^N 'dbo^ If quf atl|p& by l|tm tn tl|f ffitbrarg of J^rtnrrton SIjMlngtral ^^mtttary New Light I* jut- 12 1922 *; on ^^(CAL SEW^!^ The New Testament An account of some interesting discoveries which bear important testimony as to the time when the gospels and other books of the New Testament were written. / By PARKE P. FLOURNOY, D.D. Author of " The Search- Light of Hippolyttis " INTRODUCTION BY PROF. BENJ. B. WARFIELD, D. D., LL. D. PHILADELPHIA THE WESTMINSTER PRESS 1903 Copyright, 1903, by the Trustees of The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath- School Work. Contents PAGE Prefatory Note v Introduction (Prof. Benj. B. Warfield, D. D., LL. D. ) vii CHAPTER I. False Lights that Lead Astray 1 CHAPTER II. New Light on a Martyr's Testimony 18 CHAPTER III. The Great Light from the Vatican 47 CHAPTER IV. The Fuller Light from Mount Sinai .... 84 CHAPTER V. Twin Lights from Athens Ill CHAPTER VI. Light from the Land of the Pharaohs .... 13G CHAPTER VII. Many Lights from Many Lands or Light on the Setting 157 Appendix 179 iii Prefatory Note I AYAS encouraged to publish, in the present form, the following accounts of discoveries by the opinion kindly expressed by Dr. Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary and Dr. Hersman of Union Theological Seminar}^, Eichraond, Ya., of an article published in the Presbyterian Quarterly on the three earliest apologists. They both urged me to put into book form this and other articles on discoveries which of late years have made clearer than ever the proof of the traditional dates of the gospels and other books of the New Testa- ment. To every reader I would say that I have not only found much pleasure in the studies of which this little book is the fruit, but have been brought to feel more fully than ever be- fore the certainty of those things wherein we have been instructed about Christ our Lord. My wish for every reader is that, more firmly and joyously than ever before, he may vi Prefatory Note believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and, believing, may have life through his name. Parke P. Flourwoy. The Manse, Bethesda, Md., Jan. 21, 1903. Introduction By Prof. Benj. B. Warfield, D. D., LL. D. Princeton Theological Se3iinary The age in which our lot is cast, is an age of very eager research. It has had its reward in a long list of discoveries in every depart- ment of knowledge. Its scientific achieve- ments can scarcely be said to have come " with- out observation." Its historical and literary discoveries have naturally lain a little more out of the range of the public view. Even some of these, it is true, have been too epoch- making to remain hidden. When Dr. Schlie- mann's pick dug out Troy from the superin- cumbent ages, and at Mycenas gave us back a whole forgotten culture, a thrill went through the whole civilized workl : the several stages in the recovery of the records of the great Meso- potamian empires have been watched with even intenser interest by even greater multi- tudes. Nor can any undue modesty be at- tributed to the investigators in these recondite viii Introduction fields, leading them to underestimate the im- portance of their "finds" or to refrain from calling public attention to them. Exploitation of the results of research has often been as eager as the research itself. A certain kind of knowledge of these results has accord- ingly become very widespread. Not merely has " Babel and Bible " become a familiar alliteration, but such outlandish names as Oxyrhynchus and Akhmim lisp on the lips of babes. Sometimes this exploitation of results is in inverse ratio to the value of the discovery proclaimed. Incredible efforts are made to give immense significance to the veriest trifles, and a deafening clamor is raised over every scrap of papyrus dug out of the dust-heaps of Egypt. A fragment scarcely two inches square containing a sentence from some old homily, long, and doubtless very happily, for- gotten, is heralded over the world as a portion of a " precanonical gospel," with startling in- timations of the ruin its discovery is to work in the authority of our presently accepted gospels. A but little larger fragment con- taining a series of exceedingly apocryphal " say- ings of Jesus," is sensationally published with the grossly misleading title of " Logia of Introduction ix Jesus " affixed to it, and the suggestion made that we have recovered in it something at least very similar to the " Logia " which Pa- pias attributed to Matthew, — though this old writer certainly meant just our Gospel of Matthew by this designation, despite the efforts of a certain type of criticism to make him mean something else. The cognoscenti may smile at such obviously despairing attempts at the creation out of nothing of support for insupportable theories. But what is the uninformed public to think of it all ? Ignorant of the real state of affairs, and startled out of its indifference by the exploitation of such discoveries as these, a certain uneasiness is growing up among us, and Babylon bids fair to become again a name of dread and Egypt a land from whose sands may be expected to spring up any day a monster to devour us. There is great need that some one should tell the people plainly and with a sufficient body of illustration w^hat have been the real results of the investigations of the last quarter of a century, and what is the real bearing they have on the documents of our faith. It is this service that Dr. Flournoy is rendering, first in his excellent Search- light of St. Ilippolytus published a few X Introduction years ago, and now again in the present volume. Paradoxical as it may sound, it is easy both to overestimate and to underestimate the impor- tance of such discoveries as Dr. Flournoy re- counts to us in this interesting narrative. It is easy to overestimate their importance. It is a very unwholesome state of mind which is always groping for " confirmations " of the genuineness, trustworthiness or authority of our sacred writings. And it is as unjustified as it is unwholesome. We have not accepted these writings as authentic documents of the apostolic age and the infallible word of God, on flimsy grounds. We need no new evidence to establish them in our confidence. The mass and cogency of the evidence already in hand is so great, indeed, that it simulates in- finity and hardly admits of substantial in- crease. Carrying coals to Newcastle is pro- verbially unimportant labor. He who is seek- ing for new items of evidence, may certainly find them, and there is no reason why he should not rejoice in them : but it is all very much a work of supererogation. Even more may perhaps be fitly said. Search we never so diligently, we need not expect to find anything in itself of palmary impor- Introduction xi tance. The Christian Church in her course through the ages has not dropped out of her knowledge the things that made most for her stability and peace. Most of the documents that have been lost have been lost because they were comparatively not much worth keeping. Accordingly most of the documents that can be found, we could do very well without finding. What has been specially worth preserving has been, as a rule, specially carefully preserved. The enthusiasm of dis- covery sometimes leads scholars to talk of " revolutions " that are to be wrought by the documents they have brought to light. It is a perhaps not unnatural illusion. When the enthusiasm of discovery cools and normal judgment reasserts itself, it will be found that the balance hangs at much its old angle. The lineaments of the primitive church, drawn on the credit of the major documents that have been kept in the continuous possession of men, will not be much altered on the faith of the minor documents that have for a time passed out of notice. We need only to ask ourselves what impor- tant gains for the chief concerns of the faith have accrued to us from the most interesting of recent discoveries, to perceive clearly how xii Introduction subordinate a role they must play. What do we learn from the Akhmim fragment concern- ing the composition or history of our gospels ? Practically nothing. What new information as to the original form or authority of our gospels does the Lewis palimpsest bring us? None whatever. What new fact of impor- tance do we gain for the early history of the gospels in the church from the recovery of Tatian's Diatessaron f Not one. We knew before its recovery that the Diatessaron was just a harmony of our four gospels; and on its recovery it is naturally seen to be just a harmony of our four gospels. The absurdity of denying it to be just a harmony of our four gospels was practically as great before as it is after its recovery : and its recovery has not rendered it impossible for absurd men to continue to perpetrate absurdity. The au- thor of Suj)ernatural Religion^ in his new edition published last year, still denies the Diatessaron to be a simple harmony of our gospels : he says the discovered harmony is not Tatian's. It is really impossible to correct foregone conclusions by multiplication of evidence. What overwhelming evidence will not ac. complish, still more overwhelming evidence Introduction xiii will no more accomplish. A man submerged under a hundred fathoms of water will be no more drowned if you make it five hundred. Even if somebody should draw out of some hiding-place, to-morrow, a complete copy of Papias' Edcpositions of the Oracles of the Lord, which is perhaps the most interesting of very early Christian documents yet awaiting re- covery, there is no reason to believe that we should reap substantial evidential gains from its recovery. Anybody who wishes to know, can know now what the book was. And any- body who wishes absurdly to deny that it was what it was, could still deny it, with the book in his hand, as reasonably as he can now. Those whom suflBcient evidence will not con- vince, will not be convinced by a resurrec- tion from the dead. It is vain to hope that the task of Christian Apologetics will be sub- stantially lightened by discoveries of this kind. The difficulty of the task of Christian Apologetics does not arise from insufficiency in the evidence it is prepared to offer. It lies in a very different quarter. But, on the other hand, as we have said, it is very easy to underestimate the importance of discoveries of this kind. The term "im- portance" is a relative term, and there needs xiv Introduction to be asked on each occasion of its employ- ment, " Of importance for what ? " Is the difference of a thousandth part of an inch be- tween two measurements of importance ? That depends on what we are measuring and for what end. Out in the fields, where we are measuring the stone-fence which is to be paid for at so much a rod, it is of no importance whatever. It is of no importance to the dry- goods clerk who is measuring off a dozen yards of muslin for a customer's dress. In the observatory where the astronomer is measuring the parallax of a fixed star, it is, however, of the utmost importance. An error of this dimension in this measurement is noth- ing less than immense. Micrometers are of no use whatever in the ordinary concerns of life, and the intrusion of them into that sphere would not only be an impertinence but an in- tolerable nuisance. They nevertheless in their own sphere of usefulness possess an im- portance that is literally inestimable. Somewhat similarly, discoveries in the domain of early Christian literature which have no importance for the life and faith of the Christian Church may yet each have a very large importance in the appropriate sphere of investigation to which it belongs. The dis- Introduction xv covery of the Lewis palimpsest, for example, cannot be said to possess any significance for the Christian life. But it has high importance for the history of the Syriac Bible. Some very interesting outstanding questions in that sphere of investigation, it goes far toward settling ; and it raises some new problems of its own which the student finds exceedingly interesting and full of meaning. It even has some importance, through its significance for the history of the Syriac Bible, for the history of the text of the New Testament ; and thus plays its part in the laborious task of the ascertainment of the exact text of the New Testament. It is easy to exaggerate the part it plays in this great work, and some very strange things have been said about it in this relation — which, however, can be easily par- doned the enthusiasm of discovery. Similarly Tischendorf, when he found the great Codex Sinaiticus, in the fii^st flush of exhilaration lost temporarily the balance of his judgment and was inclined to treat it as the decisive witness to the New Testament text. He even published an edition of his New Testament in which the readings of the new codex were given preponderating authority. A very few years sufficed to correct his error and to re- xvi Introduction adjust the relative values of the witnessing documents more equitably. What we need most particularly to bear in mind, however, is that in all matters of this kind we are in a region in which measure- ments are taken with a micrometer. When we speak of things important and unimpor- tant for textual criticism, for instance, we are talking in terms of a scale of measure- ments which has no application and no meaning in the domain of common life. There is no extant text of the New Testa- ment that is not abundantly pure for our ordinary use, as we strive to build ourselves up in our most holy faith, and to furnish our- selves completely unto everj^ good work. But the textual critic operates with other stand- ards, and to him it is a matter of importance which of two prepositions meaning " from " is used in a given passage or how an aorist verb is spelled, — whether after the so-called " Alex- andrian " fashion with an " a," or after the so- called " Classical " style, with an *' o." It is of high importance for him, investigating such things, to ascertain what was the type of Greek text that underlies the earliest Syriac translation ; and as the Lewis palimpsest helps him notably in this investigation, it ap- Introduction xvii peals to biiii as a highly important dis- covery. Similarly measured by the micrometer of detailed investigation, each new discovery in the domain of early Christendom has its own high value. Do we wish, for example, to work out the history of the subterraneous literature of primitive Christianity, — the literature that represented in that time the publications in our day of Dowieism and Christian Science and Mormonism ? To the student in this de- partment of research, the Akhmim fragment, the Oxyrhynchus papyrus, and the like, com. mend themselves as most important discover- ies. Do we wish to work out the detailed history of the conflict of early Christianity with the civil authorities, in its effort to make standing room for itself in the world ? Then the discovery of Aristides' Apology will ap- peal to us as of quite exceptional importance. Are our studies given to tracing out the his- tory of the comparative study of the gospels ? Then the recovery of the text of Tatian's har- mony, even in a translated and somewhat re- vised shape, will be hailed by us as of the ut- most value. Of course no department of Christian study, any more than any Christian himself, stands xviii Introduction off to itself in isolation from all other depart- ments. Each works in with all the others in the complex activity of the Christian scholarship of the day, as it strives to perfect its multiform task of thoroughly exploring the history of the founding and growth of our re- ligion in the world. What is important for any one of them, therefore, is through it im- portant for the total which their sum makes up ; and, through it, for the whole intellectual life of organized Christianity. Accordingly, the intelligent Christian sympathetically feels the importance of each and everything that any Christian worker in any sphere of investi- gation finds important for his work. Only we must guard ourselves from transmuting its relative importance into an absolute impor- tance, under a different scale of measurements, and thus coming to fancy that in some way Christianity itself hangs on it. This is not to say that these discoveries have no apologetical value. It is to say that it is im- portant that their apologetical value should be truly estimated. For this, it is necessary to re- mind ourselves of the real apologetical situation. This, as has been already hinted, is the precise opposite of apologetical dearth. The constant conflict that necessarily reigns in a depart- Introduction xix ment the very function of which is conflict, is the result of the continual repetition of the following process. Some thinker, unwilling to believe in the supernatural character and origin of Christianity, as evinced in the evi- dence marshaled by the apologist, asks him- self how he can reconstruct the factors that entered into the origin and development of Christianity so as to present it as a natural product. He carefully constructs for himself a hypothetical history of its origin and growth with the omJssion of all supernatural factors, seeking to rearrange the facts of history so as to permit this. In doing so he comes into re- peated conflict with the facts as witnessed by the testimony in hand. He is thus led arti- ficially to manipulate this testimony, in order to escape the supernaturalistic implication. Thus he builds up an elaborate structure, on which not only the most wide and accu- rate learning but shining talents and often genius itself have been expended. In the process, he has, for example, plausibly ex- plained away all the evidence that Tatian's Diatessaroii was a harmon}^ of our four gospels : suggesting a doubt here, intruding a brilliant conjecture there, presenting a new interpreta- tion there, and so manipulating the whole that XX Introduction his readers are almost ready to disbelieve the testimony of their own eyes and accept in- stead this fairy-tale as truth. Then Tatian's Diatessaron suddenly turns up and clears the atmosphere. JN^othing really new has been discovered. It was perfectly well known be- fore just what the Diatessaron was. But men's confused minds have been clarified ; all the plausible reasoning by which they were in danger of being deceived is swept away ; and things are allowed to fall back into their old and proper places. Kow just this process has been going on over and over again, until it has become a classical remark that every new discovery drives a new nail into the coffin of critical unbelief. The metaphor is a peculiarly happy one. It implies that critical unbelief is al- ready, rightly viewed, dead and safely encof- fined : and it takes note that the progress of research has only been steadily driving su- perfluous nail after superfluous nail into the lid. That lid must be pretty nearly all nails by now. It is, however, not nearly so widely known as it ought to be that this is the precise state of the case. And it is just here that these ex- cellent books of Dr. Flournoy's have their Introduction XXI function. They come forward to tell the busy Christian Avho has had little time to inform himself at iirst-hand of the real condition of affairs, precisely how things really are. It is a very important service that Dr. Flournoy is thus rendering the Church: and he is doing it admirably. We owe him our thanks for it ; and we accord them to him most heartily. Pmic£ion, February 1, 1903. FALSE LIGHTS THAT LEAD ASTRAY I. The Old French Teacher and His Startling Assertion In Eichmond, Yirginia, for many years be- fore the Civil War, there stood, or more prop- erly, sat, a rather strange-looking, one-storied, wooden building, with a little sign over the door, on which were inscribed, if I remember aright, the words, " Select Classical School." In it was to be found daring the day, except at mealtimes, and even before day and late into the night, an indefatigable worker — a rather short, muscular man of peculiar appearance and manners. He was one of that army of teachers from New England that invaded the South long before the cry " On to Eichmond " was raised by an army of a very different kind. The South owes a great debt of gratitude to these teachers, who side by side with those educated in southern colleges and universities, did the great work of dispensing the priceless 2 New Light on the New Testament benefits of preparatory education in advance of the organization of a public-school system. This one was a good, earnest, Christian man. He had his faults, no doubt (and who of us has not some of his own ?), but, except for some in- firmities — or the opposite — of temper, David Turner lived for thirty or forty years in Rich- mond an unusually blameless and eminently useful life. The scholars who went from his school to the University of Virginia, there to attain to the degree of A. M., and thence to Germany, whence they returned with Ph. D. added to their names, were his pride ; and he never failed to keep the eyes of those under his ferule on the noble heights which these heroes had gained. There must be many elderly men, reared in Richmond during those years, who remember with gratitude the earnest exhorta- tions and careful training of this faithful teacher. In the modern language department of this school there presided, during certain hours of the day, an old Frenchman, Monsieur Michard, no less remarkable in appearance and other characteristics than his chief. He was a wiz- ened, wrinkled mite of a man, looking, as he w^ent out of the door on a March day, wrap- ping his old surtout about his emaciated form, False Lights That Lead Astray 3 as if the wind would actually take him up and blow him away like the last leaf of autumn. He had been a lawyer, long ago, in Lyons, he told us ; and for political reasons, had found it convenient, if not absolutely necessary, to leave his nativ^e land. Conversation was by no means forbidden in the modern language room when the lesson w^as through with before the hour was out, and M. Michard did not disdain to regale the inquiring minds of his pupils with other things besides the French and Spanish languages which he had to teach them. He was a Eoman Catholic, and as often happens in the case of educated men in that communion, there was in him the strange combination of a certain kind of devoutness with skepticism. One day he astonished at least one of his pupils by saying, in effect, that the New Tes- tament could hardly be a divine revelation, be- cause, as he asserted, besides the writings of which it was composed, there ^vere perhaps a hundred others about as good as those which had been collected and made into the New Testament. Providentiall}^, an antidote was at hand. Richmond was favored with the ministry of the gifted and devoted Dr. Thomas Yerner Moore at that time, and the troubled pupil 4 New Light on the New Testament found, under his ministry, a great deliverance from a terrible fate through the gospel con- tained in that very New Testament on which the old teacher had cast these aspersions. He felt that it must be of God, as it brought that help in dire extremity which nothing else could furnish, and which nothing else had the slightest tendency to furnish. The conviction he had was like that of the starving man when food has been brought to save his life and he has felt its reviving and sustaining power from the first morsel he has taken. Finding, by his own experience, this gospel to be " the power of God unto salvation," he could not help be- lieving that the book containing it was of God. This incident, however, has caused that pupil of the old Frenchman to take a deep interest in several recent discoveries Avhich have shown very clearly the falsity of the old man's asser- tion and of the implication contained in it. His feeling, on coming to know, in later life, of the evidence from early Christian literature that this assertion had only a specious basis in the existence from an earlier or later time of a large number of "pious frauds " going under the general name of l^ew Testament Apoc- rypha, w^hich were never universally received False Lights That Lead Astray 5 by the Church as inspired, was one of relief. AYhen, in more recent years, discoveries were made which completely vindicated the genuine- ness of the ISTew Testament writings, and es- pecially the four gospels, his feeling was like what that of a son might be whose father had died under false accusations — which he could not disprove, though absolutely sure from his knowledge of his father's character that they were false — when, among that father's papers he had found the full proof of his innocence and could publish it to the world. 11. Haeckel and the Gospels The assertion of M. Michard about the selec- tion of the ]N'ew Testament books from a large number of similar writings was probably based on a story which has long been a favorite ar- ticle of the stock-in-trade of infidels who make pretensions to leai^ning, and which has been repeated in various forms in a large number of publications. A version of it may be found in the American Review of Beviews of only a few years ago, in an article entitled " How the Bible Came Down to Us," and one meets with it in the most unexpected places. Opening the recent work of Professor Haeckel, of Ber- lin, the corypheus of the host of atheistic evo- 6 New Light on the New Testament lutionists who have made so much unmelodious noise in the world — and about the world — for the last half century and more, I was surprised to find the great scientist repeating the absurd story in the pages of his Riddle of the Uni- verse. This is his version of it (p. 311 ) : "As to the four canonical gospels, we now know that they were selected from a host of contra- dictory and forged manuscripts of the first three centuries by the three hundred and eighteen bishops who assembled at the council of Mcsea in 327 [sic]. The entire list of gos- pels numbered forty, and the canonical list contains four. As the contending and mu- tually abusive bishops could not agree about the choice, they determined to leave the selec- tion to a miracle. They put all the books (ac- cording to the Synodicon of Pappus), together underneath the altar, and prayed that the un- canonical books, of human origin, might re- main there, and the genuine inspired books might be miraculously placed on the table of the Lord. And that, says tradition, occurred ! The three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke — all written after them, and not by them, at the beginning of the second century, and the very different Fourth Gospel (ostensibly " after " John, written about the middle of the Fahe Lights That Lead Astray 7 second century) leaped upon the table and were thenceforth recognized as the inspired (with their thousand mutual contradictions) founda- tions of Christian doctrine." He then goes on with sarcastic and violent raillery at Christians who could be so senseless as to believe in the uncouth miracle. Now if before printing this nonsense, Haeckel had been prudent enough to go to some one well-informed about such matters— to Prof. Adolf Harnack, in the theological department of the great Berlin University, for instance — and tell him of it, he would probably have said, had politeness allowed, something like this : — '' My venerable friend, it would be wisest for us to confine ourselves to our own depart- ments of investigation, as it is best for the shoemaker to stick to his last. Had I gone to you and told you that through scientific dis- coveries in this universe, of which you seem to have solved the riddle, 'we now know' that the moon is made of green cheese, and must, therefore, of course, be inhabited, I should not have made myself more ridiculous than you would make yourself by publishing this. For, in the first place^ there is no evidence that the Council of Nice did anything at all in 8 Neio Light on the Neiv Testament the way of settling the Canon of Scripture. The story you repeat is a baseless mediaeval legend. ^ In the second place, abundant quotations in Irenagus from the four gospels as well as distinct statements on the subject, show that the four gospels were as fully accepted in the year two hundred, as the only inspired accounts of our Saviour's life on earth, as they are now ; while Justin Martyr shows by his quotations from these " Memoirs of the Ai^ostles " as he calls them, that the case was just the same more than fifty years earlier. Besides this, we now have, by recent discovery, the four gospels wrought into a continuous account in Tatian's Diatessaron {i. ^., through four), the very name of which shows that there were but four gospels recog- ^ "There is not the slightest evidence that the Council of Nice had anything whatever to do with settling the Canon of the New Testament. It was not called for any such pur- pose ; nothing relating to the subject appears in the canons or acts of the council ; no writer of the fourth, or liith, or sixth, or seventh, or eighth century has even hinted that the matter came before tlie council in any way." — Dr. Ezra Abbot. The story was published ])y John Pappus, of Strasburg, at the beginning of the 17th century, from an anonymous manuscript which mentioned events occurring in A. D, 869, "500 years after the members of the Nicene council were dead and buried," as one has well said, and is a companion piece of many such monkish stories of uncouth miracles. It may be found republished in Fabricius' Bibliothcca Grseca, Vol. XI., p. 198. False Lights 2' hat Lead Astray 9 nized, fifty years after the death of the Apostle John ; and by necessary implication, there had been no others thus recognized by the Chris- tian Church. Besides all this, we now have the four gospels in Syriac, complete, with the exception of a few pages lost out of the manu- script, earlier still than this Z>iatessaro?i, as is thought, hecsLUsethe Diatessaron contains many of its peculiar readings. It would be best, dear friend, for you to go on solving universe riddles and leave these matters to persons who have some information about early Chris- tianity." Professor Ilaeckel's mistake is due to his ignorance of the fact that the positions of the famous Tubingen School,^ so boldly maintained by unbelieving scholars till twenty-five years ago, have been made absolutely untenable by recent discoveries ; and now, no one who is in- formed on the subject can believe either in the late origin of any of the four gospels, or in the universal acceptance, at any time, of any of the many heretical gospels so-called. The Gosj?el of Peter ^, so-called, fragments of which ^ Haeckel, while niodif ying Baur's dates, emphasizes his conclusions as to the spuriousness of the gospels 2 8ee Ante-Nicene Fathers. IX. Vol., pp. 3-31. Harnack assigns it to the first quarter of the second century. Other scholars place it later. 10 New Light on the New Testament were discovered a few years ago at Akhmim, in Egypt, seems to be a Docetic document, de- pendent on, and in its main structure, patterned after, our gospels. The Apocryphal Gospel according to the Hebrews^ which, possibly, originated still earlier than that of Peter,^ was used by the heretical sects of the Ebionites, and J^azarenes and shows plainly, in the twenty- three quotations from it which are extant, de- pendence on all four of our gospels.^ So it comes about that these, the two oldest, ap- parently, of all the false gospels that are known, when closely examined, become wit- nesses for the four gospels instead of competi- tors with them.^ ^ Dr. Theodor Zahn says, ( Einleitimg, I. p. 8). "The so- called Gospel according to the Hebretvs was an Aramaic book the existence of which is attested from the middle of the second century," and on p. 261. " The Nazarenes who kept true to their mother speech, had from A. D. 150 at the latest, their gospel according to tlie Hebrews. ' ' In his History of the Canon, II. p. 722, after summing up the evidence and speaking of the period about A. D. 130-150, he says, "To this time the origin of the Gospel according to the Hebrews belongs. ' ' For these references I am indebted to the kind- ness of Dr. B. B. Warfield. 2 See Dr. B. Weiss' Manual of Introd, to N. T., Vol. II. ^ 45, 5. ^ It is hardly necessary even to mention the little known Gospel ace. to the Egyptians, a Gnostic document, but one by no means generally accepted by the Gnostics themselves, and distinctly repudiated by Clem, of Alexandria, who quotes it. False Lights That Lead Astray 11 It is instructive to look back over the course through which the Tubingen School has passed to its downfall, leaving so much spiritual wreck and ruin behind it in the overturning of the faith of many, during the past half century. The founder of this school of theological speculation was Ferdinand Christian Baur. Baur was withdrawn from the orthodox posi- tion, which his earliest productions indicate that he held, by the powerful influence of Schleiermacher, and then by that of Strauss, his own pupil, whose " Life of Jesus " seems to have been one of the means by which poor George Eliot was robbed of her faith. But the chief influence which drew him aside was Hegel's philosophy. We need not examine at length the course of his reasoning. Little more is necessary than the mention of his conclusions about the time when the different books of the N"ew Testament were written. He held that Paul wrote the four epistles, to the Romans, Corinthians and Galatians, and that John, the beloved disciple, wrote the Apocalypse ; but that the other books of the New Testament are spurious productions, and especially that the four gospels containing the facts which are the basis of Christianity were written long after their reputed authors, 12 New Light on the New Testament Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were dead; and that they, therefore, could not have been written by them. This conclusion was founded, not upon facts, but upon a priori theories. Taking the opposite course from that of the Baconian method of deducing gen- eral conclusions from an induction of particular facts, he assumed certain general conclusions as true, and then proceeded to gather and arrange facts in the endeavor to sustain these con- clusions. Assuming the impossibility of mira- cles, and of the supernatural in all its phases, and then adopting the Hegelian theory of the progress of every set of opinions, as going through the three stages of affirmation, con- tradiction and reconciliation (thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis), he endeavored to account for the origin of the Christian Scriptures by supposing that they developed in a merely natural way by this rule. The process, however, is of small importance. What we are concerned with is his conclusions as to the dates of these books, and especially of the four gospels. Placing these four epistles of Paul in this period of " affirmation," he pro- nounced them genuine and their traditional dates substantially correct. But, according to his theory, the so-called Synoptic Gospels, False Lights That Lead Astray 13 Matthew, Mark and Luke, must have origi- nated in the second period — that of discussion and difference. So he concluded that while Matthew may have been written about a. d. 130, in the interest of the Judaizing party, and Luke about 150 in advocacy of universality, Mark could not have originated earlier than the decade from 150 to 160, and that John must have been written in the period of " syn- thesis " or reconciliation of opposing parties, in the decade extending from a. d. 160 to 170. III. "Supernatural Eeligion " Now, it would not have been necessary to detain the reader with the mention of these opinions of Baur if they had been held by him alone ; but this was by no means the case. His views spread rapidly among Ger- man scholars, and the very influential Tubin- gen School was the result. Baur died in 1860, and his influence has long since waned in Ger- many, as its radical unsoundness has been demonstrated, not only by reasoning, but by unexpected events. But, as its sun was going down in Germany, it was rising on England. About twenty-five years ago there appeared in England a book dealing with these questions 14 New Light on the New Testament in an apparently learned way under the title of Super )iaticral Heligioii. The aim of the book was to destroy belief in the supernatural, and especially to discredit the four gospels. It was a popular presenta- tion in English of the Tubingen theories of Baur and his school. The author withheld his name and seems never to have revealed it, though a prominent English review writer has been sus])ected of the authorship.^ The book was ushered in with a chorus of praise from reviews, extolling its great learning and fair- ness in discussion. It was at a time when the Darwinian theories were most zealously prop- agated, and a large proportion of the most cultivated Englishmen were under the spell of the skepticism which accompanied the recep- tion of these theories. The result was that the book had an enormous sale, passing rapidly from one edition to another, and influenced a very large number of writers and readers in such a way as to lead them, at least, to ques- tion the divine origin of the Christian religion and the sacred character of the Holy Scrip- tures. One thing which, without doubt, added ' It is now well known that Mr. Walter R. Cassells is the anthor of this book, a new edition of which has just ap- peared. False Lights That Lead Astray 15 greatly to the popularity of this book with its skeptical readers was the fact that it, some- how, came to be understood that the anony- mous author was one of the most eminent prelates of the Church of England; a man noted for his profound and accurate scholar- ship and unswerving faithfulness to his sacred duties during a long life of usefulness. Whether this fiction was given out by the un- known author or by some literary Mephistophe- les among his admirers will probably never be known. But the result may, perhaps, be better imagined than described. This more than " dash of heresy " in the supposed pro- duction of a bishop long venerated for his learning and piety, gave the dish a piquancy whose charm was irresistible to the palate of the skeptical public, ready at all times, and more than ready at that time, of the beginning of the Darwinian ascendancy, to break away from all the old restraints of religion. The fact that a man of such character, standing and ability, who had so long been one of the Church's guides and defenders, had now, as it seemed, joined the sappers and miners who were trying to destroy her foundations, and that this whilom eminent defender, had, in this work, set off a blast which made the 16 New Light on the New Testament whole edifice tremble, filled the free-thinking literati with an excitement from whose intoxi- cation they have hardly yet recovered. The sadly wronged prelate did indeed most em- phatically disclaim the authorship, but this seemed of no avail. The book is said to have passed through six editions in as many months. This is probably an exaggeration ; but the fact that the assertion is made is an indication that the circulation of the book must have been rapid beyond precedent in the case of a work devoted to learned argument on such a subject. The book which was lauded by four reviews for its fairness and directness in argument was very soon found, on examination by competent scholars, to conceal, under the guise of vaunted fairness, almost every kind of indirection and unfair dealing. Dr. Lightfoot (afterwards Bishop of Durham) convicted the author of so misrepresenting and w^arping the facts with which he dealt as to show an unmistakably dishonest intention to " make the worse the better reason seem." The utter misrepresenta- tion of the meaning of authorities quoted, whether made from ignorance or design, indi- cated a prejudice against the Christian religion which made the author blind to whatever was evidential of its truth and lynx-eyed to the False Lights 'That Lead Astray 17 minutest fact that could be construed as un- favorable to it. Dr. Sanday, of Oxford, showed so conclusively the fallaciousness of the writer's argument designed to prove that the Gospel of Luke was derived from the mutilated gospel which Marcion used in prop- agating his heresy, that he was forced to ac- knowledge that the Gospel of Luke was the original which, on the other hand, Marcion trimmed and treated to make it appear to sup- port his heresy. Dr. Lightfoot, in a remarkable set of articles in the Contemporary Review, proved that the supposedly learned and fair author of Super- natural Religion, either from the lack of even a schoolboy knowledge of Greek, or from de- sign, mistranslated passage after passage, from L-en^us especially, so as to make it appear that the author intended to teach exactly the reverse of that which, on a proper translation and construction of his words, was shown to be his real meaning. II. NEW LIGHT ON A MARTYR's TESTIMONY I. Tatian's Diatessaron The main position around which this great battle raged was The Diatessaron of Tatian. The author of Supernatural Religion ven- tured to assert that " No one seems to hav^e seen Tatian's Harmony^ probably for the rea- son that there was no such w^ork." Could he have foreknown the events of the near future, he would have withheld this sarcasm. During the very next year, 1876, there ap- peared a translation of Ephrasra's Comm en- tar}^ on Tatian's Diatessaron, made at the request of the Mechitarist Fathers of San Lazzaro, Venice, by Dr. Georgius Moesinger, of the University of Salzburg.^ The author of Supernatural Eeligion, in spite of this, which was a very clear proof of the existence of Tatian's Harmony, ^2ad in desperation: "It is obvious that there is no evidence of any ' This translation was based on an earlier Latin version of the Mechitarist monk, Aucher. 18 Neic Light on a 3fartijr's Testimony 19 value connecting Tatian's gospel with those of our canon." This he did in 1879, and he most certainly would not have said it if he could have fore- seen what was to occur two years later. In 1881 Professor Zahn, of Erlangen, published a reconstruction of the Diatessaron of Tatian from Moesinger's translation of the commen- tary on it, and from the Homilies of Ajyhraates which were, also, based upon it. This made it clear that the Diatessaron was not another of the Apocryphal gospels, nor a reproduction of the Gospel according to the Ilehrews^ as had been conjectured, but was a harmony made up of our four gospels. This work of Zahn drew attention to an Arabic manuscript marked No. XIY, in the Vatican library, which purported to contain a translation of the Diatessaron itself. Ciasca, a " lector " of the library, was urged to translate this manuscript and publish it, but was delayed by other duties in doing so, and this providential delay was overruled, like many another, for the best result in the end. There was in the library one day an ecclesi- astic, the Visitor Apostolic of the Catholic Copts in Egypt. He was invited to examine the manuscript, and as a result, informed 20 New Light on the Nciv Testament Ciasca that he knew of another like it in Egypt, and that he would have it sent to hiui. In due time this was done, and thus Ciasca had two Arabic copies from which to make his translation. He completed and published his translation in 1888, in time to present it to the Pope on the occasion of his jubilee in that year. Now we have it in English in a transla- tion with notes by the Eev. Hope W. Hogg, B. D., and his wife, who gave him much assist- ance in the undertaking, as well as an earlier by B. Haralyn Hill, B. D., called The Earliest Life of Christ. Two facts make it of great importance as a witness for the four gospels. One is that it contains the whole account given of our Sav- iour's life and teachings in the gospels, in the very words of the gospels, woven together so as to make a continuous narrative, and is therefore appropriately named the Diatessaron^ i. e.^ through four. The second fact is that there is no trace of any Apocryphal gospel in it, showing that the only gospels recognized by the Christians of that early day, fifty or sixty years after the death of the last of the apostles, were those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The preparation of a life of our Saviour out of New Light on a Martyr^s Testimony 21 these gospels, and these alone, without a word of his own (as Ebed Jesu puts it, " and of his own he did not add a single saying ") indicates the universal acceptance of these gospels long before, as well as the reverential awe enter- tained of them as " The memoirs of the apos- tles," as Tatian's teacher, Justin Martyr, called them. This is too evident to need amplifica- tion or argument. The Biatessaron, according to the careful estimate made by Prof. G. F. Moore, con- tains fifty per cent of Mark, sixty-six per cent of Luke, 76.5 per cent of Matthew and ninety-six per cent of John. Before the dis- covery of the Diatessaron^ the Kev. W. M. Taylor, D. D., of New York, composed a har- mony of the same character, which he named The Life of Our Lord in the Words of the Four Evangelists^ a book which was constantly used for daily reading by one whose memory is more precious to the writer than that of any other human being ; and it would be as irra- tional to deny that Dr. Taylor ^ had our four gospels before him when he arranged that harmony, as to say that Tatian did not have them when he wove them together to make his. Duplicate expressions and narratives in ' Dr. Taylor omits the genealogies, Just as Tatian does. 22 New Light on the Neiv Testament the different gospels were, of course, omitted by both in a work of such a character. The composition of the Diatessaron implies that the four gospels were the only gospels of the Christians for a long time before it came into existence, in spite of the efforts of Basil- ides, Marcion, and other heretics to corrupt or supplant them. But an interesting question is, are there traces of the existence of these gospels during the period which lies between the death of John and the composition of the Diatessaron f This period, as every student of church history is aware, lies in great obscurity. Whether from the destruction of libraries, the preva- lence of persecution or whatever cause, the distinct Christian memorials of that time are few. Indeed this may be said of the time from the close of The Acts of the Apostles to the death of the Apostle John, also. Yet there are lights here and there in this dark morass where the paths are so indistinct and our footing so uncertain. I need not speak of the clear evidence of the existence of the four gospels and other books of the New Testament furnished by the fragments of the writings of apostolic fathers which have been preserved to our time. For these testimonies the reader New Light on a Martyr''s Testimony 23 will turn to such text-books on Christian evi- dences as that of Paley, or to the much fuller and fresher presentation of them in the almost phenomenal production of the great German scholar, Dr. Bernhardt Weiss, Manual of In- troduction to the New Testament : ^ or to the still better and sounder presentation in Char- teris's Canonicity. But in addition to the references to these writings in the scanty Christian literature which has survived from, the apostolic age to our own, we have the account of a thoroughly reliable writer, who lived from about twenty years after the death of the Apostle John to the opening of the third century, of oral com- munications which he had received from one who was a disciple of John himself, and Avas accustomed to talk with others who had seen the Lord ; and he tells us that these communi- cations by word of mouth agreed with the accounts of Christ given in the gospels. This testimony of Iren^eus is contained in a letter to a friend of his youth, who with him had been a hearer of Polycarp, the younger con- temporary of the Apostle John, but who seems ' As remarkable, however, for the lameness and impotency of some of its conclusions as it' is for its evidence of scholar- ship and diligent research. 24 New Light on the New Testament to have fallen away from the shnplicity of the gospel under the influence of political ambi- tions and heathen philosophy. Writing to this former companion, Florinus, Irenaeus says : — "I distinctly remember the incidents of that time better than events of recent occurrence ; for, the lessons received in childhood, growing with the soul, become identified with it ; so that I can describe the very place in which the blessed Polycarp used to sit when he dis- coursed, and his goings out and his comings in, and his manner of life, and his personal ap- pearance, and the discourses which he held before the people, and how he would describe his intercourse with John, and with the rest who had seen the Lord, and how he loould re- late their words. And whatsoever things he had heard from them about the Lord, and about his miracles, and about his teaching, Polycarp, as having received them from eye- witnesses of the life of the word, would relate altogether in accordance with the Scrij)- tures^ Of this, Dr. Wace {The Authenticity of the Four Gospels) remarks : — "In order to appreciate what this involves, one must ask what Irenaeus meant by ' The New Light on a Blartyr^s Teslimony 25 Scriptures.' Of course, the expression must refer to those portions of the Scriptures which narrate the life of our Lord, and Irenaeus has stated, in a memorable passage, what these records were. In the third book of his great work on The Befutation and Overthroio of Knowledge Falsely so Called^ he relates briefly, says Bishop Lightfoot : * The circumstances under which the four gospels were written. . . . He assumes throughout, not only that our four canonical gospels alone were acknowledged in the church in his own time, but that this had been so from the beginning.' " Irengeus, who quotes our four gospels 500 times in those of his writings which have been preserved, and the Gospel of John 100 times, was a contemporary, for perhaps thirty-five years, of Polycarp, whose memory as his teacher he ever held in most affectionate rev- erence. Polycarp was the contemporary^ of the Apostle John for thirty years at the least. Irenaeus regarded the four gospels just as the orthodox Christian of our day does. Now, Iren^us has much to say of Justin and his child in the gospel, Tatian. They lived for thirty years in one case, and perhaps forty in the other as his contemporaries. Tatian and Justin were contemporaries of Polycarp for the 26 New Light on the Keiv Testament first forty or forty -five years of their liv^es.^ The Diatessaron of Tatian frees the testimony of Justin Martyr of all possible doubt, and to that testimony our attention will now be directed. The Diatessaron has been well- named "the key to Justin." II. Justin, the Apologist and Martyr Somewhere about the time Avhen the Apos- tle John died at Ephesus, there was born at the village of Sychar, by Jacob's well, where our Saviour told the Samaritan woman of the water of life, a child who was to be known through all coming ages as a martyr for his cause. But, Justin Martyr, though a native of Sychar, was not of Samaritan blood. Had we no information to the contrary, we should be likely to think that he was probably a de- scendant of some one of those with whom our Lord spent two days on his journey northward ^ "Polycarp was eighty-six years old at the time of his death (from his words it would seem that he had been eighty-six years a Christian) and Irenseus speaks of him as a disciple of John, and as appointed Bishop of Smyrna by apostles, and again speaks of ' successors of Polycarp at the present time,' that is, from A. D. 177 to A. D. 190. . . . Living from A. D. 70 to 155, his life and work link together St. John and Irenseus, and they become an argument for the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel, the force of which it is impossible to deny." — Waikins' Bampton Lectures, pp. 391, 2. New Light on a Martyr s Tcatimony 27 — two days of surpassing interest tliey must have been — when, after hearing his wonderful words, they said to the woman of Samaria ; "Now we believe, not because of thy saying for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ." But it is evi- dent from all that he says that he was not of Samaritan or of Jewish blood, and that he was reared in the study of philosophy and Greek lit- erature, and without any knowledge of the Old Testament. Philosophy was his pursuit from his youth, and he early won the right to wear the philosopher's cloak. He seems to have been in the habit of retiring to some solitude to do what almost every great thinker has done — meditate, and commune with nature. It was such an excursion that was made, in God's providence, the occasion of his coming to the knowledge of the truth. The place was prob- ably in the vicinity of Ephesus, as he seems to have studied there ; but this is immaterial. Let us hear him tell of it : " And while I was thus disposed, when I wished at one period to be filled with great quietness, and to shun the path of men, I used to go into a certain field not far from the sea, and when I was near that spot one day, which having reached, I proposed to be by myself, a certain old man, by no 28 New Light on the Neio Testament means contemptible in appearance, exhibiting meek and venerable manners, followed me at a little distance." After salutations, the venerable stranger told Justin that he had come to this place to look for friends who were absent and who might be returning. As it was in view of the sea, he was probably looking for the vessel by which they were expected. Justin having told him that he delighted in solitary walks to meditate on the great ques- tions of philosophy, the stranger began to dis- course of the vanity of mere human specula- tions about the great subject of religion (for this was the field of philosophy in which Jus- tin w^as most interested), and then dwelt on the need of a divine revelation such as existed in The Prophets, or Old Testament Scriptures, and of the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, to give us a satisfactory and saving view of the truth in these great matters. Then, Jus- tin tells us : — " When he had spoken these and many other things, he w^ent away, bidding me attend to them, and I have not seen him since ; but straightway a flame was kindled in my soul, and a love of the prophets and of those men who are the friends of Christ possessed me, Neio Light on a ]\[artyr''s Testimony 29 and whilst revolving his words in my mind, I found this philosophy alone to be safe and profitable." (Dialogue Ch. 8.) ^ Thus we see how it was that Justin Martyr, though he became a Christian, never ceased to wear his philosopher's cloak. He found Chris- tianity to be the truest and highest of all philosophy, and did not cease to be a philos- opher by becoming a Christian.^ He seems to have been one of the most fearless and straightforward of all the witnesses for Christ in that brave age. Anyone who will read his two defenses of Christianity will see and feel this as he cannot otherwise do. Some years later, probably in 163, there was a thrilling scene in the court of the Roman prefect, Rusticus. The noble life was crowned with the noblest of deaths, that of a martyr for Christ. ' Justin seems to have been influenced, too, as Tve know Calvin was, by the conduct of those whom he observed under persecution. He tells us: '' Wliile I still found delight in the doctrines of Plato, and heard the Christians calumniated, but yet saw them fearless toward death, and all that men account fearful, I learned that it was impossible that they should live in sin and lust." ^ "The torch of Aristotle and Plato faded when he became familiar with the light of Christ." — Watkins' Bampion Lectures. Hart and Yolkmar date the first Apology A. D. 145-148 ; Casparl and Kruger earlier. — Watkins^ Bampton Lectures. 30 Neio Light on the New Testament Rusticus, the prefect of Rome, before whom Justin and other Christians were arraigned, demanded that they should deny their faith and salute the image of the emperor as divine. " Un- less," said he, " ye obey, ye shall be mercilessly punished." Justin said, " Through prayer we can be saved on account of our Lord Jesus Christ, even when we have been punished, be- cause this shall become to us salvation and con- fidence at the more awful judgment seat of our Lord and Saviour." Thus also said the other martyrs : " Do what you will, for we are Christians and do not sacrifice to idols." Thus, like Moses, they endured, as " seeing him who is invisible." III. Justin as a Witness Let us now turn to the utterances of Justin Martyr addressed, in his two Apologies^ to An- toninus Pius, the emperor of Rome. Dr. Basil Gildersleeve in the introduction to his edition of Justin's Apologies, says : — " If Justin was acquainted with the Fourth Gospel, the whole fabric of a great historical school falls to the ground." This must be clear to all ; for if the first Apology was not written till as late as A. D., 147 the date which Professor Gildersleeve fa- New Light on a Martyr'' s Testimony 31 vors, it was written several years before the date assigned to the Gospel of John by the Tubingen School, i. e., a. d. 160-170. Neander thinks the first Apology should be dated A. D. 139. He says : " After the death of the Em- peror Hadrian, persecutions arose against the Christians, in the beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius. Thereby Justin, who was then resident at Eorae, was induced to address a writing in defense of the interests of the Christians to the emperor. Since, however, in the superscription of this work, he does not give the title of Ccesar to M. Aurelius^ it is probably to be inferred that it was written before his adoption into that dignity, which took place in A. D. 139." But, taking the late date, there can be no doubt that Justin quotes it, and he surely could not have quoted it from thirteen to, twenty-three years before it was written, or one minute before it was written, for that matter. That Justin did know John's Gospel, must be clear to any open-minded person who will read in his first Ajyology, chapter sixty-one, these words: — " Except ye be born again, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." In addition to 32 New Light on the New Testament this he goes on to mention other words spoken in this conversation of Christ with Nicodemus, recorded in the third chaptei' of John's Gospel. In his dialogue with Trypho, chapter ninety- one, we find Justin giving a comment on John 3 : 11, and several times he refers to the name which John gives to Christ — the Logos — " the word."^ It seems plain enough then that Justin, the successor of Aristides and Quad- ratus as a defender of the faith did have the Gospel of John in his hands, and therefore, " the whole fabric of a great historical school falls to the ground." Baur may hold the theory according to which the Gospel of John could not have been written till from A. d. 160 to 170 ; but we find as a fact that it is quoted by Justin in his Apology addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, and the theory must yield to the fact, and "fall to the ground." How is it with the three synoptic gospels ? See how Justin speaks of all the gospels together under a name which may be unfamil- iar to some of us, but which seems a very natural designation for them. He draws, in a few words, a picture of the worship of the Christians on Sunday. He tells the emperor : ' Not in Philo's sense. — Gildersleeve. Neic Light on a Martyr^ s Testimony 33 " On the day called the day of the Sun (Sun- day) ^ there is a gathering together of all who dwell in city and country, with one accord (or in one place), and the Mernoirs of the Apostles and the Avritings of the prophets are read." He continues with a further descrip- tion of their worship including the administra- tion of the Lord's Supper. The significant thing for us here is that The Memoirs of the Aj?ostles are read in public worship and are evidently regarded as sacred scriptures, as they are read along with Old Testament Scrip- tures. But a question has been raised as to whether these Memoirs of the Apostles were our gospels, which contain apostolic memoirs of our blessed Lord. The controversy has been an earnest and prolonged one ; but it is hard to see how there can be any room for a difference of opinion about the matter. We need not go outside of the writings of Justin himself to determine without a shadow of doubt about what were the Memoirs of the Apostles. We need only cast our eyes up to the preceding chapter of the first apology on the same page (first Apology chapter sixty- six) and we read " The apostles in the memoirs ^ rri TOO ijXiou Xeyoiiivrj ijixipa. 34 NeiD Light on the New Testament drawn up by them, which are called gospels, ^ thus enjoined on them, that Jesus taking bread, having blessed it, said, ' This do in re- membrance of me ; this is my body, and taking the cup, and having given thanks, said, This is my blood,' " etc. Surely this is conclusive as to what the Memoirs of the Apostles are. Justin calls them *' gospels," and w^e find in them what we find to-day in our gospels. INTow if there could be any lingering doubt that this general name — Memoirs of the Apostles — means our four gospels, we may turn to another work of Justin where it is used and see proofs which must immediately scatter these doubts to the winds. In the Dialogue with Trypho, chapter one hundred, w^e read : ''But also in the gospel it is written 'AH things are delivered me of my Father,' and 'No man knoweth the Father but the Son ; nor the Son but the Father, and they to whom the Son will reveal him.' " We know, 'Hostile critics have alleged that this last expression is an interpolation. But, there is no manuscript evidence to sup- port this allegation, and the only reason they have made it seems to be that the words are so plainly fatal to their con- tention. The text is, so far as is known, as sound here as elsewhere. "When a manuscript is found that does not contain the words ' which are called gospels, ' the gloss theory will deserve respect. Till then it has not a rag of reason to hide its nakedness," — Nicholson on the Gospel according to the Hebrews, p. 134. New Light on a Martyr^ a Testimony 35 of course, that this is from our Gospel of Matthew 11 : 27, and so, what Justin states is written in the gospel,^ we find in our Gospel of Matthew. But he continues : " Christ called one of his disciples, previously known as Simon, Peter, since he recognized him to be the Christ, the Son of God, by the revelation of his Father ; and since we find it recorded in the Memoirs of the Apostles,'^ etc. All will recognize this as from the sixteenth chapter of Matthew, and this he says is " recorded in the Memoirs of the ApostlesP So our Matthew must be a part of these Memoirs of the Apostles. Look on a little farther, and in chapter 103 we read : — "For, if the Memoirs which I say Avere drawn up by the apostles and those who fol- lowed them, it is recorded that his sweat fell down like blood while he was praying and saying, if it be possible let this cup pass," etc. Here we find a quotation combining Luke 22 : 41 and 42, and Matthew 2G : 39 and he speaks of it as being " recorded in the Memoirs ^"Gospel" is often used to mean the four gospels, as Watkins puts it, " to express the unity of a collected plural- ity." Justin so uses it. — See Wnildns^ Bampton Leciiires. See, also, Charteris's Canoniciti/, especially p. 63, foot- note. 36 New Light on the New Testament which were drawn up by the apostles, and those who followed them." Now, Matthew and John whom he quoted were apostles and Mark and Luke were their followers, — Mark of Peter and Luke of Paul, for he quotes both of these extensively also. If we had space, I should like to transcribe the fifteenth chapter of the first Aj^ology, and show how, in it he quotes, Matthew seven times, Mark eight times, and Luke five times, so that in the short chapter of less than two 12mo pages we have a cluster of selections from the three synoptic gospels with only a few words of his own to serve as a thread to hold together the jewels gathered from these "•Memoirs of the Ajyostles.^'' ^ I think ^ve would be very unreasonable to demand plainer proof that Justin Martyr had just the gospels we have and no others — and refers to them as Memoirs of the Aj)ostles. Prof. James Drummond, Unitarian critic, and follower of Martineau, says of the foolish charge that John was copied from Justin : ^ — " It does seem to me surprising that any one in comparing the passages in Justin and John ' See Appendix. ^ It is somewhat remarkable that one set of critics find nothing of John's Gospel in Justin, and another set find so much that they make this charge. Neiu Light on a Martyr''s Testimony 37 should doubt for one moment that the de- pendence is on the side of the former." This sufficiently " Liberal " critic concludes : " I must conclude, therefore, as best satisfying, on the whole, the facts of the case, not only that Justin regarded the Fourth Gospel as one of the historical ' memoirs ' of Christ, but that it is not improbable that he believed in its Johannean authorship. This is a very old- fashioned conclusion, but I have endeavored simply to follow the evidence without any ulterior object and must leave the result to the judgment of the reader." How remarkably this " old-fashioned con- clusion " for which he felt bound to apologize, has been confirmed by the discovery of The Diatessaron ! Since this discovery, no self- respecting critic, however great his prejudices, can, if fully informed, either assert the de- pendence of John's Gospel on Justin or deny that Justin knew our four gospels, and them alone, as the authoritative Christian records of Christ's life and teachings. It is very hard to see how any honest reader of Justin's Ajyologies and Dialogue could have any doubt of this fact, since quotations from the Synoptic Gospels occupy a large propor- tion of the space these writings cover, and 38 New Light on the New Testament besides evident references to, and quotations from, the Gospel of John, the whole of these writings are permeated with the unique thought of this gospel which stands apart from all that has ever been written by the hand of man. The destructive critic Thoma, even, saj^s of Justin : " He cites the Synoptics ; he thinks and argues according to John." All this was evident before the discovery of The Diatessaron. Now, the case is settled ; for we find Tatian, who became a Christian under the instruction of Justin about a. d. 150, making a harmony out of the four gospels, and using ninety -six per cent of the Gospel of John in doing so, only four per cent being omitted because duplicated by statements in the other gospels. "It is certain," says Dr. B. Weiss, "that Justin is also acquainted with Pauline epistles and is influenced by them. It is characteristic throughout that what he has chiefly adopted from the Epistle to the Eomans is the applica- tion of the Old Testament in the Christian sense, as appears from the many citations com- mon to both in their form, connection and ap- plication (comp. Kom. 3: 11-lY and Dial. 27; 9 ; 27 ff. and Dial. 55 ; 11 : 16 and Dial. 42 ; Ne/w Light on a Martyr'' s Tedimony 39 11 : 2 ff. and Dial. 39-10 ; 11: : 11 and Dial. 52), and the repeated statements respecting the justification of Abraham as the father of be- lieving Gentiles, taken from Kom. 4: (Dial. 11 ; 23-119)." For proof of Justin's use of other Pauline epistles see Weiss' Introduction §7. 4. Weiss shows with equal clearness Justin's use of the Fourth Gospel. Lack of space pre- vents the presentation of the evidence in his words ; but his conclusion is that " the opinion that Justin was not yet acquainted w4th the Fourth Gospel, once so obstinately adhered to by the Tubingen School, must be regarded as definitely set aside." Justin sometimes quotes the gospels with the formula, " It is written," indicating that he regards them as Scripture. The use of the Epistle of James (Dial. 1.16), of 1 Peter (Dial. Y2), and of The Acts (1 Apology, 39, 40, 50), is clearly shown. His knowledge of The Pevelation and the fact that it was written by the Apostle John, is indicated by such words as these : — (Dial. 81). "There was a certain man with us [Chris- tians] whose name was John, one of the apos- tles of Christ, who prophesied by a revelation that was made to him." Then follows a refer- 40 New Light on the New Testament ence to the "thousand years, the general, and, in short, eternal resurrection and judgment of all men." Kev. 20. It is true that Justin does not always use the precise words of our received text. He evidently wrote with a rapidly running pen, and in the case of the second Apology, written, probably, on the eve of his execution, he evi- dently did not turn to each passage to verify his quotations. He joins together the words of two or three of the gospels in relating an inci- dent or stating a truth. Yet I think no one can point out a single expression which be- longs to any of the apocryphal gospels. The apocryphal " Gospel of Peter," discov- ered a few years ago at Akhmim in Egypt, which was in all probability the oldest of all the apocryphal gospels, is not quoted once. Justin's quotations are just such as would naturally be made by a man of great earnest- ness who had his memory well stored with the Scriptures, and had a vast number of quota- tions at his command, but did not turn to the chapter and verse, and copy every word ac- curately. AVe should remember that there were no chapters and verses then, and that Alexander Cruden was not yet born. But, lest any should think me liable to mis- Kcw Light on a Marty r^s Testimony 41 take on this point, I will, before concluding, quote the words of Westcott (Canon, p. 151). Says he ; " It is enough to repeat in the presence of these facts that differences from the present text of the gospels such as are found in the present text of Justin are wholly inadequate to prove that passages so differing could not have been taken from copies of our gospels." And this was Avritten before the discovery of the apocryphal so-called " Gospel of Peter," and The Diatessaron of Tatian. It is proper to remark that almost certainly there were some differences between the text of the gospels used by Justin and our re- ceived text, or that of Westcott and Hort ; but the main differences between his quota- tions and our New Testament are due (as is plainly the case in his Old Testament quota- tions) to the fact that he quoted freely from memory and not with Bible and concordance in his hands. Dr. Purves has rendered a great service to the cause of truth and sound criticism by his L. P. Stone lectures on Justin Martyr, deliv- ered at Princeton, and no one, unless domi- nated by prejudice, can rise from the perusal of his fifth lecture, in which he brings a great mass of evidence from the two Apolo(j'u'k and 42 New Light on the New Testameid the Dialogue to show Justin's use of the writ- ings which we now call the IN'ew Testament, without agreeing in his conclusion that Justin had " reference to a distinct Christian litera- ture, which, while nothing definite is said of its authority in the Church, was evidently rec]:ulative of the Church's faith." The fact that Justin speaks of the gospels as read in the public worship of Christians along with the writings of the prophets, that he quotes the gospels with the formula, " It is written," together with his reverent use of what he calls " our writings " ( Scriptures), indicates that, having the New Testament al- most, if not quite, in its entirety,^ he regarded it, though not yet " canonized " by any eccle- siastical council, as invested with the authority of apostles who had received the Holy Spirit according to Christ's promise, and " the prom- ise of the Father." Referring to the peculiarities of the text which Justin had before him, Dr. Purves says (p. 218):- 1 Dr. Eberhard Nestle, in his work, Introduction to Textual Criticism of the New Testament, though once a pro- fessor of Tiibingen, moots the question (following Zahn), "Whether the entire New Testament", as the Doctrine of Addai says, w^as not a present which Tatian brought with him from Rome to his fellow-countrymen,'' etc. New Light on a Martyr's Teatimony 43 " We do not mean that Justin's text is now represented in its entirety by any one manu- script or class of manuscripts, but that he gives evidence of that corruption of the ca- nonical texts which, according to abundant testimony, took place even in the century im- mediately succeeding that in which they were written, and which most plainly appears in those manuscripts which textual critics have classified as 'Western.' If, however, this be so, then Justin testifies, not only that our synoptic gospels existed in his day and were used by the Church as public documents, and were regarded as apostolic and authoritative records of the life of Christ ; but he also proves, by the incidental character of his quotations and by their very variations from the text of our gospels, that these latter were, in the middle of the second century, already ancient books, handed down from the apostolic age. Ko more explicit testimony to our synoptic gospels could well be asked of him ; and the very difficulties which at first present them- selves in his quotations, in the end confirm his evidence for their apostolic authority." Farther on (p. 248) he declares, " It is clear that at least the gospels had been formed into a sacred collection called Hhe gospel' which 44 NeiD Light on the New Testament ranked on an equality with the Old Testament, and that other apostolic books were used to regulate the faith of the Church." The strange mistake of Eusebius in interpret- ing the words of Papias seems to be responsi- ble for the figment of a second John/ and so to have helped to fashion one feature of that persistent ghost, the "Johannean problem," though Eusebius himself had not a shadow of a doubt that the Fourth Gospel was written by the Apostle John. It is to be hoped that the phantom of false authorship, at least, is laid now, since Tatian's Diatessaron has risen from the dust of long oblivion to show unmistakably that Tatian's teacher, Justin, had the gospel of that John whom Justin describes as " one of the disciples of Christ," and the writer of The Eevelation.^ 1 See Farrar's Early Days of Christianity Appendix, Ex- cursus XIV. I think that no unprejudiced person who un- derstands Greek can read this "Excursus" without being convinced that Eusebius misunderstood Papias, John the Presbyter was John the Apostle. The fact that there are two tombs of Washinofton at Mt. Vernon does not prove that there were two Washingtons, and the fact that there were two tombs at Ephesus, each claimed to be a tomb of John, does not prove that there were two Johns. ^Origen says, (Commentary on John, Book I, Chap. 6), " The gospels tlien, being four, I deem the firstfruits of the gospels to be that which you have enjoined me to search into according to my powers, the Gospel of John," Again, he says, " But Luke, though he says at the begin- New Light on a 3Iartyrs Testimony 45 This new light on the old monument has made its inscriptions clear to all — but the blind. In the presence of evidence so incontroverti- ble, it is a strange thing to find a professor in a Congregational Theological Seminary speak- ing, in a late work,^ of the Gospel of John as "a writing about the middle of the second century." But then, when we find that this theological professor does not believe in Christ, except as a mere man, and remember how clearly the Gospel of John teaches his divinity, we see the explanation. Something had to be done to get this gospel out of the way ; and so in the face of all the overwhelming evi- dence of the falsity of the Tubingen theory, he still adheres to it. It may be true that German theological theories " go to England when they die," but they do not stop there. America is receiving uing of The Acts ' The former treatise did I make about all that Jesus began to do and teach, ' yet leaves to him who lay on Jesus' breast the greatest and completest discourses about Jesus." There was no " Johannean problem" to Origen ; and it may be safely asserted that no man living from A. D. 185 to the middle of the third century knew every scrap of early Christian literature so thoroughly as he. ' Evolution of Trinitarianism, Professor Paine, Bangor Theol. Sem. 46 New Light on the New Tedament a full share of these unquiet and disquieting spirits to haunt her halls of theological learn- ing, while their carcasses still pollute the relig- ious atmosphere of Germany. III. THE GREAT LIGHT FKOM THE VATICAN 1. The reader will naturally wish to know more of the Diatessaron x)f Tatian, Justin's pupil, which, in God's good providence, arose from its long sleep and showed so plainly that Justin had our four gospels and no others. When Ciasca showed Antonius Morcos, the Apostolic Visitor of the Catholic Copts, the Arabic copy of the Diatessaron in the Vatican library, this ecclesiastic, as we have seen, promised to send him another manuscript of the same work which was owned by a gentle- man in Egypt. So there are now in Home two Arabic copies of the Diatessaron. The Egyptian manuscript bears upon it the name of the donor in the following inscription at the end : " A present from Hallm Dos Ghali, the Copt, the Catholic, to the Apostolic See, in the year of Christ, 1886." This codex is described as follows : " The codex consists of three hundred and fifty-three leaves. There is no date attached, but the 47 48 New Light on the New Testament manuscript seems to belong, at the latest, to the fourteenth century. The pages are nine by six and one-quarter inches, inclosed in an illu- minated square of golden, red and purple lines, with an ornamentation of golden asterisks." ^ This manuscript was of great service in sup- plying two lacunse in the first, caused by the loss of two folios, and in determining doubtful readings. It is described as being better than the first, in text and other respects, but quite inferior to it in orthography. It was deposited in the Borgian Library, and, from this fact, has been named the Borgian manuscript, while the other is called the Vati- can, because it has long been, and still is, in the Vatican library. It is entirely clear that these manuscripts are not copied the one from the other, nor from any common exemplar, though they have a common Syriac remote ancestor. In speaking of the great interest excited by the discovery of the " New Syriac Gospels," by Mrs. Lewis, in 1892, Prof. Eendel Harris says, that " one of the first questions that will be asked will be, * Why have you not done it into English ? ' " This has, at last, been done 1 For fuller account see articles by Prof. M. Maher in The Month, London, for November and December, 1892. The Great Light from the Vatican 49 in the case of Tatian's great work, and we have The Diatessaron done into English. We now have it in the recently published ninth volume of The Ante-Nicene Fathers^ trans- lated, according to the statement of the title- page, by Eev. Hope W. Hogg, B. D., though he informs us that his wife translated the larger part for him. The statement of the title-page is, then, made on the principle. Qui facit per aliuiii facit i?er se, only the aliimi should be aliam in this case. It is in keeping with a great trend of our times that we find the Cambridge ladies, Mrs. Lewis and her sister Mrs. Gibson, going to the St. Catherine Convent at Mount Sinai, and dis- covering the Syriac Gospels, and then see this Oxford lady w^orking side by side with her husband in giving the Diatessaron of Tatian to the English-speaking world. But an interesting question is, what of the form and contents of the Diatessaron f II. The Diatessaron as We !N'ow Have It Harmonies are made in two forms, either in parallel columns (where the subject is men- tioned by more than one evangelist), or with all the gospels interwoven, so as to give a con- 50 New Light on the New Testament tinuous narrative of events and utterances. The Diatessaron, or Harmony, of Tatian is of the latter kind. {o) A Continuous Account The narratives of all the evangelists are com- bined so as to give an account of our Saviour's life and teachings in chronological order, so far as the compiler could determine this order. In this respect it is like the late Dr. William M. Taylor's Life of Our Lord in the Words of the Four Evangelists^ and other harmonies which might be mentioned. Hence, some old writers speak of it as the " gospel of the com- hined^'' as distinguished from the distinct gos- pels. (J) The Genealogies Omitted Tatian omitted the genealogies. Theodoret intimates that this was due to a heretical tend- ency, and says that he also omitted every- thing which indicated that our Saviour was de- scended from David. That the last accusation is due to the prejudice of the heresy hunter is made clear by an inspection of the Diatessaron. No such omissions are to be found. On the other hand, in the very first section, Christ is spoken of as the son of David. " The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father The Great Light from the Vatican 51 David "^ is the expression which, above all others, would have been omitted in such a case, but it is found here, coupled with the an- nouncement that " he shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest." He did omit the genealogies, but so does Dr. Taylor, who surely will never be accused of Docetism. The omission was evidently due to the fact that it would be difficult to fit them into a con- tinuous narrative.^ {c) The Diatessaron is Divided into Fifty- five Sections It is only in comparatively recent times that our Bibles have been divided into chapters and verses for convenience of reference, and it is altogether probable that this division of the Diatessaron into sections was made for the convenience of those who read it in public services in Syria for several centuries. The division could not have been made by a man of Tatian's sense. It looks like the work of an idiot in many places, as there is no regard whatever to the subject, the division often coming in the middle of a narrative. Eendel ' Luke 1 : 32. "^ The two Arabic manuscripts, the Vatican and the Bor- gian, have the genealogies, the first side by side in the narrative, and the latter ap])ended at the close They have evidently been added by another hand after Tatian's day. 52 New Light on the New Testament Harris suggests that this division into fifty-five sections was made in order that the whole might be read in churches ^ during the year on the Sabbaths and principal feasts. This seems altogether probable; but it is time to look at — {d) Some Peculiar Readings of the Diates- saron We should remember that it was almost in- evitable that there should be many expressions which would sound rather strange to ears ac- customed to the rhythm of the familiar words of King James' version, which we have heard from our childhood. Even the Ke vised Version sometimes at first surprised us with an unfa- miliar expression, though that is professedly not a new translation, but a revision of that of King James'. The Diatessai'on was, as far as we can trace it, a Syriac Version. On the other hand, we have had the Greek text of the New Testament, the nearest to the original that could be determined by all the critical means available, and from it our English version was made, and the revised version was based chiefly on the Greek text of Westcott and Hort, the ^ This is another reason for the omission of the genealogies. They may, indeed, have been in the original work ; but ex- cluded in the preparation of it for public reading. The Great Light from the Vatican 53 greater correctness of which was secured through many sources unknown when King James' version was translated. It is necessary to remember that the Diet- tessaron was almost certainly composed in Syriac. In spite of its Greek name and other reasons which Harnack urged for thinking that it was originally composed in Greek, Syriac scholars who have examined the ques- tion with great care pronounce it as certain that it was a Syriac book. At any rate, we know that from the early dawn of Syrian Christianity it was used in the churches in Syria. Therefore, when we read the Diates- saron in the English version just published, we are reading the translation of a text that branched off from the Greek very early, and that has passed through many vicissitudes, and may have suffered changes by the mistakes of copyists, by mistranslations in passing from version to version, and that has been influenced, as we have clear evidence, by contact with different versions which are well known. The accretions, and other changes from such sources, are noted by the learned editor of the Diatessaroii in abundant footnotes. This being so, we need not expect the version be- fore us to tally exactly with either our Author- 54 New Light on the New Testament ized or the Eevised Version. In spite of all this, it is seldom that the meaning is affected to any marked degree. Some of the most singular turns of expression will be given, though, of course, the space allowed will not admit of any full display of these peculiarities. Here are some examples : — Old Simeon was preserved till he had " seen with his eyes the Messiah of the Lord." And in this form we have his " Wunc Dimittis^''^ " Now loosest thou the bonds of thy servant, O Lord, in peace." We are rather surprised at the expression in the account of the offering of the Magi (which seems natural enough, however, when we remember that the camel was then, as it still is, used to cross the desert), ^' They opened their saddle- bags and offered to him offerings of gold, frankincense, and myrrh " (Matt. 2 : 11). In the account of the visit to Jerusalem during our Saviour's childhood, we are told that Joseph and his mother " supposed that he was with the children of their company " (Luke 2: 44). The version of John 1:18, giving a glimpse of the inscrutable relations of the Father and Son, is, " the only Son, God, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath told of him." In The Great Light from the Vatican 55 that scene in which John pointed out Christ to his own disciples, as John saw Jesus coming unto him, we hear him saying : " This is the lamb of God that taketh on itself the burden of the sins of the world " (John 1 : 29). When his family could not understand the change that came over him when he began his public ministry and spoke his wonderful words and did his wonderful deeds, we are told, " And his relatives heard, and went out to take him, and said. He hath gone out of his mind." We find the Diatessaron following the Greek more closely and translating it more literally than our own English versions in the account of the thronging of the multitude about him when he ^vas healing many, "so that they w^ere almost falling ujpon {Ininir.Teo) him^ on account of their seeking to get near him " (Mark 3 : 10). The two sparrows are spoken of as "sold for a farthing iri a hond.^^ The meaningless phrase "in a bond" seems to have crept into the text by the similarity of the Syriac word for " farthing " and that for " in a bond." Indeed, a footnote tells us that the two phrases are but different explanations of the same Syriac consonants. In the account of the giving of sight to the blind man, Barti- maeus, we have one of the many indications of- 56 NeiD Light on the New Testament the line of descent — the family genealogy, so to speak — of the Diatessaron text. When our Saviour asks the blind man what he wishes him to do for him, the Diatessaron represents him as replying, " My Lord and Master, that my eyes may be opened, so that I may see thee."^^ This remarkable addition to our Greek text is found, like many of the peculiar readings of the Diatessaron^ in the Curetonian Syriac manuscript. Several of these, too, are found in the "ISTew Syriac Gospels," as Kendel Harris calls them, discovered by Mrs. Lewis at Mt. Sinai in 1892. These peculiar expres- sions indicate a relationship between the Diatessaron and the Curetonian and Lewis texts. But more of this anon. Passing on to the betrayal of our blessed Lord, we find the expression in reference to the thirty pieces of silver, "the thirty pieces of money, the price of the precious one." The seamless robe is thus referred to : " And his tunic was without sewing, from the top woven throughout." Our Saviour's cry from the cross to his Father is given in a strange form : " Yall, Yaili, why hast thou forsaken me?" In a footnote the translator says, " The syllable * Ya ' is, dou})t- less, the Arabic interjection, ' O ! ' so that it is ' O God ! O my God ! ' " etc. The centurion The Great Light from the Vatican 57 -who, at the crucifixion, commanded the guard, is called " the officer of the foot-soldiers," and this the editor considers a mistake of the trans- lator into Arabic. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to give more instances of peculiar readings. These, as has been intimated, are such as we might very naturally expect to find in a text which was translated from the Greek at a very early day, and had been retranslated into Arabic, and, of course, recopied a number of times. We are familiar with the sight of a large snowball rolled on the ground in various directions, with one object after another adhering to it, having been picked up in its course, while, perhaps, a bit of color on its surface here and there shows the kind of soil on which it has been rolled. It is liable to be somewhat thus with the text that has been translated and copied over and over again. Some accretions will stick to it, and it will take the color of the life and habits and modes of speech of the people among whom it is translated or copied, and the peculiarities of versions with w4iich it has come in contact. A remarkable thing about the Diatessaron, is that its text is so pure that no doctrine or fact of the New Testament is at all distorted in 58 Neic Light on the New Tedament it;^ and the characteristic to wliich attention should be drawn is, that Tatian gave only the words of the four evangelists. No word of ex- planation connects the phrases that are care- fully woven together to set forth the wonder- ful life and words of Christ. Xo attempted reconciliation of apparent discrepancies is given ; and there is nothing answering to the headings of chapters in our English Bible, even. In the words of the last writer who mentions the Diatessaron as a work whicli he knew, before its disappearance, Abd Ischo (or Ebed Jesu), who died early in the fourteenth century, " With all diligence he attended to the utmost degree to the right order of those tilings which were done and said by the Saviour ; of his own he did not add a single saying." ^ ^ Yet, when read at family prayers its peculiar expressions enchain the attention of young and old, throwing, as they sometimes do, new light on the narrative. '•^ It seems impossible to account for Harnack's charge of freedom in the handling of the gospels by Tatian in making his harmony, unless he considers the very act of making a harmony one of freedom. No harmonist from Tatian's day to our OAvn, it may safely be said, ever handled the gospels with more reverence. He seemed to refrain, indeed, from putting in one word of his own, even as a connective, or for purposes of reconciliation of accounts or of explanation of obscurities. One does not like to think that the exigencies of Harnack's critical creed may have influenced his judg- ment. The Great Light from the Vatican 59 While the Diatessaron gathered some accre- tions, on the other hand we find that it escaped some corruptions that are found in our Greek received text. One such case, at least, and that a notable one, may be seen in the omission of the account of the woman taken in adultery, which, by the almost unanimous consent of critics, is now considered spurious. It crept into the text very early. But it evidently was not considered a part of the Holy Scripture (though it may have been known as a verbal tradition) in the time of Origen. In his com- mentary on John, just published, in the same volume with the Diatessaron^ that account (John Y : 53-8 : 11) is omitted. The fact that Tatian omits it indicates that he wrote before it had crept into the text. The Diatessaron, does, however, include the gloss (as it almost certainly is), about the angel descending and troubling the water in the pool of Bethesda (John 5 : 3, 4), and this is an indication of the very early introduction into the text of these words, which were probably written as an ex- planation by some transcriber who lived early enough to know of this as the traditional belief of the Jews about this pool. When we see so remarkable a work as the Diatessaron in which, with great care, the 60 New Light on the New Testament four gospels are interwoven, one supplying Avliat another omits, in order to form a con- tinuous account of the life of our Lord, wo are naturally anxious to know what manner of man it was who, little more than a half century after the last gospel was penned, undertook this labor of love. Tatian, like Justin Martyr, who, it seems, led him to Christ, was a heathen philosopher who came to find the truest philosophy in Christianity. III. Tatian, the First Harmonist He is the first harmonist of whom anything is known, and it is not at all probable that there was one before him. His great zeal for Chris- tianity, as well as his originality and genius, point to him as the probable inventor of this mode of presenting the life of our blessed Lord on earth. In the introductory note to the Borgian manuscript of the Dlatessaron he is called " Titianus, the Greek." This is evidently the mistake of a copyist, for he himself tells us in so many words that he was an Assyrian.^ It is ^ He -was probably of Greek parentage, though born in Assyria. Assyria had been incorporated by Trajan in the Roman province of Syria. Hence he is sometimes called a Syrian. The Great Light from the Vatican 61 true that be wrote in Greek as well as in Syriac, of wiiicli his Address to the Greelcs (^Aoyoi r.pd^ EUr^'^a^) is witness. He was a student of philosophy in general, but inclined to that of Plato as his own philosophical creed. He was born and reared a heathen, and, in the prosecu- tion of his studies, traveled over many coun- tries that he might study the systems of various nations. When he became acquainted with the Old Testament Scriptures he was im- pressed vfith the fact that these "barbaric books," as be at first considered them (as a Greek philosopher of that day very naturally would), were "too old to be compared with the learning of the Greeks, too divine to be put on a level with their erroneous doctrine." It should be remembered that Moses preceded Herodotus, " the father of history," by more than a millennium, and it is not strange that be should have been impressed with the vener- able antiquity of the books which "Moses wrote." Fortunately for him the higher critics were not to be born for nearly two millenni- ums after his time. The account of his conversion to Christianity is thus given by l^eander, who makes a sum- mary of what Tatian himself tells in his Address to the GreeJcs : — 62 New Light on the Neio Testament " He was brought up in heathenism, and frequent travels gave him the opportunity of learning the multifarious sorts of heathen worship which at that time w^ere existing together in the Eoman empire. None among them all could recom- mend itself to him as reasonable. Not only did he ol^serve how religion was used in them to the service of sin, but even the highly wrought allegorical interpretations of the ancient myths as symbols of a speculative system of natural philosophy could not satisfy him ; and it appeared to him a dishonorable proceeding for a man to attach himself to the popular religion who did not partake in the common religious belief, and who saw nothing in its doctrine about the gods but symbols of the elements and powers of nature. The mys- teries into which he suffered himself to be initiated appeared to him also, in the same manner, not to correspond to the expectations which they awakened ; and the contradictory systems of philosophy offered him no sure grounds of reli- gious faith. He was rendered mistrustful of them by the contradiction which he often observed in those who gave themselves out as philosophers, between the seriousness which they exhibited, for the sake of appearances, in their dress, mien, and language, and the levity of their conduct. While he was in this condition he came to the Old Testa- ment, to which his attention was drawn by what he had heard of the high antiquity of these writings in comparison with the Hellenic religions, as might easily be the case with a Syrian. He himself says of the impression which the reading of this book made upon him : — " ' These writings found acceptance with me because of the simplicity of their language, the unstudiedness of the writers, the intelligible history of the creation, because of the prediction of the future, because of the wholesomeness of their precepts, and because of the doctrine of the ONE GOD which prevails throughout them.' ' ' The impression which the study of the Old Testament Tlie Gi^eat Light from the Vatican 63 made on him would appear, from this, to have been with him the preparation for a belief in the gospel. "Coming, in this state of mind, to Kome, he was con- verted to Christianity by Justin, of whom he speaks with great reverence.'' — Neander^s Church History, p. 418, Eosea translation. Tatian, like his spiritual father, Justin Martyr, retained his philosopher's cloak after he became a Christian, maintaining the posi- tion that he did not cease to be a philosopher in embracing Christianity, but rather advanced to that which is the highest and only true philosophy. So firmly, however, were some of the princi- ples of Platonism rooted in his mind that he seems to have been much influenced by them in his views and teachings during the latter part of his life. While Justin lived, however, we have the best testimony that he was free from the fault of teaching that dualism which is laid to his charge in his latter days. Some time, we know not how long, after the martyrdom of Justin, he became a leader among the Encratites, and, it seems, declaimed against marriage and the drinking of wine as sinful. He also taught that Adam was not saved, deducing this opinion from the assertion of the Scriptures that " In Adam, all die." 64 Neio Light on the New Testament Irengeus and Hippolytus speak of Tatian as, at last, a Gnostic, and Valentinian teachings are attributed to him. These accusations quite probably contain an element of exaggeration as the result of ecclesiastical zeal, as Tatian is said by Irenaeus to have " separated from the Church." Whatever amount of deflection from the truth of Christianity he may have been guilty of, we may be quite sure that it was due to that fruitful source of heresies in all ages — ours being by no means an exception — the adoption of a false philosophy and the endeavor to fit Christianity to the Procrustean bed thus pre- pared for it. The whole history of Gnosticism is an illustration of this process as followed in the early days of Christianity, and the destruct- ive school of criticism, founded by Baur of Tubingen on the postulates of the Hegelian philosophy, is an object lesson for our times of the folly of assuming the infallibilit\^ of some human theory and then trying to square God's word to it. The reverse order of procedure must suggest itself to every one who believes in the infallibility of the Scriptures as a Reve- lation from God to man, as the only true and safe course. IreucTus tells us (Adv. Haeres. Book I, Ch. The Great Light from the Vatican 65 xxviii.) that as long as Tatian enjoyed the companionship of Justin Martyr, "he ex- pressed no such views, but after his (Justin's) martyrdom, he separated from the Church," and also that he " composed his own peculiar type of doctrine," and that, among other things, " he declared that marriage was noth- ing but corruption and fornication." We may well grieve that one who was so earnest in his advocacy of Christianity, and who held himself always in readiness to lay down his life in testimony of his faith, should, in any degree, have turned from the straight line of orthodoxy, and should, at last, have separated himself from the Church ; yet we can never be too grateful for the fact that he composed the Diatessaron from the very words of the inspired gospels of our Lord, "adding not one of his own." Much as we may regret the false views into which a false philosophy and a mistaken zeal led him, it is an additional reason for grati- tude that this very departure from orthodoxy on Tatian's part makes the evidence of the Diatessaron for the genuineness of the gospels more decisive ; because this makes it well- nigh certain that he composed the harmony in the earlier part of his Christian career. This 66 New Light on the New Testament will be more fully considered when we come to make an estimate of the value of the evi- dence furnished by this work. We will now turn to look at some of the lY. Foot-prints of the Diatessaron Down the Ages There are few books that have come down to us through more than seventeen centuries that have left plainer traces along their paths. There is ample evidence of the existence of the work from a very early date down to the time of the Nestorian bishop Ebed Jesu (or, as our translator writes it, Abd Ischo), who died in 1308. For more than five centuries it had been lost, or at least had been unrecog- nized b}^ the learned, when it was translated into Latin by Ciasca in 1888. We have it now in the two Arabic manuscripts which have been mentioned, as well as the commen- tary on it written by Ephraem Syrus, who died in A. D. 373. This 'commentary is in two manuscripts in the Armenian language, which have a common remote ancestor, doubtless, but differ enough to show that neither w^as copied from the other. These Armenian manuscripts contain a commentary following in a remarkable way the same order of events The Great Light from the, Vatican 67 as the coiii})lete Arabic manuscripts of the Diatessaron which we now have. It has been remarked that w^hile these Arabic manuscripts show the influence on their text of the Peshito version (or Peshitta, as it is now called), the Ar- menian manuscripts of Ephraem's commentary contain peculiar readings of the Curetonian manuscript and of that which Rendel Harris considers the Curetonian's ancestor, the Lewis Sinai tic Palimpsest ; ^ and references and quota- tions *' go to show that the Armenian text stands much more closely related to the original than does the Arabic " (Introd. in IX. Yol. Ante-Nicene Fathers, § 15). Thus the Armenian manuscripts are another independent witness, not only of the existence, from very early times, of the Diatessaron^ but of the fact that Ephraem wrote a commentary on it, for they are manuscripts of that com- mentary itself. The Diatessaron w^as very extensively used in Syrian churches until the Peshito version (Peshitta) gradually took its place in the fifth century. Even after this it was studied and valued. Dionysius Bar Salibi, Bishop of Armida (twelfth century), has this to say of it: ' Called by Harris, The New Syriac Gos2)els. 68 New Light on the New Testament '* Tatian, disciple of Justin, the philosopher and martyr, selected from the four gospels and combined and composed a gospel, and called it Diatessaro7i — i. e., The Combined, . . . and upon this gospel Mar Ephraern commented. Its commencement was ' In the beginning was the Word.' " But this, with the exception of the assertion that the Diatessaron began with the first verse of the Gospel of John, was said, about 350 years earlier, by a Syriac commentator on the New Testament, Isho 'dad of Merv (a. d. 852), who mentions, also, another Diatessaron by Ammonius,^ who lived nearly a century after Tatian. As belonging to this (ninth) century, the subscription of the Borgian manuscript should be noted. As we have seen, that states that it was translated from Syriac into Arabic '' from an exemplar written by 'Isa-ibn-'Alial- Motatabbib, pupil of Honain ibn-Ishak," who, we learn, was a famous Arabic physician and teacher of Bagdad (d. 773), whose school pro- duced many translators. ' This Harmony of Ammonius of Alexandria (not Am- monius Saccas) was nnlike the Diatessaron of Tatian. It was not "combined," or interwoven, but had the four gospels, it would seem, in four parallel columns. The Great Light from the Vatican 69 Of Isho 'dad of Merv, Prof. Kendel Harris tells us that he transferred to bis pages " some of the most astonishing interpretations which are found in Ephraem's commentary, and gives his express statement of his depend- ence, in these peculiar interpretations, upon the Syrian father." He also tells us that what is true of Isho 'dad is equally true of Bar Salibi and Bar Hebrseus,^ and taking one passage. Matt. 2 : 23, as an instance, says : — '• Syriac authors steadily quote, and some of them ascribe to Ephraem, a dubious scholium on Matt. 2 : 23 " (it is an explanation given by Ephraem of the words, He shall be called a Nazarene), " and this scholium is actually found in the Armenian Commentary." Victor of Capua, too, had Tatian's Diates- saron in A. D. 545. A century earlier, we find Theodoret, the zealous bishop of Cyrrhus, very much exercised over the general use of the Diatessaron in the churches of his diocese, and, impressed with the fact that Tatian was a heretic, emplo3ang very energetic measures to keep his flock from using it. Writing on Heresies, 453, he says, " I myself found more ' Bar Hebraeus lived eighty or ninety years after Bar Salibi. 70 New Light 07i the New Testament than two hundred copies in reverential use in the churches of our district. All these I col- lected and removed, replacing them by the gospels of the four Evangelists." About a century before tliis, Ephraem, " the most renowned father of the Eastern Church," wrote his commentary, a translation of which from Armenian into Latin was made by Moe- singer, as we have seen, in 1876, and texts from which, published by Zahn in 1881, led to the examination and translation of the Arabic manuscript of the Diatessaron in the Yatican library, and its publication by Ciasca in time for the Pope's jubilee in 1888. Another step brings us to Eusebius, and though he does not seem to have been very familiar with the Diatessaron^ as was natural, he being a writer in Greek and that being in Syriac, yet he speaks of it distinctly and indi- cates clearly his knowledge of its plan and contents. He says : — '' Tatian having put together a certain harmony (^(juvdcpeiav) and combination (I know not how) of the gospels, named this the Dia Tessaron " ( Jw Tedfrdpio'^). (H. E. IV. 29.) Then, when we go back through a century to Hippolytus, we find him speaking of Tatian as an Encratite and Gnostic. The Great Light from the Vatican 7 1 When we go still farther back to Iren^eus, the teacher of Hippolytus, we find him speak- ing of Tatian in the same way, and Irenseus was his contemporary for about a half century, and Hippolytus was probably twenty years old when Tatian died. Now, it is well known that Irenseus was the devoted pupil of Polycarp, and that Polycarp was the disciple of John, " that disciple whom Jesus loved," being more than thirty years old when John died.^ Irenaeus quotes the Gospel of John extensively, and Tatian places almost the whole of it, about ninety-six per cent — a much larger proportion than would have been possible in the case of any of the other gos- pels — in the Diatessaron. This settles the much talked of " Johannean problem," which must now retire to the shades of that limbo into which so many of the bloodless phantoms of the Tubingen School have disappeared. An clement of importance in this discussion is the answer to the question : — ' The date of Poly(jarp'9 martyrdom has been determined, with a high degree of probability, as Februarj^ 23d. A. D. 55, and not in the time of INIarcus Aurelius, as has long been thought, and, indeed, as Eusebius tells ns. The reasons for preferring the date mentioned cannot be given here, but they are now quite generally accepted as conclusive. 72 New Light on the New Testament Y. When Tatian Composed the Diates- SAKON As to the date of the Diatessaron^ common sense obliges us to agree with Harnack when he says, " It cannot have been produced during his later years, for all traces of dualism are absent." The testimony of Irenseus is clear as to the fact that Tatian, his contemporary for about fifty years, did not teach " his peculiar form of doctrine " till after the martyrdom of Justin. We find in the Diatessaron all those narra- tives and teachings which are most thoroughly out of keeping with the Encratite form of asceticism, giv^en in full. Tatian in his latter days condemned marriage and the use of wine ; but in the Diatessaron the account of the marriage in Cana of Galilee and the turn- ing of water into wine is faithfully recorded, as well as Luke 7 : 33, 34. Professor Gildersleeve, in his Introduction to his edition of Justin Martyr's Apologies, gives preference to A. D. 163 as the date of Justin's martyrdom. The most probable time, for the composition in so laborious,^ painstaking and reverent a ' Glancing down a page of the Diatessaron, we see all four of the gospels quoted in five (5) lines, so carefully are they The Gr^eat Light from the Vatican t3 way, of this harmony of the four gospels, must have been before Tatian had undergone this change — before the simplicity of his faith had at all received the taint of that Gnosticism which was so rife in his day. The motive for such a work was probably strongest when he first came to know the gosjjels, and when he felt the ardor of his ''first love^ The most prob- able date, then, is soon after a. d. 150. YI. The Diatessakon as a Witness of THE Gospels {a) It shotvs that the Apocryphal Gosj)elSy so called^ are all sjyurious. The importance of this may not be ap- preciated by all ; but those who have been plied with assertions that there are many other gospels as old and almost as good as four,i will be glad of the ability to give a ready answer ; and the Diatessaron furnishes that answer in a most conclusive form. It contains the gospels as known to Tatian, and he a man of the widest information, born about ten years after the Apostle John died. interwoven. In at least one place, all the four gospels are drawn on to make up four lines. ^ This is one of the commonest of all cavils, though, as we see, entirely baseless. 74 New Light ,on the New Testament knows of no gospels hut those of Mattliew^ Marh^ Luke, and John. He evidently lived before any ajpochryphal gosjpel was written, or certainly before any such writings gained any credence in the Christian Church. The very nsbine, Diatessaro7i (^«« Teffadpw^S) — through four — implies that the life of our Lord was given through four gospels, and four only. (h) It absolutely overthrows the Tubingen theory as to the late origin of our four gospels. As we have seen, Baur dates the first three gospels from 130 to 160, and John during the decade ending a. d. lYO. Since the discovery of the Diatessaron, honest followers of the Tubingen School have acknowledged that Baur's position was utterly untenable. Renan acknowledges that the four gospels are not spurious. Adolf Ilarnack, too, admits " that we learn from the Diatessaron that about A. D. 160, our four gospels had already taken a place of prominence in the Church, and that no others had done so, that in particular, the Fourth Gospel had taken a place alongside the synoptics." And, also, "that as regards the text of the gospels we can conclude from the Diatessaron that the text of our gospels about the year 160 already ran essentially as we now read them " (Harnack as quoted in The Great Light from the Vatican 75 article on Tatian in Encyclopaedia Britannica). But the Dlafessaron proves much more than this. If we find a harmony of the four gospels prepared as early as 160, at the latest, we may conclude that these gospels had been accepted as the authoritative records of our Saviour's life, long before this time. A harmony of the gospels would not naturally come into existence immediately on the writing of the gospels. In the words of Professor Maher {The Mouthy London, Nov- ember, 1892), " If Tatian, knowing the whole Church as he did, devoted himself to the con- struction of an elaborate harmonized gospel narrative, in which the paragraphs, texts and fragments of texts are interwoven with the utmost pains and ingenuity, and the very greatest care directed to the preservation of even the smallest words of our four gospels, it can only be because these four gospels and the least part of their contents had before this time been received by the Church, as a sacred deposit of divine truth." Now, when we think of the fact that there were then no steam printing presses, no railroads for rapid distribution, and no general councils to stamp them as authoritative, we must conclude that this result, of a general acceptance in the 76 New Light on the New Testament different districts, of all the four gospels as a divine record of Christ's life, must have re- quired a period of many years' duration. In the words of the same writer, " The Diatessaron proves that, in the minds of the Christian world of that day, every sentence and syllable, every jot and tittle of these gospels possessed a peculiar sacredness. Zahn's conclusion, then, cannot be very far from the truth, ' In view of the history of the text, opinions as to the origin of John's Gospel, such as Baur has expressed, must appear simply as madness. It follows, further, that the element which re- mains the same in all the originals, and of the versions amid all the variations that crept into the text between A. D. 150 and 160, must have been everywhere read at the beginning of the second century.' " They were certainly thus read as soon as the Gospel of John could be reproduced by copyists and distributed. {c) Confirms the testimony of L^encBiis and Polycarp. Irenaeus (a. d. 200) quotes the four gospels as fully as any modern orthodox theologian would, tells us plainly that there were four gospels, and only four, and speaks of them as "Holy Scripture." Now, as we have seen, The Great LiyJit from the Vatican 77 Tatian was the con temporary of Irenaeus for about fifty years, and Irenseas speaks of him at some length. When we consider that Tatian was the contemporary of Poly carp, the teacher of Irenaeus, for more than forty years, and that Poly carp was a pupil of the Apostle John, and Ms contemporary for more than thirty years, and, then, that this Tatian pre- pared a harmony of the four gospels, with that of John most prominent of all, it would seem that we are warranted in saying, as we have done above, that the " Johannean prob- lem " has vanished, and that the apostolic au- thority of all the gospels is established. {d) Confirms the testhnony of Justin Martyr. The Diatessaron makes it certain that the " Memoirs of the Apostles " {artoijyqiKv^ebiiara Twv aizoGTokujv^ first Apology, 67), spoken of by Justin Martyr, as read in the worship of the Christians, were our four gospels, and not any then recent record of verbal traditions. Tatian was the pupil of Justin, and made this harmony of our four gospels, and, as we have seen, in all probability, composed his harmony in the lifetime of Justin.^ It is not at all im- ^ '* Writers in question, more particular!}^, Justin, quoted, at least at times, not from our separate gospels, but from a 78 New Light on the New Testament probable, indeed, that he did it under his super, vision and with his help. Those memorials of the Saviour's life which Justin recognized as bearing the stamp of apostolic authority, and as Holy Scripture, were our four gospels. The alternative would imply, to employ a quotation of Prof. Basil Gildersleeve, in com- menting on these words of Justin Martyr, that *' an entire change of gospels was made through- out all the different and distant provinces of the Eoman Empire, at a time when concerted action through general councils was unknown, and that, too, in so silent a manner that no record of it remains in the history of the Church." {e) Confirms the testimony of the ^'' New Syriac GosijelsP I was at first led to believe (and, as some may know, expressed the belief) that, in. these gospels, there were marks of manipulation of the account of the nativity of our Saviour in Matt. 1 : 16, 21 and 25, which indicated that harmony of the gospels."— (/JentZeZ Harris^ Diatessaron of 2\itian, p. 54.) We know that Tatian AYrote such a harmony. That was not published till after Justin's death ; but it would not be impro])able that some sort of rough draft might have been used by both master and scholar before its publication. " — Dr. W. Sunday, Bampton Lectures, p. 301. The Great Light from the Vatican 79 this Syriac text was used in the propagation of the Cerinthian heresy ; and Cerinthus was a younger contemporary of the Apostle John (See Prof. J. llendell Harris's Art. in Contem- 2)orary Beview, N^ovember, 1894). This, if true, would seem to show that the four gos- pels were not only written, but already gath- ered together, recognized, by heretics as well as the orthodox, as the authoritative records of Christianity, and then translated into Syriac ; and that, in the lifetime of a contem- porary of the Apostle John. The Diatessaron adds much to the probability that Professor Harris's conclusion is true, so far as the age of these Syriac gospels is concerned. It shows marks of the Curetonian Syriac text, and, ac- cording to Prof. Harris, this is a revised ver- sion of the "New Syriac Gospels " in the in- terest of orthodoxy. It would seem, then, that these Lewis gospels^ or Sinaiticpalimjysest, were, so to speak, two generations earlier than the Diatessaron, and that they must have been translated near the beginning of the second century. Mrs. Lewis, the discoverer of the SiiiaitiG palimpsest, dissents from Dr. Harris's opinion that the version was Cerinthian in character, saying that " some of the most eminent schol- 80 New Light on the New Testament ars in England, France, and Germany, includ- ing Dr. Westcott, have pronounced in favor of its orthodoxy." However this point may be decided, there is little if any doubt of the very early origin of this translation of the four gospels. The Dia- tessaron is good evidence on this point. Whether the Sinaitic or the Curetonian is the earlier Syriac version, may be left to the crit- ics to discuss, and if they can do so, decide ; but that both are older than the Diatessaron there can be little doubt, as peculiar readings of both these versions are found in it. The Diatessaron^ then, shows that both these versions must have been made early in the second century ; and one of them may have been made before it began. The only alternative, evidently, is that a Syriac version, the ancestor, so to speak, of both of these, was that from which the Diates- saron was composed, and for the settling of the toain question, the genuineness of the gos- pels, this would amount to the same thing. It is well nigh certain that both these versions precede the Diatessaron^ and it has been gen- erally thought that another Syriac version pre- ceded them. The Diatessaron and Sinaitic palimpsest both The Great Light from the Vatican 81 lack the account of the woman taken in adul- tery. This is a characteristic of the earliest texts. But the Sinaitio also lacks the last chapter of Mark after the eighth verse, while the Diatessaron has it. This is one of the many signs that the Sinaitic is earlier than the Diatessaron. It also shows that the Diates- saron drew on some source other than the Siniatio (the Curetonian ?), for this part of its text. CONCLUSION yil. The Diatessaron, an Independent Witness When the Diatessaron is spoken of as con- firming the testimony of so many other wit- nesses, it should not be inferred that its testi- mony is in any sense dependent on theirs. While it makes clearer and more conclusive the testimony which each of them gives, its own would stand unimpeachable, even on the impossible supposition that theirs could be refuted. Among all these witnesses it occu- pies a unique position. It is the only copy of the gospels of that early time that is 'known to have come from the pen of a well-hioivn histor- ical character. It is as certain that Tatian prepared this harmony from the four gospels 82 Neio Light on the Neiv Testament in a complete form as any fact of that date can be to us. This, of course, absolutely fixes its date within the narrow limits of a very few years of Tatian's life. Other versions were certainly earlier, at least the one from which this harmony was composed ; but the age of each one has to be determined by internal marks. The age of this is settled historically and w^ithout reference to those internal signs by which specialists determine the date of texts. Pharos, the world's wonder, reared its mar- ble shaft far aloft, and threw its great light over all the approaches to Alexandria, showing the positions of other landmarks doubtless ; but without reference to them, its position was well known to all the world, and if they had been swept away, it would still have served its own great purpose. Thus, we see the Diatessaron — the fourfold gospel — standing about a half century after John as a monumental witness of the genuine- ness of the gospels which furnish those facts that are the foundation of our faith — facts concerning God's merciful intervention to save the lost through Jesus Christ, v/hom he hath anointed and named Jesus becpaise " lie shall save his people from their sins " — and reveal- ing to us, so to speak, the locations of other The Great Light from the Vatican 83 beacons still nearer the shore and shining with the light of all the gospels. In plain words, while its own testimony is clear and indubitable, it also serves to empha- size and confirm that of the contemporaries of Tatian, Iren^us, Justin, and Polycarp, and shows us that, in the Syriac version or versions from which it was composed, the Syrian Chris- tians had their need supplied by copies of the four gospels, complete and distinct, made still earlier. We may appeal to the common sense of all honest men, and ask, in view of all these facts : Is it credible that if the gospels had heen forgeries^ the great company of Syrian Chris- tians would have received, as a part of the Holy Scriptures^ these versions made, when there were still living thousands of Christians who were contemporaries of the Apostle John in their youth f The improbability is too great to be entertained for a moment. The only rational conclusion is that the gospels thus early received as authoritative, translated, and combined into a harmony, were so received and prepared for use because they are genuine — written by the persons whose names they have borne from the first; and that they had the stamp of apostolic approval. lY. THE FULLER LIGHT FROM MOUNT SINAI At Cambridge, England, there live two ladies who may well be numbered among the heroines of our times. Distinguished as schol- ars at one of the world's chief centers of learn- ing, instrumental in securing, by their munifi- cence, the establishment there of the youngest of its sisterhood of colleges, and surrounded by all that could contribute to social enjoy- ment and the pleasures of learned ease, they have yet endured hardships and faced dangers from which most men would shrink, to accom- plish a great work for the benefit of our own and succeeding generations. In recent years many discoveries have been made which serve to throw welcome light on that most interesting of all books, the Bible ; but few of these surpass in interest and im- portance those made by the twin sisters, Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson of Cambridge, in Feb- ruary, 1892. Of these discoveries the most important was that of a Syriac manuscript 84 The Fuller Light from Mount Sinai 85 containing the four gospels ; a manuscript more than fourteen centuries old, a copy of a Syriac version made, as very eminent scholars think, not many years after the death of the Apostle John. The manuscript was complete with the exception of a few of the vellum leaves which had been lost. It is interesting to notice the train of events which led these ladies to make their journey to Mount Sinai. Prof. Kendel Harris had made the discovery of the long-lost Ajyology of Aristides in the library of this convent in 1889. He was led to make his researches in that place by the fact that the indefatigable efforts of Tischen- dorf had resulted in the discovery there, in 1859, of the Sinaitic Codex, which is consid- ered by many scholars the very oldest copy of the Bible in existence, not excepting even the Vatican Codex, at Rome. Tischendorf had seen some leaves of this celebrated manuscript in a wastebasket in the convent in 1844 ; and now, under the author- ity of the Czar of Eussia, he had come again to make an exhaustive search for the re- mainder of the Codex of which he sa^v that they formed a part. After several weeks of fruitless effort he was about to depart. He 86 New Light on the Neiv Teatament had ordered his Bedawin to have his drome- daries ready for the return journey ; when, taking a walk in the evening with the steward of the convent among the surpassingly inter- esting scenes of Sinai, he was invited, on re- turning, to take tea in the latter's cell. He had been speaking, probably, of his disappoint;- ment in not finding the remainder of the copy of the Septuagint, a fragment of which he had seen in the wastebasket fifteen years before, when the steward casually remarked that he too had been interested in reading the Septua- gint lately, and, going to a corner of the cell brought back a bulkly volume wrapped in a red cloth, and laid it in Tischendorf's hands. The scholar, after the first glance, was assured that he had before him the long-sought treas- ure. Here were the leaves matching those he had seen on his former visit, and containing a large part of the rest of the Old Testament, together with the New, to which were ap- pended the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shep- herd of Her mas. But, Prof. Eendel Harris was not the only one whose zeal for discovery was awakened and stimulated by Tischendorf's success. Mrs. Lewis tells us that in early girlhood, the desire came upon her to visit this old convent, The Fuller Light from 3Iount Sinai 8T founded by Justinian at Mount Sinai, and that when many years afterwards, the Avay was opened for her to go, it was with something like assurance that some important discovery would be the result. Mrs. Lewis and her sister, Mrs. Gibson, seem, providentially, to have received a train- ing, from childhood on, by which they were fitted to do their remarkable work for the world. The children of a wealthy Scotch gentleman, their education was very carefully conducted by competent instructors under the direction and supervision of their father. They, probably, early exhibited a love for lan- guages, with a facility in acquiring a knowl- edge of them ; and, to encourage them in these pursuits, as soon as they learned a language well, they were allowed, as a reward, to make a journey, and spend some time among the people who spoke it. Thus it came about, doubtless, that in later years they could con- verse with equal ease, with ecclesiastics who spoke modern Greek, and Bedawin, whose talk, during their many camel journeys through the desert, was in Arabic. But the account of the journey to Mount Sinai, along the track of the Exodus of Israel, ^vould better be told in Mrs. Lewis's own words : 88 Neic Light on the Neiv Testament " The project of visiting Sinai came first into my mind in early girlhood, when my future brother-in-law, Mr. James Young Gib- son, traveled by Sinai and Petra to Jerusalem in 1865, and his glowing descriptions of desert scenery were forever haunting my memory. It was revived after a very successful journey, which my sister and I made through Greece in 1883. The hospitality which we had re- ceived from Greek monks, and the pleasant intercourse which we had enjoyed with Greek ecclesiastics, emboldened us to think that a visit to the Sinai Convent would be profitable, and that perhaps our knowledge of Arabic might facilitate our intercourse with the Bed- awin who would escort us thither. I made an attempt to carry out this design in 1886, but I got no farther than ' Uyun Musa, being de- terred by apprehensions about the health of a lady friend who was traveling with me.' " After my marriage in 1887 to the Eev. Samuel Savage Lewis, of Corpus Christi Col- lege, Cambridge, we made several Oriental journeys together ; but I had to relinquish all thoughts of Sinai, as my husband was bound to residence in his college during February, the only season of the year when a desert journey is compatible with health." The Fuller Lifjht from Mount Sinai 89 Mr. Lewis died suddenly in 1891, and Mr. James Y. Gibson, the husband of her sister had died also. In the summer of this year the Syriac text of Professor Harris's then new dis- covery, the Ajjology of Aristides, was pub- lished. Mrs. Lewis became much interested in this defense of the early Christians, which, Eusebius informs us, the Greek philosopher, Aristides, who had become a Christian, pre- sented to the Emperor, Hadrian, when he came to Athens to be initiated in the Eleusin- ian Mysteries in the eighth year of his reign, i. e., in 12-1 or 125 of our era. She gave her- self to earnest study of the Syriac, especially in the ancient Estrangelo character, which her knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic, both lan- guages of the same family, made quite easy. Eev. K. H. Kennett of Queen's College was her instructor. Meeting with the wife of Professor Harris with whom she had been very slightly ac- quainted before this, she told her that she was busily engaged in the study of the Apology in the Syriac, and that she intended to go to Mount Sinai. Dr. Harris immediately called and taught the sisters to photograph with his own camera to prepare them for their work there, and, to use Mrs. Lewis's words, ''ex- 90 New Light on the New Testament pressed >the opinion so decidedly that there were treasures in the convent which he had not thoroughly examined, that we both looked forward to our journey with the brightest ex- pectations. For several weeks I dreamed of the dark closet so vividly described to me by Dr. Harris, in which lay the two mysterious chests full of manuscripts, and to which access was only to be obtained by propitiating the reverend recluses who owned them. So strongly were we impressed with the idea that we were going to discover something, that the night before our departure when the Master of Corpus (Dr. Perowne) and Mr. Kennett both called to say farewell, they actually speculated on what the discovery was to be; and Mr. Kennett expressed a hope that it might be the Harmony of the Four Gospels (or Diatessaron) written by Tatian in the second century." [The epoch-making discovery of this remark- able work in an Arabic translation had been made in the Yatican Library a few years be- fore this. The hope was that the original Syriac might be found.] Several Oriental scholars were invited to accompany Mrs. Lewis and her sister, Mrs. Gibson to Mount Sinai, but all efforts in this direction having failed, the two sisters braved the journey without them. The Fuller Light from Blount Sinai 91 Dr. Rendel Harris, however, though unable to go with them at this time, did much to pre- pare for and further their success. Says Mrs. Lewis : " Dr. Harris very kindly ordered a half-plate camera for us with all its appurte- nances, and also designed a manuscript stand for our use to obviate some of the difficulties which he had experienced." The journey was by way of Cairo, and an introduction to the patriarch of Alexandria secured one from him, or rather, from his representative (he himself being absent), to the Archbishop of Mount Sinai, who received them most kindly. This insured their favor- able reception at the St. Catherine Convent on Mount Sinai; which is thus described, after mention of incidents of the journey : — *'Next day we climbed the pass of Kug Hawa on foot, followed by our dromedaries. Soon the peak of Eas Sufsafeh burst on our view, and we stood on the great plain of Er- Rahah, just before the mountain which burned with fire, where the voice of God Vv^as heard in thunder by the multitude beneath. At length, the convent appeared in view, nestling in a narrow valley, surrounded by a walled garden, and overlooked on the one hand by the cliifs of Jebel Mousa, and on the other, by a 92 New Light on the New Testament mountain named after two Greek saints, Galakteon and Episteme. " While our tents were being pitched beside a well of delicious water, amid the cypresses, olives, and flowering almond trees of the gar- den, we were received b}^ the Hegoumenos, or prior, and by Galakteon, the librarian, whose eyes sparkled with sincere pleasure when he read our letter to himself from Mr. Eendel Harris, ' The world is not so large a.fter all,' he exclaimed, ' when we can have real friends in such distant lands.' " This aged and amiable librarian gave them not only the fullest liberty to examine the treasures of which he was the custodian, but all possible personal assistance. "On Monday, February 8th," Mrs. Lewis continues, " we worked for seven hours in the library, begin- ning at 9 A. M. The manuscripts were very much scattered, some Greek ones being in the show library, and the Arabic partly there, and partly in a little room halfway up a dark stair. " The Syriac ones, and those supposed to be the most ancient, are partly in this room, and partly in a dark closet approached through a room almost as dark. There they repose in two closed boxes, and cannot be seen without The Fuller Light from 3Iount Sinai 93 a lighted candle. They have, at different times, been stored in vaults beneath the con- vent for safety, when attacks were threatened by the Bedawin. " They were there exposed to damp and then allowed to dry without any care. It is a wonder that the strong parchment and clearly written letters have, in so many cases, with- stood so many adverse influences. " Galakteon gave us every facility for pho- tographing. He spent hours holding books open for us, or deciphering pages of the Sep- tuagint. The fact that the English should be so anxious for a correct version of the sacred writings as to have sheets of paper printed on purpose for scholars to collate thens. with all the extant manuscripts, filled the monks with a profound respect. The only drawback to our comfort was the bitterly cold wind. As there was no glass in the library windows, we had some difficulty in keeping ourselves warm. This we could only do by a smart walk out of the narrow wady." It was among these ill-kept manuscripts on vellum that the one now known as The Sina- itic or Lewis ])alimi:)sest^ was found. As we shall see farther on, Mrs. Lewis thinks, that owing to a more recent discovery connected 94 New Light on the Neiv Testament with its history, it should be renamed, The Antiochene 2:)aU77i2?sest. She teJls us, "I had never before seen a palimpsest, but my father had often related to us wonderful stories of how the old monks, when vellum had become scarce and paper was not yet invented, scraped away the writing from the pages of their books and wrote something new on the top of it; and how after the lapse of ages, the old ink was revived by the action of the common air, and the old words peeped up again ; and hoAV a text of Plato had come to light in this curious way." Among other manuscripts they found one of 538 pages, a palimpsest, written in Syriac. Many of its leaves were glued together, and some had to be separated by the woman-like expedient of holding them over the steam of a teakettle. The eyes of these sisters were probably the first that had looked on these old characters, one set of them almost hidden be- hind another, for many centuries. Says Mrs. Lewis : — "I saw at once that this manuscript con- tained two writings, both in the same ancient Estrangelo character, which I had been study- ing; that the upper writing was the biograph- ies of women saints, and bore its own date, The Fuller Light from Mount Sinai 95 \Yliich I read, 1,009 years after Alexander, A. D. 697 ; and that the underwriting was the gospels. The latter was written in two col- umns, one of which always projected onto the margin of the upper writing, so that many of its words could be easily read, and every word distinctly belonged to the sacred narrative. I pointed this out to my sister, and, as if to make assurance doubly sure, I showed her also that at the top of almost every page stood the title 'Evangelium, of Matthew, of Mark,' or 'of Luke.' I felt sure that this text of the gospels must be at least 200 years older than the one w^hich superseded (or sat upon) it, and could not therefore be later than the fifth century. . . . " My reasons for placing a high value on the palimpsest were noted down in my journal, under date of February 11th, and were after- wards embodied in an account of our journey which w^as printed for The Preshyterian Churchman of June, July, and August, before we had asked any of our friends to examine the gospel text." It is amusing to learn from Mrs. Lewis's ac- count, of how trivial a possibility was dreaded which might destroy all the fruits of their photographic labors. That dread was that 96 New Light on the New Testament the customs officials might mistake the rolled films containing their photographs for rolls of tobacco and should let in the light and destroy them. This, happily, did not occur. Though Mrs. Lewis understood that the dis- covery was one of great importance, it was many months before even she came to under- stand how very important it was, and what a place it was soon to take among the irrefraga- ble testimonies to the genuineness of the four gospels. A severe illness which Mrs. Gibson suffered after the return of the sisters to their home in Cambridge delayed the critical exam- ination of the manuscript for a considerable time. On July 15th of the year of the dis- covery, 1892, they invited a company of friends to luncheon and, before the departure of Mr. and Mrs. F. C. Burkitt, who were among them, brought some of the photographs and spread them on the piano for the inspection of the young Syriac scholar. Mrs. Lewis told him that the underwriting was Syriac Gospels, and hoped that he might be able " with his keen young eyes " to decipher them. He be- came deeply interested and asked her permis- sion to take about a dozen of the photographs home with him for careful examination. She readily assented to this request, and, on the The Fuller Light from Mount Sinai 9Y second day after this, received from Mrs. Bur- kitt the following note : — "12 Harvey Road. "My Dear Mrs. Lewis: — Frank is in a state of the highest excitement. He wrote down a part of the palimp- sest last night, and has been in to Dr. Bensley's with it, and they have discovered it is a part of the Cureton Syriac. Do you know, only one copy exists! You can imagine Frank's glee! He has just been in to tell me, and run back to the Bensleys'. I thought you would be interested and write at once. I am yours affectionately, A. Persis Burkitt." On the day after the receipt of the note a meeting of those most interested in the dis- covery was held at the house of Professor Bensley, and as it was clear that the manu- script could not be fully and accurately copied except from the original at Mount Sinai, a second expedition was decided on for the ac- complishment of that purpose. Prof. Kendel Harris was invited by the sisters to accom- pany them, together with Professor Bensley and Mr. F. C. Burkitt and their wives. The party rendezvoused at Suez on June 27th and proceeded to their destination, the convent of St. Catherine, where they w^ere most cordially received by the monks. " The next morning," says Mrs. Lewis, " Ga- lakteon tottered into what was called the arch- 98 New Light on the Neio Testament bishop's room, where the Sjriac books were kept, and asked what we wished to see first," The reply, of course was, *'all the books photographed last year." The Palestinian Lectionary which has since been edited and published by Mrs. Lewis in a very elaborate and elegant form, was intrusted to her that she might work on it in her tent, and the palimpsest was divided between the three gen- tlemen for decipherment and transcription so far as this very difiicult task might prove pos- sible. While the discovery of the palimpsest has given Mrs. Lewis celebrity among scholars the world over, her edition of the Lectionary, has obtained for her the honorary degree of Doc- tor of Philosophy from the united faculty of Halle- A¥ittenberg, and the name of her sister, Mrs. Gibson, was honorably mentioned in her diploma. Many readers may not be able to understand wh}^ Mr. Burkitt should have been excited by his supposed discover}^ that the palimpsest was a copy of the Cureton Syriac manuscript of the gospels. It was not simply because there was but one copy of this fragmentary^ manu- script of the gospels which was brought by Archdeacon Tattam from the Nitrian desert The Fuller Light from Mount Sinai 99 and deposited with others which he brought \vith it in the British Museum in 18i2, but be- cause Canon Cureton who discovered its char- acteristics and published it in 1858, had come ■ to the conclusion that it was the oldest manu- script of the gospels in Syriac discovered up to that time. The fact that it was fragmentary \vould make the discovery of a second copy of greater importance from the fact that passages missing in the first copy might be supplied from the second. The Cureton manuscript had, for instance, only a few verses of the Gospel of Mark, and another copy might con- tain all of that gospel. The scholars had not worked long at their task when they found that though the text be- fore them had points of likeness to that of the Cureton manuscript, it was not a second copy of the same. Mrs. Lewis says: "It was of the same character, but more concise, and ap- parently more ancient by half a century." She also says : '' Mr. Harris pronounced it to be by no means a difficult palimpsest, but the pages varied greatly in distinctness, and though even I could trace the words, being of their natural size, as I could not do in my photographs, there were many from which the ink of the underwriting had faded leaving 100 New Light on the New Testament only faint indications on the vellum from which words could be traced. Add to this that many of these words were covered by the dark upperwriting which was, happily, of a different color, and that most of it had to be read between the lines, and my readers may appreciate the difficulty of the task which was to be undertaken." Before going to Mount Sinai the second time Mrs. Lewis procured four bottles of a chemical compound which u^as of great use in this diffi- cult Avork of deciphering the manuscripts. She did not at first use it. " For ten days," says she, *'I had to. restrain my impatience about using this ; but on the eleventh, I hap- pened to open a large volume of Mar Isaac's discourses, which I had known on our former visit, and which contained many passages so faded as to be quite illegible. I asked Galak- teon to let me restore one of these, with the result that it came up of a brilliant hue of dark green, and he was so astonished that he asked me to paint up the whole volume and then to try my ' scent-bottle,' as it was called, on other hoary documents. '' How triumphant I felt when he gave me permission to touch up the palimpsest, though only in a few places where it could not be read The Fuller Light from Mount Sinai 101 otherwise ! Professor Bensley at first disap- proved of the proceeding, but as both his fellow- workers gave my brush the warmest welcome, he was induced, after a few days to ask for it himself, and many a blank margin thus became covered with very distinct w^rit- ing." Forty days of hard work w^ere spent by the indefatigable scholars in research among the treasures of the convent, in deciphering and transcribing. But though very laborious days, they must have been very happy ones. The joy of discovery, the gratification of finding, day by day, increasing proof of the inestima- ble value of the chief treasure which had been brought to light, the reflex energies normally employed, — in this case, the highest energies of noble minds, — the daily intercourse in work and rest, and above all, the wonderful sur- roundings ; scenes of the exquisite beauty of subtropical foliage, set off by the grandeur of those bare rocky heights, sublime, solitary, awe-inspiring, from which God once vouch- safed the most august revelation which the human race has ever received, must have filled those da\^s of strenuous toil with a unique in- terest and inspiration. The time must have been happily spent as it passed and will. 102 New Light on the New Testament doubtless, be a bright spot in the memories of those who had the privilege of taking part in this great work. Yet, as is often the case in our experience, the memories of this happy period will always be chastened by the recol- lection of sorrow. Professor Bensley fell sick in Rome, on the return journey, and died three days after reaching his home at Cambridge, and, a few weeks later, the old librarian Ga- lakteon, who had done so much to forward tiie plans of his European friends, was gathered to his fathers, " as a shock of corn cometh in in his season." After all the learned labor expended by the distinguished scholars at Mount Sinai, many passages were left undeciphered, and others were subjects of conjecture rather than of cer- tain knowledge. This being the case, Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson made a third journey to the scene of the discovery in January, 1895. The Archbishop of Mount Sinai, Porphyrios, offered them every facility for investigating, but when they asked for the palimpsest, the new librarian after a vain search, informed them that it was not to be found in the library. This was surprising, because Mrs. Lewis had provided a handsome box for the manuscript that it might be preserved from injury in the Tin: Fuller Light from Blount Sinai 103 future, and Mrs. Bensley had prepared a silk cover for it with the same design. It was known to the sisters that some pages of other manuscripts had been stolen from the convent, and it now looked as if the palimpsest of the gospels might have met a similar fate. We can well believe that, as Mrs. Lewis says, they had " a bad quarter of an hour." But in the midst of their dismay, Euthumios, the suc- cessor of Galakteon, was seen approaching with the manuscript enveloped in its silk cover, and their anxiety was immediately turned into joy. During this visit, and an- other which the sisters made to the convent in 1897, the palimpsest was examined with the greatest care, and many of the gaps in the first transcription were filled. Many of the former readings were satisfactorily verified, while in some cases, corrections were made. A New Discovery By the almost incredible labor which had now been bestowed on this most interesting copy of the gospels, it would seem that it must have been made to yield all its secrets to the learned investigators. Strange as it may seem, however, all these examinations of the original manuscript failed to bring to light an 104 New Light on the New Testament important fact in the history of the palimpsest winch has been made known by the photo- graphs of its last two pages. This fact is that it was not made a palimpsest at Sinai, but at Antioch, where " the disciples were first called Christians." ^ For a full description of the palimpsest and its peculiar features we may go to the series of articles now passing through The Exjjository Times on " What have we gained in the Sinaitic Palimpsest." The palimpsest itself is, also, accessible to the English readers in a translation made by the discoverer.^ As to the palimpsest's testimon}^ for the gospels, it is only necessary to mention a few facts, to see. One of these is that it contains our four gospels, and no others, indicating that the so- called Apocryphal Gospels^ were unknown, or at least, unacknowledged as having any au- thority, when this translation was made. ^ For an account of this remarkable discovery as to the place where the four gospels were turned into a palimpsest by writing over them the lives of women saints by "John, the Recluse," see the article, The earlier Home of the Sinaitic Palimpsest,! in The Expositor for June, 1900. 2 For a fuller account of the discovery of the palimpsest and of the journey to Mount Sinai the reader is referred to Mrs. Gibson's "How the Codex was Found," and Mrs. Lewis's, "In the Shadow of Sinai." The Fuller Light from Mount Sinai 105 Another is, that it must have been made very early. The Diatessaron^ a harmony of the four gospels, prepared by Tatian, probably in the decade 150-160 is found to contain a number of readings, or turns of expression, found only in this Sinaitic Palimpsest^ indi- cating that this version (or else one from which it was, in part, copied), must have been in existence before the Diatessaro7i. This version is a translation of the whole of the four gospels^ and the text has marked characteristics of the earliest Greek manu- scripts : " a text," as Professor* Harris, in his able article in The Contemporary^ November, 1894, remarks, " that often agrees with all that is most ancient in Greek manuscripts, a text which the advanced critic will at once ac- knowledge to be, after allowance has been made for a few serious blemishes, superior in quality to all extant copies, with a very few exceptions." These "serious blemishes," as he considers them, are all found in three verses of the first chapter of Matthew. This shows that the theory of the gradual evolution of the gospels is a dream. Another fact to be considered is that this is a translation^ implying an original from which it was translated, existing therefore still 106 Neio Light on the New Testament earlier than this version which Professor Harris concludes " must have been made far back in the second century." It is interesting in this connection, to notice that Prof. Adolf Harnack of Berlin, though viewing the question from his far- from-orthodox standpoint, has at last ac- knowledged the force of the accumulating evidence that all the gospels were written within the first century. Kecent discoveries have forced him to this conclusion ; and, after mentioning the Apology of Aristides and The Diatessaron of Tatian, he says : — "But of still greater value was the find which we owe to a learned Scotch lady, Mrs. Lewis. ... "As the text is almost completely preserved this Syrus Sinaiticus is one of the most im- portant witnesses ; nay it is extremely probable that it is the most important witness, for our gospels " (see his article in Preiissische Jahrhucher, May, 1898). Standing, like Harnack, in the van of German scholarship. Prof. Theodor Zahn of Erlangen has given his conclusions as to the dates of the gospels, respectively, as follows : — Matthew, in Aramaic, 62 ; in Greek, 85 ; The Fuller Light from Mount Sinai 107 Mark (prepared) 64 ; Mark (published) 67 ; Luke 75 ; John 80-90. Harnack's dates are Mark, 65-70 ; Matthew, 70-75 ; Luke 78-90 ; John, " not later than the beginning of the second century." ^ Thus, the two most noted New Testament scholars in Germany, the leaders of the two opposing scholars of criticism, have by inde- pendent researches from different standpoints, been brought to almost identical conclusions as to the dates of the gospels ; dates not in- consistent with the authorship of contem- poraries of Christ. Harnack, brought, or, I may say, forced, to this conclusion by the ex- ternal evidence of recent discoveries, finds it confirmed by the internal evidence of the documents themselves, and says : — "In their essential substance, the gospels belong to the first, the Jewish, aspect of Christianity, that brief epoch which may be denoted as the palaeontological." The views of such critics as Abbott and Schmiedel published in the Encyclopaedia Bib- ^ Blass thinks that Luke wrote his gospel during the im- prisonment of Paul at Ca3sarea A. D. 54-56, according to liis reckoning, 57-59 according to that of Ramsay. See The Homiletic Review, December, 1900. "Pauline Chronology,'' by W. M. Ramsay, and The Churchman (London) "The Western Text of St. Luke '' by W. Harloe Dundas. 108 New Light on the New Testament lica are clue to vision distorted and judgment warped by the prepossessions of their own miiids. Of the attack of these critics and others like them, Canon Gore (now Bishop of Worcester), himself a higher critic, well re- marks : " Now, it is easy to magnify the im- portance of the movement, and even to over- estimate its men. It has no discovery in early Christian literature to start from. The great discoveries of those years have all gone to- ward the confirmation of the traditional faith." . . . " They are discovered constantly asserting that things ' cannot have been as they are rep- resented in the gospels,' either because they do not square with the writer's own conception of Jesus and his times, or because they contra- dict some of his philosophical ideas, such as the impossibility of miracle." Even Wendt has announced his conclusion that, " critical inquiry has led, though not im- mediately in its first attempts, yet gradually in the course of time, to results whereby the historical picture of Jesus has lost nothing, but only gained." And David Smith of Tulliallan, who quotes this saying of Wendt, gives this statement of the results of that New Testament criticism by The Fuller Light from 3Tount Sinai 109 which so many have been alarmed and some have been robbed of their faith : — *' The history of Kew Testament criticism is the record of the rise and fall of a thousand theories, each influential and seemingly final, for a brief space, and each abandoned in its turn; and the New Testament has outlived them all, as it will outlive their successors to the end of time. Ex-qpd^A}ri 6 x^pro?,^^ etc. Yes, truly, ''The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away : but the word of the Lord endureth forever." These words forcibly emphasize the famous reply of Beza to Henry of Navarre : " It is true, sire, that it is the part of the Church of God to receive blows and return none ; but, re- member that it is an anvil that has used up many hammers " (a use beaucoup de mar- teaux). The blows of the hammers are falling still, but the " anvil " is as firmly fixed as ever, and we may be sure that in God's good providence the criticism of the Scriptures now so preva- lent will be overruled for the furtherance of the gospel in the end. Criticism may develop, for one thing, into a sane Biblical Theology, which will lead to the deeper and more en- thus-iastic study of the Bible, and the most 110 New Light on the Neiv Testament searching investigations will tend to establish confidence in it, though in some persons, that confidence may for the time, be weakened or destroyed. " Truth's like a torch : the more it's shook it shines," and we may believe with well grounded assurance that the revelation God has given will give forth its light more clearly through the discussion of it, and that the hand of criticism, which some feared would extin- guish it, grown more wisely skillful, will but make it shine more brightly ; yea, w^ill put it on a pinnacle to send forth more clearly its beacon light for the salvation of a lost world. TWIJS- LIGHTS FROM ATHENS I. Aristides and Quadratus, the Com- panion Apologists Justin Martyr had stood in the Church's view, for ages, at the head of the brave band of defenders of the faith, the apologists of the second century ; but the discovery of the Aj}ol- ogy of Aristides in the St. Catherine Convent in 1889 has given to its author the iirst place. Aristides now takes precedence. But another, perhaps still more eminent Christian, Quadratus, presented a defense of the Christians at the same time with Aristides. Of this event Eusebius gives the following account : — "But Trajan," [who became emperor of Rome before the death of the Apostle John], "having held the sovereignty twenty years wanting six months, is succeeded in the im- perial office by ^lius Hadrian. To him Quad- ratus addressed a discourse as an apology for the religion which we profess, because certain 111 112 New Light on the Neiv Testament malicious persons attempted to harass the brethren. "The work is still in the hands of some of the hrethren, as also in our own, from which any one may see evident proof of the under- standing of the man and of his ajpostolio faith." [Italics mine.] Indicating the early date at which Quadratus began his work, Eusebius continues : " This writer shows the antiquity of the age in which he lived, in these passages : " ' The deeds of our Saviour,' says he, ' were always before you, for they were true mira- cles ; those that were healed, those that were raised from the dead, who were seen, not only when healed and when raised, but were always present. They remained living a long time, not only whilst our Lord was on earth, but likewise when he had left the earth, so that some of them> have also lived to our ovm times."* Such was Quadratus." Eusebius continues: — " Aristides, also, a man faithfully devoted to the religion we profess, like Quadratus, has left to posterity a defense of the faith addressed to Adrian. This work is, also, preserved by a great number, even to the present day." Thus, twenty-five years after the death of the Apostle John, there occurred this event of thrilling interest. At Athens, and, possibly. Twin Lights from Athens 113 on that very Mars' Hill where Paul preached, and where the court of the Areopagus held its sessions, or it may be, on the adjacent summit of tlie Acropolis, crowned with that paragon of architecture, the Parthenon, with its frieze of Phidias, its inimitable ivory and gold Athena, within, and its colossal Athena, without, these two brave men, Aristides, the Athenian philos- opher, who had become a Christian, and Quad- ra tus, the evangelist, — the first, possibly a young man filled with enthusiasm at finding in the gospel a philosophy infinitely transcend- ing the noblest product even of the Greek in- tellect — the other almost certainly an old man, with a life of loving labors t3hiefly behind him, came to acknowledge in the most public way their allegiance to their Lord. This they did by presenting to Hadrian, the Emperor of Rome, a plea for their persecuted brethren and their much-misrepresented faith. The brave deed was not destined to be fruit- less. Not only w^as the " Rescript of Hadrian " by which the severity of the persecution was greatly mitigated, in all probability, a result of it, but it must have served to clieer and strengthen the persecuted Christian host that stood trembling behind them, its leaders, by its high example of Christian heroism. 114 New Light on the Neiv Testament The martj^rologies of the middle ages, even, presented the tradition of the brave and bril- liant deed, and now the Ajjology of Aristides has come forth from its concealment of many centuries as one of the Avitnesses to encourage faith, in an age of doubt. Eusebius tells us that the A])ology of Quad- ratus " was in his hands and in those of some of the brethren."^ He gives us a specimen which makes us long to see the whole of it. The extract from it Avhich we have indicates how early he had lived. Irenaeus tells of Poly- carp at whose feet he had sat in his youth, and Quadratus could probably tell of John and pos- sibly, even of Paul and Peter, as he was of those who, in the words of Eusebius, "held the first rank in the apostolic succession," and who had seen those who were the subjects of our Saviour's miracles. What a chasm this Aijology of Quadratus if recovered, would bridge ! The half century from A. D. Y5 to 125 is almost a blank to us. We have scarcely any particulars about it, and yet, in these fifty years there took place the 1 "The Apology of Quadratus seems to have survived till the 6th century, for several passages are quoted in the con- troversy between the monk Andrew and Euseliius (86), Pliotius, Cod. 162."— Dr. George Salmon in Did. of Xn. Biography. TiL'in Licjlds from Alliens 115 greatest movement of all church history since the days of the apostles. The letter of a heathen, written about twelve years after John's body was laid to rest at Ephesus, throws an interesting sidelight on it. Trajan's governor of Bithynia, Pliny, writing to his master, speaks of the heathen temples "almost de- serted," of "great numbers involved in the dangers of these persecutions," which were then in progress, while he asserts that " this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among the country villages." He tells Trajan of " this inquiry having already extended, and being still likely to extend to persons of all ages and ranks, and of both sexes." Such is the view of the results of this period of evangeli- zation which a Roman governor has from the outside of the Christian community, and with eyes hostile to it. It is the view of a con- temporary and one who is a very competent witness as far as intelligence is concerned. Eusebius gives, at a much later time, the inside view of the agencies — the human agencies at least — which brought about these wonderful results. But he had before him the words of earlier writers who were not only witnesses within the Christian circle, but 116 New Light on the New Testament agents in the glorious work. Eusebius knew of others, but he makes a more honorable men- tion of none than of Quadratus. He says : — " Of those who flourished in these times, Quadratus is said to have been distinguished for prophetical gifts. There were many others, also noted in these times, who held the first rank in the apostolic succession. These, as the holy disciples of such men, also built up the churches where foundations had been laid in every place by the apostles. They augmented the means of promulgating the gospel more and more, and spread the seeds of salvation and of the heavenly kingdom throughout the world, far and wide. For the most of the disciples at that time, animated with a more ardent love of the divine word, had first fulfilled the Saviour's precept by distributing their sub- stance to the needy. Afterwards, leaving their country, they performed the office of evangelists to those who had not yet heard the faith ; whilst with a noble ambition, they delivered to them the books of the holy gospel. After laying the foundation of the gospel in foreign parts, as the particular object of their mission, and after appointing others as shep- herds of the flocks, and committing to these the care of those that had been recently intro- Twin Lights from Athens 117 duced, they went again to other regions and nations, with the grace and cooperation of God. The Holy Spirit also wrought many wonders, as yet, through them, so that as soon as the gospel was heard, men voluntarily, and in crowds, eagerly embraced the true faith with their whole minds." Oh, glorious, golden age of Christianity, prophecy and promise, we trust, of a still more glorious golden age to come, when, after these times of worldliness and dearth, God will pour out his spirit upon all flesh ! Quadratus had been, perhaps, for fifty years among these scenes so blessed and yet so full at times of suffering. Now is a time of suffering, and the old hero comes with his defense, and along with the philosopher Aristides, appeals to the emperor in behalf of the Christians. God seems to have blessed the bra»ve deed. The " Rescript of Hadrian " to Fundanus, the pro- consul of Asia, was issued after it, command- ing that no Christian should be punished with- out examination and proof. JSTow, what a boon would the full account of this glorious and yet terrible half century, written by a contemporary and thoroughly competent witness, be! For one reason one would like to live fifty years more. It is to 118 NeAC Light on the New Testament be hoped that within that time the long lost Apology of Quadratits will be discovered, as that of Aristides has been already. Eusebius had it before him when he wrote his history, and gives us a very appetizing and very tanta- lizing morsel. What a flood of light would the rediscovered Apology shed on this glorious and yet almost wholly unknown half century ! Before this period we have the simplicity of apostolic Christianity. Soon after it we find the beginnings, at least of that intricate and artificial ecclesiasticism, which so sadly trans- formed and deformed the pure religion of Christ. The multiform errors of Gnosticism, that " hydra-headed monster," as Hippoly tus calls it, that w^ith the many forms of heathen philosophies and religions, served to adulterate and ruin so much of the nominal Christianity of the time, soon came upon the scene. The influences which wTouglit the sad change were working, doubtless, in secret, through all this long period, but we cannot trace them. All is dim and indistinct, and to some extent uncertain, through all this tract of time. We know something of some characters in it, but they are to us at this distance like men seen through a mist, across wide gorges among mountain heights — magnified, shadowy forms. Twin Lights from Athens 119 standing, we cannot tell just where, and mov- ing, we scarcely know whither. What a boon a flood of clear light on this period would be ! That light the Apology of Quadrat us, if discovered, will probably give in such a way as no other known writing does. He was a man qualified to tell of these times intelligently and reliably ; and from the quo- tations of Eusebius from his Apology and from what Eusebius says of him, we see that he must have told much that would be intensely inter- esting to us after almost eighteen centuries. II. The Apology of Aristides Dis- covered Let us now turn to the Apology which Aristides addressed to Hadrian. We can only indulge hopes of the discovery of the Apology of Quadratus) that of his companion apologist is now in our hands, coming to us in two languages, and in two different forms, in one of which we have it in its entirety, while, in the other, we possess far the greater part of it. The Apology of Aristides was, for ages, supposed to have finally perished, with a vast mass of the writings of antiquity. 120 Neio Light on the New Testament Jerome, about the year 420, mentions the Apology of Aristides, and says that it was presented to the Emperor Hadrian at the same time with the Ajjology of Quadratus ; that it was extant in his day, and was afterwards imitated by Justin Martyr. There is no later mention of its existence ; but what has been called " a faint reflection " of the earlier testi- mony is found in the mediaeval martyrologies as, in them, the 31st of August is given as the saints' day of " The blessed Aristides [to use the words of the old record] most renowned for faith and wisdom, who presented books on the Christian religion to the Prince Hadrian, and most brilliantly proclaimed in the presence of the emperor himself how that Christ Jesus is the only God." ^ In the sev^enteenth century there was a rumor that the Aj)ology was in some monastic libraries in Greece, but the search made for it was fruitless. In the spring of the year 1889 Prof. J. Pendel Harris, the distinguished scholar and lecturer of Clare College, Cambridge, found, in the library of the St. Catherine Convent on Mount Sinai, where Tischendorf had thirty ^ We find the AjJoJogy to be a powerful argument against polytheism and for the unity-in-trinity of God. TiL'in Liijlils from Athens 121 years before discovered the Codex Sinaiticus, the long lost Ajyology of Aristides. It was in the Syriac language, in a manuscript which Prof. Harris refers to the seventh century. Eleven years before this, the Mechitarist scholars in their convent of S. Lazaro, near Venice, had published a Latin translation of what was thought to be (and afterwards proved to be) the first two chapters of the Apology in the Armenian language. This fragment had been declared spurious by Eenan and other scholars, because it contained a term describing the virgin as the " God-bearer " — a term which belonged to a much later age than that in which the Apology of Aristldes was written. The original fragment was in the Armenian lan- guage, as has been said, and after fuller ex- amination, the use of this term was found to have been due to a mistake of the, Latin trans- lator, and when Harris discovered the whole AjMogy in Syriac, this Armenian fragment was found to correspond with it, and its genuineness was vindicated. After the happy discovery of the Apology it was found, almost entire, in a slightly modified form, but in the original Greek, imbedded and concealed, like a jewel in common earth, in a strange story of the middle ages, entitled Barlaam and 122 NeAV Light on the New Testament Josaphat — a tale of such interest, in the absence of anything like the modern novel, that it was translated into some twenty lan- guages, Hebrew and Icelandic being of the number. So seriously was the romance taken by the Church of Rome that Barlaam and Josaphat were accorded a place in the calen- dar of saints — a calendar, however, where much else equally as fictitious may be found. The brilliant corypheus of the Eitschlians, Prof. Adolf Harnack, in a notable article in the Prussische JalirhucTier^ said : " The dis covery of this Apology is a find of the first importance." A glance at its contents will convince you that this is true. The Apology of Aristicles is a witness not only for the gospels, but for the whole ISTew Testament. The name New Testament occurs a little later, as we see from a quotation in Eusebius (H. E. V. 11). III. The Apology and the New Testament In examining the Apology of Aristides as to its dependence on the JS^ew Testament, there are several tilings to be considered. One is that it is brief, the translations of the Syriac and of the Greek, printed side by side in the Twin Lights from Athens 123 Ante-Nlcene Fathers (Yol. IX) occupying only seventeen, pages. The translation of the Greek, if complete, would occupy about seven pages. Of these seven pages, more than three- fourths of the space is occupied with arguments against the most prominent systems of poly- theism, and for the unity-in-trinity of God. The arguments are chiefly philosophical, and are simply an appeal to reason. The em- peror addressed was a heathen, supposed, as is shown, to know nothing of the writings of the Christians, which he is importuned again and again to read. Hence we should not expect quotations from these writings or any mention of the names of the writers — names which would be meaningless to Hadrian. It will be in the interest of brevity and prob- ably more satisfactory to the reader to refrain from a lengthened discussion, ayd present a sample of the Apology, the whole of which may not be accessible to some. Let us take the fifteenth section in which Aristides speaks of the origin of the Chistians, and refutes the heathen charges of immorality against them. We will take the translation from the Greek fragment as being probabh^ more literal and briefer than the translation of the Syriac, which is itself a translation, and seemingly 124 New Light on the New Testament somewhat paraphrastic.^ The first part — that about Christ — occurs earlier in the Syriac. " Now the Christians trace their origin from the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is acknowledged by the Holy Spirit to be the Son of the Most High God, who came down from heaven for the salvation of men, and being born of a pure virgin, unbegotten and immaculate, he assumed flesh and revealed himself among men that he might recall them to himself from their wan- dering after many gods. And having accom- plished his wonderful dispensation, by a voluntary choice, he tasted death on the cross, fulfilling an august dispensation. And after three days he came to life again and as- cended into heaven. And, if you would read, O King, you may judge the- glory of his presence from the holy gospel writing as it is called among themselves. He had twelve dis- ciples who, after his ascension, went forth into the provinces of the whole world, and declared his greatness. As for instance, one of them ^ Dr. J. Armitage Robinson (now Dean of Westminster) edited the Greek text discovered by him in the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, as an appendix to Prof. Rendel Harris's A2)ology of Aristidea, in Texts and Studies, No. 1. In introducing this appendix, Professor Harris says, in a spirit which is as beautiful as it is rare, "Need I say how gladly I make way for him in the appendix, which will really be the text itself." Ticin Lights from Athens 125 traversed the countries about us, proclaiming the doctrine of the truth. From this it is that they who still observe the righteousness en- joined by their preaching are called Chris- tians. " And these are they who more than all the nations on the earth have found the truth. For they know God the Creator and Fashioner of all things, through the only begotten Son and the Holy Spirit ; and besides him they worship no other God. They have the com- mands of the Lord Jesus Christ himself graven upon their hearts ; and they observe them, looking forward to the resurrection of the dead, and life in the world to come. They do not commit adultery nor fornication, nor bear false witness, nor covet the things of others ; they honor father and mother, and love tljeir neighbors ; they judge justly, and they never do to others what they would not wish to happen to themselves,^ they appeal to those ^ The Syriac has, also, ' ' and the food which is consecrated to idols they do not eat." Dr. Purves has kindly drawn my attention to the indica- tion in this Apology that the text of The Acts which Aristides used had at that time suffered correction. The negative form of the ' ' golden rule ' ' here seen is noted by Seeberg, of Berlin, as an instance of "Western" corruption of Acts 15 : 20 and 29, and Professor Harris, as is seen in his Four Lectures on the Western Text, agrees with him. As this is found in connection with the statement that * ' they abstain 126 New Light on the New Testament who injure them, and try to win them as friends ; tiiey are eager to do good to their enemies; they are gentle and easy to be en- treated ; they abstain from all unlawful con- versation and from all impurity ; they despise not the widow nor oppress the orphan; and he that has, gives ungrudgingly for the main- tenance of him who has not. If they see a stranger they take him under their roof, and rejoice over him as over a very brother ; for they call themselves brethren not after the flesh, but after the spirit." When he tells the Emperor that one of the apostles " traversed the countries about us," we can hardly help believing that he refers to Paul, the apostle who first brought the gospel to Greece. Surely, too, it does not require a vivid imagination to hear, in the utterances of Aristides, echoes of Paul's address on Mars' Hill. While there are contrasts between the Apology of Aristides and this address, which we may call the Apology of Paid — contrasts from fidwXoOura/' Seeberg concluded that the interpreta- tion was in the copy of 77/e Acts used by Aristides. This would seem to indicate that 2'he Acts was, as Seeberg says, "in ecclesiastical use," and that it was, even at that time, an "ancient book, handed down from the apostolic age." My thanks are due to the Rev. T. W. Lingle, w ho kindly furnished me references from the Foiir Lectures to w^hich I did not have access. Twin Lights from Athens 127 in \Yhich Professor Stokes, of Dublin, Las seen a proof that The Acts was written in the first century — at the same time there are strik- ing resemblances.^ Let us look at some of them : — Paul strove earnestly to make known to his heathen hearers "the unknown God." This we see Aristides tried to do for Hadrian, and in doing it, presented the theology — even the trinitarianism — of Paul's epistles. Paul spoke of the folly of idolatry, and so does Aristides, with force and at length. Paul spoke of the creation of " the world and all things therein," and so does Aristides. Paul spoke of the resurrection, and so does Aristides. Paul spoke of the judgment, and of Christ as the Judge, and so does Aristides, in such words as these : — "So shall they appear before the awful judgment, which through Jesus the Messiah, is destined to come upon the whole human race." Paul speaks of the great mistakes of the Athenians in their worship, and declares of God that " he is Lord of heaven and earth " and that he"dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; neither is worshiped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing ^ Expository New Testament, in loc. 128 Neic Light on the New Testament he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." Paul was speaking to philosophers in Athens. In the same Athens Aristides speaks of the writers and philosophers among them, thus : — '' Herein, too, (they err) in asserting of deity that any such thing as deficiency can be pres- ent to it, as when they say that he receives sacrifice and requires burnt offering and libation and immolations of men, and temples. But God is not in need, and none of these things are necessary to him." When we remember that Paul's address to the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophers occu- pied only ten verses of the seventeenth chapter of The Acts, and when we see such correspond- ences in thought and even in diction between the two " Apologies,^'' can we resist the convic- tion that this passage of The Acts was in the mind of Aristides, just as we have seen that the fifteenth chapter was? It is clear that the thought of Aristides moved in the sphere of the gospels, The Acts, the epistles and The Revelation, which consti- tute the New Testament. How could this have been so, if what he calls " the holy gos- pel writing " and " their other writings " which he exhorts the emperor to read, and from which he says he derived his information, had Twin Lights from Athens 12[ew Testament, is a proof that the record is true and divine — " the record, that God hath given ... in his son." Kot only are the secondary effects wonderful, so that Christendom and civilization are practically coterminous, but there is a greater proof : In millions of human beings — millions multiplying as the ages pass— a work is progressing through which each one is des- ' The Church's One Foundation, by W. Kobertson Nicoll. 178 New Light on the New Testament tined to shine forth as the sun in the kingdom he has founded and is bringing to its perfec- tion. The process, in its different stages, is seen in every community, every household, every individual, that has truly received his gospel ; and is to the world, looking on, a proof of its truth and divine efficacy. The world beholds sinful men becoming holy, and, lighted with wisdom from on high, walking as children of light. But the fullest and most joyful proof is reserved for the illumined and the saved, themselves. These, and these only, can say that " God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Each of these, and these only, can use Paul's words ; "I know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed unto him against that day." May we all know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. APPENDIX NOTE 1 Justin Martyr's Use of the Gospels 1 Apology, Ch. xv " What Christ Himself taught "— *' Concerning chastity he uttered such sentiments as these: ' Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart before God.'" "And, 'If thy right eye offend thee, cut it out, for it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of heaven with one eye than having two eyes to be cast into everlasting fire.'" " And, ' Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced from another husl)and committeth adultery. ' ' ' "And, 'There are some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake; but all cannot receive this saying. ' So that, all, who by human law, are twice married, are in the eye of our INIaster sinners, and those who look upon a woman to lust after her. For not only he who in acts commits adultery is rejected by him, but also he who desires to commit adultery; since not only our works, but also our thoughts, are open before God. And many, both men and women, who have been Christ's disciples from childhood, remain pure at the age of sixty or seventy years ; and I boast that I could produce such from every race of men. For, what shall I say, too, of the count- less multitude of those who have reformed intemperate habits and learned these things ? For Christ called not the 179 180 A]ypciidix just nor the chaste to repentance, but the ungodly and the licentious and the unjust, his words being, ' I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.' For the heavenly Father desires rather the repentance than the punishment of the sinner." "And of our love to all he taught thus: ' If ye love them that love you what new thing do ye ? For even fornicators do this. But I say unto you, pray for your enemies, and love them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you. ' ' ' *' And that we should communicate to the needy and do nothing for glory, he said: 'Give to him that asketh, and from him that would borrow turn not away ; for if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what new thing do ye? Even the publicans do this. Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where robbers break through, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth cor- rupt. For, what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for it ? Lay up treasure, therefore, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. ' ' ' "And, 'Be ye kind and merciful, as your Father also is kind and merciful, and maketh his sun to rise on sinners and the righteous and the wicked. Take no thought what ye shall eat or what ye shall put on. Are ye not better than the birds and the beasts? And God feedeth them. Take no thought, therefore, what ye shall eat or what ye shall put on; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But seek ye the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you. For where his treasure is, there also is the mind of man . ' " "And, 'Do not these things to be seen of men; other- wise, ye have no reward of your father which is in heaven.' " Appendix 181 One who can read this one chapter of the first Apology^ and say that Justin did not make use of our gospels must either be demented or possessed of a hardihood truly sublime. NOTE 2 Early Use of the Gospel of John Basilides, the Gnostic (a. d. 125), is found quoting the Gospel of John: "That which is said in the gospels: {ru ksyotxsvov iu :o£? ebayyeUin^) He was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Hippo- lytus' Refutation of all Heresies, vii, 10. yle^o/jtcvov had just been used by Basilides in quoting Genesis 1 : 3, and is used evidently as the equivalent of ytypaizlai. See Anie-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V, p. 7. Note. As to the use of the Gospel of John by Poly carp, Papias, Polycrates and other very early writers, which many at- tempt to explain away by a multitude of suppositions and assumptions, Bishop Lightfoot has this to say : — "By a sufficient number of assumptions which lie beyond the range of verification, the evidence may be set aside. But the early existence and recognition of the Fourth Gospel is the one simple postulate that explains all the facts. The law of gravitation accounts for the various phenomena of motion — the falling of a stone, the jet of a fountain, the orbits of the planets, etc. It is quite possible for anyone, who is disposed, to reject this explanation of nature. Pro- vided that he is allowed to postulate a new force for every new fact with which he is confronted, he has nothing to fear. He will then * gird the sphere With centric and concentric scribbled o'er, Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb,' happy in his immunity. But the other theory will prevail, nevertheless, by reason of its simplicity. ' ' 182 Appendix NOTE 3 The Lewis Palimpsest and the New Testament Text It is beside the purpose of this little book to enter into any extended discussion of the textual characteristics of the Lewis palimpsest or of any of the documents mentioned. Yet I cannot refrain from suggesting that, while our reliance for the true text must be mainly upon the great uncials, yet in cases where they present insuperable difficulties, and where we find those difficulties removed by this palimpsest which may be the very earliest of all versions, and therefore made from Greek manuscripts much earlier than any to w^hich we have access, its testimony is not to be despised — nay is rather to be welcomed and trusted. Two cases w-hich appear to me to be of this kind are Matt. 27 : 9 and John 18 : 28. The Lewis palimpsest omits "Jeremiah " in the first, and in the second reads thus : * ' But they went not into the judgment-hall, that they should not be defiled whilst they were eating the unleavened bread." The acceptance of these texts relieves two difficulties— the attributing (in our received text) of a quotation from Zechariah to Jeremiah (in Matthew 27 : 9), and confusion as to the time of eating the passover by Christ and his apostles (in John 18 : 28). The Diatessaron, also, omits "Jeremiah," but has "pass- over " in John 18 : 28. The Lewis palimpsest furnishes the explanation, making the word "passover" here mean the feast of the passover — unleavened bread. NOTE 4 The Date of the Apology of Aristides Professor Harris is inclined to think that the ApoJogy was not presented to Hadrian on the occasion named, but either to Hadrian and Antoninus Pius during the few months in A. D. 138 when they were colleagues, or to Antoninus Appendix 183 alone, after the death of Hadrian. The sign of the plural with the word "majesty" and with the Syriac adjectives for "venerable and merciful," as well as the imperatives '• take and read " would incline him to believe that it was addressed to the two emperors, but for the fact that the address ' ' O king ' ' occurs constantly in the Apology in the Syriac as well as in the Greek and the Armenian. This in- clines him to believe that these plurals are erroneous and that the Apology was probably addressed to Antoninas Pius alone after the death of Hadrian. In such a case we can only weigh, as best we may, the probabilities. We know, for one thing, that it is not unusual to find in- terpolations and other changes in writings of the second cen- tury, especially in translations. This Syriac copy of the Apology abounds in them, and if we make the not improba- ble supposition that this second address and the plurals named are of this character, then there is absolutely nothing to keep us from believing that the Apology was addressed to Hadrian in the eighth year of his reign. The first address of this Syriac copy, it must be remem- bered, is ''Here follows the defense which Aristides the philosopher made before Hadrian the kmg on behalf of rever- ence for God," while that of the Armenian fragment reads "To the Emperor Csssar Hadrian from Aristides." The address is not in the Greek because of its incorporation in the story of Barlaam and Josaphat; but it begins, "I, O King," etc., the original Greek thus showing that it was addressed to only one sovereign. To accept the conclusion of Profassor Harris, in the words of the Introduction to the Apology of A ristides in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, "requires us to suppose that Eusebius was wrong; that Jerome copied his error; [and it must be remembered that Jerome .says that it was extant in his day, and his de- scription of it would seem to indicate his personal knowl- 184 Appendix edge of it] that the Armenian version curiously fell into the same mistake; and that the Syriac translation is, at this point, exceptionally faithful." Now, it is extremely improbable that Eusebius who states that it was presented to Hadrian, should have been mistaken in this case. The Apology was well known in his day, and copies of it seem to have been abundant — "preserved by a great number even to the present day, ' ' are his words. But, what would seem fairly decisive, he tells us that he had in his hands the Apology of Aristides' companion apologist, Quadratus. He must have seen with his own eyes to whom this was addressed, and he says it was Hadrian. Besides, "a hearer of the apostles " as Quadratus is said to have been, could hardly have lived long after A. d. 124-6. In addition to this, the character of the Apology indicates its early origin. Dr. Harris himself gives the following view of the indica- tions as to the date of the Apology in its style and contents : "The simplicity of the style of the Apology is in favor of an early date. The religious ideas and practices are of an antique cast. The ethics show a remarkable continuity with Jewish ethics : the care for the stranger and the friendless, the burial of the dead, and the like, are given as characteristic virtues both of Judaism and Christianity. Indeed we may say that one of the surprising things about the Apology is the friendly tone in which the Jews are spoken of. One cer- tainly would not suspect that the chasm between the Church and the Synagogue had become as practically impassaljle as we find it in the middle of the second century. There is no sign of the hostility to the Jews which we find in the Martyrdom of Poly carp, and nothing like the severity of con- tempt which we find in the Epistle to Diognetus. If the Church is not, in the writer's time, under the wing of the Synagogue, it apparently has no objection to taking the Synagogue occasionally under its own wing. Appendix 185 " Such a consideration seems to be a mark of antiquity, and one would, therefore, prefer to believe, if it were pos- sible, that the Apology was earlier than the revolt under Bar-Cocheba. " {Texts and Studies, vol. i, No. 1, p. 13.) The editor of Cambridge Texts and Studies, Dr. J. Armi- tage Robinson, thinks it entirely "possible " to believe it, in spite of the second title, in view of the fact that the trans- lator of the Greek Apology into Syriac has dealt very freely with his original, expunging some things, and adding so many others that the Syriac occupies half as much space again as the Greek. He says in his appendix {Texts and Studies, vol. i. No. 1, p. 75, note) : " Mr. Harris inclines to accept this second title as the true one ; but the course of the present argument tends to show that the Syriac trans- lator has introduced many arbitrary changes on his own ac- count : and this makes me more unwilling to accept his testimony as against that of the Armenian version, which has, moreover, the explicit statement of Eusebius to support it." He also notes the fact that the Armenian fragment shows a much closer correspondence with the original Greek than does the Syriac where the two merely translate. ' ' The ex- plicit statement of Eusebius " in his Chronicon is thus given by Dr. Harris : — " 1. The Armenian version of the Chronicon gives under the year A. D. 124, as follows : — 01. A. abr. Imp. Rom. d226 2140 8e dAdrianus Eleusinarum verum gnarus fuit multaque (dona) Atheniensium largitus est. eRomauorum ecclesiae episcopatum excipit septimus Telesphorus annis XL " Codratus, apostolorum auditor, et Aristides, nostri dogmatis (nostrse vei) philosophus atheniensis, dedere apologeticas (apologise, responsiouis) ob mandatum. " The 186 Appendix occasion and the substance of the mandate concerning the Christians, the " Rescript of Hadrian," is then given. Dr. Arraitage Robinson gives very clearly the evidence that "the Armenian version is not made from the Syriac version in its present form ; ' ' and remarks that ' ' similar arguments could be adduced if there were any necessity, to shov7 that the Syriac version is independent of the Armenian. ' ' The Armenian version, then, is an independent authority for the address to Hadian alone. Dr. Robinson shows the unreliableness of the Syriac ver- sion by comparing it with a Syriac version of the Oratio ad Grsdcos ascribed to Justin, in which he says, * ' Variation be- gins to show itself immediately after the first sentence. ' ' In this Oratio he shows, too, how the Syriac translator in- serted particulars not in the original, evidently to vaunt his independent knowledge. A similar attempt seems to have been made by the Syriac translator of the ApoJogy^ or a copyist, in inserting the duplicate address, possibly because of a tradition that it was presented to Antoninus Pius after its presentation to Hadrian.' Dr. Harris notes a serious error in punctuation in the first sentence of the Syriac and is inclined to think that the sign of the plural is a mistake, expressing the opinion that the Apology was addressed to Antoninus Pius alone, after Hadrian's reign. In order to make this consistent with the fact that Quadratus delivered an Apology at the same time, he has either to identify Quadratus with a bishop of Athens of that name who flourished about 170, or, else, to suppose that the two Apologies were delivered at different times to different emperors. I think all will agree that the evidence, both from the '"If . . . = ' Renewed, or dedicated again to . . . Antoninus Pius,' could be read, both headings might be retained." — Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. ix, p. 263, note. Appendix 187 clear statements of Eusebius and from the documents themselves, is reasonably conclusive that Aristides, an Athe- nian philosopher, and Quadratus, an '' auditor ajwsiolomm,'^ delivered their Apologies to Hadrian at Athens in the eighth year of his reign, A. D. 124-126. The other view requires too many improbable suppositions and readjustments to make it at all credible. NOTE 5 The New Testament and the Classics The great advantages we enjoy for determining the text of the New Testament may be seen when we remember the vast number of quotations from it by writers of the second and third centuries, the large number of versions of it in several languages and the many early manuscripts of it which still exist. The case of the Latin and Greek classics presents a marked contrast, as the following extract from the curator of manuscripts in the British Museum, Frederic George Kenyon, D. Lit,, Ph. D., will show : " But of the classics we have no original autographs, nor any copies nearly contemporaneous with them. The intervals which separate the composition of the great classics from the date of the earliest extant manuscripts of them must be numbered by hundreds, and sometimes by thousands of years. The plays of ^schylus were written between 485 and 450 B. c. and the earliest extant manuscript of them (a few unimpor- tant scraps excepted) was written in the eleventh century — an interval of some 1,500 years. For Sophocles, for Thucyd- ides, for Herodotus, the interval is substantially the same; for Pindar and Euripides it extends to 1,600 years. For Plato, we have interesting fragments of two of his dialogues written only a century after his death ; but for the greater part of his works we are dependent on manuscripts eleven hundred years later. Aristotle (except for his recently re- covered history of the Athenian Constitution) is in a similar 188 Appendix case ; the earliest manuscript of the Ethics was written in the tenth century, while for the Politics we have no com- plete copy earlier than the fourteenth. We are better off in regard to some of the Latin writers. Virgil, who died 19 B. c, is represented by several manuscripts which may be assigned to the fifth century, or even to the fourth ; consid- erable portions of Livy exist in copies of the fifth and sixth centuries ; there is a precious (though badly damaged) manu- script of Plautus which belongs to the fourth century ; while there are fragments of Cicero which may go back to an even earlier date. But, for Tacitus, we have an interval of 750 years before we reach our earliest copy of him ; for Horace and Lucretius, 900 years ; while in the case of Catullus the most spontaneously poetic spirit in all the literature of Eorae, we are dependent upon a few manuscri^jts written nearly 1,450 years after his death. It is worth while to note, in passing, how greatl}' superior in respect of antiquity of attestation is the Greek Testament. The shortest interval which sepa- rates any classical author from any substantial manuscript of his works is some 400 years, while in the majority of cases, it ranges from 1,000 to 1,500 years ; but of the New Testament we have complete copies within 250 years of the date at which many of the books composing it were written." Again he says, ' ' Virgil is the only classical author whose text is on the same footing as that of the New Testament, it being mainly based on uncial manuscripts. There are three substantially complete manuscripts of Virgil written in capitals (which differ from uncials only in being of squarer and stiffer formation). Besides these, there are three im- perfect manuscripts in the same style ; and though this amount of uncial evidence is incomparably less than in the case of the New Testament, it is much greater than is found in any other classical writer." — From article in Harper'' s Magazine, August, 1902, on The Lineage of the Classics. The advantage of the New Testament in the matter of Appendix 189 manuscripts could hardly be better stated in a few words than we find it given in the following extract : — ' ' A few precious copies written on vellum or parchment have come down to us from a very early period, the most important of which are (1) the Vatican, styled Codex B, preserved in the Vatican Library at Eome, and dating from the fourth century ; (2) the Sinaitic Codex discovered by Tischendorf in St. Catherine Convent at the foot of Mt. Sinai in 1859, now deposited at St. Petersburg, likewise of the fourth century ; (3) the Alexandrine (Codex A), pre- served in the British Museum, and dating from the fifth century. These, and other ancient manuscripts to the num- ber of about a hundred are called Uncials, because written with capital letters without any separation between the words — the othere of a more modern character being called Cursives, because written in a running hand. Of the latter there are about two thousand, an immense array of wit- nesses compared with the few manuscripts of classical works preserved to us, which can generally be counted on the ten fingers." — McGlymont's New Testament and its writers, small ed., pp. 2, 3. The author does not mention Codex D (Codex Bezce), now brought into special prominence by Nestle, Harris and others. In a later article in the same magazine (Nov. 1902), Mr. Kenyon says : — '"We owe our knowledge of most of the great works of Greek and Latin literature — ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Thucyd- ides, Horace, Lucretius, Tacitus, and many more — to manu- scripts written from 900 to 1,500 years after their authors' deaths ; while of therNew Testament we have two excellent and approximately complete copies at an interval of only 250 years. Again, of the classical writers we have as a rule, only a few score of copies (often less), of which one or two stand out as decisively superior to the rest ; but of the 1 90 Appendix New Testament we have more than 3,000 copies (besides the very large number of versions), and many of these have dis- tinct and independent value." But the versions, in various languages, form a valuable source of information as to the original text of the New Testament. "In spite of the ravages of time, more than three thousand copies of the Greek New Testament, whole or in part, still exist ; and to these must be added the copies of the early translations into other languages— Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Gothic, Latin, etc. — which give invaluable assist- ance to the scholar in ascertaining the correct text of the Scriptures. ' ' Besides all this, early Christian writings which have come down to us with the words of the New Testament imbedded and preserved in them not only prove the existence of it in their day, but indicate its text. It has been asserted by a competent scholar that he has found by personal examina- tion two-thirds of the New Testament in the extant remnant of the Greek writings of Origen alone, as one instance. This source of evidence is almost entirely lacking in the case of the classics. NOTE 6 The So-Called Gospel Accokding to the Hebrews Some readers may wish to know more about the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews, as a certain class of scholars are disposed to urge its claims to something like equality with the canonical gospels, while some infidels, as we have seen, assert its priority in date to all of them. An article in the Biblical World for September, 1902, claims that it was identical with the Hebrew Logia of Mat- thew mentioned by Papias (about A. D 140), who says, as quoted by Eusebius (H. E. Ill, xxxix.), "Matthew com- posed his history in the Hebrew dialect, and every one Appendix 191 translated it as he was able." The writer represents this as the view of most modern scholars. As we have seen above, Dr. Bernhard Weiss unhesitat- ingly affirms that it has no connection with this work (which Hilgenfeld and many other scholars think never really existed except in the misguided imagination of the weak-minded Papias) and shows that the fragments of the Gospel according to the Hebrews are taken from the three synoptic gospels, while there are evident traces of the gos- pel of John in words or expressions peculiar to that gospel — all being changed, of course, to sustain the views of the Ebionites or the Nazarenes who used them. The same pas- sages vary much in different recensions of this so-called gospel, as is shown especially in the different accounts given in different copies quoted by Epiphanius and Jerome. It should be remembered that our synoptic gospels were over three hundred years old when the Gospel of the Hebrews was quoted by Epiphanius, and still older when quoted by Jerome, so that the heretics of these centuries had had ample time to manipulate and change them according to their various or changing ideas. The differences in the ac- counts of the baptism of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon him show this with special clearness. By this time, too, these errorists had set up the claim that the Gos- pel according to the Hebrews was the work of the apostle Matthew. Now, the discovery of the Diatessaron of Tatian and the Lewis palimpsest of the four gospels has made the whole matter plain \ and strange to say, the writer of the article in the Biblical World does not mention these discoveries at all. If, throughout the Diatessaron, composed soon after A. D. 150, our four gosxjels alone are used — and this is the case — then there is the proof that they and they alone were the gospels of the Christian world at that period, just as Irenaeus testifies that they were in his time, fifty years later. 192 Appendix The Lewis palimpsest, too, has our four gospels alone. If the Diatessaron and the palimpsest had contained the pe- culiar readings of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, a cer- tain class of critics would have been jubilant. Now, they are entirely silent about these discoveries and act as if they had nothing to do with the matter, when, in fact, they pre- sent the clearest proof that our gospels alone were the gos- pels of the Christian world during the half centur}^ after the death of the last of the apostles. Nicholson, who wrote his elaborate treatise on the Gospel according to the Hebrews be- fore these discoveries were made, used great diligence in gathering and arranging the thirty fragments which he thought certainly belonged to this so-called gospel, together with thirty -four others which he thought probably or possi- bly belonged to it. But when he comes to marshaling these fragments and interx^reting their peculiarities in the en- deavor to sustain his theory that Matthew wrote, at one time, the Hebrew Gospel (which Nicholson identifies with this Gospel according to the Hebrews), and at another time, our canonical Greek Matthew, he reminds one much more of an adept in the arts of legerdemain than of a sober reasoner. The legitimate conclusion from the facts which he adduces is that which is made clear by the discovery of the Diatessa- ron and the palimpsest — namely, that the Gospel according to the Hebrews is a heretical document drawn from our gos- pels, with additions, omissions and changes of text, and not recognized hj the Christian Church at the middle of the second century. NOTE 7 Haenack's Hoxest Acknowledgment In a review of Dr. Armitage Robinson's book, The Study of the Gospels, The Churchman, London, has this to say (Sep., 1902): — Appendix 193 *'He [Dr. Eobinson], mentions moreover, that Dr. Har- nack, in sending to him his own Chronology of Early Chris- tian Literature, in which he 'approximates to the older views, ' wrote that ' he hoped that, as to its main positions, we should find ourselves in agreement, and that differences would henceforward appear in the interpretation of the books rather than in the problems of their date and authen- ticity. ' "It is, in fact, an immense gain to the Christian argu- ment that the most distinguished ecclesiastical scholar in Germany has substantially admitted the truth of the tradi- tion of the Chm'ch respecting the dates, and to a great ex- tent, the authorship of the books of the Kcay Testament. The German criticism, which, toward the end of the last century, used to be thrown at the heads of ' Apologists ' in England by such controversialists as the late Professor Hux- ley, is now acknowledged in Germany itself — in Berlin itself —to have been mistaken ; and the result of the controversy for fifty years is the rehabilitation, in the most important points, of the ancient Christian tradition. ' ' DATE DUE ^ ~ , GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A.