not, according to Jewish conceptions, have been regarded as a blasphemous claim. But quite apart from the exact meaning of the relationship of the Messiah to God which is implied in such terms as ‘ Son of God,” Son of the Blessed,” the nature of the Messiah as depicted in the literature of the period as of earthly and heavenly origin (cf. Volz, Jiid. Eschat., pp. 214 f.) is such that claims to be the Messiah might quite well be regarded as blasphemous, if they were untrue.” This, however, seems scarcely well founded. Zahn (on Mt, pp. 694-5) is better: “The high priest demands an answer not to the simple question whether Jesus gave Himself out for the Messiah, but whether He was the Messiah, the Son of God… The mere affirmative of the question whether He were the Messiah, could not be understood by the whole Sanhedrin as an unambiguous blasphemy. It was only a liar or a fanatic that Jesus could have been called on that ground by those who did not believe in Him. Jesus affirmed, however, also the other question, whether He was the Son of God; and indeed on oath, since he was sworn by the Living God (I Kings 2²⁴)…

Mark’s Conception of Our Lord 45 of God, in the supernatural dignity of His person, above all that is earthly, all servants’ and ‘ ministers”! of God whatever, including the very angels. Certainly this designation, ‘ Son of God,” is colored so deeply with supernatural implications that even apart froin such a passage as 13² where the superangelic nature of the Son is openly expressed, we cannot avoid concluding (cf. especially 12⁶ 14⁶ 15³⁹) that a super- natural personality as well as a supernatural office 18 intended to be ἀπαοιδιοο by ln And so in view ¹of the nature of the term itself, it is difficult to doubt that this supernaturalness of personality is intended to be taken at the height of the Divine. What can the Son, the unique and “beloved” Son of God who also is God’s heir, in contradistinction from all His servants, even the angels, be—but God Himself?

It has already been suggested that something of this implication is embedded in the employment of the ¹ Jesus designation Bridegroom (2¹⁹,⁰) of our Lord. For there is certainly in- yolved in it not merely the representation, afterwards copiously developed in the New Testament, of our Lord as the Bridegroom of the people of God, by virtue of which His Church is His bride (Mt 22² 25¹, Jno 3²⁹, Rom 7⁴ 2 Cor 11², Eph 5², Rev 15⁷ 27²,⁹), hut also a reminiscence of those Old Testament passages, of which Hos 2¹⁹ may be taken as the type (cf. Ex 20⁵ Jer 210 Tack TO³⁸,⁰,³), in which Jehovah’s relation to His people is set forth under the figure of that of a loving husband to his wife. In other words, the use of the Bridegroom ’ as a designation of our Lord assimilates His relation to the people of God to that which in the Old Testament is exclusively, even jealously, occupied by Jehovah Himself, and raises the question whether Jesus is not thereby, in some sense, at any rate, identified with Jehovah.⁶ This question once clearly raised, other phenomena wobtrude themselves at once upon our attention. We are impelled, for example, to ask afresh what sense our Lord put upon the words of the 110th Psalm, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand till I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet,” when (Mk 12³⁵+) He adduced them to rebuke the Jews for conceiving the Christ as only the son of David, whereas David himself in this passage, and that speaking in the Spirit, expressly calls Him his Lord? It is not merely the term Lord which comes into consideration here; but the exaltation which the application of the term in this connection to Him assigns to the Messiah. The scribes would have had no difficulty in understanding that the Messiah should be David’s ‘ greater son,” who should—nay, mustbecause Messiah, occupy a higher place in the Kingdom of God than even His great father.¹³’ The point of the argument turns on the supreme exaltation of the Lordship ascribed to Him, implying something superhuman in the Messiah’s personality and therefore in His origin. Who is this Lord who is to sit at

Mark’s Conception of Our Lord 47 the right hand of the Lord who is Jehovah, and to whom David himself therefore does reverence? It is hard to believe that our Lord intended—or was understood by Mark to intend—by such a designation of the Messiah, who He Himself was, to attribute to Him less than a superhuman—or shall we not even say a divine—dignity, by virtue of which He should be recognized as rightfully occupying the throne of God.¹⁴ To sit at the right hand of God 18 (0 partici pate in the divine dominion,¹⁵ which, as it is a greater than human dignity, would seem to require a greater than human nature. To be in this sense David’s Lord falls little if anything short of being David’s God¹ In estimating the significance of such a passage, we must not permit to fall out of sight the constant use Jesus of the term Lord in the LXX version Identified with of the Old Testament for God.¹⁷ There Jena it is “practically equivalent to God (Bed) and is the rendering of the solemn name of Jehovah.”¹⁸ The writers of the New Testament, and ¹⁴ So Dalman (Words, 214) says shortly: “He whom David called Lord was no mere man “(cf. pp. 385-7). Dalman thinks there is no hint of “the two natures” in the passage: this may be doubted (cf. Meyer on Mt 22⁴⁵, and Alexander in loc., also Delitzsch on Ps 110, DP 185); but this need not be pressed here.

Note: Cf. Delitzsch, Psalms, 11. p. 189. Stanton, Jewish and Christian Messiah, 101-2, points out that there is no difficulty in supposing that David himself may have anticipated a greater son: Knowing how far he had himself fallen below the standard of the true covenant king, and how the glory and prosperity of his reign had been marred through the consequences of his own sins, he might thus in spirit pay homage to a greater descendant.”

Note: Cf. Swete’s note on Mk 12³⁷,

Note: Cf. D. Somerville, St. Paul’s Conception of Christ, pp 295 et seq ¹⁸ Somerville, p. 143. The supplanting of Jehovah by Lord in the xx of course rests upon the Keri perpetuum by which Adhonai was substituted for the ineffable name” in the reading of the Hebrew

Mark among them, must be understood to have been thoroughly familiar with this use of the term, and could scarcely fail to see in its appellative application to Christ a suggestion of His deity, when the implications of the context were, as we have seen them repeatedly to be, of His superhuman dignity and nature. Particularly when they apply to Him Old Testament passages in which the term ‘ Lord refers to God, we can scarcely suppose they do so without a consciousness of the implications involved, and without a distinct intention to convey them.⁷ When, for example, in the opening verses of Mark, we read: “Even as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way; The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ye ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight,—[so] John came,” etc., we cannot easily rid ourselves of the impression that the term ‘ Lord is applied to Jesus. The former of the two prophetic citations here brought text. This in turn, however, rests upon the connection of the idea of Lord with Jehovah. ‘ Jehovah,” says Oehler (Theology of the O.T.,E.T, ed Day, 1883, p. 101), “isthe Lord… That the idea of JIN is immediately connected with the idea of Jehovah is clear from the fact that the two names are frequently associated, and that “YIN would in later times be substituted in reading for YY.. J’ When our Lord is called Lord, therefore, in the divine sense, it is to Jehovah specifically that the suggestion points.

together is distinctly made to refer to Christ, by a change in the pronouns from the form they bear in the original—though the reference in the original is to Jehovah: and this by an inevitable consequence carries with it the reference of the latter also to Christ.? But in the original of Isaiah 40³ again the reference of the term Lord is to Jehovah.. Here we see Jesus then identified by means of the common term Lord with Jehovah²¹ Of course it may be said that it is not Jesus who is identified with Jehovah, but the coming of Jesus which is identified with the advent of Jehovah” to redeem His people predicted so frequently in fe the Old Testament.²² And this explanation might 20 So Sven Herner (op. cit., pp. 7 et seq., cf. pp. 4, 5) solidly argues. ²¹ Cf. A. B. Davidson, The Theology of the O. T., p. 262: “That splendid passage, Is go¹⁻¹¹, which speaks of Jehovah coming in strength, that is, in His fulness, and feeding His flock like a shepherd, A is interpreted in the Gospels of the Son. It was in the Son, or as the Son, that Jehovah so manifested Himself. By the Old Testament prophet a distinction in the Godhead was not thought of; but subsequent revelation casts light on the preceding. The Lord, the Redeemer and Judge, is God in the Son.”

²² According to Dr. A. B. Davidson’s representation this is as far as the Old Testament writers themselves go with regard to the Messiah. They came to look upon the coming of the Messianic King as X the coming of Jehovah; but not as if the Messiah were Jehovah, but only as if in the Messiah Jehovah came to His people. Cf. e.g. The Theology of the O. T., p. 385: “It may be doubtful if the O. T. went so far as to identify the Messiah with Jehovah or to represent the Messiah as divine. It went the length of saying, however, that Jehovah would be present in His fulness in the Messiah, so that the Messiah might fitly be named ‘ God with us’ and Mighty God.’” He adds: “It was not a difficult step to take, to infer that the Messiah was Himself God, and that because He was God He was Saviour; and then to apply even those passages which speak of Jehovah’s coming in person to His coming as Messiah.” It was this step that (if it remained to be taken) was taken by our Lord and the evangelists.

serve very well in the absence of other indications in this Gospel that Jesus was viewed as a superhuman being. In the presence of such indications, howeverespecially so clear an instance as is afforded by the saying of Jesus in 13³²—and in the presence of other suggestions of the identification of Jesus with the Jehovah of the Old Testament,—such as is afforded by His adoption of the title of Bridegroom,’ —the natural implication of joining this prediction to its fellow in which we hear of the ‘ messenger” coming before the face” of Jesus (“thy”) and preparing His way” (“thy’), must be permitted to determine the question in favor of the application of the term Lord to Jesus Himself. And in that case it is the person of Jesus which is identified with Jehovah.

It cannot be doubted, therefore, that Mark sees in Jesus a supernatural person,—not merely a person endowed with supernatural powers, but Lh a person in His own personality superior to angels and therefore standing outside the category of creatures. He does not, however, dwell upon this. It emerges in his narrative, almost, we may say, by accident. This is in accordance with the character of his undertaking, which is illustrated by many kindred phenomena. His is not the Gospel of reflection: it is the Gospel of action. This evangelist is not accustomed to stop to muse upon the events he records or to develop all their significance. He does not attempt to give even a full record of the teaching of Jesus. He has set himself to exhibit the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”; and he exhibits this beginning” in a vivid picture of the wonderful career of the divine Messiah, preserving only casually certain of our Lord’s sayings as substantial elements in his presentation of His career and only incidentally suggesting what our Lord was in describing what He did. His concern is to portray fully the supernatural life which Jesus lived, at the beginning of the Gospel, as the fountain from which has flowed the great movement in which he was himself an actor. In doing this his method is of a piece throughout. He does not record for us, for example, the great saying in which Jesus declares: “All authority has been given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Mt 28¹⁸). He simply exhibits the exercise of this authority by Jesus in detail (1²²,²⁷ 2¹⁰,²⁸ 3²⁷ 4⁴¹ 5⁴², etc.); leaving it to the reader to infer the gift. Similarly he does not stop in his rapidly moving narrative to say, “Lo, here is a supernatural person”: much less does he pause to develop that conception into its implications. He does not even charge himself to cite from Jesus’ lips His own claims to divine origin and His own conception of His unique relations with the Father. What he gives us on these themes is incidental to the narrative and falls out in it almost by accident. f What he gives us is ample, nevertheless, to make it clear that Mark was not ignorant of these things. es How can it be said that Mark knows ie or wo nothing of the preéxistence of Christ when he records Jesus’ constant appli- cation to Himself of the title ‘ Son of Man’? How can it be said that he knows nothing of the supernat- ural birth of Jesus when he records Jesus’ assertion of a superangelic nature for Himself? How should one above angels enter into the sphere of human life ex- cept by a supernatural birth? Unless we consider it more credible that Mark claimed for Him an even more supernatural descent as an adult from heaven? Mark, in a word, leaves the exposition of these things to others. It is Matthew and Luke who complete the story by the record of the supernatural birth. It is John who develops all the implications of Jesus’ pre-. existence. But all that these bring to expression in their fuller accounts is implied in Mark’s narrative, in which he incidentally tells us of the dignity of that person’s nature whose wonderful career he has undertaken to describe. And there is no reason why we should suppose him ignorant of the implications of his own facts, especially when his purpose in writing did not call for the explication of these implications. In a word, it seems clear enough that there lies behind “the narrative of Mark not an undeveloped christology, “but only an unexpressed one. To give expression to his christology did not lie within the limits of the task he had undertaken.⁸

Mark’s Conception of Our Lord 53 We must guard ourselves especially from imagining that the recognition found in Mark of the deity of is in any way clouded by the emphasis he places on the Messiahship of ¹55 the fundamental fact of His mission. We have already had occasion to point out that the Messiahship and the deity of Jesus are not Je mutually exclusive conceptions. Even on the purely Jewish plane it was possible to conceive the Messiah a supernatural person: and He is so conceived, for example, in the Similitudes of Enoch and the Visions of 4 Esdras. The recognition of the deity of Jesus by Mark—and by Jesus as reported by Mark—in no way interferes with the central place taken in Mark’s narrative—and in Jesus’ thought of Himself as reported by Mark,—by our Lord’s Messianic claims. It only deepens the conception of the Messiahship which is presented as the conception which Jesus fulfilled. The result is merely that the Christian movement becomes, from the point of view of the history of the Messianic ideal, an attempt to work a change in the current conception of the Messianic office—a change which involved its broadening to cover a wider area of Old Testament prophecy and its deepening to embody spiritual rather than prevailingly external aspira- tions.²⁴ We have already noted that our Lord’s v reading the heart and the future (9³¹ 10³³), and forgiving sin on earth, and after His dying rose again and in His own proper time will return in the clouds of heaven with the angels to establish the Kingdom and judge the world.

Note: Cf. Wellhausen, Mark, p. 71: “I can find this at least not incredible, that Jesus was pleased with the name of the Jewish ideal, and yet changed its contents, and that not merely with respect to the Messiah, but analogously also with respect to the Kingdom of God.” How preference for His self-designation of the title Son of Man over other more current titles is indicatory of His enlarged and enriched conception of the Messiahship: and we have already hinted that even the title Son of Man only partly suggests the contents of His conception, elements of which found their adumbration in yet other portions of Old Testament prediction. Among these further elements of Old Testament prophecy taken up into and given validity in His conception, there are especially notable those that portray the Righteous Servant of Jehovah, culminating in the 53d chapter of Isaiah, and those that set forth what has appropriately been called the “Advent of Jehovah,”’—the promises, in a word, of the intervention of Jehovah Himself to redeem His people.

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Mark’s Conception of Our Lord 55 It may be very easy to do less than justice to the Messianic ideal current among the Jewish people at the ἔπιε of our Lord, centering as it did in the hope of the establishment of an external kingdom endowed with the irresistible might of God. Of course this Kingdom of God was conceived as a kingdom of righteousness; and it may be possible to show that most of the items that enter into the Old Testament predictions, including that of redemption from sin, were not wholly neglected in one or another form of its expression. The difference between it and the Messianic conception developed by Jesus and His followers may thus almost be represented as merely a difference of emphasis.²⁵ But a difference of emphasis may be far from a small difference; and the effect of the difference in this case certainly amounted to a difference in kind. This new Messianic ideal is unmistakably apparent in Mark’s conception and in the conception of Jesus as represented by Mark’s record of His sayings. We can trace in Mark’s record the influence of factors recalling the Righteous Servant (10⁴⁵ 9¹² 14²¹ 1²⁴) and the Divine Redeemer (1³) as well as the Danielic Son of Man²⁶ But these fac- ²6 On this general subject see two or three very strong pages in Dalman, Words, pp. 295-299: cf. Stanton, 134. iH ²⁶ Speaking of the conception embodied in the title Son of Man by our Lord as reported in the Gospels, Charles (T4e Book of Enoch, pp 312-317) argues that it included in it all the ideas suggested by the Servant of Jehovah of Isaiah, and therefore so far commends Bartlet’s construction (Expositor, Dec. 1892). Says Charles (p 316): “This transformed conception of the Son of Man is thus permeated throughout by the Isaian conception of the Servant of Jehovah; but though A the Enochic conception is fundamentally transformed, the transcendent claims underlying it are not for a moment forgotten.” If we may be i permitted to find the preadumbration of the transcendent “element of tors attain fuller expression in the records of the other evangelists. So that here too we find them bringing out into clearness what already lies in Mark rather than adding anything really new to his presentation.

Note: this conception, not in Enoch but in the O. T. representation of the Advent of Jehovah, Charles’ conception of the Messianic ideal of our Lord, for the expression of which He chose the term Son of Man,’ seems to us generally just. It is—for whatever reason—essentially a synthesis of the three lines of prediction embodied in the Isaianic “Servant of Jehovah,” the Danielic “Son of Man,” and the general O. T. “Advent of Jehovah,” along with which the other lines of prophecy—such as those embodied in the “Davidic King”—also find their place.

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Footnotes

1. On account of this profession of ignorance, Prof. Schmiedel (Encyec. Biblica, 1881) gives this passage a place among those nine “absolutely credible passages” which he calls “the foundation pillars for a truly Him (1¹³), and elsewhere they appear as His subordinates swelling His train (8³⁸) or His servants obey< ing His behests (13²⁷, “He shall send the angels’). Clearly, therefore, to Mark Jesus is not merely a superhuman but a superangelic personality: and the question at once obtrudes itself whether a superangelic person is not by that very fact removed from the category of creatures. scientific life of Jesus.” If so, a “truly scientific life of Jesus” must allow that He asserted for Himself a superangelic, that is, a more than creaturely dignity of person. Others, just for this reason, would deny the words to Jesus (e.g. Martineau, Seat of Authority in Religion, 590 N. Schmidt, The Prophet of Nazareth, 147, 231 note), and even l Dalman is not superior to the temptation arbitrarily to apportion them partly to Jesus and partly to His followers (Words, p. 194). But all this is purely subjective criticism. ↩

2. Cf. Dalman, Words, 242: “The destined possessor of the universal dominion comes not from the earth, far less from the sea, but from heaven. He is a being standing in a near relation to God…” ↩

3. The Similitudes of Enoch and the Second Book of Esdras (more commonly called 4 Esdras). Cf. Dalman, Words, pp. 242 and 131: “From the first Christian century there are only two writings known which deal with Dan 7¹³, the Similitudes of the Book of Enoch, and the Second Book of Esdras”… After the Similitudes of Enoch the only representatives of the idea [of the heavenly preéxistence of the Messiah] independent of Enoch, are 2 Esdras in the first Christian century and the Appendix to Pesikta Rabbati in the seventh or eighth century.” ↩

4. Cf. G. S. Streatfeild, The Self-Interpretation of Jesus Christ, 1906, pp. 81-83. Mr. Streatfeild connects these sayings with those in which our Lord refers to His return in glory. “Thus to describe Himself as coming into the world,” he remarks, “suggests, if it does no more, a consciousness of personal vocation, a conviction, if not a consciousness, of preéxistence.” “The word come,’ “he adds, “is never, so far as the present writer recollects, used of or by the prophets in the sense in which our Lord applies it to Himself. Apparent exceptions are shown to be only apparent by the context. On the other hand, the term is constantly used in the O. T. of God and the Messianic theophany.” Perhaps Mr. Streatfeild slightly overstates the matter, but what he says is essentially true. His use of these phrases certainly testifies to our Lord’s deep consciousness of being intrusted with a great mission which He had come into the world to fulfil—as the use of them of John the Baptist testifies to his mission: and the pregnancy of the use He makes of them, and the connections in which He uses them, strongly suggest a 140). There, but apparently there only, in pre-Christian Jewish literature the Messiah appears as Judge of the world to whom all judgment has been committed (see Charles, The Book of Enoch, 128, 129). Hence Dr. Stanton in Hastings’ B. D. IIL. 356 ef seq. says more exactly: “In this document,… He is to be the Judge in the universal judgment,… a function never assigned to the Messiah, but always ascribed to the Most High in other Jewish writings.” Cf. Salmond (Hastings’ B. D., 1, 751): “In the O. T. the final arbitrament of men’s lives is not committed to the Messiah… Only in the late section of the Book of Enoch dces the Messiah appear in any certain or definite form as the Judge at the last day.” Perhaps, however, it is not perfectly accurate with respect to this particular point to sum up as Dr. Salmond does, thus: “Christ’s doctrine of a universal, individual judgment, at the end of things, in which judgment He Himself is arbiter of human destinies, carried the O. T. conception to its proper issue, while it gave a new certainty, consistency and spirituality to the developed idea which had arisen in Judaism in the period following the last of the Jewish prophets.” Though Jesus had a forerunner in Enoch in conceiving the Messiah as the Judge of the world, He does not seem at all dependent on Enoch in this conception, any more than in others connected with it and growing out of the common reference of both to Dan 7¹3,¹⁴, Salmond, Christian Doct. of Immortality, 4 ed., 282-284, treats the whole subject judiciously: cf. further Charles, Encyc. Biblica, 1362, 66, and Expositor, VI. v. 251, 258; also Briggs, Messianic Prophecy, 154, 487. What is to be noted is that in the Similitudes of Enoch, where alone in pre-Christian sources the judgment is attributed to the Messiah, the Messiah is conceived as a superhuman Being, the Revealer of all things, and the Messianic Lord of the earth, i.e. the attribution of judgment to Him is connected with the attribution of other divine prerogatives to Him also, so that the implication of divinity inherent in this attribution is not obscured. ↩

5. Wellhausen’s remark need not be disputed: “The centurion uses the expression Son of God not, like the high priest (14⁶¹), as an epithet of the Jewish Messiah, but in the heathen sense; he says also not the Son but ‘a son of God” (on 15³⁹). ↩

6. Cf. Streatfeild, The Self-Interpretation of Jesus Christ, pp. 92, 93: “What that term meant to the mind of the Jew may be gathered from a study of the prophetic writings, which frequently portray God as the Husband of His people, and denounce the disobedience and idolatry of Israel as spiritual adultery. For any one to speak of Himself as the Bridegroom of the Kingdom was little short of a claim to Deity: the title was an impossible one for man.” ¹3 Dalman, p. 285: “There would indeed be nothing remarkable in the fact that a son should attain a higher rank than his father, and for the scribes it would not in the least be strange that the Messiah should be greater than David.” ↩

7. Cf. Stanton, Jewish and Christian Messiah, 197, 198 and Note on the latter page. Speaking of passages like these he says: “Deut 33² appears to be alluded to in various places in the Synoptists. It is a passage which speaks in the clearest terms of Jehovah coming to judgment, and the attribution of the language in the Synoptists to the second coming of the Christ is an indication of the existence, even in the body of tradition which they record, of a belief in the oneness of Christ with God.” Mutatis mutandis, this remark applies to the passage immediately to be adduced. ↩

8. Cf. a careful précis of Mark’s Conception of the Person and Office of Christ in a section of Dr. Swete’s Introduction to his commentary on Mark: pp. xc-xcv. If we should put together, simply, the elements of Mark’s christology, perhaps it might be expressed as follows: Jesus was a man, appointed by God Messiah, and endowed for His Messianic _ tasks; but not a mere man, but a superhuman being, in rank and dignity above angels (13³⁵), who “came” to earth for a mission. This mission was not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and accordingly involved humiliation and suffering: but a humiliation and suffering not for Himself but vicarious (10⁴⁵ cf. 2¹⁷). He prosecuted this min( istry by a career of preaching (1³⁸), and in the end died and rose again that He might give His life a ransom for many (10⁴⁵). Meantime, being God’s beloved Son, the heavenly King of God’s own Kingdom predicted in Daniel, the Lord of the House (13³⁵, cf. 11³) and no servant (12⁶ cf. 1¹¹ 9⁷), not merely David’s son but David’s Lord (12³⁵) who is Jehovah Himself (1³), He had in His hands all authority (122 127 210 228 441 43 of 1⁴¹ 211 25) and exercised all divine prerogatives—controlling evil spirits, the laws of nature, death itself,— __Wellhausen would have such a remark understood, however, may be (_commodiously learned from his section on “the Jewish and the Christian Messiah” in the closing pages of his Einleitung in die drei ersten Ewvangelien (1905). The Christian conception of the Messiah, such as lies on the pages of Mark, for example—that paradoxical contradiction of the gallows-Messiah, formed on the basis of the actual crucifixion of Jesus—is of course the product of the time subsequent to the death of Jesus; but its existence would be inexplicable without the assumption that Jesus was supposed by His followers to be the Messiah, although of course in His life-time it was not this Christian conception but the ordinary Jewish conception of the Messiah which they attributed to Him. The attitude of Jesus Himself to this ascription of Messiahship to Him Wellhausen finds it somewhat difficult to determine (p. 92). He is certain that Jesus did not follow the method of the Pseudochrists and openly proclaim Himself Messiah; but he thinks that there are indications that He did not repel the notion when applied to Him— though, of course, this involved an “accommodation,” as He was by no means prepared to meet the expectations connected with the title. It was no doubt, then, as a religious regenerator, not as a political restorer, that He accepted the title; but this remained at least so far within Jewish limits as not to involve that complete renunciation of Judaism which “lies in the conception of the gallows-Messiah, of the Messiah rejected by the Jews,” of the writers of the New Testament. ↩