More important, however, than any reference to special passages is the effect upon the general intellectual atmosphere of the generation in which Christ lived and worked, created and moulded to a certain extent by tlie literature intermediate between the OT and the NT. We have to read that literature to understand many of the ideas that were then current, and to find the conceptions that underlay much of the phraseology which to us seems new and .specifically Christian, but which had been gradually evolved in the preceding cen- turies. Jesus and His disciples were, of course, children of their tune in this matter, and He was bound to speak in terms intelligible to His con- temporaries. What is wonderful is the manner in which He cleared these ideas of many foolish interpretations, and delivered them from a merely fanciful exegesis.
5. Traditional sayings of Jesus that reveal dependence upon the OT. — When we turn to a consideration of the sayings that are attributed to Jesus in sources outside the NT, our difficulties are, of course, increa.sed ; for here we are on less certain ground of information, and tliere is a greater likelihood of the writers l)eing influenced by the literature with which they were familiar. Still, it will not serve to allow any theory of imitation to account for all these recorded utter- ance.s, and .some of the best authenticated of them must now be examined in the light of our present purpose.
There is, to begin with, the famous saying from the Gospel according to the Hebreira. In this work Jesus Himself is the speaker, and the saving referred to runs as follows : ' The Saviour himself says. Just now the Holy Spirit my mother took me by one of my hairs, and bore me away to the great mountain Tabor.' This seemingly extravagant figure is not so uniquely grotesque as might he supposed, for in Ezk 83 we read of the Lord taking the prophet by a lock of his head, and the spirit
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lifting- him between heaven and earth ; and in the Apocr\-phal book of Bel and the Dragon the prophet Habakkuk is described as being lifted by the hair of his head, wliile the notion of transportation without specification of the method is by no means uncommon in prophetic narratives. There is the ascetic character of the passage quoted from the Gospel according to the Egyptians, where, in answer to the question of Salome, as to when the power of death shall end, the Lord saj-s, ' So long as je women bear children ; for I came to destroy the works of womankind." These words do not seem at all in agreement with the general tenor of our Lord's teaching, though it must be confessed that the paradox is modified in the later part of the section ; but the words as they stand have a reference to such sayings as that found in Sir 25^ and other passages where women are spoken of with great severity. In the saying contained in the first Oxyrhyachu^ papyrus, ' Except ye make the Sabbath a real Sabbath, je shall not see the Father,' there maj' be a reference to Is 5S1<*- 1^. There is a class of sayings found in one form or another in several of the early Christian writers, and attributed to our Lord ; e.g. ' He that is near me is near the fire ' (Or. Horn, in Jer. xx. 3), ' He that is near the Lord is full of stripes' (Clem. Alex. Strom, ii. 7. 35). Both of these have a close parallel to a passage in Jth 8^7 ' For he hath not tried us in the fire as he did them to search out their hearts, neither hath he taken vengeance on us ; but the Lord doth scourge them that come near unto him to admonish tliem.' In the Clem. Horn. 19, 20, we find our Lord saying, ' Keep my mysterj- for me and the sons of my house ' ; and Westcott has pointed out that Theodotion's version of Is ■24i<' reads, 'Jly mystery for me, my mystery for me and mine.' The words now found in 1 P 4!* and there frequently taken as a quotation of Pr 1012, v-iz. 'Love covers a multitude of sins,' is by Clem. Alex. (Peed. iii. 12. 91) and others attributed to Jesus, it seems probable enough that He might have used the expression, and not less so even if it is a quotation from the OT. Another saying found in Justin (Dial. Tryph. xlvii.), and other authori- ties, is, ' In whatsoever I may find you, in this also will I judge you,' which is, of course, reminiscent of Jn o'iO ; and both of these may go back upon Ezk 18*0 and 241-'. \ very remarkable passage is given in Iren. v. 33, on the authority of Papias, descrip- tive of the days of tlie final glory, and the extreme fruitfulness of the \ines and grain, and also of the universal peace through- out the animal creation. The passage, which is extraordinary in character, has much resemblance to those found in Is 11^ 9, Am 913, and a very close one to Apoc. Bar 209.
6. Christ's methods as suggestive of our attitude towards OT problems. — From the foregoing dis- cussion of onr Lord's study and emiiloj'ment of the OT we may be able to discover several principles which seem to have guided Him in His use of that literature. — (a) He subjected Himself to its spiritual authority, but in no respect did He forego His in- tellectual right to judge for Himself about details of its teaching. The mere fact that words -were ^^Titte^ in the Scriptures did not suffice to render them authoritative for Him ; in fact, He selected teaching which seemed in consonance with the spirit of the Kingdom He had come to declare, and in His interpretation of sayings that He did accept He was not afraid to pass by altogether received opinion or cmrent explanation, if He felt these to be at variance with the true spirit of the original declaration of the Divine will. Sometimes, as in the case of the words, ' I am the God of Abraham,' etc., Jesus seems to support fanciful interpreta- tions of the words, and even to give His authoi'ity to the allegorists. But on more careful examina- tion we find that His exegesis is really a spiritual one, and that if the actual words can scarcely be taken, in their original use, to bear the meaning He puts upon them, at all events His reading of them IS not forced, but penetrates beneath the surface to the spiritual realities underlying them. — (b) As has been already pointed out, the critical questions connected with Jonah or the 110th Psalm dirl not emerge in His time, neither does His treatment of either passage depend upon the judgment formed as to the authorship of the original. "Whatever the character of the Book of Jonah, and whoever wrote it, the hero of the book remains as significant as a sign to Christ's contemporaries ; and in the case of the Psalmi-st it is the significance of his words as the utterance of the Divine Spirit upon which Jesus lays stress ; and this is equally the case whenever the Psalm was written, and who- ever was the author of it. The same things apply to our Lord's treatment of narratives in Genesis and other parts of the OT. His treatment of these