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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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gent inquiries in Galilee and the Persea , to which regions alone , for obvious reasons , his opportunities of investigation would be likely to extend . That arrangement would naturally be framed in the order of time , as far as he had a clear and decided knowledge of it ; but in his circumstances it would be impossible but that ( even if he considered the order of time as of great moment ) he must often be satisfied with other principles of connexion , such as
those of subject , and of cause and effect . Not unfrequently , too , as respects the words of Christ , he could only have possessed some of the many precious records which the disciples must , in various places , have made of sayings that , at different times , they had heard from his own lips , or which they had heard retraced together , though not originally so delivered , in the discourses of the Apostles or of the Seventy . That this view of the matter accords not only with the actual phenomena of the Gospel by Luke , but also
with the circumstances in which we have , historically , reason to believe he did actually compile his Gospel , is a corroborative evidence for its genuineness , and , consequently , for its credibility . No person , not circumstanced as we have abundant reason from the introduction to the Gospel , and from the book of Acts , to suppose that Luke was , could have framed a Record like that which we owe , under the blessing of God , to his faithful , intelligent , and zealous inquiries .
Few persons , we apprehend , going to the Gospel of Luke without any critical inferences from the expression / ca&ef ^ , in order 9 an a regular series 9 and without any impressions from the assertions of critics , would infer from the Gospel itself that Luke did write in strict chronological order : it does not present those specifications as to time and place , which in regular annals we might reasonably expect to find , and which St . Luke does give us when he knew them , e . g . in ch . iii . 1 , 2 , vi . 1 , ix . 51 . We know from St . Matthew , the place where the paralytic was cured , viz . Capernaum ; and we know also that it was on Christ ' s return from the cure of the Gadarene
demoniacs , and just before he was himself called to attend our Lord ' s ministry ; but Luke , though he mentions circumstances which Matthew does not , speaks of it ( ch . v . 17 ) as being " on a certain day , ' and gives no clue to the place where it was taught : and the attentive reader will find several other similar indications of his not possessing all the information as to time and place which we can derive from the other Gospels ; though , on the other hand , in some instances he supplies us , from personal witnesses , with more definite specification than the others give . But whatever doubt may be felt on this point respecting the former part of his records of Christ's
Ministry , it is , we conceive , impossible to form any arrangement of the portion between ch . x . 57 , and xviii . 15 , ( i . e . between our Lord's quitting Galilee , and his near approach to Judsea , ) which can accord wiih the order of time . For the present we will only observe , ( 1 ) that on that journey he could not have taught his disciples the brief grayer recorded in Luke xi ., * nor could they have applied for such instructions after the Discourse on the Mount ; and ( 2 ) our Lord could not , during that journey , have sent forth the Seventy , and received them back from their mission .
• See the true reading in Griesbach , or in our present volume , p . 37 .
Untitled Article
314 On the Chronology and Arrangement of the Gospel Narratives .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1831, page 314, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2597/page/26/
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