The close analogy between this call and that of the two pairs of brethren, must excite attention. They were summoned from their nets; he from the custom-house; as in their case, so here, nothing further is needed than a simple Follow me; and this call of the Messiah has so irresistible a power over the mind of the called, that the publican, like the fishermen, leaves all, and follows him. It is not to be denied, that as Jesus had been for a considerable time exercising his ministry in that country, Matthew must have long known him; and this is the argument with which Fritzsche repels the accusation of Julian and Porphyry, who maintain that Matthew here shows himself rash and inconsiderate. But the longer Jesus had observed him, the more easily might he have found opportunity for drawing him gradually and quietly into his train, instead of hurrying him in so tumultuary a manner from the midst of his business. Paulus indeed thinks that no call to discipleship, no sudden forsaking of a previous occupation, is here intended, but that Jesus having brought his teaching to a close, merely signified to the friend who had given him an invitation to dinner, that he was now ready to go home with him, and sit down to table.[33] But the meal appears, especially in Luke, to be the consequence, and not the cause, of the summons; moreover, a modest guest would say to the host who had invited him, I will follow thee, ἀκολουθήσω σοι, not Follow me, ἀκολούθηι μοι; and in fine, this interpretation renders the whole [[321]]anecdote so trivial, that it would have been better omitted.[34] Hence the abruptness and impetuosity of the scene return upon us, and we are compelled to pronounce that such is not the course of real life, nor the procedure of a man who, like Jesus, respects the laws and formalities of human society; it is the procedure of legend and poetry, which love contrasts, and effective scenes, which aim to give a graphic conception of a man’s exit from an old sphere of life, and his entrance into a new one, by representing him as at once discarding the implements of his former trade, leaving the scene of his daily business, and straightway commencing a new life. The historical germ of the story may be, that Jesus actually had publicans among his disciples, and possibly that Matthew was one. These men had truly left the custom-house to follow Jesus; but only in the figurative sense of this concise expression, not in the literal one depicted by the legend.
It is not less astonishing that the publican should have a great feast in readiness for Jesus immediately after his call. For that this feast was not prepared until the following day,[35] is directly opposed to the narratives, the two first especially. But it is entirely in the tone of the legend to demonstrate the joy of the publican, and the condescension of Jesus, and to create an occasion for the reproaches cast on the latter on account of his intimacy with sinners, by inventing a great feast, given to the publicans at the house of their late associate immediately after his call.
Another circumstance connected with this narrative merits particular attention. According to the common opinion concerning the author of the first gospel, Matthew therein narrates his own call. We may consider it granted that there are no positive indications of this in the narrative; but it is not so clear that there are no negative indications which render it impossible or improbable. That the Evangelist does not here speak in the first person, nor when describing events in which he had a share in the first person plural, like the author of the Acts of the Apostles, proves nothing; for Josephus and other historians not less classical, write of themselves in the third person, and the we of the pseudo-Matthew in the Ebionite gospel has a very suspicious sound. The use of the expression, ἄνθρωπον, Ματθαῖον λεγόμενον, which the Manicheans made an objection,[36] as they did the above-mentioned circumstance, is not without a precedent in the writings of Xenophon, who in his Anabasis introduces himself as Xenophon, a certain Athenian, Ξενοφῶν τις Ἀθηναῖος.[37] The Greek, however, did not fall into this style from absorption in his subject, nor from unaffected freedom from egotism,—causes which Olshausen supposes in the Evangelist; but either from a wish not to pass for the author, as an old tradition states,[38] or from considerations of taste, neither of which motives will be attributed to Matthew. Whether we are therefore to consider that expression as a sign that the author of the first gospel was not Matthew, may be difficult to decide:[39] but it is certain that this history of the publican’s call is throughout less clearly narrated in that gospel than in the third. In the former, we are at a loss to understand why it is abruptly said that Jesus sat at meat in the house, if the Evangelist were himself the hospitable publican, since it would then seem most natural for him to let his joy on account of his call appear in the narrative, by telling, as Luke does, that he immediately made a great feast in his house. To say that he withheld this [[322]]from modesty, is to invest a rude Galilean of that age with the affectation belonging to the most refined self-consciousness of modern days.
To this feast at the publican’s, of which many of the same obnoxious class partook, the Evangelists annex the reproaches cast at the disciples by the Pharisees and Scribes, because their master ate with publicans and sinners. Jesus, being within hearing of the censure, repelled it by the well-known text on the destination of the physician for the sick, and the Son of Man for sinners ([Matt. ix. 11 ff.] parall.). That Jesus should be frequently taunted by his pharisaical enemies with his too great predilection for the despised class of publicans (comp. [Matt. xi. 19]), accords fully with the nature of his position, and is therefore historical, if anything be so: the answer, too, which is here put into the mouth of Jesus, is from its pithy and concise character well adapted for literal transmission. Further, it is not improbable that the reproach in question may have been especially called forth, by the circumstance that Jesus ate with publicans and sinners, and went under their roofs. But that the cavils of his opponents should have been accompaniments of the publican’s dinner, as the evangelical account leads us to infer, especially that of [Mark (v. 16)], is not so easily conceivable.[40] For as the feast was in the house (ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ), and as the disciples also partook of it, how could the Pharisees utter their reproaches to them, while the meal was going forward, without defiling themselves by becoming the guests of a man that was a sinner,—the very act which they reprehended in Jesus? ([Luke xix. 7]). It will hardly be supposed that they waited outside until the feast was ended. It is difficult for Schleiermacher to maintain, even on the representation of Luke taken singly, that the evangelical narrative only implies, that the publican’s feast was the cause of the Pharisees’ censure, and not that they were contemporary.[41] Their immediate connexion might easily originate in a legendary manner; in fact, one scarcely knows how tradition, in its process of transmuting the abstract into the concrete, could represent the general idea that the Pharisees had taken offence at the friendly intercourse of Jesus with the publicans, otherwise than thus: Jesus once feasted in a publican’s house, in company with many publicans; the Pharisees saw this, went to the disciples and expressed their censure, which Jesus also heard, and parried by a laconic answer.
After the Pharisees, Matthew makes the disciples of John approach Jesus with the question, why his disciples did not fast, as they did ([v. 14 f.]); in Luke ([v. 33] ff.) it is still the Pharisees who vaunt their own fasts and those of John’s disciples, as contrasted with the eating and drinking of the disciples of Jesus; Mark’s account is not clear ([v. 18]). According to Schleiermacher, every unprejudiced person must perceive in the statement of Matthew compared with that of Luke, the confusing emendations of a second editor, who could not explain to himself how the Pharisees came to appeal to the disciples of John; whereas, thinks Schleiermacher, the question would have been puerile in the mouth of the latter; but it is easy to imagine that the Pharisees might avail themselves of an external resemblance to the disciples of John when opposing Jesus, who had himself received baptism of that teacher. It is certainly surprising that after the Pharisees, who were offended because Jesus ate with publicans, some disciples of John should step forth as if they had been cited for the purpose, to censure generally the unrestricted eating and drinking of Jesus and his disciples. The probable explanation is, that evangelical tradition associated the two circumstances from their intrinsic similarity, and that the first Evangelist erroneously gave them the additional [[323]]connexion of time and place. But the manner in which the third Evangelist fuses the two particulars, appears a yet more artificial combination, and is certainly not historical, because the reply of Jesus could only be directed to John’s disciples, or to friendly inquirers: to Pharisees, he would have given another and a more severe answer.[42]
Another narrative, which is peculiar to Luke ([xix. 1–10]), treats of the same relation as that concerning Matthew or Levi. When Jesus, on his last journey to the feast, passes through Jericho, a chief among the publicans, ἀρχιτελώνης named Zacchæus, that he might, notwithstanding his short stature, get a sight of Jesus among the crowd, climbed a tree, where Jesus observed him, and immediately held him worthy to entertain the Messiah for the night. Here, again, the favour shown to a publican excites the discontent of the more rigid spectators; and when Zacchæus has made vows of atonement and beneficence, Jesus again justifies himself, on the ground that his office had reference to sinners. The whole scene is very dramatic, and this might be deemed by some an argument for its historical character; but there are certain internal obstacles to its reception. We are not led to infer that Jesus previously knew Zacchæus, or that some one pointed him out to Jesus by name;[43] but, as Olshausen truly says, the knowledge of Zacchæus that Jesus here suddenly evinced, is to be referred to his power of discerning what was in men without the aid of testimony. We have before decided that this power is a legendary attribute; hence the above particular, at least, cannot be historical, and the narrative is possibly a variation on the same theme as that treated of in connexion with the account of Matthew’s call, namely, the friendly relation of Jesus to the publicans.
§ 73.
THE TWELVE APOSTLES.
The men whose vocation we have been considering, namely, the sons of Jonas and Zebedee, with Philip and Matthew (Nathanael alone being excepted) form the half of that narrow circle of disciples which appears throughout the New Testament under the name of the twelve, οἱ δώδεκα, the twelve disciples or apostles, οἱ δώδεκα μαθήται or ἀπόστολοι. The fundamental idea of the New Testament writers concerning the twelve, is that Jesus himself chose them ([Mark iii. 13 f.]; [Luke vi. 13]; [John vi. 70], [xv. 16]). Matthew does not give us the history of the choice of all the twelve, but he tacitly presupposes it by introducing them as a college already instituted ([x. 1]). Luke, on the contrary, narrates how, after a night spent on the mountain in vigils and prayer, Jesus selected twelve from the more extensive circle of his adherents, and then descended with them to the plain, to deliver what is called the Sermon on the Mount ([vi. 12]). Mark also tells us in the same connexion, that Jesus when on a mountain made a voluntary choice of twelve from the mass of his disciples ([iii. 13]). According to Luke, Jesus chose the twelve immediately before he delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and apparently with reference to it; but there is no discoverable motive which can explain this mode of associating the two events, for the discourse was not specially addressed to the apostles,[44] neither had they any office to execute during its delivery. Mark’s representation, with the exception of the vague tradition from which he sets [[324]]out, that Jesus chose the twelve, seems to have been wrought out of his own imagination, and furnishes no distinct notion of the occasion and manner of the choice.[45] Matthew has adopted the best method in merely presupposing, without describing, the particular vocation of the apostles; and John pursues the same plan, beginning ([vi. 67]) to speak of the twelve, without any previous notice of their appointment.