THE GOSPELS
It is now necessary to turn our attention to the Gospels, and to study the evidence as to when and how the gospel story was written. A large number of books have been devoted to this subject, and a considerable measure of agreement has been arrived at concerning the authorship and dates of publication of these books. Here it will be possible only briefly to summarize the salient facts generally accepted by all competent commentators.
It is not until about the middle of the second century that we begin to find references to any documents which could correspond to our present Canonical Gospels, and it is still doubtful whether the earliest of these documents were the same as our present Gospels, or only earlier editions upon which these Gospels were founded.
It is said that Papias referred in some letters (since lost), written in the first half or middle of the second century, to St. Mark's "Memoirs of Jesus," which Papias stated were derived from St. Peter, and to some "Sayings of Jesus" written by St. Matthew in Aramaic, which Papias said that "each one of us has translated as best he could." Papias was Bishop of Hierapolis, and none of his writings survive except in the form of alleged quotations made by Eusebius about 150 years later. It should be noted that, even if the testimony of Eusebius is accepted as accurate, these "Memoirs" and these "Sayings" are first heard of only when at least one hundred years have elapsed after the date assigned to Jesus, and that-assuming the latest possible dates for the deaths of the disciples-no eye-witness of the events related could have been alive at the time when the first mention of these books was made. It can hardly be claimed that a three-generation-old tradition is absolutely reliable.
Moreover, Papias is said to have published or spoken of "An Interpretation (or Exposition) of the Sayings of the Lord," so this translation of Matthew's Aramaic collection of precepts could have had no pretensions to verbal accuracy, even in its original form, and still less so when it eventually took the form of the Greek texts, whence our Gospel according to St. Matthew was derived.
Papias himself, according to Eusebius, recorded that he preferred oral tradition to any books; that the Mark "Memoirs" were "short and incomplete," being composed from the recollections of Peter as jotted down at various times and in no regular order by the latter's interpreter Mark; and that the "Logia" (Sayings) of Matthew were translated by every man to the best of his ability- evidently with considerable divergence of result.
There is no evidence of any kind for any earlier existence of any books resembling the Gospels; so, even if we give full credit to this second-hand evidence of Eusebius, there was, in the middle of the first half of the second century, no trace of any gospel story except some short Memoirs, upon which the present Mark was based, and those "Logia" or " Sayings of Jesus," written in Aramaic, which were afterwards used as the basis of the Greek Matthew. Eusebius also informs us that Hegesippus, who lived in the second half and towards the end of the second century, stated that he himself used the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" and other works current at that time, which are now classed as apocryphal.
So the orthodox Christian Hegesippus appears, on the evidence of the Church Father, Eusebius, to have been unacquainted with any of our Canonical Gospels, or certainly-if he did know of them-not to have regarded them as authoritative or important, since, although he freely quotes the Apocrypha in support of his doctrines, he does not ever mention one of our Canonical Gospels- a most extraordinary omission on his part if these Gospels were in existence and were believed to have been written by the persons whose names they now bear. Unwritten tradition, though 150 years had elapsed since the events of which he writes were alleged to have taken place, Hegesippus regards as being of the utmost importance; written stories of very little.
Justin Martyr, writing about 150 A.D., mentions some "Memoirs of the Apostles," but gives no names to show us to which of the Apostles he is referring. He, too, appears not to have been acquainted with any of our Canonical Gospels.
Taking into consideration these and many other similar facts, most commentators are agreed that our present Gospels were unknown until the second century was well advanced. A few theologians still maintain that they were first published at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second; but by far the greater number of critics assign their first appearance to the period between the years 120 and 150, or still later.
That the early Christians expected the second coming of their Lord during their own lifetime, and therefore felt no necessity for recording in writing the sayings and acts which were reported by word of mouth, might partly explain the delay in committing the story to writing; but the consequence of this delay, whatever its cause, must have been that, even with the most honest desire for putting down the truth and for distinguishing the truth from what was only report and romance, much must have crept into the story which was added by various Christians, who were not contemporaries of the eye-witnesses, either as their own ideas of what was right and probable, or as popular stories, evolved by rumour and brought to their notice. Any one who has any acquaintance with contemporary writings knows how freely the authors of that age gave rein to their imagination, and how what was considered suitable ranked equal with what really happened. After the lapse of three or four generations the story would lose nothing of romance nor of the miraculous in the telling, but would gain much of those ornaments of literature, but bugbears of history.
According to the Gospels themselves, the disciples who actually heard the message given were frequently rebuked by Jesus himself in his lifetime, because they misunderstood the words he uttered; and, even if the gospel story itself is an absolutely accurate record of events and speeches, these disciples altogether misunderstood the Messianic idea, and expected the Hebrew prophecies to be fulfilled and the return of Jesus as a King to reign over Israel and all other nations. When Jesus returned, in the immediate future, to set up this kingdom upon earth, they would-they expected-be his ministers, great officials governing part of his dominions. And the generation which succeeded the disciples were certainly mistaken about some matters, notably about this second coming which they so confidently expected in their own lifetime. How much more liable to error must the authors of these Gospels, written so long after the events they relate, have been! We are not, however, at present concerned with the possibility of error so much as with the questions of dates and authorship of these books.
As regards the Synoptic Gospels, scholars and critics are in a great measure agreed upon the main features of their immediate origins.
Mark was the earliest of these Gospels, and Matthew and Luke were written by men who had access to the Gospel according to St. Mark, and who copied large portions of it verbatim into their own histories; but both Matthew and Luke made considerable additions to Mark, and notably both introduce the story of the Virgin Birth, to which Mark makes no reference whatever.
But the chief additions, besides the Virgin Birth story, made by Matthew and Luke to Mark's Gospel consist of sayings of Jesus; and Biblical scholars attribute these additions to the traditional "Logia" of Matthew-those "Precepts of Jesus" written in Aramaic to which we have already referred. There are, however, other additions, made by both Matthew and Luke, which cannot be assigned to these Aramaic Logia, and which must therefore have been obtained from some other source or sources. The sources of these additions, common to both Matthew and Luke, are impossible to trace, and are now always referred by Biblical commentators to "Q," the unknown Quelle or source.
Our difficulties in dealing with the Gospels are enhanced by the textual alterations and additions which took place before they reached their present forms. Origen, as early as the third century, writes of the numerous corruptions which had crept into the texts, and there is no doubt that the earliest manuscripts which have come down to us represent interpolated and amended versions of the original documents, and differ to a more or less considerable extent from those originals themselves. The copyists of those days appear to have been in the habit of making marginal comments, references, and additions to their texts, and these notes were frequently, if not usually, incorporated into the text by the next copyist who had the manuscript.
St. Jerome, in the fourth century, tells us that there were as many different versions of Matthew's Gospel as there were manuscripts. Celsus complained that the Christians had re-written and altered their original Gospels. Our oldest manuscripts of the New Testament books are fourth-century versions, and even these were, by the compilers of our Bible, in some cases set aside in favour of still later versions. The end of Mark is an example of such an addition, the oldest manuscripts ending with chap. xv, and other manuscripts at various points before the end of chap. xvi. St. Mark, in fact, refers neither to the Virgin Birth nor to any appearances of Jesus after the Resurrection, but an account of the latter was added to his Gospel by some later hand, who probably obtained his materials from Luke.
The author of Mark's Gospel was supposed to be the Mark who was a follower of Peter, and would therefore have imbibed the teaching of that disciple; but, in view of the fact that the Gospel was unknown until long after all the attendants upon Peter must have been dead, it could hardly have been the work of the Evangelist to whom it was traditionally ascribed. This traditional ascription comes from Papias through Eusebius. According to the latter, Papias stated that the Presbyter John-a person of whom nothing else is known-told him that Mark wrote whatever he could remember of what Peter had taught about the acts and words of "the Lord." Later Fathers of the Church attempted to fortify this fourth-hand tradition by slightly varying the statement of Eusebius. Thus Fathers later in time than Eusebius, referring to his statement about Papias, improve upon its actual words by stating that they conveyed the meaning that Peter dictated and edited the Gospel, with whose contents he was made acquainted by a communication from the Holy Ghost!
However, since the time of Eusebius (about 300 A.D.) the Gospel according to St. Mark was always, by the orthodox, attributed to the "interpreter" of the disciple Peter. But against this fourth-hand evidence must be placed the internal evidence of the Gospel itself. The internal evidence is strongly against this Gospel having been written by any follower of Peter. Many of the principal episodes related about that disciple in the Gospels according to St. Matthew and according to St. Luke are altogether omitted in Mark, or so described as greatly to minimize Peter's part in them.
Again, according to Eusebius' account of what Papias reported, Mark "did not arrange in order the things which were either said or done by Christ," since he wrote down what he heard at discourses delivered by Peter on various occasions, which discourses were adapted for the occasions when they were spoken, and were therefore not consecutive nor in chronological order. Thus our present Mark (and to the earliest manuscripts of Mark the observation equally applies) is evidently not identical with the Mark to which Papias referred, as our Mark is a consecutive story and his was a collection of scattered episodes. It is consequently considered certain that the present Mark is not the work referred to by Papias, but that it is-even in its earliest extant form- another work, written by an author who appropriated the name of Mark; and it is probable that the work to which Papias referred may have been the once canonical work called "The Preaching of Peter," which is now lost. If this is the case, the argument for Mark being even as early as the middle of the first half of the second century falls to the ground, though the argument that Mark was the first of the synoptics remains as sound as ever.
The date of our Mark might be very much later than that assigned to it on the strength of Papias' statement about his Mark, as, apart from that statement as reported by Eusebius, there is no trace of Mark until much later in the second century. However, the Gospel according to St. Mark is, whoever wrote it and whenever it was written, generally accepted as the earliest of those accounts of the life of Jesus which have come down to us, and not even the most orthodox of theologians claim that its author was an eye-witness of the things he relates.
After Mark the next Gospel to appear-so it is generally believed-was Matthew. Now, the Matthew of which Papias is said to have spoken was an Aramaic collection of "Sayings," and therefore cannot be identical with the consecutive history of acts as well as of sayings which we now know as Matthew-a Gospel admittedly written originally in Greek, and not a translation from any other language. Judging from the silence about Matthew of those who mention the books in use by the Churches of their day, our Matthew must be of very much later date than the time of Papias. There may indeed have been towards the end of the life of Papias a Hebrew "Gospel according to St. Matthew," which might perhaps be identical with the in-those-days very popular "Gospel according to the Hebrews," but there is no evidence, and very little probability, that our present Matthew corresponds in any way with that book.
Jerome, another of the accepted Fathers of the Church, writing about 392 A.D., claimed to have been in possession of a copy of the original Aramaic Matthew, and to have translated it into both Greek and Latin, but naively acknowledges that he refrained from publishing this original Matthew because it was better not to allow the general public to know how widely it differed from the canonical Matthew. It is unnecessary to enter at greater length into the problems about the authorship and date of this Gospel, as it is now acknowledged by all commentators that our present Matthew was not written by the disciple of that name, and that neither its author nor its date is known. These problems have been referred to only for the purpose of demonstrating, to those who have not previously studied such questions, the nature of the evidence which has to be taken into consideration before arriving at any conclusions. The evidence is discussed at great length in a large number of works. Here we can only state the conclusion arrived at by those qualified to judge, and indicate rather than discuss the reasons they have for coming to those conclusions.
It is generally believed that, soon after the publication of Matthew, the Gospel attributed to Luke, the travailing companion of Paul, also made its first appearance. That Luke, the attendant on Paul, could not have written this book is now generally admitted. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch during the first quarter of the second century, writing on the Resurrection, makes no mention of, or quotation from, Luke, though Luke's account of the appearances after the Resurrection would have supplied him with exactly the kind of argument he required. Either Ignatius was not acquainted with the Gospel according to Luke, or, being acquainted with it, did not consider it authoritative enough to be quoted in argument. Yet Luke is said to have been a native of Antioch, and his Gospel would, if that were the case, have presumably been known there as early as elsewhere.
That Papias knew nothing of Luke is certain, as Eusebius, when endeavouring to make out the best case he could for the authenticity of the Canonical Gospels, quotes Papias' statements about the books in use in his diocese only in support of Mark and of Matthew's "Logia."
Justin Martyr appears to have been ignorant of the existence of any such Gospel, but Marcion-afterwards labelled as a heretic-and Irenaeus, who lived in the second half of the second century, both had versions of it.
The first appearance of Luke, the last of the Synoptic Gospels, can therefore be dated with a high degree of probability at the middle of the second century; but, as we shall see later, this original Luke almost certainly differed in some important particulars from our present Luke.
As a very rough guide, we can take the dates of the first appearance of the original versions of these three Gospels as Mark 120, Matthew 135, and Luke 140; but many years must have elapsed after those dates before the Synoptic Gospels took the exact form in which we now know them.
We now come to the fourth and last of our Canonical Gospels-that "according to St. John." This Gospel may have been published about the year 170, as Theophilus, who was made Bishop of Antioch at that time, is said to have quoted it. But even if it did appear so early as this, it did not immediately obtain any authoritative position, as orthodox Christian writers do not until much later refer to it as a book in use in their Churches.
Papias, bishop of a Church said by tradition to have been founded by the disciple St. John, would presumably have known of any Gospel written by the latter had it existed, and would not have spoken of written records as inferior to tradition had he known of the existence of any Gospel written by the beloved disciple of Jesus.
Marcion, who knew the originals of the three Synoptics, which he speaks of as having already been considerably altered-chiefly, it appears, with a view of introducing Old Testament prophetical correspondences-never mentions John.
In view of these facts, it is certain that the disciple John could not have written the book, and indeed the author or authors, by using the third person in verse 24 of chapter xxi and by saying "We know that his testimony is true," avow that their work is intended as a record of some one else's testimony. We have no means, except from the internal evidence of the work, of testing their claim to record the testimony of an eye-witness, or of checking the quantity of the embellishments which they may have added to that testimony; but, having in view the lateness of date and the habits of contemporary pseudonymous authors, we must regard their claim with some suspicion.
In spite of such statements as that above quoted, in spite of no claim being made in the book itself to a firsthand apostolic origin, and in spite of its doctrines-so incompatible with an apostolic origin and with the character of St. John as depicted in other books-this Gospel was for hundreds of years attributed by theologians to John, "the beloved disciple." Few things show better how blindly and uncritically tradition was for long accepted.
The most interesting and important point to notice about John is, after all, not the exact date of its appearance, but the fact that it embodies a Christian doctrine entirely different from that of the Synoptic Gospels.
The first fourteen verses of the Gospel set forth the doctrine of "the Word made Flesh." To this Word or Logos of the Gnostics we have already referred. The Logos doctrine, derived from the Greeks and originating in some still older civilization, has its counterparts in Hindu and other Eastern philosophies. It is simply a philosophic conception of a Spirit of Goodness and Wisdom which emanates from the Supreme God, his word and law poetically personified as the Holy Spirit. It is kindred to the Messenger idea such as Mercury represented, and by the century before the beginnings of Christianity the doctrine had been highly developed. The Logos, as conceived at that period by such philosophers or metaphysicians as Philo the Jew, was a spirit, vaguely personified, as all abstractions have at some time or other been by the ancients. The Logos, according to Philo, was the "Son of God," the "Image of God," the "First Begotten of God," the "Second God," the "Instrument whereby all things were created," a "Portion of God," a "Messenger from God," an "Advocate with God for humanity," the "Physician," the "Shepherd," the "Rock of Refuge," the "Well-beloved Child of God," the "High Priest of God," and many other things which were afterwards to be considered as titles of Jesus, though Jesus, at the time when these epithets were first applied to the Logos, had not yet been born.
The author of John annexed these epithets which had been applied to the Logos, and attached them to the Jesus of whom he wrote. He was the latest of our canonical evangelists, but the first definitely to identify Jesus with "the Word" "that was with God" "from the beginning," the Logos which had emanated from God, and was therefore part of God himself.
John, after his short Gnostic preface, commences his history-as Mark does-with the baptism by John and the descent of the Holy Spirit into Jesus. He writes to show how the Christ Spirit-identified with the Logos- descends into, and thus becomes incarnate in, Jesus. He attempts to reconcile the ancient Gnosticism and the Christianity of the Synoptic Gospels by this identification of Jesus and Christ. His is the culminating argument for the doctrine, which was in the course of being accepted by some sects of Christians, of the Godhead of Jesus-a doctrine differing from that taught by Paul as well as from that taught by Mark.
With the Gospel of St. John the Catholic form of Christianity-though not yet called Catholic-really begins. It is the first blend of Gnosticism and the cult of Jesus. The Virgin Birth doctrine is yet to be added, and, nearly 150 years later, the Trinity doctrine to be invented; but John takes material that he already finds in the Synoptic Gospels, improves on it, and adds to it the Gnostic ideas of "the Word," "the Light," "the Truth," and "the Darkness." In the place of the simple kindly sayings of the Synoptic Gospels, we now find Jesus making rhetorical speeches, using more pretentious phrases, and indulging in argumentations. Renan describes this new style of speaking with which John embues Jesus as "in some measure the variations of a musician improving on his own account on a given theme," and certainly the more elaborate phraseology of John's version is more musical, though perhaps less convincing, less genuine sounding, less homely honest in tone, than that reported by his predecessors. The former Gospel stories and sayings which John incorporates are often altered, and always so as to emphasize the divinity of Jesus and his identity with the pre-existing Spirit which was a portion of God. Jesus, the Christ, was "from the beginning." He was "in the World, but the World knew him not." It is all an explanation of that last, apparently inexplicable, fact.
The original Gospel ended at verse 29 of chapter xx. The last two verses of that chapter and the whole of chapter xxi are universally admitted to be late additions to a work which had already been brought to a conclusion. They are evidently appended for doctrinal reasons, first to glorify Peter and the Petrine form of Christianity, and secondly to allay the doubts of those who wondered why the second coming was still delayed, though the men who were said to be going to witness it were already all dead. The story of the miraculous draught of fishes-thus misplaced according to the Synoptics-is evidently symbolical, and not historical, the 153 fishes representing all the nations, and Peter-he who had been said once to have been desirous of confining Christianity to the Jews-being the fisherman who hauled them in.
Over John's Gospel there were great disputes. It was constantly rejected by various sects of Christians. Its authenticity was questioned-by some because it was too Gnostic, by others because it was not Gnostic enough.
We have now concluded our apparently very long, but really very brief, survey of the circumstances in which our four Canonical Gospels appeared. From this summary we find that five points of primary importance emerge:-
1. That they were not written by the evangelists whose names they bear.
2. That they were compiled about, or more than, a hundred years after the date assigned to the death of Jesus.
3. That any previous writings upon which they may have been founded were certainly of very much later date than the events they purport to describe.
4. That they are not independent accounts, but are all founded upon Mark or upon some one pre-Mark document; and
5. That the oldest extant manuscripts of these books are fourth-century writings, that these manuscripts contain much matter additional to the original works, and that their texts differ occasionally from each other and from the Authorized Version as found in our Bibles.
It yet remains to be explained how books so late in date came to be accepted as authoritative, and to say something about the other Christian books with which they found themselves in competition when they did appear, and before they were selected as the only Canonical Gospels.
Next: CHAPTER V THE APOCRYPHAL BOOKS AND THE CANON