| 72. Calling of Matthew - Connection of Jesus With the Publicans. | ||||
The first gospel (ix.9ff.) tells of a mail named Matthew, to whom, when sitting at the receipt of custom, Jesus said, Follow me. | ||||
Instead of Matthew, the second and third Gospels have Levi, and Mark adds that he was the son of Alpheus (Mark ii.14ff.; Luke v.27ff.). At the call of Jesus, Luke. says that he left all; Matthew merely states, that he followed Jesus and prepared a meal, of which many publicans and sinners partook, to the great scandal of the Pharisees. | ||||
From the difference of the names it has been conjectured that the evangelists refer to two different events; but this difference of the name is more than counterbalanced by the similarity of the circumstances. In all the three cases the call of the publican is preceded and followed by the same occurrences; the subject of the narrative is in the same situation; Jesus addresses him in the same words; and the issue is the same. Hence the opinion is pretty general, that the three Synoptics have in this instance detailed only one event. But did they also understand only one person under different names, and was that person the apostle Matthew? | ||||
This is commonly represented as conceivable on the supposition that Lev! was the proper name of the individual, and Matthew merely a surname; or that after he had attached himself to Jesus, he exchanged the former for the latter. To substantiate such an opinion, there should be some indication that the evangelists who name the chosen publican Levi, intend under that designation no other than the Matthew mentioned in their catalogues of the apostles (Mark iii, 18; Luke vi. 15; Acts i. 13.). On the contrary, in these catalogues, where many surnames and double names occur, not only do they omit the name of Levi as the earlier or more proper appellation of Matthew, but they leave him undistinguished by the epithet, "publican," added by the first evangelist in his catalogue (x. 3.); thus proving that they do not consider the apostle Matthew to be identical with the Levi summoned from the receipt of custom. | ||||
If then the evangelists describe the vocation of two different men in a precisely similar way, it is improbable that there is accuracy on both sides, since an event could hardly be repeated in ita minute particulars. One of the narratives, therefore, is in error; and the burden has been thrown on the first evangelist, because he places the calling of Matthew considerably after the sermon on the mount; while according to Luke (vi. 13. ff.), all the twelve had been chosen before that discourse was delivered. But this would only {P.341} prove, at the most, that the first gospel gives a wrong position to the story; not that it narrates that history incorrectly. It is therefore unjust to impute special difficulties to the narrative of the first evangelist: neither are such to be found in that of Mark and Luke, unless it be thought an inconsistency in the latter to attribute a forsaking of all to one whom he does not include among the constant followers of Jesus. The only question is, do they not labour under a common difficulty, sufficient to stamp both accounts as unhistorical? | ||||
The close analogy between this call and that of the two pairs of brethren, must excite attention. They were summoned from their nets; he from the custom-house; as in their case, so here, nothing further is needed than a simple Follow me; and this call of the Messiah has so irresistible a power over the mind of the called, that the publican, like the fishermen, leaves all, and follows him. It is not to be denied, that as Jesus had been for a considerable time exercising his ministry in that country, Matthew must Iiave long known him; and this is the argument with which Fritzsche repels the accusation of Julian and Porphyry, who maintain that Matthew here shows himself rash and inconsiderate. But the longer Jesus had observed him, the more easily might he have found opportunity for drawing him gradually and quietly into his train, instead of hurrying him in so tumultuary a manner from the midst of his business. Paulus indeed thinks that no call to discipleship, no sudden forsaking of a previous occupation, is here intended, but that Jesus having brought his teaciiing to a close, merely signified to the friend who had given him an invitation to dinner, that he was now ready to go home with him, and sit down to table, But the meal appears, especially in Luke, to be the consequence, and not the cause, of the summons; moreover, a modest guest would say to the host who had invited him, I -will follow you, duoXovOau aoi, not Follow me, duoAovOsi fioi; and in fine, this interpretation renders the whole story so trivial, that it would have been better omitted. Hence the abruptness and impetuosity of the scene return upon us, and we are compelled to pronounce that such is not the course of real life, nor the procedure of a man who, like Jesus, respects the laws and formalities of human society; it is the procedure of legend and poetry, which love contrasts and effective scenes, which aim to give a graphic conception of a man's exit from an old sphere of life, and his entrance into a new one, by representing him as at once discarding the implements of his former trade, leaving the scene of his daily business, and straightway commencing a new life. The historical germ of the story may be, that Jesus actually had publicans among his disciples, and possibly that, Matthew was one. These men had truly left the custom-house to fol- {P.342} low Jesus; but only in the figurative sense of his concise expression, not in the literal one depicted by the legend. | ||||
It is not less astonishing that the publican should have a great feast in readiness for Jesus immediately after his call. For that this feast was not, prepared until the following day, is directly opposed to the narratives, the two iirst especially. But it is entirely in the tone of the legend to demonstrate the joy of the publican, and the condescension of Jesus, and to create an occasion for the reproaches cast on the latter on account of his intimacy with sinners, by inventing a great feast, given to the publicans at the house of their late associate immediately after his call. | ||||
Another circumstance connected with this narrative merits particular attention. According to the common opinion concerning the author of the first gospel, Matthew therein narrates his own call. | ||||
We may consider it granted that there are no positive indications of this in the narrative; but it is not so clear that there are no negative indications which render it impossible or improbable. That the evangelist does not here speak in the first person, nor when describing events in which he had a share in the first person plural, like the author of the Acts of the Apostles, proves nothing; for Josephus and other historians not less classical, write of themselves in the third person, and the we of the pseudo-Matthew in the Lbionitc gospel has a very suspicious sound. The use of the expression, dvOpo- | ||||
TTOV, Ma-Oalov Xsyoerov, which the Manicheans made an objection, as they did the above-mentioned cireuin stance, is not without a precedent in the writings of Xcnophon, who in his Anabasis introduces himself as Xenophon, a certain Athenian. | ||||
The Greek, however, did not fall into this style from absorption in his subject, nor from unaffected freedom from egotism, causes which Olshausen supposes in the evangelist; but either from a wish not to pass for the author, as an old tradition states, or from considerations of taste, neither of which motives will be attributed to Matthew. Whether we are therefore to consider that expression as a sign that the author of the first gospel was not Matthew, mav be difficult to decide; but it is certain that this history of the publican's call is throughout less clearly narrated in that gospel than in the third. In the former, we are at a loss to understand why it is abruptly said that Jesus sat at meat in the house, if the evangelist were himself the hospitable publican, since it would then seem most natural for him to let his joy on account of his call appear in thie narrative, by telling as Luke does, that he immediately made a great feast in his house. To say that he withlidd this from modesty, is to invest a rude Galilean of that age with the affectation belonging to the most refined self-consciousness of modern days. | ||||
To this feast at the publican's, of which many of the same {P.343} obnoxious class partook, the evangelists annex the reproaches cast at the disciples by the Pharisees and Scribes, because their master ate with publicans and sinners. Jesus, being within hearing of the censure, repelled it by the well-known text on the destination of the physician for the sick, and the Son of man for sinners (Matt. ix.11ff. parall.). That Jesus should be frequently taunted by his pharisaical enemies with his too great predilection for the despised class of publicans (comp. Matt. xi. 19), accords fully with the nature of his position, and is therefore historical, if anything be so: the answer, too, which is here put into the mouth of Jesus, is from its pithy and concise character well adapted for literal transmission. Further, it is not improbable that the reproach in question may have been especially called forth, by the circumstance that Jesus ate with publicans and sinners, and went under their roofs. But that the cavils of his opponents should have been accompaniments of the publican's dinner, as the Gospel account leads us to infer, especially that of Mark (v. 16), is not so easily conceivable. For as the feast was in the house (e)n th oi)kia), and as the disciples also partook of it, how could the Pharisees utter their reproaches to them, while the meal was going forward, without defiling themselves by becoming the guests of a man that was a sinner, the very act which they reprehended in Jesus? (Luke xix. 7.) It will hardly be supposed that they waited outside until the feast was ended. It is difficult for Schleiermacher to maintain, even on the representation of Luke taken singly, that the Gospel narrative only implies, that the publican's feast was the cause of the Pharisees' censure, and not that they were contemporarv. Their immediate connection might easily originate in a leo-cndary manlier; in fact, one scarcely knows how tradition, in its process of transmuting the abstract into the concrete, could represent the general idea that the Pharisees had taken offence at the friendly intercourse of Jesus with the publicans, otherwise than thus: Jesus once feasted in a publican's house, in company with many publicans; the Pharisees saw this, went to the disciples and expressed their censure, which Jesus also heard, and parried by a laconic answer. | ||||
After the Pharisees, Matthew makes the disciples of John approach Jesus with the question, why his disciples did not fast, as they did (v. 14 f.); in Luke (v.33ff.); it is still the Pharisees who vaunt their own fasts and those of John's disciples, as contrasted with the eating and drinking of the disciples of Jesus; Mark's account is not clear (v. 18). According to Schleiermacher, every unprejudiced person must perceive in the statement of Matthew compared with that of Luke, the confusing emendations of a second editor, who could not explain to himself how the Pharisees came to appeal to the disciples of John; whereas Schleiermacher thinks the question would have been puerile in the mouth of the latter; but {P.344} it is easy to imagine that the Pharisees might avail themselves of an external resemblance to the disciples of John when opposing Jesus, who had himself received baptism of that teacher. It is certainly surprising that after the Pharisees, who were offended because Jesus ate with publicans, some disciples of John should step forth as if they had been cited for the purpose, to censure generally the unrestricted eating and drinking of Jesus and his disciples. The probable explanation is, that Gospel tradition associated the two circumstances from their intrinsic similarity, and that the first evangelist erroneously gave them the additional connection of time and place. But the manner in which the third evangelist fuses the two particulars, appears a yet more artifical combination, and is certainly not historical, because the reply of Jesus could only be directed to John's disciples, or to friendly inquirers: to Pharisees, he would have given another and a more severe answer. | ||||
Another narrative, which is peculiar to Luke (xix. 1-10), treats of the same relation as that concerning Matthew or Levi. When Jesus, on his last journey to the feast, passes through Jericho, a chief among the publicans named Zaccheus, that he might, notwithstanding his short stature, get a sight of Jesus among the crowd, climbed a tree, where Jesus observed him, and immediately held him worthy to entertain the Messiah for the night. Here, again, the favour shown to a publican excites the discontent of the more rigid spectators; and when Zacchasus has made vows of atonement and beneficence, Jesus again justifies himself, on the ground that his office had reference to sinners. The whole scene is very dramatic, and this might be deemed by some an argument for its historical character; but there are certain internal obstacles to its reception. We are not led to infer that Jesus previously knew Zacchasus, or that some one pointed him out to Jesus by name; but, as Olshausen truly says, the knowledge of Zacchaius that Jesus here suddenly evinced, is to be referred to his power of discerning what was in men without the aid of testimony. We have before decided that this power is a legendary attribute; hence the above particular, at least, cannot be historical, and the narrative is possibly a variation on the same theme as that treated of in connection with the account of Matthew's call, namely, the friendly relation of Jesus to the publicans. | ||||