BLASS AND FLINDERS PETRIE
A very interesting attempt to bring the synoptic problem to a new
critical test has latterly been made by Dr. Flinders Petrie in his
work, The Growth of the Gospels as shown by Structural Criticism
(1910). His starting point is the likelihood that logia, analogous
to the non-canonical fragments discovered in recent years, were the
original material from which the Gospels were built up. The hypothesis
is prima facie quite legitimate, there being nothing to repel it. As he
contends, there is now evidence that writing was in much more common
use in some periods of antiquity than scholars had formerly supposed;
and scraps of writing by non-scholarly persons, he argues, may have
been widely current in the environment with which we are concerned. All
the while he is founding on data from the Egypt of the third century
for a Palestinian environment of the first; and he is obliged to stress
the point that Matthew the tax-gatherer was a "professional scribe,"
while his argument runs that Matthew used the detached jottings of
other people, not his own. But let us follow out his thesis:--
We cannot doubt [writes Dr. Petrie] that such was the course
of growth when we look at the logia. Those collections of brief
sayings could hardly have come into existence if full narratives
and sufficient standards of information in the Gospels were already
circulating. They belong essentially to a preparatory age, when
records were in course of compilation. But, once written out,
they naturally survived side by side with the Gospels, which had
only used a portion of their material. [47]
It is not quite clear whether Dr. Petrie meant here to claim not only
that the so-called Logia Iesou published in 1897 and 1904 are anterior
to and independent of the Gospels (though found only in third-century
MSS.), but that they are on the same footing of credibility with the
Gospels. This, however, seems inevitably to follow from his position,
though it appears to suggest to him no difficulty about the general
historicity of the Gospel story, which he too takes for granted. Let
us then note the problems raised.
A main feature of Dr. Petrie's inquiry is that, following Professor
Blass, he insists on making the predictions of the fall of Jerusalem
part of the early documentary matter collected in the "Nucleus" which
for him is the equivalent of Weiss's Primitive Gospel. The argument of
Blass [48] is drawn from the case of Savonarola, who in 1496 predicted
that Rome would be sacked, and that horses would be stabled in the
churches, as actually happened in the year 1527. If such a prophecy
could be made and fulfilled in one case, urges Blass, it might be
in another; hence there can be no rigorous application of the canon,
Omne vaticinium post eventum, which has been relied on by the modern
school of critical theologians. Dr. Petrie appears to have made no
investigation of his own, being content to quote and support Blass;
and the point is well worth critical consideration.
Let us premise that scientific criticism, which has no concern with
Unitarian predilections, stands quite impartially towards the question
of Gospel dates. The modern tendency to carry down those dates, either
for the whole or for any parts of the Gospels, towards or into the
second century, is originally part of the general "liberal" inclination
to put a Man in place of a God, though some believers in the God
acquiesce as to the lateness of the act of writing. Those who have
carried on the movement have always presupposed the general historicity
of the Teacher, and have been concerned, however unconsciously, to find
a historical solution which saved that presupposition. The rational
critic, making only the naturalist presupposition, is committed to
no set of documentary dates. And he is not at all committed to the
denial that an inductive historic prediction, as distinguished from
a supernaturalist prophecy, may be made and fulfilled. Many have
been. Much has been said of the "marvellous prescience" of Burke in
predicting that the anarchy of the French Revolution would end in
a tyranny. He was in fact merely inferring, as he well might, that
what had happened in the history of ancient Rome and in the history
of England would happen in France. By a similar historical method
several French and other writers in the eighteenth century reached
the forecast of the revolt of the American colonies from Britain
without getting any credit for divine inspiration. And so, perhaps,
might Savonarola at the end of the fifteenth century predict a sack
of Rome, and a Jew in the first century a sack of Jerusalem.
But let us see what Savonarola actually did. He was, so to speak, a
professional prophet, and while he predicted not only a sack of Rome
but his own death by violence, he also, by the admission of sympathetic
biographers, put forth many vaticinations of an entirely fantastic
character. Here again he might very well have a Jewish prototype. For
us the first question is, What did he actually predict in history,
and how and why did he predict it? In 1494 he seems to have predicted
the French invasion which took place in that year. Villari asserts
that he did so in the sermons he preached in Lent, but admits that
"it is impossible to ascertain the precise nature" of the sermons in
question. [49] Father Lucas goes further, and points out that there
is no trace in them of the alleged prophecy [50] which Savonarola
in his Compendium Revelationum (1495) claims to have made but does
not date. Villari further admits that the sermons of that year are
so badly reported
as to have lost almost every characteristic of Savonarola's
style. Their reporter, unable to keep pace with the preacher's
words, only jotted down rough and fragmentary notes. These were
afterwards translated into barbarous dog-Latin--by way of giving
them a more literary form--and published in Venice. For this
reason Quétif and some other writers entertained doubts of their
authenticity. [51]
Villari nevertheless is satisfied of it on internal grounds, and we may
accept his estimate. The main allegation is that in 1494 Savonarola,
who had for years been preaching that national sin would elicit
divine chastisement,
in those Lenten discourses, and also in some others, foretold the
coming of a new Cyrus, who would march through Italy in triumph,
without encountering any obstacles, and without breaking a single
lance. We find numerous records of these predictions, and the
terrors excited by them, in the historians and biographers of
the period; and Fra Benedetto reports his master's words in the
following verses [thus literally translated]:--
Soon shalt thou see each tyrant overthrown,
And all Italy shalt thou see vanquished,
To her shame, disgrace, and harm.
Thou, Rome, shalt soon be captured:
I see the blade of wrath come upon thee;
The time is short, each day flies past:
My Lord will renovate the Church,
And convert every barbarian people.
There will be but one fold and one shepherd.
But first Italy will have to mourn,
And so much of her blood will be shed
That her people shall everywhere be thinned.
Here there is obvious confusion, apart from the fact that the predicted
regeneration and unification of the church never took place. The
invader is to do no fighting, and yet so much blood will be shed
that everywhere the people of Italy will be thinned. Are we, then,
to believe that the "Cyrus" prediction was made at the same time? Is
there not ground for suspicion that it was interpolated post eventum,
in the Latin report? The only alternative solution seems to be that
Villari or the Italian compiler has mixed prophecies of different
years. In his sermon of November 1, 1494, Savonarola speaks of the
French invasion as the "scourge" he had predicted [52]--an odd way of
speaking of one promised before as "the Lord's anointed," even though
the French host is said to be "led by the Lord." In any case his own
claim to have predicted of "Cyrus" is unsupported by evidence, and,
even if accepted, does not involve a date earlier than 1493-4. [53]
To predict the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France in Lent
of 1494, or even late in 1493, was easy enough. [54] The invasion had
been fully prepared, and was expected, even as was the Armada in the
England of 1588. Savonarola was very likely to have inside knowledge of
the scheme, and the Pope positively charged him with having helped to
engineer it. Florence in effect received Charles as a friend. There
had been, further, abundant discussion of the expedition both in
France and Italy long before it set out. Guicciardini tells that wise
Frenchmen were very apprehensive about it, and that Ferdinand of Naples
reckoned that it must fail. Fail it finally did. Savonarola might
even predict that the invader would not be resisted, for there was no
force ready in Italy to repel that led by Charles, with its great train
of artillery. It is an extreme oversight of Villari's to allege [55]
that in the autumn, "unexpectedly as a thunderclap from a clear sky,
came the news that a flood of foreign soldiery was pouring down from
the Alps to the conquest of Italy.... All felt taken unawares." This
assertion is completely exploded by the record of Guicciardini, and
no historian will now endorse it. Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan,
had incited Charles to the invasion; the preparations had been open
and extensive; and they had been abundantly discussed both in France
and Italy. [56] The statement that "the Friar alone had foreseen the
future" is absolute myth.
The fact remains that the invasion was not resisted, and that Rome
was "captured" in the sense of being entered by Charles, who did no
military damage and marched out again. But when Charles proceeded to
withdraw from Italy, having effected nothing, a battle was fought
and won by him. It was two years later that Savonarola, acting on
his standing doctrine that sin in high places must elicit divine
vengeance, resumed his predictions of disaster to Rome, whose Pope
was his enemy. As it happened, 1496 was again a year of expected
invasions. Charles, now the ally of Florence, was announced to be
preparing for a second inroad, and the apprehensive Sforza invited and
furthered the intervention of the emperor Maximilian as he had before
invited Charles. Predictions were again to be expected; at Bologna
at least one was actually made; and the prophet, one Raffaele da
Firenzuola, was tortured and banished. [57] Charles gave up his plan,
but Maximilian came, albeit with a small force, and was welcomed by
the Pisans.
It was before the coming of Maximilian [58] that Savonarola resumed
his prophecy of the coming scourge in a series of sermons, in one of
which he announces that Italy will be overwhelmed because she is full
of sanguinary deeds; that Rome will be besieged and trampled down;
and that because her churches have been full of harlots they will be
made "stables for horses and swine, the which will be less displeasing
to God than seeing them made haunts of prostitutes.... Then, O Italy,
trouble after trouble shall befall thee; troubles of war after famine,
troubles of pestilence after war." Again, in another sermon: "There
will not be enough men left to bury the dead; nor means enough to dig
graves.... The dead will be heaped in carts and on horses; they will
be piled up and burnt.... And the people shall be so thinned that few
shall remain." [59] At the same time he repeatedly predicted his own
death by violence.
On the latter head he had abundant reason for his forecast. On the
former it is very certain that he was not thinking of something
that was not to happen for thirty years. Again and again he assured
his hearers and his correspondents that his predictions were to be
fulfilled "in our time." Towards the end of 1496 he described himself
as "The servant of Christ Jesus, sent by him to the city of Florence to
announce the great scourge which is to come upon Italy, and especially
upon Rome, and which is to extend itself over all the world in our
days and quickly." [60] In 1497, in a letter to Lodovico Pittorio,
chancellor to d'Este, after speaking of the Lord's prediction of the
fall of Jerusalem, he writes: "Great tribulations are always [i.e. in
the Scriptures] predicted many years before they come. Yet I do not
say that the tribulations which I have foretold will be so long in
coming; nay, they will come soon; indeed I say that the tribulation
has already commenced." [61]
Yet again, in 1498, he claims in a sermon that "a part has come to
pass," noting that "in Rome one has lost a son"--a reference to the
murder of the Duke of Gandia, son of the Pope; and adding that "you
have seen who has died here, and I could tell you, an I would, who
is in hell"--supposed to be a reference to Bernardo del Nero. [62]
All this was in terms of Savonarola's theological and Biblical
conception of things, the ruling political philosophy of his age,
as of many before. Wickedness and injustice, fraud and oppression,
were dominant in high places, and God must of necessity punish, in
the fashion in which he was constantly described as doing so in the
Sacred Books, from the Deluge downwards. In Savonarola's view the
cup of Rome's abominations was full, and punishment had been earned
by the men then living, in particular by Pope Alexander.
Within two years Savonarola had been put to death, after many tortures;
and Alexander died in 1503 (not by poison, as the tradition goes)
without having seen the predicted desolation. It was under the more
respectable of the two Medicean Popes that Rome was twice sacked in
1527 by the forces of Charles V; and though there had been infinite
slaughter and pestilence in Italy, the regeneration and reunion of
Christendom predicted by Savonarola did not follow. When no reform
whatever had followed on the French invasion he had explained that his
prediction in that case was subject to conditions. Yet he announced
that his prophecy of the conversion of the Turks was unconditional,
declaring at the close of the Compendium Revelationum that it would
be fulfilled in fifteen years, and assuring his hearers in 1495 that
some of them would live to see the fulfilment. [63]