The Gospel of Luke

Front matter

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Preface

THE present Commentary conforms to the general design of the series of which it is a part, and aims to furnish the English reader with literary and historical guidance towards the understanding of the text of Luke. Severe restriction upon space has precluded the discussion of many questions connected with the pre-literary history of the evangelical tradition, but where the understanding of an episode or of a saying has seemed to demand the raising of such questions, the latter have not been entirely ignored.

The reader of the gospels should remember that for a generation after Christ the tradition of his life and teaching circulated in a form in which, as yet unfixed by writing, it was freely adapted to the evangelistic and missionary ends of the Christian society and underwent modification, partly by reference to the changing historical circumstances of the time, and partly through the Church’s need of giving fuller and preciser expression to its experience of Christ. The recognition of such modifications, which were retained when the tradition was put into literary shape by the evangelists, is the justification of historical criticism as applied to the gospels. The reader must not assume that every episode or saying has come down to us just in its original form or context. Interpretative and symbolical elements have been added, now under the influence of Old Testament prophecy and type, now through the Church’s need of defining its conceptions more clearly to itself. But if the reader is not thus at liberty to feel absolved from questions going deeper than to the mere understanding of the text, he will scarcely fail to be compensated by the closer approach to the mind and work of Christ to which this method of study invites him, nor will he lack guidance. For the collective tradition is of such a character that at no vital point is the authentic voice of the Master inaudible or his lineaments obscure. |

Luke’s is the richest and most voluminous of our gospels, and this quality it owes to the incorporation in it of the highly varied matter of its Special or L Source. This source was Judean. Visiting Palestine in the company of Paul between the years A.D. 57 and 59, the Gentile evangelist fell under the spell of the Mother Church of Jerusalem and of the special tradition which he found there, and to the inspiration of this experience we may trace the genesis of his idea of writing a gospel. To the same vil

PREFACE inspiration may be ascribed many of the well-defined characteristics of the work. Paradoxical as it seems, the Gentile writer Luke in some respects reflects the spirit of Judaic Christianity more fully than any of his peers.

In the present Commentary the main emphasis is laid on the teaching of Jesus and on those passages which seem to interpret the purpose of his mission. Here attention is directed primarily to the historical conception of the Kingdom of God which Jesus took up and carried forward, and I have taken the view that the imminence of the Kingdom in his teaching is to be connected throughout with his consciousness of bringing to his nation a final revelation of the redeeming will of God. Jesus offers to his nation, not a new doctrine of the Kingdom, but a conception of the will of God which, if received, brings the goal indicated by the Kingdom into measurable, and, indeed, immediate, relation with the lives of men. On close approach we find that loving enemies, meeting evil with good, dying to self, and becoming by a new birth sons of God, constitute the central and vital datum, the ‘mystery ’ which Jesus reveals to men.

Among other works on Luke, I owe a particular debt to the Commentaries of Easton and Klostermann, and to the great thesaurus of Strack and Billerbeck. Had space permitted, the last-named work would have been laid still more fully under contribution. My thanks are also due to Prof. G. S. Duncan, St. Mary’s College, St. Andrews, and to the Rev. James Manson, M.A., Broughty Ferry, who kindly read the following pages in proof and assisted me with many helpful suggestions.

W. MANSON.

NEw COLLEGE, EDINBURGH.

Jan. 25, 1930.

Contents

I. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES Xi II. SourcES OF THE GOSPEL OF LUKE ’ i ge III. HistorIcAL AND RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE WORK xx

IV. THE AUTHOR OF THE GOSPEL . ° ° « XXVii COMMENTARY THE AUTHOR’S PROLOGUE . ‘ ° ° ° ° I. THE BEGINNINGS (i. 5-11. 52). ‘ ° ° ° 3 II. THE CALL oF JESUS (iii. I-iv. 13). : ° ay ee III. Jesus In GALILEE (iv. 14-ix. 50) . : : - 39

IV. JESUS ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM (ix. 51-xix. 28) IIQ

Chapter I, Verses 26-38

Rather does ver. 36 suggest that like Elizabeth she came of a Levitical line.

The promises in vers. 32-33 that Jesus will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and that the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, constitute an admirable summation of the thoughts and hopes called up in simple Jewish minds at the mention of the Messiah. There was in Judaism another line of Messianic thought which started not from the promise to David but from the prophecy in Daniel vii. 13 f. of one ‘ like a son of man’ who would come with the clouds of heaven, and to whom the Ancient of Days would give an everlasting kingdom: As we shall later see, this more transcendent conception of the Messiah’s person was constantly before the mind of Jesus. But in popular Jewish and Jewish-Christian circles the Messianic hope continued to retain an anchor in the promise made to David’s line. In the present passage Son of the Most High involves as yet no physical conception of the Messiah’s relation to God, but presents him simply as supreme object of the divine love and favour. The promise that the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and will uphold his reign everlastingly, might conceivably be spoken of one who connected with the house of David merely in the natural way. But the throne and the reign here spoken of must be understood spiritually. Jesus was not king of Israel in the political sense, and the Jewish hope sometimes conceived the Davidic Messiah as reigning only for a limited term, after which a newsupernatural era—the Kingdom of God—would replace the present world.

In vers. 34-35 the prediction enters on a higher phase. A Jewish maiden, apprised that she would become the mother of the Messiah, would naturally think of this destiny as to be fulfilled through marriage, and Mary’s marriage was not yet actual. But it is now explained that God’s purpose is immediate, and comes about not by human laws or processes but through the power of the holy Spirit. Hence what is born. of Mary will be called holy, Son of God. It is obvious that in this context ‘ Son of God ’ is to be explained no longer in a purely spiritual but ina physical or hyperphysical sense. Jesus is Son of God because a

new constitutive principle, the creative energy of God, enters - into and determines his nature before he is born. And for sign or proof of the supernatural power of God here spoken of, Mary is pointed to the case of Elizabeth, to whom also, though in a different way, it has been shewn that nothing is ever impossible with God. Hence the submission of faith expressed in the assent of the ancilla Domini, the theme of so much later art and poetry, ‘I am here to serve the Lord. Let it be as you have said.’

Such is Luke’s explanation of the mystery of the Saviour’s personality. The entrance of Christ into history involves the setting aside of the ordinary laws of generation and an independent operation of the Creative Spirit. Such an idea would not be strange to the Greek world, for which Luke was writing. One of the greatest of Greek literary men of the age says expressly that ‘it is not impossible for the spirit of God . . . to engender certain beginnings of birth’ (Plutarch, Numa, 4), and certainly Luke's explanation is in keeping with the belief prevalent in the Christian circles in which he moved. But some uncertainty exists as to whether the Virgin-birth was asserted in the Judean source from which the rest of the birth-narratives is derived. It will be observed that, except for vers. 34-35 and the phrase ‘ as people supposed ’ in iii. 23, Joseph appears without prejudice as one of the parents of Jesus (ii. 27, 33, 41, 43, 48). Doubtless the source might so speak of him without implying that he was actually the father of Jesus. But many scholars consider that vers. 34-35, or at anyrate the words I have no husband in 34b, represent an overlaying of the idea in the source by another idea which was given to Luke by the environing medium of thought in which he lived. On this view: (1) the source spoke of a divinely promised birth but not yet of a Virgin-birth, and (2) Mary’s perplexity in 34a and in 36-37 was inspired purely by the incredible wonder that the Messiah should be born of her. But, even so, the Judean source would not cease to be a witness to the supernatural character of the birth of Jesus. Jesus would still be more than the product of an historical development and more than the culmination of an ethical process in humanity. Jesus comes from God in fulfilment of the agelong promise of redemption, and Luke’s addition, if it be an addition, touches only the mode in which, according to the presuppositions of an age in which the spiritual was commonly defined in physical or supraphysical terms, the entrance of Jesus into history was rendered possible.

i. 39-56: THE Visir oF Mary TO ELIZABETH 39 In those days Mary started with haste for the hill-country, for a 40 town of Judah; she entered the house of Zechariah and Io

CHAPTER I, VERSES 39-56 saluted Elizabeth, and when Elizabeth heard the salutation

of Mary, the babe leapt in her womb. Then Elizabeth was

filled with the holy Spirit ; she called out with a loud cry,

‘Blessed among women are you, and blessed is the fruit of your womb !

What have I done to have the mother of my Lord come to me ? Why, as soon as the sound of your salutation reached my ears, the babe leapt for joy within my womb. And blessed is she who believed that the Lord’s words to her would be fulfilled.’ Then Mary said

‘ My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit has joy in God my Savtour : for he has considered the humiliation of his servant. From this time forth all generations will call me blessed, for He who is Mighty has done great things for me. His name ts holy, his mercy is on generation after generation, for those who reverence him.

He has done a deed of might with his arm, he has scattered the proud with their purposes, princes he has dethroned and the poor he has uplifted, he has satisfied the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

He has succoured his servant Israel, mindful of his mercy— as he promised our fathers, to have mercy on Abraham and his offspring for ever.’

34 55

Mary stayed with her about three months and then returned 56 home.

The visit of Mary to Elizabeth follows upon the sign given to her in ver. 36. The visit enables the narrator to bring out the pre-existing harmony of divine events constituted by the births of John and Jesus. The unborn child of Elizabeth salutes the Mother of the Messiah, and Elizabeth herself is supernaturally inspired to utter the greeting in vers. 42-45. Here again we have to recognize an idealizing interpretation of history. In the actual order of events John did not recognize the Messiahship of Jesus until the close of his own career (Matthew xi. 2-3; Luke vii. 18-19), or, according to another tradition, until the day of Jesus’ baptism (Matthew iii. 14; John i. 32-34). Never-

II theless, in the eternal order a prenatal harmony is seen to govern the relation of the two personalities, and it is the purpose of the present narrative to bring this harmony out.

The hymn, known from its opening word in the Latin Vulgate as the Magnzficat, follows upon the verification of the sign given to Mary, and celebrates in an exalted poetic strain the now certain coming of the Messiah. A few Western MSS. and authorities assign the psalm to Elizabeth, but the textual support for the reading And Mary said is better, and such a prediction as ‘From this time forth all generations will call me blessed ’ obviously refers to the Virgin herself. ‘My soul magnifies the Lord,’ etc. The Magnificat is based in large part on the Song of Hannah in I Samuel 1. 11, li. 1-10. As God is magnified or glorified wherever His grace is seen and acknowledged, so the singer dwells on the divine condescension in granting the Messiah to be born of the lowly Jewish maiden, thus rendering her name for ever blessed, and for ever proving the saving interest of God in His people. (For the expression my Saviour applied to God compare Psalm xxiv. 5, xxv. 5.) In vers. 51-55 the Messianic hopes of the purest elements in Judaic society break into flame. Israel has lain crushed under the foreign despotism of Rome, but will be brought by the Messiah into the liberty of the Kingdom of God. The proud, the rich, the princes are, according to the Jewish conception, those who oppose themselves to God. The humble, the poor, the hungry are the objects of His compassion and righteous vindication. Hence redemption is envisaged as a drastic revolution by which the mighty are dethroned, the rich dispossessed, and the proud humiliated. This language, though it is not to be taken literally but in a spiritual sense, shews how intimately in Judaic Christianity the coming of Christ still stirred the chords of national hope.

As to the origin of the hymn, it has sometimes been proposed to regard it with its companion-piece, the Benedictus, as a free composition of the evangelist. But it is more likely that Luke found it in his source. Possibly a Jewish Messianic psalm, founded on the Song of Hannah, constituted its basis. It may, however, be a purely Christian creation celebrating, by aid of Hannah’s words, the community’s sense that ‘To us a Child has been born, to us a Son has been given’ (Isaiah ix. 6). In either case, the ascription of the hymn to the Mother of our Lord would have a distinct literary fitness.

CHAPTER I, VERSES 57-80 i. 57-80: THE BIRTH OF JOHN

Now the time for Elizabeth’s delivery had elapsed, and she gave 57 birth to a son. When her neighbours and kinsfolk heard of 58 the Lord’s great mercy to her they rejoiced with her, and on 59 the eighth day came to circumcise the child. They were going to call it by the name of its father Zechariah, but the 60 mother told them, ‘No, the child is to be called John.’ They 61 said to her, ‘None of your family is called by that name.’ Then they made signs to the father, to find out what he wanted 62 the child to be called, and he asked for a writing-tablet and 63 wrote down, ‘His name is John,’ to the astonishment of all. Instantly his mouth was opened, his tongue loosed, and he 64 spoke out blessing God. Then fear fell on all their neighbours, 65 and all these events were talked of through the whole of the hill-country of Judaea. All who heard of it bore it in mind ; 66 they said, ‘Whatever will this child become?’ For the hand of the Lord was indeed with him.

And Zechariah his father was filled with the holy Spirit; he 67 prophesied in these words,

* Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel, 68 for he has cared for his people and wrought them redemption ; he has raised up a strong saviour for us 69 in the house of his servant David— as he promised of old by the lips of his prophets— 70 to save us from our foes and from the hand of all who hate 71 us, to deal mercifully with our fathers 72 and to be mindful of his holy covenant, of the oath he swore to Abraham our father, 73 that freed from fear and from the hand of our foes 74 we should worship him in holiness and uprightness 75 all our days within his presence.

And you, my child, shall be called a prophet of the Most 76

High ;

for you shall go in front of the Lord to make his ways ready,

to bring his people the knowledge of salvation 77 through the remission of their sins—

by the tender mercy of our God, 78 who will make the Dawn visit us from on high, 13

79 to shine on those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our steps into the way of peace.’

80 And the child grew, he became strong in the Spirit and remained in the desert till the day when he made his appearance before Israel.

A prominent motive here ts to re-emphasize the religious significance of the name, meaning ‘ Jehovah is gracious,’ which John receives at birth. This name, already communicated to Zechariah (i. 13), and now discerned and pressed by Elizabeth despite the opposition of kinsfolk and friends, is finally decided by appeal to Zechariah, who recovers his speech the same instant. The circumcision of the child follows on the eighth day (cf. Genesis xvii. 12). In ver. 65 there occurs a statement which is of great interest as revealing the region in which these birth-traditions were first diffused. These events were talked of through the whole of the hill-country of Judaea, the dwellers in which had been awestruck by the birth and by the visible signs of grace which attended the child. Ver. 66 refers to the youth and not merely to the birth of John. The extraordinary religious endowments of the child—the hand of the Lord was indeed with him—portended from the start an exceptional destiny. Hence Zechariah is moved to utter the prophetic psalm of thanksgiving (vers. 68-79), which from its opening word in the Latin Vulgate we call the Benedictus.

The Benedictus starts with praise to the God of Israel for sending redemption to His people through a strong Saviour, the Messiah (vers. 68-69). This Saviour arises in the house of David, and his historic task is conceived as national deliverance in terms of the oath which God swore to Abraham (vers. 72-73). With this prospect of national deliverance there goes the hope of religious peace enabling a pure worship and observance of the Law to be established as the permanent rule of life in Israel (vers. 74-75). The hope of being freed from fear and from the hand of our foes reflects an age of peace, and thus assigns the hymn to a date before the war of a.D. 66-70. ‘ The concept of redemption is much the same as in the Magnificat, but with greater emphasis on the ceremonial worship. . . . Palestine will be devoted to the pure observance of the Law, free from the interference and defiling influence of Gentiles’ (Easton). Both in the Magnificat and in the Benedictus, therefore, the national

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CHAPTER I, VERSES 57-80 hope of deliverance from Rome shews through, but the deliverance is to be effected spiritually. At ver. 76 a distinctively Christian thought enters. The child John will be the Lord’s forerunner, and will bring to his people the knowledge of salvation through the remission of their sins. The words are based on the historical work of John, and lead to the thought of the new Christian era as the Dawn from on high which God makes to break on a darkened world (vers. 78-79). For the thought of the Messianic era as Sunrise-time after the world’s night compare Isaiah ix. 2, lx. 1, and especially Malachi iv. 2: ‘ Unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.’ The evangelist, as he wrote these words, cannot but have thought with gratitude of the effects produced by the preaching of Christ in his own Gentile world. He had known the deep spiritual darkness of that world, and its longing for religious certainty, for the assurance of immortality, and for the peace of forgiveness, all of which things had come to it through Christ. For the contemporary pessimism of the Greek world see Professor Gilbert Murray’s Five Stages of Greek Religion, chap. iv.

Like the Magnificat the hymn came doubtless to Luke as part of his Judean source. Drawing its language very largely from the Psalter (cf. Psalms cxi. 9, cxxxil. 17, cvi. 10, cv. 8-9, etc.) it reflects the Christian estimate of John’s personality and work (vers. 76-77), and represents doubtless a Christian composition. The only alternative would be to suppose that a Jewish psalm celebrating the coming of Elijah has been worked over in Christian circles in such a manner as to harmonize with John’s career. On either view the hymn would naturally become associated with the tradition of the prophet’s birth.

ii. I-20: THE BIRTH OF CHRIST

Now in those days an edict was issued by Caesar Augustus for a census of the whole world. (This was the first census, and it took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) So everyone went to be registered, each at his own town, and as Joseph belonged to the house and family of David he went up from Galilee to Judaea, from the town of Nazaret to David’s town called Bethlehem, to be registered along with Mary his wife. She was pregnant, and while they were there

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me WD FH the days elapsed for her delivery ; she gave birth to her first-born son, and as there was no room for them inside the khan she wrapped him up and laid him in a stall for cattle. There were some shepherds in the district who were out in the fields keeping guard over their flocks by night; and an angel of the Lord flashed upon them, the glory of the Lord shone all round them. They were terribly afraid, but the angel said to them, ‘ Have no fear. This is good news I am bringing you, news of a great joy that is meant for all the People. To-day you have a saviour born in the town of David, the Lord messiah. And here is a proof for you: you will find a baby wrapped up and lying in a stall for cattle.’ Then a host of heaven’s army suddenly appeared beside the angel extolling God and saying,

‘Glory to God in high heaven,

and peace on earth for men whom he favours ! ’

15 Now when the angels had left them and gone away to heaven, the

19 20 shepherds said to one another, ‘ Let us be off to Bethlehem to see this thing that the Lord has told us of.’ So they made haste and discovered Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in the stall for cattle. When they saw this they told people about the word which had been spoken to them about the child ; all who heard it were astonished at the story of the shepherds, and as for Mary, she treasured it all up and mused upon it. Then the shepherds went away back, glorifying and extolling God for all they had heard and seen as they had been told they would. .

The dating of the Messiah’s birth by a census or enrolment imposed by Augustus was part of the tradition which Luke found in Judea. The language of ver. 1 is, as popular language often is, somewhat inexact, for no enrolment would extend to the whole world or even to the entire Roman section of the world. Possibly the original expression in the source was not world but ‘folk,’ meaning Israel, the Aramaic term ‘amma (folk) being mistaken for ‘alma (world). We know from Egyptian papyri that from A.D. 20 onwards a census by households at intervals of fourteen years was a feature of the imperial administration of Egypt. A similar census of the province of Syria, including Palestine, took place in a.D. 6, and if the fourteenyear cycle applied to Syria, there may have been a previous

CHAPTER II, VERSES 1-20 census there in 8 B.c., which some scholars consider not too early a date for the birth of Christ.

Ver. 2, stating that the ordinance in question was the first census imposed on Judea, and took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria, is probably an amplification of the source by Luke. We know from Josephus that P. Sulpicius Quirinius carried out an enrolment of Judea in a.p. 6, which provoked a desperate rising under Judas of Gamala (Antig. xviii. 2. 1). The date—a.p. 6—is settled for Josephus by the express statement that the census occurred thirty-seven years after the battle of Actium (31 B.c.). But as A.D. 6 is an impossibly late date for the birth of Christ in view of i. 5, 26, it has usually been held that Luke’s statement assigning the census at the birth of Christ to the governorship of Quirinius is a chronological error. It appears, however, by inscriptions that for two years between Io and 7 B.c. Quirinius, though not at the time governor of Syria —the governor from g to 6 B.c. was C. Sentius Saturninus—was engaged in military operations on the northern frontiers of Cilicia. If this means that he held some administrative commission in the province of Syria, a situation exists in which the carrying out by Quirinius, though not as governor, of such a census as Luke describes becomes a possibility. So at anyrate Sir W. M. Ramsay and some other scholars have argued. But could a census in the years 8-6 B.c. be imposed on Judea which, under Herod (i. 5), was still semi-independent ? The answer is that normally it would not, but Herod, whom the disordered state of affairs in Judea had rendered suspect in Roman eyes, probably deemed it wise to come into line with Roman policy, or Quirinius may have forced his hand. Josephus indicates that a swearing of allegiance to Augustus and Herod was required of ‘all the people of the Jews ’ about this time ( Anfig. xvii. 2.4; Ramsay, Was Christ born at Bethlehem ?, pp. 179-80), and some see in this census of loyalty the enrolment with which the tradition connects Jesus’ birth. It will be seen, however, that this reconstruction of the facts involves many conjectural elements. The precise value of Luke’s statement regarding the census which led to the Saviour’s birth at Bethlehem remains indeterminable.

Normally a census such as the tradition implies would include the names, households, and property-qualifications of the enrolled. An Egyptian census-notice of the year A.D. 104 obliges “all who for any cause are outside their own districts to return

Cc 17 to their homes that they may fulfil the customary requirements of the enrolment and attend to the husbandry-duties which pertain to them’ (Deissmann, Light from the Anctent East, p. 268). Conditions of land-tenure in Egypt were exceptional, and regulations in force there would not apply to Herod’s dominions. Nevertheless, a Herodian census in Palestine being assumed, ‘it would be quite like Herod’s skill in governing Jews to disguise the foreign nature of the command by an appeal to tribal patriotism ’ (Easton). In any case, such a journey was given by Luke’s Judean source as the event which brought about the Saviour’s birth at Bethlehem, and if the journey coincided with one of the stated festivals at Jerusalem, the statement that there was no room for them inside the khan explains itself. All hostelries were thronged with pilgrims.

The narrative of the Shepherds, which forms the centre-piece of the section, condenses in poetic form the significance which the Messiah’s coming has for pious hearts in the original Judean home of Christianity, and forms an interesting counterpart to Matthew’s story of the Magi which reveals the significance of the same event for the missionary church of Antioch, where probably Matthew was written. To the dwellers in Judea, a simple folk keeping guard over their flocks, comes the supernatural good news or ‘evangel’ that a Saviour is born in the town of David. The name ‘Saviour’ indicates for Luke the character in which Jesus is destined to make his appeal to sick and suffering humanity, particularly in that section of the world which lay beyond Israel, and which, as we know from Asclepiusworship and other therapeutic cults of Hellenism, was peculiarly attracted to the thought of a Healer-divinity. The words which follow identify this World-Saviour with the Jewish Messiah of whom the prophets of Israel had spoken. Jesus is the Lord Messiah. As ‘ Messiah’ he fulfils the hope of Israel and brings the Kingdom of God; as ‘ Lord’ he summons the wider world to worship and adore. Over his birth therefore the host of heaven’s army—the phrase is sometimes used of the stars (Acts vii. 42)—is represented as chanting the story of a world’s deliverance.