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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
These are perhaps the most important verses in the Synoptic Gospels. Discussing them in 1927, the late Claude Montefiore2 candidly confessed that, as a Jew, he would like to prove them spurious because, if it could be shown that Jesus had really uttered them, orthodox Christianity would have received notable encouragement. This however, he judged very unlikely, and he went on to predict that, as the years went by, the voices raised in defence of their authenticity would grow feebler and fewer.
2 The Synoptic Gospels, II, 169, 186.Google Scholar
3 The Sayings of Jesus, pp. 273 if.Google Scholar
4 J. Theol. Stud. X, 552 if.Google Scholar
1 So Zahn, Schiatter, Schniewind, Bieneck and Cullmann. The text favoured by Harnack (and T. W. Manson) looks like an attempt to ease the ‘difficulty’. Yet the idea which it stresses—that God is inaccessible to human thought—is typically Greek (cf., Acts xvii. 23)Google Scholar and contrary to the tenor of the New Testament. Bieneck (Sohn Gottes, p. 82)Google Scholar thinks that the ‘divergent’ text was due to the influence of Marcion with his doctrine of ‘the unknown God’. On the other hand, the ‘canonical’ text consists (a) with the Synoptic view of Jesus' Sonship, bringing us face to face with the Mysterium Christi, and (b) with that ‘lowliness’ of Jesus which was the very soul of his filial obedience—‘The kingdom that I seek is Thine; so let the way that leads to it be Thine ’—and had been prophesied for the Servant of the Lord (Isa., lii. 14; liii. 2 f.). His lot was to be misunderstood by men, and in the Gospel event even his disciples deserted, denied and betrayed him.Google Scholar
2 Dalman, (The Words of Jesus, p. 283) declares the two clauses ν. 27 inseparable, and says that they are an Oriental way of ‘expressing the reciprocity of intimate understanding’.Google Scholar
1 
. See Dalman, , The Words of Jesus, p. 211.Google Scholar
2 Harv. Theol. Rev. XLIV (1953), 137 f.Google Scholar
3 The Teaching of Jesus, p. 110.Google Scholar
4 Jesus the Messiah, p. 108.Google Scholar
5 Manson, T.W., op. cit. p. 102.Google Scholar
6 Sohn Gottes, p. 85.Google Scholar
1 If this logion smacks of divine determinism, we get the other side of the medal—the stress on human free-will—in Jesus' parable of the Great Supper (Luke, xiv. 16–24). Here, addressing the professedly religious in the land, Jesus says in effect: ‘If you find yourselves outside the Kingdom, you have only yourselves to blame, since you have refused God's invitation.’Google Scholar
2 The Sayings of Jesus, p. 301, n. I.Google Scholar
3 Jesus' use of the word Abba (a diminutive form from children's speech) in addressing God has no parallel in Jewish literature. ‘His meaning’, says Jeremias (T.L.Z. 1954, no. 4, 213),Google Scholar ‘is shown by an analysis of Matt., xi. 27Google Scholar (Luke, x. 22)—a logion quite Semitic in character– to be Christological. This means: the word Abba is the most important feature in the esoteric message of Jesus.’Google Scholar
4 The Person of Christ, pp. 136 f.Google Scholar In the Synoptics we are confronted by One who not only opposed his sovereign ‘I’ to the dictates of the Law of Moses, but declared that the supreme organ of God's will on earth, Israel, would be wrecked on its attitude to himself: One who chose for himself the high and mysterious title ‘Son of man’ and promised God's Kingdom to those who attached themselves to his Person: One who never prayed with his disciples (though he often prayed for them), but who solemnly affirmed that on their acceptance or rejection of himself men's eternal destiny would depend: One who appeared among men as the Divine Forgiveness incarnate and declared that his death as the Servant of the Lord would ransom a countless multitude from their sins. Such a One stands not with men before God but between God and men and is amply entitled to make the mediatorial claim of Matt., xi. 27.Google Scholar
1 The Hymn to Echnaton in the London Magical Papyrus has: ‘I know you, Hermes, and you know me. I am you and you are I.’ Gnosis theou here is not a personal relationship (as in Matt., xi. 27), but an absorption into deity.Google Scholar
2 W. D., Davies, op. cit. p. 139.Google Scholar
3 See Smith's, G. A. magnificent chapter on ‘the knowledge of God’ in The Book of the Twelve Prophets, I, 318–32.Google Scholar
1 See Schweitzer, A., Geschichte der Leben Jesu Forschung, p. 310Google Scholar and Forsyth, , The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p. III.Google Scholar
2 This is not certain: it may be, as Dibelius thought, that they did, but that Luke omitted them because he deemed it inappropriate to his context (the Return of the Seventy). See From Tradition to Gospel, p. 279 n. 1.Google Scholar
3 In the latter the first thought is for the revelation itself, and then the revelation is said to be mediated by the Son. So, in the Great Invitation, there is first a general offer of rest, and then it is said that the rest is to be obtained by acceptance of his yoke.
4 Jesus the Messiah, p. 73; Schniewind, MC, p. 155.Google Scholar
1 Jesu Muttersprache, p. 84.Google Scholar
2 Otto, Schniewind, Schiatter, Bieneck, W. Manson, T. W. Manson, etc.
3 The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man, pp. 137 if.Google Scholar
4 T. W., Manson, in The Sayings of Jesus, p. 186,Google Scholar observes: ‘Under all this poetical eloquence (Eccius, li. 23–7)Google Scholar it is plain enough what the author is commending: it is the study of the Law.’ (The ‘house of instruction’ is the Beth ha-Midrash.) The contrast in Jesus' saying is between the yoke of the Law and the yoke of the Kingdom. In discipleship to himself men will find rest for their souls. This is what Ben Sira claims he has got from the Law. So Rengstorf sub зυγóς in Kittel's, Word-book, II, 902. It is a contrast between Messiah's yoke and the yoke of Law-religion. The promise of the saying is that he who commits himself to Jesus (that is, enters the Kingdom) will find access to the Father—‘ an access not the result of human achievement but the gift of Jesus in his work and Person’.Google Scholar
