period the greatest miracles. The later Evangelists are almost completely silent about these retirements, and leave us to suppose that Jesus made His journeys to Caesarea Philippi and the neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon in the middle of winter from mere pleasure in travel, or for the extension of the Gospel, and that He made His last journey to Jerusalem without any external necessity, entirely in consequence of His free decision, even though the expectation of death which they ascribe to Him goes far to counteract the impression of complete freedom." Why do they thus correct the history? "The motive was the same difficulty which draws from us also the question, 'Is it possible that Jesus should flee?'" Keim answers "Yes." Here the liberal psychology comes clearly to light. "Jesus fled," he explains, "because He desired to preserve Himself for God and man, to secure the continuance of His ministry to Israel, to defeat as long as possible the dark designs of His enemies, to carry His cause to Jerusalem, and there, while acting, as it was His duty to do, with prudence and foresight in his relations with men, to recognise clearly, by the Divine silence or the Divine action, what the Divine purpose really was, which could not be recognised in a moment. He acts like a man who knows the duty both of examination and action, who knows His own worth and what is due to Him and His obligations towards God and man."[1]
In regard to the question of eschatology, however, Keim does justice to the texts.[2] He admits that eschatology, "a Kingdom of God clothed with material splendours," forms an integral part of the preaching of Jesus from the first; "that He never rejected it, and therefore never by a so-called advance transformed the sensuous Messianic idea into a purely spiritual one." "Jesus does not uproot from the minds of the the sons of Zebedee their belief in the thrones on His right hand and His left; He does not hesitate to make His entry into Jerusalem in the character of the Messiah; He acknowledges His Messiahship before the Council without making any careful reservations; upon the cross His title is The King of the Jews; He consoles Himself and His followers with the thought of His return as an earthly ruler, and leaves with His disciples, without making any attempt to check it, the belief, which long survived, in a future establishment or restoration of the Kingdom in an Israel delivered from bondage." Keim remarks with much justice "that Strauss had been wrong in rejecting his own earlier and more correct formula," which combined the eschatological
- ↑ Geschichte Jesu. 2nd ed., 1875, pp. 228 and 229.
- ↑ he ultimate reason why Keim deliberately gives such prominence to the eschatology is that he holds to Matthew, and is therefore more under the direct impression of the masses of discourse in this Gospel, charged, as they are, with eschatological ideas, than those writers who find their primary authority in Mark, where these discourses are lacking.
