| 78. The Parables. | ||||
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. | ||||