CHAPTER 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.