But however that may be, we have to note that for M. Loisy the promise of reward at the judgment for help given to the distressed is not a Jesuine utterance. It occurs only in Matthew; and we may readily agree that, if such an allocution were really delivered by the alleged Founder, it could not conceivably have been left to one collector to preserve it. "The redactor of the first Gospel," comments M. Loisy in his best critical vein, "thought he ought to put this here to complete his collection of instructions concerning the parousia and the great judgment. It is ... a piece in which is developed, from the point of view of the last judgment, the word of the Lord: 'He that receiveth you receiveth me.'" So that a teaching which still makes a great impression on the Christian consciousness is confessedly but a development by an unknown hand of a bare Messianic phrase. "It has been visibly arranged to close the compilation of discourses and parables made here by the redactor of the first Gospel." [192]
Yet when we come to the parable of the Good Samaritan, which occurs only in Luke, and which also cannot be conceived as being deliberately omitted by the previous evangelists if it had been uttered by the Master, M. Loisy indulges in a very long discourse that reads like a preserved sermon, only to conclude that "the parable of the Samaritan thus offers itself as one of the most authentic testimonies [un témoignage authentique entre tous] of the teaching of Jesus. It is clear that the evangelist has not invented it, but that he has found it ready made, and that he has only given it a frame, in his fashion." [193] It is with a certain embarrassment over the spectacle of a good scholar's divagation that one proceeds to point to the absolute non sequitur in M. Loisy's comment. Supposing we agree that the evangelist found the parable ready made, wherein is this case differentiated from that of the passage in Matthew last noted? That is at least as likely to have been found ready made; yet it is not in that case claimed by M. Loisy that the passage is therefore a record of a real Jesuine utterance. He sees that it is a "patch," a development.
Now, the parable of the Good Samaritan is a plain documentary "patch," an insertion without context, between the address of Jesus to the disciples after that to the returned Seventy (whose mission M. Loisy had somewhat nervously dismissed as the evangelist's "figurative frame for the evangelizing of the pagans" [194]) and the resumption: "Now, as they went on their way...." It is impossible to imagine a more palpable insertion. First the mythic Seventy, the creation of a Gentilizing Christian, make their report on the exact lines of the report of the Twelve; then Jesus addresses them; then he "rejoices in the Holy Spirit." Then, "turning to the disciples, he said privately, Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see...." This last suggests an earlier allocution to the Twelve which has had to be turned into a "private" speech to them to distinguish it from the reply to the Seventy. [195] But however that may be, the natural sequel is verse 38, "Now, as they went on their way...." And it is between these points of natural connection that we get the parable episode beginning: "And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him...."