oracle concerning the suffering servant of Jehovah.’ Once more, to Mark’s simple statement that Jesus withdrew Himself to the sea after the collision with the Pharisees occasioned by the healing on a Sabbath of the man with a withered hand, the first evangelist attaches a fine prophetic picture, as if to show readers the true Jesus as opposed to the Jesus of Pharisaic imagination.» From these instances we see his method. He is not inventing history, but enriching history with prophetic emblazonments for apologetic purposes, or for increase of edification. Such is the fact, we observe, when we have it in our power to control his statements by compari- son with Mark’s; such we may assume to be the fact when we ’ have not that in our power, as, é.g., in the narrative relating to the birth and infancy of Jesus, in which prophetic citations are unusually abundant. The question as to the historicity of that narrative has its own peculiar difficulties, into which ~ do not here enter. The point I wish to make is that the numerous prophetic references cast no additional shadow of doubt on its historicity. Here too the evangelist is simply attaching prophe*ic oracles to what he regards as historic data. If invention has been at work it has not been in his imagination. This is manifest even from the very weakness of some of the citations, such as “ Out of Egypt have I called my Son,” “Rachel weeping for her children,” and “He shall be called a Nazarene”. Who could ever have thought of these unless there had been traditional data accepted by the Christian community (and by the writer of the Gospel) as facts? The last citation is especially far-fetched. It is impossible to say whence it is taken; it could never have entered into the mind of any one unless the fact of the settlement in Nazareth had been there to begin with, creating a desire to find for it also, if at all possible, some prophetic antici- pation.
These prophetic passages served their purpose in the apologetic of the apostolic age. For us now their value is not apologetic, except indeed in a way not contemplated by the evangelist. Their occasional weakness as proofs of the Messiahship of Jesus can be utilised in the manner above hinted at in support of the historicity of the evangelic tradition. But the chief permanent value of these citations lies in the light they throw on the evangelist’s own con- ception of Jesus. We see from them that he thought of Jesus as the Light of Galilee, the sympathetic Bearer of humanity’s heavy burden, the Beloved of God, the Peacemaker, the Friend of weak-
1 Matt. viii. 17. 2 Matt. xii. 15-21, Cy. Mark iii. 7.