Note 40 — Chapter V · THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

To this feast at the publican’s, of which many of the same obnoxious class partook, the Evangelists annex the reproaches cast at the disciples by the Pharisees and Scribes, because their master ate with publicans and sinners. Jesus, being within hearing of the censure, repelled it by the well-known text on the destination of the physician for the sick, and the Son of Man for sinners (Matt. ix. 11 ff. parall.). That Jesus should be frequently taunted by his pharisaical enemies with his too great predilection for the despised class of publicans (comp. Matt. xi. 19), accords fully with the nature of his position, and is therefore historical, if anything be so: the answer, too, which is here put into the mouth of Jesus, is from its pithy and concise character well adapted for literal transmission. Further, it is not improbable that the reproach in question may have been especially called forth, by the circumstance that Jesus ate with publicans and sinners, and went under their roofs. But that the cavils of his opponents should have been accompaniments of the publican’s dinner, as the evangelical account leads us to infer, especially that of Mark (v. 16), is not so easily conceivable.40 For as the feast was in the house (ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ), and as the disciples also partook of it, how could the Pharisees utter their reproaches to them, while the meal was going forward, without defiling themselves by becoming the guests of a man that was a sinner,—the very act which they reprehended in Jesus? (Luke xix. 7). It will hardly be supposed that they waited outside until the feast was ended. It is difficult for Schleiermacher to maintain, even on the representation of Luke taken singly, that the evangelical narrative only implies, that the publican’s feast was the cause of the Pharisees’ censure, and not that they were contemporary.41 Their immediate connexion might easily originate in a legendary manner; in fact, one scarcely knows how tradition, in its process of transmuting the abstract into the concrete, could represent the general idea that the Pharisees had taken offence at the friendly intercourse of Jesus with the publicans, otherwise than thus: Jesus once feasted in a publican’s house, in company with many publicans; the Pharisees saw this, went to the disciples and expressed their censure, which Jesus also heard, and parried by a laconic answer.