Use of the letters of the Apostle Paul

[p. 481]

In fact the agreement is so great that only the one writer can have had the other before his eyes, and there can therefore also be no doubt that, while the apostle did not use the evangelist as a source, the evangelist all the more certainly used the apostle. How identical in wording are the words of both! As it reads in Luke 22:19, λαβὼν ἄρτον εὐχαριστήσας ἔκλασε καὶ ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς λέγων· τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ σῶμά μου τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν διδόμενον· τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν, so it also reads in Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:23–24: ἔλαβεν ἄρτον καὶ εὐχαριστήσας ἔκλασε καὶ εἶπε· τοῦτό μου ἐστὶ τὸ σῶμα τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν κλώμενον· τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν. And likewise in Luke, verse 20: ὡσαύτως καὶ τὸ ποτήριον μετὰ τὸ δειπνῆσαι λέγων· τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐν τῷ αἵματί μου τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἐκχυνόμενον, and in Paul, verse 25: ὡσαύτως καὶ τὸ ποτήριον μετὰ τὸ δειπνῆσαι λέγων· τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ ἐμῷ αἵματι· τοῦτο ποιεῖτε, ὁσάκις ἂν πίνητε, εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν. Only at the latter words has Luke, instead of repeating the so characteristic Pauline formula τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν, looked back again to Matthew as well, and taken from it τὸ (ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν) ἐκχυνόμενον. Only from this combination of the two sources can the peculiar harshness in Luke, verse 20, be explained, that τὸ ἐκχυνόμενον is referred not to αἵματι but to ποτήριον. In Matthew 26:28 it reads quite in order, τοῦτο — τὸ αἷμά μου — τὸ ἐκχυνόμενον. Since, however, Luke did indeed wish to predicate the αἷμα, after Matthew, as an ἐκχυνόμενον, and yet to express the second clause, τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον, and so on, analogously to the first, τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ σῶμά μου, τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν διδόμενον, he put, instead of τῷ — ἐκχυνομένῳ in relation to αἵματι, in relation to τὸ ποτήριον — τὸ — ἐκχυνόμενον. The section in Luke dealing with the Supper, verses 16f., contains, however, yet a further striking trait. The interpreters do not quite know into what relation the first ποτήριον, verse 17, is to be set to the second. Ritschl remarks on this (p. 108): According to the usual interpretation, the verses contain an occurrence and discourses at the meal itself, before the institution of the memorial meal. Here, however, it is said to be striking that the

[p. 482]

same word which in Luke, verse 18, refers only to the Passover meal itself is set by Matthew in relation to the memorial meal. For nothing is said to justify referring these discourses to an earlier drinking of wine. The words in Matthew stand in an essential relation to the solemn institution of the memorial meal. As in Luke this meal is instituted εἰς ἀνάμνησιν, verse 19, so its significance in Matthew seems to be set in hope, namely in the hope of Christ’s return. Looked at more closely, however, these two relations are said to be only poles of one and the same thought: one remembered Christ only as the one who was to come again, and one was, after all, expecting precisely the one who had already been here. That concluding discourse in Matthew also, then, evidently belongs to the solemn formulas in which the memory of that last meal of Jesus was transmitted. But then one must also hesitate to interpret the same formula in Luke, verse 17 and verse 16, of an indifferent moment of the last meal, upon which the institution of the memorial rite only then followed. Rather, we evidently have in the three verses likewise an account of the same occurrence, so important for Christians, to which verses 19 and 20 also refer. They contain the same thing as verses 19 and 20 and Matthew 26:26–29, the determination of the Passover as the point of attachment for the religious remembrance and hope of the disciples. If, however, this had been the significance of the occurrences on that evening at all, it is yet said to be improbable that the tradition would have preserved various acts which are not really different, but one and the same. And for that reason the original belonging together of the sections verses 16–18 and 19–20 is not to be assumed. Ritschl is therefore inclined to assume that those verses were missing in Marcion’s Gospel, which would likewise only be a proof of its originality. One is not justified in this assumption, however. Epiphanius says only that in Marcion verse 16 was missing. How, then, is the ποτήριον of verse 17 to be explained? It can be explained only from the same source from which Luke has drawn his report of the Supper at all. As he had before his eyes, in verses 19 and 20, the passage 1 Corinthians 11:23–25, so in verses 16–18 the preceding passage of the apostle on the Supper, chapter 10; for here too, in verse 16, τὸ ποτήριον τῆς εὐλογίας is placed first with the same emphasis as, in Luke 22:17, the ποτήριον of the Eucharist. Since, now, he also found in Matthew 26:29 a saying of Jesus concerned especially with the cup or the wine, he probably conceived to himself, before the institution of the Supper,

[p. 483]

as an abiding action serving for remembrance, an act of Jesus referring preeminently to the cup, at which Jesus had spoken the words preserved by Matthew, which he gives again in verse 18, with a view to the κοινωνία τοῦ αἵματος and τοῦ σώματος Χριστοῦ, which was to come to its completion only in the βασιλεία θεοῦ. In the sense of our evangelist, then, two different acts would be distinguished with regard to what Jesus did at the last meal, of which the one referred to the future in the βασιλεία θεοῦ, the other to the present that first mediates this future. The chief concept of the one act was the κοινωνία, the chief concept of the other the ἀνάμνησις. When Jesus held that Passover, he did it with the consciousness that it was the last meal; but to this last being together with his disciples there attached itself for him at once the thought of their future being together again, when the βασιλεία θεοῦ should come; and in order to utter this thought with all significance and solemnity, he took the cup at that meal and spoke those words, verses 17 and 18, which, so understood, first contain their full emphatic sense, and which therefore do indeed let the verse 16 missing in Marcion appear as a disturbing intervening clause. In them precisely that κοινωνία is uttered which, in its provisional mediation, through the celebration of the Supper that serves for remembrance, is a κοινωνία τοῦ αἵματος and τοῦ σώματος. For even if in verse 18 the thought of the future being together is not expressly brought forward, the words of verse 18, ἕως ὅτου ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ ἔλθῃ, especially if, with the omission of verse 16, they attach themselves more closely to verse 15 and the φαγεῖν μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν, can be taken only in such a way that they include this too within themselves. Only in this form, however, has Luke reproduced the words in Matthew, and not as they read in the latter, without doubt for the reason that the πίνειν τὸ γέννημα τῆς ἀμπέλου ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ πατρός seemed to him, like other Jewish conceptions and expressions avoided by him,¹ to contain all too much a conception taken from the Jewish mode of viewing things.

Our evangelist shows himself to us as a genuine Paulinist, accordingly, in this too, that he has used the writings of his apostle as the source of his presentation. Another passage of our Gospel might well be reckoned in the same direction. One may well ask why, among the three Synoptics, it is precisely Luke alone in whom the express statement is found

[p. 484]

that Christ appeared to Peter. It is otherwise not the way of our evangelist to bring forward what especially distinguishes Peter and the older apostles. But here too he follows the authority of his apostle, who, in agreement with the ὤφθη Σίμωνι (Luke 24:34), says in 1 Corinthians 15:5, ὤφθη Κηφᾷ; and as to the latter there attaches itself immediately εἶτα τοῖς δώδεκα, so in Luke also there follows, to be sure on the presupposition of the meeting, peculiar to him, of Jesus with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, the appearance, narrated in this way by Luke alone, which was granted to all the disciples. Whatever else noteworthy the last three chapters contain will find its place elsewhere.¹

As in the discussions above we have considered the side of our Gospel turned toward the Gospel of Matthew, so we must also cast a glance at the other side of it, the side lying toward the Johannine Gospel. It must be generally acknowledged what an essential difference there is between the Johannine Gospel and the three Synoptic Gospels. The more, now, the Gospel of Luke, among the Synoptic Gospels themselves, is distinguished by a peculiar character, the nearer lies the question whether, in the same proportion in which it departs from the other two Synoptic Gospels, it does not draw near to the Johannine Gospel. The chief difference of the Johannine Gospel from the other three is (1) the historical, with regard to the scene of Jesus’ activity; (2) the dogmatic, with regard to the person of Jesus; and (3) the ideal or unhistorical character of the Johannine Gospel that results from this twofold difference. Does there, we must still ask, exist in these respects a certain kinship of our Gospel with the Johannine?

With the other two Synoptic Gospels, the original Gospel of Luke has Jesus come to Jerusalem only once, at the end of his

[p. 485]

teaching ministry, in order to suffer and die there.