The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive ChristianityFrothingham, Octavius Brooks
Religion
The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity
Frothingham, Octavius Brooks
Christianity -- Controversial literature
In the book of Daniel, by some supposed to have been written during the
captivity, by others as late as Antiochus Epiphanes (B. C., 175), the
restoration is described in tremendous language, and the Messiah is
portrayed as a supernatural personage, in close relation with Jehovah
himself. He is spoken of as a man, yet with such epithets as only a
Jewish imagination could use in describing a human being. Heinrich
Ewald, in the fifth volume of his history of the people of Israel,
devotes twenty-three pages to an account of the development of the
national expectation of a Messiah, which he calls "the second
preparatory condition of the consummation in Jesus." After alluding to
Joel's fervent anticipation, and Isaiah's description of the glory that
was to come through the King, in whom the spirit of pure divinity
penetrated, animated and glorified everything, so that his human nature
was exalted to the God-like power, whose actions, speech, breath even
attested deity, he says: "It is not to be questioned that this most
exalted form of the conception of the anticipated Messiah appeared in
the midst of the latter period of this history, when before the great
victory of the Maccabees, the eternal hopes of Israel were disturbed in
their foundations along with its political prospects, and the advent of
a King of David's line seemed wholly impossible. At this time the
deathless hope became more interior and imperishable in this new,
glorious, celestial idea, and the Messiah presented himself before
prophetic vision as existing from all eternity, along with the
indestructible prerogatives of Israel, which were thought of as existing
in an ideal realm, ready to manifest themselves visibly when the hour of
destiny should come. And we are able, on historical grounds, to assume
that the deep-souled author of the book of Daniel, was the man who first
sketched the splendid shape of the Messiah, and the superb outline of
his kingdom, in his far-reaching, keen, suggestive, luminous phrases;
while immediately after him the first composer of our book of Enoch
developed the traits furnished him, with an equal warmth of language and
a spiritual insight, not deeper perhaps, but quieter and more
comprehensive." Ewald supposes the book of Enoch to have been written at
various intervals between 144 and 120 (B. C.) and to have been
completed in its present form in the first half of the century that
preceeded the coming of Christ. The book was regarded as of authority by
Tertullian, though Origen and Augustine classed it with apocryphal
writings. In it the figure of the Messiah is invested with super-human
attributes. He is called "The Son of God," "whose name was spoken before
the sun was made;" "who existed from the beginning in the presence of
God," that is, was pre-existent. At the same time his human
characteristics are insisted on. He is called "Son of Man," even "Son of
Woman," "The Anointed," "The Elect," "The Righteous One," after the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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