Luke 7:1-10

2. The Centurion's Servant: Luke 7:1-10.

This was the most striking instance of faith that Jesus had met with up to this time; and what was more astonishing, He was indebted for this surprise to a Gentile. Jesus instantly perceives the deep significance of this unexpected incident, and cautiously indicates it in Luke 7:9, while in Matthew 8:11-12 it is expressed with less reserve. We should have expected the reverse, according to the dogmatic prepossessions which criticism imputes to our evangelists. It is obliged, therefore, to have recourse to the hypothesis of subsequent interpolations.

This cure is connected, in Matthew as well as in Luke, with the Sermon on the Mount. This resemblance in no way proves, as some think, a common written source. For, 1. The two passages are separated in Matthew by the healing of the leper, which Luke assigns to another time; 2. The narratives of the two evangelists present very considerable differences of detail; lastly, 3. There was nothing to prevent certain groups of narrative, more or less fixed, being formed in the oral teaching of the gospel, which passed in this way into our written narratives. As to Mark, he omits this miracle, an omission difficult to account for, if he copied Matthew and Luke (Bleek), and equally difficult if, with them, he derived his narrative from an original Mark (Ewald and Holtzmann). Holtzmann (p. 78), with Ewald, thinks that “if he cut out the Sermon on the Mount, he might easily omit also the passage which follows, and which opens a new section.” But on other occasions it is asserted that Mark purposely omits the discourses, to make room for facts. Now, are we not here concerned with a fact? Bleek does not even attempt to explain this omission.