Luke 4:28-30

Conclusion.

The threat contained in these examples exasperates them: “Thou rejectest us: we reject thee,” was their virtual reply. The term ἐκβάλλειν, to cast out, denotes that they set upon Him with violence.

About forty minutes distant from Nazareth, to the south-east, they show a wall of rock 80 feet high, and (if we add to it a second declivity which is found a little below) about 300 feet above the plain of Esdraelon. It is there that tradition places this scene. But Robinson regards this tradition as of no great antiquity. Besides, it does not agree with the expression: on which the city was built. Nazareth spreads itself out upon the eastern face of a mountain, where there is a perpendicular wall of rock from 40 to 50 feet high. This nearer locality agrees better with the text.

The ὥστε of the Alex. reading signifies: so as to be able to cast Him down. It was for that purpose that they took the trouble of going up so high. This reading is preferable to the T. R.: εἰς τό, for the purpose of.

The deliverance of Jesus was neither a miracle nor an escape; He passed through the group of these infuriated people with a majesty which overawed them. The history offers some similar incidents. We cannot say, as one critic does: “In the absence of any other miracle, He left them this.”

The greater part of modern critics regard this scene as identical with that of Matthew 13. and Mark 6., placed by these evangelists at a much later period. They rely, 1 st, On the expression of surprise: Is not this the son of Joseph? and on the proverbial saying, Luke 4:24, which could not have been repeated twice within a few months; 2 d, On the absence of miracles common to the two narratives; 3 d, On the words of Luke 4:23, which suppose that Jesus had been labouring at Capernaum prior to this visit to Nazareth. But how in this case are the following differences to be explained? 1. In Matthew and Mark there is not a word about the attempt to put Jesus to death. All goes off peaceably to the very end. 2. Where are certain cases of healing recorded by Matthew (Matthew 13:58) and Mark (Mark 6:5) to be placed? Before the preaching? This is scarcely compatible with the words put into the mouth of the inhabitants of Nazareth (Luke 4:23, Luke). After the preaching? Luke's narrative absolutely excludes this supposition. 3. Matthew and Mark place the visit which they relate at the culminating point of the Galilaean ministry, and towards its close, whilst Luke commences his account of this ministry with the narrative which we have just been studying. An attempt has been made to explain this difference in two ways: Luke may have wished, in placing this narrative here, to make us see the reason which induced Jesus to settle at Capernaum instead of Nazareth (Bleek, Weizsäcker); or he may have made this scene the opening of Jesus' ministry, because it prefigures the rejection of the Jews and the salvation of the Gentiles, which is the leading idea of his book (Holtzmann). But how is such an arbitrary transposition to be harmonized with his intention of writing in order, so distinctly professed by Luke (Luke 1:4)? These difficulties have not yet been solved. Is it then impossible, that after a first attempt among His fellow-citizens at the beginning of His ministry, Jesus should have made a second later on? On the contrary, is it not quite natural that, before leaving Galilee for ever (and thus at the very time to which Matthew and Mark refer their account), He should have addressed Himself once more to the heart of His fellow-countrymen, and that, if He had again found it closed against Him, the shock would nevertheless have been less violent than at the first encounter? However this may be, if the two narratives refer to the same event, as present criticism decides, Luke's appears to me to deserve the preference, and for two reasons: 1. The very dramatic and detailed picture he has drawn leaves no room for doubting the accuracy and absolute originality of the source whence he derived his information; whilst the narratives of Matthew and Mark betray, by the absence of all distinctive features, their traditional origin. 2. John (John 4:4) cites, at the beginning of his account of the Galilaean ministry, the saying recorded by the three evangelists as to the rejection which every prophet must undergo from his own people. He quotes it as a maxim already previously announced by Jesus, and which had influenced from the first the course of His ministry. Now, as the three Syn. are agreed in referring this saying to a visit at Nazareth, this quotation in John clearly proves that the visit in question took place at the commencement (Luke), and not in the middle or at the end of the Galilaean ministry (Matthew and Mark). We are thus brought to the conclusions: 1. That the visit related by Luke is historical; 2. That the recollection of it was lost to tradition, in common with many other facts relating to the beginning of the ministry (marriage at Cana, etc.); 3. That it was followed by another towards the end of the Galilaean ministry, in the traditional account of which several incidents were introduced belonging to the former. As to the sojourn at Capernaum, implied in Luke 4:23, we have already seen that it is included in the general description, Luke 4:15. John 2:12 proves that from the first the attention of Jesus was drawn to this city as a suitable place in which to reside. His first disciples lived near it. The synagogue of Capernaum must then have been one of the first in which He preached, and consequently one of those mentioned in Luke 4:15.