these scholars. Sometimes, indeed, they become more obscure than before. According to Meyer, for instance, the question of Jesus whether His disciples can drink of His cup, and be baptized with His baptism means, if put back into Aramaic, "Can you drink as bitter a drink as I; can you eat as sharply salted meat as I?" [1] Nor does Dalman's Aramaic retranslation help us much with the saying about the violent who take the Kingdom of Heaven by force. According to him, it is not spoken of the faithful, but of the rulers of this world, and refers to the epoch of the Divine rule which has been introduced by the imprisonment of the Baptist. No one can violently possess himself of the Divine reign, and Jesus can therefore only mean that violence is done to it in the person of its subjects.
On this it must be remarked, that if the saying really means this, it is about as appropriate to its setting as a rock in the sky. Jesus is not speaking of the imprisonment of the Baptist. By the days of John the Baptist He means the time of his public ministry.
It is equally open to question whether in putting that crucial question regarding the Messiah in Mark xii. 37 He really intended to show, as Dalman thinks, "that physical descent from David was not of decisive importance-it did not belong to the essence of the Messiahship."
But a point in regard to which Dalman's remarks are of great value for the reconstruction of the life of Jesus is the entry into Jerusalem. Dalman thinks that the simple "Hosanna, blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord" (Mark xi. 9) was what the people really shouted in acclamation, and that the additional words in Mark and Matthew are simply an interpretative expansion. This acclamation did not itself contain any Messianic reference. This explains "why the entry into Jerusalem was not made a count in the charge urged against Him before Pilate." The events of "Palm Sunday" only received their distinctively Messianic colour later. It was not the Messiah, but the prophet and wonder-worker of Galilee whom the people hailed with rejoicing and accompanied with invocations of blessing. [2]
Generally speaking, the value of Dalman's work lies less in the solutions which it offers than in the problems which it raises. By its very thorough discussions it challenges historical theology to test its most cherished assumptions regarding the teaching of Jesus, and make sure whether they are really so certain and self-evident. Thus, in opposition to Schurer, he denies that the thought of the
- ↑ See the explanation by means of the Aramaic of a selection of the saying Jesus in Meyer, pp. 72-90. A Judaism more under Parsee influence is assumed as explaining the origin of Christianity by E. Boklen, Die Verviandschaft der judisch-christlichen mit der parsischen Eschatologie (The Relation of Jewish-Christian to Persian Eschatology), 1902, 510 ff.
- ↑ The same view is expressed by Wellhausen, Israelitische und judische Geschichte, 3rd ed., p. 381, note 2; and by Albert Schweitzer, Das Messianitats- und Leidensgekeimnis, 1901.
