it in itself difficult to account by this expedient for the occurrence of the phrase in the predictions of the passion, although the persistent way in which it is repeated on all the four occasions where these predictions are uttered (St. Mark viii. 31, ix. 9, 12, 31, x. 33) cannot fail to arrest attention and arouse some misgiving.

Mr. Carpenter does not allow that these predictions were so precise as they are made to be. He thinks that Jesus knew the risks He was running, and that He deliberately faced them; but the definite predictions he would explain rather as "the Church's apology for Messiah's death. The stumbling-block of a crucified Christ was removed if it could be shown that he had himself predicted his end in conformity with ancient prophecy."1 But then he goes on to attribute a delicate tact to those who first gave shape to the traditions, which makes a larger demand upon our opinion of them.

"But why should Messiah be here designated 'Son of Man'? Because in the formation of the tradition the language assigned to Jesus accommodated itself to his historic utterances. Now the synoptic Gospels never represent him as designating himself as the Messiah. He does not repudiate the title when it is offered him, but he carefully refrains from assuming it; the official designation is never on his lips. It was impossible then that the Church should exhibit Jesus as habitually employing a name which he carefully avoided; and the Messianic feeling therefore had to embody itself in some other term which could find a sanction in his own practice. Such a term was ready in the name 'Son of Man,' which had been employed by Jesus to describe the immediate advent of the kingdom' in which God's will should be done on earth as it was in heaven." 2

I leave it to the reader to say how far a procedure of this kind-at once so bold in its recasting of one set of facts and so sensitive and scrupulous in its regard for another-was probable in the circles in which the Christian tradition was formed in the middle of the first century.

But however this may be, there are other cases which are

more intractable. One such comes early in the synoptic narrative, and is deeply seated in the triple tradition. In the healing of the paralytic at Capernaum our Lord pronounces an absolution over the sick man and then heals him, claiming the right to forgive sins as the "Son of Man." Mr. Carpenter objects to this that it "involves the conception of a causal connexion between the sin and the disease which it is difficult to believe that Jesus really entertained," and that it is contrary to the view implied in His question about the eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell.1 But is there no connexion between sin and disease? Is there any reason why there should not have been such a connexion in this particular case? The catastrophe at Siloam is not parallel. A further objection is, that the part about the forgiveness of sins comes in as a parenthesis. It is a parenthesis (in St. Mark) of some six verses, and is found, as we have seen, with remarkable closeness of language in the other synoptics. It therefore goes back as far as the documents can take us, and clearly belonged to their common original. Incidents like this are needed to sustain the charge of blasphemy; and the mere fact that one part of a narrative is separable from the rest by no means proves that it ought to be separated.

Another example follows soon after this. Our Lord supports the act of His disciples in plucking the ears of corn, not only by the precedent of Abiathar, but also by laying down the principle that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath," to which, according to St. Mark, He adds the further corollary, "so that the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." A natural and appropriate climax, say we, to whom the title "Son of Man " presents no difficulties: "exceedingly unsatisfactory" is Mr. Carpenter's verdict; but the difficulty in his eyes is clearly not critical, but dogmatic.

1 Page 378.

It is not surprising that the passages against which a criticism of this kind is directed are many of them those which Christendom specially values.

"Whosoever would become great among you, shall be your servant: and whosoever would be first among you, shall be servant of all. For verily the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Mark x. 43-45).

It is observed upon this that, while St. Matthew is in almost complete verbal agreement with St. Mark, he introduces

6

"the saying about the Son of Man with even as ' instead of 'for.' But the very fact that the phrase receives this introduction' awakes the suspicion that we are presented rather with a comment or reflection of the narrator than with a word from Jesus; and it contains a reference to the mystic efficacy of his death which shows at once what is the significance of the name 'Son of Man,' and appears to be due rather to the interpretation of the Church than to the word of the teacher. The equivalent in the third Gospel, Luke xxii. 27, 'I am among you as he that serveth [ministereth],' is much more direct."

According to the critical analysis, the presence of a phrase in two out of the three authorities decides its claim to acceptance as representing the common original of all three. Mr. Carpenter himself appears to recognise this principle; 2 but he ignores it altogether when it comes into collision with what he considers à priori probability, i.e. with anything that favours the thesis which he aims at proving.

No better foundation seems to underlie the rejection of Luke xix. 10, the commendation of Zacchaeus: "To-day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."

It is admitted that it cannot be proved, but at the same time suggested as "not improbable, that some original utter

1 The ancients were less careful than we are in preserving causal connexions. For instance, in the Latin versions enim and autem are frequently treated as almost interchangeable.

ance of Jesus has been cast by the Church into this form, and that the phrase has grown out of the effort to pourtray Messiah as the world's redeeming power, the Saviour even of the lowest of mankind." We cannot help asking, Whence came that effort? It certainly was not prompted by the current Jewish conception of the Messiah; and it can hardly have been derived from any other source than the teaching of Jesus Himself.

There is more that is attractive in the acute observation that the mention of blasphemy "against the Son of Man" in Luke xii. 10 (= Matt. xii. 32) may possibly have arisen from misreading of an original which had the "sons of men" ("all their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men "), as in the parallel context of St. Mark. But here we have again the agreement of two of the synoptic columns against the third; so that we should have to believe that the same misreading lay behind each. And if there is a questionable element in the passage about the sign of Jonah (Matt. xii. 40=Luke xi. 30), that element is contained, not in the allusion to the Son of Man ("so shall the Son of Man be [a sign to this generation]"), which is common to both accounts, but rather in the expansion of this which is found in St. Matthew.

It will have been seen that too many of the examples quoted above are not only not suggested by the critical analysis, but directly opposed to it. The temptation has been too strong to choose, not that form of a saying which approves itself as most original, but that which lends the most support to the hypothesis which is being advocated. Mr. Carpenter, I cannot but think, has been progressing too fast. He has formed his theories too soon, and allowed them to mix themselves with his statement of the facts. I can only see in the result a confirmation of what I have long held, that in order to get at any sound conclusion about the synoptic Gospels we need to execute a "self

denying ordinance," and for some sufficient period of time exclude all theories of this higher sort involving the supernatural, whether in the way of affirmation or of denial; and that we should confine ourselves strictly to the critical problem of ascertaining what is the absolutely earliest form. of the tradition, and by what steps and gradations other later forms are built up round it. We have Mr. Rushbrooke's Synopticon, but we have not yet that series of close and minute studies for which it ought to furnish the text. And pending the prosecution of those studies, I would respectfully invite the authors of "biblical manuals" such as that of which I am speaking to think twice before they engage in what may be a spreading broadcast of error.

It must not however be supposed that my sole objection to the particular theory before us is that it involves the re-writing-and the premature re-writing-of the Gospels. Another group of reasons, historical rather than critical, tells in the same direction. There is one marked omission in Mr. Carpenter's argument. He says nothing (in this connexion) of the Book of Enoch. Probably the simplest interpretation of this silence is that he sets down the passages implicated as of Christian origin. The view is that of a minority of critics: still it is held by Dr. Drummond in his Jewish Messiah; and I can quite understand his colleague sharing the opinion. The point is however important, not to say vital, in its bearing upon the whole question. Perhaps this is another instance in which the exigences of a school manual have interfered with the proper scientific discussion of a problem which demands science. If the so called "parables" in the Book of Enoch are pre-Christian, then the whole conditions of the problem are different. In that case it cannot be questioned that the title "Son of Man" was already applied, before Jesus used it, to the personal Messiah. Here for instance is a passage which excludes all doubt upon the subject: