INTERMTlOl WDBOOKS THE NEW TESTAMENT may Orillo Cone D.D. THE SYNOPTIC @ GBOFOSE I, c, INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOKS TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. Edited by Orello Cone, D.D. To be completed in four volumes. I. The Synoptic Gospels. By George L. Cary. II. The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Thes- salonians, etc. By James Drummond. III. Hebrews, Colossians, Ephesians, etc. By Orello Cone. In preparation. IV. The Fourth Gospel, Acts, etc. By Henry P. Forbes. In preparation. INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOKS TO THE NEW TESTAMENT By ORELLO CONE, D.D., Editor, GEORGE L. CARY, L.H.D. JAMES DRUMMOND, LL.D., and HENRY P. FORBES, D.D. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS TOGETHER WITH A CHAPTER ON THE TEXT-CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT BY GEORGE LOVELL CARY, A.M., L.H.D. President of the Meadville Theological School G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON Zbe IRnicherbocfter press 1900 Copyright, igoo BY GEORGE LOVELL CARY Ube Tftnicfeevbochet press, IRew IBorfe GENERAL, PREFACE TO THE SERIES. THESE Handbooks constitute an exegetical series cover ing the entire New Testament and constructed on a plan which admits of greater freedom of treatment than is usual in commentaries proper. The space generally devoted in commentaries to a minute examination of the grammatical construction of passages of minor importance is occupied with the discussion of those of a special interest from a doc trinal and practical poi nt of view. Questions of the authorship and date of the several books are treated in carefully-prepared Introductions, and numerous Dissertations are inserted eluci dating matters of graver moment. The books of the New Testament are treated as a literature which in order to be understood must be explained, like all other ancient literatures, in accordance with the accepted principles of the grammatical and historical interpretation. The aim of the writers has been to ascertain and clearly set forth the meaning of the authors of these books by the application of this method in freedom from dogmatic prepossessions. The purpose has been constantly kept in view to furnish a series of Handbooks to the New Testament which should meet the wants of the general reader, and at the same time present the results of the latest scholarship and of the most thorough critical investigation. iv GENERAL PREFACE TO THE SERIES Accordingly, more prominence has been given to the state ment of the results of the critical processes than to the presen tation of the details of these processes by means of extended discussions of questions of Greek grammar, philology, and exegesis. Hence, while the advanced student will find much to interest him in these volumes, it is believed that ministers who have not the time to occupy themselves with the refine ments of minute hermeneutics, superintendents and teachei s of Sunday-schools, and Bible-students in general will find them suited to their needs. The text used is that of the Re vised Version, although for the purpose of saving space the text has not been printed, and the passages explained have been indicated in part by references only and in part by references together with a few initial words. The Editor. PREFACE. WHAT the author here needs to say to his readers is only that which concerns the present volume as dis tinguished from the others of the series. In respect both to the distribution of the Synoptic matter into sections and the general order of sequence, the arrange ment adopted is substantially that of Holtzmann in his Hand-Commentar and Huck in his Synopse. Huck's 232 sections have been reduced to 202 without, it is believed, any loss in any direction. In the handling of the matter assigned to the several sec tions precedence has generally been given to what is con tributed by Mark, or, where he is silent, to Matthew. Critical discussions of points in which the general reader is likely to have little or no interest have been for the most part introduced in the form of special notes at the end of the several sections. All words in Greek characters, as well as all notes of secondary consequence, are relegated to the bottom of the page, and, like the more important critical notes just referred to, may be disregarded by him who is in terested only in the results of interpretation. Most citations of the Synoptic text are from the Revised Version and are printed in italics, while those which differ at all from this standard are placed within marks of quotation. Considering the purpose of the book, it has not been thought wise to load it down with extended references to authorities. The author could not specify, if he would, all the sources to which he is indebted, and he lays claim to no other originality than that which consists in an vi PREFACE independent use of material belonging to the common store of Biblical scholarship. The most profitable use of the book will require that the Revised Version of the New Testament shall be con stantly before the reader for purposes of reference. Without a previous reading of the passage commented upon, much that is written concerning it will be in danger of being but imperfectly understood. To my colleague, Professor George W. Gilmore, I am greatly indebted for valuable assistance in the correction of proof-sheets, as well as for many helpful suggestions, espe cially in matters pertaining to Old Testament scholarship, while the work was passing through the press. G. L,. C. MEADVILI.E, Pa., January, 1900. CONTENTS. Syliabus of Comment Bibliography Introduction i. The New Testament as Literature 2. The Gospel according to Matthew 3. The Gospei, according To Mark 4. The Gospei, according to Luke 5. The Synoptic Problem 6. Synopsis and Harmony Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels [For detailed contents of the Comment, see pages ix.-xvi.] ELEMENTS OF TEXT-CRITICISM : I. Various Readings II. Codices III. Versions IV. Patristic Quotations . ... V. Laws of Text-Criticism VI. Editions of the Greek New Testament . Appendix : A. The Messianic Hope B. Quotations from the Old Testament . C. The Herod Family D. Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes E. The Synagogue F. Demoniacal Possession G. Son of Man PAGE ix xvii xix xix xx xxiii xx vi xxviii xxxiii I-33I 332336 340 342 344 346 35i352355 356 358 359360 viii CONTENTS. Appendix (Continued) : page H. The Talmud ... 363 I. Parables '365 J. The Cross and Crucifixion 366 K. Miracles 368 Text-Index 371 CONTENTS OF COMMENT. THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS. PAGE § i. Two Genealogies of Jesus i \ 2. First Account of the Virgin-Birth of Jesus . 5 \ 3. Magi from the East Come to Jerusalem and Bethlehem . n \ 4. The Flight into Egypt and the Slaughter of the Innocents 15 § 5. The Return from Egypt and the Settlement at Nazareth 17 § 6. Prologue of the Gospel According to Luke . . 20 \ 7. Angelic Promise of the Birth of John the Baptist. 23 \ 8. Prophetic Announcement to Mary of the Virgin- Birth of Jesus 28 1 9. Mary's Visit to Elisabeth . .... 30 \ 10. Birth of John the Baptist 31 §11. Second Account of the Birth of Jesus; Angelic Announcement to Shepherds .... 34 §12. The Circumcision ; the Presentation in the Temple. 40 \ 13. The Boy Jesus with the Jewish Doctors ... 42 THE GALILEAN MINISTRY. § 14. John the Baptist and His Ministry .... 45 §15. The Baptism of Jesus 57 § 16. The Temptation of Jesus 60 § 17. The Return of Jesus to Galilee and His Preaching There 65 ix x CONTENTS OF COMMENT PAGE § 18. The Calling of the First Disciples .... 66 \ 19. Jesus Teaches and Heals in the Synagogue at Capernaum . . ... \ 20. The Curing of Peter's Mother-in-Law and Others. (S 21. Withdrawal of Jesus § 22. A Tour of Preaching and Healing in Galilee § 23. The Healing of a Leper I 24. • The Healing of Ten Lepers . . . I 25. The Healing of a Paralytic . . . \ 26. The Calling of Levi-Matthew I 27. A Question about Fasting Answered . \ 28. First Utterance Concerning the Sabbath I 29. Renewal of the Sabbath Controversy § 30. Healing of an Infirm Woman § 31. Healing of a Dropsical Man $ 32. A Crowd of People and Many Cures . § 33. Calling of the Twelve Apostles \ 34. Introduction to the Sermon on the Mount \ 35. The Beatitudes \ 36. The Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World ? 37. General attitude of Jesus toward the Law . I 38. Murder and the Spirit of Hate fi 39. Of Adultery and Divorce \ 40. Of Oaths ... . . I 41. Of Retaliation ... .... \ 42. Of Loving One's Enemies .... \ 43. Of Almsgiving . . .... \ 44. Of Prayer ... .... § 45. The Lord's Prayer . .... I 46. Of Fasting \ 47. Of Earthly and Heavenly Treasure . - — -r. Marvin R. Vincent, in the Student's New Testament Hand book (1893), p. 56. 3 Dr. Samuel Davidson, Introduction to the Study of the New Testament (1894), vol. i., p. 504. xxx INTRODUCTION with great freedom, often supplementing their testimony by that derived from other sources and moulding their entire material into forms of their own choosing. This con cession is quite necessary in order to account for differences as well as agreements. Thus, for example, no close follow ing of Matthew and Mark by Luke is consistent with the way in which the latter introduces the story of the last days of John the Baptist. In Matthew (xiv., 2) and Mark (vi., 14) a reference to the possible return to life of John leads to the introduction of a detailed statement of the circumstances of his death. Their having this peculiar arrangement in com mon can be explained by supposing that one of the two evangelists borrowed from the other ; but Luke's placing of the account of the imprisonment of John much earlier in his narrative (iii., 19) and quite remote from the speculation about a possible resurrection (ix., 7-9) implies dependence upon some other source than either Matthew or Mark. Luke, again, differs from the others in nowhere mentioning the circumstances which finally led to the execution of John. If the theory of direct borrowing is narrowed down to a claim that thus only can the agreement of the Synoptics in the order of their narratives be accounted for, it may be replied that such imperfect agreement as there is in this respect may just as well be explained by the assumption of dependence upon a common source. (2) The existence of such a common source as has just been suggested was formerly assumed by many ; and this theory still has its advocates. In its most common form it postulates an Aramaic original which became a direct source for our Gospels only after it had been translated into Greek. It is therefore maintained that, by extracting from Matthew, Mark, and Luke all that they have in common, and leaving aside the rest, it is possible to recover a considerable part of their common source. To this mass of fragments there has been given, in recognition of their immediate threefold THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM xxxi source, the title of the " Triple Tradition." Granting what may well be acknowledged, — • that the common matter of the Synoptics represents, so far as it goes, the tradition current in apostolic times, — the results thus far derived from the ap plication of this theory are most meagre and unprofitable for the restoration of a primitive Gospel. If the human could be separated from the animal bones in the " Golden Cham ber " of the church of St. Ursula at Cologne, we should still be far from recognising in the former the living forms of the eleven thousand unfortunate virgins whom they are supposed to represent. The disjecta membra of the ' ' Triple Tradition ' ' have their use, but they contribute very little toward the solution of the Synoptic Problem. One thing the primitive- text hypothesis appears at first sight to do satisfactorily, — it suggests the possible origin of a large number of simply verbal variations which might easily have sprung from different renderings of the same Aramaic original. Hereby, however, a new difficulty is created in place of the one thus resolved, since independent translations in the hands of the different evangelists would not have had so general a verbal agreement as to produce the degree of mutual likeness which the Synoptics manifest. If the assumption of a single Greek source seems necessary in order to account for the agreement of the three in those Old Testament quotations which all have from the Septuagint with common variations from our text of the LXX., it is to be remembered that we have no assurance that the text then in common use was in these respects like ours. (3) If the Synoptic Gospels had not a single documentary source, may they not have been constructed out of material of various kinds, including scattered memoranda and a mass of oral testimony, somewhat as modern history is built up ? The affirmative answer formerly given to this question no longer satisfies, although supported up to a recent time by some names of distinction. No one of the Synoptic writers, xxxii INTRODUCTION excepting possibly the third, gives evidence of having had any such historic sense as would make possible a work of the kind supposed. Moreover, proceeding in such a way, three independent writers could not have constructed works so much alike. (4) The theory of oral tradition chiefly apostolic as the sole source of the Gospel narratives is open to all the objections which can be urged against the last-mentioned hypothesis ; but this position is nevertheless strenuously defended by some, as against the idea of a dependence upon documentary sources. If there were any sufficient evidence of the exist ence of a body of trained catechists in the early Church, to whom and to whom alone was committed the teaching of converts and of the young who needed confirmation in the faith, it would be not unreasonable to suppose that their in structions would at an early day take on a somewhat fixed form, and that their language even would become stereo typed. In the absence of such a unifying cause, unwritten tradition would have assumed forms much more diverse than those of our Gospels. The differences of the Synoptics are well accounted for by this theory, but not their more numer ous agreements. Such measure of truth as there is in this hypothesis, as well as in (1), (2), and (3), is not lost in the theory next to be mentioned. (5) The dominant opinion of the present day makes the chronological order of the Synoptics to be Mark, Matthew, Luke. A genetic relation between the three is recognised ; but while some connect Luke only with Mark or his source, others relate him more or less closely to Matthew also. Whether the proto-Mark theory is accepted or not (and the present tendency seems to be toward its rejection, notwith standing the difficulty, already adverted to, of understanding without it the testimony of Papias) does not materially affect the hypothesis. The canonical Matthew is held to be an original composition, not representing the first stratum of SYNOPSIS AND HARMONY xxxiii tradition alone, but constructed out of materials furnished by the Matthew-logia, the narrative of Mark, and later legend, all of which the author has utilised not so much for the framing of a complete biography of Jesus as for setting forth the grounds of the Church's claim that he was the ex pected Messiah. Whether Mark had any acquaintance with the logia collection is felt to be doubtful. Luke, like the Matthew-writer, took his historical data very largely from Mark, or a proto-Mark, supplementing them from other sources and drawing upon the apostolic logia for the dis courses of Jesus. Whether he knew and made use of our Matthew is not decided. — Such is substantially the attitude of criticism at the present moment concerning the sources and composition of the Synoptic Gospels. 6. Synopsis and Harmony. The synoptic or comparative study of the Gospels is to be carefully distinguished from the harmonistic treatment of them formerly in vogue. It was once thought possible to so combine the four Gospels as to retain the entire contents of each and all in their usual order and produce by the combi nation one harmonious and self-consistent narrative. This plan not infrequently required the repetition of one and the same account, if only there chanced to be some slight varia tions in the narrative as given by the different evangelists, or a difference in chronological arrangement. This method not unnaturally seemed to its advocates to be necessitated by their acceptance of the doctrine of the verbal inspiration and absolute infallibility of the Scriptures ; for since, in their view, there could be no discrepancies in the Gospels, any difference of form, however slight, must always, it was thought, imply difference of substance. The first consistent attempt to apply this theory was made by Osiander, whose Harmony was published at Basle in 1537. Before the end xxxiv INTRODUCTION of the century more rational views began to prevail, and the Harmony of Osiander was soon superseded by the Synopsis of Chemnitz. What are called "harmonies" are con structed at the present day, but they would all more properly be styled " synopses." Their plan is for the most part identical, namely, to place opposite each other in parallel columns the different accounts either of the four evangelists or of the first three, whenever they describe the same event or report substantially the same words of Jesus or of others. Passages which have no parallels are inserted by themselves in what seems to be their proper chronological position. While those who attempt this work vary considerably from one another in their treatment of certain portions of the text, yet, upon the whole, their agreements are much more numerous than their differences. Those who compare only the first three Gospels, taking no account of the Fourth with its peculiar contents and its unique chronology, agree with one another upon all important points. Since in many cases it is necessary, from lack of distinct evidence, to resort to conjecture, it is not to be expected that a synopsis will ever be framed to which some exception cannot be taken. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. § i. TWO GENEALOGIES OF JESUS. Matt, i., i-ij ; Luke Hi., 23-38. THE opening words of the genealogical document which serves as a preface to Matthew's narrative introduces us somewhat abruptly to one of the leading problems of New Testament criticism. To understand fully the implications of the phraseology of the first sentence is to have a clue to what seems to have been the evangelist's chief purpose in writing his Gospel. He who is said in the closing verse of the first chapter to have received at his birth the simple name Jesus is here spoken of as Jesus Christ, — a fact of itself in dicating the early crystallisation of a belief that he was des tined to become his nation's deliverer and its long-expected theocratic king. All this meaning is implied in the one word " Christ " as understood by the New Testament writers («). It is Matthew's design to show by genealogical evidence that Jesus is lineally descended from King David and through him from Abraham. Since it was the general belief of the Jews that the Christ was to come from Davidic stock,1 the phrase " Son of David," used in a special sense, at length came to be one of the designations of the Messiah ; so that Jesus, if he were the Christ, must needs be able, so it was 1 See Matt, xxii., 42 ; Mark xii., 35 ; Luke xx., 41 ; John vii., 42. 1 2 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS thought, to trace his descent from David. That Jesus him self did not think so seems to be implied in his searching question recorded by all the synoptists,1 If David then calls him [the Christ] Lord, how is he his son ? With regard to the actual David ic descent of Jesus the early chdrch seems to have had no doubt ; for, apart from the historical passages in the Synoptic Gospels, where he is said to have been re peatedly saluted as the Son of David, he is so styled in one of the accepted as well as in one of the doubtful Pauline epistles,2 and in the Apocalypse s is represented as saying of himself / am the root and the offspring of David. Luke, in his genealogy, also makes Jesus to have descended from David, but no stress is laid upon this fact, and there is no indication that the evangelist was influenced by any other than a simply historical purpose in introducing the genealogy. When we come to compare the two genealogies through out, more striking differences present themselves. That Luke's order is the reverse of that of Matthew has no special significance ; but that, instead of pausing at the name of David, as Matthew does, and ending the list with Abraham, he goes back to the very beginning of the race and even mentions the Creator as the primal link in the chain indicates a broader view of the relation of Jesus to humanity than is presented in the opening paragraphs of the First Gospel. Luke, again, does not follow Matthew in his attempt, very imperfectly executed, to divide the genealogy of Jesus into three sections of fourteen generations each — a scheme alto gether Jewish in its general characteristics, and in its mode of development reminding us of the national predilection for the number seven and its multiples. In one important re spect the two genealogies agree, namely, in tracing the descent of the reputed father of Jesus and not of Mary his 1 Matt, xxii., 45 ; Mark xii., 37 ; Luke xx., 44. 2 Rom. i., 3; 2 Tim. ii., 8. axxii., 16 (cp. iii., 7, v., 5). GENEALOGIES OF fESUS 3 mother. ' In several places the links of the two chains do not correspond, but Joseph occupies the same position in both. A great source of confusion is the fact that the two schemes are far from being of the same genealogical length, since, between Jesus and David, Luke gives fifteen more genera tions than Matthew. What especially stands in the way of any harmonisation of the two lists is the fact that while Matthew, substantially following the account in the third chapter of 1 Chronicles,2 traces the descent of Jesus through Solomon and his royal successors, Luke, leaving these alto gether on one side, and yielding himself to the guidance of some source of which we have no knowledge, makes Jesus to have descended from Solomon's brother Nathan a (b). 1 This statement represents the general but not the universal opin ion of scholars at the present day. It has been and is still maintained by some that Matthew gives the genealogy of Joseph, and Luke that of Mary. One of the latest forms of this hypothesis makes Mary to have been the daughter and not, as Luke seems to say, the daughter- in-law, of Heli, — it being attempted in this way to establish her Davidic descent. 2 Matthew's apparent omission of some names from the royal list as given by the chronicler may be merely an accident of our present Greek text, since these names are present in the Curetonian Syriac, although absent again from the recently discovered Sinai palimpsest, the text of which is closely allied to the Curetonian. The striking reading of verse 16 as found in the Sinai palimpsest, — "Joseph, to whom was betrothed Mary the virgin, begat Jesus, who is called the Christ," — has some support from MSS. of the old Latin and other ancient versions. 3Tatian (second century) is said by Theodoret (fifth century) to have omitted from his Diatessaron, or Gospel Harmony, "the gene alogies and whatever other passages show that the Lord was born of the seed of David according to the flesh." In the best of the forms in which the Diatessaron has come down to us (the Borgian Arabic MS.) the genealogies are present, but only at the end as an Appendix. The words of Theodoret would seem to imply that the genealogies, as he knew them, made Joseph the father of Jesus in the fullest sense. As for Tatian's omission of the genealogies, it is conceivable that it was 4 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS NOTES. (a, p. i) He whom the evangelist at first speaks of as fesus Christ is later (verse 16) referred to as fesus who is called Christ (cp. xxvii., 17, 22), and again( verse 17) issimply designated as the Christ. Once more, in the paragraph im mediately following the genealogy, we 'and fesus Christ, as at first ; but thereafter throughout the Gospel the narrator, when speaking in his own person, uses only the name fesus, excepting that once in the eleventh chapter he substitutes for it the Christ. From these data alone it might safely be inferred that ' ' Jesus " is a personal name and ' ' Christ ' ' a descriptive title. Further inquiry confirms this impression, and makes it clear besides that the Jesus mentioned in this genealogy was not the only one who had borne the name. 1 ' Jesus ' ' is simply the Greek form of the Hebrew ' ' Joshua, ' ' and the successor of Moses is called Jesus not only in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament but also in the New. Moses is said to have changed the original " Oshea " or " Hoshea " * to " Jehoshua," f afterwards contracted into ' 'Joshua " and ' ' Jeshua, ' ' whence the Greek ' ' Iesous. ' ' Ac- cording to the genealogy given in Luke, Jesus had an ances tor Jesus ; and in the Epistle to the Colossians (iv., n) still another person of this name is mentioned. The name, in fact, was one of not uncommon occurrence. Those Jewish contemporaries of Jesus who neither spoke nor understood Greek could have known him only as " Joshua." The word " Christ," so far from being primarily a proper noun, is but a verbal adjective signifying anointed. Thus in Matt. ii., 4, xi., 2, xvi., 16, xxvi., 63 ; Mark xv., 32 ; Acts xviii., 28 ; 1 John ii., 22, instead of " the Christ" we might say with equal propriety " the anointed one," or, using the cor responding Hebrew word, with which the early disciples of due to their absence from the copies of the Gospels with which he was acquainted, rather than to any dogmatic prepossession ; which again may suggest the possibility of the original Gospels not having con tained the genealogies at all,— although it must be conceded that their uniform presence in the oldest forms of Matthew and Luke now known to us is unfavourable to both these suppositions, and especially to the latter. * In this form represented by the English ffosea, fNum. xiii., 16. VIRGIN-BIRTH OFfESUS 5 Jesus must have been more familiar, " the Messiah." * When the Jesus with whose life the New Testament Gospels are concerned came to be looked upon by his friends and fol lowers as predestined to become the anointed theocratic king of the Jewish nation, they began to speak of him as Jesus the Christ. f At length, under the influence of that tendency with which we are familiar in our own language, the useless definite article was dropped and the adjective became a noun. In Matt, xxvi., 68, Caiaphas, in mockery of the Messianic claim made for Jesus, salutes him as Christe, the equivalent of " King of the Jews " in xxvii., 29. J {Pi P- 3) Whether the belief of the early church in the Da- vidic descent of Jesus rested upon known facts, or whether it was only the natural result of a conviction that he was the Messiah and so must be the Son of David, we have no suf ficient means of determining. Upon the second supposition the two genealogies are consequence and not cause of the ac ceptance of the idea that Jesus was descended from David. § 2. FIRST ACCOUNT OF THE VIRGIN-BIRTH OF JESUS. Matt, i., 18-25. In the concluding portion of Matthew's first chapter it is unquestionably the intention of the writer to represent Jesus as having been born through the immediate influence of the Divine Spirit while his mother was still a virgin. Although this parthenogenetic origin, which Matthew appears to have had in mind when he before spoke of Joseph as the husband of Mary, of whom zvas born fesus, plainly makes the preceding genealogy altogether irrelevant to the purpose for which it was introduced, yet it is not to be supposed that in the mind of the evangelist there could have been any clear recognition * Aramaic mishihd., Hebrew mashiah. — See John i., 41, iv., 25. f Other kings had been thus designated in earlier times ; for instance, Saul, in I Sam. xxiv., 10. % On the Messianic idea, see Appendix A. 6 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS of the difficulty which presents itself to us. The reading already given from the Sinaitic palimpsest, the authority of which is hardly less than that of the Greek MSS., cannot here be left out of the account, although, by its declaration that Joseph " begat Jesus," it makes more distinct the dis crepancy between the genealogy and the following story of the virgin-birth. We are thus brought face to face with two varying traditions concerning the birth of Jesus, one of which makes him to have been the son of Joseph and Mary and the other the supernaturally born child of the latter only. Luke also testifies to the existence of the former opinion as well as the latter, when, after narrating the story of the virgin-birth, he says of Jesus that he was generally supposed 1 to be the son of Joseph. None of the other New Testament writers make any reference whatever to a supposed supernatural birth. The significant elements of Matthew's account are the following: (i) Mary is spoken of indiscriminately as the betrothed and as the wife of Joseph,2 who, in consecutive sentences, appears as her betrothed and as her husband. This is quite in accordance with the way in which betrothal and marriage were looked upon by the Jews of the time of Jesus. Betrothal was not only considered as sacred as mar riage but as being virtually a part of it, so that it could not be made void except by a legal process of divorce, which, however, might be conducted without publicity.3 The most approved custom required that there should bean interval of several months between betrothal and the completion of the marriage rites. There was no formal marriage ceremony following the betrothal, — only a marriage-feast when the bride was taken home to her husband's house. (2) Among 1 kvoixit,Ero. 2 In the Septuagint of Deut. xxii., 24, a betrothed virgin is spoken of as a wife, yvvr'/. 3 See Matt, v., 31, xix., 7 ; Mark x., 4. VIRGIN-BIRTH OF fESUS 7 other nations than the Jews it has been the popular belief that divine communications come to men through dreams. Thus Homer ' represents Zeus as sending a dream to whisper in the ear of Agamemnon as he sleeps, and the Grecian warrior follows the direction of the dream-angel as unques- tioningly as does Joseph the suggestion concerning his be trothed. The Homeric passage, however, shows that the- poet recognised the possibility of the untrustworthiness even of such divine dreams. (3) Notwithstanding that ' ' Jesus ' ' is a name which might have been given to any Hebrew child, it is said to have been divinely selected for the son of Mary because of its etymological significance. ' ' Joshua, ' ' and therefore ' ' Jesus, ' ' is substantially equivalent to saviour or deliverer,' and the child was to be so called because he was the one who should save his people from their sins. The form of expression, it is he who shall save, points to some particular expected deliverer, who could be no other than the long- looked-for Messiah. Yet the coming king was not to be pre eminently a moral reformer : he was to deliver his people from the yoke of foreign oppression, which yoke was con ceived to have been placed upon them by Jehovah a as a punishment for their sins. The injunction of the angel then is that Joseph shall call the expected child " Jesus," because it is the divine purpose through him to restore freedom to the Jewish people and re-establish the throne of David. (4) At this point the narrative is interrupted to make room for the statement that the exceptional birth of Jesus was the 1 Iliad, ii., 1-41. 2 More exactly, and preserving all the elements of the word, whose salvation (or opulence) is fehovah. Cp. Ecclus. xlvi., 1 : "Jesus [z. e., Joshua] . . . who according to his name was made great for the saving of the elect of God." 3 Very many modern scholars prefer to substitute a revised spelling, either Jahve, Jahveh, Yahwe, Yahweh, or Jhvh, for the traditional form Jehovah, which, in the midst of such diversity, it has seemed best here to retain. 8 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS fulfilment of an inspired prophecy, the words of which Matthew quotes from Is. vii., 14, though not from an alto gether accurate version.1 The prophet, whether having the birth of a national Messiah in his mind or not, has no thought of any child being born outside of the usual course of nature («). The passage plainly has no reference to a remote future but to an event then near at hand if), so that the application of it to the birth of Jesus indicates an apparent misunder standing of its true meaning by the evangelist (c).2 NOTES. (a, p. 8) Among Hebrew scholars both in England and Germany as well as in this country there is practically no dis sent from the judgment that alma (or halma/i) is used in the Old Testament, where it occurs several times, of any young woman, whether a virgin or not. In the passage from which the present quotation is taken there is nothing to indicate that this word is used in the restricted sense of the Greek parthenos (" virgin") which represents it in the Gospels. The Revised Version of the Old Testament, by the retention of "virgin" in the present passage (although giving "maiden" in the margin as an alternative reading), has been forcibly kept in harmony with Matthew's citation.* 1 On the principles of N. T. quotation, see Appendix B. 2 Attention has already been called to the peculiar reading of verse 16 in the Sinaitic palimpsest, which makes Joseph the father of Jesus. The text of verse 25 in the same MS., " and she bore to him a son, and he called his name Jesus," by reason of its greater simplicity has a better claim to be considered original than the reading of the Greek text (and R. V.) which is likely to have been strengthened in the interest of the dogma of the virgin-birth. * Matthew's reading xapQsvoS is probably due to the influence of the LXX. The other ancient Greek versions (those of Aquila. Sym- machus, and Theodotion) correctly render by rsdvis, young woman, as does the Septuagint itself in several places, although adhering to TtapbevoS in Gen. xxiv., 43. Outside of the passage now under con sideration, the R. V. sometimes translates "maid" or "maiden," and sometimes " virgin," The Hebrew has a distinct word for " vir gin," betulah, VIRGIN-BIRTH OF JESUS 9 (b, p. 8) In the eighth century before the beginning of the Christian era two hostile nations were conspiring against King Ahaz. Isaiah (or the author of this passage, whoever he may have been) makes a prediction concerning the issue of the undertaking. Incidentally reference is made to a babe about to be born, who shall receive the name Emmanuel, signifying God is with us* (z. e., " on our side "), in token of the belief of the parents in the watchful providence of Jehovah over the destinies of the king and the nation. That there was no fulfilment of the prophecy in the person of the first born son of Mary appears from the fact that he was not called Emmanuel but Jesus. Emmanuel is used strictly as a proper name but once more in the Bible, in Is. viii., 8 ; although as a declarative phrase, " With us is God," it occurs again in Is. viii., 10. Cp. Ps. xlvi., 7, 11: " The Lord of hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob is our refuge." (c, p. 8) The silence of so many of the New Testament writers concerning the virgin-birth of Jesus is of itself calcul ated to excite doubt as to the historical value of the Synop tic account. For belief in so striking a departure from the ordinary course of nature as is implied in a virgin-birth many minds demand evidence of a much higher order than the test imony of two unknown witnesses. No evidence, in fact, but that of Mary can be deemed worthy of consideration, and her testimony has not been preserved to us, or, if it has, we do not know it to be hers. Science comes in with its exclusion of parthenogenesis from human experience, to which it allows the alleged virgin-birth of Jesus to form no exception, not only because of its isolation, but because of the absence of all the conditions recognised at the present day as necessary for the establishment of a scientific fact. It is not the im possibility of a virgin-birth which is affirmed but its incredi- * This rendering of the O. T. Revisers (see their margin) and others is to be preferred to that adopted by the N. T. company, God with us ; for although the copula is expressed neither in the Hebrew orig inal nor in the Greek rendering of Matthew, in both it is plainly implied in the order of the words — " With-us-[is]-God." The Arabic version of the Diatessaron of Tatian reads, " Our God is with us." For an exposition of the entire O. T. passage (Is. vii., 14) see Toy, 1, farther developed by him in the Christian Register of June 29, 1899, art, " Messianic Predictipns,'' io THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS bility. If the contemporaries of Jesus either were ignorant that a divine parentage was claimed for him, or, knowing this fact, discredited the claim (and it is only upon one or the other of these suppositions that the silence of most of the New Testament writers can be accounted for), in either case the evidence in its favour is felt to be very much less than would be demanded for the establishment of a similar fact in our own time, — and there is not one rule of evidence for one century and another for another. To this it may be added that the Gospel narrative of-the supernatural birth is farther discredited by being inextricably interwoven with the super stitious belief of ancient times in the divine mission of dreams and the intermingling of angelic visitants in the affairs of men. All these objections weigh against the historicity of the story, whether it be possible or not to give a satisfactory explanation of its origin and early widespread acceptance. Explanations, indeed, have been attempted along two different lines (to say nothing of the scandalous inventions* of some of the opponents of Christianity in the second cent ury), both types of theory, however, agreeing in recognising Joseph as the real father of Jesus. It is urged by some that the tendency which undoubtedly existed among many ancient peoples to assign to men of unusual gifts a partial divine parentage is quite adequate to account for the rise of a belief that the birth of Jesus was not ordinary human birth. To this it is replied that the idea of demigods was one altogether foreign to Jewish modes of thought, and that the New Testa ment story has almost nothing in common with the gross narratives of Greek and Roman mythology with which it is often compared. This objection has less force when some of the Egyptian and Indian birth-stories are taken into the ac count. Others have more recently endeavoured to show that in rabbinical literature there are some traces of a belief among the Jews that the expected Messiah was to be of virgin-birth, from which fact the inference is presumably to be drawn that Jesus, being the Messiah, must have been supposed, by those who had this expectation, to be virgin-born ; but the authen ticity of the passages upon which this opinion is based has been seriously questioned. * Reproduced in a form less gross by J. Strada, in his Jesus et Vlre de la science, Paris, 1896. MAGI VISIT BETHLEHEM n §3. MAGI FROM THE EAST COME TO JERUSA LEM AND BETHLEHEM. Matt, ii., 1-12. The Herod in whose reign Jesus is said, at the beginning of Matthew's second chapter, to have been born was Herod the Great,' as appears from Archelaus being mentioned in verse 22 as his son. Since at the time of the death of Herod Jesus was still a mere child (verses 20, 21), it must have been Matthew's intention to place the birth of Jesus near the close of Herod's reign, that is, not long before 750 A.u.C. The wise men (more properly Magi or Magians*) who are re ported to have come to Jerusalem from the East to seek the infant Christ represent a Median and Persian priestly caste, although their name is sometimes, as in the second chapter of Daniel, found associated with Babylonia and Chaldaea. They believed in a resurrection and a future life and so far were in close sympathy with the views of a large part of the 1 The giving of the appellation of " the Great " (d jneyai) to Herod the son of Antipater has been accounted for in three different ways : (1) by the recognition of a certain magnificence in his reign, in spite of its many cruelties and excesses ; (2) because, if not absolutely deserving the title, he was great as compared with his sons; (3) by making the adjective have reference to age and not to dignity, thus distinguishing him as the elder Herod, the positive fieyai being used for the comparative neiZoov, which occurs in the N. T. in the sense of "older." (Cp. the English "great" and "grand" joined with words denoting relationship, as in "grandfather," "great- uncle.") On the Herod family, see Appendix C. tjudyoz. In the Septuagint of Dan. ii., 2, judyoi are among those who in ii., 12, are called 6oepoi, wise, which is a partial justification of the action of the English Revisers in retaining the old rendering in this passage, especially as, by their instructions, they were precluded from making any changes not absolutely necessary. In Esther i., 13, the LXX. read . f itpocprjTwi. 34 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS § n. SECOND ACCOUNT OF THE BIRTH OF JESUS; ANGELIC ANNOUNCEMENT TO SHEPHERDS. Luke ii. , 1-20. By the expression in those days reference is made quite in definitely to the time of the events described in the preceding chapter. It is affirmed that about this time the Roman emperor by an official decree ordered a registration of the whole empire (a). Such registrations or enrolments, when made in the provinces, were not simply for the purpose of de termining the number of the people, but were part of a sys tem of taxation. Therefore, although the phrase * employed by Luke does not suggest a record of property as well as of persons, historical considerations partly justify the rendering of the Authorised Version, which reads " taxed" instead of enrolled. There is some ambiguity in the wording of the parentheti cal second verse, it being not altogether clear whether more than one enrolment by Quirinius is implied or whether Luke means to say that an enrolment was made in Palestine for the first time when Quirinius was governor. As a matter of fact, history knows of but one tax-census during the gov ernorship of Quirinius. Since, according to Josephus, this one enrolment was made in a.d. 7, several years after the death of that Herod in whose reign Jesus is said to have been born (see Matt, ii., 1 ff. and cp. Luke i., 5), it is probable that there is confusion in Luke's chronology, — unless, indeed, which is altogether improbable, he was aware of a census concerning which all other writers are silent (b). When it is said (verse 3) that everybody went to his own city to enrol him self, some place near the residence of each one would natur ally be understood, were it not for the statement immediately following, that Joseph went for his enrolment from Galilee 1 dnoypdq>E6f)ai, apographesthai. fESUS BORN A T BETHLEHEM 35 where he lived to Bethlehem in Judaea, because he ' was de scended from King David, whose home had been in Bethle hem.2 It is implied that it was necessary for Mary, his betrothed,3 to accompany him and be enrolled in person ; but the necessity for this does not appear from any know ledge which we have of the Roman manner of conducting such a census (c). Since the season of pasturage in Judaea was between March and November, shepherds would not be watching their flocks by night (verse 8) at the time which the Christian world as signs for the birth of Jesus — December 25th. What the angel announces to the shepherds (verses 10, 1 1) is in perfect har mony with the promise made to Mary in i., 31-33: the birth of a child is proclaimed who, as God's anointed king, shall bring joy and safety to all the people of Israel. The legend is altogether Jewish and national, embracing no conception of the coming of a spiritual world-saviour. The poetical con ception of a choir of angels, while adding much to the beauty of the legend, tends to confirm the impression made by pre vious portions of the Synoptic narrative, that we are not yet standing upon firm historical ground (d). NOTES. (a, p. 34) The common translation, all the world, is mislead ing. The Greek hardly admits of a literal rendering, but, as here used, its meaning would be conveyed with sufficient ac curacy by the word ' ' every body . ' ' * The Greeks first spoke 'The Sinaitic palimpsest reads "because they were both of the house of David." 2 See 1 Sam. xvii., 12. 3 According to the text of the Sinaitic palimpsest, and four manu scripts of the Itala, Mary was already his wife. * The Syriac Sinaitic palimpsest reads "all the land," which limits the enrolment to Syria. Although the Greek cannot be thus limited in its application, the Syriac reading does give colour to the conject ure of some of the commentators that this census was confined to Palestine. 36 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS of their land, in distinction from the lands occupied by those whom they termed barbarians, as he oikoumene* "the in habited (world)," the expression here used by Luke, — and when Rome became mistress of the larger part of the then known world she assumed to herself the title. (b, p. 34) Since Archelaus succeeded his father Herod the Great as ruler of Judaea in B.C. 4, itfollows that Jesus was born at least four years and possibly five or six before the begin ning of the Christian era.f When Archelaus was deposed by Roman authority in a.d. 6, Quirinius was appointed imperial legate. If he commenced his enrolment imme diately upon his arrival in Judaea, Jesus would be at that time from ten to twelve years of age. Various attempts have been made to establish upon historical data the fact of an earlier census than the one mentioned by Josephus ; but all such efforts have proved fruitless. But not only is all profane history silent with regard to such an enrolment, it is not credible that the Roman government should have at tempted the taxation of the inhabitants of Palestine during the reign of one of the native kings. Until after the time of Archelaus Rome only exercised what at the present day would be called a " protectorate" over the domain of the Herods. This prerogative did not carry with it the right to tax the people thus recognised as friends and allies. Judaea at this time was no more subject to Rome than the Egypt of to-day is to England. Neither Quirinius nor any other Roman official could have instituted a census of Judaea with a view to the levying of taxes prior to its becoming a Roman province (a.d. 12), even though at times contributions of money had been demanded of Herod in consideration of his * t/oIkovue'vtj. From this phrase we have the word " oecumenical,'' as applied to councils embracing delegates from all parts of the world where the church has obtained a foothold. t Reckoning from the supposed time of the birth of Christ was first introduced by Dionysius the Little in the early part of the sixth cent ury. The inaccuracy of his computation makes necessary the para doxical statement that Jesus was born from four to six years before Christ. The Dionysian calendar, although early introduced into southern Europe, does not appear in English history until the latter part of the seventh century, and not until eight centuries later had it come into general use throughout Christendom. JESUS BORN A T BETHLEHEM 37 indebtedness to Roman power for the stability of his throne. No alternative then remains but to acknowledge the inac curacy of Luke's account. Should it be thought that Luke's error may have been only in associating the enrolment in question with Quirinius, and that the general registry or dered by Augustus in B.C. 6 was the one which was in pro gress at the time of the birth of Jesus, it is to be remembered that all the enrolments made under this emperor, namely, in 26 and 6 B.C. and 14 a.d., were of Roman citizens only. ifi P- 35) Several considerations tend to excite doubt as to the actual occurrence of this event. Then, as now in our own country, real estate was assessed where it was situated. So far from there being any intimation that either Joseph or Mary possessed such property in the village of Bethlehem, and so needed to go there on that account, quite another reason is given for their journey thither. If the levying of a poll-tax is to be thought of, then the registration would need to be made at the tax-office nearest the home of the in dividual — which in this case certainly would not have been Bethlehem. Supposing that under ordinary circumstances Mary would have been required to register in Bethlehem, the immediate prospect of becoming a mother would have been a sufficient reason for her not taking the journey at this precise time. Moreover, even if the difficulty of bringing the birth of Jesus into any near chronological relation with the enrolment of Quirinius could be overcome, (which could be done only by discrediting the statement of Matthew that Jesus was born " in the days of Herod the king,") there would remain the inconceivability that, after the deposition of Archelaus, when Judaea and Samaria were constituted a Roman province, a dweller in Galilee, which was not a part of this province, should be under the necessity of registering in the territory of a ruler to whom he owed no allegiance. A general consideration of some importance is this. The Roman authorities, aware of the existence of an intensely patriotic feeling among the great mass of the people of Palestine, carefully avoided unnecessary causes of irrita tion in their administration of the affairs of the province. Such an unnecessary annoyance a demand like that im plied in Luke's account unquestionably would have been. If Joseph and Mary were under the necessity of taking a three-days' journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in order to 38 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS register themselves in the little village where his ancestor David had been born a thousand years before, it can easily be conceived what a turmoil there would have been through out the land when almost countless numbers were thus com pelled to leave their homes and travel, many of them long distances, on an errand so distasteful. But that which would seem to have been both unnecessary and undesirable was also practically impossible ; for, especially among the crowded population of Galilee, a large part of which was of mixed and uncertain race, few could have been able to determine the place of the original settlement of their tribe or their family. Even in Judaea and Samaria the difficulty would have been as real if not as great. (d, p. 35) The historicity of the narrative depends not only upon its being a correct statement of the circumstances attend ing the birth of Jesus but also upon its being consistent with subsequent events. Since Jesus did not become king of Judaea, no divine messenger can have predicted that he would. The angelic annunciation is followed by none of the natural consequences of such a supernatural communica tion. The shepherds are said to have reported to others the strange story of the birth of the Messiah, but the Messianic drama ends with this first act. Even Mary only revolves these things in her mind, as though not understanding their full meaning, although they came as the fulfilment of the angelic prophecy that she should give birth to the Messiah. So when the Messianic prophecy is again repeated by Simeon (see the next section), both Joseph and Mary, notwithstand ing all that has been said to have preceded, wonder (verse 33) at the prediction that their son is to be the glory of Israel. Again, when, more than thirty years later, the Messiahship of Jesus is affirmed by one of his most intimate disciples who had been with him from the beginning of his public ministry (see Matt, xvi., 16), it is not on the strength of the birth- story of the Gospels. In attempting to trace to their real source the scattered rays which seem to shine upon us from the cradle of Jesus, we meet at the outset with that form of the Messianic hope which looks first to the race of David and next to the place of his birth for the appearance of " the dayspring from on high" (Luke i., 78). When in early Jewish-Christian thought Jesus had come to be accepted as the promised JESUS BORN A T BETHLEHEM 39 Messiah, it was a matter of importance to discover how the Galilean teacher fulfilled the conditions not only of Davidic descent but also of birth in Bethlehem. If Jesus was the Messiah, he must have been born in the city of David, although Galilee was well known to have been his home in later years. Matthew and Luke agree as to Bethlehem hav ing been the place of his birth ; but while the former knows nothing of a residence in Galilee until the return from the sojourn in Egypt, and seems to consider Bethlehem the home of Joseph and Mary, Luke plainly makes the father and mother of Jesus to have belonged to Nazareth from the be ginning. The agreement of the two writers as to the bare fact of the birth in Bethlehem is a matter of small importance, considering that both were reporting popular tradition, which upon this point admitted of no variation. Neither does the story of the Judaean birth receive any valuable support from uniform later tradition, of which the accounts of Matthew and Luke, for aught we know, may have been the chief if not the only source. Tradition had two principal elements upon which to work and which there was an intellectual necessity for combining into one harmonious whole, the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem and his life at Nazareth. Only two conceivable ways were open, one, to make Joseph and Mary true Bethlehemites, who only took up their residence in Nazareth after the birth of their first child, and the other, to think of his Nazarene parents as making a visit to Bethlehem just before his birth. One outward historical fact, that of the Galilean home, and one long-cherished national belief, that the nation's deliverer must come from Bethlehem, thus combined, under the moulding influence of the creative fancy, to give us an early Christian poetry rivalling in beauty if not in richness the mythologies of India and Greece.* " Christianity," writes Dr. Frederic Henry Hedge.f " like every other religion, has its mythology, — a mythology so intertwined with the veritable facts of its early history, so braided and welded * Since there was and still is near Nazareth a small village called Bethlehem, it is not impossible that Jesus was born in this hamlet and that this circumstance helped on the formation of the later legend, the two Bethlehems being confounded. t Ways of the Spirit, 319. 40 THE SYNOPTLC GOSPELS with its first beginnings, that history and myth are not always distinguishable the one from the other. Every his toric religion, that has won for itself a conspicuous place in the world's history, has evolved from a core of fact a nimbus of legendary matter which critics cannot always separate, and which the popular faith does not seek to separate, from the solid parts of the system." * § 12. THE CIRCUMCISION ; THE PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE. Luke ii., 21-39. The parents of Jesus are represented as complying with all the requirements of the Mosaic law at the time of the birth of their son. First, by the fulfilment of the conditions de tailed in Gen. xvii., the child himself is made as it were a party to the covenant which the Lord established with Abra ham. Then, on her own part, the mother, in obedience to the law of Lev. xii., goes to the temple in Jerusalem forty days after the birth, and out of her scanty means offers the sacrifice appointed for the poor.1 The actual poverty of the parents of Jesus can hardly be considered as well established on the strength of the meagre evidence furnished by this passage so closely connected with material of doubtful his torical value. The transition in this section from poetry to history is not clearly defined. Following the mythical birth- stories we have that which may be in part historical but * Although the words "myth" and "legend" are often used inter changeably, they are not exact synonymes. A legend, as distin guished from a myth, is an unhistorical narrative evolved from an historical fact, while a genuine myth is a purely ideal creation. Few writers, however, are careful to observe this distinction. A myth may be either the poetical embodiment of an idea or the product of the fancy working upon an historical model and creating an unreal historical parallel. 1 Lev. xii., 8 : "If her means suffice not for a lamb, then she shall take two turtle-doves, or two young pigeons." PRESENTA TLON IN THE TEMPLE 41 which can hardly be looked upon as free from legendary additions (a). The language ascribed to Simeon, as well as that descriptive of the man, abounds in distinctively Jewish forms of thought and expression, although the latter are not unmingled with phrases which are classical as well as Bibli cal.1 Thus a Greek might have been called, in the language of Plato as well as of the Bible, " righteous and devout," but only a Jew would look for ' ' the consolation of Israel ' ' and the coming of " the Lord's Christ " and " the redemp tion of Jerusalem." The evangelist was here, as in what has gone before, evidently drawing upon material derived, though probably indirectly, from Jewish sources. NOTE. (a, p. 41) The spirit of Messianic prophecy still pervades the narrative and gives to it in its details an air of unreality. Simeon and Anna may be real characters and not, as some have supposed, mere representative types of those who long ingly waited for the coming of the Messiah, and they may have been present in the temple and congratulated Joseph and Mary upon the birth of a son who, they hoped, might prove to be the promised national deliverer ; but it must be to the later Christian belief in the Messiahship of Jesus and to a knowledge of his actual career that we owe the exact form in which the narrative has come down to us. The 34th and 35th verses, addressed by Simeon to Mary, especially indicate an acquaintance with the history of Jesus, — with the manner in which he was received by his countrymen, ac cepted by some and rejected by others, — and with his tragic 1 The Greek of the N. T. is the common spoken Greek of the writers' time, modified by an acquaintance with the language of the Septua- gint. H. A. A. Kennedy has shown, in his Sources of New Testament Greek, that of the 4829 words of the N. T. about eighty per cent, were in use at least as early as the time of Aristotle. Of the remaining twenty per cent, one-third, or about seven per cent, of the whole number of words, are found in the Septuagint, and the rest in Plu tarch, Polybius, and Philo. The direct dependence of the N, T, writers upon- the LXX. has hitherto been tnucb overrated, 42 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS death. That all this should have been foreseen by Simeon is not only incredible in itself, but its expression harmonises ill with the jubilant strains of verses 29-32. § 13. THE BOY JESUS WITH THE JEWISH DOCTORS. Luke ii., 4.0-52. Of the three great national festivals of the Jewish people the passover was the most important, celebrating, as it did, their deliverance from Egyptian slavery.' With it was con nected the feast of unleavened bread, perhaps a Canaanitish festival adopted by the Israelites from the conquered people.2 Since, after visiting the temple, each little group of relatives or friends, being assembled for the customary social meal, partook together of their paschal lamb, which had been butchered for them by a priest in the court of the temple, the passover supper came to be the most important part of the festival, so that it was not unnatural to speak of eating rather than of keeping or celebrating the passover.3 Since those living at long distances from Jerusalem were not required by law to attend the passover feast every year, that the parents of Jesus did so is some indication that their piety was of an especially earnest type.4 Among the Jews 'Deut. xvi., 1 : "Observe the month of Abib, and keep the pass- over unto the Lord thy God : for in the month of Abib the Lord thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night." 2See Ex. xiii., 3, 4, xxxiv., 18. In verse 41 two uncials (one of them the codex Bezae), three MSS. of the Itala, and the Sinaitic palimpsest, have the reading "the feast of unleavened bread of the passover." 3 Luke xxii., 15 : " With desire [z. e., earnestly] I have desired to eat this passover with you." 4 In verse 42, instead of the not very clear expression after the cus tom of the feast, the Arabic Diatessaron of Tatian has ' ' after their custom to the feast," and the Sinaitic palimpsest " as was their wont to the feast." JESUS WITH THE DOCTORS 43 religious training commenced at a very early age.1 Certain religious obligations were imposed even upon children, and all the commandments of the law became binding upon one as soon as he arrived at the age of puberty.2 We may reasonably infer from Jesus being taken to the feast by his parents upon the occasion here mentioned that he was now looked upon by them as no longer a mere child, although parental anxiety still continued to watch over him. That he should be able at the age of twelve to converse with the doctors of the law and that his questions should be welcomed and answered by them 3 is nothing strange ; for Josephus says of himself,4 " When I was still a child, about fourteen years of age, I was praised by all on account of my love ot learning, the chief priests and the leading men of the city constantly coming together in order to get from me more accurate information concerning points of law " ; and there is even a tradition that once a young man of sixteen was made president of a law-court.6 Three times a day — morn ing, noon, and night — the child of Jewish parents was re quired to repeat the Shemoneh Esreh or chief prayer, a formula of petition, thanksgiving, and praise, which, as preserved to us in the modern Jewish prayer-book, is of the extent of more than a thousand words. Add to the religious influences of the home the instructions of the village rabbi and attendance 1 Timothy is said " from a babe " to have " known the sacred scrip tures." — 2 Tim. iii., 15. 2 According to the English civil law fourteen is the age of puberty for boys ; but Orientals mature early, and Jewish manhood appears to have dated from the age of twelve or thirteen years. 3 The rabbis even at their formal sessions allowed themselves to be questioned concerning points of difficulty by anyone present. 4 Life, I 2. 6 Both Josephus (Ant, iv., 8, 12 ; Against Apion, i., 12, ii., 18, 26) and Philo (Legation to Caius, \ 31) bear ample testimony to the pains taken with the instruction of youth among the Jews of their time. 44 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS upon the stated synagogue ' service, and we can understand how it was that, in his youth, the son of Joseph and Mary became imbued with the spirit and acquainted with much of the letter of the Mosaic law, even before its serious study be came obligatory upon him. That the impression made by this early training was deep and lasting appears from his answer to the question of his mother when he was found in the temple,2 where alone, as it seemed to him, could it be supposed that he would be (a). NOTE. (a, p. 44) Although the occurrence of this incident in the boyhood of Jesus is certified to only by Luke, there is an air of verisimilitude about the story which partly compensates for the lack of full historical evidence. If, on the one hand, we might at first be inclined to suspect that admiration for the man had led to a belief in the remarkable early develop ment of the child, so that the present narrative is probably to be ascribed to this source rather than to any recollection of actual facts by his parents or friends, on the other hand we have such adequate testimony to the not infrequent oc currence of what seems to us like very remarkable precocity among Jewish youths that the silence of Matthew and Mark here counts for little. There is nothing incredible in the statement that the parents of Jesus did not at first miss him from the homeward-bound caravan ; for they might well suppose that he was somewhere in the company with friends. Since, according to custom, the caravan would be made up at most of representatives of only two or three neighbouring villages, and may even have been composed only of residents of Nazareth, Joseph and Mary would have no real cause for anxiety until the time of the evening encampment and the coming on of night. 1 Even the little village of Nazareth had its synagogue. See Luke iv., 16. 2 Of the two renderings, "in my Father's house" and "about my Father's business," the former has the support of Tatian's Diatessaron and the Curetonian Syriac and Armenian versions, while the Sinaitic palimpsest has the substantially equivalent but less definite expres sion " with my Father." JOHN THE BAPTIST 45 | 14. JOHN THE BAPTIST AND HIS MINISTRY. Matt. Hi., 1-12 ; Mark i., 1-8 ; Luke Hi., 1-18. At this point the narrative assumes for the first time a dis tinctly historical character and a form truly synoptic. Al though Matthew, Mark, and Luke occupy the same point of view and have a large part of their material in common, it is only the first and the third who, in this section, stand in any intimate relation to each other. In so far as these two have common matter, the order of recital is precisely the same ; but Mark has a different arrangement. In Mark's much briefer narrative, however, there are but a very few words, and those quoted, which are not found in the accounts of Matthew and Luke (a). Mark's introduction presents a striking contrast to those of Matthew and Luke. He says not a word concerning the birth and childhood of John and Jesus, but opens his record with a brief account of the public ministry of the former. For him the gospel of fesus Christ has no earlier beginning. As in the earlier portions of both his first and second chap ters, Luke here gives evidence of his possessing the true his torical spirit. He endeavours to fix at the outset with great precision the time of the beginning of the public career of John the Baptist. The date of no other event recorded in the New Testament is given with so great precision. The author is not satisfied with merely mentioning the year of John's public appearing, but, by adding other data, he brings this event into close relation to the political and religious history of the time. Assuming that the first year of the Christian calendar is the year 753 of the Roman era, the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius corresponds to a.d. 29 ; or, to be more precise, since the exact date of the death of Augustus and the commencement of the reign of his step-son was August 19th of the year 14, the fifteenth year of the 46 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS reign of Tiberius may be counted as beginning with the 19th of August, a.d. 28. Pontius Pilate was imperial governor or procurator of the Roman province of Judaea during the last ten years of the reign of Tiberius, or from 26 to 36. The Herod here spoken of as tetrarch ' of Galilee was Herod Antipas. No other Herod ever occupied this position. His reign lasted from B.C. 4 to a.d. 39. Philip was only half- brother of Herod Antipas, his mother being Cleopatra of Jerusalem, while Antipas was the son of Malthace the Samaritan, another of the nine wives of Herod the Great who were living at one time.2 Philip was tetrarch from B.C. 4 until his death toward the end of A.D. 33 or the beginning of a.d. 34. 3 If Luke is correct in placing Abilene at this time under a tetrarch of the name of Lysanias, he supplies a fact not elsewhere attested except by a vague reference in Josephus 4 and one or two uncertain inscriptions. The high- priest Annas (= Hannas = Ananos) was appointed by Qui rinius in a.d. 6 and retained his office until the year A.d. 15, when he was deposed by the procurator Valerius Gratus. During the eleven years of his administration Gratus made five appointments to the high-priesthood, the last being that of the Joseph who is called in the New Testament Caiaphas " (b). 1 Cp. Matt, xiv., 1 ; Luke iii., 19. In Matt, xiv., 9, and Mark vi., 14, 22, the more general title of king is rather inexactly applied to him ; but Josephus (Wars of the Jews, ii., n, 5, and 12, 8) is equally inexact in speaking of the tetrarchy of Lysanias as a kingdom (fladiXEia) and of Lysanias as king (i., 22, 3). 2 See Josephus, Ant., xvii., 1, 3, and Wars, xxviii., 4. 3 Ou these two members of the Herod family, see Appendix C. *Ant., xx., 7, 1. If the Lysanias mentioned in Ant.,s.v., 4, 1, as having been put to death by Antony between B.C. 40 and 36, was tetrarch of Abilene and the only one of the name, then Luke's chronology is much at fault. See Schiirer, Appendix i., 2 ; Holtz- mann, Hand-Commentar zum N. T., i., 57, 58 ; Meyer-Weiss, Kom- mentar iiber das N. T., i., 347-348. 6 Josephus, Ant., xviii., 2, i, 2, and 4, 3 ; xx., 9, 1 ; Wars, v., 12, 2. JOHN THE BAPTLST 47 At the time thus clearly defined by Luke, John is said to have appeared, like the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, with an inspired message for his countrymen. Between this opening of the Third Gospel and the beginning of the Old Testament book of Jeremiah there is a very striking resem blance not only in thought and general literary form but even hi language. Luke's announcement of John's prophetic word is expressed in phraseology, borrowed from the LXX. , almost identical with that with which Jeremiah introduces his message. In place of Luke's definite historical statement Matthew has the very general expression in those days, by which he refers vaguely to the period in which the events previously spoken of took place. For him the beginnings of Christianity are foreshortened as it were, the birth and first public appearing of John and Jesus constituting but a single epoch. Such lack of chronological perspective is character istic of early Jewish literature.1 Each of the synoptists, but not the writer of the Fourth Gospel, speaks of John as ho baptistes,2 " the baptiser," whence the surname of the Baptist. Elsewhere, of early writers, only Josephus " gives him this title. Baptism was known before the time of John, but the special importance which he attached to the rite made him preeminently the baptiser (c). The significance of John's baptism is most fully set forth by Josephus in the passage already referred to : " For Herod put him [John] to death — a good man, who exhorted the Jews that, living virtuously both by acting justly toward one another and by honouring the Deity, they should present themselves for baptism ; for that thus even the act of baptism " would appear acceptable to Him, if they used it not for the sake of procuring forgive- 1 It is, therefore, not necessary to suppose a reference to other nearer events described in some documentfrom which the evangelist borrowed. 2 6 fiaXTidrrfi. 3 Ant., xviii., 5, 2. * fiditTiSiS, baptisis. 48 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS ness of certain offences, but for the purification of the body, inasmuch as the soul had been previously purified through righteousness. ' ' Stated concisely, John's baptism, according to Josephus, was for the purification of the body of one whose soul was already pure. The evangelists, on the other hand, agree in representing the matter somewhat differently, mak ing the confession of sinfulness, but with an implied promise of reform, to have been a prerequisite for baptism. It is evident that nothing more than this could have been de manded of multitudes of men for the most part personally unknown to the Baptist. What he desired was to help them to begin a better life, and to this end he asked them to sub mit themselves to the symbolic rite of purification by water. Mark, with a conciseness of expression natural to one who, making use of a familiar phrase, sees no reason for explaining its meaning, mentions only the wilderness as the place of John's ministry. Bringing together the more precise statements of Matthew and Luke, we are able to locate the field of his activity in the thinly inhabited dis trict of Judaea lying along the banks of the Jordan not far from where it enters the Dead Sea. This part of Palestine must have been then substantially what it is to-day, not a "desert," in the sense of being incapable of supporting animal and vegetable life, but a tract of barren land comparatively unfruitful. Into this wild region John came, not preaching, in the modern sense of the term, but " making proclama tion," ' as a herald,2 of the near approach of the kingdom of heaven (d). Mark and Luke, using identical language, speak of John as proclaiming a baptism of [i. e., conjoined with] repentance unto \i. e., looking to] remission of sins. " Remission of sins " is here, as in Luke i., 77, the abolition of their penalty. By condensing the message of John into the imperative Repent ! Matthew secures a dramatic effect 1 xf/pv66oov, kerusson. 2 whpvt,, kerux. JOHN THE BAPTIST 49 not attained by Mark and Luke (e). The words introduced by Matthew from Is. xl. are found also in Mark and Luke ; but Luke quotes at much greater length, and to Mark's citation a passage from the beginning of Mai. iii. is prefixed without any intimation that it is from a different source.1 The Fourth Gospel (i., 23) has the same citation but in a condensed form (f). The passage in Isaiah has reference to the return of the captive Jews from Babylon and to that only. Jehovah is poetically represented as about to rescue and lead home His chosen people. Before Him goes a herald to an nounce His coming and to secure the removal of all obstacles to His progress. This deliverance of Israel from the hand of the oppressor is the underlying note and not infrequently the direct theme of a considerable part of ch. xl.-xlviii. In xliv., 28, and xiv., 1, Cyrus is pointed out as Jehovah's in strument for this deliverance. When the Christian church came to conceive of the work of John as preparatory to that of Jesus, it was quite in accordance with the customary use of the Old Testament Scriptures to apply this passage to the Baptist. Mark deals in the same free manner with the words in which Malachi represents Jehovah as declaring that He is about to come and cleanse His temple which has been pro faned by the irreligiousness and immorality of the priests. The messenger who is sent to prepare the way is the prophet himself, "Malachi" meaning "my messenger."2 Taking 1 The various reading in the prophets (see R. V., margin) is doubtless the result of an attempt to get rid of a difficulty. The quotations all depart from the Hebrew in several places, but agree substantially with the LXX. In all there is a substitution of "His paths" for "the paths of our God " — a remarkable agreement indicating either dependence upon a common source or of the later evangelists upon the earlier. In Luke the Sinaitic palimpsest has substantially the original form of the passage : in Matthew its quotation is limited to " Prepare ye a way for the Lord." 2 So in Hag. i., 13, the prophet says, "Thus spake Haggai the Lord's messenger (malach)." 50 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS the passage by itself and disregarding its original connection the evangelist makes what verbal changes are necessary in order to adapt it to his purpose. The personal appearance and mode of life of the Baptist are briefly but graphically described by Matthew and Mark. Matthew's himself recalls our thought from the messenger of prophecy to the one who actually came as the herald of the Messiah. Like his prototype Elijah, of whom 2 Kings i., 8, says, " He was an hairy man [z. e., probably, clad in hairy cloth ing] and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins," John appears clothed in the poorest and simplest raiment. From Is. xx., 2, and Zech. xiii., 4, it may be inferred that this was the common garb of prophets as well as of the poor.1 The Mosaic law, while prohibiting the eating of " winged creeping things " in general, made an exception in the case of the locust family.2 The wild honey 3 which made a part of the Baptist's food may have been either an animal or a vege table product. Matthew and Mark furnish a good example of the exaggeration of popular speech, when they represent 1 The hair of camels and goats is still used to some extent in the East for the manufacture of inexpensive clothing. 2 See Lev. xi., 20-23. Locusts were eaten by the Greeks and Romans as well as by the Jews. Aristotle says that female locusts caught before the deposition of their eggs and fried in oil are " very sweet." These insects are still used for food in some countries. In the East they furnish material for bread and are also eaten roasted or boiled, after the wings have been removed. Some of the North American Indians stew them in milk or fry them in butter with crumbs, and some make bread of them. For further particulars see Bible Animals, by J. G. Wood, 596-604. 3Me'Xi aypiov (mili agrion), "wild honey," was sometimes used to designate certain vegetable juices sweet to the taste, which distil from trees and thicken upon exposure to the air. In this sense it is equivalent to the English " honey-dew." That the honey of bees is not always indicated by jue'Xi appears from Herodotus, i., 193, where he speaks of fxiXi being made from the fruit of the date-palm. The honey of wild bees is referred to in 1 Sam. xiv., 25-27. JOHN THE BAPTIST 51 the whole population not only of Jerusalem but of all Judaea as flocking to the Jordan to be baptised by John. Luke, more careful historian that he is, speaks only of multitudes.1 By all the region round about Jordan is meant the country on both sides of the river.2 This is the modern El-Ghor or ". Long Valley." Mark limits himself to repeating of the Baptist's teaching only so much as has reference to his rela tion to the one of greater dignity 3 who is to come after him.4 Notwithstanding the vagueness of his language, there can be no doubt that this mightier one is the expected Messiah. In order to present as strikingly as possible the difference between himself and the one who is to come after he com pares his relation to him with that of the meanest slave to his master ; for the care of the master's sandals was con sidered the most menial of offices. The baptism of the coming one is to be not with water but in a more subtile element, even the divine breath, the pneuma hagion* To this is added in Matthew and Luke a purification by fire, with reference to the searching character of the Messianic judgment. Matthew leads up to this with a passage (verse 10) which Luke also has (verse 9) but does not use in the same way, introducing the fiery baptism later (verse 16) and 1 In the same sober vein Josephus speaks only of the gathering of a large crowd. 2Cp. "the plain [marg. trans, circle] of Jordan," Gen. xiii., 10. In Matt, the Sinaitic palimpsest reads "all from beyond the river Jor dan." The Fourth Gospel (iii., 26, x., 40) places John beyond the Jordan. In Judaaa he would not have been in the domain of Herod Antipas, by whom he was imprisoned and put to death. 3Cp. John iii., 30: "He [Jesus] must increase, but I [John] must decrease." 4 Although Matthew and Mark substantially agree in this passage, the differences are such as to indicate that neither copied directly from the other. Luke agrees now with Mark and now with Matthew. 5 By the translation the Holy Ghost not only is the true thought concealed, but the passage is rendered unintelligible. 52 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS with a different connection. It is indeed necessary to go farther back in order to understand this part of John's mes sage. Those whom he addresses, whether the multitudes, as in Luke, or the Pharisees and Sadducees, as in Matthew, are called upon in language unsparing, if not violent, to repent of their sins (g). In asking them who had warned them to flee from the coming wrath he assumes that they are antici pating with fear the approach of the Messianic judgment.' If they think that by virtue of their being God's chosen people they will be received into the Messianic kingdom without question, he assures them that only through re pentance and a new life (" fruit befitting repentance ") can this felicity be attained. God would sooner create for Him self a new race of men from the very stones lying at their feet than to receive them in their present guilty state." It was a favourite belief among the Jews that all the ' ' children of Abraham" were heirs of the kingdom.3 Resuming the figure of the fruit-bearing tree, John warns his hearers that the time is very near at hand when those not producing good fruit will be exposed to the consuming fire of God's wrath. Had not the prophet said of Jehovah,4 " Behold, the Lord will come with fire, and his chariot shall be like the whirl wind ; to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire will the Lord plead, and by his sword, with all flesh." In Matthew's order, comes in, first, the figure of baptism in fire, and then the simile of the burn ing chaff, the latter symbolising the divine retribution upon evil-doers. Here only in the New Testament is the fan * or 1 Cp. Rom. i., 18, ii., 5 ; 1 Thess. ii., 16. 2 Few at the present day find any reference here to the rejection of the Jews and the acceptance of the Gentiles. a In the Talmud there is ample evidence of this. Cp. also John viii., 33 ff. 4 Is. lxvi., 15, 16. Cp. Heb. xii., 29, " Our God is a consuming fire." 6 ktvov, pludn. JOHN THE BAPTIST 53 winnowing-shovel spoken of. With it the grain was thrown up into the air, that the chaff might thus be separated from the wheat. Unquenchable fire is fire which dies out only when there is nothing more left for it to consume.1 Luke (verse 10) represents the multitudes as seriously inquiring what they shall do to escape the threatened doom. John's only requirement is love for one's neighbour, manifested by deeds of helpfulness. Food and clothing" are to be shared by those having an abundance with those who are in need. Luke singles out for special mention two classes of persons who would naturally seem to John as to every faithful Jew especially in need of repentance — " publicans " 3 and " sol diers." Luke alone indicates (verse 18) that what he has recorded is but a small part of John's proclamation of good news, — for that the Messiah was at last coming was indeed 1 Verses 7-10 of Matt, and 7-9 of Luke are so nearly identical in language as to indicate a very near genetic relation between the two passages, while verses n and 12 of Matt, and 16 and 17 of Luke are more loosely connected. In the two sentences which Mark and Luke have in common they appear to be somewhat related. 2 " Garments " is better than coats as a rendering of xiTmvai. Since the xiT<^v (chiton) was properly an undergarment, the word corre sponds most nearly to the Latin "tunica" and the English "shirt." See Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, under "Tunica." 3 TEXdovai (tHonai), best rendered " tax-gatherers." Those properly called "publicans," i. e., public officers (Latin publicani), were Roman citizens of rank who purchased of the government the right to collect the taxes of a province. The telonai of the N. T. were either subordinates of the publicani, or else, which is more probable, collectors appointed by the Roman officials in the province. These collectors were particularly odious to the stricter Jews, not merely on account of their frequent extortions but because they represented Roman rule, the legitimacy of which the subjects of Jehovah, the only true king, could not recognise. See Schiirer, I., ii., 68 ff. ; Carpen ter's Life in Palestine, I 25 ; Edersheim's Jesus the Messiah, second ed., i., 515 ff. 54 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS "glad tidings" to those not liable to his condemnation. Luke also stands alone in mentioning in this immediate con nection the apprehension of John.1 NOTES. (a, p. 45) It would seem that Luke here had access either to Matthew's Gospel or to its sources, of which the Mark-Gospel, as already indicated, probably formed a part ; for the three accounts have too many forms of expression in common to allow us to think of them as altogether independent com positions. (b, p. 46) Since there could be but one high-priest at a time, and Caiaphas, the son-in-law of Annas, held the office during the governorship of Pontius Pilate, Annas could have been called high-priest at this time only by courtesy. There are several instances on record in which the custom prevailed of continuing to apply the title of high-priest to one who had been superseded in office.* In Acts iv., 6, Annas is again spoken of as the high-priest, and Caiaphas is referred to in such a way as to give the impression that he occupied a subordinate position. In John xviii., 13, 24, on the other hand, it is Caiaphas and not Annas who is high-priest f ; yet the fact that Jesus was first brought before Annas makes it clear that he was recognised as having no small degree of authority. (c, p. 47) Some insist on " theimmerser" as the only proper translation of ho baptistes, claiming that the verb baptizein % always signifies to plunge beneath the surface of the water. This theory is consistently applied in The Common English Version [of the New Testament] Corrected by the Final Com mittee of the American Bible Union, even to the extent of translating, in Mark vii., 4, " immersions of cups, and pots, and brazen vessels, and couches." The most elaborate consideration of the subject from this point of view is to be found in T. J. Conant's The Mea?iing and Use of 1 See I 97. * See Schiirer, II., i., 202-203. f" Caiaphas, which was high-priest that year." "Annas there fore sent him [Jesus] bound unto Caiaphas the high-priest." \ ficatriZEiv. JOHN THE BAPTIST 55 Baptizein Philologically and Historically Investigated. (Am. Bible Union, 1861). Both the Greek baptizein and the English " immerse" suggest rather than express the idea of complete submergence. "Dip" is perhaps the nearest English equivalent of these two words. To claim that in John's baptism no part of the body was ever untouched by the water is to force upon the words of the evangelist a strictness of meaning inconsistent with their common use. Confirmatory of this view is the fact that the early Christians allowed an adaptation to circumstances in the administration of the rite of baptism quite inconsistent with the idea that complete immersion was considered a necessary form. Thus the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, a document probably as old as some portions of the New Testament, authorises bap tism, iu case of need, by pouring water upon the head.* (d, p. 48) Although Matthew alone of the New Testament writers uses this exact phrase, its substantial equivalents, "kingdom of God," "kingdom of Christ," "kingdom" (of God or of Christ being understood), are constantly recur ring, especially in the Synoptics. Once, in 2 Tim. iv., 18, there is an approximation to Matthew's usage iu the phrase " heavenly kingdom." The various meanings of the Eng lish word " heaven" are parallelled in the Biblical use of ouranos.f Iu Matthew's kingdom of heaven the place stands for him who is thought of as occupying it. All that is signified by God's " kingdom," or more strictly, according to modern usage, His " reign," cannot be brought under one formula, it being impossible to deduce a single uniform meaning from the about one hundred and fifty New Testa ment instances of the use of the phrase. John's understand ing of it can hardly have been any other than that of the popular Messianic expectation, according to which the anointed national king was to be, as in times of old, the vice gerent of Jehovah. % But whatever other elements might at * See ch. vii. f ovpavoS. % But see Drummond's The Jewish Messiah, 319. Josephus says nothing directly about the Messianic character of John's preaching, but, since he represents Herod as fearing lest the Baptist's influence over the people should not only put it into his power but arouse in him the inclination to stir up a revolution (Ant., xviii., 5, 2), it is not unlikely that what especially excited the suspicions of the king was 56 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS any time enter into the conception of "the kingdom of heaven," a recognition of the supremacy of righteousness was always present and preeminent. Under the influence of monarchical ideas Jehovah could be thought of no otherwise than as the supreme King. (e, p. 49) There is no better way of rendering metanbein and metanbia* than by " repent " and " repentance." To sub stitute for " repentance" " change of mind," as some have done, is to place etymology before usage ; and to make John issue a call to " reform " is to forget the cause in the presence of the effect. As early as the fifth century before Christ Antipho used the verb metanbein in the sense of " to repent, ' ' and in this sense the LXX. employed it two centuries later, as well as Josephus and Philo about the beginning of the Christian era. Regret for past wrong-doing is clearly the sense in which Josephus uses metanbia f in Ant., xiii., 11, 3, where Aristobulus is represented as repenting of the murder of his brother. The repentance which John demanded was such sorrow for past sins as should give promise of amend ment in the future. (/, p. 49) The " squinting construction " of the unpointed text, " The voice of one crying in the wilderness make ye ready," which leaves it uncertain whether " in the wilder ness ' ' belongs to ' ' crying " or to " make ready, ' ' J does not appear in the Hebrew, which, as the poetic parallelism § plainly shows, intends the latter connection. In the Revised Version of Isaiah " crieth in the wilderness " is given in the margin as an allowable rendering ; but this is probably a concession to the usual understanding of the New Testament form of the passage. John's proclamation of a new " kingdom." The genuineness of this passage, however, is not beyond question. See Schiirer, I., ii., 25. * hetocvoeiv, flETUVOia. t Rendered by the Latin pcenitentia in Dindorf s edition. % Editors and translators keep the difficulty out of sight by the use of punctuation and capital letters. § It is a characteristic of the poetic style in Hebrew literature to repeat substantially ideas in consecutive members of the same sen tence, varying somewhat the form of expression. Occasional traces of this tendency have been observable in the poetical portions of previous sections, THE BAPTISM OFfESUS 57 (g, p. 52) The epithet brood of vipers appears elsewhere in the New Testament only in Matt, xii., 34, xxiii., 33, where it is applied by Jesus to the Pharisees. The viper (echidna), with its outer sleekness hiding its virulent nature, appears in Greek tragedy as a favourite emblem of treachery and falsehood. Jesus had had such experience of these qualities in those of the Pharisees who were insidiously plotting against him that his language cannot be said to have been without justification ; but coming from John, and applied indiscriminately to all those who flocked to hear him, it seems altogether unprovoked. It is a question whether after many years those who recorded the sayings of John and of Jesus were able always to discriminate truthfully between them or to assign to them their right relations. If Jesus never had occasion to accuse the Sadducees and the Jewish people in general of hypocrisy, it may be questioned whether John is correctly reported as connecting with the Pharisees that sect whose members were seldom found in their company, as well as the great mass of the people not all of whom could be supposed to have Pharisaic sympathies.* § 15. THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. Matt. Hi., 13-17 ; Mark i., 9-1 1 ; Luke iii., 21-22. Matthew alone says that, when Jesus offered himself for baptism, John administered the rite somewhat unwillingly. Neither here nor in the preceding section is the Baptist represented as recognising the Messiahship of Jesus ' (a) : his unwillingness to baptise him appears to spring from a conviction of his own moral inferiority. He yields to the request of Jesus only upon his urging 2 that to make an ex- *On the Pharisees and Sadducees, see Appendix D. 'The writer of the late Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, in i., 34, puts into the mouth of John these words : " I have seen and borne witness that this [Jesus] is the Son of God." 2 In suffer it now there may be a hint of a time when their relations to each other will be changed ; but it is hardly safe to draw such an inference from the supposed meaning of a single word (dpri), which may not accurately represent the Aramaic phrase used by Jesus. It is, in fact, conceivable that these words are only an echo of the Messianic faith of the early church, 5 8 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS ception in his case would not be a fitting thing — would be not to do all that is required by the moral law. Jesus not only makes no claim to exemption from this symbolic rite of purification but insists upon his obligation to submit him self to it. In the phrase " kingdom of heaven " the word "heaven," ouranos, as we have seen,1 has little of local suggestion ; but here it distinctly indicates the apparent vault of the sky, which the ancients supposed to be a solid arch resting upon the plane of the earth.2 In the popular belief of the Jews the Deity was conceived as having a special abode above this heaven of the sun, moon, and stars,3 just as among the Greeks Zeus was supposed to dwell above the clouds. When it is said that the heavens were opened or rent asunder as Jesus came up out of the water after his baptism, there is nothing in the account which would suggest to us that it was intended to describe anything but a physical event, were it not that we have in Mark's statement what is not unlikely a survival of the earliest form of the tradi tion — an implied limitation of the vision of the opening heav ens to Jesus only, which may indicate a purely subjective 'Matt, iii., 2, in \ 14. 2 This idea is embodied in the English word "firmament" (from firmamentum of the Latin Vulgate), and the Greek tiTsps'oofia of the LXX. See Gen. i., 6-8, and cp. Ezek. i., 22-26 ; Ecclus. xliii., 1. Skamayim, the Hebrew word for the heavens, means etymologically the heights or upper regions. 3 Like many of the nations of antiquity the Jews believed in a plurality of local heavens, seven being the generally accepted num ber, and no rabbi teaching that there were fewer than two. The modern Christian conception of heaven as the present dwelling-place of departed spirits as well as of the Deity, is not derived from the Scriptures, which, so far from peopling the heavenly abodes with those who have first lived righteously upon earth, admit to the society of God and His angels only Enoch and Elijah, transported to heaven without dying, and Jesus, " the first-fruits of them that are asleep " (1 Cor. xv., 20, 23). THE BAPTISM OFfESUS 59 phenomenon ' (b). It would be consistent with Mark's repre sentation to suppose that he conceived of the divine voice as heard by Jesus and no one else and so being really an inward voice.2 In reporting the words said to have been uttered Luke follows Mark without variation, while Matthew has a form which is a testimony about Jesus rather than an address to him. The purport of the words is that Jesus is the Mes siah, God's beloved Son.3 NOTES. (a, p. 57) Even after John's death his disciples, instead of becoming followers of Jesus, as they naturally would have done if they had been taught to look upon him as the Mes siah, remained, for the most part, outside of the Christian communion. For the place of honour held by John both in the Gospels and in the Christian church he is largely in debted to the unwarrantable supposition that he knew and proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah for whose coming he was preparing the way. Even after Jesus had become famous, John, then only beginning to suspect that he might be the Messiah, sent messengers to ask him whether this was the fact.* (b, p. 59) A marked tendency toward progressive amplifi- 'The phrase rendered unto him in the A. V. and R. V. of Matthew (verse 16) is rejected by some of the best editors. If retained it only confirms the statement of the next clause. No other experience of such subjective vision is ascribed to Jesus in the N. T. 2 The later Jews had a term, bath kol, or " daughter-voice," which, as Maimonides in a rationalising spirit explains, is " when a man has such a strong imagination that he believes he hears a voice from without him." One of the Talmudists speaks of a bath kol as, upon a certain occasion, cooing like a dove. Between this notion and the earlier idea of audible messages from heaven there appears to be a close relation . 3 It is not consistent with Matthew's making John hear the pro clamation of the Messiahship of Jesus that he afterwards represents him as uncertain on this point. * See Matt, xi., 2, 3 ; Luke vii., 18, 19. 60 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS cation appears in the successive accounts of that which is as sociated with the opening of the heavens — the descent of the Divine Spirit in the form of a dove. While Matthew and Mark declare only that Jesus saw the dovelike form, Luke speaks of the appearance as though it were what anyone might have seen, and the Fourth Gospel (i. , 33, 34) makes the Baptist declare that he did see it. Luke again is more spe cific than Matthew and Mark in declaring that the Spirit de scended in bodily form like a dove (in Tatian's Diatessaron, " in the form of a dove's body," in the Sinaitic palimpsest, "in the likeness of the body of a dove"), an indication that the legend had now reached iu his circle a stage of de velopment in which there was no longer any doubt as to the objectivity of the vision.* § 16. THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS. . Matt, iv., 1-11 ; Mark i., 12, 13 ; Luke iv., 1-13. (Assuming the priority of Mark's Gospel, his brief narrative contains the nucleus of the story of the temptation, of which the much more extended accounts of Matthew and Luke are a later development.) Noticing first only the elements of this primitive tradition, we find them to be four in number : (1) that Divine Spirit which had manifested itself to Jesus at the baptism urges him immediately after into the wilderness ; (2) he remains there forty days tempted by Satan ; (3) he is in the midst of wild beasts ; (4) during this time angels *Philo says that "the divine wisdom" is symbolically called a turtle-dove (rpvyoov). Some of the Talmudists liken the spirit of God which "moved upon [or was brooding upon] the face of the waters" (Gen. i., 2) at the creation to a brooding dove. Even the voice of the turtle-dove heard in the spring season (S. of Sol. ii., 12) was interpreted in the post-Talmudic times as being the voice of the Divine Spirit. The dove which went out from Noah's ark and did not return was declared by one of the rabbis to have been the spirit of God, which, at the coming of the Messiah, will bring a crown in its mouth and place it upon the head of the anointed one, at the same time touching him and not touching him. THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS 61 minister to him. At the baptism Jesus had been visited by the Holy Spirit, bringing assurance of the divine favour ; in the wilderness he contends with and vanquishes the em bodied spirit of evil. This second theme the later Synoptics develop, either out of current tradition or by the free work ings of fancy, into a sort of sacred drama or miracle-play. They use the pictorial elements furnished by Mark, with the exception of the third, which represents his simple realistic effort to intensify the horrors of the wilderness.1 Luke follows Mark in stating merely the fact of the temptation, while Matthew's Hebraistic form of expression to be tempted indicates thaflt was a part of the-divine purpose in bringing Jesus into the wilderness that his moral strength should there be tested.2 Instead of Mark's Satan, Matthew and Luke have the devil* Matthew also using as a synonyme the tempter.* "Satan" is a Hebrew common noun, meaning an " adversary," " transformed into a proper name by the prefixing of the definite article, and used to designate the chief of the evil spirits (a). In the pictorially developed ac count of Matthew, Jesus is said to have fasted during the forty days spent in the wilderness (b). By itself this might indicate only that he subsisted upon the scanty food which nature unaided by man furnished him ; but, calljng to mind the experiences of Moses ° and Elijah,' it seems probable that 'Cp. 2 Mac. v., 27: "But Judas Maccabseus with nine others, or thereabout, withdrew into the wilderness and lived in the mountains after the manner of wild beasts, with his company, and they fed on herbs continually." 2 KEipa6Qfjvai, "be put to the test," rather than "tempted." In the Sinaitic palimpsest Luke also has the telic form, " that he might be tempted." 3 6 SidfioXoS, hd diabolds. So the LXX. in Job i., 6, et at. 4 Found elsewhere in the N. T. only in 1 Thess, iii., 5. 5 See Ps. cix., 6, margin. 6Deut. ix., 9 ; Ex, xxxiy,, 28. ' 1 Kings xix., 8, 62 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS the fasting was intended to be represented as absolute. Luke's statement that he did eat nothing in those days seems to imply complete abstinence from food ; but other passages show that not to eat bread and drink wine, that is, not to partake of customary food and drink, might be spoken of as "eating nothing."1 The mention of the fact that Jesus after his extended fast (forty days is only a common expres sion for " a__long time ") experienced the pangs of hunger serves as a natural introduction to the first temptation. Satan suggests that Jesus, since he is the Messiah, shall use his God-given powers for transforming the loaf-shaped stones lying at his feet into bread. The words of the reply to the tempter are borrowed from the Scriptures 2 and are given by the evangelists in almost the identical language of the LXX.3 Though originally spoken with reference to the manna providentially furnished to the fugitive children of Israel in the desert, they seem not unsuited to the present occasion, teaching, as they do, the general lesson of dependence upon the divine bounty. According to the order of Matthew, as a second trial Jesus is transported from the wilderness to Jeru salem and placed upon some lofty part of the temple, with the suggestion that he shall throw himself down and trust to God's fatherly protection to save him from harm. Matthew does not, like the more cosmopolitan. Luke, use the name Jerusalem, but speaks of the holy city,' as a Jew would natur ally do in writing for Jews. Jesus having replied to the previous temptation with a citation from the Scriptures, Satan strives to protect himself in advance from another answer of this sort by supporting his second suggestion with a quotation from the same source, though from the Psalter" and not from a book of the Law. The whole 'Cp. Matt, xi., ig with Luke vii., 33. 2 Deut. viii., 3. 3 In the phrase " it is written " reference is always made to the O. T. 4 Matthew again employs this phrase in xxvii., 53. ePs, xci., 11, 12, THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS 63 psalm from which the passage is taken encourages reli ance upon the divine protection ; but Satan perverts its spirit by citing it in justification of an unnecessary and boastful display of trust in God. In both Matthew and Luke the language is almost identical with that of the LXX. Jesus replies to the tempter with an apt counter- quotation made from the same source as before.1 But Satan will not readily yield. Again, making a last supreme effort and wielding the keenest weapon in his armoury, he strives to arouse in Jesus a spirit of ambition and self-seeking, promising him world-wide dominion if he will only prostrate himself in homage before him. Matthew's narrative is here more picturesque than that of Luke7~since he" takes us in imagination to the summit of some lofty mountain having an outlook limited only by the circumference of the earth's disk. The tempter receives his final check in words a third time taken from the Mosaic Law," in which supreme homage is claimed for Jehovah. The Septuagint in the Alexandrian text is quoted with exactness. The passage in its original connection is a protest against the worship of other deities than Jehovah. Satan, in assuming that this is his and not God's world, places himself among the " other gods " against whose service the people of Israel were warned (c). NOTES. (a, p. 61) The verbal root from which the noun " Satan" is derived signifies first " to set a trap," and then to " lie in wait," as a cunning adversary. But Satan is not only an adversary : he is also represented in the Scriptures as an ac cuser and calumniator, and it is in this sense that he is called in Greek ho diabblbs, ' ' the slanderer. " * In the Apocalypse (xii., 9, 10) he is " the great dragon," " the old serpent, he ¦Deut. vi., 16. Cp. Ex. xvii., 1-7. 2 Deut. vi., 13. * In the LXX. of Esther viii., 1, Haman, the enemy of the Jews, is called their diabolos. 64 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world," " the accuser of our brethren . . . which ac- cuseth them before our God day and night." In the Old Testament Satan appears as less virulent, and in the Book of Job (ch. i., ii.) is hardly more than a powerful cynical spirit who doubts the unselfishness of human virtue. The vagueness of the Hebrew conception of Satan is well shown in two parallel passages, i Chron. xxi., i, and 2 Sam. xxiv., 1 , what Satan does according to the former being attributed to God in the latter. * (b, p. 61) Mark makes no mention of the fasting of Jesus. When he says that angels ministered unto him, a very common sense of the Greek word rendered " ministered " warrants us in understanding the evangelist to mean that angels -supplied hirnwith food. (See, in the LXX., Ps. lxxvu., 25, " men ate angels''"ibT3d*i' ; Wisd. xvi., 20, " thou didst feed thy people with angels' food.") It would seem that, when Mark's simple tradition that Jesus was tempted by the devil was augmented by the details now found in the other Synoptics, the ministry of angels was thereby thrust forward to the end of the narrative, where it stands in the account of Matthew. (c, p. 63) The historical basis of the account of the tempta tion of Jesus is variously supplied by Biblical scholars. Omit ting the altogether uncritical hypothesis that everything transpired precisely as related by the evangelists, the various current theories may be ranged under two heads, according as they do or do not assume the actual existence of a personal devil. (1) There was a real temptation by a real devil; but, instead of appearing in bodily form, he merely presented to the mind of Jesus inducements to wrong-doing. (2a) The story is only a scenic presentation either of special tempta tions or of classes of temptations arising naturally in his own mind as he deliberated upon what should be his lifework ; or it was simply a moral lesson expressed by him in figura tive language for the instruction of his disciples as to their own proper conduct, or as to the conduct which they were to expect from him. This last form of the second theory might receive illustration from the reply of Jesus to Peter when the too forward disciple protested against the self-sacrifice of his master : f " Get thee behind me, Satan : thou art a stum- * Cp. Zech. iii., 1, 2. f Matt, xvi., 23. Cp. Mark viii., 33. JESUS AGAIN IN GALILEE 65 bling-block* unto me : for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men." (2b) The whole story is mythical. fi7. THE RETURN OF JESUS TO GALILEE AND HIS PREACHING THERE. Matt, iv., 12-17 ; Mark i., 14, 15 ; Luke iv., 14, 15. While Matthew and Mark agree in making John to have been imprisoned by Herod before the departure of Jesus into Galilee, and while Matthew's phraseology seems to imply a causal relation between the two occurrences, Luke assigns no motive for the change and says nothing about John in this connection. The Fourth Gospel stands by itself in placing the apprehension of John at a considerably later date, and first brings Jesus into Galilee at the time of the marriage- feast in Cana,1 of which the Synoptics make no mention. When Capernaum, where Jesus made his home after leaving Nazareth, is spoken of by Matthew as being in the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali, it is not to be inferred that this region was at that time inhabited by these two tribes. The former possessors of the land are mentioned because of the reference to them in the quotation 2 which is about to be in troduced. Isaiah wrote with reference to a threatened in vasion from Assyria in the first half of the eighth century B.C. — an attack not successfully resisted, as in his excess of hopefulness he predicted that it would be. Since the hard ships consequent upon this invasion bore heaviest upon the provinces here named, the fact that Jesus first preached there leads the evangelist to look upon this enlightenment of the people as the real fulfilment of the prophecy. When, as re ported by Mark, Jesus said the time is fulfilled, he meant that * Literally, "snare" or "trap." 'John iii., 24, ii., 1. 2 Is. ix., 1, 2 (viii. , 23). Neither the reading of the Hebrew nor that of the LXX. is uniformly followed by Matthew. Galilee = the " cir cuit" or " district." 5 66 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS the time was fully come for the establishment of the Messianic kingdom. This is brought out more distinctly in the next member of the sentence. Although the burden of the message of Jesus to his country men is here expressed in the very form into which the pro clamation and summons of John had been condensed, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, the tenor of his subse quent teaching makes it probable that between his conception of the Messianic reign and that of his predecessor there was a marked difference of which the evangelists here take no note. ' Mark's last phrase, the gospel, must be understood in its original sense of " the good news." To believe in the gospel is here to credit the announcement of the near ap proach of the kingdom of God and to conduct one's self accordingly. The gospel of God is a compendious expression for " the gospel of the kingdom of God," which is the read ing of some codices and editions.2 § 1 8. THE CALLING OF THE FIRST DISCIPLES. Matt, iv., 18-22; Marki., 16-20 ; Luke v., 1-11. Of the four original disciples of Jesus three bear Hebrew names — Simon, James, and John. Andrew is a Greek name ° 1 It is even possible that, since the later teaching of Jesus was not distinctively a call to repentance, tradition was at fault in making his first message to have been so completely identical with that of John, unless it is to be supposed that there was a marked difference between his very earliest teaching and that of the Sermon on the Mount, which is unlikely. Yet when the twelve went out they " preached that men should repent" (Mark vi., 12). What place repentauce held in the teaching of Jesus may be learned from the only other passages in which the subject is mentioned, viz., Matt, xi., 20, 21 = Luke x., 13, xii., 41 = Luke xi., 32 ; Luke v., 32, xv., 7, xxiv., 47. 2 We have here, in Luke, the first mention of the preaching of Jesus in the synagogues. On the Jewish Synagogue, see Appendix E. 3 The Galileans not being of pure Israelitish stock, the possession of a Greek name would be presumptive evidence of its owner having Gentile blood in his veins. CALL OF THE FIRST DISCIPLES 67 known in literature as early as 400 b.c. In the Fourth Gos pel i., 42, it is said that the surname Peter (or rather its Chaldee equivalent, Cephas) was given to Simon by Jesus himself when he called him to be his disciple. In the Gospels Simon is uniformly called Peter, while Paul in his letters, which are of earlier date, almost always speaks of him as Cephas. According to the Third Gospel, Simon, James, and John did not become disciples of Jesus until after he had commenced his ministry of teaching and healing (a). NOTE. (a, p. 67) Since it is implied in John i. that Andrew and Simon became associated with Jesus before his departure into Galilee, some have thought to harmonise the Fourth Gospel with the Synoptics by supposing a double calling and assum ing that the two brothers became at first only disciples and not strictly followers of Jesus. But John certainly had no such thought as this, since he mentions no later calling and leaves us to infer that the disciples who went with Jesus to the marriage feast at Cana, and afterwards to Capernaum and to Jerusalem, were those who had joined him while he was still in the region of the Jordan. Since, however, he makes Andrew and Peter to belong to Bethsaida on the lake, the difference between him and the Synoptics is of little import ance. That the first disciples of Jesus were Galileans is at tested by all the evangelists. Luke's amplified account of the calling of Simon, James, and John, embellished as it is by the story of the wonderful draught of fishes, which hints at the possession by Jesus of a marvellous power over nature, plainly belongs to one of the more recent strata of the Gospel tradition. Strauss and the critics of the Tubingen school consider the story an unhistorical representation of the failure of Christianity to win the acceptance of the Jews and its sub sequent marvellous success among the Gentiles. 68 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS % 19. JESUS TEACHES AND HEALS IN THE SYNAGOGUE AT CAPERNAUM. Mark i., 21-28 ; Luke iv., 31-37. This is the only section common to Mark and Luke which is not also found in Matthew. That Luke thinks it necessary to mention that Capernaum is in Galilee is an indication that he has in mind other than Jewish readers.1 The contrast indicated between the teaching of Jesus and that of the scribes consisted in his speaking out of his own conviction of truth, while they cited the authority of others in support of their statements. He was his own sufficient authority. If we except the vague hint at the exercise of supernatural power by Jesus contained in one of the accounts of the call ing of the first disciples (see the preceding section), we have here the earliest Synoptic mention of Jesus as a wonder worker.2 The marvel described is one of healing, and it excites surprise in the beholders not so much because of the remarkable cure effected as on account of the novelty and simplicity of the method employed. There were plenty of Jewish exorcists who could cast out " unclean spirits," as Jesus himself recognised,3 but they did it with painful effort, making use of magical rites, while he ' ' cast out the spirits with a word" 4 (a). NOTE. (a, p. 68) It is not without its significance that the first cure performed by Jesus is that of a demoniac. Demonism stands 1 Here we meet with the word " sabbath " (Hebrew shabbath, Greek sabbatdn and sabbata, Latin sabbata) for the first time. See Thayer, art. ddfifjarov. 2John ii., n, makes the turning of water into wine at the marriage- feast in Cana "the beginning of his signs." On the miracles of the N. T., see Appendix K. 3 See Matt, xii., 27. 4 Matt, viii., 16. PETER ' 5 MO THER-IN-LA W 6g almost as the type of the diseases the mastery of which is ascribed to him in the Synoptic Gospels.* Beginning with the present instance of a single cure, afterwards we find many cases grouped together, and although other forms of suffering are relieved, yet in general only this one malady is spoken of by name.f ' ' Preaching and casting out demons ' ' are more than once mentioned in such a way as to imply that these two things constituted the whole of the work of Jesus during the earliest period of his Galilean ministry. J In commissioning the twelve Jesus first of all gives them " authority over unclean spirits to cast them out," and directs them to exercise this power § ; and the first thing said of them, after their preaching has been mentioned, is that " they cast out many devils." || When the seventy re turn from their mission and make report of their success, the only thing recorded is that they said that even the demons T[ were subject to them. ** § 20. THE CURING OF PETER'S MOTHER-IN- LAW AND OTHERS. Matt, viii., 14-17 ; Mark i., 29-34 ; Luke iv., 38-41. The apostle Paul bears incidental testimony to the fact that Peter was married.1 It is for the most part difficult if not impossible to determine from the brief narratives of the evangelists the exact nature of the diseases said to have been cured by Jesus. The malady from which the mother- in-law of Peter was suffering is described by Matthew and *The Fourth Gospel makes no mention of cures of demoniacal possession. fMatt. viii., 16; Mark i., 32, 34. | Mark i., 39, iii., 13, 14. I Matt, x., 1, 8 ; Mark vi., 7 ; Luke ix., 1. || Mark vi., 13. T[ "Demon " is everywhere the best translation for dai/ioov ; " devil " should be reserved for the rendering of SidfioXoS. ** Luke x., 17. On the symptoms and causes of demoniacal posses sion, see Appendix F. 1 1 Cor. ix., 5. 70 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS Mark in terms which convey only the impression that fever- ishness was the most marked symptom of the case. Luke, writing later, magnifies the disease into a great fever* While Matthew 2 and Mark 3 simply indicate that Jesus, tak ing hold of the woman's hand, encouraged her to rise, Luke uses language which, virtually implying personality in the disease, suggests demonism as its cause. That she was able at once to attend to household duties is mentioned as evid ence of the completeness of her recovery. The curing of the demoniac in the synagogue and that of Peter's mother- in-law had both occurred upon a sabbath day. That not until sunset, when the sabbath had ended, was Jesus called upon to give help to others, indicates a reluctance, perhaps mingled with religious scruples, on the part of the people, to trespass upon the day of rest." Matthew's quotation B is from a passage in which the prophet speaks of that portion of the people of Israel which had been carried away into captivity as suffering for the sins of the whole people. The passage is therefore historical and not prophetic ; neither in itself, apart from its connection, does it fitly apply to the healing acts of Jesus, since he did not take upon himself the diseases of those whom he relieved. The section of Isaiah from which Matthew quotes was, however, generally sup posed by the Jews to refer to the Messiah. 1 Galen testifies that in his time physicians divided fevers into "small" and "great." 2 In Matthew, instead of "touched" (A. V. and R. V.) which sug gests magical cure, we should translate "took hold of," in accord ance with the usual meaning of the verb. 3 Mark is not here at variance with Matthew and Luke, the expres sion used by him (rjyeipsv) not implying a lifting up. 4 See John v., 1-18. 5 From Is. liii., 4. The lack of resemblance between the text of Matthew and that of the LXX. suggests that he may have followed the Aramaic synagogue rendering. PREACHING AND HEALING 71 §21. WITHDRAWAL OF JESUS. Mark i., 35-38 ; Luke iv., 42, 43. The time of the departure of Jesus from Capernaum is differently stated by Mark and Luke, the former placing it in the latter part of the night and the latter when it was day. " Very early in the morning" would represent the funda mental idea in both cases. It would seem that by an early departure Jesus hoped to escape a repetition of the experiences of the previous evening. There was danger that his reputa tion as a healer of diseases would interfere with his proper work of preaching the gospel. By desert is here meant only a solitary place where he might be by himself. When Simon and the rest (in Luke the multitudes) " followed him up," and the inhabitants of the city would have retained him there, he gives as a reason for his refusal to remain longer that he must carry elsewhere the message which he has already given to them. For to this end came I forth in Mark is hardly the same as for therefore was I sent in Luke. The former has reference to his departure from the city, the latter to his divine mission. § 22. A TOUR OF PREACHING AND HEALING IN GALILEE. Matt, iv., 23-25 ; Mark i., 39 ; Luke v., 44. According to the order of Matthew's narrative, Jesus was not yet known as a wonder-worker.' Here, in place of the very brief notes of Mark and Luke concerning the first ex tended public tour 2 of Jesus in Galilee, Matthew gives a comprehensive but condensed statement of the character of his work (a). His teaching in the synagogues is described 1 It is to be noticed that the cures of \ 20 come later in Matthew's Gospel. 2 The contents of \ 17 refer only to the very beginning of his work in a comparatively limited field, 72 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS simply as a proclamation of the " good news of the king dom " — the " good news of God " of Mark i., 14. So far as there is any distinction to be recognised between disease ' and sickness* it is one of degree rather than of kind. The state ment that all sorts of maladies were cured by Jesus is not substantiated by the particulars given in the record, and is to be looked upon as an artless exaggeration. Repeatedly in the New Testament "all" means "many." So when it is said that all the sick of the great province of Syria were brought to him and cured, we at once recognise the language of hyperbole.3 Besides the general expression diseases and torments, which is the same as ' ' painful diseases, ' ' and de- monianism, already met with, we here have mention of epi lepsy and palsy. The substitution of epileptic for ' ' lunatic ' ' in the Revised Version does not represent a change in the original text, but only signifies that the Greek word used, while indicating that the disease in question is one which was supposed to be affected by changes in the moon, does not mean " moon-struck" in the sense of" insane." As for the palsied or paralytic, they were those who were suffering from some weakness of the limbs, but not necessarily afflicted with what is now commonly spoken of as "palsy" or "paralysis," which science, however, comprehensively de fines as " any kind of loss, temporary or permanent, of sensation or of ability to move or to control motion. ' ' NOTE. (a, p. 71) The passage appears to be descriptive of a condi tion of things existing only at a somewhat later period. Meyer 1 V060S, ndsds. 2 ftaXaxia, malakia : "weakness" rather than "sickness." 3 The theory ingeniously developed by De Quincey, that Jesus de liberately assumed the character of a travelling physician in order to avoid exciting the suspicion of revolutionary tendencies which might attach to him as a mere haranguer of the people, receives no support from anything related in the Gospels, THE HEALING OF A LEPER 73 holds that " the description is manifestly exaggerated as re gards the time of the first ministry of Jesus," and he finds in the passage indications of ' ' the work of a later hand in the redaction of our Gospel." Verse 23 seems like a reproduc tion out of place of Matt. ix. , 35. The Short Protestant Commentary ascribes a too artificial character to the structure of the First Gospel when it makes the following extended discourse (the Sermon on the Mount) to have been intro duced as a specimen of the teachings of Jesus, and chapters viii. and ix. to have been intended only as an example of the cures spoken of here in verse 23. Besides, the Sermon on the Mount was not Messianic preaching, like that here referred to. §23. THE HEALING OF A LEPER. Matt, viii., 1-4 ; Mark i., 40-45 ; Luke v., 12-16. Although this is the first act of healing of which Matthew gives any detailed account, he does not necessarily mean to represent it as the very earliest of the cures performed by Jesus. The preceding discourse is given a later place by Luke, who also introduces two other accounts of cures 1 be fore this. The leprous man is said to have come to Jesus (when he was in one of the cities of Galilee, according to Luke) and, courteously saluting him, to have sought relief from what was not only a troublesome disease but, in the eye of the law, a disqualification for intercourse with one's fellow- men and especially for joining them in the religious services of the temple. " Master" or " Sir," and not Lord, is the proper rendering of his salutation ' as given by Matthew 1 See 1 1 19, 20. 2 xvpts, kurii. Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan Version all have the rendering " master." In Matt, xxi., 30 (where a son ad dresses his father as KvpiB), in Matt, xiii., 27 (where servants salute their master in the same way), in Matt, xxvii., 63 (where this is the salutation to the Roman governor Pilate), and in John iv., 11, 15, 19, 49. v., 7 (where Jesus is addressed), and elsewhere, both the A. V. and the R. V. translate "sir," Thus far in the Gospels the term 74 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS and Luke. Of the three several forms of expression used by the three evangelists to denote the manner of the man's obeisance, Matthew's is the general one already met with,1 which, since it indicates only a respectful bodily attitude, is mistranslated worshipped. The three accounts all agree as to the form in which the leper rather intimated than expressed his wish to be healed by Jesus : if thou wilt, thou catist make me clean. The action of Jesus in touching him and the im mediately following cure are also described in almost identical language by the three. This close resemblance is an indica tion either of there having been a common channel of tradition from which they all drew, or else of some direct dependence upon one another. The disease of which the man is said to have been cured, although called " leprosy," 2 is not thereby identified with the disease known to-day by that name (a). Even the strong statement of Luke's account (showing an exaggeration of the earlier tradition), that the man was full of leprosy, only points to a pronounced case of some form of cutaneous disease covering a large part of the body (b). NOTES. (a, p. 74 ) The Old Testament term tzahrdath, translated in the English Bible " leprosy," is generic rather than specific, being used to denote several cutaneous affections having cer tain characteristics in common.* The descriptions of the uvpioi (never, however, used vocatively) has been applied only to the Deity. The idea of superiority or authority is all that is funda mental in the meaning of the word. ' itpo6HWEa>. See \ 3 (b). ^Xeitpa, lepra. See The Diseases of the Bible, by Dr. Risdon Ben nett, ch. i. * Etymologically the word may apply to all diseases in which scales or scabs are formed upon the skin, — just as a certain plague to which sheep are subject is called the "scab "; or it may come from a root signifying "to strike," the disease in question being looked upon as a " stroke " from the hand of God, — just as we often speak of an at tack of paralysis as a "stroke," 2 Chron. xxvi., 20, is somewhat THE HEALING OF A LEPER 75 symptoms of leprosy given in the Old Testament * are of no scientific value. True leprosy is, with the rarest exceptions, an incurable malady, ultimately affecting the entire system ; but the Levitical law, in providing for the authoritative priestly recognition of the recovery of those afflicted with tzahrdath bore witness not only to its curability but also to the fact that cures were frequent enough to make it worth while to establish a law of procedure for the rehabilitation of convalescents. It is inconceivable that the leper of this account should have had such faith iu the healing power of Jesus (not before manifested, so far as it appears, in the re storing of anyone afflicted with leprosy) as to suppose that he could cure what everybody knew to be a fatal disease. All the circumstances indicate that the man was suffering from some disorder not fitly described by the English word " leprosy." What the Bible dictionaries say of " leprosy " is therefore, for the most part, of no value for the illustration of the present narrative. (b, p. 74 ) Whatever may have been the exact nature of the disease of the man here called a leper, the mere fact of the tell ing of the story by all the synoptists is sufficient evidence that the immediacy of the cure was considered marvellous. The difficulty of understanding how any affection of the skin having even a remotely leprous character could yield to a word and a touch has led to the bringing forward of other hypotheses than the one accepted by the evangelists that Jesus was endowed with remarkable wonder-working power. (1) By supporters of the earlier form of the mythical hypothesis, who were constantly finding in the record of the life of Jesus incidents having no other foundation than a de sire on the part of some of his followers that he should be thought to have parallelled striking events in Old Testament history, his asserted healing of lepers was reduced to a mere imitation of the story of the wonderful cure of Naaman.f This hypothesis now has few if any defenders. (2) The modern Dutch school of criticism likewise looks upon the favourable to the second derivation. When tzahrdath is predicated of garments and the walls of houses (Lev. xiii., 47-59, xiv., 33-57) probably mouldiness is intended. *Lev. xiii. -xiv. ; Ex. iv., 6; Num. xii., 10 ff.; 2 Kings v., 27; 2 Chron. xxvi., 19, 20. \ 2 Kings v. 76 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS story as unhistorical, but traces it to a different source, making it to have been originally intended as a symbolic representation of the helpful relation which Jesus sustained to the outcasts of society. It is conceived that he having often figuratively called himself a physician, and the foul conditions of leprosy furnishing the fittest possible symbol of the disease of sin, his cures of moral leprosy became trans formed, in the thought of the succeeding age, into cures of the bodily disease. This supposition rests upon no solid basis of ascertainable fact, since the Gospels only once * make Jesus refer to himself, and then indirectly, as a physician of souls. (3) There remains the theory that the evangelists, although describing an actual historical event, through a misconception represent as marvellous what was in fact a very simple and natural occurrence. This hypothesis rests upon the well-known tendency of stories to grow in the fre quent telling. The starting-point of this transformation is found in the ambiguity which attaches to the expression " to make clean," f which may have either a literal or a figurative meaning — may denote, in a case of this kind, either a removal of the impurities of the diseased body, or the restoration of the sufferer, after the departure of the dis ease, to the enjoyment of those social and religious rights of which he had been deprived during the period of his afflic tion, % — to which secondary meaning the tertiary one of " to pronounce clean ' ' is closely related. It is in this last sense, * See the parallel passages Matt, ix., 12 ; Mark ii., 17 ; Luke v., 31. t naHapit,Eiv (katharizHn) = the classical xaQaipsiv. % Cp. read. Tiva ipovov, to cleanse one of [the stain of] murder ; also the English law-phrase to purge one's self of contempt of court. In Heb. ix., 14, there is a good illustration of the figurative use of uaQapi&iv, where the blood of Christ is said to cleanse [A. V., "purge"] the conscience from dead works, — the word "dead" having been chosen with reference to the ceremonial im purity contracted by coming in contact with a dead bpdy. So in Heb. ix., 13, the corresponding substantive xaBapdrt/S, "clean ness," is used of the technical purity required by the Levitical law. Sophocles, Lexicon of Later and Byzantine Greek, gives " to clear, in a legal sense," as one of the meanings of uaBaptt,Eiv. Thayer's and Robinson's N. T. lexicons give as a secondary meaning of Had. " to pronounce clean in a Levitical sense," " to declare clean." THE HEALING OF TEN LEPERS 77 in which it is the equivalent of the Hebrew tihar, that the LXX. use the word in Lev. xiii., 6, 13, 17, 23, 28, in all which passages ' ' pronounce clean ' ' is the rendering both of the Authorised Version and the Revised Version. Now these passages are precisely the ones which treat of the cer emonial purification of lepers and so fix for us the usage of the LXX. with regard to katharizein* The inference thought to be legitimately deducible from these facts is that Jesus, perceiving from the condition of the ailing man that there was 110 longer any reason for his remaining under ban, assured him that, to secure the removal of his disability, he had only to go and show himself to the priest and comply with the other requirements of the ceremonial law. Later, when Jesus had become well known as a healer of diseases, the statement that he had made the man clean was under stood literally and in this sense found its way into the Gos pels. There is but one other account f (and that very likely a duplicate of this) of a healing of leprosy by Jesus. Cases of this disease were very common, and, considering the ina bility of ordinary physicians to effect a cure, had he possessed this power he must often have been called upon for its exer cise, and the Synoptics could not have failed to testify to the fact. § 24. THE HEALING OF TEN LEPERS. Luke xvii., u—19. An analysis of this narrative discloses, together with some striking resemblances to the account of the preceding section, several points of difference. The time is the last journey of Jesus to Jerusalem ; the place, some village upon the route.1 *In Lev. xvi., 30, the priest who offers a sacrifice for the sins of the people is said thereby to cleanse the people, " cleanse " being the A. V. and R. V. representative of tihar in the Hebrew and of kathari- zein in the Greek of the LXX. In Mark vii., 19, and Acts x., 15, xi., 9, KCrB. is used in the sense of to declare clean, which is sufficient to establish this as a first-century meaning of the word in Christian circles. fLuke xvii., 11-19 (I 24). 1 Cp. Luke xiii., 22. 78 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS Instead of one leper there are ten, who do not approach Jesus and prostrate themselves before him, but remain at a dis tance, in accordance with the requirements of the law, ' and call to him for help. They are cleansed, not immediately, but soon after leaving him. These differences were Luke's warrant for making of the account a distinct narrative (a). NOTE. (a, p. 78) It is, however, questionable, considering the essential likeness of the later to the earlier narrative and the fact that Luke here stands alone, whether the two stories had not a common origin. The main point of difference is one with regard to which variations in a narrative are most likely to occur — that of number. The further intensification of the wonder of the curing of the ten by representing it as taking place only after they have left the presence of Jesus intro duces the magical element of healing at a distance (verse 14), to which is added (verse 19), either as cause or condition, the possession of faith by the sufferer.* The incident of the return of the Samaritan to express his gratitude, while the other nine apparently remain unthankful, is looked upon by some as an addition to the account due to later anti-Jewish feeling ; but there is nothing in the narrative to indicate that the nine were Jews rather than Galileans. Such a universal- istic tendency as is supposed to be here displayed, if at all active in the minds of the Gospel writers, would naturally have led to the recording of other instances in which Jesus gave aid to Samaritans ; but, although teaching in various parts of their country, it is not mentioned that he ever again cured one of its inhabitants. His well known real interest in them, however, may have led to the legendary introduc tion of a Samaritan into this account. ' See Lev. xiii., 46. *Cp. Matt, ix., 22 (Mark v., 34) ; Mark x., 52 (Luke xviii., 42). THE HEALING OF A PARALYTIC 79 § 25. THE HEALING OF A PARALYTIC. Matt, ix., 1—8; Mark ii., 1-12 • Luke v., 17-26. These three accounts of the healing of one who is called a paralytic,1 while evidently sustaining a close relation to one another, differ very much as to their degree of fulness. Mark and Luke, and especially the former, preserve many pictur esque details which are wanting in Matthew (a). Matthew's expression his own city, by which he refers to Capernaum, is peculiar to this passage, and Mark's at home' does not ap pear again in the Gospels. Luke, besides mentioning the fact that Jesus was occupied with teaching and had among his auditors Pharisees and doctors of the law, who had come from far and near, intimates (verse 17) that at this time his healing power was particularly active. Mark and Luke say that, because of the crowd which filled the house to over flowing, the sick man could not be taken in by the usual entrance, but that those who carried him were obliged to go upon the housetop and make an opening in the roof through which to let him down into the room where Jesus was.3 This apartment would be likely to be the upper chamber of a house of two stories, that part of the Oriental dwelling being not unfrequently used among the Jews as a place for meeting and teaching.4 The only symptom of disease mentioned by 1 No other specific case of this disease is mentioned in the N. T. excepting the one spoken of in Matt, viii., 6. 2 The better (marginal) rendering of iv oi'xa>. Cp. 1 Cor. xi., 34, xiv., 35. The form of expression = the German zu Hause. 3 The flat roof of an Oriental house may often be reached by an outer staircase. 4Lightfoot, Horce Hebraicce et Talmudicce, cites these three pas sages from the Talmuds : "These are the traditions which they taught in the upper cham ber of Hananiah, Ben Hezekiah, Ben Garon.'' " The elders went up into an upper chamber in Jericho. They went up also into an upper chamber in Jabneh." "Rabbi Jochanau and his disciples went up into an upper chamber and read and expounded." 80 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS the evangelist is the helplessness of the sick man, who had to be carried into the presence of Jesus. Considering that the words of encouragement addressed to him and the com mand to arise and go to his home were efficacious iu restoring the use of his limbs, the case would seem to have been one of what modern physicians call " hysterical paralysis," in which, as Dr. W. B. Carpenter says, " the difficulty lies not so much in the want of power as in the want of that belief in the possession of the power which is essential to its exercise, and which yields most readily to " a confident expectation of cure." When Jesus said to the invalid " Courage, child ! forgiven are thy sins," he used language especially fitted to arouse the drooping spirits of the man and inspire him with confi dence. It was one of the fundamental conceptions of Jewish theology that not only bodily suffering and disease but all calamities were the divinely ordained punishment for sin,1 and that the removal of the penalty implied the forgiveness of the offence for which it had been imposed. It was, then, in itself immaterial whether the sick man was told that he was no longer sick, or that his sins had been forgiven, — whether the fact was stated from the point of view of the theologian or of the physician. When some of the scribes and Pharisees were scandalised at Jesus' using language which they chose to interpret as an assumption by him of the divine preroga tive, also making it evident by their behaviour that they doubted his ability really to cure the man, he showed that it was as easy for him to do the healing deed as to say the for giving word.2 The state of mind of the people, as described at the end of the narrative in Matthew and Luke, was not 'Luke xiii., 5, and John ix., 1-3, represent Jesus as combating this view. 2 Instead of saying " / have power," he says " the Son of Man has power"; but in his Aramaic speech "son of man " meant any man, man in general. He declares that there is in man healing and there fore forgiving power. See Appendix G. THE CALLING OF LEVI-MATTHEW 81 one of ' ' fear, ' ' in the usual sense of that term, but only of awe in the presence of what they considered a wonderful manifestation of divine providence. NOTE. (a, p. 79) The agreements in those portions which all have in common are such as to preclude the idea of an altogether independent origin of the three accounts. Matthew would seem either to have abridged Mark's narrative or to have followed a briefer proto-Mark ; while Luke's account has so much more in common with our present Mark as to suggest a still closer relation to it. § 26. THE CALLING OF LEVI-MATTHEW. Matt, ix., 9-13 ; Mark ii., 13-17 ; Luke v., 27-32. Each of the historical books excepting the Fourth Gospel ' has a list of the immediate " disciples " (z. e., learners) and followers of Jesus called apostles, and in all Matthew appears as one of the twelve, but not Levi. Since the Synoptics in this section all evidently speak of one and the same person and of one who, though not here designated as an apostle, was yet summoned to be a constant companion of Jesus, it is probable that he who was known as Levi before being called to the apostolate became afterwards better known in Christian circles as Matthew.2 Luke makes clear what is left doubtful by Matthew and Mark, that Levi, after his call to be a fol lower of Jesus, " made a great reception for him at his 1 Matt, x., 2-4 ; Mark iii., 16-19 ; Luke vi., 14-16 ; Acts i., 13. 2This implies inaccuracy on the part of the redactor of the First Gospel in speaking of him as though his name were Matthew at the time of his calling. Outside of the Gospels, but perhaps depending upon them, there is this testimony in the Apostolic Constitutions (8, 22) to the identity of Matthew and Levi : "I Matthew, who am also Levi, formerly a publican, make these constitutions." 82 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS house" (a). The " sinners" ' who were present with the tax-gatherers — the latter probably either Levi's subordinates in office or port-collectors from the neighbouring villages along the lake — are here met with for the first time in the New Testament, but are constantly appearing later. Luke, when speaking in his own person, does not, like Matthew and Mark, couple "publicans" and "sinners," but says (verse 29) " publicans and others," that is, others who occu pied the same social position among the Jews as the tax- gatherers. 2 The reply of Jesus to the criticism of the Pharisees upon his conduct in associating with persons of ill-repute takes the form of a proverb familiar to Greeks as well as Jews.3 According to Matthew he also quotes from one of the 1 A/japTcoXoi, hamartbldi. The ethical signification of hamarlolos, "sinner," and hamartia, "sin" (the latter already met with re peatedly in preceding sections), and the verb hamartanHn (d/iap- rdvEiv), "to sin" (occurring frequently in the N. T.), is not a part of the root-meaning of these words. Primarily the verb means "to miss the mark," hamartia denoting the fact of failure and hamartolos the actor. The secondary meaning of these words is, however, of very early growth, and in the LXX., where hamartolos is applied nearly 100 times to violators of the law of Jehovah, we find their ethical signification fully fixed. Not only their constant pre dicates make this plain, but also the synonymes with which they are often coupled. Thus in Gen. xiii., 13, the inhabitants of Sodom are called "wicked men and hamartoloi," and in Prov. xi., 31, with the just man is contrasted "the irreligious and hamartolos." Isi., 28, declares that "the lawless ones" will be crushed and " the hamar toloi" with them. In Paul's letter to the Galatians, ii., 15, all who are not Jews are spoken of as " sinners," — " we by nature Jews and not sinners of the Gentiles." In the present passage the O. T. dis tinction between " righteous " and " sinners " is preserved. 2 But cp. Luke xv., 1, the only exception. 3 According to Diogenes Laertius, when Antisthenes was reproved for associating with men of depraved character, he reminded the fault-finders that physicians are accustomed to associate with the sick. The same sentiment in a slightly different form is credited to Pausanias by Plutarch. A QUESTION ABOUT FASTING' 83 prophetic books of the Old Covenant ' an utterance ascribed to Jehovah, I desire mercy 2 and not sacrifice. 3 As applied by Jesus to the Pharisees, " sacrifice " stands for the punctilious observance of the commands of the ceremonial law, for which they were distinguished. NOTE. (a, p. 82) The tax-gatherer at an important point upon the lake, which was also upon the direct line of travel from Da mascus to Jerusalem and the far south, might be rich enough to occupy a commodious house and provide a feast for such numbers (L,uke' s great crowd), but hardly Jesus and his dis ciples with their scanty treasury. It is, nevertheless, some what difficult to understand how Pharisees, with their strict notions concerning eating and drinking with Gentiles and those who were no better than Gentiles (see Acts xi., 3 ; Gal. ii., 12), could be present at a feast in the house of a tax- gatherer, even though not themselves partaking of the food. § 27. A QUESTION ABOUT FASTING ANSWERED. Matt, ix., 14-17 ; Mark ii., 18-22 ; Luke v., 33-39. Mark alone tells us what led to the conversation reported in this section. That the disciples of John fasted like the Pharisees is an indication that the Baptist, with all his bold ness of thinking and acting, had not renounced his allegiance to the traditional law, to the requirements of which, at least in this respect, Jesus and his disciples gave no heed. The 1 Hos. vi., 6. The quotation corresponds exactly with the text of the Alexandrian MS. of the LXX. 2 i'Xeoi (Hids), "mercy," represents the Hebrew hesedh, which Hosea uses in the sense of "piety" or "goodness," and which the A. V. translates "goodness" in Hosea vi., 4, the R. V. having in the margin "kindness." The primary meaning of hesedh is "love," "good-will," of which i'XeoS, "mercy," is only one manifestation. 3 He again makes use of the words in Matt, xii., 7. 84 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS question here is not of specially appointed fasts, which all were bound to keep, but of those private fastings the ob servance of which was considered a special merit. Monday and Thursday were the regular fast-days, and some of the ' ' unco guid ' ' fasted on these days the year through. In general, however, to fast twice a week was considered suffi cient to establish a reputation for piety.1 A three-days' fast, on Monday, Thursday, and Monday, was not uncommon. Jesus, who seldom says anything at all about fasting, and never speaks of it but to condemn it when practised in the spirit of religious asceticism, here lays down the principle that fasting is only becoming as the natural manifestation of sorrow and grief. He declares that his disciples have no reason for fasting so long as he is with them ; just as the friends of the bridegroom,2 who conduct the bride to the house of the husband and join in the gayety of the marriage- feast, can have no feeling of sadness in his presence. When the Synoptics represent him as referring to the time of a coming separation from his disciples, it is probable that the crucifixion of Jesus is in the minds of the narrators, and that they write out of a precise knowledge of his fate which he did not himself possess thus early in his career. By the use of the new figures of the putting of a patch of unfulled cloth upon an old garment and the fresh, unfermented juice of the grape in old wine-skins,3 he brings out more clearly the idea 1 See the boast of the Pharisee in Luke xviii., 12 : "I fast twice in the week." Cp. the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, ch. viii.: " They [the hypocrites] fast on the second of the week and the fifth." 2 The sons of the bride-chamber, — a form of expression not found elsewhere in the N. T. Sonship, in the N. T., is the type of all close relationship of whatever kind. 3 Receptacles for wine and other liquids were made, and are to this day in some parts of the East, from the skins of small animals and especially goats, by tying up the openings of the tanned pelt which had been drawn off as nearly whole as possible. Wine-skins hung up in the dwelling and exposed to its heat and smoke became so CONCERNING THE SABBA TH 85 that his teaching is not to be cramped within the narrow limits of the law of tradition. He does not deny that the re ligion of the fathers may yet have its value, just as the old stiff wine-skins may serve to hold the wine which is no longer working. In Luke this thought is expanded in the added words of verse 39, in which the satisfaction of the Pharisees with the established form of the national religion is compared with the content of the drinker of old wine, who says that that is good enough for him. We have here one of the fruitful germs of the later Pauline doctrine. § 28. FIRST UTTERANCE CONCERNING THE SABBATH. Matt xii., 1-8 ; Mark ii., 23-28; Luke vi., 1-5. The time of this occurrence is stated indefinitely by Mat thew and Mark and obscurely by Luke, who uses a phrase ' the literal meaning of which is plain but whose application is altogether uncertain. When it is said that Jesus and his disciples went through (or between) " sown fields," 2 it is perhaps implied that they were following one of the beaten paths which separated contiguous fields, although some understand Mark to declare that they were making a path for themselves as they went. Mark says only that they plucked the ears of grain,3 the others that they also ate them, hard after a time that they could not be used with safety for any fer menting liquid. 1 dsvTEpovepcoTo? (deuterdprotds), "second-first." The many con jectural interpretations of the word, which is found nowhere else, serve only to emphasise the fact that nothing certain is known with regard to its denotation. 2 6itopi)iG>v (sporimdn), fields sown with any kind of grain, — Ameri cans say " grain-fields," and Englishmen, " corn-fields." 3 dTaxvai (stachuas), — a word found elsewhere in the N. T. only in Mark iv., 28. 86 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS Luke adding that they rubbed out the kernels with their hands. This rubbing would add to the heinousness of their offence in the eyes of the Pharisees, by whom it would be considered one of the kinds of labour forbidden to be per formed upon the sabbath. ' It was not the law, but the law as interpreted by tradition, which condemned such an act.2 Jesus does not attempt the practically impossible by trying to show his critics that their traditions have no binding force, but instead asserts their fundamental misconception of the very purpose of the institution of the sabbath. He prepares the way for a distinct and explicit statement of the principle on which this ordinance rests, by citing cases in which it had been and still was recognised by the highest authority. David had entered into the house of God (the tabernacle) and, by permission of the priest, taken for him self and his companions in need the loaves of bread which had been consecrated to the Lord.3 Here necessity was recognised as being above ritual. Again, the priests con stant^ performed certain labour upon the sabbath in dis charge of their official duties, and the law recognised the necessity and consequent legitimacy of this labour.4 The former illustration elucidates the general principle, the latter gives an instance of the application of this principle to sab bath observance. B When Jesus adds, according to Matthew, 'One of the Jewish fathers declares that simply "to pluck the ears of grain is a kind of reaping," so that the rubbing out of the kernels would be an additional offence, adding threshing to harvesting. 2 Deut. xxiii., 25, allows one to pluck what grain he pleases as he goes through a neighbour's field, but not to make use of a sickle. 3 See 1 Sam. xxi., 1-6. The " shew-bread," or "bread of presenta tion," was renewed daily, the loaves which were removed becoming " common bread," and a perquisite of the attendant priest. Mark's mention of Abiathar as high-priest at this time presents a chronologi cal difficulty of no importance, borrowed from the O. T. 4 See Num. xxviii., 9, 10. 6 Only Matthew has the second illustration, probably added to the account because of its pertinency. It is found nowhere else. CONCERNING THE SABBA TH 87 that there is there that which is greater than the temple, he does not, as is implied in the common rendering, refer to himself, but rather to that gospel which he came to preach, the gospel of human well-being. It is a placing of the new life of the spirit above the old worship of the letter. The concluding declaration of the lordship of the Son of Man over the sabbath is deduced, in Mark, from the important premise that this day was set apart for rest solely for the good of man, with the implication that a regard for this good justifies at any time a disregard of the day. Although in tended by Jesus only as a justification of the conduct of his disciples as they passed through the grain-fields on the sab bath, the argument admits of no limitations, but establishes the universal supremacy of that which is helpful to man over that which is merely conventional.1 §29. RENEWAL OF THE SABBATH CONTROVERSY. Matt, xii., 9-14 ; Mark iii., 1-6 ; Luke vi., 6-1 1. The healing of a withered hand on the sabbath (Luke alone says that it was another sabbath), while an act of sym pathetic helpfulness, yet is chiefly significant as having furnished the occasion for further teaching concerning the legitimate use of the day of rest. It is quite impossible to tell, from the very meagre description here given, what was the exact condition of the man's hand. No other similar cases are mentioned in the New Testament, except in the most general way and in a single passage.2 Also from the ' Here, as in \ 25, it appears from the context that Jesus must have used the Aramaic phrase "son of man " with reference not to himself particularly, but to every member of the human family. Had his words been rendered according to their original meaning, we should have had here simply "man is lord of the sabbath." See Appendix G. 2 John v., 3. 88 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS two instances of this affection mentioned in the Old Testa ment ' no help can be derived toward the understanding of the present case. Mark's use of the participle instead of the simple adjective to denote the relaxed condition of the hand indicates that the disability was induced and not congenital. Luke alone mentions the scribes and Pharisees as the ones who watched Jesus to see if he would heal on the sabbath ; but in Matthew and Mark the indefinite subject of the verb naturally points to the Pharisees of the preceding section. The object of these spies, it appears, was to collect distinct evidence upon which to accuse him before the constituted authorities. His free form of teaching and acting in utter disregard of the law of tradition is already exciting their animosity, and they purpose to bring legal restraint to bear upon him. According to Mark and Luke they only watched him to see what he would do ; but Matthew says that they asked him whether it was lawful to heal on the sabbath, re ceiving from him a distinctly affirmative answer resting upon premises the truth of which they could not deny.2 Mark and Luke, with almost exact agreement, make Jesus reply to the unspoken thought of those who are watching him with hostile purpose by commanding the man to step for ward where all can see him. Then, pausing, he puts to them the searching question, which they apparently deem it pru dent not to answer, " Is the sabbath a day for doing good or for doing harm, for saving life or for destroying it ? " The first form of the alternative is general, the second specific. Jesus does not recognise the middle ground of simply doing ' I Kings xiii., 4 ; Zech. xi., 17. On the supposed nature of the disease spoken of in the Bible as the " withering of the hand," see Jahn's Biblical Archceology, \ 199, iv. 2 It may be that the law did not formally authorise a man to save his property from destruction on the sabbath, but the confidence with which Jesus assumes that a sheep would be rescued from a pit into which it had fallen even on that day shows what was at least allowed by custom. HEALING OF AN INFIRM WOMAN 89 nothing. With him not to do was to undo. Not to cure the man would be to leave him to suffer if not to perish. By his Socratic method of teaching through interrogation he makes the silence of his questioners testify to the truth of his doc trine and the consequent rectitude of his conduct. The glance which Mark says that he gave them cannot have been one of anger, if accompanied by grief for their mental blind ness (" hardness of heart"), and even " indignation," the strongest allowable word, may not suitably represent his actual Aramaic speech. When, at the command of Jesus, the man stretched forth his hand, immediately recovering its use, according to Matthew and Mark they ' began at once to plot his ruin, while Luke represents them as being in a state of some perplexity and taking time to consider what course they should pursue with regard to him. § 30. HEALING OF AN INFIRM WOMAN. Luke xiii. , 10—17. The woman who is here spoken of is said to have been an invalid for eighteen years, but the only symptom of disease mentioned is her being bent over and unable to assume an erect posture. As the result of the assurance of Jesus that she is free from her infirmity, she is at once able to stand upright. In this, as in some other cases,2 it may have been thought that personal contact with Jesus had in it a magic power of cure. In the expression a spirit of infirmity (verse 11) we trace the influence of the popular belief that disease was very often the result of possession by evil spirits. Even Jesus himself speaks in accordance with this view in verse 16, 1 Matthew mentions only the Pharisees, but Mark connects with them the Herodians, or partisans of Herod, spoken of elsewhere in the N. T. only in Matt, xxii., 16, and Mark xii., 13. 2 For example, Mark iii., 10 ; Luke vi., 19. 90 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS although using language which can only be understood figuratively. The ruler of the synagogue only indirectly criticises Jesus for healing on the sabbath, preferring to find fault with the people for bringing their sick to the synagogue on that day of the week. Jesus,1 understanding that the criticism is really aimed at him, makes direct reply, address ing not only the ruler but all those present who were of his way of thinking. In calling them hypocrites 2 he charges them with displaying a zeal for the purity of the sabbath which was not genuine, since they themselves were accus tomed to subordinate its strict observance to their own per sonal interests. This stinging epithet is only a concise argumentum ad hominem ; the following questions are an argumentum a fortiori : " if an ox or an ass tied in the stall for a few hours can be loosed on the sabbath in order that it may relieve its thirst, with how much more propriety may a human being, and she a favoured daughter of Abraham, who has been for many years in bondage, be released upon this day?" 3 §31. HEALING OF A DROPSICAL MAN. Luke xiv., 1-6. The one here called a ' ' ruler " 4 of the Pharisees was only a prominent man among them, not an official, for there was no organisation of Pharisaism. He may have been a ' ' ruler of the synagogue ' ' of Pharisaic associations and sympathies — a ruler from the number of the Pharisees. After the denuncia tion just before uttered in the synagogue it seems strange to ' Luke here speaks of him as 0 ycvpioi, " the master." 2 A term used in the time of Aristophanes and Plato to denote a pla3'-actor. 3 For many curious details of the sabbath law of the Jews as inter preted by the rabbis, see Schiirer, \ 28, II. 4 apx<*>v, archon. CURES OF MANY PEOPLE 91 find Jesus the guest of a Pharisee ; but it may well be that Luke has misplaced the narrative. It was customary to feast more bountifully on the sabbath than during the rest of the week, in honour of the day.1 Who they were who were watching Jesus we are left to infer from the subsequent mention of lawyers and Pharisees.2 He is not said to have answered ' ' any words of theirs, but his question with re gard to the lawfulness of healing on the sabbath was called out by what he knew to be the common opinion of the Pharisees on this subject. Again we are at a loss to determ ine just what was the condition of the man whom Jesus healed, having only the single word hydrbpikbs ' as a descrip tion of his disease. § 32. A CROWD OF PEOPLE AND MANY CURES. Matt, xii., 15-21 ; Mark iii., 7-12 ; Luke vi., 17-19. The sea to which, according to Mark, Jesus withdrew was the Sea of Galilee, not far distant. Hitherto those who had gathered to listen to him had been chiefly Galileans ; but now people flocked to him from nearly every part of Pales tine, even from the Gentile districts in which the important cities of Tyre and Sidon were situated. They were attracted, however, not so much by the character of his preaching as by the wonderful cures which he was reported to have per formed. Foreseeing the necessity of withdrawing himself from this motley crowd, he directs his disciples to have a boat in readiness to receive him. In the meantime he heals such as present themselves to him.4 Mark intimates and 1 See Lightfoot's Horce Hebraicce, in loco. 2 See Appendix D. " vSpcoitiHoi. 4 Mark says many, Matthew all. 92 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS Luke makes plain that the popular conception of the healing power of Jesus was of a mysterious influence proceeding from his body and operating as if by magic, so that simply to touch him was sufficient to secure relief. Just as the de moniac of § 19 had declared that Jesus was " the holy one of God," by which he meant the Messiah, so now the unclean spirit says to him Thou art the Son of God. It was conceived that the possessing spirits controlled the demoniacs' organs of speech, and, since they were supposed to have super natural knowledge, their utterances were looked upon as oracles. The evangelists evidently considered the repeated testimony of the demoniacs to the Messiahship of Jesus to be evidence of the weightiest kind. Jesus himself tries to check the possessed ones and hinder them from adding to the already too great and even dangerous Messianic excitement of the people. In the present instance, Matthew, always ready to find a fulfilment of prophecy in any striking act of Jesus, quotes from the beginning of Is. xiii. to show that his desire to avoid publicity was a truly Messianic trait. Since the Targums make this passage Messianic, Matthew's appli cation of it to Jesus was going only one step beyond the Jewish scholarship of his time (a). NOTE. (a, p. 92) The quotation does not exactly correspond with any Greek or Hebrew original, though conforming much more nearly to the Hebrew text than to that of any extant Greek translation. It has been conjectured that its source may have been an oral Aramaic synagogue version. As to the originally intended application of the passage, an examin ation of it in its proper connection discloses the fact that no individual (and consequently not Jesus) was in the prophet's mind. The ' ' servant ' ' of Jehovah is the righteous portion of the people of Israel taken collectively. That the LXX. so understood the passage appears from their rendering, "Jacob is my servant . . . Israel is my chosen one." The people of Israel are spoken of as gentle and peaceful in CALLING OF THE TWEL VE 93 comparison with neighbouring nations, which were turbul ent and addicted to violence.* §33. CALLING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. Matt, x., 2-4 ; Mark Hi., 13-19 ; Luke vi., 12-16. When Mark and Luke say that Jesus went up into the mountain, the reference is probably to the hill nearest at hand ; but some take the word to be descriptive of the high land as distinguished from the plain, and not to refer to any particular elevation. Luke alone mentions that he spent the night there in prayer and when morning came called to him his disciples. Mark says that he summoned, not all his dis ciples, but those " whom he himself wanted " to have come to him. The use of the intensive pronoun " himself" em phasises the expression of this personal feeling. From these he chooses twelve to be his helpers. Matthew makes no mention of the circumstances of their calling, but merely gives a list of their names. Mark tells why Jesus attached them to himself — that he might enjoy their companionship and that they might share with him his labours of teaching and healing.uow becoming too great for his unaided strength. ' These twelve Luke says that he called apostles, i. e., mission aries, " men sent out," and Matthew also here, but here only, applies to them this term.2 Commonly in the Gospels * For a fuller consideration of the original meaning of the verses quoted, together with a presentation of the several forms of the text, see Noyes's Translation of the Hebrew Prophets, vol. i., " Introduc tion," xlviii.-lvi.; Toy, 34-36. The subject of the " Servant of Yah- weh " is also treated by Carpenter, The First Three Gospels, 128-131. ' The fact that the apostles seem not to have accomplished nor even attempted much during the lifetime of Jesus gives colour to the hy pothesis that at first he wished only to place them in training for future work which he did not live to assign to them. 2 In Mark the word is found only in vi., 30, while John, although having it once (xiii., 16), employs it only in a generic sense. It 94 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS they are not distinguished from the rest of the disciples. While the selection of just twelve may have been purely acci dental, it is more likely that the original number of the Jewish tribes had made twelve a favourite number — a round number as it were. That in all the lists of the twelve Peter stands first can hardly be ascribed to mere chance, but must rather be explained as the result of his actual preeminence among the apostles. That the name of Judas, the traitor, stands uniformly at the end of the list also indicates a group ing according to natural fitness. Matthew carries through his catalogue a binary arrangement presenting six pairs of apostles (a). NOTE. (a, p. 94) In eleven of the names all four lists agree ; but whether Judas the son (or brother) of James, or Thaddaeus, or Lebbaeus, should occupy the remaining place, or whether these are all only different names for one and the same person, criticism has not yet been able to determine.* One of the twelve — Judas Iscariot — has a surname derived from the place either of his birth or of his residence : he was " Judas of Kerioth. ' ' The Simon who stands next to him in the lists of Matthew and Mark apparently has one surname there and another in Luke and Acts ; but it is probable that ' ' zealot " f iu the latter is really the equivalent of ' ' the Cananaean ' ' in the former. J abounds in Acts and the Epistles, but its application is not always limited to the twelve. See Acts xiv., 4, 14 ; 2 Cor. viii., 23 ; Phil, ii., 25; 1 Cor. ix., 1, 2. In Heb. iii., 1, Jesus is spoken of as "the apostle and high-priest of our confession." *The text is somewhat uncertain, for, although the R. V. makes no reference to this fact, there is considerable evidence in favour of the reading Lebbaeus instead of Thaddaeus in Matthew and Mark, and Tisch. adopts Lebbaeus in Matthew. fThe Zealots were the extreme nationalist party, fanatical and given to stirring up revolt against Roman authority. J See Thayer, under Kavavaioi and Kavavvrtji ; Schurer, I., ii., 80, 81. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 95 § 34. INTRODUCTION TO THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. Matt, v., 1, 2 : Luke vi., 20a. The teachings contained in Matt, v.-vii. and partly paral lelled in Luke, although commonly called a " sermon," are such only in the generic sense of the term. Either ' ' Dis course upon the Mount " or " Teaching upon the Mount " would be a better title. Reading Matthew's introduction we get the impression that Jesus went up into the mountain for the purpose of freeing himself from the multitudes. He sits, after the custom of Jewish teachers, while his disciples gather around him. The presence of more than the chosen twelve is not, however, excluded.1 Luke seems, in vi., 17, to fix the place of this teaching elsewhere than upon the mountain, and some call his form of the discourse the " Ser mon on the Plain"; but the "lever place" of which he speaks may, without forcing the meaning of the word, be understood of some plateau among the hills, below the sum mit of ' ' the mount ' ' but above the level of the surrounding country. Raising his eyes as if from meditation (Luke), and opening his mouth (Matthew's imposing way of saying that he began to speak 3), he addresses his disciples. § 35. THE BEATITUDES. Matt. v. 3—12 ; Luke vi. , 20b— 26. The first paragraph of the Sermon on the Mount tells who among men are the blessed ones. Of Matthew's seven classes of such Luke mentions only four, but he alone adds four 'Matt, vii., 28, and Luke vii., 1, indicate that many more than the immediate disciples of Jesus were present. 2 TttSivoS (pidinos), found only here in the N. T. 3 A very few instances of a similar form of expression have been noticed in classical writers. 96 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS ' ' woes " to his four blessings. These affirmations of blessed ness are commmonly spoken of as " the beatitudes, ' ' because in the Latin Vulgate version each one begins with the word beati, ' ' blessed ' ' (a). In Luke those declared blessed are of the number of the disciples there present, while in Matthew the use of the third person (" theirs " and " they ") would make the declarations more widely applicable were it not that the last beatitude takes the form of the second person, " blessed zxeye," as in Luke, which suggests that the mean ing in the previous instances is " blessed are those of you who are ' ' etc. These first words of Jesus are then directly per sonal in their application, not general. While in Luke the poor ' plainly stand opposed to the worldly rich of verse 24, Matthew, by his modifying phrase in spirit, takes away all such reference to a mere lack of material wealth and confers a blessing only upon those who are poor in some higher sense. Jesus doubtless having spoken in the vernacular of the country and not in Greek, this richer meaning of the word " poor," which Luke misses, is to be sought in Hebrew forms of speech (b). The mourners, who, in Matthew, are next * pronounced blessed, are not those who have lost friends by death, but the same righteous " poor " among the people of Israel, represented by the little band of the disci ples of Jesus, who were to be comforted by the coming in of the new kingdom.3 Matthew's third beatitude, not found in Luke, is, if possible, still more closely related to the first. 1 itTwxoi, ptochoi. 2 Some modern editions follow those ancient exemplars which in vert the order of verses 4 and 5, thus securing a somewhat more suitable connection of ideas. 3See 2 Esd. x., 6 ff., and cp. Hos. x., 5, Am. viii., 8, where the LXX. have the same word for " mourn " which Matthew here uses. Luke has instead a word more expressive of the outward sign of mourning, but it also is a Septuagint term (see Num. xi., 10, xxv., 6). So in the following clause he has, more picturesquely, laugh instead of be comforted. THE BEA TITUDES 97 The meek ' and the poor in spirit are hardly two different classes, but the same class viewed under slightly different aspects. The ground of happiness is the same in both cases, although differently described. Since the kingdom of heaven was to be established upon earth by the restoration of the Holy Land to the children of Israel, citizenship in this kingdom and the inheritance of the land was one and the same thing. The " meek " and gentle, it is said, will come into possession of this land, not those who fight for it with the sword. For the common rendering substitute ' ' they it is who will inherit the land." Luke again, in hjs second beatitude (Matthew's fourth) gives no hint that his language is to be taken tropically; while Matthew, after strengthening the figure by combining thirst with hunger, takes them both into the spiritual realm by making righteousness and not food and drink the object of that desire which is sure to be satis fied. The contrast is brought out distinctly : those who long only for the gratification of the bodily appetite may after all go hungry and thirsty, but not they1 — the seekers after the bread of life. In saying that the ones to whom God will be merciful are those who have shown mercy to their fellow-men Jesus is only stating the natural law of retribution, in accord ance with which the unmerciful can expect for themselves only justice without favour. If the sixth beatitude had read simply ' ' blessed are the pure, ' ' it might have been taken as a commendation of the scrupulousness with which the stricter Jews practised the many ablutions prescribed by their cere monial law : as it is, the pure in heart are those who do not place the purity of the body above the purity of the inner life 1 ttpaeK, praiis. TCpavi is sometimes used in the Septuagint in stead of icrooxoi to render 'ani and its related 'dnaz'. Cp. Ps. xxxvii., ir (LXX., xxxvi.). 2 The intensive avToi, as both before and after. Cp. the words of Jesus to the woman of Samaria in John iv., 14 : " He that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." 7 98 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS —that life which the bodily organ of the heart is so often used to typify.1 Later we meet with the reverse of the pic ture, in the woes denounced against those Pharisees who make haste to ' ' cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plat ter " while leaving the inside full of corruption.2 In purity of heart are summed up all the virtues. The reward of the pure life is a vision of the Highest. To see God is to come into intimate conscious relation with Him. The figure is derived from the custom of the courts of kings, where only special favourites are admitted to the royal presence. The peace-makers " who are declared blessed are not the same as the peaceful or ' ' meek ' ' ones before spoken of, but are those who actively exert themselves to promote peace. To be called [i. e. , to be] 4 sons of God is to sustain to Him an affectionate relation like that of a son to a father. The special Messianic relation by virtue of which one became the son of God is here expanded into a universal relation from which none are ex cluded who do not exclude themselves.6 Matthew's two concluding beatitudes are blended by Luke into one, which, with some variations of form, is their substantial equivalent. Jesus declares those blessed who endure sufferings and perse cution^, if only they suffer on account of their faithfulness to the claims of duty and because they are his disciples (c). They, like the " poor in spirit," will be heirs of the king- 1 Not only all through the O. T., but in classical Greek from Homer down, xapSi'a (kardia), " heart," is used figuratively to denote espec ially the affectious but also thought and emotion. 2 Matt, xxiii., 25-28. a Eiprjvoitaioi, Hrenopdioi. "See §5. 5 The Talmud says, " He who makes peace is called a son of God." In Rev. xxi., 7, all who overcome evil desires are assured of divine sonship. The vioBe6ia or "son-adoption" of the Pauline epistles (Rom. viii., 15, 23, ix., 4 ; Gal. iv., 5 ; Eph. i., 5) includes ideas for eign to the simplicity of the conception of divine sonship here presented. THE BEA TITUDES 99 dom. This last beatitude is peculiar in being expanded into an utterance of Messianic enthusiasm. Especially does this appear in Luke, where the phrase in that day can have no other reference than to the time of the Messianic judgment. The reward in heaven of which the faithful ones are assured is not something to be received by them in a future state of existence, but the reward which is, as it were, laid up for them in heaven, and which the Lord will bring at His ap pearing.' This reward is the inheritance of the kingdom of the heavens already promised — the kingdom of God upon earth. As an immediate consolation the disciples are re minded that by their sufferings they will be brought into companionship with that noble band of true prophets whom their countrymen have in times past persecuted and rejected (d). Luke's Woe unto you in verses 24-26 is in no sense an imprecation, but simply an exclamation expressive of the misery in store for those who are not worthy of admission into the kingdom of heaven. " Alas for you " would be a more satisfactory rendering of the phrase, at least in this connection.2 By the " woes" the corresponding beatitudes are brought out into bolder relief. While the poor are the heirs of the kingdom, the rich have all their satisfaction in the present.3 Those who have abundance now will be desti tute in the coming time when those now poor will have no lack. Those who are joyful in their present prosperity will find ' ' that day " to be for them a day of mourning. Those who are praised by all instead of being persecuted for righteous ness1 sake cannot expect to be admitted to the fellowship of 'The idea of Rev. xxii., 12 ; 1 Pet. i., 4 ; Col. i., 5. 2 Is. v., 8-23, is a true antetype of this passage, but hardly Deut. xxvii., 15-26, to which Holtzmann refers as well. In the former passage but not in the latter the LXX. have ovai (dual), Luke's word rendered " woe " in the E. V. Cp. Matt, xviii., 7 ; Lrike xvii., 1. 3Cp. Matt, vi., 2, 5, 16. ioo THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS the saints of old ; for they are like the false prophets who were praised only by those who were themselves false, — the underlying thought being that men who do their duty are sure not to meet with the popular approval (e). NOTES. (a, p. 96) They are also sometimes called " the macarisms," makaribi* being the Greek word of which beati is the Latin translation. Some have desired to substitute ' ' happy ' ' for ' ' blessed ' ' ; but, although neither term satisfactorily repre sents the original, the familiar phrase has by long use become imbued with a meaning borne by no other word and coming nearer than any other to expressing the exact thought of Jesus. What of this thought is really missed in the word " blessed " is the idea of being " fortunate " or " well-off." This latter meaning especially inheres in makarioi in the first beatitude, where the blessedness of the poor is made to consist in their possession of the riches of the kingdom of heaven. The truth is expressed paradoxically : though poor they are well-off, since they enjoy the heavenly riches. (b, p. 96) The three Hebrew words, f one of which Jesus is likely to have used, denote not simply the poor but the right eous poor, and not merely those who are in pecuniary need but also those who are otherwise suffering, — just as the Eng lish word " poor" has a wide range of meaning covering almost numberless forms of undesirable condition. The righteous poor are thought of iii the Old Testament as being especially under the care of Jehovah. % The New Testament equivalent of this idea is found in the declaration of the " beatitude that theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (c, p. 98) For righteousness1 sake (Matthew) and for the Son of Man' s sake (Luke) are substantially the same thing, as ap pears from Matthew's employing/*??- my sake in his last beati- * ficcucipioi. X 'anav, 'ani, and ibhyon. The two latter words repeatedly occur to gether in Ps. as substantial synonymes, in the sense of " poor and afflicted." See xl., 18 (E. V. 17, "poor and needy "; LXX., xxxix., 18, TtTooxdi uai 7tevr?S) : lxx., 6 (E. V. 5 ; LXX., lxix., 6) : cix., 22 (LXX., cviii.). In Is. xii., 17, ebhyon (LXX. titwxoS) is used to de scribe the condition of the people of Israel in exile. Cp. xlix., 13. % See Ps. Ixxiv,, 19. THE BEATITUDES 101 tude as a substitute for his former expression. Dikaibsune* " righteousness," is that conduct which is pleasing to God : it is " His righteousness " in Matt, vi., 33. Though a very common New Testament word, its use is limited chiefly to the Epistles. Luke's Gospel has it only in i., 75, in the pro phetic speech of Zacharias, Mark not at all, and Matthew, apart from the present instance and the one just cited, has it but five times, one of these being the case already met with in iii., 15, in which it is used in the peculiar sense of a re ligious obligation lying outside of the moral law, and another the revised reading of vi., 1, where it is equivalent to "alms giving " iu the next verse. The three other instances are verses 6 and 20 of this chapter, and xxi., 32. The " right eousness " of the Epistles is something much more complex than that simple obedience to the law of God which Jesus enjoined and made the open door to the kingdom of heaven. f The expressions " on account of me " (Matthew) and " on account of the Son of Man " (Luke) — more exact than " for the sake of" — are equivalent to " because of your relation to me, because you follow me and take me for your teacher. ' ' (d, p. 99) Cp. Matt, xxiii., 29-37. Holtzmann finds under lying the details of Luke's 22d verse the language of Is. lxvi., 5, but especially reminiscences of experiences like those spoken of in John ix., 22, xvi., 2 ; Acts v., 41 ; 1 Pet. iv., 14, 16. If by your name is meant the name " Christian," these cannot have been the exact words of Jesus ; for " the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch " long after this time (see Acts xi., 26). (e, p. 100) Why Luke has the " woes " and Matthew not, is a matter of speculation. If genuine utterances of Jesus, and properly placed, it is strange that Matthew should have omitted them, especially if they were a part of the logia. If, however, they were spoken upon some other occasion, it is conceivable that they may have been unknown to Matthew. Again, they may have been a free creation in the spirit of Matt, xxiii., 13-31, with some indebtedness also to Is. lxv., 13 ff. There seems to be artificiality and inaptness in their introduction into such a discourse as this, especially if, as Luke's "Woe unto you " indicates, an immediate personal application to some of those present is intended. * SiKaio6vvrj. X See Cone's The Gospel andits Earliest Interpretations, 62 ff., 203 ff. 102 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS §36. TWO SIMILITUDES. Matt, v., 13-16; Luke xiv., 34, 35, xi., 33. In likening his disciples to salt ' Jesus seeks to impress upon them the fact of their responsibility for the spreading of the truth among men both by precept and example. But to teach others the truth they must have it themselves. If they are without the savour of godliness, they can save neither themselves nor others. They will be as worthless as the salt which, having lost its virtue, is good for nothing but the very meanest uses. In Luke's He that hath ears to hear, let him hear, attention is called to the importance of seriously considering what has j ust been said. Stripped of its rhetorical form the injunction is " Let him who hears this truth reflect upon it." What, according to later tradition, Jesus said in public of himself 2 he here, according to Matthew, affirms of his disciples, that they are the light of the world.3 It is not their eminent fitness to enlighten others to which he calls attention, but the obligation which their opportunity imposes upon them to shed abroad the light which they have 4 (a). NOTE. (a, p. 102) The parallelism in this section is not close. Only Matthew makes Jesus declare that his disciples are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, while Mark and Luke, 1 On the symbolism of salt, see Kalisch on Leviticus, pt. i., 109-114; Robinson's The Evangelists and the Mishna, 24 ; Rodrigues, Les Origines du Sermon de la Montagne, Appendix 2. 2John viii., 12. 3 In the following verse, as well as in Luke's parallel, bushel is an unsatisfactory rendering, as the measure in question (the modids)he\& only about a peck. The indefinite word "measure " would be better than "bushel." 4 In our time this teaching has assumed the stereotyped form of "Noblesse oblige." ATTITUDE TOWARD THE LAW 103 in place of the first simile, have only the general proposition that salt is good. Luke makes the statement concerning salt part of another discourse to a large crowd, while Mark's words stand at the close of a short address of Jesus to his disciples when they were " in the house" at Capernaum. There may be confusion in the Synoptic chronology, or Jesus may have spoken thus concerning salt on two or three differ ent occasions. Luke's passage concerning the lamp stands as part of still another address. § 37. GENERAL ATTITUDE OF JESUS TOWARD THE LAW. Matt. v. , 17-20 ; Luke xvi. , 17. The transition to this section is abrupt. By something which he had previously said or done Jesus must have given the impression that his spirit was iconoclastic and that he was lacking in reverence for the teachings of the Old Testa ment Scriptures.1 Always in the world reform is looked upon as destruction by the champions of the old error ; and Jesus had already shown by his teaching concerning sabbath- observance that he could not be counted on to support the traditions of the elders. Here he sets forth the principle of true conservatism — the preservation of the established order of things so long as it has use, and declares his mission to be one of completion and not of destruction. He even adopts as his own almost the exact language in which the rabbis were accustomed to affirm the absolute permanence of the law ; for they were wont to say that not even the smallest letter 2 nor even the smallest part of a letter 3 could be omitted ¦The law and the prophets here, as in Matt, vii., 12, xxii., 40, to gether represent the entire O. T. canon. To these the synagogue readings appear to have been limited (see Acts xiii., 15), and to these the apostles appealed as authority for their teachings (see Acts xxviii., 23)- 2 The Hebrew Yodh = the Greek iota, from which the English "jot." 3 "Tittle" represents the Greek nepaia (kiraid), "a little horn," io4 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS from any word of the law without endangering the safety of the world.1 By these least commandments are meant the com paratively unimportant precepts represented by the jot and tittle. The accusation against the scribes and Pharisees is that they discriminated, even arbitrarily, between commands which were binding and others which they allowed to be disregarded.2 (a.) NOTE. (a, p. 104) It is possible that the words here ascribed to Jesus have suffered in transmission. Dr. Cone represents the views of not a few critics when he says that ' ' these words cannot be otherwise fairly interpreted than as including the ceremonial prescripts ; and since it is altogether contrary to the spirit and aim of Jesus to confirm and give permanence to these, it is highly probable that the sayings in question received in the tradition a more Jewish-legalistic expression than he himself could have intended." — The Gospel and its Earliest Interpretations, 89. §38. OF MURDER AND THE SPIRIT OF HATE. Matt, v., 21—26; Luke xii., 57-59. Jesus proceeds to explain in what way his teachings tend to the fulfilment of the law, namely, by demanding obedience and has reference to the corners of certain Hebrew letters, careless ness in the writing of which might obscure or pervert the sense. 'See Edersheim's Jesus the Messiah, vol. i., 537, 538. 2 Yet in the Proverbs of the Fathers is this teaching of one of the rabbis : "Be also as careful of the observance of a light precept as of a weighty one "; and the Mishna says : " Run to the light as well as to the weighty commands." The words of Jesus are made specially emphatic by the form of introduction in verse 18, verily I say unto you. Excepting in this familiar formula, d/urjv (amen = verily) does not occur in the Synoptic Gospels, — for it is not genuine in Matt, vi., 13, and Mark xvi., 20, OF MURDER AND HA TRED 105 to the spirit as well as to the letter of his precepts. For ex ample, the law forbade the taking of human life : he con demns hatred, which not only may issue in crime but is itself a crime as deserving of punishment as those offences of which the courts of the land take cognisance. A still greater offence and one worthy of punishment by the su preme tribunal is the use of opprobrious epithets such as are calculated to leave a sting behind them. The most fearful retribution is due to him who, by calling his brother a ' ' fool, ' ' virtually insults him with the charge of atheism.1 This offence against brotherly love Jesus stigmatises as no less heinous than those sins which God is represented as punish ing with the fires of Gehenna. These are mere illustrations of a principle, not a code of penal law. The penalties of the common court, of the supreme court or sanhedrin, and of the " Gehenna of fire " (a) cover all grades of judicial punish ment and so serve as fitting measures of the guilt of all mani festations of the spirit of murder." To his condemnation of anger Jesus adds counsel for those who are at variance with their brethren (verses 23, 24). Love to God being incon sistent with hatred toward man,3 reconciliation should go before worship.4 The part of the section where Matthew and Luke are parallel (although in Luke the passage has no connection with the Sermon on the Mount) illustrates the theme by depicting the evil consequences likely to result ' Cp. Ps. xiv., 1 : " The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Both the Greek and the English but imperfectly represent the Hebrew word. 2 In the Talmud it is said that " to cherish hatred against one's brother is reckoned as great a misdeed as idolatry and murder." 3Cp. I John iv., 20, 21. 4 The Talmud says, " Even though the offender should offer in sac rifice all the sheep of Arabia, he will not be exonerated before begging pardon of the one offended." The same sentiment finds expression in another Jewish saying : "The day of expiation is not a day of expia tion until you have become reconciled to your neighbour." 106 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS from delaying reconciliation. A legal quarrel is made to represent disagreements of all kinds. NOTE. (a, p. 105) The valley of Hinnom (whence " Gehenna ") having been desecrated by Moloch worship and also (prob ably) by fires kept constantly burning for the consumption of offal, it came at length to be to the Jews what Tartarus was to the Greeks and Romans.* §39. OF ADULTERY AND DIVORCE. Matt, v., 27-32; Luke xvi., 18. The relations of the sexes furnish two other examples of the need of a higher ethical standard than that established by the letter of the Mosaic law. In teaching that purity is of the heart and that there may be sin in thought as well as in deed Jesus places himself in the rank of those few exalted ethical teachers of his age who insisted that the mind rather than the body is the true man. What Pericles said of a magistrate, that he ' ' ought to keep not only his hands but even his eyes under restraint," ] Jesus declares to be a uni versal rule of right conduct. The right eye and the right hand are typical of the most ardent passions.2 Better, says * Cp. Mark ix., 47, 48 ; Matt, xviii., 9. ' Cicero, De Officiis, i., 40. The Roman moralist (ibid. , iii., 8) speaks of those as " altogether wicked and impious who deliberate whether they shall follow that which they see to be virtuous, . . . for in the very hesitation is involved the guilty deed, even though they may not have accomplished it. Therefore, those things are not to be de liberated upon at all in which deliberation itself is a disgrace." Ju venal (Sat., xiii., 209) says that " He who meditates any wickedness within himself Is guilty of the deed." Matthew's 28th verse has an almost exact verbal counterpart in the Talmud. 2 The common preference of the right hand, the right eye, and the OF ADUL TERY AND DIVORCE 107 Jesus, that an appetite which cannot be restrained within due bounds should be entirely suppressed than that by its in dulgence one should suffer untold harm. To be " cast into Gehenna " or to " go away into Gehenna ' ' is the same as to perish, although the former expression calls up to the mind the scene of the impending Messianic judgment.1 Deut. xxiv., 1, contains the Mosaic law of divorce quoted (though not verbally and only in part) by Jesus. Thus far he has endorsed and even strengthened the law of the Old Covenant : in the case in hand he restricts its application. Under standing the law, as did many of the rabbis, to allow the separation of husband and wife for any cause, at the pleasure of the husband,2 he adopts the stricter view, that only un faithfulness, which is itself a virtual dissolution of the mar riage bond, is a sufficient cause for divorce. He even goes beyond this and declares (if we take the reports of Matthew and Luke together) that, in case of a divorce for any but the one imperative cause, any subsequent marriage of either party or to either party is a sin. To such a second unholy union a man exposed his wife by divorcing her for an in sufficient reason.3 right foot above the left, was fully shared by the Jews. See Bx. xxix., 20 ; 1 Sam. xi., 2 ; Zech. xi., 17. 1 Cp. Matt, xviii., 8, 9; Mark ix., 43-48, and this passage from Cicero's Philosophical Orations, viii., 5, 15 : " If there is anything in the body in such a condition as to harm the rest of the body, we al low it to be burned or cut out, so that some one member may perish rather than the whole body." 2 Some claimed that a man had a right to divorce his wife if, for any reason, however slight, he became dissatisfied with her, or if he sim ply preferred someone else. On the other hand, one of the Talmud- ists declares that "divorce of one's wife is a hateful thing: at the divorce of a first wife even the very altar sheds tears." 3 On a subsequent occasion this whole subject was treated by Jesus with greater fulness. See Matt, xix., 3 ff. ; Mark x., 2 ff. Concern ing the "get," or "bill of divorce," see Amram, The fewish Law of Divorce, 132 ff. io8 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS §40. OF OATHS. Matt, v., 33-37. A fourth illustration of the position of Jesus with regard to the law is found in his teaching concerning oaths.' The substance of the injunction to the faithful performance of an oath, to which he first refers, appears in three books of the Pentateuch ' (a). Many of the rabbis held that only oaths containing the name of the Deity were binding. Jesus de clares that, since God is everywhere,3 to swear either by the heavens above or by the earth beneath is to call the Lord of heaven and earth to witness to one's vow. To swear by Jerusalem was to invoke the Deity, since this was the city of Jehovah the great King.* The reason given for not swear ing by one's head — both a Jewish and a heathen form of oath — is of a different kind, depending upon the futility and meaninglessness of such oaths. Since one has no such power over his head as to be able to make even a single black hair white or a white hair black, how absurd to pre tend to give strength to an asseveration by appealing to one's head ! Not only the Old Testament but especially the Talmuds and Josephus furnish ample evidence of the preval ence of profanity among the Jews. The spirit of the teach ing of Jesus is that the truth is not strengthened by any form of exaggerated speech. It is not probable that Jesus meant to declare (verse 37) that everything beyond down right simplicity of speech comes from the devil, as the text ' Cp. with the present section Matt, xxiii., 16-22. 'Num. xxx., 2 ff. ; Deut. xxiii., 21-23 > Lev- xix-> I2- CP- Ecclus. xxiii., 9-13. 3 "Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool." — Is. lxvi., I. 4 The Psalmist (xlviii., 2, 8) calls Jerusalem " the city of the great King," "the city of the Lord of hosts," "the city of our God." Cp. Tob., xiii., 15. CONCERNING RETALIATION 109 of the Revised Version implies. The neuter marginal render ing evil is to be preferred.1 NOTE. (a, p. 108) The fact that Jesus when on trial allowed himself to be put upon oath by the high-priest * has no bearing upon the exegesis of the present passage, which clearly states that iu his teaching he discountenanced all oaths. It appears, nevertheless, from the forms of swearing of which he speaks, that he had especially in mind the prevalent custom of using such oaths in the ordinary intercourse of life, and that he was not thinking of judicial oaths, although his injunction swear not at all taken strictly condemns even these. §41. OF RETALIATION. Matt. v. , 38-42 ; Luke vi. , 29, 30. A fifth instance of a higher law. The saying which Jesus quotes 2 is part of a passage in which the duties of the magis trate with regard to the imposition of penalties are minutely defined. The lex talionis, or " law of like,''' which visited upon the offender the same suffering or loss which he had inflicted upon another, was the embodiment of the leading principle of Israelitish justice. Even in the theodicy of Paul there still remains a trace of the influence of this pre-Christian doctrine.3 What the Jewish lawgiver intended only as a guide to the judge had come to be looked upon as an authori sation of private retaliation in kind. The injunction of Jesus neither to oppose force to force nor to enter into litigation with anyone receives striking additions in the advice to ' Cp. Rom. xii., 9 : " Abhor that which is evil ; cleave to that which is good." * See Matt, xxvi., 63, 64. 2 From Ex. xxi., 24. 3 See 2 Thess. i., 6. no THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS yield cheerfully even to troublesome demands upon one's time and means.1 The conditions of the times determined the form of this advice to the first disciples. The law allowed only one of the two garments which were usually worn " to be taken as a pledge for the payment of a debt. Officers of the law and especially couriers on the king's business might impress into their service both men and beasts. §42. OF LOVING ONE'S ENEMIES. Matt, v., 43-48 ; Luke vi., 27, 28, 32-36. The Old Testament enjoins love of one's neighbour, but not hatred of one's enemy 3 : the second part of the saying quoted by Jesus must then have had some other source, so that this is not strictly a sixth example of his improvement upon the teaching of the elder Scripture, but only a correction of its false interpretation. His injunction to love one's enemies is not, however, without some Old Testament support.* In the Talmuds there are approximate parallels " ; and the Ro man Seneca, in the very spirit of Jesus and even in words suggesting his, makes the impartial bestowing of the divine blessings an example of what the heavenly Father desires of 1 Cp. Lev. xix., 18; Prov. xxiv., 29; Is. 1., 6; Ecclus. xxix. ; and see Meuschen's N. T ex Talmude illustratum, 488-568 ; Robinson's The Evangelists and the Mishna, 36. 2 The chiton, the under-garment or tunic (E. V. "coat"), and the himation, the outer-garment (E. V. " cloak "). 3 Lev. xix., 18. The declaration of the Psalmist in cxxxix., 21, 22, is no real exception, being little more than a strong expression of loyalty to Jehovah, justified by Deut. xxxii., 41. 4See Prov. xxiv., 17, xxv., 21 ; Job xxxi., 29 ; Ecclus. viii., 7. 5 " It is not the wicked whom we ought to hate ; it is wickedness." " We ought not to desire the misfortune of an enemy, neither rejoice at his fall." Rejoicing over the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea is condemned. CONCERNING ALMSGI VING 1 1 1 His children.1 In enjoining love of one's enemies Jesus is not commanding the impossible, namely, the deliberate fix ing of one's affections upon a given object, but simply the cherishing of a friendly feeling for those who have not mani fested friendship toward us " (a). NOTE. (a, p. in) Although Luke has a third more matter than Matthew in this section, it is the thought of verse 34 alone which is peculiar to him, and even this is but a development of what Matthew has in verse 42 of the preceding section. Where their forms of expression vary, they generally use substan tially synonymous phrases. Thus where Matthew has " per secute " (verse 44) Luke has (verse 28) a verb,* rarely found in the New Testament, meaning to " revile" or " insult" (English Version, despitefully use), f Once (verse 35) Luke agrees with Matthew in the use of misthos, " reward," but elsewhere he repeatedly has charts, which calls attention to the " thankfulness " (English Version, thank) of the recipient of a favour rather than to any other reward received by him who confers it. Where in Matthew (verse 48) perfection (after the measure of man's possibility) is enjoined, Luke makes Jesus to have demanded only mercifulness. §43. OF ALMSGIVING. Matt, vi., 1-4. From the ancient law and its misinterpretations Jesus passes to a consideration of the religious usages of his own 1 " If thou wouldst imitate the gods, confer favours even upon the ungrateful ; for the sun rises even upon the wicked, and the seas are open to pirates." — De Benefi, iv., 26. 2 That one of the two N. T. Greek verbs meaning " love " which is here used (dyaxdoo) has the meaning above given in distinction from the signification of . 8 For Biblical instances of " vain repetition " in prayer by heathens see 1 Kings xviii., 26 ; Acts xix., 34. 4 Many languages have a similar word to describe inarticulate and senseless utterance. 5 The teaching of the rabbis with regard to the value of iteration in prayer was various. One Talmudic passage declares that " every one who multiplies prayer is heard." On the other hand, in Ecclus. vii., 14, is the injunction, "Repeat not thy words in thy prayer." Cp. the Heautontimoroumenos of Terence, v., i., 6. ii4 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS §45. THE LORD'S PRAYER. Matt, vi., 9-15 ; Luke xi., 1-4. What we call " the Lord's Prayer "—the Pater Noster of the Roman Catholic Church — stands in Matthew as an ex ample of a form of petition not burdened with the " vain repetition " which Jesus has just condemned. In Luke it is better introduced as given upon another occasion in answer to the request of one of the disciples that their master would teach them to pray. Luke's form is more concise than that of Matthew (a), as is shown by the following parallel ar rangement of the clauses : MATTHEW. LUKE. Our father who art in heaven, Father, Hallowed be thy name. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we And forgive us our sins ; for we also have forgiven our debtors. ourselves forgive every one who is indebted to us. And bring us not into temptation, And bring us not into temptation. but deliver us from evil. The entire omission of the doxology from both texts is in accordance with the testimony of all the best MSS. and critical editions. The prayer may be resolved into an invo cation (simple in Luke, but complex in Matthew) followed by five x distinct petitions (b). The conception of the father hood of God, with which the New Testament is so saturated as to be thereby differentiated from all earlier religious 1 By dividing the second and fifth the number in Matthew may be extended to seven. THE LORD 'S PRA YER 115 literature, is not an original contribution of Christianity to the world's thought, but only the full flowering of an idea the germ of which had already taken root centuries before among many peoples. In the Old Testament, outside of the Apocrypha, the word "father" is seldom applied to the Deity. Moses, in his song before the assembly of Israel, asks the people reproachfully, in view of their sins, if Jehovah is not their father who has adopted them ; and afterwards he speaks of them as the children of Jehovah.1 Isaiah, Jere miah, and Malachi also, call Jehovah the father of His people.2 The apocryphal books, by the greater frequency of their reference to God as a father,3 show that among the people of Israel the way is gradually preparing for that ascendancy of the paternal over the monarchical conception of the Deity which characterises the new dispensation. But the idea of the fatherhood of God is Japhetic as well as Shemitic and early impressed itself upon Indo - Germanic speech, and through this upon the oldest religious literature of the Aryan stock (c). In Hebrew thought, name and per son were one : hence iu hallowed be thy name the petition is for the growth in men's hearts of reverence for the Divine Being." The prayer for the coming of the kingdom or ' ' reign ' ' of God is a natural development from the previous petition ; and the following words, which are absent from Luke, only bring out into clearer light the full content of the main idea of the sovereignty of God.6 From the 'Deut. xxxii., 6, 18-20. 2 Is. lxiii., 16, lxiv., 8 ; Jer. iii., 4, 19, xxxi., 9 ; Mai. i., 6, ii., 10. 3SeeTob. xiii., 4 ; Wisd. ii., 13, 16, 18, xiv., 3 ; Ecclus. xxiii., 1, 4, li., 10 ; 3 Mac. vi., 3. 4 In view of Is. xxix., 23, " They shall sanctify my name ; yea, they shall sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and shall stand in awe of the God of Israel," it can hardly be conceded to Dr. Plummer that " it ['thy name '] is not a mere paraphrase for God." "See \ 14 (d) . The Babylonian Talmud says that "that prayer wherein is no mention of the kingdom of God is no prayer." n6 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS expression of the spirit of worship and of the hope that God's will may speedily be done among men as it is done among the inhabitants of heaven ' the transition is easy to the thought of human need and the divine bounty which sup plies it. If by " prayer " is to be understood the asking for personal favours, then all that has gone before is but pre liminary aspiration, as some critics2 consider it (d). The next petition is in harmony with the spirit of the previous teaching '' concerning reconciliation (e). From very early times even to the present the prayer bring us not into temptation has been a stumbling-block to many because of its supposed implication that God tempts men to do wrong. Doubtless the form of expression savours of the Jewish con ception of the Deity as the controller of all human conditions and therefore of those which in their nature offer induce ments to sin ; but this doctrine was not held in any such way as to relieve men of personal responsibility for their acts. The apostle Paul, while inheriting this notion from his Jew ish training, assures his Christian converts that God " will with the temptation make also the way of escape, ' ' 4 thus encouraging them in well-doing. What Matthew adds here to Luke's formula is in the spirit of the Hebrew poetical parallelism, although it is rather a completion than a repeti tion of the previous appeal. As before,6 evil is to be pre ferred to the evil one of the text of the Revised Version (f). The doxology may be an echo from i Chron. xxix., n. It was doubtless from its use in church liturgies that it crept into some MSS. of the New Testament text.6 'Cp. Ps. ciii., 21. 2 See Haune, in fahrbucher fiir deutsche Theologie, xi., 507 ff, and in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexikon. 3 See? 38. 4 1 Cor. x., 13. 6 \ 40, which see. 6 In the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which has the Lord's THE LORD'S PRA YER 117 The " Lord's Prayer" is wrongly apprehended by those who think of it as an altogether original creation not only dissociated from but at variance with the customary forms of petition in use among the Jews in the time of Jesus. So far is this from being the case that it would be nearer to the truth to say that it is for the most part based upon forms with which the Jews of the first century were altogether familiar.' Its originality consists in its ideal comprehensive ness and brevity, nothing being omitted, and, in Luke's more nearly primitive form, nothing repeated. Although nothing is likely to have been farther from the thought of Jesus than the giving of a fixed form of prayer to his disciples, the " Lord's Prayer" must have very early come to be cherished as a precious legacy and so to have its form fixed beyond the chances of serious corruption. This is plainly indicated by the fact that the text has been pre served with so few variations in the best MSS. of the Gospels Prayer almost exactly in Matthew's form, the doxology is present and reads "for thine is the power and the glory forever." On the N. T. text of the doxology see Immer's Hermeneutics, no; Tisch., N. T. Grace, ed. 8va critica major, i., 26. ' These prayers are still iu existence and in common use among the Jews at the present day. From them almost every sentence of the Lord's Prayer can be parallelled. In view of this fact, so cautious a critic as Dr. Immer declares that " lively echoes of familiar prayers would so naturally suggest themselves to our Lord, and any reason for rejecting them was so entirely wanting, that the absence of such popular consecrated echoes, extending to the very words, would even have been matter for surprise." In the common Jewish service-book one of the most frequent forms of address to the Deity is "Our Fa ther." In one part of the morning service forty-four consecutive petitions are introduced with the words " Our Father and our king ! " Elsewhere the form of address is "Heavenly Father!" Other phrases are " May his hallowed name be praised," " Lead us not into the power of sin, transgression, iniquity, temptation or contempt . . . but remove far from us evil men and wicked associations and works." There are numerous passages resembling the doxology. n8 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS that, from the very beginning of modern textual criticism, it was fixed in every particular almost beyond dispute. From Griesbach (1774) to the present day editors have changed hardly more than a single word, and between the text of Tischendorf (1869) and that of the very latest editors there is no difference whatever. NOTES. (a, p. 114) Which of the two better represents the actual words of Jesus is a matter of dispute. It is even possible that the form may have been given by Jesus somewhat differently upon two different occasions. Assuming what is altogether more probable, that his free spirit would not twice have ex pressed itself in so nearly the same form of petition, the preference as to originality is to be given to Luke, whose terse phraseology Matthew weakens by expanding. Sup posing Matthew to have preserved the very words of Jesus, it is not conceivable that Luke should have known only of a mutilated form. The natural tendency of frequent repeti tion is to expansion, not contraction. The difficulty of sup posing that Jesus twice gave essentially the same form of prayer is clearly stated by Meyer, who urges that, if Mat thew's chronology is correct, the later request for help to pray, recorded by Luke, cannot be historical, while, if this request was made at a comparatively late date, the disciples could not have been given the prayer at the time of the de livery of the Sermon on the Mount. It is simpler to suppose a mere misplacement by Matthew than the insertion of an altogether unhistorical incident by Luke. (b, p. 114) The invocation in Matthew is not strengthened by the addition of our and which art in heaven. Luke's one word Father comprehends all. It is a needless multiplication of words and a dilution instead of an enrichment of the thought to make explicit the idea first of one's sonship and then of heavenly as distinguished from earthly parentage. The suggestion has been made, not without reason, that the addition of " our " was due to a Jewish-Christian regard for the rabbinical injunction that men should not pray as indi viduals but as if members of a congregation, that is, that they should say we and not /. Besides, Matthew throughout THE LORD '5 PRA YER 119 his Gospel* speaks of God as the " heavenly father" or the " father who is in heaven " — a phrase almost never em ployed elsewhere, f while " father " alone is constantly used throughout the New Testament — being absent from no book excepting the one brief chapter of 3 John. It would seem that only the idiosyncrasy of a reviser can account for Mat thew's monopoly of this expression. (c, p. 115) In the Hindu Rig- Veda, which is probably more than a thousand years older than the New Testament, the Supreme Deity is addressed as Dyaus-pitar or " heaven- father," whence the Greek Zeus pater and the Roman fu- piter. \ Since to speak of God as a parent is to borrow a term properly expressive only of a human relation, the phrase " heavenly father " is subject to all the diversities of meaning which, in various ages and countries, attach to the conception of ideal fatherhood. Between the dissolute " father Zeus " of the Greeks and the " father in heaven " of the New Testa ment the gulf is so great as to be almost impassable. Neither did the Roman who addressed Jupiter as optime et maxime, " best and greatest," mean by the " best " most holy, but only most free to act his own pleasure. (d, p. 116) That there is here a petition for daily bread is not altogether certain, as the margin of the Revised Version shows. The word translated ' ' daily ' ' is found nowhere else in the New Testament, neither does it occur in any earlier literature. Its etymology being uncertain and its meaning not being determinable from the connection, there has been much guessing as to its signification. All the following translations have been given : daily, for the coming day, to-morrow ' s, continual, future, that cotneth, needful, neces sary, essetitial, sufficient, permanent, excellent, surpassing, abundant, supernatural, supersubstantial, consubstantial. § *v., 16, 45, 48, vi., 1, 14, 26, 32, vii., 11, 21, x., 32, 33, xii., 50, xv., 13, xvi., 17, xviii., 10, 14, 19, 35, xxiii., 9. fLuke xi., 13, furnishes one instance. % "Zeus ... is the same word as Dyaus in Sanscrit, Jovis or Ju in Jupiter in Latin, Tiw in Anglo-Saxon, preserved in Tiwsdaeg, Tuesday, the day of the Eddie god Tyr ; Zio in Old High-German." — Max Miiller, Science of Language. \ See Dr. Plummer's notes, Lnternational Critical Commentary on Luke, 295, 296 ; Lightfoot, On a Fresh Revision of the English N. T, 120 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPLES (e, p. 1 16) In this petition sins in Luke is an interpretation of debts (the latter word perhaps occurring in Luke's source as in Matthew), for which it appears to have been substituted. Notwithstanding this change, the following verb (which means to "remit" a debt and not to "forgive" in the broader sense) still stands as a sign that the change has taken place. To ' ' have remitted "in Matthew and ' ' remit ' ' in Luke is to be added a Syriac future reading, " will remit." Taking this passage in connection with Matthew's supple mentary 14th and 15th verses we seem to hear an echo of Ecclus. xxviii., 2 : " Forgive thy neighbour the hurt that he hath done unto thee ; so shall thy sins also be forgiven when thou prayest. ' ' * (/, p. 116) Cremer maintains that " against the rendering which would take tov irovrjpov (tbu pbnerbu) as the genitive of the masculine it is enough to say that there is no reason nor pretext in the context for making this possible rendering necessary," adding that " the thought which suggests this possible rendering is foreign to the character of the prayer ' ' ; and he agrees with Stier in thinking that the incongruity becomes apparent when we substitute ' ' the devil " for " the evil one." So substantially Alford. § 46. ON FASTING. Matt, vi., 16-18. As has already been seen in § 27, the views of Jesus con cerning fasting were not those commonly held by his coun trymen. Here his position is made still plainer. Those fasts in which outward signs of sorrow are ostentatiously displayed he altogether condemns. Since under the in fluence of powerful emotions the usual care of the person is apt to be neglected, the " hypocrites," illogically inverting App. i., 163-180; Cremer's Biblico-Theological Lexicon of the N. T. Greek, 221-224 ', Meyer's Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Gospel of Matthew, I., 207-210 ; Keim's History of Jesus of Nazara, III., 340,341. *Cp. Mark xl., 25. OF TREASURE IN HE A VEN 121 the proper relation of ideas, thought by cultivating slovenli ness to become religious. The reference here may be either to private fasts regulated by the individual or to the public fasts prescribed for the whole people. The disfigurement of the face spoken of1 was produced not only by leaving it unwashed and the hair and beard uncombed but also by placing ashes upon the head. Jesus condemns this neglect and even pollution of the body, and enjoins that, whether in the spirit of fasting or not, his disciples shall not make unsightly spectacles of themselves for the purpose of attract ing attention, but shall under all circumstances observe the decencies of life.2 § 47. OF EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY TREASURE. Matt, vi., 19-21 ; Luke xii., 33, 34. The parallelism between Matthew and Luke is not close excepting in the last sentence. ' ' Treasure not up for your selves treasures " is the exact equivalent of Matthew's first words. Rust is not the full equivalent of the Greek word 3 which it is used to translate, which properly signifies " eat ing ' ' ; but as the reference here is probably to the rusting of alloyed money, the correct meaning is conveyed by the 1 In the Greek there is a paronomasia which can be only imper fectly preserved in English. It is something like this : " they make their faces unsightly that they may be seen by men to fast." The Babylonian Talmud tells us that " in the public fasts everyone took ashes and put upon his head." Again : " Why is his name called Ashur [i. e., ' black '] ? Because his face was black by fastings." It is told of Rabbi ben Ananiah that " all the days of his life his face was black by reason of his fastings." 2 The anointing of the head was a regular part of the Jewish toilet. See Deut. xxviii., 40 ; 2 Sam. xii., 20, xiv., 2 ; Ps. xxiii., 5 ; Dan. x., 3 ; Ruth iii., 3. Cp. Mark xiv., 3 ; Luke vii., 46. 3ftpdodvi) brbsis. 122 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS present translation. The moth spoken of is the clothes- moth.1 Money and garments constituted the chief treasures of the ancients. In making thieves dig through rather than break into houses regard is had to the usual structure of Oriental dwellings, the walls of which are very loosely built.2 It is only the peculiarity of the Hebrew idiom which makes Jesus seem to speak against the laying up of wealth. Strong emphasis upon the superior value of the heavenly riches is secured by representing earthly treasure as of no value. This is merely one form of Oriental hyperbole. In Luke the injunction to sell their possessions and give to the poor occurs in connection with other instructions of Jesus to his disciples concerning riches, and only looks to the conditions iu which they then found themselves. There is no reason whatever for supposing that he intended to lay down a binding precept for all men and for all time.3 §48. ON THE INNER LIGHT. Matt, vi., 22, 23 ; Luke xi., 34— 36. The figurative language here used is not to be too closely pressed. The eye is the lamp of the body, not as itself giving light but only as furnishing the necessary conditions for the reception of light." So the inner light or eye of the soul is rather a channel of divine truth than its source. As a sound and healthy eye is essential to the clear vision of material ' Mentioned nowhere else in the N. T. 2 Cp. Ezek. xii., 5, 7, 12; Job xxiv., 16. 3 See Rodrigues, Orig. du Sermon de la Montagne, App., Note x., for a passage from the Talmud concerning earthly and heavenly treasure. 4 Philo, contemporary with Jesus, wrote : "What intelligence (nous) is in the soul, that the eye is in the body," and Plato had long before spoken of " the eye of the soul." The author of Prov. xx., 27, de clares that "the spirit of man is the lamp [LXX. jxviov iiti Xpovov dvBE6iv r/firiS TEpTto/j-eSa. — ii., 3.4- ** The cubit = about eighteen inches. ff But see Potwin's Here and There in the Greek N. T., 104-110. 128 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS ing and being released, giving and receiving. The idea of compensation in kind is the single thread upon which all these thoughts are strung.' In the injunction to generosity (verse 38) the language used has reference to the measuring of grain and the use of the fold of the loose outer garment above the girdle as a pocket. If we had only the text of Matthew it might seem that Jesus meant to give a higher meaning to the worldly Jewish maxim which he cites, and to teach that as we judge our fellow-men so God will judge us, and that we ourselves are bound to conform to the stand ard by which we judge others ; but according to Luke he appears rather to affirm simply that generosity will be likely to be met with generosity. In the concluding portion of the section, mote and beam are the best words that can be used, notwithstanding the difficulty which the imagination finds in realising the picture of the latter.2 § 53. OF EXPOSING THE TRUTH TO CONTEMPT. Matt, vii., 6. It is useless to try to trace any connection of thought be tween this verse and what has immediately preceded. This want of connection deprives us of one of the most important helps toward determining the meaning of any passage — a perception of its logical relation to what has gone before and what comes after. Under these circumstances the right understanding of this injunction depends largely upon as signing to certain figurative terms their true meanings. The passage has the appearance of belonging to the instruction 'The so-called parable of verse 39 seems here quite out of place (cp. Matt, xv., 14, which has a better connection), as does also the follow ing verse. 2 Cp. this saying from the Talmud : " If one says to anybody, 'Take out the mote which is in your eye,' he receives for a response, ' Take out the beam which is in your own.' " PARABLE OF THE MIDNIGHT CALL 129 of Jesus to his immediate disciples with regard to their mis sionary work. That which is holy will then be the truth which they have to offer to the world, symbolised in the parallel member of the sentence as pearls. Dogs and swine do not represent unlike conceptions, being only different figurative embodiments of one and the same notion. How ever it may be elsewhere,1 there is nothing here to indicate that these epithets were intended to apply specially to the Gentiles, as some have supposed. The reference is rather to men of depraved and brutish minds, wherever found, who, having no appreciation of the worth of truth, not only reject it, but even despise and abuse its messengers. § 54. THE PARABLE OF THE MIDNIGHT CALL. Luke xi., 5-8. Other titles which have been given to this parable are " A selfish neighbour," "The friend at midnight," "The im portunate friend." The parable is peculiar in not being iu the usual narrative form, neither is its structure harmonious throughout. A case is supposed of one of two neighbours needing the friendly offices of the other, who grants the de sired favour, but grudgingly, since it puts him to incon venience. The application is made courteously, Friend, lend me three loaves, but the response is blunt and uncivil, almost a command to be gone. Nevertheless, as the quick est way of getting rid of the unwelcome intruder, his request is complied with. Although there is no formal application of the parable, yet the following context makes it evident that its purpose is to give assurance of the divine answer to earnest prayer. There is involved an argument of this sort : if a selfish man even against his will can be induced by per sistent appeal to do what is asked of him, how much more 1 For instance, in Matt, xv., 26. 9 130 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS ready will the Heavenly Father be to grant the requests of his children. The parable does not represent the Deity as yielding to the importunities of men : there is simply an effort to make the hearer comprehend the reasonableness of prayer by a pictorial argument from the less to the greater. § 55. ENCOURAGEMENT TO ASKING IN PRAYER. Matt, vii., 7-1 1 ; Luke xi., 9-13. In Matthew no connection of any sort can be traced be tween this passage and what has preceded ; but in Luke these five verses constitute a natural supplement to the fore going parable. The statement A nd I' say unto you distin guishes the direct and plain words of Jesus from the masked teaching of the parable, which is in form only a picture from life. The new phases under which prayer is here presented, namely, as asking, seeking, and knocking, if not a direct re flection from the parable, yet harmonise excellently with it. Although the reasons which support the injunctions of the opening verse have a certain gnomic character, as though simply stating a common fact of life, they do not rest in this, but suggest the spiritual law that asking is the condition of receiving divine gifts and that to ask of God is to put one's self in the way of receiving that which one asks. This broad principle is sadly perverted when attempted to be brought into support of an expectation that whatever a man may choose to ask for he certainly will receive. It is simply an expression, as the following verses show, of the overflowing bountifulness and generosity of Divine Providence. If, in human relations, parental love can be trusted to help and not to harm its objects, much more, says Jesus, should we have confidence in the good- will of the Divine Giver. So. far from the first words of the last verse teaching, as is some times claimed, the doctrine of the innate depravity of man, 'The "I" is emphatic. THE " GOLDEN RULE" OF DUTY 131 they simply contrast the imperfection of human nature with the perfection of the divine attributes. §56. THE "GOLDEN RULE" OF DUTY. Matt. vii. , 12 ; Luke vi. , 31. Matthew's therefore indicates a logical connection with what has gone before ; but it is far from evident what is the real ground of inference. The position of the passage in Luke in the midst of what is said of loving one's enemies (§ 42) seems more natural. When it is said that this is the law and the prophets, the most that can be meant is that this comprises the substance of the Old Testament teaching, — for no such language is there to be found. Hillel ! meant the same thing when he said of the Golden Rule, ' ' This is the principal commandment of the law ; all the rest is only com mentary " (a). NOTE. (a, p. 131) The remark is often met with in books and re peated in sermons, that only Jesus gives the Golden Rule in a positive form, all others simply teaching that one should not do to another what he would not wish to have done to himself. This statement is not in accordance with facts. Neither can the Golden Rule have originated either with Jesus or with Hillel, since it is found in literature of a much earlier date than the time of their birth.* Evidently the 1 In the opinion of Delitzsch, Hillel was born in almost the same year as Jesus, but Stapfer places him thirty and Renan fifty years earlier. One of the two latter suppositions is necessary to the support of Renan's statement that "by his poverty so meekly borne, by the gentleness of his character, by his antagonism to priests and hypo crites, Hillel was the true master of Jesus, if one may speak of a master in connection with so lofty an originality." — Life of Jesus, ch. iii. * Diogenes Laertius says of Aristotle, who flourished about the mid dle of the fourth century B.C., that "the question was once put to him, how we ought to behave to our friends, and the answer he gave was, ' As we should wish our friends to behave to. us ' " ; and of 132 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS early Christians did not recognise the superiority of the affirmative form, since in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (ch. i.) we find, "All things whatsoever thou wouldst should not happen to thee do not thou to another ' ' ; and a docu ment of the third century ascribed, though without sufficient authority, to Pope Fabian, declares that "the Master says, ' Do not to another that which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.' " §57. THE NARROW GATE. Matt, vii., 13, 14; Luke xiii., 23, 24. Notwithstanding the substantial parallelism of Matthew and Luke in this section, the latter is reporting something which took place during the last journey of Jesus to Jerusa lem and not at the time of the Sermon on the Mount. The difficulty of attaining to the Messianic salvation constitutes the essence of the teaching of both passages. Luke makes someone to have inquired of Jesus whether the number of those who would secure this salvation would be few or many ' : Matthew does not tell us how Jesus came to speak upon this subject. No direct answer is given to the in quirer, but only the intimation that he would do better to be looking out for his own salvation than speculating upon such a fruitless problem. Nevertheless there is something like an incidental answer to the question later in Luke xiii., 29, more nearly negative than affirmative.2 Strive is hardly a strong Thales, who belongs to the seventh century B.C., that he replied to the inquiry how men might live most virtuously and most justly, " If we never do ourselves what we blame in others." In the latter part of the fourth century B.C., Isocrates wrote : "What it would make you angry to suffer from anybody else, that do not to others." In the Jewish apocryphal book of Tobit (iv., 15) is the injunction, " Do to no man that which thou hatest." 'The question is answered in 2 Esd. viii., 3: "There be many created, but few shall be saved." 2 " And they shall come from the east and west, and from the north and south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God." THE TEST OF GOODNESS 133 enough word to represent the original, which implies the persistent putting forth of the greatest possible effort. The time when many will seek to enter in and not be able is the time of the Messianic judgment, their inability then being the inevitable result of their present neglect of opportunity. The destruction ' spoken of in Matthew is neither annihilation nor unending torment. There is no better English word by which to represent the Greek in this passage than " ruin." The fundamental idea is that of " loss " — loss of the offered salvation. It is the opposite of life1 (verse 14), and its pre cise significance must be determined with reference to the force of that word in its present connection. Now the life spoken of is not mere sensuous existence, but a nobler life under conditions more desirable than the present — life in " the kingdom of God " (verse 29). The " ruin " of which Jesus speaks must then be all that which this " life " is not, that is, failure to be what one might have been — a conscious sonofGod. " Life," in the New Testament,3 is holiness; sin is that spiritual torpor which is symbolised by " death." 4 §58. THE TEST OF GOODNESS. Matt, vii., 15-20, xii., 33-35 ; Luke vi., 43-45. The false prophets against whom the disciples are warned are false Christian teachers. A " prophet " under the New Testament dispensation is not primarily a foreteller of future 1 dnooXEia, apoleia. 2 C077, zoe. 3 When Zgdt/ and not /Jr'oS (bids) is the Greek word. For the distinc tion between the two see Trench's Synonyms of the N. T, \ xxvii. 4 The opening sentences of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles are a good commentary upon this passage : " There are two ways, one of life and one of death ; and a great difference between the two ways "; and as characteristics of the way of life are given the two great prin ciples of Christian living — love to God and love to man. 134 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS events, but one speaking by divine inspiration.1 A " false prophet ' ' is therefore one whose inspiration is pretended and not genuine.2 The teaching of the following verses in Matthew has often been perverted by Protestant exegetes in their controversies with the Roman Catholic Church. The latter rightly claims that the conduct of the false teachers is spoken of as furnishing a test of their true character. Not only does the opening statement, " by their fruits ye will recognise them," plainly indicate this, but the repetition of the remark at the close of the illustration, something like the q. e. d. of a geometrical proof,3 precludes the drawing of any other inference. To make the passage teach that only the good tree of faith in Christ (that is, in his sacrificial atone ment) can produce works acceptable to God is to introduce what the language does not suggest and what is altogether foreign to the connection of thought. Matthew's question, ' ' Do they gather from thorn-bushes bunches of grapes, or from thistles figs?" takes on in Luke a declarative form corresponding to its intended meaning. The second passage from Matthew belongs to the reply of Jesus to the calumnies of the Pharisees, and is not a part of the Sermon on the Mount ; but, being a practical application of the " test of goodness ' ' established in that discourse, besides being partly 'The Hebrew nabhi, or "prophet," says Gesenius, is "one who, impelled by a divine impulse, or by the Divine Spirit, rebukes kings and nations and predicts future events." — Heb. and Eng. Lex., Rob inson's 14th ed., 641. 2 It is unlikely that Jesus thus early in his career should have antici pated the faithlessness of some of his pretended followers. This de tached passage is therefore to be looked upon as probably derived from the striking predictions uttered on the Mount of Olives shortly before his death. See Matt, xxiv., 11, 24 ; Mark xiii., 22. 3 The neatness of the argument is somewhat obscured by the un suitable introduction of verse 19, apparently borrowed from iii., 10, on account of the similarity of its phraseology to that of the present passage. PROFESSIONS OF DISCIPLESHIP 135 found in Luke in connection with what is there said of the sound and the rotten tree and their fruits, it has a fitting place in this section. Jesus had been charged with doing a good deed — the casting out of demons — -by power derived from the prince of the demons. He demands of his calumni ators that they shall be consistent and call his deeds evil if they really believe that they come from an evil source, or, if they recognise them as good, shall acknowledge his power to be derived from God; for the fruit of good works does not grow upon the decayed tree of evil thoughts and desires but upon the tree of life. At the end of the section the figure of the tree and its fruits is exchanged for that of the treasure- house and its contents ; and last of all, in Luke's order, the words of the mouth are made the criterion of the purity or the depravity of the heart. §59. EMPTY PROFESSIONS OF DISCIPLESHIP. Matt, vii., 21-23 ; Luke vi., 46, xiii., 26, 27. The test of the true prophet is now made the test of the true disciple. Jesus declares that acknowledging him as Master ' counts for nothing unless one lives in accordance with the divine precepts announced by him. By the repeti tion of the title of address added emphasis is given to the claim of discipleship, as though Jesus had said, " Not every one who makes a loud profession of being my follower. ' ' Both the expressions of time here used, in that day and then, refer to the ' ' judgment ' ' which is to precede the coming of the king- ' Since there can be no reasonable doubt that the language used by Jesus was Aramaic, uvpiE (kuriS, E. V. "Lord") is probably repre sentative of rabbi, and should be translated either "rabbi" or "master" ratherthan "Lord." In support of the position that Kvpioi " came to be used as a title in addressing the Messiah," and that Jesus here applies to himself this phrase as a Messianic title, Meyer has but the one-altogether inconclusive passage, John xiii., 13, 14, to cite. 136 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS dom of heaven.1 What Luke has in common with Matthew's last two verses belongs to his fuller and more scenic repre sentation of the event, portions of which are assigned to other sections.2 The concluding phraseology of the section is bor rowed from the Old Testament 3 (a). NOTE. (a, p. 136) Jesus here appears as the Messianic judge ; but since there is no other indication in the Gospels that he thus early acknowledged his Messiahship in any sense of the term, it is likely that Matthew has erred in making this pas sage a part of the Sermon on the Mount. There is a certain subtle connection of thought between this section and the preceding, which accounts for the bringing together of the two passages. The " false prophets " and the " workers of iniquity" belong to one and the same class. The false prophets are among the false disciples. § 60. BUILDING ON THE ROCK AND ON THE SAND. Matt, vii., 24-27 ; Luke vi., 47-49. The mountain discourse of Jesus, in both Matthew and Luke, ends with a double simile. Two men are represented as building each a house near or upon the bed of a dry water course. According to Matthew, one selects a site where an already bare ledge affords a firm foundation ; according to Luke, he digs and goes down deep into the earth until he comes to the underlying rock. This man typifies one who not only hears the teaching of Jesus, but takes it to heart and acts upon it — one who is wise or " prudent," 4 that is, mindful of what is safest and best. The other man, who in 1 Cp. Matt, x., 15 ; Luke x., 12. 2 See the whole paragraph, Luke xiii., 22-30, and its distribution as indicated in the "Text-Index." 3Ps. vi., 8. * cppoviuoi, phrdnimbs. EPILOGUE TO THE SERMON 137 Matthew is called foolish ' (Luke applies no epithet to either one), builds upon the sandy wash of the river-bed (Luke says simply upon the ground) without laying any founda tion. In the rainy season a raging torrent suddenly fills to overflowing the empty channel, and the walls of the foolish man's house fall in, a heap of ruins. The picture is true to the conditions of life in Palestine at the present day. In Matthew this section is closely related to what precedes, as is indicated by the connecting therefore. That there is no reference in the first part of the simile to Jesus as the rock on which alone an enduring moral and religious character can be built, as is claimed by some exegetes, becomes evid ent in the light of this connection. Jesus simply seeks, by these two similitudes, to deepen the impression of his words concerning hearing and doing. § 61. EPILOGUE TO THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. Matt, vii., 28, 29. This is the evangelist's testimony to the effect of the teaching of Jesus upon those who heard it. They were struck with its individuality and freshness. The scribes were simply expounders of the law ; he claimed the right to revise the law itself. This boldness excited their astonish ment. To what extent he secured their sympathy is not stated (a). NOTE. (a, p. 137) Notwithstanding the general unity which char acterises the Sermon on the Mount, the lack of close connec tion between its parts, as well as the fact that in Luke's Gospel many passages have a more suitable connection, sug gests the query whether we have not in the First Gospel a 'juoopoi, mbrds. 1 38 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS composite discourse made up of elements belonging to differ ent periods of the teaching of Jesus. That there is confusion in Matthew's record appears from the fact that some things found in the Sermon on the Mount are repeated by him in other connections. There is, however, always the possibility of the same sayings having been uttered more than once. Although Matthew was one of the twelve and Luke was not, this gives the former little advantage as a reporter of this discourse, since, according to his own account,* he did not become a disciple of Jesus until after its delivery. It is true that he may have heard the discourse, but of this there is no evidence. In any case so extended an address could not be expected to be completely retained in the memory and ac curately reported by anyone ; so that neither Matthew nor Luke may have preserved more than an imperfect outline of what was said. §62. THE CENTURION'S SERVANT. Matt, viii., 5-13 ; Luke vii., 1-10, xiii., 28-30. The differences between the accounts of Matthew and Luke are not such as to warrant the inference that two dis tinct events are described ; but the somewhat similar story in the Fourth Gospel ' apparently refers to another occasion. This centurion,2 or captain, may have been in the service either of the Roman Government or of Herod Antipas — more likely of the latter. He appears to have been merely friendly to the Jews and not an avowed proselyte to their faith, judg ing not only from the language of the elders 3 but also from *See Matt, ix., 9. 1 iv., 46-53. 2 The Roman centurion was originally, as his name suggests, the captain of an hundred men. 3 These are not the official elders, members of the sanhedrin, but, so far as we can see, simply some of the older influential men of the city. Thayer makes them represent " those who in the separate states managed public affairs and administered justice." THE CENTURION'S SERVANT 139 the way in which Jesus speaks of him. This evidence, how ever, is partly lacking in Matthew, who represents him as appealing to Jesus in person.1 The two accounts differ in the way in which they speak of the disease of the centurion's servant.2 Matthew represents him as prostrated by some nervous affection which he calls palsy ; but, beyond saying that he was " suffering terribly," he is silent as to the symptoms of the case. Luke only says, in general terms, that he was sick and at death's door.3 Three circumstances are especially to be noted, that the hesitation of the centurion about asking Jesus to his house indicates a knowledge of and consideration for the usual Jewish unwillingness to run the risk of ceremonial defilement by closely associating with heathen, that he believed Jesus to be able to cure at a dis tance, and that the evangelist supposed that the sick one was thus cured. The centurion urges upon Jesus this con sideration in support of the form of his request, that if he, a mere soldier acting under the direction of a higher authority, can send subordinates to execute his commands, certainly one who has power over the demons of disease can compel them to depart from their victims without himself going into the presence of the sufferer. In the figurative language toward the end of the section the kingdom of heaven is likened, as often by the Jews, to a great feast, where, according to the popular conception, the 1 His salutation is the one considered in connection with \ 59, p. 135, where see Note '. 2 Matthew has the ambiguous word Ttctii (pais), meaning either "boy" or "servant" ; but Luke, by using both naiS and SovXoi (ddulos, "servant" or "slave"), shows that he does not understand the sufferer to have been the centurion's son. Holtzmann offers un satisfactory reasons for thinking that Luke has perverted the meaning of his source. 3 This is not in harmony with the assertion often made, that Luke's constant use of technical medical language shows him to have been a physician. »46 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS sons of the kingdom — that is, all faithful Israelites — would share the company of the patriarchs and prophets, reclining with them upon the festal couches. ' Here we have the re verse of the picture, many of the Gentiles being admitted to the brilliantly lighted banqueting-hall, while the sons of the kingdom are forced to remain in the darkness without, where they give violent expression to their disappointment and rage. Luke's 30th verse repeats the thought in a less realistic form.2 §63. THE BAPTIST'S INQUIRY. Matt, xi., 2-6 ; Luke vii., 18-23. Josephus tells us that it was in the fortress of Machserus, east of the Dead Sea, that John was imprisoned. Luke makes no mention here of the fact that the Baptist was at this time in prison — perhaps because he had previously spoken of his arrest.3 The works of Jesus which led John to send messengers to him to ask if he was " the coming one " need not be limited to the wonderful cures which he had been performing, but may include his teaching as well. " When John heard what Jesus was doing " would express the idea. In Luke, however, the reference appears to be primarily to the healing of the centurion's servant and the restoration to life of the young man of Nain, described in the immediately preceding paragraphs. The expression all these things really seems, however, too comprehensive to be limited to these two occurrences, and may include both the discourse on the mount and the cure performed in the synagogue on 1 The Jews, like the Greeks and Romans, reclined at table. 2 The attachment to this narrative, in Matthew, of verses 11 and 12, to which Luke gives a very different setting, points to a late redaction under the influence of a universalism which was not so early developed in the mind of Jesus as this arrangement indicates. 3 Luke iii., 20. THE BAPTIST'S INQUIRY 141 the sabbath. The question " Art thou the coming one ? " is to be understood, in the light of iii., 16, as equivalent to "Art thou the expected Messiah?" ' (a). Luke's 21st verse, the need of which is not felt by Matthew, elucidates and prepares the way for the instructions given in verse 22. The reply given to John's messengers remands to their master, without direct answer, the question which they had brought, and which could not be answered by a simple ' ' yes " or " no, " since Jesus both was and was not ' ' the coming one." The Messianic ideas of Jesus were far from being like those of John, and he chose to leave it to the Baptist to frame his own opinion from the nature of the work in which he found him to be engaged. This work, as John's two disciples beheld it, and as Jesus directed them to report it, was one of human helpfulness in deed and speech (b). NOTES. (a, p. 141) The thought and purpose of John in asking this question has been variously interpreted, according as this paragraph is allowed to speak for itself, or is brought into relation to other passages and made to harmonise with their supposed teaching. Questioning, under such circum stances, naturally implies doubt on the part of the questioner ; but many critics, perhaps most, have maintained that John could not have been in doubt, since the Messiahship of Jesus had been attested to him by a voice from heaven at the time of the baptism.* Some, however, who believe in this attesta tion think that John was beginning to have doubts : the last words of Jesus to the messengers f are thought to indicate this. The various opinions which have prevailed may be tabulated thus : 1. John was in doubt : (1) having once believed in the Mes sianic mission of Jesus, but now finding his faith beginning to waver because the supposed Messiah did not make greater 1 Cp. Luke xiii., 35, xix., 38; and especially Heb. x., 37. See Winer's Gram. N. T, \ 45, 1, d. *See \ 15, p. 57- t Matt., verse 6 ; Luke, verse 23. 142 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS haste in his work, and because of his not living up to the strict requirements of the ceremonial law ; (2) but now be ginning, in view of the wonderful works of Jesus, to think that he might possibly be the Messiah. 2. John was not in doubt : (1) yet was at a loss how to ac count for the apparent slowness of Jesus, and was impatient because of it ; (2) but could not understand why the Messiah should be so regardless of the requirements of the law ; (3) but uncertain as to whether the one whose fame was abroad in the land was Jesus or not ; (4) but wished to draw out from Jesus a distinct declaration which might make an im pression upon the people ; (5) but desirous of convincing his disciples who were doubtful ; (6) but impatient (a) because Jesus did not release him from prison and (b) " ' cleanse his threshing-floor ' of such refuse as Antipas and Herodias." (b, p. 141) The language in which it is described is to be taken literally ; yet, with regard to the statement that the dead are raised, it is necessary to choose between the supposi tion that historically these words are not to be ascribed to Jesus himself but to the chronicler, and the assumption that the word " dead " is here as not infrequently elsewhere in the New Testament to be understood tropically * ; for the two recorded instances of the resuscitation of Jairus' s daugh ter and of the young man of Nain (the only cases mentioned by the Synoptics) furnish a too slender basis for a statement which places occurrences of this kind on a substantial level, as to frequency, with ordinary cures of diseases. § 64. TESTIMONY CONCERNING THE BAPTIST. Matt, xi., 7-19 ; Luke vii., 24-28, xvi., 16, vii., 31-35. The three interrogatories concerning John which Jesus addresses to the multitudes are well calculated to fix their attention and prepare their minds for the direct affirmations which are to follow. " When, attracted by the reputation of John, you went out into the wilderness where he was preaching, what did you see — a reed shaken by the wind ? ' ' * See, in the Synoptics, Matt, viii., 22 ; Luke xv., 24, 32. JESUS AND JOHN CONTRASTED 143 he asks. Although several critics of good repute hare taken the word reed literally and made the question to signify ' ' Did you go out into the wilderness merely to see the reeds growing along the river-bank ? " ' the harmony of the pas sage is better preserved by supposing a reference to the char acter of John, which, it is implied, he would very much mistake who should think of it as unstable and fickle.2 As the disciples of Jesus himself did not yet look upon their master as the Messiah, it cannot have been John's uncer tainty upon this point which gave form to the question. It would seem to have been the purpose of Jesus simply to call attention to the sturdiness of John's character. The second question, with its supporting affirmation, calls attention to the simple and frugal life of John : " Did you go out into the wilderness to see a man gorgeously attired ? That cannot be, for you certainly must have known that John was not a man living in royal luxury, whose splendid appearance it was worth going many miles to see." " If then you found John to be neither weak nor self-indulgent, perhaps you recognised in him a man of a very different stamp, even a prophet," is the next suggestion of Jesus, through which he reaches that which from the start it was his purpose to say. The Baptist is first included by him among the prophets, then immediately advanced to a position of honour far above theirs, but only to be ranked at last beneath the humblest citizens of the new kingdom of whose coming he is only the herald (a). The greater glory of the new dispensation of the spirit here inspires the thought of Jesus, as afterwards that of Paul.3 ' This gives to the question a telic force corresponding to its form, instead of making it ecbatic. 2 " Shaken by the wind " is a weak and superfluous addition, if the word "reed" is to be taken literally. The plural "reeds" would also be demanded. 3Cp. 2 Cor. iii., 7-11. Verses 29 and 30 in Luke (which see) have been remanded to another section, since they sound more like an 144 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS The eagerness with which the multitude listened to the preaching of John and the general Messianic excitement of the times are spoken of by Jesus as a taking of the kingdom of heaven by storm. Referring to the prophetic character of the Old Testament Scriptures, according to which Elijah was to reappear upon earth before the ushering in of the good time coming, he declares that John has come " in the spirit and power of Elijah," ' the clause if ye are willing to receive it [or him] suggesting that they were to look for no other Elijah. He that hath ears to hear let him hear invites their serious attention to the purport of this declaration concerning John. If the message of the Baptist was a true one (and the readiness with which great numbers accepted it indicated a widespread belief that it was so), then the kingdom of heaven was near at hand and it became them to be prepared for its advent. Seeing at the same time a likeness and a difference in the way in which he and his predecessor had been received by their countrymen, Jesus likens the Jews of that generation to wayward children, who, in their sports, cannot be satisfied with anything which their comrades do, but always want something different. When one wants to play funeral, an other wants to play wedding. At weddings and other joyous festivals among the Jews there was generally dancing to the music of the pipe; at funerals a mournful dirge was sung, while the weeping friends of the deceased beat their breasts as a sign of sorrow. The austerity of the life of John and his stern call to repentance were like a solemn dirge, while editor's comment than like words of Jesus. However, whether in tended to be ascribed to Jesus or parenthetically introduced by the evangelist as an incidental remark of his own, they furnish a not un suitable connecting link with what follows, calling attention, as they do, to the coldness with which John was treated by the leaders of the Pharisaic party. 1 Luke i., 17. JESUS AND JOHN CONTRASTED 145 the freer life of Jesus was, by contrast, rather suggestive of the gladness of the wedding-feast. When Jesus, in Matthew's account, speaks of himself as eating and drinking and of John as neither eating nor drink ing, the sense is to be completed from the 33d verse of Luke, where it is said that ' ' John the Baptist has come neither eating bread nor drinking wine." Nothing more is meant than that, while John lived an ascetic life, subsisting upon such fruits of nature as the wilderness afforded, Jesus dwelt among men, eating and drinking as they did, and not at tracting attention to himself by any peculiarities of life or demeanour. The concluding words of the section are not only obscure in their application, but they are somewhat differently reported by Matthew and Luke. The former has Wisdom is [or was] justified by her works, while the latter reads, Wisdom is [or was] justified of all her children. In Matthew's form the thought is that the results, in the case both of John and Jesus, were such as to make evident the wisdom of that Divine Providence which sent them into the world as heralds of truth. In Luke the only difference is that the disciples of John and of Jesus are said to furnish this justification, which they did, in part at least, by their works. The thought in Luke seems to be somewhat more inclusive than in Matthew, taking cognisance of the indirect as well as the direct results of the missions of the two prophets.1 NOTE. (a, p. 143) The quotation in the 10th verse of Matthew and the 27th of Luke is from the beginning of Mai. iii., where, in the Revised Version, it reads, ' ' Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me." * As 'If the aorist verb iSiuaioo^r) (Mikaiothe) is used in a present or indefinite sense = " is justified," then the statement is simply an utterance of proverbial wisdom having universal application. * Cp. Mark i., 2 ; Luke i., 76, and see Norton's note on Matt, xi., 10, and Toy, 31-33. 146 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS the following context makes clear, Malachi announces the advent of some vigorous reformer, such as John the Baptist really was, — although there is no reason to suppose that the prophet had any particular individual in his mind. §65. CHARGE OF BEING IN LEAGUE WITH BEELZEBUB. Matt, ix., 32-34, xii., 22-24; Mark iii., 20-22 ; Luke xi., 14-16. Only Mark's very concise account presents Jesus in the midst of a dense crowd from which his friends seek to with draw him, thinking that he is acting strangely. To the casting out of demons Mark simply refers, without mention ing the particular cases described by Matthew and Luke. Of the two narratives from the Matthew-Gospel the first agrees with Luke in describing the cure of one who was dumb and perhaps deaf ' also, while in the second case (a) to dumbness was added blindness.2 When the scribes, in 1 Since total deafness is usually accompanied by dumbness, it is not strange that xaoq>6i (kophos), which primarily means only "blunted" or "dull," should sometimes be used, as in Matt, xi., 5 ; Mark vii., 32, 37, xi., 25 ; Luke vii., 22 ; and in the LXX. of Ex. iv.,11 ; Is. xliii., 8 ; Ps. xxxvii., 14, and elsewhere, as well as in several of the classics, in the sense of "deaf." 2 The word used is TV