The first chapter of Dean Farrar's book deals with the Bible Canon.
After another slap at the poor benighted Christians who still hold
that every word of Scripture is "supernaturally dictated and infallibly
true," Dr. Farrar remarks that the Bible is "not a single nor even a
homogeneous book." Strictly speaking, it is not a book, but a library;
and, as is pointed out later on, it is the remains of a much larger
collection which has mostly perished. The Canon of the Old Testament was
"arrived at by slow and uncertain degrees." The common assertion, that
it was fixed by Ezra and the so-called Great Synagogue in the fifth
century before Christ, is in direct opposition to the facts. It was not
really _settled_ until seventy years after the birth of Christ, when the
Rabbis met at Jamnia, and decided in favor of our present thirty-nine
books. According to Dr. Farrar, there was no special influence from
heaven in the determination of the Canon. It was a work which God left
to "the _ordinary_ influences of the Holy Ghost." Let us see then how
these influences operated on the last and most critical occasion. "The
gathering at Jamnia," says Dr. Farrar, "was a tumultuous assemblage, and
in the faction fights of the Rabbinic parties blood was shed by their
scholars. Hence the decision was regarded as irrevocable and sealed
by blood." Such are the _ordinary_ influences of the Holy Ghost. Its
_extraordinary_ influences may be easily imagined. Their history is
written in blood and fire in every country in Christendom.
Dr. Farrar allows that the Canon of the New Testament was formed "in the
same gradual and tentative way." Many Gospels, Epistles, and Apocalypses
were "current" in the "first two centuries." Some of them were "quoted
as sacred books" and read aloud in Christian churches. Seven, at least,
of the books which are now canonical were then "disputed"--namely, the
Second Epistle of St. Peter, the Second and Third Epistles of St. John,
the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, and
the Book of Revelation. The Canon was "formally and officially settled"
by the Council of Laodicea (a.d. 363), and the two Councils of Carthage
(a.d. 397 and 419), the decrees of which were sanctioned by the Trullian
Council (a.d. 692), nearly seven hundred years after Christ. Dr. Farrar
holds, however, that these Councils merely registered the general
agreement of the Christian Church. The real test of canonicity is not
the decision of Councils, which may and do err, but "the verifying
faculty of the Christian consciousness." Dr. Farrar's argument, if it
means anything at all, implies that while Councils may err, consisting
as they do of fallible men, this "Christian consciousness" is really
infallible. But as this Christian consciousness only exists, after
all, in individual Christians, however numerous they may be, or through
however many centuries they may be continued, it is difficult to see how
the greatest multitude of fallibilities can make up one infallibility.
And unless it can, it is also difficult to see how Dr. Farrar can have
an infallible Canon. He disclaims the authority of the Church, on which
Catholics rely; indeed, he says it can hardly be said that the "whole
Church" has pronounced any opinion on the Canon at all. What really
happened is perhaps unconsciously admitted by Dr. Farrar in a rather
simple footnote. "Books were judged," he says, "by the congruity of
their contents with the general Christian conviction." Precisely so; the
books did not decide the doctrine, but the doctrine decided the fate of
the books. And how was the doctrine decided? By fierce controversy, by
forgery and sophistication, by partisan struggles, and finally, after
the adhesion of Constantine, by faction fights that involved the loss of
myriads (some say millions) of lives.
Not the slightest attempt is made by Dr. Farrar to meet the difficulty
of his position; indeed, he seems unaware that the difficulty exists.
All he sees is the difficulty of the positions taken up by the Catholics
and the early Protestants. It never occurs to him that he has only
shifted from one difficulty to another. The Catholics rely upon the
living voice of God in the Church. That covers everything, like the
sky; and is perfectly satisfactory, if you can only accept it. The
early Protestants repudiated the authority of the Church, at least
as represented by the Pope and Councils; but they acknowledged the
authority of the _primitive_ Church. They were shrewd enough to see
that what cannot possibly rest on mere reason must rest somewhere on
authority; so they admitted as much as was sufficient to cover the
Scriptures and the Creeds, and refused to go a step farther. Dr. Farrar
breaks away from both parties, and what is the result? He talks
about the Canon of the New Testament being formed "by the exercise of
enlightened reason," but he lays down no criterion by which reason can
decide whether a book is inspired or not, or so specially inspired as
to require a place in the Canon. The "verifying faculty of the Christian
consciousness" is one of those comfortable phrases, like the blessed
word Mesopotamia, which are designed to save the pains of accuracy and
the trouble of definite thought. What light does it really shed upon
the following questions? Why is the Protestant Canon different from
the Catholic Canon? Is it owing to some inexplicable difference in the
"verifying faculty of the Christian consciousness" in the two cases; and
by what test shall we decide when the Christian consciousness delivers
two contradictory verdicts? Why is the book of Ecclesiastes in the
Canon, while the book of Ecclesiasticus is (by the Protestants)
relegated to the Apocrypha? Why is the book of Esther in the Canon, and
the book of Judith in the Apocrypha? Why is the book of Jonah in the
Canon, and the book of Tobit in the Apocrypha? Why is the book of
Proverbs in the Canon, and the book of the Wisdom of Solomon in the
Apocrypha? These are questions which the early Protestants answered in
their way, but we defy Dr. Farrar to answer them at all.
Let us follow Dr. Farrar into his second chapter. He states, truly
enough, that both the Old and the New Testaments represent "the selected
and fragmentary remains of an extensive literature." Many books referred
to in the Old Testament are lost. Some of the canonical books are
anonymous; we do not know who wrote them. Others bear the names of men
"by whom they could not have been composed." The Pentateuch is "a work
of composite structure," which has been "edited and re-edited several
times." The Psalms are a collection of sacred poems in "five separate
books of very various antiquity." The Proverbs consist of "four or
five different collections." The New Testament is a selection from the
voluminous Christian literature of the earliest centuries. Many Gospels
were already in existence when St. Luke prepared his own. "It is all but
certain," Dr. Farrar says, "that St. Paul, and probable that the other
Apostles, must have written many letters which are no longer preserved."
That is to say, some letters actually written by St. Paul were allowed
to perish, while others not written by him were allowed to bear his
name, and were placed as his in the New Testament Canon! There are
passages in the Gospels that are known to be interpolations; for
instance, the story of the Woman taken in Adultery. This story is
"exquisite and supremely valuable," but it is bracketed in the Revised
Version as of "doubtful genuineness." Such passages are eliminated
because they do not "meet the standard of modern critical requirements."
_O sancta simplicitas!_ Is there any reason, in the natural sense of
that word, for believing that John the Apostle wrote the rest of the
Fourth Gospel, any more than he wrote this rejected story? Dr. Farrar
strains at gnats and swallows camels, and prides himself on his
discrimination.
His references to Justin Martyr and Papias seem less than ingenuous.
It is not true that Justin Martyr "freely uses the Gospels." Dr. Farrar
admits that he "does not name them." Saying that he "used" them is
quietly assuming that they existed. All that Justin Martyr does, as a
matter of fact, is to cite sayings ascribed to Jesus, but not in one
single case does he cite a saying of Jesus in exactly the form in which
it appears in the Four Gospels. Supposing that he wrote freely, and
had ever so bad a memory, and never took the trouble to refer to the
originals, it is simply inconceivable that he should never be right. Now
and then he must have deviated into accuracy. And the fact that he never
does is plain proof that he had not our Gospels before him. Nor does
Papias mention "the Gospels." He mentions only two, Matthew and Mark,
and he says that Matthew was written in _Hebrew_, Now, the earliest date
at which Papias can be fixed is a.d. 140. This is chosen by Dr. Farrar,
and we will let it pass unchallenged. And what follows? Why this, that
no Christian writer before a.d. 140 betrays that he has so much as heard
of _any_ Gospel, and even then but _two_ are known instead of _four_,
and one of these is most certainly _not_ the Gospel which opens the New
Testament.
All this was proved a quarter of a century ago by the author of
_Supernatural Religion_--a work which is systematically ignored by
the so-called Higher Critics because its author was a pronounced
Rationalist. An excellent summary of this writer's demonstrations
appears in the late Matthew Arnold's _God and the Bible_:--
"He seems to have looked out and brought together, to the best of his
powers, every extant _passage_ in which, between the year 70 and the
year 170 of our era, a writer might be supposed to be quoting one of our
Four Gospels.
"And it turns out that there is constantly the same sort of variation
from our Gospels, a variation inexplicable in men quoting from a real
Canon, and quite unlike what is found in men quoting from our Four
Gospels later on. It may be said that the Old Testament, too, is often
quoted loosely. True; but it is also quoted exactly; and long passages
of it are thus quoted. It would be nothing that our canonical Gospels
were often quoted loosely, if long passages from them, or if passages,
say, of even two or three verses, were sometimes quoted exactly. But
from writers before Irenaeus not one such passage can be produced so
quoted. And the author of _Supernatural Religion_ by bringing all the
alleged quotations forward, has proved it."*
Now what is the exact value of these demonstrations? We will give it in
Mr. Arnold's words: "There is no evidence of the establishment of our
Four Gospels as a Gospel-Canon, or even of their existence as they now
finally stand at all, before the last quarter of the second century."
Not only is there no evidence of the orthodox theory, but, as Mr. Arnold
says, the "great weight of evidence is against it."
Dr. Giles--another ignored writer, although a clergyman of the Church
of England--had said and proved the very same thing in his _Christian
Records_; and had appended the following significant declaration:--
"There is positive proof, in the writings of the first ages of
Christianity, that the same question as to the age and authorship of the
books of the New Testament was even then agitated, and if it was then
set at rest, this was done, not by a deliberate sentence of the judge,
but by burning all the evidence on which one side of the controversy was
supported,"**
* Arnold, God and the Bible, pp. 222-3.
** Dr. Giles, Christian Records, p. 10.
It is probable that Dr. Farrar is well aware that our Four Gospels
cannot be traced beyond the second half of the second century--that is,
considerably more than a century after the alleged date of the death of
Christ. But he shrinks from a frank admission of the fact, and leaves
the reader to find it out for himself.
Instead of making this important and, as some think, damning admission,
Dr. Farrar continues his remarks on the Bible Canon. That thirty-six
books are accepted "on the authority of the Church" simply means,
he tells us, that they are accepted "by the general consensus of
Christians." The whole Church, as such, has hardly pronounced an
opinion on the subject. The Churchmen who voted at Laodicea and Carthage
"exercised no independent judgment," and their critical knowledge was
"elementary." Nor was the decision of the Council of Trent any real
improvement. Dr. Farrar approves the reply of the Reformed Churches,
that "any man may reject books claiming to be Holy Scripture if he do
not feel the evidence of their contents." But this is to make every man
a judge, not only of what the Bible means, but also of what it should
contain. Each unfettered Christian may therefore make up a Bible for
himself; which is simply chaos come again. What then is the way of
escape from this grotesque confusion? Dr. Farrar indicates it with a
crooked finger:--
"The decision as to what books are or are not to be regarded as true
Scripture, though we believe it to be wise and right, depends on no
infallible decision. It must satisfy the scientific and critical as well
as the spiritual requirements of each age."
This reduces the Bible Canon to a perpetual transformation scene. It is
a tacit confession that the Protestant Bible is an arbitrary collection
of questionable documents; that it has nothing to plead for itself but
common usage; that its very contents, as well as their interpretation,
are liable to change; in short, that if the Catholic stands upon the
rock of implicit faith, and defies all dangers by closing his eyes and
clutching the reassuring hand of his Holy Mother Church, the Protestant
flounders about with the poor little dark-lantern of private judgment
in a frightful mud-ocean--his old rock of faith in an infallible Bible
having been reduced to dust by the engines of criticism, and finally to
slush by a downflow from the lofty reservoir of pure reason.*
* It would be a pity to omit an amusing instance of the
contemptuous dogmatism of Christian divines when they had
the field to themselves. Dr. William Whitaker, a famous
learned writer on the side of the Reformation in England, in
his Disputation with two of the foremost Jesuits, Bellarmine
and Stapleton, wrote as follows:--"Jerome, in the Proem of
his Commentaries on Daniel, relates that Porphyry the
philosopher wrote a volume against the book of our prophet
Daniel, and affirmed that what is now extant under the name
of Daniel was not published by the ancient prophet, but by
some later Daniel, who lived in the times of Antiochus
Epiphanes. But we need not regard what the impious Porphyry
may have written, who mocked at all the scriptures and
religion itself." Well, this opinion of the blasphemous
Porphyry, whose writings were burnt by the Christian Church,
is now accepted by the Higher Critics. Canon Driver, for
instance, admits that the Book of Daniel is not the work of
Daniel, that it could not have been written earlier than 300
B.C., and that "it is at least _probable_ that it was
composed under the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, B.C.
168 or 167" (Introduction to the Literature of the Old
Testament, p. 467). This involves that the fulfilled
prophecies of Daniel were written after the events.