away captive into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled.' In terms nearly similar, this discourse is related in the 24th chapter of Matthew, and the 13th of Mark. The prospect of the same evils drew from our Saviour upon another occasion, the following affecting expressions of concern, which are preserved by St. Luke [xix. 41]: And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes, for the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee, and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.' These passages are direct and explicit predictions. References to the same event, some plain, some parabolical, or otherwise figurative, are found in divers other discourses of our Lord.' The general agreement of the description with the event, viz., with the ruin of the Jewish nation, and the capture of Jerusalem under Vespasian, thirty-six years after Christ's death, is most evident: and the accordancy in various articles of detail and circumstance has been shown by many learned writers. It is also an advantage to the inquiry, and to the argument built upon it, that we have received a copious account of the transaction from Josephus, a Jewish and contemporary historian. This part of the case is perfectly free from doubt. The only question which, in my opinion, can be raised upon the subject, is, whether the prophecy was really delivered before the event. I shall apply, therefore, my observations to this point solely. 1. The judgment of antiquity, though varying in the precise year of the publication of the three gospels, concurs in assigning them a date prior to the destruction of Jerusalem.2 2. This judgment is confirmed by a strong probability 1 Matt. xxi. 33-46, xxii. 1-7; Mark xii. 1-12; Luke xiii. 1-9, xx. 9-20, xxi. 5-13. 2 Lardner, vol. xiii. arising from the course of human life. The destruction of Jerusalem took place in the seventieth year after the birth of Christ. The three evangelists, one of whom was his immediate companion, and the other two associated with his companions, were, it is probable, not much younger that he was. They must, consequently, have been far advanced in life when Jerusalem was taken; and no reason has been given why they should defer writing their histories so long. 3. If the evangelists,' at the time of writing the gospels, had known of the destruction of Jerusalem, by which catastrophe the prophecies were plainly fulfilled, it is most probable, that, in recording the predictions, they would have dropped some word or other about the completion; in like manner as Luke, after relating the denunciation of a dearth by Agabus, adds, ' which came to pass in the days of Claudius Cæsar:"2 whereas the prophecies are given distinctly in one chapter of each of the three first gospels, and referred to in several different passages of each, and, in none of all these places, does there appear the smallest intimation that the things spoken of were come to pass. I do admit that it would have been the part of an impostor, who wished his readers to believe that his book was written before the event, when in truth it was written after it, to have suppressed any such intimation carefully. But this was not the character of the authors of the gospel. Cunning was no quality of theirs. Of all writers in the world, they thought the least of providing against objections. Moreover, there is no clause in any one of them, that makes a profession of having written prior to the Jewish wars, which a fraudulent purpose would have led them to pretend. They have done neither one thing nor the other. They have neither inserted any words, which might signify to the reader that their accounts were written before the destruction of Jerusalem, which a sophist would have done; nor have they dropped a hint of the completion of the prophecies recorded by them, which an undesigning writer, writing after the event, could hardly, on some or other of the many occasions that presented themselves, have missed of doing. 1 Le Clerc, Diff. III. de Quat. Ev. num. vii. p. 541. : 4. The admonitions' which Christ is represented to have given to his followers to save themselves by flight, are not easily accounted for upon the supposition of the prophecy being fabricated after the event. Either the Christians, when the siege approached, did make their escape from Jerusalem, or they did not if they did, they must have had the prophecy amongst them if they did not know of any such prediction at the time of the siege, if they did not take notice of any such warning, it was an improbable fiction, in a writer publishing his work near to that time (which, upon any even the lowest and most disadvantageous supposition, was the case with the gospels now in our hands), and addressing his work to Jews and to Jewish converts (which Matthew certainly did), to state that the followers of Christ had received admonitions, of which they made no use when the occasion arrived, and of which, experience then recent proved, that those, who were most concerned to know and regard them, were ignorant or negligent. Even if the prophecies came to the hands of the evangelists through no better vehicle than tradition, it must have been by a tradition which subsisted prior to the event. And to suppose, that without any authority whatever, without so much as even any tradition to guide them, they had forged these passages, is to impute to them a degree of fraud and imposture, from every appearance of which their compositions are as far removed as possible. 5. I think that, if the prophecies had been composed after the event, there would have been more specification. The names or descriptions of the enemy, the general, the emperor, would have been found in them. The designation of the time Iwould have been more determinate. And I am fortified in this opinion by observing, that the counterfeited prophecies of the Sibylline oracles, of the twelve patriarchs, and, I am in 1 Luke xxi. 20, 21. 'When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh; then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let them which are in the midst of it depart out, and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.' Matt. xiv. 18. 'When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then let them which be in Judea flee unto the mountains; let him which is on the house top not come down to take anything out of his house, neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.' clined to believe, most others of the kind, are mere transcripts of the history, moulded into a prophetic form. It is objected that the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem is mixed, or connected, with expressions which relate to the final judgment of the world; and so connected, as to lead an ordinary reader to expect, that these two events would not be far distant from each other. To which I answer, that the objection does not concern our present argument. If our Saviour actually foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, it is sufficient; even although we should allow, that the narration of the prophecy had combined together what had been said by him upou kindred subjects, without accurately preserving the order, or always noticing the transition of the discourse. ANNOTATIONS. It is important to keep in mind that there are FOUR points requisite to establish the claim of any alleged Prophecy to proceed from a divine revelation: (1) It must have been delivered prior to the event.1 (2) It must correspond precisely with the event; and must not be in such vague and general language as the predictions in vulgar Almanacs; that a certain great personage is likely to have cause for uneasiness,' &c. (3) It must be something beyond mere human sagacity. This rule precludes the predictions of eclipses, &c. (4) It must be a prediction that could not have caused its own fulfilment, by suggesting to some one who knew of it, a corresponding procedure. For instance, our Lord's riding into Jerusalem in the manner that had been foretold, only indicated his claiming to be the Messiah, but did not establish his claim; since it was what any one could have done. But the other predictions respecting Him depended for their accomplishment on his adversaries, or on some super-human power. 1 Bacon, in his Essay on Prophecies, remarks that many which have passed for such, were probably framed after the event. It is worth remarking, in reference to this subject, that there is a passage in the 2nd Epistle of Peter which seems to represent him (through an error in our Version) as attributing more weight, as evidence, to Prophecies, than to the miraculous signs of which he had been eye-witness. But our Translators did not well understand the force of the Greek Article; an attention to which will clearly show the true sense of the Original, which is, We have the Word of Prophecy more sure; i.e. made, by the fulfilment of it, more clear than when it was uttered.1 It is worth remarking also that the passage occurring shortly after, 'No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation,' does not express the sense of the Original.' The right sense, I cannot doubt, of the whole passage, is, 'We have the Word of Prophecy confirmed' [viz., by the event fulfilling it]: 'for no prophecy is to be interpreted by the words themselves in which it is written. [γραφῆς ιδίας επιλύσεως] (but by the event), for it came not by man's device,' [i.e., if men had been left to their own judgment, they would have probably foretold things quite plainly,] 'but as they were moved by the Spirit of God' [whose decree was, that the clear and full understanding of the predictions should not take place at the time when they were uttered.] It is worth observing, too, that if we look to the fulfilled prophecies of our Lord's coming, they were obscure and doubtful till they were fulfilled. However plain they may appear to us now, it is certain that the whole, or very near the whole, of the Jewish people mistook their meaning, and that the greater part of them rejected the Christ when He did come, precisely because He did not fulfil the expectations which they had founded on their interpretation of the prophecies. Some few, very cautious, men, among them, perhaps said within themselves, 'God has promised us a deliverer; but what kind of a deliverer 1 · ἔχομεν βεβαιότερον τὸν προφητικὸν λόγον : not τὸν προφητικὸν λόγον, Tov BeBaιóτepov, which would have expressed the sense of our Version. 2 The Apostle is not contrasting prophecies of Holy Scripture with any OTHER prophecies: nor would he, had such been his meaning, have said ypapns, but, (according to invariable usage) THE уpapns. Doubtless the word idías agrees, not with ἐπιλύσεως, but with γραφῆς, which is governed by ἐπιλύσεως. |