IN Reviewing the Public Life of Jesus, we may separate from the events those discourses which were not merely incidental, but which stand independent and entire. This distinction, however, is not precise, for many discourses, owing to the occurrences that suggested them, may be classed as events; and many events, from the explanations annexed to them, seem to range themselves with the discourses. The discourses of Jesus given in the synoptic Gospels, and those attributed to him in the fourth, diner widely both in form and matter, having only a few isolated sentences in common: they must, therefore, be subjected to a separate examination. Again, there is a dissimilitude between the three first evangelists: Matthew affects long discourses, and collects into one mass a number of sayrigs, which in Luke are distributed among various places and occalons; each of these two evangelists has also some discourses pecu-

liar to himself. In Mark, the element of discourses exists in a very small proportion. Our purpose will, therefore, be best answered, if we make Matthew's comprehensive discourses our starting point; ascertain all the corresponding ones in the other Gospels; inquire which amongst them has the best arrangement and representation of these discourses; and, finally, endeavour to form a judgment as to how far they really proceeded from the lips of Jesus.

The first long discourse in Matthew is that known as the sermon on the mount (v.-vii.). The evangelist, having recorded the return of Jesus after his baptism into Galilee, and the calling of the fishermen, informs us, that Jesus went through all Galilee, teaching and healing; that great multitudes followed him from all parts of Palestine; and that for their instruction he ascended a mountain, and delivered the sermon in question (iv. 23, ft). We seek in vain for its parallel in Mark, but Luke (vi. 20-49) gives a discourse which has the same introduction and conclusion, and presents in its whole tenor the most striking similarity with that of Matthew; moreover, in both cases, Jesus, at the termination of his discourse, goes to Capernaum, and heals the centurion's servant. It is true that Luke gives a later insertion to the discourse, for previous to it ^{P.358} he narrates many journeyings and cures of Jesus, which Matthew places after it; and while the latter represents Jesus as ascending a mountain, and being seated there during delivery of his discourse, Luke says, almost in contradiction to him, that Jesus came down and stood in the plain. Further, the sermon in Luke contains but a fourth part of that in Matthew, while it has some elements peculiarly its own.

To avoid the unpleasant admission that one of two inspired evangelists must be in error, which is inevitable if in relation to the same discourse one of them makes Jesus deliver it on the mountain, the other in the plain; the one sitting, the other standing; the one earlier, the other later; if either the one has made important omissions, or the other as important additions the ancient harmonists pronounced these discourses to be distinct, on the plea that Jesus must frequently have treated of the essential points of his doctrine, and may therefore have repeated word for word certain impressive enunciations. This may be positively denied with respect to long discourses, and even concise maxims will always be reproduced in a new guise and connection by a gifted and inventive teacher; to say the least, it is impossible that any but a very barren mind should repeat the same formal exordium, and the same concluding illustration, on separate occasions.

The identity of the discourses being established, the first effort was to conciliate or to explain the divergencies between the two accounts so as to leave their credibility unimpeached. In reference to the different designation of the locality, Paulus insists on the KTH of Luke, which he interprets to imply that Jesus stood over the plain and therefore on a hill. Thol ck, more happily, distinguishes the level space TUTTOC; Tredn'of, from the plain properly so called, and regards it as a less abrupt part of the mountain. But as one evangelist makes Jesus ascend the mountain to deliver his discourse, while the other makes him descend for the same purpose, these conciliators ought to admit, with Olshausen, that if Jesus taught in the plain, according to Luke, Matthew has overlooked the descent that preceded the discourse; or if, as Matthew says, Jesus taught seated o;i the mountain, Luke has forgotten to mention that after he had descended, the pressure of the crowd induced him to reasccnd before he commenced his harano-uc. And without doubt each was ignorant0 0 of what he omits, but each knew that tradition associated this discourse with a sojourn of Jesus on a mountain. Matthew thought the mountain a convenient elevation for one addressing a multitud-c;

Luke, on the contrary, imagined a descent necessary for the purpose; hence the double discrepancy, for he who teaclics from a mountain is sufficiently elevated over his hearers to sit, but he who teaches in a plain will naturally stand. The chronological diver- ^{P.359} gencies, as well as the local, must be admitted, if we would abstain from fruitless efforts at conciliation.

The difference as to the length and contents of the discourse is susceptible of three explanations: either the concise record of Luke is a mere extract from the entire discourse which Matthew gives without abridgment; or Matthew has incorporated many sayings belonging properly to other occasions; or lastly, both these causes of variety have concurred. he who, with Thol ck, wishes to preserve intact the fides divina, or with Paulus, the fides humana of the evangelists, will prefer the first supposition, because to withhold the true is more innocent than to add the false. This, above theologians hold that the train of thought in the sermon on the mount as s;iven by Matthew, is closely consecutive, and that this is a proof of its original unity. But any compiler not totally devoid of ability, can give a tolerable appearance of connectedness to sayings which did not originally belong to each other; and even these commentators are obliged to adinitf that the alleged consecutivcness extends over no more than half the sermon, for from vi. 19, it is a string of more or less isolated sentences, some of them very unlikely to have been uttered on the occasion. More recent criticism has therefore decided that the shorter account of Luke presents the discourse of Jesus in its original form, and that Matthew has taken the license of incorporating with this much that was uttered by Jesus at various times, so as to retain the general sketch-the exordium, peroration, and essential train of thought; while between these compartments he inserted many sayings more or less analogous borrowed from elsewhere. This view is especially supported by the fact that many of the sentences, which in Matthew make part of the sermon on the mount, are in Mark and Luke dispersed through a variety of scenes.

Compelled to grant this, yet earnestly solicitous to avert from the evangelist an imputation that might invalidate his claim to be considered an eye-witness, other theologians maintain that Matthew did not compile the discourse under the idea that it was actually spoken on a sino-le occasion, but with the clearest knowledge that such was not the casc. It is with justice remarked in opposition to this, that when Matthew represents Jesus as ascending the mountain before he begins his discourse, and descending after its close, he obviously makes these two incidents the limits of a single address; and that when he speaks of the impression which the discourse produced on the multitude, whose presence he states as the inducement to its delivery, he could not but intend to convey the idea of a continuous harangue. As to Luke's edition of the sermon, there are parts in which the interrupted connection betrays deficiencies, and there are ^{P.360} additions which do not look genuine; it is also doubtful whether he assigns a more appropriate connection to the passages in the position of which he differs from Matthew; and hence, as we shall soon see more fully, he has in this instance no advantage over his predecessor.

The assemblage to whom the sermon on the mount was addressed, might from Luke's account be supposed a narrow circle, for he states that the choice of the apostles immediately preceded the discourse, and that at its beginning Jesus lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and he does not, like Matthew, note the multitude as part of the audience. On the other hand, Matthew also mentions that before the sermon the disciples gathered round Jesus and were taught by him; and Luke represents the discourse as being delivered in the audience of the people (vii. 1); it is therefore evident that Jesus spoke to the crowd in general, but with a particular view to the edification of his disciples. We have no reason to doubt that a real harangue of Jesus, more than ordinarily solemn and public, was the foundation of the Gospel accounts before us.

Let us now proceed to an examination of particulars. In both editions, the sermon on the mount is opened by a series of beatitudes; in Luke, however, not only are several wanting which we find in Matthew, but most of those common to both are in the former taken in another sense than in the latter. The poor, ptwxoi, are not specified as in Matthew by the addition, in spirit, (tw pneumati); they are therefore not those who have a deep consciousness of inward poverty and misery, but the literally poor; neither is the hunger of the peinwntej (hungering) referred to th dikaosunh (righteousness); it is therefore not spiritual hunger, but bodily; moreover, the adverb nun, now, definitively marks out those who hunger and those who weep, the peinwntej and klaiontej. Thus in Luke the antithesis is not, as in Matthew, between the present sorrows of pious souls, whose pure desires are yet unsatisfied, and their satisfaction about to come; but between present suffering and future well-being in general. This mode of contrasting the present age and the future age is elsewhere observable in Luke, especially in the parable of the rich man; and without here inquiring which of the two representations is probably the original, I shall merely remark, that this of Luke is conceived entirely in the spirit of the Ebionites, a spirit which has of late been supposed discernible in Matthew. It is a capital principle with the Ebionites, as they are depicted in the Clementine Homilies, that he who has his portion in the present age, will be destitute in the age to come; while he who renounces earthly pos- ^{P.361} sessions, thereby accumulates heavenly treasures. The last beatitude relates to those who are persecuted for the sake of Jesus. Luke in the parallel passage has, for the Son of man's sake; hence the words for my sake in Matthew, must be understood to refer to Jesus solely in his character of Messiah.

The beatitudes are followed in Luke by as many woes oval, which are wanting in Matthew. In theae the opposition established by the Ebionites between this world and the other, is yet more strongly marked; for woe is denounced on the rich, the full, and the joyous, simply as such, and they are threatened with the evils corresponding to their present advantages, under the new order of things to be introduced by the Messiah; a view that reminds us of the Epistle of James, v.1ff. The last woe is somewhat stiffly formed after the model of the last beatitude, for it is evidently for the sake of the contrast to the true prophets, so much calumniated, that the false prophets are said, without any historical foundation, to have been spoken well of by all men. We may therefore conjecture, with Schleiermacher, that we are indebted for these maledictions to the inventive fertility of the author of the third gospel. He added this supplement to the beatitudes, less because, as Schleiermacher supposes, he perceived a chasm, which he knew not how to fill, than because he judged it consistent with the character of the Messiah, that, like Moses of old, he should couple curses with blessings. The sermon on the mount is regarded as the counterpart of the law, delivered on Mount Sinai; but the introduction, especially in Luke, reminds us more of a passage in Deuteronomy, in which Moses commands that on the entrance of the Israelite people into the promised land, one half of them shall take their stand on Mount Gerizim, and pronounce a manifold blessing on the observers of the law, the other half on Mount Ebal, whence they were to fulminate as manifold a curse on its transgressors. We read in Josh. vili.33 ff. that this injunction was fulfilled.

With the beatitudes, Matthew suitably connects the representation of the disciples as the salt of the earth, and the light of the world (v.13ff.) In Luke, the discourse on the salt is, with a rather different opening, introduced in another place (xiv. 34 f.), where Jesus admonishes his hearers to ponder the sacrifices that must be made by those who would follow him, and rather to abstain from. the profession of discipleship than to maintain it dishonourably; and to this succeeds aptly enough the comparison of such degenerate disciples to salt that has lost its savour. Thus the dictum accords ^{P.362} with either context, and from its aphoristical conciseness would be likely to recur, so that it, may have been really spoken in both discourses. On the contrary, it cannot have been spoken in the sequence in which it is placed by Mark (ix. 50): for the idea that every one shall be salted with fire (in allusion to hell), has no internal connection with the comparison of the true disciples of Jesus to salt, denoting their superiority; the connection is merely external, resulting from the verbal affinity of "salt" and "salted", it is the connection of the dictionary. The altered sequel which Mark gives to the apothegm ( have salt in yourselves, and be at peace one with another ), might certainly be united to it without incongruity, but it would accord equally well with quite a different train of thought..

The apothegm on the light which is not to be hidden, as the salt is not to be without savour, is also wanting in the sermon on the mount as given by Luke; who, however, omitting the special application to the disciples, has substantially the same doctrine in two different places. We find it first (viii. 16.) immediately after the ''nterpretation of the parable of the sower, where it also occurs in Mark (iv.21). It must be admitted that there is no incoherence in associating the shinino' of the liaht with the fuctification of the seed; still, a0 0 ' ' judicious teacher will pause on the interpretation of a parable, and will not disturb its effect by a hasty transition to new images. At any rate there is no intrinsic connection between the shining of the inward light, and the declaration appended to it by Luke, that all secrets shall be made manifest. We have here a case which is of frequent recurrence with this evangelist; that, namely, of a variety of isolated sayings being thrown confusedly together between two independent discourses or narratives. Thus between the parable of the sower and the narrative of the visit paid to Jesus by his mother and brethren, the apothegm on the light is inserted on account of its internal analogy with the parable; then, because in this apothegm there occurs the opposition between concealment and manifestation, it suggested to the writer the otherwise heterogeneous discourse on the revelation of all secrets; whereupon is added, quite irrelevantly to the context, but, with some relation to the parable, the declaration, Whosoever has, to him shall be given. In the second passage on the manifestation of the light (xi. 33), the subject has absolutely no connection, unless we interpolate one with that of the context, which turns on the condemnation of the contemporaries of Jesus by the Ninevites. The fact is, that here again, between the discourses against the demand for signs and those at the Pharisee's dinner, we have a chasm filled up with disjointed fragments of harangues.

At v. 17 ff. follows the transition to the main subject of the sermon; the assurance of Jesus that he came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil, etc. Now as Jesus herein plainly ^{P.363} presupposes that he is himself the Messiah, to whom was ascribed authority to abolish a part of the law, this declaration cannot properly belong to a period in which, if Matt. xvi.13ff. -he rightly placed, he had not yet declared himself to be the Messiah. Luke (xvi.17) inserts this declaration together with the apparently contradictory one, that the law and the prophets were in force until the coming of John. These are two propositions that we cannot suppose to have been utterred consecutively; and the secret of their conjunction in Luke's gospel lies in the word nomoj (law,) which happens to occur in both. It is to be observed that between the parable of the steward and that of the rich man, we have another of those pauses in which Luke is fond of introducing his fragments.

So little, it appears from v. 20, is it the design of Jesus to inculcate a disregard of the Mosaic law, that he requires a far stricter observance of its precepts than the Scribes and Pharisees, and he makes the latter appear in contrast to himself as the underminers of the law. Then follows a series of Mosaic commandments, on which Jesus comments so as to show that he penetrates into the spirit of the law, instead of cleaving to the mere letter, and especially discerns the worthlessness of the rabbinical glosses (48). This section, in the order and completeness in which we find it in Matthew, is wanting in Luke's sermon on the mount; a decisive proof that the latter has deficiencies. For not only does this chapter contain the fundamental thought of the discourse as given by Matthew, but the desultory sayings which Luke gives, concerning the love of enemies, mercifulness and beneficence, only acquire a definite purpose, and point of union in the contrast between the spiritual interpretation of the law given by Jesus, and the carnal one given by the doctors of the time. The words, too, with which Luke makes Jesus proceed after the last woe: -But I say to you, and those at v. 39, .And he said a parable to them, have been correctly pointed out as indicative of chasms, As regards the isolated parallel passages, the admonition to a quick reconciliation with an adversary (v. 25 f.), is, to say the least, not so easily brought into connection with the foregoing matter in Luke (xii. 58.) as in Matthew. It is still worse with the passage in Luke which is parallel with Matt. v. 32; this text (relative to divorce), which in Matthew is linked in the general chain of ideas, is in Luke (xvi. 18.) thrust into one of the apertures we have noticed, between the assurance of the perpetuity of the law and the parable of the rich man. Olshausen tries to find a thread of connection between the passage and the one preceding it, by interpreting adultery, fioi.eveiv, allegorically, as faithlessness to the divine law; and Schleiermacher attaches it to the succeeding parable by referring it to the adulterous Herod: but such interpretations are altogether visionary. Probably tradition had apprized ^{P.364} the evangelist that Jesus, after the foregoing declaration as to the perpetuity of the Mosaic law, had enunciated his severe principle on the subject of divorce, and hence he gave it tin's position, not knowing more of its original connection. In Matt. xix. 9, we find a reiteration of this principle on an occasion very likely to call it forth.

The exhortations to patience and submissiveness, form, in Matthew, the spiritual interpretation of the old rule, an eye for an eye etc, and are therefore a following out of the previous train of thought.

Ill Luke (vi. 29), they are introduced with much less precision by the command concerning love to enemies: which command is also decidedly better given in Matthew as the rectification of the precept, You shall love your neighbour, and hate. thine enemy (43ff.).

Again: the observation that to love friends is nothing more than bad men can do, is, in Matthew, made, in order to controvert the traditional perversion of the Mosaic injunction to love one's neighbour, into a permission to hate enemies: in Luke, the observation follows the rule, Whatsoever you would that men should do to you etc, which in Matthew occurs further on (vli. 12.) without any connection. On the whole, if the passage in Luke from vi. 2-36, be compared with the corresponding one in Matthew, there will be found in the latter an orderly course of thought; in the former, considerable confusion.

The warnings against Pharisaic hypocrisy (vi. 1-6) are without a parallel in Luke; but he has one of the model prayer, which recent criticism has turned not a little to the disadvantage of Matthew.

The ancient harmonists, it is true, had no hesitation in supposing that Jesus delivered this prayer twice, in the connection in which it is given by Matthew as well as under the circumstances narrated by Luke (xi.1ff.).+ But if Jesus had already in the sermon on the mount given a model prayer, his disciplea would scarcely have requested one afterwards, as if nothing of the kind had occurcd; and it is still more improbable that Jesus would repeat the same formulary, without any recollection that he had delivered it to these disciples long before. Hence our most recent critics have decided that Luke alone has preserved the natural and true occasion on which this prayer was communicated, and that like many other fragments, it was interpolated in Matthew's sermon on the mount by the writer.

But the vaunted naturalness of Luke's representation, I, for one, cannot discover. Apart from the improbability, admitted even by the above critics, that the disciples of Jesus should have remained without any direction to pray until the last journey, in which Luke places the scene; it is anything but natural that Jesus should abstain from giving his disciples the exemplar which was in his mind until they sought for it, and that then he should forthwith fall intc prayer. He had, doubtless, often prayed in their circle from the ^{P.365} beginning of their intercourse; and if so, their request was superfluous, and must, as in John xiv. 9, have produced only an admonition to recollect what they had long seen and Iicard in his society. The account of Luke seems to have been framed on mere conjecture; it was known that the above prayer proceeded from Jesus, and the further question as to the motive for its communication, received the gratuitous answer: without doubt his disciples had asked him for such an exemplar. Without, therefore, maintaining that Matthew has preserved to us the connection in which tin's prayer was originally uttered by Jesus, we are not the less in doubt whether it has a more accurate position in Luke. With regard to the elements of the prayer, it is impossible to deny what Wetstein says: tota haec oratio ex formulis Hebraeorum concinnata est , but Fritzsche's observation is also just, that desires of so general a nature might be uttered in the prayers of various persons, even in similar phraseology, without any other cause than the broad uniformity of human feeling. We may add that the selection and allocation of the petitions in the prayer are entirely original, and bear the impress of that religious consciousness which Jesus possessed and sought to impart to his followers. Matthew inserts after the conclusion of the prayer two propositions, which are properly the corollary of the third petition, but which seem inaptly placed, not only because they are severed by the concluding petition from the passage to which they have reference, but because they have no point of coincidence with the succeeding censures and admonitions which turn on the hypocrisy of the Pharisaic fasts. Mark, however, has still more infelicitously appended these propositions to the discourse of Jesus on the efficacy of believing prayer (xi. 25).

At vi. 19, the thread of strict connection is broken, according to the admission of Paulus, and so far all expositors are bound to agree with him. But his position, that notwithstanding the admitted lack of coherence in the succeeding collection of sentences, Jesus spoke them consecutively, is not equally tenable; on the contrary, our more recent critics have all the probabilities on their side when they suppose, that in this latter half of the sermon on the mount Matthew has incorporated a variety of sayings uttered by Jesus on different occasions. First stands the apothegm on earthly and heavenly treasures (19-21), which Luke, with more apparent correctness, inserts in a discourse of Jesus, the entire drift of which is to warn his adherents against earthly cares (xii. 33 f.). It is otherwise with the next sentence, on the eye being the light of the body.

Luke annexes this to the apothegm already mentioned on the light that is to be exhibited; now as the light, placed on a candlestick, denotes something quite distinct from what is intended by the comparison of the eye to a light, fwj, the only reason for ^{P.366} combining the two apothegms lies in the bare word "light": a rule of association which belongs properly to the dictionary, and which, beyond it, is worse than none. Then follows, also without any apparent connection, the apothegm on the two masters, appended by Luke to the parable of the steward, with which it happens to have the word mammon in common. Next comes, in Matthew v. 20-34, a dissuasion from earthly solicitude, on the ground that natural objects nourish and are sustained without anxiety on their part; in Luke, the doctrine is consistently united with the parable (found only in the third gospel) of the man who, in the midst of amassing earthly treasures, is summoned away by death (xii.22ff.). The warning not to be blind to our own faults while we are sharp-sighted and severe towards those of others (vii. 1-5), would, if we rejected the passage from v. 19, of chap. vi. to the end, form a suitable continuation to the previous admonition against Pharisaic sanctimoniousness (vi. 16-18), and might, therefore, have belonged to the original bodv of the discourse. This is the more probable because Luke has the same warning in his sermon on the mount (37 f. 41 f.), where it happens to assort very well with the preceding exhortation to mercifulness; but at v. 39 and 40 and part of 38, it is interrupted by subjects altogether irrelevant.

The text, "With what standard you measure out etc," is very inappropriately interposed by Mark (iv. 24), in a passage similar in kind to one of Luke's intermediate miscellanies. v. 6, in Matthew, is equally destitute of connection and parallel; but the succeeding assurances and arguments as to the efficacy of prayer (v. 7-11), are found in Luke xi. 9, very fitly associated with another parable peculiar to that evangelist: that of the friend awaked at midnight. The apothegm, What you would that men should do to you etc, is quite isolated in Matthew; in Luke, it has only an imperfect connection. The following passage (v. 13 f.) on the narrow gate, is introduced in Luke (xiii. 23.) by the question, addressed to Jesus: "Are they few that will be saved?" which seems likely enough to have been. conceived by one who knew that Jesus had uttered such a saying as the above, but was at a losa for an occasion that might prompt the idea; moreover, the image is far less completely carried out in Luke than in Matthew, and is blended with parabolical elcments. The apothegm on the tree being known by its fruits (v. 16-20), appears in Luke (vi.43ff.), and even in Matthew, further on (xii.33ff.), to have a general explication but in Matthew's sermon on the mount, it has a special relation to the false prophets; in Luke, it is in the last degree misplaced. The denunciation of those, who say to Jesus, .Lord, Lord, but who, on account of their evil deeds will be rejected by him at the day of ^{P.367} judgment (21-23), decidedly presupposes the Messiahship of Jesus, and cannot, therefore, have well belonged to so early a period as that of the sermon on the mount; Iience it is more appropriately placed by Luke (xiii.25ff.). The peroration of the discourse is, as we have mentioned, common to both evangelists.

The foregoing comparison shows us that the discourses of Jesus, like fragments of granite, could not be dissolved by the flood of oral tradition; but they were not seldom torn from their natural connection, floated away from their original situation, and deposited in places to which they did not properly belong. Relative to this effect, there is this distinction between the three first evangelists;

Matthew, like an able compiler, though far from being sufficiently informed to give each relic in its original connection, has yet for the most part succeeded in judiciously associating analogous materials; while the two other evangelists have left many small fragments just where chance threw them, in the intervals between longer discourses.

Luke has laboured in some instances to combine these fragments artificially, but he could not thus compensate for the absence of natural connection.

The first gospel (x.) reports another long discourse as having been delivered by Jesus, on the occasion of his sending out the twelve to preach the kingdom of heaven. Part of this discourse is peculiar to the first gospel; that portion of it which is common to the two other Synoptics is only partially assigned by them to the same occasion, Luke introducing its substance in connection with the mission of the seventy (x. 2 ft ), and in a subsequent conversation with the disciples (xii.2ff.). Some portion of the discourse is also found repeated both in Matthew and the other evangelists, in the prophetic description given by Jesus of his second advent.

In this instance again, while the older harmonists have no hesitation in supposing a repetition of the same discourse, our more recent critics are of opinion that Luke only has the true occasions and the original arrangement of the materials, and that Matthewhas assembled them according to his own discrction. Those expositors who are apologetically inclined, maintain that Matthew was not only conscious of here associating sayings uttered at various times, but presumed that this 'vould be obvious to his readers.:

On the other hand, it is justly observed that the manner in which the discourse is introduced by the words: These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them (v. 5); and closed by the words: ^{P.368} "when Jesus made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, etc." (xi. 1.) proves clearly enough that it was the intention of the evangelist to give his compilation the character of a continuous harangue.

Much that is peculiar to Matthew in this discourse, appears to be merely an amplification on thoughts which are also found in the corresponding passages of the two other Synoptics; but there are two particulars in the opening of the instructions as detailed by the former, which differ specifically from anything presented by his fellow evangelists. These are the limitation of the agency of the disciples to the Jews (v. 5, 6), and the commission (associated with that to announce the kingdom of heaven and heal the sick, of which Luke also speaks, ix. 2,) to raise the dead: a surprising commission, since we know of no instances previous to the departure of Jesus, in which the apostles raised the dead; and to suppose such when they are not narrated, after the example of Olshausen, is an expedient to which few will be inclined.

All that the Synoptics have strictly in common in ihe instructions to the twelve, are the rules for their external conduct; how they were to journey, and how to behave under a variety of circumstances (Matt. v. 9-11, 14; Mark vi. 8-11; Luke ix. 3-5). Here, however, we find a discrepancy; according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus forbids the disciples to take with them, not only gold, a scrip, and the like, but even shoes, and a staff; according to Mark, on the contrary, he merely forbids their taking more than a staff and sandals. This discrepancy is most easily accounted for by the admission, that tradition only preserved a. reminiscence of Jesus having signified the simplicity of the apostolic equipment by the mention of the staif and shoes, and that hence one of the evangelists understood that Jesus had interdicted all travelling requisites except these; the other, that these also were included in his prohibition. It was consistent with Mark's love of the picturesque to imagine a wandering apostle furnished with a staff, and therefore to give the preference to the former view.

It is on the occasion of the mission of the seventy, that Luke (x. 2) puts into the mouth of Jesus the words which Matthew gives (ix. 37 f.) as the motive for sending forth the twelve, namely, the apothegm, The. harvest truly is ready, but the labourers are few; also the declaration that the labourer is worthy of hi? hire (v. 7. comp. Matt. x. 10); the discourse on the apostolic salutation and its effect (Matt. v. 12 f. Luke v. 5 f.); the denunciation of those who should reject the apostles and their message (Matt. v. 15; Luke v.12); and finally, the words, Behold, I send you forth as lambs, etc. (Matt. v. 16; Luke. v. 3.) The sequence of these propositions is about equally natural in both cases. Their completeness is alternately greater in the one than in the other; but Matthew's additions ^{P.369} generally turn on essentials, as in v. 16: those of Luke on externals, as in v. 7, 8, and in v. 4, where there is the singular injunction to salute no man by the way, which might appear an unhistorical exaggeration of the urgency of the apostolic errand, did we not know that the Jewish greetings of that period were not a little ceremonious. Sieffert observes that the instructions which Jesus gave-according to Matthew, to the twelve, according to Luke, to the seventy-might, so far as their tenor is concerned, have been imparted with equal fitness on either occasion; but I doubt this, for it seems to me improbable that Jesus should, as Luke states, dismiss his more confidential disciples with scanty rules for their outward conduct, and that to the seventy he should make communications of much greater moment and pathos, The above critic at length decides in favour of Luke, whose narrative appears to him more precise, because it distinguishes the seventy from the twelve. We have already discussed this point, and have found that a comparison is rather to the advantage of Matthew. The blessing pronounced on him who should give even a cup of cold water to the disciples of Jesus (v. 42), is at least more judiciously inserted by Matthew as the conclusion of the discourse of instructions, than in the endless confusion of the latter part of Mark ix. (v. 41), where ear, (tf.), and os-ttv, seem to form the only tie between the successive propositions.

The case is otherwise when we regard those portions of the discourse which Luke places in his twelfth chapter, and even later, and which in Matthew are distinguishable as a second part of the same discourse. Such are the directions to the apostles as to their conduct before tribunals (Matt. x. 19 f.; Luke xii. 11); the exhortation not to fear those who can only kill the body (Matt. v. 28; Luke v.4 f.); the warning against the denial of Jesus (Matt. v. 32 f.; Luke v. 8 f.); the discourse on the general disunion of which he would be the cause (Matt. v.34ff.; Luke v.51ff.); a passage to which Matthew, prompted apparently by the enumeration of the members of a family, attaches the declaration of Jesus that these are not to be valued above him, that his cross must be taken etc, which he partly repeats on a subsequent occasion, and in a more suitable connection (xvi. 24 f.); further, predictions which recur in the discourse on the Mount of Olives, relative to the universal persecution of the disciples of Jesus (v. 17 f. 22. cornp. xxiv. 9, 13); the saying which Luke inserts in the sermon on the mount (vi. 40), and which also appears in John (xv. 20), that the disciple has no claim to a better lot than his master (v. 24 f.); lastly, the direction, which is peculiar to the discourse in Matthew, to flee from one city to another, with the accompanying consolation (v. 23). These commands and exhortations have been justly pronounced by criticsf to be unsuitable to the first mission of the twelve, which, like the alleged mission of ^{P.370} the seventy, had no other than happy result? (Luke ix. 10; x. 17); they presuppose the troubled circumstances which supervened after the death of Jesus, or perhaps in the latter period of his life. According to this, Luke is more correct than Matthew in assigning these discourses to the last journey of Jesus; unless, indeed, such descriptions of the subsequent fate of the apostles and other adherents of Jesus were produced ex eventu, after his death, and put into his mouth in the form of prophecies; a conjecture which is strongly suggested by the words, He whotake does not up his cross, etc. (ix.38.).

The next long discourse of Jesus in Matthew (chap. xi.) we have already considered, so far as it relates to the Baptist. From v. 20- 24 there follow complaints and threatcnings against the Galilean cities, in which most of his mighty works were done, and which, nevertheless, believed not. Our modern critics are perhaps right in their opinion that these apostrophes are less suitable to the period of his Galilean ministry, in which Matthew places them, than to that in which they are introduced by Luke (x.13ff.); namely, when Jesus had left Galilee, and was on his way to Judea and Jerusalem, with a view to his final experiment. But a consideration of the immediate context seems to reserve the probability. In Matthew, the description of the ungracious reception which Jesus and John had alike met with, leads very naturally to the accusations against those places which had been the chief theatres of the ministry of the former; but it is difficult to suppose, according to Luke, that Jesus would speak of his past sad experience to the seventy, whose minds must have been entirely directed to the future, unless v,'c conceive that he chose a subject so little adapted to the exigencies of those whom he was addressing, in order to unite the threatened judgment on the Galilean cities, with that which he had just denounced against the cities that should reject his messengers. But it is more likely that this association proceeded solely from the writer, who, by the comparison of a city that should prove rciractorv to the disciples of Jesus, to Sodom, was reminded of the analogous comparison to Tyre and Sidon, of places that had been disobedient to Jesus himself, without perceiving the incongruity of the one with the circumstances which had dictated the other.

The joy expressed by Jesus (v, 25-27) on account of the insight afforded to babes, vrfn'wiq, is but loosely attached by Matthew to the preceding maledictions. As it supposes a change in the mental frame of Jesus, induced by pleasing circumstanced, Luke (x. 17.21ff.) would have all the probabilities on his side, in making the return of the seventy with satisfactory tidings the cause ^{P.371} of the above expression; were it not that the appointment of the seventy, and consequently their return, are altogether problematical; besides it is possible to refer the passage in question to the return of the twelve from their mission. Matthew connects with this rejoicing of Jesus his invitation to the vxary and heavy laden (v. 28-30). This is wanting in Luke, who, instead, makes Jesus turn to his disciples privately, and pronounce them blessed in being privileged to see and hear things which many prophets and kings yearned after in vain (23 f.); an observation which does not so specifically agree with the preceding train of thought, as the context assigned to it by Matthew, and which is moreover inserted by the latter evangelist in a connection (xiii. 16 f.); that may be advantageously confronted with that of Luke.

ACCORDING To Matthew (Chap. Xiii), Jesus delivered seven parables, all relating to the Raaieia r&v ovpav&v. Modern criticism, however, has doubted whether Jesus really uttered so many of these symbolical discourses on one occasion. The parable, it has been observed, is a kind of problem, to be solved by the reflection of the hearer; hence after every parable a pause is requisite, if it be the object of the teacher to convey real instruction, and not to distract by a multiplicity of ill-understood images. It will, at least, be admitted, with Neandcr, that parables on the same or closely-related subjects can only be spoken consecutively, when, under manifold forms, and from various points of view, they lead to the same result.:):

Among the seven parables in question, those of the mustard-seed and the leaven have a common fundamental idea, differently shadowed forth-the gradual growth and ultimate prevalence of the kingdom of God: those of the net and the tares represent the mingling of the good with the bad in the kingdom of God; those of the treasure and the pearl inculcate the inestimable and all-indemnifying value of the kingdom of God; and the parable'of the sower depicts the unequal susceptibility of men to the preaching of the kingdom of God. Thus there are no less than four separate fundamental ideas involved in this collection of parables-ideas which are indeed connected by their general relation to the kingdom of God, but which present this object under aspects so widely different, that for their thorough comprehension a pause after each was indispensable.

Hence, it has been concluded, Jesus would not. merit the praise of being a judicious teacher, if as Matthew represents, he had spoken all the above parables in rapid succession. If we suppose in this instance, again, an assemblage of discourses similar in kind, but delivered on different occasions, we are anew led to the discussion ^{P.372} as to whether Matthew was aware of the latter circumstance, or whether he believed that he was recording a continuous harangue.

The introductory form, "And he said many things to them in parables," (v. 3); and the concluding one, "When Jesus had finished these parables" (v. 53): seem to be a clear proof that he did not present the intermediate matter as a compilation. Mark, indeed, narrates (iv. 10), that at the close of the first parable, the disciples being again in private with Jesus, asked him for its interpretation; and hence it has been contended that there was an interruption of the discourse at this point; but this cannot serve to explain the account of Matthew, for he represents the request of the disciples as being preferred on the spot, without any previous retirement from the crowd; thus proving that he did not suppose such an interruption. The concluding form which Matthew inserts after the fourth parable (v. 34 f.), might, with better reason, be adduced as intimating an interruption, for he there comprises all the foregoing parables in one address by the words, "All these things said Jesus in parables," and makes the pause still more complete by the application of an Old Testament prophecy; moreover, Jesus is here said (36) to change his locality, to dismiss the multitude to whom he had hitherto been speaking on the shore of the Galilean sea, and enter the house, where he gives three new parables, in addition to the interpretation which his disciples had solicited of the second. But that the delivery of the last three parables was separated from that of the preceding ones by a change of place, and consequently by a short interval of time, very little alters the state of the case. For it is highly improbable that Jesus would without intermission tax the memory of the populace, whose minds it was so easy to overburden, with four parables, two of which were highly significant; and that he should forthwith overwhelm his disciples, whose power of comprehension he had been obliged to aid in the application of the first two parables, with three new ones, instead of ascertaining if they were capable of independently expounding the third and fourth. Further, we have only to look more closely at Matthew's narrative, in order to observe, that he has fallen quite involuntarily on the interruption at v.34ff. If it were his intention to communicate a series of parables, with the explanations that Jesus privately gave to his disciples of the two which were most important, and were therefore to be placed at the head of the series, there were only three methods on which he could proceed. First, he might make Jesus, immediately after the enunciation of a parable, give its interpretation to his disciples in the presence of the multitude, as he actually does in the case of the first parable (10-23). But the representation is beset with the difficulty of conceiving how Jesus, surrounded by a crowd, whose expectation was on the stretch, ^{P.373} could find leisure for a conversation aside with his disciples. This inconvenience Mark perceived, and therefore chose the second resource that was open; to him-that of making Jesus with his disciples withdraw after the first parable into the house, and there deliver its interpretation. But such a proceeding would be too great a hindrance to one who proposed publicly to deliver several parables one after the other: for if Jesus returned to the house immediately after the first parable, he had left the scene in which the succeeding ones could be conveniently imparted to the people. Consequently, the narrator in the first gospel cannot, with respect to the interpretation of the second parable, either repeat his first plan, or resort to the second; he therefore adopts a third, and proceeding uninterruptedly through two further parables, it is only at their close that he conducts Jesus to the housc, and there makes hiin impart the arrear of interpretation. Herewith there arose in the mind of the narrator a sort of rivalry between the parables which he had yet in reserve, and the interpretation, the arrear of which embarrassed him; as soon as the former wrc absent from his recollection, the latter would be present with its inevitably associated form of conclusion and return homeward; and when any remaining parables recurred to him, he was obliged to make them the sequel of the interpretation. Thus it betel with the three last parables in Matthew's narration; so that he was reduced almost against his will to make the disciples their sole participants, though it does not appear to have been the custom of Jesus thus to clothe his private instructions; and Mark (v. 33 f.) plainly supposes the parables which follow the interpretation of the second, to be also addressed to the people.

Mark, who (iv. 1) depicts the same scene by the sea-side, as Matthew, has in connection with it only three parables, of which the first and third correspond to the first and third of Matthew, but the middle one is commonly deemed peculiar to Mark.i: Matthew has in its place the parable wherein the kingdom of heaven is likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares among it, which grew up with the wheat. The servants do not know where the tares come from, and propose to root them up; but the master commands them to let both grow together until the harvest, when it will be time enough to separate them. In Mark, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a man who casts seed into the ground, and while he sleeps and rises again, the seed passes, he knows not how, from one stage of development to another: and when it is ripe, he puts in the sickle, because the harvest is come. In this parable there is wanting what constitutes the dominant idea in that of Matthew, the tares, sown by the enemy; but as, nevertheless, the other ideas, of sowing, ^{P.374} sleeping, growing one knows not how, and harvest, wholly correspond, it may be questioned whether Mark does not here merely give the same parable in a different version, which he preferred to that of Matthew, because it seemed more intermediate between the first parable of the sower, and the third of the mustard-seed.

Luke, also, has only three of the seven parables given in Matt. xiii.: namely, those of the sower, the mustard-seed, and the leaven; so that the parables of the buried treasure, the pearl, and the net, as also that of the tares in the field, are peculiar to Matthew. The parable of the sower is placed by Luke (viii.4ff.) somewhat earlier, and in other circumstances, than by Matthew, and apart from the two other parables which he has in common with the first evangelist's series. These he introduces later, xiii. 18-21; a position which recent critics unanimously acknowledge as the correct one.

But this decision is one of the most remarkable to which the criticism of the present age has been led by its partiality to Luke. For if we examine the vaunted connectedness of this evangelist's passages, we find, that Jesus, having licaled a woman bowed down by a spirit of infirmity, silences the punctilious ruler of the synagogue by the argument about the ox and ass, after which it is added (v.17), And, when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed; and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. Surely so complete and marked a form of conclusion is intended to wind up the previous narrative, and one cannot conceive that the sequel went forward in the same scene; on the contrary, the phrases, then said he, and again he said, by which the parables are connected, indicate that the writer had no longer any knowledge of the occasion on which Jesus uttered them, and hence inserted them at random in this indeterminate manner, far less judiciously than Matthew, who at least was careful to associate them with analogous materials.

We proceed to notice the other Gospel parables, and first among them, those which are peculiar to one evangelist. We come foremost in Matthew to the parable of the servant (xviii.23ff.) who, although his lord had forgiven him a debt of ten thousand talents, had no mercy on his fellow-servant who owed him a hundred; tolerably well introduced by an exhortation to placability (v. 15), and the question of Peter, "How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?" Likewise peculiar to Matthew is the parable of the labourers in the vineyard (xx.1ff.), which suitably enough forms a counterpoise to the foregoing promise of a rich recompense to the disciples. of the sentences which Matthew appends to this parable (v. 16), the first, So the last shall he first, and the first last, by which he had also prefaced it (xix. 30), is the only one with ^{P.375} which it has any internal connection; the other, "for many are called, but few are chosen," rather gives the moral of the parable of the royal feast and the wedding garment, in connection with which Matthew actually repeats it (xxii. 14). It was well adapted, however, even torn from this connection, to circulate as an independent apothegm, and as it appeared fitting to the evangelist to annex one or more short sentences to the end of a parable, he might be induced, by some superficial similarity to the one already given, to place them in companionship. Further, the parable of the two sons sent into the vineyard, is also peculiar to Matthew (xxi.28ff.), and is not ill-placed in connection with the foregoing questions and retorts between Jesus and the Pharisees; its anti-Pharisaic significance is also well brought out by the sequel (31 f.).

Among the parables which are peculiar to Luke, that of the two debtors (vli,41ff.); that of the good Samaritan (x.30ff.); that of the man whose accumulation of earthly treasure is interrupted by death (xii. 46 ff. ); and also the two which figure the efficacy of importunate prayer (xi.5ff. xviii.2ff.); have a definite, clear signification, and with the exception of the last, which is introduced abruptly, a tolerably consistent connection. We may learn from the two last parables, that it is often necessary entirely to abstract particular features from the parables of Jesus, seeing that in one of them God is represented by a lukewarm friend, in the other by an unjust nidge. To the latter is amiexed the parable of the Pharisee and Publican (9-14), of which only Schleiermacher on the strength of a connection, fabricated by himself between it and the foregoing, can deny the anti-Pharisaic tendency.

The parables of the lost sheep, the piece of silver, and the prodigal son (Luke xv. 3-32), have the same direction. Matthew also has the first of these (xviii.12ff.), but in a different connection, which determines its import somewhat differently, and without doubt, as will presently be shown, less correctly. It is easy to imagine that these three parables were spoken in immediate succession, because the second is merely a variation of the first, and the third is an amplification and elucidation of them both. Whether, according to the opinion of modern criticism, the two succeeding parables also belong with the above to one continuous discourse, must be determined by a closer examination of their contents, which are in themselves noteworthy.

The parable of the unjust steward, notoriously the crux interpretum, is yet without any intrinsic difficulty. If we read to the end of the parable, including the moral (v. 9), we gather the simple result, that the man who without precisely using unjust means to obtain riches, is yet in the sight of God an unprofitable servant, (Luke xvii. 10), and, in the employment of the gifts intrusted to him by God, a steward of injustice, may best atone for this pervading unfaithfulness by lenity and bene- ^{P.376} ficence towards his fellow-men, and may by their intervention procure a place in heaven. It is true that the beneficence of the fictitious steward is a fraud; but we must abstract this particular, as, in the case of two previous parables, we have to abstract the lukewarmness of the friend, and the injustice of the judge: indeed, the necessity for such an abstraction is intimated in the narrative itself, for from v. 8. we cather that what the steward did in a worldly spirit is, in the application, to be understood in a more exalted sense of the children of light. Certainly, if we suppose the words, he that is faithful in that which is least, etc. (10-12) to have been uttered in their present connection, it appears as if the steward were set forth as a model, deserving in some sense or other the praise of faithfulness; and when (v. 13) it is said that no servant can serve two masters, the intended inference seems to be that this steward had held to the rightful one. Hence we have expositions such as that of Schleiermacher, who under the master understands the Romans; under the debtors, the Jewish people; under the steward, the publicans, who were generous to the latter at the expense of the former; thus, in the most arbitrary manner, transforming the master into a violent man, and justifying the steward. Olshausen carries the perversion of the parable to the extreme, for he degrades the master, who, by his judicial position evidently announces himself as the representative of God, into apuv -ov nodflov rov-ov, the prince of this world, while he exalts the steward into the image of a man who applies the riches of this world to spiritual objects. But as in the moral (v. 9) the parable has a consistent ending; and as inaccurate association is by no means unexampled in Luke; it is not admissible to concede to the following verses any influence over the interpretation of the parable, unless a close relation of idea can be made manifest. Now the fact is, that the very opposite, namely, the most perplexing diversity, exists. Moreover, it is not difficult to show what might have seduced Luke into a false association. In the parable there was mention of the mammon of unrighteousness; this suggested to him the saying of Jesus, that he who proves faithful in the unrighteous mammon, as that which is least, may also have the true riches committed to his trust. But the word mammon having once taken possession of the writer'a mind, how could he avoid recollecting the well known aphorism of Jesus on God and Mammon, as two incompatible masters, and adding it (v. 13), however superfluously, to the preceding texts? ^{P.377}

That by this addition the previous parable was placed in a thoroughly false light, gave the writer little concern, perhaps because he had not seized its real meaning, or because, in the endeavour completely to disburden his Gospel meaning, he lost all solicitude about the sequence of his passages. It ought, in general, to be more considered, that those of our evangelists who, according to the now prevalent opinion, noted down oral traditions, must, in the composition of their writings have exerted their memory to an extent that would repress the activity of reflection; consequently the arrangement of the materials in their narratives is subordinated to the association of ideas, the laws of which are partly dependent on external relations; and we need not be surprised to find many passages, especially from the discourses of Jesus, ranged together for the sole cause that they happen to have in common certain striking consonant words.

If from hence we glance back on the position, that the parable of the unjust steward must have been spoken in connection with the foregoing one of the prodigal son, we perceive that it rests merely on a false interpretation. According to Schleiermacher it is the defence of the publicans against the Pharisees that forms the bond; but there is no trace of publicans and Pharisees in the latter parable.

According to Olshausen, the compassionate love of God, represented in the foregoing parable, is placed in juxtaposition with the compassionate love of man, represented in the succeeding one; but simple beneficence is the sole idea on which the latter turns, and a parallel between this and the manner in which God meets the lost with pardon, is equally remote from the intention of the teacher and the nature of the subject. The remark (v. 14) that the Pharisees heard all these things, and, being covetous, derided Jesus, does not necessarily refer to the individuals mentioned xv. 2, so as to imply that they had listened to the intermediate matter as one continuous discourse; and even if that were the case, it would only show the view of the writer with respect to the connectedness of the parables; a view which, in the face of the foregoing investigation, cannot possibly be binding on us.

We have already discussed the passage from v. 15 to 18; it consists of disconnected sayings, and to the last, on adultery, is annexed the parable of the rich man, in a manner which, as we have already noticed, it is attempted in vain to show as a real connection.

It must, however, be conceded to Schleiermacher that if we separate them, the alternative, namely, the common application of the parable to the penal justice of God, is attended with great difficulties. For there is no indication throughout the parable, of any actions on the part of the rich man and Lazarus, that could, according to our notions, justify the exaltation of the one to a place in Abraham's ^{P.378} bosom, and the condemnation of the other to torment; the guilt of the one appears to he in his wealth, the merit of the other in his poverty.

It is indeed generally supposed of the rich man, that he was immoderate in his indulgence, and that he had treated Lazarus unkindly. But the latter is nowhere intimated; for the picture of the beggar lying at the door of the rich man, is not intended in the light of a reproach to the latter, because he might easily have tendered his aid, and yet neglected to do so; it is designed to exhibit the contrast, not only between the earthly condition of the two parties, but between their proximity in this life, and their wide separation in another. So the other particular, that the beggar was eager for the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, does not imply that the rich man denied him this pittance, or that he ought to have given him more than the mere crumbs; it denotes the deep degradation of the earthly lot of Lazarus compared with that of the rich man, in opposition to their reversed position after death, when the rich man is fain to entreat for a drop of water from the hand of Lazarus. On the supposition that the rich man had been wanting in compassion towards Lazarus, the Abraham of the parable could only reply in the following manner: "You once had easy access to Lazarus, and yet you did not relieve him; how then can you expect him to traverse a long distance to give you alleviation?"

The sumptuous life of the rich man, likewise, is only depicted as a contrast to the misery of the beggar; for if he had been supposed guilty of excess, Abraham must have reminded him that he had taken too much of the good things of this life, not merely that he had received his share of them. Equally groundless is it, on the other hand, to suppose high moral excellencies in Lazarus, since there is no intimation of such in the description of him, which merely regards his outward condition, neither are such ascribed to him by Abraham: his sole merit is, the having received evil in this life.

Thus, in this parable the measure of future recompense is not the amount of good done, or wickedness perpetrated, but of evil endured, and fortune enjoyed, and the aptest motto for this discourse is to be found in the sermon on the mount, according to Luke's edition: "Blessed be you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God! Woe to you that are rich! for you have received your consolation;" a passage concerning which we have already remarked, that it accords fully with the Ebionite view of the world. A similar estimation of external poverty is ascribed to Jesus by the other Synoptics, in the narrative of the rich young man, and in the aphorisms on the camel and the needle's eye (Matt. xix. 16 tf; Mark x. 17 if; comp. Luke xviii.18ff.). Whether this estimation belong to Jesus himself, or only to the synoptic tradition concerning him, it was probably generated by the notions of the Essenes. We have hitherto con-^{P.379} sidered the contents of the parable down to v. 27; from whence to the conclusion the subject is, the writings of the Old Testament as the adequate and only means of grace.

In conclusion, we turn to a group of parables, among which some, as relating to the death and return of Christ, ought, according to our plan, to be excepted from the present, review; but so far as they are connected with the rest, it is necessary to include them. They are the three parables of the rebellions husbandmen in the vineyard (Matt. xxi. 33 & parall), of the talents (Matt. xxv.14ff.: Luke xix.12ff.), and the marriage feast (Matt. xxii.3ff.; Luke xiv.16ff.). of these the parable of the husbandmen in all the accounts, that of the talents in Matthew, and that of the marriage feast in Luke, are simple parables, unattended with difficulty. Not so the parable of the mina in Luke, and of the marriage feast in Matthew. That the former is fundamentally the same with that of the talents in Matthew, is undeniable, notwithstanding the many divergencies. In both are found the journey of a master; the assembling of the servants to entrust them with a capital, to be put into circulation; after the return of the master, a reckoning in which three servants are signalized, two of them as active, the third as inactive, as a result of which the latter is punished, and the former rewarded; and in the annunciation of this issue the words of the master are nearly identical in the two statements. The principal divergency is, that besides the relation between the master who journeys into a far country and his servants, in Luke there is a second relation between the forincr and certain rebellious citizens; and accordingly, while in Matthew the master is simply designated a)nqrwpoj, a man, in Luke he is styled a)nqrwpoj eu)genhj a nobleman, and a kingdom is assigned to him, the object of his journey being to receive, for himself a kingdom: an object of which there is no mention in Matthew. The subjects of this personage, it is further said, hated him, and after his departure renounced their allegiance. Hence at the return of the lord, the rebellious citizens, as well as the slothful servant, are punished; but in their case the retribution is that of dca.th: the faithful servants, on the other hand, are not only rewarded generally by an entrance into the joy of their Lord, but royally, by the gift of a number of cities. There are other divergencies of less moment between Luke and Matthew; such as, that the number of servants is undetermined by the one, and limited to ten by the other; that in Matthew they receive talents, in Luke mina; in the one unequal sums, in the other equal; in the one, they obtain unequal profits from unequal sums by an equal expenditure of effort, and are therefore equally rewarded; in the other, they obtain unequal profits from equal sums by an unequal expenditure of effort, and are therefore unequally rewarded.

Supposing this parable to have proceeded from the lips of Jesus on two separate occasions, and that Matthew and Luke are right in ^{P.380} more complex form given by Luke, and then in the simple one given by Matthew; since the former places it before, the latter after the entrance into Jerusalem. But this would be contrary to all analogy.

The first presentation of an idea is, according to the laws of thought, the most simple; -with the second new relations may be perceived, the subject may be viewed under various aspects, and brought into manifold combinations. There is, therefore, a foundation for Schleiermacher's opinion, that contrary to the arrangement in the Gospels, Jesus first delivered the parable in the more simple form, and amplified it on a subsequent occasion. But for our particular case this order is not less inconceivable than the other. The author of a composition such as a parable, especially when it exists only in his mind and on his lips, and is not yet fixed in writing, remains the perfect master of his materials even on their second and more elaborate presentation; the form which he had previously given to them is not rigid and inflexible, but pliant, so that he can adapt the original thoughts and images to the additional ones, and thus give unity to his production. Hence, had he who gave the above parable the form which it has in Luke, been its real author, he would, after having transformed the master into a king, and inserted the particulars respecting the rebellious citizens, have entrusted arms to the servants instead of money (comp. Luke xxii. 36), and would have made them show their fidelity rather by conflict with the rebels, than by increasing their capital; or in general would have introduced some relation between the two classes of persons in the parable, the servants and the citizens; instead of which, they are totally unconnected throughout, and form two ill-cemented divisions.

This shows very decisively that the parable was not enriched with these additional particulars by the imagination of its author, but that it was thus amplified by another in the process of transmission. this cannot have been effected in a legendary manner, by the gradual filling up of the original sketch, or the development of the primitive germ; for the idea of rebellious citizens could never be evolved from that of servants and talents, but must have been added from without, and therefore have previously existed as part of an independent whole. This amounts to the position that we have here an example of two originally distinct parables, the one treating of servants and talents, the other of rebellious citizens, flowing together in consequence of their mutually possessing the images of a ruler's departure and return. The proof of our proposition must depend on our being able easily to disentangle the two parables: and this we can effect in the most satisfactory manner, for by extracting v. 12, 14, 15, and 27, and slightly modifying them, we get in a, rather curtailed but consistent form, the ^{P.381} parable of the rebellious citizens, and we then recognise the similarity of its tendency with that of the rebellions husbandmen in the vineyard.

A similar relation subsists between the form in which the parable of the marriage feast is given by Luke (xiv. 16 ft), and that in which it is given by Matthew (xxii.2ff.); only that in this case Luke, as in the other, Matthew, has the merit of having preserved the simple original version. On both sides, the particulars of the feast, the invitation, its rejection and the consequent bidding of other guests, testify the identity of the two parables; but, on the other hand, the host who in Luke is merely a certain man, is in Matthew a king, whose feast is occasioned by the marriage of his son; the invited guests, who in Luke excuse themselves on various pleas to the messenger only once sent out to them, in Matthew refuse to come on the first invitation, and on the second more urgent one, some go to their occupations, while others maltreat and kill the servants of the king, who immediately sends forth his armies to destroy those murderers, and burn up their city.

Nothing of this is to be found in Luke; according to him, the host merely causes the poor and afflicted to be assembled in place of the guests first invited, a particular which Matthew also appends to his fore-mentioned incidents. Luke closes the parable with the declaration of the host, that none of the first bidden guests shall partake of his supper; but Matthew proceeds to narrate how, when the house was full, and the king had assembled his guests, one was discovered to be without a wedding garment, and was forthwith carried away into outer darkness.

The maltreatment and murder of the king's messengers are features in the narrative of Matthew which at once strike us as inconsistent, as a departure from the original design. Disregard of an invitation is sufficiently demonstrated by the rejection of it on empty pretexts such as Luke mentions; the maltreatment and even the murder of thoso who deliver the invitation, is an exaggeration which it is less easy to attribute to Jesus than to the Evangelist. The latter had immediately before communicated the parable of the rebellious husbandmen; hence there hovered in his recollection the manner in which they were said to have used the messengers of their lord, beating one, killing and stoning others, overlooking the circumstance that what might have been perpetrated with sufficient motive against servants who appeared with demands ^{P.382} and authority to enforce them, had in the latter case no motive whatever. That hereupon, the king, not satisfied with excluding them from this feast, sends out his armies to destroy them and burn up their city, necessarily follows from the preceding incidents, but. appears, like them, to be the echo of a parable which presented the relation between the master and the dependents, not in the milder form of a rejected invitation, but in the more severe one of an insurrection; as in the parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard, and that of the rebellious citizens, which we have above separated from the parable of the minai. Yet more decidedly does the drift of the last particular in Matthew's parable, that of the wedding garment, betray that it was not originally associated with the rest.

For if the king had commanded that all, both bad and good, who were to be found in the highways, should be bidden to the feast, he could not wonder that they had not all wedding attire. To assume that those thus suddenly summoned went home to wash, and adjust their dress, is an arbitrary emendation of the text. Little preferable is the supposition that, according to oriental manners, the king had ordered a caftan to be presented to each guest, and might therefore justly reproach the meanest for not availing himself of the gift; for it is not to be proved that such a custom existed at. the period, and it is not admissible to presuppose it merely because the anger of the king appears otherwise unfounded. But the addition in question is not only out of harmony with the imagery, but with the tendency of this parable. For while hitherto its aim had been to exhibit the national contrast between the perversity of the Jews, and the willingness of the gentiles: it all at once passes to the moral one, to distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy.

That after the Jews had contemned the invitation to partake of the kingdom of God, the heathens would be called into it, is one complete idea, with which Luke very properly concludes his parable; that he who does not prove himself worthy of the vocation by a corresponding disposition, will be again cast out of the kingdom, is another idea, which appears to demand a separate parable for its exhibition. Here again it may be conjectured that the conclusion of Matthew's parable is the fragment of another, which, from its also referring to a feast, might in tradition, or in the memory of an individual, be easily mingled with the former, preserved in its purity by Luke. This other parable must have simply set forth, that a king had invited various guests to a wedding feast, with the tacit condition that they should provide themselves with a suitable dress, and that he delivered an individual who had neglected this observance to his merited punishment. Supposing our conjectures correct, ^{P.383} we have here a still more compound parable than in the former case: a parable in which, Istly, the narrative of the ungrateful invited parties (Luke xiv.) forms the main tissue, but so that, 2ndly, a thread from the parable of the rebellious husbandmen is interwoven; while, 3rdly, a conclusion is stitched on, gathered apparently from an unknown parable on the wedding garment.

This analysis gives us an insight into the procedure of Gospel tradition with its materials, which must be pregnant with results.

AS the Discourses In Matt. xv. 1-20 have been already considered, we must pass on to xviii.1ff., Mark ix.33ff., Luke ix.46ff., where various discourses are connected with the exhibition of a little child, occasioned by a contention for pre-eminence among the disciples. The admonition to become as a little child, and to humble one's self as a little child, in Matthew forms a perfectly suitable comment on the symbolical reproof (v. 3, 4.); but the connection between this and the following declaration of Jesus, that whoever receives one such little child in his name, receives him, is not so obvious. For the child was set up to teach the disciples in what they were to imitate it, not how they were to behave towards it, and how Jesus could all at once lose sight of his original object, it is difficult to conceive. But yet more glaring is the irrelevance of the declaration in Mark and Luke; for they make it follow immediately on the exhibition of the child, so that, according to this, Jesus must, in the very act, have forgotten its object, namely, to present the child to his ambitious disciples as worthy of imitation, not as in want of reception. Jesus was accustomed to say of his disciples, that whoever received them, received him, and in him, the Father who had sent him (Matt. x.40ff.; Luke x. 16; John xiii. 20). Of children he elsewhere says merely, that whoever does not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child, cannot enter into it (Mark x. 15. Luke xviii. 17.)

Closely connected by the word "answering," with the sentences just considered, Mark (ix. 38 f.) and Luke (ix. 49 f.) introduce the information which John is said to give to Jesus, that the disciples having seen one casting out devils in the name of Jesus, without attaching himself to their society, had forbidden him.

Schleiermacher explains the connection thus: because Jesus had commanded the reception of children in, his name, John was led to ^{P.384} the confession, that he and his associates had hitherto been so far from regarding the performing of an act in the name of Jesus as the point of chief importance, that they had interdicted the use of his name to one who followed not with them. Allowing this explanation to be correct, we must believe that John, arrested by the phrase, in my name (which yet is not prominent in the declaration of Jesus, and which must have been thrown still further into the background, by the sight of the child set up in the midst), drew from it the general inference, that in all actions the essential point is to perform them in the name of Jesus; and with equal rapidity, leaped to the remote reflection, that the conduct of the disciples towards the exorcist was in contradiction with this rule. But all this supposes the facility of combination which belongs to a Schleiermacher, not the dulness which still characterized the disciples. Nevertheless, the above critic has unquestionably opened on the true vein of connection between the preceding apothegm and this perplexity of John; he has only failed to perceive that this connection is not intrinsic and original, but extrinsic and secondary. It was quite beyond the reach of the disciples to apply the words in my name, by a train of deductions, to an obliquely connected case in their own experience; but, according to our previous observations, nothing could be more consistent with the habit of association that characterizes the writer of the Gospel tradition in the third Gospel, from which the second evangelist seems to have borrowed, than that he should be reminded by the striking phrase, in my name, in the preceding discourse of Jesus, of an story containing the same expression, and should unite the two for the sake of that point of external similarity alone.

To the exhortation to receive such little children, Matthew annexes the warning against offending one of these little ones, an epithet which, in x. 42, is applied to the disciples of Jesus, but in this passage, apparently, to children. Mark (v. 42) has the same continuation, notwithstanding the interruption above noticed, probably because he forsook Luke (who here breaks off the discourse, and does not introduce the admonition against offences until later, xvii. 1. f., and apart from any occasion that might prompt it), and appealed to Matthew. Then follows in Matthew (v. 8 f.) and Mark (v. 43 f.) a passage which alone ought to open the eyes of commentators to the mode in which the Synoptics arrange the sayings of Jesus. To the warning against the offending, (skandalizein), of the little ones, and the woe pronounced on those by whom offences come, they annex the apothegm on the offending of the hand, eye, etc. Jesus could not proceed thus, for the injunctions: "Mislead not the little ones!" and, "Let not your sensuality mislead you!" have nothing in common but the word mislead. It is easy, however, to account ^{P.385} for their association by the writer of the first Gospel. The word "scandalize" recalled to his mind all the discourses of Jesus containing a similar expression that had come to his knowledge, and also he had previously presented the admonitions concerning seduction by the members, in a better connection, as part of the sermon on the mount, he could not resist the temptation of reproducing them here, for the sake of this slight verbal affinity with the foregoing text.

But at v. 10 he resumes the thread which he had dropped at v. 7, and adds a further discourse on the little ones, fuapov. Matthew makes Jesus confirm the value of the little ones by the declaration, that the Son of Man was come to seek the lost, and by the parable of the lost sheep, (v. 11-14). It is not, however, evident why Jesus should class the mikrouj (little ones) with the a)pollwlouj (lost); and both ths declaration and the parable seem to be better placed by Luke, who introduces the former in the narrative of the calling of Zaccheus (xix. 10), and the latter, in a reply to the objections of the Pharisees against the amity of Jesus with the publicans (xv.3ff.). Matthew seems to have placed them here, merely because the discourse on the little ones reminded him of that on the lost, both exemplifying the mildness and humility of Jesus.

Between the moral of the above parable (v. 14) and the following rules for the conduct of Christians under injuries (v.15ff.), there is again only a verbal connection, which may be traced by means of the words, "should perish," and "you have gained;" for the proposition: God wills not that one of these little ones should perish, might recall the proposition: "We should endeavour to win over our brother," by showing a readiness to forgive. The direction to bring the offender before the Church, e)kklhsia, is generally adduced as a proof that Jesus intended to found a Church. But he here speaks of the e)kklhsia as an institution already existing: hence we must either refer the expression to the Jewish synagogue, an interpretation which is favoured by the analogy of this direction with Jewish precepts; or if, according to- the strict meaning of the word and its connection, e)kklhsia must be understood as the designation of the Christian community, which did not then exist, it must be admitted that we have here, at least in the form of expression, an anticipation of a subsequent state of things. The writer certainly had in view the new Church, eventually to be founded in the name of Jesus, when, in continuation, he represented the latter as imparting to the body of the disciples the authority to bind and to loose, previously given to Peter, and thus to form a Messianic religious constitution. The declarations concerning the success of unanimous prayer, and the presence of Jesus among two or three gathered together in his name, accord with this prospective idea.

The next discourse that presents itself (Matt. xix. 3-12, Mark, x. 2-12), ^{P.386} though belonging, according to the evangelists, to the last journey of Jesus, is of the same stamp with the disputations which they, for the most part, assign to the last residence of Jesus in Jerusalem. Some Pharisees propose to Jesus the question, at that time much discussed in the Jewish schools, whether it be lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause. To avoid a contradiction between modern practice and the dictum of Jesus, it has been alleged that he here censures the species of divorce, which was the only one known at that period, namely, the arbitrary dismissal of a wife; but not the 1'udicial separation resorted to in the present tiay. But this very argument involves the admission, that Jesus denounced all the forms of divorce known to him; hence the question still remains whether, if he could have had cognizance of the modern procedure in disolving matrimony, he would have held it right to limit his general censure. of the succeeding declaration, prompted by a question of the disciples, namely, that celibacy may be practised for the kingdom of heaven's sake, Jesus himself says, that it cannot be understood by all, but only by those to zulwm it is given (v. 11). That the doctrine of Jesus may not run counter to modern opinion, it has been eagerly suggested, that his panegyric on celibacy had relation solely to the circumstances of the coming time, or to the nature of the apostolic mission, which would be impeded by family tics. But there is even less intimation of this special bearing in the text, than in the analogous passage 1 Cor. vii. 25 ff., and, adhering to a simple interpretation, it must be granted that we have here one of the instances in which ascetic principles, such as were then prevalent, especially among the Essenes, manifest themselves in the teaching of Jesus, as represented in the synoptic Gospels.

The controversial discourses which Matthew, almost throughout in agreement with the other Synoptics, places after the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem (xxi. 23-27; xxii. 15-46), are certainly pre-eminently genuine fragments, having precisely the spirit and tone of the rabbinical dialectics in the time of Jesus. The third and fifth among them are particularly worthy of note, because they exhibit Jesus as an interpreter of Scripture. With respect to the former, wherein Jesus endeavours to convince the Sadducees that there will be a resurrection of the dead, from the Mosaic designation of God as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, maintaining that he is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Matt. xxii. 31-33); ^{P.387} Paulus admits that Jesus here argues subtly, while he contends that the conclusion is really involved in the premises. But in the expression "the God of Abraham" etc., which had become a mere formula, nothing more is implied than that the Lord, as he had been the protecting Deity of these men, would for ever continue such to their posterity. An individual relation subsisting between the Lord and the patriarchs after their death, is nowhere else alluded to in the Old Testament, and could only be discovered in the above form by rabbinical interpreters, at a time when it was thought desirable, at any cost, to show that the idea of immortality, which had become prevalent, was contained in the law; where, however, it is not to be met with by unprejudiced eyes. We find the relation of God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, adduced as a guarantee of immortality el-sewhcre in rabbinical argumentations, all of which could hardly have been modelled on this one of Jesus. If we look into the most recent commentaries, we nowhere find a candid confession as to the real character of the argumentation in question.

Olshausen has wonders to tell of the deep truth contained in it, and thinks that he can deduce from it, in the shortest way, the authenticity and divinity of the Pentateuch. Paulus sees the validity of the proof between the lines of the text; Fritzsche is silent. Wherefore these evasions? Why is the praise of having seen clearly, and spoken openly, in this matter, abandoned to the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist? What spectres and doublesighted beings, must Moses and Jesus have been, if they mixed with their contemporaries without any real participation in their opinions and weaknesses, their joys and griefs; if, mentally dwelling apart from their age and nation, they conformed to these relations only externally and by accommodation, while, internally and according to their nature, they stood among the foremost ranks of the enlightened in modern times.

Far more noble were these men, indeed, they would then only engage our sympathy and reverence, if, in a genuinely human manner, struggling with the limitations and prejudices of their age, they succumbed to them in a hundred secondary matters, and only attained perfect freedom, in relation to the one point by which each was destined to contribute to the advancement of mankind.

A controversial question concerning the Messiah is proposed (v.51-46) to the Pharisees by Jesus, namely, How can the same personage be at once the Lord and the son of David? Paulus maintains that this is a model of interpretation in conformity with the text; an assertion which is no good augury that his own possesses that qualification. According to him, Jesus, in asking how David could call the Messiah, "Lord," when in the general opinion he was his son, intended to apprise the Pharisees, that in this Psalm it is not David who is speaking of the Messiah, but another poet who is speaking ^{P.388} of David as his Lord, so that to suppose this warlike psalm a Messianic one, is a mistake. Why, asks Paulus, should not Jesus have found out this interpretation, since it is the true one? But this is the grand error of his entire scheme of interpretation-to suppose that what is truth in itself, or more correctly, for us, must, even to the minutest details, have been truth for Jesus and the apostles.

The majority of ancient Jewish interpreters apply this psalm to the Messiah; the apostles use it as a prophecy concerning Christ (Acts ii. 34 f.; 1 Cor. xv. 25); Jesus himself, according to Matthew and Mark plainly gives his approval to the notion that it is David who there speaks, and that the Messiah is his subject: how then can it be thought that he held the contrary opinion? It is far more probable, as Olshausen has well shown, that Jesus believed the psalm to be a Messianic one: while, on the other hand, Paulus is equally correct in maintaining that it originally referred, not to the Messiah, but to some Jewish ruler, whether David or another. Thus we find that Jesus here gives a model of interpretation, in conformity, not with the text, but with the spirit of his time; a discovery which, if the above observations be just, ought to excite no surprise. The solution of the enigma which Jesus here proposes to the Pharisees, lay without doubt, according to his idea, in the doctrine of the higher nature of the Messiah; whether he held that, in virtue of this, he might be styled the Lord of David, while, in virtue of his human nature, he might also be regarded as his son; or whether he wished to remove the latter notion as erroneous. The result, however, and perhaps also the intention of Jesus with respect to the Pharisees, was merely to convince them that he was capable of retaliating on them, in their own way, by embarassing them with captious questions, and that with better success than they had obtained in their attempts to entrap him. Hence the evangelists place this passage at the close of the disputations prompted by the Pharisees, and Matthew adds, Neither dare any man from that day forth ask him any more questions: a concluding form which is more suitable here than after the lesson administered to the Sadducees, where it is placed by Luke (xx. 40), or than after the discussion on the greatest commandment, where it is introduced by Mark (xii. 34.);

Immediately before this question of Jesus, the first two evangelists narrate a conversation with a lawyer, or scribe, concerning the greatest commandment. (Matt. xxii.34ff.; Mark xii.28ff.) Matthew annexes this conversation to the dispute with the Sadducees, as if the Pharisees wished, by their question as to the greatest commandment, to avenge the defeat of the Sadducees. It is well known, however, that these sects were not thus friendly; on the contrary, -we read in the Acts (xxiii. 7), that the Pharisees were inclined to go over to the side of one whom they had ^{P.389} previously persecuted, solely because he had had the address to take the position of an opponent towards the Sadducees. We may Here quote Schneckenburger's observation, that Matthew not seldom (iii. 7; xvi. 1) places the Pharisees and Sadducees side by side in a way that represents, not their real hostility, but their association in the memory of tradition, in which one opposite suggested another.

In this respect, Mark's mode of annexing this conversation to the foregoing, is more consistent; but all the Synoptics seem to labour under a common mistake in supposing that these discussions, grouped together in tradition on account of their analogy, followed each other so closely in time, that one colloquy elicited another. Luke does not give the question concerning the greatest commandment in connection with the controversies on the resurrection and on the Messiah; but he has a similar incident earlier, in his narrative of the journey to Jerusalem (x.25ff.). The general opinion is that the first two evangelists recount the same occurrence, and the third, a distinct one. It is true that the narrative of Luke differs from that of Matthew and Mark, in several not immaterial points. The first difference, which we have already noticed, relates to chronological position, and this has been the chief inducement to the supposition of two events. The next difference lies in the nature of the question, which, in Luke, turns on the rule of life calculated to insure the inheritance of eternal life, but, in the other evangelists, on the greatest commandment. The third difference is in the subject who pronounces this commandment, the first two Synoptics representing it to be Jesus, the third, the lawyer. Lastly, there is a difference as to the issue, the lawyer in Luke putting a second, self-vindicatory, question, which calls forth the parable of the good Samaritan; while in the two other evangelists, he retires either satisfied, or silenced by the answer to the first. Meanwhile, even between the narrative of Matthew and that of Mark, there are important divergencies. The principal relates to the character of the querist, who in Matthew proposes his question with a view to tempt Jesus; in Mark, with good intentions, because he had perceived that Jesus had answered the Sadducees well. Paulus, indeed, although he elsewhere (Luke x. 25) considers the act of tempting as the putting a person to the proof to subserve interested views, pronounces that the word -retpduv in this instance can only be intended in a good sense. But the sole ground for this interpretation lies, not in Matthew; but in Mark, and in the iinlbunded supposition that the two writers could not have a different idea of the character and intention of the inquiring doctor of the law.

Fritzsche has correctly pointed out the difficulty of conciliating Matthew and Mark as lying, partly in the meaning of the word mipdv, and parly in the context, it being inadmissible to suppose one among a series of malevolent questions friendly, without any intimation of the distinction on the part of the writer. With this important ^{P.390} diversity is connected the minor one, that while in Matthew, the scribe, after Jesus has recited the two commandments, is silent, apparently from shame, which is no sign of a friendly disposition on his part towards Jesus; in Mark, he not only bestows on Jesus the approving expression, Well, Muster, you have said the truth, but enlarges on his doctrine so as to draw from Jesus the declaration that he has answered discreetly, and is not far from the kingdom of God. It may be also noticed that while in Matthew Jesus simply repeats the commandment of love, in Mark he prefaces it by the words, "Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord." Thus, if it be held that the differences between the narrative of Luke, and that of the two other evangelists, entail a necessity for supposing that they are founded on two separate events; the no slighter differences between Mark and Matthew, must in all consistency be made a reason for supposing a third. But it is so difficult to credit the reality of three occurrences essentially alike, that the other alternative, of reducing them to one, must, prejudice apart, be always preferred. The narratives of Matthew and Mark are the most easily identified; but there are not wanting points of contact between Matthew and Luke, for in both the lawyer appears as a tempter and is not impressed in favour of Jesus by his answer; nor even between Luke and Mark, for these agree in appending explanatory remarks to the greatest commandment, as wll as in the insertion of forms of assent, such as You have answered right, you have said the truth. Hence it is evident that to fuse only two of their narratives is a half measure, and that we must either regard all three as independent, or all three as identical: from which again we may observe the freedom which was used by the early Christian legend, in giving various forms to a single fact or idea, the fundamental fact in the present case being, that, out of the whole Mosaic code, Jesus had selected the two commandments concerning the love of God and our neighbour as the most excellent."

We come now to the great anti-pharisaic discourse, which Matthew gives (xxiii.) as a sort of pitched battle after the skirmishing of the preceding disputations. Mark (xii.38ff.) and Luke (xx.45ff.) have also a discourse of Jesus against the scribes, but extending no further than a few verses. It is however highly probable, as our modern critics allow, that Jesus should launch out into fuller invectives against that body of men under the circumstances in which Matthew places that discourse, and it is almost certain that such sharp enunciations must have preceded the catastrophe; so that it is not admissible to control the account of the first evangelist by the meagre one of the two other Synoptics, especially as the former is distinguished by connectedness and unity.

It is true that much of what Matthew here presents as a continuous address, is assigned by Luke to various scenes and occasions, and ^{P.391} it would follow that the former has, in this case again, blended the original elements of the discourse with kindred matter into the discourses of various periods, if it could be shown that the arrangement of Luke is the correct one: a position which must therefore be examined. Those parts of the anti-pharisaic harangue which Luke has in common with Matthew, are, excepting the couple of verses which he places in the same connection as Matthew, introduced by him as concomitant with two entertainments to which he represents Jesus as being invited by Pharisees (xi.37ff.; xiv.1ff.), a politeness on their part which appears in no other Gospel. The expositors of the present day, almost with one voice, concur in admiring the naturalness and faithfulness with which Luke has preserved to us the original occasions of these discourses. It is certainly natural enough that, in the second entertainment, Jesus, observing the efforts of the guests to obtain the highest places for themselves, should take occasion to admonish thera against assuming the precedence at feasts, even on the low ground of prudential considerations; and this admonition appears in a curtailed form, and without any special cause in the final anti-pharisaic discourse in Matthew, Mark, and even in Luke again (xx. 46). But is it otherwise with the discourse which Luke attaclics to the earlier entertainment in the Pharisee's house. In the very beginning of this repast, Jesus not only speaks of the "ravening," and "wickedness," with which the Pharisees till the cup and platter, and honours them with the title of fools, but breaks forth into a denunciation of woe (ou)ai) against them and the scribes and doctors of the law, threatening them with retribution for all the blood that had been shed by their fathers, whose deeds they approved. We grant that Attic urbanity is not to be expected in a Jewish teacher, but even according to the oriental standard, such invectives uttered at, table against the host and his guests, would be the grossest dereliction of what is due to hospitality. this was obvious to Schleiermacher's acute perception; and he therefore supposes that the meal passed off amicably, and that it was not until its close, when Jesus was again out of the house, that the host expressed his surprise at the neglect of the usual ablutions by Jesus and his disciples, and that Jesus answered with so much asperity. But to assume that the writer has not described the meal itself and the incidents that accompanied it, and that he has noticed it merely for the sake of its connection with the subsequent discourse, is an arbitrary mode of overcoming the difficulty. For the text runs thus: And he went in and sat down to a meal. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said to him, "You Pharisees first wash the outside of the cup..etc. It is clearly ^{P.392} impossible to thrust in between these sentences the duration of the meal, and it must have been the intention of the writer to attach "he marvelled" to "he sat down to meat" and "he said" to "he marvelled." But if this could not really have been the case, unless Jesus violated in the grossest manner the simplest dictates of civility, there is an end to the vaunted accuracy of Luke in his allocation of this discourse: and we have only to inquire how he could be led to give it so false a position.

This is to be discovered by comparing the manner in which the two Other Synoptics mention the offence of the Pharisees, at the omission of the ablutions before meals by Jesus and his disciples: a circumstance to which they annex discourses different from those given by Luke. In Matthew (xv.1ff.), scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem ask Jesus why his disciples do not observe the custom of washing before meat? It is thus implied that they knew of this omission, as may easily be supposed, by report. In Mark (vil.1ff.), they look on, while some disciples of Jesus eat with unwashed hands, and call them to account, for this irregularity. Lastly, in Luke, Jesus himself dines with a Pharisee, and on this occasion it is observed, that he neglects the usual washings. This is an evident climax: hearing, witnessing taking food together. Was it formed, in the descending gradation, from Luke to Matthew, or, in the ascending one, from Matthew to Luke? From the point of viewadopted by the recent critics of the first Gospel, the former mode will be held the most probable, namely, that the memory of the original scene, the repast in the Pharisee's house, was lost in the process of tradition, and is therefore wanting in the first Gospel.

But, apart from the difficulty of conceiving that this discourse was uttered under the circumstances with which it is invested by Luke, it is by no means in accordance with the course of tradition, when once in possession of so dramatic a particular as a feast, to let it fall again, but rather to supply it, if lacking. The general tendency of the legend is to transform the abstract into the concrete, the mediate into the immediate, hearsay into vision, the spectator into the participator; and as the offence taken against Jesus by the Pharisees referred, among other things, to the usages of the table, nothing was more natural than for legend to associate the origin of the offence with a particular place and occasion, and for this purpose to imagine invitations given to Jesus by Pharisees-invitations which would be historically suspicious, if for no other reason than that Luke alone knows anything of them. Here, then, we again find Luke in his favourite employment of furnishing a frame to the discourses of Jesus which tradition had delivered to him; a procedure much further removed from historic faithfulness, than the effort of Matthew to give unity to discourses gathered from different periods, without adding matter of his own. The formation of the climax above displayed, can only be conceived, in accordance with the general relation between the Synoptics, in the following manner: Mark, who in this ^{P.393} instance evidently had Matthew before him, enriched his account with the dramatic expression Moyrec; while Luke, independent of both, has added a repast, deipnon, whether presented to him by a more developed tradition, or invented by his own more fertile imagination. Together with this unhistorical position, the proportions themselves seem to be disfigured in Luke (xi. 39-4:1, 49), and the observation of the lawyer, Master, thus saying you reproach us also (xi. 45), too much resembles an artificial transition from the philippic against the Pharisees, to that against the doctors of the law.

Another passage in this discourse has been the subject of much discussion. It is that (v. 35) in which Jesus threatens his contemporaries, that all the innocent blood shed from that of Abel to that of Zechariah, the son of Barachias, slain in the temple, will be required of their generation. The Zechariah of whom such an end is narrated 2 Chron. xxiv. 20 ff, was a son, not of Barachias, but of Jehoiada. On the other hand, there was a Zechariah, the son of Barucli, who came to a similar end in the Jewish war.) Moreover, it appears unlikely that Jesus would refer to a murder which took place 850 B.C. as the last. Hence it was at first supposed that we have in v. 35 a prophecy, and afterwards, a confusion of the earlier with the later event; and the latter notion has been used as an accessory proof that the first gospel is a posterior compilation. It is, however, equally probable, that the Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, whose death is narrated in the Chronicles, has been confounded with the prophet Zachariah, who was a son of Barachias (Zacli. i. 1; LXX; Baruch, in Josephus, is not the same name); especially as a Targum, evidently in consequence of a like confusion with the prophet who was a grandson of lddo, calls the murdered Zachariah a son of Iddo.)

The murder of a prophet, mentioned by Jeremiah (xxvi. 23), was doubtless subsequent to that of Zachariah, but in the Jewish order of the canonical books, Jeremiah precedes the Chronicles; and to oppose a murder revealed in the first canonical book, to one recorded in the last, was entirely in the style of Jewish parlance.

After having considered all the discourses of Jesus given by Matthew, and compared them with their parallels, with the exception of those which had come before us in previous discussions, or which have yet to come before us in our examination of single incidents in the public ministry, or of the history of the passion: it might appear requisite to the completeness of our criticism, that we should also give a separate investigation to the connection in which the two other Synoptics give the discourses of Jesus, and from this point review the parallels in Matthew. But we have already cast a comparative glance over the most remarkable discourses in Luke and Mark, and ^{P.394} gone through the parables which are peculiar to each; and as to the remainder of what they offer in the form of discourses, it will either come under our future consideration, or if not, the point of view from which it is to be criticised, has been sufficiently indicated in the foregoing investigations.