constant and permanent values of life. He handled it in such a way, as he taught, that its truth needed no labored explanation or analysis; it was self-evident.

NOTE. Jesus calls the scribes' additions to Scripture "tradition," paradosis tōn presbuteron; and as far as they obscured or traversed the true meaning of Scripture he regarded them as hurtful excrescences; cf. Matt. xv, 6; xxiii, 23.

After Jesus' death and resurrection, when little companies of his followers drew their faith and inspiration from the memory of his life, they did not at first think of themselves as other than loyal Jews; for whom, as for all other Jews, the Old Testament was the supreme literary and religious authority. Their new faith was to them the venerable Jewish faith and doctrine, with its meanings deepened and its prophecies fulfilled. It was some years, indeed, before they received the distinctive name of Christians (see Acts xi, 26). Their manner of belief was first called The Way (see Acts ix, 2); and they were first persecuted as a heretical sect of Jews. But the person who, to begin with, was most zealous to persecute them, Saul of Tarsus, who was himself originally a Pharisee—that is, of the strictest Jewish sect (Acts xxvi, 5) — became convinced that this Christian way of life, though called a sect, was really in the direct line of enlarged and fulfilled Judaism (see Acts xxiv, 14, 15). It is perhaps to St. Paul, indeed, that we owe the name The Way, as applied to Christianity. We adopt the name therefore by Scripture warrant, and consider the literature of the Christian way, that is, the New Testament, as the vital completion of the truth foreshadowed in the Old.

It was many years after Jesus' ministry before a distinctive Christian literature had so accumulated as to form the material for a New Testament canon. Meanwhile the Christians were the people of a life rather than of a book. "An epistle of Christ" (2 Cor. iii, 3) St. Paul, the great writer of epistles, calls them. It was the life that was in them, rather than

the books they wrote, that made them a power in the world; it was their distinctive Way of life, learned at first hand by familiar intercourse with a wise and gracious Master, that, as time and experience wrought their seasoning influence, created their literature, the literature of the New Testament.

Accordingly, it is with that personal source and type that we have first to deal; with the words and acts of Jesus, which in themselves were not only a wisdom of life but a skilled and finished literary power. To take note of this is the object proposed in the chapter on The Son of Man. How all this with its apostolic consequences got itself into biographical and historical record is considered in the chapter on The Literature of Fact. The chapter on The Literature of Values, following thereon, traces how the large meanings of the Christian Way were deduced from the ministry of Jesus and from the older literature of which Christianity is the heir. And finally, in the chapter on The Resurgence of Prophecy, is considered how the Christian Way from being a fulfillment projects itself in turn onward toward the limitless future, toward Isaiah's promise of new heavens and a new earth" (cf. Isa. lxv, 17; Rev. xxi, 1, 2).

१९

WHA

CHAPTER IX

THE SON OF MAN

[4 B. C. to A.D. 30]

HATEVER estimate our religious affiliations have led us to form of the personality of Jesus, the fact with which our present study is concerned is that the whole New Testament literature centers in him. He is its inspiration, its vitality, its formative influence. Its interpretation of the older literature, its new light on the way of life, its clear conception of eternal values, all derive from the life, the words, the ministry of Jesus.

The New Testament writers are indeed thoroughly grounded, as was their Master, in Old Testament ideas. Its laws, its prophecies, its wisdom, its poetry, are constantly referred to and quoted by them, as things familiarly known. Thus in a very intimate way the New Testament is interwoven with the Old; nor does it profess in any sense to supersede the Old. Rather, it supplements and completes it. The older ideas, true as they are, it regards as essentially unfinal, incomplete, preparatory to something fuller and clearer (cf. Col. ii, 16, 17; Heb. x, 1); and the realization, the fulfillment, is embodied in personal form in Jesus. He actually is what the ancient prophets dreamed ought to be, and more. As one of his New Testament biographers puts it (John i, 4): "In him was life, and the life was the light of men."

NOTE. By that same biographer, in the profoundest of the gospels, Jesus is introduced by a conception essentially literary: he is called the Word (logos) made flesh and dwelling among us (John i, 14); as if the

idea of God, inexpressible otherwise, were concentrated in a single word, and that word were spelled not in letters but in human life. Tennyson has embodied the idea in a stanza:

And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought;
Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,

And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.1

This is literary expression conceived in its ideal simplicity and its perfect power of intelligibility, -answering to the supreme purpose of revelation.

Our study of the New Testament period of the Biblical literature, therefore, naturally begins with the personal source from which its power and truth are derived; and to this end we designate him by the title which he himself chose and which none will deny him, The Son of Man.

I. EXPECTATION AND ANSWER

As the result of the literary ideals in which the Jewish race had been educated, there was at the time of Jesus' coming a widespread expectation, shared in by all classes, of a coming new order of things. In a general way that expectation had been derived from the older prophets, whose activity had subsided after the return from captivity and the rebuilding of the Temple, four centuries before. But since the time of the Maccabees, when the Book of Daniel was written (about 168 B. C.), a new species of literature, the apocalyptic, had become popular. In this literature the idea of the new order was conceived in terms at once more definite and more idealized. Thus the expectation was supported by a kind of fusion of two ideas: the prophetic, giving it moral substance, and the apocalyptic, giving it vividness. The new order was to be a kingdom of heaven. Its king, 1 Tennyson, "In Memoriam," xxxvi.

who was to be of the stock of David, was designated somewhat vaguely as the Messiah, or, in its Greek equivalent, the Christ, meaning the Anointed One.” A more common designation, and still more vague but well understood, was "He that cometh," or "The Coming One" (cf. Matt. iii, II; xi, 3). The result of his coming, as was supposed, would be a peremptory overturn of the existing government and the restoration of sovereignty to Israel. This hope had long been gathering head, and by the time Jesus came its fulfillment was generally felt to be near.

It is important to note how the prevailing idea of the new order shaped itself in men's imaginations. For if Jesus set

The Ideas that the

Coming One must Meet

himself definitely to inaugurate it he must both conform his teaching to current conceptions and correct these where they were wrong or excessive or one-sided. What was this kingdom of heaven to be like? What would be the character of its king, the Messiah? What would be the conditions of his reign? Such were the questions already in the air that must be met and answered. All sorts of imaginings, vague or vivid, pious or crafty, were enlisted in the inquiry; and whatever its form the expectation was intense, eager, ready to break out in revolt or fanaticism. Evidently the situation was one to be dealt with wisely, patiently, constructively. Men's ideas must not only be answered and appeased; they must first of all be educated.

The idea of the coming order most popularly prevalent was the apocalyptic. In accordance with this the new régime Among the was figured as one of conquest and absolute Literalists dominion, in which as subjects of the Messiah the Jewish race was not only to be delivered from the power of Rome (that of course) but to have ascendancy over the whole world. That is, it was conceived in terms of earthly despotism, and its center of power was to be Jerusalem and Palestine. With this dream of worldly sovereignty was