So, too, Schmiedel (op. cit. col. 1882) and Wendt (Die Lehre Jesu, p. 471) agiee in interpreting the words in our Lord's message to the Baptist as referring to the spiritually dead, 'the dead are raised' (Mt IP, Lk 7"), just as in their opinion the preceding words are to be interpreted of the spiritually lame and blind. But, in the first place, there is no proof that the previous clauses are to be interpreted in any such spiritual sense, and the Evangelists evidently did not so interpret them. It is urged that we can find a precedent for this spiritual interpretation in the familiar passage Is 35' ; but nothing is said in Isaiah of the raising of the dead, a fact entirely ignored by N. Schmidt, who is at one with Schmiedel and Wendt in their in- terpretation (I.e. p. 238). Moreover, it is very open to question if there was any Jewish expectation that the Messiah would raise the dead, so that St. Matthew and St. Luke had no ground of general belief upon which to base the raisings of the dead which they so evidently attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. Even if there are isolated state- ments in Jewish theology which attribute to the Messiah the power of raising the dead, it would seem to have been far more generally believed that God would Himself raise the dead. Fur- ther, even in those passages which do attribute this power to the Messiah, it is most important
any kind in Jewish writings to the raising by the Messiah of single individuals (cf. Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, i. p. 632).
But this attitude, maintained by some of Hitachi's followers and by the representative critics of the ' scientific ' school, extends to a crucial ques- tion and a crucial miracle, viz. the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead. We may readily grant Ritschl's own acceptance of this fundamental his- torical fact of Christian belief, t But what is to be said of a large number of bis followers? Some of them would no doubt allow that Christ awoke to a heavenly life with God, or they would labour to draw a distinction between the Easter faith and the Easter message ; or they would allow that the Resurrection was a fact of religious faith, or that, whilst the traditional record is often doubtful, the essential contents of the record are, and mean, everything.§ But it is upon this question of the Resurrection that Peine rijjhtly takes his stand, and upon the hulu-ion m , elusion of this fact
• AHistoncVicn.^ ;f
iJfsus Messieel I'l , |.|.. Ixvi, Ixvii.
t See the remarks .it c n. 1,, //,, /:.' .rl,lfim ThfoloaiJ.-D.t2i.
§ Orr, RitsdUian riavlvw. v. iiK.
in any satisfactory picture of the historical Christ.*
If we turn again to one of the most prominent critics who may be classed as Ritschlians, A. Har- nack, we are not only met by his famous distinc- tion between the Easter faith and the Easter but we also become aware that his
classification of the Gospel miracles is not calcu- lated to increase our belief and confidence in the character of the Gospel narrative. Harnack admits, indeed, that the spiritual power of Jesus was so great that we cannot dismiss offhand as an illusion the reports that He could make the blind to see or the deaf to hear. But, apart from these reports of surprising cures, Harnack would regard the stories of the miraculous which are connected with Jesus as arising from exaggerations of natural and impressive events, or from the projection of inner experiences on to the outer world, or from an interest in the fulfilment of OT records, or from various parables and sayings. In these and in similar ways the miraculous stories arose. And yet, after all is said, it will be noticed that there are narratives of miracles which do not fall under the above heads, and these Harnack comprises under one category as impenetrable stories, the secret of which we cannot solve, t
8. One other and important point in which the ' scientific ' German theologians and the left wing of Ritschl's followers agree is in the i-ejection of the Apostolic authorship of t/ie Fourth Gospel. And with this rejection there must needs be a serious weakening of the evidence as to our Lord's Deity, although no doubt this evidence may be substantiated from the Synoptists alone. The remarkable thing is that both Ritschlian and 'scientific' critics are alike impressed with the indications that in the Fourth Gospel we are deal- ing with a source or sources full of minute details and vivid recollections.
ers the G^,^. igeHi
belonged to the same circle in which the old Apostle St. John had lived, and that he thus had access to written information and to oral tradition received from the beloved disciple (Das Johannesevangetium, p. 216ff.). P. W. Schmidt, in his Die Geschickte Jem (1904, p. 95), cannot help feeling the force of the exact and minute geographical references which the Fourth Gospel contains, although he rejecU the Johannine authorship. Von Soden, although he refuses to rank the Fourth Gospel amongst the historical sources for a ' Life ' of Jesus, admits on the same page that the writer of that Gospel had access to good traditions in his notices of place and time, in the small details which mark his recitals, and in his information as to various personalities (Die wichtigsten Fraoen im Leben Jem, 1904, p. 5). J If we turn to English critics we find Dr. Percy Gardner inclined to follow Dr. Harnack's view that the Fourth Gospel was the work of John the Elder, who was a disciple of John the son of Zebedee. Dr. Gardner, too, is so impressed with the writer's precise local knowledge, that he thinks it may well have been derived from one of the Apostles, and very likely from John the son of Zebedee. §