Luke 7:36-50

The sinful woman. This section, peculiar to Lk., one of the golden evangelic incidents we owe to him, is introduced here with much tact, as it serves to illustrate how Jesus came to be called the friend of publicans and sinners, and to be calumniated as such, and at the same time to show the true nature of the relations He sustained to these classes. It serves further to exhibit Jesus as One whose genial, gracious spirit could bridge gulfs of social cleavage, and make Him the friend, not of one class only, but of all classes, the friend of man, not merely of the degraded. Lk. would not have his readers imagine that Jesus dined only with such people as He met in Levi's house. In Lk.'s pages Jesus dines with Pharisees also, here and on two other occasions. This is a distinctive feature in his portraiture of Jesus, characteristic of his irenical cosmopolitan disposition. It has often been maintained that this narrative is simply the story of Mary of Bethany remodelled so as to teach new lessons. But, as will appear, there are original features in it which, even in the judgment of Holtzmann (H. C.), make it probable that two incidents of the kind occurred.