Chapter III. The pragmatic design of Ur-Luke

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Chapter III. The Pragmatic Design of the Gospel Writing of Ur-Luke

It is hard to discover in the Gospel any definite order, be it temporal or according to subject. The exactness in the opening formula, ἐν ἔτει πεντεκαιδεκάτῳ Τιβερίου καίσαρος κατῆλθεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς Καπερναούμ, πόλιν τῆς Γαλιλαίας [in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Jesus went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee] (Luke 4:31),¹ stands very much alone, and is missed in the further course of the narrative. The linking of the individual sections is effected by quite loose formulas, such as ἐγένετο δὲ [and it came to pass], in which there does not lie even so much as the intention of expressing a temporal succession.² Only individual groups are linked, by the relation of their members to one another, into a temporal unity. To these belong the three sections in chapter 4: the healing in Capernaum (vv. 31–37), with the close, καὶ ἐξεπορεύετο ἦχος περὶ αὐτοῦ εἰς πάντα τόπον τῆς περιχώρου [and a report went out concerning him into every place of the surrounding region]; the scene in the synagogue at Nazareth, which is conditioned by the spread of that story in Capernaum; and a healing activity mentioned in general, which by δύνοντος τοῦ ἡλίου [as the sun was setting] (v. 40) is attached to the departure from Nazareth.³

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Likewise the Sermon on the Mount, and the selection of the 12 disciples which preceded it, and the healing of the servant of the centurion at Capernaum, belong together (Luke 6:12–7:10). This second appearance of Jesus in Capernaum is distinguished from the first, portrayed in chapter 4, by the fact that Jesus is now surrounded by disciples. The narrative of the raising of the young man at Nain would belong in the same temporal connection, if the reading ἐν τῇ ἑξῆς sc. ἡμέρᾳ [on the next, scilicet day] were to be preferred to ἐν τῷ ἑξῆς sc. χρόνῳ [in the next, scilicet time]. The latter, for which a large series of witnesses speaks, has been defended by Schleiermacher,⁴ in particular by comparison with the formula ἐν τῷ καθεξῆς [in what follows] occurring in Luke 8:1; for the other ground, that Jesus would not so soon have left the dwelling place of himself and of his disciples, so that something improbable in itself is therefore involved, must not be applied so directly as a standard to the evangelist’s narrative. De Wette, by contrast, insists on the received reading,⁵ in that he claims it, by comparison of Acts 21:1; 25:17; 27:18, as a standing expression of Luke, whereas τῷ [the neuter article] is joined with καθεξῆς [what follows]. Of those three passages, two now belong to the travel report, and one, by contrast, to the author of the Acts of the Apostles. The latter, however, is different from the author of the original Gospel which we are considering here, and we have no right at all to assert the identity of that man, from whom the travel report inserted into the Acts of the Apostles derives, with our Ur-Luke. But the linguistic usage of two other men is certainly not a standard for a third, and so, with Schleiermacher, we prefer the reading ἐν τῷ ἑξῆς [in the next], especially since at Luke 9:37 the complete formula ἐν τῇ ἑξῆς ἡμέρᾳ [on the next day] stands, and it thereby becomes improbable that τῇ ἑξῆς [on the next] was written without ἡμέρᾳ [day]. We may not, therefore, set that narrative of the raising of the dead man into immediate connection with the section indicated above.

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A third group of events, standing in a temporal connection, is Luke 8:22–56: the storm on the lake, the healing of the Gadarene demoniac beyond the lake, and the raising of the daughter of Jairus on the return to Galilee, into which narrative the story of the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage is also woven.

Further, there are brought together in a temporal linking the confession of Peter (Luke 9:18–27), the transfiguration (vv. 28–36, μετὰ τοὺς λόγους τούτους ὡσεὶ ἡμέραι ὀκτώ [after these words, about eight days]), and the healing, by Jesus, of the demoniac which had not succeeded for the disciples (vv. 37–45 ἐν τῇ ἐξῆς ἡμέρᾳ [on the next day]).

Apart from these cases, we meet with a secure chronological order only from Luke 18:17 on, from the approach of Jesus to Jericho until his end.

Besides this, we encounter at a few passages of the Gospel a grouping according to principles of subject matter. Thus it is with Luke 5:27–39, where the two reproaches of the Pharisees, that Jesus ate with his disciples among tax collectors and sinners, and that his disciples did not fast as did those of John, are joined not temporally, as in Matthew (9:14), but on account of the similarity of the subject. This is also the case with the two examples of the transgression of the Sabbath law (Luke 6:1–11), which are linked only by the formula ἐγένετο δὲ καὶ ἐν ἑτέρῳ σαββάτῳ [and it came to pass also on another Sabbath] (v. 6). Further, the story of the young man at Nain has evidently been placed before the message of the Baptist to Jesus (Luke 7:11–17) only so that Jesus may be justified when, in the enumeration of his activity, he also names νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται [the dead are raised] (v. 22).⁶ This causal connection of the two sections is of course, in the writer’s sense, also a temporal one, which however naturally does not emerge definitely enough, because it depends on that point of view (καὶ ἀπήγγειλαν Ἰωάννη οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ

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περὶ πάντων τούτων, καὶ προσκαλεσάμενος κ. τ. λ. [concerning all these things, and having called them to him, and the rest] vv. 18, 19). Further, the intervening arrival of the mother and brothers of Jesus at the explanation of the parable of the sower (Luke 8:20)⁷ is evidently narrated here because the answer given by Jesus, μήτηρ μου καὶ ἀδελφοί μου οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ ἀκούοντες καὶ ποιοῦντες [my mother and my brothers are these, who hear the word of God and do it] (v. 21), agrees in thought with the sentence of the explanation of the parable: τὸ δὲ ἐν τῇ καλῇ γῇ οὗτοί εἰσιν οἵτινες ἐν καρδίᾳ καλῇ καὶ ἀγαθῇ ἀκούσαντες τὸν λόγον κατέχουσι, καὶ καρποφοροῦσιν ἐν ὑπομονῇ [and that in the good ground are those who, having heard the word in a good and honest heart, hold it fast, and bear fruit in patience] (v. 15). One sees that it is only a different parabolic clothing of the same thought; and this similarity seems to have occasioned their having been moved close to one another in time as well.

The largest section whose arrangement rests on an interest of subject matter is plainly Luke 9–10:24. This is, as has already been remarked above, the opposition, intended by the author, of the seventy apostles to the Gentiles to the twelve original apostles. The first half of the ninth chapter follows, to be sure, probably a natural connection independent of the author’s tendency. The narrative of the feeding of the five thousand may well have been connected in the tradition with the return of the disciples. Jesus’s question, as what he would be held to be, and the confession of Peter which follows upon it, necessarily presupposes the sending out and the return of the disciples. The lacuna between the sending out and the return of the disciples is marked and filled by the mention of the same rumors about Jesus which Peter afterward mentions again (vv. 7–9; cf. v. 19), so that the author’s intention is clear: to report something here as having happened which is the presupposition and the content of Peter’s subsequent report. Those rumors about Jesus are thereby presented all the more vividly, in that they are set in relation to Herod. But the narratives from v. 28 on plainly present themselves as a collection of characteristic traits of the Twelve, which

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has been appended by the author to the narrative hitherto, and, in relation to the relationship of the Seventy to Jesus and to his purpose depicted in chapter 10, betrays the intention of setting the Twelve down at the expense of the Seventy. This is done chiefly by showing that Jesus had cause to be dissatisfied with the Twelve and satisfied with the Seventy.⁸

This observation altogether prevents me from joining the view that, in the writer’s sense, the report of the journey to Jerusalem began with Luke 9:51, and that the author accordingly wished everything following to be understood as though it had happened in Samaria on the way to the capital. That view is, so far as I know, held to this day by all expositors and critics, despite the fact that the section Luke 9:51–18:14 contains a multitude of events which cannot possibly have occurred on that route through Samaria. Thus it is improbable that the Pharisee whose invitation Jesus accepts, and at whose house he delivers the discourse of rebuke against the Pharisees in general (Luke 11:37 ff.), lives in Samaria. The Sabbath healing in a synagogue (Luke 13:10) also requires the assumption of a place other than Samaria. Just as little does the Pharisee’s banquet on the Sabbath, in which Jesus takes part (Luke 14:1 ff.), fit there; nor the appearance of the Pharisees and the scribes (Luke 15:2). That the author, further, placed the sending out and the return of the Seventy (Luke 10:1 f.) in the short time of the journey to Samaria is likewise not quite to be believed. The twice-repeated reference to that journey also (Luke 13:23: καὶ διεπορεύετο κατὰ πόλεις καὶ κώμας, διδάσκων καὶ πορείαν ποιούμενος εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ [and he was going through cities and villages, teaching and making his way to Jerusalem]. Luke 17:11: καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι αὐτὸν εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ καὶ αὐτὸς διήρχετο διὰ μέσου Σαμαρείας καὶ Γαλιλαίας [and it came to pass, as he was journeying to Jerusalem, that he himself was passing through the midst of Samaria and Galilee]) permits, in my opinion, no inference to the evangelist’s view of the locality into which the sections that follow the narratives thus introduced, Luke 14:1 ff. and

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17:20 ff., are to be placed, in both of which it is precisely Pharisees who appear.⁹ Since, then, those three formulas in which the journey through Samaria is mentioned need be referred only to the individual sections connected with them, while besides this a great series of sections decidedly resists the view that their content related to Samaria, the view is in any case to be preferred according to which the evangelist did not at all intend, from Luke 9:51 on, to give a travel report, rather than that one should, on account of the contradictions which proceed from the opposite assumption, level against him the charge of clumsiness or of inaccuracy.¹⁰ That threefold mention of Samaria and of the journey on which Jesus visited this country comes evidently partly from this, that in two cases (Luke 9:51; 17:11) an encounter with Samaritans is narrated; partly, that statement may have been connected, in the tradition which supplied it to the author, with the discourse of Jesus in Luke 13:22 ff., namely that it had been delivered on the journey to Jerusalem. Apart, then, from those isolated statements of time and place, all the narratives and discourses from Luke 9:51–18:30 lack any indication of a principle of arrangement common to them, since, apart from the connection of subject matter between chapters 9 and 10 already mentioned, such a one is sought in vain. We therefore have before us, in this part of the Gospel, only a loose aggregate of individual narratives and discourses, which, however, the author himself also wished to be regarded as nothing else. Only with the approach of Jesus to Jericho (Luke 18:35), upon which the further journey to Jerusalem is then narrated in precise connection, does the narrative serve as a necessary introduction to the catastrophe in the capital, though one not particularly marked off from the preceding section.

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The difficulties which our explanation avoids with the greatest ease are only increased by the way out which Schleiermacher took, in that he wanted to discover, in the alleged travel report, a mixing of two reports, one of which would concern Jesus’s journey to the Feast of Dedication [Enkänienfest] (John 10:22), the other his journey to the last Passover.¹¹ For, in order to make it probable that this mixing had been undertaken by someone to whom the stay of Jesus in Jerusalem at the Feast of Dedication had remained unknown, one needs the demonstration of a seam which such a reworker would surely have left. For the indication of such a seam Schleiermacher would now most like to take the notice in Luke 13:22 (καὶ διέπορεύετο κατὰ πόλεις καὶ κώμας, διδάσκων καὶ πορείαν ποιούμενος εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ [and he was going through cities and villages, teaching and making his way to Jerusalem]), which he regards as the concluding remark of the section Luke 9:51–13:22, according to which nothing further worth remark occurred on this journey, and what now follows would deliberately have been set in another time.¹² Against this, however, Schleiermacher himself now raises the objection that Jesus would already have been led to Bethany in the narrative of Mary and Martha (Luke 16:38 ff.), and for that reason he lets the whole attempt to reconstruct the individual elements of that travel narrative fall again. Even if the latter point stands as Schleiermacher thinks, it is nevertheless also not to be granted that that formula in Luke 13:22 is to be regarded as a concluding formula. For, apart from the fact that Schleiermacher himself attaches it not to v. 21 but, as a continuation, to v. 17, “since the parables in the intervening verses had probably been inserted by the author, since he was about to conclude,” those words in v. 22 are not of such a kind that they form a satisfying conclusion. Schleiermacher’s remark, that “they evidently formed a concluding formula, for as an opening formula of the following

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narrative surely no one could wish to regard them,” is calculated rather to intimidate than to convince. That formula, by contrast, rather suggests the expectation that one is to hear more of the continuation of that journey than that the report so far is thereby closed. The worst of it, however, is that that view of Schleiermacher’s has not proceeded at all from the observation of that section of our Luke, which rather contains stories that must have occurred partly on the journey to Jerusalem and partly in Galilee, but that only the effort to force the evangelist’s report into the chronological scheme of the fourth Gospel has called forth that view in him.

If, then, Schleiermacher’s theory, that a series of shorter essays lies at the basis of the Gospel of Luke, finds no application to the so-called travel report, but in this case nothing remains but to assume that the author of the Gospel assembled the individual narratives and discourses as they were offered to him by tradition, the question still arises whether the earlier part of the Gospel does not exhibit traces by which the use and insertion of such smaller diegeses [Diegesen, short written narratives] becomes probable. Here, of course, we examine only the application of Schleiermacher’s theory to Ur-Luke, and set aside for the present the preliminary history of canonical Luke.

The principle according to which Schleiermacher judges whether a narrative lay before the author of the Gospel originally as a written whole is the observation whether it is provided with a concluding formula. He expresses himself on this as follows: “Let this be established here once and for all as a principle which, it being understood that one has leave to admit exceptions to it when they are especially well grounded, will presumably easily be acknowledged by everyone: that a continuous narrative does not go back from the particular to the general, except when it entirely abandons the subject.

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A single event, by contrast, narrated for itself, offers no satisfying conclusion, except where the artistic form strictly closes it. Everyone feels this, and adds something general, just as every love story in the popular manner is not content to close with the marriage, but then adds further that the couple lived contentedly for many years, blessed with offspring. But where the subject is treated further, and one particular is strung upon another, such a return to the general is entirely out of place, and cannot occur to any narrator who is not wholly unintelligent.”¹³ Of a judgment on this critical principle in general we must refrain, because such a judgment is always only a matter of critical tact, and a contradictory judgment can at best be grounded on nothing more than the critical tact of someone else.

It is also doubtful, however, whether the general formulas in Luke, for the sake of which Schleiermacher set up that canon, are really to be regarded only as concluding formulas, or whether they do not also have the character of introducing the narratives that follow. The latter we must assert decidedly of Luke 4:14, 15, which does not yet properly belong to the original stock of the Gospel, but serves excellently for the appraisal of that view. Apart from the correctness of the statement contained in it, concerning the reputation which Jesus had acquired before his activity as a teacher is mentioned, at which Schleiermacher rightly takes exception,¹⁴ the mark which the so-called concluding formulas are supposed to have in themselves, namely that as general remarks they follow upon particulars, does not apply to this passage at all. What had preceded was the narrative of Jesus’s baptism and temptation, a narrative of particulars. But is it now

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not another particular, that Jesus appeared teaching and acquired renown? For the formula cannot be compared at all with other similar ones which we shall meet further on. Where journeys, miracles, and discourses of Jesus are reported in the particular, a general formula, as for example in Luke 4:43 (καὶ ἦν κηρύσσων ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς τῆς Γαλιλαίας [and he was preaching in the synagogues of Galilee]), must be regarded as a resting point and a concluding point. In our case, however, this does not hold. To anyone who has heard of Jesus’s baptism and temptation, the report of his teaching activity is something entirely new, by which expectation is strained, and attention is not set at rest. If now, as is the case here, an example of the teaching activity is given immediately afterward, that general formula must rather be regarded as the introduction to it. Schleiermacher holds this to be improbable because the following narrative presupposes acquaintance not only with Jesus’s teaching activity, but also with his miracles. From this, however, it follows only that the author has not designed his narrative in the most skillful way, but not that it was not his intention, by that general remark, to prepare for that story which does after all show Jesus as a teacher.

How deceptive Schleiermacher’s principle is appears further at Luke 4:37 (καὶ ἐξεπορεύετο ἦχος περὶ αὐτοῦ εἰς πάντα τόπον τῆς περιχώρου [and a report went out concerning him into every place of the surrounding region]), a verse on which he has, to be sure, not expressed himself more closely, but which, in the general judgment that all the narratives now following had originally existed individually,¹⁵ he declares to be a concluding formula in his sense. Although, then, he does not consider this verse more closely, he evidently means it when he speaks of the wholly superfluous and scarcely comprehensible recurrence of the formulas concerning the spread of Jesus’s renown. In the context of canonical Luke, to be sure, precisely this verse is not to be comprehended. We recall, however, that originally

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the narrative of the scene in Nazareth followed the section vv. 31–37, and that thereupon, with the omission of verses 38, 39, the section from verse 40 on followed. In this connection that verse, even while it serves as a concluding formula, is at the same time the link to what follows, since it is the necessary presupposition of the circumstance that the Nazarenes know of the miracle in Capernaum. Once the original relationship of the individual sections of the fourth chapter has in this way been established, the objection also falls away, that verse 30 (αὐτὸς δὲ διελθὼν διὰ μέσου αὐτῶν ἐπορεύετο [but he, having passed through their midst, went on]) forms no secure conclusion, for which reason Schleiermacher¹⁶ wanted to join it directly with καὶ κατῆλθεν εἰς Καπερναούμ [and he went down to Capernaum]. Rather, the words to be joined with it, δύνοντος δὲ τοῦ ἡλίου [and as the sun was setting] (v. 40), form the necessary supplement to the unfinished conclusion. Schleiermacher further discovers, in Luke 4:31–7:10, two original collections, which, coming from different men, were assembled by the author of the Gospel. The first of them would have contained miracle stories; the second, discourses of Jesus, for which, to be sure, miracles served in some cases as the occasion. The first story of the second collection is supposed to be Luke 5:18–26.¹⁷ Thus vv. 15–17 would be the concluding formula for the first collection. This view meets with considerable difficulties, however, in that the first collection of miracle stories includes the call of the first disciples (Luke 5:1–11), in which the miraculous is just as subordinate as it is supposed to be in the narrative of the paralytic. The second collection, that of the discourses, also includes, besides the story just named, that of the healing of the servant in Capernaum (Luke 7:1–10), in which one looks in vain for discourses of Jesus which are supposed to form the purpose of the narrative. If in this way Schleiermacher’s statement about the differing interest of subject matter in the two alleged collections is illusory, then the passage which we are to regard as the concluding

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formula of the first likewise by no means justifies the separation of those two sections. Since Schleiermacher has not entered into it with any precision, and dates the following narrative directly from verse 18, verse 18 alone would already suffice to characterize the whole formula as a transitional formula. But even if we assign this verse to the following narrative, the words in verse 15 (συνήρχοντο ὄχλοι πολλοὶ ἀκούειν καὶ θεραπεύεσθαι ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἀσθενειῶν αὐτῶν [great crowds were coming together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities]) have just as much reference to the following story of the healing and to the notice καὶ ἦν διδάσκων [and he was teaching] (v. 17) as to any one of the preceding narratives. In this section too, then, no more of an original connection is to be discovered than we have already indicated above.

Further, Luke 7:11–50 is again supposed to have been an original small diegesis.¹⁸ The connection between the raising of the young man of Nain and the message of the Baptist we have acknowledged; we must deny, by contrast, that the story of the anointing of Jesus by the sinful woman was attached on the occasion of the φίλος τελωνῶν καὶ ἁμαρτωλῶν [a friend of tax collectors and sinners] (v. 34), since this belongs to a section which was inserted only by the reviser. If one now thinks verses 29–35 away, every ground is lacking for assuming a connection between the discourse about the Baptist and the event that follows.

That Luke 8:1–21 stands in a continuous connection has been explained by us above: the first three verses serve, as Schleiermacher rightly remarks,¹⁹ as the introduction to, and the necessary presupposition of, verse 4 (συνιόντος δὲ ὄχλου πολλοῦ καὶ τῶν κατὰ πόλιν ἐπιπορευομένων πρὸς αὐτόν [and as a great crowd was gathering, and those from town after town were resorting to him]), and precisely the comparison of this passage with Luke 5:15–17 proves how the concluding formulas are ordinarily also turned into transitions at the same time. But that the section thus designated is to be held an original writing, for that one misses, after

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verse 21, the proper concluding formula, which would point back to the situation indicated at the beginning. For the assumption that the evangelist had omitted it would contradict the presupposition that they would ordinarily have remained. And since they are the only handle for carrying the diegesis theory through, that expedient would be nothing further than the simple affirmation of that for which a proof is necessary, a proof which, however, cannot be given in the present case.

The original connection of the following three stories (Luke 8:22–56) is evident. Nonetheless we also find the first two members provided with such concluding formulas as those on which Schleiermacher otherwise grounds his theory (τίς ἄρα οὗτός ἐστιν, ὅτι καὶ τοῖς ἀνέμοις ἐπιτάσσει καὶ τοῖς ὕδασι; [Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water?] v. 25. καὶ ἀπῆλθε, καθ᾽ ὅλην τὴν πόλιν κηρύσσων ὅσα ἐποίησεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς [and he went away, proclaiming through the whole city what things Jesus had done for him]. v. 39). But when Schleiermacher, notwithstanding this, and following the unmistakable impression that the three stories belong together, explains these formulas only as partial concluding formulas,²⁰ he completely overturns his principle by this exception, well grounded though it is here. If there are pure concluding formulas, the present ones are such; they are so more than those we have met so far. At the same time, however, a higher connection reaches out beyond them, and makes it impossible to regard them as marks of individual small writings. But this higher connection is not excluded by the so-called concluding formulas considered so far either. We must therefore give up recognizing, in that part of the Gospel of Luke which we have considered so far, the diegeses conjectured as an intermediate link between the tradition and the Gospel. That Luke 9:1–50 again cohered in this way is excluded by our view that v. 51 does not begin a travel report. It only remains

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to elucidate the application of Schleiermacher’s view to the last part of the Gospel. Here he assumes first that the two chapters 20 and 21 were an original writing, separated off from what precedes and from what follows. For if one assumed that they came from the same original composer who had written down what precedes, it would have to be striking that the same man had partly repeated, in Luke 21:37, 38, the content of the general notice in Luke 19:47, 48 (καὶ ἦν διδάσκων τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμέραν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ, — ὁ λαὸς γὰρ ἅπας ἐξεκρέματο αὐτοῦ ἀκούων [and he was teaching day by day in the temple, — for all the people were hanging on him as they listened], cf. ἦν δὲ καθ᾽ ἡμέραν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ διδάσκων· — καὶ πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ὤρθριζε πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ ἀκούειν αὐτοῦ [and he was day by day in the temple teaching; — and all the people came early to him in the temple to hear him]), and had partly not already communicated, at the former place, the remark in Luke 21:37: τὰς δὲ νύκτας ἐξερχόμενος ηὐλίζετο εἰς τὸ ὄρος τὸ καλούμενον τῶν ἐλαιῶν [but going out, he lodged for the nights on the mountain called the Mount of Olives]. With respect to what follows, however, Schleiermacher draws attention to the fact that, after there had already been talk, in Luke 19:47 in general and in Luke 20:19 in particular, of plots and schemes of the Pharisees against Jesus, yet at Luke 22:2, in the repetition of that report, no allusion is made to those mentions. This incoherence, as well as the circumstance that only at Luke 22:1 is there talk of the Passover feast for the sake of which Jesus had, after all, come to Jerusalem, makes it necessary, he holds, to assume here a difference of the original authors.²¹ But now an objection easily arises against the assumption that chapters 20 and 21 are an independent relation [Relation, a self-contained narrative], because the first half of them, chapter 20, does to be sure form a unity, in that it contains various attempts of the authorities to elicit from Jesus a compromising utterance, whereas the content of chapter 21, as Schleiermacher himself admits, is only an appendix to the former chapter, mediated by simultaneity,²² and this simultaneity actually connects it only with the last member of what precedes. But besides this,

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the opening formulas καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν μιᾷ τῶν ἡμερῶν [and it came to pass on one of the days] (Luke 20:1) and καί τινων λεγόντων [and as some were saying] (Luke 21:5) are so much in the manner of the author up to this point that the objections to his identity which are grounded on the character of the concluding formula would have to be stronger than they are, in order to carry Schleiermacher’s view. For just as, in itself, such a repetition of what came earlier is entirely natural in the second concluding formula, where only a few examples could be adduced in the particular, so too the later supplying of the circumstance that Jesus had spent the night on the Mount of Olives is not suspect, since that circumstance was of importance to the author at all only in order to motivate the scene at the arrest of the Lord; he therefore recalled it only when the narrative was drawing near to the catastrophe. But that concluding formula in Luke 21:37, 38 is a repetition of the earlier one only by the fact that it is to be taken together with the beginning of chapter 22, where the report of the plots and schemes against Jesus is likewise repeated, and the betrayal of Judas is attached to it. The time notice ἤγγιζε δὲ ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν ἀζύμων ἡ λεγομένη πάσχα [and the feast of unleavened bread, which is called Passover, was drawing near] is evidently to be taken as parenthetical, if not in form, then at least in sense. That the mention of the Passover feast occurs only here is not against the unity of the author, according to whose report Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem has no direct bearing at all on the celebration of the feast, and whom we must credit with placing the mention of the Passover here in the right place. One must only, to be sure, refrain from transferring the Johannine chronology onto our Gospel, according to which Jesus does, to be sure, come to the Jerusalem otherwise well known to him merely for the Passover celebration, whereas our Gospel gives no occasion at all for this view, but rather makes the impression as though Jesus had gone about in Jerusalem for a longer time before the Passover feast, and had given his opponents sufficient occasion to intensify their hatred against him and to prepare his destruction carefully. As, then, the formula of Luke 19:47, 48 serves not so much to close the preceding

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section as also to prepare for the following events, so we must likewise declare illusory the boundary which Schleiermacher saw between chapters 21 and 22. In what follows, the unintelligible character of the section Luke 22:24–38, in which, as we have shown, only vv. 31–34 are original, has induced Schleiermacher to distinguish two original narratives, Luke 22:7–23 and 22:39–23:49, between which that ambiguous section would have crept in.²³ For this, of course, there is no ground if one has recognized those suspect sections as elements that are really foreign, and therefore with ease attaches to v. 23 the section vv. 31–34 and then v. 39 ff.

If we have so far had no cause to recognize the determinations of boundary which Schleiermacher discovers, then the difficulties will also be removed which Schleiermacher finds with regard to the attachment of v. 50 ff. to what precedes in chapter 23.²⁴ We cannot find it so surprising as Schleiermacher does, that Joseph of Arimathia is first characterized in general and that one then passes to his part in the burial of Jesus, whereas one would expect that he would be introduced at once with the mention of this business, and that his further description would be supplied only afterward. For the former is the usual form of so elementary a historiography as we have before us in the Gospels: that, in order to spin a new thread, the one so far is broken off, and then the new one is developed from the beginning. It is not so natural that only at v. 54 it is remarked incidentally, καὶ ἡμέρα ἦν παρασκευὴ καὶ σάββατον ἐπέφωσκε [and it was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was dawning], since the former could well have been remarked earlier, and the latter have been attached to the ὥρα ἐννάτη [ninth hour]. Yet this remark too will find its explanation as preparation for the notice that the women had noted the grave for themselves, but had not undertaken the embalming at once, and also

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not on the following day. Furthermore, however, Schleiermacher, on the presupposition of one author, finds it inexplicable that the women already mentioned at v. 49 are here, shortly afterward, again designated with the full predicate αἵτινες ἦσαν συνεληλυθυῖαι αὐτῷ ἐκ τῆς Γαλιλαίας [who had come with him out of Galilee] (v. 55); especially since it had there been said of them εἱστήκεισαν ἀπὸ μακρόθεν [they were standing at a distance], which, as an appendix to the notice that the multitude had returned, could mean nothing other than that they had left the place of the crucifixion before preparations were made for the burial. And yet afterward they appear as taking part in it. But that repetition of the predicate of the women, though awkward, is nevertheless likewise in the manner of an undeveloped historiography, which is not given to referring back to what was mentioned earlier, but which prefers to incur repetitions. Thus Judas, even after he has already been designated, is nevertheless introduced with ὁ λεγόμενος Ἰούδας [the one called Judas] (22:47; cf. 22:3). But the other exception which Schleiermacher takes rests on an erroneous interpretation of the word εἱστήκεισαν [they were standing] (v. 49). For this does not mean that they had stood there and had gone away with the people, but that they stood there even after the crowds had dispersed. But then this notice is decidedly there in order to introduce the following narrative of the burial, in which the women are mentioned again. There is therefore no ground whatever for assuming another author from Luke 23:50 on, and with this we must give up tracing the Gospel of Luke (in its original form) back to a compilation of smaller written essays.

From this it now follows, however, that the arrangement of the material, which Schleiermacher sought to trace back, at least in part, to eyewitnesses by means of the assumption of smaller diegeses, falls entirely to the author of the Gospel. But the arbitrariness and the lack of a principle in the Gospel can come from nowhere else than from this, that the tradition from which the

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author drew, contained no points of connection for a division and an ordering of the material, and in this case it redounds only to the recommendation of the Gospel if its author refrained from bringing the historical material into an order which belonged to him alone and not to the history itself, but instead placed the individual stories side by side without any further connection. Nevertheless he does make an attempt at a certain division, in that on several occasions he tells of the impression which Jesus’s actions and discourses made upon his opponents, the Pharisees, and thus step by step prepares the reader for the final decision of the opposition. After the first Sabbath healing he remarks: αὐτοὶ (οἱ γραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ φαρισαῖοι) δὲ ἐπλήσθησαν ἀνοίας καὶ διελάλουν πρὸς ἀλλήλους τὶ ἂν ποιήσειαν τῷ Ἰησοῦ [But they (the scribes and the Pharisees) were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus] (Luke 6:11). After the discourse of rebuke against the Pharisees and the scribes, ἤρξαντο δεινῶς ἐνέχειν καὶ ἀποστοματίζειν περὶ πλειόνων, ἐνεδρεύοντες αὐτόν, ζητοῦντες θηρεῦσαί τι ἐκ τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ ἵνα κατηγορήσωσιν αὐτοῦ [they began to press him fiercely and to provoke him to speak about more things, lying in wait for him and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, in order that they might accuse him] (Luke 11:53, 54). Further, after the mention of Jesus’s teaching activity in the temple at Jerusalem, it says: οἱ δὲ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς ἐζήτουν αὐτὸν ἀπολέσαι καὶ οἱ πρῶτοι τοῦ λαοῦ· καὶ οὐχ εὕρισκον τὸ τὶ ποιήσωσιν· ὁ λαὸς γὰρ ἅπας ἐξεκρέματο αὐτοῦ ἀκούων [And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking to destroy him, and the leading men of the people; and they did not find what they might do; for all the people hung upon him as they listened] (Luke 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 [And the chief priests and the scribes sought to lay hands on him in that very hour; and they feared the people] (Luke 20:19). Finally, the report of Judas’s offer is then connected with the repeated statement καὶ ἐζήτουν οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς τὸ πῶς ἀνέλωσιν αὐτὸν, ἐφοβοῦντο γὰρ τὸν λαόν [And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how they might put him to death, for they feared the people] (Luke 22:2), whereby the prospect of the final outcome is opened. The escalation of the estrangement expressed in these formulas is evident of itself, and is certainly appropriate to the facts of the case. The relationship of the Pharisees in the section which stands before the first of those formulas is grasped with equal intelligence. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law, whom the fame of Jesus

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has drawn hither from Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem (Luke 5:17), do indeed at once declare it a blasphemy that Jesus forgives the paralytic his sins (v. 21), but their easily stirred jealousy does not yet appear deep-rooted, for the successful healing silences them and wins them over to Jesus (καὶ ἔκστασις ἔλαβεν ἅπαντας καὶ ἐδόξαζον τὸν θεὸν, καὶ ἐπλήσθησαν φόβου, λεγοντες· ὅτι εἴδομεν παράδοξα σήμερον [And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God, and they were filled with fear, saying: We have seen strange things today]. v. 26). They do of course observe Jesus’s further steps; they grumble at his association with the tax collectors (v. 30) and inquire into the ground why Jesus’s disciples do not fast (v. 33); they are also immediately on hand to censure the transgressions of the Sabbath law (Luke 6:2, 7). But only upon the second case of this kind does there follow the result which the formula indicated above contains, whereby the first epoch of Jesus’s activity is brought to a close, but which shows that the judgment and the conduct of the Pharisees toward Jesus are still uncertain. They become more decided only after Jesus’s direct attack upon them (Luke 11:53); yet this remark does not, as the previous one does, form a resting point for the narrative. It refers only to what immediately precedes, for the only encounter of Jesus with a Pharisee which is narrated between Luke 6:11 and Luke 11:53, the meal at the house of such a man, which is made notable by the anointing which a sinful woman performed on Jesus, does not intervene clearly enough in the development of the hostile relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees. One can indeed say that in that section Jesus develops his significance and his position, on their various sides, fairly completely in a thetic and an antithetic way: positively in the Sermon on the Mount (Luke 6:20–49) and in the answer to the scribe (Luke 10:25–37), in the parable of the divine kingdom (Luke 8:4–21), and in the specimen and the teaching on prayer (Luke 11:1–13). The narrative of the sending out and the instruction of the two classes of disciples would offer the necessary supplement to this (Luke 9–10:24). Antithetically there would then be the discourse about the Baptist (Luke 7:18–28), the defense against the charge of being in league with the devil and against the craving for signs (Luke 11:14–36), and the attack upon the

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Pharisees (Luke 11:37–52). But in part there still remain a number of pieces which cannot be fitted into this system, and in part the closing formula (Luke 11:53, 54) constitutes so little a section that Jesus’s discourse is continued immediately afterward, at the same place and with the same reference to the Pharisees. Finally, however, the section enclosed between the formulas of Luke 11:53 and 19:47 is of so varied a content that it can hardly be traced back to one single view and one single tendency. Several sections do indeed stand out, in which the jealous and dangerous attention of the Pharisees to Jesus (Luke 13:14; 14:1; 15:2; 16:14; 17:10; 18:18), and at the same time Jesus’s polemic against the Pharisees, partly open and partly concealed (Luke 12:1; 18:9–14), and against Judaism in general (Luke 14:7–11, 16–24; 15:3–10; 16:19–31; 17:18), are contained, and in which, as it seems, the preparation for the closing formula in Luke 19:47 is supposed to lie. Yet here too much else is interspersed. The two following sections, however, namely chapters 20 and 21 and chapters 22–24, present no difficulties. We have, then, perhaps to conceive the matter thus: that the evangelist wanted to take as his basis that plan of portraying the history of Jesus according to the escalation of the opposition between him and the Pharisees, but that the fullness and independence of the historical material prevented him from carrying that plan through clearly and consistently. We would have in this an analogy with the relationship of his dogmatic tendency to the material, which was likewise too powerful to permit the consistent impress of the very definite dogmatic type. And this analogy must strengthen us in the correctness of our conjecture, that the author laid down, as the principle of division of his Gospel, the development of the opposition between Jesus and the Pharisees. The first section (Luke 4:16–6:11) then divides again into two

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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 (Luke 6:12–11:54) brings Jesus before our eyes in the gradual development of his activity and of his tendency, up to his attack upon the Pharisees. In the third section (Luke 12:1–19:48) the opposition becomes fixed on both sides, without, however, breaking out into conflict. The fourth section (chapters 20 and 21) shows the conflict with equal weapons. The fifth (chapters 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.²⁵

For the outward arrangement of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’s relationship to the Pharisees is not the supreme determining ground, but only the content of the one part. For if we hold the division of the Gospel given by De Wette²⁶ to be the correct one, Matthew places first a positive development of the messianic plan, of the unhindered activity of Jesus, and the narrative of the sending out of the Twelve (Matthew 4:12–10:42). Only the second part (chapters 11–18, or 19:16) tells of the varied reception which his work found, in that he was in part acknowledged and in part rejected by the Pharisaic party. The Pharisees do indeed appear once already in the first part (Matthew 9:11),

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but without any further significance than that, by a question, they call forth Jesus’s well-known explanation of why his disciples were not accustomed to fast. By contrast, the consequence of their first meeting with Jesus in the second part is that they συμβούλιον ἔλαβον κατ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἐξελθόντες, ὅπως αὐτὸν ἀπολέσωσιν [took counsel against him, and went out, so that they might destroy him] (Matthew 12:14), whereas according to Luke (Luke 6:11), by the same occasion, namely the transgression of the Sabbath law, they only ἐπλήσθησαν ἀνοίας καὶ διελάλουν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, τί ἂν ποιήσειαν τῷ Ἰησοῦ [were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus]. In Matthew they are from then on always at Jesus’s side, with slanders and ensnaring questions (Matthew 12:14, 24, 38; 15:1, 15; 16:1; 19:3), but mention of their destructive plans against Jesus is made only at Matthew 21:46. Through this difference of plan in the two evangelists, the difference in the placement of the same stories, such as the Sermon on the Mount, is of course also conditioned. But insight into the principle of arrangement applied by each of the two writers is not sufficient for deciding the question, with which of the two we now find the arrangement more appropriate to the history. For even if there can be no doubt that Luke’s arrangement corresponds to the historical development of the matter, while Matthew, at least in part, but precisely in the most important period of Jesus’s public life, distributes the material systematically, it is still very doubtful whether Luke received from the tradition, together with the historical material itself, the limits which he sets, or whether he did not rather arrange that material arbitrarily into the schema which is in itself correct. In particulars one will perhaps be able, on grounds of probability, to reach a decision as to which of the two reporters one is to follow. A general judgment on the matter, however, one must decline to give.

As regards, finally, the chronological indications which we find in the two Gospel writings compared hitherto, we must call attention to the contradiction in which their statements about the imprisonment of the Baptist appear to stand. Matthew

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namely has Jesus appear only after the imprisonment of John (Matthew 4:12), and accordingly the message of John to Jesus comes from the prison (ὁ δὲ Ἰωάννης ἀκούσας ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ [But when John heard in the prison] Matthew 11:2). In Ur-Luke the latter specification drops out (Luke 7:18); therefore, if one does not from the outset regard Matthew’s report as the correct one, one has no cause to supply the same specification in Luke as well. Rather, this evangelist seems to want the matter understood in such a way that John was at that time still at liberty:²⁷ unless one may infer from Luke 9:7 (ἤκουσε δὲ Ἡρώδης ὁ τετράρχης τὰ γινόμενα ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ πάντα, καὶ διηπόρει διὰ τὸ λέγεσθαι ὑπό τινων, ὅτι Ἰωάννης ἐγήγερται ἐκ νεκρῶν [And Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was being done by him, and he was perplexed because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead]) that John had already at that time been deprived of his liberty, for which, however, given the lack of all chronological indications, one has no indisputable right. Yet Jesus’s discourse at Luke 7:25 ff. also seems to presuppose that the Baptist’s activity has ceased, and by this circumstance Matthew’s specification would be confirmed. But still other chronological indications in Luke also make it necessary to distinguish his presentation more from that of Matthew. We have already recalled several times that the hints which he gives at Luke 19:47, 48; 21:37, 38; 22:1 postulate the assumption that Jesus’s stay in Jerusalem was not so short as it appears according to Matthew. Further, if one follows Luke, one will have no cause to restrict Jesus’s activity to a single year only, if the σάββατον δευτερόπρωτον [second-first Sabbath] (Luke 6:1) is the first Sabbath after the second day of the Passover.²⁸ From all this it follows that the Gospel of Luke differs from that of Matthew too specifically for it, particularly over against the Johannine Gospel, to be classed together with Matthew so without further ado.