the Temple, Jesus rose from the grave, and could be regarded as "the first-fruit of them that sleep," the first who was quickened from the sleep of the dead. If so, Paul could assert that this was indeed more than a chance coincidence, that it was the marvellous fulfilment of a prophecy mysteriously indicated by Moses.

At the time of his conversion Paul himself may not have known the day of the crucifixion, which had taken place about eight years before. During this time the apostle of "the faith which should afterward be revealed" had certainly not seen in the crucifixion of Jesus the fulfilment of a prophecy. From the moment that his mind was struck by the theory of the three days, he was determined to bring it before the world, and to make it the foundation of his gospel. At a certain time, not later than his meeting with Peter and James, he must have known that the twelve apostles could not accept his theory of the three days. For the apostolic tradition, as we know it from the first three gospels, testified to the fact that Jesus had eaten the Passover on the 14th Nisan and had been crucified on the 15th Nisan. Against that living tradition Paul could bring forward nothing; but in the unhistorical assumption Paul saw a higher ideal than in the historical fact.

Nobody knew better than Paul that on the 15th Nisan, after sunset, delegates from the Sanhedrim annually chose a spot near to Jerusalem where a few bundles of the first ripened barley were reaped and brought into the court of the Temple. On the 16th Nisan, when it began to dawn, the barley

1

sheaf or the omer of barley-flour was waved by the priests before the Lord, and the Israelites offered "an he-lamb without blemish" for a burntoffering. Whoever distinguished in Scripture a double sense, as the Essenes and Paul did, ought to have interpreted certain passages in the Psalms and the 53rd chapter of Isaiah in such a manner as to make them refer to the Angel-Messiah, his atoning death and resurrection. They would argue thus.

Of none but of this Messiah could it have been written that for the transgression of God's people was he wounded; "the chastisement lay on him for our salvation, and by his stripes are we healed." The servant of God was led " as a lamb" to the slaughter; and as the Paschal lamb had been slain for the celebration of the "sacrifice" of the Lord's Passover,* so the life of the servant of God was given as a sacrifice for sin, the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all; . . . . . by his wisdom he, my servant, the righteous, justifies many, and he beareth their transgressions; . . . . he gave his life into death, and was counted with the transgressors. .. Free from the travail of his soul, he will satisfy his eyes." If in the words on the liberation from the travail of his soul an indication could be found of a miraculous restoration to life, of his resurrection, this figurative explanation could be confirmed by the words of the Psalmist: "Thou wilt not leave his soul in death, nor wilt thou

1 Exod. xii. 5.

2 Exod. xxxiv. 25; Lev. xxiii. 5, 6, 10, 12; Jos. "Ant." iii. 10, 5.

suffer thine holy one to see corruption," or, more literally: "Thou wilt not leave his soul in the lower world, not suffer that thy pious ones see the pit."

In all

Instead of supporting the theory of the three days according to the Scripture by these passages in Scripture, not one of them is ever cited by Paul. This we explain by the facts that the servant of God. is not called the Son of God, and that whilst the expression "the holy one" is by Isaiah referred to God the "Creator" and the "Redeemer of Israel,"* it is not the holy one, but the pious ones who, according to the literal translation of the passage, were to be saved from the danger of death." the passages of Scripture which might by figurative interpretation be made to refer to the theory of the Angel-Messiah, to his atoning death as Lamb of God, and his resurrection on the third day as first-fruit of them that sleep, not a word is said to confirm these doctrines. We have pointed out that none of the Messianically interpreted passages in Scripture, except those connected with astrology, point to the Messiah as a superhuman being, an incarnate angel.

It was most difficult, indeed quite impossible, to assert that according to the Scripture the resurrection of Christ had taken place contemporaneously with the offering of the first-fruit, unless Jesus had

1 Isa. liii.; Ps. xvi. 10; Bunsen's "Bibelwerk."

2 Isa. xliii. 15, xlix. 7.

3 Comp. Ps. xvi. 10, ix. 14 ("liberator from the gates of death"), xxx. 3 ("thou hast brought up my soul from the lower world ").

been crucified contemporaneously with the slaying of the Paschal lamb, and this had not been the As the crucifixion had not taken place on the 14th Nisan, the day of the first-fruit and of the assumed resurrection, the 16th Nisan was not the

case.

third day in any sense. Therefore Paul's theory fell thereby at once to the ground, according to which the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus had been typified by the institutions which Moses had fixed for those two days. Yet, convinced that by his death and resurrection, on these assumed days respectively, Christ did fulfil a prophecy mystically indicated by Moses, Paul would know nothing else than the crucified and risen Christ as the Lamb of God and the first-fruit of them that sleep.

PAUL AND THE ANGEL-MESSIAH.

All the analogies drawn by Paul from the Old Testament are extremely bold and imaginary; his allegorical fabric is raised on a most slender, if not, as we assert, merely nominal, historical foundation. Paul found no difficulty in asserting-what required to be proved that the promised seed of Abraham "is" Christ, that Hagar is Sinai, and Sarah is Jerusalem above. Again he writes: "What thou sowest is not quickened unless it die." We know that the corn after its death in the earth does not live again except by its progeny. But the boldest and most important attempt was made by Paul to find Scriptural authority for his assertion in the First Epistle to the Corinthians that Christ is "the

spiritual rock" which followed the Israelites. In the Book of Exodus it is written of the angel of God who appeared to the Israelites in the wilderness, that he went before and followed them. That angel had in the Targum been identified with the Memra or Word of God. It is this Targumistic and perhaps Essenic tradition which Paul, following in the steps of Stephen, has applied to Christ, whom he calls "the spiritual rock who followed" the Israelites, as the angel of the Lord did. Paul likewise refers to Christ as an angel when he states that the Galatians had received him, when detained by illness, as if he had been "an angel of God, even as Christ." He also says, apparently of the angel who stood by him in the night of the shipwreck "whose I am, and whom I serve." He ackrowledges God as the Creator, saying that "from him and through him and unto him are all things," but he likewise says that all things are "through' the "one Lord Jesus Christ," the "second Adam" and "man of (from) heaven," sent by God "in the likeness of sinful flesh," who for a time gave up his "form of God" for "the form of a servant," and who by the resurrection was proved to be "the Son of God," the conqueror over death.1

This new doctrine of Jesus as the incarnate Angel-Messiah was proclaimed by the apostle of the faith which—according to his assertion-" should

1 Exod. xxiii. 20, 21, xxxii. 34, xii. 21-24; 1 Cor. x. 1-4; Gal. iv. 14; Acts xxvii. 23; 1 Cor. viii. 6; Rom. xi. 36, xv. 22, 45-47; Rom. viii. 3; Phil. ii. 6, 7; Rom. i. 4; 1 Cor. xv. 55-57.