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THE GOSPEL HISTORY AND ITS
TRANSMISSION

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
AND ITS TRANSMISSION

F, CRAWFORD BURKITT, M.A., D.D.
NOREISIAN PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

THIRD EDITION

Edinburgh : T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street
1911

PRINTED BY
UORRISON AND OIBB LIMITED,

T. & T. CLARK, EDINBUEGH.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED.
NEW YORK : CHARLES SCBIBNER'S SONS.

Ml^-iio

06;b

PREFACE
The ten Lectures contained in this volume were
delivered in the spring of this year at the Passmore
Edwards Settlement in London as the Jowett
Lectures for 1906. I repeated them with very
little change for my inaugural course at Cambridge
as Norrisian Professor of Divinity, so that it
seemed advisable to keep them in lecture form
when they came to be printed.
It is sometimes supposed that the result of
modern historical criticism is to diminish the
historical value of the Gospels. My own
researches have made me believe that there is a
much larger element of genuine history in the
Canonical Gospels, than a general view of the
tendencies which influenced Christendom during
the first century and a half of its existence might
have led one to anticipate. The general aim,
therefore, of the last three Lectures, those on
the Gospel Canon, on Marcion, and on the
Apocryphal Gospels, is to elucidate this to me
somewhat remarkable fact, to examine the reasons
why the tradition by which the Catholic Church

PREFACE
came to hold fast is on the whole so much truer
to the actual course of events than the theories
of the Heretics.
While the volume was passing through the
press, I read Professor Harnack's new book Lukas
der Arzt. After some consideration I thought it
best to leave my Lectures as they were, without
attempting to review this brilliant vindication of
the Lucan authorship of the Third Gospel and the
Acts. With the greater part of Harnack's thesis
I find myself in thorough agreement, though I
still hold that S. Luke had read Josephus (or at
least part of the Antiquities), and that both
Gospel and Acts were the work of the author's
old age. But whatever view may be taken, there
can be no doubt that Harnack has said in this
monograph the true and necessary word on many
a vexed question connected with the subject ;
especially I must here single out the admirable
remarks on the ' Paulinism ' of S. Luke. ' Wo
ist denn der Paulinismus, ausser bei Marcion,
geblieben?' asks Harnack (p. loi). He himself
says something in answer to this pregnant
question, but the fact that he asks it at all may
serve to shew that my Lecture on Marcion was
not out of place in this book. F. C. BURKITT.
Cambridge, October 1906.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
This new Edition of my Lectures is an almost
unchanged reprint of the former Edition. I have
added a Note on de Bruyne's discovery of the
Marcionite Prologues to the Pauline Epistles, and
I have corrected a few minor errors. But I can
not say that the criticism, to which parts of my
book has been subjected, has caused me to regret
the line I took. The criticism has been exceed
ingly kindly ; but in a good many cases it has
seemed to me that the writers have not quite
understood what I was aiming at, or what were
the rocks ahead which I had perceived. To judge
by most of the criticisms one would suppose that
I had been the first person to deny the historical
value of the Fourth Gospel for determining the
course of events in the public life of our Lord, or
the first to have rejected the historicity of the
Raising of Lazarus ! As a rule the critics limit
themselves to bringing forward reasons why the
Synoptic Gospels are silent about the Raising of
Lazarus : what they have not done is to explain
how and where the tale as told in the Fourth

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
Gospel can possibly be inserted into the framework
given by S. Mark. The ' argument from silence '
in this case is not merely that the Raising of
Lazarus is ignored by S. Mark, but that his
narrative appears to leave no room to fit it in.
What I have had in view in writing these
Lectures on the Gospel History and its trans
mission to us is something very different from an
attack upon the much assaulted Fourth Gospel.
I was not anxious to prove that the narrative
books of the New Testament are not all historical :
that was a conclusion only too likely to be arrived
at in the case of the Sacred Writings of an obscure
Jewish sect that was destined in the end to
dominate the Roman world. If there is one thing
more than another that clearly issues from A.
Schweitzer's admirable history of the attempts to
write a Life of Jesus ( Von Reimarus su Wrede,
1906) it is this, that the complete historical scepti
cism of Bruno Bauer was not a mere individual
eccentricity, but the expression of serious difficulties
in an excessively complicated historical problem.
The rise of Christianity is such an extraordinary
event, that we must be prepared to find again and
again that those who study it find themselves
bewildered, and that then they begin to doubt
whether the traditional accounts of the process
have any historical foundation at all.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
The more we investigate the early history of
the Christian Church with open and unprejudiced
eyes, the more we find ourselves in a strange
world, dominated by fixed ideas that are not our
fixed ideas and permeated by an intellectual
atmosphere quite different from ours. We come
to ourselves, and we rub our eyes and wonder if
what we have been gazing upon ever had any
reality. It was for the student in this state of
mind that my book was written. What I have
attempted to shew is, that at least the Gospel
according to S. Mark is in touch with the actual
condition of Palestine in the times of the Herods ;
and, further, that the course of events in the
second century enables us to understand some of
the reasons which led the Church to cherish on
the whole a historical, as distinct from an ideal,
account of the foundation of Christianity. F. C. BURKITT.
Cambridge, May, 1907,

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
In the interval between the second and the third
editions of this book, English readers have been
effectively introduced tawhat is called the Escha-
tological view of the Gospel History, most promi
nently associated with the name of Dr. Schweitzer,
of Strassburg, and the question arises how far
modifications should be introduced dealing directly
with the problems now under discussion. After
consideration it seems to me better not to make
any great changes in the text as originally written.
I have altered a phrase here and there, and re
written a paragraph in order to bring Chapter IV.
more definitely into line with the conclusions so
eloquently set forth by Dr. Verrall in his Christ
before Herod} But even Dr. Verrall's Essay raises
some objections to the point of view from which
the public career of Jesus Christ is looked at in
part of Chapter III., and certainly if this part of
the book be left unchanged some indications of
its relation to Dr. Schweitzer's view will not be
out of place. 1 See p. 138.

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
Put in a single phrase, the question is whether
I ought to retain the Map facing p. 92. One of
the most curious features of the Gospel History
as told in S. Mark is the long absence from
Galilee indicated in Mk vii 24, 31. The small
amount of tradition connected with this period,
which very likely took up more than half the time
included in the Ministry, is easily explicable, for
we are expressly told in vii 24 that Jesus had
sought retirement ; but the question remains why
He sought it.
The object of the Map is to point out the fact
that, according to Mark, during this period of
retirement Jesus had avoided the dominions of
Herod Antipas. But Dr. Schweitzer does not
connect this retirement with Herod at all : Jesus,
he says {Quest, p. 362), 'really does flee; not,
however, from hostile Scribes, but from the
people, who dog His footsteps in order to await
in His company the appearing of the Kingdom of
God and of the Son of Man — to await it in vain.'
And while Dr. Schweitzer seems to exclude
Herod from one point of view, Dr. Verrall from
another reminds us that ' the " hostility of
Antipas," "the designs of Antipas," "the danger
from Antipas," are phrases easily found, as one
may say, anywhere except in the Evangelists.'
Perhaps this is a little over-stated, unless we are

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
careful to understand it exclusively of the personal
attitude of the Tetrarch ; but it may serve to warn
a reconstructor of the Gospel history against
unduly magnifying the political prominence of our
Lord and His disciples, or of the danger in which
they stood from the government of Galilee.
Nevertheless I retain the Map, and with it most
of the theory which the Map is intended to illus
trate. In the first place, it really does exhibit the
places named in our only source, and the order in
which they are named. Gennesaret, Tyre, Sidon,
Decapolis, ' Dalmanutha ' - Tiberias, Bethsaida,
Caesarea Philippi, a journey through Galilee, ' the
borders of Judaea,' Jericho, Jerusalem, — these are
the stations named in Mark ; and even if it be no
true itinerary, it is well that we should clearly
realise what kind of route our document puts
before us. On an uncoloured sheet of paper the
route is indeed odd ; with the territory of Antipas
indicated it becomes, I venture to think, more in
telligible, and I have suggested in the Note to
p. 92 that the enduring physical features of
Palestine supply some reasons for the most
northerly angle of it.
Very possibly I may have exaggerated ' the
danger from Antipas ' ; in any case the parts
avoided are the Tetrarch's territories and also
(till the last journey) the land of Judaea. Possibly
xUi

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
if I were to plan the whole section over again I
might lay more stress on the idea of retirement, of
waiting for the Kingdom of God, rather than that
of exile; but whatever may have been the cause the
long cessation of public work still remains — airo-
UtiTr] r) yf] Kap-jTo^opel, and the Sower was letting the
wheat and tares grow unchecked to the Harvest.
Absence from Herod's territory was also absence
from the districts where Jewish life and religion
were predominant ; it involved a cessation of most
of the features which we commonly associate with
our Lord's Ministry. We do not even know how
many of the Disciples followed Jesus to the
borders of Tyre.
It still seems to me that the idea of retirement
and passive waiting for the Kingdom is not quite
enough to explain all the data given by S. Mark.
Especially, it is not enough to explain the passage
through Galilee incognito (Mk ix 30) ; this, if
nothing else does, points to the avoidance of
definite political dangers, or rather the definite
choice of one danger rather than another. Jesus
goes to Jerusalem to die, because a Prophet must
perish at Jerusalem — there and not elsewhere.
The Gospels show us Jesus not only goino-
forward to His Death, but also choosing the time
of it and the place : it is one of the special merits
of the Gospel according to Mark that it gives us

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
some indications of the means whereby Jesus
preserved His freedom until the time for the
Passion arrived.
I have attempted elsewhere to set forth my
reasons for regarding the picture of the Gospel
History given in Mark as being in its main
features historical.^ The scope of this book never
included a discussion of this fundamental ques
tion. What I specially have had in view has
been a consideration of the reasons that led the
Church to preserve so historical a tradition of its
origins, and to contrast the Church's theory with
a non-historical theory like Marcion's. It might
have been thought in England a few years ago
that such a consideration was unnecessary. Now
we are confronted with the movement in which
Professor Arthur Drews, of Karlsruhe, is the
chief figure, the movement which preaches in the
name of modern Comparative Religion that Jesus
is not a historical personage at all, but the render
ing into history of a primitive religious myth. In
words notably orthodox in sound, Professor Drews
declares that ' the Jesus of the Gospels is to be
understood only as a God made man ' ( The Christ
Myth, Eng. tr., p. 265), while his book ends by
^ Besides what I have said in the httle book called The Earliest
Sources for the Life offesus, I have attempted to give my reasons
for dissent from the historical scepticism of Wrede in the American
fournal of Theology for the current year (191 1).

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION
saying that the ' chief obstacle to a monistic
religion and attitude is the belief, irreconcilable
with reason or history, in the historical reality of
a "unique," ideal, and unsurpassable Redeemer'
(p. 300). This book has reached a third edition
in Germany. It is, in my opinion, as unsatisfac
tory as Marcion's Gospel ; but the whole move
ment shows that the question of the existence of
the merely historical, nationalistic, Jewish element
in Christianity is still as living a question as it
was in Marcion's day. It is the question whether
human ideas or the one non-recurring Course of
Events constitute the true reality. I cannot but
believe that the Church was right when it included
the Course of Events in the Christian Creed.
F. C. BURKITT.
Cambridge, February, 1911,

xvl

CONTENTS

ffAGK
I. Introductory ..... 1-32
II. The Gospel of Mark: its literary origi
nality ..... 33-64
III. The Gospel of Mark: its historical
value ..... 65-104
Map of Herod's Tetrarchy . . Facing p. 92
IV. The composition and literary character
OF the Gospels of Luke and Matthew 105-142
Date and authorship of ' Luke ' and ' Acts ' . 105
The composition of the Gospel according to
Matthew . . . . .122
The Passion Story in Luke , . -133
V. The Teaching of Jesus Christ . 143-183
VI. The Gospel in Matthew and Luke
The Gospel in Matthew
The Gospel in Luke .
VII. The Fourth Gospel
VlII. The Gospel Canon
Chronological Summary
The Influence of the Gospels on the Church 263
x^^i

184-

-217

•

184

•

207

218-

-256

257-

-288

,

262

CONTENTS
PACK
IX. Marcion, or Christianity without His
tory ..... 289-323
X. The Rivals of the Canonical Gospels 324-352
Gospels of the Risen Christ . . .326
Gospels of the Infancy . . -337
The Gospel according to the Hebrews . 340
The Oxyrhynchus 'Logia' . . . 348
Conclusion ..... 349
Note on the Latin Prologues to S. Paul's Epistles 353
General Index . . . . -359
Index of Biblical References . . . 364

THE GOSPEL HISTORY AND
ITS TRANSMISSION I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Lo, in Four Volumes hath our Sun shone forth.
S. Ephraim, Lamy iv 659.
'T^HE Gospel History and its transmission is a
-*¦ wide subject, and it is not to be supposed
that any one could exhaust it in ten Lectures. At
the same time, it is impossible to talk profitably
for ten hours on a single subject, however wide,
without going into details ; and details are apt to
be dry and tiresome. I am very glad, therefore,
that my subject is one of such importance and
interest to every thoughtful man who is born in a
Christian land, that I can appeal to its general
importance and interest when I claim your
attention in the discussion of dry and tiresome
details. We are all agreed, I suppose, as to the import-

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
ance of the Gospel History, whatever our religious
views may be. The brief and tragic career of
Jesus of Nazareth, put to a shameful death by the
rulers of Jerusalem though He taught love to
God and kindness to men, would in any case
have been a moving and pathetic incident. But
when we remember that this tragic incident was
the immediate starting-point and source of all the
varied manifestations of Christianity, we are com
pelled, whether we be orthodox or unorthodox,
believers or agnostics, to acknowledge that the
study of it has a transcendent interest, and we shall
be prepared to admit beforehand that no pains and
no attention can be too great to bestow on its
investigation. Nevertheless it is easy, nay inevitable, that we
should sometimes lose sight of the greatness of
the subject — inevitable, that is, if we give the
several parts of our task the attention which they
need. Indeed, the parts and the details are so
interesting and absorbing to the investigator, that
it is often easy for him to forget the whole. I
shall therefore ask your pardon beforehand if I
sometimes seem to be shewing you the trees,
when you want a view of the wood. Before,
then, we enter the wood together let us look at
some of the reasons which make detailed examina
tion of the trees necessary ; or, to drop the

INTRODUCTORY
metaphor, let us explain why we need to attack
critical and literary questions about the Gospels,
before busying ourselves with the real problems
of the Gospel History.
The first thing that an unsophisticated little
child asks about a story is, 'Is it true ? ' It is
indeed the most vital and important question to
ask, but the answer cannot generally be contained
in a simple ' yes ' or ' no.' And the child gradually
learns, as he grows up, that ' Is it true? ' must often
be the last and not the first question to be asked.
Undoubtedly this is the case in the study of the
Gospel History. There is no dispute as to the
object of our study. We want a true portrait of
our Lord and of His work among men. But
there is more than one kind of truth in portraiture.
There is the truth of the photographer and the
truth of the impressionist artist. A complete set
of working drawings for S. Paul's might very well
fail to reveal the true architectural relation of
the Cathedral to the great City, which can be
suggested by a picture, faulty and inaccurate as it
may be in many a detail. It is not fair to blame
the architectural drawing for failing to give the
general impression, or to blame the picture
which aims at giving a certain impression for
being unreliable in details. And one of the
problems before us is whether our Gospels are to
3

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
be classed with architectural drawings or with
impressionist pictures, or with some other kind of
portraiture. Besides this, we have to a great extent to
reconstruct the Portrait for ourselves. As I have
said, it is not fair to blame our documents for not
giving us more than they profess to give ; but at
the same time we may legitimately try to learn
from them more than the writers direcdy aimed
to tell us. We have to learn not only to
hear our witnesses, but also to cross-examine
them. To reconstruct the Portrait of Jesus Christ for
ourselves — this is a task which is incumbent not
only upon all Christians, but also upon all those
who are concerned with religion and the aspira
tions of the human race. And to make this
reconstruction we must study the Gospels. It
will be one of the conclusions which I shall bring
before you, that the study of all Four Canonical
Gospels, even the Fourth Gospel, is necessary.
Neither of them is entirely superseded by the
others. Each one of them contains an exceed
ingly valuable element which is not represented
in the others. I am not saying, I am very far
from saying, that each of our Gospels is equal to
the others in historical value or in philosophical
value. The contrary is the case. But each of
4

INTRODUCTORY
them does singly preserve portions and aspects of
the Gospel History which we cannot afford to
lose. I have spoken of 'reconstructing the Portrait
of Jesus Christ for ourselves.' Some of you may
perhaps reply that this is not a work for every
body, and that it is not to be expected that the
ordinary Christian, who has his own work and
his own studies to attend to, should go through
the critical investigations that occupy learned
men. You will expect me, perhaps, to tell you
of this brilliant Monograph, or that epoch-making
Article, which will really explain the origin of
Christianity, or the relations of the Gospels to one
another and to history. This is, of course, part
of my business, but it is the least important part.
Naturally there are some branches of Gospel study
which must be left in the hands of specialists, and
in regard to these branches our chief duty is
loyally to accept the specialists' matured con
clusions. To begin with, there are questions of
language. The Gospels are written in Greek,
and they deal for the most part with the sayings
and doings of persons who spoke a language akin
to Hebrew, known to modern scholars as Jewish
Aramaic. Now it is eminently desirable that
those who make a study of the Gospels should
know Greek and Aramaic. You have only to
5

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
read Professor Wellhausen's short commentaries
on the Synoptic Gospels to see how many things
are immediately clear to one who has a thorough
command of Aramaic, which are only half-
perceived by less fully equipped scholars. And
it is obvious that minute investigation of the style
of the several Gospels, of the use the Evangelists
made of their sources and of the Old Testament,
can only be satisfactorily carried out in the
original Greek.
Yet the fact remains that an intelligent use of
the English Bible brings us face to face with the
most important Gospel problems, and even
suggests their solution. It is one of the great
attractions of Biblical study that the chief docu
ment is in everybody's hands in an available form,
so that all the main results and many of the
processes of learned critical study can be at once
made plain to those who will read the English
Bible carefully for themselves. Far be it from
me to undervalue the help that erudition gives,
or to seem to assert even for one moment that the
investigator can do without it. Again and again
the amateur in Biblical study, as in other subjects,
falls into errors and pitfalls from which a little
more solid learning might have saved him. But
if the ordinary Bible reader — I will not say ' the
man in the street,' for that phrase has a certain
6

INTRODUCTORY
connotation of heedlessness, which disqualifies the
class to whom it is applied from the right to sit
in judgement — but if the ordinary Bible reader
must be shy of trying to blaze out a path for
others to follow, he • has every right to demand
that the steps which others cut for him shall be
made quite plain. There is nothing in the
nature of the subject to prevent him from
understanding every step of the way that his
guide is taking him, and sometimes he may
claim the right of refusing to follow any further
in a new path, at least till cause be shewn that
it is the right one.
What I have said about questions of language
is true also of textual criticism. The scholar
really familiar with the ancient manuscripts and
versions of the New Testament has a great critical
instrument at his command. He sees before his
eyes the process by which many a characteristic
phrase has become obliterated in the course of
the transmission of the Gospels down to modern
times. He can read the Gospels in a form
appreciably nearer the originals than it was
possible for Erasmus or Bentley to do. But after
all, the problems raised by the MSS only touch
the fringe of the subject ; the great difficulties are
not obliterated in the purest text, or in the most
corrupt. 7

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
The only things of quite capital importance
that the textual criticism of the Gospels tells the
ordinary, non-specialist student is — (i) that the
paragraph known as the last twelve verses of S.
Mark [xvi 9-20] is a later addition, made to
complete a work which (as we have it) is
mutilated and incomplete at the end ; and (ii)
that there was circulated in the West of Europe,
about the middle of the second century, an edition
of the Four Gospels which contained a number of
noteworthy interpolations, some of which present
claims to be regarded as materials for history
intrinsically as strong as can be urged for much
of what is found in the genuine and authentic
text of the Gospels. The story of the woman
taken In adultery Is certainly not a genuine
portion of the Fourth Gospel, and the story of
the man working on the Sabbath, found In Codex
Bezs, Is certainly not a genuine portion of the
Third Gospel (see p. 9). We cannot trace back
the literary history of these tales with any assu
rance, but they do not read like the invention of
an annotator.
But — and this Is the point which I wish to
emphasise here — suppose that a student had no
knowledge of MSS and versions beyond what he
finds In the margin of the Authorized and the
Revised English versions. In this case he will
8

vO

Matt xii 3-8.
. . he said unto them,
Have ye not read
what David did, when
he was
an hungred, and
they that were with him ;
how he entered
into the house of God,
and did eat
the shewbread,
which it was not lawful
for him to eat, neither
for them that were with him,
but only for the priests ?
Or have ye not read
in the law, how that on
the sabbath day
the priests in the temple
profane the sabbath,
and are guiltless ?
But I say unto you,
that something greater
than the temple is here.
But if ye had known
what this meaneth,
' I desire mercy, and not
sacriiice,' ye would not
have condemned the guiltless.
For the Son of Man is
lord of the sabbath.

Mk ii 25-28.
... he said unto them,
Did ye never read
what David did, when
he had need, and was
an hungred, he, and
they that were with him ;
how he entered
into the house of God
when Abiathar was high priest,
and did eat
the shewbread,
which it is not lawful
to eat save for the priests,
and gave also to them
that were with him ?

And he said
unto them.
The sabbath
was made
for man,
and not man
for the sabbath :
so that
the Son of Man is
lord also of the sabbath.

Lk vi 3-5.
. . . Jesus answering theiii said,
Have ye not read even this,
what David did, when
he was
an hungred, he, and
they that were with him ;
how he entered
into the house of God ;
and did take and eat
the shewbread,
and gave also to them
that were with him ;
which it is not lawful to
eat save for the priests alone ?
[On the same day
seeing a certain man
working on the sabbath,
he said to him,
Man, if indeed thou know
what thou doest,
thou art blessed ;
but if thou know not,
thou art cursed
and a transgressor
of the law.] So Codex BezcB (D).
All other authorities have
And he said unto them.
The Son of Man is
lord also of the sabbath.

ZH SS
O OaoHO tok:

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
not have heard of the story of the man working
on the Sabbath, for there is no note about it In
the margin of Lk vi 5. Consequently he will
not be troubled to explain how the story was
transmitted if It be genuine, or how It came to be
Invented if It be altogether unhistorical. Such a
student will merely observe that In this whole
section of stories about Sabbath observance
S. Luke is content to follow S. Mark, as he does
elsewhere. But when our student comes to
Investigate the corresponding section of S.
Matthew he will find, even if he confines himself
to the Authorized Version, that he has to face
very much the same problem that he left In
S. Luke to the professed textual critic. He will
find that the First Evangelist bases his narrative
on S. Mark, just as S. Luke did, but that he adds
to the words of our Lord about David and the
shewbread, ' Have ye not read in the law, how
that on the sabbath day the priests In the temple
profane the sabbath, and are guiltless ? I say
unto you, that something greater than the temple
is here, but If ye had known what is meant by " I
desire mercy, and not sacrifice,'' ye would not
have condemned the guiltless.' Whence did our
Evangelist get these words ? Have they the
same claim on our acceptance as those narratives
which are related by all three Synoptic Evangel
ic

INTRODUCTORY
ists ? Have they any better claim on our accept
ance than the precisely similar story of the man
working on the Sabbath, found only in a single
ancient MS ?
Thus the attentive reader of the Gospels in
English has forced upon him the same problems
that occupy the technically learned textual critic.
Moreover, the textual critic brings but little
towards the direct solution of the problems,
except what is afforded by the very existence of
these important variants and Interpolations. I
mean, that the mere fact of their occurrence is
enough to shew us that the text of the Gospels,
the actual wording, and even to some extent the
contents, were not treated during the second
century with particular scrupulosity j by the
Christians who preserved and canonized them.
There is nothing In the way which Christians
treated the books of the New Testament during
the first four centuries that corresponds with the
care bestowed by the Jews upon the Hebrew
Scriptures from the time of Aqiba onwards.
All this, of course, is sufficiently well known,
and I am not bringing It forward now to discredit
antiquated theories of verbal Inspiration, or to
justify us in making extensive and drastic changes
in the transmitted text. What I have rather In
mind is the danger of applying to the criticism of
II

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
the Gospels a method which has been found
suitable enough in the case of the Pentateuch,
but is far too mechanical for the free and un
official literary habits of the early Christian
writers. We all know something about the
' higher criticism ' of the Pentateuch. We know
that the general structure of that venerable
compilation has been divined, and the several
documents of which It is composed marked off.
The separation of these documents has been
effected by Internal evidence only, but there is
such a general consensus of agreement In the
final results that the outsider, the non-specialist,
cannot but acquiesce in the verdict. I should
be the last person in the world to say anything
to disturb the assured results of Pentateuchal
criticism. I firmly believe in the three main
strata of legislation, viz. the books of Prophetic
story (JE), the Deuteronomic literature (D), the
Priestly Code (P). I believe that these three
documents, or rather literatures, came Into exist
ence separately one after the other, and that
they have been combined together to make our
Pentateuch, as the critics say. But I have my
private doubts whether we can trust some of the
minor and minuter pieces of analysis, an analysis
which descends to the confident assignment of
every single fragment of the Massoretic Text to
12

INTRODUCTORY
its proper source. I am pretty sure that we
cannot reconstruct the earlier documents with
anything like completeness, except perhaps the
Priestly Code, which i as a literary whole is the
latest of them all. And I am absolutely certain
that the analogy of the Pentateuch will not help
us much when we try to investigate the sources
of our Gospels.^
It is one thing to demonstrate that the Gospels
were compiled from previously existing sources ; it
is quite another thing to attempt to reconstruct
these sources. In the case of the Pentateuch there
is some justification for the reconstructors. To
begin with, the Pentateuch Is essentially a codify
ing of legislation, and a code to be useful must
in some respects be complete. Moreover, the
compiler of the Pentateuch was dealing with an
ancient and venerable literature. The later
stratum (P) was already statute law ; the earlier
portion (JE, D) was a legacy from the old times,
from the pre-exlllc state. The main business of
the compiler was Incorporation ; earlier documents
and codes were to be superseded by the new
Pandect. Something, of course, is left out In
such a procedure, but most of what is important
1 ' In den Erzahlungsbiichern des Alten Testaments liegt die
Sache ganz anders [als bei den Synoptikern], und auch dort kann
die literarische Analyse zum Kinderspiel ausarten' (Wellhausen,
Einl. in die drei ersten Evangelien, p. 57).
13

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
is retained. Indeed, one of the really striking
features about the narrative in Genesis, to take
the obvious instance, Is the number of Doublets,
i.e. stories told twice over. We have two stories
of Creation, two stories of the Flood, two stories
about the destruction of Sodom, two stories
about the Patriarch's wife and the heathen
monarch. The critical explanation, no doubt
correct, Is that in all cases these Doublets are
parallel stories taken from the separate documents
or literatures out of which the Pentateuch is
compiled. Now in the Gospels we do occasionally meet
with the same sort of thing, but far less frequently,
and the same explanation does not always seem
to apply. The true analogy to the criticism of
the Pentateuch in New Testament literature
would have been afforded by the Diatessaron, if
unfortunately the Gospels were no longer extant
and we were reduced to extracting the Gospel
history from Tatian's famous Harmony. The
Diatessaron, like the Pentateuch, is a compilation.
If we had only the Diatessaron to go upon, I
think it very likely that critics might have
Identified the Fourth Gospel, and reconstructed
It almost entire : this would correspond to the
Priestly Code In the Pentateuch. It would
further have been recognised that there were
14

INTRODUCTORY
other earlier documents of superior historical
value besides the Johannlne Gospel, and some
of the characteristics of some of these documents
might have been discovered. We should pro
bably also have distinguished the two Nativity
stories of Matthew and Luke, and recognised
the Jewish-Palestinian character of some sections
of Matthew. But I do not think the Synoptic
Gospels as whgles would have been successfully
reconstructed ; we should have had to remain
content with passing historical judgement on
single narratives and sayings.
Now, if we should fail when we attempt to
reconstruct the Gospels out of the Diatessaron,
supposing we had no Independent knowledge of
the Gospels themselves, how much more shall we
fail if we attempt to reconstruct the sources of the
Gospels out of the Gospels ? Such an attempt
assumes what may be called literary piety on the
part of the surviving writer whose works we try
to use as a quarry, and literary piety is a quality —
I will not go so far as to call it an absolute virtue
— which hardly makes Its appearance in Christen
dom before 150 a.d. Indeed, there is not much
of it to be found even then. I am not quite
sure if I have made my meaning clear. What I
mean can be Illustrated by considering the same
passage to which reference has already been
2 15

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
made. I hope subsequently to shew you that our
first Gospel, the Gospel according to Matthew,
was directly based on our Gospel according to
Mark ; and, further, that this is the case with
respect to the passage Matt xii 3-8, which has
been already quoted. On this view. Matt xii 3-8
is simply rewritten from Mk Ii 25-28, with another
saying of our Lord, drawn from another source,
worked Into the narrative. As I say, I hope to
give you some reasons for believing this in a
subsequent Lecture ; I must ask you now to take
It more or less upon trust, merely premising that
It Is a generally accepted conclusion, not a private
fad of my own. But the reason why it has been
possible to formulate this conclusion is that the
Gospel of Mark Is actually before us. I venture
to assert that If we had only had Matt xii 3-8 and
Lk vi 3-5, we could never have reconstructed
Mk II 25-28, their common source. We should
never have known that the common source con
tained a curious, and chronologically a rather
Inaccurate, reference to Abiathar, nor should we
have guessed of the existence of the characteristic
saying, ' The sabbath was made for man, and not
man for the sabbath.' Being, as we are, in
possession of the common source, we can give a
fairly Intelligible account of the manner in which
the later Evangelists treated It, when adapting it for
16

INTRODUCTORY
their own narratives ; but we could not reconstruct
the source from these later narratives alone.
The Gospel according to S. Mark is not the only
source used by Matthew and Luke, but it is the
only source which has survived. We see, clearly
enough, that we could not have reconstructed the
Gospel according to S. Mark out of the other two
Synoptic Gospels, although between them nearly
all Mark has been Incorporated by Matthew and
Luke. How futile, therefore, It Is to attempt to
reconstruct those other literary sources which
seem to have been used by Matthew and Luke,
but have not been Independently preserved.
Another Instance of the literary procedure of
an Evangelist has been well characterised by my
predecessor in the Norrisian Chair. He Is writing
of what he calls the ' moulding influence of the
editor's hand,' and goes on to say : ' S. Mark's
record of the opening words of the dialogue
between our Lord and the rich young man Is as
follows (x 17 f) : — "Good Master, what shall I do
that I may inherit eternal life ? . . . Why callest
thou me good ? None is good save one, even
God.'' With this S. Luke's account (xvlli i8f)
coincides. But In S. Matthew (xix i6f) a signi
ficant variation confronts us. The word " good "
reappears indeed, but Its reference Is wholly
changed — " Master, what good thing shall I do
17

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
that I may have eternal life ? . . . Why askest
thou me concerning that which is good} . . . One
there Is who is good." Here It Is clear that the
wording of the dialogue has been altered to avoid
the appearance of our Lord's calling In question
His own goodness, and of His refusing to accept
the attribution to Himself of what Is Divine.' ^
So far Dr. Chase. It Is quite evident that if we
only had had the narrative of S. Matthew we
should never have g-uessed how the dialoo-ue stood
In his source. We might have said that some
thing was wrong in the report, and that our Lord
was not generally accustomed to discuss the
Meaning of Good, but we should have been
unable to reconstruct the original form of the
conversation. The chances would be that the
most Ingenious restoration would have been
rather further from historical truth than the
narrative as told In S. Matthew.
It may perhaps seem a melancholy doctrine, to
teach that the Evangelists whose works we possess
altered freely the earlier sources which they used
as the basis of their narratives, and yet that we
can do little towards reconstructing these earlier
sources. Of course, it would be Indeed unsatis
factory If we had reason to believe that the
accounts of Jesus Christ on which we rely were
1 Cambridge Theological Essays, p. 387.

INTRODUCTORY
misleading. If, for instance, it should be proved
that the Gospel according to Mark, or according
to John, gave a thoroughly false notion of the life
or personality of our Lord, even when we looked
at these documents from the proper point of view,
then indeed we should be In a melancholy position.
But as a matter of fact, this is far from being the
case. Every picture demands that we shall look
at it from the proper point of view, whether our
object be to learn from the picture, or to pass
judgement upon it. And when we come to
examine the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel according
to John, we shall find that it is necessary to look
at It from a quite peculiar point of view. This we
might expect beforehand to be the case with any
work of exceptional character. But this does not
prove It to be valueless, or that we could do better
without It.
Let us admit at the outset that there are many
things in the Gospel History, about which we
most of us feel much excusable curiosity, which
nevertheless we must be content to leave unde
fined. When a great man leaves this earth, we
have begun to feel that all is not satisfactory
unless we have the ' Life and Letters of Mr. Z.'
In two volumes, written by one of his nearest
friends, to be followed at an appropriate interval
by ' The real Mr. Z.,' a work compiled by a more
19

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
or less discriminating critic. If there be any dark
or mysterious episodes In Mr. Z.'s career, we want
the searchlight turned on to explain the matter
from all points, and from the standpoint, if possible,
of all the actors in the drama.
We cannot get that out of our materials for the
Life of our Lord. On the very shortest estimate
the length of the Ministry must have extended to
about 400 days, and I doubt If our Gospels con
tain stories from 40 separate days. So that nine-
tenths at least of the publlp life of Jesus remains to
us a blank, even If we were to take every recorded
Incident as historical and accurately reported.
And all the recorded sayings of Christ, how long
would they take to pronounce ? With due gravity
and emphasis they might take six hours, — hardly,
perhaps, so much. In other words, they would
take no more than two great political speeches,
and a considerably less time than this present
course of Lectures.
Even apart from the results of the 'higher
criticism,' we do not possess enough Information
to enable us to write a biography of our Lord
after the modern pattern. But this Is not all loss.
The real question is not whether we have as much
as we should like, but whether we have as much
as we need. The craving for elaboration Is really
a kind of covetousness ; and a man's life, as our
20

INTRODUCTORY
Lord Himself tells us, does not consist in the
abundance and superfluity of things connected
with him. How often it is one story, one letter,
one illuminative saying or judgement of the
subject of a bulky modern biography, which tells
us more than all the rest what the real meaning of
the life was. The part of Lady Macbeth is just
250 lines long ; how many a biography In two
large volumes tells us less of wl^at is really essen
tial about its hero !
To come back to the Evangelists, we have
quite enough in mere bulk to obtain an intelli
gible picture of the Gospel History, if our materials
are fairly trustworthy. We have admitted that
It Is to some extent and from some points of view
regrettable that our sources are not more exten
sive. But I should like here to say a few words
In passing upon another side of the question. I
have said that our Evangelists altered freely the
earlier sources which they used. They changed,
added, omitted. This sounds, no doubt, very
terrible and dangerous. Let us put the state
ment, then, in another form, a form quite as
legitimate, but less shocking. Let us say that
the Evangelists were historians, and not chroni
clers. This does not assert that they were trust
worthy or even truthful. There are plenty of
people who do not agree with Macaulay or with

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Froude, who would be eager to deny the quality
of trustworthiness to these distinguished historians.
'Well,' you may say, 'this is worse than ever.
Is it not a misfortune that our knowledge of
Christ should come to us only through writers,
of whom you assert that they are not less partisan
than Macaulay, and not more trustworthy than
Froude ? '
Waiving the question for the present whether
the Evangelists are, as a matter of fact, suitably
compared with Macaulay and Froude, I still
think there is something to be said in reply.
Put very shortly, I think we may say that a
true impression is on the whole and for most
people better conveyed by a friend than by an
observer wholly dispassionate. What is the real
reason for the modern demand for documents ?
Is it not because we believe in our hearts that we,
the modern historian, have a better right than
those who have gone before us to sit in judgement
on the evidence ? This conviction is justified in
certain departments of thought, and It is not to
be denied that some of these departments of
thought concern Gospel study very nearly. One
of them, of course, is the question of what is
commonly called ' miracle ' ; no doubt, we are
better qualified than the Christians at the end of
the first century of our era to decide what Is, and
22

INTRODUCTORY
what is not, a likely contravention of the uni
formity of nature. I am not so sure that we are
better qualified to judge ethical questions, to
choose the good and reject the evil. In all
seriousness I am not prepared to maintain that
Professor Schmledel's Christ, or Professor Har
nack's Christ, or Count Tolstoi's Christ, is In
essentials any nearer the historical truth than the
Christ as conceived by S. Luke or the compiler
of the Gospel according to S. Matthew. All
kinds of science are valid In their own province :
this is the great critical principle of which M.
Loisy is the prophet, and for which he Is the
symbol. The chronicling of events Is one thing,
and the characterisation of a personality is another.
The course of events Is a fixed objective series ;
things happen once for all, and the determination
of the course of past events is a wholly definite
task, difficult indeed, yet perfectly mechanical. In
this sense, a Cambridge audience does not need
again to be reminded that ' History Is a science,
no more and no less.'
But the appreciation of a living personality is
not entirely a mechanical task, for it describes the
effect of the personality on the writer or speaker :
one man may be the subject of many adequate
portraits. And from this point of view we shall
do well to approach the Gospels In the spirit of
23

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
those who are as ready to be taught as to sit
in judgement. ' Matthew ' took the narrative of
' Mark ' ; he set the Sermon on the Mount at the
beginning of the public ministry of Jesus, and he
added, at the end of the final .warnings concerning
the approaching destruction of Jerusalem, the
parable or discourse about the Sheep and the
Goats. By doing this, says the objective historian,
the narrator of facts, ' Matthew ' has entirely dis
turbed the balance of the story. The progress of
the narrative is destroyed ; we cannot trace In
' Matthew ' the development of hostility in our
Lord's opponents, the disciples appear from the
very beginning as an organised body distinct
from the unbelieving Jews, and so the march of
events becomes incomprehensible. Furthermore,
we shall be told that the Sermon on the Mount
itself Is not a true discourse at all ; it is a cento
of more or less detached sayings, grouped under
heads, and many of these sayings, even if they
be genuine, belong to the later stages of the
Ministry. We shall find also that many critics
are Inclined to assign the parable of the Sheep
and the Goats to the latest cycle of the Synoptic
period, and to say that in any case it has no
historical claim to be considered a part of the
discourse traditionally ascribed to Christ upon
the Mount of Olives. All this is more or less
24

INTRODUCTORY
justifiable historical criticism. The story of Jesus
Christ's life on earth, it cannot be too often
repeated, happened In one way, and one way only.
And when our object, a noble and worthy object,
is to trace out to the best of our power the story
of that life regarded as an outward chain of
events, it is our first duty to weigh these historical
considerations, to choose the probable course of
events on which to believe, and resolutely to
reject a presentation of the course of events,
which careful consideration shews to be histori
cally improbable.
But this is not all. The course of events is
Important, but the effect produced upon us by the
course of events is still more important. What
was the effect which the course of events, the Life
of Jesus Christ on earth, produced on our First
Evangelist ? Was it not this, that it made him
arrange his Gospel as It stands for us to read ?
When we take as our aim and object to consider
what was the real effect of Jesus Christ's Ministry,
in other words, to consider what manner of man
He was, it is not for nothing that we find these
dislocations and rearrangements which so seriously
disturb the historical order of the First Gospel.
It Is not for nothing that the Evangelist would
not describe the preaching of Jesus, not even for
a chapter, without telling his readers at length
25

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
that what Jesus preached was the blessedness of
those who hungered and thirsted after righteous
ness, that anger was like murder and lust like
adultery, and that miracles and prophesylngs even
in His own name were nothing without simplicity
and sincerity of life. It is not for nothing that
the Evangelist considered it appropriate to make
Jesus conclude His discourse on the Coming of
the Son of Man and the consummation of all
things by a description of the End in which the
King of the Day of Judgement appears not as
the Merciful and Compassionate towards His
followers and the avenger of their sufferings, but
as one that pronounces His highest blessing on
those who, being in no sense His disciples, and
without looking for His reward, had yet been kind
to the unfortunate and the wretched. Interesting
Indeed Is the question, but after all of secondary
importance, whether the words which describe
this scene are a literal Greek translation of words
once upon a time spoken by Jesus of Nazareth ;
what is of real moment, a fact certainly of objec
tive history. Is that the total impression of the
life and words of Jesus of Nazareth made the
Evangelist write In this manner, and made the
Society for which he wrote accept the portrait he
has drawn. The more a rigorously objective
criticism Impels us to regard this and that
26

INTRODUCTORY
traditional Saying of Christ as a later accretion
into the Gospel legend, how much more wonder
ful, how much more forceful, must He have
been, round whose Personality grew up not only
the stories of the Nativity and the Temptation,
but also the parables of the Prodigal Son and
of the Pharisee and the Publican ? I hope I may
not be misunderstood : we have not discussed
these stories and parables yet at close quarters,
and for aught our investigation may show, we
may yet find that they are authentic reminiscences.
What I want to urge here, now that we stand
on the threshold. Is the witness borne by the
Evangelists to the moral impression produced
by Jesus Christ upon His followers. The
Evangelists are not mechanical chroniclers, they
are not afraid to treat the material before them
with great literary freedom, and here and there
we actually see unhistorical legends growing as it
were before our eyes. Under these circumstances,
the real miracle, which only escapes our notice
because it is so familiar, Is the irresistible vitality
of the ethical teaching of the Gospel. The Fire
has been laid on the earth, and we see it kindling
on every side. The Christian has hardly need
to claim more from the scientific historian than
that the life of Jesus Christ on earth Inspired
the canonical Gospels, made the Evangelists
27

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
write as they did, made the Gospels what they
are. We might perhaps stop here, and say that
further Investigation Is superfluous. But this
would be, I am sure, a wrong conclusion. I shall
therefore say a few words upon the reasons which
make minute and searching investigation of the
details of the Gospel History a profitable as well
as a fascinating study. As I said at the beginning
of this Lecture, we lose ourselves so often and for
so long In the details that we sometimes forget
the general reasons for our occupation. For this
cause we shall do well to consider why we are
thus occupied, and what we may hope to find.
And here I may take as my text two contrasted
sentences from the Cambridge Theological Essays,
which together express what I wish to say better
than I could have put it myself The first Is
from Dr. Cunningham, who reminds us that we
must not expect to attain to fuller appreciation of
religious truth merely by studying the details of
the Synoptic Problem. "The most complete
success," he says, "In the reproduction of the
past would still show us the crowds who stoned
the prophets, or from whom the Lord turned
because of their unbelief"-'
This is expressed with as much truth as
^ Cainb. Tlieol. Essays, p. 39.
28

INTRODUCTORY
picturesqueness. We shall only be disappointed
if we expect orthodoxy to be the natural result
of a competent knowledge of the history of
Dogma, or if we expect to understand the nature
of conscious life by a study of the process of
Evolution. What such study will give us is
not the vital truth, but the removal of errors.
Historical criticism does not create, it clears !
away ; clears away everything but the objective '.
fact of the course of events. But the course of
events remains. Dr. Cunningham does not deny
that the crowds who stoned the prophets were
really there. They are a part, and a real part,
of the whole truth ; and perhaps, but for historical
criticism, we might forget their existence. Never
theless we shall do well to master Dr. Cunning
ham's warning at the outset, lest we be disappointed
later on with the results of our inquiries. We
must be prepared to find the unbelieving crowds
and the other less obviously edifying parts of the
scene loom larger and more important the nearer
we get to them. We must be prepared to find ]
the whole drama of the rise of Christianity more
confused, more complex, more secular, in a word,
more appropriate to the limitations of Its own age,
than we should gather from the epic selectlveness
of the Creeds and the theological manuals.
Why then, you may say, should we proceed at
29

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
all ? What is the ultimate use of this destructive
historical criticism ? The answer lies, I am sure,
in that other sentence from the Cambridge
Theological Essays to which I referred above.
It comes at the end of a footnote in Dr. Foakes
Jackson's admirable Essay on ' Christ In History,'
coming, in fact, rather as a caveat or necessary
reservation than as part of the author's special
thesis. Dr. Foakes Jackson has been speaking
of the evolutionary standpoint from which we
now rightly treat Church History. He points
out the impossibility of resuscitating the past,
that Is, the Impossibility of resuscitating the
practices and the standpoint of past ages as
actual rules for our own conduct, and his whole
Essay Is an attempt to portray our Lord as one
who is constantly revealing Himself with increas
ing clearness to the conscience of men (p. 524).
Yet he feels himself constrained to add : "At the
same time, since In every age the Church is
tempted to regard her interpretation of her Lord
as final and complete, a return to the historic
Christ is a constant necessity, and the only
cause of progress."^
It Is not to get new Ideas of religion or of
philosophy that we need a minute and searching
historical criticism ; rather do we need to test
^ Ca?nb. Theol. Essays, p. 476 note.
30

INTRODUCTORY
the ideas we already have by the historical facts,
and we cannot get at the facts without the
criticism. Not that It Is always or generally an
easy task to exercise a true historical criticism
upon a great subject, and it Is only too easy to
fall into error. But of this, at least, we may be
confident, that our errors will not long escape
detection : if not by our own generation, then by
the next. And the attempt to ' return to the
historic Christ ' is the only way by which we can
escape from the tyranny of the last generation's
theories about Christ.
I ventured at the beginning of this Lecture to
speak of the task incumbent upon us all as the
reconstructing of the Portrait of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps It would better express my meaning If
I said the painting of the Portrait on the retina of
our minds. We have to answer for ourselves the
' old question, ' What think ye of Christ ? ' and
the answer varies for various ages and various
, degrees of intelligence. But that the retina of
our minds may take an impression of Christ, it
is necessary that Christ be brought before them ;
and this I understand to be the work of the
historical critic and Investigator.
The events of the first century are imperfectly
known to us ; it may turn out on investigation
that some things happened differently from what
3 31

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
we thought, or what our fathers thought. But
there is one thing at least which we know before
we start. We know that the events of the first
century produced the second and succeeding cen
turies. There is no need for the most timid to be
afraid of the results of historical investigation.
We know the result of the events beforehand ;
the investigations of the critics cannot alter the
events of past history. We have no reason to
be afraid of the unbelieving crowds that Dr.
Cunningham has called up from the past : they
were really there and really dangerous, but the
Christian Church came through somehow in spite
of them.

3^

II.
THE GOSPEL OF MARK:
ITS LITERARY ORIGINALITY.
Marcus . . Euangelium. . . . scripsit, ostendens in eo quid et
generi suo deberit et Christo.
A NY estimate of the effect of the Gospels
¦^ ^ upon the early Church and upon later ages
must almost inevitably begin with a statement
about the date, literary origin, and historical
value of the Gospels ; and these are questions
of such importance and complexity that a state
ment of conclusions alone would not carry
sufficient weight. It will be necessary, therefore,
first to consider the Gospels at some length as
literary and historical documents, and afterwards,
with the help of the results thus attained, to
examine their influence upon the Church and
their place in the development of the Christian
religion. The four Gospels are not by any means four
independent literary works. The Fourth Gospel
is most conveniently treated apart. But the three
33

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
obviously have something in common : they must
either copy one another or make use of a common
source. The first question is whether this source
or sources be written or oral. All kinds of
answers have been given in the past, but I
have no doubt at all which answer is correct.
I am fully convinced that the main common
source of the Synoptic Gospels was a single
written document.
In the first place, the common matter is not
mere floating tradition, the property of all the
Christian community. Had it been this, I can
not but think that the incidents identically
related by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, would
have been to a larger extent the critical points
of the Ministry, and not a capricious selection
of anecdotes. The story of the Resurrection,
the words from the Cross, the narrative of the
Last Supper, — in these we might have expected
all our authorities to agree, even in detail ; but
they do not agree. On the other hand, the
parenthesis which explains that Jesus turned
from addressing the Pharisees to say to the
sick of the palsy, 'Arise,' is found in all three
Synoptic Gospels ; all three insert the statement
concerning Herod's alarm about Jesus at the
same point, and Matthew and Mark go on to
34

ONE WRITTEN COMMON SOURCE
relate, so to speak in a footnote, the circum
stances of John the Baptist's murder ; all three
inform us that the Pharisees, when they asked
about the tribute-money, began by assuring our
Lord that He taught the way of God in truth.
These points are matters of secondary detail ;
an oral teaching or a catechetical tradition which
contained them must be held to have had singular
consistency. And if our Evangelists had worked
upon a fixed oral tradition of this definite sort,
I cannot imagine how they dared to take such
liberties with It. An oral tradition which is
definite is authoritative : can we conceive of
an oral tradition which accurately distinguishes
between the baskets {ko^woi) of fragments taken
up after the feeding of the 5000, and the
creels (o-^u/stSe?) taken up after feeding the
4000, but which left the details of the Cruci
fixion and the Resurrection vague ?
A written source, on the other hand, is perfectly
definite, but not necessarily authoritative. When
the Evangelists simply copy their common source
they agree, whether the point of agreement be
important or unimportant, while at the same
time the existence of the written document did
not prevent the use of other documents or of
any oral information which might come to hand.
There was nothing in the nature of things to
35

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
compel either of our Evangelists to reproduce
the whole of the documents upon which they
worked, or to follow them exactly : if they had
had such respect for their predecessors' work
as never to alter it, they would never have
dared to supersede these documents or traditions
by their own new Gospels. They would have
been mere scribes or, at the most, harmonists
like Tatlan.
Our Synoptic Gospels, then, resemble one
another because they are based on common
written documents. But we can go one step
further. In the parts common to Mark, Matthew,
and Luke there is a good deal in which all three
verbally agree ; there is also much common to
Mark and Matthew, and much common to Mark
and Luke, but hardly anything common to
Matthew and Luke which Mark does not share
also. There is very little of Mark which is not
more or less adequately represented either in
Matthew or in Luke, Moreover, the common
order Is Mark's order ; Matthew and Luke never
agree against Mark in transposing a narrative.
Luke sometimes deserts the order of Mark, and
Matthew often does so; but in these cases
Mark is' always supported by the remaining
Gospel. Now what is the deduction to be drawn from
36

LACHMANN ON S. MARK
these facts ? There is only one answer. We
are bound to conclude that Mark contains the
whole of a document which Matthew and Luke
have independently used, and, further, that Mark
contains very little else beside.
This conclusion is extremely important ; it is
the one solid contribution made by the scholar
ship of the nineteenth century toward the solution
of the Synoptic Problem, And I think it will not
be out of place to pause for a moment to pay
a tribute to the memory of the great scholar
Lachmann, who was the first clearly to formulate
it as long ago as 1835. Lachmann started from
the central fact that the common order of the three
Synoptic Gospels is Mark's order. "There is
not so much diversity," he says, " In the order of
the Gospel tales as most people imagine. It is
indeed very great if you compare the Synoptic
Gospels indiscriminately together, or compare
Luke with Matthew ; but If you compare Mark
with both the others separately the diversity is
inconsiderable."^ And he goes on to draw the
conclusion that the order of the narrative, as we

^ Sed narraiionum evangelicarum ordinis non tanta est quanta
plerisque videtur diversitas; maxima sane si aut has scriptores
eadem. complexione omnes aut Lucan cu7n Matthceo composueri's,
exigua si Marcum cum utroque seorsum (Lachmann in Studien
und Kritiken for 1835, p. 574, quoted by Wellhausen, Einleitung,
P- 43)- 37

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
read it in Mark, is presupposed by and underlies
the narratives In Luke and Matthew.^
Until Lachmann's time the prevailing opinion
had been that S. Matthew's Gospel was the
earliest, or at least that it offered the most
primitive arrangement. The priority of Matthew
was upheld by critics of such different opinions as
S. Augustine and Ferdinand Christian Baur, the
founder of the Tubingen School. I am not going
to give a history of the ebb and flow of modern
criticism ; it will be enough to say that the
relative priority of Mark is now accepted almost
as an axiom by the great majority of scholars who
occupy themselves with Gospel problems. But I
should like to observe that this great change of
opinion Is a result of the change of method used
in studying the question. From Augustine to
Baur, and indeed bften at the present day,
attempts have been made to determine the
relation of the Synoptic Gospels to one another
by beginning with historical and dogmatic con
siderations ; Lachmann, as you see, treated it
mainly as a question of literary criticism. Far be
It from me to disparage the high studies of history
and philosophy in favour of literary criticism ; but
1 Quid superest nisi ut illutn quem omnes velut sibi prascriptuin
sequuntur ordinem, prius quam ipsi scriberent, auctoritate ac
traditione quadam evangelica constitutum et confirmatum fuisse
dicamus? (Lachmann, p. 582.) 38

THE PLACE OF LITERARY CRITICISM
as the wise man said, ' To everything there is a
season,' and in the particular study before us the
season of literary criticism comes logically first.
As long as those who studied the Synoptic
Problem attacked it by considering mainly the
actual contents of the Gospels, they seemed to be
unable to shake off a certain confusion between
the earliest Synoptic Gospel and the primitive
preaching of Christianity. It has always seemed
to me, though from the nature of things it would
be very difficult to prove, that this was the master
cause which made Baur and his followers proclaim
the priority, at least the relative priority, of S.
Matthew's Gospel. What they really cared about
was the Sermon on the Mount. S. Matthew's
Gospel contains the Sermon on the Mount, and
S, Mark's does not ; they concluded, therefore,
that S, Matthew's Gospel is earlier than S.
Mark's. This is, of course, a very crude way of
putting the matter, but I believe it to be near
enough. At least it expresses the truth that
Baur had a much firmer hold on primitive
Christian Ethics than primitive Christian History,
and It is the History we are now investigating —
the History and the way that History is told in
our documents.
Let us come back again to our examination of
the three Synoptic Gospels and see whether we
39

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
cannot advance yet another step. We have seen
that the marked agreement of Matthew, Mark,
and Luke In many minor points, taken together
with their frequent difference in many important
points, indicates the use of a common written
source rather than a common tradition. And
further, the fact that Matthew and Luke never
agree in order, and hardly ever In wording, against
Mark Indicates that Mark contains the whole of
a document which Matthew and Luke have
Independently used. Now let us go on and see
whether there Is any reason to suppose that the
document thus used by Matthew and Luke Is
any other than the Gospel according to S. Mark
Itself Suppose for a moment that the common source
was not S. Mark, but some earlier document, the
greater part of which has been incorporated in
our S. Mark, — a document, in fact, such as the
Germans call Ur-Marcus. Well, then, w"e have
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all basing their work
upon this Ur-Marcus. What will be the result ?
As long as they all copy Ur-Marcus exactly, they
will all agree. That is, indeed, what we often
find. Sometimes one of the three, say Matthew,
will not copy exactly : either he will drop some
thing out, or add something fresh, or make some
change or correction. In that case, if Mark and
40

MARK OR UR-MARCUS?
Luke still go on copying exactly, they will still
agree, but Matthew will be different. That also
is what we find, and the same is true If it was
Luke who did. not copy exactly. But If it was
Mark that did not copy exactly when Matthew
and Luke did, we should find Matthew and Luke
agreeing against Mark ; and this we do not find.
Either, therefore, Mark always copied this hypo
thetical Ur-Marcus exactly, or we must suppose
that wherever he did not copy exactly, Matthew
and Luke also did not copy exactly.
Again, it will naturally happen that at a given
point both Matthew and Luke will be unwilling
simply to copy the Ur-Marcus. If they have no
acquaintance with each other's work, the result of
their ceasing to copy out their exemplar will be
that they will, produce something different from
it and from each other. In such a case Mark,
Matthew, and Luke will all differ from each other,
a state of things often found. But It will equally
be the case whether Mark copies Ur-Marcus
exactly or not, i.e. whether the common original
was identical with our Mark, or different from it.
Instances, therefore, in which all three Synoptic
Gospels differ from each other, tell us nothing
about the existence of an Ur-Marcus.
What, then, are the conditions which call for the
hypothesis of an Ur-Marcus, or, In other words,
41

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
which make It unreasonable for us to believe that
Matthew and Luke actually used not our Mark,
but an earlier edition of that Gospel ?
A moment's consideration will tell us that the
hypothesis of an Ur-Marcus can only be required
by those places where Matthew and Luke agree
against Mark ; or where, all three Synoptists being
different, the differences cannot be explained from
the text of Mark as It stands. We must there
fore pass in review the very few places where
Matthew and Luke may be said to agree against
Mark. These have often been collected together;
the clearest arrangement is to be found in Sir
John Hawkins's Horae Synopticae, pp. 174, 175
(2nd ed., pp. 210, 211). Sir John reckons 20 or
21 places In all, some of them concerned with
very small points Indeed : in others the agreement
between Matthew and Luke Is best explained as
due to special and fairly obvious causes.
I. Mk ii 22 = Matt ix 17 = Lk v 37, 38.
Mark — And no man putteth new wine into old wine-skins : else
the wine will burst the skins, and the wine perisheth, and
the skins : but new wine into fresh wine-skins.
Matthew — Neither do men put new wine into old wine-skins :
else the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins
perish : but they put new wine into fresh wine-skins, and
both are preserved.
Luke — And no man putteth new wine into old wine-skins ; else
the new wine will burst the skins, and itself will be spilled,
and the skins will perish. But new wine must be put into
fresh wine-skins.
42

MARK OR UR-MARCUS?
Here Matthew and Luke agree in stating
directly that the wine will be spilled {Ikx^vtm Matt,
eK-xvdrjaerat. Lk), while in Mark the verb airoWvrai
applies to the wine as well as to the wine-skins.
2. Mk iv II = Matt xiil 1 1 = Lk vlli lo.
Mark — And He was saying to them, ' Unto you is given the
mystery of the kingdom of God.'
Matthew — And He answered and said to them, ' Unto
you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven.'
Luke — And He said, 'Unto you it is given to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of God.'
Matthew and Luke agree In inserting the verb
'to know,' in explanation of what Sir John
Hawkins calls the more difficult expression,
viz. 'Unto you the mystery is given.' 'To
give the mystery of (a rite) ' Is simply ' to initiate
into (a rite).'-"- Mark preserves the Aramaic
expression ; Matthew and Luke give a paraphrase
of Mark which is so natural that It is not necessary
to explain it by having recourse to a documentary
source. It should be added that 'mystery' {to
fivarripiov) is probably the original reading in Matt
xili 1 1 as well as in Mk iv ii.
3, Mk V 25-27 = Matt ix 20 = Lk viil 43, 44^
Mark — And a woman, who had an issue of blood twelve years,
and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had
^ Eg. Aphraates (p. 2i) speaks of our 'LoxA giving the mystery
of baptism to the apostles. 43

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but
rather grew worse, having heard the things concerning
Jesus, came in the crowd behind, and touched His
garment.
Matthew — And behold, a woman, who had hemorrhage for
twelve years, came up behind, and touched the border of
His garment.
Luke — And a woman who had an issue of blood for twelve
years, which could not be healed of any,' came up behind,
and touched the border of His garment.

I have quoted the introduction to the story of
the Woman with an Issue rather fully, although
the only point that Matthew and Luke have in
common against Mark Is that they say she ' came
up behind, and touched the border of his garment,'
while Mark has ' came in the crowd behind, and
touched His garment.'^ Apart from this one
point, the passage very well illustrates the normal
characteristics of the three Synoptic Evangelists.
Mark is the fullest, the most graphic ; Matthew
the shortest, and the least Interested in subsidiary
detail. It Is surely not necessary to suppose that
Matthew and Luke were obliged to have recourse
to something different from Mark in order to
account for the mention of 'the border.' In Mk
vi 56 we read that the sick who touched the border
1 This is the true text, attested by the Sinai Palimpsest as well as
by B D and the Sahidic.
2 Mk has iXdoia-a iv ra o^Xm onia-dev fj\j/-aro tov ifiwriov avrov ;
Matt and Lk have Trpoa-fXdovcra omcrdsv rj-^aro rov Kpaa-vihov tov
Ip-arlov avTov.
44

MARK OR UR-MARCUS?
of Christ's garment were healed } if we are to look
for a literary source from which to derive the word
in Matt ix 20, Lk viii 44, this is the most probable
one. It should be added that it is not quite certain
that ' the border ' really belongs to the text of
Luke. In Matt ix 20, tov Kpaim-ehov Is omitted by
the best Old Latin MSS, but it is found In all
Greek and Syrlac texts. But in Lk viii 44, tov
KpaaireSov is not Only omitted by D and the best
extant Old Latin texts ; the Old Syrlac version
also paraphrases, having 'laid hold of the skirt
of His garment' for ij-^lraTO [rov Kpaa-ireSov'] TOV
tfutrlov avTov. In the other Gospels 7]\lraTo is not
paraphrased, so that perhaps tov Kpaa;ire^ov may
have been absent from the Greek text that under
lies the Old Syrlac.
4. Mk vi 14 = Matt xiv i = Lk ix 7,
Mark — And King Herod heard. . . .
Matthew — At that season Herod the Tetrarch heard the
report concerning Jesus. . . .
Luke — Now Herod the Tetrarch heard all that was done. . . ,
Mark here calls Herod Antipas Incorrectly a
' king ' ; Matthew and Luke give the correct title.
But he is called ' king ' in Matt xiv 9, following
Mk vi 26.
'^ The phrase is confirmed by the parallel Matt xiv 36.
45

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
5. Mk vi 30-34 = Matt xiv 13, i4 = Lkix 10, 11.
Mark — And the apostles gather themselves together unto
Jesus ; and they told him all things, whatsoever they had
done, and whatsoever they had taught. And He saith unto
them, ' Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and
rest awhile.' For there were many coming and going, and
they had no leisure so much as to eat. And they went
away in the boat to a desert place apart. And many saw
them going, and knew, and on foot from all the cities they
ran together there, and outwent them. And He came out
and saw a great multitude, and He had compassion on
them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd,
and He began to teach them many things.
Matthew — Now when Jesus heard. He withdrew from thence in
a boat to a desert place apart ; and when the multitudes
heard, they followed Him on foot from the cities. And He
came out, and saw a great multitude, and He had compas
sion on them, and healed their sick.
Luke — And the apostles, when they were returned, declared
unto Him what things they had done. And He took them,
and withdrew apart to a city called Bethsaida. But the
multitudes knowing it followed Him : and He welcomed
them, and was speaking to them of the kingdom of God,
and them that had need of healing he cured.
The Introduction to the story of the Feeding
of the Five Thousand exhibits very well the
characteristic differences of the three Gospels. I
cannot see that there is any need to suppose that
any other source underlies Matthew and Luke
here, except the text of Mark as we have it. It
is true that there are some points shared by
Matthew and Luke which are not found In Mark.
They have withdrew {avexiiip'qGev Matt, virexcopvo-ev
Lk), where Mark has went away {d7rfjX6ov), all
three words being quite common, and ava^ccpelv
46

MARK OR UR-MARCUS?
being specially characteristic of Matthew. The
curious wording of Mark, where It says that ' many
went round by land and arrived beforehand at the
point of disembarkation,'^ becomes in Matthew
and Luke the commonplace statement that ' the
multitudes followed Him.' Finally, where Mark
speaks of our Lord beginning to teach them,
Matthew and Luke both speak of healings, but
not at all in the same words. This Introduction
of general healings without details is characteristic
both of Matthew and of Luke ; e.g. Matt Ix 35,
xix 2, xxi 14; Lk V 15, vii 21. The mention of
such healings here is surely due to the general
tendencies of the Evangelists rather than to the
following of a special documentary source.
When we compare these trifling agreements of
Matthew and Luke against Mark with those of
Matthew and Mark alone, or Mark and Luke
alone, we cannot but feel that they belong to a
different order and demand a different explanation,
Matthew and Mark both tell us about the journey
by boat, and the uninvited arrival of the multitude
by land (-n-ef^), and they verbally agree all
through the phrase, ' and he came out and saw a
"^ In Mk vi 34, I cannot but think that i^ikdav means ' when
Jesus had got out of the boat,' otherwise ' outwent them ' has no
meaning. This also is the view of the passage taken by Dr.
Swete in opposition to Hort, who thought it meant 'when Jesus
had come forth from some sequestered nook in the desert.'
4 47

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
great multitude, and He had compassion on them.'
Mark and Luke agree in beginning with the
return of the apostles from their missionary tour,
and in mentioning that Jesus preached to the
waiting multitudes. Moreover, the common
omission by Matthew and Luke of the circum
stance that our Lord and the apostles were so
busy that they had no time for meals is explicable
enough : such a detail, vivid and interesting as it
is to us, Is not obviously edifying. To omit it
would be the natural course for a later Evangelist,
especially to writers such as Matthew and Luke,
who have so much fresh matter to add, which is
not represented in Mark at all.
6. Mk viii 29 = Matt xvi 16 = Lk ix 20.
Mark—' Thou art the Christ.'
Matthew — ' Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.'
Luke—' The Christ of God.'
No argument for the use of a common docu
ment by Matthew and Luke can be based on the
addition of 'of God,' because of the difference of
expression. 7. Mk ix 7 = Matt xvil 5 = Lk Ix 34.
Mark — And there came a cloud overshadowing them. . . ,
Matthew — While He was yet speaking, behold, a bright
cloud overshadowed them. . . .
Luke — And while He said these things, there came a cloud
and overshadowed them. . . .
48

MARK OR UR-MARCUS ?
It is fairly obvious that no conclusion can be
drawn from this ; any more than from the fact
that in Mk ix 4 = Matt xvii 3 = Lk ix 30, Matthew
and Luke agree in having the commonplace order
' Moses and Elijah,' while Mark has ' Elijah with
Moses,' 8. Mk ix 19 = Matt xvii 17 = Lk Ix 41.
Mark — And He answereth them and saith, ' O faithless
generation, how long shall I be by you ? how long shall I
bear with you ? carry him unto Me.'
Matthew — And Jesus answered and said, ' O faithless and
perverse generation, how long shall I be with you ?
how long shall I bear with you ? carry him hither to Me.'
Luke — And Jesus answered and said, ' O faithless and
perverse generation, how long shall I be by you, and
bear with you ? bring hither thy son.'
Here, as elsewhere, I have made some slight
changes in the familiar diction of the English In
order to emphasise some of the slighter verbal
agreements and disagreements. The agreement
of Matthew and Luke In adding perverse to
faithless does indeed shew that they have a
common literary source at this point ; but that
source is Deut xxxil 5, where the LXX has yevea
a-KoXia Kol SiecyTpafi/Mevr], 'a crooked and perverse
generation.' That this phrase came readily
to the pens of early Greek-speaking Christians
is illustrated by its occurrence in Phil Ii 15.
49

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
9. Mk x 30 = Matt xix 29 = Lk xvill 30,
Mark — 'A hundredfold.'
Matthew — ' Manifold.'
Luke—' Manifold.'
Westcott and Hort read ' manifold ' in Matt xix
29, but very many ancient authorities have 'a
hundredfold,' like Mk x 30. But what makes the
agreement of Matthew and Luke of no significance
in either case is that it is probable that In Lk
xvIII 30 we ought to read ' sevenfold ' with D and
the Old Latin MSS,
10. Mk xl 19 = Matt xxi 17 = Lk xxi 37.
Mark — And every evening He went forth out of the city.
Matthew— h.T\A He left them, and went forth out of the city to
Bethany, and lodged there.
Luke — And every day He was teaching in the temple ; and
every night He went out, and lodged in the mount that is
called the mount of Olives.
II. Mk xl 27"= = Matt xxi 23''' = Lk xx i.
Mark — And as He was walking in the temple, there come to
Him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders. . . .
Matthew — And when He was come into the temple, the chief
priests and the elders of the people came unto Him as
He was teaching. . . ,
Luke — And it came to pass, on one of the days, as He was
teaching the people in the temple, and preaching the
gospel, there came upon Him the chief priests and the
scribes with the elders. . . .
I only Include these two passages, because
they occur In Sir John Hawkins's List.
50

MARK OR UR-MARCUS ?
1 2. Mk xiv 45 f = Matt xxvi 49 f = Lk xxli
47 f-
Here Matthew and Luke agree In recording
that Jesus spoke to Judas at the moment of the
Arrest, but as they do not agree at all as to the
words spoken, this passage cannot supply an
argument for the use of a common literary source
other than Mark,
13. Mk xiv 72^ = Matt xxvi 75'' = Lk xxii 62.
Mark — And when he thought thereon, he wept.
Matthew — And he went out, and wept bitterly.
Luke — [And he went out, and wept bitterly.]
The resemblance between Matthew and Luke
is too close here to be the result of independent
interpretation of Mark's obscure phrase koX iiri-
^dkmv exXaiev. But Lk xxII 62 is omitted by
all the MSS of the Old Latin version. It is
impossible to supply any cogent reason for this
on the supposition that the words are genuine ;
it is therefore probable that the verse in Luke is
an early harmonlstic addition derived from Matt
xxvi 72 itself
14, Mk xiv 65 = Matt xxvi 6y, 68 = Lk xxii
63-65- Mark — And some began to spit on Him, and to cover His face
and to buffet Him, and to say unto Him, ' Prophesy ' : and
the officers received Him with blows of their hands.
SI

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Matthew — Then did they spit in His face and buffet Him : and
some smote Him with the palms of their hands, saying,
' Prophesy unto us, thou Christ : who is he that struck
Thee ? '
Luke — And the men that held Him mocked him, and beat Him.
And they covered Him up, and were asking Him, saying,
' Prophesy : who is he that struck Thee ? And many
other things spake they against Him, reviling Him.
This passage undoubtedly supplies more support
than any other to those who believe that Matthew
and Luke used Mark in a form different from
that In which It is known to us. It Is true that
a number of Greek MSS add in Mark the missing
words after ' Prophesy,' in agreement with Matt
xxvi 68, but they are not the best MSS, nor are
they supported by the Latin and the Syrlac. It
is wholly contrary to analogy that these MSS
should have Inherited the true text In a passage
where our better MSS have a corruption. Of
course, it is possible that we have here a primitive
lacuna In the text, and that the ancestor of all our
MSS, a copy which was (as we know) mutilated
at the end and had several blunders elsewhere,
had here lost a line after UpocprJTevaov.
I do not think we are in a position entirely to
solve this problem, but it stands practically alone.
If two or three other Instances of equal cogency
occurred, we should be obliged to conclude that
Matthew and Luke used a form of Mark different
from what we know, and the question would arise
52

MARK OR UR-MARCUS?
whether this was a better or a worse text than
that which we have. For though the longer text
here Is appropriate enough in Luke, according to
whose narrative our Lord is rudely treated by the
guards as they are whiling away the night hours
till it shall be time for Caiaphas to get up and try
the Prisoner, it Is not so appropriate in Mark and
Matthew, where the ill-treatment comes after the
trial by Caiaphas, a trial which ended by taking
Jesus away 'straightway' to Pilate, according to
Mk XV I. I cannot help thinking that rt? ea-Tiv 6
•jrato-a? ae, In Matt xxvi 68, is after all a mistaken
addition by the Evangelist, and that the real
meaning of the covering of our Lord's face, in
Mk xiv 65, is that the Jewish Court regarded
Him as a condemned criminal, like Haman of
old,i 15. Mk XV 30 = Matt xxvii 40*^ = Lk xxill
35"^ and 37,
Mark — Save Thyself, and come down from the cross.
Matthew — Save Thyself : if Thou art the Son of God, come
down from the cross.
Luke — Let Him save Himself, if this is the Christ of God, His
chosen.(the soldiers saying) If thou art the King of the Jews,
save Thyself.
These passages In Matthew and Luke can
hardly be held to shew literary connexion ; I give
1 Esth vii 8.
53

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
them merely because like Nos. lo and ii they
figure in Sir John Hawkins's List.
1 6. Mk XV 39 = Matt xxvii 54 = Lk xxlii 47.
Mark—Knd when the centurion who stood by over against
Him saw that He so gave up the ghost, he said, ' Truly
this man was a son of God.'
Matthew— ^o^ the centurion, and they that were with him
watching Jesus, when they saw the earthquake, and the
things that were done, feared exceedingly, saying, ' Truly
a son of God was this man.'
Luke — And when the centurion saw what was done, he
glorified God, saying, 'Certainly this was a righteous
man.'
I do not think there is any indication here
that Matthew and Luke have here any common
source, though Matthew mentions tA yivofieva and
Luke TO yevo/Mevov. The word for 'centurion' is
KevTvpiwv in Mark, eKaTovTap^o'! in Matthew, and
eKarovTdp'^7}^ In Luke.
17. Mk XV 42-46 = Matt xxvii 57-60 = Lk
xxill 50-54.
Mark — And when even was now come, because it was the
Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, there
came Joseph from Arimathasa, a worthy councillor, who
also himself was looking for the kingdom of God ; and
he boldly went in unto Pilate, and asked for the corpse
of Jesus. And Pilate marvelled . . . and granted the
corpse to Joseph. And having bought a linen cloth, he
took Him down, and wound Him in the linen cloth, and
laid Him in a tomb which had been hewn out of a rock ;
and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.
Matthew — And when even was come, there came a rich man
from Arimathasa, named Joseph, who also himself was
54

MARK OR UR-MARCUS?
Jesus' disciple : this man went to Pilate, and asked for
the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded it to be
g^ven up. And Joseph took the body, and wrapped it
in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb,
which he had hewn out in the rock : and having rolled
a great stone to the door of the tomb, he departed.
Luke — And behold, a man by name Joseph, who was a
councillor, a good man and righteous (he had not con
sented to their counsel and deed) from Arimathsea, a
city of the Jews, who was looking for the kingdom of
God : this man went to Pilate, and asked for the body
of Jesus. And he took it down, and wrapped it in a
linen cloth, and laid Him in a tomb that was hewn in
stone, where never nian had yet lain. And it was the
day of the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew on.
I have quoted the passages which have to do
with Joseph of Arimathsea in full, because they
seem to me to be very instructive for our purpose.
The points which Matthew and Luke have in
common are emphasised as before in thick type.
The only one of Importance is the word used
for enshrouding our Lord's body, Matthew and
Luke say that Joseph ivsTvXi^ev avTo, while
Mark has avTov ivelXTjaev, both Greek words
being quite common. Matthew and Luke also
agree in refusing to speak of the dead body of
Jesus as a corpse {irToifia), but Mark, according
to the true text, has no such scruple. It should
further be noticed that Matthew and Luke agree
in the form of the sentence, 'this man went to
Pilate.' Against these comparatively slight coin
cidences we may notice that Mark and Matthew
55

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
have in common the mention of the evening at
the beginning, and the description of the tomb
and the rolled stone at the end ; while Mark
and Luke have in common the mention of the
Preparation, the term ' councillor ' (/3oi/XeuT7j?, i.e.
decurio) applied to Joseph, and the description
of him as 'looking for the kingdom of God.'
Furthermore, it should be noticed that Mark
calls Joseph of Arimathsea eva'^riiiav ySouXevTjf?.
Now eiiaxwo^v is a word exactly like our ' worthy '
or ' respectable ' ; everxvf^^v /BovXevryv means ' a
worthy alderman,' where 'worthy' means of good
standing either morally or financially. And, as
a matter of fact, Matthew interprets it by TrXoiJo-fo?,
' rich ' ; while Luke interprets it by d<ya6o<i koI
hUaoo'i, ' good and righteous ' ; and, further, he sup
poses that the ' council ' to which Joseph belonged
must have been the Sanhedrin of chief priests
and elders which condemned our Lord. Thus the
phrase actually used by Mark explains some of the
characteristic differences of Matthew and Luke.
i8. (Mk xvi i) = Matt xxviii i = Lk xxiii 54^
Sir John Hawkins here notices that Matthew
and Luke, but not Mark, make use of a rare
word, eTn(J3(ocrKeiv, to express the ' dawning ' of
a new day, not however of the same day, for in
Luke it is used of the ' dawning ' of the Sabbath,
56

MARK OR UR-MARCUS?
in Matthew of the day after the Sabbath. The
peculiarity of the expression consists in this,
that whereas the Greek word means ' to grow
light,' the Jewish Sabbath begins at dusk on
what we call Friday evening. But as the word
does not come in the same context in Luke and
Matthew, it cannot prove that they are making
use of the same special literary source. In the
Gospel of Peter, § 2, i-n-Kpcoa-xei may come direct
from Lk xxiii 54, but its occurrence in that
document, again in another context, may serve
to shew that the word did not seem particularly
odd to Christians about the end of the first
century ad.
19. Mk xvi 5 = Matt xxviii 2, 3 = Lk xxiv 4.
Mark — ... A young man . . . arrayed in a white robe.
Matthew — . . . An angel of the Lord ... his appearance
was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.
Luke — . . . Two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.
Here in the Greek ' dazzling ' is daTpainovari,
lit. ' flashing like lightning ' — a very natural
enhancement of the simple 'white,' given by
Mark. 20. Mk xvi 8 = Matt xxviii 8 = Lk xxlv 9.
[Not included, because we do not know the
conclusion of the incomplete sentence in the
middle of which Mk xvi 8 breaks off.]
57

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
These twenty passages contain all the instances
which Sir John Hawkins gives, as to which he
says it seems almost impossible that Matthew and
Luke could have accidentally concurred in their
additions to the narrative of Mark.^ In other
words, these passages afford the strongest evidence
that can be found against the supposition that
Matthew and Luke used our Mark much as it
has come down to us. It appears to me that the
evidence is extremely weak, and that we are not
compelled by it to imagine a hypothetical Ur-
Marctis, a Gospel very much like our Mark, only
slightly different here and there, differing, in fact,
very much as a first edition of a modern book
may differ from the second or subsequent editions.
We have lingered to-day among details. In
the Introductory Lecture I said that I might be
obliged to ask you to look at the trees, when you
wanted rather a view of the wood as a whole, and
now I fear you will think that I have taken you
Into a thicket. We have for the moment lost
sight of the religious and historical value of the
1 Yet another instance is given by Sir John {Horae Synopticae,
p. 175), viz. the omission of Bethphage in Mk xi i, according to
D and the Latin texts, whereby this place would be named by
Matthew and Luke only. But the subsequent discovery of the
Sinai Palimpsest has told us that the Old Syriac version did not
omit Bethphage in Mk xi i, so doubtless it really has a place in
the genuine text of Mark, and therefore does not come in our list.
58

PECULIARITIES OF MARK
Gospels in a preliminary literary question, and
even the literary question is confused by sub
sidiary detail. But we really have got through
the thicket at last, and we shall be free to study
our documents from a more general and historical
point of view. I do not mean that we have
settled all the questions connected with the
literary genesis of the Second Gospel. Far from
it : all that we have done Is to explore a particular
nook, an obscure corner out of which might con
ceivably have issued a fatal objection to our
considering the Gospel according to S. Mark as
a primary source for the Gospel History.
We have looked well over this corner, and
found no irresistible argument for an Ur-Marcus,
for an earlier edition of our Mark. If there were
time we might go over the ground so admirably
covered by Sir John Hawkins, and consider the
parts of Mark not represented In Matthew or
Luke. These peculiarities of Mark are divided
by him into passages seeming to limit the power
of Jesus Christ, or to be otherwise, derogatory to
or unworthy of him ; ^ passages seeming to dis
parage the attainments or character of the
Apostles ; ^ other passages which might cause
offence or difficulty ; ^ minor enlargements of the
narrative, such as later adaptors would omit in
1 Horae Synopticae, p. 96. ^ Ibid. p. 98. ^ Ibid. p. 99.
59

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
works primarily intended for edification, including
some Aramaic phrases and unimportant proper
names.^ These are followed by a long list of
rude, harsh, obscure or unusual words or expres
sions, which may therefore have been omitted or
replaced by others.^ All these peculiarities of
Mark may be summed up as exhibiting un-
ecclesiastlcal unconventlonallty, a characteristic
which we might expect to find in a primitive
document coming from the circle of the earliest
Christians and written before it had been con
sidered what style of writing was appropriate for
telling the story of our Lord's Ministry,
All these things tend to demonstrate the
originality of our Mark, and therefore to shew
that ' Ur-Marcus ' either never existed or was
almost indistinguishable from the Mark we
possess. But the most convincing argument
against postulating a literary source behind our
Mark remains to be noticed. It is this — that
the hypothesis of an ' Ur-Marcus ' presupposes an
interest in the biographical details of the public
life of Jesus Christ, of which there Is little trace
elsewhere. In the extant remains of very early
Christian literature we find the doctrines of the
Crucifixion and the Resurrection ; we find the
arguments from prophecy ; we find the ethical
1 Horae Synopticae, pp. 100-105. ^ Ibid. 106-110.
6q

CHRISTIAN INDIFFERENCE TO BIOGRAPHY
teaching of the Sermon on the Mount ; and as
early as the middle of the 2nd century we find
copious references to the stories of the Nativity,
In other words, we find what corresponds to the
rudiments of the Creed, together with a real and
vivid interest in Christian morality. But the
details of the Galilean Ministry of Jesus Christ
are hardly mentioned. It is not a mere chance
that the fragments of non-canonical Gospels
discovered in recent years — the Oxyrhynchus
Logia (so-called) and the Gospel of Peter —
concern themselves the one with detached Sayings
of Jesus, the other with the Passion, It is the
peculiar merit of S, Mark's Gospel, from the point
of view of the historical investigator, that it
deals mainly with a cycle of events foreign to
the life and interests of the growing Christian
communities. The Gospels according to Matthew and Luke
represent far more nearly than the Gospel
according to Mark the temper and the preferences
of the early Churches : one of the unsolved
problems of the New Testament literature is to
supply the reasons why Mark became part of the
Church's Canon, I therefore think It most im
probable that this Gospel was one of a series of
successive revisions of what was fundamentally
the same work. Both the merits and the defects
61

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
of the Gospel according to Mark seem to me to
shew that we are dealing with what Is, from a
literary point of view, an original document and
not an adaptation of something else.
This is not the same thing as asserting that
Mark is either a faithful or an Intelligent tran
script of the events with which it deals, or that
some of the sayings and tales which are related in
it had not already passed from mouth to mouth
and acquired thereby a more or less fixed form.
What I think to be essentially new in Mark Is the
general cast of the whole narrative, the story of
our Lord's Ministry told from the beginning to
the end. It Is our main historical source, and It
is not itself based on older literary sources, but
the single narratives represent the way In which
the disciples of the disciples of Jesus told to one
another such stories of the earthly Ministry of
their Lord as they remembered in the light of all
that had happened during the momentous thirty
or forty years which succeeded the Crucifixion.
In one instance it is possible that a written
source may underlie the words of the Second
Gospel, viz. in the Eschatological Discourse
(Mk xlii 3-37). It was antecedently not im
probable that what professed to be words of
the Lord about the Last Times should be Inde
pendently circulated, especially during the agony
62

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL DISCOURSE
of Jerusalem in ad 70, and our Evangelist may
very well have Incorporated such an Independent
fly-sheet into his work, with or without alteration.
Whether the substance of this chapter be
authentic reminiscence can only be determined by
the same general tests of Internal evidence that
we apply to other parts of the Gospel ; its external
attestation is the same as the rest of the work —
that Is to say, it comes to us on the authority of
the Evangelist who incorporated it. Both the
general purport of the discourse and most of the
single sayings seem to me, if I may venture to
give an opinion, perfectly to harmonise with what
we otherwise know of the teaching of Jesus, But
the literary form is different from the rest of
Mark ; It is much the longest uninterrupted speech
In the Second Gospel, and the several sentences
are articulated together with Se and yap and the
other appropriate particles. One has only to
compare it with the string of loosely connected
Parables and Sayings in Mk iv 3-32 to feel the
difference. The hypothesis that the Eschatological Dis
course in Mk xili once circulated, very much in
its present form, as a separate fly-sheet, explains
the allusion to 'him that readeth' in Mk xiil 14.
And I venture to suggest that this fly-sheet, rather
than our Gospels themselves, may have been the
5 63

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
ultimate historical source from which the eschato
logical chapter at the end of the Didache was
derived. But however this may be, there is no
doubt that this one Discourse stands alone in
S. Mark's Gospel. Nowhere else is there any sign
that I can see of the use of previously existing
written sources. On the other hand, I believe
with Wellhausen that ' Mark was known to both
the other Synoptists In the same form and with
the same contents as we have it now.'^ It is, I
repeat, our main source for the Gospel History.
In the next Lecture we shall examine it as a
whole, with the object of inquiring to what extent
the picture which it presents of the outward life of
Jesus Christ Is to be taken as a credible historical
view.
1 Wellhausen, Einleitung, p. 57.

54

Ill,
THE GOSPEL OF MARK: ITS
HISTORICAL VALUE,
Mera rS>v fiadrjTSiv TjSe KaKeicre d7ro8iBpd(TK(is.
Celsus, ap. Origen, i 380.
O MARK'S Gospel being the main source of
*--^* information we possess for the general
course of our Lord's Ministry, it is most im
portant to determine Its trustworthiness as a
historical document. The problem before us,
therefore, is still one of objective external history,
and the general aim of this present Lecture will
perhaps best be understood if I put it in the
form of a question : Does the story of Jesus
Christ, as given in S. Mark, approve itself as an
adequately historical outline of the main events ?
We shall be ready perhaps to admit that this or
that detail is inaccurately told or too cursorily
treated, but we want to discover whether the
work as a whole gives a faithful view. Above
all, are we dealing with a piece of history,
however popular and unscientific ; or is the
65

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
work mainly mythical, a fancy picture cast in an
historical form ?
It is obvious that no guarantees of age or
authorship can give us the assurance we need,
and that we must ultimately rely on internal
evidence. If the picture presented in S. Mark's
Gospel be in essentials true, it will give an
essentially reasonable account of the Ministry.
I do not mean It will contain no stories of what
are called ' miracles,' or that we should at once be
able without misgiving to accept every incident as
having actually occurred In the way related. But
if this Gospel be in the main historical, it will have
two characteristics ; It will be generally self-
consistent, and it will fit in with the known
political and social history of the time. We
know from non-Christian historians, notably from
Josephus, something of the general history and
condition of Palestine about ad 30 ; and we know
from Jewish sources, both Talmudic and pseud-
eplgraphic, something of the culture and the hopes
and fears of the Jewish population In the first cen
tury. If S. Mark's Gospel be an historical work,
It will fit into this framework. Furthermore, if It
be In the main historical, it will not lend Itself
easily to attempts which seek to explain the
Gospel as a work designed to set forth particular
doctrines or theories about Jesus and the Church,
66

CONTENTS OF S. MARK'S GOSPEL
All these conditions I venture to think satisfied.
Let us consider for a moment what are the con
tents of the Gospel according to S. Mark. Let
us approach as outsiders, as persons desirous of
a preliminary general view. We read in Mark
that the public ministry of Jesus, the carpenter
of Nazareth in Galilee, took its rise from the
preaching of John the Baptizer. The preaching
of John had chiefly attracted the people of
Judaea, but Jesus had gone down from Galilee
and had been baptized. At the moment of
Baptism He hears a voice from Heaven calling
Him the beloved Son of God, but His public
career does not begin until John was cast into
prison by Herod Antipas, Then Jesus comes to
Galilee announcing the Kingdom of God to be
at hand, and exhorting men to repent and believe
the message. How long the first period lasted
we have no means of judging, for it is not until
Simon and his companions join the new Prophet
that the narrative becomes detailed. At first
Jesus teaches in the Synagogues, and His com
manding personality produces a great effect.
But the very success of the announcement of the
Gospel brings interruptions to the work which
are far more clearly brought out as such in Mark
than elsewhere, viz. the intrusion of invalids In
season and out of season, seeking for cures and
67

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
acquiring for Jesus a kind of popularity which
He definitely tries to avoid ; and the growing
opposition of the official Jewish world, both
religious and secular. These points afford a very
remarkable testimony to the historical value of
Mark, as they are features which can hardly have
been supplied by later reflexion, and therefore
must have been derived from real historical
reminiscence. The way in which the story of
the leper is told — the cure importuned and the
man sent away with almost fierce Injunctions of
silence, and then the man's disobedient and
unseasonable publication of his cure, so that
Jesus Is obliged to keep in the open country for
privacy — goes far to shew that cures of this kind
actually took place. Naturally we do not know
enough about the details to found any medical
doctrine on the cures. As Dr. Sanday says :
'We may be sure that if the miracles of the
first century had been wrought before trained
spectators of the nineteenth, the version of
them would be quite different.'^ I doubt if the
evidence suffices for us to go very much beyond
this admirably cautious statement. What does
appear certain is this, that the final rupture of
Jesus with the religious authorities in Galilee
arose out of the healing of the man with
1 Dictionary of the Bible, ii 625, art. 'Jesus Christ.'
68

CONTENTS OF S. MARK'S GOSPEL
the withered hand in the Synagogue on the
Sabbath, This event, according to Mark, was the parting
of the ways. The religious leaders decide to get
rid of Jesus by the help of the friends of the
Herodian government ; while Jesus, on the other
hand, begins to organise His followers Into what
was destined to develop into the Christian Church.
He no longer preaches in the Synagogues, save
once (and that unsuccessfully) in His own home,^
and for the remainder of His ministry His main
efforts are directed towards preparing His disciples
for the trials In store for Him and them. For
this purpose, and for present safety, Jesus more
and more avoids appearing In public, much of the
remaining time being spent out of Galilee, away
from the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, or else
In the open country far from the main routes.
Shortly before the breach with the Scribes and
Pharisees it had been early spring.^ In the
following year Jesus determines to go up to
Jerusalem for the Passover, though fully aware
that it can lead to no earthly victory. While still
in the territory of Antipas He remains as much
concealed as possible, but In the Roman province
of Judaea He resumes public teaching, and enters
' Mk vi I els TTjv narplda avTov : the name Nazareth is only
mentioned by Mark in i 9. ^ Mk ii 23.
69

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Jerusalem openly amid His followers. He does
not sleep inside the walls, but at Bethany, where
He has friends. The next day after His first
entry He comes In to the city and drives out from
the Temple courts those whom He finds buying
and selling there. The people in general are
friendly, and when the priests and elders demand
on the following day to know by what right He
thus acts, He is able to silence them by raising
the question of the authority of John the Baptist.
Various attempts are made on this day to en
tangle Jesus in some pronouncement which will
discredit Him with the people; but they all fail,
and the priests and elders decide that they must
get Him out of the way as quietly as possible
before the Feast begins. This plan is duly
accomplished through the treachery of Judas, one
of the Twelve apostles of Jesus. On the Thurs
day evening Jesus had gone in to Jerusalem to
eat the Passover ; at least that seems to have
been what Mark intends, but several considera
tions derived from the' Synoptic narratives
themselves (cf Mk xv 21 ; Lk xxii 15, 16) conspire
to shew that the ' Last Supper ' was not the legal
Paschal feast, though It may have been regarded
by some of the disciples as a more or less Irregular
equivalent for It. The place for the meal had
been previously arranged with some secrecy, but
70

CONTENTS OP S. MARK'S GOSPEL
afterwards Jesus was discovered with the disciples
in a garden and carried off almost without resist
ance. A hasty trial followed ; for a long time
Jesus keeps silence, but at last avows Himself to
be the Messiah and the Son of the Ineffable God
of Israel. This is considered blasphemy, and the
next morning the chief priests persuade Pilate,
the Roman Governor of Judaea, to let Jesus be
crucified. Pilate Is at first unwilling, but seeing
that it will satisfy the chief priests and their
friends, and that no voice is raised for the prisoner,
he consents. Before lo am on the Friday
morning Jesus has been conveyed outside
Jerusalem and crucified. His disciples had .fled
at the moment of the arrest, and His disheartened
and disorganised followers made no demonstration
even of sympathy. Before the tribunal of Pilate
Jesus had practically kept silence, and on the
cross His only utterance had been a cry which
the Evangelist understood to have been In the
words of the most despairing verse of the Psalms.
About 3 PM He expires on the cross in the
sight of a few faithful women friends who look on
from a distance. Somewhat later a certain Joseph
obtained from Pilate permission to bury the
corpse, and just before the Jewish Sabbath
began, at dusk, It was taken down and laid in a
rock-hewn tomb, with the Intention of completing
71

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
the burial as soon as the Sabbath was over. But
when the women came early on the Sunday
morning, they find a young man sitting in the
tomb, who announces to them that Jesus had been
raised ; that He was not there, but was going to
meet the disciples in Galilee. At this point the
text, as we have It, breaks off, but we can hardly
doubt that it went on to tell how the Lord was
seen by the apostles and others in Galilee,
The above outline is not an adequate picture of
Jesus Christ, even if we confine ourselves to the
Gospel according to Mark, I have not attempted
even to indicate the doctrines taught by Him as
there related, and I have intentionally passed
over miraculous details, as far as it was possible to
do so, without altering the framework of the
narrative. My aim was not to construct a Life
of Christ as It really was, as seen from the Inside,
but to draw up a plain narrative of the outward
career of Jesus the Nazarene, as it might have
appeared to a rather unsympathetic observer.
That it Is possible to do this at all from the details
furnished by the Second Gospel Is a very strong
argument for regarding that Gospel to be a
trustworthy historical record. A wholly un
historical myth cannot be rationalised without
becoming absurd.
This is perhaps the best point to say a few
72

GOSPEL MIRACLES
words about the Gospel miracles. Whatever
our own judgement may be with regard to what
is commonly called the ' supernatural,' it Is
evident that the occurrences related In the
Gospels were not things which impressed the
adversaries of Jesus. He gave them no 'sign' ;
in fact, He refused to give them one when they
asked for it. Nay more, occurrences which are
certainly narrated as ' miracles ' by the Evangelist
did not greatly impress even the disciples them
selves. That on at least two occasions Jesus
and His disciples had found themselves far away
in the open country in the presence of large
crowds without means of feeding them, and that
nevertheless, when they made them sit down as
for a meal, there was more than enough and to
spare, is attested by the narrative In Mk viii 1 1-
21, a narrative which it is Impossible not to regard
as derived from genuine historical reminiscence.
Yet the same passage shews us that the apostles
had not been influenced by the events of these
two meals, a circumstance which would be indeed
Incredible if these events had come to pass in the
way generally supposed. What actually happened
is of course quite beyond our power to ascertain :
we only know that the same document that tells
us of the wonderful meals, tells us also of the
distress of the apostles when shortly afterwards
73

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
they found that they were running short of
provisions. That the Gospel according to Mark contained
the story of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is
surely no reason for questioning Its right to rank
as an historical document. Here again we cannot
reconstruct the details of the history with any
confidence, whatever our beliefs may be. The
believer Is confronted with details that do not
harmonise, and the unbeliever has to explain
away the triumphant progress of the new sect.
There Is no doubt that the Church of the apostles
believed in the resurrection of their Lord. They
may have been mistaken, but "there is satis
factory evidence, that many professing to be
original witnesses " — I will not say with Paley,
" of the Christian miracles " : that claims too
much, but certainly that Jesus had been raised
from the dead, — "passed their lives in labours,
dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in
attestation of the accounts which they delivered,
and solely in consequence of their belief of those
accounts ; and that they also submitted, from the
same motives, to new rules of conduct." Let us
add, what Paley omitted, the abiding personal
Influence of Jesus in the memories of the first
disciples, and let us concede that like all other
men they may have been mistaken : with these
74

THE RESURRECTION IN MARK
amendments, Paley 's famous allegation still stands.
Yet no considerations of this kind explain the
vitality of the Christian Religion : we do not
know why it lived and lives, any more than we
know why we ourselves are alive.
To return to the Gospel of Mark, we cannot
but be struck by the sobriety of tone in the
fragmentary narrative at the end. There is no
earthquake, as in Matthew, and no Theophany,
as in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter ; what is
dwelt upon, as compared with other Christian
accounts, is the talk of the Women and their
dazed emotion on hearing the news. Whatever
interpretation we may put on the narrative, it
does not read like a myth written in the form of
history. I have attempted to shew you that the Gospel
according to Mark presents a reasonably con
sistent account of the public life of our Lord ;
and I have tried to Indicate to you some general
grounds for thinking that its treatment of the
miraculous is what might be expected in an
historical, as distinct from a mythical, document
coming from Christian sources in the first century.
But these are in a sense negative tests of his
toricity ; we have done little more than raise a
plea that the work is not Inconsistent with history.
If this Gospel Is really to rank as an historical
75

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
work it must be something more ; it must
reasonably answer some of the main questions
which lie at the very root of the Gospel history,
These questions are four in number. Two, as I
believe, are answered in the Gospel of Mark ; a
third it answers adequately, but less fully than
the other Gospels ; the fourth Is insoluble.
The first question is. How does the story of
Jesus Christ fit into general history? If He
really lived on this earth, His earthly life must
fill a certain place, however small, in the great
Pageant of events. What position did He occupy
with regard to the politics of His age, to the
general course of affairs ?
The second question concerns the Christian
Church. However unhistorical the life of Jesus
may be declared to be by advanced criticism, the
Christian Society is a present fact. Before Jesus
began to preach it did not exist ; after His death
on the cross it is found to be actually existing.
And so the question arises, How did the Christian
Society come into being?
The third question is, What did Jesus Christ
teach ? This is the question which Is answered
more fully by other Gospels, and will be best
considered later. But it is obvious that if S.
Mark's Gospel provides a satisfactory answer to
the first two questions, it will have given enough
76

THE GOSPELS AND PSYCHOLOGY
of the teaching of Jesus to vindicate its claim to
give an historical picture of Him.
The fourth question, which I have called in
soluble, is, How did Jesus of Nazareth become
what He was ? I think the approved modern
formula Is, ' The Messianic Self-consciousness of
Jesus — how was it evolved?' or something of
that kind. Well, I do not know, and I do not
think it very profitable to Inquire. What is
certain is that our Gospels are very far from
being a sort of psychological novel with Jesus
Christ for the Hero. From the moment that He
came forth In public. He spoke with authority,
and His ascendancy over His disciples was from
the first unquestioned. He had been, as we
have been, an infant in arms with an unawakened,
undeveloped mind ; He increased in due course
in wisdom and stature, and the story of the
Temptation may be taken to describe symboli
cally and parabollcally the mental struggles
through which He came into possession of
Himself But it is idle to attempt to trace any
inner development after the Ministry has begun.
We may, it Is true, note a difference between His
methods and actions when He first delivers His
Message and after He has been rejected by the
spokesmen of the official religion of His own
countrymen. But all the Information we possess
77

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
consists of some of the impressions of His
followers ; and for them, as for us, He remains
a fixed centre of authority. It was the attitude
of the Scribes and Pharisees that changed, not
the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Yet, though our Lord throughout His public
Ministry remains essentially unchanged for us,
there is one thing which happened during that
period, about which (as I said just now) we may
reasonably expect to be informed. The history
of our Lord's Ministry is the history of the birth
of the Christian Church. When Jesus was
baptized by John, the Church did not exist,
even in germ. A short time elapses, a time to
be measured rather in months than in years, and
we find the Church existing as a society In
Judaism, and yet distinct from it. This Society
was founded by Jesus Christ Himself, for what
ever view the historian may take about the
Resurrection, it is impossible to believe that
the appearances of the Risen Christ could alone
have sufficed to knit together the Christian
community. The belief that the Lord was
risen indeed, raised also the spirits of the followers
of the Crucified Prophet and animated their
faith ; but that any group of followers at all
survived the shock of the Crucifixion shews us
that the Christian community was already formed,
78

THE BIRTH OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY
The Church came Into being in the period
between the Baptism and the Crucifixion, and if
the Gospel of Mark be really an historical docu
ment, it will give an intelligible account of the
beginning of the separate Christian Society.
I believe that the Gospel of Mark gives an
intelligible and credible account ; and, further, that
it Is the only one of the Gospels, canonical or un-
canonical, which does give an Intelligible account
of the process by which Jesus Christ broke with
the Synagogue, or rather, the process by which
the Synagogue — that is, the official embodi
ment of Jewish religion — broke with Jesus Christ
and forced Him to withdraw from their system.
Let us consider a little more closely the story
of the earlier Galilean Ministry, as told In Mark.
First of all we hear of a period during which
our Lord has not yet come to any breach with
the ordinary ecclesiastical system. During this
period, which may have lasted for some months,
Jesus teaches in the Synagogues. His personal
friends gather round Him at His call, but they
have no special organisation. The religious
world of the Galilean Jews, on the other hand,
has not yet made up Its mind. In the light of
history we may very well see it was inevitable
that the new wine should burst the old wine
skins ; nevertheless, the rent had not yet been
6 79

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
made. Objections to various unconventional
acts of the new Teacher are made from time to
time, but some answer is always forthcoming.
This state of things could not last. According
to S. Mark the crucial dispute broke out over a
matter of Sabbath observance, as to whether the
healing of the man with a withered hand was
lawful or not. As I said just now, the evidence
is hardly sufficient for us to found any medical
doctrine about the cure, but I think it clear that
the general description of the event comes from
real historical reminiscence. It is totally unlike
what a Christian would have produced, if he had
been obliged to rely on his imagination alone.
There was evidently a scene of great excitement.
Jesus, says S. Mark, looked round upon the
Pharisees with anger at their crassness (Mk Hi 5) ;
and they on their part quitted the building
to concert measures with the ' Herodians,' i.e.
with what we should now call ' Government
circles' or 'the Bureaucracy,' to plan how they
might get rid of this impossible personage.
Here, in Mark HI 6, as I read the Gospel, we
have our Lord's definite breach with official Juda
ism, He left the Synagogue, never to return
again, save once in His own town.^
1 The date of the events recorded in Mk iii 5 ff. cannot be
accurately determined, but it is reasonable to suppose that it
80

THE BREACH WITH THE PHARISEES
After Mark Hi 6 a new era in the Ministry is
opened. From that moment begins the separate
existence of the embryo Church. From that
moment the aim of Jesus Is not the rousing of
the multitudes, as it had been hitherto, but the
instruction and training of His own disciples.
True, a crowd still follows Him on occasions,
and sometimes He Is willing still to teach.
But if He does so it is by way of an excep
tion, because they have come to Him from a
distance and He will not send them away without
a word.^ On the present occasion the circumstances were
different. It was a time for preparation and
organisation, not for an appeal to the crowd ; for
choosing men and training them, not for pre
cipitating an outbreak. After the scene in the
Synagogue, Jesus withdraws to the seashore,
but He is followed by an enthusiastic and un-
instructed multitude (Mk Hi 7-10). He cannot
was shortly after the occasion on which the disciples had plucked
the ears of corn on the Sabbath (Mk ii 23 ff). This story, placed
as it is somewhere near the shore of the Sea of Galilee, implies a
date somewhere in April or May. Lk vi i does not tell us any
more than the parallel in Mark. The textual evidence makes
it certain that the bfVTeponpaTa of the Byzantine and some Western
texts is not genuine, and even if it were accepted it does not seem
to correspond to any known Jewish expression. Probably an
ancient Western Scribe wrote 6NCABBAT6oB<iTcb by dittography, and
B^Tto was erroneously expanded into bevTepo-Trpara.
1 See Mk vi 31-34, also viii 34. How large is an oxXos?
81

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
escape from their importunities, even by remain
ing in a friend's boat. So He goes away
altogether to the hills, and only those whom He
summons to Him are allowed to invade His
retreat. There He appoints Twelve of them to
be with Him, and to undertake what we may call
the revival ministry, the announcement In places
which had not yet been visited of the coming
of the Kingdom of God, and the accompanying
summons to repentance. Our Lord's own time
henceforth is reserved for other work.
I may pause here for a moment and remind
you how differently this, whole scene is told in
Matthew and Luke. Their Information Is simply
derived from Mark, but the general historical
setting is so altered that we could not restore the
proportions of the original, If the Gospel of Mark
had not itself survived. I am not saying that
the First and Third Evangelists may not have
been justified from their own point of view In
making their alterations. But their narratives
can make no claim to set forth the march of
events. Having told us of the appointment of the
Twelve, S. Mark goes on to describe how Jesus
came down from the hillside to the shore, In
order to go over with a few of His disciples to
the country opposite (Mk iv 35, 36). On His
82

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER
way down He passes through Capernaum (Mk
Hi 19^, 20). The place is still agitated by His
recent quarrel with the religious world. The
Clergy — for so we may call the Scribes^ — have
now definitely made up their mind that He Is a
magician working by the aid of the prince of the
devHs, and His own famHy think Him mad (Mk
IH 22 ff, 21, 3 iff). Hastily leaving the town
without even having had a meal there. He
spends the day on the shore of the Lake
(Mk in 20, iv i, 35). Those who now form
His audience are composed of His own party,
both those who are more instructed and those
who are less so, together with a multitude of
outsiders. Just at this point comes the Parable of the
Sower and the two other Parables that have to
do with the early growth of the Kingdom of God.
It seems to me that they are extraordinarily
appropriate in the setting given them by S. Mark.
As a matter of fact the seed had been sown, the
first harvest of disciples had just been reaped.
The preaching of Jesus had gone on In Galilee
for some months at least, and now, although much
of what had been said had fallen on deaf or
forgetful ears, yet a body of disciples had been
formed, some of whom were ready to go wherever
their Master led. The first season was over, and
83

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
now a new sowing was about to begin. The
Kingdom of God had really been inaugurated on
earth (Mk Hi 26, cf Matt xii 28), and It was time
that those who were to inherit the Kingdom
should be conscious of their position, even though
as yet the Mustard Plant, with which Jesus com
pared it, was In no sense a 'tree,' but only a tiny
shoot, just visible above the ground.
Moreover, the position of these Parables, placed
iiiimediately after the breach with the Synagogue
and the appointment of the Twelve, explains the
language used when the Parable of the Sower Is
interpreted. Naturally we are not bound to hold
that the Parable of the Sower (Mk iv 2-9), the
explanation {vv. 10-20), and the other Parables
{vv. 21-25, 26-32), all follow one another in strict
chronological sequence. We learn, In any case,
that the explanation of the Parable of the Sower,
which In the Gospel immediately follows the
Parable itself, was not given till Jesus and His
more intimate companions were alone {v. 10).
It was when they were alone, according to S.
Mark, that they that were about Him with the
Twelve asked of Him the Parables. He said
unto them : ' To you has been given the secret
of the Kingdom of God : but to the outsiders it
must all come in a Parable, that, as Isaiah said,
they may see, and yet not see' (Mk Iv 10-12).
84

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER
These words are an old difficulty. Readers of
Encyclopcsdia Biblica will perhaps remember that
Prof Schmledel, In his elaborate article on the
Gospels (col. 1866), tells us that they are 'im
possible In the mouth of Jesus,' and that it is
'utterly futile' to make out a connexion in the
words as given by S. Mark. 'What pleasure,'
says Prof Schmledel, ' could he have had in his
teaching If he had to believe his God-given task
to be that of hiding from the people the truths of
salvation ? ' And so we are told that Mark Iv
rests upon a composite source A -1- B« -I- B(5 -f C,
not to mention the subsidiary interpolator who
inserted the Parable of the Leaven (col. 1867), who
seems to have been later than the canonical Mark !
It is all very complicated. I confess that I find
these elaborate exercises in mosaic work some
what lacking in verisimilitude.
Let us try for a moment to represent the scene
to ourselves as it Is told in S. Mark's Gospel, not
from our own point of view, as we look back on
the origins of Christianity from the vantage-
ground of history, but from the point of view of
the audience. I venture to think that there was
some reason why these Parables were misunder
stood by many of those that first heard them. I
think that what they found most strange and
difficult was not the parabolic form in which Jesus
85

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
was speaking to them. The difficulty lay in the
doctrine itself the doctrine of the growth of the
Kingdom of God.
All through the first century ad the religious
part of the Jewish nation expected that the
Kingdom of God was suddenly about to appear.^
The belief is attested by the many Jewish
Apocalypses which then were written, some of
which survive to our own day. They are now
subjects of study for learned men, but when they
first were circulated they expressed the hopes and
aspirations of the multitudes. At the same time
there sprang up a series of leaders who announced
themselves as heralds of the new age, men like
that Theudas of whom we read In the Acts. Our
Lord must have seemed like one of these. He
had preached for some time that the Kingdom of
God was at hand, and now He had taken a
decisive step. He had come to a definite breach
with those in authority, and now those who had
been attracted by His personality and believed
Him to be a teacher sent by the God of Israel,
might expect a sign of the approaching catas
trophe, or at the very least an assurance that the
end was speedily coming. What they heard was
very different. They heard that the Kingdom of
God was something which could be compared to
1 Cf. Luke xix li.
86

THE GROWTH OF THE KINGDOM
the growth of a plant, that It was like a man
sowing his seed, which then grew from stage to
stage naturally and sHently, until at last the
harvest was ripe.
We Christians of the twentieth century have
no difficulty in understanding that our Lord's
Kingdom was not of this world. We see per
fectly well that the development of the Christian
character and of the Christian temper among the
disciples was the one thing needful to secure the
permanence of the Christian Society. That this
work could only be inaugurated by the long and
intimate intercourse of our Lord Himself with
His immediate disciples we now know, seeing
that at the time of the Passion they were hardly
ready for the terrible strain on their faith. But
all this was not obvious in Galilee. Jesus alone
was not carried away by the decisive step He
Himself had taken ; He alone knew that a period
of gradual growth was necessary, before His
disciples, even those who were- most attached and
devoted to Him, would be strong enough to count
the cost intelligently and follow Him to the end.
Thus we come back to Mark iv 11-13. I
cannot see that these verses, when considered in
the historical situation, are either inconsistent with
themselves or betray the use of two distinct
sources by the Evangelist. 'To you the secret
87

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
of the Kingdom of God has been given : but to
the outsiders It must all come In a Parable, that,
as Isaiah said, they may see, and yet not see,' —
these words mark the separation that had just
been made. A few days earlier they would have
been inappropriate ; but if Jesus be now outside
the old Synagogue, the people of the Synagogue
are equally outside the new Church. Those
whom Jesus had called to Him (Mk iii 13) were
inside, the rest were outside. The good Tidings
of the Kingdom had been announced to all
Capernaum and the country round ; those who
had not responded had heard indeed, but not
understood. To His disciples He wHl give
further explanations, as much as may be needed,
but If those outside misunderstand His teaching,
He has other work than to go out of His way to
answer their cavils. We never read that Jesus
refused to explain His words to anyone who came
and asked Him, even in the case of ' outsiders ' ; ^
but for the future He had other work to do than
rousing the indifferent or restating His Message
to those who were hostile.
What follows In Mark iv 13 is equally appro
priate to the situation. Jesus asks His own
disciples, not without a touch of impatience,
' Know ye not this Parable ? How, then, will ye
^ See, for instance, Lk x 29, 37.
88

THE PASTOR PASTORUM
know any Parables ? ' The Parables of growth
ought to have been plain at least to some of His
intimate friends. But as yet the nature of the
new Kingdom was not clear to any of them.
They differed from ' those without ' in their will
ingness to be taught, but they were not yet
'Scribes instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven.'
A few months later we find the disciples of Jesus
of Nazareth so established in their allegiance that
the shock of the Crucifixion of their Master leaves
a nucleus of Christians undispersed. We can
hardly believe that this could have been the case
had our Lord not devoted the greater part of the
interval to the special training of His Immediate
followers. During the greater part of the year
before the last Passover our Lord lives a wander
ing life, in exile from Galilee or in concealment,
and His chief work Is no longer that of the
Revivalist, but of the Pastor pastorum.
We are now in a position to go on and consider
what answer the Gospel according to S. Mark
gives to the first of the questions which I for
mulated above, the question. How does the story
of Jesus Christ ft into general history ? However
obscure the outward life of Jesus of Nazareth
may have been, however little the rulers of His
country may have concerned themselves with
89

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Him, yet His life must have stood in some
relation to the political events of His age.
Besides, the whole Gospel narrative is full of
the crowd, of the multitudes, believing or unbe
lieving. Our Lord was no recluse by profession.
John the Baptist lived In the deserts away from
the haunts of men, yet even he came into
collision with the civil power, and ended his life
In prison. If, therefore, our Gospels be historical,
they should give an intelligible account of our
Lord's relations with the civil power ; in other
words, with the government of Herod Antipas,
the Tetrarch of Galilee.
We have just seen that the first period of our
Lord's Ministry ended In a definite breach with the
Pharisees, that Is, with the regular religious and
patriotic party among the Jews of Galilee. Their
first step, according to Mark, was to concert
measures with the ' Herodians,' that Is, as I have
said above, with persons connected in one way
or another with the government administration.
Now let us for a few minutes try to forget the
religious Interest of the Gospel history and fix
our eyes only on externals.
It must not be supposed that our Lord and His
disciples were In immediate danger because some
of the Pharisaic party had approached these
' Herodians.' They had, In fact, done little more
90

HEROD AND JESUS
than complain to the police, if we may venture to
find modern terms for the Gospel phrase. It
could not be supposed that Jesus was as yet
actively ' dangerous,' and the crowds were more
or less on His side. But presently we learn that
Herod hears the name of Jesus. There are
various reports about the new Teacher at the
Court, but Herod is sure that it will be John the
Baptist over again (Mk vi 14 ff). Meanwhile,
what is Jesus doing ? He had crossed the Lake
away from Capernaum, but had soon to leave the
country (Mk v 17). On His return He had visited
His own home, but that also ended in failure
(Mk vi 3 ff). The next we hear of Jesus is that
He takes apart His more intimate disciples, the
Apostles, that He and they may have a short rest
(Mk vi 30 ff). Crowds from various quarters
follow, and the holiday is interrupted : for our
present purpose the important point to notice is,
that after these folk have been provided with a
meal and sent away, the disciples' boat starts for
Bethsaida. It is true that they do not get there,
for at the end of the voyage they find themselves,
owing to a contrary wind, back In the plain of
Gennesaret on the West side of the Lake (Mk vi
45, 48, 53). But Bethsaida, a town and district at
the North end of the Lake, had been the intended
port. Its importance for us is political. It is
91

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
outside Galilee, in the Tetrarchy of Philip ; the
aim of the voyage had evidently been to quit
Galilee proper, the Tetrarchy of Antipas.
The return of Jesus and His disciples to
Gennesaret produces the familiar scenes. Immedi
ately there are crowds of sick folk and their friends,
followed by a controversy with Pharisees and
Scribes, some of whom had come from Jerusalem.
It was just this that the voyage had been origin
ally undertaken to avoid, and so in the next scene
Jesus has gone right away from Galilee towards
the Tyrian districts by the Mediterranean coast.
Here He Is safe and in quiet among a non-Jewish
heathen population. From the Tyrian country
He goes to the Decapolis, i.e. to the predomi
nantly non-Jewish region East and South-East of
the Sea of Galilee, making a circuit to the North
instead of retracing His steps through Galilee
itself^ This journey from Gennesaret to the Tyrian
country, and from the Tyrian country by way of
^ If we follow the text of Mark, Jesus went round by way of
Sidon. He would therefore cross the Litani and the Hasbani by
the existing route, and proceed by way of Csesarea Philippi to
the country East of the Sea of Galilee. Wellhausen {Ev. Marci, p.
60) conjectures that 81a SiSwvos in Mk vii 31 is a mistake of
the Evangelist for Bethsaida, the two names being easily confused
in Aramaic. But the object of the long journey was obviously to
pass well to the North of the Galilean portion of the Tetrarchy of
Antipas, and this very likely involved crossing the Litani river.
92

1 /

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41
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10 5 0 10 20 30

C. = Probable Site of Capernaum.
G." Plain of Gennesnret
The Tetrarchy of Herod Antipas, Coloured Pink.
WSAK.Jahnston.Ltd
JESUS IN EXILE
the Decapolis to the S.E. shore of the Galilean
Lake, does not take long to tell, but it seems to
have occupied many months of the short period of
our Lord's public Ministry. The grass was still
green when the Five Thousand were fed,'^ but now
we have arrived almost at the time of S. Peter's
confession and the start for Jerusalem to keep the
last Passover. The journey must have taken
about eight months, say from June to January
inclusive, and all this time Jesus had been an
exile from Galilee, outside the dominions of Herod
Antipas, Need for rest and quiet is hardly enough to
explain this long retirement. Why does Jesus,
to use the words of a famous opponent of
Christianity, the heathen Celsus, ' run off with
his disciples hither and thither ' ? ^ The Intlnerary
which the Gospel of Mark gives us, meagre as it
is, makes the answer quite clear. The parts that
are avoided are the dominions of Antipas. The
wanderings begin immediately after the fame of
Jesus comes to Antlpas's ears (Mk vi 14 ff, 31).
Jesus was no longer favoured by the Clergy, He was
an object of suspicion at the Court, and, like David
and Elijah in the old days, He was forced to leave
1 Mk vi 39.
^ Mcra tS>v p.a6r)TSiv rfjSe KOKeia-e anoSi.SpdiTKfi.s (Origen, Philocalia,
p. loj = Contra Celsum, i, 380).
93

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
the country. We are still, let me repeat, con
cerning ourselves with the mere externals of the
Gospel history, and we need not now pause to
consider what effect these long journeys In the
company of Jesus, through lands mostly heathen
or uncultivated, may have had upon the faithful
few who remained with Him. Let us turn rather
to the effect our Lord's absence must have had
upon others. The effect must have been to
alienate the lukewarm adherents and to encourage
the actually hostile. He was evidently not
'dangerous' — so His opponents said, no doubt.
With the aid of this key to the general history,
the key, namely, that It was not safe for Jesus
to remain in Galilee, because His enemies had
aroused the suspicions of Herod, let us go on
with the Itinerary. After the feeding of the
Four Thousand, S. Mark tells us that He went
by boat with His disciples to 'the parts of
Dalmanutha' (Mk viii lo). The parts of Dal
manutha are not yet properly identified ; there
seems to be some error in the transmitted form
of the proper name, which is at least as old as
the Gospel of Matthew, where the place is called
Magedan. Dr. Cheyne suggests a suburb of
Tiberias called Magdalnunaya : possibly It Is a
corruption of Amathus, mentioned by Josephus.''
^ See Ency. Bibl. 1635.
94

THE LEAVEN OF HEROD
Anyhow, we shall not be far wrong In looking
for some place on the West side of the Lake,
i.e. in Galilee. Wherever it was, there were
Pharisees there, who come out at once demanding
a sign from heaven. The sign, as you will re
member, is not given, and' our Lord and His
companions embark at once for Bethsaida (Mk
viii 13, 22). It is all done so hastily that they
forget to provision the boat ; I cannot doubt
that it was, in fact, a hurried flight. And from
whom should it be a flight, but from Herodian
officials ? That Is why Jesus warns the disciples,
as they sail away, to beware of the Influence of
Herod as well as of the Pharisees. Why other
wise should Herod have been brought in ? Is It
not probable that the Pharisees had told Jesus to
go at once, because Herod would fain kill him ? It
seems to me that the story given in Lkxill 31-33,
where our Lord says that it does not befit a
prophet to perish outside Jerusalem, belongs to
the occasion of the interrupted landing at the
place called ' Dalmanutha.'
From Bethsaida they go to the non-Jewish
district of Caesarea Philippi in the Tetrarchy of
Philip (Mk viii 27 ff).
And now the time comes for Jesus to start
on His final journey to Jerusalem to keep the
Passover. He does indeed go through Galilee,
7 95

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
but His movements are kept secret, even when
He passes for the last time through Capernaum
(Mk Ix 30, 31, ^^). The little company follow
the road by the lake and ultimately reach the
frontier of Judaea (Mk x i).-' Jesus Is once more
^The route followed by our Lord between Capernaum and
Jericho cannot be fully made out. The one thing really certain is
that He remained as much concealed as possible during the first
part of the journey through Galilee (Mk ix 30), and that He did not
resume teaching in public until He 'came to the borders of Judasa'
(Mk X i), i.e. as the sequel shews, not very far from Jericho in
the Jordan Valley. But there is something odd about the geo
graphical situation implied in Mk x i and the parallel verse Matt
xix I. According to the true text of Mark, which is also that of
Matthew, Jesus comes 'to the borders of Judaea beyond Jordan'
((Is ra opia rrjs 'lovSalas wepav tov 'lopidvov — SO D I&C I3&C 28 565
latt syrr). This is generally interpreted to mean, ' He came into
Judaea by crossing the Jordan,' i.e. that He followed a usual pilgrim
route to Jerusalem, in which a passage through Samaria was
avoided by crossing over into Peraea, and then crossing back
again. This route, indeed, is definitely assumed by the later Greek
MSS, which prefix Sta tov to nipav. But hid tov is not found in
any ancient version, and cannot be genuine. The Vatican MS and
its usual allies prefix Kal to iripav. This cannot imply that what
follows in the next few paragraphs happens in Peraea, for, in that
case, what would be meant by ' coming to the borders of Judaea ' ?
As a matter of fact, the Jordan divided Judaea from Peraea. The
odd thing, therefore, about the statement in Mark is that it seems to
put our Lord on the Judfean side of the Jordan, while the narrator
views the scene, so to speak, from the Peraean side.
It must be remembered that the sentence we are considering
occurs in a portion of Mark which has the highest claims to be
considered actual history, to be based ultimately on the reminis
cences of S. Peter. It is_ therefore to the point if we here take
into account general historical probabilities. We are told that our
Lord kept His progress through Galilee as secret as possible, and
it is practically certain that the immediate reason for this secrecy
was to avoid collision with the Herodian officials. Now, if this
were the real situation, to take a journey through Perasa, which
96

THE JOURNEY TO JUDAEA
safe outside the territory of Antipas, and — I
quote the very words of Mark — ' multitudes come
together unto Him again ; and, as He was wont,
was a portion of Herod's Tetrarchy, seems like incurring a needless
risk : the obvious thing to do was to go by the Samaritan route-
At the same time, if many friends and adherents were going the
usual way by Peraea, it might very well be arranged that the
meeting should take place, not at Jerusalem, but at the point
where the pilgrim-route from Peraea crossed the Jordan to enter
Judaea. This is the scheme which underlies the story of the journey as
given by S. Luke, and I cannot help wondering whether after all it
may not be the true account. That S. Luke has inserted a quan
tity of extraneous matter into his story which belongs to other times
and places can hardly be doubted : this is certainly the case with
the sayings about Beelzebul (Lk xi 158), and it is hardly likely that
Jesus would be taking a meal with Pharisees (xi 37, xiv i), or that
myriads of the people would be gathered together (xii i), in the
midst of the Samaritan country. But it is quite possible that the
Samaritan journey itself was found by S. Luke in a previously
existing source ; at least the story of the Samaritan village that
would not receive our Lord because His face was set to go to
Jerusalem sounds historical enough (ix 5 1-56). And it is noteworthy
that in this story Peter does not appear, only James and John. I
venture to suggest that the historical reason for this was that Peter
and most of the other disciples went round by Persa, that when
they arrived at the passage of the river they found Jesus waiting
for them in ' the borders of Judaea beyond Jordan,' i.e. on the W.
side, and finally that one reason why nothing is said about the events
of the previous journey is that our Lord and S. Peter had travelled
to the spot from Capernaum by different routes and not together.
The net result of this conjecture — for it is little more — is to
harmonise the accounts in Mark and Luke. It is therefore well
to point out that we are not doing violence to Mark in order
to fit it into the scheme of Luke ; on the contrary, the considera
tions which suggest that our Lord's route from Capernaum to
Jericho never actually crossed the Jordan are derived from the
curious wording of Mk x i and from general historical pro
babilities. 97

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
He taught them again.' From this point the
narrative becomes once more full of Incident,
until In due course Jesus enters Jerusalem, not
in secret but amid the acclamations of Galilean
followers. When Jesus has reached the neutral ground
of Judaea and begun again to teach in public,
what is the subject which Is discussed? The
subject is Divorce. Some persons — In adapting
the story Matthew calls them Pharisees — were
asking Him whether a man may put away his
wife. It was a test question, and we see from
what Jesus said afterwards in private to the
disciples that it was well understood by Him to
be a test question. From his own point of view
Herod had been perfectly right. Our Lord's
Ministry was in a sense John the Baptist's over
again. It began when John was thrown by
Herod Into prison, and the first watchword of
the new Prophet had been a call to repentance,
like John's. From Herod's point of view, no
doubt, the movement represented another re
crudescence of popular religious bigotry, which
was easily offended at the fashionable Roman
habits of the Herodian family. John the Baptist
had lost his life In protesting against the pagan
morals of Antipas and Herodlas ; Jesus in the
eyes of many was first and foremost the successor
98

HERODIAS
of the Baptist. For months He had been in
hiding ; now he was again upon the scene,
and the question about Divorce could not
fail to draw from Him a decisive pronounce
ment, I do not think the answer was what His ques
tioners desired. Here as elsewhere our Lord had
as little taste for the leaven of the Pharisees as
for the leaven of Herod, If they had expected
Him to rail at Antipas now that He was safe
In Judaea, they were disappointed. To Him
the general relations of man and wife mattered
more than the amours of this or that half-
heathen princelet, and — what must have sur
prised and shocked His interlocutors — mattered
more than the very words of this or that text
out of the Pentateuch. His answer offered no
palliation for Antipas and Herodlas, but His
emphatic Insistence on the sanctity of marriage
is based on the natural constitution of man
as opposed to the regulations in the Mosaic
Law, Had this been all the story we should hardly
have been justified In assuming any reference
at this point to the Herods, but what follows
makes it, I venture to think, clear. The dis
ciples, we are told, ask Jesus in private the
meaning of what He had said, and He
99

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
replied : " The woman that leaves her hus
band and becomes the wife of another commits
adultery, and the man that leaves his wife
and takes another commits adultery" (Mk x
II, 12). There are certain variations of order
and wording In the transmitted text of these
words, but all MSS and versions agree in
the main point, which is, that the woman that
deserts her husband to marry someone else is
blamed as well as the man who divorces his
wlfe.^ This condemnation of the woman Is not found
In Matthew and Luke, and It is pretty generally
assumed to be a secondary addition, ' based on
Roman Law,' says Dr. Schmledel In Encyclopcedia
Biblica, col. 185 1. I venture to think such a
view mistaken, and that so far from being a
secondary addition it is one of the really primitive
features of the Gospel of Mark, a feature which
was dropped out or altered when its historical
meaning had been forgotten. It was no doubt
monstrous to imagine that a Jewess should desert
her husband to marry another man, but it was
^ The offending woman is blamed first, according to the Old
Syriac version and the valuable Greek minuscule known as Codex
I, and this is probably the true order. There are also variations
in the terms used for the desertion of the husband by the wife
and for her subsequent marriage, no doubt caused by the fact
that a woman could neither ' divorce ' nor ' marry ' : she might ' be
divorced ' or ' be married.'
100

HERODIAS
not quite unheard of We know the woman and
her history. Herodlas had left her husband —
the man whom Mark calls ' Philip,' but Josephus
only knew as ' Herod ' — in order to live with
Antipas, Antipas also was guilty : he had put
away the daughter of the Arabian king Aretas to
marry Herodlas his half-brother's wife, she herself
being his half-niece.
We need scarcely pause to inquire whether
Herodlas merely deserted her first husband, or
whether, like her great-aunt Salome,^ she availed
herself of the methods of Roman procedure and
divorced him. Our Lord's previous words shew
that He did not regard an Immoral act as
being any the less immoral for being carried
out according to law : in either case I venture
to think the saying as reported in Mark
clearly implies a reference to Herodlas, a refer
ence which is singularly appropriate in the time
and place.
Thus the Gospel accordmg to Mark does give
an intelligible answer to our question, as to how
the story of Jesus Christ fits Into the general
history of Palestine. The details furnished by
the Gospel explain the silence of profane
historians. John the Baptist had openly wlth-
^ Josephus, Ant. xv 710-
lOI

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
stood Herod, and had perished In consequence.
Jesus came, Indeed, as the successor of John ; but
as soon as His activity reached the ears of Herod
and aroused his suspicions, Jesus gave up teach
ing in public and left the country. By doing
this, He was working for the future, but He
lost His hold on the present. He lost His
hold on the Galilean crowds ; but we have
seen in the earlier part of this Lecture that He
had already given up the task of rousing the
people, and had begun to confine Himself to
the more thorough instruction of His own
followers, before the hostility of Herod was
fairly awakened.
What the doctrine of Jesus Christ was we have
yet to consider. At present we have been deal
ing almost entirely with the external framework
in which His life Is set. But I venture to think
that what I have put before you goes far to
vindicate the claim of the Gospel according to S.
Mark to be a historical document, a document
really in touch with the facts of history. In S.
Mark we are, I believe, appreciably nearer to
the actual scenes of our Lord's life, to the course
of events, than In any other document which tells
us of Him, and therefore If we want to begin at
the beginning and reconstruct the Portrait of
Christ for ourselves we must start from the
1 02

FACT AND INTERPRETATION
Gospel of Mark. The other Gospels, even the
Gospels according to Matthew and Luke, give
us an interpretation of Jesus Christ's life. An
interpretation may be helpful, illuminating, even
inspired, but it remains an interpretation. The
thing that actually occurred was the life which
Jesus Christ lived, and our chief authority for the
facts of that life is the Gospel according to Mark.
We must be prepared resolutely to hold fast by
the result we have attained. Ideas may develop,
interpretations may become more noble and more
profound, but the facts of ancient history do not
develop. They remain the same. We must
resist the temptation to try and fit into the
historical framework supplied by Mark all the
tales and the sayings of Christ that we find in
the other Gospels. We must beware of regard
ing as additions to the sacred Biography things
that are in reality interpretations of it. Not that
there is nothing which may legitimately be done
by the harmonist ; I have ventured to put before
you an Instance just now, by combining Lk xili
31 ff with Mk viii 1 1 ff. But such interpretations
must always be made with the utmost caution.
If the narrative of Mark has a historical back
ground, and in Its main outlines and arrange
ment fits without violence into the framework
of secular circumstances and events, we are
103

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
not at liberty seriously to disturb the propor
tions of this narrative and to change its general
character, in order to interpolate into It stories
derived from a wholly different view of the
Ministry.

104

IV.
THE COMPOSITION AND LITERARY
CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS
OF LUKE AND MATTHEW.
Date and Authorship of ' Luke ' and ' Acts.'
nr^HE Third Gospel is not a book complete
¦*- in itself It is only the first portion of
a larger historical work, which was apparently
designed to be executed in three volumes. The
third volume Is not extant ; In fact, there is very
little reason to suppose that it was ever actually
written, but the absence of an adequate peroration
at the end of the Acts of the Apostles (which
forms the second volume of the series), shews us
that a further instalment must have been con
templated. The date of ' Luke ' and ' Acts ' can
be determined within narrow limits, if the argu
ments used below are sound. On the one hand,
both the Gospel and the Acts contain details
drawn directly from the Jewish Antiquities of
Josephus, a work published in 93 or 94 ad; on
los

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
the other hand, the literary evidence indicates
that the author of the Gospel and of the Acts Is
none other than that companion of S. Paul,
whose travelling diaries are largely quoted In the
latter portion of the work. The Gospel and the
Acts may therefore be assigned to the decade
95-105 : we shall not be far wrong if we say
in round numbers about 100 ad.
The evidence which convicts the Third Evan
gelist of having used the Antiquities, not always
with complete accuracy, is very well brought to
gether by Prof P. W. Schmledel In Encyclopcsdia
Biblica, articles 'Theudas' and 'Lysanias.' In
Josephus, Ant. xx 5, we read :
"While Fadus was procurator of Judaea, a certain charlatan,
Theudas by name, persuaded a very great number of people to
take their effects with them and follow him to the river Jordan ;
for he told them that he was a prophet, and said he would at the
word of command divide the river and give them an easy passage
through it ; and by these words he deluded many. Fadus,
however, did not permit them to gain aught by their folly, but
sent a squadron of cavalry against them, which, falling upon them
unexpectedly, slew many of them and took many alive. Taking
Theudas also alive, they cut off his head and carried it to
Jerusalem.'' This would be between 44 and 46 ad.
Josephus then goes on to say that the pro
curator Alexander of Judaea (about 46-48 ad) put
to death some of the sons of Judas the Galilean, a
personage who had Incited the Jews not to pay
106

LUKE AND JOSEPHUS
their taxes in the time of Quirlnius, about ad 6
{Ant. XX 52),
Now In Acts V 34 ff a speech Is put into the
mouth of Gamaliel In which these two men,
Theudas and Judas the Galilean, are mentioned
one after the other as agitators who had come to
grief after making a great stir for a short time.
" For before these days rose up Theudas, giving himself out to
be somebody ; to whom a number of men, about 400, joined
themselves : who was slain ; and all, as many as obeyed him, were
dispersed and came to nought. After this man rose up Judas of
Galilee in the days of the enrolment, and drew away some of the
people after him : he also perished ; and all, as many as obeyed
him, were scattered abroad."
Here, if anywhere in the Acts, the details of the
speech must be due to the author, for all the
Christians had been put outside. There are
strong reasons for believing that the passage in
Ant. XX 5i^2 supplied the material for Gamaliel's
speech. The verbal resemblance between the
two passages is considerable ; so much so, that
Eusebius quotes Ant. xx 5i in his Ecclesiastical
History as a confirmation of the narrative in Acts.
The account in Josephus Is consistent, and his
information about these agitators, for aught we
know to the contrary, Is accurate. The passage
in Acts, on the other hand, occurs In a speech
where it Is probable that the narrator is freely
setting down such details as, seemed appropriate ;
107

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
It Is chronologically faulty, for Gamaliel was
speaking before 34 ad, before the rebellion of
Theudas took place, and yet this rebellion is
mentioned as if It preceded the times of the
Census of Quirinius and the birth of Jesus.
When therefore we find a passage where Theudas
and Judas are spoken of, one after the other and
in reverse chronological order, occurring in a
standard history, it is natural to conjecture that
this passage was In the mind of the author of the
book of Acts. That the author of the book of
Acts should have been careless In his choice of suit
able historical instances to put Into the mouth of
Gamaliel is not very surprising, and surely quite
excusable : the important point Is not his Inac
curacy, but his acquaintance with the Antiquities
of Josephus. If he had read the Antiquities,
and I cannot help drawing this inference, we
must date the composition of the book of Acts
later than 94 ad.
It should be remarked that if we admit the
literary connexion between the Acts and the
Antiquities we cannot arrive at an earlier date
for Acts by postulating a common source for
Luke and Josephus. The problem is not to
explain how the author of Acts should have heard
of Judas of Galilee and of Theudas, but why he
should mention them together In the wrong order,
108

LUKE AND JOSEPHUS
Almost equally cogent Is the evidence about
Lysanias of Abilene. The story of the public
ministry of John the Baptist starts off In the Third
Gospel with a very elaborately given date : "in
the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and
Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother
Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and
Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene,
In the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
the word of God came to John" (Lk Hi i, 2).
The 15th year of Tiberius is 29 ad, unless the
Evangelist Is reckoning by the system of Nerva,
which would give 28 ad.
But Lysanias was not at that time Tetrarch of
Abila : he had been, according to Strabo (xvi 210,
p. 753), lord of the hill country of the Ituraeans,
and he was executed by Mark Antony In bc 36.
Nevertheless the territory that he had ruled over
continued to bear his name. Josephus {BJ II
115, §215) speaks of 'the so-called Kingdom of
Lysanias,' and in Ant. xx 7, §138) he says that
In 53 AD Agrlppa 11 received the tetrarchy of
Philip and Batanaea together with Trachonitis
and Abila, adding that this last had formerly been
the tetrarchy of Lysanias {AvaavLov S'avTrj iyeyovei
reTpapxoa).^ Can we doubt that the Third
* Cf, Ant. xix §5, 27s, 'A^iXav rr/v Avaaviov.
109

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Evangelist was writing with this passage of
Josephus in his mind ? Josephus tells us that
after 53 ad Philip's Tetrarchy and Trachonitis,
together with Abila that had been the Tetrarchy
of Lysanias, belonged to Agrlppa 11 : the natural
inference might well be that before 53, and there
fore in the time of Tiberius, Philip's Tetrarchy
belonged to Philip and Lysanlas's Tetrarchy — to
Lysanias.-^ We need to explain why Lk Hi i
mentions Abilene at all, and further why the
writer when mentioning it should fall into a gross
chronological error : the way that Josephus
mentions Abila and Lysanias explains both
difficulties on the hypothesis that the Evan
gelist derived his information from a some
what careless perusal of the Twentieth Book of
the Antiquities.
We now come to the evidence which tends to
shew that the whole of Luke and Acts is the
work of one author, including the travelling
diaries in which the writer speaks in the first
person plural (Ac xvi 10-17, xx 5-15, xxi 1-18,
xxvii I -xxviii 16). That these diaries are the
genuine records of a fellow-traveller of S. Paul
cannot well be doubted. If they were not so,
^ Most of these regions had previously been made over to Agrippa
I in AD 34 {Ant. xviii 6101, §237), but in telling us this Josephus
makes no mention of Abila in naming the ' tetrarchy of Lysanias.'
no

THE TRAVEL-DIARY AND THE GOSPEL
they would be an Incredible miracle of deceptive
art, and one adapted not so much to attract the
early Christians as to take In modern historical
and archaeological scholars : among a large
number of other details may be mentioned the
correct geographical Information in Ac xx, xxi,
and the designation of the Maltese noble as a
TT/awTo?, i.e. Primus of the island, a title confirmed
by an Inscription.
Accepting then the ' We-sections ' of Acts as
genuine excerpts from the travelling diary of a
companion of S. Paul, the question arises whether
the author of the diary Is Identical with the author
of the Acts. Now in Sir John Hawkins's Horae
Synopticae, pp. 148 ff (2nd ed., pp. 182-189), the
reader will find a number of carefully drawn up
tables of Greek words and phrases characteristic
of the ' We-sectlons,' of the rest of Acts, and of the
Third Gospel. It would be absurd to attempt to re
produce Sir John Hawkins's work here, because
the strength of the argument consists In the
number of Instances of agreement and the absence
of serious instances of disagreement. What is
really remarkable is that so much agreement with
the rest of the Lucan writings can be noted in
the 'We-sections,' which amount in all to only
97 verses, nearly half of which Is occupied with
the account of a shipwreck.
8 III

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
As a mere illustration, not as a substantive
proof, let us take the only voyage described in
the Third Gospel, that of Lk viii 22-25. This
is a little narrative of 94 words, the substance
of which (with most of the wording) is taken
direct from Mk iv 35-41. The only other source
from whence the wording of ' Luke ' Is here
derived is the literary Instinct of the evangelist.
The parallel In Matt viii 18, 23-27, also founded
on Mark, will serve to Indicate what points might
seem to invite alteration. What, therefore, Is
peculiar to the Third Gospel will give us the
Individual style of the compiler of that Gospel.
Several points illustrate the question before us.
At the start {v. 22) kuI dvjjx^V'^C'V Is Inserted,
dvdyeadai in the sense of launching forth into
deep water being frequently used in the 'We-
sections ' and twice again In the other parts of
Acts, but not In the rest of the N.T. In z/, 23
we find the word irXeiv ' to sail, travel by water,'
which is not used in Matthew and Mark, but
comes four times in the 'We-sections.' Again,
in V. 23 the English versions find it necessary to
supply the words ' with water,' where It says that
' they ' {i.e. the boat) ' were filling.' The mention
of KVfiaTa ' waves ' Is curiously avoided. This
is paralleled by Ac xxvii 41, where according to
the true text {^* AB arm) we read that the stern
112

LUCAN PHRASEOLOGY
of S. Paul's ship was dashed to pieces 'by the
violence,' i.e. by the violence of the waves, as
later MSS put it and as the English Bible under
stands it. But the writer, perhaps from familiarity
with nautical Greek, does not bring in the waves
by name.
Thus in this short narrative we find three
parallels of language between the peculiarities of
the story In Luke and the style of the writer of
the 'We-sections.' The only link between either
of the other two accounts and the ' We-sections '
is the fact that S. Mark finds occasion to mention
the stern {irpv/jiva ), a part of the ship which is
mentioned in Acts xxvii 41, but obviously this is
a mere coincidence.
While we are considering this passage it may
be worth while to point out that the other devia
tions of Lk viii 22-25 from Mark which do not
happen to find a parallel in the short compass of
the ' We-sections ' are nevertheless thoroughly
characteristic of the Lucan writings. Here, as
elsewhere in Luke, the Sea of Galilee Is carefully
called a Lake {XifiVT}) and not a Sea {Oakavaa) ; and
the word for ' being In jeopardy ' {Kivhweveiv) occurs
twice In Ac xix, otherwise only once In S. Paul
and never elsewhere in the N.T. The agitated
cry of the disciples ' Master, master, we perish '
is also characteristically Lucan, The regular
"3

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
tide AiBda-Koke, i.e. ' Teacher,' corresponding to the
Hebrew title Pabbi, Is used in all the Gospels for
the title by which our Lord is addressed. But in
Luke the disciples do not call Him AildaKoKe or
Rabbi; they call Him either Kvpie (' Lord '), or as
here 'ETna-rdTa ('Master'). In Luke AoBdaKaXe Is
the title given to Jesus by strangers or by half-
declared adversaries.^ The change of Mark's
AtSda-KoXe in Luke viii 24 Into 'EiroaTdTa Is there
fore thoroughly In keeping. The doubling of the
vocative is also a Lucan characteristic. No writer
of the Old or New Testament so often gives
sayings with this doubling. Besides ' Jerusalem,
Jerusalem' (which Lk xiil 34 shares with Matt
xxiii 37), we have 'Martha, Martha' (Lk x 41),
'Simon, Simon' (Lk xxii 31), and 'Saul, Saul,'
in all three places where S. Paul's conversion Is
narrated In Acts (Ix 4, xxii 7, xxvi 14). I do not
suggest that the compiler of the Third Gospel
invented the doubling in all these places ; In Lk
xili 34 it must certainly have stood In the source
which he was transcribing. But these many
examples shew that he appreciated the force of a
double vocative, so that we need not be surprised
to find a doubled vocative In Lk viii 24, in a
^ In Lk xxi 7 the use of AiSiio-KoXc is an indication that the whole
of the chapter is in this Evangelist's view spoken to the people
generally. 114

AUTHORSHIP OF THE TRAVEL-DIARY
sentence which shews other marks of havinof been
remodelled In language by the evangelist.
These remarks may serve to illustrate the
literary unity of the Lucan writings. To come
back to the main Issue, I think that we may
venture to endorse the verdict of Sir John
Hawkins, based as it Is on a very full induction,
that " there is , an immense balance of Internal
and linguistic evidence In favour of the view that
the original writer of these sections [that Is, the
' We-sections '] was the same person as the main
author of the Acts and of the Third Gospel, and,
consequently, that the date of these books lies with
in the lifetime of a companion of S. Paul" {Hawkins,
p. 154; 2nd ed., p. 188). Nevertheless, in view
of the great historical Importance of this con
clusion, it may be well to consider what other
view consistently with the evidence It is possible
to take. It may be said that we have only proved
that the ' We-sections ' are taken from a real
diary, the work of a companion of S. Paul on his
travels ; and also that the Third Evangelist edited
and partly rewrote this diary for his book of Acts,
just as he edited and partly rewrote Mark's
narrative when he incorporated it In his own
Gospel. The sections taken from Mark are full
of ' Lucan ' characteristics as they appear in the
present Gospel of Luke, but these ' Lucan '
"5

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
characteristics are due to the Third Evangelist,
not to Mark the original author of these sections.
May it not be that the ' Lucan ' characteristics of
the ' We-sections ' are due not to the original
diarist, but to the editor, i.e. the Third Evangelist
himself ?
A complete and satisfactory answer to this
objection can hardly be given, certainly not from
linguistic evidence alone. In dealing with the
work of the Third Evangelist we are dealing
with the work of a very expert writer. How
easily the Gospel according to Luke reads !
How strongly marked all through Is the linguistic
evidence which shews the hand of the Evangelist !
And yet we know that It Is built up upon Mark,
and that much of the wording of many whole
paragraphs has simply been transferred from
Mark. Now In studying the Acts we are in just
the same position as we should be If Luke was
the only Gospel that had survived. How can we
distinguish between the work of the diarist and
that of the editor of the Acts ?
Our answer must be that we cannot safely
distinguish. Even if Sir John Hawkins be In the
main right, as I think he Is, we cannot hope to
disentangle the work of Luke the diarist from the
work of Luke the editor of the Acts. If the
Evangelist did not scruple to rewrite sayings that
ii6

AUTHORSHIP OF THE TRAVEL-DIARY
were given in his sources as the very words of
Jesus, whenever the occasion seemed to demand
it, can we suppose that he treated his own travel
ling notes with greater reverence ? We cannot
doubt that the travelling diary has been ' written
up ' to suit the dignity of a historical work. The
story of Eutychus, with its almost pointless
allusion to the many lamps in the upper room
(Ac XX 8), a touch quite In harmony with a really
contemporary account, may very well have been
taken over from the diary unchanged. But that
Is no reason for believing that the diarist took full
notes of S. Paul's speech at Miletus, or that (if he
did so) he reproduced them unaltered.^ And
though I can well believe that during the ship
wreck S. Paul had faith enough to act in the
sensible and courageous way related by the diarist,
thanking God that he had been spared to eat
another meal and heartening up his companions
In misfortune to do the same, yet the words of his
speech do not sound like a real report (Ac xxvii
33^ 34). ' Not a hair of your head shall perish'
{v. 34) seems to have been a favourite phrase with
our Evangelist : he had already interpolated it
into the eschatological Discourse of our Lord
^ In Ac XX 25 Kr)pv<T(ra>v Tr)v ^ao-iKdav is in the style of Lk ix 2
and of Ac xxviii 31 rather than in that of S. Paul, while bid tov
alp-UTOs tov ISiov in v. 28 recalls Ac i 25 {els tov tottov tov 'ibiov).
Similar examples could be culled from almost every verse.
117

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
(Lk xxi 1 8) and now he puts It Into S. Paul's
mouth. Why, then, should we regard the substance of
the traveller's diary as having been really a diary
made by the editor of Acts ? The main reason
appears to me to rest ultimately upon a question
of literary good faith. To put the matter quite
plainly — and a familiar phrase will explain my
meaning best — I think the device of saying ' we '
when you mean ' they ' Is rather cheap, and I do
not think the editor of the Third Gospel and the
Book of Acts was given to using a cheap literary
device. It Is so easy to use and so effective, that
I cannot imagine why, If this writer thought it
worth his while to employ It at all, he should
have used It only In certain chapters of the Acts.
On the hypothesis that the ' We-sections ' are not
his own diary but someone else's, the editor of
Acts must have almost entirely rewritten these
sections, so full are they of ' Lucan ' phraseology.
Underthese circumstances It becomes disingenuous
to leave the Impression that the writer of the book
was really there, when he was not there. And
all, we may well ask, to what purpose ? To us,
of course, it makes a considerable difference,
because It affects our judgement as to the date of
the work. But the public for which the work
was originally designed knew the date of the
ii8

AUTHORSHIP OF THE TRAVEL-DIARY
work and something about the author. I do not
see what reason there was for trying to Induce
the excellent Theophllus to believe that the writer
of the Acts had been shipwrecked with S. Paul
by means of a literary trick. It was probably a
matter of common knowledge whether he had
been at one time a companion of Paul, or not.
The case is quite different with the speeches in
the Acts. These no doubt, even the speech of
Gamaliel, represent what the author thought the
various personages would have said, and in some
cases they may even have been expanded from
notes taken at the time.^ The author does not
say he was there, any more than he professes to
have overheard the conversations of our Lord
with His disciples. The case is different again
from Epistles circulated in the name of Peter or
Paul, but not really his. In such a case the false
ascription, if believed in, does add to the authority
of the letter. But In the case we are considering
the amount of extra authority gained for the
whole work among contemporaries by posing as
a companion of S. Paul on some of his later
journeys must have been small. Readers who
had accepted the Gospel of Luke without extracts
from the author's diary would not need such
extracts to authenticate the Acts of the Apostles.
1 See Ac xx 25, 38.
119

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Of course. If the extracts really were taken from
a diary by the author he might very well be proud
to Incorporate them In the way we actually find
them Incorporated.
For these reasons I still continue to hold the
old-fashioned belief that the ' We-sections ' in the
Acts are really taken from a travelling diary made
by the Editor of the whole book. As I have
already explained, this view does not imply that
the diary has been Incorporated entire into the
Acts, or that It has not been occasionally rewritten
and added to In order to fit it for Incorporation
into a literary work. What is asserted Is that
'we,' where it occurs In the narrative of Acts,
really does mean that as a historical fact the
Editor of the whole book was present.
But we have seen that there Is considerable
reason to believe that the Acts and the Gospel of
Luke were compiled by someone who had read
Josephus's Antiquities, book xx : that is to say,
that they can hardly be earlier than loo ad. Are
the two opinions compatible ?
I venture to think the two opinions are com
patible. The travellers' diaries, of which the
' We-sections ' In Acts consist, shew that their
author accompanied S. Paul from Troas to
1 20

AGE OF S. LUKE
Philippi about ad 50; there is nothing to shew
that he was more than a young man of twenty.
Thus he would have been born about ad 30,
Consequently he would not be more than 70
years old when he published the two books
dedicated to Theophllus which we possess. Is
this really improbable? Does It not rather ex
plain the very different degrees of accuracy which
we find in the works of the accomplished writer
whom I shall still not hesitate to call S. Luke ?
When he uses his own old diaries, made on the
spot and at the time, he is full of information
which surprises us now by Its minute correctness.
He gives the right title to the Praetors of
Philippi and the Politarchs of Thessalonlca.
Yes ; but he was actually there or in the im
mediate neighbourhood, and keeping a diary.
When on the other hand he comes to describe
the political situation In Palestine about the time
he himself was born, we find him falling Into
error, error none the less real for being excusable.
We do not know under what conditions he had
access to the works of Josephus ; he may have
only had the opportunity for a rapid perusal,
with but little time to make notes or extracts for
his future use. For the ordinary events of
secular history a Christian writer at the end of
the I St century would be dependent on the
121

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
ordinary channels of information. For the
events connected with the rise of his own sect
he might have special sources to draw upon.
He may have conversed during the course of his
life with those who had themselves seen the
Lord. At the same time, the fact that S. Luke
uses the Gospel according to S. Mark as his main
source for the Gospel history seems to me to
make It unlikely that he had much personal
intercourse with those who had been the
Companions of the Ministry, men who could
themselves have supplied the skeleton of a
narrative from their own reminiscences. A com
parison with the First Gospel makes it highly
probable that S. Luke also used the so-called
Logia Document In addition to the Gospel of
Mark. But the Important point which I have
attempted to demonstrate in the preceding para
graphs is that the Third Gospel was compiled in
his old age by a former companion of S. Paul,
not earlier than the reign of Nerva.

The Composition of the Gospel according to
Matthew.
The Gospel according to Matthew, unlike the
Third Gospel, cannot be dated with precision,
nor are we in a position to name the compiler,
122

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW
Something however can be gathered about the
sources which he had at his disposal and the
circle of Ideas In which he moved. Like S.
Luke, he was a competent writer, he treats the
wording of his predecessor with entire freedom,
rearranging and combining them into a well-
fused whole. This makes the reconstruction of
his lost hypothetical sources an extremely
hazardous, if not Impossible, task. As I said In
the Introductory Lecture, there can hardly be a
greater error in Synoptic criticism than to treat
the Evangelists as If they had worked like the
harmonist Tatlan, who made up a single narrative
by piecing together the words of the several
Gospels almost without alteration.
The happy circumstance that Mark, Matthew
and Luke have all survived enables us to discover
that Matthew and Luke are based on Mark, but
if Mark were not actually extant I very much
doubt whether modern criticism would have
been able to reconstruct it from the other
, Synoptists. This consideration should render
us very cautious In making statements about the
contents or arrangement of the other sources on
which we may imagine Matthew (or Luke) to
have been based. It is Indeed highly probable
that, besides Mark, another document was used
in common by Matthew and Luke, of which the
123

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
main contents were a collection of Sayings of the
Lord. This document is usually supposed to
have been what Papias calls the Logia composed
by S. Matthew, but when we attempt to go into
details it is found that the opinions of investi
gators differ widely on almost every point, and
a different Interpretation of the passage in
Eusebius will be given below. Instead, there
fore, of attempting to reconstruct the lost
materials out of which the Gospels according to
Matthew and Luke may have been built, let us
examine the demonstrable procedure of the First
and Third Evangelists with regard to the Old
Testament and S. Mark's Gospel.
In the case of S. Luke the first part of the
answer Is simple. S. Luke uses the ' Septuagint,'
the ordinary Bible which the Church inherited
from the Greek- speaking Jews. Notably this is
the case in the story of the Nativity (Lk i, II),
where the LXX, and not any Hebrew or Aramaic
document, has perceptibly coloured the style and
language of the whole narrative.-'
The quotations peculiar to the Gospel according
to Matthew have wholly different characteristics.
1 Compare the use of dhwaTdv in Lk i 37 and Gen xviii 14.
But this is only one instance out of many. Others will be found in
my own article on the Magnificat in the fournal of Theological
Studies for Jan. 1906, or in Prof. Harnack's in the Sitzungsberichte
of the Berlin Academy for 1900, pp. 538-556.
124

THE OLD TESTAMENT IN MATTHEW
A few of them are indeed taken from the LXX,
but the greater number are based on the Hebrew,
some of these exhibiting curious Inaccuracies
arising out of a misconception of the Hebrew
text. The Hebrew basis is particularly clear in
the passage ' Out of Egypt have I called my son '
(Matt ii 15). This is a quotation of Hosea xi i
that agrees literally with what we find in the
present Hebrew text ; but it differs both from the
LXX, which has ' Out of Egypt I have called
back his children,' and from the Targum, which
has 'Out of Egypt I have called them sons.' ^
The quotation In Maitt xxvii 9, 10, alleged to be
made from 'Jeremiah the prophet' but really
based on Zech xi 13, owes its presence in the
Gospel to a confusion between the Hebrew words
for 'potter' and for 'treasury.' This confusion
exists in the Massoretic text, but the LXX has
another reading and the Targum turns the
'potter' into a Temple official. Thus the
Evangelist appears to have derived his curious
interpretation from the Hebrew, and not from
the Greek Bible or from the main stream of
1 I quote the Targum, because it might be supposed to contain
a popular Jewish interpretation of the verse. Wellhausen {Matt.,
p. 11) explains a similar literal following of the Hebrew in Matt
iv 15 by assuming that the Evangehst used ' Theodotion.' It is
therefore important to notice that this explanation does not fit
Matt ii 15, for in Hosea xi i Theodotion has [e^ KlyvTVTovl eKoKeo-a
avTov vlov nov. 125

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
popular Jewish exegesis. At the same time,
seeing that In this passage (Matt xxvii 9, 10) he
assigns words taken from Zecharlah to Jeremiah,
and that in xili 35 he appears (according to the
text approved by Dr. Hort) to assign Ps IxxvIII 2
to Isaiah, It Is Improbable that he was quoting
direct from a Hebrew copy of the Prophets.
Equally clear is It that the words 'In His Name
shall the nations hope' (Matt xii 21) are taken
from the LXX of Isaiah xlii 4^ for the Hebrew
text has 'the isles shall wait for His Law.' And
similarly ' Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings
Thou hast perfected ^raw^ ' {KaTrjpTca-co atvov, Matt
xxi 16'') agrees with the Greek of Ps viii 2, while
the Hebrewtext has 'Thou hast ordained strength.'
These last passages shew that the Evangelist
was after all not unfamiliar with the Greek Bible.
This is not surprising : the surprising part is the
influence of the Hebrew text in a Greek Gospel.
Now, as we have seen, the evidence does not
point to the direct use of a Hebrew MS of the
Old Testament : we must look rather to a
collection of Testimonia as the immediate source
of our Evangelist's quotations. The collection
must have been made from the Hebrew, but the
names of the several Prophets or Psalmists do
not seem to have been attached to the quotations,
nor were the words always cited with scrupulous
126

THE LOGIA OF MATTHEW
accuracy. To collect and apply the Oracles of
the Old Testament in the light of the New
Dispensation was the first literary task of the
Christian Church. Several such collections sur
vive, and one of them, the Testimonia edited by
Cyprian, is the source from which a whole series
of Latin writers quote Scripture.
We may go on to conjecture that the original
collection of Messianic proof-texts was made by
Matthew the Publican in Hebrew, and that it is
the use of this document by our Evangelist which
gives his work the right to be called the Gospel
according to Matthew. This collection of texts,
in a word, may have been the famous Aoyia, of
which Papias speaks (Euseb. HE iii 39), which
each one interpreted as he could. The chief
objection to this view is that such a quotation
as that in Matt ii 15 ('Out of Egypt have I
called my son ') seems to assume the story of the
Flight Into Egypt, and it is difficult to believe that
this story had a place in the work of the Apostle
Matthew. I do not think we are In a position
to solve the difficulty. The Logia of S. Matthew
Is hopelessly lost, and we do not know what It
really contained. What Is really demonstrable,
and of great Importance for us in estimating the
value of the stories peculiar to the canonical
Gospel of Matthew and in investigating their
9 127

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
origin, is that the quotations by which some of
them are illustrated are derived from the Hebrew
Bible and not from the Greek. This considera
tion does not of Itself make the stories historical
or even probable, but it does tend to prove that
they originated in Palestine. In no other part of
the Empire can we assume a knowledge of the
Old Testament Scripture in the original language.
Thus the answer to the first question we asked,
as to the knowledge and methods of the First
and Third Evangelists, Is that S. Luke uses the
Greek Bible, but the First Evangelist draws his
proof- texts direct from the Hebrew (or rather
from a collection of Testimonia derived from the
Hebrew), although he too occasionally uses the
ordinary Greek translation.
We must now consider the way in which
Matthew and Luke have used the Gospel of Mark.
This is practically the question which was con
sidered in the second of these Lectures, and all
that will be needed now is a statement of results.
Matthew, we find, shortens the narrative of
Mark, retaining, the main features, but cutting
down details and (like S. Luke) suppressing the
mention of the various human emotions of our
Lord, e.g. anger, annoyance, amazement.
Matthew freely transposes the earlier parts of
128

MANY TRANSPOSITIONS IN MATTHEW
the story, which thereby becomes a series of dis
connected anecdotes. The confusion is still
further increased by the interpolation of long
discourses into the framework taken from Mark :
however interesting and authentic these dis
courses are in themselves, they completely break
up the unity of the historical narrative. But very
little of the material supplied by Mark is
altogether omitted.
Besides the long discourses, Matthew introduces
into the Marcan narrative certain stories not
known to us from other sources, such as Peter
walking on the water, Judas and the pieces of
silver, the Earthquake at the Crucifixion, the
Guard at the Tomb. There are grave difficulties
In making out a claim for considering any of
these stories as serious history. At the same
time it should be remarked that their tone and
language suggest, like nearly all the other
peculiarities of this Gospel, a Palestinian origin.
For example, the story of the earthquake speaks
of Jerusalem as ' the Holy City' (Matt xxvii 51^-
53), and we have already seen that the quotation
from the Prophets by which the story of Judas
and the pieces of silver is Illustrated is derived
from the Hebrew and not from the Greek Bible.
In view of the Palestinian origin of the
elements peculiar to Matthew, It is worth while
129

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
once more to emphasise the remarkable fact that
the Passion narrative in the First Gospel is based
upon Mark. Both In the selection of incidents
and their relative order Matthew follows un-
questionlngly the corresponding narrative In Mark.
The procedure of S. Luke offers a notable con
trast to all this. He freely omits large portions of
Mark, and in the Passion he deserts Mark to follow
another story of the last scenes. But the sections
of Mark which are Incorporated in Luke are given
In the same relative order ; and although as In
Matthew much In the narrative Is curtailed, yet
there is not the same tendency to Interpolate fresh
incidents in the Marcan stories. There are fresh
incidents In Luke, but they are kept separate.
It appears to me that the inference drawn
from these facts by Dean Armitage Robinson
is legitimate. He considers that if we wish
to reconstruct the order and arrangement of the
lost document used by Matthew and Luke,
that document which I will not call 'the Logia,' ^
we must take the outline of it from Luke
rather than from Matthew. We must subtract
from Luke the first two chapters and those
sections of the Third Gospel which are simply
derived from Mark : what Is left will give
^ Wellhausen calls it Q.
130

FEW TRANSPOSITIONS IN LUKE
us an approximate outline of the document in
question.^ In making use of the Second Gospel
S. Luke inserted it in his own narrative Kade^rj^,
in order; there is great probability that he did
the same when making use of that lost document
from which he has taken so much of what is to
us of the highest value.
But fascinating as are these schemes of
reconstruction, we should never forget how
precarious is the foundation upon which they
rest. We can no more reconstruct this lost
Gospel in detail than we could reconstruct
from Matthew and Luke alone the Gospel
according to S. Mark. We cannot get behind
the three Synoptic Gospels In the sense of
being able to dispense with either of them.
Each of the three contains authentic matter not
represented in the other two ; each of them re
presents a different view of our Lord's Life and
Teaching. We must frankly recognise that the
Gospel according to S. Mark Is nearer both in
time and in atmosphere to the actual course of
events, but the other two Synoptic Gospels en
able us to fill in many details without which the
resultant Picture would be sadly Incomplete. S.
Mark supplies us with the crown, but many of
^ J. A. Robinson, The Study of the Gospels (1902), especially pp.
87,9s, III-

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
the most precious jewels must be added from the
other Gospels.
One very common misconception may be here
conveniently noticed. Some writers speak of
' the Triple Synopsis ' and ' the Double
Synopsis,' meaning by the former phrase the
incidents or sayings found in all three Synoptic
Gospels, and by the latter those found In Matthew
and Luke, Such phrases are somewhat mislead
ing, as they Inevitably suggest that the portions
comprised under the Triple or the Double
Synopsis are better attested than those which
are found in one document only. But to those
who hold that Matthew and Luke actually used
our Mark, and another document besides, it Is
evident that the consensus of all three Synoptics
resolves itself into the single witness of Mark,
and the consensus of Matthew and Luke is In
many cases only to be regarded as the single
witness of the lost document discussed in the
foregoing paragraphs. Thus the story of the
Gadarene swine rests really on no more evidence
than the story of the blind man at Bethsaida, i.e.
upon the witness of the Second Gospel. And
similarly the Parable of the Seed growing
secretly, related only by S. Mark, is really no
worse attested than the Parable of the Vineyard,
which is given in all three Gospels. The only
132

EXTENT OF THE LOST DOCUMENT
real double attestation is to be found in those few
passages, mostly short striking sayings, which
appear to have found a place In the common
source of Matthew and Luke as well as In Mark.
These passages we shall consider in detail in
the next Lecture, when we begin to study the
teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptic
Gospels. But before we leave our survey of the
lost common source of Matthew and Luke, which
(following Wellhausen and others) I shall call Q
for convenience, let us consider one important
question connected with it, viz. whether it con
tained a story of the Passion. Practically this
is equivalent to asking whether Q was a ' Gospel,'
like one of our Gospels, or whether It was a mere
collection of discourses.
The Judgement-Parable of the Sheep and the
Goats (Matt xxv 31-46) would make so dramatic
a conclusion to a collection of the Lord's Dis
courses that we might at first sight be tempted to
regard it as the actual peroration of Q. And
this view, we must admit, seems to be borne
out by the remarkable fact that not a single
phrase In the last three chapters of Matthew can
be supposed to come from Q. Even In the
account of the Last Supper and the Words from
the Cross Matthew has nothing to add to what
Mark tells us, 133

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
The account of the Passion in Luke is very
different. The disputes In the Temple courts
with the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jerusalem
are given by Luke from the corresponding
sections of Mark, and the same is true for the
eschatological Discourse (Lk xx, xxi). There
are many verbal changes, much indeed is re
written, but no other source but Mark appears
to have been used. The opening paragraphs
of Lk xxii are also derived from Mark. But
when the Evangelist comes to the Last Supper
Itself he has other material. From this point
the Gospel of Mark is no longer the basis of
his narrative. It only supplies a few touches
here and there, like the mention of Simon the
Cyrenian in Luke xxiii 26. The rest, whatever
Its historical value and whatever may have been
the source from which Luke took it, is certainly
not derived from Mark. We have seen that
Luke does not, as a rule, disturb the relative
order of the sources which he employs, and so
the question arises whether this narrative of
the Passion may not have been derived from
the same source as most of Luke's non-Marcan
material, i.e. from Q itself
The safest criterion that a passage comes from
Q is that it should be found both In Matthew and
in Luke. We cannot expect to find many such
134

THE PASSION NARRATIVE IN LUKE
passages in this part of the Gospel, for we
have seen that in the Passion Matthew Is based
on Mark, not at all on Q. Nevertheless some
of the peculiar matter In Lk xxii is actually given
in earlier chapters of Matthew. The section Lk
xxii 24-30 contains a saying of Jesus on the
occasion of a strife for precedence among the
apostles. It begins with a parallel to Mk x 42 ff,
a saying occasioned by the request of the sons of
Zebedee for precedence. But it goes on to give
the promise that the apostles should sit on twelve
thrones judging Israel, which is parallel to Matt
xix 28, a non-Marcan verse, interpolated after the
usual manner of Matthew Into the main frame
work of the Marcan narrative. This at once
suggests that we have here a fragment of Q, and
consequently that Q contained a story of the
Passion as well as of the discourses. We know
that Q was not confined to discourses alone, for
the same arguments which prove that it contained
a discourse corresponding to the ' Sermon on the
Mount ' prove also that it contained the story of
the Centurion's boy (Matt viii 5-13, Lk vii i-io).
There Is nothing therefore surprising that it should
have given an account of the last scenes.
Whatever view we may take — and I am
most anxious not to put before you a piece of
135

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
literary reconstruction of this kind without re
minding you how doubtful this reconstruction of
lost documents must remain — there is, I venture
to think, a considerable element of valuable
history in S. Luke's account of our Lord's
Passion, from whatever source he may have
drawn his Information.
The Christian tradition tells us of Peter's
Denial, of the Trial of our Lord by the ' chief
priests,' and of rough horseplay practised on
Him when a prisoner. But Mark and Luke
do not agree as to the time or order of
these events. Our Lord was arrested in the
middle of the night when the apostles were
heavy with sleep ; He was crucified in ' the
third hour' next day according to Mk xv 25,
i.e. between 9 and 10 am, but perhaps It may
really have been a little later. Now I may be
uncritical and credulous, but I confess that I
am impressed with the account given by Luke,
regarded as a narrative of events. Here as
elsewhere, of course, the wording of the Third
Gospel reflects the style and personality of the
Evangelist : we must not assume that he treats
the unknown source Q otherwise than he treats
the extant Gospel of Mark. But the main course
of the action is more intelligible In this section as
Luke gives It, at least from the point of view of
136

THE PASSION NARRATIVE IN LUKE
the chief priests. We can hardly suppose that
the Jewish grandees kept vigil all night on
account of the Galilean Agitator ; according to
S. Luke they did not do so. Our Lord is
arrested in the dead of night, and as we should
expect He is simply detained in custody until the
great folk get up in the morning (Lk xxii 66).
A prisoner, and deserted by His followers. He
is naturally exposed to the vulgar Insults of the
Temple police who had arrested Him {vv. 63-
65) ; in point of fact, they have nothing else to
do. Meanwhile Peter slinks Into a corner of the
great court ; we are even told that he shewed his
face in the light of the fire {v. 56). He denies
His Master, as we know, during the hours that
slowly pass by. All the action takes place In
the court : in one corner is the Prisoner, in
another is Peter and the group of servants. I
can very well believe that the one group was
visible to the other, and that the Lord really
did turn and look upon Peter {v. 61). At last
the day breaks and the elders of the people
gather together, chief priests and scribes ; they
give their Prisoner a hasty trial {vv. 66-71) and
as soon as He is condemned they bring Him at
once before Pilate (xxiii i ff).
According to Mark, who is of course followed
by Matthew, the chief priests try Jesus In the
137

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
dead of night, and the rough horseplay and
buffeting appears to be done by some members
of the Council themselves while they are waiting
till it Is time to go to Pilate, not by the Temple
guards waiting till it is time for the Council to
assemble. I venture to think that S. Luke's
account is the more probable.
Among the incidents peculiar to Luke is the
interview with Herod Antipas (xxiii 4-16), com
monly treated by critical historians as fictitious.
It has recently been the subject of an independent
study by Dr. Verrall, whose work, like Lachmann's
before him, has not received from professional
theologians the attention which is Its due. But
until the arguments brought forward In ' Christ
before Herod ' have been successfully met, the in
clusion of the story how Herod treated the Good
Physician with cynical generosity must be held to
Illustrate the excellence of S. Luke's historical infor
mation rather than his credulity or inventiveness.^
^ 'Christ before Herod' first appeared in tht. fournal of Theo
logical Studies, X 321-353 (Apr. 1909) : it has been reprinted by
Dr. Verrall in his Bacchants of Euripides and Other Essays, pp.
335-390. He understands Lk xxiii 11 to mean : ' But Herod, with
the armed forces of Galilee at his back, thought Jesus of no import
ance and jested at the notion, but he presented Him with a robe of
honour and sent Him back to Pilate.' Properly speaking, there
was no 'trial' before Herod: Pilate takes the opportunity of
Herod being at hand to ascertain whether the government of
Galilee regarded Jesus as a dangerous agitator {vv. 5, 6). For
<ivv Tols aTparevfiaaiv, compare (riiv x^'P' dyyeXov in Acts vii 35 : it
almost means ' supported by ' or ' relying upon.' See also i Cor v 4.
138

THE PASSION NARRATIVE IN LUKE
We may note in passing that the accusation
which the chief priests bring against our Lord to
Pilate not only Is calculated to impress the Roman
Governor, but also contains the genuinely Jewish
phrase ^/xo-toi/ ^aaikia. That the Jews told
Pilate that the accused prisoner forbad the
people to give tribute to Caesar might have been
surmised by the Evangelist ; he would not have
been likely to have hit upon a phrase exactly cor
responding to Malka Meshiha or, as we commonly
render it, ' King Messiah.' The occurrence of
the technical Jewish phrase suggests to us that In
this passage S. Luke is using a valuable source.
Investigations of this kind, which attempt to
weigh the merits of conflicting or parallel accounts,
have always a somewhat coldblooded and judicial
spirit in them, a spirit which cannot but be out
of harmony with that in which we can study the
Passion of our Lord to our soul's profit. Yet
these historical questions must be faced. If our
estimate of the Gospel Is to be lifted out of the
region of mere Inherited sentiment. And perhaps.
If we have learnt to regard the peculiar matter in
Lk xxii and xxiii with more respect as a historical
document, we may be able to hear with renewed
attention some of the words of Jesus, which S.
Luke assigns to the night of the Last Supper.
These words (Lk xxii 24-38) are of very great
139

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
interest, and I venture to think that the con
cluding section is not only a genuine saying of
the Lord, but also appropriate in the historical
situation. The earlier part may possibly not
belong to the last evening ; for Mark also has the
saying about the kings of the Gentiles having
dominion over their subjects while the chief of
the disciples of Jesus was to be the servant of his
brethren, and In Mark it is placed on the journey
to Jerusalem, not after the Last Supper (Mk x
42 ff). Yet, after all, the desire of the sons of
Zebedee to sit on the right hand and on the left
of their Lord may very well have found expression
when they were actually seated at supper with
Jesus, perhaps occupying the very places that
they coveted in the heavenly kingdom.'^ Our
Lord's allusion to His own approaching death,
when He would give His life as a ransom for
many (Mk x 45), also suggests the last tragic
night rather than the approach to Jerusalem. Be
this as It may, I find it difficult to believe that the
words which follow are not a true, and a mis
understood, reminiscence of the night of our Lord's
arrest. They are among the saddest words in
the Gospels, and the mournful irony with which
1 If there be any historical truth in what we read of this meal
in the Fourth Gospel, the struggle for precedence may have been
the immediate cause why Jesus Himself began to wash the feet
of the disciples.
140

THE PASSION NARRATIVE IN LUKE
they are pervaded seems to me wholly alien from
the kind of utterance which a Christian Evangelist
would Invent for his Master. ' When I sent you
forth without purse and wallet and shoes, lacked
ye anything ? ' And they said : ' Nothing.' But
He goes on to tell them that now they must take
their purses and wallets, and that he who had no
sword must get one, even If he has to pawn his
cloak to buy It, for soon Jesus and His followers
will be counted among lawless folk.^ The
disciples do not understand : they take It all
literally, and someone says, ' See, here are two
swords 1 '
It seems to me easier to believe that these
words were remembered and recorded, than to
think that they could have been invented by any
early Christian of whom we have ever heard. It
is impossible to believe that the command to buy
a sword was meant literally and seriously : It Is
all a piece of ironical foreboding. The early
Christian missionaries did not, so far as we know,
go out on their travels armed ; It is only because
these words are so familiar that they do not give
us a shock.
1 The allusion to Isaiah liii 12 does not agree with the LXX, for
Lk xxii 37 has ^era dvop-av while the LXX has iv to'is dvopois. In
the words which follow, ' The things concerning me have an end '
is a better translation than ' hath fulfilment ' ; our Lord had
already used tcKos e'x" (Mk iii 26). 141

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Yet there they stand In the Gospel according
to S. Luke, and we are entitled to draw from
them the conclusions that they suggest. They
are sad enough Indeed ; but If they are historical,
as I believe them to be, they afford us a very
welcome glimpse Into the mind of our Lord.
They shew us that there was in Him a vein of
what I have no other name for but playfulness, a
tender and melancholy playfulness Indeed, but all
the more remarkable that It comes to outward
expression In moments of danger and despondency.
We feel that we are listening to the words of the
same Master, who excused the woman for the
waste of her precious ointment that might have
been so profitably spent in works of charity.
This kind of playfulness is totally alien from
ignorant fanaticism, and Indeed It is totally alien
from the general spirit of early Christianity. That
it appears at all In the Gospels Is In itself a proof
that the Evangelists and the sources from which
they drew sometimes remembered better than
they understood.

142

THE TEACHING OF JESUS CHRIST.
T ^TE come now to the Sayings of our Lord
* * as handed down for us In the Christian
tradition. And before we consider any part of
these Sayings in detail I think it will be well to
call to mind some general considerations about
the circumstances of their utterance and their
preservation. The considerations I mean are
all perfectly obvious and plain, but their very
plainness and obviousness make them run some
risk of being slurred over.
Jesus Himself wrote nothing, and the only
words which He Is said to have taught His
disciples are the words of the Lord's Prayer.
Even this short form of words has been handed
down with notable variations. He ordered the
apostles to say to those to whom they preached
'the Kingdom of God Is at hand' (Matt x 7,
Lk X 9), but this Is rather a doctrine than a
formula. It does not appear that It was part of
His method to give His disciples watchwords or
10 143

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
anything in the nature of a set phrase. On the
contrary, the Gospels tell us that He expressly
commanded His followers that they were not to
defend themselves by set apologies, but to say
what the Spirit impelled them to say, as the
occasion suggested. There is no trace of any
systematisatlon of the teaching ; the private
expositions of the Parable of the Sower, of the
new doctrine concerning Pollution (Mk vii 17)
and concerning Divorce (Mk x 10), are all as
informal as expositions can be. I do not mean
indefinite : the teaching is always clear and
definite, but It Is essentially occasional. It arises
out of what passes at the moment.
The effect of all this can be very broadly
stated. It tended to heighten the personal
impression of our Lord upon His disciples. It is
f'the Lord Jesus and not His Sayings which was
the subject of the earliest preachers of Christianity.
[¦ Doubtless part of the personal impression Included
a vivid sense of our Lord's guiding principles of
life, His daily and hourly intercourse with His
Father in Heaven, and the sureness and authority
which this heavenly Intercourse gave Him in
discerning right and wrong. They saw and felt
His Independence of earthly standards. His
impatience with the self-satisfied. His compassion
for those in need. This was what was necessary.
144

PRESERVATION OF OUR LORD'S SAYINGS
It was necessary that the disciples should reve
rence and love their Master ; far more necessary
than that they should remember His phrases.
But the conditions were not specially favourable
for accurate reminiscence. People talk vaguely
of the marvellous achievements of Oriental
memories, but I think you will find on investiga
tion that these feats are all connected with
systematic instruction. The wisdom of this or
that famous Rabbi, of this or that renowned sage,
has been handed down to posterity by the
recollections of his pupils ; but In all such cases
there was a conscious committing to memory of
instruction or doctrine. The same is true of the
preservation of the Qoran. Mohammed's dis
courses were to a considerable extent preserved
through the memories of the faithful, but they
consist of sentences of a marked rhetorical
character and end with a rhyme.^
How different is all this from the recorded
Sayings of. our Lord I As I said just now, they
are occasional, they arise out of some event, some
circumstance of His life. The Sayings for the
most part form the point of an anecdote, or are
themselves couched in the form of a story, like
* In mentioning the Mohammedan tradition we may profitably
remind ourselves of the existence of a vast mass of ' Traditions ' of
the Prophet which is in no sense genuine historical reminiscence.
145

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
several of the Parables. There Is no indication
in the Gospels that any of our Lord''s hearers
were taking notes at the time, whether mental or
written. Indeed, we are told In one place that It
was only after He had risen from the dead that
His disciples remembered He had said such and
such things.
Moreover, the aim of the early Christians was
practical ; they aimed at making saints, not
historians. The memory of Jesus survived
among His servants. His Presence was still felt
in their midst ; and we must be prepared before
hand to find that a clear distinction was not
always drawn between what He would have said
and what He really did say. ' The labourer Is
worthy of his hire ' (or, ' of his food ' ), said Jesus,
according to Matthew and Luke ; with S. Paul
this has become the formal statement that the
Lord ordained that they which preach the Gospel
should live of the Gospel (i Cor ix 14) — an
example which clearly shews how sayings
detached from a historical context harden Into
rules from which most of the distinctive phrase
ology of the speaker disappears. Another
instance of the same kind is to be found In the
Sayings about Divorce, which we considered in
a former lecture. In Mkx2-i2we have the
whole story in its historical setting, and the Saying
146

PRESERVATION OF OUR LORD'S SAYINGS
of the Lord at the end takes Its colour from "the
events of the age and the circumstances of the
place where the Saying was uttered. In Lk xvi i8
we have much the same principle of conduct laid
down, but the historical setting is gone : it
belongs to Christian Ethics rather than to our
Lord's Biography.
We need, therefore, a kind of starting-point for
the consideration of our Lord's doctrine, some
external test that will give us a general assurance
that the Saying we have before us is really from
Him, and Is not the half-conscious product of one
school of His followers. Where shall we find
such a test ?
It appeared to me that the starting-point we
require may be found in those Sayings which have
a real double attestation. The main documents
out of which the Synoptic Gospels are compiled
are (i) the Gospel of Mark, and (2) the lost
common origin of the non-Marcan portions of
Matthew and Luke, i.e. the source called Q.
Where Q and Mark appear to report the same
saying, we have the nearest approach that we
can hope to get to the common tradition of the
earliest Christian society about our Lord's words.
What we glean In this way will indicate the
general Impression His teaching made upon His
disciples, 147

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
The list of Sayings that here follow Is arranged
according to the order of Mark. The Saying Is
usually repeated with comparatively trifling verbal
variations, and In the same context, by Matthew
and Luke, or by one of them ; but these repetitions
practically contribute nothing for our purpose, and
I have not given them here. The Saying that I
give after the verse of Mark is taken from a
different context, usually from Luke, as we have
seen reason to believe that the Third Evangelist
keeps his sources more apart than Matthew does.
Matthew, on the other hand, seems often to
combine Sayings taken from Q with those taken
from Mark, so that his form of these Sayings
is generally not so instructive for the purposes
of this comparison,
I. Mk Hi 4 {copied in Lk vi 9),
And He saith unto them, ' Is it lawful on the
sabbath day to do good, or to do harm? to
save a life, or to kill?' But they held their
peace.
Lk xiv 5, 6 {compare Matt xii 1 1).
And He said unto them, ' Which of you shall have [an ass or]
an ox fallen into a well, and will not straightway draw him
up on a sabbath day ? ' And they could not answer again
unto these things.
[Most Greek MSS have vw? ^ /SoO?, i.e. 'a son
148

THE DOUBLY ATTESTED SAYINGS
or an ox.' It is quite impossible that this can have
been the original form of the Saying, but its very
harshness is in favour of its genuineness in the
text of Luke. Probably it goes back to a mistake
in translation. In Aramaic ' son ' is bar ("Q, some
times written "I*"!, e.g. Pesikta, 75"^), and 'the well '
is bira t^l"*!- If the original Aramaic ran some
thing like ^Q3 iimJl «'^^in"T pi3D 1312, It is easy to
imagine how the mistake may have arisen. In
the parallel Matt xii 11, 12, only one animal is
named — a sheep — and it is supposed to fall Into
a pit^^ 2. Mk Hi 22-26,
And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem
said, ' He hath Beelzebul,' and, ' By the prince
of the devils casteth He out the devils.' And
He called them unto Him, and said unto them
in parables, ' How can Satan cast out Satan ?
And if a kingdom be divided against itself,
that kingdom cannot stand ; and if a house
be divided against itself, that house will not
be able to stand ; and if Satan hath risen up
against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand,
but hath an end,'
Lk xi 15-18 {compare the non-Marcan portions
oflslsXX. xii 24-26).
But some of them said, ' By Beelzebul the prince of the devils
casteth He out devils.' And others, tempting, sought
149

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
of Him a sign from heaven. But He, knowing their
thoughts, said unto them, ' Every kingdom divided
against itself is brought to desolation, and a house against
a house falleth ; and if Satan also is divided against
himself, how shall his kingdom stand ? Because ye say
that I cast out devils by Beelzebul.'
[It Is evident that Mk Hi 22-26 and Lk xl
15-18 report the same Saying of Jesus, notwith
standing the many differences and the very small
amount of actual coincidence In language. It is
further evident, if we tabulate the many similarities
of language between Lk xi 14-23 and Matt xH
22-30, that S. Luke has not entirely rewritten the
passage himself but has preserved much of the
wording of his immediate source. That being the
case, it is difficult to believe that any common
document underlies Mark and Luke at this point,
other than the common memory of the first circle
of disciples. The reason why these Beelzebul
sayings are so well remembered and reported is, I
believe, to be explained partly by their striking and
picturesque imagery, but still more by the fact that
they were spoken at the moment of the great
breach with the Jewish clergy of Capernaum.]
3. Mk Hi 27
' But no one can enter into the house of the strong
man and spoil his goods, except he first bind
the strong man; and then he will spoil his
house.' 150

THE DOUBLY ATTESTED SAYINGS
Lk xi 21-23 {compare the non-Marcan portions
o/Matt xii 28-30).
'When the strong man fully armed guardeth his own court,
his goods are in peace ; but when a stronger than he shall
come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him
his whole armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his
spoils. He that is not with me is against me ; and he
that gathereth not with me scattereth.'
[Here again the verbal resemblance between
Mark and Luke is very small, though there are
some marked coincidences between Luke and
Matthew, In all this section I believe Matthew
to present a text conflated by the Evangelist out
of Mark and the ' non-Marcan document ' (Q),
which Luke has here preserved free from con
tamination with Mark,]
4. Mk HI 28-30,
'Amen, I say unto you. All things shall be for
given unto the sons of men, the sins and
the blasphemies wherewith soever they shall
blaspheme : but whosoever shall blaspheme
against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness,
but is guilty of an eternal sin' : because they
said, ' He hath an unclean spirit'
Lk xii 10,
'And every one who shall speak a word against the Son of Man,
it shall be forgiven him : but unto him that blasphemeth
against the Holy Spirit it shall not be forgiven.'

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
[Matt xii 31, 32 seems to be partly remodelled
by the Evangelist from the parallel In Mark,
which Indeed forms the basis of the narrative in
Matt xii.]
5. Mk Hi 31-34 {retold from Mark in Lk viii
19-21).
' , , . Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same
is my brother, and sister, and mother.'
Lk xi 27, 28.
' . . . Blessed is the womb that bare thee . . . 1 ' But He
said, 'Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word
of God, and keep it.'
[Lk viii 19-21 contains the story of our Lord's
mother and brethren standing outside because of
the crowd. In that place it is doubtless taken
from Mark, like the rest of Lk viii. Lk xi 27,
28, on the other hand, comes between the sayings
about Beelzebul (parallel to Mk Hi 2 2ff) and the
saying about the Lamp and the Stand (parallel
to Mk Iv 21): it Is therefore difficult to avoid
the Inference that It Is another reminiscence of
the same story as Mk Hi 31-34.]
6. Mk iv 3-9 {The Parable of the Sower). ,
[We may conjecture that the Parable of the
Sower stood in Q, but the text of Matt xiil 2 ff
and Lk viii 5 ff seems wholly derived from Mark.]
152

THE DOUBLY ATTESTED SAYINGS
7. Mk Iv 2 1 {rewritten from Mark in Lk viii
16). And He said unto them, ' Is the lamp brought
to be put under the bushel, or under the bed ?
Is it not to be put on the stand ? '
Lk xi 33 {compare Matt v 15).
' No man, when he hath lighted a lamp, putteth it in a cellar,
but on the stand, that they which enter in may see the
Ught.'i

8, Mk Iv 2 2 {copied from Mark in Lk viii 17).
'For there is nothing hid, save that it should be
manifested ; neither was anything made secret,
but that it should come to light,'
Lk xii 2 {compare Matt x 26).
' But there is nothing covered up that shall not be revealed,
and hid that shall not be known.'

9. Mk iv 23.
' If any man hath ears to hear, let him hear.'
Lk xiv 35.
' He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.'
[This Saying is also reported at the end of the
Parable of the Sower In Mk iv 9, and parallels.
^ Most Greek and Latin documents add ' neither under the
bushel' after 'cellar,' but the clause should be omitted from Lk
xi 33, on the sufficient authority of the Sinai Palimpsest, supported
as it is by several groups of important Greek MSS.
IS3

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
The very varied attestation of this Saying is good
evidence that our Lord really used this phrase,
most likely on several occasions. It clearly
shews that He expected His more intelligent
hearers to understand something of the real
meaning of His Parables.]
lo. Mk iv 24''.
', . . With what measure ye mete it shall be
measured to you.'
Lk vi 38.
' For with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you
again.'
II. Mk iv 25 {rewritten from Mark in Lk
viii 18).
' For he that hath, to him shall be given ; and he
that hath not, from him shall be taken away
even that which he hath.'
Lk xix 26 {compare Matt xxv 29).
' I say unto you, that unto every one that hath shall be given ;
but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall
be taken away from him.'
[A saying like this may very well be genuine
in both contexts ; it is inserted in this List
because whether it was uttered once or twice,
it has certainly been twice remembered.]
154

THE DOUBLY ATTESTED SAYINGS
12. Mk Iv 30-32.
And He said, ' How shall we liken the Kingdom
of God? or in what parable shall we set it
forth? As to a grain of mustard seed,
which, when it is sown upon the earth, being
a thing less than all the seeds upon the
earth, yet when it is sown, groweth up, and
becometh greater than all the herbs, and
putteth out great branches, so that the birds
of the heaven can lodge under the shadow
thereof
Lk xiil 18, 19 {compare the non-Marcan por
tions ^y Matt xlii 31, 32).
He said therefore, ' Unto what is the Kingdom of God like ?
and whereunto shall I liken it ? It is like unto a grain
of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his own
garden ; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds
of the heaven lodged in the branches thereof.'
[Here again the language of the two parallel
passages could hardly be more different, con
sidering the essential similarity of thought and
imagery.] 13. Mk vi 4.
And Jesus said unto them, ' A prophet is not
without honour, save in his own country,
and among his own kin, and in his own
house.'
Lk iv 24.
And He said, 'Amen, I say unto you, No prophet is
acceptable in his own country.'

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
[Both extracts come from the account of Jesus
at Nazareth, but S. Luke places the story at
the beginning of the Ministry, and the rest of
the context is very different. The Saying re
appears In Joh Iv 44, when Jesus is journeying
from Jerusalem and Samaria to Galilee.]
14. Mk vi 10, II {condensed in Lk Ix 4, 5).
And He said unto them, 'Wheresoever ye enter
into a house, there abide till ye depart thence.
And whatsoever place shall not receive you,
and they hear you not, as ye go forth thence,
shake off the dust that is under your feet for a
testimony unto them.'
Lk X 5*, 7, 10, II {compare Matt x 11-15).
' And into whatsoever house ye shall enter ... in that same
house remain, eating and drinking such things as they
give : for the labourer is worthy of his hire. Go not from
house to house. . . . But into whatsoever city ye shall
enter, and they receive you not, go out into the streets
thereof and say, "Even the dust from your city, that
deaveth to our feet, we do wipe off against you : howbeit
know this, that the Kingdom of God is come nigh."'
["There Is no doubt — and Matthew has rightly
recognised the fact — that Mk vi 7 ff and Lk x i ff
are variants, which must be compared together "
(Wellhausen, Ev. Luccb, p. 49).]
15. Mk vHI I2^
'Why doth this generation seek a sign? Amen,
I say unto you, there shall no sign be given
unto this generation.' IS6

THE DOUBLY ATTESTED SAYINGS
Lk xi 29 {compare Matt xii 39, also xvi 4'').
' This generation is an evil generation : it seeketh after a sign ;
and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah.'
[Note that 'the sign of Jonah,' which occurs
also in Matt xii 39, xvi 4^ Is differently expanded
In Matt xii 40 and Lk xl 30.]
16. Mk viii 15.
And He charged them, saying, ' Take heed, beware
of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven
of Herod.'
Lk xii i^
' Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
[The context Is quite different.]
17, Mk viii 34 {rewritten in Lk Ix 23).
And He called unto Him the multitude with His
disciples, and said unto them, ' If any man
would come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross, and follow me.'
Lk xiv 25-27.
Now there went with Him great multitudes : and He turned,
and said unto them, ' If any man cometh unto me, and
hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and
children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
also, he cannot be my disciple. Whosoever doth not bear
his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.'
[Lk Ix 23 Is certainly based directly upon Mk
viii 34, but S. Luke has given a peculiar turn to
157

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
it by adding ' daily ' {kuB' rfjxepav) to ' take up his
cross.'] ^
1 8. Mk Ix 37^
'Whosoever receiveth me, receiveth not me but
Him that sent me.'
Lk X i6 {compare Matt x 40).
' He that rejecteth me rejecteth Him that sent me.'
[The special Interest of this passage is the
formula ' Him that sent me,' so characteristic of
the Fourth Gospel. Similar phrases occur in
Matt XV 24, Lk iv 18, 43, so that In all our
sources — in Mark, in Q, and in the peculiar
elements of Matthew and Luke, as well as In
John — our Lord Is made to describe Himself as
being conscious of a definite Mission from the
Most High.]
19a. Mk ix 42.
' And whosoever shall cause one of these little ones
that believe on me to stumble, it were better
for him if a great millstone were hanged about
his neck, and he were cast into the sea.'
Lk xvH 2.
' ... It were well for him if a millstone were hanged about
his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than
that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.'
[Here the context Is quite different.]
^ Most Greek MSS (not the best) and most ' Western ' texts omit
' daily.' On epx^crBac in Lk ix 23, see Enc. Bibl. 1775, note *.
IS8

THE DOUBLY ATTESTED SAYINGS
19b. Mk ix 43-48 {condensed in Matt xviii 8, 9).
'And if thy hand cause thee to stumble, cut it
off: it is good for thee to enter into life
maimed, rather than having thy two hands to
go into the unquenchable fire.^ And if thy
foot cause thee to stumble, cut it off: it is good
for thee to enter into life halt, rather than
having thy two feet to be cast into hell. And
if thine eye cause thee to stumble, cast it out :
it is good for thee to enter into the Kingdom
of God with one eye, rather than having two
eyes to be cast into hell where "their worm
dieth not and the fire is not quenched." '
Matt v 29, 30 {no parallel in Lk).^
' And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out and
cast it from thee : for it is profitable for thee that one of
thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be
cast into hell. And if thy right hand causeth thee to
stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee : for it is profitable
for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not
thy whole body go into hell.'
20. Mk ix 50,
' Salt is good : but if the salt have lost its saltness,
wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in
yourselves, and be at peace one with another.'
Lk xiv 34 {compare Matt v 13).
' Salt therefore is good : but if even the salt have lost its
savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned ? '
^ Omit here As ttjv yievvav with the Sinai Palimpsest, &c.
2 It seems to me probable that Luke the Physician preferred to
leave out the metaphor of amputation. Compare the curtailment
of Mk v 26 in Lk viii 43.
II 159

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
21. Mk XII, 12.
And He saith unto them, 'Whosoever shall put
away his wife, and marry another, committeth
adultery against her: and if she herself shall
put away her husband, and marry another,
she committeth adultery.'
Lk xvi 1 8 {another form, in Matt v 31, 32).
' Every one that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another,
committeth adultery : and he that marrieth one that is
put away from a husband committeth adultery.'
[For the historical setting, see Lecture III.]
22. Mk X 42-45,
And Jesus called them to Him, and saith unto
them, ' Ye know that they which are accounted
to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them ;
and their great ones exercise authority over
them. But it is not so among you : but
whosoever would become great among you,
shall be your minister : and whosoever would
be first among you, shall be servant of all.
For even the Son of Man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give
His life a ransom for many.'
Lk xxii 25-27.
And He said unto them, 'The kings of the Gentiles have
lordship over them ; and they that have authority over
them are called Benefactors. But ye shall not be so : but
he that is the greater among you let him become as the
younger ; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For
160

THE DOUBLY ATTESTED SAYINGS
whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that
serveth? . . . but I am in the midst of you as He that
serveth.'
[The context again is quite different.]

23. Mk xi 22, 23.
And Jesus answering saith unto them, ' Have faith
in God. Amen, J say unto you, Whosoever
shall say unto this mountain, " Be thou taken
up and cast into the sea " ; and shall not doubt
in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith
cometh to pass ; he shall have it.'
Lk xvii 6.
And the Lord said, ' If ye have faith as a grain of mustard
seed, ye would say unto this sycamine tree, " Be thou
rooted up, and be thou planted in the sea " ; and it
would have obeyed you.'
[Wellhausen {Ev. Marci, p. 97) remarks that
' into the sea ' seems to suit Galilee rather than
Jerusalem. But need this use of Galilean
Imagery imply more than that the words were
uttered by a Galilean Prophet to Galilean
fishermen ? It is a saying that might very well
have been spoken more than once.]
24. Mk xi 24,
'Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever
ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have
received them, and ye shall have them.'
161

THE GOSPEL HISTORY

Lk xi 9 {compare Matt vii 7),

' And I say unto you. Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek,
and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you.'

25. Mk xi 25.
' And whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye
have aught against any one ; that your Father
also which is in heaven may forgive you your
trespasses.'
Matt vi 14, 15.
' For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father
will also forgive you ; but if ye forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses.'
[It is hardly likely that these verses from the
Sermon on the Mount were derived from Mark.]
[26.] Mk xii 32-34*.
The scribe said unto Him, ' Of a truth. Master,
thou hast well said that He is One; and
there is none other but He: and to love
Him with all the heart, and with all the
understanding, and with all the strength,
and to love his neighbour as himself, is
much more than all whole burnt offerings
and sacrifices.' And when Jesus saw that
he answered discreetly, He said unto him,
'Thou art not far from the Kingdom of
God.'
162

THE DOUBLY ATTESTED SAYINGS
Lk X 25-28.
And He said unto him, 'What is written in the law? how
readest thou ? ' And he answering said, ' Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind ; and
thy neighbour as thyself.' And He said unto him, ' Thou
hast answered right : this do, and thou shalt live.'
[I have Inserted Mk xH 32 ff and Lk x 25 ff
in the list, because at the first glance they
are real doublets ; i.e. different accounts of the
same event drawn from different sources. They
agree in the very remarkable circumstance that
the duty of love to God and one's neighbour Is
emphasised by the learned Interlocutor of our
Lord. In Mark this Is comprehensible, for what
the scribe says is merely a generously appreciative
echo of our Lord's great answer. But In Luke the
case is different. There we are surprised, first, to
find that the Jewish Doctor actually anticipates
our Lord's doctrine without having been prompted,
and then that he is unwilling to apply his own
principles. Wellhausen {Ev. Lticcs, p. 52) further points
out that the Parable of the Good Samaritan
(which immediately follows) Is strictly speaking
an answer to the question, ' Whose neighbour am
I ? ' not to ' Who is my neighbour ? ' I should
have been Inclined rather to say that it is an
answer to the question, ' What is my duty towards
163

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
my neighbour?' But In either case the incon
sequence remains. Wellhausen considers that the
answer of the scribe and the Parable are really
separate stories, which have been joined together
by the Evangelist. The Parable has a Samaritan
hero, consequently the Evangelist has placed the
whole compilation in the Samaritan section of his
Gospel; but the lawyer who answers so well at
first is only the scribe of Mark xii 30 ff transferred
to an earlier place, like the sermon at Nazareth in
Lk iv. On this theory, which on the whole
seems best to explain the facts, the answer of the
lawyer is only Mk xii 28-34 itself rewritten by
Luke to suit the Parable which follows. It is not
therefore a doublet of Mark at all.]
27. Mk xii 38, 39 {copied in Lk xx 45, 46).
And in His teaching He said, 'Beware of the
scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and
salutations in the marketplaces, and chief seats
in the synagogues, and chief places at feasts.'
Lk xi 43.
' Woe unto you Pharisees ! for ye love the chief seats in the
synagogues, and the salutations in the marketplaces.'
[Mk xii 40 goes on to accuse the Scribes that
they 'for a pretence make long prayers,' irpocpdaei
fiuKpa ¦jrpo(7ev)(^ofievoi. In Matt xxHI 5 the Scribes
164

THE DOUBLY ATTESTED SAYINGS
and Pharisees are said to 'make broad their
phylacteries." The Jewish Phylacteries were
called Tephillin, a word which means ' prayers ' :
apparently, therefore, Mark has misunderstood a
saying which referred originally to the ostentatious
size of the Tephillin worn by the professedly
religious.] 28. Mk xlii II {rewritten in Lk xxi 14, 15).
'And when they lead you, and deliver you up,
be not anxious beforehand what ye shall
speak : but whatsoever shall be given you in
that hour, that speak ye : for it is not ye that
speak, but the Holy Spirit'
Lk xH II, 12,
'And when they bring you before the synagogues, and the rulers,
and the authorities, be not anxious how or what ye shall
answer, or what ye shall say : for the Holy Spirit shall
teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say.'
29. Mk xiil 15, 16.
' . , . And let him that is on the housetop not go
down, nor enter in to take anything out of his
house : and let him that is in the field not
return back to take his cloke,'
Lk xvii 31.
' In that day, he which shall be on the housetop, and his goods
in the house, let him not go down to take them away :
and let him that is in the field likewise not return back.'
16S

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
[The whole of the section Lk xvii 20-37 Is really
a doublet of Mk xlii 3-37, and both should be
compared with the final chapter of the Didache.
Except the last five verses of Matt xlii, the
section Lk xvii 20-37 seems to me to contain the
most authentic reminiscences of what our Lord
may have said on this subject at various times.]
30. Mk xlii 21.
'And then if any man shall say unto you, "Lo,
here is the Christ"; or, "Lo, there"; believe
it not.'
Lk xvii 23,
' And they shall say to you, " Lo, there ! " " Lo, here ! " go not
away, nor follow after them.'
31. MkxIH 34, 35.
' As a man, sojourning in another country, having
left his house, and given authority to his
servants, to each one his work, commanded
also the porter to watch. Watch therefore:
for ye know not when the lord of the house
cometh, whether at even, or at midnight, or
at cockcrowing, or in the morning,'
Lk xii 37, 38.
' Blessed are those servants whom the lord when he cometh
shall find watching : amen, I say unto you, that he shall
gird himself, and make them sit down to meat, and shall
come and serve them. And if he shall come in the second
watch, and if in the third, and find them so, blessed are
those servants.' 166

THE DOUBLY ATTESTED SAYINGS
I have read out to you this list of Sayings,
familiar as they are, because of their historical
importance. No one would deny that they are
important taken singly, but I wish to draw your
attention now to their Importance as a collection.
When we study the life and work of the great
personages of history and thought there are two
distinct things that we should desire to know
about them. We desire to know their deeper
teaching, to see and recognise the first formulation
of some great Idea, which comes new and strange
from the brain of a man in advance of his time,
an idea perhaps not destined to be fully under
stood and appreciated for many a long day.
But we need also to understand the impression
made by the man on his contemporaries ; we
want to know what he stood for to them, as well
as what he stands for to us. And this last kind
of knowledge is the most necessary for us to have
when we are studying those who are great
because of the Influence they have had upon the
general course of events, not only because of what
they wrote or said.
Now I am not going to claim that the list of
Sayings which I have read to you are the deepest
or the most original of the recorded Sayings of
our Lord. It may very well be that some of the
most profound of the Sayings of His that have
167

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
survived at all are recorded only by a single
Evangelist. But if we are asking what was the
teaching of Jesus Christ which Impressed His
followers generally, or what was the main Im
pression made by His teaching, then I think we
are justified in pointing to this list that I have
drawn up. It may not be the most profound or
subtle view that we can obtain of our Lord's
doctrines, but we have reason to consider it, so
far as it goes, a true view. At least It will be
useful to us as a corrective : any other Portrait of
the Lord which we may draw must not be in
consistent with the Portrait attested by the mouth
of our two witnesses.
Not that it is by any means easy to put to
gether the Sayings in our list and weave them
Into a body of systematic doctrine. I shall not
attempt to do so ; I shall only offer a few
scattered remarks on some features of the teach
ing which more or less prominently emerge.
To begin with, we may pass by several of the
Sayings which really have rather a biographical
than a religious Interest, such as the saying about
the Prophet In his own country (13), and the
directions for the early missionary journeys of the
apostles (14). Let us go on to the attacks upon
the Scribes and Pharisees (27). The Scribes
168

OUR LORD AND THE SCRIBES
were the trained theologians of Israel, the
Pharisees were the religious world of Israel.
They therefore represented that element In the
Jewish people with which a religious Teacher
might have been expected to be in harmony.
We do actually read that our Lord's con
temporaries found it strange that He should
consort with the irreligious, and it Is quite obvious
that His answer to their complaint is at least
partly ironical. He did not believe that the
Scribes and Pharisees were whole and in no need
of a Physician, and I do not think that He con
sorted with those whom the Pharisees regarded
as sinners solely because He saw that they were
in the greatest need of repentance.
The opposition of Jesus to the Scribes does
really stand In some need of elucidation. We
Christians only hear of these folk as the opponents
of our Lord. We hear Him cry ' Woe unto you.
Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! ' We do not
know any Scribes and Pharisees, but perhaps we
do know some hypocrites, and we are content to
think of Scribes and Pharisees as another term for
hypocrites. But it is a very serious indictment
to draw up against the Jewish people. My friend
Mr, Claude Montefiore has recently protested,
not without reason, against the picture of the
Rabbinical religion which Is commonly drawn by
169

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Christians out of materials supplied by the
Christian Gospels. He complains that learned
theologians, some of whom are orthodox In
nothing else, agree In representing the Rabbinical
religion as mechanical and unspiritual, although
as a matter of fact and history it has been the
sustaining force which has knit together and kept
alive the Jewish nation unto this day. It has
been held by many Jews that Jesus was really
too emphatic in denouncing the Scribes, that He
called them a generation of vipers merely because
they rejected His doctrine.
Let us be fair to the Jews. Let us admit
first of all that the Christians may have only too
easily remembered their Master's words against
some Scribes, and afterwards set them down In
such a way that they seem like an accusation
against all the Scribes. That this Is not mere
fancy may be seen by comparing Matthew with
Mark. Mark tells us how Jesus told the people
to beware of the Scribes who desired the chief
seats in the Synagogues while (as His phrase
goes) they ' devoured widows' houses ' ; at the
same time he tells us of the enthusiastic praise
given by one of the Scribes to our Lord's summary
of the Law as a joining together of the commands
to love God and one's neighbour (26). But
though this Scribe was commended by Jesus,
170

THE RABBINICAL RELIGION
Matthew tells us nothing about him that Is good.
According to Matthew, he was 'tempting' Jesus,
and he says nothing to Jesus in reply. Yet if
we are to judge the Jews out of what we read In
the Gospels, we ought not to forget what Mark
tells us about this Scribe.
But in the next place we may ask ourselves
how far the Rabbinical religion Is the Immediate
descendant of the main current of the Judaism of
the ist century ad. Between the Judaism of
the time of Christ and the Judaism of the early
Middle Ages intervened two catastrophes, or
rather one catastrophe in two great shocks, such
as hardly ever befel any nation that has survived.
The two great Jewish rebellions in the times of
Vespasian (ad 70) and of Hadrian (ad 135)
ended in utter collapse, and most of the leading
features of the older Judaism perished In them
for ever. In ad 70 perished the Jewish State,
the Temple, the annual pilgrimages to the Feasts,
the Priestly aristocracy, all the worldly political
hopes of the Jews, Everything which the
Gospels connect with the Sadducees or with the
Herods disappeared for ever. The Revolt of
Bar-Cochba against Hadrian was equal to the
Great Revolt In fierceness ; it also contained a
Pharisaic element. Bar-Cochba was supported
by Rabbi Aqiba, himself in some ways to be
171

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
regarded as the founder of modern Judaism.
Aqiba died a martyr, and with him died the last
effort of mHitant Pharisaism.
What was left to the Jews? We may answer
with S. Paul ' much every way,' for they were left
with the Oracles of God ; but they were left with
little else. In these awful catastrophes had
perished a great part of what Jesus had most
opposed. Thousands of Jews had been killed
outright : we cannot doubt that many of the
survivors lost their nationality and became
merged into the Gentiles. Very likely many
became Christians : it is difficult, for Instance, to
explain certain features in the rise of Christianity
in Edessa, except on the supposition that the
original congregation was largely composed of
converted Jews. The Remnant who were left,
who still remained Jews, were attached to their
religion from motives which were in many ways
akin to the motives that made men Christians.
They had learnt that the Kingdom of God was not
of this world ; there was now no inducement to
serve the God of Israel left for those who did
not still love Him and trust His promises. Can
we wonder that Judaism tended to become a
more spiritual religion, narrow indeed in its outer
aspect, but animated within by humility and
grace, even by mysticism ?
172

THE RABBINICAL RELIGION
But in so far as the Rabbinical religion is all
this, it has been metamorphosed from the pre-
vaHIng Judaism of the ist century, I do not
think we need deny the real spirituality of the
Rabbinical religion because we believe what the
Gospels say about the Scribes, or that we need
disbelieve what the Gospels say about the
Scribes In the ist century because we recognise
the real spirituality of the Rabbinical religion.
We have a right to believe that the spiritual
descendants of the Scribes whom Jesus de
nounced perished in the two Revolts during the
century after the Crucifixion, whUe the spiritual
ancestor both of the Jews who became Christians
and the Jews who developed and maintained the
Rabbinical religion is represented by the Scribe
who was 'not far from the Kingdom of
God.' Even on the one point where the Synoptic
Gospels have been said to have given a wholly
false representation of the teaching of the Rabbis,
viz. the doctrine of ' Corban,' it seems to me
dangerous to disbelieve the Gospel evidence.
It is said that the Rabbis never failed in In
culcating a man's duty to his father and mother,
that parents came before vows. But I can quite
understand that while the Temple was still
standing the duty of a religious vow might seem
173

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
to some a more direct service to God, and there
fore more binding, than a man's ordinary duty to
his parents. At least it is our plain business
to remember, before we blame the unnatural
casuistry of the Rabbis, that on a different
occasion our Lord also declared that whoso had
left father or mother for His sake would
receive a hundredfold reward.^ The real moral
of the dispute about Corban for the Christian
theologian is that It shews the very great
stress which our Lord laid under ordinary
circumstances upon the ordinary natural duties
of life as compared with ecclesiastical and
ritual fervours ; and therefore it brings into
prominence the exceptional character of the
exceptional demands which He made to
wards the end of His Ministry on those
who wished to follow Him then. That
He had the right and the power to make
these demands He did not doubt ; but however
often the occasions may recur, they remain
exceptional. The real cause of quarrel between our Lord
and the Scribes seems to me to be that It was a
quarrel between erudition and intuition, between
1 Similarly, the Saying of Jesus in Mk iii 31 ff" about his mother
and brethren (5) is historically connected with the attempt of His
relatives to arrest Him as a madman. Hence the difference of
tone between this passage and Mk vii 9 ff.
174

ERUDITION AND INTUITION
traditionalism and originality. With us the word
' originality ' tends to be used for mere clever
ness, but in its true sense It Is the very word for
the great characteristic of our Lord's teaching,
especially as compared with the principles of the
Scribes, It was, in fact, so original as to be
superficially inconsistent. The tradition of the
Elders (said He) Is inconsistent with the Word
of God, the Law revealed to Moses : well then,
the tradition of the Elders must go. But in the
matter of Divorce (21) it is the Law of Moses
itself that was given for the hardness of men's
hearts ; well then, the Law of Moses must go.
In the matter of the Sabbath (i) It is the very
Law of God, which, according to the Jewish
view, God Himself has kept from the beginning,
that comes into conflict with duties of kindness
and beneficence ; well then, even the Law of
God is to be broken, as David did. What does
all this mean, but that the supreme sanction lay
not in any Code or set of Rules, however pro
mulgated, but in an enlightened conscience, a
mind really in harmony with the mind of the
Father in Heaven? We have learnt the lesson
so well that we do not see the difficulty. Our
difficulty is to know what enlightenment Is, but
that was not the difficulty of the Scribes. They
did not doubt that it was worse for a man to be
12 175

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
paralysed than to be sound ; they doubted
whether it was worse for a man to be paralysed
or for the Sabbath to be broken.
Closely connected with all this Is the way of
looking at events which Jesus called blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit (2-4). The opponents
of our Lord, who said that He cast out devils
by Beelzebul the prince of the devils, did not
deny that the devils were really cast out and
the sufferers benefited. It is very likely that If
we were to be transported back to Palestine we
should use very different medical terms both for
the diseases and the mode of cure, but that is
not the question. What the Scribes said was
in effect : ' We admit that you have cured the
man, but we do not recognise the treatment ;
it must have been unlawful.' They do not say,
as doctors sometimes say of quacks, that such
and such a treatment is sure to have evil effects
afterwards. That again is another question
altogether, which is not raised in the Gospels.
What is called In the Gospels blasphemy against
the Holy Spirit is the refusal to acknowledge
a manifest benefit to have been the work of
'the finger of God.'^
' In this matter Jesus is truly consistent with Himself, for He
refused to condemn the man who ' cast out devils ' in His name,
although not one of His followers. 176

AUTHORITY AND TRADITION
But the rejection of Tradition and of external
Authority Is a very serious course to take. Even
if we believe that our Lord was right and the
Scribes wrong in the particular disputes that
took place between them, that does not give
us a rule for other times and other questions.
Moreover, to substitute unintelllgently the rule
of Jesus for the rule of Moses is to act clean
contrary to the principle which Jesus taught.
There was no dispute between our Lord and
the Scribes as to the canonicity of the Pentateuch,
or whether God had really given commandments
to Moses. The question was whether a rule,
which was admitted to have all the sanction that
a code of rules can have, could retain its binding
force in changed and inappropriate circumstances.
How is the Christian to get and to retain that
sure and intuitive judgement of right and wrong
that his Master had?
It seems to me that the answer which Jesus
gave is contained in the two groups of Sayings
about HumHity (22) and about Watchfulness (31),
It is difficult to know where to begin, for there
are so many familiar Sayings of our Lord on these
subjects which all mean much the same thing in
the end. It is characteristic of His whole teach
ing that there can be no doubt about right and
Wrong for those who have eyes to see and ears
177

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
to hear. Those whose eyes are clear — Jesus
said ' simple ' — can see clearly, but most folk
have one eye fixed on the Will of God and
the other on their own private advantage, with
the natural result that they see double and their
whole outlook Is confused. And therefore He
-strove again and again to set the ambition of
His disciples away from their private advantage
and to turn it towards the service of their
brethren. Only he whose ambition it was to
serve the others was great among His
followers (22); only he who was at peace with
those around him could pray aright to the
common Father of him and them (20, 25) ;
and even in prayer only he who was so far
forgetful of his private wishes as to believe
that he had virtually received what he had
asked for could hope to be heard by God
(23, 24).
And I venture to urge that In something of
this kind lies the permanent ethical value of the
many Sayings about the duty of Watchfulness.
' Watch therefore, for ye know not when the
lord of the house cometh ' ; ' Blessed are those
servants whom the lord when he cometh shall
find watching,' — what do these and slmHar
Sayings really mean, when stripped of their
eschatological dress? 178

HUMILITY AND WATCHFULNESS
The hope of the Second Coming of the Son
of Man has faded with us into an unsubstantial
dream. We are not expecting a new heaven
and a new earth — at least, not in our time. And
consequently all the thoughts and the imagery
which imply the near approach of a tremendous
catastrophe have in them something strange and
unreal to us. Yet it Is imperative that we should
realise the point of view of our Lord's con
temporaries. If we are to understand His teaching
about the approaching End. It is no use to
allegorize altogether the idea of the Second
Advent, still less to regard ' The Kingdom of
God is within you ' as the only genuine teaching
of Jesus, and all the rest as carnal misunderstand
ing on the part of the disciples. The true way
is to accept the Coming of Messiah upon the
clouds of heaven to gather together His elect
from every quarter as the natural picture, the
natural way of expressing faith and hope in the
triumph of good over evil, all that people mean
nowadays by the vague word Progress. The
age In which our Lord lived did not believe In
Progress ; it was too bad an age, at least for
the class of people among whom Christianity
grew up. The only progress they had seen was
progress to the bad. To associate Ideas of
natural growth with the coming of God's
179

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
kingdom was a strange notion, which the
disciples were hardly able to grasp when they
heard their Master speak of It. If they thought
of growth at all In this connexion, it was In the
awful imagery of the Apocalypse, where there is
growth and harvest and vintage indeed, but it is
gathered into the great winepress of the wrath of
God.i And, on the whole, men were justified in looking
forward at that time to Catastrophe rather than
Progress. The Jewish State and the Jewish
Nation, as history had known them, did come
to a violent end ; and the survivors — Christianity
and Rabbinical Judaism, — however good a title
they may make out for themselves to be legitimate
heirs of the old order, are not the old order Itself,
but a new state of things. A time of Catastrophe
means a time when more than usual it is necessary
to make the right choice. Most paths lead to
swift destruction, most lines of action end in
Immediate ruin.
What, then, did our Lord command His faithful
followers ? If we confine ourselves to the Sayings
which have come down to us doubly reported,
those parts of His Teaching which appear In
S. Mark and elsewhere as well, we find that
He told them to watch like servants waiting
^ Apoc xiv 19.
180

THE PARUSIA
through the night for their lord to return (31),
but they were not to be mere passive spectators.
There was the double danger before them, first
of hailing as a new revelation that which was
not a revelation at all, but the will-o'-the-wisp of
a false prophet (30) ; and then the equally fatal
course of not being ready to act when the decisive
moment came (29).
Our Lord was proved right by the event, when
He bade His disciples look forward to a time of
trial and crisis, followed by a total change of the
conditions of their life. The actual event was
very different in detail from what had been
expected, but the mortal shock was real enough.
The Christendom of the second and succeeding
centuries was a very different thing in almost
every particular from the Kingdom of God that
had been looked for by the disciples in GaHlee
and in Jerusalem. But It was, as a matter of
fact, the line upon which the movement which
our Lord started was destined to go ; and that
the Christian movement survived at all, or
survived with a real memory of what It had
started from. Is a proof that the disciples had
learnt their lesson. They endured to the end
and were saved themselves. Much of what they
most valued was In their old home, the doomed
House of Israel ; but they had learnt that they
181

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
must not go back and attempt to salvage their
property. So when the Jewish State came to
an end, Christianity was left.
A common accusation often brought nowadays
against the early Christians is that their ethics
and their morality are Inappropriate for a stable
society that hopes to attain a higher standard of
comfort for its members by gradual amelioration.
It Is a sufficient answer to say that had the early
Christians devoted themselves to the well-to-do
philanthropy of the nineteenth century they never
would have survived at all. But I venture to
think that our answer need not stop there. We
have learnt to see that the crisis which marks the
conclusion of the old order is a continual process,
that it is always In operation, and that what is
unfit for the new order Is being continually cast
out. No generation, and least of all our own,
can pass away without far-reaching changes In
the modes by which alone men can express their
aspirations after the Eternal that changes not.
The old formulas, the old symbols, must always
be reconceived or die. It is for us still to take
heed to ourselves, lest our hearts be overcharged
with the politics of the moment and the dregs of
old disputes that once were fresh, and the new
era come upon us suddenly as a snare. This
is what Jesus Christ tells us when He says, as
182

THE PARUSIA
S. Luke paraphrases a still older form of His
words : ' Keep watch at every season, making
supplication that ye may prevail to escape all
these things that shall come to pass and to stand
before the Son of Man.'

183

VI.
THE GOSPEL IN MATTHEW
AND IN LUKE,
eXeyov ovv avra Su tIs et ; einev avTois
6 'lrj<Tovs Trjv dp-)(rjv Sri Kol XaXS vptv.
T F the Style Is the Man, then we are in a position
to know something of the compiler of the
Gospel according to Matthew. We have already
learned a good deal in the course of these Lectures
about the composition of this work. We have seen
that It is based upon Mark, but in the earlier portion
the material taken from Mark has been freely
transposed and curtailed in order to make room
for a collection of the Sayings of our Lord, which
are Introduced at appropriate places in the re
arranged narrative. In addition to these Sayings,
a story of the Birth of Jesus Christ Is prefixed to
the Gospel, with a genealogy which goes from
Abraham through David to Joseph.
All through the Gospel, in the parts taken
from Mark, In the Nativity story and the other
additions to the narrative, and not least In the
184

THE GOSPEL IN MATTHEW
Sayings ascribed to our Lord Himself, we find
the same peculiarities of language, a peculiar
style marked by the recurrence of certain
formulas and favourite expressions. To such an
extent is this the case that there Is hardly a
paragraph in the Gospel that does not contain
one or more. The Kingdom, of Heaven, used
by Matthew where other Evangelists speak of
the ' Kingdom of God,' Is the best known of them,
but there are many others equally characteristic.
Such, for instance, is the way In which after the
longer discourses of our Lord, the Evangelist
takes up the narrative with, ' And It came to pass
when Jesus had finished these sayings. . . .';^
or again, the way in which a new paragraph
begins with 'then.'^ The Parables themselves
are stereotyped, they begin ' The kingdom of
heaven is like to this or that,' ^ and they tend to
end up with ' There shall be the wailing and the
gnashing of teeth.'* You will find a list of the
Words and Phrases characteristic of S. Matthew's
¦^ Matt vii 28, xi i, xiii 53, xix i, xxvi i, contain this formula
with slight variations.
^ In the narrative ' then ' occurs in Matthew 60 times, in Mark
never, in Luke twice ; in discourses ' then ' occurs in Matthew 30
times, in Mark six times, in Luke thirteen times.
^ Matt xiii 31, 33, 44, 45, 47, xx i, xiii 24, xviii 23, xxii 2, xxv i ;
this formula never is used in the other Gospels.
* This formula occurs at the end of a Saying of Jesus in Matt
viii 12, xiii 42, 50, xxii 13, xxiv 51, xxv 30 ; elsewhere only Lk xiii 28,
where it stands at the beginning of a Saying.
185

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Gospel on pp. 4-7 of Sir John Hawkins's Horae
Synopticae, a list which repays very careful study.
But Indeed one hardly needs to read such a list
to be convinced of the general facts.
Yet I wish I could think of some other word
than ' formality ' by which to name the chief
characteristic of the First Evangelist's literary
style. Formality suggests frigidity, generally
with a certain measure of Incapacity, and these
are not among his defects. On the contrary,
Matthew has great literary skill, as well as
dignity. Everything that he says is put with
admirable clearness and lucidity ; what he writes
down he has first understood himself If there
Is an exception to be noted he notes it. A wife
is not to be divorced, said Jesus, according to
Mark and Luke ; Matthew adds the exception
saving for the cause of fornication. ' Blessed are
the poor and the hungry,' said Jesus (Lk vi 20,
21); Matthew explains that the 'poor' are the
poor in spirit, and the ' hungry ' are those who
hunger after righteousness. At the end of the
scene In which Jesus spoke to His disciples in the
boat about the leaven of the Pharisees, Matthew
adds ' Then ' — notice the typical Matthaean cast
of the sentence, — ' then understood they how that
He bade them not beware of the leaven of bread,
but of the teaching of the Pharisees and the
186

THE GOSPEL IN MATTHEW
Sadducees ' (Matt xvi 12). Some twenty verses
later, after the Transfiguration, Matthew reports
(from Mark) the sayings of Jesus about Elijah
coming to restore all things, but he adds, ' Then
understood the disciples that He spake unto them
of John the Baptist ' (Matt xvii 13). Similarly, he
points the moral of the Parable of the Vineyard,
already sufficiently obvious, by making our Lord
say, after the telling quotation about the Stone
that the buHders rejected, ' Therefore say I unto
you, the Kingdom of God shall be taken away
from you, and given to a nation bringing forth
the fruits thereof (Matt xxi 43).
This last Illustration of the First Evangelist's
method is highly characteristic. It is magnificent,
but it is not history ; at least it is not history, if by
history we mean the nearest possible approach
to giving a cinematograph view of a past scene,
accompanied by a record on the gramophone.
Such a record would indeed be precious, but even
if we had it we should want something more.
We should still want a Commentary, something
which would give us the moral of what we were
seeing and hearing.
I do not think that Matthew — it is convenient
to call the CompHer of the Gospel according to
Matthew by the traditional name — aimed at being
a Chronicler. This statement would not be true
187

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
of all the Evangelists. Mark and Luke are, in
a way. Chroniclers ; that Is^ a very great part of
their Intention is to tell the story of the events
more or less as they came to pass. With Matthew
the case Is different. He Is not especially con
cerned to paint the most lifelike picture possible
of Jesus of Nazareth as He walked the earth in
what was, even when Matthew wrote, a past age.
His aim rather Is to shew forth the real signifi
cance of one who had come in the fulness of time,
fulfilling the ancient words of prophecy, proving
Himself thereby to be the legitimate King and
Lawgiver of the new Nation which Is the true
Israel of God.
' The Kingdom of God shall be taken away
from you and given to a nation bringing forth the
fruits thereof — this Is the motto, the special
doctrine, of the Gospel according to Matthew.
The disciples are a new legitimate Israel, come to
take the place of the old Israel, and bound
together by a New Law which takes the place of
the Old. The keynote of the work is not the
opposition of Law and Grace, as in S. Paul, but
the opposition of the Old Law and the New
Law. It Is very difficult to dwell upon the leading
characteristics of Matthew without seeming to fall
back Into the phrases of Baur and his followers,
i88

THE OLD LAW AND THE NEW
to whom the main event in the development of
the early Church was the struggle between
' Paulinism ' and the primitive Jewish Christianity
of the original apostles. I am not trying to revive
the antiquated heresies of the Tiibingen School.
We need not doubt that S. Paul really wrote, and
wrote with truth, that James and Cephas and
John gave him the right hand of fellowship ; and
I venture to think, with (I suppose) the great
majority of modern students of early Christian
literature, that It is absurd and fantastic to explain
expressions in the Parables given by Matthew,
such as the 'enemy' of xiii 25 who sowed Tares
among the Wheat, as covert allusions to the
Apostle of the GentHes. Nevertheless there
remains a certain element of truth In the conten
tion of the Tiibingen theologians. There is. It
was Inevitable that there should be, a real differ
ence between the outward aspect of Christianity
in the Gentile communities founded by S. Paul,
in which the Christians were dissenters from the
heathen view of life, and the Jewish or semi-
Jewish communities In Palestine, in which the
Christians were a sect or school among the Jews.
To be a Christian at all In a heathen city meant
an inevitable change of life in every social and
domestic custom. The religion of a man's
neighbours was the service of Demons, a thing
189

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
altogether Irrational or wicked from the Christian's
point of view. There were scandals, of course,
In the little Christian societies, but on the whole
the pressure of the outside world tended to keep
things straight within the fold. But in the Jewish
communities the moral position of the Christianised
Jews was different. Here It could not be asserted
as a self-evident proposition that the Christian's
manner of life was better than the Jew's. The
Christian and the Jew worshipped the same God,
they appealed to the same sacred Scriptures, the
same Saints of old supplied acknowledged ex
amples of godly conduct. It might well seem
that except the righteousness of the Christian
exceeded the righteousness of the Jews around
them, they could not enter into the kingdom of
heaven. On every point debatable questions of
conduct would arise, and the Christians felt the
need of Rules which might guide their actions
with reference to the rules observed by their more
conservative neighbours.
In no book of our New Testament Is this con
ception of a New Law for Christians so prominent
as In the Gospel according to S. Matthew. No
book of the New Testament Is so full of thoughts
and expressions which have a real parallel In
Rabbinical literature. The Evangelist is, so to
speak, a Christian Rabbi, though no doubt he
190

THE OLD LAW AND THE NEW
would have disclaimed the tltle.^ If the Gospel
of Mark is most closely in touch with History,
the Gospel of Matthew Is most closely in touch
with the Talmud. Like the other Gospels it is
in form a narrative of the earthly life of Jesus
Christ, but It sets forth that life with reference to
the questions that most nearly concerned a Church
composed of Palestinian Christians. No doubt the
Evangelist feels himself and his brethren separated
from the mass of his unbeHeving fellow-country
men. The Christians form an Ecclesia, a Society,
of their own (xviii 17), distinct from ordinary
Jews (xxviii 15). The separation had been made
absolute when ' all the people ' had answered
Pilate by saying ' His blood be on us, and on our
children I ' (xxvii 25). But even so, the unbeliev
ing Jew is nearer than the Gentile and the tax-
gatherer (xviii 17) : he that is outcast to the Jew
Is outcast also to the Evangelist,
I imagine it to be one of the most delicate of
the problems which confront the Investigator of
the Gospel History to determine how far the
Sayings of Jesus reported only In the Gospel
according to Matthew are, in the narrower sense,
historical : how far, that Is, they are a literal trans
lation into Greek of words which Jesus once spoke,
^ Matt xxiii 8,
13 191

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
and how far they represent the practice and the
hopes and fears of those of His countrymen who
believed on Him a generation after the Crucifixion.
Happily the problem Is less important than at
first sight appears, at least to those who believe
with our Evangelist, that in a very real sense the
risen Lord was with His disciples all the days,
and that the Church in Palestine as well as in
Corinth and in Rome was really carrying out the
work that Jesus had originated. But when we
seek to pick out the particular sayings which
happen to have come down to us unmodified In
word and expression, we are attempting a task
which Is in most instances Impossible to carry out.
It Is not only a question whether this or that
sentence or illustration comes really from a later
time : ^ the Evangelist all through is thinking of
his own age and the condition and needs of his
fellow-Christians. It is this which everywhere
influences the representation that he gives of the
events of the past generation. "The Kingdom
of God here and now, according to Matthew's
representation," says Wellhausen {Einl. p. 105),
" is an Institution founded by Jesus, and conversely
the thought of the Kingdom Is inseparable from its
Founder. On this assumption Jesus has the
design to found it on earth, and so appears from
1 E.g. the mention of Zacharias, son of Barachias, in Matt xxiii 35.
192

WELLHAUSEN ON MATTHEW
the beginning as Messiah. From the beginning
He specially teaches His own disciples, to shew
them In detail how the Society of His followers
must be constituted and what kind of experiences
will befall it. He does not scatter His teaching
about on every soil heedless of its success or
failure, but sows the Kingdom of God with the
' Word of the Kingdom,' and this Kingdom of
God when called the Field is the same as in
the Parable of the Vineyard. We cannot help
recognising that the Ecclesia, the Church, is
meant, although the name is generally avoided on
historical grounds. Especially is this clear when
Jesus speaks of Scribes and Stewards of the
Kingdom of God, of the Labourers, some of whom
have long worked in it, and some only for a short
while, and of its worthy and unworthy members ;
or again, when He says that John the Baptist,
though he be the greatest of Jews, yet is less than
the least member of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The identification of the Kingdom and the Ecclesia
is entirely comprehensible, seeing that the
Christian Society was undeniably the work of
Jesus, and it was considered to be the porch of
Heaven Itself But this Kingdom, as it Is set
forth In Matthew, is altogether ' Christian ' ; it
cannot have been thus set forth, or rather pre
supposed, by Jesus Himself For in this Gospel
193

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
He really presupposes the Kingdom without con
sidering any explanation about it necessary. He
addresses His disciples as though they were
already members of His Society and organised as
such; He transfers Himself into a future state of
things as if It were then actually present."^
Professor Wellhausen's characteristic judgement
of the general standpoint of the Gospel according
1 I have ventured to paraphrase the German so much in order
to make this isolated quotation clear that I give the original here
also. Wellhausen's actual words are: "Das gegenwartige
Reich, wie es namentlich bei Matthaus erscheint, ist die Stiftung
Jesu und hat ihn zum notwendigen Korrelat. Unter dieser Voraus-
setzung hat er die Absicht, es auf Erden zu griinden und tritt eben
damit von Anfang an als Messias auf Er lehrt von Anfang an
speziell seine Junger, um ihnen aus einander zu setzen, wie seine
Gemeinde beschaffen sein soil und was ihr widerfahren wird. Er
streut nicht unbekiimmert um den Erfolg auf beliebigen Boden
seine Lehren aus, sondern er sat durch das Wort vom Reich
das Reich Gottes an, welches mit dem Saatfelde oder der Pflanzung
in dem selben Sinne verglichen wird wie mit dem Weinberge.
Dass er darunter die eK/cXjjo-ia versteht, deren Namen er aus
historischen Griinden in der Regel vermeidet, lasst sich nicht
verkennen ; es erhellt besonders deutlich, wenn er von Schrift-
gelehrten und Verwaltern, von alteren und jungeren Schichten, von
wiirdigen und unwurdigen Mitgliedern des Reiches Gottes spricht,
oder wenn er sagt, der Taufer obwol der grosste Jude sei doch
kleiner als das geringste Mitglied des Reiches Gottes. Die
Gleichsetzung der ^aa-cXeia und der eKKXi/trm begreift sich
vollkommen, da die Gemeinde unleugbar die Wirkung Jesu war
und fiir die Vorstufe' des Himmels gait. Aber sie ist durchaus
christlich und kann nicht von Jesu selber voUzogen oder gar voraus-
gesetzt sein. Denn er setzt sie in der Tat voraus, ohne eine
Erklarung dariiber fiir notwendig zu halten. Er redet zu seinen
Jiingem, als waren sie schon seine Gemeinde und als solche
organisirt ; er versetzt sich in eine zukunftige Situation, als ware
sie gegenwartig."
194

WELLHAUSEN ON MATT^HEW
to Matthew appears to me worthy of very careful
attention and to contain a great deal that is
undeniably true. We miss altogether in this
Gospel the historical perspective which meets us
in Mark, In Mark the story moves from
situation to situation, from the beginning to the
crisis ; in Matthew, as in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, the Master is depicted as 'Jesus Christ,
the same yesterday and to-day and for ever,'
The Church, the organised body of believers in
Jesus, is, as Wellhausen says, presupposed all
through, and this anticipation of the events has
doubtless coloured the turn of many a phrase.
But I venture to think that Wellhausen has
pushed a legitimate argument further than it Is
wise to go, and that we shall make a mistake if
we refuse to accept a great deal of the teaching of
this Gospel as a true representation of what Jesus
taught. I find it difficult to believe that the
Parables and Sayings which speak of the Kingdom
of God as a thing to be realised here on earth
would have retained so fresh and unecclesiastlcal
an atmosphere, if they were both In spirit and in
substance the work of an age later than our Lord.
Nowhere in early Christian literature, except In
the three Synoptic Gospels, do we find that
picturesque outlook on men and nature that finds
its expression in the Parables of Jesus. The
195

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Acts of the Apostles is full of speeches of Peter
and Paul and other Christians of the early times.
These speeches are either the work of the
speakers themselves, or of the compiler of the
Acts, who is himself one of the Evangelists. But
there is never a Parable among them, and not
many Sayings like the Sayings in the Gospels.
As an instance of what I mean, let us take the
Parable of the Tares and its Explanation (Matt
xiii 24-30, 36-43). Both Parable and Explana
tion are found in Matthew only, and the
Concordance will shew you that they exhibit in
a very marked degree the linguistic peculiarities
of the First Evangelist. No doubt, therefore, the
wording, both of the Parable and of the Explana
tion, Is the Evangelist's wording. But how very
different they are In their Inner structure ! They
both mean the same thing ; you cannot doubt
that the explanation is, in a general way, correct.
Indeed it Is too correct : the Field is the world,
the Enemy Is the devil, this figure In the scene
means this, and that means that, untH the whole
picture of the Harvest of men has melted away,
and the just are represented as shining like the
sun, Instead of lying stored like wheat In a barn.
I can well believe that the Explanation is alto
gether the handiwork of the Evangelist or of
his contemporaries, but the original picture of the
196

GENUINENESS OF THE PARABLES
good and the bad, growing together unhindered
until the harvest is ripe, seems to me to come
from another and a more creative mind. And I
know of no one else to whom to ascribe this
picture save our Lord, who taught His disciples
to imitate their Father in Heaven whose sun
shines alike on bad and good, and whose rain falls
on the just and the unjust.
I think also that we may easily go too far In
pressing the logical consequences of the belief
that the world was speedily coming to an end.
It Is true that the Ministry was a short period
when we look at It from the point of view of
general history, and that doubtless the disciples
expected that the Kingdom of God was im
mediately to appear. But If a particular twelve
or thirteen months be a very short space of time
when viewed from a distance, it is sufficiently
long for those who are actually passing through
it to raise questions which can only be settled by
an appeal to eternal principles. We know from
the Gospel of Mark that besides the main events
of the Ministry there was plenty of time for
disputes about precedence to develop among our
Lord's nearest followers.^ We saw in the first
of these Lectures how many days there were
which are unchronicled by the Evangelists. Yet
» Mk ix 34, X 35.
197

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
in each of them our Lord and the disciples must
have eaten and slept — or gone without food and
sleep, — In each of them there must have been a
round of more or less ordinary occupations, quite
sufficient In themselves to call forth the Sayings
that we find recorded.
The actual fact of the dislocation of Mark's
order by Matthew justifies us In paying very
little attention to the order In which we find the
Sayings of Jesus grouped In Matthew's Gospel ;
the way In which Matthew often, but not always,
modifies the language of Mark warns us that we
must expect Matthew to have similarly modified
the language of his other, and to us lost, sources.
But the very fact that Matthew after all retains
so much of what Is primitive in Mark, should'
teach us that Matthew has probably retained
much of what Is primitive in his other sources.
However short our Lord and His disciples may
have imagined the time would be before the End
— and Jesus expressly declared that He did not
know the day or the hour — there was yet plenty
of time to go wrong in, plenty of time for a
discrimination between the faithful and the
unfaithful, the false prophet and the true. And
therefore I think that we shall do better to regard
these Sayings of Jesus In the Gospel of Matthew,
in which a Christian community seems more or
198

GENUINENESS OF THE SAYINGS
less to be presupposed, rather as adaptations of
what the disciples had remembered of their
Master's teaching than as new inventions made
for the purpose. It is easy to apply the Sayings
in the Gospels to the varying-needs of the moment :
you may, in fact, hear it done in any pulpit every
Sunday in Church and Chapel. But It is not so
easy to make new Sayings and new Parables like
those In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke ; at
least, that kind of speech does not make Itself
heard In the extant remains of what the first four
generations of Christians wrote.
For these reasons, whHe we cannot suppose
that the order in which the various Sayings of
Jesus are given In Matthew at all represents
the chronological order in which they were spoken,
yet there is not the same reason to regard them as
unauthentic in substance. They are arranged, and
here and there altered in expression, to meet
the needs of the Christian community in Palestine
towards the end of the first century ; but I
venture to think that the greater part of the
substance of the Teaching, and all that is most
fresh and picturesque in its expression, come from
historical reminiscence of the Master's words.
There are two points upon which I ought to
touch before we leave the Gospel of Matthew.
These are the appeal to prophecy and the repre-
199

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
sentatlon of Jesus Christ as the Son of David.
Both points Illustrate in a very marked degree
the legal, we may almost say constitutional, ideas
of the First Evangelist. It Is very easy for us at
the present time to do less than justice to the
'Argument from Prophecy,' as our fathers called
it. When we read In the Gospel of Matthew
' Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by the Lord through the
Prophet, saying . . ,' (Matt i 22 f, xxi 4!), we
simply do not agree with the Evangelist. And
we do not agree for two reasons. In the first
place, we have come to look at the Old Testa
ment in a different light. We do not believe that
the sayings of the Prophets and Psalmists were
so many dark riddles to themselves and their
contemporaries, without real significance except
in regard to certain future events which were to
happen centuries after. If the Prophet said ' Tell
the daughter of ZIon, behold, thy King cometh
unto thee riding upon an ass,' this must have had
its primary and sufficient meaning in the time of
the Prophet : we cannot believe that it needed
Christ's Entry Into Jerusalem to justify its
existence. In the second place, even if there be
among us any who still hold that this verse from
Zecharlah was really a prediction of our Lord's
Entry, I still do not think they would be satisfied
200

THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY
with the Evangelist's form of words. They
would assert, I am sure, that the Prophet said
these words because our Lord was going to enter
Jerusalem thus, I do not think they would agree
with Matthew that our Lord healed those that
were sick, ' that what was said through Isaiah the
Prophet might be fulfilled' (Matt vIH i6, 17).
They would say that our Lord healed the sick,
because it was His will and kindness to do so, and
that therefore Isaiah had been inspired to pro
phesy such things of Him,
The difference between our standpoint and that
of the Evangelist Is that between him and us
lies the whole edifice of Chrlstology. We know
what Jesus of Nazareth has been to the world ;
the Evangelist lived in an age which was only
beginning to find out. The argument from
Prophecy is ultimately an attempt to shew that
the Life and Mission of Jesus was no Divine
freak or caprice, but a part of a well-ordered whole.
To the pious Jew the utterances of the Prophets
had very much the same place in their idea of the
world as what we call the Laws of Nature have for
us : they were things which had been formulated
by men, yet they were not constituted by man, but
by God. How what we call the Old Testament had
acquired this sacred character Is another matter,
but that it had acquired the character Is undisputed.
201

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
The power of the argument from Prophecy, both
the motive force which prompted its use and its
effect upon those who were influenced by It, was
that it attempted to legitlmatise the Gospel History,
to shew that It was the legitimate outcome of the
religion of holy men of old.
It cannot be said that the early Christians in
general, or the First Evangelist In particular, were
very successful In their use of the Old Testament.
They rarely rise above surprising us by their
verbal ingenuity. All the more remarkable is it
therefore to notice that the only references to the
Old Testament In the Gospels which have any
real validity for us to-day are those which are
ascribed to our Lord Himself We know from
Mark that ' Love God and love your neighbour '
was what He regarded as the sum of the meaning
of the Old Testament, and Matthew repeats the
story, with the characteristic addition that on these
commandments hangs the whole Law and the
Prophets also.-^ But besides this, Matthew twice
(Ix 13, xii 7) makes our Lord quote from Hosea
' I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' This verse
(Hosea vi 6) Is one of those flashes of spiritual
insight which light up here and there the tortuous
and despondent utterances of the most obscure of
all the Hebrew Prophets. To bring it out from
1 Matt xxii 40 : a Rabbinical phrase, cf. Berachoth, 63a.
202

OUR LORD'S USE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
its obscurity shews not only a knowledge of the
letter of the Old Testament, but also a real
appreciation of the genius of Hebrew religion.
The Evangelist In his own person alleges Hosea's
word 'Out of Egypt have I called my Son,' as
being fulfilled by the Flight into Egypt. Now
we cannot prove by critical analysis that the
Evangelist found the quotation ' I desire mercy
and not sacrifice ' in his source as being quoted
by Jesus ; but is it not hard to believe that these
two quotations represent the same person's study
of Hosea ? All we can say for certain Is that the
one quotation shews Insight and intelligence, and
that the other does not. The fact remains, that
the quotations from the Old Testament, which
are given as quotations made by Jesus, shew a
very different degree of literary tact from those
made by His followers. Are we to say with the
Jews in the Fourth Gospel ' How knoweth this
man letters, having never learned ? ' ^
^ Other instances of really appropriate quotation from the OT are
to be found in Mk vii 6, 7 = Matt xv 6 ff" (Isaiah xxix 13) ; Matt xxi
16 (Ps viii 2) ; and Lk xxii 37 (Isaiah liii 12, see^bove, Lecture IV.
p. 141). In Matt xxi 16 the quotation from the Psalm is given
according to the text of the LXX , but it seems to me that a tradition
that Jesus had quoted, perhaps often quoted, a particular text m.ight
survive independently of the version in which he had quoted it, and
independently of other traditions of His Sayings. The words of
the OT were familiar to very many Jews, even if in a merely
mechanical way. But to remember that the Master used to quote
such and such a text is one thing ; it was quite another to pick out
203

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
To return to our Evangelist. Another line by
which he tried to mark out the place of his Lord
In the universal scheme of things was to regard
him as the Heir of David. The Gospel according
to Matthew may well be called The Book of Jesus
Christ, the son of David. According to Mark,
blind Bartimaeus had indeed called out to the
Galilean Prophet by this title, but no special stress
is laid on the wayside beggar's words. Matthew
not only gives this tale (xx 30, 31) : in his Gospel
our Lord Is recognised as Son of David by the two
blind men (ix 27), by the multitudes (xii 23), by
the Canaanitish woman (xv 22), and by the
children in the Temple itself (xxi 9, 15). Jesus is
the King of the twelve tribes of Israel (xix 28),
who is ultimately to reign over all the nations
(xxv 34). In a word, the special aim of Matthew
is to represent our Lord as the legitimate Heir of
the royal house of David. That the Messiah
should be merely a Son of David was not enough.
There were doubtless many sons of David alive
at the time ; but the Evangelist wanted the legiti
mate Heir of the Divine promises made to David,
That is why in this Gospel the Genealogy of
Joseph is taken through the line of the Kings of
for oneself appropriate utterances from what Tyconius calls 'the
unsurveyed forest of prophecy.' It is only in this way that we can
explain the quotation of Ps Ixxxii 6 in Joh x 34 : possibly there is
an allusion to the same verse in Lk vi 35 {eo-i(r6e vlo\ 'Yyfriorov).
204

THE HEIR OF DAVID
Judah, and why the usurper Herod Is alarmed
when he hears that the legitimate ruler has been
born within his dominions.-^
In reality the Kingdom of Jesus Christ was not
of this world, and Jesus Himself never claimed
obedience as the Heir of David's line. His only
reference to any connexion between David and
the Messiah Is the paradox with which He prefaces
His attack in the Temple courts on the Scribes
and their ways. When He quoted Psalm ex, and
asked how the Messiah could be David's son
when David called him Lord, Matthew tells us
that none of the Scribes could answer. No
wonder : there is no answer, except that the
current method of arguing from single texts taken
at random from the Old Testament can only
prove what is believed already. The real answer
is — ' Beware of the Scribes.' ^
But even in the matter of the representation
of our Lord as the Heir of David, we may
easHy do less than justice to the point of view
of the Evangelist. The Heir of David — what
was the worth of the inheritance when the
Gospel according to Matthew was being com-
1 A full discussion by the present writer of the text and interpreta
tion of the Genealogy, and of the story of the Nativity according
to Matthew, will be found in Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, vol. ii,
pp. 258-266.
2 Mk xii 38, Lk XX 46 : contrast Matt xxiii 2, 3.
205

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
piled ? Palestine was trodden under the heel of
the Roman power, Jerusalem was left desolate,
the Temple in ruins, the Jewish nation enslaved
and broken. The tabernacle of David was fallen,
and the only worth of the inheritance was
spiritual and ideal. We cannot doubt that to
the Evangelist the Royal descent of our Lord
from David, and through David from Abraham,
symbolised the belief that the still Infant Church,
immature, weak and Insignificant as It then was,
was yet the true Israel of God, foreseen from
of old and destined in due time to triumph over
the heathen world. And it is due to the
Evangelist to remember that the triumph to
which he looked forward was a triumph of
Incorporation. The disciples were to make
disciples of all the nations. More than that :
the final test was not whether men had called
Jesus ' Lord,' but whether they had been kind
without looking for reward. As I said In the
Introductory Lecture to this series, the Important
thing for our study of early Christianity is not
whether the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats
in Matt xxv is a literal translation of words once
spoken by Jesus, or to discover the real time and
place where they were first uttered. The im
portant thing is to recognise that this Is the
kind of teaching which the Evangelist thought
206

THE EVANGELISTS AND THE GOSPEL
worthy to put In his Lord's mouth, and which
the Church accepted as worthy. At the same j
time, the more we study the special aims and
tendencies of the Synoptic Evangelists, the greater
the gap appears between the theories which they
themselves elaborate and the circle of ideas in
which the Sayings of Jesus move. Again and
again we find ourselves In the presence of some
thing which may or may not be authentic historical
reminiscence, but Is in any case totally unlike the
other remains of early Christian literature. We
cannot tell whether the tale be well remembered,
or how many steps there may have been in Its
transmission, but the difference of spirit Is un-
mistakeable, and we take knowledge of the
Evangelists that they have been with Jesus.
The Gospel according to S. Luke brings us
Into a different atmosphere, and one more difficult
to characterise than that of the First Gospel.
This is mainly due to the fact that the Third
Evangelist is more of a compiler and less of a
theorist than Matthew. In a word, he is more
of a historian. I do not mean that all his
historical statements will better stand rigid in
vestigation, but I certainly believe that he in
tended to write history ; and further, that he
wrote history as we write it, by putting together
14 207

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
such materials as came to his hand. I have
already given you In the Fourth Lecture some
reasons for believing that the chief materials
out of which this Gospel is constructed are
Mark's Gospel and the lost Document which
we have called Q ; and further that, speaking
generally, the Evangelist (whom I still believe
to be Luke the Physician, sometime a companion
of the Apostle Paul, and now writing in his old
age) has set down the events and sayings that
he relates very much In the same order as they
were given in the sources he used, while making
many stylistic changes and minor alterations.
Where S. Luke follows his sources exactly, he
preserves for us very valuable fragments of
history : I have already given you an instance
when we were examining the story of our Lord's
arrest in Gethsemane, at the end of the Fourth
Lecture. On the other hand, some of the ex
pedients by which this Evangelist attempts to
weld , his materials together can hardly be
accepted by the scientific historian. This is
conspicuously the case with regard to his
representation of our Lord's last journey to
Jerusalem. Even if we agree with Luke as to
the route followed. It Is obvious that the greater
part of the sayings and anecdotes which are
assigned to this journey do not really belong to
208

S. LUKE'S POINT OF VIEW
It,^ but to an earlier period In the Ministry.
Apparently the Evangelist, finding that the
record of the journey from Capernaum to near
Jericho was almost a blank, inserted at this
point all the stories of our Lord's teaching for
which no appropriate place offered elsewhere.
No doubt many paragraphs come directly out of
the lost source Q, notably Lk xi 15-36,
But, as I have had occasion to remark several
times in the course of these Lectures, the lost
sources of the Evangelists cannot be recovered
in such a way that we can really examine their
structure and their spirit. It is more profitable
to examine the special aims of the Evangelists
themselves, the special aspects of the Christian
movement which the Evangelists thought well
to emphasise. And although It is not so easy
to make this characterisation in the case of Luke
as In that of Matthew, it is almost more
necessary to attempt to do so, because we are
dealing with the only writer who carries on the
tale beyond the Resurrection. The trustworthi
ness of the Gospel of Luke is the measure of
the trustworthiness of the Book of Acts ; the
special point of view from which the Gospel
History is looked at In this Gospel will shew
1 On the course of this journey, see the Note at the end of
Lecture III (pp. 96, 97). 209

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
us the special point of view from which the Acts
must have been written.
To put the question in a less pretentious but
more manageable form : what features are there
In the Gospel of Luke, which are either wholly
absent from, or less conspicuous in, the other
Gospels ? There are, of course, many Sayings
and Parables given In Luke which are not found
elsewhere. The Parables of the Good Samaritan,
of the Prodigal Son, of the Pharisee and the
Publican, are conspicuous Instances. And, as I
have just said with regard to the Parables found
only In Matthew, we shall do well to remember
that nothing In the least like them in form or style
Is to be found In Christian literature outside the
Synoptic Gospels. But the presence of these
Parables in Luke does not answer our question :
their teaching, after all. Is much the same as what
is given In the other Gospels.
It appears to me that the two tendencies which
are really characteristic of the writings of S. Luke
are a tendency towards voluntary poverty and a
tendency towards asceticism. Neither of these
Ideals, as I understand the matter, belonged by
nature and choice to the earliest form of the
Christian movement. Our Lord ate and drank
with those who invited Him, so that His
opponents called Him gluttonous and a wlne-
2IO

POVERTY AND ASCETICISM
bibber. His disciples provoked comment because
they did not fast, and Jesus Himself taught the
doctrine, so amazing to a Jew, that nothing a man
takes Into him can defile him.^ The sacrifices
which, when occasion arose. He demanded from
His followers were for the sake of the Cause,^ not
directly for their personal benefit in time to come.
For the Cause, for the sake of the Gospel, our
Lord was not afraid to call upon the disciples to
give up everything, but that was because the
circumstances required the sacrifice, not because
the goods of this life were in themselves bad.
This is the same attitude of mind that we find
in the letters of S. Paul. S. Paul, like his
Master, wished his disciples to be free from
anxiety about worldly matters. Marriage and
property were not unlawful, but they were roots j
which attached a man to this world ; and S. Paul
felt sure that the time was short and that the
fashion of this world was passing away.* We
never do justice to the theory and practice of the
first two generations of Christians, if we forget
even for an instant that there brooded over them
the shadow of the anticipated End of all things.
After the Fall of Jerusalem and the extinction
of the Jewish State the Christian Churches began
iMkviiisff". 2 Mk viii 35.
^ See especially i Cor vii 27-32.
2X1

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
gradually to find out that the end was not yet,
but the view of life which was reasonable In Judcea
for half a century after the Crucifixion continued
to assert Itself as the ethical Ideal In the Christian
communities. There was indeed much to en
courage asceticism In their ranks. For the first
three hundred years the Christian Church had
a precarious existence, sometimes actively per
secuted by the State, sometimes left alone, but
never formally permitted to live. In such circum
stances earthly ties, whether of property, or of wife
and children, are more or less of an encumbrance ;
they tend to make a man less eager, less whole
hearted. And so there sprang up the notion that
these things are inconsistent with the highest
Christian life ; that the Ideal Christian should be
pennHess and unmarried.
This point of view makes Itself felt all through
the writings of S. Luke. " Blessed are ye poor ;
for yours is the Kingdom of God I " " Woe unto
you that are rich, for ye have received your
consolation I Woe unto you, ye that are full now,
for ye shall hunger!"^ "Sell that ye have, and
give alms ; make for yourselves purses which wax
not old." ^ Abraham says to the rich man In the
parable, " Remember that thou in thy lifetime
receivedst thy good things, and Lazarus in like
* Lk vi 20, 24, 25. 2 lij xii 33.
212

POVERTY AND ASCETICISM
manner evil things ; but now here he is comforted,
and thou are tormented."^ These Sayings go
further, are more uncompromising, than what we
find In the other Gospels. And as to the other
point, I think It is impossible to read through this
Gospel and the Acts without feeling that all the
writer's sympathy is for the unmarried and the
widows, from Anna the daughter of Phanuel, who
had been a widow for eighty-four years, to the
four virgin daughters of Philip the evangelist.
The tendency of Luke Is perhaps most clearly
seen In the wording of our Lord's reply to the
Sadducees, whereby it Is made to appear that
those who are worthy to attain the resurrection
from the dead do not marry like ordinary men and
women. According to Mark our Lord says, ' When
they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry,
nor are given In marriage ' ; but In the Gospel of
Luke the words of the answer are : ' The sons
of this world marry, and are given In marriage :
but they that are accounted worthy to attain to
that world, and the resurrection from the dead,
neither marry, nor are given in marriage.' The
wording has been made, as I cannot but think.
Intentionally ambiguous. It was with good reason
that the heretic Marcion, who rejected marriage
altogether for Christians, chose out the Gospel of
^ Lk xvi 25.
213

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Luke, as the only one which could be made to fit
with his own teaching.
The tinge of asceticism and, if I may use the
word, of communism which pervades the Gospel
of Luke is just one of those things which are
easier felt than demonstrated. It Is not strong
enough to disturb the balance of the story, but
its presence Is, I think. Indubitable to every
attentive reader. I have mentioned It with some
emphasis for two reasons : in the first place,
because it was a real constituent element In
early Christianity ; and, secondly, because it is a
little over-emphasised in this Gospel, if we may
judge by comparing it with the others. We may
therefore go on to assume that the stress laid upon
this side of Christian life in the Acts in the very
earliest period of the Church's existence is also
a little over-emphasised, and that If It had been
Matthew who had written the history of the
Church in Jerusalem we should have heard more
of their community of customs and morals, and
less of their community of property. All through
the Acts, in Its presentation both of Christian prac
tices and of Christian beliefs, the tale Is being told by
the same voice that speaks tons In the Third Gospel.
In conclusion, there Is one point connected with
early Christian asceticism that ought not to escape
notice. We must never forget that Christian
214

WOMEN AND THE GOSPEL
asceticism has generally tended towards the equali
sation of the sexes. The historical opposite to
the ascetic ideal was not that in which woman was
looked upon as the equal complement of man, but
one in which woman was looked upon as the
divinely ordained household drudge or the play
thing of man. The old idea of the family, at
least in the times we are considering, meant the
relegation of the woman to the background. And
so the Gospel which most strikes the ascetic note
Is also that which tells us most of the part played
by women in the Gospel history. It is an old
observation that the Nativity Story Is told by
Luke from the woman's point of view. But
elsewhere also women play a prominent and inde
pendent part in the narrative. The Widow of
Nain ; the woman that was a sinner who wiped the
feet of Jesus ; Joanna the wife of Chuza and
Susanna, who ministered unto Jesus of their sub
stance; Martha who served, and Mary who listened ;
the ' daughter of Abraham ' who was loosed from
the bond of Satan on the Sabbath ; the women who
bewaHed and lamented Jesus on His way to the
Cross, — all these come Into the Gospel story
through S, Luke alone. Some of these person
ages are certainly historical, of others we may not
be so sure. But their presence corresponds to
what is certainly a fact of history, to wit, the
215

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
appeal made by the earliest Christian preaching
to women, and their response.
The point of view of Luke differs from that of
Matthew, and both differ from Mark. In the
Gospel of Mark, whenever and wherever it was
written, we are the nearest to the events and the
spirit of the time. In Matthew we see the Gospel
History more or less as it was understood by a
Christian who had ceased to be a Jew, but who still
retained much of the lore of the Synagogue. In
Luke we have the Gospel History as told by one
who had enough ordinary Greek culture to know
that there was something in the new doctrine
which was of more value to men and women than
what they would get from the world around them.
We have seen In the last Lecture what the two
main sources from which these Gospels are built
up told us of the teaching of Jesus Christ. We
have considered to-day some of the special features
emphasised by Matthew and by Luke ; we have
seen in what directions the evangelical legend
tended to grow under their hand. Yet, after all,
the Portrait they draw remains essentially the
same. Verse after verse. Saying after saying,
might be quoted to you from the three Synoptic
Gospels, and, unless you happened to have special
knowledge or had given special attention to such
2X6

THE SYNOPTIC PORTRAIT
matters, you would be unable to say to which
Gospel they really belonged. Morally, ethically,
spiritually, they are all in the same plane. We
cannot doubt that the common impression which
they present of the way in which our Lord spoke,
the style of His utterance, the manner of His dis
course to rich and poor, to learned and unlearned,
is based on true historical reminiscence.

2X7

VII.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Nam dicere ut est quis potest? audeo dicere,fratres mei,forsitan
nee ipse fohannes dixit ut est, sed et ipse ut potuit.
S. Augustine, infoh. i.
"\ ^ 7 E come now to consider the Fourth Gospel,
* * the Gospel according to John. And be
fore we begin our investigation we shall, I think,
do well to remember the Immense Influence which
this work has had for century after century. No
work could hold so great a place before the world
so long, without Intrinsic merit of an extraordinary
sort. However peculiar the aims and methods of
the author of this work may be, however out of
harmony may be the world of ideas In which he
lived with that which surrounds us at the present
day, we shall not be likely to arrive at a true
solution of the problems which the work offers by
belittling it. If the history turn out to be no
history, it must be because it was Intended to
teach something to the author more important
than history. If the rhetoric does not always
ring true, if the argument sometimes fails really
218

EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
to appeal to us, it Is more probable that we have
misunderstood than that the writer was really at
fault. Our duty Is to criticise, and that fearlessly,
but yet with reverence and with misgiving of our
own Infallibility.
It will not be necessary here to investigate in
detail the external evidence for the Fourth Gospel.
The belief that it was written by the Apostle S.
John was fully established in most parts of the
Christian world as early as the decade 170-180 ad,
and clear indications of its use, especially among
some of the Christian ' Gnostics,' can be traced
back to a period some fifty years earlier. It is
true that these Indications are weak just where we
might have expected them to be most precise :
S. Polycarp, according to tradition a disciple of
S. John at Ephesus, does not quote at all from
the Fourth Gospel, either in his Epistle or in the
prayer which he is said to have prayed at the
stake, and the utmost that can be claimed is that
certain phrases in a single passage in his Epistle
are parallel to some leading phrases in i and 2
John.^ This passage in S. Polycarp is certainly
1 Polycarp, ad Phil, vii : ' For whosoever doth not confess Jesus
Christ to have come {e\t]\vd4vm) in the flesh is antichrist, and
whosoever doth not confess the witness of the cross is of the devil,
and whosoever perverteth the oracles of the Lord to his own
desires and says there is neither resurrection nor judgement, he is
the first-born of Satan.' Compare i Joh iv 2, 3 ; 2 Joh 7.
219

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
important as shewing that Johannlne watchwords,
like 'antichrist' and ' confessing Jesus Christ to
have come in the flesh,' were actually used by
orthodox circles In Asia Minor. But it is
remarkable that S. Polycarp should exhibit no
further trace of the influence of the Johannlne
theology. The external testimony to the traditional
authorship of the Fourth Gospel Is, in a word,
indecisive. It Is not unfavourable to the genuine
ness of the tradition, but It Is quite Insufficient to
prove It. We may therefore go on to examine
the Internal evidence. And here the first question
which must be asked Is whether this Gospel Is
really a historical work. We have seen that S.
Mark's Gospel has a very good claim to be so
regarded : how does the Fourth Gospel compare
with S. Mark ?
The comparison of the Synoptic narrative with
that of ' John ' is an old and very simple study.
The details are all familiar, and the problems
do not depend upon the niceties of Hellenistic
Greek or the various readings of MSS. It is a
matter of historical discrepancy in two perfectly
clear and definite accounts. The fact is, that the
narrative in ' Mark ' and the narrative In ' John '
cannot be made to agree, except on the supposi
tion that one or the other is, as regards the
220

THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND S. MARK
objective facts, inaccurate and misleading. I shall
hope later on to attempt an explanation : what we
are now concerned with Is the question whether
the Fourth Gospel can be trusted as a narrative
of events.
The discrepancy between the Fourth Gospel
and the Synoptic narrative, i.e. S. Mark's Gospel,
comes to a head In the story of the Raising of
Lazarus. It Is not a question of the improbability
or impossibility of the miracle, but of the time and
place and the effect upon outsiders. According to
'John,' Jesus had been in Jerusalem In the winter
preceding the Crucifixion (x 22), and after that
visit had gone away to where John the Baptist
had been baptizing (x 40). There He heard that
Lazarus of Bethany, brother of Martha and Mary,
was ill (xi I ff) ; and when at last Jesus comes to
Bethany, Lazarus has been dead four days (xi 17,
39). Jesus goes to the tomb, accompanied by
Martha and Mary and a ' multitude ' of the Jews
(xi 19, 42). H e calls Lazarus from the tomb ; and
when he comes forth bound In his grave-clothes,
Jesus says, ' Loose him, and let him go ' (xi 44).
This stupendous miracle produces, according to
' John,' exactly the sensation that we should
expect. Many of the Jews that witnessed the
scene believed on Jesus, though some of them
went away to the Pharisees and told the news (xi
22X

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
45, 46). The chief priests and Pharisees hardened
their hearts and decided forthwith that Jesus must
be killed (xl 47-53) ; but the common people were
much Impressed, and when Jesus (who had gone
into the country, to ' Ephraim ') returned to
Bethany, they came to gaze on Him, and also
upon Lazarus (xii 9). To such an extent was
this the case that the chief priests took counsel to
put Lazarus to death also (xii 10). This natural
interest on the part of the crowds caused them to
welcome Jesus with a triumphal entry (xii 12-16) ;
and stress Is laid on the public character of the
miracle and the many independent witnesses of It
(xH 17, 18).
The story of the Raising of Lazarus was a
favourite with the early Christians. The quaint
mummy-like figure of Lazarus in the arched door
of his tomb is familiar to every student of
Christian Art. It was an embodiment of the
hope of the Resurrection. But where are we to
put the scene Into the historical framework
preserved by S. Mark? Can any answer be
given, except 'there is no room'? If the events
occurred as told In the Fourth Gospel, If they
were as public as the Fourth Evangelist insists,
so fraught with Influence upon the action both of
friends and foes, they could not have been
unknown to a well - informed personage like
222

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS
' Mark,' nor could he have had any reason for
suppressing a narrative at once so public and so
edifying. It is true that ' Mark ' does not record
the Lord's Prayer or many of the most note
worthy sayings of Jesus, but these were not
public events like the Raising of Lazarus. Is it
possible that anyone who reads the continuous
and detailed story of Mark from the Transfigura
tion to the Entry into Jerusalem can interpolate
into it the tale of Lazarus and the notable
sensation which we are assured that it produced ?
Must not the answer be, that Mark is silent about
the Raising of Lazarus because he did not know
of it ? And if he did not know of it, can we
believe that, as a matter of fact. It ever occurred ?
For all its dramatic setting it is, I am persuaded,
impossible to regard the story of the Raising of
Lazarus as a narrative of historical events.
With this negative conclusion In our minds let
us go on to compare other portions of the Fourth
Gospel with Mark. The Crucifixion and Resurrec
tion do not present material differences of the order
with which we are dealing. There are many
variations and discrepancies, but all the Gospels
agree in the main facts, as may be realised by
comparing them with the apocryphal Acts of John.
But in other parts of the Gospel story the
differences are acute.
15 223

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
The common Christian tradition, attested by
S. Paul as well as by the Synoptists, asserts that
our Lord at the final meal before His arrest
instituted the rite that became the Eucharist.
The origin of the Christian rite of the common
Sacramental meal must have been known to
every moderately instructed Christian, certainly
to every one who would undertake to write an
account of our Lord's life on earth, and we
cannot suppose the Fourth Evangelist to have
been ignorant of it. When, therefore, we find
him writing an elaborate account of this last meal,
including the announcement of the Impending
betrayal, in which nevertheless there Is no mention
of the epoch-making words of Institution, we
can only regard his silence as deliberate. He
must have deliberately left out this exceedingly
important incident ; and thereby, so far as the
mere narrative of facts is concerned, he creates a
false Impression of the scene. However this may
be, it is not for want of sympathy with high
Sacramental doctrine. In Joh vi, after the story
of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, we read a
long discourse of Jesus on this very subject.
Jesus here says, ' I am the bread of life' {v. 35),
and, ' Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink His blood, ye have no life in you ' {v.
53). It Is true that a peculiar turn Is given to
224

EUCHARIST AND BAPTISM
these very strong expressions by the explanation
made afterwards to the disciples that it Is the
spirit that gives life, and that It is the words
of Jesus that are spirit and life {v. 63). But
the Sacramental expressions are not otherwise
qualified. It is evident that ' John ' has trans
ferred the Eucharlstic teaching from the Last
Supper to the earlier Galilean miracle.
This is something more than mere historical
inaccuracy. It is a deliberate sacrifice of historical
truth ; and, as the Evangelist Is a serious person
in deadly earnest, we must conclude that he cared
less for historical truth than for something else.
To render justice to his work we must do more
than demonstrate his untrustworthiness as a
chronicler. A somewhat similar result is obtained by con
sidering the Fourth Evangelist's teaching about
Baptism. The descent of the Holy Spirit
upon our Lord at His baptism by John is the
commencement of the Ministry according to S.
Mark. By this act, according to some early
theologians, such as Aphraates, He received from
the Baptist the sacerdotal gift. But the Fourth
Evangelist will have none of it. The scene at
the Jordan is Indeed recorded by him, and John
testifies to the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus ;
but the central incident, the actual baptism of
225

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Jesus by John is altogether left out (i 29-34). If
the intention of the Evangelist had been to tell us
what happened, If his Intention had been to make
us believe in Jesus because of what happened,
such an omission would be nothing short of dis
ingenuous. If we are to regard the Fourth
Gospel as a narrative of events, we can only say
that the writer has given a false Impression of
what occurred. It Is not that the Evangelist dis
approves of baptism : on the contrary, he tells us
afterwards that the disciples of Jesus baptized
their converts (iv i, 2), and he gives us the con
versation with NIcodemus, in which Jesus declares
that except a man be born again he cannot enter
into the Kingdom of God (Hi 3 ff).^
It would be easy to go on to criticise the story
of the Ministry as related in the Fourth Gospel,
to point out the improbabilities of the narrative as
It stands, and the continual discrepancies with the
Synoptic story that it presents. But it is un
necessary to do so. These ImprobabHItles and
discrepancies lie on the surface, they are univer
sally recognised ; and those who defend the
' It is not quite certain that the actual mention of ' water ' in Joh
iii 5 is genuine. It appears to have been omitted by Justin Martyr,
as is pointed out in Professor Lake's tract upon the ' Influence of
Textual Criticism on the Exegesis of the N.T.' (Oxford, 1904). That
the mention of the material element should be omitted in the dis
course which deals with the doctrine underlying the rite is quite
in the manner of the Fourth Evangelist. 226

THE JOHANNINE CHRIST
Fourth Gospel do so in spite of these things,
because of positive merits and excellences, not
because the difficulties are denied. But there Is
one point which I must notice here, a matter far
more grave than a faulty system of chronology
or a slip in a geographical name. The most
serious count against the Fourth Gospel, from the
point of view of objective external history, is the
attitude assigned to Jesus in His discussions with
the 'Jews.' Taking the narratives as they stand,
in the Synoptic Gospels the sympathy of the non-
Christian reader naturally goes with Jesus against
the Pharisees or the Sadducees. We feel that the
adversaries of Jesus are narrow, unkind, unintelli
gent. To such an extent is this the case that
recently protests have been raised by a distin
guished and learned Jew, to the effect that the
Synoptic Evangelists have misrepresented the
teachings of the Rabbinical religion. But in the
Fourth Gospel it is altogether different. Here I
cannot but think that the natural sympathy of the
non-Christian reader must go time after time with
the Jews. There is an argumentativeness, a
tendency to mystification, about the utterances of
the Johannlne Christ which, taken as the report
of actual words spoken, is positively repellent..
To heal on the Sabbath was considered by the
Jews to be a breaking of the Sabbath. According
227

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
to Mark, Jesus defends His action by such sayings
as that the Sabbath was made for man, not man
for the Sabbath ; according to Matthew, He
quotes Hosea to say that God desires mercy, and
not sacrifice ; according to Luke, He says that to
loose on the Sabbath a bond by which Satan had
bound a daughter of Abraham was even better,
and therefore as lawful, as loosing a beast from the
stall to take it to drink. Our sympathies are
clearly here with Jesus against the unreasonable
Jews. But In the Fourth Gospel, In similar
circumstances, what words are put Into our Lord's
mouth ? Why, He goes on to exasperate the Jews
still further by a disquisition about the Father and
the Son, asserting to His adversaries that whoso
ever did not honour the Son {i.e. Himself) did
not honour the Father (v 23). On a similar
occasion, when accused of 'bearing witness of
himself,' He Is made to say that He has two
witnesses In His favour, viz. Himself and the
Father (viH 17, 18). Can we wonder that the
Jews replied, ' Where Is thy Father ?' It Is quite
Inconceivable that the historical Jesus of the
Synoptic Gospels could have argued and quibbled
with opponents, as He is represented to have
done in the Fourth Gospel. The only possible
explanation Is that the work Is not history, but
something else cast In an historical form.
228

THE JOHANNINE CHRIST
From this point of view the question of the
authorship of the Fourth Gospel Is a matter of
secondary importance. It Is of the highest
Importance to ascertain the authorship and date
of a chronicle, of a narrative of facts, because there
the value of the work depends upon the nature of
the traditions or sources to which the writer had
access. But for a work of philosophy or phHoso-
phlcal history the qualifications required in the
writer are mental, rather than local or temporal.
We do not need to ask how near he stands to the
events, but whether he sees them in their true
proportion. For we have not done with the Fourth Gospel
when we have made up our minds that neither
the narrative nor the discourses are to be regarded
as history, as matters of past fact. The question
remains why the Church adopted this Gospel
Into the New Testament Canon, when so many
rivals were excluded. In the answer to this
question lies, I believe, the reason which gives a
permanent value to the work. It was not the
prestige of an apostolic name that made it canoni
cal, for the ' Gospel of Peter ' was rejected. Great
antiquity and respectful quotation by learned
Church writers did not avail to include the ' Gospel
according to the Hebrews,' nor did philosophical
229

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
thought avail the document commonly called the
' Oxyrhynchus Logia.' What was It that the
' Gospel according to S. John ' had, that these had
not? I believe the answer to be that the doctrine of
the Person of Christ set forth In this Gospel
expressed the general conviction of the Church
adequately, while the Gospels which failed to
become canonical failed mainly because the
doctrine of the Person of Christ which they con
tained failed to satisfy the requirements of the
Church. The Christ of the Fourth Gospel is
not the Christ of history, but the Christ
of Christian experience. Like S. Paul, the
Fourth Evangelist did not care to know ' Christ
after the flesh,' because he saw both his Lord
and his Lord's adversaries siib specie aeternitatis.
It is because the Evangelist views the Gospel
history from this subjective standpoint, that he
allows himself such freedom In remodelling the
external events. In the Dean of Westminster's
words : " The old disciple needs no docu
ments. . . . The whole is present in his
memory, shaped by years of reflection, illumi
nated by the experience of a lifetime. He knows
the Christ far better now than he knew Him In
Galilee or Jerusalem half a century before." ^ The
* J. a. Robinson, The Study of the Gospels, p. 148.
230

THE JOHANNINE CHRIST
adversaries of Jesus have become his own doubts
and unfaithful oppositions ; the questioners of
Jesus, such as 'NIcodemus' or 'the Woman of
Samaria,' are his own questions, his own igno
rances, which receive their solution at the hands
of the Lord who has come with His Father to
make an abode with him. He knows his Lord
to be true, and the knowledge of Him to be Life
eternal ; and therefore all opposition, however
specious, Is unjustifiable and blind. The Son of
God is a Lamp to him who beholds, a Mirror to
him who percejves, a Door to him who knocks, a
Way to the wayfarer. The true meaning of life
could never have been revealed to man, if Jesus
had not been sent as the Word from the Father.
Who He was could only be seen after He had
gone away ; what He had been seen to be was
nothing In comparison with the underlying reality.
It was no mere man whom the Evangelist was
preaching, but God unchangeable, God Invincible,
God higher than all authority and all power, and
elder and mightier than all angels and creatures
that are spoken of, and than all ages. If those
who heard would abidein this, and in this be bullded
up, they would possess their soul indestructible.^
1 See Acta loannis, ed. Bonnet, 198"^ i" ^ot^ 20228^ (or James,
Apocrypha Anecdota, \2^'^-'^^, 14*' '"', 24**, from whom I have
adapted the English translation). 23X

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
It is all a different order of thought from the
Synoptic Gospels or objective history.
The substance of the last few sentences has
been picked out of the work which above all other
surviving fragments of early Christian literature
has the closest similarity with the peculiar elements
of the Fourth Gospel. This work is the
apocryphal Acts of John, or rather, I should say,
the doctrinal section of that unequal piece of
writing. But near as the ' Gospel of John ' and
the 'Acts of John' are In many ways, their
differences are also fundamental, and It is in great
part because of these differences that the ' Acts of
John' was condemned and forgotten, whHe the
' Gospel of John ' survived to be the spiritual
food of many generations.
For although the Fourth Evangelist is no
chronicler of events, although his Christ is the
Logos, the Word of God, that to know is eternal
life, yet he firmly holds all the while that this
Christ was manifested In time as a human being,
a real man of flesh and blood, who really felt as
we feel, and above all really suffered and really
died, before He rose again from the dead. As
we have seen, the Evangelist Is careless of events ;
but to him the Death of Jesus on the Cross was
not a mere event, but a something essential, a
thing which really came to pass In the eternal
232

THE APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF JOHN
order of things. The apocryphal ' Acts of John '
sets forth the doctrine that the Crucifixion was a
delusion, the Jews gather round the Cross and
mock, but Christ is not really there ; the ' Gospel
of Peter' tells us that Christ felt no pain, and
apparently His Spirit is somehow caught up at
the last. By a true instinct this specious teach
ing was rejected by the Church of the second
century. The Passion of Jesus Christ must be
real, not a stage-play ; and If it was to be real,
Jesus Christ must have been a real man.
In no early Christian document is the real huma
nity of Jesus so emphasised as In the Fourth Gospel.
That Jesus was a real man Is an obvious inference
from the Synoptic narrative, but In the Fourth
Gospel it is .a dogma. It is the Fourth Gospel
which tells us that Jesus was tired and asked for
water to drink (Joh iv 6, 7), and that He wept at
the tomb of Lazarus (xi 35). If we ask what proof
there is that Jesus really suffered on the Cross, the
answer Is ready that the Fourth Gospel declares
Him to have said, ' I thirst ' (xix 28). Further
more, we are told, with the most solemn protesta
tions of accuracy to be found In the whole work,
that the corpse of Jesus presented a truly human
appearance (xix 34, 35).^ It was no phantom.
1 According to i Joh v 6-8 the living personality has in it three
elements, viz. spirit, water, blood. From the ' water ' we are
233

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
This is the element which differentiates the
Jesus of the Fourth Gospel from the Jesus of
Gnostic speculation. It was the Fourth Gospel
which pointed out the via media along which
alone the Church could walk. On the one
hand, the Church was not prepared to surrender
historical reality to a philosophical speculation.
The devotion of the first disciples had been
kindled by Jesus of Nazareth. It was the belief
that their dead Friend had become alive again,
and that He had really appeared to them alive
after death, which gave the earliest Christians the
will and the power to combine on earth into a
Society and afforded them enduring hope for the
future. It was essential that the Living Christ,
whom they continued to serve and to wait for,
should have been a real man who had lived and
died. Otherwise He was no FIrstfruits of the
human race, but another species altogether. On
the other hand, Christianity is essentially Mono
theistic, and it was so all the more consciously
and passionately while the whole world outside
was given over to the heathen cults and the
begotten, by the 'blood' we are sustained, and the 'spirit' or
breath is the immaterial element that enters at birth and leaves at
death. The spirit quitted Jesus when He died (Joh xix 30), leaving
behind the water and blood of a human body, the existence of which
was demonstrated to the onlookers by the spear-thrust of the
soldier. 234

THE WORD MADE MAN
deified Emperor. Whatever else Jesus Christ
might be, the Church refused to make Him a
demigod. Here the various forms of speculation
which we generally denominate ' Gnostic ' were
ready with terms and conceptions that should
bridge the gulf More than one school of
thought, both Jewish and Greek, were teaching
that the Word which proclaimed the truth to
man was in the beginning with God and was
Itself Divine, that It would come or had come to
those fitted to receive It. But the Fourth
Evangelist alone makes this Word become an
actual human being, one who really lived on
earth and died under torture as other men would
have died in similar circumstances. Whether
this conception is really credible to us or not, it
is a matter of history that it forms the central
idea of the Fourth Evangelist's theology. I
believe that it was by virtue of this central idea
that the Fourth Gospel won its way to a position
of permanent authority in the Christian Church.
I cannot hope to persuade you all to accept
the view of the Fourth Gospel which I have put
before you. It leaves very grave difficulties
unsolved. But I am confident that, speaking
generally, some theory of this kind is really
forced upon us. Especially am I sure that we
shall never do justice to this Gospel, so long as
235

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
we try to treat It as a narrative of events that
were seen and heard of men. It is not a
competitor with the Synoptic Gospels.
But, you will say, what becomes of the truth of
the Gospel ? If neither the words nor the acts
of Christ as recorded In the Fourth Gospel belong
to the historical Jesus of Nazareth, what, then, is
left that has any claim to be called history?
There is justice in this criticism, unless we can
shew that something is left. A Gospel must
be more than a satisfactory piece of theology
about our Lord. We require that it should
transmit to us something that Is really from
Him. Can the Fourth Gospel still do this?
What is left is the ideas, the thoughts on God
and man around which the Gospel moves. Let
us once for all fully recognise that the style and
manner of the words put into our Lord's mouth
no more represent His historical style and
manner than Hellenistic Greek sounds to the ear
like Aramaic. ' They are from first to last a part
of the author's self,' says Dr. Sanday.^ The
Sayings in the Fourth Gospel are all couched In
the peculiar dialect of the Evangelist, and to
make them sound like the words of Jesus
preserved In the Synoptic Gospels, the style and
manner of which, as we have reason to believe,
1 Criticism of the Fourth Gospel, p. 169.
236

THE IDEAS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL
do to some extent reproduce the style and manner
of the historical Jesus, we should need to change
and to paraphrase. But the Ideas are the Ideas
which animate the Sayings in the Synoptic
Gospels. At least, they are often the same ideas,
often similar ideas ; so that when here and there
we find a wholly new idea we have some reason
to treat with respect Its claim to represent the
teaching of Jesus Christ.
Let me give as an instance of what I mean the
words of Christ about healing on the Sabbath
(Joh V 17 ff). I have already referred to this
story. Let us attempt to look all the facts in the
face without shrinking, and I think you will find
in the end that the peculiar methods of the
Fourth Evangehst have really preserved for us
something well worth keeping. But the
Evangelist has been very far indeed from giving
us a mechanical transcript of a scene in our
Lord's career. To begin with, we can hardly
suppose that the story of the miracle Is to be
taken as it stands. Apart from the preliminary
difficulty of accounting for the presence of Jesus
at this time in Jerusalem, it must be observed
that the man who had been thirty and eight years
in his infirmity is a singularly unsympathetic
figure. The cripple at Lystra had faith to be
healed (Acts xiv 9), the man with the withered
237

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
hand In S. Mark Is not characterised at all, but
this person is just sketched sufficiently to make
us dislike him If we think of him as a real human
being: 'Sin no more,' says Jesus to him at last,
'lest a worse thing come to thee.' Then again,
as I have already observed, the actual words
which the Evangelist ascribes to our Lord when
the Jews 'persecute' Him for healing on the
Sabbath were calculated rather to exasperate than
either to appease or instruct them. 'Amen,
amen, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing
of himself but what he seeth the Father doing :
for what things soever he doeth, these the Son
also doeth in like manner. For the Father loveth
the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself
doeth : and greater works than these will he shew
him, that ye may marvel. . , . Marvel not at
this : for the hour cometh, in which all they that
are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall
come forth ; they that have done good, unto the
resurrection of life ; and they that have done 111,
unto the resurrection of judgement ' — and so forth,
for the rest of the chapter.
Now, if we look at the form and manner of
these words, It Is, I am convinced. Impossible for
one moment to Imagine that they can represent
an accurate account of any man's defence of
himself after outraging the religious susceptibilities
238

HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN JOHN
of powerful adversaries. It is not In the least
the kind of thing which a phonograph would have
reported. But are we therefore to conclude that
the whole of this chapter out of the Fourth
Gospel has no connexion with history at all ?
Let me put before you something on the other
side. First of all, the subject of the dispute between
our Lord and these 'Jews' is historical. It is
primarily concerned with the observance of the
Jewish Sabbath. This may seem a small thing,
but It is a sign that the subject-matter of the
Fourth Gospel Is not quite so far removed from
history as seems to be the case at the first
glance. For I do not think the Evangelist is
seriously interested in the Jewish Controversy :
indeed, this appears from the way in which the
conversation shifts from the question of the
Sabbath to the question of the office of the Son
of God. The general object of the Evangelist
in putting this conversation before his readers
Is to give them the true doctrine about Jesus as
the Son of the Eternal Father, not to put them
right about Sabbath observance. But just as his
doctrine was that the Eternal Son had become
Incarnate as a particular human being in Judaea,
so he knows that the doctrine about the Son
and His office must start from real Jewish
i6 239

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
disputes ; in other words, that the doctrine is to be
in touch, so to speak, with historical conditions.
And the actual doctrine Itself the principle
from which it starts, as distinct from the mere
wording of it — is not this also In harmony with
what we know otherwise of Jesus ? ' My Father
worketh even until now, and 1 work.' Of course
we here feel at once the peculiar style of the
Fourth Evangelist. But the line of argument,
apart from Its expression, not only has parallels
in the Synoptic Gospels : It exactly reiterates
our Lord's doctrine of right and wrong as
opposed to the traditionalism of the Scribes.
The essential difference between Jesus and the
Scribes, between the religion of Jesus and the
religion of His adversaries, was that He claimed
to know God and God's Will directly, while they
were dependent on the tradition of the elders,
something that had been taught and learnt.
That is what He means when He says that no
one knew or knows the Father except the Son : ^
the others only knew the Father through the
Word of God.
It was because Jesus knew the Father directly,
and not only through the Old Testament, that
He was free to judge the religion of the Old
Testament by the light of the Father's works ; In
* Matt xi 27 ; Lk x 22.
240

HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN JOHN
other words, by the light of Nature. ' My Father
worketh even until now ' — this very Sabbath on
which we are disputing — surely this means
that the laws of Nature and of Right and
Wrong do not observe the Sabbath. The same
Father whom Jesus saw making His sun to
shine on the evil and on the good, made His
sun shine equally on the Sabbath and on the
week-day. If all things were delivered unto
Jesus by the Father, then all things told Him
of the Father, things secular as well as things
conventionally sacred.
But Is this the sort of reasoning we should
expect to get from the author of the Prologue to
the Fourth Gospel, if he were merely allegorizing
out of his Inner consciousness? Is it not more
natural to suppose that such a way of thinking
about the Sabbath came to him from without
rather than from within, by memory or tradition
rather than by imagination ? The wording Is
the wording of the Evangelist, he has made it
all his own before he gives it back to the world,
but the leading thought Is the subject and source
of his theology, not a product of It.
When the Evangelist goes a little further we
are able to see what was really working in his
mind, why he thinks it worth while to revive
past disputes about the Jewish Sabbath. 'The
24 X

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man :
. . . the hour cometh, in which all that are In
the tombs shall hear his voice and shall come
forth ; they that have done good, unto the
resurrection of life, and they that have done 111,
unto the resurrection of judgement.' We see now
why the man who had been thirty and eight
years In his Infirmity Is made so unsympathetic.
He Is a type of those lying still In their tombs
who are to hear the voice of the Son of Man,
some of whom only awake to receive their due
judgement of condemnation. ' Sin no more,' It
is said to him, 'lest a worse thing come to thee.'
The Evangelist knew that a crisis In our Lord's
life had arisen out of the healing of a man on
the Jewish Sabbath ; he knew that our Lord
had claimed to know the will of His Father in
Heaven, and in virtue of that knowledge to
dispense with the precepts of the written Law,
when they clashed with what He knew directly
to be the will of God. All the rest Is the
Evangelist's setting of the story ; at least, I
cannot regard it as anything else.
And how different Is the picture of the Last
Day here presented from what we find In the
Synoptic Gospels, in Mk xiii and the parallels
In Matthew and Luke ! That Is depicted as a
judgement on the Living, this in the Fourth
242

THE LAST DAY
Gospel is a judgement on the Dead. In the
Synoptic Gospels the disciples are to watch for
the signs of the End : ' When these things begin
to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads ;
because your redemption draweth nigh.' But
here. In the Fourth Gospel, they can no longer
watch. They are In the tombs, waiting to be
aroused by the voice of the Judge.
Thus we come very near to one of the great
objects of the Evangelist, which is the deliberate
substitution of other Ideals for the expected
coming of the Messiah on the clouds of heaven.
Let me here quote what has been so admirably
said on this subject by Dr. Inge:-' "The
Synoptic Gospels, though they doubtless give
us a more accurate picture of the outward
circumstances of our Lord's ministry, and of
the manner and style of his teaching, are per
vaded by the Idea of the Messianic Kingdom.
To the majority of the first and second genera
tions of Christians, the Church was regarded as
mergly a stop-gap till the Kingdom of God
should come. Christ was to return in a few
years upon the clouds of heaven to Inaugurate
the new theocratic kingdom. In correspondence
1 From a Paper published in the Proceedings of the Oxford
Society of Historical Theology for igoj-4, pp. 58-68 : see now
(191 1) Professor Inge's Essay on the Theology of the Fourth
Gospel in Cambridge Biblical Essays, especially pp. 255-257, 259.
243

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
with these ideas, a kind of legend grew up,
affecting not only the hopes of the future, but the
traditions of our Lord's ministry. The demand
for evidence of the Messiahship, becoming every
year more urgent, was met by heightening the
colours of the picture, and modifying those
portions of the narrative which ascribed human
limitations to Jesus. This process may be seen
at work if we compare S. Matthew with S. Mark.
Christianity was In some danger of being so
closely identified with apocalyptic Messianic
dreams that It would have perished when these
hopes proved illusory" (pp. 58, 59). "The
[Fourth] evangelist wishes to lay a surer founda
tion, underpinning the fabric which at present
rested on the crumbling foundations of thau-
maturgic superstition and Chillastic or Messianic
dreams " (p. 65).
In the passage we have been considering we
have the link between the eschatological teaching
of the Fourth Gospel and that of the Synoptic
Gospels. Elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel the
doctrine is brought forward that Eternal Life Is a
condition to be realised here and now through
Christ. Jesus is not merely the future Judge ;
according to the Fourth Gospel He is the Resur
rection (xi 25), and Eternal Life Is to know God
and Jesus Christ, whom God had sent (xvii 3).
244

DOCTRINE OF ETERNAL LIFE
No one is fully alive who is not in touch with the
Father of all (x lo), and Jesus is the Way to the
Father (xiv 6). This Is only the theological
presentment of what the Synoptic Gospels shew
us In the movement of history. If Jesus was
right in setting aside the Law of God without
any other authority than what He derived from
His own insight, then He was the Word of God
embodied In a Man instead of In a Book. For
those who believed on the Christ, His word was
God's word. He and the Father were one (x 30).
To others also the Word of God had come In the
past, and these also were called In Scripture
'Gods' (x 35), but to Jesus alone was given the
full measure of the Spirit, and this Spirit was now
abiding among His followers and reminding them
of what Jesus had said to them (xiv 26). I do
not think the Evangelist cared to distinguish
between the development of doctrine and
historical reminiscence. What I think he did
see was the distinction between the doctrines of
Christianity and the historical occasions or events
with which they were associated in the minds of
the ordinary believers. He saw the danger of
associating too closely the acts and doctrines of
the Christian community with particular events
In the career of Jesus on earth. Moreover, the
Church had already existed for two genera-
245

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
tions : even If the Lord were to appear at
once, the majority of Christians would have
been among the dead. Christianity, therefore,
could not be a mere prelude to the Second
Coming ; It must be a thing timeless, eternal, a
state of mind.
Much of this way of thinking Is to be found,
more or less, in the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher
Philo. Philo saw In the Pentateuch a mirror of
Divine Wisdom, an embodiment of the Word
of the unknowable God. What seems to be
narrative is really a description of the unchange
able principles of the moral and spiritual world.
The Four Rivers of Paradise are the Four chief
Virtues, Egypt Is the sensuous body, Rebekah Is
Perseverance, and much more to the same effect.
To quote Mr. Inge again (p, 66) : " Philo shows
an utter indifference to chronology and historical
fact. . . . Every historical event is only valuable
as symbolizing some eternal, unchanging truth.
. . . The notions of personality and of a real
process in time are completely absent from Philo.
Nothing ever really happens in this phHosophy."
Nothing, we may add, ever really happens In
the world as conceived in the Stoic philosophy.
All change was an illusion, there was no develop
ment, and therefore history and the truth of
history was a thing Indifferent. The one essential
246

PHILO AND JOHN
distinction between these views and that of the
Fourth Gospel was the belief In the Incarnation
of the Divine Nature in time and place, leading
up to the Passion of Christ. That event alone
-was real ; therefore It could not be allegorized or
altered. (( By its existence it restored the Idea of
real progression and development into the Cosmos.
Elsewhere, even in the rest of the Gospel story,
the truest picture seemed to the Evangelist to be
that which most clearly taught essential doctrines.
This, at least, is the only way in which I can
picture to myself the Evangelist's procedure.
The line of thought which I have tried to put
before you to-day makes the personality of the
Evangelist a matter of less importance than It
becomes when we attempt to read the Fourth
Gospel in order to collect facts about the events
of the Ministry. But I still think that many of
the old arguments which tended to prove that he
had been a Jew of Jerusalem have never been
satisfactorily disposed of Such simple statements
as those of Joh x 22, 23 (' It was the Feast of the
Dedication at Jerusalem ; It was winter weather,
and Jesus was walking in Solomon's Porch') are
difficult to explain on any other hypothesis. At
least the person who supplied the information in
the text quoted must have had a real knowledge
247

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
of the topography of Jerusalem and of the Jewish
Calendar.^ There Is also some evidence which seems to
shew that this Jew of Jerusalem, before he became
a Christian, must have belonged to the Sadducean
party, to have been Indeed himself a Priest. The
Evangelist Matthew, who must have known
something about Jewish parties, finds occasion to
bring in the Sadducees by name some half-dozen
times, and they are mentioned several times In
the Acts. The Fourth Evangelist, though he
has so much to say about Jerusalem, does not
mention the name. Very likely he regarded It
rather, as a nickname than a real appellation.
According to S. Luke,^ ' the Sadducees say there
is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit ' : the
author of the Fourth Gospel writes, of course, from
the Christian standpoint, but some of his remarks
Illustrate curiously the statement in Acts. He
believes in these now, no doubt, in and through
the Christian revelation, but not otherwise. The
Spirit of God descended and rested upon Jesus,
but, speaking generally, ' Spirit was not yet ' (Joh
vii 39) during the Ministry of our Lord : it Is
given for the first time to the disciples after the
1 It must not be forgotten that at the time when the Gospel was
published the Temple was in ruins and the Feasts had come to
an end.
2 Acts xxiii 8, 248

DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION
resurrection (Joh xx 22). How different Is the
view which appears In the Gospel of Luke, where
Elisabeth and Zacharias, and others besides, are
filled with a Holy Spirit! Then again, according
to Matthew an angel of the Lord appears to
Joseph in a dream, and to Zacharias In the Temple
according to Luke. Angels play a very different
part in the Fourth Gospel. Two ' angels ' are seen
sitting In the empty Tomb on the morning of the
Resurrection by Mary Magdalene : this is part
of the Christian tradition, which the Evangelist
accepted, and it is foreshadowed In the saying of
Jesus to Nathanael that he shall see the angels
of God ascending and descending on the Son of
Man, a marvel which is expressly set forth as
something exceptionally great (Joh I 51). It was
not untH the resurrection of the incarnate Word
of God that angels were seen by mortal eye.
Therefore, when the Voice came from Heaven
(Joh xii 28), it is the Ignorant multitude, not the
Evangelist In his own person, who suppose that
an angel had spoken to Jesus.
And the same kind of doctrine is taught about
the Resurrection itself It is 'in Christ,' and
in Christ alone. The Pharisees believed in a
resurrection ; it was indeed the popular belief
among the Jewish people. Martha in the midst
of her grief is sure that her brother will rise again
249

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
in the resurrection at the last day (Joh xi 24). I
do not think the Evangelist believed in that
doctrine apart from his Christianity. Jesus replies
to Martha, ' / am the Resurrection.' In Him,
according to the Fourth Evangelist, is Life ; by
this formula he can express both his new belief in
the Christian resurrection and his old disbelief In
the Pharisaic resurrection. ' It shall be recom
pensed to thee In the resurrection of the just'
(Lk xiv 14) ; ' / will raise him up In the last day '
(Joh vi 40) : ^ these famHIar phrases shew by
contrast the difference of conception between the
view of a Christianised Sadducee and his brethren.
In the sentence from S. Luke the resurrection is
viewed as an event which will occur in the
providentially ordered nature of things : it is as
natural as the Last Day itself In the sentence
from the Fourth Gospel it Is part of the new
Christian dispensation.
These considerations tend to explain how the
disciple who 'wrote' the Fourth GospeP could
describe himself as ' known unto the high priest '
(Joh xvIH 15). They also throw light upon the
very curious testimony of Polycrates, bishop of
Ephesus, who wrote a letter to Victor of Rome
^ In the Greek the pronoun is very emphatic : avaa-Trjo-a avrbv
iya, Tji icrxdrr) rjpepa.
* Joh xxi 24. 250

TRADITIONS ABOUT JOHN OF ASIA
about 190 AD, he — Polycrates — being then a
Christian of at least 65 years' standing, in order
to defend the Asian custom of keeping Easter by
the day of the month, regardless of whether It
feh on Sunday or not. ' Throughout Asia,' he says
(Eusebius, HE v 24), 'great Luminaries have
gone to their rest, which will rise on the day of
the Lord's Coming, when He cometh with glory
from heaven, and shall search out all the Saints,
namely, Philip, one of the Twelve Apostles, who
sleeps In HIerapolIs, and two of his daughters,
who died virgins in old age ; and the other
daughter, who lived In a Holy Spirit, rests In
Ephesus ; and John too, who leaned on the Lord's
breast, who had been a priest and worn the High
Priest's mitre,^ both Witness^ and Teacher — he
sleeps in Ephesus. And Polycarp, too. In Smyrna,
both bishop and martyr.' Polycrates then goes
on to name other Saints of the Asian Churches,
to whose practice he appeals. Here it is definitely
Implied that the Fourth Evangelist was a member
of one of the chief priestly families.
It should be noted that Polycrates, like all the
other early witnesses from Asia, avoids calling the
Evangehst ' John the son of Zebedee,' or ' John
the Apostle.' But, you will say. Is not tradition
unanimous in identifying this John of Asia, who
* TO ¦neroKov. ^ Or, ' martyr ' : the Greek pdpTvs is ambiguous.
251

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
died a natural death in his old age, with John the
son of Zebedee ? The answer is, that tradition is
not quite unanimous, and that there still remain
traces of a different tradition which makes the son
of Zebedee die a martyr's death at the hands of
the Jews.
In a 7th or 8th century epitome, probably
based on the Chronicle of Philip of Side (about
430 ad), it is stated that ' Papias in his second
book says that John the Divine and James his
brother were slain by Jews.' '¦ And this statement
occurs again with verbal variations In the oldest
MS of the Chronicle of George the Monk, a
writer of the 9th century. The statement is
historically of Importance, not because these late
chroniclers had Independent knowledge of the
facts, but because they base their Information on
Papias, bishop of HIerapolIs about 160 ad, who
wrote an ' Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord '
in five books.
A poor basis, you will say, upon which to over
throw the universal tradition of the Catholic
Church. Let me therefore conclude by pointing
out that there is one piece of Catholic tradition,
familiar to every one, which points in the same
1 ' De Boor's Fragment,' as it is generally called from its dis
coverer, was first published in Texte und Untersuchungen v 2,
p. 170, in 1888. 252

S. JOHN'S DAY IN THE CALENDAR
direction. On the 25th of December the Church
celebrates the birthday of our Lord. The birth
days of Martyrs, for purposes of commemoration,
are the days of their martyrdom. It Is therefore
very right and proper that the commemoration of
S. Stephen, the first martyr, should be fixed upon
the 26th of December, the day after Christmas
Day. The next day, as we all know, Is S. John's
day — S. John the Apostle, not S. John the
Baptist. What is the reason for this ? The full
answer is, of course, a long story, but it will be
enough here to say that we can trace back the
beginnings of our Calendar to the beginning of
the 6th century In the West, and to the beginning
of the 5th century In the East. In a Calendar of
Carthage, drawn up shortly after 505 ad, we
read: Dec. 25, commemoration of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of
God. Dec. 26, commemoration of S. Stephen, the first Martyr.
Dec. 27, commemoration of S. John Baptist, and of James the
Apostle, whom {quem) Herod slew. ,
Here we have the same series of names as In
our Calendar, together with a commemoration of
James the brother of John, but John the Apostle
has been turned into John the Baptist. The
same Carthaginian Calendar gives June 24 for the
Baptist's commemoration, so that he is com-
253

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
memorated twice In this list, and John the Apostle
not at all.
StHl older and more weighty Is the testimony
of the ancient Syrlac Calendar of the Church of
Edessa. The venerable MS in which this
Calendar Is preserved is dated 4 1 1 ad, and the
Calendar Itself may be a generation older. It
begins with December 26 thus :
The names of our lords the martyrs and victors, and their days
on which they gained their crowns.
In the month Kanun the first [i.e. December].
On the 26th, the first martyr, at Jerusalem, Stephen the apostle,
the head of the martyrs.
On the 27th, John and James, the apostles, at Jerusalem.
Then follows a commemoration of Paul and of
Simon Kephas, ' the head of the apostles of our
Lord.' This oldest Martyrology gives a clear
answer to our question, why we commemorate
John the son of Zebedee the next day to S.
Stephen. We really commemorate him with his
brother as martyrs. The Church tradition, there
fore, when we look Into It, attests the statement
ascribed to Papias, and thereby strengthens the
cause of those who distinguish between John of
Ephesus, to whom we owe the Fourth Gospel,
and the Apostle John the son of Zebedee. As
Dr. Sanday suggests in his recent book on the
Fourth Gospel (p. 98), the ' disciple whom Jesus
254

AIM OF THE FOURTH EVANGELIST
loved ' may have been no more than a youth
when our Lord lived on earth and was
crucified. Of this at least I am quite certain : the Fourth
Gospel is the work of one to whom belief in
Jesus Christ was not a new external condition,
impressed upon him from without, after his mind
had already acquired its individual characteristics.
He had long been conscious, we may be sure, of
the presence of the Paraclete within him, guiding
him into all truth as to the inner meaning of the
life and light which came into the world when the
Word of God was manifested, not perhaps with
out some admixture of ancestral disdain for the
materialistic superstition of the masses, both of
believers and unbelievers. And now in his old
age, when the popular expectations had proved
false, as he knew they would, and the Antichrist
that was to come and set up his impious kingdom
a little before the End had not after all made his
appearance, he finds himself confronted by new
dangers from the other side. Other thinkers,
more spiritual (as they would consider) than he,
are saying that the Son of God was not a real
man at all, for flesh and blood cannot Inherit the
Kingdom of God. This to the Evangelist was the
greatest error : to deny the coming of Jesus
Christ in the flesh was the doctrine of Antichrist,
17 255

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
The Fourth Gospel Is written to prove the reality
of Jesus Christ. But the Evangelist was no
historian : Ideas, not events, were to him the true
realities, and If we go to his -work to learn the
course of events we shall only be disappointed In
our search.

256

VIII,
THE GOSPEL CANON.
' I ^HE actual process by which our Four
-¦¦ Gospels arrived at their present rank of
pre-eminence is quite obscure. From about 170
ad onwards the Gospel Canon enjoys practically
unchallenged supremacy, as we see from Tatian's
Harmony, from the document known as the
Muratorian Canon, and from S. Irenseus. Some
what earlier than Tatlan must be placed an inter
polated edition of the Four Gospels, which seems
to have been set forth in Rome, and from which
the more important ' Western Interpolations ' in
Greek and Latin Biblical MSS are ultimately
derived. This brings us back to about 1 50 ;
but the literary history of our Gospels during the
first half of the second century is unknown.
Justin Martyr doubtless used all the Four in
Rome about the middle of the century, and
Marcion certainly used Luke about 130-140.
Earlier still are the allusions which indicate a use
of Matthew by S, Ignatius. But there is nothing
257

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
to shew that Marcion was acquainted with any
other of the Canonical Gospels than Luke, and
very little to shew that S. Ignatius used any other
Canonical Gospel than Matthew ; while the verbal
inaccuracy of Justin's quotations suggests that
even in his day the ' Memoirs of the Apostles '
had hardly yet taken their place beside the Law
and the Prophets as part of the written Word of
God. At the same time, Trypho, Justin's Jewish
opponent, is quite aware that the way to become
acquainted with Christian doctrine is to read what
is written ev tw Xeyofieva eiiayyeXitp {Tryph. § lo).
Thus ' The Gospel ' has already become the name
of a Book.
We have really to distinguish three stages in
the process by which the Gospel Canon was
formed. Of the ' many who took in hand ' to write
of Jesus Christ, the Four Gospels alone remained
In favour. The rest either failed altogether to
attract, or were discovered to teach ^eresy.
There is first the stage in which ' the Gospel '
changed Its meaning from the announcement of
the Kingdom of God to a narrative, or a set of
narratives, about Jesus Christ. Then there is the
stage In which our Four Gospels won their way
to recognition. Lastly, there is the stage In which
these Four attained full and exclusive canonicity.
The final stage was thus one of exclusion,
258

THE CHOICE OF THE CHURCH
Certain ' Gospels ' had been adopted locally, such
as the ' Gospel of Peter' at Rhossus, near Antloch,
but one by one these unauthorised works were
suppressed. On the other hand, the attempt
made by Tatian to combine the unrejected Four
into a single account failed everywhere, except in
the still unconsolidated Syriac-speaking com
munity of Edessa. Whether the Church made
the ideally best choice from the point of view of
the modern historical Investigator is a matter that
cannot be scientifically demonstrated, for the
simple reason that the rivals of the canonical
Four have not survived in full. But the abiding
interest which each and all of the Four have
excited during eighteen centuries Is enough to
shew that the Church chose well. And it should
not be forgotten that those of the non-canonical
Gospels, which we know enough of to pass judge
ment upon, shew a sensible inferiority. Marcion's
Gospel is in every way Inferior to Luke, and the
Gospel of Peter is inferior to either of the
Synoptic accounts of the Passion. It is, In fact,
because the canonical Gospels paint such an
eternally fascinating Portrait, that we welcome
every scrap that may claim to give another view,
however inadequate.
In one respect I venture to think the modern
historical investigator Is more fortunate than from
259

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
general considerations he might have expected.
We are indeed fortunate that the Gospel accor
ding to Mark should have been included In the
official Canon. Many of the special ideas and
tendencies of the First and the Third Evangelists
are In close touch with the ideas and tendencies
of second-century literature. I have tried to
shew in the preceding Lecture that the theology
of the Fourth Gospel met the wants of the
Church, that it pointed out the way along which
the conflicting currents of Christian thought and
feeling might run together. In any case, the
Fourth Gospel Is unique. But It is difficult to
understand what attraction was offered to
Christians of the second century by the Gospel
of Mark, which the Gospels according to
Matthew and Luke did not offer, either singly
or taken together. In a more eminent degree.
Probably its traditional connexion with S. Peter
may have had a determining share in recommen
ding It, and the appeal of Ireneeus to historical
tradition against Gnostic theorizing may help us
to understand how such an old-fashioned book as
the Gospel of Mark, S. Peter's 'Interpreter,'
should have survived. It Is, we find, very little
quoted before It became part of the official four
fold Canon, that is, before the time of Irenseus,
and It is certain that it ran a very serious risk of
260

THE CANONICITY OF S. MARK'S GOSPEL
being forgotten altogether. As every one knows,
the genuine text ends at Mk xvi 8, in the middle
of a sentence describing the terrified departure of
the women from the empty tomb. There Is no
reason to doubt that the Gospel went on to
describe some of the appearances of Jesus to
the disciples after the Resurrection. The narra
tive is incomplete as it stands, and It is much
more likely that the mutilation was accidental
than intentional. Had it been intentional, the
break would never have been made where It is,
at i<f)o^ovvTo yap , , . : even the sentence is left in
complete. But all our MSS ultimately go back to
this mutilated text ; it is therefore evident that at
one time no more than a single mutilated copy
was in existence, or at least available. The
work had dropped out of circulation, it had lost
its public, and we can only guess at the reasons
which led to its resuscitation.
The fact, however, remains. By Its Inclusion
in the Canon we are to-day In possession of a
document in warp and woof far more primitive
than the Churches which adopted it. The fine
instinct which reserved a place for the Gospel of
Mark among the books of the New Testament
shews the Catholic Church to have been wiser
than her own writers, wiser than the heretics,
wiser, finally, than most Biblical critics from S.
261

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Augustine to Ferdinand Christian Baur. It is
only in the last half-century that scholars have
come to recognise the pre-eminent historical value
of that Gospel which once survived only in a
single tattered copy.
It may be convenient here to give a short
Chronological Summary.
From what has been said in the foregoing
Lectures, it will be evident that no very definite
date can be assigned to any of the Gospels, except
S. Luke's. But we may distinguish four periods
of 40 years each, reckoning from the Crucifixion,
I, 30-70 ad. Oral Period. No written
' Gospel ' appears during this period, nor any
formal shaping of the Gospel history as a whole.
S. Paul's accounts of the Lord's Supper (i Cor xi
23 ff) and of the Resurrection ( I Cor xv 3 ff) do
not appear to have any literary connexion with
what we read In our Gospels. To the end of this
first Period we may assign the fly-sheet underlying
Mk xiii (In Greek), and S. Matthew's Collection
of Messianic Prophecies (In Hebrew).
II. 70-110 AD. Period of the writing of the
Gospels, Gospel of Mark, 70-80 ad,
„ „ Luke (and Acts), 100 ad.
262

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY
Gospel of Matthew, 90-100 ad., in any case
before no ad.
„ „ John, loo-iioAD.
III. 1 10-150 AD. Period of the catholic recep
tion of the Gospels.
IV, 150-190 AD. Period of the canonization
of the Gospels. By the end of this period the
Idea of the Fourfold Gospel {Lren. 192) Is fully
established. The Influence of the Gospels on the Church.
The fact that the Church came to accept the
Four Gospels is a proof that each of these works
satisfied in a general way the Church's require
ments. Had it been otherwise, the Gospel In
question would never have attained to canonicity.
At the same time, it would be absurd to regard
the Church's requirements as being In any way
occupied with details ; these the Church has
learnt from what the Evangelists have supplied.
The Church's picture of Jesus Christ is not un
fairly summarised In the so-called Apostles' and
Nicene Creeds ; it is the written Gospels that
have preserved for us the winning personality of
the Son of Man.
The history of Chrlstology is not that of a
simple advance from an original unitarian psilan-
263

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
thropy to the uldmate recognition of the Deity of
Christ. Naturally it took many generations of
Christian thought to evolve a form of words which
should satisfactorily define the exceptional Nature
of the Founder of the new Religion in terms of
current philosophical conceptions. But from the
first there existed the sentiment of devotion, the
temper of mind which was assured that no title
was too high to give, no homage too high to pay,
to the Son of God who had been sent from Heaven
to overcome death and open the gates of ever
lasting life to those who believed on Him. For
the first thirty years or so practically all Christians
were converts : those who doubted how far the
Message was true did not become Christians at
all. And unless the extant literature gives a
totally false impression of the general state of
mind among Christians, the interest of the nascent
Church was not In the least directed towards the
past. In the words of the earliest written Chris
tian document that we possess, the converts had
" turned unto God from idols to serve a living and
true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven,
whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who
delivereth us from the wrath to come." ^ Those
that had entered the Church by baptism were to
set their minds on the things that are above, where
1 I Thess 19, 10.
264

THE EARLIEST CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. It
was true that the Christians in consequence of
their belief submitted to new rules of conduct, and
that these rules consisted In great part of remini
scences of the words of the Lord Jesus who had
taught ' sweet reasonableness ' and longsuffering
{eirieiKeiav Kol p,aKpo6vp,tav), rules such as: "pity,
that ye may be pitied ; forgive, that ye may be
forgiven."^ But the Gospel was not a formal
Code, still less a Biography. No pictures of
early Christianity have been conceived more
fundamentally false, both to the spirit and the
letter of historical fact, than those which represent
S. Matthew or S. Peter as delivering catechetical
lectures on the ' Life of Christ.'
The actual course of events was very different
from what the first generation of believers had
anticipated. The End, so confidently awaited,
was not yet. One by one the Companions of the
Ministry went to their graves, and when the
cataclysm of the Jewish War broke up for ever
the one community In which there could have been
common first-hand knowledge of how our Lord
had - lived and moved among men, the great
majority of Christians were Greek-speaking
inhabitants of the Levantine cities, a population
far removed in spirit and In culture from the pro-
^ Clem. Rom. ad Cor. xiii,
265

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
vincial Judaism of Galilee. What wonder that
Christianity began to mix with alien elements and
to appear In forms which alarmed the more con
servative believers ?
A few words may be said here on the influence
of S. Paul. To us, and to the whole Church for
the last seventeen centuries, S. Paul is pre
eminently the writer of the Epistles. We, like
the Church in general, recognise the wisdom that
was given him, while at the same time we find In
these Epistles ' some things hard to be understood,
which the Ignorant and unstable wrest, as they do
also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruc
tion.' The Epistles come to us as part of the
sacred Canon ; consequently they are studied, and
careful study shews us that, strange and unfamHIar
as is the whole world of thought in which they
move, they are the product of a great mind
occupied with extraordinary circumstances. Of
course, to us the Epistles, or parts of them, are
verbally familiar ; but I feel sure that, If we had
not so often heard them read and commented on,
we should find great parts of them most Incompre
hensible on a casual hearing. To the careful
student, as I said, they are documents of very
high Interest. The Epistle to the Galatlans and
the Second Epistle to the Corinthians give in the
266

THE LETTERS OF S. PAUL
most lively and moving way the Indignant self-
defence of an Intensely earnest and sincere religious
innovator, withstanding absolutely alone in the
midst of a heathen world the attacks of his co
religionists, themselves a mere sect of the Isolated
Jews, The adversaries of Paul are convlncd that
his doctrines are not only mistaken but absolutely
anarchical, destructive of the ancient ordinances
of religion. Yet In the First Epistle to the
Corinthians, and elsewhere also where occasion
offers, we see the destructive anarchist labouring,
and labouring with fervour and practical good
sense, to build up the infant communities which
he had founded on the basis of a new morality,
equally alive to the real claims of Freedom and of
Order. All this is profoundly interesting, profoundly
instructive. But a good deal of what Is best in
the Pauline Epistles does not lie on the surface.
They are in their outward form and In their whole
manner of composition occasional pieces, the
product of an age of transition. The Churches
to which S. Paul wrote, and over whose develop
ment he watched with such anxious ardour, were
neither in their formal theology nor their outward
organisation so many early examples of the
Catholic communities of later times. Nor were
they simple colonies of converted Jews. Their
267

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
interest to us historical students lies just in this,
that they were something between — the first
result of principles, so to speak, In the process of
fashioning for themselves an appropriate embodi
ment. But for that very reason they presented
little practical Interest to the next generation.
As I said, S. Paul is to us pre-eminently the
writer of the Epistles, the founder of ' Paulinism.'
But this cannot be said of the portrait of Paul
which we find In the Acts. If our only knowledge
of the Apostle of the Gentiles were drawn from
the Acts, we should not know that he ever wrote
any Epistles, and we certainly should have had
no idea of his style or manner of writing. This,
as you all know, has often been used as an
argument to prove the Acts to be unhistorical, on
the assumption that the Letters, or some of them,
are genuine. But I venture to think the true
conclusion is that for a couple of generations after
his death the memory of S. Paul the theologian
faded away with the special set of circumstances
that called his theology to the point of expression,
and that what was remembered was S. Paul the
missionary. What we find In the Acts is
re-echoed by Clement of Rome, writing at the
end of the first century ad, at the very time when
I think the Acts was being published. It Is the
unwearied patience and steadfastness of S. Paul's
268

S. PAUL'S CONVERTS
missionary journeys that calls forth the mention
of his name.^
The practical result effected by S. Paul's
labours upon the development of Christianity
lay, in a word, not in the adoption of Paulinism,
but in the presence of his converts. The Church
did not embrace S. Paul's theories as a whole.
What one man could do he did, but it Is not
given to ordinary folk to stand against the world,
and the Churches which he founded slipped back
Into more or less ordinary Jewish and Heathen
notions about virtue and morals. S. Paul's
strange and penetrating criticism of the true
nature of Law and Grace, and his doctrine of that
trust in God which can alone set a man In the
right. Is alien from the thought of second-century
Church theology. We hear little about ' Justifica
tion by Faith' from the Fathers of the second
century. But what remained was the steady
pressure of the rank and file of the Church, now
almost wholly GentHe and Levantine by race
and by tradition.
Through S. Paul Christianity became distinct
in fact as well as in theory from Judaism, and
with the change of race came a change in the
1 Clem, ad Cor. v. In chap, xlvii S. Clement refers very appositely
to I Cor i 12, and it is evident that he had read the Epistle to
the Romans. But there is no sign in S. Clement of a collection
of Pauline Letters. 269

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
character of the popular belief Christianity lost
its racial colouring and atmosphere, and became
more and more Greek, or rather, Greco- Roman.
The Christians accepted, indeed, the Hebrew
Scriptures In their Greek dress, but the Old
Testament was no longer to them a national
literature. It was a strange foreign book, full of
riddles and mysteries. And, what is still more
important for us now, the Messiah and the
Kingdom of God ceased to be natural ideas. To
say that Jesus was the Christ, the Anointed of
God, ceased to have any real meaning except
that of a profession of devotion. To the children
of S. Paul's converts at Corinth and Ephesus the
scenes of the life of our Lord, whether In Galilee
or In Jerusalem, were events In a foreign world.
A picture of normal Church life about the
end of the first century Is to be found in the
Didache. The 'Teaching of the Lord by the
Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles,' as the document
calls itself, was first printed In 1883. But the
greater part had been. In one form or another,
already known to scholars. In fact, a great part
of the Interest of the Didache lies in this, that It
was so often altered and adapted to suit the
changing requirements of the Church in different
ages. It is extant in Latin as well as Greek, and
a peculiar recension of parts of it is found In
270

THE DIDACHE
Syriac and Ethloplc. Even in the earliest extant
form it may be a second or third edition, revised
to date and perhaps modified in some detaHs to
suit a particular community. But the general
plan appears to be unaltered.
The ' Teaching ' Is a short manual designed to
instruct the disciple how to lead the Christian
Life. The Christian Life Is grouped under three
heads : Christian morality. Christian worship and
organisation, and the Christian hope. It begins
with morality, with instruction taken from the
Two Ways, a Jewish ethical handbook adapted
for Christian usage. The Christian is here taught
to love God and his neighbour, to live uprightly
and to abstain from vices and from the service of
idols. Christian worship and ritual Includes
Baptism, Fasting, Prayer — the Lord's Prayer
thrice daily, — and the Eucharist. After giving
Eucharlstic Blessings to be said over the Cup and
the Bread and after the Meal,^ the Teaching goes
on to prescribe rules for the reception and treat
ment of the wandering ' prophets ' and for the
maintenance of the regular ministry. Finally,
we have a chapter on the Second Coming of the
Lord, which is stlH the consummation instantly
to be expected. There are no directions given
for the burial of the dead.
' Did. § 10, piTa TO ipnKT](T6r)vai.
i8 271

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Thus the Didache runs through the whole
gamut of Christian economy : conduct, worship,
organisation, all Is provided for. Short as It is,
the book is meant to be sufficient and compre
hensive, at least In essentials ; we can ascertain
from it the main Ideas of the compiler and of
the community for which he wrote. We see
that all prayer was offered to God through
Christ ; ^ life and immortality had been given
to man through Christ ; ^ the true prophet was
to be received as Christ;^ the Christian's conduct
was to be what Christ had commanded.* But
biographical Interest In Christ Is completely
absent, even more completely absent than it is
from the letters of S. Paul ; for aught that
appears in the Didache, Jesus of Nazareth might
never have been crucified.
Naturally we must remember that the Didache
is a formal handbook of Christian praxis, and as
such represents the low-water mark of Christian
feeling and speculation. But It shews us better
than any other document the aspect of Christ's
work which was most prominent to the average
gentile Christian in the first century of the
Church's existence. To such a one Christ was
the 7rat9 Qeov, the messenger from God who had
come down to earth with tidings of Immortality
1 Did §§ 9, 10. =! §§ 9, lo. 3 I 1 1_ •• §§ 8, IS.
272

GENTILE CHRISTIANITY
and now was waiting till the appointed Day
when He should appear in glory on the clouds
of heaven. It is not surprising that to many
a believer the melancholy story of Jesus of
Nazareth was a stumbllngblock, and that His
sufferings were incredible.
All the more was this the case among those
who had attempted to find an appropriate place
for Jesus Christ in the various philosophical
theories of the Universe, which thoughtful men
had devised and were devising. In proportion
as the idea of Monotheism had become widely
spread, the gulf between God and man grew,
God and man, the ultimate Divine Essence and
the common matter of which we and the earth
are composed, seemed increasingly Incongruous,
The people of Lycaonia might have been willing
to believe that the Gods themselves should come
down in the likeness of men, but they were old-
fashioned folk in a country town. And even
the Lycaonians in the story did not think that
the Gods stood before them with human feelings
and natures.-'
Christian sentiment and learned speculation
were thus alike ready to welcome what we call
the Docetic heresy. Docetism Is not the name
* Acts xiv II, 15. There is an intentional contrast between
op^iadivTes dvdpanois and ofioioir aOels eapev vplv.
273

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
of a sect. It Is a theory of the person of Christ
which takes many forms and which has entered
into the theology of many schools of thought.
The essential thing is that Jesus Christ was
man only in appearance. Some, like the writer
of the Acts of John, denied that our Lord had
any material existence ; He could be seen and
heard, but the form and the voice differed on
different occasions. Others were content to deny
that He felt the pains of crucifixion ; others, like
Marcion, denied His birth. But all were alike
in this, that they regarded Jesus as having been
in no sense a real human being. It Is a theory
incredible, almost Inconceivable, to us ; but we
have learnt to know Jesus Christ through the
written Gospels.
The part played by Docetic theories of our
Lord's nature and person had a determining
influence upon the official preservation of the
Gospel History. In the foregoing Lectures I
have attempted to sketch what I conceive to be
the literary origins of the several Gospels. The
point that I wish here to re-emphasise is the
private, individual, and unofficial character of
the earlier documents. That S. Luke's Gospel
was a private venture is sufficiently Indicated
by the Preface. That S. Mark's Gospel was so
is sufficiently indicated by the narrow escape it
274

DOCETISM
ran of being lost altogether. The Gospel we call
S. Matthew's has a more formal, authoritative
tone, and it bears marks of a Palestinian origin ;
in other words, it comes from the one region
where we have a right to expect Independent
reminiscences of the Master to have survived.
It would have been no surprise if the Gospel
according to Matthew had been different
altogether from the others. Yet, as a matter
of fact, it is in structure and in much of its
wording and material based on Mark. Thus
we learn that even in Palestine no regular effort
had been made to hand down a summary of the
outward events of our Lord's Ministry.-'
To some pious Christians biographical accounts
of the life and words of the Lord may very likely
have seemed unnecessary and unspiritual. But
the rise of Docetic theories gave these " memoirs
of the Apostles " a new and theological value.
This new condition of things is mirrored in the
Ignatlan Epistles. S. Ignatius was Bishop of
Antloch, and his Epistles were written on his
way to martyrdom in Rome at some date
between no and 117 ad. To him the Gospel
history was immensely important, because it
^ The lost ' Gospel according to the Hebrews ' seems to have
been very similar in general plan to our Matthew, so that it also
must have had its ultimate basis in our Second Gospel.
275

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
furnished the proof of the real humanity of
Christ. If Christ were not really human. His
sufferings were not real, really akin to human
suffering ; and if His sufferings were not real, why
should Ignatius be willing to endure martyrdom
{Trail. § lo)? An acquaintance with the human
side of Jesus Christ was therefore necessary to
Christianity. But to make the acquaintance of
this human side a biography was Indispensable.
S. Ignatius was "fully persuaded, as touching
our Lord, that He Is truly of the race of David
according to the flesh, but Son of God by the
Divine will and power, truly born of a virgin
and baptized by John that 'all righteousness
might be fulfilled' by Him, truly naHed up In
the flesh for our sakes under Pontius Pilate and
Herod the tetrarch"; and, further, that "after
His resurrection He both ate with them and
drank with them [the Apostles] as one In the
flesh, though spiritually He was united with the
Father" {Smyrn. §| i, 3). Even this short
summary of Christological doctrine goes, as you
win perceive, beyond any known Credo in its
literary dependence on a biographical Gospel ;
for that Jesus was baptized by John, that all
righteousness might be fulfilled by Him, Is
thoroughly characteristic of ' Matthew,' and, so
far as we know. It is found in ' Matthew ' alone
276

THE CHRISTOLOGY OF S. IGNATIUS
of all the Gospels that ever were written.^ With
this agrees the circumstance that S. Ignatius
uses several phrases, such as <f)VTeia irarpo';, 'the
Father's planting,' which Indicate the literary
use of the Gospel according to Matthew. It
seems likely also that he had read the Fourth
Gospel, and it Is almost certain that he once
quotes from an ' apocryphal ' work called the
Preaching of Peter {Kripvyiia UeTpov), a document
which appears to have been a very early rival
of the canonical Acts of the Apostles.
But we are not now concerned with the recon
struction of S. Ignatius's library : the important
thing is that the most characteristic representative
of the Catholic theology of the beginning of the
second century tends to base his Doctrine of
Christ on a Gospel which Is biographical in form.
This point of view was not at first accepted by all.
The Law and the Prophets, as interpreted in the
new light, seemed sufficient to some. " If I find
it not in the charter {to, dpxeia, the 'archives,' i.e.
the Old Testament), I believe it not in the
Gospel," said the opponents of Ignatius, and
when he said, " It Is written," they answered,
" That is the question " {Smyrn. § 8). But
Ignatius had no doubt, and the Church was with
him, that the Gospel record was necessary, as
1 Matt iii 15.
277

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
the guarantee of the real humanity of Jesus
Christ. One point deserves special notice In passing.
S. Ignatius is the earliest express witness to the
belief that Jesus was born of a virgin. He is
most emphatic in asserting this ; but the Impor
tance of the doctrine for him Is not that the miracle
assures us that the man Jesus was Divine, but
that the Christian's God was really born of woman
{Eph. § 1 8).
The Church of Antloch, If we may judge from
the Ignatlan writings, took its knowledge of the
Gospel history from our ' Matthew.' The Church
In Pontus a little later, if we may judge from the
heretic Marcion, who left It in ad 138, used our
' Luke.' When and where our Four Gospels
were gathered together into a single Corpus
Evangelicum, we do not know. Traces of this
Corpus are first found in Rome about the middle
of the second century, and Indeed the con
servative character of the early Roman Church
makes it a little easier to understand how so
ancient a document as the Gospel of Mark came
to be included in the Canon. The process
seems to have been very nearly complete in
the time of Justin Martyr {Apol. i 67 ; Tryph.
106), who wrote in the decade following 150,
and It is certain that Justin's disciple Tatlan
278

THE CHURCH AND THE GOSPEL
constructed his Gospel Harmony out of the
canonical Four.
Thus our Gospels fell Into their place as the
charter of the Christian Religion, a fixed standard
open to the inspection of friend and foe. We
need hardly follow their literary history further at
this point, for in essentials they have remained
unchanged from the time of Justin to this day,
both in text (apart from minor corruptions and
alterations) and in their nominal estimation by the
Church. Before the end of the second century
the Gospel Canon was absolutely established.
The rivals of the Four, which here and there were
still read, were being rooted out by authority, and
S. Irenaeus was able to say that there could not
be more or less than four Gospels, that they cor
responded to the four Regions of the world and
the four Winds, and, above all, to the four mystic
Beasts of the Apocalypse.-' Secure in his
acceptance of all four Gospels on the authority
of Church tradition, Irenaeus had an easy task to
shew that the various speculative hypotheses as
to the nature of Jesus Christ, which had been put
forward by the eager theorists of the second
^ lren. iii 1 1 : contrast lren. ii 24, where S. Irenseus shews how
foohsh it is to argue from numbers, by collecting the instances of
Fives in the Bible and Nature. 279

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
century, were inconsistent with the statements of
the Gospels themselves. But there Is a great gap
between Irenaeus and Justin. We cannot but feel
it to be only too true that Irenaeus accepts the
Gospels on the authority of a previous age : it is,
I think, almost impossible to imagine him accept
ing them as authorities for his theology if they
had been novelties. In fact, though not in name,
they belonged to an age already antiquated. The
Church declared Itself to be founded on the Four
Immoveable Columns of the Gospel, and in token
of homage its members stood, as they stand to
this day, when the Gospel was read out to them
in their assemblies. But though the Church was
still nearer to the Gospel than the heretics. It was
now parted by the ever-increasing differences of
conditions and the ever-lengthening stretch of
years between its present state and Palestine
during our Lord's Ministry. In the next genera
tion to S. Irenaeus, the Catholics themselves
began to allegorize the Gospels, just as the
Alexandrian Jews had taken refuge in allegori
zing the Law.
To us, who are trying to understand what the
Gospels really mean, more interest attaches to an
earlier criticism on the Gospel, perhaps the earliest
piece of criticism from outside that has come
down to us. It hits the mark from more than one
280

TRYPHO'S CRITICISM
point of view. " I well know," says Trypho, the
Jewish opponent of Justin Martyr, "that your
Christian precepts out of what Is called the Gospel
are great and admirable, so admirable, indeed,
that I doubt If any one can keep them — and I
speak from personal knowledge of these writings.
Moreover, we non-Christians specially wonder
why you expect to get any favour from God,
when you set your hope on a man who was
crucified" {Tryph. § lo).
This simple and obvious piece of criticism
touches the essential point. The real humanity
of Jesus who was crucified in Judaea, and the
soaring ethical principles that He taught, — these
are the obvious characteristics of the Gospels, and
it is the Gospels which secure these things as an
inalienable possession of the Christian Church.
Moreover, Trypho's criticism Is unanswerable, if
the Gospels be regarded as mere law-books, as
a code of morals. The Pentateuch is a law-book ;
it is possible to obey it to the letter, and those
who compiled It Intended It to be obeyed to the
letter. But he who exchanges the Pentateuch for
the Gospel does not exchange one code for
another, as actually happens in the case of a Jew
turning Muslim. He who reads the Gospel finds,
on the one hand, that eternal life Is promised for
the observance of the Decalogue (Mk x 17, 19) ;
28x

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
on the other, that the renunciation of every earthly
tie is demanded (Lk xiv 26, 27), and that except
the righteousness of the Christian exceed the
legal requirements he cannot enter the Kingdom
of Heaven (Matt v 20). This discrepancy is
more than an affair of divergent ' sources ' or of
rival schools of Christian ethics : It is essentially
characteristic. The Gospel as a whole is not
intended to introduce us to a code by which all
men alike should regulate their conduct ; it is
intended to introduce us to Jesus Christ, whose
commands differ for each age and for each
Individual, because He dealt with principles and
not with rules. The love of God and the love of
our neighbour was what Jesus Christ taught ; but
to turn these principles Into a fixed Code of rules
might easily produce a course of life harmful to
our neighbour and unpleasing to God. We do
not get rid of the real difficulties of the Gospel,
though we make jettison of all the miracles, if we
leave the Sermon on the Mount.
The Gospel Ethics need criticism more, not
less, than the Gospel miracles ; and for this reason,
that it is more for the ethics than the miracles
that the Gospels are permanently valuable. We
need to put the Gospel morality Into its due
relation to time and place. If Christ said, ' Give
to every one that asketh thee,' and, ' Unto him
282

GOSPEL ETHICS AND CASUISTRY
that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the
other,' we need to understand the social conditions
of Christ's day, and those of our own also, before
we can turn these maxims Into a rational command
for fellow-believers. This is not explaining away
Christian morality. Many as have been the
abuses of casuistry, it Is a necessary study for the
practical moralist. In one sense it Is particularly
suited to Christianity, a religion founded on the
attitude of the inner man towards God, not upon
the outward observance of particular acts or
customs. If principles remain constant, the signi
ficance of particular acts must inevitably suffer
change. It was not the practice of casuistry, but
the simple fact that the Jesuits of the 17th century
had systematically practised it to condone what
they and their penitents knew to be wrong, that
gibbeted these men for ever In the pages of the
Provincial Letters. It Is Impossible to doubt
that the particular type of casuistry condemned
by Pascal was designed to make things easy for
the evil-doer at the expense of the spirit of the
Gospel, not to find an appropriate course for the
spirit of the Gospel to express itself in altered
conditions ; and it was because this was really so,
that the mordant satire gained its triumphant
success. For after making all necessary deduc
tions the common sense both of Christendom and
283

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
of the world outside knows very well what Is
meant by ' the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount '
and similar phrases. And it has ever been a
mark of true Christianity to seek to apply the
words of the Gospel to the changing needs of the
time, a task which is none the less Incumbent
upon the Church for being always difficult.
But the Gospel morality Is not the Gospel, any
more than the Didache is the Gospel. Chris
tianity stands or falls, lives or dies, with the
personality of Jesus Christ; and the Gospel is
our introduction to Jesus Christ. From the
Gospel according to Mark we may learn who
Jesus Christ was, and what part He played on
earth in human history. From the Gospels
according to Luke and Matthew we may learn
something of what Jesus Christ taught. From
the Gospel according to John we may learn what
His followers declare to be the real significance
of His Life. It is the great charm of Christianity
that its innermost doctrine Is Incarnate in the
person of its Founder, rather than crystallized
into a set of propositions or ordinances. The
propositions and the ordinances may be necessary
deductions ; one of them, as we have seen, forms
the ground Idea of the Fourth Gospel. But
they are exhibited In action ; like the Laws
of Nature themselves, the doctrines of Chris-
384

CHRIST AND THE GOSPELS
tianity are human deductions from the course of
events. Let me give one instance, perhaps all the more
instructive for being concerned with the practical
sentiment of the Christian community than with
high theological speculation. Apart from the
Gospels, I cannot find that early Christian
literature exhibits the slightest sympathy towards
the young. S. Paul tells children to obey their
parents in the Lord, and commands fathers not
to provoke their children. Further, In the Epistle
to Titus, the young women are to be trained
to love their husbands and love their children.
But this is all, and it seems rather inadequate.
Outside the New Testament matters are not
much better. Clement of Rome (xxi) speaks of
' reverencing the elders and Instructing the young
in the instruction of the fear of God,' a passage
which Is re-echoed by Polycarp. ' Thou shalt not
take away thy hand from thy son or from thy
daughter, but from youth up thou shalt teach the
fear of God' is all that the Didache has to
say (§ 4).^
These extracts are, in fact, characteristic of the
official Christian view. In the words and actions
of Jesus alone, as recorded In the Synoptic
Gospels, and especially by Mark, do we find love
^ Compare also (for a later period) Didascalia, xxii.
285

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
and sympathy for children. He taught His
disciples that It was as honourable to receive even
a child In His name as to receive the chief of all of
them ; and on another occasion, that he who would
enter the Kingdom of God must himself become
In some sense like a little chHd. But even Luke
and Matthew leave out what Mark tells us, that
our Lord took the children In His arms,^ and that
He was moved with Indignation when the
disciples wished to keep the children away from
troubling Him. The young folk did weU to
shout, ' Hosanna to the Son of David ! ' in the
Temple, for His voice Is almost the only one for
centuries that spoke of them with love and
sympathy In the things of religion. The bereaved
parents whose pathetic utterances are preserved
not In Christian literature, but in the burled
Inscriptions of the Catacombs, had little religious
countenance for their affection except from the
Saviour Himself.^
This illustration shews as clearly as any that
can be drawn the difference of atmosphere which
separates the Gospels from the rest of early
Christian theological literature, both orthodox
and heterodox. And thus it brings us back to
' Mk ix 36, X 16.
" The memory of her little brother Dinocrates came back to S.
Perpetua in prison. He had died of a cancer at the age of seven,
and Perpetua ultimately saw him in a vision well and happy.
286

THE REAL HUMANITY OF OUR LORD
the main point which I have wished to bring
before you in this Lecture, that the Gospels we
have would never have become the official
charters of the Church, but for the theological
necessity of insisting upon the true human nature
of our Lord.
The Church of the second century was content
to wait until the time was ripe for formulating a
Chrlstology. Then, as ever, it was those who
lived on the borderland of the Church who were
In a hurry to precipitate a solution. The leaders
of the main body of the Christians were for the
most part merely critical of Gnostic speculation ;
their positive doctrine was mainly developed in
controversy against the conservative Jews, the
essence of this doctrine being that the Word
which spoke In the Gospel message was the same
Word of God that spoke to men of old time
through the Prophets. But, in addition. It was an
essential part of their theory that this Word of
God had become Incarnate as a real human being
in the person of Jesus Christ. It was this part of
their theory which led them to hold firmly by a
set of narratives telling the story of Jesus, which
had been drawn up by various writers towards
the end of the first century of the Christian era,
before the memory of what had really happened
In Judaea had quite faded Into legend. We have
19 287

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
every reason to be grateful for the rash specula
tions of the Gnostic heresiarchs, for it was by
reaction against their too elaborate theorizings
that the Church took refuge in records of past
events. It was through the premature efforts of
heretics to crystallize Christian theology, that the
history of the Ministry and Crucifixion of our
Lord, to the Jews as ever a stumbllngblock, and
to the Gnostic philosophers a fable for the common
people, became enshrined as the palladium of the
Catholic Church.

288

IX.
MARCION, OR CHRISTIANITY
WITHOUT HISTORY.
T N the first prospectus of the Hibbert Journal
the editors announced that they intended to
open their pages to all varieties of religious
thought, but that it was not part of their design
to occupy their readers with the discussion of
' dead religions.' The heretic Marcion has been
dead for more than seventeen centuries, and the
Church which he established has utterly perished.
The religion of Marcion is on the face of It a
dead religion, and having decided to speak to you
about It In this Lecture, I feel it wHl be part of
my duty to attempt to explain why Marcion still
may have some living interest for us. The main
object that I have in view Is to shew you what
form Christianity took In the mind of an earnest
Christian of the second century, to whom the
historical element in the Gospel meant little or
nothing, a thinker who desired to give up every
thing In order to have his Christianity purged
289

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
from all defilements of nationalistic and material
istic elements.
Let me begin by putting before you the outline
of Marcion's career. I cannot claim to have any
new light on the subject, which you will find
admirably treated In the article on Marcion, in the
Dictionary of Christian Biography, by the late
Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. There is,
indeed, little dispute as to the essential facts.
Marcion was born about loo ad in Pontus,
apparently at the well-known Black Sea port of
Sinope, and his life occupies the first sixty years
or so of the second century. His father was a
Christian ; our authorities tell us that he was
' Bishop ' of the Church there, and according to
some accounts Marcion himself had been made
his suffragan. Here we have the first point of
interest. We cannot tell, of course, what was the
exact state of the development of the Christian
Ministry in Pontus during the first quarter of the
second century. At a later period, when Marcion
had become an excommunicated heretic and had
founded his own heretical Society, he was regarded
as their bishop, and he transmitted his ' Orders '
to a succession of Marcionite bishops who came
after him. The Marcionite ' orders ' were not
recognised at Rome any more than Anglican
orders are at the present day, but that naturally
290

MARCION
did not affect their legitimacy in the eyes of the
Marcionltes. This matter, however, hardly con
cerns us now. The real point of interest is that
Marcion came of orthodox Christian stock, and
that the Marcionltes, however much they were
mistaken, and however much they were to be con
demned, were definitely a sect of Christians.
This is not true of most of the early heretics, or
not true to anything like the same extent. For
the most part, the Gnostic heretics — Valentlnus,
Marcus, Hermogenes, and the rest — were pro
ducts of the mixture of Greek speculation with
Christianity. Their systems were only half-
Christian. But Marcion's ideas were Christian
through and through. Two centuries later, S.
Ephraim in his Hymns against Heretics avers
that Bardaisan the Gnostic (who was, In fact, a
distinguished Astronomer and Astrologer as well
as a Theologian) wasted his time in reading
heathen books about the signs of the Zodiac
instead of studying the Bible. Ephraim has
many hard things to say about Marcion, but he
does not make that kind of accusation against
him. Whatever we may think of Marcion's
theories, we must acknowledge that they pro
ceeded from the study of the Gospel.
The story of Marcion's life is for the most part
unknown. According to the Edessene Chronicle
29 X

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
he left the Church in ad 138. He then appears
to have proceeded to Rome, where he hoped that
his doctrine would be accepted, or that It would
at least receive toleration ; but In this he was
disappointed. He seems to have led a wandering
life, but he was established In Rome as a teacher
of his peculiar doctrines during the episcopate of
Anicetus (154-166), and for aught we know to
the contrary he may have died there.
The Importance of Marcion does not lie in the
outward events of his life, but In the doctrines
which he taught. They can be expressed In very
few words. His teaching was the exact converse
of those discourses in the Acts with which we are
all so familiar, in which the speaker, S. Peter or
S. Paul, seeks to prove to those who believe
Moses and the Prophets that Jesus of Nazareth
was the Christ of God. Marcion's teaching was
very different. Believing fervently that Jesus
was the Son of God, come down from the highest
Heaven to reveal the Divine will to man, he took
the Gospel message and asked how It was possible
to believe that the Author of the Gospel could
have been the God of the Old Testament.
Marcion started, In fact, from the Gospel. The
God, he said, whom Jesus preached was cvyad6<s,
' Good,' or rather, ' Kind.' He is le Bon Dieu, a
God who is able and willing to forgive. The
292

MARCION
God of the Old Testament Is Just, keeping His
promise for ever. He loves them which love
Him, and those that sought Him early found Him.
He was kind to His friends, terrible to His foes,
visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children
to the third and fourth generation of them that
hate Him. Those that left His service learned
to their cost that He Is a jealous God. He taught
His worshippers that He was God, and that there
was none beside Him, and His glory He would
not give to another. How different, said Marcion,
is the Most High whom Jesus preached ; for He
is kind to the unthankful and evil, and He com
mands His servants to be in like manner kind to
their enemies and to forgive.
Here you have in a few words the essence of
Marcion's religion and Marcion's philosophy. All
the rest follows from it, or is the result of mere
accidental co-ordination with It. What the master
cause was that compelled him to be a Christian,
that attracted him to the Gospel, that constrained
him to believe in the Divine Message of Jesus,
we do not know with precision. No Marcionite
work has survived, and we have to pick up our
information from opponents more eager to refute
the great heretic than to expound his beliefs.
That which Marcion shared with his fellow-
Christians his refuters pass over for the most part
293

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
in silence. But we may guess to some extent the
forces that Influenced him. In the first place, as
we have seen, he was born a Christian. The
general Christian tradition, the life of the Christian
Society, had doubtless a firm hold on Marcion, as
also had the belief that the same Jesus who had
taught In Palestine had proved Himself the Lord
of Death. But Marcion was something far deeper
than a mere Christian by inheritance. The mere
fact that he felt so acutely the difference between
the Old Law and the New Is a proof of the pro
found impression which the teaching of Jesus,
the Gospel morality, continued to exercise upon
him. In all this we cannot fail to recognise the
parallel between the second-century heresiarch
and those thinkers of the present day who are
attracted to the Gospel partly from ancestral
association, partly from a genuine conviction that
the message of the Gospel Is the highest teaching
which they know, who nevertheless cannot Identify
the Power that has evolved the visible universe
of Nature and produced secular history — in a
word, the God of this world — with the Father
whom our Lord revealed. Our modern ideas
about the early history of man and Nature are
widely different from those current in the second
century, whether among heretics or orthodox ;
294

MARCION
but this should not blind us to our ethical kinship
with some of Marcion's leading principles of
religion. As nearly as any one of whom we
have knowledge, he preached the Gospel morality
without external sanctions. The essence of the
orthodox polemic against him was that In doing
this he became involved In contradictions with his
own doctrines.
Sometimes it is stated that Marcion rejected
the Old Testament. That is not quite true.
Marcion rejected the God of Israel as his God ;
but, as was the case with all early Christian
thinkers, the cosmogony of the Pentateuch and
Its Interpretation played an Important part In his
speculations. Nothing more clearly Hlustrates
the great gap between modern and ancient specula
tion about the cosmos than the use made by
Marcion of the Book of Genesis. In point of fact,
the Book of Genesis had no serious rivals until the
modern sciences of Geology and Archaeology
taught us something of the actual march of events
on this planet before ordinary history began.
It Is rather difficult to do justice to Marcion's
speculations on the Fall of Man. To go Into
detaHs in a lecture like this would be misleading.
What we most need is not antiquarian lore about
ancient heretics ; we need to try to translate
Marcion's beliefs into a form which is now in-
295

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
telHgible, to attempt to realise what attitude he
took up with regard to the problems which are
still unsolved, or of which we only now are
approaching the solution. The chief point Is that
Marcion believed that man is governed or
influenced by three Principles or Forces. There
is Matter, out of which his body was made ; there
Is Justice, or, as we now call it. Law, by means of
which he came into being and emerged from mere
inanimate material ; and there Is Grace, a principle
distinct from and superior to Law, by which man
may be redeemed from the dominion of Law, and
by which in the end the better and eternal part of
man will escape from the defiling contamination
of Matter. According to Marcion, Matter, Law,
and Grace are distinct entities in the cosmos, each
dwelling in its own sphere. This world we live
in was made by the action of Law upon Matter.
Man, the noblest product of Law and Matter, is
distracted between the two principles of his being.
He alone among created things consciously tries
to obey Law, i.e. Justice, and to forsake the
degrading service of Matter ; but through his
imperfect constitution he fails to find the true
Law and becomes involved in the worship of
Idols. Justice neither forgives nor makes allow
ances, and for the sin of worshipping Idols, false
ideals which do not exist, Man goes to hell — that
296

MARCION
is to say, the spirit of Man goes to conscious
torment, for the body perishes at death.
This miserable state of things went on for many
centuries. At last the principle of Grace who
dwells in the highest heaven — in other words, le
Bon Dieu — took pity on Man and sent His Son
down to earth to redeem them from their slavery.
Hitherto He had been a stranger to Man, He had
been neither the origin of Man's life nor the
object of his worship. It was out of mere com
passion that Grace came down and interposed —
we may almost say, interfered — to save mankind
from their hopeless condition.
So Jesus, the Son of God, appeared on earth,
doing good without reward, and healing those
who for their sins were sick, until at last the God
of the Law was jealous ; and the God of the Law
stirred up his servants and they took Jesus and
crucified Him, and He became like the dead, so
that Hell opened her mouth and received Him.
But Death could have no dominion over Jesus,
nor could Hell retain One who was alive within
its bounds. Jesus therefore burst the bonds of
Hell and ascended to His Father, carrying with
Him the spirits that lay there in prison. Then
Jesus came down In His glory and appeared
before the God of the Law, who was obliged to
confess that he was guilty according to his own
297

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Law ; for Jesus had only done good to the race
of men, and yet He had been crucified. " I was
ignorant," said the God of the Law to Jesus, " and
because I sinned and killed Thee In ignorance,
there shall be given to Thee in revenge all those
who shall be willing to believe In Thee, to carry
away wherever Thou wilt." Then Jesus left the
God of the Law and betook Himself to Paul, and
revealed this to him, and sent him to preach that
we have been bought with a price. All who
believe In Jesus were then and there sold from
the dominion of the Just Power to the Good and
Kind One.
Eznik the Armenian, from whose account of
the Marcionltes the details recounted In the last
paragraph have been taken, goes on to say :
"Not all the Marcionltes know all this, but only
a few of them, who hand down the doctrine one
to the other by word of mouth. What the
Marcionltes usually say Is simply, ' The Good
Stranger — with a price He bought us from the
Lord of the Creation,' but how or with what He
bought them, — that not all of them know." Most
modern scholars suppose that this detailed theory
of how the price was paid for man belongs to a
later development of Marcionism, but there is
nothing In it inconsistent with the leading Idea
of the Marcionite doctrine. This idea is the
298

MARCION
essential antithesis between Law and Grace.
' Mercy rejolceth against Judgement,' and Marcion
saw in the God of the Old Testament the God of
Judgement, and in the God of the New Testament
the God of Mercy.
It should be here pointed out that this story of
how the World- Power caused our Lord to be
killed, not knowing who He was, and how as
a consequence He descended into Hell and
harrowed it, was not confined to the Marcionltes.
It has dropped out from the modern presentation
of Christianity, but It is always meeting us in
pre-Reformation theology, from the Acts of Judas
Thomas and the Nisebene Hymns of S. Ephraim
to the Gospel of NIcodemus and the windows of
King's College Chapel. The only real difference
between the Marcionite and the orthodox forms
of the story Is that where the Marcionltes speak
of the God of the Old Testament, the orthodox
speak of Satan. In either case. It is the Adversary
of Jesus. The Marcionltes taught that by the
sacrifice, of the Cross our Lord bought us from
the dominion of the God of the Law, the
orthodox taught that by the sacrifice of the Cross
our Lord bought us from the dominion of the
DevH. And I cannot help feeling that there is a
definite reason why the Marcionite form of the
doctrine may be the more original, and that the
399

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
story which enshrines the doctrine may have
originated among the Marcionites, if it does not
come from Marcion himself For Marcion was
constrained to explain how the Good God came
to have any concern at all with mankind. The
orthodox Christian might believe that Jesus
Christ came In the fulness of time, in accordance
with the eternal purpose of God for His Creation.
But, according to Marcion, man originally owed no
allegiance to the Good God. Man was the handi
work of the Just God, and owed Him allegiance;
It was necessary therefore to explain how man's
allegiance was transferred to the Good Stranger.
But the most curious part of the story, from
the point of view of the history of Ideas, has yet
to be told. The belief that the Redemption was
essentially an act by which Man was bought by
God from the Devil prevailed among theologians
during the first ten centuries of Christianity. It
was accepted by S. Irenaeus, by Origen, by S.
Augustine. But at last it fell into discredit, and
a new theory took its place. The author of the
new theory was as far removed from heresy as it
is possible to be. Anselm was a prince of the
Church in his lifetime, and now he is a canonized
Saint. This great philosophical thinker was
profoundly dissatisfied with the current view of
the Atonement. He felt It unworthy to represent
300

MARCION
God as giving the Devil his due : the redemption
of man must be something wholly accomplished
and transacted by the Divine Personality, not
something paid away by God to some one else.
And so Anselm elaborated the famous theory by
which the sacrifice of Christ was represented as a
debt paid by God's Mercy to God's Justice.
This thought is very near akin to the leading
idea of Marcion. In Anselm's system, which
was accepted by the mediaeval Church, and is very
commonly held even now among Protestants,
God's Justice and God's Mercy are eternal
principles which play separate and opposing parts.
They are, in fact, if not in name, distinct Persons
in the Divine Essence. The world is governed
by Justice, and Mercy can only interfere by
paying the price to Justice. Justice cannot and
will not forgive, and it is distinct from Mercy and
Grace. But this is what Marcion taught eight
centuries before Anselm. The difference is only
In nomenclature. S. Anselm speaks of the eternal
Justice of God, and, on the other hand, of the
eternal Mercy of God at last manifested In Christ ;
Marcion spoke of the God of the Law, and of the
Good and Kind Stranger who sent His Son. I
cannot see that there Is any real difference.^
• ' If we searched all space,' says Luthardt, ' we should discover
only the gospel of power ; if we surveyed all time, only the gospel
301

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
I have not attempted to set before you to-day
a complete and ordered exposition of Marcion's
doctrines. In the first place, the materials are
insufficient ; and, in the second place, you can easily
read up for yourselves all that is known about
him. What I have tried to do is to shew how
fundamental and vital were the questions which
he raised, and how closely the solution which he
proposed, strange and repellent as it sounds, is In
touch with the thought of various ages, when It
Is stripped of mere accidents of second-century
phraseology. And, indeed, the controversy
between Marcion and the Church was no mere
academic discussion.
We are told by Epiphanius that when Marcion
first came to Rome he asked to be admitted to
Communion, and when he was refused communion
he went on to ask the Roman Presbyters what
was meant when our Lord spoke of the new wine
and the old bottles and of the folly of putting a
new patch on a worn-out garment. It was a
great and serious question. Christianity, we
believe, is both old and new ; in this saying of
Jesus It Is for the moment represented as a thing
of righteousness. Only in Jesus Christ do we learn the gospel of
grace.' This characteristic sentence from an orthodox Lutheran
theologian, quoted with approval by Canon Ottley in his article on
the Incarnation in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, ii 46515,
seems to me a piece of unadulterated Marcionite doctrine.
302

MARCION
essentially new, and the problem of how to
combine the old and the new still besets the
constructive reformer of every age. But Marcion
was told that the worn-out garment signified
Judas Iscariot, who was worn out with covetous
ness, so that he was unable fitly to receive the
new and heavenly hope of the Gospel ; and
though he was joined on to the eleven Apostles
by the Lord, a worse rent came through him, and,
moreover, his mind and thought did not agree
with the others 1 Nothing more clearly shews
than this answer how incompetent the heads of
the Church about 140 ad were to resolve the
doubts of a keen and earnest thinker like Marcion.
What wonder that Marcion replied by identifying
himself with the new piece of cloth and regarding
the Church as the worn-out Jewish gabardine 1
" I will tear your Church," said he to the Roman
Presbyters, " I will tear your Church and make a
rent in it for ever."
The Marcionite schism was a very serious
rent, and one that was not mended for many a
long day. In spite of persecution, at first from
the heathen, and afterwards from fellow- Christians,
In spite of a severely ascetic mode of life, in
spite of ' refutation ' by almost every prominent
orthodox theologian, one after the other, the
followers of Marcion organised themselves into a
20 303

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Church and maintained their corporate existence
until after the 5th century. An inscribed stone is
still preserved which had stood over the lintel of
the Marcionite chapel of a village near Damascus.'
It Is the oldest dated Inscription from any
Christian place of worship, and it Is melancholy
to think that In all probability this building was
destroyed at the Instigation of Christians a few
years after it was dedicated. For 318 ad, the
date of the dedication of this Marcionite Chapel,
occurs In the Interval of toleration between the
end of the great Diocletian Persecution (313) and
the definite triumph of Christianity under Con-
standne (324), after which the Marcionites were
forbidden to meet for worship either In public or
private, and the buildings they had already
erected for meeting-places were to be confiscated.
The Marcionites had proved their devotion to
our Lord by many a martyrdom, their disci
pline was strict, their lives were pure ; but the
Catholic Church waged war upon them to the
death. I do not intend to take you step by step over
the detailed refutations of Marcion by Tertulllan
and Epiphanius. The detailed refutation of a
1 The inscription runs : ' Synagogue of Marcionites of Lebab
village of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ {Xprja-Tov), at the
expense of the priest Paul in the year 630' — i.e. 318 ad. The
place-name in the Greek is Ka>p.i]s Xc0a(3<»v, Le Bas iii 583 (2558).
304

MARCION
lost cause generally arouses sympathy rather than
conviction, for we ourselves are obliged to supply
the arguments on the heretic's side. Moreover,
the orthodox champions do much less than justice
to Marcion. Tertulllan Is epigrammatic, harsh,
and wholly without the sympathy which alone can
comprehend ; while Epiphanius, for all his erudi
tion, — well, think of 'the narrowest clergyman of
your acquaintance and what he thinks and says
of the Dissenters in his parish — that (only much
worse) Is the attitude of Saint Epiphanius toward
heretics. We shall do better to leave Tertulllan
and Epiphanius alone, until we have a better idea
of the principles underlying both parties.
For, after all, the formal refutations do not
supply us with the principal reasons why the
Church rejected Marcion. As in all great
questions, the two parties ranged themselves on
opposing sides not so much from the objections
which could be raised against the other's views
as from allegiance to positive principles. And it
is comparatively easy to pick holes In your
opponent's case, to point out the weaknesses and
inconsistencies into which he has fallen ; but for
the most part triumphant demonstrations of this
kind only serve to encourage fellow-believers.
For us, after the lapse of seventeen centuries, it Is
more interesting and more profitable to try and
30s

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
get at the positive ideals which underlay the
controversial tactics of the two camps. We have
seen what were some of the main principles of
Marcion : the eternal antithesis of Law and
Gospel, of Justice and Mercy, of Nature and
Grace. Now let us see why the Church refused
the dHemma. What were the principles to which
the Church clung when Marcion was swept
away? The answer to this query lies implicitly, as I
venture to think, in a piece of literary borrowing,
which surprised me much when I first came across
it, but which I now see to have a real appropriate
ness. Tertulllan, as you have heard, wrote a
long and elaborate refutation of Marcion. He
also wrote, or (as some think) a Carthaginian
contemporary wrote, a treatise against the Jews.
Whether this treatise against the Jews was
actually compiled by Tertulllan, or not, does not
greatly matter; the important point for us is
undisputed, viz. that it was published a very few
years after the publication of Tertullian's work
against Marcion. The two works appeared at
the same place, and belong to the same school of
thought ; they are, in fact, practically designed
for the same public. Now the surprising thing
is that about half the treatise against the Jews is
simply copied out of the Third Book against
306

MARCION
Marcion. Paragraph after paragraph agrees
verbally, or only with the omission of a con
temptuous reference to Marcion's Pontic blrth.^
It does not matter whether the writer of the
treatise against the Jews was TertuHIan plagiari
sing from himself or some one else plagiarising
from Tertulllan. The important thing is that the
same arguments that were thought appropriate to
use against the Jews were thought appropriate to
use against Marcion the anti-Jew. Surprising as
it seems at first sight, the Church had to a great
extent the same controversy with both opponents.
The Church was determined to maintain its claim
to be the true heir of the promises of the Old
Testament, the promises made of old to the
Fathers. The Jews and Marcion had this in
common, that they disputed the claim of the
Christian Church to be the legitimate successor of
the Patriarchs and the Prophets, and this was a
claim that it was vital for the Church to make.
The claim was made good. Of course the
price had to be paid. We sometimes hear that
there is too much of the Old Testament in the
Christian Religion ; that may have been, and
may be still, true of certain forms which
^ Cf Aliud est si penes Ponticos barbariae gentis infantes in
proehum erumpunt (adv. Marc, iii 13) = Aliud est si penes uos
infantes in proelium erumpunt {adv. lud. § 9).
307

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Christianity has taken. But, on the whole, there
can be no doubt that the Church was right and
that Marcion was wrong. The Church was right
both as a matter of history and as a matter of
religious theory. As a matter of history, there
can be no doubt that Jesus Christ Himself
believed that He came not to destroy but to fulfil,
and that He believed that the Father whom He
preached was the God of Abraham and of Isaac
and of Jacob, the God of the Prophets and the
Psalmists. No one had known the Father but
the Son ; yes, but that was because men were
blind and crass, not because God was a stranger.
Our Lord was not the kind of Messiah that the
Jews were expecting, but none the less He was
a Branch out of the root of Jesse. He was a
Jew by birth, by training, by His whole environ
ment ; and to forget or deny this, as Marcion
denied it, and to regard Him as something wholly
new, come down from the Absolute, is to make
Christ and Christianity incomprehensible and
unreal. And as a matter of religious theory Marcionism
is Inferior to its rival. In fact, we can see this
now much clearer than it could be seen in the
second century. Neither Tertulllan nor Marcion
had much Idea of the orderly development of
Religion from crude and chHdIsh notions about
308

MARCION
God and the world to thoughts adequate for a
maturer stage in human history. But while
Development occupies only a small space in the
Catholic theory. In Marcion's theory there was
no room for it at all. It is a theory of catastrophe :
a New God comes down from nowhere, and
proclaims true religion for the first time. And
closely allied with Marcion's rejection of the Old
Testament history as being in any sense the
history of true religion was his denial of the
reality of our Lord's body as being In any sense
true flesh and blood. Marcion's Christ con
descends to treat with the God of the Law, but
He will have nothing to do with Matter, which
In Marcion's view was a thing altogether unclean
and outside the Christ's beneficent operations.
The refusal of the Catholic Church to give
up the real humanity of our Lord, or to regard
our material life as essentially unclean and Impure,
— the two refusals are most Intimately connected
— is one of the highest claims it has upon the
o-ratitude of the modern world. That what is
Divine Is degraded by becoming really human
carries with it the corollary that the things which
really make up human life, eating and drinking,
marrying and giving In marriage, the trivial
round, the common task, have no part In the
service of God. They are not things to be
309

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
consecrated : they have nothing to do with
religion. Consequently we find those that hold
this theory either regard mere morality as a
thing indifferent ; or, as more often happens
with those In whom the religious feeling, the
devotion to the Divine, is strong, they fall into
the opposite error of asceticism.
Among these was Marcion, and he impressed
his beliefs on his followers. According to
Marcion, the procreation of children was a doing
the works of the Creator of this world, an act
unworthy of a member of Christ. And so no
Marcionite was admitted to baptism, unless the
candidate was prepared to live a life of abso
lute continence from that day forward. Holy
Matrimony to the Marcionite meant marriage
to Christ, and for man and wife to live together
meant divorce from Christ.-'
Tertullian's strictures on Marcion about this
very Important point are both vigorous and
sensible. Gluttony, he says, Is bad, but that Is
no reason for proscribing food ; what is needed
is temperance. Marriage may be the cause of
many evils, but it is not to blame for those
evHs. In common with almost all Church
writers, Tertulllan believes that 'holiness,' i.e. a
life of continence, is better than the married
^ Tert. adv. Marc, i 29, iv 34
310

MARCION
state, but (he says) we hold up this ideal not
as good as opposed to bad, but as a better as
opposed to good. And, he adds, when marriage
is attacked as unlawful for Christians, the Church
expressly defends It.
We shall all be ready to side with Tertulllan
here, rather than with his opponent. But we
must be careful about the terms we use In
reprobating the Marcionite theory and practice.
Marcion was not alone in his rejection of
marriage. Nor was the actual practice of his
adherents quite so revolutionary as It sounds to
our ears. The mere fact that the Marcionltes
continued to exist for more than three centuries,
enjoying all the while a reputation not for licence,
but for puritanical austerity, Is enough to shew
that they were not a sect of 'race-suicides.' It
was In their Sacramental theory rather than in
their social life that the Marcionites differed from
their Catholic cousins. No doubt there were
many young folk among them who volunteered
early for baptism and actual participation in the
Holy Communion, just as there were, and are still,
young Catholics who volunteer to become monks
and nuns, and remain so. But these, I venture to
think, did not form the majority of the sectaries.
The majority lived like their neighbours in the
world, attending their ' Church ' (In which they
3"

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
were allowed to witness the celebration of the
Eucharist without partaking of the sacramental
meal), and no doubt distributing towards the
necessities of the Saints. Such persons, of
course had not yet been through the ceremony
of baptism. No doubt most of them were married
like their Pagan neighbours : the Wedding Feast,
and for aught I know the Wedding Ring Itself,
Is a good deal older than Christianity. But a
Marcionite marriage was not recognised by the
Marcionite Church, and neither man nor woman
was admitted to baptism and communion until
he or she was ready to live apart for the future.
The general result, therefore, was that the
sacramental life was deferred ; It became a pre
paration for entering the life after death rather
than a regime for the present.
This view of the Sacraments was by no means
confined to the followers of Marcion. I have
attempted elsewhere to shew that It prevailed
In the Syriac-speaking Church down to the
fourth century. It Is at least certain that
candidates for Baptism In this branch of the
Church were warned that if their hearts were
set on marriage they had better turn back from
Baptism^ and go away and be married. Yet
these folk were in communion with the rest of the
^ Aphraates, Horn, vii 20.
312

MARCION
Catholic Church, and their Bishops sat with the
rest in the Council of Nicaea. And we may re
member that the Council of Nicaea was summoned
by Constantlne the Great, a Christian Emperor
who thought It well and seemly to delay his own
baptism until a few months before his death.
The reservation of the Sacraments for those
who had withdrawn themselves from the world
by celibacy and freedom from worldly cares is
not therefore a special feature of Marcionism.
None the less we cannot doubt that the Church
was right to reject it. Both the Catholics and
the Marcionites believed that the reception of
the Eucharist involved the real presence of
God in the recipient. But while the Marcionltes
thought that so holy a Presence ought not to be
mingled with the elements of everyday human
life, the Catholic theory, however haltingly and
however imperfectly, declared that the elements
of everyday life are not essentially unclean, and
that the highest union with the Divine Nature
of which man is capable will consecrate these
elements, not destroy them.
All this was Involved In the Church's con
troversy with Marcion. The Issues at stake were
really great and always new and vital. When
we remember this, we may be more able to
understand and partly to excuse the bitterness
313

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
with which Church writers speak of an ardent
and earnest Christian thinker.
I must now say a few words upon Marcion's
Bible, that Is to say, his Gospel, and his edition
of S. Paul's Epistles. Thirty or forty years ago
this would have been the centre of interest in a
Lecture on Marcion. A very general belief was
then current in critical circles that the Gospel
accepted by Marcion was not, as Tertulllan aild
Epiphanius asserted, a mutilated edition of S.
Luke, cut about to suit the heretic's notions.
It was thought that Marcion's Gospel might be
the original and our S. Luke a later Interpolated
version used by the orthodox. But this theory
has been entirely given up on closer study of
the question from various points of view. The
assertions of Tertulllan and Epiphanius have
been fully vindicated, and Marcion's Gospel has
sunk Into a mere curiosity of literature.
In the first place, the numerous omissions, by
which Marcion's Gospel chiefly differs from the
canonical S. Luke, are all, or almost all, easily
explicable. Most of them. Indeed, could not
have been retained by one who held Marcion's
views. The birth of Jesus Christ from a human
parent and the baptism of Jesus Christ by a
prophet of the old order were Inconsistent with
314

MARCION
what Marcion taught. Marcion did not believe
that Jesus could have said that God had clothed
the grass of this material world, or that He could
have declared the old Prophets to have spoken
of Him. So all these passages are absent from
the Marcionite Gospel. But no one doubts that
they form a genuine portion of the Third Gospel.
Again, the linguistic evidence is fatal to the
priority of the Marcionite edition. If the parts
rejected by Marcion did not really belong to the
Third Gospel, but were later accretions, there
should be some difference of style between these
portions and the rest. But as a matter of fact
there is none. The characteristic style of the
Lucan writings equally pervades the passages
rejected and the passages retained by Marcion ;
in fact, there is nothing to separate the two classes
except that what Marcion rejected does not fit his
peculiar theory.^
The trend of modern Synoptic criticism is also
adverse to the priority of Marcion's Gospel. The
Gospel according to S. Luke Is a composite work,
compiled by the Evangelist from two main sources,
one identical with, or at all events nearly re
sembling, our Gospel according to S. Mark, the
other mostly consisting of our Lord's Discourses.
^ The linguistic evidence is admirably marshalled in Dr. Sanday's
Gospels in the Second Century, pp. 222-230.
315

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
But Marcion's omissions are spread over both
documents. Some of the passages omitted, such
as ' Go and tell that fox ' (Lk xiii 32), are peculiar
to S. Luke ; others, such as the Parable of the
Wicked Husbandmen (xx 9-18) and the Widow's
Mite (xxi 1-4), are found also in S. Mark. It is,
I firmly believe, impossible to Invent a hypothesis
wjiich will account for the actual facts, except the
hypothesis advanced by the Church Fathers, that
Marcion himself abridged S. Luke's Gospel. Of
course, he believed himself to be restoring the
pure Gospel, purged of foreign accretions, but
from a purely literary and historical point of view
we can scarcely agree with him.
One thing, however, we may note in passing.
Marcion is, in a sense, the last of the Evangelists.
He Is the last to produce a book, professing to
give the Gospel Story, which is not a mere
Harmony of the Four Gospels. The Christian
of a later age, however heretical, did not feel
himself free to select and to reject ; Marcion's
method of treating S. Luke does not differ in
kind, only in result, from S. Luke's very free
treatment of S. Mark's Gospel.
A copy of the Marcionite edition of S. Paul's
Epistles would be, on the whole, a more valuable
discovery than a copy of the Marcionite Gospel.
316

MARCION
The Marcionite Gospel is merely an abridged and
altered edition of what we already possess, but
Marcion's edition of the Pauline Epistles very
possibly represents an earlier stage of the collec
tion of S. Paul's letters than the canonical. The
history of the collection of these letters is distinct
from the question of the genuineness of any or
either of them. That the longer letters ascribed
to S. Paul are really his, is the verdict' of most
scholars, whether they belong to the critical
school or otherwise ; and further. It seems probable
that several of these letters, notably i Corinthians
and Galatlans, have come down to us practically
in their original form. But there is no great
probability that S. Paul himself made a collected
edition of his letters, or even that he kept copies
of those that he sent. He may have done so,
but there is no evidence. It Is indeed wholly
uncertain how or when these letters were first
brought together into a Corpus. I think we may
fairly consider our present collection to be at least
a second edition, revised and enlarged ; and there
is something to be said for supposing that the
previous edition was due to Marcion's reverence
for the great Aposde. As I said before, this
question is distinct from the question of the
genuineness of the several letters. There Is clear
evidence that some of the letters, especially
317

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
I Corinthians, were known and held in great
respect by writers earlier than or contemporary
with Marcion. But there is no tangible evidence
for an Apostolicon, a collection of the Epistles.
Thus S. Clement of Rome, writing to the Church
at Corinth, quotes i Corinthians by name, and
most appropriately: "Take up the letter of the
blessed Paul the apostle, how ... he spiritually
charged you concerning himself and Cephas and
Apollos."^ But it is more than doubtful whether
S. Clement had ever heard of the letter which we
call the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, and it
is very likely that the genuine letters of Paul, out
of which our Epistle Is composed, were at that
time lying unknown to the rest of the Christian
world In Corinth Itself Again, there is very little
to suggest that S. Ignatius knew the letter to the
Galatlans, though he certainly knew i Corinthians,
and probably knew Ephesians. When, therefore,
we consider Marcion's special Interest In S. Paul,
he being, according to Marcion, the only one who
understood the doctrine that Jesus came to deliver
to mankind ; and when, further, we remember that
Marcion was perhaps more of a traveller than any
other Christian In the second century, and there
fore had opportunities for collection above most
of his contemporaries ; when we consider these
' I Clem, xlvii i.
318

MARCION
things, we may be permitted to wonder whether
Marcion may not have been the first to make a
regular collection of the Pauline Epistles. At the
same time, I should be sorry to leave you with the
Impression that this hypothesis is an assured
result of criticism. It is not so ; it is no more
than a guess, and the evidence Is not sufficient to
enable us to reach anything like certainty in the
matter.^ Marcion's share in the collection of the Pauline
Epistles must remain doubtful. But there can be
little doubt that he was the first to canonise the
New Testament. The Bible of the earliest
generations of Christians was the Bible of the
Jewish Church. The Law and the Prophets and
the Psalms, together with the still undefined limits
of the rest of the Books, were to them the recorded
Word of God. The idea of a new volume, to be
added to what had been written aforetime, was
strange and foreign to their thought. No one
can read S. Luke's Preface to his great work and
not feel that the author could never have Imagined
that his work would be sacred, otherwise than by
1 Marcion's collection consisted of ten letters, which he arranged
as follows : — Galatlans, i Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, i and
2 Thessalonian^, Ephesians (called by Marcion, 'To the Lao-
dicaeans '), Colossians, Philemon, Philippians. He did not receive
the Epistles to Timothy and to Titus.
21 319

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
the fact that words of the Lord Jesus were re
corded In it. S. Paul writes to his spiritual
children with natural authority, but the Gospel
which he enforces is a living, floating belief, not
a written record. And this remained the point of
view of the early Church. They remembered the
words of the Lord Jesus, they repeated the prayer
He had taught His disciples to use, but the
Scripture, the written Word of God, remained
what it had been. To such an extent is this the
case, that when we find in a very early Christian
writing, the so-called Epistle of Barnabas, the
words, ' Many called, but few chosen,' with as it is
written prefixed, we feel that we are confronted
with a real difficulty.'^ It is probable that
' Barnabas ' really had the words of Jesus in his
mind, whether he knew of them through our
Gospel according to Matthew or from some
earlier collection of sayings ; but it is very im
probable that he Intentionally quoted them with
the regular Scripture formula. It has therefore
been supposed, with a good deal of reason, that he
had forgotten the reference, and consequently has
employed the formula ' as it is written ' by in
advertence for the more appropriate ' as the Lord
said to His disciples,' or something of that kind.
The Church felt in no need of a new Bible ; as
^ Barn, iv 14.
320

MARCION
we have seen, the preoccupation of Church theo
logians was to vindicate the Church's claim to be
the Heir of the Covenants, to prove that the Law
and the Prophets rightfully belonged to the
Christian Church rather than to the unfaithful
Jewish Synagogue. But Marcion rejected the
Law and the Prophets. He was left without a
Bible. For him true Religion began with the
descent of the Son of God to preach in Galilee.
The record of this preaching was for him what
the mystical lives of the Patriarchs were to Jewish
and orthodox Christians, and the writings of the
true theologian Paul were the true prophecy.
Thus for Marcion the Gospel and the Epistles
made up a New Testament, replacing the Old.
The Catholic Church complained, not without
reason, that Marcion's Gospel was nothing more
than a mutilated version of a thoroughly orthodox
and trustworthy work, and it was not to be ex
pected that Marcion's edition of S. Paul's letters
would be accepted without scrutiny as complete
or accurate in text. But the fact remains that
Marcion Is the first to come before us with a
collection of Christian writings which are treated
as Scripture, that is, as works out of the words of
which doctrine can be proved. Before Marcion's
time. In the works of what are commonly called
the Apostolic Fathers, we can find traces of the
321

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
literary use of certain of S. Paul's Epistles and
(less certainly) traces of the use of some of our
Gospels. But though the Old Testament Is often
quoted, no formal quotation Is found from the
books which comprise the New Testament, with
the exception of the quotation of i Corinthians
by Clement and the passage from the Epistle of
Barnabas to which I have just now referred.
Marcion then appears on the scene with a collec
tion of books, which, though rudimentary and
incomplete, Is recognlsably our New Testament.
A generation later we find the idea of a written
record by Evangelists and Apostles firmly rooted
in Catholic theology. When we remember that
this same Marcion, in whose hands a New Testa
ment Is first found, had far greater need than his
Catholic brethren of an authoritative New Testa
ment, It is impossible to avoid the inference that
to Marcion himself is due the Introduction of
Christian books into the sacred Canon. The
books were not new ; they were used and
venerated before, but they did not occupy the
same rank as the Old Law.
A New Testament Canon of some kind would
doubtless have been formed. If Marcion had never
appeared, and, as a matter of fact, the Church
rejected Marcion's Gospel in favour of earlier
documents. What we really owe to Marcion, as
322

MARCION
I venture to think. Is the enormous preponderance
of the writings of S. Paul in our New Testament.
To Marcion, as afterwards to the Reformers of
the 1 6th century, S. Paul was the great Theo
logian, the leader and fashioner of theological
thought. But it was not so to the early Catholic
Church. The antithesis of Law and Grace,
Justification by Faith, the Church regarded as the
Body of Christ, — on all these points the ancient
baptismal Creeds are silent. I think it would
surprise any one who knew the writings of the
early Fathers from Clement of Rome to the
Nicene Age, but was unacquainted with the New
Testament, to learn that even though the Gospel
was included four times over, letters of Paul
occupied a quarter of the official Canon. It Is
the great service which Marcion rendered to the
Church, that he recognised and emphasised with
a fervour, that was none the less effective for
being narrow and one-sided, the unique position
of the great Apostle of the Gentiles.
[For the Marcionite Prologues to S. Paul's Epistles, see the
separate Note, p. 353-]

323

X.
THE RIVALS OF THE CANONICAL
GOSPELS.
T3EF0RE I bring this set of Lectures to a
-L-' close you will naturally expect me to say
something about Apocryphal Gospels, the unsuc
cessful rivals of the Canonical Four. It wHl be
Impossible, of course, to do more than touch upon
this great subject, so full of difficulties and un
solved problems In almost all its branches. Some
parts of the subject. Indeed, are not only difficult
but dull, except to the specialist Investigator.
For there is little doubt what constitutes the
main interest of the Apocryphal Gospels, at least
for most minds. It is, in one word, a reflexion
of the surpassing interest of the Canonical Gospels.
From the Canonical Gospels the world has learnt
the story of Jesus Christ, and even those to whom
the tale means little or nothing cannot fail to note
the immense influence that His Personality has
exercised upon human society. We know His
Portrait from the official Church Canon, and we
cannot but ask whether something new and yet
324

THE REJECTED GOSPELS
true may not lie hidden in the rejected accounts
of His sayings and doings on earth. The Church's
chosen documents may only tell us what the
Church wants us to learn : is it not possible to
get another and a different glimpse of Jesus from
what the Church has rejected ?
It is weH to say at the outset that I do not
think these expectations can be gratified from
what has come down to us. Of all the com
munities and schools of thought to whom the
personality of Jesus presented any interest, the
Church itself was the one most concerned to
portray His human Nature, There were sects
and thinkers to whom He was raised altogether
above humanity : from these we cannot expect to
learn new facts of His history. There was, of
course, the indifferent heathen world outside, and
the unconverted world of Judaism, but these had
neither the time nor the inclination to investigate
the tale of the Nazarenes' Prophet, at least, not
untH independent sources of historical information
had ceased to be available. Josephus, if the
famous passage about our Lord be his, as I
believe it to be, must have been indebted to some
Christian acquaintance for his information. The
heathen Celsus is practically dependent on our
Gospels. Thus we have no source of information
about our Lord except from believers,
325

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Nevertheless, the study of non-canonical Gospels
presents many features of great Interest. If they
do not give us direct historical Information about
our Lord, they yet tell us much about the way In
which some of His early followers thought of Him.
They shew us the Intellectual atmosphere through
which men looked back at the wonderful Figure
which stood at the beginning of the new dis
pensation. Let us begin with a class of writings which lie
altogether outside the domain of history in the
strict sense, viz. those Gospels which profess to
deal wholly or mainly with what happened after
the Crucifixion. We shall find these books united
by a common characteristic : they all profess to
give out a secret revelation on the authority of
the Risen Christ. According to S. Luke In the
Acts, when our Lord appeared to the disciples
after the Resurrection, He was 'speaking the
things concerning the Kingdom of God,' but
beyond a command not to depart for the present
from Jerusalem, nothing Is given of these con
versations except a rebuke for overmuch curi
osity about the time of the restoration of the
Kingdom to Israel. Later writers had more to tell.
Take, for example, the work which calls Itself ' The
Testament, or Words which our Lord, when He
rose from the dead, spake to the Holy Apostles,
326

THE TESTAMENTUM DOMINI
To us the historical setting of the Testamentum
Domini is a transparent literary device, but we
cannot allege this with regard to the public for
which it was intended, and it Is Impossible to
separate it from other earlier books which make
use of the same device. The ' Testament ' begins
thus :
"It came to pass, after our Lord rose from the
dead and appeared unto us, and was handled by
Thomas and Matthew and John, and we were
persuaded that our Master was truly risen from
the dead, that falling on our faces we blessed the
Father of the new world, even God, who saved us
through Jesus Christ our Lord, and being held In
very great fear we waited prostrate. . , , But
Jesus our Lord, putting His hand on each one of
us separately, lifted us up, saying, ' Why hath your
heart thus fallen, and are ye stricken with great
astonishment ? , , , As children of light, ask of
My Father which is in heaven the Spirit of
counsel and might, and He will fill you with the
Holy Spirit, and grant you to be with Me for
ever.' " Then the disciples ask for the Holy
Spirit, and Jesus breathes on them, and they
receive the Holy Spirit. Peter and John then
ask what are the signs of the End. There is a
long answer : the usual calamities are foretold,
signs in heaven and ragings of the sea and
327

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
monstrous prodigies ; then come exhortations to
endure patiently unto the end, then the coming of
Antichrist is foretold, and the Eastern wars that
he will Inaugurate, with which is incorporated a
curious description of his personal appearance.
Meanwhile the faithful are to watch and pray
without ceasing. The disciples receive the revela
tion with reverent thankfulness, and ask how It is
fitting that they should arrange the ' mysteries of
the Church,' i.e. the order of Church services.
This, of course, is the real purpose of the
' Testament.' So our Lord replies : " Because
that ye also have asked Me concerning the rule
ecclesiastical, I deliver and make known to you
how ye ought to order and command him who
standeth at the head of the Church, and to keep
the perfect and just and most excellent rule, in
which My Father who hath sent Me is well
pleased. , , . But because in the midst of the
assembly of the people there are, more and more,
many carnal desires, and the labourers are feeble
and few, only My perfect labourers shall know
the multitude of My words, all also which I spake
to you In private before I suffered, and which ye
know ; ye both have them and understand them.
For ' My mysteries are given to those who are
Mine' (Isaiah xxiv 6), with whom I shall rejoice
and be glad with My Father. . . . But from the
328

THE TESTAMENTUM DOMINI
day that My faithful ones also have the desire to
know, that they may do the things of the Father,
even whatsoever is in this My Testament, I will
be with them and will be praised among them,
and I will make My habitation with them, by
power informing them of the wHl of My Father.
See that ye give not My holy things to the dogs,
and cast not pearls before swine, as I have often
commanded you. Give not My holy things to
defiled and wicked men who do not bear My
cross, and are not subject to Me, and My com
mandments be for derision among them. ... I
tell you therefore how the sanctuary ought to be ;
then I will make known the holy rule of the
priests of the Church. Let the church, then, be
thus : let It have three entrances, etc."
Here follows a Church law-book, giving
directions for the due performance of all ecclesi
astical functions. It Is a sister document to the
so-called Apostolical Constitutions and akin to
what is known as the Canons of Hippolytus. No
doubt it borrows something from the Didache,
that early Christian manual which we considered
In Lecture VIII. But I have made these rather
extensive quotations from it only to exhibit
the method of composition. The author's inten
tions are quite plain. He has something new,
viz. his Church legislation, and he uses the evange-
329

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Heal history to legitlmatise and sanction this new
material. I have spoken of the Testamentum Dom.ini at
perhaps excessive length, because In this case the
literary procedure is particularly clear. But it is
only one of a series of works somewhat simHarly
planned. The Testamentum Is chiefly concerned
with Church regulations and the Liturgy. Another
work, of a wholly different age and character, is
concerned with the esoteric teaching of Gnosticism.
This Is the Pistis Sophia, an exposition of the
mystical and cosmologlcal doctrine of an Egyptian
thinker or school of thinkers. In Its present form
it may date from the 3rd or 4th century, but no
doubt It contains very ancient, partly pre-Christian,
speculations. The main object of the Pistis
Sophia Is to expound the Gnostic theory of the
world as received by the writer, and at the same
time to Inculcate the doctrine that this theory Is the
real esoteric Christianity. To do this he employs
the same machinery as Is employed by the com
piler of the Testamentum Domini, that is to say,
it Is all given as a post- Resurrection Revelation
by our Lord to the inner circle of disciples. As
in the Testamentum, so In the Pistis Sophia, the
justification for this to us unwarrantable playing
with the Gospel History is that to the authors of
these books the test of truth was dogmatic, not
330

THE PISTIS SOPHIA
historical. The authors believed that the Church
Order or the Gnostic Doctrine was the right Order
or the right Doctrine, as the case might be ;
whether what they wrote was In accordance with
the course of past events did not really matter.
It is important for us to realise this point of
view when we attempt to make a study of early
Christian Literature, because it was the view of
so many Christian writers of historical or quasi-
historical books. It is. In fact, the point of view
of the whole mass of writers who wrote In other
folk's names from, let us say, the compiler of the
Book of Enoch to the writer of the Second
Epistle of Peter. Indeed, as I have had occasion
to point out to you more than once in the course
of these Lectures, the main reason why the
Canonical Gospels themselves contain so much
that is actually historical Is not the interest of
the Catholic Church in accurate history as an
excellent thing in itself but the dogmatic
necessity of maintaining the true humanity of Jesus
Christ and the reality of His Passion against
various forms of Docetic philosophizing. The
struggle with premature systems of theology
drove the Church back Into what, compared with
Gnostic thought, Is authentic and historical
tradition. Some perhaps would refuse to count the Testa-
331

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
mentum Domini and the Pistis Sophia among the
Gospels, even among 'Apocryphal ' Gospels. In
the case of these works the historical framework
is almost obviously a mere pretence, and the
whole Interest of the author lies in the doctrine
put in our Lord's mouth. But I have cahed
attention to them here because It seems to
me that with these works In our minds we can
better attack the criticism of the ' Gospel ' and
' Apocalypse ' of Peter.
Before 1892 little was known of the 'Gospel of
Peter' beyond what Eusebius told us in his
History.'- There we read that this Gospel was
accustomed to be read in the Church of Rhossus,
near Antloch, but that it was suppressed by
Serapion, bishop of Antloch, when he found, on
examination, that it really taught the Docetic
heresy. The ' Apocalypse of Peter ' had left
more trace in Christian literature. We knew
that it dealt with the Last Judgement, and with
the torments meted out to various classes of
sinners. It is quoted once or twice as Scripture
by Clement of Alexandria, and used by several
Christian writers of the 3rd century. It formed,
in fact, one of the ultimate sources from which
mediaeval authors derived their descriptions of
Hell. In 1892 large fragments of these lost
1 HE vi 12.
332

THE GOSPEL AND APOCALYPSE OF PETER
works were published from a vellum book found
in a Christian grave in the ancient cemetery of
Akhmim in Egypt. The book, which also con
tained fragments of the ancient apocryphal work
called the Book of Enoch, was entire, but the
text which it contained of the Gospel and
Apocalypse of Peter consisted of fragments
merely. Evidently the MS from which they
had been copied was itself mutilated, so that what
has come down to us begins and ends in the
middle of sentences.
Incomplete, however, as the fragments are, they
are enough, and more than enough, to identify
them and to give a very fair idea of the character
of the documents when perfect. I suppose you
are all more or less famHIar with the contents of
the ' Gospel of Peter.' You know that our
fragment begins just after Pilate has washed his
hands of the guilt of condemning our Lord, which
is wholly borne, according to this document, by
Herod and the Jews. These drag away our Lord
to crown Him with the crown of thorns and to
crucify Him. He ah the whHe keeps sHence,
'as having no pain,' but one of the malefactors
reproaches the crucifiers, saying, 'We have
suffered thus for the evils that we have done, but
this man having become a saviour of men, how
hath He wronged you ?' Then comes the dark-
333

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
ness at noon, and the Jews are alarmed, not at
the portent, but lest the sun should have really
set, and so the Law should have been broken.
Then 'the Lord cried out, saying, "My Power,
my Power, thou hast forsaken Me " ; and having
said It, He was taken up.' Here we may remark
in passing not only that our Lord's cry on the
Cross has been given a turn whereby it attests
the non-catholic belief that His Divine nature
departed from Him just before the death on the
Cross, but also that this new turn has been given
to the cry through a misunderstanding of the
Aramaic words preserved In Mark and Matthew,
Eli being understood to mean 'My Power,' and
not ' My God.' Thus we see in the Gospel of
Peter at this point an Interpretation of Mark (or
Matthew) rather than real independent historical
reminiscence. The style of paraphrase Is after
all not unlike that which Is put into the mouth of
Pistis Sophia In her ' repentances.'
The Gospel of Peter goes on to narrate the
deposition and burial of the Lord and the Guard
at the Tomb, and then describes the Resurrection
In detail, as seen by the Soldiers and the Elders
who were keeping watch with them. It Is very
well told, and there is an ' Impressive dignity In
the Voice from Heaven which speaks to our Lord
as He emerges from the Tomb, saying, ' Hast
334

THE GOSPEL AND APOCALYPSE OP PETER
thou preaclied to them that sleep?' But how
ever much or however little the writer may have
used the Canonical Gospels, we do not feel that
he is any nearer the historical facts.
The visit of the women to the Tomb on the
Easter morning is narrated in our fragment very
much as in Mark, and It goes on to tell what
occurred afterwards, when Simon Peter (In whose
mouth the whole story is put) went away fishing
with Andrew and Levi the son of Alphaeus. At
this point our fragment comes to an end : evidently
the Gospel of Peter went on to narrate an appear
ance of the Risen Lord In Galilee.
The fragment of the Apocalypse of Peter
which Is preserved in the same MS shews us the
Lord in the midst of the disciples predicting the
false prophets and the oppression that was to pre
cede the final Judgement, exactly as in the Testa
mentum Domini, but Instead of going on to draw
up rules for Church government, the revelation
that He gives Is about the state of the righteous
dead, who live in a land of brightness and never-
fading flowers, and about the state of the wicked,
who are tormented according to the nature of
their sins. Here, of course, we pass beyond the
region of the Canonical Gospels. But the
question I wish to raise is whether, in passing
from the ' Gospel of Peter ' to the ' Apocalypse of
2^ 335

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Peter,' we have really passed from one work to
another? Is It not possible that our two frag
ments are really parts of the same work ?
In the MS from Akhmim there are no running
titles, no indication of the name by which the
fragments were known. But both fragments
profess to be the work of Simon Peter,^ who
writes partly in his own name, partly in the name
of the Twelve : the phrase ' we, the Twelve
Disciples,' occurs both In the Gospel and In the
Apocalypse. I cannot help thinking that both
Gospel and Apocalypse form only one work,
and that Its main object was to commend the
description of Paradise and Hell by setting it
in a quasi-historical framework.^
It Is very likely that the writer did not draw
entirely on his Imagination for his theories about
the state of men after death. Dr. Montague
James has suggested that their ultimate origin Is
^ 'EyM 8e 2lpa>v HiTpos, Ev. Pet. § 1 4, ad fin. ; lya Sc perd Tav
iraipav pov, % 7. The expression fjpus oi SwSexa p.a8rjTa\ occurs Ev.
Pet. § 14, and also Apoc. Pet. § 2. The transition in Apoc. Pet. § 4,
is made thus iSovTes ovv . . . cKBap^oi yeyovapev , . . koI npoa-i\6wv
TO) Kvpt'o) €L7r6v . . . Xeyet juot k.t.X.
^ The main objection to regarding the Gospel and Apocalypse
of Peter as parts of a single work is that some authorities reckon
the length of this Apocalypse at 270 or 300 stichi. According to
this, very little would now be lost. More probably, however, the
Revelation may have been separated off at a later time after the
whole work fell into disrepute as heretical, just as ' Paul and
Thecla ' was separated off from the ' Acts of Paul.'
336

THE GOSPEL AND APOCALYPSE OF PETER
to be found in Egyptian beliefs and the cycle of
ideas that underlie the Ritual of the Dead, and
this is very likely to be the case. No doubt
Pseudo- Peter altered what he took, just as he
freely altered the Gospel narratives of the Passion.
And perhaps the Egyptian priests would be as
ready to charge him with heresy from their point
of view, as Serapion was from the point of view
of Christological doctrine. The fault of which
I would accuse Pseudo-Peter is not his use of
S. Peter's name or his Docetism. I venture to
think his main fault Is that which he shares with
the compilers of the Testamentum, Domini and of
the Pistis Sophia. It Is this, that he has used
the Gospel to bring us to his doctrines, and that
he has forgotten his Hero in the events which
he describes and the doctrines which he makes
Him teach. It is hardly a mere trick of style
that the ' Gospel of Peter ' always speaks of ' the
Lord ' : the memory of Jesus was merged Into that
of the wholly supernatural Being, the mere touch
of whose dead body caused the earth to shudder.^
The Apocryphal Gospels we have hitherto
been considering have dealt with the Passion and
the period after the Resurrection. A few words
must now be said in passing on the group that
deal with the early history of our Lord. These
1 Ev. Pet. § 6.
337

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
are all of very small historical and ethical value.
Some, like the ' Protevangelizcm of James,' narrate
the birth and childhood of the Virgin Mary, as
well as the birth of our Lord ; others, like the
' Gospel of Thomas the Israelite,' tell stories
about the childhood of Jesus. These documents
are of unknown age. No doubt the comparatively
orthodox forms in which they have survived to
our time are not the earliest forms in which they
were circulated, but at any rate the silly story
about the child Jesus refusing to leai-n the
Alphabet from His teacher was used by the
Marcoslans whom Irenaeus refutes.^ No one
can suppose that any of these Gospels of the
Infancy rests on anything which has a right to be
called Tradition. Their genesis is rather to be
sought In the same circumstances that gave rise
to the Christian and Pseudo-Christian Gnostic
speculations. They represent what In the ima
gination of some thinkers must have occurred,
if the Christ on whom they believed was really
the' Son of God sent down from Heaven. But
the attempt to glorify the infancy of Jesus does
not succeed. The ' Gospel of Thomas ' is a
record of miracles performed by Jesus from five
to twelve years old, ending with the visit to
Jerusalem which is narrated In the Gospel of
^ lren. Haer. i 20 ; cf. Ev. Thomae, § 6.

GOSPELS OF THE INFANCY
Luke. To us who have learnt to know our Lord
through the Canonical Gospels the tales are only
a painful exhibition of the bad taste of the writer.
Perhaps the least offensive Is the story of how
Jesus made clay sparrows on the Sabbath, and
when rebuked for breaking the Law He clapped
His hands and the sparrows flew away. As I
said just now, some at least of these stories are
very ancient, and that the Catholic Church
rejected them shews that the Church required
more from those who wished to honour her Lord
than the mere ascription of miracles to Him.
The Jesus of these tales Is not reaUy Human,
and although the orthodox Church writers of the
second century repudiated most strongly the
accusation of worshipping a mere man, they
nevertheless held fast to the true humanity of
Jesus Christ.
One point I wish especIaUy to bring forward,
a point which shews, I think, more clearly than
any other that the tales about Christ which were
circulated were ultimately inspired by theological
and phHosophical considerations, not by historical
and biographical interest. It Is this — the absolute
sHence concerning the whole period between the
boyhood of our Lord and His Baptism. The
Gospel of Thomas and the Protevangelium shew
us that mere lack of historical material did not
339

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
hinder the development of tales about the doings
of our Lord on earth. The coming of the Son
of God into the world of humanity appeared to
the thinkers of the second century a difficult and
mysterious process. Their thoughts dwelt on it,
as to how and In what manner it could be, and
the result of these thoughts shew themselves both
in the speculations of Valentlnus and his com
panions, and In the puerilities of ' Thomas the
Israelite.' But It was agreed that the Son of
God, in whatever manner and with whatever
nature He had been born Into the world, passed
the long years between His boyhood and His
Baptism without any outward manifestation or
assumption of special Powers or Authority. It
was a period of mere natural growth : consequently
it excited no interest at all in the second century.
Had the men of that time the same sort of
biographical Interest In Jesus Christ that we
have, this period would not have been left in
unbroken silence.
The most Interesting of all the lost Gospels is
doubtless that which is known as the ' Gospel
according to the Hebrews,' and It is a little dis
couraging to have to record that recent modern
discovery and criticism have added practically
nothing to our knowledge of it. The greater
340

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS
part of the fragments that are preserved have
come down to us through quotations made by
S. Jerome, who found the Gospel used by
the Nazarean Christians of Aleppo. These
' Nazareans ' allowed S. Jerome to examine their
book. The Greek and Latin rendering which
S. Jerome made has unluckily perished, but he
quotes the Gospel here and there, as Origen also
had done before him.^
Those who quote the Gospel according to the
Hebrews naturally quote It for something which
differs from the Canonical Gospels. Where that
Gospel agreed with the Canonical Gospels it was
not worth quoting specially. Consequently what
we have is a bundle of strange-looking fragments,
representing the peculiarities of the Gospel. If it
had been preserved as a whole we should doubt
less find much which is already represented in
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In fact, the general
impression produced by most of the fragments
is that the document is a first cousin, if not
a sister document, to the Canonical Gospel ac
cording to Matthew. For Instance, Jerome
quotes from the Gospel according to the Hebrews
as follows : — ^
1 The fragments have often been collected together : my
references are to Preuschen's Antilegomena, a very useful collec
tion of all the non-canonical Gospel fragments.
2 Contra Pelag. iii 2 {Preuschen, 6).
341

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
" ' If thy brother have sinned in word and have done thee
amends, seven times in the day receive him.' Simon His disciple
said to Him, ' Seven times in the day?' The Lord answered and
said to him, ' Yea, I say to thee, unto seventy times seven. For
even in the Prophets, after they were anointed with the Holy Spirit,
there was found matter of sin.' "

The latter part of this saying is found as a
marginal note to Matt xvIH 21, 22, in a Greek
minuscule MS,-' in which the Hebrew Gospel is
called TO 'lovSaiKov. The last clause is, as Dr.
Westcott says, obscure : it seems to mean that
since even the inspired prophets were not sinless,
it is unreasonable to expect our neighbours to be
without fault. But I did not quote the passage
for exegetlcal reasons. I quoted it, because it
definitely states that the Saying of our Lord
about forgiving ' unto seventy times seven ' had a
place In the Nazarean Gospel, and that in a form
which bears all the marks of superior originality
to the parallels in Matt xvIH 21, 22, and Lk xvH
3, 4. With Matthew It speaks of seventy times
seven and brings Simon Peter into the story ;
with Luke it definitely supposes that the offender
has asked for pardon, and speaks of forgiving
seven times In the day. So far as this passage
is concerned we might even regard the Nazarean
extract as giving us the text of the lost document
common to Matthew and Luke, which I have
1 Cod. ev. 566.
342

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS
called Q ; but since the Nazarean Gospel has
parallels elsewhere with Matthew, where Luke
has none, it Is better to regard the Nazarean
form as simply giving another text of the
Matthean type. For example, the same minus
cule which has the note at Matt xviii 22, says, at
Matt xvi 17, that to 'lovSaUov has 'Son of John'
instead of ' Bar-jona ' : this can only mean that
the Gospel according to the Hebrews contained
the Saying of our Lord to S. Peter about the
Gates of Hell, which begins in the Canonical text,
' Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona ' ; and this Is
a saying which is definitely Matthean.
Similarly, S. Jerome tells us, in commenting
upon Matt xxiii 35, that in the Nazarean Gospel
It Is written ' Zacharias, son of Jehoiada,' instead
of ' Zacharias, son of Barachias.' The parallel in
Lk xi 51 has ' Zacharias ' only, without any
patronymic. Here it is pretty certain that the
Nazarean Gospel does not present the primitive
text. No doubt by the ' son of Barachias ' Is
meant that unfortunate Zacharias whose murder
in the Temple is related by Josephus ; and If this
be so, the saying as reported In Matt xxiii 35
cannot be a verbally correct report of words of
Jesus. But It is very unlikely that He should
have referred to the murder of the son of Jehoiada
mentioned in 2 Chron xxiv 20, 21. The general
343

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
meaning of the phrase, if we read ' son of Jehoiada '
with the Nazarean Gospel, is, "all the murders
done in the name of religion from Genesis to
MalachI " ; the general meaning of the phrase, if
we read ' son of Barachias ' with the Canonical
Matthew, is, "all the murders done in the name of
religion from the beginning of human history to
the present day." This last is the true meaning :
the reading of the Nazarean Gospel Implies a
study of the Bible rather than that of the human
heart. There are two other passages of the Gospel
according to the Hebrews which I must mention
here, as I think they bring out very well the
considerable, but not supreme, value of this lost
monument of early Christianity. The first, pre
served by Eusebius,^ tells us that in this Gospel
there was a different form of the Parable of the
Talents, in which three servants were mentioned
— the virtuous one who multiplied his Lord's
talent, the slothful one who hid the talent, and a
prodigal who wasted it ; and that the one was
welcomed, the second only blamed, while punish
ment was reserved for the prodigal. Thus the
whole point of the Parable was changed, In order
to drag in a piece of what may be called Sunday
School morality. Had the prodigal servant stood
^ Mai, Nov. Patr. Bibl. iv i, p. 155 {Preuschen, 7).
344

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS
in the original form of the Parable, 1 cannot think
so obviously edifying a judgement would have
been suppressed both by Matthew and by Luke.
The second passage is very similar. In Origen's
Commentary on Matt xix i6ff", as preserved in
the ancient Latin version, we read :
" It is written in a certain Gospel called ' According to the
Hebrews,' if any one will receive it, not as an authority, but as an
illustration of the subjegt before us : — The other of the rich men
said to him, ' Master, what good thing shall I do to live ? ' He said
to him, ' O man, do the Law and the Prophets.' He answered
unto him, ' I have done them.' He said to him, ' Go, sell all that
thou hast and distribute to the poor, and come, follow me.' But
the rich man began to scratch his head, and it did not please him.
And the Lord said to him, ' How sayest thou, I have done the Law
and the Prophets ? Because it is written in the Law, Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself, and lo, many of thy brethren, sons
of Abraham, are clothed in filth, dying of hunger ; and thy house
is full of many good things, and nothing at all goes out of it to
them.' And He turned and said to Simon His disciple, who was
sitting by Him, ' Simon, son of John, it is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle, than a rich man into the Kingdom of
Heaven. ' "
This well-known passage raises many questions,
but I think there can be little doubt about the
most Important point. There can be little doubt
that this form of the story Is In the end derived
from what we read in Mark, and that It is of
inferior historical value. This second rich man
was doubtless Introduced by the same hand that
introduced the prodigal Into the Parable of the
Talents, and for the same reason, viz. the
supposed Interests of ordinary ethical teaching.
345

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
The condemnation of the Rich Young Man in
the Gospels seemed too severe, unless it could be
asserted that he had not fulfilled the Law, as he
claimed to have done. But in the story as we
have it in Mark (and in Luke) the man is not
blamed for being niggardly or for not having told
the truth. He is blamed for lack of real
enthusiasm. In the historical setting, as he
spoke with our Lord on the way to the Passion
at Jerusalem, he Is simply found to be unfit to
volunteer. The Lord did not tell him to
distribute his property to the poor because they
were In need ; He told him to get rid of his
property, because at that crisis the ties of
respectability would be an encumbrance to those
who wished to follow Him. But in the story as
told in the Gospel according to the Hebrews the
historical situation Is forgotten, and the writer Is
anxious to emphasise the claims of the poor rather
than the call to follow Jesus to the death.
In one noteworthy point the Gospel according
to the Hebrews and the Canonical Matthew agree
in an alteration of the Marcan story which Is
certainly not primitive. ' Master, what good
thing shall I do ? ' Is certainly less primitive than
' Good Master, what shall I do ? ' followed as the
latter is by the answer, ' Why callest thou Me
Good ? ' The fragments of the Gospel according
346

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREW'S S
to the Hebrews are not extensive enough for us
accurately to determine Its literary relation to the
Canonical Gospel according to Matthew, but that
they form a special group of the Synoptic
documents derived from and historically Inferior
to our Gospel according to Mark, this passage
alone is enough to demonstrate.
The most curious point about this Hebrew
Gospel, and one that is at present unexplained. Is
that It Is said to be shorter than our Matthew.
Wherever its readings are preserved It gives an .
extended and fuller text. We have seen there Is
a second Rich Man and a third Servant in the
Parable. There is also the Impressive story of
the appearance of the Risen Christ to S. James
the Just, which Is not represented at all In the
Canonical Gospels.. If, therefore, the Hebrew
Gospel and our Matthew were nearly akin, and
yet the Hebrew Gospel had all this extra matter,
there must have been great omissions somewhere
in the course of the narrative. It cannot, I think,
be quite certainly discovered whether there was
anything In it corresponding to the Nativity
Story of our Matthew,^ but that would only
account for some lOO lines of the ancient
reckoning, and if the figures of NIcephorus's
' Jerome, De Viris Illustr. 3, may be referring to the Canonical
text. 347

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Stichometry be correct, the Hebrew Gospel had
only 2000 lines to 2500 in Matthew. It Is
difficult not to think that the figures must be
wrong, and that the Gospel contained nearly all
that we find in the Canonical Matthew, with other
matter beside.
I do not propose to give here a detailed
criticism of the fragments which commonly go
by the name of the ' Oxyrhynchus Logia.' Very
valuable and interesting they are — who would
question It ? — but I venture to think they add very
little to our knowledge of the Gospel History.
In the first place. It is almost impossible to work
with mere fragments. The fragments of the
Gospel and Apocalypse of Peter ' contain 16
rather closely written pages of text, but the
fragments of the document published by Dr.
GrenfeU and Dr. Hunt in 1897 and 1904 only
consist of two leaves, and one of these is torn
across, so that half of every line Is lost. It is
obvious that any conclusions based upon such
materials must be beset with much uncertainty.
But besides this, I am not at all sure that the
Sayings of Jesus In the Oxyrhynchus Papyri
would commend themselves as historically
authentic. If the whole document were preserved.
I find it a little difficult to believe that a document
348

THE OXYRHYNCHUS LOGIA
which puts 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within
you ' side by side with the Greek maxim ' Know
yourselves ' can be regarded as a faithful report
of the words of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps the
Oxyrhynchus documents may have preserved
genuine Sayings of Jesus which were otherwise
unknown, but the collection must have been
mixed with non-Semitic elements. I feel sure
that its main value is apprehended, when it is
regarded as a monument of the Influence of
Christianity upon Greek thought.
It is the special merit of the Synoptic Gospels,
and, above all, of the Gospel according to S.
Mark, that they are so little Influenced by the
spirit of the Greco-Roman civilisation. The
Church itself became ever more and more
European. Greek and Roman ideas of Philo
sophy and Law became dominant in the Theology
and the Organisation of Christendom. We can
not doubt that it was good that It should be so.
The mission of Christianity Is to Influence the
world, not to impose itself upon the world as
an alien domination. The Kingdom of God Is
like unto leaven ; and the use of leaven Is not
primarily to make more leaven, but to make
good bread. It was therefore necessary that,
in proportion as Christianity became a living
349

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Influence upon the ages, it should take up into
itself the ideas and conceptions that make the
ages what they are, and that the primitive forms
in which Christianity was embodied should suffer
change and disappear.
But this Is not all. Christianity is something
more than a belief in a Divine Spirit which
Influences the world through the medium of a
Society of men In which it works. Throughout
all the multifarious varieties of Christian specula
tion, belief in the transcendent importance of
the Life and Work of Jesus Christ remains.
The Church Is conscious that it cannot afford
to lose touch with Christ, with the Jesus of
Nazareth who once suffered on the Cross. It
was this which, in the second century, drove the
Church back upon historical tradition to escape
the inferences of Gnostic theorizing about Christ
and His work, so that the Church's belief became
enshrined in accounts of the Life of Jesus as well
as In Creed and Sacrament.
I have purposely abstained in these Lectures
from discussing most of those parts or features
of the Gospel History which usually form the
subject-matter of modern controversies. Our
belief or disbelief In most of the Articles In the
Apostles' Creed does not ultimately rest on
historical criticism of the Gospels, but upon the
3SO

CHRISTIANITY AND THE LIFE OF CHRIST
general view of the universe, of the order of
things, which our training and environment, or
our inner experience, has led us severally to take.
The Birth of our Lord from a virgin and His
Resurrection from the dead — to name the most
obvious Articles of the Creed — are not matters
which historical criticism can establish. The ex
clamation In Addison's Play, "It must be so ; Plato,
thou reasonest well 1 " is not really true to life :
fundamental beliefs are rarely acquired through a
logical process. As I ventured to say in the Intro
ductory Lecture, we do not get our leading Ideas
of religion or phHosophy from historical criticism.
But the Christian religion is not only a matter
of imagination and philosophy. The Crucifixion
under Pontius Pilate and the Death and Burial
of our Lord are as much Articles of the Christian
Creed as the Resurrection Itself And In these
Articles, Christianity enters the arena of ordinary
history. The Interpretation of the Life of Jesus
Christ in Palestine is a matter of Faith ; but the
Tale itself the course of events, belongs to
History and is a matter for the scientific
historian to scrutinise.
Meanwhile, I am sure it Is the plain duty of
the Christian investigator to strive to get as
clear ideas as he can of the outward events of
the Ministry of Jesus, and of the positions which
23 351

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
our Lord actually took up with regard to the
thought and action of the age in which He lived
among men. The more we understand these
things, the more we Individualise the Figure of
our Lord as manifested in action In that long
past scene, the better we shall be able to embody
the spirit of His teaching in forms appropriate
to our own surroundings.

352

NOTE ON THE LATIN PROLOGUES
TO S. PAUL'S EPISTLES.
A MONG the many contributions to Biblical
¦^ *¦ and Patristic learning that have been made
during the last three hundred years by members of
the Benedictine Order few have been so startling
as the sixteen pages communicated by Dom D. de
Bruyne to the Revue Bdnddictine for January 1907.
The object of Dom de Bruyne's paper is to shew
that the short ' arguments ' or prologues, prefixed
to S. Paul's Epistles In most MSS of the Latin
Vulgate and frequently printed In Editions of the
Bible, are the work of Marcion and were originally
composed as headings for the Epistles in the
Marcionite Apostolicon. This surprising theory
has been accepted by Harnack {Theologische
Literaturzeitung for March, 1907), and indeed
after reading de Bruyne's paper it Is difficult
to understand why so many generations of
scholars, from VIctorlnus and Ambroslaster to
those of our own day, should have been blind
to the marks of Marcionite authorship. The
set does not include an ' argument ' to Hebrews,
353

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
and those to Timothy and Titus, and to 2 Cor
inthians and 2 Thessalonians, are of a different
construction from the others. The argument to
Ephesians also is later, being merely an imitation
of those to Philippians and Thessalonians. But
the remainder all belong to one series, which also
Included an Epistle 'to the Laodlceans.' They
were arranged in this order : Galatlans, Corin
thians, Romans, Thessalonians, [Laodlceans,]
Colossians, Philippians, Philemon. At least it Is
certain that Galatlans came before Corinthians
and that Colossians came Immediately after
' Laodlceans,' — and this is Marcion's order and
nomenclature. But It is the contents of these Prologues, their
standpoint and theological Ideas, that are definitely
Marcionite. They are the work of one who was
as much obsessed by the opposition of Paulinism
to Judalzing Christianity as was Baur himself All
the Epistles are looked at from the point of view
of the Epistle to the Galatlans and the struggle
between the Apostle and his opponents the
Pseudo- Apostles. None but Marcionites occupied
this point of view in the second and third centuries.
And who but a Marcionite would have described
the teaching of the ' false Apostles ' as It Is de
scribed in the Prologue to Romans, where it says
that their converts ' had been brought into the Law
354

NOTE ON THE LATIN PROLOGUES
and the Prophets ' {in legem et prophet as erant
inductt) ? The Law might be merely Jewish in
parts, but the very essence of second- century
Catholic theology was that the Prophets spoke
God's word about Christ and the Church. It was
Marcion alone who rejected the Prophets.
As the Prologues are so short, I quote them In
full that they may speak for themselves : —
' Galatians are Greeks. These accepted the
word of truth first from the Apostle, but after his
departure were tempted by false Apostles to turn
to the law and circumcision. These the Apostle
recalls to the faith of the truth, writing to them
from Ephesus.'
' Corinthians are of Achaia. And these similarly
heard the word of truth from the Apostle and were
perverted variously by false Apostles, some by the
wordy eloquence of philosophy, others brought In
by the sect of the Jewish Law. These the Apostle
recalls to the true Evangelical wisdom, writing to
them from Ephesus by Timothy.'
'Romans are in the parts of Italy. These were
reached beforehand by false Apostles, and under
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ had been
brought in to the Law and the Prophets. These
the Apostle recalls to the true Evangelical faith,
writing to them from Corinth.'
' Thessalonians are Macedonians [In Christ
355

THE GOSPEL HISTORY
Jesus], who having accepted the word of truth
persevered in the faith even in persecution from
their fellow-citizens. Moreover, also, they received
not the things said by false Apostles. These the
Apostle praises, writing to them from Athens [by
Timothy].' ' Laodiceans . . . ' (missing).^
' Colossians — these also like the Laodiceans
are of Asia, and they had been reached before
hand by Pseudo-Apostles, nor did the Apostle
himself come to them. But these also by an
Epistle he corrects, for they had heard the word
from Archippus, who also accepted a ministry
unto them. Therefore the Apostle already in
custody writes to them from Ephesus.'
'Philippians are Macedonians. These having
accepted the word of truth persevered in the faith,
nor did they receive false Apostles. These the
Apostle praises, writing to them from Rome [out
of prison by Epaphrodltus].'
'To Philemon he sends a private letter for
Oneslmus his slave, and writes to him from Rome
out of prison.'
The bracketed passages are omitted in the
text as read In the Frelsing Palimpsest, the only
1 The extant Argument to the Ep. to the Ephesians runs as
follows : ' Ephesians are of Asia. These having accepted the word of
truth persevered in the faith. These the Apostle praises, writing to
them from the City of Rome out of prison by Tychicus the Deacon.'
356

NOTE ON THE LATIN PROLOGUES
extant Old Latin MS of this part of the New
Testament. The Prologues are said to be not by
the first hand in this MS, but, even If this be so,
they were added in the sixth or seventh century,
and thus this text is one of the oldest and most
Independent we possess of them. It is worth
remark that no prologue is given In the Frelsing
MS to 2 Corinthians, a fact which accords with de
Bruyne's view that the short Prologue to this epistle
found in many MSS does not belong to the
Marcionite series.
When once the key- word ' Marcion ' has been
uttered, the Prologues need no commentary. I
cannot do better than conclude here in Harnack's
words {Theol. Ltztg. 1907, col. 140). After point
ing out that the Prologues must have been origin
ally composed in Greek, not only because of
certain expressions, but also because no one living
in the West would have written Romani sunt in
partibus Italiae, Harnack says : ' We know now,
unless unexpected objections are raised, that just
as the Catholic Martyrology goes back to an Arlan
Martyrology [i.e. that quoted on p. 254], so also
the ancient Prologues are a monument of the
Marcionite Church standing in the midst of the
Catholic New Testament. Is not the canonised
collection of the Pauline Epistles itself such a
monument ? ' 357

GENERAL INDEX

Abiathar, i6.
Abilene, 109 f.
Acts of the Apostles,
date of, 108, 122, 262.
Editor is the Diarist, iioff.,
115 f.
Josephus used, 108.
no adequate peroration, 105.
speeches in Acts, 117, 119, 196.
travel - diaries, 1 06 ; — genuine
records, iiof., 118; style,
112 f.
vmtten by S. Luke in old
age, 121 f.
Akhmim MS., 333, 336.
Ambroslaster, 353.
Anicetus, Pope, 292.
Anselm, S., 300 f.
Aphraates, 43 n., 225, 312 n.
Apocalypses, Jewish, 86.
Aramaic, S f., 60, 149, 334.
Aretas, loi.
Asceticism, 210 ff., 309 ff.
Atonement, orthodox and Mar
cionite doctrines of, 298-301.
Augustine, S., 38, 262, 300.
Bar-Cochba, 171.
Bardaisan, 291.
Barnabas, Ep. of, 320.
Bauer, Bruno, viii.
Baur, F. C, 38 f., 188 f., 262, 354.
Beelzebul, 83, gy n., 150, 152.
Bethphage, 58 «.
Bethsaida, 91, 92 «., 95.
Bonnet, Prof. M., 231 n.
Brujme, Dom D. de, 353 ff.
Calendars, Ancient, 253 f.
Cambridge Theological Essays, 18,
28 ff.
Capernaum, 83, 91, 96, 150, 209.
Casuistry, 283.
Catacombs, the, 286.
Catechetical tradition, 35, 265.
Celsus, 93, 325.
Chase, Bp. F. H., 17.

Cheyne, Canon T. K., 94.
Christ, see Jesus Christ.
' the historic Christ,' 31.
Chrlstology, 201, 263 f., 272,
287, 308.
Church, first foundation of the,
76, 78 ff.
Clement of Alexandria, 332.
Clement of Rome, S., 265 «.,
268 f., 285, 318.
Codices :
Bezae (D), 8 f., 44 »., 45, 50,
58 «., 96 n.
Vatican (B), 44 «., 96 n.
minusc. i, 100 n.
minusc. 566, 342.
Old Latin MSS, 45, 50, 51,
58 «., 96 M., 356 f.
Sinai PaUmpsest (Syriac), 44 «.,
45, 58 n., 96 n., 100 n.,
153 n., 158 n.
Constantine the Great, 313.
Corban, 173 f.
Course of Events, the, 23, 25, 29.
32, 82, 103, 351.
Covering our Lord's face, 53.
Creeds, 29, 61, 263, 323, 350.
Criticism, historical, 30, 351.
Uterary, 3, 38 f.
Cunningham, Dr. W., 28 f., 32.
Dalmanutha, 94 f.
De Boor's Fragment, 252.
Decapolis, 92.
devT€poTpdjT(jj, Si n.
Diatessaron, see Tatian.
Didache, 64, 166, 270-2, 285, 329.
Didascalia, 285 n.
Divorce, 98 ff., 146, 175.
Docetic heresies, 273 ff., 331.
Doublets in the Gospels, 147-166,
in the Pentateuch, 14.
Edessa, 172, 259, 219,
EngUsh Bible, use of, 6 f.

359

GENERAL INDEX

Enoch, Book of, 333.
Ephraim, S., 291.
Epiphanius, S., 302, 305.
Eschatology, see Parusia.
Ethics, Christian, 265, 282 ff.
Eusebius, 344.
HE iii 39, 127; V 24, 251 ;
vi 12, 332.
Eutychus, 117.
Evangelists not mere Chroniclers,
22.
Eznik, 298.
Feeding of the Multitudes, 35, 73,
93 f., 224.
Foakes- Jackson, Canon F. J., 30.
Gamaliel, 107 f., 119.
Gennesaret, 91 i.
George the Monk, 252.
Gnosticism, 235, 287, 291, 340,
350-
Gospels, Apocryphal, see separate
entries.
Gospels, Canonical.
all Four indispensable, 4, 284.
Canon of the Gospels, 258 f.,
263, 278.
dates of, 262 f.
differ in value, 4.
not a code of Ethics, 281 f.
preserve to us the Humanity
of our Lord, 263, 274, 281,
284, 287, 331.
why so historical, 274, 377,
287, 325, 331, 350.
GrenfeU, Dr. B. P., 348.
Haman, 53.
Harnack, Prof, A., vi, 23, 124 «.,
353. 357-
Hawkins, Canon Sir J. C, 42-58,
59, III, 115, 186.
Hebrews, Gospel ace. to the,
229, 275 «., 340-8.
akin to Matt, 342, 346.
inferior to Mk, 344-6.
length, 347.
peculiarities only survive, 341.
relation to Lk, 343.
Hell, 332.
Harrowing of, 297, 299.
Herod Antipas, 69, 90, 138.
Dominions of, 92 f., 97.
Herodians, 80, 90, 95.
Herodias, 98 f., loi.

Hort, Dr., 47 »., 50, 126.
Hunt, Dr. A. S., 348.
Ignatius, S., 257 f., 275-S, 318.
uses a biographical Gospel, 276 f.
Infancy of Christ, 338 ff.
Inge, Dr. W. R., 243 f., 246.
Interpolations, see Textual Criti
cism.
Irenaeus, S., 257, 260, 279 f.,
300, 338.
James, Dr. M. R., 231 n., 336.
Jerome, S., 341, 343, 347 n.
Jesus Christ,
arrest and trial of, 53, 137 f.
attitude towards Herod, 93,
lOI f.
towards the Pentateuch, 99,
177.
towards the Scribes, 78 ff.,
169-176, 240.
Biography of, the, 20, 60 f.,
103, 265, 272, 288, 340.
boyhood of, absence of tradi
tion, 339 f-
breach with the Synagogue,
79 ff., 90, 150.
Founder of the Church, 78.
impression made on His
followers, 25 ff., 144, 167,
207.
see also Chrlstology.
' King Messiah,' 139.
' Messianic Self-consciousness,'
77-
place in secular history, 76,
89 ff., loi f., 325.
preservation of His Sayings,
145 1, 199.
Revival Ministry, 82.
sympathy for the young, 285 f.
Teaching of Jesus :
irony and playfulness, 140 ff.
no set phrases, 144.
on ' growth,' 86, 179.
on 'watchfulness,' 179 fi.
originaMty, 175, 240.
Parables, 833., 1 5 4, 195 f., 199.
use of OT, 141 M., 202 f.
training of the Disciples, 81 ff.,
89, 102, 143.
trial by Herod, 138.
withdrawal from Galilee, 92 f.,
95, 102.

360

GENERAL INDEX

Jewdsh Controversy, the, 202,
239. 287, 306 ff., 321.
Jewish Rebellions, the two, 171 f.,
\ 211, 265.
John, Apocryphal Acts of, 223,
231 [., 274.
John the Baptist, 90, 98, loi.
John the Apostle, son of Zebe
dee, commemoration of,
253 f-
John of Ephesus, 251, 254.
John, Gospel of,
argumentativeness of Johan
nlne Christ, 227 f.
authorship of Gospel, 229, 247 f.
the author a Jew, 247 ; a
Sadducee, 248 ff., 250 ; long
a Christian, 230, 255 ; no
historian, 225, 232, 256.
Baptism of Jesus, 225 f.
comparison with Mk, 220, 226.
date, 263.
doctrines :
Angels, 249.
Christ's Humanity, 233, 255.
Death of Jesus,232,234 n., 247.
eschatology, 242 ff., 244, 250.
Eternal Life, 244 f.
Logos, see Word.
physiology, 233 «.
Progression in time, 246 f.
Resurrection, 244, 249 f.
Sacraments, 224 ff.
Spirit, 225, 245, 248 i.
Word made Man, 230, 232,
235, 245, 284.
external evidence of use and
authorship, 219 f.
historical features, 236, 240.
Last Supper, 224.
Lazarus, raising of, vii, f., 221 ff.
Passion Story, 223, 233.
why Canonical, 229 f.
Josephus, loi, 105-110, 121, 325,
343-
Judaism, see Rabbinical ReUgion.
Judas the GaUlean, 106 f.
Justin Martyr, S., 257 f., 278, 280.
KoSeJ^s, 131.
Kingdom of God, 181,197,243,270.
growth of, 83, 86.
identified by Matt, with the
Church, 193.
• not of this world,' 87, 172.

Lachmann, 37 f.
Lake, Prof. K., 226 n.
Last Supper and Paschal Feast, 70.
Law and Grace, 188, 269.
Laws of Nature, 201, 241, 284.
Lazarus, vii. f., 221 ff.
Legitimatisation of Christianity,
see Jewish Controversy.
Literary Piety, 15.
' Logia ' Document, see Q.
Papias's Logia, 124, 127.
Loisy, Abbe A., 23.
Luke, Gospel of,
agreements vrith Matt, 42-58.
based on Mk, 17, 36f.,4off., 122.
date, 120 ff., 262.
Si.8da-Ka\e in Lk, 114.
doctrines :
asceticism, 213.
poverty, 212.
Evangehst is the Diarist, no ff.,
. IIS i.
historical value, 136, 142,207,209
Josephus used, 109 f.
keeps Q and Mk distinct, 148.
medical tendencies, 159 «.
Passion Story in Lk,53, 134-142.
private undertaking, a, 274, 319.
Q a source of Lk, 122, 208.
retains Mk's order, 1 30 f .
Samaritan section, 97 «., 208 f.
style of Lk, 112-114, 116.
uses the LXX, 124.
Women in Lk, 215.
written by S. Luke in old age,
121, 208.
Luthardt, 301 n.
Lysanias, 109 f.
Magdalnunaya, 94.
Magnificat, 124 n.
Marcion, 213, 257 f., 274, 289 ff.
a Christian by birth, 290 f., 294.
permanent influence, 323.
Marcion's Apostolicon, 3 16-19, 3 54.
Gospel, 259, 278, 314-16.
Prologues to the Pauline Epp.,
323, 353 ff.
Marcionite asceticism, 303, 310.
Chapel near Damascus, 304.
Controversy, 302 ff., 306 ff., 313.
cosmogony, 295 f., 308 f.
doctrineof theAtonement, 298 ff.
of the Fall, 295.
of the Good God, 292, 301.

361

GENERAL INDEX

Marcion! te — continued
doctrine of Justice, 296, 301.
morality, 295.
Orders, 290, 304.
sacramentalism, 3 1 1 ff.
Marcosians, 338.
Mark, Gospel of,
connexion with S. Peter, 96 n.,
260.
contents, 67-72.
date, 262.
Eschatological Discourse, 62 f.
historical value, ix., 65 f., 72,
75, 83ff., 100 ff.
main authority for the Gospel
History, 62, 64, 103, 284.
main source of Matt and Lk,
16 f., 36, 40 ff., 64, 130.
mutilation at end, 8, 261.
not a rationaUsed myth, 72, 75.
not based on written sources,
62.
only surviving source of Syn
optic Gospels, 17.
peculiarities of Mk, 59 f., 100.
private undertaking, a, 274.
Synagogue, account of our
Lord's breach with, 79 ff.
uninteresting to 2nd century
Christians, 61, 260.
Marriage, 211, 309 ff.
Matthew, Gospel of,
agreements withLk, 42-58.
alters Mk's order, 24, 123, 128,
198.
assumes the organised Christian
Society, 24, 192 ff.
based on Mk, 16, 361,406.,
123, 130, 275.
combines Q with Mk, 151.
date, 263.
doctrines :
the Argument from Prophecy,
200 ff.
the Heir of David, 204 ff.
the New Law, 188 ff.
Evangehst a Christian Rabbi,
190, 202 «.
not a Chronicler, 187 f.
Palestinian origin of Matt, 128,
129, 191, 275.
Passion Story entirely based on
Mk, 130, 133.
pecuUarities of Matt, 129, 186.
Q a source of Matt, 123.

Matthew, Gospel of — continued
quotes the Hebrew OT, 125 f.,
203.
quotes the LXX, 126.
style, 185 f.
used by S. Ignatius, 276 f.
Miracles, 22, 68, 73 f., 80.
Mohammed, 145.
Montefiore, C. G., 169, 227.
Muratorian Canon, 257.
Nativity Stories, 61, 124, 205 n.,
215,278,347.
Nazarean Christians, 341 ff.
Nerva, 109, 122.
New Testament, the idea of a,
317. 319 f.
Nicaea, Council of, 313.
Nicephorus, Stichometry, 336 ».,
347 f-
Old Testament, Christian use of,
203, 270.
Oral tradition, 34 ff., 145.
Origen, 93 n., 300, 341, 345.
Ottley, Canon R. L., 302 n.
Oxyrhynchus ' Logia,' 61, 230,
348 f.

Paley, 74 f.
Papias, 124, 127, 252.
Parables, misunderstanding
the, 84 ff., 154.
Parusia, the, 179 ff., 242 ff.,
265, 271.
Pascal's Provinciales, 283.
Paul, S., 117, 146, 188, 211,
262, 266 ff., 285, 29S,
323.
S. Paul in ' Acts,' 268.
S. Paul's converts, 269 f.
S. Paul's Letters, 266 f., 261
317 fi.
Paulinism, 266 ff., 269, 354.
Pentateuch, authority of, 99.
criticism of,i2ff.
Peraea, 96 n.
Perpetua, S., 286 n.
Peter, Apocalypse of, 332 ff.

of

251-

230, 320.

336.

Gospel of. 57, 61, 75, 138, 229
259. 332-7.
Philip the Tetrarch, 92, 95.
' PhiUp," brother of Antipas, loi.
Philip the 'Evangehst,' 213, 251
Philip of Side, 252.

362

GENERAL INDEX

Philo, 246.
Phylacteries, 165.
Pistis Sophia, 330 i., 334, 337.
Politarchs of Thessalonlca, 121.
Polycarp, S., 219, 251, 285.
Polycrates, 250 f.
Portrait of Jesus Christ, 3 f., 31,
102, 131, 168, 216, 259, 324.
to be constructed by each one
for himself, 5.
the Church's Portrait, 263.
Praetors of Philippi, 121.
' Preaching of Peter,' the, 277.
Preuschen, Dr. E., 341 n., 344 n.
Primus of Malta, in.
Prophecy, the Argument from,
200 ff., 307, 355.
Protevangelium, 338 f.
Q — i.e. the lost Document used
by Matt and Lk, 122, 130,
133 ff., 209, 343.
not confined to Discourses,
135.
parallels vsdth Mk, 147-166.
Rabbinical Religion, the, 169-173,
180, 227.
Reconstruction of lost sources,
15-18, 82.
Resurrection, beUef in the, 74!.,
234.
Rhossus, 259, 332.
Rich Young Man, the, 17 f., 346.
' Ritual of the Dead,' the Egyp
tian, 337.
Robinson, Dean J. A., 130 f., 230.
Rome, 257, 278, 302 f.
Sabbath, healing of Man at Bethesda,
227 f., 237 f., 242.
healing of Man with withered
hand, 68 f., 80.
story of Man working on
Sabbath, 8-10.
Sadducees, 171, 248 ff.
Salmon, Dr., 290.
Salome, loi.
Sanday, Dr.W., 68, 236, 254, 315 «.
Schmledel, Prof. P. W., 23, 85,
100, 106.
Schweitzer, Dr. A., viii, xi f .
Scribes, the Jewish, 83, 169-176.
Second Coming, see Parusia.

Serapion, 332, 337.
Sermon on the Mount, 24 ff., 39,
13s. 282.
Sheep and Goats, Parable of, 24 ff .,
133,206.
Sidon, 92 n.
Sources, lost, difficulty of re
constructing, 15-18.
Sower, Parable of, 83 f.
Spirit, blasphemy against, 176.
Johannlne doctrine of, 225,
245, 248 f.
Stoicism, 246.
Strabo, 109.
Swete, Dr. H. B., 47 n.
Sjmagogue, our Lord's breach
with, 80 f.
Synopsis, ' Double ' and ' Triple,'
132.
Synoptic Problem, 34 ff., 37,
see Mark, etc.
Targum, 125.
Tatian, 14, 36, 123, 257, 259.
Tertulllan, 305 ff., 310.
Testamentum Domini, 326 ff., 335,
337.
Textual Criticism, place of, 7 ff.
Interpolations in text of NT,
8 ff., 257.
Thecla, 336 n.
Theodotion, 125 n.
Theudas, 86, 106 ff.
Thomas, Gospel of, 338 f.
Tolstoi, 23.
Training of the Disciples, 81 ff.,
89, 144 ff.
Trypho's criticism of the Gospel,
258, 281.
Tiibingen School, see Baur.
' Ur-Marcus,' never existed, 40 ff..
58, 60.
Verrall, Dr. A. W., xif., 138.
Victorinus Afer, 353.
Wellhausen, Prof. J., 6, 13 «., 37 «.,
64, 92«., 125 «., I30«., 133,
156, 161, 163, 192 ff.
Westcott, Bp., 342.
Women and the Gospel, 215.
Young, sympathy for the, 285 f.
Zacharias, son of Barachias, 1 92 ».,
343 f-

363

INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES

Genesis

Zechariah

xiv 13, 14.

46 f.

36

45

xviii 14 . 124 n.

xi 13

125, 129

XV 13
22
xvi 12

277204 187

Deuteronomy

S. Matthew

16

48

17
343
xxxii 5 . .49
i I ff.
. 204
xvii 3
49
22 f.
. 200
5
48
"3 .
. 205
13
187
2 Chronicles
15
125, 127
17 .
49
hi 1 5 .
¦ 277
xviii 17
191
xxiv 20 f. . . 343
iv 15
125 n.
21, 22
342
V3, 6
. 186
xix I
96 n.
20 .
. 282
2
47
Esther
29, 30
• 159
16 ff. . 17
f.. 345
31. 32
. 160
28 . 13
5. 204
vii 8 . . . 53 M.
45 .
197, 241
29 .
50
vi 14, 15
. 162
XX 30, 31 .
204
22 f.
. 178
xxi 4 f .
200
Psalms
viii 5-13
¦ 135
9. 15 •
204
16, 17
. 201
14
47
VUl 2 . . 126
ix 13
. 202 f.
15
286
Ixxviii 2 . . 126
17
. 42
16 126,
203 M.
Ixxxii 6 . 204 n.
20
• 43 f.
17
50
ex I . . . 205
27
. 204
23
50
35
• 47
43
1871
X7 .
. 143
xxii 14
320
Isaiah
xi 27
. 240
40 .
202 n.
xii 3-8
9 f., 16
46 .
205
xxiv 6 (Gr.) . 328
7.
. 202 f.
xxiii 2, 3 .
205 M.
xxix 13 . 203 n.
n f. .
. 149
5
164 f.
xlii 4 . . 126
21.
. 126
8
191 n.
liii 12 . . 141, 203 n.
23
. 204
35 192 K.,
343 f.
40.
• 157
xxv 14 ff. .
344
xiii 1 1
• 43
31-46 26, 1,
i3, 206
HosEA
24-43
. 196 f.
34 ¦
. 204
25
. 189
xxvi 49 f . .
51
vi 6 . . . 202 f .
35
. 126
67,68
51 f.
xi I . 125, 127, 203
xiv I, 9
• 45
75 •
• SI
364
INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES

xxvii 9, lo.

125 f. 1

viii 12

. 157

XV 39

• 54

25 • . 191 1

15

• 157

42-46 .

¦54ff.

27 .

138

22 ff. .

. 132

xvi 5

. 57

40 .

53

27

• 95

8

72, 261

51-53

129

29

. 48

[9-20]

8

54 .

54

34

.i57f.

57-60

54 ff.

35

. 211

xxviii 2, 3 .
57
ix4 .
• 49
S. Luke
15 •
. 191
7 •
. 48
19 .
• 49
i, ii .
124, 215
30 ff.
. 96
13 •
. 131
S. Mark
34 .
197 n.
37 ¦
124 «.
36. .
. 286
41.67
. 249
i 40 ff. . . 68
39.
176 n.
46 .
124 n.
ii 22
. 42
42 .
. 158
u 36 .
. 213
23 .
69 n., 81 n.
43-48 .
.I58f.
iii I, 2
. 109 f.
25-28 .
9 i; 16
SO.
. 159
iv24.
¦ 155
iii, iv
69, 80 ff.
x I .
. 96
V15 .
• 47
iii 4 .
148, 175
10-12
98 ff., 144,
36 ff.
302 f.
5 •
80
146
159 f. 175
37.38
. 42
6 .
. 80 f.
16
. 286
vi I .
. 81 n.
13.
. 88
17 ff. 17,
281, 345 f.
3-5
9 f.. 16
22-26
. 149
30 .
. 50
5
. 8, 10
26
141 M.
35 •
197 n.
20, 21
186, 212
27 .
. 150
42-45
. 135. 140,
35.
204 n.
28-30
151. 176
160, 178
38.
¦ 154
31-35
152, I74M.
47 f.
. 204
vii i-io
¦ 135
iv 3-32
. 63
xi I .
. 58 n.
21
¦ 47
10-13
841, 87 f.
19
. 50
viii 10
• 43
II .
• 43
22, 23
161, 178
22-25
112 ff.
21 .
. I52f.
24
i6i, 178
43. 44
22 .
• 153
25
162, 178
4
3 i; 159 «•
23 •
.I53f.
27
. 50
ix7 .
• 45
24.
. 154
xii 25
. 213
10, II
. 46 f.
25 •
. 154
32-34
20
. 48
26 ff.
. 132
162 ff.
, 170 f.. 173
23
. . 158
30-32
• 155
38,39
30
. 49
V 17 .
. 91
164, If
59 ff., 205 n.
34
. 48
25-27
. . 43 f-
40
.1641
41.
. 49
vi 3 ff.
91
xiii 3-37
. 62 ff., 166
51-56
. 97
4 •
. 155
II
. . 165
x5ff.
. . 156
10, II
. . 156
14
. . 63
9 •
• 143
14, 26
45, 91, 93
15, 16
. 165, 181
22 .
. 240, 308
30-34 461, 81M.,
21
. 166, 181
25-28
. 163 f.
91
34. 35
. 166, 178 ff
29. 37
. 88 «.
39- . • 93«.
xiv 45 f.
. 51
xi9 .
. 162
45 ff.
• 91
65
. .5ifi.
15-T8
56
44
72
. 51
97 n.
, 149 f., 209
vii 6, 7
203 n.
XV I
. 53
21-23
.97"- 151
9ff.
. .I73f.
16-20
. . 138
27, 28
. 152
17 ff.
. 144, 211
21
• 70
29 .
- 157
31
. 92 n.
25
. - 136
33 •
• 153
viii 10
94
30
• 53
37 .
¦ 97
1 1-2 1
73.
95. 103
34
• 334
43-
164. 169 ff.
365
INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES

xi 51 .

¦ 343

xxiii 54b

. . 56

XX 5-15 . Iiof., 121

xii I a

• 97 «.

xxiv 4 . . 57

8 . . 117

lb

• 157

25, 28 . 117 n.

2 .

• 153

38 . 119 ».

10

. 151

S. John

x.xi 1-8 . Iiof., 121

II, 12

. . 165

9. - . 213

33

. 212

i4 . . .250

xxiii 8 . . 248

37,38

166,178 ff.

29 ff.

. 226

xxvii I -xxviii 16

xiii 18, 19

• 155

51 .

. 249

no f., 121

31-33

95,103,316

iii 3 ff.

. 226

xxvii 33, 34 . 117

34

. 114

iv I, 2

. 226

41 . . II2f.

xiv I

• 97 «.

6.7

• 233

xxviii 31 . 117 n.

5.6

. 148

44.

. . 156

14
. 250
V5. 14
. 237, 242
25-27
157 f., 282
17 •
. 237 f., 240
I John
34
. 159
23
. 228
35
• 153
25,281
. 242 f .
iv 2, 3 . 219 n.
xvi 18
147, 160
vi35. 53. f
)3 . 224
v6-8 . 233 M.
25
. 213
40.
. 250
xvii 2
. 158
vu 39
. 249
3.4
• 342
viii 17, 18
. 228
3 John
6
. 161
x 10 .
• 245
20-3723
. 166
166, 181
22, 23
30 .
221, 247
. 245
7 . . 219 M.
31
165!., 181
34 f.
204 n., 245
xviii 18 f.
30
17. 346
40 .
xi I ff.
. 221
. 221
Romans
xix II
. 86 «.
17. 39
. 221
26
. 154
19, 42
. 221
iii 2 . . . 172
XX I .
• 50
24,25
244, 250
9-18
. 316
35 .
• 233
34 f.
. 213
44 ff.
.221 f.
I Corinthians
46
205 n.
xii 9 ff.
. 222
xxi 1-4
. 316
28
¦ 249
i 12 . 269 n., 318, 322
7
114 n.
xiv 6
• 245
vi 20 . . 298
18
.117 i.
26
. 245
vii27ff. . .211
28
• 243
xvii 3
- 244
ix 14 . . 146
36 .
. 183
xviii 15
. 250
xi 23 ff. . . 262
17 ^
• 50
xix 28
. 233
XV 3 ff. . . 262
xxu 15, 16
• 70
30 .
234 >j.
24-30
34.35
¦ 233
135.
139, 160 f.
XX 12
• 249
Philippians
35-38
. 141 f.
22
. 248 f.
37. I
il n., 203 n.
xxi 24
. 250
ii 15 • . -49
47 f
¦ 51
61
• 137
62 .
• 51
Acts
I Thessalonians
63-65
51 f-. 137
xxiii 2
¦ 139
i 3 fi. . .326
19. . - 264
6ff. .
. 138
25 . . 117 n.
26 .
• 134
V34ff. . . 107
35. 37
. 53
xiv 9 . . 237
Apocalypse
47 •
54
11,15 273 «.
50-54
• 54fi.
xvi 10-17 .
iiof.,121 1
xiv 19 . . ]8o
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The World's Epoch -/Vlal<crs.
Edited by OLIPHANT SMEATON, M.A.
In Neat Crown Svo Volumes. :: :: Price 3s. each.

> ¦<

' An excellent series of biographical studies.' — Athenceum.
' We advise our readers to keep a watch on this most able series. It promises
to be a distinct success. The volumes before us are the most satisfactory books
of the sort we liave ever read.' — Methodist Ti7nes.

> «<

The following Volumes haue now been Issued: —
By

Buddha and Buddhism
Arthur Lillie.
Luther and the German Re=
formation. By Principal T.
M. Lindsay, D.D.
Wesley and Methodism. By
F. J. Snell, M.A.
Cranmer and the English
Reformation. By A. D.
INNES, M.A.
William Herschel and his
Work. By James Sime, M.A.
.Francis and Dominic. By Pro
fessor J. Herkless, D.D.
.Savonarola. By G. M 'Hardy,
D.D.
Anselm and his Work. By
Rev. A. C. Welch, B.D.
Origen and Greek Patristic
Theology. By Rev. W. Fair-
weather, D.D.
JMuhammad and his Power.
By P. De Lacy Johnstone,
M.A.(Oxon.).
The Medici and the Italian
Renaissance. By Oliphant
Smeaton, M.A., Edinburgh.
Plato. By Professor D. G.
Ritchie, M.A., LL.D.
"Wycliffe and the Lollards.
By Rev. J. C. Carrick, B.D.

Pascal and the Port Royalists.
By Professor W. Clark, LL.D.,
D.C.L., Trinity College, Toronto.
Euclid. By Emeritus Professor
Thomas Smith, D.D., LL.D.
Hegel and Hegelianism. By
Professor R. Mackintosh, D.D.,
Lancashire Independent College,
Manchester.
Hume and his Influence on
Philosophy and Theology.
By Professor J. Orr, D.D., Glas
gow.
Rousseau and Naturalism in
Life and Thought. By Pro
fessor W. H. Hudson, M.A.
Descartes, Spinoza, and the
New Philosophy. By Princi
pal J. Iverach, D.D., Aberdeen.
Socrates. By Rev. J. T. Forbes,
M.A., Glasgow.
Newman and his Influence on
Religious Life and Thought.
By C. Sarolea, Ph.D., Litt.
Doc, University of Edinburgh.
Marcus Aurelius and the
Later Stoics. By F. W
Bussell, D.D., Vice-Principal
of Brasenose College, Oxford.
Kant and his Philosophical
Revolution. By Professor R
M. Wenley, D.Sc, Ph.D., Uni
versity of Michigan.

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