ORTHODOXY AND THE "ORAL" HYPOTHESIS
The diverging schools of documentary "construction" being thus
alike unable to yield a coherent notion either of the process of
Gospel-making or of the beginnings of the cultus, it is not surprising
to find yet a third school of scholarly interpretation undertaking to
do better, and to build on an "oral" basis where others have vainly
built on documents. This theory, long ago predominant in Germany,
[117] is latterly represented in England by the Rev. Arthur Wright,
author of The Composition of the Gospels, a Synopsis of the Gospels,
and Some New Testament Problems.
Writing before the appearance of Dr. Petrie's treatise, Mr. Wright did
not contemplate that development of the later school which gives the
earliest possible dates for the Gospels; but we may feel sure that
he would give it small quarter. Himself essentially orthodox, and
making without question all the primary assumptions of historicity,
he dates the Epistle of James before the year 50, Paul's Epistles to
the Thessalonians in the year 52; Mark about 70; Matthew "not much"
later; Luke in 80; and John later still. [118] He is not tied to the
synoptics: when they become unmanageable he vigorously rectifies them
by the aid of the Fourth Gospel. But on his own lines he is so candid
that he can always be read with pleasure; and his arguments are well
worth consideration.
Mr. Wright's theory, in brief, is that the Gospels, one and all,
represent the late consignment to paper of matter preserved from the
first in the Christian catechetical schools, given by the apostles
and preserved by their pupils in the Rabbinical fashion. As Matthew
divides plausibly into fifty-one lessons, and Mark in the Westcott and
Hort text into forty-eight paragraphs, it is suggested that the plan in
both cases had been to attain to a set of fifty-one or fifty-two; and
If there really was an attempt to provide every Sunday with
a Gospel of its own, we shall understand why the formation of
Gospel sections proceeded rapidly at first and then ceased; we
shall understand why all our Gospels are so short and contain so
little which is not essential; we shall understand how S. Mark's
order became fixed. [119]
This plausible but dangerous detail, however, is not insisted on;
what is essential is the datum of long oral tradition. Orthodox
as he is, too, Mr. Wright holds that Luke i; ii; iii, 23-38, "are
comparatively late additions, which never formed part of the primitive
oral teaching." [120] Thus he can summarily get rid of a number of
incredibilities which the other schools more prudently leave to be
excised by the reader as he sees fit. But we shall find him making
a stout fight for many others.
On the "oral" theory every Church had its own tradition, [121]
"differing both in contents and wording from that of other
Churches, and in particular exhibiting much mixture and many
sayings of Christ which are not in our Gospels at all" [122]--an
interesting approximation, in effect, to the theory of scattered
leaflets. Thus is to be accounted for the endless variety in Gospel
phrasing and detail. For Mr. Wright, further, it is inconceivable
that any evangelist left out anything he knew of. "The common idea"
(before Dr. Petrie) "that they picked and selected what was specially
adapted to their readers, I most confidently reject." [123] Matthew
would gladly have given the parable of the Prodigal Son, and Luke the
story of the Syrophoenician woman, which would so well have suited
his purpose. [124] "He did not give it because he had never heard of
it." Thus, in brief, Mr. Wright posits much teaching lost even from
the oral tradition, as Dr. Petrie posits many lost leaflets.
But Mr. Wright's conception of the oral tradition, upon scrutiny,
becomes disquieting to the critical sense. In one place, discussing
Luther's estimate of the Epistle of James as an epistle of straw, he
remarks--with a great deal more truth, I fancy, than he dreams of--that
James's Epistle "is Christianity in swaddling-clothes." [125] Again,
the opening verses of John's Gospel "reveal a depth of knowledge
to which S. James never attained. Not that S. James would have
contradicted them or doubted their truth. But it is one thing to
see truth when it is set before you; it is another to set it forth
yourself. There is such a thing as latent knowledge." [126] Yet on
the same page with the swaddling-clothes passage Mr. Wright has said,
with regard to Mark's omission of the words, "Come unto me all ye
that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest":--
Was it humility that made him deliberately omit them as too good
for so insignificant a creature as himself to record? Or was it a
conscious or unconscious feeling that they were unsuited to his
readers? A man with such preposterous humility was ill-equipped
for the work of an evangelist. Readers so unchristian would not
value a Gospel.
What now becomes of the two presentments of James and John? Both must
presumably have known most that was to be known, ex hypothesi. Yet
James has not a word of specifically Christian doctrine, and, save
in two sentences, one of which has every appearance of interpolation,
while the other is only less suspicious, no mention of Jesus. John, on
the other hand, as an apostle (whether or not the beloved one), must
on the theory have heard many of the sayings given in the synoptics,
which he does not report. Why does he not? Had he never heard of the
"Come unto me" allocution? Could he conceivably have put it aside
from a preposterous humility? If he had not heard that, had he not
heard the Sermon on the Mount, or any of the parable-solutions given
in the synoptics as specially addressed to the twelve disciples? Can
Mr. Wright, holding by the central tradition of Jesus and the twelve,
believe that John had heard none of the teachings which he does not
repeat? If, on the other hand, he admits wholesale suppression in
John's case, what becomes of the argument above cited?
It matters little that Mr. Wright credits John with evolving the
Logos doctrine out of his own profound meditation, and with having
"remoulded" the sayings of Jesus which he does give. That is a standing
device of exegesis, Unitarian and Trinitarian alike; and by his account
the general oral tradition did the same thing indefinitely. But all
the while Mr. Wright is going a great deal further. He alternately
insists that every evangelist told all he knew, and assumes that the
two evangelists who are alleged to have been apostles did not. If,
he writes--
If, as becomes increasingly probable, a Johannine course of
teaching was extant in comparatively early times, it is not
strange that, as S. John dealt chiefly with the Judæan ministry,
S. Peter should have refused to intrude into his brother Apostle's
domain. They may have agreed at the outset to divide the work
thus between them.
It is impossible to reconcile this with Mr. Wright's theory of the
inclusiveness of the evangelists. Why should not Mark do what Matthew
and John did in the terms of the case?
Of course this is not the true critical solution; the immediate
question is the consistency of Mr. Wright's critical principles. To
the eye of unbiassed criticism the "Come unto me" logion is not a
possible oracle at all; it is an unintelligently inserted liturgical
formula from the mysteries, misplaced and meaningless as a public
teaching. [127] As regards the fair historical inference from the
wide difference between the synoptic Gospels and the fourth, it is
not possible to accept any of Mr. Wright's solutions, tried by his
own tests. To suggest that John had not "heard" of the Virgin Birth
story is for him impossible, unless he post-dates that as he does the
birth-stories in Luke. If he follows that course, what can he make of
the 13th chapter of John, a palpable interpolation or substitution
between the 12th and the 14th, which form a sequence that the 13th
absolutely breaks? [128] If that interpolation be admitted, what
exactly is left to fight for?
In any case, the implication that Matthew, the apostle, "had not heard
of" what John declares to be the first miracle, or of the raising
of Lazarus, is as destructive of every traditionalist assumption as
is the implication that John the Apostle had not heard of the Sermon
on the Mount, or of the parables of the mystery of the kingdom. Mark
and Luke expressly declare that John was present at the raising of
Jairus' daughter; and the fourth Gospel makes no mention of it. It
was perhaps to meet cruces of this kind that Mr. Wright makes John
and Peter "divide between them" the portions of the ministry; but
such a device simply destroys, as we have seen, another main part of
his case. Mr. Wright may well reject the thesis of Mr. Halcombe, who,
severely condemning "modern criticism," produces a modern criticism of
his own, which makes John's Gospel the first--another of the hopeless
devices of traditionalist critics to escape from the imbroglio of the
tradition. Mr. Halcombe gravely reasons that the best Gospel came
first; and Mr. Wright pronounces that "such a plan of composition
seems unworthy of God and incredible in man." [129] But his own theory
presents only a different set of incredibilities. He accepts without
a misgiving the most staggering anomalies. "If it were not for a
single incidental statement in S. John" (iv, 1, 2), he writes, "we
should have concluded confidently that the sacrament of holy baptism
was first instituted after the Resurrection." John's statement is in
fact the sole intimation that Jesus or the disciples ever baptized
at all; and it is either a designed or redacted equivoque or a flat
contradiction in terms:--
When therefore the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that
Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although
Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples), he left Judæa,
and departed again into Galilee.
The exegesis which can take this for a historical datum, and compose
it with the theory of an oral tradition in which baptism either by
Jesus or by his disciples never appears, is really outside serious
discussion. The proposition that, given the main tradition, either
Jesus or the disciples baptized freely, and that yet neither Matthew,
Mark, nor Luke ever heard of it, is a mere flouting of the critical
reason to which it professes to appeal. And there is no alternative
save an honest confession that the record is incredible. The whole
Christian tradition of baptism breaks down on examination, as does
the record of the acceptance of the higher mission of Jesus by John,
followed by statements affirming the continuance of John's movement
and teaching alongside of the Jesuine. Mr. Wright is severe on the
orthodox harmonists in general. "If I am right," he remarks, "the
exhausting labours and tortuous explanations of the harmonists,
in their endeavour to reconcile what cannot be reconciled, have
been wasted." [130] That is exactly what the attentive reader must
regretfully say of Mr. Wright's own reconstructions.
His handling of the problems of the date of the crucifixion and the
duration of the Ministry is a warning to every student who desires
to be loyal to critical principle. By his final admission, no one
can tell whether the Ministry lasted one, two, three, four, ten, or
twenty years. He frankly rejects Sir William Ramsay's attempt to salve
as history Luke's story of the census. The alleged procedure, he sees,
is simply impossible--"S. Luke evidently has somewhat misunderstood the
situation"--and he solves the problem by throwing over Luke's opening
chapters as late accretions. But the question of the duration of the
Ministry, which is bound up with that of the date of the crucifixion,
and thus lies at the very centre of the whole historic problem, he
is content to leave as insoluble, yet without a misgiving as to the
historicity of the record.
John makes Jesus go four times to Jerusalem; while in the synoptics we
note "the extraordinary fact that they do not bring Christ to Jerusalem
until He entered it to be crucified." [131] John puts the cleansing
of the temple at the beginning of the Ministry, and the synoptics
place it at the close. Orthodox exegesis then assumes two cleansings,
but "such a repetition is, to say the least, highly improbable,"
for Mr. Wright. "What end would such a repetition serve? And if
repeated, why should not S. Mark or S. John have told us so?" [132]
Why, indeed! So Mr. Wright suggests that the synoptics may have
telescoped several years into one. "Events in real life move much
more slowly." [133] They certainly do!
Yet, on the other hand, "the one-year ministry would solve many
difficulties. It is the only scheme which reconciles S. Luke,
S. Matthew, and S. John. Not improbably it is true: the more I
consider it, the more attractive it appears." [134] Such, evidently,
was the view of the Christian and other Gnostics. But Irenæus, the
first Father to handle the problem, declared for a ministry of about
twenty years, founding not only on the quotation in John, "Thou art
not yet fifty years old," but on the fact that "all the elders who had
known John the disciple of the Lord in Asia witness that he gave them
this tradition." [135] On the other hand, in Mr. Wright's opinion,
"ten years is the utmost length to which we can stretch the ministry
without throwing overboard S. Luke's chronology altogether." [136]
Yet Bishop Westcott declared concerning the record of Irenæus that,
"however strange it may appear, some such view is not inconsistent
with the only fixed historical dates which we have with regard to the
Lord's life, the date of His birth, His baptism, and the banishment
of Pilate." Thus turns the kaleidoscope of the tradition of which
Harnack has latterly affirmed the "essential rightness, with a few
important exceptions."
It is hardly necessary to point out that the "oral" hypothesis, like
the "documentary" and that of scattered logia, is more compatible
with the negative than with the affirmative answer on the question
of historicity. Contradictions and anomalies irreconcilable with
the assumption of a real historical process present not difficulty
but confirmation to the theory of a fictitious production, whether
documentary or oral, to establish a transforming cult, supplying a
quasi-historical basis where none such existed. Contradictory episodes
and dicta stand for diverging sects and movements. Save for incidental
concessions, all the traditionist schools alike ignore the grounds
for inferring a long-continued modification of the Gospels at many
hands; though, when Celsus late in the second century alleged the
common practice of interpolation, Origen could only explain that it
was the work of heretics. Such a procedure is for the rational critic
only the natural continuance of the method of formation.
Over the point upon which Mr. Wright most completely diverges from
the various Unitarian schools--his acceptance of the Fourth Gospel
as essentially historical--we need not here concern ourselves. Those
who can accept the Fourth and the Synoptics cannot be supposed to
admit the application of criticism to fundamentals at all, however
critically they may handle secondary issues. And they have their
defence. The liberalizers who see that the Fourth as a whole is a work
of invention, making free play with previous material, and yet cannot
conceive that the synoptics had beforehand followed a similar method,
can make no claim to critical consistency. They merely realize that
the Fourth and the Synoptics cannot all be records of a real Life and
Teaching, and they decide to reject the last rather than the prior
documents. The argument from "vividness" and lifelike detail simply
goes by the board. In the fourth Gospel there are many more lifelike
details than in the second; but that is not allowed to count.
For the rational inquirer, however, the fact remains that the
dismissal of the fourth Gospel is a beginning of historical as
distinct from documentary discrimination; and it is to those who have
made such a beginning that a further critical argument falls to be
addressed. Mr. Wright, facing a chaos of doctrinal contradictions and
chronological divergences, falls back trustingly on the reflection
that "after all we are not saved by the Gospels, but by Christ." He
has no misgiving as to the evangelists being inspired. "Inspiration
quickens their spiritual perception, but does not altogether preserve
them from errors of fact": e.g. Mt. i, 9, 11; Mk. iii, 26; Lk. ii, 2;
John xii, 3; Acts v, 36; vii, 16. [137] Perhaps Mr. Wright would grant
some dozens more of errors of fact if pressed; but his faith would not
be modified unless he should be shaken on the resurrection. "History
as well as criticism leaves us no room to question this. On so sure
a foundation is our most holy faith erected." [138] For Mr. Wright
that is supremely certain which a myriad Christian scholars now find
incredible. And we can but take our leave of him with the question of
the Jew of Celsus, "Did Jesus come into the world for this purpose,
that we should not believe in him?"