Literature.— Besides the works mentioned above, see the Comm. on Ac 2, the articles 'Pentecost,' 'Feasts,' ' Pfingstfest,' * Wochenfest ' in the Encyclopaedias and Bible Dictionaries ;
Benzinger's Heb. Arch. ; Mackie's Bible Manners and Customs ; Farrar, St. Paul, i. 83-104 ; Expositor, i. i. [1875], 393-408 ; William Arthur, The Tongue of Fire.
T. NicoL.
PEOPLE. — This collective term, which occurs about 120 times in the Gospels, is used to denote sometimes in a lesser or more general way the Ijeople (Xa6s) among whom Christ lived and ful- filled His mission, but oftener the smaller or larger crowds of people (oxXos) who, from time to time, and in the various scenes of His labour, waited upon His ministry (see art. Crowd). But 'people' (Xaos) is several times employed in the religious sense that attaches to such phrases as ' the people of God,' or ' Christ's people ' (Mt pi 2^ Lk fi'?- " 2-*2 7i«). It is only in tiiis latter sense that the word calls for special notice, and as so vieAved it possesses considerable importance.
The most noteworthy thing in regard to the re- ligious use of the word in the Gospels is, that it is never in any of them employed by Christ Himself. All the instances in which it is found are in narra- tives connected with His birth and infancy, except the one in Lk 7^^ ; and in this case it was the people who beheld the restoration of the widow's son to life who -said, ' tliat a great prophet is risen among us ; and that God hath visited his people.' The fact that Christ discarded the use of the word ' people ' in its religious sense cannot be regarded as a matter of little or no consequence. In doing so He must have acted with deliberate purpose, and for reasons considered by Himself to be valid. This view is evident from a variety of considera- tions : ( 1 ) The religious sense of the phrase ' the people of God ' had occupied a place of high im- IJortance in the historical relation between God and the Hebrew race. (2) It had been organically associated by the OT revelation with the pro- spective advent of the Messiah and His Kingdom. (3) According to Messianic prophecy, the one people of God would eventually consist of all the peoples of the earth united in a common relation to Him. (4) Christ was aware of these facts. He knew that He was Himself the Jewish Messiah and the Saviour of the world. And He was in- spired and controlled by the idea that the object of His mission was to bring the true and full sense of the phrase ' tlie people of God ' to perfect realization in the Kingdom of heaven. (5) If He had chosen to do so, it would have been easy for Him to express all the essential truths of His mes- sage to mankind in terms of ' the peojjle of God.' Moreover, this phrase could not be without attrac- tions for Him. Why, then, did He never let it fall from His lips when addressing His audiences in public and in private ?
One of His reasons must have been the signifi- cance of the phrase as it presented itself to His OAvn mind. The ideas with which He would charge it may be inferred from the essential nature of the truths embodied in the message He left behind Him. In thinking of God and His people, He would think of Him as a moral Being and of them as moral beings. He would think of the relations between Him and them as moral, and therefore as founded in this direct inward relation to them as individuals. He would think also of His relation to them as absolutely impartial, and of their rela- tions to Him as absolutely equal. And for all these reasons He would think of the relation between God and His people, as His people, as in no sense legal, and as not permitting Him to show towards any people in particular either national favour or political privileges. Finally, all this implies that Christ would think of God and His people in terms of purely moral universality. But if such is the meaning that He would attach to tiie phrase alluded to, does not that seem to favour His use
PEOPLE
of it, aud to make His rejection of it still more difficult to understand? Quite the reverse, as another reason sliows.
As a teacher, Christ had to consider not only the meaning that He attached to the phrase Himself, but also the meaning attached to it by the Jews among whom He tauglit, and who believed that tliey themselves were the people of God, and they alone of all the peoples of mankind. The* people of Israel were the people of God. This was one of the most essential and distinctive dogmas of the fully developed, orthodox, and official Judaism with which our Lord everj-wliere and always had to reckon as a teacher ; and this dogma, adhered to and upheld b}- tlie fanatical zeal of tlie rigid and conservative devotees of Judaism, \\as tlie most embarrassing tliat He had to reckon with as a teacher sent from God. For wliat did the dogma in question mean and implj-? It rested \iix)n a denial of the essential oneness of the relation of God to all the peoples of the world, and of the essential oneness of the relation of all the peoples of the world to Him. It was founded in the notion that tlie relation between God and His people was national, and that the nature of the national bond was not moral but legal. For Divine righteous- ness and the obedience of faith, the only real and permanent, because moral, conditions on which the relations between God and His people repose, it substituted ancestral descent from Abraham, and the observance of the national rite of circum- cision. And the only way, it contended, for Gentiles to obtain admission within the circle of the people of God, was to become Jews by observ- ing this national rite. It is manifest, then, that the ideas of Judaism and the ideas of Christ on the subject of ' the people of God ' were in direct and complete antagonism to one another. This fact Christ had to consider, and it was neces- sary for Him as a teacher to weigh the question as to what tlie inevitable consequences would be for Himself and His cause, if He attempted in the course of His teaching to present and explain His ideas on the subject of ' the people of God " in their real and inherent antagonism to the ideas on the same subject which had become fixed and hardened in the perverted Judaism of His time. Evident Ij- He came to the conclusion that the handling of this subject would involve Himself and the inter- ests of His mission in great risks and dangers. It is certain that such would have been the case. For if He had taught and insisted on the accept- ance of the truths of moral unitj- and universalitj" that belong to the relations between God and His people as He understood them, the bigoted ad- herents of Judaism would have forthwith resented His teaching and made Himself the object of their fanatical aud malignant hostility. He therefore persistentlj- ignored the phrase ' the people of God.' It was highly expedient for Him to do so.