Note 76 — Chapter VIII · EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS, EXCLUDING THE MIRACLES.

Thus we are led on external grounds, by the doubt whether an ancient notice refer to the one or the other of the two narratives, to a perception of their affinity,76 which is besides evident from internal reasons. In both we have a woman, a sinner, before Jesus; in both, this woman is regarded with an evil eye by Pharisaic sanctimoniousness, but is taken into protection by Jesus, and dismissed with a friendly πορεύου, go. These were precisely the features, the origin of which we could not understand in the narrative of Luke, viewed as a mere variation of the history of the anointing given by the other Evangelists. Now, what is more natural than to suppose that they were transferred into Luke’s history of the anointing, from that of the forgiven sinner? If the Christian legend possessed, on the one side, a woman who had anointed Jesus, who was on this account reproached, but was defended by Jesus; and on the other side a woman who was accused before him of many sins, but whom he pardoned; how easily, aided by the idea of an anointing of the feet of Jesus, which bears the interpretation of an act of penitence, might the two histories flow together—the anointing woman become also a sinner, and the sinner also an anointer? Then, that the scene of the pardon was an entertainment, was a feature also drawn from the history of the anointing: the entertainer must be a Pharisee, because the accusation of the woman ought to proceed from a Pharisaic party, and because, as we have seen, Luke has a predilection for Pharisaic entertainments. Lastly, the discourse of Jesus may have been borrowed, partly from the original narrative of the woman who was a sinner, partly from analogous occasions. If these conjectures be correct, the narratives are preserved unmixed, on the one hand, by the two first Evangelists; on the other, by the fourth, or whoever was the author of the passage on the adulteress; for if the latter contains much that is legendary, it is at least free from any admixture of the history of the anointing.