Note 8 — Chapter III · LOCALITY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

No supposition founded on the local relations of the writers sufficing to explain the difference in question, higher ground must be taken, in a consideration of the spirit and tendency of the evangelical writings. From this point of view the following proposition has been given: The cause which determined the difference in the contents of the fourth gospel and that of the synoptical ones, accounts also for their divergency as to the limits they assign to the ministry of Jesus; in other words, the discourses delivered by Jesus in Jerusalem, and recorded by John, required for their comprehension a more mature development of Christianity than that presented in the first apostolic period; hence they were not retained in the primitive evangelical tradition, of which the synoptical writers were the organs, and were first restored to the church by John, who wrote when Christianity was in a more advanced stage.8 But neither is this attempt at an explanation satisfactory, though it is less superficial than the preceding. For how could the popular and the esoteric in the teaching of Jesus be separated with such nicety, that the former should be confined to Galilee, and the latter to Jerusalem (the harsh discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum alone excepted)? It may be said: in Jerusalem he had a more enlightened public around him, and could be more readily understood than in Galilee. But the Galileans could scarcely have misunderstood Jesus more lamentably than did the Jews from first to last, according to John’s representation, and as in Galilee he had the most undisturbed communion with his disciples, we should rather have conjectured that here would be the scene of his more profound instruction. Besides, as the synoptical writers have given a plentiful gleaning of lucid and popular discourses from the final residence of Jesus in Jerusalem, there is no ground whatever for believing that his earlier visits were devoid of such, and that his converse on these occasions took throughout a higher tone. But even allowing that all the earlier discourses of Jesus in Judea and Jerusalem were beyond the range of the first apostolic tradition, deeds were performed there, such as the cure of the man who had had an infirmity thirty-eight years, the conferring of sight on the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus, which, from their imposing rank among the evidences of Christianity, must also have necessitated the mention of those early visits of Jesus to Judea during which they occurred.