Ver. 16. The church as a whole must repent of her too tolerant attitude to these errorists, but the threatened visi- tation is directed against the errorists themselves in the shape of some physical malady or mortal sickness, according to the current belief in early Christianity
23
358
8 xii. 7, χΗῖ."πολεμήσω peT αὐτῶν ἐν TH ῥομφαίᾳ τοῦ στόµατός µου.
4, XVil. 14
1.
” ’ col - ~ A (Hebra- €Xwv os ἀκουσάτω τί τὸ Πνεῦμα λέγει ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις: TO νικῶντι
ism corns); cf. Isa. Ixiii. το.
(cf. on τ Cor. v. 4-5, 13, xi. 30, Everling: die paul. Angelologie, etc., 20f.). Grotius refers the threat to the prophetic order (‘‘prophetas suscitabo in ecclesia”). But the ethnic conscience generally regarded pestilence or any physical calamity as a punishment inflicted by the god for some offence against his ritual or some breach ‘of morals. In the Hexateuch, the sword opposes (Num. xxii. 23, 31) and finally ‘slays (xxxi. 8) Balaam. The run of ‘thought in the verse is that if the church -does not repent, 2.6., if she does not act -on her own initiative and expel the wrong- ‘doers (in the hope of them ultimately com- ing to a better mind, 1 Cor. v. 4, 5), she ‘must submit to having them cut out of her, and thus being irretrievably lost by death. ‘The church is responsible for her erring members, and the exercise of discipline is viewed as a duty to them as well as to herself and God. Weak laxity is false kindness, the prophet implies; it merely exposes offenders to an alternative far more dreadful than discipline itself. The sword, Vict. remarks on i. 16, is used to punish deserters as well as to win victory for the faithful. For instrumental év in the pre-Christian vernacular, see Tebtunis Papyri vol. i. (p. 86) ἐν paxatpy-ats. Ver. 17. The reward for those who deny themselves pagan pleasures in this world is (as in ver. 26) participation in the privileges (Pereqg Meir 5), reserved for God’s people in the latter days (here =a victor’s banquet, Gen. xiv. 18), not as hitherto (7, 11) simply participation in eternal life. The imagery is again rab- binic (2 Macc. ii. 4-6, Apoc. Bar. vi. 7-9). Previous to the destruction of Jerusalem, Isaiah or the prophet Jeremiah was sup- posed to have hidden the ark of the cove- nant (cf. on xi. 19) with its sacred con- tents, including the pot of manna. At the appearance of the messiah, this was to be once more disclosed (cf. Mechilta on Exod. xvi. 25, etc.). It is significant how the writer as usual claims for his messiah, Jesus, the cherished privileges and rights to which contemporary Juda- ism clung as its monopoly, and further how he assumes that all the past glories of Ο.Τ. relizion upon earth—as well as all the coming bliss, which in one sense meant the transcendent restoration of
, 3A CoM 7 A / ‘ ‘ πα ~ δώσω αὐτῷ τοῦ ‘pdvva τοῦ κεκρυµµένου, καὶ δώσω αὐτῷ ψῆφον
t Sib. vii. 149, John vi. 31-32; partit. gen.
these glories—were secured in heaven for the followers of Jesus alone (vii. 17, xxi. 2, efc.). ‘See Ἄρδο Bary πα. ὅ, where “the treasury of manna will again descend from on high,” at the messianic period, that the saints may eat of it; the Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, fol- lows Philo (quis ver. div. 39, leg. allegor. iii. 59, 61, etc.) in using manna as a type of the soul’s nourishment in the present age. There does not seem to be any allusion to the rabbinical legend under- lying Sap. xvi. 20.—The strange associa- tion of manna and white stones, though possibly a reminiscence of the rabbinic notion preserved in Joma 8 (cadebant Israelitis una cum manna lapides preti- osi), cannot be explained apart from the popular superstitions regarding amulets which colour the metaphor. White stones represented variously to the ancient mind acquittal, admission to a feast (tessera hospitalis), good fortune, and the like. But the point here is their connexion with the new name. This alludes to the mysterious power attached in the ancient mind to amulets, stones (cf. Ε.Σ. i. 546-550, where vignettes are given ; also Dieterich’s Mithras-Liturgie, 31 f.) marked with secret and divine names (Jeremias, 79-80, Pfleid. Early Christ. Conc. of Christ, 112 f.), the pos- session of which was supposed to enable the bearer to pass closed gates, foil evil spirits, and enter the presence of the deity. If the new name (cf. Heitmiller’s Im Namen Fesu, 128 Ε.), is thus regarded as that of Jesus—the irresistible, invin- cible name above every name—the pro- mise then offers safe entrance through all perils into the inner bliss and feast of God; the true Christian has a charmed life. But when the new name is taken to apply to the individual, as seems more likely here, another line of interpretation is required, and the origin of the phrase (though tinged still with this amulet- conception of a stone, the more potent as it was hidden somewhere on the person, cf. Prov. xvii. 8, etc.), is best approached from a passage like Epict. i, το, where the philosopher is trying to dissuade a man from undertaking the duties of priesthood in the Imperial cultus at Nikopolis. What good will it do him