Note 3 — Chapter XVIII · The Last Solomon.

In Luke the sentence is a verse by itself, and the word “all” renders it probable that the sentiment has a bearing on the story that follows of the anointing of Jesus by a sinful woman.3 Some such incident may have occurred, but the address to Simon the Pharisee making him to be the offender, and the woman one delivered from Dame Folly by her faith (“pleasing God”) looks like a criticism on the “fling” at woman in Ecclesiastes, with a proverb taken for text. This rebuke of the Pharisee, who thought “the prophet” ought to abhor the “sinner,” immediately precedes an account of the eminent women who supported Jesus by their means,—Mary, called Magdalene; Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward; Susanna, “and many others.” They “ministered to him of their substance,” and possibly the Pharisee and others might naturally suspect him of being among “the ensnared.” The fact is strange enough to be genuine, and Luke thinks it important to say that Jesus had healed these ladies of bad spirits and infirmities. Of course it is necessary to divest Gospel anecdotes of much post-resurrectional vesture, and in this case it cannot be credited that Jesus said that the woman’s sins were “many,” which he could not have known, or that he gave her formal absolution.