The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham

The phrase "Kingdom of Heaven," so frequent on the Messiah's lips, had but one meaning, which was universally understood. It described a temporal rule, the reign of a prince of David's line. No class of people accepted the phrase in any different sense. The Christ nowhere corrects the vulgar opinion, or places his own in opposition to it. The evangelist intends to convey the idea that he is in full accord with the general feeling.

The questions put to the Messiah and the answers given to them are additional evidence of this assent; the question, for example, concerning the obligation to pay tribute to the Roman government, a test question touching the very heart of Jewish patriotism, and the cautious reply, calculated to evade the peril of a categorical declaration which was felt to be called for, and to be due. The rejoinder of the Christ is designed to satisfy the popular expectation without raising popular uproar. It is the answer of a patriot, but not of a zealot. Had the Messiah not corresponded to the image in the Jewish imagination, the inquiry might have been summarily dismissed. Its evasion proves not that the Christ transcended the average expectation, but that he shared it. The version of the incident given in Matthew XVII, confirms this judgment; for according to that account the Messiah privately admits the exemption from tribute, and then provides miraculously for its payment, "lest we should give offence."

The nature of the excitement caused by the Messiah is another evidence of the spirit in which he wrought. Everywhere he is greeted as the Messiah, the son of David; everywhere the multitudes flock to him, as to the expected king. His intimate friends are never disabused of the notion that they, if they continue firm in their allegiance, will hold places of honor at his right hand. He reminds them of the stringency of the conditions, but does not condemn the idea. An ambitious mother presents her two sons as candidates for preferment, asking for them seats at his right and left hand, on his coming to glory. He rebukes the selfishness of the ambition, says that seats of honor are for those that earn them, not for those that desire them, adding that he has no authority to assign places even to the worthiest; but he does not discountenance the notion that he shall sit in glory, that there will be places of honor on either side of him, or that the faithful servants will occupy them. Indeed, his reply confirms that anticipation.

The multitude, impressed by his claim, desire to make him a king. He removes himself; not because he repudiates all right to the office, he nowhere hints that, and in places he more than hints the contrary,—but because he is not prepared to avow his pretension. The time is not ripe for a manifesto.

The writers about this period take especial pains to limit the conception of the Messiah within the boundaries of the average patriotic ideal. They make him declare to the twelve disciples, as he sends them forth, that before they shall have carried their message to the cities of Israel the Son of Man would announce himself. On a later occasion he is made to say: "There are some here who will not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his glory." Declarations like these are pointedly inconsistent with an intellectual or moral idea of the kingdom. The notion of progress, instruction, regenerating influence, gradual elevation through the power of character, is precluded. The kingdom is to come in time, suddenly, unexpectedly, by a shock of supernatural agency, at the instant the Lord wills; the Son of Man himself knows not when, for it is not dependent on his activity as a reformer, his success as a teacher, or his influence as a person, but on the decree of Jehovah.

The attempt on the popular feeling in Jerusalem, strangely called the triumphal entrance of the Messiah into the holy city, is unintelligible except as a political demonstration; whether projected by the Christ or by his followers, or by the Christ urged by the importunate expectations of his followers, whether undertaken hopefully or in desperation, it nowhere appears that it was made in any moral or spiritual interest. All the incidents of the narrative point to a political end, the public assertion of the Christ's Messianic claim. The ass, used instead of the chariot or the horse by royalty on state occasions, and especially alluded to by the prophet Zechariah in connexion with the coming of Zion's King; the palm branches and hosannahs, emblems of sacred majesty; the cries of the attendant throng loudly proclaiming the Messiah; the Galileaan composition of the crowd, marking the revolutionary temper of it; the blank reception of the pageant by the citizens who were too wary to commit themselves to the chances of collision with the Roman authorities; the complete failure of the demonstration in the heart of conservative Judæa; the bearing of the Christ himself as of one conscious of a sublime but perilous mission; all these things find ready explanation by the popular conception of the Messiah, as a national deliverer, but are unintelligible on any other theory.

The unspiritual character of the Messiah's attitude is made yet more apparent as the history draws to a close. The violent purging of the temple can only by great vigor of interpretation be made to bear any save a national complexion. It was the assertion of Jehovah's right to his own domain; an indignant, passionate assertion; the declaration of a zealot whose zeal overrode considerations of wisdom.

The Christ's bearing before his Roman judge is of the same strain; the proud silence of the arraigned prince; the bold assertion of kingliness, when challenged; the stately defiance of the pagan's wrath; the appeal to supernatural support; the prediction of angelic succor in the hour of need, in strict accordance with the apocalyptic expressions thrown out at the last supper, and reverberated in tremendous rhetoric on the Mount of Olives and in the palace of the high priest, expressions in full and literal harmony with the Jewish conceptions of the Christ's relations with the angelic world, wholly in the spirit of Daniel, Enoch, and other apocryphal writings, leave no doubt on the mind that this personage moved within the limits of the common Messianic conception. Pilate condemns him reluctantly, feeling that he is a harmless visionary, but is obliged to condemn him as one who persistently claimed to be the "King of the Jews," an enemy of Cæsar, an insurgent against the empire, a pretender to the throne, a bold inciter to rebellion. The death he undergoes is the death of the traitor and mutineer, the death that would have been decreed to Judas the Gaulonite, had he been captured instead of slain in battle, and that was inflicted on thousands of his deluded followers. The bitter cry of the crucified as he hung on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" disclosed the hope of deliverance that till the last moment sustained his heart, and betrayed the anguish felt when the hope was blighted; the sneers and hootings of the rabble expressed their conviction that he had pretended to be what he was not.

The miracles ascribed to the Christ, so far from being inconsistent with the ordinary conception of the Messianic office, were necessary to complete that conception. It was expected that the Messiah would work miracles. This was one of his prerogatives; a certificate of his commission from Jehovah, and an instrument of great service in carrying out his designs. To the Jew of that, as of preceding periods, to the crude theist of all periods, the belief in miracles was and is easy. In such judgment, the will of God is absolute, and when should that will be exerted if not at providential crises of need, or in furtherance of his servants' work? The special miracles attributed to the Christ of the earliest New Testament literature are, as Strauss conclusively shows, patterned after performances which met satisfactorily the demands of the Jewish imagination; being either repetitions of ancient marvels, or concrete expressions of ideal faith. The miracles of this Christ are precisely adjusted to the exigencies of his calling, in no respect transcending or falling short of that standard.

The moral precepts put into the Messiah's mouth are also what he might be expected to utter. The teachings of the sermon on the Mount are echoes, and not altogether awakening or inspiring echoes, of ancient ethical law. The beatitudes do not exceed in beauty of sentiment or felicity of phrase, lovely passages that gem the pages of prophet, psalmist and sage. Portions of the morality are harsh, ungracious, intemperate, almost inhuman as compared with the mellow grandeur of the older law. Several of the parables, if taken in an ethical sense, contain moral injunctions or insinuations that are quite unjustifiable; the parable, for example, of the laborers in the vineyard, the last of whom, though they have worked but one hour, receive the same compensation as the early comers, who had borne the burden and heat of the day;—the parable of the steward, which, literally construed, palliates abuse of trusts;—the parable of Dives and Lazarus, which teaches the evil lesson that felicity or infelicity hereafter is consequent on fortune or misfortune here. These and other parables are deprived of their dangerous moral tendency by being removed from the ethical category, and made to convey lessons of a different kind. Read the story of the laborers in the vineyard as intended to justify Jehovah in granting the same spiritual favors to the newly called Gentiles as to the descendants of Abraham who, from the first, answered to the call addressed to them:—read the story of the steward as conveying an explanation of the Pauline policy in making capital with the Gentiles by offering to them on easy terms the promises that the Jews showed themselves unworthy of, and rejected:—read the story of Dives and Lazarus as containing the idea that the "poor in spirit," the outcast, to whom the mansions of the Lord's house, the patrimony of Abraham had never been opened, the people who had nothing but faith,—whom even pagan dogs commiserated,—should enjoy the blessedness of the Messiah's kingdom rather than those who claimed a prescriptive right to it on the ground of descent or privilege,—and the difficulty of reconciling them with moral principle is avoided. These parables and others of like tenor, do not belong to the first layer of Messianic tradition, but to the second deposit made by the Apostle Paul.