See other formats

Full text of "An introduction to the New Testament"

FRQM-THE- LIBRARY OF 
TWNITYCOLLEGETORQNTO 




DONATED FROM THE LIBRARY OF 

Alasdair Charles Macpherson, Ph.D. 

PILOT OFFICER R.A F. 
KILLED IN ACTION. AUGUST. 1941 






AN INTRODUCTION 

TO THE 

NEW TESTAMENT 



AN INTRODUCTION 



TO THE 



NEW TESTAMENT 



BY 

ADOLF JUL.ICHER 

PKOFESSOK OF THEOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MABBUBti 




WITH 

PREFATORY NOTE BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 



LONDON 

SMITH, ELDEK, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 

1904 

[All rights reserved] 



30 



J 



JUL 1 7 1942 



AUTHOE S PREFACE 



THE main lines that I have pursued in my treatment of the 
Introduction to the New Testament were laid down for me by 
the editorial conditions of this series. 1 In order not to trans 
gress these lines I have kept back a good deal that I would 
otherwise gladly have put forward in defence of my views. 
Nevertheless, the book is more voluminous than I could wish. 
The second and third parts, containing the history of the 
Canon and of the text, are mostly to blame for this ; I was 
least willing to be sparing on this subject, because, as a rule, 
it is held of too little account, whereas an insight into the 
growth of the Canon and the text is calculated more than any 
thing else to bring about a healthy conception of theological 
problems. 

The idea of competing with a work like Holtzmann s 
" Introduction " has naturally never occurred to me. As 
before, his book will remain indispensable for exhaustive 
studies in this branch of science. All I have desired has been 
to furnish an introduction to Holtzmann and to Weizsacker, 
and to stimulate the interest of students towards yet further 
study. The expert will not fail to detect that I often 
quietly expound other people s views while appearing only 
to advance my own ; and everyone knows that what I have 
brought forward in this book has been gradually accumulated 
by the faithful labour of whole generations and has not been 

1 Grundriss dcr Theologischen Wissenschaften , J. C. B. Mohr, Tiibingen and 
Leipzig. 



VI AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

discovered by me. I shall not dispute priority with anyone 
on the strength of the present book. 

As to readers, I only wish for those who regard as justi 
fied a strictly historical treatment of the study of the New 
Testament, but, granted this condition, a special theological 
training is not necessary. On the contrary, I hope to meet 
a want that undoubtedly exists, outside theological circles, 
among people of education, by telling the history of the New 
Testament from its beginnings in the simplest possible way, 
confining myself to essentials. 

As this is not an edition of the text, or merely a book of 
reference, the Index is only meant to facilitate the discovery 
of items which are not easily to be found in the Table of Con 
tents. 

The above sentences from the Preface to the first edition 
(1894) are still valid for the present one. The book has been 
so benevolently judged by theological critics, as well as by the 
general reader, so far as the judgments of both have reached 
me, that I have not thought myself at liberty to change any 
thing essential in its form and point of view. If it has un 
fortunately grown to the extent of some 100 pages, that is 
merely the result of an increase in the new material which 
calls for consideration within the old subdivisions. I have 
not confined myself to the elimination of certain errors of 
detail which had been pointed out to me, nor to providing 
a richer and more convenient supply of bibliographical data 
chiefly in the interests of students, nor to making the treat 
ment of the different sections more strictly uniform. Impelled 
and enlightened by the contributions which German, English 
and French writers have made in wonderful fulness and 
variety to New Testament science precisely during the last 
six years, I have once more worked through all problems 
properly belonging to an Introduction, and am not ashamed 



PREFACE Vll 

to say that I have attained to a better insight in many points 
of importance. But even where that was not the case, I 
found myself compelled to discuss new questions which 
had been raised, to put before the reader new proposals 
that had been offered for the solution of old problems, and 
generally to make him acquainted with the special circum 
stances and influences affecting our subject (Disciplin) at the 
opening of the new century. 1 Though I have not altered for 
the sake of altering, I hope that I have throughout written as 
I must have written in 1900 if no 1894 had gone before. 

The portion of the book which has been subjected to least 
revision is the history of the Canon : in an outline like this 
there is simply no room for the numerous additions which I 
would gladly have made. By far the largest share has gone 
to Part I., the history of the different Books of the New 
Testament. The Gospel of John and Acts, which had pre 
viously come off but poorly, have had justice done them ; in 
the case of the Synoptic Gospels also, the Apocalypse, the 
Catholic Epistles, and many Pauline Epistles, including the 
Pastoral Epistles and the Epistle to the Hebrews, as well as 
in the introductory paragraphs concerning the Apostle Paul, 
it will be found that I have not ceased to learn. 

I have not yet been able to meet the desire expressed by a 
particularly valued critic that I should open the first chapter 
with a brief history of Greek epistolary literature : I am un 
able to perform the task in such a way that the interpretation 
of Paul s letters would gain thereby. In other cases where I 
appear to have overlooked certain publicly expressed objec 
tions to my Introduction, the reason lies in the firmness of 
my own conviction, for instance, that the persons addressed 
in the Epistle to the Hebrews are not Jewish Christians, and 
still less natives of Palestine. 

1 The preceding is not an exact translation, but a paraphrase of the 
German, omitting certain controversial allusions more likely to be understood 
by German than by English readers. 



Vlll AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TKSTAMENT 

Only one deficiency in my book have I maintained on 
principle : one of my critics found it not theological enough. 
If that meant that I was wanting in love for the subject and 
in understanding of it, and if I failed to increase both in my 
readers, that deficiency would be the gravest conceivable. As 
that is not the meaning, what is asked for must either be a 
more detailed investigation of the world of religious thought 
in which the New Testament writers lived, or what is called 
an edifying tone. It is not for me, however, to trespass on 
the domain of another science, that of New Testament 
theology, nor to win praise by a style unsuited to this hand 
book. I can only hope that in a book which ought to be 
universally intelligible, I have never allowed myself to be 
driven on to a false road by the special interests of theology, 
or the preconceptions of the theological Decent ! 

THE AUTHOE. 

MAKBURG : October 31, 1900. 



PEEFATOEY NOTE 



As a member of that section of the general public to which, 
no less than to professed students of theology, Dr. Julicher 
addresses the book now presented in English dress to English 
readers, I may perhaps be allowed to say two or three pre 
fatory words. I hope, says Professor Jlilicher in his 
preface to the last edition, to meet a want that undoubtedly 
exists, outside theological circles, among people of education, 
by telling the history of the New Testament from its be 
ginnings in the simplest possible way, confining myself to 
essentials. At the same time the book has been abundantly 
welcomed by the scholars of its subject. The first edition 
appeared in 1894 ; the present translation is made from the 
second edition ; and the references to the Introduction in 
recent literature show that it has obtained a recognised and 
honoured place in German theological study. Professor 
Wrede of Breslau, reviewing the first edition in 1896, says, 
We do not often meet with a theological book which, with so 
solid a content, is yet so clear and flowing in style . . . which 
is never tedious and often of absorbing interest. No doubt 
the German reader is a more patient and serious being than 
his English brother, and can be trusted not to confound the 



X AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

inevitable difficulty of a great and complex subject with 
obscurity or tedium. Close attention, very close attention, 
Professor Jiilicher does certainly ask of us. But once this 
has been yielded him, the animated simplicity and sincerity of 
his method will begin to tell upon us, the method of a man 
full of intellectual energy, full also of love for his subject ; 
and we shall soon come to realise the brilliancy of much of 
his work. It would surely be difficult to find either in English 
or German a more masterly statement, within reasonable 
compass, of the Synoptic problem, or of the probable conditions 
governing the composition of the Fourth Gospel, or of the 
difficulties that surround the Acts, or, above all, of the History 
of the Canon and the Text. Everywhere we are in contact 
with a just and vigorous mind, dealing worthily with a great 
subject, avoiding indeed all merely edifying talk, and riot 
without a certain sharp and homely plainness on occasion, 
but well stored all the time with feeling and imagination, and 
never insincere. Dr. Jiilicher employs a method of perfect 
freedom, but his freedom is no mere cloak for critical license, 
and his eagerness as critic or historian does not rob him of 
common sense. 

As to his relation to other scholars, all readers of Dr. 
Harnack will remember that he speaks with special respect 
of the author of this Introduction in the preface to his own 
Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur. When Dr. 
Weiss on the more conservative side and Professor Jiilicher 
on the liberal side agree, then, says Harnack, it is not neces 
sary for any after-comer to reopen a question. In the case 
of the Pastoral Epistles, I regard the results of Holtzmann 
and Jiilicher as proved, says the Berlin professor, and he 
presupposes them in his own discussion. There are, indeed, 
great differences between the two scholars, as anyone who 



PREFATORY NOTE XI 

studies the treatment of the Johannine problem, or of certain 
points connected with the Synoptics, in both, vill easily 
recognise. And the judgment of Jiilicher on the pseud- 
epigraphical element in the earliest literature of Christi 
anity is by no means so favourable to the documents as 
that of Dr. Harnack. But in the main they are not far 
apart ; and at any rate both stand firmly on the same free 
historical ground, and would hold it a dishonour to approach 
their work in any other spirit than that of the student and 
seeker after truth. 

In comparison with the great Einleitung of Dr. Holtz- 
rnann, the more recent book shows a greater pliancy and 
simplicity of method, and less Baurian vigour and rigour. 
Dr. Jiilicher is further removed from Tubingen than Dr. 
Holtzmann. His treatment is richer in historical points of 
view ; his tone more natural and varied ; while behind the 
documents he looks to the men and their relations, takes into 
account the influence of changing moods and circumstances 
upon a writer, and relies but sparingly on those fine-drawn 
arguments based wholly on the details of vocabulary or what 
may be called the psychology of style, which the critic of 
to-day will only use when he must. His account of the 
literature of the subject is much less full than that of Dr. 
Holtzmann ; but he gains thereby greatly in interest and 
vivacity for the general reader, while for the student the two 
books complete each other. With Dr. Theodore Zahn, the 
champion of orthodox criticism in Germany, the great 
misleader in the theological field, as Dr. Jiilicher calls 
him, this Introduction will be found constantly at feud. 
Here Jiilicher stands on the same ground with Harnack. 
Zalm s vast and learned work is the antithesis and the denial 

1 Irrg&rtner, 1 maker of mazes or labyrinths. 



Xll AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

of all that the Berlin and Marburg professors hold true. 
With whom lies the future ? Can anyone doubt, who looks 
abroad a little over the general forces and tendencies, the 
efforts and victories of modern historical Wissenschaft ? 

With these few words, then, let me commend this book to 
those who feel that on these questions, these critical and 
literary questions, with which it deals, really depends our 
future Christianity. For numbers of minds in England the 
mere careful study of Dr. Jiilicher s chapters on the Gospels, 
or on the history of the Canon, would be a liberal education. 
Pain might enter into it ; but it would be the pain of growth. 
Loss might attend it ; but beyond the loss, beyond the onset 
and the struggle of a fast advancing knowledge there lies a 
new kingdom of the spirit. The true knowledge of Christ is 
in no peril : ducit opes animumque ferro. 

MARY A. WARD. 
October 1903. 



TRANSLATOR S NOTE 

THE Translator wishes to offer her sincere thanks to those 
who have kindly assisted her in translating or revising the 
present work : to Miss Margaret Watson, who undertook part 
of the actual translation, and to Mr. Leonard Huxley, 
Mr. W. T. Arnold and Professor Percy Gardner, who by their 
valuable suggestions have greatly lightened what was at 
times a very difficult task. 



CONTENTS 



PART I 

A HISTORY OF EACH OF THE NEW 
TESTAMENT WRITINGS 



BOOK I 

THE EPISTLES 



AUTHOR S PREFACE . . . . 

PREFATORY NOTE TO ENGLISH EDITION ix 

TRANSLATOR S NOTE xii 

PROLEGOMENA. 

1. SCOPE AMD ARRANGEMENT OF NEW TESTAMENT INTRODUCTION. 
Definition of Introduction as Historical Criiicism 
independent of any Dogmatic Preconception Division 
of the subject into three parts Uncertainty of Kesults 1-8 

2. A GENERAL VIEW OF THE LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECT. 

History of Introduction down to the Beformation 

Eichard Simon From Simon to Baur The Tubingen 

School The Reaction against Baur Present condition 

of Criticism The modern Pseudo-Criticism 8- 30 



CHAPTER I 
THE GENUINE EPISTLKS OF PAUL 

3. THE APOSTLE PAUL. 

His Life His Personality His Peculiar Qualities as 11 

Writer The Duty of Criticism towards the Tradition 32-54 
4. THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 

Contents Addressees Circumstances of Composition 

Authenticity and Integrity. ...... 54-60 



XIV AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

PAK 

5. THE SKCOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 

Contents Circumstances of Composition -Authenticity 

Question of vv. ii. 1-12 GO 68 

$ 6. THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 

Contents Object of the Epistle Its Recipients Circum 
stances of Composition ...... 68-78 

7. THE Two EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS. 

Relations of Paul to the Corinthians before the First 
Epistle Motives for the Composition of the First 
Epistle Contents of the First Epistle Circumstances 
of Composition Contents and Charac ter of the Second 
Epistle Time and Place of Composition -Its Cause 
and Occasion -Two lost Corinthian Epistles History 
of the Community between the First and Second 
Epistles Proposals for dismembering the Second 
Epistle 78 102 

8. THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 

Contents Time and Place of Composition Authenticity 
of chapters xv. and xvi. Ch. xvi. an Epistle to the 
Ephesians Object of the Epistle and Condition of the 

Roman Community 102-118 

9. THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. 

Character and Contents Recipients and Object of the 
Epistle Date of Composition Authenticity and 
Indivisibility of the Epistle 118-125 

10. THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON 125-127 

11. THE EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIAXS. 

Contents of Colossians Contents of Ephesians Con 
temporary origin of Colossians, Ephesians and 
Philemon The Community of Colossao and the 
Occasion for Colossians The False Teachers of 
Colossae Authenticity and Integrity of Colossians 
Object of Ephesians -Not an Epistle to Ephesus 
Objections to its Authenticity ..... 127-147 

CHAPTER II 
THE DEUTERO-PAULINE EPISTLES 

12. THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 

Theme of the Epistle and manner in which it is earned 
out Hebrews a true Epistle But not by Paul Date 
of Composition Destination Hypotheses as to the 
Author 148-174 



CONTENTS XV 

18. THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 

Contents of 1. and 2. Timothy and Titus Close connec 
tion between the three Epistles Pauline Authorship 
impossible, because (a) the Pauline elements are merely 
due to dependence on Paul, (6) the External Evidence is 
unfavourable, (c) the language is non-Pauline, (d) the 
theological position is that of the Post-Apostolic Age, 
(e) the Epistles are psychologically inconceivable as 
coming from Paul, and (/) it is impossible to find a 
place for them in Paul s lifetime The actual Circum 
stances of Composition Possible Use of Genuine 
Fragments ? . . . 174-200 

CHAPTER III 

THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES 

14. A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 

The name Catholic Epistles Close Relationship 

between the seven Epistles 201-204 

15. THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 

Contents Theme and Object of the Epistle Peter not 
the Author Actual Circumstances of Composition 
Integrity of the Superscription 204-215 

16. THE EPISTLE OF JAMES. 

Contents Character and Object of the Epistle Its 
Addressees The Pretended Author The Real Author 
Hypotheses of Spitta and Harnack .... 215-229 

17. THE EPISTLE OF JUDB. 

Contents, Form, Object and Character of the Epistle Its 

Date and Author 229-232 

18. THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER. 

Contents Object of the Epistle Its indications as to 
Author and Addressees Authenticity untenable 
Dependence on Jnde Actual Circumstances of Com 
position 232-241 

19. THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN. 

Contents Object of the Epistle Date of Composition 

Its Author identical with Author of Fourth Gospel . 241-250 

20. THE SHORTER EPISTLES OF JOHN. 

Contents and Objects of 2. and 3. John Their Author 

and his relation to the Author of the First Epistle . 250-256 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 



BOOK II 

THE APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE OF THE 
NEW TESTAMENT 

PAGE 

21. A GENERAL SURVEY OF APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE . . 256-260 

22. THE REVELATION OF JOHN. 

Contents Character of the Apocalypse Its Object and 
Plan The Apocalypse a Jewish- Christian Product 
The Author according to his own testimony and to that 
of the Tradition Eelation of the Apocalypse to the 
other Johannine Writings Date of Composition 
Question of Homogeneity 261-291 



BOOK III 

THE HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 



CHAPTER I 
THE FOUR GOSPELS 

5 23. GENERAL REMARKS ON THE GOSPELS. 

The Name Synoptics for Matthew, Mark and Luke 
The Gospels according to Matthew, etc. The Gospels 

as Historical Records .... . 292-295 

A. The Synoptic Gospels 

24. CONTENTS OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS .... 296-301 
$ 25. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. 

The Tradition as to the Apostolic authorship of Matthew 
untenable Date of Matthew Tendency and religious 
Attitude of Matthew -Its Literary Peculiarities 
Integrity of the Gospel .... 301-317 

5 26. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK. 

Mark the Author Attitude and Tendency of Mark 
Date of Composition Literary Peculiarities Integrity 
of the Gospel 317-329 






CONTENTS XV11 

PAG* 

27. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE. 

The Tradition concerning Luke, and his own Testimony 
Objects and religious Attitude of Luke Date of 
Composition Literary Peculiarities .... 329-338 

28. THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM. 

The Problem stated The earlier attempts at Solution 
Effects of combining the earlier Hypotheses First 
Statement : Mark is contained in Matthew and Luke 
Second Statement : Matthew and Luke made use of a 
second authority consisting in a Collection of Logia 
(perhaps that of the Apostle Matthew ?) Third State 
ment : Matthew and Luke made use of other 
authorities besides Mark and the Book of Logia First 
Hypothesis : Was Mark also acquainted with the Book 
of Logia ? Second Hypothesis : Dependence of Luke 
on Matthew improbable 338-367 

29. THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 

Shortcomings in their tradition Trustworthiness of their 
general picture Sketch of the Development of the 
Gospel Tradition as far as Luke 368-383 

B. John. 
30. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN. 

Contents and Arrangement Character of the Gospel 
Its Integrity Date of Composition : (a) Its Relation 
to the Synoptics; (6) The Post-Pauline Hellenistic 
Theology 383-402 

31. THE JOHANNINE QUESTION. 

External Evidence The Presbyter John Testimony 
of the Writer Impossible that the Writer should have 
been an Eye-witness Result 402-429 

CHAPTER II 

32. THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 

Contents and Plan Connection with Luke Date of 
Composition Tendency -Historical Value of the Acts 
Its Authorities, especially the We-Document Two 
fold Recension of the Text 430-456 

33. RETROSPECTIVE SURVEY OF THE TWENTY-SEVEN BOOKS 

OF THE NEW TESTAMENT . 456-458 



Xvili AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 



PART II 

A HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON 



CHAPTER I 

THE PRE-CANONICAL PERIOD OF NEW TESTAMENT LITERATURE 

PAGE 

34. THE CANONICAL AUTHORITIES OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 

The Old Testament the only Canon of Jesus Also the 
only Written Canon of the Apostles Sayings of the 
Lord become Canonical side by side with the Scriptures 
in the Apostolic Age ....... 459-468 

35. THE CANONICAL AUTHORITIES OF CHRISTENDOM FROM 

circa 70 TO circa 140. 

No Christian writing of this time claims Canonical 
Dignity Canonical Logia are taken from written 
documents, but the Author of 2. Clement is the first to 
reckon these documents with the Scriptures The 
Apostles (not their Writings) join the body of the 
Canon 468-476 

36. THE PREPARATORY STAGES IN THE CANONISATION OF THE 

NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 
1 Anagnosis in the Church services Collection of 

Documents for reading aloud 476 482 

CHAPTEE II 

THE CREATION OF THE PRIMITIVE FORM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 

CANON (circa 140-200) 

37. THE FACTS OF THE CASE. 

Canonisation of the Gospels in the writings of Justin 
Preference of oral tradition by Papias -The twofold 
New Testament of Marcion Development of the New 
Testament Canon from Justin to Theophi us The 
New Testament of Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of 
Alexandria The Muratorianuin . . 483-502 



CONTENTS XIX 

PAGB 

38. THE MOTIVES. 

The New Testament Canon the work of the primitive 
Catholic Church Conditions of admission to the New 
Testament in the Muratorianum Conditions of Cano 
nisation with the Fathers True Motives of the Con 
version of the Books for Anagnosis into Canonical 
Scriptures -Markedly conservative Character of the 
Canonisation Sketch of the Development of the New 
Testament between 140 and 200 A.D. . 502-518 



CHAPTER III 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON DOWN TO THB 
TIME WHEN IT TOOK ITS PRESENT SHAPE 

39. THE NEW TESTAMENT OF THE GREEK CHURCH FROM 

circa 200-330. 

Uncertainty of the Limits of New Testament Canon 
characteristic of Greek Church Canon of Origen 
Canon of Eusebius Canon of Greek Communities 
about 300 A.D 519-533 

40. THE NEW TESTAMENT OF THE LATIN CHURCH FROM 

circa 200 TO 375. 

Reason for extension of period Canon of Hippolytus 
Canon of Cyprian and the other Western Fathers down 
to 375 A.D 533-538 

41. THE NEW TESTAMENT OF THE SYRIAN CHURCH DOWN TO 

circa 350 538-540 

42. THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE 

LATIN CHURCH. 

Hebrews officially received about 400 Conflict of Custom 
with Ecclesiastical Decrees The Epistle to the 
Laodiceans ......... 541-544 

43. THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE 

GREEK CHURCH. 
Struggle over the Apocalypse Other Irregularities in 

Canonical Limits . . 544-549 

5 44. THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE 

NATIONAL CHURCHES OF THE EAST .... 549-551 

45. THE MAINTENANCE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON IN 

THE AGE OF THE RKFORMATION. 

New Testament of the Humanists Council of Trent 
Religious and Historical Criticisms of Canon on part 
of Reformers .... 551-555 



XX AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

PAGE 

46. THE VARIATION IN THE ORDER OF THE DIFFERENT PARTS 

OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

Importance of this question in the History of the Canon 
Order within the separate Sections Varying Order 
of the Five Sections themselves ..... 555-559 

47. EESULT OF THE HISTORY OF THE CANON. 

The Church and the Canon The technical terms 
Canonical, Apocryphal, Scripture, New Testament, 
Bible Permanent Traces of the gradual Formation of 
New Testament , . 559-566 



PART III 

A HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXT 

CHAPTER I 

48. THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS. 

All Autographa of New Testament Writers lost Their 

Writing Materials Uncial and Cursive Handwritings 567-572 

CHAPTER II 

THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE TEXTS DOWN TO THE TIME OF THE 
INVENTION OF PRINTING 

49. THE ACTUAL INCREASE. 

The Increase regulated by the needs of the Church 

Varies in the different Parts of the New Testament . 573-576 

50. THE OUTWARD FORM OF THE TEXTS DOWN TO ABOUT 

1500 A.D. 

Papyrus Rolls succeeded by Parchment Codices, which 
give way about 1200 to modern paper Form of the 
later Manuscripts Handwriting in the Parchment 
Codices -Colometric Writing Elaboration of Texts, 
especially Division into Chapters ..... 576-588 

51. THE MATERIAL HISTORY OF THE TEXT DOWN TO ABOUT 

1500 A.D. 

Enormous Corruption of the Text Unintentional Corrup 
tions Intentional Emendations . . 588-599 



CONTENTS XXI 

PAGE 

52. THE WITNESSES TO THE TEXTS DOWN TO 1500 A.D. AS THEY 

EXIST TO -DAY. 

Quotations in Works of Ecclesiastical Writers The Greek 
Manuscripts The Translations: (a) Their Value as 
Records of Original Text ; (&) The Latin Translations 
(Itala and Vulgate) ; (c) The Syriac Version (Peshitto) 599-014 

CHAPTER III 



53. THE FORMATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUS 

RECEPTUS (TO ABOUT 1630). 

Influence of Printing on the Text The Editiones 
principes of 1516 and 1521 Editions of Stephanus and 
Beza Elzevier s Textus receptus .... 615-618 

54. THE ATTACKS ON THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS (DOWN TO 

circa 1830). 

Collections of Variants beside the Text Isolated Correc 
tions of the Textus Beceptus System of Classifying 
Families of Texts 618-621 

55. THE DOWNFALL OF THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS AND THE 

LATEST TEXTUAL CRITICISM. 

Downfall of Textus Beceptus brought about by Lachmann 
Tischendorf s Services to the Text The Great 
English Recensions Present Condition of Textual 
Criticism Tasks and Prospects for the Future . . 621-628 

INDEX , 629 



AN INTRODUCTION 



TO 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 



1. The Scope and Arrangement of New Testament 
Introduction 

[Cf. H. Hupfeld : Uber Begriff und Methode der sogenannten 
biblischen Einleitung (1844), in which he defines Introduction as 
Literary History ; F. C. Baur : Die Einleitung in das N.T. als 
theologische Wissenschaft, in the Theologische Jahrbiicher for 
1850 and 1851, an explanation of Introduction as the criticism of 
the Canon ; and T. Zahn s article entitled Einleitung in das N.T. 
in the Protestantische Re&l-Encyclopadie, 1 vol. v. pp. 261-274. 
This latter deals in a lucid manner first with the history and then 
with the scope and functions of New Testament Introduction, 
handling the matter as objectively as possible. Lastly cf. G. Kriiger : 
Das Dogma vom N.T. (1896), which contends that what we want 
is a history of the whole of Early Christian Literature irrespective 
of the limits set by the Canon, and not a mere Introduction to the 
New Testament. But is there not room for both ? The larger task 
need not necessarily displace the smaller.] 

1. THE name Introduction as applied to the criticism of the 
New Testament has itself to be explained. For although we 
may clearly understand that the subject of it is furnished by 
those twenty-seven Books of the Bible which are collectively 
termed the New Testament, the word Introduction re 
mains none the less vague ; it might include a great variety of 

1 Edited by Hauck, 1896, and now in a third edition. 

B 



2 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

preliminary studies useful to the understanding of the New 
Testament. Moreover its history shows that no clear and 
universally recognised conception of its meaning and its place 
within the complete body of theological knowledge has yet 
been evolved ; probably no single topic exists which has been 
included in all Introductions to the New Testament without 
exception. In by far the greater number of the more modern 
productions we may indeed find researches into the origin of 
each individual Book of the New Testament and into the 
history of their collection into a whole ; possibly, too, into 
that of the later dissemination of their texts ; but often in 
addition to these we are confronted by a bewildering array of 
digressions on questions of dogma, hermeneutics, grammar, 
lexicography, philology, even of archaeology and geography, 
while other productions of Early Christian literature, such as 
the First Epistle of Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, the 
Didache of the Twelve Apostles, are included in the survey, 
and the history traced of the translation and interpretation 
of the New Testament and of its preservation in the Church 
and in literature. 

We can never hope to construct a uniform whole out of 
this mass of heterogeneous material. But some such unity 
is to be obtained by defining Introduction to the New Testa 
ment as that branch of the science of history or more 
accurately, of the history of literature which treats of the 
New Testament. It rests an open question \vhether the 
writings of the New Testament properly come under the head 
of literature in the strict sense of the word ; but at all events, 
it was as literature that their influence was felt. In very 
truth, this fragment of the world s literature has exerted a 
greater influence than any other book that has ever been 
written. To make it the subject of a special scientific study 
is not merely permissible to a Christian theologian who 
would advocate the view it takes of life, but is also a duty 
of the historian, quite apart from considerations of his own 
faith, because without historical understanding of the New 
Testament, whole passages of the history of the human 
spirit become utterly incomprehensible, and others can be 
but imperfectly understood. We select the history of these 



PROLEGOMENA 3 

particular twenty-seven books from that of the bulk of early 
Christian literature to which they essentially belong 
because they and no others have played so great a part in 
the world s history, not because they may have been the 
earliest literary product of the Christian spirit. However 
clearly such documents as the Gospel of Peter, the First 
Epistle of Clement, or the Shepherd of Hermas may excel 
certain parts of the New Testament in age or originality, we 
are not actually obliged to include them in the history of the 
New Testament except where our understanding of certain 
problems of literary history raised by the New Testament 
would be increased by so doing. The twin sister of Intro 
duction, New Testament Theology, is in an entirely different 
position, inasmuch as it has to seek out its object the 
Christian religion as it first arose from among the whole 
body of existing authorities, whereas the object of our own 
study lies ready to our hand. 

If, however, from whatever reasons, the limits of the New 
Testament should be so rigorously drawn as to exclude all 
other early writings, even those which are most akin to it, we 
should insist all the more strictly that the science of Introduc 
tion should occupy itself solely with the New Testament as such, 
and not with subjects which it shares with other books, such 
as language, vocabulary, geography and the like ; if any New 
Testament writer displays peculiarities in these matters, the 
fact should be remarked upon, but otherwise they belong 
to different branches of science. For this reason alone we 
should refuse to include within the limits of Introduction 
proper such subjects as the distribution of the New Testa 
ment among the nations, its use in the Church, its inter 
pretation from the point of view of theology ; for in all 
these points the fortunes of the New Testament go hand in 
hand with those of the Old. It is just as unnecessary to lay 
stress upon such studies in endeavouring to form an histori 
cally sound judgment of that piece of the world s literature 
which is called the New Testament, as it would be absurd to 
expect, say, that in a chapter on Lessing, a history of German 
literature should discuss all the translations of his works 
into foreign languages, the measure of understanding and 

B 2 



4 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

misunderstanding which he has hitherto met with, or even 
the attempts that have been made to represent him as the 
champion of this or that particular party. The history of 
the New Testament as it should be told in an Introduction 
reaches no further than the point where the development of 
the New Testament ceases. What new features are added to 
it and how long the process of growth continues these are 
the objects of our study, but the relation to the finished 
product assumed by other factors in the slow course of 
evolution is a question which lies for the present outside 
our horizon. 

2. This definition excludes every dogmatic preconception 
all reference indeed to anything of this nature and therefore 
every ulterior partisan object from the pursuit of our study. 
It does not in the least concern us to know what claims were 
made for the New Testament three hundred years ago or are 
made for it at the present day by the Church ; we seek 
neither to support the divinity of the New Testament writings 
nor to dispute and undermine it by pointing out how absurd 
are the assumptions on which the assertion of it rests. 
Criticism will indeed be applied ; not, however, in order to 
test the value of a dogma, but because, if the truth is to be 
reached, historical research can never afford to do without 
criticism in dealing with the legacy of tradition. It is the 
dogmatists affair to interpret the results of an unpreju 
diced historical investigation of the New Testament, but it 
is not for historical scholarship to declare itself independent 
of external criteria by adopting dogmatic theses as the 
starting-points of its critical work. The views of the Church 
concerning the New Testament Canon should be referred to 
as often as they are necessary to enable us to understand 
how that Canon arose ; but the changes they have undergone 
in later times at the hands of Reformers or Eationalists, or 
through modern criticism, are no concern of ours so long as 
they leave the actual contents of the New Testament un 
touched. If, like BAUR, WEISS and HOLTZMANN, we take the 
fundamental interest of New Testament Introduction to be the 
critical investigation of certain definite preconceived ideas 
of our own on the subject of the origin and collection of the 



PROLEGOMENA 5 

New Testament writings, suspicion is aroused against the 
strictly historical character of the investigation ; and while 
indeed the programme is seldom carried out and the discus 
sion of these ideas occupies a very small space the place 
which belongs to the New Testament is usurped by the ideas 
of later generations concerning the New Testament. Naturally, 
these ideas deserve the most serious attention, on account of 
the enormous influence they have had, but the task of tracing 
their development belongs to the history of dogma, and that 
of criticising them to dogmatic theology. Those who wish for 
a true Introduction to the New Testament must for the moment 
lose all interest in the thoughts which anyone has at any 
time bestowed upon the New Testament even in those of an 
infallible Church and must concentrate all their attention 
upon the New Testament itself. 

3. If, then, an Introduction to the New Testament 
means a history of its origin, exempt from any dogmatic 
preconceptions, we may at once distinguish as its main 
divisions, (1) the origin of the New Testament as a whole, 
i.e. of the collection represented by the New Testament 
Canon, and (2) the origin of the individual parts of this 
collection, i.e. of the twenty-seven Books. The order in 
which these questions should be discussed depends almost 
entirely on practical considerations. Both possibilities have 
their advantages and disadvantages, but that of placing the 
so-called special introduction (the history of the individual 
New Testament writings) first is favoured by the con 
formity of such an arrangement with the actual course of 
things ; for the books must first have been produced before 
they were collected. Thus we have decided to give the 
second place to the History of the New Testament Canon. 
But there is yet a third part to follow. The New Testa 
ment did not cease its development, its growth, at the 
moment when its Canon of twenty-seven Books appeared 
complete ; as it was handed down from one generation to 
another the text continually received important modifications 
of form in modern times, after the introduction of printing, 
no less than in the earliest years after the composition of the 
Pauline Epistles and thus we shall be bound to assign a 



6 AN IXTJRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

third place to the History of the New Testament Text, in 
which the rise of the present wording of the New Testa 
ment will be discussed. In the first our scrutiny will be 
confined to the first two centuries A.D. ; in the second we shall 
be brought down to the Middle Ages nay, to the very century 
of the Reformation ; the third takes us to the present day. 

The inclusion of Part III. as an independent branch of 
die literature of the New Testament within the limits of 
Introduction is not to be gainsaid by the assertion, though 
correct in itself, that a complete and separate representation 
of the manner in which the Greek and Roman Classics have 
been handed down to us through manuscripts and transla 
tions has never formed a special part of the history of 
Classical literature. Greek literary history is certainly little 
adapted to form an analogy to the literary history of the New 
Testament ; but an Introduction to Homer similar to ours would 
scarcely be able to ignore the history of his text, any more 
than a monograph dealing with the literary history of the 
Sibylline Oracles would be able to ignore the intricate history 
of the Sibylline texts. No complete lists of the different 
manuscripts and translations are indeed required for our 
purpose, but we shall certainly need whatever material is 
necessary to convince our readers of the growth and gradual 
development even of the smallest fractions of the New Testa 
ment, its individual words and sentences, and to give them 
an insight into the forces and laws by which that growth was 
governed. He who does not know that the New Testament 
he possesses is in its details but an imperfect form of the real 
New Testament, and why it can be no more than this, has 
simply not learnt the history of his New Testament properly. 
In order to fulfil its object it is just as necessary that a 
history of the New Testament a book in which we are 
confronted with claims of so unique a character should 
present a history of its text in its main outlines, as that a 
history of the Apostolic Symbol, of the Augustana, of the 
Decrees of the (Ecumenical Councils should enlighten us fully 
as to the changes which took place in the wording even of 
what was accepted by the Church. 

4. But unfortunately the ideal treatment of the New 



PROLEGOMENA 7 

Testament from the point of view of literary history is not to 
be attained. Our knowledge of the most important questions 
is extremely fragmentary, and in the case of the individual 
writings in particular we have practically no external evidence 
to look to, and are obliged to rely solely on indications to be 
obtained from the documents themselves. This state of 
things necessitates a critical investigation of details in which 
hypothesis is often piled on hypothesis ; no connected repre 
sentation is attainable, and the hope of reconstructing 
a complete history of the evolution of New Testament 
literature vanishes into space. With but one New Testament 
writer Paul does our acquaintance approach to intimacy ; 
his epistles, both in number and length, are sufficient to give 
us a tolerably clear idea of his personality and his peculiar 
qualities as a writer ; but the other New Testament authors 
remain wrapped in obscurity, no less than the circles from 
which they sprang and the conditions under which they 
wrote. We must be content if we can approximately deter 
mine in the case of each New Testament Book when and for 
whom it was written ; whether the author wrote in his own 
name or in that of another ; what his principal object was and 
how he succeeded in expressing it ; whether and to what extent 
he used other authorities, i.e. earlier written documents, and 
whether his work has come down to us unchanged, untouched 
by the hand of a later reviser. Here in truth we have but 
the materials for a history of the New Testament, not the 
history itself. 

With regard to the Canon our position is somewhat better ; 
in the main we know the motives by which the collection and 
canonisation of the New Testament Books was guided, we 
know the preliminary steps and the different stages through 
which the process passed, though in detail there is much that 
yet remains undiscovered. Finally, for the history of the Text 
we have indeed an enormous mass of evidence at our disposal, 
but as to the decisive period before the fourth century we can 
only be certain of the bare fact that the New Testament Text 
was subjected to considerable alteration, not of the manner 
in which it was done or of the definite results which followed. 
There is scarcely a single branch of science in which the 



8 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

inclination to know everything for certain and to have an 
answer ready for every question is so universal as it is in the 
Introduction to the New Testament ; scarcely any in which 
that inclination is so little justified. The more decidedly, 
then, must we emphasise from the very outset the fact that 
our judgments can only be absolutely trustworthy on the 
negative side, while our positive assertions can seldom rise 
above the level of probabilities. 



2. A General View of the Literature of the Subject 

1. We cannot expect to find anything resembling what vre 
now call Introduction in ancient times or in the Middle Ages. 
Least of all would anyone in those days have thought of 
studying the history of the New 7 Testament apart from that 
of the Old. The title Introduction to the divine Scriptures 
(slaaywyrj els ras dstas <ypa(f)ds) is first met with about 450 in 
a short treatise of 134 sections by one ADRIANUS, : otherwise 
unknown, a theologian of the school of Antioch. But his 
book is nothing but a piece of Biblical rhetoric and didactics ; 
the New Testament is scarcely touched upon at all. The 
celebrated M. AURELIUS CASSIODORIUS, SENATOR (f about 570), 
does indeed recommend in his most important theological 
work, the Institutio divinarum lectionum, the learned 
Donatist TycoNius, 2 ST. AuousiiNE, 3 EUCHERIUS OF LYONS * 
and JUNILIUS AFRICANUS 5 as Introductores Scripturae 
Divinae as well as the afore-mentioned Adrian, but he shows 
by the arguments he adduces that to him introduction 
meant no more than a means to the understanding of difficult 
passages, sentences or words of the Scriptures. We still 
possess the books intact to which Cassiodorius was referring : 
Tyconius 6 gives us but a summary of hermeneutics in his 
Seven Eules for the study and discovery of the meaning of 
the Holy Scriptures ; Eucherius 7 a smattering of exegetical 

1 Edited by F. Gossling, 1887. About 380. 

3 f 430. " About 450. 3 About 550. 

6 Best edition byF. C. Burkitt, in Texts and Studies, iii. 1 (1894). 
Best edition of his Formulae spiritalis Intelligentiac and Instructiowim 
Libri II. by C. Wotke, 1894. 



PROLEGOMENA 9 

sciences of a secondary order, while Augustine in the four 
books of his De Doctrina Christiana at any rate defines 
the limits of the Holy Scriptures and says something of 
the translations of the original texts. But the important 
point in his eyes is again but to describe the equipment 
necessary for him who would interpret the Bible, and the 
idea that historical knowledge, especially concerning the 
origin of the sacred books, plays any part whatever in such 
an equipment he does not consider worthy of mention. Our 
own notions of the qualities required in an introductor 
are perhaps best realised by Junilius, a court official of 
Justinian, probably of African extraction, who in the two 
books of his Instituta regularia divinae Legis gives us a 
catechism of Biblical knowledge in the form of a dialogue 
between master and pupil, in exact conformity with the 
discourses of his own master, the Nestorian PAUL OF NISIBIS. 
In the section concerning the authority of the Scriptures, for 
instance, he distinguishes between the Biblical Books of 
absolute and of secondary authority, speaks of the authors 
of the Divine Books and whence our knowledge of some a 
least of them came, and discusses the modi scripturarum 
though remaining, as he himself admits, very much on the 
surface of the Scripture. Cassiodorius had these five Intro 
ductions written out together in a codex for the library of 
his monastery, and embodied a few items of some value to us 
concerning the history of the New Testament in his own 
Institutio. 

All that the Middle Ages knew on questions of Introduc 
tion was derived from these sources, or else from the informa 
tion given by historians like EUSEBIUS, KUFINUS, JEROME and 
ISIDORE or by commentators and revisers of Biblical Books 
concerning the circumstances under which these were written. 
The more important parts of such information were usually 
transmitted in close connection with the text of the book con 
cerned as a superscription or postscript. A characteristic 
attempt at summarising these learned materials in concise 
form is afforded by the little book of HUGUES DE SAINT- 

1 Best edition by H. Kihn, Theodorus von Mopsuestia und Junilius 
Africamts (1880). 



10 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

VICTOR, the great mystic (tl!41), entitled Praenotationes 
Elucidatoriae de Scriptura sacra et ems Scriptoribus. 

2. After the beginning of the Reforming movement the 
interest in all questions relating to the Bible naturally 
increased, and most markedly so in the circles of the Roman 
Church itself. The name Introduction (sla-aywyrj) for literary 
productions of this kind appears again at Lucca and Louvain, 
but none of these works represent a continuation of the 
impulse given by Junilius and Cassiodorius. On the other 
hand, a remarkable advance is shown by the Bibliotheca 
Sancta of SIXTHS OF SIENA baptised Jew, Franciscan and 
finally Dominican which appeared in 1566. This is a 
gigantic work divided into eight books, of which but 
one is devoted to Hermeneutics, three are taken up 
with a history of Exegesis (highly meritorious, though not 
always trustworthy), and the rest consists in a positive 
enumeration of the books declared by orthodox doctrine 
to be Canonical, and a defence of this Canon against 
heretical objections. Here we regularly find information as 
to author, date, contents and order of succession of the 
different Biblical Books, bearing witness to considerable read 
ing and even to the timid promptings of a critical sense. For 
some time Sixtus remained unsurpassed in the Catholic 
world, nor were the kindred productions of Protestants, which 
appeared under very various titles, 1 of any higher value ; 
criticism has no part in them whatever ; all is subordinated 
to the dogmatic interest. Historical material is only made 
use of in so far as it can be made to lead up to the orthodox 
Protestant view of the Scriptures. 

3. A new epoch was inaugurated for the science of Intro 
duction the creator of which he might be called by RICHARD 
SIMON, priest of the Oratory of Paris, who died in 1712. 
True that the great Arminian theologian and politician HUGO 
GROTIUS (f!645) had already applied an impartial criticism to 

1 E.g., that of A. BIVETUS (died in Holland in Itiol) : Isagoge sivcintroductio 
generalis ad sacram scripturam Vcteris et Novi Testamenti, in qua eius 
natura, existentia, aucioritas, nccessitas, puritas, vcrsionum et interpretum 
rationes et modi indagantur, eiusque dignitas, perfectio et usus adversus veteres 
et novos scriptorcs lucifugas asscritur et de vero controvsrsiarum fidei iudice 
fusius disputatur. 



PROLEGOMENA 11 

certain Books of the Bible, and examined their authenticity 
with results not always favourable to tradition ; true, too, that 
in his wonderfully suggestive Tractatus theologico-politicus 
the philosopher SPINOZA (fl677) had demanded an historical 
understanding and an historical treatment of the Bible, and 
shattered, in principle, the omnipotence of dogma on that 
field ; but both these writers stopped short at occasional 
indications. Simon, on the other hand, published a History 
of the New Testament at Rotterdam in 1689, 1690 and 1692, 
and thus not only set a new inquiry on foot, but proceeded at 
the same time to answer it.- The History of Exegesis fills 
indeed the greater part of his space ; relics of the older method, 
such as discussions on the inspiration of the New Testament 
Books, apologetic directed against Jews, philosophers and 
heretics, dissertations on the style of the Evangelists and 
Apostles and on the Hellenistic tongue are to be found even 
here ; but the dogmatic element is merely nominal, and 
Simon s interest in the New Testament is that of the historian. 
Though the history of the text is the chief object of his toil, 
he manages to deal with all the main questions which we 
shall discuss in the first two parts of our Introduction 
within 230 pages of his first volume although, it is true, 
with varying degrees of energy : e.g. Chap. x. Du temps et 
de Vordre de cliaque evangile ; Chap. xii. De Vfivangile de S l 
Luc ; ce qui Va pu obliger de le publier, y en ay ant deux 
autres qui avoient este publics avant le sien ; Chap. xvi. (on 
the Epistle to the Hebrews) : si elle est de S Paul et 
canonique. Ce que Vantiquitv a cru la-dessus tant dans 
I Orient que dans I Occident. Simon separated the New 
Testament from the Old ; he gave the impulse towards the 
treatment of the New Testament as a branch of literary 
history ; he drew attention to the incessant development 
it has undergone, and inaugurated the philological and 

1 Part I. : Histoire critique du tcxte du Nouveau Testament ; Part II. : 
Histoire critique dcs versions du N.T. ; Part III. : Histoire critique des 
principaux commentateurs du N.T. Valuable supplements to Parts I. and II. 
appeared in 1G95 in Paris, entitled Nouvelles observations sur le texte et les 
versions du N.T. : the whole together taking up well over 2,000 quarto pages. 

z Of. H. Margival : E. Simon et la critique bibiiquc au XVII" sttcle (Paris, 
1900). 



12 AX INTRODUCTION TO Till-: NEW TESTAMENT 

historical criticism of the New Testament with tact and good 
taste. The spuriousness of the appendix to Mark, of John 
vii. 53-viii. 11 and of 1. John v. 7 fol. was demonstrated by 
him, as well as the uncertainty of the traditional text in 
many other places. That he himself did not go beyond the 
criticism of details the so-called Lower Criticism and 
was satisfied with the tradition on the more general ques 
tions of the origin of the separate books and of the Canon, 
is no blame to him ; it was rather the healthy beginning 
of historical investigation, and to this limitation more than 
to anything else he owed the very great influence which he 
succeeded in gaining over Protestant as well as Catholic 
learning. 

At first, indeed, Protestants and Catholics vied with one 
another in repelling these impudent attacks on the Word of 
God, but how dependent on the very thing they scorned were 
those who bewailed the way in which Simon ad infrin- 
gendam Sanctae Scripturae auctoritatem callidissimus - 
arbitrarily altered the true text of the New Testament 
and treated the most sacred books in the same manner as 
he would the writings of any profane author, is distinctly 
shown, for instance, by J. MILL S Prolegomena in Novum 
Testamentum (1707), and by the Introductio of the Frank 
furt pastor J. G. PRITIUS, which, first published in 1704, 
made its way to every part of Germany in numerous editions. 1 
In it the writer defends the authenticity of everything in 
the New Testament, even down to the appendix to Mark 
and 1. John v. 7 fol., but yet makes a pretence of giving a 
history of the Text, the individual Books and even the 
Canon (though this in very summary form), as Simon had 
done before him. In addition to this, however, he offers the 
strangest collection of information introductory to the exegesis 
of the New Testament ; thus chap, xx., for instance, treats 
of the seventy disciples, chap, xxviii. of accents, chap. xl. of 
the coins occurring in the New Testament. We must suppose 
that even as late as 1776 it was thought desirable to popu 
larise such useful services in refutation of Simon s classical 

1 The third enlarged and revised by KAPP, and the fourth by C. G. HOF- 



PROLEGOMENA 13 

works, for in that year Pritius s Kritische Schriften liber das 
Neue Testament were translated into German by CRAMER 
at the suggestion of J. S. SEMLER. 

4. In the external history of our subject conspicuous im 
portance must be assigned to Hitter J. DAVID MICHAELIS, a 
Gottingen Professor who died in 1791 and whose Einleitung 
in die gottlichen Schriften des Neuen Bundes was republished 
four times, 1 the first edition consisting of 636 pages of small 
octavo, and the third even without the index of 1356 of 
quarto. Scarcely any merit but that of using the German 
tongue for the first time can indeed be ascribed to the first 
edition ; as far as the matter is concerned the improvement 
upon Simon is certainly not so enormous as the prologue 
would have us believe, while in form everything is remarkably 
ill-arranged ; the reader learns nothing whatever, for instance, 
about books like the Epistle to the Hebrews, 2. Peter and 
Jude, and is merely referred to other parts of Scripture. 
But from the third edition onwards the material is treated 
more systematically, and divided in such a manner that 
vol. i. contains the general and vol. ii. the special intro 
duction ; and although the general part still contains sections 
on the language of the New Testament, on its quotations 
from the Old, on its inspiration, or on the question whether 
our faith is made insecure by the variants in the New Testa 
ment ( 41), such portions are clearly assigned a secondary- 
place. Instead of the divinity of the New Testament Books 
the writer seeks rather to defend their genuineness and 
credibility, but ventures even so to pronounce the defence 
difficult in the case, for instance, of the Epistle of Jude, 
and to draw attention to the fact that the historical objec 
tions and the dogmatic complaints against the authenticity 
of that Epistle do but affect the Epistle of Jude, after 
all, and not the Books of the New Testament accepted as 
Canonical by the earliest Church, and therefore not religion 
itself. One would have thought that distinctions of this sort 
would have compelled a more careful investigation of the 
history of the Canon, but this was only accomplished by the 
above-mentioned theologian J. S. SEMLER of Halle (f 1791) in 

1 In 1750, 1705, 1777 and 1788. 



14 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

his Abhandhmg von freier Untersuchungdes Kanons (4 Parts, 
1771-75). He showed that the New Testament Canon was 
the work of men and did not come into being till towards the 
end of the second century, simultaneously with the Catholic 
Church, and moreover that the judgment of these men as to the 
Apostolicity of any book ought not to debar their descendants 
from independent verification. By the distinction he made 
between the Word of God and the Canonical he finally freed 
the study of the New Testament from the fear of destroying 
religion or faith by its results. Semler did not accomplish 
any connected attempt at an Introduction, nor was the gift 
of presentation or of the skilful distribution of his material 
vouchsafed to him ; he cannot be acquitted of a tendency 
towards eccentric assertion, and yet by his numerous mono 
graphs on subjects connected with the New Testament he gave 
a mighty impulse to research in all departments, and in some 
actually advanced it e.g. by his demonstration that the 
Apocalypse and the Gospel of John could not possibly have 
come from one and the same hand. 

5. In the century that has elapsed since the death of 
Semler incredible industry has been devoted, especially in 
Germany, to the study of the New Testament, and in spite of 
various attempts of the reactionary party to compel a return 
to the traditional opinions, it has followed the principles and 
the methods of free historical investigation more and more 
closely. But from this time onwards the great advances 
made in our subject have depended less on the works 
embracing the history of the New Testament as a whole 
than on the monographs dealing, say, with the Pastoral 
Epistles, the Johannine writings or the Gospels, and on the 
numerous commentaries upon each separate Book of the New 
Testament. F. SCHLEIERMACHER S doubts as to the genuine 
ness of 1. Timothy were soon extended to 2. Timothy and 
Titus ; the right of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apoca 
lypse, the Catholic Epistles, to bear the names of their sup 
posed authors was denied with ever greater insistence and 
on ever new grounds. At first, indeed, the mere love of 
criticising outstripped the need for a positive estimation 
and understanding. The disputes on authenticity left no room 



PROLEGOMENA 1 5 

for an appreciative analysis of the documents criticised, and as 
a natural consequence an insatiable desire arose for setting up 
new hypotheses on all critical questions. The more startling 
and ingenious they were, so much the better, and a steady 
and well-founded advance from sure to less certain ground 
was seldom to be met with. 

This phase of the study of Introduction was typified on 
its questionable side by the Einleitung in das N. T. of 
F. GOTTFRIED EICHHORN, the poly-historian of Gottingen 
a work full of broad deductions and extraordinary inter 
pretations and on its favourable side by the Lehrbuch 
der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in die kanonischen 
Biicher des N. T. of W. M. L. DE WETTE, the great Biblical 
scholar (died at Basle in 1849) a book which went through 
five editions, the first appearing in 1826 and the fifth 
in 1848. Unfortunately the history of the New Testa 
ment Canon, together with much indispensable matter 
besides, must here be sought for in the Introduction to 
the Old Testament, while the first section dealing with 
the original language of the New Testament is superfluous 
in the form in which he presents it ; the writer s attitude 
towards critical problems varies very much with the different 
editions, and chief defect of all he thinks more of telling 
us the opinions of theologians about the New Testament 
Books than of giving us a plain account of the Books 
themselves ; but his work is rendered useful even to students 
of to-day by its wealth of carefully collected information on 
the literature and history of research, by the uniformity of 
its treatment, the free, sober, earnest tone of its criticism 
and the lofty and objective attitude of its author, who is, 
if anything, too sparing of his words. In opposition to the 
critical tendencies prevailing at that time, the cause of 
tradition was upheld by the Catholic J. L. HUG of Freiburg, 
whose Einleitung in die Schriften des N. T. s appeared first 
in 1808, and the fourth edition in 1847. This elegantly 
written work, which excels in the art of satisfying all the 
wishes of the Church while maintaining an air of complete 
open-mindedness, has exercised a great influence, which would 
J In five vols., 1804-1827. 



16 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

have been quite comprehensible even if the learning and tact 
of the writer had not in truth hit the mark often enough as 
compared with the exploits of the innovators. But its 
greatest interest to-day is for the ecclesiastical historian, 
who may study the difference between the Catholicism of 
the beginning of the century and the Catholicism of the 
present day to great advantage by comparing Hug with 
the more recent works of Introduction from the hands of 
Catholics e.g. with CORNELY S Historica et critica introductio 
in Novi Testament! libros sacrosanctos, vols. i. and iii. 
(Paris, 1885 and 1886), or with A. SCHAFER S Einleitung in 
das N. T. (Paderborn, 1898). 

C. AUGUST CREDNER (died at Giessen in 1857) rendered 
excellent service by his numerous and valuable works in all 
departments of New Testament Introduction ; he did not 
live to carry out the plan of an Introduction which he drew 
up (although the first part of such a work appeared in 1836), 
but the task was undertaken in his stead by the Strasburg 
professor EDWARD REUSS (tl891), whose Geschichte der 
heiligen Schriften des N. T. s first appeared in 1842 and 
reached a sixth edition in 1887. The most important parts 
of this very attractively written book are those concerned with 
the history of the translations and of Exegesis ( 421-600), 
which, however, we cannot regard as belonging to our subject ; 
and in spite of the title Geschichte der Entstehung der Neu 
Testamentlichen heiligen Schriften, the first section deals 
with the Epistles of Clement and of Barnabas, the Clementines, 
the Catholic Gospels of the Birth and Childhood, Hernias, 
the Symbolum, etc., in exactly the same way as with James 
or 1. Peter. In the many decades during which it has 
survived, this work has not only increased considerably in 
bulk, but its venerable author has with untiring energy and 
never-failing independence of judgment continued to supple 
ment and improve it and to discuss the views put forward in 
more recent works. So much, however, has undergone 
transformation in our branch of science since 1842 that not 
even the art of a Reuss could succeed in entirely suppressing 
all traces of antiquation in the latest editions. 

6. The most revolutionary change in the treatment of the 



PROLEGOMENA 1 7 

history of the New Testament proceeded from the TUBINGEN 
SCHOOL, so called from its head, the Tubingen Professor 
FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUB (f 1860). Its most distinguished 
members (among whom David Friedrich Strauss cannot 
strictly be reckoned) are E. ZELLEK, ALBRECHT SCHWEGLER, 
K. R. KOSTLIN, ADOLF HILGENFELD (of Jena) and GUSTAV 
VOLKMAR (of Zurich, f 1891), and among the younger genera 
tion, with whom the original point of view continually under 
goes new and important modifications, CARL HOLSTEN of Heidel 
berg (f 1896), and OTTO PFLEIDERER of Berlin. The organ of 
this school, pre-eminently devoted to studies connected with the 
history of primitive Christianity and of the New Testament, was 
the series of Theologische Jahrbucher which appeared from 
1842 to 1857. Since 1867 a periodical of similar tendencies 
and contents has been published at Leyden, entitled the 
Theologisch Tijdschrift, the contributors to which are Dutch 
theologians, disciples for the most part of J. H. SCHOLTEN 
(t 1885), who allowed themselves to be converted with 
their master to the historical views of the Tubingen School 
about the beginning of the sixties. Before this, however, 
Baur had already found friends in France : EDMOND SCHERER, 
for instance, there upheld the principal doctrines of the 
Tubingen School from the year 1850 onwards, and TIMOTHEE 
COLANI, editor from 1850 to 1869 of the Revue de Theologie, 
was conspicuous among those who shared his views. In 
England a few isolated stragglers who have appeared since 
1870 have gained no influence. 

It is usual to designate the Tiibingen writers briefly as 
tendency-critics, because in the case of every book of the 
New Testament they inquire first of all into the tendency 
it was meant to serve. But the epoch-making qualities 
of their criticism are thereby but poorly rendered. The 
reproach that they tore asunder the single unity formed 
by the New Testament documents and scattered it over 
two centuries is, however, still less appropriate ; what was 
great in Baur s work was rather his demand that these 
documents should not be regarded each in a separate light 
as the accidental products of any one religious personality, 
but should be grasped in close connection with the 

c 



18 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

history of Christianity, as the necessary outcome of a 
particular phase in its development. The key to the 
knowledge of this history Baur thought he had discovered 
in the antagonism between Paul and the Primitive Apostles, 
between the representative of a law-freed, universalist 
Christianity and the champions of a Messianic creed in bond 
age to all the prejudices of Judaism. This struggle, he con 
siders, gradually became less and less acute from the second 
Christian generation onwards ; concessions were made by 
both sides, and a middle course was finally agreed upon in 
order to save the very existence of the Church in the face of 
the hatred of Jews and Gentiles, and the disintegrating 
tendencies of Gnosticism. A theology at once super-Pauline 
and super-Judaistic became the foundation for the one 
Catholic Church, which at once proceeded to seal the compact 
by the creation of the New Testament Canon, thereby 
recognising all the Apostles without exception as the highest 
authority, as though no difference of opinion had ever existed 
among them. As this view of the early history of the 
Church is essentially drawn from ISiew Testament writings 
Galatians, 1. and 2. Corinthians, the Apocalypse (!) so its 
logical consequence must be the arrangement of those writings 
along such a line of development ; if they are really historical 
authorities they must stand in intimate relation to the dispute 
which formed the very life of the history of the time. They 
must have their definite place upon the line that runs from 
the Judaists of Jerusalem of about the year 40 to the cham 
pions of the Catholic Church of about 200, such as IRENAEUS 
of Lyons or TERTULLIAN of Carthage ; all of them, without 
exception, must be written in the interests either of strife or of 
reconciliation. This then, in Baur s view, explains why we 
possess documents under the names of Paul, Peter or John, the 
spuriousness of which is beyond question; in this manner the 
later writers appealed in entire good faith to the great authori 
ties of their party for the defence of that which seemed to them 
indispensable. The divergency between their own point of 
view and that of these old authorities they did not perceive, and 
we can now reconstruct the course of development within the 
Pauline party by the writings of the so-called Paul and his 



PROLEGOMENA 19 

disciple Luke, as we can the gradual emancipation of the 
Primitive Apostolic tendency from its one-sidedness and the 
extinction of the antagonism between it and Paul in the 
Catholic Epistles, Matthew, Mark and the Johannine writings. 

Thus the only witnesses left from the earliest period of 
Christianity before 70 A.D., would be four Pauline Epistles 
Galatians, 1. and 2. Corinthians and Romans and the 
Apocalypse of the Apostle John, a document of the bitterest 
hatred against Paul, inspired by Ebionism of the narrowest 
type ; while the earliest record of the higher synthesis would 
be the Fourth Gospel (quite close to which come the Johan 
nine Epistles), written some time after 160. 2. Peter 
belongs more or less to the same period, and was written 
with the object of pronouncing a sort of canonisation of the 
Epistles of his arch-enemy Paul through the mouth of Peter. 
Not long before, the Pastoral Epistles had exhorted 
the flock to put all their strength into the overthrow of 
Gnosticism, having already lost all sense of what had 
hitherto made union so difficult the alternative implied in 
the question of Faith and Works. The rest of the New 
Testament Books spring from the time of the attempts at 
mediation, a statement which applies particularly to the 
Synoptics and the Acts. In their present form the Synoptics 
can only be understood as arising from the interests at work 
during the period of assimilation in the second century ; 
Matthew is the conciliatory recast of a Judaistic original, 
just as Luke rests upon a strictly Pauline Primitive Luke, 
while Mark, a compilation of excerpts from Matthew and 
Luke with the omission of all that might foster a recollection 
of the original feud, is the Gospel of neutrality ; its tend 
ency is the absence of tendency. The Acts, however, are 
pervaded even down to the most trifling details by the funda 
mental idea of setting up a parallel between Peter and Paul, 
of representing the leaders of the two contending parties as 
similar in word and deed, intentions and effects, and thus of 
winning support through history itself for the new watchword 
Peter and Paul. 

A large number of the theses laid down by the Tubingen 
School have been proved to be untenable. Even within the 

c 2 



20 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

school itself the fact was recognised, and first asserted 
definitely by HILGENFELD, that among the Epistles bearing 
the name of Paul, 1. Thessalonians, Philippians and Philemon 
could not be ascribed on grounds of internal evidence alone 
to any other than the writer of Galatians and Corin 
thians, and that a conciliatory tendency had only been 
forced upon them. Nor could it be permanently denied that 
even external evidence forbade us to assign any large number 
of New Testament writings to a date so far into the second 
century. But the most important point is that, thanks to 
the labours of HOLSTEN, the majority of the Tubingen critics 
now admit that it is impracticable to regard Peter and the 
Primitive Apostles as the champions of extreme Judaism at 
all, but that Peter rather maintained towards the Judaistic 
agitators an attitude of greater freedom and mildness in 
comparison with the uncompromising hostility of Paul, that in 
fact his point of view was not very clearly defined. In 
short, they recognise that here, too, the antagonism is in a 
certain sense the later growth, and a relatively tolerant unity 
the primitive condition. But the historical system of Baur 
suffers above all from the mistake, first, of over-rating the 
importance of Judaism in the early days of Christianity 
and of ascribing to Paul alone the championship of uni- 
versalistic tendencies and the edification of Gentile Christ 
ian communities, and, secondly, of insisting with rigid 
one-sidedness that the history of primitive Christianity 
was dominated till far into the second century by the 
sole interest of the battle round the Law and the pre 
rogatives of the Jews ; whereas in reality this battle was 
only one factor among many in the formation of its history, 
and innumerable Christians of the first two generations not 
only did not understand it, but did not even know anything 
about it. It is not mainly from ideas and principles that a 
new religion draws its life : the decisive influences are emo 
tions, feelings, hopes ; and Baur s picture of the historical 
development of the Apostolic and post-Apostolic ages is 
too logical and correct, too deficient in warmth of colour to 
have probability on its side. Nevertheless the fact remains 
that Baur inaugurated a new epoch in the study of the New 



PROLEGOMENA 21 

Testament, not only by his numerous flashes of new and un 
erring insight on questions of Introduction as well as of 
exegesis and New Testament theology, but principally by the 
fact that he raised the pursuit of this branch of science to a 
higher level, and did away with the subjective and detached 
method of investigation. Since Baur s day the literary history 
of the New Testament can no longer be dealt with apart from its 
connection with the history of Christianity as a whole ; he 
has taught us to regard the Books of the New Testament 
from a truly historical point of view, as the products of and 
the witnesses to the Christian spirit of a definite age. 

Of Baur s writings the most important for our subject 
are : Die Christuspartei in Korinth (an essay in the 
Tubinger Zeitschrift fur Theologie for 1831, pp. 61 fol.), 
Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, sein Leben und Wirken, 
seine Briefe und Lehre (1845 and 1866), Kritische Unter- 
suchungen iiber die kanonischen Evangelien (1847) and 
the comprehensive summary of his system in the Kirchen- 
geschichte der drei ersten Jahrhunderte (1853). His- 
immediate disciples did no more, for the most part, than 
carry out the ideas of their master in individual portions of 
the literature of the New Testament, but an exception to this 
rule was formed by SCHWEGLER, who in his Nachapostolisches 
Zeitalter in den Hauptmomenten seiner Entwicklung treated 
his subject in such a way that it included a discussion of 
almost all the writings of the New Testament. HILGENFELD 
produced a Historisch-kritische Einleitung in das N.T. in 
1875, in which he gave the history of the individual docu 
ments between that of the Canon and that of the Text. Not 
only in questions of the authenticity of Pauline Epistles or 
the dating of spurious writings were his decisions more con 
servative than Baur s ; even in the case of the Gospels 
he gave up the attempt to explain the divergencies between 
them solely on the ground of their different interests, and 
accordingly placed Mark at any rate between Matthew and 
Luke. The post-Apostolic age, in so far as it continued to 
produce New Testament writings at all, he considered to 
have been influenced rather by the persecution of the Christ 
ians undertaken by the Roman State, and by the internal 



22 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

crisis produced by Gnosticism, than by the antagonism be 
tween the parties of the Primitive Apostles and of Paul which 
dominated the Apostolic age itself. Both before and after 
the appearance of this Einleitung he repeatedly advanced 
and defended the same views as those put forward there in 
numerous essays and monographs, large and small. But 
unfortunately there is a certain self-willed obstinacy in this 
clearly and smoothly written book, which will never allow 
the writer to go back upon what he has once asserted, and 
which makes its appearance even outwardly, in the different 
treatment he bestows on his materials according as he 
spends a greater or less degree of interest and industry upon 
them. Still further removed than Hilgenfeld from the pre 
judices of Baur is OTTO PFLEIDERER, whose tastefully written 
work on Das Urchristentum, seine Schriften und Lehren 
(1887, 891 pp. ; new edit. 1902) deals, as we might expect from 
the title, with all the problems of Special Introduction to the 
New Testament. Here the breach between Paulinism and the 
Christianity of the Primitive Apostles, the community of 
Jerusalem, is represented as far slighter from the outset, and 
the reconciliation as having been effected by Paul him 
self ; a decisive factor in the development of Christianity 
is recognised in Hellenism, which, however, did not, in the 
writer s opinion, suddenly force its way into the Church in the 
middle of the second century, and then produce a complete 
falling-away from the old ideas, but was already at work in 
the mind of Paul ; while in those of the later generations it 
was continually forming new and peculiar combinations with 
the primitive Christian spirit. 

7. The merit of having induced the Tubingen School to 
change its tone does not belong to the party of bitter opposi 
tion which rose up against it from the most diverse quarters. 
The fanatical outcry against the heresy of Baur, as raised, 
for instance, by H. THIEBSCH in Marburg, T. PETER LANGE in 
Bonn, and H. EBRARD, with his heavy facetiousness, in 
Erlangen, affected only those circles which had no need of such 
influence, and the Isagogik of PROF. GUERICKE of Halle 
strictly correct in an ecclesiastical sense has long since 
fallen into oblivion. Some profit might, however, be found 



PROLEGOMENA 25 

even at the present day in G. V. LECHLER S Apostolisches und 
Nachapostolisches Zeitalter (3rd edit. 1885), which gives a 
sort of history of each individual document of the New 
Testament by means of a running discussion of the Tubingen 
propositions, but does not venture to support the tradition 
under all circumstances, as, for instance, in the case of 
2. Peter. But highest in point of intelligence among those 
whose dogmatic standpoint forced them into an uncom 
promising opposition to all negative criticism was Prof. 
J. C. K. VON HOFMANN of Erlangen (f 1877), who was 
never able to complete the detailed exposition of the New 
Testament which he had in his mind ; his lectures, however, 
on so-called Introduction to the New Testament were edited by 
VOLCK in 1881 as the ninth part of that work. But they 
contain not a word on textual histon% and the account of 
the rise of the New Testament Canon is worse than inadequate 
(it nils just eight pages), while the examination of the 
individual documents is also unequal and sometimes incom 
plete. Hofmann ends by justifying the tradition of the 
Church in the case of all the books of the New Testament : 
even 2. Peter, he considers, is from the hand of the Apostle ; 
even Hebrews as well as the three Pastoral Epistles was 
written by Paul after his first imprisonment ; but as in his 
exegesis and analytical reproduction of the documents in 
question, so in his criticism of them, Hofmann shows himself 
to be a past master in the art of preferring the far-fetched 
and the improbable to the natural and the obvious. 

Nevertheless theologians were never wanting who pro 
tested against the Tiibingen ideas while sharing Baur s 
attitude of freedom towards tradition and dogma. This may 
be said without qualification at least of E. REUSS, of the 
celebrated Church historian K. HASE of Jena, of that gifted 
and imaginative Frenchman ERNEST RENAN, author of the 
Histoire des origines du Christianisme, } and of the Heidel 
berg professor DANIEL SCHENKEL ; while in the main it is also 
true of H. EWALD, from whose furious attacks on Baur no one 
would guess how frequent is the agreement even in detail 
between the two scholars. Among the supporters of the 

1 Seven vols., 18fi3-1883. 



24 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

theology of compromise represented by SCHLEIERMACHER, F. 
BLEEK of Bonn (t 1859) rendered conspicuous services in the 
study of the New Testament. His Einleitung in das N. T. 
appeared posthumously, edited by J. F. BLEEK (1862), and 
the third and fourth editions were carefully and piously 
revised by W. MANGOLD in 1875 and 1886 in accordance with 
the progress of knowledge up to that time. In the pre 
liminary remarks to this work, which is still widely read at 
the present day, relics of the old Introductions may yet be 
found, in the shape of paragraphs on the original language of 
the New Testament Books and the character of the Greek 
in which they are written ; the order, too, in the first main 
division, dealing with the origin of the individual books, is 
remarkable ; the four Gospels and Acts are there placed first 
and the Pauline Epistles second, but here the arrangement 
suddenly ceases to follow the traditional order of the Canon, 
and is determined by the chronological order of their com 
position. Otherwise this somewhat prolix work (it covers 1085 
pages) has many merits ; the writer combines a warm love of 
his subject and great discretion in judgment with wide 
knowledge and many-sided interests, while in controversy he 
always maintains a standard of high-bred decorum. Many 
shortcomings which were due to his excessively conservative 
bent have been made good by the more drastic proceedings of 
Mangold, though here the reader is too often perplexed by 
the discrepancy between Bleek s text and Mangold s notes, 
which contradict one another flatly, for instance, in such 
questions as that of the second imprisonment of Paul. 
Much has also been suffered to remain in the text which the 
editor afterwards proves to be either inaccurate or erroneous. 
In its general attitude Bleek s Einleitung is far too 
similar to that of DE WETTE to have had the power to break 
the influence of the Tubingen School ; Baur s historical 
system was not to be combated by pointing out a few diffi 
culties and improbabilities contained in it ; it was necessary 
to replace it by a wholly different conception of the period of 
history it covers, in which its mistakes should be avoided 
while its established results should not be ignored. It was 
ALBRECHT PIITSCHL of Gottingen (+ 1889) who, as early as 1846, 



PROLEGOMENA 2o 

in his Das Evangelium Marcions und das kanonische 
Evangelium des Lucas, and afterwards in his Entstehung der 
altkatholisehen Kirche (esp. the 2nd edit., 1857), showed, while 
keeping strictly to the methods of Baur, that the Tubingen 
over-estimate of the importance of Jewish Christianity was 
unwarranted, and that Hellenic thought was a powerful auxi 
liary factor in the formation of the primitive Catholic Church. 
Beyond this Eitschl himself took no part in the special study 
of the New Testament, and his own views on the develop 
ment of Primitive Christianity might with advantage have 
been corrected and supplemented in many ways ; he under 
rates the influence of the Jewish element, for instance, in the 
Early Church, and systematises where it is rather a question 
of individualities ; but almost all students of the present day 
who possess any independence of judgment are agreed that 
it is the great merit of Ritschl to have shown, in the most 
convincing manner, what was the chief defect in the historical 
system of the Tubingen School. 

8. At the present day we have little to fear from the 
one-sidedness of that school, but all the more from the 
arrogance of the party of tradition, which behaves and 
endeavours so to persuade the public as though the labours 
of Baur had left our knowledge in exactly the same state 
as it was in before. A glance at the works of Introduc 
tion most widely read in Germany to-day will confirm 
this statement. They are H. J. HOLTZMANN S Lehrbuch 
der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in das N. T. (1885, 
1886 and 1892) : B. WEISS S Lehrbuch der Einleitung in 
das N. T. (1886, 1889 and 1897) ; F. GODET S Einleitung 
in das N. T. (1893 sqq., translated from the French) 1 and 
T. ZAHN S Einleitung in das N. T. in two volumes published 
respectively in 1897 and 1899. 2 These w r orks are carried out 
on very different scales ; Godet and Zahn present only 
Special Introduction, for which Zahn covers 1150 pages in 
all, Godet 378 for the Pauline Epistles alone ; whereas 
Weiss and Holtzmann with 500 pages apiece give us not only 

1 As yet only vols. i. and ii. have appeared, in incomplete form, vol. i. on 
the Pauline Epistles, and vol. ii. on the Gospels and Acts. 
* A second edition of both volumes appeared in 1900. 



26 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

this but also the history of the Canon and the New Testament 
Text (Weiss at any rate a sketch of this last) ; while Holtzmann 
adds an appendix conspicuous for its precision and exhaus- 
tiveness on the New Testament Apocrypha. Holtzmann s 
special merit is that he gives full and always accurate 
information as to the arguments employed by both sides on 
each controverted question ; indeed his objectivity sometimes 
goes too far, in that his own well-reasoned judgment does 
not always appear clearly enough above the mass of opinions 
and ideas he quotes from other writers. The object of Weiss, 
on the other hand, is rather to state each problem plainly and 
lucidly and then to solve it, and he seldom allows the reader 
to perceive how many objections may be and have been raised 
against his attempts at solution. Godet, with his edifying tone, 
never lays firm hold of any single problem ; what he gives 
us is a sermon on the New Testament Books richly adorned 
with quotations and occasionally ingenious and striking, but 
the very opposite of a guide to methodical investigation. 
Zahn excels in coolness and confidence, and presents us with 
an enormous wealth of individual disquisitions of great 
learning, as well as with many original combinations of ideas. 
But only one of these four, Holtzman, follows the good 
traditions of German criticism and moreover without any 
school preconceptions in pointing out the very different 
degrees of certainty with which we can proceed to formulate 
decisions within its domain. The three others regard the 
authenticity of every New Testament Book with the 
exception of Hebrews, which, however, does not even profess 
to be by Paul as above all question, although indeed with 
this shade of difference between them, that Weiss looks 
upon the negative critics merely as purblind, Godet as 
impious, and Zahn as stupid and malignant. Thus the 
ecclesiastical tradition is saved, and even ADOLF HARNACK in 
his preface to the Chronologic der altchristlichen Literatur ; 
sees a time approaching in which we shall no longer trouble 
ourselves much about the deciphering of problems of literary 
history in connection with Primitive Christianity, because the 
thing which it is our main object to prove, viz. the essential 

1 1897, vol. i. p. x. 



PROLEGOMENA 27 

trustworthiness of the tradition, with few important excep 
tions, will have attained universal recognition. In the 
whole of the New Testament, according to Harnack, there 
is probably but a single document which can be called 
pseudonymous in the strictest sense of the word the Second 
Epistle of Peter. 

To me, however, this new cult for the tradition by 
which, as a matter of fact, Harnack understands something 
quite different from the tradition of Zahn and his followers 
-seems quite as questionable as the earlier prejudice against 
it ; we shall indeed have to take it as our starting-point 
again and again, but we must always be prepared to leave it. 
What violent means must be used in order to assert the truth 
of the tradition from beginning to end, may be gathered, as we 
know, from Zahn s book. Harnack, indeed, exclaims at the 
end of the above-quoted Preface, It is in history, not in 
literary criticism, that the problems of the future lie, thus as 
it were condemning Zahn s dogmatism in advance. But is it 
possible to write history at all without including literary 
criticism ? 

A work like Carl Weizsacker s Apostolisches Zeitalter 
der christlichen Kirche - has proved with masterly skill how 
ultimately connected is the history of the earliest Christianity 
with that of the literature of the New Testament. There we 
find the history of New Testament literature interwoven with 
that of the primitive Christian religion during the first 
century of its existence, and nearly all the New Testament 
Books analysed, examined and given their true value at their 
proper place ; nor can any unprejudiced reader fail to 
recognise the convincing force that belongs to this presenta 
tion of history, in spite of the fact that the writer avoids all 
polemical discussion. But is Weizsacker s book, which gives 
the most perfect expression to one of the fundamental 
ideas of Baur, calculated to confirm the essential trust 
worthiness of the tradition ? Perhaps Zahn s Einleitung 
has convinced Harnack since then, that the time of universal 

1 P. viii. 

1886 and 1892 ; translated into English for the Theological Translation 
Library (Williams and Norgate), by James Millar, B.D. 1894. 



28 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

recognition in the matter of problems of literary history 
connected with Primitive Christianity is still far distant, and 
that we may not relinquish the tasks set by the study of 
Introduction as though they were already accomplished, but 
must labour more strenuously than before for their discharge 
in the right spirit, in a loftier tone than of old, and without 
the former pretence of universal knowledge, the traffic in 
hypotheses, and the mania for accumulating details short 
comings, all of them, of which the Traditionalists may 
be accused no less than the Critics. 

No very great advance in the study of Introduction can 
be expected in the immediate future. Lost literature of the 
first century will scarcely be restored to us by discoveries in 
the monasteries of Syria or the sand of Egypt ; we must be 
content with what we already possess. And here literary 
criticism will do well to return to a closer union with separate 
exegesis and so-called New Testament theology. The chief 
blame for the mistakes of the Lower and the Higher Criticism 
is due to faultiness of exegesis, which is still very general in 
spite of the abundance of good commentaries. The science 
of New Testament Introduction cannot aspire to be more than 
a coadjutor in the history of the origin of the Christian religion ; 
by that aim she should limit her range and estimate the 
value of her results. 

9. Brief mention must finally be made of a form of 
pseudo-criticism --for it has itself deprecated the name of 
hyper-criticism which considers itself called upon simply to 
upset all previous views of the development of the earliest 
Christian literature. It had a precursor about 1840 in BRUNO 
BAUER, a theologian of Berlin, whose doctrine was that the 
great figures of the New Testament, Jesus and Paul, must 
be regarded as literary fictions and Christianity as the product 
of Roman popular philosophy. In the last twenty-five years 
similar theories have been put forward in Holland by A. PIER- 
SON, A. D. LOMAN, VAN MANEN and NABER, but in Germany 
very few serious investigators have as yet taken up the idea : 
among them, however, are E. STECK of Berne with his Der 
Galaterbrief nach seiner Echtheituntersucht, nebst kritischen 
Bemerkungen zu den paulinischen Hauptbriefen (1888), and. 



PROLEGOMENA 29 

in principle, the Swabian professor D. VOLTER, now in Amster 
dam. These modern sceptics differ from one another in innu 
merable points, but they are all agreed in asserting that the 
chief Pauline Epistles are precisely those which cannot 
possibly spring from the historical Paul, but belong to the 
time immediately before Marcion, in whom the development 
from below upwards, the antinomian tendency, reached its 
highest point. Here the Acts must actually serve to throw 
suspicion on the Epistle to the Galatians ! 

We shall decline to make the smallest compromise with 
such a system, first, because Epistles like those to the 
Galatians and the Corinthians appear to us to be beyond 
the range of forgery, if only on account of the many 
illogical, incongruous things that they contain, highlv 
natural as these would have been in the situations implied ; 
secondly, because we can find no room in the second cen 
tury for the artist who, immediately before the authority- 
loving Marcion, proceeded with a sovereign disdain for all 
authority to create the authorities for the next stage of 
development ; and, thirdly, because we reject, as an idea that 
has never been found consistent with history, the fundamental 
assumption that the Christianity of the year 50 was connected 
by an exact and rigid line of evolution with the Christianity 
of a hundred years later. The miserable ambition of explain 
ing historical personages as the mere products of their age, 
of calculating them out as though they were a mechanical 
combination of the factors that determined the intellectual 
life of their time and their surroundings, is not likely to be 
fulfilled in face of the great men of the world s history. The 
author of the principal Pauline Epistles will always remain 
to a certain extent a mystery to us, whether we look for him 
in the second or the first century. In short, this latest school 
seems to me to be no more than a symptom of disease, which, 
however, is the less to be feared because to all appearances 
the tendency to find a solution for every difficulty that may 
confront exegete or critic, in the light-hearted rejection of 
documents as spurious, or to fill up the gaps in our knowledge 
with piquant conjectures and ingenious ideas, is growing 
weaker and weaker throughout the whole field of historical 



30 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 

research. It is to be hoped that this may soon be said of a 
thing but little less offensive : the passion, if not for declaring 
the great Epistles themselves to be non-Pauline, at least 
for robbing them of all value by the assertion that they 
are full of interpolations, and by the endless production 
of irresponsible conjectures. Unfortunately, the example 
in this department was set by C. H. WEISSE, otherwise a 
scholar of great repute, and was followed in Holland 
by J. W. STRAATMANN and M. A. N. KOVERS, and in Germany 
by E. SULZE and D. VOLTER. Indeed, the production of schemes 
for the dismemberment of New Testament Books will soon 
reach its utmost limit ; l the partition of the Epistles to the 
Corinthians by H. HAGGE and H. Lisco may be called typical 
of its methods. If these gentlemen are right, the Almighty 
must have set from 90 to 120 hands in motion during the 
first and second centuries, to produce a mutilation, unparal 
leled elsewhere, of all the New Testament texts, with the 
sole object of creating a field for the brilliant display of the 
ingenuity of modern theologians, for whom no other task is 
now worthy of notice. 



; A complete account of them down to 1894 may be found in CLEMEN S 
Die Einheitlichkeit der paulinischen Bricfc an der Hand der bisJier mit 
Bezug auf sie aufgestellten Interpolations- und Compilationshypothesen 
geprilft (1894). 



PART I 



[Cf. besides the works mentioned in 2, the Commentaries on 
the New Testament as a whole, which usually pay particular atten 
tion to questions of Introduction. Special mention must be made, 
however, of those edited by H. A. W. Meyer and by H. Holtzmann. 
The Kritisch-exegetisches Commentar iiber das Neue Testament 
of the former appeared in 1882 in 16 vols., in which 1. and 2. 
Thess. and Hebrews were undertaken by G. K. G. Liinemann, 1. 
and 2. Tim., Titus and the Catholic Epistles by J. E. Hiither, 
Eevelation by F. Diisterdieck and the rest by the Editor. The 
more recent editions have been entrusted to others ; B. Weiss 
has undertaken the greater part of the work, but several sections 
have already been re-edited twice over. We shall mention the 
newest editions at the head of each of our , under the title of 
H. A. W. Meyer. But as the original unity of design, tone 
and scale has disappeared, so the value of the different vols. is by 
this time very unequal ; all, however, have a tendency, while pro 
fessing to examine the evidence impartially, to concede as little as 
possible to negative criticism and to make the New Testament 
writers appear as the representatives of the author s own moderate 
Protestant orthodoxy. A typical example of this is afforded by 
Sieffer s commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. The 
abundant criticism at first applied to older commentators under 
taken on no very clear principles and from differing points of view 
has been to an increasing extent abandoned in the newer editions. 
The Hand-Commentar zum Neuen Testament of H. J. Holtz 
mann, 1 with contributions by E. A. Lipsius, P. W. Schmiedel and 
H. von Soden, is a work which confines itself almost entirely to a 
practical interpretation of the New Testament texts and to a brief 

1 First appeared in 1889 in Freiburg-i.-Br., but parts of it have now 
reached a third edition. 



oJ AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

answering of questions of literary and religious history by the 
help of the most trustworthy authorities. The five volumes of 
Zockler and Strack s Commentar zu den heiligen Schriften der 
Alten und Neuen Testamente which deal with the New Testament, 
reached a second edition in 1897 ; here, too, the editors were 
assisted by other writers Nosgen, Luthardt, Schnedermann, 
Wohlenberg, Burger and E. Riggenbach, the value of whose work 
varies considerably. But even if we ignore Nosgen s plaintive 
contribution, it is impossible to recommend this Commentary as a 
whole, because the writers conservative interest too often stands 
in the way of a clear understanding of the texts. An English 
parallel to Meyer is afforded by the International Critical Com 
mentary, in which the uniformity of tone and value has as yet 
been well maintained in spite of the large number of contributors ; 
but unfortunately the greater part of the work has not yet appeared. 
C. Weizsiicker s Das Neue Testament iibersetzt (of which the 
9th edition appeared in 1899, Freiburg-i.-Br.) is such a master 
piece of translation that it almost supplies the place of a com 
mentary to the attentive reader.] 



BOOK J 

THE EPISTLES 
CHAPTER I 

THE GENUINE EPISTLES OF PAUL 

[Cf. B. Weiss : Die paulinischen Briefe im berichtigten Text, 
:nit kurzer Erlauterung (1896, pp. 682).] 

3. The Apostle Paid 

[Consult besides F. C. Baur and E. Renan (see above, pp. 17-23) 
A. Hausrath : Der Apostel Paulus (1872) and M. Krenkel : 
Paulus, der Apostel der Heiden (1869) and Beitrage zur 
Aufhellung der Geschichte und der Briefe des Apostels Paulus 
(1890). Also F. Spitta : Zur Geschichte und Literatur des 
Urchristentums (1893), vol. i. pp. 1-108 on Die zweimalige romi- 
sche Gefangenschaft des Paulus, and pp. 109-154 on the 2nd 
Epistle to the Thessalonians ; C. Clemen : Die Chronologic der 



3.] THE APOSTLE PAUL 33 

paulinischen Briefe (1893) ; and Ihre Einheitlichkeit, etc. (1894 ; 
see esp. p. 20) ; W. M. Eamsay : St. Paul the Traveller and the 
Eoman Citizen (1895) and St. Paul in the Acts (1898), which 
latter is rather a persistent defence of the Acts than a biography 
of Paul ; 0. Cone : Paul the Man, the Missionary and the 
Teacher (1898), and Adolf Harnack : Chronologic der altchrist- 
lichen Literatur (1897). Of this last, vol. i., pp. 233 fol. deal 
with the Chronologic des Paulus und das Todesjahr des Petrus 
und des Paulus, and assign the Conversion of Paul to the 
year 30, his arrest at Jerusalem to Easter, 54, and his arrival 
in Eome to the spring of 57, after which the writer assumes 
that he was released, that he departed on fresh journeys, was 
imprisoned for the second time in Rome and finally executed 
in 64. On the other hand, Zahn in the 2nd Appendix to vol. ii. of 
his Einleitung, though he also favours the second imprisonment, 
assigns the execution to 66 or even 67, the conversion to the 
beginning of 35 and the arrest in Jerusalem to 58. More to the 
point is E. Schiirer s article in the Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche 
Theologie, 1898, entitled Zur Chronologie des Lebens Pauli. 
Besides these works, all chiefly concerned with questions of 
biography and literary history, there are those bearing on the 
religious aspect of the question, such as A. Sabatier s L Apotre 
Paul, 1882, and O. Pfleiderer s Der Paulinismus (1890) of which 
even the 1st edition (1873) is not at all out of date.] 

1. The man to whose extant writings we shall first turn 
our attention was a Jew of the purest Jewish blood (Gal. ii. 
15, i. 13 fol. ; 2 Cor. xi. 22 ; Rom. xi. 1 ; Philip, iii. 4 fol.) 
and belonged, according to his own account, to the tribe of 
Benjamin. Jerome tells us that he was born in the little 
Galilean town of Gischala, and if this is correct which is, 
however, doubtful Paul and his family must have migrated 
very early to Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia. In the Acts he 
is simply mentioned as a man of Tarsus ; but according 
to xxii. 3, he was also born there, and certainly such a title 
could hardly have been applied to him if he had merely made 
a passing sojourn in Tarsus during one of his missionary 
journeys. The year of his birth is unknown, but it cannot 
have been very far from the beginning of our era, for before 
his conversion be makes his appearance in public in a way 
which would have been hardly possible for a Jew of less than 



34 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

thirty years of age ; his mind had had time to take firm root in 
the Eabbinical theology before he cast aside what had once 
seemed so precious to him ; while after 60 A.D. he speaks of 
himself from his prison as Paul the aged. The fact that 
he reckoned himself among the chief apostles, also, would 
be best explained by supposing that there was no substantial 
difference of age between Jesus and himself, and that he was 
at most two or three years the younger. At his circumcision 
he was given the Jewish name of Saul, by which alone he is 
spoken of in the Acts as far as xiii. 9. ; there, however, we 
learn that he also bore the name of Paul, which he uses 
exclusively in his epistles. There is nothing in the Acts to 
indicate that he adopted this second name at that particular 
moment possibly in order to symbolise his new birth and 
it is still less probable that his meeting with Sergius Paulus 
the Proconsul of Cyprus was the occasion of the change. 
Double names were becoming the fashion in the East at that 
time, and it was especially common to couple a Greek with a 
Semitic name, so that our Apostle might very well have been 
called both Saul and Paul from his youth up. He would then 
have left it to the changing milieux in which he happened to 
find himself to call him by whichever name they found most 
convenient ; so that to Greeks he would always have been Paul. 2 
Paul did not spring by any means from the lowest class 
His whole bearing would be sufficient to show this ; but we 
also have evidence that his family possessed the Roman 
civitas long before his birth. That he should have learnt a 
trade that of tent-maker or tanner according to Acts xviii. 3 
is no objection to this theory, since such was the very 
general custom among the Jewish scribes. On his missionary 
journeys it is clear that he had no private means at his 
disposal, but the apostate would have scorned to accept any 
support from his yet unconverted family. No doubt he 
intended to become a Piabbi and with this view betook him 
self when still quite a young man to Jerusalem, where teachers 
as distinguished as Gamaliel the Elder were at that time to be 
found. 3 Here he remained true to that extreme Pharisaism 

1 Philemon, ver. 9. 

Cf. Deissmann s Bibelstudien (189JJ), vol. i. pp. 181 fol. :l Acts xxii. 8. 



3.] THE APOSTLE PAUL 35 

which was the tradition of his family ; he could not be strict 
enough in his observance of the Law, and he looked with 
burning hatred, ready for any and every act of violence, 
upon the small body of the followers of Jesus who had 
so rudely attacked the Pharisaic ideal of the Messiah, and 
therefore, in spite of their attachment to the Law, could 
never hope to be tolerated or even recognised by the Pharisee 
pure and simple. Jesus himself he had not seen (2. Cor. 
v. 16 proves nothing whatever either way), so that he 
probably did not arrive in Jerusalem until after his death, 
but the persecution and extermination of his followers seemed 
to Paul a worthy task to which to devote his life. 1 On some 
such errand he had set out one day for Damascus, 2 when the 
reaction suddenly and irresistibly came upon him. He 
describes the occurrence himself as a direct revelation of 
Christ vouchsafed to him in or near Damascus, and charging 
him with the task of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles. 3 
Of course this vision had its pyschological preparation within 
him ; instead of the proud self-satisfaction of the average Jew, 
which, in the words of Philipp. vii. 6, could bear witness to 
itself as touching the righteousness which is in the Law, 
found blameless, Paul had already known moments when he 
had felt all the bitter pain of one sold unto sin and condemned 
to a helpless doing of evil in spite of all his love for good, and 
had cried in his woe Who is it that will save me ? The little 
he had heard of the sayings of Jesus had long since made an 
impression upon him, and the courage and contempt for 
death that he had witnessed among the Christian community 
had already begun to exercise his conscience. It was now only 
the obstinacy of the Pharisee, determined to seek salvation 
* in the Law, through his own merits, that still combated the 
<7Kav8a\ov of the Gospel preached by these innovators, 
and this precisely because such a man would naturally be 
more alive than they to the logical conclusions of their faith. 
In a Paul of Tarsus the struggle between his own religious ex 
perience and the Jewish tradition could have but one ending 
it led him inevitably to the vision of that Jesus whom he had 

1 Gal. i. 13. * Acts ix. 1-19. 

3 Gal. i. 15-17 ; 1. Cor. xv. 8. 

D 2 



36 AN 1NTKODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

striven so hard to believe a false prophet and a traitor, 
throned in heavenly glory, to the instant acceptance of the 
Lord s call and the entrance by baptism into the ranks of his 
disciples. 

The narrative of these events in the Acts ! is of a some 
what legendary character, as, indeed, is the case with nearly 
all those parts of the book that bear on the first and larger 
half of Paul s missionary life ; it is only when we come to the 
later part that we find it drawing from trustworthy sources. 
Here we may rely almost without exception on the informa 
tion it gives as to the order of succession of the chief stations 
of his missionary travels, but its indications of time are less 
valuable and are often put in the form of conjecture by the 
writer himself. Fortunately, however, we may learn enough 
from the actual letters of the Apostle to give us a tolerably 
clear idea of his fortunes after his conversion. Immediately 
after his vision (Gal. i. 16 fol.) he went into Arabia, returning 
some time later to Damascus and thence after three years 
absence to Jerusalem. He only left Damascus under com 
pulsion, for according to 2. Cor. xi. 32 an attempt was made 
on his life by the Ethnarch of the Arabian King Aretas 
probably prompted, like all such later persecutions, by the 
inconvenient zeal he displayed in his enthusiasm for the new 
religion. A singular hypothesis has been put forward, based 
on the immediately of Gal. i. 16 and on the similarity with 
which Paul describes his sojourn in Arabia and that which 
took place afterwards in Syria, that he spent these three years 
in solitude in the Arabian desert, silently meditating upon his 
experience or developing undisturbed his peculiar system of 
doctrine as though Arabia were mere desert, and Paul s 
vocation that of the scientific theologian ! No, a definite office 
had been laid upon him in his vision, and Paul was not 
the man to hesitate an instant in the discharge of all the 
duties of that office, while it need not surprise us that he did 
not at once achieve brilliant successes that left their mark on 
universal history. 

When he found the country east of the Jordan closed to 
him it was necessary to seek some other field of enterprise, 

1 ix. 1-30. 



3.] THE APOSTLE PAUL 37 

and what more natural than that he should turn to his own 
country of Syria and Cilicia? He merely touched at 
Jerusalem on his way thither, and himself declares that his 
fortnight s stay in the city was of a purely private and secret 
nature ; he wisely contented himself while there with visiting 
Peter and being introduced by him to James the brother of 
the Lord. In any case the words of Gal. i. 18 and 22 
effectually exclude the possibility of his having had any dis 
putes at this time with the Hellenists of the Jewish capital. 1 
He remained in the new scene of his activity for fourteen 
years 2 and doubtless used Antioch as his base of operations, 
as the Primitive Apostles used Jerusalem ; for although he 
may not have been the actual founder of the Christian com 
munity there which early became one of importance he 
regarded himself at least as the representative of the whole 
Gentile-Christianity of the city. 3 The report in the Acts 4 
rests no doubt on good authority when it tells us that Paul 
spent a considerable time at Antioch and was at first con 
tinually going back to it. It is clear, on the other hand, that 
he did not confine himself to preaching in this one city for 
fourteen years continuously, but that he laboured for the 
Gospel in many parts of Syria and Cilicia, sometimes alone 
and sometimes with companions, while it is conceivable that 
even the so-called first missionary journey to Cyprus, Pam- 
phylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia 5 may have fallen within this 
period. It is true that in the Acts this journey is made to 
follow on a second visit of the converted Paul to Jerusalem, 6 
while within this period of fourteen years Paul certainly did 
not set foot within the borders of Judaea ; but this would 
not be the only error of the Acts relating to that period, and, 
on the other hand, although Paul himself only mentions his 
labours in Syria and Cilicia, he may not necessarily have 
meant to exclude an occasional excursion into neighbouring 
unconverted countries. Only this journey of Paul and Barnabas 
cannot have been very important or successful ; otherwise 
Paul would certainly have mentioned it in Gal. i. 21. 

1 Acts ix. 28 fol. - Gal. ii. 1. 

3 Gal. ii. 11 fol. * xiv. 28 ; xv. 35 and xviii. 22. 

5 Acts xiii. 4-xiv. 26. xi. 30, xii. 25. 



38 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

Seventeen years after he had left Jerusalem as the deadly 
foe of the Christian community there, he returned to make 
his appearance publicly in its midst, and with him went the 
Jewish Christian Barnabas and the Gentile Titus whom he 
had himself converted to the Gospel. This was a step which 
he would not even yet have dared to take on his own 
responsibility, but its necessity had been revealed to him in a 
vision, and the state of affairs outside his own Church now 
demanded a settlement which Paul could only hope to effect 
in a satisfactory manner by personal intercourse with the 
universally acknowledged heads of the new sect. According 
to Gal. ii. 2-5 Paul was in danger of seeing his labour 
wasted ; there were certain members of the community, whom 
Paul can only describe as false brethren privily brought in, 
who disputed the truth of his Gospel, because he offered 
it and all its promises without stipulating that the convert 
should accept the Mosaic Law along with his new faith, 
and because he did not even insist upon the circumcision 
of the converted Gentile ; thus, since they appealed to the 
authority of Jesus himself and of his chosen Twelve, they 
must doubtless have excited considerable distrust of Paul and 
his programme and have worked against him both directly 
and indirectly. But Paul was certain of the justice of his 
cause, while the immediate sense of his divine mission lent 
him additional strength, and he ventured to appeal to the 
Apostles themselves to decide the quarrel : that is to say, to 
recognise his rights and his liberty. It was a very judicious 
move of his to take with him his fellow-worker Barnabas, who 
had long been respected in Jerusalem, and Titus, the most 
distinguished of the Greeks he had himself converted ; the 
pillars of the Church in Jerusalem should see and hear 
this uncircumcised Christian, should learn what experiences 
he had to tell and listen to his prophetic words ; then they 
should ask themselves whether the spirit which dwelt in 
him was of a different sort from theirs. Paul s expectations 
were fulfilled, for although there may have been a good deal 
of sympathy for those false brethren among the community 
of Jerusalem, the elders received Titus, uncircumcised as he 
was, into the Church, acknowledged the supernatural nature 



$ 3.] THE APOSTLE PAUL 39 

of the summons that made Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles, 
and with it his equality with Peter. This last concession was 
made necessary, in spite of all objections, by Paul s success, 
which could only be the work of God. The Jewish world 
they kept for themselves, but delivered the Gentiles over to 
Paul, and the seal was set upon the perfect harmony thus 
established, by Paul s promise to collect money among the 
converted Gentiles for the suffering Church at Jerusalem. 
Paul probably proposed this task himself, for his attitude 
towards the leaders of the Primitive Church would be much 
more happily attested by such a collection than by any 
written recommendations, which he would have been too 
proud to accept or to use. It is impossible to be on bad 
terms with or to despise the man from whom one accepts 
a favour, and, the conditions being what they were, love 
and mutual esteem must clearly have existed between giver 
and receiver. 

There was now 7 nothing to detain Paul longer in Jerusalem, 
and he returned to take up his interrupted task at Antioch in 
the old way. A visit from Peter, which took place soon after 
this, must have given him much pleasure by proving to the 
world the keen interest taken by the greatest of the Primitive 
Apostles in the welfare of the Gentile communities, and a 
friendly understanding among all the Christians of Antioch 
was promoted by it. But Peter was soon followed by certain 
men from James, who protested against his eating with the 
uncircumcised as a breach of the Mosaic Law, and he and all 
the other Jewish Christians at Antioch, with the exception of 
Paul, were prevailed upon to abandon this custom of fellow 
ship at meals, although till now no objection had been raised 
against it. Paul, however, regarded this change not only as 
a mere temporary compromise based on purely artificial 
grounds, but as a treacherous misinterpretation of the true 
Gospel, and at a meeting of the community when all the 
faithful, including the envoys of James, were present, he 
accused his fellow-Apostle in the bitterest terms of pusill 
animity and even of treachery to the faith. 1 

What the sequel was to this painful dispute we do not learn, 

Gal. ii. 11-21. 



40 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

but we should have no justification for asserting that it re 
sulted in a definite breach between the parties concerned. 
Even in the Epistle to the Galatians Paul speaks of Barnabas 
and Peter in far too friendly a way to leave room for the 
supposition that a dissolution of the agreement described in 
ii. 8, 10 was contemplated on the ground of this one serious 
difference. Paul does not relate the occurrence for the pur 
pose of prejudicing his readers against Peter or of lowering 
him in their eyes, but simply to illustrate in the most striking 
way his own unchanging steadfastness and independence at 
a critical juncture. But it is easy to imagine that after these 
disputes he longed to turn his back upon Antioch and the 
neighbourhood where he and Barnabas had hitherto worked 
together, and that he began to seek some new field for his 
labours in distant lands. The statement in Acts xv. 40 fol., 
that Paul set out in company with one Silas (= Silvanus) 
but without Barnabas, is very probably correct ; he first went 
through Syria and Cilicia confirming the churches and 
doubtless encouraging them to resist Judaistic demands ; 
and then, as a result of the visit of the Lycaonian and 
Pisidian brethren, he succeeded in gaining another travelling 
companion in the person of Timothy, so that with these two 
he could now set out on his great northward and north 
westward journey through Galatia and Phrygia to the Troad, 
and even, contrary to his expectation, to Macedonia and 
Achaia. The incidents of these travels can best be ascer 
tained by referring to the Epistles Paul wrote at the time. 
According to Acts xviii. 18-23 he journeyed from the capital 
of Achaia via Caesarea (in Palestine) and possibly Jeru 
salem (?) back to Antioch, but soon afterwards started on a 
second journey, of which the ultimate goal was Ephesus. 

Hence we are accustomed to distinguish three missionary 
journeys ; but in reality this merely encourages the false 
impression that Paul began his missionary career with 
the events of Acts xiii. ; it is more practical to distinguish 
his spheres of work, thus ; Arabia with Damascus for three 
years ; Syria and the neighbouring districts for fourteen years 
(or fifteen if we consider the Cyprian voyage to have taken 
place after the assembly in Jerusalem) ; then after the dispute 



3.] THE APOSTLE PAUL 41 

with Peter, Galatia, Macedonia and Achaia (including Corinth) 
for three years, and finally Asia for over two and a quarter, 
according to Acts xix. 8 and 10, or for three full years 
according to xx. 31. The visits to Macedonia and Achaia 
included in this last period do not form a missionary journey 
in the strictest sense ; Paul s gaze was now directed further 
westwards, towards Rome and Spain, and his intention rather 
was to take leave of his Greek communities, and merely to 
appear once more in Jerusalem with the fruits of a collection 
made during several years by the Greeks for their poorer 
brethren in that city. His arrival at Jerusalem for a feast 
of Pentecost probably took place one year after his departure 
from Ephesus. Here the heaviest blow of all was dealt 
him ; at the demand of the Jews he was immediately taken 
prisoner and transported to Csesarea ; there, however, he 
was not definitely condemned, because he lodged an appeal 
to the Emperor, but after a tedious delay, lasting two 
years according to the Acts, was sent by order of the Pro 
curator Festus to Rome by sea. His departure took place 
in early autumn, and owing to a shipwreck which compelled 
him to spend the winter in Malta he did not arrive in 
Rome until the spring of the next year. The last words of 
the Acts concerning him are that he lived there for two years 
longer, under military supervision, but otherwise unhindered 
in his labours for the Gospel. 

With this the relative chronology of Paul s life is 
established with tolerable certainty. A period of seventeen 
years is required from his conversion to the so-called 
Apostolic Council of Acts xv. and Galatians ii., and another 
of ten or eleven years from that point to the last words 
of the Acts. But the task of assigning this chain of events 
to its place in general chronology is none the less difficult. 
As yet we know of only two fixed landmarks by which to 
guide ourselves : (a) King Aretas died in the year 40 A.D. 
at latest, so that Paul s flight from Damascus, which was 
caused by his ethnarch, could not have taken place later 
than that year ; thus 37 A.D. is the terminus ad quern for his 
conversion, (b) In the summer of 62 the successor of Festus, 
one Albinus, was already at work in Judsea, so that Paul s 



42 AN INTEODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

despatch as a prisoner to Rome cannot be dated later than 
the autumn of the year 61. It cannot, however, be placed 
much earlier, for Festus did not hold his office long, so that, 
ceteris parilus, the autumn of the year 60 would perhaps 
be the most probable date for Paul s departure from Caesarea 
towards Rome. By calculating back from this point accord 
ing to the dates given in the Acts of which none but the 
two years for the Csesarean imprisonment are open to doubt 
we are able to fix the Apostolic Council at or near the year 
52 and the conversion of Paul at the year 35. No objection 
can be raised against this last, for if Jesus was crucified in 
A.D. 29 or 30, five years would be amply sufficient to account 
for the development of a Messianic community into an 
abomination in the eyes of strict Pharisaism, and also for the 
corresponding development which changed Paul from a silent 
member of the school of Gamaliel into a furious persecutor 
though one who already belonged at heart to the persecuted 
of the community at Damascus. His execution at Rome in 
the time of Nero a tradition which no one cares to dispute 
would then fall in the year 63, and would have no connection, 
as we are so prone to assume, with the so-called Neronian 
persecution of the summer of 64. But in any case we should 
find it difficult to believe that Paul was ever suspected of 
incendiarism ; while, when we take Nero s character and the 
state of things in Rome at that time into account, a sudden 
and fatal turn in the Apostle s trial, unexpected even by him 
self, would need no special explanation such as the unwonted 
agitation produced by the fire of Rome. 

In recent times great popularity has been won by the 
hypothesis (which indeed is not a new one) that Paul was 
released at the end of the two years mentioned in Acts 
xxviii. 30, and that he set out on his travels once more, 
visiting Spain and also his old communities in the East, but 
that he was then again thrown into prison, and this time 
executed. Thus Zahn assumes that Paul left Rome in the 
autumn of the year 63, returned to it in the spring of 66 and 
was executed either at the end of that year or at the beginning 
of the next. Harnack finds room for this mysterious fourth 
journey between 59 and 63. Nothing, however, speaks in 



3.] THE APOSTLE PAUL 43 

favour of such an hypothesis except the interested but vain 
desire of apologists to save the Pastoral Epistles ; the passage 
in the first Epistle of Clement 1 in which the martyrdom of 
Paul is mentioned in distinct terms (after that of Peter, to 
which, however, the reference is not quite so plain), gives us 
rather the impression that the victims of the persecution in 
question suffered later than Peter and Paul, for if the writer 
had known that Paul was martyred in 67 and the supposed 
incendiaries as early as 64, would he have passed on from 
the subject of Peter and Paul to speak of them with the 
words, To these men [Peter and Paul], who walked in such 
holy wise, was joined (crvvridpoiadrj) a great host of the elect, 
who . . . have become a glorious ensample unto us ? We 
may search the whole of the Acts in vain for any indication 
that Paul was but temporarily debarred from his work; 
indeed the farewell discourse .at Miletus points in the clearest 
terms to the very opposite conclusion. Nor can I detect 
in vv. xxviii. 30 fol. any reference whatever to a subse 
quent release of the Apostle ; the words, he taught, no 
man forbidding him, are surely meant in silent contrast to 
the implied sequel, that he was forbidden, and if Paul had 
taken up his teaching again afterwards in the old way the 
writer could hardly have kept silence on the subject. The 
rash idea, moreover, that Luke was keeping back this last 
period of the labours of Paul, together with the story of 
his glorious martyrdom, to form the material for a third book 
equal in bulk to the Gospel and the Acts, is destroyed by 
the reflection that even if he meant to include some of the 
doings of Peter, Matthias and Thomas, his material cannot 
have been sufficient. Simple-minded readers have construed 
a journey to Spain out of Romans xv. 28, without making 
the slightest effort to find a place for it in Paul s life ; 
others with equal justice have discovered a reference in 
Philippians i. 25 and ii. 24 to his release after the first 
Roman imprisonment ; but the Acts know nothing of this so- 
called primitive tradition. With great tact the book breaks 
off at the last point at which the labours of the hero- 
Apostle for the Kingdom of God can be described at the 

1 Ch. v. fol. 



44 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

moment when he has succeeded in proclaiming the Word of 
the Cross in the West, at the very steps of the imperial 
throne, and the writer refrains from relating the tragic 
ending of Paul s life because it was not his desire to write a 
biography of Paul, but to describe the triumphal march of 
the Gospel under the leadership of the Apostles. In his 
eyes the Acts of the Apostles came to an end with the last 
day on which Paul could preach the Lord Jesus fully and 
frankly, no man forbidding him. 

2. With this rapid sketch of the Apostle s life we have 
not yet attained the most important materials for a realisa 
tion of his personality. This would require above all that 
we should absorb ourselves in his world of thought, in the 
grandeur of his peculiar religious convictions, and in his 
conception of the Gospel, a task which must be left to 
another branch of the subject, New Testament theology, to 
discharge. But too much stress cannot be laid upon the 
fact that Paul was in no sense of the words a theologian or a 
dogmatist. Many of the errors of criticism even of the most 
modern arise from the habit of calling attention to supposed 
contradictions in the different Epistles, which Paul, it is 
thought, would never have made, or of seeking for a hard 
and fast line of development for his religious views, arrang 
ing the Epistles according to it, and rejecting everything 
which does not fit in with the arrangement. Paul was far 
too great a genius not to have room in his mind for ideas that 
differed very widely. Things Jewish and things anti-Jewish 
were almost evenly balanced in his thoughts and in his 
temperament, while he himself never observed the antagon 
ism between them. This alone would necessitate a certain 
oscillation in his mind between free speculation and Bab- 
binical logic ; but he never regarded himself as having 
nothing more to learn ; rather he was always open by his 
very nature to new and higher knowledge, troubling himself 
little about the stages by which it was attained. His cry to 
the Philippians ] : If in anything ye are otherwise minded, 
even this shall God reveal unto you : only, whereunto we 
have already attained, by that same rule let us walk, 

1 iii. 15 fol. 



3.] THE APOSTLE PAUL 45 

applied with at least equal force to himself. Nor must we 
forget that in his case even the knowledge which was absolute 
and incontestable might often be expressed in the most varied 
forms, according to his mood at the time, his adversaries, or 
the circumstances of the case. 

But the fact remains that Paul has a right to be called 
the Apostle /car s^o-^v, the disciple who raised the Messianic 
faith, hitherto but the creed of a Jewish sect, to the position 
of a world-religion. Immense as were the inward difficulties 
he had to overcome at first and not only, it seems, before 
his conversion those which he encountered all his life from 
the outside world during the execution of his work can 
hardly have been less. The words of 2. Cor. xi. 23-29 show 
clearly enough how incomplete is the picture given in the 
Acts of his struggles and his heroism ; every step that he 
took was won at the risk of his life, in the face of the hatred 
of Jews and fanatical Jewish Christians and of the contempt 
of the Gentiles ; there was no indignity, no suffering, no mis 
fortune that he was not forced to bear. Untiring in his 
labours as a preacher, he earned his livelihood by bodily toil, 
often at night, 1 and but rarely accepted presents even from 
his most faithful followers. 2 At the same time his health 
was by no means sound ; the infirmity of the flesh of Gal. 
iv. 13 can scarcely have been a mere passing trouble, and hi 
2. Cor. iv. 7-12 he dwells at length upon the dying which 
he bears about in the body. Moreover the thorn in the 
flesh of 2. Cor. xii. 7-9 has given rise to the very probable 
suggestion that after his conversion he became an epileptic 
a fact assuredly not unconnected with that highly strung 
religious temperament which was continually manifesting 
itself in visions and revelations. He remained unmarried, 
and never enjoyed the happiness of family life ; 3 his duties 
were all towards Christ and the Gospel, and rival duties 
towards man he could not undertake. It is true that through 
his Epistles we come to know of a whole host of helpers 
who willingly obeyed their master s orders, but even in later 
years he experienced disappointments l like those caused him 

1 1. Thess. ii. 9. - 2. Cor. xi. 8 fol. ; Philip, iv. 15. 

1 1. Cor. vii. 7, ix. 5. * CL Philip, ii. 20 fol. 



46 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

at an earlier date by John Mark and Barnabas. 1 And that 
he was the one guiding spirit of the band is abundantly 
shown by the fact that not a trace can be found of any 
systematic continuation of his life s work by any one of these 
disciples after he himself had passed away. 

How, then, can we explain the unexampled success 
as compared with that of other Apostles which attended 
the preaching of this sickly, insignificant-looking man? 
How did he manage to win this multitude of followers for 
a Gospel so foreign to the Greek genius, and in a world so 
strange to him ? And, once won, how did he succeed in 
holding it together in such firmly-knit communities ? The 
phrase because the time was fulfilled is scarcely a sufficient 
answer to the question, and the appeal to the strength of 
God made perfect in weakness is but an evasion of the 
point at issue. Certainly it was not by his learning that 
Paul made his impression the few quotations from Greek 
literature that may be found in his Epistles - scarcely point 
to an original acquaintance with the classics. They might 
easily have remained in his memory from his school days, 
or he might have acquired them by mere intercourse with 
men of general cultivation. Nor can he have excelled in 
eloquence, for his enemies readily assert though only in 
reference to one of his defeats that his speech was con 
temptible. 3 He probably spoke as he wrote, for he used to dic 
tate his Epistles and certainly never troubled to polish them, or 
to spend time upon the elegance of their style. We may, in 
fact, form our idea of his manner of speech from these Epistles. 
But of course his missionary preaching, and the Epistles that 
have come down to us, cannot have been much alike in their 
contents. He would naturally have expressed himself other 
wise in addressing a Christian community than in speaking to 
an audience of Gentiles who had never heard the name of Christ 
before, 4 and to whom he had first to explain the fundamental 
religious ideas of repentance, of faith in the one true God, of 
the Resurrection and the Day of Judgment. The discourses 
which the Acts put into his mouth on such occasions con- 



1 Acts xiii. 13 and xv. 35 fol. 
3 2. Cor. x. 10. 



- 1. Cor. xv. 33. 

1 1. Thess. i. 9 and 10. 



3.] THE APOSTLE PAUL 47 

tain much that he must undoubtedly have made use of, but 
they are at all events but attempts on the part of the 
author to indicate the way in which the Apostle might have 
set about his task, and we should decline to put much faith 
in them, if for no other reason than that we are told in 
the Acts that Paul used always to preach in the synagogues 
first, and only turned to the Gentiles when Israel repulsed 
him a statement which in the face of Gal. i. 16, ii. 2, 
5 and 9, and 1. Thess. is quite untenable. Nor would 
a man of Paul s stamp ever have acted so rigidly according to 
programme. He seized his openings wherever he happened 
to find them, making use of such fellow-labourers or fellow- 
travellers as chance threw in his way, or starting from the 
house of some friend who had perhaps offered him hospitality 
on the recommendation of a relation at home ; but besides such 
means as these he can never have shrunk from appearing 
openly in the streets or at popular gatherings, or from visiting 
the synagogues whenever the slightest chance of success pre 
sented itself, so as to sow the seed among his own compatriots. 
Without all these varied attempts he would not so often 
have come into conflict with the authorities. Then as soon as a 
convert was won at any place, fresh hearers would be brought 
in by him from among his own acquaintance, and thus some 
communities must have grown with great rapidity from the 
very beginning. The curiosity of the Greeks and their search 
after something especially to satisfy the religious needs of 
the average man, whom no philosophy could help, was of 
use in procuring him an attentive hearing, while the mag 
nificent promises that he brought with him won over the 
class of men to whom but little of Paul s message could be 
brought home beyond a few historical facts and the hopes it 
held out for the future. 

Meanwhile whether our Apostle possessed in any very high 
degree the gifts of ruling men and of reading their hearts 
appears doubtful from the Epistles to the Corinthians ; he 
judged everything and everybody according to his own 
standard, nor was his ideal of Christ all in all favourable to 
a tender consideration of individual peculiarities. It could not 
have been easy, moreover, for one who could never be false to 



48 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

the Jewish theologian within him, to identify himself with the 
Greek point of view, or even to recognise any justification for 
a conception of the world so different from his own. He 
was perhaps always too ready to yield to his so-called 
visions, especially in shaping his plan of operations, 1 so 
that the charge of vacillation was not only raised against him 
but appears to have had some foundation. The passion that 
drove him to such questionable utterances against Jews and 
Judaists as those of Gal. v. 12 or Philip, iii. 2 which led him 
to pronounce the sharpest judgment of all for they all seek 
their own against friends who, perhaps for very good reasons, 
had for once not obeyed his call 2 must undoubtedly have 
led him into indiscretions of speech in his intercourse with 
obstinate Gentiles ; but he possessed dogged courage, un 
swerving faith in his subject and his calling, a passion for 
self-sacrifice however great, the ever infectious zeal of the 
enthusiast, wonderful animation and warmth of speech, and 
finally that touching tenderness of feeling shown in Philip, iv. 
10, 20 qualities compared with which a few deficiencies of 
manner hardly weigh in the scale, and which could not fail 
to lay all the best of his converts, once gained, under the 
lasting spell of his influence. 

3. A writer in the strictest sense Paul did not profess to 
be, nor is there any need to discuss the question whether he 
was specially qualified to be one or not. But he has left 
us some letters, addressed to fellow-believers, whether indi 
viduals or whole communities. They are his letters, even 
where the superscription tells us that one or more com 
panions were writing with him ; for the continual oscillation 
between I and we which, by the way, is certainly not 
due to chance alone shows that the responsibility for the 
contents rests only upon him. As he had had no sharers 
in the work of founding his communities, so he had no 
collaborators in writing his Epistles. These Epistles, however, 
in spite of the fact that they are always intended as writings 
of the moment addressed to a narrow circle of readers, 
yet approach much more nearly to the position of inde 
pendent literary works than the average letters of great men 

1 2. Cor. i. 15 fol. ; Acts xvi. 7. Philip, ii. 21. 



5 3.] THE APOSTLE PAUL 49 

in modern times. For it is characteristic of Paul s writings 
that he can never confine himself to the narrow and indi 
vidual aspect of a thing ; unconsciously he will lift the 
smallest question into a higher sphere and place it on a 
wider basis : take his instruction to the Corinthians on 
spiritual gifts and their different values, for instance, and 
see to what a lofty level he raises it by the sudden insertion 
of the hymn to love ! Again, he likes to be certain of his 
ground before he decides a point, and his arguments habitu 
ally lead down deeper and deeper into the very foundations 
of his faith. 

The Epistle to the Romans is in its main features written 
according to a scheme already well thought out ; and the 
digressions with which in 2. Corinthians iii.-v. Paul surrounds 
his tolerably simple theme that he is not ashamed of his 
weakness and has no need to defend himself reveal a height 
of art which in anyone else would suggest conscious skill. No 
later doctor of the Church, not even excepting Tertullian 
and Augustine, ever delivered himself, in thirty pages, of 
thoughts so abundant, so bold and so profound as those Paul 
sets forth here in three ; while the loftiness of tone which he 
displays prohibits any idea that he was merely jotting down 
a hasty answer to a letter received from the community a 
message on paper. Paul was fully conscious of the duty laid 
upon him, eve i in absence, to share with his communities the 
best of that spiritual grace which had been vouchsafed to him. 
Thus, without knowing or intending it, Paul became by his 
letters the creator of a Christian literature. It has indeed been 
asserted that he was already familiar with some writings of 
Christian origin, but this cannot be proved. As to older usage, 
he follows it so far as to begin his letters with an address in 
which the names of writer and recipient are conjoined in 
a salutation, and to end them with good wishes ; but the 
numerous additions in the address to the names of both 
sender and recipient at once betray their Christian origin, 
while the words of greeting themselves are especially Christian 
in form (%apis vplv, etc., for -^aipsiv, ^aipe-rs and the like). 

More important, however, is the fact which we can only 
perceive through his Epistles that Paul created a new 



50 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

language for the new religion. Of course he understood the 
Hebrew that was spoken at that time in the schools of 
Jerusalem, but there can be no doubt that Greek must have 
been much more natural to a man who studied the Old 
Testament almost exclusively in the Greek translation, or 
Septuagint ; and the hypothesis that his writings were trans 
lated into Greek from a first draft in Aramaic is almost as 
romantic as the suggestion that on his missionary travels he 
was only able to communicate with the Gentiles by means of 
an interpreter. He was, on the contrary, fully master of the 
language, not indeed of the Greek of the Classical period, but 
of the colloquial Hellenistic (17 KOivfy, into which he had also 
infused a strong Hebrew element arising from his education 
and his study of the Septuagint. But he was not satisfied 
with the materials furnished by these two sources ; wherever 
it seemed necessary he had the courage to coin new words 
and phrases dfcaipslaffai, for instance, in Philip, iv. 10, and 
the expression sv Xpta-rm slvai and to words long in existence 
he sometimes gave a new meaning. His writings are not 
equalled in point of vocabulary by any part of the Septuagint, 
and even within the New Testament he is superior to all in 
the wealth and variety of his expressions and his boldness 
in using them. But his style is neither smooth, elegant nor 
correct, and he himself never considered that he excelled in 
the art of writing. 1 He pays little attention to euphony or 
to the artistic construction and rounding-off of his periods ; 
the words GVVKOIVWVOS TT/S- pi^rjs rfjs TTiorr/ros TYJS s\aias, for 
instance, of Rom. xi. 17 are oratorically ugly, as well as the 
thrice repeated sv v^lv of 1. Cor. xi. 18 and 19 and the sv 
iravri beside sv Tracrt of 2. Cor. xi. 6. The passage beginning 
at Eom. ii. 18 is overburdened with synonymous expressions ; 
nor does his tendency towards pleonasms reveal itself only in 
the later K pistles ; jdp is repeated four times in quick succession 
in the short sentences of Rom. ii. 11-14, 2 and 8s seven times 
in 1. Cor. vii. 6-12 and xiv. 4 -6". The periods in Philip, 
iii. 20 fol., hi. 7-11, ii. 5-11 and i. 27-30, also, are halting 
and confused. 

In a letter wholly devoid of punctuation, many of the 
Apostle s words must have been unintelligible, although in 

1 2. Cor. xi. 6. " Cf. 1. Cor. xi. 18-23. 



THE APOSTLE PAUL 51 

dictating he might have made them quite clear to his secre 
tary through accentuation and gesture ; unintentionally, too, 
a few difficult anacolutha arose, and even in the Epistle to 
the Eomans it may easily be seen that Paul never kept 
to any carefully thought-out arrangement of his sentences, 
but put down whatever the inspiration of the moment 
suggested to him. His chain of thought is often disconnected, 
his conclusions even apart from the groundless character of 
his exegetic method not above reproach; similes and 
allegories miss the mark because the general conception is 
faulty, and the complaint of 2. Pet. iii. 16 that in the Epistles 
of Paul are some things hard to be understood is not 
without justice. Certainly they are not easy reading with 
their throng of hurrying thoughts, their tersely expressed 
ideas, sometimes no more than indicated, their passages of 
dialectic demanding the strictest attention beside stirring 
outbursts of stormy passion. Nevertheless Paul must be 
ranked as a great master of language, for his words are never 
forced or artificial, but always suit his subject and his mood, 
whether he is advising, exhorting, threatening, rebuking or 
consoling. Unconsciously he makes use of the tricks of 
popular speech with the greatest effect, sometimes of striking 
metaphors, 1 or of short and compressed word-pictures, 2 of 
rhetorical questions 3 and of effective anaphorse, 4 and even 
groups of antitheses, 5 word-plays G and oxymora 7 are not 
wanting. But he avoids all straining for effect through the 
observance of oratorical rules ; he finds without effort the 
most striking form for his lofty ideas ; and it is because his 
innermost self breathes through every word that most of his 
Epistles bear so unique a charm. 

4. We must not, however, indiscriminately accept as 
Pauline all that the Church has handed down to us under 

1 Gal. v. 15 ; 2. Cor. xi. 20. - 1. Cor. xiii. 1-2 ; Gal. iv. 19. 

3 Rom. ii. 21-26. 

4 E.g., the 4 TTOJ/TO of 1 Cor. xiii. 7, the 8 ov of xiii. 4-6, and cf. the fine 
monotony of phrase of Rom. ii. 17 fol. 

5 E.g., 2. Cor. vi. 8-10. 

6 E.g., that in Rom. iii. 2 fol., on iriffr(ve<rdai, airta-Tew, iriffris, and in Gal. 
v. 7 fol. on irfidfo-Bai and irei(r/j.ovfi. 

7 Rom. i. 20, rci aopara O.VTOV . . . Kadoparai. 

E 2 



62 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

that name. The Epistle to the Hebrews does not even pro 
fess to be by Paul, and of the remaining thirteen a few are 
exceedingly doubtful, while about half are still hotly con 
tested. We must at any rate keep the possibility in view, 
not only that various writings early became attributed to the 
Apostle through error and false conjecture (like most of the 
pseudo-Cyprianic tracts to Cyprian), but that they were 
deliberately composed and circulated under his name. We 
should do well, however, to avoid the word forgery in this con 
nection ; it is only to the advantage of an exceedingly narrow 
view of history that we should attach ideas of fraud and deceit 
to writings published by men of a later generation under 
cover of some honoured name in the past ; we thus make it 
easy to say that Holy Church cannot possibly have accepted 
such scandalous fabrications. The boundless credulity of 
ecclesiastical circles, to which so many of the New Testament 
Apocrypha among them an actual Epistle of Jesus have 
owed their lasting influence, will not be got rid of by a pro 
fession of moral indignation, any more than we shall do away 
with the facts that the ethical notion of literary property is a 
plant of modern growth (a history of editions ought to be 
written side by side with that of the Pseudepigrapha !) ; that 
believers frequently borrowed from the books of other believers, 
or of unbelievers, without mentioning any source and without 
considering themselves in any way as thieves ; and that with 
the best intentions and the cleanest consciences they put 
such words into the mouth of a revered Apostle as they 
wished to hear enunciated with Apostolic authority to their 
contemporaries, while yet they did not regard themselves 
in the smallest degree as liars and deceivers. Not only would 
the indifference of orthodox theology to questions of genuine 
ness go to prove this, but the countless pseudepigrapha known 
to us arose for the most part within the Church itself, and 
there is really no specific difference between the arbitrary way 
in which copyists and exegetists treated the sacred writings, 
or the literary habit, say, of composing discourses to be 
placed under the name of Peter or Paul, or the repre 
sentation of Jesus as delivering a sermon on a given occa 
sion which had first been put together out of several separate 

1 To King Abgarus of Eclessa (see Euseb. Hist. Ecc. I. 13). 



5 3.] THE APOSTLE PAUL 53 

fragments, and the attempt to construct complete Pauline or 
at any rate Apostolic letters after the existing models. The 
adulteratio scripturae of which the Fathers occasionally speak 
with such horror, consisted in giving an heretical meaning to 
the word of God, forgery in making heretical additions to it, 
or removing by erasure some of the fine gold of the original. 
And if even some modern scholars often show an entirely 
undeveloped sense of the difference between historical truth 
and what they consider as religious truth, we must not blame 
the Christians of the first and second centuries if, with still 
stronger subjectivism, they applied their conception of truth 
solely to the substance of their religious consciousness, and 
were quite indifferent as to the form in which it was clothed. 
The anecdote told by Tertullian in his De Baptismo, ch. 17, 
of the Asiatic Presbyter who had to give up his office for 
fraudulently ascribing his Acts of Thekla to Paul, is a case 
in point, for the Presbyter declares that it was his love for 
Paul that drove him to write, and therefore he cannot have 
had an evil conscience ; while his judges, including our 
informant, were not shocked by his literary fraud as such, 
but by his venturing to advocate heresies in his book, such 
as that of the right of women to preach and baptize. So 
that it is not necessary to point to the widespread custom 
among the philosophers of that age, especially among the 
Pythagoreans, of passing off their own writings as the 
works of the most ancient masters, or to the infinity of 
spurious compositions then current under the names of 
Demosthenes, Alexander, or Plato, the authors of which were 
certainly not mere deceivers ; nor even to recall the fact that in 
Jewish apocalyptic literature all revelations without exception 
are ascribed to men of old Daniel, Ezra, Enoch, Noah, 
Abraham, etc., for even without these parallels we may 
assert that the tendency in the Early Church towards 
literary disguises was just as strong as it was naive. In 
the West a certain perception of the difference between 
romance and history was perhaps more common, and certainly 
Irenaeus and Augustine would never have composed an 
Epistle under the name of Paul. But even here the criticism 
applied to anyone who put himself forward under the aegis of 



54 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

Apostolic authority was only concerned with questions of 
tradition and orthodoxy ; any work that could produce plau 
sible evidence and was unexceptionable as to doctrine, was 
allowed to pass unchallenged. It would thus be more than 
wonderful if from among this mass of pseudo-Apostolic 
writings none had found their way into the New Testament : 
more extraordinary still, however, if all the twenty-one 
canonical Epistles were to belong to that class, for, after all, 
a forgery is usually an imitation of some greater original, as 
is so clearly shown in all the apocryphal Gospels, Apo 
calypses, and Histories of the Apostles. Paul must first have 
written his Epistles and these Epistles have won repute and 
influence, before those who had not the courage to appear 
openly under their own names could attempt to influence 
Christendom in the customary form of the didactic letter, or 
could put forward their Apostolic reflections under cover of 
the name of Peter, Paul or John. 

Four of the Epistles of Paul have not been disputed even 
by the Tubingen School, and only those who lack all critical 
power have attempted to shake them. They are those to the 
Romans, the Corinthians and the Galatians. The three 
Pastoral Epistles are now generally regarded as spurious, but 
the majority of those who hold this view are in favour of the 
genuineness of 1. Thessalonians, Philippians and Philemon ; 
2. Thessalonians and Ephesians are almost universally given 
up, as well as large parts of Colossians. I do not, however, 
hold that the objections even to these last three are insuper 
able. 

4. The First Epistle to the Thessalonians 

[Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vol. x., in which W. Bornernann undertakes 
the Epistles to the Thessalonians (1894, 5th and 6th ed.) ; Hand- 
Commentar, ii. 1 (1. and 2. Thess. and 1. and 2. Cor. by P. W. 
Schmiedel, 1892), and P. Schmidt : Der l stc Thessalonicherbrief 
neu erklart, nebst einem Excurs iiber den 2 ten gleichnamigen Brief 
(1885).] 

1. After the address and greeting of i. 1, Paul expresses in 
somewhat hyperbolical terms his grateful satisfaction at the 
steadfastness in faith of his Thessalonian friends, wherein 



4.] THE FIEST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALOXIANS 5-5 

he hopes that they may become an example to others far 
beyond the borders of Macedonia and Achaia (i. 2-10). 
Parallel with this runs ii. 1-16, where the Apostle calls to 
mind his former experiences in Thessalonica the dark side 
of them as well as the bright before expressing in 17-20 
his earnest desire for another meeting. But this being 
impossible, he has at all events sent Timothy to obtain news 
of the community ; news on the whole so reassuring that he 
feels he can now only wish it further increase by the grace of 
God in love and holiness. 1 Here follows the most clearly 
marked division in the Epistle ; in the next two chapters Paul 
makes some earnest exhortations, to which the mention in 
iii. 10 of what was lacking in his readers faith and the good 
wishes of vv. 11-13 form a delicate transition from the tone 
of grateful remembrance of the earlier part. In iv. 1-12 he 
protests against certain relics of heathen immorality, espe 
cially with regard to their sexual relations and their ordinary 
dealings one with another, and rebukes a scandalous tendency 
to idleness which had arisen through their excited expecta 
tion of the approaching millennium. To this he attaches 
some eschatological instruction, 2 declaring first in iv. 13-18 
that Christians who had already fallen asleep should 
not yield precedence at the Parusia to those who were 
still alive, and then warning his readers in v. 1-11 that 
nothing was known about the coming of the Last Day, and 
that their only care must be to see that they were prepared for 
it at any moment. In what their preparation was to consist he 
explains in a few more particular exhortations touching the 
life of the community, ending in good wishes and promises ; ? 
then comes a short and hearty farewell. 4 

2. Those to whom the Epistle is addressed are named in 
i. 1 as the Christians of Thessalonica, the brilliant merchant 
city on the Gulf of Thermae which was at that time the 
capital of Macedonia. According to i. 9 and ii. 14, the 
community consisted entirely of Greeks, former idolaters a 
statement which contradicts the account in Acts xvii. 1-9 
who had been converted to God and the expectation of the 

1 iii. 1-13. 2 iv. 13-v. 11. 

3 v. 12-24. 4 25-28. 



56 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

return of Christ by the preaching of Paul, Silvanus and 
Timothy, the writers of the Epistle. These three had come 
to Thessalonica from Philippi, where they had been shame 
fully entreated, l probably in the year 53, and according 
to Acts xvii. 2 they had only stayed three weeks, because 
the mob, incited against them by the numerous Jews of 
Thessalonica, had then driven them away. Now the above- 
mentioned shortcomings in the manner of life of the com 
munity would certainly favour the supposition that it had not 
enjoyed long years of Apostolic guidance ; but that Paul 
should only have made a three weeks stay there is wholly in 
consistent with the remarks he makes in ii. 7 and 10 about 
his personal relations with his readers, while his description 
of the toil and trouble he had had there and of his daily 
and nightly labours would under such circumstances sound 
boastful. Moreover, three weeks would certainly not have 
been sufficient for the two gifts of love mentioned in 
Philip, iv. 16, to have reached him from Philippi. He had 
left Thessalonica abruptly with his two companions, heavy at 
heart and full of anxious fears lest the work so well begun 
should be destroyed behind his back, especially since the 
Thessalonian converts had from the very first been sorely 
oppressed by their compatriots. Since he could not return 
thither himself, as he would have preferred to do, he had 
sent back Timothy from Athens 2 to strengthen the forsaken 
community, only Silvanus remaining with him. 

3. The Epistle was not written from Athens :: but from 
Corinth, whither Paul had betaken himself after his some 
what unsuccessful appearance in the former city. 4 For we 
must infer from i. 7 and 8, that Achaia possessed by now 
a considerable number of converts, and Paul evidently felt 
himself as much at home there as he did in Macedonia. Six 
months at least must have elapsed since his departure from 
Thessalonica : probably more, for Timothy s journey there and 
back 5 would have occupied some space of time, and Paul s 
repeated plans of travelling thither G cannot be fitted into a 
few weeks. Besides this, one or two members of the Thessa- 

1 ii. 2 ; Acts xvi. 16 fol. : iii. 1. fol. 3 iii. 1. 

4 Acts xviii. 1. 5 iii. 6. 8 ii. 18. 

I 



4.] THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS 57 

Ionian community had died in the interval, 1 whereas nothing 
of the kind had occurred during Paul s visit, and since the 
whole body did not consist of more than a few hundred souls 
this circumstance would also seem to suggest a longer 
period. Hence the Epistle could hardly have been written 
before 53 (for the end of 52 is the earliest date at which 
Paul could have set foot on European soil) and certainly not 
after 54. But the inducements for Paul to write it immedi 
ately after Timothy s return are obvious. They may be 
summed up as follows : his objects were to draw the com 
munity closer to himself, and to sever it more completely 
from heathenism but more especially, also, to correct some 
misconceptions concerning the Second Coming and the fate of 
Christians who had died before it. In all essentials, of course, 
Timothy s report of the Thessalonians had been favourable ; 
he could say that they had remained true to the Gospel 
against all attacks ; but a certain mistrust of Paul and of the 
sincerity of his interest in their congregation had also arisen, 
which was probably promoted from without the words of 
ii. 15 fol. seem to justify the conjecture that Paul suspected 
Jewish intrigues. Hence in chap. ii. he strikes an apologetic 
note, while in i. and iii. he declares how he loves the 
Church and takes pride in it, only he cannot now propose 
the one proof of his sincere attachment to it which was so 
eagerly demanded 2 a visit to Thessalonica itself. Besides 
these reasons for writing, it was now becoming manifest in 
various ways that the Thessalonians were as yet very scantily 
instructed in the truths of the faith and their bearing on the 
Christian standard of life : the idea, for instance, of a resur 
rection of the dead had still to be solemnly proclaimed to 
them. An enthusiastic section among them 3 were behaving 
as though the great convulsions of the Last Day were already 
upon them and the old order of things and the old duties 
all swept away ; while side by side with these stood others 
who in their reaction against such a course went too far 
in the opposite direction, clinging tenaciously to the old 
views and so missing the profound meaning of the Christian 
life. Quarrels and insubordination to the elders * were the 

1 iv. 13 fol. * iii. 6, 10. 3 iv. 11 fol. v. 12-15. 



58 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

result, and many opportunities for malicious criticism were 
given to the enemies of the Church. 1 Although Timothy may 
already have had to deal with this state of things, a confirma 
tion of his words by the chief Apostle, at any rate by letter, 
might still seem advisable, and he had in all probability 
promised the perplexed Thessalonians a direct reply from 
Paul on the subject of the dead. 

4. In opposition to the school of Baur the genuineness of 
the Epistle should be upheld as unquestionable. In style, 
vocabulary and attitude it approaches as nearly as possible 
to the four Principal Epistles (see p. 19) ; and although the 
views laid down in iv. 16 fol. as to the resurrection of the 
dead in Christ do not correspond with those expressed in 
2. Cor. v., they do correspond with those of 1. Cor. xv. 51 fol., 
and Paul may very well have changed his point of view in 
this matter as in others, in obedience to the impressions of 
later years. It is true that in this Epistle Paul does not 
make any use of the Old Testament, which plays so large a 
part in the other four, and that he does not contend for the 
liberty of the Church against the doctrine of justification by 
the Law ; but this is a controversy the only one for which the 
use of the Old Testament was indispensable on which he 
never entered without provocation ; and in Thessalonica there 
were as yet no Judaists. The new converts were threatened,! 
not by a false Gospel, but by rabid hatred of any GospeLjj 
Chapters i.-iii., it is suggested, give the impression of a survey 
v" jof the history of the Thessalonian Church made by a later 
hand, with the help of the materials furnished by the Acts ; 
a knowledge of the Epistles to the Corinthians is thought to 
be betrayed in it, and in i. 3 the Pauline trio of faith, hope 
and charity is supposed to be clearly connected with the Apo 
calyptic works, labour and patience. 2 The connection is 
certainly- accidental ; works, labour and patience are frequent 
ideas with Paul ; and the fundamental Pauline principle is as 
little compromised by the work of faith in 1. Thess. i. 3, as 
by the hope expressed in Phil. i. 6 that He who has begun a 
good work in the Philippians will perfect it until the Parusia. 
In spite of a great many points of contact between our Epistle 

1 iv. 12. - Rev. ii. 2. 



4.] THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS 59 

and 1. and 2. Corinthians, its literary dependence on the 
latter is not demonstrable, and its frequent agreement with the 
Acts should surely be considered as evidence in favour of the 
latter rather than hostile to the Epistle, while verse iii. 1 fol.,fc 
on the other hand, contradicts Acts xvii. 14-16 and xviii. 5, inu 
a point of some importance. Nor is it easy to see from what * 
motive a later writer should have composed the Epistle ; while 
it is hardly likely that he would have made Paul as in iv. 15 
express a hope which he knew had never been fulfilled. 
On the other hand, if we assume that Paul was giving some 
friendly advice to a newly founded and as yet but scantily 
instructed Gentile community, the Epistle presents no diffi 
culties, while the mention in v. 12 of the rulers of the new 
church, whom he describes as those which labour among you 
and admonish you, does not point to a time of fully developed 
hierarchies, but just the opposite, for no technical name (such 
as bishop or presbyter) is as yet in existence, much less any 
fixed jurisdictions. No Christian community, however, was 
ever entirely without leaders. 

A particular objection has been raised against vv. ii. 
14-16 ; it is contended that the former persecutor of the 
Christians of Judaea could not have suppressed his own part 
in that affair ; that for a patriot like Paul l such violent invective 
against the Jews was unnatural, and here quite uncalled for, 
since the Jews had done the Thessalonians no harm ; and, 
moreover, that the mention of the wrath of God in verse 16 
evidently refers to the destruction of Jerusalem, which Paul, 
seventeen years before it happened, could not have spoken of 
as a thing of the past. But to mention his own share in the 
persecution of the Christians at this point would surely have 
been in bad taste was he really obliged in the interests of 
truth to insert after the words of the Jews the confession, 
of whom I unfortunately was then one ? Moreover, he 
speaks of the Jews in 2. Cor. xi. 24 with much the same 
alienation as here. He had long realised that in their hatred 
of Christ they were hastening to their own destruction, and 
even a patriot may be driven to bitter wrath against his coun 
trymen by painful experiences, especially if patriotism is not 



60 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP, i- 

the ruling passion of his heart. Probably Paul had recently 
been made to suffer heavily by the Jews at Corinth, just as 
they had been the instigators of the agitation against him and 
the community at Thessalonica. Without prophesying, he 
could show that God s judgment had already been fulfilled 
upon them he was thinking, not of risings suppressed, of the 
famine described in Acts xi. 28, or of the Edict of Claudius, 1 
but merely of what he fears to be the incurable blindness of 
his countrymen. Is not the same thought expressed in 
1. Cor. ii. 8 and ii. 6? Verse 16 "- b bears in the highest 
degree the Pauline stamp. In form, the same is true of the 
abrupt conclusion 16", for which a quotation from some Jewish 
Apocryphon or a gloss on the text of Paul s Greek Bible has 
been quite superfluously suggested. As a matter of fact, 
both verses read like echoes from an angry indictment lately 
flung in the face of his persecutors by Paul. I can thus see 
no sufficient grounds for removing verses ii. 15 and 16 or even 
only ii. 16 , as interpolations, from the genuine Epistle of Paul. 

5. The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians 

[GL works mentioned in preceding ; also A. Klopper s Der 
2 te Brief an die Thess. in Theologische Studien und Skizzen 
aus Ostpreussen (ii. 73-140, 1889), a clever but somewhat dis 
cursive defence of the Pauline authorship of the Epistle ; and 
F. Spitta, Der 2 te Brief an die Thess. in Zur Geschichte u. 
Literatur d. Urchristentums, vol. i. pp. 109-154, 1893 (Timothy 
the author, or rather the re-caster, of a Jewish Apocalypse of the 
time of Caligula). For ii. 1-12 cf. Bousset, Der Antichrist, 1895.] 

1. Upon the opening address and greeting, there follows, 
in the rest of the first chapter, a thanksgiving for the faith 
fulness of the community, especially under afflictions, the 
recompense for which would not be wanting on the Last 
Day. This prepares the way for the leading passage of the 
Epistle (ii. 1-12), which continues and completes teaching 
already given by word of mouth concerning the Parusia, a 
subject in regard to which Paul s readers had been much dis 
quieted. The Day of the Lord, Paul argues, cannot yet have 
appeared, for even Antichrist (so, at least, following 1. John, 

1 Acts xviii. 2. 



$ 6.] THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS 61 

we are accustomed to sum up the various terms used by 
Paul in his description of this mysterious caricature of the 
returning Christ), who must first have brought the world s 
sin to its climax, had not yet been revealed ; he was still only 
working in secret, being restrained for the present by another 
power, of whom the Thessalonians knew. Next come still 
with the idea of the future in view personal wishes, hopes, 
and requests of the Apostle for himself and for the Thessa 
lonians, 1 followed by a few earnest warnings against restless 
idleness and an excitement that led to neglect of duty. 2 
Lastly we have the farewell greeting, specially emphasised 
as written by Paul s own hand. 

2. If the Epistle is Pauline it must have been written 
after 1. Thessalonians, in which case the words of ii. 15 may 
be readily taken as a reference to that Epistle ; any corre 
spondence between Paul and the community before the First 
Epistle, is excluded by what is told us there in vv. ii. 17-iii. 
6. Moreover, it should be placed very soon after the latter, 
probably in the same year, for the relations between writer 
and receivers have not substantially altered between the two 
dates. Paul is still accompanied by Silvanus and Timothy, :: 
and the complaint in iii. 2 about the unreasonable and 
wicked men reminds us forcibly of the mood in which he 
wrote verse ii. 15 of the First Epistle. The Apostle s opinion 
of the community, too, is very similar both in praise and 
blame to what it had formerly been, except that the evils 
created among a certain section of its members by false 
expectations of the future, and the general restlessness and 
excitability, seem to have increased, so that he desires to 
have disciplinary measures adopted in restraint of such 
dangerous elements. These erring spirits, it appears, ap 
pealed on -the one hand to visions seen by them (yu^Ve 
8i,a 7rvVfj.aTos) and on the other to the word and writing 
of Paul. This rouses him to an emphatic denial of the latter 
in ii. 2, while in iii. 17 he points expressly to his hand 
writing, in which the final greeting was always written, 
as the sign by which all genuine epistles from him might 
be recognised. From what source Paul had derived his 

1 ii. 13-iii. 5. * iii. 6-16. i. 1. 



62 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

information we are not told, and from the indefinite we 
hear of iii. 11 it may be concluded that the bearer of it did 
not wish to be named ; at any rate it cannot have been one 
of Paul s travelling-companions. The necessity on which 
his informant must have laid great stress for the Apostle to 
assume once more a decided attitude towards these fanatics 
must have been the occasion for the Second Epistle. 

3. The authenticity of 2. Thessalonians has, however, 
been disputed by the great majority of investigators, not 
merely of the Tubingen school, from Baur onwards. The 
Epistle, they argue, shows remarkably little connection with 
its predecessor of the same name ; vv. ii. 1-12 excepted, it is in 
fact nothing but a paraphrase of the First Epistle, with charac 
teristic departures from the Pauline phraseology. Chap, ii., 
again, the section peculiar to the Epistle, is full of ideas quite 
alien to Paul, while the warning against spurious epistles, of 
which there can hardly have been a thought during Paul s 
lifetime, sounds as though the later author wished to ward 
off such suspicions from himself. The great prominence 
given to Apostolic authority and power would also seem to 
point to a later time, when the Church gladly represented her 
laws of discipline as derived from Paul himself. 

The least important of these arguments are those referring 
to the phraseology, for on the whole the style is so thoroughly 
Pauline that one might indeed admire the forger who could 
imitate it so ingeniously. For the rest, every Epistle contains 
some peculiarities ; other features again we need not recognise 
as such : there is no necessity, for instance, to apply the title 
Lord, which Paul always reserves elsewhere for Jesus Christ, 
to God at any point in this Epistle, not even in iii. 3, 5 ; and 
the designation of Jesus as our Lord 2 is the term most 
familiar to the author. It would certainly be very suspicious 
if 2. Thess. designated Christ as God, a usage unknown in 
Paul ; but if we turn to i. 12 we find that our God means 
something quite different from the Lord Jesus Christ, 
although it is but one grace that both bestow. The numerous 
points of affinity with 1. Thess. are explained, on the one 
hand, by the similarity in the circumstances under which both 

1 ii. 15, iii. 4, 6 9 fol. and 14. 2 Cf. iii. 4, 



6.] THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS 63 

were written, for in the interval Paul can have had very little 
news from the community, and that little perhaps in writing ; 
on the other, by the fact that when certain Thessalonians 
justified their errors by appealing to his Epistle (and his 
spoken words), Paul did not carefully go through the draft 
of his previous Epistle, but called to mind as accurately 
as he could what he had already said on the subject to the 
community by word of mouth and by letter. He lays stress 
on his authority, for paedagogic reasons, as in 1. Corin 
thians j ; on the other hand, he bestows such unlimited 
praise 2 upon each individual in the community as no later 
defender of official authority would have thought of putting 
into the mouth of the Apostle. And if, in opposition to certain 
other statements of his, he declares in iii. 9 that his motive 
in labouring so diligently was to give the Thessalonians a 
good example, there is no need to point to the preceding 
verse, where he states as his motive that we might not 
be chargeable to any of you ; for this shifting of his point 
of view for purposes of exhortation is a very common 
characteristic of Paul, and is in this connection specially 
adroit. You pious idlers, he seems to say, you appeal to 
me ; why, then, do you entirely neglect to follow the ex 
ample of unceasing toil that I have set you ? Moreover 
if much to Paul s astonishment they had appealed to an 
Epistle of his, they may very well have meant 1. Thessa 
lonians; they were pointing to vv. v. 1-11 in it ! as their 
justification, since they found that continual watchfulness 
and sobriety were not compatible with the old rules of life. 
Moreover, by the aid of an interpretation the like of which 
is still common at the present day, they managed to employ 
vv. 2, 3, 4, 5 in support of their thesis, the day of light is 
already here. 

Paul, naturally, was not conscious of having written them 
a syllable in this sense, and so he concluded from the 
tidings that had just reached him from Thessalonica that a 
forged letter was circulating there under his name. This mis 
taken idea of his would be amply sufficient to explain ii. 2 as 
well as iii. 17. But whoever credits one of the Macedonian 

1 iv. 21 and v. 3-5. 2 i. 3 and ii. 13. 3 Cf. ii. 16. 



64 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

fanatics, not only with the unexampled audacity, but with the 
unexampled stupidity of composing a letter in the name of 
the Apostle while he still remained in the neighbourhood, has 
a still easier explanation of ii. 2. Only he must needs con 
fess that the mania for forgery must have been uncommonly 
strong not to have been restrained by the most unpromising 
circumstances, nay not even by the Parusia itself. 1 It cannot 
be disputed that Paul had by now adopted certain fixed habits 
in his correspondence ; and we are certainly not justified in re 
ferring the words h Trdo-y s TTia-roXfj to 1. and 2. Corinthians and 
Galatians, which were of course not written in the year 53-54. 
Paul must have written countless epistles both before and 
after 2. Thessalonians, of which all traces have disappeared. 

The chief difficulty, however, seems to me to lie in 
ii. 1-12, the passage which so evidently forms the kernel 
of the Epistle that any hypothesis which inclines to treat it, 
together with a few other inconvenient verses, as a later 
interpolation inserted into a genuine Pauline Epistle, should 
be avoided from the very outset. It seems a very plausible 
supposition, however, that a later unknown writer might 
have composed the Epistle, with as close a resemblance as 
possible to 1. Thessalonians in its minor details, simply in 
order to make the ideas of ii. 1-12 appear genuinely Apostolic, 
or even in order to substitute for the First Epistle, whose pro 
phecies presented difficulties to a generation more reserved in 
their eschatological beliefs, one similar in all other respects but 
avoiding that danger. According to their different interpre 
tations of this passage, 2. Thessalonians has been variously 
assigned by those who deny its authenticity, either to some 
date before 70 A.D., or to the reign of Trajan, about 110. 

In the passage beginning at ii. 1 the idea that the day of 
the Lord had already come is contradicted, since before the 
coming of Christ, the falling away, the coming of the Man of 
Sin, must take place. This Abomination was indeed already 
moving through the existing world in secret, but the community 
knew what power it was that held him back, and until this was 
withdrawn, the time of the Gainsayer /car t^o^v was not at 
hand, much less the hour for the return of Christ, which would 
instantly bring about the annihilation of the Lawless One. 

1 . . . by epistle as from us, as that the day of the Lord is now present. 



5.] THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS 66 

This is a complete eschatological system, and there are 
some who like to call the passage a miniature Apocalypse ; it 
does indeed remind us often enough of the Apocalypse of 
John, although the literary dependence of the one on the 
other ought never to have been asserted. And in truth Paul s 
writings nowhere else present any trace of such ideas ; in 
1. Thess. v. he says that the day of the Second Coming is not 
to be determined, but will come as a thief in the night, 
when it is least expected ; here, on the contrary, he calculates 
minutely what events must separate the present from the Day 
of the Lord. Nor can the passage be taken as a further 
development of the ideas set forth in 1. Thess., any more 
than as a foreshadowing of the eschatological views of the 
later Epistles, since according to ii. 5 Paul had already 
communicated to his readers by word of mouth all that he 
here announced to them. The references to contemporary 
history which some have thought it necessary to discern in the 
two chief ideas of the Man of Sin, and of the power restrain 
ing him in the first to Caligula, Nero, or a pseudo-Nero, to 
a false Messiah, or to an upholder of heretical doctrines ; in the 
second, to Agrippa, Claudius, Vespasian or Trajan would, if 
proved, scarcely admit the possibility of Pauline authorship 
for this apocalypse. But they are unnecessary, especially the 
suggested connection with Caligula s impious design of desecrat 
ing the Temple : sufficient historical background is supplied 
by the events in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. 

My own opinion is that the undeniable difficulties which 
this chapter presents can, after all, be most easily solved by 
assuming its Pauline authorship. There is no actual contra 
diction between 1. Thess. iv. and v. and this Epistle ; Paul may 
very well have given utterance to both views verbally in Thes- 
salonica, as he himself tells us in vv. v. 2 of the First Epistle 
and ii. 5 of the Second ; and here, too, it may be observed 
that, as the matter contained in ii. 6-10 of the Second Epistle 
is partially new to his readers, so also to the image in vv. 
3 and 4 a few touches are now added for the first time, for 
the TttOxtt of verse 5 does not pretend to cover every syllable. 
Perhaps it covers even less in reality than in the thought of 
the writer. But as to the Parusia, the union of the faithful 

F 



66 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

with the Lord Jesus and the terrible destruction of the rest, 
the teachings of the Second Epistle are exactly the same as 
those of the First. In 1. Thess. v. the Day of the Lord only 
comes as a thief in the night and as travail upon a woman 
with child for those who are the children of night, and what 
we learn in 2. Thess. ii. 8 fol. is not in the least inconsistent 
with this. In 1. v. 1 Paul had imagined that there was no 
need that he should instruct the community as to the times and 
seasons of what was to come, because they knew the main 
point, viz. that the Lord would come bringing salvation and 
eternal life to all believers. In the Second Epistle he recog 
nises that instruction of this sort was wanted after all, and 
the direction which it was to take was shown him by the 
abuses that had already arisen. It now behoved a wise pastor 
to insist on and occasionally to supplement the calming and 
sobering influences contained in the verbal discourse on the 
Last Things mentioned in 1. Thess. i. 10. That he should 
have bestowed much thought on the reasons for the post 
ponement of the Lord s coming is of course quite natural 
it caused him partly joy and partly sorrow but he never 
doubted that the Lord was at hand ; and that confidence 
of his remains unshaken even through 2. Thessalonians. 1 
The question of what was yet to come to pass before the 
Parusia was not a fundamental part of the faith ; he was 
here instructing the Catechumens upon it, and as it was not 
to them that he addressed himself in his later Epistles there 
was no need to touch upon the subject there. 

Nor, in my opinion, is there anything inconsistent with 
Paul s ideas in the details of the Apocalypse. They bear 
a strong Jewish stamp (the word falling away is an instance 
of this), for of course the Man of Sin who carries his 
wickedness to the point of sitting in the Temple of God was 
not conceived of as the representative of faithless Israel, still 
less as the head of backsliding Christianity, but as the personi 
fication of a godless heathendom, or more accurately, of the 
rulers of the world, who strive with God for the possession 
of mankind. Paul had received this idea from the Eabbinical 
schools, and had not discarded it on his conversion, for he 

S cf. i. 5 10. 



5.] THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS fi? 

probably felt now, as before, that the definitive and final revela 
tion of the Majesty of God must be preceded by the complete 
and seemingly final triumph of the powers of evil, these latter 
being personified in Antichrist as the former in the Lord 
Jesus after the manner of Semitic thought, influenced by the 
ideas of the Messiah and the Devil. Expectations of this sort 
had been cherished among the Jews ever since the time of 
the Maccabees, and since, with very natural pessimism, they 
had sometimes imagined themselves to have gone through the 
most shameful outbreaks of sin conceivable and yet the 
end had not appeared the further conception of a restraining 
power (Kars^ov), which now also began to take personal shape, 
became indispensable. Whatever Paul may have thought of 
the existing government, 1 it is quite possible that he regarded 
the organised strength of Rome, which still stood in some 
degree for order and right, as this power which restraineth ; 
at any rate ice are no longer in a position to put forward any 
more plausible hypothesis. It is true that the hopes of Rom. 
xi. 25-32 correspond ill with this picture, for there the future 
is painted in the opposite colours, the shining hues of peace ; 
but 1. Thess. v. 3, 6 and 1. Cor. xv. 24-26 rank with this 
passage, and in vv. ii. 11 and 12 of the Second Epistle we can 
discern all the boldness of the author of Romans ix., who 
could represent the Prince of Darkness, the Antichrist, as sent 
to the unbelievers by God himself, in order that they might 
all be condemned. 2. Thess. ii. 1-12 is not a Jewish Apocalypse 
recast by a Christian hand and immortalised under the name 
of Paul, but rather we may learn from it, as from so many 
other passages, that Paul had brought much with him from 
his Jewish past, into the period of the new man, and was 
skilful in using it, tolerably assimilated, for the edification of 
Christian communities. 

If the occurrences in the community presupposed by 
2. Thess. are by no means extraordinary, the Epistle also 
corresponds perfectly with Paul s method of dealing with 
such eccentric conduct. I am also inclined to think that the 
writer himself hoped to witness all that he here describes. 
If an imitator composed this brief Epistle, in order to countei - 

1 Rom. xiii. 1 fol. 

F 2 



68 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

act eschatological extravagance in the Church by destroying 
its fundamental presuppositions, he set about his task very 
badly. As a matter of fact he only substitutes for one exciting 
theory of the last things another equally exciting. 

It may be admitted that 2. Thess. is in no sense a great 
work. The Epistle is limited in range and proportionately 
poor in original thoughts : but in Paul s case, as in others, it 
was more important to find the right word at the right time 
than to utter sublime mysteries which did not profit those who 
could not understand them (see 1. Cor. xiv. 6). Assuredly, by 
this short letter he both gave the Thessalonians food for their 
imagination, and strengthened their power of comprehension. 

6. The Epistle to the Galatians 

[Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vol. vii., by F. Sieffert (1899) ; Hand-Com- 
mentar ii. 2 ; Gal. Eom. Phil, by E. A. Lipsius (1892) ; C. Holsten s 
Das Evangelium des Paulus (1880), a complete analysis of the 
connection of thought between Galatians and 1. Corinthians, carried 
out with as much single-minded devotion to the subject as strict 
critical in sight, but a work in which Paulis judged too one-sidedly by 
the rules of logic. It is interesting to compare this with a book 
which may be similarly described and yet is quite different in 
result, the Brief des Paulus an die Galater of M. Kahler (1884). 
Also A. Schlatter s Der Galaterbrief ausgelegt fur Bibelleser 
(1890), an independent work not entirely without scientific merit 
in spite of its edifying tendency ; J. B. Lightfoot s St. Paul s 
Epistle to the Galatians (1892), the most complete collection 
we have of technical material for the interpretation of the text ; 
E. Schiirer s Was ist unter TaXarla in der Uberschrift des 
Galaterbriefs zu verstehen ? ( Jahrbucher fur protestantische 
Theologie, 1892, p. 460), and W. M. Eamsay s A Historical 
Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians in the Expositor for 
1899, p. 57. (See above, p. 33.)] 

1. Apart from the address and greeting of the first verses 
and a brief final summary in vi. 11-18, Galatians consists 
of three clearly marked divisions, beginning respectively 
at i. 6, iii. 1 and v. 13. At the point where the Apostle 
usually expresses his gratitude, he gives vent in this Epistle 
to painful surprise that his readers should have fallen away 

1 i. 6-10. 



6.] THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS 69 

from his true Gospel to follow a different and accursed 
one, as against which he declares that his Gospel was not 
after man. This thesis, to establish which is the main 
object of the Epistle, is first placed on an historical basis 2 by 
the assertion that neither his Gospel nor his Apostolate was 
received of man. In support of this he first points to his call 
and to his seventeen years activity, 3 in which there was no 
question of any dependence on man, and then 4 relates how, 
without sacrificing a particle of his own Gospel, he was recog 
nised in Jerusalem by the pillars of the Church as the Apostle 
of the Gentiles, with rights equal to their own. 

Then follows the strongest proof of his independence 5 
the account of how he publicly rebuked the great Cephas at 
Antioch, and upheld the equal rights of the Gentile Christians 
against him. The recapitulation of the speech he made on 
that occasion forms the transition to the second division, 
the actual demonstration of the truth and divinity of the 
Gospel of freedom from the Law. In iii. 1-5 he reminds 
the Galatians of their own experiences, of how they received 
the Holy Ghost, not through observance of the Law, but 
through faith in Jesus Christ ; and then in the following 
verses (i he appeals to the witness of Scripture itself, which in 
Abraham s time, long before the Law appeared, made its 
promises dependent upon faith alone. The Law was not 
thereby set aside it did not pretend to be more than a 
schoolmaster, an expedient of secondary importance 7 but 
now the appearance of Christ, the seed of promise, had put 
an end to the period of bondage and raised us from the 
position of slaves to that of free sons and heirs, 8 who by 
falling back into the service of the Law would do no better 
than return to paganism. 9 And then, with a sudden change 
from the didactic tone to one of moving tenderness, he appeals 
to the feelings of the Galatians and the childlike love that 
they formerly bore him, in order to tear them away from 
these new false friends of theirs. 10 Next, from iv. 21 to v. 
12, he again takes up the argument against the Law from the 

1 i. 11. * i. 6-ii. 21. 3 i. 13-24. < ii. 1-10. 

1 ii. 11-21. iii. 6-18. iii. 19-24. 

8 iii. 25-iv. 7. 9 iv. 8-11. I0 iv. 12-20. 



70 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

Law itself, with an allegorical turning of the story of Ishmael 
and Isaac, repudiating all half-measures and urging upon his 
readers the necessity of choosing between bondage and freedom, 
damnation and grace- for in his passionate excitement he 
cannot but picture to himself all that they had at stake, 
or refrain from bitter imprecations against their deluders 
(ol dvaararovvTts vjnas). But in order to prevent any 
misunderstanding by which freedom from the Law might 
be interpreted as a danger to morality and mutual love, he 
adds the explanation : they are to walk in the Spirit, for 
the Spirit of God which is brought by faith cannot endure 
the presence of any of the works of the flesh. A few 
special words of advice are added 2 against self-conceit and 
egotism, but the main idea is not lost sight of that salvation 
and eternal life can only be reaped where the good seed has 
been scattered on the soul. So that in practice also his 
Gospel proves itself to be divine by the moral results which 
it produces. Greetings and personal requests would here be out 
of place ; all those to whom the letter is directed were in danger 
of going astray, and with a hand that trembles with emotion 
he now addresses to all a last earnest cr^y of warning. 3 

2. The strong excitement under which the Epistle is 
written excludes all idea of forgery, and explains the 
occasional obscurities of expression, as well as the audacities 
or flaws in the argument, better than any theory of interpola 
tion. Every sentence shows why Paul had taken up his pen : 
the Christians of Galatia were in danger of falling a prey to 
a false Gospel. Agitators hostile to Paul had penetrated into 
the community, among them at least one person, probably, of 
conspicuous authority 5 although that this was either Peter or 
Barnabas is equally unlikely. They had made a deep im 
pression, inexplicable to Paul, upon the Galatians, who were 
evidently not as yet sufficiently clear and steadfast in their 
faith. 6 Paul, standing in the very thick of the fight, was 
unable to impute any but selfish motives to these men 7 ; he 
calls down a curse upon them, 8 and declares that the accept- 

1 v. 13-25. 2 v. 26-vi. 10. J vi. 11-18. 

* ol TaplcrffovTts I/pas, i. 7, v. 10, vi. 12 fol. * v. 10. 

* i. 6, iii. 1, v. 7. i. 7, iv. 17, vi. 12 fol. " i. 8, v. 12. 



6.] THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS 71 

ance of their Gospel was equivalent to a forfeiture of grace. 1 
Any compact with them he felt to be out of the question. 
Accordingly he bids his readers choose uncompromisingly 
between himself and them, 2 even though they abstained from 
direct attack upon him, offered to explain his silence as to 
certain claims of the new religion on the ground of a 
teacher s consideration for his flock, 3 and even attempted to 
base themselves to some extent upon his authority. 4 In 
directly, however, they must doubtless have striven to detach 
the Galatians from him, to represent him as an authority of 
secondary rank, who had only heard of Christ and his 
Gospel through the medium of the Primitive Apostles, and 
therefore had no right to proclaim a free Gospel in opposi 
tion to those who had given him his commission. Paul 
deals with this point from i. 15 to ii. 21, and in ii. 7 actually 
represents himself as undoubtedly the highest human authority 
for the Gentile world. 

But the question at issue was not one of form ; these 
agitators wished to impose upon the Galatians 5 the Law 
under which they themselves had been born and bred, or at 
least to exact from them a strict observance of its chief 
provisions, such as circumcision G and the celebration of the 
Jewish feasts. Above all they naturally demanded the 
keeping of the Sabbath, 7 as an essential condition of the 
salvation promised to the children of Abraham. 8 They 
themselves had not, like Paul, 9 opposed these works of the 
Law to Faith, but had persuaded themselves, and then 
with very intelligible success the Galatians, that perfect 
righteousness, the very object for which the believer struggled, 
could only be attained by the strict fulfilment of the will of 
God made manifest in the Law. 10 In reply to this Paul 
defines his point of view in the clearest way : the Law and 
Faith, in his eyes, were mutually exclusive, damnation being as 
indissolubly connected with the one as grace with the other. 11 

1 v. 4. - v . 7,9. 3 i. 10. 

4 i. 8, teal ecus ^ueTs . . . ; v. 11, ei irtpno^v eri KTipvffffw, to be understood 
in the same sense as ii. 14, el <n . . . tOviicias ys. 

5 v. 1, iv. 21. 6 vi. 12 fol., v. 3. 
7 iv. 10. " Hi. 7 fol., vi. 16. 9 iii. 2, 5. 

10 v. 4, iii. 3 (<?iriTe\(r06), iii. 8, 11 ; ii. 16, 21. " iii. 10 fol., v. 3, 4. 



72 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP, i. 

The Law as the outward standard of morality had been 
superseded by the inward and transforming power of the 
heavenly Spirit, the vofMos rov XptcrroO. 1 Therefore any 
attempt to rehabilitate it after its destruction by the death of 
Christ on the Cross, must be branded as a denial of God, of 
Christ and of the Holy Ghost 2 ; nay, Paul goes so far as to 
declare that the relapse of the community towards the ideals 
of Judaism was equivalent to a return to their former idolatry. 3 
Thus he unconsciously proclaims Christianity as a new 
religion, equally opposed to Judaism and to Greek Polytheism. 

The object of the whole Epistle lies in this declaration ; 
even the warnings of v. 13-vi. 10, although they do contain 
references to particular faults among the Galatian community, 
such as strife, arrogance and moral laxity, help to confirm 
the main thesis that only the Gospel preached by Paul was 
from heaven. 

3. The Epistle is addressed to the Churches of Galatia. 4 
These communities, unlike those of Achaia, Macedonia and 
Asia, where larger towns were gradually singled out as capitals 
and naturally assumed a leading position, seem to have 
been distributed evenly over a strip of country, and to have 
grown up under like conditions, and remained so, till the time 
when the Epistle was written. The province of Galatia, a 
country for the most part of fruitful plough-land and pasture, 
lying in the centre of Asia Minor and shut off from the sea 
on all sides, had received its name from the hordes of Celts 
which, sweeping over from Europe in the third century B.C., 
had here found a permanent resting-place. Since then they 
had of course become civilised that is to say, Hellenised 
in every way ; but though their old dislike to crowding 
together into cities may have lingered on, allusions to the 
relics of a Celtic religion in the passage beginning at iv. 9 
could only be traced by the same morbid ingenuity that so 
eagerly advocates the Teutonic origin of the Galatians. 
Whether the few hundred Christians to whom this Epistle is 
addressed were descended from the conquerors of 280-240 
B.C. or from later Greek and Oriental immigrants, it is 

1 v. 5, 18, 25, vi. 2. 2 ii. 18-21, iii. 14, iv. 29. 

3 iv. 8-11. 2, and see 1. Cor. xvi. 1. 



6.] THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS 73 

impossible to say, nor, in the face of verse iii. 28, ought it to 
interest anyone. As for the part of Galatia in which to look 
for the oldest Christian communities, which certainly lay 
near together and were not very numerous, conjecture is 
equally futile ; the western part seems to be indicated in 
the Acts. 1 

For the last seventy years, however, an hypothesis has 
been very much in favour according to which the Galatia 
of our Epistle should be taken in a wider sense to mean all 
the provinces placed, since the death of King Amyntas in 
B.C. 25, under the rule of a single Propraetor, especially 
Lycaonia and Pisidia. In that case the churches of 
Galatia might consist of those named in the Acts 2 as having 
been founded on the so-called First Missionary Journey the 
communities of Antiochia Pisidiae, Iconium, Lystra and 
Derbe. The wording of the Acts, however, is in the first 
place unfavourable to this theory ; something apart from 
Pisidia and Lycaonia is to be understood in the term Galatia. 
But even if in official phraseology the name Galatia had 
included the districts of Pisidia and Lycaonia, and if Iconium 
or Derbe had been officially designated as Galatian towns, it 
would still be far from probable that in the course of 
seventy-five years the inhabitants of these towns should have 
grown accustomed to calling themselves Galatians. It is one 
thing to be incorporated into a powerful and haughty State 
like Bavaria ; it is a very different matter to be attached to an 
administrative district like the New Galatia of the Eomans. In 
addressing Pisidians and Lycaonians as foolish Galatians 
(iii. 1), Paul whom, it is true, modern admirers credit with 
the rule of never employing an old local name unless it had 
become the name of a Roman province would have been guilty 
of using as utterly inappropriate a phrase as would a speaker of 
to-day in apostrophising the citizens of Frankfort-on-the-Main 
as wealthy men of Hesse Nassau. Belief in the new 
hypothesis becomes most difficult when it appears, as with 
Zahn, combined with the old suppositions : namely, that the 
first visit of the Apostle only concerned the Southern 

1 xvi. 6. * xiii. fol. 



74 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAI>. I. 

Galatians, though the second also included Galatia proper. 
Does it follow that communities which, like those of Derbe 
and Pessinus, lay more than 120 miles apart, had become 
blent within a few months in the same life and the same 
errors ? However, the whole controversy is but of slender 
importance. Not even chronology has anything to gain by it ; 
and if instead of Galatians we say Christian communities 
in the interior of Asia Minor, the dispute is at an end. 

Paul was the founder of these Galatian communities ; it 
was he who had first proclaimed the Gospel among them. 1 
He had never intended at the time to preach to them, but 
illness had forced him to make a long sojourn in their 
country, and he remembers with emotion how lovingly and 
eagerly they had surrendered themselves to him. This alone 
is enough to differentiate the Galatian mission from that to 
Pisidia and Lycaonia ; the flight of Barnabas and Paul to 
Lystra and Derbe is not precisely represented in the Acts 
as a convalescent trip after an attack of malaria. It is 
true that Barnabas, who took part in the Pisidian mission, 
seems from chap. ii. to have been well known to the 
Galatians, while Titus had yet to be introduced to them. 
But Cephas is also known to them, and of course the false 
apostles played off the authority of those two men 
Barnabas and Cephas against Paul ; and this is the reason 
why Paul is so much concerned to establish his particular 
relation to them beyond all doubt. But he always declares 
that it was he alone who first preached the Gospel among 
them. The plural of i. 8 fol. (which, by the way, passes into 
the singular in i. 9) would probably not have been analysed 
by the Galatians into a series of individual components, which 
in verse 9 must needs be different from what they were in 8. 

The great majority of the Christians of Galatia had 
formerly been heathens. 2 Elements of Jewish nationality were 
probably altogether lacking among them, for the passages 
brought forward to prove their existence 3 must either establish 
the Jewish extraction of all or of none of the Galatians. 
The ye all of iii. 26 and 28, might certainly stand in 

1 iv. 19, iii. 2 fol., i. 8, 9. - iv. 8, v. 2 fol., vi. 12 fol. 

3 iii. 2, 13 fol., 23 fol., iv. 3, 5, v. 1. 



5 6.] THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS 75 

implied antithesis to the thought not merely the minority 
among you of Jewish birth. But in both cases the emphasis 
lies, not on the irdvTss, but on the predicate, that assures to 
every believer the present possession of salvation, or rather 
of the highest guarantees of salvation. The agitation of the 
Judaists had originated from outside, probably not without 
the support of the false brethren of Jerusalem, in describ 
ing whom Paul had the heresy-mongers of Galatia in his 
mind. With the Holy Scriptures to support them which 
Paul himself had taught his converts to revere as the Word 
of God it was easy to convince the theologically untrained 
Galatians of the necessity of circumcision, especially when Paul 
and his friends had safely turned their backs upon the place. 
The date of the foundation of these communities cannot be 
established with any certainty from the Epistle itself, but ac 
cording to Acts xvi. 6 it was during the great journey which 
eventually took the Apostle on to European soil that is to 
say, about 52-3 A.D. 

4. The question as to the date at which the Epistle was 
written is a more difficult one. Apparently Paul had already 
paid his readers two visits, 1 the second as well as the first in 
his capacity of preacher, i.e. in successful efforts to increase 
the number of believers, perhaps also of churches, in Galatia. 
The words of i. 6 2 give us the impression that these visits 
were not separated by any great interval of time, and that 
the latter especially had taken place quite recently. The 
aforementioned agitations probably only arose after the 
second, for the 7ra\iv, again, of v. 3, would be more likely 
to refer to the thoughts expressed in chap. iii. (especially 
verse 10) than to any verbal declarations ; and if by the 
TrposiptJKa/jLsv of i. 9 we do not, with Luther, understand 
verse 8, but other imprecations previously uttered, we may be 
led to suppose that Paul was forced to make use of such pro 
testations to which he is here merely lending additional force 
at his first as well as every succeeding visit to any town. 
The excitement that runs through the whole Epistle, and the 
arguments Paul uses in it, are hardly compatible with the 

1 iv. 13. 2 See also iv. 16, 18, 20. 



76 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

assumption that he had observed traces of Judaistic influences 
among the Galatians in his recent visit, but had easily over 
come them and cheerfully continued on his journey. It is more 
probable that the news of the defection of the Galatians took 
him completely by surprise, for it assuredly did not reach him 
through an official deputation from the churches, nor by a letter 
from them, to which he would certainly have referred, however 
briefly. He did immediately all that he could do from a 
distance to prevent the worst. If, then, the second visit is that 
mentioned in Acts xviii. 23, it must have occurred during the 
so-called third journey : that is to say, before Paul s stay of 
several years duration in the province of Asia ; and the 
Epistle must have been written during that stay itself, pro 
bably on one of the expeditions made from Ephesus for 
missionary purposes, since Paul makes no mention in it of any 
Christian community surrounding him. Only those of the 
brethren who were known to the Galatians are with him, 
probably the fellow-preachers who had accompanied him on 
his last visit thither. Hence it follows that any but the years 
55-57 are excluded. 

And indeed this assignment seems to me to be almost cer 
tain. The objection that Paul could have hurried in person 
to Galatia from Ephesus or its neighbourhood, if he found a 
voyage from Ephesus to Corinth so easy, does not hold ; for 
Paul nowhere says that he was prevented from coming or 
suggests any reason against coming. Perhaps he had reason 
to think he would effect more by a letter than by a personal 
visit. It must be remembered that he could look back to un 
pleasant experiences with the Corinthian community ( 7, 7). 
The gentle tone in which in 1. Cor. xvi. he mentions 
the orders he gave to the Galatians for a collection can only 
be explained on the assumption, either that he had set matters 
straight in Galatia by his Epistle, and had recently sent them 
paternal advice once more, or that 1. Cor. xvi. dates from 
before the Galatian catastrophe, and the orders in question 
were given somewhere during his second stay in Galatia. 
The latter possibility seems preferable, because we find no 
Galatian delegates mentioned either in Rom. xv. 26 or Acts 
xx. 4 (unless Gaius of Derbe is to be considered a Galatian), 



6.] THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS 77 

among the deputation which brings the Collection, and this 
cannot but reawaken our suspicion that the relations between 
Paul and the Galatians were at that time broken off a thing 
which was indeed bound to occur unless the Galatians had 
immediately renounced their Judaistic perverters. 

Under these circumstances, then, we are brought down to 
the second half of the stay at Ephesus. Moreover, we have 
not the slightest interest in referring this Epistle, which for 
mulates more sharply than any other the anti-Jewish and 
anti-legal ideas of the Apostle, to the earliest practicable 
period in his life. The Epistle, though surpassed by others in 
wealth of thought, would on account of its clearness and 
decision deserve to be regarded as the last testament of the 
Apostle to his Gentile churches on his departure from them. 
But, in dating the Epistle as late as the period of captivity 
in Home, the Fathers were only resting on the words of 
vi. 17, whereas Paul need not have waited till the time of his 
imprisonment to speak of the marks of the Lord Jesus which 
he bears in his body (cf. 2. Cor. xi. 23 fol.) ; still less, how 
ever, need we suppose that such words could only have been 
uttered in the first months after the sufferings he endured at 
Philippi in 52-3. Nor, finally, can any earlier date be ac 
cepted, such as the journey begun immediately after the meet 
ing of the Apostles at Jerusalem in 52, for in the seventeen 
years of Paul s missionary work described in i. 15-24 there 
was no room for the foundation of the Galatian churches, 
and, however briefly he expresses himself in i. 21, he could 
not have omitted to mention his appearance in Galatia, if 
that had indeed taken place before the events of ii. 1. To 
gather from the words of ii. 5 that the truth of the gospel 
might continue with you that this journey of Paul s to 
Jerusalem was necessitated precisely by the Judaistic agitation 
in Galatia, or that as soon as the Judaistic reaction arose Paul 
was alarmed for his Galatian children, is to overlook the fact 
that the Apostle s historical narrative received all its colour 
from the immediate interest of the narrator in it ; instead of 
his adversaries in Jerusalem he now has before his eyes the 

1 Vv. 1 and 5 especially, and cf. ver. 10. 



78 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

false brethren who had crept in privily beside him in Galatia : 
instead of those whom he had there protected, the threatened 
Galatians a subtle piece of tactics, and how intelligible from 
the psychological side ! He says ye, where properly we 
should stand, from the same tenderness of feeling as in iii. 26- 
29. It is true that he informs his readers of the proceedings 
of the Council of Jerusalem as of something quite new, but 
this does not prove that they had only just occurred, or that 
Paul had had no intercourse with his readers in the interval, for 
he wisely spoke of such things only in case of need, seeing how 
easily they might shake men s confidence in the truth of his 
Gospel. Nor is there any meaning in ii. 10 unless Paul had 
had some opportunity of proving his zeal since the time of 
the Council. In short, even if the Galatians are the Chris 
tians of Lycaonia, the Epistle cannot have been written as 
early as twelve months after the Council of the Apostles. 
True that Zahn places it before 1. Thessalonians ; but thanks 
to the immense apparatus of messages, corresponding plans, 
and missions to and fro which he constructs for us, he compels 
every calculating reader to postulate a longer interval than four 
to six months between the commencement of the European 
mission and the composition of our Epistle. Chronologically, 
Galatians is the third, perhaps the fourth, of the Epistles of 
Paul which have come down to us. 



7. The Two Epistles to the Corinthians 

[Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vols. v. and vi., by G. Heinrici (1896 and 
1900), and Holtzmann s Hand-Commentar ii. 1., in which 1. and 
2. Thess. and 1. and 2. Corinthians are taken by P. W. Schmiedel 
(1892). 

For commentaries on both Epistles cf. G. Heinrici, 1880-87 
(careful and independent). On 1. Cor., F. Godet, translated into 
German by K. Wunderlich, 1886-88 (containing delicate aesthetic 
and religious observation, but wanting in comprehension of the 
critical problems involved), and C. Holsten, in his Evangelium 
des Paulus (v. supra, p. 68). On 2. Cor., A. Klopper, 1874. Also 
innumerable monographs, among which J. F. Eabiger s Kritische 
Untersuchungen iiber den Inhalt der beiden Briefe des Apostels 



7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 79 

Paulus an die korinthische Gemeinde (1886) is especially valuable 
for its clear statement of the disputed points.] 

1. In order to understand Paul s Epistles to the Corinth 
ians it is necessary to form an adequate idea of the state of 
the Corinthian community and of its relations to Paul, a task 
which is made possible by certain passages in the Acts * and 
by various allusions scattered through the Pauline Epistles. 
On his first journey to Europe probably in the year 53- 
Paul, after passing through Macedonia and Athens, had 
arrived at Corinth, the capital of Achaia, a city which, stand 
ing as it did beside two seas, formed the connecting link be 
tween the commerce of the East and of the West. According 
to 2. i. 19 words which certainly have the appearance of 
a later gloss, though their substance is confirmed by 1. and 2. 
Thessalonians Silvanus and Timothy had helped him in his 
preaching, but even if we do not follow Acts xviii. 5 in 
assigning a later date for their arrival, Paul might still con 
sider himself 2 as the true father, founder and creator of the 
Corinthian church. It was by his means that the Gospel 
had first been brought to it, 3 and this is borne out by the 
fact that the firs tfruits of Achaia, the house of Stephanas 4 
which had deserved so well of the Corinthian Christians 
were among the few members of the community r> baptised by 
Paul himself. In weakness and in fear 6 he had entered 
upon his work in this strange city, and his success was great 
beyond his expectations 7 ; for from the very multiplicity of the 
factions that arose in the new community it is clear that it 
cannot have been a small one. It was composed for the 
most part of poor and uneducated folk, many of them, as 
might be expected, slaves s ; yet, as the presence of individual 
members of good position may be inferred even from this 
passage, so the existence of considerable difference of social 
standing among the Corinthian Christians <l follows from 
xi. 20 fol. According to 1. xii. 2, theyihad formerly been 
idolaters. It does not actually follow from 1. vii. 18 that 

1 xviii. 1-18, 27 fol., xix. 1, xx. 2 fol. 

* 1, iv. 15, Hi. 6-10 ; 2, xii. 14. 

1, ix. 1, 2 ; 2, iii. 3. 4 1, xvi. 15. * 1, i. 14-16. 

ii. 3. 1, i. 4-7. 1, i. 26-29. 



80 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

there was a small minority of Jews among them, but in itself 
this is quite probable. The Jewish couple, AquilaandPrisca, 1 
belonged for a time to the community, and their labours 
for the new creed among the circle to which they had 
access are not likely to have been entirely unavailing. 

In Acts xviii. 11, Paul is represented as having devoted 
more than a year and a half to the Corinthians, though 
probably with certain brief interruptions during which he 
sought to win converts to the new faith in other districts of 
Achaia. 2 Nevertheless the relations between them were not 
so intimate that he would have consented to accept support 
from them as he had from the Philippians : he maintained 
himself while at Corinth by his own labours/ 1 though he 
says 4 that this reserve on his part was not due to any want 
of love, but to prudence, that all occasion for malevolent sus 
picion might be avoided. He had then departed for a con 
siderable time, and in the interval a Jewish Christian from 
Alexandria, by name Apollos, 5 had laboured for the Gospel at 
Corinth not in antagonism to Paul, but probably in a more 
conspicuous manner," for we are told in 1. iii. 5-9 that the 
community had been increased through him. And notwith 
standing iii. 10-15 Paul speaks of this brother with great re 
spect again in iv. 6 and xvi. 12, where we learn that he had left 
Corinth for Ephesus and had there met Paul, but had not yet, 
at the time when Paul wrote, allowed himself to be persuaded 
to resume his work among the Corinthians. Through him Paul 
had of course obtained more recent news of his old community 
over-sea, and this had again been supplemented a little later 
by the arrival of certain members of t?he house of Chloe, 7 who 
seem to have removed from Corinth to Ephesus ; but, besides 
this, three members of the community, Stephanas, Fortu- 
natus and Achaicus, were at his side while he was writing 
the First Epistle, 8 men who had apparently been deputed to 
bear a letter 9 from the Corinthians to their Apostle, and who 
were probably charged at the same time with an urgent 

1 1, xvi. 19. - 1, i. 1 ; 2, i. l,xi. 10. 

3 1, iv. 12 ; ix. 6, 11-15, 18 ; 2, xi. 7-10. 4 2, xi. 12. 

* Cf. Acts xviii. 24 fol. " Cf. 1, i. 17, iv. 10 ; 2, xi. 0. 
7 1, i. 11. s xvi. 17 fol. " vii. i. 



7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 81 

invitation to Paul and Apollos to renew their visits to 
Corinth. But Paul may have heard much from other 
sources also as to the state of things at Corinth, 1 for the 
communication between that city and Ephesus was frequent 
and easy. And in vv. v. 9 and 11 of the First Epistle we 
hear, almost by chance, of an earlier letter, previous to 1. Cor 
inthians, addressed to the community, in which Paul had 
forbidden them to * keep company with fornicators ; but 
this warning had been misunderstood -perhaps by design 
and taken as though Paul had meant fornicators among the 
Gentiles and thus made an absolutely impracticable demand. 
The letter seems to have been a short one, and was certainly 
not written without urgent need ; but it has disappeared, 
together with the above-mentioned epistle from the Corinth 
ians, in which perhaps that foolish misconstruction was pleaded 
as their defence. 

2. Accordingly, we shall not have very far to seek for the 
causes which led Paul to write the so-called First Epistle to 
the Corinthians. He had been asked by the community for 
his pastoral advice on a series of questions of morality 
doubtless as to where the Christian conscience, for instance, 
should draw the line in the matter of the relations between 
the sexes ; how the Christian was to judge concerning the 
eating of meat sacrificed to idols (slSc0\60vTa), which had 
been sold in the market-place or set before him at a friend s 
table ; and finally as to the signs by which the true presence 
of the Spirit might be recognised, and as to the best way of 
insuring that all spiritual gifts, the utterances of religious 
enthusiasm, should be given due place and honour. Besides 
these, there may have been requests for information about 
Apollos and the matter of the Collection. Perhaps Paul was 
merely asked to give the messengers brief and verbal in 
structions on these points ; but fortunately for us, Paul 
neither could nor would settle questions of so much import 
ance with terse commands like those of 1. xvi. 1-4 and 12. 
He worked them out before the inquiring community, first ir 
himself and then in the Epistle, with all his peculiar energy 
of religious thought and all the delicacy of his moral sense ; 

1 1, v. i,xi. 18. 



82 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

and, in spite of his world-contemning idealism and his attach 
ment in principle to established custom, we may well admire 
his power of avoiding both extremes, and of distinguishing 
between matters of universal and eternal value and those of 
mere individual moment. 

But he also gave his flock instructions and commands 
for which he had not been expressly solicited. As in Thessa- 
lonica though in a different form - so in Corinth, doubts 
had been expressed as to the possibility of a resurrection from 
the dead ; and in many points, survivals of the old heathen 
life, as yet unsubdued, were still manifest. For instance, the 
prosperous members of the community fared sumptuously at 
the common evening meal, while the needy went hungry ; so 
little was the idea of brotherhood carried out in practice. 
They were not ashamed of carrying petty quarrels between 
members of the Church before a Gentile tribunal ; and one 
man actually lived in incest with his stepmother, and had 
not yet been cast out by the Church. In other ways again 
their enthusiasm passed the bounds of decency ; women 
wished to take an active part in the Church services, and 
appealed to the constraining force of that Spirit which had 
been bestowed also upon them, and even to the teaching of 
the Apostle himself there is neither man nor woman, but 
all are one in Jesus Christ. They discarded the veil, which 
was intended to protect them from insult, at the religious 
festivals ; and there was some danger lest certain gifts of the 
Spirit, such as speaking with tongues and prophecy, should 
be practised in mere levity by men of pushing ambition, to 
the detriment of true edification. And besides all this the 
Corinthians were full of self-satisfaction of a vanity which 
thought it could dispense with all external guidance. This 
may have become evident to Paul from the community s 
letter, even though we need not actually believe that it 
tried to call Paul to account, used a tone of disrespect, or 
was the work of one of his adversaries ; but it showed itself 
at any rate with peculiar offensiveness in an impertinent 
criticism of all Christian authorities. Greek party-spirit had 
infected even the young community, and Paul knew of at 
least four competing cliques in Corinth, each with its particular 



7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 83 

watchword and in i. 12 he does not even pretend to give a 
complete list ; they were the partisans of Paul, of Apollos, 
of Peter and of Christ. At present, apparently, this party- 
spirit was mainly nourished by a love of singularity, for Paul 
had not heard of any serious religious differences among 
them ; but deplorable results had not failed to ensue, as each 
faction could only assert its own superiority at the expense of 
the leaders of the others, and Paul himself had been subjected 
to criticism of the most hostile kind. 1 The party of Apollos 
probably boasted of their leader s cleverness and skill in 
argument, and no doubt it was in opposition to them that the 
Paulinists first arose ; another small body again probably 
composed of Jewish Christians lately arrived there, for it is 
surely a bold assumption to say that they consisted only of 
wandering Apostles from Palestine insisted that if an Apostle 
must needs be their champion, it was Peter, the Pillar of the 
Church, who should be so regarded. 

By the party of Christ we should probably understand 
taking Galatians into account not the apostles of a state of 
independence unfettered by any traditions, but persons who, 
like the false brethren or the emissaries of James mentioned 
in Galatians, 2 set their claims still higher, and, since Peter did 
not seem to them infallible enough, used Christ himself as 
their authority, acknowledging no other law than that which 
they had received from the Messiah in his own lifetime, or 
that which the glorified Messiah had revealed to them. Verse 
ix. 1 seems to be directed against the party of Peter, for Paul 
would not have insisted without reason upon the facts that 
he too was an Apostle, he too had seen the Lord Jesus ; and 
xi. 1 be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ 
may be aimed against the party of Christ. But, so far as 
Paul knew, it had not yet come to any actual attack upon the 
substance of his Gospel, and he looked upon the whole existence 
of these parties as stupidity rather than wickedness an 
attitude which would indeed be most astonishing if he had 
already had bitter experience of the disturbance of his Galatian 
communities by these apostles of Peter or of Christ. He 
could still praise the community for keeping the ordinances 
1 i.-iv. and ix. 1-13. * Gal. ii. 4, 12. 

e 2 



84 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

as I delivered them unto you. At present what troubled 
him most were the moral shortcomings which had arisen 
in consequence of this factiousness, and might give the 
enemies of the Gospel opportunity for exultation and scoffing. 
But he dreads a still more serious state of things ; in iii. 17 
he already speaks of a destroyer of the temple of God, 
and it is surely not without reference to Corinth that in 
iii. 10-15 he dwells upon those who built with worthless 
materials wood, hay and stubble upon the foundation 
Jesus Christ. This situation was grave enough in his eyes 
to induce him since he could not immediately visit it in 
person - to make an earnest appeal to the conscience of the 
community by letter. 

3. Paul took no trouble to weave the various threads of 
his Epistle into an artistic whole, but availed himself of the 
freedom of style allowed in letter-writing, and probably from 
chaps, vii. to xvi. followed the order, broadly speaking, of 
the epistle from Corinth. After the address and greeting * and 
the customary words of thanks, 4 he takes up the subject of 
the mischievous party-spirit of the Corinthians in a tone of 
great excitement, which, however, gives place towards the 
end to words of fatherly exhortation ; nor does the concluding 
verse What will ye? shall I come unto you with a rod, or 
in love and a spirit of meekness ? - express any rekindling 
of his wrath. Then in chaps, v. and vi. he pronounces 
a sentence of excommunication upon the fornicators, and once 
more defines the attitude which it were fitting that a Christian 
community should take up with regard to fornication, in the 
midst of which he inserts an appeal fi to the Christian sense 
of honour against going to law before a heathen judge. In 
chap. vii. he answers the question touching the relations 
between the sexes, and then that of the difference between 
duty and expediency, as arising out of the problem of meat 
sacrificed to idols 7 ; next he combats the innovating spirit of 
the women H ; and finally the abuses at the celebrations of the 
Lord s Supper. 9 The last two passages are closely connected 
with each other, as they both deal with offences against 

1 xi. 2. - iv. 18 fol. :i i. 1-3. 

4 i. 4-7. 5 i. 10-iv. 21. vi. 1-11. 

viii.-xi. 1. s xi. 2-16. xi. 17-81. 



7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 85 

propriety at religious gatherings. The transition is easy 
to chaps, xii.-xiv., in which spiritual gifts are judged 
according to a standard which the lofty utterance of chap, 
xiii. a Canticle, as it were, in praise of love expresses in 
so exalted a way. In chap. xv. he lays down and defends a 
part of his Gospel not generally understood at Corinth the 
certainty of a resurrection from the dead, as the necessary 
consequence of the rising again of Jesus. Finally, in 
chap. xvi. there are directions as to the mode of gathering 
the collection for the poor ; plans of travel ; information as 
to the approaching visit of Timothy ; all winding up with 
advice after the manner of 1. Thessalonians v., 1 with greetings, 
and a conclusion from Paul s own hand. 

Here it might be well to say that the idea of 1. Corinthians 
being a mere conglomerate of disjointed utterances upon the 
most various subjects should be absolutely rejected. The ques 
tion of incest and fornication, 2 for instance, had been led up to 
by the emphasising of Paul s paternal right of chastisement : 
here was a case in which strict chastisement was a duty ; 
in chap, vi., again, we have the discussion upon judging, 
because in v. 12 Paul had exhorted his readers to exercise 
judgment, while chap. vii. is also the natural development of 
the ethical problems touched upon in v. and vi. 

4. Nothing can be gathered from the address as to the 
circumstances under which the Epistle was written. Paul s 
coadjutor in the task, Sosthenes, who can scarcely be identified 
with the ruler of the Synagogue of Acts xviii. 17, is other 
wise unknown to us ; he must have been one of Paul s 
helpers, who possessed probably the same sort of authority 
with the Corinthians, and for the same reasons, as Timothy 
or Silvanus. The latter we do not find in Paul s vicinity after 
the period of activity in Corinth, and Timothy had already 
been sent by Paul to Corinth, 3 probably before the letter 
from the Corinthians had reached its destination. He was 
to return, according to Paul s wish, straight to him from 
Corinth ; but probably he had had other tasks to discharge 
as well, and had gone to Achaia by way of Macedonia, so that 
Paul s Epistle, though despatched later, may have arrived in 
Corinth earlier than he. It was entrusted, we may suppose 

1 Vv. 12, 13. 2 Chaps, v. and vi. 3 iv. 17, xvi. 10 fol 



86 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

to the three representatives of the community who had 
delivered the Corinthians epistle into Paul s hands, and these 
would have performed both journe3 r s by the shortest route, i.e. 
by sea. The Epistle was written from Ephesus, 1 where Paul 
was surrounded by a considerable staff of brethren, including 
Apollos. He can send greetings from the Churches of Asia, 3 
and must therefore have been working in the district for some 
time 4 ; while according to xv. 32, where he speaks of fighting 
with wild beasts, he had already experienced persecution at 
Ephesus ; a few years also seem to have elapsed since his 
departure from Corinth, 5 and there is nothing to indicate that 
since his foundation of the community Paul had paid it 
another visit in fact verse ix. 18 almost excludes the possi 
bility. And since he speaks of a possible wintering at Corinth, 6 
and intends to make the Jewish feast of Pentecost the latter 
limit of his stay in Ephesus, the Epistle must have been 
written in the spring. If we were quite sure that Paul 
kept to the plan of operations outlined in xvi. 1, 3 and 5, we 
should certainly be obliged to assign 1. Corinthians to the end 
of his sojourn at Ephesus, and in that case scarcely enough 
space would be left for Galatians between the despatch of 
1. Corinthians and Paul s hasty departure. But Paul altered 
his plans of travel again and again sometimes of his own 
accord and sometimes of necessity (as indeed in Ephesus 
itself, according to Acts xix. 10, not long afterwards) and 
thus the arguments brought forward on p. 76 still hold good, 
and 1. Corinthians may be assigned with much probability to 
the year 56. 

5. The other Epistle of Paul to the Corinthian communit} 
that we still possess it is about two-thirds the length of the 
First, and even more clearly than the First includes within 
its scope the Christians scattered through Achaia is the most 
problematical of all the Pauline Epistles. Its arrangement 
is in some respects exceedingly simple, in others all but inexplic 
able. The three main divisions, chapters i.-vii., viii.-ix., and 
x.-xiii., are marked off unmistakably from one another, even 

1 xvi. 8. - xvi. 20, and cf. Gal. i. 2. 

3 xvi. 19. 4 Cf. verse 9. 

5 Acts xviii. 18, and cf. 1. Cor. iv. 18. 6 xvi. 6. 



7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 87 

by their tone. The smaller middle part deals entirely with 
the matter of the Collection. Here the Apostle seeks to 
stimulate the zeal of those he is addressing both with 
earnestness and love ; but, though the matter is so dear to his 
own heart, he is not sure of its reception by the Corinthians, 
and hence arise the numerous repetitions and occasionally 
turgid sentences. The difficulty of making a clear translation 
of these chapters, in spite of their exceedingly simple subject- 
matter, is due to this condition of embarrassment under 
which they were penned. Then, however, with the abruptest 
change of front, Paul turns from chap. x. onwards to 
defending himself against certain persons at Corinth who 
had sought to vindicate their disobedience by the most 
malignant slander. Their accusations are set forth with a 
running commentary in chap. x. ; in xi. 1-15 Paul proceeds 
to a vehement attack upon these deceitful false apostles, and 
further draws a comparison remarkable for its bitter 
irony as well as for its moving pathos between his own 
promises and performance and theirs ; however painful such 
boasting may be to him, he dare not injure his cause out of 
false modesty. Finally, he implores his readers in a some 
what quieter tone 2 to settle their most serious differences 
and complete the victory of truth before his approaching third 
visit to Corinth. The abruptness of the three concluding 
verses, xiii. 11-13, is especially remarkable when contrasted 
with their parallels in the First Epistle. 3 

In the first part, however (chaps, i. vii.), which of course 
begins with address and greeting, Paul passes by an almost im 
perceptible transition from his thanksgiving to a description of 
his recent sad experiences and to a discussion of the differences 
subsisting between himself and the Corinthians. He first blesses 
God 4 for the consolation -to which the Corinthians themselves 
had contributed by their sympathetic prayers on his behalf- 
granted him for the terrible experiences he had undergone 
in Asia. He had almost ceased to count upon their sympathy, 
and the fear of losing their hearts had tortured him more 
during those dark days than all his external calamities. How 

1 xi. 16-xii. 18. 2 xii. 19-xiii. 10. 

3 1, xvi. 13-24. i. 3-11. 



88 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

deeply the confidence between the Apostle and the community 
had been shaken can be seen from vv. i. 11, 12, 17, where 
Paul defends himself against the charges of insincerity and 
untrustworthiness that had been brought against him. He 
had only given up his promised visit to Corinth, he declares, 
out of forbearance towards the community, and because the 
letter he wrote them in its stead had had the desired effect, 
since the community had corrected the man who had sinned 
against him. Now, however, after punishment, they were 
free to forgive him. He, Paul, had not been seeking his own 
honour in the whole affair, but had let himself be guided by 
his love for the Corinthians, which had driven him irresistibly 
towards them, even from his fruitful field of work in the 
Troad. Then, with true loftiness of tone, he continues his 
defence ] against the charge of vain and conceited arrogance, 
in such a manner that the sublime truth and force of his 
gospel are set before the very eyes of his readers. 2 He 
declares himself the Apostle of the new covenant, the covenant 
of the Spirit, of freedom and of glory ; he dwells upon the 
fact that all his trouble and weakness have only increased in 
him the certainty of eternal life and the longing for home, 
together with the overwhelming power of the Holy Spirit, 3 and 
he insists that his labours have been solely devoted to the 
reconciliation of mankind with God, and the founding of a 
new creation. 1 Upon this follows, by way of epilogue, an 
earnest exhortation to his readers to show forth this newness 
in their conduct a newness having no further connection 
with the old life r> and finally a hearty expression of his 
restored confidence towards them ; for the good news which 
Titus had brought with him of the repentance of the Corinth 
ians had comforted his mind and confirmed him most 
joyfully in his ancient good opinion of their disposition. 

2. Corinthians is, strictly speaking, the most personal of 
the extant Epistles of Paul. Apart from its business discus 
sions it is entirely occupied with self-defence and controversy ; 
but yet no other is richer in profound teaching as to the 
foundation, the aims and moral effects of his gospel ; the 

1 From chapter iii. onwards. iii. 1-iv. 6. 

3 iv. 7-v. 10. 4 v. 11-vi. 10. vi. 11-vii. 1. 



7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 

individuality of the Apostle shows itself here in its most many- 
sided form : in all its burning love, its bitter wrath, its con 
siderate wisdom in the direction of earthly affairs, and its all- 
forgetting absorption in the mysteries of the other world. 
Above all, we are left with the impression that this man and 
his religion are one. 

6. The circumstances under which the Epistle was com 
posed appear at first sight to be easily ascertainable. Paul 
had been forced to leave Asia, i.e. Ephesus, under imminent 
danger of death, and had then turned his steps northwards, 
waiting awhile in Troas for the return of Titus, whom he 
had sent to Corinth, but finally going on to meet the latter in 
Macedonia. 1 Here he had happily fallen in with him and 
had received the most cheering reports of Corinth from his 
lips. 2 At the moment of writing he was gathering in the 
money collected in Macedonia to which he hopes consider 
able additions may be made in Corinth 3 and was intending 
to reach that city shortly, accompanied by certain Macedonian 
Christians, 4 there to receive the sums his readers had col 
lected. In order to encourage the energetic prosecution of 
this Collection he had sent a few trusted friends before him to 
Corinth, with Titus again at their head, 5 and these had probably 
taken charge of his Epistle, which he had written in haste at 
their urgent request. He mentions his approaching visit again 
a little further on. 6 His companion in writing the Epistle was 
Timothy, whom according to Acts xix. 22 he had sent into 
Macedonia before his own departure from Ephesus. All this 
agrees admirably with the situation described in Acts xx. 2 ; 
the Epistle was written a few weeks or months before Paul s 
last appearance in Corinth, whence, it will be remembered, 
he started on his circuitous 7 journey to Jerusalem, gather 
ing in contributions to the Collection on his way the last 
journey that he was destined to undertake as a free man. 
2. Corinthians must, then, be assigned to a date some nine 
months previous to his arrest : that is, in the autumn of the 
year 57. 

1 i. 8-10 ; ii. 12 fol. 2 vii. 5-7. 3 viii. 6 fol. 

ix. 4. * viii. 6, 16-24, ix. 3-5. 

> xii. 14, 20. fol., xiii. 1 fol. and 10. Acts xx. 3 fol. 



90 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

7. It is also easy to give a general answer to the question 
of the occasion or object of the Epistle. Paul had just 
received unequivocal proof from Titus that the majority of 
the Corinthian Christians recognised Paul s rank as an 
Apostle, and his right to be regarded by them as a father, and 
that they regretted all expressions to the contrary. Paul 
now assures them in the warmest way that his feelings were 
the same, and that he bore them a love which took thought only 
for their welfare. This alone would have been too much to 
entrust to a verbal message, but he \vas besides extremely 
anxious to stimulate the ardour of the Achaians in the matter 
of the Collection, and, above all, he had to settle his account 
with that small body of implacable opponents who were still 
carrying on their agitations in Corinth. By refuting each of 
their charges separately he must prevent any repetition of a 
situation put an end to with so much difficulty, in which a 
community assumed the position of judge over its own Apostle, 
putting him as it were on trial. 

But many difficulties present themselves as soon as we 
attempt to distinguish clearly the lines of connection between 
the First and Second Epistles, and to investigate more 
minutely what had actually passed between Paul and the 
Corinthian Church to make the explanations of the Second 
Epistle necessary. Nor is there anything else within the 
limits of our subject which has called forth so bewildering a 
variety of attempts at solution as have these questions. It is 
bad enough, to begin with, that it should be thought necessary 
or possible to solve them all. Two facts, however, are placed 
beyond all doubt : first, that the Second Epistle was written 
later than the First, for the party divisions treated in the First 
as relatively harmless appear from the Second to have well- 
nigh severed the bond between Paul and the Corinthians. It 
is true that we hear nothing more of the earlier party names, 
of the factions of Apollos, Peter, and Paul, but the opposition 
of the party of Christ, supported from outside, 1 had proved 
to be all the more formidable ; it was more dangerous even 
than the Judaistic movement in Galatia, for its leaders did 
not come forward with the special demands of Judaism, 

1 iii. 1, x. 12, 18, xi. 4. 



7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 91 

but merely strove to drive the hated Paul out of Corinth by 
means of a campaign of slander. He was a braggart, it was 
said ; he walked in the flesh ; he lacked the calling and 
power of an Apostle, and played the Evangelist out of greed. 
The other fact is equally indisputable that before this 
Epistle Paul had addressed yet another, of which we now hear 
for the first time, to the Corinthians. 1 This last had been 
written out of much anguish of heart with many tears and 
with the object of calling forth the sorrow and repentance of his 
readers. He had demanded satisfaction in it for an insult 
offered him by an unnamed member of the community. 2 
Subsequently he had become extremely uneasy as to the effect 
which his very imperious 3 communication might have had 
upon its readers 4 ; but at last Titus arrived with the news of 
a happy result 5 ; the great majority of the Corinthians had 
punished the offender, 6 and had declared their loyalty to Paul. 
With great joy he welcomes their surrender which, by the 
way, according to vii. 7, they could hardly have expressed to 
him by letter and now he asks them himself to pardon the 
wrong-doer and to consider the affair at an end. To identify 
this offender (aSiKijaas) who had not, as Paul insists, caused 
him personal sorrow 7 with the incestuous person of 1. v. would 
be almost as monstrous, when we consider the mildness with 
which Paul treats him, as to identify the First Epistle, or 
even the epistle mentioned in 1. v. 9, with the stern letter 
described in the Second. There is nothing in the First Epistle 
which corresponds to what we must needs imagine as the 
contents of the letter written with many tears ; and it is im 
possible that Paul should suddenly have become uneasy, a year 
or two after, as to the effect which a letter written before 1. and 
answered by the community with perfect calmness before 1., 
might have had. I am unable to discover in 1. Corinthians 
this mighty wrath flashing out at all points, this forced calm 
which wrung tears from Paul s deeply sensitive nature, this 
most bitter pain ; and if the First Epistle were written in 
heaviness, what epithet must we apply to the Second, which, 
though written in joy, has its real outbreaks of fierce anger ? 

1 ii. 3, 4, 9, vii. 7-12. 2 ii. 5, vii. 12. x. 9-11. 

4 ii. 13, vii. 5. s Ch. vii. 6 ii. 5 fol., vii. 11. ii. 5. 



92 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. j. 

Of course a spirit of determined malignity might so distort 
even an epistle which, like 1. Corinthians, says so much 
that is loving and good of its recipients, that its pages might 
appear to teem with insults, but even if we do attribute 
such malice to the Corinthians, it would still be strange 
that, though Paul had immediately had pricks of conscience 
on account of this very moderately written Epistle, he should 
within a few months afterwards have ventured to address a 
document so far more violent as was the Second Epistle to the 
same newly pacified community. It is not so bad, however, 
to ascribe to him this act of folly as to hold him capable of 
a shuffling diplomacy dictated by boundless opportunism, of 
assuming an air of indifference in the Second Epistle ! towards 
the incestuous person of the First 2 of saying he had merely 
wished to test the obedience of the community and its zeal on 
his behalf merely because his judgment of the offender in 
the earlier Epistle had not given satisfaction. 

No, between the First and Second, Paul had had an 
extremely painful dispute with the Corinthians, and betioeen 
these two, as well as before the First, an epistle loas sent by 
Paul to the Corinthian Church which has not found its way 
into the Canon. The self-esteem of the community was no 
doubt very early concerned in the suppression of both these 
documents, which were not exactly flattering to their recipients, 
and probably only possessed a temporary value. And in the 
case of the second this would doubtless have been the wish of 
Paul himself. But where and how did this offence against 
the Apostle on the part of a Corinthian Christian take place ? 
What the wrong consisted in does not interest us so much ; it 
was of course connected with the movement of personal 
persecution which had soon envenomed the party spirit of the 
city ; and we know already what unworthy things were 
publicly said there, by the party of Christ, about the de 
tested Paul. 3 In this case we must assume that the attacks 
had taken a peculiarly coarse and insolent form. But if only 
we knew whether Paul had experienced them in person, or 
had merely heard of them from others ! In the former case 
we must assume a visit of the Apostle to Corinth which 

1 Chs. ii. and vii. - Ch. v. 3 x. 7, xi. 13, 23. 



7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 93 

the Acts do not mention, and, moreover, one which took 
place after the writing of the First Epistle ; for that 
letter refers only to Paul s earliest pioneering labours in 
Achaia. In spite of the silence of the Acts indeed, we are 
forced to recognise three sojourns of the Apostle in Corinth, 
by Paul s own plain statements in 2. xii. 14 and xiii. 1, 
according to which his approaching visit would be the third. 
Besides these statements, the words of 2. ii. 1 can only be 
understood to refer to a second visit which Paul looks 
back upon with horror ; and if it was one performed in 
heaviness, the experience denoted by the same expression in 
2. ii. 5, may very well have occurred during its course. Such 
a visit, with results unsatisfactory to Paul, we should also 
infer although without his direct testimony from the words 
of x. 1, 10 and xi. 21, for it could not have been in reference 
to his first brilliant activity in Corinth that his opponents 
would have pointed to the contrast between the weightiness 
of his Epistles and the weakness of his bodily presence. 
i. 15 is no argument to the contrary, for Paul s abandoned 
purpose was, not to give the Corinthians the benefit of a 
second visit, but to combine his journeys to Achaia and 
Macedonia in such a way that Corinth might twice receive 
the blessing of his presence. This plan, moreover, which 
certainly does not correspond with that of 1. xvi. 5, might 
just as well have held the field for a time after the despatch 
of 1. Corinthians as before it. 

Thus the course of affairs between the First and Second 
Epistles may be imagined as something like this : the 
First Epistle had had no effect in Corinth on the party 
divisions, and Timothy would have informed Paul on his 
return thence that the anti-Pauline agitation, grasping at 
every pretext, had made formidable progress and that he had 
stood perplexed and impotent before it. This was the reason 
why Timothy was not made use of again for missionary work 
in Corinth. Paul, however, believed that he himself would 
produce a greater effect, and sailed across the short stretch 

1 And in this confidence I was minded to come unto you before, that ye 
might have a second benefit : and by you to pass into Macedonia, and again 
from Macedonia to come unto you. 



94 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

from Ephesus to Achaia, perhaps without warning ; but he 
failed to strike the right note, had to put up with a personal 
insult from one of the members of the community, and very 
soon travelled back again, grieved to the heart, and, in the 
opinion of his opponents, completely driven off the field. He 
may have waited in vain for some time for some intimation 
of repentance on the part of his Corinthian children ; later 
tidings were probably highly unsatisfactory, and he then 
wrote that third letter in which he sharply lashed the 
ingratitude, disobedience and immorality of the Corinthians 
and offered them a choice between submission ! and a final 
rupture. The delicate task of conveying this letter and 
afterwards of bringing those to whom it was addressed into a 
responsive frame of mind, he entrusted to Titus, who was as 
yet unknown to the Corinthians. 2 The results of this man s 
judicious and energetic proceedings :! were that the greater 
part of the community complied with Paul s demands 
which are unknown to us in detail and repelled the 
calumnies of the followers of Christ, while Titus could even 
successfully introduce the matter of the Collection without 
further delay. 5 

Of course he did not accomplish all this in a day, and his 
stay in Corinth was prolonged beyond his expectation. When 
he had started on his journey Paul was still at Ephesus, but 
was intending to depart shortly and to go through the 
Troad to Macedonia ; his route having been arranged so 
accurately with Titus beforehand that the latter could not 
fail to meet the Apostle at some point on his return from 
Corinth. The earlier plans announced by Paul in i. 15, 
however, according to which he thought of going from Asia 
through Corinth to Macedonia and from there back again to 
Corinth, cannot in this case have been communicated to the 
Corinthians by Titus or by the intermediate epistle, for that 
epistle had probably served as a substitute for the first of 
these two visits ; and we know that complaints of the 
Apostle s vacillation had already been made to Titus.* 5 Paul 
had rather promised something of this kind to the Corinthians 

1 2, ii. 9, x. 6. " 2, vii. 14. 3 vii. 15. 

4 ii. 5 fol. s viii. 6. 6 i. 13, 15 fol. 



7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 95 

during his second visit, or through some intermediate channel 
at the time of it. That he had formed exactly the same 
plans in the First Epistle l as we may gather from the 
Second 2 that he actually carried out at last is a mere coinci 
dence : he was forced by the stress of circumstances to revert 
to the original plan of 1. xvi. in spite of a more recently 
arranged modification intended especially for the advantage 
of Corinth. This modification was of later date than 1. xvi., 
for according to 2. ii. 1 Paul would have kept to it had not 
his determination not to visit Corinth again in heaviness, 
but to wait for her submission, obliged him to make a direct 
journey to Macedonia. The most probable hypothesis is 
that in bidding farewell to his friends after his prematurely 
curtailed second visit he had promised them compensation in 
the form of two visits at a later time. And we know also 
from Acts xx. 3, that Paul was again unable to perform the 
Collection journey to Jerusalem direct from Corinth by sea, 
as he had desired, but that he first travelled northwards once 
more to Macedonia and then along the eastern side of the 
jiEgean Sea southwards to Palestine. 

If we consider the multitude of events which would thus 
have taken place between 1. and 2. Corinthians, we must 
divide the two Epistles from one another by about a year and 
a half, and if 1. was written in the spring of 56, 2. must be 
assigned to the autumn of 57, and so on ; for only thus 
would there be time for the intermediate visit and letter and 
the long interval of waiting. It is true that Paul could not 
in this case have left Ephesus at Pentecost in the same year 
in which he wrote the words of 1. xvi. 8, but must have 
extended his activity there for another twelve months ; but 
this is attested by his own words in 2. viii. 10 and ix. 2, 
where we hear that the Corinthians had shown goodwill 
towards the matter of the Collection since the previous year 
(airb Trspva-i). But the starting-point of their goodwill, in 
spite of the agreement between viii. 10 and viii. 6 (jrpo- 
svapxjccrQai} could not have been the appearance of Titus, but 
the zeal of the Corinthians for the Collection attested in or 
aroused by the words of 1. xvi. 1. 

1 xvi. 5 fol. - 2, i. 23, ii. 1, 12 fol., ix. 5. 



96 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CKAP. I. 

8. Just as the Church could not admit that at least one 
Epistle of Paul s to Corinth and another addressed to him 
thence had disappeared and therefore attempted to make up 
for them by a forged correspondence, which, arising out of 
the Acts of Paul, was preserved both in Latin and 
Armenian and enjoyed full recognition in the Armenian 
Bible for 1000 years so modern criticism thinks itself 
bound to discover considerable portions at least of the lost 
epistles to the Corinthians within the limits of the canonical 
pair. The most recent critics have set themselves to this 
productive task with amazing energy, contending, for in 
stance, that relics of the earliest Corinthian Epistle are to be 
found in several passages scattered through what is now the 
First, 1 and, naturally, this has not been accomplished with 
out once more attacking the genuineness of individual 
sentences. An hypothesis which assumes that the passage 
vi. 14 to vii. 1 of the Second Epistle is such a relic has 
indeed gained the approval of a much wider circle. Here 
the admission that there are at any rate no grounds for 
regarding these verses as non-Pauline is satisfactory ; a few 
\sy6/j,va of the sort contained in the paragraph 
Bs/V/ap, /ZHTO^T;, av^wvricns^ crvjKarddscris, 
are of no importance, especially in an epistle so 
rich in peculiarities as 2. Corinthians, while the use of a-apt; 
in the sense of the outer man in vii. 1 has good parallels 
elsewhere. 2 Nor are the tone and ideas by any means 
un-Pauline. On the other hand, it will not be denied that 
the context would not suffer by the rejection of these verses ; 
vii. 2 would follow excellently upon vi. 13, and the rejected 
passage would be perfectly appropriate in a letter such as 
that described in 1. v. 9-13. But what is most convenient is 
not necessarily right ; it is not impossible that vi. 14 fol. 
should follow upon vi. 12 and 13 any more than that vii. 2 fol. 
should follow upon vii. 1. The entreaty to break with 
unbelief and all its works is fully prepared for, for instance, 

1 E.g., iii. 10-28, vii. 17-24, ix. 1-x. 22, x. 25-30, xii. 20 fol., xiv. 33 6 -30. 
xv. 1-55 and 57 fol. 

- iii. 3, iv. 10-12, v. 16 ; Gal. iv. 13 ; and compare especially the relief 
for our spirit of 2, ii. 13 and the relief of our flesh of 2, vii. 5. 



THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 97 

by v. 10 and vi. 1 and 2, and the somewhat violent transition 
to this fundamental moral demand may be psychologically 
explained by the Apostle s anxiety lest in this letter, occupied 
as it was with assurances of friendship, self-justification and 
efforts for the Collection, the most important point the 
edification of a community little accustomed as yet to 
walking in the Spirit, but rather in need of a strict 
discipline should not be sufficiently emphasised. 

Almost more misleading than this suggestion about 2. vi. 
14 and the following verses is the so-called hypothesis of the 
Four Chapter Epistle, which was first put forward by A. 
Hausrath. According to this theory, chaps, x.-xiii. are to be 
severed from chaps, i.-ix. in the form of a separate epistle, 
and are to represent that intermediate letter mentioned 
in chaps, ii. and vii. ; it can scarcely be disputed, indeed, that 
chaps, i.-ix. as well as x.-xiii. could each constitute a com 
plete epistle in themselves except that the ending of the one 
(and might not ix. 15 perhaps be sufficient ending?) and 
the address of the other had been struck out and the 
vehemence and sharpness with which Paul attacks his 
readers after the conciliatory explanations of i.-vii. and the 
friendly requests of viii. and ix. are certainly startling. Nor 
does he confine himself by any means to dealing with the 
agitators, the Christ party ; he appears indignant with the 
disobedience of the community, which he distinguishes 
clearly from the few against whom a life and death 
struggle must be waged ; he fears that it will let it 
self be perverted 2 ; he takes note of its want of firmness 
towards the calumniators 3 ; he is even prepared for an 
unsatisfactory reception of his apologia* Nor does he 
expect to find the community hi anything but an unsatis 
factory state," and this corresponds ill with the self-con 
gratulatory tone of chaps, i. and vii. The Corinthians 
seem to have demanded a proof that Christ was speaking by 
him,* and to have formally assumed towards him the position 
of Judge. 7 Such a letter might well be said to have been 

1 x. 2, 6, 7, 12, etc. - xi. 3. 3 xi. 20. 

4 xii. 19. * xii. 20. * xiii. 3. 

7 xiii. 5. 

H 



98 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. J. 

written with many tears, ] and to be calculated to test their 
obedience - ; and that an epistle containing threats like those 
of xii. 20 fol. and xiii. 2 (vv. i. 23 and ii. 1 would in this 
case sound like a reference to xiii. 10) should have called 
forth sorrow :; from its readers, may be easily understood. 
The wrong-doer who must have been spoken of in the 
intermediate letter 4 seemed also to be present in the Four 
Chapter Epistle ; he was the such a one of x. 7-11, and 
he was referred to in xi. 13 and x. 11 by the same indefinite 
word (o TOIOVTOS) as was used for the wrong-doer of ii. 6. 
And no doubt remained as to the nature of the wrong after 
the words of x. 10. 

Yes, only it is a pity that the similar o TOLOVTOS of xii. 
2, 5 refers to Paul ; that worse calumnies than those pro 
ceeding from the anonymous person of x. 10 were according 
to x. 2 hurled against him by many persons ; that the 
constant alternation between singular and plural in his 
attack on the outside apostles " excludes the idea that the 
Apostle s wrath was here chiefly directed against a definite 
person for a piece of particular insolence ; and that the man 
who trusteth in himself that he is Christ s 6 (and who, 
moreover, cannot be identified with the he that cometh of 
verse xi. 4), had evidently forced himself in from outside and 
was not a member of the community, so that he could hardly 
be treated as, according to ii. 6, the wrong-doer had been. 
The forgiveness which Paul had desired for this man, and 
of which he had assured him on his own part, he could 
not have granted to an enemy of the Cross of Christ, and 
still less could he have made use of the reason furnished 
by verse ii. 10 in such a case ; and if the wrong-doer belonged 
to the category of agitators described in chaps, x. fol. the 
statement of the object of the Epistle as given in vii. 12 
would be flagrantly untrue. Nor does Paul make any 
demands concerning an offender in these chapters, as accord 
ing to ii. 5 fol. and vii. 12 he must have done in the inter 
mediate letter. Another forcible argument is that any hostile 



2 ii. !>. 3 vii. 8-11. vii. 12, ii. 5 fol. 

* xi. 5-xii. 11 ; cf. Gal. v. 10 beside v. 12 and iv. 17. 
" 7 .a .4. 



7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 99 

expressions as to the harshness of his epistles in contradis 
tinction to the weakness of his bodily presence would certainly 
have been explicable after the arrival of such a letter of punish 
ment (chaps, x.-xiii.) of which he wrote several in the 
course of his life but not before : not, that is to say, simply 
on the ground of 1. Corinthians and the pre-canonical epistle, 
which certainly cannot have bristled with threats. Finally, 
verse xii. 18 is decisive. Here we are told that Paul had 
sent Titus and a brother to Corinth, and these words, were it 
only for the verbs used, viz. Trapsica^sa-a, which corresponds 
to viii. 6 and 17, avvaTrscrTsiKa, with which compare viii. 18 
and 22, and (rvvzirs^a^v can only refer to the second depu 
tation mentioned in chapter viii. as having already started. 2 
Even if they referred, however, to the mission of Titus, 
which had just reached a happy termination in Macedonia, 
an epistle which treated that event as past cannot have been 
the intermediate letter of which Titus was himself the 
bearer, or which rendered the intervention of Titus necessary. 
Hence it would be more reasonable to employ the 
hypothesis of the Four Chapter Epistle in such a way as to 
assume yet a fifth epistle to the Corinthians, one written after 
chaps. 2. i.-ix. and when the deputation for the Collection 
had already arrived at Corinth :1 ; in that case we should 
be free to place Paul s second visit between the two divisions 
of the epistle, and should understand why this visit had been 
made so prominent in the last four chapters only, while it 
would not be absolutely necessary for the comprehension 
of i.-ix. But such a visit could only have occurred as a 
useless dt tour from Macedonia, for Paul could not while at 
Ephesus have asked so confidently : Did Titus take any 
advantage of you ? and we may not place it too close to the 
third and last, because of vv. xii. 20 fol. Moreover, the 

1 x. 1, 9, 10 and 11. 

2 That here only one brother is spoken of, while in chapter viii. it seems 
that two were accompanying Titus, is no argument for a different situation, 
since Paul may well have felt himself responsible only for that one whom he 
had himself tested (viii. 22) and had himself despatched to Corinth, while the 
other appears rather as joining the party on his own initiative, as representative 
of the Churches. 

3 xii. 17 fol. xii. IP. 

H 2 



100 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

relations between Paul and the Corinthian Church become a 
psychologically insoluble riddle, if Paul had not only abandoned 
the plans of chaps, viii. and ix. yet again, but had also 
paid a visit to Corinth after the reconciliation effected by 
Titus, solely in order to leave an impression of weakness 
behind him, to threaten measures of punishment at his next 
coming, and to have insults flung in his face. Thus by his 
ill-judged appearance he would have completely ruined a 
delicate matter which had been running quite smoothly : and 
this again would be hardly consistent with the note of confi 
dence struck in various places throughout these chapters. 

We should do well, then, to accept these four chapters, on 
the evidence of tradition, as written contemporaneously with 
2. Cor. i.-ix., for they can neither be of earlier nor of later 
date, nor could anyone but Paul have written them. To us, 
indeed, some things in them seem strange : the rapid change 
in tone and attitude strikes us as astonishing : but then we 
have a far more imperfect knowledge of the situation of the 
writer than the earliest readers of the Epistle, by whom alone 
Paul desired to be understood. 

* In any case, Paul would certainly not have dictated so 
long a letter all at once ; and often a change of tone or an 
imperfect connection may be explained by that alone. It is 
possible, even, that there may have been an interval of some 
length between the beginning and the completion of the 
letter, that it was interrupted by the hasty despatch of Titus, 
and that after the departure of this gentle mediator resent 
ment obtained the ascendency in Paul s mind. Nor, perhaps, 
had even Titus had nothing but good news to report, and it is 
possible that Paul had but just received tidings from another 
source of new and base attacks upon him by the men of 
Christ. But indeed we have no need for such explanatory 
hypotheses. Paul had probably intended from the outset to 
deal in succession with the three subjects which now filled his 
mind whenever he thought of Corinth first with the positive 
and then with the negative. In the first place it would 
certainly be expedient to give a gracious answer to the 
repentant advances of the community wisdom and love both 

1 x. 2, 5, 6,xi. 1 fol., xii. 20 tol., xiii. 10-12. 



$ 7.] THE TWO EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS 101 

pointed to such a course. But not only do the digressions of 
chaps, ii.-vi. prove how much Paul thought his readers still 
in need of deeper instruction and more careful guidance ; it is 
distinctly stated here, and not only in chaps, x.-xiii., that but 
a partial result had as yet been attained, and that the com 
munity was far from having purged itself of all distrust of its 
Apostle. There are a large number of passages which 
reveal definite grievances and anxieties on Paul s part 
with regard to the Corinthians ; and even in the matter of 
the Collection he is obliged to approach them with great 
caution and formality, whereas with the Macedonians re 
straint rather than encouragement had been needed. And 
since he was writing to the whole community and not to the 
submissive majority only,- since he desired to find all clear 
on his arrival, and not to be hindered in his pastoral labours 
by disputes with the lying apostles, at whose door lay all the 
strife, or with their thoughtless followers, he must and would 
express his attitude towards these rebellious persons and 
their doctrines finally and in writing. And who will wonder 
that a man of Paul s stamp should again have struck a 
harsher note than before towards the whole community, as 
he recalled how easily the Corinthians had suffered them 
selves to be imposed upon concerning him with what in 
constancy, shallowness and at the same time arrogance they 
had behaved ? 

But, however bitterly he writes in these passages, it had 
not been his intention to do so ; his admonition was to have 
been given in meekness and gentleness, 3 since he was 
already certain of the complete rout of his antagonists. 4 It 
is, however, only at the end " that he recovers once more the 
tranquillity which he had not always been able to maintain 
in his argument with such adversaries. For our part, we 
may perhaps think that he would have done better to place 
the controversial part at the beginning of his letter, and to 
have left his readers with the final impression that wherever 
there was any desire to make peace with him, he on his side 

1 E.g., i. 12 fol. (ver. 14, airb ntpovs), L 23 fol., ii. 5, 9, 17, iii. 1, 5, iv. 2, 5, 7 
fol., v. 11 fol. 20, vi. 1, 3, 4-13, vii. 2 fol., viii. 22, ix. 3. 

2 ii. 6. 3 x. 1. 4 x. 2-6. * xiii. 6-13. 



102 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

was ready to give any proof of his hearty willingness to forgive 
and to trust again. But he had good reason for his pro 
cedure. Chaps, i.-ix. seem to have been written in Timothy s 
name as well as his own, while chaps, x.-xiii. were meant 
to be understood as spoken by himself alone. The avros Se 
syto QaOXos of x. 1, does not stand in contradistinction to the 
long-forgotten brethren of ix. 3 and 5, but introduces a 
personal explanation on Paul s part probably written, like 
Galatians, with his own hand in which, as though between 
man and man, he lays the bare truth before the faithful 
portion of the Corinthian community, demonstrating both to 
them and to us what was and had been the question at issue 
between himself and them. They were to feel that the only 
course which remained to them was, either to lose their 
Apostolic father or else to come to a definite breach with these 
Judaistic disturbers of the peace. Chaps, i.-ix. proclaim 
the conclusion of a truce in the matter of the offender, 
and chaps, x.-xiii. lay down the conditions of a lasting 
peace. The situation that confronts us in x.-xiii. is none 
other than that of i.-ix., but in the two divisions the same 
circumstances are regarded from entirely different points of 
view. And that they did require such two-sided illumination 
is just what we should expect from the nature of such a situa 
tion. Paul seems to have judged it aright, for soon after the 
completion of this Epistle he stayed at Corinth for three 
months, and to judge from a work most probably composed 
during his stay there, the Epistle to the Piomans not by any 
means in a disturbed or gloomy state of mind. 

8. The Epistle to the Romans 

[Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vol. iv., by B. Weiss, 1899 ; Hand-Commen- 
tar ii. 2 (Gal. Rom. Phil, by R. A. Lipsius, 1892) ; Internat. Critical 
Commentary, by W. Sanday and A. Headlam. 1900 ; the special 
commentaries of E. Bohmer (1886) and of G. Volkmar (1875), both 
differing widely from the traditional form of exegesis ; of F. Godet, 
translated into German by Wunderlich (1890, see p. 78) and of 
A. Schlatter (1894, see p. 68). Also E. Grafe s Uber Veranlas- 
sung und Zweck des Romerbriefes (1881), a lucid investigation 
of the introductory questions and review of the criticism hitherto 



8., THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS 103 

devoted to it, and W. Mangold s Der Romerbrief und seine 
geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen, a vigorous defence of Baur s 
theory of the Jewish-Christian character of the Roman community ; 
H. Lucht : Uber die beiden letzten Capitel d. Romerbriefs, 1871 
(an acute defence of Baur s theses touching chs. xv. and xvi. 25-27, 
and of the relative authenticity of xvi. 1-23). E. Riggenbach, Die 
Adi-esse des XVI Cap. des Romerbriefs and Die Textgesch. der 
Doxologie Rm. xvi. 25-27 in Neues Jahrbuch fur deutsche Theo- 
logie, 1892, 498-605, and cf. ibid. 1894, 350 ff. (a learned defence 
of its authenticity and integral connection with Romans).] 

1. Apart from the introduction and conclusion, our Epistle 
falls clearly into two divisions chaps, i.-xi. being argu 
mentative, and chaps, xii.-xv. hortative. The first part 
which might be termed an exposition of Paul s Gospel is 
again divided between chaps, viii. and ix. ; in the first half 
Paul defends his faith against the religious errors of Ju 
daism, and in the second (ix.-xi.), against nationalist objec 
tions of the Jews. A lengthy composition, it is free from all 
signs of excitement, and is written with much care ; and 
though, nevertheless, the writer s warmth of feeling again and 
again finds striking expression, the chain of thought is not 
thereby interrupted and in any case Paul could not have 
described the way to righteousness and life in the style of a 
catechism. It is well known how highly Luther valued this 
Epistle, and indeed it is the most important foundation for the 
study of Paul s Christianity, although for the history of his 
times it is not quite so valuable. 

The address, 1 with its unusually full description of the 
writer s qualifications, is followed by a thanksgiving, combined 
with an explanation of the motives which led Paul to open 
direct communication with his readers. He hopes before long 
to preach the Gospel to them also, and in i. 16 fol. lays 
down the principle that the Gospel is the revelation of the 
righteousness of God, and that for such revelation Faith 
is the Alpha and Omega. He then illustrates this thesis 
first negatively 2 and then positively. 3 (a) Negatively : before 
faith existed, and without faith now, there neither was nor ia 

1 i. 1-7. - i. 18-iiL 20. * iii. 21-viii. 39. 



104 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

true righteousness neither in the Pagan nor the Jewish - 
world, which, certain though it was that God in his unalter 
able fidelity would some day fulfil the promises vouchsafed to 
Israel, could never attain to freedom from sin and punish 
ment through the Law, but only to a knowledge of sin. 
(6) Positively : through the expiatory death of Jesus Christ, 
God, without relaxing aught of his justice, had established re 
mission of sins and bestowed the gift of perfect righteousness 
on Gentiles as well as Jews, on the sole condition of faith. 3 
But this assertion was no contradiction of the Law. On 
the contrary, it was confirmed by the Law in the story of 
Abraham.* Neither was it contradicted by our own experience, 
for no afflictions could rob us of the feeling of reconciliation, 
of peace with God and of hope in his glory . (i This alone 
made it possible to understand the ways of God in history ; 
as sin and death had extended to all mankind from the one 
Adam, and were not conquered, but only accentuated, by the 
Law, so by the one Jesus Christ righteousness and life were 
now conveyed to all. A new epoch in the world s history had 
opened, an epoch directly opposed to the last, and consequently 
having nothing, not even the Law, in common with it. 7 Faith 
did not even require the Law as a supplement, for men 
were no longer to be in bondage to sin ; the believer had 
died to sin by the act of baptism 8 ; sanctification was the 
fundamental condition of eternal life. 9 The Law had now no 
further claim upon us, since Christ s death had released us 
from it. 10 

That the Law was good and divine, however, was not in any 
way to be denied ; only, sold unto sin as we were by the flesh, in 
spite of the joy of the inward man in the Law of God, as in all 
else that was good, the Law had no power beyond that of show 
ing us the full extent of our impotence and need. 11 But now a 
new day had dawned ; whoever was in Christ had passed the 
period of the flesh and the Law ; he walked in the Spirit as a 
child of God, released from all bondage and fear and in the 

1 i. 18-32. 2 ii. 1-iii. 20. 3 iii. 21-30. 

4 iii. 31-iv. 25. s Gen. xv. 6. 6 v. 1-11. 

7 v. 12-21. b vi. 1-14. a vi. 15-23. 

10 vii. 1-6. " vii. 7-25. 



8.] THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS 105 

presence of an infinite felicity, in which the rest of creation 
should come to share. 1 

Paul then introduces his discussion of the nationalist ob 
jections of the Jews by admitting the fact that Israel, the 
chosen people, had held aloof from Christ. 2 But the promise 
of God had only been given to the spiritual Israel, 1 and God s 
mercy might choose out the true children of Abraham freely 
wherever it would. 4 Every potter has a right over his clay, 
to make out of it vessels unto honour or unto dishonour, as he 
wills. Nor ought the carnal Israel to complain that it did not 
form part of this chosen body, for in spite of all its zeal for the 
Law it had obstinately pursued the phantom of self-righteous 
ness, and refused to listen to the clearest exhortations 
of the Scriptures to faith in Jesus Christ. 5 To want of 
understanding was added active disobedience. But, thank 
God, not all the Israelites were hardened : a remnant there 
was which had been chosen out. 6 And even the temporary 
casting out of the great majority of them had an educational 
purpose : Israel, or all that was left of it, would be saved at 
last, after all the Gentiles, and the broken branches of the 
olive-tree would be grafted in again. 7 

Then, with a skilful change of argument, the Apostle in 
troduces his exhortation with the wish that his readers, hav 
ing freed themselves from the old delusions, should render 
reasonable service to God the service of the good, the 
acceptable, and the perfect. 8 This idea is then illustrated 
by a number of short general precepts concerning true Chris 
tian behaviour both within the community and towards the 
world at large. 9 Special stress is laid on the duty of subjec 
tion to the higher powers, lo after which everything is 
summed up in the commandment Love thy neighbour as 
thyself, n and the imminence of the Last Day dwelt upon 
as a motive for walking honestly. 1 2 Then from xiv. 1 
to xv. 13, he gives his advice upon a difficulty peculiar to 
the Eoman community, showing that brotherly love would 

viii. 1-39. - ix. 1-5. 3 ix. 6-13. 

4 ix. 14-29. * ix. 30-x. 21. ti xi. 1-10. 

7 xi. 11-36. " xii. 1 and 2. xii. 3-21. 

10 xiii. 1-7. " xiii. 8-10. 1! 11-14. 



106 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

avoid the faults committed on both sides in the disputes 
between the strong and the weak eaters of meat and 
vegetarians. Then follow explanations of a personal kind on 
the subject of his plans of travel and of the part which Eome 
was to play in them. In vv. xvi. 1 and 2 he desires his readers 
to extend a warm welcome to a certain Phoebe, a Christian 
of Cenchreae ; the salutations that follow * are interrupted 
between vv. 17 and 21 by a sharp warning against sowers 
of strife and false apostles, and with a solemn doxology the 
Epistle ends. 

2. Verse i. 13 alone :! would be sufficient to induce us to 
assign the Epistle to the Romans to a late period of Paul s 
life. But in chap, xv. 4 he says still more plainly that he had 
finished his work in the East from Jerusalem as far as 
Illyricum, and was now intending to set out via Rome for the 
conquest of Spain/ 1 He was at present on his way to Jerusalem 
in order to hand over there the results of the Collection made 
in Macedonia and Achaia. 6 And since he could not very well 
have written an Epistle of this sort on board ship or at one 
of the stations on the journey, our thoughts naturally turn 
to Corinth as the place of composition, for it was there that 
Paul spent the last three months uninterruptedly before 
his journey. 7 Besides, the recommendation of a woman of 
Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, 8 would most naturally have 
proceeded from Corinth, while Gaius, the man who is men 
tioned in xvi. 23 as Paul s host, may be identical with his 
namesake of 1. Cor. i. 14. It was in the early part of 58 
that is to say, about six months after the production of 2. Cor. 
that Paul introduced himself by letter to the Romans. 

3. This date, however, is principally based upon verses 
whose authenticity is by no means undisputed. As early as 
the year 140, approximately, Marcion imagined himself to have 
discovered, on dogmatic grounds, numerous interpolations in 
the canonical text of Romans. Similar assertions on the 
part of modern critics possess in general no higher scientific 

1 xv. 14-33. * xvi. 3-23. 

3 And I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I pur 
posed to come unto you, and was hindered hitherto ; of. Acts xix. 21. 

4 Vv. 18-23. s xv. 24 and 28. 6 xv. 25 fol. 

xx. 3. * xvi. 1. 



8.] THE EPISTLE TO THE EOMANS 107 

value though it is true that in vii. 25-viii. 1, for instance, 
the traditional text is really not tenable ; but to prove this in 
detail belongs to the province of exegesis. But Baur and his 
school have rejected chaps, xv. and xvi. as an appendix added 
in the second century in the interests of reconciling the 
anti-Pauline party, and have at most recognised a few frag 
ments of a genuine Pauline Epistle wrought into them. 1 This 
theory, indeed, seems not to be without external evidence too, 
for Marcion s version of Eomans broke off at xiv. 23, and in 
the West the Church itself seems to have possessed copies 
in which verse xiv. 23 was followed by the doxology 2 alone. 
And if in the Greek manuscripts this last is sometimes placed 
after both chaps, xiv. and xvi., sometimes only after xiv. 23 
but in such a way that chaps, xv. and xvi. would then follow on 
sometimes only after xvi. 3, and in some copies was entirely 
wanting, this variation would also bear witness to some uncer 
tainty in the tradition from verse xiv. 23 onwards. These 
points of textual history would be best explained by sup 
posing that the Epistle was circulated in two versions, the 
one reaching as far as xiv. 23, the other as far as xvi. 23 
(or 24), and that the doxology was appended first to the 
shorter, where the want of a fitting ending would have been 
felt particularly keenly after xi. 36, and afterwards to the 
longer version as well. In my opinion, it is impossible to 
admit that it fits better between xiv. 23 and xv. 1 than after 
xvi. 23, though undoubtedly its transference thence to the 
end of the Epistle is easier to imagine than the converse. 
The discovery of a delicate inner connection between the 
doxology and the contents especially of xiv. 1-xv. 13 is 
probably a case of the wish is father to the thought. It is 
true that, in spite of its numerous points of contact with 
Pauline phraseology (Kara TO svayjs\i6v p,ov is specifically 
Pauline), the doxology does almost sound as though it 
were the product of a later time a time that loved a pleni 
tude of liturgic formulae ; its reference to the Father as the 
eternal and only wise God is without analogy in Paul s 
writings. Still, I should not definitely venture to assert its 

1 E.g., xv. 30-33 and xvi. 1 and 2. : xvi. 25-27. 



108 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

spuriousness as long as the spuriousness of the Epistle to the 
Ephesians is not placed beyond question. 

Whoever does so venture, however, is by no means obliged 
to treat the remaining part of the two chapters in the same 
way. Verse xiv. 23 being an extremely awkward ending for a 
letter, it is in itself more likely that the shorter version of the 
Epistle, if it ever existed, should represent a mutilation 
although hardly one caused by design than that the longer 
should have arisen through the additions of a later hand. 
The salutations of xvi. 3-16 and 21-23 contain nothing that 
savours of fabrication ; it is impossible to believe seriously 
that an Andronicus and a Junias should still in the second 
century have been reckoned among the Apostles, 1 whereas 
this would have been quite in keeping with Pauline usage. 
The fact that they were Christians before him is accentuated 
by Paul as an additional motive for respecting them. But 
how improbable this from the pen of a later writer ! Nor, 
above all, can anyone have had the smallest object in ascribing 
the recommendation of Phoebe to Paul. Vv. xvi. 17-20 are 
certainly very surprising in their present place, but otherwise 
they bear the Pauline stamp both in form and matter. The 
best analogies for the abruptness of the condemnation are 
to be found in 2. Cor. x. fol. and in Philippians iii., while 
Komans vi. 17 affords a parallel for the application of the word 
doctrine to the Gospel. In ver. 20 the end of the world is 
evidently expected in the immediate future.^ As to chap, xv., 
in the first place it follows admirably upon xiv. as far as 
verse 13 ; the strong and the weak of xv. refer to precisely 
the same persons as before, and the circumcision and the 
Gentiles ;i are only brought in to illustrate the principle that 
in receiving each other, they, both the strong and the weak, 
were only following the example set them by Christ. And 
that Christ should in ver. 8 be called the minister of the 
circumcision is not contrary to Paul s usage, but merely the 
recognition of an historical fact. Nor, in the second place, 
do vv. 14-33 show us a fictitious Paul, half submitting to 
the Jewish Christians ; he surrenders none of his rights, 4 but 

1 xvi. 7. - Of. Lk. xviii. 8. 3 Ver. 7 fol. 

4 Vv. 16-20. 



8.] THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS 109 

on the contrary refers to certain odious principles of his 
Judaistic adversaries, 1 and the modesty of his tone towards the 
Romans 2 arises from the fact that he could not there come 
forward, as in Corinth, as their father and founder. In ver. 
16 he makes use of a metaphor from sacrificial worship, but to 
discover in the expressions necessary to it anything pointing 
to clericalism, to a heightened idea of the priestly character 
of the Church official, would mean a very perverted interpre 
tation. The personal messages are all of them best suited 
to the situation in which Paul then was ; how could a later 
writer have thought of making him plan a journey to Spain, 
and even ask something of God which was not granted him, 3 
or of putting a doubt into his mouth as to the reception of 
his collection-money at Jerusalem ? Not a sentence of 
chap. xv. can be attributed to a forger, and the language is as 
characteristically Pauline as that of xvi. or vii. 

4. But even if everything in the Epistle down to xvi. 27 
can be referred to Paul, it may yet not have formed part of 
the original Epistle to the Eomans. Since 1829 the theory 
brought forward by David Schulz (in Breslau) that Rom. xvi. 
belonged to an epistle of Paul to the Ephesians has 
gained almost universal acceptance. The champions of this 
theory are, however, disagreed as to whether chap. xvi. 
represents a mere fragment of an epistle to the Ephesians, or 
one that is practically complete, whether it should begin at 
ver. 1 or only at ver. 3, and whether vv. 17-20 and 21-23 
belong to it. It has even been proposed to assign chaps, ix.-xi. 
or xii.-xiv. to this Ephesian Epistle. 

It is in any case improbable that Paul should have had 
so many intimate acquaintances in Rome as he appears from 
vv. 3-16 to have had among his readers. The names 
themselves tell us nothing -- those in Latin afford no proof in 
favour of their owners Western extraction, those in Greek 
none against it. But is it in Rome that we are to look for 
Epaenetus/ the first fruits of Asia, and for Prisca and Aquila, 5 
who according to 1. Corinthians were living in Ephesus ? 
We should have to presuppose a sort of general migration of 

1 Ver. 20. Ver. 15. 3 Ver. 31. 

1 Ver. 5. Vv. 3 fol. " xvi. 19 ; and cf. 2. Tim. iv. 19. 



110 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

Paul s Eastern communities to Home in order to render con 
ceivable the presence there of so many of the Apostle s friends. 
And Kufus l would seem to have taken his mother with him, 
and Nereus 2 his sister. Then are we to suppose that Prisca 
and Aquila had immediately been able to found a house- 
community at Rome 3 similar to that which they had collected 
at Ephesus 4 ? The stress laid on the obligation of all Gentile 
churches to them in xvi. 4 seems indeed to fit Rom. xv. 16 
and 27 very well, but the expression, which occurs nowhere 
else in Paul s writings, was chosen with delicate tact in 
order to accentuate their merit more sharply, since they were 
of Jewish extraction. Everything in this passage points to 
Ephesus, none of it to Rome. In writing to the strange 
Roman community Paul would certainly not have emphasised 
his own personal connections with those he was greeting so 
often," and on the same grounds I should also be inclined to 
ascribe vv. 1 and 2 to the Ephesian letter. Phoebe s services 
to Paul personally were scarcely adapted to impress the 
Romans ; but the question as to whether it were more likely 
for a woman of Cenchreas to migrate to Ephesus than to 
Rome does not seem to me to be worth much argument. 
These two verses furnish us with a motive for the epistle the 
address has of course disappeared, but probably nothing else ; 
Paul grants Phoebe s request for a letter of recommendation 
to a place where his recommendation justly carried weight, and 
makes use of the opportunity to greet his old friends and to 
add a short but earnest warning to his readers <; against the 
disturbers of peace, the agitators with their flattering words. 
That such men would not neglect Ephesus when they had 
worked so successfully at Corinth, is self-evident, especially 
since Paul had been obliged to fly from that city. But there 
was no need for a systematic attack, since Paul was still sure 
of his community, nor would there have been room for one in 
so short a letter. Even its tone here diverges remarkably 
from that of the Epistle to the Romans ver. 19, for instance, 
with its your obedience, I would have you, does not suit 
the latter at all : and the place would be singularly inappro- 

1 Ver. 13. 2 Ver. 15. Ver. 5. 4 1. Cov. xvi. 19. 

4 Vv. 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, y, 11 and 13. 6 Vv. 17-20. 



8.] THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS 111 

priate for so important an exhortation. The chief objection, 
however, lies in xvi. 17-20, for the other reasons are only of 
the more or less probable rank. If Paul wrote these words 
to the Eomans it would be necessary to construct a very 
different view of the community from that which is based on 
chapters i.-xv. Simply for prudential reasons Paul would never 
have w r ritten so sharply to a community with which he was 
unacquainted ; had he, then, entirely forgotten the intermediate 
roXf^r/porspov sypatya of XV. 15 ? 

Vv. xvi. 1-20 can therefore be described with tolerable 
certainty as they stand, as a miniature epistle of Paul to the 
Ephesians. On the other hand, vv. 21-23 would suit an 
epistle to Rome just as well as one to Ephesus. The Epistle 
to the Romans has indeed an amply sufficient ending in verse 
xv. 33, but greetings like those of xvi. 21-23 may yet very 
well have followed it, and it even sounds as though Paul were 
now for the first time introducing the senders of these 
greetings to his readers, to whom they were personally 
unknown. And in an epistle to the Ephesians everyone would 
expect these three verses to come before ver. 16 rather than 
after ver. 20. But if we consider vv. 21-23 as the origi 
nal ending of Romans, the short Ephesian epistle would 
then have been inserted into it, and that is a much more 
doubtful hypothesis than that of its being added to it. That 
this addition took place very early is easily conceivable if both 
Epistles were written at the same time, and perhaps by the 
hand of the same scribe (i.e. the Corinthian Tertius 1 ). At 
any rate, we should definitely place the letter of recommenda 
tion during Paul s last sojourn at Corinth because of vv. 
xvi. 1, and ver. 7 is no objection, for Paul had had fellow- 
prisoners not only at Rome and Caesarea, but also before,- 
and the two here named had probably shared his imprison 
ment on the same occasion as that on which Aquila and Prisca 
had risked their necks for his life. Nor need it surprise us that 
six or eight months after the event Paul still had it vividly 
before his eyes. Again, there is no necessity to suppose that 
this epistle was the first that he had addressed to his Ephesian 
community since that sorrowful departure, so that we need 

1 xvi. 22. - Cf. 2. Cor. xi. 23. 



112 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

not expect a passage of lamentation over those experiences or 
thanksgiving for his deliverance. These expressions had 
found utterance before, since Paul had some feeling for his 
community but they have disappeared. 

5. Having now determined the compass of the Epistle to 
the Romans, we may hope to form a clearer idea as to its 
object. In spite of the violent opposition of modern authori 
ties, we must unhesitatingly assert that this, like the rest of 
Paul s Epistles, was written to, that is to say for, a single 
community in this case that of Rome and that it was in 
tended for this one community and was meant to produce an 
effect upon it alone ; not that it was an outline of Pauline 
faith and teaching for the world at large, accidentally clothed 
in the epistolary form which its author found so natural, and 
dedicated by a clever act of courtesy to the important com 
munity of the world s capital. What Paul expresses in i. 11 
as his long-cherished wish in making this approaching visit to 
Rome namely, to impart some spiritual gift to the Roman 
Christians to the end they might be established is also his 
object in the Epistle. It is thus that he begins to carry out 
a duty towards them that he had often keenly felt. 1 He had 
acquainted himself with the internal affairs of the Roman 
community, and knew of the friction between the strong 
and the weak, 2 and in spite of the phrases let us not 
therefore judge one another, let us follow after things 
which make for peace, :1 it is not a section of his ethical 
system that he is here treating of, but a defect peculiar to 
the Roman community that he is striving to eliminate by 
some spiritual gift. 1 Nor is it by chance that in an epistle 
to the Romans the exhortation to a loyal bearing towards 
the higher powers 5 should have been so earnest and so 
comprehensive, and even though we may not be able to 
prove in the rest of the Epistle that Paul s apologetic and 
parsenetic arguments were aimed especially at the Christians 
of Rome, yet in many passages of other Epistles proof of this 
sort is equally impossible. But the animation of the tone, the 
passages scattered through it beginning brethren, beloved, 

1 i. 14 fol. - xiv. fol. * xiv. 13 and 19 : cf. xv. 1 and 2. 

1 xiv. liJ, Kpivarf 1C), v^itiv rb ayativv /C.T.A. ; xv. 5, 0, 7. xiii. 1-7. 



8.] THE EPISTLE TO THE BO MANS 113 

show that Paul had definite readers in his mind, and that he 
was not speaking in monologue. Nevertheless it is not to be 
understood by this that he possessed a clear and complete 
idea of the situation of the Roman Christians ; naturally not 
more than occasional items of news would have reached his 
ears. Nor is it worth while to warn my readers against the 
childish pedantry of assuming that every word in such a 
work of doctrine as this, which explains many of the funda 
mental problems of religion in so thorough and systematic 
a way, was directed to the needs of Roman hearers alone ; 
on the contrary, we must here test the writer s apparent 
allusions to the position and opinions of his readers with 
even greater care than in the case of the Epistles addressed 
to communities with which Paul was familiar. 

In any case Paul cannot have been ignorant of the ele 
ments of which the Christian community of Rome was com 
posed, and this, then, we in our turn shall learn from the 
Epistle. Since its first effort is to remove the objections 
against Paul s Law-freed Gospel, it has been concluded in 
the face of the manifest proofs to the contrary that the com 
munity addressed was entirely or mainly Jewish-Christian, and 
biassed with the prejudices of Judaism. Paul speaks of his 
readers in i. 5 fol. and xi. 13 simply as Gentiles, and vv. 
i. 13-15 would have no meaning if the Christians of Rome 
consisted of Jews by birth, neither would xv. 14-16. The 
tone of feeling in which he announces his approaching journey 
to Jerusalem with the proceeds of the Collection does not 
sound to me like a bid for the sympathy of the Romans, 
whose attention is to be drawn thereby to the piety of Paul s 
attitude towards the primitive community of the Holy Land, 
but rather like a preparatory announcement of similar collec 
tions to be made in Rome. Otherwise there would be some 
thing unfitting in the twofold emphasis laid in xv. 27 upon the 
debt to the saints in Jerusalem which the Gentile Christians 
were bound to discharge. Again, it is scarcely possible that 
Paul would have written vv. vi. 16-21 to circumcised Chris 
tians. The Jew is only addressed in passages of animated 
contention against Judaistic doctrine, 2 otherwise, especially in 

1 xv. 25-28. ii. 17. 



114 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP i. 

chaps, ix.-xi., the Israelites are spoken of in the third person, 
while phrases such as Abraham, our forefather according to 
the flesh and various others - may be explained in the same 
way, or, like 1. Cor. x. 1, by the fact that Paul was treating 
the facts and ideas of his own inward experience as common 
Christian property. 

Naturally it is not to be supposed that any of the larger 
communities of Paul s time were without some Jewish admix 
ture, least of all that of Borne, which had arisen without any 
help from the Apostle of the Gentiles. And this is why Paul 
felt his position towards it so uncertain. It was an unknown 
quantity to him a Gentile community indeed, and therefore 
belonging to his sphere of work, but not founded either by 
him or by any of his companions, and therefore 3 outside 
his jurisdiction. The legend of its foundation by Peter 
has been abandoned, but nevertheless it must have been 
from Jerusalem that the Gospel was brought to Rome, 
although not by means of special emissaries, but through the 
silent channels of trade between the Holy Land and the 
Jewish community of the world s capital. The first Christians 
of Rome are therefore sure to have been Jews, and in the 
strife between those who rejected Jesus and those who thought 
him the Messiah, which led to the well-known Edict of the 
Emperor Claudius Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue 
tumultuantes Roma expulit 4 it was probably with the latter 
that proselytes sided more abundantly. These again won 
further converts to the new religion among Gentile circles, 
and it was precisely this Imperial edict expelling the Jews 
from Rome, which, besides bringing about a strong preponder 
ance of the Gentile Christian element in the Messianic com 
munity for solely because of his faith in the Messiah no 
Jew could escape the doom of banishment probably resulted 
also in the final separation there between Jews and Christians, 
because this was to the interest of both. 

Now, it would have been quite possible for Gentile Chris 
tians to have imposed upon themselves the observance of the 
entire Mosaic Law, as the Galatians had been prepared to do, 

1 iv. 1. - iv. 12, ix. 10, iii. 9, vii. 5 and 6 t 

1 Rom. w. 20. Ct. Acts xviii. 2. 



8.] THE EPISTLE TO THE EOMANS 115 

and the Christians of Rome might have combined an extrac 
tion mainly Gentile with a disposition entirely or mainly 
Jewish. Nevertheless, the strong of chap. xiv. fol., who 
confessedly form the majority, hold a faith which allows them 
to eat everything, and not meat alone, without distinction, 1 and 
which observes no particular day, such as the Sabbath, more 
than any other 2 ; hence they had placed themselves in a 
position of greater freedom towards the Law than any 
Proselytes, and constituted a Gentile Christian community 
emancipated from the Law and growing wild, so to speak, 
independently of Paul and certainly without his profound 
justifications for such an attitude. We must not even 
assert that the minority of weak brethren represented a 
Judaistic party. For they shrank altogether from eating 
meat and from drinking wine, a fact which points to the 
ascetic scrupulosity which was so common a feature of the 
times, rather than to Pharisaic strictness. At any rate, Paul 
did not look upon the weak brethren as representatives of 
that Judaism which declared the works of the Law necessary 
to salvation, for in that case he could not without compto- 
mising himself have met them so far as he does in xiv. 
21 fol. ; he treats them rather as Christians who, having 
begun their progress towards a complete freedom of belief, had 
attained to all but the highest step. 

But what, then, could have led the Apostle, who in 
chap. xiv. fol. warns his readers in the name of brotherly 
love against an exaggeration of the sense of freedom, to 
defend himself as far as chap. xi. of the same Epistle almost 
exclusively against a condemnation of his gospel which is only 
conceivable as coming from Jewish quarters ? Must we not 
assign chaps, xii. fol. to a different epistle from chaps, i.-xi., 
since in the recipients of the two sections exactly opposite 
errors or faults seem to be pre-supposed ? Can the judges 
of chap. ii. be identified with those of chap. xiv. ? Or was the 
community addressed in i.-xi. really independent of the 
Law, while Paul was merely strengthening it against possible 
Judaistic attacks, by laying before it a careful exposition 
of the whole state of the case? Yet if on his migra- 

1 xiv. 2. xiv. 5. 

i 2 



116 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. $. 

tion to the West Paul only recalled the fact that the 
Judaistic propaganda had up to that time always followed on 
his track, and if he wished to prevent the possibility of its 
establishing itself in Eome too behind his back, why did he 
not prefer to prosecute this task of prevention personally and 
effectively, where, as in this case, there was no danger in delay ? 
No, there is only one way of regarding the Epistle as a whole 
and as an actual letter, such as Paul knew how to write, and 
that is by supposing that Paul had some reason for setting at 
rest, before his arrival in Rome, certain prejudices which would 
have made his labours there fruitless or unsatisfactory, and 
that to this end he chose to make a calm and complete state 
ment and justification of his attitude towards the Law and 
towards Judaism. We had better refrain from making guesses 
at the Judaistic party s plan of campaign, which we simply do 
not know, and from speculating as to the arrangements it had 
made for procuring the Apostle of the Gentiles, whose latest 
plans must already have been known to it, the reception it 
desired for him in the capital of the West. Not a word in the 
first fifteen chapters of the Epistle points to any conspiracy of 
slanderers whose wiles Paul was trying to expose ; he merely 
contends indirectly against the ideas entertained by the Romans 
concerning him and his Gospel, without troubling himself as 
to their origin, for in the end it could only be a question of 
the one constant source. Thus the Christians of Rome were 
told that Paul spurned the Law of God, 1 that his teaching 
said Let us do evil, that good may come, 2 and that he 
directly encouraged sin in the name of Grace. 3 He aroused 
reproach and astonishment as a Jew now hostile to the Jews : 
an apostate who delighted in proclaiming the exclusion of 
his own people from salvation v ; and the wild jubilation, it 
may be, of a few fanatical Gentile Christians : over this final 
settlement with the accursed Israel, did but wound and 
alienate the Jewish Christian minority and the friends of 
peace still more. 

Who was there, under these circumstances, to undertake 
the defence of Paul and his gospel, if there was so little 

1 iii. 31, vii. 7. 2 iii. 8. 3 vi. 1 and 13. 

4 Chaps, ix.-xi. 5 xi. 13. 



5 8.] THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS 117 

knowledge of him among the Christians of Eome, such a 
want of understanding on both sides of the essence of his 
teaching ? The question would indeed be beside the mark, if 
Romans xvi. were genuine, and a large number of Paul s 
personal adherents, including Aquila and Prisca, were settled 
in Rome ; in that case we should practically be reduced to 
seeking the motive for the Epistle in the fact that these had 
advised him to disarm the suspicions of the majority in the 
city, by a judicious and conciliatory letter, before he himself 
appeared, since they had as yet fought these suspicions in 
vain. But not a trace of the anxiety which Paul must in 
that case be assumed to have felt is to be found in Romans ; 
only in chap. ix. does he show some anger at the thought of 
the gross misunderstanding which the charge against him of 
lack of patriotism implied, but even there he soon recovers 
the tone of the teacher, the prophet, the rapt interpreter of the 
mysteries of God : the role of defendant he does not assume. 
The objects, then, of the Epistle to the Romans were : to 
announce Paul s approaching visit, to contradict certain 
natural but false suppositions as to the motive for this visit, 
and above all to prepare the ground for it skilfully and well. 
Paul wished to be received as brother and Apostle in the 
world s capital which he could ill do without as his base of 
operations for the conquest of the West and not, as else 
where, to find himself involved at the outset in vexatious 
wranglings. He set about his task in the right way : up to 
this time the Romans had judged him upon hearsay, but now 
they should learn what was the substance and the manner of 
his preaching, they should decide according to their Christian 
conscience whether what he offered them were tidings 
great joy or not, and whether they had been given a faithful 
or a false picture of him and of his fundamental ideas. 
They were not of those who clung to the Law on principle ; 
they recognised as clearly as he the universality of salvation ; 
and therefore Paul was confident that after reading his 
Epistle even if they did not understand it all they would 
no longer be able to deny him the possession of the Spirit, 
but that they must, feel the plenteous influence therein of 
spiritual gifts. And in truth Paul could not have acted 



118 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

with greater skill. This Epistle probably fulfilled its task 
better than any of his others, for here the whole man is 
revealed to us. In chaps, i.-iv. we have the Kabbinical 
schoolman, in viii. and xi. the inspired poet, in xiii. and xiv. 
the sober, careful director of conduct, and in ix. the bold 
thinker who follows out to its logical conclusion the argument 
which makes all things begin and end in God. The Romans 
would not be able to disregard such a man or to lock their 
hearts against him, unless they had previously determined 
to make no terms with him whatever. A small knot of irre- 
concilables may even yet have remained, but the community 
proper looked up to Paul as their Apostle from the moment 
this Epistle reached them. 



9. The Epistle to the Philippians. 

[Of. H. A. W. Meyer, vols. viii. and ix., 4 : Philippians by E. 
Haupt (1897) , together with Colossians, Philemon and Ephesians and 
an Introduction of 104 pages entitled Die Gefangenschaftsbriefe 
neu bearbeitet. In the Hand-Commentar, Galatians, Romans and 
Philippians are undertaken by R. A. Lipsius (vol. ii., 2, 1892). See 
also the International Critical Commentary, by M. Vincent 
(1897). For special commentaries see B. Weiss (1859), J. B. 
Lightfoot (1896), and A. Klopper (1893) ; also C. Holsten s investi 
gation in the Jahrbucher fur protestantische Theologie (1875 
and 1876), in which he sides with those who dispute the authen 
ticity.] 

1. The Epistle to the Philippians is written with unusual 
warmth, in a tone almost of familiarity, and with a certain lack 
of form. In it Paul opens his heart freely, and hence his sub 
jects and moods are variable. But the writer who, even with 
this simplicity, has such marvellous power to exalt and edify 
becomes only the more dear to us ; his tenderness is never 
shown more abundantly than in the way in which he speaks 
of the gift bestowed on him by the Philippians, nowhere is his 
spiritual gift of treating even the small events of common 
intercourse in a lofty way, and of illuminating them with his 
religious idealism, more brilliantly manifested. 



9.] THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS 119 

After the address and greeting and the thanksgiving 
and prayer for the community, 2 he informs his readers as to 
the state of his own affairs and as to his experiences and 
prospects. 3 To this 4 he skilfully appends the exhortation : 
by looking on Jesus as the example of lowliness and self- 
sacrifice, nay even as a personal joy and glory to himself, 
they are to put an end to the factiousness of their common life. 
Next he announces the approaching visit of Timothy and the 
return of the faithful Epaphroditus, lately recovered from a 
serious illness, 5 and with the charge, Finally, my brethren, 
rejoice in the Lord, 6 takes up his exhortation once more. 7 
In the first place we have an urgent appeal to his readers to 
seek their progress only along the path in which they now 
stand, 8 and above all things not to renounce their high 
spiritual possessions righteousness through faith, perfection, 
knowledge for the sake of the pitiful glory of a carnal 
circumcision and of a supposed righteousness through the 
Law. Then follow 9 certain special exhortations to individual 
members of the community, viz. to two women who, though 
they had laboured zealously for the Gospel, had recently 
fallen out one with another. In iv. 4 and again in iv. 8 Paul 
rouses himself to bid a particularly warm and vigorous fare 
well, but returns again in vv. 10-20 to express his grateful 
joy in the Philippians gift, which, he declares, was precious to 
him, not for its assistance in his own need, but as the fruit of 
their faith. Greetings and salutations end the Epistle. 10 

2. At Philippi, an inland town in eastern Macedonia, 
Paul had preached at the time he first set foot on the soil of 
Europe ; there he had been shamefully ill-treated and finally 
driven from the town," but he had left behind him a com 
munity so faithfully attached that when he was at Thessa- 
lonica it had twice already sent him voluntary help, and 
afterwards did so yet again. 12 Since he never accepted monev 

1 i. 1 fol. 2 i. 3-11. 3 i. 12-26. 

4 i. 27-ii. 18. ii. 19-30. iii. 1. 

7 iii. 1-iv. 9. 8 iii. 16. " iv. 2 fol. 

lc iv. 21-23. " 1 Thess. ii. 2. 

12 Philipp. iv. 15 fol. ; 2 Cor. xi. 8 and 9. 



120 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

from other communities, the relations he had had with the 
Philippians since the beginning of the gospel (these words 
being spoken, of course, from their point of view) had always 
been unique. For some time after this they had had no 
further opportunity of proving their zeal for their beloved 
Apostle, but the relations between them had not grown cold. 2 
Now 3 the Philippians had sent a gift to Paul through 
Epaphroditus, a member of their community, and had 
strictly charged the latter to stay and render personal 
service to the Apostle. 4 Their messenger had, however, 
become dangerously ill, and was besides tormented with 
home-sickness, so that Paul considered it his duty to send 
him back as soon as he was recovered. But whether the 
Philippians, who had heard of his illness, 5 had made inquiries 
after him by letter is just as impossible to determine as 
the question whether their gift of love was accompanied 
by a joint epistle or not. Paul makes no reference whatever 
to any epistle of theirs. He had enough reason for writing 
to them without this ; he must provide Epaphroditus, who 
had, after all, only half fulfilled his mission, with a letter of 
excuse ; he must express his thanks for their gift, give them 
the desired information as to the state of his suit, report 
to them as to his present condition and his prospects, and, 
since he had heard of their earnest longing for another visit, 
at all events promise them an equivalent the approaching 
visit of Timothy. That he would not do this without 
adding to it some spiritual gift for their encouragement 
needs no explanation ; some of their faults he may have 
heard of through Epaphroditus, and others he may have 
contended against more than once already ; at any rate he 
knows how to discharge this duty as well as the others in a 
paternal spirit. 

The question as to whether the community consisted of 
Gentile or Jewish Christians need concern us little, however 
probable the former may be, even from iii. 3 fol. In any 
case it adhered implicitly to Paul/ and the divisions that 
existed in it were mainly founded on personal vanities and 

1 iv. 15. 2 iv. 1, i. 8. 3 iv. 14 and 18. 

4 ii. 30. * ii. 26. ii. 12, iii. 17. 



9.] THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS 121 

jealousies. Even at Philippi, however, everything was not 
perfect ; but the dogs, the evil workers, the concision," 
against whom Paul breaks out so fiercely in iii. 2, were 
certainly not members of the community, but agitators from 
outside, new-made Proselytes, who sought to advance the 
cause of Moses amid the religious ferment of such societies. 
This exhortation is not sufficient evidence from which to con 
clude that the Philippians were inclined towards Judaising. 
If Paul means by those who mind earthly things, whose 
god is the belly, of iii. 18 fol., the same persons as those 
he attacks in iii. 2 and the enemies of the Cross of 
Christ could scarcely have been degenerate though professing 
Christians then we must conclude that he had already 
warned the Philippians of the evil workers etc., and they are 
either to be found not far removed from the adversaries of 
i. 28 (that is, in a powerful Jewish community at Philippi, 
intent upon suppressing its Christian rival), or else we must 
assume that a Judaistic agitation pure and simple like that in 
Galatia was still going on in the East, and that Paul looked 
upon it as on a level with unbelieving Judaism itself, if not 
even below it. In either case no more is implied as to the 
attitude of the Philippians towards matters of faith than that 
the Apostle, already inclined as he was to look on the dark 
side of things, did not credit all members of the com 
munity with so mature a knowledge as to be proof against 
every argument that these agitators could bring forward. 
Paul knew how lovingly the community clung to him, and 
that his word had absolute authority over it ; as long as he 
lived, indeed, it would not fall ; but what if he were now to be 
called away ? For this contingency, then, the faithful of 
Philippi shall possess a testament from him which leaves 
nothing to be desired in point of clearness. If seducers press 
upon them, they shall know even though Paul himself can 
no longer be asked for counsel what his opinion of their 
tempters religion and morals had been, so that even if their 
judgment waver, piety towards himself may keep them in the 
right way. 

iii. 15, 16 ; ii. 12. 



122 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

3. Paul was a prisoner when he wrote the Epistle, 1 and 
moreover the words praetorian guard - and they that are 
of Caesar s household ; point decidedly towards the Roman 
imprisonment. His expectation, too, of a speedy termination 
to his suit would fit Eome better than Caesarea, and still 
more would the fact that he was once more directing his 
thoughts, in the event of his being set at liberty, towards a 
journey to his old communities," whereas from Caesarea he 
must have turned them towards Eome. From i. 14 it 
appears that he was surrounded by a considerable Christian 
community, from which he can send greetings to Philippi/ 1 
As a prisoner he could not, of course, have had direct relations 
with this whole body, but he had special friends among his 
guards, and even his older fellow-workers had not, according 
to ii. 20 fol., all forsaken him. He complains, 7 however, of 
a minority who preached Christ out of evil motives of envy 
and strife his imprisonment having naturally left the field 
open to them. He does not expressly say that these rivss 
belonged to his immediate vicinity, but if their intention 
really was to raise up affliction for him in his bonds by 
their proceedings, we should certainly look for them in Eome. 
What they preached was not a, false gospel, so that they must 
have disclosed their possible Judaistic leanings still more 
cautiously than had Paul s Corinthian adversaries, and the 
Eoman community, on which Paul was in no position to 
press the true wine, and with which he was not on terms of 
personal intimacy, entertained no suspicions against them. 
It seems probable under these circumstances that the Epistle 
should be placed between the years 61 and 63, but of these 
61 is the least likely, since we must allow time for three 
events : the Philippians hear of the arrival of Paul in Eome, 
they send a gift to him there, and the bearer of it falls ill and 
recovers again. More than this, however, I should not venture 
to assert, for the expressions of longing for death 8 are certainly 
conceivable from Paul s lips before the last months of his life, 
while the complaint of ii. 20 fol. against all his entourage, 



1 i. 7, 13 fol. and 17. 

4 ii. 23. 

7 i. 15 and 17. 



2 i. 13. 

5 ii. 24, i. 25-27. 
" i. 20 fol. 



3 iv. 22. 
6 iv. 22" 



9.] THE EPISTLE TO THE PH1LIPP1ANS I 23 

with the exception of Timothy, might have given place to a 
more cheerful verdict, supposing, for instance, that these 
companions had been replaced by others ; we need not neces 
sarily regard it as the result of years of observation and 
disappointed hope. And the all of ii. 21 is clearly hyper 
bolical. Paul was human, after all, and had a right to give 
utterance in his epistles even to passing moods and feelings. 

4. This should never be lost sight of in dealing with the 
attempts of some critics to apply the pruning-knife to our 
Epistle. The theory of the Tubingen school, that the whole 
Epistle is post-Pauline, is indeed almost universally abandoned, 
for the language corresponds exactly with that of the recognised 
Epistles, while the tone is Pauline beyond the possibility of 
imitation. 1 Any difficulties arising from the doctrines of 
Christology and Soteriology of ii. 6-11 and iii. 6-11 which 
are held to represent in the first case an exaggeration and in 
the second a relaxation of the Pauline conception are set at 
rest when we apply an unprejudiced exegesis to the passages 
in question, in the light of our knowledge that Paul did not 
make use of fixed dogmatic formulae, but of religious ex 
periences which could admit of very various expression and 
the content of which was ever growing wider. The special 
mention of the bishops and deacons in the address 2 was 
probably owing to the fact that they had managed and 
carried out the Collection on Paul s behalf, while the mere 
existence of such Church officials is not more suspicious than 
that of the men who are over you of 1. Thessalonians. : 
More remarkable certainly is the fact that the anti-Pauline 
evangelists are here judged so mildly that Paul can actually 
say of their doings Christ is proclaimed, l and can therefore 
rejoice in them still, whereas in the Epistle to the Galatians 
he had cursed them. But is not the same idea expressed in 
2. Corinthians xi. 4, only in different words, and may not 
personal experience have convinced the Apostle that a large 
number of his opponents did actually help to spread the 
Gospel by their preaching ? Did Paul s enemies consist only 
of bigoted Judaists ? 

Under these circumstances other critics have only pointed 

1 i. 20fol.,iv. 10 fol. - i. 1. a v. 12. i. 15-18. 



124 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

to the directly opposite strain in which the adversaries are 
disposed of in chap, iii., and demand that since such con 
tradictions are inadmissible in so short a letter, we should 
either remove certain passages as interpolations, or rather 
that we should divide the Epistle into two documents addressed 
to Philippi at different times. In this case it was most 
natural to mark the boundary at iii. 1 and 2, where it must 
be admitted that a remarkable change of tone occurs. Such 
an hypothesis no matter whether chaps, iii. and iv. were 
then held to form the later or the earlier epistle is certainly 
to be preferred to the bold venture of piecing together two 
Epistles to the Philippians out of fragments lying scattered 
through all the four chapters, although the need for such a 
flimsy construction testifies again to the impracticability of 
the first hypothesis. Both classes of critics consider them 
selves further entitled to appeal to an external witness, since 
Polycarp in his Epistle to the Philippians speaks of epistles 
of Paul to that community which they would do well to 
read and digest. That Paul corresponded frequently with 
the Philippians, in any case, will hardly be doubted even 
apart from the words of iii. 1, but that in Polycarp s time 
there should have existed two or more such epistles which 
were only later pieced together into our present Epistle is 
impossible. The bishop of Smyrna was the victim of some 
confusion, or else his plural (siri(rro\aC) is only rhetorical, or 
perhaps generic, like the other churches of 2. Corinthians xi. 8. 
If, however, 2. Corinthians can best be understood as a whole, 
there can be no possible reason for the dismemberment of 
Philippians ; the Apostle s mood had simply varied as he 
wrote, had alternated between eagerness for life and rejoicing 
in death. And so especially under the influence, perhaps, 
of some new exasperating experience Paul might have 
directed the stormy outbursts of iii. 2 fol. against the same 
persons as those whom, from another point of view, he had 
j udged with comparative mildness, say, the day before. 2 But he 
has not the same foes in his mind in these two passages : in 
chap. i. he is thinking of certain persons who were a personal 
annoyance to himself ; in chap. iii. of men who might become 

1 iii. 2. * i. 15 fol. 



10.] THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON T25 

dangerous to a community most dear to him. The former 
were helping, though unwillingly, to spread the word of the 
Cross ; the latter were exerting all their strength to under 
mine it. Nevertheless, the passionate tone of iii. 2 and iii. 
18 fol. will always be remarkable, since there is apparently no 
question of an immediate menace to the faith of the Philip- 
pians, and Paul s picture of the dogs is drawn rather from 
recollections of past struggles ; but all will be clear if we give 
their psychological significance to the moods of an imprisoned, 
sickly and solitary man. 

10. The Epistle to Philemon 

[Cf. works mentioned in next section, and also, for inter 
polations in the genuine Epistle, Holtzmann s article in the 
Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie (1873) entitled Dei- 
Brief an Philemon kritisch untersucht (pp. 428).] 

This little note, which besides the address and farewell 
greetings consists of merely a single paragraph, is addressed 
to an individual Christian named Philemon ; the persons 
included in the opening greeting, Apphia and Archippus, are 
members of his family, and around this again a house-com 
munity, as in the case of Aquila and Prisca at Ephesus, has 
gathered. A certain slave of Philemon s, Onesimus by name, 
had run away from his master, perhaps under aggravating 
circumstances i.e. with stolen money 1 and the imprisoned 
Paul had succeeded in converting him. The Apostle now 
sends him back to his master, as he was bound to do, but 
entreats the latter to forgive him and to look upon him 
no longer as a slave, but as a brother. Since he allows it to 
be seen how gladly he would have kept Onesimus beside him, 
and how Philemon really owed him some such requital for 
his conversion, which had been effected by Paul himself, it 
seems that he expected the liberation of the slave as the 
one service to which, for the sake of the Gospel, he laid 
claim. He makes no demand, however, on that ground. 
According to Colossians iv. 9, Onesimus was a Colossian, and 
Archippus also belonged to that city, or to its immediate 

1 Verse 18. 



126 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

neighbourhood, 1 so that we must look for the head of the family, 
Philemon, at Colossae too. It is true that Paul had never 
been to this town and yet seems to have won over Philemon to 
Christ, but a man so well-to-do would have travelled at least 
as much as a Chloe - or a Phoebe " and nothing would have 
been more natural than that he should have met Paul more 
than once on such occasions e.g. at Ephesus. 

At the time of writing the Epistle Paul was in captivity, 4 
but was not hindered from doing fruitful work/" 1 This alone 
might speak for Rome as against Csesarea, but the impression 
is further strengthened by the hope expressed by Paul in 
ver. 22 that he would soon be able to claim Philemon s 
hospitality." In no case would the discrepancy between the 
plans of travel in Philippians ii. 24 and Philemon 22 (if it exists 
at all) compel us to consider Rome in the former case and 
Csesarea here as the starting-points of the proposed journeys 
as though Paul were bound to cling fast to ideas so casually 
hinted at (for they are really nothing more) for a period of 
perhaps a year. Nor need we rack our brains to decide 
whether a slave escaping from Colossae would be more likely 
to betake himself to Rome, with all its hiding-places, or to 
Caesarea, where no one would suspect his presence ; for his 
meeting with Paul must in any case have been the work of 
chance. Since Timothy, as well as certain other brethren, is 
here staying with Paul, as in Philippians, 7 the Epistle should 
be assigned to some date near the Epistle to the Philippians, 
but whether a trifle earlier or later is not to be determined. 
At any rate, the cheerful temper of the present Epistle which 
in ver. 19 allows the writer to speak in harmless jest is 
not necessarily earlier than the melancholy thoughts of 
Philippians. The Tubingen school have pronounced the 
Epistle to be non-Pauline ; they consider that the supposed 
later author was aiming at a settlement of the slavery 
question through the lips of Paul, and that the state of things 
implied in the Epistle is a little too romantic to be true. But 
the whole of the Apostle s life was romantic in this sense, and 

1 Col. iv. 17. 2 1 Cor. i. 11. J Rom. xvi. 1. 

* Vv. 1 and IB. Ver. 10. * See p. 122. 

7 Philip, i. 1. i. 1 -1 and 10-18. 



5 11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIANS 127 

a settlement of the slavery question, which one almost expects, 
is precisely what the writer does not attempt ; he keeps himself 
throughout to the one case before him, and does not even there 
give any quite unequivocal decision. As far as form and contents 
are concerned, there is nothing in Philemon unfavourable to 
the theory of its authenticity, and it is probable that no one 
would have questioned it, had not the Epistle been injured by 
its close connection with Colossians and Ephesians, whose 
Pauline authorship it was thought necessary to deny. But 
how could a forger have put unfulfilled hopes into the 
mouth of the Apostle ? And what a masterpiece of imitation 
would the whole Epistle present, notably vv. 15-20 ! The 
pedantic doubts of later theologians as to the canonical 
nature and the inspiration of Philemon, of which we hear 
through Jerome, Chrysostom and Theodorus Mopsuestenus, 
are anything rather than the relics of primitive tradition ; on 
the contrary, the external evidence rather confirms the witness 
borne by every sentence in the Epistle, that Philemon belongs 
to the least doubtful part of the Apostle s work. 

11. The Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians 

Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vols. viii. and ix. 2, 3, in which Col., 
Ephes. and Philem. are undertaken by E. Haupt (1897) ; Hand- 
Commentar, vol. iii. 1 ; Col. Ephes. Philem. and the Pastorals by 
H. von Soden (1893) ; Internat. Critical Commentary (1897) ; 
Col. and Ephes. by T. K. Abbot. Also the special commen 
taries of J. B. Lightfoot, 1886 (for Colossians and Philemon 
see p. 44) ; of H. Oltramare (in French, published at Geneva, 
1891 and 1892) on Colossians, Ephesians and Philemon (the 
latter a very conservative although in parts extremely careful 
exegesis), and of A. Klopper, Colossians (1882) and Ephesians (1891). 
The critical questions are stated with the greatest accuracy and 
independently discussed in H. J. Holtzmann s Kritik der Epneser- 
und Kolosserbriefe (1872)]. 

The connection between these two Epistles is so close 
that they must be treated together. Even a passing glance 
at their contents will be sufficient to show this, although by 
no means fully. 

1 Yer. 2-2. 



128 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

1. Colossians begins with address and greeting. The 
next verses contain a thanksgiving for the conversion of the 
Colossians, accomplished by Epaphras, and a wish for the 
continual improvement of their standing in the kingdom of 
Christ, the mention of whose name immediately calls forth a 
Christological digression upon the majesty of the Son, who is 
the source of all blessings and transcends all greatness. 
Then 2 Paul defines his own task within this kingdom to 
proclaim its universality and tells his readers that he 
labours and struggles especially for their advancement. 3 
After this preparation he assails them with entreaties not to 
let themselves be bewildered again by teachers who deluded 
them with a show of false perfection by setting all manner of 
misleading human wisdom in the place of the one Christ, and 
who by the stress they laid on the worship of angels and 
certain special ascetic and ritual observances drew them away 
from Christ, their head. 4 How to serve him is now described 
in the practical part of the Epistle r> the Colossians must be 
raised above all earthly things and the old man with his 
doings, they must put on the spirit of Christ in love and 
peace and in joyful thanksgiving to God the Father. 1 Paul 
now proceeds to specify more minutely the duties of man and 
woman, of child and father, of servant and master 7 it is 
the Christian s domestic code and then, returning to the 
broader tone, he urges them all once more to steadfast 
prayer not forgetting the work to which he himself had 
been called - and bids them win the unconverted through 
their conduct and by a right use of the Word. 8 Then come 
personal matters, the commendation of the bearers, greetings 
and commands, and finally the farewell written with his own 
hand. 9 

2. Not less clearly does Ephesians fall into two parts of 
equal bulk, the one theoretical and the other practical. After 
the address and blessing of vv. 1 and 2 there follows a 
very lengthy thanksgiving, 10 the first part of which n consists 

1 Vv. 14-23. - i. 24-29. J ii. 1-3. 

4 ii. 4-23. s Chap. iii. fol. iii. 1-17. 

iii. 18-iv. 1. " iv. 2-C. iv. 7-18. 

i. 3-23. ll Vv. 3-14. 



11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIANS 120 

in a general extolling of God for having chosen us from 
the beginning of his own free will, while the second for 
which verse 12 is a preparation is concerned more parti 
cularly with the readers, for whom the writer declares he 
gives thanks and offers prayers continually, because they had 
found the way to Christ, the universal Lord and head of 
their Church. From death by sin we had been transported 
to the heavenly world of the risen Christ a transformation 
accomplished by Grace alone, without any act of ours * and 
the fatal barrier between the heathen under the flesh, to 
whom the Ephesians once belonged, and the people of 
promise, was now done away by the blood of Christ. 3 After 
the destruction of those ordinances which stirred up enmity 
and created the gulf between you that were far off and 
them that were nigh, the holy temple had been rebuilt 
upon a new foundation, and all who had obtained access to 
God through the one Spirit were made use of in equal 
measure as stones in the building thereof. The glory of pro 
claiming this secret of the joint inheritance of the Gentiles 
had been granted to him, Paul, the prisoner of the Lord/ 
and he therefore prayed that they, far from losing heart at 
his bonds, would become ever more perfect in faith, love and 
knowledge. With the doxology of iii. 20 the writer returns 
to the point from which he started 6 ; in reality the whole of 
this first part of the Epistle is merely an unusually elaborate 
parallel to the thanksgivings with which Paul always loved 
to preface his Epistles a solemn contemplation of the majesty 
which, through Christ, had given mankind the Gospel of 
atonement, of re-creation and of peace. 

The exhortation now begins 7 with an injunction to the 
readers to give practical proof of the restored unity of the 
Spirit in all lowliness, steadfastness and love, and to root out 
every trace of the old heathen life. 8 Paul then proceeds to 
warn them more particularly against falsehood, wrath, stealing, 
corrupt speech and an unforgiving heart, 9 and in the next 
two verses holds up God and the love of Christ as the models 

1 Vv. 15 fol. 2 ii. 1-10. 3 ii. 11-13. 

ii. 14-22. s iii. 1-12. 6 i. 3 fol. 

7 iv. !-!(>. * iv. 17-24. iv. 25-32. 



130 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

after which his readers were to strive. Then come some 
further moral precepts in the same strain as those of chap. iv. ; 
once more the contrast is vividly brought out between what 
was and what is, between unclean and clean, darkness and 
light, foolish and wise. This is followed by a domestic code - 
touching upon the various classes in the same order as that 
of Colossians iii. 18, and then, in a boldly drawn picture of 
the putting on of the spiritual armour, 3 the Apostle spurs his 
readers to battle against the powers of evil both of the natural 
and the supernatural worlds, and urges them to make supplica 
tion on his behalf, seeing how eagerly he longed to be free once 
more to take part in such a fight. After a word of commendation 
for the bearer, Tychicus, 4 the Epistle ends with a benediction. 
3. If we assume that both Epistles are authentic there can 
be no doubt as to the date of their composition. Paul is a 
prisoner, :> and he sends the Epistles by the hand of Tychicus, 
whose station and business are described in both Epistles in 
almost identical terms. This alone would be enough to prove 
their nearly simultaneous composition. That Timothy is not 
named in Ephesians, as he is in Colossians, 7 as joint writer of 
the Epistle, is no greater discrepancy than that the last 
chapter of Ephesians differs from Colossians 8 in not containing 
any special greetings ; we are not to conclude from it that 
Paul was in different circumstances, but only that different 
relations subsisted between him and his addressees. Colossians, 
again, is intimately connected through Onesimus with the 
Epistle to Philemon, for Onesimus was to arrive at Colossae 
in company with Tychicus n and would certainly have been 
charged with the latter document ; in both, Paul and Timothy 
are the joint authors, and in both Paul sends greetings from 
Epaphras, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke. Jesus Justus 
is the only person mentioned in Colossians 10 who does not 
appear in Philemon, but this is probably only because he was 
personally unknown to the readers of the latter ; while as 
to Paul s fellow-prisoners, his friends may very likely have 

1 v. 3-21. * v. 22-vi. 9. :f vi. 10 20. 

1 vi. 21 fol. 5 Col. iv. 3 and 18 ; Epb. iii. 1 and vi. 19 fol. 

6 Co!, iv. 7 fol. ; Epli. vi. 21 fol. 7 i. 1. 

s iv. 10 fol. iv. 9. I0 iv. 11. 



11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIANS 131 

relieved each other in that capacity, so that the different 
application of the title in the two Epistles need not surprise 
us. As to the relation between these three Epistles and 
Philippians it is best not to dogmatise ; but the mournful tone 
of the latter might easily have given place to the more 
cheerful mood of Colossians and Philemon, especially as in 
Philippians itself it does not last throughout the Epistle. - 
And in Col. iv. 11 there is certainly a slight echo of the 
bitter tone of Philip, ii. 20 fol. At any rate, we must assign a 
common date to Philemon, Colossians and Ephesians, and in 
all probability Paul wrote them at Eome in the year 62 or 63. 
Some time in the sixties the country round the Lycus, where 
Colossae lies, was visited by a terrible earthquake, and if Paul 
had known of this he would probably have mentioned it in 
the Epistle to the Colossians ; but there is so much uncertainty 
about the date of this earthquake that we cannot derive any 
help from it towards the chronology of our Epistles. 

4. The town of Colossae lay in South-West Phrygia, in the 
fertile valley of the Lycus, quite close to two larger cities, 
Laodicea and Hierapolis, whose Christian communities, it 
seems, carried on an active intercourse and exchange of 
communications with that of Colossae. 3 Probably they all 
arose in the same way 4 and followed similar lines of develop 
ment. They did not belong to the churches founded by Paul 
himself, even though a few individual members might have 
received their faith from him, 5 for according to ii. 1 Paul had 
never seen Colossae. Their founder seems to have been a 
Colossian named Epaphras, G probably a disciple of Paul, but 
at any rate one who proclaimed the gospel there in Paul s own 
manner. 7 How long these communities had already existed 
is not be determined from the Epistle, and we possess no other 
evidence. But since their founder was a Gentile Christian s 
we may consider the communities also to have been such, and 
passages like i. 21 and 27 and especially ii. 13 confirm this 
view. Some time before, this said Epaphras had come to 

1 Col. iv. 10 ; Philem. 23. * See p. 123. 

;1 Col. iv. 13 and 15 fol., ii. 1. 4 Col. iv. 13. 

3 Philem. 19. 6 Col. i. 7, iv. 12. 

7 i. 4, 7 fol., ii. 5 fol. * iv. 11 and 12. 

K 2 



132 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

Borne from Colossae to visit Paul, and had been able, in the 
name of the community, to give proof of its sympathy with 
the Apostle and to deliver a report of the state of affairs 
there which was on the whole extremely satisfactory. It was 
natural, therefore if only because the Colossians were now 
deprived of their valued leader that when an opportunity 
arose, such as was afforded by the sending back of Onesimus 
(while Tychicus, too, was instructed to pass through Colossae), 
Paul should thank them for their love and self-sacrifice, should 
assure them of the warm love he bore them in return and 
should urge them to continue along the path of righteousness. 
Part of the Epistle would thus be quite adequately accounted 
for. There was, however, something besides this which the 
Apostle of the Gentiles seems to have considered himself in 
duty bound to impress upon the Colossians with the whole 
weight of his authority. False brethren had appeared in the 
community, and there was some danger lest when left to itself 
it should gradually fall into the power of these men. Whether 
Epaphras had already striven against them, but without 
success, or whether they had not made their appearance until 
after his departure, so that the news of their proceedings had 
reached him and through him Paul ^but recently, we do 
not learn. At any rate, to unmask these apparently harmless 
innovators, to proclaim them dangerous seducers, and to 
shield his own gospel against such corruption were among the 
principal objects of the Epistle. 

5. In the picture of these false brethren of Colossae the 
mingling of different features is very remarkable. The 
emphasis with which Paul impresses upon his readers that 
they were circumcised with a circumcision not made with 
hands, 2 the stress which he lays upon faith and baptism, 3 
the declaration especially that the bond which was against 
us i.e. the Commandments had been nailed to the Cross 
and therefore done away with, 4 and the warning against the 
distinctions made in foods and days feast-days, new moons 
and Sabbaths 5 all recall the Judaistic agitators with whom we 
are best acquainted through the Epistle to the Galatians. And 

1 ii. 5. " ii. 11. :i ii. 12. 

1 ii. 14. 3 ii. 16. 



11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIANS 133 

their transferring the position due to Christ to the rudiments 
of the world l reminds us directly of Galatians iv. 3 and 9. 
But their love of classifying both meat and drink? and their 
ascetic tendencies and anxieties 3 do not exhibit the manners 
of strict Pharisaism, but rather the fundamental qualities of 
a mystical form of piety such as that of the weak of 
Romans xiv. The reproach that they had sought to mislead 
the Colossians by the tradition or the doctrines of men 4 which 
cannot be explained in this context by Mark vii. 8 and by 
philosophy and vain deceit 5 takes us still further away 
from Judaism. Paul would not have called the service of 
the Law will-worship (i0\o&pr)<TKia)f but a more exact 
definition of this may be found in ii. 18, where besides 
hypocrisy or artificial humility (raTrsivo^poo-vvrj), he warns 
his readers against the worship of angels (dprjo-Kia ra>v 
a<yys\wv) which some had attempted to impose upon them by 
appeals to fictitious revelations. 

The Apostle himself was not attacked by these false 
brethren. It is true that he repeatedly emphasises his 
deserts 7 and his right of ministry in the Gospel, 8 but one is 
left with the impression that he did not intend thereby to 
ward off attacks from outside so much as to strengthen the 
belief of his readers positively in his own right and power to 
instruct them. The innovators of Colossae had not branded 
the faith held till then by the community as a false but as an 
incomplete Christianity ; they belonged to the class which 
according to 1. Cor. iii. 12 sought to build up hay and 
stubble upon the unchanging foundation of the faith ; they 
flattered themselves that they had reached a higher stage of 
Christian knowledge, and offered to initiate others also into 
the perfect worship and into the secret depths of wisdom. 
The phrases used by the Apostle are directed against this 
from the very beginning : cf . i. 6, sTreyvwrs 
ver. 9, STTiyvwaiv sv Trdcrr) aofyia teal avvsazi 
ver. 10, rfj eTriyvoHrst, rov 0sov, ver. 27, "yvwpicrat TI TO 

1 <rTo<xf 12 ToC tc6cr/j.ov, ii. 8 and 20. ii. 16. 

3 ii. 23 and 21. < ii. 8 and 22. 

5 ii. 8 and 18 ( puffed up by his fleshly mind ). " ii. 23. 

7 i. 25 fol., ii. 1. " i. 23 and 25. 



134 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 



ver. 28, sv Trdar) aofyiq iva Trapaanjacof^sv Trdvra 
rs \stov, 1 and it is surely in reference to the 
claims of his opponents that Paul speaks so often here of 
filling and fulness ; perhaps, indeed, he was borrowing 
their very terms. We should probably do the practical 
philosophy of which they made such show too much honour 
by ascribing it to a dualistic scheme of things. It must have 
been a mixture between certain fantastic speculations, on the 
one hand, concerning the spirit world for the transition is 
easy between the mystic and the spiritualist i.e. concerning 
the intermediate beings who lay between the invisible Godhead 
and lowly man, and whose favour must be secured or whose 
tyranny avoided ; and, on the other, a host of precepts for 
reaching the goal through the practice of cults and through 
ascetic observances. Considerable relics of heathen, Hellenic 
and Oriental customs would here appear, though clothed in 
Christian forms ; the old gods, whether good or evil, would 
be called Angels, and the ceremonial indispensable to the 
mind once nurtured amid the mysteries of the East fitted as 
closely as possible to that prescribed in the holy Scriptures of 
Israel, which the Gospel also acknowledged, but of course 
with a certain wilfulness (sOs^odp^a-Kia) in points of detail. 
The ascetic temperament also had its part, as with all the 
religious movements of that age. Whence the elements of 
their wisdom of mysteries really came, the false brethren 
themselves did not know, nor did they observe, any more 
than was observed by the later worshippers of the Virgin 
Mary and of the Saints, that it resulted in the expulsion of 
Christ from his unique position ; they imagined that they 
had discovered perfect knowledge through the study of the 
Scriptures and the Gospel itself. Here, then, we have, in 
its main features, a tolerably clear picture of these heretics. 

6. With this interpretation, moreover, the chief objection 
against the tradition, which never omits Colossians from 
among the Pauline Epistles, is removed. Baur imagines 
that he recognised in the misleaders of Colossae the Gnostics 
who in the second century jeopardised the existence of the 
Church, and that the Epistle was composed in order to deal 

Cf. iii. 14. 



S 11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIANS 135 

a death-blow at Gnosticism in the name of the great Apostle. 
Others, again, have considered that in the polemical parts of 
the Epistle there were two layers lying one above the other, 
one of which was Pauline and contended against false pro 
phets of the type of the weak brethren of Eome except 
that here they laid down as rules what at Eome they merely 
practised on their own account while the other was later by 
many decades and dealt with Gnosticism as the arch-enemy. 
Here the picture of the heretics was painted over in such a 
way as to cause the Gnostic of the second century to be 
recognised in it. But all the traits that are in any way 
distinctive in the Epistle can easily be understood as united 
in a single class of teachers, and these teachers again might 
very well have arisen in Paul s time. There is nothing that 
points to any of the greater Gnostic systems, which we can 
date with tolerable certainty in fact the Gnosticism that 
is attacked in Colossians is actually older than Christianity. 
It is true that we have no other evidence of such philosophers 
in South-Western Phrygia about the year 63, but, considering 
the state of our knowledge concerning that time and district, 
we have no right to expect such evidence, especially when it is 
a question, as here, of transitory phenomena. Moreover, if a 
Christian of the third or fourth generation A.D. were here 
attacking the Gnosticism of his time, we should justly be 
surprised at his silence upon the worst charges which from 
his point of view could be brought against it, and at his 
working instead with such feeble weapons. 

If, on the other hand, Paul had to deal with men of the 
type described above, the course he adopted here was exceed 
ingly natural. He does not attempt to go into details, because 
he was not accurately enough informed ; he is content to 
emphasise the fact that, after what he had heard, he must 
affirm that they had fallen back into the bondage of 
outward ordinances and into a misconception of the dignity 
of Christ. But he has no cause to enter upon an angry 
invective against the supposed idolatry of the Colossians, 
still less to point out that these Jewish philosophers enter 
tained, side by side, contradictory and irreconcilable theories : 
the latter was unnecessary, because he had no intention of 



186 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. J. 

delivering a lecture on logic, and the former because these 
false teachers, with their worship of angels, did not call the 
monotheistic idea in question any more than Paul himself, 
with his worship of the Lord Jesus. Not God, but Christ in 
his position of the highest was here threatened, and it was 
Paul s object to insist upon the unique position of his Master. 
The formulae in which he here expresses the incomparable 
superiority of Christ over all the powers of this world, 
culminating in the words in him dwelleth all the fulness 
of the Godhead bodily, are not, it is true, to be found 
in the earlier Epistles, and in i. 15-20 one might even 
recognise a change from the old Pauline Christology in u 
cosmological direction, 3 new points of view and new interests 
being brought into the foreground. But if it was only by this 
means that he could put down grievous errors, he might well 
have accomplished such a change within himself ; and the 
new formulae were forced upon him by his new opponents. 
The idea, too, of the Church, i.e. the whole body of the 
Saints, as the Body of Christ 4 which is to be met with both 
in 1. Corinthians 5 and in Eomans 6 satisfies the needs of this 
controversy ; it meant that all Christians without distinction 
should depend upon Christ, without any other mediators, 
advocates or contrivances for bringing them to salvation. 
There indeed was an occasion for the picture of the Head and 
the Body, which also illustrated so admirably the duty of 
holding fast to the Head. Nor is this conception of the 
Church by any means post-Pauline, for as early as 1. Corin 
thians 7 Paul divides mankind into Jews, Gentiles and the 
Church of God. Colossians certainly does not aim at the glori 
fication of the Church as the sole means to salvation, extra 
quam nulla salus, in the sense of a later time, but only at 
the preservation of all the rights of its Head : Christ alone, 
all of us one in Christ, have now, in consequence of the 
change of foe, become the watchwords in place of the anti- 
Judaistic sola, fide. The mention of the sufferings endured 

1 i. 18 : fv Trcifftv O.IITUS irpMTtvcav ; cf. i. 15 : irpcaroTOKos iramjs Krifffcas. 

2 ii. 9. :i See especially i. 16, 19, 20, ii. 10. 

< i 18, 24 ; ii. 19. " xii. 27 fol. 

xii. 5. \. 32. 



11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIAXS AND EPIIESIANS 137 

by the Apostle for the Church, the body of Christ 
sufferings by which he filled up on his part that which was 
lacking of the afflictions of Christ ! would be intolerable 
in the mouth of a later writer, but Paul s Christian mystic 
ism thereby attains its most characteristic expression. This 
participation, he means to say, exalted him so highly in 
all his sufferings that through them he approached nearer 
and nearer to Christ, and, as he says in Philippians, - became 
conformed unto his death. 

None but the Tiibingen school have discovered a concilia 
tory tendency in an epistle so devoid of the slightest conces 
sions to the Jewish Christians, and accordingly the only re 
maining argument worth mentioning against its authenticity is 
that of the difference of style. In syntax and vocabulary the 
Epistle to the Colossians has many peculiarities, particularly 
in the way of long strings of clauses and interminable periods, 
which look very much like patchwork, while, on the other 
hand, much of Paul s most habitual phraseology is absent. But 
the amount of agreement is, after all, much larger, and the 
long-winded style only occurs in passages directed against the 
false doctrine ; nor must it be forgotten that Paul was not so 
thoroughly accustomed to these views as he was to those 
described in the Epistle to the Eomans, and that excitement 
did not here lend him wings, as in the case of Galatians 
or 2. Corinthians. Moreover, the parallel argument in Philip 
pians ii. 5-11 bears a stamp somewhat similar to that of the 
obnoxious parts of Colossians, and who could expect that 
Paul in his imprisonment and old age would overcome such 
difficult and complex dogmatic problems with the triumphant 
freshness and precision that he had displayed when in the 
zenith of his powers ? 

Against the hypothesis which Holtzmann has so in 
geniously put forward, that the present Epistle to the Colos- 
eians represents a composite product a genuine Pauline 
foundation with later interpolations from the hand of the 
author of Ephesians we have the fact that the suspicion of 
such interpolation into this Epistle, which runs on in an even 
flow without obstacle or gap, would never have arisen but for 

1 i. 24. - iii. 10. 



138 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

the presence of the Epistle to the Ephesians beside it. Colos- 
sians in itself fulfils all the conditions which can reasonably 
be expected of an Epistle written by Paul to Colossse entirely 
without collaboration in the circumstances represented above. 

7. The purpose of the Epistle to the Ephesians is, in con 
tradistinction to all the Pauline Epistles we have yet examined, 
little dependent upon the particular circumstances and needs 
of its readers ; the writer s object is to impress upon them as 
decisively as possible the idea of the divinity and unity of 
the Church of Christ, a unity which did away with all dis 
tinctions between Jewish and Gentile Christians and all hesi 
tation and error in doctrine ; and, further, to unfold the con 
sequences which ensued therefrom for the conduct of the 
members of this Church. Provided we are justified in defend 
ing its Pauline authorship at all, we might apply the name of 
the last testament of the dying Paul to this Epistle l far 
rather than to Philippians, for although it hardly touches upon 
certain important sides of Paul s gospel assuming them to be 
well known beforehand it nevertheless gives a rich and wide 
development to some of its most fundamental ideas. 

The very widespread and searching doubts entertained 
in this case even by scholars who are otherwise friendly 
to tradition relate principally to two questions : (1) whether 
Ephesians is to be considered as an epistle addressed by Paul 
to Ephesus, and (2) whether or not it is to be considered as a 
Pauline Epistle at all. 

8. The answer to the first question should undoubtedly be 
in the negative. Paul could not have written to his Ephesian 
community, to which he had devoted several years of his 
best powers, and with which, according to Acts xx. 17-38 not 
to mention Komans xvi. and the hypothesis of the Ephesian 
Epistle he had maintained such close relations ever since, in 
the calm tone of the Epistle to the Ephesians. He sends no 
special greetings either to or from anyone, and he writes only 
in his own name, even though Timothy, who was well known 
at Ephesus, was with him now, as he was when the Epistle to 
the Colossians was written. Writer and readers are here per 
sonally unknown to one another. 2 Yet our Epistle, written from 

1 In spite of vi. 19. 2 iii. 2-4 and i. 15. 



11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIANS 139 

prison as it was, could not have been composed before Paul s 
long sojourn at Ephesus, simply because of its close connec 
tion with Colossians and Philemon ; so that Paul, who since 
about the year 54 had known more definitely than by 
hearsay of the faith and love of the Ephesians, could not 
have written it to them at all. Moreover, the crucial sv 
E(/>5o-o) of the address is textually untrustworthy. It is true 
that the Roman Canon of Muratori (circa 200 A.D.) knows of 
the Epistle as one directed to Ephesus, while an uninter 
rupted line of further witnesses to this tradition might be 
enumerated down to the present day ; but the earliest 
Christian to whom we can refer for the superscriptions of 
Pauline Epistles, Marcion, sets down the Epistle as one to the 
Laodiceans, and cannot therefore have read in Ephesus in 
verse 1. From the way in which Tertullian proceeds against 
Marcion on this occasion we must conclude that he considered 
this superscription as an invention of his adversary s, but 
not as one involving the erasure of anything in the original 
text ; in fact, Tertullian does not seem to have read any 
indications of place in verse 1 at all. And that manuscripts 
merely with the words rols ayiois rols ovai KOI Trio-rots were 
handed down as late as the fourth century, we have abundant 
evidence, amongst others, in Origen, Basil and Jerome. 

Now, that anyone should intentionally have struck out an 
original sv E^ecrco is presumably not to be thought of for it 
would have been replaced by something else and not simply 
erased and the idea that there was originally no indication of 
place at all is even more fantastic, for the addresses of 2. Corin 
thians, Romans and Philippians effectually prove that this 
was indispensable. We must assume, then, that the original 
mention of the addressees has accidentally disappeared, and 
that the words sv E<e<r<w are the conjecture although cer 
tainly an ancient one of a copyist who wished to fill up the 
intolerable gap after rots- ovaiv and who had received the 
superscription to the Ephesians from tradition, which 
even Zahn here accuses of being in error. All sorts of 
explanations have been put forward of the origin of this 
mistake, but to me the simplest appears to be that the 

1 Kom. i. 7. 



140 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

collector into whose hands the Epistle had fallen, unaddressed, 
could not endure the absence of superscription and put in a 
conjectural Trpos \L$>scnovs from the idea that the community 
of Ephesus, where Paul had laboured for three years, must 
surely have received a letter from its Apostle at one time or 
another. 

Unfortunately, we are not in a position to replace this sin 
gularly mistaken conjecture by a better one. The Laodicea 
of Marcion is possibly but another conjecture, though that 
of the most attentive reader of the Pauline Epistles. The 
fact that an epistle of Paul to Laodicea was mentioned in 
Colossians, but had already disappeared, would make it natural 
that the unaddressed document should be considered as the 
epistle there mentioned, especially as there was no desire to 
acknowledge the definite loss of any Apostolic Epistle. The 
conjecture is not a bad one, for the Laodicean epistle cannot 
have been written much before Colossians, so that the great 
similarity between the two would thereby be conveniently 
explained. The Laodiceans were personally unacquainted 
with Paul, 1 as ver. i. 15 of Ephesians would require, and 
Tychicus was probably the bearer of the epistle to Laodicea 
as well as of that to Colossae, which fits in admirably with 
Eph. vi. 21 fol. But, on the other hand, one cannot imagine 
any motive which could have induced Paul to treat the 
Laodiceans, with whom in reality he stood on the same 
footing as with the Colossians, in such a totally different way, 
to avoid all individualising with them, and to show himself 
so distant with them while so friendly with the latter. In 
my opinion it is inconceivable that the Apostle should have 
taken up this tone towards any single community, but as we 
are nevertheless concerned with an epistle in which the 
writer draws a sharp distinction between himself and his 
readers these latter merely forming a very large body, upon 
whom he impresses what all stood in equal need of the 
assumption that Paul is here addressing the whole Gentile- 
Christian world is misleading. In that case the words in 
question would originally have run rols OVO-LV sv sOvso-iv. 
But, as a matter of fact, we learn nothing about the addressees 

1 Col. ii. i. 



5 11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSS1ANS AND EPHESIANS 141 

from the Epistle except that they were now believers, 1 and 
had once been heathens. 2 Another objection to this hypo 
thesis is that the remark about Tychicus in vi. 21 pre 
supposes a more contracted circle of readers, for he had 
naturally not been charged to go round among all the Gentile- 
Christian communities. Moreover, in several passages 3 the 
readers are distinguished from all the saints, and ver. iii. 
18 alone would prevent us from looking upon these latter as 
referring only to the Jewish Christians, or even, as some 
contend, to the community of Jerusalem. 

If, therefore, we are dealing with a genuine epistle and 
not with the religious opinions of a later Christian, trying, 
clumsily enough, to act the part of an Apostle of the Gentiles 
writing to one of his communities, there is but one supposi 
tion left to us : Ephesians is a circular epistle addressed to a 
group of Gentile-Christian communities which had arisen 
without Paul s direct co-operation, which were on the whole 
in possession of the true Gospel, and upon which he was 
anxious to exercise a direct influence and to bestow some 
spiritual gift as soon as opportunity arose. The mission of 
Tychicus, who was going from Rome to Colossae, now made it 
possible that these communities should be sought out ; more 
than this it is not worth while to conjecture. It is but small 
satisfaction to declare that this circular epistle is identical 
with that from Laodicea mentioned in Colossians iv. 16, 
and it is decidedly bold to conclude from the word SK (rrjv SK 
\ao8iKias) that Paul was not referring there to an epistle to 
the Laodiceans but merely to one from Laodicea that is, to 
one intended for Colossae after Laodicea, but not destined to 
rest even there. Every unprejudiced reader would surely 
take these words as referring to the exchange of two equally 
valuable possessions by communities lying side by side. 
Thus, then, Paul must have written three epistles contem 
poraneously with Philemon Colossians, Ephesians and the 
lost epistle to the Laodiceans and we can therefore hardly 
wonder at finding constant repetitions and a certain tone of 
fatigue in the latest in date of the three. Of course Pau 

1 i. 13, 1", fol. - ii. 1, 11-13, 17 fol., iii. 1, iv. 17. 

a i. 15, iii. 18, vi. 18. 



142 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

would not have left the addressees unnamed in the circular 
epistle ; he needed only to choose the name of the province 
(or provinces), or else some other geographical term embrac 
ing the desired area ; but the suggestion that Paul had had a 
number of copies of the epistle prepared, each with a blank 
after rols ovaiv, so that Tychicus should there insert the 
name of each new community that he visited and in this 
way the words sv E</>ecr&> would have originated from the 
hand of Tychicus ! is an idea, after all, that savours too 
much of the modern practical spirit. According to our 
hypothesis, Ephesians would be definitely placed on the 
dividing-line between the Epistles proper and the Catholic 
Epistles, in which the epistolary element is reduced to a 
literary form, and curiously enough there are not a few 
material points of contact, too, between our Epistle and these 
latter. 

9. But the importance of the question above discussed 
shrinks to the vanishing point if Ephesians was merely foisted 
upon Paul, and if its addressees have as little reality as its 
nominal author. It is true that the external evidence is 
favourable to the Epistle ; it was much used by the Christian 
literature of the second century, very probably as early as 
the First Epistle of Peter ; indeed, it has actually been pro 
posed to ascribe both these Epistles to the same writer. 
This alone is enough to prevent our assigning it to a 
date later than 100 A.D., so that the hypotheses of the 
Tubingen school as to its anti-Gnostic or anti-Montanist 
tendencies are negatived by the date of its composition. On 
the other hand, the supposed literary obligations of this 
Epistle to the four Principal Epistles or to any written Gospels 
are nowhere so much as rendered probable. But there is no 
lack of very serious considerations. The Epistle possesses a 
quite unusual amount of words peculiar to itself ; for instance 
the devil, regularly spoken of by Paul under the name of 
Satan though once called the Tempter and once Beliar 
is here 8m/3o\os, and the unwonted stiffnesses of style 
in Colossians i. and ii. are here substantially exaggerated 
and multiplied. Cumbrous chains of sentences, full of 

1 iv. 27, vi. 11. 



11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIANS 143 

participles and relative pronouns, are the rule ; there are 
numerous lengthy passages ] each consisting in reality of 
a single sentence into which only a few arbitrary stops 
can be introduced. Instances of the coupling of two 
synonymous nouns by means of a genitive or a preposition 
are remarkably numerous 2 ; there is an obvious overcrowd 
ing and diffuseness of style (e.g. iii. 18 : to apprehend . . . 
what is the breadth and length and height &c.) and the 
thoughts are often obscured, as though stifled, by the rush of 
words. On the other hand, much that is specifically Pauline 
may be found in Ephesians, such as the metaphorical use of 
oiKo8ofjLi]^ Trspiao-susiv used transitively, 4 the words Karavrav, 
appa/3a>v, aTToXvrpuxris, avaKsfyakaiovcrOai, and so on, and in 
both parts of the Epistle we are continually being reminded of 
Pauline ideas and modes of expression. At any rate, since 
style is greatly influenced by the mood of the writer (see 
pp. 137, 141), we could not, if the pros and cons were 
otherwise evenly balanced, let this argument turn the scale. 

We may, however, perceive here no less than in Colossians 
a development of the Pauline doctrine in the direction of 
Johannine theology. The lively interest in the universal 
Church which dominates the Epistle is certainly a new 
feature ; but here again it is a question of a development of 
existing germs, a thing that could not have been the mere work 
of a later writer. The lack of definite features in its teaching 
is unquestionable ; in fact, Ephesians almost gives one 
the impression of a printed sermon ; but then we possess 
no other circular epistle from Paul s hand to use as a 
standard by which to reject this one. To say that the 
falseness of the situation appears in the statements made by 
the Apostle concerning himself or his readers is surely an 
exaggeration, and the hyperbole of iii. 8 in minimis Deus 
maximus has by no means an un-Pauline ring. The readers 
are represented quite in accordance with the circumstances 
of the case as having formerly been Gentiles, and as still 

1 i. 3-14, i. 15-23, ii. 1-10, i i. I- 1 9. 

2 E.g. ii. 14, rb ft.ta/noix ov TOV <t>pay/j.ov ; ii. 15, & v6fj.os TU>V fvro\<i>v V 
5.>-y/ia(n>/ ; iv. 13, <s fitrpov ri\iKias rov n-Mpccjuaros TOV Xptffrov. 

3 ii. 21, iv. 12, 16 and 29. 4 i. 8. 



144 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

standing much in need of greater perfection in knowledge 
and morality, but there is no indication that the writer is 
addressing a second generation, which would of course have 
contained a certain number of Christians by birth. The few 
sentences that are tinged with controversy l would suit the 
mood and the date as well of the Epistle to the Colossians. 
The struggle against Judaism seems indeed to be laid aside, 
but why should Paul have carried it on in a place where the 
danger that threatened was from heathenism alone? Of 
course the whole tone of the Epistle would be quite 
comprehensible on the supposition that a Pauline Christian 
of about the year 90 was its author, but with a general 
work like this the only question is whether it would be in 
comprehensible as coming whence it professes to come, i.e. 
from Paul, and whether it becomes more comprehensible as 
to purpose, form and ideas if we assume that it was the work 
of a later forger. 

The greatest difficulties are presented by individual pas 
sages ; not indeed by iv. 5, for the words one faith, one 
baptism become perfectly natural when considered in their 
context, and TTLO-TCS does not mean a profession of faith, but 
faith itself, the sole condition of salvation, as baptism is the 
assurance of it. But vv. iv. 11, ii. 20 and iii. 5 do present such 
difficulties. In the first of these the Church offices established 
by God are enumerated Apostles, prophets, evangelists, 
pastors and teachers and here the absence of the ecstatic 
spiritual gifts, which Paul had rated so highly in 1. Corin 
thians xii.-xiv., is considered to be a sign of later authorship. 

But, in the first place, the prophets undoubtedly belong 
to this missing class, and, in the second, the list is not intended 
to be a complete one ; moreover in this setting, where Paul s 
thoughts are turned towards the building up of the Church 
in unity of spirit, his choice is by no means ill directed. 
Evangelists are certainly not mentioned by Paul in any other 
Epistle. Yet how else was he to describe the men who had 
first proclaimed the Gospel in these Asiatic communities, but 
had claimed the title neither of Apostles nor of Prophets ? 
Gratitude, if nothing else, obliged him to mention them, and 

1 iv. 14 fol., v. 0. 



11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIANS 145 

the term teacher was not comprehensive enough. Again, the 
words of ii. 20, that the Church is built upon the foundation 
of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the 
chief corner-stone, would certainly, ceteris paribus, seem to 
point to an Apostle s disciple rather than to an Apostle as the 
author, while it sounds stranger still from the lips of Paul 
that the mystery of Christ was now revealed unto his holy 
apostles and prophets in the Spirit (iii. 5). Nevertheless, as 
early as 1. Corinthians l the Apostles are already treated in 
some sort as a self-consistent order, and if in carrying out 
the simile of the building-up of the Church the position of 
corner-stone was reserved for Christ, it was natural that the 
Apostles should be assigned the part of foundation which in 
1. Corinthians 2 had been assigned to Christ. The self-confi 
dence shown in I.Corinthians iii. 10 is also scarcely less than 
that expressed in Ephesians ii. 20. And in defence of iii. 5 
it may be pointed out that the title of holy means more to 
our perceptions than it would have to Paul s, for he calls 
every believer a saint. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied 
that it is one thing to count oneself as belonging to the com 
munity of saints, and quite another to speak of the holy 
Apostles as including oneself in their number, and I ani 
unable to attribute such a breach of taste to Paul. But might 
not the word djiois have been an interpolation prompted by 
primitive piety ? 

But, whatever be the decision at which we arrive, the 
relationship between Ephesians and Colossians must always 
remain remarkable. The points of resemblance both in 
expression and matter are so numerous as to exclude all idea 
of coincidence. Except for a few verses in chap, i., the 
passages in which Colossians stands alone, without parallels 
in Ephesians, are only four, 3 while, on the other hand, 
Ephesians contains but seven 4 which are independent of 
Colossians. Even in these, frequent points of agreement 
with Colossians may be found. This is all the more re- 

1 xv. 9-11. 2 iii. 11. 

3 ii. 1-9 and 16-23 (though with vv. 7 and 19 excepted), iii. 1-4, iv. 
9-18. 

4 i. 3-14, iii. 13-21, iv. 1-16, 17 fol., 20 fol., v. 23-32, vi. 10-17. 

L 



146 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

markable because the anti-heretical purpose of Colossians is 
by no means that of the author of Ephesians ; nor can there 
be any question of a simple absorption into the one Epistle 
of integral parts of the other, for the parallels to Col. i. 3-27, 
for instance, are scattered through the first four chapters of 
Ephesians in an entirely different order. What is true of 
Colossians, indeed, may also be affirmed of Ephesians, viz. 
that no one who did not have Colossians before him would 
imagine the Epistle to have been composed by patchwork 
and the interpolation of extraneous pieces. Professor Holtz- 
mann, however, after the most searching examination of the 
materials, has conceived the idea that the indebtedness belongs 
partly to Ephesians and partly to Colossians ; but if we 
reject as too complicated the hypothesis he has built up 
upon it, by which Ephesians would come to lie between 
a genuine epistle of Paul to Colossse and our present Epistle 
to the Colossians (which he considers as the product of a 
later re-casting in which Ephesians was drawn upon), the 
simplest explanation would still be that one man in this 
case Paul had written the two related Epistles, at short 
intervals, but Ephesians probably a little later, and that 
certain thoughts and modes of expression which were still in 
his mind from the earlier Epistle had found their way plenti 
fully into the later. For it would only be true to say that 
the author must have had the earlier work before him when 
he wrote the later, if we assume that Ephesians was the 
work of a later writer, but even on comparing Eph. vi. 21 fol. 
with Col. iv. 7 fol. it would not be true of Paul, precisely 
because the reproduction of the one in the other is not 
literal enough. The curious mixture in it of original 
thought-exposition with dependence on the parallel Epistle 
which must always be admitted can best be explained by 
supposing that in both Epistles the same writer was pouring 
forth his soul, and that since his circles of readers were not 
contiguous he did not too anxiously avoid repetition. 

Nor has a clear hypothesis of the circumstances under 
which a Paulus redivivus might have composed the Epistle 
to the Ephesians ever been provided, for it is impossible to 
see what purpose he could have served or why he made such 



11.] EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHES1ANS 147 

a particularly thorough use of Colossians, when he himself 
did not lack independent ideas and was also acquainted with 
other Pauline Epistles. Many separate points in the Epistle 
would certainly become more intelligible on the assumption 
that it was written by an Apostle s disciple though even 
then he must have come into extraordinarily close contact 
with his master but not so the Epistle as a whole. Although, 
then, Ephesians may not belong to our unquestioned Pauline 
heritage, it would yet be equally impossible to deny the 
Apostle s authorship with any confidence. 



148 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP, n 



CHAPTER II 

THE DEUTERO-PAULINE EPISTLES 

12. The Epistle to the Hebrews 

[Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vol. xiii., by B. Weiss (1897), and vol. iii. 
Bk. 2 of the Hand-Cornmentar, comprising Hebrews, 1. and 
2. Peter, James and Jude, byH. von Soden (1899). For special com 
mentaries, consult F. Bleek (1828, 1836 and 1840), whose 3 vol. 
work lays the foundation of the subject and contains a great deal 
of scholarly material ; F. Delitzsch (1857), whose book contains 
much original work ; pp. 1-70 of F. Overbeck s Zur Geschichte 
des Canons (1880), in which he traces the history of the Epistle as 
far as 400 A.D., and of which pp. 3-18, on the probable history of the 
period preceding it, are especially valuable ; H. von Soden s articles 
in the Jahrbuch fur protestantische Theologie (1884), Heft 3 and 
4, in which he concludes that the readers were not Jewish Chris 
tians but the Christian communities of Italy ; E. M6n6goz, La 
th6ologie de l 6pitre aux Hebreux, in which pp. 9-76 deal with 
questions of Introduction (the addressees Jewish Christians of a 
single extra-Palestinian community, date between 64 and 67), and 
A. Harnack, in the Zeitschrift fur die Neutestamentliche Wissen- 
schaft, i. 1900 (addressees the house-community of Aquila and 
Prisca in Eome [see Eomans xvi. 3], author either Prisca or Aquila, 
date between 65 and 80).] 

1. The distinction with which we are familiar in 
Paul s writings between a theoretical and a practical part, 
cannot be said to exist in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
even though a considerable division occurs at ver. x. 18, 
and from this point onwards the exhortative character 
decidedly prevails. For between the beginning and x. 18 we 
may find sections both large and small which do not differ 
in any way from the tone of the concluding part, while on 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 149 

the other hand certain passages in the latter hold the same 
language as the main parts of the dogmatic half not to 
mention such mixed passages as vv. xii. 18-29 or vv. 
xiii. 13-16. It is precisely the peculiarity of this Epistle that 
it does not present a consistent doctrinal development of 
ideas, followed by a conclusion of friendly advice for the life 
of the community and of the individual, but that the intel 
lectual instruction which it gives is used each time as the 
occasion or as the broad foundation for practical exhortation. 
This follows from the fact that the ultimate object which the 
author was pursuing was distinctly practical ; his task was to 
rouse his readers out of a religious condition partly timorous 
and faint-hearted, partly dull, slothful and thoughtless, 
partly eager for change and almost ripe for apostasy. He 
must restore them to unswerving fortitude, to patience and 
courage, earnestness and strength, and above all to pride in 
their Christian faith, and, moreover, he must do this by 
means of a knowledge of the Scriptures well calculated 
to demonstrate the full majesty of that Christian faith. A 
characteristic feature of Hebrews is its reliance on Christian 
knowledge as the foundation of Christian strength, or, con 
versely, its conviction that indifference in moral and religious 
matters must necessarily imply certain defects of Christian 
insight or of Christian knowledge. Jesus Christ is the 
same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever 2 there lay 
the substance of Christianity, and therefore its supreme 
value would be proved if on as wide a comparison as possible 
of Christ with the other known claimants of divine revela 
tion, the enormous superiority of the former admitting 
neither supplement nor enrichment were yielded as the 
result. The writer himself calls his Epistle the word of 
exhortation (6 \6yos TT}S Trapa/cX^creeos), 3 and although he 
also feels himself a teacher, 4 the task he sets himself is not 
that of revealing or of re-establishing individual truths, but 
of showing the necessity of truth ; he wishes to impart the 
* word of righteousness : 5 and that perfection which was to 

1 x. 26-31, xi. 1-40, xiii. 10-12. - xiii. 8. 

3 xiii. 22, and cf. x. 25 6 . 4 v. 12. 5 v. 13. 



150 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

be his own and his readers goal l was solely dependent in his 
eyes on the highest training of the power to discern good 
and evil. 2 The writer never loses sight of this fundamental 
idea ; all the subtleties of his Scriptural proof are only 
intended to help in establishing beyond question the perfec 
tion of Christ and of Christianity, and thereby in rendering 
inoperative all temptations to an abandonment of Christ. 

The Epistle begins at once with denning the revelation 
of God in His Son as the ultimate and most effectual. 3 
Hereupon the exaltation of the Son above all the angels is 
demonstrated : 4 although he had for a short time been 
made lower than the angels, had partaken of flesh and 
blood, had been delivered up to death and exposed to temp 
tation, this had only come to pass in order that he might carry 
out his work of salvation and be a true brother to mankind. 
In the next chapter " the superiority of Jesus over Moses 
and Joshua is likewise established. Moses was only faithful 
as a servant in the house, whereas Christ was faithful as 
a son, over his house, and Joshua had not been able to lead 
his people to true rest, for the fulfilment of that promise was 
to be the work of Christ. The next section compares Christ, 
the true Melchisedek, with the spiritual head of the ancient 
Israelites, the High Priest Aaron G : the latter and his suc 
cessors, we are told, were appointed without an oath from 
God, succeeded one another at short intervals, and were 
obliged to offer up sacrifices for their own sins as well as for 
those of the people ; whereas the High Priest Christ received 
his office with an oath, would abide in it unchangeable for ever 
and^was free from sin. But and this was the main point 
it was not his Person alone which was so highly exalted ; his 
Work also towered infinitely high above that of the High 
Priests of the Old Testament, 7 for he performed it in Heaven, 
and they but in the lowly tabernacle ; his sacrifice was of 
his own blood, theirs but of the blood of beasts : he had 
redeemed our sins once and for all, while the Levitical priest 
hood must continually renew their imperfect offerings. 

There is no lack of practical applications in each of these 

1 vi. 1. - v. 14. 3 i. 1-3. 4 i. 4-ii. 18. 

iii. 1-iv. 13. iv. 14-vii. 28. " viii. 1-x. 18. 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 151 

main divisions of the first part, 1 and next the author s 
exposition of the work of the eternal High Priest and of the 
foundation of the new covenant leads him to utter an earnest 
warning to his readers 2 to hold fast this splendid heritage 
of hope and to see that their actions matched it, since 
the most terrible punishment was in store for him who sinned 
consciously and, as it were, trod Christ under foot after 
having known the truth. 3 They who formerly, in times of 
grievous suffering, had proved themselves so gloriously by 
their cheerful self-sacrifice and patience, must not now, when 
the day of recompense drew near, cast away their endurance, 
resignation and joy. 4 Belief without trust in what they 
believed was nothing, since faith consisted precisely in reliance 
on good things hoped for but invisible. This it was that 
was so vividly attested by the long succession of the heroes of 
faith from Abel down to their own day." Therefore they 
too must show some of the patience of Him who was crucified, 
especially since the wholesome chastening which they endured 
was sent from God G ; they must follow after peace and holiness 
before it was too late, 7 for was not the punishment of him 
who spurned the revelation of God in Christ so much the 
more terrible than that which was threatened in the Old 
Testament, as the perfect appearance of God in the heavenly 
Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth, was more 
imposing than his former manifestation to Moses in fire and 
smoke and rushing wind ? 8 Then follow a few special exhor- 
tations, !) but also in the course of them 10 a warning against 
strange teachings, which, perhaps in the interests of a 
hair-splitting spirit in the choice of meats, imperilled the 
fundamental notion of Jesus alone, and diverted attention 
from the true, spiritual sacrifices. The end is formed by 
vv. 18-25, which consist of personal requests, benedictions, 
charges and greetings. 

2. We have now to establish for here we must proceed 
with the greatest care from firm to doubtful ground the 

1 E.g., ii. 1-4, iii. 7-iv. 2, iv. 14-16, v. 11-vi. 12. 

2 x. 19-25. 3 x. 26-31. 4 x. 32-39. 

4 xi. 1-40. xii. 1-11. 7 xii. 12-17. 

8 xii. 18-29. 9 xiii. 1-17. lo Vv. 9-16. 



152 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. u. 

theory that Hebrews represents an actual letter of the 
same sort as the Pauline Epistles, and not merely a theo 
logical treatise or a sermon in epistolary form, like the Catholic 
Epistles. It is true that it lacks the superscription, that the 
introduction savours very little of the epistolary style and that 
for whole paragraphs at a time the author gives forth his re 
flections without reference to any definite readers ; while the 
words brethren, J beloved 2 or holy brethren, partakers of 
a heavenly calling :i do not mean any more than the we 
that occurs repeatedly from i. 1 onwards ; for the author 
undoubtedly assumed that he was speaking to Christians like 
himself. We will also leave vv. xiii. 22-25 a passage 
which bears a very close resemblance to the Pauline endings 
out of account for the present in the conduct of our argu 
ment, since many critics consider them to be a later addition 
appended to the Epistle in the interests of its Pauline author 
ship, and perhaps analogous to chap. xxi. of the Fourth Gospel. 
The changes from ye to we, again, or vice verso * seem to 
indicate that the whole of Christendom was implied in both, 
and, above all, phrases like And what shall I say more ? for 
the time will fail me if I tell, etc., 5 and several others, sound 
little adapted to the style of a letter. But in such phrases it is 
merely the oratorical training of the author which is brought 
to light, while as to the we we must make a sharp distinction 
between the cases in which it represents a self-including exten 
sion of the warnings addressed to the ye and those in which 
the author distinguishes himself from his readers in the 
pluralis auctoris. 8 

This last-named passage (xiii. 18), however, obliges us to 
assume that his circle of readers was definitely circumscribed, 
for at that date an author would scarce have claimed the 
prayers of the whole of Christendom, least of all on the ground 
of verse 19, that I may be restored to you the sooner. And, 

1 iii. 12, x. 19, xiii. 22. 2 vi. 9. 3 iii. 1. 

4 E.g., iii. 1 and 6, iii. 13 and 14, iv. 1, (po^0w/j,fv /xrjirore . . . TIS e| v^S>v ; 
xii. 1-3, xii. 25, xiii. 2-6. 

xi. 32. c ii. 5, viii. 1, ix. 5. 

7 E.g., in ii. 1 and 3, but also in Paul s 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians, 
v. 5 h -10, beside 1-5" and 11. 

8 ii. 5, vi. 9, 11, xiii. 18. 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 153 

above all, the praise bestowed on his readers for the power of 
self-sacrifice which they had manifested in the past, 1 and for 
the services of love which they rendered even now to their 
fellow-believers, could not have applied to the whole of 
Christendom ; while the complaints about the dulness of 
hearing that had come upon them and their lack of progress 2 
are of course only applicable on the assumption that the 
author was addressing a circle of readers whose moral and 
religious development he had sympathetically watched for 
years, and to whom he was attached by ties of old personal 
relations. This becomes still clearer when we read the words 
of vi. 9-12 between the lines : But, beloved, we are persuaded 
better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, 
though we thus speak etc. He was now grievously troubled 
about them, and accordingly wrote them a long epistle, 
beseeching them earnestly to suffer themselves to be warned 
in time. Such an epistle lacking an address seems, it is true, 
a monstrosity, but no trace has survived of any address, and 
all the hypotheses by which scholars have sought to explain 
its absence some contending that it was a matter of chance, 
and others that it was intentional, meant to conceal the 
identity of the real author have something unsatisfactory 
about them. No reader feels the want of anything before 
verse 1, and vv. 1-3 form the most excellent introduction to 
a \6yos TrapaKfojcrsfos ; it would thus seem as though the 
superscription with the address never constituted an integral 
part of the Epistle at all and had therefore not been handed 
down by the tradition. With all reserve, then, I would ven 
ture to put forward the suggestion that supposing, indeed, 
no separate form of address was used the superscription was 
omitted as a precautionary measure, perhaps because the 
sender was obliged to entrust the transmission of his manu 
script to Gentiles whom he did not wish to inform of the 
nature of the discourse that they were forwarding, or per 
haps because all intercourse between writer and recipients 
was prohibited, and the former did not therefore wish to 
excite remark by making the statements at the head of his 
epistle too distinct. If this is not the right solution, we must 

x. 32-34, vi. 10. - v. 11-vi. 8. 



154 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. u. 

assume that two lines or more have disappeared, consisting 
in an introduction in which the writer explained to his 
readers what he intended to set before them and by what 
right he addressed them : informing them, in fact, that he 
enclosed for their perusal an address of exhortation. This 
last, then, we should possess intact (i. 1-xiii. 21), while of 
the framework but the last and smaller portion (vv. xiii. 
22-25) would have been preserved. 

3. For about 1500 years the tradition of the Church has 
almost unanimously held that Paul was the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. The history of the Canon shows us 
that the Eastern, especially the Alexandrian, Church received 
Hebrews early into its corpus Paulinarum, and with many 
learned hypotheses, indeed, as to the draughtsman of the 
text retained it there unanimously ; that in the West, on 
the other hand, it was known even earlier, but not as a 
Pauline Epistle, and that it was only after the middle of the 
fourth century, under the pressure of Eastern tradition, that 
it gradually received recognition as a Pauline Epistle and at 
the same time found its way into the New Testament. This 
suspicious attitude of the Latins, who certainly could not 
have taken exception to the contents of the Epistle, at any 
rate during the decisive period later they might have been 
dissatisfied with vv. vi. 4-8 is alone sufficient to raise a 
certain doubt as to the trustworthiness of the Pauline 
hypothesis ; our next endeavour would be to explain their 
suspicions as arising from a variant tradition as to the author. 
And here we find in effect that Tertullian and Novatian 2 
speak of Barnabas as such, apparently unaware of any 
doubt as to his authorship. Then, again, it is very easy to 
see how in seeking for an author for the Epistle now name 
less, and full as it was of the deepest wisdom Paul s name 
was thought of, for not only was Paul the Epistle-writer tear 
s^o^v, but the antinomian tendency of Hebrews, and the 
systematic setting of the new revelation and the new covenant 
before the old, seemed entirely Pauline ; isolated sentences 

1 About 220. - After 250. 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 155 

and words l not less so. Who but Paul could have written 
Heb. vii. 18, the assertion about the annulling of the com 
mandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness : 
For the law made nothing perfect ? Verse xiii. 9 surely 
suggested Paul s imprisonment, and perhaps also xiii. 3, but 
the mention above all of our brother Timothy - seemed to 
force the assumption that the same man was responsible for 
this epistle as he from whom 1. Thessalonians, 3 Philemon and 
2. Corinthians had proceeded. It is true that we have here 
treated vv. xiii. 22-25 as genuine ; but since 23 fits in so well 
with 19, and 22" is equally appropriate after the many words 
of blame that had gone before, while 22 the smooth excuse 
of the practised orator falls in so well with the character of 
the whole Epistle, the passage seems to me after all to be 
more comprehensible as the chief cause of the attribution to 
Paul of the Epistle, than as its subsequently invented justi 
fication. For in the latter case the inventor must have 
exercised a marvellous self-restraint, and his good fortune 
in that none of the friends of the Barnabas-hypothesis found 
out his stratagem, must have been even more marvellous. 

Nevertheless, the Pauline hypothesis must be absolutely 
given up. Even its first enthusiastic supporters, the 
Alexandrian masters Clement and Origen (about and after 
200 A.D.), became convinced of the suspicious fact that the 
style of Hebrews was utterly different from that of Paul. And 
indeed the difference in vocabulary is already striking enough : 
for instance, the Pauline Xpiarbs lyo-ovs is altogether absent, 
while even lya-ovs Xptaros is only to be found in three 
places 4 ; a favourite conjunction with Hebrews is odsv, which 
Paul never uses, and Hebrews employs the word avaKawi&iv 5 
where Paul writes dvafcaivovv (dvarcaLvtDcris)* But, above all, 
the manner, the style and the temperament are entirely 
different here from what they were in the ten Pauline 
Epistles which we have been discussing. Instead of the 

1 E.g., ii. 2, cf. Gal. iii. 19; ii. 10, cf. Rom. xi. 36; x. 10 fol. 19-23, 
xiii. 1-6. 

J xiii. 23. * Esp. ver. iii. 2. 4 x. 10. xiii. 8 and 21. 

s vi. 6. 2. Cor. iv. 16 ; Col. iii. 10. 



156 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

irregular, warm and personal way in which Paul expressed 
himself sometimes so condensed as to be unintelligible, 
sometimes too full of words, but always lively and natural 
the style of Hebrews is smooth and rhythmically rounded, it 
runs in artistic periods, 1 is equable, still, transparent and 
sometimes impressive, while here and there it is adorned 
with similes. The rhetorical phrases alone which are men 
tioned on p. 152 above and to which might be added &>s 
STTOS SITTSIV (vii. 9), the sole instance of this expression in the 
New Testament point to a different education from that 
which Paul had enjoyed. 

Altogether, this Epistle is written in better Greek than any 
other Book of the New Testament, whereas Paul s writings 
are always tinged with Hebrew colouring. And although it 
has been proposed to avoid these difficulties by the hypothesis 
that Paul had written the Epistle in Hebrew, as being 
addressed to Hebrews, and that what we possessed was merely 
a very clever translation, this unfortunately only proves that 
in New Testament criticism we must be prepared for every 
folly. The faultless elegance of the language, in which not 
even subtle plays upon words are wanting, and which presents 
so striking a contrast to the rude Greek of the Old Testa 
ment quotations, would be beyond the reach of any translator. 
Besides, how truly wonderful that in all the countless quo 
tations from the Old Testament, even where it is only a 
matter of an allusion, his renderings are always correct accord 
ing to the Septuagint ; was this translator, then, in a position to 
look them all out in his Greek Bible without exception at the 
right place, and at the same time so fortunate as to be able, 
even where the Septuagint diverges in sense itself from the 
Hebrew text which the original of Hebrews would after all 
have used to remodel the context without a sign of stumbling 
so as to fit in with the altered wording of the references? 
Moreover, even in the introduction of these quotations the 
difference between the author and Paul becomes apparent ; 
the latter uniformly prefers such formulae as ysypaTrrcu, 
Ae ysi r) ypa(f))j etc., while in Hebrews these are totally lacking ; 
it is God, or the Holy Spirit, or one somewhere (God 

1 E.g., i. 1-4, ii. 2-4, 14 fol., vii. 20-22 and 23-25. 



12.] 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 



157 



speaking through him, of course, as we see from i. 1) who 
says here what Paul makes the Scriptures say, except when 
an impersonal \sysi, slpy/csv, sv TO* \syscr0ai, suffices. 

But we cannot even allow the Epistle to be traced back 
indirectly to Paul to be considered, for instance, as composed 
by the order and in the name of the Apostle by one of his 
companions, so that all the peculiarities of form could be set 
down to the latter s account, while the ideas (ra VOTHJLCLTO,, 
according to Origen) were preserved to Paul. For, to begin 
with, the Epistle does not contain the slightest sign of pro 
fessing to be written with Apostolic authority on the contrary, 
the author distinguishes himself from them that heard the 
Gospel of Jesus, 1 which Paul could never have done. Then it is 
impossible in this case to divide the form from the matter ; 
what the author expresses with such consummate clearness 
and certainty are not ideas thrust upon him from without, 
but his own inmost possession. Finally, it is true that 
Hebrews reminds us very often of Paul so strongly, in fact, 
that a direct imitation of certain passages, at least, out of 
Piomans and 1. Corinthians has been asserted (and Hebrews v. 
12 fol., for instance, cannot be independent of 1. Cor. iii.). 
But this dependence is not necessarily a literary one, 
and the author of Hebrews may have appropriated these and 
other Pauline expressions and ideas from personal intercourse 
with Paul or with a Pauline community. 

But the whole theological standpoint of the author of 
Hebrews is totally unlike that of Paul, nor can it be under 
stood simply as a further development of the Pauline point of 
view. The Gentiles (eOvrj) are not once mentioned, nor are 
Greeks and Jews ; justification by faith and by the works of 
the Law is never spoken of, but we hear all the more of the 
perfection which manifests itself in doing the will of God ; 
here we do not find the genuine Pauline idea of faith, but one 
which leans decidedly towards the side of hope in future 
possessions - ; and the words in Christ, which are not even 
lacking in Philemon, may be searched for here in vain. The 
Cross of Christ is certainly mentioned in xii. 2, and his 



158 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

sufferings and death are also recalled in other passages, 
but not with the same fervour as with Paul. The idea of 
justification has disappeared ; the antithesis between flesh 
and spirit, upon which Paul founded his religious con 
ception of the world, is nowhere brought forward as the 
directing force in the process of salvation. Paul s mystical 
conception of this has vanished. Hebr. vi. 4 and x. 29 
are the only passages of the Epistle in which it is claimed 
that any trace exists of the lofty feeling which marks 
the possessor of the Holy Spirit, and even there the ex 
pressions are not Pauline. It is true that in the picture 
of Christ there is nothing antagonistic to the Pauline con 
ception, but there is a difference in the salient points ; 
the author of Hebrews is mainly concerned with representing 
Jesus as the Son of God, who came from heaven to earth 
and returned again to heaven as inheritor of the dominion of 
the world, as our example in obedience and our fore 
runner in the eternal blessedness which consists in near 
ness to God. In its Christology, though not in that 
alone, Hebrews stands intermediate between the Epistles 
of Paul and John. But it is not my intention to give a 
complete enumeration of its divergences from Pauline 
ideas ; further evidence against the tradition will appear 
hereafter. 

4. Since the question of authorship will ever remain the 
most critical, let us now attempt to set down the internal 
evidence to be obtained from Hebrews as to its origin. Here 
we find that the date may be fixed at once with tolerable 
probability. Our Epistle was unquestionably used in the 
so-called First Epistle of Clement, which was addressed from 
Rome to Corinth shortly before the year 100 ; this alone 
would be enough to fix the terminus ad quern of Hebrews . at 
about the year 95. And since it is natural to consider the 
Timothy of xiii. 23 as Paul s old friend, this would be 
reason enough for going back a little earlier in time, for this 
Timothy, who had just been liberated and was about to start 
on a journey, could hardly have been a very aged man. On 
the other hand, it seems probable that Paul was dead, for so 
long as he was alive it is difficult to find room for this im- 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 159 

prisonment of Timothy ; and, more than this, those men who 
had the rule over you and who spake unto you the word of 
God (xiii. 7), had by now brought their pilgrimages to an end. 
It is natural to suppose that they had met their end through 
martyrdom, but even then it is quite arbitrary to confine the 
expression them that had the rule over you to Peter and 
Paul. Ver. ii. 3 does not say, indeed, that Jesus hearers 
had left the stage, and that the Apostolic Age had disappeared, 
but yet a certain interval of time is implied between those 
primitive days and the Christianity of the present. Verses v. 
12 l and vi. 7 in particular would lead us to assume that the 
Christianity of those addressed was of tolerably long standing ; 
but this, after all, gives us but an approximate idea. An 
important point seems to be that in x. 32-34 there is a ques 
tion of the former days, in which the addressees, Christians 
already, had proved themselves in the grievous afflictions that 
had come over the believers, partly through their own suffer 
ings and partly through their faithful comradeship with other 
heroes of the faith. Now it seems that a second trial of this 
sort had recently set in, but, to the writer s sorrow, with few 
glorious results. Surely, too, vv. xii. 1-11 and the whole of 
chap, xi. 2 were meant to kindle not merely as a precaution 
ary measure their courage and their joy in suffering. This 
suggests the persecution of the Christians under the Emperor 
Domitian (81-96), at least to those who consider that xiii. 7 
refers to the martyrdoms under Nero. 

It is true that the majority of scholars place the Epistle 
between the years 64 and 70, and we cannot prove the im 
possibility of so doing. But, besides the considerations above 
mentioned, the isolated features of the picture which the 
Epistle gives of the contemporary Christian world speak 
in favour of assigning it to a later date say, the year 85. 
The idealism of former days has disappeared " ; there is 
no longer any serious belief in the long and vainly hoped- 
for Second Coming and the heavenly reward especially as 
so many persons have died without receiving it and, at 
any rate, no one is prepared to hazard, if need be, his 

1 By reason of the time, ye ought to have been teachers. 

2 Efip. vv. 35 -33. xii. 3, 12 fol. 4 xi. 13, 40. 



160 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

honour and his life for such a faith. 1 A careful observer 
would have noticed nothing but retrogression in religion 
as well as morals 2 ; there were individuals who had given 
up attending the public worship of God :j ; there even ap 
pear to have been cases of apostasy and shameless denial 
of the Son of God. 4 It would of course be impossible to 
assert that this general deterioration was only possible from 
a certain decade onwards, but it would certainly have been 
more probable about the year 85 than 20 years earlier. The 
leaders 5 were certainly no clerical order, but they were 
already noticeably removed from the saints. In xiii. 7, as 
in xiii. 17, they are something more than the Trpoia-Ta/jisvot, 
of 1. Thessalonians v. 12 ; they have become the shepherds of 
souls and the recognised examples. The community appears 
to have consisted of professional teachers, such as the author 
himself, and of pupils ; and this in itself is little favourable 
to the early dating of the Epistle. Nor is there anything 
positive to authorise its assignment to some date before 70 A.D., 
for the supposed arguments in favour of it are connected 
with a faulty exegesis. For Zahn s cherished discovery in 
chronology, that the forty years of iii. 9 indicated the time 
between the crucifixion of Christ and the destruction of Jeru 
salem, rests on a misunderstanding of the symbolic meaning 
of the whole section ; according to the spirit of Hebrews we 
might rather reckon the forty years in the sense of iv. 2-4, as 
the whole period from the creation to the Incarnation of 
Christ. It shows very little comprehension of the author s 
mode of argument to discover a reference to Jerusalem in 
xiii. 13, or to conclude from the fact of the author s calling 
upon his readers to leave it ( for we have not here an abiding 
city ) that the holy city was still standing (i.e. that he 
was writing before the August of 70). And even though 
the institutions of the Law priests, sacrifices and the like 
are frequently, though not without exception, spoken of as 
things of the present, (the strongest instance of this is ver. 
ix. 9, though only if we read, with Luther, KaO cv for naff 1 fy, 

1 iii. 6, 12-14 and 19, iv. 1 fol., vi. 15, x. 19-25. 

- v. 11-vi. 8, xii. 15 fol., xiii. 4. 3 x. 25. 

4 x. 29, and cf. xii. 25. 5 xiii. 7, 17, 24. 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 161 

which would refer to 7rapa/3o\ij or rather to 77 Trpwrt] O-K^VYJ), it 
does not therefore follow that the Temple of Jerusalem could 
not have been destroyed by that time. For the writer was not 
speaking of the Temple at all the word vaos does not occur 
in the Epistle but of the Mosaic tabernacle (a-KrjvTj). Like 
many others, both of earlier and later times, he works 
without any regard to historical conditions, thinking only 
of the Scriptural picture of the Jewish worship, and drawing 
his knowledge of it solely from the Books of Moses. 

But perhaps the most preposterous argument of all is that 
based on ver. viii. 13, where the old covenant is spoken of as 
nigh unto vanishing away (syyvs afyavia-fjiov}, and therefore 
did not count as vanished yet as though it did disappear 
in th-3 year 70 ! The word nigh, of course, applies to the 
moment when God spoke, i.e. Jeremiah xxxi. 31 etc., and the 
vanishing away began at the moment when Jesus inaugurated 
the new covenant. If we were to affirm, however, that the 
author, supposing him to have witnessed the catastrophe of the 
year 70, could not have allowed the most telling argument for 
his super- Judaistic attitude to escape him - viz. the fulfilment of 
the doom prophesied against the earthly Jerusalem we should 
be confusing our own feelings with those of the unknown writer : 
in his eyes the political history of the Jews of that day was in 
capable of serving as evidence, for this he found exclusively in 
the divine revelation as manifested either in the Old Testament 
or in Christ. Were it not so, how could he have forgotten that 
still stronger piece of evidence, that the earthly High-Priests had 
bound the heavenly High-Priest to the Cross ? So long, then, 
as we do not know when Timothy died, there is no reason for 
considering the year 70 A.D. as a terminus ad quern ; there is 
nothing against fixing the date between 75 and 90 A.D. 

5. The position taken up by most investigators with regard 
to the question of the date of Hebrews depends on their judg 
ment as to the object of the Epistle, and certainly some definite 
information as to its destination would be most desirable. 
Where are we to look for the community, or closely connected 
group of communities, which we have already established as 
forming the addressees for the Epistle ? The superscription 

1 Pp. 152, 153. 

M 



162 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP n. 

Trpbs ~E/3patovs does not help us much towards a decision, for 
we only have evidence of it towards the end of the second 
century although then it is uncontested, and East and 
West possess it alike ; but it gives far too strong an im 
pression of having been decided on to suit the contents, 1 by 
men who were seeking an address to correspond with those of 
the rest of the Pauline Epistles. It is for us only a piece 
of the same ecclesiastical tradition which has shown itself so 
little trustworthy in the matter of the author. 

But, even if it were genuine, the choice would still be an 
open one between (1) Hebrew-speaking and therefore Pales 
tinian Christian communities, (2) those of the Dispersion 
consisting of former Jews, 2 and even (3) Jewish Christian 
members of a great Gentile community for, after all, the 
addressees can only have been baptised Christians. But it is 
only the force of tradition which can possibly explain the 
astounding fact that to this day the community of Jerusalem 
which did indeed migrate to Pella in the year 66 or 67 is 
seriously considered as having been the recipient of Hebrews. 
All the evidence we have speaks against this theory. Even 
though Greek may have been understood in Palestine, it 
would still have been scarcely suitable to address an epistle 
written in the most polished Greek to the Jewish-Christian 
community of Jerusalem, while to have made use of the 
Septuagint alone would have been naive indeed. Nor is it 
easy to suppose that the Christians of Jerusalem should have 
looked forward so eagerly to the return of Timothy. Accord 
ing to Gal. ii. 10 the community there was miserably poor, but 
such is not the impression we receive of its readers from 
Hebr. x. 34, still less from vi. 10, whoever may have been the 
recipient of the succour there mentioned. And is it probable 
that our author would have waited till ii. 3 to tell such 
Christians as these who was their security for the true 
Gospel that in his warnings against degeneration and 
backsliding he should have overlooked his most effective 
argument, the fact that they were walking on the very ground 

Thus as early as i. 1 we have the fathers, in ii. 16, Abraham s seed, 
and xiii. 13 is still more suggestive. 

* Thus in Philip, iii. 5, the Tarsian Paul is called E&pa7os. 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 163 

over which Jesus had borne his Cross, and on which he had 
appeared in glory as the Eisen One ? 

There are fewer objections to the countless other hypotheses 
such as those of Alexandria, Antioch, Jamnia and Ravenna 
but this is chiefly because we know next to nothing of the 
earliest history of these communities. The only supposition 
that is really encouraged by the Epistle itself although 
absolute certainty is nevertheless out of the question is that 
Hebrews was addressed to the place where it first made its 
appearance, i.e. to Rome. In Rome Timothy was certainly 
well known and beloved, and he might have been expelled 
thence for a time by the authorities ; the greeting from them 
of Italy would also suit Rome well, for these men were 
probably Christians now in the writer s company, but far from 
their own homes ; and how but through some local connection 
should they and no others be linked so closely to the recipients 
of the letter ? 

It is true that the Roman community was not a Hebrew 
one in the year 90, nor even in the year 66. But it is surely 
nothing but custom and an imperfect comprehension of the 
writer s mode of argument that still leads so many to con 
sider the Jewish-Christian character of the recipients as an 
axiom, or, as they put it, a self-evident conclusion. Even 
if Rome is not its right address, ,we must still assert that 
Hebrews was directed simply to Christians, without any refer 
ence to their nationality, and that the question of the origin 
of these members of the true People of God existed neither 
for the writer nor for the readers of the Epistle. The words 
the fathers and the seed of Abraham - are explained by 
Romans iv. 1 and 12 ; and passages like ii. 2 and 3 and iii. 5 
and 6 in which the we is said to have been meant as an 
antithesis if anything, prevent the identification of those 
called to the salvation of the New Covenant with the members 
of the Old. Verse ix. 15 does not by any means oblige us to 
regard those that had been called as the perpetrators of the 
transgressions that were under the first covenant ; it is 
merely the writer s object to teach men to regard the death of 
Jesus as much in the light of a termination of the period of 
1 i. i. ii. IG. 

w 2 



164 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP.II. 

transgression as in that of an introduction to the period of 
the eternal inheritance ; for the threats of punishment in the 
Old Covenant must first be carried out in that death before the 
new age of fulfilment could begin. The mention of the many 
whom Jesus led to salvation is surely meant as a comparison 
with the small people of the Old Testament. In ii. 9 we 
hear that Jesus tasted death for every man, and since in 
vii. 27 and xiii. 12 he is described as having done this for 
the people, and as having been able to make propitiation J 
for the sins of the people, this means something different 
from the people of the Old Testament : it means the Elect, 
the People of God. In vii. 11 and ix. 19, the author speaks 
of the people to whom the law of Moses was given as of 
an alien body. Is it possible that the saints, whose way 
into the Holy Place now lay open before them for all time, 
could be identical or, indeed, even commensurate with the 
people, 4 whose errors could only be imperfectly removed 
by the worship of the Old Covenant ? And does the descrip 
tion of his readers as men cleansed from dead works to 
serve the living God " apply so very aptly to converted 
Jews ? 

A still stronger argument is afforded by v. 12-vi. 5, 
according to which these readers needed again and again 
to be informed of the rudiments of the first principles of the 
oracles of God, and even of such things as repentance for 
dead works, faith towards God, teaching of baptisms and 
of laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and the 
eternal judgment. Of these things it was surely unnecessary 
to remind men who had once been Jews. Besides this, the 
faults which the writer contends against as of the first 
magnitude among his readers fornication, the want of zeal, 
of vigorous faith and of joy in hope -point rather to a 
community of Gentile Christians. If, however, it be urged 
that the writer s arguments move exclusively upon an Old 
Testament foundation, and that chaps, vii.-ix. especially 
presuppose an intimate acquaintance with the religious 
ordinances of the Old Testament, it is at most thereby proved 

1 ii. 10, ix. 28, xii. 15. * ii. 17. ix. 8. 

4 ix. 7. * ix. 14. 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 165 

that many Gentile Christian readers must have misunderstood 
the author s meaning. But although this would apply to 
many a Jewish Christian reader too, and although the specula 
tions of Hebrews are devoid of all convincing power for 
us to-day, the author himself certainly believed that they 
would have a great effect ; and since the Christians of that 
day had other needs than those of ours, and considered it 
one of their first duties to be fully acquainted with the Holy 
Scriptures with Leviticus no less than with the Psalms 
they probably did have such an effect. 

But, it may be urged, what if the deadly sin mentioned speci 
fically and threatened with the direst punishment in Hebrews 
that apostasy against which the writer warns us signified 
a relapse from Christianity into Judaism? The only 
passage which might seem to suggest this interpretation is 
xiii. 9-16, where the advice concerning the proper sacrifices 
and such as would be well pleasing to God does certainly 
sound as though the meats which were so important in the 
readers eyes were meats of sacrifice. But here the end of 
verse 9 shows precisely that the readers themselves had not 
yet learnt the worthlessness of such meats (ol TrspnraTovvrss 
are not the same persons as those addressed in the preceding 
fj.rj Trapafyspsa-Oe : a theologian of the first century would 
never have characterised the Judaistic preaching as divers 
and strange teachings ) ; rather some new heresy had 
recently made its appearance among them some teaching 
of a Judaistic character, perhaps like that of Colossae, 
which found favour with the Christians of that day in their 
craving for reality. But that this was not the most serious 
danger, but only a symptom of the general falling-off in 
religious energy, is shown by the mere fact that it is only 
mentioned cursorily at the end of the Epistle and met by the 
fluent methods of an artificial exegesis. Since it is here, 1 
however, that the cry is raised, Let us therefore go forth 
unto Jesus without the camp . . . for we have not here an 
abiding city, the patrons of the Hebrew hypothesis interpret 
this as a summons to the readers to leave behind them the 
national and religious fabric of Israel to which they belonged. 

4 ver. 13. 



166 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. u. 

The readers themselves would hardly have understood so 
dark a speech, and a form of rhetoric which brought in the 
main idea of the Epistle so incidentally a propos of a state 
ment about sacrifices and expected success to follow would 
indeed be strange. The going forth to Jesus is equivalent to 
a searching for the future city, and the camp which was to be 
abandoned represents the outward world with its pleasures 
in fact the meaning of this verse is exactly the same as that 
of iv. 11, let us give diligence to enter into that rest. Nor 
does the writer speak of the weakness and unprofitableness 
of the Law 2 out of anxiety lest his readers should once more 
subject themselves to it, but because it was in this way that 
he could most triumphantly demonstrate the dignity and 
sublimity of the Christian revelation. He knows that the 
fair growth of the Christian spirit among his readers was 
threatened less by false teachers than by all manner of 
temptations to sin, to recantation in adversity and trouble, 
when their endurance was put to too severe a test, and 
to perplexity concerning the prophecies, whose fulfilment 
was too long delayed. These things he hopes to check by 
making it clear to them with all his theological skill and 
all his earnestness of conscience, that the i religion of the 
New Covenant rested on a firm 3 foundation, that it fulfilled 
all the prophecies, and with its infinite wealth in heavenly 
goods could never make too high a claim upon their conduct, 
or be too dearly bought by any sacrifice. 

I repeat once more : all these considerations by no 
means exclude Jewish-born Christians from among the ad 
dressees of Hebrews ; but the author himself is at bottom 
indifferent as to what the brethren had believed before their 
enlightenment ; for him Christianity was a new religion, and 
it is principally a matter of accident that from isolated indica 
tions let fall by the writer, it appears that he himself con 
ceived of his hearers as former idolaters. But it was only 
possible to ignore the difference between Gentile and Jew 
with such absolute freedom, after Paul had completed his 
mission, with its profound effect upon the history of the 

1 x. 5, xi. 7, 38. 2 vii. 18 fol. 

3 /3e aios, ii. 2, iii. 6, 14, vi. 19, ix. 17. 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 167 

world ; and where else than in Rome could the conditions 
for this attitude of indifference have been so favourable ? 

Thus, then, we find both Zahn and Harnack agreeing 
as to Rome, but both qualifying their assignment ; Zahn adds 
that it was a group of Roman Christians consisting entirely of 
native Jews, while Harnack describes them as a small circle 
of Christians (a single household of the faithful) in Rome. 
The arguments which they bring forward do not seem to me 
to be convincing. The theory of a Jewish group has been 
already disposed of, and why should we suppose that the 
author did not write to a whole community ? First, they 
reply, because those to whom the Epistle was addressed 
formed an absolutely united and harmonious group, and 
such uniformity in religious and moral conditions would have 
been incredible in so large and varied a community as that 
of Rome. But we do not know whether the author of Hebrews 
had sufficient art to throw light on the different shades of 
opinion which certainly existed, or whether he even wished to 
do so : was not his chief object, perhaps, to bring into pro 
minence the fundamental errors in which one and all were 
partakers ? The larger the circle to whom he wrote, the 
easier would it be, as well as the more fruitful from an edu 
cational point of view, to employ this method of treating the 
subject ; it would have been little short of tactless in address 
ing a household of which he knew every member personally. 
Secondly, it is urged that the warning in v. 12 (that his 
readers ought long since to have been teachers) would not be 
appropriate if addressed to a community in which youths and 
new converts were constantly to be found : it must be intended 
for a group of older Christians. But did the house-commu 
nity never increase ? and can we seriously think of it as of a 
school from which in course of time bands of teachers regu 
larly emerged ? The ofaiXovrss slvat, SiSdo-tca\ot is intended 
to be taken cum grano salis, and serves to emphasise the 
contrast between the ideal and the real. But the ideal 
could be applied in an unqualified degree to the collective 
community, whose ultimate aim must indeed be to teach, 
even though all its members did not attempt it in so subtle a 
form as the author of Hebrews, or even by word of mouth 



168 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

at all. Thirdly, it is asserted that only a narrow circle of 
older Christians could be exhorted to remember their glorified 
leaders of former times, or reminded of the rich fame which 
they bore with them from those early days ; and that the 
words we desire that each one of you may show the same 
diligence - sound as though they were addressed to a small 
homogeneous group. But I cannot imagine any better way 
of stirring up the sense of honour in a large community 
than by pointing to the noble features of its past. None of us 
in a similar case would mention the exceptions those who 
had had no share in them ; and Paul, for instance, would 
have uttered the desire expressed in vi. 11, not only to a large 
community, but to the whole of Christendom. 

It is said that xiii. 17-24 cannot easily mean any 
thing but that the addressees had their own i)jov/j,svot, but 
were also subordinate to the ^yovfj-svoi of the community. I 
can detect no difference between the ^/ovfisvoi of ver. 17 and 
those of ver. 24 ; the Trdvras which is quite natural in the 
greeting of 24 would be absurd in the exhortation to obedience 
of 17 ; and all the saints who are to be greeted in 24 b 
are not the other Christians outside the house-community, but 
the other Christians who are not rjyov/jisvot,^ To interpret 
the sTTiavvaywyr) savr&v , again, as a separate assembly of 
this narrow circle is only possible if we assume a division 
of the collective community into parishes with settled 
boundaries : but would that be expedient about the year 
85 A.D. ? 

In my opinion the only argument left for the household 
hypothesis is that it is very difficult to explain how the 
Eomans came to forget the origin of the Epistle, if we take 
for granted that Hebrews was written to the whole Roman 
community by one of its prominent teachers. But since 
Harnack considers this forgetfulness to be intentional, he de 
prives himself of this point in his argument ; the whole com 
munity, which would probably be dependent on a few leaders 
in such matters, might have shared the intention of giving the 
Epistle another name. As a matter of fact, the riddle is not 

1 Heb. x. 32 fol., xiii. 7. - vi. 11. 

1 Cf. the TT ii Tfs of 2. Cor. xiii. 12 fol. ; Philip, iv. 21 fol. x. 25. 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 169 

so insoluble if the author was not an Apostle, but only some 
other highly honoured member of the community, of whom 
there were many in Rome. The letter would be read with 
gratitude once, and then laid aside the more readily that it 
was considered far too learned for the average Christian and 
its author would not have encouraged a cult of his short 
epistle if, in effect, he soon returned to his community and was 
able to continue his work there for some time longer. When 
the public began once more to take an interest in the Epistle 
all data as to its origin had disappeared, and it was not the 
manner of that age to undertake methodical investigations, 
which might have yielded satisfactory results even then. 

But those who cannot accept Eome as the destination 
of the Epistle can choose some other Italian community, or 
the Italian Christians collectively ; the character of the 
Epistle is far rather Catholic than that of a private letter 
addressed to a religious clique. 

6. Thus it is almost conclusively proved that the author 
was closely connected with the Pauline circle (as is indeed 
indicated by the Timothy of ver. xiii. 23), that he had been 
active as a teacher in Rome for a long period, and that, at a 
time when he was withdrawn from his community (probably 
by force, and certainly not merely for a short space), he com 
municated to them, in the form of a didactic epistle, the exhor 
tations which were unfortunately most necessary, and which he 
considered it dangerous to delay until the time of his hoped- 
for return. In view of the meagreness of the New Testament 
traditions, however, we certainly cannot maintain a priori 
that the name of this man, so full of the Spirit and of energy 
as he was, must be found somewhere in the New Testament. 
Since it became necessary to give up Paul, an endless 
variety of names have been suggested : Apollos, Barnabas, 
Clement, Luke, Silas, and lately even the husband and wife 
Aquila and Priscilla. Now the Epistle betrays no sign of 
composite authorship, but only shows that the writer was not 
alone, that he was surrounded by Christians who were like- 
minded with himself, and who shared his fate : in short, that 
Hebrews is the work of a single author is placed beyond all 
doubt. Anything which may be adduced in favour of the 



170 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

Apollos hypothesis applies almost equally to Aquila (or to 
his wife, if anyone can discover a feminine temperament 
or feminine fancy in the Epistle), viz. the probability of 
a continuous friendship with Timothy, the gift of teaching, 
the high culture (Apollos was an Alexandrian, but Priscilla 
and Aquila had expounded to this Alexandrian the tenets of 
Christianity), the fiery zeal for the Gospel, the close connec 
tion with Pauline theology, the freedom from the Law, the 
familiarity with Pauline forms of speech not necessarily 
resting on the study of his Epistles. Indeed, we might 
have expected that upon either of these the Pauline Gospel 
in all its fulness would have had a more powerful effect. 
We do not know whether Apollos ever went to Eome ; 
Aquila and Priscilla, for their part, left Kome about 52 A.D. 
and generously supported Paul in Corinth and Ephesus ; 
they could in no case have founded their Eoman house- 
community before 52, but must have gone back from Ephesus 
to Eome and again have emigrated thence, or perhaps have 
been expelled from it. Some have felt justified in inferring from 
Eomans xvi. 3 fol. that they returned to Eome before 58, in 
spite of the passage in 2. Timothy iv. 19, where they are 
mentioned as living in Ephesus. But we know far too little 
of the group which surrounded Paul to be able to say that 
only Apollos and Priscilla satisfy the demands which must 
be made for the author of Hebrews. 

For Barnabas there is the evidence of the Latins ; but 
may not their evidence be founded on error there no less than 
in the case of the so-called Epistle of Barnabas, which we find 
among the Apostolic Fathers and which no one now ascribes 
to Barnabas ? Is not this Barnabae just such an hypothesis 
of the Eomans as the Hav\ov is an hypothesis of the Alex 
andrians ? In any case, we should have to suppose that 
Barnabas had developed greatly since the event spoken of in 
Gal. ii. 13 but that is not inconceivable. Can we, however, 
credit the Levite, to whom Jerusalem was thoroughly familiar, 
with misunderstandings in regard to Old Testament cere 
monial si^ch as those of ix. 3 fol., and vii. 27 ? According to 
ix. 4 the censer stood in the Holy of Holies ; according to vii. 27 

1 Against this see above, pp. 109-111. 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 171 

the high -priest offered his sacrifices daily for his own 
sins and the sins of the people : none but the exegete who 
takes the critical method of Hebrews for his model, will 
believe that s^ovcra dvfuarr^piov signifies only an ideal 
adjunct of the altar of the Holy of Holies, and that /caO 
y jfjispav means the same thing as /car hnavrov. Others again 
see in such errors (which, moreover, need not be taken too 
seriously) nothing but the effects of a mistaken point of view : 
the author, they say, drew his picture of Jewish worship only 
from the study of the Scriptures. This is a point against 
Barnabas, and the absolute indifference of the writer to the 
antagonism between Jew and Gentile would be as remarkable 
in him as in Aquila, Paul or any others who had fought the 
battle of this fundamental principle. For the argument that 
Barnabas, the vibs Trapa/cA^o-sco?, 1 might well have written this 
\6yos 7rapaK\rjaeQ)s, as the Epistle declares itself to be, 2 is 
surely only meant as a joke. Accordingly, the Barnabas hypo 
thesis is not one which has all the probabilities on its side ; but 
we should do best simply to decline to give any answer to the 
question of the writer s name. It would be far more valuable 
if we could give a sketch of his personality, but unfortunately 
the author, like everything personal in Hebrews, retires so 
much into the background that we must confine ourselves to 
a few indications, completing what was said on pp. 149, 152 
and 153 above. 

The safest conclusion is that in him ideas fundamentally 
Pauline were combined with numerous elements of Alexan 
drian theology, in such a way that he must be looked upon as 
a unique phenomenon in the history of the first century. 
The author was a Paulinising Christian of Alexandrian edu 
cation. And since there was only a Jewish Alexandrinism at 
that time, he must have received this education and brought 
it with him into Christianity as a Jew for to consider him 
as a Gentile by birth at such an early period would surely be 
somewhat bold. That he had read the works of the leader of 
the Jewish school of Alexandria, Philo, 3 is, if not absolutely 
beyond question, at least extremely probable, when we consider 
his relatively numerous points of contact with that writer, 

1 Acts iv. 36. - Heb. xiii. 22. J Died A.D. 40. 



172 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. II. 

e.g. in his Christological terms. For it goes without saying, 
that the similarity between him and Philo was in a sense 
formal and confined, seeing that the latter had remained a 
Jew while the author of our Epistle had become a Christian. 
His taste not being identical with that of the modern 
historian he probably did not find the writings of the 
Alexandrian Jew so distressingly dull. The form of exegesis 
in Hebrews, consisting in a reasoning from symbols, is very 
Philonian, and the description of the Holy Place and the 
Holy of Holies as the first and second tabernacles, 1 in con 
nection with the first and second Covenants, is a model of 
this kind. The antitheses between shadow and reality, 2 
created and uncreated, 8 things divine and things earthly, 4 
things of the past " and things to come G (which for the believer 
indeed are already present), things transient and things 
enduring, 7 rule the thoughts of the exegetist, not that between 
sin and grace. What was essential in his eyes to a true 
comprehension oi the Old Testament revelation was to recog 
nise behind the shadow, the emblem, the parable, the antitype 
(SIKCOV, a/cia, i/TroSefy/xa, 7rapa/3o\^ avrirvrroi 1 } the forms of 
the things themselves 8 ; and the more artificial and far 
fetched were the means of attaining to such knowledge, the 
more convincingly would they act upon the disciple of such an 
art. With the complete lack of historical sense characteristic 
of Alexandrinism, it entirely ignores such historical questions 
as that of the religious value of the Jewish worship, practised 
as it was or would still be according to the letter. Such a 
question could only excite interest in so far as it supplied the 
colours for the religious ideal to be depicted. 

Professor Biehm has tried to prove that the leading 
theological ideas in Hebrews are of Palestinian origin- e.g. 
that of the Sabbath rest of the Children of Israel but has 
stated the fundamental question wrongly, so that his lengthy 
work on the doctrinal ideas of Hebrews (1867) is no more 
than a sign of retrogression. We could not do our author a 

1 viii. 7-ix. 12. 2 ^ aKrjv^ 7) a\i)6tvfi, viii. 2, and cf. ix. 24. 

* ix. 11. 4 ix. 1, x. 5, vi. 4, viii. 5, ix. 23. 5 ix. 9. 

e fj.(\\uv aluv, /itAAovTa ityaOd. and the like : vi. 5, ix. 11, x. 1, and cf. 
xi. 20. 

7 vii. 3 and 24, x. 34, xii. 27 ; xiii. 14. 8 x. i. 



12.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 173 

greater wrong than by bringing him into direct connection 
with the Christianity of the Primitive Apostles. Nowhere 
does he declare himself to be their disciple, least of all in 
ii. 8, where even ol cucova-avres can scarcely refer exclu 
sively to the Primitive Apostles, and still less can the author 
alone be understood in y^as. Only the eyes that are endowed 
with the power of searching the Apostolic world of thought 
in its other aspects also, can see that the mortal shape of 
Jesus was present to our author s mind quite otherwise than 
to that of Paul in colours more vivid and this precisely 
on the ground that he possessed the testimony of eye 
witnesses. Are we to suppose that the fact mentioned in 
Hebrews xiii. 12, that the hill of Golgotha lay outside the 
gates of Jerusalem, was known only in Primitive Apostolic 
circles ? The merit of Eiehm s theory lies in its recognition 
of the fact that the incarnation of the Son of God and his 
sojourn on earth was of greater religious importance to the 
author than to Paul : yet this is not a sign of pre-Pauline 
thought, but of victory over Pauline one-sidedness. The 
theologian of the second Christian generation is seen through 
out. In reality Hebrews is in its essential points further 
removed from the Primitive Apostles than Paul himself ; its 
author thinks no longer of a settlement with Judaism ; he 
knows of no prior rights of the Israelites under the New 
Covenant. The stress he lays upon sanctification, upon good 
works, and upon obedience, is not specifically primitive 
Apostolic ; it is rather primitive Catholic. 

Thus we willingly renounce the idea of finding a name for 
a great unknown ; we can understand the Epistle and assign 
it an historical value, without knowing its gifted author by 
name. It is a document of post-Apostolic times, and to us 
it is almost pathetic, because it shows us one of the best men 
of those days labouring by means of the subtleties of his 
artificial theology to reanimate the spirit which was threaten 
ing to vanish from among the multitude ; we see a represen 
tative of the ecclesiastical aristocracy then in progress 
of formation, impressed with the sense of each believer s 
responsibility for the rest ; his work is the most living 

1 xii. 15. 



174 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

protest we possess against the pietistic self-satisfaction of a 
collection of independent communities. 

A state of spiritual indifference such as is combated by 
the writer s strong idealism might at one time or another 
have come over any community, and therefore the Epistle 
would from the very first day of its appearance, even if it 
was only intended for Eome or Puteoli, have been equally 
useful to other Christians. It has a right to dwell in the 
Canon, in spite of its Alexandrian subtleties, for through it 
there breathes something of the spirit of the first great age. 



13. The Pastoral Epistles 

[H. A. W. Meyer, vol. xi. : Timothy and Titus by B. W. Weiss, 
1893 (ed. 6) ; Hand-Commentar iii. 1 : Col. Eph. Philem. Pastoral 
Epistles, by H. von Soden, 1893 (ed. 2). The best special commen 
tary is that by H. J. Holtzmann (1880), which contains a great deal 
of information on the exegesis and criticism already applied to tbis 
subject. The monograph of P. H. Hesse, Die Entstehung der 
N.T. lichen Hirtenbriefe, 1889, seeks to prove that the three Epistles 
were formed from a genuine Pauline foundation by recastings, by the 
additions of copyists, and above all by the incorporation of other 
canonical documents ; but it has little method, and therefore little 
convincing power. Contributions to the discussion are to be found 
in F. Spitta s Zur Gesch. und Litt. d. Urchristenthums, i. 1893, 
pp. 35-49, and A. Harnack s Die Chronologic der altchristlichen 
Litt. i. 1897, pp. 480-5.] 

1. For about a century, the name of Pastoral Epistles 
has been applied to the three letters which we find in the 
New Testament addressed to Timothy and Titus under the 
name of Paul, and containing instructions as to their pastoral 
labours among Christian communities ; no objection can be 
raised against it. 

The First Epistle to Timothy begins immediately after 
the address and greeting to speak of false teachers who dealt 
in mythologies, and who, while the Law was yet indispensable 
for sinners, represented a false antinomianism. 1 The idea 
that Paul would have been fully competent to deal with this 

1 i. 3-11. 



13.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES 175 



subject (o sTTia-rsvd rjv iya>) l leads up to a thanksgiving to the 
mercy of God in having transformed him, once a blasphemer 
and a persecutor, into a minister of the Gospel for sinners. 2 
This heritage with all its responsibilities, but also all its rights 
over those who fell away, he bequeathed to Timothy/ To this 
he adds certain corresponding instructions : first, that wherever 
there were Christians prayers should be made for all men, 
including kings and rulers 4 this being based on the uni 
versality of the divine decree of mercy and then as to 
the manner in which men should pray and the demeanour 
proper for women both while praying and at other times. 5 
Here follows an enumeration of the conditions required for 
attaining the office of bishop, 6 and then for that of deacon, 7 
while in conclusion emphasis is laid on the importance of 
these directions, since the House of God was in question 
the pillar of truth 8 ; in contemplating which the author 
breaks out into a hymn in praise of the great mystery 
of godliness and of Him who was manifested in the flesh. 
Chap. iv. is devoted to a description of the particular duties 
of Timothy : first, with regard to false doctrines of dualistic 
and ascetic tendency, which diverted attention from the main 
issue, viz. godliness 9 ; and then touching his own personal con 
duct. 10 Chap, v., too, begins with advice for his behaviour 
in his intercourse with the old and the young, and continues 
in apparently the same strain on the subject of the widows," 
except that here the tone of the master directly addressing 
his disciple is once more replaced by that of the teacher of 
Canon Law, as in the passages about the elders l2 and about 
the duties of slaves. 13 Between these last two, however, come 
three verses connected with what goes before by an 
association of ideas only to be explained as coming from 
certain definite experiences of the writer s ; in them Timothy 
is charged for his health s sake even to take a little wine, and 
also to rest assured that in cases of sin as well as of good 
works everything would be brought to light. From here to 

1 Verse 11. * i. 12-17. * i. 18-20. 4 ii. 1-7. 

ii. 8-15. iii. 1-7. 7 iii. 8-13. iii. 14 fol. 

iv. 1-10. 10 iv. 11-10. " v. 3-16. v. 17 22. 

11 vi. 1 and 2. M v. 23-25. 



176 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

the end we have an earnest exhortation to hold fast in 
seriousness, truth and purity the wholesome word of Christ 
to the end of the world, heedless of the false teachers strife 
of words. Vv. vi. 17-21 bear the marks of a later addition, 
the first three containing rules for the rich, and the last a 
protest against so-called knowledge (gnosis). 

In the Second Epistle to Timothy the address and greeting 
are followed, as we are accustomed to find in Paul s Epistles, 
by a thanksgiving and prayer, the latter to the effect that 
Timothy might, like Paul, in spite of all sufferings, continue 
in his steadfast faith and in sound doctrine.- After a few 
personal observations 3 the thread of i. 14 is caught up again 
at chapter ii. ; Timothy is exhorted to learn to wait steadfastly, 
rejoicing in the battle, for the fruits of his labours, which 
could not fail to appear, 1 and while holding aloof from 
heretical disputations and foolish hair-splittings, to work in all 
gentleness and virtue for the recover} 7 of those who had 
been led astray / From iii. 1 to iv. 5 a more exact description 
is given of the various forms of these vessels of dishonour in 
the House of God vessels which now, in the last days, must 
reveal themselves ; it was for Timothy to fulfil the duties of 
his office towards them, in steadfastness and temperance, 
following the teaching and the example of Paul and furnished 
completely with all sacred knowledge. Paul himself felt that 
he was nearing his end. 5 Upon this a number of personal 
communications, charges and greetings 7 lead up to the final 
blessing. 

The Epistle to Titus, which is about half as long as 
the First Epistle to Timothy the Second Epistle standing 
midway between the other two in this respect has a some 
what longer superscription. 8 First of all, the principles are 
laid down which were to govern the choice of the Elders, 
this being a particularly important point, because there existed 
a detestable heresy which had lately been making formidable 
progress. 10 Vv. ii. 1-10 prescribe the manner in which, 

1 vi. 3-16, for the doxology and Amen come at verse 16. 

* i. 3-14. :i i. 15-18. 4 ii. 1-13. 

* ii. 14-26. (i iv. 6-8. iv. 9-21. 
" i. 1-4 (cf. Rom. i. 1-7). i. 5-9. 10 i. 10-lU. 






13.J THE PASTORAL EPISTLES 177 

according to sound doctrine, the old men, the -women, the 
young men and the slaves were to be treated : that is, what 
rules were specially to be impressed upon these respective 
classes, for God s mercy required a decided renunciation 
of worldly lusts from all alike. 1 Titus is then commanded 
to watch over his own authority, to see that obedience was 
rendered to rulers and to secure quiet living, 2 for with the 
regenerate 3 good works must take the place of the old vices. 
Upon this follow a few short directions for his treatment of 
false teachers and schismatics, 4 and then a few messages and 
greetings and the final blessing. 

2. The most superficial glance at the contents of the three 
Epistles will be enough to demonstrate their close connection 
one with another. Just as they appeared at the same moment 
in history and have almost without exception stood side by 
side in the New Testament, so they mutually correspond in 
word and thought perhaps even more remarkably than does 
Ephesians with Colossians. Hence they can only be examined 
in common, and we are led from the very outset to expect a 
common origin for all three. It is true that the first attempt 
at criticism on this domain was Schleiermacher s denial 5 
of the Pauline authorship of 1. Timothy alone, while later 
writers, too, have wished to consider 2. Timothy at least as 
authentic, although they have abandoned 1. Timothy and 
Titus. But more difficulties are hereby created than removed. 
The three Epistles are dominated but by one object that 
of providing guarantees for the steady continuance of the 
Christian community-life upon a sound Apostolic basis. 
This was to be brought about, first, by a decided rejection of 
all false doctrine and schismatic tendency ; secondly, by the 
establishment of strict rules of morality and discipline in all 
classes of the community, and, thirdly, by the intelligent and 
careful organisation of the clerical order i.e. the offices and 
stations of honour an institution which would be the means 
of doing most for both. The latter is dwelt upon least strongly 
in 2. Timothy, and most in 1. ; the second finds expression 
most abundantly in Titus, while in 2. Timothy the personal 

1 ii. 11-14. * ii. 15-iii. 2. iii. 3-8 (cf. ii. 11-14). 

4 iii. 9-11. * In 1807. 



178 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

and epistolary style is better represented than it is in 1. and 
in Titus. In spite of these differences, however, the Epistles 
still present the appearance of a single whole. In their lan 
guage they display a remarkable similarity, nor do Titus and 
1. Tim. constitute by any means a separate group, partially 
opposed to 2. Timothy, while a fairly large number of some 
what unusual expressions are only to be found here in the 
whole of the New Testament, but here in all three. Such 
is the expression TTIO-TOS 6 \6yos, faithful is the saying/ 
which occurs thrice in 1. Timothy and once each in 2. Timothy 
and Titus. 1 There are, moreover, whole sentences which 
exhibit almost verbal agreement : such as the sis b srsO^jv syw 
tc-qpv}; KOL a7rd(TTo\o$ of 1. Timothy ii. 7 and 2. Timothy i. 11, 
and numerous others. - 

3. Nearly, however, as the three Epistles are related 
to one another both in form and matter, so far are they 
removed from the genuine Epistles of Paul. 

(a) It is true that Paul did write to individual persons, 
that he would have approved of the tone of these Epistles, 
and that he himself was accustomed to oppose false teachers 
and to demand their unequivocal rejection by others. He 
was acquainted with bishops and deacons/ as early as 
1. Thessalonians 4 he exhorted his readers to recognise those 
that were placed in authority over them, and we might find 
a parallel for the rules of the Pastoral Epistles concerning the 
old and the young, men, women and slaves, in the domestic 
codes of Colossians and Ephesians. Much in the Epistles 
has precisely the Pauline ring : the addresses, the greetings, 
personal communications like those of 2. i. 15-18 or iv. 
16-18 and 6-8, and many other things of the kind." 1 
Striking expressions like yovsva-iv aTreiOsls? or Kara TO 
svayys\iov pov are common to 2. Timothy and Romans, 

1 1. Tim. i. 15, iii. 1 and iv. 9 ; 2. Tim. ii. 11 ; Titus iii. 8, and cf. i. 9. 

- E.g., 1. Tim. vi. 11 and 2. Tim. ii. 22 : Titus i. 6-9 and 1. Tim. iii. 2-4 ; 
Titus i. 16 and iii. 1 and 2. Tim. iii. 17 (rrpbs TTUV epyov ayaQov) ; and 1. Tim. 
iii. 9 and 2. Tim. i. 3 (tv KaQapS. awfttiriffti). 

s Philip, i. 1. 4 v. 12. 

1 E.g., the chain of clauses in 1. Tim. from i. 11 to 1 3. 

2. Tim. iii. 2 and Bom. i. 30. 

7 2. Tim. ii. 8 and Horn. ii. 1C and xvi. 25. 



13.] THE PASTOKAL EPISTLES 179 

while the phrase TO svajysXtov rfjs So^s is found both in 
L Timothy and 2. Corinthians } Tria-rsiisa-Oai in the sense of 
to be entrusted with is only to be found in Paul s Epistles 
outside 1. Timothy 2 and Titus, :i and in the sense of to 
i/e believed in appears only in 2. Thessalonians 4 and 
1. Timothy/ This resemblance extends, moreover, to such 
innocent forms of expression as a<f>oppj]v StBovai nvL > which 
occurs only in 1. Timothy 6 and 2. Corinthians, 7 while a<f>opp.ri 
appears elsewhere only in Paul, and that five times. 

But if we dispute the authenticity of the Pastoral Epistles, 
such points of contact are easily to be explained by the intimate 
acquaintance with genuine Pauline Epistles which we must 
of course suppose the Pseudo-Paul to have possessed. He 
wished to pass for Paul, or at least to address his contem 
poraries in the person of Paul, and it is therefore natural 
enough that he should have imitated the real Paul. He had 
studied the Apostle and sat in spirit at his feet and not 
without effect for many years before he ever conceived the 
plan of writing epistles himself under the name of Paul. Once 
resolved on this, prudence counselled him at least not to be 
intentionally sparing of reminiscences from these epistles. 
Parallels like those afforded by 1. Timothy i. 8, we know that 
the law is good, and Romans vii. 16, or by 1. Timothy i. 5, 
the end of the charge is love, and Romans xiii. 9, or more 
especially by 1. Timothy ii. 7, I speak the truth, I lie not, 
and Romans ix. 1, decidedly give us the impression that 
1. Timothy is dependent upon Romans, since what is admi 
rably to the point in Romans either disturbs the context here 
or does not appear to have sufficient motive. A number of 
verses of the Pastoral Epistles sound as though they were put 
together from genuine Pauline fragments 8 ; and if 1. Timothy 
i. 12-16 and ii. 7 were not written by Paul himself, the writer 
has consciously imitated him, and has caught his very tone 
even in externals, as in the vjrsp Tr\s6vaa-sv 7} ^dpis. 

1 1. Tim. i. 11 and 2. Cor. iv. 4. 

i. 11. 3 i. 3. 4 i. 10. * iii. 16. 

v. 14. ; v. 12. 

8 E.g., 2. Tim. ii. 20 from 1. Cor. iii. 12 and Rom. ix. 21 ; 2. Tim. iv. t> 
from Philip, ii. 17, i. 23. and 2. Tim. iv. 7 fol. from 1. Cor. ix. 24, 25, Philip, ii. 
16, iii. 12, 14. 

N 2 



180 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

The points of contact between the Pastoral Epistles and the 
other books of the New Testament are not so numerous as to 
warrant us in maintaining that the relation between them is 
that of dependence; they are related to 1. Peter, as they are 
to 1. Clement, in their tone and phraseology, but a literary 
obligation need not necessarily have existed. We are often 
reminded in them of the Synoptic Gospels : compare, for 
instance, 1. Timothy ii. 6 a (oBovs savrov avn\vrpov vTrsp 
7rdvTO)v) with Mark x. 45 (8ovvat, rrjv -^rv^rjv avrov \vrpov avrl 
7ro\\mv) and 1. Timothy v. 18 with Luke x. 7 ; here the 
logion The labourer is worthy of his hire is quoted just as 
it stands in Luke as Scripture, immediately after the words 
of Deuteronomy xxv. 4. But this must be due to a lapse 
of memory ; at the time of the Pastoral Epistles no one would 
have treated Luke as ypafaj in the same way as Deuteronomy. 
The author of 1. Timothy believed that this was a saying from 
the Old Testament such as that taken from Deuteronomy xxv., 
and indeed it has quite the Old Testament ring. We are not 
sufficiently familiar with the early history of the Synoptics 
to venture to assert that the author of the Pastoral Epistles 
had read our Gospels. 

(b) The external evidence is not favourable to the authen 
ticity of the Epistles. The earliest certain use of them is by 
Polycarp of Smyrna, and by the end of the second century 
we find them everywhere firmly established in the Corpus 
Paulinarum ; but no more is proved by this than that the 
Pastoral Epistles existed in the first half of the second century 
and were warmly welcomed by the Church. It might be mere 
chance that neither the Epistle of Barnabas nor Justin contains 
the slightest reference to them ; certainly they share this fate 
with other Epistles of Paul of undoubted authenticity. But 
of very real importance is the fact that Marcion the Gnostic 
(about 140 A.D.) did not include them in his Canon of Pauline 
Epistles, although he certainly admitted into it all writings 
\vhich he had heard of in the Church under Paul s name ; 
if, then, the Pastoral Epistles belonged to these, why should 
he have utterly ignored them, since he might easily have 
omitted what was inconvenient to him in their case as well 
as in that of the other Epistles ? The reasons by which 



S 13.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES 181 

he is said to have justified their exclusion from his Canon, 
to which he even admitted the short Epistle to Philemon, 
are purely fanciful. But if Marcion was not acquainted 
with the Pastoral Epistles at that time, we should conclude 
that they did not make their appearance until a period when 
the other ten were already enjoying a widespread circula 
tion : in all probability after 100. This of course is not a 
sufficient proof of their spuriousness, but it makes us sus 
picious of the tradition. 

(c) The first of the main arguments against their authen 
ticity is afforded by their language. The number of a?ra 
\ey6fisva is not so much the question, for that words like 
TroXf THXTJS 1 or oiKovpyos - are not to be found in Paul s writings 
proves no more than does the fact that oXo/cX^os and O\OTS\IJS 
are only used by Paul in 1. Thessalonians. 3 It is more worthy 
of notice that in the Pastoral Epistles such everyday words as 
Trpoa-s^siv nvi, dpvsicrdai and a)(f>e\ifj,os are met with five, six 
and four times respectively, but never in Paul s Epistles nor 
in the rest of the New Testament ; or that instead of the 
thoroughly Pauline sirt,6vp.ia we here find r}8ovrf* sometimes 
compounded with <iXoy, <pi\rjSovoiS to form a word very charac 
teristic of these Epistles. But the fact that brings conviction 
is that many words which were indispensable to Paul are 
absent from the Pastoral Epistles : e.g. particles like apa. Bio, 
Stort ; whole families of words like Trepura-os with all its com 
pounds (elsewhere only absent in Philemon and 2. Thessa 
lonians) ; likewise Kav-^aa-dat (elsewhere occurring everywhere 
but in Colossians and Philemon), and, still more, svspysiv. 
The word <rw/ia, which Paul uses so extremely abundantly, 
only appears here once in the form <rcofjt,ariKij. R On the other 
hand, the Pastoral Epistles make the most liberal use of the 
words <Tu><^p(i)v,(T(i)^)p6vws,crw^)povlv 1 cra)<ppovlsiv,cr(i)(f)povt(r/jL6s 
and awfypoarvvri, whereas with Paul <ra)(ppovsiv alone occurs 
but twice. Still more striking is the preference for the stem 
in all sorts of combinations and derivatives even 
, which occurs only in 1. and 2. Timothy 7 in the 

1 1. Tim. ii. 9. * Titus ii. 5. v. 23. 

4 Titus iii. 3. 2. Tim. iii. 4. * 1. Tim. iv. 8. 

7 1. Tim. iii. 2 2. Tim. ii. 24. 



182 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

whole of the New Testament while the words svasfiws, 
svasftsia, sua-/3siv may be found thirteen times here and not 
once in Paul s Epistles. Nor can it be accidental that /caA.6? 
may be met with twenty-four times in the Pastoral Epistles 
alone and only sixteen times in the ten Pauline Epistles ; 
and while Paul uses it almost exclusively as a substantive 
TO tca\6v, K,a\a, Ka\6v scmv it occurs twenty times as an 
adjective in the Pastoral Epistles, especially with epya. } 

But neither does the style in general remind us in 
the least of Paul, whether we compare it with Ephesians, 
or 1. Thessalonians, or Eomans. The constructions are 
simple, the ideas expressed without ornament (for word 
plays like (fiiXijSovot, fjiaXXov TJ <f)i\60EOi 2 can scarcely be 
classed as ornaments) ; nowhere is there a trace of the 
Pauline swing and energy, and we hardly ever come across 
an anacoluthon, a break in the construction, or an ambiguity 
caused by the rush of hurrying ideas : all is regular and 
smooth in the Pastoral Epistles, but all is also without force 
or colour. Their words are many and their ideas few ; of 
Paul one might say exactly the opposite. 

Attempts have been made to weaken this argument by 
reminding us that what we have here are private letters, 
in which the writer would naturally express himself with less 
restraint than he would in what might be called an official 
epistle a letter addressed to a community. I doubt, however, 
whether this differentiation would apply in Paul s case ; he 
did not consider himself to be more official in his Epistle 
to the Philippians than he did when he was writing to 
Philemon or to his friend Timothy ; but even if it were so, 
nothing would be gained for the Pastoral Epistles, for such a 
difference could only apply to the tone and the manner, not to 
the very materials of the language. Blass, the philologist, 
does not cL ^ider it astonishing that Paul should write to 
his discip]L nou ^d assistants in a different manner i.e. in a 
more loftyL^ heard Q n ^ the churches. Are we to suppose, 
then, tha| e p as ^ ovq i uself writes letters to his friends and 
pupils in ,4.<^ore lofty style than he bestows on the grammars, 
prefaces and historical sketches which he produces for the 

1 This occurs four times in Titus alone. * 2. Tim. iii. 4. 



13.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES 183 

common herd ? And in what sense of the word can the style 
of 1. Timothy be considered more lofty than, for instance, 
that of 2. Corinthians 3-5 ? It may be neater, but is a 
neater style the same thing as a more lofty one ? Still more 
unfortunate, perhaps, is the suggestion that Paul s style might 
have undergone a change, that as he grew old he might have 
lost some of the animation once peculiarly his own, might 
have been influenced by many things, even the vocabulary of 
his opponents. Surely it is more than improbable that this 
influence should only have begun to exert itself so late, and 
should have extended to the use of particles and whole groups 
of related words which have nothing whatever to do with 
theology. Moreover, Paul was an old man when he wrote 
Philemon and Philippians, yet why should these traces of 
senility be absent from them ? And who can believe that 
Paul, whom we have studied as a letter-writer throughout a 
whole decade and have always found substantially the same, 
should suddenly after another two or three years have under 
gone so complete a change ? The style of Ephesians might 
perhaps be described as tinged with traces of senility ; but to 
credit Paul with a change of style from that of Galatians and 
Corinthians through the more wordy obscurity of Colossians 
and Ephesians to the smooth commonplace of the Pastoral 
Epistles, is surely a little too much. Let writers with such 
theories of style-development examine the earliest and latest 
works of Tertullian or Athanasius from that point of view of 
men who were exposed to outside influences from reading 
and controversy at least as much as Paul and then see 
whether they discover such differences there as exist between 
Komans and 1. Timothy ! 

(d) As to an intentional appropriation of phrases from 
the enemy s camp, this would be least incredible in the 
case of formulae bearing on a different world of thought : 
as when the Pastorals so frequently speak of the good or 
the clean conscience (expressions which do not occur in Paul s 
Epistles), or when stress is laid upon the sound word of 
doctrine (vynjs or vyialvav), again without parallel in Paul. 
Expressions like \o^ofj,a^siv 1 or \oyofj,a-^lai 2 might, of 

1 2. Tim. ii. 14. 2 1. Tim. vi. 4. 



184 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. u. 

course, have been coined by Paul at any moment for use 
against a particular form of theological propaganda. But what 
could have induced the Apostle absolutely to discard the 
words most characteristic of his thought, i.e. his favourite 
ideas, like that of putting on (Christ, or the new man, etc.) 
or of revelation (airoKa\.v^ns and dTroKa\v7rTiv) ? And are 
we to suppose that Paul further owed to his adversaries his 
unusual use of iricms (faith) ? For the words sv TTIO-TSI are 
met with here nine times in the most varied connections, 1 
while in the other ten Epistles they occur but thrice, and 
even then only coupled with the verbs ^v, slvai and O-T//KSIV. 
These things alone could only be explained on the assumption 
that the writer was a man whose ways of thought were other 
than Paul s ; but the fundamental conceptions and the whole 
attitude of the Pastoral Epistles are different from those of 
Paul. I do not mean that importance should be attached 
to small contradictions, such as that a mediator should 
be spoken of in Galatians 2 as something of a relatively low 
order, while in 1. Timothy 3 Christ is solemnly extolled as 
mediator between God and men, nor can there be any 
question here of a peculiar non-Pauline theology like that of 
Hebrews. The author of the Pastoral Epistles was certainly 
not conscious of deviating in the smallest particular from his 
revered Apostle, and innovations in doctrine, as we know, he 
hated with all his soul. 

But in this dread of theological contention, and even of 
speculation of any kind, 1 in this accentuation of a simple 
holding fast and propagation of the tradition, 5 in the striking 
emphasis laid upon the practical duties of Christians and in 
the moralising character of our Epistles, a different spirit is 
shown from that of Paul the spirit of the Afterborn. Faith, 
of which he cannot speak often enough, has changed to ortho 
doxy ; it now means the recognition of and unswerving ad 
herence to fundamental religious facts, such as that of the 
unity of God, 6 the universality of the divine decree of mercy, 7 

1 E.g., 1. Tim. i. 4, the dispensation of God which is in faith. 
" iii. 19 fol. 3 ii. 5. 

4 2. Tim. ii. 23, and 1. Tim. vi. 4. 5 E.g., 2. Tim. 5. 13 fol., and ii. 2. 
8 1, ii. . 7 ii. 4, 6. 



13.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES 185 

the fulfilment of the same through Jesus Christ, whose 
mortal nature is just as strongly dwelt upon as his subsequent 
glorification, 1 and the equal balance of labour and reward. - 
It is true that we still hear of a calling, 3 of the elect, 4 of 
the Divfre purpose and grace (TrpoOsa-is KOL %a/Hs) which 
was given us from everlasting in Christ Jesus 5 as the only 
ground of our salvation (ov Kara ra spya -f]p,wv) ; but who 
could extract from these bald formulae anything of the daunt 
less force of the belief in Predestination which is to be found 
in Romans viii. 28 fol. ? According to the Pastoral Epistles, 
salvation is fore-ordained to the believers, the righteous, the 
pure. According to Paul, the individual believers are fore 
ordained to salvation. The Anti- Judaism of Paul, which 
was wholly a matter of principle, has here become one of 
persons. In Titus i. 10 ol SK rfjs 7rspiTo/j,rjs, they of the 
circumcision, are treated as contemptuously as are their 
prescriptions for purification founded nevertheless on the 
law of Moses which are called Jewish fables and command 
ments of men. This was the judgment of the early Catholic 
Church, but not of Paul. In the Pastoral Epistles we find a 
uniform reflection of the average Christianity of the second 
century, although one peculiarly rich in reminiscences of 
Pauline doctrine ; even the Creed appears already fixed in 
definite formulae, 5 and it is assumed as a matter of course 
that each baptised Christian has testified to his faith before 
the community, in the recognised form. 

But most instructive of all will be a glance at the eschato- 
logy of the Epistles. The true Paul allowed his ideas about 
the Last Things to vary a good deal, but still a conviction of 
the near approach of the Last Day was always a mighty force 
within him, and the hope that he might himself live to see 
the return of the Lord never wholly left him. The thought 
that it might be necessary to make lasting provision for a 
continued existence of the Church on earth, would have been 
inconceivable to him. But in the Pastoral Epistles the situa 
tion is completely changed. The presentiment of death in 
2. Tim. iv. 6 may here be left out of account. Men were 

1 1, iii. 16. 2, ii. 5 fol. * 2. Tim. i. . 4 2. Tim. ii. 10. 

5 2. Tim. i. 9. 6 1. Tim. ii. 5 fol., iii. 16, vi. 13 ; 2. Tim. ii. 8. 



186 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

waiting, it is true, for the appearance of Jesus and the Day 
of Judgment ; when, indeed, did they cease to wait for them ? 
But they were already consoling themselves with the thought 
that the Parusia of God would take place in his own time, l 
and they were accordingly preparing to establish themselves 
upon earth. The principal object, as we know, of the Pastoral 
Epistles is to give advice on the practical organisation of 
the Church, and a second period in the history of the com 
munity a period subsequent to the Apostolic is brought 
clearly into view. The passages beginning the time will 
come when/ 2 in the last days grievous times shall come, 3 
in later times some shall fall away, 4 are instances 
of this, while 1. ii. 15 is also specially characteristic. 
The fact that this future tense alternates with the pre 
sent of Titus i. 10, there are many unruly men, and the 
past of 1. Timothy i. 6, from which things some have 
turned aside, 5 is only a proof that the writer found him 
self in an artificial position ; the things which he makes the 
lips of Paul foretell as future were to him partly present and 
partly past, and it is clear throughout that he was not count 
ing upon a speedy and sudden intervention of God. How 
much more primitive, more Pauline, is the tone of Hebrews, 
with its anxiety lest the short respite, so long as it is called 
To-day, should be let slip ! 

(e) A further reason for disputing the authenticity of the 
Pastoral Epistles lies in the fact that the manner in which 
Paul here speaks of himself to his trusted friends, and 
even the motives which led him to write to them, are 
psychologically inconceivable. In Galatians and 1. and 2. 
Corinthians we have sufficient evidence of how close were his 
relations with Titus and Timothy, what great things he 
expected of them and they did not fail to accomplish. Are 
we to believe, then, that in writing to these men he would 
style himself with full formality in the addresses as an 
Apostle of Jesus Christ, etc. etc., exactly as he did towards the 
Eomans whom he did not personally know, or the Galatians 
when they were leaning towards apostasy, while in the 

1 1. Tim. vi. 15. 2 2. Tim. iv. 3. 3 2. Tim. iii. 1 fol. 

1 1. Tim. iv. 1. Cf. 1. vi. 21. 



13.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES 187 

Epistle to Philemon he did not consider it necessary ? Must 
he declare to them that he was appointed of God to be a 
preacher of the Gospel, that he spoke the truth and lied not ? 
Must he discourse to them at considerable length upon his 
past career, with exaggerations towards both extremes, 
representing himself on the one hand as having been a man 
of shame, the chief of sinners, and on the other as having 
served God from his forefathers in a pure conscience ? 
We need not emphasise the contradiction between this last 
sentence and the seventh chapter of Romans ; but will the self- 
praise of the Apostle in Philippians iii. 6 which is yet 
intended merely as a foil to iii. 8, I do count them but 
dung 1 bear comparison with this unqualified Xarpsvw? 
We are shown in Philippians iii. 12 what Paul thought of his 
perfection, of his so-called completeness : in 2. Timothy iv. 7 
fol. we see an estimate of his merits such as could only have 
been pronounced by a disciple who deeply honoured him not 
by himself. Nor does he seem to have had any very con 
siderable confidence in his intimate friends, since he explains 
the most elementary things to them at such length, impresses 
upon them over and over again the most obvious duties, such 
as that of decent conduct, 2 and considers it natural that 
Timothy should be thought lightly of on account of his youth, 
whereas he was certainly older at the time than was Jesus at his 
death or Paul at the beginning of his missionary work. As in 
the phrase fnjSslsT-fjs vsorrjros crov Karafypovsirw, so throughout 
the Pastoral Epistles, we have the impression that the world 
at large is being addressed, not the addressees : this, however, 
does not appear to strike those critics who point to this 
passage with such enthusiasm as evidence of the private 
character of the Epistles. 

Zahn, on the other hand, exaggerates the unpleasant 
features in the picture of Timothy, who, he declares, is already 
tempted to withdraw in a cowardly way from Paul, and 
therefore from his own calling ; who shelters himself behind 
his youth to excuse his lack of energy in the fulfilment of 
his duties. He also urges upon us, and with justice, that 
all the legendary invention of the Ancient Church was on 

1 Philip, iii. 8. 2 E.g., 2 Tim. ii. 22 : Flee youthful lusts. 



188 AN INTRODUCTION" TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP, n. 

the side of panegyric, and from this he deduces the folly of 
the hypothesis that a pseudo-Paul should in 1. and 2. Timothy 
have made this caricature of the Timothy whom the genuine 
Paul praised so highly in his Epistles. But the pseudo- 
Paul s need for panegyric is amply satisfied in the words 
of praise devoted to Paul himself, 1 and even in the case of 
Timothy it obtains its due in vv. i. 4 fol. and iii. 10 of the 
Second Epistle. The unpleasing traits in the picture of 
Timothy and Titus are demanded by the parts assigned to 
them, for the detailed instructions which the author pretends 
to possess from Apostolic lips would only have been needed 
by men who were not yet quite familiar with their task. 
Again, the number of his friends who have fallen away and 
turned traitors serves, on the one hand, to make the lonely 
greatness of the Apostle, still unforsaken by his God, shine 
forth with yet purer glory ; and, on the other, it provides a 
motive for the lively anxiety with which he gives advice and 
warnings of so minute and pressing a nature. But, not least, 
we find in it a reflection of the experiences of the unknown 
author himself : the untrustworthiness, the weakmindedness, 
the lack of clearness of those who wished to be leaders and 
examples, appeared to him as the canker gnawing at the roots 
of the Christianity of his times. Hebrews fully prepares us 
for such judgments in a Christian writing twenty years later. 
But can we believe that the men who helped Paul and his 
Gospel to conquer the world, who restored his authority in 
communities of which he almost despaired, and who did not 
hesitate to risk their necks for his life such men as Titus, 
Timothy, Aquila, or Demas can we believe that these were 
such miserably timid, self-seeking and small-minded men as 
Zahn would have us to think, in order that he may save the 
genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles ? We must judge Paul by 
his disciples, for he had had ten years in which to train them ; 
if they were so immature as would appear from the Pastoral 
Epistles, he certainly had not finished his course of instruction ! 
Moreover, if Paul had been with both Timothy and Titus 
shortly before writing 1. Timothy and Titus respectively 2 
and had then appointed them their tasks, why should he do so 

1 E.g., 2. Tim. iii. 10 fol. 1. Tim. i. 3 ; Titus i. 5. 



S 13.] THE PASTOKAL EPISTLES 189 

again so soon, in spite of the fact that he was looking forward 
to a speedy re-union with them ? l 1. Tim. iii. 15 shows that 
the writer himself felt how unnatural this was, though he was 
unable to avoid it. Why is there not in 1. Timothy a single 
word of advice specially intended for Ephesus, with which 
Paul was so intimately acquainted, and why does he give 
Titus so detailed a picture of the Cretan heretics, whom the 
latter must surely have known best himself, while at the 
same moment destroying the possible utility of the infor 
mation by bidding him leave Crete ? Contradictory things 
of this sort will never be explained on the supposition that 
the real Paul was writing to real fellow-labourers about the 
real circumstances of his time, but only by assuming that a 
later writer had created an artificial situation out of which 
he made the Apostle issue directions to certain famous 
community-leaders of former times. It is also significant to 
note that he can only picture the companions of Paul as 
chattels always at the disposal of the Apostolic Prince of 
the Church, a band from among whom the latter regularly 
appointed the leaders, the important personages, the Apostolic 
vicars, of the newly founded communities. 

(/) Similar difficulties arise when we attempt to find a 
place for the Epistles during the life of Paul especially since, 
considering their close connection, only one period of Paul s 
life is possible, and that after the composition of the other 
Epistles. Let us see what they themselves have to tell us as 
to the circumstances under which they were written. 

According to 1. Timothy i. 3, Paul had recently been 
working together with Timothy at Ephesus, but had now, 
leaving the latter behind to contend against the false brethren, 
gone on to Macedonia, in the confident hope of a speedy 
return. 2 From this we conclude that the Apostle was a free 
man, and we might be inclined to think of the particular 
moment in the so-called Third Missionary Journey when 
after a three years sojourn in Ephesus he was forced to 
leave the city and went up through Troas to Macedonia, were 
it not, unfortunately, that according to 2. Corinthians this 
was done in company with Timothy and certainly not in the 

1 1. Tim. iii. 14 ; Titus iii. 12. - 1. Tim. iii. 14 and iv. 13. 



100 AN IXTKOIU ITIOX TO THK NEW TESTAMENT [CH uv n. 



hope of a speedy return. The Epistle to Titus Paul also 
wrote as a free man, surrounded by many companions ; he 
had recently been with Titus in Crete, and had left him 
behind to organise the new communities ; but now lie writes 
to him to come with all speed, as soon as Artemas or Tychicus 
should have arrived, to Nicopolis ^probably in Epirus>, where 
he was intending to pass the winter.- The temper alone of 

1. Timothy is sufficient to show that it could not have been 
composed immediately after the Ephesian catastrophe. It 
might rather be assigned to an excursion which with as 
much probability as that second journey to Corinth 3 also 
not mentioned in the Acts Paul might have made a year 
or two before from Ephesus to Macedonia. But then the 
Epistle would have to be placed before 2. Cor. and Romans 
and to be divided by a long interval from 2. Timothy, and 
this is impossible. Paul might certainly have planned a 
winter in Nieopolis during his last journey through Macedonia 
possibly l>efore he had received tidings as to the effect of 

2. Cor. though, of course, the erf cut ion of the plan need not 
be taken for grant ed ; but that does not help us with the 
Epistle to Titus, because Paul touched at Crete for the first 
time considerably later, during his journey to Rome. If this 
had ever l>een preceded by a fruitful activity upon the island, 
the eye- witness who wrote the report beginning at Acts xxvii. 7 
would certainly have mentioned it. And moreover the bringing 
in of several otherwise unattested acts is in itself suspicious. 

In 2. Timothy we find that Paul is a prisoner in Rome,* 
conscious, according to iv. 08, that he is nearing his end. 
In iv. 16 he says that at his first defence all had forsaken 
him ; the impudent opj>osition of Alexander the copper 
smith, too, had since then offended him deeply v iv. 1-1^ ; all 
that were in Asia had turned away from him (i. Ifo. But 
he had in the mean time received much loving-kindness ; 
the fugitives, with the exception of Pemas, 1 seem to have 
returned to him for a time, but just now ouly Luke 
was with him," while Titus was in l>almatia and Crescens 
in Gaul. Paul wishes J to have Timothy, as well as 

in. 13. * ii. 12. Soe pp. 93 94. 

i. 16 tol- * v. 10. iv. 11. i. 4. 



$ 13.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES 191 

Mark, 1 with him shortly, 2 before the winter had set in. 3 
Where Timothy was staying at the time we are not definitely 
told, but it could not very well have been far from Troas, 
since he was to bring with him thence the famous cloak and 
books (and this to one who was daily expecting his end ! ) * ; in 
fact, in spite of the words Tychicus I sent unto Ephesus 5 
and of verse i. 15, our thoughts would, according to i. 18 and 
iv. 19, and as in 1. Timothy, turn to Ephesus. Zahn prefers 
Iconium or Lystra a holiday resort of the evangelist, 
who had grown weary at home. The Epistle might quite 
well have been written during the Eoman imprisonment, but 
in that case before Philemon, Colossians and Philippians, for 
when they were composed Timothy and Mark were both with 
Paul and had been sharing his sufferings for some tune. 
Above all, it is evident that Timothy here receives accurate 
information for the first time concerning Paul s imprison 
ment. But here again it is strange that Paul should calmly 
have left the cloak in Troas for several years, especially if, 
with the Acts, we assign the duration of the Caesarean 
imprisonment to two years ; while the remarks of iv. 20, that 
Erastus had remained at Corinth and Trophimus had been 
left behind at Miletus sick, sound more than ever as though 
this had taken place quite recently, in fact during the last 
Collection-journey, in which Trophimus, according to Acts xx. 
4, had taken part. Timothy, however, had also taken part in 
it, so what would be the object of describing these proceedings 
to him over again ? 

The career of Tychicus, too, becomes an absolute 
riddle. Not only do we find that before Paul s arrest the 
latter had sent him to Crete or intended to do so 6 and had 
then taken him with him to Jerusalem, 7 but that after his 
imprisonment he sent him according to 2. Timothy s to Ephesus, 
and according to Colossians 9 and Ephesians lu to Colossae and 
other neighbouring communities. But these two, in spite of the 
proximity of their destinations, are incompatible as one and 
the same mission, since in the one case Paul was almost 

1 iv. 11. * iv. 9. * iv. 21. 4 iv. 13. 

* iv. 12. k Tit. iii. 12. Ads xx. 4. iv. 12. 

iv. 7. * vi. 21. 



192 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

deserted and longed for the arrival of Timothy, and in the 
other both Timothy and several other companions were at 
his side. Even if we allow that Philemon, Colossians and 
Ephesians were written from Caesarea, this would mean that 
Tychicus had for years been travelling about unceasingly at 
Paul s behest ! 

In order to avoid these difficulties and to keep the Epistles 
close together, a convenient hypothesis has been put forward. 
It creates a period in the life of Paul of which we have no 
other knowledge whatever none, therefore, which would 
interfere with the utterances of the Pastoral Epistles a 
period which may equally well include free activity in 
Ephesus and Epirus, Macedonia and Crete, and close confine 
ment with the prospect of death. For such a period the only 
place left in the life of Paul would be after those two years 
which he spent in Eome in a state of semi-confinement ; he 
must then have been set free, but after a short time have 
been imprisoned in Rome once more, and then, but not till then, 
have been executed. Of the objections which the course herein 
assumed by the argument raises in the highest degree of the 
importance of the fact that the Acts certainly knew of no libera 
tion of the Apostle, and of the lack of trustworthy evidence for 
this so-called second Roman imprisonment it is unnecessary 
to speak further. 2 

But in no case can 2. Timothy iv. 16-18 serve as a founda 
tion for this castle in the air. From the words of the text no 
one would guess that the first defence signifies the same 
thing as the first imprisonment, or that the delivery out 
of the mouth of the lion was identical with an acquittal by 
the imperial tribunal. We are compelled to conceive this 
triumph of the Apostle as a moral and religious one, both from 
the statement of its end and aim in verse 17 and the parallel 
passage in verse 18, The Lord will deliver me from every 
evil work, and will save me unto his heavenly kingdom. 
Paul can assure his pupil that, when before the tribunal, 
he had defended the Gospel with power and had as yet 
checkmated the Devil, although relying only on himself and 
on his God. The second imprisonment theory owes its 

1 Acts xxviii. 30. 2 See pp. 42 fol. 



13.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES 193 

popularity solely to the unpopularity of any critical verdict 
against the authenticity of a New Testament Book. 

Professor Weiss has formulated the state of the case in 
the following way : (a) that the hypothesis of a second 
imprisonment is confirmed only by the Pastoral Epistles, 
if they are genuine, and (b) that the genuineness of the 
Pastoral Epistles can only be proved by adopting that 
hypothesis. Criticism, he declared, could never get out of 
this circle. In this statement he forgets, however, that this 
in itself quite conceivable period in the life of Paul becomes 
very improbable in the light of our tradition for that a 
thing is conceivable in itself is never of much use to us in 
history, that such suppositions must simply be neglected 
when they are only made for the benefit of those who insist 
upon holding the untenable through thick and thin, and 
that even if the life of Paul had finally shaped itself in this 
way beyond question, as we should be obliged to assume if 
we adopted this hypothesis concerning our Epistles, their 
authenticity would not even then be demonstrated, since with 
the chronological difficulties the apologists would only have 
got rid of a quarter or an eighth part of the objections against 
their genuineness. 

4. With regard to the determination of the date of the 
Epistles, it is enough to refer to a few points, though these 
are decisive. As we refrained, for reasons given above, 1 from 
drawing conclusions from 1. Timothy v. 18, where Luke is 
apparently considered as a canonical book, so we will also 
refrain here from making the words antitheses of the 
knowledge which is falsely so called 2 refer to Mansion s 
principal work, entitled Antitheses, which can scarcely have 
been completed before the year 140. The readers of these 
words are not warned against any book. The Church appears 
to be going through a period of persecution 3 ; this would 
explain the numerous defections, but the very uncertain indi 
cations of the Epistles do not permit us to fix the date of this 
persecution more nearly than to say that it was perhaps that 
inaugurated by Trajan. Certainly the condition and organi- 

See p. 180. - 1. Tim. vi. 20. 

3 See 2. Tim. i. 6 fol., iv. 5. 



194 AN INTKODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. 11. 

sation of the communities presupposed by the Epistles point to 
a time tolerably far removed from Paul. Unfeigned faith has 
already become a kind of family inheritance ; Timothy had 
received it from his mother and grandmother. 2 The duty of 
keeping the faith is much more strongly dwelt upon than 
that of spreading and deepening it. The Catholic stand 
point is reached ; the truth is there, and men are divided 
into those who hold fast to the truth and those who deny it ; 
there is no longer any question of more or less in the recognition 
of it (Philip, iii. 15) ; there is hardly a sign left to show that 
the religious needs of the communities were supplied, as in 
1. Corinthians xii.-xiv., by their spiritually gifted members 3 ; 
definite persons in definite offices have taken the place of the 
inspired brethren, and the division into clergy and laity, even 
though the names have not yet appeared, is already accom 
plished. 1 Particular qualities are required for admission into 
the presbytery and for the offices of bishop and deacon, as 
well as for the rank of honourable widowhood. These quali 
ties (e.g. that a man should rule well his own house, should 
not be a newly baptised convert) generally show that they 
were the outcome of long experience and observation, and 
that a higher standard of morality was already required from 
the clergy. It is just as certain that the demand of 1. Tim. iii. 2, 
that a bishop and also a deacon (iii. 12) should be the 
husband of one wife, means more than that he should be 
free from the reproach of adultery and fornication, as that 
the widow of sixty years who must have been the wife of 
one man means, especially when taken in conjunction with 
v. 11, a woman who has only been once married : the second 
marriage of a widow was already counted as a breach 
of the first troth. The primitive form of ordination as a 
means of special grace to those in office is already introduced 5 
in fact great store is set upon the observance in the Church 
of definite forms. 

The picture of the average moral condition of the com 
munities is not very edifying, 6 and the frequent reference to 

1 2. Tim. i. 5. * 2, i. 3; 1, v. 4. 

8 1. Tim. iv. 14, and i. IS. 4 1. Tim. v. 17-19. 

* 1. Tim. iv. 14. 6 1. Tim. iii. 2-5, 8, 11, v. 20 ; 2. Tim. iii. 2-5 and G fol 



13.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES 195 

the opinion of non-Christians l is also distinctive. The best 
spirits in the Christian world saw with sorrow that the vice 
and frivolity of their fellow-believers were doing most serious 
harm to the Gospel ; the secularisation of Christianity was 
proceeding apace. True, this did not begin everywhere at 
the same time, nor is the date at which a hierarchical 
organisation first came into being distinctly determinable, but 
in neither case can we take our stand too near the Apostolic 
Age. 

The description of the false brethren combated in the 
Pastoral Epistles agrees with this assignment namely, to the 
third or fourth generation A.D. Even if there were no direct 
mention in 1. Timothy vi. 20 of the knowledge which is falsely 
so called, there could be no doubt that these heretics who, in 
the author s experience, had already caused much mischief 
in the Church, and from whom he feared still more - were 
Gnostics. Everything in the writer s theology that is at all 
tangible is anti-Gnostic in tone; 1. Timothy ii. 4 and 6 sound 
like a protest against the Gnostic division of mankind into 
two or three classes, one of which, that of the slaves of Matter 
(Hylicists), was absolutely excluded from salvation ; the ex 
travagant respect for tradition, again, and the anti-Docetic 
utterances all point in the same direction. But the Gnostics 
may be recognised still more distinctly from the positive infor 
mation supplied by the Pastoral Epistles as to the behaviour 
of the heretics. Whether they were Greeks or quondam Jews, 2 
they vaunted themselves upon their myths of subtle meaning 
and their endless genealogies,- 1 and imposed upon men by their 
skill in reasoning and their capacity for continually setting 
up and solving fresh problems. These newfangled teachers 
of the Law used it for idle speculations, instead of for 
the confirmation of Christian knowledge, 1 or appealed 
to it without the least conception of its true interpreta 
tion, in order to enforce the commandments of men ft the 
prohibition of marriage, of the drinking of wine and 



1 1. Tim. iii. 7, v. 14 ; Titus ii. 5. - Titus i. 10 and 14. 

3 1. Tim. i. 4. < 1. Tim. i. 7 ; 2, iii. 15-17. 

5 Titus i. 14. 

o 2 



196 AX 1XTKODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

the eating of meat and denied the idea of a future 
resurrection - on the ground that the true resurrection had 
already taken place, at any rate among the sons of know 
ledge. 

Now, it is true that in the aggregate these features do not 
all apply to any single Gnostic system, such as that of 
Basilides or of Marcion, but we know numerous Gnostic sys 
tems only by name, and the writer has no desire to discuss 
the individual doctrines of any one system minutely. He 
confines himself in dealing with this poison mainly to an 
allusive treatment. Perhaps he knew that the false teaching 
was advancing to the assault from the most diverse quarters ; 
but every variety was alike worthy of condemnation. We 
should be fundamentally mistaken as to the position of the 
Pastoral Epistles if we pressed these false teachers rigidly 
into three classes : the evil and hopeless men of the last times, 
against whom the author only wished to prepare his readers ; 
the blasphemers of the present, who were already excommuni 
cate ; and the TspoSiSao-Ka\,ovvTs within the Church, re 
commended to the watchful discipline of the vicars a com 
paratively harmless class, which had merely lost sight of the 
serious morality of Christianity in its fondness for rabbinical 
or ascetic fancies. Although these false teachers may be 
somewhat shadowy figures to us, they need not have been 
so to the author s contemporaries. Nor must we forget 
that the writer was bound to maintain the role of Paul, and 
therefore can only utter his warnings in the form of pro 
phecy. For this very reason he cannot be over-precise in his 
outlines. Now, it was only in the seeond century that this 
struggle for existence between subjectivism and the true 
and wholesome doctrine, the Apostolic tradition, became the 
chief concern of the Church, just as the rigid organisation of 
the Church became closely bound up with the same movement. 
Granted that the writer of the Pastoral Epistles was one who 
actively participated in such a struggle, one who, realising the 
danger, did not hesitate, in self-defence, to employ the doubt 
ful weapon of supposititious Pauline Epistles, these Epistles 
could only have been written after the year 100. And taking 

1 1. Tim. iv. 3, v. 23. "- J. Tim. ii. 18. 



$ 13.] THE PASTOEAL EPISTLES 197 

the external evidence into account, we should fix upon the first 
quarter of the second century. 

As to the writer s place of abode it is best to abstain from 
all conjecture. Many have suggested Eome, basing their 
suggestion on occasional Latinisms in the language ; but 
these have little significance, and there is no other local 
colouring. The author must certainly have belonged to the 
ministry, and it is probable that he may even have been 
born of Christian parents, 1 but there is no evidence whatso 
ever to show that he was of Jewish extraction. 2 

5. The idea of imparting advice and warning to Christen 
dom in the name of Paul probably came to our unknown 
author from observation of the exasperating fact that the 
false teachers sometimes claimed the authority of Paul for 
their vain doctrine, and sometimes treated it with open con 
tempt. This is the reason why he lays so much stress, now 
on the Apostolic rights of Paul, and now on the fact that his 
message contained nothing but the plain Gospel received 
direct from the Son of God appearing in flesh as the 
Saviour of sinners. His object was to make the true Paul 
give his opinion unmistakably on the false Paulinists as well 
as on the outspoken Anti-Paulinists. To the question why 
the author made Paul write to Timothy and Titus rather than 
to anyone else, we might answer : because his object was to 
furnish admonitions in the Apostle s name to the heads of the 
Church, and for such a part the best known of his trusted 
comrades were the most suitable ; they were at once Paul s 
disciples, whom he could teach and counsel in fatherly tones, 
and his trusted followers, whom he could endue with Apo 
stolic authority to establish discipline and order in Gentile 
communities. It is far more difficult to answer the further 
question : why the anonymous author drew up three 
epistles when one would have sufficed, and in what order he 
composed the three. We may venture the conjecture that 
from the first he intended to produce more than one epistle, 
and perhaps chose the number three to begin with ; if Paul 
communicated the same instructions from different situations, 
to diS erent men, working in entirely different provinces, the 

1 2. Tim. i. 3, iii. 15. See Titus i. 10, ol IK TTJS irfpiro/j.ris. 



198 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

weight of his utterance would be effectively increased. Then 
no doubt would remain that Paul had laid down binding 
laws for the whole Church and for all times. With regard to 
the order in which they were written, we may reasonably 
assert that 1. Timothy and Titus display the closest con 
nection ; 2. Timothy might rather be called the author s 
trump-card, by which he made the dying Apostle hand over 
his last will and testament to a successor in the ministry. 
This is a situation which would naturally call forth tenderer 
as well as harsher tones. Moreover, on this supposition we 
should behold the writer s powers increasing before our eyes, 
for in 2. Timothy he certainly approaches most nearly to 
the real Epistles of Paul in expression, thought and attitude. 
This observation, again, leads up to another hypothesis, 
viz. that genuine Pauline material may have been incorporated 
in the Pastoral Epistles notes or fragments of the Apostle s 
letters to those two friends. To a lively fancy, Hymenreus, 
Alexander and Philetus may appear as figures of rlesh and 
blood ; and indeed the personal references in 2. Timothy i. 15, 
18 and iv. 9-18, 19-21, and in Titus iii. 12, 15, have little 
or no connection with the main tendencies of the Epistles. 
It is suggested that Paul s request in 2. Timothy iv. 13 sounds 
too simple to have been invented, and large portions of 
2. Timothy 2 or Titus 3 contain no teaching which, regarded by 
itself, would surprise us as coming from the mouth of Paul. 
The critics have therefore set to work with much zeal to 
extract the authentic parts, even down to individual words 
and syllables, from the existing Pastoral Epistles, and have 
then pieced these together with great skill to form two, 
three and even more genuine Epistles of Paul, perfect and un 
impaired. On the other hand, Harnack, who also believes in 
some such genuine foundation underlying the Pastoral 
Epistles, has discovered yet a third hand in the present text. 
He thinks that about the year 150 some scribe interpolated 
the portions of 1. Timothy 4 and Titus 5 concerning the disci 
pline of the Church, as well as the ending of 1 . Timothy/ 1 with 
the warning against Marcion s Antitheses. 

1 1. Tim. i. 20 ; 2. Tim. ii. 17. 2 E.g., i. 7-12, and ii. 3-13. 

3 iii. 1-8. iii. 1-13 and parts of chapter v. s i. 7-9. tt vi. 17-21. 



5 13.] TUB PASTORAL EPISTLES 199 

I cannot accept either of these hypotheses. We must 
of course take care not to assert that the employment of 
genuine fragments by the nameless author, or the interpola 
tion of later additions into his own work, was impossible in 
itself ; but the impression of unity given by the whole, 
especially of the close connection originally existing between 
all the parts referring to the discipline of the Church, in my 
opinion outweighs the force of the arguments brought forward 
in favour of a division of the material among several authors, 
one writing about the year 60, one about 110, and one about 
150. The author brought forward these numerous names and 
facts (which are to be found especially in 2. Timothy and 
Titus) of set purpose, in order to give his work the closest 
possible connection with the genuine Pauline Epistles ; he 
obtained his materials in part from the collection of Epistles 
accessible to him as to us, and from the Acts ; in part he 
added to them by free invention, in the manner to be exhibited 
soon afterwards in the Acts of Paul. Here he would, of 
course, make occasional allusions which we are naturally 
unable to follow to personal matters and occurrences of the 
moment. 2. Timothy iv. 9-18 is intended (and successfully) 
to awaken the sympathy of the reader with the disillusioned, 
lonely, poverty-stricken Apostle, deprived even of his books, 
to arouse admiration for his strength and thereby to increase 
the effect of his former warnings. The entreaty to Timothy 
to come quickly, 1 recurring in the middle of the messages 
of greeting, is well calculated to represent the pathetic 
longing of the man. The other passages which bear the 
mark of Paul s style are successful imitations ; the skill with 
which, if genuine, the anonymous author must be credited 
for working them up into his own material is at least aa 
remarkable as that which their simple invention would have 
entailed. However, even there he is not quite Paul ; but no one 
can doubt his wish to be Paul, and Paul alone, in these Epistles. 
Those who consider it an axiom that Pseudepigrapha are only 
the work of fools who betray the forger with every word, have 
no resource but to cast off or to conceal all doubts as to tfte 
genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles. But it does not surprise 

1 iv. 19-21. 



200 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

me, considering the extraordinarily fine perception sometimes 
displayed by the author of the Acts in the discourses he puts 
into the mouth of his hero, coraesponding as they do to his 
individuality and to the given situation, that another Christian, 
whose work was made so much more easy by his long study 
of the ten Pauline Epistles, should not long afterwards l have 
undertaken to write epistles in Paul s name to secure the 
welfare of the distressed Church epistles in which the public 
of that time found Paul again, complete as they pictured 
him, the Apostle of the true faith and the champion of 
morality and order in all the churches. The skill of the 
unknown writer although, to my mind, somewhat premedi 
tated deserved its success, because it was not self-seeking. 
The Church accepted without question the word of Paul 
of which she stood in so much need, and she rewarded the 
Pseudo-Paul for his work by speedily including his productions 
in the collection of the Apostolic Epistles, although for 
force of intellect and wealth of ideas they can endure no 
comparison with the genuine Pauline Epistles or with the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. 

1 About 110. 



201 



CHAPTEK III 

THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES 

14. A general Survey of the Catholic Epistles 

THE name Catholic Epistles/ under which we include to-day 
the seven shorter New Testament Epistles which are not 
ascribed to Paul, was thoroughly familiar to Eusebius, 1 about 
325. Origen 2 also used it frequently, although only in the 
singular of individual Epistles, such as 1 John, Jude and 
1 . Peter. Dionysius of Alexandria :i applies the word Catholic 
to the 1st Epistle of John, apparently in contradistinction to 
the 2nd and 3rd. But perhaps the oldest record of it that we 
possess is to be found in the writings of the Antimontanist 
Apollonius, 4 who attributes to the heretic Themison the com 
position of a Catholic Epistle in imitation of that of the 
apostle (John ?). In any case, this title clung to it long 
afterwards e.g. in the writings of Socrates and Theodoretus 
in the fifth century and especially in the form \wdvvov // 
KadoXiK^. Now, since Eusebius declared that most of the 
Catholic Epistles were disputed, he cannot have understood 
the name to mean as much as recognised by the whole 
Church ; nor can Origen, for he called the Epistle of 
Barnabas Catholic too ; and least of all Apollonius. 
Catholic in this connection has a mere outward significance ; 
the epithet was probably intended in the first instance to 
denote 1. John unequivocally as encyclical, addressed to the 
world at large, and, as it were, official, as distinct from such 
private letters as 2. and 3. John and the Pauline Epistles, 
which were addressed to single persons or communities. In this 

1 Died in 340. 3 Died 254. 

3 About 200 A.I). See Eusebius, Historic, Eccles. VII. 25, vii. and x. 

4 About 197 A.D. See Eusebius, V. 18. 



202 AN INTRODUCTION TO TIIH NEW TESTAMENT [CHAI>. in. 

sense Jude and 2, Peter were Catholic, and possibly James 
also, if the twelve tribes were intended to signify the new 
people of God ; while 1. Peter was at any rate addressed to 
half the Christian world. The whole collection of non-Pauline 
Epistles would then in a short time have been so designated, 
a parte potiori, and the name restricted to these seven. The 
Epistle of Barnabas is actually distinguished by Eusebius 2 from 
the Catholic Epistles, and the custom soon arose of making 
quotations from the latter under this title, as well as from 
the Apostle, or fourteen Pauline Epistles. When the name 
became known in the West, however, it was misinterpreted, 
for the word Catholic represented a dogmatic idea to the 
Latins, and not one of form, and it was replaced by the 
presumedly synonymous term Canonical, i.e. genuine, part 
(according to the doctrine of the Church) of the divine 
Scriptures : in which case there could no longer be any idea 
of contradistinction to the Pauline Epistles. Not till the 
Middle Ages did the older name Catholic Epistles become 
general in the West as well, and even then it was scarcely 
better understood than it had been in former times. 

2. The Church showed a proper instinct in gathering this 
set of letters together. Augustine himself observed :1 that 
whereas Paul in his Epistles carried his support of the thesis 
that man was justified by faith, without the works of the law, 
so far that there was some danger of misunderstanding him, 
the Epistles of the other Apostles, Peter, John, James and Jude, 
were written with the very intention of enforcing the doctrine 
that faith without works was useless. This, however, contains 
some exaggeration, and the Pastoral Epistles must be excepted 
in such a judgment of Paul. But it is true that such a differ 
ence does exist between the respective levels and the dominant 
ideas of the two collections ; Paul occupies himself through 
out in laying the foundations, the authors of the Catholic 
Epistles in raising the superstructure ; he is concerned with 
the genuineness of the root, they with that of the fruit ; he 
feels himself a minister of the Gospel, they speak in the name 
of the Church already becoming the Catholic Church. 

1 James i. 1. - Hlstoria Eccles. VI. 14. i. 

3 De Fide et Operibiis, xiv. 21 



5 14.] GENERAL SURVEY OF THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES 203 

In spite of the fact that according to the superscriptions 
these Epistles are divided among four authors one being 
assigned to James and one to Jude, two to Peter, and three 
to John all of them, that is, to men of the earliest Apo 
stolic circles there yet exist numerous points of relationship 
between them. Above all they have this peculiarity in 
common, that their contents, taken as a whole, even though the 
addresses may, as in 2. and 3. John, seem to deny it, concern 
the Church in general ; they lack the personal stamp, and neces 
sities universally felt are met by them with counsel universal 
in tone. Ephesians, Hebrews and the Pastoral Epistles no 
doubt form the transition to this class of epistle, but the 
individuality of the letter-writer and the peculiarities of the 
epistle here retire still further into the background : the epistle 
is merely the literary form in which the unknown writer holds 
intercourse with an unknown public, and one might almost say 
that this form was then the fashion of the moment, were it 
not that its approved value, realised through the beneficent 
influence of the Pauline heritage, was evidently the cause of 
its retention. The authors of the Catholic Epistles and we 
need not suppose that they devoted very much reflection to 
it simply wrote epistles because they already possessed the 
letters of the Apostle, and this already implies that these 
epistles can only have sprung from post-Pauline times, and 
therefore not from any of -the Primitive Apostles. 

They are all of trifling bulk Jude and 2. and 3. John quite 
short, about the same length as Philemon ; James, 1. Peter 
and 1. John, which are all of about equal length, a little 
longer than Colossians, and 2. Peter not much longer than 
2. Thessalonians. Not one of these writers engages in far- 
reaching trains of thought or searching investigations ; the 
Epistles contain little theology, but all the more practical 
advice for the life of the Christian and of the Church, together 
with much edifying exhortation in the epistolary form, the 
ideas loosely strung together. The modest proportion here 
maintained between the value and the extent of the subject- 
matter, must have decidedly assisted their circulation and 
recognition ; epistles like the 1st and 2nd of Clement and the 
Epistle of Barnabas would on account of their length have 



204 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

had much greater difficulty in establishing themselves in all 
communities, even though they had been ticketed with the 
names of Apostolic authors. Moreover, the history of the 
reception of the Catholic Epistles l at once leads us to consider 
that they represent the product of a later time than that of 
the ten Pauline Epistles ; only 1. John and 1. Peter were con 
sidered Canonical writings as early as the second century, while 
2. John, Jude and 3. John followed slowly from the year 200 
onwards, and James and 2. Peter hardly appeared at all before 
the third century. 



15. The First Epistle of Peter 

[Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vol. xii. : Briefe Petri und Judae, by E. 
Kiihl, 1897 (ed. 6) ; Hand-Commentar iii. 2; Hebrews, 1. and 2. 
Peter, James and Jude, by H. von Soden, 1899 (ed. 3). The mono 
graph of J. M. Usteri (1887) is full and well-reasoned in matters of 
exegesis, but too strongly biased in questions of criticism by a desire 
to uphold the authenticity of the Epistles. See also Ad. Harnack : 
Die Ghronologie der altchristlichen Litteratur/ i. 451-465 
(1. Peter) ; 465-470 (Jude and 2. Peter). Against Harnack s hypo 
thesis as to 1. Peter see W. Wrede in the Zeitschrift fur die Neu- 
testamentliche Wissenschaft, i. pp. 75-85.] 

1. A sharp distinction exists between the body of the 
Epistle, on the one hand, and, on the other, the address and 
greeting and the conclusion,- with salutations and blessing. To 
divide this body into its separate members is a difficult busi 
ness ; and an arrangement decided on by the author himself 
is undiscoverable, because it never existed. 

Verses i. 3-12 form an introduction, not unlike those of 
the Pauline Epistles, consisting in praise to God that he had 
caused those to whom the Epistle was addressed to be born 
anew to the living hope, in a glorious salvation not to be 
dimmed by any suffering. Upon this follows the first and 
larger part, 3 hortative in tone, and consisting in an injunc 
tion to the readers to live holy lives in accordance with this 
new birth and living hope, freed from all the old vices 

1 See Tart II. - v. 12-14. 3 i. lo-iL 10. 



15.] THE FIKST EPISTLE OF PETER 205 

and active in brotherly love, and to grow as God s people 
in communion with Christ, the living corner-stone. The 
second part l gives more particular directions as to the line of 
conduct to be pursued towards the Gentiles and towards those 
in authority, by slaves towards their masters and here 
follows a digression upon the suffering of Christ as our 
example 2 by women towards their husbands and by men 
towards their wives, and finally by every man towards his 
fellow-believers. This is followed by a passage 3 in which 
meekness and patience in suffering are very earnestly en 
joined, and the sufferings of Christ with their blessings both to 
the living and the dead are called to mind ; here, too, occur 
the famous sentences about Christ s descent into Hell. 4 The 
third part, from iv. 7 to v. 11, is that with least inner cohesion. 
The writer begins 5 with urging his readers not to forget 
prayer and love, since the end was drawing near, for in them 
each individual could serve the community ; then 6 he bids them 
see that they suffered not as evil-doers but only as Christians, 
whereby suffering was turned into joy. Then he appeals to 
the elders to discharge their duty towards the flock with un 
selfish faithfulness, and likewise to the young men to perform 
theirs with humility towards the old. 7 The closing verses 8 
contain a final exhortation to all to march on humbly towards 
eternal glory, prepared, in these evil times, for battle with the 
devil, and full of trust in God. 

2. If no more than the address and ending of the Epistle 
had been preserved, there might certainly be some difference 
of opinion as to its object. According to v. 12, the author 
meant to exhort his readers briefly and to declare to them that 
that wherein they were established was the true grace of God. 
According to i. 1, the author is the Apostle Peter, and the readers 
are the Christians of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and 
Bithynia. They are solemnly proclaimed the elect who are 
sojourners of the dispersion ; and here our thoughts naturally 
turn to Jewish Christians, since Peter, as we know, 9 held the 
Apostolate of the circumcision. Did Peter, then, wish to 

1 ii. ll-iv. 6. " ii. 21-25. J iii. 13-iv. G. 

4 iii. 19-21, iv. 6. 5 iv. 7-11. 6 iv. 12-19. 

1 v. 1-5. 9 T. 6-11. Gal. ii. 8. 



206 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

confirm them in that form of the Gospel which he had brought 
them, or had caused his disciples to bring them perhaps 
in opposition to the enticements of Paul towards an abandon 
ment of the Law ? But no, this is impossible, for according to 
i. 14, 18, ii. 9 fol. and iv. 3 fol. the addressees are converted 
Gentiles, and from this it would appear that the title in the 
address should be understood figuratively. The Christians 
in these five provinces, as elsewhere, were merely sojourners 
upon the earth, pilgrims 2 without the rights of citizens :i ; 
and they are called the Dispersion simply because they 
were isolated, without country, few in number 4 and scattered 
among immense majorities of unbelievers. But the Gentile 
Christian communities of Galatia and Asia owed their 
Christianity to Paul ; must we, then, suppose that in 
v. 12 Peter wished to testify that their Pauline Gospel was 
true and divine unless indeed, on the principles of the 
Tubingen school, we take the view that a later writer 
\vas attempting in this way to demonstrate the unanimity 
between Peter and Paul in the interests of the party of union ? 
Such intentions as these, however, have simply been imported 
into the Epistle ; nowhere do we find a comparison between the 
heritage entrusted to the readers and that delivered to Peter, 
nor is the remark in verse v. 12 intended to furnish the key 
to the Epistle, as though its contents could not be understood 
without it, but has exactly the same value as Hebrews xiii. 22, 
Accept our word of exhortation and our testimony. The 
readers needed such exhortation because their faith, their 
obedience, their advance in sanctification was now in peril ; 
the trial of manifold temptations had overwhelmed them 5 ; 
and therefore it could not be impressed upon them too strongly 
that even though faith were attended with shame and suffering, 
it was nevertheless the purest grace. 

Every word of the Epistle is directed towards encouraging 
and strengthening the readers in the face of persecution and 
suffering : they were not on that account to lose sight of the 
great hope or to fall back exhausted into the old ways, nay 

1 i. 12, 25. - Cf. also i. 17 and ii. 11. 

3 Cf. Heb. xiii. 14. 4 iii. 20 ; cf. the fKhfXTol Siaa-rropas of Matt. xxii. 14. 

Mentioned as early as i. 6. 



$ 15.] THE FIKST EPISTLE OF PETER 207 

rather, by dwelling in light, love and purity, they must 
provoke the admiration of their enemies, and advance the 
victory of the Gospel. It is true that the author also gives 
advice which would be equally fitting for times of peace, 1 but 
he lays stress on the fact that through suffering the average 
level of Christianity must and should be raised. 2 The true 
Christian as shown in suffering that is the theme of the 
Epistle, and it is in this direction that the picture of Christ 
is turned as often as it is brought in ; the object this so-called 
Peter had in view was neither one of Church policy nor of 
polemical dogma for nowhere is there any mention of heresies 
but simply and solely one of practical utility. He refrains 
entirely from supporting these practical ideas even by a 
substructure of dogmatic theology, after the manner of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. The secret of the attraction that 
his work retains to the present day is to be found in this 
uniformity of tone and in the living warmth which pervades 
it ; since it does not profess to offer a profound revelation, no 
one feels that anything is wanting in it ; it stands as a 
masterpiece of edifying discourse, which errs neither on the 
side of the pedantic nor of the trivial. 

3. We may assert without hesitation that if the first word, 
Peter, of our Epistle were absent, no one would have imagined 
that it had been composed by him. Silvanus, who appears 
to have acted as scribe, we only know elsewhere as the 
companion of Paul, and Mark, too, is attested by Philemon :J 
and Colossians 4 as having been among Paul s companions 
at least as the latter grew old. And almost everyone 
understands the words She that is in Babylon, elect together 
with you, 5 as applying to the community of Rome, the 
spiritual Babylon, 5 where Paul lived for several years after 
the year 60 ; and what connecting links could have existed 
between Peter and the Pauline communities of Asia Minor ? 
How much easier it would be, in the face of all this, to believe 
in its Pauline authorship ! The language is not precisely 
that of the Epistle to the Corinthians, but still it is a fluent 

1 iii. 3-7, iv. 7-11, v. 1-5. z iv. 16 fol. 

* Verse 24. 4 iv. 10, and cf. 2. Tim. iv. 11. 

s v. 13. Rev. xiv.-xviii. 



208 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

Greek less Hebraistic even than Paul s ; are we, then, to 
attribute this to Peter, who needed an interpreter when he 
was upon Greek soil, and is it likely that the Palestinian Peter 
would simply have quoted the Old Testament from the 
Septuagint, as is here the case, and that his thoughts should 
have moved in the forms of the Septuagint ? For he abounds 
even in unintentional echoes from it. This fact, apart from 
other niceties of Greek expression, makes it impossible that 
Silvanus should have translated an Aramaic Epistle of Peter 
into Greek. In that case we should have to go a step further, 
and believe, with Zahn, that Peter had left the composition 
of the Epistle to Silvanus, because he considered him better 
qualified for the task than he was himself. But then 
verses v. 12-14 would still be a postscript written by the 
Apostle, and the Epistle would remain a partial Pseudepigraph, 
since in the superscription it definitely professes to be an 
Epistle of the Apostle Peter. 

This hypothesis is scarcely more probable than Von 
Soden s, particularly as it presumes an extraordinary mea 
sure of self-depreciation in Peter. According to Von Soden, 
Silvanus composed the Epistle in his old age, long after the death 
of Peter, in accordance with the ideas of the inspired Apostle. 
But could we credit the author, as we must in this case, with so 
blatant a piece of self-praise as that contained in v. 12? and is 
it likely that Silvanus, about the year 80, would not have con 
sidered his own authority sufficient to give fatherly counsel to 
oppressed brethren in the Pauline mission-district ? One thing 
there is in favour of both forms of the Silvanus hypothesis 
it explains the remarkably Pauline attitude of the First 
Epistle of Peter quite satisfactorily. The Epistle does not of 
course pretend to be the expression of any school of theological 
opinion, and therefore it takes up neither a positive nor a 
negative position upon any of the important and radical 
principles of Paulinism, but it reminds us of the Pauline Gospel 
much more strongly than do the Epistle to the Hebrews 
or the Pastoral Epistles ; in its conceptions of Christ, of the 
saving power of his death, of faith and of the new birth, it 
both breathes the Pauline spirit and makes use of the Pauline 

1 v. 12. 



15.] THE FIKST EPISTLE OF PETER 209 

formulae. 1 There are, moreover, countless points of contact 
with passages in the Pauline writings most conspicuously 
with Komans and Ephesians 2 which cannot have been the 
work of chance, especially as, even in its mere outward forms, 
in the address and ending, there is much that reminds us very 
strongly of Paul. And it is actually a fact that serious attempts 
have been made to ascribe Ephesians and 1. Peter to the same 
writer. But in truth there are sufficient points of distinction 
between Paul and our author : e.g. the latter s preference for 
picturesque expression and for conceptions such as that of the 
salvation of souls as the end of faith, whereas Paul did not 
value the ^rv^ai so highly ; but such differences in a disciple 
of Paul would present no difficulties. 

However, the Epistle has been handed down to us as the 
work of Peter, not of Silvanus, and it behoves us to show that 
this tradition is untenable. The resolute party of defence, 
which attaches more value to the single word Hsrpos in 
verse 1 than to the evidence of the whole of the rest of the 
Epistle, is now placed in the following dilemma. Either it 
must assume (1) that the Epistle was written by Peter before 
the appearance of the Pauline Epistles, i.e. about 53 or 54, in 
which case (a) the independence asserted by Paul in the 
Epistle to the Galatians becomes a grievous delusion, since 
he would have owed not only the kernel of his Gospel but 
even his epistolary style to Peter ; (6) he must, contrary to his 
principles, have worked upon a field over which Peter had 
prior rights ; (c) the history of the Apostolic times becomes 
an absolute riddle, for we should find Peter, who had just 
been publicly rebuked by Paul at Antioch 4 for exercising a 
moral pressure towards Judaism upon the Gentile Christians, 
writing immediately afterwards to Christian communities 
in a manner by which it might be supposed that such a thing 
as a written norm for the social conduct of mankind the 

1 E.g., tv Xpio-rf, iii. 16, v. 10 and 14 ; coo7rojelj/, iii. 18 ; owo/caAuifjj and 
a.TroKa.\virTtffdai six times, and as often avaffrpoipr). 

- E.g., 1. Peter iv. 10 fol. with Bom. xii. 6 fol. ; iii. 9 with Horn. xii. 17 and 
1. Thess. v. 15 ; ii. 13-17 with Rom. xiii. 1-7 ; iii. 22 with Eph. i. 20 fol. ; 
iii. 18 (iVo imas itpoaa.ya.yri TV 6ff) with Rom. v. 2 and Eph. ii. 18 and iii. 12 ; 
v. 12 with Rom. v. 2. 

3 i. 9, and cf. ii. 11 and 25. Gal. ii. 11 fol. 

P 



210 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

Law did not exist : that he knew only of Christians, not of 
Jewish or Gentile Christians ; and (d) we should be forced to 
admit that Peter already possessed everything in Paul s 
teaching which helped to form the common Christian con 
sciousness ; that even without the abstruse proofs and specula 
tions of Paul, unintelligible to the majority, he already 
possessed the Gospel to whose victorious establishment Paul 
had felt himself bound to sacrifice the strength of his whole 
life : that in fact Paul was a superfluous person in history 
or else (2) that Peter wrote this Epistle after Paul had written 
his, at the beginning of 64 or, if he did not die till after the per 
secution of Nero, between the years 64 and 67 ; in that case, he 
learnt from Paul s Epistles and actually imitated them. But 
then one fails to understand why he did not remind his readers, 
intimately acquainted as they were with Paul, of their master 
himself as an instance of the suffering hero, 1 whose fortunes 
verily fitted him to serve as an example to his spiritual 
children in similar circumstances, even though for the moment 
he was again enjoying his freedom ; and then, above all, one 
would have to assume that Paul had exercised a greater influence 
on Peter than had Jesus himself. For whereas the theological 
formulae coined by Paul are to be found in 1. Peter, it is with 
difficulty that a few points of resemblance between the Epistle 
and the Gospels have been traced, while the main ideas of the 
Gospels, such as that of the Son of Man, of the Kingdom of 
God and of eternal life, are not to be found in it at all. As 
the sources of his religion, i in fact, we need nothing but the 
Old Testament and the Epistles of Paul. 

But in either case, if a favourite Apostle of Christ, one of 
the pillars of the Church, [could write to a community 
hitherto unknown to him without offering them anything 
from the store of his intercourse with Jesus, without indicat 
ing in any way except by the colourless I, a witness of the 
sufferings of Christ 2 how much he owed to this companion 
ship ; if he could only speculate about Christ (like Paul, who 
had never seen him in the -flesh 3 ) instead of telling his 
readers about him then I do not see what this superiority 
of the Primitive Apostles over Paul can possibly have meant, 

1 Cf. Hebrews xiii. 7. - v. 1. " Cf. i. 8. 



15.] THE FIKST EPISTLE OF PETER 211 

or how we are to imagine that the earliest forms of the 
Gospels, with all their richness of material, ever arose. Even 
this Epistle, in short and of all the Catholic Epistles it 
might the soonest give us an impression of naive and 
primitive Christianity could only be ascribed to Peter by 
one who did not recognise in Jesus that mighty personality 
which, to the end of their lives, dominated all who had once 
been drawn beneath its sway. If, on the other hand, the 
Epistle was the work of Peter himself, we must assume that 
he was lacking in all originality, and simply produced a 
slavish copy of the Pauline writings ; that he had belonged to 
the Pauline party at Corinth and had not felt himself adapted 
to be the head of a party of his own ; that the Apostle who was 
pronounced a rock by the judgment of Jesus must henceforth, 
by the judgment of Zahn, be considered a spirit of small 
originality, not to be compared with such men as James, Paul 
and John : a man accessible by nature to outside influences, who 
did not find it necessary first to fight his battles with a well- 
stamped character of his own, in order then to work for the 
good and the wholesome. Finally, the opposite theory, the 
assignment of 1. Peter to a date previous to 1. Thessalonians 
and Galatians, is not even worthy of serious discussion, since 
Paul s originality is beyond all suspicion, and Paul would not 
have begun his mission-work in Galatia and Asia if flourish 
ing Christian communities had already been founded there 
under the influence of Peter as we should be obliged to 
assume from v. i. fol. 

4. But the tradition is untenable for the simple reason that 
the conditions set forth in the Epistle show a considerably 
later date than the period between the years 50 and 67. The 
author s intimate acquaintance with the Pauline writings 
(probably including Hebrews), the Gospels and the Acts points 
towards none too early a date. Seeing that the office of 
presbyter had already become so profitable that men had to 
be warned against tending the flock for filthy lucre, 1 and that 
it was necessary to forbid the elders to oppress the young 
men, and the young men to be insubordinate to the elders, 
we are carried on at least as far as the period in which the 

1 v. 2. 



212 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

strife between old and young in Corinth gave occasion for the 
composition of the First Epistle of Clement. On the other 
hand, the Epistle cannot have been written much after 100, 
because it was known and made use of by Polycarp, Papias 
and the author of the Epistle of James. With the rough 
assignment, then, to about 100 A.D., we ought not to be very 
far wrong. The Christian communities all over the world 
were exposed to grievous suffering in enduring the fiery trial 
of their faith 2 such bitter hardships that the end of all 
things 3 must surely be at hand. The Epistle would have 
adopted a different tone towards isolated instances of abuse and 
persecution, such as the Christians had had to endure from 
the very first ; it is evident that here the period of systematic 
persecution, in which there was no escape from suffering, 
and in which the Christian was persecuted for his Christianity s 
sake, 4 had set in ; the Christians had attracted the notice 
and the jealous hatred of the Gentile world, 5 and the great 
stress laid upon their loyalty even towards the Imperial 
officials, in ii. 13-17, makes it seem very probable that the 
Government shared this jealousy, since iv. 15 evidently points 
to public prosecutions in which Christians were tried for 
their lives. From the note struck in iii. 17-iv. 1 as well 
as in iv. 19 we may conclude that the punishment of death 
was already decreed against the Christians ; in speaking 
of annoyances, insults and slanders, the solemn words si 6s\oi 
TO 6s\r}fjia TOV dsov, Trda-^siv, would be somewhat dispropor 
tionate. It is a further proof of the author s good sense that 
he does not make more ado about the iniquity of these 
judicial murders. No intemperate complaint of the open 
violence offered to Christians as such, would have been 
appropriate from the mouth of Peter, and, moreover, the 
author did not wish to fan the flame of anger, but rather to 
exhort to patience, forbearance, and trust in God. 

Nevertheless, the name of Babylon for Piome is remark 
able enough. But the period of the real Christian persecution 
began, at earliest, under the Emperor Domitian, 6 and from 

v. 9. - iv. 12, i. 7. :i iv. 7, 17. 

4 iv. 16, and Li. iv. 14, iii. 15-17. 5 ii. 12. 

8 81-90. 



15.] THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER 213 

v. 9 we may evidently conclude that the writer was not 
thinking only of the crimes of Nero. The Epistle would seem 
to refer directly to the enactments of Trajan about the year 111, 
known to us from the letters of Pliny the Younger, if we take the 
obscure word aXXoTptsTTia-KOTros to mean the judicial informer, 
or delator. It has, however, another meaning which is at least 
equally plausible, that of a persistent meddler : so that we 
cannot adopt the Edicts of Trajan as the terminus a quo. In 
these times of distress such a letter of consolation was of course 
extremely appropriate. From verse v. 13 and the particularly 
numerous points of resemblance to the Epistle to the Romans 
we should be inclined to assume that the author was a 
Roman Christian, writing perhaps just as some disastrous 
piece of news from Asia Minor about the persecution of the 
Christians there had reached his ears. But his limitation of 
the address to the Churches of five provinces of Asia Minor, 
in spite of the obviously Catholic tone of the Epistle, might 
also be explained by supposing that he was himself an 
inhabitant of Asia Minor, more especially interested in the 
brethren of his own immediate neighbourhood. 

5. The question remains, for what reasons this Christian, 
who has left behind in 1. Peter such a valuable memorial of 
his fulness, simplicity and truth, assumed the mask of Peter 
a man who had died twenty or thirty years before. If 
Silvanus were the author we could find no answer to this 
question. Harnack avoids the question by a bold hypothesis : 
he doubts whether the primitive document was originally 
a letter at all ; he thinks that the writer was some prominent 
teacher and confessor of about the year 90, at the latest, but 
that he had no intention of pretending to be Peter ; that 
another man, probably the author of 2. Peter, invented the 
beginning and end of the Epistle 2 in order to give the docu 
ment the stamp of an Apostolic letter. Before the reference in 
2. Peter in. 1, he con tends, no one had quo ted a word from I.Peter 
as Petrine ; the address and conclusion, moreover, can easily 
be detached from the whole, and contain difficulties which can 
best be explained on the hypothesis that they were added later 
on. But, in any case, we should not expect to find the author 

1 iv. 15. - i. 1 fol. and v. 12-14. 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

expressly named in such quotations before the end of the second 
century ; the document, moreover, bears the character of an 
epistle stamped in every line, 1 and therefore must have pos 
sessed an address from the very beginning. There would surely 
be something almost miraculous, too, in the complete and 
sudden success of the false address which, according to 
Harnack, supplanted it after the year 150. Moreover, the 
beginning and end appear to me to agree just as excellently 
with the rest of 1. Peter as they differ from the bombastic 
style of 2. Peter. The man who forged the first and second 
verses of the first chapter would have united the principal 
points of the Epistle in short formulae with a truly masterly 
hand ; for, with the exception of the name, everything which 
he there presents has its definite parallel in the Epistle : 
in i. 2, for instance, we find a most skilful grouping, (1) of 
the foundation of our salvation predestination by the Father ; 
(2) of the means by which it is accomplished sanctification 
by the Holy Ghost ; and (3) of its end and aim obedience 
and purification through the blood of Christ. Nor will the 
concluding verses present any difficulties unless we consider 
that the body of the Epistle indicates a different personality 
from that of Peter. As a matter of fact, the author there 
keeps himself almost entirely in the background, but where, as 
here, he does speak of himself everything is perfectly appli 
cable to Peter ; even if we follow Harnack in thinking that a 
witness of the sufferings of Christ does not indicate the 
disciple who followed his master into the palace of the High 
Priest when all the rest had fled, we must allow that it is the 
most perfect characterisation of the witness /car s^o^jv, who 
imitated his master even to his death on the Cross, and that 
the close of verse v. 1 sounds like a reference to Matt. xix. 28. 
If a Koman Christian of about the year 100 wished to issue 
such a letter of consolation to his fellow-Christians under an 
Apostolic title, of the two Apostles of Borne Peter s name would 
have seemed to him the more suitable, precisely because it 
was he who had suffered the more grievously for his Christi 
anity s sake. The author refrained from writing an Epistle of 
Paul, fearing to betray too marked a difference from the master. 

1 i. 3 fol. 12, ii. 13, iv. 12, v. 1-5, 9. - v. 1. 



16.] THE EPISTLE OF JAMES 215 

Since Peter was not sufficiently familiar with Greek, he gave 
him Silvanus as an interpreter, 1 perhaps on the ground of 
Acts xv. 23 ; and it was possibly his familiarity with the 
tradition that the Gospel of Mark was originally founded on 
statements of Peter, which made him mention Mark as now 
in his company. Naturally the Apostle whose eyes were fixed 
on his approaching end could only have sent this letter of 
encouragement from Babylon-Piome, from betwixt the lion s 
very jaws. Since the epistolary style of Paul was our author s 
standard in every respect, he needed a few remarks such as 
verses v. 12-14 for the end of his letter, and certain very 
simple considerations sufficed to produce them. The end of 
2. Peter, on the other hand, shows that its author had no 
feeling for such considerations. 1. Peter is one of the most 
transparent documents in the New Testament, so long as we 
can divest our minds of modern prejudices in approaching it. 

16. The Epistle of James 

[Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vol. xv., by W. Beyschlag 1898 (ed. 6) ; 
Hand-Commentar hi. 2 : Hebrews, 1. and 2. Peter, James and 
Jude by H. von Soden, 1899 (ed. 5) ; F. Spitta : Der Brief des 
Jacobus, in Zur Gesch. u. Litt. d. Urchristentums, ii. 1-239, 
1896 ; Massebieau : L epitre de Jacques est-elle I osuvre d un 
Chretien ? 1896 (35 pp.) ; Ad. Harnack : Die Chronologie d. 
altchristl. Litt. i. 485-491 (1897).] 

1. There is no definite connection of thought in the Epistle 
of James : it consists of separate chapters merely strung 
together, and treating of certain questions of Christian life 
and feeling. The address is as short as possible, and final 
greetings, etc. are absent. Vv. i. 2-18 deal with tempta 
tions, which are declared to be salutary if they drive the 
Christian to prayer and strengthen his humility and his trust 
in God. Here are described the different relations towards 
temptation of God and of man s sinful lusts from God we can 
receive nothing but good. The next passage 2 warns us to 
be doers of the word of God after hearing it diligently : this 
chiefly by curbing anger, bridling the tongue and practising 

1 v. 12. * i. 19-27. 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

mercy. 1 Next we are told that this mercy, the omission of 
which was counted a transgression of the Law before God as 
much as adultery or murder, was denied by the frequent 
disregard of the poor and the servile preference shown to the 
rich. No one, under any circumstances, was freed from the duty 
of loving his neighbour as himself. Yes, a man must have 
works : faith alone was of no use. Faith without works was dead 
in itself, as the stories of Abraham and Kahab proved. 2 Vv. iii. 
1-12 are an attack upon the sins of the tongue, while the 
next passage 3 rebukes the love of quarrelling, the W 7 orldliness 
and the tendency to fault-finding nourished by the pride of 
wisdom. In iv. 13-17 we are called upon never to speak 
of our plans for future events without a pious If the 
Lord will, and in the next passage l we have a comparison 
between the rich man going towards a terrible judgment and 
the poor man encouraged to wait in patience by the consoling 
thought of the approaching Parusia. Verse v. 12 commands 
us to refrain from swearing, and the Epistle ends with various 
directions concerning prayer, the confession of sins and the 
treatment of the sick and of those who had erred from the 
truth. 

2. In so far as there is any connection to be found 
between these separate sections, it is furnished by acci 
dental associations of ideas. The mention in i. 18, for 
instance, of the word of truth forms the connection to 
vv. 19 and 23, where the hearing and then the performance 
of this word are insisted on. In like manner the charge to 
visit the fatherless and widows calls forth the first apo 
strophe against the rich," which is continued in a yet sterner 
tone and after many digressions in v. 1 again by mere 
accident. And how easily the author allows himself to be 
led away from his subject by a subordinate idea may be seen 
even within the sections, e.g. in i. 5-11, where he completely 
loses sight of the theme of temptation and speaks of lack of 
wisdom, of the doubt which paralyses the force of prayer, and 
of the glory of the brother of low degree as opposed to that of 
the rich man. As in the Old Testament Books of Proverbs 

1 ii. 1-13. - ii. 14-26. 3 iii. 13-iv. 12. 

4 v. 1-11. 5 Chap. ii. 



16.] THE EPISTLE OF JAMES 217 

and the Greek gnomic literature, the sentences are strung 
together like beads ; the scarcity of connecting particles in 
the Epistle l is not a sign of awkwardness of style on the part 
of the author, but is on the contrary quite in keeping with 
the character of the Epistle. We might point to the 
discourses of Jesus arranged by Matthew 2 as a parallel 
case, for there too we are frequently met by these unexpected 
transitions of thought, and accordingly there are many who 
would represent this Epistle as a similar collection of sayings 
for the most part already in existence. This supposition ac 
quires much weight from such considerations as are suggested, 
for instance, by vv. i. 2-18, where temptation evidently 
means something quite different at the beginning of the 
passage from what it does at the end ; for we cannot seriously 
suppose that what we are told to count pure joy in verse 2 3 
is the same thing as what in verse 14 is declared to 
represent the enticement and seduction of our own evil lusts. 
Sentences like Every good gift and every perfect boon is 
from above, and many others, 4 have the ring of well-worn 
phrases, and the curious but which connects the second 
part of verse 19 5 with the first G is best explained by sup 
posing that the former was taken over without reflection 
from some written source where it had stood in a different 
context. 

But still the Epistle of James is certainly not a mere 
compilation, in which the author s only task would have 
been one of selection. Vv. ii. 14-26 were surely not 
copied from any other source, any more than ii. 1-7 or iv. 
13-16. But the rest of the Epistle fits in completely both in 
tone and phraseology with these passages ; the author writes 
tolerable Greek throughout ; he is master of the language, 
and can form word-plays like SisKpiOrirs . . . tcpirai, 7 or 
Qaivo/jLevr] . . . a^avi^ops^ * (that of iii. 9 is the most skilful, 
and betrays an acquaintance with Greek literature), while he 
even ventures on a sort of oxymoron in the sentence let the 

1 E.g., i. 12, 13, 1G, 17, 18, 19, 26, 27, and v. 1-6. 

a E.g., Matt. vii. . 3 Cf. 12. 4 i. 12, 13, 19, 20, 27. 

5 But let every man be swift to hear, etc. 

Know ye this, my beloved brethren. 7 ii. 4. B iv. 14. 



218 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

rich man glory in that he is made low. His fondness for 
expressing himself in vivid figures, 2 his employment, for 
didactic purposes, of similes from nature and from daily 
life, :! and of historical examples, 1 all form part of his own 
individuality. In this so-called Epistle we are shown, 
not only the stability of an unerring taste in the collec 
tion of extraneous material, but the consistency of a literary 
personality ; and the countless reminiscences of other litera 
tures on which we stumble must be explained by the 
assumption that in its composition the author allowed himself 
to be greatly influenced by the rich stores of wisdom treasured 
in his memory : actually, no doubt, he offers old and new 
together, but the form in which it stands is all his own mental 
property. In this respect he stands no lower than Paul or 
the author of Hebrews, but the space which these would give 
to Old Testament quotations is filled by him with maxims and 
concise formulations of his own religious and moral ex 
perience. 

In a composition of this kind there can obviously be no 
question of a consistent thesis. To impress upon his readers 
a quantity of sound precepts for a truly Christian life is the 
object for which the Epistle was written. That the author 
makes use of 54 imperatives in 108 verses is a sufficient sign 
of his intention : he delivers a kind of sermon of repentance. 
He does not wish to impart new wisdom, or to refute heretical 
doctrines, but simply to unmask the secularisation which had 
already met him in so many different forms, to hold a mirror :> 
to his brethren, that they might see their sorry figures 
and be lastingly ashamed. Even the passage concerning 
faith and works (i is no exception to this rule much less does 
it form the kernel of the Epistle for it is merely intended to 
stir up those lax and indolent members of the community 
who glossed over their disinclination to active works of love 
by pointing to their faultless faith. The writer represents 
things as he unfortunately saw them everywhere, and 
measures them against his own ideal of piety without 

1 i. 10. - E.g., i. 14 fol. and 25. 

3 i. 6, 10 fel., 23 fol., iii. 4 fol., 11 fol. 

4 ii. 21, 25, v. 11, 17 fol. s i. 23 fol. 6 ii. 14-26. 



16.] THE EPISTLE OF JAMES 219 

completeness either in blame or exhortation, but still in the 
hope of being able to rouse men s consciences with regard to 
some particularly important points, which he believed were 
somewhat overlooked in the ordinary preaching to the 
churches. 

3. According to the opening verse, James was written for 
the twelve tribes which are of the dispersion, and the most 
obvious interpretation of the words would point to the Jewish 
Christians of countries outside Palestine, for the author 
certainly wrote to fellow-Christians : nothing in the Epistle 
reads like an appeal of James to unbelieving countrymen to 
submit to the word of truth. But the readers are thought of 
as living in organised communities l ; and where and till when 
did any purely Jewish Christian communities exist in the 
Dispersion ? Not a single word in the Epistle indicates 
readers of Jewish origin, for it would be preposterous to see in 
the rich of chaps, ii. and v. a portrait of the fat, usurious, 
arrogant Jews, while the word Synagogue 2 as applied 
to the general assembly of the addressees, does not imply 
a Jewish origin any more than does the ETria-vvayw^ij of 
Hebrews x. 25 : it was the most appropriate Greek term 
for describing the religious assemblies even of Gentiles, and 
of Gentile Christians down to a much later time. No 
where is any national prejudice alluded to, and thus it 
seems best to interpret the address in the same way as that 
of 1. Peter ; the twelve tribes are God s people, 3 and God s 
people, ever since the saving work of Christ, consisted of all 
believers who, though verily of the dispersion, were to be 
found on earth. 

The Epistle, then, fixes its horizon at the farthest possible 
point : it is an appeal to the whole of Christendom. And 
indeed we should have taken it for a truly Catholic Epistle 
even if it had had no address at all. It was given to the world 
as a literary work, not sent round by messengers to a definite 
circle of readers. The numerous appeals which it contains to 
brethren, my brethren, my beloved brethren are just as 
rhetorical as the words of ii. 20, vain man. There is never 
any reference to the special circumstances of an individual 

1 v. 14. 2 ii. 2. 3 1. Peter ii. 10. 



220 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. HI. 

community, nor does any personal intercourse take place 
between writer and readers ; of the epistolary form, in fact, 
only a faint shadow is preserved. 

4. According to the superscription, the author is James, 
a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. The mere 
fact that the title of Apostle is wanting forbids us to think of 
James the son of Zebedee or James the son of Alphaeus, but 
the former was executed at an early date, 2 and the latter dis 
appears from the scene after the Ascension. 3 All the greater 
however, was the part played in Jerusalem by James the 
brother of the Lord, 4 whom Paul mentions in Galatians :> as 
one of the pillars, naming him actually before Cephas and 
John. Even Josephus took an interest in him, and in about 
the year 180 Hegesippus 6 drew up a minute account of his 
personality. It may safely be assumed that he fell a victim to 
Jewish hatred before the outbreak of the Jewish war. And it 
is to him that, as far as they express an opinion on the subject, 
the Greek Fathers unanimously ascribed our Epistle. His 
right to address the whole of Christendom could not be disputed : 
he was the James tear e^o^v, who did not need to present 
himself under any title, while the fact that he did not make 
a special boast of his relationship to Jesus in the opening 
verse aroused no wonder, but rather passed for tactfulness. 

At first sight there seems to be a good deal of evidence in 
favour of the view that this First Bishop of Jerusalem was 
really the author of our Epistle. A thoroughly practical, con 
servative disposition, as we find it displayed in the Epistle, 
must surely have been his characteristic ; he was a foe to 
many words, and easily inclined to treat poverty as a virtue 
without more ado. The tone of the Epistle bears a certain 
resemblance to that of the discourses of Jesus in Matthew, and 
points of contact with the Gospels are more numerous here 
than in any other Epistle of the New Testament. We might 
also attribute the use of the Wisdom of Jesus the son of 
Sirach and of the Wisdom of Solomon to a Palestinian 
Christian of that period, if we could believe that those books 

1 Of. Jude i., Philip, i. 1. 2 Acts xii. 2. 3 Acts i. 13. 

4 C -,1. i. 19. 5 Gal. ii. 9. 

8 Eu. bius, Hist. Eccles. ii. 23. 



16.] THE EPISTLE OF JAMES 221 

were still or already in circulation in the Palestinian tongue. 
Nevertheless, the arguments against authenticity are far too 
powerful and numerous to leave room for the slightest doubt 
on the subject. First, how could the son of a Nazarene 
carpenter have attained such fluency in the Greek tongue as 
is here displayed ! a fluency which, as in the case of Hebrews, 
absolutely excludes the hypothesis that what we possess is a 
translation from an Aramaic original ? The explanation that 
he did not acquire his fluency in the use of Greek in the 
school of a rhetorician but in his daily life is more than 
naive, in view of the rhetorical character of the Epistle of 
James ; but he who considers it natural that James should 
have followed the Septuagint when he wrote in Greek, may 
certainly, if he likes, define his relation to the Greek tongue 
as not particularly awkward. As to his use of the Sep 
tuagint, how could one who had grown up to manhood 
with his Hebrew Bible by any possibility use the former, 
especially to the extent here noticeable ? For readers in 
a position to judge, the fact is established that Greek was the 
writer s native tongue, or one of them at least. 

Secondly, how could that strict upholder of the Law, before 
whom Peter did not dare to defend the practice of sitting down 
to meat with Gentile Christians, 2 have composed an epistle in 
which the necessity of observing the Ceremonial Law no longer 
comes under discussion, hi which religion is said to consist in 
morality of conduct, 3 which speaks with enthusiasm of the per 
fect law, the law of liberty, l culminating in the royal com 
mand to love one s neighbour ft and the author of which must 
therefore have regarded the old Law as imperfect and as a law 
of bondage ? Harnack makes the very apposite remark that 
the acceptance of such a theory would force us to believe that 
history had repeated itself in the strangest manner, for in this 
case a Christianity such as that of Hernias, Clement and 
Justin must already have flourished between the years 31 and 
50, and Paul s appearance would then have been a sort of super 
fluous intervention only not calculated this time to make sin 
greater, but to leave the good in a more precarious condition. 

1 See pp. 217 fol. - Gal. ii. 12. 3 i. 27. 

i. 25, ii. 12. * ii. 8. 



222 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. m. 

And, thirdly, the passage in chap. ii. vv. 14-26, is 
wholly inconceivable as coming from the mouth of .Tames in 
the last years of his life. The writer here disputes the 
doctrine that man can be justified by faith alone without 
works (note that he says justified, not, according to the Gospel, 
saved) : such a lifeless faith, he urges, could be of no use, and 
even devils possessed it. Now, Paul had taught justification 
by faith alone, and James ii. 24 is simply the contradiction 
of Paul s words in Romans iii. 28 ; as James ii. 23 is an 
attempt to wrest from Paul his chief authority, Gen.xv. 6, as to 
the faith of Abraham. That the one passage should be inde 
pendent of the other is out of the question, still more so that 
James should have opened the dispute and that Paul should 
only have set up his theses out of opposition to him. 1 No, 
the Epistle is directed against a formula which had long been 
used to gloss over moral unfruitfulness, and to detach this from 
its connection with Paul is to represent things as they are not. 
The hypothesis which seeks to regard James as the oldest 
New Testament Epistle, dating back from the thirties or 
forties or the beginning of 51, is almost more grotesque than 
the assignment of 1. Peter to a date previous to the chief 
Pauline Epistles, for a declaration concerning faith and works 
as conditions of salvation could not possibly have been made 
before the historic and far-reaching activity of Paul ; and, 
moreover, this assignment was evidently prompted merely by 
the wish not to be obliged to admit an antagonism between 
Paul and James. 

Now, it is certainly possible that in the last years of his 
life James had heard with sorrow of the suspicious teachings 
of the Apostle of the Gentiles ; it is conceivable although 
certainly not very likely that copies of those very Pauline 
Epistles had reached him from which the formulas of James 
ii. 20 etc. are taken ; but could he in such a life-and- 
death struggle have contented himself with a few superficial 
objections, while he suffered the really important point that 
of the observance of the Ceremonial Law to pass by him in 
silence? In the Apostolic Age, or at least in Jerusalem 
among the leading spirits, so foolish a misunderstanding 

1 Cf. James ii. 14, 16, and 18-20. 



$ 16.] THE EPISTLE OF JAMES 223 

of the Pauline thesis is inconceivable. For faith in 
James ii. 14 etc. is a belief in fact, which even the devils 
could attain to ; whereas with Paul it means a grateful submis 
sion to the saving will of God, as revealed in the crucified and 
risen Christ, and an inner union with Christ a thing which 
naturally was only accessible to believers. And so, too, the 
works which Paul rejects are the works of the Law, which 
Christ had abrogated ; those which James demands, on the 
other hand, are the fruits of faith such as even under Paul s 
system would not and could not have been omitted 
the reasonable service, in fact, of Romans xii. 1. As far as 
the practical consequences are concerned, the author of 
James ii. stands on an equal footing with Paul ; he will not 
allow faith to count as a comfortable excuse for moral in 
difference, but demands some proof of faith. This is precisely 
the case with Paul, except that he does not recognise as faith 
what remains without fruit. Now, this misunderstanding of 
Pauline expressions would be quite intelligible at some later 
time, when nothing was known of the rule of the Jewish Law, 
and the works of the Law were looked upon merely as moral 
actions : a man of such a time might have written James 
ii. 14-26 not as a disguised attempt to brand Paul as a heretic, 
but rather as a correct interpretation of his words. 1 In his eyes 
the Apostle could not have meant to encourage this easy-going 
younger generation, which imagined itself certain of heaven for 
its mere orthodoxy, and therefore he seeks to point out, with 
as close a connection as possible with Paul s words, how both 
faith and works could best be accorded their due. The 
vain man whom he indignantly apostrophises in ii. 20 is 
not Paul, but someone who interprets Paul in this false and 
dangerous way. If, on the other hand, James the Just had 
written this passage about the year 60 or 61, the enemy 
against whom he contended could not have been a misrepre- 
senter of Paul s teaching, but simply Paul himself, and the 
arguments employed against him, which could not then be 
palliated on the saving ground of incomplete knowledge, would 
in their conscious distortion of the case be as contemptible 
and cowardly as they were futile. Lastly, we may now add 

1 Cf. 2. Peter iii. 16. 



224 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

to these arguments against the authorship of James the 
positive tokens of a later time. 

5. If the Epistle of James had come down to us unnamed, 
its assignment to the second century say, to the period 
between 125 and 150 would commend itself on the most 
diverse grounds. It has a considerable literature behind it 
not only Old Testament Apocrypha, but Christian writings also : 
Paul, Hebrews, 1. Peter and the Gospels. The points of resem 
blance, too, between it and the first Epistle of Clement are so 
many and so striking that it is impossible to explain them 
satisfactorily except by supposing our author to have been 
acquainted with that Epistle. James shares its fundamental 
ideas with those of the Shepherd of Hernias, and even in expres 
sion it often approaches the latter remarkably closely though 
what is there expressed in broad and commonplace form 
here becomes more refined. Unfortunately, however, the data 
are not forthcoming by which to prove the employment of 
the one by the other, and when we have no actual quotations 
to deal with, mere arguments about literary obligations are 
unsupported and futile. The determined opponent turns them 
round : according to Zahn, it was the study of James ii. 14 fol. 
which moved Paul in the Epistle to the Eomans - to make an 
exposition of the subject, founded on Genesis xv. 6, incom 
parably more thoroughgoing than his former utterances in 
Galatians 3 ; and in writing the Epistle Paul did well, he adds, 
to take James s methods of instruction into consideration, since 
the Christians of Rome were already accustomed to them ! 
Still less telling is the reference to the much-oppressed con 
dition of the Christians, as described in chaps, i. and v. ; 
surely verse ii. 7 ( Do not they blaspheme the honourable 
name by the which ye are called ? ), coining after verse (>, 
points to a time in which the Christians were persecuted for 
their Christianity s sake ; when even fellow-believers appear 
not seldom to have denounced one another. 

Further, the state of the communities both as to morals 
and religion seems to have degenerated more considerably 

1 Cp. James iv. 6 fol. with 1. Peter v. 5 fol., and Jaines i. 18, 21 with 
1. Peter i. 23-ii. 2. 

- iv. 3-24. ;i iii. 5-7. 4 Cf. 1. Peter iv. 16. 



16.] THE EPISTLE OF JAMES 225 

than we should have thought it possible before the time of 
Hermas. Universal indifference had established itself in the 
Church, and men sought shamelessly to excuse their vices and 
their laxity on the pretext that the temptations to which 
they were subjected came from God, 1 or that since they 
possessed faith, that was enough for salvation. 2 A long time 
must have passed before Paul s doctrine of faith alone could 
have been so boldly misapplied, and in a Church the majority 
of whose members set themselves so low a standard a re 
action like that of Montanism (which began about 155 A.D.) 
could not have been far off. But the main point is that the 
writer s whole attitude, his theological position, take us, when 
compared with the interests and ideas of the Apostolic age, 
into a totally different world. Christ is scarcely mentioned at 
all, and when he is, it is only as the longed-for Judge ; the 
Messianic idea has entirely disappeared, and faith now 
consists half in knowing, 3 and half in remaining steadfast. 1 
The Epistle speaks of the Law entirely in the manner of the 
second century, with its enthusiasm for the nova lex. 
Religion has lost the sharp, decisive features of the early 
times ; practically nothing is left of it now but generalities 
on the one hand a firm trust in God s goodness, expressed in 
prayer and never losing hope, and on the other a zealous fulfil 
ment of God s commands, an exercise of pure piety as defined 
in verse i. 27. The author does not fight for Christ, for faith, 
for hope, but for conduct, for uprightness, for self-discipline ; it 
is not his part to found and increase a Church in defiance of 
the world, but to drive the world out of the Church. On the 
face of it the Epistle of James declares itself, in spite of its 
earnestly religious character, to be perhaps the least Christian 
book of the New Testament hence its want of attraction for 
Luther and can it be that such a document belongs to the 
earliest Christian times ? 

With this assignment of the Epistle to so late a date, we may 
perhaps feel the absence of some reference to heretical troubles. 
Verse i. 17 can scarcely have been spoken with an anti-Gnostic 
purpose, but vv. iii. 1 fol. be not many teachers (the very 
opposite of Hebrews v. 12) and iii. 13 1 fol. show that there 

1 i. 13. - ii. 14. 3 ii. 14 fol. i. 6. 

Q 



226 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

was no lack of vexatious tendencies of the kind at the time of 
our Epistle. Its author, however, did not look upon such 
wranglings as the main evil, or rather he did not expect much 
success from controversy with these fluent disputants. To 
conclude from his silence as to Gnostic seducers that he knew 
of none, would be just as wise as to conclude that because he 
gives no warning against sins of impurity there were no 
harlots and adulterers among his readers, and therefore that 
he could not be addressing Gentile Christian communities ! 
He wished neither to draw up a complete list of require 
ments, nor a manual for inexperienced teachers, but to offer 
some spiritual gift for the edification of the Church ; but 
all his observations led him to the conclusion that the 
Church of that time was lacking in moral energy, and he 
thought that if this lack were supplied the other evils would 
vanish of themselves. A blameless life he regarded as the 
test of the possession of truth and purity of faith. Perhaps, 
too, the split between the Church and the heretics had become 
wider by his time, so that as he had nothing to do with 
those outside, he was obliged to content himself with holding 
up a mirror to his own party, with its conceited orthodoxy, in 
order to draw its attention to the many blots with which it 
was still disfigured. Nor had Gnosticism appeared every 
where in equal strength, and where our Epistle was written 
we do not know. Many opinions favour Eome, but con 
nections with Rome can be discovered in every document of 
uncertain origin of about this date, and Rome was certainly 
not the sole producer scarcely even the most distinguished 
of this form of literature. 

But we have no grounds at all for fixing upon Palestinian 
soil and Jewish-Christian surroundings as the source of the 
Epistle of James. There is even less of distinctively Jewish 
character to be observed about the author than of distinctively 
Christian ; his morality is rather Hellenistic than Palestinian, 
and the resemblances to Old Testament phraseology and 
thought in his Epistle are the fruit of many years study 
of Church literature, in which, of course, the Old Testa 
ment ranked very high. His practical wisdom is of mixed 
" iwish, Christian and Pagan origin ; he was probably a man of 



$ 16.] THE EPISTLE OF JAMES 227 

education, but sprung from a family that had long been Christian, 
and he wrote under the name of James, not because he wished 
to mark the antagonism between Paul and the Jewish Christians, 
but probably because he honoured in the person of James 
the first representative of the Lord upon earth, and did not 
venture to imitate Peter or Paul, whose Epistles were already 
in circulation. The exceedingly late appearance of James in 
the literature of the Church ; is also a strong support to this 
view. 

6. Some have recently attempted to throw a fresh light on 
the origin of James by assuming the existence of interpola 
tions. In an investigation useful in many ways for the 
special exegesis of this Epistle, Spitta puts forward the 
ingenious hypothesis that James is a Jewish possibly 
pre-Christian document, for which a Christian admirer 
wished to find a place hi the New Testament, and therefore 
inserted the name of Christ in the address and in verse ii. 
1. And independently of Spitta, Massebieau has arrived 
at a similar result. There is much in ii. 1 to make that 
view attractive ; the rest of the address in i. 1, however, would 
sound exceedingly strange as a superscription to an epistle 
of a Jew to his fellow-believers. But what is urged against 
the pre-Pauline origin of vv. ii. 14-26 has just as much 
weight when directed against the supposition that the author 
was a Jew ; I cannot believe that a Jew would write such 
sentences as i. 18, ii. 5, 7 and iv. 4, any more than that he 
would take pride in the law of freedom, as in vv. i. 25 and 
ii. 12, 2 or that he would be yearning for the Parusia of the 
Lord. 3 

There is nothing in the Epistle which could only have been 
said by a Jew, and even such thoroughly Christian writings as 
1. Peter contain large sections which might as well have been 
written by a Jew as by anyone else. 4 If we can believe that the 
Epistle of James, although of Jewish origin, gave such extra 
ordinary pleasure to a Christian of about the year 150 that 
he could not help changing it into a New Testament Scripture 

1 In any case not till after the year 200. 

1 Cf. ii. 8. v. 7 fol. 

4 E.g., ii. 1 fol. 11-20, iii. 1-14. 

Q 2 



228 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

by the addition of a dozen words, we could as easily believe 
that a Christian of that time might have produced the whole 
document himself, seeing that no previous mention of it 
exists. The one theory is not in the least more difficult to 
accept than the other. 

Harnack sets the Christian editor another task. He sug 
gests that a collection of maxims and fragments of discourses 
which had been in circulation, say, since 130, and had originated 
with a post-Apostolic Teacher, was, about the year 200, re 
modelled by an unknown hand into a letter, for which it had 
never been intended, by the prefixing of verse i. 1, while at 
the same time it was provided with a great name, which soon 
won it the respect due to a Canonical work. But Harnack s 
reasons are not convincing. To say that no one would write a 
letter like this document is an exaggeration, where it is a case, 
as here, of a more or less skilful adaptation of a literary form 
unsuited to the object which the author had in view ; I could 
rather believe that the Epistle was an excerpt from an originally 
much longer letter than a compilation from the discourses of the 
aforesaid Teacher. That the address appeals, in a somewhat 
artificial manner, to the whole of Christendom, while parts at 
least of the document are directed to a perfectly definite and 
limited circle, is a reproach which would apply to every Catho 
lic Epistle, apart from any artificiality. Finally, he contends 
that the forger nowhere indicates that he wishes to be con 
sidered as James, and, therefore that the so-called Epistle 
cannot originally have been a forgery. Now, I should have 
thought that the author made a claim throughout on the 
obedience of his readers, and wrote with the conviction that he 
had the right of administering sharp reproof to them l ; but 
if we go in search of indications that he is posing as James we 
mistake his object entirely. Clearly the forger neither pre 
fixed the name of James to his Epistle nor wrote the Epistle 
itself, merely because he was determined to play the part of 
James, but because he wished to secure a universal hearing 
for his words. This he secured by the superscription ; further 
efforts to appear as James would imply a consciousness of the 
danger and untruthfulness of such literary fictions, and a fear 

1 We need only note verses v. 12-14 fol. 



17.] THE EPISTLE OF JUDE 229 

of the critical mistrust of his readers, both of them feelings 
as foreign to the writers of that day as they would be unavoid 
able to those of ours. 



17. The Epistle of Jude 
[Cf. the works mentioned in 18.] 

This Epistle contains but a single section, besides its 
address and greeting and its doxological ending. The author 
begs his readers bravely to shield the faith delivered to 
them, against those who had the appearance of Christians 
but who nevertheless shamelessly denied the Lord. 1 He 
then reminds them briefly of the punishments which had 
lighted upon similar offenders in the past, and this leads up 
to a description of the audacious dreamers of to-day, who 
went astray from the truth and destroyed the foundations of 
faith, 3 and to an exhortation to keep the right course in the 
face of these dangers. 1 

The Epistle purports to be written by one Judas, brother 
of James. Now, this cannot be the Apostle Judas the son of 
James, of whom we hear in Luke and the Acts, 5 because, 
although the name of his father is mentioned, nothing is said 
of any brother ; but since the addition evidently presupposes 
that this brother James was a distinguished personage, we 
are obliged to turn to that James who was the brother of Jesus 
and the pretended author of the Epistle of James. But then 
Judas must also have been a brother of Jesus a point upon 
which he might have kept silence out of respect 6 and accord 
ing to Matt. xiii. 55 and Mark vi. 3 there actually was such a 
person. The addressees are all those that are called and kept 
for Jesus Christ, and therefore the circle for which it is intended 
appears to have been just as catholic as that of the Epistle of 
James ; moreover, the epistolary form is here purely artificial, 
as is proved by the end. Yet in itself there is nothing impos 
sible in the theory that it was addressed to a single church 
or group of churches, which, on receiving the document, 

1 Vv. 3 fol. Vv. 5-7. 3 Vv. 8-16. 

4 Vv. 17-23. s Luke vi. 16 ; Acts i. 13. See p. 220. 



230 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

found themselves fully enough described in verse 1. Verse 3 
appears at first sight to suggest that the author was in 
constant correspondence with those to whom he wrote. But 
all individual traits are wanting ; the word beloved in 
vv. 3, 17 and 20 is no argument to the contrary. 

The sole object of the Epistle is to warn Christendom 
against a band of pseudo-Christians whose doctrines were no 
less abominable and anti-Christian than was their moral 
conduct. It is written in deep sorrow at the spread of such ten 
dencies in the Church, but it shows more zeal than ability in 
attacking them ; the writer allows a larger space to his wrath 
against these wretches and to a description of the judgment 
awaiting them than to a demonstration of the meanness of 
their principles and practice. Only in a few places does he 
give any positive information concerning them and even 
that is often no more than indicated and the real refutation 
consists entirely in the assertion 2 that through the oracles of 
Prophets and Apostles men had long been prepared for such 
phenomena. The style does not show any very striking 
facility, 3 but it is not without a certain pithy vigour. 

2. The enemies contended against in Jude are not merely 
vicious and weak-kneed Christians perhaps such as had fallen 
away through persecution still less Jewish revolutionaries, 
but rather Antinomian Gnostics. They have not yet left the 
Church, 4 but on the contrary practise their deceit within 
it, and take advantage of the credulity of the others to trade 
upon their visions 5 and their superior wisdom. 6 This was 
precisely why they were so dangerous. That they were 
Gnostics is, however, proved by verse 19, for the separation 
of mankind into different classes, and the haughty contempt 
here mentioned in which the spiritual party held the 
psychical, were distinct characteristics of Gnosticism. Verses 
8 and 10" can only mean that they rejected the Old Testament 
revelation and regarded the God of the Old Testament and his 
angels either as powers of evil, hostile to the true God, or at 
least as imperfect and as standing far below the true God 

1 Vv. 4, 8, 10 (12 and 16), 19, 23. 

2 Vv. 4, 14 fol. and 17 fol. 3 E.g., verse 16. 

4 Verse 12. * Verse 8. 6 Verse 16. 



17.] THE EPISTLE OF JUDE 231 

which again was characteristic of Gnosticism. Connected with 
this, too, is the fact that they enjoined the transgression of 
the Old Testament commandments without distinction as a 
duty, and even most appalling of all in the author s eyes 
practised the defilement of the flesh and indulged their un 
natural lusts. 1 How far the writer gives a correct version of 
their doctrines in this last respect, or whether he was not 
repeating mere malignant rumours, we need not decide ; the 
fact of their hyper-Pauline Antinomianism and of the distinct 
ively Gnostic type of their defilements remains unshaken. 
But whether we see in them Carpocratists or Archontics, 
or members of some school that afterwards disappeared, 
we cannot date either them or the Epistle before the time of 
the Pastoral Epistles. 2 

The writer also shows by his conception of faith that he is 
a man of a later time ; our most holy faith is a thing 
which can be delivered once and for all, 3 and is therefore ob 
jectively the orthodox creed. The time of Christ s Apostles is 
past, according to verse 17, and in verse 4 a saying of Christ s 
is introduced as having been set forth from of old. The fact 
that he does quote sentences of Christian origin even though 
we may continually dispute his acquaintance with Paul and 
more particularly with the Pastoral Epistles proves that he 
did not belong to the first two Christian generations. Nor 
would his active use of Apocryphal writings such as of the 
Assumption of Moses 4 and of the Book of Enoch 5 seem 
to betray the taste of a Primitive Apostle either, and the 
occurrence of two or three such quotations in this short Epistle 
is surely a fact of some importance. From our knowledge of 
the history of these Apocrypha, as well as of Gnosticism and 
of the Epistle itself, it seems most natural to assume that the 
author was an Egyptian Christian. From external evidence 
alone we know that Jude must have been written before 180, 
but we should not venture to decide on any positive decade 
between that year and 100. It would be advisable, however, 
not to place it too late, as the author s mood seems to be one 
of astonishment and indignation at this new ungodliness. 

1 Vv. 8 and 23. 2 See pp. 195 fol. 

3 Vv. 3, 20. Verse 9. * Verse 14 (and 6 ?). 



232 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

Hence, if the Epistle of Jude belongs to the second century, 
it cannot have been written by the brother of Jesus and of 
James ; and it joins the class of pseudonymous epistles. 
Certainly it is astonishing that the author should have chosen 
as the patron for his short address a man so little known, who 
must have been, one would think, almost forgotten in the 
writer s time. It is true that we do not recognise the axiom 
that a pseudo- John could not possibly have been named John, 
but we prefer to renounce the doubtful hypothesis that the 
writer of Jude s epistle himself bore the name of Jude, and 
that this decided him in his choice among names of weight 
for his pamphlet. But neither the brother of James nor, 
as some have suggested, the whole superscription has the 
air of a later addition ; and the question why a later inter 
polator should have made such an addition would be still 
more unanswerable. The most probable supposition is that 
the author belonged by birth to those circles in which the 
memory of James was specially revered, that he did not 
venture to ascribe his well-meant work to James himself, but 
was satisfied with a name from among his family, his house 
community. Perhaps Jude had lived on after his brother s 
death into a time when none of the Lord s Apostles were 
left in Palestine, and might therefore be used to personate 
the herald of the prophesied abomination with greater fitness 
than any other among the band of the first generation. 

For the relation of Jude to 2. Peter see 18, par. 4. 



18. The Second Epistle of Peter 

[Cf. F. Spitta s Der zweite Petrusbrief und der Brief des 
Judas (1885), a clever but unsuccessful attempt to place 2. Peter 
before 1. Peter and Jude. See also the works mentioned in 
15.] 

1. The address and greeting are followed by an introduc 
tion, 2 in which the writer exhorts his readers to become 
perfect in knowledge and virtue, in token of their gratitude for 
God s glorious gifts, and in order to win admittance into the 

1 Verse 1. * i. 3-11. 



18.] THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER 233 

Eternal Kingdom of Christ. Next l he justifies himself for 
taking up his pen, on the ground that he wishes to bear solemn 
witness once more before he dies to the might and presence 
of Jesus, as he himself had been allowed to behold them on 
the holy mount, in exact accordance with the Old Testa 
ment prophecies. At the same time he informs his readers 
that false teachers would appear among them, striving 
with the subtlest art to drag them down in their own fall, 
men who blasphemed the holiest things and were sunk 
in the most detestable transgressions. 2 If these denied even 
the return of Christ declaring that everything since the 
creation had continued on its unchanging course he must 
refer his readers once more to the Prophets and Apostles, he 
must remind them of the Flood and exhort them to wait 
patiently, for the God before whom a thousand years were as 
one day could not yet be accused of delay. 3 His long-suffering, 
which granted time for repentance to all, was the sole reason 
why the day of destruction had not yet appeared, and that day, 
moreover, would come as a thief in its own time, without any 
warning given. The writer ends with the exhortation to be 
prepared for this day at all times, laying stress in verse 15 
on his agreement with Paul, in whose epistles there were 
only some things hard to be understood, which the igno 
rant wrested unto their own destruction. 

2. We might be tempted to regard as the principal object 
of the Epistle the attack upon the false teachers, with which 
it is concerned throughout the whole of chap. ii. and also 
in some other places. But the heretics only rouse in the 
author a sort of negative interest ; he rids himself of them 
only in so far as they obstruct the progress of his readers 
towards true knowledge. Some have pointed to verse iii. 15 
fol., and consider that the Epistle is intended to make Peter 
appear as the ally and defender of Paul, either as against 
the presumptions of Gnosticism, whose votaries appealed to 
Paul s authority in support of their own fictions, or as a pro 
test against the old parties in the Church, who played off 
Peter against Paul and vice versa. That, however, is just as 

1 i. 12-21. - ii. 1-22. 3 iii. 1-13. iii. 14-18. 

5 iii. 3-7, 16 fol., and i. 16, 19-21. 



234 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

unlikely as that the objects of 1. Peter or Hebrews should 
only have been made manifest in vv. v. 12 and xiii. 9-16 
respectively. On the contrary, the kernel of the Epistle (that 
is, the key to its comprehension) lies in chap, iii., as we might 
already suppose from verse iii. 1, with its reference to i. IB 
( to stir you up by putting you in remembrance ) . To revive 
and establish for all time the firm trust in the Parusia of 
Christ, both in the face of insolent criticism and of peevish 
murmurs that it had already been awaited too long in vain, is 
the sole object of the Epistle ; for the author attributes all the 
retrogression in moral conduct in the Church to the weakening 
of hope in the approach of a heavenly kingdom, and of fear of 
the Last Judgment. In order to further the work of degenera 
tion, these abominable heretics had, with cunning strategy, 
made the belief in the Parusia their chief point of attack ; 
he who sought to save this belief must begin by refuting 
the heretics and exposing them in all their worthlessness 
beneath the full glare of the Divine judgments and sentences, 
as made known in the Bible. Their opinion must be divested in 
advance of all authority in the discussions about the Parusia. 
The connection between chap. i. and vv. iii. 1-13 is still more 
distinct ; as early as i. 3-11 our gaze is directed towards the 
great and precious promises, towards the eternal kingdom 
of Christ, which men might deserve by a firm faith and 
the diligent practice of virtue ; while vv. i. 12-21 point to 
the guarantees for the Christian s belief in the Parusia 
the inspired Prophets and Apostles who were eye-witnesses 
and ear-witnesses of the glory of Jesus. For what was the 
Transfiguration on the Holy Mount but a foretaste of the 
Parusia ? The knowledge on which the writer lays such 
stress l refers to the motives of God in delaying apparently 
the fulfilment of his promises concerning the Second 
Coming, and in iii. 14 18 he returns in reality to the sub 
ject of the opening exhortations, the meaning of which is here 
for the first time made fully clear. In verse 15 he emphasises 
the fact once more that the teaching of all the Apostles not 
excepting Paul, out of whose Epistles the enemy sought to 
make capital was absolutely identical on this point. 

1 i. 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, ii. 20 and iii. 18. 



18.] THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER 235 

We must confess that the author has put his case not 
unskilfully, except for the somewhat extravagant polemical 
part in chap. ii. ; he shows what powerful authority the 
expectation of the Parusia had on its side, how base and 
vulgar were its opponents, and this prepares the reader s mind 
for the explanation why there was and could be no question 
of a disappointment of hopes already excited, in spite of the 
delay in their fulfilment. The intellectual demands of his 
readers would certainly have been completely satisfied by such 
a treatment of the subject. It is more doubtful whether the 
Epistle immediately produced that moral and religious 
growth which, in the writer s eyes, was the necessary conse 
quence of this strengthening of Christian knowledge ; too little 
is left in 2. Peter of the infectious enthusiasm kindled by the 
love of Christ which glows throughout the First Epistle. 

3. The Epistle purports to be written by Symeon Peter, 
a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ (the combination is 
similar to that in Romans i. 1-4) and is addressed to all 
believers. We cannot for a moment entertain the idea of 
rejecting the superscription, since both in vv. i. 18 and 
iii. 15 the writer appears again as an Apostle, in the former 
as one of the disciples who witnessed the scene of the 
Transfiguration i.e. either as Peter or as one of the sons of 
Zebedee while in iii. 1 he represents himself as one who had 
already written an Epistle to the same addressees, and in i. 18 
as one who in the face of approaching death wished to draw 
up his testament for the Christian world. Nor is he any 
where untrue to the part, either as regards himself or his 
readers ; in i. 16, it is true, the readers appear to owe 
their Christianity, not to himself, but to all the Apostles, 
but that might be said of all Christians ; and the words 
of iii. 2, the commandment of the Lord and Saviour 
through your Apostles, is only intended, like the passage 
about Paul, to emphasise the uniformity of all Apostolic 
declarations. The words of an Apostle were, according to the 
writer s conception of him, intended for every believer, and 
therefore he did not recognise any difference 2 between his 
own or 1. Peter s circle of readers, and that of a Pauline 

1 Matt. xvii. 1 fol. 2 iii. 1. 



236 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

Epistle. 1 Whether the writer had any particular passage of 
the Pauline literature in his mind when he wrote verse iii. 15 
is uncertain, 2 but to doubt the identity of the earlier letter 
mentioned in iii. 1 with 1. Peter, and to invent a lost Epistle 
of Peter in its stead, is a piece of hypercriticisrn on the part 
of the partisans of tradition all the more superfluous as 
the reference here to 1. Peter is not in the least unnatural. 
The longing for the Parusia dominates 1. Peter too, and it is 
precisely the thesis of the First Epistle that the end of all 
things is at hand 3 that 2. Peter is intended to defend, 
although certainly with some explanatory reservations, 
against those who denied the doctrine of the Second Coming. 
2. Peter, in short, appears to stand in the same relationship 
to 1. Peter as 2. Thessalonians to 1. Thessalonians. 

4. This apparently obvious situation, however, out of 
which 2. Peter seems to have arisen, is untenable when sub 
jected to criticism. 2. Peter was not written by the author 
of the First Epistle, so that if the latter, which is cited by 
our Epistle as Petrine, is not from the hand of Peter, how 
much less can the Second Epistle claim to be of Apostolic 
origin ! In no New Testament writing can pseudonymity be 
so abundantly proved as in 2. Peter, and in none has it been 
recognised by so many scholars who in other matters hold 
the most conservative views. It is precisely in order to save 
the First Epistle that these latter have given up the Second. 
That the two Epistles have some points in common goes with 
out saying, when we consider the acquaintance of the one with 
the other, but nevertheless they are as far removed from one 
another both in form and substance as, say, Hebrews from 
Galatians. And since, if we accepted their authenticity, they 
must necessarily approach each other very nearly, this 
difficulty is insurmountable ; it increases still more, however, 
when Zahn places the Second Epistle a few years earlier 
than the First, the only result of which is to show, to our 
considerable surprise, how far greater was the presump 
tive writer of 1. Peter, Silvanus, than the pillar-apostle 

1 iii. 15. 

2 It might suggest Rom. ii. 4, but also 2. Thess. ii. 13 fol. and 1. Thess. 
v. 1 fol. 3 1. Peter, iv. 7. 



18.] THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER 237 

trained in the school of Jesus. The style of 2. Peter, which 
is quite different in vocabulary from the First Epistle, is 
marked by a certain turgidity which offers the strongest 
contrast to the fluency of 1. Peter ; the writer tries to write 
elegantly, 1 but is in reality very far from faultless in the 
construction of his sentences. 2 We are also struck by the 
scantiness of his modes of expression, which obliges him to 
make frequent repetitions of the same phrases. The part 
which in 1. Peter is played by hope, is here taken by know 
ledge ; the sufferings and persecutions around which every 
thing turns in 1. Peter are here not even mentioned ; what 
1. Peter reveres most highly in Christ is his blessed suffering ; 
here it is his majesty and power. 

But 2. Peter is very largely dependent upon Jude, and the 
very fact that by far the greater part of the latter Epistle (late 
as it is) is taken up and repeated in 2. Peter, destroys the 
assumption of the latter s authenticity even if it were possible 
to credit Peter with so gross a piece of plagiarism. Chap, 
ii. is a complete reproduction of Jude 3-18. The fact that 
Jude in verse 18 mentions as an Apostolic prophecy words 
which might be identified with 2. Peter iii. 3, might seem to 
favour the priority of the latter ; but in reality this is only 
brought forward in Jude as a prophecy universally known. 
In all the rest of the passage we should be more likely, in 
comparing, so far as is possible, the parallels between Jude 
and 2. Peter, to recognise a motive for the latter to alter, 
amplify, smooth down and give a rhetorical polish to the 
material he had before him in Jude, than vice versa. Again, 
the fact seems to me to weigh heavily against the priority 
of 2. Peter, that while Jude openly speaks of the heretics 
as of an existing danger, the author of 2. Peter tries to 
maintain the fiction that he is merely prophesying future 
events, but betrays the unreality of his attitude by con 
stantly slipping back from the future of vv. ii. 1 fol. into the 
present 3 and even into the past 4 tenses. Could Jude, in 

1 Cf. expressions like ATJ&J, 5. 9 ; raf>rap6ta, ii. 4 ; /3Ae /x/ta, ii. 8, and &0c<rpoi, 
ii. 7 and iii. 17. 

2 i. 3 fol. and ii. 15 fol. 

3 Vv. ii. 10, 12 fol., 18, and so on. 4 ii. 15, 22. 



238 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

the position of imitator, have transformed this impression 
of artificiality into one of naturalness by an equally arti 
ficial alteration of certain passages ? And what object can 
there have been in constructing the Epistle of Jude out of 
2. Peter ? 

On the other hand, it is quite conceivable that the author 
of 2. Peter might have woven into his own Epistle, though with 
the omission of the quotations from Apocryphal writings 
to which exception might be taken, 1 the smaller and, as he 
thought, already half-forgotten Epistle of Jude, whose vigorous 
invectives seemed to him quite worth using. Jude is intel 
ligible from beginning to end without the supposition that it 
drew from a previous work, and so is 2. Peter, for indeed 
it must honestly be confessed that if we had had no knowledge 
of Jude, we should never have suspected that an older document 
had here been copied down with a mixture of freedom and 
servility most instructive to the student of literary obligations ; 
still, since we must choose, everything seems to speak for 
the priority of Jude (as above for that of 1. Peter). The 
parallels to Jude are to be met with throughout the whole 
Epistle, 2 so that by such hypotheses as that a later writer had 
interpolated the whole central portion, 3 a recast of the 
Epistle of Jude, into a genuine Epistle of Peter, we only 
create difficulties where all might be clear. As is shown in 
vv. 20-23, Jude combats heresy as such ; hence he concludes 
with counsels as to how 7 his readers were to defend them 
selves against their seducers, and help back the seduced 
into the right path. In tone and expression these counsels 
suit the preceding arguments excellently ; 2. Peter, on the 
other hand, employs the diatribe against heretics as the 
means to another end, and can therefore do nothing with 
Jude 20-23. Does this not destroy the assumption that Jude 
is an excerpt from 2. Peter ? 

Moreover, the author of 2. Peter made free use of other 
Avritings also : of the Pauline Epistles, 4 including the 

1 Vv. 9 and 14 fol. 

- i. 5 (<nroi8V Trarrav = Jude 3). 12 (inrofj.Lfj.vr)ffKfiv . . . si Scira? = Jude 5), 
and again in iii. 8, 7, 17 and 18. 

3 i. 20-iii. 3. E.g., 1. Thess. v. 2 in iii. 10. 



18.] THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER 239 

Pastorals, 1 of the Gospels, probably of the First Epistle of 
Clement, and of the Apocalypse of Peter, recently discovered 
in an Egyptian tomb. 2 The points of contact between these 
two pseudonymous Petrine writings are certainly not acci 
dental ; they might possibly be explained on the supposition 
that both had made use of a third document, but more easily 
by the contrary assumption that the author of the Apocalypse 
was acquainted with 2. Peter. But so long as the date of 
this Apocalypse remains undetermined, the solution of the 
question is for the present of little use to us. 

5. One thing gains a certain amount of probability from the 
above-mentioned resemblance, as well as from the incorpora 
tion of Jude, and that is that 2. Peter, like the two writings in 
question, was of Palestinian or Egyptian origin. With 
regard to its date, the external evidence supplies a terminus 
ad quern at the end of the second century at latest, and we 
shall not challenge the assignment to the period between 125 
and 175. We do not wish to lay too much stress on the doubts " 
raised by the non-appearance of the Parusia, since these 
might easily have arisen earlier, but there is no lack of other 
evidence, even apart from the literary dependence of the Epistle. 
The primitive Catholic Church with its three authorities, 
the Prophets, the Lord, and the Apostles, is complete l ; the 
Epistles of our brother Paul had not only been completely 
collected, but could be placed on a level with the other 
scriptures, " and therefore enjoyed Canonical acceptance, 
while both Gnostics and orthodox Christians appealed to them 
as authorities in their disputes. In spite of the hatred 
against Gnosticism, the Church had adopted the Gnostic s 
worst fault, his exaggerated reverence for knowledge. How 
ever plainly the Epistle may assume the part of a precautionary 
exhortation designed for the needs of later times, 6 it is 
nevertheless clear that it was written in the very midst of the 
struggle against heresy, against subjectivism (see i. 20 : 
IBlas s mXva-sws) ; and that it only recognised as true what 

1 E.g., i- 1C, fffffoQifffifvoi fj.v6oi. 

2 Cf. A. Harnack, Texte und Untersuchungen, ix. 2, pp. 90 fol. (1893), 
2nd ed. pp. 87 fol. 

s iii.4. l i. 19-21, Hi. 2. 5 iii. 16. 

6 Most markedly in iii. 17. 



240 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

was attested by Prophets and Apostles, or what could vindicate 
itself by its moral effects. 1 And to mention one last detail 
the idea expressed in i. 4, that we should become partakers 
of the divine nature and escape from corruption, bears such 
obvious marks of a theological system influenced by Hellen 
istic ideas, that we can only ascribe the Epistle an artificial 
product after the manner and in the taste of that time to 
an ecclesiastical theologian of very late date. 

Finally, the assiduity with which the Pseudo-Peter here 
carries out the fiction is an evidence of the fact that 2. Peter 
was composed in a later period of pseudonymous ecclesiastical 
literature than were the Epistles of Jude, James, and 1. Peter. 
We leave the Pastoral Epistles out of account, because 
their author was moved to imitate Paul s Epistles, even in 
minute details, by the many genuine Epistles from which he 
had drawn a great part of his spiritual nourishment. But 
the fiction of their authorship is not an integral part of Jude, 
James and 1. Peter ; it is only added loosely, as a frame to a 
picture already finished and complete in itself. With 2. Peter, 
on the other hand, it is the first consideration in the writer s 
literary scheme, and the author never loses the consciousness 
of the part he is playing. The reference in i. 13 fol. to the 
prophecy by Jesus of Peter s death in John xxi. 18 fol. 
is unmistakable ; and the eye-witness of the Transfiguration 
distinguishes himself with equal conspicuousness in i. 18 from 
the readers who love Jesus, not having seen him. - Verse i. 
15 certainly refers on the surface to the Epistle he was engaged 
in writing, but the fact of which the fame was spread by 
Papias that Peter had laid the foundation for a trustworthy 
Gospel may be read between the lines. In vv. ii. 1 and iii. 17 
the fiction is carefully maintained that Peter could only speak 
prophetically of the false teachers of the second century ; in 
iii. 15 the writer brackets himself with Paul, to whom wisdom 
had been given from above because the two Apostles, Peter 
and Paul, had long been coupled in men s mouths ; and in iii. 
1 he refers to the Epistle already in circulation under the 
name of Peter. This writer, in short, constructs his fiction 
methodically : he is anxious from the first about the success 

1 i. 5-7, 8. - 1. Peter i. 8. 



19.] THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN 241 

of his enterprise ; but this only shows that the public had 
already learnt not to accept indiscriminately all that was 
offered to it under an Apostolic title, and that mere correctness 
of contents was no longer considered sufficient. It proves 
nothing, however, for the genuineness of documents in which 
the fiction of authorship had no further influence naturally 
always an unfavourable one on their contents. James, 
Jude and 1. Peter are still flowers of free growth, whose scent 
loses none of its sweetness for the names they go by ; 2. Peter 
is an artificial production of learned ingenuity. Probably 
the least questionable statement of any here laid down is 
that 2. Peter is not only the latest document of the New Testa 
ment, but also the least deserving of a place in the Canon. 

19. The First Epistle of John 

[Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vol. xiv.: the Johannine Epistles by 
B. Weiss (1900, ed. 6) ; Hand-Commentariv., the Gospel, Epistles 
and Eevelation of John, by H. Holtzmann (1893). The most 
valuable of the monographs, in spite of its edifying tendency, is that 
of E. Rothe (1878); W. Karl s Johanneische Studien, i., 1898 
(1. John), is original, but, in my opinion, wrong on every point; 
otherwise cf. T. Haring s Gedankengang und Grundgedanke des 
jsten Johannesbriefs, to be found in the Congratulatory Address to 
Carl von Weizsacker, pp. 173-200 (1892). Wiesinger in the Theo- 
logische Studien und Kritiken for 1899, pp. 575-581, gives a 
simple analysis of the train of ideas in 1. John.] 

1. The innumerable attempts to discover a well-considered 
arrangement in the First Epistle of John have had the merit 
of neutralising one another. Even T. Haring s interpretation, 
though sympathetic in itself, supposes the writer to have 
been filled with an almost exaggerated feeling for the very 
thing towards which he openly displays his absolute indiffer 
ence viz. a strictly logical and harmoniously ascending 
development of ideas. On the contrary, it is aphoristically 
and in the form of meditations that his groups of ideas, both 
large and small, are put together : not indeed in the manner 
of a later rearrangement of long-completed fragments, but as 
a continuous stream of pensees upon various successive 
subjects. Thus the transitions from one section to another, 



242 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

as well as the unexpected returns to themes already fully 
discussed, only arise from the varying moods of the writer, 
and this partly explains the fact that at many points it is 
impossible to make out where the boundary between two 
reflections lies. And just as large sections of the Epistle 
might be taken away without leaving any visible gap, so 
before the end the writer might have continued the old 
threads for some time lorger without altering the character of 
the Epistle, or in any way diminishing or increasing the 
impression created by the whole. 

Verses i. 1-4 form the introduction, in which the writer 
asserts his fitness for the task before him. Next he makes it 
clear that fellowship with God, who is synonymous with light, 
was out of the question in the case of certain men those 
who walked in darkness, who thought themselves, forsooth, 
free from sin, and yet did not fulfil the commandments of 
Christ who, above all, blindly and shamefully neglected 
his principal commandment, that of brotherly love. His 
readers, on the other hand, to whom he first offers the 
highest testimony, 2 were not to allow themselves to be led 
away by any temptation from the love of the Father to the 
love of the world/ 1 The danger was not small, for the fore 
runners of the approaching End had now arisen in great 
numbers : the Antichrists who owned not Jesus as the Christ, 
and therefore denied both Father and Son. 4 The faithful 
should attack such seducers with the strong self-confidence of 
those who had long possessed the unction of the Spirit," who 
were already children of God, and were only bound to prove 
it by doing justly and practising a brotherly love that 
rejoiced in all self-sacrifice. Nought but this distinguished 
the children of God from the Cainites, the children of the 
Devil. In iii. 2, 3 the writer sums up and defines the com 
mandment of God, that we should believe in the name of 
his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, and appears to 
be hastening to a close ~ ; but in iii. 24 he introduces, with the 
remark thereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit 
which he gave us, a keen argument 8 against the false spirits 

1 i. 15-ii.ll. - ii. 12-14. ;i ii. 15-17. 4 ii. 18-26. 

5 ii. 20 fol. ti ii. 28-iii. 18. iii. 19 fol. 8 iv. 1-6. 



19.] THE FIEST EPISTLE OF JOHN 243 

who denied that Jesus Christ was come in the flesh, and 
points out the connection between the commandment 
to love our brother and the belief in Jesus, the Son of 
God. 1 This faith was our acknowledgment of the boundless 
love of God for us ; it lifted us into the sphere of God (that 
is, of Love), and our continuance therein was impossible 
unless we became one with it and practised Love. The last 
verses 2 give a final exhortation to joy in prayer, to a common 
battle against sin, and against the world which lieth in the 
evil one. We possess the true God and eternal life in Jesus 
Christ ; far be it, then, from us to worship idols ! 

2. It is evident that our Epistle, which, in spite of the 
words I write unto you, I have written unto you, and, as 
early as i. 4, these things we write, hardly bears the ap 
pearance of a letter, is a manifesto addressed to the whole of 
Christendom. The words you also, ye also, of i. 3, are not 
intended to distinguish certain definite readers from the great 
mass of believers, but rather to differentiate the Church 
founded by the Apostles from its founders, the eye-witnesses 
of revelation. The words in which the readers are addressed, 
little children, my little children, brethren, beloved 
(and at one point 3 the little children are divided into 
fathers and young men ), are as indefinite as possible in 
tone : no trace is to be found of a narrower circle of readers, 
and in v. 11-13 you is exchanged for we. Zahn s pene 
tration discovers in this Epistle, free as it is from all personal 
references, that the addressees 4 represent only a part of 
Christendom, the Asiatic churches, which, according to v. 21, 
had grown up on heathen soil : thus, he interprets the words 
ye have overcome them of iv. 4 in the sense of the Asiatic 
churches have overcome them. Unfortunately, however, it 
is not so easy to construe verse iv. 4 as the God that is in the 
Asiatic churches is greater than he that is in the world. It 
seems most natural to look for the object of this encyclical in 
the preservation of Christianity (to which of course the false 
spirits and the Antichrists no longer belonged 5 ) in the true 
faith of Christ and the true brotherly love, without which 
there could be no union with God. But the author was 

1 iv. 7-v. 13. *1 21. ii. 12-14. 4 ii. 19. * ii. 19. 

K 2 



244 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

surely urged to this enthusiasm for preservation only by 
painful experiences. Many Antichrists had arisen under 
fche mask of Christianity, 1 boasting that they possessed the 
Spirit, and disputing the identity of the human Jesus with 
Christ, the Son of God. 2 

Now this was a form of Docetism which is only attested 
and conceivable as having grown up within the Gnostic circle ; 
the persons concerned had evidently boasted of their new 
and perfect knowledge 3 of the true God, 4 a knowledge which 
absolutely rejected the idea of an incarnation of the Divine ; 
they had represented themselves as the true possessors of the 
Spirit (Pneumatists)/ had promised eternal life to their 
partisans alone, 6 and had openly shown an indifference to the 
fate of their non-Pneumatist brethren described by our author 
as the hatred we, the children of light, were bound to expect 
from the world. They had disputed the possibility of sin for 
themselves (i.e. the full Christians, the Pneumatists) for to 
distinguish the liars and seducers of ii. 4, iv. 20, i. 8 and iii. 7, 
from those of ii. 22 and 26 is quite unwarranted and conse 
quently had erased from the history of salvation as super 
fluous the atoning death of the Son of God, and had declared 
themselves, at least in theory, superior to all moral law and 
bound by no commandments. Both this Antinomianism and 
the above-mentioned denial of Jesus, had sprung, according 
to our Epistle, from one root ; and we find in effect that such 
theory and practice was combined in Gnosticism. We may 
therefore conclude that 1. John was a polemical writing 
directed against an Antinomian form of Gnosticism, but 
defending the true Gnosis, which, in the first place, saw in 
the incarnate Son of God the true knowledge of God, with all 
that that involved i.e. forgiveness of sins, justification, 
sanctification, eternal life and, in the second, recognised the 
necessity of breaking with sin and practising love. As 
against the pride of the Pneumatists, 7 again, it could not 
emphasise the fact too strongly that whatever qualities of 
religion and morality we possessed were the gifts of God 

1 ii. 18 fol. - ii. 22, iv. 2 fol., v. 1, 5, G fol. and 20. 

;1 ii. H fol. " E.g., v. 20 fol. : iv. 1-3, 0. 

6 ii. 2. r >_28. iii. 1, 24, iv. 13, v. 11, 20. 



19.] THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN 245 

alone, and that our presumed possession of them could only 
be shown to be actual (that is, really coming from God) by 
corresponding actions. Every sentence of our Epistle is 
written in the interests of such a defence, and it was because 
the author continually imagined that he had not brought 
forward arguments enough that he so often returned to what 
had gone before, and was sometimes not even afraid of contra 
dicting himself. 1 He draws upon his whole world of ideas to 
furnish weapons in the battle against moral and religious 
confusion, but urges nothing in support of those ideas them 
selves except where argument might be useful in strengthen 
ing the confidence of his readers in Anti-Gnostic Christianity. 

3. It is impossible to name an exact date for the com 
position of the Epistle. The Gnostic pseudo-prophets seem 
at any rate to have appeared in large numbers 2 and with full 
confidence of success, which is surely not probable before the 
second century. We do not recognise any definite Gnostic 
School in the few distinct indications given by the Epistle ; 
Zahn only singled out the Cerinthians because he concluded 
from verse v. 6, that the false teachers had laid excessive 
stress on the baptism of Jesus, and had perhaps honoured the 
baptist John almost as highly as the man Jesus. But we 
cannot dissociate ordinary libertinism, as well as these pecu 
liar Christological doctrines, from the outbreak of heresy 
combated in 1. John, and we have no evidence of such things 
in the teaching of Cerinthus. 

It is indisputable, as far as concerns the writer himself, 
that the Pauline theology, with all its problems, had been left 
far behind, for the question of the validity of the Mosaic Law 
exists as little in the author s mind as that of the recognition 
of national distinctions between the children of God. He 
himself is not free from Gnostic tendencies ; his Dualism, 
which makes so sharp a contrast between God and the world, 
the children of God and the children of the Devil, that it 
leads him to declare that whosoever is begotten of God 
doeth no sin, 3 borders closely on heresy, and the high 
value he sets on knowledge points in the same direction. On 
the other hand, he shares with the anti-Gnostic majority the 

1 Cf. i. 8 fol. with iii. 9 and v. 18 fol. 2 ii. 18. 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

practical trait of insistence upon righteousness, upon the ful 
filment of the commandments and upon the practice of love, 
and both these characteristics together are the mark of Old- 
Catholicism. His idea of Christ is not exactly that of 
oneness with the Father, for the passages which sound very 
much like an obliteration of the line of distinction between 
Father and Son and sometimes it is impossible to tell which 
of the two the writer means are to be explained by his 
desire to brand the denial of the Son as a denial of the 
Father, and so to fix upon the Antichrists the further sin of 
hostility to God, to mark them out as worshippers of idols. 
But the writer proves himself a member of the Catholic Church 
by the stress he lays upon holding fast to the ancient doctrine, 
the doctrine accessible to all 2 ; the commandment heard from 
the beginning (a?r apx>l s ) 3 represents the same idea to him, 
and with the same force, as does that of the tradition delivered 
once for all (a7ra), to Jude. 4 

The external evidence in support of this Epistle is rela 
tively good, but nothing hinders us from assigning it to the 
period between 100 and 125 ; 1. Peter certainly gives us an 
impression of greater primitiveness. 

4. The question of authorship is here inseparable from 
that of the relation of the Epistle to the Fourth Gospel, 
and from that of its authenticity : that is to say, of the 
credibility of that very ancient Church tradition according to 
which the Apostle John composed both the Gospel and the 
Epistle. The main question can only be decided, if at all, in 
dealing with the Gospel ; as regards the Epistle, we must first 
observe that the author does not name himself, so that there 
can be no question of pseudonymity, and yet that he assumes 
Apostolic authority,-" although avoiding the Apostolic title. 
He does not impart a single saying from the Saviour s lips, 
however, or a single definite incident of his history only 
abstract theories and speculations which are. to say the least 
of it, surprising as coming from an Apostle. His ignoring of 
the Old Testament is also remarkable, and in fact nothing 
but the evidence of the author himself would lead us to 

1 ii. 22 fol. 2 ii. 20, 27. 3 ii. 7, 24, iii. 11. 

4 Jude 3 and 5. s i. 1-3, 5. 



19.] THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN 

suppose that this document was the work of an Apostle. And 
since this evidence is limited to the introductory verses, we 
can only maintain that what he wished was to give his 
production the authority of eye- and ear-witnesses, rather than 
to take the name of one particular Apostle ; especially when 
we consider the many plurals in i. 1-5. (Later on the writer 
speaks of himself in the singular, and uses the plural, with or 
without r)fiis, only when speaking in the name of believers 
collectively, or in the sense of one. ) But how indeed could 
he refute the pseudo-prophets except with the highest of all 
earthly authority, that of the collective witness of the disciples 
of Jesus, ever renewed through brotherly love and destined 
to endure until the return of Christ ? If the writer himself 
were an Apostle of overwhelming authority, he acted with 
very little wisdom in concealing his name ; it would certainly 
not have endangered the idea of the uniformity of all Apo 
stolic preaching to have stated clearly to his readers, the 
like-minded, the hostile, and above all the undecided whose 
authority it was that was here fighting for the truth. 

But for us the fact is all the more certain that the writer 
of the First Epistle of John is identical with the writer of the 
Fourth Gospel. The relationship between the two documents, 
with all their outward difference of form, is most striking. 

In the Gospel, too, the writer conceals his name, but 
describes himself as an eye-witness in words which must re 
mind us of the corresponding phrases in the Epistle. 1 In 
numerable parallels between the two documents have long since 
been observed, beginning with the opening sentence in each. 2 
Elsewhere we may compare, for instance, vv. iv. 12, 20 of 
the Epistle with verse i. 18 of the Gospel no man hath 
seen God at any time or 1. John v. 12, He that hath the 
Son hath the life ; he that hath not the Son of God hath not 
the life, with iii. 36 of the Gospel, and 1. John i. 4, * that 
our joy may be fulfilled, with John xv. 11, xvi. 24, xvii. 18. 
There is never any question of mere copying in these cases, 
still less does one document expressly quote the other ; but 
just as repetitions are extremely common both within the 

1 Gosp. i. 14. xix. 35, 

2 Gosp. iv dpxy fa > Epist. & fiv d 



248 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

Epistle 1 and within the Gospel, though always with slight varia 
tions of expression, so these parallels are to be explained in 
the same way and they alone almost compel us to recognise 
the identity of the two writers. Moreover, it is not only a 
question of occasional sentences, which might possibly have 
been incorrectly preserved in the memory of a later writer ; 
in the whole vocabulary, in the mode of thought and in 
the peculiarities of the style which are many there exists 
between the two documents an absolute and complete agree 
ment. Both have the same preference, for instance, for the 
words napTvpia and f^apTvpslv, while pdprvs, /j,aprvptov and 
fjbaprvpscrOai, do not occur at all ; both have the same Hebra 
istic manner of working out their ideas in simple sentences, 
connected by and or perhaps not connected at all although 
it must be observed that the aversion to <ydp and ovv is much 
stronger in the Epistle than in the Gospel and in both we 
find the habit of giving double expression, both positive and 
negative, to their theses, 2 and an extraordinary abundance of 
participles used as substantives. Such characteristic formulae 
as the only-begotten Son for Christ, to be of God, to be be 
gotten of God, to be of the truth, to do the truth, to have 
the life, to abide in love, to walk in darkness, to be out of 
the world, are only to be found in 1. John and the Gospel of 
John. Fundamental ideas, too, like that of the necessary 
connection between the love received from God, or from 
Christ, and the love we practise towards our brethren, of the 
sending of the Son into the world in order to save the world 
and to take away the sins of the world, of the hatred borne 
by the world against the brethren 3 and of the victory over 
the world, 4 all play the same part in both documents. 

It is true that the Epistle has some peculiarities : it alone 
speaks of false prophets and Antichrists, of denial in the 
distinctively religious sense, of the Parusia, of hope, of the 
doing of righteousness (but we find that the doing of 
truth is mentioned in both 5 ). Instead of the cosmological 

1 Epist. i. 6, 8 and ii. 4 ; ii. 18, 22 and iv. 3 ; ii. 3 and iii. G b . 

- E.g., Epist. ii. 27, iv. 6, v. 12 ; Gosp. iii. 30, viii. 47. 

s Epist. iii. 13 ; Gosp. xv. 18 fol., xvii. 14. 

4 Gosp. xvi. 33 ; Epist. v. 4 fol. 5 Gosp. iii. 21 ; Epist. i. 6. 



19.] THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN 240 

conception of the Logos to which John attaches his spe 
culations on the nature of Christ in the prologue to the 
Gospel, 1 the Epistle (i. 1) inserts the religious conception of 
the word of life or the word of God, which is meant at 
any rate as a partial personification. The Paraclete whose 
advent is announced in the Gospel 2 is not mentioned in the 
Epistle, and the word is even used in a different sense in 
ii. 1. Differences in vocabulary are also to be found, such 
as that the Epistle uses the phrase Koivwvia /jisra TWOS 
four tunes, and that, too, within five verses (i. 3-7) ; while in 
the Gospel there is no trace either of this word or of any 
other derived from tcoivwvsiv. But these differences can 
nearly all be explained by the peculiar objects of the Epistle 
objects which concentrated the writer s attention on certain 
points which did not always coincide with the favourite themes 
of the Gospel. And certainly it would imply a preposterous 
idea of the relationship between the Epistle and the Gospel, to 
suppose that the former was Backed on to the latter as a sort of 
letter of recommendation. The Epistle is concerned with 
other objects than the Gospel, and moreover in so persistent 
and one-sided a manner that it is impossible to think of the 
Gospel and the Epistle as simultaneous productions. If 
they are separated in time, the last ground for doubting the 
identity of their writers disappears, for it would be more 
than foolish to expect an author to confine himself in a 
later work to exactly the same material as he had used per 
haps five years before. The question as to whether the 
Epistle or the Gospel is the earlier work is not particularly 
important, when we have once recognised the fact that no 
skill in imitation and no mere school-connection could ever 
have produced a similarity so all-pervading as exists between 
the Gospel of John and this Epistle ; but by far the more 
probable assumption is that the Epistle was a later work 
from the hand of the Evangelist. He produced it after the 
earlier and greater work, not because he wished to express 
the main idea of the latter hi more popular, though at the 
same time dogmatic, form, and thus to fix it more firmly in his 
readers memory, but because his Gospel and his conception 

1 i. 1 fol. - Chaps, xiv-xvi. 



250 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. m. 

of Christianity were now being seriously threatened by the 
Gnostics, who actually employed some of his formulae in order 
to recommend themselves to the ignorant, and who in effect 
found many points of agreement between their views and his. 
For his apology he chose the epistolary form which Paul had 
raised to honour, although without making any material 
changes in his style to suit it. 

20. The Shorter Epistles of John 

[Cf. works mentioned in 19 ; also A. Harnack, Uber den 
3 ten Johannesbrief, in the Texte und Unters. zur altchr. Lit. xv. 
3, 1897.] 

1. These two Epistles, which resemble one another very 
closely in outward form, return to a more distinct epistolary 
style ; they possess both address and final greeting, and in both 
the writer calls himself the Presbyter, although in 2. the 
addressee is the elect Kvpla and her children, and in 3. 
Gaius the beloved. This parallel in 3. 1 might at first 
sight lead us to suppose that the addressee of 2. was also an 
individual Christian, who was perhaps named Kyria, or else 
whose name was left unmentioned, in which case the word 
must be translated lady. But nowadays it is almost 
universal to take the word lady as referring figuratively to 
a community of the Lord (a single Christian community accord 
ing to verse 13), in which again the whole of Christendom 
might be symbolised. For the writer could scarcely have 
called a Christian lady of his time beloved by all them that 
know the truth, even allowing for the greatest extravagance of 
style. According to verse 4, her children must have been 
unusually numerous, and this verse can only be made to agree 
with verse 1, by assuming that there the word children is 
used in a narrower sense than here. The use of both singular 
and plural in addressing this lady l also favours such an 
interpretation, and moreover the chief contents of the 
Epistle are by no means private in character. But precisely 
because the matter of the Epistle is suited to the whole 
Church, and not merely to a single community, and since the 

Singular in vv. 4, 5 and 13 ; plural in vv. G, 8, 10 and 12. 



20.] THE SHOETER EPISTLES OF JOHN 251 

author would scarcely have wished it seriously to be restricted 
to a single community, he might just as well have intended 
to address an individual Christian matron under the name 
of Kyria as an individual Christian brother under that of 
Gaius, and the difficulties might be explained by supposing 
that the addresses are fictitious. The epistolary form led 
him to write to individuals, but he intended that these writings 
should have a catholic circulation. 

Besides the address and ending, 2. John consists only of a 
plea to its recipients to walk according to the commandments 
of God, especially in the matter of mutual love, and, in 
defiance of all Antichrists who denied the incarnate Christ, 
to stand fast in the teaching of Christ. 1 The false teacher 
was not to be received into their houses, nor even to be given 
a greeting. 2 This last piece of advice is the only part peculiar 
to the Epistle, and we may conclude that the writer s object 
was to establish it as a principle with regard to the treat 
ment of heretics. 

The Third Epistle has, after its address, an introduction 3 
which reminds us of the Pauline prefaces an expression of the 
writer s joy, that, as others had borne witness, Gaius walked 
in the truth. Following on this he praises him for having 
received passing brethren in a friendly manner, thereby ren 
dering a service to the truth they represented. 4 Unhappily, 
this was not the case with Diotrephes, who, from a desire for 
personal supremacy, had received neither the brethren nor a 
letter written by the author, 5 and had expelled from the church 
others who were willing to do so. It was to be hoped that 
Gaius would not follow his example. 6 Verse 12 gives a glowing 
testimony to Demetrius, from which, however, we do not learn 
whether the writer means to recommend him to the hospitality 
of Gaius, or as a trustworthy ally in the church. The letter 
ends with the same formulae as the Second Epistle. 

The Gaius of the Third Epistle can be identified as little as 
the Diotrephes or the Demetrius, for, considering the fre 
quency of the name, it would be almost childish to suppose 
that he was the same as the Gaius mentioned by Paul in 

1 Vv. 4-9. - Vv. 10 fol. 3 Vv. 2-4. 

3 Vv. 5-8. * Vv. 9 and 10. K Ver. 11. 



252 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

1. Corinthians and Romans - ; but when we consider that 
this was a time of which we know practically nothing, it 
would indeed be a marvel if he could be identified. Taking 
the Second Epistle into account, however, we seem justified in 
assuming that all three were imaginary persons (verse 11, 
for instance, does not fit the description of Gaius in vv. 2-6, in 
the least, and the tenses of 3, 5 fol. betray the hollowness of 
the assumed situation) ; thus the only object of the Epistle 
would appear to have been to urge as a sacred duty the cordial 
reception and entertainment of brethren travelling in the 
service of the Gospel, and to unmask the lust of power which, 
at the expense of truth, and solely in order to shut out all 
external influences from its neighbourhood, did not fulfil this 
duty and spurned even the highest of all authorities. 

2. We can only dispute the view that both Epistles spring 
from the same writer, if we consider the one to be the slavish 
imitation of the other, and in that case the decision as to 
whether 2. or 3. were the earlier could only be purely arbi 
trary. I hold it probable that they were written contempora 
neously, for none but a Chancery clerk could have clung so 
closely to his epistolary formulae as to give to two Epistles 
written at different periods an appearance so similar as that 
possessed by 2. and 3. John (with the exception of the verses 
dealing with the special subjects in each). They show 
the Johannine type in phrases like to know the truth, 3 
to be of God, to have God, to have both the Father 
and the Son, " and also in such unimportant expressions 
as that your joy may be fulfilled. 6 The words of 3. 12, thou 
knowest that our witness is true, remind us particularly of the 
Gospel, 7 but both Epistles, and particularly the Second, are still 
more closely related to the First Epistle, for vv. 2. 4-9 are 
in reality nothing but a short extract from that Epistle, while 
the letter mentioned in 3. /written either to the whole Church 
or to a community, and which Diotrephes would not receive, 
would also seem to refer with great probability to the First 

1 i. 14. " xvi. 23. 3 2nd Epist. 1 ; cf. Gosp. viii. 32. 

4 3rd Epist. 11. " 2nd Epist. 9. 

8 2nd Epist. 12; cf. 1st Epist. i. 4. 

7 v. 31 fol., viii. 13 fol., xix. 35, and esp. xxi. 25. 8 Vrr. U 



20.] THE SHORTER EPISTLES OF JOHN 253 

Epistle. But it might just as easily be taken as referring to 
the Second, and in this case the fiction becomes unmistakable, 
for no one in real life would write an Epistle like 2. John to a 
community the ruler of which as the writer himself knew 
and mentioned in a simultaneous letter to a personal friend 
in that community would not receive his Epistle, but had 
actually put himself in a position of impious antagonism 
to him. 

The indications as to the date of the Epistles are but scanty, 
though what we have said with regard to the First Epistle 
holds good of the Second ; a somewhat later stage in the develop 
ment of ecclesiastical orthodoxy is implied by the emphasis 
given to the injunction to abide in the teaching, and the 
absolute condemnation of those who go onward. As to the 
Third Epistle it is not necessary to follow Harnack in consider 
ing it as an important document dating from the period of the 
struggle of the old patriarchal mission -organisation with the 
individual communities and their tendency towards consolida 
tion ; but we may probably take Diotrephes as a representative 
of the monarchical aspirations in the communities, and of the 
mistrust of the wandering teachers which soon prevailed in 
the whole Church ; we can therefore scarcely date our Epistles 
before the years 100-125. 

The tradition tells us that the writer of 2. and 3. John was 
identical with the writer of 1. John and the Gospel of John. 
Many objections, however, have been raised against this. The 
two former, after all, stand much closer to one another 
than to the longer writings, and their resemblance to 
these latter may be explained by their mental dependence on 
them, and by the fact that their author may have spent a con 
siderable period in the Johannine atmosphere. The shorter 
Epistles possess much that does not occur in 1. John and the 
Gospel : not merely the words <f>t\o7rpa)Ti>iv and psXav, to 
which no one has the right to expect any parallels, but phrases 
like tydpyv \iav, 1 /3\S7TT savTOVs, * a7ro\afj./3dviv yuadov 
7rX/;p7/, 2 avvspyol yiva>p0d nvtf all of which remind us of 
the Synoptics or of Paul. Even in the extract from the First 
Epistle in 2. 4-9 there are some remarkable differences, such 

1 2nd Ep. 4 and 3rd Ep. 3. - 2nd Ep. 8. 3 3rd Ep. 8. 



254 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. in. 

as the words irXdvos and 7r\dvoi in verse 7 : the fact that the 
Antichrist is only spoken of in the singular ; the mention of 
the danger of losing the things which have been wrought, 2 
the reference to the full reward, and the excommunication of 
the man who goeth onward, or who taketh the lead 
(Trpodywv). Finally, when we consider the great difference 
between the epistolary garb of the First Epistle and that of the 
other two, and the fact that the latter found their way into 
the Canon later than the First Epistle and separately from it, 
we can at any rate understand that doubts might be entertained 
of the tradition which sought to ascribe all four writings to 
the same hand. On the other hand, the differences between 
the two shorter Epistles and the longer are not more consider 
able than between the latter and the Gospel. I see no reason 
left for ascribing the three Epistles of John to more than one 
author ; if we may assume that he wrote the last two as a 
supplement a few years after the First Epistle first, in the 
Second Epistle, to point out more particularly the duty of 
separation from the false teachers ; then, in the Third, to 
give a forcible recommendation to a form of the practice of 
brotherly love which was specially important, though often 
entirely ignored or its necessity contested. 

One question only remains : why the unknown writer, who 
was apparently well content to remain partially anonymous in 
the First Epistle, now reveals himself in the Second and Third ; 
and, if so, why he does not come forward simply under his own 
name, but adopts a title which might mean anything, and there 
fore tells us next to nothing the title of Presbyter. The first 
became necessary when instead of the sermon in epistolary 
form he chose the form of the occasional letter. But how 
can the vague title Presbyter be coupled in the nomi 
native with the dative to Gaius ? This would only be 
possible if the person intended was known to everyone in the 
Christian world as the Presbyter Kar s^o^v, and perhaps 
better known by this title than by his own name. It is said 
that there was such an Elder of the name of John in the 
second century. Either this man is the writer of our Epistles, 
or some unknown person has appropriated his name in order to 

1 Verse 7. 2 Verse 8. 



JO.] THE SHORTER EPISTLES OF JOHN 255 

secure an adequate authority for his disciplinary instructions. 
Perhaps he had heard that some had placed his first epistle 
ad acta, and therefore determined to announce more defi 
nitely whose voice it was that had demanded a hearing. He 
attained his object. A hundred years later the shorter 
Epistles were always quoted as the Epistles of John wherever 
they were known. 

For further particulars of this Presbyter see below, 31. 



256 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK u. 



BOOK II 

THE APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE OF THE 
NEW TESTAMENT 

21. A General Survey of Apocalyptic Literature 

[Cf. F. Liicke s Versuch einer vollstandigen Einleitung in die 
Offenbarung des Johannes (1852) ; E. Schurer s Geschichte des 
jiidischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, vol. iii. pp. 181-273 ; 
Wellhausen s Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, vi. pp. 215-249 (1899) ; 
and for works of H. Gunkel and W. Bousset see next section. A 
good translation of the Jewish Apocalypses not contained in 
the Old Testament has been made by Kautzsch, in his Die 
Apokryphen und Psetidepigraphen des A. T. s, ii. pp. 177-528 
(1900), with short commentaries and introductions ; the general 
introduction to the first volume (pp. xx-xxiii) should also be con 
sulted.] 

WHILE the Epistolary literature of the New Testament was 
created by Christianity itself, that is by the great Christian 
Apostle Paul, without any dependence on existing models, and 
the Gospels and Acts were written in a form naturally arising 
from the needs of an historical religion -for we may suppose 
that even if no one had ever composed an historical book 
before, the Saviour would have been described in much this 
way to future generations the Apocalyptic writings of the 
New Testament belong to a species of artistic composition 
which existed long beforehand, which grew up on Jewish soil 
and was finally adopted by the new religion without any essen 
tial modifications. It is true that only one such book, the 
Apocalypse of John, has found its way into the New Testament 
Canon (or has remained there permanently), but there are 
other works of the kind which have laid claim to a like 



21.] GENERAL SURVEY OF APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE 257 

consideration, such as the Apocalypse of Peter, 1 and the 
Shepherd of Hennas,- and this form of edifying literature 
was for centuries exceedingly popular in the widest Christian 
circles. Professional theologians made light of it, but the 
lower orders of the Christian population derived from it much 
stimulus to their imagination and material for their religious 
thought. 

The name Apocalypse, which many books of this class do 
not bear from the beginning, is generally applied to all those 
writings in which a human being tells the story of what had 
been imparted to him from heaven above, under circumstances 
of miracle, concerning those matters and problems of the 
other world which, though inaccessible to human reason, 
are of all the greater interest on that account to the pious 
heart. Apocalyptic elements are also frequently found in 
books of another class -e.g. in the Psalms of Solomon, in 
Jewish books of legends, and so on and this naturally enough, 
for the Apocalypse does not merely represent a branch of 
literature, but rather a stage in the development of the 
Israelitish religion. The first great product of Apocalyptics 
was the Book of Daniel, written in the time of the Maccabees 
about the year 166 B.C. ; all later examples drew from it, 
most of them consciously. It now finds its place among the 
Prophets of the Old Testament, and perhaps rightly so, for 
Apocalyptic literature is in reality the last manifestation of 
Old Testament Prophecy. 

Prophecy found itself on the way to an Apocalyptic form as 
soon as, from Jeremiah onwards, it was compelled to abandon 
the direct action of man on man, and to influence its genera 
tion solely through the medium of literature. Ezekiel in the 
Captivity is already book-prophet from first to last. In other 
respects, too, he shows very strongly the characteristics of an 
age of decadence : few new ideas and none of the moral 
energy of the old stock, but in their place an imagination 
luxuriant enough, but running to waste in a tangle of barren 
weeds. Vague allegories exercise the ingenuity of the reader 
rather than guide his will in accordance with eternal law. The 
healthy bond between Prophecy and the living history of the 

1 See p. 210. - Written at Home about 140 A.D. 

S 



258 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK 11. 

people has been severed, nor are matters mended by the 
return of half the exiles to Palestine, for Israel remains 
divided and has lost the free disposal of its own affairs. No 
Prophet could now venture to deal publicly with political ques 
tions, and indeed none would have had the power, for the 
mental horizon and the interests of the poor downtrodden 
Palestinians grew narrower year by year. At last for when 
the aspect of the present is too dreary, we turn our eyes to the 
future the best of them had little left but the hope that Israel 
would one day be restored by supernatural intervention, and 
would be suffered to attain the mastery over its former tyrants 
in token of God s approval of its steadfast faith. And they did 
not merely turn their eyes to this future time, they invented 
an art of calculating the precise moment of its appearance by 
the interpretation of ancient prophecies, such as that of the 
seventy years of Jeremiah. The existing world they gave 
over to the Devil, as the Children of God had been compelled 
to give over their land to the heathen oppressor, but they 
yearned with all the more feverish expectation for that future 
aeon in which, after fearful judgments on the guilty God 
would at last carry out his will in all things, great and small. 
This one idea still had life ; but, partly because it could not 
be freely uttered under foreign rule, partly because the 
shrinkage of the available material made it necessary to adopt 
new forms to produce the old effects, and partly because the 
inexpressible could not from its very nature be reproduced with 
exactness in the language of men, it became the custom for 
those who spoke or wrote on this subject to veil their thoughts, 
and half to reveal them in images, half to keep them back 
as riddles. This explains the two prime characteristics of 
this last phase of prophecy the overwhelming stress laid on 
the future and its joys, and the obscurity of the form the 
chequered, fantastic dress in which that future is presented 
to the mind. 

Nor is this half prophetic, half poetic literature wholly 
without grandeur. Ideal aims sometimes find sublime ex 
pression, and the ethical standpoint, that only faith wins 
God s final reward, attains due recognition. It has deserved 
well, too, of the community which it sought to sustain and 



GENERAL SURVEY OF APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE 259 

hold together, for whenever fear and despair were at their 
height, a book of this kind would almost certainly appear, 
arousing new courage by interpreting the present calamities 
as the birth-pangs of the glory that was to be. Nevertheless, 
viewed as a whole, Apocalyptics is Prophecy turned senile, 
drawing its sustenance from one interest only, and working 
on a single pattern. Instead of creative genius we have 
laborious imitation ; only by yet more detailed and extrava 
gant descriptions of the final Metamorphosis, which was ever 
receding further into the future, could the later writer excel 
the earlier ; the mind becomes more and more entangled in 
the subtleties of a riotous and yet calculating imagination, 
till at last it becomes a mere question of satisfying the 
pseudo-religious curiosity and pleasing the degenerate taste 
of the time. So impotent were the leading spirits of this age, 
indeed, that no man was confident enough to assume the office 
of God s messenger in his own name, but put what he had to 
say into the mouth of some famous man or woman of old, such 
as the legendary Daniel, Ezra, Moses, Noah, a Sibyl, Enoch, 
Seth, or Adam. One of these personages describes to his 
descendants how a revelation was vouchsafed to him, by super 
natural means, of the life and condition of the heavenly world, 
of God s intentions for his creatures, and especially of the 
course of history, which, after an age of bitter disappointments 
for the just and of overweening insolence on the part of the 
ungodly, would end at last in the victory, not less perfect than 
sudden, of God and of the righteous. This end the Apocalyptic 
writer usually describes as near at hand, and his own place 
in history as immediately preceding it ; but the real date of 
these professedly primaeval revelations can be recognised from 
the fact that up to a certain point the predictions of the Man 
of God correspond in some degree (and towards the end even in 
points of detail) to the true historical tradition, while after that 
point their outlines suddenly become blurred, and analogies 
with the actual course of events are no longer to be found. 
The former class came within the author s own experience or 
transmitted knowledge ; the latter he expected to be realised 
by the immediate future, and, it must be admitted, expected 
generally in vain. 

S 2 



260 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TKSTAMENT [BOOK IT. 

With the appearance of Jesus, this form of prophecy was 
in principle superseded. Jesus did not come forward under 
another s name, he spoke freely and without disguise -using 
images only to facilitate the understanding of his thought 
he sought the means of realising the Messianic hopes, not 
in extravagant descriptions of blessedness to come, but in 
warfare against the false piety of Pharisaism, and in the 
establishment of a healthy relation between every child of 
God and its Father. And his Apostles followed his example, 
especially Paul the Apostle ; they laboured for the Gospel 
after the manner of the genuine Prophets, and we can only 
speak of a Pauline or a Gospel - Apocalypse cum grano 
salis, in so far as in the painting of the last days some of 
their colours were taken from Jewish Apocalyptics. But we 
could not expect that those Christians who as Jews had 
owed their spiritual edification mainly to Apocalypses should 
undergo a complete change of taste ; and the general con 
dition of things rather favoured the adoption of this form 
of religious literature on the part of the new religion, for 
not less eagerly were the Christians now looking forward to 
the Parusia of Christ than had the Jews in former times 
awaited the appearance of the Messiah. Soon, too, their 
condition became one of not less oppression and almost 
greater hopelessness than that of Israel in its worst days. 
Add to this that in all religiously inclined sections of the life- 
weary world of those days, and not in Jewish circles only, we 
may reckon upon rinding a particular interest taken in books 
with an apparatus of mystery and enigmatical predictions 
concerning the end of all things. So it came about that the 
Apocalyptic genre was soon cultivated with eagerness by 
Christian authors also. Sometimes an old Jewish Apocalypse 
was recast from the Christian point of view, sometimes an 
entirely new one was written ; and of these last the oldest 
that has come down to us is the Revelation of John. 

1 2. Thess. ii. 1-1 J. - Matt. xxiv. 



$ 22.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 261 



22. The Revelation of John 

[Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vol. xvi., by W. Bousset, ed. 5, 1896, 
his strong point the methodological sections in the Introduction 
(pp. 141-170). Hand- Commen tar, vol. iv., Die johanneischen 
Schrifte, by Holtzmann himself (ed. 2, 1893). The numerous 
special commentaries on Eevelation, especially those of E. Heng- 
stenberg (ed. 2, 1861), T. Kliefoth (1874), and H. Fuller (1874) 
are more interesting to the student of Church history than in 
structive for the interpretation of the book itself. Since 1882 the 
interest of scholars has been one-sidedly applied to investigating 
the construction and date of the Apocalypse. Among the countless 
publications of this class (many of which were mere abortions) 
P. Spitta s Die Offenbarung des Johannes (1889) is valuable 
for its contributions towards a better understanding of details. 
See also H. Gunkel s Schopfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit 
(1895), a work intended to create a new epoch in our understand 
ing of Revelation. 

1. The Apocalpyse, which only slightly exceeds 1. Corin 
thians in bulk, used at one time to be much admired for its sym 
metrical construction, but in reality it is extremely difficult to 
summarise its contents briefly and yet with tolerable complete 
ness. The first three verses form the superscription, declar 
ing the work to be a Eevelation which Jesus Christ had sent 
and signified by the command of God through his angel to 
John, and dealing with the things which must shortly come 
to pass. The book was intended for the servants of Jesus, 
and they were to keep the things which were written there 
in. Then follows a preface in which John, the transmitter 
of this revelation, addresses a solemn greeting to the seven 
churches which are in Asia, while the next verse (i. 8) is 
actually put into the mouth of God. In verse 9 the writer 
begins the story of how he was seized by the Holy Ghost one 
Lord s day on the island of Patmos, and received the 
charge to write down all that he was about to see and send 
the book to the Churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, 
Thyatira, Sardes, Philadelphia and Laodicea. In seeking for 
the giver of the charge, he beheld standing in the midst of 
seven golden candlesticks one like unto a son of man, who 



262 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK n. 

held in his right hand seven stars ; this figure declares him 
self to be the Risen One, and dictates seven letters to the 
angels of the above-named churches of Asia. The letters con 
sist partly in a recognition of the Christian faith, the patient 
endurance under persecution, and the opposition to false 
Apostles shown by the communities, partly in a sharp reproof 
of their loss of zeal (this to Ephesus, Sardes, and especially the 
lukewarm Laodicea), their tendency to Nicolaitism (especially 
Pergamum), and to the Antinomianism of the prophetess 
Jezebel (this to Thyatira only), and lastly in reminding them 
of the swift, unheralded return of Christ. 

From this vestibule we enter the main temple of the 
visions in chapter iv. The seer is borne up to heaven and 
there beholds the throne of God, surrounded by the thrones 
of four-and-twenty Elders, and in the midst of it the four 
creatures of Ezekiel the Lion, the Calf, the Man, and 
the Eagle who vie with the Elders in praising God. Next, 1 
he beholds a book sealed with seven seals, which no one is 
found worthy to open, until the Lamb with seven horns and 
seven eyes approaches, amid the rejoicing of all the heavenly 
host, and breaks the seals one by one. With the breaking of 
the first four, 2 the Parthian invader, the sword of Rome, 
famine and pestilence are let loose upon the world ; with the 
fifth, the souls of the murdered saints raise their cry for 
vengeance and are consoled by the promise of the approach 
ing Day of Judgment ; the breaking of the sixth produces a 
great earthquake whereby the whole fabric of the world is 
shattered 4 ; but before it falls twelve thousand servants of 
God out of each of the twelve tribes of Israel are sealed upon 
the forehead, 5 and the seer beholds a countless multitude of 
the blessed of all nations, believers in Christ who had come 
unspotted out of the great tribulation, standing before the 
throne of God. (i Only now is the seventh seal opened, 7 upon 
which there follows a silence in heaven about the space of 
half an hour. Then there appear before God seven angels 
with seven trumpets, and after the prayers of the saints had 
gone up before God the first four sound their blasts." 

1 Chap. v. * vi. 1-8. :i vi. 9-11. 4 vi. 12-17. 

5 vii 1-8. 6 vii. 9-17. viii. 1. H viii. 0-12. 



5 22.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 

This produces fearful convulsions upon the earth, and a third 
part of everything affected is utterly destroyed. Then the 
first of the three woes (oval,) which are announced 1 to 
follow the sounding of the last three trumpets is fulfilled at 
the blast of the fifth 2 ; a miraculously created swarm of locusts 
under their king Abaddon (or Apollyon) is sent to torment 
for the space of five months all who had not received the seal. 
At the blast of the sixth trumpet ; the four angels bound in 
the great river Euphrates are let loose, that they may slay the 
third part of mankind with their hordes of horsemen : never 
theless the residue does not repent. Chap. x. prepares us 
for the last act, that of the Seventh trumpet, in which the 
mystery of God will be fulfilled. 1 John is bidden therein to 
eat a little book sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the belly, 
and after this to prophesy * concerning the Holy City how 
it should be trodden under foot by the heathen, with the 
exception of the Temple, for forty-two months, while the two 
prophets ( witnesses ) of God, armed with miraculous powers, 
should prophesy for the same space of time. Then, however, 
these two were to be killed by the beast that cometh up out 
of the abyss, and for three days and a half their bodies were 
to lie unburied, but at the end of that time they would receive 
new life and be borne up to heaven, while a terrible earthquake 
destroyed seven thousand persons. This was the second Woe. 
Now at last the seventh trumpet sounds, 6 the foundation of 
the Kingdom of Christ is celebrated in Heaven, and the end of 
the world appears to have come. 

But no, the visions proceed ; in chap. xii. there appears 
in Heaven a woman in travail, and a dragon with seven 
crowned heads and ten horns stands before her ready to 
devour her child. But this child, the Messiah, is caught up 
to God, and Michael casts the dragon and his angels out of 
Heaven for ever, nor can he harm the mother of the child on 
earth for the earth befriends her but only the rest of her 
seed. Chap. xiii. tells how a beast rose up from the sea 
with ten crowned horns and seven heads, one of which was 
smitten unto death, but his death-stroke was healed ; this 

1 Verse 13. 2 ix. 1-12. 3 ix. 13-21. 

x. 7. & xi. 1-13. s xi. 15-1 J. 



264 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [HOOK n. 

beast the dragon endows with all his power and might for 
two-and-forty months, and it makes war on the saints and is 
worshipped by all other dwellers on the earth. This, however, 
is in consequence of the deceitfulness of a second beast, who 
comes up out of the earth and has two horns like unto a 
lamb, though he speaks like a dragon. By his wonderful 
signs he induces mankind actually to worship the image of 
the water-beast as divine, and to allow themselves to be marked 
with his name, which was contained in the number six 
hundred and sixty and six. Meanwhile the Lamb, with his 
hundred and forty and four thousand saints, his band of 
virgins, is standing on the mount of Zion, 1 and an angel 
proclaims aloud an eternal gospel, saying with a great voice : 
The hour of judgment is come. 2 A second angel announces 
the fall of Babylon, 3 a third utters a threat of eternal torment 
against the worshippers of the Beast and of his image, 4 while 
to those who had died in the Lord, heavenly rest is promised. 
The Son of Man is already at hand, with the insignia of the 
world s judge, and the sickle begins its work upon the earth.- 5 
Here the scene changes once more, 6 and seven angels appear 
with the seven last plagues. As they step out of the heavenly 
temple they are given seven golden bowls full of the wrath of 
God, which they pour out one by one, to the fearful destruc 
tion of mankind 7 ; nevertheless, men do not repent, but 
gather themselves together at Harmagedon round the Dragon 
and the two beasts for the last fight with God. Here 8 the 
seer unexpectedly turns his gaze towards Babylon as in 
chap. xi. towards Jerusalem Babylon, the synonym of Rome, 
the great harlot, whose deeds of shame and whose fall 
and destruction are described in much detail ; a hymn of 
praise is raised in Heaven over the fall of Babel, and finally 
we are shown the triumphal progress of the Word of God, 
ending with the overthrow of the Beast and the false prophet, 
and the slaughter of all their confederates. 9 Upon this we are 
briefly told lo of the thousand years during which the dragon, 

1 xiv. 1-5. 2 xiv. 6 and 7. 8 xiv. 8. 

< Vv. 9-13. 5 Vv. 14-20. 6 Ch. xv. 

7 Ch. xvi. xvii-xix. 10. 9 xix. 1-21. 
xx. 1-6. 



S 22.] THE EEVELATION OF JOHN 265 

Satan, was to lie bound in the abyss, while the saints of Christ 
take part in the preliminary resurrection and hold sway with 
their master over the earth. But at the end of the thousand 
years Satan breaks forth once more and gathers his host 
together, Gog and Magog, at the ends of the earth ; but the 
danger does not last long, and he is hurled once and for all 
into the lake of fire : upon this the day of universal resur 
rection and of judgment dawns, which puts an end for ever to 
death and to the kingdom of the dead. Then we have a 
description 2 of the glories of the new heaven and the new 
earth, and especially of the New Jerusalem, and with this the 
Apocalyptic material is exhausted, and the last verses :> form a 
literary ending to correspond with chapter i. The ascending 
scale of authorities which vouch for the trustworthiness of 
this inviolable book John himself, the Angel who conducts 
him, and finally Jesus Christ is once more pointed out, and 
the longing for the Parusia, for the coming of the Lord 
Jesus, is fanned to fever-heat. 

2. The connection between this Apocalypse and those of 
Jewish origin is unmistakable. In both we find the same 
concentration of interest upon the last things, the same 
promises of a speedy revolution in favour of the righteous, 
the same confusion between things past and things to come, 4 
the same fantastic and magical pictures of approaching 
events, and the same hesitating and partial interpretation of all 
manner of Mysteries 5 and Wisdoms. 6 Here, however, the 
recipient of the revelation is not a man of hoary antiquity, 
but a Christian, by name John. He reckons himself among 
the Prophets, 7 and demands a respectful recognition for his 
book, 8 and of course he has no doubt as to the correctness 
of his ideas on the subject of the things to come. Never 
theless, the old discussion as to whether the book can best 
be interpreted from the point of view of contemporary, eccle 
siastical (or rather, imperial) history, or from that of Eschato- 
logy, is entirely behind the times. Any extravagance could 

1 xx. 7-15. * xxi. 1-xxii. 5. 

3 xxii. 6-21. 4 E.g., xi. 2, xiii. 2-5, xvii. 9 fol. 

1 i. 20, x. 7, xvii. 5 and 7. xiii. 18, xvii. 9. 

7 xxii. 9 and 18, i. 3. s i. 3. xxii. 9 and 18 fol. 



266 AX INTRODUCTION" TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK ir. 

find its authority in this book, so long as people started 
from the false assumption that the author s visions had 
already been, or would hereafter be literally fulfilled. The 
Apocalypse of John was taken out of the sphere to which 
it belonged, and, simply because it had happened to remain 
within the New T Testament, was judged by quite a different 
standard from that which was applied to similar works, like 
the Book of Enoch, 4th Ezra, or the Shepherd of Hernias. 
Science, however, cannot tolerate such a proceeding, and 
while she is quite ready to acknowledge the peculiarities of 
this Christian work and the influence which the new faith 
exerted over the imagination of the writer, she cannot ignore 
the obvious fact that here, as in all Apocalyptic writings, 
a picture of future events has been constructed out of the 
hopes and wishes of a part at least of the Christianity of that 
time, and with the help of its accumulated store of hatreds, 
loves, hopes, ideals and fanciful imaginings. For who is there 
who seriously maintains to-day the idea of a thousand years 
Kingdom of God on earth ? No, the enduring religious 
value of the book lies in the energy of faith which it displays, 
in the splendid certainty of its conviction that God s cause 
must ever be the best, and is inseparable from the cause 
of Jesus Christ, and in the pithy and striking aphorisms 
scattered through it,- which have long since become an integral 
part of our literature of edification ; but it would be wholly 
inadmissible to treat the details of the writer s fancy as an 
authentic source either for a history of the past or of the future. 
The Apocalypse of John is, moreover, the artificial product 
of study and reflection ; its ecstatic visions are merely literary 
trappings, not actual experiences. Otherwise we should be 
obliged to assume that the writing of it had always, by some 
miraculous means, been simultaneous with the author s seeing 
and hearing, for in xxii. 9 the book appears to be already 
finished when the visions come to an end. The position of 
the seer is not made quite clear : sometimes he is in heaven, 3 
sometimes on the earth, 4 and the artificiality of the situation 
is no less significantly shown by the fact that he frequently 

1 xx. 1-6. - E.g., ii. 1(X , iii. 11 and 19-21, xii. 11, xiv. 13 and xxi. 4. 
iv. 1 4 Chaps, x and xi. 



22.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 267 

relapses from the past tense, which alone would have suited 
his presumable experiences, into the future. 1 That he also 
professes to have seen things which are not to be seen under 
any circumstances, such as the voice of the Son of Man, 2 or 
the way in which the four beasts around the throne of God 
cried Holy, Holy, Holy, having no rest day and night, 3 is 
at most a defect in expression ; for the words I saw introduce 
the whole body of his experiences from the moment his visions 
begin. But it is more curious that he should have seen all 
four sides of the throne of God equally well from where he 
stood, as again in chap. xxi. he sees the city which is equal 
in length, breadth and height, or that in chap. v. he should 
have perceived at once that the book sealed with seven seals 
was written within and on the back that is, on both sides 
of the leaves. That in i. 16 the Son of Man is described as 
holding seven stars in his right hand is apparently forgotten 
in the next verse, for there he lays this right hand kindly 
upon the seer, who had fallen down as one dead. Images 
like that of the Son of Man, out of whose mouth proceeded a 
sharp two-edged sword, 4 or that of the lamb with ten horns 
and seven eyes, standing as though it had been slain, ; can 
scarcely be the products of a genuine vision, but were rather 
put together and written down without any aid from sight. 
And are the seven spirits of God, which appear in v. 6 as 
the seven eyes of the Lamb, to be counted twice over, seeing 
that we had already recognised them in iv. 5 (and cf. i. 4) in 
the seven lamps of fire burning before the throne ? Ex 
planatory glosses like those just mentioned, or like verse v. 8, 
bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, 6 
are ill suited to the tone of a visionary ; they show the hand 
of the man of letters who tries by incidental hints to make 
his technical terms more intelligible. 

The whole construction of the book, in short, is, in spite 
of numerous inconsistencies, far too elaborate, with its suc 
cessive heptades of seals, trumpets and bowls, the corresponding 
three and a half years and three and a half days of chap, xi., and 

1 iv. 9 fol., ix. 6. Note, e.g., the change in tense between xi. 2-10 and the 
three following verses. 

2 i. 15. 3 iv. 8. 4 i. 16. s v. 6. " f. xi. 8. 



268 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [HOOK n. 

the general partiality for numbers and mathematical figures 
of all sorts all of which are taken from the pre-existing 
Apocalyptic material : God s ways are not fashioned accord 
ing to the rules of a cheap mysticism of numbers, and in 
the visions even of a sick man such arts of calculation do 
not occur. We do not thereby deny that the author had had 
visions, or that they had made a powerful impression upon 
him and had appeared as a divine injunction laid upon him 
to impart his own consolation and his own knowledge to the 
rest of the brethren all over the world. The man who wrote 
the Apocalypse believed in his own words with absolute trust ; 
but behind his visions lie Apocalyptic studies which had excited 
and enriched his mind and his imagination, and after those 
visions lie still more of them. The Apocalypse is not a 
pamphlet hurriedly committed to paper in the glowing excite 
ment of a night, but a learned work, over the composition of 
which the writer often pondered long, and to which he certainly 
added many finishing touches after it was completed. The 
framework, consisting of the superscription and the farewell 
greeting, were probably added when all the rest was finished. 
8. We should, however, do the writer grave injustice if we 
assumed that his motive for the elaboration of his work was 
a desire to win the name of Prophet by an Apocalyptic work 
of art, as though he were incapable of deserving it in the 
usual way. His seven Epistles to the Churches show how 
carefully he had studied the condition of those commu 
nities which were accessible to him, how accurate was his 
knowledge of their merits and their shortcomings, and how 
earnestly he set about the task of improving them. He 
knows the temptations to which the patience of some was 
exposed by their perpetual sufferings for Christ s sake, and 
fears that they may even yet lose hope ; and he has misgivings 
lest others should be found unprepared on the day of the Lord s 
return. He himself is convinced that the Parusia will 
take place in the near future and that there is short space 
left for repentance ; hence he seizes his pen to announce 
in the name of Christ the approaching day of decision, 
bringing with it eternal bliss or eternal torment hoping 

1 Ch. ii. fol. 



THE REVELATION OF JOHN 269 

thereby to kindle new life among the followers of Christ. By 
means of the rich apocalyptic setting in which he clothes his 
fundamental idea, and by the use of which he proves himself 
be a true child of his age, a sharer alike in its taste and in its 
lack of the critical instinct, his book did succeed in attracting 
attention, in producing an overwhelming effect, and in exerting 
a strong influence upon the Church. He did not in any way 
aspire to interpret theological problems, or to start a new 
Christology, or a new doctrine of salvation ; only occasionally 
are we able to perceive how he thought about these questions, 
and then not very clearly ; while the only new matter that he 
has to communicate concerns the course of the next and 
latest period of history. 

What strikes us perhaps most of all, when we remember 
the stress laid upon the loyalty of Christians to the powers 
that be, in Romans and 1. Peter, and the recognition of their 
restraining power in 2. Thessalonians, 1 is the burning- 
hatred which the Apocalypse displays towards the empire of 
Rome. It regards this empire as the direct work of Satan, 
and the city of Rome as the pinnacle of godlessness on earth, 
and the writer cannot dwell long enough upon the descrip 
tion of the judgment of Rome and the rejoicing of the saints 
over her fall.- Rome is in his eyes the earthly Antichrist, 
and the Caesar-worship that had been introduced there the 
summit of all blasphemy, 3 while the head that was mortally 
wounded, but recovered from the death-stroke, is to him 
a caricature of Christ : cp. the &>y scr^ay^sv^v of xiii. 3 with 
the same words as applied to the Lamb in v. 6. Till Rome 
was destroyed the reign of the Messiah on earth could not be 
established : its fall, however, was soon to be accomplished, 
though not before God had endeavoured by repeated revela 
tions of his supernatural power to warn the world of its ap 
proaching fate, and both by words and deeds to urge man 
kind to repentance. He prepares them for the approaching 
annihilation by plagues - in this case three times seven so 
that no one can plead the excuse of having fallen upon his 
fate unwarned. 

1 Ch. ii. - Chaps, xviii. and xix. 3 xiii. 1, 5 fol., H, 12-17. 4 Ch. xi. 



270 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK u. 

For it is unquestionable that the writer wished, between 
chaps iv. and xvii., to trace the course of the immediate 
future, of the last things, in chronological sequence, and 
along an uninterrupted, even line ; the order of his narration 
(in other words, of his vision) is always also the order of fulfil 
ment. This is, however, disputed by the supporters of the 
recapitulative interpretation from Victorinus down to 
B. Weiss who assert that the same periods and events are 
repeated throughout the Apocalypse, only in different garb, so 
that large sections of the book are to be understood as juxta 
posed rather than consecutive. 

Certainly it is undeniable that the advance from earlier to 
later events is often imperfect : the breaking of the sixth seal, 
for instance, in chap, vi., is followed by almost more ap 
palling consequences than is the sounding of the first trumpet 
in chap, viii., or the pouring forth of the first bowl in chap, xvi., 
while the crisis in vi. 17 for the great day of their wrath 
is come seems to be identical with that which follows the 
sounding of the sixth trumpet in x. 7, or that of xiv. 7 ; and 
xiv. 8 is also identical with xviii. 2. But from such occasional 
faults of composition we must not draw any too hasty con 
clusions. The writer s skill had its limits, and his imagina 
tive material was sometimes too much for him. It would, 
however, be truly wonderful if this were not the case, for if 
the Apocalypse satisfied even the lowest claims of dramat 
urgic aesthetics, it would stand alone among numerous 
examples of its class. Moreover, nothing is really parallel in 
the various parallel acts which have been constructed out of 
it but the number of scenes and the effect (or ineffectiveness) 
of the plagues : when, for instance, at the second trumpet- 
blast a third part of the sea is turned to blood and a third 
part of the creatures in and upon the sea are destroyed, while 
at the pouring out of the second bowl - the sea becomes blood 
and every living creature that was in it dies, the intention of 
gradation is surely unmistakable. Altogether, we should be 
obliged to credit the writer with a strange indifference towards 
the subject-matter of his visions, and to exaggerate the idea of 
their figurativeness beyond all measure, if we assume that 

1 viii. 8. - xvi. 3. 



22.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 271 

he is capable of describing identical events from the Last Days 
under different forms. Apart from the fact that he nowhere 
gives us any sign of an interruption in his ecstasy, and that 
the unprejudiced reader is compelled to recognise an unbroken 
succession of miraculous events, this hypothesis which is 
excusable in Victorinus (about 300) implies a complete mis 
conception of the very nature of Apocalyptics. The apo 
calyptic writer would be incapable in spite of his delight in 
mystery of representing the same event under different 
images, simply because in his eyes it was not a question of 
images, but of realities ; he might indeed put on the same 
level such things as seals, trumpets and bowls, though I 
prefer to think that there is a perfectly well-considered grada 
tion even in these instruments, but he could not treat in the 
same way a victorious Parthian campaign, the burning of a 
third part of the earth and its trees, and the noisome and 
grievous sore upon mankind. 

The Apocalypse is, in fact, not a poem or an allegory ; 
rather the figurative matter in it is intended to be taken very 
seriously. At any rate the writer was not conscious of the 
boundary line between the metaphorical and the actual, 
for the innumerable similes which he employs for purposes of 
illustration e.g. ix. 5, And their torment was as the tor 
ment of a scorpion, when it striketh a man surely do not 
sound as though he were using the language of unreality. 
The key of the pit of the abyss is no more merely figurative 
than the lake of fire and brimstone, in spite of the fact that in 
xxi. 8 this last is interpreted as the second death ; while in 
accordance with the spirit of the book, the seven lamps of fire 
burning before the throne of God do not cease to burn merely 
because the writer recognises in them the seven Spirits of God. 
Nor would the seventh seal and the seventh trumpet have any 
content left unless we looked upon the succeeding heptade as 
the unfolding of this content ; while the conformity of vi. 17 
with x. 7 and xiv. 7 is best explained by supposing that 
although after the breaking of six seals, the end of the world 
seemed to be at hand, God s mercy tries new and sharper 
warnings, once and again, which the much-afflicted and 
already half-despairing saints must bear in patience. It 



272 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK n. 

was not merely love of romancing that induced the writer 
to give us so many different scenes from the transition period, 
before the longed-for catastrophe (and still less may we, con 
trary to his intention, reduce their number by about a third 
through a process of compression) but because he believed, 
saw, that is, knew for certain that the Kingdom of the Lamb 
on earth would not be established so suddenly as many 
wished it to be : that it had yet to be preceded by a soul- 
stirring tragedy of several acts and many scenes. The 
reproach that hope had been deceived, prophecies left un 
fulfilled, that the End had been often announced and had 
never appeared, could only be met unless the last things 
were to be postponed to an infinitely distant future, and the 
recent proclamation of them were to be disavowed by con 
structing a scheme for these last things of ample propor 
tions, in which at various points catastrophe enters, but, as 
the reader learns, is an end, but not yet the end. 

4. The Apocalypse undoubtedly springs from Jewish- 
Christian circles. The writer is not only so familiar with the 
Old Testament and moreover with every part of it in equal 
degree that his points of contact with it are almost inces 
sant, but he lives in the very midst of all that apparatus of 
Apocalyptic ideas heaped together from later Judaism, from 
the Old Testament, but also from other sources, such as 
Babylono-Persian mythology and Greek poetry, and sometimes 
even prides himself upon interpreting it correctly for the first 
time. 1 He speaks of the Gentiles in the tone of the born 
Jew,- and the- fanatical colouring of his wrath against Rome* 
the new Babylon, is also specifically Jewish. He hails the 
Messiah as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of 
David, 3 and with all his hatred against his unbelieving 
countrymen, the name Jew remains in his eyes a title of 
honour. But he is still more fully betrayed by his language. 
He understands Hebrew (see, for instance, his translation of 
Balaam into Nicolaus in ii. 14 fol.), 4 is familiar with the Old 

1 E.g., Zach. iv. in xi. 4 ; Ezek. xxxviii. fol. in xx. 8 ; the myths of the fight 
with the dragon and of the seven-headed beast in Chaps, xii., xiii. and xvii. 
- xi. 2, xx. 3 and 8. :! v. 5. 

iii. 14, the Amen, ix. 11, xvi. 16. 



22.] THE EEVELATION OF JOHN 273 

Testament in the original tongue or else in an Aramaic ver 
sion, and his book is written throughout in the Jewish-Greek, 
a language which is not wanting in clearness, nor occasion 
ally in a certain rhythm and force, but which in its barbarous 
violations of the rules of Greek grammar and syntax would 
only be explicable as coming from a man who did not use it 
as his mother tongue whose thoughts ran in u Semitic 
groove. Certain portions, such as chap, xii., give us the 
impression of being translated almost literally from the 
Hebrew, and as no one would probably care nowadays to assert 
as much of the whole Apocalypse of passages like i. 9-11, 
for instance, or of the seven Epistles the fact that no 
difference of style is perceptible at any point is all the more 
remarkable. The text has certainly come down to us very 
much corrupted, but most of the variants owe their origin to 
the desire of later copyists to make the book more readable 
for the cultivated Greek. The Apocalypse will co-ordinate a 
participle and a finite verb by means of the definite article 
e.g. ii. 20, } X?7oucra avrrjv TTpocfitJTiv Kol SiBdcrKSt . . ., and 
still more strongly in i. 4 and 8 : o wv KOI 6 TJV KOL 6 sp-^o^svos, 
a title which is treated as indeclinable, e.g. UTTO 6 wv etc. 
Appositions in the nominative are made to every oblique 
case, 2 and according to Hebrew custom the oblique forms 
of avros are added pleonastically to participles and relatives. 3 
Phrases like iroi^aw aurous I va rj^ovau ^ the confusion of 
moods and tenses/ or of genders/ the use, or rather misuse, 
of prepositions, 7 the total absence of the instrumental dative, 
the place of which is supplied by ev,* and a construction which 
makes no attempt at the Greek form of period, and which 
can hardly accomplish dependent clauses except when intro- 

1 Also i. 5 and ii. 9. - E.g., i. 5, ii. 13 and 20, iii. 12, ix. 14, xx. 2. 

3 E.g., ii. 7, Ttj> viKtavri 8o!<ra! a.iir<f, and iii. 8, *hv ovSfls Svfa-rat Khe tffai avTi /f, 
and cf. xii. 6, STCOV ?x 6 ^* e ^- 

4 iii. 9. 

s E.g., iii. 9 : "vet trpoaitvvhaovffiv Kttl yvuimv. 

* E.g., iv. 1, i] <^o. v}j . . . \eya-ti, iv. 8, <aa fi> Kad ei> avruv tx<av. 

7 E.g., ir( with ca0fj<r0ai, used with all cases indiscriminately; and &c or 
awo with the Passive instead of (>*&. 

8 E.g., xiii. 8, iv na\a.(pri airoKTiivtiv. 

T 



07, 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK n. 



duced by os or on : these are all signs of a Semitic habit of 
writing. 

But the question remains as to whether the Jewish 
Christianity of the Apocalypse has also a dogmatic signifi 
cance, i.e. should be taken as anti-Pauline, as Judaistic. The 
Tubingen school, especially G. Volkmar, assert that Paul is 
attacked in the Apocalypse with burning hatred ; that it is he 
to whom the first apostles of ii. 3 refer, for whose rejection 
the Ephesians are so highly commended, and that the writer s 
mention in ii. 24 of those which know not the deep things of 
Satan is no less than an ironical citation of 1. Cor. ii. 10, 
turned against the followers of Paul. Well, the fact that the 
foundation-stones of the New Jerusalem are described in xxi. 
14 as bearing the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb is 
certainly a proof that the writer did not take much notice of 
Paul, who according to 1. Cor. 1 did not belong to the Twelve ; 
but to ignore him in such a case, to place him below the 
Twelve Apostles, is not by any means the same thing as to 
brand him as Antichrist. The Apocalypse itself is entirely 
devoid of anti-Pauline polemics, and we are only justi 
fied in describing its Christianity as one not distinctly or 
consciously dependent on or influenced by Paul. The writer 
was no child, no disciple, of Paul, but still less a Judaist fana 
tically devoted to the Law. The preference given to Pales 
tine, Jerusalem and the twelve tribes of Israel in his future 
Kingdom bears the proper Judaistic stamp so little that one 
might even credit the writer of Komans ix.-xi. with the same 
hopes. That Jewish Chauvinism which considered none but 
the seed of Abraham worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven and 
of eternal blessedness is entirely foreign to the Apocalypse : 
it declares unequivocally that salvation was intended for all 
men ; God s earthly communities are represented before His 
throne by 24 and not merely 12 Elders, and according to 
v. 9 the Lamb had purchased with his blood men of every 
tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, with which the pic 
ture of vii. 9 fol. 2 entirely agrees. And as, on the one hand, 
all nations are represented among the martyrs for the name of 
Christ for the important point was not to be a Jew, but to 

1 xv. 5. 2 Cf. xxi. 24 fol., xxii. 2. 



22.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 275 

have been inscribed in the Book of Life from the foundation 
of the world so on the other hand the Apocalypse expects 
nothing for the bearer of the name of Jew as such, and calls 
the unbelieving Jews in ii. 9 merely a (or the) synagogue of 
Satan. 

But the freedom from legal bondage to which the Apo 
calypse bears witness is just as undeniable as its universalism ; 
except for the prohibition to eat meat sacrificed to idols and 
to commit fornication, 2 which must remind every reader of 
the Apostolic Decree of Acts xv. 28 fol. the writer is un 
willing to cast any other burden - upon his readers. In 
the Kingdom of the New Jerusalem there is no temple, 4 and 
the word circumcision is not once mentioned throughout 
the book. That form of Antinomianism which chaps, ii. and 
iii. contend against, the writer of 1. Cor. would also have 
contended against to the death. It is true that the Apostle 
who wrote Philippians iii. 4-11 could never have expressed 
the undoubted right of a remnant of Israel to salvation 
in so mechanical a way as chap. vii. here expresses it 
Galatians iii. 28 ( there can be neither Jew nor Greek ) is 
certainly a more lofty point of view than Rev. ii. 9 or iii. 9. 
The peculiarities of the Pauline theology are, moreover, en 
tirely lacking ; by faith the Apocalypse understands a 
steadfast, patient endurance, and it looks upon a man s 
works r> of which faith was certainly the loftiest as the point 
on which his salvation depended. The relation between this 
Jewish idea and that of predestination remains uncertain ; the 
writer would probably have thought of them as harmonised 
by the prescience of God. 

The chief characteristic of the figure of Christ in the 
Apocalypse is that the Saviour is for the most part represented 
in the form of a Lamb (apviov), which had shed its blood 
and been slain, but had then, as the firstborn of the dead, 6 
entered upon the period of universal sway. Christ s death, 
his present and especially his future glory, are religious facts 
of fundamental importance to the Apocalypse. But we learn 

iii. 5, xiii. 8, xvii. 8, xx. 12 and 15, xxi. 27. 
- ii. 14 and 20. J ii. 24. xxi. 22. 

5 From ii. 2 to xxii. 12. 6 i. 5. 

T 2 



276 AX INTRODUCTION* TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK n. 

nothing very definite concerning the necessity for and the 
significance of his death, and nothing whatever about his 
life on earth. Once, in a context that reminds us of Matt. 
xi. 27, the writer applies the name Word of God l to the 
crucified Heavenly King ; in two passages it is uncertain 
whether the divine titles refer to the Father or to the Son ; 
but the distinction between the two is at any rate to be strictly 
maintained, for in the very first verse the Revelation of 
Jesus Christ is given to Christ by God, while in iii. 14 
he is spoken of as part of the creation of God, even though 
as its beginning (apx j l)- I 11 ethical matters especially, the 
author of the Apocalypse has no more connection with Paul 
than every Christian of that time must have had ; the idea of 
reward plays a great part in his mind, and he gives a parti 
cularly high value to the negative virtues ; next to the martyrs, 
the ascetics form the highest class of believers, for we are told 
in xiv. 4 that they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he 
goeth, his firstfruits, were virgins : that is, an hundred and 
forty and four thousand that had been purchased out of the 
earth and were not defiled with women. And it is highly 
probable that a distinction corresponding to this attitude of 
mind is intended between the saints and those that feared 
the name of God, mentioned in xi. 18. Thus, then, in spite 
of many points of contact with the Pauline phraseology 2 - 
which hardly suffice to establish the idea that the writer 
had made a study of the Pauline literature the Christianity 
of the Apocalypse can be called neither Pauline nor anti- 
Pauline ; so far as any religious views or conceptions can be 
discovered in it outside the circle of eschatological ideas, they 
can be explained as the natural development possibly in 
fluenced indirectly by the results of the Pauline mission to 
the Gentiles of the primitive form in which the Gospel 
converted Jews into believers ; the writer would have felt 
himself quite at home, for instance, in the Roman community 
of about the year 58. :i 

5. From the time of Justin onwards the Apocalypse was 
attested by the Church as the work of the Apostle John, i.e. 

1 xix. 13. " 1 Cor. xv. 20 ; Col. i. 15 and 18 ; 2 Cor. v. 17 
3 See 8, par. 5. 4 About 150 A.D. 



22.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 277 

John the son of Zebedee, and fifty years later it was known 
that the Apostle John had seen these visions when exiled, for 
the Gospel s sake, to the island of Patmos. But also about 
the year 200 A.D. a distinguished theologian, Cains, disputed 
the Apostolic origin of the Apocalypse, declaring it rather to 
be a worthless forgery by the heretic Cerinthus ; and he found 
supporters in this view among the Christians of the East, even 
though only among certain learned individuals. The Alogi of 
Asia Minor maintained a similar view, and in the school of Alex 
andria we find that from about the year 260 onwards the writer 
was held to be, not the Apostle John, but another celebrated 
John of Ephesus. If we add to this that the Emperor who 
banished him is generally mentioned as Domitian, but some 
times also as Claudius, Nero or Trajan, while some writers 
avoid giving any name at all, and that the place from which 
he was banished is Eome, according to some, and Ephesus, 
according to others, it will be seen that it is not possible 
to plead a uniform and trustworthy tradition. Even though 
the arguments of Caius against the Apostolic origin of 
the Apocalypse, prompted as they are by dogmatic motives, 
need impress us little, the equally prejudiced arguments of 
Churchmen on the other side must also be disregarded ; the 
tradition had in fact derived, or rather deduced, all its own 
knowledge about the book from the book itself, combining it 
with a little outside knowledge as well ; so that we must set 
aside all this pseudo-evidence and go to the only fountain-head, 
the book itself, for its own testimony. 

The writer speaks of himself as John, 1 as Christ s servant, 2 
and as a brother and partaker with his readers in the tribu 
lation and kingdom, 3 and according to i. 4 these readers were 
the seven communities of the province of Asia. Hence we 
must assume that he was an Asiatic Christian, which was 
already probable from the fact that he took a particular 
interest in the seven churches of Asia, 4 and had an accurate 
knowledge of their circumstances. That he had only migrated 
thither from Palestine as an old man may possibly be gathered 
from his style, but the hypothesis is not necessary, for the 
language in which he writes and the attachment which he 

1 i. 1, 4, 9, xxii. 2. - i. 1. a i. 9. 4 i. 4. 



278 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK IT. 

shows to the Holy Land would be very natural even in a Jew 
of the Dispersion, who had had a strictly Jewish education 
and training. The name John was a common one among 
Jews : we hear of a Christian of the name, John Mark, in 
the New Testament ; as well as of the son of Zebedee ; we 
know from other sources that in the Ephesian community at 
least the Jewish Christian element was strongly represented, 
and what right have we to assume that the writer of the 
Apocalypse was necessarily the most famous man of his 
name ? Or will anyone seriously assert the Apostle s author 
ship on the ground that he was surnamed by Jesus, according 
to Mark hi. 17, Son of thunder, and that this name seems 
especially to tit the Apocalyptic writer ? as though a tem 
perament of that sort were of such rare occurrence in those 
times ! If the Lord s day of verse i. 10 is part of the 
figurative setting, the same may be said of the alleged scene 
of the visions, the island of Patmos - ; and moreover the 
writer says nothing of any banishment, while the word of 
God and the testimony of Jesus for which he went to Patmos 
might easily refer to the contents of the book itself, 3 to receive 
which he had betaken himself to the lonely island. It might 
seem natural then, if so many of the writer s statements con 
cerning his experiences his ecstasy, his seeing and hearing, 
and his conversations with the angel are to be regarded as 
apocalyptic form, to make no distinctions, and to look upon the 
name of the writer too as imaginary. In that case a great 
man must have been meant, the only man, in fact, of whom 
an Asiatic Christian could have thought in reading the bare 
name John ; and, supposing the Apostle John had ever 
been known in Asia Minor, then this Apostle may well be 
understood. But the book is equally devoid of indications 
either that the writer wished to be taken for, or that he 
actually was, the Apostle. Not a syllable points to the Apostle- 
ship of this John ; even when Jesus speaks to him there is 
no mention of their former intercourse, and in xxi. 14 the 
writer speaks of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb certainly 
not in the tone of one who belonged to their number or could 
possibly belong to it. Nor may we bring forward the argu- 

1 Acts xii. 12 etc. - i. 9. 3 i. 2. 



22.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 279 

ment that he addresses his readers in the tone of one con 
scious of possessing the highest authority. However high an 
opinion he has of his book, 1 it is not because of his own high 
position in the Church, but because his prophecy is genuine, 
his words faithful and true. He demands his hearing as a 
Prophet - who had been found worthy to receive the revela 
tions of Jesus Christ through his angel, and he does not set 
up any other claim : it is not he, for instance, but the Son of 
Man, who criticises the seven churches. Now the Prophet 
regards himself as only the accidental vessel in which a 
heavenly wisdom is offered to the faithful ; the withdrawal of 
the person and of everything personal into the background, 
which in a real letter is impossible, is here demanded by 
the exigencies of the literary genre, and we cannot, there 
fore, be careful enough in drawing our conclusions, especially 
those e silentio. But so long as it is not proved that every 
Apocalypse must of necessity be pseudonymous, and such 
an assertion is preliminarily refuted by the Shepherd of 
Hernias, we have no right to make the arbitrary assumption 
that our Apocalypse was written under a false name. It alone, 
without the existence of the tradition, would never suggest the 
idea that its writer was one of the Twelve Apostles, or a patri 
archal Head-Pastor of Asia, or in fact more than a Prophet, who, 
at the time when his book was first circulated, had already been 
working long and fruitfully among the Asiatic communities. 

6. The writer of the Apocalypse, in fact, does not become 
mysterious until we begin to examine the curious rela 
tion borne by his book to the rest of the Johannine 
writings a relation which presents the most marked diver 
gencies on the one hand, and on the other certain indisputable 
signs of connection. The divergencies are now almost uni 
versally recognised, in spite of the tradition, which would not 
hear of any but Apostolic writers within the limits of the New 
Testament. The writer of the Apocalypse wrote neither the 
Gospel nor either of the Epistles, nor is his indebtedness to 
them discoverable in any part of the Apocalypse. As it 
was generally felt even by the instinct of those early times, 
seer and evangelist differed from one another absolutely in 

1 xxii. 18 fol. - xxii. 6. 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK II. 

vocabulary, style, ideas and point of view. Jerusalem, for 
instance, is always spelt by the Gospel IspoaoXvfjia, by the 
Apocalypse IspovaaX.^ ; the Gospel is free from the rude 
Semiticisms of the Apocalypse, which on its side reminds us 
nowhere of the quite peculiar style of John ; the antitheses 
between light and darkness, God and the world, love and 
hate do not appear at all in the Apocalypse, and the latter 
never speaks of abiding in anything, still less of being 
born of God, of the Spirit/ or of being of God. The 
Apocalypse speaks of Jesus as a Lamb innumerable times, 
but merely makes use of the word apviov for it without any 
addition, while the Gospel has 6 apvos rov Osov. 

Finally, the theological attitude of the Gospel is almost 
diametrically opposed to that of the Apocalypse. For the 
latter, the Jew who is worthy of the name is the faithful 
Christian, 1 whereas for the former the word Jew is merely a 
shameful epithet branding the nation which had shed the 
blood of Christ ; the eschatological hopes to which the soul 
of the seer clings with passionate longing retire so far into 
the background in the Gospel that one might almost doubt 
their existence, and the visions of the future with their highly 
sensual colouring would hardly have been approved of by the 
Evangelist, with his tendency towards spiritualising all things. 
Nor should we fail to observe the fact that in the Apocalypse 
the writer names himself without any circumlocution, while in 
the other Johannine writings this is partially avoided in various 
ways. The professional apologist of course finds it possible to ex 
plain away all these difficulties as though they were mere child s 
play : the Apostle John had undergone considerable develop 
ment, he urges, and had taken less pains, besides, to write cor 
rect Greek in the Apocalypse than to give a true rendering of 
what he saw (a melancholy theory, as though truth had 
seemed less necessary to him in writing the Gospel !) : but, 
nevertheless, it is one of the most assured results of New Testa 
ment criticism that not another line from the hand of the 
writer of the Apocalypse has been preserved to us in the New 
Testament, least of all in the Gospel of John ; for if the 
v pocalypse is the most Jewish book of the New Testament, 

1 ii. 9, iii. 9. 



>.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 281 

the Fourth Gospel is certainly the most anti-Jewish, the 
most opposed to the whole circle of Jewish interests and ideas, 
the furthest removed from the Jewish atmosphere. 

At the present day, however, the need is rather to 
emphasise the opposite fact, that of the signs of relationship 
between the Apocalypse, and the Gospel and Epistles of John. 
Bousset has collected a body of material which proves that 
such a connection exists even in minor peculiarities of 
language ; favourite Johannine phrases like ^aprvpla and 
naprvpslv are also of frequent occurrence in the Apocalypse 
though with the addition of the words ^aprvpLov and fidprvs, 
which are again unknown to the Gospel ; and the Johannine 
similes of the water of life, the vine, the shepherd, and the 
bride, are all to be found in the Apocalypse, though always 
with certain peculiar differences of meaning or of expression ; 
o-v/as- occurs throughout the New Testament only in the Fourth 
Gospel ~ 2 and the Apocalypse/ acfxi^stv only in the latter and 
the First Epistle of John. 4 Christ is extolled as having 
overcome the world only in the Gospel 5 and the Apocalypse ; 
the victory of the Christian in like manner only in the 
Apocalypse and the First Epistle. The words her children 
and this teaching in Rev. ii. 23 and 24 remind us of 
2. John 4 and 10, while the expression which occurs so fre 
quently in the Apocalypse, to keep the word or the com 
mandment of Jesus or God, has numerous exact parallels 
only in the Gospel and the First Epistle. The name Word 
of God as applied to Jesus in Rev. xix. 13 7 is probably not 
synonymous with the Logos idea implied in the Prologue 
to the Fourth Gospel, but the phrase as I also have received 
of my Father in Eev. ii. 27 is the very language used by the 
Johannine Christ in John x. 18, and it is only in these two 
books, again, that the Saviour is spoken of as a Lamb. These 
points of detail, however, are not sufficient to assist us in deter 
mining the author of the Apocalypse, nor when we weigh 
them carefully can they be said to favour the assumption that 
either of the parties concerned was under literary obligations 

1 Meyer, vol. xvi. pp. 206-8. - xi. 44, vii. 24. 

3 \. 16. " in. 12. s xvi. 33. 

6 iii. 8, 10, xii. 17, xiv. 12 etc. 7 See p. 276. 



282 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK n. 

to the other ; they are perhaps best explained on the supposi 
tion that Gospel, Epistles and Apocalypse grew up on the 
same soil, in a church in which a peculiar religious language 
and world of ideas had established themselves at the time, 
but without injury to freedom in other respects. But it is 
only in dealing with the Gospel that we shall be able to turn 
this suggestion to account ; here we cannot go beyond the 
result already attained, that according to the self-testimony 
of the Apocalypse, its author was a teacher of Asia Minor 
named John. 

7. Now, when did this John produce his book? No con 
clusions can safely be drawn from the names of the com 
munities, for the fact that the greater number of them are not 
mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament does not prove 
that they might not have been founded, in the same way as 
Colossse and Laodicea, as early as the time of Paul. A rela 
tively late assignment is rather favoured by the fact that the 
memory of Paul seems to have died away in these communities ; 
but was it really imperative that Jesus should remind the 
Ephesians of the man who had won them to his name, and 
even, perhaps, quote a fragment of Paul s Epistle to the 
Laodiceans, in the letter addressed to that community ? That it 
is impossible to pro ve any employment of the Pauline Epistles 
we have already pointed out ; ; but the parallels between the 
Apocalypse and the eschatological discourses in the Synoptic 
Gospels are more remarkable, although we cannot assert 
any actual dependence on one side or the other ; and beside 
Mark xiii. 2, Rev. xi. 1 fol. even makes the more primitive 
impression. But one point d appui does remain to us in 
our efforts towards an assignment : in the Apocalypse Eome 
is reckoned as the deadly enemy of the new faith : she is 
drunken with the blood of the martyrs ; a Pergamenian Christ 
ian is mentioned by name who had sealed his faith with his 
death, and not he alone, but many others ; in the writer s eyes, 
in fact, the Church has definitely become a Church of Martyrs." 
Now, such a tone is not to be explained solely on the ground 
of the Neronian horrors of the year 64, and of the occasional 
persecutions on the part of those set in authority, to which 
1 P. -27r,. - ii. 13. 



22.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 283 

even the Christians of Paul s time had been exposed in Asia 
Minor. In Rev. vi. 10 the martyrs not only cry to God How long 
dost thou leave our blood unavenged ? but they are consoled 
with the answer that their fellow-servants and their brethren 
which should be killed even as they were must first have ful 
filled their course. The Church was thus prepared for 
systematic persecution until the end of the world ; perhaps 
at the moment when the Apocalypse was written a fresh out 
burst of persecuting fury was seen to be imminent. But 
such alarms would have been mere extravagance before the 
last years of Domitian (81-96), and therefore the time 
between 95 and 100 is probably the earliest at which we can 
possibly place the book. And this assignment is rendered 
still more acceptable by the picture given in the Apocalypse of 
the condition of the Christian communities. Ephesus had 
forsaken its first love l ; Sardes was all but dead, and only 
possessed a few names which did not defile their garments/ 2 
while in Laodicea spiritual life had become wholly dead. 
And it was not only a question of the unconscious dropping 
of the old enthusiasm, of a growing secularisation ; heretics, 
too, had made their way into the churches Balaamites and 
Nicolaitans (and the prophetess Jezebel ?) who actually 
taught Antinomianism and Libertinism. 3 Who, then, should 
these false teachers be, if not those Gnostics whom we have 
already seen attacked in 1. John, Jude and 2. Peter, especially 
as they boast of a knowledge that reaches down to the 
deep things of Satan 4 ? 

These indications in favour of an assignment of the 
Apocalypse to the year 100 or thereabouts, are counter 
balanced by others which point towards the time before the 
year 70. Most of the arguments brought forward in this 
case, however, are of no value, owing to their being based 
upon a false exegesis. Those who, placing all their con 
fidence in the method of interpreting the Apocalypse by the 
light of contemporary events, searched the history of the first 
century for a Parthian invasion, a Roman punitive expedition 
against a rebellious province, an earthquake, a plague of 
locusts or a famine, certainly made all sorts of discoveries ; 

1 ii. 4. - iii. 1-4. Cf. Jude 23. 3 ii. 14 fol. and 24. 4 ii. 24. 



284 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK n. 

but their labour was unfortunately wasted, because the writer 
does not record these plagues as having already come to pass, 
but announces them as belonging to the future. No more is 
to be deduced from his prophecies than that he himself 
knew of such calamities, either from his own experience, 
or else from reading or from popular belief. Eev. xii. 6 has, 
however, been cited as favouring an assignment to the year 
69 ; the woman who escapes to the desert for three and a 
half years after the birth of her son is supposed to represent 
the Christian community of Jerusalem, which withdrew to Pella 
beyond Jordan at the beginning of the Jewish war. But the 
writer is here dealing with events in Heaven ; it is not 
likely that he would have looked upon the community of 
Jerusalem as the Mother of Christ, and no calculations can be 
based upon the number three and and a half, which belongs to 
the Apocalyptic stock-in-trade. Since, in fact, Gunkel made his 
thorough and, it is to be hoped, lasting exposure of the errors 
of this exegetic method, it has rather seemed as if we may no 
longer expect to find any reference in the strictly Apocalyptic 
parts of the book to the writer s own time or to that which 
had preceded it. Yet this is not so. Like all Apocalyptic 
writers, he occasionally finds himself in a position to con 
nect the future with the past, by the statement and justifica 
tion of a chronological scheme, and if, again, he rejects as 
impossible an event belonging to the future, we may be 
certain that he himself had not witnessed its occurrence. 
This last case is exemplified in chap, xi., the former in 
chaps, xiii. and xvii. In xi. 1 the seer is bidden to measure 
the temple of God, but not the outer court, because this had 
been given to the Gentiles, who should tread the holy city 
under foot for forty and two months. The forty and two 
months must be taken with all reserve, but it is nevertheless 
indisputable that such a sentence must have been written 
before the destruction of the Temple in August of the year 
70, and it is also more than probable that it was written when 
the worst fears were entertained for the fate of the rest of the 
city that is, during the siege. 

It is quite clear, again, that the sea-beast of chap. xiii. 

1 xii. 1, 4, 7. 



22.] THE EEVELATION OF JOHN 285 

is meant to represent the Roman Empire, and its seven heads 
upon which were names of blasphemy, seven emperors, who 
had arrogated to themselves that name which belonged to God 
alone Augustus, i.e. Sg/Sao-Tos-, and also other titles, such as 
(T(OT-ijp (Saviour), which robbed Him of the honour due to none 
but Himself. Now, since Domitian would, reckoning from 
Octavius Augustus, be the eleventh emperor or if we omitted 
the three short reigns of Galba, Otho and Vitellius (68-69), 
still the eighth this passage about the seven heads could not 
have been written as late as the time of Domitian (81-96), but 
only at a time when the fall of the world-empire might be 
hoped for immediately after the reign of a seventh Emperor. 
One of these heads had, according to xiii. 3, been smitten 
unto death, but the death-stroke was healed, and the respect 
of the world for the beast only increased : to whom, then, 
should this refer but Nero, who died in the summer of 68, 
but who, according to the popular fancy, still lived on, so 
that a series of Nerones redivivi made their appearance and 
sought to snatch the imperial power ? Now in xiii. 18, the 
number of the beast that is to say, probably that of the head 
which was healed, since it was also the number of a man - 
is given as six hundred and sixty and six, which, according to 
the value of the letters in Hebrew, has been interpreted by four 
German scholars of our own time, working independently, as 
Nero Caesar. It is true that the calculation is not absolutely 
free from doubt, for it would be false if the variant of Irenaeus, 
six hundred and sixteen, were the true reading, and altogether 
would perhaps seem more plausible, considering this 
reference to Nero redivivus, to hold with Momnisen that 
the Apocalypse belongs to the end of the reign of Vespasian 
(69-79), since it was then that the first pseudo-Nero made his 
appearance in the East. But at what date such rumours 
might have arisen among the people, especially in Asia, 
we do not know. In chap. xvii. the writer returns once 
more to the beast, who is now carrying the harlot Babylon 
(i.e. Rome) ; and here in vv. 9 fol. he does give us a sort of 
clue. We are told that the seven heads are seven kings 
(i.e. Emperors), the five are fallen, the one is (i.e. the sixth), 
the other (the seventh) is not yet come, and when he 



286 AN INTllODUCTION TO THK NEW TKSTAMKXT [BOOK II. 

cometh, he must continue a little while. And the beast that 
was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven ; 
and he goeth into perdition. According to this, then, the 
author wrote during the reign of the sixth Roman Emperor, 
i.e. of Galba (68-69), or, more probably, since Galba would 
not have been heard of much in the East, of Vespasian, whose 
son and successor, Titus (79-81), would, as the writer thought, 
have but a brief reign, reckoned apocalyptically, and then live to 
see the fall of the Roman Empire. But no ; verse 11 tells us 
that an eighth was yet to come, who, in conjunction with all 
the kings of the earth (ten in number), should war against 
the Lamb, but should be destroyed ; now, since this is at the 
same time one of the seven, it can only refer to a re-vivified 
Nero, \vhose speedy re-appearance was so generally expected. 
The words the sixth king is absolutely prohibit that assign 
ment of the Apocalypse to the time of Domitian which seemed 
just now so probable ; although verse 11 by itself might have 
been written under Domitian if the author had meant to repre 
sent him as a second Nero. Here, then, we are confronted by 
the following problem : while the greater part of the Apoca 
lypse affords no data for determining the date of its composi 
tion, certain indications in chaps, xi. xii. xiii. and xvii. oblige 
us to assume that it was written in the period between the 
death of Nero and the destruction of Jerusalem, while others 
again, especially in chaps, ii.iii. and vi., seem to point equally 
distinctly to a time at least twenty-five years later. 

8. We cannot hope to master these difficulties as long as 
we regard the Apocalypse as a perfectly independent work 
created by a single author. The contradictory indications of 
date demand the supposition that there exist within the book 
different elements, which were not brought into connection until 
a later time. Thus, when D. Volter, at the instigation of Prof. 
Weizsacker, was the first to attempt, in 1882, a reduction of the 
Apocalypse into a number of smaller Christian Apocalypses or 
fragments of such writings, criticism made a great step in ad 
vance ; and a further step was taken when, in 1886, E. Vischer 
formally recognised the Jewish origin of the groundwork 
of the Apocalypse, and sought to interpret it as the expanded 



22.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 287 

translation made by a Christian of the next generation, of the 
Aramaic original of some Jewish writer. Unfortunately, new 
difficulties here arose, for Volter himself did his best to shake 
our faith in his theories by his restless love of throwing out 
ever newer and more artificial plans of the process of develop 
ment which the Apocalypse was supposed to have undergone. 
For the last two decades, German, 1 Dutch 2 and French 3 
scholars have vied with one another in their efforts to solve 
all the riddles of the Apocalypse by the combination and 
emendation of those two fundamental hypotheses ; the supposed 
sources of the Apocalypse become more and more numerous 
some are Jewish, some Christian, and some to be traced to 
copyists and interpolators but at present the only result of 
this activity has been that the uninitiated receive the impres 
sion that nothing is certain and nothing impossible in the field 
of New Testament research. 

Even apart from the contradictory indications of date, 
however, we are compelled to recognise the kernel of truth in 
all these hypotheses by the incongruity existing between 
certain parts of the Apocalypse and the main scheme, or even 
between them and their own immediate contexts. All runs 
smoothly as far as vi. 17, but then, before the seventh seal is 
opened in viii. 1, chapter vii. is unexpectedly thrust before our 
eyes, containing a description of the sealing of 144,000 Israelites, 
and introducing us to an innumerable host of the faithful 
servants of the Lamb, who stand before the throne singing 
praises to God. The second half of the chapter (vv. 9-17) 
is of course the complement to the first half, felt to be 
necessary from the standpoint of Christian universalism, 
but it is the first half itself (vv. 1-8) which appears to be 
an interpolated fragment. The four winds which are held 
back for a moment only by four angels (vv. 1-3) are after 
wards forgotten, nor is there any reference further on to the 
144,000 servants of God sealed from the twelve tribes of 
Israel, for no one could identify them with the faithful of 
9 fol., because these are removed far beyond the power 
of the winds. In xiv. 1-5, the 144,000 souls who stand 

1 E.g., F. Spitta and K. Erbes. E.g., T. G. Weyland. 

3 E.g., A. Sabatier and H. Schoen. 



288 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK n. 

beside the Lamb on Mount Zion are defined as the virgins 
purchased out of the earth, most certainly in reference to 
vii. 1-8 and 9-17. But here it is obviously a question 
of later adaptation ; the sealed ones of vii. 3 are not a group 
of elect Christians, but God s servants in general ; they stand 
in no relation whatever to the Lamb (but, on the other 
hand, cf. vv. 9, 10, 14, 17, and xiv. 4) ; and the list of 
the twelve tribes in vii. 5-8 would be pointless from the 
mouth of a Christian who saluted the community of Christ s 
servants as the Twelve Tribes of the Dispersion. 1 Nor was 
the writer of the Apocalypse the man to create himself arti 
ficial difficulties ; in vii. 1-8 he simply adapted a fragment 
of a Jewish Apocalypse, to which he had been drawn by the 
idea of the sealing of the 144,000, and then in two suc 
ceeding passages 2 he partly neutralised it, and partly ex 
plained it from a Christian point of view. The incongruity 
of the opening was forgotten in the attraction exercised by the 
main scene. 

Again, vv. x. 1-xi. 13 make a most unexpected inter 
ruption in the drama of the seventh trumpet ; chap. x. is a 
prelude to the strange events of xi. 1-13, the scene of which, as 
well as the part played by the two martyr prophets, remains 
full of mystery. The contrast between the interest, worthy 
of a Jewish zealot, displayed in vv. 1 and 3 in temple, altar 
and worshippers, and the wrath of the Christian in verse 8 
against the great city where their Lord was crucified, which 
spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, is the greatest con 
ceivable, while in vv. 9 and 10, again, it is not unbelieving 
Israel, but the dwellers on the earth, who make merry over the 
murder of the prophets, nor is the murderer Judah, but the 
beast that cometh up out of the abyss. The inconsistencies of 
this passage, in fact, are only to be explained on the supposi 
tion that the writer was following an authority which he partly 
reproduced, and partly emended. Here again we may look 
upon it as certain that its sources were Jewish and its original 
language Hebrew or Aramaic, while the anti-Jewish colouring 
was supplied by the writer of vv. ii. 9 and iii. 9. 

1 Cf. xxi. 12. * vii. 9 fol. and xiv. 1 fol. 



22.] THE REVELATION OF JOHN 289 

In the more than singular allegory of chap, xii., again, 
the repetition of verse 6 in vv. 13 and 14 shows that his 
material was more than the writer could manage, and in any 
case these ideas, which he has so much difficulty in twisting 
into a Christian shape, were certainly not of genuine Christian 
origin. All becomes clear, however, if we look upon the 
passage as the prophecy of one of those Pharisees who saved 
themselves from the Roman armies by flying from Jerusalem 
during the Jewish War, between 66 and 69. Most of it, more 
over, can be retranslated into Hebrew without any difficulty. 
Lastly, if we compare chap. xiii. with xvii., we are struck both 
by the latter s repetitions and discrepancies, and in like 
manner by those of chap, xviii., which can scarcely be 
separated from xvii. Can xviii. 24 be from the same pen as 
xi. 8 b ? And xxii. 3-5 only repeats in different words what 
had been said in xxi. 22-26. Instances of this sort are bound 
to shake our confidence in the homogeneity of the Apocalypse, 
while the analogy of numerous other writings of this class 
naturally suggests the idea that here, too, the incongruous 
elements are the result of revision, interpolation, and passage 
through different hands. Nor is the motive for such altera 
tions (which the Apocalypse feared for itself, and with good 
reason ) far to seek ; certain parts would grow antiquated and 
be belied by events, and these would then be set aside or else 
brought up to date by glosses and interpolations. Neverthe 
less, the uniformity of the book in language, style and tone 
must not be forgotten, and especially the fact that the general 
plan introduction, seven epistles, three cycles of seven 
visions, Kingdom of the Messiah on earth, end of the world, 
New Jerusalem, and finally the literary conclusion is per 
fectly straightforward. What we have before us is no 
wretched compilation, but a firmly welded edifice ; the archi 
tect of this whole is for us a living personality, and his style, 
with its efforts after the loftiest heights, is characteristic of the 
whole building ; certain barocco additions are indeed worked 
in, yet it is never possible to detach them so easily from 
their context but that part of the surrounding building shares 
their fall. Thus the different hypotheses of interpolation, 

1 xxii. 18 fol. 



290 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [BOOK u. 

revision and compilation are disposed of, and it is only the 
seer s authorities that we have to investigate. And, since 
in those parts which are certainly from the author s own pen 
nothing points to a time before 70 A.D., we shall not regard 
the Apocalypse as a production of the year 69, into which all 
kinds of later material have been interpolated, but rather as 
the work of a Christian of about the year 9o, who in many 
places inserted older Apocalyptic fragments, more or less 
adequately harmonised with the context. 

Whether these older fragments belonged to one or more 
Apocalypses, and whether they are directly or merely in 
directly of Jewish origin, will perhaps never be determined 
with absolute certainty : the latter especially, because in the 
matter of eschatological beliefs the Christian growth is so 
closely entwined with the Jewish parent stem- except where 
faith in Jesus is directly concerned that the two are indis 
tinguishable. It is true that large tracts of the Apocalypse 
breathe the Jewish spirit, reflect Jewish hopes, Jewish 
longings for revenge, and Jewish ideas ; but might not a 
Christian have brought such feelings with him from his own 
Jewish past ? As to the question of the number of sources, and 
still more that of their reconstruction, it is the part of sober 
criticism to forego any attempt to answer it in the case of the 
Apocalypse ; the writer has made use of his older material in 
far too arbitrary a way for that, sometimes completely 
remoulding it, sometimes adapting it to his own use by 
insertions, transpositions or omissions ; nor should it be 
forgotten that he is borrowing from the property of others, 
even when, without any actual document before him, he is 
yet making use of earlier Apocalyptic material. The duty of 
tracing these materials, from the point of view of religious 
history, far back to their possibly distant sources, has been 
demonstrated most powerfully by Gunkel, who has at the 
same time applied sharp and salutary criticism both to certain 
prevailing methods of literary judgment and to the school of 
interpretation by means of contemporary history ; but apart 
from his own superstitious belief in the one method extra 
quam nulla salus, he shares with his adversaries the prejudice 
of regarding the writer of the Apocalypse as a corpus vile 



THE REVELATION OP JOHN 291 

which takes the food offered it and must assimilate it well or 
ill. On the contrary, the Seer is far too independent to 
warrant us in hunting out a tradition behind everything he 
says ; where, indeed, as in chaps, xiii. and xvii., or xi. and xii., he 
cannot work out his allegory, or can only do so with the help 
of artificial or violent expedients, then we may be sure he is 
resting on tradition, oral or written ; but, for the rest, is it not 
possible that an Apocalyptic writer may have shown some 
fragments of the gift of invention? And are not certain 
eccentricities of form and matter crKdv&a\a imposed upon 
an Apocalypse by its very genre ? Those, then, who think 
themselves justified merely on the ground of some irregularity, 
some contradiction or repetition, in explaining it by a theory 
of interpolation, mistake the true character of the book, which 
in its fantastic imagery, spun out to great elaboration, and yet 
flowing from no fresh or original inspiration, could not possibly 
observe either regularity or symmetry of style. To pretend to 
have found an answer to every question raised by the Apo 
calypse is the very opposite of science. 



292 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 



BOOK HI 

THE HISTORICAL BOOKS OF THE 
NEW TESTAMENT 

CHAPTER I 

THE FOUR GOSPELS 

[Cf. B. Weiss : Die vier Evangelien im berichtigten Text mit 
kurzer Erlauterung (1900) the notes merely intended as an 
introduction to the revised text of the Gospels ; G. Volkmar : 
Marcus und die Synopse der Evangelien (1876) extremely 
original and suggestive, but eccentric and specially prejudiced 
against Matthew. Further, H. Weisse : Die Evangelienfrage in 
ihrem gegenwartigen Stadium (1856) ; C. Weizsacker : Unter- 
suchungen iiber die evangelische Geschichte (1864) ;, E. Eenan : 
Les Evangiles et la seconde generation chretienne (1877) ; 
P. Ewald : Das Hauptproblem der Evangelienfrage und der 
Weg zu seiner Losung (1890), a spirited attempt to maintain 
the Fourth Gospel intact by applying the most vigorous criticism 
to the Synoptics ; and W. Brandt : Die evangelische Geschichte 
und der Ursprung des Christenthums (1893). The author of 
this book is a second Strauss in scepticism, and has all the latter s 
learning, independence and love of truth without his mythological 
preconceptions, but unfortunately lacks a touch of Eenan s genius. 
Lastly, Adolf Harnack s Die Chronologic der altchristlichen 
Literatur, vol. i. pp. 589-700 ( Die Evangelien ) ; G. Dalman s 
Die Worte Jesu, vol. i. (1898) ; and P. Wernle s Altchristliche 
Apologetik im N. T. published in the Zeitschrift fur die Neu- 
testamentliche Wissenschaft for 1900, pp. 42-65 a clever but 
somewhat one-sided attempt to explain the differences between 
Mark and the later Gospels as the result of the needs of Christian 
Apologetics against Jews and Gentiles respectively.] 



23.] GENERAL REMARKS ON THE GOSPELS 293 

23. General Remarks on the Gospels 

1. For about a hundred years the Gospels according to 
Matthew, Mark and Luke have been called the Synoptic 
Gospels in contradistinction to the Gospel according to John, 
because they stand in such close and at the same time 
such inextricable mutual relations that a synopsis, i.e. a 
general view of the whole, is often essential even for a proper 
understanding of the text, and it is impossible to pass judg 
ment on any one of them without first taking the others into 
consideration. For comparative study of this kind it is 
hardly possible to do without a Synopsis which prints the text 
of the three Evangelists either in parallel columns or else one 
above the other, so that the reader can embrace the parallel 
passages at a glance and find the peculiarities of each single 
Gospel ready divided by external marks from the matter 
common to the other two or three. 

[The Synopse der drei ersten Evangelien by A. Huck (1898), 
forming an appendix to Holtzmann s Hand-Commentar, vol. i. 
(1898), is most conveniently arranged, while E. Heineke s Synopse 
der drei ersten kanonischen Evangelien mit Parallelen aus Job. 
is, though on a different system, a work of the most scrupulous 
care. England, however, possesses a still more brilliant example 
in the polychrome Synopticon of W. G. Eushbrooke (1880). 
A. Wright s Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek (1896) displays 
too one-sided an interest in Mark, and its supplement in the same 
author s The Gospel according to St. Luke in Greek (upon 
which a similar edition of Matthew is presumably to follow) was 
necessary. Unfortunately, the absence in all these Synopses of 
the variant readings is much felt.] 

2. In the old tradition the Synoptics and John all bear 
the same name, Gospel (according to Matthew, Mark etc. 
/cara MarOaiov), a name which can hardly date from the 
writers themselves. In the New Testament, especially in the 
writings of Paul, the word Gospel has the specific meaning of 
the glad tidings of the fulfilment of all prophecy in Jesus 
Christ, and of the kingdom he established. Moreover, when 
Paul speaks of his Gospel the word means to him the sum of 



294 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

all that he, as an Apostle, has to communicate, which indeed 
consisted in Christ alone. Everyone, however, who gave up 
his life to the furtherance of this message was an Evangelist. 
But with Eusebius (about 825 A.D.) Evangelist is the technical 
name for the writers of the canonical Gospels, of which he speaks 
in the plural quite fluently, for meanwhile and indeed con 
siderably earlier, in Marcion s time, about 140 A.D. Gospel 
had become the term for a certain literary species, i.e. for 
the books which told of the Life and Passion and Resurrec 
tion of the Lord : Origen (circa 250) speaks without any 
difference of meaning of the Gospel and the Gospels. These 
are the books which Justin terms memoirs of the Apostles, 
and Eusebius the Doings or History of Jesus (at rof 
Iijaov TT page is). The transition from the wider to the more 
limited interpretation of the word was an easy one ; and a 
lingering sense of the original meaning of the word Gospel 
a word which demands in reality only one subjective genitive 
( God s ) and one objective genitive ( of Jesus Christ ) can 
be traced in the fact that the authors names were not connected 
with the title by means of the genitive case (as, for instance, the 
Epistles o/Paul), but through the medium of the preposition 
Kara. This formula has ever since been retained in the Latin 
Bible, either as cata or as secundum, although by about 400 
A.D. people had come to talk quite naturally of the Evangelium 
sancti Lucae. It would never have occurred to men in those 
days to argue whether Kara Aovicav had from the beginning 
meant the immediate author, and not merely the authority from 
whose spoken words the Gospel had been written down by 
some nameless person, even though Kara does in itself admit 
of different interpretations. 

3. The Gospels cannot be called historical books if the 
term be interpreted as applying solely to books which owe 
their entire origin either to a mere love of narrative, or to 
the scientific impulse to recall the past, or to the wish to gain 
insight into the interdependence of past events and to pass 
judgment upon them. The same may be said of the Acts. 
The Gospels were written first and foremost for edification 
to supply the need of the community which grounded its faith 
on the words, deeds and sufferings of Jesus, and which 



23.] GENERAL REMARKS ON THE GOSPELS 295 

could not let the recollection of these things the basis of its 
existence be covered up or dimmed. The object of the 
Gospels was to arouse and keep for ever living the faith in 
Jesus Christ, to be a substitute for, or perhaps an accompani 
ment to, the personal preaching of the missionary, and they were 
also of great use to the primitive Christian in apology and 
controversy. But they pursued their object through the 
medium of historical materials, and preserved the narrative 
form of writing ; therefore, in spite of their overwhelming 
religious tendency, they still have a claim to the title of 
historical books, at least as much as the books of the 
Maccabees, and more than the Life of St. Antony of 
Athanasius. How far they are trustworthy historical sources 
is another question, and one to which we shall revert later on. 
A religious intention must indeed necessarily influence a writer s 
choice of material, but it need not prevent him from telling 
the truth. Luke certainly claimed to be an historian, and all 
four Gospels have at least as much right to be included in the 
literature of history as many a modern Life of Christ. 

A. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 

[Cf. B. Weiss : Das Marcusevangelium und seine synoptischen 
Parallelen (1872) and Das Matthausevangelium und seine Lucas- 
parallelen (1876) very thorough exegesis and sober criticism. 
Hand-Commentar, vol. i., Die Synoptiker and Die Apostel- 
geschichte" (both by Holtzmann himself). Further, Holtz- 
mann s other work, Die synoptischen Evangelien (1863) ; J. C. 
Hawkins : Horae synopticae (1899), and J. Wellhausen s Skizzen 
und Vorarbeiten/ vi. pp. 187 fol. (1899). 

It seems advisable to begin our examination of the three 
Synoptic Gospels with a survey of their contents, the outline of 
the story of Jesus which they all present in common ; then to 
consider in the case of each Gospel independently what conclusions 
we may come to (whether on the ground of tradition or on that 
of the signs and indications they themselves contain) concerning 
questions of literary history, such as those of author, individuality, 
date and motive of composition, and to keep the subject of their 
mutual relations to be dealt with last. Each of them made 
its appearance independently, and each of them may there 
fore claim to be considered independently, both as to what it has 



296 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

to tell and how it tells it. This arrangement also has the 
advantage of securing that when we come to the difficult discussion 
of the Synoptic Problem, Matthew, Mark and Luke will be more 
to us than empty names, and that this discussion itself may be 
considerably shortened.] 

24. The Contents of the Synoptic Gospels 

In Matthew an introduction (chaps, i. and ii.), containing 
the birth-story etc., and a conclusion (chaps, xxvi.-xxviii.), 
dealing with the Passion, Death and Eesurrection of Jesus, 
are clearly marked out from the main body of the Gospel, 
which is a narrative of the public ministry of Jesus. In 
the introduction we have a genealogy of Jesus, 1 his birth 
in Bethlehem, 2 and the flight into Egypt in consequence 
of the coming of the Magi, and the migration to Nazareth. 
Chaps, iii. 1-iv. 16 contain the preaching of the Baptist 
as a preparation for the appearance of Jesus, the baptism of 
Jesus, the temptation, and the return to Galilee (Capernaum). 
Chaps, iv. 17-ix. 34 describe his first activity in Galilee, 
and how, taking up the Baptist s cry of repentance, he 
gathers disciples about him and goes through the country 
with them as Teacher and Healer. Examples to illustrate 
both functions are given : chaps, v.-vii. with the so-called 
Sermon on the Mount almost a Messianic manifesto 
exemplify his teaching, and chaps, viii. ix. give ten cases of 
healing (the leper, the centurion s servant at Capernaum, 
Simon s wife s mother, the calming of the storm on the lake, 
the two demoniacs in the country of the Gadarenes, the man 
sick of the palsy, the raising of the ruler s daughter, the woman 
with an issue of blood, the two blind men, the dumb man 
possessed with a devil). Chaps, ix. 35-xiii. 58 are, as it were, 
a second act, to be read side by side with the first rather than 
after it ; the introductory passage (ix. 35-38) is a complete 
parallel to iv. 23 fol. and the calling of the disciples 4 corre 
sponds to iv. 18-22. But the difficulty of the task of Christ 
is now becoming more apparent ; in x. 1-42, with forebodings 
already dark and sad, he appoints the Twelve to be assistant 
preachers of the Kingdom ; a propos of the mission of the 

1 i. 1-17. - i. 18-25. 3 Chap. ii. x. 1 4. 



24.] THE CONTENTS OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 297 

imprisoned Baptist, in chap, xi., he prophesies or asserts 
the partial failure of his own Gospel (Chorazin and Beth- 
saida). Now we see him in conflict with the self -conceited 
piety and the wilful blindness of the Pharisees (the plucking 
of the ears of corn, the healing of the sick on the Sabbath-day, 
and the ascription of his miraculous powers to Beelzebub), 
and next with the insensibility of his own near kin and of 
his Nazarene fellow-countrymen (chap, xii., and xiii. 53-58). 
The parables inserted in xiii. 1-52 show that he has by 
now given up the hope of a recognition of the truth by the 
multitude at large. Chaps xiv. 1-xviii. 35 form the third 
act of his Galilean activity ; the separation is now complete 
between him and his countrymen. The story of the execution 
of the Baptist (xiv. 1-12) is a fitting prologue ; after this 
Jesus flees into the wilderness, feeds the five thousand with 
five loaves and two fishes (duplicated in xv. 32fol.), appears to 
his disciples walking on the lake, and is acknowledged by them 
to be the Son of God (xiv. 23). 

After drawing the distinction between the false and the 
true conception of uncleanness in xv. 1-20, Jesus consents to 
shed his blessing even on the pagan districts of Tyre and 
Sidon (healing of the Canaanitish woman s daughter ), and 
amid the full tide of his miraculous deeds he gives a stern 
refusal to the demand of the Pharisees and Sadducees for a 
sign. 2 Peter s confession at Csesarea Philippi Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God : now fills him with 
surprise as coming from the ranks of the Twelve, who had but 
just before 4 shown a remarkable want of understanding of his 
words, but he accepts it joyfully as a divine revelation vouch 
safed to the disciple who was appointed as the rock-foundation 
of the new community of the Kingdom. He proceeds at once, 
however, to warn them against deceitful hopes : as he himself 
must suffer and die, in spite of his Messiahship, before the 
Eesurrection came to pass, so must his faithful followers take 
up his Cross in self-denial, in order that when he returned in 
glory they should receive an eternal reward. 5 To confirm 
their faith in his Messiahship, three disciples now behold the 

1 xv. 21-28. 2 xv. 29-xvi. 4. 3 xvi. 13-16. 

4 xvi. 5-12. 5 xvi. 16-28. 



298 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

transfiguration of their Master on a high mountain, l and 
to the end of chap, xviii. Jesus exerts himself in many 
different directions to prepare his followers for the time when 
they would be left alone, and especially to familiarise them 
with his own conviction of the necessity of his death. In 
xix. 1 he turns his steps towards Judaea on the last fatal 
journey always ready to make use of any opportunity of 
strengthening and enlightening his disciples and enters 
Jerusalem in triumph as Messiah. By the cleansing of the 
temple he excites the fury of the authorities, and then fore 
tells their downfall in symbolical actions and in the parables 
of xxi. 28 fol., 33 fol., and xxii. 1 fol. After a victorious 
argument with the Pharisees (the tribute-money, the great 
commandment of the law) and the Sadducees (non-existence of 
marriage in the resurrection), he casts them off in chap, 
xxiii., with terrible denunciations. Chaps, xxiv. and xxv. con 
tain his last testament to the disciples, in which he first describes 
the Last Things in apocalyptic colours, and then shows them, 
through the parables of the ten virgins and the talents and 
by the picture of the Last Judgment, how to draw the true 
practical conclusions from this knowledge. After the pre 
parations described in xxvi. 1 fol. (the anointing in Bethany, 
to prepare me for burial ), Jesus keeps the Passover with his 
disciples (20-29) ; now follow (vv. 30-46) the moving scenes on 
the Mount of Olives and in the Garden of Gethsemane, then 
(vv. 47-56) his capture, his trial before Caiaphas and the 
denial by Peter (vv. 52-75). In xxvii. 1-10 we have his 
death sentence, the repentance of Judas, the confirmation 
of the sentence by the Roman governor (vv. 11-26), and 
finally (vv. 27-56) his mockery, crucifixion and death. 
Vv. xxvii. 57-66 relate the burial of Jesus and the watching 
by his grave ; on the third day - the women find the grave 
empty, but are told by an angel that Jesus is risen and 
will appear to his disciples in Galilee. This comes to pass 
in xxviii. 16-20, where the risen Christ, invested with all 
power in heaven and earth, sends them forth to teach and 
baptise all peoples. 

In bulk, Mark falls short of Matthew by about three - 

1 xvii. 1-9. - xxviii. 1-15. 



24.] THE CONTENTS OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 299 

eighths, but this discrepancy is due but little to Mark s con 
cluding section, for in this part 1 there is the least amount 
of divergence between two chroniclers, both in the sequence 
of events and in detail. But the differences in the beginning 
are all the greater. In i. 14 Mark has already reached 
the point which Matthew only arrives at in iv. 17. Mark 
has no birth-story like that of Matthew, but only a brief 
introduction skilfully concentrating our interest upon the 
main point, and giving a short account of John s preaching of 
repentance, his baptising and his prophecies concerning the 
Messiah,- as well as of Jesus s baptism by the Holy Ghost and 
of his life in the wilderness. 3 Then he turns to the public 
ministry of Jesus, with which he occupies himself from i. 14 
to xiii. 37. As far as ix. 50 the scene of the ministry is laid 
in Galilee and the districts lying to the north or east of it ; 
afterwards, in chaps, x.-xiii., in Judaea, and in Jerusalem 
itself after his entry into that city. 1 In this last half the 
arrangement of the material varies very little from the 
arrangement in Matthew, except that in Mark we have no 
parallel whatever to Matt. xxv. and only a partial parallel to the 
Woes uttered in Matt, xxiii. The eschatological discourse 
in Mark xiii. is also shorter than that in Matt. xxiv. Matthew 
lacks only the beautiful story of the widow s mite given in 
Mark xii. 41-44, as also in Luke xxi. 1-4. On the other hand, 
the arrangement adopted in the Galilean part of Mark, i. 14- 
ix. 50, is peculiar and worthy of note, because in it we can 
perceive an approach to historical development. First, in 
i. 1445, the appearance of Jesus causes only a sort of amazed 
excitement ; in ii. 1 his struggle begins, and in iii. 6 Pharisees 
and Herodians are already plotting his downfall ; in iii. 7 fol. 
we have a living picture lighted up by the dazzling glory 
of his miracles, proving him as they did to be the Son of 
God of the Galilean Messiah in his intercourse, first, with 
the multitude (from whom, however, he is obliged to with 
draw himself further and further in painful discourage 
ment), next, with the governing classes roused to mortal 
hostility against him, and lastly, with his own disciples, who 

1 Mark chaps, xiv.-xvi = Matt, chaps, xxvi. xxviii. 
i. 4-8. i. 9-13. 4 xi. 1-11. 



300 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

still stood so much in need of careful instruction. Of course 
Mark does not group his events exclusively or even funda 
mentally according to a chronological system ; here, as in the 
other two Synoptics, we can detect a preference for connecting 
events by their subjects : ii. 18-iii. 6 (the dispute about fasting 
and the two instances of healing on the Sabbath) are examples. 
In the whole section i. 14 to xiii. 37 the deficit in Mark as com 
pared with Matthew is primarily concerned with the sayings 
of Jesus ; Mark contains no Sermon on the Mount at all, and 
the discourse at the sending forth of the disciples is reduced 
like the declaration of woe to the Pharisees to a few sen 
tences. The chapter of parables and the last words to the 
disciples are also much more briefly given. 

3. The third synoptist, Luke, also comes closest to the 
other two in the concluding section, chaps, xxii.-xxiv. But 
the resurrection episode is a good deal more detailed in Luke, 
and he makes the risen Lord appear first of all though it 
is just possible that verse xxiv. 34 implies a previous appear 
ance to Peter to two disciples on the road from Jerusalem to 
Emmaus, and then to the eleven in Jerusalem itself, where 
Jesus gives them careful instructions before he finally takes 
leave of them, with a solemn benediction, in Bethany. 
Luke s version of the public ministry of Jesus between 
chaps, iv. 14 and xxi. 35 covers about the same ground 
and strikes about the same balance of word and deed 
as Matthew s narrative. All that precedes, in the one as 
in the other, falls naturally into an historical introduction 
and into the preparations for the appearance of Jesus. Never 
theless, the differences are greater than the resemblances. The 
genealogy of Jesus given by Matthew in i. 1 is only inserted 
by Luke in iii. 23 38. He begins with a prologue about 
the purpose of his work (i. 1-4), and his version of the story 
of the birth and childhood reminds us but occasionally of the 
far shorter and more compact version of Matthew. In iii. 
1-20 Luke gives us the story of John up to his imprisonment, 
having already related his miraculous birth in chap. i. ; 
then in iii. 21 fol. he passes rapidly over the baptism of Jesus 
and iri iv. 1-13 over his temptation. How little we can count 
in Luke on a chronologically correct arrangement of the 



24.] THE CONTENTS OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 301 

material in the main section (chaps, iv. 14 to xxi. 38), is 
shown at the very beginning (iv. 16-20), in the story of his 
rejection by the Nazarenes, where a reference is made to some 
previous activity in Capernaum, whereas it is not till iv. 31 
that his first appearance in Capernaum is described. Down 
to ix. 50 Luke tells us of Christ s activity in Galilee in striking 
agreement with Mark s arrangement of events, except that in 
vi. 20-49 he inserts a short pendant to Matthew s Sermon on 
the Mount - -a sermon in the plain. At this point, however, 
the parallel ceases. A mass of narratives, sayings and 
dialogues are introduced that either do not occur in Mark and 
Matthew, or else are given there in other places and with 
wholly different contexts. Only in xviii. 15 does Luke con 
verge again with Mark, shortly before the entry of Jesus into 
Jerusalem in xix. 28 fol. Everything that lies between ix. 50 
and this point generally known as Luke s Itinerary is 
supposed to have happened on the journey from Galilee to 
Jerusalem through Samaria. The last part in Judaea is not 
so long in Luke as in the other two, chiefly because he has 
already included much of what is then told by them, in his 
Itinerary. But the facts that are common to all three come 
in the same order here as in Matthew and Mark : the story of 
the healing of the blind Bartimeus, for instance, the entry into 
the capital, the cleansing of the Temple, the questioning of 
the power of Jesus, the parable of the vineyard, the disputes 
with the Pharisees and Sadducees, the declaration of Woe 
and the prophecies concerning the last things. 1 Such a wide 
spread agreement makes the peculiarities of Luke in ix. fol. and 
in chaps, i., ii. and xxiv. all the more remarkable. 

25. The Gospel according to Matthew 

[For books to be consulted see 23 and 24. For special 
commentaries see H. A. W. Meyer, i. 1, by B. Weiss 
(1899), and P. Schanz s Kommentar iiber das Evangelium des 
heiligen Matthaus (1870). The author of this last is probably 
the most thorough and unprejudiced exegete that the Eoman 
Catholic Church possesses at the present day. For the points 
discussed in paragraph 5, see W. Soltau s article in the Zeit- 
1 Luke xxi. 5 fol. 



302 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

schrift fur die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaffc, part i., 1900, 
entitled Zur Entstehung des ersten Evangeliums (pp. 219-248).] 

1. The Gospel of Matthew was used, though anonymously, 
by most of the Christian writers of the second century. But 
considering the freedom of quotation of those days, it is hardly 
possible, nor is it worth while, to make a list of authors who 
can be proved to have been acquainted with Matthew. As 
far as we know, the authorship of the Gospel by the Apostle 
Matthew was never once questioned. It was universally held 
to be the oldest, and Eusebius for one has details of its origin 
to give us, 1 to the effect that when Matthew was going on to 
preach to other peoples after leaving the Jews, he left behind 
him his Gospel, in the mother tongue, as a substitute for his 
own personal ministration. Origen (about 240) was already 
aware that the Gospel had been written for the converted Jews, 
and Iren&us speaks of its being written in Palestine at the time 
when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome. 
But the special emphasis laid by all these critics on the words 
written in the Hebrew tongue betrays the source whence all 
their knowledge springs, namely Papias.- Papias is quoted 
by Eusebius in his Historia ecclesiastica :! in the following- 
terms : Matthew wrote down the Sayings in the Hebrew 
tongue, and everyone translated them for himself as best he 
could. I consider it to be beyond dispute that Papias was 
here giving information concerning what is now our First 
Gospel, and that he regarded it as a Greek version of a Gospel 
written in Hebrew by the Apostle Matthew. I think it 
probable, too, that if he owed his information to the Presbyter, 
the latter understood the same thing by it as he himself, and 
that when Papias inquired of him as to Matthew s book he 
and his questioner were not talking at cross purposes. Never 
theless, although the fact seems highly favourable to this view 
that in Matt. ix. 9-13 the call of the publican Matthew to 
the ranks of the disciples is told at particular length, while 
in the parallels to this passage 5 the name of the publican is 
given as Levi, it at once gives rise to the gravest objections. 

1 Hist. Eccl. iii. 24, 6. - Died A.D. 165. 3 iii. 39, 16. 

4 Cf. Matthew the publican in the list of the Apostles Matt. x. 3. 
- Mark ii. 14 fol. ; Luke v. 27 fol. 



25.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 303 

The Gospel according to Matthew as we have it to-day 
cannot possibly be the translation of a Hebrew original. 
Not only does its clear and fluent Greek, which is much less 
tinged with Hebrew than that of Mark, forbid such an 
assumption, but the writer frequently makes use of such 
forms as the genitive absolute, subordinate clauses and the 
antithesis of pev and fie, while the uniformity of style and 
vocabulary displayed by the whole Gospel is such as no 
ordinary translator could have attained to. 1 Even plays on 
Greek words, like that of xxiv. 30 /co-^ovrai icai otyovrai 
are to be met with. It is true that part of the Old Testament 
quotations are taken from the Hebrew text (e.g. in xiii. 35 :i 
for I will utter things hidden from the beginning of the 
world we have spsv^o^ai, KSKpv/Apsva airo /eara/SoA^s- instead 
of the Septuagint rendering <f>@e<yt;o/jiai irpo^KrifiaTa air ap^s, 
while on the other hand 35 corresponds word for word with 
the Septuagint -), but part of them are also identical with the 
Septuagint renderings, particularly in cases where the Maso- 
retic text would be of no use, and where the whole story 
depends upon the Greek e.g. xxi. 16, where we read with the 
Septuagint Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou 
hast perfected praise, as against the Hebrew version Through 
the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast established might 
[or a bulwark]. 3 Finally, we shall show later on that Matthew 
reproduces older Greek authorities practically without modifi 
cation, and for anyone possessing sane common sense this 
should surely settle the question of its original language once 
and for all. 

I certainly do not wish, however, to dispute the writer s 
knowledge of the Hebrew idiom, although many of the instances 
brought forward to prove it such as the word-play on master 
of the house and Beelzebub in x. 25 should rather be laid to 
the score of Jesus than to that of the Evangelist, while I am not 
prepared to think that he was the first and only writer who 
interpreted the Hebrew name Jesus as that of the Saviour. 

1 E.g., r6re, *col iSov, in referring to the Kingdom of Heaven, the end of the 
world, etc. 

* Compare also Matt. viii. 17 and Isaiah liii. 4". 
3 Cf. xi. 10, xiii. 14 fol. 



304 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

But Old Testament quotations like that of xxvii. 9 do betray 
the Hebrew student, though not especially when one thinks 
of Paul, Mark, John ! the Hebrew writer. Nor does the 
statement of Irenseus, that the heretical Jewish Christians 
known as Ebionites and Nazarenes used the Gospel of Matthew 
alone, of which he believed the Church to possess a Greek 
version, take us any further, for we may doubt whether 
Irenaeus ever saw this Hebrew Gospel of the Ebionites, and 
perhaps he merely concluded on the authority of Papias that 
it must be identical with Matthew. Jerome, who displayed a 
scientific interest in the Gospel according to the Hebrews (TO 
svajjsXiov icad c E/3/3atouy), of which he found a copy in the 
library of Caesarea, expressly states that this was the Hebrew 
foundation of the Canonical Matthew, and such an identifica 
tion would not have been displeasing to the Jewish Christians. 
But the very fact that Jerome claims to have made both a 
Greek and a Latin translation of the Gospel according to the 
Hebrews shows that there must have been considerable 
differences between it and Matthew, otherwise such a task 
would not have been worth while. And indeed the fragments 
unfortunately all too few that still remain to us of the 
Gospel to the Hebrews l differ so markedly from Matthew, 
both in form and matter, that we cannot even accept 
the theory that both works were based upon a common 
Hebrew foundation, recast in the one case in the interests of 
the Church universal, and in the other in those of the Juda- 
istic party. 

Are we, then, to ignore the Papias tradition altogether ? 
Schleiermacher has gained wide acceptance for an hypothesis of 
compromise, according to which this statement of Papias did 
not refer to our First Gospel at all, but to an older document, 
possibly made use of by its author and consisting merely in a 
collection of Logia. He contends that the Presbyter was 
speaking only of Logia, that is of sayings, and that this was 
a title wholly inapplicable to a Gospel containing so much 
narrative matter as Matthew. It is certainly true that Papias 
had just defined the contents of Mark as that which Jesus 

1 Collected, with a critical commentary, by E. Handmann in Tcxtc und 
Untersuchungcii, v. 3, 1888, entitled Das Hebrder Evangelium. 



25.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 305 

spoke or did (^ \sj(6svra fj Trpa^dsvrd), and that this sounds 
like a conscious differentiation between Mark and the more 
limited work of Matthew ; true, too, that the words rjp^vsvcrs 
avrd produce the impression that Papias was speaking 
of oral translation as occasion or necessity arose, and 
especially in connection with the reading aloud in the Church 
services. But Papias is not really so very precise in his defi 
nitions, for three lines farther on in his passage about Mark 
he speaks only of sayings of the Lord (fcvpiafcol ^0704) even in 
his case, while on a closer examination we are bound to consider 
the spfjbrfvsia in the case of Matthew as written and not oral. 
The point of the statement would be wholly mistaken if we sup 
posed that any special stress was laid on the object, ra \6<yia, 
or even on the predicate a-we^pd-^raro ; the stress lies, on the 
contrary, solely on the words sftpatSi $aXlr$>. By the words 
ra \6yia the contents of Matthew s book are at once briefly 
summarised, a parte potiori, and solemnly characterised as 
oracles, such as form the content of the historical books of 
the Old Testament. Matthew s authorship is taken for granted, 
but the problem remained to be solved as to how the world 
came to possess a Greek work from the hand of the Jewish 
tax-gatherer. The answer was that he himself had written it 
in his mother-tongue, but that others obscure, unknown men 
had translated it into Greek. A certain shade of depre 
ciation lies in the word everyone as well as in the as best 
he could ; both expressions are meant to imply the inferiority 
of the translation. It would, however, be a hasty inference to 
say that the speaker had really known many different versions ; 
he might at most have concluded something of the sort from 
the complaints of others as to the great discrepancies 
apparent in the material of what the Christians circulated as 
their Gospel. Papias or his informant was measuring 
Matthew as well as Mark against a Norm-Gospel, which can 
scarcely have been other than John ; he could not deceive 
himself as to the differences between them, nor could he 
venture simply to dispute the authority of the others, and 
therefore he makes an indirect attack upon them : certainly, he 
implies, he has not a word to say against Peter or against 
Matthew, but, after all, their Gospels did not faithfully express 



306 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

the Apostles themselves, but only the work, carried out as it 
was under different conditions, of their interpreters. 

With this admission our informant has already deprived 
the Matthew of the Greek Church of direct Apostolic origin. 
Here he is quite right, for a work which we shall show 
to be dependent upon various authorities, some of which were 
themselves not at first hand, .cannot indeed be from the pen of 
an Apostle, of one of the Twelve : but, as a matter of fact, the 
book nowhere sets up the smallest claim to Apostolic author 
ship. It is, of course, possible that the markedly legendary 
features of the narrative might have been preserved to us by 
an Apostle as well as by anyone else perhaps even those of 
the birth-story if he had himself received them from others. 
But the arrangement of the Gospel is so artificial, so lacking 
in the unimportant traits, the sure pegs on which all kinds 
of detail depend that are never lost to the memory of an eye 
witness (for where Mark and Luke can still give the names of 
individual persons concerned, such as those of Jairus l and of 
Bartimeus, 2 Matthew contents himself with a colourless a 
centurion, two blind men ) lastly, it would be so unnatural 
that the narrator should have withdrawn himself so com 
pletely from the circle of characters moving through the 
Gospel no I or we ! that we cannot believe this book 
to have been the work of a disciple. 

Does this result, however, deprive the Papias tradition of 
all its value ? I think not. Hebrew speech and imperfect 
translation may have been invention with a purpose by the 
Presbyter, but all the more firmly does the name of 
Matthew cling to this Gospel ; the Presbyter found it already 
existing there, and did not venture to make any attack 
upon this older tradition. It is true that this tradition 
itself may be founded on error, but anyone who was enthu 
siastic enough to seek an Apostolic label for an anonymous 
Gospel circulating in the first century for we must be pre 
pared to go back as far as that would scarcely have hit upon 
the name of an Apostle so little known as Matthew with 
out definite cause. He would have been far more likely to 
ascribe it to Peter in view of the brilliant role assigned to him 

1 Mark v. 22 ; Luke viii. 41. -> Mark x. 4G. 



25.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 307 

in xvi. 18 fol. and xvii. 24-27. All existing facts, including 
the interest shown by the author in Matthew in ix. 9 and x. 3, 
are best explained on the supposition that peculiar relations 
existed between this Gospel and Matthew, that the author 
actually used a collection of Logia made by Matthew as the 
foundation for his book, and that since he had not his own 
personal glory so much at heart as the influence of his Gospel, 
he recommended this latter to his fellow-believers as a Greek 
version, made according to his ability, of the old Matthew. If 
Papias s Presbyter knew, on the one hand, of the existence of a 
Hebrew collection of Logia with Matthew for author, and, on 
the other, had learnt to regard our first Greek Gospel as the 
Gospel of Matthew, the combination mentioned by Eusebius 
would have been the most natural thing in the world to him, 
who had probably never read the Hebrew text, and in any case 
believed that he possessed a higher and more spiritual tradi 
tion than either Peter or Matthew. However uncritical it may 
be, then, to insist, in defiance of all appearances and solely on 
the testimony of Papias, upon an original Hebrew Matthew, it 
is no less reasonable and safe to recognise a Hebrew collection 
of Logia made by Matthew as one of the chief constituents of 
this Gospel provided, indeed, that when we come to examine 
the Synoptic authorities we are led by a quite independent road 
to admit the existence of Hebrew Logia of Apostolic origin. 
The danger of ranging the l/cao-ros-hermeneutist, with his some 
times inadequate Swarov, too close to the disciple Matthew 
cannot exist for us, unless we ivish to prove ourselves o-fii/cpo- 
repoi rov vovv than the literary historians, in dealing with 
Eusebius iii. 39. 

2. Since we must derive all our knowledge, except the 
name by which it was known in the Church, from the Gospel 
itself, we shall first try to determine the date of its composi 
tion, of which the ancient world knew nothing. Here we 
cannot take the comparatively numerous passages into account 
in which the Holy City is assumed to be still untouched and 
the service of the Temple still continuing. These are all 
sayings of Jesus himself, which the author reproduces faith 
fully according to his documents. The remarkable evdsws 
too of verse xxiv. 29, which appears to place the Last Day in 



308 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

close proximity to the destruction of Jerusalem, springs in like 
manner from an older authority and cannot be taken as 
evidence of the date of Matthew. If the catastrophe of 
Jerusalem really vibrates more powerfully through this Gospel 
than through any of the others, this does not prove that its 
author was writing in the first decade after 70 (as Harnack 
contends), but at most that it was more important for his 
purpose than for that of the other Evangelists to lay special 
stress upon that catastrophe. That Matthew was composed 
after the year 70 is conclusively proved by verse xxii. 7 ; for 
there the touch that accords so ill with the rest of the parable 
of the wedding-feast the sending out of his armies by the 
king, roused to wrath by the neglect of his invitations, to 
destroy those murderers and burn their city could scarcely 
have been thought of before the burning of Jerusalem. The 
expressions in two of the parables, my Lord tarries ! and 
but because the bridegroom tarried, - show that men were 
already feeling that they must seriously face the question of 
the long delay of the Parusia, and vv. xxvii. 8 and xxviii. 15 
until this day support the impression that the narrator 
feels himself separated by wide tracts of time from the events 
he narrates. If the external evidence forbids us to go further 
than the beginning of the second century, other considerations 
make it practically impossible to urge an earlier date ; the 
time about the year 100 is the most probable. The general 
condition of the Church favours this assumption ; she had 
become, on the one hand, a Church Universal, for we hear that 
the Eisen One has promised her the whole of mankind 
make disciples of all nations, lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world (in order to weigh this utterance 
truly, we need but compare verse xi. 23) ; on the other, she 
sees her very existence threatened by the hatred of the powers 
of this world. 4 The writer is especially concerned not to give 
any provocation to the Roman authorities, and it is not with 
out design that he draws Pilate and his wife (who is well- 
disposed towards Jesus) in so favourable a light. j Since the 
later years of Domitian s reign, 7 Christianity had had every 

xxiv. 48. 2 xxv. -5. :! xxviii. 18-20. 4 x. 17 fol. 

* xvii. 27. 6 xxvii. 11-24 and 58. ; See pp. 212. 283. 



25.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 309 

reason to assert its political harmlessness, and if possible to call 
up political personages of the past to bear witness to the fact. 

But the decisive argument, in my opinion, is the religious 
attitude of Matthew. Though its author is so conservative in 
his treatment of the tradition, he is already far enough 
removed from it in spirit ; he writes a Catholic Gospel, and his 
truly Catholic temper gained for his work the first place 
among the Gospels. A Christian who could summarise the task 
of the Christian missionaries in the words baptise them . . . 
and teach them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded 
you, who is already familiar with a baptismal formula 
expressed in precise Trinitarian terms, 2 can scarcely belong to 
the first century. Christianity, indeed, as is finely shown 
especially in xxv. 31-46, is still, properly, only perfect 
righteousness, the school of goodness and self-sacrifice, the 
community which accepts the new law given by Jesus for 
the ethical interest prevails throughout over the dogmatic 
but such a community needs a firm organisation and a clear 
code of laws, such as we find in xvi. 18 fol. and xviii. 15-17. 
In Matthew s eyes the community, the Church, forms the 
highest disciplinary authority, and is the keeper of all 
heavenly gifts of grace ; here, in fact, we find the primitive 
Catholicism already complete in its fundamental features. It 
was the strangest mistake that criticism could commit to 
place this essentially Catholic Gospel first among all the 
evangelistic products of the early Church. The partisans of 
tradition might be forgiven for it, for to them the most 
precious is always the oldest ; but in defence of criticism it 
can only be urged that even at the present day there are 
many to whom a slight tinge of Jewish colour counts as a sure 
sign of pre-Catholic origin, and that Hellenisation is pro 
claimed far too one-sidedly as the one cardinal point of distinc 
tion between primitive Christian and early Catholic theology. 

3. Who the author was and to what province he belonged 
will probably never be known. The only certain thing is that 
he wrote for Greek readers who knew no Hebrew, for he 
translates Hebrew words to them. For instance, as early 

1 xxviii. 19 fol. 

2 In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. 



310 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

as i. 23, we have Emanuel, that is, God with us. From 
his knowledge of the Hebrew language and Bible we 
may conclude that he was himself a born Jew. He is 
intimately acquainted with the Old Testament, and expounds 
it in the manner of the Palestinian scribes, without using the 
Alexandrian method. That in his book quotations from, or at 
any rate references to, the Old Testament occur much more 
frequently than in those of the other Evangelists w r e naturally 
do not include here the quotations in Jesus own discourses 
is no mere coincidence ; it hangs together with the funda 
mental tendency of his work, revealed as early as i. 22 
all this is come to pass that it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken by the prophet. l Such expressions occur through 
out the. whole Gospel. 2 Besides the main purpose common to 
all the Evangelists, 3 it is evident that the author had in view 
the special purpose of showing, at every important point in 
his narrative, how the prophecies of holy Scripture had been 
fulfilled. How obviously has the account of the entry into 
Jerusalem 4 been shaped to fit this point of view ! Jesus asks 
for two animals, an ass and a colt tied with her, simply in 
order to suit Zechariah ix. 9. The object of Matthew is, as it 
were, to wrest the Old Testament from unbelieving Israel and 
hold it up as the patron of the Christian faith. Our author 
did not, of course, stand alone in the Church of his day in pur 
suing such an object, and thus stories like that of the murder 
of the Innocents, which seem to have been invented merely for 
the purpose of reproducing Old Testament types in the history 
of the fulfilment, were not necessarily first imagined by him. 
It was the first duty of Christian theology to find out Old 
Testament prophecies according to which the Messiah must 
suffer and die, and this task was begun even before the con 
version of Paul. The second would then naturally follow- 
that of collecting together the remaining prophecies concerning 
Christ and demonstrating their conformity with the actual 
history of Jesus. Here it would of course be all-important to 
refute the calumnies of the Jews against Jesus and their attacks 
upon his Messiahship, by the words of Scripture ; hence we 

1 Is. vii. 14. 2 Note verses 5, 15. 17, 23 in chapter ii. alone. 

3 See 23, 3. 4 xxi. 1-11. 



25.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 311 

have xxvi. 15 and xxvii. 9 in justification of the Judas episode 
Zechariah had foretold it all, down to the very details. An 
enormous amount of work of this kind had been done before 
the appearance of Matthew, and we are not in a position to 
decide which are his own discoveries and where he is depen 
dent on others. At any rate the selection of them was his 
own affair, and thus we may at once regard as typical of 
Matthew s taste the genealogy of Jesus. 1 Here the three 
series each containing fourteen generations (from Abraham to 
David, from David to the Babylonian Captivity, from the 
latter to Jesus) all arranged by dint of a clumsy forcing of the 
Old Testament data are obviously meant to make the reader 
feel that the whole line has now found its consummation, and 
that the Seed of Abraham, the Son of David, must needs 
make his appearance now for the salvation of all peoples, 
whereas fourteen generations earlier, calamity and curse had 
reached their highest point. 

Nothing is, however, more mistaken than to regard the 
Jewish Christian who clung to the Old Testament as a bigoted 
Israelite and an anti-Pauline. The wicked man of the 
parable 2 who sows tares at night among the wheat has 
been identified with Paul, but Matthew himself identifies him 
with the devil. 3 At first sight it might be tempting to inter 
pret the prediction of false prophets and of increasing law 
lessness (dvo/Ata) among the faithful as directed against 
the law-freed Paulinism. But did not Paul himself predict 
with horror the revelation of the lawless one ? r It is true 
that the Gospel contains words that have in them very little 
of the Pauline spirit, such as Go not into any way of the 
Gentiles, 6 and still more the dwelling on the eternal con 
tinuance of every letter of the Law in v. 17-19. In Matt. 
xxiv. 20 Jesus bids his disciples pray that their flight be not 
in the winter, neither on a Sabbath " (fj-yfts a-a/3/3dra) 
possibly meaning the Sabbatical year ?), whereas Mark fears 
the winter only. Matt. xvi. 17-19 seem to be intended for the 
sole purpose of proclaiming Peter as the representative of Christ 

1 i. 1-17. 2 xiii. 25-28. 3 xiii. 39. 4 xxiv. 11 fol. 

2. Thess. ii. 8. B x. 5, 6 (xv. 24). 

7 xxiv. 20 ; cf. Mark xiii. 18. 



312 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

on earth, and of denying the right of any co-ordinate authority 
such as that of Paul beside his own, within the Church ; 
but the same writer, alone of all the Evangelists, had inserted 
in the story of Jesus walking on the sea an episode which 
exposes Peter s want of faith as clearly as that of chap, xxvi. 2 
exposes his cowardice during Jesus trial. Are we to suppose 
that the severe Wherefore didst thou doubt ? of xiv. 31 is 
spoken through the lips of Jesus by the Paul of Galatians ii. 
11 ? Assuredly not, for the anecdote is merely meant to show 
that the faith of a true disciple must be able to compass all the 
miracles performed by Christ himself. But if the anti-Petrine 
bias is a delusion here, the Petrine or Jewish-Christian bias is 
no less so in xvi. 17-19 and, more especially, in xvii. 24-27 ; in 
this latter passage Peter merely represents the whole class of 
free sons of God created by Christ, while the words of the 
former whatever meaning may have attached to them in the 
first instance cannot have been meant by the Evangelist, who 
wrote long after Peter s death, as a distinction conferred upon 
Peter alone : in his eyes Peter stood for the Apostolate, for the 
Apostolic Church. 

In chap, xxvii., moreover, we might almost detect a trace 
of anti-Jewish feeling in Matthew ; the Gentile Pilate is 
represented as washing his hands in innocence of the deed, 
while all the people cry out : His blood be on us, and on our 
children ! 3 Matthew takes pains, in fact, to represent the 
High Priest and the 6 ^Xos as those who were breathing 
slaughter against Jesus. Finally, against the utterances on 
the side of the Law we must set others that not only attack 
Pharisaism and all its piety of word and formula in the 
sharpest way, but were also never written or spoken by a 
legally strict Israelite ; of these we may mention the sum 
ming up of the whole of the Old Testament in the twofold 
commandment concerning the love of God arid the love of 
one s neighbour, 1 and the saying All things therefore what 
soever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye 
also unto them ; for this is the law and the prophets. 5 Such 
contradictions in the same Gospel are nothing exceptional : 

1 xiv. 28-32. - Of. Mark. xiv. 3 Verses 24-2G. 

4 xxii. 34-40. 5 vii. 12. 



25.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 313 

for instance, the warning against the teaching of the Pharisees 
in xvi. 12 scarcely agrees with xxiii. 3, all things therefore 
whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe a command 
which seems to be already revoked in xxiii. 4, particularly in 
connection with xi. 29 fol. Later writers misunderstood indi 
vidual sayings of Jesus ; and moreover in different circum 
stances and from different points of view Jesus expressed 
himself differently about the same matter. In following his 
authorities, Matthew incorporated sayings of a strongly con 
servative stamp without difficulty, because to him it seemed 
obvious that, rightly explained, each of these sayings agreed 
perfectly with his Christianity. But wherever his own 
hand shows itself, one sees that his method of thought is 
as universalistic as it is free from the bondage of the Law. 
In the parable of the marriage feast he sees the rejection 
of the unbelieving Israelites and the calling of the Gentiles, 
and the law on the fulfilment of which everything depends, 
is not for him the Jewish ritual law, but the moral law, 
which the teaching of Jesus first led men to understand in all 
its fulness. 

Nor is the righteousness which he prizes so highly that of 
which the Pharisee boasts in the parable,- but rather that 
which was to be won by obedience to the commandments of 
Christ, and the Sermon on the Mount is intended to impart 
the principal substance of this Christian code. The Evangelist 
looks upon v. 17-19 merely as confirming the agreement 
between the old revelation and the new ; he represents Jesus 
not as the depreciator of duty and service, but as the teacher 
who first showed men how to understand the Law and the 
Prophets in all their profundity and gigantic scope. The 
ceremonial ordinances do not enter into his thoughts : they 
have already disappeared from his horizon ; and thus the 
sayings of v. 17 etc. present no difficulties to him. 

Of course the Saviour was not the destroyer but the 
fulfiller of the Old Testament, both in his works and in his 
teaching (but, of the Law and the Prophets, be it observed) ; 
it is to prove this that the First Evangelist writes his Gospel ; 
nevertheless, for the believer there can be no other authority 

1 xxii. 1-14. - Luke xviii. 9 fol. 



314 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

than Jesus himself. 1 There are no specifically Pauline 
formulae in Matthew, but still less are there traces of any 
animosity against Paul. The writer has no part in the 
strifes of the Apostolic age, and to put him down as belonging 
to one or other of its parties is a fundamental mistake. He 
represents the standpoint, not of Paul, nor of Peter, nor of 
Apollos, nor of the Corinthian men of Christ, but of the 
Church, the building of which he alone foretells in the trium 
phant words of xvi. IS. It is no mere chance that those 
Judaists who separated themselves from the Catholic Church 
were not satisfied with this Gospel. And, indeed, it would have 
been the strangest irony of history if a Gospel of Judaising 
or Esseiiising tendency had so quickly conquered the hearts of 
all Gentile Christians as to remain to this day the principal 
Gospel of Christendom, the Gospel by which the picture of 
Jesus has been engraved on all our minds ! Certainly Matthew 
has come to be the most important book ever written, but not 
through any misunderstanding or because of any mere advan 
tages of form. It has exerted its enormous influence upon the 
Church because it was written by a man who bore within 
him the spirit of the growing Church Universal, and who, free 
from all party interests, knew how to write a Catholic Gospel : 
that is to say, a Gospel destined and fitted for all manner of 
believers. 

4. Much, indeed, in the individuality of Matthew has 
favoured this triumphal progress of the First Gospel. Leav 
ing out of account the beginning and end, it is richer in 
material even than Luke. The ingenious system by which 
the writer has made use of the numbers 3, 7, 10 or 12 for 
grouping together sections related either in matter or form, 
has remained for the most part unnoticed ; on the other hand, 
his love for making long and homogeneous compilations, like 
the Sermon on the Mount, which he has put together out of 
all kinds of disjointed material, like the chapter of the seven 
para^is, 2 the discourse at the sending forth of the disciples, 3 
the decithdvm of Woe, 4 the discourse on the last things, 3 as 
well as tiu" in : on about the miracles of Jesus r> all these 

Tr 

1 xxviii. iC. - xiii. 3 Chap. x. * Chap, xxiii. 

" Chaps. xXi d xxv. 6 Chaps, viii. and ix. 



25.] THE GOSPEL ACCOKDING TO MATTHEW 315 

have won him the gratitude of those who care more for an 
arrangement calculated to aid the memory than for chrono 
logical accuracy. In telling his story Matthew hits the 
happy mean between circumstantial prolixity and obscure 
terseness ; he is easy to read, for the reader s attention 
is never diverted from the matter in hand by anything 
artificial or striking in his form. The Hebrew colouring 
which comes out so abundantly (though not only, it is true, 
in this Gospel) in the many pleonasms like and it came to 
pass, that, * and he answered and spake (esp. \sjwv after a 
verbutn dicendi), or in the placing of the predicate before 
the subject - ; and the preference (peculiar to Matthew) for 
connecting the different sections with after these things and 
in that tune, :; are admirably suited to the quiet, even tone in 
which the common folk like to have such stories told. However 
many written sources Matthew may have borrowed from, we 
must acknowledge, even without comparing them, that he has 
not made himself their slave, but has used them with absolute 
freedom, assimilating them as he thinks best. The individuality 
cf the author makes itself so strongly felt from beginning to 
end both in style and tendency, in cadence and thought, that it 
is impossible to think of the Gospel as a mere compilation. 

5. The integrity of Matthew has recently been disputed, 
generally with the object of weeding out later and, as it is 
said, interested interpolations made in the genuine Matthew, 
or even with that of distinguishing a later editor from the 
earlier compiler, a deutero- from a proto-Matthew. The most 
vigorous champion of this latter view is Soltau. Harnack 
considers it an obvious fact that xxviii. 9 and 10 form a 
simple duplicate of xxviii. 5-7, due to the desire to fit an 
appearance at Jerusalem into the Gospel, but he also has his 
suspicions concerning the birth-story, the confession of Peter 
and the organisation of the Christian community. Soltau 
ascribes the following additions to the later supplementer : 
chaps, i. and ii. ; all illustrative quotations, such as vv. 
iii. 3, iv. 14-16, etc. ; those paragraphs which depend upon the 

1 E.g., vii. 28, xxvi. 1. 

2 For instance, \tyet avry 6 Irjo-ous, xviii. 22 ; airexpiOiiffav 5i ai <pp6vt/j.oi 
\fyovcrai, xxv. 9. 3 rare, 4v littlvtf rf katpf. 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

arguments of such quotations, such as xxvi. 15, the stories of 
the ass and the colt and of Judas, 2 and also v. 18 fol. 
because this latter represents the fundamental principle of 
illustrative quotation ; Matthew s three Petrine legends, 3 and, 
in the story of the Passion, xxvii. 19, 24 fol., 52 fol., the 
passage from xxvii. 62 to xxviii. 20. and a few isolated expres 
sions recalling passages in the Old Testament. Soltau 
defends this hypothesis on the grounds that the contrast in 
language between the additions and the rest of the Gospel, 
and also in style between the discourses and the more con 
siderable additions, demand a difference of author ; that the 
interpolations generally disturb and interrupt the context, 
whereas as a rule Matthew impresses us with its uniformity 
of structure, and finally that the original Matthew was anti- 
Judaistic and undogniatic in his opinions, while on the other 
hand the Judaistic supplementer maintained a strictly dog 
matic point of view. These observations all contain an 
element of truth, and only the second is somewhat wrongly 
stated ; these additions are SsvTspaxrsis, later accretions, 
which it was beyond the skill of the Evangelist to weld into a 
perfect whole with the original substance of the Gospel 
matter ; but must we therefore assume that they were inter 
polated as afterthoughts into the finished Gospel ? This 
hypothesis would moreover leave but a sorry patchwork task 
to the Proto-Matthew, and ascribes everything with any 
independent stamp upon it to his later amplifier. In reality 
we are never forced by our First Gospel to assume the exis 
tence of two different editors apart, of course, from those 
portions in which the writer s authorities are distinctly 
traceable ; it presents a whole, proceeding from a single mind, 
as far at least as a truly Catholic Christian of the year 100 or 
thereabouts could create a whole out of such materials. The 
theory of the Deutero-Matthew was, in fact, only brought 
forward to make the criticism of the Synoptics easier, for 
certain writers wished to assert both the dependence of Luke 
on Matthew and his priority before Matthew. If this is 
established, we must look upon Matthew as a hybrid produc 
tion ; but on this point we would refer our readers to 28 and 

1 xxi. 2-5. xxvii. 3-10. 3 Chaps, xiv. xvi. and \vii. 



25.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 317 

29. The hybridity of Matthew, which is in a sense shared by 
Luke, is to be explained by the facts of religious and tradi 
tional developments, not by hypotheses of literary history 
alone. Under the circumstances, therefore, the mere fact that 
we find older and newer material intermingled in his book does 
not justify us in dividing the First Evangelist (the beginning 
and end of whose work correspond so well together) into 
two persons, of one of whom we could form no conception. 
Deutero-Matthew, moreover, must have expunged large sections 
of Proto-Matthew s work, especially his ending : why not, then, 
have corrected it ? 

26. The Gospel according to Mark 

[Cf. works mentioned in 23 and 24. Besides these, 
H. A. W. Meyer, i. 2, 1892, by B. and J. Weiss; International 
Critical Commentary (1896), by E. Gould, and P. Schanz s work 
mentioned in 25. A. Klostermann s Das Marcusevangelium 
nach seinem Quellenwerthe fur die evangelische Geschichte (1867) 
is a defence in the apologetic interest, in parts full of caprice, of 
the priority of Matthew to Mark, but in wealth of material and in 
sterling quality it has not been equalled by any later work, and cer 
tainly not surpassed by that of W. Hadorn, Die Entstehung des 
Marcusevangelium (1898). For par. 5 (end) see Conybeare s article 
in the Expositor for 1893, entitled Aristion, the author of the last 
12 verses of Mark (p. 241) ; P. Eohrbach s Der Schluss des Mar 
cusevangelium, der Vierevangelienkanon und der kleinasiatische 
Presbyter, (1894) ; Adolf Harnack in Texte und Untersuchungen 
(1894), xii. 1 b, p. 6, and also his Chronologic, vol i. pp. 696 fol.] 

1. As regards the early evidences for Mark, the state 
of the case is precisely as with those for Matthew. They 
go back to Papias, 1 who had heard from the Presbyter that 
Mark had been Peter s interpreter, and had noted down the 
sayings and doings of Jesus accurately, as far as his memory 
served him, but not in the right order. 2 The want of order 
he excuses by saying that Mark himself was never a hearer or 
follower of the Lord, but derived all his knowledge from the 
discourses of Peter, which in their turn were always adapted 
to the needs of the moment, so that they could not be called 

1 Eusebius, Hist. Ecclcs. iii. 39, 15 ; see 25, 1. 2 o\> pevrot TOI. 



318 AN INTEODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

a compilation of the words of the Lord. Mark, therefore, was 
not at all in a position to arrange them in the right order 
and to produce a complete Gospel ; he rightly attached 
the greatest importance to omitting nothing and falsify 
ing nothing in what he had heard. How far Papias, who 
measures Mark by the standard of another Gospel (probably 
that of John ) and who thinks himself obliged to excuse 
his deficiencies, is here mingling his own reflections with 
the naturally shorter account given by the Presbyter, is no 
business of ours to decide ; the statement concerning the 
authorship of Mark is certainly the oldest kernel of the story, 
and we who recognised a sound kernel in the parallel state 
ment concerning Matthew, certainly have no cause to reject it 
here without a hearing. The First Epistle of Peter also 
assumes the presence of a Mark in the following of Peter. 2 
Col. iv. 10, where Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, is men 
tioned as the companion of Paul, :! makes us think of John 
Mark in the Acts, whose relations with Paul were not always 
of the best, and whom nothing could deter from joining Peter 
later on. The knowledge of Greek and Hebrew which would 
qualify him for the title of interpreter may without hesitation 
be attributed to a relation of Barnabas, and the writer of the 
Gospel possesses this knowledge : he preserves Aramaic 
words, but translates them correctly into Greek, as, for 
instance, talitha cwmi, which is, being interpreted, Maiden, 
I say unto thee, arise. " 

It is true that we shall have to give a different answer 
from that given by Papias or the Presbyter, to the question 
whether Mark arranged his material in the chance order into 
which Peter threw the words and deeds of Jesus in his 
teaching. Papias s account of Mark s procedure is, in my 
opinion, psychologically untenable. In reality Mark has 
the best ra^is of all the Evangelists, for, broadly speaking, 
the life of Jesus did unfold itself in the way in which Mark 
describes it. At first the object of universal wonder, he 
soon provoked opposition, and by dint of his successful efforts 
towards the moral elevation of the people and their liberation 

1 See p. 305. 2 1. Peter v. 13. 3 Cf. Philem. 24 ; 2. Tim. iv. 11. 
4 Acts xii. 12, 25, xv. 37-39. 5 Mark v. 41. 



26.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK 319 

from the yoke of the Pharisees and the tutelage of the 
Scribes, he drew down upon himself that mortal enmity of 
the upper classes which drove him gradually to withdrawal, 
to flight, and the limitation of his work to a small circle of 
disciples, until at last the opportunity came for his complete 
destruction. But Papias s mistake is one of judgment only, 
and does not in the least affect the fact attested by him : 
that John Mark wrote a Gospel founded on reminiscences of 
the Petrine circle. The writer of our Mark never pretends 
to have been an eye-witness. The anecdote told by him 
alone, 1 of the mysterious young man who followed Jesus 
after his capture, when the disciples had already fled, and 
then when hands were laid on him, left his fine linen cloth, 
and fled naked, can be taken, as many wish, to refer to the 
narrator, without the Mark-hypothesis being in the least 
endangered thereby ; for this young man, who only appears 
once, is not represented as being an actual hearer of the 
Lord, which Mark himself certainly was not. The proba 
bility is that we have in this story a piece of the very oldest 
tradition, just as we have in the saying 2 that Simon of 
Gyrene, who carried the cross, was the father of Alexander 
and Piufus. The persons in question were still known to 
Mark, but the other Evangelists pass them over in silence, 
because they know nothing of them and no religious interest 
attaches to such statements. 

There is no doubt that Peter is especially prominent in 
this Gospel. The public ministry of Jesus begins with the 
calling of Peter " ; and the healing of his wife s mother is surely 
mentioned only because of his own grateful remembrance of 
the incident. Exactly at the right point in the narrative 
Mark brings about the distinction between the two names 
Simon and Peter 5 ; later on (i a saying is put into the mouth of 
Peter (Matthew attributes it to the disciples 7 ) which could 
perfectly well have been said by any other follower. Still more 
striking is the way in which Peter is expressly named beside 
his disciples in xvi. 7 as the recipient of the command to go 
before into Galilee, where the risen Lord would show himself. 

1 xiv. 51 fol. - xv. 21. 3 i. 10-18. 4 i. 30 fol. 

5 Mark iii. 16. u x. 28, xi. 21. 7 Matt. xxi. 20. 



320 AN INTEODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

Nevertheless, the Gospel of Mark cannot be called Petrine in 
the sense of having been compiled at Peter s dictation, or 
as forming a valuable authority not only for Peter s recollec 
tions of the life and sufferings of Jesus, but also for the 
Petrine theology, and even for the personality, tempera 
ment and disposition of the Apostle. It is perhaps possible 
that Peter might not have withheld from the knowledge of 
his brethren stories so deeply discreditable to himself as 
that of his denial l or that of viii. 32 fol., where Jesus 
rebukes him as Satan ; it is perhaps possible that many a 
mythical feature may have found its way into his picture of 
Jesus, especially in his story of the last days, that he was 
capable of taking pleasure in miraculous tales like that of the 
destruction of the two thousand swine, 2 and that a half- 
visionary experience like that of the Transfiguration scene : 
may not have been improbable in his case ; but could he have 
related anything so purely legendary as xv. 36, or as the two 
stories of the feeding of the multitude ? If Papias had not 
suggested the idea, in fact, we should scarcely have thought 
of claiming Peter as the authority for the statements made in 
Mark s narrative ; Mark s intention was to give us the Gospel, 
not the Gospel according to Peter. He shows himself, besides, 
to be so skilful a narrator and so fully master of his 
materials that we should be doing him an injustice in placing 
him arbitrarily in dependence on Peter, as the ancients wished 
to do, out of ecclesiastical considerations. Nowhere does the 
Gospel suggest the idea that its author was fettered by his 
material ; all he tells seems to come straight from his heart, 
the Gospel he offers is complete in itself : would this have 
been so successfully accomplished if he had confined himself 
to what he had casually learnt from Peter ? Moreover, if we 
believe that Mark was using a written document in chap, xiii., 
we must by so doing abandon the Petrine foundation. 

No, Mark too, like Luke, was a collector ; his work 
did not grow up under the shadow of one mighty name 
alone. A man who, though a friend of Peter, had had 
opportunities, for many decades, of hearing other reports from 
other men concerning the great age of salvation, must have 

1 xiv. 30, 66-72. - Chap. v. 3 ix. 2 etc. 



26.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK 321 

written a Gospel different indeed from one which Peter himself 
or his simple interpreter might have produced. 

2. All that this Gospel reveals concerning the theo 
logical position of its author agrees with the result just 
obtained. Different critics have imputed the most opposite 
tendencies to him : some declare that his Gospel is directly 
Pauline ; others, that it breathes the purest Apostolic tradition ; 
others, again, that it is the Gospel of conscious neutrality, 
intended to effect a general reconciliation, by the avoidance of 
extreme utterances on either side, of all parties on a common 
Evangelistic ground. All this, however, is theory forced upon 
it from outside. In the writer himself we can trace no 
tendency but that of telling the Gospel of Jesus Christ as 
movingly as possible, and of demonstrating his glory through 
his own words and deeds the tendency, in fact, which every 
Gospel must display. The author did not wish to gain favour 
with any particular creed, school or party. His leanings 
towards Pauline views, which Volkmar discovered in him in so 
many places, 1 are of just as problematic a nature as the 
contrast in which Mark is supposed to stand to the anti-Pauline 
Apocalypse of John.- Phrases that sometimes have a Pauline 
ring, like Abba, Father, 3 or ,the saying about the fulfilling 
of the time, 1 need not if we must insist at all upon direct 
authority for such trifles lead us to doubt the authorship of 
Mark, for Mark certainly came under the influence of Paul. 
But the material which the writer wishes to reproduce and 
to reproduce faithfully and without any subjective additions 
had its origin in the Primitive Community, and Mark 
would certainly not have been the man to Paulinise it, or 
to have consciously coloured it in any way. From the Gospel 
itself we derive but one impression concerning the author : that 
he was a born Jew, familiar with the circle of the original 
Apostles, and especially interested in Peter, but also a much- 
travelled person, rejoicing in the fact that the Gospel was to 
be preached to all the nations. 5 

The confession which he puts into the mouth of the Gentile 

1 Cp. Mark xiii. 35 with Rom. xiii. 12. J Mark xiii. 26 fol. 

1 Only to be found in Mark xiv. 36 ; Bom. viii. 15 ; Gal. iv. 6. 
4 Mark i. 15 ; cf. Gal. iv. 4. 5 Mark xiii. 10. 

Y 



322 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. T. 

centurion beside the Cross, Truly this man was the Son of 
God, is characteristic of his attitude towards the Gentile 
mission. Judaistic leanings, Law-bound anxieties, are both 
outside his horizon ; in his eyes the religion of the crucified 
and risen Son of God was a new world -religion. 

We shall never know whether Mark originally wrote for a 
limited circle of readers or not. He certainly did not write 
for Palestinian readers, for there would have been no need to 
translate Golgotha and other words of the kind for their 
benefit, and it would have been superfluous to explain to Jewish 
Christians in general the time-indication the first day of 
unleavened bread by the addition when they slew the 
passover. These little parentheses, however, cannot be ex 
plained away as the additions of a translator, for the suggestion 
that there is an original Hebrew or Aramaic document at the 
bottom of our Greek Gospel is conspicuously ill-judged. No 
translator could have created the originality of language 
shown by Mark. The tradition, according to one branch of 
which Mark was written in Alexandria, while another and con 
siderably older branch assigns it to Rome, is here of little use 
to us : the first is the outcome of the legend that Mark was 
Bishop of Alexandria ; the second springs from the remem 
brance of Peter s activity in Piome, and the assumption that 
the interpreter must have worked in the same place as his 
master was then an exceedingly natural one. According to 
Philemon and Colossians, Mark really went to Rome, and it is 
very possible that he stayed there a considerable time, and 
perhaps even that he received the impulse to begin his work 
there, and stayed to complete it. The influence of the Latin 
language upon the Greek of Mark s Gospel has been urged in 
support of this hypothesis, which, however, still remains a 
mere hypothesis. Some Latin words he takes over bodily 
(like <\yecav, KT/VO-OS, /csvrvplcov), and the widow s two mites -he 
reckons in Roman coinage which make a quadrans. But 
we must not lay too much stress on isolated instances like 
these, for with the expansion of the Roman Empire, Latin 
terms, especially those connected with the law, the army and 
the taxes, would be sure to make themselves used throughout 

1 Mark xiv. 12 - xii. 42. 



26.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK 323 

the world. It is therefore more than bold to point to x. 12 
which is peculiar to Mark as a proof of the Eoman origin 
of the Gospel. The words And if she herself shall put away 
her husband, and marry another, she committeth adultery, 
are certainly surprising from the lips of Jesus, for the divorce 
of a husband by the wife was unknown to the Jew. But are 
we to suppose that Mark, the Jew, was here seeking to 
accommodate the words of Jesus to the Roman marriage-law ? 
If so he must either have become accustomed to the ideas of 
Roman Law with marvellous rapidity, or else have developed 
an incredible degree of subtlety. A much simpler ex 
planation is that he made this addition the wording of which 
is in any case incorrect to the genuine Logion of verse 11 
out of a love of parallelism and of symmetry ; it seemed 
important to him to declare that in the Kingdom of God the 
duties and transgressions of men and women counted alike. 

3. As to the date at which the Second Gospel was com 
posed, the development of the tradition is interesting. 
According to Irenaeus s interpretation of him, Papias (about 
150 A.D.) seems to imply that during the composition of his 
book Mark was no longer able to appeal to Peter for emenda 
tions or advice ; Clement of Alexandria, on the other hand, 
tells us - that when Peter heard of Mark s scheme, he neither 
hindered nor encouraged him, while Eusebius himself main 
tains :i (about 325 A.D.), on the authority of Clement of 
Alexandria and Papias, that by revelation of the Holy 
Spirit Peter had expressed himself well pleased that Mark 
had been moved to write a Gospel, and had verified (or cor 
roborated) the work (fcvpwaai TY)V ypa(f))]v). Post-Eusebian 
theologians simply make Peter commission Mark to do the 
work, taking the former as the actual author, Mark merely 
as the scribe. In this gradation the ideal of Apostolicity is 
realised. Of course, the older theory is the more sensible, for 
the true Apostles never had anything to do with the revision of 
books. That consideration would not, however, prevent Mark s 
Gospel from having been written during Peter s lifetime, 
for Mark certainly did not hold a life appointment as Peter s 
secretary. On the other hand, it is merely fanciful to 

1 iii. 1-7. - Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. vi. 14, 7. 3 Ibid. ii. 15, 2. 

Y 2 



324 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

suppose that there is any special probability in the assumption 
that Mark wrote down the recollections of Peter immediately, 
or at any rate soon after his death : as a matter of fact we are 
thrown back upon the Gospel itself as our sole authority for 
the determination of its date. Well, then, the farewell speech 
of chapter xiii. certainly contains a few expressions, especially 
verse 14, which seem to belong to the years before 70, but in 
these cases Mark is undoubtedly dependent on an older 
source, while his own point of view is betrayed by vv. 1 fol. 
and 9 fol. as that of the later comer. The most signifi 
cant fact, however, is that here the last catastrophe is 
foretold for the days after that tribulation l without the 
addition of the immediately (svOscos) so characteristically 
preserved by Matthew ~ and coming from an earlier source. 
And so, though we are not at all convinced by Volkrnar s 
positive dating of the Gospel at 73 A.D., we should still 
regard the year 70 as the terminus a quo. The lower limit 
can in our opinion only be found by comparison with Matthew 
and Luke, but the fact that it was in Mark s lifetime confines 
us to the first century. 

4. Mark is distinguished by a power of lively presentation ; 
he aims at clearness and at complete pictorial reproduction. 
All through he speaks in the language of the people, without 
any attempt at elegance or symmetry. Hence we find him 
reporting short phrases in oratio recta* running the sentences 
together with /cat, 4 avoiding the use of the relative pronoun, 5 
and using avros very frequently in the oblique cases. 6 His 
style is distinguished by a lack of connecting particles 
between separate paragraphs, and by a certain monotony in 
the introductory forms ; his mode of presentation is in fact 
typically anecdotic. He avoids abstract expressions, and would 

> xiii. 24. - Matt. xxiv. 29. 

3 See, for example, Chap. iii. 11, and the characteristic direct question in 
xiii. 1, as compared with Matt. xxiv. 1 and Luke xxi. 5. 

4 See iii. 1-26, where /ecu is used about thirty times for connecting the 
sentences, 5e only once, -ydp twice. 

5 E.g., ii. 15 : there were many and they followed him = many who 
followed him. 

6 E.g. : seven times in Chap. vii. 32 fol., now of Jesus, now of the deaf 
and dumb. 



26.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK 525 

rather be long-winded than use them ; he is not afraid of 
vulgarisms like Kpdparros? which Matthew and Luke always 
replace by K\ivr] or some such word. In Mark we find also a 
piling on of negatives, and the use :; of such careless colloquial 
isms as they uncovered the roof where he was. He uses the 
present tense by preference, and likes paraphrasing a preterite 
by the phrase and he began, :> just as he likes saying too 
much rather than too little for the sake of greater vividness. 
Note, for instance, the superfluous sgopvgavrss in ii. 4, 
the phrase what manner of stones and what manner of 
buildings in xiii. 1, and the explanatory details about the 
time in xiii. 35 whether at even, or at midnight, or at 
cockcrowing, or in the morning. He has an especial fond 
ness for the adverb immediately (evQvs) and similar 
hyberbolical turns of phrase. Hence it is that there is some 
thing fresh and strong and primitive about his whole presen 
tation, particularly in its very awkwardnesses. Now and then 
his taste reminds us of that displayed by an old reviser of 
Codex D, : in dealing with the texts of the Gospels, or more 
particularly with the Acts ; in many cases his downright, 
pleonastic mode of expression sounds like an intentional 
strengthening of that of his fellow-Evangelists, with its lack 
of energy and nerve, and this perhaps partly explains the 
hypothesis of Griesbach and Baur, which regards Mark as a 
mere excerptor from Matthew and Luke. But in reality his 
naive freshness is a very different product from the reflec 
tiveness of a later generation, as shown by these emendators, 
and in the comparatively rare instances in which Codex D 
strikes the true, primitive note of Mark, in its version of the 
Acts, Matthew or Luke, it also is reproducing the genuine, 
earliest text. 

5. The integrity of Mark has been the subject of endless 
discussion among the critics. I do not mean to refer to the 
excessive amount of early emendation which gathered round 
his text during the first centuries, out of the wish to bring it 



1 Cf. xiii. 19, air apx^s Kriatws V fKrifftv o Beds. - ii. 4, 9, 11 fol., vi. 55. 

3 See, for example, xiii. 2, ov /ur; d<j>07j [u5e] \l8os . . . &s oi> p^ KaraXvOrj. 

4 ii. 4. 4 See i. 45, And he began to preach. 
6 See infra, 32, 6, 52, 2. 



326 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

into closer accord with the texts of Matthew or Luke, but to the 
hypotheses of an original Mark, which according to some was 
shorter than the form we now have, according to others longer. 
Indeed, some have actually gone so far as to distinguish a 
first, second and third Mark. The least hazardous of all 
these theories is that of the existence of later interpolations, 
such as vv. i. 2, 3 ; the line between them and the above- 
mentioned emendations is indeed not easy to draw. But 
even here it is well to proceed with caution ; Mark i. 5-8, for 
instance, can no longer be taken as an interpolation direct 
from Matthew, as soon as the reader follows Codex D ! in 
reading, as against all other versions, clothed in a garment 
of camel s skin (Ssppiv Ka^\ov) instead of clothed in 
camel s hair with a leathern girdle about his loins. - The 
hypotheses of an original Mark arise, however, only from 
the wish for a simpler solution of the Synoptic problem. 
They can never have been based on the study of Mark 
alone, for such a study nowhere produces the impression that 
any large portion has dropped out, or that any has been put 
in by a strange hand. If we read Matthew and Luke beside 
him, we may naturally wonder why the story of the centurion 
at Capernaum does not exist in Mark, still more why he has 
not a word of Matthew s great Sermon on the Mount. Is 
it possible that even the Lord s Prayer should not have 
been known to him, or that he should not have thought it 
worth inserting ? All the same, we must not foist these items 
upon the original Mark. putting them in, say, after iii. 19, 
but remind ourselves that it was never Mark s intention to 
write a complete Gospel. Besides giving us in the first place 
sayings of Jesus which represent actual events, then the dis 
cussions with Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees, and the 
prophetic utterances 3 which were necessary in order to 
prove his hero at every turn master of the situation, he 
contents himself with setting forth in but few examples ! the 
actual manner in which Jesus spoke or taught. Even there 
he is not essentially concerned with the substance of 
Jesus teaching as such, but wishes to demonstrate that the 

1 See below 32 par. 6, 52 par. 2. - See Matt. iii. 4. 

3 viii. 31 fol., ix. 30 foL, x. 32 fol., and ch. xiii. iv. 1-34. 



26.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK 327 

division created among his countrymen by his activity, 
and the slow progress made by his cause, had all been fore 
told and explained in advance by Jesus himself : that, in 
fact, he had not only foreseen all that had come to pass, 
but had not even desired anything else. However early 
or late the Gospel may have been written even as 
an abstract of Matthew and Luke after 140 A.D. it 
is inconceivable that the writer should have been un 
acquainted with the many sayings of the Lord which are not 
to be found in his Gospel, or that he should merely have put 
them indifferently aside, while it is equally inconceivable that 
these sayings can have been struck out by a later hand. And 
to impute to mere chance the disappearance the almost 
exclusive disappearance of the discourses of Jesus would be 
the most venturesome supposition of all. 

But Mark certainly did not write with a constant, though 
tacit, reference to a collection of Logia from which the reader 
might fill in what he himself left unsaid ; his work does not 
bear the character of a supplement ; his object rather was to 
provide a Gospel as aid to the work of propaganda, at a 
time when men were beginning to recognise that they must no 
longer confine themselves to the direct action of person upon 
person if the command of Jesus in xiii. 10 was to be fulfilled in 
time, but must invoke the power of the pen or of the press, 
as we should say to-day in the service of the Gospel. In 
fascinating the minds of unknown readers with the sublime 
picture of the Saviour of the world, they would naturally 
emphasise those features which brought out what was kingly, 
irresistible, divine about him, though of course their choice 
would be subject to the influence of Jewish taste ; on the 
other hand, they would reserve for fellow-believers the rules 
of conduct he had laid down, his teaching concerning prayer, 
trust in God, the forgiveness of sins, etc. We should 
probably proceed in just the opposite way among our own 
fellows ; we attribute a mightier persuasive power to the 
Lord s Prayer, to the parables of the Prodigal Son, the Good 
Samaritan, the Pharisee and the Publican, or to the Sermon 
on the Mount, than to any of the miracle-stories ; but Mark 
wrote his Gospel for his own contemporaries, basing it upon 



328 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEAV TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

the experiences of long years of missionary toil. We can fully 
understand the reasons for his method, and we recognise in 
Matthew and Luke, who strive after an ideal of completeness 
especially in these very sayings a later stage of Gospel 
literature ; it is precisely the one-sidedness of Mark that gives 
us the strongest proof of its greater age. The history of the 
text may show that our accepted version of this Gospel differs 
from the original to the extent of a few interpolations or 
suppressions, but our idea of Mark is not essentially altered 
thereby. And that idea suits perfectly with the place in 
history to which, as we believe, our Mark and not a supposed 
primitive version, belongs. 

There is only one passage in the existing text of Mark 
that w r e must unconditionally reject, and that is the con 
clusion, vv. xvi. 9-20. There is an obvious discrepancy 
between it and what goes before for we had been led to 
expect appearances in Galilee, the style exhibits none of 
Mark s peculiarites, the verses are all to be found in Matthew, 
Luke and John, and even the external evidence in their 
favour is as unsatisfactory as possible. Jerome had hardly 
ever come across the passage in Greek copies. It is true 
that Mark cannot originally have concluded with xvi. 8 
* for they were afraid ; in v. 7, appearances of Jesus are fore 
told, the occurrence of which the Evangelist must naturally 
have described. For this reason we cannot regard as genuine 
a, second and quite short ending, preserved in certain Greek 
MSS., which only assumes the existence of these visions, 
but does not describe them. If we cannot make up our 
minds to the desperate expedient of saying that Mark was 
unable to finish his Gospel, and since it is also an extremely 
precarious assumption that the last verses of Mark have dis 
appeared by chance perhaps by the accidental detachment 
of the last leaf of the autographon, so that copyists were 
compelled to stop at xvi. 8 there is only one explanation 
left to us, viz. that the true ending was intentionally re 
moved some time in the second century, before the book 
had gained Canonical recognition. This was probably done 
because it was felt to be intolerable that one Evangelist 
i.e. Mark should make the first appearance of the risen Lord 



26.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK 329 

occur in Galilee, and before Peter alone, while the others 
assigned it to Jerusalem, before the women, or the eleven, or 
the two disciples going to Emmaus. It is not at all impossible 
that Luke, the author of John xxi. and the author of the 
Gospel of Peter were still acquainted with the complete text of 
Mark, nor is it capable of the smallest proof that Matthew 
and Luke no longer possessed it ; but in historical questions 
it is better not to reckon with an unknown quantity. What 
we now read as the ending of Mark is an attempt to help out 
a deficiency so grievous in a sacred book, but the attempt 
cannot have been simultaneous with the suppression of the 
genuine ending, if only because it was less successful. Pos 
sibly we ought to give credence to an Armenian manuscript 
recently discovered by Conybeare, in which the passage in 
question is ascribed to the presbyter Aristion (one of the 
principal authorities of Papias, and therefore probably an 
Asiatic theologian of about the year 110) ; perhaps the verses 
were not originally intended as a substitute for the piece lost 
after xvi. 8, but formed part of an apologetic-historical 
document of some considerable length. If this is so, the 
value of the traditions handed down by this disciple of the 
Lord may, to judge from such an example, be reckoned at 
zero. That, however, is a question pertaining to the history of 
Christian literature. Here we are only concerned with the 
fact that the ending of the original Mark has undoubtedly 
been mutilated ; but this does not affect our judgment with 
regard to the rest of the Gospel, for it was only in cases of 
the most urgent need that the Early Church undertook to 
make suppressions in any valued work of edification. 

27. The Gospel according to Luke 

[Cf. works mentioned at 24. Also H. A. W. Meyer, i. 2, by 
B. and J. Weiss (ed. 8, 1892), and the Internat. Grit. Commentary, 
by A. Plummer (ed. 3, 1900). For special commentaries see P. 
Schanz, 1883 (see 25), and F. Godet, published in French in 
1888 and translated into German by Wunderlich in 1892 full of 
ingenuity, but one-sided and without any historical sense. Cf. 
also T. Vogel s Zur Characteristik des Lucasevangelium nacli 
Sprache und Stil (1899), an amateur philological essay deserving 



330 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

of consideration in many respects, but not for critical questions ; 
A.. Harnack s Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur, vol. i. 
pp. 246-50 ( Die Zeit der Apostelgeschichte und der drei Evan- 
gelien ), and his article entitled Das Magnificat der Elisabeth, 
nebst einigen Bemerkungen zu Lc. i. u. ii. in the Sitzungsberichte 
der koniglichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaft for 1900, 
pp. 538-556.] 

1. There is no tradition worthy of the name concerning 
Luke, whom Papias did not know, or at any rate did not mention. 
The ancients were universally agreed that the writer was that 
Luke, disciple of Paul, who is mentioned in Philem 24, 
2. Tim. iv. 11, and called the physician in Col. iv. 14 : pre 
sumably a native of Antioch. Eusebius naturally lays stress 
on the fact that he was on intimate terms with the other 
Apostles ; Irenaeus was of opinion that the Gospel had only 
been written after the death of Paul, but later writers take 
care to fasten the responsibility, as in the case of Mark, on the 
Apostle himself. Happily for us, the author has supplied a pro 
logue to his Gospel in which, it is true, he says nothing of 
himself, but explains his motives for writing. From this we 
learn (1) that he is not attempting anything unheard of, for 
many of whom, according to the natural interpretation of 
the words, none were eye-witnesses had attempted to com 
pile an account of what was Christian history tear s^o^v ; 
(2) that he does not belong to the original eye-witnesses, does 
not even claim to have had close relations with them or with 
any one of them, for he only wishes to write even as they 
delivered them unto us (that is, to us Christians of a later 
day : of himself he writes directly afterwards in the singular, 
e Sofs Ka/jioi) ; (3) that the older Gospels do not satisfy him, 
because they have not traced the course of all things ac 
curately from the first, and because their order, i.e. the 
chronological arrangement of the individual parts, is faulty ; 
(4) that he bases his confidence of being able to produce some 
thing better than his predecessors, not on any gift of inspiration 
that had been imparted to him, but on his own exhaustive 
and methodical labours. The prologue might indeed have 
been prefixed to any work of profane history just as aptly as 
to this, and it is not religious hesitation at the boldness of 



27.] THE GOSPEL ACCOKDING TO LUKE 331 

venturing to write down the sacred story that underlies verse 
3, but a feeling of the difficulty for him, who was no eye 
witness, of carrying out the task he had undertaken. 

The question as to whether the celebrated companion of 
Paul was the author of this Gospel cannot be decided without 
reference to the Acts. We shall therefore leave it to be dis 
cussed in 32, pars. 3 and 5, and shall here content ourselves 
with obtaining some idea of the peculiarities of the Gospel. 

2. According to verses 3 and 4 of the prologue, the author 
wrote his Gospel for a person who was either a Christian 
catechumen or who at any rate displayed an interest in 
Christianity : that thou mightest know the certainty concern 
ing the things wherein thou wast instructed. This man, 
Theophilus, evidently a person of some distinction (here he is 
greeted as Kparia-rs @eo</>tXe, in the Acts merely as <w @e6$t\6, 
a fact from which the omniscient critics have concluded that 
in the interval between the writing of the Gospel and the Acts 
Theophilus became more intimate with Luke and was probably 
baptised by him), is certainly not the only reader whom Luke 
expected to have, still less a fictitious personage in whom 
every friend of God was to recognise himself, but it was to 
him that the writer, according to the custom of those days, 
dedicated his book when he committed it to the public. The 
purpose which it was intended to serve, however, may never 
theless be gathered from verse 4 : Luke s object is to increase 
the convincing power of the Gospel through the improvements 
which he could offer in the presentation of the Gospel-stories. 
But there is nothing to indicate that he claimed to write the 
Gospel in a new spirit and according to a better interpretation ; 
his predecessors themselves, according to verse 1, had not 
written of anything but those things which are most surely 
believed among us, and this alone inclines us to look askance 
on the theory that he had a special purpose in writing, 
whether of an ultra Pauline or a conciliatory character. In 
fact, the indications of purpose (tendenz) discovered by the 
critics mutually destroy one another. It is true that the 
paragraph in Matthew so strangely favourable to the Law l 
does not appear here, but in reality Luke says the same thing 

1 v. l? foi. 



332 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

in xvi. 17 if anything, in still more emphatic language ; it 
is true, too, that besides the sending out of the Twelve to 
preach the Gospel he relates an exactly similar proceeding in 
the case of seventy others, who are sent forth two by two 2 ; 
but how can there be any question here of an attempt to 
thrust the Twelve out of their position of authority, or of a slight 
cast upon the original Apostles, when a little further on 3 we 
find the precedence of the Twelve in the Kingdom of Heaven 
recognised exactly as in Matthew 4 ? 

Pauline ideas and expressions, on the other hand, are 
scattered but scantily through Luke ; the justified of xviii. 
14, or the words that they may not believe and be saved, in 
the parable of the sower," have a Pauline ring, and the tyopTLa 
Bvaftda-TaKTa of xi. 46 might also be compared with Galatians 
vi. 5, (froprlov /Sao-rdasL ; the grace (%dpis) which was so 
all-important to Paul is, while wholly absent in Mark and 
Matthew, to be found here eight times, and still more fre 
quently in the Acts, but not in the specifically Pauline sense ; 
the reverence with which Luke reserves the death on the 
Cross to Jesus alone, while he uses the expressions put to 
death, hanged, for the two malefactors, in contradistinction 
to Mark and Matthew 7 (though in verse 33 he is obliged by 
his construction to admit the a-ravpovv in their case also) 
reminds us of the sacredness of the * word of the Cross 
in Paul s mind ; finally, x. 8, eat such things as are set before 
you, agrees word for word with 1. Corinthians x. 27 ; but the 
remarkable resemblance between the accounts of the Last 
Supper in Luke and 1. Corinthians 8 rests textually upon an 
uncertain foundation. The beautiful parable of the unprofit 
able servants 5 certainly destroys the delusion of man s 
claims upon God for reward with true Pauline energy, but the 
idea implied therein of the necessity of doing all the things 
that are commanded would, on the other hand, not have been 
admitted by Paul, and moreover a genuine saying of Jesus 
cannot be invoked to attest the theological tendencies of Luke. 
We do not wish to deny the writer a knowledge of Paul s 

1 ix. 1-6. - x. l-l( ). 3 xxii. 30. 4 xix. 28. 

5 viii. 12. 6 See especially vi. 32-34 and xvii. 9. 

7 Mark xv. 27 and 32 ; Matt, xxvii. 38 and 44, ol ffvvtff-ra.vptaft.fvoi avv 
avrf. * Luke xxii. 19 fol. ; 1 Cor. xi. 24 fol. 9 xvii. 7-10. 



27.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE 333 

gospel and of some of his Epistles, but he certainly made 
no attempt to propagate the fundamental ideas of Paulinism 
by means of the sacred story. Broadly speaking, he owes 
neither more nor less to Paul than did the whole Church : 
i.e. the ideas of the universality of salvation l (on account of 
which he gives so much prominence to the Samaritans -) 
and of the boundlessness of God s mercy, as set forth in 
the parable of the prodigal son :i and the incident of the 
malefactor ; 4 but it is precisely in these two points that Paul 
was no more than a faithful and consistent interpreter of 
Jesus. Where we should undoubtedly have been obliged to 
recognise the disciple of Paul i.e. in doctrines of a pre 
existing Christ or of the atoning value of his death Luke 
fails us altogether ; the special features of his picture of Jesus : 
his boundless love towards sinners, showing itself even in 
his prayer from the Cross for his enemies 5 ; his kindly com 
passion towards the despised of men and his whole-hearted 
sympathy with all misfortune these are but the accentuation 
of what we learn from Mark and Matthew, certainly not 
undertaken with the intention of furthering Pauline theology, 
and in fact solely due to the writer s longing to win for his 
Saviour the sympathy and trust of Hellenic readers. We 
are therefore justified in saying that Luke relates the Gospel- 
story from the point of view of the later Gentile Church, with 
out any infusion of theology. 

The author must certainly be regarded as a Gentile 
Christian, and a born Greek as was the case with Luke, 
according to Colossians 15 not only because of his fluency 
in the use of Greek, but because he avoids every Hebrew 
word, betrays not the smallest knowledge in his Old Testa 
ment quotations of the original text, and is unacquainted with 
the scene in which the events of his Gospel are enacted, so 
that Judaea can mean the whole of Palestine to him. 7 Almost 
more significant is the indifference he displays towards the 
declarations of Jesus on the subject of Jewish customs and 
Jewish parties ; he passes over in silence the dispute about 

1 xxiv. 47. 2 x. 33 and xvii. 16 ; cf. ix. 52-56. 

3 xv. 11 etc. * xxiii. 39 fol. s xxiii. 34. 

8 iv. 10-14. i. 5, vi, 17, vii. 17, xxiii. 5. 



334 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

uncleanness, for instance, which is reported by both the 
other Synoptists. 1 These questions had as little actual 
interest for him as for his readers, for whose benefit he 
explains the word scribes (ypa^iJiarsls) six times by the 
addition of VO^LKOL, turning it into lawyers, - and once : 
translates it into z^o/xaStSacr/caXot, doctors of the law. If 
Luke carries the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam instead of 
only as far as Abraham/" 1 he intended thereby neither to 
protest against the sonship of the Lord to Abraham or David 
(which he seems rather to acknowledge in verses 31 and 34) 
nor to excite any profound meditations concerning Jesus as 
the second Adam, the new creation ; he merely shows by so 
doing assuming, indeed, that we owe the list to him at all 
his love of scholarly completeness, coupled indeed with the 
secondary desire to emphasise the man in Jesus more clearly 
than the Jew. His determination to relate all things from 
the first is responsible for his birth- and childhood-stories, 
which go back as far as the annunciation of the birth of John 
the Baptist, describe in great detail the miraculous surround 
ings in which the birth of the Saviour was accomplished, and 
do not even lose sight of Jesus when he had grown to boy 
hood ; to this also we owe his conclusion, which gives a 
remarkably full account of the intercourse of the risen Christ 
with his faithful followers, and ends with a brief report of his 
Ascension. The other promise made by Luke in the prologue, 
that he would give the chronological data more accurately 
and state the relationship between individual scenes with 
greater clearness, is also fulfilled by the dates he furnishes in 
the opening chapters, i; especially, however, by iii. 1 and 2, 
where the year of the beginning of the Baptist s activity is 
established by a sixfold synchronism. Later on, too, he 
often makes the most loyal efforts to fix in some degree the 
time at which a particular event takes place, as at ix. 37, 
on the next day, when they were come down from the moun 
tain, or at xiii. 1. The Great Interpolation 7 is also made 
with a view to a better chronology of the life of Jesus, and 

1 Mark vii. Matt. xv. - This only occurs once in Matthew, xxii. 35. 

3 v. 17; also Acts v. 34. 4 iii. 23-38. * Matt, i. 1-17. 

6 i. 5. ii. I fol., ii. 42, iii. 23. ix. 51 fol. 



27.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE 335 

the remarks, characteristic of Luke, concerning the occasion 
(or the tendency] of any saying of Jesus are likewise prompted 
by his efforts after the greatest possible precision. 

All this, however, has nothing to do with the writer s 
religious attitude. Only in one point is this perceptibly 
different from that of the other Evangelists ; even without 
any comparison, we are struck by the unwoiidliness of his 
tone, by his aversion to property and enjoyment, by his 
glorification of poverty, his accentuation of the duty of self- 
sacrifice and especially of almsgiving. One need merely read 
Luke xiv. 26 and 33 beside Matt. x. 37 in order to feel the 
sternness of Luke s demands ; one almost has the impression 
that the boundless charity towards sinners shown by this 
Gospel was to be compensated for by the equally exalted 
character of the demands made on the disciples. Other- 
world ethics finds its place by the side of other-world re 
ligion, and is fully conscious of its own rights ; to be blessed, 
loving and loved in the next world meant that in this the 
Christian must be wretched, hating and hated. Blessed are 
the poor, Woe unto you that are rich, for you have received 
your consolation 2 this is Luke s version, and the command 
ments of xiv. 12 and xviii. 22 ( sell all that thou hast ) and 
the incidents of xiv. 21 and xix. 8 are all in the same tone. 
The most striking instance, however, is the parable of Dives 
and Lazarus, 3 according to which poverty and need per se 
will open the way to Heaven, while riches and prosperity appear 
certain to be rewarded by eternal torment. Mammon, or the 
possession of great wealth, is simply unrighteousness, 4 but the 
possessor still has the power of winning eternal life by dis 
tributing his goods Make to yourselves friends by means of 
the mammon of unrighteousness, that, when it shall fail [or, 
when your end approaches], they may receive you into the 
eternal tabernacles. This is a metaphorical expression and 
cannot be pressed, but Luke certainly takes the idea very 
seriously, that the future glory was to act as compensation to 
those who had suffered and gone hungry while on earth. 

Thus it has been suggested that this Gospel bears an 

1 E.g., xviii. 1 and 9, xix. 11. Because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and they 
supposed that the Kingdom of God was immediately to appear. 

vi. 20 and 24. 3 xvi. 19-31. 4 xvi. 9 and 11. 



336 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

Ebionite stamp, and traces of Jewish influences and authorities 
have been sought within it. This, however, is a great mistake ; 
the attitude maintained by Luke, of mistrust towards the world 
and hostility towards all present enjoyment, an attitude 
which can be traced back to the Cynical philosophy or to the 
dualistic ideas existing at the bottom of all forms of religion 
about the beginning of our era, with just as much probability 
as to certain special phenomena of later Judaism such an 
attitude was characteristic of the whole of the post- Apostolic 
Church, and was only suppressed by a sort of compromise at 
a later time. The Third Gospel reminds us of the Epistle of 
James and the Christianity reflected therein ; it has a strong 
tinge of primitive Catholicism, though without the ecclesias 
tical feeling of Matthew ; but yet in the moulding of his 
materials the writer gives expression to that other state of 
mind also, and more naively than Matthew that is to say, 
encouraged by his delight in hyperbolical language and 
striking antitheses, he accentuates the traces of asceticism 
which he found already consciously existing in the tradition. 
But there can be no question of any deliberate colouration of 
the Gospel story in the interests of Ebionitism. 

3. That Luke was written some time after the destruction 
of Jerusalem in the year 70 is proved beyond question by xxi. 
21-24, in which the terrible events of the Jewish War are 
looked upon as things of the past. The accuracy of these 
descriptions has even been explained by some as the result of 
the dependence of Luke on the writings of the eye-witness 
Josephus. His prologue alone, however, which showr the 
evangelistic literature already in full flower, compels us to 
adopt the last years of the first century as the earliest possible 
date. The external evidence would moreover admit of its 
composition about the beginning of the second century, and 
the silence of Papias concerning Luke remains important. 
Its conception of Christ and Christianity, of Law and Revela 
tion, has also many more analogies among the documents of 
the second century than among those of unquestionably 
earlier origin. The emphasis with which even the risen Jesus 
here appeals to the authority of Prophets and Scripture is 

1 xxiv. 25-27 and 44-4G. 



27.] THK GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE 337 

noteworthy, and the colours in which the author paints the 
miraculous incidents, especially those at the beginning and 
end, remind us, though as yet distantly, of the taste of an age 
which gave the rein to its imagination in the creation of the 
Apocryphal Gospels. A more definite date might be fixed on 
comparing this Gospel with Matthew and John (or possibly by 
the help of the Acts), but for the present we must be content 
to leave the whole period between 80 and 120 A.D. open. 

4. From the very beginning the structure of the sentences 
in the Prologue is sufficient to show that the writer was a man 
of considerable rhetorical culture. He is completely master 
of the language, for though the Greek he writes is by no 
means classical, it is perfectly fluent and in a sense refined. 
He alone among the New Testament writers uses words like 
rvy-^dvsiv rivos and (f>oprl^iv with a double accusative ; he 
knows the rules of Greek grammar and syntax, and generally 
observes them. Then, on the other hand, we may frequently 
light upon a strong Hebraism, especially in the birth- and 
childhood-stories, which read like a piece of the Old Testa 
ment even in a good translation. But in many passages 
throughout the Gospel l a clear glimpse of their Aramaic founda 
tion may be caught, and even in the resurrection narrative (the 
appearance of Jesus to the disciples going to Emmaus), for 
which the writer is generally considered to be solely responsible, 
the influence of Semitic modes of speech is remarkable. We 
have, for instance, in xxiv. 38, 8ia\oyia/jLol dva/3alvova-iv sv ry 
KapSla vfj,wv ; in xxiv. 32, our heart was burning within us, 
and, more than this, the variant ftsfiapripsvii for icaiofj,svi) 
is only to be explained by the help of Syriac, in which Tp 
might have been mistaken for vp\ Harnack declares that the 
Hebraisms in the Psalms which Luke puts into the mouths of 
Mary and Zacharias 2 are conscious on his part, that their 
whole style is artificial and intended to produce an impression 
of antiquity. There is certainly much in these canticles that 
seems to suggest the authorship of the Third Evangelist, but 
if Harnack is right, Luke must not only have been a past 
master in the art of imitating styles, but must also have 
made a deliberate use of his art in the Gospel. In most 

1 E.g., xiii. 9, xx. 10. * i. 40^55 and 68-79. 

Z 



338 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

instances, however, the Semitic dress is due to the presence of 
Aramaic authorities which Luke reproduces with tolerable 
accuracy, and in reality we miss a conscious and measured art 
more in Luke s Gospel than in the others wherever, at least, 
it is possible to trace his method of procedure at all ; so that 
in certain portions it bears the appearance of a compilation 
more markedly than either Mark or Matthew. Thus, since 
none have ever regarded Luke as a mere translation from 
the Aramaic, the most probable assumption seems to be that 
the plentiful traces of Aramaic idiom to be found in it are 
due either to the documents employed by the writer, or to 
the unconscious influence exerted upon his own style (even in 
places where he was writing independently) by the authorities 
he was accustomed to consult. His great reputation as a 
writer rests upon higher merits than this ; he has a wonderful 
power of maintaining a full harmony of tone throughout the 
whole length of his narratives, as of his discourses ; he knows 
how to attain the desired effect, and the stories of Mary 
Magdalene and of Martha and Mary, 2 the parables of the 
Good Samaritan 3 and of the Prodigal Son all of them 
peculiar to Luke will always hold their place among the 
noblest gems of the narrative art. 

28. The Synoptic Problem 

1. In most cases the existence of several accounts of the 
same period of history is a pure gain, and raises no difficulties : 
it is almost always easy, for instance, to reconcile two or three 
different biographies of a saint and to extract the true story 
from them. If we possessed, say, only Matthew, John and 
one or two apocryphal Gospels as the sources of the Gospel 
story, the corresponding questions might probably be settled 
in very few words. The Synoptic problem consists in the 
unique commingling of agreement and disagreement both 
in every conceivable degree which a comparison between 
Matthew, Mark and Luke brings to light, and which at first 
night makes it seem a hopeless undertaking to attempt to 
describe the origin of the three Gospels in such a way as to 

1 vii. 36-50. 2 x. 38-42. 3 x. 30-37. 4 xv. 11-32. 



28.] THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 339 

avoid doing any violence to the facts, while yet unravelling 
the tangle of peculiarities and agreements which those three 
sources present. 

How far-reaching is the unanimity between the Synoptic 
Gospels is felt as soon as we place John beside them. Their 
whole outline of the life of Jesus is the same ; before his 
first appearance in public come the baptism in the Jordan 
and the sojourn in the wilderness, and then follows a period 
of great activity in Galilee, with Capernaum as the base 
of operations ; the journey to Jerusalem for the feast of 
the Passover (which is moreover the first he makes as 
Prophet, so that we are obliged to limit the period of his 
Messianic activity to a year at most) ushers in the days of 
his Passion, which end with his seizure, crucifixion and re 
surrection on the third day. The last three chapters run side 
by side in all three Gospels, and even from the entry into 
Jerusalem the sequence of the important events and sayings 
is the same, while as in the case of the Baptism, Temptation 
ind return of Jesus to Galilee, so the preceding account of the 
Baptist and his preaching is given by all the Synoptists in the 
same place and in the same manner. The three narratives 
consisting, first, of the healing of the man sick of the palsy, 
next of the calling of the publican, and lastly of the discourse 
concerning fasting, which are entirely unconnected internally, 
are given in the same order by all the Synoptists, 2 and the 
same may be said of the stories of the calming of the 
storm and of the Gerasene demoniac. 3 Reckoned by the 
natural boundaries of the paragraphs, and apart from the 
story of the Passion, 50 to 70 sections common to all three 
Synoptics have been enumerated, and this is about half 
the total number which it is possible to distinguish. Nor 
is this unanimity ever confined merely to the sense 
although there it extends to the very finest gradations but 
in form and expression it reaches so far that whole sentences 
in Matthew, Mark and Luke are almost word for word the 

1 Mark xi. 1 fol. 

2 Mark ii. 1-22; Matt. ix. 1-17 ; Luke v. 17-39. 

3 Mark iv. 35-v. 20 ; Matt. viii. 23-34 Luke viii. 22-39. 

7. 2 



340 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

same. 1 And the same degree of unanimity is to be observed 
between any two of the Synoptics in those passages which 
are absent in the third, of which 80 to 50 have been distin 
guished as common to Matthew and Luke without Mark, 
10 to 15 to Mark and Matthew without Luke, and perhaps 
5 to Mark and Luke without Matthew always apart from the 
last three chapters in each. In the first case, for instance, 
the preaching of John - is rendered in exactly the same words 
by Matthew and Luke, the story of the centurion at Caper 
naum 3 almost as literally, and the message of Jesus to John 
in captivity, 4 practically without variation ; in the second, 
the answer to the question of the sons of Zebedee, 5 and the 
account of the healing power of Jesus garment, 6 are identical 
in Matthew and Mark, while in the third, Luke and Mark 
agree in the story of Jesus and the demoniac in the synagogue 
of Capernaum, 7 and in that of the widow s mite. 8 

This similarity, however, is in no case to be explained by 
the assumption that the accounts we have before us are abso 
lutely accurate and authentic narratives. Two or three 
eye-witnesses would never agree so closely in their account of 
the same event as those that we have here. Nor must we 
forget that they give us only a very small selection of the great 
mass of Jesus deeds and sayings. If, then, this selection was 
made with such striking coincidence by all three the same 
order being maintained even with events and sayings whose 
precise date was by no means determinable such coincidence 
cannot have been the work of chance. But the most 
marvellous thing of all would be the similarity of expression 
which meets us just as much in the reports of Jesus sayings 
as in the narration of his miracles ; those sayings must, after 
all, have been translated from Aramaic into Greek, and then 
we are to suppose that two or three independent translators 

1 E.g., Mark i. 7 fol., Matt. iii. 11 and Luke iii. 1C ; Mark ii. 10, Matt. ix. 6 
and Luke v. 24 ; Mark ii. 22, Matt. ix. 17, Luke v. 37 fol. ; Mark viii. 35, Matt, 
xvi. 25, Luke ix. 24 ; Mark xiv. 48, Matt. xxvi. 55, Luke xxii. 52 . 

2 Matt. iii. 7 b -10 and 12, Luke iii. 7 -9 and 17. 

3 Matt. viii. 9, Luke vii. 8. 4 Matt. xi. 4-6, Luke vii. 22 fol. 

5 Mark x. 37-40, Matt. xx. 21-23. 

6 Mark vi. 50, Matt. xiv. 36. Mark i. 23-25,. Luke iv. 33-35 Y 
8 Mark xii. 43 1 fol. Luke xxi. 3 fol. 



$ 28.] THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 341 

would have hit upon the same expressions for whole passages 
together, 1 no matter whether it were a question of common or 
uncommon words ? 

If we felt tempted to explain- the whole array of facts by 
the supposition that the writers were inspired, such a theory 
would at once be excluded by the equally numerous instances 
of divergency, which also extend from the merest matters of 
form to the most important differences of fact. In the story 
of the healing on the Sabbath, which all three Synoptists tell 
in practically the same way, 2 Mark describes the situation 
thus : Kal TJV SKSC avOpwiros s^rjpafJifASVTjv sj^wv rrjv X ^P a > Luke 
thus : Kal r/v avOpwrros SKSI Kal rj %/? avrov r\ 6sta r)v ^r/pd ; 
and Matthew thus : Kal ISov avdpwiros X s ^P a ^X wv ^pdv. 
This sounds as though each writer had chosen the expression 
independently to describe the same thing, but we might notice 
even here that Mark agrees half with Luke and half with 
Matthew, while the partial divergence between the three wit 
nesses becomes still more striking in the succeeding sentences. 
According to Mark and Luke they watched him in the 
synagogue though Luke names a subject, namely, the Scribes 
and Pharisees upon which Jesus himself propounds the 
question, whereas in Matthew, Jesus is asked whether healing 
on the Sabbath be lawful. The question which Jesus sets his 
adversaries is given almost in the same words by Mark and 
Luke, but quite differently, even in substance, by Matthew, 
whereas then again Mark and Matthew agree in representing 
the effect of this challenge on the Pharisees in a much stronger 
light than Luke. Matthew adds the parable of the leaven 3 
to that of the grain of mustard-seed, 4 which he had told in the 
same connection and often in the same words as Mark, 5 and 
Luke also gives both together, 6 agreeing far more closely 

1 Mark xii. 44, Luke xxi. 4, IK rov irepio-o-fvovros avroTs f&a\ov; Mark vi. 56, 
Matt. xiv. 36, "va itytavrat rov KpaaireSov rov Iftariov avrov ; Matt. iii. 12, Luke 
iii. 17, rb irrvov tv TTJ X ft P > - "Tof;, SiaxaQapai r^v &\<tiva avrov ; Mark xiii. 25, 
Matt. xxiv. 29, Luke xxi. 26, al Svvdfjifis . . . o-a\ev9-fio-ovrat, which is a 
quotation from Isaiah xxxiv. 4, rendered, however, in the Septuagint 
raK-f]aovrai ; and finally Mark ii. 3, Matt. xii. 1, Luke vi. 1, through the 
cornfields, 810 o-iropi/j.iav. 

* Mark iii. 1-6; Matt. xii. 9-14 ; Luke vi. 6-11. 

3 xiii. 33. 4 xiii. 31. 5 iv. 31. 6 xiii. 18 fol. 



342 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

as to form with Matthew than with Mark, but tells them in an 
entirely different connection. And why does Matthew bring in 
the two breaches of the Sabbath ; much later than Mark and 
Luke ? How is it that the Sermon on the Mount of Matt. 
v.-vii., which is entirely absent in Mark, does indeed reappear 
for the most part in Luke, much of it even in the very same 
words, but scattered over ten chapters, from vi. to xvi., in 
small and separate sections ? The birth-story of Matthew 
contradicts that of Luke, nor do the genealogies in the two 
Gospels agree any better, while Mark contains not a word of 
either. Luke and Matthew tell the parable of the lost sheep - 
in much the same way, but those of the lost piece of silver 
and of the prodigal son, which Luke brings in immediately 
afterwards, and which maintain the same tone and belong to 
the same connection, are entirely without parallel in Matthew. 
Matthew and Mark have practically nothing to correspond 
with the contents of Luke xvi. the parable of the unjust 
steward, Dives and Lazarus, arid certain sayings on the pride 
of the Jews and the validity of the Law and the same may be 
said of the two stories of Sabbath healing in Luke xiii. and xiv. 
Matthew in his turn is the sole reporter of various long sayings 
like the parables of xiii. 36-52, or that of the labourers hire/ 
or the description of the Day of Judgment. 4 The peculiarities 
of Mark, on the other hand, cover only a very few verses, and 
include but one complete section that of the healing of the 
blind man of Bethsaida. 5 How marked are the differences 
which occur, too, in the material common to all three is best 
shown in the story of the Resurrection that is, in Mark xvi. 
1-8 and its parallels in the other two Synoptics. The women 
who go to the sepulchre with spices early on the Easter 
morning are in Mark the two Marys and Salome, in Matthew 
the two former only, and in Luke they two and Joanna and 
other women that were with them. In the sepulchre they see, 
according to Mark and Matthew, a young man (an angel of the 
Lord), and according to Luke two men in shining garments ; 
the two former tell us that the Risen Lord appeared to his 
disciples first in Galilee, and therefore not on Easter-day at 

1 xii. 1-1-1. - Luke xv. 3-7; Matt, xviii. 12-14. 

3 xx. 1-16. * xxv. 31-4G. * viii. 22-26. 



28.] THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 343 

all, while Luke relates appearances on this very day to (Peter ?), 
to the disciples at Emmaus and to the Eleven, all in or around 
Jerusalem. Such discrepancies and contradictions are so 
frequent with the Synoptics, even among otherwise identical 
phrases, that if we ascribed an equal value to all three reports, 
one of them \vould continually be cancelled and destroyed by 
the other two, so that we should be obliged to dispute the 
existence of any trustworthy tradition concerning Jesus. The 
Church has therefore just as strong an interest as historical 
science, in determining what relationship our three authorities 
actually bear to one another, and what well-attested kernel of 
truth can be extracted from this medley of contradiction and 
agreement. 

2. The earlier ecclesiastical learning, as well as that of the 
older Protestantism, refused to recognise this state of things, 
and avoided the necessity of admitting variations in the tradi 
tion concerning the words and deeds of Jesus, by making 
Harmonies of the Gospels in which the parallelism of any 
two accounts which differed in the slightest degree was denied : 
so that a threefold feeding of the five thousand and a twofold 
of the four thousand had perforce to be admitted, merely in 
order to avoid the necessity of saying that the Evangelists 
differed in certain respects in their accounts of the same 
incident. Nevertheless, the Risen Lord cannot have appeared 
for the first time both in Galilee and Judaea, and are we to 
suppose, too, that immediately after his baptism Jesus was 
tempted of the devil twice, according to the same plan, only 
with the means arranged in a somewhat different order ? 
Even the early Church showed more courage and common 
sense than this ; men pointed to the natural differences of 
memory, nor was any objection raised even by Augustine 
to the theory that the later Gospels drew from the earlier, 
i.e. Luke from Mark and Mark from Matthew. No serious 
attempt, however, to master these difficulties by scientific 
methods was made till the latter half of the 18th century, and 
now the countless schemes for a solution of the Synoptic 
Problem may, in spite of all their differences of detail, be 
divided into four main hypotheses : (a) that of Tradition ; 
(b) that of the employment of one Gospel by the other ; (c) that 



344 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

of the existence of an original Gospel ; and (d) that of the 
employment by the Evangelists of numerous scattered frag 
ments. The two latter may also be regarded as variations of a 
general hypothesis of the dependence of our Gospels upon 
earlier authorities. 

The first hypothesis (as maintained, among others, by 
Gieseler and Godet) will not admit the dependence of any of 
the Gospels upon earlier written materials. All three Synop- 
tists, it declares, drew from the rich stream of oral tradition 
which continued down to their time, and which had very early 
assumed a definite form, like the sagas of pre-literary times. 
This fundamental type might be recognised in the element 
common to all the Synoptics, while the variations were to be 
ascribed partly to the tradition itself, which was never fixed 
and immutable, and partly to the memory, the taste and the 
individuality of each Evangelist. A grain of truth lies in this 
conception though indeed but a minute one : it was certainly 
not till comparatively late, and not till the Gospel material had 
gone through considerable changes and become fixed in a 
number of points, that the oral tradition became converted 
into a stationary, written tradition. But it would always 
have been incredible that the many who according to Luke s 
preface had written Gospels, should all have worked away quite 
regardless of one another, and that Luke himself should 
merely have glanced at his predecessors writings, without 
using them as materials. And how are we to explain the fact 
that this stamp of uniformity extends to the very finest shades 
of the Greek idiom, whereas the tradition grew and took final 
shape only on Palestinian soil, and had no common meeting- 
ground in the Greek world ? Moreover, when we remember, 
first, the remarkable differences which appear in the tradition 
itself on comparing Paul s account ! of the institution of the Last 
Supper and of the appearances of the Risen Christ with those 
given in Matthew, Mark and even in Luke, or, secondly, the 
fact that, scattered through Matthew and Luke, we may dis 
cover certain obvious literary peculiarities of Mark, our con 
fidence in the fixed tradition as the sole common foundation 
of the three Synoptics completely disappears ; the problem 

1 1. Cor. xi. and xv. 



28.] THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 345 

is far too complex to admit of a solution by so simple a 
formula. 

The advocates of the theory of dependence, on the other 
hand e.g. Griesbach and the Tubingen school approach 
the matter from a diametrically opposite point of view ; they 
seek to ascertain the relations between the three Synoptics, 
making the later dependent on the earlier, and declare that, 
since this dependence never becomes servile, the common 
matter must have been taken from the older Gospel and the 
variations have been added by the borrowers. The Tubingen 
school have the advantage here, inasmuch as their assump 
tion that the Synoptics were party documents enables them 
to find a reasonable motive for the great majority of variations 
in the supposed dogmatic or ecclesiastical tendency of the 
Evangelists. Unfortunately, however, the variations very 
seldom present any trace of such a tendency, and if the 
theory of dependence be not already ruled out by the fact 
that in the question of succession every possible grouping of 
the three Synoptists has been declared the only true one for 
Mark has been placed now first, now second, as the adapter of 
Matthew, and again last of all, as the colourless abbreviator 
of both Matthew and Luke we should yet be obliged to give 
it up on the ground that it has never explained the fact that 
in the parallels between Matthew and Luke, where Mark is 
not involved, Matthew appears to have been dependent on 
Luke and to have inspired him in an almost equal degree. 

The hypothesis of an original Gospel supported byLessing, 
J. G. Eichhorn and others is intermediate between the two 
former ; it agrees with the first in denying the dependence of 
one Gospel upon another, and with the second in declaring it 
impossible to explain the relationship between the three 
Synoptics without presupposing the existence of an earlier 
written document, and not merely that of an oral tradition. 
It makes all three Synoptics dependent on a written source of 
this kind, and does not seek to identify it with any existing 
book of the New Testament certainly an impossible point of 
view for the orthodox believers in Inspiration ! This documeut 
is assumed to have been an original Gospel of great richness 
and antiquity, embracing the whole of the life of Jesus, and is 



346 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

identified by some with the Gospel to the Hebrews, or is at any 
rate considered to have been originally written in Hebrew. 
From this the three Synoptists are supposed to have drawn, and 
hence their similar construction and their countless points of 
agreement in details and in expression. But in order to ex 
plain the striking differences between the three, we are obliged 
to admit the existence of several successive editions of 
this original Gospel, and to assume that each Synoptist 
possessed a different one a theory which in reality only 
shifts the difficulties out of the clear domain of the Canonical 
Gospels into the darkness of a vanished literature, a litera 
ture over which the imagination alone holds sway, and whose 
early and complete disappearance would not be far short of a 
miracle. 

An improvement on this view is offered by the Fragment 
hypothesis of Schleiermacher, which affords a far more ade 
quate recognition of the idea that a variety of sources lie at the 
bottom of the Synoptics, as well as of Luke s reference to his 
many predecessors and of his criticism of them. He contends 
that not one Gospel only should be assumed as the fountain- 
head, but that in the earliest times there were a consider 
able number of scattered leaflets of very diverse bulk, upon 
which various persons had written down recollections of their 
intercourse with Jesus, or whatever they had heard from 
others in the way of sayings or unusually impressive deeds 
of the Lord. Such leaflets would naturally not have been pre 
served very long, and moreover whoever collected them must 
sometimes have lit upon duplicates which he did not recognise 
as such, because the accounts did not agree in every point, or 
perhaps even the occasion and the time were differently 
reported. If the Synoptists made use of as much of this 
floating literature as was accessible to them, it would certainly 
be conceivable that their reports would at times be word for 
word alike and at times entirety different, while the variations 
in the order would be especially easy to explain. But the 
existence of these fragments is more than doubtful ; in the 
earliest times such aids to the memory would not have been 
required, and in the later men did not write down this or that 
particular saying, but made relatively complete collections of 



28.] THE SYXOPT1G PEOBLEM 34.7 

them. The verbal agreement between the Synoptics is 
altogether too far-reaching, each one of the Gospels too much 
of a whole, to warrant us in thinking that they were put 
together out of a shifting mass of original fragments. 

3. If, then, the older hypotheses are all found wanting, 
and if all of them, nevertheless, contain a grain of truth, we 
must obviously try combining them in order to get nearer to 
the whole truth. In the first place, the Synoptists would 
scarcely have made use of written sources only, but would all 
have had some connection with the oral tradition (which 
their younger contemporary Papias actually considered of 
more importance than the written) ; but it is still more cer 
tain that their Gospels were not written independently of one 
another that one at least of them must have been known to 
the other two ; certain also that they made use of a non- 
canonical written source as well most probably, indeed, of 
several so that the only question that remains is whether 
these sources should be regarded rather as fragments or as 
original Gospels. An improvement in the direction of the 
desire to avoid the one-sidedness of the older hypotheses has 
undoubtedly taken place in the Synoptic criticism of nearly 
all schools of theology ; the only point of importance now 
is to distinguish accurately between those questions of the 
literary relationship of the Synoptics which can be answered 
by the modern school brilliantly inaugurated as it was by 
C. H. Weisse and C. G. Wilke l and those which are not yet 
ripe for decision, i.e. which with the means at our command 
it is as yet impossible to answer definitely. 

In this connection we must warn our readers against the 
superstition that everything in the Gospels can be un 
riddled and made logically clear by critical hypotheses. The 
Synoptists wrote as men, and every personality is a mystery 
beyond a certain point. It would be mere folly, for instance, 
to try and lay down beforehand the method which Luke 
must follow in dealing with his materials that is, to throw 
over all the results of previous observation if once we met 
with something unexpected. Least of all in the case of the 
Synoptists ought we to hope for exact results, because 

1 In Der Urevangelist, 1838. 



348 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

their text has been modified to such an appalling extent in 
the way of emendations, harmonisations and additions- 
most of all, of course, that of Mark ; in fact it is impossible 
to attempt any critical work with Luther s text, and even 
the newest and best editions of the Synoptics contain 
perhaps hundreds of readings which have supplanted the 
original version very early, it is true, but all the more 
thoroughly for that. If the original reading has been acci 
dentally preserved in individual cases by one or two out of a 
hundred witnesses in the first ten centuries by a Latin or a 
Syrian copyist, or by the Codex D in other cases it must surely 
have disappeared without a trace ; this is, on the one hand, a 
warning to us to be careful in drawing conclusions from 
isolated observations, and, on the other, it encourages us to 
set aside the timidity which only ventures to accept an hypo 
thesis if it explains everything, and explains it in the most 
plausible manner possible. 

4. Our first assertion is, that Mark ivas used as a primary 
source both by Matthew and Luke. The order of the in 
dividual sections in Mark corresponds best with the actual 
course of history, and it would certainly be strange if the 
simpler narrative should have come after the far more arti 
ficial grouping of Matthew or Luke. Besides, Matthew and 
Luke keep to the outline of Mark in all essential points, ex 
cept that they make large insertions of their own though 
at different stages and occasionally make alterations in the 
order to suit their own arrangement. Thus Matthew in 
vv. iii. 11-iv. 22 follows Mark i. 7-20 very closely, but 
then leaves out all but i. 39 of Mark, in order to bring in the 
great Sermon on the Mount as an example of the preaching 
of Jesus, before returning again to Mark i. 29-ii. 22 in his 
eighth and ninth chapters. In this way the scene described 
in Mark i. 21-28, in which Jesus is recognised by the 
demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum, is cast aside, not, 
we may be sure, because Matthew had any objections to it, 
but because before the Sermon on the Mount he could find no 
room for it, in the miracle-stories of chap. viii. it was equally 
out of place, and afterwards he forgot it. The order of the 

1 Matt, v.-vii. ; Luke vi. 20-viii. 3 and ix. 51 -xviii. 14. 



28.] THE SYJS OPTIC PROBLEM 349 

separate sections in the collection of parables of Mark iv. ! and 
Matthew xiii. 2 is also very instructive ; Matthew brings in 
the whole of Mark except vv. 21-24, the essential points 
of which he had already introduced into chaps, v., vii. and 
x., while he replaces vv. 26-29 by what he considers a 
truer version of the same parable, and enlarges Mark s 
parable of the grain of mustard -seed by that of the leaven. 
That Luke, too, is directly dependent upon Mark, and not 
merely through the medium of Matthew, is shown, for instance, 
as early as iv. 31-44, where Luke brings in four sections 
in exactly the same order as Mark i. 21-39, whereas Matthew 
omits two of them altogether and inserts the other two con 
siderably later, in chap. viii. Another instance is afforded by 
Luke ix. 18-50, where the writer, after borrowing nothing 
from Mark since verse vi. 45, returns to him quite suddenly 
in order to reproduce the passage from viii. 27 to ix. 40, 
regardless of the additions :; and omissions 4 made by Matthew. 
Luke, on his side, only omits ix. 10-13 which Matthew 
had inserted at the same place as Mark and this merely 
because the contentious questions of Pharisaic theology did not 
interest him. 

But an exact study of the relationship of the Synoptics 
in the sections common to them all is far more con 
vincing still. Let us take, for instance, the story of the 
man sick of the palsy." Here each of the three has 
made a separate introduction for himself, but in Luke s 
case some dependence on the ideas of Mark seems probable. 
After this, however, the similarity of the three accounts 
is so close that only dependence on a written source can 
explain it. Mark has three phrases /cal IScov rrjv TTIO-TIV 
avrwv? rt scrnv vKO7ra)Tpov, slirslv . . . rj siTrslv, 7 and 
especially verse 10, iva, 8s slSrjrs etc. which are repro 
duced word for word in Matthew and Luke, while verse 
5 corresponds equally closely with verse 2 b of Matthew, 
and vv. 4, 7 b and 12" with vv. 19, 21" and 26 of Luke! 

1 Vv. 1-04. 2 Vv. 1-35, and cf. Luke viii. 4-18. 

Matt. xvii. 24-20. 4 Mark ix. 38-40. 

Mark ii. 1-12 ; Matt. is. 1-8; Luke v. 17-20. 
" Verse 5. 7 Verse 9. 



350 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 



Mark and Luke 2 have the words STTLJVOVS and 
in common as against the IScov and evQv/jisia-Oai of Matthew, 
and Luke s s$> b tcarsKSLro 3 is surely a reminiscence of Mark s 
OTTOU o 7rapa\vTiKos KCLTSKSITO.* What Matthew and Luke 
have in common as opposed to Mark, on the other hand, are 
the words ?7rt /cXu^y, 5 where Mark uses the vulgar Kpa/3arros, 
c47Tz> 6 where Mark has \syst,, TrspiTrdrsi ~ for Mark s inrays, 
and the repetition of the words sis rov olicov avrov in the 
carrying out of Jesus command. The effect upon the 
spectators is spoken of by Mark as an s^iarac-Oat, 8 and by 
Matthew as <bo(3ei<r@ai^ while Luke calls it SKI-TCLO-IS and 
(j>6/3ov 7r\^a-drjvai. That Mark s account is here the earliest 
may be assumed from the very vividness of his description ; 
he tells us of the lack of space, of the uncovering of the roof, 
and that the paralytic was borne of four, while Luke only 
speaks of men as bringing him in, and Matthew makes no 
mention of any agent at all. Can we suppose that Mark 
derived his report from the descriptions of both Matthew and 
Luke, and yet succeeded in producing the freshest and most 
living picture ? If, moreover, we take the peculiarities of the 
wording into account as well, and compare the extent and 
nature of the material shared by Mark partly with Matthew 
and Luke, partly with Luke alone and partly with Matthew 
alone, his priority is established beyond a doubt ; and the 
only question it is still impossible to decide from an examina 
tion of this passage is that of the relationship between Matthew 
and Luke. 

Again, let us compare Mark ii. 13-22 (the calling of Levi 
[or Matthew], the visit of John s disciples, the twofold parable 
of the new piece of cloth and the new wine) with its equivalents 
in the other two 10 ; nearly half this passage is told in the 
same words by all three writers, save that Mark has a much 
fuller introduction, and repeats the idea of verse 19 a in a 
slightly different form in 19 b a pleonasm which Matthew 
and Luke naturally have not imitated. Of the remaining 

1 Verse 8. " Verse 22. 3 Verse 25. 4 Verse 4. 

3 Matt, verse 2 ; Luke uses K\tvftioi>, vv. 19 and 24. 
fi Matt. vv. 2 and 4. Verse 5. 8 Verse 12. 

Verse 8. " Luke v. 27~r,9 ; Matt. ix. 9-17. 



THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 351 

part Mark shares about half with Matthew as against Luke : 
.g. verse 15, many publicans and sinners sat down [to meat] 
with Jesus and his disciples, where Luke has there was a 
great multitude of publicans and of others, though in the 
next verse he tells us, in conjunction with Mark and Matthew, 2 
that both publicans and sinners were sitting at table with 
Jesus. The word la-^vovrss a little further down 3 is common 
to Mark and Matthew as against the vyialvovrss of Luke, while 
Mark 21 and Matthew 16 agree in such very unusual phrases 
paKovs dyvd(>ov, aipsi TO 7r\ijpa)fjLa drro, /cal ^slpov 
a-^ia^a yivsrai that all idea of chance is set aside. But 
Mark and Luke also agree in some points as opposed to 
Matthew : e.g. in the name Levi instead of Matthew, in the 
word wrja-Tsvsiv 4 instead of Trsvdslv* in the antithesis between 
the new and the old, 6 and in the words the wine will burst 
the skins. On the other hand, Matthew and Luke keep 
together as against Mark only in the words Sia ri 7 for Mark s 
ori, SITTZV 8 for Mark s \sysi, s-rri/BdXXst 9 for siripdirrei, and 
sK^sirat KOI d7r6X\vvTai 10 for the simple diroXkvrat of Mark. 
Such alterations, consisting almost entirely of the most 
obvious polishings and simplifications, Luke need not have 
copied from Matthew nor Matthew from Luke, while the 
agreement between Matthew and Mark more especially, even 
apart from the sentences common to all three, is far too 
minute to admit of any explanation but that of literary 
dependence. 

In Mark s version of the third prophecy of the Passion 11 
there is much that agrees in every word with the reports of 
Matthew 12 and Luke, 1 " but we are struck by the still greater 
amount of material common to Matthew and Mark only, 
while, on the other hand, the words S/JLTTTVEIV, dTro/crsvova-iv, 
dvaa-rtja-srat of Mark are only to be found reproduced in 
Luke. 15 The only thing common to Matthew and Luke 
without Mark is the word slirsv, where Mark has 



Verse 29. - Mark 16; Matt. 11. 3 Mark 17; Matt. 12. 

Mark 19 ; Luke 34. Matt. 15. Mark 21" ; Luke 36. 

Matt. 11. " Matt. 12. " Matt. 16. 

Matt. 17 ; Luke h.s KX"^ (TeTa * K <d a-n-o\oiiirTa.i. verse 87. 

1 Mark x. 32-34. * Matt. xx. 17-19. " Luke xviii. 31-34. 
1 Verse 34. li Vv. 32 fol. 



352 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

\sysiv. 1 In fact, an exact statistical examination of the points 
of agreement and disagreement between the three Synoptics 
in the passages common to them all most convincingly so, 
for instance, in the story of the entry into Jerusalem and in 
the parable of the husbandmen almost invariably yields the 
following results : Mark coincides with Matthew and Luke to 
an astonishing degree, while the two latter without Mark only 
agree in such things as the insertion of a 8s, the pleonastic 
repetition of a \syovrssr or an ISovrss, or the substitution of 
dysiv for (frspsiv, spsiTS for iiTrars, SLTTS for \syst. This holds 
good for the last three chapters too, at least for those parts 
of them into which Matthew and Luke have inserted no fresh 
episodes ; and hence we may conclude that Mark did not 
skilfully weave his stories together out of both Matthew and 
Luke for then we should be forced to assume that with 
an extraordinary partiality he always chose out those por 
tions which were common to both his predecessors, while 
to explain the origin of those portions we should have to 
resort to some entirely new hypothesis, nor that he drew, 
together with Matthew and Luke, from some original source 
now lost to us, for in that case it would be equally extra 
ordinary that he should, practically without exception, have 
appropriated to his own use precisely those portions which 
had also been selected thence by the other two. Mark, then, 
served as the source both for Matthew and Luke. On the 
whole, Matthew has borrowed more from Mark word for word 
than Luke has done, but we may best see how closely Luke 
clings to him too, in examining those sections which are only 
to be found in Mark and Luke. 2 Whether in the passages 
shared by Mark with Matthew and Luke or with only one of 
the two, it is almost always easier to understand the diver 
gencies of Luke and Matthew from Mark on the supposition 
that the two former had Mark before them, than vice versa. 

It is also for the most part superfluous to assume Ijhe 
existence of an additional authority for the alterations made 
by Matthew and Luke in the text of Mark. It is quite natural 
that they should have moulded his reports into a form better 

1 Verse 32. 

a E.g., Mark ix. 38-40 = Luke ix. 19 fol. ; Mark xii. 41-44 = Luke xxi. 1-4. 



THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 353 

suited to their own interests and tastes, and thus they simply 
omitted anything which seemed to them questionable ! or 
superfluously detailed. 2 If, on the other hand, Matthew names 
the toll-gatherer summoned by Jesus, Matthew, 3 while Mark 
and Luke speak of him as Levi ; if Matthew introduces 4 into the 
discussion on the Sabbath an argument about the sheep falling 
into a well, which Mark does not know, and Luke brings in 
elsewhere," or if Luke inserts at the end of a passage other 
wise entirely dependent on Mark a verse peculiar to his 
Gospel alone And no man having drunk old wine desireth 
new, for he saith, " The old is good " i; these corrections 
and additions are certainly not due to the imagination of the 
writers, but still less do they prove that they had made use 
of another account besides that of Mark. They wove them in, 
either from some piece of oral tradition which seemed to them 
more trustworthy, or else because, having read them in some 
other written source, though in a different connection, they 
happened to call them to mind by a natural chain of thought 
just at these points. 

This fact, then, that Matthew and Luke drew about half 
their material exclusively from Mark, can only be denied by 
those who neither can nor will form a true idea of the way in 
which these Evangelists went to work. In their eyes Mark 
was no sacred author whom they felt bound to copy down 
letter for letter to quote, as it were. He belonged for them 
to the many predecessors to whom Luke was consciously 
superior, and if Matthew knew of fewer such, he yet believed 
that he had something more perfect to offer than they 
including Mark had produced. They gladly kept to the report 
of Mark, whom they valued as a well-informed Evangelist. 
They followed him in many very essential points, even down 
to his wording, and it never occurred to them to procure 
as many other narratives as possible for the verification or 

1 E.g., Mark ix. 39, for there is no man which shall do a mighty work in 
my name, and be able quickly to speak evil of me. 

2 E.g., Mark xi. 14: And his disciples heard it ; xi. 10, xii. 43: rav 
&a\\ovriav els rb yao(f>v\&Kiot>, or the note prefixed by Marl;, TO. fi.i\\ovra airy 
ovufiaivtir, to the speech of Jesus in x. 32. 

3 Verse ix. 9. xii. 11 and 12 . 5 xiv. 5. 
6 Luke v. oO. 

A A 



354 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

correction of his reports, and perhaps to adopt only such pas 
sages as did not contradict such other sources. They related 
quite freely and naively in their own tone things which they 
had often read in Mark, and they had no more fear of following 
him too closely than they had of differing from him in certain 
matters of fact. But besides the narrative of Mark, which 
held the first place in their affections, they were secretly 
influenced not only by their own personal interests, affec 
tions and literary peculiarities, but also by their education 
and training, especially by the Christian element therein. 
They must have heard tales and sayings of the Lord in other 
ways as well in the church and in their private social inter 
course and much of this would remain firmly fixed in their 
memories. It would exert its influence on the way in which 
they reported this or that parallel passage of Mark, and 
sometimes, since these additional authorities can scarcely all 
have been bad, they may have preserved for us in their 
rendering of Mark, touches more primitive and more original 
than his. 

5. But Matthew and Luke cannot be reconstructed only 
from Mark and a few scattered reminiscences from the 
preaching of the Gospel in the church. They have far too 
extensive a body of material in common which is unknown to 
Mark, and the literal agreement between them here is per 
haps still greater than it was in those passages which they 
had deduced from Mark. In the extract from the preaching 
of the Baptist 1 there is scarcely a divergency between them. 
In the story of the temptation about half is identical in each, 
down to the very /cat earrjarsi> STTL TO Trrspvyiov rov ispov. 2 
The differences in the two reports of the parable of the talents 3 
are much greater, but even here there is no lack of remarkable 
coincidences, as in the final judgment, unto every one that 
hath shall be given, and in the antithesis between Ospt&iv 
and (TTrslpsiv, further back. In the parables of the thief and 
of the faithful and unfaithful stewards/ the differences in 

1 Matt. iii. 7 b -10, 12 ; Luke iii. 7 b -9, 17. 
- Matt. iv. 5; Luke iv. 9. 
Matt. xxv. 14-30 ; Luke xix. 11--J7. 
Matt. xxiv. 43-51 ; Luke xii. 39-48. 



j 28.] THE SYNOPTIC FKOBLEM 355 

expression are again scarcely worth mentioning, and still more 
astonishing is the agreement between Matthew and Luke in 
the saying about the sign of the prophet Jonah. The 
short sayings of Jesus, too, most of which Matthew sweeps 
together into the Sermon on the Mount, while Luke has them 
scattered throughout his Gospel, are particularly interesting. 
Their literary relationship is obvious in nearly every case. 2 
Moreover, Matthew cannot here be regarded as the authority 
of Luke, or Luke as the authority of Matthew, but, as we 
might have concluded from the observations made at the 
time of our comparison of them with Mark, both are draw 
ing from an older source. In a large number of instances 
Luke appears as the later amplifier and interpreter : e.g. in 
ix. 60, where he adds the words but go thou and publish 
abroad the kingdom of God to the saying of Matthew," Leave 
the dead to bury their own dead, or in vii. 25, where he has 
they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, 1 4 
instead of Matthew s mere repetition of the preceding phrase, 
they that wear soft raiment ft ; or, again, in the explanation 
of the parable of the son who asked a loaf of his father, 5 where 
he promises the Holy Spirit as the gift of God, instead of the 
good things (ayadd) of Matthew. 7 But, on the other hand, 
Luke s authority cannot have been Matthew, for what should 
have induced him to break up the beautiful grouping of the 
latter s Sermon on the Mount and to insert the fragments at 
haphazard here and there ? And the Lord s Prayer as given 
in Matthew 8 is to all appearances an amplification of Luke s 
version 9 for who could credit Luke with an arbitrary curtail 
ment of it ? The quadrans, too, of Matthew v. 26, is surely 
;a later touch compared to the mite (XSTTTOV) of Luke xii. 59, 
and in Matt. vii. 22 the Logion of Luke xiii. 26 is simply taken 
^ind modified to suit the condition of a later generation. In a 

1 Matt. xii. 39-45 ; Luke xi. 29"-32. 

- E.g., Matt. vii. 11 and Luke xi. 13 ; Matt. vi. 29 and Luke xii. 27" ; Matt, 
v. 26 and Luke xii. 59 ; Matt. xi. 12 fol. and Luke xvi. 16. 

3 viii. 22. 

4 virdpxovres, & word which, while absent in Matthew and Mark, is 
thoroughly characteristic of Luke. 

s Matt. xi. 8. s Luke xi. 13. vii. 11. * vi. 9-13. 

9 xi. 2-4. 

A A 2 



356 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NE\V TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

vast number of points, in short, we are strongly impressed 
with the belief that an old groundwork has been added to now 
by Matthew and now by Luke : e.g. in the saying For after all 
these things do the Gentiles seek etc. 1 the words TOV KOO-^OV be 
side ra sOvrj are certainly an addition of Luke s, while Matthew 
must have inserted o ovpdvios beside 6 Trarrjp vfiw 
beside TOVTOJV, and KOI rrjv SiKaioavvrjv beside rr)v 
Or, again, in the saying of Matt, xxiii. 23 and Luke xi. 42, the 
mint, dill, and cummin of Matthew looks older than the mint 
and rue and every herb of Luke, but, on the other hand, Luke s 
ye pass over judgment and the love of God seems to deserve 
the preference over Matthew s modification, ye have left 
undone the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy 
and faith (TTIO-TIS). 

The abundant use by Matthew and Luke of a second 
written authority besides Mark can scarcely now be denied, but 
what sort of authority was it ? Its name is of no importance 
(some call it a Logia document, others an Apostolic source), 
but the main question is, was it a complete Gospel like that of 
Mark ? The answer to this question is undoubtedly in the 
negative, for there appears no trace of it in the stories of the 
Passion and the Resurrection ; what Matthew and Luke tell 
us there apart from Mark 2 they certainly did not draw from 
a common document. Sayings of the Lord, sometimes loosely 
attached to an historical fact, are what Matthew and Luke 
derive thence, and their introductions of them generally differ 
so widely that one is tempted to believe that this document 
contained as a rule no introductions at all. In that case it 
would have been a collection of the sayings of Jesus, composed 
without any exercise of conscious art, though doubtless not 
without some regard to the internal connection between them 
in fact, very much what we are led by Papias to imagine 
that the work of the Apostle Matthew was. As far as we can 
still reconstruct this source from Matthew and Luke, it may 
very well have been of Apostolic origin. It must, however, 

1 Matt. vi. 32 fol. ; Luke xii. 30 fol. 

- E.g., Matt, xxvii. 3-10 and 62-66 (the repentance of Judas and the 
guarding of the sepulchre), and Luke xxiii. 40-43 (the conversation with the 
malefactor) and xxiv. i:j_a (the disciple* at Emmaus). 



28.] THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 357 

also have contained the story of the Temptation, for which 
it is absolutely necessary to assume that Matthew and Luke 
possessed a written authority other than Mark, and also an 
account of the preaching of the Baptist, which, to judge from 
Luke iii. 11-14, may even have been more detailed than 
that preserved in Matthew. Would this sort of material suit 
a collection of the Logia of Jesus ? This may be affirmed 
without hesitation in the case of the three temptations, and, 
in spite of its legendary colour, we cannot say that the account 
is not such as an original Apostle might have believed and 
gladly transmitted ; while in the other case it is quite easy 
to imagine, considering the close connection between the 
preaching of Jesus and that of John, that the document might 
have contained Logia of the Baptist before those of the 
Messiah. The interest it shows later on in the desert 
preacher i.e. in Matt. xi. 2-19 and Luke vii. 18-35, a 
passage where the mutual relationship of Jesus and John is 
clearly brought out in both, and which is unknown to Mark 
makes it very probable that it had already said something 
about him beforehand. The only real difficulty is that pre 
sented by the story of the centurion of Capernaum, whose 
servant Jesus heals from a distance. 1 Certain very remark 
able touches of Luke s, 1 which he certainly did not invent, 
are absent in Matthew, and altogether in the earlier part the 
points of contact between the two are not considerable, but 
from verse 8 of Matthew onwards, where the centurion speaks 
and Jesus addresses him and his own followers, the literary 
connection with Luke is unmistakable. Yet here the two 
Evangelists were not drawing from Mark ; for to claim the 
passage, purely for convenience sake, as one originally 
belonging to Mark and then accidentally lost, is a very 
questionable proposal, particularly as the tone of Matthew 
10-12 is entirely that of the other Logia. To presume a 
third authority for the sake of this one passage is not to 
be commended either, and we must therefore assume that 
the writer of the Logia document, in order to make the 
weighty words about the lack of faith in Israel and the 
many who should come from the east and the west and sit 

1 Matt, viii. 5-13 ; Luke vii. 1-10 and xiii. 28 fol. 2 vii. 3-5. 



358 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom 
of heaven quite clear, for once related the incident that gave 
rise to them more explicitly than usual. This one exception 
is riot enough to make his book a Gospel like Matthew s, a 
counterpart of Mark, for, as is shown by another episode that 
of the man with the withered hand : it is not always easy to 
draw the border-line between the words and deeds of Jesus. 

We may say, then, that the second authority used in the 
Synoptic literature (which for convenience sake we will call Q) 
served the purpose of handing down to posterity certain- 
precious sayings of the Lord in an authentic form. But 
since it was only reproduced very freely by Matthew and 
Luke, since its text is very seldom quoted literally by them, 
and since a complete absorption of its contents into the Gospels 
of the two borrowers is still less to be thought of, it is now 
impossible to reconstruct it. Its plan is as little determi- 
nable as its bulk, but it seems certain that the author did not 
arrange his collection upon a chronological principle, but 
grouped it catechetically according to its subjects : he wished 
to illuminate one after the other the main themes with which 
the teaching of the Church was concerned such as prayer, 
confession, etc. by means of sayings of the Lord. Of 
the character of Q we can only say that the incisive power 
and the unpretending simplicity of the words of Jesus are 
expressed in it to perfection. It contains no signs of the 
writer s having witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, but we 
may assume from Matthew xxiv. 43-51, and Luke xii. 39 fol., 
that he had already awaited the Parusia for a considerable 
time in vain. The years between 60 and 70 would therefore 
seem the most convenient assignment for it. 

The question as to whether the Apostle Matthew " or some 
other Christian familiar with the story of Jesus wrote down 
this book of Logia is of less importance than that of its 
language. Was it written in the Jewish tongue, and was it 
preserved unaltered for a considerable time ? Since the agree 
ment between Matthew and Luke is so particularly close, 
extending even to very unusual expressions, in the passages 
they borrow from this work, we are obliged to assume thai 

1 Matt. xii. 9-14; Luke xiv. 1-16. * See p. 307. 



5 28.] THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 359 

they used a Greek translation of Q as their common source. 
Its Aramaic substratum is unmistakable, for in Matt. xi. 17, 
for instance, the words wp^a-aa-ds sKo-^aads rest upon 
an Aramaic word-play of raqedton and arqedton. 1 And to 
my mind the question is settled by the fact that whereas 
Luke in one of the Woes on the scribes and Pharisees 
has Give for alms that which is within, Matthew reads 
Cleanse first the inside etc., a variant which is incon 
ceivable as coming from the Greek, but perfectly natural 
if founded upon an Aramaic original, in which the words in 
question, zakki and dakki, might easily have been confused. 
The substitution of alms-giving for cleansing is certainly 
characteristic of the taste of Luke, but even apart from the 
fact that he probably did not understand Aramaic, it is 
impossible to attribute to him the translation of Q into Greek. 
The facts would best be accounted for by assuming that Q 
was originally an Aramaic document composed by Matthew 
between the years 60 and 70, that it was shortly afterwards 
translated into Greek, and that several different versions of 
this translation were produced, some of which made correc 
tions in it (like the KaOapicrov of Matt, xxiii. 26) according 
to a better reading of the Aramaic text, others inserted 
supplementary matter, and others again made arbitrarj 7 or 
formal alterations. Wernle (who, by the way, does not regard 
Matthew as the author of Q, though he does attribute it to 
some member of the original Apostolic circle ; and believes that 
not Aramaic, but Greek, was its original language) puts down 
to one of these revisers all the Judaistic elements in Matthew s 
borrowings from Q (examples of which, in their pristine 
crudity, he professes to recognise in v. 17-20, x. 5 fol. and 
xxiii. 3). He is certainly right not to regard the general 
tone of Q as Judaistic, but, on the contrary, to see in it the 
truest witness to the free and almost revolutionary Gospel of 
Jesus himself. But it is not likely that the Judaistic inter 
polations in Q should have sprung from a later hand ; in 
so far as they are not really genuine words of Jesus they 
might far rather have been fragments of the tradition of 
the Primitive Community concerning him ; the author of Q, 

1 Cf. Matt. xii. 41 fol. and Luke xi. 31 fol. 



360 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

no less than Matthew or Luke, 1 put another meaning upon 
them, and was not afraid of their misuse in the interests of 
party strife. 

On the other hand, an Ebionite version of Q has been traced 
by some in those passages of Luke which, as is proved by their 
parallels in Matthew e.g. by the Beatitudes and Woes, to 
quote the first examples are derived from this document, 
but take a far stronger tinge of hostility to the world and its 
pleasures in Luke s case than in Matthew s. Additions of this 
kind, considering the growing inclination of the Church in 
this direction, may well have been the work of some reviser, 
just as they evidently suit the taste of Luke. But in them 
also a large part of the most genuine matter we possess from 
the mouth of Jesus may still linger ; for the truth is that 
Jesus bore within himself something both of the Judaist and 
of the Ebionite, just as traces of both tendencies may be 
found in Matthew and in Luke. I shall not venture to 
trace the development of Q in detail as far as its final 
disappearance within the Canonical Gospels ; but it is safe 
to assert that its course was chequered by not a few vicissi 
tudes. 

6. If we have here been able to acknowledge the truth 
that lies in the hypotheses of Dependence -and an Original 
Gospel, we may now point out what is sound in the Tradi 
tion- and Fragment-hypotheses. Owing to the possession of 
collateral authorities, we are in a position to know where 
Matthew and Luke followed Mark and where they used the 
Logia collection. But there still remain large sections 
nearly a quarter of Matthew and Luke which have no 
parallel anywhere else : part of these might of course still 
be derived from the Original Matthew, for just as Matthew 
and Luke constantly differ in their selections from Mark, so 
it must have been with their treatment of the other authority. 
In the Woes against the Pharisees especially, there are 
many things peculiar to Matthew which convey the same 
tone as those which he shares with Luke, and we might 
also instance the saying about the eunuchs,- or that about 

. Esp. xvi. 17. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than 
1- -^ne tittle of the Law to fail. - Matt. xix. 10- 12. 



28.] THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 361 

the right way to pray, 1 or Luke s I came to cast fire upon 
the earth, and what will I, if it is already kindled ? which 
suit the tenor of the Logia document to perfection. But it 
would be a hopeless task to try and decide how far its 
influence extended over Matthew and Luke, when we can no 
longer control the one by the other. Certain it is that in both 
may be found materials which they must have drawn from 
sources otherwise quite indefinable. The Birth-stories etc., 
in both, 2 the picture of the Day of Judgment in Matthew, the 
above-mentioned additions in the last three chapters, and espe 
cially Luke s insertions of the stories of Zacchaeus, 1 of the Sama 
ritan village, 5 and of Mary and Martha, 6 the parable of Dives 
and Lazarus 7 (which he had himself received in a version that 
altered its original point), and also his mention of the minis 
tering women, 8 all bear a particular stamp, and must have 
had their special origin. Much of all this is manifestly the 
legendary product of later times, like the story of Judas, the 
guarding of the sepulchre, the appearance to the two disciples 
at Emmaus 9 and practically everything in the first chapters of 
both Luke and Matthew. As a rule, the object of each story 
is unmistakable : that of the guarding of the sepulchre, for 
instance/ arose out of the desire to refute and retaliate upon 
the slander spread by the Jews that the disciples of Jesus 
had stolen his body in order to proclaim him risen from the 
tomb. But I doubt whether the Evangelists who have 
preserved these narratives for us were also their creators ; 
however unmistakable is the hand of Matthew in i. 22 fol., 
for instance, or in ii. 5 fol., it is not likely that he would have 
invented these occurrences himself merely in order to bring 
in the words of a prophecy ; he would rather have made use 
of fragments of tradition probably oral which had crossed 
his path, and subjected them, though with still greater 
freedom than he had shown in dealing with written material, 
to his own ideas and his own design. The genealogy of 
Jesus, with which Matthew opens his Gospel, serves a wholly 

1 Matt. vi. 5-8. 

2 Matt. i. and ii. ; Luke i. and ii. 3 Matt. xxv. 31-46. 
4 Luke xix. 1-10. 5 Luke ix. 51-56. B Luke x. 38-42. 

7 xvi. 19-31. Luke viii. 1-3. > Luke xxiv. 10 Matt, xxvii. 



362 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

different purpose, after all, from that of the story of his 
miraculous birth, which follows immediately upon it, and are 
we to suppose that Matthew invented both of these side by 
side ? The anecdote of the payment of the half-shekel by 
Jesus and Peter which Matthew alone preserves ends 
with a very legendary touch, but I cannot believe that it has 
no foundation in fact. The miracle of the fish is connected 
so superficially with a story otherwise fully worthy of Jesus, 
that if Matthew in order to demonstrate the political loyalty 
of the Christians ! had composed it, he would indeed have 
surpassed himself. His method as a writer and his tenden 
cies would naturally gain the upper hand more easily when 
he was telling some edifying legend that he had never seen 
written down than when he was merely following a written 
authority ; but it is only necessary to compare Matthew with 
the apocryphal Gospels of later times in order to realise the 
absurdity of the idea that he was at the same time a daring 
inventor of Logia or evangelic narrative, and a faithful 
copyist of existing written materials. 

The same may be said of Luke. It is true that he has 
some independent invention ; he alone is probably responsible 
for the bringing in of Herod into the trial of Jesus : kings 
and governors (/3ao-i\sls fcal rjjs/nuvss) were to attest the 
innocence of Jesus in order that now, at the time when Luke 
wrote, the innocence of Christians might be demonstrated 
before the same tribunals with greater vraisemblance. But 
then, again, he evidently owes the episode of the disciples of 
Emrnaus, with its Aramaicisms and its reference to an 
appearance to Peter * (which the author himself certainly 
did not mean to make), to another hand ; while his story of 
the Birth and Childhood is so distinct in style from the rest 
of the Gospel that it cannot be explained without assuming 
a different written authority for it. The exact personal 
information of viii. 1-3 must of course also have been 
founded on documentary reports, and in any case how 
could one seriously believe that Luke should wilfully have 
made use of only two of the many predecessors whose 

xvii. 24-27. 2 xxiv. 34. 



28.] TFIE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 

existence he was aware of ? His first two chapters might 
have been in circulation by themselves among Christian 
communities --a Fragment, in Schleiermacher s sense and 
it is possible, too, that he may have known and made use of a 
collection of parables, to which we owe the beautiful allegories 
of the Prodigal Son, of the lost piece of silver, of the unjust 
judge, of the Pharisee and the Publican, and of the Good 
Samaritan. According to his own prologue Luke took great 
pains over the collection of his material ; but this would 
indeed be an empty boast if he had merely made a patch 
work composition out of two original works of considerable 
bulk, which were certainly accessible to many of his readers, 
and had adorned it with a succession of his own inventions. 
It is probable, on the contrary, that he procured as 
many records as possible (dTrofjivrjuovsvpaTa), but he would 
also have gone round among the elders listening to their 
tales, in the manner of Papias, and he was proud of having 
secured a far more complete Gospel in this way than any 
others known to him. Matthew s procedure also must have 
been very similar to this, except that, as a rule, he did not 
obtain access to the same witnesses and evidence as Luke. 
Occasionally, of course, he may even have done this, or he 
may have heard such parables as those of the talents, 1 or 
the marriage-feast, 1 by word of mouth, like Luke, who gives 
a remarkably different version of them. 3 Or, again, one 
of them may have drawn from oral tradition what the other 
already possessed in a written form. It is impossible to say 
more on this point, except perhaps that Luke seems to recur 
more constantly to written authorities than Matthew. But 
to assume a special Ebionite source for Luke is quite 
unwarranted, because the Ebionite colouring pervades the 
whole of his Gospel from beginning to end, and is just as 
noticeable in the material he took from Mark and from 
the Logia document as in what he borrowed from anonymous 

sources. 

* 

7. Two questions still remain unanswered, even for those 
who, without accepting our proposed solution of the Synoptic 

1 xxv. 14-30. * xxii. 1-14. 

xix. 11-27, xiv. 15-24. 



364 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

problem as a piece of new dogma, may yet feel it to be 
relatively the most probable i.e. first, that of the mutual 
relationship between the two main authorities (Mark and Q) 
used by Matthew and Luke, and, secondly, that of the relation 
of these two Gospels to each other. According to the tradition, 
of course, Mark wrote from memory alone, merely reproducing 
the substance of Petrine lessons. And, on the other hand, it 
goes without saying that the man of the primitive Apostolic 
age to whom we owe the epoch-making collection of Sayings 
of the Lord, would not have used as his main authority a 
book so unproductive for his purpose as Mark, even granted 
that he knew Greek and was acquainted with the Gospel in 
question. The contrary would be by no means so improbable, 
in spite of the tradition. Professor Weiss does in fact assert 
that several passages common to all three Synoptics are 
derived from this Apostolic authority, so that occasionally 
of course Matthew or Luke might have preserved it in a more 
faithful form than the older Mark. The proofs he adduces 
in support of this theory from a number of narratives l (for 
he regards the authority, not as a mere collection of Logia, 
but as a true Gospel, though one which, curiously enough, 
possessed no ending) are not very convincing ; and even 
where the sayings of Jesus seem to bear a more primitive 
stamp in Matthew or Luke, we can always explain this by 
the fact that many of them must have been widely known 
throughout Christendom long before Mark was written, so 
that even a copyist of Mark might by trusting his memory have 
handed down some things in a more primitive form than 
Mark himself. But no one will doubt that certain words of 
Jesus, like the parable of the sower in Mark iv., or a great 
deal of the eschatological discourse in Mark xiii., were already 
contained in the Logia document, for the idea that Mark 
never coincided with anything in the other authority, that 
none of the Logia he preserves found entrance into Q, is wholly 
unintelligible. If Q obtained recognition very rapidly in 
Christian circles, it is surely most natural to suppose that in 

1 E.g., from that of the man sick of the palsy, Mark ii. 1 etc. ; from the 
feeding of the five thousand, Mark vi. 35 etc., and from the healing of the blind 
man, Mark x. 46 etc. 



28.] THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 365 

those sections which were common to both, Mark s narrative 
would have been moulded under its influence. Moreover the 
remarkably small space which is granted in his Gospel to the 
words of Jesus, rather leaves the impression that the writer 
did not attempt any completeness in that respect, an idea 
which, considering the enormous value which every syllable 
from the lips of Jesus possessed, would only be possible 
on the supposition that the propagation of the Lord s sayings 
had already been provided for. Mark did not write his Gospel 
as a supplement to the Logia document, but as an inde 
pendent work ; still, this does not make it impossible that 
he half unconsciously took his predecessor into account. It 
is, however, not conclusively proved that Mark had any written 
authorities, more particularly the genuine Matthew, before 
him when he wrote. This would only be demonstrable if 
Matthew and Luke, in passages which were connected with 
undoubted portions of the earlier authority, but which were 
also to be found in Mark, agreed with one another against 
Mark so often as to exclude all idea of chance, and moreover 
presented a text which was obviously more primitive than his, 
so that Mark s motive in emendating it would become ap 
parent. This case, however, does not exist, so that we cannot 
get beyond hypotheses. Luke xvii. 2 certainly gives the 
saying about causing one of these little ones to stumble in a 
more primitive form than Mark ix. 42 or Matthew xviii. 6, and 
yet in language so similar to Mark s that we are tempted to 
believe Luke s version to have been identical with Q, which 
was then used as the foundation for Mark and through Mark 
for Matthew ; but might not Luke s text just as well have 
been a combination of Mark and Q ? 

In cases where similar observations may be made on 
narrative portions which cannot be referred to Q, (e.g. that 
a sentence of Mark s, in opposition to the great majority of 
data to the contrary, occasionally seems to be dependent 
upon Matthew or Luke and to represent the later version) 
the hypothesis has been started of an Original Mark, which 
is supposed to have undergone a more thorough revision in 
accordance with later standards than either Matthew or Luke, 
so that in its canonical form it might sometimes appear 



oG6 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTA MKNT [CHAP. i. 

;>is the later version beside its Synoptic parallels. It is true 
that Mark gives the saying of the unforgivable sin in a later 
form than the other two ; he alone ventures no longer in 
the case of blasphemy against the Son of Man to give an 
express promise of forgiveness. Matthew s version, again, 
of the saying I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of 
the vine until the day when I drink it new with you (psB 
V/JLWV) in my Father s kingdom - seems more primitive than 
Mark s," where the words with you have disappeared (Luke s 
version is still more modern in tone) ; but this verdict can 
only be applied to individual words or sentences in Mark, 
never to a complete passage, so that the data are insufficient 
to bear out this hypothesis of an Original Mark. The bad 
state in which the text of Mark has been handed down to us 
warns us to be careful, and it is always possible that in the 
case of material so widely known as this, the writer drawing 
from an earlier source may sometimes have corrected it 
from knowledge gained elsewhere, and so may even offer us a 
text identical with that from which his model s had arisen, 
perhaps through mere misunderstanding. 

8. Of the many subsidiary authorities used by Luke, 
Matthew may have been one provided, that is, that Matthew 
was the earlier of the two, which has, however, not yet been 
proved. 1 It is certainly safe to say that if Matthew was in 
existence at the time when Luke wrote, the Third Evangelist 
could scarcely have overlooked so brilliant a work in the 
course of his laborious researches, still less have deliberately 
left it unused, presumably out of some dislike he bore to it. 
Moreover Matthew and Luke coincide in a few points where 
Mark and the Logia document no longer serve as authorities : 
both, for instance, add to the mocking cry Prophesy ! of 
Mark xiv. 65 the words who is he that struck thee " 
both give the words s^tjrsi ev/caipiav (i (of Judas) where Mark 
contents himself with an E&JTSI . . . svKalpws ; the simile of the 
lightning, which both employ though in different ways in 

1 Mark iii. 28 fol. ; Matt. xii. 31 fol. ; Luke xii. 10. 
- Matt. xxvi. 29. 3 xiv. 25. 

1 See pp. 881, 382. 5 Matt. xxvi. 68; Luke xxii. 64. 

fl Matt. xxvi. 10 ; Luke xxii. 6. 



28.1 THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM 367 

describing the angel who guards the sepulchre, 1 is absent 
from Mark, and a few lines before " both use the by no means 
common word 7ri<f)a)(TKeii> to denote the earliest dawning of the 
day (though in Luke that day is the Sabbath and in Matthew 
the first day of the week). In the Birth-story the words of 
Matt. i. 21, she shall bring forth a son and thou shalt call his 
name Jesus, are almost identical in Luke. 3 Some have even 
thought they could discover in Luke original passages of 
Matthew s own composition, and this would constitute a proof. 
But it is impossible to tell what was Matthew s own composi 
tion and where he was drawing from oral or written tradition, 
and in some cases his authorities may have been equally ac 
cessible to Luke. In any case the latter did not pay very 
much attention to Matthew ; he tells quite a different Birth- 
story, and varies from him almost as much in the last three 
chapters. All we can definitely say is, that the points of 
agreement between Matthew and Luke in passages which 
both draw from the same source only extend further than the 
substance of that source in minor details which both might 
have hit upon independently, and that the turns of phrase 
characteristic of Matthew s own hand cannot be proved to 
exist in Luke. Thus it is not very probable that Luke was 
<acquainted with Matthew as one of the many, nor that 
Matthew made use of Luke. In my opinion, both took up 
their pens more or less simultaneously, each unaware of the 
other s work, and both actuated essentially by the same motive, 
i.e. that of bestowing a Gospel upon the Church which should 
at once be complete, and well adapted both to refute unjust 
accusations from outside and to edify the believers them 
selves. The employment of the same main authorities by 
both is the strongest proof of the fact that, in spite of 
Luke i. 1, the choice was limited, and the connecting links 
between the two great Synoptists and the events which they 
described fragile and precarious. They appeared just in time 
to save some portion of the old inheritance. 

1 Matt, xxviii. 3; Luke xxiv. 4. : Matt, xxviii. 1 ; Luke xxiii. 54. 

i. 31. 



368 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

29. The Historical Value of the Synoptic Gospels 

[For the literature of the subject see supra, 23-27. Also 
A. Eesch, Agrapha, and Ausserkanonische Paralleltexte zu den 
Evangelien, in Texte und Untersuchungen, v. 4 (1889), x. 1-4 
(1893-6). J. H. Ropes, Die Spriiche Jesu, in Texte und Unter 
suchungen, xiv. 2 (1896), a critical revision of the material which 
had been brought together with prodigious industry, but not sifted, 
by Eesch. A. Eesch, Die Logia Jesu nach dem griech. und hebr. 
Texte wiederhergestellt (1898). At the same time appeared the 
edition of the Hebrew text yw nm, rven VW nn^in ISO which 
was the crown of the fantastic edifice erected by Eesch s brain.] 

1. Since it is not for their own sake, but for that of the story 
which they tell, that we prize the Synoptics so highly, the 
most important question, after all, is how far they will serve 
in the reconstruction of the life of Jesus, what is their value 
as historical documents. This, it may be said at once, is not 
unlimited. In any case, the narrative of the Synoptists can 
not be called complete ; Mark did not even aim at making 
his work complete, nor could we fail to believe (even if 
we had no knowledge of the many profound and probably 
genuine words of Jesus which have come clown to us through 
non-Canonical literature) that what the Synoptists have pre 
served to us is only a fractional part of all that Jesus must have 
said and done during his Ministry. Their material is not 
sufficient to delineate even the outlines of the life of Jesus, 
except where a fruitful imagination ventures to supply the 
missing indications as to the date or occasion of individual 
occurrences, or the connection between them. But it is not 
only that the Synoptics know far less than we could wish 
about Jesus : what they know and tell is a mixture of 
truth and poetry. The sayings they report in absolutely 
identical form apart from possible variations in translation 
would not take long to count, and wherever we can observe 
their methods we see how little they valued strict accuracy 
in the reproduction of their authorities, and how fully they 
felt themselves justified in treating the details with literary 
freedom, now curtailing and now amplifying them. The 



29.] 

fear of impairing historical truth was evidently unknown to 
them. Even if the remarkably different versions of the 
parable of the marriage-feast, 1 for instance, did not compel 
us to assume that one of the narrators at least deliberately 
modified the original version, the hand of the reporter is un 
mistakable in countless cases where the sayings of Jesus are 
concerned. So improbable a touch as that of Matt. xxii. 6, 
where the guests who are bidden to the banquet by the King, 
but who refuse to come, lay hold on his servants and kill 
them, was certainly not introduced into the parable by its 
original author, but by the Evangelist, who, in his eagerness 
for interpretation, was not thinking of ordinary guests, but of 
the Jews who persecuted the Lord s Apostles. Mark iv. 
10-12 and 34 may serve to show how misunderstandings of 
many kinds could also injure the tradition ; here Jesus 
describes the perverseness of the people as the reason for his 
speaking in parables, whereas according to the most natural 
interpretation of iv. 33 he was actuated by the opposite and 
only credible motive that of speaking in similes because he 
could in that way be better heard and understood. 

In Mark xi. 2 we are told that when Jesus was on his way 
from Bethany to Jerusalem he sought fruit from a fig-tree in 
vain and therefore cursed the tree, and that as his disciples 
passed by with him again the next morning they found it 
withered to the root. Matthew also relates the incident, 3 but 
postpones Jesus curse till the day after the cleansing of the 
temple, while in Mark it had taken place before it ; thus in 
Matthew the withering of the tree occurs immediately, to the 
astonishment of the disciples. Is it possible to deny a tend 
ency towards the increase of the marvellous in this example ? 
Mark s anecdote of the feeding of the four thousand * is a mere 
duplicate of that of the feeding of the five thousand which he 
had told just before " ; the parallelism between the two is so 
far-reaching that no other explanation is even arguable, the 
one version simply arose through exaggeration of the other. 
In the one case four thousand persons after three days fasting 
are fed with seven loaves and a few fishes, and leave seven 

1 Matt. xxii. 1 etc. ; Luke xiv. 16 etc. - Vv. 12-14 and 19-2 2. 

xxi. 18-21. 4 viii. 1 etc. * vi. 34 etc. 

B D 



370 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

basketfuls of broken pieces over, and in the other, five thou 
sand men (Matthew expressly adding beside women and 
children ) are fed with five loaves and two fishes, leaving 
twelve basketfuls of broken pieces. Again, the story of Jesus 
walking on the sea l is a kind of Docetic exaggeration of 
the beautiful tale of his stilling the storm,- while the in 
stance brought forward by all three Synoptists, but most 
complacently by Mark, 3 of his power over demons that of the 
Gerasene swine is nothing but the purest legend. Jesus is 
represented as having met a man with an unclean spirit (or 
two, according to Matthew 4 ) in the country of the Gerasenes, 
from whom he expelled a legion of devils ; these, however, he 
allowed to enter into a herd of two thousand swine which 
were feeding close at hand, and which then immediately 
rushed down the steep into the sea to the consternation, as 
may well be imagined, of the much injured owners. Mark 
and Matthew give us but one instance of a raising from the 
dead that of the daughter of Jairus 5 but Luke also tells 
that of the widow s son at Nam, fi placing it before the other, 7 
and the older Evangelists would certainly not have passed 
over so edifying and convincing a miracle as this of their own 
free will. In any case the public raising from the dead at Nam 
cannot, with Luke, be placed earlier than the secret one in the 
house of Jairus, but should probably be regarded as a later 
growth after the type of the primitive Jairus miracle. The 
Birth-story of Matthew (and still more certainly that of Luke) 
is wholly and entirely the work of pious fancy, and if in the 
relatively exact account of Jesus last suffering and death we 
may reasonably expect particular trustworthiness for who 
could possibly have invented the story of the denial of Peter, 8 
for instance, or the cry of Jesus on the Cross, My God, 
my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? !l yet even here, 
and in the oldest source, the legendary elements are not 
lacking, such as the statements about the darkness that 
covered the whole land, and the rending of the veil of the 

1 Mark vi. 45 etc. - Mark iv. 35 etc. 3 v. 1-20. 

4 viii. 28. * Mark v. 22 etc. ; Matt. ix. 18 etc. 

c vii. 11-17. viii. 40 etc. 

* Mark xiv. 6G etc. " Mark xv. 34. 



29.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 371 

temple. 1 Fresh touches were of course continually being 
added, like that of the guarding of the sepulchre - (which 
tended to assist the belief in the Kesurrection), or like 
the words of Jesus on the Cross as given by Luke, Father, 
forgive them, etc., or the few words to the malefactor those 
infinitely touching illustrations of a love which, even in the 
midst of death, sought only to excuse its tormentors, and 
held itself open to the anguished prayer of the meanest 
sinner. 

By far the greater part of this material, the authenticity of 
which is more than doubtful, was not invented by the Synop- 
tists, but was derived by them from oral or written authorities. 
They themselves were generally responsible only for the form, 
in the arrangement of which they certainly exhibited consider 
able freedom, though always in the full belief that they were 
able to reproduce the traditional material more effectively than 
anyone else had done before them. It is true that they did 
not apply historical criticism to the materials they used, but 
if they had, no Gospels would have been written, and their 
artificial productions would have fallen into oblivion a few 
decades after they appeared. Edification was for them the 
standard of credibility ; their task was, not to understand and 
estimate the historical Jesus, but to believe in him, to love 
him above all else, to teach men to hope in him : they did 
not describe the Jesus of real life, but the Christ as he appeared 
to the hearts of his followers, though of course without 
dreaming of the possibility of such an antithesis. 

2. Nevertheless the Synoptic Gospels are of priceless value, 
not only as books of religious edification, but also as authorities 
for the history of Jesus. Though much of their data may be 
uncertain, the impression they leave in the reader s mind of the 
Bearer of Good Tidings is on the whole a faithful one. Brandt 
is not wrong, but he does not say enough, when he calls the 
Synoptic picture of Christ the finest flower of religious 
poetry. The true merit of the Synoptists is that, in spite of 
all the poetic touches they employ, they did not repaint, but 
only handed on, the Christ of history. They indeed omitted 
many of his great words, either through forgetfulness or 

1 Mark xv. 33 and 38. - Matt, xxvii. 62 etc. and xxviii. 11-15. 

u B 2 



372 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

ignorance, they misunderstood many of them, and altered the 
form of others, and it may even have chanced that they or 
their authorities wrongly attributed to Jesus some saying 
which, though worthy of him, really came from the lips of 
some other master. But the modern Jewish attempts to treat 
the Logia of Jesus given by the Synoptics as a partisan 
selection of rays of light from the far richer wisdom of the 
Rabbis merely because there exist some parallels, sometimes 
of remarkable closeness, between them and the Mishna or the 
Talmud are just as irrational as the views of that school 
of criticism run wild, which regards these sayings as the mere 
deposit of the moods and ideals which held sway among the first 
three generations of Christians. The mass of homogeneous 
parables alone, which we find in the Synoptics, compels us to 
fall back upon a single personality as the author of a mode of 
teaching not elsewhere adopted at the time, or at least not 
in the same way ; for how could the age of the Synoptics, 
which degraded and deformed the parables into allegories, have 
first produced them, to its own bewilderment ? And the same 
may be said of nearly all those isolated sayings of Jesus which 
the Evangelists misunderstood, or the interpretation of which 
causes them so much trouble as in Matt, xxiii. 36, where the 
author makes the awkward addition of rov iror^piov to TO svros, 
thereby destroying the meaning of the word ; while the sayings 
actually invented by the Synoptists such as the frequent 
references of Jesus to his approaching sufferings immediately 
betray their external origin by their monotony and their 
absence of life. But, as a rule, there lies in all the Synoptic 
Logia a kernel of individual character so inimitable and so 
fresh that their authenticity is raised above all suspicion. 
Jesus must have spoken just as the Synoptists make him speak, 
when he roused the people from their torpor, when he comforted 
them and lovingly stooped to their needs, when he revealed 
to his disciples his inmost thoughts about his message of the 
Kingdom, when he guided them and gave them laws, when he 
contended fiercely with the hostile Pharisees and Sadducees, or 
worsted them by force of reasoning : for no otherwise can we 
explain the world-convulsing influence gained by so short a life s 
work. The impression that they are veritably the words of 



29.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 373 

Jesus is by no means altered by the fact that they contain 
side by side things Jewish and things anti-Jewish, things 
revolutionary and things conservative, things new and 
things old, freedom and conventionality in judgment, crudely 
sensuous hopes and a spiritual idealism which fuses present 
and future into one ; for he who was destined to become all 
things to all men in a far higher sense than Paul must 
have been able to comprehend within himself the elements of 
truth in all antitheses. 

Nor should the Synoptic accounts of the deeds and sufferings 
of Jesus be judged in a less favourable light. It matters 
little how many of the miracle-stories fall to the ground, 
whether he healed one blind man or three, and how often and 
under what circumstances he waged his victorious war against 
sin and its attendant miseries, illness, want and death : the 
main point which each of these more or less embroidered 
stories seeks to illustrate, and which only a very sorry 
rationalism can deny, is that he not only taught but acted as 
one that hath authority. The fact that he wrought miracles 
principally upon the mentally diseased, as in Mark i. 32-34, 
and the observation made by Mark that because of the unbelief 
of his countrymen at Nazareth he could there do no mighty 
work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and 
healed them, enable us in some degree to guess the secret of 
his success. Stories like that of the Talitha cumi of Mark 
were not elaborately invented, nor was the Messiah who in 
his night-watch in the Garden of Gethsemane, though his 
soul was sorrowful even unto death, yet won through prayer 
the strength to go forward to the end, in spite of the blindness 
of his disciples, the wickedness of his foes and the agony of a 
horrible death such a Messiah was not the creation of the 
idealising fancy of any class of believers, which would have 
employed far different colours. 

Again, the figure of the traitor among the Twelve, or the 
story of Peter denying his Master before the cock crew, are 
not the mere products of Christian imagination, however much 
may have been imported into their details by legend or theo 
logy. Must Pilate and his favourable opinion of Jesus have 

1 vi. 5. 



374 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

been invented, merely because the washing of his hands and 
his wife s dream seem improbable touches ? Our confidence 
is especially won by the sober reserve with which Mark 
ventured to know nothing of Jesus before his appearance in 
public, and almost nothing of him after his death. But even 
the extraneous element which finds its way into the beginning 
and end of Matthew, and still more plentifully into that of 
Luke, is not really inconsistent with the tone of the rest ; 
everything is dominated, within the Synoptic limits, by the 
same spirit, and the insertions assimilate themselves as though 
of their own accord to the over-mastering original. And if 
the total picture of Jesus which we obtain from the Synoptics 
displays all the magic of reality, (in Luke just as much as in 
Matthew and Mark) this is not the effect of any literary skill 
often indeed defective on the part of the Evangelists, nor is 
it the result of the poetic and creative power of the authorities 
lying behind them ; but it is rather owing to the fact that 
they, while modestly keeping their own personalities in the 
background, painted Jesus as they found him already existing 
in the Christian communities, and that this their model 
corresponded in all essentials to the original. The simplest 
faith, like the highest art we learn this from the Synoptists, 
who drew from the sources of such a faith has a wonderfully 
fine perception for the peculiar traits of its hero ; in recon 
structing the precious image from memory, it flings reflection 
and the critical faculty aside, it omits much and adds new 
touches, but it attains at last, in spite of all apparent weak 
ness and caprice, to a picture such as no master of historical 
writing, though furnished with all the aids of science and 
initiated into all the technicalities of his craft, can produce 
in the case of his favourite figures. 

8. It sounds paradoxical to say so, but the history of 
the Synoptic tradition stretches back to the very lifetime of 
Jesus. Within a short time after the appearance of the 
Messiah, certain particularly striking words of his wem 
spread abroad in ever widening circles, while the fame of his 
miracles penetrated through the length and breadth of the 
Jewish lands ; no wonder, then, that mistakes and exaggera 
tions should soon have found their way in. It is absurd to 



29.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 375 

characterise the Gospels as late productions simply because 
they contain much legendary matter ; the adherence of this 
deposit to the tradition a process which may be observed 
with all great historical figures cannot be placed too early in 
the case of Jesus. The unbelieving Saul himself may have 
heard in Jerusalem of his healings of the blind, of his raisings 
of the dead, and of his power over wind and waves, and even 
his mortal enemies, the Pharisees, believed a certain amount 
of these things. Everything in this man, who worked upon 
the conscience, feelings and imagination of the people so 
miraculously seemed surrounded with a halo of miracle ; the 
thirst for the marvellous which the Master himself struggled 
against ] found nevertheless its satisfaction among his followers, 
and it was certainly owing solely to his own temperate and 
quiet truthfulness, naturally averse as it was to any such 
glorification let him only be compared with Mahomet in this 
respect ! that the tendency towards legendary amplification 
contented itself in his case with adding some brightly coloured 
ornament to the original picture. It is true that it never 
occurred to him or to any of his friends while he was yet 
working on earth to organise a sort of official report of his 
deeds. And even after his death his followers would rather 
wait with longing hearts for his return than hasten to draw 
up a catechism of his life for the instruction of later genera 
tions ; no trace of a primitive Gospel of pre-Pauline date is to 
be discovered anywhere. But the remembrance of Jesus did 
not therefore die out. As soon as the circle of his intimate 
companions had recovered from their dismay at his death on 
the Cross, each would seek to encourage the other with the 
help of what they still possessed of him ; his words became 
the substitute for the departed one himself : the favour 
ite consolation and at the same time the absolute standard 
of the life of the new community. Paul himself treated the 
sayings of the Lord as binding upon every Christian as a 
matter of course, and the few that he quotes in his Epistles 
he received from the primitive communities, which were justly 
proud of such possessions. Words of Jesus were, of course, 
still more necessary to the Christians of Palestine in their 

1 Matt. xii. 38 etc. 



376 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

continual discussions with their fellow-countrymen, of whose 
conversion they would not despair, than they were to the 
Apostle of the Gentiles, whose object was to arouse faith in a 
forgiveness of sins and in an eternal life and blessedness 
through Christ ; and it was these words, whose super- Jewish 
sublimity and anti-Pharisaic boldness no one could deny, 
which did still more than the scandalon of the death on the 
Cross to repel the majority of Israelites from such a Messiah. 
Neither in Palestine nor among the Gentiles in foreign 
lands, however, could the preachers of Christ confine them 
selves to handing on the characteristic utterances of their Lord : 
every catechumen as well as every believer must have been 
repeatedly told the story of his death and resurrection, and 
his miracles were also appealed to as the proof of his having 
been anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power. ! This 
primitive interest in his history, both in his deeds and his 
fate, should not be underrated ; in discussion with the unbe 
lieving Jews it was important to be able to prove by concrete 
examples that his life corresponded closely with the Messianic 
prophecies (or expectations), that he had walked the earth 
possessed of divine power, endowed with supernatural majesty, 
and in every way as the Son of God, and that he had fulfilled 
the will of God just as much by his suffering and death as he 
had sealed it by his Pxesurrection. But the mission to the 
Gentiles was no less in need of this witness to the Saviour, 
afforded by deeds of omnipotence and by the fulfilment 
in him of ancient prophecy ; it was not only the school of 
apologists inspired by Justin (A.D. 150), but Paul himself, who 
brought the Kara ras <ypa(f)ds : into the foreground in dealing 
with possible Hellenic converts, side by side with reports of 
the life and death of Jesus. And, in spite of his contempt 3 
for the Jewish demand for signs, he must have regarded the 
signs and wonders which were the necessary credentials of 
an Apostle as absolutely natural in the case of the Messiah, 
and must have extolled them in fitting language before his 
hearers. From this point of view, as the foundation of 
trust in Jesus, his gospel, and his revelation, the acts 

1 Acts x. 38. - 1. Cor. xv. 3. 

:i 1. Cor. i. 22. Rom. xv. 19 ; 2. Cor. xii. 12. 



29.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 377 

(Trpd%eis) of Jesus might well seem the most important matter 
of all. 

Nevertheless, the relation between the two sides of Gospel 
tradition, the sayings and the narratives, has been very aptly 
compared with that which exists in the eyes of Jewish 
orthodoxy between the Halacha (doctrine, interpretation of the 
Law) and the Haggada (continuation of the sacred history). 
The stories seemed merely to lead the reader to Jesus, while 
it was in the sayings that men possessed his actual self. This 
division is frequently to be met with ; Irenaeus, 1 for instance, 
boasts of having heard Polycarp relate both the teaching and 
the miracles of Jesus (KIU Trspl TWV SwajAsajv avrov KOI rrspl 
rfjs SiBaa-KoXias), and wherever we find any comment on 
the relationship between them, the miracles are looked upon 
as the preparation for the teaching. And, above all, we must 
remember that the Logia of Jesus were already in existence 
in the form which he himself had given them, so that any 
alteration of their wording could only be a change for the 
worse, while in the case of the stories about the Lord his 
followers had first to learn how to tell them, so that there the 
form was merely human handiwork. Indeed, a later comer 
with an entirely different version might perhaps materially 
improve the narrative of a fellow -believer who had already 
told the story of some miracle many times. Thus the stereo 
typing of the Gospel material as far as it occurred at all- 
took place much earlier and more successfully in the case of 
the sayings of Jesus than in that of the stories of his life ; 
though since the Christian communities, even in Palestine, 
were from the outset much scattered, it could never become 
complete even in the case of the sayings. Expressions would 
be forgotten here which were remembered elsewhere ; recol 
lections would be revived in one place and left in obscurity in 
another ; thoughts would be strung together here and left in 
their separate form there, and so on, and we should be obliged 
to assume a sort of central inspection of the Gospel tradition, 
exercising its functions with great rigour and still greater good 
fortune, in order to make it seem probable that there was any 

1 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. V. xx. 6. 



378 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

considerable uniformity in that tradition before the period of 
the written propagation of the Gospel. 

Papias tells us that the Apostle Matthew inaugurated 
this period by writing down (of course in the popular dialect 
of Palestine) a collection of Sayings of the Lord. None 
but certain modern theologians who are anxious to reproduce 
the Original Gospel by re-translation from the Greek, but who 
do not know Aramaic, declare that Matthew wrote in the 
sacred language, the Hebrew of the Old Testament. We do 
not doubt the statement of Papias, 1 and it is to the eternal 
credit of the primitive community that it preserved to the 
Church the Jesus of history, as well as the Christ of the 
believer s reflection. We know nothing definite as to the 
motives which induced this Apostle to take up his pen, but it 
can only have been when the number of ear-witnesses of the 
words of Jesus had considerably diminished, and the need arose 
of handing on the substance of his Gospel, under the authority of 
an eye-witness and in permanent form (i.e. in writing), to a ris 
ing generation who had neither heard nor seen the Lord. The 
author probably aspired as little to any exhaustive complete 
ness as he did to accuracy of chronological sequence ; nor could 
he have attained to either, since his memory and his oppor 
tunities for investigation had their limits, and the community, 
moreover, had never been at all anxious to know when Jesus 
had uttered a particular saying (any more than when he had 
wrought a particular miracle), but only what he had revealed 
and what he had promised. The Logia document of Matthew 
probably consisted in a selection of the most important words 
of Jesus known to the writer, made with all possible fidelity 
and with a timid endeavour to reproduce some larger groups 
by arranging them according to their subjects. Greek 
literature possessed similar collections of the utterances of 
wise men (aTro^Osj/jiara) in considerable numbers. And that 
such logia-books were renewed even in later times is proved by 
the discovery at Oxyrhynchos, published in 1897 by Messrs 
Grenfell and Hunt under the title of \6yta J^croO ( Sayings of 
our Lord, from an early Greek Papyrus ), in which apparently 
we have a Christian of about 300 A.D. making a collection of 

1 See pp. 306, 307. 



29.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 379 

sayings pure and simple, all of them introduced by the words 
\sjsi Irjo-ovs. How opportune was the undertaking of Matthew 
was proved by its success ; even in the Greek communities it 
was soon felt to be indispensable, and preachers interpreted it 
as well as they could until good written translations did 
away with the necessity for such separate efforts, and at 
last actually supplanted the Aramaic original altogether. 
The collection as such was not regarded as Scripture, and 
only the word of Jesus which it contained was sacred ; how 
can we wonder, then, that the copyists were no more servile 
in their treatment of its text than the unknown transla 
tors ? Wherever it was possible to make an edifying inser 
tion, to explain, to correct by the light of a different tradi 
tion, or perhaps even to rewrite in another form, it was 
clone ; one translation would be corrected by another, and 
thus perhaps not two copies of the Logia document would 
finally have been exactly similar in every part. This would 
have been another reason for its disappearance. But it 
probably did not entirely disappear till the complete Gos 
pels rendered further competition impossible, and made 
the document itself superfluous by appropriating all its con 
tents. 

It is impossible to say whether in this transition between 
the Apostolic and Post- Apostolic ages, other similar collections 
arose either suggested by the example of Matthew or else 
independently of him or not. But even if they did, they 
would not have included all the sayings of Jesus which were 
in circulation at that time, and thus it would be possible even 
after 100 years and more had passed away to draw from the 
fuller, though certainly less limpid, oral tradition certain 
sayings beside much that was of little value which, though 
not Biblical ( Agrapha ), yet have the true ring about them, 
like the Be ye true money-changers (^ii>eaOs 56/a/iot 
rpaTTs^irat) so often quoted by the Fathers, or the logion from 
the Gospel according to the Hebrews, And ye should never 
be glad except when ye look upon your brother in love. 

The first step in the conversion of the Gospel material 
into literature was necessarily followed by others. A legiti 
mate need of the community for an account of their Saviour 



380 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

in full, especially in his suffering and death, but, above all, the 
need felt by the Christian teachers of possessing a document 
to which they could appeal in their battles for the true Messiah 
against unbelievers, which would provide them with the 
means of demonstrating that Jesus was the Beloved Son of 
God, in spite of all apparent failure and defeat such needs 
were met soon after 70 by Mark. Either, however, because 
he knew that his readers were already fairly familiar with the 
Sayings of the Lord, or else because they were less necessary 
for his purpose, he laid special stress upon the narrative side. 
He may have been assisted in this task by his recollections 
from his intercourse with Peter, but as a matter of fact he did 
not care very much whence he drew any particular episode, so 
long as it suited his book. Mark is, moreover, obviously 
influenced by theological considerations ; certain features in 
his account of the Passion clearly betray their origin in the 
author s desire to see the prophecies of the Old Testament 
fulfilled. Thus the spitting upon Jesus, 1 the buffeting and 
scourging, 2 come from Isaiah 1. 6, the silence of Jesus ;! from 
Isaiah liii. 7, his crucifixion between two robbers from 
Isaiah liii. 12, the casting of lots for his raiment from 
Psalm xxi. 19 (and xxii. 18). But the fact that he does not 
quote the Old Testament parallels seems to favour the view 
that Mark did not think out these things for himself, but 
followed the tradition here as elsewhere. And in the case of 
the trial and execution of Jesus events for which the Christian 
community itself was not able to procure any trustworthy 
witness the process of reconstruction naturally began on the 
very first day. The task of depicting in accordance with God s 
Word the manner in which the Messiah must have suffered 
and died was one to which the Apostles themselves might 
gladly have given their assistance. 

Similar productions must have arisen in considerable 
numbers between the years 70 and 100, for Luke speaks of 
many predecessors ; many may not indeed mean 25 or 100, 
but certainly more than two, and this is sufficient evidence that 
the demand again and again exceeded the supply, and that the 
idea of the stability and uniformity of the tradition is imagi- 

1 xiv. 65. - xv. 15, 19. 



29.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 381 

nary. The mutual relationship of these productions was 
probably very much confused ; but we may assume that all 
of them made use of oral traditions in various degrees as 
well as of written authorities. Those of them which were 
not saved, like Mark and Matthew, by admission into the 
Canon, disappeared ; the apocryphal Gospels of the second 
century, such as those according to the Hebrews, to the Egyp 
tians, to Peter, of which some parts have been preserved, 
and probably also a Gospel fragment from a papyrus found 
at Fayoum (a parallel to Matt. xxvi. 29-34), to which Professor 
G. Bickell of Vienna enthusiastically assigns a very high place 
all these are in reality modified versions of the Canonical 
Gospels, written to suit sectarian or heretical tendencies ; but 
that is no reason why occasional fragments of primitive 
tradition should not have found their way into them. Luke 
and Matthew, however, seem already to stand at the point 
where the production of Gospels ceased to be a gain to the 
Church and began to mean danger only, and even John must 
share in this judgment to some extent ; from Luke onwards 
the writing of Gospels fell into the hands of romancers and 
religious philosophers, or rather perhaps of theologians and 
theologasters, and the Church did well to pay but scant atten 
tion to their productions. Moreover Luke set up a fatal ideal 
with his all things accurately from the first, for the later 
writers omitted his inward qualification, as far as I could find 
out anything about them, and peopled with the creations of 
their own fancy just those periods of the life of Jesus which 
had till then remained almost empty i.e. his youth and the 
days immediately following his resurrection. These Gospels 
of the Childhood and the Ascension have no longer any con 
nection with the tradition, except where they borrow from the 
Canonical Gospels, and it would be absurd to take them 
seriously into account as authorities for the history of Jesus, 
especially in the case of those Gospels which were only com 
posed in order to furnish Evangelistic proofs for the peculiar 
dogmas of some Gnostic school. In both these genres the 
Gospel story merely serves as the means to some ulterior end. 
Matthew produces the impression of being slightly further re 
moved from this sort of writing than Luke, because, in spite of 



382 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

his additions to Mark at the beginning and end, he is still 
fairly reticent about the history of the Risen Christ, and con 
tents himself in his Birth-story also with two or three 
edifying pictures. Luke, on the other hand, has a very highly 
coloured early history, which extends as far as Jesus twelfth 
year ; his Resurrection chapter is nearly three times as long 
as Matthew s, and instead of the one cry which according to 
Mark and Matthew 7 Jesus uttered on the Cross Eloi, Eloi, 
lama sabachthani ? he puts three other sayings into the 
mouth of Christ which express, not torture and anguish of soul, 
but their contrary. 1 These three words were unquestionably 
unknown to Mark and Matthew, nor can they, in spite of their 
beauty, have been founded on tradition ; they are rather the 
expression of what the faith of later Christians saw in the heart 
of their dying Redeemer. But Luke readily poetised, and incor 
porated poetry, while Matthew did so only in case of need ; 
this difference, however, between the personalities of the two 
writers need not imply a difference of date between their re 
spective productions. Each of the three Synoptics contains 
some elements invented independently of the tradition, but 
even these have their value, since they were not the products 
of mythologising art, but the half naive conversions into fact 
of things of which Jesus was believed capable, closely con 
nected, too, both in style and tone, with the best-attested 
passages in the Gospels. That Luke contains a far greater 
abundance of those elements than either Matthew or Mark 
is, however, compensated for by the fact that he alone has 
preserved to us a succession of the noblest gems of the Gospel 
tradition, which, but for his fortunate hand, would have been 
lost to mankind. 

As long as the Gospel material was still in a plastic state, 
before the canonisation of certain definite forms of it, three 
different periods may be distinguished : first, that of oral 
transmission (between the years 30 and 60), when the holders 
of the tradition, unconcerned for the wishes of future genera 
tions, but compelled by the religious duties of the moment, 
kept the main outlines of the Gospel story fresh and living in 
the minds of the community ; secondly, that of the Synoptic 

1 xxiii. 34, 43 and 46. 



29.] THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 383 

record (from about 60 to about 100), when, after an Apostle had 
laid the foundation of a Gospel literature, many writers, 
among them Mark, Matthew and Luke, created in similar 
fashion (since all were in closest touch with the tradition) and 
by selection from the materials still available, a written pre 
sentation of the Gospel story, clear, connected, and neglecting 
none of the points of primary importance ; and thirdly, that 
of the fabrication (from the beginning of the second century 
onwards) of apocryphal Gospels, when the living tradition was 
exhausted, the religious necessities of the majority satisfied 
by the great existing Gospels, and the passion for further 
production, if it did not manifest itself solely in the emenda 
tion of older Gospels to suit various dogmatic prejudices, found 
an outlet in the actual manufacture of new material. The 
first period was the richest in its aggregate possessions, but 
the individual, even a Paul, for instance, possessed but frag 
ments ; the second effected by crystallisation into writing a 
consolidation which, in spite of the decrease of material, was 
yet a step in advance ; and after 100 begins the decadence. 
Later generations sought to conceal their imitation of the 
ancients and to produce the appearance of wealth by remodel 
ling well-attested matter in accordance with later tastes, or 
else by bringing together a mass of fables that were wholly 
unattested. The Gospel descended to the market-place, while 
the prominent appearance in it of other personalities robbed 
it of all its peculiar charm. The Church showed great tact 
in refusing to countenance these so-called Gospels, and we have 
good grounds for supposing that in the Synoptics she has 
handed down to us the best that ever existed under that title, 
and that the Gospel story was never and nowhere so truly, 
fully and plainly told as in Mark, Matthew and Luke. 

B. JOHN 
30. The Gospel according to John 

[Cf. works mentioned at 23. For commentaries see Meyer, 
ii., by B. Weiss (ed. 8, 1893); Hand-Commentar, iv., by Holtz- 
rnann (ed. 2, 1893) ; C. E. Luthardt, Das Johanneische Evange- 
lium (1875-76) ; F. Godet, Saint Jean. The last two take 
the apologetic side entirely, but Luthardt with slightly more 



384 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHA.P. I. 

perception of the difficulties than Godet. Further, 0. Holtzraann, 
Das Joh. Evangelium untersucht und erklart (1887) ; F. Spitta s 
article on Unordnungen im Texte des vierten Evangeliums, in 
Zur Gesch. und Liter, des Urchristentums, part i. 1893, pp. 155 
-204 ; W. Baldensperger, Der Prolog des vierten Evangeliums 
(1898), which reconstructs a new historical background for the Fourth 
Gospel with equal boldness and skill (on this question compare 
W. Wrede in Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen for 1900, pp. 1-26) 
and H. H. Wendt, Das Johannesevangelium Eine Untersuch- 
ung seiner Entstehung und seines geschichtlichen Wertes 
(1900), a defence of the hypothesis that certain earlier written 
records from the Apostle s hand were embodied and recast in the 
discourses of the Fourth Gospel. Lastly, C. Weizsacker s chapter 
on the Fourth Gospel in his Apostolisches Zeitalter (1892), which 
will always remain a classic (pp. 513-538, and cf. 476-486).] 

1. The Gospel of John has been credited by lovers of the 
mysterious with a construction devised with the most 
exquisite art ; that is, with a system of trinities (Dreiheiteri) 
carried out with equal persistency in small things l as in 
great. The writer himself, according to this theory, did not 
perceive the greater part of them, and the most contradictory 
views have been put forward with equal justice as to his own 
intentions in the matter of arrangement. In reality one 
section usually fits into the next by its very form, and 
larger divisions can be suggested at many different points 
almost as well as in the single case of chapter xiii., after 
which the Gospel unfolds the passage of Jesus to the Father 
in a variety of scenes, whereas up to that point it had 
described his activity on earth alone. 

The Prologue (i. 1-18) expounds in short, terse sentences 
what really forms the subject of the Gospel. Jesus is the in 
carnate Word, the universal Eeason which has been with God 
from all eternity, and he has now come down among us men 
to bring us grace and truth and the perfect knowledge of God. 
Upon this John the Baptist, who had already been mentioned 
in the Prologue - as a witness to the only-begotten Son, leads 
up through a series of other witnesses to the first public 
appearance of the Son of God, for whom he was to prepare 

E.g., i. 1 * b and c . 2 i. 15-18. 



30.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN 385 

the way ; a group of disciples gather round Jesus, and 
Nathaniel repeats the testimony of John. 1 Next, Jesus mani 
fests his glory by performing his first miracle, the conversion 
of the water into wine at the marriage at Cana. 2 From Cana 
he journeys through Capernaum to Jerusalem and there 
cleanses the Temple 3 ; he finds faith even among the rulers of 
the Jews, one of whom, Nicodemus, comes to him by night and 
holds converse with him about the second birth. 4 Jesus 
activity as baptiser next calls forth fresh testimonies from 
John, 5 and on his journey through Samaria he reveals 
himself to a Samaritan woman as Prophet and Messiah, 
while other Samaritans believe on him because of his word. 
On his return to Galilee he heals the nobleman s son at 
Capernaum. 7 The subsequent feast of the Jews takes him 
again to Jerusalem, where at the Pool of Bethesda he heals 
by a single word the man who had been infirm for thirty-eight 
years, thereby breaking the Sabbath and being obliged to defend 
himself against the Jews. 8 The feeding of the five thousand 
on the other side of the Sea of Tiberias next leads to the 
sayings in which he calls himself the bread of life and 
speaks of the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood, 
upon which a division occurs in the ranks of his disciples. 9 
At the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem matters come to a 
collision between him and the Jews, who are already planning 
his destruction ; the fools among them will not hear at any 
price of a Galilaean Messiah. 10 An episode n tells how he set 
free the woman taken in adultery, whose judges had all dis 
appeared because none dared cast the first stone at her and 
thus inflict the punishment to which she was liable in the 
eyes of the Law. Then follow further disputes with the Jews, 12 
in which Jesus seeks to demonstrate the contrasts, typified 
by himself and them, between light and darkness, above and 
beneath, freedom and bondage, the children of God and the 
children of the devil all this leading up to the healing 
on the Sabbath of the man born blind, 13 at which the 

1 i. 19-51. - il. 1-11. 3 ii. 12-25. 4 iii. 1-21. 

s iii. 22-3(5. 6 iv. 1-42. 7 iv. 43-54. 

8 Ch. v. " Ch. vi. <> Ch. vii. 

11 vii. 53-viii. 11. - viii. 12-59. ls Ch. ix. 

C C 



386 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

wilful blindness of the Jews is fully brought to light. 
He declares himself the good shepherd who collects his 
scattered sheep into one flock and is willing to lay down 
his life for them, but the unbelievers, those who are not of 
his sheep, see in him one possessed with a devil ; and later 
on, when at the feast of the Dedication in Jerusalem he 
announces plainly in answer to a question from the Jews 
that he is the Christ, and even that he and the Father are 
one, his hearers threaten to stone him for blasphemy. 1 The 
last section of this first part, x. 40-xii. 50, shows the 
breach complete between the Christ and the mass of the 
Jews ; in the very detailed account of the raising of the four 
days buried Lazarus, Jesus reveals himself as the Resurrec 
tion and the Life, but before this - he suffers himself to be 
anointed as though for burial by the sisters of Lazarus in 
Bethany. Then in Jerusalem, which he enters amid cries of 
Hosanna," himself conscious of approaching death, he sets 
the great decision for the last time before the people. A few 
Greeks indeed seek him out, a voice from Heaven announces 
his approaching glorification in the presence of the multitude, 
but he finds but little faith among the people, and even 
among his followers there are many who do not venture to 
acknowledge him. 

From chapter xiii. onwards he devotes himself solely to his 
disciples ; the action of washing their feet, which he performs 
after a meal, is made the occasion for the expulsion of the 
traitor Judas ; and throughout the next three chapters 4 he 
addresses those long-drawn parting speeches to the Eleven 
in which he exhorts them to remain steadfast in love, in 
prayer and in him, the true Vine, even after his departure ; 
promises to send them the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit pro 
ceeding from the Father, as a substitute for his own presence, 
and finally comforts them with the thought of the hour of 
re-union, when there would be no more speaking in proverbs. 
Then follows " the High-Priestly prayer for the glorification 
of the Son and all his disciples. The story of his suffering, 
death and burial fills the next two chapters ; three appear- 

1 x. 1-39. - xii. 1-11. s xii. 12-15. 

* xiii. 31-xvi. 33. Ch. xvii. 



30.] THE GOSPEL ACCO11DIXG TO JOHX 387 

ances of the Eisen One to Mary, to the Eleven and to 
Thomas are described in chapter xx., and the Gospel appears 
to end at verse 30 ; then, however, another chapter follows in 
a supplementary manner, telling of the miraculous draught of 
fishes which the risen Christ causes his disciples to make 
in the Sea of Tiberias. The end is formed by prophecies 
concerning the death of Peter and of the Beloved Disciple. 

2. The peculiar character borne by the Gospel of John, 
differing as it does so markedly from the Synoptics that even 
a child learning its Sunday lesson would notice it, cannot be 
explained by the ostensible purpose ascribed to it in xx. 31. 
The Synoptics, too, were written in order to bring their readers 
faith in Jesus as Messiah and as the Son of God, and thereby 
to give them eternal life in his Name ; and if John expressly 
declares l that he did not attempt to make his record complete, 
the same may certainly be said of Mark. It is rather that 
the special tendency of the writer gained an infinitely 
greater influence over the Gospel material in John than in 
the case of the Synoptics. Let us but compare the Prologues 
of Luke and of John : in the former it is the interest of the 
historian that is displayed in those matters which have been 
fulfilled among us, he wishes to relate all things accurately 
from the first, while in the latter the theologian sums up in 
terse phrases the truths which every reader must bring with 
him in order to study the Gospel story in the spirit of piety. 
This Prologue, in fact, contains the whole of the Gospel in 
nuce. It contains the melody, the Leit-motiv (especially 
vv. 11-14) which rings in our ears again and again amid a 
mass of variations. The instrument to which the composer is 
bound is the earthly life of Jesus, and thus everything which 
we learn in the Fourth Gospel has the sound of history, but 
the important thing is not to hear the history, but to catch 
the melody through it, and to satisfy the soul with the enjoy 
ment of it. But it is certainly an exaggeration to think that 
the miracle stories existed in the mind of John only as alle 
gories, as disguises for his own metaphysical and religious 
thoughts, for we should then be obliged to extend this 
theory to the story of the Passion as well, which is out 

1 xx. 80, and cf. xxi. 25. 

c c 2 



388 AN INTRODUCTION TO THK NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

of the question ; Nicodemus, too, and Nathaniel are meant 
to be taken as historical personages just as seriously as 
John, 1 Simon Peter, 2 Thomas-" or the High Priest Caia- 
phas. 1 

The writer believed the marriage at Cana to have been 
an actual event, the changing of ordinary water into noble 
wine to have taken place on that occasion ; he does not intend 
the man blind from his birth of chapter ix. to be a symbol of 
those who were as yet unenlightened, who had never seen God, 
nor his Lazarus to be a personification of the creature subject 
to decay, in the sense of Romans vii. 24 and viii. 20. But 
he treats almost all these persons as mere framework ; they 
vanish as suddenly as they appear, as in the case of Nico 
demus and of the Greeks who wished to see Jesus." The 
Evangelist only takes an interest in them as long as he can 
make use of them, to reflect some feature of the inner life of 
Jesus. The miracles, in fact, attest the divine omnipotence of 
Jesus, the sayings his divine omniscience, and the double mean 
ings conveyed in both strengthen in a manner characteristic 
of the author s taste the impression of the unique greatness, 
the j ulness, of Jesus. The Fourth Evangelist certainly did not 
undervalue the evidential power of miracles in awakening faith, 
as may be seen by ii. 11 and 23, but he places a still higher value 
on knowledge than on power, and this explains the marked pre 
ponderance he gives to the words of Jesus, which he regards 
as indispensable commentaries even on the miracles. 

But, more than this, John does not paint the wonder-work 
ing Jesus as one who used his power to exercise compassion, 
to banish trouble and misery and to dry the weeping eye ; 
touches like Luke s And when the Lord saw her he had 
compassion on her . . . and he gave him to his mother 7 
even the very words for compassion are not to be found 
in John ; here the actions of the Saviour, who knows well 
how to appreciate love, s are not directed towards removing 
the petty ills of the day, but solely towards the ultimate goal 
of pointing out the division between the children of God, and 

1 Chaps, i. and iii. - Chaps, xiii. and xxi. a xx. 24. 

4 xi. 49. - xii. 20- 22. 6 i. 14 and 16. 

Luke vii. 13 fol. fi v. 42, xiii. 35 and Ch. xv. 



30.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN 389 

the children of the world who had given themselves over to 
perdition. God loves the world only in so far as it is his work 
and contains the germ of eternity, nor are we bidden to love the 
world or the sinner, but Light, God and the brethren. The 
one-sidedness of the central idea of John, upon which all the 
words and deeds of Jesus turn, is, after all, its chief 
characteristic ; Jesus lifts up his voice, not in order to explain 
the riddles of life and of history, to supply his hearers with 
advice for their practical conduct or with precepts for the new 
morality (as in the Sermon on the Mount), or to solve certain 
problems of the Jewish faith and Jewish philosophy, such as 
those of healing on the Sabbath, true cleanliness, or the 
resurrection of the dead ; wherever he is not speaking as a 
Prophet in order to reveal his omniscience, or in parables in 
order to test the understanding of his hearers, he has one 
constant theme himself, his relations to the Father, to the 
world and to those who believe in him, and through all this 
the fulfilment, the completion of the Scriptures. This gives 
the Gospel a remarkable monotony ; sublime as its ideas are. 
they are but few, repeated again and again and expressed in 
scarcely differing forms ; and this impression is strengthened 
by a certain poverty of vocabulary and a sameness in the 
manner of presentation. 

At first sight, John appears to be constructed with more 
skill and to attain a higher unity than Matthew itself. 
Whereas the Synoptics usually string their material together 
by external links only, John creates a sort of drama, in which 
later events constantly refer to earlier, 1 and the chronological 
thread is never lost sight of ; from the first appearance of Jesus 
to the end we may always know exactly where the action takes 
place, nor is there any lack of definite indications of time and 
place, such as Cana, Bethany, Sychar in Samaria, the two 
days of iv. 40 and 43, or the midst of the feast and the 
last day, the great day of the feast, of chapter vii. But we 
are inclined to feel that by this constant change of scene an 
appearance of movement is artificially produced of which the 

1 E.g., iv. 15 to ii. 23 ; iv. 46 (and 54) to ii. 1-11 ; vii. 23 to v. 8 and 9 ; 
xiii. 33 to vii. 33 foh and viii. 21 fol. ; xv. 20 to xiii. 10, and xviii. 14 to xi 
49 fol. 



390 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEAV TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

reality is entirely lacking ; not only is there no space left 
for any development in Jesus himself : there is not even room 
for it in his relations with the world and in his achievements. 
He himself quite in accordance with the dogma of the Gospel 
is the same on the first day as after his Resurrection ; we 

i/ are told nothing of his birth, nothing of his baptism, of his 
sojourn in the wilderness or even of his temptation. Even 
the division of mankind into believers, enemies, and waverers, 
is there from the beginning. That he was joyfully acclaimed 
at first from all sides, then that the people grew suspicious 
and in open disputes applied the test of Jewish standards to 
his piety and authority, in order to destroy him at last with 
all the hatred of disappointment such a course of events has 
not left the slightest trace behind it in the Fourth Gospel. 
Next to the Prologue, John reveals himself most clearly as 

V the interpreter (not the reporter) of history in those insertions 
which he loves to make in the substance of his narrative. 
Such additions are also to be found in the Synoptics, especially 
when these describe the occasion for an important saying of 
the Lord s (e.g., Luke s And the Pharisees, who were lovers of 
money, heard these things ; and they scoffed at him ), but they 
are confined to a few indispensable parentheses, whereas in 
John the writer uses them to make his readers entirely depen 
dent upon his interpretation and his judgment ; ii. 21 fol. is 
characteristic of this, and so is 24 fol., But Jesus did not 
trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men, and 
because he needed not that anyone should bear witness 
concerning a man, for he himself knew what was in man. - 
These observations of the writer s are made in exactly the 
same tone as the discourses of Jesus, and it is impossible 
to separate them from the context ; occasionally even one 
may seriously doubt whether the speaker is Jesus or the 
Evangelist, and in i. 16-18 some hold it to be the Baptist, 
others the writer, a fact which proves how subjective is the 
character of the report and how completely the Gospel 
material is here steeped in the individuality of the writer. To 

1 xvi. 14, and cf. xviii. 1 and xix. 11. 

2 Cf. vii. 39, x. (>, xi. 13, xii. 16, 33 and 41 : These things said Isaiah, 
because he saw his glory, and he spake of him, i.e. Jesus. 



30.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN 391 

unfold the right interpretation of Christ that is, of Christianity 
before his readers eyes, is the writer s sole desire, and there 
fore we cannot expect him to give us vivid pictures from the 
life of Jesus ; he did not even succeed in reaching a living 
realisation of what he wished to tell, and hence the incon 
sistencies and self-contradictions of his story : as when he 
assumes a thing to be known in chapter xi. 1 which he only 
relates in chapter xii., or when in chapter xvi. 2 Jesus foretells 
an event to his disciples which according to ix. 22 had long 
since come to pass. 

John s mode of presentation is also characterised by a 
remarkable uniformity. The construction of the sentences is 
Hebraistic, 3 and there is an entire absence of the true period ; 
final clauses are the only subordinates which are at all 
unusually frequent, and generally the writer merely likes to 
co-ordinate his principal clauses, while a sort of rhythmical 
solemnity is imparted to his language by his habit of express 
ing his more important thoughts in two parallel sentences : 
e.g., He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on 
him that sent me. And he that beholdeth me beholdeth him 
that sent me. Or again, He that believeth on the Son hath 
eternal life, but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see 
life. * As examples of his circumstantial mode of expression, 
which cannot indulge too largely in repetition, we may take 
i. 20, And he confessed, and denied not ; and he con 
fessed . . . or i. 32, where the words And John bare 
witness, saying . . . divide the speech of John which is 
by no means long in itself quite superfluously into two 
halves. In the remarkably small vocabulary of the Gospel, 
abstract ideas, like to believe on, to bear witness of, 
witness, love, life, are relatively the best represented, 
while certain concrete words used in a metaphorical sense, 
such as light, darkness, vine, bread, water, have not 
the effect of a true image in vivifying the language, because 
their new meaning is already stereotyped ; illustrations of a 

1 Verse 2. 2 Verse 2. 

3 E.g., in the placing of the predicate first, which occurs almost without 
exception : e.g., xviii. 12-27. 

4 xii. 44 fol. 5 iii. 36, and cf. p. 249. 
8 Cf. xviii. 15 and 16, and xvii. 14 h and 16. 



392 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

parabolic nature, like those of the travailing woman of xvi. 21, 
and the friend of the bridegroom of iii. 29, are exceptional. 

The most curious point, however, is the regular system 
displayed in the arrangement of the discourses ; though they 
appear to flow on spontaneously in conversational form, with 
alternating speeches -for even in the leave-taking discourses 
of chapters xiii.-xvi. Peter, Thomas, Philip and Judas are made 
to step in with separate questions they are in reality all 
made after the same pattern. Whether Jesus is conversing 
with Nicodemus, with the Jews, with the Samaritan woman 
or with his own disciples, the process is the same : an introduc 
tory question is answered by him with an ambiguous sentence - 
which the questioner misunderstands ; Jesus then corrects 
the mistake, and if a second question shows that he has done 
so effectually, he gives further and more detailed instruction 
on the subject which is in truth his only one, and upon the 
understanding of which everything depends. Almost in the 
same words as the woman of Samaria, with her Sir, give me 
this water, that I thirst not, :i do the Galilasans beseech him 
Lord, evermore give us this bread 4 ; and the answers in 
the two cases are not less similar. Thus instead of the end 
less variety of real history, what we find in John, down to 
the most trifling details of form, is the monotonous, sys- 
tematising tendency of an historical construction as incapable 
of plain narrative as it is indifferent to historical detail. 

3. It would seem impossible that any doubts should exist 
as to the integrity of a Gospel whose individual features are 
so sharply defined as these. Nevertheless the texts of all the 
Gospels have come down to us in a state which leaves free 
scope for a critical reconstruction of the wording of individual 
passages," and even John has been emendated and added to 
by the dogmatic tendencies of later generations. Textual 
criticism, then, has long since decided that the paragraph 

1 xiii. 36, xiv. 5, 8 and 22 ; cf. xvi. 17 fol. and 2!) fol. 

2 E.g., ii. 19, Destroy this temple, etc. ; iii. 3, Except a man be born 
from above (&vwQfv) ; iv. 10, living water ; iv. 32, I have meat to eat that 
ye know not. 

3 iv. 15. 4 vi. 34. 

6 E.g., John i. 18, where there is a question as to whether we should read 
only begotten Son or only begotten God ; v. 4, x. 8, xxi. 25. 



30.] THE GOSPEL ACCOHDING TO JOHN 393 

about the woman taken in adultery which is to be found, by 
the way, in two very different recensions was interpolated 
into the Fourth Gospel by accident from an external source ; 
very few old Greek manuscripts contain it, nor are the 
earlier Latin Fathers acquainted with it ; Blass nevertheless 
regards it as an original part of his Koman recension of 
Luke, in which he complacently finds a home for it at xxi. 36 ; 
Eusebius tells us that he read it in Papias and in the Gospel 
to the Hebrews, and if Papias endowed it with the authority 
of a John, the motive which induced the unknown copyist 
(perhaps in the third century) to insert it into the Fourth 
Gospel would not be far to seek. From internal evidence 
alone we should be obliged to declare it spurious, for both in 
tone and diction it departs very widely from its context ; but 
neither its beauty nor its credibility sustains any injury from 
the removal of its Apostolic authority - it remains the 
noblest of Agrapha. 

It is not so easy to pronounce decisively upon chapter xxi. 
At first sight everyone would assume it to be a supplement 
added by another hand. The Gospel possesses an admirable 
conclusion in the last two verses of chapter xx. ; the idea 
that the writer inserted it when making the fair copy, 
merely in order to fill up a page which would otherwise 
have remained blank, is scarcely to be taken seriously, and 
if he was the Beloved Disciple himself, he could never have 
forgotten or intentionally have passed over the appearance 
of the Pdsen One related in chapter xxi. Again, verse 
24 sounds like the testimony of younger disciples con 
cerning the writer of xx. 30 and 31, and the principal object 
of the supplement might have been to justify the death of 
John by a saying of Jesus, seeing that it had occurred, con 
trary to all expectation, before the Parusia. The locality of 
chapter xxi. alone seems to point to some stream of tradi 
tion not otherwise made use of in John, for whereas chapter 
xx., like the Gospel of Luke, tells only of appearances in 
Jerusalem, chapter xxi. transfers such a scene to the sea of 
Tiberias in Galilee. Of course, the notion that this chapter 
was taken from another Gospel and merely tacked on 
to John is inadmissible, for vv. 1 and 14 refer distinctly 



394 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

to chapter xx., and the interest of the narrator in chapter xxi. 
is limited to John s Gospel, which he merely wished to 
complete. On the other hand, we find that the tradition 
knows of no Fourth Gospel without chapter xxi., that in 
mental attitude, tone and vocabulary the latter corresponds 
entirely with the Gospel (as in verse 19% for instance, a 
parenthetical remark on the double meaning of the miraculous 
draught of fish), so that the disciple who is here supposed to 
have added to the Gospel must have worked himself into the 
mental individuality of his master in a truly wonderful 
manner. He must even have known that master s innermost 
intentions better than the Evangelist himself, for an essential 
part of the Gospel would be wanting if, while xviii. 15 fol. tell 
us that Peter and the Beloved Disciple were the only ones 
among his friends who followed their Master after his arrest, 
and xx. 2-4 that they alone hastened to the grave on the first 
day of the week to ascertain whether he had actually quitted it, 
yet when their Lord had risen again they were not held worthy, 
like the Magdalene, of a special appearance from him. In 
xx. 21-23, Jesus had imparted their mission to his disciples : 
what special charge had he to lay upon his most faithful 
pair ? It is this question to which chapter xxi. gives the 
answer ; the testimony of the departing Son of God, that the 
Beloved Disciple should tarry till his return, sets the seal 
upon the witness borne by this disciple throughout the 
Gospel to the Son of God ; nor are even vv. 24 fol. written 
by a different hand, but by the same interpreter to whom 
we owe verse 19 a . The last two verses of chapter xx. were 
not originally intended as the ending of the Gospel, but, 
like xix. 35, constituted a sort of editorial addition inserted 
into the body of the story, like the phrase He that hath 
ears to hear, let him hear of the Synoptics and the 
Apocalypse. It is perfectly in accordance with the writer s 
manner that we are not prepared beforehand for a change in 
the scene of the visions ; as he appears to bring the farewell 
discourse to an end at xiv. 31, and yet takes it up again in a 
still more exalted tone in chapter xv., so he appears to bring 
the Kesurrection story to an end at xx. 31, and yet adds to it 
one of its most important parts ; xx. 30 and 31 are but one 



30.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN 395 

of the writer s many exhortations to his readers to use his 
book aright ; he does not really take leave of them until 
xxi. 24 fol. 

The passages in John, however, which have been struck 
out by critical censors are far from being confined to chapter xxi. 
and vii. 53-viii. 11. The schemes for its dissection are by 
this time almost innumerable. Critics have attempted to prove 
that whole sections among others an account of the Last 
Supper have disappeared from the Gospel, that others have 
been moved to the wrong place, 1 while others - again are later 
interpolations. Or else a considerably shorter original Gospel 
is reconstructed (this view is held by Weisse, Schweizer, Eenan, 
Wendt and Delff) by declaring either the Galilean sections, 
or the majority of the miracle stories, or the great discourses 
to be interpolations. The Prologue is pronounced spurious, 
except for the fragment comprised in vv. 6-8, which is in 
dispensable as an introduction to i. 19 fol., and as a witness to 
which the anti-Christian controversialist Celsus, who flourished 
about 170 A.D., is appealed to ; the theologian who added 
the remaining verses, it is contended, did so with the intention 
of bringing the Gospel into line with Alexandrian metaphysics, 
but not only did the want of connection between vv. 6-8 
and what immediately precedes and follows them betray the 
later composition of those parts, but the two main ideas of the 
Prologue, those of the Logos and the Charis, :! disappeared 
without a trace in the rest of the Gospel. Most of these sug 
gestions are prompted solely by the wish to save at least a 
groundwork of Apostolic authorship for the Gospel, even though 
the whole of it could not be ascribed to the Apostle ; but such a 
wish, as the starting-point for critical hypotheses, is extremely 
suspicious. These hypotheses must, however, be rejected in 
toto, because they do not take into account the similarity both in 
form and matter which extends to every part of the Gospel 
for even the miracle stories are indissolubly connected with the 
discourses that precede and follow them. The Prologue is the 

1 E.g., vv. vii. 15-24 and chaps, xv. and xvi., the proper places for which 
are said to be respectively between v. 47 and vi. 1, and after ver. xiii. 31". 

- E.g., vi. 51-59. 

* Vv. 14, 16 and 17. 4 E.g., chaps, ix. and xi. 



390 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

most indispensable part of all ; it bears the very stamp both 
of the other explanatory insertions of the Evangelist and of the 
Johannine discourses of Jesus ; but the writer was prevented 
by the fineness of his tact from putting a Greek philosophical 
term like the Word into the mouth of Jesus himself or even 
of his disciples, and wherever Jesus speaks the general term 
grace is replaced, in accordance with the old tradition, by the 
more particular salvation (cr^stv, arwrrjp. awrrjpia). Add 
to this that it is impossible to discover any obvious motive 
for the interpolations. The irregularities and contradictions 
which are relied upon to support such hypotheses are the 
very characteristics of John. 1 The critics too often set up the 
standard of their own logic, their own attention to details, 
their own demand for a correct succession of events, in 
short, a Gospel such as they themselves would write it, as their 
guide, whereas the task which John set himself (that of 
carrying out his ideal of the Christ in the actual history of 
Jesus, and of using materials drawn from a tradition still 
partly entangled in the things of the flesh for the repre 
sentation of a spiritual Christ) was not attainable without 
certain inconsistencies, since the form prescribed was far too 
inflexible for the new matter it was to contain. 

4. (a) In order to ascertain the date at which the Fourth 
Gospel was composed, we must first examine its relation to the 
other Gospels we possess, i.e. the Synoptics. It is almost 
universally regarded as certain that John was a later produc 
tion, because the Synoptics are all utilised in it. It is true 
that the differences between them are far more extensive than 
the points of agreement, for, apart from the Passion story, only 
a very few passages of John are unquestionably paralleled in 
the Synoptics of the discourses, indeed, practically none but 
xii. 25-31 and of course any literal copying-down of an earlier 
document is not to be thought of in the case of a writer who 
dealt with his material in so independent a fashion; but 
sufficient traces have nevertheless remained of his acquaint 
ance with the older works. In the story of the anointing 
(xii. 1-11), verse 8 is word for word identical with Matt. xxvi. 
11, which is itself an abbreviation of Mark xiv. 7 ; in verse 7 

1 See pp. 246 and 391. 



30.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN 397 

Jesus speaks of his being anointed for burial in much the same 
manner as in Mark 8 and Matthew 12, while the selling of the 
ointment for three hundred pence and the deprecating Let 
her alone are shared by John with Mark only. Finally, the 
remarkable identity in the description of the ointment, where 
the dependence of the one on the other is indisputable, 1 leaves 
no further room for doubt. The dependent writer can, how 
ever, only be John, for instead of following Mark and 
Matthew in saying that the ointment was poured over the 
head of Jesus, he relates how Mary anointed the feet of Christ 
and wiped them w r ith her hair a trait taken practically word 
for word from Luke s account, 2 which is itself a variant of the 
story based upon Mark. In the same way we may observe in 
comparing John s description of the Entry into Jerusalem, 3 
or of the feeding of the five thousand, 4 or even large parts of 
his story of the Passion," with their Synoptic equivalents, that 
John, though never binding himself slavishly to his predeces 
sors, is yet influenced by them even in matters of expression. 
All other explanations of these facts are unsatisfactory, since 
the points of agreement between John and the three Synop- 
tists are inextricably intertwined, and extend to the peculiar 
property of each. This relationship alone, then, will prevent us 
from assigning the Fourth Gospel to any date before 100 A.D. 
(b) That John made use of the Pauline Epistles in the 
same way as he employed the Synoptics cannot be asserted 
with so much confidence. It is true that in reading his work 
we are reminded often enough of Pauline ideas and phrases 
most frequently of those of Romans/ Corinthians and 
Ephesians and the Epistle to the Hebrews, too, might have 
been known to him ; but we must not expect to find in his 
work any literal transcripts from these writings. His theo 
logical position certainly implies a knowledge of the Pauline 

1 John has pvpov vdptiov iritrTiKrjs iro\vrtfj.ov ; Mark is identical, except for 
the word iro\vrt\ovs for Tro\irrip.ov, and Matthew has pvpov fiapv T i n o v. 

2 Luke vii. 37-50. 

3 John xii. 12 etc. ; Mark xi. 1-11 ; Matt. xxi. 1-11 ; Luke xix. 29 etc. 

4 John vi. 1-14 ; Mark vi. 30 ; Matt. xiv. 13 ; Luke ix. 10. 

* John xviii., e.g., the judgment of Pilate, ovUfpiav vpiffK<a tv avrtf air lav, 
beside Luke xxiii. 4, ovStv (vpitrKu airier tv r<f av8punri? rovrcf, and especially 
xix. 1-3, 15-19, 29 and 38. 

s Cf. John viii. 34 and Bom. vi. 16 ; John xii. 38 and Rom. x. 16. 



398 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

teaching ; he presents us with a modification of the Pauline 
theology characteristic of a time when the great differences of 
the first period were overcome, when compromise was no 
longer possible with Judaism, and when Christianity had long- 
begun to feel itself a new religion, or rather the religion in 
contradistinction to the godlessness of the world. Paul and 
the Apocalypse still look upon the name of Jew as a title of 
honour, which they were by no means inclined to surrender to 
the unbelieving Hebrews ; John, on the other hand, regards 
the Jews from the very beginning as a body alien and 
hostile to the Lord and his followers, and this evidently 
represents the state of things which existed when he wrote the 
Gospel. The two main theses of Paul, those of the universality 
of salvation and of the freedom of faith from the Law, have 
entered into the writer s very marrow ; in v. 11 we are told 
that the Son quickeneth whom he will, and xi. 52 is still 
more explicit. 1 We read of Samaritans and Greeks as well as 
true Israelites pressing to hear him, and behind the words 
about the one flock and the one shepherd,- and the prayer 
1 that they may be one, 3 the idea rises up distinctly of the 
one Church in which there were no distinguishing degrees ; 
John could never have written those words of the Epistle to 
the Eomans about the advantage of the Jew. 4 The man 
who points the contrast between the law given by Moses and 
the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ, 5 or between 
Moses, who was not the giver of the bread from heaven, fi 
and the Father who gave the true bread from heaven in the 
person of the Son he sent into the world ; the man who 
claims obedience only for the commandments or command 
ment of Jesus 7 and repeatedly designates the Law as the Law 
of the Jews H such a man had not only broken with Judaism 
in his own person, but in his time the Church had long ceased 
to be concerned with questions of circumcision, Sabbath- 
observance and forbidden meats. The Johannine theology 
arose through the simplification of the Pauline ; it allowed a 

1 Cf. x. 1C and xvii. 6. - x. 1C. 3 xvii. 11 and 22. 

,yy 1 rb irfpiffa bi rov lovSaiov, Horn, iii. 1. 5 i. 17. 

6 vi. 82. 

7 xiv. 15 and 21, xv. 10 and 12, or verse xiii. 34, the new commandment 
(cf. xii. 49 fol.). viii. 17, x. 34, xv. 25. 



30.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN 399 

number of favourite Pauline theories, like the self-abrogation 
of the Law, or the atoning power of Christ s death upon the 
Cross, to drop, because they were no longer necessary ; the 
process of salvation is much less complicated with John than 
it is with Paul, for the substance of John s story consists in 
nothing but the perpetual struggle between the flesh and the 
spirit, the Father and the world, darkness and light. The 
descent into the world of the only-begotten Son, who offered the 
highest good to all men and demonstrated his divinity in the 
clearest way, necessarily put an end in principle to this 
struggle ; the hitherto commingled elements separated them 
selves ; to see Jesus was to see the Father, 1 and meant truth 
and life, and whoever denied this henceforth was lost beyond 
all further help, while he who recognised it aright possessed 
all things therein. 

The absolute significance of the Person of Christ is still 
more sharply emphasised here than it is by Paul ; the image 
of the Jewish Messiah is completely lost sight of, and the 
pre-existing Messiah of Paul, who renounced his Godhead, 
assumed the image of man, and humbled himself so low for 
the purposes of God that God rewarded him by exalting him 
still higher, giving him the name of Lord and judging him 
worthy of adoration, becomes with John the Word that was 
with God from all eternity, the creator of the world, who 
allowed his glory to be seen for a short time in the flesh, and 
then returned again to the Father, not to new honours, but to 
the place he had occupied of old, where he was now preparing 
the abode of his faithful flock. Here, too, beside the ancient 
phrase that the Scripture might be fulfilled, - we find 
another taking equal rank with it that the word of Jesus 
might be fulfilled a ; Jesus, in fact, decides his own fate and 
determines what is his ; xii. 48, where the role of the world s 
judge is given to the word which Jesus speaks, is another 
case in point : one might almost be tempted, indeed, to draw 
a parallel between it and the Word of God which assumes the 

1 xiv. 9 fol. 

2 E.g., xiii. 18, xvii. 12, xix. 24 and 36 ; and cf. xii. 38 and xv. 25, 
Lva ir\f]pea9y & \6yos 6 Iv rep v6fj.(f avriav yfypafA./j.fvos. 

3 xviii. 9 and 32, which refer back to xvii. 12 and xii. 32 fol. 



400 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

part of the world s Creator in i. 3. The deification of Jesus, 
for which Paul had opened the way, was inexorably carried out 
by John to its furthest conclusion, and this alone should be 
enough to set all doubts at rest as to the relative dates of the 
two theologians. In the domain of eschatology, too, the 
riddance of Jewish realism which Paul had failed to effect 
is completed in principle by John. Although the old 
forms of expression are still preserved, the writer has no 
place for a Last Judgment dividing the blessed from the 
damned and for a period 01 sleep before the general resurrec 
tion still less for a thousand years reign within the limits 
of the earth ; in his eyes Jesus had already - bestowed 
the glory which he had received from the Father upon his 
followers ; they possessed eternal life, because they were no 
longer of the world. Even their separation from Jesus 
could not disturb their joy and peace, for they had received in 
his stead the spirit of truth, which led them even higher into 
the realms of truth and produced in them the power to do yet 
mightier works than Jesus himself had done. Death for the 
Christian, as for Christ himself, meant exaltation, and Jesus by 
his death drew all men unto him. 

Such a transformation of the Gospel as understood by 
Paul would only have been possible a considerable time after 
Paul s death, and the fact that it was produced under the 
unmistakable influence of Greek philosophising speaks still 
more strongly for the relatively late composition of the Fourth 
Gospel. We may doubt the direct dependence of John upon 
the Tractates of Philo, but his spiritualism, his love for sym 
bolic reasoning, and the whole fund of ideas with which he 
works prove his intellectual affinity to the Alexandrians, and 
his conception of the all -creating Logos points in the same 
direction. 

Nevertheless, we have already recognised a similar com 
bination between the theological ideas of Alexandria and the 
fundamental principles of Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
which is most probably of earlier origin than Luke or Matthew. 
The arguments drawn from the theological attitude of John, 
indeed, lead us but to a terminus a quo at about 70 A.D., though 

1 E.g., xii. 48. - xvii. 22. 3 xii. 32. 



S 30.] THE GOSPKL ACCORDING TO JOHN 401 

this must subsequently be brought down to the end of the first 
century through the dependence of John on the Synoptics. 
It is more important to determine the terminus ad quern, and 
here the means at our command do not permit us to say 
of the Gospel alone more than at latest from 100 to 125. 
The Gnostic school of Valentine, which flourished from 130 
onwards, was greatly influenced by the Fourth Gospel from 
its very beginning, and one of its members, Heracleon, wrote 
the first commentary upon it about the year 170. The 
Montanists, 1 again, were very fond of using all the Johannine 
writings as their authorities. I therefore believe that I am 
justified by an argumentum e silentio in giving the date some 
what more precisely as from 100 to 110. The school of Baur 
has indeed discovered that both Gnosticism and Montanism 
are referred to in the Fourth Gospel, but in reality we are 
struck by the negative relation in which it stands towards 
Gnosticism ; its author was not dreaming of carrying on a 
campaign against the fundamental ideas of the Gnostic system. 
Words with a Gnostic ring, however, are not entirely absent 
from the Fourth Gospel, such as x. 8, All that came before 
me are thieves and robbers though naturally the all does 
not imply, as Marcion contends, a condemnation of the Old 
Testament Prophets, but is limited to those who pretended to 
come as shepherds, lords of the flock, i.e. as pseudo-Christs. 
John the Baptist would have been such a thief if he had not 
been the very opposite of what the enemies of Christianity 
sought to paint him. But with a reasonable exegesis all that 
remains of the so-called Gnosticism of John are the facts 
that he sets an unusually high value upon knowledge, that, 
like many Gnostic systems, the Fourth Gospel may be called 
an unconscious attempt to give the elements of Hellenic 
culture the preponderating influence in Christianity over the 
remains of Jewish thought and feeling, and that the mono 
tonous, didactic tone which so sharply distinguishes the 
Gospel of John from the vernacular freshness of the Syn 
optics, as also the writer s preference for abstract ideas and 
his love of introducing symbols like those of water, bread or 
wine these things do occasionally remind us of Gnostic 

1 From 160 onwards. 

D D 



402 AX INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

productions. All other points of contact with Gnostic writers, 
certain phrases bordering on Docetism in reference to the 
bodily nature of Jesus, the dissolution in the Prologue of the 
pure Monotheistic idea, the dualistic foundation of the Gospel, 
these belong in an equal degree to most of the other ecclesi 
astical writers of that time. But the fact that the Fourth 
Evangelist could write a Gospel with a purpose (T end-en z- 
Evangelium) without a trace of anti-Gnostic purpose, 
surely shows that Gnosticism had not as yet begun to 
be a serious danger to the Church, or at any rate to that 
part of it which lay within his field of view. The Gospel 
of John thus appears to lie before Jude and the Pastoral 
Epistles. 

But with this we come to the all-important question as to 
the authorship of John, upon a right solution of which our 
understanding of its nature, purpose and value depends in a 
far greater degree than is usually the case with such a 
problem. 



31. The Jolianninc Question 

[Besides the books mentioned in the foregoing section, cf. 
E. Schiirer s Uber den gegenwartigen Stand der johanneischen 
Frage (1889), and, following upon this, A. Meyer s Die Behand- 
lung der johanneischen Frage im letzten Jahrzehnt, in the 
Theologische Rundschau for 1899, part ii. pp. 255-263, 295-305 
and 333-345. Also P. Corssen s Monarchianische Prologs zu den 
4 Evangelien/ in Texte und Untersuchungen xv. 1, 1896, esp. 
pp. 103-117.] 

1. Ever since, in 1820, Prof. K. G. Bretschneider brought 
forward strong reasons for declaring it impossible to conceive 
the Fourth Gospel as the work of an Apostle, the dispute as 
to whether the tradition were right or wrong has become ever 
keener. The orthodox opinion, that in his old age the 
Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, wrote his Gospel at Ephesus 
as a last testament to the Church, is held by the one side as 
positively as it is rejected by the other. 

The favourite argument for the Fourth Gospel s Apostolic 
authorship is the particularly distinct and early attestation- 



^5 31. THi: JOIIAXXINE QUESTION 403 

of it. it is certainly true that wherever John was used in the 
Church from the third century onwards, it was regarded as the 
work of the son of Zebedee ; only the Alogi of Asia Minor 
rejected it, even before the end of the second century, but that 
was scarcely on the ground of better or even of divergent 
tradition ; their contemporaries Irenseus and the author of the 
Muratorian Fragment, whose dogmatic ideas took no exception 
to the book, had no doubt whatever that it originated with the 
Apostle John. The still older traces of acquaintanceship with 
John prove nothing either way, because no statements are 
made concerning its author. For instance, although in 
Irenaeus V. xxxvi. 2, the Presbyters quote the words In my 
Father s house are many mansions as a Saying of the Lord, 
it is certainly probable that they had read those words in the 
Fourth Gospel ; but this does not help us in any way to decide 
under what name they read that Gospel. It is our duty to 
examine the tradition narrowly, and to test its various con 
stituents according to their antiquity. Thus it is proved by 
the absolutely trustworthy testimony of Irenaeus, 1 that about 
the year 130 Poly carp boasted of the fact that he had known 
and had intercourse with John and others who had seen the 
Lord. No one has any doubt that by this John Irenaeus 
meant the son of Zebedee, the same whom he mentions in 
II. xxii. 5 as the witness for a fragment of tradition concerning 
Jesus ; and in III. i. 1 he declares expressly that this John, the 
disciple who leaned on Jesus breast, published the Gospel at 
Ephesus in Asia. Innumerable witnesses now follow in his 
train, whose information as to the occasion for this production 
and especially as to the reason why the Apostle took up his 
pen even after the Church had received three Gospels from 
the hands of Apostles or of their disciples, becomes more and 
more precise. Thus about the year 200, Clement of Alex 
andria - had heard from older authorities that after the other 
Evangelists had imparted the corporeal Gospel, John had at 
the instigation of his friends and in the might of inspiration 
created a spiritual Gospel. Thus a satisfactory formula was 
at the same time provided for the enormous difference of 

1 Euseb. Hist. Kccles. V. xx. 4. - Ibid. VI. xiv. 5 and 7. 

D D 2 



404 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

which even that age must have been sensible to a certain 
extent between the picture of Christ given by the Synoptics 
and that given by John. 

Apart from this distinction, however, between the corporeal 
and spiritual Gospel, the information concerning John in the 
Fragment of Muratori agrees with that of the authorities of 
Clement. The author of the Fragment, however, takes greater 
pains to prove the rank of the Fourth Evangelist as eye-witness, 
and the unity of spirit in all four Gospels, and he gives a more 
romantic description of its origin ; he represents the fellow- 
Apostles of John as urging him to write, and relates how it 
was revealed to the Apostle Andrew that John was to record 
everything under a sort of joint responsibility of all, but in 
his own name. According to this account, then, the writing 
of the Gospel could only be placed at Jerusalem and before the 
year 66, since the other Apostles were still alive ; but not only 
does Eusebius 2 assign the Gospel to the period of John s 
extreme old age (declaring him, moreover, to have been 
actuated by the desire of filling up the gap left by the 
Synoptics in the first half of the history of Jesus), but even 
the much earlier Irenseus seems to have held this view, and 
he certainly looked upon Ephesus as the place of its composi 
tion. The Historia Ecclesiastica, somewhat freely recon 
structed by Corssen, 3 tells us that on his return from Patmos 
to Ephesus after the death of Domitian, and at the request of 
all the bishops of Asia and of deputations from many com 
munities, the virgin apostle John wrote in an exalted style 
concerning the divinity of Christ, in order to provide a bulwark 
against Cerinthus, Ebion and others who denied the pre- 
existence of Christ ; that after a solemn fast in which all par 
took, a revelation had been vouchsafed to him in consequence 
of which he felt empowered to write down things worthy of the 
Lord. The Monarchian prologue to John of the third century, 
which was discovered in 1895, 1 assumes as well known that, 
although the Fourth Gospel occupied the second place, it was 
written last of all, and written by the Apostle John after he 
had written his Apocalypse on the island of Patmos. 

1 Lines 0-33. * Jfist. Ecclcs. III. xxiv. 7. 

3 Texte und Untersuchungen, XV. 80. 2. 4 Ibid. p. 6. 



$ 31.] THE JOHANNINK QUESTION 405 

All other tradition concerning the Gospel is dependent on 
the above-named sources ; and are these particularly remark 
able for their antiquity and credibility ? So far as their 
statements do not contradict one another, they are obvious 
legends invented according to the taste of the age in order to 
convince the world of the author s inspiration and of the 
exalted nature of his motives in writing ; the yvwptftoi of 
Clement, for instance, and the condiscipuli of the Canon of 
Muratori were of course deduced from i. 14. and xxi. 24 we 
behold and ivc know. For the rest, all we know is that 
from the year 180 onwards John was almost universally 
recognised in the Church as the work of the Apostle John who 
died at Ephesus. 

But the fact that the same men without exception ascribe 
the Apocalypse with equal confidence to the same John, although 
it is impossible seriously to suppose that these two works are 
from the hand of a single author, makes us somewhat 
suspicious of their information ; if we were obliged to choose, 
we should give the preference to the Apocalypse, which is 
attested by Justin (about the year 155) as being the work 
of the Apostle John. It is certainly true, however, that 
Irenaeus was not the man to spin traditions out of his own 
brain. He appeals to Polycarp, who in his turn declares that 
he had had trustworthy information concerning the Lord 
Jesus from the eye-witness John. We do not mistrust either 
of the two, but it is most certain that this statement does 
not constitute Polycarp a witness to the Evangelist John. 
Those who picture the matter in the following light that, 
when Irenaeus as a boy heard the aged Polycarp preach 
and tell of his experiences, he asked him whether the disciple 
of whom he was thus speaking were the same as he who had 
written the wonderful Logos-Gospel, and that Polycarp there 
upon made him a kindly sign of assent such may look upon 
the chain of tradition from Jesus to Irenaeus, through John 
and Polycarp, as marvellously complete; but others must 
consider it equally possible, precisely because Irenaeus does 
not appeal to Polycarp as a witness to the Fourth Gospel, 
that on the occasion of this visit the young Irenaeus was as 
yet unacquainted with that Gospel. The one fact established 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

by Polycarp is that a disciple named John sojourned in Asia 
for a considerable time ; since he alone among other eye 
witnesses is mentioned by name, he must have been a 
conspicuous personage and have possessed unusual authority ; 
he must also have lived to a great age, since he met the heretic 
Cerinthus in the Baths of Ephesus, 1 and his death occurred, 
as Irenasus expressly asserts, in the early years of the reign 
of Trajan. That this John was buried at Ephesus is told by 
Polycrates, Bishop of that city, about the year 190 2 ; he adds 
the words He who lay on the Lord s breast and extols him 
as Witness and Teacher (this probably in reference to the 
Apocalypse and the Epistles), while he also adds the mys 
terious title Priest who wore the brow-band. 

Unfortunately, however, at the critical point in Irenaeus s 
book this John of Asia is merely designated as a disciple of 
the Lord, and not as one of the Twelve, as the son of 
Zebedee or as the Apostle. Considering the frequency of 
the name of John, then, this pillar of the Asiatic Church 
might after all have been another than the son of Zebedee. 
As early as the year 260, indeed, Dionysius of Alexandria 
proposed to distinguish two Asiatic teachers of the name of 
John, since two graves of John w r ere shown at Ephesus the 
one perhaps being the author of the Apocalypse, and the 
other, of course, the great Apostle who wrote the Gospel and 
the Epistles. Eusebius, who is still less favourably inclined 
than Dionysius towards the Apocalypse, joyfully agrees to 
this hypothesis, 1 and urges in support of it the testimony 
of Papias, who throughout his five books frequently called 
himself a hearer (avrr/rccos) of a Presbyter John whom he 
clearly distinguished from the Apostle (and Evangelist, adds 
Eusebius). This distinction is, in fact, unavoidable, unless 
indeed one were so frivolous as to credit Eusebius with wilful 
falsification, or else so fanatical a Eusebian as to ascribe 
to Papias, merely because Eusebius calls him a man of 
limited intelligence, the manner of speech of a child of 
eight or of a greybeard of ninety, who forget what they 
have said within a minute of saying it. Papias is reported 

1 Iren. III. iii. 4. - Euseb. Hist. Eccles. V. xxiv. 3. 

3 Ibid. III. xxxix. 6 fol. 



31.] THE JOHANNINE QUESTION 407 

by Eusebius to have written, in describing his fruitful efforts 
to obtain authentic information concerning the Lord and his 
teaching, the following words : If I met with anyone who 
had been a follower of the elders anywhere, I made it a 
point to inquire what were the declarations of the elders, 
what was said by Andrew, Peter or Philip, what by Thomas, 
James, John, Matthew or any other of the disciples of our 
Lord, and what is said by Aristion and the Presbyter John, the 
disciples of the Lord. It is clear that Papias here sets the 
Presbyter John, mentioned after Aristion, nearly on the same 
level as that other John whom he places before Matthew ; but 
the context establishes it beyond question that the latter is 
meant for the son of Zebedee, while the other does not belong 
to the circle of the Twelve any more than does Aristion. 
On both Johns are bestowed the honourable titles of Disciple 
of the Lord and Elder, for both were representatives of 
the first Christian generation -that of the eye-witnesses. But 
while the one had said, the other was still saying, and it 
is therefore implied that he was alive at the time of Papias s 
investigations though whether Papias held any direct inter 
course with him is not stated, at any rate in this passage 
and since the John mentioned in the midst of none but 
Apostles can scarcely be any other than the famous Apostle, 
the son of Zebedee, it is obvious that the surviving John was 
no Apostle, but merely a Presbyter. 

Papias, then, said nothing of any Evangelist John ; had 
he done so, Eusebius would scarcely have kept his knowledge 
of such a fact to himself, and the recent childish hypothesis 
that John dictated his Gospel to Papias is hardly worth a 
mention. But Papias places the son of Zebedee in the 
majestic list of the Apostles from whose lips he had still 
been able indirectly to procure utterances ; side by side with 
him, however, another John, who was an Elder too, but also 
his own contemporary and one of his chief authorities. If 
the son of Zebedee had lived at Ephesus that is, in the 
neighbourhood of Papias down to the time of Trajan, we 
should expect that the latter, in his thirst for information, 
would have made use of him to a very considerable extent ; 

1 Hist. Eccles. III. xxxix. 4. 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

but now it seems as though our informant never approached 

any nearer to him than he did, say, to Thomas or Matthew.. 

Papias does not breathe a syllable of the two Johns in Asiu 

whose existence Eusebius concluded from this passage : he 

merely tells us of two disciples and elders named John. And 

since the inventors of the hypothesis of the two Johns had 

an all too obvious interest in doing so, and since the story 

of the two graves at Ephesus will scarcely impose upon any 

historian acquainted with the Legends of the Saints, the- 

long-lived son of Zebedee dwelling in Asia seems by the 

testimony of Papias to be replaced by another John who 

lived far on into the time of Papias and was accessible to 

him, so that he may in truth have dwelt in Asia ; and this 

John we may perhaps designate even though the title waf- 

by no means regarded by Papias as peculiar to him alone 

as the Presbyter, in order to distinguish him from the Apostle. 

This assumption appears to be confirmed by the testimony 

of Polycrates, 1 who in enumerating the Pillars of the Church 

in Asia gives the first place to Philip, one of the Twelve 

Apostles (though he is here labouring under a delusion, for 

it was the deacon of Acts vi. 5 and viii. 5 fol.), and to his 

prophesying daughters, and only the second to John, who 

leaned on the breast of the Lord, and who lay buried at 

Ephesus, while the third he assigns to Polycarp of Smyrna. 

The order is remarkable ; and why does not John receive the 

title of Apostle if he belonged to the ranks of the Apostles ? 

These and the like considerations have given rise to the 

hypothesis (urged with particular energy by Bousset, Delff 

and Harnack) according to which the John of Asia Minor 

and of the Johannine writings was only converted into the 

son of Zebedee by an early confusion of ideas, and was in 

reality another John, who had indeed seen Jesus, but who did 

not belong to the circle of the Twelve in short, the Presbyter. 

The testimony of Justin is, however, very unfavourable to 

this hypothesis, for he regarded the John of Patmos and 

Ephesus as the son of Zebedee, and yet must surely have 

acquired this opinion in Asia, where he was converted. Nor 

does the appeal to Polycrates hold good, for in the emotional 

1 Euseb. Hist. Kccles. V. xxiv. 3. 



31.] THE JOHANNINE QUESTION 409 1 

style of that Prince of the Church the titles bestowed on the 
Ephesian John must have been meant to exalt him in 
comparison with that of 6 TWV SwSsfca cnrovToXaiv assigned to 
Philip of Hierapolis, to whom the first place in Polycrates s- 
list was perhaps given merely on the ground, that he had 
been the first to die. We surely cannot believe that Polycrates 
considered it possible for a man to have leaned upon the 
breast of the Lord without having been one of the Apostles ? 
And if there is here a question of an early confusion of 
persons, might not Papias himself have shared it? Might 
he not on occasion have cited sayings of John side by side 
with those of Thomas without observing that that same John 
was still alive, and was in fact the Elder who was labouring 
at Ephesus, in his own neighbourhood ? If the Ephesian 
John never applied the title of Apostle to himself, but always 
that of Disciple only, if as time went by he was more and 
more generally hailed with pious affection as the Elder, 
since of all the generation of the first eye-witnesses he had 
survived almost alone, then the error into which the Bishop 
of Hierapolis fell would not be wholly unintelligible. 

We have no idea of giving a verdict. All that is certain 
is that the tradition concerning the two Johns of Asia is 
worthless since their fusion into a single person could not 
have been accomplished there in so short a time and that a 
Disciple named John, whom some call the son of Zebedee 
and others the Presbyter, laboured on in Asia up to a very 
great age, having probably left his Palestinian home for ever 
in consequence of the troubles caused by the Jewish War. 
But that this disciple wrote the Fourth Gospel, Irenaeus, 
at the end of the second century, is the first to attest. Such 
a tradition can hardly be called first-rate ; the writer s own 
testimony to himself will be found to be far more valuable. 

2. What, then, is the evidence of the Gospel and the three 
Epistles for we must take these also into account because 
of their intimate connection with the Gospel as to their 
author s identity ? The superscriptions are the work of their 
collectors, and therefore the self -testimony of the writer is 
reduced to certain vague and doubtful indications. In the 
two short epistles of the Elder (2. and 3. John) we can 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

indeed scarcely expect any enlightenment on the writer s 
past, but the silence he maintains as to his real name in the 
.addresses is nevertheless remarkable. On the other hand, in 
the First Epistle and the Gospel (e.g. i. 14, and we beheld 
his glory ) the rank of eye-witness is certainly claimed for 
the writer with regard to the Gospel story, xxi. 24 of the 
Gospel clearly shows how much importance the writer at 
tached to this ocular testimony, and by the mysterious word 
ol&afjisv (we know) the Evangelist is supplied with authorita 
tive testimony to the truth of his witness, for of course this 
could only have been said by those who had themselves been 
eye-witnesses, by the circle of the Condiscipuli, of whom later 
legend tells. But what, then, was the name of this man 
of trust to whom they gave the task of recording truth so 
momentous ? It was, according to this verse, merely the 
disciple, and from the context (ovros sa-nv) we may read, 
with verse 20, the disciple whom Jesus loved. The same 
circumlocution is met with elsewhere, 2 and we may take it for 
granted that the same man was meant in xviii. 15 fol. by 
another disciple or the other disciple, which was known 
unto the high priest. This item, by the way, is of no use 
to us, since we learn nothing further concerning an acquaint 
ance of the high priest among the band of disciples. 

In former times it was believed as a matter of course on 
the ground of tradition that the Beloved Disciple was no 
other than John the son of Zebedee. Chapter xxi. seems to 
support this view, since in verse 2 those who took part in the 
miraculous draught of fishes are named as Simon Peter, 
Thomas, Nathaniel, the sons of Zebedee and two others of his 
disciples ; and since nothing is said as to a subsequent 
change of scene, it is among these that we must look for the 
Beloved Disciple whom, according to verse 20, Peter, turning 
about, saw by his side following the Lord. But why should 
he not just as well have been Nathaniel, or one of the un 
named pair? The sons of Zebedee, who are mentioned 
nowhere but here throughout the Gospel, while the names of 
James and John do not appear at all, might be mere padding, 

1 i. 1-4. 

- xiii. ~2 3, xix. 2C, xx. 2 (here f<f>i\ti instead of the usual -hyd-ira). 



5 31. ] THE JOHANNINE QUESTION 411 

like the mention of Philip in xiv. 8. If we only knew, at any 
rate, whether the Beloved Disciple were one of the Twelve ! 
But this is by no means rendered certain by xxi. 2, for 
Nathaniel and the nameless pair cannot very well be included 
in the ranks of the Twelve. True, we are expressly told in 
verse 20 that this disciple was the same as he who had 
leaned on Jesus breast at supper and said, Lord, who is he 
that betrayeth thee ? (Cf. xiii. 23 : There was at the table 
reclining in Jesus bosom one of his disciples, and xiii. 25 : 
He leaning back, as he was, on Jesus breast said unto him, 
etc.) This supper was the last meal of which, according to 
the Fourth Gospel, Jesus partook in company with his 
disciples, and it was also that at which he performed the 
washing of their feet and finally pointed out Judas as his 
betrayer. According to the Synoptics, 1 too, none but the 
Twelve were with him on this occasion, but the Synoptic 
account is not conclusive for the Fourth Gospel ; John, as we 
know, says not a word of the institution of the Last Supper 
at that parting ceremony, which to the Synoptics is the point 
of greatest importance, and what they represent as the 
Paschal meal is in John merely an ordinary supper. The 
disciples are indeed present, according to xiii. 5, but it 
seems scarcely probable that this idea, which occurs with 
such extraordinary frequency in John, should coincide 
absolutely with that of the Twelve, 2 when we remember that 
after the Risen One had appeared to his disciples in xx. 19 
and bestowed the Holy Ghost upon them, we are told that 
Thomas, one of the Twelve, had not been with the disciples 
when Jesus came, whereas eight days later he is to be found 
among them in the same room. 3 In the High Priestly 
prayer of chap. xvii. as well as in the parting discourses, we 
are left with the impression that the disciples represent the 
whole body of believers all those whom God had given to Jesus 
out of the world 4 and of whom but one alone was lost r> a 
statement which, by the way, we hear with astonishment after 
reading vi. 66. If, in short, the Fourth Gospel did not con 
tain that saying of Jesus Did not I choose you the twelve ? 

1 Mark xiv. 17-25 and parallels. 2 Except in vi. 67 and 70 fol. and xx. 24. 
X x. 26. * xvii. G. s xvii. 12. 6 vi. 70. 



41- A\ INTRO IHiC TION TO THK \K\V TKSTAMKNT ^C 

we should learn from it nothing whatever of a privileged 
circle of twelve Apostles. These few verses, then, vi. 67-71, 
stand as a modest concession to the traditional story ; but to 
the Evangelist himself the title of disciple seemed far more 
glorious than that of one of the twelve, which he bestows 
only on the traitor Judas and on the faithless Thomas, while 
the word uTroo-roXos is used but once, and that as a parallel to 
the word Sov~\.os. This, indeed, almost has the air of a cer 
tain animosity against the Twelve and their special authority, 

tj O / - 

and this impression is further heightened by another con 
sideration. 

The Beloved Disciple, who is here professedly the narrator, 
and whom not even the third person of xix. 85 deposes from 
the role of writer to that of authority, regularly appears side 
by side with Simon Peter, and as regularly eclipses him. In 
the account of the Last Supper - Simon Peter wishes to know 
whom Jesus regards as his betrayer ; he does not, however, 
dare to ask the question himself, but makes a sign to the 
Beloved Disciple, who immediately asks it and receives the 
desired answer. At Jesus arrest but two of his disciples 
follow their Lord, Peter and the nameless one ; the latter first 
procures admittance for Peter into the High Priest s palace 
by virtue of the consideration in which he is there held, but 
then, while Peter cowardly denies his Master, the other ac 
companies him faithfully along the whole of the road to death, 
he alone stands beneath the Cross, and he it is who is given 
by the dying Christ to Mary as her son, becoming thereby in 
the fullest sense the heir of Jesus. Further on, :! again, he 
and Peter, alone among the disciples, go to the tomb at the 
bidding of the Magdalene, but he, the other, reaches it 
before Peter, steps up to the opening and sees the linen cloths 
lying empty. Upon this Peter enters the tomb itself before 
him, but this is no proof of greater faith on the contrary, it 
is only of the other that we are definitely told he saw and 
believed, even though he too, as well as Peter, as yet knew 
not the Scripture. Finally in xxi. 15-23 it is surely not 

1 He that hath seen hath borne witness, and he knoweth that he saith 
true. 

- xiii. 23 etc. 3 xx. 2 etc. 



31.] THE JOHANXIXE QUESTION 413 

intended to confer on Peter a degree of love to Jesus to which 
no other had attained, but rather politely to refuse this claim 
to a TrXsov TOVTWV ; Peter s very question in verse 21 betrays 
the fact that he regarded the Beloved Disciple as a rival, 
and it is also noteworthy that the latter follows Jesus of his 
own accord, whereas Peter does so only by express command. 
Lastly, in verses 22 and 23 we are given to understand that 
a saying became rife among the brethren that the unnamed 
disciple would not die, for this was thought to have been fore 
told him by the Eisen One as distinctly as had his death upon 
the cross to Peter ; but the writer s faith in this saying 
had passed away, and he impresses it upon us that Jesus 
did not say he shall not die, but only if I will that he 
tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? 

The only touch in the picture of the unknown disciple 
which is in favour of his identification with the son of 
Zebedee is the designation he who leaned on Jesus breast, 
because this reminds us of Mark x. 37, where the sons of 
Zebedee ask to be suffered to sit, one on the right hand and 
one on the left of Jesus in his glory a request which would 
certainly lead us to suppose that they were accustomed even 
in this world to occupy the places of honour at his side. 
Besides we certainly have a feeling that Jesus could not 
have bestowed special marks of his love and confidence 
on a disciple whom he did not at the same time admit into 
the circle of the Twelve, and which is still more impor 
tantof whom the other Gospels know absolutely nothing. 
As a matter of fact, however, this chosen one, who in his turn 
stands opposed to the other chosen ones, is a figure which 
can find no place within the Synoptic tradition : he is, in fact, 
not a figure of flesh and blood at all. The self-testimony of 
the Fourth Gospel is bound to arouse the gravest suspicions 
on account of the airs of mystery and the ambiguity which 
surround it. If in xix. 35 and xx. 31, the writer addresses 
himself directly to his readers with the words that ye may 
believe, why does he keep his own personality that of 
speaker or writer as the case may be so mysteriously 
veiled? Considering the charges laid upon him and the 
events in which he had taken part, an I would in truth 



414 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

have been no less natural than a ye or a we. If a disciple 
were here setting down some of his recollections of Jesus no 
matter from what point of view or after how long an interval 
the tone of personal reminiscence would be bound to assert 
itself more, and it is wholly impossible to conceive why the 
son of Zebedee or any other John should so anxiously have 
avoided all plain references to his own personality. On the 
other hand, the vagueness and mystery of the indications 
concerning the author, his cautious reserve on one page, 
followed by the highest claims on another, would become 
quite intelligible if a later Christian, writing in the name of 
the true body of disciples, of those blessed ones who had not 
seen, and yet had believed, had composed a spiritual, an 
idealist Gospel such as must have been written by a disciple 
who, leaning as he did upon his Master s breast, had been 
enabled to gaze into his heart, and was therefore far better 
qualified to describe his greatness and glory than those who 
merely reported those things which their bodily eyes had 
seen. 

But it is to be concluded from xxi. 22 fol. that the 
unknown writer did not create for himself the rule of an ideal 
disciple quite independently. It is true that he promises his 
counterpart a spiritual tarrying till the Parusia of the 
Lord that is to say, within the Gospel, which was to 
win and work till the end of the world but, on the other 
hand, he confesses that this personage was mortal, was in fact 
dead ; and why this change if it were not founded on some 
historical fact ? The aged John of Ephesus is the only 
disciple known to us who lived to such an advanced age that 
a belief in his immortality might have arisen ; it is to him 
that tradition points ; Polycrates claims the Beloved Disciple 
as a pillar of the Asiatic Church, and therefore his image 
must surely have hovered before the mind of our Evangelist 
too, whom it were idle to look for anywhere but in Asia. But 
was it the son of Zebedee or the Presbyter whom he thus 
idealised, and in whose name he sought to write ? From the 
investigation conducted above we must conclude that we are 
not in a position to answer this question, or at most we can 
but say that he wished to be heard and read, not as the son 



31.] THK JOHANX1XE QUESTION 415 

of Zebedee nor yet as the Presbyter, but simply as the disciple 
who had understood Jesus best and loved him most tenderly. 
And for a true understanding of the Gospel it is a matter of 
indifference which of the two was the John whom the writer 
had in his mind, at any rate if we accept it as certain that it 
is not this John himself who speaks to us in the Gospel, but 
one of his later adherents. 

3. It is, in fact, the one unassailable proposition which 
criticism, dealing solely with the internal evidence, can set 
up concerning the Fourth Gospel, that its author was not 
the disciple whom Jesus loved. Those who can ascribe it 
to this actual John may just as well accept the Second Epistle 
of Peter as the work of Simon Peter. Nor does the 
Presbyter hypothesis affect this judgment in the least, for 
the Presbyter himself would still be a disciple who had 
leaned on Jesus breast, who after his Master s death had 
taken that Master s mother into his own house, and had thus 
been enabled to obtain detailed information of his early 
history, for a mere passing contact with Jesus such as even 
Aristion could boast (supposing that he was the fabricator of 
the wretched conclusion to Mark) is not sufficient to infuse 
historical reality into this figure of the most intimate of 
the friends of Jesus which pervades the Fourth Gospel. 
The most intimate must, after all, have been a Hebrew ; 
though that is not inconceivable in the case of the Evangelist, 
since the Semitic extraction of the writer may be observed 
both in the language, with its shrinking from the periodic 
sentence, and also in the forms of thought. For my part, 
however, I should prefer to look upon our Evangelist as the 
Christian-born son of Jewish Christian parents, for his 
attitude towards the Jews is so hostile and aloof that he uses 
the name no longer in a national sense, but merely to denote 
the unbelieving adherents of a superseded religion. 1 It is 
true that, if we substitute for the quondam fisherman an 
otherwise unknown John who, as the friend of Caiaphas, had 
been in a position to acquire a high training in theology and 
philosophy, and had been an early convert to the fundamental 
ideas of Paul, the objections which (considering that in 

1 P. 398. 



410 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT CH.VP. i. 

Galatians John is named as one of the Pillars of the primitive 
community , who reserved to themselves the Apostleship 
of the Circumcision, and that the son of Zebedee was a 
Galilean fisherman) the writer s philosophical culture and 
wholly unprejudiced attitude towards the Law and the Cir 
cumcision must raise in our minds, lose in weight although 
they do not entirely disappear. And there is also the reflec 
tion that the son of Zebedee himself would in the thirty years 
or more which he is said to have passed in the Hellenic atmo 
sphere of Ephesus before the composition of the Gospel, have 
had time for a thorough modification of his ideas. But the 
difficulty remains that John whether Apostle or Presbyter 
must have written the Gospel (and also the Epistles, which 
seem to belong to a still later date) in extreme old age, and 
such literary activity on the part of a centenarian is open to 
doubt ; for the monotony of the Gospel has other causes than 
that of senility, and the writer gives sufficient proofs of alert 
attention and of a power of work that knew its own ends 
and dominated its material. 

The decisive argument is, however, furnished by literary 
and historical criticism, which is obliged to protest altogether 
against assigning the book to an eye-witness. The writer of 
the Fourth Gospel was acquainted with the three Synoptics, 
and his indebtedness to them is conspicuous in certain parts ; 
but is it probable that the eye-witness would have made use 
of second-hand authorities for his narrative, and that many 
(according to Luke) would have vied with one another in 
writing Gospels, while one of the Pillars, the authority /car 
s^o-^i iv for these matters, was still living at Ephesus and 
could at any moment have consigned all these productions to 
oblivion by publishing his own recollections ? It is true that 
John does not merely follow the Synoptics in what he tells 
us, for by far the greater part of his Gospel has no Synoptic 
parallels at all. Nor is he ever a mere copyist, for it is pre 
cisely the differences between his account and that of the Syn 
optics which strike us most forcibly. The fact that he passes 
over many things which they agree in relating, ought to raise 
no difficulties, for he presupposes some acquaintance with the 
Somatic Gospels. Again, that certain stories concerning 



31.1 THE JOHANNINJE QUESTIOiN 417 

the miraculous power of Jesus, for instance are pecu 
liar to him might at first sight be taken to prove that much 
continued to exist in his memory which had not yet become 
the common property of wider circles. But the miracles 
peculiar to John the changing of the water into wine, the 
healings of the sick man at the Pool of Bethesda and of 
the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus do not give 
us the impression of actual fact, but rather of artistic 
intensification of well-known Synoptic stories. None of the 
disciples can have had any motive in keeping secret these 
brilliant proofs of the miraculous power of Jesus, and we ask 
ourselves in vain why none of the Synoptists appear to know 
anything about them. The simplest explanation is that they 
arose in later times under the influence of a theology firmly 
convinced that the Son of God possessed omnipotence on earth 
and exerted it in all directions, and creating its examples 
for this almighty power, now in close agreement with the 
tradition and now with but slight reference to it. Jesus had 
in fact, according to xxi. 25, done so many deeds that even 
the world itself would not contain the books which should be 
written concerning them ; therefore, no matter where the 
imagination might range in order to behold him, the creator 
of the world, at his work of transformation, it could never 
light upon an empty spot, nor could it ever ascribe to him 
deeds too vast or too extraordinary. In describing the appear 
ances of the Risen Christ, for instance, the Fourth Evan 
gelist lays special stress on the fact that he came when the 
doors were closed ; the element of the miraculous is thereby 
greatly increased in comparison with the earlier version of 
Luke ; and the story of the Passion, too, when contrasted with 
that of the Synoptics, bears throughout this amplifying 
character, which tends to obliterate every trace of weakness 
or of inward struggle, and which in all other cases of a com 
parison of authorities counts as a sign of later origin. 

The foreknowledge of Jesus cannot be insisted upon too 
emphatically in John - ; no scene in Gethsemane is here to be 
found ; Jesus goes to meet his captors of his own accord, and, 
on condition that they let his disciples go, delivers himself up 

1 xx. 15), 2(5. * xviii. 4, xix. 28. 

I. E 



418 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

voluntarily to those who had already been flung to the ground 
by his mere word. The Jesus of the older Evangelists, who kept 
silence during the interrogation, is here transformed into the 
accuser and judge ] ; his dealings with Pilate are those of a king 
with his subordinate, and only in xix. 9 does the prophecy he 
opened not his mouth obtain a momentary recognition. The 
words which John puts into the mouth of Jesus on the Cross 
serve only to waken faith and to convert the Saviour into an 
emblem of brotherly love ; the cry My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me ? is far more intolerable to John than 
it had been to Luke. 

But the entire framework of the public career of Jesus is 
different in John from what we find it in the Synoptics. It is 
not merely that the latter represent Jesus as being crucified 
on the fifteenth day of the month Nizan, after he has 
celebrated the Passover with his disciples on the previous 
day, in accordance with the Law, while, in John, Jesus 
dies on the fourteenth day of Nizan, before the beginning 
of the Jewish Passover : it is that the activity of Jesus is 
transferred in quite overwhelming proportions by John to 
Judaea and Jerusalem and is distributed over several years, 
whereas in the Synoptics we are told of but one journey of 
the Messiah to Jerusalem that which led him to the fatal 
Passover. A very remarkable difference also exists between 
the Synoptics and John with regard to an occurrence which 
could never have been displaced in the memory of one who 
had taken part in it. The^cleansing of the Temple, that act 
of Messianic omnipotence, is placed by Mark, Matthew and 
Luke in the last days before the death of Jesus, and forms 
the main ground for the action of the authorities against 
him ; John, on the other hand, relates it as early as chapter ii., 
placing it in the first Easter visit of Jesus to Jerusalem, and 
in his account the Jews content themselves with asking him 
for a sign of his authority to do such things. That the state 
ment of John is here the less probable of the two is admitted 
by almost all who allow any criticism whatever to be applied 
to his Gospel, so obvious is the connection in this case with 
the idea that pervades the whole of John, that the Son- 
ship of Jesus was attested^continuously from the very first 

1 xviii. 20, 21, 23. 



31.] THE JOHANNINE QUESTION 419 

moment of his appearance in public both by himself and 
by his disciples and followers, particularly by John the 
Baptist. According to the Synoptics, on the other hand, 
the Twelve themselves did not realise whom they had in their 
midst until comparatively late ; this is evidently a fragment 
of real historical knowledge, and John s is the dogmatic recon 
struction. For if in John vi. 68 etc., Peter in the name of 
the Twelve answers Jesus question Would ye also go away ? 
with the words Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life. And we have believed and know that 
thou art the Holy One of God, this is an obvious heightening 
of Mark viii. 29, but it contains nothing new, since as early 
as i. 49 Nathaniel makes the same acknowledgment. In my 
opinion the Synoptics are also right as to the day of Jesus 
.death and as to the duration of his ministry. For to recon 
struct, solely on account of the one prophetic utterance How 
many times etc. of Matthew and Luke, 2 several visits of 
Jesus to Jerusalem out of the Synoptics themselves, against 
their obvious intention, is almost as childish a pastime as that 
of determining the number of years of the ministry from the 
parable of the fig-tree in Luke. 3 But John had a definite 
interest in making Jesus appear in Jerusalem several times and 
for various different feasts ; Jerusalem was to him the stage on 
which Jesus was meant to fight out his battle with the Jews, and 
this battle must be depicted in more scenes than one. And is it 
-easier to believe the account of the Passion in John, according 
to which Jesus dies on the fourteenth of the month Nizan, at 
the very hour at which, as the Law directs, the Paschal 
Lamb was being prepared for the Passsover (a combination of 
events which was more than welcome to the theology of fulfil 
ment, since it visibly represented Jesus as the Lamb of God) 
or the report of the Synoptics, in which Jesus is still able to 
celebrate the Passover with his disciples, and is slain on the day 
after the Feast, in gross violation of the festal ordinances ? 

I know of no point, in fact, in which our knowledge of the 
life of Jesus receives an incontestable increase through the 
Fourth Gospel. But even if we could value its author more 
often as a witness of the first rank, it would still be impossible 

1 xxiii. 37. * xiii. 34. 3 xiii. 7. 



420 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE i\EVV TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

to assume any more than that he made use of certain valuable- 
authorities, and not that he was an eye- and ear-witness. 
Some critics are inclined to attribute certain definite state 
ments in John, especially those indications of place which 
have no connection with the writer s general design (Tendenz) 
such as Bethany beyond Jordan as the scene of John s 
baptising, 1 or afterwards .ZEnon near to Salim, - or the men 
tion of Jesus walking in Solomon s porch 3 to the studious 
researches of the Evangelist. And he may certainly have had 
some knowledge of Palestine, for the remark about the High 
Priest of that year in xi. 49, which corresponds so ill with 
the established custom of the Jews, affords no direct proof to 
the contrary, since in Asia men would easily become accus 
tomed to such inaccurate phraseology. But the names of 
persons which are occasionally introduced in order to give 
animation to the narrative inspire but little confidence, and 
still less the numerical statements of xxi. 8 or vi. 19 ( when 
therefore they had rowed about five-and- twenty or thirty fur 
longs etc.). If, then, these data have no higher value than, 
say, the statement of Josephus that Balaam was led by Balak 
to a mountain sixty furlongs distant from the camp of the 
Israelites, have we any right to ascribe those other details 
as to places, feasts and days to anything but the author s 
literary pleasure in making his representation more detailed ? 

Unfortunately, the verdict that John, while loosely de 
pendent on the older authorities, created his own materials 
freely, and derived them from his faitJi rather than from 
trustworthy sources, is not least true when applied to the dis 
courses of Jesus which fill the greater part of his book. 

Not only does his Jesus speak in the language of the Evan 
gelist and pray in the way in which the Evangelist narrates, 
but what he says has scarcely two or three sentences in 
common with the Sayings as given in the Synoptics. Instead 
of the parables of the latter, we have here, at most, colourless 
allegories and ambiguous metaphors ; instead of the pithy 
practical wisdom of the Synoptics, we find theological spec-u- 
lation ; instead of the constant relation to actual circum 
stances and events, the prevailing character of timeless- 

2 iii. 2:;. :1 x. 23. 



31.] THE JOHANNINE QUESTION 421 

ness. All the discourses whose sole theme is in reality 
the speaker himself must be considered just as unhistorical 
.as the long High-Priestly prayer of chapter xvii., which 
could scarcely have been uttered in the presence of the disci 
ples and formally recorded by them immediately afterwards. 
If we leave a few doubtful sayings out of account, the only 
verse in the Synoptics which recalls the tone of the Johannine 
discourses is Matt. xi. 27 (repeated in Luke x. 22) ; and we 
are thus confronted with the choice of looking for our 
historically attested materials either in John or in the 
Synoptics but not in both. For a Jesus who preached alter 
nately in the manner of the Sermon on the Mount and of 
John xiv.-xvi. is a psychological impossibility ; the distinc 
tion between his so-called exoteric and esoteric teaching a 
palpable absurdity. The defenders of the authenticity of 
John do, moreover, as a rule admit that the Evangelist 
intended to make some sort of idealisation of the sayings of 
Jesus that he was in a state of quasi ecstasy while writing 
in other words, that he gives us a picture of his hero 
which exceeds the bounds of history. Science, however, can 
not allow itself any such mysticism or phrase-making ; in the 
Johannine discourses it is impossible to separate the form 
from the matter to ascribe the form to the later writer 
and the matter to Jesus no : sint ut sunt aut non sint ! It 
is of course perfectly conceivable that as in John xii. 25 a 
saying of Jesus is corroborated by Synoptic parallels, so 
there may be certain others not so corroborated which spring 
from a different but trustworthy tradition (e.g. xiv. 2) ; in 
itself, for instance, Jesus might well have bequeathed such 
a consolation as that of xvi. 21 fol. to his disciples. But the 
specifically Johannine material, of which chapter xvii. is the 
type, was produced and created by a single brain, and that 
the brain of the Evangelist. The party of Apology, more 
over, who do their best to disguise this fact by all manner 
of explanatory hypotheses, defeat their own ends, for in 
reality they lower Jesus in order to exalt one of his disciples 
to the skies. Jesus must surely be regarded, to judge from 
the effects which he has left upon the world s history, and 
quite apart from the religious aspect of the case, as a 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CH,VP. u 

personality which either repelled or else completely subjugated 
others ; hut if Jesus favourite disciple, after he had been 
withdrawn for many years from all personal intercourse with 
his master, could record a higher than the merely historical 
impression of him : if the Christ who is elevated to the level 
of the Johannine individuality is more lovable, greater and 
mightier than the strictly historical Christ of the Synoptics : 
then Jesus has hitherto been consistently over-rated then 
the disciple is above his Lord. 

4. If these considerations compel us to deny the Fourth 
Gospel all independent value as an authority for the history 
of Jesus, the book acquires an even greater interest as an 
authority for that of the early Church in fact, of the Church 
in general, for it is certainly the original source of that concep 
tion of the Saviour to which, in the theology of the Church (not 
in the feelings of the people), the future was destined. More 
over it teaches us once for all how very far from any real clear 
ness and fixity were the ideas of the early Church concerning 
Jesus, since it was possible in the second century for John to be 
come a Canonical Gospel side by side with the three Synoptics. 
The high-handed manner in which the unknown author of 
John composes discourses and prayers to put into the mouth of 
Jesus and arranges the course of his activity on earth, might 
almost destroy our confidence in all tradition concerning 
Christ, if we did not still feel the contrast very markedly 
between John and the ephemeral glitter of the multitude of 
fancy-Gospels (PhantaKieevanyelien} which sprang into exis 
tence soon afterwards, and if we did not see that even John 
respects the fundamental lines of actual history, although, 
unfortunately, the sayings he records are far from suited to 
it. The story of the baptism of Jesus, for instance, which 
must have been particularly inconvenient to our Evangelist, he 
adapts indeed to his own ends, but without destroying all traces 
of the Synoptic narrative. He was certainly aware of the 
striking contrast between his own presentment of the Gospel 
story and that of the other Evangelists, with whose work, as we 
know, he was acquainted : he did not feel satisfied with the 
existing Gospels, and intended partly to improve upon and 
partly to supersede them. Here the question confronts us : 



31.] THE JOHANNINE QUESTION 423 

whence this writer, who could not feel called upon on the 
ground of eye-witness-ship to charge the older Evangelists with 
falsification whence he derived the courage for this bold 
task, and what it was that actually constrained him to take 
up his pen. In attempting to answer it we enter upon one of 
the most obscure passages in the history of the early Church. 
The view that John was published as a philosophical 
prose-poem, by an Asiatic theologian who might just as well 
have kept his Messiad to himself, should certainly be rejected 
as antiquated and narrow-minded. On the contrary, John is a 
work begotten by the actual needs of the time. The passionate 
zeal of the writer is not entirely concealed beneath the mono 
tony of his discourses, and the idea which is so natural to us of 
the devout John wholly absorbed in the contemplation of his 
Saviour is in reality most ill-suited to such a man. Balden- 
sperger tries to explain the Gospel as the manifesto of a 
Christian, writing during the acute stage of the struggle 
between the followers of Jesus and the Baptist sect, which 
latter had openly gone back into the camp of unbelieving 
Judaism. The remarkable interest in John the Baptist 
shown by our author, his almost importunate eagerness to 
compare him with Jesus and to emphasise his inferiority 
(e.g. x. 41 : John indeed did no sign ), would certainly be 
explained by this hypothesis, and a flood of light is thereby 
shed on many a dark word in the Gospel. But in spite of 
Acts xviii. 24-xix. 7, the Baptist sect remains but a shadow, 
which it is difficult to imagine as entering upon so severe 
a contest as Baldensperger must assume, with what was by 
that time the comparatively old-established Church. And 
even if we could so think of it, we should still require another 
factor for the full comprehension of the peculiarities of John, 
for we can hardly suppose that the farewell discourses are 
directed against the Baptist and against those who over-rated 
him. Moreover, the Gospel contains not a single utterance 
hostile to or even slighting the Baptist ; in v. 33 fol., for 
instance, contempt is poured by Jesus, not upon the Baptist, 
who had borne witness unto the truth, but upon the Jews, 
who had sought testimony from a man, whereas Jesus 
neither asked nor needed any external witness, his worka 



424 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NKW TESTAMENT [OHAI-. i. 

alone testifying to him as Saviour. Here, as in many other 
passages even in such as contain no reference to the Baptist 
at all it is clearly shown that the foes against whom the 
controversial element in John was directed were the un 
believing Jews. These had pressed the claims of the Baptist 
in order to destroy the authority of Jesus ; they had contended 
that John had baptised unto the forgiveness of sins long 
before Jesus, that Jesus himself had received John s baptism 
and consequently the forgiveness of sins, and that he had 
thereby entered the ranks of John s disciples. And assuredly 
the disciple was not above his master. As against the 
exalted claims which the Christians attached to the baptism 
of their Church, the baptism of John must still retain the 
virtue of priority, and in Jewish thought the earlier is of 
necessity the greater. Had not Jesus himself been obliged 
to confess of the Baptist that he was the greatest of all 
men born of women ? Nor did such opponents confine 
themselves to these few objections to the pretensions of the 
Christians ; they ransacked the whole history of Jesus in order 
to discredit him. True, he had driven out unclean spirits, 
but he had himself admitted that the sons of the Pharisees 
could do the like ; he had chosen out a band of disciples, but 
had looked upon the traitor as his friend until the very last 
day, and when misfortune overtook him, even the others had 
forsaken or denied him to a man. He had not dared to go 
up to Jerusalem, the true home of the Messiah, because he 
knew that he would not be able to subdue the wise of the 
great city, as he had the foolish mobs of Galilee, by a few 
high-sounding speeches ; and when at last he had made the 
venture he had soon been rudely awakened out of his giddy 
dream of kingship, and had died in despair upon the Cross. 
Such were the reproaches hurled by their adversaries against 
the faithful in the disputes between Jews and Christians. 
Gentiles whom the latter were seeking to win over would 
suffer themselves to be imposed upon in this matter by 
Judaistic agitators, and even the believers themselves for the 
most part knew no clear and decisive arguments with which to 
refute such accusations. The enemy appealed to the Christian 
authorities themselves : Your own Mark, Matthew or Peter 



S 31.] THE JOHANNINE QUESTION 425 

say so-and-so, they would cry ; and the attacked could not deny 
that such words were indeed to be found in their Gospels^ 

It was from such a dangerous situation that the Fourth 
Gospel took its birth. Its author did not indeed reject the 
existing Gospels, nor, we may be sure, did he declare them 
spurious, for in common with every Christian of his time he 
read in them traditions handed down from the circle of the 
Twelve, springing from Peter or from Matthew ; but even 
though they contained nothing false, they did not contain 
enough : they did not depict the whole Christ, the Christ from 
whose majesty the darts of Jewish calumny must glance 
harmlessly aside. The Church needed a Gospel that should 
preach the true Christ in his teaching and his suffering, 
in his miraculous power and his rising from the dead : a 
Christ, in fact, with whom the Baptist, mere mortal as he was, 
could not even be compared, who had manifested himself from 
beginning to end as a divine being, furnished with divine 
powers of action and of knowledge, who had brought salvation 
to his people and assured it them for all future ages, and 
who had only died that the Scripture might be fulfilled and 
the full assurance of salvation founded upon water and 
blood might be given. He had not stooped to win the 
favour of the multitude, but the aristocrats of mind and birth 
so far at least as the might of Satan did not hold them 
captive crowded to hear him, and whenever an injury was 
inflicted on him it was of his own free will. 

These few examples must suffice to illustrate the position 
taken up by the Fourth Gospel. It is throughout Apologetic. 
The Gospel history is arranged and adapted in the most un 
compromising manner with a view to repelling Jewish insinua 
tions against the Gospel as it had hitherto existed. Nor if 
we wish to estimate both historically and psychologically the 
causes which led to the production of John, can we afford 
to overlook the depreciatory glance it casts upon the Synoptics, 
and upon those Christians who thought to rely on the 
Synoptics alone the expanded traditions of the Twelve in 
the battle of the religions. Thus the Fourth Evangelist 
cannot have taken up his pen before the second century. 
There is no need to assume that an alarming increase took 



426 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NKW TESTAMENT [CHAP. I. 

place in the Jewish propaganda during his time ; the only 
necessary supposition is that the two monotheistic religions, 
each with its vigorous proselytising tendency, had become 
definitely separated, and were now openly striving precisely 
in the interest of their missionary activities to dispute one 
another s claims to precedence. This state of things, however,, 
continued during the whole of the second century. As Justin 
championed the cause of the Church against Judaism in 
his Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew, so the Fourth Evangelist 
wished to champion it in his Gospel only with still greater 
effect, because his demonstration was positive, was in the 
grand style, and was apparently carried out with all the im 
partiality of the historian. 

But with whose authority should he endow his Gospel ? 
His own name, that of a little-known and perhaps compara 
tively young Christian theologian, would have done more harm 
than good, and, on the other hand, he would scarcely have 
dared to issue it expressly under that of another. His source 
of information must be an eye-witness, and if possible one who 
by his relation to Jesus possessed the highest qualifications for 
telling the story of Jesus. Well, he thought he was acquainted 
with such a man. The man to whom he, as well as the whole 
Asiatic Church of his time, owed their knowledge of the Lamb 
of God, of his divine character and of the absolute nature of 
the redemption he had brought, was the disciple John. John 
had passed away, even though men had believed he would 
live to see the return of the Lord, but his witness his (Gospel 
lived on in his communities, and assuredly it would be an 
act of which he would have approved to draw up this witness 
of his in written form, now, when the need for a convincing 
word of testimony was so urgently felt. But the writer would 
have been no true child of his age if in carrying out his plan 
his attention had always been anxiously fixed in the first 
instance upon the tradition as delivered by John, instead of 
upon the needs of the Church. The greater part of the dis 
courses of Jesus, and probably the bold modifications of the 
Passion story in an equal degree, are his own work. How far 
there may already have existed in much of this a school tradi 
tion on which he worked, we cannot even attempt to ascertain, 



5 31.] THE JOHANNINE QUESTION 427 

but what must have given him an inward confidence in his 
task was the conviction that he was reproducing the portrait 
of Christ exactly as he had received it from John. According 
to the standards of his time, the words we know that his 
witness is true (xxi. 24) would afford full excuse for the man 
who, in order to increase the effect of this witness, had shortly 
before added to the words this is the disciple which beareth 
witness of these things, which are subjectively true, the 
objectively questionable exaggeration and which wrote these 
things. 

The connection between the Gospel and the long-lived 
disciple of Jesus in Asia, of whom we have certain knowledge 
through Polycarp and Irenaeus, is thus established, and where 
else should we look for this enthusiastic admirer of the disciple 
who leaned on the breast of the Lord than at Ephesus, the 
city where that disciple had stood for so many years like a 
steadfast pillar among his brethren ? And in Asia Minor we 
may discover yet other elements of the Christology and the 
religious language of which the perfect type is offered by 
the Fourth Gospel ; e.g. in the Apocalypse (see p. 281), in 
the quotations from the Asiatic Presbyters made by Irenaeus, 
in the writings of Papias (e.g. the passage quoted by Eusebius 
in the Hist. Eccles. III. xxxix. 3 : evTo\a$ . . . avr avrijs 
Trapayivo/Asvas rffs d\r)0sias) and of Polycarp. 1 The divine 
Christ, Christ as the Truth, the Way, the Life, the bread of 
Life, etc., are not the creations of our Evangelist himself, but 
were found pre-existing by him as the creations of Johannine 
thought, and he himself merely erected his own artistic 
edifice upon the Johannine foundation. 

Unfortunately, this John must, notwithstanding, always 
remain for us a figure wrapped in mystery. He must at any 
rate have been a determined and successful representative 
of spiritual (pneumatische) Christology, a believer, for 
whom to have Christ and all the treasures of time and 
eternity, on the one hand, and, on the other, to have 
love both to God and to the brethren, were identical con 
ceptions, and moreover so strongly marked a personality, 
that although he but travelled further along the road 

1 E.g., Philip. Hi. 3, vii. 1, be. 2. 



42S AN INTRODUCTION TO TITK NKW TESTAMENT [CHAP. i. 

laid down by Paul, the image of Paul was blotted out by him 
though all unintentionally in the Asiatic provinces. The 
Epistles of Paul were still preserved there, but all recollection 
of the man himself faded away. Was this great man, then, 
one of the Sons of thunder, or a disciple John who did not 
come into prominence until comparatively late ? The title of 
Trpsa-fivTspos borne by 2. and 3. John merely establishes the 
identity of the John referred to there with him of xxi. 22 of 
the Gospel ; it is the disciple who dieth not, the Elder among 
Elders. It is true that the Apocalypse is particularly refrac 
tory to the notion of Apostolic authorship, but neither would 
the Beloved Disciple of the Fourth Gospel have been a suitable 
author for it, since on that hypothesis we should have ex 
pected some reference to the past imperishable relations of the 
Seer with the Son of God. However cautious we ought to be 
in demanding a personal element in an Apocalypse, it certainly 
cannot be considered probable that the Revelation was the 
work of John, the aged disciple of Asia ; at most it, too, can 
be said to belong to his School, even though it may be of 
earlier date than the Gospel, and may perhaps be more 
directly dependent on his teaching. When this is said, how 
ever, the last reason for preferring the intangible Presbyter 
to the son of Zebedee disappears ; the latter might well have 
given a mighty impulse to the Christianity of Asia in the 
years between 70 and 100, and have impressed the stamp 
of his personality upon the Church of that district for many 
years to come. 

Of course, what he evidently prided himself upon most 
was, not his having once belonged to the circle of the 
Twelve, but the fact that as disciple he had been and still was 
bound to his Master by special and indissoluble ties of love ; 
thus it was the character of disciple, eye-witness, Beloved 
of the Lord, which his unknown follower who dared to write 
the Gospel prized in him more highly than that of Apostle 
especially since certain Apostles were not merely alleged by 
Jewish slanderers, but had proved themselves to be, guilty of 
treachery, cowardice, lack of understanding and of faith. 
His aged master, on the other hand, was for him the embodi 
ment of the voice of truth. And when he had designed the 



31.] THE JOHANNINE QUESTION 429 

Gospel in a manner he thought worthy of the Elder 
himself, and when his work earned the approval of those who 
had often sought in vain for such a weapon during the heat 
of battle, it became so sacred a task to him and so much his 
second nature to write in the tone of John, that when 
Gnosticism, with its errors both of theory and practice, 
appeared and demanded a speedy and telling refutation, he 
entered the lists against it in the same character of the aged 
witness only, naturally, not with another Gospel, but with an 
Epistle, the form of literature whose utility for such disputes 
had been established by Paul. Isolated supplements he 
furnished in the shape of the two shorter Epistles. The 
clearer emphasis here laid on the authority by which these 
writings appearing, as they probably did, suddenly and 
mysteriously claimed attention, as well as the complaints in 
2. and 3. of certain open refusals to receive them which had 
reached the writer s ears, confirm us in the assumption which 
we must in any case have made, that the Johannine writings 
were not welcomed with equal enthusiasm by all Christians 
who were brought into contact with them. Various motives 
may have combined to produce the objections raised against 
all or some of them : in the East, for instance, many who had 
found a lifelong sustenance in Mark or Matthew would have 
rejected John in the spirit of Luke v. 39. But the new 
generation and the young everywhere accepted it; the 
self-consciousness of the new religion was more simply and 
sublimely formulated there than in the older Gospels, and 
whatever the fascination of the subject left unaccomplished 
was performed by the renown of the name under which these 
writings circulated. After the lapse of a few decades the em 
barrassment into which the Church was brought by the constant 
appeals of Gnostics, Montanists and Docetists to the authority 
of John, or the objections which the Quartodecimani were 
bound to raise against the new date for the Crucifixion, hardly 
HO much as weighed in the scale against the name of John. He 
was the last survivor of the band of Jesus personal friends, and 
therefore the last word was said by his Gospel. 

1 And no man having drunk old wine desireth new, for he saith " The old is- 
better. " 



430 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 



CHAPTER II 

32. The Acts of the Apostles 

[Cf. H. A. W. Meyer, vol. iii. (ed. 8, by H. H. Wendt, 1899), 
and Holtzmann s Hand-Commentar, vol. i. (on the Synoptics and 
Acts, ed. 2, 1892). The most recent revision, by Franz Overbeck 
in 1870, of W. M. L. de Wette s Commentar is a work of 
enduring value. Consult also E. Zeller : Die Apostelgeschichte 
nach ihrem Inhalt und Ursprung kritisch untersucht (1854), 
which is the most notable statement of the Tubingen point of 
view ; E. Lekebusch : Die Composition und Entstehung der 
Apostelgeschichte (1854), moderate Apologetics; F. Spitta : Die 
Apostelgeschichte, ihre Quellen und deren geschichtlichen Wert 
(1891) ; J. Weiss : Uber die Absicht und den literarischen 
Charakter der Apostelgeschichte (1897), and P. W. Schmiedel s 
. article entitled The Acts of the Apostles in the Encyclo 
paedia Biblica/ vol. i. pp. 37-57 (1899). For other works see 
below, par. 6.] 

1. After an introduction linking this work with the Gospel 
of Luke, 1 the first chapter describes how before his Ascension 
Jesus committed the continuation of his work on earth to the 
Eleven, 2 and how these chose a certain Matthias by lot to 
rill the twelfth place in their ranks in the room of Judas, who 
had died a horrible death. :i On the day of Pentecost the 
promise made by Jesus is fulfilled ; the Holy Ghost is 
bestowed upon the disciples, and the miracle of their speaking 
with tongues is explained by Peter before the astonished 
multitudes of pilgrims who come streaming to the Feast from 
;ill parts of the earth ; three thousand souls are won over to the 
Gospel, and the believers proceed to live together in an ideal 

1 i. 1-3. - i. 4-14. s i. 1.5-20. 4 i. *. 



32.] THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 431 

community of goods. 1 In chapters iii.-v. we have further 
proofs of the miraculous power of the new Spirit : a lame 
man is healed ; Peter and John are imprisoned and then 
set free ; Ananias and Sapphira are punished for the deceit 
they had practised in delivering up their property, the 
Apostles who had been taken prisoners by the Sadducees 
are released by an angel ; and, after Peter s defence in the 
Sanhedrin, Gamaliel advises a cautious and temporising treat 
ment of his followers. The next two chapters 2 tell how 
seven ministers to the poor were chosen for the community 
in Jerusalem, and how one of them, Stephen, after rising in 
41 brilliant speech from the position of one accused of blas 
pheming the Law to that of an accuser of the Jews who 
disgraced the Law, was stoned to death. But the dispersal 
of the Christians which follows upon this event brings nothing 
but good to their cause, for the Gospel now penetrates to 
Samaria, and reaches a eunuch from distant Ethiopia, while 
an episode tells of the sorcerer Simon, who wished to buy the 
gift of conferring the Holy Ghost from the Apostles. 3 Next 
follows a description of the conversion of the persecutor Saul, 4 
after which we hear how Peter journeyed to and fro, now 
as a miracle-worker in Lydda and Joppa, now as a baptiser 
of believing Gentiles in the house of the centurion Cornelius 
at Caesarea, where, prepared beforehand by visions, he is con 
vinced by actual observation that God did not deny the Holy 
Ghost even to the uncircumcised." Next follows a description 
of the spread of Christianity as far as Antioch, where the 
name of Christian first appears. Even the hatred of King 
Herod Agrippa cannot harm the primitive community, for 
though James is executed, Peterj is miraculously released 
from prison. 7 Chaps, xiii. and xiv. tell \ of the missionary 
journey of Barnabas and Saul now re-named Paul by 
way of Cyprus to Asia Minor andj, north wards as far as 
Iconium, Lystra and Derbe ; then .follows an account 
of the Apostolic Council "of^ Jerusalem s jj-at which it is 
decided that Gentile converts-should indeed be required, in 

1 Ch. ii. z vi. and vii. * Ch. viii. 

4 ix. 1-30. ix. 31-xi. 18. " xi. 19-26. 

xii. l- 2r>. " xv. 1-33. 



432 AN INTRODUCTION TO TUP] NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. ir. 

consideration of the weekly readings from the books of Moses 
in all synagogues, to abstain from things sacrificed to idols, 
from blood, from things strangled and from fornication, but 
should be absolved from all further bondage to the Law (this 
the so-called Apostolic Decree). Paul and Barnabas now 
separate for fresh missionary journeys, the former going 
overland through Cilicia, Lystra and Iconium to Galatia, 
Troas and Macedonia. 1 The proceedings at Philippi, where 
Paul and his companions are scourged and condemned to 
close imprisonment, but are delivered on the very next day 
by a miraculous interposition of Providence, and even escorted 
out of the town with all honour by the magistrates, are next 
described in detail,- and in chap. xvii. we are told how they 
travelled on, westwards and southwards, by way of Thessa- 
lonica, Beroea and Athens - where Paul makes his speech on 
the Areopagus to Corinth. 3 Returned to Antioch, Paul 
starts on a fresh expedition and chooses Asia as his field of 
operations, but after three years work there he is expelled 
from Ephesus, never to return, by the tumult raised against 
him by the silversmith Demetrius. Then follows an account, 
very minute in parts, of his journey through Macedonia down 
to Greece and back, and then along the eastern coast of the 
Mediterranean to Caesarea, after which we hear how he 
arrived in Jerusalem, then of the rising stirred up against 
him by the Jews, of his transportation to Csesarea, where he 
is kept in prison for two years until Festus succeeds to the 
procuratorship, and of the various speeches he makes in his 
defence/ The last two chapters tell of his removal to Borne and 
of his discussions with the heads of the Jewish community 
there, and the document ends with the statement that he was 
suffered to preach the Gospel there for two whole years, 
none forbidding him. 

We must not expect to find any subtly considered scheme 
in this book, which merely narrates certain events in the order 
of their succession, but it is nevertheless possible to distinguish 
two parts, the first consisting of chaps, i.-xii., in which Peter 
stands at the centre of affairs and is, as it were, the leader of 

1 xv. 35-xvi. 11. xvi. 1-2-40. 3 Chs. xviii. and xix. 

4 xx. 1-xxi. 14. s xxi. 15-xxvi. 32. 



32.] THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 433 

the forward movement, and the second of chapters xiii.-xxviii., 
in which this role is transferred to Paul. In other words, 
the first contains the history of the primitive community and 
of the Palestinian mission ; the second, that of the spread 
ing of the Gospel among the Gentiles to the very ends of the 
earth, from Antioch to Rome. But in the central portion, be 
tween chapters viii. and xv., these two divisions frequently 
overlap ; the account of the Council of Jerusalem, for instance, 
in xv., belongs by right to the first part, and that of the 
conversion of Paul, 1 together with viii. 3 and xi. 25, more 
correctly to the second ; it can, however, have been no part of 
the writer s purpose to impose this dualism upon his readers 
consciousness. 

2. By the dedication to Theophilus - and the express 
reference to a former work dealing with Jesus, as well as by 
the assumption of Jerusalem as the place of the Ascension 
(which agrees ill with the accounts in Mark, Matthew and 
John), the Book of Acts gives us to understand that it is a 
continuation of the Gospel of Luke. Moreover, we have no 
cause to consider the indications of the prologue to be a mere 
fabrication, for in language, taste, religious views (e.g. the 
exaltation of poverty and the high value set on fasting) and 
descriptive colour the two books agree almost more closely 
than we could have any right to expect, considering their very 
different subjects and the abundant use by both of very 
different materials. Their similarity in bulk would also seem 
to have been part of the intention of the writer. J.H. Scholten s 
theory (put forward in 1873) that though the writer of Acts, 
like the writer of Luke, belonged to the Pauline school, yet 
the two cannot have been identical, because the former is 
favourably inclined towards Jewish Christianity, while the 
latter is opposed to it, rests on an insufficient foundation ; nor 
are certain more recent hypotheses, according to which the 
Acts passed through the hands of a later reviser, who is to be 
clearly distinguished from the author (here the author both 
of Acts and Luke), deserving of any higher consideration. 
Slight contradictions in terms are not sufficient to justify us 
in bestowing three authors upon the Acts a Judaist, an anti- 

1 ix. 1-30. * See Luke i. 3. 

F F 



434 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT [CHAP. n. 

Judaist and a neutral for the Gospel can also display similar 
incongruities. It is true that the question as to whether this 
one writer had intended from the beginning to follow up his 
Gospel by a second book must remain unanswered. The 
prologue of Luke does not indicate it clearly and appears to 
belong solely to the Gospel, while the ending is complete in 
itself and needs no supplement. And since the picture of 
the Ascension is certainly far more highly coloured in the 1st 
chapter of Acts than in Luke xxiv., the conclusion may be 
permitted that the two books were not written at one sitting ; 
and the Acts are also made into an independent work by the 
catalogue of the Apostles, which is here inserted 1 regard 
less of its duplicate in Luke. 2 

3. The Book of Acts was probably written a few years later 
than Luke, i.e. somewhere between the years 100 and 105. It 
is true that it contains no direct references to events of the 
Post-Apostolic period, in consequence of which some have 
ventured to date the book as early as the lifetime of Paul, of 
whose death we are not told. This is, however, rendered 
impossible by the fact that the latter is represented in chapter 
xx. ;; as bidding farewell for ever to the elders of the church 
at Ephesus, while the execution of Paul is left unmentioned 
at the end for other reasons than that of its not having taken 
place at the time those verses were written. 4 The decisive 
argument is that the book stands no nearer to the events 
related in it than does the Gospel to its own subject: in both 
the story is told from written authorities ; the full observation 
of the eye-witness makes itself felt partially, wherever these 
authorities permit ; but side by side with it, and not always in 
the earlier chapters only, we come upon the nebulous con 
ceptions of a later generation. The idealisation here made 
of the Apostolic Age is not the work of an enthusiastic, 
uncritical contemporary ; it is far too systematic for that, 
and the knowledge which the writer still possesses of that 
age is significantly meagre. If the Acts were written by 
a friend of Paul during Paul s actual lifetime, the writer 
would incur the sharpest criticism, for he must in that 

1 i. 13. - vi. 14-16. 

3 . 4-38, and cf. xxi. 4, 11 14. 4 See pp. 43, 44. 



32.] THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 435 

case have written the history of his own times not only 
in a partisan and arbitrary spirit, but actually with the 
grossest carelessness ; he must have passed over important 
events in silence concerning which a single question would 
have brought him information. In reality the impres 
sion he gives throughout is rather that of the industrious 
collector, hampered by insufficient material, but desiring to 
tell his story impartially. And a motive for the com 
position of such an Apostolic history in the years 63 or 64, 
when Peter, Paul and John were still alive and expected to 
see the return of Jesus with bodily eyes, is only discoverable 
by those whose lack of judgment is as complete as that of the 
party which desires to find room for the first sketch of a 
Gospel in the very lifetime of Jesus. 

On the contrary, the plan of the Acts as well as the man 
ner of its execution point to a time wh