Note 101 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

The narrative common to all the three synoptical writers is that of a cure of blindness wrought by Jesus at Jericho, on his last journey to Jerusalem (Matt. xx. 29 parall.): but there are important differences both as to the object of the cure, Matthew having two blind men, the two other Evangelists only one; and also as to its locality, Luke making it take place on the entrance of Jesus into Jericho, Matthew and Mark on his departure out of Jericho. Moreover the touching of the eyes, by which, according to the first evangelist, Jesus effected the cure, is not mentioned by the two other narrators. Of these differences the latter may be explained by the observation, that though Mark and Luke are silent as to the touching, they do not therefore deny it: the first, relative to the number cured, presents a heavier difficulty. To remove this it has been said by those who give the prior authority to Matthew, that one of the two blind men was possibly more remarkable than the other, on which account he alone was retained in the first tradition; but Matthew, as an eye-witness, afterwards supplied the second blind man. On this supposition Luke and Mark do not contradict Matthew, for they nowhere deny that another besides their single blind man was healed; neither does Matthew contradict them, for where there are two, there is also one.101 But when the simple narrator speaks of one individual in whom something extraordinary has happened, and even, like Mark, mentions his name, it is plain that he tacitly contradicts the statement that it happened in two individuals—to contradict it expressly there was no occasion. Let us turn then to the other side and, taking the singular number of Mark and Luke as the original one, conjecture that the informant of Matthew (the latter being scarcely on this hypothesis an eye-witness) probably mistook the blind man’s guide for a second blind man.102 Hereby a decided contradiction is admitted, while to account for it an extremely improbable cause is superfluously invented. The third difference relates to the place; Matthew and Mark have ἐκπορευομένων ἀπὸ, as they departed from, Luke, ἐν τῷ ἐγγίζειν εἰς Ἱεριχὼ, as they came nigh to Jericho. If there be any whom the words themselves fail to convince that this difference is irreconcilable, let them read the forced attempts to render these passages consistent with each other, which have been made by commentators from Grotius down to Paulus.