Category: New Testament

Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 3

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130

§ 80.

Speech against the scribes and Pharisees.

Matth. 23, 1-39.

1. The seat of Moses. 

Matth. 23, 2-4.

It is a good thing that in the beginning of a long speech against the scribes and Pharisees, the audience is reminded that they should not let the wickedness of the person and their actions keep them from following their teachings: The scribes and Pharisees sit on the seat of Moses,” v. 2, 3. “All things therefore which they say unto you, that ye ought to observe, observe and do. But do not do according to their works, for they say it, but do it not. “But then, in the same discourse, the doctrines of the Pharisees and of the scribes should also be mentioned, such as, for example, the doctrine of the oath in vv. 16-22, which prove that the people must also be warned against the doctrine of these people. Still less, however, should we have passed over from their characterization as preachers of the Law of Moses to their description as inventors of an intolerable tradition, as if we were still speaking of the same significance of the scribes. “For,” it says immediately v. 4, “they bind heavy and unbearable burdens, but with their finger they will not stir them” – “and not with a finger will ye touch them”, so writes the man from whom Matthew borrowed this saying, Luke, whose saying Matthew associated with that other saying which in his time was probably already regarded as a saying about the hypocrisy of the teachers of the law, Luke, who first elaborated the woe-cries against the Pharisees, which Matthew even began with: Woe to you Pharisees, although the persons addressed are not present and rather only the people were to be instructed about their nature. Luke can have the Lord say: woe to you because the Pharisees are sitting with him at the table. But at table, now that Jesus was invited as a guest by one of the Pharisees? Should we really spoil the joy of Luke’s account, of this stormy interlude from the life of Jesus, by a lengthy argument? So be it, but on condition that I never again need to mention the name of a theologian in the course of this work.

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2. A stormy intermezzo.

Luke 11, 37.-12, 1.

While Jesus was still speaking to those who had demanded a sign from him, a Pharisee invited him to breakfast. He immediately accepted the invitation, entered the house, reclined at the table, and immediately, when the Pharisee showed his surprise that he did not wash before the meal, he spoke out against the Pharisees with the words: “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.” (Luke 11:39). After the Pharisees were further rebuked, a new incident follows: a law teacher takes the opportunity to remark that the preacher of punishment also insults his class, and now with the introduction “Woe also to you, experts in the law!” the thunder against the law teachers begins, first that they burden the people with unbearable loads but refuse to lift a finger to help them (Luke 11:46).

Schleiermacher feels a true joy in his heart that it was just a breakfast to which Jesus had accepted the invitation this time, for, he said, at a proper evening meal “he would hardly have neglected to wash, that would have been a deliberate breach of custom” *). But is not this violation considered and presented by the evangelist as a deliberate one, when Jesus contrasts inner and outer purity and declares himself against the Pharisaic concern for appearance?

*) a. a. O. p. I79 -181.

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According to Schleiermacher, the Pharisees demonstrated their hypocrisy by inviting Jesus, and it is against this hypocrisy and their hostile attitude that the speech in Luke 12:1-12 is directed, which begins with the warning against the yeast of the Pharisees. “The intensity of that dispute caused that great crowd (Luke 12:1 ‘Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another’), which, it seems, freed Jesus from the intrusiveness of the Pharisees for this time.” Jesus spoke so loudly and terribly that tens of thousands gathered together!

But Schleiermacher further assumes that Jesus’ speech against the Pharisees took place “after breakfast, when they were already outside and could again be observed by the people. The Pharisee did not come forward with his reproach about the omitted washing until after breakfast,” and yet it says in v. 38, 39, “when the Pharisee saw it, he was amazed,” and Jesus immediately starts against the hypocrites. Schleiermacher ponders over this and bases his argument on the fact that the end of the meal was not mentioned. And yet it was only not mentioned because it was not worth mentioning after such a great battle against the Pharisees had been described, because a proper tact prevented the evangelist from mentioning it, in short because this setting of a breakfast for such a great battle proved in the end much too petty. How would it look if at the end of those prophecies it were reported: and then the breakfast was over. The note about the hostile attitude of the Pharisees (Luk 11, 53. 54) does not want to say what Schleiermacher hears from it, that the Pharisees already wanted to go over to violence, from which Jesus was only protected this time by the fact that the people were summoned by the noise of the quarrel in tens of thousands and fortunately arrived very quickly; indeed Luke does not even want to speak of violence, but he only says: from now on they tried to catch him by putting dangerous questions before him.

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No! No! replies Paulus, when we are surprised that Jesus, while still at the table, so severely accuses the people of whom he was invited to breakfast and whose invitation he had immediately accepted, that he even speaks of the bloodguilt that should be smelled on them. No! No! says Paulus, Jesus was right to speak so, since he indeed “noticed murderous fury, dogged (!) rage in those present” *).

*) Handb. II, 115.

Indeed! Jesus at breakfast! Cries of woe over the blood-guilt of the people with whom he is breakfasting! So great a noise that crowds of tens of thousands hurry up! Everything is right, if the letter is right!

But Luke has only cast the story of Mark about the dispute about purity into a new form, because he wanted to enrich it with new elements. That he reworks this narrative is evident from the fact that Jesus first speaks of a contrast between “from without and from within” and then (b. 46), at the new point of evidence, immediately of the burden of the Pharisaic tradition.

 

3. The seeking of precedence.

Matth. 23, 6 -12.

Now, if Matthew, in v. 6, wanted to borrow from the speech as delivered to him by Mark the reproach that the Pharisees have the first place in the synagogue and let themselves be saluted, if he wanted to take occasion from this to work out a sermon on humility – for it is his work when he writes: they like to be called masters, but you do not let yourselves be called masters, for One is your Master, Christ etc. – Finally, when he, in order to strongly recommend the duty of humility to his readers, copies the saying about self-abasement *) from Luke (C. 14, 11), he should at least not have thought that with this sermon he was still following the same path that he had taken immediately before when he accused the Pharisees of hypocrisy (v. 5).

*) The elements for his statement provided Luke with several quotes from the Old Testament, for example Ezekiel 21:26.: εταπείνωσας the high and elevated the humble. Ps. 113, 6. 7. said Jehovah ταπεινά έφορών… and raised up from the land of the poor. Ps. 138, 6. Judith 9, 11. That Luke knew how to appreciate the book of Judith, we see from his praise of Mary: for we hear how the priest Osias greets Judith after her heroism (Judith 13, 18): ευλογητη συ θυγάτηρ τω θεώ τω υψίστω παρα πασας τας γυναικας τας επι της γης.

Isa. 5, 21 : ουαι οι σθνετοι εν εαυτοις: compare Luke 10, 21.

Isa. 26, 5: ὃς ταπεινώσας κατήγαγες τοὺς ἐνοικοῦντας ἐν ὑψηλοῖς· πόλεις ὀχυρὰς καταβαλεῖς καὶ κατάξεις ἕως ἐδάφους: compare the saying about Capernaum Luke 10, 15.

Sirach 3, 18. Οσω μεγας ει τοσοθτω ταπεινου σεαυτον: compare Luke 14, 7 – 11.

Luke took the elements of his Sermon on the Mount from the O. T. Comp. the original text Isa. 65, 5: “who seize you and cast you out for my name’s sake” and Luk. 6, 22. Ps 109, 28: καταρασονται αυτοι και ου ευλαγσεις: compare Luke 6, 28. Also the sayings Proverbs 25, 21 and Luke 6, 27. Ps. 103, 8: οικτιρμων και ελεημων ο κυριος: compare Luke 6, 36.

The basis of the parable of the house, Luke 6, 48. 49, is found in Luke 13, 11. 14. Proverbs 12, 7.

Matth. has also done his part. Isa. 61, 2: παρακαλέσαι πάντας τους πενθούντας – Matth. 5, 4. Ps. 37, 11: οι δε πραείς κληρονομήσουσι την γήν = Matth. 5, 5. Sirach 7, 14: μη δευτε-ρώσης λόγoν εν προσευχή σου and Sprache 10, 19 – Matth. 6, 7. The saying of the look and heart Matth. 6, 20. 21 is contained in Sirach 29, 11. Ps. 62, 10, after Luke 12, 33 the keywords from Isa. 51, 8.

To add some more ! Ps. 55, 22 : επίρριψον επί κύριον την μέριμνάν σου και αυτός σε διαθρέψει == Luke 12, 22. Jes. 41, 14: μη φοβού Ιακώβ ολιγοστός Ισραήλ, εγώ εβοήθησά σοι λέγει ο θεός σου, και λυτρούμενος σε Ισραήλ == Luke 12, 32. lingu. 19, 17: έλεγξον τον πλησίον σου πριν η απειλήσαι και δός τόπον νόμω υψίστου == Luke 12, 58. Isa. 49, 12 : ηξουσιν από βορρρά == Luke 13, 29. Sirach 7, 10: μη ολιγοψυχήσης εν τη προσευχή σου == Luke 18, 1. Isa. 8, 12. 13: τον δέ φόβον αυτού του μη φοβηθήτε …. κύριον, αυτών αγίασατε και αυτός εσται σου φόβος nachgebilber in Luke 12, 4. 5. 

The σκάνδαλα Matth. 13, 41 find borrowed from Zephaniah 1, 3 (Urtext).

Concerning Mark compare e.g. Ch. 3, 27 with Isa. 49, 24. 25 : μὴ λήψεταί τις παρὰ γίγαντος σκῦλα; ….. ἐάν τις αἰχμαλωτεύσῃ γίγαντα, λήψεται σκύλα· λαμβάνων δὲ παρὰ ἰσχύοντος σωθήσεται.  Ezek. 3, 27 : ὁ ἀκούων ἀκουέτω == Mark 3, 9. Proverbs 28, 24. Mark 7, 11. Ps. 49, 7. 8 == Mark 8, 37.

Compare also (Mark 4, 36 – 41) the story of the calming of the storm with Ps. 197, 24 – 31 and Jon. 1, 5. 6. 12.

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4. The prophecies.

Matth. 23, 13 – 33.

Luke’s speech against the teachers of the law closes with the woe: you have taken the key of knowledge; you yourselves do not enter, and those who want to enter you refuse (Luk 11, 52). Matthew, who still has in mind the key to the kingdom of heaven from before, has made the following woe out of it: you shut up (v. 13) the kingdom of heaven from men, you do not enter and you do not even let in those who want to enter.

This is followed by woe to the hypocrites who eat widows’ houses and pray a lot for the sake of appearances (v. 14), formed after Jesus’ original speech in Mark.

The woe over proselytising and the sophistical distinction of oaths (vv. 15-22) belongs to Matthew alone.

Luke’s “woe” over the hypocritical tithing “mint, rue, and every kind of garden herb” (Luke 11:42) – Matthew says: “mint, dill, and cumin” – is further enriched by the last synoptic with the accusation that these “blind guides” strain out gnats but swallow camels (verse 23-24). But Luke would hardly have imagined that later scholars would take his deliberate exaggeration seriously and swear that the Pharisees had also paid tithes from the coin and the rue.

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Luke (C. 11, 39 – 41) has explained the contrast between the inside and the outside in this way: the Pharisees keep the outside of their dishes pure, while they themselves are full of robbery and wickedness in their inside; but they should consider that he who made the outside also made the inside, and they should only give what is inside as all things, so that everything would be pure for them. Matthew, though it is in itself very simple, found it too difficult and involved: he now makes the cups and bowls the only object of consideration (v. 25. 26): the Pharisees are accused that their cups and bowls are kept clean by them on the outside, but on the inside they are full of robbery and “uncleanness”, but they should rather keep the inside of them clean – but how? is not said – then the inside of them would also be clean.

The comparison of the hypocrites with tombs, on the outside of which one cannot see what they contain, and the remark that the experts in the law, by building tombs for the prophets who killed their fathers, confess to the deeds of their fathers (Luke 11:44, 47-48), both sayings that Luke keeps far apart, Matthew not only elaborates further, but also, as was to be expected of him, brings them into direct contact because of the mere word “tombs” – he even says “graves” twice (verse 27-32).

 

5.The blood of Zacharias.

“Therefore”, it now says, after the Pharisees and scribes have been exposed as prophet murderers, in both further – but no! while in Luke (C. 11, 49-51) it says: “Therefore Wisdom also said, I will send unto them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill, and some they will persecute; that there may be reclaimed from this generation all the blood shed from the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel even unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple; yea! I tell you, it will be reclaimed from this generation”, Matthew has Jesus say (v. 34-36): “Therefore, behold, I send you”, i.e. Matthew has now given the theologians cause to ponder whether Jesus is speaking here in His own name, namely in the name of His authority, or whether He is only speaking like the old prophets in the name of Jehovah, etc. – thus I see Jesus as a prophet. I send you prophets, wise men and scribes” – a new reason to wonder to what extent Jesus’ apostles can be called scribes! – Matthew goes on to say: “and you will kill and crucify some of him, and scourge some of them in your synagogues, and persecute them from one city to another”, i.e. without engaging in musings: Matthew has described more clearly than Luke the sufferings which, according to the experiences of Christ and the apostle Paul, await every teacher of the kingdom of heaven – but finally he names Zacharias more closely as the son of Barachias – but whether he hit the right note here or thinking of the Old Testament martyr Zechariah and only confusing his father Jehoiada with the father of the prophet Zechariah, can be of no consequence to us; In Luke, the Zechariah who is murdered between the altar and the temple is the same Zechariah who was killed in the temple by the Jewish Zealots shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem and who was a son of Baruch. If the beginning of the world is reckoned from the blood of Abel, if the blood of all prophets is to be smelt, then the final date must also be the most extreme – Luke reckons up to Zechariah of the Jewish war and thus commits the same oversight that happened to him in the Acts of the Apostles, where he lets Gamaliel speak of Theudas as of a known person.

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Some theologians have been so bold as to acknowledge the truth and thus claim that Jesus prophesied the murder of that Zechariah – but they have forgotten to teach us how the people, the disciples or the Pharisees could understand this prophecy when Jesus speaks of the blood of this man as if it had already been shed.

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To explain the words (Luke 11, 49): The prophecy of God said: I will send to him prophets and apostles, and they will kill some of him and persecute others”, we do not need to assume that Luke is citing an apocrypha which has been lost to us – rather, he only has in mind the speeches of Jehovah which deal with the mission of the prophets and the suffering among the unbelieving people, and furthermore, he remembers a saying in which the equipping of the prophets is attributed to wisdom *).

*) Jer. 44, 4: απέστειλα προς υμάς τους προφήτας … ουκ ήκουσάν μου. Wisdom of Solomon 7, 27 : προφήτας κατασκευάζει.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 3

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121

§ 79.

The fight between Jesus and his opponents.

Mark 12, 13 -40.

As the people have their outpost in the blind man of Jericho, so representatives of the learned and influential power of the capital had appeared before (C. 7, 1.) to show the Lord what to expect from his opponents. Now that Jesus had come out in Jerusalem, and with the cleansing of the temple had proclaimed himself not only the judge of the decayed theocracy, but also the one who must accuse the corrupt leaders of the church of unfaithfulness and take over the leadership of the host in their stead, the superiors decided to overthrow him, but for fear of the people who clung to him, they decided to tread carefully and now sought to catch him by asking questions about difficult points of contention. The fight becomes a learned contest.

 

1. Overview.

First – we turn immediately to the writing of Mark – they send off some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to catch him with one word. They ask him about the tribute and are astonished at him when he solved the matter so surprisingly simply.

Then the Sadducees also turned to him, but when they had given him to consider the folly of believing in resurrection, they had to hear that they were very much mistaken on this point.

This is the terrible battle! Jesus has emerged victorious, the matter becomes milder, a scribe, who had been listening to the learned contest, sees that Jesus has answered well, and therefore puts a question to him about the first of all the commandments. Jesus tells him which commandment it is, the matter ends amicably, the scribe praises and approves the answer, adds that obedience to this commandment is better than sacrifice, and Jesus remarks to him in response to this intelligent answer: “You are not far from the kingdom of heaven.”

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But now no one dares to ask him any more and so Jesus now takes the opportunity to present a question himself in order to shame the opponents. It is the question about David’s son. No one, of course, can confront him, but the people, who had gathered in great numbers, listened to him with pleasure, and in teaching them, he gives that thunderous warning to the scribes.

That Matthew had already set the entrance to this contest in confusion, we have already noted. The note that the opponents “left him and went away” is later attributed to Mark and is placed at the end of his account of the interest, although he had already attributed the one conclusion of this story: that the opponents were astonished.

Then (C. 22, 23) the Sadducees appear, but since at the end of Jesus’ answer he writes [die drucker?]: He goes further in the following part of the original report, taking up the note about the people’s approval, the note which is only in its place at the end and before the exhortation about the scribes, and says: the multitudes were astonished at his teaching (v. 33).

He took away its friendly character from the negotiation for the highest bid; a law teacher throws it on, who appears before the Lord after an agreement of the Pharisees, and the Pharisees felt encouraged for this new undertaking against their enemy, because they – what a beautiful reason! especially after their early defeat! – had heard that he had silenced the Sadducees. Of course – as Matthew was still very consistent this time – the friendly conclusion is not missing, that the scribe approved of Jesus’ answer and also earned the approval of Jesus. The report concludes with the indication of the highest bid. But in order not to leave the conclusion too bare, Matthew must replace Jesus’ words (Mark 12:31): “There is no greater commandment than these” with the fuller formula: “On these two commandments depend the law and the prophets.”

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Again the Pharisees come together and Jesus asks them about the formula: Son of David, i.e. Matthew has changed the position of the matter in such a way that Jesus is no longer the aggressor, and the note that no one dared to ask him, which had to precede the question about the Son of David, he has put in the wrong place, because he put it only after Jesus’ statement about the Son of David.

Now follows – but it is not mentioned as in Mark that the people were present – in chapter 23, verse 1, the speech against the Pharisees in the presence of the people.

Luke still leaves the transition to the question about the tribute as he finds it in the writing of Mark, but he does not say that it was Pharisees who sent some of them to catch their enemy by a dangerous question: he rather calls these delegates people who imagined themselves to be just! (C. 20, 20). A very appropriate description in a story that was not in the least about Pharisaic self-righteousness! If Luke had preferred to use this formula of love (C. 16, 15), from which he even created the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector (C. 18, 9 -14), he would have used it. 18, 9 -14), as Mark said, that it was the Pharisees and Herodians who carried out the attack against Jesus and who first started the battle that was to be fought, because the purpose of this whole passage is obviously no other than to set all Jewish parties in motion against the Messiah and to let Him triumph over all of them.

Luke was therefore also very wrong to omit the question of the “scholar of Christ” about the highest commandment from this passage and to put the formula that no one dared to ask Jesus any more, the formula that is only in its place after the negotiation about the highest commandment, the formula that he himself puts in place after the rejection of the Saddueans (C. 20, 40), before the question of the deniers of the resurrection and at the end of the passage about the nugget of interest (v. 26). Of course, he speaks twice, when he says “they were silent”, “they dared not ask him any more”, in a way that it is clear that he wants to make the unfruitful and useless remark that these particular opponents did not dare to ask anymore. But this “anymore” after the dismissal of the Sadducees betrays him and accuses him of having misunderstood the “no one dared to ask him anymore” of Mark quite substantially.

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After the dismissal of the Sadducees, the question about the son of David follows, and then the speech against the scribes. However, in the introduction to the former section, he, just like Matthew, wrongly neglects the transition that Mark provides: Jesus answered (that is, now that the opponents were defeated, he took the opportunity to ask them a question).

Luke has placed the negotiation for the highest bid in a random position, after tearing it out of its context. He reports on it in chapter 10, verse 25. However, he unfortunately reveals very inappropriately that he read it in Mark after the dismissal of the Sadducees, when he presents the scribe’s response “You have spoken the truth” (Mark 12:32) in the form of “Some of the scribes answered, ‘Teacher, you have spoken well!'” (Luke 20:39) after the refutation of the denial of the resurrection. Where did these scribes suddenly come from if not from Mark’s account?

 

2. The tribute

The story of the tax coin came into being in those times which, as the New Testament epistles teach us, had to deal very often and very variously with the question of how the congregation was to relate to the Roman authorities, even though the only answer was always the same, that obedience was not to be withdrawn from the authorities, although the only and true Lord was to be worshipped in the Messiah. The Christian principle, in itself destructive in nature and necessarily hostile to the world and the state, helped itself for the moment and for the empirical existing conditions with the information that one had to submit to what existed. But that the world would soon and completely be put to an end – this hope and certainty was not given away even when, once pressed by accusations, one patiently offered one’s neck to the yoke.

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3. The resurrection.

The ponderings about the resurrection were also very much in vogue at that time, when one had to contend with the scoffers who did not want to know anything about the resurrection of the Lord. Of course, if Jesus is to decide on the question, it must be Sadducees with whom he disputes, just as it was fitting that Mark should also lead Herodians out of the place when it concerns a question which at the same time touches on politics.

If we only had Luke’s synoptic gospel left to us, we would have to think that the Christians did not consider their savior particularly skilled in the art of reasoning and deduction. After the question of the Sadducees about whose wife the woman who had lived successively with seven brothers in levirate marriage would be at the resurrection, a question intended to make belief in the resurrection ridiculous, Jesus answers in Luke (chapter 20, verses 34-38): “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.” (So, is that supposed to prove immortality and its consequence? It would either have to be proved first or, more boldly and from the outset, be taken as a presupposition) – they are like the angels, and they are children of God, since they are children of the resurrection. But the fact that the dead are resurrected has also! Moses showed in the passage from the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But God is not a God of the dead, but of the living. All live unto him. But is there any proof of the resurrection beforehand, so that it can be said that Moses also proved it?

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Luke misunderstood the account of Mark, thinking that in the first chapter, where the angelic likeness of the resurrected is spoken of, there was also an argument for the resurrection. For Mark, however, this is only an argument in so far as the objection raised by the Sadducees against the impossibility of the resurrection is thereby removed. Luke came to his wrong idea especially because of the fact that Jesus (Mark 12, 24) denies the opponents that they were wrong because they knew neither the scriptures nor the power of God. He quickly says that there must now be two proofs of the resurrection. But according to Mark, the power of God proves itself not only in the resurrection of the dead, but also in the transformation of men into angels; the power of God, therefore, is to support both parts of the argument; the proof from Scripture, and only now really the proof of the resurrection, is only given in the second part.

Matthew has remained faithful to Mark.

 

4. The highest commandment.

Luke has treated the question of the highest commandment extraordinarily well. He improved the passage greatly when he copied it from Mark. The divine art of sacred historiography is great.

Firstly, the question should be purely theoretical, as Luke himself indicates, but highly inappropriate, by adding that the questioner had the intention of testing Jesus (Luke 10:25). And yet, the same Luke, who adds this inappropriate indication, gives it a purely practical interest when he has turned it into the question of the rich man: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

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Furthermore, this is a beautiful tempter who, as soon as Jesus asks him what is written, immediately knows how to combine those two commandments of love for God and one’s neighbour, no! how to count them out like clockwork! A beautiful tempter, who parrots the discovery, which in the case of Mark is supposed to be a discovery of Jesus, and must certainly appear as such, like a catechism! Not a word more about it! That is what is supposed to be new, that there is no higher commandment than these two! And Luke makes the seeker complain about this discovery, so that Jesus now replies: you have answered correctly, while in Mark the scribe, moved by the greatness of the discovery, says to Jesus: you have spoken according to the truth, “for – hear! hear! – there is only One God”, i.e. there is also only One Commandment!

Beautiful tempter, whose mouth is not yet shut, who immediately asks: who is my neighbour (Luk 10, 29)! Nice connoisseur of the catechism, who does not yet know that! And how inappropriate, after what has been said so far, is Luke’s remark, this repetition of his formula, that this man wanted to make himself stretched.

A part – but only a part – of the blame for all these improvements was borne by the fact that Luke here – in order to teach who is next – wants to use the parable of the Good Samaritan. Because the Samaritan is set up as an example, because this strange tempter is to be challenged to imitation, Jesus must finally turn the matter around at the end, namely, ask who was the neighbour of the poor man who had fallen into the hands of the robbers, and the teacher of the law must then also answer (C. 10, 30 to 37).

Since the word Samaritan has just been mentioned, we can still – but it is not worth the effort to even casually remind us that Luke, in order to contrast the Samaritans with the ungrateful Jews, invented the story of the Samaritan who alone thanked the Lord for the deliverance from leprosy, while the nine Jews, who had received the same benefit at the same time as him, were inaccessible to the feeling of thanks. Luk 17, 11 -19*).

*) Luk 17, 13: ιησου επιστάτα ελέησον ημάς.
Mark 10, 47 : ο υιός Δ. ιησού ελέησόν με.
Luke 17, 14: πορευθέντες επιδείξατε εαυτούς τους ιερεύσι. In order to explain how someone suddenly converted, Luke creates the miracle that Jesus only spoke these words to them, and they were healed on the way as they were going to the priests according to his command.
Mark 1, 44 : ύπαγε, σεαυτόν δειξον τώ ερεί.
Luke 17, 19: αναστας πορεύου: η πίστις σου σέσωκέ σε.
Mark 5, 34: η πίστις σου σέσωκέ σε. ύπαγε εις ειρήνην.
The beginning of Luke 17:12 is a reproduction of Mark 10:46.

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5. The son of David.

What do you think of Christ? Whose son is he? asks Jesus – as Matthew tells us, C. 22, 42 – and in fact the people hit it so well with their answer: David’s! that they bring the conversation exactly into the direction that Jesus himself probably already had in mind. How then – continues Jesus; as if he should not have said: but how – does David call him in the spirit? – i.e. David according to the dictates of the Holy Spirit, when he says: “The Lord says to my Lord: sit down, etc.” If, then, David calls him Lord – now comes the right turn of phrase – how is he his son?

How can the opponents, whom Jesus is to embarrass, set up even one side of the difficulty? How can the negotiation be dragged back and forth so long that we only find out at the end what the difficulty is? Jesus is supposed to carry out an attack, so he has to attack the opponents right at the beginning and embarrass them. Matthew has copied badly.

“How is it,” Jesus asks in Mark, “that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?” Now follows the objection taken against this assertion from that Psalm, and then at the end the knot is pulled together: whence then is he his Son?

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Thus wrote the same evangelist who posed the question above: “How do the scholars of Christ say that Elias etc. “Mark 9, 11.

The difficulty we have already explained above could of course only be formed by the evangelist from the point of view from which it was considered certain that David was the author of that Psalm.

 

6. The gowns.

Mark 12, 38 – 40.

Mark has done very well in the speech of Jesus against his opponents – we would almost venture the tautology. It is short and to the point, but striking. Beware,” says Jesus, and he says no more and no less, “of the Christian scholars, who go about in robes, and are saluted in the markets, and seek the first seat in the synagogues, and the first place at dinner; who eat up the houses of widows, and pray much for a pretence! “

Do you not see the Christian scholars before you? All the Christian scholars, as they live and breathe?

O, hear how the robes rustle! 

“They shall receive the more condemnation. ” 

At the same place, Luke has copied the same speech verbatim, and from one keyword, he has formed his parable of the first seat at the banquet (Luke 14:7). But Matthew has placed such a long speech against the scribes and Pharisees here, and this speech grows so much out of all proportion in its excessive length and out of any context, that we can conveniently consider it in a separate paragraph.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 3

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§ 72.

The little ones.

Mark 9, 33-50. 10, 13 – 16.

The close connection between the account of the disciples’ dispute over rank and Jesus’ statements about His Messiahship and destiny, as demonstrated above, entitles us to examine this account in this section. Inwardly, it is connected with the other account of the blessing of the children, and our task will now be to determine the relationship between the two accounts, and especially to reconstruct the original account for the former, since even in the writing of Mark we are confronted with many disturbing elements and the precision of the presentation is nullified.

It seems, in any case, that the substance which both narratives deal with did not easily lend itself to a firm and clear representation. It is too soft and, due to its softness, difficult to digest; it is very vague and contains a thousand contradictions in its gelatinous state; it is not only unmanly but also inhumane. We will be brief, as our above investigations have already resolved all these narratives. We simply note: sentimental contemplation of childhood, once it becomes serious, is an attack on the dignity of reason and its education and goods. The child is precisely characterized by raw desire, self-will, and selfishness in their most disgusting form. Who among us would want to become a child again and discard everything he has acquired in terms of education in the company of men? And were not the disciples true children, considering everything that the Gospels have reported to us about them so far? Did they not just now commit a true childish prank when, after their Master’s remarks about His suffering, they knew nothing better to do than to argue about precedence? Instead of presenting the children as a model, Mark should rather have said: become reasonable and men for once! Until now you have only been little children. Children, become men!

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1 The blessing of the children.

We will first consider the account of the blessing of the children, partly because it is the clearer, more solid one – but only relatively, for in itself it is also contradictory and impossible – and partly because we must already know it, in order to be able to decide on some interpolations which confuse the first account.

One brings – we do not know how it comes to pass, since the people have not yet heard that the Lord is such a great friend of children, nor can we understand it any better, since the Lord travels through regions where he had not previously appeared – children to him, so that they may touch Jesus, that is, as we will see later, but which Luke has left out at the end (Chapter 18, 15-17), and which Matthew has only hinted at briefly, especially in relation to the detailed introduction – he simply says (Chapter 19, 15): he laid his hands on them – so that he would put his hands on them and bless them. The disciples prevented the people who brought them: why? would only be understandable if they themselves had already become children, whose main passion is the most foolish envy. When Jesus saw it, he became angry and said to them: Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them, for such – τωνγαρ τοιουτων – is the kingdom of God. Such! That is, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, which they receive – as Luke writes in accordance with Mark’s command; Matthew has very wrongly left out this more specific designation – as a child.

The poor children! We mean the real children: what might they have done in their embarrassment while Jesus was teaching the great children, the disciples?

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How embarrassed they must have stood there! Even more, that Jesus hugged and blessed them afterwards can hardly compensate for the fact that they must serve purely and solely as a means for Jesus to teach the great, adult children. Jesus says not a word about them, and they must only serve as a metaphor for the great children. Calvin indeed says that the expression “such” refers to both the little ones and those like them*; de Wette goes even further: because “it is necessary in the action of Jesus that he must speak about the children themselves, the expression ‘such’ refers back to the previous subject, the children”**). Indeed, it refers back to them, but – how long should one waste time on such children’s lessons? – in the way that they are only used as a substrate for a metaphorical expression. The children are and remain mere means, brought there only so that the Lord can use the metaphorical expression “little children”; that is, only the pragmatism of Mark brought them there, so that the command of humiliation and self-denial, which recurs so often in this section (Chapter 8, 31; – 10, 45) and is the main theme, can be expressed once in the form that bringing children gives the Lord the opportunity to impress upon his followers that one can only receive the kingdom of heaven as a child. The whole thing is extremely frosty, contrived, and without substance; it is everything that can be the opposite of living, healthy, and rational reality.

*) τοιουτων: hac voce tam parvulos, quam eorum similes comprehendit.

**) 1, 1, 160. de Wette thereby commits the other violent trick of referring to 2 Cor. 12, 2. 3. 5. The poor language has indeed suffered much when theology still ruled. Anyone who no longer feels like sacrificing the law of language to the most miserable of all passions, to theological passion, will see at first glance that Paul (v. 5) wants to avoid referring directly to himself and, as far as possible in this case, to reject himself by the expression τοιουτος.

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Before we hear how Jesus commands self-abasement on the occasion of the disciples’ rank dispute, we note that later, when the disciples became displeased with the pretensions of the two Zebedees, he again demands self-abasement. Here, because the development of the theme is concluded, the speech is not only more detailed than before – the opposition to the worldly great ones and princes who seek dominion is carefully elaborated and then commanded: whoever wants to be great among you, be a servant; whoever wants to be first, be the servant of all – but it is now also stated that self-denial is the first duty of the followers of the suffering Messiah: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life in payment for many. “(Mark 10, 41 – 45. Matth. 20, 24 – 28.)

 

2. The Ranking Dispute Among the Disciples.

If it is clear that all of those incidents are literary creations, so that the Lord has an opportunity to express how the followers of the suffering Messiah should behave, and if it is equally clear that the contrast aimed at with these incidents cannot be more obvious and crude, it may still be worthwhile to point out how the crudeness of Matthew’s layout is further elaborated. Mark had wisely refrained from allowing the disciples to openly raise the question of who was the greatest, and although Luke blurred the finer nuances of the original account and only reported, “There arose a dispute among them as to who was the greatest, and when Jesus – in a wondrous way – saw the strife of their hearts, he took a child” (Chapter 9, 46-47), he still retained this reluctance. But Matthew not only allows the disciples to openly and shamelessly raise that question before the Lord, not only does he allow them to speak as if it were a foregone conclusion that there was a supreme rank in the kingdom of heaven – thus incorporating the premise of the request of the sons of Zebedee with a modification in his account – but he also allows the disciples to ask as if they had already received the promise that one of them would have the preeminence in the kingdom of heaven. “Who is (αρα) the greatest then,” they ask, “in the kingdom of heaven” (Chapter 18, 1) – a very inappropriate reference to an earlier concession in any case. In the original Gospel, Jesus never gave the disciples any reason to fall into such childishness. On the contrary! Their question is supposed to provide a contrast to the preceding conversation about suffering, death, and the cross. Or, as Chrysostom suggests, the question may refer to Jesus’ recent grant of preeminence to Peter over all the others, in which case the matter was already settled and decided. Only one thing is certain: Matthew had nothing specific in mind with that transition formula, and the disciples’ question should have been absent from a Gospel that teaches about Peter being given the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

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3. The exception of a little one.

After the childish question of the disciples, Jesus takes a child – we would like to know where it immediately came from, since according to the original account the discussion took place in the house where Jesus and the disciples had stopped after their journey; we would also like to see the embarrassed face of the poor child in the midst of the disciples, whom it was supposed to serve as an example – and after he has placed it in the midst of the disciples – a piece of cake would have been more welcome to the child – he says (Matthew 18, 2-5): Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this (!) child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes such a child in my name welcomes me.

First of all, in the first half of this saying, the two different ways in which the same thought is twisted and turned and sharpened contradict each other. At the beginning (v. 3) it says, “Whoever does not become like the children cannot enter the kingdom of heaven – that is, the kingdom of heaven in general. “Then it says (v. 4): He who is humbled like this child is the greater in the kingdom of heaven,” i.e. only now does the discourse return to the occasion and the first saying does not belong here; it belongs to the narrative of the blessing of the children, where Matthew omits it. But the second half of the saying also contradicts the first. When Jesus, in v. 5, continues without further ado, in the same breath, as if he were speaking in the best context, “and whoever receives such a child in my name receives me,” we cannot see any connection here, since the child is just now regarded as an object of imitation, now as an object of benevolent care, that is, according to very different considerations, which must be kept quite separate. The contradiction seems more tolerable when, in Luke’s account, the value of the one who receives the child in Jesus’ name is mentioned first, and only then is added: “Whoever is the least among you all is the greatest” (Luke 9, 48). Here, at least, the latter reflection does not separate the statement about receiving a child from that symbolic act of Jesus placing a child before them, as it does in Matthew’s account. The contradiction seems least problematic when, as we read in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus first sits down, calls the disciples over to him, and tells them: “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9, 35), and only then takes a child, places it in the midst of the disciples, and speaks about the merit of the one who receives such a child. But it is precisely here that the contradiction has emerged most sharply. Luke and Matthew at least say that Jesus, before he begins to speak, performs the symbolic action with the child. This is quite in order, but less appropriate if Jesus should sit down beforehand and directly pronounce the teaching which he first wants to give through the symbol. *). Correct! We do not dare to remark that Mark himself, because all these passages deal with the same subject, has already prefixed the sentence which Jesus later utters on the occasion of the absurd demand of the Zebedees, the sentence (C. 10, 43), whoever wants to be great must be the servant, whoever the first, the last. We immediately take back this remark, since it is contradicted by the simplicity of Mark. Luke went first, because he later omitted the story of the Zebedees, Matthew followed him blindly, increased the contradiction and only a later hand inserted this saying (C. 9, 35) and the disturbing introduction to it into the writing of Mark.

*) Wilke, p. 220. 221.

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Mark has directed all the power of his presentation to the one point he has set his sights on. He does not only say what Matthew alone has copied: “whoever receives one of these children receives me”, but has the Lord add: And he that receiveth me receiveth not me, but him that sent me. “This or a similar advice must follow, as is also said in the following saying, omitted here by Matthew, but so beautifully given above (C. 10, 42), of him who gives a disciple even a drink of water (Mark 9, 41.): “Truly, I say to you, do not lose your reward. “A prayer of this kind is also required because of the following description of the terrible punishment that would befall the one who offended one of the little ones who believed in Jesus (Mark 9, 42. Matth. 18, 6). Matthew has omitted this increase, because his work was already full enough for him through the preceding insertions v. 3. 4.

The saying about taking up children, which Paul understands with humorous seriousness as compassion for orphaned children *), can only be understood correctly when we see in it one of those Christian sayings that want to be understood seriously – like the saying about plucking out the eye – but whose meaning mocks itself and lifts itself up in a more general idea. The child who is taken in the name of Jesus – that is, because, as the disciples later say (Mark 9, 41), it belongs to Christ – is not intended to represent the lesser members of the community in a rational way from the outset – otherwise, why would so much seriousness be wasted on the placement of an actual child and the reference to it? – but neither is the statement meant to stop at the mere idea of a child or the absurd notion of a believing child. Instead, the statement gets lost in that unclear darkness of prosaic seriousness and its complete negation, in that darkness which Christian language loves and has created in this grandiose indeterminacy.

*) Ereget. Handb. II, 525.

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The general meaning of the saying – this is certain – is that he too can be great, indeed do everything that makes him worthy of the kingdom of heaven, who does even the smallest thing, or only has the opportunity to do it, if he does it only in the name of Jesus. It cannot be denied that the bringing of a child into the discussion is very formal, very cold, and very forced. The whole meaning of the statement is even spoiled when we have to imagine how embarrassed the child must have felt being used as a tool to teach those adult children.

We have said that the saying about the merit of the smallest kindness shown to the disciples (C. 9, 41) immediately follows the saying about the reception of such children in the writing of Mark: we agree with Wilke’s apt remark that the intervening passage (v. 38 – 40) is inserted by a later hand from the writing of Luke (9, 49 – 50). Because Jesus says: whoever receives one of these children “in my name”, it occurs to John to “take occasion” and to “reply”: Master, we have seen one who casts out demons “in your name” and does not follow us. We have therefore resisted him. But Jesus answered, “Do not hinder him, for he who is not against us is for us.” A man who tightens the threads of the narrative as tightly as Mark would have written the three sentences, “Whoever receives one such child (v. 37), whoever gives you a cup of water (v. 41), whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin (v. 42),” one after the other, and would have been unable to insert such an inappropriate episode here. Only Luke, who knows nothing greater about the seventy than that even the demons were subject to them, was able to insert this episode here for the sake of the mere words “in Jesus’ name.” If, just as Moses’ spirit came upon the seventy of the Old Testament, so Jesus’ spirit also came upon the seventy of the New Testament, and they drove out demons in their master’s name, then the parallel continues. “There, in the Old Testament, a young man complains that two others who stayed behind in the camp and did not go out to the tent with him also prophesied, and he asks Moses to forbid them. But Moses answers, ‘Would that all prophesied!’ (Numbers 11:26-29). That is the story from which we have the counterpart in Luke 9:49-50. Luke 11:23 also places value on exorcising demons and presents it as a matter of interest. The statement of Jesus that is included here, ‘He who is not with me is against me,’ has a similarity to the one expressed here in verse 50: ‘He who is not against us is for us.’ So this passage belongs only to Luke. Luke does not have the verses from Mark 9:41 onwards. He moves on to something else with the interpolated episode, which is linked to the following story of the zeal that John showed against the inhospitable Samaritans and for his Lord and Master (Luke 9:51-56) by the order of things.” *).

*) Wilke p. 635. 636.

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Mark did not yet know that episode. Matthew, who also did not yet read it in the Scripture of the primitive evangelist, passes immediately after the saying of the reception of such a child to the other of the trouble which is given to one of the little ones that believe; Luke could only include this statement later, and he not only included it very late, but also very inappropriately, by giving it the blue sky as a backdrop. (Luk. 17, 1 – 2.)

 

4. The trouble.

After Jesus warns not to cause offense to any of the little ones who believe in him, saying that the punishment for such a transgression would be severe, Matthew 18:7 follows with the statement: “Woe to the world for the offenses, for it is necessary that offenses come, but woe to the man by whom the offense comes.” We need not even remind ourselves that the following verses (v. 8-9) about the limb that should be cut off and thrown away if it causes offense, and the punishment for those who cause offense (v. 6) are necessarily related – the severity of the punishment is the connecting link between both statements, and the progression from the first to the second is based on the reflection that if causing offense to others deserves severe punishment, then we must also be mercilessly strict against the offenses that our own limbs cause. Even without this reflection on the following verses, it is clear that the idea of the necessity of offense (v. 7) is very awkwardly inserted here. This idea can be thought of at any time, but not where the sole purpose of the speech is to warn against any kind of offense. Marcus has developed this warning (9:42-50) from the original Gospel, while Luke has only taken the opportunity to elaborate on the necessity of offense and the misery of the one who causes offense (Luke 17:1-2), wisely omitting the verses from the original Gospel. Matthew has combined the work of his two predecessors.

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5. The high value of the little ones and the lost. 

Matth. 18, 10 – 14.

If, as happens especially in the writing of Mark, but also in Matthew, there is such a detailed discussion of the limbs that give rise to offense, the little ones are forgotten. This is also why they have long been forgotten, because in the saying about offense, when it is said that one should not offend any of these little ones who believe in Jesus, the original substrate of the image is pushed aside. For are children really the ones who can be said to believe in Jesus? It is therefore extremely bewildering and inappropriate when Matthew now speaks of real children again, and the way he speaks of them makes the confusion even more colossal. “Take heed,” Jesus must remark in verse 10-11, “not to despise one of these little ones, for I tell you, their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. For the Son of Man came to save the lost.” This is followed by the parable of the lost sheep and, finally, the remark: “So it is also the will of your Father in heaven that not one of these little ones should be lost.

What confusion! It is clear from the mention of the angels that children are meant: they are the guardian angels who watch over the weakness and helplessness of the children! But can the children be called “the lost”? Every word about it would be lost and wasted with diligence and courage. Matthew copied the parable of the lost sheep from Luke and did not copy the following parable of the lost penny and son (Luk. 15, 1 – 32) at the same time, because otherwise it would have been impossible for him to cast an inappropriate retrospective glance at the little ones.

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Matthew has even dulled the sharpness of the irony that is inherent in that glorious story of the lost sheep: of course! for first of all he had to shorten the parable very much in order to get back to his little ones, and the shortening had at the same time to be a weakening, because in order to enforce his game with the little ones he could not let the essence of the enormous contrast that is originally contained in that parable fully emerge. When he has found the lost sheep,” he assures Jesus, “he will rejoice over it more than over the nine and ninety who have not gone astray. I tell you,” says Luke, “there will be more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over nine and ninety righteous people who have no need of repentance. Thus writes the evangelist who first worked out these parables of the lost according to the pattern of that original antithesis which he saw before him in the writing of Mark. But we must add that Mark alone worked out the contrast purely, when he contrasted the healthy and the sick, the righteous and the sinners; in the parables of the lost, this ironic contrast only appears at the end, while at the beginning the fallen and the not-fallen confront each other in a completely different way. Luke was therefore not happy when he used the Old Testament *): “I will seek out what is lost” with the antithesis that Mark has worked out. That he gave expression to the same irony in the story of Zacchaeus – but not with any particular luck – has already been mentioned above, and the way in which he weaves it into the story of the anointing of Jesus will be seen later.

*) Ezech. 34, 16 τὸ ἀπολωλὸς ζητήσω καὶ τὸ πλανώμενον ἐπιστρέψω

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We have already had occasion to notice how the old Adam of modern theology does not want to know anything about the sharpness of this Christian irony. He must also grumble against the parable of the prodigal. The thought that the joy over one penitent sinner is greater than over 99 righteous ones, says, for example, de Wette *), is (!) conceived in human terms: man rejoices for the moment (!) more over what he has regained than over what he already possesses. “In religion, on the contrary, this joy is eternal! The “excess weight” of this joy, says de Wette **), cannot be attributed to God. And yet it is said in Luke 15, 7: “in heaven” there will be a preponderance of joy. Yes, replies de Wette, this is said “naturally only in figurative speech”. What is natural, however, is that the natural man does not want to know or acknowledge anything about heavenly things, and what is unnatural is that he wants to force his aversion to heavenly things on heaven itself!

Since we have once engaged with the theologians and the parable of the lost sheep calls upon us to do so, let us say with what satisfaction we hear it when Neander defines the difference between the fable and the parable to the effect that in the latter “the animals are portrayed in such a way as the law of nature entails” ***). Correct! The fable makes the animals act intelligently, freely and rationally, because it is the mockery of the servant against despotism and his witty self-liberation from the degradation to which a brutal despotism has condemned him. The fable can almost be called poetry, while the parable is the serious prose of religious necessity, lets the animal be an animal and ascribes understanding and will, power and wisdom only to the lord and master, the shepherd.

*) l, 2, 77.

**) 1, 1, 154.

***) L. J. Ch. p. 174.

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6. Reconciliation.

Matth. 18, 15 – 35.

Between the preceding and the following exhortation to reconciliation, the evangelist seemed to see an internal connection in the idea that humans should be reconciliatory towards their fellow brethren who have wronged them, just as God shows care towards the lost. However, firstly, the evangelist should have indicated this connection in a transitional sentence, at least. Secondly, we must note that such an indication would have been surprisingly difficult for him, since there is no connection at all. Is the tendency of that parable of the lost to depict God as reconciliatory, or is it rather ironic towards the righteous, towards the healthy? Is not the ironic dialectic between the concept of the righteous and sinners its only content? So, what is the prosaic exhortation to forgive one’s neighbor doing here?

And even if the best connection were inherently present, it would be completely undermined by the way in which Matthew elaborates on the commandment of reconciliation. Is it appropriate when, in a context where reconciliation should be commanded, the painful judicial procedure is commanded, according to which one should first confront the brother who has wronged us alone, then, if it was unsuccessful, bring two others to confront him, then, if that too is fruitless, report him to the church, and finally, if he does not listen to the church, regard him as a heathen and a tax collector?

In the following, the author continues to write in what he believes to be the best context when he says (v. 18): “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and so on.” And when it goes on to say (v. 19-20): “if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” However, these statements are neither related to each other nor to the preceding one. Even if we were to understand v. 18 in terms of the power of excommunication, it was only previously mentioned (v. 17) that the disobedient person excludes himself from the church, or if v. 17 is supposed to present the church as an absolute judge, it is as a church, as a community, while the subjects to whom the power of binding and loosing is transferred in v. 18 are the disciples. And in v. 19-20, there is not even a mention of the function of judgment, but only of the power of community in the matter of prayer.

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It would therefore be ridiculous to try to find a semblance of coherence when v. 21 returns to the subject, namely Peter asks: Lord, how often may my brother offend against me and should I forgive him? Perhaps seven times? Before we hear how the Lord answers: No, not seven times, but seven and seventy times. and before we hear the following parable of that king who punished his servant, whom he had forgiven a great debt, because he would not forgive even a lesser debt to his fellow servant – so before we hear all this, we must cut through this confused tangle – it deserves no more – and ask, whether Peter, if there is to be any talk of reconciliation, was allowed from the outset and without any cause to offend his brother so badly and shamefully that he asked with the fastidious earnestness of the quisque praesumitur malus whether his brother was allowed to sin against him seven times before he had the right to intervene with the ray of banishment?

If only Matthew had been content to copy Luke literally: “Take heed: if thy brother offend against thee, warn him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he offend thee seven times in a day, and return unto thee seven times in a day, saying, I am sorry; forgive him” (Luke 17:3, 4). Behold! Thus speaks not only a man, but also a man who first writes down such reflections. In his poor compiling, jumbled manner, Matthew did not even realize that he writes like an inhumane person.

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“Be careful: if your brother sins against you, warn him, and if he repents, forgive him!” That is just and humane! Matthew took this as an opportunity to describe the hierarchical chain of command all the way to the point where the brother is thrown out of the church! (— Or does Fritzsche want us to explicitly note that the church, the ekklesia, is the Christian church, not the “synagogue of Satan”, not the Jewish community, but the church in which the hierarchs bind and loose and in which, on the other hand — because here is where the contradictions reside — even two or three, when gathered in the name of Jesus, can be sure that the Lord is among them? Is time and paper worth nothing? — Precisely because both are worth a lot, we will not dwell further on how strange it is that Matthew wants the brother to be punished in the presence of two people in the second stage of the chain of command, because on the testimony of two or three witnesses ——– no more!). Matthew thought of the Old Testament provision on the number of witnesses in the wrong place; we also will not further point out how Matthew, only for a very superficial resemblance, now gives the power he gave to Peter above to the disciples in general and then adds a word about the power and significance of the church community: the whole thing is very poorly composed.

“And if your brother sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him!” It is trivial; this is how someone writes who first comes up with a saying of this kind and still knows what he is aiming at. Matthew focuses on the seven times, which in Luke is only an intensification of the assumed possibility — (“: and if he sins seven times”) — in a one-sided way, takes it awkwardly prosaic, lets Peter speak very clumsily as if he were sure that his brother could sin against him seven times a day – Matthew left out this necessary specification – and now the response must surpass the crude assumption by saying that he must show forbearance “until the” seventy-seventh offense.

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Luke, too, has a parable which recommends the necessity of conciliation, and he, too, has placed it in an external context with the parables of the prodigal – it is the parable of the unjust steward. At the end of this parable it says: Make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. Weisse has taken the last step towards resolving the difficulty when he declares the words “with the unrighteous mammon” to be those “which Jesus did not speak” – we must declare them to be those which do not belong to the parable (Luke 16:1-9), and even dare to call them such, which were not inserted into the text by Luke, but only by a later hand from v. 11. Weisse *) first correctly explained the meaning of the parable: just as that steward earned his master’s favour by boldly paying his debtors their bills, so we too should “regard ourselves as God’s appointed stewards of his great household and behave in exactly the same way, and no differently, towards our master’s debtors.”

*) II. 162. 163.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 3

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§ 71.

The power of faith.

Mark 9, 14 – 29.

According to the reports of Matthew and Luke, when Jesus exclaimed “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you and bear with you?” in response to the father’s complaint that the disciples were unable to heal his son, it seems certain that this accusation was directed towards the disciples because they had shown themselves to be weak and inept in the absence of their master. However, in the account of Mark, the matter is not so certain. While some significant manuscripts read “Jesus said to them”, others omit any further specification and thus attempt to cast doubt on the reading “Jesus said to him” (the father of the boy). This decision is inconclusive, as the latter reading may be difficult, and the view of Matthew and Luke may have been imposed by later readings of the original gospel. But when we see how Jesus accuses the father of the sick boy of lacking faith in the following passage, when he makes a bitter accusation that everything is possible for the believer, and the man tearfully declares “I believe, Lord; help my unbelief!” it seems certain that this accusation is directed towards the father of the boy and is based on the assumption that – how shall we express this enormous and most fearful transcendence? – that a person in faith can move mountains and cast them into the sea, so the father could have healed his son from the outset.

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Calvin notes that Jesus usually treats people kindly, even when they make a somewhat inconvenient request, but this time the man, who was pained by his son’s illness, asked for help modestly and humbly. But why should an evangelist not be harsh, cruelly transcendent and exuberant at times, especially when this harsh exuberance is rooted in the nature of faith?

In short, it is highly probable that the Fourth understood this passage of the Gospel correctly when he borrowed from it (C. 4, 48) the phrase that the father of a sick son was harshly approached by Jesus, whom he asked for help.

Only afterwards, when the company had returned home, does Mark allow the disciples to come forward so that they too can learn what they had been lacking. They ask Jesus why they were unable to drive out the demon, and now they learn – as the congregation later understood the matter and believed they had to fight against the devil – that this kind can only be driven out by prayer and fasting. Luke left out this section because he wanted to report shortly afterwards how the Seventy simply drove out the evil spirits in the name of Jesus. Matthew, however, keeps the question of the disciples, only allowing it to be raised off the battlefield, and enriches Jesus’ answer with a saying that was delivered after the withering of the fig tree. Luke had taken this saying about faith that moves mountains out of its context, particularly by introducing it with the clumsy request of the disciples: “Lord, give us more faith” like a lightning bolt falling from a blue sky, and, to reveal to us where he got this saying from, turning the mountain into a mulberry-fig tree. Matthew takes the saying out of its isolated position in Luke, turns the tree back into its original form, the mountain, but does not feel prevented from putting the same saying into Jesus’ mouth again when he finds it in Mark’s scripture.

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Of course, it is a contradiction when the Lord, in one breath, demands faith and fasting and prayer as the basic condition for one and the same work, but the same contradiction is already contained in the original report, when the Lord, before the conversation with the disciples, recommended faith to the father of the sick man, as if he could have cured the sickness of his son through it. Matthew only drew this contradiction closer together and very rightly seized upon it when he lifted that isolated saying out of Luke’s writing, for Luke had taken the disciples’ request: give us faith! (C. 17, 6) to the speech of that man: Lord, I believe, help my unbelief! Thus, in Matthew’s writing, all the elements that belong together have been reunited.

It has been wondered why the Fourth Gospel says nothing about demons that Jesus had cast out, nothing about this struggle with the kingdom of the devil. Some critics thought that he did not want to know about these associates of the devil because of his supposedly greater education, while others thought that he had simply not known about the exorcisms. We can now answer: he had read the Gospel of Mark and therefore said nothing about that struggle with the kingdom of Satan, because he allowed the Lord to fight against Satan and his evil in a different, more comprehensive, or rather more abstract way, perhaps also because he felt the role that demons played in the original gospel. In his writing, which has entirely different messengers of the Messiah and in which the Lord preaches about himself from the beginning, demons were superfluous as these corner preachers and betrayers of the secret. Under these circumstances, it is also understandable that the accusation that Jesus had the devil, if the Fourth Gospel still made it (Ch. 7, 20; 8, 48), had to be rather incorrectly or very weakly made. We have demonstrated in the criticism of the Fourth Gospel what this reversal and weakening consists of.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 3

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61

§ 70.

The Second Coming of Elijah.

Mark 9, 11 – 13.

The omission of the conversation between Jesus and the disciples about Elijah was filled by Luke in a strange way, that he let the Lord leave the mountain the following day (Luke 9, 37). Matthew, who would have done best if he had at least omitted that dialogue, also overreaches himself somewhat when, on the contrary, he attempts to connect it with the transfiguration. “What, then, do the scholars of Christ say,” ask the disciples, as they came down from the mountain with their Master, “that Elijah must come first?” The question of the disciples presupposes the doubt of the disciples, whether Elijah must yet come, nay, it presupposes the certainty that he need not come at all, and it is therefore only intended to form an objection against the assertion of the scribes. If we now, since neither this doubt nor this certainty is founded in the foregoing, should nevertheless perhaps venture the utmost and explain the question of the disciples thus: “Elijah has just spoken with you, why then should we still expect him, or why do the scribes say that he must appear first, that is, before you? – But even this is of no avail, for the fact that Elijah appears once to the Lord and converses with him cannot be called the coming of which Malachi spoke.

Like the transition which Matthew made, the question itself, which we find in Mark, is made late. Matthew formed that inappropriate transitional formula, Mark created the question and answer and placed both here, not only because Elijah had just appeared and been mentioned, but because now that the Messiahship of Jesus had been explicitly discussed and acknowledged in all its attributes, it was time that the significance of the forerunner was also acknowledged and that he was explicitly called his forerunner by the Lord. Jesus’ response is the expression of later religious reflection on the history, and the question of the disciples is also poorly formulated in the scripture of Mark, as it presupposes in an exaggerated way the thought that it would be impossible to still need another Elijah in the disciples’ minds.

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Jesus’ response *), that Elijah has already come and that he has suffered as it is written about the Son of Man, seems to belong completely to Mark, i.e. the original gospel writer seems to have already developed this comparison between the fate that the Messiah must suffer and that which the baptizer Elijah suffered, since Matthew (17:12) would not have easily come up with it at the corresponding location, and Luke in the reworking of this conversation about the Elijah-baptizer (Luke 7:33-34) also reveals that in the original account there was a statement that the people had rejected the baptizer and the Messiah in the same way.

*) And that as Fritzsche and Wilke rightly transpose the text: Mark 9, 13. 12, ελιας μεν . . . . αλλα λεγω υμιν, οτι και ηλιας εληλυθεν και εποιησαν αυτω οσα ηθελησαν, καθως γεγραπται επι τον υιον του ανθρωπου ινα πολλλα παθη και εξουδενωθη.

The fourth makes the Baptist himself declare that the saying of the prophet Isaiah was fulfilled in him by the preacher in the wilderness, but gives him occasion to declare that he was not Ellas. Both are equally inappropriate! He reads in the Scriptures of Luke that the Baptist had once had occasion to declare that he was not the Messiah, he makes this occasion an oskficial one, and as he now in a very exaggerated manner sets it up that the Baptist should first answer all the questions of the inquirers until he declares himself to be that preacher in the wilderness, so he presents the matter clumsily enough in such a way that mair also asked the Baptist whether he was the Ellas and the latter answered the question in the negative. The “who do you think that I am? I am not” of Luke (Acts 13, 25, Luk 3, 15) has been blown out of proportion by the Fourth.

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Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics
by Bruno Bauer

Volume 3

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21

§ 68.

The prophecies of Jesus of his Passion.

Mark 8, 31	Luk. 9, 21. 22	Matth. 16, 21
Mark 9, 31. 32	Luk. 9, 43-45	Matth. 17, 22
Mark 10, 33. 34	Luk. 18, 31-34	Matth. 20, 17
Matth. 26, 2

Three times all three synoptics – to put it more vaguely with regard to Luke – let the Lord proclaim His suffering, His death and His resurrection in advance before His entry into Jerusalem; but in the way in which they increase the certainty of these prophecies and insert them into the whole of their writings, they differ from each other.

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1. The increase of certainty.

After Peter’s confession, as reported in Mark 8:31, Jesus opened up to the disciples that “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.” After the Transfiguration, as they traveled incognito through Galilee – because the Lord did not want to attract attention, the manner of his appearance was already somewhat subdued and he wanted to enter the path of death without delay – he told the disciples the same thing, only more generally stating that “the Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men,” etc. Finally, as they were already on the way to Jerusalem (Mark 10:32-34), the prophecy becomes more specific or rather so specific that it is almost nothing but the program of the play whose performance is imminent. “See,” Jesus said to the twelve, “we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes. They will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise again.”

Whatever one may think about these prophecies and Jesus’ exact knowledge of the brutalities he would experience in the last hours, it is enough to say that in the Gospel of Mark, the increasing specificity of the prophecies is quite appropriate.

Luke has not changed much. The first prophecy he leaves unchanged, the second he abbreviates; Jesus only says: the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men, for Jesus has to waste too many words beforehand to call the disciples to attention – “Receive these words in your ears! “and the evangelist has to remark far too much on the disciples’ inability to hear these words to leave room for writing out Mark in full. The third prophecy he leaves (C. 18, 31 – 33) also essentially unchanged, except that he thought he had to change the active construction to the passive, and at most he was entitled to do so, since he believed he had to change the words “the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death” in Mark’s Gospel to “everything that is written about the Son of Man in the prophets.”

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Here, again, Matthew reveals to us the abstract nature of the later perspective, which makes the anachronisms that are already inherent in the original religious view even greater, and wants to see everything as already completed from the beginning, even barbarically blurring the small nuances of the original religious reflection. Immediately after Peter’s confession, in his abstract and anticipatory manner, Matthew has the Lord say that “he must now go to Jerusalem” and suffer much, etc. – followed by the prophecy that is the first in Mark’s Gospel. Matthew includes the second prophecy unchanged, at least without burdening it with an addition, but in the third, in which the brutalities of Jesus’ opponents are listed, he cannot resist removing one, the spitting, – so much was he dependent on the number of words! – and instead has the Lord say that he will be crucified (Matthew 20:19).

But he pushed the definiteness even further. Mark tells us how two days before Easter the priests had decided on the death of Jesus, but had postponed the execution of their decision until after the feast; He also tells us how the betrayal of Judas gave the priests the opportunity to carry out their plan earlier, and finally, when he lets Jesus speak of his death and of the betrayer during the meal of the Passover evening, he knows that we will believe that Jesus was not surprised by the passion events against his knowledge, just as he also shows us how Jesus voluntarily went to meet it when he gave himself up in the garden of Gethsemane, when he knew that the betrayer would find him.

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Where the facts speak so loudly and clearly, a prophecy about what is imminent would have been very unnecessary and even out of place, especially since Jesus had already concluded his account of the last things in the previous discourse and uttered prophecies that far surpass the fate that now awaits him. Only before Jesus enters the scene of his suffering were prophecies in their place. Nevertheless, Matthew could not resist having the Lord tell the disciples at the end of that discourse on the last things and at the beginning of the Passion narrative (Matthew 26:1-2): “You know that in two days’ time it will be Passover, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.”

By considering the position of these three prophecies, we will reveal their origin and the origin of their context in one fell swoop, and we will also have the opportunity to answer some of the most important questions of criticism – although these pitiful questions cannot really be called important, because their solution reveals their whole misery.

 

2. The position of the three prophecies in the writing of Mark.

Each time these three prophecies in the writing of Mark have an inner relation to the preceding one, each time they are followed by an event which contrasts with them, which gives Jesus cause for a rebuke, whereupon Jesus again has cause to instruct his own in a more general form.

 

1. a) The first prophecy.

Peter acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, but now the Lord shows the disciples the dark side of the messianic image by saying that he must suffer. After highlighting the internal contrast of the messianic ideal in this way, the other contrast is presented, which is formed by the selfishness of the world. Peter represents this selfishness, and the Lord rebukes him, calling him Satan, because he is focused on the human aspect rather than the divine. Jesus then teaches the crowd and his disciples about the duty of self-denial in a more general way.

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Whoever wants to follow him must deny himself and take up his cross. For whoever wants to keep his soul will lose it; but whoever loses his soul for my sake and – what the two others leave out – for the sake of the Gospel, will keep it. What good would it do a man if he gained the whole world and was deprived of his soul? (i.e. if his life were taken from him, he would not be able to enjoy his gain. Similarly, spiritual life is a prerequisite, without which nothing has worth or even existence for humans.) Luke has taken the nerve out of the saying when he abandons the expression in which the soul is apparently distinguished from the ego and held up to it as valuable, and instead has put the sensible expression: “when one loses oneself and is deprived of oneself. “Or what can man give so that he may redeem his soul? For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of none of my words – therefore the mention of the Gospel is original and necessary – among this adulterous generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Matthew has overlooked the fact that the passage is designed to emphasise the importance of the confession and writes in his tendency to move from the abstract to the general: “the Son of Man will come . . . . . . and then he will repay each one according to his deeds”). And Jesus said to them: “Truly I say to you, there are some among those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God – (Matth, correctly explaining your context, writes: the Son of Man in his! Kingdom) – come in power.

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Note not only the position and arrangement of the contrasting elements, but also their extension and spread. The historical account is compact, intense, and the contrasts are not kept far apart, but all are equally elaborated. The concluding speech (Mark 8:34-38, 9:1) – as if the sermon on the preceding theme or the moral of the story – is not excessively prolonged.

 

1. b) The second prophecy.

The second prophecy forms the inner contrast or complement to the transfiguration, and the outer contrast to the image of the suffering Messiah must be the selfish dispute of the disciples as to which of them is the greater (C. 9, 30-34). Jesus rebukes these children, who always seem to want to remain children, and – if these sentences belong to the Mark – is given the opportunity by a remark of John to further consider the duties of his own.

 

1. c) The third prophecy.

Jesus had in vain exhorted a rich man to renounce his possessions, to follow Him and to take up the cross (C. 10, 21. 22). On the other hand, the Messiah declares that he is ready to face the suffering that awaits him, but at the same time he has to reject the senseless claims of two attackers who fight for the next places on his side. No sooner had he done so than the other disciples, grumbling at the insolence of the two, gave him the opportunity to speak again of the duty of self-denial which each of his followers must practise. —-

Everywhere, then, the same structure, the same relationship of the group, the same contrasts, yes, the same thoughts and even the same turns of phrase, transitions, constructions and words!

How beautiful, the theologian will perhaps say, when he is forced to notice the arrangement of the reports and to see in the first place, how beautiful, how marvellous! We may already say: what poverty and paucity of invention!

27

But, we must add, in Mark we find these two turns of phrase always purely executed, the groupings appropriately arranged, the contrasts in their correct proportion and in their proper tension. We find none of this in Matthew and Luke, because they no longer knew the tendency and inner context of these passages in the Gospel.

 

3. The position of the three prophecies in Luke’s writing.

It has already been noted that Luke made his account less consistent when he left out the dialogue between Peter and Jesus after the first prophecy. It is also not necessary to mention that he gave the two first prophecies a false position by including so much between them and the note that Jesus was really serious about traveling to Jerusalem. He presents the second prophecy (Luke 9:44) in the same context in which he found it in Mark. Although the third prophecy (Luke 18:31) also follows the account of the rich man, Luke does not include the request of the sons of Zebedee – he believed that he could use the details that Mark provides in connection with this third prophecy at another place more effectively, as we will see later.

It is clear that if he twice omitted a necessary part of the original account, he no longer knew its tendency, and if he communicates the second prophecy with its original setting, he only acted as a mere copyist.

Luke gave his reflection a different direction, a direction that directly relates to the intelligence of the disciples, while Mark, in his vivid contrasts, only presents the matter in such a way that the disciples were not yet capable of practicing the self-denial that Jesus demanded of them and which he himself was about to practice to the highest degree.

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After the healing of the possessed man, which follows the transfiguration, Mark gives no concluding formula to instruct us about the impression the miracle made on the people; we have become sufficiently acquainted with his manner to know why: he really wants the following incidents, which form contrasts to the preceding, to follow as such contrasts. Jesus heals the possessed man, he comes home with the disciples, they ask him why they could not cast out the devilish spirit, Jesus explains to them, “and as they set out, they travelled through Galilee, and he would not let himself be known. “For – we now learn why he wanted to travel incognito – he instructed the disciples that “the time of suffering was not far off. Right! Thus the thought of suffering stands in clear contrast to the preceding, also to the transfiguration. No sooner has Jesus arrived in Capernaum than the other contrast develops: Jesus asks the disciples what quarrel they had on the way and now has to chastise them because of their jealousy about precedence.

Luke concludes the account with all that has gone before, when he immediately, after helping the demoniac to health, remarks that everyone was amazed – everyone! that is, also the crowd that was present down at the mountain. Now the tension between the word “suffering” and the word “transfiguration” is not only removed, but when Luke says: When all were amazed at all that Jesus did,” and when we are to think that Jesus, who now wants to speak of his sufferings, is alone with his disciples, we lose all sense of hearing and seeing. Could he not have found another formula to distinguish the disciples from all those who were just now marvelling at the greatness of God? He could not. Enough, after Jesus has spoken of his suffering, it is said: “But they understood not this word, and it was hid from them, lest they should understand it; and they feared to ask him concerning this word. ” (C. 9, 43-45.)

29

Mark did not need this contrast. A foreign hand has bestowed upon him the reflection of Luke and inserted it into his writing: (C. 9, 32) “but they understood not the word, and feared to ask him ” *). Matthew saved the later glossator the trouble by turning the matter into a spiritual one and writing: (17, 23) and they became very sad.

*) Wilke, p. 504.

Luke has become so entrenched in his conception of the contrast that he places the same remark just as broadly and almost literally as after the second also after the third, although it is he who has Jesus refer to the prophecies of the prophets on this occasion. (18, 31-34) If Jesus could remind the disciples of the prophecies, i.e. if he could refer to a dogma as he does here, i.e. if he could refer to a dogma as a Christian preacher can do, then the disciples must have known what he was talking about. Mark incorporated the prophecies of O.T. into the speeches of Jesus himself and therefore, among other things, did not yet think of the crucifixion, as Matthew had the temerity to do. He speaks only of being overawed, scourged, humiliated and spat upon.

We come to Matthew.

 

4. The stater in the fish’s mouth. 

Matth. 17, 21-27.

Peter’s being given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and his being raised to the rock on which the church is to rest securely, both of these things, because they are inserted too superficially into the structure of the original gospel, have already been moved back to the place where they belong.

Before we move on from the rich man’s dispatch to Jesus’ third prophecy of His sufferings, time will also take too long: but here too it will be very easy for us to remove the interpolated parable of the denarii (Matth. 20, 1-16).

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As for the second prophecy, here we have only to remove the intruder who wants to make the progress of the interest resound too annoyingly to the contrast which is unfit for it. We will cut off the excessive extension of the conclusion later in order to restore the correct measure of the original representation. That intruder is the miracle of the stater in the fish’s mouth.

When they were travelling in Galilee, says Matthew, Jesus told the disciples about the future of his sufferings, but the evangelist does not say that Jesus travelled through Galilee with the intention of going straight to Jerusalem, he does not say that Jesus travelled incognito through Galilee and explained to the disciples the striking nature of this journey, pointing to the future of his sufferings. He said nothing of all this, because on the arrival of the company in Capernaum he wanted to give the Lord another opportunity to perform an extraordinary miracle. If the people who demanded the taxes should admonish Peter and his master, Jesus was not allowed to travel incognito. But if Jesus does not travel incognito, if he does not travel through Galilee to continue the way beyond the province, then this prophecy is not motivated: if the disciples’ dispute about precedence does not fall out on that journey on which Jesus spoke of his sufferings, then the two sides of the contrast are torn out of their tension, and if Matthew, after he has performed the miracle with that statue, cannot help himself but say that on that day the disciples approached Jesus with the question as to which of them was the greatest, then the lameness of the disciples’ childishness has become excessive. Yet Mark is still so reserved that he presents the matter as if Jesus had asked the disciples what they had discussed on the way, and since they had kept silent out of shame, by means of his keen insight he saw through their dispositions and knew their quarrel. 9, 47), Jesus saw through the thoughts of their heart; but Matthew, who had to form a new transition after the interpolated episode of the Stater, formed it so badly that he lets the disciples step shamelessly before Herm with their childish question and that he even, when he lets them ask: “Who then is (!) the greatest?” he must betray that this question is connected with something that has gone before. Only he has so clumsily formed this hindsight from the preceding that it now appears as if Jesus had previously given the childish disciples a well-founded reason for their question. We only need to recognise this confusion and bring together what belongs together in order to crush the episode of the stater.

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The question of whether the tax Jesus is being asked to pay is the Roman poll tax or the legal temple tax should not be raised again. When Jesus comes home *) and precedes Peter with the question whether “the kings of the world” levy interest on their children, and when Peter answers: rather on the foreigners, he adds: therefore the sons are free, it is clear that he wants to draw the conclusion from the custom of the “worldly” kings, how the “heavenly” king also treats his children. The Jewish people are like a group of foreigners and adopted servants to the heavenly king, whose children are Jesus and his disciples.

*) Matth. 17, 25 και ότε εισήλθεν εις την οικίαν and  V. 24 ελθοντων δε αυτων εις καπερναουμ, is still the formula of Mark C. 9, 33: και ηλθεν εις καπερναουμ και εν τη οικια γενομενος επηρωτα. Matth. writes προέφθασεν by making the marvellous perspicacity which Jesus there evidences in Mark more glaringly noticeable to the reader for ſhis purpose. Jesus knows what Peter has encountered and immediately speaks about the matter, just as he knows what the disciples have discussed on the way to Mark and seeks to bring them to confession.

Matthew formed this story out of the later and only later possible view, according to which Jesus and his followers were regarded as the true children of God and the Jews as servants, whom Jehovah, if he willed, could also bid farewell to again. The fourth evangelist borrowed this view from Matthew, but confused his treatment of it by developing the definition of servitude even further, without distinguishing this further development from the form in which he found it in the Scriptures of his predecessor.*)

*) Joh. 8, 31-36. Herewith is determined that which we Crit. d. ev. Gesch. d. Joh. p. 328 still left undefined.

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Matthew has placed the miracle in the wrong place here, as it is very unbecoming for someone who has just admitted that he must suffer to find a divine law too burdensome and its observance indecent. It is the same contradiction into which Matthew fell above when he copied Mark’s first prophecy of Jesus’ sufferings, for if the Messiah must suffer and demands unlimited self-denial from his followers, it was very inappropriate to bestow the keys of the kingdom of heaven on Peter and legitimize hierarchical pride in general.

But in any case, even apart from its surroundings, the tendency of that fish anecdote is an unworthy one. It is at least unworthy how the exalted man disputes the obligation to pay interest, denies it for his person and for his own, yet acknowledges it again by paying the interest, but, by bowing, is at the same time endeavouring to secure for himself the recognition of his exaltedness by the amusingly ironic way in which he pays the interest.

 

5. The origin of Jesus’ prophecies of his suffering.

If we have now succeeded in restoring the original report, then his last hour will also have struck.

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Weisse says *) that the “scene between Jesus and Peter” which followed the first prophecy was, as he somewhat forcefully expresses it, “drawn directly from the mouth of this disciple by the reporter” and that it “stands as a powerful argument against any doubt about the factual correctness of such proclamations from Jesus’ mouth.” However, regarding these prophecies, which – we may say immediately, without intending to make the criticism that will lead to this result useless or save us from it – are not based on success, but, together with the gospel accounts of suffering and resurrection, are modeled on the Old Testament ideal, we need only look at them humanely – and criticism must be humane – to be sure that as they stand – and in a form other than as they stand, they do not exist for either the rationalist or the believer – no living person speaks like that. Only a book speaks like that.

*) I, 531

The fact that they occur just three times, and that their definiteness increases appropriately in the original report, proves their authorial origin, an origin which, moreover, Matthew also proves when he makes their definiteness even greater and adds to the three a fourth, an even more definite one.

It would be unnecessary, especially since it is such an easy task in any case, to show the nullity of the tradition hypothesis everywhere, or to trace it back to its nothingness, i.e., to the imagination of scholars. We took over the business this time in order to give Mark his last honour. Gfrörer says that the three prophecies are basically one and the same. (Correctly understood, we admit this. But he takes it incorrectly. In the Christian Church the tradition had been preserved that Jesus, before his arrival in Jerusalem, had foretold the destinies awaiting him there. “So tradition had such a strong memory that it did not allow a weak “hint” to be lost! As if it were not much easier for the faithful to put the strongest and most fluent speeches about the future into the mouth of the Lord! As if the believer as such did not have to be convinced that the Lord foreknew everything exactly as it was to come! – In short, Gfrörer now thinks: “Because of the ambiguity which lay in this determination of the time, the prophecy was indented by means of three different sagas in three special places” *). But we know nothing more of such a framework into which various – we can hardly write the word – legends or – or ghosts again inserted the ghost of a legend or tradition – or what shall we call the absurdity? – interpolated. The three prophecies arose where we read them written, first, all together and in the order in which we see them before us. They came into being with their surroundings, which form the necessary contrast to them. Mark also knows how to write, as a man writes who creates such things, for he remarks, when he wants to report the third prophecy, that Jesus again saw the twelve and spoke to them of his future. “Again!” (παλιν C. 10, 32) after he had already told them twice about the near future.

*) Die heil. Sage, ll, 56. 64.

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Mark first formed everything, everything, the prophecies and the contrasts belonging to them. Calvin has very well noticed the difficulty that now arises from the triple number, at least from the repeated repetition of this prophecy, but he has removed the difficulty very badly when he says, “although the apostles had already been taught before about the end of the Lord, yet they had not made sufficient progress in their understanding, and Jesus now repeats anew what he had already said often. ” But this would be a very unskilful teacher, who is content merely to repeat something anew **) when he knows that his pupils have not grasped what he had told them before. What teacher will chase down the same tirade in such a case? The teacher who really deserves the name will indeed take up the matter “anew,” but he will take it up from a “new” side, and of course precisely from the side which he knows was not yet clear to his pupils. This is how real, human teachers act, but they do not recite the same formula.

**) de iutegro repelit, quod saepius dixerat.

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Mark formed these prophecies and had the Lord pronounce them three times, so that he would follow the law of the holy trinity and at the same time have the opportunity to add an artistic enhancement to his writing.

The enhancement lies not only in the prophecies, but also in the contrasting surroundings.

The background is first formed by the confession of Peter, in which the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah first emerges, the second time – in the transfiguration – the background is already more brilliant, and the third time the glory of Jesus and his kingdom is secured in a negative way, in that the rich and powerful of this world are humiliated in that rich man.

After each of these prophecies, Jesus has the opportunity to shame and rebuke human thoughts and behavior, first by scolding Peter for not wanting to hear about suffering, then after the second prophecy, by rejecting a more definite arrogance and the desire for superiority in general, and finally, after the third prophecy, the sons of Zebedee come with their request for seats at his right and left hand.

Who is now so bold as to deny that not only these three prophecies, but each of them in turn, originally belong together with their contrastive surroundings, that the prophecies, as they each follow one another with their surroundings, form a whole, and that as this whole they owe their origin to a single pen, to the plastic art of one man, to the invention of Mark?

Very well! Let us hear the last proof! If Mark did not want to compose too badly – and he did indeed compose quite skilfully – i.e. if he did not want to place the teaching of his Lord too low, he had to present the matter in such a way that the disciples, who were so often to be reminded of his suffering, would also be instructed about it more closely. In fact, this instruction always followed regularly. But how? After an event that Jesus could not foresee had happened. Did Jesus know that Peter would speak as he did, did he know that the disciples on the journey through Galilee would argue about precedence, that the Zebedees would come up with this senseless idea? Did he know that his disciples would commit such childish pranks? No, he did not know. But he should have known them better and should have taught them immediately when he spoke of suffering and especially when he thought he would have to speak of it more often. But no, he did not have to: the Lord of Mark knows that he only has to wait a few moments or until he returns from Caesarea Philippi to Capernaum to get the opportunity for these teachings.

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That is to say, Mark has formed everything in such a way that what otherwise follows in one flow in the intelligible world complements itself in separate plastic formations – a complementation that is only possible in the world of ideal conception, in the real world it would be the opposite.

But not everyone who undertakes to create a world of ideal perception is therefore a master. The evangelists are not masters. There was only one Greek, there is only one Homer. The ideal world of the Gospels lacks the harmony of humanity, of moral, human motives, that harmony which even the contrasts must not lack. The ideal world of the sacred writers is a prosaic and disgustingly disjointed world.

These three contrasts must follow the three prophecies, so that a sermon on the necessity of self-denial, suffering and mutual subordination follows.

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But then, as Weisse demands, we are to be forced to devour such positive stones and blocks, such figures of extremely “individual truth”, or to worship them as fetishes? If Jesus has clearly said that he must suffer and just added that he will rise on the third day, should Peter then come and say that this should not happen? When Jesus speaks of suffering and death, should the disciples behave like children and argue about who is the greatest? When Jesus speaks again of suffering, shall the Zebedees know nothing better than to think how to get ahead of the others in order to take the seats on the right and left of the Lord?

It would be pointless to say that if Jesus knew what kind of childish people he was dealing with, he should either not have spoken of such things to them at all, or if he really wanted to, he should have taken them to the children’s school. It would be pointless to say explicitly that if Jesus had spoken so clearly of his suffering, the disciples, even children, would have understood him. Jesus did not make these disclosures to the disciples, he did not have to trouble himself with their childishness; Peter, the Twelve and the Zebedees had only to act so incomprehensibly foolishly that Jesus might be given the opportunity, i.e. that the evangelist – if we may misuse the word – might have vivid occasions to set forth the meaning of suffering in the kingdom of God or to indicate the applications to which the spirit should apply the thought of his Saviour’s suffering for the salvation of his soul.

If Jesus had to prophesy his suffering in advance and describe those last hours down to the crudest coincidences, so that his omniscience and the voluntariness with which he approached the suffering might become clear, the childish imaginings of his disciples serve to put the seal of divine sublimity on his calmness and self-assurance for the evangelical view.

Whoever still dares to take these prophecies as the words of Jesus, may make even the smallest detail comprehensible to the sensible, may tell us, for example, what the disciples must have thought when Jesus asked them to take up their “cross”. Bengel is right, and he will continue to be right until evidence to the contrary is produced, when he says that the cross was not used by the Jews in a figurative or literal sense. He is right when he says that Jesus alludes to his cross, but he is wrong when he tries to explain the possibility of such an allusion by saying that Jesus had already carried the cross in secret *). Did the disciples know this, or had they noticed it, or had Jesus shown it to them?

*) to Matth. 10, 38: alludit ad crucem suam, quam ipse jam tum ferebat occulto.

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Luke has formed a prophecy on his own, which we still have to consider, in order to answer a question in which it has again played a great role.

 

6. Jerusalem, the murderess of the prophets, and the festival journeys of Jesus.

The situation in which some of the Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod is after his life no longer exists for us. Go,” Jesus answers his enemies, who are very worried at this time, “and tell this fox: behold, I cast out demons and heal diseases today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will come to an end (Luk 13:31, 32). 32) – which is different from the words of an evangelist who knows so much about how the demons obey the name of Jesus, to whom the healing of the sick seems to be one of the most important aspects of the business of Jesus, and who has very clumsily placed the account after three days, which is lost in the original prophecy of Jesus, in order to use it as a rubric for the main business of Jesus and the completion of his course. “Only that I must walk today and tomorrow and the day after, for it is not possible for a prophet to perish outside Jerusalem” v. 33. – thus another, also not particularly happy application of the three days and a somewhat too dogmatic transformation of the words of Jesus, which Luke reads in Mark and which he himself writes down again C. 18, 31. Where is the dogma written that no prophet can perish outside Jerusalem, or what antecedence could Jesus bring to a dogma of this kind? Does an evangelist, in a passage so well invented, write the further reflection (v. 34) “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often have I wished to gather thy children together, as a bird gathereth her young under her wings, and ye would not? Behold, your house shall be left desolate. But I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, till it come to pass, that ye should say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” (Here, then, in this place, where Jesus had not yet been in Jerusalem, here, where Jesus first declared that he must go to Jerusalem, because it was only here that the prophet could perish, here is this saying originated, for it is at the same time supposed to be a prophecy of the reception which Jesus found on entering the holy city, for here they cried, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord. (Peace in heaven and glory in the highest! was also shouted by varying the theme of that English hymn of praise: Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth). Matthew did not see the relation of that saying to the entry into Jerusalem; he believed it, because Jerusalem is at the same time thought of as a city about which the Lord had often endeavoured to give a better place, when he made it – separated from that confused twofold execution of the triple number – the last word which the Lord spoke to the people (C. 23, 37 – 39). We do not need to mention that it is inappropriately attached to a speech that is not directed against the people, not against the holy city, but against the Pharisees.

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Luke formed the saying first and, what is more, in a very inappropriate place and linked it to an even more inappropriate occasion, if possible.

But, one might still ask, in order to save the presuppositions of the fourth Gospel *), does not the presupposition that Jesus was often in Jerusalem ring through this saying, a presupposition which therefore seems to be all the more correct and justified because it contradicts the other presuppositions of the Synoptics? No! Luke formed the saying first! On a saying which stands in such a suspicious environment and with which, in so far as it speaks of death in Jerusalem, there is certainly an inner connection, does one want to found a system? Doesn’t the primal gospel show a trace that could lead us to the presupposition of the fourth gospel?

*) Strauss L. I. I. 505. 506.

Weisse thinks himself justified by the saying to conclude a longer duration of Jesus’ one stay in Jerusalem, which, as he at the same time thinks, the Synoptics rightly assume alone **). But he builds on the wrong place which Matthew gave to the saying. He builds on sand. In Luke’s writing the saying has its solid ground, as far as there can be such a thing in the chimerical world of this writing.

**) I, 420.

Luke is certainly not the man who could come to the aid of the fourth evangelist, nor is he the man who could justify Weisse in ascribing to Jesus’ stay in Jerusalem, of which the synoptics alone know, a duration that was as long as possible. Luke remains faithful to the Synoptic presupposition also in the second part of his writing, when he (Acts 10, 37) lets Peter describe the life in the same way as he has described it in the Gospel *), namely that Jesus “began from Galilee”, travelled around and finally performed his deeds in Jerusalem and Judea. Luke also has Peter (v. 38) speak as if the healing of the sick and the casting out of devils were the main deeds of Jesus, i.e. Luke has formed the speech in which the Lord speaks of the necessity of His healing miracles.

*) and how the priests also describe the course of it, when they delivered Jesus to Pilate: Luk 23, 5: αρξαμενος απο της γαλιλαιας εως ωδε. Literally the same Acts. 10, 37.

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But Luke lets the Lord speak as if he had much and often to do with Jerusalem? This does not give us the right to form theological hypotheses. He also lets Peter speak as if Judea and Jemsalem had been a main scene of Jesus’ miraculous activity, and yet in the Gospel itself he knows only as much and as little about Jesus’ stay in Jerusalem as his predecessor Mark. Luke forms the first point in the transition from the view of the Synoptics to that of the Fourth, namely, the point at which Judea and Jerusalem became important for the entire activity of Jesus, but he has not yet drawn the line from this point that the Fourth drew. He only formed a sentence in which he emphasised Jesus’ activity in Jerusalem and partly also spoke of this activity in the sense that Jesus took care of the children of Jerusalem by taking care of the chosen people in general.

Otherwise, or rather everywhere, he is dependent on the view of Mark and proves that he has his more exact knowledge of the life of Jesus through Mark. He even continues this view quite correctly in additions. If the angel who reports the resurrection of their Master to the women says that they should tell the disciples that Jesus would go ahead of them to Galilee, where they would see him as he had told them, Luke has the angel say that they should remember what he told them “while he was still in Galilee” (C. 24, 6.). Jesus, writes Luke (C. 16, 47.), taught daily in the temple, i.e. he wanted to use this new opportunity to work through his teaching.

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There can be no doubt about the opinion of Mark. When he says: Jesus entered Jerusalem, went into the temple and after he had looked at everything, he went out to Bethany, because it was already late, this means: Jesus satisfied the curiosity of a man from the province and today he could do nothing but look at the temple, namely, he could not teach because it was already late.

Matthew did not copy this passage from Mark, since he – very hastily and somewhat too hotly – had the merchants driven out of the temple immediately after the Lord’s entry; instead, he formed another passage, which proves his agreement with Mark’ basic premise. When Jesus enters Jerusalem, the whole city is in an uproar and people ask, “Who is this? But the crowd answered: this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee (C. 21, 10. 11.). This time we do not wish to reproach Matthew particularly for not having made it clear to us where the multitudes come from who are distinguished from the citizens of the holy city; he has at least shown us that, according to his view, Jesus also comes for the first time from the province to the capital.

Weisse reminds us that the rejoicing of the people at the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem proves that Jesus had not been in this city before or – to put it more correctly – that according to the Synoptics the moment has come when the Son of David enters the holy city. The Fourth, therefore, could not understand this rejoicing in its true sense; he even had to use the miracle of Lazarus to win over the crowds, since according to his previous account Jesus only had to expect trouble and distress in Jerusalem.

*) I, 297.

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Whether at the time of Jesus, as Weisse remarks, who is only concerned with the positive statements of the Synoptics, people in Galilee thought more freely about the feast commandments, is not our concern here, but it is more than likely and at least puts the mechanical pragmatism of the fourth Gospel in its proper light. Whether the feast attendance was not necessary for Jesus is a personal question, and therefore cannot be answered by us, since we have not yet received a single message about Jesus. But Weisse’s remark is correct that according to the synoptic accounts Jesus travels to Jerusalem not to visit the feast but to suffer. However, we do not conclude from this, as Weisse does, that Jesus ‘ travelled to Jerusalem only at the time of this Christian sacrificial pascha, but . . . . . .

but that Mark the Evangelist was not at all concerned about all these questions of the theologians and Jews when he wrote his Gospel. He did not even think about the annually recurring feasts; their cycle had been forgotten in the ideal world in which he lived and which he described. The only thing he knew about it was that Jesus had to suffer at the Passover: for the time until then he knew nothing of chronology, as little as of a festival cycle.

It will now be seen where we want to go and where this matter will finally and for all time come to an end.

How can we take it into our heads to decide what a man had to do, or whether he attended the festivals of his people more than once, when all the reports that are supposed to teach us about him have dissolved? How can we go so far in our hunger for historical fragments as to want to decide from a writing whose author really lives in an ideal world and who, until he comes to the Passover, has breathed from the river of Lethe and forgotten all earthly measure of time, whether Jesus also visited the festivals more than once? Only one thing is certain, that the Passover – even the Passover! – has ideal significance for Mark, and that the time until this feast seems to him an eternity in which he knows no earthly calendar.

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The fourth evangelist, who used no other sources for his news of the life of Jesus than the Gospels which we still possess, has distributed the life of his Lord in the Jewish festival cycles – but the admiration which was paid for it to the strength of his memory, the accuracy of his account, or higher influences, is now at last reduced to its proper measure, or rather to the opposite feeling.

One might now be inclined to agree with the Synoptics. For is it not more beautiful and more dignified how they present the matter, that Jesus first appears at the outermost edge of the holy land, establishes his work and only now enters the holy city in order to attack the corrupt hierarchy in the centre of its power and to fulfil his destiny?

It is more beautiful and more worthy, but not historical, for as yet we have found no trace of what is called history.

Weisse assumes that the public activity of Jesus must be attributed “a duration of a not too small number of years” *). We have no say in this, for reasons which we have already given. But we have a question to ask about the assumption that Mark got his material from Peter and yet, if we want to use this wretched prose of observation, which is quite inappropriate here, attributes such a very short period of time to the activity of Jesus. He has,” answers Weisse *), “in his endeavour to explain the isolated stories of Peter – that is to say, Peter has never – never – never! – never said a word about the whole? – into the solid whole of a history of the Lord’s life, by the manner of his transitions from one matter to another – Olshausen, how much wrong you have been done! – has created a semblance of continuity of events and thus also of changes in the setting of events, which a more skilful narrator, at least one who was at the same time a critical researcher, would undoubtedly have avoided. “

*) I, 292

*) I, 313 – 314.

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No! Only one who knew an eyewitness like Peter would have avoided such a thing!

The Urevangelist, whom the Church called Mark, was not such a one.

The Urevangelist does not look at the transitions in any other way than the way he presents them. But carefully! He means to give definite, definite transitions, but in his ideal world he has at the same time lost the miserable prose of the earthly measure of time; he believes he is describing the history of an eternity, or at least he forgets the transitions, which are meant to be completely serious, in the view of the content, which to him is an infinite one. This is the contradiction of evangelical chronology. But the fact that it was possible for the evangelist to squeeze the creation of his ideal conception into such a short period of time for our calculation, proves first of all that the Christian principle is not capable of creating a true, extensive work of art and that the evangelist knew nothing less than the real life of Jesus.

But we want to hold him in such high esteem in any case that he is no longer asked the question of the festive journeys. This question is known only to the fourth and the theologian.

Admittedly, the theologian makes it very easy for himself in this respect too. He says: “the difference (between John and the poor Synoptics) in regard to chronology is easily (!) eliminated by the remark (!) that in the first three Gospels there are no chronological provisions at all” *).

*) Neander, 8. I. Chr. p. 380.

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One can see that theology is an easy science; but its weight has become even lighter through criticism.

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