Its relation to the Johannine Gospel

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By contrast, according to Luke his activity is not so exclusively restricted to Galilee as according to the other two Synoptics. As, according to the Johannine Gospel, he is now in Galilee, now in Judea and Jerusalem, and repeatedly goes back and forth, so according to Luke he already leaves early his original sphere of activity in Galilee and enters Samaria, in order from there, as the chief point of his activity, to appear again in Galilee as well, but only periodically. He would indeed, according to this presentation, have been, in the main period of his public teaching ministry, only in Samaria, and not, as according to the Johannine Gospel, in Judea and Jerusalem; yet in the mode of conception of the author of our Gospel also, Jerusalem draws at least this much closer together with the original scene of his activity, that he sets the very first entry into Samaria, and then his further remaining there, into the closest and most immediate relation to Jerusalem. It is as if, traveling through Samaria, he were already in spirit in Jerusalem, the final goal of the journey leading from Galilee through Samaria. Not only, then, after he has already completed the main part of his teaching activity, as in Matthew 19:1, does he leave Galilee in order to go to Judea; rather, already at the time when the main period of his activity was in principle only beginning, the whole intention of his working is directed upon Jerusalem. A historical harmonization of the contradiction existing between the Johannine and the Synoptic presentation is so little to be thought of here that Luke’s presentation rather only comes in as a third alongside the other two. Since, now, only one of these three divergent presentations can be held for the truly historical, that of the Gospel of Luke can have arisen only from an interest similar to that of the Johannine. The latter has Jesus appear in Jerusalem too already at the very beginning, in order to grasp the whole public activity of Jesus from the point of view of that same opposition to Judaism which lies clearly before one’s eyes in his last fate, so that this itself presents itself only as the natural catastrophe of the struggle developing from the beginning. An antithetical tendency against Judaism the Gospel of Luke already has as a Pauline Gospel, but it does not grasp the opposition of Christianity to Judaism with the same sharpness as the Johannine, as one of principle, grounded in the unbelief of the Jews. Therefore in Luke also, not in the same way as in John, is the unbelief of the Jews, presenting itself in its various

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phases and intensifying from step to step, the moving principle of the historical progress. Only in the conduct of the Pharisees toward Jesus could one see a course of development analogous to the Johannine. In this sense Ritschl believes he recognizes the attempt at a certain division of the historical material drawn from tradition in this, that Luke tells on various occasions of the impression which Jesus’ actions and discourses made on his opponents, the Pharisees, and thus prepares the reader step by step for the final decision of the opposition. After the first Sabbath healing, he is said to remark: αὐτοὶ δὲ (οἱ γραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ Φαρισαῖοι) ἐπλήσθησαν ἀνοίας καὶ διελάλουν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, τί ἂν ποιήσειαν τῷ Ἰησοῦ (6:11). After the discourse of rebuke against the Pharisees and scribes: ἤρξαντο δεινῶς ἐνέχειν καὶ ἀποστοματίζειν αὐτὸν περὶ πλειόνων, ἐνεδρεύοντες αὐτόν, ζητοῦντες θηρεῦσαί τι ἐκ τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ, ἵνα κατηγορήσωσιν αὐτοῦ (11:53–54). Further, after the mention of Jesus’ teaching activity in the temple at Jerusalem, it is said: οἱ δὲ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς ἐζήτουν αὐτὸν ἀπολέσαι καὶ οἱ πρῶτοι τοῦ λαοῦ, καὶ οὐχ εὕρισκον τὸ τί ποιήσωσιν· ὁ λαὸς γὰρ ἅπας ἐξεκρέματο αὐτοῦ ἀκούων (19:47–48); and as a single example of their mood there is then adduced, after a successful rebuff of the Pharisees: καὶ ἐζήτησαν οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς ἐπιβαλεῖν ἐπ᾽ αὐτὸν τὰς χεῖρας ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ὥρᾳ καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν τὸν λαόν (20:19). Finally, with the repeated statement καὶ ἐζήτουν οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς τὸ πῶς ἀνέλωσιν αὐτόν, ἐφοβοῦντο γὰρ τὸν λαόν (22:2), the report of Judas’s offer is then connected, whereby the prospect of the final outcome is opened. The escalation of the breach expressed in these formulas is said to be self-evident, and certainly appropriate to the actual state of the case. Equally judicious is said to be the way the relation of the Pharisees is conceived in the section that stands before the first of those formulas. The Pharisees and scribes, whom the report of Jesus has drawn hither from Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem (5:17), do indeed at once declare it a blasphemy that Jesus forgives the paralytic his sins (verse 21), but their easily stirred jealousy is said not yet to appear rooted, for the successful healing is said to make them fall silent and to win them over to Jesus (καὶ ἔκστασις ἔλαβεν ἅπαντας καὶ ἐδόξαζον τὸν θεὸν καὶ ἐπλήσθησαν φόβου, λέγοντες, ὅτι εἴδομεν παράδοξα σήμερον) (verse 26). Naturally, however, they observe the further

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steps of Jesus, they grumble at his association with the tax collectors (v. 30) and inquire into the reason why Jesus’ disciples do not fast (v. 33); they are also at once on hand to censure the transgressions of the Sabbath law (6:2, 7); but only at the second case of this kind does the result follow which contains the formula indicated above, by which the first epoch of Jesus’ activity is brought to a close, but which shows that the judgment and the conduct of the Pharisees toward Jesus is still uncertain. They become more decided only after Jesus’ direct attack upon them (11:53). Yet already at this passage Ritschl must confess that the principle of division he has presupposed cannot be carried through in a pure form. He therefore wants to conceive the matter thus. The evangelist is supposed to have wanted to take as his foundation the plan of depicting the history of Jesus according to the heightening of the opposition between him and the Pharisees; but the fullness and independence of the historical material prevented him from carrying that plan through distinctly and consistently. The first section (ch. 4:16–6:11) falls again into two parts, since Jesus at first appears without contact with the Pharisees, and, when this contact takes place, does not yet come into opposition to them. The second section (6:12–11:54) brings Jesus before our eyes in the gradual development of his activity and of his tendency, up to his attack on the Pharisees. In the third section (12:1–19:48) the opposition consolidates itself on both sides, without, however, breaking out into conflict. The fourth section (chs. 20 and 21) shows the conflict with equal weapons. The fifth (chs. 22–24) brings the decision, the victory of the Pharisees through the betrayal, but also the victory of the Savior through the power of God.¹ Even if one grants the correctness of this division in general, one can still assert only this much: that Luke keeps the opposition between Jesus and the Pharisees constantly in view, and brings it out more strongly than Matthew, who indeed has the Pharisees, right at their first meeting with Jesus in the second part of his Gospel, 12:14, resolve to kill him, but (while from then on they are of course always at his side with slanders and captious questions, 12:14, 24, 38; 15:1, 12; 16:1; 19:3) mentions their pernicious plans against Jesus again only at 21:46. The guiding point of view of the Gospel of Luke does not, however, lie in this opposition; in this respect the point of contact which it has with the Johannine Gospel in the emphasizing of

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that opposition also remains a mere analogy. But the opposition of Judaism to Christianity, which penetrates the Johannine Gospel so deeply, has itself two different sides. The more repulsively Judaism, in its radical unbelief, stands toward Christianity, the more strongly is Christianity drawn toward heathenism. This inner pull of Christianity toward heathenism expresses itself in the Johannine Gospel, alongside its antithesis to Judaism, in several significant features: not only in the Greeks who appear at 12:20f. and in the declaration of Jesus, connected with that, concerning the fruit of his death, 12:24, with which the passage 11:52 is to be compared, but also quite especially in the scene in Samaria depicted in chapter 4. The rich field, which Jesus already then saw ripe for the harvest, is the heathen world opening itself to the Gospel on so wide a scale. There is hardly anything else in which the kinship of the Gospel of Luke with the Johannine, in distinction from the two Synoptic Gospels, gives itself to be recognized so characteristically. While the Gospel of Matthew, in order to do no injury to the particularistic interest of Judaism, which can see in its Messiah only the one sent to the lost sheep of Israel (Matt. 15:24), has Jesus expressly avoid the way of the Gentiles and enter no Samaritan city (10:5), the Johannine Gospel by contrast leads him into Samaria, in order to have him look here, with the most joyful elation and enthusiasm, into the future that lies before him; and the Gospel of Luke even divides his activity between Galilee and Samaria, with a visible preference for the latter country. The Gospel of Luke accordingly goes even beyond the Johannine in this, but something else comes into consideration here. Since the Johannine Gospel pursues without interruption the conflict of Jesus with the Jews, it can let Jesus work in Samaria only in passing. The Gospel of Luke does not bring this conflict to outward view in the same way. It presents the opposition of Christianity to Judaism only in this, that it has Jesus, in his activity in Samaria, turn away from Judaism, and in that factually anticipates the significance which the heathen world was to gain for the Gospel. Pauline universalism, turned away from Judaism, turns all the more trustingly toward heathenism. Out of the opposition to Judaism there developed, so very naturally, a sympathy for heathenism, such as can hardly be

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mistaken in Luke, in his presentation of the passion narrative. It has been shown in the investigation of the Johannine Gospel¹ what interest the evangelist has lent to the heathen judge Pilate, over against the hatred of the Jews, in favor of Jesus: here too the presentation of Luke makes the transition from the Synoptic presentation to the Johannine. In Matthew also, Pilate indeed testifies to his decided conviction of Jesus’ innocence; he would very gladly have seen it if the people had demanded the release not of Barabbas, but of Jesus, and he wants to know himself free of every guilt in the condemnation of Jesus; but it comes to an acting upon his conviction by attempts, such as are made by him repeatedly in John for the rescue of Jesus, in the same way only in Luke. To this belongs the scene, peculiar to Luke, of Jesus’ being sent off to Herod. For to what end is Jesus sent by Pilate to Herod? As the evangelist gives clearly to understand at 23:13–15, really only to this end, that Pilate can confirm, by the agreeing testimony of Herod, the judgment he has repeatedly pronounced, that he finds this man in no way guilty of that of which they accuse him. Ἀνέπεμψα γὰρ ὑμᾶς πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ ἰδοὺ, οὐδὲν ἄξιον θανάτου ἐστὶ πεπραγμένον αὐτῷ, v. 15. This scene, peculiar to Luke and irreconcilable with the reports of the other evangelists, can have arisen only from the endeavor to have the innocence of Jesus attested as evidently as possible. For this purpose, then, Pilate is presented as milder and fairer than he appears in Matthew, and, according to the good opinion which the evangelist has of heathenism, the confidence is placed in him that, as a heathen, he was far more receptive to the recognition of the truth than the Jews were in their hatred against Jesus.²

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The dogmatic difference, concerning the person of Jesus, between the Johannine Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels consists in the great difference between the Johannine Logos and the Synoptic υἱὸς θεοῦ. In this respect too the author of our Gospel takes, in general, a mediating position, in that he approaches the Johannine standpoint in the same proportion in which he goes beyond the Synoptic standpoint of Matthew. In Luke too, indeed, as in Matthew, Christ, as υἱὸς θεοῦ, is the Messiah in the Jewish sense; but Luke does not remain merely with this concept. He rises above it, and seeks to detach from it whatever can in any way be separated off from it. Already the fact that he began his Gospel immediately with the appearance of Jesus in Capernaum points to this. With the omission of everything that served only as prehistory, he also had no need to mention the Davidic descent. Son of David is therefore, with him, a purely popular designation of the Messiah, and he seems quite deliberately, over against the merely Jewish meaning of this concept, to have taken up the narrative of Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisees, which indeed also stands in Matthew, but in that Gospel corrects itself, partly through the prehistory and partly through the whole Old Testament tenor of the Gospel: the narrative in which Jesus, arguing from the well-known passage of the Psalms, sets over against the Messiah as David’s son the Messiah as David’s Lord (20:41f.). As Messiah in the Jewish sense he lets Jesus appear only so far as was necessary,¹ since he could not otherwise enter upon his calling; but as soon as these necessary conditions of historical existence have been satisfied, he at once lets him gain a wider sphere, and bring the higher concept of his being to view. This higher concept presents itself in the Gospel of Luke most characteristically in the commanding power, always certain of its superiority, which Jesus exercises over the demons, as already in the act so characteristic of his first appearance (4:33), so often in what follows. In Matthew too Jesus drives out demons, but in Luke not only does this side of Jesus’ activity come forward far more significantly; the

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power that manifests itself therein is also conceived as the essential attribute of the higher personality that belongs to Jesus as the υἱὸς θεοῦ. Τίς ὁ λόγος οὗτος; he has the first witnesses of this manifestation of Jesus’ power say, at 4:36, ὅτι ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ἐπιτάσσει τοῖς ἀκαθάρτοις πνεύμασι καὶ ἐξέρχονται. The demons themselves, in yielding to the higher power that comes upon them, must testify that the one who exercises such an authority over them can only be the Christ who comes before them as υἱὸς θεοῦ. The comparison of the parallel passages in Matthew 4:24 and 8:14f., where these expulsions of demons are mentioned only in general, and the ἐξουσία καὶ δύναμις that manifests itself in them is not brought out in the same emphatic way, shows clearly what weight Luke laid on these proofs of the power dwelling in Jesus. It is the specific criterion of the dignity and the vocation that mark Jesus out. Therefore the Twelve, at their sending out, receive δύναμιν καὶ ἐξουσίαν ἐπὶ πάντα τὰ δαιμόνια, 9:1, and the Seventy boast of themselves, on their return, that in his name καὶ τὰ δαιμόνια ὑποτάσσεται, 10:17. What is peculiar in Luke is that, while he seeks to fix as exactly as possible the objectivity of the expulsions of demons narrated of Jesus, he at the same time regards them as the standard by which the power that effects them, as their necessary presupposition, is to be measured. Whoever exercises such a power over the demons must, in his whole being, be higher and mightier than the demons; and if his power extends over the whole kingdom of the demons, it can only be the divine power with which he is equipped. Luke goes back to the concept of power when he has Jesus himself say, 11:20: εἰ ἐν δακτύλῳ θεοῦ ἐκβάλλω τὰ δαιμόνια, ἄρα ἔφθασεν ἐφ’ ὑμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. Intentionally he has put ἐν δακτύλῳ θεοῦ here instead of ἐν πνεύματι θεοῦ, as it reads in the otherwise identically worded parallel passage in Matthew 12:28, in order to vindicate to Jesus, instead of the indefinite πνεῦμα θεοῦ as the principle of messianic equipment in general, the definite concept of power, of absolute divine power. It is the same logical connection when Jesus, in the so significant passage in which he sees Satan overcome in the success with which the Seventy had proved themselves the masters over the demons, and, in accordance with this activity of his disciples so wholly corresponding to his mind, confers on them the ἐξουσία ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ ἐχθροῦ, says of himself that everything has been delivered to him by his Father. Whoever can confer upon others such a power for the

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overpowering of the hostile principle that resists the kingdom of God must himself be in possession of the highest power, must be the υἱὸς θεοῦ in a sense other than the ordinary Jewish one, must be conscious of an identity with God which itself makes him a higher, superhuman being. This identity is expressed in the same passage, in the words that follow immediately upon it: οὐδεὶς ἔγνω, τίς ἐστιν ὁ πατήρ, εἰ μὴ ὁ υἱὸς, καὶ τίς ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς, εἰ μὴ ὁ πατήρ, καὶ ᾧ ἐὰν βούληται ὁ υἱὸς ἀποκαλύψαι, 10:22. Both these latter words and the preceding ones, πάντα μοι παρεδόθη ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός, are found in Matthew also, but in another connection, and so also in another sense. That the passage Matthew 11:27, which already echoes the christological mode of view of the Johannine Gospel, stands very isolated in the connection of this Gospel, has rightly been remarked already more than once; for on what, in it, should such a relation of identity rest, going so decidedly beyond the Jewish concept of the Messiah? It could have as its presupposition only that πάντα μοι παρεδόθη ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός; but this dignity too, which sets the Son in so immediate a connection with the Father, is ascribed to him not already during his earthly life, but only after his resurrection, Matthew 28:18. If, by contrast, this power over all things is ascribed to him by Luke already at the point of time of his life to which Luke 10:17 refers, then he must have had it altogether as a property immanent in him. He is in himself the Son who stands in this relation of identity to God; he is therefore not first raised to this high dignity, which distinguishes him specifically, by his resurrection, but he is in possession of it from the beginning, and already his first appearance reveals the absolute exaltation of his being. There is thus in Luke the visible striving, already designating a more advanced standpoint, to go back from the appearances in the life of Jesus, insofar as they can only be effects of a power manifesting itself in them, as the outward, to the inward, and to fix this inward as an immanent property of his being. The case is quite analogous with the healings of the sick. Matthew narrates them, as also the expulsions of demons, quite simply, without connecting with them any further reflection than the one lying nearest his standpoint, that the one as the other happened in order that the word of the prophet might be fulfilled: αὐτὸς τὰς ἀσθενείας ἡμῶν ἔλαβε, καὶ τὰς νόσους ἐβάστασεν, 8:17. In Luke, by contrast, the further logical reflection already entered, that what

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manifested itself in Jesus in this way must have been substantially present in him himself, as a cause adequate to the effect. So he came to the peculiar conception of a healing substance issuing involuntarily from Jesus at every touch of his body and producing a definite effect. Compare Luke 8:44 with Matthew 9:20. While Matthew merely narrates that a woman touched Jesus, and makes it only a notion of the woman that she would be healed already by the mere touching of the hem of his garment, Luke by contrast has Jesus himself say: ἥψατό μου τις, ἐγὼ γὰρ ἔγνων δύναμιν ἐξελθοῦσαν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ. Here too there is already a certain analogy with the concepts of the Johannine Christology, according to which, for example, Jesus does not merely raise the dead and make them alive, but is himself the resurrection and the life. What he does and effects, he himself is; it is something identical with him, consubstantial with his person. As extraordinary and supernatural as his deeds therefore are, so extraordinary and supernatural must he himself be according to his whole being. Indeed, even an element of the Johannine concept of the Logos is found in him. Τίς ὁ λόγος οὗτος; it reads at Luke 4:36, ὅτι ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ἐπιτάσσει τοῖς ἀκαθάρτοις πνεύμασι, καὶ ἐξέρχονται. The interpreters do not take those first words correctly. They can only be taken thus: what sort of quality of the word is this, that is, what power of the word is this, or of what kind must he be whose word is so powerful that in power and might, that is, as one endowed with power and might, he commands the spirits. In his word, in his λόγος, the ἐξουσία καὶ δύναμις that dwells in him reveals itself. What he is, he is essentially in his word. As this holds of his power, so it must hold of him altogether. What his words are, that he himself is. But of his words it is said that, even if heaven and earth pass away, they do not pass away, 21:33 (cf. Matt. 24:35, where the same words stand, which in Matthew, however, have no such point of attachment in his Christology as in Luke); that heaven and earth would pass away sooner than one tittle of his words should pass away, 16:17. At bottom the same holds here again: τίς οὗτος ὁ λόγος; of what kind must he be whose words are of an imperishable, eternal, divine nature, of whose words the same can be said that is otherwise said of the law, that no κεραία may disappear?¹ Therefore what he proclaims, and

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what one is so eager to hear, is also the λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ, as Luke 5:1 (cf. 8:11, 31; 11:28), but also only Luke, calls the content of Jesus’ discourses. What he speaks is the word of God itself; and if of the λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ as a whole the same must hold that is predicated of his λόγοι in the passages named, then in the whole connection of these concepts no very great step is still needed in order to regard the one who proclaims the λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ as identical with this λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ itself. Only in this higher sense, which unites all these relations in itself, can he be the υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, so identical with the Father that his consciousness is the consciousness of the Father, and the consciousness of the Father is his. His identity with the Father is an identity both of knowledge and of power. With the power with which all things have been delivered to him by the Father, he overpowers and destroys all demonic powers; his name is the bearer and the sum of this power conferred on him by God and immanent in himself (10:17); and the demons themselves know that he has this irresistible power, which he exercises in a way so ruinous for them, as the υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (4:41). With this we see ourselves, in our Gospel too, placed into the same dualistic mode of view within whose sphere the Johannine Gospel moves. With the absolute power of the Father, the Son of God stands over against all the demonic powers hostile to the kingdom of God. His task is to combat and to destroy everything demonic. As in the Johannine Gospel the highest result of this combat is designated by the expression that the prince of this world has been judged, so in Luke (10:18) Jesus sees the devil cast down and falling from heaven like a flash of lightning. Here as there this victory is expressed, in the self-certainty of Jesus’ consciousness, as an immediate fact, although it must first take its temporal course. In the Johannine Gospel the unbelief and the hatred of the Jews has its deepest root in the power of darkness. Luke does not yet have this view of Judaism; but while Matthew narrates the betrayal of Judas as a simple fact, he indeed does not, as after him the author of the Johannine Gospel does, have Satan enter directly into Judas, yet he does have him and the power of darkness actively intervene in it, 22:31, 53.¹ There is thus, in his mode of

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view as well, an antagonism of two opposed principles, which takes its course in the life and in the last destinies of Jesus.

Without question, all these christological elements have their unity only in such a concept of the person of Christ as lies beyond the Synoptic, on the way to the Johannine. Christ can be thought only as a higher, superhuman being; but to what more definite expression the concept of his being is to be brought cannot be said, all the less because nothing more definite comes forward either at the beginning or at the end of the life of Jesus. The mother and brothers of Jesus are mentioned at 8:19. Whether, however, by the cutting off of everything that belongs to the prehistory, he wanted to remove from view not only the Jewish but also the human origin, one would hardly venture to assert. That, while in Matthew the last word of Jesus is the expression of complete forsakenness by God (Matt. 27:46), Luke by contrast has him lay his spirit in the hands of the Father (23:46, in agreement with John 19:30), one can take as Ritschl takes it:¹ in the word of Jesus in Luke there shows itself the one to whom all things have been delivered by the Father, and who renounces life by his own plenitude of power; the word in Matthew, however, makes it impossible to presuppose, in the sense of the evangelist, such a view of Christ as Luke has. Jesus, on this view, shows himself, in expectation of death, not as a strong Lord over all things, but as a weak man, and so this feature corresponds completely to the view of the non-absoluteness of the earthly life of Jesus. But in what relation are we to think this πνεῦμα and its παρατίθεσθαι to the substantial concept of his being that results from the whole appearance and activity of Jesus, and how does it stand to the ἀναφέρεσθαι εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν (24:51), and to that ἀνάληψις to which the evangelist, what is likewise noteworthy, already points at 9:51 as the moment of completion? To these questions, since this Christology still lacks a substantial point of unity, no definite answer can be given.

Noteworthy, further, in this connection is our evangelist’s conception of the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ and of the relation of the Parousia of Christ to it. At first there seems to be in him a certain vacillation over whether the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ is already there, or is yet to come. That it is already there in the present, as this is the conception that lies at the basis of the Gospel of Matthew,

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Luke too seems to say, at 10:9, 11: ἤγγικεν ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, and at 11:20: ἄρα ἔφθασεν ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. But the conception that in any case predominates in him, and is thus his real conception, is that the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ is not yet there, but is yet to come, stands yet before us in the future. In this sense it reads at 9:27: εἰσί τινες τῶν ὧδε ἑστώτων, οἳ οὐ μὴ γεύσωνται θανάτου, ἕως ἂν ἴδωσι τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ. How this is to be reconciled with Luke 21 is indeed not clear; but according to this passage too the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ is yet to come, whereas in Matthew 16:28 it is only said: ἕως ἂν ἴδωσι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐρχόμενον ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ, which does not exclude the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ already being there. Likewise it reads, in Luke 12, with a view to the arrival of the Lord that is to be expected (cf. v. 35f.), v. 32: εὐδόκησεν ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν δοῦναι ὑμῖν τὴν βασιλείαν; 21:31: ὅταν ἴδητε ταῦτα γινόμενα, γινώσκετε, ὅτι ἐγγύς ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ (for which there stands in Matthew 24:33: ὅτι ἐγγύς ἐστιν ἐπὶ θύραις, to which ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ is not to be supplied here, but ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, as the chief subject of the discourse so far); 22:18: οὐ μὴ πίω ἀπὸ τοῦ γεννήματος τῆς ἀμπέλου, ἕως ὅτου ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ ἔλθῃ (whereas here again it reads in Matthew 26:29: ὅταν αὐτὸ πίω μεθ’ ὑμῶν καινὸν ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ πατρός μου, so that accordingly there is no talk of a βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ that is yet to come).¹ A passage belonging here in a still more special way is the passage 17:21–24, which is indeed taken quite differently according to the usual explanation. It not only must not be taken as proof that Luke placed the kingdom of God in the inwardness of the heart; there does not even lie in it that the kingdom is already there in the present. The coming of the kingdom of God is an outward event, which, however, because it develops suddenly, is withdrawn from outward observation; and the present-tense form, as Ritschl has rightly remarked,² expresses in a graphic way only the surprise which

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is in the future to be called forth by the coming of the kingdom of God. The view that in the future becomes present is grasped in its immediacy, as this is also indicated by ἰδού. Thus the preceding words, v. 21, receive a very close and natural relation to the following v. 24: ὥσπερ γὰρ ἡ ἀστραπὴ — οὕτως ἔσται ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ αὐτοῦ. It evidently stands in connection with this conception of the coming of the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, which stands yet before us only in the future, that Luke not only will know nothing of the scene of Jesus’ solemn entry into Jerusalem, which in Matthew’s presentation can be taken only as the real beginning of the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, or as the solemn opening of the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ that has already come, but in the parable taken up in its place, which pushes the appearance of the Lord out into the further future, even seems to raise an express contradiction against it. At the same time, however, there also results from this so remarkable difference between the two evangelists what interest Luke had in his conception of a βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ that is yet to come. If it had had to be regarded as one that had already come, and was already now present, Judaism, in the midst of which the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ already was at that time, would thereby have had a precedence which the Paulinist did not gladly grant it. So one prefers, in order to set Jews and Gentiles equal to one another with respect to the real existence of the βασιλεία θεοῦ, not to speak at all of its already being there, but only of its yet being to come. The same therefore holds of it as of the Parousia of Christ; and once one has already come so far that of the one, as of the other, one can say only this much, that when it comes it will come all at once, suddenly and surprisingly, one has already got beyond the Jewish form which the Parousia of Christ itself still has in the conception of the apostle Paul, and is in the midst of the transition to that more spiritual form according to which, as we see this in the Johannine Gospel, the Parousia of Christ and the βασιλεία θεοῦ are in general nothing future, but something already present, and also nothing present in the form of the Jewish mode of view.

The two chief differences between the Johannine Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels, which had to be taken into account here in order to assign our Gospel its place in relation to the Johannine, have had, in the case of the latter, the consequence that one cannot possibly ascribe to it a purely historical

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character. The further it removes itself from a Gospel for the calling of whose historical credibility into doubt the same cause is not present, the more necessary it is to seek the resolution of the contradiction that obtains on the other side, on the side of that Gospel in which, in general, so much seems to point to its pursuing an ideal tendency. Since, now, the Gospel of Luke, as has been shown, inclines over to the side of the Johannine Gospel in so much that belongs to its peculiar character, the question is what, in view of such points in which it does not agree with the Gospel of Matthew, is to be held of its historical credibility.

What an important place the choosing and the sending out of the seventy disciples occupies in our evangelist, how significantly it enters into his presentation of the Gospel history, how much in the plan and arrangement of his Gospel depends on it, is a chief point of the investigation so far. How, then, are we to judge of this moment of the Gospel history from the standpoint of historical consideration? It is only Luke who knows of the Seventy; and the more recent critics and interpreters, so far as they examine the matter more closely and are not caught beforehand in mere presuppositions, are with fair unanimity of the view that this statement is more than doubtful, since it lacks external support and inner probability alike.¹ The question can therefore only be whether we are to regard it as a legend of the primitive Christian tradition, or perhaps even have to put it solely to the account of our evangelist. If, however, in the former case, one puts the question with Strauss thus: whether such a consistent holding to sacred numbers, such a spinning further of the beginning once given by the number of the apostles, is not wholly in the spirit of the primitive Christian legend, which, insofar as we think it colored in a Jewish way, drew the conclusion that if Jesus had imaged the twelve tribes in the number of his apostles, he would also have imaged the seventy elders by a corresponding number of disciples; or, insofar as we conceive it in a more Pauline and universalistic way, could not but presuppose that Jesus, alongside the relation of his cause to the Israelite people indicated by the number of the apostles, at the same time prefigured, by the choice

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of seventy disciples, its further determination for all the peoples of the earth: then there already lies in this distinction, rightly made, a moment that does not permit us to stop at the assumption of a mere legend. In the circle of the oldest Jewish Christianity such a legend could not possibly arise. The oldest Jewish Christians had enough in their twelve apostles, and the universalistic task of Christianity, so far as they had already become conscious of it, seemed to them in any case able to be solved only through the twelve apostles, since a Christianity going out beyond Judaism and detached from it still lay outside their horizon. Had Luke taken the legend of the Seventy from mere tradition, they would have had to have, right from the start in that tradition also, the determination which he gives them. With him, however, they are determined for a circle of activity lying out beyond the sphere of the Twelve, for a commission for which the Twelve did not yet seem to be qualified, and provided with an instruction which contains determinations that could not at all have been suitable for those men on their Jewish-Christian standpoint. Not in the Jewish-Christian circle, then, but only in the Pauline would the origin of the legend have to be presupposed. But where, then, are we to look for it in the latter as well? Not only is there not found, in the writings of the apostle Paul, the apostle through whom the principle of this new form of Christianity first came to clear consciousness and received its practical significance, even the slightest hint of such a legend; the apostle himself even excludes the possibility of it by this, that he claimed to have received his office as apostle to the Gentiles, or his universalism, not along this path, through such an outward mediation as that of the Seventy too would have been, but immediately through Christ himself. In the circle of the apostle himself, then, in his immediate surroundings, the origin of such a legend cannot be thought. It could have arisen only later, at a time in which one could not rightly conceive how such a legend could still take on the character of a historically transmitted legend. In the whole narrative of the seventy disciples, as it appears to us in our Gospel, so unmistakable a Pauline stamp and interest expresses itself that, even in the case in which a historical tradition should lie at its basis, we should at the same time have to assume that it was worked over entirely for his purposes by the Pauline writer. What great difference is there then still at all, whether one takes something in it as already found by him,

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or regards it as his own product, taken up by him into the Gospel history? It is, however we may take it, an unhistorical element, arisen from the endeavor to lead Pauline Christianity, which these Seventy represent, back, by a mediation which could not be in the sense of the apostle, but must have lain very near a writer who, once he made the Gospel history from his Pauline standpoint the object of his presentation, believed he could not refrain from demonstrating in it a point of attachment for his Pauline Christianity, to an immediate act of Jesus belonging to the earthly life of Jesus, even if one that took place only after the calling of the Twelve, yet wholly of the same kind as that calling. Since, however, he could not assume that his apostle Paul himself had been one of these Seventy, and it cannot otherwise be thought what historical relation they are supposed to have had to him, what other significance can these Seventy have had for him than a figurative one, a figurative, typical significance of the same kind as that of the number which designates their determination? Since, by the nature of the case, nothing in the public life of Jesus could have an immediate relation to the apostle Paul himself, his apostolic calling was accordingly to find its place, at least in this prefigurative way, in the circle of the Gospel history, as one distinguished from that of the Twelve, not already included in it, standing over against it independently. If one considers further, however, what influence the element newly taken up by our evangelist has; how, from this point on, his presentation of the Gospel history is laid out entirely to put the Twelve in the shade in the same proportion in which the Seventy are to appear in the fairest light of apostolic activity; what changes have been undertaken with the Gospel history for this purpose; how he has transposed narratives, and set sayings of Jesus which in Matthew stand in an entirely different connection now here, now there: then it is not possible to ascribe to the Gospel of Luke the same degree of documentary historical credibility which must belong to the Gospel of Matthew at least relatively, so long as we have no cause to presuppose an interest of the presentation that alters its historical character in the same way. What an analogy the Gospel of Luke has in this respect too with the Johannine is of itself clear. Even if in it the historical material is too predominant for it to have been able to receive, on the whole, an equally

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ideal character like the Johannine, it nevertheless has in it many elements which are more or less unhistorical and, at the same time, like the narrative of the Seventy, of an ideal, figurative nature. While there are parables which do not merely illustrate a general truth, but present in themselves the concrete relations of the present, like the parable of the rich man at least at the close, and that of the noble man, 18:12f., there are also historical narratives whose historical element seems to be only the clothing, figurative form of a definite idea. In this sense one would, as has already been remarked earlier, take in particular the narrative of the two sisters, Mary and Martha (10:38). This same narrative shows at the same time, most tellingly, the inner kinship which our Gospel has, in such features of an ideal character, with the Johannine, in which, with the preference peculiar to it for this mystical symbolism, what was only indicated by the former is carried further in the most ingenious presentations. Into the same category one would place the narrative of the sinful woman who anoints Jesus (7:36f.). Is it not the figurative presentation of the genuinely evangelical truth, that a penitent heart, feeling deep within itself the need of the forgiveness of sins and moved by love, cannot fail, through faith in Jesus, really to obtain the forgiveness of sins? This narrative too has its parallel in the Johannine Gospel, in the pericope of the adulteress. If we add further how so many scattered individual features can have only a figurative significance (compare, for example, 13:32, 33), and so many transitions to parables and narratives serve only as a clothing form, this too gives a standard for judging the historical character of our Gospel, and a further moment for grounding the general judgment that its place can be assigned only on the transition from the Synoptic Gospels to the Johannine.