Note 186 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

But this curative miracle does not appear independently and as an object by itself: the history of it hinges on the fact that the cure was wrought on the Sabbath, and the point of the whole lies in the words by which Jesus vindicates his activity in healing on the Sabbath against the Pharisees. In Luke and Mark this defence consists in the question, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it? in Matthew, in a part of this question, together with the aphorism on saving the sheep which might fall into the pit on the sabbath. Luke, who has not this saying on the present occasion, places it (varied by the substitution of ὄνος ἢ βοῦς, an ass or an ox for πρόβατον sheep, and of φρέαρ, well or pit for βόθυνος, ditch) in connexion with the cure of an ὑδρωπικὸς a man who had the dropsy (xiv. 5); a narrative which has in general a striking similarity to the one under consideration. Jesus takes food in the house of one of the chief Pharisees, where, as in the other instance in the synagogue, he is watched (here, ἦσαν παρατηρούμενοι, there, παρετήρουν). A dropsical person is present; as, there, a man with a withered hand. In the synagogue, according to Matthew, the Pharisees ask Jesus, εἰ ἔξεστι τοῖς σάββασι θεραπεύειν; Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? According to Mark and Luke, Jesus asks them whether it be lawful to save life, etc.: so, here, he asks them, εἰ ἔξεστι τῷ σαββατῷ θεραπερύειν; Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath? whereupon in both histories the interrogated parties are silent (in that of the withered hand, Mark: οἱ δέ ἐσιώπων; in that of the dropsical patient, Luke: οἱ δὲ ἡσύχασαν). Lastly, in both histories we have the saying about the animal fallen into a pit, in the one as an epilogue to the cure, in the other (that of Matthew) as a prologue. A natural explanation, which has not been left untried even with this cure of the dropsy,186 seems more than usually a vain labour, where, as in this case, we have before us no particular narrative, resting on its own historical basis, but a mere variation on the theme of the sabbath cures, and the text on the endangered domestic animal, which might come to one (Matthew) in connexion with the cure of a withered hand, to another (Luke) with the cure of a dropsical patient, and to a third in a different connexion still; for there is yet a third Story of a miraculous cure with which a similar saying is associated. Luke, namely, narrates (xiii. 10 ff.) the cure of a woman bowed down by demoniacal influence, as having been performed by Jesus on the sabbath; when to the indignant remonstrance of the ruler of the synagogue, Jesus replies by asking, whether every one does not loose his ox or ass from the stall on the sabbath, and lead him away to watering? a question which is undeniably a variation of the one given above. So entirely identical does this history appear with the one last named, that Schleiermacher comes to this conclusion: since in the second there is no reference to the first, and since consequently the repetition is not excused by confession, the two passages Luke xiii. 10, and xiv. 5, cannot have been written one after the other by the same author.187