Chapter II. The dogmatic tendency of Ur-Luke

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Chapter II. The Dogmatic Tendency of Ur-Luke

The dogmatic character does not show itself in so positive a way in Ur-Luke as in the Gospels of Matthew and of John. In these two writings the ideas which the authors intended to carry through in their material, and which had presented themselves to them as the results of their contemplation of the history of Jesus, are set at the head. Matthew has one recognize at once, from the genealogy, in Jesus the son of Abraham and of David, the Messiah of the Jewish people who has at last appeared; John first leads the readers to the contemplation of the eternal divine Logos, whose activity in the flesh he then unfolds as the history of Jesus of Nazareth. And just as the whole Johannine Gospel represents the struggle between the incarnate Logos and the world, and the final victory of the former over the latter, partly historically and partly prophetically, so Matthew too shows in the plainest way the son of David as the preserver and restorer of the law, who wills to belong exclusively to his people, and only under compulsion, through its resistance, takes the other peoples into his plan of salvation. In Ur-Luke we do not see any principal thought, in which the historical material would be concentrated, emerge with such definiteness. Only in a negative and indirect way can its tendency be ascertained. It lies, namely, rather hidden in the selection of the material, and in the passing over and excision of certain elements of the tradition which serve essentially to support and to ground the dogmatic tendency of Matthew. Hence it is possible only through comparison with Matthew to get on the track of the tendency of Ur-Luke.

The real practical center of the view of the person of Christ in Matthew’s Gospel is his affirmative relationship to the law. What Jesus intends in Matthew (5:17, 18) is not the abolition of the law,

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but its preservation and completion. He wishes to displace only the Pharisaic manner of fulfilling the law (v. 20). For the Matthean Christ demands respect even for the arbitrary multiplication of the law by the ordinances of the Pharisees (chapter 23:3), since, as guardians of the law, they would have the right to its more exact determination. One looks in vain in Ur-Luke for any such confirmation of the law. In the Sermon on the Mount precisely that section is missing in which, in Matthew, Jesus so definitely presents himself as the fulfiller of the law, and at no other place is that thought supplied afterward.¹ Rather, the end of the law is expressly proclaimed, so that it is no longer to retain its validity in the divine kingdom (Luke 16:16: ὁ νόμος καὶ οἱ προφῆται ἕως Ἰωάννου· ἀπὸ τότε ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ εὐαγγελίζεται [the law and the prophets were until John; from that time the kingdom of God is preached]).² Then, of course, that acknowledgment of the Pharisaic ceremonial laws which is pronounced in Matthew is also found nowhere in Ur-Luke; rather, they are condemned as such (Luke 11:42). In place of the abolished law there enters, in Ur-Luke, the concept λόγοι τοῦ Χριστοῦ [words of Christ] or λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ [word of God], the latter form in Luke 5:1; 8:11, 21; 11:28, the former in Luke 16:17: εὐκοπώτερόν ἐστι τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν παρελθεῖν, ἢ τῶν λόγων μου μίαν κεραίαν πεσεῖν [it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of my words to fall], Luke 21:33: ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ παρελεύσονται· οἱ δὲ λόγοι μου οὐ μὴ παρέλθωσι [heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall by no means pass away], Luke 6:47: ὁ ἀκούων μου τῶν λόγων καὶ ποιῶν αὐτοὺς [he who hears my words and does them] (cf. Matthew 7:24: ὅστις ἀκούει μου τοὺς λόγους τούτους καὶ ποιεῖ αὐτούς [whoever hears these words of mine and does them]). In these passages the divergence, alongside the identity in other respects, is characteristic of the difference between the Gospels. The τούτους [these] of Matthew points, namely, to the discourses in which the completion of the law was contained, and thus back to the law itself as the highest norm,

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whereas in Ur-Luke the words of the Lord in and of themselves lay claim to absolute significance. And for that reason, at the passages cited, they are also called directly ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ [the word of God]. With these views there also agrees the repeated violation of the commandment of sabbath rest by Jesus, since the ground, that the Son of Man is lord over the sabbath (Luke 6:3), designates the same authority by means of which Jesus declares the law abrogated, but his own words eternal. Through the specific difference, indicated in Ur-Luke, between the kingdom of God and the period of the law that precedes it, that saying of Jesus about the Baptist is also explained: μείζων ἐν γεννητοῖς γυναικῶν προφήτης Ἰωάννου τοῦ βαπτιστοῦ οὐδείς ἐστιν· ὁ δὲ μικρότερος ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ μείζων αὐτοῦ ἐστιν [there is no prophet among those born of women greater than John the Baptist; but the lesser one in the kingdom of God is greater than he] (Luke 7:28, cf. 16:16). While, then, this saying and Jesus’s treatment of the sabbath commandment are explicable only from that fundamental conception of Ur-Luke, since in Matthew they cannot well be reduced to the continuing acknowledgment of the Mosaic law, Ur-Luke has nevertheless also taken up into his Gospel several pieces which contradict that general presupposition, namely those in which Jesus urges observance of the law and presents fulfillment of the law as a means to blessedness (Luke 5:14; 10:25 f.; 18:18 f.). These exceptions must not be ignored, although they are precisely only exceptions, since the overall tendency of the evangelist was directed to presenting Jesus as he had to appear on the Pauline standpoint which the evangelist occupies. Only a Pauline could lay such stress on the abolition of the law, and as such the evangelist proves himself, furthermore, throughout. — In particular, this is the case in the inclusion of a series of sections in the Gospel which we do not find in Matthew, and which plainly correspond to the Pauline interest in free grace and mercy. To this there is then further joined the avoidance of all utterances which would impute to Jesus a national particularism,

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whereas, on the contrary, such pieces are included as show Jesus in intercourse at least with the Samaritans, who count as Gentiles. It is certainly not a matter of indifference for the standpoint of the two Gospels that, while Matthew has ἔσεσθε οὖν ὑμεῖς τέλειοι, ὥσπερ ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς τέλειός ἐστιν [you shall therefore be perfect, as your Father who is in heaven is perfect] (Matthew 5:48), the corresponding passage in Ur-Luke reads γίνεσθε οὖν οἰκτίρμονες καθὼς καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν οἰκτίρμων ἐστι [be therefore merciful, even as your Father also is merciful] (Luke 6:36). The duty to forgive, and not to repay like with like, is thus not traced back to the law, as the similar duties are in Matthew, but derived from the general principle of Christianity, conceived also subjectively. This is proved by the rebuke of the sons of Zebedee, in the Samaritan village whose inhospitality they wished to repay with fire, in the words of Jesus: οὐκ οἴδατε οἵου πνεύματός ἐστε ὑμεῖς [you do not know of what spirit you are] (Luke 9:55). Not as though the author had made up such stories; but that he took them up proves to us his dogmatic direction. The two parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin make the saving mercy of God vivid (Luke 15:1 ff.), of which Matthew too has included the former (Matthew 18:12). The parable of the Samaritan (Luke 10:30 ff.) sets forth mercy as a duty toward everyone. In several sections the commendation of poor, humble, meritless Christianity is even bound up with a rejection of the Jewish Christianity that trusts proudly in works and expects only a just recompense. This is evidently made vivid in the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38 ff.). Even if we do not doubt the historical credibility of the narrative, still, in the case of the evangelist who passed over the certainly historical confirmation of the law by Christ, because the acknowledgment of the law was in dispute between the Christian parties, a definite consciousness is surely to be presupposed as to why he granted this narrative a place in his Gospel. One can then,

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however, not doubt that there is symbolized, in Mary, who, sitting at Jesus’s feet, heard his word and had thereby chosen the best part, the Pauline Christianity of humble, receptive faith, and, in Martha, who περιεσπᾶτο περὶ πολλὴν διακονίαν [was distracted about much serving] and who demands that her sister enter upon the same practical activity, the Christianity of the Jews bound to fulfillment of the law. Schwegler³ recalls, in illustration of this contrast, the contrast set up in the Epistle of James between ἀκροατὴς λόγου [a hearer of the word] and ποιητὴς ἔργου [a doer of work] (James 1:23, 25), by which Pauline and Jewish Christianity are supposed to be designated, yet in such a way that the worth is judged in reverse. When the author of the work Die Evangelien u. s. w. [The Gospels, and so on], p. 88, takes the two sisters as allegories of Peter and Paul, the same thought lies at the bottom. But whether one has the right to read into the Gospel throughout the motives of the personal opposition of those two apostles is very much to be doubted. In one class with that story of the two sisters belongs also the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9 f.), which the evangelist introduces with the words εἶπε δὲ καὶ πρός τινας τοὺς πεποιθότας ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτοῖς ὅτι εἰσὶ δίκαιοι καὶ ἐξουθενοῦντας τοὺς λοιπούς, τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην [and he spoke also to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised the rest, this parable]. This description fits so well the later circumstances also, the disdain which the Epistle of James shows toward the Pauline principle of faith; and the concluding maxim, πᾶς ὁ ὑψῶν ἑαυτὸν ταπεινωθήσεται· ὁ δὲ ταπεινῶν ἑαυτὸν ὑψωθήσεται [everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted] (v. 14), is so similar to Paul’s vindication of himself against his opponents in Corinth⁴ that no doubt can remain as to the motive for the inclusion of this parable.

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To these two pieces the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus also attaches itself (Luke 16:19 ff.). Its sense is evidently this, that the salvation which until then had been appointed for the Jews has been transferred, in their place, to the Gentiles. This contrast does not, to be sure, lie immediately in the designation and portrayal of the πλούσιος [rich man] and the πτωχός [poor man]. Rather, the portrayal of the reversal of their fortunes in this world and in the next originally had, probably, the intention of expressing the Ebionite principle which is also expressed in the Sermon on the Mount in Luke: μακάριοι οἱ πεινῶντες νῦν· ὅτι χορτασθήσεσθε [blessed are those who hunger now, for you shall be filled] (Luke 6:21), — οὐαὶ ὑμῖν τοῖς πλουσίοις, ὅτι ἀπέχετε τὴν παράκλησιν ὑμῶν [woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation] (v. 24). Accordingly, in the parable too the poor man is received into Abraham’s bosom only because he is poor, and the rich man, because of his wealth on earth, forfeits heavenly blessedness, as is clear from Abraham’s words: μνήσθητι, ὅτι ἀπέλαβες τὰ ἀγαθά σου ἐν τῇ ζωῇ σου, καὶ Λάζαρος ὁμοίως τὰ κακά· νῦν δὲ ὅδε παρακαλεῖται σὺ δὲ ὀδυνᾶσαι [remember that you received your good things in your life, and Lazarus likewise the evil things; but now this one is comforted, and you are in anguish] (Luke 16:25). Now it is not merely possible that the author of the Gospel conceived this contrast of poverty and wealth as a symbol of the Gentiles and the Jews, of whom the former were poor and the latter rich in divine revelation, the latter being, while the Gentiles sought to sate themselves on the scraps of the Jewish wealth,⁵ indifferent and proud in the abundance of it. Rather, the author of the Gospel evidently wanted this conception to be understood as bound up with his parable. This is proved by the addition of verses 27–31, which, after the parable is properly at an end, is appended still for greater clarification. Namely, the five brothers of the rich man, whose change of mind he wishes to bring about, are evidently to be understood as the Jewish sects, since they are characterized

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as those who ἔχουσι Μωϋσέα καὶ τοὺς προφήτας [have Moses and the prophets] (v. 29). From the 7 Jewish sects enumerated by Hegesippus in Eusebius (Historia ecclesiastica [Ecclesiastical History] IV, 22) one has only to subtract the Samaritans, whom the evangelist always regards as representatives of the Gentile world, and the Pharisees, who are represented precisely by the rich man himself, and exactly 5 remain, which coincide with the brothers of the rich man. This combination is confirmed by the fact that the rich man himself addresses Abraham as πάτερ Ἀβραάμ [father Abraham], and that Abraham in his reply also uses the word τέκνον [child] (vv. 24, 25). From this it is plain, especially since the parable as a whole is not concerned with commending beneficence, and the rich man’s intention cannot be to move his brothers to it, that in the parable the Gentiles’ need of salvation, over against the unfruitful righteousness of the law among the Jews, is to be set in the proper light. For as surely as these would neither use Moses and the prophets rightly, nor let themselves be set right by one risen from the dead, so surely is the attainment of salvation promised to the Gentiles who turn toward it.⁶

The right of the Gentiles to be received into the divine kingdom is presupposed in Ur-Luke without further ado. For that reason there is found there no trace of the exclusive destination of the Gospel for the Jews, uttered several times in Matthew. Thus the story of Jesus’s meeting with the Canaanite woman is missing, against whom he declares οὐκ ἀπεστάλην εἰ μὴ εἰς τὰ πρόβατα τὰ ἀπολωλότα οἴκου Ἰσραήλ [I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel] (Matthew 15:24). According to Luke, Jesus has come at all ζητῆσαι καὶ σῶσαι τὸ ἀπολωλός [to seek and to save that which is lost] (Luke 19:10; cf. 5:32). For this reason he also omits the instruction which Jesus in Matthew gives the Twelve: εἰς ὁδὸν ἐθνῶν μὴ ἀπέλθητε καὶ εἰς πόλιν Σαμαρειτῶν μὴ εἰσέλθητε· πορεύεσθε δὲ μᾶλλον πρὸς τὰ

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πρόβατα τὰ ἀπολωλότα οἴκου Ἰσραήλ [do not go off into a way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel] (Matthew 10:5, 6). The promise to the apostles, καθίσεσθε ἐπὶ δώδεκα θρόνους κρίνοντες τὰς δώδεκα φυλὰς τοῦ Ἰσραήλ [you shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel] (Matthew 19:28), which is honorable for the apostles and also brings out again the precedence of Israel over the other peoples, Ur-Luke does not know.⁷ The instruction in the eschatological discourse, to pray that the flight not fall on the Sabbath (ἵνα μὴ γένηται ἡ φυγὴ ὑμῶν σαββάτῳ [that your flight may not happen on a sabbath], Matthew 24:20), our evangelist omits as a matter of indifference, if not as offensive. In the parable of the wedding feast, too, to which the beggars from the streets and hedges are invited (Matthew 22:1–14; Luke 14:16–24), our Gospel lacks the trait characteristic of Matthew, that the guest whom the master of the house noticed without a festal garment is expelled. For, as Schwegler rightly remarks,⁸ “the original composer of the parable is willing, to be sure, to allow that the Gentiles are invited into the kingdom of God, but only in the event that the Jews decline the invitation, and only on the condition that the Gentiles do not enter the kingdom of God as such, but that they first become Jews, put on the garment of Jewish righteousness of the law — a condition which the third evangelist naturally could not acknowledge, for which reason he strikes out that concluding sentence and casts the whole parable in a more Pauline form.” By contrast, the positive interest in the Gentiles which Ur-Luke attributes to the Savior appears in Jesus’s relationship to the Samaritans, who in the eyes of the Jews count as Gentiles. Not only is a Samaritan, in a parabolic narrative, held up as a pattern of mercy and love of one’s neighbor (Luke 10:30), and even set over against the priest and the Levite, but in the Gospel Jesus himself comes into closer contact with inhabitants of that despised country. On one occasion he intends to spend the night in a Samaritan

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village, and, even though turned away, he shows in his answer to the disciples who call on him to punish the inhospitable (οὐκ οἴδατε, οἵου πνεύματός ἐστε ὑμεῖς; ὁ γὰρ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου οὐκ ἦλθε ψυχὰς ἀνθρώπων ἀπολέσαι, ἀλλὰ σῶσαι [do you not know of what spirit you are? for the Son of Man did not come to destroy the souls of men, but to save them], Luke 9:56) that he does not rank the Samaritans behind the Jews either. Likewise, in the story of the healing of the ten lepers (Luke 17:11–19), it is again the Samaritan, the ἀλλογενής [foreigner] (v. 18), who shows himself receptive of benefits and distinguishes himself above the members of the people of Israel. Finally, the sending of the seventy disciples (Luke 10:1 ff.), who are given preference over the Twelve by a far longer address of instruction, is evidently a clear mark of the universalist tendency of the Gospel. They are appointed for the seventy peoples of the earth, as the Twelve are for the tribes of Israel; and the more weight is attached to them and to their mission, the clearer it is that the evangelist lets the destination of the Gospel go, from the beginning, beyond the bounds of the Jewish people. The purely dogmatic tendency of this section becomes still more evident if it is the case that the doubts about its historical credibility are well founded.⁹ For one then sees how the Pauline interest in the Gentiles’ right to Christianity has taken shape in this narrative.¹⁰

Adherence to Pauline principles is proved by

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the Gospel of Ur-Luke also in the agreement with Paul on some subordinate points. Thus the address of instruction to the Seventy contains the direction ἐν αὐτῇ δὲ τῇ οἰκίᾳ μένετε, ἐσθίοντες καὶ πίνοντες τὰ παρ᾽ αὐτῶν· ἄξιος γὰρ ὁ ἐργάτης τοῦ μισθοῦ αὐτοῦ ἐστι [and remain in that same house, eating and drinking the things from them; for the laborer is worthy of his wages] (Luke 10:7), which agrees exactly with the procedure which the great apostle followed, and which he was led to defend in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 9:7 ff.). Indeed, the following words, ἐσθίετε τὰ παρατιθέμενα ὑμῖν [eat what is set before you] (Luke 10:8), agree word for word with the same direction of Paul (1 Corinthians 10:27). They are missing in the parallel passage in Matthew for a good reason, because freedom or unfreedom in the enjoyment of foods formed a chief difference between the Jewish-Christian party and Paul, as the passages Acts 11:3 and Galatians 2:12 ff. prove. In the Clementine Homilies, too, it is strictly insisted that Christians and Gentiles may not eat together. One sees, then, that the Gospel before us took up this catchword of the Pauline party as well, although it is more than doubtful whether that saying comes from Jesus, whose intercourse with tax collectors and sinners, in eating also (Matthew 9:11; Luke 5:30; 15:2), does not, however, straightway include the transgression of the Mosaic food laws. Further, as has often been remarked already, there is a closer agreement of Luke with Paul in the report of the institution of the Lord’s Supper (Luke 22:19, 20; 1 Corinthians 11:23–26) than with the other Synoptics. In particular, the formulas εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν [in remembrance of me] and καινὴ διαθήκη ἐν τῷ αἵματί μου [new covenant in my blood] occur only here. On this point too, then, a dependence of the evangelist on his apostle, and in particular an acquaintance with the First Epistle to the Corinthians, is not to be mistaken.¹¹

In that the Gospel before us thus decisively

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takes the side of Paul, it sets itself indirectly over against the other apostles, who with their party were after all always only jealous of that man. For this a quantity of data is also at hand, as soon as we draw the comparison with the Gospel of Matthew, which stands in the service of that party. The first Gospel, namely, as having proceeded from the Jewish-Christian party, distinguishes the head of that party, Peter, in particular. This does not consist in the fact that he usually appears as spokesman of the other disciples, and that the Lord’s questions too are commonly directed to him as the representative of the others, for in the same way he is also brought forward in the third Gospel.¹² But it is certainly not without intention that, according to the first Gospel, apart from Judas no other disciple ventures to deal with Jesus directly. For even the sons of Zebedee need the mediation of their mother in order to lay a request before the Lord (Matthew 20:20),¹³ whereas in the third Gospel there is no hesitation about John and James addressing the word to the Lord directly (Luke 9:49, 54). Besides this, however, Peter is markedly distinguished in the first Gospel not only by being called by Jesus as the first in respect of time (Matthew 4:18–20), but also by having, in another sense, the predicate πρῶτος [first] ahead of his companions (Matthew 10:2), and by being designated, as the bearer of the work of salvation, with the most laudatory words (Matthew 16:17–19).¹⁴ In the third Gospel the sons of Zebedee share with Peter and his brother the honor of being the first to be called by Jesus (Luke 5:1–11); the predicate

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πρῶτος drops out of the list of the apostles, and the name Peter appears there (Luke 6:14) as a byname without further significance. And to that passage in the sixteenth chapter there corresponds only very weakly the charge of Jesus to him to strengthen his companions in their faith (Σίμων, ἰδοὺ ὁ σατανᾶς ἐξητήσατο ὑμᾶς τοῦ σινιάσαι ὡς τὸν σῖτον· ἐγὼ δὲ ἐδεήθην περὶ σου ἵνα μὴ ἐκλείπῃ ἡ πίστις σου, καὶ σὺ ποτὲ ἐπιστρέψας στήριξον τοὺς ἀδελφούς σου [Simon, behold, Satan has demanded you, to sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail, and you, when you have once turned back, strengthen your brothers]. Luke 22:31, 32). What a difference it is, when there Peter’s fitness for the calling entrusted to him is presupposed without any doubt whatsoever, but here the entrusting of a far more limited task is made dependent on Peter’s returning, with God’s help, from his weakness and unfaithfulness! It is further to be ascribed to the preference for Paul that in Ur-Luke all those passages of Matthew are also missing on which the claims of the Twelve to exclusive possession of the apostolate could be grounded, so that, namely, the great apostle to the Gentiles should not have his right to that office curtailed. Thus there is missing altogether the honorable address of Jesus to the disciples whom he has already gathered about himself (Matthew 4:18–22) in the Sermon on the Mount, ὑμεῖς ἐστε τὸ ἅλας τῆς γῆς· ὑμεῖς ἐστε τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου [you are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world] (Matthew 5:13, 14); further, the transfer to all twelve disciples of the authority to bind and to loose first conferred on Peter (Matthew 18:18); and the promise that they would judge the 12 tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28), in Ur-Luke. Rather, the narrative of the seventy disciples has at the same time the intention of putting the twelve original apostles in the shade. Not only does the third evangelist have Jesus address to these a far longer discourse of instruction than to the 12 apostles (Luke 9:1–6), but he transfers the words in which Jesus in Matthew (Matthew 10:40) sums up the dignity of the twelve apostles, ὁ δεχόμενος ὑμᾶς ἐμὲ δέχεται, καὶ ὁ ἐμὲ δεχόμενος δέχεται τὸν ἀποστείλαντά με [he who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me], rather onto the Seventy: ὁ ἀκούων ὑμῶν ἐμοῦ ἀκούει, καὶ ὁ ἀθετῶν ὑμᾶς ἐμὲ ἀθετεῖ· ὁ δὲ ἐμὲ

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ἀθετῶν, ἀθετεῖ τὸν ἀποστείλαντά με [he who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me; and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me] (Luke 10:16).¹⁵ One knows what value the primitive Christian community set upon someone’s having stood in immediate intercourse with Jesus, in order to be able to be called an apostle (Acts 1:22), as indeed the great respect which James, Peter, and John enjoyed as the στύλοι τῆς ἐκκλησίας [pillars of the church] rested precisely upon this (Galatians 2:9), and how hard it was for Paul to carry through the acknowledgment of his calling with the Jewish-Christian party. It is also easy to see that precisely such traditions as the passages of Matthew just cited contain served as the real basis of those claims of the original apostles. All the more did it lie in the interest of a Paulinist to ignore such sayings, even if they really did come from Christ, and not to include them in his Gospel, if he did not want thereby to impair the right of his apostle. The author of our Gospel has, however, also pursued, by the grouping of his narratives, the intention of putting the original apostles decidedly in the shade over against the 70 apostles to the Gentiles, who, if Paul himself is not actually supposed, in the author’s mind, to belong to them,¹⁶ are at least to be regarded as a symbol of his person. For it is striking that in the ninth chapter, after the sending and return of the Twelve, a number of narratives are gathered which place their capacity for their great work in a not very favorable light. At the transfiguration Peter and the sons of Zebedee are βεβαρημένοι ὕπνῳ [weighed down with sleep], and Peter speaks μὴ εἰδὼς ὃ λέγει [not knowing what he says] (vv. 32, 33). The disciples cannot heal a demoniac boy (v. 40), although Jesus had given them ἐξουσίαν ἐπὶ πάντα τὰ δαιμόνια καὶ νόσους θεραπεύειν [authority over all the demons, and to heal diseases] (v. 1);

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and the words ὦ γενεὰ ἄπιστος καὶ διεστραμμένη· ἕως πότε ἔσομαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς καὶ ἀνέξομαι ὑμῶν [O faithless and perverse generation: how long shall I be with you and bear with you?] (v. 41) cannot be referred otherwise than to the disciples, although in the parallel passage, Matthew 17:17, this interpretation is doubtful.¹⁷ Then it follows that they have not understood at all the prediction of Jesus’s death (v. 45), then a dispute about rank among the disciples as proof of their foolish pride (v. 46). Finally John gives yet a specimen of his ill will toward the success of the activity of a disciple of Jesus who does not keep with them (v. 49),¹⁸ and together with his brother James he shows vengefulness against the inhospitable Samaritans (v. 54). Now, in that the sending of the seventy apostles to the Gentiles follows upon this collection of traits of character in the older disciples, the author’s intention appears quite clearly: to set these over against those as the capable against the incapable, as those in whom Jesus has joy (ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ὥρᾳ ἠγαλλιάσατο τῷ πνεύματι ὁ Ἰησοῦς [in that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the spirit], Luke 10:21) against those who only ever give him occasion for displeasure and rebukes, and further as the immature, who receive God’s revelation, against the wise, from whom the same remains hidden.

This polemic against the original apostles, and the apology for Paul, which the author of the Gospel seems to express to us in the grouping of those two chapters, counts for the author of the work cited several times, “the Gospels, Their Spirit and Their Authors,” as the main idea which governs the whole Gospel, and as the key to the understanding of its whole composition. He expresses himself, however, after he has set forth the difference, acknowledged by us as well, in the representation of Jesus’s relationship to the disciples in the various Gospels,

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to the effect that the Gospels are to be held merely as products of party spirit, to the exclusion of historical truth (p. 28). This view is now to be demonstrated and confirmed especially in the third Gospel. The reader is introduced into it, and in particular into the Lukan Sermon on the Mount, with the words (p. 49): “Let us therefore make our heart hard, and prepared to see the twelve apostles in the third Gospel treated by Jesus himself no better, and designated as Pharisees, hypocrites, and blind men, and so on, and thus to see the holy mouth of the Lord profaned into a servant of Pauline passion.” The author then finds everywhere partly direct attacks, partly bitter irony, against the original apostles in the speeches of Jesus in the third Gospel, and in many cases on the basis of such passages in which interpreters now usually miss a fitting connection. Historical credibility would therefore no longer be ascribable to it at all, as is also asserted by the author himself (p. 430), since the historical material in and of itself would have had no significance for the evangelists, although the Gospel of Luke is after all supposed to have been produced in the year 57 or 58 (p. 301)! Since this view will yet give us occasion, in the investigation of the historical worth of the Gospel, for an exact examination of its particular grounds, let it only be remarked here provisionally that the polemic against Peter and his companions, as the author presupposes it in Luke, is not found, after all, with the consistency that would be necessary in order to draw those inferences from it; since, as we have seen, the evangelist does not rob that disciple of the honor which he enjoys in Matthew, of appearing as the representative and spokesman of his companions. Indeed, the Lord even shows him the confidence, according to Luke’s report, of charging him to raise up his companions in their weakness and unfaithfulness (Luke 22:32), although he himself would not remain steadfast in the temptation. But the author has overlooked or ignored these passages and their significance.

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If, for that reason, that view were really to fit the third Gospel, another disciple would have to be set up in it, instead of Peter, as spokesman of the rest over against Jesus, as is the case in the Gospel of John. However much, then, we acknowledge the value of many remarks and explanations of that anonymous author, still neither may his fundamental view be held to be correct, nor may it be inferred immediately from a party tendency that the credibility of the narrative is thereby excluded.

Two further points, however, are to be considered, in order to complete our survey. The sympathy for the Gentiles which the Pauline standpoint brings with it is also to be recognized in the portrayal which the third evangelist gives of Pilate’s influence upon the catastrophe of Jesus. It is essentially different from Matthew’s report of the same matter. According to him, Jews and Gentiles share equally the guilt of the execution. Alongside the rage and malice of the heads of the people stand the superstitious weakness of Pilate and the mockery of his soldiers. Instead of investigating the charge properly and setting a firm bearing over against the passion of the accusers, he puts the question, wholly fruitless for Jesus’s good under those circumstances, whether they wished him or Barrabas to be set free. Only after the voice of the people had already decided, and the matter was no longer in his power, does he attempt weak objections, and finally himself lends a hand after all to the carrying out of the execution. Pilate appears quite otherwise in Luke. In the charge calculated entirely with a view to him, that Jesus, as king of the Jews, meant to rise against the emperor, he finds no guilt (Luke 23:4). He repeats this judgment, supported by the testimony of Herod (vv. 14, 15), and sets it for the third time against the growing uproar (v. 22), in which, without any instigation on his, Pilate’s, part, the release of Barrabas is demanded. He must, to be sure, yield to the uproar, and grant the execution of Jesus

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(ἐπέκρινε γενέσθαι τὸ αἴτημα αὐτῶν [he gave sentence that their request should be done], v. 24; τὸν δὲ Ἰησοῦν παρέδωκε τῷ θελήματι αὐτῶν [and Jesus he delivered up to their will], v. 25), but without taking part in the execution itself by a verdict and by the dispatch of the cohort, as is the case in Matthew. For according to Luke’s report it is carried out only by the tumultuous crowd. If, now, soldiers and a centurion are indeed mentioned at the place of the crucifixion (vv. 36, 47), the former mocking him, the latter shaken by his end, these, in accordance with the evangelist’s meaning, are there on account of the two criminals, who are likewise crucified, and of whom it is merely said ἤγοντο δὲ καὶ ἕτεροι δύο κακοῦργοι σὺν αὐτῷ ἀναιρεθῆναι [and two other criminals were also led with him to be put to death] (v. 32), whereby, however, it can without further ado be supplied that this took place lawfully by the authority of the magistracy.¹⁹

Finally, the christological side of the Gospel is still to be considered. Jesus naturally appears in it as the Jewish Messiah. As such he is recognized by the demons (Luke 4:34, 41), and designated by the names ὁ ἅγιος τοῦ θεοῦ [the Holy One of God] and ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ [the Son of God].²⁰ As Messiah and king of the Jews he gives himself out before the court (Luke 22:70; 23:3). Nevertheless this conception of Jesus counts for Ur-Luke by no means as the main thing, as it does for Matthew. While the latter makes it his business to show Jesus everywhere as the Jewish Messiah and to trace every individual occurrence back to that, Ur-Luke refrains from adducing, from the life of Jesus, precisely the most characteristic proofs of that dignity. He tells nothing of his Davidic descent, nothing of the solemn new legislation which he, as Messiah, had to promulgate, nothing of the comprehensive

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fulfillment of the prophecies, which is brought out so prominently in Matthew. The writing of Ur-Luke contains nothing of Jesus’s royal entry into Jerusalem, nothing of his promise to return as king,²¹ nothing of his exclusive destination for Israel, which, according to Matthew’s report, he always observes. The sensory elaboration which Matthew gives of the return and the final judgment of the Lord (Matthew 25:31 ff.) Ur-Luke avoids; he reports neither the accompaniment of the angels with whom Christ will appear again (Matthew 24:31), nor does he mention the thrones on which the twelve disciples will judge Israel (Matthew 19:28), nor does he designate blessedness so directly as a banquet as Matthew does (Matthew 8:11).²² The chief weight of the Lukan account of the promise of the parousia of Christ lies in the circumstance that it will come to pass surprisingly and unexpectedly (Luke 17:24; 21:35), and it is indeed precisely denied that the coming of the divine kingdom is subject to external observation (Luke 17:20).²³ In the remaining

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points, however, which Matthew adduces as proof of the messianic dignity of Jesus, Ur-Luke directly contradicts him. We have already set forth how far the Lukan Jesus keeps from a Jewish particularism, and associates with Samaritans without ado, in that he nowhere appears as restorer of the law, but outright proclaims its end. The report of the royal entry of Jesus into the capital, which occupies so significant a place in Matthew, and is designated by him as the fulfillment of an important prophecy, seems likewise to be outright excluded by Ur-Luke. For while, according to Matthew 21:1 ff., one must form the view that Jesus wanted to appear as king and to set his hand to the outward shaping of the kingdom, in Luke he declares the opinion, that he is going to Jerusalem in order to establish his kingdom, to be an erroneous one (Luke 19:11 ff.).²⁴ Furthermore, Ur-Luke never, as Matthew does, adduces from the Old Testament the proof of the significance and dignity of Jesus. Only at a single passage does Jesus apply a word of the psalmist to himself (Luke 21:41–44), but precisely with the intention of rejecting a presupposition of Matthew. He appeals to the fact that David calls the Messiah his Lord, and asks how then this one can be the son of that one. Matthew too, to be sure, relates this inference (Matthew 22:41 ff.), but in the context of his writing it is neutralized by the prevailing view that Jesus is of Davidic descent. In the writing of Ur-Luke, however, that utterance of Jesus evidently has a very high significance, because the author also otherwise removes from Jesus all the marks of a Jewish Messiah, and certainly not without intention draws this testimony alone for Jesus from the Old Testament.

One sees, then, that the conception of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah is for Ur-Luke only an isolated notice, which in his view does not in any degree express the character of Jesus exhaustively,

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and is at most a point of connection for another view of his person. It is, by contrast, much harder to say under what point of view the history of Jesus appeared to him at all, or what result he has positively drawn from it. For this, not entirely certain data are available in the composition and grouping of his Gospel history. The explanations of Jesus’s higher nature which the history of his birth and baptism contain in Matthew are a firm basis for the understanding of the whole first Gospel. This key too we must do without in Ur-Luke, who introduces Jesus to us at once as a teacher in Capernaum. Yet precisely this first section of his Gospel (Luke 4:31–37) will not have been placed at the head without intention. Two points are to be distinguished in it. First, the testimony which the demoniac bears to Jesus’s dignity and might (ἦλθες ἀπολέσαι ἡμᾶς· οἶδά σε τίς εἶ, ὁ ἅγιος τοῦ θεοῦ [you have come to destroy us: I know you, who you are, the Holy One of God]. v. 34), and the power which Jesus actually exercises over the demon by his word (v. 35). Strange as it may appear, the demon serves here, just as John the Baptist does in the other Gospels, to proclaim Jesus as the one he is, and to introduce him into his activity. As the latter is capable of his testimony only as a divine prophet, and besides this the miracle at the baptism is added as accreditation, so here it is the superhuman nature of the demon which makes it possible for him to recognize the one who is stronger than he is. From this it follows that there is nothing to object to at the beginning of our Gospel, since Jesus is introduced into his activity by a sufficient testimony. But secondly, precisely this first encounter of Jesus with the devil, and the power which he proves over him, seems to permit an inference to the overall view which is to be carried through in the Gospel. This would be the conception that Jesus, as the one superior to the demons and to Satan, is the redeemer from evil and from ill. As

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such, however, he must himself also be of superhuman origin, as this is indirectly expressed in the question of the eyewitnesses of that expulsion of the demon: τίς ὁ λόγος οὗτος; ὅτι ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ἐπιτάσσει τοῖς ἀκαθάρτοις πνεύμασι, καὶ ἐξέρχονται [What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out] (v. 36). That this power over the demons, and the testimony which they bore to Jesus, must have been very important to the author, is proved by the statement in v. 41: ἐξήρχετο δὲ καὶ δαιμόνια ἀπὸ πολλῶν, κράζοντα καὶ λέγοντα· ὅτι σὺ εἶ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ [and demons also came out of many, crying out and saying: You are the Son of God]²⁵, which is contained in a summarizing report of Jesus’s activity. It is also especially brought out in another account of his teaching and healing activity: καὶ οἱ ὀχλούμενοι ἀπὸ πνευμάτων ἀκαθάρτων ἐθεραπεύοντο [and those who were troubled by unclean spirits were healed] (Luke 6:18). For that reason, then, the Twelve also receive, at their sending out, δύναμιν καὶ ἐξουσίαν ἐπὶ πάντα τὰ δαιμόνια [power and authority over all the demons] (Luke 9:1), and the Seventy, as standing in Jesus’s service, have the experience, and joyfully declare it to the Lord, that καὶ τὰ δαιμόνια ὑποτάσσεται ἡμῖν ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι σου [the demons also are subject to us in your name] (Luke 10:17). To this utterance Jesus now attaches a discourse which we believe we may at the same time take as the expression of the author’s view of the person of Jesus. The power over the individual demons is here first grounded in the fact that their prince, Satan himself, has lost his power (ἐθεώρουν τὸν σατανᾶν ὡς ἀστραπὴν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ πεσόντα [I was watching Satan fall like lightning from heaven] v. 19). It is of course to be presupposed that he has lost it through Christ himself, for otherwise the latter could not, as happens in v. 20, confer on his own the ἐξουσία ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ ἐχθροῦ [authority over all the power of the enemy]. However much it now appears, however, as though by this only the power over the outward harmful influences of the devil had been designated, since in particular the πατεῖν ἐπάνω ὄφεων καὶ σκορπίων [treading upon serpents and scorpions] is adduced as an example, and as though

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in verse 20 that same power were greatly diminished, — it is nevertheless probable that that promise too, ὅτι τὰ ὀνόματα ὑμῶν ἐγράφη ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς [that your names were written in heaven], is thought of as dependent on the defeat of the devil and of all his power, namely of sin and of evil as well. The contrast between μὴ χαίρετε [do not rejoice] and χαίρετε δὲ [but rejoice] must in any case not be taken too strictly, because then verse 19 would be entirely meaningless; but the relative contrast can, in the context of the passage, rest only on this, that the disciples are directed from the possession of power over the demons in others to the certainty of their own redemption: which has become possible precisely by this, that the devil has been cast down by Christ. As the cause of this it is stated by Jesus that πάντα μοι παρεδόθη ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός μου [all things have been delivered to me by my Father] (v. 22). For whoever would break the devil’s superhuman force must himself be equipped with divine power. As support for this assertion he then adduces that he is the only mediator of the knowledge of God (οὐδεὶς ἔγνω τίς ἐστιν ὁ πατὴρ εἰ μὴ ὁ υἱὸς, καὶ τίς ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς εἰ μὴ ὁ πατὴρ, καὶ ᾧ ἐὰν βούληται ὁ υἱὸς ἀποκαλύψαι [no one knew who the Father is except the Son, and who the Son is except the Father, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him]), without whom the kings and prophets of the Old Testament also could not have attained the revelation of God for which they longed (vv. 23, 24).²⁶ Jesus therefore counts for Ur-Luke as the vicegerent and revealer of God, invested with the whole of divine power, who by his defeat of all satanic power effects the redemption of men from outward and inward ill, and by his teaching, which for that reason is also outright called ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ [the word of God] (Luke 5:1),²⁷ opens the knowledge of God which was closed to the ancients. To this high significance which Jesus holds in Ur-Luke there corresponds completely the one testimony which he adduces for himself from the Old Testament,

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namely that he is “the Lord of David” (Luke 20:41–44); nor is a passage found anywhere where Jesus, as happens more often in Matthew, placed himself in the rank of the prophets.²⁸ It is so high a dignity which, for the view of Ur-Luke, conceals itself under the title of the Jewish Messiah, a title which, as is understandable, has sunk for the Paulinist only to a subordinate significance. But that that conception of Christ, like much else in our Gospel, is likewise explicable only through the Pauline standpoint of the author, must not go unrecognized. It is evidently also the conception of the contrast of sin and grace, around which the theology of Paul turns, which is reflected in the relationship of Christ to the devil and his kingdom, according to the evangelist’s presentation. Christ is therefore viewed as the holder of divine power, because his work is to overcome and to destroy Satan and evil. But as to how the evangelist may have mediated that conception to himself theologically, all traces of that are lacking; and we must give up the wish to discern it even merely by analogy. Rather, however, it does not appear at all necessary to presuppose a theological mediation in his case, since the historical impression of the extraordinary greatness of the Redeemer, as it shimmers through the Gospel, can subsist independently of all dogmatic definiteness. Only let one beware of confusing this absolute view of the person of Jesus with the absolute concept of that person, as it is present in the Logos idea.²⁹ Paul too, who, if ever anyone was, was absorbed in the absolute view of the person of Christ, had not dogmatically arrived at setting up a fixed and closed concept of it,

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and one would be doing very wrong to regard him as a witness for the Logos idea, toward the attainment of which he has made only an incomplete approach. The Gospel of Ur-Luke therefore belongs, however clearly its other party-distinctive features stand out, with respect to the conception of the person of Christ, to the pre-dogmatic period. In this respect it coincides with the Gospel of Matthew and with the Apocalypse. From the former, indeed, the preliminary history must be excepted, in which the concept of πνεῦμα [spirit] is applied dogmatically to Jesus. But at the same time the difference is also not to be missed which obtains between Ur-Luke on the one side and Matthew and the Apocalypse on the other. Both show Jesus, just as Ur-Luke does, as the holder of the whole divine power (Matthew 28:18: ἐδόθη μοι πᾶσα ἐξουσία ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς [all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth]; Revelation 5:12: ἄξιόν ἐστι τὸ ἀρνίον τὸ ἐσφαγμένον λαβεῖν τὴν δύναμιν καὶ πλοῦτον καὶ σοφίαν καὶ ἰσχὺν καὶ τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν καὶ εὐλογίαν [the Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive the power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing]), but, be it well noted, only after his resurrection, so that the conception lies at the basis that Jesus acquired his dignity as God’s vicegerent only through his death. In the passage of Luke treated above, this dignity is ascribed to him already in his earthly life, in distinction from Matthew, in whom the parallel passages stand without significance for the overall view of the Gospel.³⁰ But the conception of Matthew and of the Apocalypse is without doubt the more original, since it evidently gives more expression to the impression which the fate of Christ was bound to make upon those who stood nearest to him. His earthly life could show them nothing of the fullness of divine power which the believers were inwardly compelled to ascribe to him; they could ground their faith only on the plenary power of the risen and transfigured one. Only a younger generation could advance to beholding the earthly life of Jesus too in the splendor of divine fullness of power, which

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our Gospel ascribes to him. This difference is then shown also by a comparison of the two portrayals of the death of Jesus. The last word of Jesus in Matthew is θεέ μου ἱνατί με ἐγκατέλιπες [My God, why have you forsaken me?] (Matthew 27:46); in Luke, by contrast, πάτερ εἰς χεῖρας σου παραθήσομαι τὸ πνεῦμά μου [Father, into your hands I will commit my spirit] (Luke 23:46).³¹ In this word there shows himself the one to whom all things have been delivered by the Father, and who renounces life out of his own plenary power; that word of the Matthean Christ, by contrast, makes it impossible to presuppose, in the evangelist’s sense, such a view of Christ as we have demonstrated in Ur-Luke. In expectation of death, Jesus shows himself not as a strong Lord over all, but as a weak man, and so this trait corresponds completely to the view of the non-absoluteness of the earthly life of Jesus.

As the result of this investigation of the dogmatic character of Ur-Luke, it is therefore to be established that the historical material of the life of Jesus is so selected and so grouped that it corresponds to the Pauline principles.³² Christ appears as the conqueror of the devil, equipped with all divine power, and as such does not restrict his activity to the Jewish people, but, with the intention of saving all that is lost, turns at once to the Gentiles. He proclaims the end of the law as soon as the invitation to the divine kingdom begins; he commends the quiet trust in divine grace in preference to the bustle of fulfilling the law; and, still more particularly, by the precedence granted to the Seventy, he as it were prophetically takes the great apostle to the Gentiles under his protection against the jealousy of the twelve original disciples. With this, however, as has already been indicated at individual points, the character of the Gospel is still not

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exhausted. Not all sections of the Gospel let themselves be subordinated to those Pauline points of view; rather, for almost every individual proposition there are found contradictory sections: or such as seem at least to restrict the validity of that dogmatic tendency, and do not let it appear entirely pure. The cases in which Jesus himself refers to the observance partly of the ceremonial law (Luke 5:14; 17:14), partly of the moral law, as a means of blessedness (Luke 10:28; 18:20), contradict the proposition that the dominion of the law has come to an end with the Baptist. Alongside the commendation of the humble acceptance of grace there stands, in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, the conception of the merit of works (Luke 6:35; 18:29, 30). Only the destination of salvation for the Gentiles appears in the Gospel without restriction; the author, by contrast, in the setting of Peter into the background, which Peter evidently experiences in relation to the first Gospel, has not gone so far as to displace him entirely from the place which he occupies among the disciples of Jesus as their representative and head (Luke 22:32), and, without prejudice to his non-Jewish activity and to his dignity as God’s vicegerent in all things, the name of Jesus as υἱὸς θεοῦ [Son of God] has not yet lost its original sense as Jewish Messiah (Luke 22:67, 70; 23:3). These observations are probably the best suited to refute the opinion about our Gospel, as though it were a pure tendency writing, in which case, naturally, there could no longer be much question of historical credibility. For, supposing the case that the author’s overall view of Christ and of his activity did not correspond to the actual state of affairs, then at least those elements which would not let themselves be subordinated to the Pauline party tendency would, in the fact that they have nevertheless been taken up by the author, have a guarantee of their credibility. The investigation of the credibility of the Gospel in detail leads first to the question of how matters stand with the pragmatic arrangement of the writing.