Even in the early church, the more enlightened fathers adopted the opinion, that the heavenly voices spoken of in the biblical history were not external sounds, the effect of vibrations in the air, but inward impressions produced by God in the minds of those to whom he willed to impart himself: thus of the appearance at the baptism of Jesus, Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia maintain that it was a vision, and not a reality, ὀπτασία, οὐ φύσις.[9] To the simple indeed, says Origen, in their simplicity, it is a light thing to set the universe in motion, and to sever a solid mass like the heavens; but those who search more deeply into such matters, will, he thinks, refer to those higher revelations, by means of which chosen persons, even waking, and still more frequently in their dreams, are led to suppose that they perceive something with their bodily senses, while their minds only are affected: so that consequently, the whole appearance in question should [[241]]be understood, not as an external incident, but as an inward vision sent by God; an interpretation which has also met with much approbation among modern theologians.
In the first two Gospels and in the fourth, this interpretation is favoured by the expressions, were opened to him, ἀνεῴχθησαν αὐτῷ, he saw, εἶδε, and I beheld, τεθέαμαι, which seem to imply that the appearance was subjective, in the sense intended by Theodore, when he observes that the descent of the Holy Spirit was not seen by all present, but that, by a certain spiritual contemplation, it was visible to John alone, οὐ πᾶσιν ὤφθη τοῖς παροῦσιν, ἀλλὰ κατά τινα πνευματικὴν θεωρίαν ὤφθη μόνῳ τῷ Ἰωάννῃ: to John however we must add Jesus, who, according to Mark, participated in the vision. But in opposition to this stands the statement of Luke: the expressions which he uses, ἐγένετο—ἀνεῳχθῆναι—καὶ καταβῆναι—καὶ φωνὴν—γενέσθαι, it came to pass—was opened—and descended—and a voice came, bear a character so totally objective and exterior,[10] especially if we add the words, in a bodily form, σωματικῷ εἴδει, that (abiding by the notion of the perfect truthfulness of all the evangelical records) the less explicit narratives must be interpreted by the unequivocal one of Luke, and the incident they recount must be understood as something more than an inward revelation to John and Jesus. Hence it is prudent in Olshausen to allow, in concession to Luke, that there was present on the occasion a crowd of persons, who saw and heard something, yet to maintain that this was nothing distinct or comprehensible. By this means, on the one hand, the occurrence is again transferred from the domain of subjective visions to that of objective phenomena; while on the other, the descending dove is supposed visible, not to the bodily eye, but only to the open spiritual one, and the words audible to the soul, not to the bodily ear. Our understanding fails us in this pneumatology of Olshausen, wherein there are sensible realities transcending the senses; and we hasten out of this misty atmosphere into the clearer one of those, who simply tell us, that the appearance was an external incident, but one purely natural.
This party appeals to the custom of antiquity, to regard natural occurrences as divine intimations, and in momentous crises, where a bold resolution was to be taken, to adopt them as guides. To Jesus, spiritually matured into the Messiah, and only awaiting an external divine sanction, and to the Baptist who had already ceded the superiority to the friend of his youth, in their solemn frame of mind at the baptism of the former by the latter, every natural phenomenon that happened at the time, must have been pregnant with meaning, and have appeared as a sign of the divine will. But what the natural appearance actually was, is a point on which the commentators are divided in opinion. Some, with the synoptical writers, include a sound as well as an appearance; others give, with John, an appearance only. They interpret the opening of the heavens, as a sudden parting of the clouds, or a flash of lightning; the dove they consider as a real bird of that species, which by chance hovered over the head of Jesus; or they assume that the lightning or some meteor was compared to a dove, from the manner of its descent. They who include a sound as a part of the machinery in the scene, suppose a clap of thunder, which was imagined by those present to be a Bath Kol, and interpreted into the words given by the first Evangelist. Others, on the contrary, understand what is said of audible words, merely as an explanation of the visible sign, which was regarded as an attestation that Jesus was the Son of God. This last opinion sacrifices the synoptical writers, who undeniably speak of an audible voice, to John, and thus contains a critical [[242]]doubt as to the historical character of the narratives, which, consistently followed out, leads to quite other ground than that of the naturalistic interpretation. If the sound was mere thunder, and the words only an interpretation put upon it by the bystanders; then, as in the synoptical accounts, the words are evidently supposed to have been audibly articulated, we must allow that there is a traditional ingredient in these records. So far as the appearance is concerned, it is not to be denied that the sudden parting of clouds, or a flash of lightning, might be described as an opening of heaven; but in nowise could the form of a dove be ascribed to lightning or a meteor. The form is expressly the point of comparison in Luke only, but it is doubtless so intended by the other narrators; although Fritzsche contends that the words like a dove, ὡσεὶ περιστερὰν, in Matthew refer only to the rapid motion. The flight of the dove has nothing so peculiar and distinctive, that, supposing this to be the point of comparison, there would not be in any of the parallel passages a variation, a substitution of some other bird, or an entirely new figure. As, instead of this, the mention of the dove is invariable through all the four gospels, the simile must turn upon something exclusively proper to the dove, and this can apparently be nothing but its form. Hence those commit the least violence on the text, who adopt the supposition of a real dove. Paulus, however, in so doing, incurred the hard task of showing by a multitude of facts from natural history and other sources, that the dove might be tame enough to fly towards a man;[11] how it could linger so long over one, that it might be said, ἔμεινεν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν, it abode upon him, he has not succeeded in explaining, and he thus comes into collision with the narrative of John, by which he had sustained his supposition of the absence of a voice.[12]
§ 51.
AN ATTEMPT AT A CRITICISM AND MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE NARRATIVES.
If then a more intelligible representation of the scene at the baptism of Jesus is not to be given, without doing violence to the evangelical text, or without supposing it to be partially erroneous, we are necessarily driven to a critical treatment of the accounts; and indeed, according to De Wette and Schleiermacher,[13] this is the prevalent course in relation to the above point in the evangelical history. From the narrative of John, as the pure source, it is sought to derive the synoptical accounts, as turbid streams. In the former, it is said, there is no opening heaven, no heavenly voice; only the descent of the Spirit is, as had been promised, a divine witness to John that Jesus is the Messiah; but in what manner the Baptist perceived that the Spirit rested on Jesus, he does not tell us, and possibly the only sign may have been the discourse of Jesus.
One cannot but wonder at Schleiermacher’s assertion, that the manner in which the Baptist perceived the descending Spirit is not given in the fourth gospel, when here also the expression ὡσεὶ περιστερὰν, like a dove, tells it plainly enough; and this particular marks the descent as a visible one, and not a mere inference from the discourse of Jesus. Usteri, indeed, thinks [[243]]that the Baptist mentioned the dove, merely as a figure, to denote the gentle, mild spirit which he had observed in Jesus. But had this been all, he would rather have compared Jesus himself to a dove, as on another occasion he did to a lamb, than have suggested the idea of a sensible appearance by the picturesque description, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove. It is therefore not true in relation to the dove, that first in the more remote tradition given by the synoptical writers, what was originally figurative, was received in a literal sense; for in this sense it is understood by John, and if he have the correct account, the Baptist himself must have spoken of a visible dove-like appearance, as Bleek, Neander, and others, acknowledge.
While the alleged distinction in relation to the dove, between the first three evangelists and the fourth, is not to be found; with respect to the voice, the difference is so wide, that it is inconceivable how the one account could be drawn from the other. For it is said that the testimony which John gave concerning Jesus, after the appearance: This is the Son of God ([John i. 34]), taken in connexion with the preceding words: He that sent me to baptize, the same said unto me, etc., became, in the process of tradition, an immediate heavenly declaration, such as we see in Matthew: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Supposing such a transformation admissible, some instigation to it must be shown. Now in [Isaiah xlii. 1], Jehovah says of his servant: הֵן עַבְדִּי אֶתְמָךְ־בּוֹ בְּחִירִי רָצֲתָה נַפְשִׁי; words which, excepting those between the parentheses, are almost literally translated by the declaration of the heavenly voice in Matthew. We learn from [Matt. xii. 17 ff.] that this passage was applied to Jesus as the Messiah; and in it God himself is the speaker, as in the synoptical account of the baptism. Here then was what would much more readily prompt the fiction of a heavenly voice, than the expressions of John. Since, therefore, we do not need a misapprehension of the Baptist’s language to explain the story of the divine voice, and since we cannot use it for the derivation of the allusion to the dove; we must seek for the source of our narrative, not in one of the evangelical documents, but beyond the New Testament,—in the domain of cotemporary ideas, founded on the Old Testament, the total neglect of which has greatly diminished the value of Schleiermacher’s critique on the New Testament.
To regard declarations concerning the Messiah, put by poets into the mouth of Jehovah, as real, audible voices from heaven, was wholly in the spirit of the later Judaism, which not seldom supposed such vocal communications to fall to the lot of distinguished rabbins,[14] and of the messianic prejudices, which the early Christians both shared themselves, and were compelled, in confronting the Jews, to satisfy. In the passage quoted from Isaiah, there was a divine declaration, in which the present Messiah was pointed to as it were with the finger, and which was therefore specially adapted for a heavenly annunciation concerning him. How could the spirit of Christian legend be slow to imagine a scene, in which these words were audibly spoken from heaven of the Messiah. But we detect a farther motive for such a representation of the case by observing, that in Mark and Luke, the heavenly voice addresses Jesus in the second person, and by comparing the words which, according to the Fathers, were given in the old and lost gospels as those of the voice. Justin, following his Memoirs of the Apostles, ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων, thus reports them: υἱός μου εἶ σύ. ἐγὼ σήμερον γεγέννηκα σε;[15] Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. In [[244]]the Gospel of the Hebrews, according to Epiphanius;[16] this declaration was combined with that which our Gospels contain. Clement of Alexandria[17] and Augustin[18] seem to have read the words even in some copies of the latter; and it is at least certain that some of our present manuscripts of Luke have this addition.[19] Here were words uttered by the heavenly voice, drawn, not from Isaiah, but from [Psalm ii. 7], a passage considered messianic by Jewish interpreters;[20] in [Heb. i. 5], applied to Christ; and, from their being couched in the form of a direct address, containing a yet stronger inducement to conceive it as a voice sent to the Messiah from heaven. If then the words of the psalm were originally attributed to the heavenly voice, or if they were only taken in connexion with the passage in Isaiah (as is probable from the use of the second person, σὺ εἶ, in Mark and Luke, since this form is presented in the psalm, and not in Isaiah), we have a sufficient indication that this text, long interpreted of the Messiah, and easily regarded as an address from heaven to the Messiah on earth, was the source of our narrative of the divine voice, heard at the baptism of Jesus. To unite it with the baptism, followed as a matter of course, when this was held to be a consecration of Jesus to his office.