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ad res sacras ad summas minutias redigendas.... effecisse, ut Jesu Apostolorumque ætate Christologia Judæorum in eam redacta esset formam, quæ ab ista, quam ante exilium Babylonicum habuit, multum abhorruit." (Ib. p. 8.) Again, at p. 15, we are told, that this being the fact, the Egyptian Jews, and chiefly those of Alexandria, rejecting the weak matter of their old and vulgar opinions, rose to a form of doctrine at once more beautiful and more holy that is, to the most perfect knowledge of a more sure and divine doctrine to the most elevated study of virtue, and to an increase in it, by no means whatever to be repressed-thence to a felicity thus to be derived, at once more pure, and more productive of mental delights; all of which they obtained by means of allegorical interpretations, to which they were much addicted. Hence, too, they derived their notions of future rewards and punishments, &c. &c. We are next carried on to the Samaritans, then to the Jews of Palestine, and then are told, what perhaps no one will deny, that they interpreted their prophecies so as to make their Messiah a great conqueror, &c.—that they gradually acquired foreign notions, and consequently differed greatly in religious opinions, &c. &c.; after this, the particular discussions, in which all this erudite matter is to be applied, commence. I have been the more particular in this detail, for the purpose of shewing the reader, how very plausibly and inoffensively this class of divines proceeds with its matter; and how very well it is adapted to ensnare the inexperienced and unwary mind. Let us now come to the application.

They also gave reasons may be

Our first chapter commences with § 9, where we are told that the Jews of Palestine termed their Messiah the Anointed (Christ, Xgros) of God, or King of Israel. him many other names, for each of which assigned. When they had respect to his regal dignity, they called him, as was usual with other ancient people, the Son of God. And, in order to mark out his exclusive excellency, he was styled the only-begotten. With respect to his birth, he was named the Son of David-to his office, the Saviour, or Redeemer. With regard to his religious character and offices, he received the name of the Prophet. With respect to his ministerial office, and the favour he should have with God, the King who should come in the name of the Lord, or the Elect and Beloved of God. With regard to his holiness,

&c., the holy one of God, the Pastor.

But the title of the

Son of man had no respect either to person or thing, but was taken from Daniel's prophecy (vii. 13), where the Messiah is spoken of comparatively, &c.

I remark, in the first place, I can discover no reasonable objection to our Lord's receiving titles, in certain respects expressive of his offices, even in a divinely inspired revelation. As far as I can see, our revelation is in every respect most reasonable; and I think it pursues the only reasonable method, in every case, by which men, such as they are, can be treated with any prospect of success. But, suppose the Messiah had received titles bearing no relation whatever to his offices; would it not then have been objected, that these titles had been imposed in a vague and unaccountable manner; and that, therefore, the whole was unsuitable to us as reasonable beings? Mr. Bertholdt has made no formal objection on this score; he has only insinuated (which was all he could do), that, as similar titles were sometimes found among the ancient heathen, these also could claim no greater authority than was due to those.-Let us now consider the proofs.

It must be remembered, Mr. Bertholdt has purposedly confined himself to Jewish books published since the captivity, in order, as he tells us, to account for the change of opinions which at that time began to take place. In his illustrations, therefore, of the title Christ or Messiah, he has cited nothing older than the fourth book of Esdras. But why, it may be asked, has Mr. Bertholdt excluded the title Shiloh; which, however it may be explained by us, has, as the oldest Jewish documents in our hands will shew, been always understood to relate to the Messiah? e. g. Gen. xlix. 10. 27, which is thus paraphrased by Onkelos, Ty, until the Messiah come. To the same effect are the Targums of the pseudo-Jonathan and of Jerusalem. It is true, we have no document explaining this passage so old as the Babylonish captivity; still, we have every reason for believing, that the sense here given was that held by the Jews respecting this passage, in times much older than those of the captivity. To this, many other passages occurring even in the Pentateuch may be added, a few only of which I shall now notice: and first, Gen. iii. 15. "And thou shalt bruise his heel," which is explained both by the pseudo-Jonathan and the Targum of Jerusalem, as referring to an event

to come to pass in the days of the Messiah. All the passages of this sort occurring in the Old Testament, may be seen in the Chaldee, Talmudic, and Rabbinic Lexicon of Buxtorf, col. 1268, &c. Of these, however, Mr. Bertholdt has prudently taken no notice.

Again, Num. xxiv. 17, " There shall A STAR come out of Jacob," &c., which both Onkelos and the pseudo-Jonathan interpret of the Messiah. Again, in 2 Sam. xxiii. 3, we have this remarkable passage, given as part of the last words of

translated ,מוֹשֵׁל בָּאָדָם צַדִּיק מוֹשֶׁל יִרְאַת אֱלֹהִים :David

thus in our authorised version: "He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of the Lord:" but by the Targumist: "He said that he would set one up King, who is the Messiah, who shall arise, and rule in the fear of the Lord;" which appears to me to be fully justified by the following context: "And he shall be as the light .... when the sun," &c. It will be observed, that very considerable additions are here made to the words of the original text, in our version; and which I think cannot be defended: He that, must be, &c.; not to insist on the position into which these supernumerary words throw the rest of the context. I would render the passage thus: A righteous (one) shall govern among men: he shall govern (in) the fear of the Lord. The Septuagint has the following: Εἶπον ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ, Πῶς κραταιώσητε φόβον Κριστοῦ; I said of man, How will ye retain the fear of Christ? Another reading gives Kugiou, of the Lord. The Syriac has ads?

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where we have a manifest ,ܙܣܶܝܩܐ ܕܫܠܝܛ ܟܕܚܠܐ ܠܗܐ

error in and put in the plural number, when the context, no less than the original, requires the singular. The translation will then be: "That the Just (one shall) rule among men, that he shall rule in the fear of God." If, therefore, any reliance can be placed upon these considerations, this is also a prediction relating to the Messiah; and, that it is so, I certainly have no doubt. The allusion to the sun may serve to identify it with the passage just cited from Numbers; and, when we read in the prophet Malachi (iv. 2), But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise," &c. which is scarcely any thing more than a paraphrase upon this passage, I think a doubt cannot remain on the subject. Here, then, we have as splendid a prediction of the Messiah's kingdom as any to

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be found in the Old Testament; and, let it be remembered, this was uttered a considerable time before the Babylonish captivity. But, as before, this mode of considering the context will not suit the purposes of Mr. Bertholdt.

Again, in Isaiah (iv.2): “ In that day shall THE BRANCH of Jehovah be beautiful," &c.; which, when compared with Jeremiah, xxiii. 5,—“ I will raise unto David a RIGHTEOUS BRANCH, and a king shall reign and prosper," &c.-" In his days Judah shall be saved," &c.,—can leave no doubt on the mind of any candid man that the Messiah must be meant: and in this sense the Targumist has taken both these passages. Again, Isaiah, vii. 14: "Behold the virgin shall conceive," &c., which St. Matthew has applied to Christ; and ib. ix. 6: "For unto us a child is born," &c., which the Targumist has also applied to the Messiah, cannot perhaps be subtracted from the passages which speak of Christ before the captivity.

The most remarkable prophecy, perhaps, in the Old Testament relating to the Messiah, is that contained in the 53d chapter of Isaiah; but of this, Mr. Bertholdt, with the rest of his school, easily disposes: first, by denying the genuineness of all the prophecies ascribed to Isaiah from the 40th chapter to the end; and, secondly, by explaining away the obvious sense of this, in particular. Mr. Bertholdt, however, refers us here to a work by J. D. Kruiger, entitled "Commentatio de verosimillima oraculi Jes. lii. 13. sqq. et liii. interpretandi ratione;" but, as I have not access to this book, I must take my materials from others to which I have; and these are, the Scholia of Rosenmüller, and the German Commentary on Isaiah by Dr. Gesenius: and, as these are highly accredited works with the rationalists, no objection will be made to their authority. To begin with Mr. Rosenmüller: "That part of the book," says he, “which runs on from the 40th chapter, manifestly argues a writer who lived in Judea, after the city of Jerusalem had been burnt by the Chaldeans, and the Jewish commonwealth had been overturned. For neither does he predict those most grievous calamities as future, but mourns for them as present; and that, not as a prophet, to whose mind future

* Dr. Gesenius has the same argument in his Commentary (Zweyter Theil, p. 163) on chap. liii.

things are held out as present, but as one who resided in a ruined land, and passed his time in the midst of the ruins of cities. For who, I ask," continues he, "could write such things as these, unless he saw before him the Temple broken down and subverted (viz.), Thy holy cities are a solitude, Zion is a solitude, Jerusalem is desolate; our holy house, and our glory, where our forefathers praised thee, he hath burnt with fire, and all our desirable places are given up to devastation.'" (Is. lxiv. 10, 11: I have here translated Rosenmüller's Latin version.) He goes on to tell us, that many more things occur in this part of the book, which manifestly betray a writer who flourished about the end of the Babylonish captivity, who not only hopes that the destruction of the Babylonian empire is drawing nigh, but he is persuaded of it, &c. He then adds: "Now, who does not see, that predictions which describe the imminent destruction of Babylon, or which hold out liberty and a new commonwealth to the exiles, could scarcely be of any use or profit if made known to those Jews who still resided in their own country in peace and quietness, and fearless of any captivity whatever. For to such, they would have been either obscure, prefiguring as they did some future state of things, or useless; nor yet adapted to give consolation, for then they wanted no such thing," &c. This extract contains the principal arguments advanced by this school to shew, that the last twentysix chapters could not have been written by the person who wrote the first thirty-nine of this book. Let us now consider all this. In the first place, then, all prophecy is uttered in the Hebrew, and all the oriental languages of this family, either in the present or past tense of the verbs: for this obvious reason; because they possess no other, or future, tense. For the most part, however, prophecy is uttered in the past tense; for the purpose, as the oriental grammarians

And so Justin Martyr: "Orav di ἤδη γενόμενα λέγη, ὡς καὶ ἐν τοῖς So that there was not quite so first ages of the church as our Eusebius too, in the Demonfollowing words on this subject:

* See my Hebrew Grammar, p. 352. προφητικὸν πνεῦμα τὰ μέλλοντα γίνεσθαι ὡς προειρημένοις δοξάσαι ἐστίν. Apol. p. 81. much ignorance on these matters in the German friends would have us believe. stratio Evangelica, lib. iv. cap. 15, has the Κατά τινα δὲ συνήθειαν προφητικὴν, τὸ μέλλον ὁ προφήτης ὡς παρωχηκὸς ἀναφωνεῖ, καὶ ὡς περὶ ἑαυτοῦ τοῦ προφητεύοντος δηλοῖ.

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