Note 10 — Chapter VIII · EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS, EXCLUDING THE MIRACLES.

Matthew, having omitted (ix. 34) the discourse of Jesus, was obliged also to defer the demand of a sign, which required a previous rejoinder on the part of Jesus, until his second narration of the charge concerning Beelzebub; and in this point again the narrative of Luke, who also attaches the demand of a sign to the accusation, is parallel with the later passage of Matthew.10 But Matthew not only has, with Luke, a demand of a sign in connexion with the above charge; he has also another, after the second feeding of the multitude (xvi. 1 ff.), and this second demand Mark also has (viii. 11 f.), while he omits the first. Here the Pharisees come to Jesus (according to Matthew, in the unlikely companionship of Sadducees), and tempt him by asking for a sign from heaven, σημεῖον ἑκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ. To this Jesus gives an answer, of which the concluding proposition, a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas; γενεὰ πονηρὰ καὶ μοιχαλὶς σημεῖον ἐπιζητεῖ, καὶ σημεῖον οὐ δοθήσεται αὐτῆ, εἰ μὴ τὸ σημεῖον Ἰωνᾶ τοῦ προφήτου, in Matthew, agrees word for word with the opening of the earlier refusal. It is already improbable enough, that Jesus should have twice responded to the above requisition with the same enigmatical reference to Jonah; but the words (v. 2, 3) which, in the second passage of Matthew, precede the sentence last quoted, are totally unintelligible. For why Jesus, in reply to the demand of his enemies that he would show them a sign from heaven, should tell them that they were indeed well versed in the natural signs of the heavens, but were so much the more glaringly ignorant of the spiritual signs of the messianic times, is so far from evident, that the otherwise unfounded omission of v. 2 and 3, seems to have arisen from despair of finding any connexion for them.11 Luke, who also has (xii. 54 f.), in words only partly varied, this reproach of Jesus that his cotemporaries understood better the signs of the weather than of the times, gives it another position, which might be regarded as the preferable one; since after speaking of the fire which he was to kindle, and the divisions which he was to cause, Jesus might very aptly say to the people: You take no notice of the unmistakable prognostics of this great revolution which is being prepared by my means, so ill do you understand the signs of the times.12 But on a closer examination, Luke’s arrangement appears just as abrupt here, as in the case of the two parables (xiii. 18).13 If from hence we turn again to Matthew, we easily see how he was led to his mode of representation. He may have been induced to double the demand of a sign, by the verbal variation which he met with, the required sign being at one time called simply a σημεῖον, at another a σημεῖον ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ. And if he knew that Jesus had exhorted the Jews to study the signs of the times, as they had hitherto studied the appearance of the heavens, the conjecture was not very remote, that the Jews had given occasion for this admonition by demanding a sign from heaven, σημεῖον ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ. Thus Matthew here presents us, as Luke often does elsewhere, with a fictitious introduction to a discourse of Jesus; a proof of the proposition, advanced indeed, but too little regarded by Sieffert:14 that it is in the nature of traditional records, such as the three first gospels, that one particular should be best preserved in this narrative, another in that; so that first one, and then the other, is at a disadvantage, in comparison with the rest.