University o Chicago
lEibravics
I.
THE FOUR GOSPELS AND THE
CHRISTIAN LIFE
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CENTURY AND
THE PROBABLE DATES OF THE
FOUR GOSPELS
Birth of
Christ
B.C. 4
Crucifixion
of Christ
29
Destruction of
Jerusalem
70
Death of
John
98
Life of Christ
Gentile Ch
Jewish Christianity
ristiamty
100"
10 20 30 40 50 60 7
80 90
70
MARK
75
MATTHEW
83
LUKE
98(-110)
JOHN
. "- ". '= ' ' \ *
The Four Gospels aod/ihe,
I *;>:>' " /-'., ; 1 , J ;. : ' ' - > '
*V^il' "" '--A *"'*' "'"'' : T * ; ^
Christian JLire
WALTER B. DENNY, S.T.M.
I
Pastor of the First Congregational Church,
Huntington, Conn.
THE PILGRIM PRESS
BOSTON CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT 1925
BY SIDNEY A. WESTON
Printed in the United States of America
THE JORDAN & MORE PRESS
BOSTON
719345
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY WIFE,
WHOSE LOVE FOR CHRIST
AND EAGERNESS TO MAKE HIM KNOWN
WERE THE INSPIRATION
OF THIS BOOK
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE GOSPEL AND THE GOSPELS . . 1
II MARK, THE EARLIEST GOSPEL . . .23
III MATTHEW, AND THE "SAYINGS OF JESUS" 49
IV LUKE, AND THE LOST GOSPELS ... 73
V THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE FIRST
THREE GOSPELS . . . . . . 95
VI JOHN, THE LATEST GOSPEL .... 119
VII THE HISTORICAL JESUS 141
VIII THE CHRIST OF EXPERIENCE . . . 161
IX How TO STUDY THE GOSPELS . . . 183
CHAPTER I
The Gospel and the Gospels
1. The first Christian century. The period
covered by the lives of Jesus and his apostles
includes almost exactly the first century of
our era. If we represent the century by
a horizontal line (see chart, frontispiece)
divided for convenience into ten-year sec-
tions, we shall be able to get a simple, bird's-
eye view of the great movements that resulted
in the permanent establishment of the Chris-
tian religion in the world. Four events with
their dates stand out most prominently:
(1) the birth of Jesus, B.C. 4 1 ; (2) the death
of Jesus, A.D. 29; (3) the destruction of
Jerusalem, A.D. 70; (4) the death of John, the
last of the original apostles, about A.D. 98.
These dates help us to see the three main
movements that had to do with the founding
of Christianity: (1) the life of Jesus, lasting
1 The Christian era, or system of dating from the birth of
Christ, was originated about the middle of the sixth century by
Dionysius Exiguus, abbott of a monastery in Rome. It has been
discovered since then that Dionysius was mistaken by several
years in his date for the birth of Christ. Since it is now impracti-
cable to change the calendar, the birth of Christ must accordingly
be given as B.C. 4.
The Four Gospels
about a third of a century; (2) the period of
Jewish Christianity, when the center of the
Christian movement was in Jerusalem; (3)
the period of Gentile, or non-Jewish Chris-
tianity, when the new religion spread out
beyond the borders of Palestine, and took root
in the provinces and cities of the Roman
empire. It will be noticed that these last
two periods overlap considerably, for the
change from one to the other was accom-
panied by much struggle and controversy,
and took a long time.
2. The career of Jesus. Jesus was about
thirty-three years old when the Roman
authorities, to please the Jews, nailed him to
the cross. Thirty years of his life were passed
chiefly in the village of Nazareth, where he
grew up and followed the trade of a carpenter.
We have so little direct knowledge of these
years that they are often called the " hidden
years." But all this time he was growing,
developing in body and mind, so that when
at last he laid aside his tools and entered
upon his work of preaching and healing, he
was fully prepared.
In three short years he lived in the light of
pitiless publicity such a life that for two
thousand years no one has been able to
detect a flaw in his personal character ; his
teaching remains the highest standard that
4
The Gospel and the Gospels
the world has known for individual lives and
for civilization itself; and his life as a whole,
sealed by his obedience unto death and fol-
lowed by his triumphant resurrection, has
proved to be the greatest incentive in the
world for lifting men and society into higher
and nobler ways of living.
3. The Jewish church in Jerusalem. A
few weeks after the death of Jesus his disciples
passed through a strange and wonderful
experience (Acts 2) which convinced them
absolutely that Jesus was living, spiritually
and invisibly, in their midst. This experi-
ence marks the historical beginning of the
Christian Church.
The first disciples were all Jews, and the
headquarters of the new movement were in
Jerusalem, probably in the home of Mary, .
mother of John Mark, where Jesus may have
celebrated his last Passover meal with his
disciples, and where the Pentecostal experi-
ence may have taken place. The new church
appeared to be little more than a new sect,
or denomination, of the Jewish religion, the
unique feature being that its members be-
lieved that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah,
and that though he was already spiritually
present, he would soon return bodily and
visibly, to deliver the Jewish people from their
subjection to Rome, and make of them a great
5
The Four Gospels
and independent nation. Only Jews were
admitted into the membership of this infant
church.
The leaders of the church in this earliest
period were Simon Peter, and James and John
the sons of Zebedee. James was soon put
to death by the Roman provincial " king "
(Acts 12 : 2), and another James, the brother
of Jesus himself, took his place among the
leaders of the Jerusalem church.
4. The Gentile churches of Paul. Jesus
himself did not intend that his followers
should be only Jews. He came to bring the
knowledge of God to all men. It was with
great reluctance and only through hard
experiences that the early apostles overcame
their race prejudices, and acknowledged that
Gentiles, i. e., Greeks and Romans, could also
become Christians. Peter learned this
lesson (Acts 10), though he sometimes forgot
it (Gal. 2 : 11-14), and did not become the
leader of the Gentile church in Rome until
the very last years of his life.
It is Paul to whom belongs the credit of
making the new religion break away from its
Jewish limitations, and spread everywhere
throughout the Roman world. Without the
tireless and heroic labours of this great mis-
sionary it is hard to see how Christianity
could ever have grown to be anything more
6
The Gospel and the Gospels
than a sect of Judaism. With the sagacity
of a great statesman, Paul carried his gospel
message into the provinces of Asia Minor,
then into Greece, and at last into Rome
itself, where a church had already been
organized before his coming. When at last
the armies of Titus destroyed the city of
Jerusalem, and the Jews ceased to exist as a
distinct nation, and the Christians in Jerusa-
lem were scattered along with their Jewish
brethren, Paul had already planted the
religion of Christ so widely that it did not
perish with the Jewish temple, but lived on
with its roots firmly embedded in the life of
the Gentile Roman world.
After the death of Paul the center of
interest in the Christian movement shifts
first to Peter, who now moved to Rome and
became the leader of the important church
there. Later our attention is directed chiefly
to Ephesus, an important city in Asia Minor,
where the large and strong church became
the center of a flourishing missionary move-
ment in the surrounding provinces. Here
the apostle John seems to have been the
leader, and here the last of our Gospels was
written at the end of the first century or in
the first years of the second.
5. When the Gospels were written. With
this brief review of the early years of Chris-
7
The Four Gospels
tianity in mind, we may now note the names
and the dates of our four Gospels upon
our diagram. It should be remembered that
there are many complicated problems in-
volved in the correct dating of these writings,
so that it must not be inferred that the dates
here given command the unanimous assent
of all scholars. It is quite certain, however,
that Mark was the first, and that it was
written about the time of the destruction of
Jerusalem (A.D. 70). Matthew and Luke
came next, following Mark within ten or
fifteen years. It seems probable that Mat-
thew was written quite soon after the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem (about A.D. 75), in view of
its evident interest in the problems that
grew out of that event; some scholars,
however, believe that it was written after
Luke (which we may assign to A.D. 83).
The fourth or The Gospel of John was
considerably later, coming at the very end of
the century, or in the opening years of the fol-
lowing century (A.D. 98-110).
Two facts of great importance now stand
out clearly as we survey our diagram.
(1) The first three Gospels stand fairly
close together in point of time, while John's
Gospel is so much later that it stands in a
class by itself. As we shall see later, the
8
The Gospel and the Gospels
first three Gospels have certain points of
resemblance that make it convenient to
study them in a group, while John is so
different from the others that it requires
special study.
(2) Not one of the Gospels was written
for more than forty years after the events
which it narrates. This fact is of great
importance. During this time a whole new
generation was born and grew up. The
men who wrote the Gospels had become old
men. We are to think of these four memoirs
of Jesus as the work of old and mature men
writing for the help of younger people. They
are not trying merely to give their readers
an exact chronicle of all that Jesus said and
did, but are selecting those stories out of
their knowledge of his life that they had come
to feel were the most significant, and that
would give these younger Christians, who had
never seen Jesus, a strong and true impres-
sion of him.
6. Why the Gospels were not written
earlier. There were at least four reasons
why Christians did not earlier feel the need
of writing down the stories of the life and
teachings of Jesus.
(1) They expected Jesus to return in per-
son very soon. All the records of the early
churches show that this belief was very
9
The Four Gospels
strong among the first Christians (see, for
example, Acts 1 : 11; 3 : 20; 1 Thess. 4 : 13-
18). This belief was based chiefly on the
fact that the previous career of Jesus had not
corresponded to the hopes of the Jewish
nation regarding their Messiah ; consequently
the disciples assumed that he must be coming
back again to fulfill literally the ancient
promises. A literal and prejudiced inter-
pretation of some of Jesus' own teachings
seemed to support this belief. With this
hope so strong among them, their chief
interest was not in recalling his past life, but
in looking forward and getting ready for the
greater times that they believed were just
ahead.
(2) To these early Christians the matter of
supreme importance, while they waited and
made ready for their Master's return, was
the cultivation of a keen sense of fellowship,
by faith and prayer, with the invisible,
spiritually present Lord. This sense of the
spiritual presence of Christ in their hearts,
and in their midst as the bond of their Chris-
tian brotherhood, was what made them
Christians. It did not seem nearly as im-
portant to them to remember all the things
that happened during the earthly career of
their Master, as it was to cultivate this
inward certainty that he was even now close
10
The Gospel and the Gospels
to them, saving them from their sins, helping
them every moment to bear their burdens,
and leading them, in their efforts to induce
others to become Christians. Paul, espe-
cially, emphasized this idea of the Christian's
personal experience of fellowship with the
risen and invisible Christ. He even said,
" Though we have known Christ after the
flesh, yet now we know him so no more "
(2 Cor. 5 : 16). Christ, for these ardent
believers, was far more a Living Presence
than a fond, but fading, memory.
(3) So far as there was ah interest among
them in the historical career of Jesus, it
seemed quite natural for them to depend on
the stories which Peter and John and James
and the other apostles could tell them. For
were not these men living eye-witnesses of
these things? Was it not far more satisfactory
to listen to the words of one who had been
there, who had heard with his own ears and
seen with his own eyes the wonderful things
that Jesus had taught and done? As long
as these men who had known Jesus personally
could travel about among the churches and
talk about him out of their own personal
recollections, no great need was felt for
written records of his career.
(4) As the new religion spread and new
churches were formed, it soon became neces-
ii
The Four Gospels
sary to arrange for some sort of systematic
instruction for the new converts in matters
pertaining to their new way of life. Many of
these new Christians, especially in the Gentile
cities outside of Palestine, knew absolutely
nothing about Jesus except what they had
heard from the missionaries who had led
them to accept the new faith. They believed
that Christ was an invisible, spiritual Pres-
ence, who could help them to live better
lives, and who was soon to appear visibly and
set up his wonderful reign in Jerusalem.
The next step necessary was to gather these
new disciples into instruction classes. Older
and more mature Christians were appointed
to teach them. The main subject of instruc-
tion was, of course, the meaning and the
duties of the Christian life, so that they might
live worthily while they waited and watched
for their Master. Yet there must also have
been some time spent in telling the stories of
Jesus' earthly career, which these teachers
knew from their own experience or had heard
from the apostles. Through this system of
instruction classes there soon grew up a
collection of stories about Jesus which were
used to illustrate and enforce the duties of the
Christian life. Only the most useful stories
were thus preserved, and these were told and
re-told until their literary form had been
12
The Gospel and the Gospels
made as perfect as possible. This collection
of stories was preserved by memorizing
them an accomplishment in which the
ancients far excelled us; and as long as
memorizing seemed sufficient, it was not felt
necessary to go to the great labour (in those
days) of reducing them to writing.
7. How the Gospels came to be written.
As time went on, however, each of these
reasons for not putting the stories of Jesus
into writing became at last an actual reason
for writing them down.
(1) Since the earliest disciples confidently
expected Jesus' visible return to them during
their own lifetime, they naturally felt that
there was no great need for preserving written
accounts of his former career. His new
presence and further teaching would soon
satisfy all their needs. But the years slipped
rapidly by, and no such event occurred as
they were fondly expecting. Jesus did not
miraculously descend from heaven with his
angels in clouds of glory. At last, when
Jerusalem had been destroyed, and the na-
tional life of the Jews had come to an end,
and even then Jesus had not reappeared, the
Christians began to realize that they must
have misunderstood his teaching and the
teaching of their prophets. At any rate,
they perceived that if he was really going to
The Four Gospels
come back in the way they had expected,
this event was not going to happen in the
lifetime of most of those who had known him
during his former career on earth. This
need of revising their beliefs about his second
coming led them to see that it was time to
have some permanent record of the events and
teachings of his earthly life.
(2) The early Christians had been quite
right in insisting that spiritual fellowship
with the living, invisible Christ was the very
foundation of the Christian life. But when
people start out to live such a life of com-
munion with an unseen Presence, they need
something more than their own imagination
or feelings to tell them what sort of a Being
their unseen Lord is and what things he
expects of them. Without the example of
his earthly life and teachings they could not
know whether the suggestions that came to
them in their moments of prayer or devotion,
the promptings of conscience, the visions
inspired by exalted feelings, the ideas result-
ing from careful reflection, were really his
voice or not. The result of neglecting the
careful study of his earthly life was that
" Christian experience " came to be a term
that sanctioned every imaginable variety
and extravagance of feeling and thought,
from trance-like emotional states to conduct
14
The Gospel and the Gospels
that was actually immoral. Gradually it was
perceived that the true experience of com-
munion with the living Christ must be guided,
checked, standardized, by referring it always
to an authoritative record of what Jesus had
taught and done in his visible, earthly life.
(3) As the years sped on, the help which
the Church had received from the reports of
the apostles, who were eye-witnesses of the
life of Jesus, began to fail. The apostles
died. Beginning with James, who was put
to death by Herod, the men who had been
Jesus' closest companions one by one " fell
asleep," and the Church could no longer
turn to them for personal recollections of
the Master. This fact, too, became at last
a strong incentive to writing the records of
Jesus' career, so as to preserve them in some
permanent and authoritative form before it
was too late.
(4) We have referred to the instruction
classes, and the collection of stories, or
" oral tradition," that grew up by this means.
These stories were repeated from memory,
and thus taught to others, who also memo-
rized and repeated them. But even the
wonderful capacity of the ancient Oriental
world for memorizing had its limits. Sooner
or later, such a method of preserving the life
of Christ was sure to result in changes in
The Four Gospels
the stories, unintentional inaccuracies or
prejudiced interpretations; and there came
a time at last when it was felt to be necessary
to get this oral tradition written down, to
save it from becoming unreliable.
8. Religious controversy reflected in the
Gospels. The new religion of Christ did not
spread and establish itself without a great
deal of opposition. Its new way of life had
to struggle hard against competing views
and practices. While the Gospels were not
intended primarily for the purposes of religious
controversy, there are, nevertheless, many
traces to be found in them of the conflicts that
were going on at the time they were written.
These traces are, naturally, not obvious to the
casual reader, but they become apparent when
the Gospels are studied in the light of some
previous knowledge of the conditions of the
times.
During the first century the opposition to
Christianity came from three main sources.
(1) Judaism. The earliest Christians were
all adherents of the Jewish religion. They
seemed to consider their new faith as a new
branch of Judaism. Many of them felt that
it was terribly wrong to abandon the Jewish
rites and ceremonies that had always been a
part of their religion. Consequently, not
only from those Jews who never became Chris-
16
The Gospel and the Gospels
tians at all, but even from within the ranks of
the Church itself, there was strong opposition
to any view of the new faith that tended to
make it independent of the traditional religion
of Israel.
Paul was the leader who saw most clearly
that the religion of Christ must break away
completely from everything that was merely
Jewish, if it was ever to spread and become a
permanent world-religion. Heroically he set
himself to this task. It involved him in
constant controversy, often extremely bitter,
with the Jewish faction in the Church. But
he succeeded, and to his success is due the
fact that the religion of Christ survived the
catastrophe that finally overthrew the Jewish
temple and destroyed the Jewish nation.
While this great controversy with Judaism
centered about the apostle Paul, there are
many traces of it reflected in the Gospels.
The writers of our Gospels found it necessary
again and again to tell their story in such a
way as to remind their readers that this
Christ about whom they were writing was not
merely a Jewish Messiah, but the Saviour
of the world.
(2) Paganism. The new religion also had
to make its way against the competition and
opposition of the heathen spirit of the Roman
civilization, and this rivalry often involved
17
The Four Gospels
controversy and persecution. The pagan
spirit of Rome came into conflict with the
early Church in three forms: the popular
heathen religion, which was a crude and often
vulgar idol-worship; Roman politics, which
had exalted the emperor into an object of
religious worship, largely for political pur-
poses ; and the general social life of the times,
which was fearfully degraded and immoral.
Against each of these forms of opposition the
Christian religion had to take a strong stand.
Christians must have nothing to do with the
religious observances of the heathen temples ;
they must acknowledge the emperor as their
lawful ruler, but must refuse absolutely to
worship him as a god ; and they must separate
themselves completely from the immorality
that was so common that society no longer
condemned it. All this involved steadfast-
ness, loyalty even to the point of martyrdom,
and a spirit of uncompromising separation
from the world, that made the Christian life
an unceasing struggle. Our Gospels show
many indications of this conflict that put
Christianity and the " world " into such
direct opposition to each other.
(3) Gnosticism. In some sections of the
early Church, leaders who were versed in the
various heathen philosophies of the time
tried to harmonize the teachings of these
18
The Gospel and the Gospels
philosophies with the teachings of Chris-
tianity. These efforts resulted in the great
movement known as " gnosticism." The
clearest thinkers in the Church, however,
realized that these gnostic views were a
compromise between Christianity and hea-
thenism which really undermined all that was
most essential and valuable in Christianity.
Consequently they declared war to the finish
against these gnostic teachers, in order that
they might keep Christianity pure and true
to the spirit and teachings of its Founder.
The gnostic 'movement came to its. height
after the first century, but the first traces
of it appeared before the apostles were dead,
and reflections of Paul's opposition to it are
to be found especially in his epistle to the
Colossians. Among the Gospels it is John's
that shows a special interest in this subject.
For this was the latest of the Gospels, and
was written in Ephesus, which was one of the
important centers of the new gnostic philoso-
phy. It is one of the main objects of John's
, Gospel to insist that the Christian faith must
be built directly upon the foundation of the
historical life of Jesus, and not allowed to go
wandering off into the mists of philosophical
speculations.
The Four Gospels
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
VON SODEN, History of Early Christian Literature, pp.
1-20, 121-127.
KENT, Life and Teachings of Jesus, ch. IV.
SCOTT, Apologetic of the New Testament, ch. I.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND FURTHER
STUDY
1. Which Gospel is the longest? shortest? earliest?
latest? How many chapters in each Gospel? What
is the approximate date of each Gospel? Which
Gospels contain stories of the birth and infancy of
Jesus? At what points in his life do the others begin?
2. What was Paul's greatest service to the Christian
religion?
3. In what sense is it fair to say that Jesus was the
founder of the Christian religion? Peter? Paul?
4. Of the four reasons given for finally putting the
Gospels into permanent written form, which do you
think was the first reason to influence the Gospel
writers? Which was the strongest in its incentive?
Which the most important from the standpoint of the
centuries that have followed?
5. What seems to be the probable reason why we
have four Gospels, and only four, in our New Testa-
ment? Preserve your answer for possible correction
in view of the chapters following.
6. Why do all the Gospels give nearly one-fourth of
their space to the events immediately connected with
the death of Jesus?
7. What subjects of religious controversy among the
early Christians are reflected in the following: Mark
7: 19, "making all meats clean" (cf. Romans 14);
Mark 10 : 42-44; John 18 : 36; John 1 : 14?
2O
The Gospel and the Gospels
OUTLINE OF MARK'S GOSPEL
I SUPERSCRIPTION, 1 : 1.
II PREPARATION FOR JESUS' PUBLIC CAREER,
1 : 2-13.
Ill THE GALILEAN MINISTRY, 1 : 14 7 : 23.
1 Jesus' Rise to Fame, 1 : 14-45.
The first preaching, disciples, miracles.
2 The Beginnings of Opposition, 2:1 3:6.
Five hostile criticisms by the Pharisees.
3 Results, 3 : 7-35.
Crowds excited; apostles chosen; scribes oppos-
ing; brethren worried.
4 Teaching by Parables,. 4 : 1-34.
An attempt to reach the people by a new method.
5 Miracles of Power, 4 : 35 5 : 43.
Jesus' control over nature, demons, disease and
death.
6 The Climax of Jesus' Fame, ch. 6.
His work is about to develop into a mass-
movement.
7 Jesus' Work Stopped by the Pharisees,
7 : 1-23.
IV JOURNEYS IN THE NORTH, 7 : 24 9 : 50.
1 Ministry in Phoenicia and Northern Galilee,
7 : 24 8 : 26.
Jesus seeks obscurity, in order to teach his
disciples.
2 The Crisis at Caesarea Philippi, 8 : 27
9:29.
Peter's confession leads Jesus to speak plainly
about his coming death and resurrection.
3 Teaching about Greatness and Peace, 9 :
30-50.
21
The Four Gospels
V THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM, ch. 10.
Teachings about divorce, children, riches, true
greatness; healing of blind Bartimaeus.
VI THE MESSIANIC ANNOUNCEMENT, 11 : 1-26.
Jesus' claims set forth symbolically by the
entrance into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the
temple, and the withering of the fig-tree.
VII CONFLICT WITH THE JEWISH LEADERS, 11 : 27
12 : 40.
Controversies in which the Pharisees 1 rejection
of Jesus is followed by Jesus' rejection of the
Pharisees.
VIII FORECAST OF THE OVERTHROW OF THE TEMPLE,
12 : 41 13 : 37.
IX THE DEATH OF JESUS, chs. 14-15.
X THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION, ch. 16.
22
MARK, THE EARLIEST GOSPEL
CHAPTER II
Mark, the Earliest Gospel
1. The home and family of John Mark.
In Acts 12 : 11-14 we read that Peter, after
he was released from the prison in Jerusalem,
hastened to " the house of Mary, the mother
of John, whose surname was Mark, where
many were gathered together and were pray-
ing." These statements introduce us to
John Mark, more commonly called Mark, 1
who later became the author of our earliest
Gospel. His mother, Mary, was evidently a
Christian, and seems to have opened her
home as a central meeting-place for the Chris-
tians of Jerusalem. Here Mark became
acquainted with the leaders of the Christian
movement, especially with Peter, with whom
he afterwards became closely associated.
2. Mark's personal contact with Jesus.
Although we have no direct evidence, it is
quite possible that the large guest-room on
1 It was not uncommon for Jews to add Roman surnames to
their first, or Jewish, names. In this case Mark (Marcus) is
the Roman name, and John the original, or Hebrew, name. Cf.
Acts 13: 9.
25
The Four Gospels
the second story of Mary's house was the
" upper room " where Jesus and his disciples
celebrated their last Passover together. The
place where this Passover was eaten was some
home in which Jesus was already known, and
if it was in Mary's house, Mark must have
had more than one opportunity to see Jesus
and to become acquainted with him.
There is an interesting anecdote related
in Mark's Gospel (14 : 51-52) in connection
with the betrayal and arrest of Jesus. " And
a certain young man followed with him, hav-
ing a linen cloth cast about him, over his
naked body: and they lay hold on him; but
he left the linen cloth, and fled naked."
Many scholars have felt that the best explana-
tion of this story is that Mark himself was
the " certain young man," though in relating
the incident he has modestly refrained from
mentioning his own name. If this is true,
it confirms the supposition that Mark, while
not one of the company of apostles, was
nevertheless a devoted friend and follower of
Jesus, especially in the last days of the
Master's life.
3. Mark's relation to Paul. There are
many references in Acts and in Paul's letters
which show that Mark was one of the active
workers in the missionary efforts of the early
church, and sometimes a companion of the
26
The Earliest Gospel
great apostle himself. In Acts 11 : 30 we
read that Barnabas and Saul (Paul) came
from Antioch to Jerusalem to bring a gift for
the famine-stricken Christians in Jerusalem.
Barnabas was John Mark's cousin (Col.
4 : 10), so it is altogether probable that they
were Mary's guests. When they left Jeru-
salem (Acts 12 : 25), they took Mark with
them to Antioch, and from there the three
men set out on a missionary tour together
(13 :4-5). When they reached Pamphylia,
Mark left them and returned home (13 : 13).
No reason is given for his return. Some have
thought he was unable to stand the hardships
of missionary life. Others have suggested
that his mother's failing health may have
made it unwise for him to remain away
longer. Whatever the reason was, Paul did
not like it, for later, when he was starting
out on a new journey, it was suggested that he
take Mark along with him, and he objected
strongly, and seems to have felt that Mark had
been unfaithful in leaving him on the previ-
ous journey (15 : 3 6-40). The outcome was
that Paul and Silas started off together for a
long missionary tour, while Mark and his
cousin Barnabas were sent out on a shorter
journey, to visit the Christians in Cyprus.
The disagreement with Paul was healed
over in time, for some years later we find
37
The Four Gospels
Paul in his letters speaking of Mark as his
" fellow- worker " (Philemon 24), and as "use-
ful " to him (2 Timothy 4:11), and instruct-
ing the Christians in Colossae to receive
Mark kindly when he visits them (Col. 4 : 10).
4. Mark's relation to Peter. After Paul's
death Mark became the companion and
helper of Peter. He had known Peter, of
course, in the old Jerusalem days, when his
mother's home was the general meeting-
place of the Christians in Jerusalem. The
influence of Peter upon the young John Mark
in those days can scarcely be over-estimated.
Peter was recognized by all as the leader
of the apOvStolic band, a position which he
held not only by the command of Christ
himself, but because of his natural gifts
of leadership. To Peter, therefore, more
than to any one else, these early disciples,
like Mark, looked for instruction and guid-
ance. Peter, just because he had given early
promise of leadership, had been given excep-
tional opportunities by Jesus to share inti-
mately his ideals and his spirit. He had
devoted himself to Jesus with all the splendid
powers of his keen, questioning mind, his
ardent and often rash enthusiasm, and his
dominating energy, and now out of his rich
experience with the Master he was giving
himself without stint to the group of disciples
28
The Earliest Gospel
who looked to him for inspiration and teach-
ing. To all this activity of Peter, Mark
responded by catching his spirit and even his
very phraseology, so that Mark's Jesus was
essentially Jesus as he was reflected through
the personality of Simon Peter. The col-
lection of narratives and reminiscences which
Mark later arranged into his " Gospel " are
thus stamped with the individuality of Peter
no less than with that of Mark himself.
So we are not surprised to find Mark and
Peter together in the last years of the latter's
life. In the first epistle of Peter, the apostle
writes from Rome, which the early Christians
had nicknamed " Babylon," because of its
greatness and its wickedness. He says, " She
(the church) that is in Babylon, elect together
with you, saluteth you; and so doth Mark,
my son " (1 Peter 5 : 13). Here we see
Mark, now a mature Christian and an experi-
enced missionary, living in Rome with the
aged Peter, who depends on him for help and
loves him as a son. It was soon after the
death of Peter, while Mark was probably
still living in Rome, that the earliest of our
Gospels was written.
5. Religious instruction in the early Church.
As long as the Christian movement was
confined to Jerusalem and the regions where
Jesus had lived and worked, his apostles
29
The Four Gospels
could appeal confidently to their hearers'
own knowledge to confirm the things they
preached about him. No public character
was better known in his own country than
Jesus. But when the gospel began to spread
beyond the borders of Palestine, and Gentiles,
who knew nothing of Jesus, nor even of the
Jewish Scriptures, began to respond to the
missionary appeal, it became necessary at
once to describe the career of Jesus, especially
his death and resurrection, 1 more fully to
the new audiences. As little groups of
converts were organized into local assemblies,
or " churches," it became important to
instruct them regarding the meaning and
duties of the Christian life. The apostles
could not do much of this work; they were
needed for the frontier work of carrying the
gospel into new regions. It was necessary
that gifted young men should be found, who,
either from their own knowledge of Jesus, or
from careful instructions from the apostles,
or both combined, could teach the new Chris-
tians the great facts about Jesus on which the
new religion rested. At first, as we have seen
in the last chapter, the subject matter of
such teaching was largely the doctrines about
1 See 1 Cor. 1 : 24, as suggesting the reason why it was so hard
for Jews to think of the crucified Jesus as their Messiah a
contradiction in terms! Ed.
30
The Earliest Gospel
Jesus, by means of which the apostles
explained his atoning death, his relation to
God, and his authority over the lives of his
followers. But more and more they came to
support these doctrines by narrating the
events, the deeds and the sayings of the Lord.
Thus the new Christians were instructed in
the faith.
John Mark may have been one of these
teachers. His personal character and gifts,
and the fact that he had known Jesus person-
ally, would make him one of the most useful
of this group of workers. His long experience
with Paul helped him to understand thor-
oughly Paul's teachings about Christ, and
his position as companion and helper of Peter
gave him an opportunity to learn many addi-
tional details about Jesus' deeds and teach-
ings. Probably no one in the whole body of
early Christians was better qualified to write
the first reliable story of the career of the
Master.
6. What the early Church Fathers say
about Mark and his Gospel. Many writings
of the leaders of the Church in the days
just following the apostles have been pre-
served, in whole or in part, and there are
several references in these writings to Mark
and his Gospel. Selecting only the oldest
and most trustworthy of these passages, we
The Four Gospels
may quote them to show how all we have said
about Mark as the author of the earliest
Gospel is confirmed.
Shortly after the death of Peter, the church
in Hierapolis, in Asia Minor, was in charge of
a man named Papias. Papias may have
known some of the apostles personally; at
any rate, he knew many of their intimate
friends. He wrote a book called " Interpre-
tation of the Sayings of the Lord." This
book has been lost, but some passages from
it have been preserved through quotations
in other writings made before it disappeared.
The passage we are interested in is quoted
by Eusebius, who wrote a history of the
Church, in the first part of the fourth century.
This is what Papias says about Mark, accord-
ing to Eusebius' quotation:
" And the Elder said this also: Mark,
having become the interpreter of Peter,
wrote down everything that he remembered,
without, however, recording in order what
was either said or done by Christ. For
neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow
Him; but afterwards, as I said (attended),
Peter, who adapted his instructions to the
needs (of his hearers), but had no design
of giving a connected account of the "Lord's
oracles (words). So then Mark made no
mistake while he thus wrote down some
32
The Earliest Gospel
things as he remembered them, for he made
it his one care not to omit anything that he
heard, or to set down any false statement
therein." 1
Irenaeus, the great leader of the church in
Lyons, was one of Papias' disciples. In a
quotation from one of his writings, made by
Eusebius in the Church History just referred
to, Irenaeus says:
11 After the departure of these (Peter and
Paul), Mark, the disciple and interpreter of
Peter, also transmitted to us in writing what
had been preached by Peter." 2
Finally, Eusebius himself, in his History,
says:
11 So greatly, however, did the splendour
of piety enlighten the minds of Peter's hearers,
that it was not sufficient to hear but once,
nor to receive the unwritten doctrine of the
gospel of God, but they persevered in every
variety of entreaties, to solicit Mark, as the
companion of Peter, and whose Gospel we
have, that he should leave them in writing
a monument of the doctrine thus orally com-
municated. Nor did they cease their solicita-
tions until they had prevailed with the man,
and thus became the cause of that history
1 Eusebius, H. E., iii, 39 (translated by Lightfoot, Apostolic
Fathers).
2 Eusebius, H. E., v, 8 (Kruse).
33
The Four Gospels
which is called the Gospel according to
Mark." 1
7. The writing of Mark's Gosp.el. These
quotations, together with the facts gathered
from the New Testament itself, are sufficient
to give us a good working theory of the
writing of our earliest Gospel. In Mark's
Gospel we have a record of Jesus' words and
deeds, written by Mark, chiefly from informa-
tion given him by Peter. It is impossible,
of course, to say in detail just how much of
the Gospel is the original work of Mark and
how much is really due to the apostle. The
remarkably vivid style, reflecting faithfully
so many of the picturesque details of Jesus'
surroundings, and of his very movements
and appearance, is probably the result of
Mark's loyal reproduction of the very lanr
guage in which Peter used to tell the stories
of the Master's life. The arrangement of the
stories into their natural order, to form a con-
tinuous narrative of Jesus' career, is probably
due to Mark himself. Thus, so closely are the
influence of Peter and the work of Mark
intermingled in this Gospel, that it would
hardly be an exaggeration to re-name the
Gospel the " Gospel according to Peter and
Mark."
The story of how Mark was led to under-
1 Eusebius, H. E., H, IS (Kruse).
34
The Earliest Gospel
take the work, and how the aged apostle
instructed and encouraged him, is beautifully
told by Edgar Lee Masters in his poem,
" The Gospel of Mark." 1
But Mark, my son, there's Rome below you
there
What temples, arches, under the full moon!
Here let us sit beside this chestnut tree,
And while the soft wind blows out of the sea
Let's finish up our talks. You must know
all
Wherewith to write the story e'er I die
Beneath the wrath of Nero. See that light,
Faint like a little candle, I passed there.
That's one of our poor men, they make us
lamps
Wherewith to light the streets and Nero's
gardens.
We shall be lamps they'll wish to snuff in
time.
We met tonight at one Silvanus' house,
And I was telling them about the night
When in Gethsemane you followed Him,
Having a cloth about your naked body.
And how you laid hold on him, left the cloth
And fled. But when you write this, you
can say,
" A certain young man," leaving out your
name,
1 " The Gospel of Mark " by Edgar Lee Masters; The Great
Valley, p. 147.
35
The Four Gospels
You may not wish to have it known 'twas
you
Who ran away, as I would like to hide
How I fell into sleep and failed to watch
And afterwards declared I knew Him not:
But as for me, omit no thing. The world
Will gain for seeing me rise out of weakness
To strength, and out of fear to boldness.
Time
Has wrought his wonders in me, I am rock.
Let hell beat on me, I shall stand from now!
Then don't forget the first man that he
healed.
There's deep significance in this, my son,
That first of all he'd take an unclean spirit
And cast it out. Then second was my
mother
Cured of her fever, just as you might say:
Be rid of madness, things that tear and
plague,
Then cool you of the fever of vain life.
But don't forget to write how he would say
" Tell no man of this," say that and no more.
Though I may think he said it lest the
crowds
That followed him would take his strength
for healing,
And leave no strength for words, let be and
write
" Tell no man of this," simply. For you see
These madmen quieted, these lepers cleansed
36
The Earliest Gospel
Had soon to die, all now are dead, perhaps.
And with them ends their good. But what
he said
Remains for generations yet to come, with
power
To heal and heal. My son, preserve your
notes,
Of what I've told you, even above your life.
Make many copies lest one script be lost.
I shall not to another tell it all
As I have told it you.
But as for me
What merit have I that I saw and said
" Thou art the Christ "? One sees the thing
he sees.
The lawyers said there's nothing in this
fellow.
His family beheld no wonder in him.
Have Mary Magdalene and I invented
These words, this story? who are we to
do so,
A fallen woman and a fisherman!
Or did this happen? Did we see these
things?
Did Mary see him risen, and did I ?
* * *
And I declare to you that untold millions
In centuries untold will live and die
By these words which you write, as I have
told them.
And nation after nation will be moulded,
37
The Four Gospels
As heated wax is moulded, by these words .
And spirits in their inmost power will feel
Change and regeneration through them
Go write what I have told you, come what
will
I'm going to the catacombs to pray.
8. The date of Mark's Gospel. The
quotations given from the early Church
Fathers suggest that Mark did not write his
Gospel until after the death of Peter. The
special attention given in chapter 13 to Christ's
teaching about the destruction of the temple
suggests, further, that the Gospel was written
very close to that event. But it is very
difficult to determine whether it was composed
just before or just after that great catastrophe.
We have therefore placed the date of the
Gospel at A.D. 70, the year of the destruction
of Jerusalem, though it may have been a
very short time either earlier or later.
9. The vivid narrative style of Mark. One
cannot read Mark without being impressed
with the rapidity of movement which char-
acterizes his story of Jesus. From the very
first paragraph there is something new hap-
pening every moment. This sense of move-
ment gives the Gospel a peculiar attractive-
ness to modern readers. It is due in part to
38
The Earliest Gospel
the small amount of space given to the say-
ings of Jesus. It is a Gospel of deeds rather
than of teachings. This stands out very
clearly as one compares Mark with Matthew
and Luke. The Sermon on the Mount is not
reported at all in Mark; there are only six
parables; and the three most important dis-
courses, the instructions to the Twelve (chap-
ter 3), the parables by the sea (chapter 4), and
the forecast of the destruction of the temple
(chapter 13), are all given in much shorter form
than in Matthew and Luke. This absence
of long discourses makes the movement of
the story just so much more condensed and
rapid.
The literary style, moreover, is remarkably
simple, straightforward and picturesque. The
author is fond of concrete, illustrative words,
when other writers would have used more
abstract expressions. Observe the frequent
use of the " historical present," as, for
example, " there cometh to him a leper "
(1 :40); "they come, bringing unto him a
man sick of the palsy "(2:3);" and straight-
way, while he yet spake, cometh Judas "
(14 :43). Many little realistic touches are
given to the story which are not found in the
other Gospels, such as the multitudes .crowd-
ing about him so that he could not eat (3 : 20) ;
Jesus sleeping on the cushion of the boat
39
The Four Gospels
(4 : 38) ; Jesus' sigh, when the Pharisees asked
him for a sign (8 : 12). Observe also the
frequent use of the word " straightway,"
especially in the opening chapters.
10. Mark's extreme candor and boldness.
Mark's realism goes further than just his
.picturesque diction. It is seen also in the
unreserved manner in which he tells his story.
He tells many things about Christ and his
apostles that other more cautious writers
would omit, for fear that unsympathetic
readers would get a wrong impression of the
greatness and perfection of Jesus and the
dignity of his apostles. Such frankness in
details, where Matthew or Luke would either
omit or soften down the language used,
indicates that Mark's chief interest was in
reporting faithfully his own or Peter's per-
sonal recollections of Jesus. Whether his
statements matched the theories that had
been thought out to explain the unique
personality of Christ, or not, was a matter of
quite secondary concern to Mark. His chief
business was to record the facts as accurately
and as completely as he knew them; he was
quite willing to leave to others the framing of
such theories about Christ as the facts might
warrant.
A few illustrations of this unreserved
manner of Mark may be given, from among
40
The Earliest Gospel
the many details which he gives in his story,
which the other Gospels either omit or soften
down, perhaps from reasons of prudence.
Thus Jesus is described as angry, or indignant,
in 3 : 5; 10 : 14. In 3 : 21, he is suspected
of insanity by his friends. In 6:5, he is
unable to perform miracles (cf. Matthew
13 : 58). Compare also the straightforward,
blunt statement of Jesus in Mark 10 : 18
with the softer, less perplexing statement
attributed to him in the corresponding pas-
sage in Matthew 19 : 17.
11. The Gospel was written for Gentile
readers. It is quite clear that Mark intended
his Gospel for circulation among non-Jewish
Christians, probably in the neighborhood of
Rome. This is evident from the fact that
there are very few quotations from the Old
Testament; there are constant explanations
of Jewish or Aramaic 1 words or phrases;
and references to Jewish customs are fre-
quently explained.
Jewish or Aramaic words or phrases are
explained in 3 : 17; 5 : 41; 7 : 11; 7 : 34;
10:46; 14:36; 15:22; 15:34. For
examples of Jewish customs that needed to
be explained to the readers, see 7 : 3, 4; 12 :
18; 14:12; 15:6; 15:42. Such explana-
1 Aramaic was the common language of Palestine in the time
of Jesus and his apostles. See page 97.
41
The Four Gospels
tions would not have been needed except
among non-Jewish readers. The frequent
occurrence of Latin terms, like denarius
(" shilling ") (6 : 37), centurion (15 : 39), cen-
sus (" tribute ") (12 : 14), praetorium (15 :
16), suggests that the book was written
among Roman Christians, and was intended
first of all for Roman readers.
12. What Mark thought of Christ. The
picture of Jesus that was in Mark's mind,
and that he wished to impress upon his
readers, was that of an active, ministering
Saviour. His conception of Christ was, of
course, largely derived from Peter, whose
ideas and teachings are as strongly reflected
in this Gospel as Mark's own. Peter's
thought of Christ is well summed up in his
words to Cornelius, in Acts 10 : 38: " Jesus
of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the
Holy Spirit and with power: who went about
doing good, and healing all that were op-
pressed of the devil; for God was with him."
Jesus is emphasized in this Gospel as the
Servant of God and man. Mark's portrait
of him reminds us strongly of those great
poetic portraits of the " Servant of Jehovah "
in the Old Testament, the most wonderful
of which is in Isaiah 52 : 13 to 53 : 12. This
magnificent poem describes the character of
a man who lacked all those outward dis-
42
The Earliest Gospel
tinguishing marks of rank or fortune that so
commonly commend a man to the attention
of others, but whose active sympathy gathered
into his own heart the sorrows and wrongs of
his fellows, even to the point of suffering an
undeserved death; and declares that such is
the ideal man, the true " Servant " of Jehovah,
the man in whom God is well pleased. If
one studies carefully Peter's references to
Christ in the early chapters of Acts, 1 it will
be seen that Peter had that great poem in
mind as he described his Master. He saw
in Jesus a true fulfillment of that wonderful
poetic portrait.
Moreover, a careful study of Jesus' own
experiences and words, especially in connec-
tion with his baptism, temptation and early
preaching, will show that he himself believed
that this prophetic poem described the most
perfect life possible to man, and that he con-
sciously adopted it as his model, and gave
himself up to living just that sort of a life.
We see him, in Mark's Gospel especially,
spending himself in sympathetic and self-
sacrificing service for others, identifying him-
self fully with the infirmities and sorrows of
men and the sufferings caused by their sins,
relieving every sort of disability and redeem-
ing every sort of failure, just as far as men
1 Acts 3 : 13, 18, 26; 4 : 27-28, 30. Cf. also 8 : 32-35.
43
The Four Gospels
were willing to accept his helping ministry;
and finally, in the great sacrifice of the cross,
suffering an unjust death, and in it rendering
his supreme service to men for their redemp-
tion.
The key-note of Mark's Gospel is the word
of Jesus in 10 : 45: " The Son of man came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and to give his life a ransom for many."
13. Mark's view of Christianity. The
Christianity of Mark's Gospel is the sort that
finds its chief expression in deeds of service,
performed in the name or spirit of Christ,
for the help of men. It is a Christianity
that does not deem the lowliest or smallest
deed of helpfulness unworthy of the spirit of
any earnest Christian, and which at the same
time does not shrink from the hardest and
most heroic sacrifice on behalf of others. No
Christianity that exhausts itself in private
religious emotions can find a warrant in
Mark's portrait of Jesus Christ. Prayer,
worship, meditation, are all vitally necessary,
yet they are never to be regarded as the final
ends of the Christian life. They are indis-
pensable means of keeping oneself in tune
with Christ, of cultivating the sense of
Christ's comradeship in the tasks of life; but
the final proofs of one's Christianity, accord-
ing to this earliest Gospel, are to be found out
,44
The Earliest Gospel
among one's fellows, in the sympathetic
bearing of others' burdens, and the unmeas-
ured devotion to Christ's enterprise of lifting
the world of selfish, sinning, weakened men
and women into a clearer and more helpful
relation to God.
No salvation that seeks safety merely,
some easy and private immunity from the
consequences of wrong-doing, can find a
sanction in this Gospel. Mark's type of
Christian is saved to serve. He is one who
has caught the spirit of Mark's Christ, and
who straightway makes his own comfort or
satisfaction a very secondary matter. Side by
side with his Master, he throws himself into
self-forgetting ministry to others. If he ever
does " save his own soul," it will be because
he has thus " lost " it in the service of God
and man.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
GOODSPEED, Story of the New Testament, ch. VIII.
BURTON, Short Introduction to the Gospels, ch. II.
BACON, Making of the New Testament, ch. VII
(pp. 154-173).
VON SODEN, History of Early Christian Literature,
pp. 153-164.
45
The Four Gospels
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND
FURTHER STUDY
1. Read the Gospel of Mark through, at one sitting,
if possible, following the Outline on page 21. Note
what seem to you to be (1) the three or four chief
crises in the career of Jesus; (2) the accumulation of
circumstances that brought on each crisis; (3) the
alternatives between which he had to choose at the
critical moment; (4) the results that followed his
decision in each case.
2. How much time would have been required for
such a public ministry as Mark records, if there were no
long intervals of time between the various events?
Try to appreciate the fact that the deeds and sayings
of Jesus that have been preserved are only a minute
fragment of a busy career that lasted some three years.
3. In selecting these particular incidents and sayings
for his Gospel, what motives influenced Mark?
4. Make a list of the parables in Mark. In 4:1,
what indications do you find that Jesus was making an
important change in his preaching plans at this time?
Why did he adopt the method of preaching by parables?
5. Do you find any indication in Mark that Jesus
expected his followers to organize themselves into the
" Christian Church " after his death? What, accord-
ing to chapter 13, did he expect would happen after his
death and resurrection? How soon? What is he
anxious his disciples shall do before that time (13 :10)?
Why?
OUTLINE OF MATTHEW'S GOSPEL
I GENEALOGY, BIRTH AND INFANCY OF JESUS,
chs. 1-2.
II PREPARATION FOR JESUS' PUBLIC CAREER,
3:14:11.
(Given with greater fullness than in Mark.)
46
The Earliest Gospel
III THE GALILEAN MINISTRY, 4 : 12 15 : 20.
(Most of the incidents, but only a small por-
tion of the teachings, are found in Mark.
Compare each section with the corresponding
section in the Outline of Mark, page 21.}
1 Jesus' Rise to Fame, 4 : 12-25.
2 The Sermon on the Mount (description of
the Kingdom), ch. 5-7.
3 Ten Miracles (the blessings of the Kingdom),
8 : 1 9 : 34.
4 Sending Forth the Disciples (instructions
concerning the propaganda of the King-
dom) 9 : 35 10 : 42.
5 Results general unresponsiveness, ch. 11-12.
6 Teaching by Parables, 13 : 1-53.
7 The Climax of Jesus'. Fame, 13 : 54 14: 36.
8 Jesus' Work Stopped by the Pharisees,
15 : 1-20.
IV JOURNEYS IN THE NORTH, 15 : 21 18 : 35.
1 Ministry in Phoenicia and Northern Galilee,
15 : 21 16 : 12.
Follows Mark, omitting two miracles recorded
by Mark.
2 The Crisis at Caesarea Philippi, 16 : 13
17 : 20.
Follows Mark, adding teaching about the
Church, 16 : 17-21.
3 Teachings about Greatness and Forgiveness,
17 : 22 18 : 35.
Almost wholly different from Mark.
V THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM, ch. 19, 20.
Follows Mark, with the addition of the parable
of the laborers in the vineyard, 20 : 1-16.
VI THE MESSIANIC ANNOUNCEMENT, 21 : 1-22*
Follows Mark.
47
The Four Gospels
VII CONFLICT WITH THE JEWISH LEADERS, 21 : 23
23 : 39.
Follows Mark, with the addition of the parables
of the two sons, and the marriage feast,
21 : 28-32 and 22 : 1-14. The section on
the denunciation of the Pharisees is much
longer than Mark's.
VIII FORECAST OF THE OVERTHROW OF THE TEMPLE,
chs. 24, 25.
Follows Mark, omitting Mark's story of the
widow's mites, and adding parables of the
ten virgins, the talents, and the teaching
about the judgment.
IX THE DEATH OF JESUS, chs. 26, 27.
Follows Mark, omitting the incident of the
young man who followed Christ, Mark
14 : 51-52, and adding several minor inci-
dents.
X THE RESURRECTION, ch. 28.
The section on the discovery of the empty tomb
is based on Mark; otherwise the story is
quite different.
MATTHEW, AND THE "SAYINGS
OF JESUS "
CHAPTER III
Matthew, and the "Sayings of Jesus"
1. Comparison of Matthew with Mark. If
one compares the outline of Matthew with
the outline of Mark (pages 21 and 46), or,
better still, if one reads the Gospel of Matthew
through rapidly with the two outlines before
him, he will notice certain traits that are
characteristic of Matthew, that stand out
all the more prominently in contrast with
Mark.
2. The arrangement of events and sayings
into groups. One of the first features that
will be noticed is Matthew's tendency to
gather the materials of his Gospel into well-
defined groups, each of which has some com-
mon idea running through it. Thus, the
" Sermon on the Mount " (chapters 5 to 7)
gathers together in fairly systematic fashion
the great teachings of Jesus about the king-
dom of heaven. Chapters 8 and 9 bring to-
gether ten miracles of Jesus which in Mark's
Gospel are widely separated as to time and
place. Chapter 10 presents a series of instruc-
tions to the disciples on the subject of service
The Four Gospels
to Christ, some of which have to do with the
tour which they were just beginning, while
others have to do with their service to his
cause after his death. Chapter 13 collects a
series of eight parables about the kingdom of
heaven. Chapter 23 presents a group of say-
ings which condemn the Pharisees for their
hypocrisy. Chapers 24 and 25 gather to-
gether many sayings and parables that deal
with the " end of the age."
3. The constant appeal to Old Testament
prophecy. Scarcely less striking is the large
number of quotations from the Old Testa-
ment which one finds in Matthew. In Mark
there are only a very few such quotations,
but in Matthew the Old Testament is quoted
at least sixty times. Many of these refer-
ences occur in Jesus' own sayings; eleven
others are introduced by the writer with
the formula, " that.it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the prophet," or similar
words. 1 These eleven references are espe-
cially significant, for they show us that the
writer of this Gospel wanted his readers to
think of Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testa-
ment prophecy.
These eleven quotations are important
for another reason, for we learn from them
1 1: 22-23; 2:5-6, IS, 17-18, 23; 4: 14-16; 8:17; 12:17-21;
13:35; 21:4-5; 27:9-10.
52
The "Sayings of Jesus"
how the writer regarded the Hebrew Scrip-
tures. He shared the common Jewish
practice of his time, which used the Old Testa-
ment largely as a collection of " proof texts "
which could be quoted to support one's
own view, sometimes even when the exact
wording of the quotation had to be changed, 1
or even when it had to be given a meaning
which it did not have in its original Old
Testament setting. 2 This method of using
the Old Testament is known as the " alle-
gorical " method. It is based on the idea
that the Scriptures contain many hidden
teachings which may have little or nothing
to do with their simple historical sense.
These hidden teachings are -to be discovered
by means of some " key " known only to the
initiated. Such a method uses the words of
the Bible symbolically, making them stand
for ideas not usually expressed by them in
common speech. These symbolic meanings,
moreover, often flatly contradict the ordinary
sense of the words when they are studied as
the natural expression of the writer's mind.
It was a method much in vogue in Jesus'
time, and was used by all the Jewish rabbis
in the temple and the synagogues, though
Jesus himself did not use it in its extreme
1 E.g., 2 : 6, 23; 12 : 18-21; 27 : 9-10.
2 E.g., 1:23; 2:18; 27:9-10.
53
The Four Gospels
form. In the light of modern historical
science, this allegorical method of Bible study,
in so far as it contradicts or ignores the nat-
ural historical meaning of the Bible writers, is
thoroughly discredited.
The Jews in the time of Christ, largely by
means of this method, had already gathered
out of their Scriptures a large number of
passages which they said (often mistakenly)
referred to their expected Messiah. Hence it
was quite natural that the writers of the New
Testament, who had been brought up in this
view of their ancient Scriptures, should quote
the Old Testament more loosely than we
would today, and allowance must be made for
this when we study their quotations.
4. Similarities between Matthew and
Mark. A closer comparison of Matthew
with Mark shows a third feature, more strik-
ing even than that just described. Many
passages, some of them of considerable
length, are almost word for word the same in
Matthew and Mark. Two or three of the
most remarkable illustrations of this state-
ment may be given. Of course the fact can
be seen and studied better by comparing the
two Gospels in the original Greek; yet our
English translation will answer sufficiently
for our purpose.
Compare, for example, Matthew 13 : 1-2
54
The "Sayings of Jesus"
with Mark 4 : 1-2. Without extending the
comparison on into the actual words of Jesus,
which we might expect would be the same if
they were correctly reported, it is very strik-
ing that both Gospels introduce the parable
of the sower in almost exactly the same words.
So, again, the story of Jesus walking on the
water (Matthew 14 : 22-33 and Mark 6 : 45-
52) is told in almost exactly the same language
in both Gospels. In the story of the healing
of the paralytic (Matthew 9 : 1-8 and Mark
2 : 1-12) most of the details are told in pre-
cisely the same language; in the verse " but
that ye may know that the Son of man hath
authority on earth to forgive sins (he saith
unto the sick of the palsy) ..." even the
parenthesis occurs in precisely the same place
and the same form in the two accounts.
Such close likeness between these two Gospels
cannot have been an accident.
5. The plan of the Gospel is argumenta-
tive. It is clear that Matthew's purpose in
writing this Gospel was not so much to give
a connected, chronological account of Jesus'
career, as to prove by selected incidents from
that career that Jesus was the Messiah
prophesied in the Old Testament. His habit
of collecting his material into groups around
some topic, such as the kingdom of heaven,
miracles, " woes," etc., shows that he does
55
The Four Gospels
not hesitate to take some of the events and
sayings of Jesus out of their actual order and
put them together so as to give a single
impression of what Jesus did or taught about
some specific matter. This does not mean
that Matthew's Gospel is merely a topical
description of Jesus' life and ministry, but
only that the writer does frequently change
the order of events for the sake of giving his
readers a strong impressionistic portrait of
Jesus as the Messiah.
6. The Gospel was written for Jewish
readers (i.e., Jewish Christians). As we
have seen in Chapter I, by the time the
Gospels were written there were Christian
churches scattered far and wide, some of
them composed chiefly of converted Jews,
others chiefly of converted Gentiles. The
Jewish Christians differed from their Gentile
fellow- Christians in one very important re-
spect. They had been brought up on the
Scriptures of the Old Testament, and the
Gentiles had not. These Jewish Christians
had grown up to regard their Scriptures with
great reverence, and they would be very slow
to accept the claims made for Christ unless
they could be convinced that this Christ was
really the One whom they believed was fore-
told in their sacred writings. It was espe-
cially for the instruction of these Jewish
56
The "Sayings of Jesus"
Christians that the Gospel of Matthew was
written.
This fact, which is already abundantly
clear from the constant appeal to Old Testa-
ment passages, is also confirmed by the
way in which the writer refers to Jewish cus-
toms and ceremonies, assuming that his
readers are already familiar with them. A
good illustration of this is the reference to the
Jewish custom of ceremonial washings, in
Matt. 15 : 2, which should be compared with
Mark's elaborate explanation of the same
custom (Mark 7 : 3-4).
7. Matthew's Gospel is based on Mark.
The striking similarities which we have
noticed between this Gospel and Mark can
best be explained by assuming that the writer
of Matthew must have been acquainted with
the Gospel of Mark, and must either have had
a copy of it before him when he wrote, copy-
ing almost word for word large portions of it
into his own story; or else must have come
to know it almost by heart, so that he could
quote much of it from memory.
If one will compare the two Gospels care-
fully, by means of a good " Synopsis," or
edition which prints the Gospels in parallel
columns, he will discover that the general
outline of Jesus' career, beginning with his
baptism and ending with his resurrection, is
57
The Four Gospels
the same in Matthew as in Mark. Matthew
has evidently used Mark's Gospel as the
framework of his own story of Jesus, changing
a few passages here and there, or re- arranging
their order, so as to suit his purpose, and also
adding a large amount of other material
which is not found in Mark.
8. The " Sayings of Jesus." A study of
those sections which are not found in Mark
shows that they are mostly sayings of Jesus,
such as the Sermon on the Mount, most of the
teachings in the instructions to the disciples
(chapter 10), or the sermon about the " end
of the age " (chapters 24 and 25). Nearly all
New Testament scholars have come to the
conclusion that there must have been in
existence before Matthew's Gospel was writ-
ten, a book in which some one had gathered
together many of the best-remembered say-
ings, or teachings, of Jesus. It is probable
that this book, which was used, like Mark,
as a basis of instruction for Christian converts,
was written even earlier than Mark's Gospel,
although there is some reason to think that
Mark himself was acquainted with it. It is
probable that this collection of Jesus' say-
ings, or the Logia, 1 as scholars today call it,
was written by Matthew, or Levi, one of the
twelve apostles, and that it was the earliest
1 From the Greek word for " sayings."
58
The "Sayings of Jesus"
attempt to put any record of Jesus' career
into writing. No copy of the Logia in its
original form has ever been discovered in the
ancient tombs or libraries that have yielded
so many priceless manuscripts to the explorer.
But it is barely possible that some copy of it
will yet be unearthed.
9. How Matthew's Gospel was written.
We are now in position to construct a working
theory of how this Gospel came to be written.
Some teacher among the Jewish Christians
of those early days, living perhaps in Palestine,
became acquainted with Mark's Gospel, which
had been published a few years before. He
was already acquainted with the Logia;
perhaps he had been using it for some years
already in his teaching work. When he
came to know Mark's Gospel, or possibly to
secure a copy of his own, he saw how useful it
would be to write a longer story of Jesus'
career which would combine the two. That
is what this Gospel is: a combination of
Mark and the Logia, woven together into a
continuous story, 1 and arranged in such a
way as to show its readers that Jesus was
indeed the promised Messiah of their Scrip-
tures.
We see also how this Gospel came to be
1 With a few additional narratives, like the stories of the
ancestry, birth and infancy of Christ, chapters 1 and 2.
59
The Four Gospels
called the " Gospel according to Matthew."
If Matthew was indeed the writer of the
Logia, it was quite natural that the new book
should be given his name, because he was
responsible for the really important parts of
it that were not already known as " Mark."
And it is quite proper that we should continue
to call it " Matthew's Gospel," in recognition
of this same fact.
10. Why this Gospel was written. Mat-
thew's Gospel was written soon after the
destruction of Jerusalem. It was later than
Mark's, however, so we have placed its date
upon our diagram (frontispiece) as approxi-
mately A.D. 75.
The Jewish Christians, for whom it was
written, were facing several grave questions.
They had never broken away from the belief
that the Christ whom they accepted was
in some way connected with a triumphant
future for the Jewish nation. It was that
hope that had led them to accept him as their
Messiah. They believed that God was going
to establish a great kingdom on the earth, with
the Jewish people as the political center of it.
When the armies of Titus, after a fearful
siege lasting five months, overthrew their
holy city, desecrated and destroyed their
temple, and scattered far and wide the
remnant of Jews who survived the attack,
60
The "Sayings of Jesus"
their faith in Jesus was sorely shaken. Could
this Jesus, after all, be the true Messiah?
What had become of the kingdom of God?
How could they explain the sudden and com-
plete elimination of their nation from the
stage of history?
Matthew's Gospel was written to furnish
these Jewish Christians with the true answers
to these questions, and its permanent value
is discovered in just these answers which it
gives.
11. The Messiahship of Jesus. To reas-
sure his readers that Jesus was indeed the
true Messiah, -the writer of this Gospel had
to show them (1) that Jesus did indeed fulfill
the Messianic prophecies of the Hebrew
Scriptures; (2) but that the meaning of his
Messiahship was something more spiritual
and less political than they had supposed.
That is the reason for the constant appeal
to Old Testament prophecy, which we have
already noted as one of the outstanding
characteristics of this Gospel. The writer
shared the prevailing attitude of his time
toward the Old Testament, and, as we have
seen, sometimes quoted it in a loose and
unscientific way that would be quite uncon-
vincing to a modern reader. Nevertheless,
his defects in this regard were not apparent
to his first readers, for they shared them ;
61
The Four Gospels
and by his many references to prophetic
" proof texts " he made an argument for the
Messiahship of Jesus that was quite satisfy-
ing and convincing to them. And his whole
story reveals how the Lord, whose deep
spiritual insight was never satisfied with
anything that was merely superficial, saw in
the Messianic teaching of the Old Testament
something far more spiritual and less political
than the people of his time had seen. The
Jews of his day interpreted their Messianic
hope in terms of earthly power and govern-
ment; Jesus interpreted it in terms of right-
eousness and service. There was the whole
fundamental distinction; and to make that
distinction clear to his Jewish-Christian read-
ers was the first great purpose of this writer.
If he could convince them once for all that
the title "Messiah" 1 stands for leadership
in character, rather than Jewish leadership in
world politics, they would then perceive how
the true Messianic cause could survive, even
though the Jewish nation perished.
12. How did Christ " fulfill prophecy "?
What has just been said about the loose
method of using the Old Testament that
prevailed in Matthew's time raises a question
1 " Messiah " is the Hebrew word which becomes " Christ "
in the Greek of the New Testament. Both words mean literally
" Anointed," referring to the idea that the Messiah comes with
a special divine authority.
62
The "Sayings of Jesus"
that should be faced by the modern student.
If we can no longer use Matthew's " proofs "
that Jesus fulfilled the Messianic prophecies
of the Old Testament, then what is the true
relation between Jesus and the Old Testa-
ment hopes and descriptions of the Messiah
and his kingdom? In other words, how
does Jesus fulfill Old Testament prophecy?
To understand the answer to this question,
it is necessary to break away completely
from the idea which has so often been taught,
that the fulfillment of prophecy consists in
matching some deed or circumstance in the
life of Jesus with some word or phrase selected
more or less at random from the Old Testa-
ment. That was just the point where the
Jews of Matthew's time were at fault in their
understanding of prophecy. They were satis-
fied to find superficial resemblances between
Jesus and their prophecies. They should
have gotten deeper into the heart of their
sacred writings, and then they would have
found a resemblance, i.e., a fulfillment, far
more wonderful than the chance coincidences
which they so eagerly seized upon. That was
what Jesus himself did. He believed that
he was the Messiah. He believed that he was
fulfilling prophecy. " I came not to destroy,
but to fulfill " (Matt. 5 : 17). But how?
By discovering the deep purpose of God for
63
The Four Gospels
men as it was revealed in the Scriptures of
his race, and then accepting that purpose as
his Father's will for him, and living it faith-
fully and conscientiously. It did not matter
to Jesus whether he was buried in a rich man's
tomb or in the tomb of a poor man. That
was not the way he believed he was fulfilling
the great poetic prophecy of Isaiah 53 (cf.
verse 9). He fulfilled it by perceiving
deeply the meaning of the whole poem in
which that line occurs, realizing that here
was a poetic portrait of a life in which God
was well pleased, a life of righteousness and
sacrificial service; and then setting himself
earnestly to live just that kind of a life of
righteousness and sacrificial service. And
because he so lived, the spirit of his life ran
true to the spirit of the ancient writing and
the " Messianic prophecy " found in him its
true and perfect fulfillment, or embodiment.
That was ever Jesus' relation to the Old
Testament. He found in its noblest passages
ideals and inspirations which he made his
own; he lived them out as no other man had
ever done; and thus in him they were fulfilled.
13. The kingdom of God. Matthew's Gos-
pel re-interprets the idea of the kingdom of
God to its Jewish- Christian readers along
the same lines that it develops the idea of
Jesus' Messiahship. It shows that the king-
64
The "Sayings of Jesus"
dom, too, is indeed the same kingdom that
the whole history of the Hebrews had been
preparing for, and yet is radically different
from the current ideas about it. In other
words, the Jews of the first century had a
wrong idea about the kingdom of God, just
as they had misunderstood the idea of the
Messiah, and it is the business of this Gospel
to correct that false view.
The kingdom is the one great theme of
Matthew's Gospel. The word itself occurs
no less than fifty times. Matthew's favorite
description of it is the " kingdom of heaven,"
(32 times), rather than " kingdom of God "
(4 times). This preference is in itself signifi-
cant, for the phrase " kingdom of heaven "
suggests that the nature of the kingdom is
super-earthly; it is a heavenly or spiritual
order brought into the affairs of earth. Thus
it turns one's thoughts away from political to
moral and spiritual facts.
The keynote of the Gospel is struck in the
first words which Jesus spoke when he began
his ministry in Galilee, " Repent ye, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand" (4 : 17).
The whole Gospel is an unfolding of that
statement. (1) The kingdom, concerning
which all the ancient seers and psalmists
had sung, toward which all the Divine educa-
tion of the Hebrew race had been directed,
65
The Four Gospels
was now about to be set up; (2) but this
kingdom was not primarily political, but
moral and spiritual; a kingdom of righteous-
ness, at the gateway of which stood the flam-
ing word, " Repent! "
Thus the Gospel answered the perplexed
inquiry of the Jewish Christians whose faith
had been so sorely tried by the political ruin
of their nation. The kingdom of God is a
kingdom of righteousness, a kingdom of
character conformed to the righteous will of
God. Such a kingdom is not necessarily
dependent upon the continuance of the Jewish
nation. And thus we see at the same time
the permanent message of this Gospel. It is
the announcement and interpretation of the
kingship, or government, of God over the
lives of men. To realize and spread this
government is the supreme business of the
followers of Jesus Christ.
14. The universality of the Christian relig-
ion. In an earlier chapter we have seen how
Paul performed the great service of planting
the faith of Christ firmly and widely in the
Gentile world, so that when the tragic break-
down of the Jewish nation came at last, the
cause for which Christ lived and died did not
perish with his nation. That was what
Christ was so urgently desiring when he said,
in connection with his teaching about the
66
The "Sayings of Jesus"
coming overthrow of the temple, " And the
gospel must first be preached unto all the
nations (Gentiles) ! " (Mark 13 : 10) The
Gentile churches were thoroughly detached
from Judaism; they did not feel that their
existence was dependent upon the national
fortunes of the Jews ; but not so the remaining
groups of Jewish Christians who survived
the great catastrophe. It was very hard for
them, with their intense religious patriotism,
to realize that the Messianic cause, i.e., the
faith of Jesus Christ (Christianity) was vastly
bigger and deeper than the national life of
their own race. The writer therefore seeks
to show them, not only that Jesus' Messiah-
ship and the kingdom of God were much
greater and more universal conceptions than
they had supposed, but that Jesus did
actually try his best to establish his kingdom
among his own people first, confining his
ministry to his own land (4 : 23), and restrict-
ing the labors of his fellow-workers to their
own countrymen (10 : 5-6). Matthew wants
his readers to understand that Jesus would
really have made his own nation the first
Christian nation, and the first missionaries
of the kingdom to other nations. But Israel
would not have it so. Because he demanded
repentance and righteousness as the prime
conditions of the kingdom, the rulers of Israel
67
The Four Gospels
opposed him, and at last flatly rejected the
kingdom he brought them. Thus he was
forced to declare to them, " The kingdom of
God shall be taken away from you, and shall
be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits
thereof" (21:43). And then he warned
them that their unrighteous and unteachable
attitude would soon result in arousing the
fury of the Roman authorities against them,
and that would mean the utter annihilation
of their nation. Thus Matthew makes it
clear that it was the Jews themselves who were
responsible for the fact that God had set aside
their nation, and had turned to a different
plan for establishing his righteous govern-
ment in the earth.
Here, too, we see the deeper, permanent
value of this Gospel. It teaches us that the
whole purpose of God in establishing a king-
dom is not confined to any one nation, be it
Israel, America, or any other. He calls each
nation, as he called Israel of old, to follow
Jesus Christ, in order to be the servants and
messengers of his kingdom-gospel to the
other nations of the world. If America
fails to enter the kingdom by the way of
repentance and righteousness, then she will
fail, as Israel failed, and the kingdom will be
" taken away from her, and given to another
nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."
68
The "Sayings of Jesus"
For Christianity, according to Matthew,
is for the world, not for the private possession
or enjoyment of any select group. The
greatest practical teaching of this " Gospel
of the kingdom " is the suggestion that we
gather from its whole treatment of the career
of Jesus Christ, namely, that each Christian
individual or Christian nation is to be a
center of influence, a point of radiation, from
which the kingdom of righteousness is to
spread outward, until all men and all nations
are gathered in glad and voluntary submission
to the will of God.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
GOODSPEED, Story of the New Testament, ch. IX.
BURTON, Short Introduction to the Gospels, ch. I.
BACON, Making of the New Testament, ch. VI.
VON SODEN, History of Early Christian Literature, pp.
127-153, 181-200.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND FURTHER
STUDY
1. Read the Gospel of Matthew through, if possible
at one sitting, following the Outline on page 46. Note
the passages in which Christ's mission has a special
and explicit reference to the Jews; to the Gentiles.
What is the relation between these two aspects of his
mission, as reflected in this Gospel?
2. Compare the Outline of Matthew (page 46) with
the Outline of Mark (page 21). What general points
of similarity do you find?
6 9
The Four Gospels
3. Be sure to read Matthew's eleven quotations from
the Old Testament (listed on page 52, note), and com-
pare them carefully with their Old Testament originals,
so as to verify the statements made in this chapter
regarding Matthew's method of using Old Testament
prophecy.
4. Make a list of the longer discourses of Jesus in
Matthew. Which of these are omitted in Mark? In
general, how does Mark's report of the discourses
which he does give compare with Matthew's?
5. Why was Matthew placed first in our New Testa-
ment, instead of Mark?
OUTLINE OF LUKE'S GOSPEL
I PREFACE; BIRTH AND YOUTH OF JOHN THE
BAPTIST AND JESUS, chs. 1-2.
II PREPARATION FOR JESUS' PUBLIC CAREER,
3:14:13.
Similar to Matthew, with additional teachings
of John the Baptist and a different genealogy.
Ill THE GALILEAN MINISTRY, 4 : 14 9 : 17.
The principal additions to the material found
in Mark and Matthew are the raising of the
widow's son, 7 : 1117, and the anointing in
the house of Simon, 7 : 36-50. Each sec-
tion should be compared, as to contents, with
the corresponding sections of the Outlines of
Mark and Matthew, pages 21 and 46.
1 Jesus' Rise to Fame, 4 : 14 5 : 16.
2 The Growth of Opposition, 5 : 17 6:11.
3 The Sermon on the Mount, 6 : 12-49.
4 A Group of Miracles, 7 : 1-17.
5 Results: Unresponsiveness and Appreciation,
7 : 18-50.
70
The "Sayings of Jesus"
6 Teaching by Parables, 8:1-21.
7 Another Group of Miracles, 8 : 22-56.
8 Climax of Jesus' Fame, 9 : 1-17.
IV JOURNEYS IN THE NORTH, 9 : 18-50.
Follows Mark, but is much condensed.
1 The Crisis at Caesarea Philippi, 9 : 18-43a.
2 Teaching about Greatness, 9 : 43b-50.
V THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM, 9:51
19 : 28.
The larger portion of this section is peculiar to
Luke. Only a small portion is found in
Mark. The verses not peculiar to Luke are
from widely scattered sections of Matthew
and Mark.
VI THE MESSIANIC ANNOUNCEMENT, 19 : 29-48.
The stories of the entrance into Jerusalem and
the cleansing of the temple are quite different
from the stories in Mark and Matthew.
VII CONFLICT WITH THE JEWISH LEADERS, ch. 20.
Follows Mark.
VIII FORECAST OF THE OVERTHROW OF THE TEMPLE,
ch. 21.
Follows Mark, with some additional verses at
the close.
IX THE DEATH OF JESUS, chs. 22-23.
Follows Mark, with many minor changes, and
with the addition of the incidents of the
examination before Herod, the lament of the
daughters of Jerusalem, and the penitent
thief.
X THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION, ch. 24.
The section on the discovery of the empty tomb
is based on Mark; otherwise the story is
quite different, though some of the incidents
are longer accounts of incidents referred to
in Mark.
71
LUKE, AND THE LOST GOSPELS
CHAPTER IV
Luke, and the Lost Gospels
1. The preface of Luke's Gospel. The
best introduction to this Gospel is Luke's
own introduction, in the first four verses
of chapter 1 :
" Forasmuch as many have taken in hand
to draw up a narrative concerning those
matters which have been fulfilled among us,
even as they delivered them unto us, who from
the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers
of the word, it seemed good to me also, having
traced the course of all things accurately from
the first, to write unto thee in order, most
excellent Thedphilus; that thou mightest
know the certainty concerning the things
wherein thou wast instructed."
A careful study of these verses reveals
several important facts regarding this Gospel.
(1) The Greek text of these verses, and of
the Gospel that follows, is much purer and
more classical in style than the Greek of the
other Gospels. The writer must have been
a man of considerable culture, well- versed in
literary Greek. (2) The reference to "many"
other narratives shows that Matthew and
75
The Four Gospels
Mark were not the only ones who tried to
write stories of Jesus' life before this time.
None of these other attempts, however, has
been preserved; they are " lost Gospels."
(3) The address to Theophilus suggests that
the Gospel is written to a personal friend of
the writer, although it is doubtless intended
also for wider circulation among Theophilus'
Christian friends. The name " Theophilus "
is Greek, so we may infer that the writer has
Greek readers in mind. (4) Theophilus had
already been " instructed " in the current,
stories about Jesus, but his friend, who had
read these stories, and who was something of
a critic himself, seemed to think that some
of them at least were wanting in accuracy,
either as to their statements of fact, or as to
the general impression of Jesus Christ which
they conveyed to their readers. He therefore
set out to gather the best information he
could find, not only from these written
stories, but also from such surviving " eye-
witnesses " as he could get in touch with;
and then he attempted to write a narrative
of Christ's life which would give Theophilus
and his friends a greater " certainty " con-
cerning these matters.
Each of these suggestions gathered from the
preface is confirmed and extended by further
study of the Gospel itself.
76
The Lost Gospels
2. The author. There is no good reason
for doubting the uniform tradition of the
early church, that the author of this Gospel
was Luke, who is mentioned several times in
Paul's epistles, and who was also the author
of the book of Acts. Luke's references to
Jewish localities and customs, both in his
Gospel and in Acts, indicate that he was quite
familiar with Palestine and the religion of
Judaism. But Paul's reference to him in
Colossians 4 : 14, when compared with verse
11 of the same chapter, seems to mean that
he was not of the " circumcision," that is,
he was not a Jew by birth. It seems probable
that Luke was a Greek, but that before he
had become a Christian he had been a con-
vert to the Jewish faith. Such converts
were commonly called " Hellenists." His
clear, classical style confirms this suggestion
that he was a Greek by birth and education.
Luke is commonly known to us as the friend
of Paul. Paul refers to him as " Luke the phy-
sician," and scholars have often pointed out a
number of technical medical terms in his Gos-
pel and Acts, which confirm this statement.
He was probably Paul's physician during the
years of the apostle's imprisonment in Rome,
caring for him during the last years of his
life with such skill as the meager medical
science of those days afforded.,
77
The Four Gospels
The personal character of Luke is reflected
in his writings. With the Gospel before us,
it is not hard to see what kind of a man this
bosom friend of Paul's was. His literary
ability, including both his fine style and his
researches into the literature of his times,
marks him as a man of considerable learning
and culture. His selection of incidents and
sayings from among the stories current about
Jesus reveals him as a man of fine human
sympathies ; tender toward womanhood, large
and generous in his spirit toward all who were
down-trodden, rejoicing in the freedom and
breadth of the mercy of God that was made
known to mankind through the words and
deeds of Jesus Christ.
3. The sources. Like Matthew, Luke's
Gospel seems to have been written, as the
preface suggests, by piecing together extracts
from other earlier writings, with such re-
arrangements and corrections as Luke himself
thought necessary to give a more orderly
account of Jesus' career. A careful study of
the Gospel shows that four main sources were
used quite extensively in it.
(1) The general framework of the story is
the same as that of Mark. If the Gospel is
compared with Mark, we shall find just what
we found in the case of Matthew, namely,
that Luke has given us substantially a repro-
78
The Lost Gospels
duction of Mark, adopting Mark's general
plan, and copying large portions of Mark
almost verbatim, while into this framework
he has inserted materials gathered from other
sources.
(2) Just as Matthew's Gospel weaves into
Mark's story of Jesus long extracts from the
book known as the Logia, or" Sayings of
Jesus," so Luke has inserted into his story
many quotations from this same source. If
the quotations from the Logia in Matthew
and Luke are compared, it will be found that
each writer has felt free to make slight
changes in the wording, altering a word or a
phrase here and there, in order to express
himself more perfectly in his own style, and
to present his subject from his own point of
view.
(3) If this were all, Luke's Gospel would be
almost exactly like Matthew's Gospel. But
Luke has also inserted a long account of a
certain portion of Jesus' ministry which is
entirely omitted by Matthew and Mark.
This is the section which includes most of the
material from 9 : 51 to 18 : 14. It is evident
that for this part of the story Luke is depend-
ing upon another of the " many " narratives
which were current. Scholars usually call
this source the " Perean Document," because
it deals with a portion of Jesus' ministry which
79
The Four Gospels
was carried on chiefly in Perea, east of the
Jordan, during his last journey to Jerusalem.
This Perean Document contains some of the
most priceless parables of Jesus, such as the
Good Samaritan, the Lost Sheep, the Lost
Coin, and the Lost Son. No trace of this
document has ever been found, beyond the
quotations which we have in Luke. It is one
of the " Lost Gospels."
(4) Besides these three main sources, Luke
begins his Gospel with two chapters of stories
connected with the birth and infancy of
Jesus, which are not found in any other
Gospel, and which he probably gathered from
still other writings that were known to him,
but which have been lost to us.
4. Luke's portrait of Jesus. The address
to Theophilus indicates, as we have seen,
that Luke expected his Gospel to be read
chiefly by Greek, rather than by Jewish or
Roman, Christians. There are many details
in the Gospel itself which confirm this sug-
gestion, such as the rarity of quotations from
the Jewish Scriptures, occasional explana-
tions of the author's references to localities in
Palestine, and the absence of certain Hebrew
words which occur frequently in the other
Gospels.
We discover the key to Luke's portrayal
of the character of Jesus when we remember
80
The Lost Gospels
this fact that the Gospel was intended pri-
marily for Greek readers. The great ideal that
Greek culture had always stood for was the
ideal of the perfect man. The outstanding
contribution of Greece to the world's civiliza-
tion was not in any special national greatness,
but in the greatness of certain individual
men who grew up in her midst; men like
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, for example.
The sum of all Greek philosophy was repre-
sented by the saying, " Man, know thyself."
The .achievement of perfect manhood was
the highest aspiration of the best culture
of Greece.
Now, it has often been pointed out that
Luke's Gospel presents Jesus as the perfect
man, the pattern of God's ideal for humanity.
It is not so much the Messiahship of Jesus
that we find emphasized here (compare
Matthew), as the humanity, the manhood,
of Jesus. This portrait of Jesus as the world's
most perfect man will be appreciated best
when we set it in contrast with the Greek
ideal of perfection, as Luke doubtless expected
his readers to do. To present in Jesus a new
and better type of perfection than the Grecian
model is the underlying motive of this Gospel.
So, while Luke pictures the physical perfec-
tion of Jesus in the stories of his birth and
childhood, his mental perfection in the period
81
The Four Gospels
of youth, and his spiritual perfection in the
testing experiences of baptism and temptation,
he goes right on presenting this perfect man
in action, showing his perfection in his deeds
and words, until he comes to the story of the
transfiguration (9 : 28ff). This experience of
Jesus means, for Luke, that Jesus has reached
the highest level of perfection that is possible
for a human individual; he is now ready to
be " translated " into glory, without the inter-
vening experience of death, just as Enoch
and Elijah had been; for he is worthy. But
at this point Luke makes his great contribu-
tion to the portrait of the perfect man. He
shows that although Jesus possessed every
quality of perfection that could enter into the
Greek ideal, there was something in him that
went beyond anything that Greece included
in her philosophy, namely, the sacrifice of
himself upon the altar of service to God and
humanity. The Greek ideal man was self-
centered. That, according to Luke, was where
it failed. Jesus went beyond anything that
Greek culture or thought had achieved, when
he came down from the mount of trans-
figuration, and " set his face steadfastly to go
to Jerusalem," to suffer and die for others.
That note of sacrifice is the crowning glory of
perfection which Luke discovers in the Son
of man. The key verse of Luke's Gospel is,
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The Lost Gospels
therefore, in 19 : 10: " For the Son of man
came to seek and to save that which was
lost."
5. Luke's purpose in his Gospel. Mat-
thew's Gospel is strongly argumentative;
he tries to present, quite formally and techni-
cally, proofs that Jesus was the Messiah
foretold by the Jewish prophets. Mark's
Gospel is primarily historical; it presents a
simple, vivid narrative of the deeds and move-
ments of Jesus, as Mark had learned them
from Peter. John's Gospel, as we shall see,
is strongly theological; it aims to present a
theory, or doctrine, about the Person of
Christ. Luke's Gospel, while partaking some-
what of the aims of the first two (but not the
last), is mainly didactic; it is written prima-
rily for the purpose of correcting and building
up the Christian faith of Theophilus and
his friends.
To be sure, there is a real attempt in Luke
to present an accurate historical narrative of
the career of Jesus. But it must be remem-
bered that the writers and readers of the first
century were not accustomed to make the
same sharp distinction between history as a
record of fact and history as an interpretation
of fact that we in our more scientific age
insist on. We must not ask from Luke's
11 history " the same literal fidelity to minute
83
The Four Gospels
details of fact that we would ask from a
modern historian. There is, also, a certain
argumentative strain in his Gospel ; not formal
and obvious, as in Matthew; but present
nevertheless. Luke is trying to convince his
readers that here is the world's perfect man.
He does not seek to do this by means of formal
proofs, but rather by means of such literary
and artistic skill that his character-sketch of
Jesus will make its own convincing appeal to
his readers. But beyond either of these aims,
Luke is concerned chiefly to present the career
of Jesus in a manner that will show Theophi-
lus that the invisible Christ whom Christians
worshipped had revealed in his earthly life the
true pattern of holy living, and that to live by
this pattern is to grow stronger and stronger
in the Christian life.
6. The Saviourhood of Jesus. (1) Luke's
Gospel presents Jesus as the brother and the
friend of man. The public ministry opens
with the declaration of Jesus in the synagogue
at Nazareth, that he had come to " preach
good tidings to the poor " (4 : 18). One is
impressed as he reads on with the compassion
of Jesus toward the weaker and despised
classes of society. His friendship for sin-
ners is so marked as to draw the criticism of
the haughty Pharisees (15 : 1-2). He re-
serves his denunciations for the hypocritical
84
The Lost Gospels
officials (11 : 3 7-52), and has only pity and
forgiveness for penitent sinners (7 : 3 7-50;
18 :9-14; 23 : 39-43). He mingles socially
with the obnoxious publicans (19 : 5), and
shows especial sympathy toward the " poor "
(6 : 20; 18 : 22-24). He loves children, and
defends them (18 : 1517). His sympathy
and friendship toward women (who were
generally looked down upon) is more marked
in Luke than in any other Gospel (4 : 38-39;
7 : 11-15; 7 : 36-50; 8:2-3; 10 : 38-42; 21 :
1-4; 23 : 27-29).
(2) The universality of Christ's Saviour-
hood is also especially marked in Luke. He
is the Saviour of the whole world. He
declares that his mission is to seek and save
the " lost " not merely the " lost sheep of
the house of Israel " (as in Matthew 10 : 5).
The angels at Bethlehem proclaim that the
birth of the Saviour is a cause of joy to " all
the people" (2 : 10-11). The aged Simeon,
prophesying in the temple as he holds the
infant Jesus in his arms, declares that God
has sent this child to be a " revelation to the
Gentiles " (2 : 32). John the Baptist, in
announcing the kingdom of God, is careful to
add the words not reported in the other
Gospels, " And all flesh shall see the salvation
of God " (3 : 6). And after the story of this
Christ has been told, and we have seen him
85
The Four Gospels
bringing his helpful ministry to all sorts and
conditions of men, we find him at last gather-
ing his disciples about him and commissioning
them to be his witnesses, to preach repentance
and remission of sins in his name " unto all
the nations, beginning from Jerusalem,"
(24 :47).
7. The Christian way of life. The Chris-
tian way of life is commended in Luke both
by the example and by the direct teaching of
Christ.
(1) Christ himself, as Luke presents him,
is the perfect man, the model of the true life.
To catch his spirit, to live as he lived, not in
the external movements and arrangements of
life, but in inward disposition and motive, is
to be a Christian. But the whole aim of this
Gospel is to show that the character of Christ
is just manhood at its best; manhood living
in dependence upon and obedience to the will
of God, and therefore realizing to the full the
highest capacities of human nature. The
most perfect Christian, therefore, according
to Luke, is just the most perfect man. The
Christian life is not some new manner of
living that one takes on, that is strange and
foreign to one's natural capacities. It is the
life that recognizes every instinct and capac-
ity of man's nature as sacred and God-given ,
and seeks not to suppress any of them, but
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The Lost Gospels
to control all of them, so that one's whole
nature may express itself joyously and help-
fully. There is no place for asceticism, or
self-denial for its own sake, in the example set
by Luke's Christ. Every instinct for joy
and social pleasure is divine, and one lives
less than a real Christian life when one tries
to suppress the instinctive urge of happiness
that is part of one's deepest self.
(2) At the same time, Christ, in his direct
teaching about the way of life, realizes how
prone we are to exalt the less important
things of life at the expense of the more
important. Therefore his teaching in this
Gospel is particularly insistent upon a stern
self-discipline, in order that the material
interests of life shall not crowd out the higher
spiritual interests. It is in this Gospel that
Christ is most severe in setting forth the
terms of discipleship. "If any man cometh
unto me, and hateth not his own father,
and mother, and wife, and children, and
brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
also, he cannot be my disciple. Whosoever
doth not bear his own cross, and come after
me, cannot be my disciple. ... So therefore
whosoever he be of you that renounceth not
all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple "
(14 : 26, 27, 33). The motive of these stern
words is not that life may be restricted and
87
The Four Gospels
made miserable by its renunciations. The
motive is really just the opposite of this.
It is because Christ desires that his followers
shall enter into the largest possible enjoy-
ment of life that he insists that no object of
affection or service shall share the supreme
loyalty that he claims for himself. Nothing
less than such undivided allegiance can
enable the Christian to escape the domina-
tion of life by the lesser good, and to achieve
the good that is really highest and broadest
and happiest.
8. The Gospel. When we speak of the
Christian " gospel " we mean the message
of Christianity that God is good, that he
loves men, and seeks at measureless cost to
himself to redeem them from their failures
and sins, and to help them live lives worthy
of his children. The gospel is therefore
primarily the " good news " about God.
When we review the teaching of Luke about
God, we find that he lays special stress on
(1) God's fatherly love and boundless kind-
ness, and (2) the fact that God's require-
ments are moral rather than ceremonial.
(1) The threefold parable of the lost
things the lost sheep, the lost coin, the
lost son is found only in Luke (chapter 15).
It is the most perfect story in the world for
illustrating all that is essential in the Christian
The Lost Gospels
religion. And the outstanding truth sug-
gested by the story is the truth of God's
interest in seeking and finding his lost chil-
dren. No more perfect picture of God has
ever been drawn, even by Jesus Christ him-
self, than the portrait of the father of the lost
boy, eager for his son to return, welcoming
his home-coming with rejoicing, and restor-
ing to him his position in the family as his
own son. This picture of God is supple-
mented by many other teachings in this
Gospel which reveal God's fatherly interest
in his children. Thus, Jesus teaches that
God anticipates his children's needs (12 : 30);
he is concerned about the small details of
their lives (12 : 7); he responds quickly to
their cry for help (11 : 513); he is kind even
toward the unthankful and the evil, and
merciful even toward the sinful (6 : 35) ;
he forgives the forgiving (11 : 4) and justifies
the penitent (18 : 14).
(2) The Jews had allowed their religion to
become a formal and exacting code of cere-
monial requirements. To be a good Jew,
according to the teaching of the Pharisees in
the time of Christ, one did not necessarily
have to be a good man morally; but one must
be very scrupulous about the precise manner of
observing the Sabbath, and about the endless
details of religious exercises. The Pharisees
89
The Four Gospels
could not eat with unwashed hands, yet they
were willing to appear before God with filthy
hearts. Jesus swept away completely all this
empty and corrupt view of religion. He
taught that God's measurements of the relig-
ious life are moral, not ceremonial. Justice
and love are worth more than the tithing of
herbs (11 :42); clean hands are not so
important as clean hearts (11 :39); doing
good is the best way to observe the Sabbath
(6 :9; 13 : 10-17).
9. The kingdom of God. Matthew, as we
have seen, presents the subject of the king-
dom of God from the standpoint of the Jewish
national hopes; the kingdom is not political,
but moral, and is therefore not bound up with
the political fortunes of the Jews. Luke also
shows a deep interest in Christ's teaching
about the kingdom, but presents it in such
a way as to emphasize some aspects of it
with which Matthew does not deal so directly.
(1) The most important saying of Jesus
concerning the kingdom which is found only
in Luke is in chapter 1 7 : 20-2 1 . The Pharisees
asked him when the kingdom was to appear,
and he replied, " The kingdom of God cometh
not with observation; neither shall they say,
Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom of
God is among you." The Pharisees were
looking for the establishment of the kingdom
90
The Lost Gospels
at some future time; Jesus declares that the
kingdom is already in their midst. In this
statement he seems to be referring to- the
works of mercy that he had been performing;
the sick were being healed, the lepers were
being cleansed, penitents were being forgiven,
the poor were hearing the good news about
God. " The kingdom," he is saying in effect,
" is a movement in history which has already
begun through my ministry; it is marked by
such deeds as I am doing. Wherever men
in my name and inspired by my spirit go out
and strive to lift the world toward God and
righteousness and happiness, there the king-
dom of God is present and at work."
(2) The passage just quoted thus presents
the kingdom of God as the spirit of love at
work righting the wrongs of the world. This
conception of love as the solution of social
problems is characteristic of Luke's Gospel.
The outstanding illustration of it, of course,
is the story of the Good Samaritan (10 : 30-
37), which, like the story of the Lost Son,
is found only in Luke. The same truth is
also at the bottom of many teachings of
Jesus about wealth, which Luke reports with
unusual fullness. The rich man who built
more barns (12 : 15-21) did not need more
barns so much as he needed more love. The
true use of wealth is to serve those who lack
The Four Gospels
(18 : 22). The peril of wealth is very great
(18 : 24), for it is impossible for a man to
serve God and the spirit of money-getting
at the same time (16 : 13); yet it is possible
for a rich man to use his wealth so as to
promote eternal friendships (16:9). Jesus
also took occasion, when invited to a feast
(14 : 1-11), to point out that even social
festivities may be, and ought to be, occasions
for truly humble service to .society.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
GOODSPEED, Story of the New Testament, ch. X.
BURTON, Short Introduction to the Gospels, ch. III.
BACON, Making of the New Testament, ch. VII,
pp. 173-184.
VON SODEN, History of Early Christian Literature,
pp. 165-180.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND FURTHER
STUDY
1. Read the Gospel of Luke through, if possible at
one sitting, following the Outline on page 70. Compare
the Outline with those of Mark and Matthew (pages 21
and 46). What general resemblances do you find
between Luke and these earlier Gospels? What broad
differences?
2. Compare the preface of Luke (1 : 1-4) with the
preface of Acts (Acts 1:1). What does the comparison
suggest as to (1) authorship, (2) readers, (3) purpose,
of each book; and (4) the relation of the two books to
one another?
92
The Lost Gospels
3. Note that Luke places the rejection at Nazareth
(4 : 16-30) at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. Where
does Mark place it? (Mark 6 : 1-6) Does Luke really
mean to suggest that this was Jesus' first public act?
(compare verse 23). What is his motive in putting the
incident at this point?
4. In the section, 9 : 51 to 19 : 28, what especially
famous stories do you find, that do not occur in the
other Gospels? Think what the world would have
lost, had not Luke preserved these fragments of the
' Perean Document."
5. Note that Luke makes Jerusalem the scene of the
resurrection appearances of Jesus (ch. 24). What
does he seem to think of the idea (of Mark) that the
appearances were to take place in Galilee? (compare
carefully Luke 24 : 6 with Mark 16 : 7, and note also
that Mark 14 : 28 is deliberately omitted by Luke).
6. Renan called this Gospel " the most beautiful
book in the world." What characteristics do you note
in it that tend to justify this description?
93
THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE
FIRST THREE GOSPELS
CHAPTER V
The Historical Value of the
First Three Gospels
1. The original language of the Gospels.
The common language of the Jews in Pales-
tine in the time of Jesus and his apostles was
Aramaic. This was originally the language
of Syria, and came into use among the He-
brews gradually, from the days of the Baby-
lonian captivity (586 B.C.) onward. It is
closely related to the Hebrew tongue, yet
different in many respects. The pure, classi-
cal Hebrew was preserved in the writings of
the Old Testament, which are almost wholly
in that language.
But except among the Jews, the common
language of the Roman Empire in these times
was Greek. Some of the Roman officials,
naturally, used the Latin tongue, especially
for official business. But in the vast provin-
cial territory of the Roman Empire, Greek
was the common language of business and
literature. Doubtless many of the Jews in
Palestine were as familiar with Greek as they
were with their own Aramaic. It is not known
97
The Four Gospels
whether Jesus knew or used the Greek lan-
guage; it is possible that he knew it well
enough to use the Greek translation of the
Old Testament that had been made at least
a hundred years before his birth and was in
common use in his time. But there is no
certain evidence on this point. His public
teachings and his private conversations with
his disciples were all in the familiar Aramaic
tongue.
Among his apostles, however, were some
who understood Greek and used it freely.
All four of our Gospels were originally written
in the Greek tongue.
2. The human origin of the Gospels. The
Gospels were written, just as any other book,
ancient or modern, is written, by men. It
is neither natural nor necessary to suppose
that they were produced by any miraculous
agency. Each Gospel has come to us in
its present form through the thought and
labour of one or more human individuals,
and each bears unmistakably the marks of its
human writer. The personalities of Mark,
of John, of Luke and Matthew, are just as
clearly reflected in the way they have selected
and arranged their materials, in their choice
of words, their literary style, as the per-
sonalities of Milton or Browning or Roosevelt
are reflected in the books they have written.
98
Historical Value
No study of the Gospels can be worthy of the
serious student that fails to recognize this
fact. We must always remember that what
we have in the Gospels is not alone a record
of things that Jesus said and did, but an
interpretation of these things, an estimate of
their spiritual value, by their respective
writers. Even if we regard the true sayings
of Jesus as absolutely infallible, we have to
take into account that they have been pre-
served for us through the medium of very
human writers, who have reported him from
the standpoint of what he had come to mean
to them.
3. The modern prejudice against miracles.
There is a strong tendency today to discount
any story which professes to be historical,
but which contains " miraculous " features.
Since the miraculous element enters very
largely into the Gospel stories of Jesus Christ,
the modern student cannot help recognizing
that prejudice, and he must take it into
account in his estimate of the historical value
of the Gospels.
If " miraculous " is taken in the sense of
some activity of God which sets aside and
defies the operation of his own laws of nature,
the prejudice against miracles is pretty well
justified by the whole trend of modern science,
with its fine appreciation of the reign of law
99
The Four Gospels
everywhere in the universe. But if the
Gospel miracles are to be understood, not as
violations of the order of nature, but as the
operation of natural laws which men had not
then come to understand, but which Christ
because of his unique personality was able to
employ, then, they cannot be disposed of so
easily, and we may not feel free to throw doubt
upon the Gospel story just because there are
miracles in it.
4. The notion of " wrong in one place,
untrustworthy everywhere." Another com-
mon prejudice against the Gospel history has
grown up out of the idea that God is the
author of the Gospels, and that he, and not
their human writers, is alone responsible for
the perfect accuracy of every statement
contained in them. This is a very mislead-
ing idea, because it leads us at once into
serious errors in our attitude toward the
Gospels, while at the same time it contains
just enough of truth to make it sound very
plausible.
The truth in the idea is that through these
Gospel writers God, in his providential
government of the world, was really trying
to get the facts and the significance of the life
of Jesus permanently into the mind of the
human race, so that the truth about Jesus
might be known, and his influence might be
100
Historical Value
at work, forever. God did cause the Gospels
to be written. But the serious mistake in the
idea is that God caused the life of Jesus to be
made into a permanent literary record inde-
pendently of men. The whole teaching of the
Bible, and of Christ himself, is that God works
for the advancement of the human race
through men; he uses men to accomplish his
purposes, uses them with all their talents
and limitations and failings, and is content
not to move forward faster than frail and
fallible men can keep up with him. It is
thoroughly misleading, therefore, to say that
God, rather than certain very human indi-
viduals, namely, Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John, was the " author " of our Gospels, and
is consequently alone responsible, for whatever
is said in them.
Each Gospel story must be judged on its
own merits. It is quite possible, for example,
that Matthew reported the Sermon on the
Mount correctly, and yet was mistaken when
he said that there were two Gadarene demoni-
acs instead of one, as Mark reports. It
is quite possible that John's portrait of Christ
may be true to the best faith of Christianity,
and yet he may be historically mistaken
in placing the cleansing of the temple at the
beginning of Jesus' ministry instead of at the
close, as the other Gospels do. To find an
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The Four Gospels
error in one detail does not mean that the
whole Gospel history is untrustworthy.
5. The value of the Gospel history. From
all that has been said above, it will be evident
that we cannot take the absolute historical
accuracy of the Gospel narratives for granted.
The question of trustworthiness cannot be
answered except on the basis of painstaking
and expert historical study of the Gospels
themselves. There are many points of detail
in this field that only well-trained historical
experts are qualified to express an independent
opinion about. But it is possible for the
ordinary student to see for himself, and to
appreciate, the main lines of the answer that
modern scholarship can give to the general
question.
There are certain factors to be noted, which
tended to interfere with the strict accuracy of
the Gospel story. (1) Our present English
Gospels are translations made from the Greek
Gospels; the Greek manuscripts from which
they are made are not the original writings,
but copies of them made by scribes or teach-
ers in the fourth century of our era, or later.
The original Greek Gospels, moreover, do
not report the exact words of Jesus, but have
translated them from Aramaic into Greek.
All this process of translation and copying
offers opportunities for mistakes to creep in.
102
Historical Value
(2) Each Gospel writer has given us his story
of Jesus from his own personal point of view;
his interpretation of Jesus may not have been
perfect, and his partial or imperfect views
of Christ may have prejudiced him and led
him unconsciously into mistakes of fact or
interpretation. (3) There is clear evidence
in all the Gospels that their writers were not
so much concerned with writing an accurate
biography of Jesus, down to the last detail,
as with giving an impressionistic picture of the
life and significance of Jesus for the Chris-
tian religion; if they made . relatively slight
historical mistakes, they themselves would
have said that such mistakes did not matter,
so long as they succeeded in making their
readers think of Christ as they thought of
him. (4) We have noted in the first chapter
that more than forty years elapsed between
the career of Jesus and the writing of our
Gospels. During that time men can forget
many details, and when they try to recall
them they are quite apt to get some of their
facts twisted, even if they are correct in the
main. (5) It is always true that when men
fondly remember a great man, their memories
naturally begin to exaggerate their favorite
recollections, or, to express it more accu-
rately, to idealize their hero. It is this
inevitable tendency that accounts for the
103
The Four Gospels
legends and miracles that have grown up
around the names of great men, such as St.
Francis d'Assisi. There is no good reason
to suppose that this tendency would fail to
show itself as men tried to remember Jesus
Christ.
All these factors tended to break down
the strict accuracy of the Gospel records,
and they must be taken into account, and
the proper allowance made for them, when the
modern student tries to gather from the
Gospels the history of Jesus Christ.
On the other hand, there are certain factors
which tended to keep the recollections of
Jesus free from mistakes during the forty
years or more that elapsed before they were
written down. (1) The Gospels were written
in an age when writing was much less com-
mon than it is now, and people depended upon
their memories just so much the more. It
is little short of marvelous to modern stu-
dents when they learn what prodigious feats
of memory were common among these ancient
peoples. Yet the great books of antiquity,
like Homer's Iliad or the books of the Hebrew
lawgivers, were invariably known and passed
on for generations by memory before they
were first put into writing. Where we would
make a hundred slips of memory in reciting
a hundred pages of poetry or narrative, Mark
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or Peter or others who taught the stories of
Christ to the early Christian converts would
be apt to make but half a dozen. This
wonderful cultivation of memory must be
taken into account as a great help in preserv-
ing the Gospel stories with essential accuracy.
(2) We cannot overlook the fact that the
Christian faith itself tended to emphasize the
importance of accuracy in speech, and to make
the Gospel teachers and writers feel that it
was important to verify their statements as
far as possible before making them. (3) Our
Gospels were written either by those who
were personal eye-witnesses of the life of
Jesus, or were the direct pupils of such eye-
witnesses.
6. The historical value of Mark. Mark,
as we have seen, probably knew Jesus per-
sonally, saw him, and followed him, espe-
cially during the Master's visits to Jerusalem.
Moreover, he lived among the earliest Chris-
tians, who probably had their headquarters
in his home. And his Gospel itself is, accord-
ing to the testimony of the early Church
Fathers, largely the teaching of Peter, which
Mark, as his secretary, wrote down for him.
Thus we have good reason for trusting the
Gospel of Mark as substantially a true story
of the career of Jesus.
There is only one clear indication in Mark's
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The Four Gospels
Gospel that he has deliberately told his story
out of its true chronological order. That is
the section from chapter 2 : 1 to 3 : 6. In this
section it seems clear that Mark has grouped
together five incidents, not because they all
happened in close sequence at just this point
in Jesus' ministry, but because they furnish
a cumulative picture of the opposition to
Jesus from the Pharisees. The point in each
of these five stories is the criticism directed
against Jesus by the Pharisees, and his self-
defense. The series is progressive, coming
to its climax when the Pharisees " went out;
and straightway with the Herodians took
counsel against him, how they might destroy
him "(3: 6).
7. The historical value of Matthew. In
Matthew we find a much stronger argumen-
tative interest than in Mark. Matthew is
trying to prove a case for Jesus before his
Jewish-Christian readers who were puzzled
about the relation of Jesus to the popular
Jewish hopes of Messiah and his kingdom.
Therefore he shows little regard for strict
chronological order. His material is gathered
under the general framework of Mark's
Gospel, and is therefore naturally chronologi-
cal in the main. Yet he has obviously col-
lected his material into groups, each of which
deals with some topic or phase of Jesus' life.
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We need not suppose that all the miracles
in chapters 8-9 occurred in just the order
given ; or that all the parables of the kingdom
in chapter 13 were spoken on one single
occasion; or that all the teachings about the
work of spreading the gospel, which we find
in chapter 10, were originally spoken as part
of the instructions to the disciples for their
first tour of Galilee.
Matthew, as we have seen, is composed
chiefly by weaving together the stories of
Mark, and the teachings of Jesus that had
been gathered into an earlier publication now
called the Logia. There is some reason to
suppose that this book, the Logia, was
originally arranged by topics, rather than by
dates, so that the great teachings of Jesus
about the Kingdom would be gathered to-
gether in one section, his teachings about the
mission of his disciples in another section, and
so on. If this is true, we see clearly how it
happens that so much of this Gospel is ar-
ranged in groups of incidents or teachings of
Jesus.
8. The historical value of Luke. Luke
declares in his preface (1 : 1-4) that he
intends to write a better Gospel than those
which were then current, that is, a Gospel
which would be more valuable for the instruc-
tion of his friend Theophilus; one which
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The Four Gospels
would create in his friend's mind a feeling of
greater certainty concerning the Christian
truths which he had been taught. From our
survey of this Gospel we have seen that it
consists in the main of an interweaving of
Mark and the Logia, just as Matthew does,
but with the addition of a long account of the
activities of Jesus in the region of Perea.
Luke evidently felt that such a combination
of records would present a fuller, clearer
portrait of Christ than any other Gospel that
he knew; moreover, when he is relating some-
thing which we also find in Matthew or Mark,
and changes the wording or arrangement
that he finds there, we may suppose that he
believes that his changes are going to give a
fairer impression of Jesus to his readers;
that his version will be less liable to be mis-
understood, and so will give a greater sense of
certainty to his reader's faith in the Saviour.
9. A summarized statement of the trust-
worthiness of the first three Gospels. We
may now gather up the main . conclusions
regarding the historical trustworthiness of the
Gospels, in which the great majority of modern
scholars are pretty well agreed. Leaving
until the next chapter the special question of
John's Gospel, we may state these conclusions
regarding Matthew, Mark and Luke as
follows :
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(1) The general plan of Jesus' career is
based on Mark, the other two being but
copies of Mark in this respect. The plan
of Jesus' life as presented by Mark is thor-
oughly trustworthy for what is given. But
we must not forget that what we have in our
Gospels is, after all, only a small fragment of
the total life of Jesus, just a few of the best
remembered words and deeds and move-
ments. We can trust Mark, however, as
to the general progress of Jesus' public
career.
(2) As to the chronological order of the
separate deeds and teachings of Jesus, Mark's
order is usually to be preferred, when the
various Gospels do not agree. And where
Mark is silent, or not decisive, Luke is prob-
ably more likely to be correct than Matthew,
for he wrote with greater interest in just these
points, and less interest in trying to mass
materials for arguing a case for Jesus' Messiah-
ship.
(3) As to the separate events or sayings,
each story must be estimated on its own
merits. It is well within the scientific truth
to say that most of the events and sayings re-
ported in the first three Gospels occurred
substantially as they have been recorded.
The presence of a miraculous element in a
story may raise special questions that need
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The Four Gospels
to be faced, but does not necessarily make the
record untrustworthy. Yet, on the other
hand, there might be special reasons for
doubting whether a certain story is really
historical, and such doubt concerning one
story does not necessarily throw doubt upon
the remainder of the Gospel. For example,
some have supposed that Mark's story of the
feeding of the four thousand (8 : 1-10) is a
duplicate version of the similar story of the
feeding of the five thousand (6 : 30-44).
(Observe how much more vague and general-
ized it is.) It is supposed that two versions
of the same event might have been preserved
in different sections of the early Church, and
in the course of time each might have been
told a little differently, until at last, when
Mark came to write, the two stories were so
different that he assumed that they referred
to two separate events, and recorded them as
such. Such an explanation may or may not
be true, but if it is true, the rejection of the
second story as unhistorical does not neces-
sarily mean that there was no feeding of the
multitude at all. Each event or saying must
be judged upon its own merits, and in general,
it is safe to assume that all of them are trust-
worthy, unless there is clear and strong
evidence to the contrary.
(4) As to the minute details, such as the
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Historical Value
exact wording of some saying of Jesus, or
the setting or exact circumstances of his deeds,
we must be ready to make allowance for some
historical inaccuracies. Sometimes the
author's particular views or prejudices are
unconsciously reflected in the way he tells
his story; sometimes allowance must be made
for the natural tendency to legendize, or
idealize, or to forget. Only so can many
minute differences between corresponding nar-
ratives be reasonably explained.
10. The Gospels fulfill the purpose for
which they were written. The Gospels thus
present to us a solid body of historically
trustworthy material, with a small fringe of
un-historical detail. This ragged edge of
uncertain details does not prevent the Gospels
from accomplishing the great purpose for
which their human authors wrote them, and
for which God in his providence intended
them. They give us a faithful and perma-
nent impression of the character, career and
ideas of Jesus Christ. If there are micro-
scopic errors in them which the scientific
historian is concerned about, they are never-
theless sufficiently accurate for all ordinary
purposes of promoting the cause of Chris-
tianity in the lives of Christians and in the
world. The interests of religion do not
require the nice distinctions of the scientific
in
The Four Gospels
historian. Religion is not so vitally con-
cerned to know exactly where the real shades
off into the ideal, where history gives way to
interpretation. It is sufficient for the culture
of the religious life if we can be satisfied, not
that everything in the Gospel did happen
exactly as set down, but that it did so happen
in the main, and that the remainder could
have happened that is, that in the narra-
tives as we now have them we have a true
impressionistic portrayal of the personality
of Christ.
11. A general principle for teachers. As
a rule, it is better for teachers in the church
school to teach the stories of the Gospels
just as they are given in the Gospels them-
selves, avoiding language that raises the
question of their accuracy. It is better not
to enter into discussions regarding the trust-
worthiness of this or that detail until the
pupils themselves raise the question seriously.
The answer to be given then will depend upon
the stage of mental maturity which the pupil
has reached. Sometimes very little children
will raise such questions, long before their
minds are mature enough to understand what
is involved in the distinction between real
and ideal forms of truth. With such small
children the better plan, if possible, is to
postpone any detailed or scientific answer
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Historical Value
until they are older, and to reply to their
questions from the standpoint of their own
limited understanding of what " true " means.
One may say, for example, " Yes, this is
true," or, perhaps, " Some think this is true,
and some think it is not; but is it not just
like Jesus to say (or do) this? "
But by and by, when the child has entered
the adolescent period, the question, " Is this
true? " assumes a new and serious importance.
The mind is now developed to the point where
it is ready for the distinction between real
and ideal truth, or between fact and inter-
pretation. A good illustration for the child
at this time is the comparison between a
painted landscape and a photograph of the
same scene. The two pictures illustrate the
two kinds of truth, and when the distinction
is grasped, the pupil is ready to learn that the
Gospels are not wholly like the photograph,
but in a measure like the landscape, and that
the painting is, after all, more valuable than
the photograph if one wants primarily to
enjoy the artistic beauty of the scene.
Teachers should never hesitate to face the
possibility of contradictions or historical errors
in the Gospels ; and their explanation of such
difficulties, if they really trouble the mind
of the pupil, should always be of such a nature
that the pupil when he grows older will not
"3
The Four Gospels
have to say, " Once I was taught wrongly;
but now I know better."
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
BURTON, Short Introduction to the Gospels, ch. IV.
DALE, Living Christ and the Four Gospels, ch. V.
KENT, Life and Teachings of Jesus, pp. 97-108
(miracles).
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND FURTHER
STUDY
1. Try to appreciate the fact that the literary and
historical standards in New Testament times were
considerably different from those in our own times;
e.g., in regard to copying freely, and often with deliber-
ate changes, the writings of some one else, without
acknowledgment; attributing speeches to persons
whose words could not possibly have been reported
verbatim; emphasis upon total impression rather than
on minute accuracy in statements of fact. What
influence should such considerations have upon one's
attitude toward the Gospels as historical records?
2. What is the real fallacy in the argument that if the
Gospels are untrustworthy in a single detail, they are
untrustworthy in everything?
3. What evidences do you find in a general survey of
present-day life that God is carrying out his purpose
to make this world a good world by working through
men's efforts rather than independently of man? Do
you know of any evidences in history, other than the
possible evidence of the Biblical miracles, that he ever
works independently of man for the betterment of
man's life?
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4. Consider carefully the statement, " The laws of
the universe are on the side of the good man." Are
the " laws of nature " the same as the " laws of God "?
How are the laws of the universe a positive help to the
man who strives after goodness? (Give some illustra-
tions.) How are they hostile to the man whose domi-
. nant purposes are not good?
5. In the consideration of any " miracle," note that
there are always three distinct questions to be asked:
(1) the scientific (philosophical) question, Could it
happen? (2) the historical question, Did it happen?
(3) the religious question, What did (does) it mean?
The answer to the first hinges upon one's conception of
God and his relation to nature; the answer to the
second is solely a matter of historical and literary
evidence; the answer to the third may be different for
the first century conditions than for our modern world.
Study carefully two or three of the Gospel miracles in
the light of these three questions, and write out your
answers. Use, e.g., the healing of the Gadarene
demoniac, Mark 5 : 1-20; the healing of the centurion's
servant, Matthew 8 :5-13; the feeding of the multi-
tude, Mark 6 : 30-44.
OUTLINE OF JOHN'S GOSPEL
I PROLOGUE: THE WORD MADE FLESH, 1 : 1-18.
II THE EARLY PERIOD OF JESUS' MINISTRY; EARLY
WITNESSES TO CHRIST.
1 John the Baptist and the First Disciples,
1 : 19-51.
2 The Miracle at Cana; the Disciples' Faith
Confirmed, 2 : 1-12.'
3 The Cleansing of the Temple; the First
Opposition, 2 : 2-22.
The Four Gospels
4 Nicodemus, 2 : 23 3 : 21.
5 The Samaritan Woman; Discourse on Wor-
ship, 4 : 1-42.
6 The Nobleman and His Son, 4 : 43-54.
III THE MIDDLE PERIOD OF JESUS' MINISTRY;
CHRIST'S CLAIMS ACCEPTED BY A FEW
INDIVIDUALS, BUT REJECTED BY THE JEWS
AS A WHOLE, ch. 5-12.
1 Healing of the Impotent Man at Bethesda;
Christ as the One Sent from God, ch. 5.
2 Feeding the Multitude; Christ as the Bread
of Life, ch. 6.
3 The Feast of Tabernacles; Christ as the
Water of Life, chs. 7-8.
4 The Man Born Blind; Christ as the Light of
the World, ch. 9.
5 The Feast of Dedication ; Christ as the Good
Shepherd, ch. 10.
6 The Raising of Lazarus; Christ as the Resur-
rection and the Life, ch. 11.
7 The Final Presentation and Rejection of
Christ, ch. 12.
IV THE CLOSING PERIOD OF JESUS' MINISTRY;
CHRIST'S DEEPER MANIFESTATION OF
HIMSELF TO His DISCIPLES, chs. 13-17.
1 The Washing of the Disciples' Feet; a
Lesson in Humility, 13 : 1-20.
2 The Exclusion of Judas, 13 : 21-30.
3 The Conversation in the Upper Room,
13 : 21 14 : 31.
4 Teachings on the Way to the Garden,
chs. 15-16.
5 Christ's Farewell Prayer, ch. 17.
V THE DEATH OF JESUS; THE APPARENT VICTORY
OF UNBELIEF, chs. 18-19.
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Historical Value
VI THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS ; THE VICTORY OF
FAITH, ch. 20.
VII APPENDIX: COMMISSION, COMMENDATION AND
CONCLUSION, ch. 21.
JOHN, THE LATEST GOSPEL
CHAPTER VI
John, the Latest Gospel
1. John's Gospel is different from the
others. When the first three Gospels are
compared with one another, as we have had
occasion to compare them in the previous
chapters, it is found that in their broad out-
lines they resemble each other very closely.
This is due, of course, to the fact that they
have all been constructed on the basis of
one original, namely, Mark. Because of
this general resemblance these Gospels are
commonly called the " synoptic " Gospels,
meaning, " similar in appearance."
But when we turn to John we find ourselves
in a totally different atmosphere. The out-
standing characteristics of John's Gospel are
not its resemblances to the other Gospels, but
its striking differences from them.
2. The tone is philosophical rather than
historical. In the very first verses we are
introduced to a philosophical discussion of
the eternal aspects of Christ, which repre-
sents him from a point of view altogether
different from the simple, human portrait of
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The Four Gospels
Mark. This philosophical or theological tone
is carried right through the whole Gospel.
The deeds of Jesus are narrated in such a
way as to raise questions regarding his divine
origin. The teachings of Jesus are also
selected with a view to setting forth his
claims to be " sent from God," or, as the
introduction puts it, " the Word made flesh."
No matter how intensely human and realistic
the narratives are, we are never allowed to
forget that this Jesus who moves about, per-
forming " signs " and teaching great truths,
is more than human; he is nothing less than
God manifest in human form, undertaking
in this way to reveal himself to mankind and
to redeem mankind from sin and to bring
to humanity a more abundant life. The
speeches of Jesus are commonly about his
claims to be " sent from God "; he presents
himself as the Son of God, the bread of life,
the living water, the light of the world.
Whether he is driving the traders out of the
temple, or talking with a wicked woman, or
arguing with the Pharisees, or comforting
his disciples before his death, or hanging on
the cross, he is always represented by John
as something more than a common man.
And this desire to make the " divinity " of
Christ stand out in all the story is what makes
this Gospel strikingly different from the
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The Latest Gospel
others. This faith in the divinity of Christ
is not absent from Matthew, Mark and
Luke; nevertheless, it is by no means so de-
liberately forced upon the attention of their
readers as we find it in John.
This theological purpose is not merely for
the sake of presenting a theoretical discussion
about the origin or meaning of Christ. The
motive of this Gospel is intensely practical.
The author wants his readers to see these
superhuman aspects of Christ in order that
they may put their faith in him as a Saviour
and a living Lord. " These [things] are
written," he declares, " that ye may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and
that believing ye may have life in his name "
(20 : 31). It seemed to him of the first
importance that his readers should know the
ever-living Christ in their own personal
experience, rather than that they should
merely be familiar with the stories and tradi-
tions about his earthly life. Therefore he
uses the stories about the earthly life of Jesus
simply as a means of setting forth the truth
about the divine, eternal Christ; his Gospel,
in contrast with the other Gospels, is not fact
suggesting meaning, but meaning recalling
fact.
The influence of this strong theological
aim is seen in the way the character of Jesus
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The Four Gospels
is presented. One of the most remarkable
features of John's portrait of Jesus is the
absence of all human development in him.
Such progress as there is in the story is
dramatic rather than psychological; it is the
development of an idea rather than a per-
sonality. The ideas of Jesus, his declarations
about his Messiahship, his methods of teach-
ing and working, his knowledge of his com-
ing cross, 1 are all full-grown from the very
first chapters. This is in marked contrast to
the synoptic story, where we find Jesus fre-
quently changing his methods and adopting
new policies as to what he shall do and teach,
as his experience develops, as the Pharisees
grow more and more hostile, and as his
disciples progress in their faith in him.
3. As a rule, incidents (miracles) are made
the texts for long discourses. This is espe-
cially obvious in the central portion of the
Gospel, where the healing of the impotent
man at the Pool of Bethesda (chapter 5), the
feeding of the five thousand (chapter 6), the
journey to the Feast of Tabernacles (chapters
7 and 8), the healing of the man born blind
(chapter 9), the Feast of Dedication (chapter
1 John's Gospel represents Jesus as fully conscious from the
beginning of a coming " hour " (the hour of his death) which
should mark the consummation of his whole mission. See 2:4;
4:21,23; 5:25,28; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23,27; 13:1; 16:32;
17 :1.
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The Latest Gospel
10), the raising of Lazarus (chapter 11), are all
made the starting-point for long and profound
discourses of Jesus concerning his unique re-
lation to God and his peculiar mission to the
world and to those who believe on him.
4. The language and style of these dis-
courses are due to the author rather than to
Jesus. This is a statement which, of course,
can be verified more easily by those who read
the Gospels in the original Greek than by
those who read them only in the English
versions. Still, it is possible for English
readers to feel the truth of it by careful read-
ing and study.
First, some of the long discourses in John
should be read alongside of the discourses in
the synoptic Gospels which are more or less
parallel to them. Thus the third chapter of
John might be read beside the eighteenth
chapter of Matthew; the " Good Shepherd "
discourse in John 10 alongside of the parables
in Luke 15 ; the farewell teaching about going
away and coming again (John 14 to 16), with
the long discourse about the destruction of
Jerusalem and the coming again of Christ,
in Mark 13. One can hardly help feeling
how great the difference is in the range of
ideas, the vocabulary and the literary style
between the synoptic teachings of Jesus and
the Johannine teachings,
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The Four Gospels
Then, when this difference has been appre-
ciated, the discourses of Jesus in John should
be studied in comparison with other portions
of the Johannine writings where it is the
author and not Jesus who is speaking. One
of the best examples of this is to read Jesus'
teachings in John 3 in comparison with
John's first epistle, chapter 5 : 1-13. The ideas,
the choice of words, the style of expression,
are quite similar. Or, compare the teaching
of Jesus in John 3 : 1-21 with the teaching of
John the Baptist in the same chapter, verses
27-36. The ideas, the diction, the literary
style of these two discourses are so much alike
that if it were not for the introduction of the
narrative in verses 22-26 we would not know
that Jesus had stopped speaking and that the
new speaker was John the Baptist. Such
comparisons may be extended indefinitely,
and they all point to the conclusion that the
writer of this Gospel has re-told the teaching
of Jesus, very largely in his own language
and in his own style.
5. Controversial aims in John's Gospel.
Toward the end of the first century Chris-
tianity had grown sufficiently strong to
command serious attention from the Jews
among whom it had had its origin, and from
the pagan worshippers who found that the
new cult was making inroads upon their
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The Latest Gospel
religions. As a result the new religion of
Christ was attacked from many quarters, and
was obliged to defend itself.
(1) The Jews had always been bitter
enemies of the new faith, and the great
achievement of Paul in lifting Christianity
to the plane of a world religion was the out-
come of long and bitter opposition from Jew-
ish Christians who wanted the new faith to
remain a sect of Judaism. When this Gospel
was written this controversy with Judaism
was not yet settled, and it is clear that the
author selected much of the material of his
Gospel with a view to showing Jesus' superi-
ority to any merely Jewish ties. Not only
the constant controversies with the Jews in
which Jesus engages in this Gospel, but the
whole portrait of Jesus as the eternal and
universal Saviour 1 is intended to be a reply
to those " Judaizers " who were still, at the
end of the first century, claiming Christianity
as a branch of the Jewish religion. Notice
also how these controversies are commonly
spoken of as being with the " Jews," instead
of with the " Pharisees," as in the other
Gospels.
(2) There were also heathen religious phi-
losophies which at this time were begin-
ning to attack Christianity. These attacks
1 Cf. 3 : 16; 4 : 42; 10 : 16; 11 : 52; 12 : 32.
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The Four Gospels
consisted of attempts to combine the heathen
religious views with the doctrines of the
Christians. The composite teaching thus
formed became known as " Gnosticism," and
its followers were Gnostics (" wise ones ").
The Gnostics taught that the world (matter)
was evil, and that Christ was separated from
God by many intermediate ranks of angelic
beings. They also held that the historical
life of Jesus was of no value, because religion
rested on ideas rather than on historical
facts. It is not difficult to trace in this
Gospel the writer's interest in defending
Christianity from such false theories, which
in his time were just beginning to gain head-
way among thinkers and teachers in the
Church. The whole Gospel is intended to
show that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, the
" only-begotten," than whom none is so
closely related to the Supreme Deity. And
this Gospel is written also for the express
purpose of showing that the invisible, spiri-
tual Christ, whom Christians believe in, to
whom they prayed and looked for salvation,
was a real, historical person, who had lived
on earth in human form, and who was now
exalted to the right hand of God.
6. The " Johannine problem." These
characteristics of the fourth Gospel, the
philosophical tone, the absence of any human
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development in Christ, the peculiar style and
circle of ideas with which the Gospel deals,
the selection of materials to serve certain
theological or controversial purposes, all create
a problem of great complexity when we come
to ask when and by whom this Gospel was
written. Many volumes have been published
on this subject, and the question is by no
means settled yet to the satisfaction of all
New Testament scholars. But a constantly
increasing majority of scholars now feel that
the old theory that this Gospel was written
in its present form by John the apostle, the
son of Zebedee, is not tenable, although the
apostle may have had a share in furnishing
the historical materials which the author has
used in his work, thus justifying to some
extent the common practice of referring to
this Gospel as " The Gospel according to
John."
7. A working theory of how the Gospel
was written. It seems clear from a careful
study of this Gospel that the author was
familiar with Jewish history, places, customs,
ideas and literature. Yet his philosophical
ideas indicate that he was a resident of
Ephesus when he wrote the Gospel, for Ephe-
sus was the center of these views at that time.
He is, of course, a Christian, and a leader
and instructor of other Christians. Much
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The Four Gospels
of his material is presented from the stand-
point of one who saw with his own eyes the
things he describes. This seems clear from
the careful attention of the narrative to
details, even though it may possibly have
been mistaken in some instances. It should
be noted that the author never names him-
self as " John," although he refers to " the
disciple whom Jesus loved " (a phrase which
seems to be intended to refer to John the son
of Zebedee) as the chief authority for what
he says about the life of Jesus. *
These facts seem best to be explained by
assuming that the Gospel was written by an
unknown Christian leader in the last years of
the first century or the opening years of the
second, on the basis of reminiscences furnished
him by some one (probably John himself)
who had been a close companion of Christ.
On this theory our fourth Gospel resembles
Mark's Gospel, in that the writer depends for
his historical sources on the apostle John, just
as Mark depends on the apostle Peter. It is
different from Mark, however, in that the
materials have been worked over and ex-
panded and interpreted and retold in the
writer's own language (especially the teach-
ings of Christ), while Mark's book seems to
1 See especially 21 : 20 in connection with 21 : 24. Cf . also
18 :16; 19 : 26; 20 : 2; 21 : 17.
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preserve with remarkable fidelity the personal
characteristics and language of Peter himself.
This does not mean that the author of our
fourth Gospel has necessarily misrepresented
Christ's ideas and claims, but it does mean
that we must make some allowances for the
writer's own ideas and point of view and
vocabulary which we do not have to make
when we study the synoptic Gospels.
8. The historical value of this Gospel. In
the light of our discussion of the historical
value of the synoptic Gospels, we may now
try to summarize the historical value of John,
on the basis of the statements just made
concerning its origin and composition. (1)
For the general chronology of Jesus' career,
John is only a second rate authority. Its
purpose was not chronological, but theologi-
cal. (2) For the records of individual inci-
dents in the life of Christ, the Gospel is a
first rate authority. The narratives have all
the characteristics of an eye-witness, and
stand as high in general reliability as the
incidents of the synoptic Gospels. (3) For
the discourses of Jesus, John must be rated as
a third-class authority. In all probability
the sayings of Jesus recorded in John are
based upon real, authentic teachings of
Christ; but they have been retold in the
author's own language, and they have prob-
The Four Gospels
ably often been expanded as the writer of the
Gospel has carried their ideas out into his own
interpretation and application.
It should not be forgotten that the greatest
value of this or any other Gospel is not its
minute historical accuracy, but the faithful-
ness with which it conveys to its readers a
true impression of Jesus Christ. The ability
of John's Gospel to lead people everywhere
into a deep spiritual experience of the living
Christ, is the standing proof of its superlative
worth to the Church as a part of the Christian
Bible.
9. The great teachings of John's Gospel.
(1) The Divine Sonship of Jesus Christ. The
writer declares that his purpose is to show
that " Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God "
(20 : 21). In the light of the whole Gospel,
that statement means that he desires to show
that the title " Christ " (Messiah), or, as he
prefers, " Son of God," is not to be denned
in the old Jewish sense of a political deliverer,
but in a deeper and more spiritual sense as
One sent from God to bring to all men the
true knowledge of God as the Father. This,
as we saw in Chapter 3, is also one of the
main objects of Matthew's Gospel. But
John carries the deepening and the spiritual-
izing of the idea of Messiah much further
than Matthew. According to Matthew, Jesus
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tried to make it clear that his Messiahship
did not mean political leadership so much as
righteous character and lowly service. His
greatness as the Messiah, or Anointed One,
was moral greatness; his ascendancy over
men was moral leadership. The writer of
John is anxious to show even more than this.
He wishes his readers to perceive that Jesus
bears a peculiar and eternal relation to God,
which he describes in his introduction under
the figure of the " Word," and throughout
the rest of the Gospel by means of the title
" Son of God," or the " only-begotten Son."
John means by " Son of God " something
different from what Matthew or the other
Gospels mean by this term. In the synoptic
Gospels the term is used simply as one of the
well-known titles of the Jewish Messiah.
But John gives it a profound theological
meaning, suggesting by it that Jesus had lived
eternally with God, that he was equal to and
in some wonderful way identical with God,
and that he had come into the world to save
it. 1 Thus the name " Son of God," for John,
is not so much a title describing Jesus'
earthly life, as a doctrine, or theory, about
Jesus' unique relation to God. In saying
that his purpose in this Gospel is to show that
, for example, John 1 : 1-2; 10 : 30; 14 : 9; 3 : 16-17;
12 : 47.
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The Four Gospels
Jesus is the Son of God, the author is there-
fore declaring that his chief object is to
present a doctrine about Jesus, and to illus-
trate it by references to his historical career.
In this Gospel we make the transition from
history to theology.
(2) The two worlds. John's Gospel is
deeply influenced by the idea that man's life
is a battle-ground between two worlds, or two
sets of forces, and that the problem of char-
acter is the problem of putting oneself on
the side of the higher, better world. Some-
times these two sets of opposing forces are
called " light " and " darkness." Thus, in
1 : 4, Jesus is referred to as the light, which
shone into the darkness of the world's sin,
and, though the forces of darkness did their
best to overcome him, they were not able to
capture him. 1 Sometimes the same opposi-
tion is described as " flesh " against " spirit,"
the two selves, so to speak, that are in every
man. " That which is born of the flesh is
flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit" (3:6; see also 6 : 63). Again, this
idea of conflict is expressed in terms of " life "
against "death"; death being the spiritual
state into which one is brought by sin, and
life representing the sum of all that Christ
1 " Apprehend," not " comprehend," as in the King James
version. See also 3 : 19-21.
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has to bestow. In this view of life as a battle-
ground between opposing forces, the teaching
of John's Gospel is strikingly similar to the
teaching of the first Epistle, and it is probable
that the development of this conception is
largely the result of the author's own brooding
over the less philosophical teaching of Christ.
(3) Eternal life. The phrase " eternal life"
is not absent from the synoptic Gospels, but
the fourth Gospel goes much further than
they do in emphasizing it as one of the main
teachings of Christianity. It was easy and
natural for people in those days, as it is in
our own time, to drift into the notion that
eternal life means the life one expects to
live after death, and that will continue its
existence endlessly. That is certainly true,
so far as it goes. But according to John's
Gospel, when one has said that he has missed
the deepest truth of the phrase. It is one of
the main objects of this Gospel to show that
(1) eternal life is not merely endless existence,
but a moral and spiritual quality that
characterizes the life of one who believes in
Jesus, and that (2) this new spiritual life
begins, not at death, but the moment one
accepts Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God.
Thus, this Gospel declares that the great
purpose of Christ's coming was that men
" may have life, and may have it abun-
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The Four Gospels
danlly " (10 : 10). He came to impart, by
the contagion of his own pure, strong char-
acter, a life built of such eternal qualities
love, truth, righteousness that the chang-
ing ages cannot destroy it. And when one
receives, or welcomes, Christ into his heart,
this life begins at once in him; he is " born
from above" (3 :3); he "hath" (present
tense, not future) " eternal life, and cometh
not into judgment, but hath " (already)
" passed out of death into life " (5 : 24).
(4) Faith and knowledge. The Gospel of
John declares again and again, with tireless
insistence, that the way into the Christian
life is by believing, or by faith, in Jesus
Christ, the Son of God. The word " believe"
is used in nearly every chapter, and occurs
ninety-nine times in the whole Gospel; it is
the key-word of the Gospel. But believing
in Christ is carefully described as something
much deeper and more vital than merely
accepting a certain doctrine about Jesus.
We often use the word in the sense of giving
mental assent to some idea or proposition.
To believe in Christ is much more than this.
It means to commit oneself, absolutely,
finally, and unreservedly, for time and eter-
nity, to the life of obedience to Jesus Christ.
" He that believeth on the Son hath eternal
life, but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not
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see life " (3 : 36). It is the faith that expresses
itself in obedience that makes the Chris-
tian sure of God and of eternal life. Hence,
the life of faith is also said to consist in
knowledge, not in the ordinary sense of
possessing information, but in the deeper
sense of knowing by experience. " This is life
eternal, that they should know thee, the only
true God, and him whom thou didst send,
even Jesus Christ " (17 : 3; cf. 7 : 17).
(5) The Holy Spirit and the second com-
ing of Christ. John's Gospel makes much of
Jesus' teaching on these subjects, especially
in chapters 14-16. To understand that
teaching, which the author has carefully
presented so as to meet the particular needs
of his immediate readers, one must recall the
time and circumstances of the publication of
this Gospel. Nearly one hundred years had
passed since the birth of Jesus, and nearly
seventy years since he had departed to "go
to the Father." The hopes which the early
Christians had fondly cherished, that he
would soon visibly return to them, had not
been realized. He had not come back; at
least, not in that way. Nearly all these first
disciples were now dead. John himself was
probably the last survivor among the original
apostles. With the failure of those early
hopes to materialize, the Church in the days
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The Four Gospels
when this Gospel was written was facing a
critical situation. The faith of many Chris-
tians was sorely shaken, for they felt that
Christ had not kept his promise to come back
to them. One of the great objects which the
author had in view when he wrote this Gospel,
was to suggest to his readers that they had
been mistaken in looking for a visible and
bodily return of Jesus. For Jesus, he seems
anxious to point out, had returned, even
as he said he would. The " Comforter,"
concerning whom he has much to say in
chapters 14 to 16, was just Jesus himself
come back spiritually, to live among them,
in fulfillment of his promise, " I will not leave
you desolate; I come unto you " (14 : 18).
The Church was looking for a future return
of Jesus; but, as this Gospel points out
(16 : 17-22), Jesus intended to return imme-
diately. The Church was looking for a return
that would be public and visible; but Jesus
himself (so the writer is careful to show,
14 : 21-23) taught that he could not reveal
himself to all, but only to those who loved
him and believed in him.
Jesus, therefore, according to this Gospel,
is now present; just as really, personally
present as he can ever be; no visible com-
ing can make him more really present than
he is today, as his Spirit dwells in the hearts
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of his faithful followers, and binds them into
the fellowship of the Christian Church. Thus
all that is vital in his promise about coming
again has already been fulfilled. In view of
theories regarding the " second coming " of
Christ that are widely held today, the teach-
ing of John's Gospel on this subject is of great
practical importance and will repay the most
careful study.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
GOODSPEED, Story of the New Testament, ch. XVII.
BURTON, Short Introduction to the Gospels, ch. V.
BACON, Making of the New Testament, ch. IX.
VON SODEN, History of Early Christian Literature,
pp. 390-425.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND FURTHER
STUDY
1. Read the Gospel of John through, if possible at
one sitting, following the Outline on page 115. What
reasons do you find for putting this Gospel in a class by
itself, as compared with the other Gospels? E.g., as
to (1) the author's aim and point of view, as reflected
in the Prologue, 1:1-18, and Conclusion, 20:31;
(2) the kind of material which the author has selected;
(3) his general method of treating his biographical
material.
2. What evidences do you find in John 3 : 1-18;
11 : 41-42; chap. 17, that the words attributed to
Jesus are, at least in part, really the language of the
evangelist?
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The Four Gospels
3. Compare the " parable " of the Good Shepherd,
John 10 : 1-18, with the parable of the Lost Sheep,
Luke 15 : 3-7. What differences do you note as to the
aims of each? their methods of presentation?
4. What is the earliest indication, according to this
Gospel, that Jesus was conscious of the coming cross
and resurrection? How does this compare with Mark?
What does the comparison suggest as to John's con-
ception of Christ?
5. According to John 10 : 11-18, who was primarily
responsible for the death of Jesus? In the face of this
passage, how would you answer the charge that Jesus'
death was the suicide of a fanatic?
6. In John, the " supper discourses," chaps. 13-16,
occupy the same general position in the Gospel story
that the discourses about the destruction of Jerusalem
and the end of the age hold in the synoptic Gospels.
Both are given as Jesus' " farewell " teaching, embody-
ing his views and instructions about the future. Com-
pare John 13-16 with Mark 13 (or Matthew 24-25),
and note what differences, if any, you find regarding the
time and manner of Jesus' " return."
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THE HISTORICAL JESUS
CHAPTER VII
The Historical Jesus
1. Scientific and devotional study of the
Gospels. It is a principle of the first impor-
tance, in all worthy study of the Gospels, that
there is no essential distinction between
" scientific " and " devotional " study. By
" scientific " we mean, of course, that sort of
study which conies to the Bible with a mind
open to all the facts, literary and historical
as well as religious, which may be discovered
in its writings. It is the attitude which,
in the phrase of Coleridge, insists on " study-
ing the Bible just as we would study any
other book." That is what we have tried
to do in the preceding chapters. Our method
stands in sharp contrast with the method
which many have tried to follow, in which the
Bible is used merely to furnish " proof -texts "
to show that such and such a view of religion
must be right, and differing views must be
wrong.
In studying the Bible for personal religious
culture, the more " scientific " we are in our
143
The Four Gospels
attitude toward it, the more likely we shall
be to discover in it those religious truths
which are of deep and lasting value to our
lives. The one aim of all truly scientific
study in any field is the discovery of truth,
and that is exactly the one great aim of truly
devotional Bible study. We do not have to
throw away our scientific spirit when we seek
to build Christian character through the
reverent study of the Bible. We need that
spirit, and the more we have of it the better.
We do need, however, to be on our guard
against studying the Bible with an interest
that is intellectual merely, and not deeply
personal and spiritual. It is quite possible
to fill one's mind as full as an encyclopedia
with all sorts of interesting and valuable facts
about the Gospels, and yet be very far from
gathering inspiration from them for living a
Christian life. What we get out of our Bible
study will depend on what we are especially
interested in getting. There is a poem about
three friends, a physician, a teacher and a
scientist, who spent a holiday together in a
country walk. When they came back the
physician was quite excited about the unsani-
tary conditions he had found among the
farmers; the teacher had several pages in
his notebook full of the oddities and collo-
quialisms which he had heard in the speech
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The Historical Jesus
of the country folk; and the scientist was
rejoicing because he had added ten new bugs
to his collection. Each got something of
what he was most interested in. Our study
of the Bible is governed by the same law of
interest. If we are interested only in the
peculiar customs and manners of ancient
people, we shall find much in the Bible of
antiquarian value. If we have a feeling for
beautiful poetry or striking figures of speech,
the Bible will reward our study with great
literary treasures. If we want to know some-
thing about the movements of history in
ancient times, we shall find the Bible a
valuable source-book for the study of certain
nations and periods of antiquity. But we
may study the Bible with all these interests in
view, and still be very far from being better
Christians because of our study. If the Bible
is to yield its richest treasures to the student,
he must study it for the purpose of finding
out what it has to teach regarding the Chris-
tian way of life. It is when we come to the
Bible with that aim, that our study of it
becomes " devotional " study.
In regard to the Gospels, which are the
subject of this book, we may put the foregoing
truth in this form: the true aim in all our
study of the Gospels should be the discovery
of the historic personality of Jesus Christ.
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2. The modern return to Jesus Christ.
There has never been a time since the Chris-
tian Church began, when Jesus Christ has
not been formally recognized as the center of
the whole Christian system. All the great
creeds, ancient and modern, however widely
they may differ in other matters, agree in this,
that Christianity is built upon the founda-
tion of Jesus Christ.
But it was not long after the founding of
Christianity, that the interest of the great
leaders and thinkers in the Church turned
away from the historical career of Jesus and
became focussed upon various theories about
him. Men lost interest in the life of Jesus,
and became absorbed in the doctrine about
Jesus. They engaged in profound and vast
speculations regarding the mystery of Christ's
nature, without hitching their speculations to
the actual facts of his earthly life. They
built their teachings on the epistles of Paul
and neglected the Gospels. Christ, to the
thinkers from the days of the apostles right
down to the early days of the nineteenth
century, was a theological doctrine rather
than an historical personage. He was thought
of chiefly as some mysterious God-man, of
some strange blend of human and divine
natures, instead of the simple, winsome per-
sonality that meets us in the pages of the
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The Historical Jesus
Gospel of Mark. The historical Jesus was
forgotten, and the theological Christ was
elaborated until his features could no longer
be recognized as the features of the Man of
Nazareth. That is the story of the main
currents of the Christian Church's treatment
of Christ through the centuries. There were
noble exceptions here and there, of course,
but the prevailing attitude toward Christ
was to hide his historical life behind a theory
or doctrine about his person.
If you go into any well-equipped religious
library, you will find shelf after shelf filled
with books classed as " Lives of Christ."
In them you may read, from the varying
standpoints of a great multitude of writers,
the story of Jesus of Nazareth, told in the
fashion of ordinary biography, from the
material to be found in the four Gospels.
But you will also find that this vast literature
on the historical life of Christ is all less than
one hundred years old. /The study of the
historical career of Jesus is a distinctly
modern movement in the history of Chris-
tianity. }
The movement began in 1835, when a
German scholar, David Friedrich Strauss,
published his Leben Jesu (" Life of Jesus ").
This work of Strauss' was the first serious
attempt to write a biography of Jesus in
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modern times, and almost the first in the whole
Christian era. Strauss was a pioneer. His
book had many faults, and is not regarded
very seriously today. Even when he first
published it, his radical views about Christ,
so different from the views that were then
considered orthodox, aroused a great storm
of criticism and protest. Strauss himself
was expelled from the University where he
had given promise of a brilliant career. But
he had lighted a torch, and the torch kindled
a mighty fire. The " back to Jesus Christ "
movement had begun.
The second noteworthy attempt to write
a biography of Jesus was by a Frenchman,
Ernest Kenan, who published his Vie de
Jesu (" Life of Jesus ") in 1863. Kenan's
" Life of Jesus " was even more famous than
that of Strauss because the author was a man
of extraordinarily brilliant imagination, and
wrote in a superb literary style. These
two books laid the foundation of the modern
study of the life of Christ.
From this time on the tide of interest
swung away from the speculations of the
theologians. " Back to Christ! " was the
watch-word of religious thinking. And in
the sixty years since Kenan's book appeared,
an ever-swelling stream of " Lives of Christ "
has shown us how the earthly career of Jesus
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The Historical Jesus
has captured the attention of the Christian
world. In Germany, England, Scotland and
America the study of the .Gospel records of
Jesus, the appreciation of the historical
Jesus Christ, has been the all-absorbing theme
of Christian thinkers and writers, of preach-
ers and Bible teachers. Today it is a simple
fact that the four Gospels are being studied
with a minuteness and devotion and apprecia-
tion that have never been given to any other
writings in the world's history. Today the
real historical Jesus is better known, better
understood, and better loved, than he has
ever been in the history of his Church.
What is the significance of all this modern
interest in the history of Jesus? Just this,
that the Christian Church is learning more
deeply than ever before that the Christian life
centers in a personal loyalty to Jesus Christ,
and not merely in confessing one's belief in
certain doctrines about him. To be a Chris-
tian is not so much a matter of being " ortho-
dox " as a matter of being loyal. It is not
intellectual assent merely, but obedience,
that makes one a Christian.
3. The discovery of Jesus Christ in the
Gospels. The great aim in all worthy study
of the Gospels is the discovery of the historical
personality of Jesus Christ. Successful Gos-
pel study means that Jesus Christ stands out
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The Four Gospels
in our thinking vividly real, the lines of his
portrait filled in with clear-cut strokes as we
have discovered him in this or that situation
in his earthly career. When we study some
particular incident, say the healing of the
man born blind (John 9), the test of our
study is not how real the blind man has
become to our imagination, but how real
Jesus Christ has become. And so, in every
section of the Gospels, we try to see what
Jesus Christ is like, by viewing him in the
midst of the words and deeds that filled his
busy days.
4. What one discovers in the historical
Jesus. Let us try to sum up, in a general
statement, what the search for the real
historical Jesus reveals, as we take the details
of the Gospel stories and bring them together
into a general portrait of Christ. We find
that in certain respects Jesus is like ourselves,
and in certain other respects he is very differ-
ent from ourselves.
5. A Personality intensely like ourselves:
human. The first impression one gets of
Jesus when he comes to the Gospels with an
open mind is the humanness of Jesus. He is
a real human being, with the common charac-
teristics of other human beings. Physically,
he is just like other men. His body grows
just as other human bodies grow; at one time
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The Historical Jesus
he is a baby, helpless, utterly dependent upon
his mother's care ; by and by he is a boy, with
a boy's growth, a boy's inquisitiveness, a
boy's love of travel and adventure. Then we
see him grown up, shouldering the burden of
a man's life in the world, working as other
men work, getting tired and needing rest as
other men do. He uses his feet to walk, his
hands to toil, his eyes to see, his ears to hear,
his mind to think, just as other men do.
Physically, he is intensely like us: human.
If we study his mental life, again we find
him just like ourselves. His mind grows,
just as ours do. When he was a little child
he did not know as much as he knew when he
grew up; he went to school and learned, like
other boys. Like all of us, there were many
things he never did know; he was always
asking ordinary questions, seeking for infor-
mation. His friends speculated about the
time when the world was going to end; Jesus
said he didn't know. He did not seem to
know anything about our modern science,
such as our germ-theory of disease, but shared
the common ideas of his time in regard to
the cause and nature of human ailments.
As far as we can tell, he shared the belief of his
time that the earth was flat, and that the
" heavens " were regions up above the solid
arch of the sky. When he chose his disciples,
The Four Gospels
he seems to have believed that Judas was as
promising as the rest of them; there is no
certain intimation that he knew beforehand
that Judas would prove a traitor. All the
way through his career we see his mental life
is just like the mental life of other people.
Even in his spiritual life, he is like our-
selves when we are at our best. For the
deepest fact in Jesus' character is that he
recognized that the spiritual life is the highest
part of life; he lived and taught on that
assumption; and so do we, when we are at
our best.
In all the common characteristics of human
life, then, we discover in the historical Jesus
a man intensely like ourselves : human.
6. A Personality vitally different from our-
selves : unique. There are certain features,
however, about this man whom we discover
in our study of fthe> Gospels, in which he is
strikingly different from other people, and no
portrait of the Jesus Christ of the Gospels is
complete, or scientifically fair to him, that
does not include these unique features.
(1) His sense of God vs. his sense of sin.
The most remarkable characteristic of Jesus'
life was his unfailing sense of God. He lived
in the perpetual consciousness of communion
with his heavenly Father. With the possible
exception of a few moments on the cross,
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The Historical Jesus
he seems never to have lost this " awareness "
of God. Of him, in the most perfect fashion
conceivable, it can be said that " in God he
lived, and moved, and had his being." God
was always as real to him as the air he
breathed.
This fact alone would mark Jesus off from
the great majority of other men, as an unusual
religious genius. But when we consider this
fact in connection with the absence of any
sense of sin or moral failure in his life, it
becomes absolutely unique. For Jesus seems
never once to have had any sense of any
wrong-doing for which he needed to ask God's
forgiveness. He lived his life openly, in the
face of fierce enmity and criticism, and yet he
constantly challenged even his foes to find
any flaws in his character. " Which of you
convicteth me of sin?" (John 8:46) "I
do always the things that are pleasing to
him" (John 8:29). When he made the
latter statement we might be inclined to say,
" Yes, but other men might say the same
thing, and they might be wrong." But we
read that when Jesus declared that his life
was always well-pleasing to God, " many
believed on him." The story is told of a man
who said to Thomas Carlyle, " I have reached
the point where I can say, with Jesus Christ,
' I and my Father are one.' " Carlyle's
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The Four Gospels
rough but splendid answer was, " Yes, but
Jesus Christ got the world to believe him! "
The fact that Jesus never lost his sense of
fellowship with God, and at the same time was
never conscious of any sin in his life that
needed God's forgiveness, contradicts all
human experience absolutely. For the un-
failing law of the religious life is that the more
deeply we become conscious of the God whom
Jesus taught us to believe in, the more deeply
we realize how unworthy we are of com-
munion with him, and how much there is in
our lives that needs his mercy and forgiveness.
The absence of any such feeling on the part of
Jesus is a trait that is absolutely unique.
(2) His timeless outlook vs. his historical
attachments. Another fact that marks Jesus
off as a unique personality is the fact that he
always saw beyond the temporary and local
conditions of his life, and what he said and
did have proved to be of permanent value.
A man like other men, as we have seen, he
lived as other men lived, in the midst of his
own country and people and times. He was
a Jew by birth, by education and by religious
inheritance, and his life was spent almost
entirely among his own countrymen. When
he taught he was compelled, if he would get
himself understood at all, to teach in the
language, by means of the ideas, and according
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The Historical Jesus
to the customs of the people who listened to
him. His speech was the common Aramaic
speech of his land. His illustrations, by
means of which he expressed and made clear
his ideas, were from the commonest objects
and customs of his day. His truths were
taught as all new truths have always to be
taught, by building upon the foundations of
what people around him already knew or
believed. He was a true man of his time,
like other men in his historical attachments.
And yet his teachings are absolutely uni-
versal and permanent. Underneath the
wrappings of Jewish speech and customs are
always to be found ideas that are just as true
for the Greeks and Romans as they are for
Jews, and just as true for this twentieth
century as they were for his own generation.
The speech of Palestine has become obsolete,
a dead language. The customs to which
Jesus referred for illustration have mostly
been left behind in the march of civilization.
But the truths he taught through these are
just as true today as they were then. Not
one thing that Jesus taught has ever had to be
unlearned. Indeed, the world is turning
wistfully to the teachings of this Christ today
as never before, and vaguely beginning to
realize that the truths he taught are after
all the only hope of civilization, and that they
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have never yet been given a real trial in the
life of the world. No other religious teacher
has so perfectly blended a life of simple con-
formity to his own age, with absolute time-
lessness in his teachings, as Jesus Christ.
In this, too, he is unique.
(3) His personal claims vs. his personal
sanity. Once more, when we come to examine
the career of Jesus, we cannot fail to be
amazed at the stupendous claims he made for
himself. Other great religious teachers have
claimed great personal honors and titles;
yet no other has claimed such final powers of
revealing God, of saving men, and such rights
of final judgment, as Jesus Christ. " Come
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11 : 28).
The beauty and winsomeness of these great
words must not blind us to the stupendous
claim they contain, that Christ is humanity's
great Rest-Giver. " All authority hath been
given unto me in heaven and on earth "
(Matt. 28 : 18). Was ever any claim to
ascendancy over men more absolute than
this? " No man knoweth the Father, save
the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son
willeth to reveal him." " I and my Father
are one." " No man cometh unto the Father
but by me." What are we to think of such
announcements ?
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The Historical Jesus
We may say at once, that if any ordinary
person should appear in our midst today and
make such claims as these about himself,
our first thought would be that he was a man
of unbalanced mind. We should have him
examined in regard to his sanity. Men
have made such claims, in our own day as
well as in other days; but these assertions
have always proved in a short time to be the
flights of a disordered brain. But when we
study Jesus Christ, as we find him in the
Gospels, the one fact about him that is more
certain than any other is that he was not
insane. No saner, sweeter, more wholesome
human spirit ever lived. He was scrupulous
about his times of retirement for contempla-
tion and prayer, so that his thinking and his
teaching might never become fanatical or
unbalanced. His judgment regarding the
simplest problems, that confronted him, as
well as the deepest problems of human life,
stand the test of time; his decisions have
never had to be reversed. No man ever lived
a sounder, saner life than Jesus lived.
If these tremendous claims to be the
Messiah, the sole Revealer of God, the Saviour
and the final Judge of men, were the utter-
ances of a wild-minded fanatic, we should
simply dismiss them, and class Jesus with
other extremists of which history is full.
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The Four Gospels
But when we couple these claims with his
marvelous poise and sanity of mind, they
constitute a trait in him that is unshared
by any other man: unique.
7. Summary: the Jesus Christ of history.
To gather together the facts that we have
been noting into a summarized portrait of
the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, we have to
say, first, that Jesus Christ is a real, historical
person, a man who lived a truly human life,
and who fills a place in the great stream of
human history just as other men have done.
But we have to say, in the second place, that
there are some unique facts about him that
cannot be explained by comparing him with
other men. Certain laws of life which are
universal so far as other men are concerned
are not true of him ; he is the Great Exception.
It is just these unique traits which we have
noted that have led Christians in all ages to
feel that Jesus must be described in terms
that are more than ordinary human terms.
Upon these facts, in which he is the Great
Exception to common humanity, have been
built all the various theories about the divin-
ity of Christ. Many and various are the
descriptions of this " divine " or unique
aspect of Christ, for all of them are just
human attempts to account for these peculiar
facts, and each view depends upon the view-
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The Historical Jesus
point and mental make-up of the one who
constructs it. It is not necessary to say that
the doctrine of Christ's divinity taught by
this theologian or that is the only true one;
perhaps there are elements of truth in most of
them. Nor is it proper to say that when one
accepts such and such a person's teaching
about the divinity of Christ, that then and
then only can one fairly be called a Christian.
But it does seem necessary that in our total
estimate of the personality of Jesus Christ we
shall recognize certain features in which he
differs vitally from all other men who have
lived in history, and that these features
are what have given him his supreme ascend-
ancy over the life and thinking of mankind.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER READING
JEFFERSON, Character of Jesus, ch. XXVI. (The
Greatness of Jesus.)
GLOVER, The Jesus of History, chs. I, III, IV.
SIMPSON, The Fact of Christ, pp. 39-50.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND FURTHER
STUDY
1. Alexander, Socrates, Napoleon, Lincoln, are
universally numbered among the world's great men.
What is the outstanding trait or achievement in each
one that entitles him to such fame? In comparison
with these men, what is the one outstanding fact about
Jesus that entitles him to rank as the world's Greatest
Man?
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The Four Gospels
2. If Jesus had come to live his earthly life in the
midst of our twentieth-century America, he would
doubtless have presented his message about God and
duty in the language and forms of our modern thought.
Would his essential message have been different? (ie.,
would he have omitted or altered any of his fundamental
views, or added others as equally essential?) Would
the modern world have rejected him, as the Jews of
Palestine did?
3. Study the following typical examples of Jesus'
teaching: Matthew 5:21-24; Luke 18:1-7; John
16 : 2-3. In each case distinguish between the outer,
temporal form of his teaching, and the inner, perma-
nent truth.
4. Are the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount
(e.g., Matthew 5 : 38-47) intended to apply to nations
as well as individuals? Why do not the modern na-
tions take them seriously?
5. Study Jesus' activity in the cleansing of lepers
(e.g., Mark 1:40-44; Luke 17:12-19). May the
fact of his own perfect physical health have had some-
thing to do with his fearlessness in coming into contact
with contagious diseases, and his immunity from them?
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THE CHRIST OF EXPERIENCE
CHAPTER VIII
The Christ of Experience
1. The effects of the discovery of the
Personality of Jesus Christ. It is impossible
for any one to come consciously into the
presence of a powerful personality without
being profoundly influenced by it. The pres-
ence and activity of a Lincoln or a Roosevelt
are bound to rouse in men strong feelings of
friendship or enmity. Such feelings are the
stronger and more inescapable as the man in
question possesses a more powerful personal-
ity and as one's contact with him is more
intimate. This is supremely true of the
remarkable personality of Jesus Christ. Let
us, then, trace out the inevitable results of our
discovery of this personality in the Gospels.
(1) He compels our admiration. No one
can read the Gospels thoughtfully and with
an open mind without feeling at once the
wonderful attractiveness of the character of
Jesus. The same fascination, or charm, that
drew the multitudes irresistibly around him
in his earthly career sends out its influence as
his character discloses itself in the study of
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The Four Gospels
the Gospels. The beautiful tenderness and
abounding strength; the splendid courage
that dared confront the vested interests of his
day; the wooing sympathy of his invitation
to the weary and heavy-laden; the unaffected
love for little children; the patient forbear-
ance toward his disciples; the unerring tact-
fulness of his dealing with all sorts of people;
the sublime heroism of his great sacrifice;
these are among the qualities that have
endeared him to humanity. Multitudes have
resisted his appeal, denied his claims, resented
his interference with their lives, refused to
obey his commands, but not one who faces
him thoughtfully can help admiring him.
(2) He measures up to our moral ideal.
For nineteen centuries the character of Jesus
has been exposed to the keenest scrutiny and
criticism that have ever been directed toward
a human life. And no one has yet found any
warrant for asserting that Jesus comes short
in any trait demanded by the highest con-
science and morality of men. As an ideal for
individual life he satisfies our deepest in-
stincts of what is right. As a pattern for
human society, no social ideal has yet been
discovered higher than that which he exem-
plified in his own conduct and expressed in
his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.
What is there in his teaching that has had
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The Christ of Experience
the effect of spoiling life at any point? Where
is the child who has been denied his right to
live a child's life, and to grow into beautiful
youth and fine manhood, because Jesus Christ
came into human history? Where is the
woman whose womanhood has been degraded
because of anything contemptuous toward her
sex in the teaching of Jesus? Where has
industrialism found any warrant for setting
property above personality in any word
uttered, or influence exerted, by this man?
To ask such questions is to declare that all
the highest goals of individual or social life
toward which mankind is slowly and painfully
struggling are just those set forth in the teach-
ing of Christ, and embodied in his personal
life and conduct.
The only serious criticism that has been
possible to the thoughtful student of Jesus
is the fear that leads him to say, " His char-
acter is too perfect, the ideal is too far beyond
me; give me Buddha or Confucius as my
example and I can follow hopefully; but set
before me Jesus Christ and I am in despair;
I can never hope to attain the pure and lofty
level of his life." Such a criticism is natural
enough; yet it is not well-founded; for no
one can find permanent satisfaction in any
ideal that is less than the best he knows.
When the man who makes such a criticism
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The Four Gospels
as this comes to his best moods, and takes
counsel with his highest self, he is led to say,
" Practical or impossible, within my reach or
forever beyond it, no other conception of life
so perfectly matches all that is highest and
best and noblest in me as this life of Jesus
Christ."
(3) He challenges our moral choice. Like
all strong characters, the personality of Jesus
makes an appeal to our moral natures, an
appeal for something more than emotional
admiration, or intellectual assent to his
perfection. He appeals to our wills, our
power of moral choice.
That was the constant effect of his presence
during his earthly life. The crowds were
drawn to him as to a magnet; they could not
let him alone. As they faced his teaching
they were compelled to admit that " never
man spake as this man." But they were
also constrained by his forceful personality
to do something more; they found that they
must either follow him or reject him. The
presence of Jesus invariably challenged the
conscience of those who came close enough to
really know him. They had to become his
friends or his enemies, and that not passively,
but actively. They must surrender them-
selves to the ideal which they saw and felt
in him, or they must harden their hearts
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The Christ of Experience
against that ideal of life. The one impos-
sible attitude in his presence was moral neu-
trality.
As the same great personality discloses
himself to the student of the Gospels today,
the same influence is exerted, and the modern
student finds in this Christ the same chal-
lenge to his moral nature. Still Jesus Christ
not only attracts men, but sifts them. Still
contact with him creates moral issues. His
presence inevitably produces crises in one's
inner life. Shall I accept his way of life, and
reverently and obediently follow him? Or
shall I choose the lower, less perfect way, and
surrender myself a little longer to the life
that is less than the best? Some such ques-
tioning is inevitable when one really faces
Jesus Christ. The only way to escape it is
to stop facing him; but even this is no real
escape, for, the issue having once been raised,
to refuse his challenge is to take sides, morally,
against him. The only answer that brings
satisfaction to one's deepest nature is such
an answer as Richard Watson Gilder expresses
in the well-known lines:
" If Jesus Christ is a man,
And only a man, I say
That of all mankind I will cleave to him,
And to him I will cleave alway.
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The Four Gospels .
" If Jesus Christ is a God,
And the only God, I swear
I will follow him through heaven and hell,
Through the earth and the sea and the
air! "
2. What, then, is a Christian? In the
light of all the facts which we have studied
in this book about the Gospels and the Christ
whose earthly life is recorded in them, we are
now ready to frame a simple, yet compre-
hensive definition of the Christian life. A
Christian is one who faces the personality of
Jesus Christ, feels the challenge which that
personality makes to his moral nature, and
responds obediently to it.
3. The breadth of this definition. It is
important to observe what this definition
does not include.
(1) It does not mean that there is any
simple, uniform type of Christian experience
or behavior. There is no standard set of
beliefs or prayers or emotions or public
behavior by which all alike can be measured
to see whether they are Christians or not.
It used to be supposed that no one could
be a Christian unless he had passed through
a convulsive experience of conversion, in
which his emotions were aroused to such a
pitch of intensity that it seemed as if some
supernatural conflict between Satan and God
168
. The Christ of Experience
were going on inside of him. There can be
no question that many have made the start
in the Christian life to the accompaniment
of such emotional upheavals. But intense
emotion is not a universal test of whether
one is a Christian or not. Large numbers of
earnest Christians, whose natures are bal-
anced and steady, and whose lives have
developed evenly and naturally, have entered
into the conscious Christian life without any
unusual excitement whatever.
Nor is the plan, or pattern, of Christian
conduct the same for all Christians. There
is no detailed code of " thou shalt " and
" thou shalt not " which regulates the coming
and going, the doing and not doing, of all
Christians alike. Of course, we have princi-
ples of the Christian life set forth in the whole
example and teaching of Jesus Christ. But
Jesus never intended his teaching to be hard-
ened into literal rules for the regulation of
life's details. Christian conduct is bound by
just two great limits: the ideals discoverable
in the life and teachings of Jesus, and the
application of these ideals by the individual
conscience which is trained to face the per-
sonality of Jesus Christ habitually.
No two Christians who are living in close
touch with Jesus Christ will regulate the
details of their lives in exactly the same way.
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The Four Gospels
For Christ deals individually with each soul.
His words of daily command, or, to say the
same thing in the more scientific phraseology
of our day, the impulses of conscience that
will be aroused when Christians bring them-
selves inquiringly into the presence of his
personality, are for no two persons exactly
alike. He will say something, just as surely
as one confronts him with the prayer, " What
shall I do, Lord? " He will answer through
the reaction of conscience, and one's duty will
be made clear; but the duty in each case will
depend upon the individual needs of the one
who seeks, and will not necessarily be the
same as the duty or task he lays upon the con-
science of the next person who comes to him.
(2) Our definition does not mean that
every Christian will be led to explain the
personality of Christ in the same terms. No
particular formula, or doctrinal statement of
the " divinity " of Christ, can be taken as a
universal test of whether one is a Christian
or not. We have seen in the last chapter
that there are certain great facts about Christ
which must be taken into account in any
attempt to explain him. Some of these facts
can be explained easily enough in the terms
of our common humanity. Other facts are
unique ; they put Christ in a class by himself.
Any explanation which accounts for these
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The Christ of Experience
facts that are unique will be an explanation
which cannot be applied to any other human
being. What explanation we shall give will
depend largely on the kind of ideas and terms
that fit our particular mental make-up.
Some will be satisfied with such terms as
" perfect humanity, humanity raised to the
n-ih power, unique human individuality,"
and the like. Others will be better satisfied
with Biblical terms, like " God with us, the
Word made flesh, the only-begotten Son of
God, God in Christ," etc. Others, again,
will find it more satisfying to employ terms
like " divinity, deity, revelation of God,
God-man, God incarnate, having the value of
God, two natures in one person, very God
and very man," etc.
But not one of these many formulas, or the
theories about Christ which they try to
express, can be applied to all Christians as a
test of whether their Christianity is genuine
or not. For no two Christian minds are just
alike, and no explanation of Christ will
satisfy all minds equally well.
If the words which Thomas addressed to
Jesus, " My Lord and my God " (John
20 : 28), are understood as the earnest and
sincere confession that Jesus had come to
be to him the rightful Master of his life and
the supreme object of his devotion, and are
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The Four Gospels
not taken as expressing any particular meta-
physical theory about him, then they are
words which are pretty sure to express the
feeling of every Christian sooner or later, who
comes to know Christ in something of the
same intimate fashion in which Thomas
knew him.
(3) Our definition does not mean that the
Christian will be a person of mature spiritual
experience at the very beginning of his Chris-
tian life. The Christian life is essentially the
habit of facing Christ and letting Christ
make his own appeal, day after day and year
after year. But Christ is a Teacher, and
Christians are growing persons. The teacher
begins with the simple and more elementary
things, and by and by we grow able to see and
do the harder and bigger things. In the
twilight before the dawn one can distinguish
faintly the outlines of the larger pieces of
furniture; as the light grows stronger the
smaller objects appear, the comb and brush
on the dresser, the details of the pictures on
the walls. And when the sun shines at last
directly into the room, then even the particles
of dust floating in the air are clearly visible.
So as one lives in the presence of Christ, the
light of Christ's personality will shine brighter
and brighter, and will reveal deeper and
deeper facts in one's life, sins and weaknesses
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The Christ of Experience
that were unsuspected, powers and tasks
that were undreamed of; and each new dis-
covery will bring with it new duties of self-
conquest or service. So the Christian life is
a never-ending process of self-discovery in
the increasing light of Christ, and of self-
surrender and obedience to Christ.
4. The depth of this definition. It is
equally important to understand what our
definition of a Christian does include.
To begin the Christian life is to face the
personality of Jesus Christ, and for the first
time to recognize the moral demands which
Christ makes upon one, and to begin to obey
those demands. To live the Christian life
day by day is to face Christ habitually, and
to respond habitually to the ever-increasing
appeal which he makes to one's moral nature
with ever renewed surrender and obedience.
One does not prove that he is a Christian
because he can point to some act of obedience
yesterday or last year. The proof that one
is living a Christian life today is that he is
hearing and obeying the voice of Christ
today. In other words, it is not this or that
act of obedience which makes one a Chris-
tian, but the habit of bringing one's life
regularly and persistently into the presence
of Christ, and responding obediently to each
new Christian impulse thus aroused. The
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The Four Gospels
heart of the matter, then, is to know where to
find Christ, and, knowing where he is, to
cultivate the habit of facing him daily and
obeying him.
5. Where is Christ to be found today?
(1) The object of this book has been to show
that the personality, or spirit, of Jesus Christ
has been preserved in the four Gospels.
That is the purpose for which, in the provi-
dence of God, the Gospels were written.
There is nothing mysterious or magical about
this. Where is the personality of Milton to
be found today? In " Paradise Lost " or
11 L f Allegro " or " II Penseroso." We study
the poems which Milton wrote, and his spirit
kindles ours while we do so. The spirit of Sir
Walter Scott still influences those who read
the Waverley novels or Lockhart's great
biography. Just so the personality of Jesus
resides in the Gospels, and we can find him
by the scientific and reverent study of these
four memoirs.
If the Christian life is to grow normally,
there must be a constantly increasing knowl-
edge of the historical Christ. Let no new
ardent disciple imagine that he can learn all
that the Gospels have to teach him about his
Master in a few lessons. The great Per-
sonality who speaks from those pages cannot
be exhausted in a few sessions of the " morn*
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The Christ of Experience
ing watch." Christ cannot be understood
once for all. He grows upon one, as one's
Christian life advances. New light is ever
breaking forth from God's Word. No matter
how many years have been spent already in
consecrated study, when the inquiring disciple
comes to the Christ of the Gospels again,
he finds that there is still something new;
some fresh vision of the beauty and glory of
the Master breaks upon the soul, some call
to deeper and further consecration is heard,
some fresh insight is gained into the meaning
of the life of love.
This truth lays upon every earnest Chris-
tian a definite and solemn obligation to set
apart time and strength sufficient for the
progressive study of Jesus Christ as he is
revealed in the four Gospels. The law of
Christian growth is as inexorable as any
other law of life. Life depends upon growth ;
where growth is suppressed, life itself shrivels
and dies. And growth is dependent upon the
simple, yet absolutely inescapable condition
of regular and proper nourishment. There is
no option for the Christian in this matter.
One's spiritual life itself is at stake; for it
cannot function unless it is nourished by
regular and earnest thinking about Jesus
Christ as he is found in the Gospels.
(2) But it is not alone in the Gospels that
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The Four Gospels
the personality of Jesus Christ is to be found.
He is also to be discovered and faced in the
practice of prayer.
There are two reasons why the study of the
Gospels apart from prayer is not an adequate
means of holding one's life under the influence
of Christ, (a) The character of Christ as
revealed in the Gospels can furnish us only
with principles, or ideals, of conduct. These
principles have to be applied to the concrete
situations of life. We need the inspiration
and guidance of Christ's personality just as
much in applying these principles as we do in
discovering them, (b) The kind of study
which we described in the last chapter as
" devotional " study is prayer. When we
search for the mind of Christ in the records,
that is, when we study the life of Jesus with
minds eager to understand him and with
hearts eager to catch his spirit, we are praying
in the very process of studying. For prayer,
in the broadest and most comprehensive
meaning of the term, is the act or habit of
searching after the best that the universe
holds for one.
There is, of course, another legitimate use
of the word " prayer " which narrows its
meaning to something very much more con-
crete and formal than this. In this more
restricted meaning of the word, prayer is the
17$
The Christ of Experience
definite framing of one's thoughts, feelings,
desires or decisions in the form of direct
address to God. Yet it is not the fact that
the mind is articulating itself in words that
makes such an exercise prayer. It is the
fact that one is actually expressing one's
longing after God and his gifts. No formal
" saying of prayers" without the spiritual
desire for communion and self-expression
Godward is prayer. On the other hand, the
deep craving of the spirit of man for life's
greatest good will shrink and die, just as any
other natural instinct will shrink and die, if
it is not given adequate opportunities to grow
by self-expression.
There are many theories about prayer and
its answer, and many denials that contact
between the spirit of man and the Spirit of
Christ is as real and immediate as prayer
assumes it to be. But it is not necessary to
have a finished theory about prayer before
one prays. Whatever the true theory may
be which explains the fact, it is a fact, verifi-
able in experience, that when one approaches
the Christ of the Gospels with an earnest
desire to know what this Christ would have
him do, there is a reaction of conscience, a
spiritual intuition, or whatever else one may
call it, that throws light upon one's problem,
and is not wholly one's own opinion or judg-
The Four Gospels
ment, but is in some measure the result of the
influence of the personality of Jesus Christ
himself.
Such attempts to discover the mind of
Christ, however, must always be guarded
against the danger of one's personal prejudice
or caprice by reference to the best one knows
concerning the historic personality of Christ.
The spirit of prayer and the faithful study
of the Gospels are the necessary correctives
and complements of each other.
(3) In another very important sense the
personality of Christ is present in his Church,
and the Christian who seeks to hold his life
steadily under the influence of Christ will
therefore seek the companionship of Christian
people in the worship and work of the Church.
For the Church, in essence, is just the group
life of those who are seeking to make Christ
real to themselves and others.
It is this fact, that the Spirit of Christ is
present in the collective life of Christian
people as well as in each Christian's indi-
vidual life, that Paul expresses figuratively
when he calls the church the " body of
Christ." As the physical body of Jesus
was the residence of his spirit during the days
of his flesh, so the Church is his dwelling-
place in the larger life that he is living per-
petually in the world.
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The Christ of Experience
One needs the objective portrait of Jesus
in the Gospel records to correct and standard-
ize the impulses to Christian duty that are
born of the prayerful spirit. And in like
manner, one needs the wholesome corrective
of Christian counsel and friendship and
partnership to keep one's ideas of truth and
conduct from being narrowed or distorted by
one's individual bias. Every one who desires
to live under the constant inspiration and
constraint of Jesus Christ should therefore
seek to share in the life .and work of some
Christian church. No church will be found
that embodies the Spirit of Christ perfectly;
yet few will be found that do not embody it
in some wholesome and helpful measure.
(4) Finally, it must never be forgotten that
Christ's growing influence upon one's life is
conditioned upon obedience. Not every one
can claim that final promise which the risen
Lord gave to his disciples, " Lo, I am with
you always " (Matt. 28 : 20). For the prom-
ise was given in connection with a definite
command. It is when we obey the command
that we realize the Presence. This is true
not only in the larger aspects of the great
task of " making disciples of all the nations,"
but in all the details of the life which seeks
to make its influence felt in the Christian
enterprise. " He that wilfeth to do ...
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The Four Gospels
shall know " is not alone a great truth of
modern pedagogy; it is an eternal law of the
spiritual life. Obedience to each new demand
that Christ makes upon one's life is the one
way to " grow in grace, and in the knowledge
of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ."
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
BOSWORTH, What It Means to be a Christian, ch. IV.
KING, Things Fundamental, ch. IV.
DALE, The Living Christ and the Four Gospels, chs. I,
II.
SIMPSON, The Fact of Christ, pp. 50-62.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND FURTHER
STUDY
1. The Christian life may be analyzed as (1) familiar-
ity with the ideas and ideals of Jesus; (2) personal
devotion to the personal leadership of Jesus; (3) the
sense of forgiveness and spiritual renewal through the
Spirit of Jesus; (4) active cooperation in furthering the
cause of Jesus in the world. Which of these elements
do you consider the central, or fundamental, element?
How do you relate the others to it?
2. Is it possible to know God, in the Christian sense,
without any aid from Christ? Is one always conscious
of the part Christ plays in the knowledge of, and
communion with, God?
3. Try to grasp firmly the idea that Christ is known
and approached by the Christian in two ways: (1)
through history, and (2) through religious experience
(" faith ") Think out clearly just how these two
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The Christ of Experience
aspects of Christ (1) supplement and (2) correct each
other.
4. Do you think that a confession of belief in the
" divinity " of Christ ought to be made a condition of
church membership? Why?
5. How do the two aspects of prayer (1) as the
heart's search, or desire, for life's best things, and (2)
as a definite, verbal exercise, supplement and correct
each other? How can the principle involved in these
two aspects of prayer be applied to the questions of
(1) worship and church attendance; (2) the sacredness
of life and the sacredness of the Lord's Day?
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HOW TO STUDY THE GOSPELS
CHAPTER IX
How to Study the Gospels
1. Importance of constant study of the
Gospels. The Gospels, as we saw in the
last chapter, are one of the chief means of
keeping the Christian in constant contact
with the personality of Jesus Christ. Conse-
quently the prayerful study of the Gospels,
both privately and in fellowship with other
Christians, is indispensable to the mainte-
nance of a healthy Christian life. Every
Christian should identify himself with some
group of Christians, in a congregation or a
Bible class, where the life of Christ forms the
constant background, and often the actual
subject, of the preaching or teaching. In
one's personal reading and thinking, too, the
Gospel memoirs of Jesus Christ should be the
object of prayerful study for some consider-
able portion of each year. This chapter is
intended to suggest the broad outlines and
principles that may guide such a life-long
study of the Gospels, whether in private or
in Bible classes.
2. Own your own Bible. A borrowed book
never gives quite the same satisfaction to the
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The Four Gospels
student as one which he knows he can keep,
and by means of which he can recall at any
future time the outstanding impressions which
he gained when he studied it. As one be-
comes more deeply involved in this sort of
work, it will be found well worth while to
own several Bibles, or New Testaments or
copies of the Gospels, and to keep each copy
for use in one particular kind of study.
The American Standard Version is the best
all-round edition. The newer translations of
the New Testament, like those of Weymouth
or Moffatt or Goodspeed, are very valu-
able and well worth using. But they do not
have the same weight of authority as transla-
tions that the American Standard Version
has, and they are considerably more expen-
sive. Hence they are not likely to come into
general use for a long time at least. The
American Standard Version, or the " Revised
Version" (R. V.), as it is commonly called,
has two important advantages over the older
King James Version. It is a more accurate
translation of the original; and it is printed
in paragraphs, like a real book, instead of in
separate verses. This latter feature is very
important. It reflects the whole change from
the old attitude toward the Bible, which
regarded it chiefly as a collection of " texts,"
to be quoted with little or no reference to their
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How to Study the Gospels
setting, and the modern attitude, which
recognizes that the Bible is a collection of real
literature, and is to be read and studied in the
same way as any other book.
Be sure that your Bible is one of good
print, large and clear enough to avoid all
eye-strain. A fine-print Bible is just a stand-
ing invitation to neglect one's Bible study.
Do not be afraid to mark your Bible. The
wider the margin and heavier the paper the
better for this purpose. The first time the
writer ever read the Bible through he under-
scored the verse or two in each chapter which
most appealed to him. His second connected
reading was in the New Testament, and this
time each paragraph (in the Revised Version)
was given a topic, or title, in the margin.
Other copies studied at later times contain
underscorings, " railroadings " connecting re-
lated words or phrases, notes in black and red
ink, references to sermons or chapters in the
writer's library, outlines and analyses, and
so on. Such a series of carefully marked
Bibles becomes a literary treasure greatly
to be prized in after years, as one reviews the
various lines of study whose results have been
thus preserved.
3. Study each Gospel as a unit. There is
not a paragraph in the Gospels, not an
incident or saying in the whole career of
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The Four Gospels
Jesus, that will fail to reward the most patient
and microscopic examination. Nor will any
chance to compare a story in one Gospel with
its parallel in another Gospel fail to yield
fruitful suggestions if the literary relation of
the Gospels to one another is rightly appre-
ciated. But before either of these methods is
undertaken in any thoroughgoing manner it is
essential that each Gospel be known and
appreciated as a separate literary unit. In
spite of the fact that some of the Gospel
writers copied portions of their materials
from other Gospels, each one bears the stamp,
of distinct individuality; each has its own
literary characteristics, each its own point
of view for interpreting Christ, each its own
separate contribution to make to one's total
impression of the Jesus Christ of history.
The first and most fundamental kind of
Gospel study, therefore, is the rapid reading
and re-reading of each Gospel, without any
attempt at the interpretation of details, and
with resolute refusal to dwell upon more than
the broadest points of comparison or contrast
between one Gospel and another. Such read-
ing should be repeated again and again, until
each Gospel stands out in one's mind as a
distinct literary production, having its own
unity, characteristic literary traits, and mes-
sage concerning Jesus Christ. It is only on
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How to Study the Gospels
the foundation of this sort of mastery of the
Gospels as literary wholes that one can pro-
ceed to the most successful study of detailed
incidents, or to comparisons between parallel
stories.
Mark, the shortest Gospel, can be read
aloud in an hour and a half. Luke and
Matthew can be read aloud in less than three
hours. Most people read silently much faster
than they read aloud, without losing the sense
of what they are reading. The Gospels
should be read in chronological order; Mark
first, then Matthew and Luke, and finally,
John. As far as possible such reading should
cover one whole Gospel without stopping.
To conserve the values of such reading it is
important that some written record be kept of
the impressions gained by each reading. Such
a record should not contain detailed inter-
pretations, or arguments, or elaborate exposi-
tions, but real impressions only. To get the
best results each reading should be begun
with some well-defined question in mind, and
the note-book at the close should record the
answer which the reading has suggested to
that question, and not much else except the
date and extent of the reading. The follow-
ing are examples of such questions: What
are the main movements (geographical; use
map) of Jesus according to this Gospel?
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The Four Gospels
What are the general outlines of the develop-
ment of his career? of his own sense of his
mission? of his foresight of his death? of his
hopes for his cause? of his successive tempta-
tions and surrenders to his Father's will?
Which Gospel presents Jesus so as best to
fit the ideas of (1) servant of the Lord; (2)
Son of God; (3) King of Israel; (4) Son of
man? What new impressions have I gained
during this reading, of the character or great-
ness of Jesus? of the relative emphasis in
this Gospel on his life vs. his death? of his
miracles vs. his teaching? What are the main
themes of his teaching? Trace the develop-
ment, in their attitude and behavior toward
Jesus, of the Pharisees; the crowds; the
disciples.
4. The study of separate sections or para-
graphs. The study of the details of each
Gospel incident or discourse can produce the
best results only when one has gained some
clear impression of the point of view and
message of each Gospel, by the use of some
such method as has just been described.
Only so can one approach the separate stories
from the writer's own standpoint and gather
from them the message which he meant to
convey. The failure to provide for this
broader and more comprehensive literary
view of the books of the Bible is the weakest
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How to Study the Gospels
point in most of the courses of Bible study
now provided for church school use.
It is far better to take one Gospel at a time,
beginning with Mark, and go through it
paragraph by paragraph, omitting nothing,
than to pick up a story here and another
story there, skipping from one Gospel to
another, and thus losing the particular flavor
which each writer put into his own narrative,
and which is often the real key to under-
standing the point of his story.
(1) Analyze. There are two ways of ana-
lyzing a Gospel. The first and simplest is to
divide it into its simplest sections (almost
always the paragraph as given in the Revised
Version) , and to select a title, or topic, for each,
writing the list of topics, with references, in
your note-book, or, better still, in the margin
of a copy of the Gospels kept for this piece of
study. Such an analysis amounts practically
to a " table of contents." There is little or
no attempt to show in it any particular
scheme of development in the story or teach-
ing of the Gospel. The other kind of analy-
sis is the logical; in this form the outline is
constructed so as to show as clearly as possible
the development of some theme which each
successive paragraph helps to unfold.
We may take the Sermon on the Mount
(Matt. 5 to 7) as an illustration of these two
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The Four Gospels
methods of analyzing. A topical outline
would be something like this:
The Beatitudes (5 : 3-12)
Salt and Light (5 : 13-16)
True Righteousness (5 : 17-20)
Murder (5 : 21-26)
Adultery (5 : 27-32)
Oaths (5 : 33-37)
Revenge (5 : 38-42)
Loving One's Enemies (5 : 43-48)
Almsgiving (6 : 1-4)
Prayer (6 : 5-15)
Fasting (6 : 16-18)
Trust (6 : 19-34)
Judging Others (7 : 1-6)
Asking and Receiving (7 : 7-12)
The Two Ways (7 : 13-14)
False Prophets (7 : 15-23)
The Two Houses (7 : 24-27)
An analysis of the same chapters based on the
logical principle would yield some such result
as this:
Theme: The Kingdom of Heaven
I Its Nature: a kingdom of blessedness,
founded on character (5 : 3-12)
II Its Object: to represent God in the
world (5 : 13-16)
III Its Righteousness:
1 Founded on the law and prophets
(5 : 17-20)
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How to Study the Gospels
2 Perfect, as illustrated by five refer-
ences to the Mosaic law (5 : 2 1-48)
3 Sincere, not hypocritical ; with three
illustrations (6 : 1-18)
4 The first duty of every member
(6 : 19-34)
IV Its Rule: the " Golden Rule," which is
to be applied to such matters as criti-
cism and prayer (7 : 1-12)
V Its Conditions of Membership :
1 Very strict (7 : 13-14)
2 Based on doing the will of God
(7 : 15-27)
(2) Paraphrase. One is usually surprised
when he examines himself critically, to dis-
cover how easily familiar words and phrases
are allowed to slip through the mind without
understanding what they mean. There is
only one way to make sure that one has really
grasped the sense of a sentence or paragraph,
and that is to make sure that one can re-tell
it in other words. No superstitious reverence
for the mere words of Scripture should blind
the student to the great value of paraphrasing
the language of the Gospels. One cannot be
sure that he has mastered the idea until one
is no longer dependent upon the exact words
in which he found it.
>
With the constant aid of the dictionary,
therefore, and also of a Greek- English lexicon
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The Four Gospels
or concordance, if one is able to use it, the
passages which are being studied should be
written or spoken in other words, as nearly
equivalent as possible to the original. It is
of especial value to do this with the more
obscure passages. For example, one may
re-state Mark 4 : 11 in this way: " You are
the sort of men to whom God can make clear
the new and unfamiliar idea which I have
come to teach regarding God's government
of human life." Or Mark 3 : 29 might be
paraphrased in some such language as this:
" As for those whose conscience is so dead
that they can no longer discriminate between
a filthy spirit (Beelzebub) and God's pure
Spirit, there is grave danger that they will
never seek forgiveness, but will cling to their
wickedness forever." It is not to be supposed
that such paraphrases are exactly equivalent
to the text itself; if they were they would be
translations, not paraphrases. But they are
attempts to lay hold of and express the idea
which the Gospel writer is trying to set forth.
Such exercises give the student real proof
that he is in search of living truth and not of
dead formulas.
(3) Consult books. It is always better to
try to express the sense of a passage in one's
own words before seeking to find out what
others have said about it. The attempt may
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How to Study the Gospels
have to be revised in the light of what you
read, but it proves the independence of your
thought, and without this the study of the
Gospels will amount to little. But having
put your mind conscientiously to work on
the passage, the next thing is to find out what
others have said about it.
A good Bible Dictionary, like Hastings'
one- volume dictionary, is the first requisite.
By means of it one should seek constantly to
become acquainted with the localities and
customs that are referred to in the Gospel
story. Scribes, synagogue, Nazareth, Pilate,
temple, all such words of local or technical
import should be looked up as one comes to
them. In addition to the Bible Dictionary,
the following books, selected from the im-
mense literature of the subject, will be found
especially helpful:
The volumes on the Gospels in the Cam-
bridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. Handy
commentaries, which explain the Gospels
verse by verse.
Burton, A Short Introduction to the Gospels.
A valuable handbook for tracing out the
literary peculiarities of each Gospel, so far
as these bear upon the questions of author-
ship.
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The Four Gospels
Goodspeed, The Story of the New Testa-
ment.
Bacon, The Making of the New Testament.
Scott, The New Testament Today.
Von Soden, History of New Testament
Literature.
The sections on the Gospels present the
views of some of the foremost modern scholars
regarding the origin of these four books of the
New Testament.
Moffatt, Introduction to the New Testament.
Moffatt, The Approach to the New Testa-
ment.
Garvie, The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved
(Studies in the Fourth Gospel).
In these volumes advanced students will
find the ripest results of the most devout and
careful scholarship of today.
Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah. (2 vols.)
An old book, but still of great value for its
information regarding the Jewish customs and
beliefs that form the background of the life
of Christ.
Smith, The Days of His Flesh.
Garvie, Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus.
Glover, The Jesus of History.
Kent, 'The Life and Teachings of Jesus.
Four fresh and stimulating guides to the
study of the life of Christ.
196
How to Study the Gospels
Hutton, The Proposal of Jesus.
Simkhovitch, Toward the Understanding of
Jesus.
Two attempts to trace the relation of Jesus
and his message to the political conditions
and problems of his time.
Bergner, Some Aspects of the Life of Jesus.
An interpretation of Jesus in the light of
recent researches in psychology.
Jefferson, The Character of Jesus.
Jefferson, Things Fundamental.
King, Fundamental Questions.
Bosworth, What It Means to be a Christian.
Winchester, The Message of the Master
Teacher.
Simpson, The Fact of Christ.
Dale, The Living Christ and the Four Gos-
pels.
. Certain chapters in these books are given in
the " References for Further Reading." In
each case, the whole volume will well repay
careful study.
(4) Summarize. The results of paragraph
study should be gathered together in a note-
book, or in some form of Bible marking,
which will serve to recall the chief discoveries
whenever desired. These notes should in-
clude (1) a short statement of the main teach-
ing of the passage, i.e., what the writer
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The Four Gospels
intended his readers to learn from it; (2)
paraphrases or explanations of the less obvious
passages; (3) quotations or notes from books
consulted; (4) questions or memoranda for
further study.
5. Compare the Gospels with one another.
It is always better to allow a Gospel story to
make its own independent impression first,
before bringing it into comparison with
parallel sections in the other Gospels. After
this has been done, however, comparisons
may be made, and such comparisons will
nearly always yield further suggestions of
value, if rightly done.
A " synopsis," or edition of the Gospels
which prints the parallel passages in columns
beside each other, is indispensable in this
comparative study. A good synopsis is that
edited by Ross L. Finney, which is based on
the German work of A. Huck. The first three
Gospels are printed in parallel columns, in the
American Standard Version, and one can see
at a glance the differences or similarities in
the corresponding accounts of the same
incident or discourse.
In this kind of study one must guard
against the tendency to harmonize all the
differing and contradictory statements which
appear when comparisons are made. It is
not easy to resist the desire to make a state-
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How to Study the Gospels
ment in Matthew mean something that will
bring it into agreement with the correspond-
ing statement in Mark, rather than to let
it mean just what Matthew meant by it,
whether it agrees with Mark or not. When
Matthew, for example, reports Jesus as say-
ing, " If ye, then, being evil, know how to
give good gifts unto your children, how much
more will your Father who is in heaven give
good things to them that ask him? "(7:11),
and Luke, in the corresponding verse (Luke
11 : 13) changes the words " good gifts "in
the last part to " Holy Spirit," no attempt
to " harmonize " the difference can be half
as satisfactory as to recognize that Luke has
made a change in the statement that he had
read in Matthew's Logia, because he cared
more about calling attention to Jesus' great
gift of the Holy Spirit than he did about
minute accuracy of quotation.
In general, it is well to begin this com-
parative study by noting what Mark has to
say; when Mark's viewpoint and teaching
have been appreciated one may then turn to
Matthew and Luke, and see what additional
details are furnished, or what different point
of view or personal interest is represented
by the changes which they have made in their
versions of the same story.
6. Study the Gospel characters. If one
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The Four Gospels
has a good working knowledge of the contents
and main teachings of the Gospels, there is
no more fruitful study for the culture of the
Christian life than to trace out the history of
the various characters who came into con-
tact with Jesus Christ during his earthly
career. It is safe to say that in the characters
of Simon Peter, Mary and Martha, Nico-
demus, Herod, Pilate, Thomas, Judas, and
all the rest, every type of human life is
represented and every shade and variety of
goodness and badness. And the peculiar
value of these characters is that we can see
them in contact with the character of Christ,
so that Christ's reaction to such people, and
their reaction to Christ, can be traced out.
Thus the study of the Gospel characters
furnishes an inexhaustible field for the dis-
covery of Christ's attitude toward all sorts of
men and all kinds of human problems.
The following plan, modified occasionally
as circumstances require, may be followed in
such a study. (1) Select the particular char-
acter to be studied, and make a list of all the
passages in which this character figures
significantly. (2) Study each passage care-
fully and gather together in your notebook
a list of the outstanding traits of this char-
acter as revealed in the words or actions
recorded. It is well to sum up these data in
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How to Study the Gospels
the form of a short character-sketch, using
the Gospel incidents as illustrations. (3)
Review the passages again, noting in each
case the personal attitude or behavior
toward Christ; appeal for help, indifference,
enmity, curious inquiry, admiration, con-
fession of faith, etc. (4) Then, going over
the passages once more, observe how Jesus
responded to each situation as it arose; with
sympathy, rebuke, denunciation, appeal, in-
struction, etc. (5) Finally, think out the
permanent values of the incidents which have
been studied; that is, work out in the form
of a simple and clear statement how Jesus
Christ feels and responds to such and such a
type of character or such and such a situa-
tion or problem. The Christian faith in
Christ is that he is " the same, yesterday,
today and forever." His reaction to the
men of his own time is a revelation of the
perpetual reaction of God to men of similar
character or condition, and therein lie the
spiritual values of this sort of study.
A single example may be given to illustrate
this method. Take the story of Thomas the
apostle. There are only three passages in
which we find him (except in formal lists of
the apostles). These are all in John's Gos-
pel (chaps. 11, 14 and 20). In the first we
see him expressing his ardent devotion to
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The Four Gospels
Christ, as he declared he would rather go up
to Jerusalem and die with Christ than remain
in safety without his Master. In the second
we see him interrupting Christ, to ask for
further light on a point that was not clear to
him. In the third we find him declaring
that he will not believe on the risen Christ
until he has the same evidence for his faith
which the other apostles had already received ;
but when that evidence is forthcoming, he
readily makes his confession. Thus the char-
acter of Thomas appears vividly in these
passages; he is a man of splendid loyalty, of
devoted friendship, to Christ; and a man,
also, of fine intellectual honesty, ready to
confess his faith when he has reasons for his
belief, but scorning to confess as his own a
faith which he must take merely on the
authority of some one else. As we study
Jesus' response to him we mark, first, how he
allowed Thomas to go up to Jerusalem with
him, letting the course of events vindicate
his own good judgment in going into danger;
we see also how patiently he explained
Thomas' difficulty to him ; and we see, finally,
how promptly and graciously he gave his
apostle the experience of sight and touch as a
foundation for the faith he sought in him.
All this reveals the patient dealing of God
with men of Thomas' characteristics.
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How to Study the Gospels
7. The study of the life of Christ. If
one is sufficiently grounded in the indepen-
dent study of the Gospels so that he will not
be led to abandon his own individual thinking
and judgment, he will find great inspiration
in reading at least one good life of Christ
each year. Such reading should always be
done both critically and sympathetically.
The student should never surrender his right
to differ from an author in his interpretation
of this or that point concerning the life of
Jesus. The reading of a book on the life of
Christ should be done with the Gospels and
notebook in hand, so that new items of
information, or new ideas suggested from the
author's treatment of familiar passages, can
be verified or else rejected. The critical
attitude, however, should not exclude a real
appreciation of the special point of view from
which the book under consideration treats
the life or significance of Christ. There are
few if any biographies of Jesus that have not
some new and inspiring message for those who
read with care to understand the writer's
aims and viewpoint.
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The Four Gospels
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
JEFFERSON, Things Fundamental, chs. IV and V
(" How the Old Conception of the Scriptures
Differs from the New")
SMYTH, How We Got Our Bible.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND FURTHER
STUDY
1. Why was the King James version printed so as
to make each verse stand out by itself, as though it
were a complete paragraph?
2. As an exercise in analyzing, study Mark 2 : 1 to
3 : 6. Make a topical outline. How many incidents
are there? Give each one an appropriate title. Select
a title for the whole section. Now make a logical out-
line of the same section, around the idea of " the
beginning, growth and climax of opposition to Jesus."
Study each incident carefully until you understand
(paraphrase) each successive criticism against Jesus,
his reaction in each case, and how one criticism led to
another, culminating in 3 : 6.
GENERAL REVIEW
1. In what sense are the Gospels of human origin?
of Divine origin?
2. Name the Gospels in the order in which they were
written ; describe briefly the characteristics of each, and
how each was written. What is the particular empha-
sis of each Gospel on the character, or mission, of
Christ? on the nature of Christianity?
3. Why is constant study of the Gospels necessary
to Christian growth? Always remember that the
penalties of neglect in this matter are not immediately
apparent; one can get along for a while on the momen-
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How to Study the Gospels
turn of the past; but they are sure; and the worst
effects are bound to show in our children.
4. Consider thoughtfully that one of the most
important tasks of the Church is to bring people per-
sistently into contact with the personality of Jesus
Christ. What ways can you name in which the Church
can and should do this? Are there any other tasks in
the Church that are greater and more important than
this? Give your reasons for your answer.
5. Which Gospel do you like best? Why?
205
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