Chapter LXXIX.—Of the Concord Between Matthew, Mark, and John in Their Notices
of the Supper at Bethany, at Which the Woman Poured the Precious Ointment on the Lord,
and of the Method in Which These Accounts are to Be Harmonized with that of Luke, When
He Records an Incident of a Similar Nature at a Different Period.
154. Matthew, then, continuing his narrative from the point up to which we had con-
cluded its examination, proceeds in the following terms: “Then assembled together the chief
priests and the elders of the people unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caia-
phas, and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty and kill Him: but they said, Not
on the feast-day, lest there be an uproar among the people. Now when Jesus was in Bethany,
in the house of Simon the leper, there came unto Him a woman having an alabaster box of
precious ointment, and poured it on His head as He sat at meat;” and so on down to the
words, “there shall also this that this woman hath done be told for a memorial of her.”1209
The scene with the woman and the costly ointment at Bethany we have now to consider, as
it is thus detailed. For although Luke records an incident resembling this, and although the
name which he assigns to the person in whose house the Lord was supping might also suggest
an identity between the two narratives (for Luke likewise names the host “Simon”), still,
since there is nothing either in nature or in the customs of men to make the case an incredible
one, that as one man may have two names, two men may with all the greater likelihood have
one and the same name, it is more reasonable to believe that the Simon in whose house [it
is thus supposed, according to Luke’s version, that] this scene at Bethany took place, was a
different person from the Simon [named by Matthew]. For Luke, again, does not specify
Bethany as the place where the incident which he records happened. And although it is true
that he in no way particularizes the town or village in which that occurrence took place, still
his narrative does not seem to deal with the same locality. Consequently, my opinion is,
that there is but one interpretation to be put upon the matter. That is not, however, to suppose
that the woman who appears in Matthew was an entirely different person from the woman
who approached the feet of Jesus on that occasion in the character of a sinner, and kissed
them, and washed them with her tears, and wiped them with her hair, and anointed them
with ointment, in reference to whose case Jesus also made use of the parable of the two
debtors, and said that her sins, which were many, were forgiven her because she loved much.
But my theory is, that it was the same Mary who did this deed on two separate occasions,
the one being that which Luke has put on record, when she approached Him first of all in
that remarkable humility, and with those tears, and obtained the forgiveness of her sins.1210
1209 Matt. xxvi. 3–13.
1210 Luke vii. 36–50. [This identification of Mary of Bethany with the woman spoken of by Luke is part of
the process by which the latter is assumed to be Mary Magdalene. The occasions were different, and it is far
more likely that there were two women, neither of them Mary Magdalene.—R.]
Of the Concord Between Matthew, Mark, and John in Their Notices of the Supper at Bethany, at Which the Woman Poured the Precious Ointment on the Lord, and of the Method in Which These Accounts are to Be Harmonized with that of Luke, When He Records an Incident of a Similar Nature at a Different Period.
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Of the Concord Between Matthew, Mark, and John in Their Notices of the Supper…