The Harmony of the Gospels 2.140–2.154

Matthew, then, continues: “Then the Pharisees went away and took counsel how to catch him in speech. And they send their disciples to him with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are truthful and teach the way of God in truth, and you care for no one; for you do not regard the person of men. Tell us, then, what do you think: is it lawful to pay tax to Caesar or not?’” and so on, up to where he says, “And when the crowds heard it, they were amazed at his teaching.” These two answers of the Lord, one about the coin for paying tribute to Caesar, the other about the resurrection on account of that woman who had married seven brothers in succession, Mark and Luke narrate similarly, and they do not differ at all in order. For after that parable of the tenants of the vineyard and of the Jews against whom it was spoken preparing plots, which all three recorded, these two, Mark and Luke, pass over the parable of those invited to the wedding feast, which Matthew alone inserted, and now follow along with him, narrating these two, about Caesar's tribute and about the woman of seven husbands one after another, in exactly the same order, without any question of conflict.

Matthew, then, continues and says: “But the Pharisees, hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, gathered together, and one of them, a teacher of the law, asked him, testing him, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets.’” Mark also records this, keeping the same order. Nor should it trouble anyone that Matthew says the one by whom the Lord was asked was testing him, while Mark is silent about this and concludes at the end that the Lord said to him, when he answered wisely, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” For it may be that, though he came testing, he was corrected by the Lord's answer. Or certainly we should not take the testing itself as evil, as of an enemy wanting to deceive, but rather as cautious, as of one wanting to try out further someone unknown. For it is not without reason written, “He who believes easily is light of heart and will be diminished.”

Luke, however, inserts something of the kind not in this order but far elsewhere. But whether he is recalling this, or whether that is another man with whom the Lord dealt similarly about these two commandments, is altogether uncertain. From this, however, he also rightly seems to be another man: not only because of the great difference of order, but also because he is said to have answered the Lord's question himself and to have mentioned these two commandments in his answer; and when the Lord had said to him, “Do this, and you will live,” meaning that he should do what he himself had answered was great in the law, the evangelist goes on to say, “But he, wishing to justify himself, said, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” Then the Lord told of the man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers. Hence, since this man is both said beforehand to have been testing him and himself answered with the two commandments, and after the Lord's admonition, “Do this, and you will live,” is not commended as good, when it is said of him, “But he, wishing to justify himself”; whereas the one whom Matthew and Mark record in the same order is so well commended that the Lord said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God”: it is more probably believed that this is another man, not that one.

Matthew continues: “When the Pharisees had gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, ‘What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?’ They say to him, ‘David's.’ He said to them, ‘How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet? If, then, David calls him Lord, how is he his son?’ And no one could answer him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day to ask him any more questions.” Mark too records this next and in the same order. Luke too is silent only about the man who asked the Lord which was the first commandment in the law; but having passed this over, he too keeps the same order, and likewise narrates that the Lord asked the Jews about the Christ, how he is the son of David. Nor does it make any difference to the sense that according to Matthew, when Jesus had asked what they thought about the Christ, whose son he was, they answered, “David's,” and only then did he bring in how David called him Lord; whereas according to the other two, Mark and Luke, they are not found to have been asked or to have answered. For we must understand that after their answer the Lord's own statement was conveyed by the two evangelists as he spoke it in the hearing of those whom he wanted to instruct profitably by his teaching and to draw away from the doctrine of the scribes, who knew of Christ only that he was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, but did not understand that he was God, for which reason he was David's own Lord. So, according to these two evangelists, the Lord is recorded as speaking about those who were in error to those whom he wanted to free from their error, so that what was said to those men, “How do you say,” as Matthew narrates, is to be taken as said not, as it were, to them but about them, rather to those he wanted to teach.

Matthew continues, keeping the order of the narrative thus: “Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying, ‘The scribes and Pharisees have sat on the seat of Moses; so observe and do whatever they tell you, but do not do according to their works. For they say and do not do,’” and so on, up to where he says, “You will not see me from now on until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Luke too records that the Lord gave a similar discourse against the Pharisees and scribes and teachers of the law, but in the house of a certain Pharisee who had invited him to a meal. To narrate this, he had departed from Matthew around the place where both had recorded what the Lord said about the sign of Jonah of three days and nights, about the queen of the South and the Ninevites, and about the unclean spirit that returns and finds the house cleaned. After this discourse Matthew says, “While he was still speaking to the crowds, behold, his mother and brothers stood outside, seeking to speak to him.” Luke, however, after recording in that discourse of the Lord also some things that Matthew passed over, departs from the order he had kept with Matthew thus: “While he was speaking,” he says, “a certain Pharisee asked him to dine with him, and he went in and reclined. But the Pharisee began to reason within himself and say why he had not been baptized before the meal. And the Lord said to him, ‘Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish.’” And from here he says against the same Pharisees, scribes, and teachers of the law the rest, such things as Matthew says in this place we have now undertaken to consider. Although Matthew records these things in such a way that, though he does not name that Pharisee's house, he does not state where they were said in a way that conflicts with that house, nevertheless, because the Lord had already come to Jerusalem from Galilee, and after his coming the preceding events up to this discourse are so connected that they are probably taken as done in Jerusalem, while Luke narrates that discourse when the Lord was still making his journey to Jerusalem, there seem to me to be two similar discourses, of which Matthew narrated one and Luke the other.

We must certainly consider how it is said here, “You will not see me from now on until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” when according to the same Matthew they have already said this. Luke too says that this was the Lord's answer to those who had warned him to go away from there because Herod wanted to kill him. There too he records that exactly the words Matthew gives here were spoken by him against Jerusalem itself. For according to Luke it is narrated thus: “On that very day some of the Pharisees came, saying to him, ‘Get out and go away from here, because Herod wants to kill you.’ And he said to them, ‘Go, tell that fox: Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I am finished. Nevertheless I must walk today and tomorrow and the following day, because it cannot be that a prophet perish outside Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often I wanted to gather your children as a bird gathers its nest under its wings, and you would not! Behold, your house will be left to you. And I say to you, you will not see me until the time comes when you will say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” This narrative of Luke does not indeed seem to conflict with the fact that the crowds said to the Lord as he came to Jerusalem, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”; for according to Luke's order he had not yet come there and it had not yet been said. But since Luke does not say that he went away from there then, so as not to come until the time when that would be said (for he continues on his journey until he comes to Jerusalem), and since what he says, “Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I am finished,” is understood as spoken by him mystically and figuratively (for he did not suffer on the day that was the third from that day, since he immediately says, “I must walk today and tomorrow and the following day”), it certainly compels us to understand mystically also what he says, “You will not see me until the time comes when you will say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” signifying by this that coming of his in which he will come in glory; so that what he says, “I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I am finished,” refers to his body, which is the church. For demons are cast out when the nations, abandoning the superstitions of their fathers, believe in him; and cures are performed when people live according to his precepts, after the devil and this world have been renounced, up to the end, the resurrection, in which, as on the third day, the church will be finished, that is, will be perfected to the fullness of the angels through the immortality of the body too. Therefore this order of Matthew is by no means to be thought to have digressed into something else; rather, Luke is to be understood either to have anticipated what was done in Jerusalem and inserted it by recollection before his narrative brought the Lord to Jerusalem, or that the Lord, already drawing near to that city, gave such an answer to those warning him to beware of Herod as Matthew says he also spoke to the crowds when he had already arrived in Jerusalem and all the things narrated above had been done.

Matthew continues and says: “And Jesus went out of the temple and was going away. And his disciples came to him to show him the buildings of the temple. But he answered and said to them, ‘Do you see all these things? Truly I say to you, there will not be left here stone upon stone that will not be thrown down.’” Mark too records this in almost the same order, after a short digression made in order to record the widow who put two mites into the treasury, which Luke alone records with him. For according to Mark too, after the Lord dealt with the Jews about how they took the Christ to be the son of David, the things he says about beware of the Pharisees and their hypocrisy are narrated. This passage Matthew followed out at great length and narrated more things said there. And so after the same passage, which Mark touched on briefly and Matthew set out in full, Mark added nothing more, as I said, than the very poor and very rich widow, and then added the things by which he again agreed with Matthew, speaking of the future overthrow of the temple. Luke too, after that about the Christ, how he is the son of David, records a few things about beware of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. From there, like Mark, he goes on to the widow who put two mites into the treasury; then he adds, as Matthew and Mark do, the future overthrow of the temple.

Matthew continues, saying: “And as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will these things be, and what is the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘See that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they will deceive many,’” and so on, up to where he says, “And these will go into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Now let us consider this long discourse of the Lord according to the three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. For they compose it together, keeping the same order. Each, indeed, also says some things of his own here, in which no suspicion of conflict need be feared; but as for the things they say in common, we must see to it that they are nowhere thought to contradict one another. For if anything of that kind occurs, it cannot be said that it is something else and said similarly by the Lord elsewhere, since the narrative of all three is concerned with the same place of events and times. Certainly the fact that they do not all keep the same order of the same sayings spoken by the Lord makes no difference either to understanding or to conveying the matter, so long as what is reported as said by him does not contradict itself.

As for what Matthew says, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come,” Mark too records it in the same order thus: “The gospel must first be preached to all nations.” He did not say, “and then the end will come,” but he signifies this by saying “first,” that is, “and the gospel must first be preached to all nations,” because they had asked about the end. When, then, he says, “The gospel must first be preached to all nations,” he certainly means first, before the end comes.

Likewise, what Matthew says, “When, then, you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, let him who reads understand,” Mark says thus: “But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not, let him who reads understand.” In this change of wording he set out the same meaning; for “where it ought not” is said precisely because it ought not to be in the holy place. Luke, however, does not say, “When you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place,” or “where it ought not,” but says, “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by an army, then know that its desolation has drawn near.” That, then, is when the abomination of desolation will be in the holy place.

As for what Matthew says, “Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let him who is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house, and let him who is in the field not go back to take his tunic,” Mark too records this in almost the same number of words. Luke, however, says, “Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains,” this as the other two do, but the rest differently. For he goes on to say, “Let those who are in its midst depart, and let those who are in the country not enter it, because these are days of vengeance, so that all that is written may be fulfilled.” What they said, “And let him who is on the housetop not come down to take anything from his house,” seems quite different from what he says, “And let those who are in its midst depart”; unless perhaps, because there will be great confusion with so great a danger at hand, those whom the siege had shut in (which he signifies by saying “those who are in its midst”) will be on the housetops, stunned and wanting to see what is threatening or where one can escape. But how does he say “let them depart,” when he said above, “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by an army”? For what follows, “Let those who are in the country not enter it,” seems to belong to a fitting warning, and can be observed: that those who are outside should not enter it. But those who are in its midst, how are they to depart from the army when the city is already surrounded? Or is this “to be in its midst”: when the danger will already press so hard that one cannot escape in a temporal way to protect the present life; and since then the soul ought to be ready and free, not occupied and weighed down by carnal desires, the other two signify this by “on the housetop” or “upon the housetop”? So that what Luke says, “let them depart,” that is, let them no longer be captured by the desire for this life but be ready to move to another life, the other two said thus: “Let him not come down to take anything from his house,” that is, let him not be inclined by any affection toward the flesh as if to gain some advantage from it; and what Luke says, “Let those who are in the country not enter it,” that is, let those who by a good resolve of heart have already come to be outside it not desire it again with carnal longing, the other two said thus: “And let him who is in the field not go back to take his garment,” as if to be entangled again in the cares of which he had been stripped.

As for what Matthew says, “But pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath,” Mark gave part of this and was silent about part: “But pray,” he says, “that these things may not happen in winter.” Luke did not say this, yet he alone said something by which he seems to me to have shed light on this very saying, which those two put obscurely. For he says, “But take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly. For it will come like a snare upon all who sit on the face of the whole earth. Watch, then, at all times, praying that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that are to come.” This is understood to be the flight that Matthew records, which must not happen in winter or on the Sabbath. To winter belong the cares of this life, which Luke plainly put; to the Sabbath, gluttony and drunkenness. For cares are sad, like winter; while gluttony and drunkenness submerge and overwhelm the heart with carnal pleasure and luxury, and this evil is signified by the name of the Sabbath because it was already then, as it is now, the very bad custom of the Jews to abound in delicacies on that day, while they do not know the spiritual Sabbath. Or, if something else is to be understood in those words according to Matthew and Mark, let Luke too have said something else, so long as no question of conflict is raised. For we have not undertaken here to expound the Gospels, but to defend them from charges of falsehood or deception. As for the other things that Matthew put in this discourse, those he has in common with Mark raise no question; and those he has in common with Luke, Luke did not put in this discourse, with which his order agrees, but elsewhere he either recalls and inserts such things by anticipation, recording earlier what was said later by the Lord, or makes us understand that they were said twice by the Lord, now according to Matthew and then according to himself.

Matthew continues: “And it happened, when Jesus had finished all these discourses, he said to his disciples, ‘You know that after two days the Passover will come, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.’” The other two, Mark and Luke, attest this, not departing from the same order. But they do not convey it as said by the Lord; for they omitted to indicate this. Yet in their own person Mark too says, “Now the Passover and Unleavened Bread were after two days,” and Luke, “Now the feast of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was drawing near.” It was drawing near, then, in such a way as to be after two days, as the other two agree more plainly. John, however, recorded the nearness of the same feast in three places: in the first two he was narrating certain other things, but in the third place his narrative clearly deals with the very time that these three also indicate, that is, when the Lord's passion was already imminent.

But to those who look too little carefully, this can seem contradictory: that Matthew and Mark, after saying that the Passover would be after two days, then recorded that Jesus was in Bethany, where the story of the precious ointment is told, while John says that Jesus came to Bethany six days before the Passover, when he is about to narrate the same thing about the ointment. How, then, according to those two, was the Passover to be after two days, when after saying this they are found with John in Bethany, narrating that same thing about the ointment that he narrates, while he says the Passover was to be after six days? But those who are troubled in this way do not understand that Matthew and Mark put what happened in Bethany with the ointment by way of recapitulation, not as happening after that prediction of theirs about the two days, but as already done earlier, when there were still six days to the Passover. For neither of them, after saying that the Passover would be after two days, added the event in Bethany so as to say, “After this, when he was at Bethany”; but Matthew says, “Now when Jesus was in Bethany,” and Mark, “When he was at Bethany.” This is certainly understood to be even before those things were said which were said two days before the Passover. So, as is gathered from John's narrative, six days before the Passover he came to Bethany; there took place that supper where the precious ointment is mentioned; from there he came to Jerusalem sitting on a colt; and after that took place the things they narrate as done in Jerusalem after this coming of his. From that day, then, on which he came to Bethany and that happened with the ointment, to the day on which all these things were done and said, we understand that four days were spent, even though the evangelists do not mention it, so as to arrive at the day which the two defined as two days before the Passover. Luke, when he says, “The feast of Unleavened Bread was drawing near,” did not state the two days; but this nearness which he recorded we ought to take as within that interval of two days. And John, when he says, “The Passover of the Jews was near,” does not mean these two days to be understood, but six days before the Passover. Accordingly, having recorded some things after saying this, then, wishing to show how near the Passover was, he said, “Jesus, then, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany, where Lazarus had died, whom Jesus raised. And they made him a supper there.” This is what Matthew and Mark record by recapitulation, when they had already said that the Passover would be after two days. By recapitulation, then, they go back to that day in Bethany which was six days before the Passover, and narrate what John does about the supper and the ointment, from which he was to come to Jerusalem and, after doing there the things narrated, to arrive at the day which was two days before the Passover. From this point they digressed, to record by recapitulation what had been done earlier in Bethany with the ointment; and when that narrative is finished they return again to where they had digressed, that is, so that the Lord's discourse which he gave two days before the Passover may now be narrated. For if we remove from the middle what they narrated as done in Bethany, departing from the order by recollection and recapitulation, and join the order itself together, the account runs according to Matthew thus, with the Lord saying: “You know that after two days the Passover will come, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the court of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and took counsel to seize Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they said, ‘Not on the feast day, lest perhaps there be an uproar among the people.’ Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests,” and so on. For between what was said, “lest there be an uproar among the people,” and what was said, “Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas, went,” was inserted that about Bethany which they told by recapitulation; omitting it, we have joined the narrative together to show that the order of times does not conflict. According to Mark too, with the same supper at Bethany, which he too inserted by recapitulation, likewise omitted, the order of the narrative holds thus: “Now the Passover and Unleavened Bread were after two days, and the chief priests and scribes were seeking how to seize him by stealth and kill him. For they said, ‘Not on the feast day, lest perhaps there be an uproar of the people.’ And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went away to the chief priests to betray him,” and so on. Here too, between what was said, “lest perhaps there be an uproar of the people,” and what we have joined to it, “And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve,” was placed that about Bethany which they told by recapitulation. Luke, certainly, passed over the very event done in Bethany. We have said these things on account of the six days before the Passover, which John gave when narrating the event at Bethany, and the two days before the Passover, which Matthew and Mark gave, when after saying this they recorded the same event at Bethany that John records.

Matthew continues from the place where we had ended our consideration of the narrative, and says: “Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the court of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and took counsel to seize Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they said, ‘Not on the feast day, lest perhaps there be an uproar among the people.’ Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him having an alabaster jar of precious ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined,” and so on, up to where he says, “What she has done will also be told in memory of her.” Now let us consider the woman and the precious ointment, which happened in Bethany. For although Luke records a similar deed, and the name of the man with whom the Lord was dining agrees (for he too says Simon), nevertheless, since it is not against nature or against human custom that, if one man can have two names, two men can much more have one name, it is more credible that that Simon was another, not the leper in whose house this was done in Bethany. For Luke does not say that the event he narrates happened in Bethany either; and although he does not mention the city or village where it happened, his narrative does not seem to be concerned with the same place. I think, then, that nothing else is to be understood, not indeed that it was another woman then, the sinner who came to Jesus' feet and kissed them and washed them with tears and wiped them with her hair and anointed them with ointment, to whom the Lord, having used the comparison of the two debtors, said that her many sins were forgiven because she loved much; but that the same Mary did this twice: once, namely, what Luke narrated, when, approaching for the first time with that humility and those tears, she obtained the forgiveness of her sins. For John too, although he did not narrate how it was done as Luke did, nevertheless recorded it in commending that same Mary, when he had begun to speak of raising Lazarus, before he came to Bethany. He narrates it there thus: “Now there was a certain man sick, Lazarus of Bethany, of the village of Mary and Martha her sister. And it was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.” In saying this John attests Luke, who narrated that this was done in the house of a certain Pharisee, Simon; so Mary had already done this. But what she did again in Bethany is something else, which does not belong to Luke's narrative but is narrated alike by three, namely John, Matthew, and Mark.