dences upon Sir 51 are in reality ^ i i I ;
in some particulars the alleged lik( m - - i, -mli as might be found in the utterances of any Jewish speakers. It may also be noted that -while the
See, further. Dr. Sanday, Critici
Fourth Gojpe(,
notable how both St. Paul and St. James can speak of Jesus as ' the Lord of the (Cf. the Divine) glory.'
f See for a recent criticism, Cambridge Theological Essayg, 1905, p. 465 ff.
CEITICISM
CRITICISM
391
points of comparison are preserved, the points of contrast are entirely omitted. For example, Jesus the son of Sirach in liis prayer thanks God because He has hearivened to him and delivered him from peril ; our Lord in His prayer thanks the Father for revealing to babes that which had been con- cealed from the wise and prudent.*
But it should further be borne in mind that these statements in Mt. and Lk. do not stand alone ; that the Gospel which is probably the earliest of the Synoptics speaks of ' the Father ' and of ' the Son ' absolutely, and that the words employed can only be fairly explained as assigning to our Lord a unique relationship to God : ' But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father ' (iMk 13^-). If such words are suspected, we may fairly ask who would have been likely to introduce them ? Dr. Schmiedel, who generously allows us to con- struct a ' scientific ' ' Life of Christ ' from five say- ings and four incidents of the Gospels, does not attempt to deny that our Lord spoke these words ; and although, of course, he uses them for his own purposes of exegesis, we may now take it that this representative of the most advanced criticism allows us to regard this verse in St. Mark's Gospel as an utterance of our Lord Himself, t Professor N. Schmidt refuses to accept even Mk 13^-, and regards the words in question, ' neither the Son,' as probably an interpolation (The- Prophet of Naza- reth, pp. 147, 231). Such words presuppose, he thinks, such a doctrine of subordination as was cherished in the Church of the second century. But has he forgotten the doctrine of subordination in 1 Co 15^, a passage which even he dares not refuse to St. Paul ?
In addition to Dr. Swete's remarks, to which reference has been made above, we may cite the following passage, as bearing closely on our subject, from the Dean of Westminster's Study o/ thu Gospels, p. 109: "Observe that the titles "the Father" and "the Son" are used absolutely (i.e. in Mt. and Lk. loc. cit.). We are familiar with this use from St. .John's Gospel. But it occurs but once again in the Synoptic Gospels, Mark xiii. 3'2. . . . It is an important fact to be borne in m" ' ' the Christology of John's Gospel, that speech is attested once for St. Mark and Markan document. We could hardly ha from the historical point of view, tliat c thus speak of Himself absolutely as " necessary to explain how unique is the claim which is put forward by this language.' t
Professor N. Schmidt, indeed, has boldly argued against this uniqueness in His relation to the Father which our Lord claims, by asserting that He always availed Himself of the general expres- sion ' Abba, Father,' and that the variants ' my Father ' and ' your Father ' were introduced by the Greek Evangelists.§ But, as M. Lepin has pointed out in his valuable book, it is to be noted that a distinguished Aramaic scholar. Dr. Dalman, does not hesitate to affirm, in contradistinction to the
* Cf. Lepin,
Lord Hii
, Appendix, on the Abb6 Loisy's positic
'- Tneologic< . art. ' Son
Fairbaim, op. cit. p. 476 ; Headiam, Critical Qmstimis,
191; Cambridge • ■ •-
§ Encyc. Bibl.
gical Essays, 1906, p. 431
' 1 of God,' iv. 4696. This is one of the nful articles in the whole of the four volumes, and we cannot be surprised that Professor Schmidt throws doubt upon our Lord's exact words, when at this time of day he can throw doubt, as in this same article, upon St. Paul's authorship of 1 Thessalonians. More recently Professor Schmidt has repeated these arguments, and he appears to regard Mt 1125, Lk lO^i as casting an undeserved reflexion upon the character of Jesus ! {The Prophet of Nazareth, p. 162). On Schmidt's denial that our Lord ever called Himself the Son of .Man see Stalker's Chris- tology of Jesus, p. 72, and Muirhead's Eschatology of Jesus, p. 148). If the Gospels were written as late as Schmidt believes, It IS certain that the introduction into all of them of such a title as the Son of Man ' would have been regarded with the gravest suspicion, and would have failed to gain acceptance in Chris- tian circles where our Lord's Godhead was fully recognized.
assertions of Dr. Schmidt, that the unique position assumed by Jesus follows from the invariable separation which He makes between ' my Father ' and ' your Father ' ( Words of Jesus, p. 281 [Eng. tr.]); and a few pages later Dr. Dalman writes: ■ Nowhere do we find that Jesus called Himself