Category: New Testament

Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 2

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137

§ 40.

The Healing of Two Blind Men.

Matth. 9:27-31.

It has already been shown above that Matthew copied the conclusion of his account of the healing of the two blind men from Mark’s account of the healing of the leper. The beginning and middle of this account are also borrowed from Mark’s writing; they are nothing but a copy of the story of the blind man from Jericho, which Matthew therefore relates twice, as he also picks it up again where he finds it in Mark’s writing. We also do not know why we should not mention here what Wilke has also demonstrated, that Matthew speaks of two blind men both times, whereas only one blind man is healed at Jericho according to Mark, because with this story he combines another healing of a blind man, which his predecessor reports at another place (after the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, Mark 8:22-26).

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The evidence is as follows. The only thing that still interests and perhaps stands out as content in Mark’s narrative of the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida is the description of the way in which the healing gradually takes place and the patient regains the use of his eyes. However, Matthew does not love the details, often neglecting them where he should have taken his predecessor’s account as a model. At times, though, we cannot blame his more educated reflective standpoint, especially when the elaborations on how the healing occurred and the illness disappeared seemed worthless to him in the miracle reports. It was of the utmost indifference to him how a patient was healed, if he could only write that the healing was miraculously brought about by Jesus’ word *). If a narrative contained nothing more than the note that a patient was healed, and consisted of nothing more than a detailed description of the way in which the illness was cured, it had no value for him, and it cost him little effort to leave it out or to combine it with another narrative. Thus, he had not reported particularly on the healing of the possessed man in the synagogue at Capernaum, and without much consideration, he had made this possessed man the companion of the demoniac of Gadara. Similarly, he did not consider it worthwhile to report the healing of the blind man from Bethsaida; however, he did not want to conceal the miracle, and quickly he turned the one blind man from Jericho into two blind men.

*) Μark, for example, describes in great detail how Jesus heals the demoniac after the Transfiguration below the mountain Mark 9:24-27: επετιμησεν τω πνευματι τω ακαθαρτω λεγων αυτω το πνευμα το αλαλον και κωφον εγω σοι επιτασσω εξελθε εξ αυτου και μηκετι εισελθης εις αυτον. και κραξαν και πολλα σπαραξαν αυτον εξηλθεν (literally the same as in Mark 1:25-26) και εγενετο ωσει νεκρος ωστε πολλους λεγειν οτι απεθανεν, ο δε ιησους κρατησας αυτον της χειρος ηγειρεν αυτον και ανεστη. Luke did not write down all these words, which could be found in any medical work, and Matthew, what does he do? He rightly says nothing more than: (C. 17, 18.) και επετιμησεν αυτω ο ιησους και εξηλθεν απ αυτου το δαιμονιον και εθεραπευθη —   there comes again his usual closing formula – ο παίς από της ώρας εκείνης.

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The incident that occurred at Jericho is in his mind, even the account of Mark, when he reports the healing of the two blind men that occurred after the raising of Jairus’ daughter. As Jesus, he says in Chapter 9, verse 27, continued on from there, namely from the house of Jairus, two blind men followed him. But how can two blind men “follow” the Lord so surely and freely? Nothing is easier! Matthew reads in the scripture of Mark that the blind man followed Jesus, and without further ado, he writes the same thing down because he urgently needed a transition and in the rush did not immediately notice that the blind man of Mark only “follows” the Lord after his healing *). The two blind men cry out and shout, “have mercy on us, Son of David,” they shout now as they did later when they sit by the roadside again in Jericho, and just like the blind man of Jericho whom Mark tells about *). That Jesus enters his house (after leaving Jairus’ house) and that the blind men come to him here is modeled on the story of the blind man who was healed in Bethsaida, because even if he does not come to the Lord himself, at least he is brought to Jesus when he had stayed in Bethsaida **). According to Mark’s account, Jesus asks the blind man from Jericho: “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man replies, “I want to see again,” and Jesus then says to him, “Go, your faith has healed you!” Matthew gives the same exchange, only that he borrows the expression of confidence that Jesus could perform the miracle from the story of the leper (Chapter 8, verse 2 in Mark, Chapter 1, verse 40). Finally, he returns to Mark’s account of the blind man from Bethsaida, and finds that Jesus sent the blind man whom he had led out of the village and healed here in the wilderness back home with the command not to enter the village or speak of the matter to anyone in the village. But Matthew cannot use this specific situation when he lets his two blind men be healed in Capernaum, yet he wants to conclude with the same prohibition and now takes up the conclusion of the account of the leper (Mark 1:43-45), which he had omitted above.

*) If one were to say that this is too adventurous, we refer to things that we have already become accustomed to in the Gospel of Matthew. We will learn more of such pragmatic creations that arose only from a hasty combination of information in the Gospel of Mark. One of the most remarkable can be found in Matt. C. 14, 12. Perhaps we can explain his understanding this time so that it no longer seems too adventurous. In Mark 10:46, he reads that when Jesus left Jericho, he was accompanied by his disciples and a considerable crowd (και των μαθητών αυτού και όχλου ικανού). On the other hand, he expresses a simpler version in Matt. C. 20, 29 that when the company left Jericho, a large crowd followed them (ξαλ éxito evoμένων αυτών ….. ηκολούθησεν αυτώ όχλος πολύς). Perhaps he already had this simpler version in mind when he wrote the section in C. 9:27 and used the blind men instead of the crowd because the crowd was not immediately present. The matter remains always adventurous.

*) Matth. 9, 27 κράζοντες και λέγοντες, ελέησον ημάς υιέ Δαυίδ. Matth. 20, 30 έκραξαν λέγοντες, ελέησον ημάς, κύριε υιός Δαυίδ. Mark 10, 47 ήρξατο κράζειν και λέγειν, ο υιός Δαυίδ Ιησού, ελέησόν με.

**) Matth. 9, 28 ελθόντι δε εις την οικίαν, προσήλθον αυτώ οι τυφλοί. Mark 8, 22 και έρχεται εις Βηθσαϊδάν και φέρουσιν αυτώ τυφλόν.

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Otherwise, when Matthew changes the sequence of events and suddenly connects narratives that are far apart in the writing of Mark, we find the reason for these rearrangements, which were brought about by a kind of necessity, in the pragmatism that had already been established in the previous sections and had become a commanding force. However, this time, nothing can be discovered in the previous sections that would explain why Matthew had to jump from the resurrection of Jairus’ daughter to an event that, according to Mark’s account, happened after the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and shortly before the entry into Jerusalem in Jericho. Nevertheless, Matthew had his good reason for letting the healing of the blind happen right now. He is in a hurry to instruct the apostles, wants to report the message of the Baptist immediately after this, but, as Luke prescribes, he has to begin the answer with which Jesus dismisses the messengers of the Baptist with the words (Ch. 11, 5.): “the blind see!” and now wants to give these words, by already reporting a healing of the blind beforehand, a historical basis and justification. Luke, who first introduced this new element into the original type of the Gospel story, did not yet think of prefacing the justification to Jesus’ answer. Or perhaps he was just not thinking about this aspect of the miraculous activity, as he lets the raising of the young man from Nain precede the message of the Baptist so that the reader can understand how Jesus could say in his response to the Baptist, “The dead rise!” (Luke 7:22).

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 2

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124

§ 38.

The Healing of the Woman with the Issue of Blood.

Matthew 9:20-22.

It would certainly be senseless, says Calvin *), to assume that Christ, without knowing who the blessing would affect, had poured out his grace. We must assume without hesitation that he healed the woman with knowledge and will, and only afterwards asked about her because he wanted her to come forward of her own free will.

*) absurdum.

If it were truly absurd to attribute to the Lord a healing power that involuntarily went out from his body, and even settled in his garment, so that the sick person who only touched the edge of it was instantly healed **), then the evangelical account would be meaningless. Because even Matthew, although he leaves out everything that the other two tell, to make it quite certain that the healing was involuntary, cannot blunt this point of the account, indeed he explicitly includes it in his presentation when he says that the Lord had turned around and, when he saw her, called out to her, “Be of good cheer, daughter, your faith has made you well.” Her faith, which made her sure that she would be healed by touching his garment, had already helped her, and if the Lord had to turn around to see who had touched him *), he had previously concluded from some circumstance that someone must have touched him. Mark tells us what he concluded from – he noticed that power had gone out from him – and Luke even transforms this conclusion into a saying of Jesus: “Someone has touched me, for I perceived that power had gone out from me.”

**) This escalation was introduced by Matthew and Luke in the account. Mark only speaks of the garment in general and only exaggerated this simple observation in Chapter 5, verse 56.

*) Matth. 9, 22 ο δε ιησους επιστραφεις και ιδων αυτην. Mark 5, 30 και ευθέως ο Ι. επιγνούς εν εαυτώ την εξ αυτού δύναμιν έξελθούσαν επιστραφείς ….. V. 32 και περιεβλέπετο ιδείν την τούτο ποιήσουσαν.

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All three accounts insist that the healing was involuntary. But strangely enough, the narrator who has proven to be the first one also felt the secret difficulty that would prompt a Calvin to make the harsh pronouncement that the ordinary view is absurd. Mark, in particular, would not want to exclude the (relative) sensible mediation by the will of Jesus, and thus he allows at least a confirmation of the miracle through the will to follow afterwards. He lets the Lord say after the words, “your faith has helped you”: “Go in peace and be healed of your affliction!” But it was too late: with the words “your faith has helped you,” the healing is assumed to have already been completed, and before Jesus turns around and seeks out the person who touched him, the woman had already realized that she had been healed of her illness (Mark 5:29). If we consider that once a miracle was established in the evangelical view, it was only valuable for its wondrous apex and that eventually this apex became so meaningful in memory that individual elements of the original view were lost **), then it is certain that Mark is not only relatively the first narrator but, speaking specifically of this story, the absolute first, the creator, the poet. He still knew what the miracle he was shaping meant, but he also felt the enormous difficulty that the view of miracles had to overcome in this case, and he had to overcome it in two ways as the first one to do so. The idea was firm in his mind; he wanted to demonstrate it through a single case, how the heavenly miracle-working powers had assimilated with the person of Jesus to such an extent and had been bestowed upon him with such an unbounded abundance that they had even passed into the natural constitution of his body and had been communicated to his garments. This idea had already been brought up by Mark before: by the sea, where Jesus had withdrawn after the conflict with the Pharisees (3:10), the people who were plagued actually fell upon him, so that they could touch him *). Now he wants to show by an example how great the miracle-working power of the body and even of the clothes of Jesus was, and to bring the miracle in all its magnitude before the eyes, he can hardly find words that are full and strong enough to describe the severe suffering of the woman. She had already had the flow of blood for twelve years and had suffered much from many doctors and spent all her property on it, but it had not helped her at all, “on the contrary, it had only become worse *).” With the same care and precision of detail, he describes how the sick woman was healed by touching Jesus’ garment and the Lord at least realizes that someone must have touched his garment, as power had gone out from him. Thus Mark did everything to describe the miracle in its immense magnitude and to raise it to the certainty that Jesus did not heal this time by the power of his explicit will: in the end, however, he becomes anxious, he himself is frightened by the boundlessness of the miracle-working power that he had attributed to the body of Jesus, and now, after he had hoped to have already mastered the difficulty of the matter through the accuracy of the description, he realizes that he has only made the immense even more immense and tries to stifle it with the difficulty. But it is too late! The Lord did not need to intervene with his will anymore, as the healing had already been completed. It remains involuntary **). — Oh, when we now see how Mark, the first creator of this view, wavered, how later — see Luke — healing was considered purely involuntary, others claimed Jesus’ will, until finally in modern times the art of interpretation reached such a high degree of development that it understood how to secretly smuggle “Christian consciousness” into the account and now, when it had quietly blown all “materialistic” notions out of its head, dared to assert that the Lord knew very well what was happening behind his back, he even worked with his will and furthermore intended to heal the woman both physically and morally *) — yes, until finally they did not hesitate to speak of the nonsense “of a trust mixed with erroneous conceptions” of the woman, which “was not deceived” **), — when we see all this, this outgrowth of Mark’s simple view, before us as the monstrosities of exegetical anxiety and madness, and when we are finally allowed to conclude this long sentence — what should we do then? Should we still build the Tower of Babylon higher? As if it were possible! One can clearly see that explanations like those of Olshausen and Neander are so crookedly placed on the building and are themselves so extravagant that they are to blame if the magnificent building of exegetical despair, the tower in which reason was to be walled up, finally collapses to the ground. It has fallen; the rubble, the debris only covers the ground; but the dust settles, liberated reason throws the wild rubble aside and brings to light the true foundation on which the first simple structure was built. We have found this foundation in Mark’s view, and in itself, in its ideal simplicity, it is the postulate that the heavenly powers of the godly men pass into the perfect immediacy of sensual tangibility, in which they penetrate bones, clothing, sweat cloths and even finally share in the shadow of holy men. Even after the death of such men, their bones are miraculous (2 Kings 13, 21.).

**) “The proof is provided by Luke: he omits the subsequent confirmation of the miracle through the will (Luke 8:48). In this case, Matthew was motivated by other considerations to shorten the account, but he could only agree to such a shortening because later the details of the miracle accounts lost their significance. He also omits that confirmation and says instead (Matt. 9:22): “And the woman was healed at that moment.” He used his standard formula with which he usually concludes miracle accounts for that subsequent confirmation of the miracle that he reads in Mark. (Compare Matt. 8:18, 15:8.) In addition, he had to fill a gap here, create a pause, and give a note, since he could not provide the information that messengers had come at that moment who reported the death of Jairus’ daughter.

*) Luke mitigates, abbreviates and even leaves out the last part, which was necessary for the contrast. Matthew only says that she had the flow of blood for 12 years – again a confirmation of the assertion that the detail had lost its significance for later readers.

*) πολλούς εθεράπευσεν, ώςτε επιπίπτειν αυτώ, ίνα αυτού άψωνται, όσοι είχον μάστιγας. Vergl. 5, 34 μάστιγoς.

**) This procedure of Mark forms the counterpart to the carefulness with which he proceeds in the story of the daughter of Jairus to the postulate of a resurrection of the dead. Here the carefulness and the anxiousness of a first attempt in the manner of progress is demonstrated, in the story of the woman with the flow of blood the same is demonstrated in the retraction that is made at the end

*) Olshausen, I, 325.

**) Neander, p. 422.

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If this transition of divine power to sensory immediacy in the world of ideal perception persists, we know what to do with it: we simply observe it and recall in it the idea that ultimately generated it, namely, the idea that the elevated historical spirits also work beyond the realm of their rational calculation through the power of their inner content, and that the abundance of their power streams far beyond the limits of their determined will. However, if the apologist wants to impose his quackery on us, that is, to insult our reason and distort the evangelical perception, he will now know what criticism will respond to him. Finally, however, no one will be able to naturalize the sensory perception of the evangelist, as immediate as it is, with flesh and bones in the realm of pure reason. Weisse attempts it, but how? “The concept of miracle,” he says*, “takes for itself such an outward appearance of physical existence, through which involuntary action is also conceivable. Such an outward appearance of the purely physical existence, which is bound to the spirit and mediated by the spirit, takes the place of that allegedly irrational incomprehensibility which dogmatic bibliolatry must predicate of the substance of that power.” However, if Weisse had only respected the earlier views of the theologians, he would not have spoken against dogmatism and rather seen that his assumption of a “pure” physical “existence,” which is again “mediated by the spirit,” and of involuntary action, which is again only mediated by the will, is nothing but the fluctuating and untenable excuse of those excellent learned men. We are far from wanting to improve, develop, or secure these excuses now; the historical perception of the religious spirit cannot be raised immediately into the concept, expanded into theory, or placed in the reality of nature and history, and the only task that can be assigned to us because of it is solely the explanation of its origin, an explanation that we have given when we showed that it is the transfer of the essential determinations and relations of self-consciousness into the sensory and individual aspects of immediate being. As for the physical constitution of historical heroes in reality, their relationship to the spirit – if we exclude artists – is no different than that their powers extend just enough to provide the necessary foundation for the inner struggles and exertions of the spirit.

*) a. a. O. I, 502.

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The final enlightenment will eventually be found in the report when it is considered in its entirety. The section to which it belongs is preceded by three others: first (C. 1:14-45), Mark explains to us how Capernaum became the center of Jesus’ activity; then (C. 2:1-3:6) he reports to us how the relationship between the new principle and the law developed and the enmity of the Pharisees arose; what the significance of the third section (C. 3:7-4:34) is, will later become clear to us; but if the fourth section (C. 4:35-5:43), which Matthew has also preserved in its entirety, begins with the calming of the storm and ends with the raising of Jairus’s daughter, and between these two limits includes the healing of the possessed and the woman with the issue of blood, then we now know what its purpose and significance are: it is to present the pure and unadulterated revelation of the glory of Jesus in his miraculous deeds, with no other interests interfering. In the first and second (also in the third) sections, there are also enough miracles, but the point with which the reports end, or the purpose they serve in context, diverts attention from the miracle as such and directs it to other interests. On the other hand, the miracle itself should now be viewed, and it is self-evident that it will be colossal, extraordinary, and valuable in terms of interest in every case, depending on the degree of importance, that is, the power of resistance the miracle worker had to overcome even if only by a word. As we can expect from such a skilled composer as Mark is in historical matters, he will arrange the individual miracles according to their degree of significance. Mark has worked excellently. In the storm, the Lord stills the turmoil and rebellion in nature; over there among the Gadarenes, he defeats a legion of devilish spirits, and here, on this shore, he heals an ingrained uncleanness with just a touch of his garment, and finally he kills death with a single word. Can the miracle worker achieve more by defeating the devilish, unclean, and death itself? And can the writer better organize than by first bringing the elements into obedience and finally overcoming the greatest enemy of ordinary consciousness, death? Mark has worked so skillfully in every direction, allowing the entire section to stand out so beautifully from its surroundings, arranging it so appropriately and developing the details that we would do him an injustice as a writer if we were to withhold from him the honor of having shaped and created this entire section.

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We have already traced back the origins of the first two accounts (of the calming of the storm and of the healing of the possessed), so we only need to draw attention to the indications that prove that the last two accounts were created together. It is already significant and only the work of the writer that the healing of the woman with the issue of blood is inserted into the story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter, precisely at the point where Jesus had set out to heal a sick person and the message arrives that the girl had died. But this was necessary according to the structure of the entire section: the prospect of a struggle with death could not be opened up yet, as the power of Jesus’ body healed the deep-rooted illness of the woman with the issue of blood, and only at the moment *) when the woman’s illness was lifted could the message arrive, which presented the Lord with the more difficult task of fighting death **).

*) Mark 5:35 “While he was still speaking…”

**)From this it will become completely clear how inexpediently Matthew has made a change when he has the father of the child immediately appear with the request for its resurrection.

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Mark has finally used another means to connect both events closely to each other. The woman with the issue of blood suffered for twelve years, and the daughter of Jairus was twelve years old, as is noted at the end of the story in passing to explain why she got up and walked around after being revived (v. 42). Luke did not know that his predecessor was indicating that the child was already at the age where she could get up and walk around on her own, he did not see that Mark needed this detail necessarily to vividly illustrate the awakening of the child. Therefore, he omits the remark that the child walked around again and says at the beginning of the narrative that the child was twelve years old. “The only one” of Jairus, he adds (8:42), by drawing the conclusion from the man’s words in Mark 5:23 “my daughter,” Jairus had no other children. Matthew only reports that the woman with the issue of blood suffered for twelve years, he does not even include the name of Jairus in his account, nor does he say to his readers that his daughter was a twelve-year-old child. He does not appreciate and properly value the detail, even if it is essential in Mark’s writing and serves, as in this case, for the pragmatic connection of two reports.

*) Mark 5:42 και ευθεως ανεστη το κορασιον και περιεπατει ην γαρ ετων δωδεκα. Luke 8:55 και επέστρεψε το πνεύμα αυτής (Mark presents the return of life much better to the view by immediately reporting and painting the consequence) και ανεστη παραχρημα. Luke feels the gap that now arises by leaving out the περιεπατει ην γαρ …, he therefore immediately adds the note: και διεταξεν αυτη δοθηναι φαγειν, a remark that Mark has much more appropriately at the end, after reporting that the child walked around again, that Jesus forbade them to speak of the matter.

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There is no need to discuss the account of the raising of Jairus’ daughter any further now that the origin of this entire section has been so clearly revealed. However, there are still some things to note about the presentation and literary work.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 2

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114

§ 37.

The Fasting of the Disciples of John.

Matthew 9:14-17.

And then, Matthew continues, as Jesus was dining with that tax collector, the disciples of John came to him and asked, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” In order to preserve the honor of his protege, who prompted the Pharisees with this question, Schleiermacher **) simply states that “the question from John’s disciples would have been almost naive,” without telling us why, and without considering whether the way Luke has the Pharisees ask the question would make these people appear even more naive. But Luke reports that the same Pharisees who had just grumbled about Jesus’ association with tax collectors and sinners said to him, “Why do the disciples of John fast often and pray frequently, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink?” Anyone who wants to argue that Luke’s account is the original one must make it understandable to us how the Pharisees suddenly adopt the remarkable objectivity of language, speaking of themselves as if they were others or even strangers. Until casuistry is so far advanced that it explains even this peculiar case, it will probably have to be considered as the only possible explanation that Luke only allows the Pharisees to ask the question in this way because he literally copies the question from a scripture in which it is only asked by Jews in general. He did not consistently carry out the modification of the original report and partly let himself be governed by the letter. And yet he himself changed the question, but in the wrong place: he lets the Pharisees ask why the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast so much and pray so much, and forgets to change the question so much that he makes the opponents wonder why Jesus’ disciples do not pray. He only writes: “and eat and drink what is appropriate.” He has forced the mention of prayer into the report and only forced it into one half of the report, because even in his narrative Jesus only speaks of fasting, as if prayer were not even thought of in the question. Of course – he writes Jesus’ answer according to Mark. Finally, he does not close the question as it should be: why do not your disciples fast, but rather breaks the rhythm of the question and lets the Pharisees speak: but why do yours eat and drink? This change betrays to us the pragmatism of the evangelist, because already before, when the Pharisees ask Jesus’ disciples: why does he eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners, he has changed it so that the question refers to the behavior of the disciples: why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Luke wanted to bring both narratives into immediate connection and now presents the matter in such a way that the questioners are not only the same people, but that their question also refers to the same case, namely the behavior of the disciples. He realizes that even according to his own account, it is not eating in general, but eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners that is criticized, and he has failed to notice that Jesus’ first answer: “I have come to call sinners” assumes an accusation of the Lord and not of his disciples.

**) Cf. Schleiermacher, p. 79.

*) Still maintained by Neander, p. 228.

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However, according to the original tendency of the account, they must have been decided opponents of the Lord or people whose hostility was already stirring when they took occasion from the disciples’ way of life to accuse the Lord himself. If the question were issued by John’s disciples, it would be inappropriate, if not “simple,” as Schleiermacher thought, unless the historian also explained how they came to such a hostile attitude that they confronted the Lord with the Pharisees. However, Matthew did not provide us with this explanation; he could not provide it unless he wanted to invent a new story like he did on another occasion with the fourth evangelist. And he did not need to provide it because he did not even think that far and only wanted to specify and vivify the indefinite beginning given by Mark’s account. Indeed, at the outset, Mark notes briefly and succinctly – for nothing more was necessary to prepare the reader for the following narrative – “the disciples of John and the Pharisees were fasting” (Mark 2:18), and now he only lets people step forward who take occasion from the way of life of his disciples to accuse Jesus. Of course, he does not leave the matter completely indefinite, since he always lets the Pharisees act hostilely against the Lord before and after, so he certainly thinks of them as the questioners this time too. However, he intentionally keeps the representation in suspense because he wanted to avoid the appearance that both attacks happened during the meal at Matthew’s, perhaps also because of a correct aesthetic feeling, he wanted to avoid the uniformity of the representation and did not want to start every single paragraph with the remark that the Pharisees stood there and carried out the attack. This feeling prompted him, in chapter 3, verse 2, not to mention the Pharisees by name right away and only to note later (verse 6) that it was the Pharisees who had laid in wait for the Lord.

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The way in which Jesus justifies his discipline must cause a lot of trouble for the theologian who has not yet freed himself from the service of the letter, and eventually, if he wants to save the letter at any cost, force him to kill the life that is really present in the letter. The letter does not kill, if it depends solely on it, i.e. if its living development is not forcibly suppressed, but it is the apologist who kills it. Criticism revives it again and leads it back to the only source of life, into self-awareness.

First, Jesus answers (Mark 2:19-20): Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast*). Fasting is not rejected in itself, but it is only appropriate if it happens at the right time, namely in the moment of abandonment.

*) Matthew has nicely shortened it by omitting the answer to the question “can they fast?” and immediately following the question with the indication of when the wedding guests will fast. Luke also abbreviated it in this way. Under the hand of Mark, the definite form of the saying only arose, he still struggled with the moments of thought and therefore sometimes gave the members, which become superfluous when the whole is finished, instead of the short whole.

And without pausing, Jesus continues (Mark 2:21-22): No one sews a patch of new cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, and the tear will be worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into new wineskins. That is to say – and this saying is usually understood in this way – do not try to impose the forms of the old on the standpoint on which I have placed mine, otherwise the old will be shattered by the power of the new principle, and instead of gaining a form for the new, one runs the risk of losing it itself. It is unmistakable that the transfer of legal customs to the Christian standpoint can be described and criticized as not only illegitimate but also harmful and corrupting; however, Neander argues that this idea would then be “completely foreign” to the preceding passage *). “What harm does that do?” we might answer, “if only one or both of the passages have a sound sense for themselves.” Oh no! it rings in the apologist’s innermost being, that would be terrible, frightening, because then there would be no way to avoid the admission that we do not have here a saying of the Lord before us, or at least it could no longer be denied that both sayings did not owe their origin to the same occasion at the same time. So let’s just help vigorously, twist, distort, and squeeze! So – the meaning of the second saying is now – “one cannot even reform the old nature of man by forcing fasting and prayer exercises on it from the outside.” Listen: “from the outside!” That’s supposed to be the point! It is true that images must not be anxiously held onto in their individual features, so that one would want to search for a corresponding element in the matter itself for every feature, and one would be rightly said to violate this principle if we were to object to Neander that there is no question here of the old nature of man, since the compared thing is compared to the new wine that one should not put in old wineskins. Well then, let us withhold this objection for a moment, but then we have a much greater right to reject Neander’s explanation and to twist the point, which lies in the determination: “from the outside,” since it is based only on the isolated circumstance that in the first saying there is talk of the patch that one “puts on” an “old” garment. We say, an even greater right! For if two images are brought together to represent the same thing, we can in any case, if the composer is not too clumsy, be sure that the second one will be clearer and more precisely corresponding to the thing. So it is here; it is about the form in which the disciples of Jesus are to grasp the new spirit, and then the second image of the fate of the must, depending on whether it is placed in old or new wineskins, is the one that most closely corresponds to the determinations of the thing itself. But even if it were not the case, the point “from the outside” remains forever lost, as there is no place for it in the second image, unless one believes that the must can be poured into the skins from the inside. The point is not “from the outside”, but rather the idea that only homogenous, new things fit together, that every thing must have its appropriate appearance form – in short, it remains that both images are intended to reject the attempt to bind the new spirit in the old forms of the legal spirit as foolishness, and thus it is again established that the sayings attributed to the Lord here exclude each other. First, it is said that fasting practiced at the right time should not be disapproved, and afterwards, it is described as impossible to unite the old and the new, the new principle and the old forms.

*) ibid., pp. 232-234.

119

Luke must have already had a feeling that both sayings were not really connected, he at least makes the transition from one to the other with the formula “he also told them a parable”, which we have already encountered in his writing in places where he put together sayings on his own and could not hide that the connection he intended was not really present *). Finally, Weisse has successfully found that it is “more correct to separate both sayings from each other or at least leave their connection undecided **).” But as we have proven, they must be separated altogether.

*) Luke 5:36 και παραβολήν προς αυτούς. Compare Luke 6:39 είπε δε παραβολήν αυτοίς. Luke 18:1 έλεγε δε και παραβολήν αυτοϊς.

**) a. a. O. I, 483.

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First of all, as a necessary consequence of the above criticism, we would have to state that both sayings did not arise from the same occasion; but if the question is asked which saying arose from the presumed occasion, we might well wonder for which of the two the apologist will decide. But no! We don’t want to know, he doesn’t admit that result at all, and we won’t bother him any further for that reason, since we have nothing more to do with this question and the investigation must take a completely different turn. If only one of the two sayings, and both equally, can be appropriately related to that occasion, then this occasion no longer exists for us as a historical one, and it reveals itself to us as a freely formed category under which Mark has placed sayings that refer to the same collision of the old and the new. Weisse himself must admit that the parables of the garment and the wine “only fulfill their purpose if they are not taken merely as a dismissal of that particular question” – but what does that mean other than: their general scope is out of proportion to that specific occasion, and this disproportionality has arisen because general controversies that the community had to fight through were compressed into a single event in the life of Jesus? Jesus has just appeared – the way of life of his followers cannot yet have been so peculiarly shaped that it caused a sensation, so it could not yet be contrasted with the way of life of the disciples of John. Furthermore, when we consider that real history knows nothing about a special school of John’s disciples, nothing about how a group of followers who were supposed to have gathered around the Baptist (but never existed) lived and behaved according to the law, it is clear that this occasion is pure invention. The struggle of the old and the new, which the community endured, was to be exemplified in an incident from the life of Jesus, or rather the life of the Lord, since it was unknown, could only be taken from the treasure trove of the experiences and events of the community: thus, sayings of far-reaching universality and carefully constructed occasions had to come together. This time, the freedom of the Christian principle was to be brought to the attention of a feature of the life of Jesus: it was fitting that not only the one legal party, namely the Pharisees, confronted the Lord, but the power of the new only appeared in its full scope when even the man closest to salvation had not yet freed himself from the shackles of the old. Instead of the Baptist, who had been displaced from the scene, his disciples had to be placed opposite the Lord, and for that reason alone, Mark had to make this historical discovery that there had been a special circle of John’s disciples, because the saying he wanted to convey this time had the way of life of the community in mind and the disciples of Jesus, who are now the historical image of the community, had to be placed opposite the entire circle of disciples of the old powers.

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The first saying about the fasting of the wedding guests shows itself in all its parts as a later creation. To call oneself “the bridegroom” was impossible for the Lord because at his time the bride, the church, had not yet been born. From the time when the bridegroom was taken away *), he could not speak so briefly that everyone would understand what he meant. No one could know what this strong expression “taken away” meant, even less so since the natural and ordinary circumstances of the bridegroom offer no aspect that could be the self-evident image of the violent rapture of the Lord. Only after the death of Jesus was the saying understandable and where it has its meaning, it was also only formed then.

*) Mark 2, 20. parall. ελεύσονται δε ημέραι, όταν απαρθή απ’ αυτών ο νυμφιος.

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The theologian should actually be grateful to us for restoring this saying to where it originated, because as long as the assumption holds that it belongs to the Lord, and as long as statutory authority is granted to the biblical word, it must also be a law that the church fasts constantly after the rapture of the Lord or, if this is impossible, accepts that law through specific fasting days. However, if it originated in the church, the saying should not be understood so literally, since after the death of Jesus there was no law or custom by which constant fasting was strictly commanded, and it is finally clear that fasting is to be understood figuratively. Matthew understood this correctly and used the more general expression at the beginning of the saying: can the wedding guests “mourn” *), as long as the bridegroom is with them? In short, fasting is the internal pain and sorrow, this feeling of negation that is an essential element in the life of the church due to the memory of the death of the Redeemer.

*) C. 9, 15 πενθείν.

The difference between both sayings, which we had to designate as such at the beginning and which contradict each other, remains, although according to the figurative explanation of the first, it becomes clear that both are not entirely unrelated: in the first, the point is the idea that the church fulfills the legal commandment of fasting in a higher sense, in the pain over the sufferings of their Redeemer – (she dies with her Lord every day) – in the second, the demand that the Old should be the form of the New is unconditionally rejected. Mark was well aware of this resonance of both sayings, namely that they both exercise a negative dialectic against the old law, when he put them together, but it is just as certain that he did not create both freely and from scratch himself. He freely formed the first, the more artificial one, and for the second, he used a general principle, perhaps a proverb that had formed in the church.

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Regarding the saying about new wine and old wineskins, Luke (C. 5, 30) adds another one as if it were in the best context: “And no one who drinks old wine wants new, because he says the old is better.” However, it is difficult, indeed impossible, to find a connection between this saying and the preceding context. “If it is authentic,” says Weisse, “it can only be said to explain the difficulty of penetrating Jesus’ teaching.” *) According to our previous discussions, it is hardly necessary to ask whether a saying of this kind, if it were actually spoken by Jesus, could have been remembered for years; indeed, it is much too meager and thin to be a proverb that was circulating in the community. Proverbs of this meagerness, which do not sharpen into a specific spiritual relationship through the power of their point, owe their origin rather solely to the writer, who, with more or less success, continues a given topic and the already found execution of it on his own. Weisse also considers it “more likely that Luke added the saying off the cuff and without thinking of anything right about it.” Luke did indeed add it, believing that he was putting it in the best context, but he was mistaken, for the mere fact that wine was mentioned before and after, that old and new were talked about in both sayings, is not enough to create a true connection. Nevertheless, if no connection with the preceding, but at least some spiritual meaning can be found in the saying itself, this comes solely from the fact that natural relationships are the images of spiritual determinations in themselves.

*) II. 140.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 2

—o0o—

95

§ 36.

The banquet of the tax collector Matthew.

Matthew 9:9-13.

The apologists should finally become wise and stop trying to completely stifle the contradictions in the Gospel accounts with such blind fury, lest they create the impression that the Christian religion stands or falls based on whether these contradictions are stifled or left free. However, it seems as if a demonic force does not allow these people to rest, constantly driving them to work on this weakest aspect of their system, and making it more damaging through their work, because that is actually the case – their system really must fall if the contradictions are not stifled like they do, and finally, the punishment for their contempt for human freedom and reason should strike them. Even at this moment, they are circling, measuring, pressing, stretching, and doing everything possible with these contradictions, while criticism has recognized them and gained insight into their origin. The recognized contradiction is no longer a contradiction.

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1. The Calling of Matthew.

The man whom Jesus called to follow him away from his tax booth after healing the paralyzed man is called Levi *) by Mark (2:14) and Luke (5:27), but the first Synoptist calls him a certain Matthew. In modern times, the solution to this contradiction was believed to be found in the possibility that “the tradition” had confused two people. Levi, says Sieffert, was called as all three Synoptists report, and his profession was to provide the occasion for that banquet where Jesus’ friendly relationship with tax collectors offended the Pharisees. “But it is certain that the apostle Matthew was also a tax collector before he was called by Christ to be his disciple, although his calling probably did not take place under the same circumstances that relate to the calling of Levi **).” Neander offers another solution to the difference: “It is always possible that the host was another rich tax collector named Levi, a friend of Matthew’s. Thus, the one whose calling provided the occasion for this feast and the host may have been confused with each other through tradition” *). However, all talk of tradition must be rejected from the outset, as it can be proven most clearly here, as previously, that the evangelist whom the church has called Matthew has used nothing but the writings of his two predecessors and his own wit for this narrative **). He noticed with amazement that neither Luke nor Mark mention that Levi, whom they report was called by Jesus to permanent discipleship, belonged to the twelve apostles. How, he asks, could this man not belong to the twelve? Yes, he belonged to them, he is only listed under a different name in the register. But under which name? He knew best, and it was previously believed that he himself was the Matthew from whom the first gospel originated, and whom Mark and Luke only mention under his original Hebrew name when they call him Levi. But if it gives us pause that this man speaks so strangely of himself and, when he immerses himself in history, does so with the formula “then Jesus saw a man named Matthew (ανθρωπον Ματθαιον λεγομενον),” the apologist awaits us with the edifying remark *), we must admire in this circumstance “the receding of subjectivity” which the evangelists **), as chaste historians, manifest who were purely absorbed in their sublime object. What nonsense! As if this were still purity when an evangelist speaks of himself in such a way that the reader is misled. “He saw a man named Matthew” does not simply introduce Matthew – does the apologist not have a Caesar who could teach him otherwise? – but also tells us that this Matthew was an unknown person to the evangelist. He only knew him from the list of apostles provided by Mark (3:18) and Luke (6:15). Luke recorded the story of Levi’s calling and included the list of apostles mechanically, but the synoptist who was preferred and placed first by the church, perhaps because they felt he was the apologist among the three, took offense at Levi not being named among the apostles – no! He was certain that Levi must have been one of the twelve and had hidden himself under another name in the list of apostles, and without much thought, he blindly picked from the multitude of unknown names that the list presented to him. Thus, Levi became Matthew. Both Mark and Luke did not think of identifying the two men, they would not have omitted the least thing that was required of them in this case, they would have at least called Matthew “the tax collector” so that their readers, if lucky, could come to the assumption that this Matthew was the tax collector whose calling they had previously recounted. But both list Matthew without further designation. If the apologist were right, they would not be secure from the accusation that their carelessness had caused unrest in the church for almost two millennia, and if the accusation were taken seriously, they would not be acquitted.

*) Mark calls him even more specifically the son of Alphaeus (τον του Αλφαιου). However, Wilke (p. 673) has convincingly demonstrated that this addition is later and inauthentic. Mark actually “only mentions one N. τον του Αλφαιου”, James in 3: 18, whom he has to distinguish from the other James, the brother of John.

**) Sieffert on the Origin of the First Canonical Gospel, p. 59.

*) L. J. Chr. 253.

**) Already the beginning of his narration (C. 9, 9) και παραγων εκειθεν ειδεν ανθρωποω is structured in such a way that it is only understandable when we compare it with Mark’s account. Παραγων means “in passing,” but how can this formula be immediately connected with the other phrase, “from there”? “In passing,” Jesus can only be thought of if it was said that he had left the place where he was before; but Matthew is silent about this. He does say “from there,” but “in passing.” This expression no longer reflects on the starting point that was left behind, but on the line along which one already finds oneself. The mediation and the movement that led to this line are done with, and just as the starting point is forgotten, the state that has now arisen can be called rest in comparison to that movement. Matthew had to reflect on the starting point and on the preceding movement, but he expressed this reflection disorderly. Why? Because it was tedious for him to deal with these details, which are essential for the appropriate construction of the narrative and which will never be missing in the original account. Because he did not want to copy Mark completely, because copying these minutiae was boring for him, because he was satisfied if he had the petty but essential assumptions of what follows roughly in his head, regardless of whether his readers were orientated in these matters or not, briefly, because he was only concerned with the essential content. Even Luke found this exact copying of the original tedious; he only says in chapter 5, 27: “And after that he went out, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom.” So he does not tell his readers where the customs house was located. Now listen to the original account (Mark 2, 13-14): “And he went out again by the seaside; and all the multitude resorted unto him, and he taught them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom.” Compare with John 9, 1: και παραγων ειδεν. Because of John, 8, 59 ιησους δε εκρυβη  . . . διελθων δια μεσου αυτων και παρηγεν ουτως. Compare Luke 4, 30 αυτός δε διελθών διά μέσου αυτών ἐπορεύετο. Παρηγεν Joh. 8, 59 is actually an inaccurate expression, but can still be explained at most: after he had gone “through the midst of them,” he went “quietly” past them “along the crowd” and “further.”

Regarding the difficulty we will find below, if Sieffert (p. 60) says that the first evangelist must have been unaware that the choosing of the twelve apostles had already taken place before the Sermon on the Mount, it has just been shown to us again that he could have easily obtained more precise information on such matters from the writings of his two predecessors if they had not caused him as much scruple as his apologist.

*) z. B, still Olshausen, I, 315.

**) Olshausen says, “the Gospels”! Here, only the haste was at fault for the blunder, but otherwise, the confusion in the language of the apologists proves that their cause itself is nothing but the confusion of self-consciousness. The apologist cannot write better because his cause does not give him courage, strength, and confidence. One only needs to look at the insane statement, “Of course, if Olshausen, at the aforementioned place, is excessively concerned with the retreat of subjectivity and the chastity of the evangelists and then continues a moment later: ‘Certainly, their reflectionlessness is also expressed in this. The twisted and contorted phrases, the uncertainty and lack of coherence in movement, and the pale bloatedness in the language of the apologists—all this dull and exhausting style comes from the untruth and dullness of the matter. If one analyzes the saw they anxiously twist, one must either lose patience because no content rewards the effort, or, if one seeks the truth with them out of fear, become insane, or move beyond this oppressed standpoint, if one wants to remain rational and patient during the analysis.”

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In this important matter, Mark did not reflect yet. The list of apostles was given to him and he did not feel compelled to relate the story of the calling of the tax collector to it – why? Because this story only had value for him in regard to the hostile interaction between the Pharisees and the Lord that arose from it, and because he was only concerned with the development of Jesus’ relationship with the Jewish party in this context. Luke follows him without hesitation, but Matthew, the latest, for whom the pragmatism of his predecessor had become completely foreign, and who no longer wanted to simply copy, reflected – namely in his own way.

Sometimes, however, he did not reflect or could not direct his reflection, which was directed to other things, to circumstances that also cannot be overlooked. His reflection was always only directed to individual points, so it was not all-powerful. But let us not reveal the secret too early; the apologist would be unhappy and would have to despair of everything, and in the end, he believed he was at the end of the world if his miserable worries were taken away from him. Only in his petty obsession with the letter did he have his true self-confidence, and whoever robs him of that is evil.

Luke – namely, Mark is not considered in this world question – first tells of the calling of Levi – that is, of Matthew in the apologetic world – (Ch. 5, 27), then he reports how Jesus, in the solitude to which he later withdrew, chose the Twelve – including Matthew – and held the Sermon on the Mount before them as well as before the crowd that had just arrived (Ch. 6, 12-20). Terrible! The first synoptist reports that Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount before the disciples and the people, before telling us about the calling of Matthew and the determination of the circle of disciples, and the poor apologist must still know Matthew as well as the Twelve if he is to hear the Sermon on the Mount devoutly and with the proper effect! So how can he be helped?

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It is not easy to find a way out of this, as evidenced by the various tortures to which Tholuck has to resort; however, a way out is always found in the end. For the moment, we would have too much to do if we wanted to reflect on “the fact that Matthew also thought about the election of the apostles preceding the Sermon on the Mount, although he does not mention it here or anywhere else” *) – we will soon hear that the first evangelist, in chapter 10, did not report on the election of the apostles at all. Let us focus for now on the core of Tholuck’s explanation. Matthew was already called to be an apostle before the Sermon on the Mount; “but this election may have been something surprising and unexpected for him, he could not simply stay with Jesus, but had to return to his tax business and only here fulfill his obligations completely. And then, after a few days, when Jesus went out of Capernaum again, he found the tax collector sitting at the tax booth, who in the meantime had made his arrangements, and now called him to join him” **).

*) Tholuck, Ausleg. der Bergpr. p. 26.

**) Ibid. p. 28.

That would be a disciple as evangelical belief demanded! It is very unfortunate when Tholuck reminds us of the disciple whom Jesus invited to follow him another time, but who asked permission to first bury his father. What did Jesus answer this young man? And would he – namely he, as he lived, acted and spoke in evangelical belief – not have answered the tax collector just as strictly if he had said after the invitation: “Let me make arrangements first before I follow you?” Furthermore, when we see the tax collector sitting calmly in his booth as Jesus passes by and calls him – for the second time – we do not see that he has made his arrangements in the meantime; he is rather sitting there as if he is thinking about nothing but his daily business. Yes, the narrative would fall apart if the contrast were removed that the man who sits calmly in his tax business is moved to follow Jesus by a word from the Lord and immediately – whoever wants to take care of the business afterwards! – leaves his business.

102

But why waste words to prove that the first evangelist knows nothing about an earlier calling of Matthew: we have seen why he immediately reached so far into Luke’s presentation at the beginning and brought forward the Sermon on the Mount and placed it at the forefront of his presentation of the public life of the Lord. Once the Sermon on the Mount had received this place, the account of the calling of the tax collector had to follow later. The evangelist did not care about the consequences of this, and he did not expect the believers to be so troubled by it. He was not always as literal-minded as the later theologians.

 

2. The Banquet.

And as he was reclining at table in the house, the first Evangelist continues, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples at table (Matt. 9:10).

In what house? Fritzsche thinks it was Jesus’ own house *). When? Some time after the calling of Matthew, Fritzsche answers. Certainly! One cannot write more carelessly than Matthew did; but no matter how deficient his account may be, it still reveals, by its structure, the original intention behind it. The house is in contrast to the tax collector’s booth which Matthew had just left, and because he had left it immediately to follow the Lord, the banquet was arranged by him right after his calling. This is what it really says in the original text: “And it came to pass, as he (namely Jesus) reclined at table in his (the tax collector’s) house, many tax collectors and sinners were also reclining with Jesus and his disciples at table; for there were many of them and they followed him” — namely, they followed him from the tax collector’s booth (Mark 2:15) *). Luke further elaborated on Mark’s account when he says (Luke 5:29), “And Levi made him a great feast in his own house.”

*) on Matthew, p. 341.

*) και εγένετο εν τω κατακείσθαι αυτόν εν τη οικία αυτού. Matt. 9:10: και εγένετο αυτού ανακειμένου εν τη οικία.

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3. The Question of the Pharisees.

As Fritzsche says, he does not know how the Pharisees had seen Jesus eating with tax collectors, but it is certain that their question to the disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” had been posed by them later **). They did not even see him sitting at the table himself, but later, de Wette ***), “found out” that he had eaten with tax collectors. But not even in the careless account of Matthew is there a justification for this explanation, because immediately after it was mentioned that the tax collectors were sitting at table with Jesus and his disciples, it is said “when the Pharisees saw” †), so this is supposed to be the immediate consequence of the former. Just as quickly as the striking phenomenon that Jesus is sitting at table with tax collectors and sinners has occurred, the reader is amazed and reflects on the remarkable event, no! before the reader can even come to reflection, the Pharisees are supposed to express their amazement and give occasion for Jesus to interpret and explain the striking appearance. Luke hastens to this point of the report so quickly that he does not even notice that the Pharisees had seen Jesus sitting at table, but immediately says: “they murmured and said to the disciples” *). In the writing of Mark, the matter is correctly presented: “And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and sinners, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?'”

**) in Matthew, p. 342: posthac aliquando.

***) 1, 1, 92.

†) και ιδόντες οι φαρ.

*) και εγόγγυζον …. λέγοντες.

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4. The Response of Jesus.

“The strong, Jesus answered when he heard the question of the Pharisees **), do not need a physician, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. The Pharisees, explains De Wette, are, if only comparatively, the healthy and righteous, because they did not live in such injustice as the tax collectors” ***) “Jesus recognizes legal righteousness.” But can there be a harsher, sharper saying than the one which here we see the apologists, out of fear that Jesus might appear too harsh and offensive, dulling? The saying is revolutionary and expresses in a striking point the reversal of the concept and the revolution that entered the world with Christianity, which humiliated the pride of self-righteousness and redeemed the rejected – it is the entire revolutionary irony of the Christian principle, as it cannot be expressed better in its simplest form *).

**) Mark 2:17 and after him Matthew (9:12). The question and answer followed one after the other. Luke hurries back quickly by suppressing the “they” and instead saying in 5:31,  και αποκριθεις ο ιησους ειπεν προς αυτους.

***) see  Handb. 1, 1, 92.

*) Calvin: est ironica concessio. Compare Weisse 1, 481.

105

Luke also recorded the saying, probably not because he thought the point was too sharp, but because he remembered that Jesus had come to call for repentance (Mark 1:15) — softened by saying that Jesus said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32) **). So he misunderstood the meaning of the saying; for the monstrous thing about the ironic contrast is that sinners are “called to salvation,” while the righteous are rejected, and the kingdom of heaven is destined for those sinners who are considered outcasts by the world.

Matthew also introduced a new element into the saying, interrupting its original movement on the one hand and weakening the impact of the point on the other, by directing the reader’s attention to a point that is outside the direction of the saying. After the words, “The strong do not need a doctor, but the sick do,” Jesus says, “But go and learn what this means ***): ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13). Matthew was the one who introduced this “for/because” – ου γαρ ηλθον – into the saying, and it is precisely this “for” that completely disrupted the coherence of the saying. If one were to retain the “for” as the authentic saying, although it is very dispensable and does not even form an appropriate transition from one half to the other, it could only connect the general statement that the sick, not the strong, need a doctor, and its confirmation by referring to Jesus’ actual purpose. But is there still coherence when the saying of Hosea is inserted between the two sentences? And what does this saying have to do here, where Jesus is speaking about his behavior and only has to speak about it, since the Pharisees had taken offense at his behavior? Finally, even if Jesus wanted to say how others should follow his example, and that he could do so in the midst of the saying that justifies and describes his behavior, could he then possibly think of that saying of the prophet? Never! For the point in this word of the prophet has nothing to do with the thought of the opposite fate that is destined for the righteous and sinners, and it points to a completely different point, namely, where the absolute value of inwardness is decided against external observance of the law. Only the echo that there is a contrast contained in Jesus’ saying and that of the prophet, and that Jesus, when he calls sinners, is practicing the mercy that the prophet recommends, only this echo, which becomes dissonant if one listens to it for more than a moment, has prompted the evangelist to insert this saying here *).

**) εις μετάνοιαν.

***) μαθετε τι εστιν. On another occasion, Matthew lets the Lord quote the same saying of Hosea with the same formula – on his own authority: C. 12, 7 ει δε εγνωκειτε, τι εστιν.

*) Cf. Wilke, p. 349.

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5. Credibility of the Report.

The main saying itself, which is short but of tremendous power and penetration, seems to be entirely genuine and to have originated on this occasion; nevertheless, we are forced to make a remark, or rather we have just made it and have not yet expressed it, which will shake and completely overthrow the assumption that we have really received many sayings of Jesus literally handed down to us in the Gospels. In any case, we no longer have a definite occasion on which the saying could have arisen, the one at least that Mark reports to us, we have lost it in our contemplation.

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For religious belief, however, when it artistically shapes and works out its inner determination into history, the scene in which the tax collector immediately follows the first call of Jesus, abandons his tax booth and violates his duty, can be held, because in it it sees the power of Jesus’ word and sees it all the more surely, the more the tax collector was bound by his duty to the post he left and the more ruthlessly he left it. What in the world of religious belief is called faith and zeal for the Lord is in the real and human world forgetfulness of duty; what in that world is natural and simple form, in this world is a storm that whips all relationships together wildly and tears them out of their sockets; what is possible in that world is impossible or insane in this one. By their tortured interpretations, the expositors have already betrayed to us that it is incomprehensible how the Pharisees could be immediately at hand to object to the striking spectacle of this banquet, how they could express their amazement to the disciples, and finally, how Jesus could hear their accusation and answer them. Religious belief does not concern itself with such difficulties; for intelligent contemplation, these difficulties are things of impossibility.

Only the remark about the saying! One only needs to make it oneself— a glance at the accounts of the three Synoptics is enough. Luke and Matthew had the written letter in the scripture of Mark before them, and what did they make of the saying? Luke gave it a different and even inappropriate meaning, while Matthew made its meaning unclear by splitting the punchline and inserting a foreign one. If this happens to a saying that they read in writing, what will happen to the fate of a saying that wanders around in the memory of a scattered community composed of heterogeneous elements for who knows how many years? Well, we don’t need to be concerned about it, as it cannot wander around in this unstable, changeable element, since it will become different in every head, in every particular circle, and assume new forms — that is, there can no longer be talk of a particular saying. It would have been very little indeed if the first followers of Jesus had brought and shared nothing more than a couple or hundreds of sayings from their life together with the Savior; they could neither have founded a community nor overcome the world with that. Rather, it was principles, principles, general views, and the creation of a new essential world that gave the community its existence, which initially occupied it alone and later drove it to create individual views, punchlines, contrasts, and sayings. The specific, individual is shaped only when the essence and the general have become common property and firm possession of a life circle, after the view of the essence and the essential principles had formed again from a series of individual stimuli, influences, and impacts. Jesus had given his own and the world this impetus — but not through individual sayings alone, not even through sayings that were in fact the expression of the new principle in the broadest sense, but by infinitely expanding the soul of his own through the endless series of his influences, which they had never suspected until then, and thus deeply shaking it that they were finally — after his departure — forced to bring this inner expansion to self-consciousness in the thought of the new principle and in the view of the essential world and to trace it back to its simplest expression. The moment that created this expression gave the community its life, and its first vital movements and efforts were — as the Pauline letters prove — directed towards further defining this expression — but still initially in the form of general principles. From these principles, the sayings of Jesus were formed later, which the anachronism that always creeps into religious views makes the first historical expression and the basis of those principles in the Gospels that emerged when the general interest of faith became historical.

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So in this case, Mark has expressed the irony of the Christian principle sharply, purely, and effectively in the saying he puts into the Lord’s mouth. The opportunity for this was easily found: the tremendous word had to be spoken against the self-righteous Pharisees, the condescension of the Lord who associates with the rejected – with tax collectors and sinners – had to give rise to the occasion, and so that this occasion – the banquet where association even as eating and drinking with the despised appears – would naturally come about, the tax collector who is organizing the banquet to bid farewell to his former friends must be summoned.

Mark has constructed this story only for the context in which he allows the collision between the Savior and the Pharisees and scribes to arise, and at this moment he does not think beyond this context. He does not, therefore, think of comparing this account, which he created for a special purpose, with the list of the twelve apostles and putting them in connection. He could not yet carry out this work. That story of the tax collector had just been created by him, while the list of apostles was given to him; but the list tells him nothing about a Levi, nothing about a tax collector who belonged to the Twelve; so it was impossible for him to insert that tax collector into the list. For the first Synoptist, for this pragmatic artist, these difficulties no longer existed; he could compare and put both calmly in connection, and he did it boldly enough by blindly inserting that tax collector as Levi’s substitute and making him a tax collector.

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Luke has not yet compared, but, as he usually does, has copied from Mark. Instead, he has done something else, namely used the point of Mark’s story to create a new story, or rather to spin this story – it is that of Zacchaeus – from it. Everything in this story, from the name of the tax collector which from the outset should indicate the inner purity of the man *), to the fact that Jesus addresses him by name, even though he was previously unknown to him and had climbed a mulberry tree to see him **), since how can chance, the name of a person, be known to another person other than through experience – everything has been purified. To secure the evidence, we are allowed to anticipate a later investigation here. On the journey to Jerusalem, Mark reports (chapter 10, 46-52) that as Jesus passed through Jericho and went through the gate ***), a blind man who was standing by the roadside called out to him for help, and after Jesus had restored his sight, the man followed him on the journey †). Mark intended for a witness of his miraculous power to follow the Lord on the way to Jerusalem. Luke says that Jesus healed the blind man when he was near Jericho, simply stating that the blind man followed the Lord, omitting the words “on the journey,” since he only needs the blind man for the pomp of the procession through the city. He now fills the gap he still feels by saying that the healed man praised God and that the entire crowd, which was witness to the miracle, joined in this praise. It is clear why Luke has made changes – he wants to make the procession through Jericho more magnificent, and by giving the Lord a praising entourage, he motivates the curiosity of the chief tax collector *) in a striking way.

*) זַכָּ֔י, the pure, the louder, e.g. Ezra 2: 9.

**) Luk. 19, 5: Zacchaeus,  descend with haste.

***) εκπορευομένου αυτού από Ιεριχώ.

+) ήκολούθει τώ Ι. εν τη οδώ.

*) εζήτει ιδείν τον Ι. τίς έστι.

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“Today I must stay at your house,” Jesus calls to Zacchaeus, who is still sitting in the tree. He quickly climbs down and joyfully welcomes his guest, who had invited himself. And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, “He has gone in to be guest with a man who is a sinner.” Weisse **) thought he had to praise the “living individuality” in this story, but it may not be called nitpicking if we ask who are the “all” who murmur about Jesus’ kindness to the tax collector, and if we answer that from the context it is not only inexplicable but also purely impossible that everyone should have had such an attitude towards the Lord. Only the people had been mentioned before. But if they had just praised God for the healing of the blind man and followed the miracle worker in fervent zeal on the triumphal procession through Jericho, how is it possible that all of a sudden they should change their minds? If Jesus had compassion on the blind man and therefore received praise, he could also be merciful to a “sinner” without being rebuked. Olshausen says, “the Pharisees” murmured ***), but how else can he know than from a story that the evangelist at this moment has in mind, even copying it carelessly and hastily, borrowing only the punchline (the people’s accusation) and, because he is only concerned with this, forgetting to indicate who was murmuring about the Lord? In short, Luke has given the account he had already copied from Mark on his own, with a variation for the second time †). He also repeats the saying that the Son of Man came not to call the righteous, but sinners, in a different, free-form when he has the Lord say he came (C. 19:10) to seek and to save the lost.

**) a. a. O. II, 176,

***) a. a. O. I, 765.

†) Luke 19:7: και ιδοντες – He has the text of Mark before him and picks up the ξαναρρίπτων that he had let fall earlier in Luke 5:37 – πάντες εγόγγυζον, λέγοντες, ότι παρά αμαρτωλω ανδρί εισήλθε καταλύσαι.

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It is actually superfluous to note that the following words of Zacchaeus and Jesus are not appropriate to the context: even if they were much better formulated and seemed to flow naturally from the occasion, the fact remains that the occasion was contrived. When the people murmured, Zacchaeus stepped forward and said, “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold” (Luke 19:8). But that would be a beautiful “sinner,” as the Lord desires, if Zacchaeus stepped forward so confidently and said he was one of those tax collectors who acted as the Baptist had commanded (Luke 3:13). He does indeed want to defend himself against the popular cry of “he stays with a sinner,” but it was still inappropriate to enumerate the virtues that adorn him. And how he praises himself! The first part of his self-praise, “I give half of my goods to the poor,” is boastful, and the second part, “if I have defrauded anyone, I restore it fourfold,” is even more ambiguous and only arose from the fact that Luke wanted to incorporate the reminiscence of his saying of the Baptist, “take no more than what is prescribed for you,” into the tax collector’s speech. Even Jesus’ speech is not very successful for the evangelist, indeed he does not even know how to introduce it properly when he addresses it to Zacchaeus *), although the saying that the Son of Man seeks the lost, as is done correctly in Mark’s account **), must be directed immediately against the self-righteous. Even Luke could not help but develop Jesus’ speech in such a way that it was addressed to strangers, not to Zacchaeus. “Today,” Jesus says, “salvation has come to this house, since he too is a son of Abraham.” In fact, we need only to have rid ourselves of the bad habit of taking every word as given *), to see how it is more similar to a timid retreat than a bold attack on the proud and the divine defense of sinners and the lost, when Jesus justifies or rather excuses his choice of the tax collector by saying that he too – και αυτος – is a son of Abraham, just like the dissatisfied and envious critics!

*) V. 9: είπε δε προς αυτόν.

**) Mark 2, 17: noi héyal aŭrois ουκ ήλθον καλέσαι.

*) and thinks it is sufficient to explain by exchanging the words of the text with a couple of others that mean the same thing. Thus Olshausen, I, 765: “As an Abrahamite, he had the next right to salvation.” Similarly, de Wette, I, 2, 96.

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Once again – for the third time – Luke has taken the narrative of Mark word for word to let the point emerge in new variations. But they all, Luke says in chapter 15, verses 1 and 2, came near to him, all (!) tax collectors and sinners, to hear him. Then the Pharisees and scribes murmured **) saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” “He eats with them” belongs to Mark’s scripture; “He receives sinners” is a later reflection of the community, a reflection which praises the beneficence and mercy as such, namely as an exalted quality of the Lord, and could not be more appropriately placed than here, where it is reported as a reflection of the Pharisees. “He receives sinners” is the theme of the parables of the lost sheep, coin, and son that follow (chapter 15, 3-32). Later, when Matthew gives us the opportunity, we will examine these parables and similar passages in the third Gospel, in which the acceptance of sinners is praised in more detail; for now we only notice – which is actually superfluous – that this third outbreak of the Pharisees’ displeasure is patterned after Mark’s narrative *) and that Luke had in mind this section of his own writing, in which the word “lost” was used three times (verses 6, 9, 32), when he later formulated the general principle in the narrative of Zacchaeus that the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost.

**) και διεγόγγυζον οι φ. και οι γρ. λέγοντες, ότι ούτος αμαρτωλούς προσδέχεται και συνεσθίει αυτοίς.

*) The Pharisees say: “He eats with sinners!” and before that it was only reported that the tax collectors and sinners came near to hear him!

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 2

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§ 35.

The Healing of the Paralytic.

Matthew 9:2-8.

The boldness with which Jesus exclaimed to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven!” seemed like blasphemous presumption to the present scribes. Jesus recognized in their hearts *) their thoughts and said to them, “Why do you think such things in your hearts? What is easier to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or:

*) Only Mark 2:8 has the addition: τω πνευματι for he was the first to feel the need to explain the miraculous fact that Jesus recognized the secret thoughts of the scribes. Luke omits the addition, he only says επιγνους τους διαλογισμους αυτων, and Matthew (9:4) even says: “And Jesus, knowing their thoughts” – εἰδὼς; for the later generations it goes without saying that Jesus instantly understood people’s inner thoughts.

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Rise, take up your bed and walk?” But to show them that as the Son of Man he had the authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” “And immediately he rose up, took up his bed and went out before them all. *)” Thus ended the story, according to Mark 2:12, and the people were amazed and praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!” Luke confused the conclusion by his redundancy: first, saying that all were amazed, then that they praised God, and finally that they were filled with fear, saying, “Today we have seen strange things.” He also introduced confusion by saying earlier (Luke 5:25) that the healed man went home, praising God δοξαζων τον θεον. This praise was originally only intended for the conclusion, as the people saw the formerly paralyzed man leave the house, healed and healthy (Mark 2:12 εξηλθεν εναντιον παντων).

When Mark notes at the end of a miracle story that the people or the disciples were amazed **), and often uses vivid colors to paint their amazement, it was once thought that this was proof that he wrote after Matthew and Luke and had no choice but to exaggerate the short, casual and unguarded reports of his predecessors. This was very unjustified! On the contrary, we have just seen how Luke has overloaded and confused the simple and natural conclusion of his predecessor’s account. Matthew had to reveal to us through his clumsiness in changing the conclusion of the account of the calming of the storm that he could no longer find himself in the representation of his predecessor, or at least could not leave it unchanged. He will prove to us again shortly that by transcribing the writing of Mark and changing its details, he did not necessarily improve it from a pragmatic perspective. He will show us this again, also in the concluding remarks to accounts of miracles.

*) Mark 2, 10-12: λέγει τα παραλυτικώ· σοι λέγω, έγειραι, άρον τον κράββατών σου και ύπαγε εις τον οίκόν σου, και εγερθείς ευθέως και άρας τον κράββατον εξήλθεν εναντίον πάντων. Luke 5, 24 hat ſtatt zpáßßatov zhuvidiov. Matth. 9, 6 shivrv. Compare temporarily John 5, 8, 9: λέγει αυτώ ο Ιησούς, έγειραι, άρον τον κράββατών σου και περιπάτει, και ευθέως εγένετο υγιής ο άνθρωπος» και ήρε τον κράββατον αυτού και περιεπάτει. John 5. 5, 14 μηκέτι αμάρτανε, ίνα μη χείρόν τί σοι γένηται. Further V. 18 ίσον εαυτόν ποιών τω θεώ compare with Mark, 2, 7 τί ούτος λαλεί βλασφημίας και τις δύναται αφιέναι αμαρτίας, ει μή είς ο θεός; Luke 5, 21 ει μη μόνος ο θεός; Matth. 9, 3 let the scribes say only:  οὗτος βλασφημεῖ; he doesn’t dwell on the individual anymore because he believes every reader will interpret the meaning of the reproach as he himself does.

**) See C. 4:41: “Who is this, that even wind and sea obey him?” Mark 5:20: “And they were amazed beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.’” Mark 7:37: “And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.’”

At times, Mark omits to mention that everyone was amazed, but never without reason; he then creates another contrast at the end or intends to connect the following event closer to the miraculous deed. For example, after the Sabbath healings, the Pharisees “immediately” decide to destroy Jesus (Mark 3:6). Also, in Mark 1:34 and 3:12, he doesn’t want to be made known by demons. After the miraculous feeding (Mark 6:45-46), he immediately forces the disciples to go ahead of him across the sea, and he himself escapes to the mountain. After healing the deaf-mute demoniac, the disciples ask in Mark 9:28 why they couldn’t cast out the demon. Peter’s mother-in-law, freed from fever, waits for the guests in Mark 1:31. In contrast, the amazement of the people is expressed strongly elsewhere! Also, compare the amazement of the disciples in Mark 6:51!

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The matter is to be understood quite differently, and this – the only correct – interpretation is not unimportant for the development of criticism, as it is fatal to the miracle stories. If Mark lets the people or the disciples be beside themselves with amazement at the miraculous deeds of the Lord, this amazement is the objective and plastic expression of what was happening in the view of the community and the writer who shaped it, as faith in the heavenly power of the Redeemer became historical belief and created a new, wonderful history. The religious self-consciousness itself was beside itself, and with every new enrichment of the Gospel miracle story it was beside itself, and although the miracle power of the Lord was certain to the writer who worked for the community, it was still an involuntary feeling that these specific types of miracles were new, and his feeling, as well as the impression these reports made on the community, had to be incorporated into the historical narrative itself. The amazement of the crowd and the disciples is the amazement and restoration of the original evangelist and his contemporaries.

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Luke writes down the formulas that express this amazement without significant changes, but Matthew proves the correctness of our interpretation through the changes he attempted to make to the original account. Either he suppresses the remark that Jesus’ deed aroused admiration (as in the account of the healing of the Gadarene demoniac), or he exchanges his predecessor’s strong expressions (“they were amazed,” “they were beside themselves”) for the milder expression that they were simply surprised. When Mark reports that even the disciples were amazed, he says that “the people” in Jesus’ surroundings marveled (as in Mark 8:27 and 14:33). And when finally in Mark’s account the people are amazed at the wondrousness of the deed in general, Matthew says that they were amazed at the power of this particular deed. That’s how he did it this time. To the scribes Jesus said, “So that you may see that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, rise up, take up your bed, and go home.” Accordingly, in Matthew 9:8, the people praise God for giving “such” power to people. And now, “people!” It is not so much the miracle-working power of Jesus that is the cause of amazement, but rather the fact that in Jesus’ power the whole of humanity is considered, elevated, and glorified by God. When Matthew wrote, the world of wonder was already established to such a degree and the view already so deeply rooted that it seemed inappropriate to make a big deal out of the miracle.

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If we are asked to discuss the so-called credibility of the report, the theologian in us and the theologian outside who scrutinizes us demand it. Well then! The amazement of the crowd is depicted, but the crowd itself only came together in such great numbers that it blocked the way to the house where Jesus was staying and prevented the faithful bearers of the sick man from reaching him, because it wanted to take advantage of Jesus’ presence and insisted that he leave as quickly as he did during his first visit to Capernaum. For the same reason, they absolutely wanted to bring the sick man to Jesus. However, we have already recognized the first visit, that is, the one described by Mark, as the work of the writer. Furthermore, how could Jesus know what the scribes were thinking in their hearts? Jesus knows because that’s what Mark wants, because the evangelist wants to report the following speech about forgiveness of sins and miraculous powers, and the scribes must take offense at it this time because the arrangement of this report demands it, namely, that the hostility of the scribes should first be expressed as inner dissatisfaction and then gradually become more evident until finally (Mark 3:6) the opponents of the Lord conspire to bring about his downfall. As for how the bearers could bring their stretcher onto the roof of the house, we will not ask, as the apologist will torture us with the excuse that they took a – at any rate, very long and arduous – detour; but how they could break open the roof and enter the room where Jesus was, without damaging the assembly in the room or fatally injuring anyone’s head, no one will tell us, at least no one who would try to persuade us that we should consider the report as credible. Operations of this kind, such as breaking open a roof over a room filled with people, only cease to be dangerous when they are carried out in the realm of ideal perception.

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In Jesus’ words, “which is easier to say, ‘your sins are forgiven’ or to say, ‘get up and walk’?” the most convincing proof for the assertion that he performed miracles had to lie if they were really his words. But to believe this is hindered by nothing less than their content. The scribes took offense at Jesus speaking as if he had the power to forgive sins. Jesus now wants to prove that he does indeed possess and can exercise this power: “For which is easier, to forgive sins or to perform miracles? Clearly the former; therefore, if I can do the more difficult, as I will now show, then it cannot be doubted that I also have the authority for the easier.” The conclusion is understandable, but for whom? For the consciousness to which the Savior’s miraculous power is the strongest and compelling proof of his authority. However, this consciousness has only formed him, not Jesus! As understandable as he may be, he is incorrect, untrue, because the power of the spirit to forgive sin and to undo what has been done is surely greater than the most enormous miracle, which only suspends a natural law, as the spirit surpasses nature infinitely through its power, interiority, intensity, i.e. through its ability to resist. The man who shook the world by expanding self-awareness to infinity and revealed it as the power over sin, this man could never have made the statement that the miracle was greater than the act of forgiving sins. It was only in the later community that the saying and the occasion that brought it forth were formed. When, namely, the religious-historical view of Jesus’ authority to forgive sins wanted to become truly certain and to view its proof through the power of miracles in one focus, it was indeed appropriate that a sick person be brought before the Lord, since illness was considered a punishment for sin and in its healing the abolition of sin also appeared externally, just as Jesus most clearly demonstrated his power over sin when he performed what was perceived as the more difficult task, namely, lifting the visible appearance of sin. It is also very appropriate and a correct instinct of view that the scribes are set up as opponents; to Jewish consciousness, it indeed seemed impossible that the spirit could gain mastery over its inner determinacy, including sin.

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If the point of the report is based on the assumption that illness is a punishment for sin *), then the result of our criticism relieves us of the question of whether Jesus assumed a positive connection between sin and illness. We do not know how he saw the matter, but we do see from the Gospels that in the early church the Jewish view of that connection still held, at least to the extent that it was still accepted unreservedly when needed for pragmatic reasons.

*) Weisse, I, 480 notes that the report does not assume that “every individual illness is a specific punishment for sin.” That is correct, but does not address the matter and does not negate the actual assumption. It was only the reasonable uncertainty and inconsistency of the Jewish consciousness if that view was not taken out of its generality and applied to each individual case. The embarrassment of this application to the individual would have entangled the legal consciousness in too many contradictions and would have led to the dissolution of the view earlier than it actually happened. The evangelists assume lengthy and ingrained illnesses when they use the Jewish view for their narratives.

The story of the man born blind in the fourth Gospel provides us with evidence that the difficulties of the Jewish view, when applied to individual cases, were not hidden and gave rise to casuistic questions. A similar proof is provided by the Gospel of Luke. Once people come to Jesus and report to him about the Galileans whom Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices. Jesus answers, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or do you think that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. (Luke 13:1-5) The story tells us nothing about those Galileans. Of course, Olshausen *) says, “among the countless horrors that the Romans committed against the Jews, the slaughter of some unknown Galileans was like a drop in the ocean.” If this is so and no one can find the drop that has disappeared into the sea, then Luke would have known nothing about Pilate’s act, just as he knew nothing about the eighteen who were killed by a tower in Jerusalem. But the statement of Jesus, which referred to these accidents, has preserved the memory of them! Now, finally, make it understandable to us how a saying like this, a saying that truly has no such significant content, could have been preserved until the time of Luke – and even in tradition? The saying is freely formed and formed by Luke himself only in the present context, since before and after that it was said that one had to get one’s affairs in order and repent before it was too late. Before: if you go with your adversary to the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge; after: if the fig tree does not bear fruit, it will be cut down (Luke 12:58-59; 13:9) **). In the middle, Luke placed a saying that recommends the same consideration for the end, and is only different in its starting point from the other two, just as they differ from each other with regard to the epigrammatic preparation and the starting point.

*) B. C. I, 639.

**) Even the construction of the sentences corresponds to each other: Luke 13:5: ἀλλ’ ἐὰν μὴ μετανοήτε, πάντες ὡσαύτως ἀπολεῖσθε; Luke 23:9: εἰ δὲ μήγε, εἰς τὸ μέλλον ἐκκόψεις αὐτήν.

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For the saying that concerns us here, Luke used the casuistic question that arose from the dissolution of the legal consciousness, namely the question of whether the misfortune is truly a punishment for sinfulness and proves the guilt of the suffering, since there are so many sinners running around who are spared from all misfortune. No, says Luke, their punishment will catch up with them in the end.

The apologist may still answer the question of how Jesus could immediately rebuke the people who innocently brought him the news of Pilate’s deed: Do you think these Galileans were especially sinful? At least he must answer the question, i.e., become a poet and create a new story if “credibility” is to be maintained. We have answered the question by saying that the address breaks out so prematurely because Luke is only concerned with this punchline and the occasion only needed to be mentioned as far as the reader needed to know to which event the saying referred.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 2

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§ 31.

The Request of Two Disciples.

Matth. 8, 19-22.

 

As Jesus is on the way to the ship or perhaps already in the act of boarding it – for at the end of this shorter section it says: “and when he had entered into a ship, his disciples followed him” – at that moment a scribe comes to him with the request to follow him everywhere. Jesus answers him: The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.

But another of his disciples *) said to him, “Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

*) V. 21: έτερος των μαθητών αυτού.

But how? Another of his disciples? “Another”: this can only be explained in connection with the previous passage. But was the scribe who made the first request a disciple of Jesus? Far from it! At first glance, and even after letting this story affect one a thousand times: one will always have the feeling that those who were to depart here were not yet followers of the Lord and did not stand so close to him that they could be called his disciples. The excuse that the success has been anticipated here and that those two had joined the disciples who are mentioned later (v. 23) as the Lord’s constant followers, is inadmissible here; if it should be more than just an excuse, if it should be justified, then not only should it be said of the second person that he had joined the Lord, but above all of the first person. Because only if the second person, like the first, the scribe, understood himself to be a follower, could he be called “another of his disciples”. Now, however, the sayings that both must hear are of such a nature that they contain a conflict that has a position and opinion of its own, which stands out for itself, that both have stepped back from it. The position is at least calculated to have the sayings always close the narrative, thus standing out in their high and sublime position, the dissonance between the demand for absolute renunciation and limited finitude for itself, and the dissonance is not resolved by the news that the two really understood this demand. Or even if we can concede to the second story that it has a milder ending and that the man’s inclination is already more decisive – let me bury my father “first” – although it is admittedly not said that he really had the courage to leave the realm of the dead, the dissonance towards which the first story is designed is unmistakable.

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Since he has misunderstood Matthew, it is clear that he is not the original narrator. He is also not the authentic and original informant for the second story. “The other of the disciples” comes with a proposal and suggestion that could not have come out of thin air, but rather is linked to something that came before. When he says, “let me first (προτων) bury my father,” he must already have been called to follow Jesus, and this call must have just been made to him – but Matthew forgot to mention this assumption, which he did not exclude from Luke – whom he quotes here – because he was only interested in the punchline and could not get to it quickly enough.

Luke also closely connected both stories, but he avoided the inconveniences that Matthew brought about with his later pragmatism. The scribe of Matthew is just someone in Luke (9:57), and the other disciple that Matthew speaks of is just another, namely another in relation to that first someone ( ετερος v. 59), and it is finally understandable that the second asks to be allowed to “first” bury his father, because Jesus had already called him to follow *). However, Matthew changed one thing excellently. According to Luke’s account, Jesus says to the second one, “let the dead bury their dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” But that is too specific, too special for the first moment when Jesus first calls a man to follow him, and is only due to the pragmatism of Luke, who immediately reports on the sending of the seventy and, like them, wants to make the proclamation of the kingdom of God (Luke 10:1, 9) the task of this just recently recruited disciple. Matthew has Jesus answer simply: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”

*) v. 59: είπε δε προς έτερον, ‘Ακολούθει μοι.

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That Matthew has placed the request of the two men in the wrong place, when he lets it happen on the way from Capernaum to the sea, we do not need to mention, since it has already been shown how this departure from Peter’s house is. Therefore, it is also unnecessary to note here that at the moment when Jesus is about to board the ship, the time is too limited for those requests. “Fortunately,” therefore, Gfrörer says *), “Luke has included the incident.” Why? Schneckenburger seeks to justify this even more specifically by saying **): “The preaching of the kingdom of God (Luke 9:60) was a task that the Lord gave to his twelve only after a longer period of instruction, and then again later, precisely during the last journey, to his seventy. At an earlier time, the severity that would not allow for a small delay requested by the piety of the disciple would not have been compatible with Jesus’ mercy.” But why should the Lord have only demanded the hardest renunciation later from his own? He demanded from those two pairs of brothers at the very first moment of his appearance that they should unconditionally and ruthlessly join him, and they understood the request so precisely and followed it so punctually that they “immediately” left their business and their “father”! Certainly, when Luke makes the proclamation of the kingdom of God the sole task of the man who wanted to bury his father, he has in mind the appointment and sending of the seventy to preach the gospel, and he narrates the calling of some men precisely to make it somewhat understandable to the reader where suddenly seventy disciples come from, but for us, this makes it certain that he has formed the historical context a priori, since those seventy belong to a world that owes its origin to his apriori inferences and tendencies.

**) Heil. Sage II, 19.

***) On the Origin of the First Three Gospels, p. 24-25.

43

Luke has also closely linked his account with the preceding events. Those men come into contact with the Lord as he has begun the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, already in Samaria and here he was rejected by the inhabitants of a village where he sought lodging. The first man’s proposal, “I will follow you, Lord, wherever you go,” is supposed to be connected on the one hand with the circumstance that the villagers did not receive Jesus, and on the other hand with the fact that the Lord was on a journey – but this connection doesn’t help us at all, and in general, it’s not worth more than that of Matthew, who also places the event during a travel opportunity, since this journey to Jerusalem, which Luke reports, is of a nature that can never be characteristic of an actual journey.

In short, only in Luke’s account does the event have a real connection, but not the true, not the living connection, but only the writerly connection, which is inherently considered to be very unfortunate and deficient, but even in this imperfect form of presentation, it is not missing in Matthew.

44

The apologist, when making the best of a bad job and accepting criticism at least as far as it serves their interests, and the critic, when still entangled in apologetic interests, both could now eagerly grab and triumphantly exclaim: “So Luke did not create these sayings, since they did not emerge fresh from the current context – therefore, these are sayings of Jesus that have come to him through tradition, who knows by what means.” One sees that the proverb “haste makes waste” is unknown to the apologist. If Luke did not create these punchlines, could not someone else have created them before him? Could they not have come to the third evangelist from the element in which such punchlines live, from tradition, and from the conversation of the community? But even this assumption raises a difficulty. In specific circles, for example, of a society, a city, a state, or even a continent, punchlines arise and spread with extraordinary rapidity, which give a new perspective to some aspect of general conditions, and due to their novelty and striking character, they find general approval. However, as quickly as they spread over the circle to which they belong, they disappear just as quickly. They never live long in tradition. Only if they are written down immediately upon their first emergence or shortly thereafter, do they survive until later, included in the context of a larger historical work, and gain eternity, if they strikingly characterize a historical standpoint.

If this statement is based on the nature of history and historiography and is confirmed by a thousand years of experience, we must therefore once again declare ourselves against the tradition hypothesis here. It follows necessarily that we do not hear in these sayings the literal expressions of Jesus that have been preserved in the tradition of the community for many, many years. Consider how quickly the community spread over the earth from morning to evening, how it grew incrementally by attracting individual masses. Should the scattered adherents in cities and provinces have all heard the same anecdotes so that they would know to whom they were serving as a new Lord, and so that the tradition could arise to which we finally owe the preservation of those anecdotes? How could the community that would overcome the world ever arise from such anecdotal peddling? Not only the Pauline, but all the letters of the New Testament prove instead that the community arose entirely differently, that the members who were won had heard entirely different things, and that the interests of the community in the first century AD, which gave it its origin, were fundamentally different. The essence, the principle of the kingdom of heaven in its pure simplicity, in the definiteness that its contrast to the law and its historical revelation in the suffering and resurrection of the Savior gave it, that and only that was proclaimed to the old world, to which the believers held fast and believed it to be enough as such because it was infinitely much, and the internal dialectic of this principle formed the only and exclusive interest that occupied, united, and even through the divisions and questions that it raised in individual communities, united the entire community.

45

At that time, only when the community had secured its general principle in dialectic with the law and the view of the suffering, resurrection, and glorification of its Savior was established, the need arose to hear more about the historical empirical circumstances, entanglements, and events of Jesus’ life; but when it arose, the possibility of satisfying it was no longer available. What could Jesus have experienced in his life and during his struggle with the Jewish world? What else but the experiences of the community? What could he speak and present? What else but the self-consciousness of the community? Even if we disregard that the memory of the individual events of Jesus’ life had disappeared, and that the Christian principle, as purely positive, could not grasp the true form of historiography, for the individual could not gain its pure and appropriate representation and mutual interconnection if it was considered as such and in every respect as an appearance of the general, thus exposed to the danger of being excessively expanded, so the general was not recognized in the inner movement of individual events and relationships, but should be viewed immediately at every moment in every detail. Even if we ignore all of this, at that time, when the Gospels were to be written, the true form of historiography had been lost through a series of important revolutions. History had become a collection of anecdotes. In the Roman world, the modern principle of individuality and personality had already been announced and established in the way that was possible then, i.e., in the way of immediacy. The Lord of the world had ascended to the throne in Rome to concentrate and represent all interests, all rights, and the measure of everything in his person. And now that morality and the substantial bond that otherwise made individuals a whole had disappeared, and the power of one person had replaced the moral unity, which should apply to all and instead of all, the atomistic points of others reacted and were forced to regain stability and solidity in their personality, if they did not want to perish completely. The principle of personality had emerged, and history became a biography, and world history became a collection of anecdotes. Suetonius had successors who were worthy of him.

46

While in Rome, the personality which encompassed the power of the world ascended the throne, the Christian community arose through the tremendous miracle that a person appeared who had drawn the power of heaven into his inner being and had risen in faith as the Promised One, as the Eternal and the One. As the Eternal and Promised One from the beginning, he founded the community, and when his church was founded and later reflection wanted to find out how this work had formed historically and prevailed in the struggle with the world, there was no other history than the history of this One Person who remained the One as he had worked here on earth and continued to work in his servants from the seat of his heavenly glory. The form of the Gospels was thereby unchangeably determined – the main thing was and remained that individual and always individual things were reported if it was only a single aspect of the life of this One in which his heavenly infinity appeared immediately. Apart from the suffering, death, and resurrection, one knew nothing when one wanted to know individual things – and yet one knew enough: the fortunate one who was called to find it found it in the perception, interests, and struggles of the community, for what the community was, experienced, and possessed in its inner being was and had only been through the One, or rather, that was the One.

47

One may say, whatever we write here is aprioric work, but it will not harm us. We have written it here because previous criticism has given us the right to do so, and the following remarks will prove it.

To the point! “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests,” Jesus said, “but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Weisse rightly observed *) that Jesus “would hardly have used such a striking image to express the simple observation that he did not want to be physically bound to a fixed home,” or that he did not have a fixed home. Weisse also reminds us of the sense in which we use the expression “four pegs,” and now leads us to the following explanation. Every person has their four pegs, that is, despite all mobility and freedom from external statutes, a resting place, a certain formula that is supposed to apply to everything again, that should give the final satisfaction and with which one can be comfortable. The letter, i.e. every “fixed form that in any way counts as a letter in life or history,” not just the written letter, is once again solidified by people, even by the freest, until it has become a rigid absolute. Jesus wants to deny that the divine spirit that dwells within him can sink to this bondage, and he denies it precisely before a scribe – Matthew, who created him, was guided by a splendid instinct – because it is the scribe’s characteristic that he does not have the courage to free himself from the misunderstood formulaic system, to throw off the baggage of finiteness and to ruthlessly surrender to the infinity of the idea.

*) II, 57

48

Now then, if this explanation is correct — and it is — and it finally comes down to the serious question of from which standpoint the saying originated, the answer cannot be doubtful for a moment. Weisse still thinks innocently that the words were spoken by Jesus to a scribe — whom Matthew had just introduced — but he was still innocent and the matter had not yet become so serious that this question could no longer be avoided. If the words had been spoken by Jesus, they would have had the extremely meager meaning that he had no fixed dwelling place and that his followers likewise had to forgo such comforts, and this meaning would also be the only one that it would have to make sense, because the consideration of the empirical person of Jesus, who speaks there, travels around the country and points the man who wants to follow him to his situation, would not only have hindered, thwarted, but also simply made impossible the elevation to a higher sense. But in the community, the saying arose and developed from the self-consciousness of its infinity, without hindrance, the dialectical and revolutionary power of its content, since the personality of Jesus, whose historical situation gave the epigrammatic basis for the actual point, no longer hindered the development of the thought from this standpoint. It is hardly necessary to note that the standpoint which produced the saying did not have the thought in its purity in its consciousness, but only became aware of it from the situation of the person Jesus and as a reflection on it — in a situation that we call the prototype of the idea only according to our understanding.

49

Also, the second saying: “let the dead bury their own dead” is also correctly explained by Weisse, when he notes that the word “dead” should be understood figuratively not only the first time, but both times *). “What Jesus meant with this saying is nothing else than the spiritually deadening occupation with the dead and decaying **), where there is something alive that demands our sense and our power.” Correct! The sphere which the follower of Jesus should leave is altogether a realm of the dead, where spiritually dead things float back and forth.

*) II, 58.

**) A fortunate world, where the struggle with the newer dead, the apologetics, a struggle that in our time is only possible through dialectical engagement, no longer needs to be fought! But we are now so unlucky and lucky that we can only help the spirit to victory by overcoming the material. But in essence, it has always been so.

But if Weisse still assumes that the saying belongs to the Lord, he must certainly find it “more than doubtful” whether the exalted Master really intended to dissuade the disciple from fulfilling his pious duty with this call. And yet nothing could be less doubtful than that even a momentary return to the dead in an absolute sense should be forbidden – the point of the whole would at least be irretrievably lost if the commission were not an absolute one, and the disciple, instead of Jesus, should unconditionally succumb, should so comfortably settle with both colliding powers. The collision must therefore be preserved in its purity, i.e., Jesus did not speak these words. Firstly, the elevation of the saying into the spiritual realm would have been impossible again if the man to whom it was addressed really had just buried his father. Secondly, Jesus would never have dared, and if he was a true human being, he would never have dared to form a collision of such abstract cruelty that all divine and human commandments would not have been sufficient to persuade a person to violate the family ethic. Even if all the powers in heaven and on earth were to conspire against the power of the family, their alliance would be powerless.

50

So it comes down again to the fact that the saying was formed in the community and should express, command and illustrate the revolutionary renunciation of a world that appeared as a realm of the dead.

If we were not already elevated by both sayings into a world that is just as different from the real world as it is from the real history of Jesus, we would certainly be alienated from our world, to which the story belongs, if we notice that Luke allows a third person to approach Jesus who is also willing to follow him, but who also has to hear that the kingdom of heaven demands the sacrifice of all other considerations, as he asked the Lord for permission to say goodbye to his family first. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:61-62).

It is no longer a question, as it has sometimes been discussed before, whether the Lord had the opportunity to express the same thought three times in a row, but now the question is whether he ever expressed this thought three times in his life, and whether the punch line of his sayings has been preserved in tradition for many, many years – a question that is already answered if we are shown that the first two sayings do not belong to him. We must not even speak as if the tradition of the community were the artist who develops the punch lines that serve the expression of the same thought, since we can no longer entertain the unclear idea that tradition in its substance could produce certain works. It is rather the writer who tries his skills at tasks of this kind and loves to work out general ideas that have indeed flowed into his life circle in several forms. So these three punch lines are a product of the writer and, in this accumulation, actually a disturbing and distracting surplus, which even Matthew took offense at. Matthew rightly leaves out the third punch line.

51

Thus, the only remaining question is whether Luke himself created these sayings, or whether he found them at least partially in a written source that he used. Of course, we cannot obtain absolute certainty about this, but it also doesn’t hurt to consider it. It is possible that he received the impetus that led to the elaboration of these points from an earlier written source, or it is possible that his predecessor had already passed on the matter to him in a more specific form, but no one can provide anything substantial against the assertion that Luke created the whole thing. On the contrary, it can even be shown how he arrived at all three points. In the Gospel of Mark, he reads how the first disciples, when they were called by the Lord, left everything behind, and even the sons of Zebedee left their father without further ado and followed the Lord. The courage of recklessness that lies in this decision of the disciples, Luke did not bring to the fore in his presentation at the right place, and where he speaks of the calling of the disciples, he does it confusedly (Lk 5:10-11). He blunts the point that is intended in Mark’s presentation and does not even mention that the followers of Jesus broke away from their families. But what he has neglected here, he has not completely forgotten, rather he carried it around in his head for a long time, turned it over and over, transformed it into general principles, such as the principle that the followers of Jesus must renounce their four stakes, and finally developed these principles into sayings that the Lord directed to men who gave him occasion to do so by putting their limited circumstances – even circumstances that belong to morality – in conflict with the duties of a disciple of Jesus. To further develop the occasion, especially the third (Lk 9:61), the evangelist was brought to reflect on the story of the calling of Elisha *), whose request to bid farewell to his father beforehand could naturally not be granted according to the structure of the evangelical type, and our writer unconsciously drew the deeper meaning that the sayings received from the life element to which he belonged. He may have drawn more meaning from there – especially in the first two sayings – than he knew himself and could fully develop.

*) I Kings 19:20 (LXX) [published as 20:20]: καταφιλήσω τὸν πατέρα μου καὶ ἀκολουθήσω ὀπίσω σου.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 2

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22

§ 28.

The Centurion of Capernaum.

Matth. 8, 5 — 13.

Upon entering Capernaum, a centurion approaches Jesus with the request that he heal his son, who is lying paralyzed at home, or rather he initially only describes the suffering of his son. In response to Jesus’ declaration that he will go and heal him, the centurion says that he is not worthy for the Lord to enter under his roof, and that it only takes a word from him for his son to be healed. Jesus is amazed and says to his followers: “Truly I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.”

23

If Jesus could only speak in this way if he had already experienced the nature of the Jewish people for some time, then it is certain that this story stands too early in the first Gospel – for Jesus has just appeared – that its true and original home is in the Gospel of Luke – because here there is really a description of Jesus’ longer activity before it – and that Matthew placed it so unfortunately only because he borrowed it from the Gospel of Luke in connection with the Sermon on the Mount.

But is it really the case that Luke’s account is the original one? Isn’t a lot of it unlikely, isn’t the excess that it has before Matthew’s presentation very disturbing and even inappropriate to the point of the whole thing? Yes, so it is, De Wette answers, and “it seems that Luke provides a later extension.” *)

*) Ereg. Handb. I, I, 83.

Although the words of the centurion with which he declares himself unworthy for Jesus to come under his roof and expresses confidence that only a word from the Lord is needed for the sick person to be healed are also the same in Luke (7:6-8), the centurion does not present them personally to the Lord, but through friends he sends to him on the way to his house. He does not come into personal contact with Jesus at all, but from the outset he had sent elders of the Jews to him, when he heard of his arrival in Capernaum, and through them he had asked him to come and heal the sick person. And only when the Jews had interceded on behalf of the Gentile, saying that he was worthy of the service of love because he loved their people and even built their synagogue, only then, when Jesus had actually set out and was near his house, did he have the words of faith sent to him that so amazed Jesus.

24

What, however, could be more certain than that the words, which come so fresh from the heart and so admirably penetratingly addressed to the Lord, and which also so strikingly relate to the man’s personal circumstances – “I too am a man subject to authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it” – what could be more certain than that such words were personally addressed to the Lord by the man himself? And there can be no greater inconvenience than that the man, after inviting Jesus into his house through his messengers, suddenly has the idea to send new messengers to bring a second request, when Jesus is already close to his house.

Of course, the absolute apologist, as well as the patron of Luke, cannot admit such inconveniences. Olshausen *) must concede to Luke’s account “the advantage of greater clarity and accuracy in external details,” and Schleiermacher **) must find in it “the characteristics of a well-informed eyewitness.”

*) Bibl. Comm. I, 267. 268.

**) Ueber die Schr. des Luke, p. 92.

The difference between the two accounts cannot be admitted by the absolute apologist, nor can he pay attention to the fact that it is a contradiction. Olshausen has done enough good when he merely observes that the account in the first Gospel is “nothing but a shorter expression.” However, more thorough Bible scholars have realized that the matter is not so easily settled. For example, Bengel is very diligent in exploring all possibilities, even searching for divine laws that determined the form of the report provided by Matthew. He maintains that the centurion did not approach Jesus himself, but rather it appears that he left the house at first but returned later. Therefore, his will was taken as the action itself and was credited by God higher than the action, and Matthew expressed this divine assessment of the will excellently by following the law of divine history, which is much more exalted than the law of human history. Look at this edifying torture, you present-day apologists, and be ashamed of your frivolous treatment of such differences! However, the torture remains, of what Bengel has written for the sake of Matthew’s account. If the will was reckoned higher than the act by God *), then wouldn’t Matthew have represented this divine consideration and the law of divine history very poorly by not mentioning anything about the mere will and immediately substituting the less valuable act for it? Or does Luke say anything about the man initially intending to go to the Lord himself and then changing his mind and sending someone else instead? Just as Matthew simply says that the man “came up” to the Lord when he entered Capernaum, so it is said from the outset in Luke that when the man heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to him. Finally, when Calvin asserts that Matthew proceeds correctly – inepte – by attributing to the centurion what was only done at his request and in his name, when Paulus defends the evangelist with the principle that one can also say that someone did something even if he had it done by others (quod quis per alium fecit etc.) **), and when Augustine even says that this principle could be applied here especially ***), we must unfortunately note that this application is purely impossible for the act of going, coming, etc., since one cannot have these movements done for oneself by others.

*) Pluris divinitus aestimabatur,

**) I, 709.

***) No, indeed! While he wants to say it, he dares not say it: de cons. Evang. Lib. II, c. 49. Si ipsa peryentio usitate dicitur per aliós fieri, quanto magis accessus per alios fieri potest. Why doesn’t he say: per alios fieri dici potest? The absurdity of the whole sentence would have been even more apparent.

26

Although the differences can no longer be denied, it still remains that Luke’s account is the original one and that Matthew had it in mind when he beautifully reworked it. He sends the meticulous and annoying delegation of Jewish elders that Luke portrays back home and correctly figured out that the centurion must approach the Lord personally and without intermediaries. Furthermore, Matthew presents the matter so beautifully that the centurion first laments the suffering of his boy and then, as Jesus agrees to go and heal the sick, expresses his faith that the Lord can perform the healing from a distance.

Another difference arises from the fact that Matthew made an appropriate change. We are not referring so much to the fact that, according to Luke *), the sick person is near death, while according to Matthew he is confined to bed with a painful limb disease, but rather to the fact that he is the servant of the centurion in Luke’s account and the son of the same in Matthew’s (ο παις). “Boy” is indeed ambiguous in the Greek language: it can mean both servant and son – but the categorical way in which the centurion says “my boy,” the urgency and pleading of his request for help, prove that Matthew expects us to think of the man’s son. From Luke’s account and the amount of circumstances and pleas he presents, he concluded that it was more appropriate for the centurion to plead for his son, who was no longer fatally ill but simply suffering. Perhaps he also helped himself, not to stray too far from the original, with the uncertain word “boy” and left it to his readers to determine the indefinite from the context.

*) κακως εχων ημελλεν τελευταν (Luke 7:2). Compare John 4:47: ημελλεν αποθνησκειν

27

If it is now certain that Luke “does not provide a later expansion whose purpose is to emphasize the humility of the man even more *)”, we still have to answer the question of how he came to his report. A look at Mark solves the question. Mark knows nothing about the centurion, but tells instead the story of the Hellenistic woman whose daughter Jesus heals from a distance – a story that Luke knows nothing about. And yet we read this story in Luke; it is precisely the story of the centurion! Note beforehand that Luke took offense at such a close and immediate contact of the Lord with a pagan person, so he inserted the delegation of the Jewish elders as an intermediary and put in their mouths the embarrassing recommendation of the heathen, who now becomes a kind of proselyte, so all the inconveniences are explained. That woman, when she heard about Jesus, went to him and asked for help for her daughter, so now that delegation must immediately appear with the specific request and of course, since the centurion does not appear in person, ask the Lord to come and help the sick person **). In the original report, however, Luke finds that the Lord healed from a distance and did not see the sick person he helped this time. Therefore, if Jesus follows the requests of the delegation and is already near the centurion’s house, the centurion must send new messengers to stop him and make the healing possible from a distance. Even the words, and even the construction of the sentences are already ready for this purpose, namely in the writing of Mark, where messengers also come to meet the Lord when he is on his way to a hospital and at least try to hold him back *).

*) de Wette 1, 1, 83. Grauß II, 121.

**) Mark 7, 25, 26 : ακούσασα γυνή περί αυτού, ής είχε το θυγάτριον αυτής πν. ακαθ., ελθούσα προσέπεσε προς τους πόδας αυτού και πρώτα αυτόν ίνα — Luk. 7, 2, 33 εκατοντάρχου δέ τινος δούλος κακώς έχων ήμελλε τελευτάν. ακούσας δε περί του Ιησού, απέστειλε προς αυτόν έρωτών αυτών, όπως ελθών διασώση τον….

The words and construction of the sentences are so similar that the conclusion of the story is also compared: Mark 7, 30: xai artɛlfovoa εις τον οίκον αυτής, εύρε το δαιμόνιον εξεληλυθός και την θυγατέρα βεβλημένην επί της κλίνης. Luk. 7, 10: και υποστρέψαντες οι πεμφθέντες εις τον οίκον, εύρον τον ασθενούντα δούλον υγιαίνοντα.

See also the later investigations in John 4:46-47: Joh. 4, 46. 47 : και ήν τις βασιλικός ου ο υιός ήσθένει εν Κ. ούτος ακούσας, ότι ‘Ιησούς ήκει απήλθε προς αυτόν και ήρώτα αυτόν, ίνα καταβή και ιάσηται αυτού τον υιόν· ήμελλε γάρ αποθνήσκειν.

Note the following interweaving of the reports. Luke is too impatient to send the captain’s messengers back home and to let the sick man be healed, that he completely forgets that the Lord had to first speak the word that heals the sick. Matthew makes up for the omission by supplementing Luke’s report from the original, namely from Mark’s account, and summarily reports only the discovery of the fact that the Lord’s word had helped. He says in Ch. 8, 13: xal Entev και Ι. τ. εκατ. “Υπαγε και ως επίστευσας γενηθήτω σοι. και ιάθη και παίς αυτού εν τη ώρα εκείνη. Mark. 7, 29 : και είπεν αυτή, Διά τού-τον τον λόγον, ύπαγε εξελήλυθε το δαιμόνιον εκ της θυγατρός σου. και απελθούσα , εūρε. When Matthew copies the story of the Canaanite woman from Mark, he again uses some of the phrases which he had previously copied from Mark: Matth. 15, 28: τότε αποκριθείς ο Ι. είπ. αυτή, Ω γύναι, μεγάλη σου η πίστις, γενηθήτω σοι ως θέλεις. και ιάθη ή θυγάτηρ αυτής από της ώρας εκείνης.

Compare John 4:50: λέγει αυτώ ο Ι. Πορεύου, υιός σου ζή. Ebens. 3. 53 : εν εκείνη τη ώρα.

*) Luke 7:6: ο δε Ι. επορεύετο συν αυτοίς, ήδη δε αυτού ου μακράν απέχοντος από της οικίας, έπεμψε προς αυτόν και εκατόνταρχος φίλους, λέγων αυτώ, κύριε, μη σκύλλου: – γαρ –

Compare Mark in the account of the raising of Jairus’ daughter: Mark 5, 23: και απήλθε μετ’ αυτού. 23. 35: έτι αυτού λαλούντος, έρχονται από το αρχ. λέγοντες, ότι …. τί έτι σκύλλεις τον διδάσκαλον.

28

Another example, then, of the remarkable nature of the first Gospel, that it sometimes presents the same subject to us twice. In connection with the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew borrows from Luke a copy of a portrayal of Mark’s, which he also reproduces when the context leads him in that direction.

29

Matthew was naturally not a critic and therefore could not notice that both accounts were the same. Furthermore, when he significantly improved Luke’s account by removing the troublesome messengers and allowing the Gentile to approach Jesus in person, and even used a part of Mark’s account of the Greek woman to complete the story of the captain, it was not a mere external comparison of both accounts that helped him with these improvements; rather, it was the power of the idea that had received its pure expression in Mark’s account that seized him and forced him to eliminate the inconveniences of Luke’s account.

However, this idea is nothing other than that of the spiritual effect of Jesus into the distance, namely into the distance of the heathen world, on which his work, although he acted within the limits of Jewish life, should have an impact *). In the story of the Canaanite woman, the dialectic of this idea is worked into the immediate determinacy of the situation; Luke emphasizes it for reflection and makes this more sensible development possible through the humility of the man who does not dare to approach the Lord personally from the outset and does not consider himself worthy of the envoy himself coming under his roof (Luke 7:6-7). In Matthew’s account, the intelligent elaboration of the punchline is finally completed when the captain appears before the Lord personally, first only complaining of his domestic suffering, and when the Lord is about to go to help him, he says, “No! Just say the word, and my house will be healed” **).

*) See Weisse, ev. Gesch. II, 56.

**) If one confuses the laws that apply in the world of art – namely the art of religious perception – and in empirical reality, then one would have to, as de Wette (a. a. O.) does, call the captain’s second request “the more modest but more believing one”; in reality, however, it would be highly immodest and exceed all measure.

30

One more thing that Matthew has done beautifully: he adds to the Lord’s word, “Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith”, the saying about the arrival of the Gentiles in the kingdom of heaven and the rejection of the children of the kingdom (Ch. 8, 11-12) – a saying which he took from Luke (Ch. 13, 28-29) and reworked brilliantly *).

De Wette thinks **), “perhaps Luke gives this saying ‘more correctly’ on another occasion.” What does that mean? Did the specific, individual occasion ever arise on which Matthew lets it arise? More correctly? Does Luke have more accurate information when he puts the saying out there? Gfrörer also claims that the saying “fits better in the place where it was inserted by Luke ***).” But we have already sufficiently learned about this occasion, created by the question of whether few will be saved (Luke 13:23). Gfrörer even thinks that the saying has “a very unfortunate position” in Matthew. But we can’t find a happier place for it than Matthew has found, namely the occasion where Jesus could greet the faithful Gentile as the forerunner of the multitudes of nations flowing to the kingdom of heaven from the east and west. Matthew has given the saying the home to which it originally belonged, namely the idea that generated it and the story of the centurion. But it is not the “true Matthew”, whom Weisse †) assumes to have placed the saying as a “conclusion” to the story of the centurion. There is only one Matthew, the truly authentic one, who continued the work of Mark and Luke and who also found out this time that this saying, which Luke had put out there, could not be better placed than here, where the symbol of the faithful multitudes of nations was found.

*) As we have already noted above, 1, 159.

**) I, 1, 84.

***) Heil. Sage II, 19.

†) a. a. O. II, 54.

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After all this, it is no longer necessary to explain, with Strauss, the story of the centurion as an attempt to view the miracle-working power of Jesus quantitatively, nor are we allowed to consider it as a parable formed by Jesus himself *), nor do we even need to offend the apologist by asking about the possibility of the miracle – the centurion is the Canaanite woman, and is therefore a metamorphosis that never existed in the real world.

*) and, as Weisse does (II, 54), to give the first evangelist only the praise of a faithful copyist. Weisse says that the first evangelist “fairly accurately” translated the parable from the collection of sayings of Matthew.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 2

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31

§ 29.

The first stay of Jesus in Capernaum.

Matthew 8:14-17.

Although Matthew had already said before that Jesus moved to Capernaum, he only mentioned it (Chapter 4, 13), and neither did he take it seriously nor could he explain to us how Jesus came to settle in this city. Now he does say (Chapter 8, 14) that Jesus went into the house of Peter, but the circumstance which led Jesus to Capernaum and to the house of this disciple – his calling – goes much further back.

As for Luke’s account, it has been mentioned several times before, and it needs hardly to be pointed out that in the Gospel of Mark this story of Jesus’ return to the house of Peter has its true context and original origin. *) With the newly recruited disciples, Jesus enters Capernaum (Mark 1:21 εισπορευονται), he enters the synagogue and from there they (the whole group) go to the house of Simon and Andrew; Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law and she waits on them (αυτοις,, the whole company). Matthew no longer needs to look back at Peter’s calling to bring Jesus to his house; he is already at home in Capernaum and therefore speaks in unity (verses 14-15) that Jesus goes into the house of Peter and that the mother-in-law, after he has healed her, waits on him (αυτω). Luke speaks in the plural: she waited on them (avrvtz), by copying this word from Mark, without realizing that he had not yet given the Lord the company of the disciples (Luke 4:39).

*) especially since Wilke has made this relationship between the three accounts so clear once Mark is accepted.

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In the evening, Luke continues (v. 40-41), they brought to him all who were sick, and he healed them. And demons also came out of many. Matthew, on the other hand, reports (8:16-17) that in the evening, many demon-possessed people were brought to him, whom he freed from unclean spirits. He also healed all the sick. Matthew changes the order of events because he wants to connect his account to the reflection that Jesus had to heal the sick in order to fulfill the word of Isaiah, “He himself took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” Only Mark motivates the whole incident not only historically, but also in his presentation, where the individual details are in perfect harmony. “They brought to Jesus all who were sick and demon-possessed,” he says (1:32), “and he healed all who were sick” (v. 33) and “drove out the demons” (v. 34).

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Any thought of a historical basis for this account must immediately disappear when we remember that the occasion for these events is purely fictitious. As we showed above, it is absolutely impossible that Jesus began his work with the calling of the first disciples, and if we imagine the Lord’s activity to be so mechanically determined and regulated that he felt he had to leave Capernaum the next morning because it was his duty to proclaim the gospel in other neighboring places, then we are deluding ourselves. Is it really possible that a teacher could believe that he had done enough even for the near future, if he had given a public lecture and performed a couple of miracles in one place? In the real world, a teacher must take much more time, appear much more freely and liberally, and cannot divide his time so mechanically. If it is in the nature of his task that he must travel to different places, he will not rush from one place to another.

If we are therefore forced to admit the unsuitability of Mark’s presentation, we could perhaps still try to argue that the miracles which Mark places in Jesus’ first stay in Capernaum were performed there later. In vain! They only have their original place and meaning at the place assigned to them by Mark, i.e., at a place that never existed, since Jesus could never have started his work with the calling of the two pairs of brothers in order to come to Capernaum through their mediation. Jesus must heal the demon-possessed immediately as he enters the synagogue, cure Peter’s mother-in-law of fever, and heal many sick people in houses in the evening, so that his connection with Peter and his house, as well as with Capernaum, the center of his Galilean activity, is established and explained from the beginning. Mark no longer knew the historical circumstances under which this connection was formed, so miracles had to take the place of spiritual, gradual mediation. Jesus must now prove himself to the people of Capernaum as a miracle-worker on the first day he comes out in their city, and through a miracle on the woman who entertains guests in Peter’s house, he must open a hospitable house in his new home.

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The discrepancy between the accounts of the Synoptics and the fourth Gospel regarding Peter’s hometown has troubled apologists even more than the miracles, or indeed, far more. According to the note found in the Gospel of Mark and followed by the other two Synoptics (Mark 1:29, Luke 4:38, Matthew 8:14), Peter is from Capernaum, whereas the fourth Evangelist calls Bethsaida his hometown (John 1:45). “But,” asks Fritzsche, “could Peter not very well have been born in Bethsaida and later moved to Capernaum?” DeWette agrees and assumes that Peter moved to Capernaum after his marriage, and Grotius even suggests that the house of Peter mentioned by Matthew is actually his mother-in-law’s house. Another example of how history is enriched with notes, but unfortunately with notes that cannot withstand criticism. The fourth Evangelist knows nothing about Peter moving to Capernaum before he met Jesus; on the contrary, he assumes that Peter is still living in Bethsaida even after being called by Jesus. On the other hand, Mark, who is the only one to consider here since his successors only copied his account partially, refers to the house where Jesus stays as “Simon and Andrew’s” house, not Simon’s alone, as Luke and Matthew do. Therefore, Peter owns the house as an inheritance from his father, not as a dowry from his wife, and he has owned and lived in it with his brother since the beginning. If we now read more carefully in the fourth Gospel how Bethsaida is referred to as the city of Andrew and Peter, the contradiction is complete. How it arose is hardly worth asking, and it is unlikely to be answered, as it may have such a chance origin that the light of criticism can no longer illuminate such a deep mystery. It is likely that the matter can be explained as follows: the Evangelist wanted Jesus to find Philip, but one can only find a person if one already knows them somehow, so some mediation was necessary, and the author assumed that Philip was a fellow countryman of Peter and Andrew. So he immediately gives him Bethsaida as his hometown, without considering whether that brotherly pair was actually from there.

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It is not inappropriate here to note more precisely the way in which the evangelists view Capernaum as the center of Jesus’ Galilean activity.

As we have already learned, all three Synoptics have Jesus going from Nazareth to be baptized and moving to Capernaum. According to Mark’s account, Jesus stays as a guest in Simon’s house for only one day. When he returns to Capernaum after his first journey, and people hear that he is at home, this house (Mark 2:1) can only be that of Peter, into which he enters with the twelve whom he called after the second outbreak in Capernaum (Mark 3:20). It is not mentioned that he entered another house after his third departure, when he returned to Capernaum after the parable speech and the healing of the Gadarene demoniac, apart from that of Jairus, whose daughter he raised. Rather, he immediately goes to his hometown (πατριδα) of Nazareth after the miracle. Later, shortly before his departure to Jerusalem, he comes to Capernaum once again and is in the same house (εν τη οικια Mark 9:34), which can only be that of Peter in this context.

In short, according to Mark’s account, Jesus stays in Capernaum only as a guest, but if he initially feels it is his duty to stay only a short time in this city, as he must also preach elsewhere, Capernaum immediately appears as the center of his activity after his first journey (Mark 2:1). He only leaves it, as with his two subsequent journeys (Mark 3:6, 3:20-22), because he is forced to do so by his enemies.

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The contradiction is undeniable, and we must at least admit that even Mark has not given us a firm and reliable picture of the way of life of Jesus.

Luke cannot be considered in the present question, since he even dealt very disorderly with the statements of his predecessor, namely, three times when Mark says that Jesus returned to Capernaum (Mark 2:1, 3:20, 9:33), he leaves the locality completely undefined (Luke 5:17, 11:15, 9:46). Only after the Sermon on the Mount (Luke 7:1) does he let Jesus enter Capernaum, and when he later lets him return to the near shore after healing the Gadarene demoniac, where Jairus receives him (Luke 8:40), he does not remind us that this synagogue ruler was at home in Capernaum, which circumstance, however, must necessarily be assumed in the narrative of Mark, as well as Matthew (Matthew 9:1).

We can also be brief about Matthew. According to his account, Jesus stays in Peter’s house for only one day, but immediately returns to Capernaum on the following day, after having just left it. This time, too, he only stays in the city for one day, travels around the country from now on, and touches Capernaum only once more and only for a moment (Matthew 17:24-19:1), when he set out on the journey to Jerusalem. So Jesus only stays in Capernaum for two days, and yet this city is called (Matthew 9:1) “his city” ( η ιδια πολις)! A striking proof of how little the evangelists knew about the locality in which Jesus worked, how much they were inclined to make a priori determinations even about this point, and how little they were nevertheless able to work these determinations into the historical narrative in a pure and consistent manner. Matthew finds Capernaum mentioned most frequently in Mark’s scripture, and he immediately makes it “his city,” even though he only allows him to stay there for two days.

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But we must not forget to mention that Luke has formed an equal a priori and just as inconsistent as Matthew. According to his account, Jesus slept in Capernaum only twice, and yet he first pronounces the woe over this city, which, having been raised to heaven, is now to be cast down to hell (Luke 10:15), a saying of which Mark knows nothing. He forms a saying that presupposes that Capernaum was particularly favored as a witness to the miraculous deeds of the Messiah, and yet he tells us nothing of the many signs that occurred in this city.

Even Mark shows how little he had an original and coherent view of these relationships by the way he suddenly has Jesus’ relatives, his mother and brothers, appear in Capernaum. He presents it as if they were at home in this city and known to everyone in the crowd (Mark 3:20-21, 32) – but how is that possible, since Jesus himself only came from Nazareth to Capernaum and even then only by chance through the disciples he had found? As a guest, he stayed in this city?

It seems, however, to have been an involuntary – and easily satisfying – need for this type of perception to see Jesus’ relatives immediately as residents of the place where he himself often stayed. Even the fourth evangelist felt this need and satisfied it in his own way without hesitation. Although he considers Judea as the ordinary sphere of Jesus’ activity, he is so dominated by the type of historical view that regards Capernaum as an esteemed venue for the deeds of the Lord that he cannot completely suppress the glory of this city. Immediately after the wedding in Cana, Jesus goes to Capernaum (John 2:12). That royal official whose son is dying comes from this city (4:47), and in the synagogue of Capernaum (6:59) Jesus speaks of the enjoyment of his flesh and blood. The same evangelist, who only lets the Lord stay in Galilee for a very short time, who introduces Jesus as a Nazarene (John 1:46-47), cannot avoid having his mother and brothers, who were guests at the wedding in Cana, also go to Capernaum. It seems that the attention was not to be too scattered and that if Jesus’ relatives were to come into conflict with him, they should be nearby – as in John 7:3.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 2

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14

§ 27.

The Healing of the Leper.

Matthew 8:1-4.

Immediately after calling the two pairs of brothers, Jesus goes with them to Capernaum, where they are based, and he appears as a powerful teacher in the synagogue, so much so that the people are amazed. Even a man who was possessed by an unclean spirit and present in the synagogue, or rather the demon in this man, recognizes in Jesus “the Holy One of God” and senses that he has come to destroy him and his kind. When he cried out and revealed that he knew who Jesus was, Jesus commanded him to be silent and to come out of the possessed man, and he was freed to the amazement of those present.

15

Luke includes this account of Mark’s (Mark 1:21-28) in his writing in its entirety, after he had led the Lord of Nazareth to Capernaum (Luke 4:31-37). The only mistake he made was to allow Jesus to go to Capernaum and even stay at Peter’s house (verse 38) before reporting the calling of the first disciples.

Although Matthew was indeed hasty in mentioning Capernaum (Matthew 4:13), he does not report the calling of the first disciples as late as Luke, but instead has Jesus travel around Galilee and gain great fame in order to give the Sermon on the Mount an appropriate background. And he reports the sermon itself so early because he wants to show by example that Jesus’ teachings must have greatly affected the people.

He cannot report the incident in the synagogue in Capernaum, so he leaves it aside for later when it would be more appropriate to bring it up. Now, however, he is dominated by Luke, from whom he borrowed the occasion, idea, and structure of the Sermon on the Mount, and he must now, willingly or unwillingly, have the Lord come to Capernaum and heal the centurion’s servant. But before that, as the Lord is coming down from the mountain to Capernaum, he sends the leper to meet him. Why? He wanted to fill in the empty space between the descent from the mountain and the meeting with the centurion upon entering the city. He did not want the triumphal procession of the divine envoy and new legislator to go unnoticed in one place, and if just then the people were amazed at the powerful preaching of the preacher, he wanted to immediately start the miracle-working upon coming down from the mountain and arriving in the plain. He was led to this healing in particular by the following circumstance. After the great sermon, Luke says, the Lord entered Capernaum *). Matthew reads the same thing word for word from Mark **) at a place where he had just read the healing of the leper – he needed no more than this to believe he was justified in inserting this healing precisely here, where a miracle was so necessary to him before Jesus entered Capernaum.

*) Luke 7:1 εισηλθεν εις Καπερναουμ

**) Mark 2:1 και παλιν εισηλθεν εις Καπερναουμ

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The fact that he placed it in the wrong place and was forced to leave out the punchline of the whole thing, we have already seen.

Luke reports it at the place where he found it in Mark; he places it on the journey that Jesus took when he left the house of Peter, but he had already disorderly arranged the travel plan from the beginning when he lets Jesus call Peter on this journey. In addition, he has given the situation an indefinite definiteness, while Mark leaves it completely indefinite, as appropriate to the punchline. According to Mark’s account, the leper came to the Lord while he was traveling throughout Galilee, but according to Luke, when Jesus was in one of the cities where, as he said at the beginning of his journey, he must also preach the gospel ***). Finally, Luke does not reproduce the contrast on which Mark has built the whole thing purely; he does not say that despite the prohibition, the healed man made the matter known and Jesus had to stay away from the cities and retreat into the wilderness. Rather, he chooses the indefinite portrayal that the reputation of Jesus only spread further *), that the crowds flocked to him to hear him and be healed, and that he himself stayed in the wilderness and – the standing formula! – prayed. Peter’s catch of fish made this weakening of the contrast necessary, as it not only interrupts the journey, but also gives the impression that it only begins when Jesus meets the leper in one of the cities. At least now the travel report makes a new start when Jesus and the sick man meet, and it would have to end too quickly if the healed man immediately made Jesus known as his savior and forced him to withdraw into secrecy. The news of the miraculous event must therefore spread only generally – one does not know how, but in any case in a way that takes more time – among the people.

***) Luke 5:12: και εγένετο εν τω είναι αυτόν εν μιά των πόλεων.  4:43: και ταϊς ετέραις πόλεσιν ευαγγελίσασθαι με δεί.

*) Luke 5:15: διήρχετο δε μάλλον ο λόγος περί αυτού.

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So in Mark we find the conception of the story in its first purity, simplicity, and epigrammatic elaboration. The tension of the whole is calculated for the point at which Jesus so strictly forbids the announcement of the miracle, and the appropriate resolution of the tension is given in the circumstance that the healed man nevertheless and even immediately, after leaving Jesus, speaks much about the matter, makes it known, and thereby causes the crowds to rush to the Lord himself in the wilderness, where he had withdrawn to.

But why does Jesus forbid the healed man so strictly to speak of the matter? Why does he tell him to show himself only to the priest and to offer the cleansing sacrifice commanded by Moses “as a testimony to them”? The matter cannot be understood as if the man were not first to speak with the people at length and first show himself to the priest, as if it were then permitted for him to make the matter known. The prohibition is rather absolute: he is not to speak with anyone at all about the matter **), that is, he is not to betray his doctor as the miraculous Messiah; for the healed man had recognized Jesus not only through the miracle but had already recognized him as the Messiah from the outset when he addressed him with the words: “if you will, you can make me clean.” The solution does not lie in the assumption that Jesus himself was initially uncertain of his messianic calling: for in this case, he could not have spoken as if the assumption of the sick man regarding his messianic dignity and power was fully correct. Instead of merely forbidding him to speak of the miracle, he should have told him that his assumption was too far-reaching. Or did Jesus’s still obscure intuition of his messianic calling get hit electrically by the recognition of another, so that in this recognition he saw what was not yet clearly recognized by himself, then he should have spoken differently in this case as well. But just as his words simply confirm the assumption of the healed man, his messianic nature must have been long recognized and generally acknowledged if someone were to come up with the idea of demanding the liberation from leprosy from him without further ado.

**) “Ορα μηδενί μηδέν είπης.

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In the third edition of his work, *) Strauss finds “the true reason for that prohibition” in the account of the fourth Gospel. Just as in John 6:15, the people, because they had concluded from the miraculous feeding that he was the Messiah, intended to make him king by force, “so he had to fear from the dissemination of any act or discourse that seemed to testify to him as the expected Messiah an excitement of the fleshly Messianic hopes of his contemporaries, whose transformation into the spiritual was the task of his life.” If Jesus really had something to fear, then he must have had very little confidence in the power and clarity of his speech, or his speech must have been of such a nature that he could not rely on its impression at all. Or, as for the deeds, it would have been not only less dangerous, but also dignified and appropriate if he had not performed any that could cast a false light on his work and his purpose. But how does the critic reason from the assumption that Jesus really worked miracles—namely, miracles according to the popular notion? Only the apologist can fall into the contradiction that, on the one hand, he demands miracles from Jesus so that he can worship him as the Messiah, and on the other hand, he must hide them away in order to see Jesus as the spiritual Messiah. And what about the testimony of the fourth Gospel? How can that serve to explain the difficulty? What is it other than the view pushed to the extreme pinnacle that is just now to be explained?

*) E. J., I, 548.

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Also Wilke *) explains that “Jesus does not want to make a big deal out of it.” The meaning of his command, with which he dismisses the healed man, is: “Don’t say anything about the healing, let the people see for themselves that you have been healed when you bring your cleansing offering.” Very well! To some extent, this explanation is based on the text, but not entirely, as it puts an accent on the “you” and “the people themselves” which the text does not know. On the other hand, it does not exhaust the text, as the words of the text: “for a testimony to them,” are too solemn to only mean: “so that the people see that you have been healed.”

We would vainly try to explain the words which the evangelist puts in Jesus’ mouth if we did not, with a jolt, move away from the apologetic standpoint which takes those words as Jesus’ words from the outset. But the following consideration gives us that jolt. It is true that the words imply that Jesus does not want to make a big deal out of it, and if he did not want to, it could only be because he did not want people’s view of his personality to be too much restricted to one side, namely that of a miracle worker. But if he had really had this principle, he would not have followed it at the right time or rather he would have either not been able to perform miracles at all or only very rarely. Does this not give miracle working a great predominance when he heals a large number of sick people in the evening when he had taken up residence in Peter’s house (C. 1, 33) and later, when crowds from all of Palestine flocked to him (C. 3, 7), so many that he exhausted himself? Why, if only one leper is healed, forbid the announcement of the story, since he healed in the presence of a large crowd before and (C. 3, 8) the crowds came to him because they had heard of his deeds, i.e. his miracles? And scarcely has Jesus forbidden the leper to speak of the matter, than the first thing he does after leaving him is to make the matter known. And what is the result? The people streamed to him from all directions! But if the prohibition was so completely useless, Jesus would have known beforehand, and therefore he would not have bothered to oblige the healed man to be silent. On the other hand, if he had really issued the prohibition, we may be sure—and we must presuppose this of any real man—that his word was so firm, so serious, and so penetrating that the healed man could not have forgotten it even for a moment.

*) Der Urevangelist, p. 182.

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All possibility of seeing words of Jesus in this prohibition has thus disappeared for us. It was made by the evangelist, but since it is the core of the whole story, since it is the punchline that the miracle only serves to bring about, nothing can give us the certainty that Jesus performed this miracle. In addition, the whole situation is purely fabricated: the first disciples had to be called urgently so that Jesus could come to Capernaum as quickly as possible, but he had to arrive immediately on his first appearance in Capernaum, because at the time when Mark wrote, this city was considered the center of his Galilean travels, and because it was now fitting that he should embark on his first mission journey from Capernaum: in short, if the early entry into Capernaum and the departure the following day are events that only took place in the pragmatic reflection of Mark, then we also know where Jesus was traveling when he met the leper.

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The enigmatic prohibition now stands as a free creation of Mark’s and its meaning will now only be revealed. As the belief in miracles had developed to the extent that it was believed that the Lord had often performed miracles, healed the sick and raised the dead, a contradiction arose which is necessarily inherent in the Christian idea of miracles. It was established that Jesus had performed miracles, thereby accrediting himself as the one sent by God and testifying to the divine origin of his work. On the other hand, with the rise of the Christian principle, the Jewish demand for signs had been so far restricted and the proof from the spirit had become so prominent, or at least a postulate, that one did not want to rely solely on miracles or view Jesus solely as a miracle worker and thus somehow had to limit the view of miracles. In the graphic portrayal of the gospel story, this contradiction took on the form that Jesus performs miracles – for that was once absolutely necessary – and at the same time declares that he does not want to attach weight to such deeds. The miracles must therefore – forgive the expression – be hidden away in the corner or placed under a bushel: Jesus forbids their publication. However, the evangelical view is unable to remain consistent; it does so already in that it forms miracles that must be hidden away again, and thus it has, at the same time as it hides them, a secret interest in miracles and yet it cannot have told the story in vain. Therefore, it must somehow present the prohibition as futile: in the present case, it portrays the situation in such a way that the healed man nevertheless makes the miracle known and causes the crowds from all over to rush after the Lord into the seclusion of the desert (Mark 1, 45).

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Now, the solemn words “as a testimony to them”? The context in which we find them will explain them. If the leper turns to Jesus convinced that he is the Messiah and therefore can help him, and if Jesus then heals him with a single word, it seems that this would result in a conflict with the order of the law, namely that the legal ceremony of priestly purification and cleansing would no longer be necessary. After this healing, however, the clashes with the Pharisees and with the law follow (Mark 2.) – is it not clear that this healing and Jesus’ statement are intended to form the transition to this new section? In the sense that the transition would make it clear that Jesus did not willfully bring about the collisions with the law, and in fact did everything to avoid them where they could be avoided? “To be a testimony to them,” therefore, means that my higher authority should not overturn or violate the legal order at any cost, as a testimony to all who would like to reflect on it.

The new contradiction into which the entire prohibition falls at the end is loud enough to draw our attention.

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