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Introduction
Since the stimulus which the investigation of the life of Jesus received through Strauss, the judgment of the critics has united in the acceptance of two principles which are to be observed in the further investigation of that subject. The first is that criticism is to be purely historical, without the admixture of dogmatic considerations. The second is that the Gospels are to be considered individually, and their worth as historical sources determined, before one uses them as foundations for establishing the actual state of the facts. For however much the well-known work of Strauss contradicts the views of the life of Jesus that formerly prevailed, it nevertheless stands on the same ground with them in this: that the historical criticism he practiced was burdened with the dogmatic just as, formerly, the historical synthesis of the history of Jesus went hand in hand with dogmatic positivism, and that on both sides an equal historical worth was presupposed in all the Gospels. Now, whereas people had earlier flattered themselves that they could bring the Gospels into a harmony, Strauss uncovered the weaknesses and defects of this procedure, which, since then, even the most careful efforts have not succeeded in remedying. For that reason one ought no longer to hesitate to confess the impossibility of a complete harmony of the Gospels, instead of making the work needlessly harder by ever-repeated attempts to produce one, attempts which must nevertheless always fail. That demonstration of the impossibility of a harmonistic
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treatment of the Gospels is the undeniable fruit of the Straussian criticism. But with this the impulse was also given toward the formation of a more deeply grounded view of the Gospels. If a comparison of them, Gospels which make the same claim to historical worth, had led to the result that they exclude one another and mutually cancel their historical worth, this could lie only in the fact that they are not merely purely historical documents. One therefore had to go on to consider each of them as a writer’s product. This was done by Bruno Bauer, though in a manner which, instead of bringing the investigation nearer its goal, led it only onto byways. If Strauss contented himself with explaining the divergences of the Gospels from a gradual advance of the formation of myths, that is, with leaving them unexplained, nothing was improved by tracing those differences back to the caprice of the writers. Rather, a view contradicting all historical probability was mixed in as well. The first positive step toward an investigation of the life of Jesus on new foundations was taken by Baur’s treatise “On the Composition and Character of the Johannine Gospel.” What is now required is to determine historically the literary distinctiveness of the Gospels, and on this path to reach a comprehensive judgment of their worth as historical sources, which was not possible by the weighing of probabilities in particulars that has been customary until now. For that reason one also cannot stop at analyzing the character of the fourth Gospel, a character different from that of the Synoptics. The Synoptics too, on account of their divergences from one another, which have indeed still been far too little appreciated, call for the same individual treatment that the Gospel of John has received.
Among these it is in particular the Gospel of Luke that deserves special attention. While the character and the tendency of Matthew lie open to the day, and are no longer easily mistaken, it has
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not yet proved possible to gain a firm judgment about Luke. Even if the Pauline spirit of this Gospel is evident in general, it nevertheless contains a number of elements which cannot be subordinated to that spirit; and the question is whether, with the judgment that the Gospel means to mediate between Paulinists and Jewish Christians, an explanation of that phenomenon has been given. The christological side of the Gospel is likewise not so simple that it has by now already been brought back to a satisfying expression. Just as difficult is the question of the plan of the whole, so that one now seems almost ready to give up discovering any such plan at all. These points are not only important enough in themselves to be subjected to a repeated investigation. They are also worth discussing because the historical significance of the third Gospel, in comparison with the first, depends on how the third Gospel itself presents the person and the history of Jesus. Until now, for the establishment of the teaching of Jesus, people have believed they might prefer the report of the one evangelist to that of the other at will, and have therefore drawn now from Matthew, now from Luke, by turns, without being able to justify this procedure by a comprehensive view of both, for which reason a dogmatic prejudice has often enough decided the matter instead of that view. That precisely this prejudice must be kept far from the question is acknowledged by the critics of all parties.
But the task we set ourselves, namely to investigate the character of the Gospel of Luke as an individual work, cannot be fulfilled so simply, because it depends on the view one has of the kinship of the Synoptics with one another. On this point, however, it is impossible to make use of one of the current views as a presupposition. Among the hypotheses on this point there is none which one could accept without hesitation, because they are all insufficient. It is urgently necessary that, for the knowledge of the origin of the Synoptics as well, new
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standpoints be gained. This need has in recent times called forth the Mark hypothesis, a renewal of Eichhorn’s hypothesis of an original Gospel, with the difference that one sought that original Gospel within the circle of the Synoptics themselves. The attempt, although it was undertaken by Wilke with a great expenditure of care and acuteness, is to be regarded as a failure, because the hypothesis that the two longer Gospels had their basis in Mark required the further hypothesis that the latter too had been interpolated. One will never solve the riddle if one seeks the explanation only within the circle of the three canonical Synoptics themselves. For at least in regard to the Gospel of Matthew, tradition points us to its origin from the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, and thus beyond the circle of the canonical Synoptics. If, now, for the elucidation of the origin of the Gospel of Luke, we go back in an analogous way to the apocryphal Gospel of Marcion, this is done, to be sure, with a full consciousness of the difficulty of the task, of opposing a generally widespread view such as this one, that Marcion mutilated the canonical Luke. For what is at issue here is not only the overturning of a result of biblical criticism which for more than twenty years seemed to be secure. The view we seek to establish is so far lacking in all so-called historical testimonies that it must appear venturesome, in contradiction with them, and purely by the means of internal criticism, to introduce a new hypothesis into a field which is already overfilled with such hypotheses. Notwithstanding this, the key to insight into the real character of the canonical Gospel writing lies solely in the comparison of the two Gospel writings. And if, for that reason, we first set before it a detailed investigation of the Gospel of Marcion, we shall throughout keep the Gospel of Luke in view while doing so.