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TRANSFIGURATION - continued
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[3252] Note here the want of the article: na poisosin atn basila. We owe this notice to the Fourth Gospel, and it is in marked inconsistency with the theory of its late Ephesian authority.
[3253] St. John vi. 15.
[3254] St. Matt. xiv. 23.
[3255] Ber. 3 b.
[3256] Probably from 3 to about 6 a.m.
[3257] Even the beautiful allegory into which Keim would resolve it - that the Church in her need knows not, whether her Saviour may not come in the last watch of the night - entirely surrenders the whole narrative. And why should three Evangelists have invented such a story, in order to teach or rather disguise a doctrine, which is otherwise so clearly expressed throughout the whole New Testament, as to form one of its primary principles? Volkmar (Marcus, p. 372) regards this whole history as an allegory of St. Paul's activity among the Gentiles! Strange in that case, that it was omitted in the Gospel by St. Luke. But the whole of that section of Volkmar's book (beginning at p. 327) contains an extra-ordinary congeries, of baseless hypotheses, of which it were difficult to say, whether the language is more painfully irreverent or the outcome more extravagant.
[3258] Ps. viii. 5, 6; comp. Hebr. ii. 6-9.
[3259] On the other hand, the miraculous feeding of the multitude seems to exhibit rather the humanly-Divine aspect of His Person.
[3260] Literally, a phantasma. This word is only used in this narrative (St. Matt. xiv. 26 and St. Mark vi. 49.)
[3261] Acts xxvi. 8.
[3262] 1 Cor. xv. 12-19.
[3263] Acts xvii. 31, 32.
[3264] 1 Cor. xv. 1-8.
[3265] 2 Pet. iii. 4.
[3266] The authenticity of the Second Epistle of St. Peter is here taken for granted, but the drift of the argument would be the same, to whatever authorship it be ascribed.
[3267] St. Matt. xiv. 22.
[3268] St. John vi. 22.
[3269] Weiss (Matthaus-Evang. p. 372) sees a gross contradiction between what seems implied as to His original purpose and His walking on the sea, and hence rejects the narrative. Such are the assumptions of negative criticism. But it seems forgotten that, according to St. Matt. xiv. 24, the journey seems at first to have been fairly prosperous.
[3270] Weiss (u. s.) certainly argues on the impossibility of His having seen the boat so far out on the Lake.
[3271] According to St. Matt. xiv. 24, they seem only to have encountered the full force of the wind when they were about the middle of the Lake. We imagine that soon after they embarked there may have been a fresh breeze from the other side of the Lake, which by and by rose into a violent contrary wind.
[3272] St. John, in distinction to the Synoptists, here uses the expression theoren (St. John vi. 19), which in the Gospels has the distinctive meaning of fixed, earnest, and intent gaze, mostly outward, but sometimes also inward, in the sense of earnest and attentive consideration. The use of this word as distinguished from merely seeing, is so important for the better understanding of the New Testament, that every reader should mark it. We accordingly append a list of the passages in the Gospels where this word is used: St. Matt. xxvii. 55; xxviii. 1; St. Mark iii. 11; v. 15, 38; xii. 41; xv. 40, 47; xvi. 4; St. Luke x. 18; xiv. 29; xxi. 6; xxiii. 35, 48; xxiv. 37, 39; St. John ii. 23; iv. 19; vi. 2 (Lachm. and Treg.), 19, 40, 62; vii. 3; viii. 51; ix. 8; x. 12; xii. 19, 45; xiv. 17, 19; xvi. 10, 16, 17, 19; xvii. 24; xx. 6, 12, 14. It will thus be seen, that the expression is more frequently used by St. John than in the other Gospels, and it is there also that its distinctive meaning is of greatest importance.