The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (4th ed.)

At the moment that John had completed his baptism of Jesus, the synoptical gospels tell us that the heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, and a voice from heaven designated him the Son of God, in whom the Father was well pleased. The fourth Evangelist (i. 32 ff.) makes the Baptist narrate that he saw the Holy Spirit descend like a dove, and remain on Jesus; but as in the immediate context John says of his baptism, that it was destined for the manifestation of the Messiah, and as the description of the descending dove corresponds almost verbally with the synoptical accounts, it is not to be doubted that the same event is intended. The old and lost Gospels of Justin and the Ebionites give, as concomitants, a heavenly light, and a flame bursting out of the Jordan;6 in the dove and heavenly voice also, they have alterations, hereafter to be [240]noticed. For whose benefit the appearance was granted, remains doubtful on a comparison of the various narratives. In John, where the Baptist recites it to his followers, these seem not to have been eye-witnesses; and from his stating that he who sent him to baptize, promised the descent and repose of the Spirit as a mark of the Messiah, we gather that the appearance was designed specially for the Baptist. According to Mark it is Jesus, who, in ascending from the water, sees the heavens open and the Spirit descend.

Even in Matthew it is the most natural to refer εἶδε, he saw, and ἀνεῴχθησαν αὐτῷ, were opened to him, to ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Jesus, the subject immediately before; but as it is said, in continuation, that he saw the Holy Spirit ἐρχόμενον ἐπ’ αὐτὸν, not εφ’ αὑτὸν (Mark’s ἐπ’ αὐτὸν, which does not agree with his construction, is explained by his dependence on Matthew), the beholder seems not to be the same as he on whom the Spirit descended, and we are obliged to refer εἶδε and ἀνεῴχθησαν αὐτῷ to the more remote antecedent, namely the Baptist, who, as the heavenly voice speaks of Jesus in the third person, is most naturally to be regarded as also a witness. Luke appears to give a much larger number of spectators to the scene, for according to him, Jesus was baptized ἐν τῷ βαπτισθῆναι ἅπαντα τὸν λαὸν, when all the people were baptized, and consequently he must have supposed that the scene described occurred in their presence.7

The narrations directly convey no other meaning, than that the whole scene was externally visible and audible, and thus they have been always understood by the majority of commentators. But in endeavouring to conceive the incident as a real one, a cultivated and reflecting mind must stumble at no insignificant difficulties. First, that for the appearance of a divine being on earth, the visible heavens must divide themselves, to allow of his descent from his accustomed seat, is an idea that can have no objective reality, but must be the entirely subjective creation of a time when the dwelling-place of Deity was imagined to be above the vault of heaven. Further, how is it reconcilable with the true idea of the Holy Spirit as the divine, all-pervading Power, that he should move from one place to another, like a finite being, and embody himself in the form of a dove? Finally, that God should utter articulate tones in a national idiom, has been justly held extravagant.8

Even in the early church, the more enlightened fathers adopted the opinion, that the heavenly voices spoken of in the biblical history were not external sounds, the effect of vibrations in the air, but inward impressions produced by God in the minds of those to whom he willed to impart himself: thus of the appearance at the baptism of Jesus, Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia maintain that it was a vision, and not a reality, ὀπτασία, οὐ φύσις.9 To the simple indeed, says Origen, in their simplicity, it is a light thing to set the universe in motion, and to sever a solid mass like the heavens; but those who search more deeply into such matters, will, he thinks, refer to those higher revelations, by means of which chosen persons, even waking, and still more frequently in their dreams, are led to suppose that they perceive something with their bodily senses, while their minds only are affected: so that consequently, the whole appearance in question should [241]be understood, not as an external incident, but as an inward vision sent by God; an interpretation which has also met with much approbation among modern theologians.

In the first two Gospels and in the fourth, this interpretation is favoured by the expressions, were opened to him, ἀνεῴχθησαν αὐτῷ, he saw, εἶδε, and I beheld, τεθέαμαι, which seem to imply that the appearance was subjective, in the sense intended by Theodore, when he observes that the descent of the Holy Spirit was not seen by all present, but that, by a certain spiritual contemplation, it was visible to John alone, οὐ πᾶσιν ὤφθη τοῖς παροῦσιν, ἀλλὰ κατά τινα πνευματικὴν θεωρίαν ὤφθη μόνῳ τῷ Ἰωάννῃ: to John however we must add Jesus, who, according to Mark, participated in the vision. But in opposition to this stands the statement of Luke: the expressions which he uses, ἐγένετο—ἀνεῳχθῆναι—καὶ καταβῆναι—καὶ φωνὴν—γενέσθαι, it came to pass—was opened—and descended—and a voice came, bear a character so totally objective and exterior,10 especially if we add the words, in a bodily form, σωματικῷ εἴδει, that (abiding by the notion of the perfect truthfulness of all the evangelical records) the less explicit narratives must be interpreted by the unequivocal one of Luke, and the incident they recount must be understood as something more than an inward revelation to John and Jesus. Hence it is prudent in Olshausen to allow, in concession to Luke, that there was present on the occasion a crowd of persons, who saw and heard something, yet to maintain that this was nothing distinct or comprehensible.

By this means, on the one hand, the occurrence is again transferred from the domain of subjective visions to that of objective phenomena; while on the other, the descending dove is supposed visible, not to the bodily eye, but only to the open spiritual one, and the words audible to the soul, not to the bodily ear. Our understanding fails us in this pneumatology of Olshausen, wherein there are sensible realities transcending the senses; and we hasten out of this misty atmosphere into the clearer one of those, who simply tell us, that the appearance was an external incident, but one purely natural.

This party appeals to the custom of antiquity, to regard natural occurrences as divine intimations, and in momentous crises, where a bold resolution was to be taken, to adopt them as guides. To Jesus, spiritually matured into the Messiah, and only awaiting an external divine sanction, and to the Baptist who had already ceded the superiority to the friend of his youth, in their solemn frame of mind at the baptism of the former by the latter, every natural phenomenon that happened at the time, must have been pregnant with meaning, and have appeared as a sign of the divine will. But what the natural appearance actually was, is a point on which the commentators are divided in opinion. Some, with the synoptical writers, include a sound as well as an appearance; others give, with John, an appearance only. They interpret the opening of the heavens, as a sudden parting of the clouds, or a flash of lightning; the dove they consider as a real bird of that species, which by chance hovered over the head of Jesus; or they assume that the lightning or some meteor was compared to a dove, from the manner of its descent. They who include a sound as a part of the machinery in the scene, suppose a clap of thunder, which was imagined by those present to be a Bath Kol, and interpreted into the words given by the first Evangelist. Others, on the contrary, understand what is said of audible words, merely as an explanation of the visible sign, which was regarded as an attestation that Jesus was the Son of God.

This last opinion sacrifices the synoptical writers, who undeniably speak of an audible voice, to John, and thus contains a critical [242]doubt as to the historical character of the narratives, which, consistently followed out, leads to quite other ground than that of the naturalistic interpretation. If the sound was mere thunder, and the words only an interpretation put upon it by the bystanders; then, as in the synoptical accounts, the words are evidently supposed to have been audibly articulated, we must allow that there is a traditional ingredient in these records. So far as the appearance is concerned, it is not to be denied that the sudden parting of clouds, or a flash of lightning, might be described as an opening of heaven; but in nowise could the form of a dove be ascribed to lightning or a meteor. The form is expressly the point of comparison in Luke only, but it is doubtless so intended by the other narrators; although Fritzsche contends that the words like a dove, ὡσεὶ περιστερὰν, in Matthew refer only to the rapid motion. The flight of the dove has nothing so peculiar and distinctive, that, supposing this to be the point of comparison, there would not be in any of the parallel passages a variation, a substitution of some other bird, or an entirely new figure. As, instead of this, the mention of the dove is invariable through all the four gospels, the simile must turn upon something exclusively proper to the dove, and this can apparently be nothing but its form. Hence those commit the least violence on the text, who adopt the supposition of a real dove.

Paulus, however, in so doing, incurred the hard task of showing by a multitude of facts from natural history and other sources, that the dove might be tame enough to fly towards a man;11 how it could linger so long over one, that it might be said, ἔμεινεν ἐπ’ αὐτὸν, it abode upon him, he has not succeeded in explaining, and he thus comes into collision with the narrative of John, by which he had sustained his supposition of the absence of a voice.12