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Mat_26:6 ff. This anointing, which is also recorded in Mar_14:3 ff. (followed by Matthew), is not the same as that of Luk_7:36 ff., but is so essentially different from it, not only as to the time, place, circumstances, and person, but as to the whole historical and ethical connection and import, that even the peculiar character of the incident is not sufficient to warrant the assumption that each case is but another version of one and the same story (in opposition to Chrysostom, Grotius, Schleiermacher, Schr. d. Luk. p. 110 ff.; Strauss, Weisse, Hug, Ewald, Bleek, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Schenkel, Keim). This, however, is not a different incident (in opposition to Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, Theophylact, Euthymius Zigabenus, Osiander, Lightfoot, Wolf) from that recorded in Joh_12:1 ff.[23] The deviations in John’s account of the affair—to the effect that the anointing took place not two, but six days before the feast; that Martha was the entertainer, no mention being made of Simon; that it was not the head, but the feet of Jesus that were anointed; and that the carping about extravagance is specially ascribed to Judas—are not to be disposed of by arbitrarily assuming that the accounts of the different evangelists were intended to supplement each other (Ebrard, Wichelhaus, Lange), but are to be taken as justifying the inference that in John alone (not in Matthew and Mark) we have the narrative of an eye-witness. The incident, as given in Matthew and Mark, appears to be an episode taken from a tradition which had lost its freshness and purity, and inserted without exact historical connection, although, on the whole, in its right order, if with less regard to precision as to the time of its occurrence. Hence the loose place it occupies in the pragmatism of the passage, from which one might imagine it removed altogether, without the connection being injured in the slightest degree. The tradition on which the narrative of Matthew and Mark is based had evidently suffered in its purity from getting mixed up with certain disturbing elements from the first version of the story of the anointing in Luke 7, among which elements we may include the statement that the name of the entertainer was Simon.
[23] On the controversy in which Faber Stapul. has been involved in consequence of his theory that Jesus had been anointed by three different Marys, see Graf in Niedner’s Zeitschr. f. histor. Theol. 1852, I. p. 54 ff. This distinguishing of three Marys (which was also adopted by so early an expositor as Euthymius Zigabenus, and by τινές , to whom Theophylact refers) is, in fact, rather too much at variance with the tradition that the sister of Lazarus is identical with the woman who was a sinner, Luke 7, and was no other than Mary Magdalene. Yet in none of the three accounts of anointing is this latter to be understood as the Mary referred to.
Mat_26:6. Γενομ . ἐν Βηθαν ] i.e. having come to Bethany, 2Ti_1:17; Joh_6:25, and frequently in classical writers; comp. on Php_2:7. To remove this visit back to a point of time previous to that indicated at Mat_26:2, with the effect of simply destroying the sequence (Ebrard, Lange), is to do such harmonistic violence to the order observed in Matthew and Mark as the τότε of Mat_26:14 should have been sufficient to avert.
Σίμωνος τοῦ λεπροῦ ] In a way no less unwarrantable has the person here referred to (a person who had formerly been a leper, and who, after his healing, effected probably by Jesus, had continued to be known by this epithet) been associated with the family of Bethany; he has been supposed to have been the deceased father of this family (Theophylact, Ewald, Gesch. Chr. p. 481), or some other relative or friend (Grotius, Kuinoel, Ebrard, Lange, Bleek), or the owner of the house. Of the person who, according to Matthew and Mark, provided this entertainment, nothing further is known; whereas, according to John, the entertainment was given by the family of which Lazarus was a member; the latter is the correct view, the former is based upon the similar incident recorded in Luke 7.