VI The perfection of Jesus' character lies in its absolute humanness. That he lived a normal human life; that he was tempted in all points like as we are; that he learned obedience by the things which he suffered, we gather from the story of his earthly career. That he lived his life without sin is also of record, and the burden of disproof is upon him who would show the record false. We are fain to believe that Jesus chose the title "Son of Man" because of its simple human connotation. He was very man of very man. In him Israel flowered and humanity came to its own. Generic humanity took fresh root in him. He epitomized in himself the race as it was destined to become. In his teaching he worked constructively on the human plane. He magnified the worth of the individual man. He held the soul, the self, which is the core of personality, to be of more value than the whole material world. He was the friend of sinners, and in his intercourse with the lowest we can see what must have been his constant feeling as he moved among the throng that pressed him. Rank, wealth and culture, and the privileges of birth were as nothing in his eyes compared with the simple fact that men and women were born of the earth-mother and had God for their father. Everywhere he felt the human touch, and it drew from him the virtue of his unspent sympathy. Whether to Zacchaeus the extortioner or to the woman taken in adultery, his appeal was to the best that was in humanity and the appeal was always made in faith. The story of the temptation throws a flash of strong light upon Jesus' habits of thought. We are told that the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. The vision itself probably was not new to Jesus. The world as a whole had been present to his mind before. He repelled the suggestion of Satan, but he retained the panoramic vision. Out of his deep brooding over it came his "weltanschauung." His eye was fixed upon the total of humanity as the sphere of God's present and future working. He expected that when he should be lifted up from the earth, he would draw all men unto himself. His out look and his hope, and his invincible purpose, were universal, racial. Thus far we have been moving among things essentially human. And, not only his death, but his resurrection and ascension, were they not as truly stages in his human career as were his birth, his circumcision and baptism? Was he not exalted to the right hand of God because of what he had done as man when he lived his life in the flesh? Was it not as the ideal man that the divine benediction was bestowed on him-"This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased"? And when we think of Jesus as divine, is it not because his divinity is the irrefragable conclusion of the argument which his total life presents? Our vision still is of man; man on the way to a predestined salvation. We have seen humanity as a whole rising through Israel to a sense of its worth in the sight of God. We have seen it come to maturity in Jesus in whom the divine Word was made flesh. We have seen it made perfect through suffering and exalted to a place within the Godhead. The task of Jesus which he began on earth he completes from his theanthropic throne. He sends forth his Spirit, which is the Spirit of sonship, to reproduce in all the sons of men a character like his own, thus making them partakers of the divine nature. We see not yet what man shall be; but we hear the footfalls of an unnumbered host, and catch the strains of an ascending song-the processional of redeemed humanity. SAN ANSELMO, CALIFORNIA, IX NOTES ON TWO PASSAGES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA BY A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON It may be somewhat hazardous for a non-specialist in Biblical and Semitic subjects to enter among the ranks of contributors to this volume, but I remember the kindness with which Dr. Briggs, the first president of our little Oriental Club in New York, used to call upon me, as the only Indo-Iranian member, to present something after the papers of the evening were read, and how graciously the Biblical colleagues received such communications, though not directly in their line. For that reason I count it a privilege and a pleasure to add the accompanying notes from the field of Iranian studies in connection with two passages in the Old Testament Apocrypha as a memento of kindness on the part of a friend and as a mark of regard for the scholar whom I have long admired. 1. A Note on Ragau (Avestan Raghã, Old Persian Ragā) in Judith 15,15 Owing to my interest in Zoroaster I have always felt an attraction for the history of ancient Ragha, the modern Rai, whose ruins lie about five miles south of Teheran. Ragha is supposed by tradition to have been the home of Zoroaster's mother, and appears as 'Rages' or 'Ragau' in Tobit and Judith.* On each * A description of the ruins of Raghā and a sketch of its history, by the present writer, will be found in Persia Past and Present, pp. 428-441, New York, 1906, and in the Spiegel Memorial Volume, pp. 237-245, Bombay, 1908. For the tradition about Zoroaster's mother see Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran, pp. 17, 192, 204, New York, 1899. of the three visits which I paid to Persia in the years 1903, 1907, and 1910, I was particularly struck by the aptness of a local allusion in Judith to the plain and mountains about Rai, whatever may be the inaccuracy of other allusions in this non-canonical work. The well known passage (Judith, 11-15) describes how Nebuchadnezzar marched against (1) Arphaxad, who reigned over the Medes in Ecbatana, (5) and made war with King Arphaxad in the great plain: this plain is in the borders of Raga u, (13) and he set the battle in array with his host against King Arphaxad in the seventeenth year, and he prevailed in his battle and turned to flight all the host of Arphaxad, and all his horse, and all his chariots; (14) and he became master of his cities, and he came even unto Ecbatana, and took the towers, and spoiled the streets thereof, and turned the beauty thereof into shame. (15) And he took Arphaxad in the mountains of Rag a u, and smote him through with his darts, and destroyed him utterly, unto this day.' I shall not enter here into the question of the historical or pseudo-historical identity of Arphaxad,* but I wish to emphasize the appropriateness of the references to the plain and the mountains in connection with Ragha, a matter that might be included with the local names regarding which Schürer remarks that 'der Verfasser seine Erzahlung nicht geographisch in die Luft gebaut haben wird.' † In whatever direction one approaches Rai (Ragau, Rages), whether from the south or from the north, or when journeying to and from Khurasan, one is struck by the impression of plain and mountain alike. The photographs which are here reproduced will bring out that point more clearly; and, as I have noted elsewhere, the mountains in question may either be a part of the Alburz range, as is generally thought, or *See Cheyne, 'Arphaxad 2,' in Encycl. Bib. 1. 319, and W. Max Müller's 'Arphaxad,' in Jewish Encycl. 2. 137 and Prášek, Gesch. der Meder und Perser, 2. 35, n. 1. Gotha, 1910; and compare, O. Wolff, Das Buch Judith, pp. 51-56, Leipzig, 1861, and especially André, Les Apocryphes de l'Ancien Testament, pp. 153-154, Florence, 1903. † Quoted from Löhr in Kautzsch's Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen, p. 148, Freiburg i. B., 1898. See Spiegel Memorial Volume, p. 239. |