2. The Jewish supremacy. — It was generally believed that the Kingdom would come through an act of power, in which God would visit His people, — the Jews, — delivering them from all their enemies, so that they might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness for ever (Lk 1'^). Men of the type of Simeon, Zacharias, and Joseph of Arimathaea waited for the consolation of Israel. Such persons doubtless believed with the prophets {e.g. Is W"- 9"-, Zee 9') th.tt the supremacy of God's people would be maintained, if not actually accomplished, by methods of peace, and even in the spirit of brotherly alliance among the nations (see esp. Is 19-^'), who would receive the 'law' from Mount Zion (Is 2--*). Yet obviously both they and the general populace, and even the dis- ciples after the Resurrection (Ac 1°), thought of a
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state of things in which the position of God's ancient people would be central and supreme.
3. The Messiah.— Beyond the general belief that the Kingdom would come through an act or series of acts of Divine power, there is abundant evidence that in the time represented by the Gospels there was among the Jewish people, though not confined to them,* the definite expectation that the King- dom would come through the advent of a personal Kuler — called by the Jews the Messiah or, in Greek, the C%m< = ' the Anointed' — on whom God would pour forth His Spirit in extraordinary measure. This belief, so far as the Jews were concerned, goes back to the testimony of the earlier prophets (esp. Isaiah and Micah), but its history within the OT period shows that it some- times either disappeared altogether or retired into the background, its place being taken by such a view as that expressed in Jer SI*'*-— of a reign of Jahweh Himself through His law written on the hearts of His people, t We need not here inquire into the causes of this fluctuation. It is enough to remark that for about a century before the time of Christ the belief that the Kingdom would be established through an individual world- wide Ruler, who would exercise practically Divine powers, had been current in larger or smaller circles among the Jews. Sufficient proof of this lies in the circumstance that in the time of our Lord passages in the Prophets (e.g. Deutero-Isaiah) or in the Apocalypse of Daniel, which had origin- ally no reference to an individual Messiah,^ had come to be so interpreted. The interpretation is current. No other is even thought of. In some cases, no doubt — as notably in the fulfilments of prophecy marked by the First Evangelist — it may be difficult to decide whether the exegesis of "a passage cited from a prophet is not of purely Christian origin ; but there are unquestionably some cases (notably Dn 7^^) in which the impor- tation of a reference to an individual Messiah into passages which really contain no such refer- ence, is of pre-Christian date.
4. Various forms of the conception of the Messiah. — It is difficult to determine witli any minuteness how the Messiah was conceived, as regarded either His Person or His work. In re- gard to the former, e.g., it would be unwarrant- able to infer from Mt V (cf. Is T'*) that it was generally believed that He would be born of a virgin, and perhaps equally so to infer from the fact that the disciples (16"' 1!), and perhaps others also (14^^), expressed their belief in the Messiah- ship of Jesus by calling Him the Son of God, the prevalence of a belief among Jewish theologians of the 1st cent, that the Messiah was of one nieta-
^sical being wth Jahweh. The utmost per- ,)S which we can affirm is that it was largely believed that the origin of the Messiah would be mysterious (Jn T"), and that this belief rested in all probability directly on the Messianic interpre- tation of Dn l'"^-.% It seems possible, however, to distinguish two general types of belief regarding the Messiah and His work. The one may be called the Prophetic, the other the Apocalyptic type. The former type, which was the more popular and lield its ground even with the scholars of the time (Mk 12***- II), rested on the early Prophetic testi- mony that the Messiah would spring from the house of David,— a belief of whose persistence and
phys haps
3;
Riehm's Messianic Prophecy,
• On this cf. Tacitus, Uitt. Josephus, BJ VI. v. 4.
t On this fluctuation see esp. T. & T. Clarlc, 1900.
t In the case of Daniel this is disputed by such competent scholars as Hilffenfeld and Uiehm.
5 On the antiquity of the Danielic conception itself see the interesting work of H. Gressniann, Der Vrspmng der isr.-jud. EschatQlogU. p. 334 fl., Gottingen, 1905.
of whose correspondence with the actual fact the circumstance that Jesus is confidently affirmed or assumed by five of the NT writers (Matthew, Luke, Paul, author of Hebrews, author of Apoca- lypse*) to have been of the seed of David may be considered the most striking proof. According to this type, so far as purely Jemsh belief is con- cerned, the work of the Messiah, while super- human, was conceived on comparatively secular lines. He would destroy his persistent enemies and establish a reign of lasting righteousness and peace over obedient and contented subjects. This type, taken by itself, hardly possesses for us eschatological interest. It belongs to a mode of conception in which the problems of death and immortality, if realized at all, cannot be solved. The spliere ottered for solving them is too mun- dane. It is otherwise with the apocalyptic type of view, which rested mainly on the Book of Daniel, esp. Dn 7'^'- and 12-'-. Whether or not the author of Daniel in the latter of these passages conceived of a resurrection from the dead available for all past generations of faithful Israelites, it seems certain that in the time of our Lord this sense was assigned to his words by those who, like the Pharisees, held the doctrine. According to Josephus, t the Pharisees held a fatalistic doctrine of the present life— but not of human conduct — which seems to have resembled that of the Stoics, and which made them for the most part averse to schemes of political revolution. Their participation, therefore, in the popular \-iew of the ' Son of David ' was more theoretical than real. Their tendency was to conceive the final Kingdom on strictly supernatural lines. It was a wonder that would not spring from earth, but would descend from heaven. The Messiah was the Man of Daniel's vision, the Man of the Clouds.J