•YAIUE-'WHIIVIEKm'Y-

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THE BRITSH ACADEMY

' RigMeoxtsiiess ' in 'the (gospels

The Rev. Edwitt A. Abbott, D.D.
E4Io\« ,<jf ' the Academy

[From the Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. VIIL\

London
Published for the British Academy
By Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Pretes
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'RIGHTEOUSNESS' IN THE GOSPELS
Communicated by the Rev. EDWIN A. ABBOTT, D.D.,
FELLOW OF THE ACADEMY,
March 20, 1918
'There are two kinds of Christian righteousness,' says Hooker,
' the one without us, which we have by imputation ; the other in us,
which consisteth of faith, hope, charity, and other Christian virtues.' 1
This twofold technical definition of a righteousness that is called
specially ' Christian ' prepares us for something artificial in the use of
the word in English. Shakespeare never uses it ; nor do Pope and
Shelley. When it is used by Milton, Cowper, and Wordsworth it is
tinged with ecclesiastical or theological associations, which remain to
this day, so that even now, when we enumerate the good qualities of
some friend, we cannot — without some sense of unreality — speak
of his 'righteousness'. We may praise his 'justice', but that is
a narrower thing. We may praise his 'goodness1, but that is a
vaguer thing. We may praise his 'kind-heartedness', but that is
a different thing. We have no English noun corresponding to that
noble use of the Greek adjective which we find in Plato : ' God is as
righteous as is possible [for divine nature], and there is nothing more
like God than a human being that is as righteous as is possible [for
human nature].' z With this preface, let us pass to the use, and non-
use, of the word * righteousness ' in our Gospels, and to a consideration
of the best explanation of the facts.
In Mark 'righteousness' is non-occurrent. In Matthew it occurs
frequently, and always in Christ's words. In Luke it nowhere occurs
in Christ's words, not even in parallels to Matthew— and only once
elsewhere, namely, in the Song of Zacharias ('that we . . . should
serve him [i.e. the Lord] without fear, in holiness and righteousness
before him.' 3 In John it occurs in only one passage, where Jesus, in
His last Discourse, says that the Paraclete will convict the world in
respect of 'righteousness'.4 Assuming for the present that Matthew
has preserved a genuine doctrine of Jesus about ' righteousness ', we
1 Sermons, ii. 21. 2 Plato, Theaet. 176 C.
s Luke i. 75. * John xvi. 8-10.
viii. O

2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
have to ask, first, what is its purport, and, secondly, why Luke has
omitted it.
Starting from the LXX, we find that there the Greek dikaiosund
— that is, righteousness or justice — represents a great number of
Hebrew words, but more especially a longer form of tsdk that is used
for the first time thus : ' Abraham believed God and it was reckoned
unto him for righteousness.''1 The same Hebrew is repeated twice in
Deuteronomy, ' It shall be righteousness unto us if we observe to do
all this commandment before the Lord our God', and, more particu
larly, ' Thou shalt surely restore to him [i. e. the needy borrower] the
pledge when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his garment
and bless thee : and it shall be righteousness unto thee before the Lord
thy God.''2 In all these passages the ' righteousness ' is regarded as
' reckoned'' unto some one (' him ', ' us ', ' thee ') even where ' reckoned '
is omitted. It is also ' before God ', that is to say, as seen by the
eyes of God, who sees the truth.
But here we are confronted with the fact that in the Deuteronomic
passages the LXX has eleemosune, which in the Gospels and Acts
regularly means ' charity ' in the sense of ' charitable alms '. And the
Hebrew (the above-mentioned form of tsdk) is sometimes translated
thus in the Psalms, Isaiah, and Daniel. It also has this meaning in
Mishnic Hebrew.3 This explains the error of A.V. in the Sermon on
the Mount, ' Take heed that ye do not your alms before men '. The
correct reading is ' Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before
men1 — 'righteousness' being technically used in the Mishnic sense of
"alms'1. And the context goes on to precepts about '•almsgiving''.
A.V. has followed a corrupt text which has substituted an easy word
for a difficult one.
We shall come again to this passage in its order. Meantime we
note not only the fact that Luke omits it, but also the possibility that
he may have omitted it for the same reason that induced some scribes
to corrupt Matthew's version of it. Writing for Greeks and Gentiles,
Luke wrote for readers who deemed righteousness one of the most
divine virtues. Greeks would not understand that Jews had special
need to beware of a spurious ' righteousness '. The true righteousness
was to be ' before God '. The false righteousness was ' before men ',
or 'righteousness according to [Levitical] Law', that is, external
righteousness of action extending to minute tithe- payings, and purifi
cations, but not internal, not righteousness of heart or motive. Mark
indirectly suggests this later on in his Gospel in a diffuse section on
1 Gen. xv. 6 (LXX). 2 Deut. vi. 25, xxiv. 13.
8 Levy, iv. 173 a.

'RIGHTEOUSNESS' IN THE GOSPELS 3
' washings ' ; but even there he does not mention the term ' righteous
ness ', preferring to say that ' the Law ' has been overlaid by ' tradi
tions '. There, Mark is followed by Matthew, who however omits
some of Mark's diffuse details.1 Luke omits the whole section —
doubtless because it was technically Jewish, and also because it was
needless for his Gentile readers, not because it was non-historical or
needless for Christ's Jewish hearers at the time. Although Gentiles
as well as Jews were in danger of self-righteousness, that danger was
peculiarly great for the latter. For they possessed a law of righteous
ness written in a book, much of which dealt with externalities and
was capable of being literally obeyed without moral effort. The
danger is summed up in the Pauline saying that ' Israel pursued after
a law of righteousness . . . being ignorant of the righteousness of God,
and desiring to establish their own righteousness. .' 2
We proceed to take Matthew's instances in order, merely premising
that, even where they occur in Matthew's single tradition, they are
not to be rejected at once as unauthoritative, since all the other
Evangelists show a disposition to avoid using a word that Jesus Him
self must incontestably have used, and since the avoidance of it can be
reasonably explained in all the other Gospels as a natural and not
dishonest ' suppressio obscuri '.
The first instance is connected with Christ's coming to the Baptist
to be baptized by him. The prophet expostulates, saying, ' I have
need to be baptized by thee '. But Jesus replies, ' Suffer [it] now, for
thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness \3 What is meant by
' it becometh ' as distinct from ' it is needful ' ? And does * us ' (instead
of ' me ') mean the Baptist and Jesus, or ' all Israel of whom I am one ' ?
And how can the reception of baptism, which is not prescribed either
by the Law of Moses or by the Law of Nature, come under the head
of a ' fulfilling ' of ' all righteousness ' ?
Early explanations are few and divergent. Ignatius writes that
Jesus Christ * was baptized by John in order that all righteousness
might be fulfilled by Him ' — asserting in the same sentence that He
was ' truly from the race of David . . . Son of God . . . truly born of
a virgin . . . truly nailed [to the cross] ' * — as if protesting (against
the Docetics) that there was ' truly ' some objective ' righteousness '
that was to be ' fulfilled ' by the baptism. But he does not tell us
what it was. Origen says ' Christ Himself is related to have been
baptized by John, not with that baptism which is in Christ (Rom. vi.
3), but with that which is in the Law. For so He Himself says to
1 Mark vii. 1 foil., Matt. xv. 1 foil. 2 Rom. ix. 31-x. 3.
3 Matt. iii. 15. 4 Jgn. Smyrn. § 1.

4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
John, " Suffer it now . . . all righteousness". Whereby He shows that
the baptism of John was a fulfilment of the ancient things {expletio
veterum), not a beginning of the new things {inchoatio novorumy1
On the other hand, Jerome says that Jesus refrained from adding the
nature of the righteousness — whether it was the righteousness of the
Law or the righteousness of Nature — for the express purpose of
making us understand that it meant both. But he, too, does not
explain how the acceptance of baptism 'fulfilled' either kind of
righteousness.2 Chrysostom says, ' How is it " becoming " ? Because
we are thereby fulfilling the whole Law. . . . For " righteousness " is
the complete fulfilment of the commandments [of the Law].' 3
But what 'commandment' of the *old things' — that is, the Old
Dispensation or Law — prescribed baptism ? None is alleged by these
ancient writers. The Horae Hebraicae indeed paraphrases ' all
righteousness ' as ' everything that is just ', and says that as the
Levitical priests ' were initiated by washing and anointing, so was He
by baptism and the Holy Ghost.' 4 But this narrows down ' all
righteousness ' into such righteousness as was required by the Law
from ' Levitical priests ' — hardly a satisfactory explanation.
Perhaps the words may be explained by something like Origen's
interpretation, as meaning that the Baptist, the last of the prophets,
was making a final prophetic attempt to put new life into the fulfil
ment of the righteousness of the old Law, and that Jesus, while
awaiting further revelation, said that it was 'becoming' or 'seemly'
for all Israel to join in this attempt ' for the present ' (R.V. ' now '),
although He anticipated that it would be insufficient. This view is
not incompatible with the belief that even before His baptism Jesus
felt intimations of a future that would make the old righteousness
pass into the background. None the less, it might seem His present
business, as the Epistle to the Hebrews says, to 'take hold of the
seed of Abraham ', so that ' it behoved him in all things to be made
like unto his brethren '.6 Christ's ' brethren ' were resorting to John's
baptism ; He, then, would do the same.
The next instance is in the opening of the Sermon on the Mount,
where the parallel texts of Matthew and Luke seem to exhibit either
Matthew's predilection for the word we are discussing or Luke's
avoidance of it.
1 Origen on Rom. vi. 3-4 (Lomm. vi. 383). 2 Jerome on Matt. iii. 15.
8 Chrys. on Matt. iii. 16 (ed. Field i. 154). * Hor. ffeb. on Matt. iii. 15.
6 Heb. ii. 16-17. The Baptist himself indicates that this ' taking hold of the
seed of Abraham' might be ineffectual, and that other ' children of Abraham'
might be (Matt. iii. 9, Luke iii. 8) ' raised up' from 'the stones'.

'RIGHTEOUSNESS' IN THE GOSPELS 5
Matt. v. 6, 10. Luke vi. 21.
Blessed are they that hunger Blessed a;e ye that hunger now.
and thirst after righteousness.
Blessed are they that have Luke omits.
been persecuted for the sake of
righteousness. Here we must remind ourselves that Christ's precepts to His first
converts and missionary disciples would probably be current in at
least two different forms : — first, a single brief summary, of the nature
of a Missionary's Manual ; secondly, detailed and separate accounts,
arranged chronologically or according to subject-matter, of the several
sayings, along with the circumstances or causes that had originated
some of them. These would be rather of the nature of a Biography.
Sayings from the Manual might sometimes be combined with sayings
from the Biography. We can quote from Matthew's version of the
Precepts to the Twelve an instance of combination in Matthew
parallel to an instance of separation in Luke. Some sayings that
Matthew inserts in the Precepts to the Twelve Luke omits there, but
inserts in his account of a Mission of Seventy peculiar to his Gospel.
This being the case, we must not assume that we have no alternative
here between supposing that Luke altered Matthew or Matthew altered
Luke. We ought more cautiously to say, ' It is quite possible that
there were at least two originals, (1) a Manual, (2) a Biographical
Collection of Logia '. Luke may have argued that the Logion here
was liable to be misunderstood. It might encourage some to be content
with aspirations after a self-regarding righteousness instead of practical
well-doing beneficent to others. The Manual was liable to no such
objection. It was addressed to the disciples alone, the champions and
preachers of the Gospel, meaning ' Blessed are ye, my disciples, though
ye hunger in this world, and though ye are cast out by men for my
sake.' On the other hand, in preferring the Logion, Matthew may
have been actuated by a desire to extend the application of the words
beyond the circle of Missionaries by changing the second into the third
person, and by avoiding the danger of the Lucan 'now'. For 'now',
if taken literally, might mean that every one, however bad, if poor and
persecuted in this world, would be blessed in the next. He would not
hunger then, if he ' hungered now '.
Continuing our questioning in the same spirit, we must not ask
' Why does Luke omit " thirst " ? ' but ' Why does the Version adopted
by Luke — perhaps the Manual — omit "thirst"?' And the answer
will be, ' Partly for brevity, and partly because Luke and the author
1 Matt. x. 12-15, Luke x. 5-6, 11-12.

6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
of the Manual took the words literally and comforted the Missionaries
under literal ' hunger '. On the other side, if we ask why the Version
adopted by Matthew inserts ' thirst ', the answer will be that Matthew
and the Logia are not so brief and did not take the words literally.
Philo speaks of ' those who thirst and hunger for the gracious gift
of goodness 7 as typified by the children of Israel receiving the manna
in the wilderness;1 and the Psalm of Wandering describes the Israelites
in the wilderness as 'hungry and thirsty'.2 Matthew quotes, in the
context of the passage that we are discussing, the Psalm that says,
'The meek shall inherit the land.'3 This, too, Luke omits. It is
certainly difficult and certainly not true to literal and ordinary ex
perience. But it was true in the mind of the Hebrew Psalmist. And
a similar metaphorical inheritance or reception of ' lands ' is promised
elsewhere by Jesus in Mark and Matthew where the parallel Luke
omits ' lands \4
In that passage a reason can be given for Luke's omission, though
' lands ' was in the original. The context deals with the renunciation
of home and home relations by a disciple and his recompense for
renouncing them. Now it was intelligible that a disciple, renouncing
home relations in order to enter into the Church, should receive among
his new Christian brethren, even in this world, the equivalent, and
more than the equivalent, of his former 'brethren and sisters and
mother and children'. But it was not so easily intelligible that he
should receive ' lands '. Philo, it is true, represents Abraham — when
called forth by God from his home in Haran to wander like a pilgrim
— as saying to God, ' Thou, Lord, art my country and my kinsfolk and
my father's hearth.'5 But this is not the same thing as saying to God,
' Thou arb my lands.' Luke, therefore, might omit ' lands ' as being
possibly an error, and certainly unintelligible to his readers.
Yet Philo's language, mentioning 'Abraham', and 'country', and
'father's hearth', may guide us to an understanding of the Marcan
'lands' as being an allusion to the renunciation of Abraham, when
the Lord said to him, ' Get thee out from thy country, and from thy
kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show
thee ',6 and afterwards, ' I am the Lord that brought thee out ... to
give thee this land to inherit it.'7 Abraham might be said anti
thetically to be giving up ' lands ' inherited from his father Terah, in
order to inherit a ' land ' promised to him by the Father in heaven.
This is the first mention of ' inheriting ' in the Bible. It should be
1 Philo, i. 566. 2 Ps. cvii. 5, comp. ib. 9, 36. 8 Ps. xxxvii. 11.
1 Mark x. 29-30, Matt. xix. 29, Luke xviii. 29-30. 6 Philo, i. 477.

6 Gen. xii. 1. ' Gen. xv.

/.

'RIGHTEOUSNESS' IN THE GOSPELS 7
studied along with the Christian comment, that Abraham ' obeyed to
go out unto, a place that he was to receive for an inheritance ' and
'became a sojourner in the land of promise1.1 Then the prominence
given by the earlier Gospels to ' lands ' becomes explicable. And in
favour of the insertion of 'lands' there is this argument, that no
Evangelist would make such a paradoxical addition to Christ's list of
home relations without authority. Although, therefore, we may find
no fault with Luke, or may even praise him for his tact and sense of
what was suitable to his Gentile readers, we must not praise him, in
his version of the doctrine of Renunciation, for a strict and literal
accuracy in reporting Christ's words.
Returning to the Sermon on the Mount, we are justified in believing
that Matthew is not amplifying, or summarizing out of his own head,
but is adding a longer and more poetic version taken from the Logia.
Luke, on the other hand, if he is not here himself abridging and
summarizing, is taking his version from the Manual. This may well
have seemed to him more practical and comforting to Missionaries,
more true to experience and history, and more intelligible to
Gentiles 2
The next two instances use ' righteousness ' in a technical sense for
'almsgiving'. ' Your righteousness1, says Jesus to His disciples, must
exceed ' the righteousness of the Pharisees ', and ' Take heed that ye do
not your righteousness (A.V. alms) before men to be seen by them.'3
Why does Luke nowhere insert these surely very needful warnings ?
Perhaps because of their technicality. At all events he inserts a non
technical parable directed against those who ' trusted in themselves
that they were righteous and despised others \ They are typified by
a Pharisee praying by the side of a Publican. The Pharisee says,
' God, I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men ... or even as
this publican. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that
I get.' The Publican says, ' God, be merciful to me a sinner '. Luke
adds, as the comment of Jesus, ' I say unto you, This man went down
to his house made righteous ' — that is, beheld as righteous by God —
' rather than the other '. 4 Here all technicality is removed by
1 Heb. xi. 8-9.
2 A minor point is worth noting. In Heb. ' to thirst ' is followed by Heb.
prep, 'for' (Gk. dat.), but in idiomatic Gk. by genitive. T17 ducatoawrj dat. may
have been confused with rrj SiKaioo-vvrj accus. , which Matthew has. Luke, if he
had the dat. before him, may have thought that it meant ' in the way of
righteousness ', or ' in the cause of righteousness ', that is, ' now, while doing
the work of a missionary '. Comp. Ps. lxiii. 1 ' thirsteth for thee', LXX a-oi, but
B 2 N 2 o-e.
3 Matt. v. 20, vi. 1. * Luke xviii. 9-14.

8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
the introductory phrase, 'trusted in themselves that they were
righteous '.
In the next instance — the final one in the Sermon on the Mount —
Matthew employs a phrase used also by Paul speaking about the
righteousness of God.1 This fact may be urged by some in favour of
the view that Luke omits it, not because it was technical, but because
it was part of a paraphrastic amplification of a brief original retained
by Luke in its brevity.
Matt. vi. 33. Luke xii. 81.
But seek ye first his kingdom Only seek ye his kingdom, and
and his righteousness — or, the these things shall be added unto
kingdom and his righteousness 2 — you.
and all these things shall be added
unto you.
On the other hand, Luke might very well omit a Pauline phrase if
it had become associated with technical controversy. And the reading
in Matthew, 'Seek ye first his kingdom (or, the kingdom)"1 resembles
an early Mishnic saying in Berachoth, that one is to ' receive upon him
the yoke of the kingdom of heaven first, and, after that, receive upon
him the yoke of the commandments '.3 Also, Matthew's version
accords with his version of the Lord's prayer, where, after 'Thy
kingdom come ', he (but not Luke) inserts ' Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven ' — so that the prayer for the fulfilment of God's
righteous will, i.e. His * righteousness' (as well as for His 'kingdom')
comes ' first ', before the prayer for daily bread. It accords also with
the above-quoted Matthaean beatitude, ' Blessed are they that hunger
and thirst after righteousness '. There is a consistency and originality
in these Matthaean sayings which suggests that they are not Matthew's
patchings of the Manual, but Matthew's borrowings from the Logia.
Matthew's final instance of the word, like his first, is connected
with John the Baptist. It is in a charge brought against the chief
priests and the elders of the people, to whom Jesus says, ' John came
unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not, but
1 Paul, however, uses it for the most part controversially, and makes distinc
tions between (Rom. i. 17, iii. 5, 21) ' righteousness of God' and other unsatis
fying kinds of righteousness (Rom. x. 3, 5, &c, Phil. iii. 6, &c). That the
phrase (Gen. xv. 6) ' counted for righteousness ' had become a subject for
Christian controversy in the first century is indicated by the Epistle of James,
ii. 21-4.
2 Codex B has tt)V Siicaioaivriv koi ttjv f$a(Ti\{iav airov, which might mean
' righteousness and his kingdom ' or ' his righteousness and kingdom ' ; SS. and
other authorities have 'the kingdom of God and his righteousness' ; Burkitt
quotes from Aphraates, ' Let us seek his kingdom and his righteousness.'
3 Abolh, ed. Taylor, p. 117, quoting Berach. ii. 2.

'RIGHTEOUSNESS' IN THE GOSPELS 9
the publicans and the harlots believed him ; and ye (emph.) [your
selves] when ye saw it, did not even afterwards repent that ye might
believe him V It is not surprising if Luke found ' in the way of
righteousness ' difficult. For the margin refers us to no parallel in
the Old Testament except a highly poetic and exultant utterance of
the divine Wisdom, ' I walk in the way of righteousness.'' 2 But in
Matthew the reference appears to be (as an ancient commentary
indicates) to a much narrower ' righteousness '.3 Jesus seems to say,
' John came to you, the observers of the Law, in the way of an enlarged
righteousness of the Law, enjoining fasting, and enlarging the duty of
almsgiving,4 and yet ye believed him not.'
This would seem to mean a "righteousness of works' liable to
become mechanical, but not, in itself, inconsistent with that righteous
ness which is mentioned, for the first time in the Bible, in connexion
with Abraham, whose belief in the promise of God ' was counted to
him for righteousness'. We have seen that, at the outset of his
Gospel, Matthew represented Jesus the Messiah as agreeing with John
the Baptist, the Prophet, in the desire to do the utmost possible for
the old Law of righteousness of man's works5 before He Himself, as
the Messiah, introduced the Gospel of the Promise of the Spirit of
God. Having begun thus, Matthew proceeds to represent Jesus, in the
1 Matt. xxi. 32. The parall. Luke vii. 29 has ' And all the people when they
heard, and the publicans, accounted God (or, recognized God as) righteous, having
been baptized with the baptism of John'. This seems to mean ' recognized the
righteousness of God in the righteous warning of John His messenger'. Luke's
context has a reference to the Baptist's fasting (Luke vii. 33, Matt. xi. 18),
' eating no bread nor drinking wine '. This (comp. Luke xviii. 1 2, ' I fast twice
in the week ') might have been supposed likely to attract some Pharisees to John
at the beginning of his mission.
2 Prov. viii. 20.
3 Cramer on Matt. xxi. 28, 'he came to you, not to them', i.e. to you the
observers of the Law. Chrysostom says : ' This — namely, believing John — was
especially a hearkening to the Law of God. It was not therefore a matter of
grace alone, but also of righteousness, that the harlots entered [the kingdom].
For they did not remain harlots when they entered.'
' Comp. Luke iii. 11.
6 It is true that the fasting and the almsgiving enjoined by the Baptist were
not enjoined by the Law (any more than baptism) except so far as the former
might be regarded as an extension of the fast on the Day of Atonement and the
latter as an extension of the provision for the widow and the orphan. But the
Baptist hoped, perhaps, to put life into the Law by extending its visible province :
' The Law nowhere mentions " fasting " but only " afflicting one's soul " . I can
not make these people afflict their souls by making them hate their own sins and
love God's righteousness. But I can make them afflict their souls through their
bodies by the pain of hunger, and this may prepare the way for something better,
leading them to a sense, and to an avoidance, and finally to an abhorrence, of
the sins that have brought on them the imposition of this pain.'

10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
Sermon on the Mount, as defining this ' righteousness ' in detail and
as showing that the works must proceed from our love of God and our
love of His righteousness, not from our love of man's applause.
Now, in this final mention of ' righteousness ', Matthew represents
Jesus, toward the close of His career on earth, as standing in the
Temple, the home of the sacrificial precepts of the Levitical Law.
Looking back on what John attempted to do, He says, in effect,
' John came to you Pharisees first, to you, the professed supporters
of the Law in its minutest details. He came to you in the way of
righteousness, that is to say, in the way of the righteousness of that
Law, as distinguished from the way of Promise, and ye believed him
not.' Thus the rulers of the Jews are rebuked for not having seconded
the Prophet's efforts in behalf of that very Law to which they them
selves professed devoted allegiance — the ancient and righteous Law
of Israel.
All this is consistent and life-like. It gives us an insight into
possibilities of various shades of feeling in the supporters of the Law
and the would-be reformers of it. Some, including the Sadducees*
might be content to observe the letter of the Pentateuch and nothing
more. Others, reformers of a sort, including the Pharisees, might
enclose the Law as it were with marginal hedges of interpretation, so
as always to observe too much rather than too little — more especially
enlarging ordinances concerning tithing and purifying and other
external acts, so as to make them more strict, and their own righteous
ness in observing them more exact. Others, reformers of a better
sort, might insist, as almost all the Prophets did, on the fundamental
importance of purifying their conceptions of God, if they aspired to
obey the Law of God, quoting, as from Hosea, the version adopted by
the LXX, ' I will have mercy rather than sacrifice '. Others, still
more advanced reformers, going to an extreme length, as some of the
Essenes are said to have done, might abstain from the sacrifices of
animals altogether, quoting Hosea as in the Hebrew, and as Jesus
Himself is alleged by Matthew to have quoted it, ' I will have mercy
and not sacrifice V Such different shades of Palestinian thought and
controversial discussion Mark might not try to represent, because they
belonged to a record of logia or discourses rather than to one of facts.
Luke might avoid them because his readers were saturated with the
Greek conception of true dikaiosune as a virtue, divine as well as
human, of the noblest kind. And to them the Gospel of their Saviour
would seem no fit receptacle for protests — needed in old days but not
1 Matt. ix. 13, Hos. vi. 6. Jerome makes no remark on the difference of the
LXX from the Hebrew.

'RIGHTEOUSNESS' IN THE GOSPELS 11
now — against the degradation of the term by past Jewish controver
sialists. Turning to the Fourth Evangelist we find that in his Gospel he
differs from Matthew as to the treatment of the term ' righteousness ',
and almost agrees with Luke. Almost, but not quite. There is one
passage in which he represents Jesus as mentioning the word, on the
night before His departure from the disciples in this world, and in
order to prepare them for that departure. Jesus has previously-
promised them a Paraclete to take His place, being (as it were) His
Second Self, the Spirit of Truth.1 And now he says, ' And he [the
Paraclete] when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin,
and of righteousness, and of judgement ... of righteousness because I
go to the Father and ye behold me no more'.2 There is evidently here
no thought at all of the Jewish ' righteousness of the Law ', even in its
broadest sense, much less in the sense of ' almsgiving '. It is a personi
fication. The Father looks down from heaven to men on earth and
sends His Paraclete to ask them, ' Where is my Righteousness, whom
I sent down to live among you, and to make you righteous ? ' And
men, convicted and ashamed, are regarded as compelled to reply, 'We
did not love, we rejected, we cast out Thy Righteousness, because we
ourselves were unrighteous '. Thus will theParaclete 'convict the world',
or constrain the world to convict itself, ' in respect of righteousness '.
The picture bears some resemblance to that of Astraea, the goddess
of Justice, who lived on earth during the Golden Age, but was finally
forced to depart to her home in heaven, banished by the injustice of
men. Or it might be illustrated by the story of Aristides the Righteous,
banished from Athens because the Athenians were tired of hearing
him called righteous. But what is probably in the Evangelist's mind
is the thought of a sad reversal of the glorious prospect depicted in
the Psalms : ' Truth springeth out of the earth, and righteousness hath
looked down from heaven.'3 How different was the prospect now !
'Truth', or 'the Spirit of Truth', is a title of the Paraclete,4 and
instead of ' springing out of the earth ' the Paraclete will come down
to convict the earth ! 'Righteousness ', also, instead of ' looking down
from heaven ' to bless the inhabitants of earth, is on the point of being
banished to heaven, as an exile from the unrighteous earth.
It is worth noting that this beautiful passage in the Psalms is
narrowed in both the Talmuds by a technical interpretation.5 They
1 John xiv. 16-20. 2 John xvi. 8-10.
3 Ps. Ixxxv. 11. 4 John xiv. 17, xv. 26, xvi. 13.
6 Baba Bathra 11 a, Jer. Talm. Pea i. 1. (Schwab, vol. ii, p. 7, inserts ' aumone '
t o make the meaning clear.)

12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
take ' righteousness 7 as ' acts of almsgiving ', stored up as treasures in
heaven, whence they look down and bless the almsgiver. But the
Hebrew poet conveys no such meaning, nor does the Targum thus
narrow the words. The Fourth Gospel — whether alluding, or not,
to the Psalm — certainly glorifies righteousness in its highest sense by
this impressive use of the word in Christ's Last Discourse. And the
impression is deepened by the climax of ' O righteous Father ! ' x in the
very last sentence of the Last Prayer. It closes the record of
Christ's utterances — up to the moment of His arrest — with an exalta
tion of ' Righteous Father ', even above ' Holy Father ', as the highest
appellation that God can receive from His own Son.
So much for the Johannine Gospel. But in the Johannine Epistle
a different course is followed. In that short treatise righteousness is
thrice mentioned, and always in the phrase ' do righteousness '. This
does not occur in the New Testament elsewhere except once in
Revelation and once (as above quoted) in Matthew's version of the
Sermon on the Mount, ' Take heed that ye do not your righteousness
before men \2 There, as we have seen, the word meant ' almsgiving '.
Here the writer of the Epistle appears to be warning his readers not
only against some who narrowed down righteousness to works of alms
giving, but also against others who denied the need of any righteous
works at all. Against both, he contends that our 'righteousness'
must be Christ's and no other. Against the former he says, ' Every
one that doeth righteousness is born of him [i.e. God] ' 3 and ' He that
doeth righteousness is righteous as he [i.e. Christ] is righteous'.4
Against the latter — the despisers of all such righteousness as is
manifested by "doing', and the exalters of self-absorbed, solitary
meditations on things divine — he says, 'Every one that doeth not
righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother '.5
These sentences contain the sum and substance of what we know
from all the Gospels to have been Christ's actual doctrine, namely,
that all our righteousness must be based on our love of God as our
Father and of men as our brethren. How He may have expressed it
may be a matter of doubt. Several modern critics are of opinion that
Matthew has interpolated a mention of righteousness whenever his
mention of it is not supported by the parallel Luke. But as Luke
never allows the word to pass Christ's lips at all, but resorts to other
ways of expressing Christ's condemnation of those who 'trusted in
1 John xvii. 25 ' Righteous Father ! ' appears to come as a climax after xvii. 11
' Holy Father ! '
2 Matt. vi. 1, Rev. xxii. 11. s 1 john ;; 2g.
1 1 John iii. 7. » a j0hn Hi. 10.

'RIGHTEOUSNESS' IN THE GOSPELS 13
themselves that they were righteous and despised others', such
a sweeping condemnation of Matthew's consistent traditions is based
on insecure foundations.
Our conclusions, then, are as follows. It may be taken as certain
that Jesus, in thought at all events, protested against the ' doing ' of
a spurious ' righteousness ' or ' almsgiving.', dictated by the love of
the applause of men as well as by a belief that it would be rewarded
in strict accordance with a debtor and creditor account registered by
God. It may be taken as highly probable that occasionally Jesus,
when thus protesting, used the word ' righteousness ' in the technical
sense in which it was used by the Jews in, and before, the first century.
It is more probable that Luke omitted all these traditions as being
too technical — and as being capable of expression in other ways —
than that Matthew, without any authority, interpolated all of them
in Christ's doctrine. It is probable that the Johannine Epistle alludes
to these differences between Matthew and Luke on the subject, and
still more probable that the Epistle faithfully expresses Christ's
fundamental doctrine about it.
Edwin A. Abbott.

Oxford
Printed by Frederick Haft at the University Press

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