_The entrance into Jerusalem, therefore, was an ovation not to the Messiah but to the Forerunner._ But then it is impossible that the people understood the scene with the blind man as indicating that Jesus welcomed the address “Son of David.” Here again it is a question of Synoptical detail by which the scene is totally changed. [pg 159] The shout in the name of the Son of David is incidental. The question is only whether the public could and must conceive it as a form of address. This conception is evidently that of Matthew and Luke, _but by Mark it is excluded._ According to the Matthean account, two blind men sit by the wayside and cry, Have mercy upon us, Son of David (Mt 20:30). In Luke the cry runs: Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon me (Lk 18:38). Thereupon Jesus comes to a stand before him, converses with him, and heals him. According to Mark, the blind beggar, son of Timæus, is sitting behind the multitude at the edge of the road. _Jesus does not see him, cannot address him, but hears only a voice, which reaches him as from the ground out of the midst of the stir,_ of one calling upon the Son of David for help. Jesus comes to a stand and sends _to have him fetched!_ They follow the voice and find the man sitting upon the ground. Rise, he calleth thee! they say to him. He throws away his garment, springs up, and presses through the crowd to Jesus. As Jesus sees the man approaching him thus he can have no idea that he is blind! He has to ask him, therefore, what he wants. The distance, the heat, [pg 160] the sending to fetch him, the nimble approach,—all this Matthew has dropped. He has simplified the situation: Jesus encounters the two blind men on the road and at once addresses them. Only he has retained from the original situation the question, “what is wanted?”—which in Mark is actually necessary, but in Matthew remains unaccountable, for there Jesus must see that he has to do with two blind men! But if there lay such a distance between Jesus and the blind man, no one could have an idea that he took the monotonous cry about the Son of David as an address to himself! It was just simply an annoying cry, which the bystanders sought in vain to silence. The people attached as little importance to it as to the cries of the demons—if in fact they understood it at all. The _address_ of the beggar was of an entirely different tenor and shows that he no more took Jesus for the Messiah than did the people: “Rabbi, that I may receive my sight.” For him, therefore, Jesus was the rabbi from Nazareth.