[660] According to Sanh. 90 b, such an one was not even allowed to get the Terumah.
[661] Jer. haSh. 56 d, line 10 from bottom.
[662] Judg. xiii. 18.
[663] Dan. ix. 21.
[664] x. 21.
[665] Two other Angels are mentioned, but not named, in Dan. x. 13, 20.
[666] The Jewish ideas and teaching about angels are fully given in Appendix XIII.: Jewish Angelology and Demonology.'
[667] Moed k. 26 a.
[668] 1 Kings xviii. 37 (in Hebr. without that' and again'); see Ber. 31 b, last two lines.
[669] Bemidbar R. 14. Another view in Par. 13.
[670] This in Shir haSh R. i. ed. Warshau, p. 3 a.
[671] All the Rabbinic traditions about Elijah as the Forerunner of the Messiah' are collated in Appendix VIII.
[672] I should, however, remark, that that very curious chapter on Repentance, in the Pirké de R. Elieser (c. 43), closes with these words: And Israel will not make great repentance till Elijah - his memory for blessing! - come, as it is said, Mal. iv. 6,' &c. From this isolated and enigmatic sentence, Professor Delitzsch's implied inference (Zeitschr. fur Luther. Theol. 1875, p. 593) seems too sweeping. __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER IV. THE ANNUNCIATION OF JESUS THE MESSIAH, AND THE BIRTH OF HIS FORERUNNER.
(St. Matt. i.; St. Luke i. 26-80.)
FROM the Temple to Nazareth! It seems indeed most fitting that the Evangelic story should have taken its beginning within the Sanctuary, and at the time of sacrifice. Despite its outward veneration for them, the Temple, its services, and specially its sacrifices, were, by an inward logical necessity, fast becoming a superfluity for Rabbinism. But the new development, passing over the intruded elements, which were, after all, of rationalistic origin, connected its beginning directly with the Old Testament dispensation - its sacrifices, priesthood, and promises. In the Sanctuary, in connection with sacrifice, and through the priesthood - such was significantly the beginning of the era of fulfillment. And so the great religious reformation of Israel under Samuel had also begun in the Tabernacle, which had so long been in the background. But if, even in this Temple-beginning, and in the communication to, and selection of an idiot priest,' there was marked divergence from the Rabbinic ideal, that difference widens into the sharpest contrast, as we pass from the Forerunner to the Messiah, from the Temple to Galilee, from the idiot' priest to the humble, unlettered family of Nazareth. It is necessary here to recall our general impression of Rabbinism: its conception of God, [673] and of the highest good and ultimate object of all things, as concentrated in learned study, pursued in Academies; and then to think of the unmitigated contempt with which they were wont to speak of Galilee, and of the Galileans, whose very patois was an offence; of the utter abhorrence with which they regarded the unlettered country-people, in order to realise, how such an household as that of Joseph and Mary would be regarded by the leaders of Israel. A Messianic announcement, not the result of learned investigation, nor connected with the Academies, but in the Sanctuary, to a rustic' priest; an Elijah unable to untie the intellectual or ecclesiastical knots, of whose mission, indeed, this formed no part at all; and a Messiah, the offspring of a Virgin in Galilee betrothed to a humble workman - assuredly, such a picture of the fulfillment of Israel's hope could never have been conceived by contemporary Judaism. There was in such a Messiah absolutely nothing - past, present, or possible; intellectually, religiously, or even nationally - to attract, but all to repel. And so we can, at the very outset of this history, understand the infinite contrast which it embodied - with all the difficulties to its reception, even to those who became disciples, as at almost every step of its progress they were, with ever fresh surprise, recalled from all that they had formerly thought, to that which was so entirely new and strange.