I. Genuineness of the Christian Documents.
THE GENUINENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS, or proof that the books of the
Old and New Testaments were written at the age to which they are assigned
and by the men or class of men to whom they are ascribed.
Our present discussion comprises the first part, and only the
first part, of the doctrine of the Canon (κανών, a measuring-reed;
hence, a rule, a standard). It is important to observe that the
determination of the Canon, or list of the books of sacred
Scripture, is not the work of the church as an organized body. We
do not receive these books upon the authority of Fathers or
Councils. We receive them, only as the Fathers and Councils
received them, because we have evidence that they are the writings
of the men, or class of men, whose names they bear, and that they
are also credible and inspired. If the previous epistle alluded to
in _1 Cor. 5:9_ should be discovered and be universally judged
authentic, it could be placed with Paul’s other letters and could
form part of the Canon, even though it has been lost for 1800
years. Bruce, Apologetics, 321—“Abstractly the Canon is an open
question. It can never be anything else on the principles of
Protestantism which forbid us to accept the decisions of church
councils, whether ancient or modern, as final. But practically the
question of the Canon is closed.” The Westminster Confession says
that the authority of the word of God “does not rest upon historic
evidence; it does not rest upon the authority of Councils; it does
not rest upon the consent of the past or the excellence of the
matter; but it rests upon the Spirit of God bearing witness to our
hearts concerning its divine authority.” Clarke, Christian
Theology, 24—“The value of the Scriptures to us does not depend
upon our knowing who wrote them. In the O. T. half its pages are
of uncertain authorship. New dates mean new authorship. Criticism
is a duty, for dates of authorship give means of interpretation.
The Scriptures have power because God is in them, and because they
describe the entrance of God into the life of man.”
Saintine, Picciola, 782—“Has not a feeble reed provided man with
his first arrow, his first pen, his first instrument of music?”
Hugh Macmillan: “The idea of stringed instruments was first
derived from the twang of the well strung bow, as the archer shot
his arrows; the lyre and the harp which discourse the sweetest
music of peace were invented by those who first heard this
inspiring sound in the excitement of battle. And so there is no
music so delightful amid the jarring discord of the world, turning
everything to music and harmonizing earth and heaven, as when the
heart rises out of the gloom of anger and revenge, and converts
its bow into a harp, and sings to it the Lord’s song of infinite
forgiveness.” George Adam Smith, Mod. Criticism and Preaching of
O. T., 5—“The church has never renounced her liberty to revise the
Canon. The liberty at the beginning cannot be more than the
liberty thereafter. The Holy Spirit has not forsaken the leaders
of the church. Apostolic writers nowhere define the limits of the
Canon, any more than Jesus did. Indeed, they employed
extra-canonical writings. Christ and the apostles nowhere bound
the church to believe all the teachings of the O. T. Christ
discriminates, and forbids the literal interpretation of its
contents. Many of the apostolic interpretations challenge our
sense of truth. Much of their exegesis was temporary and false.
Their judgment was that much in the O. T. was rudimentary. This
opens the question of development in revelation, and justifies the
attempt to fix the historic order. The N. T. criticism of the O.
T. gives the liberty of criticism, and the need, and the
obligation of it. O. T. criticism is not, like Baur’s of the N.
T., the result of _a priori_ Hegelian reasoning. From the time of
Samuel we have real history. The prophets do not appeal to
miracles. There is more gospel in the book of Jonah, when it is
treated as a parable. The O. T. is a gradual ethical revelation of
God. Few realize that the church of Christ has a higher warrant
for her Canon of the O. T. than she has for her Canon of the N. T.
The O. T. was the result of criticism in the widest sense of that
word. But what the church thus once achieved, the church may at
any time revise.”
We reserve to a point somewhat later the proof of the credibility
and the inspiration of the Scriptures. We now show their
genuineness, as we would show the genuineness of other religious
books, like the Koran, or of secular documents, like Cicero’s
Orations against Catiline. Genuineness, in the sense in which we
use the term, does not necessarily imply authenticity (_i. e._,
truthfulness and authority); see Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist.
Theol., art.: Authenticity. Documents may be genuine which are
written in whole or in part by persons other than they whose names
they bear, provided these persons belong to the same class. The
Epistle to the Hebrews, though not written by Paul, is genuine,
because it proceeds from one of the apostolic class. The addition
of Deut. 34, after Moses’ death, does not invalidate the
genuineness of the Pentateuch; nor would the theory of a later
Isaiah, even if it were established, disprove the genuineness of
that prophecy; provided, in both cases, that the additions were
made by men of the prophetic class. On the general subject of the
genuineness of the Scripture documents, see Alexander, McIlvaine,
Chalmers, Dodge, and Peabody, on the Evidences of Christianity;
also Archibald, The Bible Verified.
1. Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.
We do not need to adduce proof of the existence of the books of the New
Testament as far back as the third century, for we possess manuscripts of
them which are at least fourteen hundred years old, and, since the third
century, references to them have been inwoven into all history and
literature. We begin our proof, therefore, by showing that these documents
not only existed, but were generally accepted as genuine, before the close
of the second century.
Origen was born as early as 186 A. D.; yet Tregelles tells us that
Origen’s works contain citations embracing two-thirds of the New
Testament. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 12—“The early years of
Christianity were in some respects like the early years of our
lives.... Those early years are the most important in our
education. We learn then, we hardly know how, through effort and
struggle and innocent mistakes, to use our eyes and ears, to
measure distance and direction, by a process which ascends by
unconscious steps to the certainty which we feel in our
maturity.... It was in some such unconscious way that the
Christian thought of the early centuries gradually acquired the
form which we find when it emerges as it were into the developed
manhood of the fourth century.”
A. All the books of the New Testament, with the single exception of 2
Peter, were not only received as genuine, but were used in more or less
collected form, in the latter half of the second century. These
collections of writings, so slowly transcribed and distributed, imply the
long continued previous existence of the separate books, and forbid us to
fix their origin later than the first half of the second century.
(_a_) Tertullian (160-230) appeals to the “New Testament” as made up of
the “Gospels” and “Apostles.” He vouches for the genuineness of the four
gospels, the Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, thirteen epistles of Paul, and the
Apocalypse; in short, to twenty-one of the twenty-seven books of our
Canon.
Sanday, Bampton Lectures for 1893, is confident that the first
three gospels took their present shape before the destruction of
Jerusalem. Yet he thinks the first and third gospels of composite
origin, and probably the second. Not later than 125 A. D. the four
gospels of our Canon had gained a recognized and exceptional
authority. Andover Professors, Divinity of Jesus Christ, 40—“The
oldest of our gospels was written about the year 70. The earlier
one, now lost, a great part of which is preserved in Luke and
Matthew, was probably written a few years earlier.”
(_b_) The Muratorian Canon in the West and the Peshito Version in the East
(having a common date of about 160) in their catalogues of the New
Testament writings mutually complement each other’s slight deficiencies,
and together witness to the fact that at that time every book of our
present New Testament, with the exception of 2 Peter, was received as
genuine.
Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 50—“The fragment on the
Canon, discovered by Muratori in 1738, was probably written about
170 A. D., in Greek. It begins with the last words of a sentence
which must have referred to the Gospel of Mark, and proceeds to
speak of the Third Gospel as written by Luke the physician, who
did not see the Lord, and then of the Fourth Gospel as written by
John, a disciple of the Lord, at the request of his fellow
disciples and his elders.” Bacon, N. T. Introduction, 50, gives
the Muratorian Canon in full; 30—“Theophilus of Antioch (181-190)
is the first to cite a gospel by name, quoting _John 1:1_ as from
‘John, one of those who were vessels of the Spirit.’ ” On the
Muratorian Canon, see Tregelles, Muratorian Canon. On the Peshito
Version, see Schaff, Introd. to Rev. Gk.-Eng. N. T., xxxvii;
Smith’s Bible Dict., pp. 3388, 3389.
(_c_) The Canon of Marcion (140), though rejecting all the gospels but
that of Luke, and all the epistles but ten of Paul’s, shows, nevertheless,
that at that early day “apostolic writings were regarded as a complete
original rule of doctrine.” Even Marcion, moreover, does not deny the
genuineness of those writings which for doctrinal reasons he rejects.
Marcion, the Gnostic, was the enemy of all Judaism, and regarded
the God of the O. T. as a restricted divinity, entirely different
from the God of the N. T. Marcion was “ipso Paulo paulinior”—“plus
loyal que le roi.” He held that Christianity was something
entirely new, and that it stood in opposition to all that went
before it. His Canon consisted of two parts: the “Gospel” (Luke,
with its text curtailed by omission of the Hebraistic elements)
and the Apostolicon (the epistles of Paul). The epistle to
Diognetus by an unknown author, and the epistle of Barnabas,
shared the view of Marcion. The name of the Deity was changed from
Jehovah to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If Marcion’s view had
prevailed, the Old Testament would have been lost to the Christian
Church. God’s revelation would have been deprived of its proof
from prophecy. Development from the past, and divine conduct of
Jewish history, would have been denied. But without the Old
Testament, as H. W. Beecher maintained, the New Testament would
lack background; our chief source of knowledge with regard to
God’s natural attributes of power, wisdom, and truth would be
removed: the love and mercy revealed in the New Testament would
seem characteristics of a weak being, who could not enforce law or
inspire respect. A tree has as much breadth below ground as there
is above; so the O. T. roots of God’s revelation are as extensive
and necessary as are its N. T. trunk and branches and leaves. See
Allen, Religious Progress, 81; Westcott, Hist. N. T. Canon, and
art.: Canon, in Smith’s Bible Dictionary. Also Reuss, History of
Canon; Mitchell, Critical Handbook, part I.
B. The Christian and Apostolic Fathers who lived in the first half of the
second century not only quote from these books and allude to them, but
testify that they were written by the apostles themselves. We are
therefore compelled to refer their origin still further back, namely, to
the first century, when the apostles lived.
(_a_) Irenæus (120-200) mentions and quotes the four gospels by name, and
among them the gospel according to John: “Afterwards John, the disciple of
the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, he likewise published a gospel,
while he dwelt in Ephesus in Asia.” And Irenæus was the disciple and
friend of Polycarp (80-166), who was himself a personal acquaintance of
the Apostle John. The testimony of Irenæus is virtually the evidence of
Polycarp, the contemporary and friend of the Apostle, that each of the
gospels was written by the person whose name it bears.
To this testimony it is objected that Irenæus says there are four
gospels because there are four quarters of the world and four
living creatures in the cherubim. But we reply that Irenæus is
here stating, not his own reason for accepting four and only four
gospels, but what he conceives to be God’s reason for ordaining
that there should be four. We are not warranted in supposing that
he accepted the four gospels on any other ground than that of
testimony that they were the productions of apostolic men.
Chrysostom, in a similar manner, compares the four gospels to a
chariot and four: When the King of Glory rides forth in it, he
shall receive the triumphal acclamations of all peoples. So
Jerome: God rides upon the cherubim, and since there are four
cherubim, there must be four gospels. All this however is an early
attempt at the philosophy of religion, and not an attempt to
demonstrate historical fact. L. L. Paine, Evolution of
Trinitarianism, 319-367, presents the radical view of the
authorship of the fourth gospel. He holds that John the apostle
died A. D. 70, or soon after, and that Irenæus confounded the two
Johns whom Papias so clearly distinguished—John the Apostle and
John the Elder. With Harnack, Paine supposes the gospel to have
been written by John the Elder, a contemporary of Papias. But we
reply that the testimony of Irenæus implies a long continued
previous tradition. R. W. Dale, Living Christ and Four Gospels,
145—“Religious veneration such as that with which Irenæus regarded
these books is of slow growth. They must have held a great place
in the Church as far back as the memory of living men extended.”
See Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 2:695.
(_b_) Justin Martyr (died 148) speaks of “memoirs (ἀπομνημονεύματα) of
Jesus Christ,” and his quotations, though sometimes made from memory, are
evidently cited from our gospels.
To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Justin Martyr uses the
term “memoirs” instead of “gospels.” We reply that he elsewhere
uses the term “gospels” and identifies the “memoirs” with them:
Apol., 1:66—“The apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which
are called gospels,” _i. e._, not memoirs, but gospels, was the
proper title of his written records. In writing his Apology to the
heathen Emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Antoninus, he chooses
the term “memoirs”, or “memorabilia”, which Xenophon had used as
the title of his account of Socrates, simply in order that he may
avoid ecclesiastical expressions unfamiliar to his readers and may
commend his writing to lovers of classical literature. Notice that
Matthew must be added to John, to justify Justin’s repeated
statement that there were “memoirs” of our Lord “written by
apostles,” and that Mark and Luke must be added to justify his
further statement that these memoirs were compiled by “his
apostles and those who followed them.” Analogous to Justin’s use
of the word “memoirs” is his use of the term “Sunday”, instead of
Sabbath: Apol. 1:67—“On the day called Sunday, all who live in
cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the
memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read.”
Here is the use of our gospels in public worship, as of equal
authority with the O. T. Scriptures; in fact, Justin constantly
quotes the words and acts of Jesus’ life from a written source,
using the word γέγραπται. See Morison, Com. on Mat., ix; Hemphill,
Literature of Second Century, 234.
To Justin’s testimony it is objected: (2) That in quoting the
words spoken from heaven at the Savior’s baptism, he makes them to
be: “My son, this day have I begotten thee,” so quoting _Psalm
2:7_, and showing that he was ignorant of our present gospel,
_Mat. 3:17_. We reply that this was probably a slip of the memory,
quite natural in a day when the gospels existed only in the
cumbrous form of manuscript rolls. Justin also refers to the
Pentateuch for two facts which it does not contain; but we should
not argue from this that he did not possess our present
Pentateuch. The plays of Terence are quoted by Cicero and Horace,
and we require neither more nor earlier witnesses to their
genuineness,—yet Cicero and Horace wrote a hundred years after
Terence. It is unfair to refuse similar evidence to the gospels.
Justin had a way of combining into one the sayings of the
different evangelists—a hint which Tatian, his pupil, probably
followed out in composing his Diatessaron. On Justin Martyr’s
testimony, see Ezra Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 49,
note. B. W. Bacon, Introd. to N. T., speaks of Justin as “writing
_circa_ 155 A. D.”
(_c_) Papias (80-164), whom Irenæus calls a “hearer of John,” testifies
that Matthew “wrote in the Hebrew dialect the sacred oracles (τὰ λόγια),”
and that “Mark, the interpreter of Peter, wrote after Peter, (ὕστερον
Πέτρῳ) [or under Peter’s direction], an unsystematic account (οὐ τάξει)”
of the same events and discourses.
To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Papias could not have
had our gospel of Matthew, for the reason that this is Greek. We
reply, either with Bleek, that Papias erroneously supposed a
Hebrew translation of Matthew, which he possessed, to be the
original; or with Weiss, that the original Matthew was in Hebrew,
while our present Matthew is an enlarged version of the same.
Palestine, like modern Wales, was bilingual; Matthew, like James,
might write both Hebrew and Greek. While B. W. Bacon gives to the
writing of Papias a date so late as 145-160 A. D., Lightfoot gives
that of 130 A. D. At this latter date Papias could easily remember
stories told him so far back as 80 A. D., by men who were youths
at the time when our Lord lived, died, rose and ascended. The work
of Papias had for its title Λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξήγησις—“Exposition
of Oracles relating to the Lord” = Commentaries on the Gospels.
Two of these gospels were Matthew and Mark. The view of Weiss
mentioned above has been criticized upon the ground that the
quotations from the O. T. in Jesus’ discourses in Matthew are all
taken from the Septuagint and not from the Hebrew. Westcott
answers this criticism by suggesting that, in translating his
Hebrew gospel into Greek, Matthew substituted for his own oral
version of Christ’s discourses the version of these already
existing in the oral common gospel. There was a common oral basis
of true teaching, the “deposit”—τὴν παραθήκην—committed to Timothy
(_1 Tim. 6:20_; _2 Tim. 1:12, 14_), the same story told many times
and getting to be told in the same way. The narratives of Matthew,
Mark and Luke are independent versions of this apostolic
testimony. First came belief; secondly, oral teaching; thirdly,
written gospels. That the original gospel was in Aramaic seems
probable from the fact that the Oriental name for “tares,”
_zawān_, (_Mat. 13:25_) has been transliterated into Greek,
ζιζάνια. Morison, Com. on Mat., thinks that Matthew originally
wrote in Hebrew a collection of Sayings of Jesus Christ, which the
Nazarenes and Ebionites added to, partly from tradition, and
partly from translating his full gospel, till the result was the
so-called Gospel of the Hebrews; but that Matthew wrote his own
gospel in Greek after he had written the Sayings in Hebrew.
Professor W. A. Stevens thinks that Papias probably alluded to the
original autograph which Matthew wrote in Aramaic, but which he
afterwards enlarged and translated into Greek. See Hemphill,
Literature of the Second Century, 267.
To the testimony of Papias it is also objected: (2) That Mark is
the most systematic of all evangelists, presenting events as a
true annalist, in chronological order. We reply that while, so far
as chronological order is concerned, Mark is systematic, so far as
logical order is concerned he is the most unsystematic of the
evangelists, showing little of the power of historical grouping
which is so discernible in Matthew. Matthew aimed to portray a
life, rather than to record a chronology. He groups Jesus’
teachings in chapters 5, 6, and 7; his miracles in chapters 8 and
9; his directions to the apostles in chapter 10; chapters 11 and
12 describe the growing opposition; chapter 13 meets this
opposition with his parables; the remainder of the gospel
describes our Lord’s preparation for his death, his progress to
Jerusalem, the consummation of his work in the Cross and in the
resurrection. Here is true system, a philosophical arrangement of
material, compared with which the method of Mark is eminently
unsystematic. Mark is a Froissart, while Matthew has the spirit of
J. R. Green. See Bleek, Introd. to N. T., 1:108, 126; Weiss, Life
of Jesus, 1:27-39.
(_d_) The Apostolic Fathers,—Clement of Rome (died 101), Ignatius of
Antioch (martyred 115), and Polycarp (80-166),—companions and friends of
the apostles, have left us in their writings over one hundred quotations
from or allusions to the New Testament writings, and among these every
book, except four minor epistles (2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John) is
represented.
Although these are single testimonies, we must remember that they
are the testimonies of the chief men of the churches of their day,
and that they express the opinion of the churches themselves.
“Like banners of a hidden army, or peaks of a distant mountain
range, they represent and are sustained by compact, continuous
bodies below.” In an article by P. W. Calkins, McClintock and
Strong’s Encyclopædia, 1:315-317, quotations from the Apostolic
Fathers in great numbers are put side by side with the New
Testament passages from which they quote or to which they allude.
An examination of these quotations and allusions convinces us that
these Fathers were in possession of all the principal books of our
New Testament. See Ante-Nicene Library of T. and T. Clark; Thayer,
in Boston Lectures for 1871:324; Nash, Ethics and Revelation,
11—“Ignatius says to Polycarp: ‘The times call for thee, as the
winds call for the pilot.’ So do the times call for reverent,
fearless scholarship in the church.” Such scholarship, we are
persuaded, has already demonstrated the genuineness of the N. T.
documents.
(_e_) In the synoptic gospels, the omission of all mention of the
fulfilment of Christ’s prophecies with regard to the destruction of
Jerusalem is evidence that these gospels were written before the
occurrence of that event. In the Acts of the Apostles, universally
attributed to Luke, we have an allusion to “the former treatise”, or the
gospel by the same author, which must, therefore, have been written before
the end of Paul’s first imprisonment at Rome, and probably with the help
and sanction of that apostle.
_Acts 1:1—_“The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning
all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.” If the Acts was
written A. D. 63, two years after Paul’s arrival at Rome, then
“the former treatise,” the gospel according to Luke, can hardly be
dated later than 60; and since the destruction of Jerusalem took
place in 70, Matthew and Mark must have published their gospels at
least as early as the year 68, when multitudes of men were still
living who had been eye-witnesses of the events of Jesus’ life.
Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 180—“At any considerably
later date [than the capture of Jerusalem] the apparent
conjunction of the fall of the city and the temple with the
Parousia would have been avoided or explained.... Matthew, in its
present form, appeared after the beginning of the mortal struggle
of the Romans with the Jews, or between 65 and 70. Mark’s gospel
was still earlier. The language of the passages relative to the
Parousia, in Luke, is consistent with the supposition that he
wrote after the fall of Jerusalem, but not with the supposition
that it was long after.” See Norton, Genuineness of the Gospels;
Alford, Greek Testament, Prolegomena, 30, 31, 36, 45-47.
C. It is to be presumed that this acceptance of the New Testament
documents as genuine, on the part of the Fathers of the churches, was for
good and sufficient reasons, both internal and external, and this
presumption is corroborated by the following considerations:
(_a_) There is evidence that the early churches took every care to assure
themselves of the genuineness of these writings before they accepted them.
Evidences of care are the following:—Paul, in _2 Thess. 2:2_,
urged the churches to use care, “to the end that ye be not quickly
shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or
by word, or by epistle as from us”; _1 Cor. 5:9—_“I wrote unto you
in my epistle to have no company with fornicators”; _Col.
4:16—_“when this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it
be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye also
read the epistle from Laodicea.” Melito (169), Bishop of Sardis,
who wrote a treatise on the Revelation of John, went as far as
Palestine to ascertain on the spot the facts relating to the Canon
of the O. T., and as a result of his investigations excluded the
Apocrypha. Ryle, Canon of O. T., 203—“Melito, the Bishop of
Sardis, sent to a friend a list of the O. T. Scriptures which he
professed to have obtained from accurate inquiry, while traveling
in the East, in Syria. Its contents agree with those of the Hebrew
Canon, save in the omission of Esther.” Serapion, Bishop of
Antioch (191-213, Abbot), says: “We receive Peter and other
apostles as Christ, but as skilful men we reject those writings
which are falsely ascribed to them.” Geo. H. Ferris, Baptist
Congress, 1899:94—“Serapion, after permitting the reading of the
Gospel of Peter in public services, finally decided against it,
not because he thought there could be no fifth gospel, but because
he thought it was not written by Peter.” Tertullian (160-230)
gives an example of the deposition of a presbyter in Asia Minor
for publishing a pretended work of Paul; see Tertullian, De
Baptismo, referred to by Godet on John, Introduction; Lardner,
Works, 2:304, 305; McIlvaine, Evidences, 92.
(_b_) The style of the New Testament writings, and their complete
correspondence with all we know of the lands and times in which they
profess to have been written, affords convincing proof that they belong to
the apostolic age.
Notice the mingling of Latin and Greek, as in σπεκουλάτωρ (_Mark
6:27_) and κεντυρίων (_Mark 15:39_); of Greek and Aramæan, as in
πρασιαὶ πρασιαί (_Mark 6:40_) and βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως (_Mat.
24:15_); this could hardly have occurred after the first century.
Compare the anachronisms of style and description in Thackeray’s
“Henry Esmond,” which, in spite of the author’s special studies
and his determination to exclude all words and phrases that had
originated in his own century, was marred by historical errors
that Macaulay in his most remiss moments would hardly have made.
James Russell Lowell told Thackeray that “different to” was not a
century old. “Hang it, no!” replied Thackeray. In view of this
failure, on the part of an author of great literary skill, to
construct a story purporting to be written a century before his
time and that could stand the test of historical criticism, we may
well regard the success of our gospels in standing such tests as a
practical demonstration that they were written in, and not after,
the apostolic age. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 27-37;
Blunt, Scriptural Coincidences, 244-354.
(_c_) The genuineness of the fourth gospel is confirmed by the fact that
Tatian (155-170), the Assyrian, a disciple of Justin, repeatedly quoted it
without naming the author, and composed a Harmony of our four gospels
which he named the Diatessaron; while Basilides (130) and Valentinus
(150), the Gnostics, both quote from it.
The sceptical work entitled “Supernatural Religion” said in 1874;
“No one seems to have seen Tatian’s Harmony, probably for the very
simple reason that there was no such work”; and “There is no
evidence whatever connecting Tatian’s Gospel with those of our
Canon.” In 1876, however, there was published in a Latin form in
Venice the Commentary of Ephraem Syrus on Tatian, and the
commencement of it was: “In the beginning was the Word”_ (John
1:1)_. In 1888, the Diatessaron itself was published in Rome in
the form of an Arabic translation made in the eleventh century
from the Syriac. J. Rendel Harris, in Contemp. Rev., 1893:800
_sq._, says that the recovery of Tatian’s Diatessaron has
indefinitely postponed the literary funeral of St. John. Advanced
critics, he intimates, are so called, because they run ahead of
the facts they discuss. The gospels must have been well
established in the Christian church when Tatian undertook to
combine them. Mrs. A. S. Lewis, in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“The
gospels were translated into Syriac before A. D. 160. It follows
that the Greek document from which they were translated was older
still, and since the one includes the gospel of St. John, so did
the other.” Hemphill, Literature of the Second Century, 183-231,
gives the birth of Tatian about 120, and the date of his
Diatessaron as 172 A. D.
The difference in style between the Revelation and the gospel of
John is due to the fact that the Revelation was written during
John’s exile in Patmos, under Nero, in 67 or 68, soon after John
had left Palestine and had taken up his residence at Ephesus. He
had hitherto spoken Aramæan, and Greek was comparatively
unfamiliar to him. The gospel was written thirty years after,
probably about 97, when Greek had become to him like a mother
tongue. See Lightfoot on Galatians, 343, 347; _per contra_, see
Milligan, Revelation of St. John. Phrases and ideas which indicate
a common authorship of the Revelation and the gospel are the
following: “the Lamb of God,” “the Word of God,” “the True” as an
epithet applied to Christ, “the Jews” as enemies of God, “manna,”
“him whom they pierced”; see Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ, 1:4, 5.
In the fourth gospel we have ἀμνός, in Apoc. ἀρνίον, perhaps
better to distinguish “the Lamb” from the diminutive τὸ θηρίον,
“the beast.” Common to both Gospel and Rev. are ποιεῖν, “to do”
[the truth]; περιπατεῖν, of moral conduct; ἀληθινός, “genuine”;
διψᾷν, πεινᾷν, of the higher wants of the soul; σκηνοῦν ἐν,
ποιμαίνειν, ὁδηγεῖν; also “overcome,” “testimony,” “Bridegroom,”
“Shepherd,” “Water of life.” In the Revelation there are
grammatical solecisms: nominative for genitive, 1:4—ἀπὸ ὁ ὤν;
nominative for accusative, 7:9—εἶδον ... ὄχλος πολύς; accusative
for nominative, 20:2—τὸν δράκοντα ὁ ὄφις. Similarly we have in
_Rom. 12:5_—τὸ δὲ καθ᾽ εἶς instead of τὸ δὲ καθ᾽ ἕνα, where κατὰ
has lost its regimen—a frequent solecism in later Greek writers;
see Godet on John, 1:269, 270. Emerson reminded Jones Very that
the Holy Ghost surely writes good grammar. The Apocalypse seems to
show that Emerson was wrong.
The author of the fourth gospel speaks of John in the third
person, “and scorned to blot it with a name.” But so does Cæsar
speak of himself in his Commentaries. Harnack regards both the
fourth gospel and the Revelation as the work of John the Presbyter
or Elder, the former written not later than about 110 A. D.; the
latter from 93 to 96, but being a revision of one or more
underlying Jewish apocalypses. Vischer has expounded this view of
the Revelation; and Porter holds substantially the same, in his
article on the Book of Revelation in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary,
4:239-266. “It is the obvious advantage of the Vischer-Harnack
hypothesis that it places the original work under Nero and its
revised and Christianized edition under Domitian.” (Sanday,
Inspiration, 371, 372, nevertheless dismisses this hypothesis as
raising worse difficulties than it removes. He dates the
Apocalypse between the death of Nero and the destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus.) Martineau, Seat of Authority, 227, presents
the moral objections to the apostolic authorship, and regards the
Revelation, from chapter 4:1 to 22:5, as a purely Jewish document
of the date 66-70, supplemented and revised by a Christian, and
issued not earlier than 136: “How strange that we should ever have
thought it possible for a personal attendant upon the ministry of
Jesus to write or edit a book mixing up fierce Messianic
conflicts, in which, with the sword, the gory garment, the
blasting flame, the rod of iron, as his emblems, he leads the
war-march, and treads the winepress of the wrath of God until the
deluge of blood rises to the horses’ bits, with the speculative
Christology of the second century, without a memory of his life, a
feature of his look, a word from his voice, or a glance back at
the hillsides of Galilee, the courts of Jerusalem, the road to
Bethany, on which his image must be forever seen!”
The force of this statement, however, is greatly broken if we
consider that the apostle John, in his earlier days, was one of
the “Boanerges, which is, Sons of thunder”_ (Mark 3:17)_, but
became in his later years the apostle of love: _1 John
4:7—_“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God.” The
likeness of the fourth gospel to the epistle, which latter was
undoubtedly the work of John the apostle, indicates the same
authorship for the gospel. Thayer remarks that “the discovery of
the gospel according to Peter sweeps away half a century of
discussion. Brief as is the recovered fragment, it attests
indubitably all four of our canonical books.” Riddle, in Popular
Com., 1:25—“If a forger wrote the fourth gospel, then Beelzebub
has been casting out devils for these eighteen hundred years.” On
the genuineness of the fourth gospel, see Bleek, Introd. to N. T.,
1:250; Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 33,
also Beginnings of Christianity, 320-362, and Grounds of Theistic
and Christian Belief, 245-309; Sanday, Authorship of the Fourth
Gospel, Gospels in the Second Century, and Criticism of the Fourth
Gospel; Ezra Abbott, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80-87;
Row, Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 249-287; British
Quarterly, Oct. 1872:216; Godet, in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 25;
Westcott, in Bib. Com. on John’s Gospel, Introd., xxviii-xxxii;
Watkins, Bampton Lectures for 1890; W. L. Ferguson, in Bib. Sac.,
1896:1-27.
(_d_) The epistle to the Hebrews appears to have been accepted during the
first century after it was written (so Clement of Borne, Justin Martyr,
and the Peshito Version witness). Then for two centuries, especially in
the Roman and North African churches, and probably because its internal
characteristics were inconsistent with the tradition of a Pauline
authorship, its genuineness was doubted (so Tertullian, Cyprian, Irenæus,
Muratorian Canon). At the end of the fourth century, Jerome examined the
evidence and decided in its favor; Augustine did the same; the third
Council of Carthage formally recognized it (397); from that time the Latin
churches united with the East in receiving it, and thus the doubt was
finally and forever removed.
The Epistle to the Hebrews, the style of which is so unlike that
of the Apostle Paul, was possibly written by Apollos, who was an
Alexandrian Jew, “a learned man” and “mighty in the Scriptures”_
(Acts 18:24)_; but it may notwithstanding have been written at the
suggestion and under the direction of Paul, and so be essentially
Pauline. A. C. Kendrick, in American Commentary on Hebrews, points
out that while the style of Paul is prevailingly dialectic, and
only in rapt moments becomes rhetorical or poetic, the style of
the Epistle to the Hebrews is prevailingly rhetorical, is free
from anacolutha, and is always dominated by emotion. He holds that
these characteristics point to Apollos as its author. Contrast
also Paul’s method of quoting the O. T.: “it is written”_ (Rom.
11:8; 1 Cor. 1:31; Gal. 3:10)_ with that of the Hebrews: “he
saith”_ (8:5, 13)_, “he hath said”_ (4:4)_. Paul quotes the O. T.
fifty or sixty times, but never in this latter way. _Heb.
2:3—_“which having at the first been spoken by the Lord, was
confirmed unto us by them that heard”—shows that the writer did
not receive the gospel at first hand. Luther and Calvin rightly
saw in this a decisive proof that Paul was not the author, for he
always insisted on the primary and independent character of his
gospel. Harnack formerly thought the epistle written by Barnabas
to Christians at Rome, A. D. 81-96. More recently however he
attributes it to Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, or to their joint
authorship. The majesty of its diction, however, seems unfavorable
to this view. William T. C. Hanna: “The words of the author ...
are marshalled grandly, and move with the tread of an army, or
with the swell of a tidal wave”; see Franklin Johnson, Quotations
in N. T. from O. T., xii. Plumptre, Introd. to N. T., 37, and in
Expositor, Vol. I, regards the author of this epistle as the same
with that of the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, the latter being
composed before, the former after, the writer’s conversion to
Christianity. Perhaps our safest conclusion is that of Origen:
“God only knows who wrote it.” Harnack however remarks: “The time
in which our ancient Christian literature, the N. T. included, was
considered as a web of delusions and falsifications, is past. The
oldest literature of the church is, in its main points, and in
most of its details, true and trustworthy.” See articles on
Hebrews, in Smith’s and in Hastings’ Bible Dictionaries.
(_e_) As to 2 Peter, Jude, and 2 and 3 John, the epistles most frequently
held to be spurious, we may say that, although we have no conclusive
external evidence earlier than A. D. 160, and in the case of 2 Peter none
earlier than A. D. 230-250, we may fairly urge in favor of their
genuineness not only their internal characteristics of literary style and
moral value, but also the general acceptance of them all since the third
century as the actual productions of the men or class of men whose names
they bear.
Firmilianus (250), Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, is the first
clear witness to 2 Peter. Origen (230) names it, but, in naming
it, admits that its genuineness is questioned. The Council of
Laodicea (372) first received it into the Canon. With this very
gradual recognition and acceptance of 2 Peter, compare the loss of
the later works of Aristotle for a hundred and fifty years after
his death, and their recognition as genuine so soon as they were
recovered from the cellar of the family of Neleus in Asia; De
Wette’s first publication of certain letters of Luther after the
lapse of three hundred years, yet without occasioning doubt as to
their genuineness; or the concealment of Milton’s Treatise on
Christian Doctrine, among the lumber of the State Paper Office in
London, from 1677 to 1823; see Mair, Christian Evidences, 95. Sir
William Hamilton complained that there were treatises of Cudworth,
Berkeley and Collier, still lying unpublished and even unknown to
their editors, biographers and fellow metaphysicians, but yet of
the highest interest and importance; see Mansel, Letters, Lectures
and Reviews, 381; Archibald, The Bible Verified, 27. 2 Peter was
probably sent from the East shortly before Peter’s martyrdom;
distance and persecution may have prevented its rapid circulation
in other countries. Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 114—“A ledger
may have been lost, or its authenticity for a long time doubted,
but when once it is discovered and proved, it is as trustworthy as
any other part of the _res gestæ_.” See Plumptre, Epistles of
Peter, Introd., 73-81; Alford on 2 Peter, 4: Prolegomena, 157;
Westcott, on Canon, in Smith’s Bib. Dict., 1:370, 373; Blunt,
Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Canon.
It is urged by those who doubt the genuineness of 2 Peter that the
epistle speaks of “your apostles”_ (3:2)_, just as _Jude 17_
speaks of “the apostles,” as if the writer did not number himself
among them. But 2 Peter begins with “Simon Peter, a servant and
apostle of Jesus Christ,” and Jude, “brother of James”_ (verse 1)_
was a brother of our Lord, but not an apostle. Hovey, Introd. to
N. T., xxxi—“The earliest passage manifestly based upon 2 Peter
appears to be in the so-called Second Epistle of the Roman
Clement, 16:3, which however is now understood to be a Christian
homily from the middle of the second century.” Origen (born 186)
testifies that Peter left one epistle, “and perhaps a second, for
that is disputed.” He also says: “John wrote the Apocalypse, and
an epistle of very few lines; and, it may be, a second and a
third; since all do not admit them to be genuine.” He quotes also
from James and from Jude, adding that their canonicity was
doubted.
Harnack regards 1 Peter, 2 Peter, James, and Jude, as written
respectively about 160, 170, 130, and 130, but not by the men to
whom they are ascribed—the ascriptions to these authors being
later additions. Hort remarks: “If I were asked, I should say that
the balance of the argument was against 2 Peter, but the moment I
had done so I should begin to think I might be in the wrong.”
Sanday, Oracles of God, 73 note, considers the arguments in favor
of 2 Peter unconvincing, but also the arguments against. He cannot
get beyond a _non liquet_. He refers to Salmon, Introd. to N. T.,
529-559, ed. 4, as expressing his own view. But the later
conclusions of Sanday are more radical. In his Bampton Lectures on
Inspiration, 348, 399, he says: 2 Peter “is probably at least to
this extent a counterfeit, that it appears under a name which is
not that of its true author.”
Chase, in Hastings’ Bib. Dict., 3:806-817, says that “the first
piece of _certain_ evidence as to 2 Peter is the passage from
Origen quoted by Eusebius, though it hardly admits of doubt that
the Epistle was known to Clement of Alexandria.... We find no
trace of the epistle in the period when the tradition of apostolic
days was still living.... It was not the work of the apostle but
of the second century ... put forward without any sinister motive
... the personation of the apostle an obvious literary device
rather than a religious or controversial fraud. The adoption of
such a verdict can cause perplexity only when the Lord’s promise
of guidance to his Church is regarded as a charter of
infallibility.” Against this verdict we would urge the dignity and
spiritual value of 2 Peter—internal evidence which in our judgment
causes the balance to incline in favor of its apostolic
authorship.
(_f_) Upon no other hypothesis than that of their genuineness can the
general acceptance of these four minor epistles since the third century,
and of all the other books of the New Testament since the middle of the
second century, be satisfactorily accounted for. If they had been mere
collections of floating legends, they could not have secured wide
circulation as sacred books for which Christians must answer with their
blood. If they had been forgeries, the churches at large could neither
have been deceived as to their previous non-existence, nor have been
induced unanimously to pretend that they were ancient and genuine.
Inasmuch, however, as other accounts of their origin, inconsistent with
their genuineness, are now current, we proceed to examine more at length
the most important of these opposing views.
The genuineness of the New Testament as a whole would still be
demonstrable, even if doubt should still attach to one or two of
its books. It does not matter that 2nd Alcibiades was not written
by Plato, or Pericles by Shakespeare. The Council of Carthage in
397 gave a place in the Canon to the O. T. Apocrypha, but the
Reformers tore it out. Zwingli said of the Revelation: “It is not
a Biblical book,” and Luther spoke slightingly of the Epistle of
James. The judgment of Christendom at large is more trustworthy
than the private impressions of any single Christian scholar. To
hold the books of the N. T. to be written in the second century by
other than those whose names they bear is to hold, not simply to
forgery, but to a conspiracy of forgery. There must have been
several forgers at work, and, since their writings wonderfully
agree, there must have been collusion among them. Yet these able
men have been forgotten, while the names of far feebler writers of
the second century have been preserved.
G. F. Wright, Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences, 343—“In
civil law there are ‘statutes of limitations’ which provide that
the general acknowledgment of a purported fact for a certain
period shall be considered as conclusive evidence of it. If, for
example, a man has remained in undisturbed possession of land for
a certain number of years, it is presumed that he has a valid
claim to it, and no one is allowed to dispute his claim.” Mair,
Evidences, 99—“We probably have not a tenth part of the evidence
upon which the early churches accepted the N. T. books as the
genuine productions of their authors. We have only their verdict.”
Wynne, in Literature of the Second Century, 58—“Those who gave up
the Scriptures were looked on by their fellow Christians as
‘traditores,’ traitors, who had basely yielded up what they ought
to have treasured as dearer than life. But all their books were
not equally sacred. Some were essential, and some were
non-essential to the faith. Hence arose the distinction between
_canonical_ and _non-canonical_. The general consciousness of
Christians grew into a distinct registration.” Such registration
is entitled to the highest respect, and lays the burden of proof
upon the objector. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity,
Introduction; Hovey, General Introduction to American Commentary
on N. T.
D. Rationalistic Theories as to the origin of the gospels. These are
attempts to eliminate the miraculous element from the New Testament
records, and to reconstruct the sacred history upon principles of
naturalism.
Against them we urge the general objection that they are unscientific in
their principle and method. To set out in an examination of the New
Testament documents with the assumption that all history is a mere natural
development, and that miracles are therefore impossible, is to make
history a matter, not of testimony, but of _a priori_ speculation. It
indeed renders any history of Christ and his apostles impossible, since
the witnesses whose testimony with regard to miracles is discredited can
no longer be considered worthy of credence in their account of Christ’s
life or doctrine.
In Germany, half a century ago, “a man was famous according as he
had lifted up axes upon the thick trees”_ (Ps. 74:5, A. V.)_, just
as among the American Indians he was not counted a man who could
not show his scalps. The critics fortunately scalped each other;
see Tyler, Theology of Greek Poets, 79—on Homer. Nicoll, The
Church’s One Foundation, 15—“Like the mummers of old, sceptical
critics send one before them with a broom to sweep the stage clear
of everything for their drama. If we assume at the threshold of
the gospel study that everything of the nature of miracle is
impossible, then the specific questions are decided before the
criticism begins to operate in earnest.” Matthew Arnold: “Our
popular religion at present conceives the birth, ministry and
death of Christ as altogether steeped in prodigy, brimful of
miracle,—and _miracles do not happen_.” This presupposition
influences the investigations of Kuenen, and of A. E. Abbott, in
his article on the Gospels in the Encyc. Britannica. We give
special attention to four of the theories based upon this
assumption.
1st. The Myth-theory of Strauss (1808-1874).
According to this view, the gospels are crystallizations into story of
Messianic ideas which had for several generations filled the minds of
imaginative men in Palestine. The myth is a narrative in which such ideas
are unconsciously clothed, and from which the element of intentional and
deliberate deception is absent.
This early view of Strauss, which has become identified with his
name, was exchanged in late years for a more advanced view which
extended the meaning of the word “myths” so as to include all
narratives that spring out of a theological idea, and it admitted
the existence of “pious frauds” in the gospels. Baur, he says,
first convinced him that the author of the fourth gospel had “not
unfrequently composed mere fables, knowing them to be mere
fictions.” The animating spirit of both the old view and the new
is the same. Strauss says: “We know with certainty what Jesus was
_not_, and what he has _not_ done, namely, nothing superhuman and
supernatural.” “No gospel can claim that degree of historic
credibility that would be required in order to make us debase our
reason to the point of believing miracles.” He calls the
resurrection of Christ “ein weltgeschichtlicher Humbug.” “If the
gospels are really historical documents, we cannot exclude miracle
from the life-story of Jesus;” see Strauss, Life of Jesus, 17; New
Life of Jesus, 1: preface, xii. Vatke, Einleitung in A. T., 210,
211, distinguishes the myth from the _saga_ or legend: The
criterion of the pure myth is that the experience is impossible,
while the _saga_ is a tradition of remote antiquity; the myth has
in it the element only of belief, the _saga_ has in it an element
of history. Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 37—“A myth is false in
appearance only. The divine Spirit can avail himself of the
fictions of poetry as well as of logical reasonings. When the
heart was pure, the veils of fable always allowed the face of
truth to shine through. And does not childhood run on into
maturity and old age?”
It is very certain that childlike love of truth was not the
animating spirit of Strauss. On the contrary, his spirit was that
of remorseless criticism and of uncompromising hostility to the
supernatural. It has been well said that he gathered up all the
previous objections of sceptics to the gospel narrative and hurled
them in one mass, just as if some Sadducee at the time of Jesus’
trial had put all the taunts and gibes, all the buffetings and
insults, all the shame and spitting, into one blow delivered
straight into the face of the Redeemer. An octogenarian and
saintly German lady said unsuspectingly that “somehow she never
could get interested” in Strauss’s Leben Jesu, which her sceptical
son had given her for religious reading. The work was almost
altogether destructive, only the last chapter suggesting Strauss’s
own view of what Jesus was.
If Luther’s dictum is true that “the heart is the best
theologian,” Strauss must be regarded as destitute of the main
qualification for his task. Encyc. Britannica, 22:592—“Strauss’s
mind was almost exclusively analytical and critical, without depth
of religious feeling, or philosophical penetration, or historical
sympathy. His work was rarely constructive, and, save when he was
dealing with a kindred spirit, he failed as a historian,
biographer, and critic, strikingly illustrating Goethe’s
profoundly true principle that loving sympathy is essential for
productive criticism.” Pfleiderer, Strauss’s Life of Jesus,
xix—“Strauss showed that the church formed the mythical traditions
about Jesus out of its faith in him as the Messiah; but he did not
show how the church came by the faith that Jesus of Nazareth was
the Messiah.” See Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 362; Grote, Plato,
1:249.
We object to the Myth-theory of Strauss, that
(_a_) The time between the death of Christ and the publication of the
gospels was far too short for the growth and consolidation of such
mythical histories. Myths, on the contrary, as the Indian, Greek, Roman
and Scandinavian instances bear witness, are the slow growth of centuries.
(_b_) The first century was not a century when such formation of myths was
possible. Instead of being a credulous and imaginative age, it was an age
of historical inquiry and of Sadduceeism in matters of religion.
Horace, in Odes 1:34 and 3:6, denounces the neglect and squalor of
the heathen temples, and Juvenal, Satire 2:150, says that “Esse
aliquid manes et subterranea regna Nec pueri credunt.” Arnold of
Rugby: “The idea of men writing mythic histories between the times
of Livy and of Tacitus, and of St. Paul mistaking them for
realities!” Pilate’s sceptical inquiry, “What is truth?”_ (John
18:38)_, better represented the age. “The mythical age is past
when an idea is presented abstractly—apart from narrative.” The
Jewish sect of the Sadducees shows that the rationalistic spirit
was not confined to Greeks or Romans. The question of John the
Baptist, _Mat. 11:3—_“Art thou he that cometh, or look we for
another?” and our Lord’s answer, _Mat. 11:4, 5—_“Go and tell John
the thing which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight ...
the dead are raised up,” show that the Jews expected miracles to
be wrought by the Messiah; yet _John 10:41—_“John indeed did no
sign” shows also no irresistible inclination to invest popular
teachers with miraculous powers; see E. G. Robinson, Christian
Evidences, 22; Westcott, Com. on John 10:41; Rogers, Superhuman
Origin of the Bible, 61; Cox, Miracles, 50.
(_c_) The gospels cannot be a mythical outgrowth of Jewish ideas and
expectations, because, in their main features, they run directly counter
to these ideas and expectations. The sullen and exclusive nationalism of
the Jews could not have given rise to a gospel for all nations, nor could
their expectations of a temporal monarch have led to the story of a
suffering Messiah.
The O. T. Apocrypha shows how narrow was the outlook of the Jews.
2 Esdras 6:55, 56 says the Almighty has made the world “for _our_
sakes”; other peoples, though they “also come from Adam,” to the
Eternal “are nothing, but be like unto spittle.” The whole
multitude of them are only, before him, “like a single foul drop
that oozes out of a cask” (C. Geikie, in S. S. Times). Christ’s
kingdom differed from that which the Jews expected, both in its
_spirituality_ and its _universality_ (Bruce, Apologetics, 3).
There was no missionary impulse in the heathen world; on the other
hand, it was blasphemy for an ancient tribesman to make known his
god to an outsider (Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 106). The
Apocryphal gospels show what sort of myths the N. T. age would
have elaborated: Out of a demoniac young woman Satan is said to
depart in the form of a young man (Bernard, in Literature of the
Second Century, 99-136).
(_d_) The belief and propagation of such myths are inconsistent with what
we know of the sober characters and self-sacrificing lives of the
apostles.
(_e_) The mythical theory cannot account for the acceptance of the gospels
among the Gentiles, who had none of the Jewish ideas and expectations.
(_f_) It cannot explain Christianity itself, with its belief in Christ’s
crucifixion and resurrection, and the ordinances which commemorate these
facts.
(_d_) Witness Thomas’s doubting, and Paul’s shipwrecks and
scourgings. _Cf._ _2 Pet. 1:16_—οὐ γὰρ σεσοφισμένοις μύθοις
ἐξακολουθήσαντες = “we have not been on the false track of myths
artificially elaborated.” See F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to
Christ, 49-88. (_e_) See the two books entitled: If the Gospel
Narratives are Mythical,—What Then? and, But How,—if the Gospels
are Historic? (_f_) As the existence of the American Republic is
proof that there was once a Revolutionary War, so the existence of
Christianity is proof of the death of Christ. The change from the
seventh day to the first, in Sabbath observance, could never have
come about in a nation so Sabbatarian, had not the first day been
the celebration of an actual resurrection. Like the Jewish
Passover and our own Independence Day, Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper cannot be accounted for, except as monuments and
remembrances of historical facts at the beginning of the Christian
church. See Muir, on the Lord’s Supper an abiding Witness to the
Death of Christ, In Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 36. On Strauss and
his theory, see Hackett, in Christian Rev., 48; Weiss, Life of
Jesus, 155-163; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief,
379-425; Maclear, in Strivings for the Faith, 1-136; H. B. Smith,
in Faith and Philosophy, 442-468; Bayne, Review of Strauss’s New
Life, in Theol. Eclectic, 4:74; Row, in Lectures on Modern
Scepticism, 305-360; Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1871: art. by Prof.
W. A. Stevens; Burgess, Antiquity and Unity of Man, 263, 264;
Curtis on Inspiration, 62-67; Alexander, Christ and Christianity,
92-126; A. P. Peabody, in Smith’s Bible Dict., 2:954-958.
2nd. The Tendency-theory of Baur (1792-1860).
This maintains that the gospels originated in the middle of the second
century, and were written under assumed names as a means of reconciling
opposing Jewish and Gentile tendencies in the church. “These great
national tendencies find their satisfaction, not in events corresponding
to them, but in the elaboration of conscious fictions.”
Baur dates the fourth gospel at 160-170 A. D.; Matthew at 130;
Luke at 150; Mark at 150-160. Baur never inquires who Christ was.
He turns his attention from the facts to the documents. If the
documents be proved unhistorical, there is no need of examining
the facts, for there are no facts to examine. He indicates the
presupposition of his investigations, when he says: “The principal
argument for the later origin of the gospels must forever remain
this, that separately, and still more when taken together, they
give an account of the life of Jesus which involves
impossibilities”—_i. e._, miracles. He would therefore remove
their authorship far enough from Jesus’ time to permit regarding
the miracles as inventions. Baur holds that in Christ were united
the universalistic spirit of the new religion, _and_ the
particularistic form of the Jewish Messianic idea; some of his
disciples laid emphasis on the one, some on the other; hence first
conflict, but finally reconciliation; see statement of the
Tübingen theory and of the way in which Baur was led to it, in
Bruce, Apologetics, 360. E. G. Robinson interprets Baur as
follows: “Paul = Protestant; Peter = sacramentarian; James =
ethical; Paul + Peter + James = Christianity. Protestant preaching
should dwell more on the ethical—cases of conscience—and less on
mere doctrine, such as regeneration and justification.”
Baur was a stranger to the needs of his own soul, and so to the
real character of the gospel. One of his friends and advisers
wrote, after his death, in terms that were meant to be laudatory:
“His was a completely objective nature. No trace of personal needs
or struggles is discernible in connection with his investigations
of Christianity.” The estimate of posterity is probably expressed
in the judgment with regard to the Tübingen school by Harnack:
“The _possible_ picture it sketched was not the _real_, and the
key with which it attempted to solve all problems did not suffice
for the most simple.... The Tübingen views have indeed been
compelled to undergo very large modifications. As regards the
development of the church in the second century, it may safely be
said that the hypotheses of the Tübingen school have proved
themselves everywhere inadequate, very erroneous, and are to-day
held by only a very few scholars.” See Baur, Die kanonischen
Evangelien; Canonical Gospels (Eng. transl.), 530; Supernatural
Religion, 1:212-444 and vol. 2: Pfleiderer, Hibbert Lectures for
1885. For accounts of Baur’s position, see Herzog, Encyclopädie,
art.: Baur; Clarke’s transl. of Hase’s Life of Jesus, 34-36;
Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, 227, 228.
We object to the Tendency-theory of Baur, that
(_a_) The destructive criticism to which it subjects the gospels, if
applied to secular documents, would deprive us of any certain knowledge of
the past, and render all history impossible.
The assumption of artifice is itself unfavorable to a candid
examination of the documents. A perverse acuteness can descry
evidences of a hidden _animus_ in the most simple and ingenuous
literary productions. Instance the philosophical interpretation of
“Jack and Jill.”
(_b_) The antagonistic doctrinal tendencies which it professes to find in
the several gospels are more satisfactorily explained as varied but
consistent aspects of the one system of truth held by all the apostles.
Baur exaggerates the doctrinal and official differences between
the leading apostles. Peter was not simply a Judaizing Christian,
but was the first preacher to the Gentiles, and his doctrine
appears to have been subsequently influenced to a considerable
extent by Paul’s (see Plumptre on 1 Pet., 68-69). Paul was not an
exclusively Hellenizing Christian, but invariably addressed the
gospel to the Jews before he turned to the Gentiles. The
evangelists give pictures of Jesus from different points of view.
As the Parisian sculptor constructs his bust with the aid of a
dozen photographs of his subject, all taken from different points
of view, so from the four portraits furnished us by Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John we are to construct the solid and symmetrical life
of Christ. The deeper reality which makes reconciliation of the
different views possible is the actual historical Christ. Marcus
Dods, Expositor’s Greek Testament, 1:675—“They are not two
Christs, but one, which the four Gospels depict: diverse as the
profile and front face, but one another’s complement rather than
contradiction.”
Godet, Introd. to Gospel Collection, 272—Matthew shows the
greatness of Jesus—his full-length portrait; Mark his
indefatigable activity; Luke his beneficent compassion; John his
essential divinity. Matthew first wrote Aramæan Logia. This was
translated into Greek and completed by a narrative of the ministry
of Jesus for the Greek churches founded by Paul. This translation
was not made by Matthew and did not make use of Mark (217-224). E.
D. Burton: Matthew = fulfilment of past prophecy; Mark =
manifestation of present power. Matthew is argument from prophecy;
Mark is argument from miracle. Matthew, as prophecy, made most
impression on Jewish readers; Mark, as power, was best adapted to
Gentiles. Prof. Burton holds Mark to be based upon oral tradition
alone; Matthew upon his Logia (his real earlier Gospel) and other
fragmentary notes; while Luke has a fuller origin in manuscripts
and in Mark. See Aids to the Study of German Theology, 148-155; F.
W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 61.
(_c_) It is incredible that productions of such literary power and lofty
religious teaching as the gospels should have sprung up in the middle of
the second century, or that, so springing up, they should have been
published under assumed names and for covert ends.
The general character of the literature of the second century is
illustrated by Ignatius’s fanatical desire for martyrdom, the
value ascribed by Hermas to ascetic rigor, the insipid allegories
of Barnabas, Clement of Rome’s belief in the phœnix, and the
absurdities of the Apocryphal Gospels. The author of the fourth
gospel among the writers of the second century would have been a
mountain among mole-hills. Wynne, Literature of the Second
Century, 60—“The apostolic and the sub-apostolic writers differ
from each other as a nugget of pure gold differs from a block of
quartz with veins of the precious metal gleaming through it.”
Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person Christ, 1:1:92—“Instead of the writers
of the second century marking an advance on the apostolic age, or
developing the germ given them by the apostles, the second century
shows great retrogression,—its writers were not able to retain or
comprehend all that had been given them.” Martineau, Seat of
Authority, 291—“Writers not only barbarous in speech and rude in
art, but too often puerile in conception, passionate in temper,
and credulous in belief. The legends of Papias, the visions of
Hermas, the imbecility of Irenæus, the fury of Tertullian, the
rancor and indelicacy of Jerome, the stormy intolerance of
Augustine, cannot fail to startle and repel the student; and, if
he turns to the milder Hippolytus, he is introduced to a brood of
thirty heresies which sadly dissipate his dream of the unity of
the church.” We can apply to the writers of the second century the
question of R. G. Ingersoll in the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy:
“Is it possible that Bacon left the best children of his brain on
Shakespeare’s doorstep, and kept only the deformed ones at home?”
On the Apocryphal Gospels, see Cowper, in Strivings for the Faith,
73-108.
(_d_) The theory requires us to believe in a moral anomaly, namely, that a
faithful disciple of Christ in the second century could be guilty of
fabricating a life of his master, and of claiming authority for it on the
ground that the author had been a companion of Christ or his apostles.
“A genial set of Jesuitical religionists”—with mind and heart
enough to write the gospel according to John, and who at the same
time have cold-blooded sagacity enough to keep out of their
writings every trace of the developments of church authority
belonging to the second century. The newly discovered “Teaching of
the Twelve Apostles,” if dating from the early part of that
century, shows that such a combination is impossible. The critical
theories assume that one who knew Christ as a man could not
possibly also regard him as God. Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John,
12—“If St. John wrote, it is not possible to say that the genius
of St. Paul foisted upon the church a conception which was strange
to the original apostles.” Fairbairn has well shown that if
Christianity had been simply the ethical teaching of the human
Jesus, it would have vanished from the earth like the sects of the
Pharisees and of the Sadducees; if on the other hand it had been
simply the Logos-doctrine, the doctrine of a divine Christ, it
would have passed away like the speculations of Plato or
Aristotle; because Christianity unites the idea of the eternal Son
of God with that of the incarnate Son of man, it is fitted to be
and it has become an universal religion; see Fairbairn, Philosophy
of the Christian Religion, 4, 15—“Without the personal charm of
the historical Jesus, the œcumenical creeds would never have been
either formulated or tolerated, and without the metaphysical
conception of Christ the Christian religion would long ago have
ceased to live.... It is not Jesus of Nazareth who has so
powerfully entered into history: it is the deified Christ who has
been believed, loved and obeyed as the Savior of the world.... The
two parts of Christian doctrine are combined in the one name
‘Jesus Christ.’ ”
(_e_) This theory cannot account for the universal acceptance of the
gospels at the end of the second century, among widely separated
communities where reverence for writings of the apostles was a mark of
orthodoxy, and where the Gnostic heresies would have made new documents
instantly liable to suspicion and searching examination.
Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80, 88, 89. The
Johannine doctrine of the Logos, if first propounded in the middle
of the second century, would have ensured the instant rejection of
that gospel by the Gnostics, who ascribed creation, not to the
Logos, but to successive “Æons.” How did the Gnostics, without
“peep or mutter,” come to accept as genuine what had only in their
own time been first sprung upon the churches? While Basilides
(130) and Valentinus (150), the Gnostics, both quote from the
fourth gospel, they do not dispute its genuineness or suggest that
it was of recent origin. Bruce, in his Apologetics, says of Baur
“He believed in the all-sufficiency of the Hegelian theory of
development through antagonism. He saw tendency everywhere.
Anything additional, putting more contents into the person and
teaching of Jesus than suits the initial stage of development,
must be reckoned spurious. If we find Jesus in any of the gospels
claiming to be a supernatural being, such texts can with the
utmost confidence be set aside as spurious, for such a thought
could not belong to the initial stage of Christianity.” But such a
conception certainly existed in the second century, and it
directly antagonized the speculations of the Gnostics. F. W.
Farrar, on _Hebrews 1:2_—“The word _æon_ was used by the later
Gnostics to describe the various emanations by which they tried at
once to widen and to bridge over the gulf between the human and
the divine. Over that imaginary chasm John threw the arch of the
Incarnation, when he wrote: ‘The Word became flesh’_ (John
1:14)_.” A document which so contradicted the Gnostic teachings
could not in the second century have been quoted by the Gnostics
themselves without dispute as to its genuineness, if it had not
been long recognized in the churches as a work of the apostle
John.
(_f_) The acknowledgment by Baur that the epistles to the Romans,
Galatians and Corinthians were written by Paul in the first century is
fatal to his theory, since these epistles testify not only to miracles at
the period at which they were written, but to the main events of Jesus’
life and to the miracle of his resurrection, as facts already long
acknowledged in the Christian church.
Baur, Paulus der Apostel, 276—“There never has been the slightest
suspicion of unauthenticity cast on these epistles (Gal., 1 and 2
Cor., Rom.), and they bear so incontestably the character of
Pauline originality, that there is no conceivable ground for the
assertion of critical doubts in their case.” Baur, in discussing
the appearance of Christ to Paul on the way to Damascus, explains
the outward from the inward: Paul translated intense and sudden
conviction of the truth of the Christian religion into an outward
scene. But this cannot explain the hearing of the outward sound by
Paul’s companions. On the evidential value of the epistles here
mentioned, see Lorimer, in Strivings for the Faith, 109-144;
Howson, in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 24; Row, Bampton Lectures
for 1877:289-356. On Baur and his theory in general, see Weiss,
Life of Jesus, 1:157 _sq._; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ.
Belief, 504-549; Hutton, Essays, 1:176-215; Theol. Eclectic,
5:1-42; Auberlen, Div. Revelation; Bib. Sac., 19:75; Answers to
Supernatural Religion, in Westcott, Hist. N. T. Canon, 4th ed.,
Introd.; Lightfoot, in Contemporary Rev., Dec. 1874, and Jan.
1875; Salmon, Introd. to N. T., 6-31; A. B. Bruce, in Present Day
Tracts, 7: no. 38.
3d. The Romance-theory of Renan (1823-1892).
This theory admits a basis of truth in the gospels and holds that they all
belong to the century following Jesus’ death. “According to” Matthew,
Mark, etc., however, means only that Matthew, Mark, etc., wrote these
gospels in substance. Renan claims that the facts of Jesus’ life were so
sublimated by enthusiasm, and so overlaid with pious fraud, that the
gospels in their present form cannot be accepted as genuine,—in short, the
gospels are to be regarded as historical romances which have only a
foundation in fact.
The _animus_ of this theory is plainly shown in Renan’s Life of
Jesus, preface to 13th ed.—“If miracles and the inspiration of
certain books are realities, my method is detestable. If miracles
and the inspiration of books are beliefs without reality, my
method is a good one. But the question of the supernatural is
decided for us with perfect certainty by the single consideration
that there is no room for believing in a thing of which the world
offers no experimental trace.” “On the whole,” says Renan, “I
admit as authentic the four canonical gospels. All, in my opinion,
date from the first century, and the authors are, generally
speaking, those to whom they are attributed.” He regards Gal., 1
and 2 Cor., and Rom., as “indisputable and undisputed.” He speaks
of them as “being texts of an absolute authenticity, of complete
sincerity, and without legends” (Les Apôtres, xxix; Les Évangiles,
xi). Yet he denies to Jesus “sincerity with himself”; attributes
to him “innocent artifice” and the toleration of pious fraud, as
for example in the case of the stories of Lazarus and of his own
resurrection. “To conceive the good is not sufficient: it must be
made to succeed; to accomplish this, less pure paths must be
followed.... Not by any fault of his own, his conscience lost
somewhat of its original purity,—his mission overwhelmed him....
Did he regret his too lofty nature, and, victim of his own
greatness, mourn that he had not remained a simple artizan?” So
Renan “pictures Christ’s later life as a misery and a lie, yet he
requests us to bow before this sinner and before his superior,
Sakya-Mouni, as demigods” (see Nicoll, The Church’s One
Foundation, 62, 63). Of the highly wrought imagination of Mary
Magdalene, he says: “O divine power of love! sacred moments, in
which the passion of one whose senses were deceived gives us a
resuscitated God!” See Renan, Life of Jesus, 21.
To this Romance-theory of Renan, we object that
(_a_) It involves an arbitrary and partial treatment of the Christian
documents. The claim that one writer not only borrowed from others, but
interpolated _ad libitum_, is contradicted by the essential agreement of
the manuscripts as quoted by the Fathers, and as now extant.
Renan, according to Mair, Christian Evidences, 153, dates Matthew
at 84 A. D.; Mark at 76; Luke at 94; John at 125. These dates mark
a considerable retreat from the advanced positions taken by Baur.
Mair, in his chapter on Recent Reverses in Negative Criticism,
attributes this result to the late discoveries with regard to the
Epistle of Barnabas, Hippolytus’s Refutation of all Heresies, the
Clementine Homilies, and Tatian’s Diatessaron: “According to Baur
and his immediate followers, we have less than one quarter of the
N. T. belonging to the first century. According to Hilgenfeld, the
present head of the Baur school, we have somewhat less than three
quarters belonging to the first century, while substantially the
same thing may be said with regard to Holzmann. According to
Renan, we have distinctly more than three quarters of the N. T.
falling within the first century, and therefore within the
apostolic age. This surely indicates a very decided and
extraordinary retreat since the time of Baur’s grand assault, that
is, within the last fifty years.” We may add that the concession
of authorship within the apostolic age renders nugatory Renan’s
hypothesis that the N. T. documents have been so enlarged by pious
fraud that they cannot be accepted as trustworthy accounts of such
events as miracles. The oral tradition itself had attained so
fixed a form that the many manuscripts used by the Fathers were in
substantial agreement in respect to these very events, and oral
tradition in the East hands down without serious alteration much
longer narratives than those of our gospels. The Pundita Ramabai
can repeat after the lapse of twenty years portions of the Hindu
sacred books exceeding in amount the whole contents of our Old
Testament. Many cultivated men in Athens knew by heart all the
Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. Memory and reverence alike kept
the gospel narratives free from the corruption which Renan
supposes.
(_b_) It attributes to Christ and to the apostles an alternate fervor of
romantic enthusiasm and a false pretense of miraculous power which are
utterly irreconcilable with the manifest sobriety and holiness of their
lives and teachings. If Jesus did not work miracles, he was an impostor.
On Ernest Renan, His Life and the Life of Jesus, see A. H. Strong,
Christ in Creation, 332-363, especially 356—“Renan attributes the
origin of Christianity to the predominance in Palestine of a
constitutional susceptibility to mystic excitements. Christ is to
him the incarnation of sympathy and tears, a being of tender
impulses and passionate ardors, whose native genius it was to play
upon the hearts of men. Truth or falsehood made little difference
to him; anything that would comfort the poor, or touch the finer
feelings of humanity, he availed himself of; ecstasies, visions,
melting moods, these were the secrets of his power. Religion was a
beneficent superstition, a sweet delusion—excellent as a balm and
solace for the ignorant crowd, who never could be philosophers if
they tried. And so the gospel river, as one has said, is traced
back to a fountain of weeping men and women whose brains had oozed
out at their eyes, and the perfection of spirituality is made to
be a sort of maudlin monasticism.... How different from the strong
and holy love of Christ, which would save men only by bringing
them to the truth, and which claims men’s imitation only because,
without love for God and for the soul, a man is without truth. How
inexplicable from this view the fact that a pure Christianity has
everywhere quickened the intellect of the nations, and that every
revival of it, as at the Reformation, has been followed by mighty
forward leaps of civilization. Was Paul a man carried away by
mystic dreams and irrational enthusiasms? Let the keen dialectic
skill of his epistles and his profound grasp of the great matters
of revelation answer. Has the Christian church been a company of
puling sentimentalists? Let the heroic deaths for the truth
suffered by the martyrs witness. Nay, he must have a low idea of
his kind, and a yet lower idea of the God who made them, who can
believe that the noblest spirits of the race have risen to
greatness by abnegating will and reason, and have gained influence
over all ages by resigning themselves to semi-idiocy.”
(_c_) It fails to account for the power and progress of the gospel, as a
system directly opposed to men’s natural tastes and prepossessions—a
system which substitutes truth for romance and law for impulse.
A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 358—“And if the later triumphs
of Christianity are inexplicable upon the theory of Renan, how can
we explain its founding? The sweet swain of Galilee, beloved by
women for his beauty, fascinating the unlettered crowd by his
gentle speech and his poetic ideals, giving comfort to the
sorrowing and hope to the poor, credited with supernatural power
which at first he thinks it not worth while to deny and finally
gratifies the multitude by pretending to exercise, roused by
opposition to polemics and invective until the delightful young
rabbi becomes a gloomy giant, an intractable fanatic, a fierce
revolutionist, whose denunciation of the powers that be brings him
to the Cross,—what is there in _him_ to account for the moral
wonder which we call Christianity and the beginnings of its empire
in the world? Neither delicious pastorals like those of Jesus’
first period, nor apocalyptic fevers like those of his second
period, according to Renan’s gospel, furnish any rational
explanation of that mighty movement which has swept through the
earth and has revolutionized the faith of mankind.”
Berdoe, Browning, 47—“If Christ were not God, his life at that
stage of the world’s history could by no possibility have had the
vitalizing force and love-compelling power that Renan’s pages
everywhere disclose. Renan has strengthened faith in Christ’s
deity while laboring to destroy it.”
Renan, in discussing Christ’s appearance to Paul on the way to
Damascus, explains the inward from the outward, thus precisely
reversing the conclusion of Baur. A sudden storm, a flash of
lightning, a sudden attack of ophthalmic fever, Paul took as an
appearance from heaven. But we reply that so keen an observer and
reasoner could not have been thus deceived. Nothing could have
made him the apostle to the Gentiles but a sight of the glorified
Christ and the accompanying revelation of the holiness of God, his
own sin, the sacrifice of the Son of God, its universal efficacy,
the obligation laid upon him to proclaim it to the ends of the
earth. For reviews of Renan, see Hutton, Essays, 261-281, and
Contemp. Thought and Thinkers, 1:227-234; H. B. Smith, Faith and
Philosophy, 401-441; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt, 425-447; Pressensé,
in Theol. Eclectic, 1:199; Uhlhorn, Mod. Representations of Life
of Jesus, 1-33; Bib. Sac, 22:207; 23:353, 529; Present Day Tracts,
3: no. 16, and 4: no. 21; E. G. Robinson, Christian Evidences,
43-48; A. H. Strong, Sermon before Baptist World Congress, 1905.
4th. The Development-theory of Harnack (born 1851).
This holds Christianity to be a historical development from germs which
were devoid of both dogma and miracle. Jesus was a teacher of ethics, and
the original gospel is most clearly represented by the Sermon on the
Mount. Greek influence, and especially that of the Alexandrian philosophy,
added to this gospel a theological and supernatural element, and so
changed Christianity from a life into a doctrine.
Harnack dates Matthew at 70-75; Mark at 65-70; Luke at 78-93; the
fourth gospel at 80-110. He regards both the fourth gospel and the
book of Revelation as the works, not of John the Apostle, but of
John the Presbyter. He separates the prologue of the fourth gospel
from the gospel itself, and considers the prologue as a preface
added after its original composition in order to enable the
Hellenistic reader to understand it. “The gospel itself,” says
Harnack, “contains no Logos-idea; it did not develop out of a
Logos-idea, such as flourished at Alexandria; it only connects
itself with such an idea. The gospel itself is based upon the
historic Christ; he is the subject of all its statements. This
historical trait can in no way be dissolved by any kind of
speculation. The memory of what was actually historical was still
too powerful to admit at this point any Gnostic influences. The
Logos-idea of the prologue is the Logos of Alexandrine Judaism,
the Logos of Philo, and it is derived ultimately from the ’Son of
man’ in the book of Daniel.... The fourth gospel, which does not
proceed from the Apostle John and does not so claim, cannot be
used as a historical source in the ordinary sense of that word....
The author has managed with sovereign freedom; has transposed
occurrences and has put them in a light that is foreign to them;
has of his own accord composed the discourses, and has illustrated
lofty thoughts by inventing situations for them. Difficult as it
is to recognize, an actual tradition in his work is not wholly
lacking. For the history of Jesus, however, it can hardly anywhere
be taken into account; only little can be taken from it, and that
with caution.... On the other hand it is a source of the first
rank for the answer of the question what living views of the
person of Jesus, what light and what warmth, the gospel has
brought into being.” See Harnack’s article in Zeitschrift für
Theol. u. Kirche, 2:189-231, and his Wesen des Christenthums, 13.
Kaftan also, who belongs to the same Ritschlian school with
Harnack, tells us in his Truth of the Christian Religion, 1:97,
that as the result of the Logos-speculation, “the centre of
gravity, instead of being placed in the historical Christ who
founded the kingdom of God, is placed in the Christ who as eternal
Logos of God was the mediator in the creation of the world.” This
view is elaborated by Hatch in his Hibbert Lectures for 1888, on
the Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church.
We object to the Development-theory of Harnack, that
(_a_) The Sermon on the Mount is not the sum of the gospel, nor its
original form. Mark is the most original of the gospels, yet Mark omits
the Sermon on the Mount, and Mark is preëminently the gospel of the
miracle-worker.
(_b_) All four gospels lay the emphasis, not on Jesus’ life and ethical
teaching, but on his death and resurrection. Matthew implies Christ’s
deity when it asserts his absolute knowledge of the Father (11:27), his
universal judgeship (25:32), his supreme authority (28:18), and his
omnipresence (28:20), while the phrase “Son of man” implies that he is
also “Son of God.”
_Mat. 11:27—_“All things have been delivered unto me of my Father:
and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know
the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to
reveal him”; _25:32—_“and before him shall be gathered all the
nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the
shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats”; _28:18—_“All
authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;
_28:20—_“lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the
world.” These sayings of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel show that the
conception of Christ’s greatness was not peculiar to John: “I am”
transcends time; “with you” transcends space. Jesus speaks “sub
specie eternitatis”; his utterance is equivalent to that of _John
8:58—_“Before Abraham was born, I am,” and to that of _Hebrews
13:8—_“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for
ever.” He is, as Paul declares in _Eph. 1:23_, one “that filleth
all in all,” that is, who is omnipresent.
A. H. Strong, Philos. and Religion, 206—The phrase “Son of man”
intimates that Christ was more than man: “Suppose I were to go
about proclaiming myself ‘Son of man.’ Who does not see that it
would be mere impertinence, unless I claimed to be something more.
‘Son of Man? But what of that? Cannot every human being call
himself the same?’ When one takes the title ‘Son of man’ for his
characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is
something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his
original condition and dignity; that it is condescension on his
part to be Son of man. In short, when Christ calls himself Son of
man, it implies that he has come from a higher level of being to
inhabit this low earth of ours. And so, when we are asked ‘What
think ye of the Christ? whose son is he?’ we must answer, not
simply, He is Son of man, but also, He is Son of God.” On Son of
man, see Driver; on Son of God, see Sanday; both in Hastings’
Dictionary of the Bible. Sanday: “The Son is so called primarily
as incarnate. But that which is the essence of the Incarnation
must needs be also larger than the Incarnation. It must needs have
its roots in the eternity of Godhead.” Gore, Incarnation, 65,
73—“Christ, the final Judge, of the synoptics, is not dissociable
from the divine, eternal Being, of the fourth gospel.”
(_c_) The preëxistence and atonement of Christ cannot be regarded as
accretions upon the original gospel, since these find expression in Paul
who wrote before any of our evangelists, and in his epistles anticipated
the Logos-doctrine of John.
(_d_) We may grant that Greek influence, through the Alexandrian
philosophy, helped the New Testament writers to discern what was already
present in the life and work and teaching of Jesus; but, like the
microscope which discovers but does not create, it added nothing to the
substance of the faith.
Gore, Incarnation, 62—“The divinity, incarnation, resurrection of
Christ were not an accretion upon the original belief of the
apostles and their first disciples, for these are all recognized
as uncontroverted matters of faith in the four great epistles of
Paul, written at a date when the greater part of those who had
seen the risen Christ were still alive.” The Alexandrian
philosophy was not the source of apostolic doctrine, but only the
form in which that doctrine was cast, the light thrown upon it
which brought out its meaning. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation,
146—“When we come to John’s gospel, therefore, we find in it the
mere unfolding of truth that for substance had been in the world
for at least sixty years.... If the Platonizing philosophy of
Alexandria assisted in this genuine development of Christian
doctrine, then the Alexandrian philosophy was a providential help
to inspiration. The microscope does not invent; it only discovers.
Paul and John did not add to the truth of Christ; their
philosophical equipment was only a microscope which brought into
clear view the truth that was there already.”
Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:126—“The metaphysical conception
of the Logos, as immanent in the world and ordering it according
to law, was filled with religious and moral contents. In Jesus the
cosmical principle of nature became a religious principle of
salvation.” See Kilpatrick’s article on Philosophy, in Hastings’
Bible Dictionary. Kilpatrick holds that Harnack ignores the
self-consciousness of Jesus; does not fairly interpret the Acts in
its mention of the early worship of Jesus by the church before
Greek philosophy had influenced it; refers to the intellectual
peculiarities of the N. T. writers conceptions which Paul insists
are simply the faith of all Christian people as such; forgets that
the Christian idea of union with God secured through the atoning
and reconciling work of a personal Redeemer utterly transcended
Greek thought, and furnished the solution of the problem after
which Greek philosophy was vainly groping.
(_e_) Though Mark says nothing of the virgin-birth because his story is
limited to what the apostles had witnessed of Jesus’ deeds, Matthew
apparently gives us Joseph’s story and Luke gives Mary’s story—both
stories naturally published only after Jesus’ resurrection.
(_f_) The larger understanding of doctrine after Jesus’ death was itself
predicted by our Lord (John 16:12). The Holy Spirit was to bring his
teachings to remembrance, and to guide into all the truth (16:13), and the
apostles were to continue the work of teaching which he had begun (Acts
1:1).
_John 16:12, 13—_“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is
come, he shall guide you into all the truth”; _Acts 1:1—_“The
former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus
began to do and to teach.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation,
146—“That the beloved disciple, after a half century of meditation
upon what he had seen and heard of God manifest in the flesh,
should have penetrated more deeply into the meaning of that
wonderful revelation is not only not surprising,—it is precisely
what Jesus himself foretold. Our Lord had many things to say to
his disciples, but then they could not bear them. He promised that
the Holy Spirit should bring to their remembrance both himself and
his words, and should lead them into all the truth. And this is
the whole secret of what are called accretions to original
Christianity. So far as they are contained in Scripture, they are
inspired discoveries and unfoldings, not mere speculations and
inventions. They are not additions, but elucidations, not vain
imaginings, but correct interpretations.... When the later
theology, then, throws out the supernatural and dogmatic, as
coming not from Jesus but from Paul’s epistles and from the fourth
gospel, our claim is that Paul and John are only inspired and
authoritative interpreters of Jesus, seeing themselves and making
us see the fulness of the Godhead that dwelt in him.”
While Harnack, in our judgment, errs in his view that Paul
contributed to the gospel elements which it did not originally
possess, he shows us very clearly many of the elements in that
gospel which he was the first to recognize. In his Wesen des
Christenthums, 111, he tells us that a few years ago a celebrated
Protestant theologian declared that Paul, with his Rabbinical
theology, was the destroyer of the Christian religion. Others have
regarded him as the founder of that religion. But the majority
have seen in him the apostle who best understood his Lord and did
most to continue his work. Paul, as Harnack maintains, first
comprehended the gospel definitely: (1) as an accomplished
redemption and a present salvation—the crucified and risen Christ
as giving access to God and righteousness and peace therewith; (2)
as something new, which does away with the religion of the law;
(3) as meant for all, and therefore for Gentiles also, indeed, as
superseding Judaism; (4) as expressed in terms which are not
simply Greek but also human,—Paul made the gospel comprehensible
to the world. Islam, rising in Arabia, is an Arabian religion
still. Buddhism remains an Indian religion. Christianity is at
home in all lands. Paul put new life into the Roman empire, and
inaugurated the Christian culture of the West. He turned a local
into a universal religion. His influence however, according to
Harnack, tended to the undue exaltation of organization and dogma
and O. T. inspiration—points in which, in our judgment, Paul took
sober middle ground and saved Christian truth for the world.
2. Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament.
Since nearly one half of the Old Testament is of anonymous authorship and
certain of its books may be attributed to definite historic characters
only by way of convenient classification or of literary personification,
we here mean by genuineness honesty of purpose and freedom from anything
counterfeit or intentionally deceptive so far as respects the age or the
authorship of the documents.
We show the genuineness of the Old Testament books:
(_a_) From the witness of the New Testament, in which all but six books of
the Old Testament are either quoted or alluded to as genuine.
The N. T. shows coincidences of language with the O. T. Apocryphal
books, but it contains only one direct quotation from them; while,
with the exception of Judges, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Esther,
Ezra, and Nehemiah, every book in the Hebrew canon is used either
for illustration or proof. The single Apocryphal quotation is
found in _Jude 14_ and is in all probability taken from the book
of Enoch. Although Volkmar puts the date of this book at 132 A.
D., and although some critics hold that Jude quoted only the same
primitive tradition of which the author of the book of Enoch
afterwards made use, the weight of modern scholarship inclines to
the opinion that the book itself was written as early as 170-70 B.
C., and that Jude quoted from it; see Hastings’ Bible Dictionary:
Book of Enoch; Sanday, Bampton Lect. on Inspiration, 95. “If Paul
could quote from Gentile poets (_Acts 17:28_; _Titus 1:12_), it is
hard to understand why Jude could not cite a work which was
certainly in high standing among the faithful”; see Schodde, Book
of Enoch, 41, with the Introd. by Ezra Abbot. While _Jude 14_
gives us the only direct and express quotation from an Apocryphal
book, _Jude 6_ and _9_ contain allusions to the Book of Enoch and
to the Assumption of Moses; see Charles, Assumption of Moses, 62.
In _Hebrews 1:3_, we have words taken from Wisdom 7:26; and
_Hebrews 11:34-38_ is a reminiscence of 1 Maccabees.
(_b_) From the testimony of Jewish authorities, ancient and modern, who
declare the same books to be sacred, and only the same books, that are now
comprised in our Old Testament Scriptures.
Josephus enumerates twenty-two of these books “which are justly
accredited” (omit θεῖα—Niese, and Hastings’ Dict., 3:607). Our
present Hebrew Bible makes twenty-four, by separating Ruth from
Judges, and Lamentations from Jeremiah. See Josephus, Against
Apion, 1:8; Smith’s Bible Dictionary, article on the Canon, 1:359,
360. Philo (born 20 B. C.) never quotes an Apocryphal book,
although he does quote from nearly all the books of the O. T.; see
Ryle, Philo and Holy Scripture. George Adam Smith, Modern
Criticism and Preaching, 7—“The theory which ascribed the Canon of
the O. T. to a single decision of the Jewish church in the days of
its inspiration is not a theory supported by facts. The growth of
the O. T. Canon was very gradual. Virtually it began in 621 B. C.,
with the acceptance by all Judah of Deuteronomy, and the adoption
of the whole Law, or first five books of the O. T., under Nehemiah
in 445 B. C. Then came the prophets before 200 B. C., and the
Hagiographa from a century to two centuries later. The strict
definition of the last division was not complete by the time of
Christ. Christ seems to testify to the Law, the Prophets, and the
Psalms; yet neither Christ nor his apostles make any quotation
from Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Canticles, or Ecclesiastes, the last
of which books were not yet recognized by all the Jewish schools.
But while Christ is the chief authority for the O. T., he was also
its first critic. He rejected some parts of the Law and was
indifferent to many others. He enlarged the sixth and seventh
commandments, and reversed the eye for an eye, and the permission
of divorce; touched the leper, and reckoned all foods lawful;
broke away from literal observance of the Sabbath-day; left no
commands about sacrifice, temple-worship, circumcision, but, by
institution of the New Covenant, abrogated these sacraments of the
Old. The apostles appealed to extra-canonical writings.” Gladden,
Seven Puzzling Bible Books, 68-96—“Doubts were entertained in our
Lord’s day as to the canonicity of several parts of the O. T.,
especially Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Esther.”
(_c_) From the testimony of the Septuagint translation, dating from the
first half of the third century, or from 280 to 180 B. C.
MSS. of the Septuagint contain, indeed, the O. T. Apocrypha, but
the writers of the latter do not recognize their own work as on a
level with the canonical Scriptures, which they regard as distinct
from all other books (Ecclesiasticus, prologue, and 48:24; also
24:23-27; 1 Mac. 12:9; 2 Mac. 6:23; 1 Esd. 1:28; 6:1; Baruch
2:21). So both ancient and modern Jews. See Bissell, in Lange’s
Commentary on the Apocrypha, Introduction, 44. In the prologue to
the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, we read of “the Law and the
Prophets and the rest of the books,” which shows that as early as
130 B. C., the probable date of Ecclesiasticus, a threefold
division of the Jewish sacred books was recognized. That the
author, however, did not conceive of these books as constituting a
completed canon seems evident from his assertion in this
connection that his grandfather Jesus also wrote. 1 Mac. 12:9
(80-90 B. C.) speaks of “the sacred books which are now in our
hands.” Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 3:611—“The O. T. was the
result of a gradual process which began with the sanction of the
Hexateuch by Ezra and Nehemiah, and practically closed with the
decisions of the Council of Jamnia”—Jamnia is the ancient Jabneh,
7 miles south by west of Tiberias, where met a council of rabbins
at some time between 90 to 118 A. D. This Council decided in favor
of Canticles and Ecclesiastes, and closed the O. T. Canon.
The Greek version of the Pentateuch which forms a part of the
Septuagint is said by Josephus to have been made in the reign and
by the order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, about 270 or
280 B. C. “The legend is that it was made by seventy-two persons
in seventy-two days. It is supposed, however, by modern critics
that this version of the several books is the work not only of
different hands but of separate times. It is probable that at
first only the Pentateuch was translated, and the remaining books
gradually; but the translation is believed to have been completed
by the second century B. C.” (Century Dictionary, _in voce_). It
therefore furnishes an important witness to the genuineness of our
O. T. documents. Driver, Introd. to O. T. Lit., xxxi—“For the
opinion, often met with in modern books, that the Canon of the O.
T. was closed by Ezra, or in Ezra’s time, there is no foundation
in antiquity whatever.... All that can reasonably be treated as
historical in the accounts of Ezra’s literary labors is limited to
the Law.”
(_d_) From indications that soon after the exile, and so early as the
times of Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 B. C.), the Pentateuch together with
the book of Joshua was not only in existence but was regarded as
authoritative.
2 Mac, 2:13-15 intimates that Nehemiah founded a library, and
there is a tradition that a “Great Synagogue” was gathered in his
time to determine the Canon. But Hastings’ Dictionary, 4:644,
asserts that “the Great Synagogue was originally a meeting, and
not an institution. It met once for all, and all that is told
about it, except what we read in Nehemiah, is pure fable of the
later Jews.” In like manner no dependence is to be placed upon the
tradition that Ezra miraculously restored the ancient Scriptures
that had been lost during the exile. Clement of Alexandria says:
“Since the Scriptures perished in the Captivity of Nebuchadnezzar,
Esdras (the Greek form of Ezra) the Levite, the priest, in the
time of Artaxerxes, King of the Persians, having become inspired
in the exercise of prophecy, restored again the whole of the
ancient Scriptures.” But the work now divided into 1 and 2
Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, mentions Darius Codomannus (_Neh.
12:22_), whose date is 336 B. C. The utmost the tradition proves
is that about 300 B. C. the Pentateuch was in some sense
attributed to Moses; see Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 35; Bib. Sac.,
1863:381, 660, 799; Smith, Bible Dict., art.: Pentateuch;
Theological Eclectic, 6:215; Bissell, Hist. Origin of the Bible,
398-403. On the Men of the Great Synagogue, see Wright,
Ecclesiastes, 5-12, 475-477.
(_e_) From the testimony of the Samaritan Pentateuch, dating from the time
of Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 B. C.).
The Samaritans had been brought by the king of Assyria from
“Babylon, and from Cuthah and from Avva, and from Hamath and
Sepharvaim”_ (2 K. 17:6, 24, 26)_, to take the place of the people
of Israel whom the king had carried away captive to his own land.
The colonists had brought their heathen gods with them, and the
incursions of wild beasts which the intermission of tillage
occasioned gave rise to the belief that the God of Israel was
against them. One of the captive Jewish priests was therefore sent
to teach them “the law of the god of the land” and he “taught them
how they should fear Jehovah”_ (2 K. 17:27, 28)_. The result was
that they adopted the Jewish ritual, but combined the worship of
Jehovah with that of their graven images (_verse 33_). When the
Jews returned from Babylon and began to rebuild the walls of
Jerusalem, the Samaritans offered their aid, but this aid was
indignantly refused (_Ezra 4_ and _Nehemiah 4_). Hostility arose
between Jews and Samaritans—a hostility which continued not only
to the time of Christ (_John 4:9_), but even to the present day.
Since the Samaritan Pentateuch substantially coincides with the
Hebrew Pentateuch, it furnishes us with a definite past date at
which it certainly existed in nearly its present form. It
witnesses to the existence of our Pentateuch in essentially its
present form as far back as the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.
Green, Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, 44, 45—“After being
repulsed by the Jews, the Samaritans, to substantiate their claim
of being sprung from ancient Israel, eagerly accepted the
Pentateuch which was brought them by a renegade priest.” W.
Robertson Smith, in Encyc. Brit., 21:244—“The priestly law, which
is throughout based on the practice of the priests of Jerusalem
before the captivity, was reduced to form after the exile, and was
first published by Ezra as the law of the rebuilt temple of Zion.
The Samaritans must therefore have derived their Pentateuch from
the Jews after Ezra’s reforms, _i. e._, after 444 B. C. Before
that time Samaritanism cannot have existed in a form at all
similar to that which we know; but there must have been a
community ready to accept the Pentateuch.” See Smith’s Bible
Dictionary, art.: Samaritan Pentateuch; Hastings, Bible
Dictionary, art.: Samaria; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the O.
T., 1-41.
(_f_) From the finding of “the book of the law” in the temple, in the
eighteenth year of King Josiah, or in 621 B. C.
_2 K. 22:8—_“And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the
scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah.”
_23:2—_“The book of the covenant” was read before the people by
the king and proclaimed to be the law of the land. Curtis, in
Hastings’ Bible Dict., 3:596—“The earliest written law or book of
divine instruction of whose introduction or enactment an authentic
account is given, was Deuteronomy or its main portion, represented
as found in the temple in the 18th year of king Josiah (B. C. 621)
and proclaimed by the king as the law of the land. From that time
forward Israel had a written law which the pious believer was
commanded to ponder day and night (_Joshua 1:8_; _Ps. 1:2_); and
thus the Torah, as sacred literature, formally commenced in
Israel. This law aimed at a right application of Mosaic
principles.” Ryle, in Hastings’ Bible Dict., 1:602—“The law of
Deuteronomy represents an expansion and development of the ancient
code contained in _Exodus 20-23_, and precedes the final
formulation of the priestly ritual, which only received its
ultimate form in the last period of revising the structure of the
Pentateuch.”
Andrew Harper, on Deuteronomy, in Expositor’s Bible: “Deuteronomy
does not claim to have been written by Moses. He is spoken of in
the third person in the introduction and historical framework,
while the speeches of Moses are in the first person. In portions
where the author speaks for himself, the phrase ’beyond Jordan’
means east of Jordan; in the speeches of Moses the phrase ‘beyond
Jordan’ means west of Jordan; and the only exception is _Deut.
3:8_, which cannot originally have been part of the speech of
Moses. But the style of both parts is the same, and if the 3rd
person parts are by a later author, the 1st person parts are by a
later author also. Both differ from other speeches of Moses in the
Pentateuch. Can the author be a contemporary writer who gives
Moses’ words, as John gave the words of Jesus? No, for Deuteronomy
covers only the book of the Covenant, Exodus 20-23. It uses JE but
not P, with which JE is interwoven. But JE appears in Joshua and
contributes to it an account of Joshua’s death. JE speaks of kings
in Israel (_Gen. 36:31-39_). Deuteronomy plainly belongs to the
early centuries of the Kingdom, or to the middle of it.”
Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 43-49—“The Deuteronomic law was so
short that Shaphan could read it aloud before the king (_2 K.
22:10_) and the king could read ‘the whole of it’ before the
people (_23:2_); compare the reading of the Pentateuch for a whole
week (_Neh. 8:2-18_). It was in the form of a covenant; it was
distinguished by curses; it was an expansion and modification,
fully within the legitimate province of the prophet, of a Torah of
Moses codified from the traditional form of at least a century
before. Such a Torah existed, was attributed to Moses, and is now
incorporated as ‘the book of the covenant’ in _Exodus 20_ to _24_.
The year 620 is therefore the _terminus a quo_ of Deuteronomy. The
date of the priestly code is 444 B. C.” Sanday, Bampton Lectures
for 1893, grants “(1) the presence in the Pentateuch of a
considerable element which in its present shape is held by many to
be not earlier than the captivity; (2) the composition of the book
of Deuteronomy, not long, or at least not very long, before its
promulgation by king Josiah in the year 621, which thus becomes a
pivot-date in the history of Hebrew literature.”
(_g_) From references in the prophets Hosea (B. C. 743-737) and Amos
(759-745) to a course of divine teaching and revelation extending far back
of their day.
_Hosea 8:12—_“I wrote for him the ten thousand things of my law”;
here is asserted the existence prior to the time of the prophet,
not only of a law, but of a written law. All critics admit the
book of Hosea to be a genuine production of the prophet, dating
from the eighth century B. C.; see Green, in Presb. Rev.,
1886:585-608. _Amos 2:4—_“they have rejected the law of Jehovah,
and have not kept his statutes”; here is proof that, more than a
century before the finding of Deuteronomy in the temple, Israel
was acquainted with God’s law. Fisher, Nature and Method of
Revelation, 26, 27—“The lofty plane reached by the prophets was
not reached at a single bound.... There must have been a tap-root
extending far down into the earth.” Kurtz remarks that “the later
books of the O. T. would be a tree without roots, if the
composition of the Pentateuch were transferred to a later period
of Hebrew history.” If we substitute for the word “Pentateuch” the
words “Book of the covenant,” we may assent to this dictum of
Kurtz. There is sufficient evidence that, before the times of
Hosea and Amos, Israel possessed a written law—the law embraced in
_Exodus 20-24_—but the Pentateuch as we now have it, including
Leviticus, seems to date no further back than the time of
Jeremiah, 445 B. C. The Levitical law however was only the
codification of statutes and customs whose origin lay far back in
the past and which were believed to be only the natural expansion
of the principles of Mosaic legislation.
Leathes, Structure of O. T., 54—“Zeal for the restoration of the
temple after the exile implied that it had long before been the
centre of the national polity, that there had been a ritual and a
law before the exile.” Present Day Tracts, 3:52—Levitical
institutions could not have been first established by David. It is
inconceivable that he “could have taken a whole tribe, and no
trace remain of so revolutionary a measure as the dispossessing
them of their property to make them ministers of religion.” James
Robertson, Early History of Israel: “The varied literature of
850-750 B. C. implies the existence of reading and writing for
some time before. Amos and Hosea hold, for the period succeeding
Moses, the same scheme of history which modern critics pronounce
late and unhistorical. The eighth century B. C. was a time of
broad historic day, when Israel had a definite account to give of
itself and of its history. The critics appeal to the prophets, but
they reject the prophets when these tell us that other teachers
taught the same truth before them, and when they declare that
their nation had been taught a better religion and had declined
from it, in other words, that there had been law long before their
day. The kings did not _give law_. The priests _presupposed_ it.
There must have been a formal system of law much earlier than the
critics admit, and also an earlier reference in their worship to
the great events which made them a separate people.” And Dillman
goes yet further back and declares that the entire work of Moses
presupposes “a preparatory stage of higher religion in Abraham.”
(_h_) From the repeated assertions of Scripture that Moses himself wrote a
law for his people, confirmed as these are by evidence of literary and
legislative activity in other nations far antedating his time.
_Ex. 24:4—_“And Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah”;
_34:27—_“And Jehovah said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for
after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee
and with Israel”; _Num. 33:2—_“And Moses wrote their goings out
according to their journeys by the commandment of Jehovah”; _Deut.
31:9—_“And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests
the sons of Levi, that bare the ark of the covenant of Jehovah,
and unto all the elders of Israel”; _22—_“So Moses wrote this song
the same day, and taught it the children of Israel”; _24-26—_“And
it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words
of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses
commanded the Levites, that bare the ark of the covenant of
Jehovah, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it by the side
of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, that it may be
there for a witness against thee.” The law here mentioned may
possibly be only “the book of the covenant”_ (Ex. 20-24)_, and the
speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy may have been orally handed down.
But the fact that Moses was “instructed in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians”_ (Acts 7:22)_, together with the fact that the art of
writing was known in Egypt for many hundred years before his time,
make it more probable that a larger portion of the Pentateuch was
of his own composition.
Kenyon, in Hastings’ Dict., art.: Writing, dates the Proverbs of
Ptah-hotep, the first recorded literary composition in Egypt, at
3580-3536 B. C., and asserts the free use of writing among the
Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia as early as 4000 B. C. The
statutes of Hammurabi king of Babylon compare for extent with
those of Leviticus, yet they date back to the time of Abraham,
2200 B. C.,—indeed Hammurabi is now regarded by many as the
Amraphel of _Gen. 14:1_. Yet these statutes antedate Moses by 700
years. It is interesting to observe that Hammurabi professes to
have received his statutes directly from the Sun-god of Sippar,
his capital city. See translation by Winckler, in Der alte Orient,
97; Johns, The Oldest Code of Laws; Kelso, in Princeton Theol.
Rev., July, 1905:399-412—Facts “authenticate the traditional date
of the Book of the Covenant, overthrow the formula Prophets and
Law, restore the old order Law and Prophets, and put into
historical perspective the tradition that Moses was the author of
the Sinaitic legislation.”
As the controversy with regard to the genuineness of the Old Testament
books has turned of late upon the claims of the Higher Criticism in
general, and upon the claims of the Pentateuch in particular, we subjoin
separate notes upon these subjects.
_The Higher Criticism in general._ Higher Criticism does not mean
criticism in any invidious sense, any more than Kant’s Critique of
Pure Reason was an unfavorable or destructive examination. It is
merely a dispassionate investigation of the authorship, date and
purpose of Scripture books, in the light of their composition,
style and internal characteristics. As the Lower Criticism is a
text-critique, the Higher Criticism is a structure-critique. A
bright Frenchman described a literary critic as one who rips open
the doll to get at the sawdust there is in it. This can be done
with a sceptical and hostile spirit, and there can be little doubt
that some of the higher critics of the Old Testament have begun
their studies with prepossessions against the supernatural, which
have vitiated all their conclusions. These presuppositions are
often unconscious, but none the less influential. When Bishop
Colenso examined the Pentateuch and Joshua, he disclaimed any
intention of assailing the miraculous narratives as such; as if he
had said: “My dear little fish, you need not fear me; I do not
wish to catch you; I only intend to drain the pond in which you
live.” To many scholars the waters at present seem very low in the
Hexateuch and indeed throughout the whole Old Testament.
Shakespeare made over and incorporated many old Chronicles of
Plutarch and Holinshed, and many Italian tales and early tragedies
of other writers; but Pericles and Titus Andronicus still pass
current under the name of Shakespeare. We speak even now of
“Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar,” although of its twenty-seven editions
the last fourteen have been published since his death, and more of
it has been written by other editors than Gesenius ever wrote
himself. We speak of “Webster’s Dictionary,” though there are in
the “Unabridged” thousands of words and definitions that Webster
never saw. Francis Brown: “A modern writer masters older records
and writes a wholly new book. Not so with eastern historians. The
latest comer, as Renan says, ‘absorbs his predecessors without
assimilating them, so that the most recent has in its belly the
fragments of the previous works in a raw state.’ The Diatessaron
of Tatian is a parallel to the composite structure of the O. T.
books. One passage yields the following: _Mat. 21:12a_; _John
2:14a_; _Mat. 21:12b_; _John 2:14b, 15_; _Mat. 21:12c, 13_; _John
2:16_; _Mark 11:16_; _John 2:17-22_; all succeeding each other
without a break.” Gore, Lux Mundi, 353—“There is nothing
materially untruthful, though there is something uncritical, in
attributing the whole legislation to Moses acting under the divine
command. It would be only of a piece with the attribution of the
collection of Psalms to David, and of Proverbs to Solomon.”