Note 157 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

These divergencies are certainly important enough to be a reason, with those who regard them from a certain point of view, for maintaining the distinction of the fact lying at the foundation of the synoptical narratives from that reported by John: only this accuracy of discrimination must be carried throughout, and the diversities between the two synoptical narratives themselves must not be overlooked. First, even in the designation of the person of the patient they are not perfectly in unison; Luke calls him δοῦλος ἔντιμος, a servant who was dear to the centurion; in Matthew, the latter calls him ὁ παῖς μοῦ, which may equally mean either a son or a servant, and as the centurion when speaking (v. 9) of his servant, uses the word δοῦλος, while the cured individual is again (v. 13) spoken of as ὁ παῖς αὐτοῦ, it seems most probable that the former sense was intended. With respect to his disease, the man is described by Matthew as παραλυτικὸς δεινῶς βασανιζόμενος a paralytic grievously tormented; Luke is not only silent as to this species of disease, but he is thought by many to presuppose a different one, since after the indefinite expression κακῶς ἔχων, being ill, he adds, ἤμελλε τελευτᾶν, was ready to die, and paralysis is not generally a rapidly fatal malady.157 But the most important difference is one which runs through the entire narrative, namely, that all which according to Matthew the centurion does in his own person, is in Luke done by messengers, for here in the first instance he makes the entreaty, not personally, as in Matthew, but through the medium of the Jewish elders, and when he afterwards wishes to prevent Jesus from entering his house, he does not come forward himself, but commissions some friends to act in his stead. To reconcile this difference, it is usual to refer to the rule: quod quis per alium facit, etc.158 If then it be said, and indeed no other conception of the matter is possible to expositors who make such an appeal,—Matthew well knew that between the centurion and Jesus everything was transacted by means of deputies, but for the sake of brevity, he employed the figure of speech above alluded to, and represented him as himself accosting Jesus: Storr is perfectly right in his opposing remark, that scarcely any historian would so perseveringly carry that metonymy through an entire narrative, especially in a case where, on the one hand, the figure of speech is by no means so obvious as when, for example, that is ascribed to a general which is done by his soldiers; and where, on the other hand, precisely this point, whether the person acted for himself or through others, is of some consequence to a full estimate of his character.159 With laudable consistency, therefore, Storr, as he believed it necessary to refer the narrative of the fourth gospel to a separate fact from that of the first and third, on account of the important differences; so, on account of the divergencies which he found between the two last, pronounces these also to be narratives of two separate events. If any one wonder that at three different times so entirely similar a cure should have happened at the same place (for according to John also, the patient lay and was cured at Capernaum), Storr on his side wonders how it can be regarded as in the least improbable that in Capernaum at two different periods two centurions should have had each a sick servant, and that again at another time a nobleman should have had a sick son at the same place; that the second centurion (Luke) should have heard the history of the first, have applied in a similar manner to Jesus, and sought to surpass his example of humility, as the first centurion (Matthew), to whom the earlier history of the nobleman (John) was known, wished to surpass the weak faith of the latter; and lastly, that Jesus cured all the three patients in the same manner at a distance. But the incident of a distinguished official person applying to Jesus to cure a dependent or relative, and of Jesus at a distance operating on the latter in such a manner, that about the time in which Jesus pronounced the curative word, the patient at home recovered, is so singular in its kind that a threefold repetition of it may be regarded as impossible, and even the supposition that it occurred twice only, has difficulties; hence it is our task to ascertain whether the three narratives may not be traced to a single root.