I väntan på Jesus

However, he has considered it to promote, to a great extent, a correct understanding of the New Testament scriptures, to know the country, the people, the time from which these writings owe their origin, the circle of ideas in which they lived, for whom Jesus proclaimed that he was the Messiah. For clear and obvious is that even the new in his teaching must attach, either as a development or an opposite, to the common opinions of the people. Of great importance is, therefore, to know, what was preached in the synagogues and what was believed about Messiah at the time when Jesus appeared. When Andreas said to his brother Simon: "We have found the Messiah" (John 1: 41), and this immediately followed him to Jesus, what was Simon then looking for and thought to find? What did the word Messiah mean to him? Which ideas did it arouse in his soul? And when the same Simon Peter stated his creed: "You are Christ, son of the living God", or Nathanael exclaimed: "Rabbi, you are the son of God, you are the king of Israel", what did they mean by this expression "son of God"? In what sense were these words used in Bethsaida's, Kapernaum's and Nazareth's synagogues, where Andreas, Petrus, Nathanael and the people that surrounded Jesus had been taught about Messiah and been strengthened in the hope about his soon coming? Paulus was a scribe and a Pharisee. As a youth he had sat at the Rabbi Gamaliel's feet. He was raised by the synagogue teachings, had incorporated its language and the ways it prefered. One just need to look into the older rabbinic literature to immediately grasp the similarity between its mode of presentation and Paulus'. And so it must be, if Paul, when he wrote, would not be incomprehensible to himself. Is it not important for a clear understanding of him to know the, so to speak, technical words, expressions and pictures, which in the synagogue were traditional? Clearer light over the content of the New Testament, greater certainty about it, which its author wanted to express with his peculiar sayings, must undoubtedly be distributed through a preliminary study such as that implied. Therein lies the right preparation to enter the sanctuary of the New Covenant. But to believe that one should look back at the Scriptures from the standpoint of a dogmatics which came about under the influence of several factors, centuries after the life of Christ, which was as well formulated by Greeks and Romans, who owned poor or no knowledge of the circle of ideas in which Jesus' disciples and chroniclers were raised, or the conditions, from which they proceeded, this is already in itself an error. A certain chapter of this dissertation therefore presents the fruit of a study of the Messiah idea by the Jews before and at the appearance of Jesus. The knowledge of this is, as already pointed out, the forecourt of the New Testament Christ doctrine, necessary to undergo to come to her.