THE PROPHET OF NAZARETH.
WHAT is meant by the phrase "Son of man" as it is used in the Gospels ? The discussion of this question is the keynote of a new and dee ply interesting book entitled "The Prophet of Nazareth" (Macmillan and Co., 10s. 6d. net). The author, Professor Nathaniel Schmidt, is a Biblical scholar of repute who carries on his critical work upon an unusual method. The duty of the critic at this present juncture is, in his opinion, "to turn every purported saying of Jesus into Galilean Aramaic [the language standing midway between classical Hebrew and modern Arabic, spoken in Galilee at the time of Christ], that we may test in His own vernacular the translations we may be fortunate enough to possess." His Aramaic studies have brought him to a startling conclusion. The Aramaic equivalent for "the Son of man" is bar nasha, and by usage it means simply "man." In The mouth of our Lord it could have had, he believes, no titular significance whatever. Christ, he says, never used this term "concerning himself" in order "to claim Messiahship in any sense, or to hint that he was 'a mere man,' or 'the true man,' but in some pregnant -utterances used it in reference to `man' in general, his duties, rights, and privileges." His arguments are philo- logical, and as such it is impossible that those without special knowledge should answer or confirm them. It seems, how- ever, that they are confirmed by a great many scholars of importance. Professor Schmidt was chosen to write the article entitled "Son of Man" in the "Encyclopaedia Biblica "; and in Hastings's "Dictionary of the Bible" the conviction to which he gives voice, while it is controverted, is admitted to have much weight. The obvious objection to his theory in the mind of the ordinary reader is that his new translation by no means always fits the context. This fact he of course faces fairly, but is, we think, somewhat put to the shift to explain it. That "the Son of man" was occasionally substituted by the writers of the Greek Gospels for the personal pronoun is rendered sufficiently likely by the fact that in the same passage we may read "I" according to one Evangelist and "the Son of man" according to another. Again, we can readily believe that when our Lord appears to make a sudden comment on His own words or actions—as, for instance, when, after the exhortation, "Whosoever will be chief arming you, let him be your servant," we read "Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many "—we may mistake the explanation of the Evangelist for the words of Christ. These reasonable hypotheses, however, are not the only ones we are called upon to accept, if we would take Professor Schmidt for our interpreter. Still, if it is really true that in all extant Aramaic literature the phrase has but one significance, our author's position must be admitted to be strong.
If for the sake of argument his contention be conceded, it necessitates a certain amount of "reinterpretation of the life and teaching of Jesus." First and foremost, it throws a new light upon our Lord's attitude towards man, modifying, if not destroying, the once general view that, prompted by infinite compassion, the object of His mission was the redemption of a fallen race rendered incapable by the sin of their common ancestor of working out their own salvation. "Man," He teaches, if Professor Schmidt be right, "is Lord of the Sabbath." " Man " has the power to forgive sin. "Man," though physically less well off than the animals, is capable by nature of divine inspiration, and should strive to live up to his best powers that he may fit himself for an immediate resurrection of the spirit after the death of his body.
The incident concerning the keeping of the Sabbath, wherein our Lord reminds His audience that David was blameless when he ate the " shewbread," furnishes Professor Schmidt with his most convincing illustration. There can be no doubt that his translation completes the obvious suggestion of the passage. The sentences run thus, as he reads them :—" Man was not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath for man; therefore man is also lord of the sabbath." It must be remembered that the incident in question took place at an early period in our Lord's career. If He ever declared Himself to be the Messiah, He had not done so then. Neither His Disciples nor their accusers would have understood Him had He mentioned His
office to uphold His arbitrary authority, and the fact that the Messiah had a right to abrogate the law could not have excused the action of David in breaking it. David, our Lord suggests, broke it in accordance with his natural conscience and his common-sense--and did right. Of course, the implication of His words—in our author's translation— is very far-reaching indeed. It is not too much to say that it is a declaration that no religious institution made for man's good is too sacred to be altered by man for his own betterment. The Jews held the law as delivered to Moses to be sacrosanct, yet Christ defended the position of a layman who broke it, in accordance with a higher moral law within ; and He pointed out to His hearers that whatever their technical sub- servience to its letter, they did the same thing in practice every time that an instinct of compassion moved them to go to the assistance of a distressed animal on the Sabbath. Taken in our author's sense, the words of Christ make an infallible Christian Church an impossibility, encouraging as they do the instinct of developing humanity to throw off the shackles of sacred tradition. He certainly seems to confer the right to control the Church upon her children, for whose good alone a Church can exist.
That Christ claimed for " man " the power to forgive sin, • and did not merely assume it for Himself, is a notion very hard of acceptance for the Protestant spirit. When He for- gave the paralytic, He said (according to Professor Schmidt), not "The Son of man" hate "power to forgive sin," but "Man hath power to forgive sin." It is a tremendous pronouncement, but the idea, as our author reminds us, does not hang upon the translation of a single text. Christ did in another instance "enjoin upon his disciples to exercise this authority, this blessed privilege of assuring their fellow.men of the pardon of their sins when their disposition should justify them in doing so." To forgive and to assure of forgiveness do not, however, seem to us to be quite the same things. It may be academic to make such a distinction, for with the assurance may come peace, and the end of that bitterness and despair which often accompany remorse. Yet surely some more definite power of binding and loosing their fellows would seem to be recog- nised in "man" by our Lord's words thus interpreted. Do they not suggest that while the offended person keeps an injury in malignant remembrance he keeps it in active being and renews the responsibility of the perpetrator P On that hypothesis, however, none but the offended person, or one who knew his mind, could effectually forgive. Professor Schmidt's translation leaves the passage full of difficulty.
When our Lord, after performing some cures, is accused of working by the power of the Devil, and declares that blasphemy against the Son of man may be forgiven, but not blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, His words are, however we read them, not very easy to understand. That He was alluding in any metaphysical sense to the third person of the Trinity is historically impossible. The most probable explana- tion has always seemed to the present writer to be the obvious practical one, that while it is excusable to blaspheme against any moral authority, however high, so long as we do not recognise it, it is inexcusable to blaspheme against the inner light, and leaves an indelible scar upon character. Professor Schmidt makes a more mystical interpreta- tion, and one which we cannot see follows necessarily even from his new translation. "The enemies of Jesus," we read, "charged him with performing his cures by the aid of Beelze- bub. In this he saw a blasphemy because he felt that his success in curing the sick was due to the Spirit of God that had come upon him ; yet he was careful to distinguish between an attack on a fellow-man and a denunciation of the Spirit that operated." We have only space for one more instance, and that is of slight importance. "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but man bath not where to lay his head," reads very well, and suggests, as Professor Schmidt says, a proverb or an epigram coined on the spot.
Whether Professor Schmidt's conclusions will be categori- cally adopted by scholars we have no means of foretelling ; but what may be considered certain is that they will not be adopted by the general public, who will not be at the pains to understand learned decisions, and who will always regard the Bible for all practical purposes as having been written in Elizabethan English. This, however, does not .mean that modern Biblical criticism—to which this book forms an im- portant addition—will be without effect upon the Christianity
of the common people. It is the outcome of the spirit of the age in which the masses share. The mediaeval Christian public can hardly be said to have adopted the conclusions of the schoohnen ; none but metaphysicians could understand them. Nevertheless, the compromises which these scribes arrived at after prolonged argumentations shaped the Christianity of the masses, whose minds were emotionally in tune with those of their instructors. To-day a great change has come over the spirit of learned and unlearned alike. It is not possible to account for waves of religious feeling, but they carry upon their crests both the simple and the scholarly. Christendom is losing its corporate sense of sin, is full of a strange hope of corporate perfectibility, and is turning for some sanction of its aspirations to Him in Whose mouth all the highest aspirations of man find expres- sion. The schoolmen of to-day no longer ask of themselves, as did the creed-makers of the Middle Ages, what is the precise position of our Lord in the celestial hierarchy. The schedules of doctrine which Oecumenical counsellors drew up asserted boldly the divine authority by which He taught, but made little allusion to His special teaching. They racked their reason to do Him honour, but the revelation contained in His words assumed in their eyes but a slight importance. To-day the focus of theological thought has changed. The fires of fanaticism could no longer be revived around the addition of a letter or a syllable to a creed. What, asks Christendom by the mouths of its new scholars, is the relation of God to men ? In this matter they are able to inquire of Christ Himself, and they are straining every mental nerve that they may recover the exact sense of His words. They disagree, they split hairs, and ride off upon theories, as did their scholastic forefathers; but the sum of their knowledge must form in the end the new shape into which Christianity is to be poured. For they work for a new generation which has been nurtured upon the knees of ecclesiasticism, but is now breaking loose from its moribund nurse, and going forth in the liberty of the Lord, with its thoughts fixed not so much upon "the conversion of the Godhead into Flesh" as upon the "taking of the Manhood into God."
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