The Epistle to the Hebrews, finding in this Psalm an introduction of "first-born" into the world, for there is no article preceding the word, follows it so closely as to omit any article before "son"
(i. 2). He finds this in an address of the deity to his angels ("holy ones" or saints), and understands verse 27 of the Psalm to mean that they, the angels, are to worship the "first-born" as the Elyon, or Most High on earth. From 2 Sam. vii. the Epistle gets sufficient authority for ascribing an eternal personality to the sonship, anciently represented by Solomon, and we may thus see that the gesture of Hebrew religion towards a doctrine of incarnation was much earlier than is generally supposed. And this, too, is the Hebrew contribution to a Psalm which, in the nine verses above quoted, imports ideas foreign to Judaism. The reciprocal help of the deity and the king (19-21) is Avestan, and inconsistent with monotheism. Elyon is the name of an ancient Phoenician G.o.d, slain by his son El, no doubt the "first-born of death" in Job xviii. 13, and the violent "son of evil,"
in verse 22 of our Psalm. The exaltation of both David and Solomon in the Psalm is primarily in reference to service and deeds, not majesty, essence, or t.i.tle; of these Avestan religion made little, but Hebraism made much, and the deification of Solomon, though warranted by other Psalms, is added to this eighty-ninth by Samuel and the Epistle to the Hebrews.
In Ecclesiasticus it is written: "In the division of the nations of the whole earth he set a ruler over every people; but Israel is the Lord"s portion: whom, being his first-born, he nourisheth with discipline, and giving him the light of his love doth not forsake him.... For all things cannot be in men, because the son of man is not immortal. What is brighter than the sun? Yet the light thereof faileth; and flesh and blood will imagine evil" (xvii.). Now in the Zoroastrian theology there could be no direct contact of G.o.d with matter: the devil"s empire could be invaded and death conquered only by a perfectly "blameless" MAN. (Cf. "Wisdom of Solomon," xviii. 21, with the "sinless" of Heb. iv. 15, the "guileless" of vii. 26, and "without blemish," ix. 14). The spotless one can use no carnal weapon. In the Zoroastrian theology the divine potency is that of the Word, and formulas exist to be wielded against every variety of demon. So in this Epistle the supremacy of the Son is by "the word of his power", (i. 3), and "the Word of G.o.d is sharper than any two-edged sword"
(iv. 12).
The enterprise of the Son of G.o.d was to fulfil these conditions. He must become a complete man, share all the infirmities of man, all his liabilities to temptation, receive no a.s.sistance from his Father, no angelic help,--placed lower than the angels,--and confront the powers of Death and h.e.l.l without any material weapon. If he succeeded in remaining sinless, faithful to the divine law, even unto death, even while in h.e.l.l, unshaken by threats, sufferings, or seductions, it must be a purely human achievement. There was no miracle; even the suspicion of using supernatural power would have tainted the whole work of Jesus as conceived in this Epistle.
This undertaking was not simply for the sake of mankind. All things are not yet subjected to the divine sway (Heb. ii. 8). Heaven itself was shaken, when the old covenant failed, and trembled for the result of the tremendous conflict of the Son of Man on earth with its Prince and his hosts (Heb. xii. 25-29). This was "the joy in front of him"
(xii. 2), as well as the rescue of men.
Thus was the man left entirely to the devil, not even his life being reserved, as in the case of Job. He loudly cries for help, even with tears, at the sight of Death; he is heard, pitied, but no help comes. He must trust to his human merits, and not miracles, for his Sonship is of no value in this conflict. By his obedience learned in his sufferings, by his sinlessness under all trials and temptations, he fulfilled the conditions of deathlessness. By his own heart"s blood, not by offerings of b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices, not by supernatural power, he reached the place of holiness, "having obtained eternal redemption." From first to last there was no divine aid. His unanswered loud cries (Heb. v. 7) may be connected with the legend of his expiring cry, "My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
Much of the thought here is similar to the "Wisdom of Solomon"
(ii. 22-4, iii. 1-9), where however the ideas are conflicting. It is said, "G.o.d created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity: nevertheless, through the devil"s envy came death into the world, and they that hold of his side do find it." But then Jahvism puts in with the declaration that the seeming destruction of the righteous is G.o.d"s chastis.e.m.e.nt and probation of them. The Epistle to the Hebrews does not regard the sufferings and death of Jesus as G.o.d"s work at all, but all from the devil. Though G.o.d spoke by him there is no suggestion that he sent Jesus, or that his coming was not voluntary.
With this reservation, and a large one it is, that Jesus was not delivered up to Satan by G.o.d, but left to confront his torments in an effort to subdue him, "bring him to nought," the central idea of the Epistle is a doctrinal transfiguration of Job, who being delivered up to Satan, triumphs over the tempter and tormentor, and through all preserves his sinlessness and loyalty to G.o.d. The result being that those who had denied Job"s merits, his sinlessness, had to secure Job"s intercession in order to escape the penalty of having ascribed his sufferings to G.o.d (Job xlii. 8). [33] This relationship of ideas is all the more interesting because apparently unconscious in the writer of the Epistle, and thus revealing the extent to which Oriental religion had remoulded Judaism among the educated Jews of his time. Monotheism is strictly inconsistent with the supremacy of "merits" which is the very soul of Oriental religion. The sacred books of India contain records of saints or Rishis who by extraordinary austerities, sacrifices, and virtues so piled up their "merits" that the G.o.ds were frightened, as they were at the tower of Babel; and sometimes the G.o.ds tempted these powerful saints to commit some sin that would reduce their "merits." The Solomonic "Proverbs" are pervaded by the Oriental doctrine of "merits": a man is proved by test of his merits, as gold pa.s.sing through the furnace (xxvii. 21); the perfect inherit good (xxviii. 10); and perhaps that sublime pedlar of transcendent gems imported along with the gold of Ophir some version of the Puranic legend of Harischandra, "the Hindu Job." All the Jahvist adulterations of the biblical version do not conceal the fact that when Jahveh, by delivering the meritorious man up to Satan, delivered himself also into the hands of Satan, he (Jahveh) was compelled to surrender before the merits on which the man had planted himself. Jahveh reclaimed his sovereignty, but agreed that Job, who had said "G.o.d hath wronged me,"
had spoken of him "the thing that is right" (xlii. 8). In the same way the storm-G.o.d Indra (the Hindu Jahveh) accompanied by all the G.o.ds, headed by Dharma (Justice), appears to Harischandra after his trials, and tells him that he, his wife and son, had, by their merits, "conquered heaven" (Markandeya Purana). The completion of these merits was when Harischandra resolved with his wife to die on the funeral pyre of their son, who, as a result of their torments, had died by a serpent"s bite. It was then that the G.o.d Indra appeared to restore the son, and admit that the just and faithful king, his wife and son, had "conquered heaven." We are thus carried to the Solomonic affirmations that "when the whirlwind pa.s.seth the just man is on an everlasting foundation" (Prov. x. 25), that "justice delivereth from death" (x. 2), that "the just man finds a refuge in death"
(xiv. 32); and we are carried forward to the Epistle to the Hebrews, where, after the last ordeal, death, the son of the heavenly king is restored to life, and Satan, who had over him the power of death, "brought to nought" (ii. 14). But further, in the Puranic legend, which from time immemorial has been a pa.s.sion-play in India, Harischandra, when told that he, his wife and son, had "conquered heaven," refused to ascend to heaven without his "faithful subjects." "This request was granted by Indra, and after Viswamitra had inaugurated Rohitaswa, the king"s son, to be his successor, Harischandra, his friends and followers, all ascended to heaven." Thus, in our Epistle, the son, having "learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and having been made perfect, became unto all them that obeyed him the author of eternal salvation." "For in that he hath himself suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." The subjects of King Harischandra who remained faithful to him after he was reduced to beggary, ascended with him. Faith is declared in our Epistle to be "the testing of things not seen" (xi. 1), and faithfulness is to "run with patience the course that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the captain and perfector of faithfulness, who for the joy set before him endured the stake (stauron), despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of G.o.d" (xi. 1, xii. 1, 2).
And there is also, I believe, in the scheme of redemption set forth in this Epistle, an influence from the story of King Usinara in the Mahabharata, of which there were various versions which must have been familiar to the Buddhists in Alexandria. A dove pursued by a falcon takes refuge in the bosom of Usinara; the falcon demands its surrender. The King quotes the law of Manu that it is a great sin to abandon any being that has taken asylum with one. The falcon urges that it is the law of nature that falcons shall feed on doves, and that unless this dove is surrendered its little falcons must starve. The King offers other food, but the only subst.i.tute that is adapted to the falcon"s nature is a quant.i.ty of Usinara"s own flesh equal to the weight of the dove. To this the King agrees. Balances are produced, and the dove placed in one scale, in the other a piece of the King"s flesh, which seems large enough, but is insufficient. Though the King cuts off piece by piece all of his flesh, the dove outweighs it, until at length Usinara gets into the scale HIMSELF. That outweighs the dove, which is really Agni, the falcon being Indra. The G.o.ds who had a.s.sumed these forms in order to test Usinara"s fidelity to the law of sanctuary, resume their shape, and the King ascends transfigured to paradise. In one version a King (Givi) sacrifices his son, Vrihad-Gasbha in obedience to sacred requirements, the story resembling that of Abraham and Isaac. Alford calls attention to the emphasis on the word "himself" in the Epistle of the Hebrews ix. 14: "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit offered HIMSELF, without blemish, unto G.o.d, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living G.o.d."
Without blemish! That was the great point. The champion of the Good confronts the champion of Evil, his purpose being to conquer the last enemy, Death, by unarmed human virtue. This was the central idea in the Pa.s.sion, a drama gone to pieces in the Gospels. Therefore, he did not summon legions of angels, and said to Peter, "Sheath thy sword." Therefore, the mere lynching of Jesus, for such it was, is given the formalities of judicial procedure, in order to impress an official character on the testimonies to his innocence: Pilate, Caiaphas, Pilate"s wife, Judas, Herod, all bear witness that no evil is in him, and he challenges the High Priest"s court, "If I have uttered evil bear witness of the evil." [34] In this pa.s.sion-drama Jesus Barabbas is set beside Jesus the Christ,--officially proclaimed guilt beside officially proclaimed innocence,--and Wrath selects guilt, condemns innocence. But it was thus the first-born of Life prevailed over the first-born of Death. In that crisis the blameless man swerving not from his rect.i.tude, established the "a.s.sembly of the first-born,"
who can dwell with the living G.o.d because they have learned from their Captain how to get rid of the defilement of mortality. There is nothing vicarious in his service. The Captain represented the human race in a single combat with Satan, and he discovered for all the vulnerable point of that Adversary,--that he could not hold in sheol a perfectly sinless human being. But it still remained that without holiness no man could see the Lord. Another advantage secured by Jesus for men was that after his victory was achieved the heroic man, on resuming his previous position as Son of G.o.d, was able to add thereto what he had won as Son of Man,--the office of high priest or intercessor, who could take good care that every man who fulfilled the condition of holiness got his reward. Satan should not cheat. Nevertheless Jesus had been his own saviour, and every man must be his own saviour.
Pulpit ignorance has wrested from the Epistle to the Hebrews fragments of texts, in support of a dogma of atonement which only a fortunate lack of logic prevents from amounting to a doctrine of human sacrifice. A favorite clause is, "Without the shedding of blood there in no remission,"--which is really this epistle"s stigma on the system it is abolishing! The sacredness of the blood of Jesus was that it was the price he had to pay to the devil in order to preserve his sinlessness, and so rise from death, and demonstrate to others that they also could rise by sinlessness to eternal life. It might cost their blood also, but would be lost if they "resisted unto blood." Jesus thus brought life and incorruption, as distinguished from living-death in sheol, to light. And the devotion to Jesus for this was due to the belief that he had laid aside his heavenly glory and become a complete man, and had thus risked his all, his greatness, his very immortality, to make for both heaven and earth the tremendous venture; the slightest misstep, the least sin, or wrath, or impatience, and he would have had his abode in sheol, in bonds of Satan, through all eternity.
When this Epistle was written the believers already found immortality in such faith; with such hope and joy before them they were able to despise sensual joys, to conquer temptations, and to fulfill those duties and conditions of personal holiness which are described in this Epistle,--"Peace with all men, and holiness without which no man can see the Lord." The ecstasy did not last long, but it was a marvellous phenomenon while it lasted, and the most complete reflection of it may be found in this Epistle to the Hebrews, especially if it be approached by its prologue,--the "Wisdom of Solomon,"--but it is subtle, and can only be comprehended by patient and comparative studies.
At the heart of this earliest and swiftly lost Christianity was a sublime effort to humanize G.o.d.
CHAPTER XIV.
SOLOMON MELCHIZEDEK.
It is possible that the genealogies of Jesus started from no other basis than Hebrews vii. 14: "It is clear beforehand that our Lord hath arisen out of Judah." [35] Yet nothing could be more subversive of the Epistle than a claim of any hereditary authority or advantage for Jesus.
The author of the Epistle, if he ever heard the phrase "Son of David,"
avoided it, for David is here in the background, and in a quotation from one of his Psalms his name is pa.s.sed over, with the vague words, "one hath testified somewhere, saying," etc. It is an essential part of the writer"s argument that Christ is "without genealogy" of that kind. To some it was no doubt grateful to be told that Jesus was not of the priestly tribe, not of that "apostolic succession," so to say; but it was more important to convince the conservative that their sacred history sanctioned faith in a high priest approved as such not by carnal descent, but by his sinlessness and by his resurrection. But it was not agreeable to any Jewish party to suppose that the new dominion was to be altogether in the heavens, or detached from the Solomonic Golden Age for whose return they were hoping. The writer therefore connects Jesus with a "first-born" forerunner, namely, with Melchizedek, concerning whom he "has many things to say, and hard of interpretation." So Christian commentators have to this day found what he does say, and Melchizedek is not surrounded by any dogmatic fence that can turn a new hypothesis into a trespa.s.s.
The Epistle applies to Jesus lines from Psalm cx.:
Thou art a priest for ever, After the order of Melchizedek.
But in this anonymous Psalm there is reason to believe that Melchizedek is not a proper name at all. It is admittedly a combination of malki"-tzedek, "king of justice," and in the Jewish Family Bible (Deusch) the above lines are translated, "Thou art my priest for ever, my king in righteousness, by my word." The Septuagint, regularly followed by the Epistle to the Hebrews, has Melchizedek in this Psalm cx., which was also messianized by the LXX. in its very first line, "The Lord said unto my Lord," Kyrios being the word for Lord in both cases, whereas in the original the words are different ("Jahveh declared to my Adonai"). And it is notable that Matthew xxii. whose Hebraic character is so marked, and Mark xii., both make Jesus follow the Septuagint in quoting these words.
In both of these Gospels the incident is evidently, in Mark clumsily, interpolated, and it would appear to have belonged to some legend of the Infancy, such as that of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, where it occurs naturally:
"And when he was twelve years old they took him to Jerusalem to the feast. But when the feast was over they indeed returned, but the Lord Jesus remained in the temple among the doctors and elders and learned men of Jerusalem, and he asked them sundry questions about the sciences and they answered him in turn. Now he said to them, Whose son is Messiah? They answered him, The son of David. Wherefore, then, said he, Doth he in spirit call him Lord, when he saith the Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, that I may bring down thy enemies to the footprints of thy feet?"
It is probable that this anecdote had floated down from an early period when the notion of a royal descent of Jesus had not arisen.
Obviously a tremendous question arises here as to how a story should be found in Genesis xiv. about Melchizedek, which as a proper name really occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, [36] and the mystery is increased by the absence of any allusion to such a personage in Jesus Ben Sira"s enumeration of "famous men" (Ecclus. xliv.), or elsewhere. It almost looks as if Jesus Ben Sira had not read, or else had cancelled as spurious, the strange pa.s.sage in Genesis--which is as follows:
"And Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine; and he was priest of El-Elyon. And he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram of El-Elyon, purchaser of heaven and earth; and blessed be El-Elyon, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he (Abram) gave him a tenth of all."
Professor Max Muller, in his third lecture on the "Science of Religion," gives some useful information concerning this peculiar name, "El-Elyon," after consulting his contemporaries at Oxford and in Germany:
"One of the oldest names of the deity among the ancestors of the Semitic nations was El. It meant Strong. It occurs in the Babylonian inscriptions as Ilu, G.o.d, and in the very name of Bab-il, the gate or temple of Il.... The same El was worshipped at Byblus by the Phoenicians, and he was called there the Son of Heaven and Earth. His father was the son of Eliun, the most high G.o.d, who had been killed by wild animals. The Son of Eliun, who succeeded him, was dethroned, and at last slain by his own son, El, whom Philo identifies with the Greek Kronos, and represents as the presiding deity of the planet Saturn.... Elyon, which, in Hebrew, means the Highest is used in the Old Testament as a predicate of G.o.d.... It occurs in the Phoenician cosmogony as Eliun, the highest G.o.d, the Father of Heaven, who was the father of El."
According to Sanchunvaton (Euseb. Proep. i. 10) the Phoenicians called G.o.d Elioun.
The combination El Elyon occurs in but two chapters in the Bible,--Genesis xiv. and Psalm lxxviii. (The Revisers translate it in Genesis, "G.o.d Most High," but in the Psalm (verse 35), "Most High G.o.d.") That the name was imported from the earlier into the later chapter is suggested by a similar a.s.sociation of each with the idea of purchase or redemption: "G.o.d Most High, purchaser of heaven and earth"
(Genesis), "G.o.d Most High, their redeemer" (Psalm). But which is the earlier? Probably the Psalm; for it is a long resume of the traditional history of Israel, but contains no allusion to Abraham. Had its unique name, "El Elyon," been derived from any such traditional source surely some mention of Abraham would have been made.
The Psalm is Elohistic. Possibly the Phoenician name for G.o.d, Elioun, was used in order to set "El" above it. Or it may be that as Solomon had been declared "Elyon of Kings" (Psalm lx.x.xix. 27) it was important to recall that he at the same time said, "My Elohim," and to place "El"
before his t.i.tle. This conjecture is warranted by the fact that in both of the Psalms, and in the corresponding pa.s.sages, G.o.d is spoken of as a "Rock." There are other resemblances between the two Psalms, one very striking:
Psalm lxxviii. 70--"He chose David also, his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds."
Psalm lx.x.xix. 19, 20--"I have raised one elected out of the people; I have discovered David, my servant."
The Psalm in which the Septuagint personalises malki"-tzedek (cx.) into "Melchizedek" is a fragmentary little piece, with two incomprehensible verses at the end which seem to allude to some legend or folklore now lost. These verses (6 and 7) are incongruous with the preceding ones and must be detached, and perhaps verse 5 also, as this seems an anti-climax. These closing verses look as if they may have been added by some admirer of Joshua"s slaughter of kings, and it is probable that the legend of Joshua"s making his captains tread on the necks of the five kings (Joshua x.) was developed out of the opening verse of this Psalm:
"Jahveh said to my lord [Adonai], Sit thou at my right hand, Until I make thine enemies thy footstool."
The leader of these kings was Adonai-Zedek, who, like Melchizedek, was King of Jerusalem; they are certainly mythical relatives, their names meaning "Lord of Justice" and "King of Justice." It is philologically impossible that any persons with those proper names could have existed in Jerusalem before the invasion of the Hebrews. And "Adonai-bezek,"
the "radiant lord," whose thumbs and toes Joshua cut off when he captured Jerusalem, is a transparent variant of Adonai-zedek.
When the city, originally named Jebus, began to be called Salem (see Psalm lxxvi. 2), the aboriginal people who continued to dwell there might naturally dream of their ancient kings, as the Welch and Bretons so long did of Arthur, "flower of kings," and perhaps similarly expect their return to restore their ancient freedom; and it may have become a useful political device to find beyond the ugly legends of Joshua"s cruelty to their "just" and "shining" lords a prettier one, made out of an old song, of an earlier "King of Justice," whose bread and wine Abraham had eaten, to whom he had paid t.i.thes, whose deity, El Elyon, the father of Israel had recognized as his own, and with whom he had made a treaty of salem, or peace,--Jebus thus becoming Jebus-Salem (Jerusalem).
Josephus records the legend as it was no doubt generally accepted among the Jews in the first century of our era: "Now, the King of Sodom met him (Abram) at a certain place which they called the King"s Dale, where Melchizedek, King of the City of Salem, received him. That name signifies the righteous king, and such he was without dispute, insomuch that on that account he was made the priest of G.o.d. However, they afterward called Salem Jerusalem." (Antiq. Bk. i. ch. 10.)