down the principle: "It is not lawful to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs." If after these exclusive sentences the boon is finally granted, it is as of the crumbs(1) which fall from the master's table.(2) The modified expression(3) in the second Gospel: "Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs;" does not affect the case, for it equally represents exclusion from the privileges of Israel, and the Messianic idea fully contemplated a certain grace to the heathen when the children were filled. The expression regarding casting, the children's bread "to the dogs" is clearly in reference to the Gentiles, who were so called by the Jews.(4) A similar, though still stronger use of such expressions, might be pointed out in the Sermon on the Mount in the first
Gospel (vii. 6): "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine." It is certain that the Jews were in the habit of speaking of the heathen both as dogs and swine—unclean animals,—and Hilgenfeld,(1) and some other critics, see in this verse a reference to the Gentiles. We do not, however, press this application which is, and may be, disputed, but merely mention it and pass on. There can be no doubt, however, of the exclusive references to the Gentiles in the same sermon, and other passages, where the disciples are enjoined to practise a higher righteousness than the Gentiles. "Do not even the publicans... do not even the Gentiles or sinners the same things."(2) "Take no thought, &c, for after all these things do the Gentiles seek; but seek ye, &c, &c."(3) The contrast is precisely that put with some irony by Paul, making use of the common Jewish expression "sinner" as almost equivalent for "Gentile;"(4) In another place the first Synoptic represents Jesus as teaching his disciples how to deal with a brother who sins against them, and as the final resource, when every effort at reconciliation and justice has failed, he says: "Let him be unto thee as the Gentile [———] and the publican." (Mt. xviii. 17.) He could not express in a stronger way to a Jewish mind the idea of social and religious excommunication.
The instructions which Jesus gives in sending out the Twelve, however, express the exclusiveness of the
Messianic mission, in the first instance at least, to the Jews, in a very marked manner. Jesus commands his disciples: "Go not into a way of the Gentiles [———] and into a city of the Samaritans enter ye not; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying: The kingdom of heaven is at hand."(1) As if more emphatically to mark the limitation of the mission, the assurance is seriously added: "For verily I say unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man come."(2) It will be observed that Jesus here charges the Twelve to go rather "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" in the same words that he employs to the Canaanitish woman to describe the exclusive destination of his own ministry.(3) In coupling the Samaritans with the Gentiles there is merely an expression of the intense antipathy of the Jews against them, as a mixed and, we may say, renegade race, excluded from the Jewish worship although circumcised, intercourse with whom is to this day almost regarded as pollution.(4) The third Gospel, which omits the restrictive instructions of Jesus to the Twelve given by the first Synoptist, introduces another episode of the same description: the appointment and mission of Seventy disciples,(6) to which we must very briefly refer. No mention whatever is made of this incident in the other Gospels, and these disciples are not referred to in any other part of the New Testament.(6) Even Eusebius remarks that no
catalogue of them is anywhere given,(1) and, after naming a few persons, who were said by tradition to have been of their number, he points out that more than seventy disciples appear, for instance, according to the testimony of Paul.(2) It will be observed that the instructions, at least in considerable part, supposed to be given to the Seventy in the third. Synoptic are, in the first, the very instructions given to the Twelve. There has been much discussion regarding the whole episode, which need not here be minutely referred to. For various reasons the majority of critics impugn its historical character.(3) A large number of these, as well as other writers, consider that the narrative of this appointment of seventy disciples, the number of the nations of the earth according to Jewish ideas, was introduced in Pauline universalistic interest,(4) or, at least, that the number is
typical of Gentile conversion, in contrast with that of the Twelve who represent the more strictly Judaic limitation of the Messianic mission; and they seem to hold that the preaching of the seventy is represented as not confined to Judaea, but as extending to Samaria, and that it thus denoted the destination of the Gospel also to the Gentiles. On the other hand, other critics, many, though by no means all, of whom do not question the authenticity of the passage, are disposed to deny the Pauline tendency, and any special connection with a mission to the Gentiles, and rather to see in the number seventy a reference to well-known Judaistic institutions.(1) It is true that the number of the nations was set down at seventy by Jewish tradition,(2) but, on the other hand, it was the number of the elders chosen by Moses from amongst the children of Israel by God's command to help him, and to whom God gave of his spirit(3)s and also of the national