CHAPTER VIII.

JESUS AT CAPERNAUM.

Beset by an idea, gradually becoming more and more imperious and exclusive, Jesus proceeds henceforth with a kind of fatal impassibility in the path marked out by his astonishing genius and the extraordinary circumstances in which he lived.  Hitherto he had only communicated his thoughts to a few persons secretly attracted to him; henceforward his teaching was sought after by the public.  He was about thirty years of age.[1] The little group of hearers who had accompanied him to John the Baptist had, doubtless, increased, and perhaps some disciples of John had attached themselves to him.[2] It was with this first nucleus of a church that he boldly announced, on his return into Galilee, the “good tidings of the kingdom of God.”  This kingdom was approaching, and it was he, Jesus, who was that “Son of Man” whom Daniel had beheld in his vision as the divine herald of the last and supreme revelation.

[Footnote 1:  Luke iii. 23; Gospel of the Ebionites, in Epiph., Adv.  Haer., xxx. 13.]

[Footnote 2:  John i. 37, and following.]

We must remember, that in the Jewish ideas, which were averse to art and mythology, the simple form of man had a superiority over that of Cherubs, and of the fantastic animals which the imagination of the people, since it had been subjected to the influence of Assyria, had ranged around the Divine Majesty.  Already in Ezekiel,[1] the Being seated on the supreme throne, far above the monsters of the mysterious chariot, the great revealer of prophetic visions, had the figure of a man.  In the book of Daniel, in the midst of the vision of the empires, represented by animals, at the moment when the great judgment commences, and when the books are opened, a Being “like unto a Son of Man,” advances toward the Ancient of days, who confers on him the power to judge the world, and to govern it for eternity.[2] Son of Man, in the Semitic languages, especially in the Aramean dialects, is a simple synonym of man.  But this chief passage of Daniel struck the mind; the words, Son of Man, became, at least in certain schools,[3] one of the titles of the Messiah, regarded as judge of the world, and as king of the new era about to be inaugurated.[4] The application which Jesus made of it to himself was therefore the proclamation of his Messiahship, and the affirmation of the coming catastrophe in which he was to figure as judge, clothed with the full powers which had been delegated to him by the Ancient of days.[5]

[Footnote 1:  Chap. i. 5, 26, and following.]

[Footnote 2:  Daniel vii. 13, 14; comp. viii. 15, x. 16.]

[Footnote 3:  In John xii. 34, the Jews do not appear to be aware of the meaning of this word.]

[Footnote 4:  Book of Enoch, xlvi. 1-3, xlviii. 2, 3, lxii. 9, 14, lxx. 1 (division of Dilmann); Matt. x. 23, xiii. 41, xvi. 27, 28, xix. 28, xxiv. 27, 30, 37, 39, 44, xxv. 31, xxvi. 64; Mark xiii. 26, xiv. 62; Luke xii. 40, xvii. 24, 26, 30, xxi. 27, 36, xxii. 69; Acts vii. 55.  But the most significant passage is John v. 27, compared with Rev. i. 13, xiv. 14.  The expression “Son of woman,” for the Messiah, occurs once in the book of Enoch, lxii. 5.]