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    iiugus narrative never goes back from the particular to the general , unless when it totally drops its subject ; while on the other hand , as a particular incident related by itself presents no satisfactory conclusion , the relater of such an incident always adcls jsome general clause . He instances in our popular stories , where , having conducted the hero and heroine through the detail of their difficulties to the period of their marriage , the author never finally

    dismisses them , without some general assurance to his readers of their subset quent happiness , p . 22 . The remark is certainly both acute and just , and it is a principal test by which Dr . S . endeavours to detect the termination of those separate , narratives of which he thinks the Gospel was composed . In applying it , however , there are two limitations which we think will take this passage at least from under its operation , namely , that this summing up of the subsequent history of a subordinate personage is by no means

    inconsistent with the continuity of the narrative as regards the leading character : and , secondly , that such a return from the particular to the general is by no means unnatural , when such a subordinate personage is dismissed even for a time , if the manner of his dismissal indicate the intention of recalling him at some future opportunity . Such appears to be the case here . The history of the birth of John is connected almost from the first with that of Jesus , and it is difficult to conceive that any narrator , after the mention of the circumstances , ch . i . 26—38 , 42 , should have concluded

    with the eightieth verse . The very words too , _ " and was in the wilderness fill the day of his manifestation to Israel , " indicate the intention of resuming his history at a future period . In what sense Dr . S ., who seems to have anticipated this objection , says , that the clause only breaks the chain of the narrative , ( p . 239 ) we are unable to discover . Again , to prove that the second chapter cannot have been originally composed continuously with the first , he observes , ( p . 24 , ) " that Joseph and Mary ' s residence in Nazareth

    and Joseph ' s descent from David are both mentioned a second time , ( ch . ii , 4 , ) in a manner evidentl y implying that we did not know those facts before . " Let the reader compare this mention of them with the first " In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent to a city of Galilee whose name was Nazareth 9 to a virgin whose name ivas Mary , betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph , of the house of David , " ch . u 25 , *• And Joseph went up from Galilee , from the city of Nazareth into Judea , to the city of David , which is called Bethlehem , ( because he was of the house and family of David , ) along

    with Mary his betrothed wife , " ch . n . 4 . Is not the distinction here evident between the manner of introducing objects and persons , in the first passage * and that of referring to them when already introduced , in the second ? How strange , too , in an independent narrative the mention of the circumstance , avv Mapct / A T ^ p jW , € jU . vijcrT £ V / L * ty 7 ) auT < jS y vvaiia , ovcy tytcvy , which , however , was quite natural from an author who had already given us the words of Ga * - brieLch . i . 35 . All the remainder of the first division he thinks separates

    itself into a series of originally unconnected narratives ; the birth and vision of the shepherds , ch . ii . 1—20 ; the presentation in the temple , ch . ii . 22—40 ; the dispute with the doctors in the temple , ch . ii . 41—52 ; observing that each of these terminates with clauses resembling that at cji . i . 80 . We readily admit that such clauses as the two last might have appeared unnatural in a biography of our Lord , which pursued the growth of his character and the history of his life from month to month and from year to year ; there would have appeared then no reason why the particular detail should be anticipated by a general remark ; but the actual case is very different . The

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    Reviewt + Schleierrnadher ' s Critical Essay on the Gospel of St . Luke . 37

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1827, page 37, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1792/page/37/