We may take it as established, then, that the phrase ' these little ones ' on the Master's lips means not 'children,' but distinctly and always 'my disciples.' The question still remains open, however, whether our Lord means by it all His disciples, or only a speciallj* designated class of them. The latter has been quite commonly sup- posed, and interpreters have busied themselves defining the characteristic qualities of the par- ticularly designated class. Hahn, for example, argues strenuously that the disciples at large cannot be meant ; but that the designation presupposes gradations among the disciples (cf. Lk 7'-*), and the essence of the exhortation in Lk 17- at least is that the greater must not despise the lesser. Godet similarly supposes that the ' little ones ' are ' beginners in the faith,' ' those yet weak in the faith.' Sui'ely, however, such distinctions are foreign to the contexts in which these phrases occur, and even inconsistent with them. In ^It 10^, for example, the broad identification of ' one of these little ones ' with ' a disciple ' excludes from thought all divisions within the body of disciples ; and the definition of ' these ' as' the disciples to whom our Lord Avas speaking, as He spoke of them as 'these little ones,' looks in the same direction. In Mk 9*-, again, the phrase ' these little ones ' takes up broadly the ' you ' of the i)receding verse, and therefore designates just the disciples at large. 'These little ones' are, moreover, defined here as ' these that believe," that is to say, as ' believers,' in their essential char- acteristics as such. Much the same may be said of Lk 17-, in the context of which there is a dis- tinction between brother and brother but no dis- crimination betAveen greater and lesser, Avhile the Avhole drift of Mt IS^-'i-* is to exalt the 'little ones' and to identify them Avith that body of chosen ones to Avhose salvation the Avill of the Father is pledged. It may be taken as exegeticallj" certain, then, that by ' the.se little ones ' our Lord does not intend to single out a certain section of His disciples, — Avliether the Aveakest in faith or the more advanced in that humility of spirit Avhich is the fruit of a gi-eat faith, — but means the Avhole body of His disciples. This is therefore just one of the someAvhat numerous general designa- tions Avhich He gives to His disciples by Avhich to express His conception of their character and estate, and the nature of His feelings tOAvards them.
2. Whence this particular designation of His disciples Avas derived by our Lord remains indeed someAvhat obscure. It iised to be quite generally supposed that in it He had simply adopted and applied to His OAvn disciples an ordinary designa- tion for their pupils current in the Kabbinical schools. This idea seems traceable to .1. J. Wet-
38
LITTLE ONES
LITTLE ONES
stein, who illustrates the phrase on its first occur- rence (^It 10^-) by the following quotation from the Bcreshith Babba (xlii. 4) :
' Where there are no little ones, there are no disciples ; where there are no discii)les, there are no sages ; where there are no sages, there are no elders ; where there are no elders, there are no prophets ; where there is no prophet, there is no God.'
Following this suggestion, commentators like Bolten, Kuinoel, Bloonifiekl, Fritzsche have accordingly explained the i^hrase as simply a Hebraism for 'disciples.'
It was early pointed out, however [e.g. by Meyer, ed. 2, p. 215 note; Bruno Bauer, ii. 241), tliat the currency in the Rabbinical schools of such an emi)loyment of 'little ones' as a designation for ' disciples ' is neither shown by the citation from the Bcreshith Rabba nor supported by any other evidence. Accordingly this notion has quite gener- ally died out (cf. Meyer-Weiss, ed. 8, 1890). Its place lias been largely taken by the very natural supposition that our Lord has done for Himself what the Rabbis had been supposed to have done for Him, — applied affectionately to His disciples a designation appropriate literallj- only to children. The difficulty of this sup- position, otherwise most satisfactory, is that the particular designation in question — 'little ones' — is not a Biblical designation of children, and not one which would readily suggest itself as a term of affection. Neither the Hebrew (pp) nor the Greek (/JUKpos) lent itself readily to adoption as a term of tenderness ; and accordingly neither in the Hebrew nor in the Greek Bible does tiie term 'little ones' (D':apa, oi fj-iKpol) ever occur as a periphrasis for children. Wliere we read of ' little ones ' in the English Bible in the sense of children, this is an imposition of an English idea upon a totally divergent Hebrew conception (id Gn 34^'* 43^ 46^ etc. ). It is quite true that in Rabbinical Hebrew D'jcp has become a standing term for chil- dren ; but not as a term of affectionate feeling so much as with the simple implication of immaturity. The katan and ketanna were to the Rabbis merely tiie ' boy ' and ' girl ' as undeveloped and unripe, in opposition to the mature man and woman. And although this term was occasionally transferred by them metaphorically to their pupils, it was not, if we can trust the lexicographers, in a very pleasant sense. The ' little one ' among the disciples was just an 'abortion' — one who disregarded his teacher and set his immaturity against his master's ripe learning ; or one who, while yet fit only to be a learner, wislied to set himself up prematurely as a teacher (cf. Levy or Jastrow, sub voce "op, quoting the tract Sota 22« ; but consult Sota 24A, wiiere we are told that Samuel was surnamed ppi 'the Little,'— cf. 'James the Little' in the NT, and ' Kleigenes the Little' in Xenophon, — because he made himself little, that is, bore himself humbly ; here a good sense seems to be attached to the metaphorical use of the word). It was assuredly not from this circle of ideas that our Lord derived His use of the phrase, even if we may suppose that tliis Rabbinical use of it was already developed in His day.