The Expositor (Volume 6) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the ultimate confirmation of any hypothesis can be hoped. The recovery of documents appertaining to the environment of the " Second Isaiah" would tell the dwellers in the Cave whether their reconstructions of the realities from the shadow had been correct. D. S. Mabooliouth. JOHN THE BAPTIST AND HIS MESSAGE. The Evangelists are concerned wholly with the life of Jesus, and the ministry of John the Baptist is of little interest to them, except in its relation to the greater work which was to follow. We may therefore infer that their portrait of John is so coloured as to do him at on-e more and less than justice. On the one hand his affinitii with Jesus are unduly emphasized. All other features in his work are thrown into the background, and he stands before us in his most exalted capacity as the witness to the Light. On the other hand, his appearance is viewed as a mere passing episode. An impression is left on our minds that his mission had no separate value or result, and was immediately merged in that of his Successor. It is evident, however, from various indications in the New Testament itself, that John was not simply a forerunner of Jesus, but was an independent teacher, with a message and a programme of his own. When he was thrown into prison his disciples continued his work, apparently unconscious that it had now be'en superseded. Long after his death we find traces of a community which looked back upon him as its founder, and which was never wholly absorbed into the Christian Church. In order to understand his true relation to Jesus, we require in the first instance to study him by himself, forgetting as far as possible the greater events to which his ministry was the prelude.Our only materials for such a study (apart from a debated passage in Josephus l) are g...