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 critics[42] 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.
§ 78.
THE PARABLES.
According to Matthew ([chap. xiii.]), Jesus delivered seven parables, all relating to the βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. Modern criticism, however, has doubted whether Jesus really uttered so many of these symbolical discourses on one occasion.[47] The parable, it has been observed, is a kind of problem, to be solved by the reflection of the hearer; hence after every parable a pause is requisite, if it be the object of the teacher to convey real instruction, and not to distract by a multiplicity of ill-understood images.[48] It will, at least, be admitted, with Neander, that parables on the same or closely-related subjects can only be spoken consecutively, when, under manifold forms, and from [[346]]various points of view, they lead to the same result.[49] Among the seven parables in question, those of the mustard-seed and the leaven have a common fundamental idea, differently shadowed forth—the gradual growth and ultimate prevalence of the kingdom of God: those of the net and the tares represent the mingling of the good with the bad in the kingdom of God; those of the treasure and the pearl inculcate the inestimable and all-indemnifying value of the kingdom of God; and the parable of the sower depicts the unequal susceptibility of men to the preaching of the kingdom of God. Thus there are no less than four separate fundamental ideas involved in this collection of parables—ideas which are indeed connected by their general relation to the kingdom of God, but which present this object under aspects so widely different, that for their thorough comprehension a pause after each was indispensable. Hence, it has been concluded, Jesus would not merit the praise of being a judicious teacher, if, as Matthew represents, he had spoken all the above parables in rapid succession.[50] If we suppose in this instance, again, an assemblage of discourses similar in kind, but delivered on different occasions, we are anew led to the discussion as to whether Matthew was aware of the latter circumstance, or whether he believed that he was recording a continuous harangue. The introductory form, And he spake many things to them in parables ([v. 3]): καὶ ἐλάλησεν αὐτοῖς πολλὰ ἐν παραβολαῖς, and the concluding one, when Jesus had finished these parables ([v. 53]): ὅτε ἐτέλεσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὰς παραβολὰς ταύτας, seem to be a clear proof that he did not present the intermediate matter as a compilation. Mark, indeed, narrates ([iv. 10]), that at the close of the first parable, the disciples being again, καταμόνας, in private, with Jesus, asked him for its interpretation; and hence it has been contended[51] that there was an interruption of the discourse at this point; but this cannot serve to explain the account of Matthew, for he represents the request of the disciples as being preferred on the spot, without any previous retirement from the crowd; thus proving that he did not suppose such an interruption. The concluding form which Matthew inserts after the fourth parable ([v. 34 f.]), might, with better reason, be adduced as intimating an interruption, for he there comprises all the foregoing parables in one address by the words, All these things spake Jesus in parables, etc., ταῦτα πάντα ἐλάλησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐν παραβολαῖς κ.τ.λ., and makes the pause still more complete by the application of an Old Testament prophecy; moreover, Jesus is here said (36) to change his locality, to dismiss the multitude to whom he had hitherto been speaking on the shore of the Galilean sea, and enter the house, εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν, where he gives three new parables, in addition to the interpretation which his disciples had solicited of the second. But that the delivery of the last three parables was separated from that of the preceding ones by a change of place, and consequently by a short interval of time, very little alters the state of the case. For it is highly improbable that Jesus would without intermission tax the memory of the populace, whose minds it was so easy to overburthen, with four parables, two of which were highly significant; and that he should forthwith overwhelm his disciples, whose power of comprehension he had been obliged to aid in the application of the first two parables, with three new ones, instead of ascertaining if they were capable of independently expounding the third and fourth. Further, we have only to look more closely at Matthew’s narrative, in order to observe that he has fallen quite involuntarily on the interruption at [v. 34 ff.] If it were his intention to communicate a series of parables, with [[347]]the explanations that Jesus privately gave to his disciples of the two which were most important, and were therefore to be placed at the head of the series, there were only three methods on which he could proceed. First, he might make Jesus, immediately after the enunciation of a parable, give its interpretation to his disciples in the presence of the multitude, as he actually does in the case of the first parable ([10–23]). But the representation is beset with the difficulty of conceiving how Jesus, surrounded by a crowd, whose expectation was on the stretch, could find leisure for a conversation aside with his disciples.[52] This inconvenience Mark perceived, and therefore chose the second resource that was open to him—that of making Jesus with his disciples withdraw after the first parable into the house, and there deliver its interpretation. But such a proceeding would be too great a hindrance to one who proposed publicly to deliver several parables one after the other; for if Jesus returned to the house immediately after the first parable, he had left the scene in which the succeeding ones could be conveniently imparted to the people. Consequently, the narrator in the first gospel cannot, with respect to the interpretation of the second parable, either repeat his first plan, or resort to the second; he therefore adopts a third, and proceeding uninterruptedly through two further parables, it is only at their close that he conducts Jesus to the house, and there makes him impart the arrear of interpretation. Herewith there arose in the mind of the narrator a sort of rivalry between the parables which he had yet in reserve, and the interpretation, the arrear of which embarrassed him; as soon as the former were absent from his recollection, the latter would be present with its inevitably associated form of conclusion and return homeward; and when any remaining parables recurred to him, he was obliged to make them the sequel of the interpretation. Thus it befel with the three last parables in Matthew’s narration; so that he was reduced almost against his will to make the disciples their sole participants, though it does not appear to have been the custom of Jesus thus to clothe his private instructions; and Mark ([v. 33 f.]) plainly supposes the parables which follow the interpretation of the second, to be also addressed to the people.[53]
Mark, who ([iv. 1]) depicts the same scene by the sea-side, as Matthew, has in connexion with it only three parables, of which the first and third correspond to the first and third of Matthew, but the middle one is commonly deemed peculiar to Mark.[54] Matthew has in its place the parable wherein the kingdom of heaven is likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares among it, which grew up with the wheat. The servants know not from whence the tares come, and propose to root them up; but the master commands them to let both grow together until the harvest, when it will be time enough to separate them. In Mark, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a man who casts seed into the ground, and while he sleeps and rises again, the seed passes, he knows not how, from one stage of development to another: and when it is ripe, he puts in the sickle, because the harvest is come. In this parable there is wanting what constitutes the dominant idea in that of Matthew, the tares, sown by the enemy; but as, nevertheless, the other ideas, of sowing, sleeping, growing one knows not how, and harvest, wholly correspond, it may be questioned whether Mark does not here merely give the same parable in a different version, which he preferred to that of Matthew, because it seemed [[348]]more intermediate between the first parable of the sower, and the third of the mustard-seed.
Luke, also, has only three of the seven parables given in [Matt. xiii.]; namely, those of the sower, the mustard-seed, and the leaven; so that the parables of the buried treasure, the pearl, and the net, as also that of the tares in the field, are peculiar to Matthew. The parable of the sower is placed by Luke ([viii. 4 ff.]) somewhat earlier, and in other circumstances, than by Matthew, and apart from the two other parables which he has in common with the first Evangelist’s series. These he introduces later, [xiii. 18–21]; a position which recent critics unanimously acknowledge as the correct one.[55] But this decision is one of the most remarkable to which the criticism of the present age has been led by its partiality to Luke. For if we examine the vaunted connectedness of this Evangelist’s passages, we find that Jesus, having healed a woman bowed down by a spirit of infirmity, silences the punctilious ruler of the synagogue by the argument about the ox and ass, after which it is added ([v. 17]), And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed; and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. Surely so complete and marked a form of conclusion is intended to wind up the previous narrative, and one cannot conceive that the sequel went forward in the same scene; on the contrary, the phrases, then said he, and again he said, by which the parables are connected, indicate that the writer had no longer any knowledge of the occasion on which Jesus uttered them, and hence inserted them at random in this indeterminate manner, far less judiciously than Matthew, who at least was careful to associate them with analogous materials.[56]
We proceed to notice the other evangelical parables,[57] and first among them, those which are peculiar to one Evangelist. We come foremost in Matthew to the parable of the servant ([xviii. 23 ff.]) who, although his lord had forgiven him a debt of ten thousand talents, had no mercy on his fellow-servant who owed him a hundred; tolerably well introduced by an exhortation to placability ([v. 15]), and the question of Peter, How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Likewise peculiar to Matthew is the parable of the labourers in the vineyard ([xx. 1 ff.]), which suitably enough forms a counterpoise to the foregoing promise of a rich recompense to the disciples. Of the sentences which Matthew appends to this parable ([v. 16]), the first, So the last shall be first, and the first last, by which he had also prefaced it ([xix. 30]), is the only one with which it has any internal connexion; the other, for many are called, but few chosen, rather gives the moral of the parable of the royal feast and the wedding garment, in connexion with which Matthew actually repeats it ([xxii. 14]). It was well adapted, however, even torn from this connexion, to circulate as an independent apothegm, and as it appeared fitting to the Evangelist to annex one or more short sentences to the end of a parable, he might be induced, by some superficial similarity to the one already given, to place them in companionship. Farther, the parable of the two sons sent into the vineyard, is also peculiar to Matthew ([xxi. 28 ff.]), and is not ill-placed in connexion with the foregoing questions and retorts between Jesus and the Pharisees; its anti-Pharisaic significance is also well brought out by the sequel ([31 f.]).