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 synoptists 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 connexion 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. 25 ff.). The general opinion is that the first two Evangelists recount the same occurrence and the third, a distinct one. [1006] 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 synoptists 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 (πειράζων); 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 (ἐκπειράζων) as the putting a person to the proof to subserve interested views, pronounces that the word πειράζων 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 unfounded 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 πειράζων, and partly 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 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, Master, thou hast 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, O Israel, the Lord thy 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 νομικὸς appears as a tempter (πειράζων), 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 well as in the insertion of forms of assent, such as, Thou hast answered right, Thou hast 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: whence 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. [1007]

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. 38 ff.) and Luke (xx. 45 ff.) have also a discourse of Jesus against the scribes, γραμματεῖς, but extending no farther than a few verses. It is however highly probable, as our modern critics allow, [1008] 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 synoptists, [1009] 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 it would hence follow that the former has, in this case again, blended the original elements of the discourse with kindred matter, belonging to the discourses of various periods, [1010] 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 connexion as Matthew, introduced by him as concomitant with two entertainments to which he represents Jesus as being invited by Pharisees (xi. 37 ff.; xiv. 1 ff.)—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. [1011] 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 them 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 it is otherwise with the discourse which Luke attaches to the earlier entertainment in the Pharisee’s house. In the very commencement of this repast, Jesus not only speaks of the ravening, ἁρπαγή, and wickedness, πονηρία, with which the Pharisees fill the cup and platter, and honours them with the title of fools, ἄφρονες, but breaks forth into a denunciation of woe, οὐαὶ, 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. [1012] 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 connexion 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 meat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, εἰσελθὼν δὲ ἀνέπεσεν· ὁ δὲ Φαρισαῖος ἰδὼν ἐθαύμασεν, ὁτι οὐ πρῶτον ἐβαπτίσθη—· εἶπε δὲ ὁ Κύριος πρὸς αὐτὸν. It is manifestly 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 ἐθαύμασεν to he sat down to meat ἀνέπεσεν, and he said εἶπεν to he marvelled ἐθαύμασεν. 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 synoptists 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. 1 ff), 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 (vii. 1 ff.), they look on (ἰδόντες,) while some disciples of Jesus eat with unwashen 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 view adopted 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 farther 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 synoptists, in the following manner: Mark, who in this instance evidently had Matthew before him, enriched his account with the dramatic expression ἰδόντες; while Luke, independent of both, has added a repast, δεῖπνον, 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. 39–41, 49), and the observation of the lawyer, Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also (xi. 45), too much resembles an artificial transition from the philippic against the Pharisees, to that against the doctors of the law. [1013]

Another passage in this discourse has been the subject of much discussion. It is that (v. 35) in which Jesus threatens his cotemporaries, that all the innocent blood shed from that of Abel to that of Zacharias, the son of Barachias, slain in the temple, will be required of their generation. The Zacharias 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 Zacharias, the son of Baruch, who came to a similar end in the Jewish war. [1014] 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. [1015] It is, however, equally probable, that the Zacharias, son of Jehoiada, whose death is narrated in the Chronicles, has been confounded with the prophet Zechariah, who was a son of Barachias (Zech. i. 1; LXX.; Baruch, in Josephus, is not the same name); [1016] especially as a Targum, evidently in consequence of a like confusion with the prophet who was a grandson of Iddo, calls the murdered Zechariah a son of Iddo. [1017] The murder of a prophet, mentioned by Jeremiah (xxvi. 23), was doubtless subsequent to that of Zechariah, 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. [1018]

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 connexion in which the two other synoptists 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 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.