Jesus retained for execution. In this incident we are furnished with a striking counterpart to the ceremonies of the expiation-day. In the release of the robber Barabbas we see the lot coming up with the inscription "for Azazel," while in the condemnation of Christ, we read the opposite allotment, "for Jehovah." We cannot refrain from regarding Barabbas in this transaction as an impersonation, a representative type, of the whole people to whom he belonged, and in the words of Peter on the day of Pentecost, we more than imagine that we see described the very process of selection and rejection which stands forth before us in the prescribed ceremonies of the Jewish Law; Acts 3: 13-15. The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our father has glorified his Son Jesus, whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead." Here we have the typical scene of the wilderness vividly enacted before us in its substantiated realities of a far different place and a far distant age. In Barabbas released, with all his crimes upon his head, in accordance with the emission of the goat loaded with the sins of the congregation, we see a lively, and we doubt not, a designed, emblematic presentation of the fact of the judicial thrusting forth of that covenant race, with the weight of the imprecated curse of God abiding upon them from one generation to another. Nay, so precise is the accordance between the items of the adumbration and of the accomplishment, that we behold in Pilate the fore-shadowed "fit man" by whom the discharged goat was led forth into the wilderness. "He shall send him away by the band of a fit man into the wilderness." The original is peculiar; beyad ish itti, by the hand of a man timely, opportune, seasonable. The proper Greek rendering, as Bochart remarks, is xaigi or suxaig well-timed; and the evangelist in his account of Pilate's time-serving agency in the events of the crucifixion, presents us with the very man for the nonce, who is so significantly designated by the epithet before us. Matt. 27: 20-26: "But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them: Whether of the twain will

ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus, which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified. And the governor said, Why? what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified. When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person; see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and our children. Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified."

We here leave the subject, commended to the calm consideration of our readers, to whom we say, in the language of Spencer, proposing his views of the same subject,---" Si quis lumine perspicaciore donatus, hujus instituti rationes solidiores assignaverit, me minime pertinacem experietur."

ARTICLE VII.

EXPLANATION OF Ζαχαρίου υἱοῦ Βαραχίου, ΜΑΤΤ. 23: 35.

By Christ. Wilhelm Müller, Preacher at Recknitz Mecklenburg. Translated by the Junior Editor from the Theologische Studien und Kritiken.

Dr. Winer-Bibl. Realwörterbuche 2. Aufl. Th. II. p. 822, -declares himself, with the latest expositors of the above passage, for the opinion, that Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, of whose being stoned, we have an account in 2 Chr. 24: 21, is unquestionably here meant. Even Olshausen, the faithful student of the Scriptures, finds nothing objectionable in the opinion, that Matthew confounded the name of the father of the murdered, perhaps with the father of Zechariah, one of the prophets of the Old Testament, and rather adopts it, than favor an opinion at all forced.-Bibl. Commentar I. p. 854. 3. Aufl. But, notwithstanding this agreement of the latest expositors, it seems to us that there are objections of no little weight to this interpretation. The opinion, that the

evangelist has here been guilty of a failure of memory is ever to be received with caution, and is liable to the charge of arbitrariness. Then, too, the place and time given in Chronicles seem not to suit the passage in our Evangelist. In Chronicles as above, it is said, that Zechariah was stoned in the court of the temple-nine, according to the LXX., έv aůλñ oïxou xugiou. And although we should concede, that the place as indicated by Matthew, μεταξὺ τοῦ ναοῦ καὶ Tou Oudiaorgiou-compare the parallel in Luke 11: 51,—is consonant with the representation in the Chronicles, yet we ask if the Lord in his discourse alluded to that passage in Chronicles, wherefore the extended and more exact specification of the place in the gospel? It seems not to have originated from Jewish tradition; for in the Talmud, to the question: ubinam loci interfecerunt Zachariam, the answer is the following: nec in atrio Israëlis, nec in atrio mulierum, sed in atrio sacerdotum-cf. Lightfoot Hor. Heb. ad Matt. 23: 25. The circumstantial pointing out of the locality in the gospels, itself renders the allusion to the Chronicles improbable in our estimation.

In respect to the chronological agreement also, we might find, in our most recent expositors, more subtilty than truth. Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, was put to death under king Joash about 840 B. C.; and Jesus is supposed to have meant this murder in the passage before us, forsooth, because it is the last recorded murder of a prophet in the Old Testament. But if the Lord says to his contemporaries, that all the innocent blood shed on the earth must come on them, why should he exclude from the recompense the whole period from Joash to his own day? Is it not much more natural and probable to suppose, that he took the murder of Abel as the terminus a quo, the murder of a pious (öixaios) man of that generation as the terminus ad quem, and so comprehended all innocent blood shed from the creation of the world-ἀπὸ καταβολής xóoμou in Luke-to his own day? This view is supported by the fact, that the poveúdars-ye have murdered-points precisely to a deed of those then living, especially as a nice distinction between the fathers and the contemporaries of our Lord runs through the whole discourse. To remove these difficulties, De Wette remarks-exeget. Handbuch I. 1, p. 194-"povsúdars is spoken according to the idea of community of guilt; properly speaking, the fathers had done it

-compare Gen. 46: 4. Ps. 66: 6. Hos. 12: 5." This opinion, however, seems inadmissable, as the same personal designation, in πλώσατε ν. 32, as in ἀποκτενεῖτε καί σταυρώσετε v. 34., manifestly applies only to those addressed, and és' iμãs v. 35, points precisely to the same persons. The idea of communitative guilt certainly lies in the whole tenor of the discourse, but not in the word épovecare, which, if what was said referred to the murder of Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, must much rather denote a community of action.

Although, on account of these objections we cannot agree with the latest interpreters of this passage, yet we must accord with them in this, that they set aside the other explanations considered by them, as arbitrary and groundless. We wonder the more, however, that they have altogether overlooked the oldest of all interpretations which finds in Zacharias the father of John the Baptist. Even Winer, who mentions it, enters into no examination of it. The learned Lightfoot, as above quoted, certainly gives his judgment. there: quae de Zacharia, Baptista patre, hic dicuntur, somnia sunt; but this cannot prevent us from making the attempt to justify again this earliest interpretation.

Origen, the father of Exegesis, says, in Tract. xxvi, in Matt., that Zacharias, the father of John, was murdered by the Jews, who was enraged because he had allowed Mary, after the birth of the Saviour, to stand in a part of the temple appropriated exclusively to virgins and in another place -Tom. xi. in Matt. p. 225, ed Huet.-he says expressly that Jesus, by the language in Matt. 23: 35, confirms a writing considered as apocryphal, ἐν ἀκοκρύφοις φερομένην-Basilices, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, and others, agree with Origen-comp. Thilo, cod. apocr. N. T. I. Proleg. LXIV. n. There is a different tradition of the murder of this Zacharias found in the Protevangelium Jacobi, capp. xx.XXIV.-Thilo. I. 1, p. 262 sq. Zacharias is here represented as having been put to death by Herod the Great, at the time of the murder of the children of Bethlehem, because he would or could not give him information of the abode of his son John. Of this opinion was the Patriarch Peter of Alexandria, expressed in his pastoral letter a. 306-Routhii Reliq. sacr. Vol. 111. p. 341 sq., and the Nestorian Bishop Solomon of Bassora sac. 13.—Assemanni Biblioth. Orient. T. III. P. I., p. 315 sq.-who represents as the common

opinion of Syrian Christians, that Zacharias, on account of his concealment of his son, was, by Herod's order, slain between the temple and altar.

These testimonies are sufficient to establish the fact of a constant tradition, during the first centuries of the Christian era, that the father of the Baptist had been murdered, although the tradition varies as to the occasion and manner of his murder. This variation, however, cannot make us suspicious as to the matter of the tradition itself, as it is universally characteristic of it, that it conjectures the occasion and attendant circumstances of any fact committed to it, and reports them in connection with the fact itself. For the truth of the fact, we have two witnesses of weight in Origen and the Protevangelium Jacobi. For no one will deny critical tact to Origen, nor accuse him of a blind credulity in tradition. If then he applies the account of the murder of Zacharias to the explanation of our passage of the Scriptures, it must have seemed to him to rest on good grounds. Of the Protevangelium Jacobi, however, the learned editor-Thilo, I.I. p. xlv.-judges, that this very ancient writing, of which already Origen, Epiphanius, Gregory of Nyssa, indeed, perhaps Justin Martyr and Clemens Alexandrinus, make mention, might contribute very much to the criticism and grammatico-historical interpretation of the New Testament. Comp. in the same, p. lxii., the favorable opinion of Combefisius. Would it not, then, betray an excessive protestant abhorrence of all tradition, if we should place in the land of dreams, an account in itself not improbable, merely because it is found in a writer of traditions? We appeal frequently and with justice to the testimony of tradition, on other points of controversy, e. g. as to the authenticity of our gospels. The only inquiry therefore is, whether the father of the Baptist suits the context of our passage; then we have in the words of Jesus, as Origen correctly remarks, a confirmation of the traditionary account of the murder of Zacharias.

That the time, in which this murder falls, agrees very well with the language of Jesus, indeed appears exclusively admissable, has been already determined above. When Jesus spake these words, about thirty years had passed away since the murdering of our Zacharias: he could, therefore, adduce the same as an act of his contemporaries-povsúdare. And what case lay nearer to him than the murdering, in the sanc