If, then, the four narratives can be reconciled only by the supposition that several of them have undergone important traditional modifications: the question is, which of them is the nearest to the original fact? That modern critics should unanimously decide in favour of John, cannot surprise us after our previous observations; and as little can the nature of the reasoning by which their judgment is supported. The narrative of John, say they (reasoning in a circle), being that of an eye-witness, must be at once supposed the true one,[63] and this conclusion is sometimes rested for greater security on the false premiss, that the more circumstantial and dramatic narrator is the more accurate reporter—the eye-witness.[64] The breaking of the box of ointment, in Mark, although a dramatic particular, is readily rejected as a mere embellishment; but does not John’s statement of the quantity of spikenard as a pound, border on exaggeration? and ought not the extravagance which Olshausen, in relation to this disproportionate consumption of ointment, attributes to Mary’s love, to be rather referred to the Evangelist’s imagination, which would then also have the entire credit of the circumstance, that the house was filled with the odour of the ointment? It is worthy of notice, that the estimate of the value of the perfume at 300 denarii, is given by John and Mark alone; as also at the miraculous feeding of the multitude, it is these two Evangelists who rate the necessary food at 200 denarii. If Mark only had this close estimate, how quickly would it be pronounced, at least by Schleiermacher, a gratuitous addition of the narrator! What then is it that, in the actual state of the case, prevents the utterance of this opinion, even as a conjecture, but the prejudice in favour of the fourth gospel? Even the anointing of the head, which is attested by two of the synoptists, is, because John mentions the feet instead of the head, rejected as unusual, and incompatible with the position of Jesus at a meal:[65] whereas the anointing of the feet with precious oil was far less usual; and this the most recent commentator on the fourth gospel admits.[66]
But peculiar gratitude is rendered to the eye-witness John, because he has rescued from oblivion the names, both of the anointing woman, and of the censorious disciple.[67] It has been supposed that the synoptists did in fact [[408]]know the name of the woman, but withheld it from the apprehension that danger might possibly accrue to the family of Lazarus, while John, writing later, was under no such restraint;[68] but this expedient rests on mere assumptions. Our former conclusion therefore subsists, namely, that the earlier Evangelists knew nothing of the name of the woman; and the question arises, how was this possible? Jesus having expressly promised immortal renown to the deed of the woman, the tendency must arise to perpetuate her name also, and if this were identical with the known and oft-repeated name of Mary of Bethany, it is not easy to understand how the association of the deed and the name could be lost in tradition, and the woman who anointed Jesus become nameless. It is perhaps still more incomprehensible, supposing the covetous blame cast upon the woman to have been really uttered by him who proved the betrayer, that this should be forgotten in tradition, and the expression of blame attributed to the disciples generally. When a fact is narrated of a person otherwise unknown, or even when the person being known, the fact does not obviously accord with his general character, it is natural that the name should be lost in tradition; but when the narrated word or work of a person agrees so entirely with his known character, as does the covetous and hypocritical blame in question with the character of the traitor, it is difficult to suppose that the legend would sever it from his name. Moreover, the history in which this blame occurs, verges so nearly on the moment of the betrayal (especially according to the position given to it by the two first Evangelists), that had the blame really proceeded from Judas, the two facts would have been almost inevitably associated. Nay, even if that expression of latent cupidity had not really belonged to Judas, there must have been a temptation eventually to ascribe it to him, as a help to the delineation of his character, and to the explanation of his subsequent treachery. Thus the case is reversed, and the question is whether, instead of praising John that he has preserved to us this precise information, we ought not rather to give our approbation to the synoptists, that they have abstained from so natural but unhistorical a combination. We can arrive at no other conclusion with respect to the designation of the woman who anoints Jesus as Mary of Bethany. On the one hand, it is inconceivable that the deed, if originally hers, should be separated from her celebrated name; on the other, the legend, in the course of its development, might naturally come to attribute to one whose spiritual relations with Jesus had, according to the third and fourth gospels, early obtained great celebrity in the primitive church, an act of devoted love towards him, which originally belonged to another and less known person.
But from another side also we find ourselves induced to regard the narratives of Matthew and Mark, who give no name to the woman, rather than that of John, who distinguishes her as Mary of Bethany, as the parent stem of the group of anecdotes before us. Our position of the identity of all the four narratives must, to be tenable, enable us also to explain how Luke’s representation of the facts could arise. Now, supposing the narrative of John to be the nearest to the truth, it is not a little surprising that in the legend, the anointing woman should doubly descend from the highly honoured Mary, sister of Lazarus, to an unknown, nameless individual, and thence even to a notorious sinner; it appears far more natural to give the intermediate position to the indifferent statement of the synoptists, out of whose equivocal nameless woman might equally be made, either in an ascending scale, a Mary; or, in a descending one, a sinner. [[409]]
The possibility of the first transformation has been already shown: it must next be asked, where could be an inducement, without historical grounds, gradually to invest the anointing woman with the character of a sinner? In the narrative itself our only clue is a feature which the two first synoptists have not, but which John has in common with Luke; namely, that the woman anointed the feet of Jesus. To the fourth Evangelist, this tribute of feeling appeared in accordance with the sensitive, devoted nature of Mary, whom he elsewhere also ([xi. 32]), represents as falling at the feet of Jesus; but by another it might be taken, as by Luke, for the gesture of contrition; an idea which might favour the conception of the woman as a sinner—might favour, we say, not cause: for a cause, we must search elsewhere.
§ 90.
THE NARRATIVES OF THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY, AND OF MARY AND MARTHA.
In the Gospel of John ([viii. 1–11]), the Pharisees and scribes bring a woman taken in adultery to Jesus, that they may obtain his opinion as to the procedure to be observed against her; whereupon Jesus, by appealing to the consciences of the accusers, liberates the woman, and dismisses her with an admonition. The genuineness of this passage has been strongly contested, nay, its spuriousness might be regarded as demonstrated, were it not that even the most thorough investigations on the subject[69] indirectly betray a design, which Paulus openly avows, of warding off the dangerous surmises as to the origin of the fourth gospel, which are occasioned by the supposition that this passage, encumbered as it is with improbabilities, is a genuine portion of that gospel. For in the first place, the scribes say to Jesus: Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned: now in no part of the Pentateuch is this punishment prescribed for adultery, but simply death, the mode of inflicting it being left undetermined ([Lev. xx. 10]; [Deut. xxii. 22]); nor was stoning for adultery a latter institution of the Talmud, for according to the canon: omne mortis supplicium, in scripturâ absolute positum esse strangulationem,[70] the punishment appointed for this offence in the Talmud is strangulation.[71] Further, it is difficult to discover what there was to ensnare Jesus in the question proposed to him;[72] the scribes quoted to him the commandment of the law, as if they would warn him, rather than tempt him, for they could not expect that he would decide otherwise than agreeably to the law. Again, the decision of Jesus is open to the stricture, that if only he who is conscious of perfect purity were authorized to judge and punish, all social order would be at an end. The circumstance of Jesus writing on the ground has a legendary and mystical air, for even if it be not correctly explained by the gloss of Jerome: eorum videlicet, qui accusabant, et omnium mortalium peccata, it yet seems to imply something more mysterious than a mere manifestation of contempt for the accusers. Lastly, it is scarcely conceivable that every one of those men who dragged the woman before Jesus, zealous for the law, and adverse to his cause as they are supposed to be, should have had so tender a conscience, as on the appeal of Jesus to retire without prosecuting their design, and leave the woman behind them uninjured; this rather [[410]]appears to belong merely to the legendary or poetical embellishment of the scene. Yet however improbable it may appear, from these observations, that the occurrence happened precisely as it is here narrated, this, as Bretschneider justly maintains,[73] proves nothing against the genuineness of the passage, since it is arguing in a circle to assume the apostolic composition of the fourth gospel, and the consequent impossibility that a narrative containing contradictions should form a portion of it, prior to an examination of its several parts. Nevertheless, on the other hand, the absence of the passage in the oldest authorities is so suspicious, that a decision on the subject cannot be hazarded.
In any case, the narrative of an interview between Jesus and a woman of the above character must be very ancient, since, according to Eusebius, it was found in the Gospel of the Hebrews, and in the writings of Papias.[74] It was long thought that the woman mentioned in the Hebrew gospel and by Papias was identical with the adulteress in John; but against this it has been justly observed, that one who had the reproach of many sins, must be distinct from her who was detected in the one act of adultery.[75] I wonder, however, that no one has, to my knowledge, thought, in connexion with the passage of Eusebius, of the woman in Luke of whom Jesus says that her many sins, ἁμαρτίαι πολλαὶ, are forgiven. It is true that the word διαβληθείσης does not fully agree with this idea, for Luke does not speak of actual expressions of the Pharisee in disparagement of the woman, but merely of the unfavourable thoughts which he had concerning her; and in this respect the passage in Eusebius would agree better with the narrative of John, which has an express denunciation, a διαβάλλειν.
Thus we are led on external grounds, by the doubt whether an ancient notice refer to the one or the other of the two narratives, to a perception of their affinity,[76] which is besides evident from internal reasons. In both we have a woman, a sinner, before Jesus; in both, this woman is regarded with an evil eye by Pharisaic sanctimoniousness, but is taken into protection by Jesus, and dismissed with a friendly πορεύου, go. These were precisely the features, the origin of which we could not understand in the narrative of Luke, viewed as a mere variation of the history of the anointing given by the other Evangelists. Now, what is more natural than to suppose that they were transferred into Luke’s history of the anointing, from that of the forgiven sinner? If the Christian legend possessed, on the one side, a woman who had anointed Jesus, who was on this account reproached, but was defended by Jesus; and on the other side a woman who was accused before him of many sins, but whom he pardoned; how easily, aided by the idea of an anointing of the feet of Jesus, which bears the interpretation of an act of penitence, might the two histories flow together—the anointing woman become also a sinner, and the sinner also an anointer? Then, that the scene of the pardon was an entertainment, was a feature also drawn from the history of the anointing: the entertainer must be a Pharisee, because the accusation of the woman ought to proceed from a Pharisaic party, and because, as we have seen, Luke has a predilection for Pharisaic entertainments. Lastly, the discourse of Jesus may have been borrowed, partly from the original narrative of the woman who was a sinner, partly from analogous occasions. If these [[411]]conjectures be correct, the narratives are preserved unmixed, on the one hand, by the two first Evangelists; on the other, by the fourth, or whoever was the author of the passage on the adulteress; for if the latter contains much that is legendary, it is at least free from any admixture of the history of the anointing.