Two points have recently been much in dispute : (o) Whether in view of the grammatical possibilities of Aramaic, as used in the time of Jesus, He could have applied to Himself the phrase •Son of Man* or 'Man' as a title, basing on Dn 7^^: and (6) Whether He could have done this so habitually as our Gospels represent. Even those who, like Lietzmann§ and WeUhausen.i; have reached on these points the most negative conclusions, do not doubt that in the latt«r part of His career, and perhaps habitually. Jesus held the apocalyptic view of the final Kingdom and'of the glorious advent of the Messiah ; and, even if we exclude the Ititle 'Son of Man' from those passages in the Gospels which have no eschatological reference, there remains a siitficient number (about a third of the entire number, exclusive of John) where the eschatological reference is distinct. Thus, e.g., out of 32 instances of 'Son of Man 'in Matthew's Gospel, 14 are apocalyptic.il
It is indubitable that in the time of our Lord the Book of Daniel and other Apocalypses modelled on it were much read by a considerable portion of the Jewish people. Many of those whose ^■iew•s were influenced by this literature saw no inconsistency in combining with these views others derived from literature of the ' prophetic ' type, e.g. The Psalter of Solomon,** embodying the ancient and still popular conception of the ' Son of David.' Yet, as this veneration for ancient prophecy was combined for the most part mth political quiescence, it may perhaps be said that in the more reflective minds ' Son of David ' and ' Son of Man ' represented one heavenly ideal. Jesus Himself expressly repudi- ated the implications of 'Son of David' (Mk 12^"' |t) ; but it is remarkable that this did not hinder the prevalence in Christian circles of the Apostolic age of the belief that He was of the seed of David according to the flesh, and the Evangelists Matthew and Luke risked publishing pedigrees,
* Mt 11, Lk 331, Ro 13, He 714. Rev 55.
ailed The Psalms of
5 Der ilenschensoh n. ■ II Skizzenxu Vorarb. •■ •I Iiluirhead, EschnfJ •'Psalms of the Phir Solomon, Rvle and Jame'
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whose apjiarent mutual inconsistencies constitute tlie chief difficulty of the modern mind in accept- ing the fact they were designed to establish.
Instructive in this connexion is the phrase ' Kingdom of the heavens ' in Matthew's Gospel. The phrase is, of course, equivalent in meaning to ' Kingdom of God ' which the other Evangelists employ. It need not, however, be questioned that Jesus, occasionally at least, used ' Kingdom of the heavens,' and it seems certain that He did not invent the phrase. It was current, and it pointed to the apocalyptic construction of the Messianic hope. The Kmgdom belonged to the heavens, and would come thence to earth. It was the unlike- ness of Jesus to the altogether wonderful Person- age of the apocalyptic Messiah that offended the Pharisees. If He were the Messiah, why should He refuse a sign from Iieaven? (Mt IG'"'-).
S. The preliminaries of the coming Kingdom.— Assuming this leading idea of a Kingdom to come, heavenly in its origin and nature, we must now ask how the various matters preliminary to or accompanying its advent were conceived.
(«) Who were the heirs of the Kingdom''. There were people 'just and devout' (Lk 2-^) who 'waited for tlie consolation of Israel,' the still surviving tj'pe of Jahweh's ' poor ones ' who ' cried unto him and he heard them ' (Ps 34^). Such persons, how- ever, did not advertise themselves, nor did they as a rule sit in the seat of the learned. The prevail- ing teachers were the scribes and Pharisees, whose yoke, practically intolerable, was yet theoretically imperative. It has been questioned how far readers of the Gospels get from them a fair impression of the moral and religious influence exercised by the teachers of the Law, and it lias been contended, with perhaps some justice, that tlie impression so derived is as one-sided as the impression of the Roman Church one naturally gathers from his- tories of the Protestant Reformation. Still, the good type of scribe or Catholic is not due to the tendency against which the Evangelic text or the Reformation is a protest. It cannot be doubted that in the time of our Lord it was authoritatively taught by the Pharisees that the title to inheri- tance of the heavenly kingdom was a punctilious observance of the L»,w after the manner of their own practice. Their doctrine, indeed, on this point is not explicitly stated in the Gospels or in any contemporary documents. But the impression we gather from the situation depicted in the Gospels and from the record regarding the Apostle Paul favours the supposition that the view of the Pharisees in the time of Jesus is that represented by the Rabbinism of the 2nd cent., viz. that the Messiah would come when Jahweh's people, the Jews, were found generally and carefidty observing the Law* And the ' Law' meant not simply the legal precepts of the Pentateuch (in particular the Priestly Code), it meant the 'tradition' of the elders. While the average man inevitably shook off the punctilios of obedience, and the Phs themselves took refuge from their own rigour .__ an elaborate casuistry, we cannot doubt that the generally accepted view was that the passport to the Kingdom was 'the righteousness of the law.'