eyond Jordan start from Jerusalem (x. 40), John shows that Jesus must
have returned to the capital after his withdrawal from the feast of
Tabernacles. When and how this took place is not indicated. Later, after
his retirement from the feast of Dedication Jesus hastened at the summons
of his friends from beyond Jordan to Bethany when Lazarus died (xi. 1-7).
From Bethany he went not to the other side of Jordan again, but to Ephraim
(xi. 54), a town on the border between Judea and Samaria, and from there
he started towards Jerusalem when the Passover drew near. This record of
John has, as Dr. Sanday has recently remarked (HastBD II. 630), so many
marks of verisimilitude that it must be accepted as a true tradition. It
demands thus that in our conception of the last journey from Galilee room
be found for several excursions to Jerusalem or its neighborhood. One of
these at least--to the feast of Dedication (x. 22)--represents another
effort to "gather the children of Jerusalem." While not without success,
for at least the blind man restored by Jesus gave him the full faith he
sought (ix. 35-38), it showed with fuller clearness the determined
hostility to Jesus of the influential class (x. 39).

168. It has been customary to find in the long section peculiar to Luke
(ix. 51 to xviii. 14) a fuller account of the Perean ministry, as it has
been called. For it opens with a final departure from Galilee, and comes
at its close into parallelism with the record of Matthew and Mark. Yet
some parts of this section in Luke belong in the earlier Galilean
ministry. The blasphemy of the Pharisees (xi. 14-36) is clearly identical
with the incident recorded in Mark iii. 22-30, and Matt. xii. 22-45; while
several incidents and discourses (see outline prefixed to Chapter III.)
bear so plainly the marks of the ministry before the revulsion of popular
favor, that it is easiest to think of them as actually belonging to the
earlier time, but assigned by Luke to this peculiar section because he
found no clear place offered for them in the record of Mark. Not a little,
however, of what Luke records here manifestly belongs to the time when
Jesus referred openly to his rejection by the Jewish people. The note of
tragedy characteristic of later discourses appears in the replies of Jesus
to certain would-be disciples (ix. 57-62), and in his warning that his
followers count the cost of discipleship (xiv. 25-35). The woes spoken at
a Pharisee's table (xi.