(Synoptics)
U nder the title of “ ‘ I came’: the express self-testimony of Jesus to the purpose of His sending and His coming,” Adolf Harnack has published a study of the sayings of Jesus reported in the Synoptic Gospels, which are introduced by the words “I came” or, exceptionally, “I was sent,” or their equivalents. 1 These, says he, are “programmatic” sayings, and deserve as such a separate and comprehensive study, such as has not heretofore been given to them. In his examination of them, he pursues the method of, first, gathering the relevant sayings together and subjecting them severally to a critical and exegetical scrutiny; and, then, drawing out from the whole body of them in combination Jesus’ own testimony to His mission.
It goes without saying that, in his critical scrutiny of the passages, Harnack proceeds on the same presuppositions which govern his dealing with the Synoptic tradition in general; that is to say, on the presuppositions of the “Liberal” criticism, which he applies, however, here as elsewhere, with a certain independence. It goes without saying also, therefore, that the passages emerge from his hands in a very mauled condition; brought as far as it is possible to bring them, even with violence, into line with the “Liberal” view of what the mission of Jesus ought to have been. It is reassuring, however, to observe that, even so, they cannot be despoiled of their central testimony. That Jesus proclaimed Himself to have come—to have been sent—on a mission of salvation, of salvation of the lost, Harnack is constrained to present as their primary content. By the side of this, it is true, he places a second purpose—to fulfil the law, that is, to fill it out, to complete it. Accordingly, he says, Jesus’ self-testimony is to the effect that “the purpose of His coming, and therewith His significance, are given in this—that He is at once Saviour and Lawgiver.” Behind both lies, no doubt, love, as the propulsive cause—“I came to minister”—and yet Jesus is perfectly aware that His purpose is not to be attained without turmoil and strife—“I came to cast fire upon the land and to bring a sword.” These sayings, he remarks in conclusion, contain very few words; and yet is not really everything said in them? Shall we call it an accident that “under the superscription ‘I came,’ the purpose, the task, the manner of Jesus’ work, all seem to be really exhaustively stated, and even the note of a bitter and plaintive longing is not lacking”?
It seems to be well worth while to follow Harnack’s example and to make this series of sayings in which our Lord’s testimony to the nature of His mission has been preserved for us in the Synoptic record, the object of a somewhat careful examination. Approaching them free from the “Liberal” presuppositions which condition Harnack’s dealing with them, we may hope to obtain from them a more objective understanding than he has been able to attain of how Jesus really thought of His mission.
I
Our differences with Harnack begin with even so simple a matter as the collection of the passages. He discovers eight, as follows: Mt. 10:34 ff. = Lk. 12:51, 53; Mk. 2:17 = Mt. 9:13 = Lk. 5:32; Mk. 10:45 = Mt. 20:28; Lk. 12:49; Lk. 19:10; Lk. 9:56; Mt. 5:17, Mt. 15:24. This list, however, seems to us to require a certain amount of correction.
(1) We are compelled to omit from it Lk. 9:56, as, despite the vigorous defence of its genuineness by Theodor Zahn, 2 certainly spurious.
Harnack’s argument in its favor suffers somewhat from a confusion of it with some neighboring interpolations. Because he supposes himself to discover certain Lucan characteristics in these, he concludes that this too is Lucan in origin. Because some of them appear to have stood in Marcion’s Gospel he assumes that this also stood in that Gospel. It is a matter of complete indifference, meanwhile, whether it stood in Marcion’s Gospel or not. It may be urged, to be sure, that it is easier to suppose that it was stricken out of Luke because of Marcion’s misuse of it, than that it was taken over into Luke from the Gospel of that “first-born of Satan.” Meanwhile, there is no decisive evidence that it stood in Marcion’s Gospel; 3 and, if it had a place there, there is no reason to suppose that it was taken over thence into Luke. It was, on the contrary, already current in certain Lucan texts before Marcion. 4
The method of criticism which is employed by Harnack here,—a method with which Hilgenfeld used to vex us and of which Harnack and Bousset and Conybeare seem to have served themselves especially heirs 5—is, let us say it frankly, thoroughly vicious. Its one effort is at all costs to get behind the total formal transmission, and in the attempt to do this it is tempted to prefer to the direct evidence, however great in mass and conclusive in effect, any small item of indirect evidence which may be unearthed, however weak in its probative force or ambiguous in its bearing. The fundamental principle of this method of criticism naturally does not commend itself to those who have made the criticism of texts their business. Even an Eduard Norden sounds a salutary warning against it, 6 and the professional critics of the New Testament text reject it with instructive unanimity. 7 Nobody doubts that wrong readings were current in the second century and it goes but a little way towards showing that a reading is right to show that it was current in the second century. Many of the most serious corruptions which the text of the New Testament has suffered had already entered it in the first half of that century. The matter of importance is not to discover which of the various readings at any given passage chances to appear earliest, by a few years, in the citations of that passage which have happened to be preserved to us in extant writings. It is to determine which of them is a genuine part of the text as it came from its author’s hands. For the determination of this question Harnack’s method of criticism advances us directly not a single step, and indirectly (through, that is, the better ascertainment of the history of the transmission of the text) but a little way.