Introduction

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The Gospel of Luke

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Introduction

At the point which Gospel criticism has now reached, after the old relation of substantial identity among the Gospels has been dissolved by Strauss’s criticism, and that criticism itself has stopped at the merely negative result of their mutual contradiction and unhistorical character, criticism has above all to occupy itself with the main question: what each of the four Gospels, considered by itself, is according to its whole individuality; what particular tendency it pursues alongside the general historical purpose; and how, from an inner center, it has taken shape as this definite form of the Gospel history. Once criticism has become more clearly aware of this task, it can at first attempt the solution only on those of our four Gospels which, by their characteristic peculiarity, differ most from the rest. The more something stands out in its specific difference, the more it of itself prompts the question of the cause of such an appearance, and the surer the points of support it also offers for grasping and assessing it. From this point of view the present investigation began with the Gospel of John, and the critical results, as they now lie before us, are, I believe, clear and definite, and firm and secure enough to build further upon the foundation that has been given. The more thoroughgoing the difference of the fourth Gospel from the first three is, the more certain it is that, so long as one has not reached a more exact understanding of this relation, one will be able to come to no more definite result on the critical question about the Gospels in general. If we now ask, however, with which of the three other Gospels the investigation begun from this point of view is next to be carried further, it can only be the Gospel of Luke that draws our attention. The Gospel of Mark has, in the same proportion in which it shares its content with the other two Synoptic

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Gospels, all the less that is peculiar to it. Over against the Gospel of Matthew, however, the Gospel of Luke has in its favor not only a not inconsiderable part of its content, but also, in particular, its Pauline character. If, therefore, we can presuppose in one of the Synoptic Gospels a definite tendency from which it is to be understood in its origin and nature, it is the Gospel of Luke.

The Gospel of Luke has always been taken as a Gospel distinguished by its peculiar character, but people have stopped at the simple presupposition of the fact: that its author Luke was a Paulinist, whose Paulinism shows itself in individual expressions and turns of phrase, and especially also in the preference with which he took into his Gospel writing some parables passed over by Matthew, such as those of the prodigal son and of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The first to press more deeply into the subject of the question concerning the Gospel of Luke was the essay by the editor of the Theologische Jahrbücher: “On the Dogmatic Character of the Third Gospel, with Special Reference to Its Relation to the Acts of the Apostles and to the Gospel of John.”¹ From the point of view established for the Acts of the Apostles, Zeller sought to show that the Gospel has not only, as the language already shows, one author with Acts, but also one purpose; that just as there the history of the Jerusalem community and of Paul, so here the history of Christ himself is treated in the sense of a mediation between Judaism and Paulinism; that Christ is conceived and presented as the Jewish Messiah, whose essential determination, however, lies in this, that through him the messianic salvation passes from the unbelieving Jews to the believers among the Gentiles. In this respect a side of the Gospel turned toward Judaism first becomes noticeable. The concessions made to Judaism have, however, only the purpose of demanding from it in return, as a counter-gift, something far more significant: the recognition of Pauline universalism. As a man of mediation, the author of the Gospel is also supposed not to have carried Paulinism through strictly. To bring Pauline universalism to general recognition is so much the purpose of his writings that even the inclusion of individual un-Pauline elements, and the receding of important Pauline elements, is to be explained from this universalistic tendency.

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Even if he lets fall the dogmatic presuppositions of universalism, this happens only in order to make easier its practical carrying out, the real union of Jews and Gentiles into one whole, the formation of a general church. This general view of the origin and character of the third Gospel has, in the essay named, been demonstrated for the most part so aptly from the characteristic features of the Gospel that, even if it must first be more closely modified and carried further, it is nevertheless already to be regarded as a secure foundation for the further investigations. Schwegler too, therefore, could only build further on this foundation when, in his comprehensive investigations of the post-apostolic age, he assigned the Gospel of Luke its place among the Pauline conciliatory writings, and summed up his critical results in the overall judgment that the third Gospel has as its literary motive the intention of a mediation between Jewish and Pauline Christianity; Pauline according to its basic conception and its basic character, it nevertheless seeks, true to that tendency, to attach what is Pauline everywhere to what is Jewish-Christian, but likewise, conversely, to lead what is Jewish-Christian over into what is Pauline.¹ The unnamed author of the work The Gospels, Their Spirit, Their Authors, and Their Relation to One Another: A Contribution to the Solution of the Critical Questions concerning Their Origin (Leipzig, 1845) does seem to strike out on a path lying fairly far from this one. It will become clear from what follows, however, how his investigations, which deserve every attention here for the very reason that they likewise make the Gospel of Luke the chief object of their critical interest, attach themselves of their own accord only to the basic conception already gained, as soon as they are brought back from their eccentricity to their true center.

In the investigation of the Gospel of Luke one immediately comes upon a point which must above all be settled if one wants to arrive at a decisive result: the relation to the Marcionite Gospel. Schwegler has already seen himself moved to go back to this question and to subject the usual view to a fresh examination, which, with the documents and traditions before him, gave him the conviction that the Marcionite Gospel was in no case a mutilation of our Luke. This assumption, Schwegler holds, which through Hahn and Olshausen has become a standing presupposition,

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originally only an uncritical presupposition of Irenaeus and Tertullian on the basis of likewise uncritical and unhistorical assumptions, so lacks all inner coherence, so lacks all capacity to be carried through, and entangles itself in such contradictions, obscurities, and insufficiencies, that at the first attempt to explain from it the peculiarities of the Marcionite Gospel one sees oneself compelled to desist from it.¹ This same view, for which Schwegler has brought forward from the Marcionite Gospel a series of very evident proofs, has most recently been established and carried out on a wider scale by Dr. A. Ritschl in the very noteworthy work Das Evangelium Marcions und das kanonische Evangelium des Lucas (Tübingen, 1846). Both opponents of the view held until now have shown Hahn’s procedure in grounding the mutilation hypothesis to be entirely without principle. While Schwegler, however, given the lack of older sources and the partial unusability of later ones, will assert with definiteness only this much, that a mutilated Luke was in no case the Gospel of Marcion, however else the matter may stand, but rather, what follows immediately from this, a Gospel writing independent of our third Gospel; and while he will hold the further assumption, that it was directly the source and basis of Luke, more precisely, that the author of the third Gospel catholicized it and, by mixing in Jewish-Christian pieces, attempted to produce an equilibrium of its elements, in the interest of a mediation between the Pauline and the Petrine tendency, to be probable in the highest degree and yet not strictly demonstrable;² it is, by contrast, precisely this, that the Marcionite Gospel as an independent source writing can only be the original stock of our Gospel of Luke, that is the main point which Ritschl keeps in view, in order to carry the investigation of the Marcionite Gospel forward to a more definite result. The inconsistency of the method, he remarks, which belongs to Hahn’s hypothesis, grounds the right to set over against it in turn the view of Semler and Eichhorn, that the Gospel used by Marcion was an independent one and older than the canonical Luke. Whether the other assumption of Eichhorn, namely that the Gospel of Marcion was a source writing of the canonical Luke, may already coincide with this, can

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emerge only from the further, more exact investigation. We must, however, proceed from the possibility of Eichhorn’s second assumption as well, since the originality of the shorter writing will be able to be demonstrated only by this: that in the sections missing from it there are found traces of a later revision by a second hand. The marks by which revisions make themselves known are, in most cases, offenses against the connection with the sections between which, or into which, something else, something foreign, has been inserted, since a reviser who does not reproduce the whole anew, but only introduces slight changes and enlargements, can hardly escape the danger of tearing apart the connection of pieces that had until then been well ordered, or of placing pieces that contradict one another side by side.¹ On this principle, according to which the sections of Luke that were missing from Marcion’s Gospel are examined as to whether they fit well into the connection, or whether they do not rather bear the stamp of deriving from a second reviser, Ritschl’s investigation rests, and the chief constituent of it is accordingly the discussion of those sections in which the traces of such a lack of connection can be demonstrated. With this, the newest state of the investigations of the Marcionite Gospel has been briefly indicated. The more sharply the question is defined, the closer a relation it has to the Gospel of Luke, and it is clear that no secure judgment can be passed on the literary character of this Gospel before one is clear about whether, on the basis of the Marcionite Gospel, two essentially different constituents are not to be distinguished in our canonical Luke.