One work there is, apparently Jewish, which is an exception in Jewish literature in regard to more than oneof the points which we have been discussing —the Enochie Book of Parables, to which reference has been made, but the consideration of which was deferred. The present is a suitable opportunity for making a few remarks upon it. In this docu- ment the Messiah is repeatedly called ‘the Son of Man,’ and described as surrounded with majesty in the presence of the Lord of Spirits, and reserved for a future manifestation. Furthermore, 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. Yet, in spite of the various points of contact with Chris- tian ideas and language, there is nothing (save one phrase, whichis probabl to be otherwise explained) to connect this Son of Man with the Christ of Christian faith, who has been crucified and has since ascended to His throne, and is waiting to return in glory. It is very unlikely that a Chris- tian writer would have so concealed his own belief, or that a Christian interpolator, while introducin those passages and expressions which correspon with Christian rather than with Jewish ideas, would have done his work with so much reserve. The traits in question may however, for all that, be due to Christian influence. To any one who considers how Christian teaching affected the thought of many pagans in the early centuries, even sometimes of such as remained most hostile to Christianity, or who is at all familiar with the many instances of the same kind which there are among educated Hindus at the present day, this will seem a not improbable hypothesis. And in the relations which existed during the Ist cent. A.D. between Jewish Christianity and Judaism there were the conditions which would make such effects natural. It is to be added, that even if it is a mistake to trace the peculiarities of the Enochie Book of Three Parables to Christian influence, it may still be
st-Christian. It is true that ‘the figure of the
essiah is here drawn specially in dependence upon the Bk. of Daniel.’ But it would not be justifiable to regard this as making an early date more cred- ible. For between the original vision and this rendering of its imagery there lies a difference in the definiteness and fulness of the Messianic ideas implied, which was only by degrees approached and never elsewhere attained among Jews.
ii. THE CHRISTIAN TRANSFORMATION.—The fact that Jesus claimed to be the Christ, and the signi- ficance of this fact, the manner in which and the time when He did so, and the part which the tem- re of the prevalent Jewish expectation had in
etermining His course of action, need not here be considered. It must suffice to note that He gavea new character to the conception of the Christ when to His acceptance of His disciples’ faith in Him, as such, He linked the distinct announcement of His ee sufferings (Mk 8?" and parallels, Mk 10®-— Mt 20-35), In the minds of the first mem- bers of the Christian Church, the experiences of the Cross, the Resurrection, and Pentecost, together with the impression which the character and work, the life and teaching of Jesus had made upon them, led to a rapid transformation, pregnant with im- portant consequences, of the idea of the Messiah which they had held as Jews. They turned again, as Jesus had taught them +o do (Mk 12! *=Mt 21 22°, Mk 14°=Mt 26%, Ik 417, Jn 5° etc.), to their ancient Scriptures, and read them with new
eyes. They found scattered there the elements of a relatively complete ideal, which had been per. fectly fulfilled in Jesus. The process by which they combined them was uncritical, and was to a large extent performed unconsciously, but the result was in harmony with essential truth.
By the very character which Jesus had assumed in His mode of life and ministry, attention was directed to the promise of a true prophet, and we are not surprised to find that special stress is laid on it in the early preaching in the Acts (Ac 3” 7%).
The references in the same part of NT to ‘the servant of Jehovah,’ though they have not perhaps been commonly noticed, can hardly be questioned when they have been pointed out (Ac 4%, where παῖς should, in view of the manifest allusions to Is, and the use of this term in the LXX, be rendered —not with AV ‘child’—but with RV ‘servant,’ as also at Ac 34-5), His ‘anointing’ (Ac 457, cf. Is 61’) with the Spirit served as a link to connect Him with the king of David’s line. It may be permissible to see an allusion to the same figure of prophecy in the parable Lk 141, though δοῦλος is the word there employed.
But the question upon which the whole contro- versy between believers in Jesus as the Christ and the Jews necessarily turned was as to the Divine intention, foreshown in the prophets, that He should pass through suffering and death to His triumph (Ac 315 8% 178 26%). Stress was also laid upon those spiritual blessings, the expectation of which had already been associated with the Messi- anic times—the call to repentance, the remission of sins, peace, the outpouring of the Spirit (Ac 2!7-2 55! 10°).