Note 2 — Chapter III · LOCALITY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

Why, it must be asked, have the synoptical writers been silent on this frequent presence of Jesus in Judea and Jerusalem? Why have they represented the matter, as if Jesus, before his last fatal journey to Jerusalem, had not overstepped the limits of Galilee and Perea? This discrepancy between the synoptical writers and John was long overlooked in the church, and of late it has been thought feasible to deny its existence. It has been said, that Matthew, at the commencement, lays the scene in Galilee and Capernaum, and pursues his narrative without noticing any journey into Judea until the last; but that we are not hence to conclude that Matthew was unacquainted with the earlier ministry of Jesus in Judea, for as with this Evangelist the local interest is subordinate to the effort at an appropriate arrangement of his events, many particulars in the former part of his history, which he narrates without indicating any place, may have been known, though not stated by him, to have occurred in the earlier journeys and residences in Judea.2 But this alleged subordination of the local interest in Matthew, is nothing more than a fiction of the harmonist, as Schneckenburger has recently proved.3 Matthew very carefully marks (chap. iv.) the beginning and (chap. xix.) the end of the almost exclusive residence of Jesus in Galilee; all the intervening narration must therefore be regarded as belonging to that residence, unless the contrary be expressed; and since the Evangelist is on the alert to notice the short excursions of Jesus across the lake and into the north of Galilee, he would hardly pass over in silence the more important, and sometimes prolonged visits to Judea, had they been known or credited by him. Thus much only is to be allowed, that Matthew frequently neglects the more precise statement of localities, as the designation of the spot or neighbourhood in which Jesus laboured from time to time: but in his more general biographical statements, such as the designation of the territories and provinces of Palestine, within the boundaries of which Jesus exercised his ministry, he is as accurate as any other Evangelist.