[6136] So Strauss (after Wetstein) and even Keim. Painful as controversy is in connection with the last hours of Jesus, I would not have shrunk from contesting the positions of Keim, if I had not felt that every unprejudiced person must see, that most of them are mere assertions, without an attempt at anything like historical evidence.
[6137] Strauss (ii. p. 556), and more fully Keim (iii. p. 438, Note 3), quote Joel ii. 10, 31; Amos viii. 9; Is. xiii. 10; 1. 3; Job ix. 7; Jer. xv. 9. Of these passages some have no bearing, however remote, on the subject, while the others refer not to the Messiah but to the final judgement.
[6138] To be quite fair, I will refer to all the passages quoted in connection with the darkening of the sun as a token of mourning. The first (quoted by Wetstein) is from the Midrash on Lament. iii. 28 (ed. Warsh. p. 72 a). But the passage, evidently a highly figurative one, refers to the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of Israel, and, besides the darkening of the sun, moon, and stars (not the sun only), refers to a realistic fulfilment of Nah. i. 3 and Lament. iii. 28 in God's walking in dust and keeping silence. The second quotation of Wetstein, that when a great Rabbi dies it is as portentous as if the sun went down at midday - has manifestly no bearing whatever on the matter in hand (though Strauss adduces it). The last and only quotation really worth mention is from Sukk. 29 a. In a somewhat lengthened statement there, the meaning of an obscuration of the sun or moon is discussed. I have here to remark (1) that these phenomena are regarded as signs' in the sense of betokening coming judgments, such as war, famine, &c., and that these are supposed to affect various nations according as the eclipse is towards the rising or setting of the sun. The passage therefore can have no possible connection with such a phenomenon as the death of Messiah. (2) This is further confirmed by the enumeration of certain sins for which heavenly luminaries are eclipsed. Some are not fit for mention, while others are such as false witness-bearing, the needless cutting down of fruit-trees, &c. (3) But the unfairness, as well as the inaptitude, of the quotation appears from this, that only the beginning of the passage is quoted (Strauss and Keim): At a time when the sun is obscured, it is an evil sign to all the world,' while what follows is omitted: When the sun is obscured, it is an evil sign to the nations of the world; when the moon is obscured, it is an evil sign to Israel, because Israel reckons according to the moon, the nations of the world according to the sun.' And yet Wünsche (Erlauter. pp. 355, 356) quotes both that which precedes and that which follows this passage, but leaves out this passage itself. (Comp. Mechilta, p. 3 b.)
[6139] These are described with terrible realism by Keim.
[6140] aonan ltrosin, Hebr. ix. 12.
[6141] ltron, St. Matt. xx. 28.
[6142] 1 Pet. i. 19.
[6143] Tit. ii. 14.
[6144] ntlutron pr pnton 1 Tim. ii. 6.
[6145] pr pnton, 2 Cor. v. 15.
[6146] Gal. iii. 13.
[6147] So in St. Matthew, according to the best reading. In St. Mark, Eloi, Eloi [apparently the Syriac form], lema sabachthanei? Might it be that St. Matthew represents the current Judæan or Galilean dialect, and St. Mark the Syrian, and that this casts light alike on the dialects in Palestine at the time of Christ, and even, to some extent, on the composition of the Gospels, and the land in which they were written? The Targum renders Ps. xxii. 2: Eli, Eli, metul mah shebhaqtani? (On account of what hast Thou forsaken me?').
[6148] This in the extreme agony of soul, not to mark His Divinity.