582 NEW TESTAMENT 



ply "the man," or "the mortal," and that whatever specific sense 

 attached to it would be by virtue of a semi-mythologic supernatural 

 use which Jesus cannot have applied to his own person, I still fail to 

 see why he may not have employed the term objectively in his 

 eschatological teaching, of the coming Judge, the purifier and refiner 

 of Israel proclaimed by Malachi and by John the Baptist. We must 

 leave it to criticism whether Jesus' references in the third person 

 to this apocalyptic figure were not transformed after his resurrection 

 into a representation that he himself would thus appear. This un- 

 conscious change would require but slight lapse of time when the 

 elements were already in solution. I think, however, in spite of this 

 being called "the self-designation of Jesus," that we may already say 

 such was not the fact. However marked the apocalyptic features of 

 his preaching, Jesus' favorite conception of his mission, and his rela- 

 tion to God and men was not that of the apocalyptic figure who 

 comes to judgment with the clouds. 



The supreme question, as Meyer has so wisely said, is, after all, the 

 vital, distinctive element in the gospel of Jesus himself; not the 

 doctrine that he was the Son of God, though that became the focus 

 of all later developments, but " his own belief in his mission, and his 

 relation to God his Father." This relation is indeed expressed by the 

 designation "the Son," so frequent in the Fourth Gospel, but not by 

 "the Son of Man," and not by the "Son of God," as usually under- 

 stood. 



We learned long since not to import into this synoptic title the 

 metaphysical sense of the Fourth Gospel. The synoptic writers, and 

 certainly Jesus himself, in relating his vocation as the Son of God, 

 were not dreaming of superhuman attributes. The commentators 

 tell us the title is employed in the " theocratic sense " as belonging 

 to the heir of the throne of David ; but while there are in Acts two 

 allusions to " the sure mercies of David " and the promise of the con- 

 tinuance of his dynasty, there is no phase of the Messianic hope which 

 so little appeals to Jesus as this, none which he so uniformly antagon- 

 izes and suppresses. Of all types of Messianism nationalistic zealotry 

 was least that of his mission. How, then, does Jesus' sense of his 

 Messianic vocation express itself in the form of the Bath Qol at his 

 baptism, " Thou art my Son " ? * We must answer this question by 

 observing, first, a general principle Charles has established regarding 

 all Messianic titles, that they apply reciprocally to Israel and its 

 representative; second, by noting the feature distinctive of Jesus' 

 own teaching. On the principle of Charles we perceive at once in what 



1 The variation of the tradition (Luke in, 22, Western text, has, " this day have 

 I begotten thee," instead of " in thee I am well pleased "), and the Pauline cast 

 of the Markan phrase (cf. Mk. I with Eph. i) which underlies Matthew and Luke 

 (a text) justify the suspicion that only the words " Thou art my Son " represent 

 the original. 



