140). There, but apparently there only, in pre-Christian Jewish litera- ture 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. iii. 356 et seq. says more exactly: "In this document, . . • He is to be the Judge in the universal judg- ment, ... 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 does 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 7^3,i4_ Sal- mond, 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 attribu- tion is not obscured.
Mark's Conceptio7i of Our Lord 43
the mind Inevitably reverts again to the representation of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which In its doctrine of the Son (cf. Heb i^ 3^ 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 "* — 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 ad- juration of the high priest to declare whether He were ' the Christ, the Son of the Blessed,' Jesus points ap- parently 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 14*^'"). And it Is noticeable farther that Immediately upon our Lord's acceptance of the ascrip- tion the high priest accused Him of blasphemy (14*^^), which appears to be an open Indication that to claim to be ' the Son of the Blessed ' was all one with claim- ing to be a divine person.^^ Even the heathen cen-
» Cf. Meyer and Swete on Mk 3^1.
10 W. C. Allen, on Mt 26*^3, 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 im- plied 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. 314 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
44 The Designations of Onr Lord