exegetical art. It is true that if art sufficed, we should not have long to wait for the solution in this case. We should be asked to content ourselves with one or other of the artificial solutions with which exegetes have been accustomed from of old to find a way round this difficulty. Usually the saying is claimed as supporting the "presence" of the Kingdom. This is the line taken by Wendt, Wernie, and Arnold Meyer. [1] According to the last named it means: "From the days of John the Baptist it has been possible to get possession of the Kingdom of God; yea, the righteous are every day earning it for their own." But no explanation has heretofore succeeded in making it in any degree intelligible how Jesus could date the presence of the Kingdom from the Baptist, whom in the same breath He places outside of the Kingdom, or why, in order to express so simple an idea, He uses such entirely unnatural and inappropriate expressions as "rape" and "wrest to themselves."
The full difficulties of the passage are first exhibited by Johannes Weiss. [2] He restores it to its natural sense, according to which it means that since that time the Kingdom suffers, or is subjected to, violence, and in order to be able to understand it literally he has to take it in a condemnatory sense. Following Alexander Schweizer, [3] he sums up his interpretation in the following sentence: Jesus describes, and in the form of the description shows His condemnation of, a violent Zealotistic Messianic movement which has been in progress since the days of the Baptist. [4] But this explanation again makes Jesus express a very simple meaning in a very obscure phrase. And what indication is there that the sense is condemnatory? Where do we hear anything more about a Zealotic Messianic movement, of which the Baptist formed the starting-point? His preaching certainly offered no incentive to such a movement, and Jesus' attitude towards the Baptist is elsewhere, even in Jerusalem, entirely one of approval. Moreover, a condemnatory saying of this kind would not have been closed with the distinctive formula: "He that hath ears to hear let him hear" (Matt. xi. 15), which elsewhere, cf. Mark iv. 9, indicates a mystery.
We must, therefore, accept the conclusion that we really do not understand the saying, that we "have not ears to hear it," that we do not know sufficiently well the essential character of the Kingdom of God, to understand why Jesus describes the coming of the
- ↑ Arnold Meyer, Jesu Muttersprache, 1896. P. W. Schmidt, too, in his Geschichte Jesu (Freiburg, 1899), defends the same interpretation, and seeks to explain this obscure saying by the other about the "strait gate."
- ↑ Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, 2nd ed., 1900, p. 192 ff.
- ↑ Stud. Krit., 1836, pp. 90-122.
- ↑ See also Die Vorstellungen vom Messias und vom Gottesreich bei den Synoptikern. (The Conceptions of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God in the Synoptic Gospels.) By Ludwig Paul. Bonn, 1895. 130 pp. This comprehensive study discusses all the problems which are referred to below. Matt. xi. 12-14 is discussed un the heading "The Hinderers of the Kingdom of God."
