VI. THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. [909]
§ 76.
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.
In reviewing the public life of Jesus, we may separate from the events those discourses which were not merely incidental, but which stand independent and entire. This distinction, however, is not precise, for many discourses, owing to the occurrences that suggested them, may be classed as events; and many events, from the explanations annexed to them, seem to range themselves with the discourses. The discourses of Jesus given in the synoptical gospels, and those attributed to him in the fourth, differ widely both in form and matter, having only a few isolated sentences in common: they must, therefore, be subjected to a separate examination. Again, there is a dissimilitude between the three first Evangelists: Matthew affects long discourses, and collects into one mass a number of sayings, which in Luke are distributed among various places and occasions; each of these two Evangelists has also some discourses peculiar to himself. In Mark, the element of discourses exists in a very small proportion. Our purpose will, therefore, be best answered, if we make Matthew’s comprehensive discourses our starting point; ascertain all the corresponding ones in the other gospels; inquire which amongst them has the best arrangement and representation of these discourses; and, finally, endeavour to form a judgment as to how far they really proceeded from the lips of Jesus.
The first long discourse in Matthew is that known as the Sermon on the Mount (v.–vii.). The Evangelist, having recorded the return of Jesus after his baptism into Galilee, and the calling of the fishermen, informs us, that Jesus went through all Galilee, teaching and healing; that great multitudes followed him from all parts of Palestine; and that for their instruction he ascended a mountain, and delivered the sermon in question (iv. 23 ff.). We seek in vain for its parallel in Mark, but Luke (vi. 20–49) gives a discourse which has the same introduction and conclusion, and presents in its whole tenor the most striking similarity with that of Matthew; moreover, in both cases, Jesus, at the termination of his discourse, goes to Capernaum, and heals the centurion’s servant. It is true that Luke gives a later insertion to the discourse, for previous to it he narrates many journeyings and cures of Jesus, which Matthew places after it; and while the latter represents Jesus as ascending a mountain, and being seated there during delivery of his discourse, Luke says, almost in contradiction to him, that Jesus came down and stood in the plain. Further, the sermon in Luke contains but a fourth part of that in Matthew, while it has some elements peculiarly its own.
To avoid the unpleasant admission that one of two inspired Evangelists must be in error,—which is inevitable if in relation to the same discourse one of them makes Jesus deliver it on the mountain, the other in the plain; the one sitting, the other standing; the one earlier, the other later; if either the one has made important omissions, or the other as important additions;—the ancient harmonists pronounced these discourses to be distinct, [910] on the plea that Jesus must frequently have treated of the essential points of his doctrine, and may therefore have repeated word for word certain impressive enunciations. This may be positively denied with respect to long discourses, and even concise maxims will always be reproduced in a new guise and connexion by a gifted and inventive teacher; to say the least, it is impossible that any but a very barren mind should repeat the same formal exordium, and the same concluding illustration, on separate occasions.
The identity of the discourses being established, the first effort was to conciliate or to explain the divergencies between the two accounts so as to leave their credibility unimpeached. In reference to the different designation of the locality, Paulus insists on the ἐπὶ of Luke, which he interprets to imply that Jesus stood over the plain, and therefore on a hill. Tholuck, more happily, distinguishes the level space, τόπος πεδινὸς, from the plain properly so called, and regards it as a less abrupt part of the mountain. But as one Evangelist makes Jesus ascend the mountain to deliver his discourse, while the other makes him descend for the same purpose, these conciliators ought to admit, with Olshausen, that if Jesus taught in the plain, according to Luke, Matthew has overlooked the descent that preceded the discourse; or if, as Matthew says, Jesus taught seated on the mountain, Luke has forgotten to mention that after he had descended, the pressure of the crowd induced him to reascend before he commenced his harangue. And without doubt each was ignorant of what he omits, but each knew that tradition associated this discourse with a sojourn of Jesus on a mountain. Matthew thought the mountain a convenient elevation for one addressing a multitude; Luke, on the contrary, imagined a descent necessary for the purpose: hence the double discrepancy, for he who teaches from a mountain is sufficiently elevated over his hearers to sit, but he who teaches in a plain will naturally stand. The chronological divergencies, as well as the local, must be admitted, if we would abstain from fruitless efforts at conciliation. [911]
The difference as to the length and contents of the discourse is susceptible of three explanations: either the concise record of Luke is a mere extract from the entire discourse which Matthew gives without abridgment; or Matthew has incorporated many sayings belonging properly to other occasions; or, lastly, both these causes of variety have concurred. He who, with Tholuck, wishes to preserve intact the fides divina, or with Paulus, the fides humana of the Evangelists, will prefer the first supposition, because to withhold the true is more innocent than to add the false. The above theologians hold that the train of thought in the Sermon on the Mount, as given by Matthew, is closely consecutive, and that this is a proof of its original unity. But any compiler not totally devoid of ability, can give a tolerable appearance of connectedness to sayings which did not originally belong to each other; and even these commentators are obliged to admit [912] that the alleged consecutiveness extends over no more than half the sermon, for from vi. 19 it is a string of more or less isolated sentences, some of them very unlikely to have been uttered on the occasion. More recent criticism has therefore decided that the shorter account of Luke presents the discourse of Jesus in its original form, and that Matthew has taken the licence of incorporating with this much that was uttered by Jesus at various times, so as to retain the general sketch—the exordium, peroration, and essential train of thought; while between these compartments he inserted many sayings more or less analogous borrowed from elsewhere. [913] This view is especially supported by the fact that many of the sentences, which in Matthew make part of the Sermon on the Mount, are in Mark and Luke dispersed through a variety of scenes. Compelled to grant this, yet earnestly solicitous to avert from the Evangelist an imputation that might invalidate his claim to be considered an eye-witness, other theologians maintain that Matthew did not compile the discourse under the idea that it was actually spoken on a single occasion, but with the clearest knowledge that such was not the case. [914] It is with justice remarked in opposition to this, that when Matthew represents Jesus as ascending the mountain before he begins his discourse, and descending after its close, he obviously makes these two incidents the limits of a single address; and that when he speaks of the impression which the discourse produced on the multitude, whose presence he states as the inducement to its delivery, he could not but intend to convey the idea of a continuous harangue. [915] As to Luke’s edition of the sermon, there are parts in which the interrupted connexion betrays deficiencies, and there are additions which do not look genuine; [916] it is also doubtful whether he assigns a more appropriate connexion to the passages in the position of which he differs from Matthew; [917] and hence, as we shall soon see more fully, he has in this instance no advantage over his predecessor.
The assemblage to whom the Sermon on the Mount was addressed, might from Luke’s account be supposed a narrow circle, for he states that the choice of the apostles immediately preceded the discourse, and that at its commencement Jesus lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and he does not, like Matthew, note the multitude, ὄχλους, as part of the audience. On the other hand, Matthew also mentions that before the sermon the disciples gathered round Jesus and were taught by him; and Luke represents the discourse as being delivered in the audience of the people (vii. 1); it is therefore evident that Jesus spoke to the crowd in general, but with a particular view to the edification of his disciples. [918] We have no reason to doubt that a real harangue of Jesus, more than ordinarily solemn and public, was the foundation of the evangelical accounts before us.
Let us now proceed to an examination of particulars. In both editions, the Sermon on the Mount is opened by a series of beatitudes; in Luke, however, not only are several wanting which we find in Matthew, but most of those common to both are in the former taken in another sense than in the latter. [919] The poor, πτωχοὶ, are not specified as in Matthew by the addition, in spirit, τῷ πνεύματι; they are therefore not those who have a deep consciousness of inward poverty and misery, but the literally poor; neither is the hunger of the πεινῶντες (hungering) referred to τὴν δικαιοσύνην (righteousness); it is therefore not spiritual hunger, but bodily; moreover, the adverb νῦν, now, definitely marks out those who hunger and those who weep, the πεινῶντες and κλαίοντες. Thus in Luke the antithesis is not, as in Matthew, between the present sorrows of pious souls, whose pure desires are yet unsatisfied, and their satisfaction about to come; but between present suffering and future well-being in general. [920] This mode of contrasting the αἰὼν οὗτος and the αἰὼν μέλλων, the present age and the future, is elsewhere observable in Luke, especially in the parable of the rich man; and without here inquiring which of the two representations is probably the original, I shall merely remark, that this of Luke is conceived entirely in the spirit of the Ebionites,—a spirit which has of late been supposed discernible in Matthew. It is a capital principle with the Ebionites, as they are depicted in the Clementine Homilies, that he who has his portion in the present age, will be destitute in the age to come; while he who renounces earthly possessions, thereby accumulates heavenly treasures. [921] The last beatitude relates to those who are persecuted for the sake of Jesus. Luke in the parallel passage has, for the Son of man’s sake; hence the words for my sake in Matthew, must be understood to refer to Jesus solely in his character of Messiah. [922]
The beatitudes are followed in Luke by as many woes οὐαὶ, which are wanting in Matthew. In these the opposition established by the Ebionites between this world and the other, is yet more strongly marked; for woe is denounced on the rich, the full, and the joyous, simply as such, and they are threatened with the evils corresponding to their present advantages, under the new order of things to be introduced by the Messiah; a view that reminds us of the Epistle of James, v. 1 ff. The last woe is somewhat stiffly formed after the model of the last beatitude, for it is evidently for the sake of the contrast to the true prophets, so much calumniated, that the false prophets are said, without any historical foundation, to have been spoken well of by all men. We may therefore conjecture, with Schleiermacher, [923] that we are indebted for these maledictions to the inventive fertility of the author of the third gospel. He added this supplement to the beatitudes, less because, as Schleiermacher supposes, he perceived a chasm, which he knew not how to fill, than because he judged it consistent with the character of the Messiah, that, like Moses of old, he should couple curses with blessings. The Sermon on the Mount is regarded as the counterpart of the law, delivered on Mount Sinai; but the introduction, especially in Luke, reminds us more of a passage in Deuteronomy, in which Moses commands that on the entrance of the Israelitish people into the promised land, one half of them shall take their stand on Mount Gerizim, and pronounce a manifold blessing on the observers of the law, the other half on Mount Ebal, whence they were to fulminate as manifold a curse on its transgressors. We read in Josh. viii. 33 ff. that this injunction was fulfilled. [924]
With the beatitudes, Matthew suitably connects the representation of the disciples as the salt of the earth, and the light of the world (v. 13 ff.). In Luke, the discourse on the salt is, with a rather different opening, introduced in another place (xiv. 34 f.), where Jesus admonishes his hearers to ponder the sacrifices that must be made by those who would follow him, and rather to abstain from the profession of discipleship than to maintain it dishonourably; and to this succeeds aptly enough the comparison of such degenerate disciples to salt that has lost its savour. Thus the dictum accords with either context, and from its aphoristical conciseness would be likely to recur, so that it may have been really spoken in both discourses. On the contrary, it cannot have been spoken in the sequence in which it is placed by Mark (ix. 50): for the idea that every one shall be salted with fire (in allusion to hell), has no internal connexion with the comparison of the true disciples of Jesus to salt, denoting their superiority: the connexion is merely external, resulting from the verbal affinity of ἁλίζειν and ἅλας,—it is the connexion of the dictionary. [925] The altered sequel which Mark gives to the apothegm (have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another) might certainly be united to it without incongruity, but it would accord equally well with quite a different train of thought. The apothegm on the light which is not to be hidden, as the salt is not to be without savour, is also wanting in the Sermon on the Mount as given by Luke; who, however, omitting the special application to the disciples, has substantially the same doctrine in two different places. We find it first (viii. 16) immediately after the interpretation of the parable of the sower, where it also occurs in Mark (iv. 21), It must be admitted that there is no incoherence in associating the shining of the light with the fructification of the seed; still, a judicious teacher will pause on the interpretation of a parable, and will not disturb its effect by a hasty transition to new images. At any rate there is no intrinsic connexion between the shining of the inward light, and the declaration appended to it by Luke, that all secrets shall be made manifest. We have here a case which is of frequent recurrence with this Evangelist; that, namely, of a variety of isolated sayings being thrown confusedly together between two independent discourses or narratives. Thus between the parable of the sower and the narrative of the visit paid to Jesus by his mother and brethren, the apothegm on the light is inserted on account of its internal analogy with the parable; then, because in this apothegm there occurs the opposition between concealment and manifestation, it suggested to the writer the otherwise heterogeneous discourse on the revelation of all secrets; whereupon is added, quite irrelevantly to the context, but with some relation to the parable, the declaration, Whosoever hath, to him shall be given. In the second passage on the manifestation of the light (xi. 33), the subject has absolutely no connexion, unless we interpolate one [926] with that of the context, which turns on the condemnation of the cotemporaries of Jesus by the Ninevites. The fact is, that here again, between the discourses against the demand for signs and those at the Pharisee’s dinner, we have a chasm filled up with disjointed fragments of harangues.
At v. 17 ff. follows the transition to the main subject of the sermon; the assurance of Jesus that he came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil, etc. Now as Jesus herein plainly presupposes that he is himself the Messiah, to whom was ascribed authority to abolish a part of the law, this declaration cannot properly belong to a period in which, if Matt. xvi. 13 ff. be rightly placed, he had not yet declared himself to be the Messiah. Luke (xvi. 17) inserts this declaration together with the apparently contradictory one, that the law and the prophets were in force until the coming of John. These are two propositions that we cannot suppose to have been uttered consecutively; and the secret of their conjunction in Luke’s gospel lies in the word νόμος, law, which happens to occur in both. [927] It is to be observed that between the parable of the steward and that of the rich man, we have another of those pauses in which Luke is fond of introducing his fragments.
So little, it appears from v. 20, is it the design of Jesus to inculcate a disregard of the Mosaic law, that he requires a far stricter observance of its precepts than the Scribes and Pharisees, and he makes the latter appear in contrast to himself as the underminers of the law. Then follows a series of Mosaic commandments, on which Jesus comments so as to show that he penetrates into the spirit of the law, instead of cleaving to the mere letter, and especially discerns the worthlessness of the rabbinical glosses (48). This section, in the order and completeness in which we find it in Matthew, is wanting in Luke’s Sermon on the Mount; a decisive proof that the latter has deficiencies. For not only does this chapter contain the fundamental thought of the discourse as given by Matthew, but the desultory sayings which Luke gives, concerning the love of enemies, mercifulness and beneficence, only acquire a definite purpose and point of union in the contrast between the spiritual interpretation of the law given by Jesus, and the carnal one given by the doctors of the time. The words, too, with which Luke makes Jesus proceed after the last woe: But I say unto you, and those at v. 39, And he spake a parable unto them, have been correctly pointed out as indicative of chasms. [928] As regards the isolated parallel passages, the admonition to a quick reconciliation with an adversary (v. 25 f.), is, to say the least, not so easily brought into connexion with the foregoing matter in Luke (xii. 58) as in Matthew. [929] It is still worse with the passage in Luke which is parallel with Matt. v. 32; this text (relative to divorce), which in Matthew is linked in the general chain of ideas, is in Luke (xvi. 18) thrust into one of the apertures we have noticed, between the assurance of the perpetuity of the law and the parable of the rich man. Olshausen tries to find a thread of connexion between the passage and the one preceding it, by interpreting adultery, μοιχεύειν, allegorically, as faithlessness to the divine law; and Schleiermacher [930] attaches it to the succeeding parable by referring it to the adulterous Herod: but such interpretations are altogether visionary. [931] Probably tradition had apprized the Evangelist that Jesus, after the foregoing declaration as to the perpetuity of the Mosaic law, had enunciated his severe principle on the subject of divorce, and hence he gave it this position, not knowing more of its original connexion. In Matt. xix. 9, we find a reiteration of this principle on an occasion very likely to call it forth. The exhortations to patience and submissiveness, form, in Matthew, the spiritual interpretation of the old rule, an eye for an eye, etc., and are therefore a following out of the previous train of thought. In Luke (vi. 29), they are introduced with much less precision by the command concerning love to enemies: which command is also decidedly better given in Matthew as the rectification of the precept, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy (43 ff.). Again: the observation that to love friends is nothing more than bad men can do, is, in Matthew, made, in order to controvert the traditional perversion of the Mosaic injunction to love one’s neighbour, into a permission to hate enemies: in Luke, the observation follows the rule, Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, etc., which in Matthew occurs farther on (vii. 12) without any connexion. On the whole, if the passage in Luke from vi. 2–36, be compared with the corresponding one in Matthew, there will be found in the latter an orderly course of thought; in the former, considerable confusion. [932]
The warnings against Pharisaic hypocrisy (vi. 1–6) are without a parallel in Luke; but he has one of the model prayer, which recent criticism has turned not a little to the disadvantage of Matthew. The ancient harmonists, it is true, had no hesitation in supposing that Jesus delivered this prayer twice,—in the connexion in which it is given by Matthew, as well as under the circumstances narrated by Luke (xi. ff.). [933] But if Jesus had already in the Sermon on the Mount given a model prayer, his disciples would scarcely have requested one afterwards, as if nothing of the kind had occurred; and it is still more improbable that Jesus would repeat the same formulary, without any recollection that he had delivered it to these disciples long before. Hence our most recent critics have decided that Luke alone has preserved the natural and true occasion on which this prayer was communicated, and that like many other fragments, it was interpolated in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount by the writer. [934] But the vaunted naturalness of Luke’s representation, I, for one, cannot discover. Apart from the improbability, admitted even by the above critics, that the disciples of Jesus should have remained without any direction to pray until the last journey, in which Luke places the scene; it is anything but natural that Jesus should abstain from giving his disciples the exemplar which was in his mind until they sought for it, and that then he should forthwith fall into prayer. He had, doubtless, often prayed in their circle from the commencement of their intercourse; and if so, their request was superfluous, and must, as in John xiv. 9, have produced only an admonition to recollect what they had long seen and heard in his society. The account of Luke seems to have been framed on mere conjecture; it was known that the above prayer proceeded from Jesus, and the further question as to the motive for its communication, received the gratuitous answer: without doubt his disciples had asked him for such an exemplar. Without, therefore, maintaining that Matthew has preserved to us the connexion in which this prayer was originally uttered by Jesus, we are not the less in doubt whether it has a more accurate position in Luke. [935] With regard to the elements of the prayer, it is impossible to deny what Wetstein says: tota hæc oratio ex formulis Hebræorum concinnata est; [936] but Fritzsche’s observation is also just, that desires of so general a nature might be uttered in the prayers of various persons, even in similar phraseology, without any other cause than the broad uniformity of human feeling. [937] We may add that the selection and allocation of the petitions in the prayer are entirely original, and bear the impress of that religious consciousness which Jesus possessed and sought to impart to his followers. [938] Matthew inserts after the conclusion of the prayer two propositions, which are properly the corollary of the third petition, but which seem inaptly placed, not only because they are severed by the concluding petition from the passage to which they have reference, but because they have no point of coincidence with the succeeding censures and admonitions which turn on the hypocrisy of the Pharisaic fasts. Mark, however, has still more infelicitously appended these propositions to the discourse of Jesus on the efficacy of believing prayer (xi. 25). [939]
At vi. 19, the thread of strict connexion is broken, according to the admission of Paulus, and so far all expositors are bound to agree with him. But his position, that notwithstanding the admitted lack of coherence in the succeeding collection of sentences, Jesus spoke them consecutively, is not equally tenable; on the contrary, our more recent critics have all the probabilities on their side when they suppose, that in this latter half of the Sermon on the Mount Matthew has incorporated a variety of sayings uttered by Jesus on different occasions. First stands the apothegm on earthly and heavenly treasures (19–21), which Luke, with more apparent correctness, inserts in a discourse of Jesus, the entire drift of which is to warn his adherents against earthly cares (xii. 33 f.). It is otherwise with the next sentence, on the eye being the light of the body. Luke annexes this to the apothegm already mentioned on the light that is to be exhibited; now as the light λύχνος, placed on a candlestick, denotes something quite distinct from what is intended by the comparison of the eye to a light, λύχνος, the only reason for combining the two apothegms lies in the bare word λύχνος: a rule of association which belongs properly to the dictionary, and which, beyond it, is worse than none. Then follows, also without any apparent connexion, the apothegm on the two masters, appended by Luke to the parable of the steward, with which it happens to have the word Mammon, μαμωνᾶς, in common. Next comes, in Matthew v. 25–34, a dissuasion from earthly solicitude, on the ground that natural objects flourish and are sustained without anxiety on their part; in Luke, this doctrine is consistently united with the parable (found only in the third gospel) of the man who, in the midst of amassing earthly treasures, is summoned away by death (xii. 22 ff.). [940] The warning not to be blind to our own faults while we are sharp-sighted and severe towards those of others (vii. 1–5), would, if we rejected the passage from v. 19, of chap, vi. to the end, form a suitable continuation to the previous admonition against Pharisaic sanctimoniousness (vi. 16–18), and might, therefore, have belonged to the original body of the discourse. [941] This is the more probable because Luke has the same warning in his Sermon on the Mount (37 f., 41 f.), where it happens to assort very well with the preceding exhortation to mercifulness; but at v. 39 and 40, and part of 38, it is interrupted by subjects altogether irrelevant. The text, With what measure ye mete, etc., is very inappropriately interposed by Mark (iv. 24), in a passage similar in kind to one of Luke’s intermediate miscellanies. V. 6, in Matthew, is equally destitute of connexion and parallel; but the succeeding assurances and arguments as to the efficacy of prayer (v. 7–11), are found in Luke xi. 9, very fitly associated with another parable peculiar to that Evangelist: that of the friend awaked at midnight The apothegm, What ye would that men should do unto you, etc., is quite isolated in Matthew; in Luke, it has only an imperfect connexion. [942] The following passage (v. 13 f.) on the strait gate στενὴ πύλη is introduced in Luke (xiii. 23) by the question addressed to Jesus: Are there few that be saved? εἰ ὀλίγοι οἱ σωζόμενοι; which seems likely enough to have been conceived by one who knew that Jesus had uttered such a saying as the above, but was at a loss for an occasion that might prompt the idea; moreover, the image is far less completely carried out in Luke than in Matthew, and is blended with parabolical elements. [943] The apothegm on the tree being known by its fruits (v. 16–20), appears in Luke (vi. 43 ff.), and even in Matthew, farther on (xii. 33 ff.), to have a general application, but in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, it has a special relation to the false prophets; in Luke, it is in the last degree misplaced. The denunciation of those who say to Jesus, Lord, Lord, but who, on account of their evil deeds will be rejected by him at the day of judgment (21–23), decidedly presupposes the Messiahship of Jesus, and cannot therefore, have well belonged to so early a period as that of the Sermon on the Mount; hence it is more appropriately placed by Luke (xiii. 25 ff.). The peroration of the discourse is, as we have mentioned, common to both Evangelists.
The foregoing comparison shows us that the discourses of Jesus, like fragments of granite, could not be dissolved by the flood of oral tradition; but they were not seldom torn from their natural connexion, floated away from their original situation, and deposited in places to which they did not properly belong. Relative to this effect, there is this distinction between the three first Evangelists; Matthew, like an able compiler, though far from being sufficiently informed to give each relic in its original connexion, has yet for the most part succeeded in judiciously associating analogous materials; while the two other Evangelists have left many small fragments just where chance threw them, in the intervals between longer discourses. Luke has laboured in some instances to combine these fragments artificially, but he could not thus compensate for the absence of natural connexion.
§ 77.
INSTRUCTIONS TO THE TWELVE. LAMENTATIONS OVER THE GALILEAN CITIES. JOY OVER THE CALLING OF THE SIMPLE.
The first gospel (x.) reports another long discourse as having been delivered by Jesus, on the occasion of his sending out the twelve to preach the kingdom of heaven. Part of this discourse is peculiar to the first gospel; that portion of it which is common to the two other synoptists is only partially assigned by them to the same occasion, Luke introducing its substance in connexion with the mission of the seventy (x. 2 ff.), and in a subsequent conversation with the disciples (xii. 2 ff.). Some portion of the discourse is also found repeated both in Matthew and the other Evangelists, in the prophetic description given by Jesus of his second advent.
In this instance again, while the older harmonists have no hesitation in supposing a repetition of the same discourse, [944] our more recent critics are of opinion that Luke only has the true occasions and the original arrangement of the materials, and that Matthew has assembled them according to his own discretion. [945] Those expositors who are apologetically inclined, maintain that Matthew was not only conscious of here associating sayings uttered at various times, but presumed that this would be obvious to his readers. [946] On the other hand, it is justly observed that the manner in which the discourse is introduced by the words: These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them (v. 5); and closed by the words: when Jesus made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, etc. (xi. 1); proves clearly enough that it was the intention of the Evangelist to give his compilation the character of a continuous harangue. [947]
Much that is peculiar to Matthew in this discourse, appears to be merely an amplification on thoughts which are also found in the corresponding passages of the two other synoptists; but there are two particulars in the opening of the instructions as detailed by the former, which differ specifically from anything presented by his fellow Evangelists. These are the limitation of the agency of the disciples to the Jews (v. 5, 6), and the commission (associated with that to announce the kingdom of heaven and heal the sick, of which Luke also speaks, ix. 2), to raise the dead: a surprising commission, since we know of no instances previous to the departure of Jesus, in which the apostles raised the dead; and to suppose such when they are not narrated, after the example of Olshausen, is an expedient to which few will be inclined.
All that the synoptists have strictly in common in the instructions to the twelve, are the rules for their external conduct; how they were to journey, and how to behave under a variety of circumstances (Matt. v. 9–11, 14; Mark vi. 8–11; Luke ix. 3–5). Here, however, we find a discrepancy; according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus forbids the disciples to take with them, not only gold, a scrip, and the like, but even shoes, ὑποδήματα, and a staff, ῥάβδον; according to Mark, on the contrary, he merely forbids their taking more than a staff and sandals, εἰ μὴ ῥάβδον μόνον and σανδάλια. This discrepancy is most easily accounted for by the admission, that tradition only preserved a reminiscence of Jesus having signified the simplicity of the apostolic equipment by the mention of the staff and shoes, and that hence one of the Evangelists understood that Jesus had interdicted all travelling requisites except these; the other, that these also were included in his prohibition. It was consistent with Mark’s love of the picturesque to imagine a wandering apostle furnished with a staff, and therefore to give the preference to the former view.
It is on the occasion of the mission of the seventy, that Luke (x. 2) puts into the mouth of Jesus the words which Matthew gives (ix. 37 f.) as the motive for sending forth the twelve, namely, the apothegm, The harvest truly is ready, but the labourers are few; also the declaration that the labourer is worthy of his hire (v. 7, comp. Matt x. 10); the discourse on the apostolic salutation and its effect (Matt. v. 12 f.; Luke v. 5 f.); the denunciation of those who should reject the apostles and their message (Matt. v. 15; Luke v. 12); and finally, the words, Behold, I send you forth as lambs, etc. (Matt. v. 16; Luke v. 3). The sequence of these propositions is about equally natural in both cases. Their completeness is alternately greater in the one than in the other; but Matthew’s additions generally turn on essentials, as in v. 16; those of Luke on externals, as in v. 7, 8, and in v. 4, where there is the singular injunction to salute no man by the way, which might appear an unhistorical exaggeration of the urgency of the apostolic errand, did we not know that the Jewish greetings of that period were not a little ceremonious. [948] Sieffert observes that the instructions which Jesus gave—according to Matthew, to the twelve, according to Luke, to the seventy—might, so far as their tenor is concerned, have been imparted with equal fitness on either occasion; but I doubt this, for it seems to me improbable that Jesus should, as Luke states, dismiss his more confidential disciples with scanty rules for their outward conduct, and that to the seventy he should make communications of much greater moment and pathos. [949] The above critic at length decides in favour of Luke, whose narrative appears to him more precise, because it distinguishes the seventy from the twelve. We have already discussed this point, and have found that a comparison is rather to the advantage of Matthew. The blessing pronounced on him who should give even a cup of cold water to the disciples of Jesus (v. 42), is at least more judiciously inserted by Matthew as the conclusion of the discourse of instructions, than in the endless confusion of the latter part of Mark ix. (v. 41), where ἐὰν (if), and ὃς ἂν (whosoever), seem to form the only tie between the successive propositions.
The case is otherwise when we regard those portions of the discourse which Luke places in his twelfth chapter, and even later, and which in Matthew are distinguishable as a second part of the same discourse. Such are the directions to the apostles as to their conduct before tribunals (Matt. x. 19 f.; Luke xii. 11); the exhortation not to fear those who can only kill the body (Matt. v. 28; Luke v. 4 f.); the warning against the denial of Jesus (Matt. v. 32 f.; Luke v. 8 f.); the discourse on the general disunion of which he would be the cause (Matt. v. 34 ff.; Luke v. 51 ff.); a passage to which Matthew, prompted apparently by the enumeration of the members of a family, attaches the declaration of Jesus that these are not to be valued above him, that his cross must be taken, etc., which he partly repeats on a subsequent occasion, and in a more suitable connexion (xvi. 24 f.); further, predictions which recur in the discourse on the Mount of Olives, relative to the universal persecution of the disciples of Jesus (v. 17 f. 22, comp. xxiv. 9, 13); the saying which Luke inserts in the Sermon on the Mount (vi. 40), and which also appears in John (xv. 20), that the disciple has no claim to a better lot than his master (v. 24 f.); lastly, the direction, which is peculiar to the discourse in Matthew, to flee from one city to another, with the accompanying consolation (v. 23). These commands and exhortations have been justly pronounced by critics [950] to be unsuitable to the first mission of the twelve, which, like the alleged mission of the seventy, had no other than happy results (Luke ix. 10, x. 17); they presuppose the troublous circumstances which supervened after the death of Jesus, or perhaps in the latter period of his life. According to this, Luke is more correct than Matthew in assigning these discourses to the last journey of Jesus; [951] unless, indeed, such descriptions of the subsequent fate of the apostles and other adherents of Jesus were produced ex eventu, after his death, and put into his mouth in the form of prophecies; a conjecture which is strongly suggested by the words, He who taketh not up his cross, etc. (v. 38). [952]
The next long discourse of Jesus in Matthew (chap. xi.) we have already considered, so far as it relates to the Baptist. From v. 20–24, there follow complaints and threatenings against the Galilean cities, in which most of his mighty works were done, and which, nevertheless, believed not. Our modern critics are perhaps right in their opinion that these apostrophes are less suitable to the period of his Galilean ministry, in which Matthew places them, than to that in which they are introduced by Luke (x. 13 ff.); namely, when Jesus had left Galilee, and was on his way to Judea and Jerusalem, with a view to his final experiment. [953] But a consideration of the immediate context seems to reverse the probability. In Matthew, the description of the ungracious reception which Jesus and John had alike met with, leads very naturally to the accusations against those places which had been the chief theatres of the ministry of the former; but it is difficult to suppose, according to Luke, that Jesus would speak of his past sad experience to the seventy, whose minds must have been entirely directed to the future, unless we conceive that he chose a subject so little adapted to the exigencies of those whom he was addressing, in order to unite the threatened judgment on the Galilean cities, with that which he had just denounced against the cities that should reject his messengers. But it is more likely that this association proceeded solely from the writer, who, by the comparison of a city that should prove refractory to the disciples of Jesus, to Sodom, was reminded of the analogous comparison to Tyre and Sidon, of places that had been disobedient to Jesus himself, without perceiving the incongruity of the one with the circumstances which had dictated the other. [954]
The joy, ἀγαλλίασις, expressed by Jesus (v. 25–27) on account of the insight afforded to babes, νηπίοις, is but loosely attached by Matthew to the preceding maledictions. As it supposes a change in the mental frame of Jesus, induced by pleasing circumstances, Luke (x. 17, 21 ff.), would have all the probabilities on his side, in making the return of the seventy with satisfactory tidings the cause of the above expression; were it not that the appointment of the seventy, and consequently their return, are altogether problematical; besides, it is possible to refer the passage in question to the return of the twelve from their mission. Matthew connects with this rejoicing of Jesus his invitation to the weary and heavy laden (v. 28–30). This is wanting in Luke, who, instead, makes Jesus turn to his disciples privately, and pronounce them blessed in being privileged to see and hear things which many prophets and kings yearned after in vain (23 f.): an observation which does not so specifically agree with the preceding train of thought, as the context assigned to it by Matthew, and which is moreover inserted by the latter Evangelist in a connexion (xiii. 16 f.) that may be advantageously confronted with that of Luke.
§ 78.
THE PARABLES.
According to Matthew (chap. xiii.), Jesus delivered seven parables, all relating to the βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. Modern criticism, however, has doubted whether Jesus really uttered so many of these symbolical discourses on one occasion. [955] The parable, it has been observed, is a kind of problem, to be solved by the reflection of the hearer; hence after every parable a pause is requisite, if it be the object of the teacher to convey real instruction, and not to distract by a multiplicity of ill-understood images. [956] It will, at least, be admitted, with Neander, that parables on the same or closely-related subjects can only be spoken consecutively, when, under manifold forms, and from various points of view, they lead to the same result. [957] Among the seven parables in question, those of the mustard-seed and the leaven have a common fundamental idea, differently shadowed forth—the gradual growth and ultimate prevalence of the kingdom of God: those of the net and the tares represent the mingling of the good with the bad in the kingdom of God; those of the treasure and the pearl inculcate the inestimable and all-indemnifying value of the kingdom of God; and the parable of the sower depicts the unequal susceptibility of men to the preaching of the kingdom of God. Thus there are no less than four separate fundamental ideas involved in this collection of parables—ideas which are indeed connected by their general relation to the kingdom of God, but which present this object under aspects so widely different, that for their thorough comprehension a pause after each was indispensable. Hence, it has been concluded, Jesus would not merit the praise of being a judicious teacher, if, as Matthew represents, he had spoken all the above parables in rapid succession. [958] If we suppose in this instance, again, an assemblage of discourses similar in kind, but delivered on different occasions, we are anew led to the discussion as to whether Matthew was aware of the latter circumstance, or whether he believed that he was recording a continuous harangue. The introductory form, And he spake many things to them in parables (v. 3): καὶ ἐλάλησεν αὐτοῖς πολλὰ ἐν παραβολαῖς, and the concluding one, when Jesus had finished these parables (v. 53): ὅτε ἐτέλεσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὰς παραβολὰς ταύτας, seem to be a clear proof that he did not present the intermediate matter as a compilation. Mark, indeed, narrates (iv. 10), that at the close of the first parable, the disciples being again, καταμόνας, in private, with Jesus, asked him for its interpretation; and hence it has been contended [959] that there was an interruption of the discourse at this point; but this cannot serve to explain the account of Matthew, for he represents the request of the disciples as being preferred on the spot, without any previous retirement from the crowd; thus proving that he did not suppose such an interruption. The concluding form which Matthew inserts after the fourth parable (v. 34 f.), might, with better reason, be adduced as intimating an interruption, for he there comprises all the foregoing parables in one address by the words, All these things spake Jesus in parables, etc., ταῦτα πάντα ἐλάλησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐν παραβολαῖς κ.τ.λ., and makes the pause still more complete by the application of an Old Testament prophecy; moreover, Jesus is here said (36) to change his locality, to dismiss the multitude to whom he had hitherto been speaking on the shore of the Galilean sea, and enter the house, εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν, where he gives three new parables, in addition to the interpretation which his disciples had solicited of the second. But that the delivery of the last three parables was separated from that of the preceding ones by a change of place, and consequently by a short interval of time, very little alters the state of the case. For it is highly improbable that Jesus would without intermission tax the memory of the populace, whose minds it was so easy to overburthen, with four parables, two of which were highly significant; and that he should forthwith overwhelm his disciples, whose power of comprehension he had been obliged to aid in the application of the first two parables, with three new ones, instead of ascertaining if they were capable of independently expounding the third and fourth. Further, we have only to look more closely at Matthew’s narrative, in order to observe that he has fallen quite involuntarily on the interruption at v. 34 ff. If it were his intention to communicate a series of parables, with the explanations that Jesus privately gave to his disciples of the two which were most important, and were therefore to be placed at the head of the series, there were only three methods on which he could proceed. First, he might make Jesus, immediately after the enunciation of a parable, give its interpretation to his disciples in the presence of the multitude, as he actually does in the case of the first parable (10–23). But the representation is beset with the difficulty of conceiving how Jesus, surrounded by a crowd, whose expectation was on the stretch, could find leisure for a conversation aside with his disciples. [960] This inconvenience Mark perceived, and therefore chose the second resource that was open to him—that of making Jesus with his disciples withdraw after the first parable into the house, and there deliver its interpretation. But such a proceeding would be too great a hindrance to one who proposed publicly to deliver several parables one after the other; for if Jesus returned to the house immediately after the first parable, he had left the scene in which the succeeding ones could be conveniently imparted to the people. Consequently, the narrator in the first gospel cannot, with respect to the interpretation of the second parable, either repeat his first plan, or resort to the second; he therefore adopts a third, and proceeding uninterruptedly through two further parables, it is only at their close that he conducts Jesus to the house, and there makes him impart the arrear of interpretation. Herewith there arose in the mind of the narrator a sort of rivalry between the parables which he had yet in reserve, and the interpretation, the arrear of which embarrassed him; as soon as the former were absent from his recollection, the latter would be present with its inevitably associated form of conclusion and return homeward; and when any remaining parables recurred to him, he was obliged to make them the sequel of the interpretation. Thus it befel with the three last parables in Matthew’s narration; so that he was reduced almost against his will to make the disciples their sole participants, though it does not appear to have been the custom of Jesus thus to clothe his private instructions; and Mark (v. 33 f.) plainly supposes the parables which follow the interpretation of the second, to be also addressed to the people. [961]
Mark, who (iv. 1) depicts the same scene by the sea-side, as Matthew, has in connexion with it only three parables, of which the first and third correspond to the first and third of Matthew, but the middle one is commonly deemed peculiar to Mark. [962] Matthew has in its place the parable wherein the kingdom of heaven is likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares among it, which grew up with the wheat. The servants know not from whence the tares come, and propose to root them up; but the master commands them to let both grow together until the harvest, when it will be time enough to separate them. In Mark, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a man who casts seed into the ground, and while he sleeps and rises again, the seed passes, he knows not how, from one stage of development to another: and when it is ripe, he puts in the sickle, because the harvest is come. In this parable there is wanting what constitutes the dominant idea in that of Matthew, the tares, sown by the enemy; but as, nevertheless, the other ideas, of sowing, sleeping, growing one knows not how, and harvest, wholly correspond, it may be questioned whether Mark does not here merely give the same parable in a different version, which he preferred to that of Matthew, because it seemed more intermediate between the first parable of the sower, and the third of the mustard-seed.
Luke, also, has only three of the seven parables given in Matt. xiii.; namely, those of the sower, the mustard-seed, and the leaven; so that the parables of the buried treasure, the pearl, and the net, as also that of the tares in the field, are peculiar to Matthew. The parable of the sower is placed by Luke (viii. 4 ff.) somewhat earlier, and in other circumstances, than by Matthew, and apart from the two other parables which he has in common with the first Evangelist’s series. These he introduces later, xiii. 18–21; a position which recent critics unanimously acknowledge as the correct one. [963] But this decision is one of the most remarkable to which the criticism of the present age has been led by its partiality to Luke. For if we examine the vaunted connectedness of this Evangelist’s passages, we find that Jesus, having healed a woman bowed down by a spirit of infirmity, silences the punctilious ruler of the synagogue by the argument about the ox and ass, after which it is added (v. 17), And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed; and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. Surely so complete and marked a form of conclusion is intended to wind up the previous narrative, and one cannot conceive that the sequel went forward in the same scene; on the contrary, the phrases, then said he, and again he said, by which the parables are connected, indicate that the writer had no longer any knowledge of the occasion on which Jesus uttered them, and hence inserted them at random in this indeterminate manner, far less judiciously than Matthew, who at least was careful to associate them with analogous materials. [964]
We proceed to notice the other evangelical parables, [965] and first among them, those which are peculiar to one Evangelist. We come foremost in Matthew to the parable of the servant (xviii. 23 ff.) who, although his lord had forgiven him a debt of ten thousand talents, had no mercy on his fellow-servant who owed him a hundred; tolerably well introduced by an exhortation to placability (v. 15), and the question of Peter, How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Likewise peculiar to Matthew is the parable of the labourers in the vineyard (xx. 1 ff.), which suitably enough forms a counterpoise to the foregoing promise of a rich recompense to the disciples. Of the sentences which Matthew appends to this parable (v. 16), the first, So the last shall be first, and the first last, by which he had also prefaced it (xix. 30), is the only one with which it has any internal connexion; the other, for many are called, but few chosen, rather gives the moral of the parable of the royal feast and the wedding garment, in connexion with which Matthew actually repeats it (xxii. 14). It was well adapted, however, even torn from this connexion, to circulate as an independent apothegm, and as it appeared fitting to the Evangelist to annex one or more short sentences to the end of a parable, he might be induced, by some superficial similarity to the one already given, to place them in companionship. Farther, the parable of the two sons sent into the vineyard, is also peculiar to Matthew (xxi. 28 ff.), and is not ill-placed in connexion with the foregoing questions and retorts between Jesus and the Pharisees; its anti-Pharisaic significance is also well brought out by the sequel (31 f.).
Among the parables which are peculiar to Luke, that of the two debtors (vii. 41 ff.); that of the good Samaritan (x. 30 ff.); that of the man whose accumulation of earthly treasure is interrupted by death (xii. 16 ff. comp. Wis. xi. 17 ff.); and also the two which figure the efficacy of importunate prayer (xi. 5 ff., xviii. 2 ff.); have a definite, clear signification, and with the exception of the last, which is introduced abruptly, a tolerably consistent connexion. We may learn from the two last parables, that it is often necessary entirely to abstract particular features from the parables of Jesus, seeing that in one of them God is represented by a lukewarm friend, in the other by an unjust judge. To the latter is annexed the parable of the Pharisee and Publican (9–14), of which only Schleiermacher, on the strength of a connexion, fabricated by himself between it and the foregoing, can deny the antipharisaic tendency. [966] The parables of the lost sheep, the piece of silver, and the prodigal son (Luke xv. 3–32), have the same direction. Matthew also has the first of these (xviii. 12 ff.), but in a different connexion, which determines its import somewhat differently, and without doubt, as will presently be shown, less correctly. It is easy to imagine that these three parables were spoken in immediate succession, because the second is merely a variation of the first, and the third is an amplification and elucidation of them both. Whether, according to the opinion of modern criticism, the two succeeding parables also belong with the above to one continuous discourse, [967] must be determined by a closer examination of their contents, which are in themselves noteworthy.
The parable of the unjust steward, notoriously the crux interpretum, is yet without any intrinsic difficulty. If we read to the end of the parable, including the moral (v. 9), we gather the simple result, that the man who without precisely using unjust means to obtain riches, is yet in the sight of God an unprofitable servant, δοῦλος ἀχρεῖος (Luke xvii. 10), and, in the employment of the gifts intrusted to him by God, a steward of injustice, οἰκονόμος τῆς ἀδικίας, may best atone for this pervading unfaithfulness by lenity and beneficence towards his fellow-men, and may by their intervention procure a place in heaven. It is true that the beneficence of the fictitious steward is a fraud; but we must abstract this particular, as, in the case of two previous parables, we have to abstract the lukewarmness of the friend, and the injustice of the judge: nay, the necessity for such an abstraction is intimated in the narrative itself, for from v. 8 we gather that what the steward did in a worldly spirit is, in the application, to be understood in a more exalted sense of the children of light. Certainly, if we suppose the words, He that is faithful in that which is least, etc. (10–12) to have been uttered in their present connexion, it appears as if the steward were set forth as a model, deserving in some sense or other the praise of faithfulness; and when (v. 13) it is said that no servant can serve two masters, the intended inference seems to be that this steward had held to the rightful one. Hence we have expositions such as that of Schleiermacher, who under the master understands the Romans; under the debtors, the Jewish people; under the steward, the publicans, who were generous to the latter at the expense of the former; thus, in the most arbitrary manner, transforming the master into a violent man, and justifying the steward. [968] Olshausen carries the perversion of the parable to the extreme, for he degrades the master, who, by his judicial position evidently announces himself as the representative of God, into ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, the prince of this world, while he exalts the steward into the image of a man who applies the riches of this world to spiritual objects. But as in the moral (v. 9) the parable has a consistent ending; and as inaccurate association is by no means unexampled in Luke; it is not admissible to concede to the following verses any influence over the interpretation of the parable, unless a close relation of idea can be made manifest. Now the fact is, that the very opposite, namely, the most perplexing diversity, exists. Moreover, it is not difficult to show what might have seduced Luke into a false association. In the parable there was mention of the mammon of unrighteousness, μαμωνᾶς τῆς ἀδικίας; this suggested to him the saying of Jesus, that he who proves faithful in the ἀδίκῳ μαμωνᾷ, the unrighteous mammon, as that which is least, may also have the true riches committed to his trust. But the word mammon having once taken possession of the writer’s mind, how could he avoid recollecting the well-known aphorism of Jesus on God and Mammon, as two incompatible masters, and adding it (v. 13), however superfluously, to the preceding texts? [969] That by this addition the previous parable was placed in a thoroughly false light, gave the writer little concern, perhaps because he had not seized its real meaning, or because, in the endeavour completely to disburthen his evangelical meaning, he lost all solicitude about the sequence of his passages. It ought, in general, to be more considered, that those of our Evangelists who, according to the now prevalent opinion, noted down oral traditions, must, in the composition of their writings, have exerted their memory to an extent that would repress the activity of reflection; consequently the arrangement of the materials in their narratives is governed by the association of ideas, the laws of which are partly dependent on external relations; and we need not be surprised to find many passages, especially from the discourses of Jesus, ranged together for the sole cause that they happen to have in common certain striking consonant words.
If from hence we glance back on the position, that the parable of the unjust steward must have been spoken in connexion with the foregoing one of the prodigal son, we perceive that it rests merely on a false interpretation. According to Schleiermacher, it is the defence of the publicans against the Pharisees, that forms the bond; but there is no trace of publicans and Pharisees in the latter parable. According to Olshausen, the compassionate love of God, represented in the foregoing parable, is placed in juxtaposition with the compassionate love of man, represented in the succeeding one; but simple beneficence is the sole idea on which the latter turns, and a parallel between this and the manner in which God meets the lost with pardon, is equally remote from the intention of the teacher and the nature of the subject. The remark (v. 14) that the Pharisees heard all these things, and, being covetous, derided Jesus, does not necessarily refer to the individuals mentioned xv. 2, so as to imply that they had listened to the intermediate matter as one continuous discourse; and even if that were the case, it would only show the view of the writer with respect to the connectedness of the parables; a view which, in the face of the foregoing investigation, cannot possibly be binding on us. [970]
We have already discussed the passage from v. 15 to 18; it consists of disconnected sayings, and to the last, on adultery, is annexed the parable of the rich man, in a manner which, as we have already noticed, it is attempted in vain to show as a real connexion. It must, however, be conceded to Schleiermacher, that if we separate them, the alternative, namely, the common application of the parable to the penal justice of God, is attended with great difficulties. [971] For there is no indication throughout the parable, of any actions on the part of the rich man and Lazarus, that could, according to our notions, justify the exaltation of the one to a place in Abraham’s bosom, and the condemnation of the other to torment; the guilt of the one appears to lie in his wealth, the merit of the other in his poverty. It is indeed generally supposed of the rich man, that he was immoderate in his indulgence, and that he had treated Lazarus unkindly. [972] But the latter is nowhere intimated; for the picture of the beggar lying at the door of the rich man, is not intended in the light of a reproach to the latter, because he might easily have tendered his aid, and yet neglected to do so; it is designed to exhibit the contrast, not only between the earthly condition of the two parties, but between their proximity in this life, and their wide separation in another. So the other particular, that the beggar was eager for the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table, does not imply that the rich man denied him this pittance, or that he ought to have given him more than the mere crumbs; it denotes the deep degradation of the earthly lot of Lazarus compared with that of the rich man, in opposition to their reversed position after death, when the rich man is fain to entreat for a drop of water from the hand of Lazarus. On the supposition that the rich man had been wanting in compassion towards Lazarus, the Abraham of the parable could only reply in the following manner: “Thou hadst once easy access to Lazarus, and yet thou didst not relieve him; how then canst thou expect him to traverse a long distance to give thee alleviation?” The sumptuous life of the rich man, likewise, is only depicted as a contrast to the misery of the beggar; for if he had been supposed guilty of excess, Abraham must have reminded him that he had taken too much of the good things of this life, not merely that he had received his share of them. Equally groundless is it, on the other hand, to suppose high moral excellencies in Lazarus, since there is no intimation of such in the description of him, which merely regards his outward condition,—neither are such ascribed to him by Abraham; his sole merit is, the having received evil in this life. Thus, in this parable the measure of future recompense is not the amount of good done, or wickedness perpetrated, but of evil endured, and fortune enjoyed, [973] and the aptest motto for this discourse is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount, according to Luke’s edition: Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God! Woe to you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation; a passage concerning which we have already remarked, that it accords fully with the Ebionite view of the world. A similar estimation of external poverty is ascribed to Jesus by the other synoptists, in the narrative of the rich young man, and in the aphorisms on the camel and the needle’s eye (Matt. xix. 16 ff.; Mark x. 17 ff.; comp. Luke xviii. 18 ff.). Whether this estimation belong to Jesus himself, or only to the synoptical tradition concerning him, it was probably generated by the notions of the Essenes. [974] We have hitherto considered the contents of the parable down to v. 27: from whence to the conclusion the subject is, the writings of the Old Testament as the adequate and only means of grace.
In conclusion, we turn to a group of parables, among which some, as relating to the death and return of Christ, ought, according to our plan, to be excepted from the present review; but so far as they are connected with the rest, it is necessary to include them. They are the three parables of the rebellious husbandmen in the vineyard (Matt. xxi. 33 ff. parall.), of the talents or minæ (Matt. xxv. 14 ff.; Luke xix. 12 ff.), and the marriage feast (Matt. xxii. 2ff.; Luke xiv. 16 ff.). Of these the parable of the husbandmen in all the accounts, that of the talents in Matthew, and that of the marriage feast in Luke, are simple parables, unattended with difficulty. Not so the parable of the minæ in Luke, and of the marriage feast in Matthew. That the former is fundamentally the same with that of the talents in Matthew, is undeniable, notwithstanding the many divergencies. In both are found the journey of a master; the assembling of the servants to entrust them with a capital, to be put into circulation; after the return of the master, a reckoning in which three servants are signalized, two of them as active, the third as inactive, whence the latter is punished, and the former rewarded; and in the annunciation of this issue the words of the master are nearly identical in the two statements. The principal divergency is, that besides the relation between the master who journeys into a far country and his servants, in Luke there is a second relation between the former and certain rebellious citizens; and accordingly, while in Matthew the master is simply designated ἄνθρωπος, a man, in Luke he is styled ἅνθρωπος εὐγενὴς, a nobleman, and a kingdom is assigned to him, the object of his journey being to receive for himself a kingdom: an object of which there is no mention in Matthew. The subjects of this personage, it is further said, hated him, and after his departure renounced their allegiance. Hence at the return of the lord, the rebellious citizens, as well as the slothful servant, are punished; but in their case the retribution is that of death: the faithful servants, on the other hand, are not only rewarded generally by an entrance into the joy of their Lord, but royally, by the gift of a number of cities. There are other divergencies of less moment between Luke and Matthew; such as, that the number of servants is undetermined by the one, and limited to ten by the other; that in Matthew they receive talents, in Luke minæ; in the one unequal sums, in the other equal; in the one, they obtain unequal profits from unequal sums by an equal expenditure of effort, and are therefore equally rewarded; in the other, they obtain unequal profits from equal sums by an unequal expenditure of effort, and are therefore unequally rewarded.
Supposing this parable to have proceeded from the lips of Jesus on two separate occasions, and that Matthew and Luke are right in their respective arrangements, he must have delivered it first in the more complex form given by Luke, and then in the simple one given by Matthew; [975] since the former places it before, the latter after the entrance into Jerusalem. But this would be contrary to all analogy. The first presentation of an idea is, according to the laws of thought, the most simple; with the second new relations may be perceived, the subject may be viewed under various aspects, and brought into manifold combinations. There is, therefore, a foundation for Schleiermacher’s opinion, that contrary to the arrangement in the Gospels, Jesus first delivered the parable in the more simple form, and amplified it on a subsequent occasion. [976] But for our particular case this order is not less inconceivable than the other. The author of a composition such as a parable, especially when it exists only in his mind and on his lips, and is not yet fixed in writing, remains the perfect master of his materials even on their second and more elaborate presentation; the form which he had previously given to them is not rigid and inflexible, but pliant, so that he can adapt the original thoughts and images to the additional ones, and thus give unity to his production. Hence, had he who gave the above parable the form which it has in Luke, been its real author, he would, after having transformed the master into a king, and inserted the particulars respecting the rebellious citizens, have intrusted arms to the servants instead of money (comp. Luke xxii. 36), [977] and would have made them show their fidelity rather by conflict with the rebels, than by increasing their capital; or in general would have introduced some relation between the two classes of persons in the parable, the servants and the citizens; instead of which, they are totally unconnected throughout, and form two ill-cemented divisions. [978] This shows very decisively that the parable was not enriched with these additional particulars by the imagination of its author, but that it was thus amplified by another in the process of transmission. This cannot have been effected in a legendary manner, by the gradual filling up of the original sketch, or the development of the primitive germ; for the idea of rebellious citizens could never be evolved from that of servants and talents, but must have been added from without, and therefore have previously existed as part of an independent whole. This amounts to the position that we have here an example of two originally distinct parables, the one treating of servants and talents, the other of rebellious citizens, flowing together in consequence of their mutually possessing the images of a ruler’s departure and return. [979] The proof of our proposition must depend on our being able easily to disentangle the two parables; and this we can effect in the most satisfactory manner, for by extracting v. 12, 14, 15, and 27, and slightly modifying them, we get in a rather curtailed but consistent form, the parable of the rebellious citizens, and we then recognise the similarity of its tendency with that of the rebellious husbandmen in the vineyard. [980]
A similar relation subsists between the form in which the parable of the marriage feast is given by Luke (xiv. 16 ff.), and that in which it is given by Matthew (xxii. 2 ff.); only that in this case Luke, as in the other, Matthew, has the merit of having preserved the simple original version. On both sides, the particulars of the feast, the invitation, its rejection, and the consequent bidding of other guests, testify the identity of the two parables; but, on the other hand, the host who in Luke is merely a certain man, ἄνθρωπος τις, is in Matthew a king, βασιλεὺς, whose feast is occasioned by the marriage of his son; the invited guests, who in Luke excuse themselves on various pleas to the messenger only once sent out to them, in Matthew refuse to come on the first invitation, and on the second more urgent one some go to their occupations, while others maltreat and kill the servants of the king, who immediately sends forth his armies to destroy those murderers, and burn up their city. Nothing of this is to be found in Luke; according to him, the host merely causes the poor and afflicted to be assembled in place of the guests first invited, a particular which Matthew also appends to his fore-mentioned incidents. Luke closes the parable with the declaration of the host, that none of the first bidden guests shall partake of his supper; but Matthew proceeds to narrate how, when the house was full, and the king had assembled his guests, one was discovered to be without a wedding garment, and was forthwith carried away into outer darkness.
The maltreatment and murder of the king’s messengers are features in the narrative of Matthew which at once strike us as inconsistent—as a departure from the original design. Disregard of an invitation is sufficiently demonstrated by the rejection of it on empty pretexts such as Luke mentions; the maltreatment and even the murder of those who deliver the invitation, is an exaggeration which it is less easy to attribute to Jesus than to the Evangelist. The latter had immediately before communicated the parable of the rebellious husbandmen; hence there hovered in his recollection the manner in which they were said to have used the messengers of their lord, beating one, killing and stoning others (λαβόντες τοὺς δούλους αὐτοῦ ὃν μὲν ἔδειραν, ὃν δὲ ἀπέκτειναν, ὃν δὲ ἐλιθοβόλησαν), and he was thus led to incorporate similar particulars into the present parable (κρατήσαντες τοὺς δούλους αὐτοῦ ὕβρισαν καὶ ἀπέκτειναν), overlooking the circumstance that what might have been perpetrated with sufficient motive against servants who appeared with demands and authority to enforce them, had in the latter case no motive whatever. That hereupon, the king, not satisfied with excluding them from the feast, sends out his armies to destroy them and burn up their city, necessarily follows from the preceding incidents, but appears, like them, to be the echo of a parable which presented the relation between the master and the dependents, not in the milder form of a rejected invitation, but in the more severe one of an insurrection; as in the parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard, and that of the rebellious citizens, which we have above separated from the parable of the minæ. Yet more decidedly does the drift of the last particular in Matthew’s parable, that of the wedding garment, betray that it was not originally associated with the rest. For if the king had commanded that all, both bad and good, who were to be found in the highways, should be bidden to the feast, he could not wonder that they had not all wedding attire. To assume that those thus suddenly summoned went home to wash, and adjust their dress, is an arbitrary emendation of the text. [981] Little preferable is the supposition that, according to oriental manners, the king had ordered a caftan to be presented to each guest, and might therefore justly reproach the meanest for not availing himself of the gift; [982] for it is not to be proved that such a custom existed at the period, [983] and it is not admissible to presuppose it merely because the anger of the king appears otherwise unfounded. But the addition in question is not only out of harmony with the imagery, but with the tendency of this parable. For while hitherto its aim had been to exhibit the national contrast between the perversity of the Jews, and the willingness of the Gentiles: it all at once passes to the moral one, to distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy. That after the Jews had contemned the invitation to partake of the kingdom of God, the heathens would be called into it, is one complete idea, with which Luke very properly concludes his parable; that he who does not prove himself worthy of the vocation by a corresponding disposition, will be again cast out of the kingdom, is another idea, which appears to demand a separate parable for its exhibition. Here again it may be conjectured that the conclusion of Matthew’s parable is the fragment of another, which, from its also referring to a feast, might in tradition, or in the memory of an individual, be easily mingled with the former, preserved in its purity by Luke. [984] This other parable must have simply set forth, that a king had invited various guests to a wedding feast, with the tacit condition that they should provide themselves with a suitable dress, and that he delivered an individual who had neglected this observance to his merited punishment. Supposing our conjectures correct, we have here a still more compound parable than in the former case: a parable in which, 1stly, the narrative of the ungrateful invited parties (Luke xiv.) forms the main tissue, but so that, 2ndly, a thread from the parable of the rebellious husbandmen is interwoven; while, 3rdly, a conclusion is stitched on, gathered apparently from an unknown parable on the wedding garment.
This analysis gives us an insight into the procedure of evangelical tradition with its materials, which must be pregnant with results.
§ 79.
MISCELLANEOUS INSTRUCTIONS AND CONTROVERSIES OF JESUS.
As the discourses in Matthew xv. 1–20 have been already considered, we must pass on to xviii. 1 ff., Mark ix. 33 ff., Luke ix. 46 ff., where various discourses are connected with the exhibition of a little child, occasioned by a contention for pre-eminence among the disciples. The admonition to become as a little child, and to humble one’s self as a little child, in Matthew, forms a perfectly suitable comment on the symbolical reproof (v. 3, 4,); but the connexion between this and the following declaration of Jesus, that whosoever receives one such little child in his name, receives him, is not so obvious. For the child was set up to teach the disciples in what they were to imitate it, not how they were to behave towards it, and how Jesus could all at once lose sight of his original object, it is difficult to conceive. But yet more glaring is the irrelevance of the declaration in Mark and Luke; for they make it follow immediately on the exhibition of the child, so that, according to this, Jesus must, in the very act, have forgotten its object, namely, to present the child to his ambitious disciples as worthy of imitation, not as in want of reception. [985] Jesus was accustomed to say of his disciples, that whosoever received them, received him, and in him, the Father who had sent him (Matt. x. 40 ff.; Luke x. 16; John xiii. 20). Of children he elsewhere says merely, that whosoever does not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child cannot enter therein (Mark x. 15; Luke xviii. 17). This declaration would be perfectly adapted to the occasion in question, and we may almost venture to conjecture that ὃς ἐὰν μὴ δέξηται τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν ὡς παιδίον, was the original passage, and that the actual one is the result of its confusion with Matthew x. 40, ὃς ἐὰν δέξηται παιδίον τοιοῦτον ἓν ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματί μου.
Closely connected by the word ἀποκριθεὶς, answering, with the sentences just considered, Mark (ix. 38 f.) and Luke (ix. 49 f.) introduce the information which John is said to give to Jesus, that the disciples having seen one casting out devils in the name of Jesus, without attaching himself to their society, had forbidden him. Schleiermacher explains the connexion thus: because Jesus had commanded the reception of children in his name, John was led to the confession, that he and his associates had hitherto been so far from regarding the performance of an act in the name of Jesus as the point of chief importance, that they had interdicted the use of his name to one who followed not with them. [986] Allowing this explanation to be correct, we must believe that John, arrested by the phrase, in my name (which yet is not prominent in the declaration of Jesus, and which must have been thrown still further into the background by the sight of the child set up in the midst), drew from it the general inference, that in all actions the essential point is to perform them in the name of Jesus; and with equal rapidity, leaped to the remote reflection, that the conduct of the disciples towards the exorcist was in contradiction with this rule. But all this supposes the facility of combination which belongs to a Schleiermacher, not the dulness which still characterized the disciples. Nevertheless, the above critic has unquestionably opened on the true vein of connexion between the preceding apothegm and this ἀπόκρισις of John; he has only failed to perceive that this connexion is not intrinsic and original, but extrinsic and secondary. It was quite beyond the reach of the disciples to apply the words in my name, by a train of deductions, to an obliquely connected case in their own experience; but, according to our previous observations, nothing could be more consistent with the habit of association that characterizes the writer of the evangelical tradition in the third gospel, whence the second Evangelist seems to have borrowed, than that he should be reminded by the striking phrase, in my name, in the preceding discourse of Jesus, of an anecdote containing the same expression, and should unite the two for the sake of that point of external similarity alone. [987]
To the exhortation to receive such little children, Matthew annexes the warning against offending one of these little ones, σκανδαλίζειν ἕνα τῶν μικρῶν τούτων, an epithet which, in x. 42, is applied to the disciples of Jesus, but in this passage, apparently, to children. [988] Mark (v. 42) has the same continuation, notwithstanding the interruption above noticed, probably because he forsook Luke (who here breaks off the discourse, and does not introduce the admonition against offences until later, xvii. 1 f., and apart from any occasion that might prompt it), and appealed to Matthew. [989] Then follows in Matthew (v. 8 f.) and Mark (v. 43 f.) a passage which alone ought to open the eyes of commentators to the mode in which the synoptists arrange the sayings of Jesus. To the warning against the offending, σκανδαλίζειν, of the little ones, and the woe pronounced on those by whom offences come, τὸ σκάνδαλον ἔρχεται, they annex the apothegm on the offending, σκανδαλίζειν, of the hand, eye, etc. Jesus could not proceed thus,—for the injunctions: Mislead not the little ones! and, Let not your sensuality mislead you! have nothing in common but the word mislead. It is easy, however, to account for their association by the writer of the first gospel. [990] The word σκανδαλίζειν recalled to his mind all the discourses of Jesus containing a similar expression that had come to his knowledge, and although he had previously presented the admonitions concerning seduction by the members, in a better connexion, as part of the Sermon on the Mount, he could not resist the temptation of reproducing them here, for the sake of this slight verbal affinity with the foregoing text. But at v. 10 he resumes the thread which he had dropped at v. 7, and adds a further discourse on the little ones, μικροὺς. Matthew makes Jesus confirm the value of the little ones by the declaration, that the Son of man was come to seek the lost, and by the parable of the lost sheep (v. 11–14). It is not, however, evident why Jesus should class the μικροὺς with the ἀπολωλὸς (lost); and both the declaration and the parable seem to be better placed by Luke, who introduces the former in the narrative of the calling of Zaccheus (xix. 10), and the latter, in a reply to the objections of the Pharisees against the amity of Jesus with the publicans (xv. 3 ff.). Matthew seems to have placed them here, merely because the discourse on the little ones reminded him of that on the lost—both exemplifying the mildness and humility of Jesus.
Between the moral of the above parable (v. 14) and the following rules for the conduct of Christians under injuries (v. 15 ff.), there is again only a verbal connexion, which may be traced by means of the words, ἀπόληται, should perish, and ἐκέρδησας, thou hast gained; for the proposition: God wills not that one of these little ones should perish, might recall the proposition: We should endeavour to win over our brother, by showing a readiness to forgive. The direction to bring the offender before the church, ἐκκλησία, is generally adduced as a proof that Jesus intended to found a church. But he here speaks of the ἐκκλησία as an institution already existing: hence we must either refer the expression to the Jewish synagogue, an interpretation which is favoured by the analogy of this direction with Jewish precepts; or if, according to the strict meaning of the word and its connexion, ἐκκλησία must be understood as the designation of the Christian community, which did not then exist, it must be admitted that we have here, at least in the form of expression, an anticipation of a subsequent state of things. [991] The writer certainly had in view the new church, eventually to be founded in the name of Jesus, when, in continuation, he represented the latter as imparting to the body of the disciples the authority to bind and to loose, previously given to Peter, and thus to form a messianic religious constitution. The declarations concerning the success of unanimous prayer, and the presence of Jesus among two or three gathered together in his name, accord with this prospective idea. [992]
The next discourse that presents itself (Matt. xix. 3–12, Mark x. 2–12), though belonging, according to the Evangelists, to the last journey of Jesus, is of the same stamp with the disputations which they, for the most part, assign to the last residence of Jesus in Jerusalem. Some Pharisees propose to Jesus the question, at that time much discussed in the Jewish schools, [993] whether it be lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause. To avoid a contradiction between modern practice and the dictum of Jesus, it has been alleged that he here censures the species of divorce which was the only one known at that period, namely, the arbitrary dismissal of a wife; but not the judicial separation resorted to in the present day. [994] But this very argument involves the admission, that Jesus denounced all the forms of divorce known to him; hence the question still remains whether, if he could have had cognizance of the modern procedure in dissolving matrimony, he would have held it right to limit his general censure. Of the succeeding declaration, prompted by a question of the disciples, [995] namely, that celibacy may be practised for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, Jesus himself says, that it cannot be understood by all, but only by those to whom it is given (v. 11). That the doctrine of Jesus may not run counter to modern opinion, it has been eagerly suggested, that his panegyric on celibacy had relation solely to the circumstances of the coming time, or to the nature of the apostolic mission, which would be impeded by family ties. [996] But there is even less intimation of this special bearing in the text, than in the analogous passage 1 Cor. vii. 25 ff., [997] and, adhering to a simple interpretation, it must be granted that we have here one of the instances in which ascetic principles, such as were then prevalent, especially among the Essenes, [998] manifest themselves in the teaching of Jesus, as represented in the synoptical gospels.
The controversial discourses which Matthew, almost throughout in agreement with the other synoptists, places after the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem (xxi. 23–27; xxii. 15–46), [999] are certainly pre-eminently genuine fragments, having precisely the spirit and tone of the rabbinical dialectics in the time of Jesus. The third and fifth among them are particularly worthy of note, because they exhibit Jesus as an interpreter of Scripture. With respect to the former, wherein Jesus endeavours to convince the Sadducees that there will be a resurrection of the dead, from the Mosaic designation of God as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, maintaining that he is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Matt. xxii. 31–33 parall.): Paulus admits that Jesus here argues subtilly, while he contends that the conclusion is really involved in the premises. But in the expression אֱלהֵי־אַבְרָהָם the God of Abraham, etc., which had become a mere formula, nothing more is implied than that Jehovah, as he had been the protecting Deity of these men, would for ever continue such to their posterity. An individual relation subsisting between Jehovah and the patriarchs after their death, is nowhere else alluded to in the Old Testament, and could only be discovered in the above form by rabbinical interpreters, at a time when it was thought desirable, at any cost, to show that the idea of immortality, which had become prevalent, was contained in the law; where, however, it is not to be met with by unprejudiced eyes. We find the relation of God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, adduced as a guarantee of immortality elsewhere in rabbinical argumentations, all of which could hardly have been modelled on this one of Jesus. [1000] If we look into the most recent commentaries, we nowhere find a candid confession as to the real character of the argumentation in question. Olshausen has wonders to tell of the deep truth contained in it, and thinks that he can deduce from it, in the shortest way, the authenticity and divinity of the Pentateuch. Paulus sees the validity of the proof between the lines of the text; Fritzsche is silent. Wherefore these evasions? Why is the praise of having seen clearly, and spoken openly, in this matter, abandoned to the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist? [1001] What spectres and double-sighted beings, must Moses and Jesus have been, if they mixed with their cotemporaries without any real participation in their opinions and weaknesses, their joys and griefs: if, mentally dwelling apart from their age and nation, they conformed to these relations only externally and by accommodation, while, internally and according to their nature, they stood among the foremost ranks of the enlightened in modern times! Far more noble were these men, nay, they would then only engage our sympathy and reverence, if, in a genuinely human manner, struggling with the limitations and prejudices of their age, they succumbed to them in a hundred secondary matters, and only attained perfect freedom in relation to the one point by which each was destined to contribute to the advancement of mankind.
A controversial question concerning the Messiah is proposed (v. 41–46) to the Pharisees by Jesus, namely, How can the same personage be at once the Lord and the son of David? Paulus maintains that this is a model of interpretation in conformity with the text; [1002] an assertion which is no good augury that his own possesses that qualification. According to him, Jesus, in asking how David could call the Messiah, Lord, when in the general opinion he was his son, intended to apprise the Pharisees, that in this Psalm it is not David who is speaking of the Messiah, but another poet who is speaking of David as his lord, so that to suppose this warlike psalm a messianic one, is a mistake. Why, asks Paulus, should not Jesus have found out this interpretation, since it is the true one? But this is the grand error of his entire scheme of interpretation—to suppose that what is truth in itself, or more correctly, for us, must, even to the minutest details, have been truth for Jesus and the apostles. The majority of ancient Jewish interpreters apply this psalm to the Messiah; [1003] the apostles use it as a prophecy concerning Christ (Acts ii. 34 f.; 1 Cor. xv. 25); Jesus himself, according to Matthew and Mark, adds ἐν πνεύματι to Δαβὶδ καλεῖ αὐτὸν Κύριον, thus plainly giving his approval to the notion that it is David who there speaks, and that the Messiah is his subject: how then can it be thought that he held the contrary opinion? It is far more probable, as Olshausen has well shown, that Jesus believed the psalm to be a messianic one: while, on the other hand, Paulus is equally correct in maintaining that it originally referred, not to the Messiah, but to some Jewish ruler, whether David or another. Thus we find that Jesus here gives a model of interpretation, in conformity, not with the text, but with the spirit of his time: a discovery which, if the above observations be just, ought to excite no surprise. The solution of the enigma which Jesus here proposes to the Pharisees, lay without doubt, according to his idea, in the doctrine of the higher nature of the Messiah; whether he held that, in virtue of this, he might be styled the Lord of David, while, in virtue of his human nature, he might also be regarded as his son; or whether he wished to remove the latter notion as erroneous. [1004] The result, however, and perhaps also the intention of Jesus with respect to the Pharisees, was merely to convince them that he was capable of retaliating on them, in their own way, by embarrassing them with captious questions, and that with better success than they had obtained in their attempts to entrap him. Hence the Evangelists place this passage at the close of the disputations prompted by the Pharisees, and Matthew adds, Neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions: a concluding form which is more suitable here than after the lesson administered to the Sadducees, where it is placed by Luke (xx. 40), or than after the discussion on the greatest commandment, where it is introduced by Mark (xii. 34).
Immediately before this question of Jesus, the first two Evangelists narrate a conversation with a lawyer, νομικὸς, or scribe, γραμματεὺς, concerning the greatest commandment. (Matt. xxii. 34 ff.; Mark xii. 28 ff.) Matthew annexes this conversation to the dispute with the Sadducees, as if the Pharisees wished, by their question as to the greatest commandment, to avenge the defeat of the Sadducees. It is well known, however, that these sects were not thus friendly; on the contrary, we read in the Acts (xxiii. 7), that the Pharisees were inclined to go over to the side of one whom they had previously persecuted, solely because he had had the address to take the position of an opponent towards the Sadducees. We may here quote Schneckenburger’s observation, [1005] that Matthew not seldom (iii. 7, xvi. 1) places the Pharisees and Sadducees side by side in a way that represents, not their real hostility, but their association in the memory of tradition, in which one opposite suggested another. In this respect, Mark’s mode of annexing this conversation to the foregoing, is more consistent; but all the synoptists seem to labour under a common mistake in supposing that these discussions, grouped together in tradition on account of their analogy, followed each other so closely in time, that one colloquy elicited another. Luke does not give the question concerning the greatest commandment in connexion with the controversies on the resurrection and on the Messiah; but he has a similar incident earlier, in his narrative of the journey to Jerusalem (x. 25 ff.). The general opinion is that the first two Evangelists recount the same occurrence and the third, a distinct one. [1006] It is true that the narrative of Luke differs from that of Matthew and Mark, in several not immaterial points. The first difference, which we have already noticed, relates to chronological position, and this has been the chief inducement to the supposition of two events. The next difference lies in the nature of the question, which, in Luke, turns on the rule of life calculated to insure the inheritance of eternal life, but, in the other Evangelists, on the greatest commandment. The third difference is in the subject who pronounces this commandment, the first two synoptists representing it to be Jesus, the third, the lawyer. Lastly, there is a difference as to the issue, the lawyer in Luke putting a second, self-vindicatory, question, which calls forth the parable of the good Samaritan; while in the two other Evangelists, he retires either satisfied, or silenced by the answer to the first. Meanwhile, even between the narrative of Matthew and that of Mark, there are important divergencies. The principal relates to the character of the querist, who in Matthew proposes his question with a view to tempt Jesus (πειράζων); in Mark, with good intentions, because he had perceived that Jesus had answered the Sadducees well. Paulus, indeed, although he elsewhere (Luke x. 25) considers the act of tempting (ἐκπειράζων) as the putting a person to the proof to subserve interested views, pronounces that the word πειράζων in this instance can only be intended in a good sense. But the sole ground for this interpretation lies, not in Matthew, but in Mark, and in the unfounded supposition that the two writers could not have a different idea of the character and intention of the inquiring doctor of the law. Fritzsche has correctly pointed out the difficulty of conciliating Matthew and Mark as lying, partly in the meaning of the word πειράζων, and partly in the context, it being inadmissible to suppose one among a series of malevolent questions, friendly, without any intimation of the distinction on the part of the writer. With this important diversity is connected the minor one, that while in Matthew, the scribe, after Jesus has recited the two commandments, is silent, apparently from shame, which is no sign of a friendly disposition on his part towards Jesus; in Mark, he not only bestows on Jesus the approving expression, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth, but enlarges on his doctrine so as to draw from Jesus the declaration that he has answered discreetly, and is, not far from the kingdom of God. It may be also noticed that while in Matthew Jesus simply repeats the commandment of love, in Mark he prefaces it by the words, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord. Thus, if it be held that the differences between the narrative of Luke, and that of the two other Evangelists, entail a necessity for supposing that they are founded on two separate events; the no slighter differences between Mark and Matthew must in all consistency be made a reason for supposing a third. But it is so difficult to credit the reality of three occurrences essentially alike, that the other alternative, of reducing them to one, must, prejudice apart, be always preferred. The narratives of Matthew and Mark are the most easily identified; but there are not wanting points of contact between Matthew and Luke, for in both the lawyer νομικὸς appears as a tempter (πειράζων), and is not impressed in favour of Jesus by his answer; nor even between Luke and Mark, for these agree in appending explanatory remarks to the greatest commandment, as well as in the insertion of forms of assent, such as, Thou hast answered right, Thou hast said the truth. Hence it is evident that to fuse only two of their narratives is a half measure, and that we must either regard all three as independent, or all three as identical: whence again we may observe the freedom which was used by the early Christian legend, in giving various forms to a single fact or idea—the fundamental fact in the present case being, that, out of the whole Mosaic code, Jesus had selected the two commandments concerning the love of God and our neighbour as the most excellent. [1007]
We come now to the great anti-pharisaic discourse, which Matthew gives (xxiii.) as a sort of pitched battle after the skirmishing of the preceding disputations. Mark (xii. 38 ff.) and Luke (xx. 45 ff.) have also a discourse of Jesus against the scribes, γραμματεῖς, but extending no farther than a few verses. It is however highly probable, as our modern critics allow, [1008] that Jesus should launch out into fuller invectives against that body of men under the circumstances in which Matthew places that discourse, and it is almost certain that such sharp enunciations must have preceded the catastrophe; so that it is not admissible to control the account of the first Evangelist by the meagre one of the two other synoptists, [1009] especially as the former is distinguished by connectedness and unity. It is true that much of what Matthew here presents as a continuous address, is assigned by Luke to various scenes and occasions, and it would hence follow that the former has, in this case again, blended the original elements of the discourse with kindred matter, belonging to the discourses of various periods, [1010] if it could be shown that the arrangement of Luke is the correct one: a position which must therefore be examined. Those parts of the anti-pharisaic harangue which Luke has in common with Matthew, are, excepting the couple of verses which he places in the same connexion as Matthew, introduced by him as concomitant with two entertainments to which he represents Jesus as being invited by Pharisees (xi. 37 ff.; xiv. 1 ff.)—a politeness on their part which appears in no other gospel. The expositors of the present day, almost with one voice, concur in admiring the naturalness and faithfulness with which Luke has preserved to us the original occasions of these discourses. [1011] It is certainly natural enough that, in the second entertainment, Jesus, observing the efforts of the guests to obtain the highest places for themselves, should take occasion to admonish them against assuming the precedence at feasts, even on the low ground of prudential considerations; and this admonition appears in a curtailed form, and without any special cause in the final anti-pharisaic discourse in Matthew, Mark, and even in Luke again (xx. 46). But it is otherwise with the discourse which Luke attaches to the earlier entertainment in the Pharisee’s house. In the very commencement of this repast, Jesus not only speaks of the ravening, ἁρπαγή, and wickedness, πονηρία, with which the Pharisees fill the cup and platter, and honours them with the title of fools, ἄφρονες, but breaks forth into a denunciation of woe, οὐαὶ, against them and the scribes and doctors of the law, threatening them with retribution for all the blood that had been shed by their fathers, whose deeds they approved. We grant that Attic urbanity is not to be expected in a Jewish teacher, but even according to the oriental standard, such invectives uttered at table against the host and his guests, would be the grossest dereliction of what is due to hospitality. This was obvious to Schleiermacher’s acute perception; and he therefore supposes that the meal passed off amicably, and that it was not until its close, when Jesus was again out of the house, that the host expressed his surprise at the neglect of the usual ablutions by Jesus and his disciples, and that Jesus answered with so much asperity. [1012] But to assume that the writer has not described the meal itself and the incidents that accompanied it, and that he has noticed it merely for the sake of its connexion with the subsequent discourse, is an arbitrary mode of overcoming the difficulty. For the text runs thus: And he went in and sat down to meat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, εἰσελθὼν δὲ ἀνέπεσεν· ὁ δὲ Φαρισαῖος ἰδὼν ἐθαύμασεν, ὁτι οὐ πρῶτον ἐβαπτίσθη—· εἶπε δὲ ὁ Κύριος πρὸς αὐτὸν. It is manifestly impossible to thrust in between these sentences the duration of the meal, and it must have been the intention of the writer to attach he marvelled ἐθαύμασεν to he sat down to meat ἀνέπεσεν, and he said εἶπεν to he marvelled ἐθαύμασεν. But if this could not really have been the case, unless Jesus violated in the grossest manner the simplest dictates of civility, there is an end to the vaunted accuracy of Luke in his allocation of this discourse: and we have only to inquire how he could be led to give it so false a position. This is to be discovered by comparing the manner in which the two other synoptists mention the offence of the Pharisees, at the omission of the ablutions before meals by Jesus and his disciples: a circumstance to which they annex discourses different from those given by Luke. In Matthew (xv. 1 ff), scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem ask Jesus why his disciples do not observe the custom of washing before meat? It is thus implied that they knew of this omission, as may easily be supposed, by report. In Mark (vii. 1 ff.), they look on (ἰδόντες,) while some disciples of Jesus eat with unwashen hands, and call them to account for this irregularity. Lastly, in Luke, Jesus himself dines with a Pharisee, and on this occasion it is observed that he neglects the usual washings. This is an evident climax: hearing, witnessing, taking food together. Was it formed, in the descending gradation, from Luke to Matthew, or, in the ascending one, from Matthew to Luke? From the point of view adopted by the recent critics of the first gospel, the former mode will be held the most probable, namely, that the memory of the original scene, the repast in the Pharisee’s house, was lost in the process of tradition, and is therefore wanting in the first gospel. But, apart from the difficulty of conceiving that this discourse was uttered under the circumstances with which it is invested by Luke, it is by no means in accordance with the course of tradition, when once in possession of so dramatic a particular as a feast, to let it fall again, but rather to supply it, if lacking. The general tendency of the legend is to transform the abstract into the concrete, the mediate into the immediate, hearsay into vision, the spectator into the participator; and as the offence taken against Jesus by the Pharisees referred, among other things, to the usages of the table, nothing was more natural than for legend to associate the origin of the offence with a particular place and occasion, and for this purpose to imagine invitations given to Jesus by Pharisees—invitations which would be historically suspicious, if for no other reason than that Luke alone knows anything of them. Here, then, we again find Luke in his favourite employment of furnishing a frame to the discourses of Jesus which tradition had delivered to him; a procedure much farther removed from historic faithfulness, than the effort of Matthew to give unity to discourses gathered from different periods, without adding matter of his own. The formation of the climax above displayed, can only be conceived, in accordance with the general relation between the synoptists, in the following manner: Mark, who in this instance evidently had Matthew before him, enriched his account with the dramatic expression ἰδόντες; while Luke, independent of both, has added a repast, δεῖπνον, whether presented to him by a more developed tradition, or invented by his own more fertile imagination. Together with this unhistorical position, the proportions themselves seem to be disfigured in Luke (xi. 39–41, 49), and the observation of the lawyer, Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also (xi. 45), too much resembles an artificial transition from the philippic against the Pharisees, to that against the doctors of the law. [1013]
Another passage in this discourse has been the subject of much discussion. It is that (v. 35) in which Jesus threatens his cotemporaries, that all the innocent blood shed from that of Abel to that of Zacharias, the son of Barachias, slain in the temple, will be required of their generation. The Zacharias of whom such an end is narrated 2 Chron. xxiv. 20 ff. was a son, not of Barachias, but of Jehoiada. On the other hand, there was a Zacharias, the son of Baruch, who came to a similar end in the Jewish war. [1014] Moreover, it appears unlikely that Jesus would refer to a murder which took place 850 B.C. as the last. Hence it was at first supposed that we have in v. 35 a prophecy, and afterwards, a confusion of the earlier with the later event; and the latter notion has been used as an accessory proof that the first gospel is a posterior compilation. [1015] It is, however, equally probable, that the Zacharias, son of Jehoiada, whose death is narrated in the Chronicles, has been confounded with the prophet Zechariah, who was a son of Barachias (Zech. i. 1; LXX.; Baruch, in Josephus, is not the same name); [1016] especially as a Targum, evidently in consequence of a like confusion with the prophet who was a grandson of Iddo, calls the murdered Zechariah a son of Iddo. [1017] The murder of a prophet, mentioned by Jeremiah (xxvi. 23), was doubtless subsequent to that of Zechariah, but in the Jewish order of the canonical books, Jeremiah precedes the Chronicles; and to oppose a murder revealed in the first canonical book, to one recorded in the last, was entirely in the style of Jewish parlance. [1018]
After having considered all the discourses of Jesus given by Matthew, and compared them with their parallels, with the exception of those which had come before us in previous discussions, or which have yet to come before us in our examination of single incidents in the public ministry, or of the history of the passion: it might appear requisite to the completeness of our criticism, that we should also give a separate investigation to the connexion in which the two other synoptists give the discourses of Jesus, and from this point review the parallels in Matthew. But we have already cast a comparative glance over the most remarkable discourses in Luke and Mark, and gone through the parables which are peculiar to each; and as to the remainder of what they offer in the form of discourses, it will either come under our future consideration, or if not, the point of view from which it is to be criticised, has been sufficiently indicated in the foregoing investigations.
VII. DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL
§ 80.
CONVERSATION OF JESUS WITH NICODEMUS.
The first considerable specimen which the fourth gospel gives of the teaching of Jesus, is his conversation with Nicodemus (iii. 1–21). In the previous chapter (23–25) it is narrated, that during the first passover attended by Jesus after his entrance on his public ministry, he had won many to faith in him by the miracles, σημεῖα, which he performed, but that he did not commit himself to them because he saw through them: he was aware, that is, of the uncertainty and impurity of their faith. Then follows in our present chapter, as an example, not only of the adherents whom Jesus had found even thus early, but also of the wariness with which he tested and received them, a more detailed account how Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews and a Pharisee, applied to him, and how he was treated by Jesus.
It is through the Gospel of John alone that we learn anything of this Nicodemus, who in vii. 50 f. appears as the advocate of Jesus, so far as to protest against his being condemned without a hearing, and in xix. 39 as the partaker with Joseph of Arimathea of the care of interring Jesus. Modern criticism, with reason, considers it surprising that Matthew (with the other synoptists) does not even mention the name of this remarkable adherent of Jesus, and that we have to gather all our knowledge of him from the fourth gospel; since the peculiar relation in which Nicodemus stood to Jesus, and his participation in the care of his interment, must have been as well known to Matthew as to John. This difficulty has been numbered among the arguments which are thought to prove that the first gospel was not written by the Apostle Matthew, but was the product of a tradition considerably more remote from the time and locality of Jesus. [1019] But the fact is that the common fund of tradition on which all the synoptists drew had preserved no notice of this Nicodemus. With touching piety the Christian legend has recorded in the tablets of her memory, the names of all the others who helped to render the last honours to their murdered master—of Joseph of Arimathea and the two Marys (Matt. xxvii. 57–61 parall.); why then was Nicodemus the only neglected one—he who was especially distinguished among those who tended the remains of Jesus, by his nocturnal interview with the teacher sent from God, and by his advocacy of him among the chief priests and Pharisees? It is so difficult to conceive that the name of this man, if he had really assumed such a position, would have vanished from the popular evangelical tradition without leaving a single trace, that one is induced to inquire whether the contrary supposition be not more capable of explanation: namely, that such a relation between Nicodemus and Jesus might have been fabricated by tradition, and adopted by the author of the fourth gospel without having really subsisted.
John xii. 42, it is expressly said that many among the chief rulers believed on Jesus, but concealed their faith from dread of excommunication by the Pharisees, because they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. [1020] That towards the end of his career many people of rank believed in Jesus, even in secret only, is not very probable, since no indication of it appears in the Acts of the Apostles; for that the advice of Gamaliel (Acts v. 34 ff.) did not originate in a positively favourable disposition towards the cause of Jesus, seems to be sufficiently demonstrated by the spirit of his disciple Saul. Moreover the synoptists make Jesus declare in plain terms that the secret of his Messiahship had been revealed only to babes, and hidden from the wise and prudent (Matt. xi. 25; Luke x. 21), and Joseph of Arimathea is the only individual of the ruling class whom they mention as an adherent of Jesus. How, then, if Jesus did not really attach to himself any from the upper ranks, came the case to be represented differently at a later period? In John vii. 48 f. we read that the Pharisees sought to disparage Jesus by the remark that none of the rulers or of the Pharisees, but only the ignorant populace, believed on him; and even later adversaries of Christianity, for example, Celsus, laid great stress on the circumstance that Jesus had had as his disciples ἐπιῤῥήτους ἀνθρώπους, τελώνας καὶ ναύτας τοὺς πονηροτάτους. [1021] This reproach was a thorn in the side of the early church, and though as long as her members were drawn only from the people, she might reflect with satisfaction on the declarations of Jesus, in which he had pronounced the poor, πτωχοὺς, and simple, νηπίους, blessed: yet so soon as she was joined by men of rank and education, these would lean to the idea that converts like themselves had not been wanting to Jesus during his life. But, it would be objected, nothing had been hitherto known of such converts. Naturally enough, it might be answered; since fear of their equals would induce them to conceal their relations with Jesus. Thus a door was opened for the admission of any number of secret adherents among the higher class (John xii. 42 f.). But, it would be further urged, how could they have intercourse with Jesus unobserved? Under the veil of the night, would be the answer; and thus the scene was laid for the interviews of such men with Jesus (xix. 39). This, however, would not suffice; a representative of this class must actually appear on the scene: Joseph of Arimathea might have been chosen, his name being still extant in the synoptical tradition; but the idea of him was too definite, and it was the interest of the legend to name more than one eminent friend of Jesus. Hence a new personage was devised, whose Greek name Νικόδημος seems to point him out significantly as the representative of the dominant class. [1022] That this development of the legend is confined to the fourth gospel, is to be explained, partly by the generally admitted lateness of its origin, and partly on the ground that in the evidently more cultivated circle in which it arose, the limitation of the adherents of Jesus to the common people would be more offensive, than in the circle in which the synoptical tradition was formed. Thus the reproach which modern criticism has cast on the first gospel, on the score of its silence respecting Nicodemus, is turned upon the fourth, on the score of its information on the same subject.
These considerations, however, should not create any prejudice against the ensuing conversation, which is the proper object of our investigations. This may still be in the main genuine; Jesus may have held such a conversation with one of his adherents, and our Evangelist may have embellished it no further than by making this interlocutor a man of rank. Neither will we, with the author of the Probabilia, take umbrage at the opening address of Nicodemus, nor complain, with him, that there is a want of connexion between that address and the answer of Jesus. [1023] The requisition of a new birth (γεννηθῆναι ἄνωθεν), as a condition of entrance into the kingdom of heaven, does not differ essentially from the summons with which Jesus opens his ministry in the synoptical gospels, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. New birth, or new creation, was a current image among the Jews, especially as denoting the conversion of an idolater into a worshipper of Jehovah. It was customary to say of Abraham, that when, according to the Jewish supposition, he renounced idolatry for the worship of the true God, he became a new creature (בריה חדשה). [1024] The proselyte, too, in allusion to his relinquishing all his previous associations, was compared to a new-born child. [1025] That such phraseology was common among the Jews at that period, is shown by the confidence with which Paul applies, as if it required no explanation, the term new creation, καινὴ κτίσις, to those truly converted to Christ. Now, if Jesus required, even from the Jews, as a condition of entrance into the messianic kingdom, the new birth which they ascribed to their heathen proselytes, Nicodemus might naturally wonder at the requisition, since the Israelite thought himself, as such, unconditionally entitled to that kingdom: and this is the construction which has been put upon his question v. 4. [1026] But Nicodemus does not ask, How canst thou say that a Jew, or a child of Abraham, must be born again? His ground of wonder is that Jesus appears to suppose it possible for a man to be born again, and that when he is old. It does not, therefore, astonish him that spiritual new birth should be expected in a Jew, but corporeal new birth in a man. How an oriental, to whom figurative speech in general—how a Jew, to whom the image of the new birth in particular must have been familiar—how especially a master of Israel, in whom the misconstruction of figurative phrases cannot, as in the apostles (e.g. Matt. xv. 15 f.; xvi. 7), be ascribed to want of education—could understand this expression literally, has been matter of extreme surprise to expositors of all parties, as well as to Jesus (v. 10). Hence some have supposed that the Pharisee really understood Jesus, and only intended by his question to test the ability of Jesus to interpret his figurative expression into a simple proposition: [1027] but Jesus does not treat him as a hypocrite, as in that case he must have done—he continues to instruct him, as one really ignorant οὐ γινώσκοντα (v. 10). Others give the question the following turn: This cannot be meant in a physical sense, how then otherwise? [1028] But the true drift of the question is rather the contrary: By these words I can only understand physical new birth, but how is this possible? Our wonder at the ignorance of the Jewish doctor, therefore, returns upon us; and it is heightened when, after the copious explanation of Jesus (v. 5–8), that the new birth which he required was a spiritual birth, γεννηθῆναι ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος, Nicodemus has made no advance in comprehension, but asks with the same obtuseness as before (v. 9), How can these things be? By this last difficulty Lücke is so straitened, that, contrary to his ordinary exegetical tact, he refers the continued amazement of Nicodemus (as other expositors had referred his original question) to the circumstance that Jesus maintained the necessity of new birth even for Israelites. But, in that case, Nicodemus would have inquired concerning the necessity, not the possibility, of that birth; instead of asking, How can these things be? he would have asked, Why must these things be? This inconceivable mistake in a Jewish doctor is not then to be explained away, and our surprise must become strong suspicion so soon as it can be shown, that legend or the Evangelist had inducements to represent this individual as more simple than he really was. First, then, it must occur to us, that in all descriptions and recitals, contrasts are eagerly exhibited; hence in the representation of a colloquy in which one party is the teacher, the other the taught, there is a strong temptation to create a contrast to the wisdom of the former by exaggerating the simplicity of the latter. Further, we must remember the satisfaction it must give to a Christian mind of that age, to place a master of Israel in the position of an unintelligent person, by the side of the Master of the Christians. Lastly, it is, as we shall presently see more clearly, the constant method of the fourth Evangelist in detailing the conversations of Jesus, to form the knot and the progress of the discussion, by making the interlocutors understand literally what Jesus intended figuratively.
In reply to the second query of Nicodemus, Jesus takes entirely the tone of the fourth Evangelist’s prologue (v. 11–13). [1029] The question hence arises, whether the Evangelist borrowed from Jesus, or lent to him his own style. A previous investigation has decided in favour of the latter alternative. [1030] But this inquiry referred merely to the form of the discourses; in relation to their matter, its analogy with the ideas of Philo, does not authorize us at once to conclude that the writer here puts his Alexandrian doctrine of the Logos into the mouth of Jesus; [1031] because the expressions, We speak that we do know, etc. ὃ οἴδαμεν λαλοῦμεν κ.τ.λ., and, No man hath ascended up to heaven, etc. οὐδεὶς ἀναβέβηκεν κ.τ.λ., have an analogy with Matt. xi. 27; and the idea of the pre-existence of the Messiah which is here propounded, is, as we have seen, not foreign to the Apostle Paul.
V. 14 and 15 Jesus proceeds from the more simple things of the earth, ἐπιγείοις, the communications concerning the new birth, to the more difficult things of heaven, ἐπουρανίοις, the announcement of the destination of the Messiah to a vicarious death. The Son of Man, he says, must be lifted up (ὑψωθῆναι, which, in John’s phraseology, signifies crucifixion, with an allusion to a glorifying exaltation), in the same way, and with the same effect, as the brazen serpent Num. xxi. 8, 9. Here many questions press upon us. Is it credible, that Jesus already, at the very commencement of his public ministry, foresaw his death, and in the specific form of crucifixion? and that long before he instructed his disciples on this point, he made a communication on the subject to a Pharisee? Can it be held consistent with the wisdom of Jesus as a teacher, that he should impart such knowledge to Nicodemus? Even Lücke [1032] puts the question why, when Nicodemus had not understood the more obvious doctrine, Jesus tormented him with the more recondite, and especially with the secret of the Messiah’s death, which was then so remote? He answers: it accords perfectly with the wisdom of Jesus as a teacher, that he should reveal the sufferings appointed for him by God as early as possible, because no instruction was better adapted to cast down false worldly hopes. But the more remote the idea of the Messiah’s death from the conceptions of his cotemporaries, owing to the worldliness of their expectations, the more impressively and unequivocally must Jesus express that idea, if he wished to promulgate it; not in an enigmatical form which he could not be sure that Nicodemus would understand. Lücke continues: Nicodemus was a man open to instruction; one of whom good might be expected. But in this very conversation, his dulness of comprehension in earthly things, ἐπίγεια, had evinced that he must have still less capacity for heavenly things, ἐπουράνια; and, according to v. 12, Jesus himself despaired of enlightening him with respect to them. Lücke, however, observes, that it was a practice with Jesus to follow up easy doctrine which had not been comprehended, by difficult doctrine which was of course less comprehensible; that he purposed thus to give a spur to the minds of his hearers, and by straining their attention, engage them to reflect. But the examples which Lücke adduces of such proceeding on the part of Jesus, are all drawn from the fourth gospel. Now the very point in question is, whether that gospel correctly represents the teaching of Jesus; consequently Lücke argues in a circle. We have seen a similar procedure ascribed to Jesus in his conversation with the woman of Samaria, and we have already declared our opinion that such an overburthening of weak faculties with enigma on enigma, does not accord with the wise rule as to the communication of doctrine, which the same gospel puts into the mouth of Jesus, xvi. 12. It would not stimulate, but confuse, the mind of the hearer, who persisted in a misapprehension of the well-known figure of the new birth, to present to him the novel comparison of the Messiah and his death, to the brazen serpent and its effects; a comparison quite incongruous with his Jewish ideas. [1033] In the first three Gospels Jesus pursues an entirely different course. In these, where a misconstruction betrays itself on the part of the disciples, Jesus (except where he breaks off altogether, or where it is evident that the Evangelist unhistorically associates a number of metaphorical discourses) applies himself with the assiduity of an earnest teacher to the thorough explanation of the difficulty, and not until he has effected this does he proceed, step by step, to convey further instruction (e.g. Matt. xiii. 10 ff., 36 ff., xv. 16, xvi. 8 ff.). [1034] This is the method of a wise teacher; on the contrary, to leap from one subject to another, to overburthen and strain the mind of the hearer, a mode of instruction which the fourth Evangelist attributes to Jesus, is wholly inconsistent with that character. To explain this inconsistency, we must suppose that the writer of the fourth gospel thought to heighten in the most effective manner the contrast which appears from the first, between the wisdom of the one party and the incapacity of the other, by representing the teacher as overwhelming the pupil, who put unintelligent questions on the most elementary doctrine, with lofty and difficult themes, beneath which his faculties are laid prostrate.
From v. 16, even those commentators who pretend to some ability in this department, lose all hope of showing that the remainder of the discourse may have been spoken by Jesus. Not only does Paulus make this confession, but even Olshausen, with a concise statement of his reasons. [1035] At the above verse, any special reference to Nicodemus vanishes, and there is commenced an entirely general discourse on the destination of the Son of God, to confer a blessing on the world, and on the manner in which unbelief forfeits this blessing. Moreover, these ideas are expressed in a form, which at one moment appears to be a reminiscence of the Evangelist’s introduction, and at another has a striking similarity with passages in the first Epistle of John. [1036] In particular, the expression, the only begotten Son, ὁ μονογενὴς υἱὸς, which is repeatedly (v. 16 and 18) attributed to Jesus as a designation of his own person, is nowhere else found in his mouth, even in the fourth gospel; this circumstance, however, marks it still more positively as a favourite phrase of the Evangelist (i. 14–18), and of the writer of the Epistles (1 John iv. 9). Further, many things are spoken of as past, which at the supposed period of this conversation with Nicodemus were yet future. For even if the words, he gave, ἔδωκεν, refer not to the giving over to death, but to the sending of the Messiah into the world; the expressions, men loved darkness, ἡγάπησαν οἱ ἄνθρωποι τὸ σκότος, and, their deeds were evil, ῆν πονηρὰ αὐτῶν τὰ ἔργα (v. 19), as Lücke also remarks, could only be used after the triumph of darkness had been achieved in the rejection and execution of Jesus: they belong then to the Evangelist’s point of view at the time when he wrote, not to that of Jesus when on the threshold of his public ministry. In general the whole of this discourse attributed to Jesus, with its constant use of the third person to designate the supposed speaker; with its dogmatical terms only begotten, light, and the like, applied to Jesus; with its comprehensive view of the crisis and its results, which the appearance of Jesus produced, is far too objective for us to believe that it came from the lips of Jesus. Jesus could not speak thus of himself, but the Evangelist might speak thus of Jesus. Hence the same expedient has been adopted, as in the case of the Baptist’s discourse already considered, and it has been supposed that Jesus is the speaker down to v. 16, but that from that point the Evangelist appends his own dogmatic reflections. [1037] But there is again here no intimation of such a transition in the text; rather, the connecting word for, γὰρ (v. 16), seems to indicate a continuation of the same discourse. No writer, and least of all the fourth Evangelist (comp. vii. 39, xi. 51 f., xii. 16, xxxiii. 37 ff.), would scatter his own observations thus undistinguishingly, unless he wished to create a misapprehension. [1038]
If then it be established that the evangelist, from v. 16 to the end of the discourse, means to represent Jesus as the speaker, while Jesus can never have so spoken, we cannot rest satisfied with the half measure adopted by Lücke, when he maintains that it is really Jesus who continues to speak from the above passage, but that the Evangelist has inwoven his own explanations and amplifications more liberally than before. For this admission undermines all certainty as to how far the discourse belongs to Jesus, and how far to the Evangelist; besides, as the discourse is distinguished by the closest uniformity of thought and style, it must be ascribed either wholly to Jesus or wholly to the Evangelist. Of these two alternatives the former is, according to the above considerations, impossible; we are therefore restricted to the latter, which we have observed to be entirely consistent with the manner of the fourth Evangelist.
But not only on the passage v. 16–21 must we pass this judgment: v. 14 has appeared to us out of keeping with the position of Jesus; and the behaviour of Nicodemus, v. 4 and 9, altogether inconceivable. Thus in the very first sample, when compared with the observations which we have already made on John iii. 22 ff., iv. 1 ff., the fourth gospel presents to us all the peculiarities which characterize its mode of reporting the discourses of Jesus. They are usually commenced in the form of dialogue, and so far as this extends, the lever that propels the conversation is the striking contrast between the spiritual sense and the carnal interpretation of the language of Jesus; generally, however, the dialogue is merged into an uninterrupted discourse, in which the writer blends the person of Jesus with his own, and makes the former use concerning himself, language which could only be used by John concerning Jesus.
§ 81.
THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS, JOHN V.–XII.
In the fifth chapter of John, a long discourse of Jesus is connected with a cure wrought by him on the sabbath (19–47). The mode in which Jesus at v. 17 defends his activity on the sabbath, is worthy of notice, as distinguished from that adopted by him in the earlier gospels. These ascribe to him, in such cases, three arguments: the example of David, who ate the shew-bread; the precedent of the sabbatical labours of the priests in the temple, quoted also in John vii. 23 (Matt. xii. 3 ff. parall.); and the course pursued with respect to an ox, sheep, or ass, that falls into the pit (Matt. xii. 11, parall.), or is led out to watering on the sabbath (Luke xiii. 18): all which arguments are entirely in the practical spirit that characterizes the popular teaching of Jesus. The fourth Evangelist, on the contrary, makes him argue from the uninterrupted activity of God, and reminds us by the expression which he puts into the mouth of Jesus, My Father worketh hitherto, ὁ πατὴρ ἕως ἄρτι ἐργάζεται, of a principle in the Alexandrian metaphysics, viz. God never ceases to act, ποιῶν ὁ θεὸς οὐδέποτε παύεται: [1039] a metaphysical proposition more likely to be familiar to the author of the fourth gospel than to Jesus. In the synoptical gospels, miracles of healing on the sabbath are followed up by declarations respecting the nature and design of the sabbatical institution, a species of instruction of which the people were greatly in need; but in the present passage, a digression is immediately made to the main theme of the gospel, the person of Christ and his relation to the Father. The perpetual recurrence of this theme in the fourth gospel has led its adversaries, not without reason, to accuse it of a tendency purely theoretic, and directed to the glorification of Jesus. In the matter of the succeeding discourse there is nothing to create a difficulty, nothing that Jesus might not have spoken, for it treats, with the strictest coherence, of things which the Jews expected of the Messiah, or which Jesus attributed to himself, according to the synoptists also: as, for instance, the raising of the dead, and the office of judging the world. But this consistency in the matter only heightens the difficulty connected with the form and phraseology in which it is expressed. For the discourse, especially its latter half (from v. 31), is full of the closest analogies with the first epistle of John, and with passages in the gospel in which either the author speaks, or John the Baptist. [1040] One means of explaining the former resemblance is to suppose, that the Evangelist formed his style by closely imitating that of Jesus. That this is possible, is not to be disputed; but it is equally certain that it could proceed only from a mind destitute of originality and self-confidence,—a character which the fourth Evangelist in nowise exhibits. Further, as in the other gospels Jesus speaks in a thoroughly different tone and style, it would follow, if he really spoke as he is represented to have done by John, that the manner attributed to him by the synoptists is fictitious. Now, that this manner did not originate with the Evangelists is plain from the fact, that each of them is so little master of his matter. Neither could the bulk of the discourses have been the work of tradition, not only because they have a highly original cast, but because they bear the impress of the alleged time and locality. On the contrary, the fourth Evangelist, by the ease with which he disposes his materials, awakens the suspicion that they are of his own production; and some of his favourite ideas and phrases, such as, The Father showeth the Son all that himself doeth, [1041] and those already quoted, seem to have sprung from an Hellenistic source, rather than from Palestine. But the chief point in the argument is, that in this gospel John the Baptist speaks, as we have seen, in precisely the same strain as the author of the gospels, and his Jesus. It cannot be supposed, that not only the Evangelist, but the Baptist, whose public career was prior to that of Jesus, and whose character was strongly marked, modelled his expressions with verbal minuteness on those of Jesus. Hence only two cases are possible: either the Baptist determined the style of Jesus and the Evangelist (who indeed appears to have been the Baptist’s disciple); or the Evangelist determined the style of the Baptist and Jesus. The former alternative will be rejected by the orthodox, on the ground of the higher nature that dwelt in Christ; and we are equally disinclined to adopt it, for the reason that Jesus, even though he may have been excited to activity by the Baptist, yet appears as a character essentially distinct from him, and original; and for the still more weighty consideration, that the style of the Evangelist is much too feeble for the rude Baptist,—too mystical for his practical mind. There remains, then, but the latter alternative, namely, that the Evangelist has given his own style both to Jesus and to the Baptist: an explanation in itself more natural than the former, and supported by a multitude of examples from all kinds of historical writers. If however the Evangelist is thus responsible for the form of this discourse, it is still possible that the matter may have belonged to Jesus, but we cannot pronounce to what extent this is the case, and we have already had proof that the Evangelist, on suitable opportunities, very freely presents his own reflections in the form of a discourse from Jesus.
In chap. vi., Jesus represents himself, or rather his Father, v. 27 ff., as the giver of the spiritual manna. This is analogous to the Jewish idea above quoted, that the second Goël, like the first, would provide manna; [1042] and to the invitation of Wisdom in the Proverbs, ix. 5, Come, eat of my bread: ἔλθετε, φάγετε τῶν εμῶν ἄρτων. But the succeeding declaration, that he is himself the bread of life that cometh down from heaven, ἄρτος ὁ ζῶν ὁ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καταβὰς (v. 33 and 35) appears to find its true analogy only in the idea of Philo, that the divine word, λόγος θεῖος, is that which nourishes the soul, τὸ τρέφον τὴν ψυχήν. [1043] From v. 51, the difficulty becomes still greater. Jesus proceeds to represent his flesh as the bread from heaven, which he will give for the life of the world, and to eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and to drink his blood, he pronounces to be the only means of attaining eternal life. The similarity of these expressions to the words which the synoptists and Paul attribute to Jesus, at the institution of the Lord’s Supper, led the older commentators generally to understand this passage as having reference to the Sacramental supper, ultimately to be appointed by Jesus. [1044] The chief objection to this interpretation is, that before the institution of the supper, such an allusion would be totally unintelligible. Still the discourse might have some sense, however erroneous, for the hearers, as indeed it had, according to the narrator’s statement; and the impossibility of being understood is not, in the fourth gospel, so shunned by Jesus, that that circumstance alone would suffice to render this interpretation improbable. It is certainly supported by the analogy between the expressions in the discourse, and the words associated with the institution of the supper, and this analogy has wrung from one of our recent critics the admission, that even if Jesus himself, in uttering the above expressions, did not refer to the supper, the Evangelist, in choosing and conveying this discourse of Jesus might have had that institution in his mind, and might have supposed that Jesus here gave a premonition of its import. [1045] In that case, however, he could scarcely have abstained from modifying the language of Jesus; so that, if the choice of the expression eat the flesh, etc., can only be adequately explained on the supposition of a reference to the Lord’s Supper, we owe it, without doubt, to the Evangelist alone. Having once said, apparently in accordance with Alexandrian ideas, that Jesus had described himself as the bread of life, how could he fail to be reminded of the bread, which in the Christian community was partaken of as the body of Christ, together with a beverage, as his blood? He would the more gladly seize the opportunity of making Jesus institute the supper prophetically, as it were; because, as we shall hereafter see, he knew nothing definite of its historical institution by Jesus. [1046]
The discourse above considered, also bears the form of a dialogue, and it exhibits strikingly the type of dialogue which especially belongs to the fourth gospel: that, namely, in which language intended spiritually, is understood carnally. In the first place (v. 34), the Jews (as the woman of Samaria in relation to the water) suppose that by the bread which cometh down from heaven, Jesus means some material food, and entreat him evermore to supply them with such. Such a misapprehension was certainly natural; but one would have thought that the Jews, before they carried the subject farther, would have indignantly protested against the assertion of Jesus (v. 32), that Moses had not given them heavenly bread. When Jesus proceeds to call himself the bread from heaven, the Jews in the synagogue at Capernaum murmur that he, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother they knew, should arrogate to himself a descent from heaven (v. 41); a reflection which the synoptists with more probability attribute to the people of Nazareth, the native city of Jesus, and to which they assign a more natural cause. That the Jews should not understand (v. 53) how Jesus could give them his flesh to eat is very conceivable; and for that reason, as we have observed, it is the less so that Jesus should express himself thus unintelligibly. Neither is it surprising that this hard saying, σκληρὸς λόγος, should cause many disciples to fall away from him, nor easy to perceive how Jesus could, in the first instance, himself give reason for the secession, and then, on its occurrence, feel so much displeasure as is implied in v. 61 and 67. It is indeed said, that Jesus wished to sift his disciples, to remove from his society the superficial believers, the earthly-minded, whom he could not trust; but the measure which he here adopted was one calculated to alienate from him even his best and most intelligent followers. For it is certain that the twelve, who on other occasions knew not what was meant by the leaven of the Pharisees (Matt. xvi. 7), or by the opposition between what goes into the mouth, and what comes out of it (Matt. xv. 15), would not understand the present discourse; and the words of eternal life, for the sake of which they remained with him (v. 68), were assuredly not the words of this sixth chapter. [1047]
The further we read in the fourth gospel, the more striking is the repetition: of the same ideas and expressions. The discourses of Jesus during the Feast of Tabernacles, ch. vii. and viii. are, as Lücke has remarked, mere repetitions and amplifications of the oppositions previously presented (especially in ch. v.), of the coming, speaking, and acting, of Jesus, and of God (vii. 17, 28 f., viii. 28 f., 38, 40, 42, compare with v. 30, 43, 38); of being from above, εἶναι ἐκ τῶν ἄνω, and from beneath, ἐκ τῶν κάτω (viii. 23, comp. iii. 31); of bearing witness of one’s self, and receiving witness from God (viii. 13–19, comp. v. 31–37); of light and darkness (viii. 12, comp. iii. 10, ff., also xii. 35 f.); of true and false judgment (viii. 15 f., comp. v. 30). All that is new in these chapters, is quickly repeated, as the mention of the departure of Jesus whither the Jews cannot follow him (vii. 33 f., viii. 21, comp. xiii. 33, xiv. 2 ff., xvi. 16 ff.); a declaration, to which are attached, in the first two instances, very improbable misapprehensions or perversions on the part of the Jews, who, although Jesus had said, I go unto him that sent me, are represented as imagining, at one time, that he purposed journeying to the dispersed among the Gentiles, at another, that he meditated suicide. How often, again, in this chapter are repeated the asseverations, that he seeks not his own honour, but the honour of the Father (vii. 17 f., viii. 50, 54); that the Jews neither know whence he came, nor the father who sent him (vii. 28, viii. 14, 19, 54); that whosoever believeth in him shall have eternal life, shall not see death, while whosoever believeth not must die in his sins, having no share in eternal life (viii. 21, 24, 51, comp. iii. 36, vi. 40).—The ninth chapter, consisting chiefly of the deliberations of the Sanhedrim with the man born blind, whom Jesus had restored to sight, has of course the form of conversation, but as Jesus is less on the scene than heretofore, there is not the usual amount of artificial contrast; in its stead, however, there is, as we shall presently find, another evidence of artistic design in the narrator.
The tenth chapter commences with the well-known discourse on the Good Shepherd; a discourse which has been incorrectly called a parable. [1048] Even the briefest among the other parables of Jesus, such as that of the leaven and of the mustard-seed, contain the outline of a history that develops itself, having a commencement, progress, and conclusion. Here, on the contrary, there is no historical development; even the particulars that have an historical character are stated generally, as things that are wont to happen, not as things that once happened, and they are left without further limitation; moreover, the door usurps the place of the Shepherd, which is at first the principal image; so that we have here, not a parable, but an allegory. Therefore this passage at least—(and we shall find no other, for the similitude of the vine, ch. xv., comes, as Lücke confesses, under the same category as the one in question)—furnishes no argument against the allegation by which recent critics have justified their suspicions as to the authenticity of the fourth gospel; namely, that its author seems ignorant of the parabolic mode of teaching which, according to the other Evangelists, was habitual with Jesus. It does not however appear totally unknown to the fourth Evangelist that Jesus was fond of teaching by parables, for he attempts to give examples of this method, both in ch. x. and xv., the first of which he expressly styles a parable, παροιμία. But it is obvious that the parabolic form was not accordant with his taste, and that he was too deficient in the faculty of depicting external things, to abstain from the intermixture of reflections, whence the parable in his hand became an allegory.
The discourses of Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles extend to x. 18. From v. 25, the Evangelist professes to record sayings which were uttered by Jesus three months later, at the Feast of Dedication. When, on this occasion, the Jews desire from him a distinct declaration whether he be the Messiah, his immediate reply is, that he has already told them this sufficiently, and he repeats his appeal to the testimony of the Father, as given in the works, ἔργα, done by Jesus in his name (as in v. 36). Hereupon he observes that his unbelieving interrogators are not of his sheep, whence he reverts to the allegory of the shepherd, which he had abandoned, and repeats part of it word for word. [1049] But Jesus had not recently abandoned this allegory; for since its delivery three months are supposed to have elapsed, and it is certain that in the interim much must have been spoken, done, and experienced by Jesus, that would thrust this figurative discourse into the background of his memory, so that he would be very unlikely to recur to it, and in no case would he be able to repeat it, word for word. He who had just quitted the allegory was the Evangelist, to whom three months had not intervened between the inditing of the first half of this chapter, and that of the second. He wrote at once what, according to his statement, was chronologically separated by a wide interval; and hence the allegory of the shepherd might well leave so distinct an echo in his memory, though not in that of Jesus. If any think that they can solve this difficulty by putting only the verbal similarity of the later discourse to the earlier one to the account of the Evangelist, such an opinion cannot be interdicted to them. For others, this instance, in connexion with the rest, will be a positive proof that the discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel are to a great extent the free compositions of the Evangelist.
The same conclusion is to be drawn from the discourse with which the fourth Evangelist represents Jesus as closing his public ministry (xii. 44–50). This discourse is entirely composed of reminiscences out of previous chapters, [1050] and, as Paulus expresses it, [1051] is a mere echo of some of the principal apophthegms of Jesus occurring in the former part of the gospel. One cannot easily consent to let the ministry of Jesus close with a discourse so little original, and the majority of recent commentators are of opinion that it is the intention of the Evangelist here to give us a mere epitome of the teaching of Jesus. [1052] According to our view also, the Evangelist is the real speaker; but we must contend that his introductory words, Jesus cried and said, Ἰησοῦς δὲ ἔκραξε καὶ εἶπεν, are intended to imply that what follows is an actual harangue, from the lips of Jesus. This commentators will not admit, and they can appeal, not without a show of reason, to the statement of the Evangelist, v. 36, that Jesus withdrew himself from the public eye, and to his ensuing observations on the obstinate unbelief of the Jews, in which he seems to put a period to the public career of Jesus; whence it would be contrary to his plan to make Jesus again step forward to deliver a valedictory discourse. I will not, with the older expositors, oppose to these arguments the supposition that Jesus, after his withdrawal, returned to pronounce these words in the ears of the Jews; but I hold fast to the proposition that by the introduction above quoted, the Evangelist can only have intended to announce an actual harangue. It is said, indeed, that the aorist in ἔκραξε and εἶπε has the signification of the pluperfect, and that we have here a recapitulation of the previous discourses of Jesus, notwithstanding which the Jews had not given him credence. But to give this retrospective signification there ought to be a corresponding indication in the words themselves, or in the context, whereas this is far less the case than e.g. in John xviii. 24. Hence the most probable view of the question is this: John had indeed intended to close the narrative of the public ministry of Jesus at v. 36, but his concluding observations, v. 37 ff., with the categories of faith, πίστις, and unbelief, ἀπιστία, reminded him of discourses which he had already recorded, and he could not resist the temptation of making Jesus recapitulate them with additional emphasis in a parting harangue.
§ 82.
ISOLATED MAXIMS OF JESUS, COMMON TO THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE SYNOPTICAL ONES.
The long discourses of Jesus above examined are peculiar to the fourth gospel; it has only a few brief maxims to which the synoptists present parallels. Among the latter, we need not give a special examination to those which are placed by John in an equally suitable connexion, with that assigned to them by the other Evangelists (as xii. 25, comp. with Matt. x. 39, xvi. 25; and xiii. 16, comp. with Matt. x. 24); and as the passage ii. 19 compared with Matt. xxvi. 61, must be reserved until we treat of the history of the Passion, there remain to us only three passages for our present consideration.
The first of these is iv. 44, where the Evangelist, after having mentioned that Jesus departed from Samaria into Galilee, adds, For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honour in his own country, αὐτὸς γὰρ ὁ Ἰ. ἐμαρτύρησεν, ὅτι προφήτης ἐν τῇ ἰδίᾳ πατρίδι τιμὴν οὐκ ἔχει. We find the same idea in Matthew xiii. 57 (Mark vi. 4; Luke iv. 24), A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own house, οὐκ ἔστι προφήτης ἄτιμος, εἰ μὴ ἐν τῇ πατρίδι αὑτοῦ καὶ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ αὑτοῦ. But while in the latter case it stands in a highly appropriate connexion, as a remark prompted by the ungracious reception which Jesus met with in his native city, and which caused him to leave it again: in John, on the contrary, it is given as a motive for the return of Jesus into his own country, Galilee, where, moreover, he is immediately said to be warmly received. The experience stated in the above sentence would rather have disinclined than induced Jesus to undertake a journey into Galilee; hence the expedient of translating γὰρ by although, is the best adapted to the necessity of the case, and has even been embraced by Kuinöl, except that, unhappily, it is an open defiance of the laws of language. [1053] Unquestionably, if Jesus knew that the prophet held this unfavourable position in his native country, πατρίς, it is not probable that he would regard it as a reason for going thither. Some expositors, therefore, have been induced to understand πατρίς, not as the province, but in a narrower sense, as the native city, and to supply, after the statement that Jesus went into Galilee, the observation, which they assume the Evangelist to have omitted, that he avoided his native city, Nazareth, for the reason given in the ensuing verse. But an ellipsis such as this explanation requires us to suppose, belongs not less to the order of impossibilities than the transmutation of γὰρ into though. The attempt to introduce the desiderated statement that Jesus did not visit his own πατρίς into the present passage has been therefore renounced: but it has yet been thought possible to discover there an intimation that he did not soon return thither; a delay for which the maxim, ὅτι προφήτης κ.τ.λ. might consistently be quoted as a reason. [1054] But to render this interpretation admissible, the entire period of the absence of Jesus from Galilee must have been mentioned immediately before the notice of his return; instead of this, however, only the short time that Jesus had tarried in Samaria is given (v. 45), so that in ludicrous disproportion of cause and effect, the fear of the contempt of his fellow country men would on the above supposition, be made the reason for delaying his return into Galilee, not until after a residence of some months in Judea, but until after the lapse of two days spent in Samaria. So long, therefore, as Galilee and Nazareth are admitted to be the πατρίς of Jesus, the passage in question cannot be vindicated from the absurdity of representing, that Jesus was instigated to return thither by the contempt which he knew to await him. Consequently, it becomes the interest of the expositor to recollect, that Matthew and Luke pronounce Bethlehem to be the birthplace of Jesus, whence it follows that Judea was his native country, which he now forsook on account of the contempt he had there experienced. [1055] But according to iv. 1, comp. ii. 23, iii. 26 ff., Jesus had won a considerable number of adherents in Judea, and could not therefore complain of a lack of honour, τιμή; moreover the enmity of the Pharisees, hinted at in iv. 1, was excited by the growing consequence of Jesus in Judea, and was not at all referable to such a cause as that indicated in the maxim: ὅτι προφήτης κ.τ.λ. Further, the entrance into Galilee is not connected in our passage with a departure from Judea, but from Samaria; and as, according to the import of the text, Jesus departed from Samaria and went into Galilee, because he had found that a prophet has no honour in his own country, Samaria might rather seem to be pointed out as his native country, in conformity with the reproach cast on him by the Jews, viii. 48; though even this supposition would not give consistency to the passage, for in Samaria also Jesus is said, iv. 39, to have had a favourable reception. Besides, we have already seen, [1056] that the fourth Evangelist knows nothing of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, but on all occasions presupposes him to be a Galilean and a Nazarene. From the above considerations we obtain only the negative result, that it is impossible to discover any consistent relation between the maxim in question and the context. A positive result,—namely, how the maxim came to occupy its actual position, notwithstanding this want of relation, will perhaps be obtained when we have examined the two other passages belonging to the present head of our inquiry.
The declaration xiii. 20, He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me, has an almost verbal parallel in Matt. x. 40. In John, it is preceded by the prediction of the betrayal of Jesus, and his explanation to his disciples that he had told them this before it came to pass, in order that when his prediction was fulfilled, they might believe in him as the Messiah. What is the connexion between these subjects and the above declaration, or between the latter and its ensuing context, where Jesus recurs to his betrayer? It is said that Jesus wished to impress on his disciples the high dignity of a messianic missionary, a dignity which the betrayer thought lightly of losing; [1057] but the negative idea of loss, on which this supposition turns, is not intimated in the text. Others are of opinion that Jesus, observing the disciples to be disheartened by the mention of the betrayer, sought to inspire them with new courage by representing to them their high value; [1058] but in that case he would hardly have reverted immediately after to the traitor. Others, again, conjecture that some intermediate sentences have been omitted by the writer; [1059] but this expedient is not much happier than that of Kuinöl, who supposes the passage to be a gloss taken from Matt. x. 40, united originally to v. 16 of chap. xiii. of John, but by some chance transposed to the end of the paragraph. Nevertheless, the indication of v. 16 is an useful way-mark. This verse, as well as v. 20, has a parallel in the discourse of instructions in Matthew (x. 24); if a few fragments of this discourse had reached the author of the fourth gospel through the medium of tradition, it is very probable that one of them would bring the others to his recollection. In v. 16 there is mention of the sent, ἀπόστολος, and of him who sent him, πέμψας αὐτὸν; so in v. 20, of those whom Jesus will send, and of Him who sent Jesus. It is true, that the one passage has a humiliating, the other an encouraging tendency, and their affinity lies, therefore, not in the sense, but in the words; so that as soon as the fourth Evangelist puts down, from memory, traditional sayings of Jesus, we see him subject to the same law of association as the synoptists. It would have been the most natural arrangement to place v. 20 immediately after v. 16; but the thought of the traitor was uppermost in the mind of the writer, and he could easily postpone the insertion of an apophthegm that had only a verbal connexion with his previous matter.
Our third passage, xiv. 31, lies yet farther within the domain of the history of the Passion than the one last examined, but as, like this, it can be viewed quite independently, we shall not be anticipating if we include it in our present chapter. In the above passage, the words Arise, let us go hence, ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν, remind us of those by which Jesus, Matt. xxvi. 46; Mark xiv. 42, summons his disciples to join him in encountering the traitor: Rise, let us be going, ἐγείρεσθε ἄγωμεν. The position of the words in John is perplexing, because the summons to depart has no effect; Jesus, as if he had said nothing of the kind, immediately continues (xv. 1), I am the true vine, etc., and does not take his departure with his disciples until after he has considerably prolonged his discourse. Expositors of every hue have been singularly unanimous in explaining the above words by the supposition, that Jesus certainly intended at the moment to depart and betake himself to Gethsemane, but love for his disciples, and a strong desire to impart to them still further admonition and comfort, detained him; that hence, the first part of the summons, Arise, was executed, but that, standing in the room in which he had supped, he pursued his discourse, until, later (xviii. 1), he also put into effect the words, let us go hence. [1060] It is possible that the circumstances were such; it is also possible that the image of this last evening, with all its details, might be engraven so deeply and accurately in the memory of a disciple, that he might narrate how Jesus arose, and how touchingly he lingered. But one who wrote under the influence of a recollection thus lively, would note the particulars which were most apparent; the rising to depart and the delay,—not the mere words, which without the addition of those circumstances are altogether unintelligible. Here again, then, the conjecture arises that a reminiscence of the evangelical tradition presented itself to the writer, and that he inserted it just where it occurred to him, not, as it happened, in the best connexion; and this conjecture assumes probability so soon as we discover what might have reminded him of the above expression. In the synoptical parallels the command, Rise, let us be going, is connected with the announcement, Behold the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners—behold he is at hand that doth betray me; with the announcement, that is, of the hostile power which is approaching, before which, however, Jesus exhibits no fear, but goes to encounter the danger with the decision implied in that command. In John’s gospel, also, Jesus, in the passage under our notice, had been speaking of a hostile power when he said, The Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. It makes little difference that in John it is the power that dwells in the betrayer, and in those led by him, while, in the synoptical gospels, it is the betrayer who is impelled by that power, that is said to approach. If the author of the fourth gospel knew by tradition that Jesus had united with the announcement of an approaching danger the words, Rise, let us be going, this expression would be likely to occur to him on the mention of the prince of this world; and as in that stage of his narrative he had placed Jesus and his disciples in the city and within doors, so that a considerable change of place was necessary before they could encounter the enemy, he added to ἄγωμεν (let us go), ἐντεῦθεν (hence). As, however, this traditional fragment had intruded itself unawares into the train of thought, which he designed to put as a farewell discourse into the mouth of Jesus, it was immediately lost sight of, and a free course was given to the stream of valedictory instruction, not yet exhausted.
If, from the point of view now attained, we glance back on our first passage, iv. 44, it is easy to see how the Evangelist might be led to insert in so unsuitable a connexion the testimony of Jesus as to the treatment of a prophet in his own country. It was known to him traditionally, and he appears to have applied it to Galilee in general, being ignorant of any unfavourable contact of Jesus with the Nazarenes. As, therefore, he knew of no special scene by which this observation might have been prompted, he introduced it where the simple mention of Galilee suggested it, apparently without any definite idea of its bearing.
The result of the above investigation is this: the fourth Evangelist succeeds in giving connectedness to his materials, when he presents his own thoughts in the form of discourses delivered by Jesus; but he often fails lamentably in that particular, when he has to deal with the real traditional sayings of Jesus. In the above instances, when he has the same problem before him as the synoptists, he is as unfortunate in its solution as they; nay, he is in a yet more evil case, for his narrative is not homogeneous with the common evangelical tradition, and presented few places where a genuine traditional relic could be inserted. Besides, he was accustomed to cast his metal, liquid from his own invention, and was little skilled in the art of adapting independent fragments to each other, so as to form an harmonious mosaic.
§ 83.
THE MODERN DISCUSSIONS ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE DISCOURSES IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. RESULT.
The foregoing examination of the discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel, has sufficiently prepared us to form a judgment on the controversy of which they have recently been the subject. Modern criticism views these discourses with suspicion, partly on account of their internal contexture, which is at variance with certain generally received rules of historical probability, and partly on account of their external relation to other discourses and narratives. On the other hand, this gospel has had numerous defenders.
With respect to the internal contexture of the above discourses, there arises a twofold question: Does it correspond to the laws, first of verisimilitude, and secondly, of memory?
It is alleged by the friends of the fourth gospel that its discourses are distinguished by a peculiar stamp of truth and credibility; that the conversations which it represents Jesus as holding with men of the most diverse disposition and capacity, are faithful delineations of character, satisfying the strictest demands of psychological criticism. [1061] In opposition to this, it is maintained to be in the highest degree improbable, that Jesus should have adopted precisely the same style of teaching to persons differing widely in their degrees of cultivation; that he should have spoken to the Galileans in the synagogue at Capernaum not more intelligibly than to a master of Israel; that the matter of his discourses should have turned almost entirely on one doctrine—the dignity of his person; and that their form should have been such as to seem selected with a view to perplex and repel his hearers. Neither, it is further urged, do the interlocutors express themselves in conformity with their position and character. The most educated Pharisee has no advantage in intelligence over a Samaritan woman of the lowest grade; the one, as well as the other, can only put a carnal interpretation on the discourse which Jesus intends spiritually; their misconstructions, too, are frequently so glaring, as to transcend all belief, and so uniform that they seem to belong to a standing set of features with which the author of the fourth gospel has chosen, for the sake of contrast, to depict those whom he brings into conversation with Jesus. [1062] Hence, I confess, I understand not what is the meaning of verisimilitude in the mind of those who ascribe it to the discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John.
As to the second point, regarding the powers of memory, it is pretty generally agreed that discourses of the kind peculiar to John’s gospel,—in contradistinction to the apophthegms and parables, either isolated or strung together, in the synoptical gospels,—namely, series of dependent propositions, or prolonged dialogues, are among the most difficult to retain and reproduce with accuracy. [1063] Unless such discourses were reduced to writing at the moment of their delivery, all hope of their faithful reproduction must be abandoned. Hence Dr. Paulus once actually entertained the idea, that in the judgment-halls of the temple or the synagogues at Jerusalem, there were stationed a sort of shorthand writers, whose office it was to draw up verbal processes, and that from their records the Christians, after the death of Christ, made transcripts. [1064] In like manner, Bertholdt was of opinion, that our Evangelist, during the lifetime of Jesus, took down most of the discourses of Jesus in the Aramæan language, and made these notes the foundation of his gospel, composed at a much later period. [1065] These modern hypotheses are clearly unhistorical; [1066] nevertheless, their propounders were able to adduce many reasons in their support. The prophetic declarations of Jesus relative to his death and resurrection, said Bertholdt, are more indefinite in John than in the synoptical gospels, a sure sign that they were recorded before their fulfilment, for otherwise the writer’s experience of the event would have reflected more clearness on the predictions. To this we may add the kindred argument, by which Henke thought it possible to establish the genuineness of the discourses in John: namely, that the fourth Evangelist not seldom appends explanatory remarks, often indeed erroneous, to the obscure expressions of Jesus, thus proving that he was scrupulously conscientious in reporting the discourses, for otherwise he would have mingled his comments with their original matter. [1067] But it is with justice objected, that the obscurity of the predictions in the fourth gospel is in perfect harmony with the mystical spirit that pervades the work, and as, besides, the author, together with his fondness for the obscure and enigmatical, indisputably possessed taste, he must have been conscious that a prophecy would only be the more piquant and genuine-looking, the more darkly it was delivered: hence, though he put those predictions into the mouth of Jesus long after the events to which they refer, he might yet choose to give them an indefinite form. This observation helps to explain why the Evangelist, when elucidating some obscure expressions of Jesus, adds that his disciples did not understand them until after his resurrection, or after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (ii. 22, vii. 39); for the opposition of the darkness in which the disciples at one time groped, to the light which ultimately arose on them, belongs to that order of contrasts with which this gospel abounds. Another argument, adopted by Bertholdt and approved by Tholuck, is, that in the discourses of the fourth gospel there sometimes occur observations, which, having no precise meaning in themselves, nor any connexion with the rest of the discourse, must have been occasioned by some external circumstance, and can only be accounted for on the supposition of prompt, nay, of immediate reduction to writing; and among their examples the passage, Arise, let us go hence (xiv. 31), is one of the most important. [1068] But the origin of such digressive remarks has been above explained in a manner that renders the hypothesis of instantaneous notetaking superfluous.
Thus commentators had to excogitate some other means of certifying the genuineness of the discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel. The general argument, so often adduced, founded on what a good memory might achieve, especially among men of simple lives, unused to writing, lies in the region of abstract possibility, where, as Lücke remarks, [1069] there may always be nearly as much said against as for a theory. It has been thought more effectual to adopt an argument resting on a narrower basis, and to appeal to the individual distinctions of the Apostle John,—to his intimate and peculiar relation to Jesus as the favourite disciple,—to his enthusiasm for his master, which must surely have strengthened his memory, and have enabled him to preserve in the most lively recollection all that came from the lips of his divine friend. [1070] Although this peculiar relation of John to Jesus rests on the authority of John’s gospel alone, we might, without reasoning in a circle, draw from it conclusions as to the credibility of the discourses communicated by him, were the faults of which his gospel is accused only such as proceed from the inevitable fading of the memory; because the positive notices of that relation could never flow from this negative cause. As, however, the suspicion which has arisen to the prejudice of the fourth Evangelist has gone far beyond those limits, even to the extent of taxing him with free invention, no fact resting on the word of John can be used in support of the discourses which he communicates. But neither the above relation, if admitted, nor the remark that John apparently attached himself to Jesus in early youth, when impressions sink deepest, and from the time of his master’s death lived in a circle where the memory of his words and deeds was cherished, [1071] suffices to render it probable that John could retain in his mind long series of ideas, and complicated dialogues, until the period in which the composition of his gospel must be placed. For critics are agreed that the tendency of the fourth gospel, its evident aim to spiritualize the common faith of Christians into the Gnosis, and thus to crush many errors which had sprung up, is a decisive attestation that it was composed at a period when the church had attained a degree of maturity, and consequently in the extreme old age of the apostle. [1072]
Hence the champions of the discourses in question are fain to bring forward, as a forlorn hope, the supernatural assistance of the Paraclete, which was promised to the disciples, and which was to restore all that Jesus had said to their remembrance. This is done by Tholuck with great confidence, [1073] by Lücke with some diffidence, [1074] which Tholuck’s Anzeiger severely censures, but which we consider laudable, because it implies a latent consciousness of the circle that is made, in attempting to prove the truthfulness of the discourses in John, by a promise which appears nowhere but in those discourses; [1075] and of the inadequacy of an appeal, in a scientific inquiry, to a popular notion, such as that of the aid of the Holy Spirit. The consciousness of this inadequacy shows itself indirectly in Tholuck, for he ekes out the assistance of the Paraclete by early notes; and in Lücke also, for he renounces the verbal authenticity of the discourses in John, and only contends for their substantial veracity on grounds chiefly connected with the relation which they bear to other discourses.
The external relation of the discourses of Jesus in John’s gospel is also twofold; for they may be compared both with those discourses which the synoptists put into the mouth of Jesus, and with the manner in which the author of the fourth gospel expresses himself when he is avowedly the speaker.
As a result of the former comparison, critics have pointed out the important difference that exists between the respective discourses in their matter, as well as in their form. In the first three gospels, Jesus closely adapts his teaching to the necessities of his shepherdless people, contrasting, at one time, the corrupt institutions of the Pharisees with the moral and religious precepts of the Mosaic law; at another, the carnal messianic hopes of the age with the purely spiritual nature of his kingdom, and the conditions of entrance therein. In the fourth gospel, on the contrary, he is perpetually dilating, and often in a barren, speculative manner, on the doctrine of his person and higher nature: so that in opposition to the diversified doctrinal and practical materials of the synoptical discourses, we have in John a one-sided dogmatism. [1076] That this opposition does not hold invariably, and that in the discourses of the synoptical gospels there are passages which have more affinity with those of John, and vice versâ, must be granted to judicious critics; [1077] but the important preponderance of the dogmatical element on the one side, and of the practical on the other, is a difficulty that demands a thorough explanation. In answer to this requisition, it is common to adduce the end which John is supposed to have had in view in the composition of his gospel: namely, to furnish a supplement to the first three gospels, and to supply their omissions. But if Jesus taught first in one style, then in another, how was it that the synoptists selected almost exclusively the practical and popular, John, nearly without exception, the dogmatic and speculative portions of his discourse? This is accounted for in a manner intrinsically probable. In the oral tradition, it is observed, on which the first three gospels were founded, the simple and popular, the concise and sententious discourses of Jesus, being the most easy of retention, would alone be propagated, while his more profound, subtle and diffuse discourses would be lost. [1078] But according to the above supposition, the fourth Evangelist came as a gleaner after the synoptists: now it is certain that all the discourses of Jesus having a practical tendency had not been preserved by them; hence, that the former has almost invariably avoided giving any relic of such discourses, can only be explained by his preference for the dogmatic and speculative vein: a preference which must have had both an objective and a subjective source, the necessities of his time and circumstances, and the bent of his own mind. This is admitted even by critics who are favourable to the authenticity of the fourth gospel, [1079] with the reservation, that the preference betrays itself only negatively, by omission, not positively, by addition.
There is a further difference between the synoptical gospels and the fourth, as to the form of teaching adopted by Jesus; in the one, it is aphoristic and parabolic, in the other, dialectic. [1080] We have seen that the parable is altogether wanting in the fourth gospel, and it is natural to ask why, since Luke, as well as Matthew, has many admirable parables peculiar to himself, John has not been able to make a rich gleaning, even after those two predecessors? It is true that isolated apothegms and sentences, similar to the synoptical ones, are not entirely absent from the fourth gospel: but, on the other hand, it must be admitted that the prevailing aphoristic and parabolic form of instruction, ascribed to Jesus by the synoptists, is more suited to the character of a popular teacher of Palestine, than the dialectic form which he is made to adopt by John. [1081]
But the relation of the discourses of Jesus in the gospel of John, to the Evangelist’s own style of thinking and writing, is decisive. Here we find a similarity, [1082] which, as it extends to the discourses of a third party, namely, the Baptist, cannot be explained by supposing that the disciple had formed his style on that of the master, [1083] but requires us to admit that the Evangelist has lent his own style to the principal characters in his narrative. The latest commentator on John has not only acknowledged this with regard to the colouring of the expression; he even thinks that in the matter itself he can here and there detect the explanatory amplifications of the Evangelist, who, to use his own phrase, has had a hand in the composition of the longer and more difficult discourses. [1084] But since the Evangelist does not plainly indicate his additions, what is to assure us that they are not throughout interwoven with the ideas of Jesus, nay, that all the discourses which he communicates are not entirely his own productions? The style furnishes no guidance, for this is everywhere the same, and is admitted to be the Evangelist’s own; neither does the sense, for in it also there is no essential difference whether the Evangelist speaks in his own name or in that of Jesus: where then is the guarantee that the discourses of Jesus are not, as the author of the Probabilia maintains, free inventions of the fourth Evangelist?
Lücke adduces some particulars, which on this supposition would be in his opinion inexplicable. [1085] First, the almost verbal agreement of John with the synoptists in isolated sayings of Jesus. But as the fourth Evangelist was within the pale of the Christian community, he must have had at his command a tradition, from which, though drawing generally on his own resources, he might occasionally borrow isolated, marked expressions, nearly unmodified. Another argument of Lücke is yet more futile. If, he says, John had really had the inclination and ability to invent discourses for Jesus, he would have been more liberal in long discourses; and the alternation of brief remarks with prolonged addresses, is not to be explained on the above supposition. But this would follow only if the author of the fourth gospel appeared to be a tasteless writer, whose perception did not tell him, that to one occasion a short discourse was suitable, to another a long one, and that the alternation of diffuse harangues with concise sentences was adapted to produce the best impression. Of more weight is the observation of Paulus, that if the fourth Evangelist had given the rein to his invention in attributing discourses to Jesus, he would have obtruded more of his own views, of which he has given an abstract in his prologue; whereas the scrupulousness with which he abstains from putting his doctrine of the Logos into the mouth of Jesus, is a proof of the faithfulness with which he confined himself to the materials presented by his memory or his authorities. [1086] But the doctrine of the Logos is substantially contained in the succeeding discourse of Jesus; and that the form in which it is propounded by the evangelist in his preface, does not also reappear, is sufficiently explained by the consideration, that he must have known that form to be altogether foreign to the teaching of Jesus.
We therefore hold it to be established, that the discourses of Jesus in John’s gospel are mainly free compositions of the Evangelist; but we have admitted that he has culled several sayings of Jesus from an authentic tradition, and hence we do not extend this proposition to those passages which are countenanced by parallels in the synoptical gospels. In these compilations we have an example of the vicissitudes which befal discourses, that are preserved only in the memory of a second party. Severed from their original connexion, and broken up into smaller and smaller fragments, they present when reassembled the appearance of a mosaic, in which the connexion of the parts is a purely external one, and every transition an artificial juncture. The discourses of Jesus in John present just the opposite appearance. Their gradual transitions, only rendered occasionally obscure by the mystical depths of meaning in which they lie,—transitions in which one thought develops itself out of another, and a succeeding proposition is frequently but an explanatory amplification of the preceding, [1087]—are indicative of a pliable, unresisting mass, such as is never presented to a writer by the traditional sayings of another, but such as proceeds from the stores of his own thought, which he moulds according to his will. For this reason the contributions of tradition to these stores of thought (apart from the sayings which are also found in the earlier gospels) were not so likely to have been particular, independent dicta of Jesus, as rather certain ideas which formed the basis of many of his discourses, and which were modified and developed according to the bent of a mind of Alexandrian or Greek culture. Such are the correlative ideas of πατὴρ and υἱὸς (father and son), φῶς and σκότος (light and darkness), ζωὴ and θάνατος (life and death), ἄνω and κάτω (above and beneath), σὰρξ and πνεῦμα (flesh and spirit); also some symbolical expressions, as ἄρτος τῆς ζωῆς (bread of life), ὕδωρ ζῶη (water of life). These and a few other ideas, variously combined by an ingenious author, compose the bulk of the discourses attributed to Jesus by John; a certain uniformity necessarily attending this elemental simplicity.