The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (4th ed.)

The first gospel (x.) reports another long discourse as having been delivered by Jesus, on the occasion of his sending out the twelve to preach the kingdom of heaven. Part of this discourse is peculiar to the first gospel; that portion of it which is common to the two other synoptists is only partially assigned by them to the same occasion, Luke introducing its substance in connexion with the mission of the seventy (x. 2 ff.), and in a subsequent conversation with the disciples (xii. 2 ff.). Some portion of the discourse is also found repeated both in Matthew and the other Evangelists, in the prophetic description given by Jesus of his second advent.

In this instance again, while the older harmonists have no hesitation in supposing a repetition of the same discourse,36 our more recent critics are of opinion that Luke only has the true occasions and the original arrangement of the materials, and that Matthew has assembled them according to his own discretion.37 Those expositors who are apologetically inclined, maintain that Matthew was not only conscious of here associating sayings uttered at various times, but presumed that this would be obvious to his readers.38 On the other hand, it is justly observed that the manner in which the discourse is [343]introduced by the words: These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them (v. 5); and closed by the words: when Jesus made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, etc. (xi. 1); proves clearly enough that it was the intention of the Evangelist to give his compilation the character of a continuous harangue.39

Much that is peculiar to Matthew in this discourse, appears to be merely an amplification on thoughts which are also found in the corresponding passages of the two other synoptists; but there are two particulars in the opening of the instructions as detailed by the former, which differ specifically from anything presented by his fellow Evangelists. These are the limitation of the agency of the disciples to the Jews (v. 5, 6), and the commission (associated with that to announce the kingdom of heaven and heal the sick, of which Luke also speaks, ix. 2), to raise the dead: a surprising commission, since we know of no instances previous to the departure of Jesus, in which the apostles raised the dead; and to suppose such when they are not narrated, after the example of Olshausen, is an expedient to which few will be inclined.

All that the synoptists have strictly in common in the instructions to the twelve, are the rules for their external conduct; how they were to journey, and how to behave under a variety of circumstances (Matt. v. 9–11, 14; Mark vi. 8–11; Luke ix. 3–5). Here, however, we find a discrepancy; according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus forbids the disciples to take with them, not only gold, a scrip, and the like, but even shoes, ὑποδήματα, and a staff, ῥάβδον; according to Mark, on the contrary, he merely forbids their taking more than a staff and sandals, εἰ μὴ ῥάβδον μόνον and σανδάλια. This discrepancy is most easily accounted for by the admission, that tradition only preserved a reminiscence of Jesus having signified the simplicity of the apostolic equipment by the mention of the staff and shoes, and that hence one of the Evangelists understood that Jesus had interdicted all travelling requisites except these; the other, that these also were included in his prohibition. It was consistent with Mark’s love of the picturesque to imagine a wandering apostle furnished with a staff, and therefore to give the preference to the former view.

It is on the occasion of the mission of the seventy, that Luke (x. 2) puts into the mouth of Jesus the words which Matthew gives (ix. 37 f.) as the motive for sending forth the twelve, namely, the apothegm, The harvest truly is ready, but the labourers are few; also the declaration that the labourer is worthy of his hire (v. 7, comp. Matt x. 10); the discourse on the apostolic salutation and its effect (Matt. v. 12 f.; Luke v. 5 f.); the denunciation of those who should reject the apostles and their message (Matt. v. 15; Luke v. 12); and finally, the words, Behold, I send you forth as lambs, etc. (Matt. v. 16; Luke v. 3). The sequence of these propositions is about equally natural in both cases. Their completeness is alternately greater in the one than in the other; but Matthew’s additions generally turn on essentials, as in v. 16; those of Luke on externals, as in v. 7, 8, and in v. 4, where there is the singular injunction to salute no man by the way, which might appear an unhistorical exaggeration of the urgency of the apostolic errand, did we not know that the Jewish greetings of that period were not a little ceremonious.40 Sieffert observes that the instructions which Jesus gave—according to Matthew, to the twelve, according to Luke, to the seventy—might, so far as their tenor is concerned, have been imparted with equal fitness on either [344]occasion; but I doubt this, for it seems to me improbable that Jesus should, as Luke states, dismiss his more confidential disciples with scanty rules for their outward conduct, and that to the seventy he should make

communications of much greater moment and pathos.41 The above critic at length decides in favour of Luke, whose narrative appears to him more precise, because it distinguishes the seventy from the twelve. We have already discussed this point, and have found that a comparison is rather to the advantage of Matthew. The blessing pronounced on him who should give even a cup of cold water to the disciples of Jesus (v. 42), is at least more judiciously inserted by Matthew as the conclusion of the discourse of instructions, than in the endless confusion of the latter part of Mark ix. (v. 41), where ἐὰν (if), and ὃς ἂν (whosoever), seem to form the only tie between the successive propositions.

The case is otherwise when we regard those portions of the discourse which Luke places in his twelfth chapter, and even later, and which in Matthew are distinguishable as a second part of the same discourse. Such are the directions to the apostles as to their conduct before tribunals (Matt. x. 19 f.; Luke xii. 11); the exhortation not to fear those who can only kill the body (Matt. v. 28; Luke v. 4 f.); the warning against the denial of Jesus (Matt. v. 32 f.; Luke v. 8 f.); the discourse on the general disunion of which he would be the cause (Matt. v. 34 ff.; Luke v. 51 ff.); a passage to which Matthew, prompted apparently by the enumeration of the members of a family, attaches the declaration of Jesus that these are not to be valued above him, that his cross must be taken, etc., which he partly repeats on a subsequent occasion, and in a more suitable connexion (xvi. 24 f.); further, predictions which recur in the discourse on the Mount of Olives, relative to the universal persecution of the disciples of Jesus (v. 17 f. 22, comp. xxiv. 9, 13); the saying which Luke inserts in the Sermon on the Mount (vi. 40), and which also appears in John (xv. 20), that the disciple has no claim to a better lot than his master (v. 24 f.); lastly, the direction, which is peculiar to the discourse in Matthew, to flee from one city to another, with the accompanying consolation (v. 23).

These commands and exhortations have been justly pronounced by critics42 to be unsuitable to the first mission of the twelve, which, like the alleged mission of the seventy, had no other than happy results (Luke ix. 10, x. 17); they presuppose the troublous circumstances which supervened after the death of Jesus, or perhaps in the latter period of his life. According to this, Luke is more correct than Matthew in assigning these discourses to the last journey of Jesus;43 unless, indeed, such descriptions of the subsequent fate of the apostles and other adherents of Jesus were produced ex eventu, after his death, and put into his mouth in the form of prophecies; a conjecture which is strongly suggested by the words, He who taketh not up his cross, etc. (v. 38).44

The next long discourse of Jesus in Matthew (chap. xi.) we have already considered, so far as it relates to the Baptist. From v. 20–24, there follow complaints and threatenings against the Galilean cities, in which most of his mighty works were done, and which, nevertheless, believed not. Our modern critics are perhaps right in their opinion that these apostrophes are less suitable to the period of his Galilean ministry, in which Matthew places [345]them, than to that in which they are introduced by Luke (x. 13 ff.); namely, when Jesus had left Galilee, and was on his way to Judea and Jerusalem, with a view to his final experiment.45 But a consideration of the immediate context seems to reverse the probability. In Matthew, the description of the ungracious reception which Jesus and John had alike met with, leads very naturally to the accusations against those places which had been the chief theatres of the ministry of the former; but it is difficult to suppose, according to Luke, that Jesus would speak of his past sad experience to the seventy, whose minds must have been entirely directed to the future, unless we conceive that he chose a subject so little adapted to the exigencies of those whom he was addressing, in order to unite the threatened judgment on the Galilean cities, with that which he had just denounced against the cities that should reject his messengers.

But it is more likely that this association proceeded solely from the writer, who, by the comparison of a city that should prove refractory to the disciples of Jesus, to Sodom, was reminded of the analogous comparison to Tyre and Sidon, of places that had been disobedient to Jesus himself, without perceiving the incongruity of the one with the circumstances which had dictated the other.46

The joy, ἀγαλλίασις, expressed by Jesus (v. 25–27) on account of the insight afforded to babes, νηπίοις, is but loosely attached by Matthew to the preceding maledictions. As it supposes a change in the mental frame of Jesus, induced by pleasing circumstances, Luke (x. 17, 21 ff.), would have all the probabilities on his side, in making the return of the seventy with satisfactory tidings the cause of the above expression; were it not that the appointment of the seventy, and consequently their return, are altogether problematical; besides, it is possible to refer the passage in question to the return of the twelve from their mission. Matthew connects with this rejoicing of Jesus his invitation to the weary and heavy laden (v. 28–30). This is wanting in Luke, who, instead, makes Jesus turn to his disciples privately, and pronounce them blessed in being privileged to see and hear things which many prophets and kings yearned after in vain (23 f.): an observation which does not so specifically agree with the preceding train of thought, as the context assigned to it by Matthew, and which is moreover inserted by the latter Evangelist in a connexion (xiii. 16 f.) that may be advantageously confronted with that of Luke.