Luke 9:6

3 d. Luke 9:6. The Result. Διά, in διήρχοντο (they went through), has for its complement the country in general, and denotes the extent of their mission. Κατά, which is distributive, expresses the accomplishment of it in detail: “staying in every little town.”

Only Mark makes mention here of the use of oil in healing the sick, a remarkable circumstance, with which the precept, James 5:14, is probably connected. In Matthew, the discourse absorbs the attention of the historian to such a degree, that he does not say a word, at the end of chap. 10, about the execution of their mission.

This short address, giving the Twelve their instructions, is only the preamble in Matthew (chap. 10) to a much more extended discourse, in which Jesus addresses the apostles respecting their future ministry in general. Under the influence of his fixed idea, Baur maintains that Luke purposely abridged the discourse in Matthew, in order to diminish the importance of the mission of the Twelve, and bring out in bolder relief that of the seventy disciples (Luke 10) “We see,” he says, “that every word here, so to speak, is too much for the evangelist” (Evangel. p. 435). But, 1. If Luke had been animated by the jealous feeling which this criticism imputes to him, and so had allowed himself to tamper with the history, would he have put the election of the Twelve (chap. 6), as distinct from their first mission, into such prominence, when Matthew appears to confound these two events (Luke 10:1-4)? Would he mention so expressly the success of their mission, as he does, Luke 9:6, while Matthew himself preserves complete silence upon this point? It is fortunate for Luke that their respective parts were not changed, as they might have been, and very innocently, so far as he is concerned. He would have had to pay smartly for his omission in the hands of such critics! 2. Mark (Mark 6:8-10) gives this discourse in exactly the same form as Luke, and not at all after Matthew's manner; he, however, is not suspected of any antipathy to the Twelve. It follows from this, that Mark and Luke have simply given the discourse as they found it, either in a common document (the primitive Mark, according to Holtzmann), or in documents of a very similar character, to which they had access. There is sufficient proof, from a comparison of Luke 9:6 in Luke with Luke 9:13 in Mark, that of these two suppositions the latter must be preferred. 3. We may add, lastly, that in the discourse on the apostolate (Matthew 10) it is easy to recognise the same characteristics already observed in the Sermon on the Mount. It is a composition of a didactic nature on a definite subject, in which fragments of very different discourses, speaking chronologically, are collected into a single discourse. “The instructions it contains,” Holtzmann rightly observes (p. 183), “go far beyond the actual situation, and imply a much more advanced state of things....” Bleek, Ewald, and Hilgenfeld also recognise the more evident indications of anticipation. We find the true place for the greater part of the passages grouped together in Matthew, under the heading, general instructions on the apostolate, in Luke 12:21.

For all these reasons, we regard the accusation brought against Luke respecting this discourse as scientifically untenable.