is opposed the doctrine of the Angel-Messiah, which was not recognized in Israel, and to which passages in the Book of Isaiah and in the Gospels on the virgin-born refer. The seventy weeks in the Book of Daniel do not refer to the year of the birth or of the crucifixion of Jesus. CHAPTER II. JESUS OF NAZARETH. INTRODUCTION. As son of David, Jesus is descended from the socalled strangers in Israel, whose ancestors were, however, the aboriginal Hebrews, those Medes or Chaldeans who had journeyed from "the East," from beyond the Tigris, and had come to Shinar, who captured Babylon four centuries before Abraham was born in that country, and subjugated the aborigines of Hamite-Indian origin. From these were descended the female ancestors of Jesus mentioned in the genealogies, and probably also Melchizedek. These Medes, the Madai of Genesis, originally belonged to the Aryan-Japhetic race, to the monotheists of the East, and they followed the doctrines of the Bactrian Reformer, Zoroaster, which became vitiated by the later Magi, probably of Indian origin. Yet the verbally transmitted tradition, late recorded in the "Zendavesta," was partly preserved in its purity, and scriptures prove that the principal doctrine referred to the "Holy Spirit" in humanity as a medium between God and man. This doctrine of "the spiritual power," or Maga, was by the later priestly caste of the Medes, by the Magi, mixed up with a system of asceticism, of ceremonies and materialistic mysticism, all which things were strange to the original doctrine of Zoroaster. In the place of the ancient fire symbolism, which referred to the invisible innate Holy Spirit, a mixture of astrology, incantations, and every kind of superstition had crept in. But what Plato still called "the genuine, pure, and sublime magic of Zoroaster," was preserved by the memory of the initiated, by a secret doctrine supported by records of the same in the most ancient parts of the "Zendavesta." With this tradition the Massôra in Israel stood in connection.2 Yet the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, its universality, was kept in silence by the law and the prophets until John. Only a future outpouring of the Spirit of God on all flesh was promised, what John called the baptism with the Holy Spirit, that is, the promised new and spiritual covenant, what was designated as the kingdom of heaven, the rule of the Holy Spirit in mankind. THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS UNTIL JOHN. Jesus said: "All the prophets and the Law have prophesied until John . . . . but from the days of John the Baptist until the present moment the kingdom of heaven is taken by violence, and the violently 1 Plato, "De Magia," cap. 25, 27, 31. striving take forcibly possession of it." We explain these for ever memorable words to mean, that the Law and the prophets until John have regarded the kingdom of heaven, the rule of the Holy Spirit on earth, as future; that they therefore have denied the presence of the Spirit of God in humanity. But from the days of John the Baptist until the moment when Jesus uttered these words, that is, since the commencement of his public teaching, the kingdom of heaven has been proclaimed as already come, the Spirit of God as present in humanity. The kingdom of heaven had to be taken by violence because "the blind guides" of the blind, the Scribes and Pharisees who sat in the seat of Moses, had "shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, neither going in themselves, nor suffering them that are entering to enter." This explanation of the mysterious words of Jesus on the kingdom of heaven, which appear displaced in the transmitted text, is in harmony with the teaching on the Spirit of God in the Scriptures by the Law and the prophets until John. It is indicated in the Old Testament that the Spirit existed at the "creation" of heaven and earth, that it was mysteriously active above the waters which covered the lifeless earth. According to Holy Scripture the Divine Spirit was by God breathed into the nostrils of the first man, but in consequence of human sins the Spirit was withdrawn at the time 1 Matt. xi. 13, 12 (Bunsen's "Bibelwerk "). We place the 13th verse before the 12th for greater clearness. of the Flood, as implied by the statement that God's Spirit should "not for ever abide in man." The restoration of this divine gift is in Genesis brought into connection with the victory of the seed of the woman, of the Messiah over the Devil, the seducer of mankind. According to the teaching in Scripture, it is only exceptionally that the Holy Spirit inspires a prophet with superhuman knowledge, as in the case of Balaam; or the Spirit rests upon a man in times of great danger, as on Othniel, to make him "a saviour," or on Gideon, Jephthah and Samson, the deliverers. The Spirit of God is described as coming to Saul and then leaving him. David believed that the Spirit of God was within him, and he prayed that God would not take it from him, but would fit him out or arm him "with a willing spirit." Only in the Book of Job, in the Chaldean doctrinal poem, the doctrine is recorded of the Spirit of God's continuous presence in man. "My breath [Spirit] is still fully in me, the breath of God is in my nostrils;" as long as man lives, he breathes. 'the breath of the Almighty." We therefore find that the Law and the prophets until John do not refer in a single passage to the presence of the Spirit of God in mankind. But the prophets foretell in clear words the future coming of the same, the outpouring of the Divine Spirit on all flesh. They darkly indicate that at this time the 1 Gen. i. 2, ii. 7, vi. 3; Numb. xxiv. 2; Judg. iii. 10, vi. 34, xi. 29, xiii. 25; 1 Sam. x. 6-10, xvi. 14, xviii. 12, xxviii. 15; Ps. li. 12, cxxxix. 7. 2 Job xxvii. 3, xxxiii. 4. |