Luke 7:16-17

Vers. 16, 17. The Effect produced.

On the feeling of fear, see chap. Luke 5:8.

A great prophet: a greater than John the Baptist himself, a prophet of the first rank, such as Elijah or Moses. The second expression: God hath visited..., is more forcible still; it suggests more than it expresses. The expression: this saying [this rumour, A. V.], might be referred to the fame of the miracle which was immediately spread abroad. But the words περὶ αὐτοῦ, concerning Him, which depend, as in Luke 7:15, on λόγος οὗτος, rather incline us to refer this expression to the two preceding exclamations (Luke 7:16): “This manner of thinking and speaking about Jesus spread abroad.” It is an indication of progress in the development of the work of Jesus. In order to explain into Judaea, Keim (i. p. 72) unceremoniously says: Luke just makes Nain a city of Judaea. But the term ἐξήλθεν, literally: went out, signifies the very contrary; it intimates that these sayings, after having filled Galilee (their first sphere, understood without express mention), this time passed beyond this natural limit, and resounded as far as the country of Judaea, where they filled every mouth. There is no necessity, therefore, to give the word Judaea here the unusual meaning of the entire Holy Land, as Meyer and Bleek do. The reason why this detail is added, is not in any way what Köstlin's acute discernment surmised in order to build upon it the critical hypothesis that the narrative is of Judaean origin. These words are intended to form the transition to the following passage. John was in prison in the south of the Holy Land, in the neighbourhood of Judaea (in Peraea, in the castle of Machaerus, according to Josephus). The fame of the works of Jesus, therefore, only reached him in his prison by passing through Judaea. The words: and through out all the region round about, which refer especially to the Peraea, leave no doubt as to the intention of this remark of Luke. It forms the introduction to the following narrative.

There is a difficulty peculiar to this miracle, owing to the absence of all moral receptivity in the subject of it. Lazarus was a believer; in the case of the daughter of Jairus, the faith of the parents to a certain extent supplied the place of her personal faith. But here there is nothing of the kind. The only receptive element that can be imagined is the ardent desire of life with which this young man, the only son of a widowed mother, had doubtless yielded his last breath. And this, indeed, is sufficient. For it follows from this, that Jesus did not dispose of him arbitrarily. And as to faith, many facts prove that not in any miracle is it to be regarded as a dynamical factor, but only as a simple moral condition related to the spiritual aim which Jesus sets before Himself in performing the wonderful work.

Keim, fully sensible of the incompetency of any psychological explanation to account for such a miracle, has recourse to the mythical interpretation of Strauss in his first Life of Jesus. We are supposed to have here an imitation of the resurrection of dead persons in the Old Testament, particularly of that wrought by Elisha at Shunem, which is only a short league from Nain. These continual changes of expedients, with a view to get rid of the miracles, are not calculated to recommend rationalistic criticism. And we cannot forbear reminding ourselves here of what Baur urged with so much force against Strauss on the subject of the resurrection of Lazarus: that a myth that was a creation of the Christian consciousness must have been generally diffused, and not have been found in only one of our Gospels. Invention by the author (and consequently imposture) or history, is the only alternative.

From the omission of this miracle in Matthew and Mark, the advocates of the opinion that a proto-Mark was the common source of the Syn., conclude that this narrative was wanting in the primitive document, and that Luke added it from special sources. But if this were only a simple intercalation of Luke's, his narrative would coincide immediately afterwards with those of Mark and Matthew. Unfortunately there is no such coincidence. Matthew, after the cure of the centurion's servant, relates the cure of Peter's mother-in-law, and a number of incidents which have nothing in common with those which follow in Luke. And Mark, who has already omitted the preceding fact, although it should have been found, according to this hypothesis, in the proto-Mark, for that is where Matthew must have taken it from, does not fall, after this omission, into the series of facts related by Luke. After the day of the Sermon on the Mount, he places a series of incidents which have no connection with those that follow in Luke. And yet the boast is made, that the dependence of the three Syn. on a primitive Mark has been shown to demonstration! As to Bleek, who makes Mark depend on the other two, he does not even attempt to explain how Mark, having Luke before his eyes, omitted incidents of such importance.