Note 164 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

Modern expositors are deterred from the identification of all the three narratives, by the fear that it may present John in the light of a narrator who has not apprehended the scene with sufficient accuracy, and has even mistaken its main drift.164 Were they nevertheless to venture on a union, they would as far as possible vindicate to the fourth gospel the most original account of the facts; a position of which we shall forthwith test the security, by an examination of the intrinsic character of the narratives. That the suppliant is according to the fourth Evangelist a βασιλικὸς, while according to the two others he is an ἑκατόνταρχος, is an indifferent particular from which we can draw no conclusion on either side; and it may appear to be the same with the divergency as to the relation of the diseased person to the one who entreats his cure. If, however, it be asked with reference to the last point, from which of the three designations the other two could most easily have arisen? it can scarcely be supposed that the υἱὸς of John became in a descending line, first the doubtful term παῖς, and then δοῦλος; and even the reverse ascending order is here less probable than the intermediate alternative, that out of the ambiguous παῖς (= ‏כַעַר‎) there branched off in one direction the sense of servant, as in Luke; in the other, of son, as in John. We have already remarked, that the description of the patient’s state in John, as well as in Luke, is an enhancement on that in Matthew, and consequently of later origin. As regards the difference in the locality, from the point of view now generally taken in the comparative criticism of the gospels, the decision would doubtless be, that in the tradition from which the synoptical writers drew, the place from which Jesus performed the miracles was confounded with that in which the sick person lay, the less noted Cana being absorbed in the celebrated Capernaum; whereas John, being an eye-witness, retained the more correct details. But the relation between the Evangelists appears to stand thus only when John is assumed to have been an eye-witness; if the critic seeks, as he is bound to do, to base his decision solely on the intrinsic character of the narratives, he will arrive at a totally different result. Here is a narrative of a cure performed at a distance, in which the miracle appears the greater, the wider the distance between the curer and the cured. Would oral tradition, in propagating this narrative, have the tendency to diminish that distance, and consequently the miracle, so that in the account of John, who makes Jesus perform the cure at a place from which the nobleman does not reach his son until the following day, we should have the original narrative, in that of the synoptists on the contrary, who represent Jesus as being in the same town with the sick servant, the one modified by tradition? Only the converse of this supposition can be held accordant with the nature of the legend, and here again the narrative of John manifests itself to be a traditional one. Again, the preciseness with which the hour of the patient’s recovery is ascertained in the fourth gospel has a highly fictitious appearance. The simple expression of Matthew, usually found at the conclusion of histories of cures: he was healed in the self-same hour, is dilated into an inquiry on the part of the father as to the hour in which the son began to amend, an answer from the servants that yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him, and lastly the result, that in the very hour in which Jesus had said, Thy son liveth, the recovery took place. This is a solicitous accuracy, a tediousness of calculation, that seems to bespeak the anxiety of the narrator to establish the miracle, rather than to show the real course of the event. In representing the βασιλικὸς as conversing personally with Jesus, the fourth gospel has preserved the original simplicity of the narrative better than the third; though as has been remarked, the servants who come to meet their master in the former seem to be representatives of Luke’s second embassy. But in the main point of difference, relative to the character of the applicant, it might be thought that, even according to our own standard, the preference must be given to John before the two other narrators. For if that narrative is the more legendary, which exhibits an effort at aggrandizement or embellishment, it might be said that the applicant whose faith is in John rather weak, is in Luke embellished into a model of faith. It is not, however, on embellishment in general that legend or the inventive narrator is bent, but on embellishment in subservience to their grand object, which in the gospels is the glorification of Jesus; and viewed in this light, the embellishment will in two respects be found on the side of John. First, as this Evangelist continually aims to exhibit the pre-eminence of Jesus, by presenting a contrast to it in the weakness of all who are brought into communication with him, so here this purpose might be served by representing the suppliant as weak rather than strong in faith. The reply, however, which he puts into the mouth of Jesus, Unless ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe, has proved too severe, for which reason it reduces most of our commentators to perplexity. Secondly, it might seem unsuitable that Jesus should allow himself to be diverted from his original intention of entering the house in which the patient was, and thus appear to be guided by external circumstances; it might be regarded as more consistent with his character that he should originally resolve to effect the cure at a distance instead of being persuaded to this by another. If then, as tradition said, the suppliant did nevertheless make a kind of remonstrance, this must have had an opposite drift to the one in the synoptical gospels, namely, to induce Jesus to a journey to the house where the patient lay.