The Literature and History of New Testament Times

by J. Gresham Machen

It will be remembered that the synagogues attracted not merely Jews but also Gentiles. The Gentile "God-fearers," as well as the Jews, were acquainted with the Messianic hope. Even the Gentile mission, therefore, was prepared for by the prophets of Israel.

3. THE PERMANENT VALUE OF PROPHECY

The appeal to prophecy, however, was not merely valuable to the early Church. It is of abiding worth. It represents Jesus as the culmination of a divine purpose. The hope of Israel was in itself a proof of revelation, because it was so unlike the religious conceptions of other nations. The covenant people, the righteous king, the living God, the world-wide mission—that is the glory of Israel. The promise is itself a proof. But still more the fulfillment. The fulfillment was an unfolding. Wonderful correspondence in detail—and far more wonderful the correspondence of the whole! The promise was manifold. Sometimes the Messiah is in the foreground. Sometimes he is out of sight. Sometimes there is a human king, sometimes Jehovah himself coming to judgment; sometimes a kingdom, sometimes a new covenant in the heart; sometimes a fruitful Canaan, sometimes a new heaven and a new earth. But manifold though the promise, Christ is the fulfillment of it all. "How many soever be the promises of God," in Christ is the yea. II Cor. 1:20. There is the wonder. In Christ the apparent contradictions of the promise become glorious unity, in Christ the deeper mysteries of the promise are revealed. Christ the keystone of the arch! Christ the culmination of a divine plan! That is the witness of the prophets. It is a witness worth having.

4. THE MESSIANIC HOPE OF LATER JUDAISM

After the close of the Old Testament, the promise did not die. It was preserved in the Scriptures. It continued to be the life of the Jewish nation. But it was not only preserved. It was also interpreted. Some of the interpretation was false, but much of it was true. The Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament promise is worthy of attention. What did the Jews of the first century mean by the Messiah, and what did they mean by the Messianic age?

In the first place, they retained the hope of a king of David's line—a human king who should conquer the enemies of Israel. When it was held in a one-sided form this was a dangerous hope. It led logically to materialistic conceptions of the kingdom of God and to political unrest. It led to the effort of the Jews to take Jesus by force and make him a king. John 6:15. It led to the quarrel of the disciples about the chief places in the kingdom. Matt. 18:1-4; Mark 9:33-35; Luke 9:46,47. This conception of the Messiah had to be corrected by Jesus. "My kingdom is not of this world." John 18:36.

Yet even where the Messiah was conceived of as an earthly ruler, the spiritual hope was by no means always and altogether lost. The "Psalms of Solomon," for example, Pharisaic psalms of the first century before Christ, though they look for an earthly ruler, picture him as one who shall rule in righteousness. "And a righteous king and taught of God is he that reigneth over them; And there shall be no iniquity in his days in their midst, for all shall be holy and their king is the Lord Messiah" (Ps. Sol. xvii, 35, 36. See Ryle and James, "Psalms of the Pharisees," especially pp. 137-147). No iniquity in the days of the Messiah! That is true understanding of the Old Testament, even joined with the political ideal.

In the second place, however, the Messianic age is sometimes in later Judaism conceived of as purely supernatural. The Messiah is not an earthly ruler, merely helped by God, but himself a heavenly being, a preëxistent "Son of Man," judge of all the earth. The Messianic age is ushered in not by human warfare, but by a mighty catastrophic act of God. Not a liberated Canaan is here the ideal, but a new heaven and a new earth.

This transcendental, supernaturalistic form of the Messianic hope appears in the "Book of Enoch" and other "apocalypses." Its details are fantastic, but it was by no means altogether wrong. In many respects it was a correct interpretation of the divine promise. The new heavens and the new earth are derived from Isa. 65:17. The doctrine of the two ages was accepted by Jesus and by Paul—for example Matt. 12:32; Gal. 1:4; Eph. 1:21. The heavenly "Son of Man" goes back to Dan. 7:13,14. The Book of Enoch was not altogether wrong. Its use of the title "Son of Man" prepared for the title which Jesus used.

Finally, the Messianic hope was held in a pure and lofty form by the "poor of the land"—simple folk like those who appear in the first two chapters of Luke. In the hymns of Mary and Zacharias and Simeon, purely political and materialistic conceptions are in the background, and the speculations of the apocalypses do not appear. The highest elements of prophecy are made prominent. "For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples; a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." Luke 2:30-32. In those circles, the hope of Israel burned still and pure.