sacrifice, the Son of God substituted for the lamb, the same that
was bound and Himself bound the strong man, that was judged being
judge of the quick and dead, and that was delivered into the hands
of sinners to be crucified; the same that was lifted on the horns
of the unicorn, and that was pierced in His holy side; the same
that poured forth again the two purifying elements, water and
blood, word and spirit, and that was buried on the day of the
passover, the stone being laid against His sepulchre.
If the publication of this work was suggested by Melito's treatise on
the same subject, as seems probable, it must have been written about
A.D. 164-166, or soon after. The references to the Gospels are obvious.
In the first extract Apollinaris has in view the difficulty of
reconciling the chronology of the Paschal week as given by St John with
the narratives of the Synoptic Evangelists; and he asserts that the date
fixed for the Passion by some persons (the 15th instead of 14th) can
only be maintained at the expense of a discrepancy between the two
accounts; whereas, if the 14th be taken, the two accounts are
reconcilable. At the same time he urges that their view is not in
harmony with the law, since the paschal lamb, the type, was slain on the
14th, and therefore it follows that Christ, the antitype, must have been
crucified on the same day. I am not concerned here with the question
whether Apollinaris or his opponents were right. The point to be noticed
is that he speaks of 'the Gospels' (under which term he includes at
least St Matthew and St John) as any one would speak of received
documents to which the ultimate appeal lies. His language in this
respect is such as might be used by a writer in the fourth century, or
in the nineteenth, who was led by circumstances to notice a difficulty
in harmonizing the accounts of the Evangelists. The second extract bears
out the impression left by the first. The incident of the water and the
blood is taken from the Fourth Gospel; but a theological interpretation
is forced upon it which cannot have been intended by the Evangelist.
Some time must have elapsed before the narrative could well be made the
subject of a speculative comment like this. Thus both extracts alike
suggest that the Fourth Gospel was already a time-honoured book when
they were written.
But the author of _Supernatural Religion_ meets the inference by denying
the genuineness of the extracts. I hardly think, however, that he can
have seen what havoc he was making in his own ranks by this movement. He
elsewhere asserts very decidedly (without however giving reasons) that
the Quartodeciman controversy turned on the point whether the 14th Nisan
was the day of the Last Supper or the day of the Crucifixion, the
Quartodecimans maintaining the former [240:1]. In other words, he
believes that it was the anniversary, not of the Passion, but of the
Last Supper, which the Quartodecimans kept so scrupulously on the 14th,
and that therefore, as they pleaded the authority of St John for their
practice, the Fourth Gospel cannot have been written by this Apostle,
since it represents the Passion as taking place on the 14th. As I have
before intimated, this view of the Paschal dispute seems to me to be
altogether opposed to the general tenor of the evidence. But it depends,
for such force or plausibility as it has, almost solely on these
fragments from ancient writers quoted in the _Paschal Chronicle_, of
which the extracts from Apollinaris are the most important. If therefore
he refuses to accept the testimony of the _Paschal Chronicle_ to their
authorship, he undermines the very foundation on which his theory rests.
On this inconsistency however I need not dwell. The authorship of these
extracts was indeed questioned by some earlier writers [241:1], but on
entirely mistaken grounds; and at the present time the consensus among
critics of the most opposite schools is all but universal. 'On the
genuineness of these fragments, which Neander questioned, there is now
no more dispute, writes Scholten [242:1]. Our author however is far too
persistent to let them pass. Their veracity has once been questioned,
and therefore they shall never again be suffered to enter the
witness-box.
It may be presumed that he has alleged those arguments against their
genuineness which seemed to him to be the strongest, and I will
therefore consider his objections. They are twofold.
1. He urges that the external testimony to their authorship is
defective. His reasoning is as follows [242:2]:--
Eusebius was acquainted with the work of Melito on the Passion, and
quotes it, which must have referred to his contemporary and
antagonist, Apollinaris, had he written such a work as this
fragment denotes. Not only, however, does Eusebius know nothing of
his having composed such a work, but neither do Theodoret, Jerome,
Photius, nor other writers, who enumerate other of his works; nor
is he mentioned in any way by Clement of Alexandria, Irenæus, nor
by any of those who took part in the great controversy.
Here is a tissue of fallacies and assumptions. In the first place, it is
a _petitio principii_, as will be seen presently, that Apollinaris was
an antagonist of Melito. Even, if this were so, there is not the
smallest evidence, nor any probability, that Apollinaris would have
written before Melito, so that the latter could have quoted him. How,
again, has our author learnt that Eusebius 'knows nothing of his having
composed such a work'? It is certain, indeed, that Eusebius had not seen
the work when he composed his list of the writings of Apollinaris; but
it nowhere appears that he was unaware of its existence. The very
language in which he disclaims any pretension of giving a complete list
seems to imply that he had observed other books quoted in other writers,
which he had not read or seen himself. Theodoret does not 'enumerate
other of his works,' as the looseness of the English would suggest to
the reader. He only mentions incidentally, when describing the sects of
the Severians and Montanists respectively, that Apollinaris had written
against them [243:1]. There is not the smallest reason why he should
have gone out of his way in either passage to speak of the work on the
Paschal Festival, supposing him to have known of it. And if not, where
else does our author find in Theodoret any notice which can be made to
yield the inference that he was unacquainted with this treatise? Nor
again does Jerome, in the passage to which our author refers in his note
[243:2], allude to a single work by this writer, but simply mentions him
by name among those versed in profane as well as sacred literature.
Elsewhere indeed he does give a catalogue of Apollinaris' writings
[243:3], but there he simply copies Eusebius. With regard to Photius
again, the statement, though not so directly inaccurate, is altogether
misleading. Photius simply mentions three works of Apollinaris, which he
read during his embassy, but he does not profess to give a list; and he
says distinctly that there were other famous works by the same author
which he had not seen. Who the 'other writers' may be, who 'enumerate
other of his works,' I am altogether at a loss to imagine. But the last
sentence, 'Nor is he mentioned in any way by Clement of Alexandria,
Irenæus, etc.,' is the most calculated to mislead the reader. Of the
treatise of Clement on the Paschal Festival only two short fragments are
preserved. He does not mention any person in these, nor could he have
done so without going out of his way. For the rest, Clement is reported
by Eusebius to have stated in his work that he was prompted to write it
by Melito's treatise on the same subject [243:4]. Eusebius is there
discussing Melito, and any mention of Apollinaris would have been quite
out of place. What ground is there then for the assumption that Clement
did not mention Apollinaris, because Eusebius has not recorded the fact?
When at a later point Eusebius comes to speak of Clement, he says of
this father that in the treatise of which we are speaking he 'mentions
Melito and Irenæus and _certain others_, whose explanations also he has
given' [244:1]. Why may not Apollinaris have been included among these
'certain others' whom Clement quoted? The same fallacy underlies our
author's reference to Irenæus. The work of Irenæus is lost. Eusebius,
it is true, preserves some very meagre fragments [244:2]; but in these
not a single writer on either side in the Quartodeciman controversy is
mentioned, not even Melito. Irenæus may have quoted Apollinaris by name
in this lost treatise, just as he quotes Papias by name in his extant
work on heresies, where nevertheless Eusebius does not care to record
the fact. All this assumed silence of writers whose works are lost is
absolutely valueless against the direct and explicit testimony of the
_Paschal Chronicle_.
2. But secondly; our author considers that the contents of these
fragments are inconsistent with their attribution to Apollinaris. His
argument is instructive [244:3].
It is stated that all the Churches of Asia, including some of the
most distinguished members of the Church, such as Polycarp, and his
own contemporary Melito, celebrated the Christian festival on the
14th Nisan, the practice almost universal, therefore, in the
country in which Claudius Apollinaris is supposed to write this
fragment. How is it possible, therefore, that this isolated convert
to the views of Victor and the Roman Church could write of so vast
and distinguished a majority as 'some who through ignorance raised
contentions' on this point, when notably all the Asiatic Churches
at that time were agreed to keep the fourteenth of Nisan, and in
doing so raised no new contention at all, but, as Polycrates
represented, followed the tradition handed down to them from their
fathers, and authorized by the practice of the Apostle John
himself?
with more to the same effect.
I will hand over this difficulty to those who share our author's views
on the point at issue in the Quartodeciman controversy. Certainly I
cannot suggest any satisfactory mode of escape from the dilemma which is
here put. But what, if the writer of these fragments was not an
'isolated convert to the views of Victor,' but a Quartodeciman himself?
What, if the Quartodecimans kept the 14th, not as the commemoration of
the last Supper, but of the Passion, so that Melito himself would have
heartily assented to the criticisms in these fragments? [245:1] This is
the obvious view suggested by the account of the controversy in
Eusebius, and in Irenæus as quoted by Eusebius; and it gains
confirmation from these fragments of Apollinaris. It seems to me highly
improbable that Apollinaris should have been an exception to the
practice of the Asiatic Churches. So far I agree with our author. But
this is a reason for questioning the soundness of his own views on the
Quartodeciman controversy, rather than for disputing the genuineness of
the fragments attributed to Apollinaris.
After this account of Melito and Apollinaris, the two chief
representatives of the later school of St John, it will be worth while
to call attention to a statement of Irenæus in which he professes to
record the opinion of the Asiatic elders on a point intimately affecting
the credibility of the Fourth Gospel, the chronology of our Lord's life
and ministry [245:2].
The Valentinians, against whom this father is arguing, sought for
analogies to the thirty æons of their pleroma, or supra-sensual world,
in the Gospel history. Among other examples they alleged the thirty
years' duration of our Lord's life. This computation of the Gospel
chronology they derived from the notices in St Luke as interpreted by
themselves. At the commencement of His ministry, so they maintained, He
had completed His twenty-ninth and was entering upon His thirtieth year,
and His ministry itself did not extend beyond a twelve-month, 'the
acceptable _year_ of the Lord' foretold by the prophet. Irenæus
expresses his astonishment that persons professing to understand the
deep things of God should have overlooked the commonest facts of the
evangelical narrative, and points to the three passovers recorded in St
John's Gospel during the term of our Lord's ministry. Independently of
the chronology of the Fourth Gospel, Irenæus has an _à priori_ reason
of his own, why the Saviour must have lived more than thirty years. He
came to sanctify every period of life--infancy, childhood, youth,
declining age. It was therefore necessary that He should have passed the
turn of middle life. From thirty to forty, he argues, a man is still
reckoned young (_juvenis_).
But from his fortieth and fiftieth year he is already declining
into older age, which was the case with our Lord when he taught, as
the Gospel and all the elders who associated with John the disciple
of the Lord in Asia testify that John delivered this account. For
he remained with them till the times of Trajan. But some of them
saw not only John, but other Apostles also, and heard these same
things from their lips, and bear testimony to such an account.
Irenæus then goes on to argue that the same may be inferred from the
language of our Lord's Jewish opponents, who asked: 'Thou art not yet
fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?' This, he maintains, could
not properly be said of one who was only thirty years of age, and must
imply that the person so addressed had passed his fortieth year at
least, and probably that he was not far off his fiftieth.
On this passage it must be remarked that the Valentinian chronology was
derived from a _prima facie_ interpretation of the Synoptic narrative;
whereas the Asiatic reckoning, which Irenæus maintains, was, or might
well have been, founded on the Fourth Gospel, but could not possibly
have been elicited from the first three Gospels independently of the
fourth.
On this question generally I have spoken already in a former paper
[247:1]. Though it seems probable that our Lord's ministry was confined
to three years, yet there is not a single notice in any of the four
Gospels inconsistent with the hypothesis that it extended over a much
longer period, and that He was some forty years old at all events at the
time of the Passion. The Synoptic narratives say absolutely nothing
about the interval which elapsed between the Baptism and the Passion. St
John mentions three passovers, but he nowhere intimates that he has
given an exhaustive list of these festivals. The account of Irenæus
therefore is not so unreasonable after all; and we need not have
hesitated to accept it, if there had been any definite grounds for doing
so.
It will be seen however, that Irenæus, while maintaining that our Lord
was forty years old, grounds his opinion mainly on a false inference
from John viii. 57. At the same time he adduces the testimony of the
Gospel and 'all the elders,' not for this particular view of our Lord's
age, but for the more general statement that He was past middle life;
and this vagueness of language suggests that, though their testimony was
distinctly on his side as against the Valentinians, it did not go beyond
this. It is very far from improbable indeed, that he borrowed this very
interpretation of John viii. 57 from one of these Asiatic elders, just
as we have seen him [247:2] elsewhere borrowing an interpretation of
another passage of this Gospel (xiv. 2) from the same source. But, as he
has here forced the testimony of the Fourth Gospel to say more than it
really does say, so also he may have strained the testimony of 'all the
elders' in the same direction. Yet the broad fact remains that he
confidently appeals to them in support of a chronology suggested by the
Fourth Gospel, but certainly not deducible from the Synoptic narratives.
And the extant remains of this school support the appeal so qualified.
We have seen that its two most famous authors, Melito and Apollinaris,
distinctly follow the chronology of the Fourth Evangelist, the one in
the duration of the Lord's ministry, the other in the events of the
Paschal week [248:1].
Of the special references to these fathers of the Asiatic Church, which
appear elsewhere in Irenæus, it is sufficient to say that in one
instance an elder is represented as quoting a saying of our Lord
contained only in the Gospel of St John [248:2] while the words ascribed
to another are most probably suggested by the language of the same
Evangelist [248:3]. This latter elder, whose speculations are given at
great length, also introduces two direct quotations from St Paul's
Epistles, and treats the Apostle's authority throughout as beyond
dispute [248:4].
The last father of the Asiatic school, whom it will be necessary to
mention, is POLYCRATES, bishop of Ephesus. When Victor of Rome in the
closing years of the second century attempted to force the Western usage
with respect to Easter on the Asiatic Christians, Polycrates wrote to
remonstrate. The letter is unhappily lost, but a valuable extract is
preserved by Eusebius [248:5]. In this the writer claims to speak
authoritatively on the subject of dispute, owing to the special
opportunities which he had enjoyed. He states that he had received the
observance of the 14th by tradition from his relations, of whom seven
had been bishops; he says that he had conferred with the brethren from
all parts of the world; and he adds that he had 'gone through every holy
scripture.' When we remember the question at issue, and recall the
language of Apollinaris respecting the Gospels, in writing on the same
subject, we see what is implied in this last sentence. The extract,
which is short, contains only two references to the writings of the New
Testament. The one is to the Fourth Gospel; St John is described in the
very words of this Gospel, as 'he that leaned on the bosom of the Lord'
([Greek: ho epi to stêthos tou Kuriou anapesôn]) [249:1]. The other is to
a book of the Pauline cycle, the Acts of the Apostles; 'They that are
greater than I,' writes Polycrates, 'have said, _We must obey God rather
than men_' [249:2].
We have now reached the close of the second century, and it is not
necessary to pursue the history of the School of St John in their
Asiatic home beyond this point. But in the meantime a large and
flourishing colony had been established in the cities of southern Gaul,
and no account of the traditions of the school would be adequate which
failed to take notice of this colony. This part of the subject however
must be left for a subsequent paper. Meanwhile the inferences from the
notices passed under review cannot, I think, be doubtful. Out of a very
extensive literature, by which this school was once represented, the
extant remains are miserably few and fragmentary; but the evidence
yielded by these meagre relies is decidedly greater, in proportion to
their extent, than we had any right to expect. As regards the Fourth
Gospel, this is especially the case. If the same amount of written
matter--occupying a very few pages in all--were extracted accidentally
from the current theological literature of our own day, the chances,
unless I am mistaken, would be strongly against our finding so many
indications of the use of this Gospel. In every one of the writers, from
Polycarp and Papias to Polycrates, we have observed phenomena which bear
witness directly or indirectly, and with different degrees of
distinctness, to its recognition. It is quite possible for critical
ingenuity to find a reason for discrediting each instance in turn. An
objector may urge in one case, that the writing itself is a forgery; in
a second, that the particular passage is an interpolation; in a third,
that the supposed quotation is the original and the language of the
Evangelist the copy; in a fourth, that the incident or saying was not
deduced from this Gospel but from some apocryphal work, containing a
parallel narrative. By a sufficient number of assumptions, which lie
beyond the range of verification, the evidence may be set aside. But the
early existence and recognition of the Fourth Gospel is the one simple
postulate which explains all the facts. The law of gravitation accounts
for the various phenomena of motion, the falling of a stone, the jet of
a fountain, the orbits of the planets, and so forth. It is quite
possible for any one, who is so disposed, to reject this explanation of
nature. Provided that he is allowed to postulate a new force for every
new fact with which he is confronted, he has nothing to fear. He will
then
"gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb,"
happy in his immunity. But the other theory will prevail nevertheless by
reason of its simplicity.
VIII. THE CHURCHES OF GAUL.
[AUGUST, 1876.]
In the preceding papers I have investigated the testimony borne by the
Churches of Asia Minor to the Canonical Gospels, and more especially to
the Fourth Evangelist. The peculiar value of this testimony is due to
the close personal relations of these communities with the latest
surviving Apostles, more particularly with St John. At the same time I
took occasion incidentally to remark on their attitude towards St Paul
and his writings, because an assumed antagonism between the Apostle of
the Gentiles and the Twelve has been adopted by a modern school of
critics as the basis for a reconstruction of early Christian history. I
purpose in the present paper extending this investigation to the
Churches of Gaul. The Christianity of Gaul was in some sense the
daughter of the Christianity of Asia Minor.
Of the history of the Gallican Churches before the middle of the second
century we have no certain information. It seems fairly probable indeed
that, when we read in the Apostolic age of a mission of Crescens to
'Galatia' or 'Gaul' [251:1], the western country is meant rather than
the Asiatic settlement which bore the same name; and, if so, this points
to some relations with St Paul himself. But, even though this
explanation should be accepted, the notice stands quite alone. Later
tradition indeed supplements it with legendary matter, but it is
impossible to say what substratum of fact, if any, underlies these
comparatively recent stories.
The connection between the southern parts of Gaul and the western
districts of Asia Minor had been intimate from very remote times. Gaul
was indebted for her earliest civilization to her Greek settlements like
Marseilles, which had been colonized from Asia Minor some six centuries
before the Christian era; and close relations appear to have been
maintained even to the latest times. During the Roman period the people
of Marseilles still spoke the Greek language familiarly along with the
vernacular Celtic of the native population and the official Latin of the
dominant power [252:1]. When therefore Christianity had established her
head-quarters in Asia Minor, it was not unnatural that the Gospel should
flow in the same channels which had already conducted the civilization
and the commerce of the Asiatic Greeks westward.