4. If Jesus’ Passion was the inaugural act of the new morality of the Kingdom of God, the success of it depended upon the Disciples being led to understand it in this sense and to act in accordance with it. The Passion-idea was a reflection. Are these assumptions, considered individually, justified? 3. The Two Contrasted Periods. (First Assumption.) The period of ill success is dated from the time following the mission of the Twelve. What are the events of the supposedly fortunate period? We pass over the vexatious discussion with the Pharisees about the healing of the paralytic (Mk 2:1-12), over the question of fasting (Mk 2:18-22), and that of the observance of the Sabbath (Mk 2:23-[3:6]). Already in Mk 3:6 it has come to the point of a murderous attack. Jesus has to renounce his family because they wish to fetch him home by force as one who is mentally incompetent (Mk 3:20-22, Mk 3:31-35). At Nazareth he is rejected (Mk 6:1-6). In the same period occurs the attack which shocked him most profoundly. The Pharisees discredited him with the people by [pg 065] charging that he was in league with the devil (Mk 3:22-30). How deeply this saying wounded him may be seen from his reference to it in the commission to the Twelve. He prepared his Disciples for a similar experience. “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more those of his household” (Mt 10:25). Such are the well known events of the “successful period”! But they are nothing in comparison with those which he hints at when he is sending out the Twelve. In general terms he has already pronounced those blessed who are reproached and persecuted for his sake (Mt 5:11, 12). Now he leads his Disciples to expect oppression and distress (Mt 10:17-25). Faithfulness to him involves the endurance of enmity (Mt 10:22), the severance of the dearest ties (Mt 10:37), and the bearing of the cross (Mt 10:38). The Galilean period is to be regarded as a _happy_ one: the commission to the Twelve is _pessimistic_ in tone. How does that agree? The hints also which he drops at that time in the presence of the people point to bitter catastrophes. What must have occurred in Chorazin, in Capernaum, and in Bethsaida that he calls down upon them the wrath of [pg 066] the Day of Judgment, in which it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for them (Mt 11:20-24)! Because this gloomy tone accords ill with the happy Galilean period, there is an obvious temptation to regard the Matthean speeches of the time of the Apostles’ mission as compositions which include fragments belonging to a later period. Where, however, could Jesus have spoken such words? So long as he remained in the north after the flight he made no speeches, and the utterances of the Jerusalem days have their own peculiar character, so that it is hard to know where to introduce references to Galilean occurrences and warnings to the Disciples in prospect of their journey.