a 5—20,
“Ti µε λέγεις ἀγαθόν; οὐδεὶς dyads, εἰ μὴ εἷς, ὁ Θεός.ὶ θέλεις εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν ζωήν," !' τήρησον ὃ τὰς ἐντολάς.
A , a? c αὐτῷ, “em Ποίας; O Se
porxevcets* οὗ κλέψεις' οὐ eudopaptupyaets -
249
ei δὲ 18. ΛέγειΙ Ch, xxiii.
2 3; XXVili.
*Ingods εἶπε, “Td, οὐ φονεύσεις’ ου 20(insense
5 , ofobserve). IQ. τιµα τονπι ee xxil.
πατέρα cout καὶ τὴν pytépa* καί, ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς
. 5 σεαυτογ.
20. Λέγει αὐτῷ 6 νεανίσκος, '' Πάντα ταῦτα ὃ ἐφυλαξά-
1 For the clause ‘re µε λεγεις . . . θεος in T. Κ., BDL, many verss. (including Syr. Cur. and Sin.) Orig. read τι µε ερωτας περι του αγαθον; εἰς εστιν ο αγαθος,
which the R. V. and most modern editors adopt.
probably responsible for the T. R. 2 SSBCDL place euoedOer after ζωην. Στηρει in BD.
but it is implied; of course it was some- thing good that would have to be done in order to obtain eternal life. What good shallJ do? Fritzsche takes this as not = quid boni faciam? but = quid, quod bonum sit, faciam? that is, not = what particular good action shall, etc., but = what in the name of good, etc. This is probably right. The man wants to know what the good really is. .
that by doing it he may attain eternal life. It was a natural question for a thoughtful man in those days when the teaching and practice of the religious guides made it the hardest thing possible to know what the good really was. Itis a mistake to conceive of this man as asking what specially good thing he might do in the spirit of the type of Pharisee who was always asking, What is my duty and I will do it? (Schdottgen). Would Jesus have loved such a man, or would such a man have left His presence
sorrowful ὃ---ζωὴν αἰώνιον: an alternative
name for the summum bonum in Christ’s teaching, and also in current Jewish speech (Wiinsche, Beitrdge). The King- dom of God is the more common in the Synoptics, the other in the fourth Gospel. —Ver.17. ‘ti µε ἐρωτάς, etc. : it seems as if Jesus thought the question super- fluous (so Weiss and Meyer), but this was only a teacher’s way of leading on a pupil = ‘‘of course there is only one answer to that: God is the one good being, and His revealed will shows us the good He would have us do”. A familiar old truth, yet new as Christ meant it. How opposed to current teaching we know from Mt. xv. 4-9.— εἰ δὲ θέλεις, etc., but, to answer your question directly, 15, εἰο.----τήρ-ει (-ησον) τ. év.; a vaguer direction then than it seems to us now. We now think only
“N8BCD omit σον.
Harmonistic assimilation is
5 παντα παντα in BD.
of the Ten Words. Then there were many commands of God besides these; and many more still of the scribes, hence most naturally the following ques- tion.—Ver. 18. molas; not =Tivas (Grotius), but what sort of commands: out of the multitude of commands divine and human, which do you mean? He had a shrewd guess doubtless, but wanted to be sure. Christ’s reply follows in this and subsequent verse, quoting in direct form prefaced with τό the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and fifth commands of the Decalogue with that to love a neighbour as ourselves from Lev. xix. 18. This last Origen τε- garded as an interpolation, and Weiss thinks that the evangelist has introduced it from xxii. 39 as one that could not be left out. Ifit be omitted the list ends with the fifth, a significantly emphatic position, reminding us of Mt. xv. 4, and giving to the whole list an antithetic reference to the teaching of the scribes. In sending the inquirer to the second table of the Decalogue as the sum of duty, Jesus gave an instruction anything but common- place, though it seem so tous. He was proclaiming the supremacy of the ethical, a most important second lesson for the inquirer, the first being the necessity of using moral epithets care- fully and sincerely. From the answer given to this second lesson it will appear whereabouts the inquirer is, a point Jesus desired to ascertain.