On examining the passage as it occurs in our first Synoptic, we are at the very outset struck by the singular fact, that this short saying appears twice in that Gospel with a different context, and in each case without any propriety of application to what precedes it, whilst it is not found at all in either of the other two Synoptics. The first time we meet with it is at the close of the parable of the labourers in the vineyard.(1) The householder engages the labourers at different hours of the day, and pays those who had worked but one hour the same wages as those who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and the reflection at the close is, xx. 16: "Thus the last shall be first and the first last; for many are called but few chosen." It is perfectly evident that neither of these sayings, but especially not that with which we are concerned, has any connection with the parable at all. There is no question of many or few, or of selection or rejection; all the labourers are engaged and paid alike. If there be a moral at all to the parable, it is the justification of the master: "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?" It is impossible to imagine a saying more irrelevant to its context than "many are called but few chosen," in such a place. The passage occurs again (xxii. 14) in connection with the parable of the king who made a marriage for his son. The guests who are at first invited refuse to come, and are destroyed by the king's armies; but the wedding is nevertheless "furnished
with guests" by gathering together as many as are found in the highways. A new episode commences when the king comes in to see the guests (v. 11). He observes a man there who has not on a wedding garment, and he desires the servants to (v. 13) "Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness without," where "there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth;"(1) and then comes our passage (v. 14): "For many are called but few chosen." Now, whether applied to the first or to the latter part of the parable, the saying is irrelevant. The guests first called were in fact chosen as much as the last, but themselves refused to come, and of all those who, being "called" from the highways and byways, ultimately furnished the wedding with guests in their stead, only one was rejected. It is clear that the facts here distinctly contradict the moral that "few are chosen." In both places the saying is, as it were, "dragged in by the hair." On examination, however, we find that the oldest MSS. of the New Testament omit the sentence from Matthew xx. 16. It is neither found in the Sinaitic nor Vatican codices, and whilst it has not the support of the Codex Alexandrinus, which is defective at the part, nor of the Dublin rescript (z), which omits it, many other MSS. are also without it. The total irrelevancy of the saying to its context, its omission by the oldest authorities from Matth. xx. 16, where it appears in later MSS., and its total absence from both of the other Gospels, must at once strike every one as peculiar, and as very unfortunate, to say
1 This is not the place to criticize the expectation of
finding a wedding garment on a guest hurried in from
highways and byways, or the punishment inflicted for such an
offence, as questions affecting the character of the
parable.
the least of it, for those who make extreme assertions with regard to its supposed quotation by the Epistle of Barnabas. Weizsacker, with great probability, suggests that in this passage we have merely a well-known proverb,(1) which the author of the first gospel has introduced into his work from some uncanonical or other source, and placed in the mouth of Jesus.(2) Certainly under the circumstances it can scarcely be maintained in its present context as a historical saying of Jesus. Ewald, who naturally omits it from Matthew xx. 16, ascribes the parable xx. 1—16 as well as that xxii. 1—14, in which it stands, originally to the Spruchsammlung(3) or collection of discourses, out of which, with intermediate works, he considers that our first Gospel was composed.(4) However this may be, there is, it seems to us, good reason for believing that it was not originally a part of these parables, and that it is not in that sense historical; and there is, therefore, no ground for asserting that it may not have been derived by the author of the Gospel from some older work, from which also it may have come into the "Epistle of Barnabas."(5)
There is, however, another passage which deserves to be mentioned. The Epistle has the following quotation: "Again, I will show thee how, in regard to us, the Lord saith, He made a new creation in the last times. The Lord saith: Behold I make the first as the last."(l) Even Tischendorf does not pretend that this is a quotation of Matth. xx. 16,(2) "Thus the last shall be first and the first last," [——]—] the sense of which is quite different. The application of the saying in this place in the first, and indeed in the other, Synoptic Gospels is evidently quite false, and depends merely on the ring of words and not of ideas. In xix. 30 it is quoted a second time, quite irrelevantly, with some variation: "But many first shall be last and last first" [——]—]. Now it will be remembered that at xx. 16 it occurs in several MSS. in connection with "Many are called but few are chosen," although the oldest codices omit the latter passage, and most critics consider it interpolated. The separate quotation of these two passages by the author of the Epistle, with so marked a variation in the second, renders it most probable that he found both in the source from which he quotes. We have, however, more than sufficiently discussed this passage. The author of the Epistle does not indicate any source from which he makes his quotation; and the mere existence in the first Synoptic of a proverbial saying
like this does not in the least involve the conclusion that it is necessarily the writing from which the quotation was derived, more especially as apocryphal works are repeatedly cited in the Epistle. If it be maintained that the saying is really historical, it is obvious that the prescriptive right of our Synoptic is at once excluded, and it may have been the common property of a score of evangelical works.