2. Fulfilment of joy (■n-\rip6oi). Here again there is an ambiguity. XVhen St. Paul says (Ph 2=) ' Fulfil ye my joy,' what does he mean ? Is it (1) ' Complete my happiness ; unless I hear of your being thoroughly at one, I cannot be perfectly happy ' ? or (2) does he mean, ' I have sacrificed many ordinary sources of happiness ; give me this my chosen joy'? Authorities seem to prefer the first; perhaps, 'complete the joy I already have in you.' That is, ' fulfilment ' of ' joy ' is taken as a quantitative and continuous idea. Elsewhere the phrase is peculiarly Johannine (Jn 3=^ 15" 16=* 17'', with 1 Jn 1*, 2 Jni=). The Baptist, e.g. (S^), has his joy in full. He has oil the joy he can expect. Yet there is more than this in the words. He has full joy — 'rejoiceth greatly.' In the Johannine passages the tico thoughts seem included : the joy (Christ's joy, e.g.) is given ; and what is given is a full joy. So prominent is the latter thought— the more quantitative — that one is tempted to regard AV ' full ' as a better rendering, in regard to joy, than the more literal ' fulfilled ' of RV.
3. Fulfilment of prophecy or of Scripture or of Christ's words (usually irXTipSa, Mt 1= and very often ; Mk 15=8 [doubtful text] ; Lk 1=», Jn 12^ and elsewhere. In Christ's words, Mt 26^-'* [a ' doublet '] = Mk 14« [Lk 2^ has not the word]; Lk 4=' 21= 24", cf. 9=' ' his decease ' ; 21=» ' times of the Gentiles' ; 22'8 the Passover 'fulfilled in the kingdom of God' ; Jn 13" 15=° and elsewhere. But reXeiiu, Jn 19=". 'There is perhaps a slight difference in meaning — not the word of Scripture verified, but the terrible things spoken of in S<-ri])t>ire made actual — when we have Tc\4a at Lk 18" 22". Purely in the sense of 'fulfilment,' perhaps, at Jn 19=*- '". (nivreXioi occurs Mk 13* ; the noun awT^Xeia [tou aluvo! ' end of the world,' RVm ' consummation of the age'] in Mt.'s ]', 24^ and also at 1339-*»28=». [He 9=«, ffwTAeia tup aiwfuv ' end of the ages,' KV ; marg. 'consummation']. TeXfi6u [AV ' finish,' RV ' accomplish '] is used in the Johannine discourses of Christ's work [Ipyoi^, 4*" 17*] or works [5^, cf. again 19**]). As far as the words rendered ' fulfil ' are concerned, they are used in the same sense throughout ; whether the fulfilment is of the past (the OT) in the present (Christ), or of the present (Christ's words) in the (eschatological) future. And
FULFILMENT
FULFILMENT
several Greek words are fairly represented by the same English meaning. Moreover, for a full index of the Sorijiture teaching we should need to in- clude passages like Lk •24-'»-=', where no word 'fulhl' occurs. (But we have it in Lk 24-'-'). This holds especially of the fullilnient of Christ's own words. It is true, the word as well as the thought occurs in the Fourth Gospel (IS"-''-), but in the Synoptics the phrasing is different. The nearest approach is Mk 133" ||_ . i,iit,ii all [these] things be accomplished {yiyriTai) — a diHicult passage, discussed below (under ' Fulttlinent of law '). We must lay down, in general, that the NT thinks of fulfilment as oc- curring in detailed mechanical correspondence with the letter of prediction. God has said so-and-so, therefore it must happen exactly as was said. In Jn 19-^ it is difficult to take any other view of the Evangelist's meaning than that Jesus exclaimed ' I thirst,' because the Passion psalms had spoken of the cruel thirst of the Sufferer. We must not, of course, exaggerate the simplicity of the Bible writers. A few verses earlier, where Jn 18^ inter- prets Jesus' protection of His disciples, at the moment of His o-mi arrest, as the fulfilment of the word which He spake, ' Of those whom thou hast given me I lost not one,' the Evangelist knows perfectly, and trusts his readers to remember, that the true sense of (^lirist's words belongs to a differ- ent region. In that one instance, at least, he is consciously accommodating, as we might do in quoting a line of Shakspeare. And there is more. The Evangelist discerns in Christ's care for the disciples a type of the supreme spiritual transac- tion. Even outwardly, Clirist sa\'es others, while not saving but sacrificing Himself. Still, in general, the letter of the NT takes the letter of the OT as a magic book, foreshowing what must happen to Christ. Deeper views are no doubt latent in tln' NT, but they are nowhere formulated by it. They do not rise to the .surface of consciousness in Evan- gelist or Apostle.
i. Fiiljih/tcitt of laiv[and prophets?]. [Fulfilment genercdly .'] The interpretation here raises very difficult questions, hardly to be settled without some critical surgery. First let us take what is simple ; to ' fulfil ' the Law is to obey it — r€Kiiv — at Ro 2", Ja 28; or w\r,pouy, Gal 5», Ko 13''- '». (On these last, see below). Unambiguous, too, is ' to fulfil all righteousness ' {irXripCicrai., Mt 3'^) ; and the saying may well be historical, though unsupported in the parallels. It fits tlie circumstances (see present writer's paper on ' Dawn of Messianic Con- sciousness' in Expos. Times, 1905, p. 215), if per- haps tinged in expression with the Evangelist's phraseology. But what of Mt 5" ('Think not that I came to destroy the law or the pro]iliets ; I caiiie not to destroy but to fulfil' — jrXi)p(iffai)V ('OMmli 'i-'i^ been written on this subject since the jiresent writer discussed the passage in ' '/n-i.^f uiu! Ih<- .Tnrc^h Imr, 1886. Even more deci.h'.lly lli.in (h. n. lie nmM insist that if v.'* — andespr.i i/illy it v.'' i- :i uemiiiie part of Christ's discourse, we :in- .shut up to iiixler- stand ' fulfil ' in the sense of ' obey ' (so Cremer's Lexicon, bracketing 5" with 3'=). But (b) the case for omitting v.'**— with its Pharisaic aspect, its at least seemingly exaggerated canonization of the whole letter of the Pentateuch — is being very strongly pressed to-day {e.g. Votaw, art. ' Sermon on the Mount' in Hastings' DB, Ext. Vol. ). If v.'" [some would say vv.'*- "] be a gloss [or belong properly to a different context in a .somewhat different form], we may render ' not to destroy but to pcrfrrt the law,'— raising it to its ideal height of purity, and carrying it to its ideal depth of inwardness. This view probably holds the field at present. It goes well with vv.'^', etc., where our Lord, in a series of brilliant paradoxes, sweeps a^\ay the mere letter of the OT [? or the legal glosses added to it