On the other hand, it does not follow that the arrangement of events within each section is chronological ; rather, the evangelist would cer- tainly seem to have here deserted the principle of temporal order for the principle of grouping. For instance, although his general scheme m l"-3' is borne out by the natural presumption that some miracles arresting public attention preceded in time the opposition offer^ to doctrine which miglit otherwise have passed unnoticed, yet it is hardly likely that all the miracles came first and all the teaching after. That is to say, the proba- bility that the episode of the ears or com really preceded all events from 3' onward, doea -"ot carry with it an equal probability that it preceded also the events of 3'"', or followed those of l''-2*'. Even if the sections aa wholes are in chronological order, the events within each section are obviously massed in groups.
b. St. Luke's account of the Ministry divides itself in the main into two well-marked portions, of which the first (4"-9°'') is parallel to the common tradition of the otlier Synoptists, while the second (9°'-19'^) is almost entirely peculiar ; and with this division corresponds a (seemingly methodical) arrangement of notes of place which serves as a setting for the liistory.
In the first portion, representing the Galilean ministry of the common tradition, the localities named are, with one exception, and that more apparent than real, exclusively Galilean : 4'* Gali- lee, '" Nazareth, ^' Capernaum ; 5' Lake of Genne- saret ; 7' Capernaum, " Nain ; 8"- Mary is of Magdala, and Joanna is wife of Herod's steward ; '^- ^ Lake of Galilee, with its opposite shore. Mention is made, as in St. Mark, of the gathering of hearers from Judita, Jerus., Tyre and Sidon, and of the fame of Christ's miracles ' in all Judica and the country round' (5" 6" 7"); but nowhere is our Lord himself removed from Galilee save in the single statement in 4" that he was ' preaching
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in the synagogues of Judiea ' : 'lovSaia^, k B C L Q R etc. ; I'aXiXalat, Textus liecejitus. Apolo''etic in- terest has detected here an * undesigned coinci- dence ' w-ith tlie Judiean ministry in St. John ; but the truth is that in this and some other passages St. Luke is using 'Judaea' in the extended sense of ' Palestine,' a term unfamiliar to NT and to the Ist cent. A.D. generally. When St. Luke VTote, the Kom. province, though it then included all Palestine except Upper Galilee, was still known only as Juda?a (Schiirer, JIJP I. ii. 257). Traces of this usage in his writings (side by side with the narrower sense in which Judaea was opposed to Samaria or Galilee) would be Ac 26''" 'Damascus, Jems., all the country of Juda;a and the Gentiles' ; Ac 10" ' throughout all Jud^a, begin- ning from Galilee,' and the similar phrase Lk 23' (cf. 6" 7"), in each of which cases 'all Juda-a' appears to mean Palestine. The phrase may have been used in 4" as a sort of comprehensive intro- duction to the Ministry ; and though it does not, toCidcm verbis, coniine our Lord to Galilee, it does not necessarily take him beyond its borders. The definite indications of the first half of the record are unanimously Galilean.
In sharp contrast with this, the section peculiar to St. Luke opens with the statement about Christ that ' as the days of his assumption were coming to the full, he set his face firmly to go to Jeru- salem ' ; 9^* iv T(^ ffvuTrXTipouadat rdt ij^^pai rijs dva- Xi)^ewt airroO. Again and again the same direction is emphasized in the remaining chapters. He is journeying through cities and villages, teaching and making his way to Jerus. 13-'' ; he passes through the midst of Samaria and Galilee on his journey to Jerus. 17" ; he is going up to Jerus. 18^' ; he is near Jerus. 19". It is clear that all these chapters, to the mind of the evangelist, represent a conscious working up (though not necessarily a direct journey) towards Jerus., and ' the filling up of the days of his a.ssumption ' is a phrase which cannot cover more than a tew months at the outside. Nor is there anything to suggest that, the second group of chapters being thus limited in duration, the previous group, which occupy a shorter space in the record, extended over any much longer period. Indeed it is not im- probable that St. Luke shared the view, widely spread from very early times, that confined the Ministry to a single year ; it is even possible that he himself, like so many of the readers of his Gospel, interpreted in this sense the reference preserved by him to Isaiah's prophecy of the 'acceptable year of the Lord' (Lk 4'"= Is 61').
c. St. John's Gospel distinguishes itself from the other three by its careful enumeration of six notes of time, hve of them Jewish festivals, between the Baptism and the Crucifixion ; and these precise ana detailed recollections of an eye- witness must be allowed decisive weight against the apparently divergent testimony of the third SjTioptist, not to say that their very precision may have consciously aimed at a silent correction of iniiiressions erroneously derived from earlier evangelical narratives.