historical, and therefore true and self-justifying. The recognition of the claims of eschatology signifies for our dogmatic a burning of the boats by which it felt itself able to return at any moment from the time of Jesus direct to the present.
One point that is worthy of notice in this connexion is the trustworthiness of the tradition. The Evangelists, writing in Greek, and the Greek-speaking Early Church, can hardly have retained an understanding of the purely eschatological character of that self-designation of Jesus. It had become for them merely an indirect method of self-designation. And nevertheless the Evangelists, especially Mark, record the sayings of Jesus in such a way that the original significance and application of the designation in His mouth is still clearly recognisable, and we are able to determine with certainty the isolated cases in which this self-designation in His discourses is of a secondary origin.
Thus the use of the term Son of Man-which, if we admitted the sweeping proposal of Lietzmann and Wellhausen to cancel it everywhere as an interpolation of Greek Early Church theology, would throw doubt on the whole of the Gospel tradition-becomes a proof of the certainty and trustworthiness of that tradition. We may, in fact, say that the progressive recognition of the eschatological character of the teaching and action of Jesus carries with it a progressive justification of the Gospel tradition. A series of passages and discourses which had been endangered because from the modern theological point of view which had been made the criterion of the tradition they appeared to be without meaning, are now secured. The stone which the critics rejected has become the corner-stone of the tradition.
If Aramaic scholarship appears in regard to the Son-of-Man question among the opponents of the thorough-going eschatological view, it takes no other position in connexion with the retranslations and in the application of illustrative parallels from the Rabbinic literature.
In looking at the earlier works in this department, one is struck with the smallness of the result in proportion to the labour expended. The names that call for mention here are those of John Lightfoot, Christian Schottgen, Joh. Gerh. Meuschen, J. Jak. Wettstein, F. Nork, Franz Delitzsch, Carl Siegfried, and A. Wunsche.[1] But even a work like F. Weber's System der altsynagogalen
- ↑ See Dalman, p. 60 ff. John Lightfoot, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in quatuor Evangelistas. Edited by J. B. Carpzov. Leipzig, 1684. Christian Schottgen, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in universun Novum Testamentum. Dresden-Leipzig, 1733. Joh. Gerh. Meuschen, Novum Testamentum ex Talmude et antiquitatibus Hebraeorum illustratum. Leipzig, 1736. J. Jakob. Wettstein, Novum Testamentum Graescum. Amsterdam, 1751 and 1752. F. Nork, Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen zu neutestamentlichen Schriftstellen, Leipzig, 1839. Franz Delitzsch, "Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae," in the Luth. Zeitsch., 1876-1878. Carl Siegfried, Analecta Rabbinica, 1875; "Rabbin. Analekten," Jahrb. f. prot. Theol., 1876. A. Wunsche, Neue Beitrage zur Eriauterung der Evangelien aus Talmud und Midrasch. (Contributions to the Exposition of the Gospels from Talmud and Midrash.) Gottingen, 1878.
