Chapter V. Character and origin of the interpolations

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Chapter V

Character and Origin of the Interpolations in the Gospel of Luke

The Gospel we have just been considering is, then, the original stock [Grundstamm] of our third canonical Gospel, whose author made that writing his own by completions, enrichments, and individual corrections, although, as our first investigation showed, the foreign elements that originate from him, only quite externally in connection with the original textual stock,

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have been placed. The preface of the second reworker does not contradict this result either, although, considered by itself, it also offers no real trace for explaining the origin of the third Gospel. The author distinguishes himself in it from the many who, before him, enabled by the reports of the eyewitnesses and of those who took part in the work and in the history of Jesus, have undertaken records of them, and thus presupposes written Gospels. If we have now come to know, as one of them, the one which the author of the third Gospel has made the basis of his writing, then this relationship of his to that preliminary work is not excluded by the words in which the writer of the preface designates the difference of his sources from those of his predecessors. That these have drawn from the oral tradition, he says clearly; of himself he says only that he has carefully followed everything from the beginning and ascertained it. This cautious and not entirely direct expression contains, of course, the admission that the author, in order to attain his purpose, held in particular to those written attempts of his predecessors, although it does not, to be sure, exclude the possibility that he too still drew some things from the tradition. Given the uniformity of the content of those earlier attempts, and the reverence which they in any case must have inspired, it is therefore naturally not to be wondered at if that use of the source writings took place in such a way that one of them was laid down as the basis and was enriched by other elements. For this kind of writing we have, in the relationship of the Second Epistle of Peter to the Epistle of Jude, in that of the Epistle to the Ephesians to the Epistle to the Colossians, and of the Clementine Recognitions to the Homilies, examples which, even if not entirely exact, are nevertheless similar. That our author undertook his work, however, two grounds moved him to that. First, that he had investigated all the events from the beginning (παρηκολουθηκότι ἄνωθεν πᾶσιν ἀκριβῶς [having followed all things accurately from the first]), from which we

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must infer that he missed the necessary completeness in each of the older writings. Then, however, he also ventured to deliver a report full of certainty and reliability. The author proved the completeness of his research in the addition of the narrative of the infancy and the baptism, and so on. In what, however, the ἀσφάλεια [certainty] is supposed to consist is not so easy to recognize. The promise of it seems to indicate a critical procedure, which, however, might contradict the appeal to the source writings that come from eyewitnesses. For precisely these, one would think, guaranteed the credibility of his report. In this case the mark of the ἀσφάλεια would coincide with that of the completeness and the source-based character of the report. For a historical accuracy in the higher sense in which our own time demands it, one will not be entitled to credit it to the evangelist for this reason as well: because, as we have already shown above in the case of some differences between the Marcionite and the canonical text,¹ he pursued, in the reworking of the original Gospel, an anti-Marcionite party interest. That the preface tells us nothing of this is equally natural, since a definite consciousness of the right or wrong of this procedure is not to be looked for in the evangelist. Or should the ἀσφάλεια of the history perhaps consist precisely in its anti-Marcionite form, namely in this, that the points of attachment for Marcion’s interpretations were cleared away? If we might assume this, it would be explained why the ecclesiastical reworker laid down as the basis of his writing precisely that Gospel used by Marcion, which in his eyes lacked the ἀσφάλεια which he conferred on it by making it unfit for Marcion’s use. I conjecture that we may declare this to be the chief purpose of the ecclesiastical redaction, to which the striving for completeness is only subordinate. For if this were the main thing, it would not be explicable

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that, given the abundance of Gospel tradition, the enrichments of the original writing amount, in relation to the whole, to little more than the fourth part, and that Matthew’s Gospel still has, beyond the third, a series of important narratives and discourses. We shall therefore have to distinguish and to investigate, as possible grounds in the case of the interpolations and the additions of the third Gospel, that party tendency and the striving for completeness.

Setting aside for the present the narrative of the infancy, baptism, and temptation of Jesus, we turn to the altered beginning (Luke 4:16–31) which the reviser has given the underlying document [Grundschrift]. He has exchanged the places of the narratives about Jesus’s first appearance in Capernaum and in Nazareth, and by interpolations has conferred on the latter a character originally quite foreign to it. For while, as we have seen, the conduct of the Nazarenes toward Jesus was entirely friendly, the weaving in of the sentence οὐδεὶς προφήτης δεκτός ἐστιν ἐν τῇ πατρίδι αὐτοῦ [no prophet is acceptable in his own country] produces the impression, wholly contradicting the original presentation, as though the Nazarenes had met Jesus with hostility. This interpolation has its ground, evidently, in the story which Matthew 13:54 ff. has preserved, that Jesus answered the contemptuous reception by his countrymen with those words, although the different form of the important words in the two passages perhaps prevents one from assuming a direct borrowing of them from Matthew. But the words in Luke have their purpose in this, that the following words could be attached (vv. 25–27). For just as Matthew has placed the Sermon on the Mount, as it were as a program, at the beginning of Jesus’s activity, because there unfolded in it the significance which Jesus chiefly had for the evangelist, so Luke uses our story in order to equip it with the traits in which, in his view, the chief significance of Jesus consisted. Namely, the

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interpretation of the prophecy, with the conclusion: σήμερον πεπλήρωται ἡ γραφὴ αὕτη ἐν τοῖς ὠσὶν ὑμῶν (vv. 17–21) [Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your ears], shows Jesus as the fulfiller of the prophecies; the allusion, however, to the precedence which Elijah and Elisha granted to Gentiles (vv. 25–27) is meant to ground the setting of the Jews behind the Gentiles with respect to Christianity. If the reviser proves by this that he is a Paulinist, one may well assume that the application of the prophetic passage to Jesus is directed against Marcion. Marcion inferred from the beginning of his Gospel (v. 31) that Jesus entered the world without preparation, without earthly connection. For that reason Jesus himself now had to appeal to his announcement by the prophet; for that reason, too, the reviser undertook the transposition of the two sections, so as not to leave even the appearance that Jesus had first appeared suddenly in Capernaum. With what historical right the evangelist has Jesus utter those inserted discourses will probably have to remain undecided. For even if no doubt can stand against this, that Jesus did in general appeal to passages of the Old Testament, and that in particular a proof for our passage lies in Luke 7:22, it is nevertheless also explicable that the striving of Christians to find points of contact in the Old Testament led them to put proof-texts of that kind already into Jesus’s mouth. Since so definite a tendency of the writer here lies open — a writer who, if he wrote after Marcion, was already separated by a hundred years from the actual events — and since it must furthermore remain doubtful in any case [printed weifelhaft] whether the synagogue at Nazareth was precisely the place for these discourses, inasmuch as Matthew already no longer knows what to say of what Jesus taught there (Matthew 13:54 ff.), we must with good reason doubt whether Jesus appealed, precisely in this form, to the passage of Isaiah and to the example of the two older prophets. Yet for that reason the evangelist will not already have presented the matter thus on his own initiative, but he may also in this have followed the tradition.

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The remaining alterations of the text which are to be derived from an anti-Marcionite tendency, and the more precise grounding of which has been given above, are the following:

Luke 4:16: the addition οὗ ἦν τεθραμμένος [where he had been brought up].

Luke 8:19–21: the omission of the words τίς ἡ μήτηρ μου καὶ τίνες οἱ ἀδελφοί μου [Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?], and the addition of v. 19.

Luke 10:21: the addition καὶ τῆς γῆς [and of the earth].

Luke 10:22: the transposition of the members τίς ἐστιν ὁ υἱός [who the Son is] and τίς ἐστιν ὁ πατήρ [who the Father is], and the exchange of the form ἔγνω [he knew] for γινώσκει [he knows].

Luke 16:17: the exchange of the words τῶν λόγων μου [of my words] for τοῦ νόμου [of the law].

Luke 20:35: the omission of the words ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ [by God] after καταξιωθέντες [those who were counted worthy].

Luke 22:3: the addition εἰσῆλθε δὲ σατανᾶς εἰς [and Satan entered into], and the recasting of the construction of the sentence connected with it.

Luke 24:25: the alteration of the words ἐλάλησεν ὑμῖν [he spoke to you] into ἐλάλησαν οἱ προφῆται [the prophets spoke], and the additions of verse 27 and, in verse 32, καὶ ὡς διήνοιγεν ἡμῖν τὰς γραφάς [and how he opened the scriptures to us].

Finally, the insertion of Luke 24:44–46, and the alteration of the construction of verse 47 connected with it.

A further series of additions attests, moreover, the Pauline interest of the reviser, already expressed in that first passage as well. This is the case in Luke 13:28–30, in that the discourse which concerns the contrast of the few righteous and the many unrighteous is given such a turn that the Jews appear as the many unrighteous, and the Gentiles as the few righteous. To the patriarchs and prophets who are gathered in the kingdom of heaven, other participants will be gathered from all the quarters of heaven, but the Jews (ὑμεῖς [you]) will be excluded, so that the first will be last, and the last, by contrast, will be first. The same gnome [maxim] is in Matthew in part woven into the story of the centurion at Capernaum, at chapter 8:11, 12, and in part, at chapter 20:16, to be found as the conclusion of the parable of the workers equally rewarded for different periods of work.

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It is not, now, to be assumed that our evangelist took these gnomes from there, where they stand in an entirely different context, since a dependence on Matthew will be credible and probable only in thoroughly parallel passages. Nor is there complete agreement, either in the words or in the position, between Matthew 8:11, 12 and Luke 13:28, 29. The author may therefore well have drawn the formula from elsewhere.²

Not quite so harsh is the thought which underlies the parable of the lost son (Luke 15:11 ff.). For that this too is meant to present the relationship of the Jews and the Gentiles is, even if it has not hitherto been generally conceded, nevertheless by no means to be denied.³ The elder son, who served his father through many years, never transgressed a commandment of his, and yet has until now received no reward (v. 29), who for that reason despises his younger, ruined brother, and looks askance (v. 30) at the kindly reception which he nevertheless meets with from the father, is a faithful picture of Judaism, against which Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, chapters 9–11, had to defend the reception of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God. The younger son, by contrast, who separates himself from the father and goes off into a far country in order to live dissolutely there (v. 13) and in fornication (verse 30), is by

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these πάθη ἀτιμίας (Romans 1:26) [passions of dishonor] sufficiently characterized as a representative of the Gentile world. The trait, too, that the same man had to tend the swine (v. 15), points to the same thing, for swine are indeed not to be found among Jews, but only in a Gentile land.⁴ The parable is distinguished from the saying considered above, however, by this: that with the gracious acceptance of the younger son it does not join the casting out of the elder, but rather, in the words τέκνον σὺ πάντοτε μετ᾿ ἐμοῦ εἶ, καὶ πάντα τὰ ἐμὰ σά ἐστιν (v. 31) [Child, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours], grants to that same man, to Judaism, the priority in the enjoyment of salvation. This is entirely in Paul’s sense. For even if he knows in Christ no difference between περιτομή [circumcision] and ἀκροβυστία [uncircumcision], since both find righteousness only in faith, he nevertheless fully acknowledges the precedence of Judaism, in that through the covenant and the promise it is still bound especially near to God (Romans 3:1, 2; 9:4–6), and the Gentile world stands to it only as the wild olive grafted on stands to the genuine one (Romans 11:17). The parable agrees in its basic thought with the two of the lost sheep and the lost coin (chapter 15:1–10), with which the reviser has connected it very fittingly; only, their simple sense has been worked out more precisely and individualized, and in addition the figure of the envious elder brother has been added. Matthew shares a similar parable (Matthew 21:28–31), of the two sons of one father, of whom one disobedient in word and obedient in deed, the other obedient in word but disobedient in deed.

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Here the point is to make vivid the precedence of the tax collectors and the harlots over the Pharisees zealous for the law, in which relationship much similarity with the later contrast of Jews and Gentiles lies; yet the result of this parable, οἱ τελῶναι καὶ αἱ πόρναι προάγουσιν ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ [the tax collectors and the harlots go ahead of you into the kingdom of God], does not correspond to that of the parable of the lost son, but rather recalls that sentence at Luke 13:28–30 (cf. Matthew 21:43). One does see from this, however, that the difference between brothers was used in different ways in order to make vivid the difference of aptitude for the divine kingdom, and so nothing stands in the way of deriving the origin of our parable from Jesus himself as well. Yet one may hardly trace its form, which so clearly presents later party relationships, immediately back to Jesus, but only, perhaps, the simple basic thought in a similar shape, as in the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

Perhaps the narrative of the different conduct of the criminals on the cross (chapter 23:39 ff.) also refers to the contrast of the Jews and the Gentiles, of whom the former were hardened, but the latter receptive. This symbolic sense of the passage must commend itself, since its historical character is indeed very suspect. The narrative is not vouched for by Matthew, who rather reports that both fellow-sufferers joined in the revilings directed against Jesus (chapter 27:44); the only guarantor is the author of the third Gospel, who wrote at least a hundred years after the death of Jesus. Furthermore, as we have shown,⁵ the answer which Jesus gives the criminal bears the character of a later origin. Finally, however, not only the trust, but already the man’s acquaintance with the return of Jesus, which Jesus had indeed promised only in secret to his closest confidants, is

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thoroughly improbable.⁶ If, then, this trait owes its origin to the tradition, it lies near at hand to understand it as a symbolization of the contrast of the Jews and the Gentiles.⁷ Yet the Gospel writer will probably not have taken up this passage with this consciousness.

The Paulinism of the reviser shows itself further in the weaving in of short sentences which cannot deny their origin from Paul. They are: chapter 19:9, καθότι καὶ αὐτὸς υἱὸς Ἀβραάμ ἐστιν [for he too is a son of Abraham], cf. Romans 4:16; Galatians 3:7; — and chapter 20:38, πάντες γὰρ αὐτῷ ζῶμεν [for we all live to him], cf. Romans 14:8.⁸

Finally, the section chapter 17:7–10 too probably owes its inclusion to the Pauline basic thought of the lack of merit in works. Yet the sentence δοῦλοι ἀχρεῖοί ἐσμεν [we are unprofitable slaves] is grounded differently in this context than it is in Paul. Paul denies the merit of works because human beings are incapable of fulfilling their duty, namely the law, completely. Here in Luke, however, the thought is that merit begins only where duty ceases, to which is to be supplied that, since everything is our duty, nothing remains over for our merit.

Nevertheless, the Paulinism of the reviser is not an entirely free and pure one; the same Paulinism appears inclined toward a reconciliation with the Jewish Christians and toward an acknowledgment of the law. The former is proved in particular by the inclusion of the Judaizing infancy narrative in the Gospel; the latter by the way in which the passage chapter 16:17 has been altered in an anti-Marcionite sense. This passage, in its original form, was a faithful expression of the Pauline thought of the νόμος παιδαγωγός [the law as pedagogue], which had to cease at the very moment when, through the λόγοι τοῦ κυρίου [words of the Lord], freedom and the kingdom of God were raised to everlasting dominion. But the unbridled use which Marcion made of the teaching of Paul, the extreme to which he heightened Paul’s abrogation of the law, drove

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those Paulinists who would not follow him, back to a higher acknowledgment of the law, and thereby to an accommodation with Jewish Christianity. This is the general point of view which makes so important the otherwise wholly senseless alteration of the words τῶν λόγων μου [of my words] into τοῦ νόμου [of the law] in Luke 16:17, an alteration which was meant to serve to withdraw a proof-text from Marcion. It is the same point of view which also guided the reviser of our Gospel in the composition of the Acts of the Apostles.

The remaining sections which the same person has inserted into the underlying document bear no mark of party character. They were therefore placed in their position by the author, evidently only in the striving after accuracy and completeness. They are in part more or less similar to the parallel passages of Matthew, and in part they have no parallel in this Gospel.

To the latter belong:

Luke 9:31, the remark that the men of the Old Testament spoke with Jesus, in the transfiguration, about his departure at Jerusalem.

Luke 13:1–9, the instruction and the threat of Jesus, occasion for which is given him by the report that Pilate had killed Galileans, and the parable of the fig tree.

Luke 13:31–33, the answer to Herod, hard to understand.

Luke 19:41–44, the lament over Jerusalem, and the prediction of its destruction.

Luke 21:18, the promise of inviolability to the disciples.

Luke 22:35–38, the exhortation to buy swords.

Luke 22:43, 44, the narrative of the struggle and of the strengthening in Gethsemane.

It is of course impossible to designate the origin of these sections. Among themselves they are of very different worth. The insertion of chapter 21:18, after death had shortly before been promised to the disciples,

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is all the less to be comprehended, since at the time of the evangelist they had all died, and some had also perished as martyrs. Or is that verse meant to indicate such notions and legends as that John was dipped into boiling oil in Rome and drawn out again unharmed?⁹ Since we evidently have to look for the author of the third Gospel in Rome, it would be possible that with those words he means to indicate legends of that kind. For otherwise it is not to be comprehended at all on what ground the verse has been inserted here.¹⁰

The interpolations in the narrative of the transfiguration and of the agony of soul are to be regarded as traditional expansions. Their historical worth, uncertain as it already is in and for itself, because both events lacked earwitnesses and eyewitnesses, is thereby made wholly suspect, in that we do not find them earlier than in the interpolations of the third Gospel. Given this character of all three passages, it is probably also very doubtful whether they were taken by the author from any earlier writing.

Likewise the answer to Herod, and the exhortation to buy swords, seem, if not products of the tradition, yet to have been corrupted by it. The ambiguity and the unintelligibility of the latter passage have been demonstrated above.¹¹ In the former (Luke 13:31 f.), the intention of Herod to kill Jesus does not correspond to the other reports which we have of his disposition toward Jesus (Luke 9:7–9; 23:8–11).¹²

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Furthermore, the circumstance that John the Baptist did in fact perish elsewhere contradicts the sentence that no prophet can find his end outside Jerusalem. And finally, one has until now tried in vain to unriddle the sense of Jesus’s answer.¹³ These difficulties, set beside the so late appearance of this section, leave no other way out than to call into question the original character of the narrative, just as that of the section chapter 22:35–38.

Such objections do not strike the two sections chapter 13:1–9 and 19:41–44. They are in themselves clear and intelligible, and raise no doubt against their original character. For even if the words in the latter section, περιβαλοῦσιν οἱ ἐχθροί σου χάρακά σοι (19:43) [your enemies will cast up a palisade against you], agree strikingly with the procedure of Titus at the siege of the city,¹⁴ this is not yet a sure proof that the prediction was made post eventum [after the event], since the enclosing of a city by a rampart belonged to the usual means of a siege, and in this case it is still to be taken into account that the rampart erected by Titus did not reach its goal, but was destroyed by the Jews.

Besides these sections there is, among the interpolations, a further series of such as agree more or less with passages of Matthew, whereby the conclusion would lie near that they were taken from this Gospel. Yet the verbal agreement which, as one ought to think, would nevertheless have to go with that, is found only in quite few cases, namely Luke 10:13–15 compared with Matthew 11:21–23; Luke 13:34, 35 compared with Matthew 23:37–39; and Luke 7:31–35 compared with Matthew 11:16–19. In the last case, however, the circumstance is still to be noted that Luke 7:29, 30 also belong to the interpolation. These are parallel to Matthew 21:32 only insofar as they, as it seems, arose out of this verse, without the two

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passages exactly coinciding. For this is the second class of these interpolations similar to Matthew, which look like revisions of passages of Matthew, but which have not quite succeeded. To this class, then, belong Luke 7:29, 30 compared with Matthew 21:32; Luke 11:48–51 compared with Matthew 23:30–36; Luke 21:21, 22 compared with Matthew 24:16; Luke 22:24–30 compared with Matthew 20:25–28; 19:28. These cases now seem to contradict the passages which stand in verbal agreement with Matthew, and to neutralize them, for they prove an independence of the interpolations of Luke from Matthew rather than a dependence. For if we assume the latter, it cannot be seen to what end the interpolator undertook the alteration of those Matthean passages, which by their intelligible coherence distinguish themselves so considerably above the parallel passages of Luke. If, then, the assumption that our Matthew is the source of a series of interpolations in Luke becomes uncertain in these cases, one must also, in the sections still left over, not overlook the difference from Matthew in the form and, at times, in the matter itself. The sections are Luke 4:38, 39 compared with Matthew 8:14, 15; Luke 11:29–32 compared with Matthew 12:39–42; Luke 11:42 compared with Matthew 23:23; Luke 12:6, 7 compared with Matthew 10:29–31; Luke 12:33, 34 compared with Matthew 6:19–21; Luke 18:31–34 compared with Matthew 20:17–19; Luke 19:29–38 compared with Matthew 21:1–9; Luke 19:45, 46 compared with Matthew 21:12, 13; Luke 20:9–18 compared with Matthew 21:33–44; Luke 20:37, 38 compared with Matthew 22:31, 32; Luke 22:49–51 compared with Matthew 26:51–54. Most of the divergences in the presentation are, to be sure, not of a kind that would make the dependence of Luke upon Matthew simply inconceivable, since one sees in the Gospel of Mark, after all, how freely one went to work in reproducing a presentation that lay before one; yet in two cases the presentation of Luke even stands out above the parallel sections of Matthew. Namely, in the

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piece of discourse on the sign of Jonah (Luke 11:29–32), the point of comparison between Jonah and Jesus, on which the understanding of the whole hangs, is in Luke evidently stated correctly: καθὼς ἐγένετο Ἰωνᾶς σημεῖον τοῖς Νινευΐταις, οὕτως ἔσται καὶ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τῇ γενεᾷ ταύτῃ (v. 30) [Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also shall the Son of Man be to this generation]; whereas in Matthew this point is not only not especially brought forward, but between the announcement of a sign such as Jonah was, and the inference, agreeing with Luke, that the Ninevites and the queen from the south will condemn this generation, there steps in, at Matthew 12:40, the interpretation, here wholly foreign and forced: ὥσπερ ἦν Ἰωνᾶς ἐν τῇ κοιλίᾳ τοῦ κήτους τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ τρεῖς νύκτας, οὕτως ἔσται ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ τῆς γῆς τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ τρεῖς νύκτας [Just as Jonah was in the belly of the sea-monster three days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights]. This composition of two wholly different thoughts is, however, certainly not the original form of the discourse; that form, rather, lies before us in Luke. Likewise, in the narrative of the entry into Jerusalem too, the advantage is on the side of Luke’s presentation (chapter 19:29 ff.), since he does not relate the notice — to which Matthew (chapter 21:7) lets himself be misled by an overly literal application of the prophetic passage — that Jesus rode upon two donkeys. By these observations one must of necessity become wholly uncertain whether Luke used the first Gospel in its present form, because in those interpolations no trace shows itself of the most striking distinctive features of that writing. Thus it is also striking that, if he has borrowed the parable Luke 20:9–18 from Matthew 21:33–44, he has not also taken over from it verse 43, the verse favorable to the Gentiles (διὰ τοῦτο λέγω ὑμῖν, ὅτι ἀρθήσεται ἀφ᾿ ὑμῶν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ δοθήσεται ἔθνει ποιοῦντι τοὺς καρποὺς αὐτῆς) [For this reason I say to you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and will be given to a nation that produces its fruits].

These observations determine us to let fall the assumption that these interpolations derive from the Gospel of Matthew in its present form; and we should have to confess that their origin could not be demonstrated, were not precisely the three passages in Matthew last adduced of such a kind that

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they led us onto a definite track. It is made certain by the testimony of Papias¹⁵ that of the original Hebrew Gospel of Matthew there existed various translations or, what under those relationships is the same thing, redactions, to which our canonical Gospel also belongs. That this Gospel is not original in every respect is attested most clearly by precisely those three cases: namely, the composition of two interpretations of the sign of Jonah, the alteration of the fact in Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem under the influence of the prophetic passage cited, and the insertion of that anti-Jewish threat into the parable of the rebellious vinedressers. The lack of original character in the first two cases will probably not still require proof. That of the last emerges from this: that v. 43, not quite fittingly, separates two prophetic passages, of which the second (ἐπὶ τὸν λίθον τοῦτον, v. 44 [upon this stone]) attaches closely to the first, and that the same verse corresponds neither to the nearest purpose, namely the polemic against the Pharisees (cf. Matthew 21:31, 45), nor does the exclusion of the Jews from salvation altogether correspond to the mind of Christ or to the tendency of Matthew.¹⁶ For even in the original Gospel of Luke — who, if anyone, had an interest in taking up sayings of that kind, if they existed — no trace of this thought is found. These specimens therefore indicate that in the Gospel of Matthew, too, different strata of reworkings are to be separated, and that there must have existed a redaction of it in which, in particular, the sentences adduced were lacking. That redaction would therefore agree with the parallel sections in Luke, which we know as interpolations, and whose origin we accordingly derive from that earlier form of the Gospel of Matthew,

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as we are entitled to do. By this, then, the form of all the interpolations of Luke that are parallel to passages of Matthew — a form agreeing in part and diverging in part — would be explained, although we must forgo corroborating this relationship by further demonstrations. Yet I should not wish to extend this explanation to those interpolations which have above been characterized as revisions of Matthean passages. In them the writer seems in any case to have undertaken changes in something that lay before him, the motives of which, so far as they can be recognized, have been stated above at the individual passages (Luke 7:29 ff.; 11:48 ff.; 21:21, 22; 22:35 ff.),¹⁷ unless perhaps the influence of oral tradition must be assumed, which, however, is of course incommensurable for us.

In order to prove that he had followed πᾶσιν ἄνωθεν [all things from the beginning], and probably also in order to meet the Christology of Marcion, the evangelist has opened his writing with the narrative of the birth of the forerunner John and of the birth of Jesus, further of the activity of the former, and of the baptism and temptation of the latter. One must acknowledge, with Schleiermacher, that this section (chapters 1–4:15) falls into two groups, whose original connection is at least very doubtful. It is, to be sure, not decisive that chapter 2 ends with a clear concluding formula, and that chapter 3 is introduced by an elaborate notice of time, for this notice is probably not original. The evangelist has expanded the notice of time which in the original writing stood before the narrative at Capernaum (Luke 4:31 ff.), and has placed it in its present position. The two groups, however, are clearly distinguished by their different character, which permits one to infer a different origin. Further, we find in Justin an acquaintance with an infancy narrative agreeing in general with Luke, while at the same time he also uses the infancy narrative of Matthew and the baptism narrative of the Gospel of the Hebrews (Matthew’s).

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Of the specific marks of the Lukan narrative of the baptism and the temptation, by contrast, nothing is found.¹⁸ According to this, then, both seem also to have existed separately; and the genealogy too, which interrupts the connection of the narrative of the baptism and the temptation, so that one sees that the author did not know how to introduce it properly, may in addition derive from yet a third source. Schleiermacher wishes, moreover, the first chapter also to be regarded as separated from the second, in that he points out that at the beginning of the second chapter all the notices about the parents of Jesus already known from the first would be repeated, while no reference would be made to the annunciation by the angel, which the one who repeated the rest would certainly not have forgotten.¹⁹ Schleiermacher does not now declare himself as to whether, in that case, the second chapter really presupposes the content of that message of the angel, or not. Yet if the chapters did not originally belong together, we have in the second chapter no mark (for verse 21 Schleiermacher again postulates another author) that its author assumed the conception by the Holy Spirit; this would be only the view of the author of the first chapter. With the different authors, then, different views of the begetting of Jesus in those chapters would also be given. Since, however, as can probably be shown, our report is of later origin than that of Matthew, in which the birth in Bethlehem and the begetting by the Holy Spirit are indeed established, it is not to be assumed that the report in Luke 2 means to exclude the latter point by silence. But if, as is accordingly probable, he presupposes it tacitly, this can have come about only because he refers to the first chapter, which will therefore have the same author as the second. If, now, Schleiermacher in addition

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also cuts the second chapter to pieces, in that he regards the concluding formulas in verses 18–20, 40, and 52 as marks of just so many small narratives,²⁰ then verse 40 is rather to be regarded, just as well, as an introduction to the following narrative of the twelve-year-old Jesus. Further, against the separation of verses 1–20 from verses 22–40 it is to be objected that verse 21 is then left over. This verse Schleiermacher explains as an interpolation of the compiler, whose concern it was to fill out the thirty days until the purification, for, he says, the brevity of the mention does not suit the writerly manner which prevails in the pieces before and after. This, however, is a very subjective piece of reasoning. For how can the conclusion hold, that because the author otherwise narrates at length he must therefore do so everywhere, when it cannot after all be proved that he arbitrarily expanded and embellished his narrative? Further, one could derive verse 21 from the intention of the compiler, to fill a lacuna, only if the verse really answered to this presupposed end. Since this is not the case, however, and a lacuna between the eighth and the thirtieth day would again remain to be filled, that explanation is wholly uncertain. If, then, no more compelling grounds are brought forward, there is no doubt that chapters 1 and 2 belong together, whether the compiler found them already in writing or took them up from the tradition.

The messianic idea which prevails in these chapters moves wholly within the bounds of the Jewish outlook, and for that reason contrasts strikingly with the universalistic character of the remaining parts of the Gospel. Passages such as chapter 1:32, 33 — οὗτος ἔσται μέγας καὶ υἱὸς ὑψίστου κληθήσεται καὶ δώσει αὐτῷ κύριος ὁ θεὸς θρόνον Δαβὶδ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ· καὶ βασιλεύσει ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον Ἰακώβ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας [This one shall be great, and shall be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever], and 68, 69 — εὐλόγητος κύριος ὁ θεὸς τοῦ Ἰσραὴλ, ὅτι ἐπεσκέψατο καὶ ἐποίησε λύτρωσιν τῷ λαῷ αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἤγειρε κέρας σωτηρίας ἡμῖν ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ Δαβὶδ τοῦ παιδὸς αὐτοῦ [Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has visited and wrought redemption for his people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David his servant], cf.

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vv. 17, 54, 55 — prove this clearly, and have also never been misjudged. It is therefore hardly comprehensible that the author of the writing Die Evangelien u. s. w. [The Gospels, and so on], pp. 225 ff., undertakes to understand precisely those verses in the same allegorical sense, the sense on which Paul grounds the distinction of the true Israel from the actual one (Romans 9:6). This coercive measure is prompted by the endeavor to carry through the view that the Gospel was of one casting, a view which, however, is refuted by our whole investigation. The question of the historical value of the infancy narrative cannot, of course, be decided here, since the circumstance that it was added to the Gospel only by the reviser of the Gospel is not a very essential factor for the decision. But the late appearance of this section is a sufficient ground against Weisse’s opinion that the infancy narrative of Matthew is younger than that of Luke, because the notices, in Matthew, of the begetting by the Holy Spirit and of the birth in Bethlehem would presuppose the establishment of these facts in Luke.²¹ Weisse himself, to be sure, remarks: “This seems to contradict the view which we expressed above concerning the cycle of legends of Luke, that only through him were those mythical fundamental facts fixed into actual mythical formations which could have a secure validity in the general belief of the community. But this contradiction,” he means, “is only apparent. It could, namely — even if the myth arose at once in the company of such elaborative and embellishing traits — nonetheless well have happened that at first only the main content gained a place in the general belief, but not the secondary traits as well, and that the latter did so only after they, together with other content of the oral tradition, had been spread by written record.²²” But the distinction between the producing of a myth and the

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appropriation of it is by no means to be conceded. Herein would lie a relationship of reflection which, if we can make the origin of myths vivid to ourselves at all, is to be thought away from this process. The producing of a myth is itself the appropriation of it, and a distinction between mythical main points and subordinate points cannot take place where reflection is at rest. If, then, the facts of the begetting of Jesus by the divine Spirit and of his birth in Bethlehem stand firm in Matthew, it does not follow from this that they presuppose those mediations, the angel’s message to Mary and the census: indeed, it is more probable that the Matthean form excludes those mediations in Luke, since it will not succeed at all to compose a pragmatic connection out of the two infancy narratives. Apart from this, however, one must also hesitate to designate the infancy narrative of Luke as a pure product of continued myth-formation. The various hymns which run through the first two chapters resist this. If they are unhistorical, they can derive only from conscious, and not from unconscious, poetic composition; and likewise the linking of the birth of Jesus with the census under Quirinus has certainly not arisen in a mythical way, but from the striving after historical accuracy. This makes it necessary that we hold this presentation of the infancy narrative, over against the purely prosaic and immediate one of Matthew, to have arisen later. The presentation in Luke of the history of the activity of John, of the baptism, and of the temptation of Jesus also has this character, that these accounts are younger than the narrative in Matthew. The additions in Luke 3:10–15 do not, to be sure, prove this, but the formula does with which the appearance of the Spirit at the baptism of Jesus is designated: σωματικῷ εἴδει (3:22) [in bodily form], which could well have arisen from the more indefinitely conceived form of that appearance in Matthew, whereas the reverse assumption is not probable. Furthermore, there is also the

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exchange of the second and third temptations (Luke 4:5–12), in comparison with Matthew 4:5–10, which has evidently proceeded only from the reflection that the return of Jesus and of the devil from the city to the high mountain would be less suitable than if they had gone from the wilderness onto the mountain and at last into the city, whereas the arrangement of Matthew, according to which the last temptation concerns the most important object, namely dominion over all the kingdoms of the world, makes the impression of original character.²³ Some have for that reason sought to declare the genealogy of Jesus in Luke (chapter 3:23–38) universalistic in comparison with the Matthean one, because it traces the descent of Jesus as far as Adam: and it has therefore been declared to agree with the tendency of the Gospel. Since the latter, however, has not prevented the wholly particularistically colored infancy narrative from being joined to the Gospel, and the former by no means presupposes the thought that salvation is appointed for all the peoples, even without their becoming Jews, that view is very questionable, especially as the genealogy has evidently proceeded from Jewish circles. Rather, the striving after completeness might well be the ground of that tracing of the genealogy up to Adam.

In the section which opens the canonical Gospel and, as has been shown, contains a collection of narratives of different kinds, the author has, moreover, set himself a further monument of his ἀκριβεία [exactness] in the chronological determinations with which he begins the third chapter. The first of them, according to the years of the reign of Tiberius, he did, to be sure, find already in the underlying document which he had adopted; but the statements concerning the Palestinian conditions by which it was expanded — which, since Ebrard has justified the one about Lysanias, give no ground for objection — testify that the author of the Gospel was not without historical education, although in the reworking of the Gospel proper he lost sight of that education more than one might wish.