INTEGRITY OF THE GOSPELS.
As stated in former chapters, this is to be presumed till the contrary is
shown. There is, however, strong confirmation from many sources.
_First._—The writings of the Apostolic Fathers present to our view the
Christ of the Gospels, in his advent and life, ministry and teaching,
death and resurrection. In particular, his resurrection from the dead is
cited by Clement (A.D. 97) as an earnest of that of his followers, and as
a proof that he came forth from God. The greatest of miracles, and the
central fact of Christianity, appears in the earliest writings (outside
of the New Testament), the date of which can be determined. Judge Waite,
in his “wonderful hundred[1] years of silence by Christian writers”
concerning the miracles of Christ, is oblivious of what he had before
stated, that aside from the Gospels, there are left of the first century
“only the Epistles of Paul, the one Epistle of Clement of Rome, some
slight notices by Jewish and heathen writers, and the few legends and
traditions preserved in the writings of the Fathers.” Such an argument
from silence, _where there are no writings extant_, is not befitting _a
judge_.
_Second._—The earliest quotations substantially agree with the Canonical
Gospels. Some of those by Justin Martyr have been given in chapters
five and six, and those by Clement may be found in the Note.[2] These
quotations by Apostolic and Christian Fathers, afford ample[3] means for
comparison, and no variations appear to indicate any changes to affect
the character or teachings of our Lord. Professor Fisher says[4] of
_Justin’s_ references, that they embrace “not more” than two sayings of
Jesus that have not substantial parallels in the four Evangelists. The
first is, “In what things I shall apprehend you, in these will I judge
you,” which is found also in Clement of Alexandria, and Hippolytus.
The second is, “There shall be schisms and heresies,” a prediction
referred also to Christ by Tertullian. These sayings may have come from
_tradition_. It seems not improbable that they were current expressions,
embodying what Jesus taught[5] respecting the standard by which men shall
be judged according to the light which they have received, and divisions
in the same household. (See cc. 6 to 8 _ante_).
_Third._—The facts in Christ’s history referred to by the Fathers,
with very rare exceptions (the most of which were stated and explained
in chapter seven), correspond with the Evangelists. The exceptional
facts are such as would naturally have been derived from tradition,
and they in no way change the life or character of our Lord as they
appear in the Gospels. The marvel is, that they should be so few and
unimportant, considering that some of the writers lived at a time when[6]
“traditionary reminiscences must have possessed all their freshness.”
_Fourth._—Marcion’s Gospel (written as early as the year 145), except in
intentional omissions and mutilations, for which he was sharply called to
an account by Tertullian, presents a substantial agreement with Luke’s
Gospel. Judge Waite claims that it was earlier than Luke’s; but the
almost unanimous verdict of scholars is against him. Indeed, Professor
Fisher, in the March number of the _Princeton Review_ for 1881 (p. 217),
says: “That Marcion’s Gospel was an abridgment of our Luke is _now
conceded on all hands_, even by the author of ‘Supernatural Religion.’
Dr. Sanday has not only demonstrated this by a linguistic argument, but
has proved by a comparison of texts that the Gospel of the Canon must
have been for some time in use, and have attained to a considerable
circulation, before Marcion applied to it his pruning-knife. There is
no reason to doubt that he took for his purpose a Gospel of established
authority in the Church.” Professor Curtiss also says that “the weight
of scholarship is overwhelmingly in favor of the priority of Luke.”
And he quotes from the last edition of the “Supernatural Religion,”
the admission referred to by Professor Fisher. Its anonymous author
says that Dr. Sanday’s very able examination “has convinced us that our
earlier hypothesis is untenable; that the portions of our third Synoptic,
excluded from Marcion’s Gospel, were really written by the same pen which
composed the mass of the work; and, consequently, that our third Synoptic
existed in his time, and was substantially in the hands of Marcion.”
Dr. Sanday[7] shows, as he expresses it, that Marcion’s Gospel stands
to Luke’s “entirely in the relation of _defect_. We may say entirely,
for the additions are so insignificant—some thirty words in all, and
those for the most part supported by other authority—that for practical
purposes they are not to be reckoned. With the exception of these thirty
words inserted, and also some slight alterations of phrase, Marcion’s
Gospel presents simply an _abridgment_ of our St. Luke.” That Marcion’s
Gospel was not one of Justin’s “Memoirs,” is plain from his calling
him a wolf,[7] “sent forth by the devil.” Although Marcion’s Gospel
is not in existence, except as reproduced from the works of Tertullian
and Epiphanius, its agreement with Luke (with the exceptions which they
pointed out) becomes important evidence that Luke is to-day as it was in
the year one hundred and forty-five.
_Fifth._—Our Gospels and Acts before the close of the second century of
our era were translated into other languages, and the Syriac, Coptic
and Latin versions which have come down to us with some imperfections
and slight variations, are in substantial agreement with our present
version in all that is material. A translation of a given date presumably
represents a text of greater age than itself. Hence the manuscripts from
which these translations were made were older than the year two hundred,
and probably older than the year one hundred and fifty.
_Sixth._—The early and continued multiplication of copies affords
strong evidence. Those who copied from originals deemed authentic would
certainly endeavor to make exact copies. As these Memoirs were read in
all the churches, and, doubtless, in Christian families and Christian
schools, they soon became very numerous. There was fraternal intercourse
between the churches. Any substantial difference in the copies would
be noticed. Any such differences would be transmitted in copies made
from these copies, and so on, to the manuscripts which have reached
us. The number of copies before the tenth persecution (commenced A.D.
300, and lasting ten years) must have reached many thousands.[8] So
complete was then supposed to be the extinction of Christianity, that
coins were struck and inscriptions set up, recording the fact, that the
“Christian superstition” was now utterly exterminated, and the worship
of the gods restored by Diocletian, who assumed the name of Jupiter, and
Maximian, who took that of Hercules. This persecution, in addition to
the destruction of life, was specially[9] directed to the destruction of
copies of the Scriptures.
_Seventh._—Constantine, their successor, in the year 331, caused fifty
copies of the Scriptures to be made for Byzantium, under the care of
Eusebius of Cæsarea, the church historian. The manuscript discovered by
the celebrated Tischendorf, in 1859, at the convent of St. Catherine,
on Mount Sinai, is believed to be one of those copies, and to be the
oldest[10] Greek manuscript in existence. _If_ one of the fifty, it is
more than fifteen hundred years old. It is called the Sinaitic Codex.
The second rank belongs to the Vatican Codex. Its date is probably not
later than the fourth century. The next in the order of time is the
Alexandrian Codex. Its date is the latter part of the fourth century or
the beginning of the fifth century. The Vatican has been in the Vatican
Library since 1445. The Alexandrian was sent, in 1628, by the Patriarch
of Constantinople, to Charles I., and is now in the British Museum. The
Sinaitic was presented by its discoverer to the Emperor of Russia. There
is no doubt whatever that these three manuscripts were written back of
the “dark ages,” and at a time when the true text could be known with
great exactness, and was comparatively free from errors. With these,
there are fifty manuscripts that are a thousand years old. There are, it
is estimated, more than seventeen hundred manuscripts of the whole, or
portions, of the New Testament, ranging in date from the fourth to the
sixteenth century. Providence, says Tischendorf, has ordained for the
New Testament more sources of the greatest antiquity than are possessed
by all the old Greek literature put together. The number of manuscripts
of the Greek Classics, says[11] Professor Stowe, is very small compared
with the Greek Testament manuscripts, and the oldest of them scarcely
reaches nine hundred years. There are such differences between the
Sinaitic, Vatican, and Alexandrian manuscripts as indicate that no two
of them were taken from the same original. A little reflection will
convince any one, that while no single copy may be literally exact from
its original, the multiplication of copies adds greatly to substantial
accuracy as the result of the whole. For although there is a tendency
to a repetition of _some_ errors, by different copyists from the same
original, as where successive sentences end with the same word, yet, in
general, different copyists would make different errors, one in one part
of the instrument, and the other in another, and, where the copies are
numerous, they mutually correct each other. So it happens that in the
different manuscripts of the New Testament, with different readings of
many thousands (counting all trifles, like the omission to dot an _i_
or cross a _t_ in English chirography, as different readings), there is
substantial agreement. It is a fact to be emphasized, says[12] Professor
Fisher, “that the Scriptures are almost utterly free from wilful
corruption;” and he endorses the opinion of the great critic, Bentley,
that the real text “is competently exact in the worst manuscripts now
extant; nor is one article of faith or moral precept either perverted
or lost in them.” And examining the subject in hand from a lawyer’s
standpoint, the _worst_ manuscript, or translation, or version, is
sufficient for the purposes of the argument. And to cite once more the
great authority of Professor Greenleaf,[13] to the genuineness of the
Four Gospels: “The entire text of the Corpus Juris Civilis is received
as authority in all the courts of Continental Europe, upon much weaker
evidence of its genuineness; for the integrity of the Sacred Text has
been preserved by the jealousy of opposing sects beyond any moral
possibility of corruption; while that of the Roman Civil Law has been
preserved only by tacit consent, without the interest of any opposing
school to watch over and preserve it from alteration.”
And now (1882) the New Revision, both of the text and of the translation,
by scholars who have no superior, and the careful product of ten years’
labor, has been long enough before the world to know the results. Not
a single fact or witness to the Resurrection is lost, and not a single
doctrine is changed, while many passages are better understood.
[1] He puts the date of the Epistle of Barnabas, A. D. 130, but it is
generally placed earlier.
[2] “Be merciful that ye may obtain mercy; forgive that it may be
forgiven to you; as ye do, so shall it be done unto you; as ye judge so
shall ye be judged; as ye are kind so shall kindness be shown to you;
with what measure ye mete with the same it shall be measured to you” (c.
13). Matt. vi. 12-15; Matt. vii. 2; Luke vi. 36-38. “This people honoreth
me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (c. 15). Matt. xv. 8;
Mark vii. 6. “Woe to that man! It were better for him that he had never
been born, than that he should cast a stumbling block before one of my
elect, yea it were better for him that a millstone should be hung about
his neck, and he should be sunk in the depths of the sea, than that he
should cast a stumbling-block before any of my little ones” (c. 46).
Matt. xviii. 6; Matt. xxvi. 24; Mark ix, 42; Luke xvii. 2.
[3] The entire Gospel could be reproduced from those writings, including
Irenæus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.
[4] The _Princeton Review_ for March, 1881, p. 201.
[5] Matt. x. 34-36; Luke x. 13-15; Luke xii. 47-53.
[6] Bampton Lectures for 1877, p. 221, by the Rev. C. A. Row, M. A.,
Pembroke College, Oxford, Prebendary of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
[7] Ap. I., cc. 22, 58. See also Sanday’s Gospels of the Second Century,
p. 214, and “Canonicity,” by A. H. Charteris, D. D., 1880, pp. 76, 393.
[8] Norton estimates the number by the close of the second century at
sixty thousand, which may be a large estimate.
[9] Vol. VII. of McClintock and Strong, p. 966; Neander’s Church History,
Vol. I., p. 148. Neander says that Feb. 22, A.D. 303, on one of the
great pagan festivals, at the first dawn of day, the magnificent church
of Nicomedia (then the imperial residence) was broken open, the copies
of the Bible found in it were burned, and the whole church abandoned to
plunder and then to destruction. The next day was published an edict
that all assembling of Christians for the purpose of religious worship
was forbidden; churches were to be demolished to their foundations; all
manuscripts of the Bible should be burned; those who held places of honor
and rank must renounce their faith, or be degraded; those belonging
to the lower walks of private life to be divested of their rights as
citizens and freemen; slaves were to be incapable of receiving their
freedom so long as they remained Christians; and in judicial proceedings
the torture might be used against all Christians of whatsoever rank. “It
is quite evident,” says Neander, “that the plan now was to extirpate
Christianity from the root.” But it was the darkness which preceded the
dawn, for this was the _last_ of the Pagan persecutions.
[10] A facsimile steel engraving forming the frontispiece to
Tischendorf’s New Testament, gives specimens of the Greek text in which
these three manuscripts are severally written. The difference in the
style of the text is one great means by which experts determine the age
of the manuscript. The oldest manuscripts are written in large, square,
upright capitals; and they are called Uncials. The later manuscripts are
written in flowing scripts; they are called Cursives. The proportion
of Uncial to Cursive manuscripts is about one to ten. The Cursive was
introduced in the tenth century.
[11] Origin and History of the Books of the New Testament, by Prof. C. E.
Stowe, A.D. 1867, pp. 31, 62.
[12] In Scribner’s Monthly for February, 1881, p. 617.
[13] An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the rules
of Evidence administered in Courts of Justice, etc. By Simon Greenleaf,
LL.D., Royal Professor of Law in Harvard University (A.D. 1846), p. 28.