temptation of Adam and the Temptation of Christ. Adam, made in the image of God, was tempted to become like God, yielded to the temptation, and lost his Eden. Jesus, being in the form of God, says St. Paul, "counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped," but . . . "humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death." "Wherefore also God highly exalted him and gave unto him the name that is above every name." This last statement is more bold than a modern theologian would dare to make. It implies, when the Jewish language of Paul is put into modern phrase, that Jesus, in consequence of the choices made at the time of the Temptation, under the illumination of his mystic experience, won his deity. It is well known that in Jewish thought the name summed up the attributes of deity.1 In telling his disciples of his experiences at the Baptism and during the Temptation Jesus drew aside the veil from his inner life to an unusual degree. Ordinarily during his ministry he was too intent on making the Father known to men to speak of himself. Nevertheless there are two or three occasions on record during his later ministry when we can detect the evidences of mystic experience.

10

Before speaking of these, we should pause to note Jesus' habit of prayer. On two occasions after days of exhausting work with multitudes—one in Capernaum, when Simon's mother-in-law was healed; the other after the five thousand were fed we find Jesus withdrawing to a solitude to pray. (Cf. Mark 1:35; 6: 46; Matt. 14:23; Luke 5: 16; 6: 12.) During the labor of ministry he had apparently depleted, so he felt, his spiritual resources, and consequently sought opportunity to be alone with the Father, that, by mystic communion, the fountains of energy might be replenished.

Another definite occasion, in the account of which we can detect the marks of mystical experience on the part of Jesus, 10 See Lev. 24: 11 and the Talmud passim.

was the Transfiguration. The accounts of the Transfiguration are, as we have them, a mixture of what Jesus experienced, what the disciples saw, and the inferences which they made from what they saw. Probably those inferences led them to heighten in some respects what they actually beheld, as memory placed their vision in new perspective.

The occasion was a crisis in the ministry of Jesus. After months of association with his disciples as a great Teacher, during which he had called himself the Son of Man, a term which concealed his Messianic claim, while it had in it also the potentialities of revealing it, he retired with the disciples to Cæsarea Philippi in order that, withdrawn from the crowds, he might prepare them for the future. There he drew from Peter the confession: Thou art the Messiah," commended Peter for his insight, and later rebuked him for his stupidity and presumption. It was after this, as he contemplated going to Jerusalem to certain death, that he took Peter, James, and John and went up into a mountain to pray. As the disciples gazed and as he was praying "the fashion of his countenance was altered," says Luke. Matthew heightens the statement declaring: "His face did shine as the sun." This has the marks of a mystical experience. "Prayer of illumination, altered face, changed form, glorified figure, radiation of light, have marked many mystics." 11 For the Master himself we may infer, then, that the prayer involved a mystic experience. The outward manifestation of this experience was visible to the disciples.

But what of the other features of the narrative — the appearance of Moses and Elijah? It has long seemed to the writer that this part of the account represents a psychological experience on the part of the disciples. They had but recently recognized his Messiahship, and they are now led in their thought to associate him with Moses and Elijah, the two great heroes of their national history. Perhaps their 11 Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, IX, 89 b.

thought was helped to this by the transfigured appearance of his face, which suggested the shining of the face of Moses as he came down from the mountain (cf. Ex. 34:29-35). Thus they put Jesus as the Messiah, in thinking of him, in proper perspective. It seems probable that in thinking of him in this new perspective they gradually extended the shining of his face till they thought of his garments as shining also. Even if it be true that the narrative now contains in part a psychological experience of the disciples, it also contains a historical mystical experience of Jesus.

Another saying of Jesus, that in Matt. 11:25-27, points to a mystical experience. As the text stands it indicates that at a definite point of time Jesus realized the functions of a revealer of God to men which his sonship imposed upon him. This point of time apparently lay between the Temptation and the Transfiguration. The passage runs:

"At that season Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son save the Father; neither doth any man know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him."

You will remember that following these words is Jesus' invitation "Come unto me all ye that labor. . . . Take my yoke upon you.'

This passage has been a sort of storm-center of discussion in recent years. It is the only passage in the Synoptic narratives in which the Father and Son are contrasted in a manner somewhat like that of the Fourth Gospel. Of course to writers of the point of view of Nathaniel Schmidt the passage is unhistorical.12 They cannot conceive Jesus as entertaining a conception of God's Fatherhood or of his

12 Cf. Prophet of Nazareth, New York, p. 151 ff.

own Sonship that was at all unique. Notwithstanding the doubts of such writers, the attestation of the passage proves it to have been a part of one of the early pre-synoptic sources. At least that is true of verses 25-27. According to Burton's school of criticism 13 this passage formed a part of the first Perean Document; according to the prevailing school, it was a logion from Q, a source as old as or older than the substratum of Mark. Harnack has subjected the text to a searching analysis, 14 and recognizes that it was a genuine part of Q except the words which place the Son and Father in a unique relation to each other. These were, he thinks, due to the compiler of our first Gospel,- an opinion the arguments for which do not seem convincing. Since the Logion occurs in Luke 10:21, 22, and there includes these words, it is but fair to assume that they were a part of Q or of P', or of the early document, by whatever name we call it. Any doubt as to this is purely subjective and not supported by external evidence.

But even if the saying occurred in Q (or P') this, in the minds of many, does not prove that these words come from Jesus. Allen in the International Critical Commentary claims that there is an undoubted dependence of the words in Matt. 11:25-30 on Ecclus. 51, and gives a list of phrases that occur in both texts that is very striking.1 15 He was not the first to note this, and others have made much more of it than he. Loisy and Montefiore erect upon this basis, fortified by some other parallels from the Synoptics, the theory that these are not words of Jesus at all, but a sort of early Christian hymn, in which Jesus is exalted by identifying him with the eternal Wisdom, who alone knows God fully.16

13 Cf. D. R. Wickes, The Sources of Luke's Perean Section, Chicago, 1912, p. 67 f.

1 Sprüche und Reden Jesu, Leipsig, 1907, p. 18 f., 200-216. 15 Commentary on Matthew, New York, 1907, p. 124.

16 Cf. A. Loisy, Les evangiles synoptiques, Paris, 1907, p. 91, n. 3,

It must be said, however, that possible as this view appears, it does not impress one who puts Matt. 11:25-30 and Ecclus. 51 side by side and reads them in connection. Sirach's thanksgiving and praise to God are in a vein so different from the words of Jesus under consideration, that it can only be said that, if the logion in Matthew consciously quotes his words, the quotation was made by a genius so much greater than Sirach that he created a new and much more beautiful whole. To the question of the identification of Jesus with the Divine Wisdom we shall return in a moment.

It is not so certain, however, that Ben Sirach furnished the intellectual ancestry of the passage. Pfleiderer had regarded it as an adumbration of Paulineism, believing it to have been suggested by I Cor. 15:25-27.17 Bacon, on the other hand, finds the literary ancestry of the passage in Isaiah 29:9– 24.18 These opinions indicate that there are many possibilities, if literary ancestry is to be traced.

If, however, the passage is from Q (or P') the question remains to be determined whether it represents the words of Jesus or is a free composition of the author of the document. Wellhausen holds the words no man knoweth the Father but the Son" to be an interpolation 19 apparently made by the author of the document. It must be said, however, that if the words are a part of Q (or P') and if we are compelled to push back the date of the Synoptic Gospels to the time indicated above, the document must have been composed within a decade or two of the Crucifixion. If there is any relation between this logion and Paul, Paul might more easily be dependent on the document than the document on him. Suppose one were to grant that in the logion the Son is conceived somewhat after the manner of and The Gospel and the Church, New York, 1909, pp. 93–96, and Montefiore, The Synoptic Gospels, London, 1909, p. 606. 17 Unchristentum, Berlin, 1888, p. 445.

18 Jesus the Son of God, New Haven, 1911, pp. 7, 19 Das Evangelium Matthaei, Berlin, 1904, p. 57 f.

8.