His answer is variously reported : ' / am {^ydi et>i) : and yon ivill see the Son of Man seated on the rlgJit hand of the Poxvcr, and coming with the clouds of heaven ' (Mk 14^-) ; ' It is as thou sayest {<tv elwas). Yet I tell you, in future you xoill see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of the Pmver, and coming on the clouds of heaven ' (Mt 26®'*) ; ' You will not believe if I tell you, nor xoill you answer if I question you. But from henceforth the Son of Man shall be seatel on the right hand of the Power of God' (Lk 22^'"®''). Primarily, the saying is a remi- niscence and application of the Messianic passage in l)n T''*, though the Speaker lias also the opening of Ps 110 in His mind — a psalm which in those days was more tlian once upon His lips (cf. Mk 12^''). So mucii is clear. But the details of the answer are not always quite intelligible. Tiius St. Luke+ divides the question into two, and, in reply to the query, 'Art thou the Son of God?' makes Jesus reply : vfiels X^yere, Sri iyd} elfii (22™). On the other liand, the Markan answer is perfectly explicit (cf. Menzies, The Earliest Gosjjel, p. 267). Jesus replies, ' / am.' St. Matthew, again, gives an evasive or ambiguous turn to the words by the phrase <tv diras. whicli here, as in 26-^, is commonly under- stood to mean a qualified affirmative. The person addressed replies in the sense of the questioner. ' You say so. I Avill not contradict you.' ' I answer you out of your own lips.' Recently, however, Chwoison, followed by Merx, N. Schmidt {The Prophet of Nazareth, p. 287), and others, has
* The reconstruction of the Temple in the new age was one work of the Messiah, according to some circles of pre-Christian .luflaism (cf. Enoch 90-** etc.; Bousset, lieliqinn des Judentiims, 22(jf.).
t The avoidance of God's name, in accordance with Jewish usage, is, as O. Holtzmann points out (/>('/« of Jesus, pp. 164, 47.T), ' a strong point in favour of the soundness of our tradition.'
* ' VVic Power' of Mk. and Mt. is more original than Lk.'s Bxplanatory phrase.
VOL. 1 1.-48
challenged the interpretation of the phrase as a Rabbinic form of affirmation ; instead of being equivalent to the Latin dixisti, it is held to be really a denial. This is most unlikely, to judge from the context ; and even linguistically, as Dalman has shown ( Words of Jesus, p. 309 f.), it is unnecessary.*
But, minor discrepancies apart, the answer re- veals three cardinal traits of Jesus : His courage in confessing the Mes.sianic vocation, when death was the inevitable consequence ; His serene con- fidence in the success of His cause upon earth ; and His admission that only the future could unfold the real meaning of His Person. f The last point is to be noted specially. The high jn-iest's question was so contrived as to make any answer fatal, whether negative or affirmative. In the one case, Jesus would lose all His influence and authority ; in the other. He would be liable to judgment as a pretender. But Jesus realized that even a bare af- firmative would be misleading, since His Messianic vocation was widely different from what the ordin- ary expectation imagined. Hence the fuller state- ment, wrung from the tension and passionate faith of His soul. The words seized on by the Council were those referring to His claim to sit at the right hand of the Power, but it must not be in- ferred J from this that the charge of constructive blasphemy for which Jesus was condemned was dissociated from His Messianic claims. The con- tention that such claims were not blasphemous in themselves all depends on the character of the l^erson who made them. The Council considered themselves, rightly or wrongly, absolved from entering into any minute examination of the con- duct and aims of Jesus. § On that their minds were already made up, as His arrest shows. The attitude of Jesus to the Law and the Temple and the cherished religious traditions of Judaism left no doubt in their minds that He was a dangerous person, in whom it would be superfluous to look for any Messianic criteria. His presumption in claiming Messianic honour was in itself blasphemy of a capital order, as it involved a supersession of the Mosaic Law, and His words now corroborated the impression already made by His actions that He was a discredited pretender to Divine rank, and a false and disloyal jjrophet. In short, the verdict of the historian, as Holtzmann puts it, must be: 'Jesus confessed Himself to be Messiah, was condemned as a false Messiah, and executed as a pretender.' ||
Caiaphas had now gained his point. He had in- duced Jesus to convict Himself out of His own mouth, and with a pious gesture of horror (cf. 2 K 22", 1 Mac Ipi, Is 371 etc.) he professes himself at once shocked by the blasphemy of the Galilsean, and satisfied with the result of his interrogation. He appeals theatrically to the Council if this is not enough evidence, and they obsequiously agree.
The condensed and cursory nature of the report makes it impossible for us to be sure whetiier this verdict was as premature and illegal as it appears to be, and whether the irregularities were held to