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The Four Gospels in the
Earliest Church History
JSatrtt iUctttre for 1907
The Four Gospels in the
Earliest Church History
BY
THOMAS NICOL, D.D.
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AND BIBLICAL CRITICISM
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MCMVTII
All Rights reserved
In jIHemoriam
THE VERY REV. A. H. CHARTERIS,
D.D. (EDIN. AND ABERD.), LL.D.
PREFACE.
HOWEVER the ground may change in the con
flict as to the credibility of the Gospel history,
the first line of defence, it seems to me, must
always be the external evidence. It is the
external evidence for the Four Gospels which
I have endeavoured in these Lectures to state
in the light of the most recent research. The
statement does not profess to be minutely ex
haustive, but it is hoped that nothing material
has been overlooked.
To the Baird Trustees I owe cordial acknow
ledgments for giving me the opportunity of
dealing with this important subject for the first
time in their Lectureship.
It has been a high gratification to me that
my old teacher, Professor Charteris, has read
the Lectures in proof, and done so with the
ardour and keenness of former years. From
my ever -helpful colleague, Professor Cowan, I
have received similar aid and many valuable
suggestions.
My debt to the chief authorities in this field,
viii Preface.
as the reader will at once perceive, is great. A
selected list of books, most of which have been
consulted, is given after the table of contents.
Of these, Eusebius s Ecclesiastical History de
serves special mention, M Giffert s translation,
with its valuable notes, having been in constant
use. Next to it, the monumental works of Profes
sor Zahn have been of service. His Einleitung
in das N.T. (in its third edition) has now been
translated, and will be published in the course
of this year. The references in the Lectures
are to the translation, of which the publishers,
Messrs T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, kindly allowed
me to see the sheets in advance. To our great
English scholars I am under deep obligations;
and with the works of Westcott and Lightfoot,
Sanday and Stanton, I venture to name Pro
fessor Charteris s Canonicity, which, though
out of print, is by no means out of date.
P.S. This volume had been passed for press
with a dedication to the Very Reverend A. H.
Charteris, D.D., LL.D., " as a tribute of admir
ation and affection from an old student." His
sudden death on April 24 has made an alteration
necessary. It is now with the deepest gratitude
dedicated to his memory.
UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN,
May 2, 1908.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY I
CHAPTER I.
EARLIER CRITICAL THEORIES.
Four Gospels unquestioned till close of eighteenth
century First critical assaults Paulus, Strauss,
Baur Baur s reconstruction of Primitive Christ
ianity -Its wide acceptance Reaction Re
jection ......
CHAPTER II.
SOME RECENT CRITICISM.
Critical successors of Baur Rejection of historical
element in Gospels Particular theories
Schmiedel Statement and criticism of his
positions Pfleiderer KalthofT Contention of
present course of lectures . . .19
x Contents.
CHAPTER III.
THE FOUR GOSPELS ABOUT 2OO A.D.
Acknowledged books of New Testament at close of
second century Use of the word " canon "
Tests of canonical quality Gospels specially
treasured Four Gospels appealed to alike by
Catholic Church and heretical sects The close
of the second century an epoch in Christian lit
erature The testimony of ORIGEN CLEMENT
OF ALEXANDRIA TERTULLIAN EARLY VER
SIONS : Syriac, Latin, Egyptian . . 34
CHAPTER IV.
A GOSPEL COLLECTION IREN^EUS
Traces of a Gospel collection Position of Irenasus :
(i) His lofty conception of the Church ; (2) His
wide acquaintance with the thought of his time ;
(3) His high doctrine of Inspiration ; (4) His
labours in widely separated provinces of the
Church His testimony to a Gospel collection
His claim of exclusive authority for the Fourfold
Gospel Objections taken by negative criticism :
(i) To his symbolism; (2) His views of the
age of Jesus at His death ; (3) His alleged
incompetence as a witness to the sayings of
Polycarp ; (4) His testimony as a witness for
the whole Church questioned His credibility
vindicated . 58
Contents. xi
CHAPTER V.
A GOSPEL COLLECTION MURATORIAN FRAGMENT
AND TATIAN.
MURATORIAN FRAGMENT described Its testimony
Its account of composition of fourth Gospel
Value of its tribute subject to uncertainty as to
its date TATIAN His personality Disciple of
Justin Martyr His Diatessaron Testimonies
to its use and character Its subsequent history
Its witness to a Gospel collection . . 80
CHAPTER VI.
A GOSPEL COLLECTION JUSTIN MARTYR.
JUSTIN S chronology and literary work Did he
know our Gospels ? Credner s view His use
of Synoptics now generally acknowledged
Indications of individual Gospels Question
whether the fourth Gospel belongs to the
Memoirs Harnack s view Recent criticism
Extra-canonical sayings of Jesus Reference
to A eta Pilati . . . . -97
CHAPTER VII.
THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS THE NUMBER FOUR.
HERMAS and his Shepherd Dr Charles Taylor s
discovery of Fourfold Gospel in the Shepherd
Proofs of its use The ground of FOUR as
the number of the Gospels Four in Scripture
symbolism Harnack s question, Why four and
not one ? Collection of Four first completed in
Asia Minor soon after the issue of the fourth
Gospel . . . . . .112
xii Contents.
CHAPTER VIII.
ST MATTHEW. I.
Individual Gospels accompanied from beginning with
traditions of origin Internal evidence conclusive
as to authorship of St Luke and St Mark St
Matthew the favourite Gospel of the early Church
Its early and wide circulation Harnack on its
attractive character Illustrations of its early use
Testimony of JUSTIN MARTYR 2 CLEMENT
Apology of ARISTIDES . . .122
CHAPTER IX.
ST MATTHEW. II.
PAPIAS of Hierapolis His c Expositions His
statement that St Matthew wrote his Logia
in Hebrew Views as to Logia Schleier-
macher s view Hilgenfeld s view that they were
the Gospel of St Matthew Traces in early Church
of an Aramaic Gospel of St Matthew Zahn s
view Testimony of POLYCARP Its peculiar
value . . . . . .145
CHAPTER X.
ST MATTHEW. III.
Testimony of IGNATIUS The Ignatian letters
Proofs of the use of St Matthew CLEMENT
OF ROME Epistle of BARNABAS Use of the
Gospel by EARLY HERETICS Testimony of
the DIDACHE St Matthew the Gospel of the
Didache 161
Contents. xiii
CHAPTER XI.
ST MARK.
Early lack of favour Augustine s view Connection
with St Peter Testimony of Justin Papias
of Hierapolis His reference to the Presbyter
John Presbyter and Apostle one and the
same Importance of this testimony Apos
tolic Fathers Heretical writers Internal evid
ence Authenticated by the other Evangelists . 179
CHAPTER XII.
ST LUKE. I.
Eusebius and Irenaeus on St Luke Testimony of
Marcion Marcion s heresy Marcion s canon
Tertullian against Marcion Marcion in
modern criticism Zahn s investigations Mar
cion s knowledge of the Gospels . . 209
CHAPTER XIII.
ST LUKE. IL
Justin Martyr Apocryphal Gospel of Peter
Celsus Protevangelium Jacobi Basilides
Apostolic Fathers Tradition of Lucan author
ship The tradition supported by internal evi
dence St Luke a witness to historical character
of earliest Christian records . , . 227
xiv Contents.
CHAPTER XIV.
ST JOHN. I.
History of criticism Witness of Eusebius and
Irenasus Testimony of Tatian in Diatessaron
and Address to the Greeks Clementine
Homilies Gospel of Peter Justin Martyr
Principal Drummond s judgment Testimony of
heretics Valentinus Basilides Verdict of Dr
Ezra Abbot The Alogi Papias and Polycarp 241
CHAPTER XV.
ST JOHN. II.
Ignatius His letters His circumstances when
they were written References to St John s
Gospel in them Coincidences of language
Correspondence in doctrine and in views of the
Christian life Nature of this Johannine influ
ence Explained by acquaintance with written
Gospel How such acquaintance was possible
Composition and authentication of the Gospel 273
CHAPTER XVI.
IDENTITY OF THE FOURTH EVANGELIST.
Not John the Apostle, but John the Presbyter, held
to be the author Liitzelberger Keim Har-
nack Delff De Boor s Fragment Precarious
nature of these theories The Early Church not
mistaken as to identity of the Evangelist Chain
Contents. xv
of early witnesses : Justin Martyr, Irenasus,
Polycrates, Clement of Alexandria Testimony
of Acts, and the Epistles, and Revelation
Character of John the Apostle in keeping with
the tone of the Gospel and Epistles Differ
ences between St John s Gospel and Synoptics
External evidence and internal converge upon
John the Apostle as the author . . .293
CHAPTER XVII.
CONCLUSION.
The tradition of authorship supported by witness of
the Church Continuity of the Church of the
Gentiles with the Church of Jerusalem Pres
ervation of tradition of authorship The Church
existed before the Gospels St Paul s Epistles
before the Gospels St Paul and Gospel writers
in full accord Chain of early witnesses Christ
ianity as a creative force Its effects and mani
festations Testimonies to its vitality and power
Primacy of the Four Gospels as records of
Christ Their authority Their equality with Old
Testament Their inspiration Their acceptance
as an adequate and authoritative record of the
Life and Teaching of Christ . . . 309
SELECTED LIST OF BOOKS.
I. THE CANON.
Charteris (A. H., D.D., LL.D.), Canonicity. Edinburgh, 1880.
The New Testament Scriptures. London, 1882.
Gregory (Caspar Rene", D.D., LL.D.), Canon and Text of
the New Testament. Edinburgh, 1907.
Leipoldt (Johannes), Geschichte des N.T. Kanons. Leipzig,
1907.
Moore (Professor E. C), The New Testament in the Christian
Church. New York, 1904.
Sanday (W., D.D., LL.D.), Inspiration 3 (Bampton Lec
ture). London, 1898.
Westcott (Bishop), The Canon of the New Testament. 7
London, 1896.
The Bible in the Church. London, 1866.
Zahn (Theodore, D.D.), Geschichte des N.T. Kanons.
Erlangen and Leipzig, vols. i. and ii., 1889-1892.
(Quoted GK.)
Forschungen zur Geschichte des N.T. Kanons. Er
langen and Leipzig, vols. i.-vii., 1891-1903.
Grundriss der Geschichte des N.T. Kanons. 2 Leipzig,
1904.
II. CHURCH HISTORY.
Von Dobschiitz (E., D.D.), Christian Life in the Primitive
Church. London, 1906.
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History. Translated by A. C.
M Giffert, D.D. Oxford and New York, 1890.
xviii Selected List of Books.
Harnack (Adolf, D.D., LL.D.), Expansion of Christianity.
Translated by James Moffatt, D.D. Two vols. London,
1904.
Ramsay (Sir William, D.D., LL.D.), The Church in the
Roman Empire. 5 London, 1898.
St Paul the Traveller. 3 London, 1897.
Was Christ Born at Bethlehem ? 2 London, 1898.
Schaff (Philip, D.D., LL.D.), History of the Church, Apos
tolic Christianity, and Ante-Nicene Christianity. Four
vols. Edinburgh, 1883-1884.
Wernle , Beginnings of Christianity. Two vols. London,
1905.
III. EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE.
Bardenhewer, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur. Two
vols. Miinchen, 1902.
Burkitt (F. C., D.D.), Early Eastern Christianity. London,
1904.
Cruttwell (Rev. C. T., M.A.), Literary History of Early
Christianity. Two vols. London, 1893.
Deissmann, Evangelium und Urchristentum. Miinchen,
1905.
Donaldson (Sir James, D.D., LL.D.), History of Christian
Literature and Doctrine. Three vols. 1864-1866.
Harnack, Geschichte der Altchristlichen Literatur. Leip
zig. I. Die Cberlieferung, 1893. II. Die Chronologic,
1897-1904.
Kriiger, Early Christian Literature. London, 1897.
Lightfoot (Bishop), Essays on Supernatural Religion. Lon
don, 1889.
M Clymont (J. A., D.D.), New Testament and its Writers.
Edinburgh, 1893.
Von Soden, Early Christian Literature. London, 1906.
Weiss (J.), Die Schriften des N.T. neu iibersetzt. 2 Got-
tingen, 1907.
Selected List of Books. xix
IV. INTRODUCTION.
Holtzmann (H. J.), Einleitung in das N.T. Freiburg-i.-B.,
1885.
Jiilicher (Adolf, D.D.), Introduction to N.T. Translated
by J. P. Trevelyan. 1904.
Moffatt, The Historical New Testament. 2 Edinburgh,
1905.
Salmon (G., D.D.), Introduction to the N.T. 8 London,
1897.
Weiss (B., D.D.), Einleitung in das N.T. Berlin, 1886.
Zahn, Einleitung in das N.T. 3 Two vols. Leipzig, 1907.
English trans. Three vols. Edinburgh, 1908.
V. LIFE OF CHRIST.
Bousset (W., D.D.), Life of Christ. London, 1906.
Edersheim (Alf., D.D.), Life and Times of Jesus the Christ. 2
London, 1883-1886.
Farrar (F. W., D.D.), Life of Christ. London, 1883.
Holtzmann (Oscar), The Life of Christ. London, 1904.
Keim (Theodor), Jesus of Nazareth. Six vols. London,
1876-1883.
Sanday, Outlines of Life of Christ. Edinburgh, 1905.
Life of Christ in Recent Research. Oxford, 1907.
Schweitzer (Albert, D.Phil.), Von Reimarus zu Wrede.
Eine Geschichte der Leben - Jesu Forschung. Tub
ingen, 1906.
VI. PATRISTIC.
Ante-Nicene Christian Library. T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh.
Donaldson (Sir James), Apostolic Fathers. London, 1874.
Funk (F. X., D.D.), Patres Apostolici. Tiibingen, 1901.
Gutjahr (F. S., D.D.), Glaubwiirdigkeit des Irenaischen
Zeugnisses. Graz, 1904.
xx Selected List of Books.
Harnack, Die Apostellehre. Texte u. Untersuchungen.
1884.
Harvey (Wigan), Irenaei Opera. Two vols. Cantab., 1857.
Hill (Rev. J. Hamlyn), The Diatessaron of Tatian. Edin
burgh, 1894.
Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers. 2 Vols. i.-iv. London, 1890.
Roensch, Das N.T. Tertullians. Leipzig, 1871.
Semisch, Justin Martyr : His Life and Writings. Edin
burgh, 1843.
Swete (H. B., D.D.), Patristic Study. London, 1902.
Taylor (Chas., D.D.), Hermas and the Four Gospels.
London, 1892.
New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers. Oxford, 1905.
VII. THE GOSPELS.
(l) AS A WHOLE.
Blass (F., D.D., LL.D.), Philology of the Gospels. London,
1898.
Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission. Edin
burgh, 1906.
Robinson (J. A., D.D.), The Study of the Gospels. London,
1902.
Sanday, The Gospels in the Second Century. London,
1876.
Stanton (V. H., D.D.), The Gospels as Historical Docu
ments. Cambridge, 1903.
Westcott, Introduction to the Gospels. 8 London, 1895.
(2) THE SYNOPTICS.
Campbell (Colin, D.D.), The First Three Gospels in Greek. 2
London, 1899.
Gloag (P. J., D.D.), Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels.
Edinburgh, 1895.
Selected List of Books. xxi
Harnack, Spriiche u. Reden Jesu. Leipzig, 1907.
Hawkins (Sir John), Horae Synoptics. Oxford, 1898.
Smith (James, of Jordanhill, F.R.S.), The Origin of the
Gospels. London, 1853.
Wellhausen (J.), Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien.
Berlin, 1905.
Wright (Arthur, D.D.), Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek.
London, 1903.
(3) INDIVIDUAL GOSPELS.
(a) St Matthew.
Allen (W. C), Commentary (Internat. Grit. Ser.) Edin
burgh, 1907.
Morison (James, D.D.), Commentary. London, 1883.
Zahn, Das Evangelium des Matthaeus Ausgelegt. Leipzig,
1903.
(b) St Mark.
Gould (E. P., D.D.), Commentary (Internat. Grit. Ser.)
Edinburgh, 1896.
Menzies (A., D.D.), The Earliest Gospel. London, 1901.
Morison, Commentary. 3 London, 1883.
Swete, Commentary. London, 1898.
Weiss (B., D.D.), Das Marcus-Evangelium. Berlin, 1872.
(c) St Luke.
Harnack, Luke the Physician. London, 1907.
Hobart, Medical Language of St Luke. Edinburgh, 1883.
Plummer (Alfred, D.D.), Commentary (Internat. Crit. Ser.)
Edinburgh, 1898.
Wright, St Luke s Gospel in Greek. London, 1900.
xxii Selected List of Books.
(d) St John.
Drummond (James, LL.D.), The Character and Authorship
of the Fourth Gospel. London, 1903.
Gloag, Introduction to the Johannine Writings. Edinburgh,
1891.
Loisy (Alfred), Le Quatrieme Evangile. Paris, 1903.
Luthardt (C. E., D.D.), St John the Author of the Fourth
Gospel. Edinburgh, 1875.
Sanday, Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth
Gospel. London, 1872.
Criticism of the Fourth Gospel. Oxford, 1905.
Watkins (Archdeacon, D.D.), Modern Criticism in relation
to the Fourth Gospel (Bampton Lecture). London,
1890.
Wendt (H. H., D.D.), The Gospel according to St John.
Edinburgh, 1902.
Westcott, St John (Speaker s Commentary). London, 1880.
(4) APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS.
Nicholson (E. B.), The Gospel according to the Hebrews.
London, 1879.
Preuschen Antilegomena. 2 Giessen, 1905.
Resch (Alfred), Agrapha. Texte u. Untersuchungen. 1889.
Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha. 2 Leipzig, 1876.
Relevant articles in Hastings Dictionaries, in Encyclopaedia
Biblica, and Herzog Real-Encyclopadie. 3
The Four Gospels in the
Earliest Church History.
INTRODUCTORY.
IN any estimate we form of the trustworthiness
of the Gospels as a presentation of the Life, the
Teaching, and the Work of Christ, much de
pends upon the directness of their sources and
their proximity in time to the events which they
record. When He is represented as the com
pletion of God s earlier revelation of Himself to
man, it is a momentous consideration whether
He is a mere mythological figure or a great
historical Personality. When the impression of
Him conveyed by the writers of the Gospels is
that of a Divine Person of supernatural power,
stainless purity, and unwearying goodness, it is
of supreme importance for us to have the assur-
A
2 Introductory.
ance that the picture has been drawn from the
life. When there are words attributed to Him
expressing the consciousness of unique Sonship
to God the Father, a Sonship which was " per
fect in every relation and of cosmical and
eternal significance," it is of profound concern
to us to have a record of them reliable and
sure. As regards that death which He died
upon the Cross, of which He said that it was
a ransom for many, and of which His com
missioned Apostles declared that it was for the
remission of the sins of the world, it is of the
utmost consequence to know that the evangelic
and apostolic testimony is in accordance with
the facts. And when the same narratives, with
variations in detail but with substantial unanim
ity, record the Resurrection, setting before us
the two momentous facts of an empty sepulchre
and a Risen Lord, it is essential for the fulness
of Christian faith and hope to be assured that
the facts involved are not the invention of the
first disciples, nor the result of reflection on
the part of the growing Christian community,
but historical realities vouched for from the be
ginning and attested by eyewitnesses who could
not be mistaken.
Now if the Gospels were works of the second
century, written by unknown authors or produced
by reflection and discussion within the Christian
The Gospels Contemporary Records. 3
community, we could not have the same assur
ance of their trustworthiness. It would be diffi
cult in such a case to maintain that the original
tradition had not undergone transformation as
it travelled downwards, and to show that the
Gospel record was free from admixture of ex
aggeration and embellishment. But if we can
have good reason for holding that the Gospels
and with them the Acts of the Apostles were
written within the lifetime of men who had seen
the Lord, and if we can trace them to writers
who were either credible eyewitnesses them
selves or took pains to ascertain from eyewit
nesses and trustworthy authorities the truth of
what they record, then we may have confidence
that the portrait they have drawn for us is the
real Christ, that He actually performed those
mighty works, and spake as never man spake,
and died upon the Cross, and rose from the
grave, and ascended to heaven for our re
demption.
It is true there are those who decline to admit
that the Gospels are more credible and trust
worthy because they are contemporary records.
Professor Schmiedel says: 1 " If our Gospels could
be shown to be written from 50 A.D. onwards,
or even earlier, we should not be under any
necessity to withdraw our conclusion as to their
1 Encyclopaedia Biblica, art. "Gospels."
4 Introductory.
contents ; we should, on the contrary, only have
to say that the indubitable transformation in
the original tradition had taken place much
more rapidly than one might have been ready
to suppose. The credibility of the Gospel his
tory cannot be established by the earlier dating
of the Gospels." No ! because no evidence, in
the judgment of Schmiedel, could attest a mir
acle, the old doctrine of David Hume a century
and a half ago. Professor Harnack, after having
shown by a scholarly and elaborate argument
that Luke the Physician, the author of the Third
Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles, was the
fellow - worker and companion in travel of St
Paul, and that his Gospel, depending to a con
siderable extent upon St Mark, fell within the
days of the Apostles, guards himself against
holding that St Luke s narrative is therefore
more reliable and trustworthy as a record of
facts. 1 This is doctrine that can only be main
tained in the teeth of the established canons of
historical credibility. Strauss did not go to the
length of critical hardihood professed by these
two scholars. He has said in his * Life of
Jesus : "It would most unquestionably be an
argument of decisive weight in favour of the
credibility of the Biblical history could it be
shown that it was written by eyewitnesses, or
1 Lucas der Arzt, p. 159 ff. (English trans.)
The Gospels reliable Histories. 5
even by persons nearly contemporaneous with
the events narrated" (p. 55). We can meet
the dictum of the Berlin Professor with the
judgment of a scholar of our own, not one whit
behind Professor Harnack, in a field where both
have a well-established pre-eminence. " In no
other department of historical criticism," says
Sir William Ramsay, " except Biblical, would
any scholar dream of saying, or dare to say, that
accounts are not more trustworthy if they can
be traced back to authors who were children
at the time the events occurred, and who were
in year-long, confidential, and intimate relations
with actors in these events, than they would be
if they were composed by writers one or two
generations younger, who had personal acquaint
ance with few or none of the actors and con
temporaries." 1 This judgment is in accordance
alike with the canons of historical credibility and
with the dictates of common-sense. We would
not withdraw the Gospels from the tests of
literary and historical criticism. But we claim
that their genuineness and credibility should be
admitted when those tests have been applied and
they have satisfied them.
1 Expositor, December 1906.
CHAPTER I.
EARLIER CRITICAL THEORIES.
WITH the exception of the Alogi in the second
century, an obscure and insignificant sect, who,
on internal grounds, assigned the authorship of
the Fourth Gospel to Cerinthus ; and of Faustus, 1
the Manichaean in the fourth century who sug
gested that the titles of the Gospels According
to Matthew, According to Mark, and so on, desig
nated not the authors but the authorities from
which the actual writers derived their materials,
the genuineness of the Four Gospels may be
said to have passed without question down to
the close of the eighteenth century.
It is the Fourth Gospel which has had to
sustain the most formidable attacks of negative
criticism. The assault was opened in 1792 with
a book on The Dissonances of the Evangelists,
1 August, Contra Faustum, xxxii. 2. Cf. xxxii. 16, 19, 21, 22;
xxxiii. 6-8.
First A ttacks. 7
by Edward Evanson, a man of little scholarship
and less critical judgment, who rejected the
Fourth Gospel because of the discrepancies, as
he alleged, between it and the other Gospels,
especially St Luke. An attack from such a
quarter could scarcely expect to prove of any
great effect, but it was sufficient to break in
upon the unanimity of acceptance which the
Gospels had uninterruptedly enjoyed from the
beginning, and it fastened upon points which
raise difficulties even for believing critics. The
next attack was made, again upon the Fourth
Gospel, in 1820 by Bretschneider, a German
pastor of scholarship and repute, with a volume
entitled Probabilities Concerning the Nature
and Origin of the Gospel and Epistles of the
Apostle John. He maintained that the Johan-
nine discourses were largely imaginary, and
that the author was not the Apostle, nor a
native of Palestine, nor a Jew, but rather some
Christian of Alexandrian training, who wrote this
Gospel in Egypt, whence it was taken to Rome
and put in general circulation by the authority
of the Roman Church. His treatise called forth
replies, by which, strange to relate, this impugner
of the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel was con
vinced, so that he became a powerful advocate
of the Johannine authorship.
From this time forward, however, the genuine-
8 Earlier Critical Theories.
ness and the credibility of the Gospels were
freely called in question. That great movement
of the human intellect called the Aufkldrung,
which German historians declare to have been
for significance and strength of influence only
second to the introduction of Christianity and to
the Reformation, was then in full tide, and its
principles were being applied to the Biblical
history. Narratives containing the supernatural
and the miraculous were held to be contrary to
reason, and had to be explained away or al
together set aside. Of this rationalistic criticism
H. E. G. Paulus, Professor of Theology, first at
Jena and latterly at Heidelberg, was a conspicuous
example. Already in 1800 he had published a
* Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, explain
ing away the miracles of the Gospel history ; and
in 1828 he published a Life of Christ. He does
not dispute the historical character of Jesus, but
he sets himself, by all sorts of exegetical devices
and interpretations, to get rid of the miraculous
element in the Gospel history. He admits the
occurrences of a miraculous character related in
the Gospels to be facts, but he insists that they
are only natural facts whose real causes the eye
witnesses and narrators had no proper means of
ascertaining. Under the naturalistic treatment
of Paulus the Life of Christ is transformed into
that of a wise Rabbi, who performed no miracles,
Paulus and Strauss. g
but from love to men executed innumerable
works of charity, with the help of medical skill
and in virtue of a measure of good fortune attend
ing his exertions. He reduces the Gospel narra
tives to a tissue of paltry deceptions and ridicu
lous trivialities, and his character of Christ is a
miserable caricature of the reality. A great deal
of the coarser rationalism and scepticism of more
recent times, along with some that would resent
being called coarse, is animated by the same
spirit, and proceeds by methods little different.
As a serious attempt to account for the Gospel
narratives and the Person of Christ it is no
longer to be reckoned with.
Seven years after Paulus had given to the
world his Life of Christ, David Friedrich
Strauss published his Leben Jesu. He was at
the time Tutor in the Theological Seminary at
Tubingen, and he leaped into notoriety at once
by the publication of his work. Although more
thoroughgoing in his scepticism than Paulus, he
rejected entirely his rationalistic exegesis. He
saw that no straightforward exposition could re
move the miracles from the Gospel history, so
deeply and firmly are they embedded in the
narratives of the Evangelists. He accordingly
framed his famous mythical theory to account
for the Gospels and the Person of Christ. A
good and holy Jew named Jesus, who had
io Earlier Critical Theories.
gathered round Him a band of enthusiastic and
credulous followers, was in course of time meta
morphosed by them into the Divine Christ, whose
figure the Evangelists set before us. In their
enthusiasm and devotion they imagined numerous
fictions regarding Him, and by-and-by they mis
took their own inventions for realities and as
cribed them to Jesus, with no intention to deceive.
The fruitful mind of the early Church thus
created myth after myth. Spontaneous impulse
had by the end of the first century brought into
existence the materials of our present Gospels.
At last three unknown authors arranged these
materials and produced the Synoptic Gospels.
In the scheme of Strauss the Gospel of Matthew
was adopted, not as the work of the Apostle of
that name, but as the most original and relatively
credible of the three, although it too had under
gone many revisions. Sixty years later arose
another great unknown, whose character must
have been a strange compound of mysticism,
enthusiasm, and imposture, but who produced
the Fourth Gospel and palmed it off upon the
Church as the work of the Beloved Disciple.
Strauss has a poor opinion of the Fourth Gospel,
and especially of the discourses of Jesus which it
records. But he maintains its absolute unity,
comparing it to that of the seamless coat of
which it speaks. Strauss s mythical theory has
Ferdinand Christian Baur. n
entirely failed. The whole picture of Christ as
exhibited in the Gospels is as remote as possible
from the exaggerated and fantastic creations of
mythology, and the universality characteristic of
the picture is far above and beyond the local and
national features which usually mark the myth.
No fictitious growth such as Strauss postulates
could have given us, even if the interval of time
and circumstances had otherwise allowed, the
Figure which is the supreme and ineradicable
miracle of the Gospel history, the Person of
Christ. Strauss s Life of Jesus gave rise to
a vast and varied literature when it was first
published for the learned world, but when in
1864 he reissued it in more popular form for
the German people it attracted comparatively
little attention.
Great as was the excitement created through
out the Christian world by the assault of Strauss,
his attack was in itself feeble and superficial in
comparison with that of Baur, who had been his
master at Tubingen before his * Life of Jesus
was written. Baur was Professor of Historical
Theology at Tubingen from 1826 to 1840, when
he elaborated the system in which he professed
to account in scientific fashion for the origin
and early history of Christianity. The chief
importance of his work, and of the critical school
which he founded, lies in the elaborate investiga-
12 Earlier Critical Theories.
tion which he made into the origin of the New
Testament and into the history of the Apostolic and
the post-Apostolic age, with their variously con
stituted parties. With Baur, as with Paulus and
Strauss, the rejection of the supernatural in every
form was an axiom. He found the elements of
the Christian religion in conceptions and ideas
already current in Judaism and heathenism, and
he traced the phenomena of Christianity to them
as the products of a natural development. Pay
ing little heed to the external evidence attesting
the existence and use of the New Testament
Scriptures, Baur believed himself able, by a study
of the literature of the Apostolic and the post-
Apostolic age, to exhibit the true course of the
development of Christianity.
Primitive Christianity, as Baur conceives it, is
Ebionitic in its character, distinguished from
Judaism proper only by the place it assigns to the
Crucified Jesus, in whom it sees the promised
Messiah who will come again to perfect His
kingdom. Of this stage the first Apostles, Peter
and James and John, are the leading representa
tives, and they still observe circumcision and the
other requirements of the Law.
In opposition to this narrow and conservative
Ebionite type is the Pauline conception of
Christianity, which is universal in its character,
asserting freedom from the Law, and claiming
Baur s View of Primitive Christianity. 13
for Jesus pre-existence, oneness with the Father,
and generally the attributes of Godhead. In the
opposition which he claims to have discovered
between St Paul and the Three, Baur finds the
pivot for his reconstruction of the entire Christian
history. Not only is this opposition seen in the
differences between St Paul and the Judaising
Christians of the Apostolic age, but it continues
down into the second century, where it is to be
clearly recognised in the so - called Clementine
literature the Clementine Homilies and Recog
nitions in which St Peter, and St Paul in the
character of Simon Magus, are leading and
opposing figures.
In the face, however, of Gnostic error threaten
ing both the Petrine and the Pauline wings of
Christianity, and of persecution on the part of
the Roman State, a synthesis of these opposing
tendencies is brought about, and their contending
voices are silenced in the unity of the Catholic
Church, which is attained by the third quarter of
the second century.
To these three stages of the development of
Christianity Baur assigns the various New Testa
ment books, as well as other works not included
in our canon. To the first belongs the Apoca
lypse, which he considers to be Ebionitic in char
acter and accepts as the genuine production
of St John. To the second belong the four
14 Earlier Critical Theories.
principal epistles of St Paul, Romans, i and 2
Corinthians, and Galatians, in which the radical
opposition between St Paul and the Judaisers is
so clearly marked. To the last stage, running
well into the second century, belong the rest of
our canonical books, including the Four Gospels,
which by their conciliatory character, as Baur
conceived, were manifestly produced to heal the
divisions of an earlier time. Of the Gospels,
Baur, like Strauss, as we have seen, considered
St Matthew the most authoritative, because
it betrays least of party feeling. Whilst St
Matthew, written about 130 A.D., is Judseo-
Christian in its spirit, St Luke, written about
100 A.D., is universal, after the fashion of St Paul,
and St Mark, written later than St Matthew, is
of a mediating tendency. The latest of the
Gospels, as Baur infers from its highly developed
Christology, is that bearing the name of St John,
which was not written till about 150 A.D. The
Four Gospels were not the work of companions
of Jesus, but the productions of men nearly
a hundred years after His death, written in
the interests of conciliation, and all of them
" tendency " writings.
Baur s scheme of early Church history tore
up Christianity by the roots, and swept away even
the testimony of the Apostolic Fathers. For a
time it seemed as if the very citadel of Christi-
Failure of his Theory. 15
anity had been taken, and the theory and school
of Baur became dominant, and remained in power
throughout Germany for some decades. Those
who did not accept the results of his investiga
tions, and still upheld the genuineness and
credibility of the Gospels, were stigmatised as
apologists and traditionalists.
The reaction against the extreme conclusions
of Baur and his School was sure to come.
Within the circle of his immediate adherents
differences began to show themselves. Hilgen-
feld, now the last survivor of those first followers,
early detached himself from Baur s main propo
sitions, and so did Kitschl, who showed in 1857
that there was no fundamental difference between
St Paul and the primitive Apostles. Weizsacker,
Baur s successor in Tubingen, declared it to be
a mistake to suppose that in the post-Apostolic
age there were only Paulinists and legalising
Jewish Christians. Professor Harnack, in an
early essay, 1 has pointed out that Baur and the
Tubingen School had an eye only for ideas and
intellectual conceptions, and laid far too little
stress upon those vital relations embracing the
facts of spiritual experience and motive forces
thus brought into play, which the speculative
critic has no plummet to sound and no calculus
to estimate. " New life," says Harnack, " creates
1 Reden und Aufsatze, ii. 221.
i6 Earlier Critical Theories.
new opinions not only new opinions new life.
Much more attention is therefore now directed
to the social life, the public worship, the morality,
and the discipline of the early Christians than
was ever the case with the Tubingen School." 1
In the overthrow of his imposing scheme of
reconstruction, the admission which Baur had
made of the genuineness of the four principal
Epistles of St Paul played an important part.
From these Epistles the essential facts and
doctrines of Christianity can be deduced as they
are set forth in the Gospels and the other books
of New Testament Scripture, and their testimony
has been found wholly antagonistic to the super
structure which he erected upon them.
We have already noticed that Baur paid scant
attention to the external evidence on behalf of
the early circulation and use and authority of the
Gospels. The fresh investigation of the early
Christian literature in the first and second
century, to which Baur s revolutionary theories
1 A recent writer effectively emphasises this in his own way.
"The greatest personalities in political history, in philosophy, in
literature, and in science, with the results they have achieved, have
not obviously been the product of their environment, and if they have
been due to evolution, it has certainly not been an evolution so
simple and straightforward in its modus operandi as that which here
accounts for the origin of the Christian religion. It has had its
surprises its Shakespeare from Stratford, its Napoleon from Corsica,
its Lincoln from the backwoods ; but there must be no surprises of
any kind in the New Testament."
Reaction against his Views. 17
gave an impulse, became one of the most power
ful weapons in the hands of the defenders of
positive Christianity. In this field an incalcul
able debt of gratitude is owing to Westcott,
Lightfoot, and Sanday among English scholars,
and to Zahn and Harnack among Germans, for
their laborious researches and their successful
vindication of the traditional dates of the Gospels,
and for the materials they have collected in
defence of the genuineness and credibility of the
record. In this connection acknowledgment
must be made of discoveries of manuscripts of the
Gospels and other documents filling up gaps in
the early Christian literature, whereby fresh links
in the chain of proof have been found and the
case for accepting the Gospels made, as many are
glad to believe, irresistible. By the progress of
patristic studies, by the discovery of fresh liter
ary materials, and by a thorough re-examination
of the sacred writings themselves, notably the
Epistles of St Paul, the Tubingen theory of
early Church history and literature has been
completely overthrown. " I am far from dis
paraging the historical importance which belongs
to the Tubingen School," says Professor Harnack
in the essay already quoted. " But as regards the
development of the Church in the second century,
it may safely be said that the hypotheses of the
Tubingen School have proved themselves every-
i8 Earlier Critical Theories.
where inadequate, nay erroneous, and are to
day held by very few scholars." No doubt the
influence of Baur is still at work in the critical
and theological sphere in Germany and elsewhere,
and there still are, as we shall see, scholars who
call in question the grounds of the reaction from
his extreme conclusions. But the return to tradi
tion, so far as the chronology and authority of
early Christian writings are concerned, is now
justified as the assured result of much scholarly
and laborious research, and the view of the books
held from the beginning is not likely, after the
failure of Baur, ever to be successfully challenged.
CHAPTER II.
SOME RECENT CRITICISM.
IT was upon the external attestation of the
Gospels and other books of the New Testament
that Baur s great scheme of the reconstruction
of the early history and literature of Christianity
most notably made shipwreck. Driven from the
external evidence, his critical descendants have
taken refuge in the internal, where subjective
considerations have freer scope to cast doubt
upon the credibility of the Christian documents.
Accepting our Gospels as they stand, the more
extreme wing of the successors of Baur have
set themselves, by an abuse of critical analysis,
by misleading analogies from the study of Com
parative Religion, 1 and by an abundance of arti-
1 There is a considerable school of thinkers who assure us that
all early religions are born in an atmosphere of myth, mystery, and
legend, from which they gradually emerge into something more
orderly, historical, and tangible. So the narratives of the Virgin
Birth of our Lord, His Miracles, His Resurrection and Ascension,
2O Some Recent Criticism.
ficial assumptions, to reconstruct the Gospel
history on a purely naturalistic basis. In this
reconstruction we find only a humanitarian Christ,
and in some extreme theories Christ disappears
altogether, and Christianity is left to be produced
by a sort of spontaneous combustion. Bethlehem
is not the place of His birth, which is more likely
to have been Nazareth or somewhere in Galilee.
It was not at Jerusalem, nor anywhere in Pales
tine, that the belief in the Resurrection was
cast in its final mould by the evangelical Easter
legend, but at Antioch, where the disciples were
first called Christians. There Gentile Christians,
who had been wont in their heathen state to
celebrate the worship of Adonis, the Master,
transferred the idea and the worship to a new
Master, Christ. We have been accustomed to
believe that Jesus was condemned and suffered
death because He claimed to be the Messiah
are the legendary setting of the Christian religion. But the pro
position thus laid down is a mere hypothesis, and the deduction
to the disadvantage of the Christian faith is extremely precarious.
The story of Buddha in ancient and genuine Buddhist literature
is not mythical nor miraculous. The myths and miracles and super
natural elements, notably the so-called Christian-like elements in
Buddha s life, came in nearly a thousand years later. Buddhism
passed downwards from philosophy and the search for the Way
into myth and idolatry and superstition and atheism ; not upwards
from myth to truth. The same might be said of Confucianism and
Taoism. See "Taoism," by Archdeacon Moule, in Church Mis
sionary Review, October 1907.
Negative Theories. 21
and the Son of God. No, say the latest critics,
His Messianic claim was the invention of the
first believers and was attributed to Him, like
the Resurrection, as the result of reflection and
discussion among themselves. We have been
accustomed to regard the Four Gospels as bio
graphical or historical records enshrining the
portrait of our Lord as He appeared to men
in the days of His flesh. In this, according to
these critics, we have been mistaken. They are
not so much histories as apologetic and theo
logical treatises, exhibiting a development which
begins with St Mark and reaches its culmina
tion in St John. Even St Mark s Gospel, which
is recognised as the oldest of all, and has been
regarded as specially marked by vividness and
circumstantiality, is now declared to belong to
the history of dogma. It is not easy to meet
theories of such pure subjectivity, nor to answer
arguments and speculations so elusive and dis
sociated from facts. But they all offer us in
the end a Christ who is an ideal figure destitute
of historical reality, or a Christ who is a mere
man and who never rose again from the grave.
That such a Christ should have mastered the
mind and soul of St Paul, as we see from his
Epistles and his work as a pioneer of the Gospel ;
that such a Christ should have become the foun
dation of the Church and of Christendom these
22 Some Recent Criticism.
are miracles greater than those at which un
believing critics take offence.
Of theories of the Gospels, that which has
perhaps attracted most attention in this country
of recent years is contained in the article " Gos
pels " in the * Encyclopaedia Biblica, and is the
work of Professor P. W. Schmiedel of Zurich. 1
On the subject of the credibility of the Gospels
he admits the dictum that when a profane his
torian finds before him a historical document
which testifies to the worship of a hero unknown
to other sources, he attaches first and foremost
importance to those features which cannot be
deduced merely from the fact of this worship,
and does so on the simple and sufficient ground
that they would not be found in this source
unless the author had met with them as fixed
data of tradition. The same fundamental prin
ciple may be applied to the Gospels, for they
are all of them written by worshippers of Jesus.
In the application of this principle there are,
first and foremost, two great facts to be recog
nised, that Jesus had compassion for the mul
titude, and that He preached with power, not
as the Scribes. Schmiedel having laid down this
1 The article is divided between Professor Schmiedel and Dr
Edwin A. Abbott, the latter of whom deals mainly with the external
evidence. It is with the Synoptic Gospels that Schmiedel is con
cerned in this article. He deals with JOHN separately, under the
head of the Gospel by him.
Schmiedel on the Gospels. 23
principle, proceeds to examine some of the lead
ing points in the Synoptic Gospels, and devotes
a large amount of attention to the miracles.
As regards miracles, he does not say they are
impossible, but as his examination goes to show
that all of them, notably the great miracle of
the Resurrection, are incredible, the result is
that they must be rejected.
"The foregoing sections," he goes on to say,
" may have sometimes seemed to raise a doubt
whether any credible elements are to be found in
the Gospels at all." He, therefore, desires to
lay emphatic stress upon certain passages which
form the foundation pillars for an absolutely
scientific life of Jesus. The absolutely credible
passages are nine in number five about Jesus in
general, and four about His miracles. As they
conform to the criterion of historical credibility
already referred to, and are not of a kind to
glorify the "hero" Jesus, Schmiedel considers
that there is no good reason for refusing them
credence. He is aware that a dogmatic motive
may be imputed to him, but he calls attention
to the statements as at least facts in the record.
The five sayings attributed to Jesus are : " Why
callest thou Me good ? None is good save God
alone " (Mark x. 18) ; " Whosoever shall speak
a word against the Son of Man, it shall be for
given him ; but whosoever shall speak against
24 Some Recent Criticism.
the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him "
(Matt. xii. 32); "Of that day or that hour
knoweth no man, not even the angels in heaven,
neither the Son, but the Father " (Mark xiii. 32) ;
" When His friends heard it, they went out to
lay hold on Him, for they said, He is beside
Himself" (Mark iii. 21); and "My God, my
God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " (Mark xv
34). The four passages relating to miracles
(Mark viii. 12, Mark vi. 5, Mark viii. 14-21, Matt,
xi. 5) are taken by Schmiedel as showing that
in reality our Lord gave no countenance to the
working of miracles, and declined to perform
them ; but in order to reach any such conclusion
he has to adopt the method of interpretation
which we have reprobated in Paulus. In the last
reference (Matt. xi. 5), where Jesus, in His answer
to the messengers of John the Baptist, follows
the enumeration of miracles sight given to the
blind, strength to the lame, hearing to the deaf,
and life to the dead with the statement that
the poor have the Gospel preached to them,
Schmiedel declares that Jesus was then speak
ing not of the physically but of the spiritually
blind, lame, leprous, deaf, dead. Such exegesis
is the expedient of despair.
To suppose, as it is easy to do, on a cursory
reading of Schmiedel s article, that those nine
passages were all that he found credible in the
Schmiedel on the Gospels. 25
Gospels would be to do him some injustice.
He admits that the purely religious - ethical
utterances of Jesus offer a field for credible
passages, and they are to be accepted so long
as they do not violate the axiom of historical
credibility already laid down. " Here," he says,
"we have a wide field of the wholly credible in
which to expatiate, and it would be of immense
advantage for theology were it to concentrate
its strength upon the examination of these
sayings and not attach so much importance to
the minute investigation of the other less im
portant details of the Gospel history." More
over, he claims that these nine passages at least
prove the real existence of Jesus, and satisfy us
that the Gospels contain a few absolutely trust
worthy facts concerning Him. " If passages of
this kind," he says, " were wholly wanting in
them, it would be impossible to prove to a sceptic
that any historical value whatever was to be
assigned to the Gospels ; he would be in a
position to declare the picture of Jesus contained
in them to be purely a work of phantasy, and
could remove the Person of Jesus from the field
of history, all the more when the meagreness of
the historical testimony regarding Him, whether
in canonical writings outside the Gospels, or in
profane writers such as Josephus, Tacitus, Sue
tonius, and Pliny, is considered."
26 Some Recent Criticism.
Professor Schmiedel concedes that Jesus is a
historical figure. But the Christ whom he leaves
to us after his manipulation of the Gospel records
is not the Christ of St Paul, or of the Apostles,
or of the early Church. A Christ who never rose
from the tomb could never have kindled the faith
in which martyrs died, and a Christ who was
only the weak and fallible man whom Schmiedel
makes Him out to be could never have won the
trust and the love and the adoring worship of
Christians. Schmiedel s critical procedure in
reaching his negative conclusions is marked by
the most arbitrary assumptions and an unlimited
subjectivity. His assumption that miracles are
incredible is one which vitiates his whole treat
ment of the Evangelists, and prevents him from
recognising in them veracious narrators of facts
or anything else than blundering craftsmen in the
field of literature. He finds contradictions and
discrepancies where the open-minded reader sees
just those natural variations which are a proof
of reality and truth. In many instances the
objections he takes are positively childish and
trivial, and one wonders how he can account
for writings characterised by so many obvious
defects and obscurities having attained to the
dignity of literature at all. Schmiedel is bound
to have great difficulty in showing how the dis
ciples came to deify a man who had just been
Pfleiderer s Views. 27
crucified ; and he and all who agree with him, in
rejecting the Resurrection and in asserting the
mere humanity of Jesus, find it difficult to show
how the Church arose so early as it did, and
Christianity became the religion of the Empire.
This is a difficulty which presses hard upon
Professor Pfleiderer of Berlin, whose views of
Christianity and the Gospels have become well
known in this country. His position as Gifford
Lecturer in Edinburgh University has given his
views a currency and a prestige beyond what
their merits deserved. Not only his Gifford
Lectures, but his Primitive Christianity (in a
second edition) and Christian Origins are
circulating in an English dress. It seems
doubtful whether he would admit so much of
the historical in the Gospels and in the Person
of Jesus as Schmiedel. He opens his Primitive
Christianity with the somewhat ambiguous and
not very hopeful sentence : " However much we
may regret that we have so little certain know
ledge regarding the first beginnings of Christianity,
the fact itself can hardly be disputed." "We
have no historical knowledge," he says, " of the
childhood and youth of Jesus, for the narratives
in Matthew and Luke are religious legends of no
historical value." The baptism of Jesus, with
which St Mark opens his Gospel, followed by St
Matthew and St Luke, is self-evidently not history
28 Some Recent Criticism.
but legend, " one of the first steps in the develop
ment of the Christ-speculations of the Christian
congregation." " The Gospel passage by which
Christ is supposed to have made bread and wine
at the last supper the symbols of His dead body
and shed blood " belongs to the utterances which
have been subsequently put into His mouth.
These words originated in the Apostle Paul s
mystical teaching of the sacrificial death of Christ
and its sacramental celebration in the Communion.
This is just the doctrine of Strauss and Baur sixty
years ago. Pfleiderer, indeed, still maintains
that St John s Gospel was written in the second
century, as late as 140 A.D. " In order to estimate
correctly the true value of this Gospel, we should
not seek in it a historical work, which it did not
at all mean to be. It was rather a didactic way of
writing which had clothed its theological thoughts
in the form of a life of Jesus." This character he
attributes to the Gospel, and this late date he
assigns to it in the teeth of the undoubted refer
ences to St John s Gospel in the literature of
the second century before 120 A.D. Of the mir
aculous he will have none. The Resurrection
is to him as incredible as it is to Strauss or
Schmiedel, but his attempts to explain the ac
ceptance of it by the first disciples are as
impotent as theirs. Seeing that he ascribes the
creation of the character of Jesus to theological
Kalthoff. 29
reflection and the workings of the early Church
consciousness, it is not easy to see how there
came to be on his principles any Christianity to
discuss. How, again, are we to bridge the gulf
which yawns broad and deep between such a
Jesus as Pfleiderer gives us and the Christianity
which is the one creative force known to the
Roman Empire a century or even half a century
later ? To this question he has no answer. " He
heaps up laboriously," says Dr Albert Schweitzer 1
in his clever but unsatisfying volume on the
History of the Writing of Lives of Christ,
"wood, hay, stubble, but where the fire is to
come from to kindle the mass to the faith of the
primitive Church he is unable to make clear."
The ne plus ultra of negation at the present
time has been reached by Kalthoff, who laboured
as a pastor in Bremen, North Germany, till his
death in the end of 1906. He denied altogether
the historical existence of Jesus. He was not
the first to have gone to this extreme, for Bruno
Bauer, more than fifty years ago, had reached
the same depth, and he had been followed by
Pierson and Naber and some of the more irre
sponsible critics of the Dutch school. Nor was
Kalthoff altogether singular in his extreme con
clusions among modern writers, for J. Macdonald
Robertson, in his Christianity and Mythology,
1 Von Reimarus zu Wrede, p. 311.
30 Some Recent Criticism.
and William Benjamin Smith, an American
scholar, writing in Germany under the patronage
of Schmiedel, in his * Der vorchristliche Jesus,
have both denied the historical existence of
Jesus. In his Christusproblem, published in
1902, and his * Entstehung des Christentums,
1904, Kalthoff sets forth his views regarding
the origin of Christianity. In his view, Christ
ianity arose out of the impact of Jewish Messianic
expectations and worldly ambitions upon the dis
content and social misery of Rome under the
Emperors. There is no problem of the life of
Jesus, only a Christ problem. Jesus of Nazareth
never lived, or, if he was one of the numerous
Jewish Messiahs who met the death of the cross,
at least he never founded Christendom. The
history of Jesus given in the Gospels is in reality
only the history of the rise of the portrait of
Christ : in fact, the history of the Church coming
into existence. Kalthoff fell out with the modern
conception of the historical Jesus because he
could find no way through from the life of Jesus
to primitive Christianity. If, then, we cannot
find our way from Jesus to the early Church,
why, he reasoned, should we not try to find the
way from the early Church back to Him ? Him
self a keen social reformer, Kalthoff presented a
secularised Christ, as he called Him, to the men
of his generation : a Christ who was intended to
His Extreme Scepticism. 31
infuse new vitality into the old type of Christ
conceived by the Church. It was this Christ,
without any semblance of historical reality,
which, according to his view, became the found
ation upon which the Church is built and the
fountainhead from which Christianity flows. It
is hard to believe that any man holding office in
the Church of Christ could in his sober senses
have framed such a conception of Christendom,
Christianity, and Christ. Yet his extravagances
serve as a rediictio ad absurdum of theories regard
ing Christ and the Gospels, which are supported
by names more worthy of respect, but which
leave us in the end where he leaves us, with an
ideal figure destitute of historical reality. As
to the whole tendency and principles of such
criticism, we may quote the words of a recent
Gifford Lecturer of the University of Edinburgh,
an English scholar of great learning and practical
sagacity. In his lectures on The Knowledge
of God, Professor Gwatkin 1 says: " Critical
methods like these will turn any history into
romance. As feats of paradox they are alto
gether admirable; but when they are laid before
us as the ripest results of modern historical
research, we are compelled to make our protest
in the name of truth and sanity against this
astounding licence of reckless theorising, forced in-
32 Some Recent Criticism.
terpretations, contempt of evidence, and system
atic disregard of common-sense."
There is one feature common to almost all
those extravagant critical theories. They place
the Gospels late in the early Christian history,
in order that there may be room, in the interval
between Christ and the time of their composition,
for the exercise of theological reflection and for
the interaction of Christianity and pagan in
fluences, for the accretion of miraculous and
legendary incidents, and for that transformation
of the early and more simple Christian tradition
which is one of the fundamental assumptions of
the negative critics. Pfleiderer, 1 for instance, is
not out of place when he dates St Mark s Gospel
about 70 A.D. ; but when he places St Luke
in the beginning of the second century, and St
John in its fourth decade, and asserts that
St Matthew is not the work of a single author,
but that " generations of early Christianity " 2
worked at it, we see the pressure of the pre
suppositions under which he labours.
The contention of the present course of lectures
is, that the Four Gospels are authentic and trust
worthy productions of the Apostolic age, that
they have come down to us practically unchanged
from the hands of their Apostolic authors, and
that their influence can be traced, individually
1 Christian Origins, p. 222. 2 Ibid., p. 243.
Plan of these Lectures. 33
and collectively, from a very early time, moulding
the spiritual life, and intellectual development, and
social and missionary activities of the rapidly ex
tending Christian Church. There may be critics
so bent on the rejection of the supernatural that
they will, even after this contention is established,
refuse to admit the credibility of the Gospel
histories ; but we may confidently leave their ob
jections to be dealt with by the intelligence and
common-sense of mankind. Let it once be shown
that the Four Gospels are contemporary records
and contain a sober and consistent history of the
life, teaching, and work of Christ, and many
questions now in dispute will be brought nearer
to a settlement, if not finally answered.
We begin our investigation of the early Christ
ian literature with the close of the second century,
to ascertain how the Four Gospels were regarded
in the Church at that epoch of its history.
We shall then, working backwards, trace the
Gospel collection of Four, following the earliest in
dications of its existence and use, upwards, as we
believe, to the very threshold of the Apostolic age.
We shall also, in the same order, investigate
the traces of the use and influence and authority
of the individual Gospels, devoting attention to
some of the special problems in the external
evidence which have not yet received a final
settlement at the hands of the critics.
34
CHAPTER III.
THE FOUR GOSPELS ABOUT 2OO A.D.
IN presenting the evidence for the Four Gospels
from the earliest Church history and the earliest
Christian literature, there is a certain advantage
in proceeding in reverse chronological order. We
take as our starting-point the close of the second
century, when the Gospels were fully accepted and
acknowledged, and trace them upwards towards
the Apostolic age and the time assigned by imme
morial Christian tradition for their composition.
This course may involve a certain amount of over
lapping and repetition, but it is of consequence
to be able to start from a fixed point at which
all are agreed that the Four Gospels were in
existence and were regarded as authoritative Holy
Scripture.
By the close of the second century, with the
exception of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the two
shorter Epistles of St John, the Second Epistle of
At Close of Second Century. 35
St Peter, the Epistles of James and Jude, and the
Apocalypse, all the books of the New Testament
were acknowledged as apostolic and authoritative
throughout the whole Church. The testimony of
the great Fathers varied in respect of these dis
puted books ; but the canon of the acknowledged
books, including the Four Gospels, was estab
lished by their common consent. 1 The word
" canon " was not yet in use as a designation of
the New Testament writings. It was used from
the middle of the second century in such ex
pressions as o KavtoV T?}? aXrjOeias, o Kavatv TT}<?
Tmrreo)?, designating the formulated confession
of the Christian faith ; and Clement of Alexandria
speaks of the words of Jesus or the Gospel (Kara
rbv tcavbva rov evayy6\iov 7ro\iTevcrdfjivos) as a
canon or rule of life. It was not till about
the middle of the fourth century that it was
expressly employed to describe the collection
of books universally regarded as Holy Scrip
ture. When it came into use, the designation
" canonical " was found contrasted with " apocry
phal," the books used and publicly read in the
services of the Church being in this way distin
guished from those which were hidden away and
not brought forward for such use, but rather
employed for their own purposes by schismatical
and heretical communities. The great criterion
1 Westcott, On the Canon, p. 344.
36 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
of canonical quality was the liturgical reading
of the books in public worship. And the use of
these books was required to meet the need of the
Churches for edification by means of that which
Jesus had done and said, as well as that which
the Apostles and eminent teachers of the Apos
tolic age had taught. It was no decree of Church
council, nor any direction emanating from Apos
tolic authority, which determined the canon of
Scripture. It was not the head but the heart of
the Church, and that heart guided by the Spirit
of Truth Himself, which determined the books
of the canon.
We see the process far advanced by the close
of the second century. By this time the Apos
tolic writings were called by the name of New
Testament (/ccuvrj SiaOtficr)), the very term giving
them a position of authority and sacredness, and
placing them on a level of equality with the
writings of the Old; indicating, too, that the
full development so long in process at last was
reached. Specially treasured were the Gospels.
They were the oftenest copied, as we know from
the vast preponderance of manuscripts of them
extant ; they were the first to be translated into
other tongues, as they are still the first to be
given to converts from heathenism in the mission
field. By the end of the second century our Four
Gospels were regarded as of exclusive authority
Gospels received ly Heretics. 37
in the Churches of Rome, Asia Minor, Syria,
Palestine, Alexandria, North Africa, and Gaul.
If there were, even later than this, references to
the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the
Gospel according to the Egyptians, implying
that these works found some acceptance in the
Churches of Palestine and Alexandria, yet their
position was undoubtedly secondary, and their
circulation and influence limited.
The Four Gospels were already appealed to,
not only within the circles of orthodoxy, for the
confirmation of Catholic faith, but also among
heretical sects, whose representatives sought from
them support for their peculiar tenets or fan
tastic speculations. Irenseus 1 says, "So well
established are our Gospels that even teachers
of error themselves bear testimony to them ; even
they rest their objections on the foundation of the
Gospels." The Ebionite heretic, for example, had
as his favourite Gospel St Matthew, while the
Marcionite, at the opposite pole of doctrinal
belief, accepted as his authority a mutilated St
Luke. The Valentin ian gnostics favoured St
John, the first commentary of all being that
on St John by Heracleon, a follower of Valen-
tinus. St Mark was acknowledged and used
by more than one of the early gnostic sects.
But though heretics accepted the Gospels of
1 Ad versus Hsereses, iii. u. 7.
38 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
the Church, and never attributed them to other
authors than those we know, they put their
own interpretations upon their contents and ob
tained their own peculiar doctrines by manipu
lation and perversion of their teaching. It is
certainly remarkable that the Valentinians, the
Marcionites, and other gnostic sects, never ad
vanced in support of their opinions a single
narrative relating to the ministry of Jesus save
what is found in the Gospels. It does not appear
that they ascribed to Him a single sentence of
any imaginable importance which our evangelists
have not transmitted. It is true that the large
heretical literature of the second century has
come down to us only in fragments, in passages
preserved in the pages of Irenseus, Hippolytus,
Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen,
who devoted treatises to the refutation of
heresies. But we know enough of their works to
be sure of their general attitude. The Docetic
author of the Gospel of Peter imparts his
own colouring to the Evangelic record, but ad
heres to the narrative. Marcion and the sect
which he founded made use of a recension of
St Luke; but we ascertain from the copious
references of Tertullian in his treatise Against
Marcion, that it differed from our canonical St
Luke only by the omissions which Marcion had
made. Tertullian, again, expressly declares that
Theophilus of Antioch. 39
Valentinus used all our Four Gospels. Whilst
the heretical sects, with their tendencies to exag
geration and extremes in matters of doctrine,
had their favourites, lending some countenance to
their peculiar views, within the Church itself the
Four Gospels were already venerated and held to
be sacred. They were accepted as Apostolic
writings, as precious and veracious records of
the life of Jesus, and as an authoritative rule
of faith and practice.
The epoch which we have chosen as a starting-
point for our investigation is no longer in the
obscurity which makes certainty so difficult to
attain in the early decades of the second century.
It stands rather in the broad daylight of a large
and unquestioned Christian literature which has
survived to us. It was an epoch, in fact, of great
activity in the history of Christian literature.
To the last two decades of the second century
belong Theophilus of Antioch and Irenseus of
Lyons. Theophilus is the first who quotes a
Gospel by the name of its writer. Writing
in 180 A.D. to his friend Autolycus, he refers
to what the Holy Scriptures teach, and all
the inspired men (ol Trvevfjuarotyopoi,), of whom
John says: "In the beginning was the Word"
(John i. i). About 185 A.D. there is the great
treatise of Irenseus Against Heresies. In the
first decades of the third century there are
40 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
the commentaries and other works of Hippo-
lytus, notably his work Against all Heresies,
long known as the Philosophumena, and at
tributed to Origen. To the same epoch belongs
Tertullian, whose surviving works are numerous
and varied, and whose anti-heretical writings in
particular are a mine of information. These three
writers are specially of value for details they have
preserved of the systems of early heretics, and
for the quotations they give from their works,
enabling us to judge for ourselves what books
of the New Testament those heretics knew and
accepted. Two greater names remain as repre
sentative of this epoch Clement of Alexandria
and Origen, both associated with the famous
Catechetical School of that ancient city, and
both writers who devoted themselves to the setting
forth of the truths of the Christian system in terms
of the science and philosophy of the day. We
shall here content ourselves with brief notices of
the testimony of Origen (186-253 A.D.), Clement
of Alexandria (165-220 A.D.), and Tertullian (160-
240 A.D.)
ORIGEN was the scholar of Clement of Alex
andria, and at a very early age succeeded him as
head of the famous Catechetical School. His
learning and his industry were colossal. His
literary fertility was remarkable, even if we re
gard the six thousand books credited to him by
Or i gen. 41
Epiphanius as a great exaggeration. None of
the early Fathers equalled him in originality,
and the Church, which did not fully trust
him, has been compelled to acknowledge him
as her greatest theologian before Augustine. He
founded the Catechetical School of Caesarea, and
travelled over the East more than any other
scholar of his time. He is said to have written
on every book of Scripture. There are still pre
served considerable portions of his homilies on
St Luke in Jerome s translation, and of his com
mentaries on St Matthew and St John, several
books partly in Greek and partly in Latin transla
tions. Remarking upon the sinister meaning of
the word " have taken in hand," "attempted"
(e7re%et/>77<7ay), in St Luke s preface to his Gospel,
and rinding in it a latent charge of haste and
lack of spiritual endowment in the writers of the
narratives referred to, Origen goes on to say:
" Matthew did not make an attempt, but wrote,
being moved by the Holy Spirit ; likewise also,
Mark and John, similarly also, Luke. The Gospel
inscribed * according to the Egyptians and the
Gospel inscribed as of the Twelve the compilers
* attempted. And there is also in circulation
the Gospel according to Thomas. Basilides like
wise already dared to write a Gospel according
to Basilides. 1 Many therefore made attempts,
1 See, however, p. 231.
42 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
and there is the Gospel according to Matthias
and several others. But Four alone the Church
of God approves." Eusebius 1 records another
statement equally clear and explicit : " In the
first book of his commentaries on Matthew,
preserving the rule of the Church, he testifies
that he knows only Four Gospels, writing
to this effect I have learned by tradition
concerning the Four Gospels which alone are
uncontroverted in the Church of God spread
under heaven, that the Gospel according to
Matthew, who was once a publican, but afterwards
an Apostle of Jesus Christ, was written first ; that
according to Mark, second ; that according to
Luke, third ; that according to John last of all.
We are not required to adopt Origen s view of the
priority of St Matthew to St Mark, which has
been rendered doubtful by internal evidence, but
we are well entitled to accept his statement re
garding the authorship of the several Gospels.
Whilst, therefore, Origen is aware of the existence
of other Gospels which he names, and has no ob
jection, any more than Clement and others, that
apocryphal and pseudepigraphic, even heretical,
writings should be read, he is quite decided in
the affirmation that for the public services of the
Church only the Four have from any time which
he can remember been allowed. 2
1 H. E., vi. 25.
2 Zahn, Grundriss der Geschichte des N. T. Kanons, p. 17.
Origen and Celsus. 43
Origen, however, furnishes us with the testi
mony of an earlier writer which is of special
importance. We have his Apology in Reply
to Celsus in eight books complete. This
work has been called " the most perfect apolo
getic performance, from the standpoint of the
Christianity of the early Church," which we
possess. The True Word of Celsus, to which
it is a reply, shows on the part of the heathen
philosopher a considerable acquaintance with
Christianity and its records. Origen takes for
granted that Celsus had the Gospels before him,
and the passages of Celsus which he has occasion
to quote show that he was acquainted with all our
canonical Gospels. Origen suggests that Celsus
derived his view that the Apostles of Christ were
notoriously wicked men from a passage in the
Epistle of Barnabas, referring to the saying of
our Lord that He came not to call the righteous
but sinners. However that may be, the silence of
Celsus as to other Gospels, and his exclusive, or
almost exclusive, references to the contents of our
canonical Gospels, go far to show that when he
wrote his attack, about 176 A.D., they were held
among Christians to be of exclusive and para
mount authority.
We are indebted to Origen also for references
to the Commentary on St John by Heracleon, the
Valentinian heretic about 160 A.D. 1 In his own
1 See p. 37.
44 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
Commentary on St John s Gospel, Origen quotes
Heracleon s work more than fifty times, com
menting as freely upon Heracleon as upon St
John. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the
value of the testimony of Origen, living at an
epoch of the Church s history, knowing by travel
the communities of Church life in many differ
ent countries, and furnished with true reverence
of spirit and all the aids of history, criticism,
and philosophy.
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, the immediate pre
decessor of Origen at the head of the Catechetical
School, himself succeeded Pantsenus, and con
tinued to preside over it from 189 to 219 A.D.
His three chief works are An Exhortation to
the Heathen (HporpeTTTifcbs 717309 "EXX^z/a?), an
apologetic treatise; the Instructor (HaiSaycoyos),
an unsystematic but tolerably complete reper
tory of Christian ethics ; and the Miscellanies
(2T/>a>yuaTefc), which have been described as an
unmethodical digest of lectures actually de
livered in the Catechetical School. These
treatises form a kind of introduction to Christ
ianity for the benefit of all, whether Christian
believers or heathen inquirers, who desired to
receive further instruction or to understand
Christian thought. Out of numerous other
works which came from his hand only one
small tract has been preserved Who is the
Clement of A lexandria. 45
Rich Man that shall be Saved? It is in this
last that we find the story of St John of Ephesus
and the young robber. These works of Clement
exhibit immense erudition. They abound in
quotations, and references both to Pagan and to
Christian authors. The whole domain of Greek
literature was perfectly at his command Homer,
Hesiod, Pythagoras, and Plato he quotes copi
ously. With all his learning, however, he shows
no acquaintance with the literature of ancient
Rome. With early Christian literature he was
well acquainted, and he had read for himself
the writings of Tatian, Melito of Sardis, and
Irenasus.
It is from Eusebius, however, who has pre
served a statement from his lost Outlines
( TTroTUTnwcret?), that we obtain the clearest and
directest account of his view of the Gospels. 1
"Again, in the same book, Clement,has set down
the tradition of the elders of former days con
cerning the order of the Gospels, which is to
this effect. They were wont to say that of
the Gospels those containing the genealogies
(Matthew and Luke) were written first. And
as regards Mark, they said this was the plan :
Peter having preached the word publicly in
Rome, and having spoken forth the Gospel by
the Spirit, many of those who were then in Rome
1 Euseb. H. E., VI. 14.
46 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
requested Mark, as one who had attended him
for long and remembered what had been said,
to commit to writing what had been spoken;
and that having composed his Gospel, he com
municated it to them at their request. This be
coming known to Peter, he neither forbade it nor
encouraged it ; but John, last, perceiving that the
outward life of Christ (TO- cr^^aTiKa} had been
detailed in the Gospel, being encouraged by his
intimates, under the inspiration of the Spirit,
composed a spiritual Gospel." This account of
the relation of St Mark s Gospel to St Peter
differs somewhat from that given by Irenseus,
but the substantial truth of the tradition is not
thereby affected. That Clement regarded the
Four Gospels which we now possess as of ex
clusive authority is not inconsistent with the
habit of this great and learned Father in quot
ing other Gospels and in referring to Clement
of Rome, Barnabas, Hermas, the Apocalypse
and Preaching of Peter, and the Didache, as
Scripture. It cannot be denied that his practice
in this respect is the freest of all the Fathers.
This may come of the very width of his reading
or of the largeness of his sympathies. He finds
a parallel to sayings in the Thesetetus of Plato
and in the traditions of Matthias in the Gospel
to the Hebrews, where it is written, " He that
hath wondered shall rule and he that hath at-
Tertullian. 47
tained to rule shall rest." He quotes an apoc
ryphal question of Salome to our Lord, with
the answer of our Lord thereto, and proceeds :
" We do not find the saying in the Four Gospels
which have been handed down to us, but in the
Gospel according to the Egyptians." The very
form of his statement makes it plain that Clement
draws a distinction between our Four Canonical
Gospels and this apocryphal Gospel according
to the Egyptians. 1 When we remember the
extraordinary learning of Clement and his wide
literary sympathies, we need not wonder at his
somewhat loose practice in making quotations
from Holy Scripture, and we may confidently
assume from the clear and explicit references
which we find in his works that his Gospel canon
was exactly that which we ourselves acknowledge.
TERTULLIAN (160-220 A.D.) is one of the most
original figures in the early history of the Church
1 In his pamphlet entitled Das neue Testament urn das Jahr
200, published in 1889, immediately after Zahn s first volume on
the Canon (first half) appeared, Professor Harnack handled Zahn s
claim of a closed canon at that date very severely, and laid great
stress upon the loose practice of Clement of Alexandria in the
matter of quotations. In a vigorous and learned rejoinder, called
Einige Bemerkungen zu Adolf Harnack s Prufung, and in the
succeeding portions of his great work on the Canon, Zahn has
fully vindicated his position, and shown that in reference to the
ecclesiastical authority and completeness of the New Testament
collection Clement was essentially in the same position as the other
Fathers, whose practice of quotation was more strict.
48 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
the fiery Presbyter of Carthage, lawyer, contro
versialist, orator, and scholar. His reading in
classical literature was extensive, and his works
are a storehouse of antiquarian lore, conveying
much information regarding the history, the
social life, and the religious ceremonies both of
Greece and Rome. He quotes, for example,
from the * Histories of Tacitus, and calls that
historian ille mendaciorum loquacissimus. 1 He has
references to the "Phsedo" and the "Timseus"
among the Dialogues of Plato, and shows him
self well acquainted with the Platonic philosophy.
Eusebius describes him as a man versed in the
Roman law, and his writings prove his skill as a
pleader and his acquaintance with legal termin
ology. He grew up in heathenism, and was
already in his mature manhood when he was
converted to Christianity in 192 A.D. In later
life he attached himself to the Montanist move
ment, which had many attractions for an ardent
and impulsive nature like his. His writings were
voluminous, apologetic, doctrinal, and practical.
What Origen was to Greek Christianity, Tertul-
lian was to Latin, even though his works did not
attain to anything like the number of Origen s.
He was the first who set himself systematically
to explain the doctrines of Christianity in the
Latin which was vernacular to the North African
1 Apologeticus adv. Gentes, xvi. i.
Tertullian and the Canon. 49
peoples, and it is from him that the expressions
redemption, justification, sanctification, and many
others in the vocabulary of ecclesiastical the
ology, have come.
To Tertullian the New Testament already is
on a level with the Old. He speaks of the Law
and the Gospel, of the Law and the Gospels,
of the Law and the Prophets, and the Gospel
and Apostolic writings, thus distinguishing the
Old Testament from the New, and placing the
New on an equality with the Old. He speaks
of both Testaments, of the entire canon (instru-
mentum) of both Testaments, of two canons or
testaments. He expressly prefers 1 the designa
tion instmmentum to testamentum (" instrument! vel
quod magis usui est dicere testament! "), although
the latter is in more general use. The remark
in the foregoing parenthesis shows that among
his Latin contemporaries Tertullian found testa-
mentwn already in use to describe the Christian
Scriptures. Zahn 2 bids us not think of his use of
the word as forensic, as if Tertullian considered
the instrumenta to be documents in the process
between himself and the heretics. The Apostolic
writings were to him in their collective form, first
and foremost, instruments of instruction without
which preaching was impossible. We find, in
fact, the expression instmmentum prcedicationis.
1 Adv. Marcionem, iv. I. 2 GK. i. no.
D
50 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
The instrument* were the indispensable tools of
the preacher and the theologian. He speaks of
the Four Gospels as the instrumentum evangelicum,
contrasting them with the sii:%ularitas instrument!
of Marcion, who had as his Gospel the one muti
lated Gospel of Luke. Nostrum evangelium is
with him the whole Four as commonly received,
and commune instrumentum is the Gospel record
in so far as his and Marcion s agree.
It is in his great treatise Against Marcion
that we find the clearest pronouncements of
Tertullian regarding the Gospels, and, as we
shall see later, we can determine the character
of the Gospel favoured by Marcion from the
copious quotations made in his refutation of
the heretic. With him the title-deeds of the
Church are the Scriptures guaranteed by the
signature of Christ and the witness of the
Apostles. He insisted on the value of the tradi
tions handed down by Apostles and the churches
which they founded. " If it is acknowledged
that that is more true which is more ancient, that
more ancient which is even from the beginning,
that from the beginning which is from the
Apostles, it will in like manner assuredly be
acknowledged that what has been preserved in
violate in the Churches of the Apostles has been
derived by tradition from the Apostles. Let
us see what milk the Corinthians drank from
Tertullian and the Canon. 51
Paul ; to what rule the Galatians were recalled
by his reproofs ; what is read by the Philippians,
the Thessalonians, the Ephesians ; what is the
testimony of the Romans who are nearest to
us, to whom Peter and Paul left the Gospel, a
gospel sealed with their own blood. We have,
moreover, churches founded by John. For even
if Marcion rejects his Apocalypse, still, the suc
cession of bishops, if traced to its source, will
rest upon the authority of John. And the noble
descent of other churches is recognised in the
same manner. I say, then, that among them,
and not only among the Apostolic Churches,
but among all the churches, the Gospel of
Luke, which we earnestly defend, has been
maintained from its first publication." And
" the same authority of the Apostolic Churches
will uphold the other Gospels which we have
in due succession through them and according
to their usage, I mean those of [the Apostles]
Matthew and John ; although that which was
published ^by Mark may also be maintained to
be Peter s, whose interpreter Mark was ; for
the narrative of Luke also is generally ascribed
to Paul : since it is allowable that what
scholars publish should be regarded as their
Master s work." x " We maintain, first and
foremost, the evangelical instrument to have
1 Adv. Marcionem, iv. 5.
52 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
Apostles for its authors, upon whom this office
of proclaiming the Gospel has been imposed by
the Lord Himself; if also it has Apostolic men
among its authors, it has them not alone, but
with Apostles and after Apostles, because the
preaching of the disciples might have been sus
pected of vainglory, if the authority of the
masters did not support it, nay, the authority
of Christ, who made the Apostles their masters.
Therefore, John and Matthew from the Apostolic
band instil faith into us ; Luke and Mark of the
number of Apostolic men establish it." 1 From
these quotations we see that Tertullian not only
had the Four Gospels, but had them in an order
of his own : John, Matthew, Luke, and Mark,
differing very little from that of the Western
witnesses to the New Testament text, which is
Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark.
At the close of the second century the
Church already possessed a New Testament
alongside of the Old. Its books were like
those of the Old Testament, " Scripture," or
" the Scriptures," or " the Divine Scriptures."
They were the works of Spirit - moved men
(Trvev/jLaTocfropol). 2 Not the Gospels alone were
"Dominical writings" (at Kvpicucal ypaffrai), but
the Old and New Testaments. "The constant
use of this designation for the whole Bible by
1 Adv. Marcionem, iv. 2. 2 Theophilus ad Autol,, ii. 22.
Early Versions. 53
Irenseus, Clement, and the later Africans," says
Zahn, "proves that thereby from the beginning
it was not a contrast to the writings of the Old
Testament that was intended to be expressed,
but rather the strong consciousness of the fact
that Christ, the Lord, is the Alpha and Omega
of all true Revelation, and even of all the records
preserving it. Not only does the Old Testament
witness of Christ, but Christ Himself speaks
through the Prophets; His Spirit, or the Logos
not yet manifested in the flesh, has inspired
them. Thus is He the Creator and Dispenser
of all Holy Scripture. It was, therefore, more
than an external fact ; it was the universal con
viction of the Church regarding the true origin
of all Holy Scripture hidden from Jews and
heretics, and of the inner connection resting
upon that origin, which the Christians of that
time expressed, when they called them not only
the Lord s writings, but also their writings, or
the distinctively Christian literature." * This
was no other than Luther s doctrine of inspired
Scripture "was Christum treibt " what deals
with Christ.
The existence, at this epoch, of EARLY
VERSIONS of the New Testament Scriptures is
a notable fact in the history of the Canon.
1 GK, i. 98.
54 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
The claim of Christianity to be the true re
ligion, to possess the one full and satisfying
revelation of God to man, to set forth the one
and only Saviour of mankind, carries with it
the obligation to make its Holy Scriptures, con
taining the message of life eternal, known to
all mankind. The sense of such an obliga
tion, even if not so highly developed, in the
Jewish people, who were possessed of God s
earlier revelation, led to the execution of the
first translation of all, the Septuagint Version
of the Old Testament. Of this obligation,
although it may not have taken formulated
expression, the Church early became conscious.
The sense of it fell low in the Middle Ages, but
the Reformation, with its assertion of the right
of private judgment, gave it new and vastly ex
tended application. Wherever the first Apostles
and their successors carried the good news of
Christ beyond the bounds of the Greek-speaking
world, one of the first necessities they had to
meet was the demand for the record of God s
revelation of Himself, and of that revelation in
Christ, in the vernacular speech of the newly
evangelised peoples. And we may be sure that
of the New Testament Scriptures, the demand
for the Gospels would be the first, as it still is
in every mission-field.
There are three versions which go back to a
Syriac Version. 55
very high antiquity, the Syriac, the Latin, and
the Coptic or Egyptian versions. The tendency
of recent research goes to show that it was
in the valley of the Euphrates, in Edessa or
Nisibis of Syria, rather than in the more con
spicuous cities of the Roman Empire, that the
first version of the New Testament Scriptures
was made. Professor Caspar Rene" Gregory of
Leipzig, an eminent authority in this field, tells
us : 1 " These Syrian Christians undoubtedly
made a Syriac New Testament very soon, as
soon as they learned that there was a Greek
New Testament. I think it most likely that
they translated the books into Syriac before the
end of the second century, and I regard it as
possible that many of the books were translated
before the end of the first century. It may be
seen that the Syriac text had a special charm for
them in the thought that it was almost precisely
the language that Jesus had used as he went
about from Galilee to Jerusalem and back again,
to Perea, and to the neighbourhood of Tyre.
In the place where our Bibles have an Aramaic
expression, like * Rabbi, Talitha cumi, the
Syriac translation did not have, as the Greek
has and as our Bibles have, a translation of these
words, for they were Syriac already and every
reader understood them." The standard version
The People s Bible History, p. 581.
56 The Four Gospels about 200 A.D.
of the Syriac New Testament, the Peshitta, called
for its excellence " the Queen of the Versions," is
thought by some scholars to be as early as the
latter half of the second century, but it is more
generally believed to be the final form of the
version, reached in the fifth century. But
there are three recensions of the Syriac transla
tion containing the Four Gospels which reach
well up into the second century, the oldest of
these being represented in the famous Syriac
Sinaitic manuscript found on Mount Sinai in
1892 by Mrs Lewis. Although in the old Syriac
Canon the Catholic Epistles and the Apocalypse
were wanting, it is noteworthy that in the earliest
Syriac versions the Four Gospels as we have re
ceived them, and these alone, are given. When
the Syriac Sinaitic version was produced, perhaps
not later than the middle of the second century,
the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gos
pel according to the Egyptians had apparently
disappeared from regular use, and the only Gospels
considered indispensable and necessary for sal
vation were our Four Gospels, and these not
in any primitive or rudimentary form, but as
they are found in our standard evangelical
exemplars.
The Latin and the Egyptian versions followed
in no great space of time, although in connection
with their origin, as with the Syriac, there are
Latin and Egyptian Versions. 57
many questions still under discussion. Of them
it is true what has been said of the Syriac,
that they represent our Gospels in the form in
which they have come down to us from their
Apostolic authors. The significant point in this
inquiry is this, that the earlier those efforts at
translation are dated, the earlier the sense within
the Church of the sacredness and authority of
the Gospels is seen to be. It was because this
was the Word of God, and needful for salvation,
that translation into vernacular speech, so as to
be " understanded " of the people, was resorted
to. These versions all contained the Four Gos
pels and no other, though not always in the
order to which we are accustomed. This shows
that by the end of the second century, perhaps
as early as the middle of it, the Churches out
side of Palestine and Asia Minor, outside the
boundaries of the Greek-speaking world, where
these versions originated, were not then engaged
in selecting a gospel or determining a creed :
they already acknowledged, and used, and felt
the necessity of translating into their vernacular
for general use, the Fourfold Gospel which came
from Apostles of Christ and their followers, and
which was the bond of a common faith and
hope to them all.
CHAPTER IV.
A GOSPEL COLLECTION IREN^US.
WE have seen that at the close of the second
century the Four Gospels were regarded as a
sacred quaternion, and the conception of a
"Fourfold Gospel " (rerpd^op^ov evay<ye\iov) had
already taken root in widely separated quarters
of the Church. From the Euphrates Valley to
the shores of the western Mediterranean, and
from Gaul to the borders of Ethiopia, the Church
of Christ at that epoch acknowledged our Four
Gospels as the source of her life and the founda
tion upon which she was content to rest.
But we can trace the collection of Four Gospels
to a much earlier period than has yet been in
dicated. In fact, it is not sufficiently realised,
despite the ample investigations of the last thirty
years, how early this collection was brought to
gether. It is well worth while following up the
traces of a collection before discussing the Gos
pels one by one.
Irenczus and the Church. 59
For this purpose, as well as for his testimony
to individual gospels, no writer of the second
century is better entitled to be heard than
Irenaeus, Bishop of Vienne and Lyons in the
two last decades of the second century. There
has been considerable discussion as to the date
of his birth, which is of some consequence, as
affecting his testimony to experiences of his early
life; but in the meantime it will suffice to note
that his great work, Against Heresies, belongs
to about the year 185 A.D. As a witness to
Catholic usage and practice at this epoch,
Irenaeus had unusual qualifications ; and no man
had a larger acquaintance with the thought and
speculation of his age.
i. He had a lofty conception of the Church.
He regarded her as the authorised custodian and
interpreter of the Christian faith ; and he attri
buted to the historic Apostolic Churches, and
especially to the Church of Rome, the character
of authentic depositories of the genuine Christian
tradition. It is with him that the idea of an
Apostolical succession in the episcopate is be
lieved to have originated : he is at least the first
to give it formulated shape. Whatever we may
think of his doctrinal and ecclesiastical positions,
the literary and historical aspects of them are of
great importance. For Irenseus, the sources of
Christian truth are the teaching of Christ and
60 A Gospel Collection Irenaus.
His Apostles, handed down, first by word of
mouth and then by authoritative witnesses, the
oral and the written tradition being in full accord.
Apostolicity is with him the test of canonicity.
Apostolic Churches being the authentic deposit
ories of tradition, the Four Gospels received and
handed down by them through an unbroken suc
cession are to him of exclusive and supreme
authority. " To him," it has been said, " belongs
the distinction of stereotyping the genius of or
thodoxy, and founding the Church s polemic
method. In an age when wild speculations
were in the air, he adheres unswervingly to
the Apostolic tradition, enticed from the safe
path neither by the dancing lights of gnosticism
nor by the steadier flame of Greek philosophic
thought." x
2. He had an uncommonly wide acquaintance with
the thought of his time. His great work, Against
Heresies, furnishes ample proof of this. For
the intricacies of early gnostic speculation he is
our greatest authority. Whilst his own ortho
doxy has never been impeached, he has the
credit of having given in his treatise a fair and
trustworthy exposition of heretical views. He
has a firm grasp of Scripture doctrine, and em
bodies in his book a large amount of sound and
interesting exposition of Holy Scripture. "Any
1 Cruttwell, Literary History of Early Christianity, ii. 374.
Ireneeus and Inspiration. 61
one," says Bishop Lightfoot, "who will take the
pains to read Irenseus through carefully, endeav
ouring to enter into his historical position in all
its bearings, striving to realise what he and his
contemporaries thought about the writings of
the New Testament, and what grounds they had
for thinking it, and, above all, resisting the
temptation to read in modern theories between
the lines, will be in a more favourable position
for judging rightly of the early history of the
New Testament canon than if he had read all the
monographs which have issued from the German
press for the last half century." *
3. He had a high doctrine of Inspiration.
Speaking of the Old Testament, he says, " It was
the Holy Spirit that preached through the pro
phets the dispensations " (ra? ol/covo/jLias). Again,
he says, " All the Scriptures being spiritual, both
every Scripture given to us from God will be
found by us harmonious, and through the variety
of the expressions one harmonious melody will
be perceived within us." With reference to the
Gospels, he declares that, though " fourfold, they
are held together by one Spirit." He describes
the Apostles, after they had been clothed with
the power of the Holy Spirit descending upon
them from on high, as " being fully assured about
all things, and possessing perfect knowledge."
1 Essays on Supernatural Religion, iv. 141.
62 A Gospel Collection Irenaus.
In a very interesting passage, 1 he remarks that
St Matthew might have said that " the birth of
Jesus was on this wise," but that the Holy Spirit,
foreseeing the depravers of the truth, and guard
ing against their fraud, said by St Matthew, "the
birth of Christ was on this wise," showing that
He was both, in other words, that Jesus was
Christ from His birth. Thus, what might have
seemed the accidental choice of one form of ex
pression rather than another, is ascribed to the
directing care of the Holy Spirit. Irenseus held
not only the genuineness, but also the inspiration
of the Gospels.
4. He had a varied career in widely separated
provinces of the Church. He could speak for
the Church in Asia Minor, Rome, and Gaul, in
all cases from personal experience. He was a
native of Asia Minor, and in early youth came
under the teaching and influence of Polycarp, the
Bishop of Smyrna and disciple of John the
Apostle. In a letter to Florinus, a fellow-disciple
in the school of Polycarp, who had fallen into
heresy, written in his later life and preserved in
the pages of Eusebius, Irenaeus refers to their
early days together : " I remember the events of
that time more clearly than those of recent years,
so that I am able to describe the very place in
which the blessed Polycarp sat as he discoursed,
1 Against Heresies, iii. 16. 2.
Irenczus in Gaul. 63
and his goings out and his comings in, and the
accounts which he gave of his intercourse with
John and with the others who had seen the Lord.
And as he remembered their words and what he
heard from them concerning the Lord and con
cerning His miracles and His teaching, having
received them from eyewitnesses of the Word of
Life, Polycarp related all things in harmony with
the Scriptures." 1 There was thus only the space
of one life, that of Polycarp, between Irenseus
and the Apostolic age between him and the last
survivor of the Apostles, who had leaned upon
the Master s breast, and was the disciple whom
Jesus loved. When, then, Irenaeus refers to par
ticulars in the life of our Lord as related by
Polycarp, we have the assurance that the aged
Bishop s reminiscences coincided with the ac
counts contained in the written Gospels, and a
fortiori that written Gospels were in circulation
as a standard for the knowledge of the life and
teaching of Jesus in Irenaeus s youth in Asia
Minor. 2
It was not in Smyrna, however, that the life-
work of Irenseus was done. When we first hear
1 Euseb. H. E., V. 20.
2 Harnack s attempt to show that "the Scriptures," with which
the reminiscences were in accord, were the Scriptures of the Old
Testament, is unconvincing. See Das neue Testament um das
Jahr 200, p. 35. Cf. Zahn, GK. i. 169, n. I ; and Harnack,
Chronologic, p. 325 ff.
64 A Gospel Collection Ircnczus.
of him in his ecclesiastical relations, he is a
presbyter of the Church at Lyons, in Southern
Gaul. There is nothing remarkable in this,
because Greek colonies from Asia Minor were
early established in the valley of the Rhone,
and there was much communication by com
merce and otherwise between the mother com
munity and the daughter down into Christian
times. Whether Irenaeus had spent some time
at Rome before he settled in the west, there is
no record to show. It has been held that his
clear conception of the unity of the Catholic
Church, his high estimate of Rome as the centre
of Catholic tradition, and the eminently practical
bent of his mind, all point to residence and
labour in Rome before he settled for the work
of his life in distant Gaul. However this may
be, in 177 A.D., when a terrible persecution,
sanctioned by Marcus Aurelius, the Roman
Emperor, broke out in Gaul, Irenaeus, then a
presbyter, was entrusted with the famous Letter
of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons to the
brethren of the Churches of Asia and Phrygia,
and carried it as far as Rome. Among the
martyrs in that persecution was Pothinus, the
bishop of Lyons, who had reached the pat
riarchal age of ninety years. The See being
vacant, Irenseus was raised to the Episcopal
office, the fact showing that he had been long
His Varied Career. 65
enough associated with the Church of Lyons
to be marked out for the succession.
For a quarter of a century, till his death in
202, he occupied that exalted office, taking an
active part in the movements and controversies
of the times. His personal relations with Poly-
carp have been questioned, and his testimony to
the credibility of the Gospel history has been
disparaged by critics, who find these facts a
serious obstacle to their negative theories. Such
treatment only serves to bring out the importance
of his position and the trustworthiness of his
testimony. " Irenseus," says Professor Gutjahr, 1
in his acute and learned work on The Trust
worthiness of the Testimony of Irenseus, written
to meet these attempts at depreciation, "was
assuredly neither a troglodyte to whom human
voice had never penetrated; nor the inhabitant
of an island forgotten by the world, upon whose
shores no wave of spiritual life ever breaks ; nor a
misanthropist recluse holding himself aloof from
the ways of men ; nor an indifferent creature
lacking all interest in and all acquaintance with
the questions of the time, he was everything
the very reverse. His life unfolded itself in the
most important scenes and centres of ecclesi
astical and religious life in Smyrna, in Rome,
in Gaul, and he occupied for long the influential
1 Glaubwiirdigkeit des Irenaischen Zeugnisses, p. 14.
E
66 A Gospel Collection Irenceus.
positions of presbyter and Bishop of Lyons. He
stood in many-sided personal relations to the
outstanding personalities of his generation, took
the liveliest interest and the most active part in
all the great controversies of the closing decades
of the second century, the Paschal controversy,
the Montanist controversy, and was in particular
himself one of the foremost and most successful
champions of truth against Gnostic error, as well
as one of the most important witnesses and
defenders of the New Testament canon."
The foregoing considerations give weight to any
special judgment which Irenaeus might deliver on
the subject of the Gospels. It is in the Third
Book of his treatise Against Heresies that we
have the fullest and most explicit account of the
Gospel collection. He is the first of the early
Fathers to condescend upon the names of all the
Evangelists. "As it was in the power of the Holy
Spirit," he says, 1 "that the Apostles preached, so
it was in the same power that the Evangelists
put the glad tidings on record." Matthew, he
goes on to say, published a written Gospel among
the Hebrews in their own language, while Peter
and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying
the foundations of the Church. And after their de
parture (eoSo^, which may mean " death "), Mark,
the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed
1 Ad versus Hsereses, iii. I.
His View of Four Gospels. 67
down in writing what had been preached by him.
Luke, also, the companion of Paul, set down in
a book the Gospel preached by him. Then
John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned
upon His breast, himself also published his Gospel
while staying at Ephesus in Asia. " So firm is
the ground upon which the Gospels rest that
the very heretics themselves bear witness to
them, and starting from them, each one of
them endeavours to establish his own peculiar
doctrine," 1 again enumerating the Four Gospels
and affirming their authorship. When we con
sider the learning and the critical acumen of
Irenaeus, as exhibited in his exposition and dis
cussion of prevalent heresies; when we recall
the facilities which he enjoyed for ascertaining
accurate particulars of the history of the Apostles
and those who were associated with them ; when,
moreover, we remember that he had to deal with
opponents ready to question unfounded or un
guarded statements, we may confidently believe
that he knew whereof he spoke when he called
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John the authors of
the Fourfold Gospel. It would require very
strong and explicit evidence to overthrow the
testimony of a witness with such qualifications
for ascertaining and declaring the truth.
Irenseus knew the Four Gospels as the work
1 Adversus Haereses, iii. n. 7.
68 A Gospel Collection Irenceus.
of the authors he names, the same to whom
tradition, from the second century to the nine
teenth, has explicitly assigned them. But Irenseus
goes further, and claims for them in clear and
unmistakable terms exclusive authority. His
description of the Fourfold Gospel is specially
noteworthy. He is arguing that it is one and
the same God, the Creator of heaven and earth,
whom the Prophets foretold and the Gospels
announced. In opposition to heretics, who held
that the God of the Old Testament is inferior to
the God of the New, he maintains that neither
Prophets nor Apostles acknowledged any other
Lord God save the Lord and God supreme ; the
Prophets and the Apostles alike confessing the
Father and the Son, but reverencing no other
as God and confessing no other as Lord. The
Old Testament knows nothing of a God above the
God of Israel who chose Jerusalem ; and the New
Testament as little of a Word descending upon
Jesus at His baptism, it knows only Jesus Christ,
the Word who was made flesh and dwelt among
us. To justify his contention, Irenseus turns to the
Gospels in succession and vindicates his position
from them. He then proceeds 1 to formulate his
doctrine of the uniqueness and exclusiveness of
the Gospel quaternion : " It is impossible that the
Gospels can be either more or fewer in number
1 Adversus Hsereses, iii. n. 8.
His View of Four Gospels. 69
than they are. For since there are four regions
of the world in which we live, and also four prin
cipal winds, while the Church has been dispersed
over the whole earth, and the Gospel is the pillar
and ground of the Church and the breath of her
life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars,
from all quarters breathing incorruption, and re
kindling the spiritual life of men. Whereby it is
evident that the Artificer of all things, the Word
who sitteth upon the cherubim and holdeth all
things together, when He was manifested to men
gave us the Gospel in four aspects, but held
together by one Spirit. As David says, entreating
the manifestation of His presence, Thou that
sittest between the cherubims, shine forth. For
the cherubim were fourfold and their faces
images of the dispensation (rfjs Trpaj^areia^) of
the Son of God. For, as the Scripture saith,
The first living creature was like a lion, symbol
ising His effectual working, and His leadership,
and His royal estate ; the second, like a calf,
signifying His sacrificial and priestly office; the
third, having the face of a man, evidently describ
ing His advent as man ; and the fourth, like a
flying eagle, setting forth the gift of the Spirit
resting upon the Church. The Gospels, there
fore, are comparable to those figures among which
Christ is seated. For the Gospel according to
John relates His original, effectual, and glorious
70 A Gospel Collection Irenczus.
generation from the Father, saying, In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and was God. Also, All things were
made by Him, and without Him w r as nothing
made. But the Gospel according to Luke, as
being of a priestly character, began with Zach-
arias the priest offering incense to God. For
already the fatted calf was being prepared which
was to be slain in honour of the younger son.
Matthew, again, proclaims His human birth,
saying, The book of the generation of Jesus
Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham,
and, Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on
this wise. This Gospel, therefore, is of human
aspect ; wherefore, also, through the whole of
it, the character of a lowly- minded and meek
man is maintained. Mark, on the other hand,
commenced with a reference to the prophetic
spirit, which came from on high upon men,
saying, The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, as it is written in Esaias the prophet,
pointing to the winged aspect of the Gospel,
on which account he made his narrative concise
and rapid, for this is the note of the prophetic
character. . . . These things being so, all who
destroy the form of the Gospel are vain and
unlearned, and, moreover, audacious, represent
ing the aspects of the Gospel as being either
more or fewer than has been mentioned; the
His Authority Questioned. 71
former that they may appear to have discovered
more than the truth, the latter that they may
set the dispensations of God aside."
The importance of this testimony of Irenseus
cannot well be overestimated. Although he
wrote his treatise Against Heresies about
185 A.D., it was not then for the first time that
the Fourfold Gospel appealed to his judgment.
He writes as if in the course of his long and
varied career, doing battle against Gnosticism and
Montanism, and building up the Church, in times
of trial and persecution, on the truth of the Gospel,
he had never known any other save the Four.
Zahn is well entitled to say : " Irenseus did not
employ empty words when he spoke of the Four
Gospels as the pillars which from time imme
morial have supported the fabric of the Catholic
Church. So stood they without any rival in the
churches of the land of his birth, as well as in
those over which he was Bishop, and also in
Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, and Antioch." 1
It is evidence of the cardinal position which he
occupies in the history of early Christian literature
and of the New Testament canon, that great
exertions have been put forth by the negative
critics to break down his evidence or to explain
it away.
i. Objection has been taken to the symbolism
1 Zahn, GK. i. 192.
72 A Gospel Collection Irenaus.
which he employs to describe and illustrate the
Gospel collection of Four. It is said to be rather
the fantastic conception of a dogmatist than the
sober-minded testimony of a historian. But this
is surely quite to misunderstand the object which
Irenaeus has in view. Symbolism is with him an
afterthought. In another place l he shows how
five can be a symbolic number, having a wide
prevalence in the Scriptures five loaves for the
five thousand ; five virgins wise and foolish ; five
men on the Mount of Transfiguration Peter,
James, John, Moses, Elias; five ages of human
life infancy, boyhood, youth, maturity, old
age, and so on. It does not determine the
Gospel quaternion, but is used in accordance
with Oriental modes of expression to illustrate
it. Irenaeus found Four Gospels in possession of
the field, each presenting its own view of the
great Divine subject of them all, and all combin
ing in a complete and harmonious presentation
of the Godman so adequate to the spiritual re
quirements of the Church, that when he wished
to find symbols for them he could find nothing
more suitable, whether in things sacred or things
secular, than the four faces of the cherubim, or
the four living creatures of the Apocalypse, or the
four quarters of the heavens, or the four principal
1 Against Heresies, ii. 24. 4.
Objections Answered. 73
winds. There is nothing in the symbolism he
employs to infer dogmatic or polemic purpose
beyond what was perfectly legitimate; nothing
certainly to disqualify him from being a trust
worthy witness to fact.
2. Objection is taken to a remarkable statement
of Irenaeus l to the effect that Jesus did not die at
the age of thirty or in His thirties, but attained
an age between forty and fifty, thus having ex
perience of all the gradations of human life. But
this is not all. He backs up this remarkable
statement by a reference to St John s Gospel,
where the Jews say to Jesus, " Thou art not fifty
years old and hast Thou seen Abraham ? " and
to the elders, who had consorted with St John in
Asia, and who agreed in declaring that this was
St John s view of the length of our Lord s life.
When the context, in which these peculiar asser
tions appear, is examined, they are seen to be
much less damaging to the credit of Irenaeus than
would appear at the first blush. He has been
contesting the view of the Valentinians (a view
held by several of the early Fathers and also
held by some orthodox theologians to this day)
that our Lord s ministry was really confined to a
year, and that Jesus died at its close just as He
completed His thirtieth year of earthly life. He
1 Against Heresies, ii. 22.
74 A Gospel Collection Irenczus.
meets this erroneous view, as he considers it,
first, by a better exposition of the passage of
St Luke, where Jesus speaks of " the acceptable
year of the Lord " ; secondly, by an enumeration
of at .least three annual Passover feasts which
Jesus is represented as attending ; thirdly, by the
theoretical opinion that it behoved Jesus to reach
the maturity of middle life, between forty and fifty,
to do justice to His calling as the Perfect Teacher
of mankind ; and fourthly, by a reference to the
passage in St John s Gospel, where the Jews
express the opinion that our Lord had not reached
fifty years. The theoretical argument of Irenaeus
appears to our ways of thinking unquestionably
weak, but the imputation against his credibility
as a historian would only be serious if on the one
hand it implied ignorance of the Gospel narratives,
or, on the other, it showed carelessness in report
ing the statements of his authorities. As regards
the latter, an examination of the passage discloses
the fact that the only point affirmed by the Pres
byters of Asia was that our Lord s ministry lasted
more than a single year; and as regards the
former, no one can read the treatise of Irenaeus
without finding on every page proofs of ample
and accurate acquaintance with the Gospel
history. Even if it be that in this passage
Irenaeus shows less than his wonted lucidity of
statement, and perhaps more than his wonted
Objections Answered. 75
keenness as a controversialist, there is no ground
for discrediting him as a historian. 1
3. Objection is taken to the testimony of
Irenasus on the ground that he was only a boy
when he saw and heard Polycarp, and so failed to
discern that Polycarp was the hearer not of John
the Apostle but of another John, better known to
modern criticism than to antiquity, John the
Presbyter. Of this view Professor Harnack may
be regarded as a strenuous representative. In his
* Chronology of the Early Christian Literature, 2
he admits that Irenseus believed the John of
whom Polycarp spoke to be the Apostle, but then
he assumes that the memories of Irenaeus are
those of his childhood, and not to be relied upon
when he records them in his old age. Harnack,
however, puts a strain upon the language of the
letter of Irenaaus to Florinus which it will not
bear. In that letter Irenaeus speaks of himself as
a lad (Trat?) when Florinus was out in the world
and achieving success ; he recalls to his erring
companion, who had become a heretic, the lessons
they had learned together at the feet of Polycarp,
and speaks of them as if they had continued over
a considerable time ; and he claims an elderly
man s privilege of remembering the lessons and
1 See Lightfoot, Essays on Supernatural Religion, p. 246 ;
Journal of Theological Studies, Oct. 1907, p. 53 ff.
2 Chronologic, pp. 320 ff. ; 656 ff.
76 A Gospel Collection Irenceus.
events of youth better than the experiences of
later years. In another place he testifies to
having seen Polycarp in his first youth (eV rfj Trpoorrj
rjfi&v rj\iKla\ that is, in his early manhood, and
though we have no record to show that he had
intercourse with him later, that does not exclude
the possibility that he had. We may believe
that if Professor Harnack had not felt himself
under the necessity of holding to John the
Presbyter as the author of the Fourth Gospel,
he would not have pressed language so keenly to
make Irenaeus appear but a child when he heard
Polycarp discoursing upon John, and as a child
incapable of discriminating between the Apostle
and the Presbyter. The language does not
warrant any such inference, and, even if Irenaeus
had been so young as Harnack implies, we can
scarcely believe that he had not conversed with
companions, or others of more mature age, at a
later time, able to correct the mistakes of his
early days and to set him right on such a
question. "We used to think," says Professor
Gwatkin of Cambridge, "with Irenseus himself,
that the memories of early life are the most
indelible of all. When some trifle recalls them
we often see them returning, even in extreme
old age, with all the vividness and certainty of
yesterday. Human nature must be much the
same in all ages, and it was the life s work both
Objections Answered. 77
of Polycarp and Irenseus to keep the deposit
entrusted to them. I see no escape from the
conclusion that this is more than almost any other
a question on which it is hardly in human nature
that Irenaeus can be mistaken, when he tells us
that the Apostle John, and not another, was the
teacher of his old master Polycarp." 1
4. It has nevertheless been questioned whether
the assertion of Irenseus, attributing exclusive
authority to these Four Gospels, holds good for
the whole Church at this early period. In Alex
andria, as we have seen, Clement, writing early
in the third century, seems to draw a distinction
between what is handed down in our Four Gos
pels and what is circulated in other Gospels ; but
he regards with favour the Gospel according to
the Egyptians and the Gospel according to the
Hebrews ; and he quotes also apocryphal sayings
of Jesus that were still current in the Church.
Harnack will have it 2 that the Gospel according
to the Egyptians is no heretical production, but a
Gospel which had established itself from the be
ginning in Egypt. For this he brings but the
scantiest proof, and Zahn is right in maintain
ing 3 that the Church of Alexandria had about
1 Contemporary Review, 1897, p. 222. See also Stanton, Gos
pels, p. 213 ff.
2 Das neue Testament urn das Jahr 200 A.D. ; Altchristliche
Literatur, p. 12.
3 GK. i. 176. Comp. Einige Bemerkungen.
78 A Gospel Collection Irenczus.
200 A.D. no other Gospel than the Churches of
Rome and Carthage and Lyons. If Clement is
more free in his Scripture references than some
of the other Fathers, this is due more to the
peculiar bent of his mind than to a different
condition of things. Just as Clement s theology
" is not a unit but a confused eclectic mixture
of the true Christian elements with many Stoic,
Platonic, and Philonic ingredients," J so his con
ception of inspired Scripture was also more com
prehensive. In Syria, we find about the close of
the second century a Gospel in circulation bear
ing the name of Peter, the same which has
recently been discovered by Dr Rendel Harris,
and is now known to be a distinctly Docetic
production. But this Gospel, which Serapion,
the Bishop of Rhossus, is willing to have read
in his diocese, is not proved to have enjoyed
general acceptance and use in the Church, but
only to have been allowed for private and indi
vidual perusal. There is no reason to doubt that
the Gospel quartette set forth by Irenseus was
adopted thus early throughout the whole Church.
We conclude in favour of the credibility of
Irenseus. We hold that less than a hundred
years from the time when eyewitnesses survived
of the miraculous works of Jesus of Nazareth,
and when companions of the Apostles were living
1 Schaff, Ante-Nicene Christianity, ii. 783.
His Credibility. 79
to tell to the succeeding generation what manner
of men they were, we have a reliable witness, with
learning, with retentive memory, and with sobriety
of judgment as well as acuteness of intellect,
vouching for it that Four Gospels, and only
Four, were received as sacred authorities in
widely separated quarters of the Church, and
assigning to the Four the names by which they
have all along been known, as if no other had
ever belonged to them.
8o
CHAPTER V.
A GOSPEL COLLECTION MURATORIAN
FRAGMENT AND TATIAN.
FROM Irenseus, who is well able to testify to the
usage of the Church of Rome in the decade 180-
190 A.D., we pass to a document still more directly
representing the mind of the Roman Church
about the same time. This is THE MURATORIAN
FRAGMENT, so called from the Italian scholar
Muratori, who extracted it from a manuscript
collection of miscellaneous pieces found in the
Ambrosian Library in Milan, and published by
him in 1740. The manuscript from which this
extract is taken had originally belonged to the
famous Irish monastery of Bobbio, and had itself
been copied in the eighth century. The copy
must have been made from what was even then
a mutilated exemplar, for it begins in the middle
of a sentence, and, as it is also defective at the
end, it is properly called a fragment. It is in
Date of Fragment. 8 1
Latin, and appears to be a badly done translation
of a Greek account of the Canon. " Its evid
ence," says Dr S. P. Tregelles, 1 one of its most
careful editors, " is not the less trustworthy from
its being a blundering and illiterate transcript of
a rough and rustic translation of a Greek orig
inal." It has been attributed to Caius the Pres
byter, about 190 A.D., and also to Hippolytus, but
the authorship remains uncertain. It professes
to have been written by a contemporary of Pius,
the tenth Bishop of Rome, for referring to the
Shepherd of Hermas the Fragment declares it
was written " very recently in our times in the
city of Rome by Hermas while his brother Pius
sat in the chair of the Church of Rome." The
episcopate of Pius is regarded as having lasted
from 139 to 154 A.D., but as to this there is
divergence of opinion among ecclesiastical his
torians. There is an undoubted reference to
Montanism towards the close of the Fragment,
which would put its production nearer the close
of the second century, if not with Zahn 2 into the
beginning of the third. But the date commonly
assigned to it, 170 A.D., is quite consistent with
the Fragment itself, and may be accepted approx
imately as the time which it represents. That it
was written in Rome, or in some part of Italy, is
established by the internal evidence, and if it were
1 Canon of Muratori, p. 10. 2 GK. ii. 136.
F
82 A Gospel Collection Muratorian Fragment.
original and not a translation from the Greek it
would be the earliest ecclesiastical writing we
possess in that tongue. As Westcott says, 1 how
ever, " the recurrence of Greek idioms appears
conclusive as to the fact that it is a translation,
and this agrees well with its Roman origin, for
Greek continued to be even at a later period
the ordinary language of the Roman Church."
The testimony of the Fragment to the Four
fold Gospel, bearing in mind its mutilated char
acter, is unmistakable. It begins in the middle
of a sentence, and its opening words are : " But
at some he was present and so he set them
down " (" aliquibus tamen interfuit et ita posuit ").
As the next sentence refers to " the third Book
of the Gospel, the Gospel according to Luke," and
as the writer goes on to give an account entirely
his own of the composition of St John s Gospel,
we are led to conclude that the opening words
are part of his account of the second Gospel,
the Gospel according to St Mark. It is true
we cannot assume as certain a codex containing
the Gospels in the order to which we have be
come accustomed. At the same time, out of
all the arrangements of the order of the Four
Gospels which have been found, the order Mark,
Matthew, Luke, John, is without example. It is
a fair inference that we should regard the refer-
1 Canon, p. 216.
St Mark in Fragment. 83
ence of the writer in the opening words as being
to the Gospel according to St Mark. On this
assumption a difficulty arises as to what is
meant by the expression, " at some he was
present." It might refer to incidents or dis
courses in the life of Jesus at which the writer
of the Gospel was present, and which he set
down of his own knowledge. This, however,
could not be said of St Mark. It is doubtful
whether he was ever in our Lord s company at
all, although he has been with some reason iden
tified as the young man without a name whom
he introduces into the narrative of the Lord s
betrayal (Mark xiv. 51, 52). How, then, are the
words to be explained consistently with this
fact ? St Mark has always been regarded as
St Peter s interpreter, as having received the
materials of his Gospel from St Peter, and it
is to this source that we attribute the numerous
autoptic touches with which his Gospel abounds.
Moreover, it was the house of Mary, the mother
of John Mark, which was the favourite resort
of the disciples of Jesus after the Ascension,
where discourse would often turn, in the hear
ing of St Mark, on the mighty works and the
wonderful words of Jesus. Bearing this in mind,
it seems quite permissible, as Westcott holds, 1
to regard the expression as referring to con-
1 Canon, p. 543 n. Cf. Zahn, Einleitung, ii. 428, 429.
84 A Gospel Collection Muratorian Fragment.
versations with St Peter at which St Mark and
others were present, in which the chief Apostle of
the Lord gave reminiscences of His divine life
and ministry and death and resurrection. This
explanation appears to be entirely satisfactory,
and we need have little hesitation in regarding
the opening words as a testimony to the second
Gospel.
That the list of books of New Testament
Scripture in the original of our mutilated ex
tract began with St Matthew is the irresistible
inference. What the Fragment has to say of
"the third" and "the fourth" Gospel makes
us regret that we are not in possession of the
whole. "The third Book of the Gospel," it
goes on to say, " that according to Luke, was
compiled in his own name by Luke, the phys
ician you know of (iste), from what he heard
from others when, after Christ s Ascension, Paul
had taken him to be with him as a companion
in travel. Yet neither did he see the Lord in
the flesh ; and he, too, as he was able to ascer
tain events, so set them down, beginning with
the birth of John (the Baptist). The fourth of
the Gospels was written by John, one of the
disciples. When exhorted by his fellow- disciples
and bishops, he said, Fast with me this day for
three days ; and what may be revealed to any
of us let us relate it to one another. The same
St John in Fragment. 85
night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the
Apostles, that John was to write all things in
his own name, and they were all to certify it.
And, therefore, though various elements are
taught in the several books of the Gospels, yet
it makes no difference to the faith of believers,
since by one guiding Spirit all things are declared
in all of them concerning the Nativity, the
Passion, the Resurrection, the conversations
with His disciples, and His two comings the
first in lowliness and contempt, which has come
to pass, the second, glorious with royal power,
which is to come. What marvel, therefore, if
John so firmly sets forth each statement in his
Epistles too, saying of himself, What we have
seen with our eyes, and heard with our ears,
and our hands have handled, these things we
have written unto you ? For so he declares
himself not only an eyewitness and a hearer,
but also a recorder of all the marvels of the
Lord in order."
There are several points of interest in this
statement.
(i) The author of the fourth Gospel is here
said to be one of "the disciples" of the Lord.
This does not distinguish him from " the Apostle,"
but rather describes John in his quality as an eye
witness and competent narrator of the work and
teaching of his Master. The Fragmentist is not
86 A Gospel Collection Muratorian Fragment.
so much concerned about the apostolicity of the
Gospels as about their trustworthiness as a record
of Christ and His redemption. Irenaeus, as we
shall see, who had no doubt of the identity of John
with the Apostle, also calls him the " disciple of
the Lord."
(2) The compiler of this list of the books of
New Testament Scripture knows of Four Gospels,
and only Four. Mention is made of the Shep
herd, and also of an Apocalypse of Peter, as
books to be used at least for edification. But
no Gospel is mentioned as in any way coming
into competition with the Gospels which are
named, and which are the Four Gospels of the
Catholic Church to-day.
(3) These Gospels have attributed to them
the inspiration of the Divine Spirit, which
breathes through each, and binds them all to
gether as one whole.
(4) In their totality, as Zahn points out, 1 the
Four Gospels contain all that is requisite, so
that as one whole they set forth the Nativity,
the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Second
Coming, even though the second and the fourth
Gospels contain no account of the Birth of Jesus.
It is a significant tribute to the growth of the
combined authority of the Gospel quartette that
already, at this early date/and at all events within
1 GK. ii. 41.
The Church of Syria. 87
the second century, the essential harmony of the
Gospels was discerned and practically applied.
Despite the uncertainty as to the precise date
of this valuable relic of early Christian antiquity,
we may regard it as directly representing the
mind of the Church of Rome, and showing the
Gospel Collection of Four established even be
fore the time of Irenaeus.
It is a far cry from the Church of Rome to the
Church of Syria, with its two great centres at
Antioch and Edessa, but here also we have testi
mony to the existence and authority of a Fourfold
Gospel as explicit and weighty as that which has
just been considered. Whilst we have in the
Syriac version a witness for the Syrian Church
from a very early date, we have in TATIAN an
individual testimony of no ordinary value. It
was not at Antioch but at Edessa that the Syriac
Scriptures were chiefly in circulation. Antioch,
the capital of the great Empire of Seleucus, was
a Greek city, and the Gospel did not require to
change its Greek dress in the city where the
disciples of Jesus were first called Christians. It
was different with Edessa, the flourishing capital
of the Syrian principality of Osrhoene, which
preserved its independence of Rome well into
the third century of our era. Here, on the
boundary-line between Greek and Persian civil-
88 A Gospel Collection Tatian.
isation, still flourished a large amount of Semitic
culture unaffected by Hellenic cosmopolitanism.
When Christianity set foot on this soil it could
not help assuming a national form, and the neces
sity arose early of possessing the written Gospel
in the vernacular. Singularly enough, it is the
Fourfold Gospel rather than individual Gospels
which arrests attention here, in the Diatessaron
of Tatian.
The personality of Tatian is not very clearly
revealed, but there are some points of interest
regarding him. Born, probably of Greek parents,
in Assyria, as he tells us in his Address to the
Greeks, he travelled much in pursuit of rhetoric
and philosophy. He found his way to Rome,
as did most of those in that time who had
any special need to be supplied, or any special
remedy for human ills to make known, or any
special discovery in truth to publish abroad.
In Rome he came under the influence of Justin
Martyr. Under the teaching of Justin he em
braced Christianity somewhere about 150 A.D.,
when he was already in middle life. The par
ticulars of his career after his conversion are not
clear, but he seems to have left for the East and
devoted himself to the defence of Christianity, of
which he became one of the most strenuous and
able apologists. In opposition to Zahn, who con
siders that he was but once in Rome, and that he
The Diatessaron. 89
became a Christian in the East, and ended his
life there, Harnack maintains that he made a
second visit to Rome, became eminent as a
teacher in the Church, but after the death of
Justin fell into heresy of an ascetic and Encratite
tendency, and broke with the Church in 172 A.D.,
returning finally to his native land and there
spending the remainder of his days. The pecu
liarity of some of Tatian s views caused him to
appear to Irenaeus a specially obstinate heretic,
but he seems never to have separated himself
from the Catholic Church nor to have founded a
sect or party. He was still honourably named in
Rome at the beginning of the third century as a
champion of the orthodox doctrine of the divinity
of Christ. Clement and Origen controverted his
views, but did not refer to him as the leader of a
party. His apologetic treatise continued to be
held in honour in the Greek Church after he had
passed away. In it, and in what remains of his
other writings composed in Greek, he is entitled
to bear witness to the condition of the Church
Catholic in the period 150-170 A.D. and onwards.
Eusebius tells us that he left a great many
writings, 1 but the only two he names are * The
Address to the Greeks and that " combination
and collection of the Gospels, I know not how, to
which he gave the title Diatessaron." It is this
1 H. E., IV. 29.
go A Gospel Collection Tatian.
work eva<y<ye\iov Irjaov XptfrroO TO 8ta
which gives him the place he occupies in the
history of the canon. Eusebius is the first
Christian writer to notice the Diatessaron, but
the vagueness of his description shows that he
had never seen it, and that he only knew it by
hearsay. Epiphanius seems to have had still less
acquaintance with it, for, referring to Tatian, he
remarks : " People say that the Diatessaron Gos
pel, which some call the Gospel of the Hebrews,
originates with him." It is still more note
worthy that Jerome is wholly silent regarding it,
mentioning from among " the endless volumes "
of Tatian only the one " Contra gentes floren-
tissimus liber." This goes somewhat against the
contention of those who, like Harnack, believe
that the Diatessaron was compiled from the
Greek and afterwards translated into Syriac ; for
if there had been a Greek Diatessaron in circula
tion some of those writers would have been likely
to know it. Professor Gregory l has little doubt
that the Harmony was originally Greek. The
Arabic translation of the Diatessaron calls the
Harmony the work of Tatian " the Greek." But
he holds it to be an altogether possible thing that
it should at an early date have been translated
into Syriac. That it was composed in Syriac at
a very early period, and obtained a sure place
1 Canon and Text, p. 399.
The Diatessaron. gi
in the affections of Syrian Christians as a com
pendium of the life and teaching of Christ,
accounts sufficiently for the ignorance of early
historiographers, and also for its long-continued
use in the Syrian Church.
Its existence is well attested in the Church of
Syria. The so-called * Doctrine of Addai, whether
we assign it with Zahn to the second half of the
third century or with Harnack to about 400 A.D.,
testifies that at Edessa the Diatessaron was used
in public worship in place of the individual Gos
pels, and passed for Holy Scripture. Aphraates,
about the middle of the fourth century, in his
Homilies, treats the Diatessaron as Holy Scrip
ture. * Ephraem, who died in 373 A.D., knew the
individual Gospels, but used the Diatessaron
exclusively as Holy Scripture. It was the
Commentary of Ephrasm upon the Diates
saron, preserved in an Armenian translation, and
translated from Armenian into Latin by Mechi-
tarist Fathers in Venice, which gave to modern
scholarship the first really accurate and reliable
account of the contents of this work. It was then
seen to follow the narratives of our Four Gospels,
according to a plan conceived by Tatian, and to
contain nothing, speaking broadly, that is not
to be found in them. It is from Theodoret of
Cyrrhus that we have the most explicit account
which Christian antiquity supplies of this remark-
92 A Gospel Collection Tatian.
able treatise. Writing in 453 A.D., he says 1 at the
end of his chapter on Tatian, " He also composed
the Gospel which goes by the name of Diatessaron,
having cut out the genealogies and all that shows
our Lord to have been of the seed of David
according to the flesh. And it was in use not
only by those who were of that way of thinking,
but also by those who follow the Apostolic doc
trines, not being aware of the wickedness of the
compilation, but using it in more simple fashion
as a convenient epitome. I found more than
two hundred such books held in honour in our
Churches, and I collected them and put them out
of the way, and substituted for them the Gospels
of the four Evangelists" (ra TWV rerrdpwv^ evay-
yeXio-rwv dvreicnjryayov evayyeXia). By this time
the individual Gospels had gained the upper hand,
and the Diatessaron disappeared from the public
services of the national Syrian Church ; but it
continued to be used by scholars for purposes of
study, and from a manuscript, copied as late as
the ninth century, an Arabic translation of the
Diatessaron was executed in the eleventh century.
Of this an example has been found and pub
lished, with a Latin translation, by the Italian
scholar Ciasca. The career of the Diatessaron
was not at an end when it disappeared from the
Churches of Syria. As it was the instrument in
1 In his ETTITO/^ aipeTiKijs KaKo/j-vdias, i. 2O.
The Diatessaron. 93
the hands of Syrian missionaries from the second
century for the evangelisation of dwellers on the
banks of the Euphrates, so, centuries later, it
became the instrument, in a Latin translation,
of the evangelisation of the dwellers in Central
Europe and on the banks of the Rhine. The
manuscript known as Codex Fuldensis, which
Victor of Capua, about 546 A.D., put in circula
tion, and which was the Gospel-book employed
by Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans, is found
to have the Gospels arranged continuously, in the
same order as the Diatessaron. Thus, far from
the scenes of its origin and earliest use, and after
it had disappeared in the original Syriac alto
gether, for no manuscript of the original is known
to survive, the work of the Assyrian orator and
scribe exercised an influence which was continued
in such works as the Heliand at a still later
time. The work has been translated in the
Supplementary Volume of Ante-Nicene Fathers,
and its contents can be examined in Hemphill s
Diatessaron and in Mr Hamlyn Hill s * Earliest
Life of Our Lord, where an English translation is
also given. Zahn has also published an elaborate
attempt to reconstruct it from the Commentary of
Ephraem and the Homilies of Aphraates, which it
is interesting to compare with the contents of
Ciasca s Arabic-Latin version. 1
1 Forschungen, i. 112 ff. ; cf. GK. ii. 530 if.
94 A Gospel Collection Tatian.
We now know enough of the Diatessaron to
be certain that it is not a distinct evangelical
narrative, nor yet identical with the Gospel
according to the Hebrews, as Epiphanius sup
posed it to be. The author of Supernatural
Religion is one of the very few critics who uphold
the former view. It has been carefully dissected
and analysed, and no doubt can remain in any un
prejudiced mind that we have before us the work
of which Theodoret withdrew two hundred copies
from his diocese, a work manifestly compiled
from our four canonical Gospels, and consisting
almost wholly of familiar evangelical materials. It
begins with St John s prologue: "In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God." The genealogies are omitted,
but it gives the story of the birth of the Fore
runner as in St Luke, and of the birth of Jesus as
in St Matthew and St Luke. His early ministry
and His work in Galilee follow, and the later
ministry, with parables and discourses, also finds
a place. The record as given in the Diatessaron
closes with the Lord s Supper, Gethsemane, the
trials before the high priest and Pilate, the cruci
fixion, and the resurrection and ascension. There
are considerable displacements of the Gospel
narratives, such as a harmoniser could not help
making; but scholars are of opinion that all
through his work he was preparing rather a
The Diatessaron. 95
companion to the Four Gospels than a substi
tute for them. There is an absence of extra-
canonical matter which shows that he had written
sources before him, and was not trusting to oral
tradition. That the Four Gospels were in exist
ence in the time of Tatian is an obvious corollary
from what has been said ; that they contained
materials which were indispensable to the per
sonal edification of Syrian Christians and to the
evangelising of regions beyond, and so were
regarded as part of an authoritative revelation,
has now been put beyond question.
Tatian is credited with the framing of the first
Gospel harmony, just as Basilides with the first
quotation of the Gospels as Scripture, Heracleon
with the first commentary, and Marcion with the
first canon of New Testament Scripture. It is,
however, scarcely probable that heretics were so
far in advance of orthodox Christians in the con
sciousness and discernment of the separateness of
these Scriptures from all other literature. There
are traces of harmonising before the time of
Tatian, and it is possible that he only extended
somewhat the conception underlying the ATTO-
fjLvrj/jLovevfjLara of his master, Justin. " There is a
tendency," says Dr Sanday, 1 " apparent through
out the later writers, marked in Clement, very
marked in the Didache, and marked also, as we
1 Inspiration, pp. 301, 302.
96 A Gospel Collection Tatian.
overstep the limits of their period, in Justin, to
combine together phrases from these two Gospels,
St Matthew and St Luke. So much is this the
case that the hypothesis has more than once been
thrown out that the writers in question, more
particularly Justin, quoted, at least at times, not
from our separate Gospel, but from a Harmony
of the Gospels. That was not published till after
Justin s death ; but it would not be improbable
that some sort of rough draft might have been
used by both master and scholar before its publi
cation. . . . Besides Tatian s Harmony, there
was another, as we know, composed very soon
after his by Theophilus of Antioch. This would
show that the idea of harmonising or combining
Gospels was in the air." If we hold that the
Diatessaron was first compiled in Greek, we
may see in that fact an evidence of the previous
existence of a Harmony of the Four Gospels,
such as the Kiro^v^^ovev^aTa may have been.
97
CHAPTER VI.
A GOSPEL COLLECTION JUSTIN MARTYR.
WE proceed higher up the stream to the valu
able testimony of JUSTIN MARTYR. It is likely
that he was born about 100 A.D. 1 He was a
native of Palestine, having been born in Flavia
Neapolis in Samaria. After a long and dis
appointing quest for satisfaction and rest in
philosophical systems, he found what he sought
in Christ and His Gospel. He set himself forth
with to propagate and defend the faith which he
had thus received, and he stands out as one of the
greatest of the Christian apologists. In this
interest he laboured at Ephesus and Rome, where
1 The chronology of Justin is by no means certain, the data for
determining it being scanty and ambiguous. Dr Hort placed his
martyrdom in 148 A.D. ; the First Apology in 146 ; the Second (if
really separate from the first) in 146 or 147 ; and the Dialogue about
the same time. Harnack (Chronologic, p. 284) gives the chrono
logy as follows, Conversion, 133; stay in Ephesus, about 135;
Apology (he regards the two as one), a year or two after 150; the
Dialogue, between 155 and 160 ; martyrdom at Rome, between 163
and 167, perhaps 165 A.D.
G
98 A Gospel Collection Justin Martyr.
he resided for some years. Out of many writings
which have come down to us under his name,
three only survive which can be regarded as
genuine products of his pen the two Apologies
and the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. The
First Apology, in all probability written soon after
150 A.D., is addressed to the Emperor Antoninus
Pius ; the Second, written not much later, appeals
rather to the Senate, and incidentally to the
Emperor. In these Apologies he challenges
the attention of Roman Emperor, Senate, and
people, not simply to the facts relating to Chris
tianity and its Divine Founder, but also to
the records in which they are contained. The
Dialogue with Trypho the Jew is a more
elaborate treatise, modelled on the Dialogues of
Plato, and deals not only with the facts relating
to Christianity and its Divine Founder, but also
with the leading doctrines of the Christian faith.
He quotes the Gospel as something known to his
opponent, and cites the Memoirs as his authori
ties for speaking of Jesus as the Logos to this
Jewish controversialist. Issuing as they do from
the middle of the second century, his works are
among the most precious monuments of sub-
apostolic times, and afford much insight into
early Christian life, instruction, and worship.
It was long held, and thought to be fully
established by modern critical discussions, that
J^^st^n and the Synoptics. gg
Justin, while probably knowing our Gospels, or
at least some of them, seldom made use of them,
but had another Gospel narrative, to which the
references in the Apologies and the Dialogue
were to be assigned. This view found its most
reasonable and learned exponent in the great
German scholar, Karl A. Credner, whose His
tory of the New Testament Canon for long
exercised a powerful influence in this depart
ment of Biblical learning. When the question
was asked what this Gospel work possessed by
Justin was, the answer was at first, " the Gospel
according to the Hebrews," and later, a peculiar
form of this apocryphal work, appearing as the
Gospel of Peter, or even as the Diatessaron of
Tatian. Although the Gospel according to the
Hebrews has not yet been recovered, the Gospel
of Peter and the Diatessaron can now be ex
amined, and their testimony does not support
the theory of Credner. The question of Justin s
employment of an extra-canonical document is
not yet finally answered, but the present state
of knowledge on the subject will be considered
later in this chapter.
That Justin uses the three Synoptic Gospels
is generally agreed among scholars. He never
mentions the Evangelists by name, but for his
purpose, whether in addressing the Roman Em
peror in vindication of the character and good
TOO A Gospel Collection Justin Martyr.
name of the Christians, or in proving the trans-
itoriness of the law by its fulfilment in Christ
to Trypho the Jew, the names of the Evangelists
were altogether without weight, and he did well
not to encumber his arguments with them. No
more does he mention the name of St Paul, to
whose epistles there are undoubted references.
The only New Testament book whose author he
names is the Apocalypse, which he attributes to
St John, but does not quote, although it con
tains the very title, " the Word of God," which
is the foundation of Justin s doctrine of the
Person of Christ (KaKelrai TO ovojjia avrov 6
^0709 rov eov, Rev. xix. 13). But though
Justin never names the Synoptists, it is not
difficult to distinguish in his quotations refer
ences to all three. The general name by which
he designates and quotes the Gospel records is
the well-known name by which Xenophon de
scribes his Memoirs of his master Socrates
ATTo/nviifjiovevpaTa. The Memorabilia 1 are the
records contained for us in the Gospels concern
ing Christ, written for us by His disciples.
Behind the general designation we can distin
guish the individual Gospels. The reference to
the bloody sweat decisively intimates the use of
1 Sanday remarks that the Memorabilia are historical author
ities of weight, as coming from Apostles, but no more. They are
not called "Gospels," but just "Memoirs," because he is not
writing to Christians but to heathen. Inspiration, p. 305.
Justin and the Synoptics. 101
St Luke, who alone records it ; the reference to
the sons of Zebedee, under the name of
Boanerges, in the same way intimates the use
of St Mark. Of St Matthew there are many
clear indications, 1 even if in not a few of the
quotations from his Gospel there are words also
taken from St Luke a combination which points
to early harmonising. The expression used in
the reference which obscurely hints at the second
Evangelist (ei> rot? dTrojAwrjiJiovev/jiao-iv avrov, that
is Herpov, where the meaning is " in the recollec
tions which have come down in the Church from
St Peter") only goes to confirm the tradition that
St Mark s Gospel is founded upon St Peter s
preaching. The assumption that the reference is
to the second Gospel is supported by what Justin
says of the Memoirs as written by apostles and
their companions " In the Memoirs, which I take
to have been composed by His Apostles and those
who followed them, it stands written." 2 This
description is precisely in accord with the com
monly received view that St Matthew and St
John, themselves Apostles, wrote our first and
fourth Gospels, and St Mark and St Luke, fol
lowers of Apostles, the second and third. It is
notable that when Justin 3 is quoting from St
Luke, he avoids using the word " Apostles," and
1 See Dial., c. 78, for references to St Matthew.
2 Dial., c. 103. 3 Apol., i. 35. Dial., c. 105.
IO2 A Gospel Collection Justin Martyr.
in two places employs the more general expres
sion, "they that have recorded the Memoirs" (pi
This brings us to the question which has been
frequently discussed, whether the fourth Gospel
is to be included among the Memoirs. There is,
indeed, the prior question whether Justin made
use of the fourth Gospel at all. When we ex
amine Justin s doctrine of the Person of Christ,
we cannot help feeling that there is a close
relationship between his Logos and that of the
fourth Gospel. Semisch 1 shows by a careful
analysis that it is neither to Plato nor to the
Neo-Platonists that Justin owes his conception
of the Logos ; and while he admits that the
Alexandrian and Philonic theosophy had a share
in Justin s formulation of it, he claims that its
substance rests on a purely Scriptural and
Christian foundation. It is scarcely possible to
doubt that there is some relationship between
the Logos of Justin and that of the fourth
Gospel. Either the fourth Gospel is depen
dent upon Justin, or Justin upon the fourth
Gospel. It does not take long to discover that
of the two, originality belongs to the Gospel,
and that Justin s doctrine is a development
along the same line of thought. Supposing,
however, that Justin had adapted the Logos
1 Justin Martyr, ii. 193 ff.
Justin and the Fourth Gospel. 103
doctrine of Philo to the setting forth of the
Person of Christ, there are still a considerable
number of incidental references and allusions
which point to Justin s use of the fourth
Gospel. He speaks of Christ as the Word and
Son of the Father, "Who was made Flesh." 1
Again he refers to St John when he says : " Ex
cept ye be born again, ye shall not enter into
the Kingdom of Heaven. That it is impossible
for those who have once been born to enter into
the wombs of those that bore them is evident " 2
(John iii. 3-5). In the Dialogue, 3 after quoting
Ps. xxii. 20 f., in which " My only begotten " (rov
/jLovoyevf) pov) occurs, he proceeds : " For that
He was only begotten to the Father of all
things, peculiarly born of Him, His word and
power, and that He afterwards became man
through the virgin, as we learned from the
Memoirs, I have before shown " (John i. 18).
Altogether there are about twenty obvious refer
ences, and half as many more echoes of St John
in the Apologies and the Dialogue.
It is thus in a high degree probable that Justin
knew and used the fourth Gospel. But how
does the admission bear upon a Gospel collec
tion ? Professor Harnack s view may be referred
to. 4 That Justin knew the fourth Gospel he
1 Apol., i. 32. 2 Apol, i. 61.
3 Dial., c. 105. 4 Chronologic, pp. 673-5.
IO4 A Gospel Collection Justin Martyr.
holds to be overwhelmingly probable. That he
classed it with the Memoirs and regarded it as
the work of the Apostle John, he says, cannot
be proved. He will not deny that Justin held
the fourth Gospel to be the work of John the
Apostle, and his judgment as to the authorship
of the Apocalypse appears to him to weigh in
favour of the Gospel also. "We must accord
ingly leave the possibility, ay, the probability,
open that the description of the fourth Gospel
as the work of one; of the Twelve is found about
155-160, and that in Justin." Recent criticism, 1
in spite of Harnack s doubt, is favourable to an
affirmative answer. As we have already seen,
Justin speaks of the Gospels as " composed by
Apostles of the Lord and their followers " a
form of expression which accurately describes
the Gospels as we have received them, two
written by Apostles, St Matthew and St John,
and two by apostolic followers, St Mark and St
Luke. It seems, further, to be quite possible,
and of some degree of probability, that Justin,
and his antagonist Trypho as well, knew not
merely separate Gospels, but a Gospel collection.
"In your so-called Gospel" says Trypho, 2 " I am
1 Leipoldt, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, p. 130,
n- 5-
2 Dial., c. 10.
Justin and a Collection. 105
aware that there are commandments so wonder
ful and great that nobody can be supposed able
to keep them." " In the Gospel He is recorded
to have said : All things have been delivered
unto Me by My Father; and no man knoweth
the Father save the Son, nor the Son save the
Father, and they to whomsoever the Son may
reveal Him" (Matth. xi. 2;). 1 " The Gospel"
here spoken of as a unit is evidently the same as
"The Memoirs," and the identification lends prob
ability to the view that Justin had some collec
tion, which may have been the original of Tatian s
Diatessaron. There is, in fact, a historical
presumption of some weight furnished by the
Diatessaron of Justin s pupil, that Justin was
possessed of a collection, or a harmony of some
sort himself. As has been noted already, Justin
does a considerable amount of harmonising in his
quotations. He weaves together passages, espec
ially from the parallel narratives of St Matthew
and St Luke, in a way which has suggested an
exercise of memory, but which may be better
explained by the existence of some kind of har
mony, if only of the Synoptic Gospels. If the
Memoirs were a kind of harmony like the
Diatessaron, and its original or pattern, we
should have an explanation of the absence of
1 Dial., c. 100.
106 A Gospel Collection Justin Martyr.
express references to the Evangelists. It has
been observed that Justin has nearly two hundred
references to Old Testament books, and quotes
them by name, whereas he never once names
the writer of a Gospel. If he were simply quot
ing "the Gospel" or Memoirs which had
taken the form of a harmony, his quotations
could not well be assigned to the individual
writers, merged as they were in this combined
whole.
Justin s allusions to facts, and even sayings, not
found in our canonical Gospels are interesting. 1
He speaks of Jesus as born in a cave, of the wise
men as coming from Arabia, of Jesus as making
yokes and ploughs in the carpenter s workshop.
He alludes to the circumstance that " when Jesus
came to the river Jordan where John was baptiz
ing, as Jesus went down into the water also fire
was kindled in the Jordan," a circumstance
which, singularly enough, is found in certain
manuscripts of the Old Latin in this form : " And
when Jesus was baptized a great light shone
around from the water, in so much that all feared
who had come near." It is to be noticed here,
however, that Justin is careful not to give apostolic
authority for "the fire kindled in the Jordan," for
he follows this statement on his own authority
1 See Zahn, GK. i. 537 ff.
Justin and other Sources. 107
with the further statement that " the Apostles of
our Christ Himself recorded that when He came
up out of the water the Holy Spirit as a Dove
lighted upon Him," where the Apostles are St
Matthew and St John in whose Gospels it is.
Justin is equally careful not to ascribe the heavenly
words at Christ s baptism in the apocryphal
form: "Thou art my Son, this day have I
begotten Thee," to the Memoirs, but he adds that
the Memoirs of the Apostles tell how the devil
came to Him and tempted Him. 1
There are two sayings of our Lord recorded by
Justin which are not found in the Gospels : " For
this reason also our Lord Jesus Christ said, In
whatsoever things I find you, in these also shall
I judge you"; 2 " Christ said there shall be
schisms and heresies." 3 These references are
a very slender foundation upon which to build
up any theory of a rival Gospel having been
used by Justin. That the Gospel according to
the Hebrews may have been the source of these
and other features in the numerous references
of Justin is quite possible, but they may also
have come to Justin by oral transmission. 4
1 Dial., 88. 2 Dial., 47. 3 Dial., 35.
4 With regard to the y A/cro UiXdrov quoted by Justin (Apol., i.
35), Professor Stanton has made it probable that this is not a mere
rhetorical expression such as we find in some of the Fathers appeal
ing to authority, but a Pilate-record which may well have been
io8 A Gospel Collection Justin Martyr.
Upon a review of the evidence afforded by the
references we may confidently hold that the
Memoirs of Justin were a Gospel collection
such as was undoubtedly known later to the
Muratorian Fragmentist, toTatian, and to Irenaeus.
That they included St John s Gospel is highly
probable. That they included any other Gospel
than our Four is very improbable, for any such
Gospel would have been read along with the
others in the services of the early Christians, and
must have become well known. No such Gospel,
however, is known either to the Muratorian Frag
mentist or to Irenaeus, and we may believe there
was no such Gospel. We are thus entitled to trace
back the collection of Four Gospels to the middle
of the second century, which marks the period of
Justin s literary activity. Professor Charteris has
well shown the absurdity of the contention that
these Memoirs were not the Gospels of our Canon.
"The position, then, is," he says, 1 "that Justin
used and Trypho read a Gospel which cannot
be traced elsewhere or afterwards, a Gospel
before Justin, Tertullian, and the writer of the Gospel of Peter,
as well as the writer of the Letter professing to be from Pilate to
Claudius, contained in the Acts of Peter and Paul and the Acta
Pilati. The parallelisms taken singly are of insignificant account,
but taken together they form an argument of considerable strength.
Gospels as Historical Documents, pp. 104-133.
1 Canonicity, p. Ixiii.
Justin and the Four Gospels. 109
different from that which his contemporary
Marcion knew and mutilated : a set of books
which so marvellously disappeared that Irenaeus
(who had possibly known Justin, and certainly
wrote within thirty years of his death), when he
descanted on the four winds, the four quarters of
the world, and the four Gospels, knew nothing of
them ; and that Justin, when he quoted the apoc
ryphal book or books, quoted so strangely that
Eusebius, with all his love of gossip and all his
historical lore, and many another besides him,
never knew that the quotations were not from
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. That is to say,
that the Memoirs to which Justin challenged the
attention of the Roman emperor, senate, and
people, and which were, therefore, well known,
had so completely perished from the earth that
Irenseus, who was familiar with the affairs of
Asia, Rome, and Gaul, appealed to friend and foe
to remark how marvellous is God s great provid
ence in giving to Christendom and to humanity
the Four Gospels the Four, neither more nor
less Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."
That these Gospels by Justin s day were already
marked out as of special authority and sacredness
needs hardly to be said. They were esteemed as re
cords of the Life of Jesus, and were accounted the
more worthy because they came from Apostles and
no A Gospel Collection Justin Martyr.
apostolic men. They were publicly read at the
Christian assemblies for worship on "the day of
the sun," and read alternately with the Prophets,
as long as time permitted. And more remark
able still Justin himself quotes them as he quotes
the books of the Old Testament, which was the
whole Bible of the primitive Church. In the
Apologies and in the Dialogue we find copious
quotations from the Old Testament, from the
book of Genesis, from the Psalms, and from the
Prophets Isaiah being by far the most frequently
quoted. In his Old Testament quotations he
names the books and quotes with general exact
itude, because he has the Old Testament Scrip
tures before him in the Septuagint translation. 1
If he quotes the New Testament with greater
freedom, it is because he seems to quote from
memory; and if he never names his authorities,
it is because their names are of no consequence in
his contentions. But that he quotes the Gospels
as he quotes the Prophets shows that already in
his judgment they are of the same authority, and
though he never calls them New Testament
Scripture, he attributes to them the qualities of
1 Even in connection with the Old Testament he makes awkward
mistakes. He miscalls the Prophets, puts Zephaniah for Zechariah,
Jeremiah for Daniel, Isaiah for Jeremiah, Hosea for Zechariah, and
Zechariah for Malachi, and he dovetails verses from different parts
of Scripture. Gildersleeve, Justin Martyr, p. xxxiv.
Justin and the Four Gospels. in
Scripture by placing them on the level of the
Old Testament books. 1
1 There is good reason to believe that Marcion, while making
choice of St Luke as his Gospel, with excisions to suit his views,
was acquainted with all Four Canonical Gospels. As the conclusion
of a very thorough examination of Marcion s New Testament, Pro
fessor Zahn (GK. i. 680) affirms that the heretic found in the
Church in his day the same Gospels as Justin tells us were used in
the services of the Lord s day, and as Tatian, two decades later,
worked into his Diatessaron.
112
CHAPTER VII.
THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS THE NUMBER FOUR.
FROM Irenaeus we travel back thirty years to come
to Justin Martyr, and from Justin another thirty
to the Shepherd of Hermas and the testimony
borne to a Gospel collection in that remarkable
writing. There is some difficulty in fixing the
exact date of this apocalyptic work, the Pilgrim s
Progress of the early Church, greatly esteemed
and highly popular. The great Fathers of the
third century, like Origen and others, considered
Hermas to be the person of that name saluted by
St Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. Zahn
holds that it is another Hermas who is the subject
of the visions, though he gives the book an early
date, about 97-100 A.D. But a date somewhat
later, between no and 125 A.D., has commended
itself to other scholars. 1 The Shepherd is pecu-
1 See Stanton, The Gospels as Historical Documents, p. 41
and n. Cf. p. 81.
Dr Charles Taylor and Hennas. 113
liar, even among the apostolic Fathers, in this
that it cites no book either of the Old or New
Testament by name, although it makes allusion
to an apocryphal book (now lost) called Eldad
and Modat. It does not contain a quotation
from any apocryphal gospel. Its whole teach
ing is in perfect accord with the New Testa
ment Scriptures. It had the widest circula
tion of any extra - canonical book, and seems to
have been regarded as in some sense Holy
Scripture down to the first decades of the third
century in Rome and in Carthage, in Catholic
and Montanist circles alike. When the Sinaitic
Manuscript was discovered by Tischendorf a large
portion of the Shepherd was found incorporated,
showing the high esteem in which it was held
when that manuscript was written. There are
coincidences to be found in the Shepherd with
the language and teaching of St Matthew, St
Mark, St Luke, St John, the Acts, i Cor
inthians, Ephesians, Hebrews, i Peter, and the
Apocalypse. There are, besides, resemblances of
expression, and even of sentiment, to St James s
Epistles.
It has fallen, however, to Dr Charles Taylor, 1
Master of St John s College, Cambridge, a
mathematical scholar who, like the late Rev.
Dr Salmon of Dublin, betook himself in later
1 See his Witness of Hermas to the Four Gospels.
H
114 The Shepherd of Hermas The Number Four.
life to critical and patristic studies, to discover
through its somewhat obscure allusions the sug
gestion which lies at the foundation of Irenaeus s
description of the Fourfold Gospel. That Iren
aeus knew the Shepherd is certain. He quotes
it, and goes the length of calling it Scripture.
Eusebius, who had diligently perused the works
of Irenaeus, takes special note of his quotation
from the Shepherd. The passages of Hermas,
in which Irenaeus may have found the suggestion
of Four and only Four Gospels, are as follows :
"That thou seest a woman sitting upon a bench,
strong is the assertion : for the bench hath four
feet, and stands firm : for the world is compacted
of four elements " (Vis. iii. 13. 3) ; " Therefore
there were four rows in the foundation of the
tower. . . . The first stones, hesays, the ten
that have been laid for foundations, are the first
generation, the twenty- five the first generation
of just men ; and there are the twenty-five pro
phets of God and His servants; and there are
the forty apostles and teachers of the preaching
of the Son of God " (Sim., ix. 4. 3 ; 15. 4). The
woman sitting upon the bench is the Church,
and the four feet of the bench are the Four
Gospels, upon which the Church is upheld.
Again, the tower in the Similitude which stands
four - square, and which also adumbrates the
Church, suggests the Four Gospels by the four
Four Gospels in the Shepherd. 115
rows in its foundations. The correspondence
between Irenseus and Hennas is remarkable, and
is regarded by Dr Charles Taylor as too close
to be accidental. While Hermas depicts the
Church as seated on a bench, with four feet rep
resenting the Four Gospels, Irenaeus says that
the Son of God sits upon the four cherubim or
living creatures, and that these correspond to
the Four Gospels. While Hermas argues that
the Gospels, the support of the Church s seat,
are four in number because the world is com
pacted of four elements, Irenaeus concludes that
the Gospel must have had four constituents to
correspond with the fabric of the universe, which
was understood to be made up of four elements.
Origen compares the Four Gospels to the
elements of the faith of the Church, of which ele
ments the whole world consists. While the four
rows in Hermas stand for cosmic generations,
each of which had received a message of good
news, corresponding to one of the Four Gospels,
Irenaeus says that the Logos revealed Himself
to all the four generations, and each of them
received a covenant, each revelation and cove
nant corresponding to one of the canonical
Gospels. " The Church in Irenaeus," says Dr
Taylor, " has the Gospel for its one pillar, and
the Gospels for its four pillars : analogous to this
in Hermas are the figures of the one bench with
n6 The Shepherd of Hennas The Number Four.
four feet, and the one foundation with its four
rows or tiers representing the Gospel and the
Gospels. ... I maintain, on the strength of the
evidence adduced, that the famous sayings of
Irenaeus on the actual and necessary fourfoldness
of the Gospel were not his own, but a reproduc
tion of what Hermas had written a generation
before ; that Hermas, in his enigmatic way, rep
resented the Four Gospels as having already
obtained a unique and canonical position ; and
that, in any case, they had obtained this posi
tion in the lifetime and to the knowledge of
Hermas, who wrote not in any obscure corner
of the earth, but in its capital, Rome." l
The argument of Dr C. Taylor, elaborately
and carefully worked out, with proofs too num
erous to be mentioned here, is not to be set
aside by the remark that the Church had not
yet definitely selected the Four Canonical Gos
pels in the time of Hermas. That is just the
point to be proved. Such selection can only be
attested by individual references like this ; and
though the allusions of Hermas are of a cryptic
character, the well-known passage in Irenaeus
suggests the key. It cannot be alleged that
there is any allusion to any other Gospel than
our four. Professor Stanton, who comes on in
dependent grounds to the same general con-
1 Witness of Hermas, pp. 17, 18.
Four as the Number of Gospels. 117
elusion as Dr Taylor, does not consider himself
justified in holding that by this time " the Four
Gospels were consciously separated off from all
other works of the same kind and classed to
gether as of co-ordinate and unique authority,
in other words, that the conception of the * four
fold Gospel already existed." 1 The obscure
character of the references in Hermas may not
allow us to go all the length spoken of by
Dr Stanton. But if there be anything in Dr
Taylor s argument at all, we find a collection
of Four Gospels with a certain measure of
authority half a century earlier than the famous
declaration of Irenseus, and several years earlier
than the date assigned by Baur and his school
for the composition of St John and others of
the Four.
What, then, is the ground for FOUR as the
number of the Gospels ? Four, to be sure, is
the number of the world, and Four Gospels would
mark the universality to which the message of
the Gospel is destined, even as there are four
primary elements, four winds, four seasons, four
corners of the earth, and four quarters of the
heavens. The number four was a sacred num
ber in the old Hebrew literature : Jehovah mani
fested His glory in the quadrangular plan of both
1 Gospels as Historical Documents, p. 47.
n8 The Shepherd of Her mas The Number Four.
tabernacle and temple, and in the city, which
lieth four-square, whose length is as great as its
breadth, the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. 1
It is not, however, out of regard to the symbol
ism of numbers that the Church has adopted
Four Gospels. There might have been seven,
which is the number of perfection, as there are
Seven Spirits of God, and Seven Churches re
presented by seven lamp - stands in the Apoc
alypse ; or five, as there are in man five senses,
and in the Law and in the Psalms five books.
Symbolism, as we have seen, is with Irenseus an
afterthought ; it does not determine the Gospel
quaternion, TO rerpaevayyeXiov, but is used in
accordance with the fashion of the East, and of
the time, to illustrate it. There were by the
beginning of the second century Four Gospels,
which soon approved themselves to the heart
and conscience of the Church as trustworthy and
reliable records of the Life and Discourses and
Death and Resurrection of Jesus. Any tentative
records that might have been in circulation (such
as those referred to in Luke i. i) had served their
purpose and fallen out of use. There were no
others that could be said to approach them in
1 Harnack likens the Four to a university with its quadriviuvn,
its four faculties, John being the theologian, Luke the physician,
Mark the philologist, Matthew the lawyer. In the Muratorian
Canon St Luke is designated Studiosus juris. Medicine in the
Earliest Church History, Texte u. Unters, viii. 39.
Four as against One. 119
general acceptance and use in all the widely
separated quarters of the Church, not the Gos
pel according to the Hebrews, which was appar
ently a Gospel for Jewish Christians, the Gospel
of a sect, and outside of Palestine little known ;
not the Gospel of the Egyptians, which was
clearly ascetic in its character and confined to a
small circle of admirers ; not the Gospel of Peter,
which was docetic in its tendency, and known
only in Syria and Egypt. No party ends were
served by the Four Gospels as we have them.
They were not perhaps at first all regarded with
equal favour, we have seen that St Matthew
was most popular from the beginning, but they
were the best known and the most widely cir
culated. And thus they grew into the canon of
Four which we find stereotyped in Irenaeus, and
exclusively upheld by Tertullian and Origen.
The question has been raised, Why have we in
the New Testament four Gospels, and not one
only ? l One would appear to be the most natural
and most convenient for the purposes of private
and public edification ; and the followers of
Marcion were content with one, the mutilated
Luke of that heretic; the Syrian Christians
found Tatian s Diatessaron for centuries adequate
to their requirements ; and other sects had only
i Harnack, Reden u. Aufsatze, ii. 239 ff. ; Leipoldt, Geschichte
des neutestamentlichen Kanons, p. 142 ff.
120 The Shepherd of Hernias The Number Four.
one Gospel. Professor Harnack is of opinion
that the four would ultimately have been melted
down into one had not special circumstances
intervened to make the Church cling tenaciously
to the Gospels which had found favour, and to
use them as an arsenal of weapons to overcome
hostile assaults. The main factor in this situ
ation was Gnosticism; and Gnosticism on the
one hand, and the practical requirements of the
Church on the other, stayed the process of
unification and left us with the four. Leipoldt
thinks that the process was hindered by the
requirements of the struggle of the Church against
Marcion, by the early efforts at canonising indi
vidual books of New Testament Scripture, and
especially by the rivalry which he conceives to
have subsisted at a very early stage between the
Synoptics and the fourth Gospel. This implies
that the Synoptic Gospels had been already
brought together and were regarded as an entity
by themselves ; but there is nothing to show
when this had taken place. That the idea of the
fourfold Gospel took possession of the Church
when she recognised in St John s Gospel that
which seemed to make the representation of the
Redeemer adequate and complete, is most natural.
There is reason to believe that the collection of
the Four was first realised and completed in Asia
Minor, though it may have happened simultan-
Four yet One. 121
eously under the influence of the same ideas in
other provinces. It may well have been borne
in upon the heart of the Church in the early
years of the second century, when St John s
Gospel was yet fresh with the dew of heaven,
that now the Christian had in those Four Gospels
a complete portrait of the Master and a full-orbed
presentation of His teaching. The teachers of
the Church may have felt that in those four they
had enough, yet none to spare. That they were
four, coincided in the spiritual realm with other
works of God in the realm of natural and physical
things. That they soon came to be all esteemed
of equal authority, and all to be sacred Scripture,
like the books of the Old Testament, is clear
from the witness of the early Fathers. Although
St Mark and St Luke were less esteemed in some
quarters, yet all four have been preserved, and
St Mark has now come to its own. They were
Four Gospels, but yet One Gospel : an adequate
substitute for the oral teaching of the Apostles,
now that those great lights had disappeared
from the firmament of the early Church.
122
CHAPTER VIII.
ST MATTHEW. I.
FROM an early period in the second century,
therefore, the Four Gospels were regarded as
a unity. As early as the middle of the second
century they were read in the weekly assemblies
of the faithful ; and not much later we find them
translated into other tongues, so that remote and
newly evangelised peoples might learn for them
selves the wonderful works of God in human
redemption. The tradition connecting them
with Apostles and followers of Apostles is already
established, and from that time onwards is prac
tically unanimous. The Four Gospels are anony
mous books. In St Matthew and St Mark the
personality of the author is nowhere betrayed
by the use of the first person. In St Matthew s
Gospel the Apostle himself is indeed mentioned ]
as called by Jesus, and included among the Twelve,
1 Matt. ix. 9 ; x. 3.
The Gospels and Tradition. 123
but with nothing to identify him as the author.
The names of St Mark, St Luke, and St John
are not once found in the Gospels bearing their
names. From the fourth Gospel it can be
gathered that the author was a Jew and an
Apostle of the Lord ; but it is doubtful whether,
from the indications furnished by the Gospel
itself, the shrewdest of the early Fathers could
have determined that he was the son of Zebedee.
From the preface of the third Gospel and the
We-sections of the Acts of the Apostles, as well
as from the medical phraseology which abounds
in both books, a conclusive argument has been
built up in favour of the authorship of St Luke,
St Paul s companion in travel and beloved
physician. But there is absolutely no sign in
early Christian antiquity of any attempt thus
to read the internal evidence of St Luke s in
valuable histories. There was, however, no
necessity for such an appeal to internal evidence.
Theophilus of Antioch, when he, first of the early
Fathers, named St John as the author of the
fourth Gospel, only followed the tradition which
had come down to him ; and Irenseus, when, in
his great work Against Heresies, he named St
Matthew, St Mark, St Luke, and St John as
the authors of the four, did so because those
names had come down to his time along with the
Gospels. It might, of course, be alleged that
124 st Matthew. I.
the editor, or, if it should seem more probable,
the community, who, early in the second century,
brought the Gospels together in a collection, on
their own authority ascribed the Four Gospels
to Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark respectively.
Since, however, the Gospels were written singly
and independently, and without reference to any
such later collection, and since they were read,
copied, and circulated before being gathered into
a collection, there would be during the period of
their separate circulation no lack of tradition
concerning their origin and authorship. Such
traditions have been preserved for us in the
pages of Eusebius, Irenseus, Papias, and else
where. The description in the titles of the
Gospels, in the originals and in the earliest
versions, assigning the authors at a later time,
finds its most natural explanation in the fact
that particulars as to authorship contained in the
titles accompanied the individual Gospels from
the beginning. The most recent discussions
of the internal evidence confirm this early tradi
tion in the case of St Luke and St Mark, to the
extent of conclusively settling their authorship
of the third and second Gospels respectively ;
and if we cannot, in the present state of our
knowledge, claim such a full accord between the
external and internal evidence in the case of St
Matthew and St John, we shall see that in their
Wide A ttestation of St Matthew. 125
case also the tradition is not contradicted, but to
a large extent borne out by a due consideration
of the internal indications of authorship contained
in these Gospels.
Of the early and wide circulation of St
Matthew s Gospel there are abundant proofs.
Of all the New Testament books it has the
largest attestation in early Christian literature.
There are references to it, or coincidences with
its language, in practically every one of the
early Fathers. There is some reason to believe
that it was the first of the New Testament books
to be translated into Syriac, and as the Syriac
was probably the earliest of the versions, the trans
lation of St Matthew s Gospel would be the first
to be executed. It is quite likely that it was
early read by the Rabbis, and that this is one
explanation of those parallels which have been
set up between the teaching of Jesus and the
Rabbis, discrediting the originality of Jesus. 1
Not only by Catholic writers, but by heretics,
St Matthew seems to have been held in authority
and esteem. The Ebionites, before they became
schismatical heretics and rejected the Super
natural Birth, seem to have used the Gospel
i The saying of "the mote "and "the beam" (Matt. vii. 3-6),
which is ascribed to Rabbi Tarphon (loo A.D.), might well have
been borrowed from St Matthew. See Erich Bischoff, * Jesus und
die Rabbinen, pp. 1-8, 89, 90.
126 St Matthew. I.
according to St Matthew. 1 Ptolemseus, one of
the disciples of the gnostic Valentinus, quoted
frequently words of our Lord recorded by St
Matthew; and the Marcosian sect of heretics,
who had a fondness for apocryphal gospels
and forged spurious writings of their own, also
exhibit references to it. 2 Even the heathen
Celsus is a witness to the wide circulation and
use of St Matthew s Gospel. While Celsus
knew the other Gospels he was most familiar
with St Matthew, being acquainted with the
incidents recorded in the first two chapters, and
many circumstances attending the passion of
Jesus, the putting a reed in His hand, the
giving Him gall to drink, the earthquake at the
Crucifixion, the rolling away of the stone by an
angel. 3 A singular proof of the wide circulation
of St Matthew s Gospel is seen in the fact that
Pantsenus, the head of the Catechetical School
of Alexandria, on the occasion of a journey to
India, that is possibly to South Arabia, found
a Gospel under the name of St Matthew written
in Hebrew characters circulating among the
Christians of this region. " For Bartholomew,
one of the Apostles," says Eusebius, 4 " had
1 Irenseus, Adversus Haereses, i. 26. 2.
2 Westcott, Canon, p. 313 ff., where examples are given from the
pages of Epiphanius and Irenaeus.
3 Patrick, The Apology of Origen, p. 91.
4 H. E., V. 10. 3.
Grounds of its Popularity. 127
preached to them and left with them the writ
ing of Matthew in the Hebrew language, which
they had preserved till that time." This was
possibly as early as 180 A.D.
It seems singular that the one Gospel which
assuredly grew up on the soil of Palestine should
have outdistanced the others so completely in
the race for the favour of the Gentile Churches.
" But for their admission into the canon," says
Professor Harnack, 1 " Mark certainly, and Luke
probably, would have disappeared. Wherein lies
the lack in Mark and Luke and the sufficiency
of Matthew ? The Gospel of Matthew is a
work vindicating Christianity against Jewish asper
sions and objections which were early taken up
by Gentile opponents. This Evangelist alone has
a distinct interest in our Lord s teaching as such :
he instructs, he proves, and all the while he keeps
the Church well in the foreground. . . . The
Gospel which in point of contents and by its
tendencies stands farthest away from Greek ideas,
the Gospel which is throughout occupied with
sharp and detailed controversy with the unbe
lieving Jews of Palestine, was early laid hold of
in the Greek communities as the Gospel most
to their mind, because it met the requirements of
defence against the narrower Judaism ; in short,
on account of its theological and doctrinal char-
1 Luke the Physician, pp. 167, 168.
128 S* Matthew. I.
acter, and its solemn and ceremonious style."
Possibly the very fact that it was the work of
an Apostle of the Lord, and the belief, early
spread abroad, that it preserved in their most
authentic form the words of Jesus, contributed
to the popularity of this Gospel. A Gospel,
moreover, which had the approval of the
Churches where the great events associated with
human redemption had transpired, was assured
of general acceptance. 1
No doubt St Matthew, by its very size,
though in this respect it comes short of St
Luke, lends itself to frequent reference and
quotation. But, after all, its character and con
tents were the ground of its early popularity.
It presents the Lord to men pre-eminently as
the Saviour of the world, the Promised Messiah,
the Desire of all nations, an aspect of Christ
always attractive to sin-burdened, sorrow-laden
humanity. A Gospel containing the Sermon on
the Mount, the Great Invitation, the Missionary
Marching Orders of the Church, and many other
notable sayings and discourses of Jesus, could
not fail to meet with general acceptance, and
was certain to be widely circulated and read and
quoted. Its parables and miracles, its sayings
and doings of Jesus, were early woven into the
ever-enlarging Christian literature. Irenseus calls
1 See Zahn, Einleitung, ii. 570, 571 (Eng. trans.)
Its Early Influence. 129
it St Matthew s, and quotes largely from it by
name. We have touching evidence of its preci-
ousness to the Christians of the province over
which Irenseus was set as ecclesiastical overseer.
One of the most beautiful and heart - stirring
relics of Christian antiquity is the Letter of
the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, written in
177 A.D., in a time of terrible persecution, to
their brethren far away in the Churches of Asia
and Phrygia. It is in this Letter that we find
the story of the youthful martyr, Blandina,
whose loyalty to Christ amid tortures unspeak
able remained unshaken till death, and of the
aged Pothinus, the predecessor of Irenaeus in
the see, who suffered martyrdom at the age of
ninety. The Letter is saturated with New
Testament phraseology. And what connects St
Matthew with it is a reference which it contains
to the wedding-garment (evSvpa ydfjuov) in the
parable of the Marriage of the King s Son, which
is spoken of as an object of ambition to those
martyrs and a hope to cheer them amid the
agonies they were called to endure. It is pos
sible to say that this was an expression which
had come down from the lips of the Lord by
oral transmission. But it seems rather to be
one of those indirect proofs which go to show
that St Matthew was read, and pondered, and
yielded comfort and strength to persecuted
130 St Matthew. I.
Christians, in the Valley of the Rhone on the
western frontiers of Christendom, in the third
quarter of the second century. Such incidental
allusions, employed with such effect, are often
more convincing than direct citations.
Another such allusion, clearly indicating ac
quaintance with another discourse of Jesus pre
served by St Matthew and by him alone, may be
noticed. It is found in Justin s First Apology,
where, claiming that the Christians are helpers
and allies of all who seek the public good, he
declares that one great motive with them is the
thought that they are going forward either to
everlasting punishment (alcomov KoKacnv) or to
eternal salvation, according to the lives they
have lived and the works they have done. The
allusion to " everlasting punishment " is made
in such a way that we naturally ascribe it to
St Matthew s record of our Lord s discourse on
the Last Judgment, and it shows how His
teaching wrought itself into the lives of His
followers as an influence of the greatest moral
power. Whilst incidental allusions have great
value, there is no lack by the last quarter of
the second century of large quotations. Irenaeus
quotes large passages from St Matthew by name.
Athenagoras the Athenian, in the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, has quotations of considerable length
from the Sermon on the Mount in the Apology
Testimony of Justin Martyr. 131
which he presented to the Emperor in vindica
tion of the character of the Christians.
But it is time to set forth in a more connected
fashion the chief proofs of the early and wide
circulation of St Matthew s Gospel, beginning
with JUSTIN MARTYR in the middle of the second
century. We have seen that Justin s Memoirs
of the Apostles that is, Memoirs written by
Apostles and their followers included the Four
Gospels of the New Testament canon. Whilst
making use of all these, and probably of the
Gospel of Peter besides, Justin shows a prefer
ence for St Matthew and St Luke. In his First
Apology, addressed to the Emperor, Justin has
quotations from all the Gospels, in the case of
St Matthew and St Luke often extending over
two or more verses together. From St Matthew
there are at least 112 quotations and from St
Luke at least 60. Of these two Evangelists,
every chapter except one is laid under contribu
tion either in the Apologies or in the Dialogue.
In the Dialogue he more than once (c. 23 and c.
100) claims that the Virgin is of the family of
David and Jacob and Isaac and Abraham (Matt, i.)
We find in Justin a very clear and explicit refer
ence to the Virgin Birth. He takes pains to
show that it happened in fulfilment of prophecy,
and to explain the sense in which he and the
Christians of early days held it to be miraculous.
132 S2 Matthew. 7.
Referring first to the prophecy of Isaiah, he quotes
the prediction, apparently from memory, " Behold
a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they
shall call His name (epovaw eVt rc5 ovo^art, avrov
Me# rip&v o eo?) God with us." In case the
Emperor should think this was just such a thing
as was fabled by the poets regarding Jupiter,
Justin proceeds to explain. 1 He gives the view
of the Virgin Birth held by the Church from the
beginning, and tells how the angel " proclaimed to
her the glad tidings (evrjyyeXio-aTo avrrfv), saying :
Behold thou shalt conceive of the Holy Ghost,
and thou shalt bear a Son, and He shall be called
Son of the Highest, and thou shalt call His name
Jesus, for He shall save His people from their
sins, as those who recorded (pi aTro^vrj/jLo-
vevaavres) all things concerning our Saviour
Jesus Christ taught." The words of the Evan
gelist are : " The angel of the Lord appeared
[unto Joseph], saying, Joseph, thou son of David,
fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife : for that
which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
And she shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt
call His name Jesus : for He shall save His people
from their sins" (Matt. i. 20, 21). Justin con
ceives it necessary to explain what St Matthew
does not, how the name Jesus is connected with
the salvation of His people : " Jesus in Hebrew
1 Apol. i. 33.
Testimony of Justin. 133
is Saviour (cr&m;p)." Justin appeals chiefly to
St Matthew, but there is a clause introduced
from St Luke, who is his authority for "He
shall be called Son of the Highest," and in the
context he refers, though not in exactly quoted
words, to the Holy Ghost, who was to come upon
the Virgin, and the power of the Highest who was
to overshadow her. The birth at Bethlehem not
named, but described as a village thirty-five fur
longs from Jerusalem is also connected by Justin
with Micah s prophecy (v. 2 ; Matt. ii. 6), and a
point which might weigh with the Emperor its
historical truth is referred by him to the enrol
ment papers in the time of Cyrenius (009 real
e/c TWV aTroypacfrwv rwv yevojjievwv
iov, rov vfjierepov ev lovBaia Trpairov
When we remember that St Matthew
writes upon Jewish soil and that his thoughts
move within the circle of Jewish ideas, we see
how groundless the suggestion is that the Virgin
Birth belongs to the region of classical myth
and legend. But we see from Justin s deprecat
ing remark how easily such an explanation of
the Virgin Birth could have arisen when the
miraculous event was told to the people of
classic lands.
Of other incidents recorded in St Matthew
Justin has many examples. The Wise Men
1 Apol. i. 34.
134 S Matthew. 7.
from Arabia, who were guided by a star and
presented offerings of gold and frankincense and
myrrh, and who were warned not to return to
Herod the flight into Egypt the massacre of
the innocents and Rachel weeping for her children,
are all given, even with occasional exaggeration
of language, as in the first Gospel. We find
also notices of the preaching of the Baptist and
latterly of his death, of the Temptation by Satan,
following the order of St Matthew, and general
references to the miracles of Jesus. Between the
commencement of our Lord s ministry and the
closing scenes Justin refers to few events. Of
the events and details of Passion week Justin has
many notices the triumphal entry, the institu
tion of the Lord s Supper in remembrance of
Him, the Agony, the Crucifixion, the parting of
the raiment by lot, the mocking of the bystanders,
the last Word of resignation, the Burial, the Re
surrection on the day of the sun, the appearance
to the disciples on the way to Emmaus, and the
Ascension. There is a considerable mixture of
St Luke and St Matthew, the former here having
the preponderance. The Agony is referred to in
the Dialogue twice, in one case in terms clearly
taken from St Luke (xxii. 44) (c. 103), and in the
other in terms strongly suggestive of St Matthew
(xxvi. 39) (c. 99) : " On the day when He was about
to be crucified He took three of His disciples aside
Testimony of Justin. 135
with Him to the mount which is called Olivet,
immediately adjacent to the Temple in Jerusalem,
and prayed, saying Father, if it be possible, let
this cup pass from me. And after this He prays,
and says : Not as I wish, but as Thou wilt." The
references to the calumny of the Jews as to the
alleged theft of the body of Jesus by His dis
ciples and to the Great Commission are from St
Matthew alone.
Whilst Justin s references to incidents of the
Gospel narratives are not scanty, his references
to the teaching of Jesus and quotations of His
words are numerous. St Matthew furnishes a large
proportion of these references. There are long
quotations from the Sermon on the Mount, and
in the Apology (cc. xv. xvi.) they are made with a
view to show the power of moral transformation
that dwelt in the teaching of Christ. The par
able of the Sower, the sign of the Prophet
Jonah, the charge to the Apostles, and others,
are to be referred to St Matthew only. But there
are many quotations in which there is a weaving
together of both St Matthew and St Luke, as if
already there were a Harmony in existence ; and
there are references where we cannot tell whether
it is St Matthew or St Luke that is quoted.
One very remarkable reference on the part of
Justin is to those notable words of Jesus : "All
things have been delivered unto Me of My Father,
136 St Matthew. 7.
and no man knoweth the Son save the Father
and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him "
(Matt. xi. 27). Two things are to be noted here.
First, this is one of the passages in a Synoptic
Gospel which enable us to understand how Jesus
could have delivered the discourses we find in St
John. In the Dialogue (c. 100) Justin quotes
the words in the following terms : " And in the
Gospel (that is, the Gospel record) it stands
written, All things have been delivered unto Me
of My Father, and no man knoweth the Father
save the Son ; nor yet the Son save the Father
and they to whomsoever the Son may reveal
Him." These words appear specially to have
attracted Justin, whose theological, and especially
Christological, views have a distinct affinity with
St John. They are quoted also in the First
Apology, simply as words of Jesus, twice in the
same chapter (Ap. i. 63), though without the lofty
claim which introduces them, and in the same
order as in the Dialogue, inverting St Matthew s
order. Irenaeus, 1 it should be said, also quotes the
passage in its context, giving the words in Justin s
order. Marcion also has the passage, and uses
eyi>o>, as Justin does, in preference to ywwaicet, or
eTTiyiyvtoo-Kei. But the quotation is clearly one of
those cardinal sayings of Jesus which were often
quoted, and not always in exact terms, by early
1 i. 20, 3.
Testimony of Justin. 137
writers. Secondly, the passage is found also
almost in exact parallelism in St Luke (x. 22 if.)
It belongs, accordingly, to the non - Marcan
source, which is drawn upon both by St Matthew
and St Luke, which Wellhausen calls Q, and
which, being the earliest collection of sayings of
Jesus that we know, has been called by critics
the very earliest Gospel. 1 This source has been
extracted from the evangelic materials and set
forth with much ingenuity by Professor Harnack, 2
who has an elaborate and interesting discussion
of this very passage. If this collection of dis
courses, as Holtzmann calls it, is St Matthew s,
and if it was written, as Professor Ramsay thinks
probable, in the lifetime of Jesus, then it is a wit
ness, remarkable and most precious, to the lofty
doctrine of the person of Christ which we find in
the Synoptic Gospels and in St John. No wonder
that Justin and Irenaeus prize it so highly.
There are in Justin sayings attributed to Jesus
which have a basis in discourses recorded in St
Matthew, but cannot be said to be citations from
his Gospel or any other of the four. " The very
things which He declared beforehand would
happen in His name we see enacted before our
eyes and in serious fact. For He said, Many
shall come in My name, outwardly arrayed in
1 Sir William Ramsay, * Expositor, May 1907.
2 Spriiche u. Reden Jesu.
138 St Matthew. I.
sheep s skins, while inwardly they are ravening
wolves. And, There shall be divisions and
heresies. And, Beware of false prophets, who
shall come to you, outwardly arrayed in sheep s
skins, while inwardly they are ravening wolves.
And, There shall rise up many false Christs and
false apostles, and they shall lead astray many
of the faithful." 1 The predictions of divisions
and heresies and false apostles are not found in
St Matthew s Gospel, although false Christs and
false prophets are predicted in the great eschato-
logical discourse in Matthew xxiv., and in the
same discourse the disciples are warned against
teachers of error who are to come in His name.
St Paul, in his Epistles to the Corinthians, has
references to schisms and heresies (i Cor. xi.
18, 19), and to false apostles (2 Cor. xi. 13). The
Clementine Homilies (xvi. 2) combine the two
predictions, and Hegesippus 2 speaks of false
Christs, false prophets, false apostles. Tertul-
lian and Lactantius attribute to our Lord a
prediction of heresies. Considering that Justin
writes in the period between the days of oral
teaching and those of entire dependence on
written Gospels, we should not perhaps go far
wrong to say that he has been indebted to oral
tradition ; and this view would find support from
references in other Christian writers. And yet
1 Dial., c. 35. 2 Euseb. H. E., IV. 22.
Second Epistle of Clement. 139
we may have here nothing more than free quota
tion from the canonical Gospels on the part of
Justin, with that rhetorical colour and exag
geration in which he sometimes indulges. An
other example of this treatment of the Gospel
record is found in the Dialogue with Trypho : 1
" Christ also Himself, saying that the kingdom
of heaven is at hand, and that He must suffer
many things of the Scribes and Pharisees, and
be crucified and rise on the third day, and again
present Himself in Jerusalem and there drink
again and eat together with His disciples, also
predicted that in the interval before His coming
again, as I said before, priests and false prophets
would arise in His name, and so it seems to have
come to pass." Here we have no quotation from
a Gospel, but we do have a memoriter blending of
words of our Lord with portions of the Gospel
narrative. There can be no doubt whatever of
the high estimation in which Justin, by the middle
of the second century, held the Gospel according
to St Matthew.
Ever since Bryennios discovered a complete text
of the so-called SECOND EPISTLE OF CLEMENT,
it has been recognised that the work is not a
letter but a homily. " After the God of truth,"
says the writer, " I send to you an exhortation to
1 c. S i.
140 S^ Matthew. /.
the end that ye may give heed to the things which
are written, in order that ye may save both your
selves and him that leadeth in the midst of you "
(c. xix.) It is clearly one of those exhortations
which the president of the Christian assembly
delivers after the reading of the Memoirs of the
Apostles or the writings of the prophets, of
which Justin has spoken. 1 But who the author
is we cannot tell. That it was Clement was
doubted as long ago as Eusebius, and none of
the early writers credit him with more than
one epistle. Although Professor Harnack 2 has
strongly pressed the claims of Rome as the
Church to which it is addressed, the marked
allusion to the Grecian games, and probably to
the Isthmian festival, in similar terms to St Paul s
well-known allusions in i Cor. ix., points more
decisively to Corinth. If the audience addressed
belonged to Corinth, this fact would explain the
dissemination and reputed authorship of the docu
ment, for it would thus come to be associated
with the genuine Epistle of Clement of Rome to
the Corinthians. 3 The internal evidence, in the
judgment of Lightfoot, whose opinion is adopted
by Stanton against Harnack, points to 140 A.D. as
the date of its composition. That the unknown
1 Ap. i. 67.
2 Zeitschrift f. Kirchengeschichte, i. 264 ff., 329 ff.
3 See Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, ii. 197 ff.
Second Epistle of Clement. 141
preacher was acquainted with all the Synoptic
Gospels is clear, for there are quotations from all
of them, St Matthew being still the favourite,
though St Luke is not far behind. In chapter ii.,
after two quotations from Isaiah liv., " Rejoice
thou barren that bearest not, ... for the children
of the desolate are more than of her that hath an
husband," the author continues, " again, another
Scripture saith, I came not to call the righteous,
but sinners." The quotation agrees exactly with St
Mark (ii. 17), but might be taken from St Matthew
(ix. 13). In Luke (v. 32) the words et? perdvoiav
are added. The formula of quotation not only
assigns to the words the character of Scripture,
but expressly places them on the level of the Old
Testament already quoted. In chapter iv. refer
ence is made to the Sermon on the Mount : " Let
us therefore not merely call Him Lord, for this
will not save us ; for He saith, Not every one that
saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall be saved, but he
that doeth righteousness," which is a free quota
tion of " Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord,
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but
he that doeth the will of My Father which is in
heaven " (Matt. vii. 21 ; cf. Luke vi. 46). In
chapter viii. there is a quotation expressly said
to be from " the Gospel " : " For the Lord saith
in the Gospel, If ye kept not that which is little,
who shall give unto you that which is great ?
142 St Matthew. I.
For I say unto you that he which is faithful in
the least is faithful also in much." This is a
combination of St Luke (xvi. 10) and St Matthew
(xxv. 21, 23). In chapter xiv. there is an interest
ing distinction between the Old and the New
Testament: the former he called "The Books"
(TO, Pi/3\ia, the Bible), while the latter is called
"The Apostles" (01 aTroo-roXot). If the latter
term implies that the Gospels, to which reference
is made, are not yet technically and expressly
placed on the level of Holy Scripture, there are
expressions elsewhere which substantially include
them in that category. The author (c. xiii.) in
troduces a saying of our Lord in the Gospels
with the words " God saith," having immediately
before referred to the Oracles of God (ra \6yia
rov eoO) in the same connexion a mode of ex
pression which surely implies that he regarded the
passage read as part of the Word of God. And
when towards the close of his discourse he de
scribes the reading of the Scriptures as the voice
of "the God of Truth " speaking to the congrega
tion, we feel that there is but a little way to the
full recognition of the Gospels as Holy Scripture
which we find in Irenseus and Clement of Alex
andria. There is a strong resemblance to Justin s
manner of quoting, both in the freedom with
which citations are given and in the combining
of passages from St Matthew and St Luke.
Apology of Aristides. 143
The fact that there is no trace of St John s
Gospel need not be taken as implying that it
was not known, for the references to St Paul s
Epistles, which could not but be well known to
the writer, are comparatively few, and the writing
from its small size does not give scope for many
quotations. No fewer than four sayings are
attributed to our Lord which are not to be
found in our canonical Gospels. One of them,
at least, belongs to the Gospel of the Egyptians,
which, with its teaching disparaging the rela
tions between the sexes, never had any wide
circulation, and never was a serious rival of
the Four Gospels. When we remember that
Clement of Alexandria, and even Origen, who
drew an absolute line of demarcation between
our Four Gospels and any other, still quoted
from the Gospel according to the Hebrews in
the beginning of the third century, we need not
be surprised to find this writer in the middle
of the second using an apocryphal Gospel. The
Gospel according to St Matthew has at any rate
the assured position which it occupies in the
earliest Christian writings.
Still earlier there is in the recently recovered
Apology of ARISTIDES, the Athenian, which was
presented to the Emperor Hadrian about 125 A.D.,
a significant reference to St Matthew s Gospel.
144 S Matthew. I.
It also relates to the Virgin Birth. "The
Christians," says Aristides in his vindication of
the character of his co-religionists, " trace the
beginning of their religion to Jesus, the Messiah ;
and He is named the Son of God Most High.
And it is said that God came down from heaven,
and from a Hebrew virgin assumed and clothed
Himself with flesh ; and the Son of God lived in
a daughter of man. This is taught from that
Gospel which a little while ago was spoken
among them as being preached ; wherein if ye
also will read, ye will comprehend the power
which is upon it." l It is, upon the whole, rather
St Matthew than St Luke who is referred to :
" Behold a virgin shall be with child and shall
bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name
Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with
us " (Matt. i. 23). But in the reference, the
words " the Son of God Most High " are sug
gestive of St Luke. That it was from a written
and authoritative record that Aristides makes
his appeal to the Emperor seems clear from the
context ; and in another place he designates his
source " the writings of the Christians " (c. xvii.)
1 Apology of Aristides, c. ii.
145
CHAPTER IX.
ST MATTHEW. II.
ABOUT the same time as Aristides there is testi
mony to St Matthew from Phrygia, in Asia
Minor, which is of special interest and signific
ance. It comes from PAPIAS, the Bishop of Hier-
apolis, who in a fragment of his Expositions of
the Oracles of the Lord, which Eusebius has pre
served, expressly designates Matthew the author
of a Gospel. Irenseus, 1 in referring to his great
work in five books, calls him " an ancient man "
" a man near to the beginning " (ap^alo^ avrjp) 2
a hearer of John the Apostle and a companion of
Polycarp. He was a man whose early career
belonged to the Apostolic age and the begin
nings of Church life in Asia. Eusebius ques
tions the statement of Irenseus that Papias was
a hearer of John the Apostle, and the subject
1 Adversus Hsereses, v. 33. 4 ; cf. Euseb. H. E., III. 39.
2 See Zahn, Forschungen, vi. no ff.
K
146 S* Matthew II.
is one of the most intricate and perplexed in
early Christian literature. But the testimony of
Irenseus, who was himself a hearer of Polycarp,
is to be preferred in a matter of this kind,
especially as Eusebius is not without a certain
bias against Papias for his millenarianism, and
has, as we shall see, an interest in making him
out to be the disciple of another John. Papias,
at any rate, was in a position to ascertain and
to record particulars relating to the Apostles and
early founders of the Church. At Hierapolis there
lived apparently to a long age Philip and his
daughters. Whether this was Philip the Evan
gelist, whom St Paul found at Csesarea on his
last journey to Jerusalem, and who had four
daughters possessed of prophetic gift (Acts xxi. 8,
9), as ancient writers assert ; or Philip the Apostle,
who ended his days in Hierapolis, and had three
daughters, one of whom " lived in the Spirit," 1 is
of little consequence, because in either case par
ticulars such as Papias is represented as obtaining
from them went back to the earliest days of the
Church. In his Expositions, which may be
referred to about 125 A.D., Papias incorporated
many incidents and particulars which he had
gathered through a long life, and which bore
upon the Gospel histories. If only this treatise
were to come to light like the Didache, the
1 Euseb. H. E., III. 39.
Papias s Expositions. 1 147
Gospel of Peter, the Apology of Aristides, and
other valuable finds of recent years, we should
obtain the solution of problems and difficulties
which the fragments of it have raised for the
critic and the historian.
The question as to the precise character of
these Expositions (\oyicov fcvpia/cwv ef^^o-e^) has
produced a large controversial literature. In his
brilliant Essays on Supernatural Religion * the
late Bishop Lightfoot brought his great learning
and keen historical imagination to the examina
tion of this subject. Against his opponent, who
held that Papias had no knowledge of our Gospels,
he established to the satisfaction of many scholars
that the work of Papias consisted of three strata :
(i) a written text, in all likelihood comprising our
Gospels ; (2) interpretations explaining the text
and forming the main object of the work; and
(3) oral traditions illustrative of these interpreta
tions, which Papias had made it his aim, evidently
for a long time before writing, to gather from the
elders, and followers of the elders, and survivors
of the Apostolic age; "for," he explains, "I did
not think that what was to be obtained from
books would profit me so much as that which
came from a living and abiding voice." 2 He
mentions Gospels by St Mark and St Matthew,
1 See the Essays on Papias of Hierapolis, pp. 142-216.
2 Euseb., III. 39. 4.
148 S* Matthew. II.
and there is good reason to believe that he was
acquainted with those by St Luke and St John.
They would lie at the basis of his work. An ex
tract from the work of Papias is given by Irenaeus l
with reference to the millennial reign : " As the
elders who saw John the disciple of the Lord relate
that they had heard from him how the Lord was
wont to teach and speak of those times : Days
will come when vines will grow each having ten
thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand
branches, and on each branch ten thousand twigs,
and on each twig ten thousand clusters, and in
each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape
when pressed shall yield twenty -five measures
of wine. . . . These things Papias testifies in
writing in the fourth of his books. And he added,
saying: These things, however, are credible to
them that believe. And when Judas, the traitor,
did not believe, but asked, How shall such
growths be accomplished by the Lord? Papias
says the Lord said : They shall see who shall
come to those times." It is such traditions
passed from mouth to mouth which Papias uses
to illustrate his expositions and prefers to the
productions of Gnostic writers like Basilides and
Valentinus already in circulation, which are "the
books " he evidently has in view. 2
His testimony to St Matthew is as follows :
1 Ad versus Haereses, v. 33. 3. 2 Lightfoot, p. 161.
The Logia. 149
" So then Matthew compiled his oracles (ra
\6jia) in the Hebrew tongue, and every one
interpreted them as he was able." 1
The following considerations may help to eluci
date this difficult statement :
1. On one particular amid many points of
diversity there is unanimity among scholars.
When we find the word Hebrew employed we
may be sure that Aramaic is meant the dialect
of Hebrew which was vernacular among the in
habitants of Palestine in the time of our Lord
the original language of the Gospel, inasmuch
as it was the language in which He uttered the
discourses recorded in the Gospels and all the
gracious words which proceeded out of His
mouth.
2. A question as to which there is still great
divergence of opinion is the precise meaning of
"compiling his oracles." Schleiermacher sug
gested that it meant a collection of our Lord s
discourses and sayings which St Matthew had put
together. This view has been adopted by scholars
of eminence, and in the " criticism of sources "
which is presently so much in vogue it occupies a
conspicuous place. It is held that this collection
of discourses made by the Apostle Matthew, and
described by Papias, is one of the most important
sources of the First Gospel, and that from it the
1 Euseb. H. E., III. 39. 16.
150 St Matthew. II.
Gospel takes the name of St Matthew. Professor
Burton of Chicago finds certain longer discourses
which have no parallel in either St Mark or St
Luke, and certain shorter sayings of Jesus, com
prising together about 230 verses, or a little over
one-fifth of the whole Gospel of St Matthew.
" The comparison of the Gospels," he says, 1 " cer
tainly suggests that these passages constituted
a source of our Gospel of Matthew. It is in
favour of the supposition that they in fact were
contained in, or constituted, the original collec
tion of sayings of Jesus to which Papias refers,
that it conforms to this ancient and undisputed
tradition, and that it explains, as no theory
which makes the Matthaean Logia a source of
both Matthew and Luke or of all three Synoptists
can explain, how the present Gospel of Matthew
obtained the name. On this view the present
Gospel naturally took the name of that old docu
ment which it alone, of our present Gospels at
least, reproduced, and of which it might almost
be considered an enlarged edition."
This hypothesis has found favour with critics
of opposite schools, but it has serious difficulties
to encounter. First, there is no clear trace in
early Christian antiquity of any such collection ex
isting by itself, and independently of St Matthew s
1 Principles of Literary Criticism and the Synoptic Problem,
p. 41. Compare W. C. Allen s * St Matthew, p. Ivi. ff.
The Logia. I5 1
Gospel. 1 And secondly, rd \6<yia cannot be re
stricted to discourses or sayings alone. In the
Epistle to the Hebrews (v. 12) ra \6yia rov
BeoO stands for the entire revealed word of
God, embracing history and narrative as well
as Divine utterances and words. In Romans
(iii. 2) St Paul uses ra \6jia rov Oeov to de
scribe the whole Divine Revelation which was
entrusted to the Jews. 2 Lightfoot 3 concludes a
careful examination of this point with the asser
tion that " the oracles " (ra \6yia) can be used as
co-extensive with "the Scriptures" in the time
of Papias. And Hilgenfeld, 4 who would not be
swayed by bias in a matter of this kind, declares
1 Professor Harnack, in his recent contribution to New Testament
Introduction ( Spriiche und Reden Jesu, p. 172), after having care
fully and skilfully extracted from St Matthew and St Luke the
non-Marcan document common to them, which consists wholly of
discourses with no narrative, and is now generally known as Q,
thinks the Matthcoan Logia of Papias may probably be that source,
but he considers that both Eusebius and Papias understand by
Matthew s Logia our St Matthew. The subject is ably discussed
by Professor Sir William Ramsay, Expositor, May 1907.
2 The title A.6yia Irjcroy, Sayings of our Lord, is not to be
applied to those remarkable collections which Messrs Grenfell and
Hunt have discovered at Oxyrhynchus, first in 1897 and again in
1903. In the second instalment of these texts the opening formula
is not TO. \6yia but ot \6yoi ol TO?OI of \6yoi ofts eXaM/crei/ I^ffovs
suggesting Acts xx. 35 and I Clement xiii., where we have the
same formula, " remembering the words of the Lord Jesus (TUV
\6ycav TOV Kvptov lijffov) how He said."
3 Essays on Supernatural Religion, p. 176.
4 Einleitung in das Neue Testament, p. 456,
152 St Matthew. II.
that of a mere account of the sayings of Jesus
Papias has no thought : " Not a mere collection
of sayings, but a complete Gospel is what Papias
regards Matthew as having written in Hebrew."
3. There is now the question whether any such
Gospel, written in Hebrew, was known in early
Christian antiquity. Papias is not our only
authority for the existence of a Hebrew Gospel
of Matthew. Irenaeus, who knew the Four
Gospels so well, and held them to be of ex
clusive authority, traces them back to the
Apostles themselves, and says of St Matthew : 1
" Matthew published his Gospel among the Heb
rews in their own language while Peter and
Paul were preaching and founding the Church
in Rome." Whether the account of Irenaeus
was exclusively dependent upon Papias we can
not tell, but Origen, whose writings show not the
slightest acquaintance with the work of Papias,
speaks of a Hebrew Matthew with as much con
fidence as Irenaeus, who had read Papias s book.
Eusebius 2 records the journey of Pantaenus to
the East and his discovery among the people of
India possibly the people of South Arabia of a
Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, which had been left
to them by Bartholomew the Apostle ; and in
another place 3 he states that " Matthew, who had
at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was
1 Adversus, iii. i. I. 2 H. E., V. 10. 3. 8 H. E., III. 24. 6.
The Logia. 153
about to go to other peoples committed his
Gospel to writing in his native tongue, and thus
compensated those whom he was obliged to leave
for the loss of his presence." Jerome and Epi-
phanius recognise the existence of the work,
although when Jerome speaks of the Hebrew
original of St Matthew as a book in his possession
he means rather the Gospel of the Nazarenes ;
and Epiphanius appears to be under the influence
of a similar confusion. That there had been a
Gospel, bearing the name of Matthew and circu
lating in Aramaic in the early days of Christi
anity, is witnessed by a continuous tradition
from Papias to Eusebius. 1
4. This early Aramaic Gospel of Matthew was
apparently no longer in existence in the time of
Eusebius. If there had been a copy extant any
where, it surely would have been in the library of
Pamphilus, which was at the historian s service.
Even in the time of Papias it was probably no
longer in use, for Papias refers to the time when
each one translated it as already lying in the past.
That this translating referred to written trans
lations or revisions of St Matthew s writing does
not require to be supposed. It is much more in
accordance with probability that oral translation
is what Papias had in his mind. But what is
here in view is that Christians who had know-
1 Cf. Zahn, Das Evangelium des Matthaus, pp. 18, 19.
154 St Matthew. II.
ledge of Aramaic and Greek endeavoured to make
the contents of this Aramaic Gospel intelligible
to congregations with little or no knowledge of
this language. Zahn l considers that it was never
the book of Matthew which was translated, but
always and only single sections from it, and, what
was the chief point for Papias, always a portion of
the Lord s sayings (\6yia Kvpia/cd). And he says
it was not Christian worship as conducted in his
younger years which Papias describes, " In this
case he would have used the imperfect (rjpfjujveve)
to express the fact that the reading of sections of
Scripture in Greek was exchanged for the trans
lation of Hebrew passages. Neither does he
describe a condition of things in existence at the
time when he wrote (epfirjvevei), but employs the
aorist (rjp/jirjvevo-e) to indicate that it was some
thing belonging entirely to the past. It was so
once ; when Papias wrote it was no longer neces
sary." 2 By this time the Greek Matthew with
which we are familiar had taken its place. From
the Didache, from the Epistle of Barnabas, and
from Polycarp s * Epistle to the Philippians we
know that the Greek Matthew was already widely
known and circulated. How the transition was
made from the Hebrew Matthew to the Greek is
one of those questions upon which we have no
1 Einleitung in das Neue Testament, ii. 510 (Eng. trans.)
2 Ibid., p. 514 (Eng. trans.)
The Logia. 155
information. But it must have been made early,
and the Greek Gospel must have always been
held to be a complete substitute for the Hebrew
book, and never bore any other name than that
of St Matthew.
5. Professor Zahn l is of opinion that the tran
sition was made through the Aramaic Matthew
being translated by some unknown hand, or, as
with the Targums and the Latin Bible, a succes
sion of hands, at a very early period into Greek,
which soon achieved a wide circulation. There
need be no prejudice against such a translation,
which is intrinsically probable. As Jesus made
use of Aramaic in preaching to the people and
instructing His disciples, all the discourses of
Jesus, and the words spoken by Him to the Jews
who had intercourse with Him, had to pass
through a process of translation in order to be
recorded for us in our Greek Gospels. Not in St
Matthew alone, but in St Mark and St Luke as
well, commentators refer words of Jesus from
time to time to an Aramaic original in order to
understand them fully, or to explain the different
forms in which they occur in the tradition. In
his learned Commentary on St Matthew, Pro
fessor Zahn makes this assumption of translation
a cardinal point in his exegesis ; and Wellhausen,
in his Commentaries on the Synoptic Gospels,
1 Einleitung in das Neue Testament, ii. 515 (Eng. trans.)
156 St Matthew. II.
goes back also to the Aramaic foundation of
portions of the narrative.
That the Gospel according to Matthew appeared
at first in an Aramaic dress seems to be established
by the testimony of Papias, corroborated by other
witnesses whom we have adduced. That the
Greek St Matthew is substantially identical with
this Hebrew Gospel of Matthew known to Papias
appears to me in the highest degree probable.
There are, however, drawbacks which must leave
our conclusion short of certainty.
(1) It cannot be affirmed with any strong show
of evidence that our present St Matthew reads
like a translation from Aramaic into Greek. It
has, in the judgment of many scholars, all the
marks of an original and independent composi
tion. The latest English commentator of note 1
asserts that " our First Gospel was not originally
written in Hebrew, nor is it likely that in its
present form it is the work of an Apostle." So
important a witness as Dr G. Dalman, in his
Words of Jesus, casts the weight of his name
into the scale against the view that there was
an Aramaic Gospel of Matthew.
(2) It is difficult to account for the similarities
found in the Marcan sections of St Matthew
on the assumption that St Matthew wrote in
1 W. C. Allen, International Commentary, on St Matthew,
p. Ixxx,
Polycarp. 157
Hebrew, and that his Gospel was not translated
into Greek till, say, 85 A.D., as Zahn maintains.
But until we are better able to estimate the
influence of oral tradition in the making of our
Gospels, and until the relations between the
Synoptic Gospels are more satisfactorily cleared
up, it is premature to press for a final solution
of a literary question like this.
It is a great deal to be assured that by 125 A.D.,
and on any view of the fragment of Papias, a con
siderable time before, the Gospel according to
Matthew was in circulation among the churches
of Phrygia as an authoritative record of the Life
and Teaching of Jesus, and bearing the name of
the Apostle called from the receipt of custom to
follow Christ.
That the Greek St Matthew was in existence
from a very early period is clear from the testi
mony of the Apostolic Fathers. Passing from
Papias, the first witness to be considered is one
whose period overlaps that of the Phrygian
Bishop, POLYCARP of Smyrna. As a personal
hearer of St John, along with Papias and others
who had seen the Lord, he is able to attest the
harmony between the reminiscences of those
early disciples and the written records of the
Lord s miracles and teaching. " I am able to
describe the very place in which the blessed Poly-
carp sat as he discoursed, and his goings out and
158 S* Matthew. II.
his comings in, and the manner of his life, and
his physical appearance, and his discourses to the
people, and the accounts which he gave of his
intercourse with John and with the others who
had seen the Lord. And as he remembered
their words, and what he heard from them con
cerning the Lord and concerning His miracles
and His teaching, having received them from
eye-witnesses of the Word of Life, Polycarp
reported all things in conformity with the written
records," is the testimony of Irenaeus 1 regarding
one whom he reverenced as a father in the Gospel.
That "the written records" thus referred to
were the Gospels is questioned by Professor Har-
nack, 2 who regards the expression as meaning
the Old Testament Sciptures, but on grounds
which are unconvincing. The testimony of a
personality situated as Polycarp was is speci
ally valuable. We have from his own hand only
a single letter written To the Philippians ;
and we have also the Martyrdom of Polycarp,
probably from a contemporary hand, giving par
ticulars of his death. The letter to the Philip
pians, however, was written long before his
martyrdom. Its purpose was to acknowledge
receipt of letters from the Philippian Christians
relating the behaviour of Ignatius as he passed
1 Letter to Florinus, Euseb. H. E., V. 20.
2 See above, p. 63.
Poly carp. 159
through Philippi, along the Via Egnatia, on the
way to martyrdom at Rome. It must, therefore,
date somewhere between 107 A.D. and 117 A.D.,
the limits within which the martyrdom of
Ignatius is believed to lie. Polycarp has in
all between thirty and forty coincidences with
the language of New Testament Scripture, al
though the number of cases in which he refers
to Old Testament Scripture is small. Of the
Evangelists we can be fairly sure that he was
acquainted with St Matthew. He quotes x as
follows from the Sermon on the Mount : " Re
membering what the Lord said as He taught
Judge not that ye be not judged; forgive and
it shall be forgiven to you ; have mercy, that
ye may obtain mercy; with what measure ye
mete, it shall be meted to you again. And,
Blessed are the poor, and the persecuted for
righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven " (Matt. v. 3, 7 ; vii. 12 ; cf. Luke vi.
20, 36-38). And again, 2 " Praying the All-
seeing God with supplications not to lead us into
temptation (Matt. vi. 13), as the Lord said, The
spirit is willing but the flesh is weak " (Matt.
1 Ep. to Phil., c. ii. 3. The first clauses here have parallels in
Clement of Rome and in Clement of Alexandria, but there is no
ground for believing that they came from any other record than
our Gospels. See Westcott, Canon, p. 62 ; Stanton, The
Gospels as Historical Documents, pp. 25, 27.
2 C. vii.
160 S* Matthew. II.
xxvi. 41). These references which we claim for
St Matthew show affinities sometimes with St
Mark and sometimes with St Luke ; but though
they do not absolutely infer quotation from any
one of them, they at least suggest the knowledge
in the Philippian Christians of a body of truth
like the Sermon on the Mount as it is recorded
in St Matthew. Having evidence of the existence
of St Matthew s Gospel from Polycarp s contem
porary, Papias, we naturally assign the quotations
which have a certain measure of verbal agree
ment, and entire agreement with its contents,
to that Gospel. The Epistle of Polycarp to the
Philippians is very brief, and allows but little
scope for quotation ; and yet into its texture
are woven unmistakable allusions to i Peter,
i John, and more than one Epistle of St Paul.
" St Matthew," says Professor Stanton, 1 "is the
only one of the Synoptic Gospels, the signs of
the use of which in the sub - Apostolic age are
really impressive." It is just this Gospel which
the critics at the present time are least dis
posed to acknowledge as the work of an
Apostle, and these early references to it are
the more welcome.
1 The Gospels as Historical Documents, p. 17.
CHAPTER X.
ST MATTHEW. III.
THE Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians was
in all probability of the same date as the
Ignatian Epistles, the history of which it in a
manner continues. IGNATIUS, Bishop of Antioch,
had been condemned to be thrown to the wild
beasts at Rome in one of the persecutions which
arose in the reign of Trajan. From Antioch
to Smyrna he had travelled by land under
the charge of a maniple of Roman soldiers,
whom he calls ten leopards ; and at Smyrna he
wrote letters to the Ephesian, the Magnesian,
and the Trallian Christians, whose representa
tives met him at Smyrna ; and also to the
Roman Christians, to whom he was going, and
whom he begged to do nothing that would
tend to save his life and rob him of the crown
of martyrdom. After leaving Smyrna he halted
at Troas, from which he would make the pass
age across the ^Egean to reach the Via Egnatia
L
162 St Matthew. III.
at Neapolis, and there he wrote a letter of thank
ful remembrance to the Smyrnaean Christians,
another to Polycarp their bishop, and still an
other to the Christians of Philadelphia, whom
he had seen on his way by the northern road
from Antioch to Smyrna. These seven, amid a
mass of letters which have come down to us in
three different recensions, are now, thanks to the
labours of Lightfoot, Zahn, Harnack, and other
scholars, recognised as genuine; and falling as
they do within the second decade of the second
century, they are of the very greatest value in
their bearing upon the Gospels. Of his sig
nificant testimony to St John s Gospel we shall
hear in another chapter. Of the Synoptics, the
parallels in Ignatius are much closer to St
Matthew than to St Mark or St Luke. Indeed,
there is hardly a parallel that can be main
tained with St Mark, and only one or two with
St Luke, whereas there are eight references
which may without hesitation be assigned to St
Matthew, and one or two more of somewhat
doubtful claims. In the opening of the Epistle
to the Smyrnaeans (chap, i.), Ignatius exultingly
honours Christ as " being truly of the family
of David according to the flesh, Son of God
according to the will and power of God, born
truly of the Virgin, baptised by John in order
that all righteousness might be fulfilled by
Ignatius. 163
Him." The reference here is undoubtedly to
St Matthew (iii. 15), because he alone of the
Evangelists gives this motive for our Lord s
baptism. In other letters 1 Ignatius says, "These
are not the planting of the Father " ; and " Keep
yourselves away from evil plants, which Jesus
Christ does not cultivate, because they are* not
the Father s planting," the reference in both
being to the words of Jesus recorded by St
Matthew (xv. 13), " Every plant which my
Heavenly Father did not plant shall be rooted
up." Another interesting parallel is found in the
letter to Polycarp (c. i.), where Ignatius ex
horts him " Bear all as also the Lord beareth
thee. . . . Bear the sicknesses of all like a
perfect athlete." Here the somewhat unusual
word (/3acrrae) is that of St Matthew, and not
the word of the LXX translating the well-known
passage of Isaiah (liii. 4) on which it is founded,
and it can scarcely be doubted that Ignatius has
taken it from our First Gospel (Matt. viii. 17).
In the same letter (c. ii.) and in the very
next verses we seem to have reminiscences of
St Matthew again : " If you love disciples who
are good, no thanks to you for it : rather by
meekness subdue the more pestilent. Every
wound is not healed by the same application :
stay violent attacks with gentle applications. Be
1 Trallians, xi. I ; Philad., iii. i.
164 St Matthew. III.
thou wise as a serpent in all things, and always
harmless as the dove " (Matt. v. 46, x. 16). In
the Epistle to the Ephesians 1 Ignatius has a
reference to the incident of the anointing of the
Lord at Bethany in the house of Simon the
leper, which is recorded by St Matthew, St Mark,
and St John : " For this cause," says Ignatius,
"the Lord received ointment upon His head
that He might breathe immortality upon His
Church." In St John it was not the head but
the feet which Mary anointed. As between St
Matthew and St Mark, the verbal coincidence
is more on the side of St Matthew (xxvi. 6),
which is most likely the source of the reference.
In the Epistle to the Magnesians there is
a very striking reference to the descensus ad
inferos, and Christ is represented as having
visited the souls of patriarchs and prophets and
to have raised them up. " How," exclaims
Ignatius, 2 " shall we be able to live without
Him for whom the prophets waited as their
teacher, being His disciples by the Spirit ? And
because of this, He whom they righteously waited
for, when He was come, raised them from the
dead." This refers in all probability to the dim-
cult passage in St Matthew (xxvii. 52), where
we read " Many bodies of the saints that had
fallen asleep arose ; and coming forth from the
1 Ephes. xvii. i, 2 Magnes. ix. 3.
Clement of Rome. 165
tombs after His rising, entered into the Holy
City and appeared unto many." There are also
allusions which point to the Synoptic tradition
such as "Be ye salted in Him" 1 (Matt. v. 13,
Mark ix. 50, Luke xiv. 34) ; and " The tree is
known by its fruit" 2 (Matt. xii. 33, Luke vi. 44).
There are other passages in which traces or
echoes of the Gospel of St Matthew are to be
found, but the proofs of the knowledge of this
Gospel by Ignatius are sufficiently clear. It
is a question whether he is not indebted to
some other source for the statement highly
coloured even for Ignatius that at our Lord s
manifestation to the ages " a star shone in
heaven above all the stars, and its light was
inexpressible, and its strangeness caused aston
ishment ; and all the rest of the constellations,
with sun and moon, formed themselves into a
chorus round it, while it with its light outshone
them all." 3 Ignatius keeps so strictly within the
Gospel tradition, that it is very doubtful whether
we need to go beyond the star in the East in the
second chapter of St Matthew for the allusion,
which contains also a manifest reminiscence of
Joseph s early dream (Gen. xxxvii. 9).
From Ignatius we pass on upwards to CLEMENT
OF ROME. His First Epistle to the Corinthians,
1 Magnes. x. 2. 2 Ephes. xiv. 2. 3 Ephes. xix. 2.
166 St Matthew. III.
which is usually set down to 96 A.D., and is written
by him in name of the Church of Rome, contains
numerous and lengthened quotations from the
Old Testament, especially from the Pentateuch,
the Psalms, and the Prophet Isaiah, occupying in
all nearly a quarter of the whole Epistle. But
whilst he quotes so copiously, he gives no refer
ences to Old Testament books. His formulae of
quotation are fairly numerous and varied (Xeyet
yap TTOV : (rvveTTifjiapTVpovcrrjs KOI rfjs y/mt/)?}? : ovrco
yap yeypaTrrai : 0)9 eirayyeiKa^evov rov eoO : ourw?
yap (pTjcriv 6 eo? : irpoXeyei yap rjfMv). His Old
Testament quotations are often very loose, and
his manner of quotation in the New Testa
ment is marked by the same characteristic, so
that verbal divergence from the canonical text
need not imply any other source. The Epistle to
the Hebrews is quoted at least a dozen times, and
St Paul s First Epistle to the Corinthians, perhaps
both Epistles, are alluded to by name. Of refer
ences to the Gospels that can be tabulated there
are not more than a dozen altogether, and of
these not more than four can be attributed to
St Matthew. One reference brings into juxta
position a passage of an ancient prophet Jere
miah and words of our Lord in the Sermon
on the Mount. Clement first quotes 1 Jeremiah
(ix. 23, 24), " Let us do according as it stands
1 i Cor. xiii.
Clement of Rome. 167
written (for the Holy Spirit saith, Let not the
wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the
mighty man glory in his might, neither let the
rich man glory in his riches, but rather let him
that glorieth glory in the Lord, to seek Him, and
to do judgment and righteousness), especially
remembering the words of the Lord Jesus which
He uttered as He taught meekness and patience,
for thus He said, Be merciful, that ye may obtain
mercy ; forgive, that ye may be forgiven ; as ye
do, it shall be done unto you ; as ye give, so shall
it be given to you; as ye judge, so shall ye be
judged ; as ye show kindness, so shall kindness
be shown to you ; with what measure ye mete it
shall be measured to you" (Matt. vi. 14, 15; vii.
i, 2 ; Luke vi. 31, 36-38). Another reference *
strongly suggesting St Matthew, but also St Mark
and St Luke, is, " Remember the words of Jesus
our Lord : for He said, Woe to that man ; it were
better for him that he had not been born than
that he should make one of My chosen ones to
offend; it were better for him that a millstone
were hanged round his neck and he cast into the
sea, than that he should cause one of My little
ones to stumble " (Matt. xxvi. 24, xviii. 6 ; Mark
ix. 42 ; Luke xviii. 2). The occurrence here of the
rare word translated " cast into the sea " (Karairov-
, used by St Matthew alone of the New
1 I Cor. xlvi.
168 St Matthew. III.
Testament writers, fixes the main reference as
being to St Matthew. Clement shows no signs
of knowing other Gospels than the canonical
Four, and his Christian literature mirrors itself
not merely in the few direct quotations. It lies
behind his way of thinking, behind his way of
putting things, and behind his language. Nothing
in this Epistle points to other writings, and his
testimony can be claimed without hesitation for
St Matthew s Gospel. 1 " These Epistles of Clem
ent and Polycarp," says Dr Charteris 2 and we
may add those of Ignatius " imply the previous
acceptance of the existing documents and doc
trines of the New Testament ; and the very fact
that in the case of those to whom they were
writing, as in their own, they constantly assume
that the religion of Jesus Christ has been known
and believed, is a powerful testimony to the
acceptance of the same facts, and the prevalence
of the same truth. We may see that Clement
knew his readers to be more familiar with the
life of Jesus Christ than with the biographies
of Old Testament saints; for when he speaks
of Abraham, or Moses, or David, he thinks it
necessary to remind them of the general char
acter of the life, whereas a simple allusion to
1 Compare Gregory, Canon and Text of the New Testament,
p. 66.
2 Canonicity, p. xvii.
Barnabas. 169
the facts of the history of Jesus Christ is
enough."
Clement represents Rome ; our next witness re
presents Alexandria. This is the Epistle of BARN
ABAS, one of the most ancient witnesses, although
it is not possible to define his place in the patristic
succession with exactitude. Harnack places the
Epistle at 130-131 A.D., and Lightfoot somewhere
between 70-79. The latest discussions indicate
no ground for placing the Epistle later than the
first century. It was apparently written when
Jerusalem and the Temple were already in ruins,
and yElia Capitolina had not been founded. It is
now almost unanimously agreed that Barnabas,
" the son of consolation " (Acts iv. 36), was not
the author. 1 Judging from the fact that it was in
Egypt that the Epistle was first known and most
highly esteemed, we should say that Alexandria
was the place of its composition. What, then,
are the Gospels known to the writer, whoever he
may have been ? St Mark and St Luke can hardly
be said to find any attestation ; but it is scarcely
possible to doubt the knowledge and use of St
Matthew. There are at least two or three clear
indications of knowledge of our First Gospel.
"Let us give heed," says the writer, 2 "lest, as
1 My venerated predecessor, Professor Milligan, who wrote the
article "Barnabas" in Smith s Dictionary, held to the view that
the apostolic Barnabas was the author.
2 Bar. iv. 14.
170 St Matthew. III.
it is written (009 yeypaTrrcu), we be found many
called but few chosen " (Matt. xx. 16, xxii. 14).
The expression, " as it is written," occurs now for
the first time in its application to New Testament
Scripture. It is worth noticing that it was only
when the Sinaitic Manuscript was discovered by
Tischendorf in 1859, with a complete Greek text of
Barnabas incorporated in it, that the reading &&gt;?
yeypaTrrai, was ascertained for certain. The ex
pression points at least to a written record, and
it is important as showing that this record was
treated by the author of the Epistle as Scripture,
on the same footing as the Old Testament, which
is cited with the same formula. Another clear
parallel with St Matthew is, 1 " When He chose as
His own Apostles to go and preach His Gospel
men who were wicked beyond all sin, in order
that He might show that He did not come to
call righteous men, but sinners, He thus mani
fested Himself to be the Son of God." 2 It was
an early charge brought against Christianity that
its first preachers were some of them taken from
the lowest of the people, and Celsus in particular
made it, founding, as Origen 3 thinks, on the exag
gerated language used " in the Catholic Epistle of
Barnabas." Barnabas 4 in another place gives an
1 Bar. v. 9.
2 The best texts of St Matthew read here, "For I came not to
call the righteous, but sinners" (Matt. ix. 13).
3 Contra Cels., i. 63. 4 Bar. xii. n.
Early Heretics. 171
interpretation of Psalm ex., which he may very
well have derived from our Lord s words in His
disputation with the Pharisees, recorded in St
Matthew (xxii. 45). The author quotes fre
quently from the Old Testament, and he cites
his authorities with varying degrees of accuracy.
Dr Sanday * reckoned sixteen exact, twenty-three
slightly variant, and forty-seven variant citations
of the Old Testament in the Epistle. It was to be
expected that his New Testament citations would
have something of the same character, and we
see this in his references to St Paul s Epistles, of
which Romans and Ephesians are quoted. There
need be no hesitation in admitting his Gospel
citations, even though they may not all be exact.
There is a saying, supposed to be attributed to
Jesus, which is not found in the Gospels 2 "So,
He says, they who wish to see Me and to attain
unto My kingdom must receive Me in tribulation
and suffering." It may, however, be no more than
a dramatic enforcement of the meaning of the
emblem of the scarlet wool caught in the bramble
bush, referred to in the preceding sentences. But
the quotations already given, and other allusions
or echoes, all point to the ancient and much-
quoted Gospel according to Matthew.
From Irenseus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, and
others who have left particulars of the views
1 Gospels in the Second Century, p. 31 ff. 2 Bar. vii. 11.
172 St Matthew. III.
of EARLY HERETICS, we gather what was their
attitude to the New Testament books. The
Ebionites appear to have known of a Hebrew
Gospel of St Matthew. The Ophites, while
apparently acquainted with apocryphal writings,
allude also to New Testament books, and are
known to have used St Matthew. Cerinthus,
the contemporary of St John at Ephesus,
was acquainted with St Matthew s genealogy
of our Lord, but denied the Supernatural Birth,
making Jesus to be the son of Joseph and Mary,
and the Christ to descend upon Him at His
baptism. From what Hippolytus tells us of
Simon Magus and his heresy, we may infer that
he had some acquaintance with St Matthew s
Gospel. 1
We have thus traced the existence and use and
growing authority of our First Gospel up to the
last decades of the first century. It is with the
TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES that we
reach in all probability the earliest written
records which have survived outside the
canon of New Testament Scripture. 2 The dis
covery of this early Christian document by
Bryennios in the library of the Jerusalem
Monastery of the Holy Sepulchre at Constanti
nople in 1873, in a manuscript volume containing
complete Greek texts of the two Epistles of
1 Canonicity, p. 384. 2 Funk, Patres Apostolici, pp. vi-xix.
The Didache. 173
Clement and other writings, was a notable event
in the history of patristic literature. The Didache
or Teaching is referred to in early lists of Chris
tian books, and is included by Eusebius among
his spurious books along with the Shepherd and
others. It is even quoted (as is the Shepherd)
by Clement of Alexandria as inspired Scripture,
and such quotation is at least a tribute to its
high antiquity. It is a moot - point whether
Barnabas quotes from the Didache or the
Didache from Barnabas, but there are many
considerations favouring the former alternative.
Hermas, in the Shepherd, appropriates almost
verbatim passages of the Didache. 1 Its date
may be fixed somewhere between 80 and go A.D.
Here again St Matthew is the best known Gospel, 2
in fact, it appears to be the only one known to
the writer. St Luke may be alluded to twice or
thrice ; St Mark once ; St John s cannot be re
ferred to, for it was not yet written, and yet there
1 Mandat ii. 4-6; compare with Did., cc. i. 5, 6 ; iv. 7.
2 Of express references to Scripture there are eight in the whole
book. Two of them are to the Old Testament, with the formula of
quotation "For this is what was spoken by the Lord, as it
was said." Five are to the Gospel (i) "As the Lord commanded
in His Gospel" (viii. 2} ; (2) " Concerning this the Lord has said"
(ix. 5) ; (3) "According to the decree of the Gospel" (xv. 3) ; (4)
"As ye have it in the Gospel of our Lord" (xv. 4) ; (5) "As ye
have it in the Gospel " (xv. 3) ; and one is to an unknown authority
"Concerning this it has been said" (i. 6). It is undoubtedly St
Matthew which is the Gospel of the Didache.
174 St Matthew. III.
are expressions which might be taken to show
signs of his influence. There are twenty-five co
incidences with St Matthew, and as the Didache
was probably written in Palestine, it is natural
that St Matthew should be its authority. It is
in the Didache 1 that we find the first notice of the
Lord s Prayer outside the New Testament, given
in the form in which our Evangelist has recorded
it. It has the Doxology, which is omitted in the
oldest manuscripts and versions, and now also in
our Revised Version ; and it gives it with only
very slight verbal variations, the most important
of which is the omission of " the kingdom," so
that it runs, " For thine is the power and the
glory for ever." There is also a word-for-word
quotation of the Baptismal formula, 2 " Baptise
them in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost " (Matt, xxviii. 19). Not
able too is the version given 3 of the Golden Rule,
which takes a negative form, as contrasted with
the positive form in St Matthew and St Luke :
" All things whatsoever thou wouldest not should
be done to thee, do thou also not to another." It
is not given in the Didache with a formula of
quotation, and we cannot, perhaps, claim the ref
erence as exclusively to St Matthew. 4 It does,
1 Did., c. viii. 2 Did., c. vii. 3 Did., c. i.
4 The negative form of the Golden Rule is older than the Gospels,
and was current among the Jews at an earlier time. In the Talmud
The Didache. 175
however, differ verbally from any of the Rabbinical
forms, and the frequency of the references to
St Matthew otherwise makes the allusion to the
First Gospel probable, even though put in a
negative form. To the Great Invitation
(Matt. xi. 28) there is what is regarded by
critics of various schools as a clear reference
in "the yoke of the Lord," 1 "If thou canst
bear the whole yoke of the Lord, thou shalt be
perfect," 2 where the easy yoke of Christ, in His
gracious teaching and commands, is contrasted
with the yoke of the law of Moses and the addi
tions of the Pharisees, which their fathers were
not able to bear (Acts xv. 10). Whilst most of
the references are to discourses and sayings of
Jesus, there are allusions also to incidents in the
Gospel history as recorded by St Matthew; and
it is attributed to Hillel in the form, " Do not to thy neighbour what
is disagreeable to thee." In Tobit (iv. 15) it appears in the form,
" What thou thyself hatest, do to no man " ; and in Philo almost the
same, " What any one hates to endure, do not to him." The Stoics
had it in this negative form, and Isocrates, the Attic orator, put it
in this form, " What stirs your anger when done to you by others,
that do not to them." Buddhist and Chinese ethics are said to
possess the negative form also. Dr Charles Taylor derives the
saying from the Second Table of the Law by supposing a question
asked, " What are those things which thou shalt not do to thy neigh
bour?" And the answer given, "What to thyself is hateful." Thus
the origin of the saying would be accounted for, and its description
as the sum total of the Law. See C. Taylor, Sayings of the
Fathers ; Erich Bischoff, Jesus und die Rabbinen, p. 92.
1 Did., c. vi. See Funk, ad loc.
2 Harnack, Spriiche und Reden Jesu, p. 213 n.
176 S* Matthew. III.
from the quotations of the Didache we gather
that already our First Gospel was employed for
purposes of Christian edification and instruction,
as well as for imparting information regarding the
Life and Teaching and Death and Resurrection
and Second Coming of the Lord. When we
bring the use of the Gospel in the Churches thus
within the first century, we can see that it may
well have been in existence from the seventh
decade, as is indicated by Irenaeus, or, if that
refer to the Aramaic Gospel, we may still regard
the Greek recension as coming from a time not
much later.
The tradition attributing the First Gospel to
St Matthew has the unanimous witness of early
Christian antiquity to support it. In the Gospel
itself, although St Matthew is referred to, there is
nothing to associate him with its authorship. It
is true that in his capacity of tax collector St
Matthew was a person accustomed to writing,
and it was thus within his power to have noted
down at a very early date discourses and sayings
of Jesus for use in his labours as a preacher of
the Gospel with which he was entrusted. And
no doubt the name of one of the Twelve, associ
ated with records of the Life and Discourses and
Works of Jesus, would be the surest passport to
their early acceptance and ultimate canonisation.
St Matthew and Tradition. 177
These points, however, and the modest references
to himself in his Gospel, while they are consist
ent with St Matthew s authorship, are not suffi
cient of themselves to have suggested it. There
is no apparent motive, other than the fact, which
could have induced the early Church to assign
the most attractive and most frequently used of
all the Gospels to one of the least notable of all
the Apostles of Christ. If the object had been to
palm off a Gospel upon the Church, or to give an
air of Apostolicity to a collection of legends and
ethical teachings which came to be associated
with Jesus within the circles of the faithful, it
would surely have been one of the best known
and most conspicuous of the Apostles that would
have been selected to bear the weight of such
responsibility and honour. " Matthew, the publi
can," it has been said, 1 "is the last person with
the possible exception of Judas Iscariot upon
whom a reader of the Gospels would fix as a plaus
ible father for one of them." We are, therefore,
constrained to believe that the tradition associ
ating the name of St Matthew with the First
Gospel from the time when it first began to
circulate, which is confirmed by Papias, and
never questioned by any Gnostic writer, and
finally placed beyond dispute by Irenaeus, is
1 Expositor, July 1906, p. 75.
M
178 S* Matthew. III.
based not upon learned conjecture but upon
facts which in that age were incontrovertible. 1
1 Cf. Zahn, Einleitung, ii. 392 (English translation). Zahn s
judgment of this Gospel is worth quoting, as that of one who has
devoted to its exposition much study and vast erudition : "If the
preceding summary of the principal thoughts of the book is in the
main correct, we must admit that the work is exceedingly rich in its
content, that it is constructed according to a plan, and that this
plan is carried out to the smallest detail. In greatness of concep
tion, and in the power with which a mass of material is subordin
ated to great ideas, no writing in either Testament dealing with a
historical theme is to be compared with Matthew. In this respect
the present writer would be at a loss to find its equal also in the
other literature of antiquity" (ii. 556).
179
CHAPTER XI.
ST MARK.
IF St Matthew s Gospel has left the most numer
ous traces of its existence and influence in the
earliest Christian literature, that of St Mark has
left the fewest. This Gospel, now recognised as
possessing strongly marked characteristics of its
own, and generally acknowledged to be the
earliest of the Four, was held in early Church
history of least account among them. Even
although it was considered to be, in a certain
sense, the Gospel of the foremost of the Twelve
Apostles, the impression which it made upon the
early Church was comparatively insignificant.
This is clear from the place which it occupies
in many of the ancient manuscripts, notably in
those which represent the Western type of text,
where it is placed last in order. The textual
peculiarities connected with the last twelve verses
of St Mark have suggested to scholars that there
was a time considerably later than the time of
i8o St Mark.
its composition when this Gospel existed in no
more than one copy, which shows that it had
not been largely copied and circulated.
It is not difficult to explain the comparative
paucity of references in early Christian writings.
Our Second Gospel was not directly the work of
an Apostle, but of one who was only a follower
of Apostles. Its contents, as a study of the
Synoptic problem has shown, were already almost
wholly incorporated in the Gospels of St Matthew
and St Luke. The sections of St Mark which
have no parallel in the other two Synoptics are
less than a twentieth of the whole Gospel, al
though throughout his Gospel the Evangelist
excels the others in the minute and lifelike rep
resentation of facts. It may have been pre
judiced by the fact, for which Irenseus 1 is our
authority, that some early Gnostics used it in the
interest of their view which separated Jesus from
the Christ, declaring Christ to be incapable of
suffering and Jesus to be the sufferer. It was,
moreover, the shortest of the Four, and the
literary characteristics which have made it so
precious to scholars of modern days, and the
tokens that it is really the earliest of them all,
were not discerned by the great Biblical critics of
the third and fourth centuries. We can under
stand their attitude from the remarks of Augustine
1 Adversus Hsereses, iii. n. 10.
Augustine on St Mark. 181
in his De Consensu Evangelistarum : l " He has
nothing in his Gospel which he shares with John
alone. He has very little that is peculiar to him
self. He has still less in common with Luke
alone. But he has very much in common with
Matthew, often expressed too in just so many,
and indeed the very same, words. In these in
stances he sometimes agrees with Matthew alone
and sometimes with the other Gospels when
they run parallel with Matthew." But as long
as the view prevailed that St Mark was simply,
as Augustine called him, the pedissequus et breviator
of St Matthew, its position could not but be sub
ordinate and its influence less widely marked.
Harnack 2 has said that but for its admission to
the Canon it would have perished, and we see
how near it actually came to such a fate. " By
its inclusion in the Canon we are to-day," says
Professor Burkitt, 3 " in possession of a document
in warp and woof far more primitive than the
Churches which adopted it. The fine instinct
which reserved a place for the Gospel of Mark
among the books of the New Testament shows
the Catholic Church to have been wiser than her
own writers, wiser than the heretics, wiser, finally,
than most Biblical critics from St Augustine to
Ferdinand Christian Baur. It is only in the last
1 De Cons., i. 2. 2 See above, p. 127.
3 Gospel History, p. 261.
182 S* Mark.
half century that scholars have come to recognise
the pre-eminent historical value of the Gospel
which once survived only in a single tattered
copy."
That St Mark wrote his Gospel under the in
fluence of St Peter is one of the best attested
traditions of early Christian antiquity, and the
internal characteristics of the Gospel support the
tradition. Of the Four Gospels, " the second,"
says Origen, 1 " is by Mark, who composed it
according to the instructions of Peter." Clement
of Alexandria, in his account of the origin of the
Gospels, says : " As regards Mark, they said this
was the plan : Peter having preached the Word
publicly in Rome, and having spoken forth the
Gospel by the Spirit, many of those who were
then in Rome requested Mark, as one who had
attended Him for long and remembered what had
been said, to commit to writing what had been
spoken ; and that having composed his Gospel
he committed it to them at their request. This
becoming known to Peter, he neither forbade it
nor encouraged it." 2 The testimony of Ter-
tullian 3 has already been quoted. " Of the
Apostles, therefore, John and Matthew first in
stil faith into us ; whilst of Apostolic men, Luke
and Mark renew it afterwards. . . . That which
1 Euseb. H. E., VI. 25. 2 Euseb. H. E,, VI. 14.
3 Adversus Marcionem, iv. 2. 5. See above, p. 51.
Irenceus and St Mark. 183
Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter s,
whose interpreter Mark was. For even Luke s
form of the Gospel men usually ascribe to Paul."
" Mark, the interpreter and follower of Peter,"
say Irenseus, 1 " thus commences his Gospel
narrative : The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God." Although the critical
instinct of those great Fathers may have some
times been at fault, they may be accepted as
accurate reporters of primitive tradition, in which
capacity they are of the highest service to us.
We do not require to quote Irenseus in detail
in support of the Second Gospel after having re
corded his declaration as to the acceptance and
authority of Four, and only Four, Gospels, of which
without a doubt our St Mark was one. Although
it is not quoted in Irenseus by any means so often
as the other Gospels, the quotations show that it is
the Canonical Gospel which is before the writer.
Irenaeus vouches for the commencement in the
language of our St Mark, and he is a witness
also to the last twelve verses. These are lacking
in the Sinaitic and Vatican Manuscripts and in
Mrs Lewis s Syriac, are found in a shorter form
in some manuscripts and versions, and are
either omitted or inserted with notes of doubt
by most modern editors of the New Testament.
The words of Irenaeus are : " Also, towards the
1 Adversus Hsereses, iii. 10. 6.
184 St Mark.
conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says : So then
after the Lord Jesus had spoken unto them, He
was received up into heaven, and sitteth on the
right hand of God ; confirming what had been
spoken by the prophet : The Lord said to my
Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand, until I make
Thy foes Thy footstool." The use of St Mark s
ending, as it has come down to us, by the
larger number, though not the greater weight,
of authorities, and, among others, especially by
a writer of such wide knowledge as Irenaeus,
without any question and with no suspicion
of its genuineness, is a point in its favour
not easily overcome. There are indications 1
in Justin Martyr, the Shepherd of Hermas,
Barnabas, and even Clement of Rome, of possible
acquaintance with the ordinary ending, which
corroborate Irenasus. The verses have been found
in an Armenian manuscript of the Gospels written
in 986 A.D., with the rubric attached " Of the
Presbyter Ariston," and the inference has been
drawn that Ariston, possibly Aristion, the friend
of Papias and " a disciple of the Lord," was the
author, who added them to remedy the abrupt
ending of St Mark xvi. 8, and bring the Gospel to
a proper conclusion. 2 There is no question of the
1 See Dr Chas. Taylor, Hermas and the Four Gospels, p. 57,
and Expositor, 1893, p. 77 ff.
2 F. C. Conybeare, Expositor, 1893, p. 240 ff.
Testimony of Justin Martyr. 185
antiquity of the verses. It has even been sug
gested by the late Dr Salmon 1 that if they are
not the first conclusion written by St Mark, they
may be a second written later.
As we have already seen, 2 the MURATORIAN
FRAGMENTIST may safely be inferred to be speak
ing of St Mark when in the now mutilated open
ing of the Fragment we read, " aliquibus tamen
interfuit et ita posuit," "but at some he was
present, and so set down what he had heard."
That JUSTIN MARTYR was acquainted with St
Mark has been shown in our discussion of his
Memoirs, and we have just seen that he may
have been acquainted with the traditional ending.
In a significant passage 3 he calls the Memoirs,
from which he gives a quotation, Peter s :
" The mention of the fact that Christ changed
the name of Peter, one of the Apostles, and that
the event has been written down in his (Peter s)
Memoirs (eV rot? airo/jivrj/jLovev/jiao-w aurou), to
gether with His having changed the name of
two other brothers, sons of Zebedee, to Boan
erges, which is, sons of thunder (Mark iii. 16, 17),
tended to signify that He was the same through
whom the surname Israel was given to Jacob and
Joshua to Hoshea." The expression " his Memoirs"
1 Introduction, p. 151. Cf. Human Element in the Gospels,
PP- 530, 531-
2 See above, p. 82. 3 Dial., c. 106.
186 S* Mark.
here might be interpreted as Memoirs of Christ,
but such a subjective interpretation is quite out
of accord with the invariable usage of Justin, who
calls his authorities Memoirs of the Apostles that
is, Memoirs composed by the Apostles or others.
Another allusion of Justin to St Mark s narrative
has an interest of its own. Describing, for the
benefit of Trypho the Jew, the baptism of Jesus, he
tells how He was reputed to be the son of Joseph
the carpenter, and a carpenter Himself. " For,"
says Justin, 1 " He worked at the trade of a
carpenter, making ploughs and yokes, thereby
teaching the emblems of righteousness and ex
emplifying an active life." From St Matthew
we learn that He was accounted the carpenter s
son ; it is St Mark alone who records the question,
"Is not this the carpenter?" (vi. 3). Celsus
seized upon this, calling Jesus a carpenter to
trade (reKTovncrjv T6%wrjv), and framing from it
one of his proofs of the discreditable origin of
Christianity. Although Justin does not allude to
the Second Gospel with the frequency with which
he alludes to the First and the Third, he does
this sufficiently often to make it clear that it was
one of the Memoirs which were his authorities
for the Life and Teaching of Christ, and the
sacred books of the first Christians in their
worship.
1 Dial., c. 88.
Testimony of Papias. 187
It is PAPIAS OF HIERAPOLIS who is again the ear
liest writer to bring explicit testimony to St Mark s
authorship of the Second Gospel. The testimony
which he records in his Expositions, and which
has been preserved by Eusebius, is represented as
coming from the lips of the Presbyter John. This
personage, about whom there has been such an
amount of speculation, we believe to be none
other than the Apostle John himself. That John
the Apostle should bear testimony to St Mark s
Gospel is rendered easy of credit by the words
of Eusebius (iii. 24. 7) : " When Mark and Luke
had already published their Gospels, they say that
John, who had employed all his time in proclaim
ing the Gospel orally, finally proceeded to write for
the following reason : the three Gospels already
mentioned having come into the hands of all, and
into his own too, they say that he accepted them
and bore witness to their truthfulness." Testi
mony from such a quarter to the origin and
character of one of the Synoptic Gospels must
be of unique value, and it is necessary to examine
with the greatest care the extract of Papias which
is the foundation of this view. It will be con
venient to place in direct sequence the statement
of Papias and the comments of Eusebius con
taining the sole references in early Christian
literature to the Presbyter John, and then the
statement attributed to the Presbyter regarding
i88 St Mark.
St Mark. It is the earlier statement which sup
plies the references to the Presbyter which we
interpret as pointing to the Apostle John, the
son of Zebedee.
" But Papias himself, in the preface to his dis
courses," says Eusebius, 1 " by no means declares that
he was himself a hearer and eyewitness of the holy
Apostles, but he shows by the words which he uses
that he received the doctrines of the faith from those
who were their friends. He says : But I shall not
hesitate also to set down for you, along with my inter
pretations (ep/^Tjveia^), whatsoever things I learned care
fully and remembered carefully in time past from the
elders, guaranteeing their truth. For, unlike most people,
I did not take pleasure in those who have much to say
(rot? ra vroXXa \eyov<7i,v), but in those who teach
what is true ; nor in those who relate the precepts of
others (ra? a\\oTplas eVroXa?), but in those who relate
such as have been given by the Lord to faith and are
derived from the Truth itself. But if ever any one came
in my way who had been a close follower of the elders
(7raprjKo\ov0r)K(i)s TIS rot? Trpeo-flvrepois), I was wont
to put questions (aveicpivov) regarding the words of the
elders what Andrew or what Peter said, or what Philip
or what Thomas or James, or what John or Matthew, or
any other [one] of the disciples of the Lord said (etTrez^),
as well as regarding the things which Aristion and the
Presbyter John, the disciple of the Lord, have to say
(a re Apio-ricov Kal o irpecrfBvTepos Iwdvvrjs . . .
\eyovaiv). For I did not think that what was to be
1 H. E., III. 39. 2.
The Presbyter John. 189
obtained from books would profit me so much as that
which came from a living and abiding voice. It is
worth while observing here that he counts the name of
John twice, in the first case classing him with Peter and
James and Matthew and the other Apostles, plainly
meaning the Evangelist ; in the other case, mentioning
John again after an interval, and ranking him outside the
number of the Apostles, putting Aristion before him,
and distinctly calling him Presbyter, the inference being
that they are right who say there were two persons in
Asia bearing the same name, and that there were two
tombs in Ephesus, both of which even to the present
day are called John s. It is necessary to pay attention
to this, for it is probable that it was the second, if one
does not care to admit that it was the first, who saw the
Revelation which is by name attributed to John. And
Papias, of whom we are now speaking, confesses that he
received the words of the Apostles from those who fol
lowed them, but says that he himself had been a hearer
of Aristion and the Presbyter John. At least he men
tions them frequently by name, and gives their traditions
in his writings. . . .
Papias gives also l in his own work other accounts
of the words of the Lord on the authority of Aristion
mentioned above, and traditions as handed down by
the Presbyter John, to which we refer those who
are fond of learning. But now we must add to the
words of his which we have already quoted a tradi
tion which has been circulated concerning Mark, who
wrote the Gospel, as follows : This also the Presbyter
used to say (e\e<ye) Mark having become the inter-
1 III. 39. 14, 15.
I go St Mark.
preter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in
deed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things
said or done by Christ (ra VTTO rov XptcrroO rj \ej(0evra
$ TrpaxOevra). For he neither heard the Lord nor fol
lowed Him as a disciple, but afterwards, as I said, he
followed Peter, who was wont to adapt his instructions
to the requirements of his hearers, though not with any
intention of giving a consecutive record of the Lord s
discourses, so that Mark made no mistake in thus
writing down some things as he remembered them ;
for he made it his one care to omit nothing of the
things which he heard, and to set down nothing in
them falsely. "
We have given the two extracts in their context,
so that the important statements of Papias, with
the scarcely less important comments of Eusebius,
may be in the judgment of the reader. It is not
to be wondered at that on the right hand and on
the left, by scholars of conservative views and by
the very advanced critics, emendations of the text
have been proposed, but these have been rendered
futile by the absolute unanimity of the manuscript
authorities of Eusebius. 1 It is from the words of
Papias as they stand that we are to interpret his
references to the Presbyter John.
i. Papias intimates, in the very first words
quoted by Eusebius, that he had himself been a
learner from the elders, and had used the materials
he had received from them to strengthen or illus-
1 Funk, Patres Apostolici, p. 350 ff.
The Presbyter John. igi
trate his interpretations of the Gospel narrative.
But he was not content with what he had learned
from them directly ; if any one had come in his
way who had been in days gone by a close com
panion of those elders, he was in the habit of
questioning him to ascertain the words which
those elders spoke and set them down in his col
lections. But who were those elders from whom
he was himself a learner, and from whom and
from whose companions he obtained words of
theirs which he treasured beyond the written
narratives put in circulation by others ? It can
scarcely be doubted that they were the men of the
first generation after Christ. In all three places
where " the elders " (pi Trpecrftvrepoi) occurs it means
" the men of an earlier generation." Irenaeus
frequently has occasion to use the term when
speaking of his authorities, and to him Ignatius,
Polycarp, and Papias were " elders." To Papias
"the elders" were the men of the generation
between Christ and his own day, and he en-
numerates them here : Andrew, Peter, Philip,
Thomas, James, John, Matthew, and even
Aristion, all of them described as disciples,
and, with the exception of the last, known to us
to be disciples that is, personal followers of the
Lord. The Elder John, mentioned along with
Aristion, and ranked with him as a disciple of
the Lord, if we are to give to the title (o
192 St Mark.
fivrepos) the meaning which it has throughout the
extract, is a man of that generation, a personal
disciple of Jesus, like those honoured Apostles and
teachers who had, when Papias was making his
collections, already passed away.
2. The question at once arises, Can this Elder
or Presbyter John, who is mentioned along with
Aristion, be the same who has already been
mentioned along with Andrew and Peter and
Matthew, Apostles of the Lord, John the Apostle,
the son of Zebedee ? It seems to militate against
this view that he is only called, as Aristion is,
"a disciple," and not "an Apostle," of the Lord.
It is to be noticed, however, that the others
Andrew, Peter, and the rest are not called
by Papias " Apostles," but only "disciples" of
the Lord. And when Irenseus 1 mentions John
he designates him also " the disciple of the
Lord," although without question the John of
Irenseus is the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee. 2
Papias does not call even Andrew and Peter
" Apostles," because their significance for him
had nothing to do with their Apostolic office.
He was in search of trustworthy traditions con
cerning Jesus to incorporate with his expositions
of the Gospel narratives. Aristion, who was not
one of the Apostles, was just as important a
1 Adversus Hsereses, ii. 22. 5 ; iii. 3. 4.
2 Ibid., iii. i. i ; ii. 22. 5.
The Question of two Johns. 193
witness as the Apostle Thomas, or indeed more
so, since Papias had had no opportunity to
cross-examine Thomas as he had Aristion. He
thinks, therefore, of no distinction between those
who were Apostles and those who were not, but
designates those who had seen and heard and
followed Jesus " disciples of the Lord " (fiad^ral
rov /cvpiov), or elders (7rpeo-/3vTpoi), according as
he connects them with Jesus, or with himself and
the generation to which he belonged. 1 There
is no objection whatever to interpreting the
designation as belonging to the Apostle John
on the ground that he is called only a " disciple
of the Lord."
3. There still remains the crucial question why
John should be mentioned among the elders and
ranked with Apostles early in the statement of
Papias, and farther on should be spoken of as
the Elder John, as if he were another of the
same name and of a later generation. Did
Papias really have in his mind two Johns, or
does he speak of the one John whom alone
primitive Christian antiquity knows, in two
different relations ? The latter alternative is
suggested by the grammatical construction of the
words of Papias. We have an indirect question
referring to past time (ri elirev), and a co-ordinate
1 Funk, Patres Apostolici, p. 352 n. ; Zahn, Einleitung, ii.
437 (Eng. trans.)
N
ig4 St Mark.
relative clause containing a verb in present time
(a re \eyovo-Lv). Papias tells us that he asked
those who had learned from the Apostles of the
Lord for utterances of theirs illustrative of the
Gospel narratives, and particularly of the Lord s
discourses. He mentions Andrew and Peter and
Matthew, who had not survived to a later day,
and asked what they had said (dirov), while the
informants (7rapr)tco\ov6r)Ka)s rt?) were still in a
position to learn from them. These informants
might have lived in Palestine for a length of
time, and had opportunities long before Papias
met them in Asia to hear many Apostles and
other disciples of Jesus. In the case of Aristion
and of John, who evidently outlived the rest of
their generation, he asked, for the purposes of
his collection, at a time when they were yet
alive, when others as well as himself had oppor
tunities of learning from them what they had
to say (a re \eyova-iv). The Apostle John be
longed to both groups of the disciples of
Jesus, whose words Papias desired to ascertain
from their own disciples. That the expression
" The Elder " was applicable to him we know.
He called himself by that name in addressing
the readers of his Second and Third Epistles,
using it as if to reciprocate the affectionate
veneration in which he was held, both as a
spiritual father and an Apostle of Christ, in his
Eusebius author of Misunderstanding. 195
closing years at Ephesus. We hold, therefore,
that the passage of Papias, which at first sight
seems to have in view two Johns, really speaks
of one only, in the two different relations which
we have described. 1
4. It is the comments of Eusebius which have
given any substance that there is to the separate
personality of the Presbyter John. He by no
means exhibits the lucidity and consistency
which usually mark his narratives and criticisms
in his treatment of this extract of Papias. He
really introduces the extract to show that
Irenseus 2 was wrong in calling Papias a hearer
of John the Apostle, and he says that Papias,
in the extract given above, by no means declares
himself a hearer and eyewitness of the holy
Apostles. In carrying out this contention he
seems to contradict himself. For he refuses to
allow that the elders, from whom Papias says
he learned, were Apostles, and yet a few sen
tences later he speaks of "the words of the
elders" as being "the words of the Apostles,"
which Papias received from their disciples.
" He suppresses the obvious fact that Papias
spoke first of such traditions as he received
from the elders directly (or from the Apostles, as
1 Cf. Leimbach, Herzog, Art. "Papias," xiii. 645; Zahn,
Einleit., ii. 453 (Eng. trans.)
2 Adversus Haereses, v. 33. 4.
196 S* Mark.
Eusebius puts it), before saying that he also
inquired concerning the words of the elders
(Apostles), in case he fell in with others who,
like him, had been their disciples." 1
It is the reference to the Apocalypse which
perhaps gives us the clue to the procedure of
Eusebius in connection with the extract from
Papias. Eusebius did not care for the Book
of Revelation, which he placed among the
spurious books, although he had to admit that
it was largely received in the Church. 2 He
disliked it because it spoke of the millennial
reign of Christ, and he had a poor opinion of
Papias also because he held millenarian views.
He did not care to attribute the Apocalypse to
so honoured an Apostle as John, and here, in the
Elder John, the teacher of the millenarian Papias,
seemed to be a possible author of the Apocalypse.
Dionysius of Alexandria had already noted the
difference in style between the Fourth Gospel
and the Apocalypse, and had expressed the view
that if there had been two Johns at Ephesus,
even as there were two monuments each bearing
the name of John, a solution of the literary
difficulty would be found in assigning the Gospel
to the one and the Apocalypse to the other.
Dionysius, however, did not get beyond the
reach of conjecture : if he knew the words of
1 Zahn, ubi supra. 2 H. E., III. 25.
Only one John in Asia Minor. 197
Papias, he did not interpret them as witnessing
to two Johns, for he knew only of John the
Apostle. 1 Eusebius is more venturesome, and
assuming, on the strength of this extract of
Papias, that there was a second John at Ephe-
sus, he improves upon the position of Dionysius
and gives his friend a choice in the one or the
other of an author of the Apocalypse. 2
5. The unanimous tradition of the Church of
the first three centuries knows of only one
person bearing the name of John who during
the last decades of the first century was in any
way distinguished in the Churches of Asia
Minor John, the Apostle of the Lord, the
son of Zebedee, the teacher of Polycarp and
of Papias. So far as we can gather, Eusebius,
though he mentions the critical views of
Dionysius and says Papias refers by name
frequently to Aristion and the Elder John, has
no tradition on the point to guide him.
Throughout his history, except in the chapter
dealing with Papias, the only John of Ephesus
whom he knows, and he refers to him often,
is John the Apostle. He ascribes to him
without question the Fourth Gospel and the
1 H. E. } vii. 24, 25.
2 " Perhaps no conjecture presented by an ancient writer has been
so widely adopted in modern times. A conjecture it still remains,
for no fresh light has been thrown on the enigmatic figure of John
the Elder." Swete, Apocalypse, p. clxxii.
198 St Mark.
First Epistle. "Nevertheless," he says, 1 "of
all the disciples of the Lord, only Matthew
and John have left us written memorials, and
they, tradition says, were led to write under the
pressure of necessity. . . . But of the writings
of John, not only his Gospel, but also the
former of his Epistles, has been accepted
without dispute both now and in ancient
times." He has only, so far as we can gather,
the passage of Papias, which he has preserved
to us, to go upon, and so his Elder John is,
in the words of the late Dr Salmon, 2 "a doubt
ful interpretation of an ambiguous word in an
isolated extract from a lost book." Polycrates,
Bishop of Ephesus (180-190), recalling the great
lights of the early Church in Asia now departed,
mentions one John, but not two. Irenseus
knows the five books of Expositions of Papias
and quotes from them, 3 but he never mentions
such a personage as the Presbyter, and does not
consider it necessary to put his readers upon
their guard against confusing between him and
the Apostle. Dionysius, as we have seen
though the fact of another John having lived in
Ephesus would have suited his conjecture as to
1 H. E., in. 24. 5.
2 Human Element in the Gospels, p. 29, referring, however, to
the Logia in Papias.
3 Adversus Hsereses, v. 33. 4.
Modern Criticism and the Presbyter. 199
the authorship of Revelation knows of no such
person.
The silence of Christian antiquity is remark
able, if there ever was such a person. It is
dangerous, of course, to argue from silence, and
a single unequivocal and explicit statement by
a veracious witness must outweigh the silence
of any number of authorities. The testimony
of Papias, commented upon by Eusebius, cannot
be called such a statement, and it can be natur
ally and reasonably interpreted without suppos
ing that he mentions two different persons at all.
The resuscitation of the conjecture of Eusebius
in the interest of a criticism adverse to the
Apostolic authorship of the Fourth Gospel has
led to a variety of theories and speculations
which can only be termed fantastic and ex
travagant. Of these we shall have to speak
when we come to consider the separate testi
monies to the Fourth Gospel. There are
scholars, on the other hand, like the late
Bishops Lightfoot and Westcott, Professor
Charteris, Professor Sanday, Professor Stanton,
Professor Swete, Principal Drummond, 1 and
others who think a separate personality, the
1 In his Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel Dr
Drummond devotes a whole chapter to the subject of " Papias and
the Presbyter John," and makes out a very strong case for the
view which he supports.
200 St Mark.
Elder John, sufficiently vouched for by the
fragment of Papias, while they attribute both
the Gospel and the Apocalypse to John the
Apostle. The Elder is to them, however,
a figure totally devoid of personal character
istics, " without father, without mother, with
out descent," and his appearance on the
stage of the Apostolic history, on their view, is
without influence and without notice in any
other ecclesiastical record. The view that John
the Apostle and the Elder John are one and
the same was elaborately worked out by the
late Professor Milligan l forty years ago, and is
maintained by Zahn, Funk, Leimbach, the late
Dr Schaff, and the late Dr Salmon of Dublin,
and others. It is the view which, I venture to
think, has the greatest amount of evidence in
its favour.
We come now to the testimony of Papias to St
Mark s Gospel, which is of unique interest as
giving us the judgment of the Apostle John.
" Mark having become the interpreter of Peter,
wrote down accurately, though not indeed in
order, all that he remembered of the things said
or done by Christ." These are the words of the
Elder, as I believe, the Apostle John ; the re
mainder is comment by Papias, as appears from
the interjected expression, " As I said." And
1 Journal of Sacred Literature, 1867.
Testimony of the Presbyter. 201
both text and comment describe the circum
stances under which St Mark s Gospel was com
posed. The scope thus assigned to the work of
St Mark accords well with the Gospel which
bears his name ; for it combines in due propor
tions things said and things done by Christ,
although in St Mark it is mighty works rather
than long discourses which bulk most in the
eye of the reader. Whatever may be said by
critics like Schmiedel and Wellhausen l as to the
transformation of the original tradition regard
ing Christ before it came even to St Mark, the
view which Bishop Lightfoot so strenuously
combated in his Essays on Supernatural
Religion has now ceased to be held, that the
Second Gospel was recast between Papias and
Irenaeus, and that the Gospel which Papias
knew was a different Mark altogether. Nor is
there any doubt in the mind of Papias as to
the identity of St Mark s book, of which he had
heard his teacher speak, with that used in the
Church of Asia Minor at the time when he
wrote. It seems as if complaint had been made
in the time of Papias of the manner of St
Mark s presentation of the Lord s words and
works. Apparently exception was taken to its
want of completeness and to its deviation from
strict chronological order. The dependence of
1 Einleitung, p. 53.
202 St Mark.
the Gospel upon the Apostle Peter explains
both. St Mark in large measure reproduced St
Peter s discourses, which, as we learn from
Papias and can well understand, had in view
the practical requirements of the audiences
whom he addressed, and must have varied from
time to time. He added no inventions of his
own to these discourses, but was scrupulously
careful to omit nothing which he had heard and
still remembered, and to adhere strictly to the
facts. As regards the lack of order, it cannot
be said that there is no observance of chrono
logical order, for this Gospel, in its own way,
is as orderly as the others. But order is to be
estimated by the conception of the speaker ;
and when it is the Apostle John who speaks,
we can understand him to mean that St Mark s
Gospel diverged from the order of his oral
instructions, which later became stereotyped in
the Fourth Gospel. This is undoubtedly the
case. And even St Luke, who incorporates in
his Gospel about three - fourths of the Second
Gospel, treats his source as if he recognised the
peculiarities noted by the Elder. 1
Whether the word "interpreter" (ep/jLvjvevriqs),
applied to St Mark in relation to St Peter, is
used literally or figuratively that is, in the
sense of imparting the teaching of a master
1 Harnack, Luke the Physician, p. 158 n.
Apostolic Fathers. 203
has been largely debated. 1 The latter
seems to be most probable. St Mark wrote
not as an Apostle, but as an apostolic man,
and was dependent on the Apostle Peter for
the main body of his materials. In thus giving
to the world in his Gospel the teachings of St
Peter, St Mark was his " interpreter."
The Second Gospel is thus, by the testimony
presented by Papias, traced up to the closing
years of the first century. At that time, when
Papias was gathering collections of tradition
and anecdote, which he recorded in his
Expositions, a book written by a follower of
St Peter, and narrating the things said or
done by Christ, was circulating in Asia, and
had attracted the attention of Christians there.
It had even come under the notice of the
Beloved Disciple at Ephesus, whose judgment
regarding it has been handed down to us in the
work of Papias.
When we go back beyond Papias to the
APOSTOLIC FATHERS, proofs of the early circu
lation and use of the Second Gospel are still
forthcoming. If they be somewhat slender and
uncertain, they are nevertheless enough to show
the continuity of the tradition. HERMAS, as we
1 See Swete, St Mark, p. xx ; Zahn, Einleitung, ii. 454-456
(Eng. trans.)
204 S2 Mark.
have seen, knew of a Gospel quaternion, and
Professor Zahn l has maintained that a pre
dominant use of St Mark is observable in the
* Shepherd, this being in his judgment the favour
ite Gospel in the Roman Church for the time.
" Those, therefore," runs the Shepherd, 2 " who
are involved in many and various worldly affairs
do not join themselves to the servants of God,
but go astray, being suffocated by their business
occupations ; but rich men hardly join them
selves to the servants of God, fearing the
demands made by them. Such persons, there
fore, shall with difficulty enter into the kingdom
of God (Mark x. 22, 23). For as it is difficult
for naked feet to walk over thorns, so also it is
difficult for such to enter the kingdom of God."
PoLYCARP, 3 who was a hearer of John the Apostle,
has at least one reference which looks like an
allusion to St Mark (xiv. 38, cf. Matt. xxvi. 41),
although such an expression " the spirit indeed
is willing, but the flesh is weak " might have
been handed on by oral tradition. IGNATIUS*
has probable echoes of St Mark when he speaks
of the " unquenchable fire" (ix. 43), and when
he says, " Neither shall the perfect faith, Jesus
1 Der Hirt des Hermas, pp. 456-464 ; but see GK. ii. 919.
2 Hermas, Sim., ix. 20. 2.
3 Polyc. ad Phil., vii. 2.
4 Ign. Eph., xvi. 2 ; Smyr., x. 2.
Heretical Writers. 205
Christ, be ashamed of you" (viii. 38). When
we come to CLEMENT OF ROME there are no
references to St Mark that we can be sure of,
but there are sayings quoted in which St Mark
and St Matthew are agreed.
When we turn to the earliest HERETICAL
WRITERS we find that St Mark was in use
among them. The use of the Second Gospel
by Cerinthus is asserted by Irenaeus. The
CLEMENTINE HOMILIES* have echoes of it and
one highly probable reference. HERACLEON,
whose commentary is quoted in Clement of
Alexandria, has the reference to St Mark
(viii. 38) already mentioned as cited by Ignatius.
MARCION was probably acquainted with our
Gospel. In the recently discovered GOSPEL
OF PETER an interesting proof of acquaint
ance with the Gospel according to Mark has
been surmised by Professor Burkitt. 2 In the
two oldest manuscripts, as has been already
noticed, the last twelve verses of St Mark are
wanting, the verses now concluding the Gospel
having been added later, whether by St Mark
himself or by another hand. Professor Burkitt
points out that the general agreement of St Mark
and St Matthew all through the narrative of the
Passion makes it antecedently probable that the
1 See Canonicity, p. Ixvi. if.
2 Transmission of the Gospel History, p. 332 ff.
206 S* Mark.
genuine Gospel of St Mark as it left the author s
hands would follow the lines of the conclusion
of St Matthew. We should expect it to tell how
the eleven disciples went away into Galilee and
saw the Lord on a mountain there, when He
would give them His last commands. Now this
is the line which is followed in the Gospel of
Peter, and there are coincidences which appear
to support the suggestion of Professor Burkitt.
The whole subject, however, alike in its textual
aspects and in its historical, is so complicated
that this suggestion cannot be taken for more
than a surmise.
It was after the departure (rr)v egoSov) of St
Peter and St Paul, says Irenseus, that St Mark
committed to writing what had been communi
cated concerning Jesus in the preaching of the
foremost of the Apostles. That his Gospel was
first given to the Church of Rome is the testi
mony of antiquity, and is borne out by the
references, slight as they are, in the Shepherd
and the Epistle of Clement. Its connection with
St Peter is to be gathered from the Gospel itself.
"From the Gospel itself," says Julicher, "we
derive but one impression concerning its author :
that he was a born Jew, familiar with the circle of
the original Apostles, and specially interested in
Peter, but also a much-travelled personage, rejoic
ing in the fact that the Gospel was to be preached
S* Mark and St Peter. 207
unto all nations." 1 The public ministry of Jesus
as recorded in the Gospel begins with the calling
of St Peter. Other events of the early ministry
have St Peter for their centre. The house and
the boat of which Jesus availed Himself were
Simon s. Both in the account of the scene at
Csesarea - Philippi, and in the narrative of the
denial, in which St Peter figures so largely, we
can see that he is St Mark s source. There was
one incident which lived in St Peter s memory
to the end of his days, and was cherished with
peculiar fondness, the Transfiguration, upon
which he dwells in his Second Epistle with
special emphasis and tenderness. St Mark re
cords it with touches which are peculiar to
him, and when we consider the fulness of detail
with which he has recorded that event we can
easily trace it to the foremost Apostle. The
vividness, circumstantiality, and realism which
pervade St Mark s Gospel bear witness to the
influence of St Peter, and fully bear out the
tradition of his connection with its record. 2
1 Introduction to the New Testament, p. 321.
2 " St Mark s Gospel is most readily accounted for as the product
of two factors : the narrative of a Galilean eyewitness, and the
interpretation of that narrative in a Greek form for Roman readers.
Tradition points to St Peter, the Galilean fisherman, as the source of
the narrative, and to St Mark, his interpreter at Rome, as the
writer of the book. Everything in the scope and style of the work
is in harmony with this view of its origin." The Dean of West
minster, The Study of the Gospels, p. 47.
208 S* Mark.
St Mark, which is so meagrely attested by Pat
riotic witnesses in comparison with St Matthew,
has an authentication more weighty than these.
It has been incidentally noticed that St Mark s
narrative is largely reproduced, with slight altera
tions and with occasional divergences in the order
and setting of his materials, in St Matthew and
St Luke. These Evangelists thus became primary
witnesses for St Mark as a reliable and trust
worthy Gospel history. With St Luke, the com
panion and fellow-labourer of St Paul, on the one
hand, and the Presbyter John, whom we take to
be the Apostle of the Lord, on the other, as wit
nesses for his Gospel, St Mark is an Evangelist
whose credit is unassailable.
209
CHAPTER XII.
ST LUKE. I.
ALTHOUGH the attestation of the Third Gospel in
the Early Fathers is not so widespread as that
of the First, nor so early as that of the Second,
there never was a question raised in early Chris
tian antiquity as to its genuineness and credibility.
From Irenseus, who is the first explicitly to name
St Luke as the author, and the Muratorian Canon,
in which the Gospel is given the third place,
St Luke has been acknowledged as the writer.
Eusebius, who had command of all the references
to the New Testament books in the Christian
literature before his day, and who includes the
Third Gospel among his " acknowledged " books,
says of its author : l " Luke, who was of An-
tiochian parentage and a physician by profes
sion, and who was specially intimate with St
Paul, and in no ordinary way associated with
the rest of the Apostles, has left us in two in-
1 H. E., in. 4 . 7.
o
210 St Luke. 7.
spired books proofs of that spiritual healing art
which he learned from them. One of the
books is the Gospel which he testifies that
he wrote, as those who were from the begin
ning eyewitnesses and ministers of the word
delivered unto him, all of whom, he says, he
followed accurately from the first. The other
book is the Acts of the Apostles, which he com
posed not from the accounts of others, but from
what he had seen himself. And they say that
Paul meant to refer to Luke s Gospel whenever,
as if speaking of some Gospel of his own, he
used the words, according to my Gospel. " In
another passage, where he deals with the order
of the Gospels, Eusebius l has a notable reference
to St Luke s preface: "Luke, in the beginning
of his Gospel, states himself the reasons which
led him to write his narrative. He states that
since many others had more rashly undertaken
to compose a narrative of the events of which
he had acquired perfect knowledge, he himself
feeling the necessity of freeing us from their un
certain opinions, delivered in his own Gospel an
accurate account of those events in regard to
which he had learned the full truth, being aided
by his intimacy and his stay with Paul, and
by his association with the rest of the Apostles."
Eusebius here reads into St Luke s opening
1 H. E. } in. 24. 15.
References in Irenceus. 211
words strictures upon the motives and methods
of his predecessors in the Gospel collections
which they put together, strictures neither ex
pressed nor implied by the Evangelist. The
view that St Luke was " aided by his inti
macy and his stay with St Paul and by his
association with the rest of the Apostles," is
a stroke of the higher criticism on the part of
Eusebius, and, though perfectly correct, is not
warranted by anything which the Evangelist
says in the preface to his Gospel.
We have already seen the views of Irenaeus on
the subject of a collection of Gospels. His refer
ences to the Four Gospels are copious, explicit,
and unhesitating, as if there was no doubt as
to their authorship and never had been. In his
argument against Marcion he contends that it
was the same God who made heaven and earth,
and whom the prophets declared, that was set
forth in the Gospel, and he adduces proofs of his
contention from our Four Gospels, attributing
them to the authors whom we recognise. From
St Luke, whom he l designates " the follower and
disciple of Apostles " (sectator et discipulus apos-
tolorum), and notably of St Paul (Aou/ca? 6
afc6\ov6os Hav\ov), he quotes largely, referring
to the annunciation and birth of the Forerunner,
the annunciation to Mary, the appearance of the
1 Ad versus Hsereses, iii. 10, iii. i.
212 S* Luke. I.
angel to the shepherds, the multitude of the
heavenly host, the presentation in the Temple,
and other incidents peculiar to St Luke s Gospel.
For the refutation of the opinion that St Paul was
the only Apostle who had knowledge of the truth,
he appeals to the intimacy of St Luke, who was
his constant companion and fellow - traveller,
showing that if St Paul had known mysteries
unrevealed to the other Apostles, St Luke could
not have been ignorant of them. " That this
Luke was inseparable from Paul," he says, 1 "and
his fellow - labourer in the Gospel, he himself
clearly evinces, not as a matter of boasting, but
as bound to do so by the truth itself. For he
says that when Barnabas and John, who was
called Mark, had parted company from Paul
and sailed to Cyprus, we came to Troas, and
when Paul beheld in a dream a man of Macedonia
saying, * Come over into Macedonia, Paul, and
help us, immediately, he says, we endeavoured
to go into Macedonia, understanding that the
Lord had called us to preach the Gospel unto
them. . . . But surely if Luke, who always
preached in company with Paul, and is called by
him his beloved, and with him performed the
work of an evangelist, and was entrusted to hand
down to us a Gospel, learned nothing different
from him, as has been pointed out from his words,
Irenczus a Higher Critic. 213
how can these men, who were never attached to
Paul, boast that they have learned hidden and
unspeakable mysteries ? "
Irenseus proceeds to show that St Paul and
the Apostles kept back nothing of all they had
learned from the Lord. " Thus also does
Luke," he continues, "without respect of per
sons, deliver to us what he had learned from
them, as he has himself testified, saying, Even
as they delivered them unto us who were eye
witnesses and ministers of the Word from the
beginning. Now if any man will set Luke
aside, as one who did not know the truth, he
will by so acting manifestly reject the Gospel of
which he claims to be a disciple. For through
him we have become acquainted with very many
and important parts of the Gospel ; for instance,
the generation of John, the history of Zacharias,
the coming of the angel to Mary, the exclamation
of Elisabeth, the descent of the angels to the
shepherds, the words spoken by them, the testi
mony of Simeon and Anna with regard to Christ,
and that at twelve years of age He was left
behind at Jerusalem ; also the baptism of John,
the number of the Lord s years when He was
baptized, and that this occurred in the fifteenth
year of Tiberius Caesar. And in His office of
teacher this is what He has said to the rich :
Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received
214 St Luke. I.
your consolation, and Woe unto you that are
full, for ye shall hunger, and ye who laugh now,
for ye shall weep, and Woe unto you when all
men shall speak well of you, for so did your
fathers to the false prophets. : And so Irenseus
goes through a tolerably complete summary of
the contents of the Third Gospel. " There are
also," he says, " many other particulars to be
found mentioned by Luke alone, which are made
use of both by Marcion and Valentinus. And
besides all these he records what Christ said
to His disciples in the way after the resurrection,
and how they recognised Him in the breaking of
bread." The uncritical character of the early
Fathers is a favourite topic with certain writers,
but here Irenseus shows himself a critic of no
mean order. He has no hesitation or doubt as
to St Luke being the author both of the Third
Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles, and he
has in his mind s eye the very elements which go
to determine the questions raised by modern criti
cism the unity of authorship, the We-sections,
and the Pauline cast of the two writings.
We pass on now to the testimony of Marcion
himself to the Gospel according to St Luke. It
is unfortunate that no work of Marcion or any of
his followers survives, but we can collect his views
from Hippolytus, Irenseus, Tertullian, Epiphanius,
and others who set themselves to refute his
Position of Marcion. 215
arguments. It was in a series of propositions
called Antitheses that Marcion set forth the
superiority of the New Testament to the Old,
the God of the Christians to the God of the
Jews, the Gospel to the Law, and the Apostles
to the ancient Prophets. We have seen in the
quotation made above how Irenaeus exposes the
inconsistency of those who accept the Gospels
as genuine and yet refuse to acknowledge the
doctrines they set forth. Marcion is not guilty
of this inconsistency to the same extent as
others, for he accepts this one Gospel only.
Marcion of Pontus came to Rome about 135 A.D.,
and established himself there as one of the most
dangerous heretics. It gives us some con
ception of the detestation in which he was held
that Polycarp, when Marcion once met him in
Rome and said, " Recognisest thou us ? " replied
to the heretic, " I recognise the first-born of
Satan." l He founded a church of his own, as we
have already seen, and the Marcionites subsisted
as a sect down into the fifth century quite separate
from the Catholic Church. He was, we may say,
the father of all those who in our day regard the
historical element in the Gospels as of no ac
count and their ethical and spiritual teaching as
everything. He held that the God of the Old
Testament was quite different from the God of
1 H. E., IV. 14. 7.
2i6 St Luke. I.
the New Testament, revealed to us by Jesus,
and he could not believe that the Gospel came
from the God of the Old Testament at all. He
denied accordingly that Christianity had any root
in the Old Testament, but regarded it as some
thing absolutely new upon the earth, with the
result of making Christ and Christianity incom
prehensible and unreal. Having cut Christianity
away entirely from its Old Testament connection,
and having rejected the Old Testament itself so
decisively, he required some basis on which to
rear the doctrinal fabric connected with his
name. From the Judaism which he hated he
took the conception of a canon of Scripture,
and over against the body of Scripture accepted
by the Jews he set up a new body of Scripture,
comprising a mutilated Gospel of St Luke and
ten Epistles of St Paul, with excisions to suit
his scheme of doctrine. " Wherefore also," says
Irenseus, 1 " Marcion and his followers have be
taken themselves to mutilating the Scriptures,
not acknowledging some books at all ; and
curtailing the Gospel according to Luke and the
Epistles of Paul, they assert that these are alone
authentic, which they have themselves thus
shortened." The procedure of the heretic is
described elsewhere : 2 " He mutilates the Gospel
1 Adversus Hsereses, iii. 14. 12 ; cf. iii. II. 7, 9.
2 Adversus Hoereses, i. 27. 2.
Tertullian upon Marcion. 217
which is according to Luke, removing all that
is written respecting the generation of the Lord,
and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of
the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most
clearly confessing that the Maker of this uni
verse is His Father. ... In like manner, too,
he dismembered the Epistles of St Paul, remov
ing all that is said by the Apostle regarding that
God Who made the world, to the effect that
He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
also those passages from the prophetical writings
which the Apostle quotes in order to teach us
that they announced beforehand the coming of
the Lord."
It is Tertullian who gives the most complete
account of Marcion s treatment of St Luke s Gos
pel. In his treatise against Marcion, especially
in the Fourth Book, he proceeds to expose
the system of the Pontic heretic on the basis
of his acceptance of this Gospel alone. He
goes through the Gospel chapter by chapter,
letting us see what Marcion rejected and what
he received, and how he manipulated it to serve
his own ends. " We lay it down as our first
position," says Tertullian, 1 "that the evangelical
testament has Apostles for its authors, to whom
was assigned by the Lord Himself the office of
publishing the Gospel. Since, however, there are
1 Ad versus Marcionem, iv. 2.
218 St Luke. I.
apostolic men also associated in the authorship,
they are not alone, but with Apostles and after
Apostles, because the preaching of disciples might
be open to the suspicion of an affectation of
glory if there did not accompany it the authority
of the masters, which means that of Christ ; for it
was that which made the Apostles their masters.
. . . Never mind if there does occur some vari
ation in the order of the narratives, provided
that there be agreement in the essential matter
of the faith, in which there is disagreement with
Marcion. Marcion, on the other hand, you must
know, ascribes no author to his Gospel, as if it
could not be allowed him to affix a title to that
from which it was no crime, in his eyes, to sub
vert the very body. . . . Now of the authors
whom we possess, Marcion seems to have singled
out Luke for his mutilating process. Luke, how
ever, was not an Apostle, but only an apostolic
man; not a master but a disciple at least as
far behind him as the Apostle whom he followed
and that, no doubt, was St Paul was behind
the others; so that had Marcion even published
his Gospel in the name of St Paul himself, the
single authority of the document, destitute of all
support from preceding authorities, would not be
a sufficient basis for our faith." Tertullian then
proceeds with what is at once a commentary on
St Luke s Gospel and a vigorous refutation of
Marriott s Gospel. 219
Marcion from the heretic s own presuppositions.
Marcion s Gospel 1 begins with the words, "In
the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar
God came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee,
and taught on the Sabbath Day" (Luke Hi. i,
with iv. 31 taken in). Marcion follows this up
with the case of the man with the unclean spirit
in the synagogue (iv. 32-39) and the healing of
all who were brought to Jesus afflicted with
various diseases at sunset of the same day (iv.
40-44), mutilating the narrative, however, so that
it cannot be shown how far he had the Evangel
ist s words before him. It is noticeable that the
first two chapters of St Luke are omitted entirely.
It would have been altogether contrary to Mar
cion s system to admit that Christ came in the
flesh and that He had anything to do with the
fathers of the Old Testament dispensation. So
he could take no notice of John the Baptist s
ministry, and the Temptation of Christ lay
equally outside the scope of his principles. He
omits the parable of the Prodigal Son, because
it represents the Supreme God as the Father
of both Jews and Gentiles; he alters a well-
known saying of Jesus (xvi. 17), " It is easier
1 See the references very fully given, with explanatory notes woven
in, Canonicity, pp. 400-408 ; and for an elaborate restoration of
Marcion s Bible both Gospel and Epistles see Zahn, GK. ii. 455-
529. See also Roensch, Das neue Testament Tertullian s.
22O St Luke. /.
for heaven and earth to pass away than for one
tittle of the law to fail " to " It is easier ... for
one tittle of my words to fail," where he refuses
to acknowledge any reference to the Law. In his
exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, Tertullian 1
quotes the golden rule as it is given in St Luke :
"And as ye would that men should do to you, do
ye also to them likewise " (Luke vi. 31). And it
is just possible that it is with his eye upon
Marcion that he adds the negative form of it,
saying, " In this command is no doubt implied
its counterpart : And as ye would not that men
should do to you, so should ye also not do to
them likewise." In another passage (xviii. 19) he
makes an addition to the text of the Gospel to
serve his purpose : " Call me not good ; one is
good, God the Father," where "the Father"
is added to distinguish the Supreme God from
the demiurge, who, though God, was not Father.
The testimony of Tertullian is to the same effect
as that of Irenaeus, and we might pursue the
inquiry with the same result through Hippolytus
and Epiphanius, the conclusion being that those
learned Fathers all held the Gospel adopted by
Marcion to be none other, in spite of excisions
and interpolations, than our Gospel according
to St Luke.
This verdict of early Christian antiquity was
1 Adversus Marcionem, iv. 16,
Theories as to Marcion s Gospel. 221
challenged by the rationalistic criticism of Ger
many, and it is interesting now to recall that
Ritschl began his literary career with a work
intended to prove that Marcion s Gospel was the
work of a Pauline Christian of the last decades
of the first century, which a less genuine Paulin-
ist worked up, about 140-145 A.D., into a gospel
of his own by interpolations especially from St
Matthew, and which is now known as our Gos
pel according to St Luke. Ritschl was then a
follower of Baur, and Baur gave the work his
approval. By-and-by Hilgenfeld and Volkmar,
from within the Tubingen camp, attacked the
new hypothesis, and with such success that Baur
withdrew his approval. Ritschl himself in a
short time recanted and withdrew from the
Tubingen camp. The view thus represented
has not been left without champions in more
recent times. But they have not been able to
rehabilitate the theory in the estimation of the
learned world. In his early Gospels in the
Second Century Professor Sanday has a brilli
ant and convincing chapter on Marcion s Gospel.
He showed that out of fifty-three sections peculiar
to St Luke, from the point where the thread of
the narrative is taken up by Marcion, all but
eight are to be found also in Marcion s Gospel.
"Curious and intricate," says Dr Sanday, 1 "as
1 Gospels in Second Century, p. 214.
222 St Luke. /.
is the mosaic work of the Third Gospel, all the
intricacies of the pattern are reproduced in the
Gospel of Marcion. Where St Luke makes an
insertion in the ground -stock of the narrative,
Marcion makes an insertion also ; where St Luke
omits part of the narrative, Marcion does the
same." In fact, he seems to have treated it
exactly as he is known to have treated the
Epistles of St Paul, cutting out portions and
omitting whole passages where the teaching of
the only Apostle he acknowledged ran counter
to his own.
The case for the traditional view has been
made still stronger by the elaborate studies
which Professor Zahn has made on the text of
Marcion. There are many charges of falsifica
tion and corruption of the text imputed to
Marcion by Tertullian and others of which he
has to be acquitted. Tertullian is unnecessarily
severe, for example, when he imputes a corrupt
motive to Marcion and his followers in calling
the canonical Epistle to the Ephesians the
Epistle to the Laodiceans. Marcion had good
reason so to call it. In the Epistle to the
Colossians (iv. 16), St Paul speaks of an Epistle
to Laodicea, which is now generally believed to
be the circular letter called "To the Ephesians."
The words destining it to Ephesus (eV E<e<r&&gt;,
Eph. i. i) were unknown to Marcion, as they
Tertullian s Strictures. 223
were to Origen, having been omitted in what
is now believed to have been a circular letter.
This illustration suggests that the falsifications
and alterations which Tertullian and others impute
to Marcion in his treatment of St Luke may
be really nothing more than various readings.
Professor Zahn has proved this. Where Tertul
lian and Marcion are entirely agreed as to the
Greek text of any passage of the Gospel under
reference, and have it, so far as we can gather,
word for word the same, we may be tolerably
certain of the precise reading of Marcion in
quoting St Luke. It is well known that there
are two types of text in the Third Gospel and
the Acts of the Apostles, both (if we accept the
theory of the late Professor Blass) from St Luke
himself, the one representing the original draft
and the other the fair copy of the author. The
manuscripts copied from the one or the other
respectively reproduce their characteristics, and
the Western authorities whether manuscripts
like Codex Bezse, or versions like the Old Latin,
or Fathers like Irenaeus exhibit these peculiar
readings most prominently. Marcion s text,
where we can be sure of it, belongs to this type.
And although Tertullian s use of the same type
of text should have saved him from falling into
the mistake of accusing Marcion of falsification
when he deviated from the Catholic text of his
224 St Luke. I.
day, he may have been misled by trusting to his
memory, and so have cast the blame upon the
heretic.
We have, therefore, not only the testimony
of Marcion to St Luke s Gospel, but evidence
derived from the number and character of the
textual variations that it had been circulated and
copied for a long time before. There is good
reason to believe that he used a text of St Luke
assimilated to that of St Matthew and St Mark,
so that he not only knew these Gospels but lived
at a time when the three had already circulated
so long together that copyists had begun to be
influenced in the transcription of one by the
habitual knowledge of the others. There are
also indications that he had acquaintance with
our Fourth Gospel.
" Only in very insignificant measure," says
Zahn, 1 " has Marcion, according to the witnesses
available, used for his own the three Gospels
directly or indirectly ascribed to Apostles, so
that the judgment of his opponents that he
gave to his Church a mutilated Luke appears
on this side to be fully warranted. But he has
nevertheless used these Gospels so far that the
answer to the question obtained on another
line, What Gospels has he found up to that
time used in public worship ? appears now to
1 GK. i. 680.
Mar don and the Canon. 225
be fully ascertained. They are the same of
which we have already heard from Justin, that
they were the staple of Christian edification in
the ordinary services of the Catholic Church,
and which Tatian, two decades later, worked
up into his Diatessaron. Only there are to be
found in Marcion none of those small apocryphal
additions which Justin and Tatian have intro
duced into our Gospels. For some few harm
less enlargements which he took over from an
ecclesiastical text of the Gospels can scarcely
be compared with additions drawn from a
written or oral source circulating alongside of
our Gospels."
On the question of the Canon of Scripture
Marcion may have anticipated the Church as a
whole. While the Church combined Old Testa
ment books and New Testament books in a
unity as equally sacred writings, and suitable for
use in Divine worship, Marcion rejected the Old
Testament as a source of revelation with which
Christianity had nothing to do. While the
Church did not yet possess a fixed and generally
accepted canon of New Testament Scripture, but
exhibited differences in different provinces, Mar
cion gave to his adherents a fixed canon. Whilst
the Catholic collections embraced at least thir
teen Pauline Epistles, and exhibited essentially
the same text as we read, Marcion had only ten,
p
226 St Luke. I.
and these in a text considerably shorter. Instead
of the Fourfold Gospel of Catholic Christianity,
Marcion gave to his adherents a single Gospel,
which appeared so like to none of the canonical
Gospels as to that of St Luke. Even in Mar-
cion s Gospel, as we have seen, there is no un-
canonical matter, and no appearance of it in any
of his writings, so that he is a witness not only
to St Luke but also to the fact that no more than
our Four were then accepted within the Roman
Church, for which he is a witness.
227
CHAPTER XIII.
ST LUKE. II.
THE testimony of Marcion carries us back con
siderably beyond his day, for the condition of the
text shows that his Gospel, our Third Gospel, had
been for a length of time in circulation. It is
quite in accordance with this that we find un
doubted references to it in JUSTIN MARTYR, the
references, as already indicated, showing the in
fluence of Matthew and Mark, perhaps because of
an early harmony or because the * Memoirs ( A-Tro-
/jLvrjfjiovevfjiaTa) are themselves^, harmony. There
are references to St Luke in Justin s writings,
more or less clearly marked, numbering over
sixty. In his vindication of the Christians to the
Emperor we find him quoting the words of Jesus
in the Sermon on the Mount : 1 " As to being
patient of evil, and helpful to all, and free from
anger, this is what He (o X/KO-TO?) said : To him
that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the
1 Apol., i. 16.
228 St Luke. II.
other ; and him that taketh from thee the vest or
the cloak, hinder not" (Luke vi. 29). St Luke
is most in evidence, but St Matthew (v. 39, 40)
seems also recalled in the mixed character of the
passage. A similar mixture is found in another
reference, 1 where St Luke (xii. 4, xviii. 27) and
St Matthew (x. 28) are combined : " We know
that our Lord Jesus Christ spoke as follows : The
things which are impossible with men are possible
with God. And, Fear ye not them that kill you
and after that have nothing that they can do, He
said, but fear ye Him Who is able after death to
cast both soul and body into hell." In Justin s
account of the Virgin Birth, St Luke (i. 35) and St
Matthew (i. 21) are found in combination. There
are passages, however, referred to which imply
St Luke alone : " For in the Memoirs, which I
say were composed by His Apostles and those
that followed them, it is written, 2 sweat poured
down from Him like clots of blood as He prayed
and said, Let this cup pass, if it be possible"
(Luke xxii. 44). " And when Herod, who suc
ceeded Archelaus, had taken the power entrusted
to him, to whom also, by way of doing him
courtesy, Pilate sent Jesus bound, God foreseeing
that this would happen, had spoken as follows "
(Luke xxiii. 7, 8). A good illustration of a quota
tion made from memory, and not in the very words
1 Apol., i. 19. 2 Dial., c. 103.
Gospel of Peter. 229
of the Gospel, is the following : l " And again in
other words He said, I give to you power to tread
upon serpents and scorpions and adders, and upon
all the power of the enemy " (Luke x. 19). An
other quotation, 2 while by no means exact, too
closely resembles the Third Gospel to be referred
to any other source : " As also our Lord said,
They shall neither marry nor be given in marriage,
but shall be equal to the angels, being the children
of the God of the resurrection " (Luke xx. 35, 36).
But no one can read Justin s First Apology or the
Dialogue without finding quotations or references
to discourses of Jesus or incidents in His ministry,
as well as to particulars associated with His Birth
and with His Passion, Trial, Crucifixion, and
Resurrection, as these are recorded by the Third
Evangelist.
Another witness contemporary with Justin
and Marcion whose testimony may be noticed
is the apocryphal GOSPEL OF PETER, which
is placed by Harnack and Sanday as early as
the first quarter of the second century, but, as
Zahn contends, may not be earlier than 140-150
A.D. It presupposes our Canonical Gospels, and
there are a number of expressions which exhibit
the influence of St Luke. It is only a fragment
which has been preserved, containing the narra
tive of the Passion and the Resurrection. It is
1 Dial., c. 76. 2 Dial., c. 81.
230 St Luke. II.
accordingly only the concluding chapters of St
Luke that it attests, but in attesting these it
sufficiently attests the whole Gospel. The Gos
pel of Peter mentions, like Justin, the sending
of Jesus by Pilate to Herod ; calls the two male
factors fcafcovpyoi ; recalls the multitudes present
at the last scenes of the Crucifixion beating
their breasts ; the two men in the sepulchre in
shining vesture ; the bringing of spices by the
women for a memorial while it was yet early
morning all of which particulars belong to the
Evangelic narrative, and are peculiar to St Luke.
There are other coincidences of such an artless
and natural character that they are inexplicable
if we deny to the Docetic author of the fragment
a knowledge of the Gospel according to Luke. 1
Reference might be made to CELSUS, who used
St Matthew as his chief authority, but who has
1 About the same date some scholars would find testimony in the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. The work seems to have
been known to Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian. Origen ex
pressly refers to it in his Homily on Joshua. Its value has been
called in question by Schiirer ( Geschichte des Volkes Israels, 3 iii.
252-262), who holds it to be a Jewish work interpolated in a
Christian interest. Plummer ( St Luke, p. Ixxviii) has drawn up a
table of verbal coincidences on the assumption that the book is from
the middle of the second century of our era, and their testimony is
confirmed by coincidences of thought pointing to the universality of
the Christian redemption and the comprehensiveness of the Kingdom.
Professor Charles, however ( The Testaments of the Twelve Patri
archs ), holds that the work was written in Hebrew before 100 B.C.,
and represents pre-Christian Judaism at its highest and best. He
The Gospel of Basilides. 231
references to incidents and precepts clearly trace
able to St Luke. " He seems to allude to the
sending of an angel to Mary; he scoffs at her
royal descent, and at the carrying back of the
genealogy of Christ to the first man. Either from
St Luke or St John he has learned that Jesus,
after His resurrection, showed His pierced hands
to the disciples. He has read in St Luke the
saying of Jesus about the ravens. The form in
which he quotes the precept of Jesus with refer
ence to not returning evil for evil suggests St
Luke rather than St Matthew." 1
In the apocryphal PROTEVANGELIUM JACOBI
and the PSEUDO - MATTH^EUS, which are In
fancy Narratives, there are references to St
Luke s Nativity history. These works are both
comparatively early in the second century, and
presuppose the Gospel history. They give a
cave, just as Justin does, for the place of the
birth of Jesus.
Of the early heretics, none has a more emi
nent place than BASILIDES, who used the New
Testament books and quoted them as Script
ure. There are those who are of opinion
admits slight Christian interpolations, but believes that our Lord
knew it and used it in the Sermon on the Mount, and that St Paul
also was acquainted with it. In this estimate Jewish scholars agree
with him, but Schlirer s view appears to strike the mean between
Charles and Plummer.
1 Patrick, Apology of Origen in reply to Celsus, pp. 92, 93.
232 St Luke. II.
that St Luke was his Gospel. Eusebius 1 tells
us of his Exegetica, a work in twenty -four
books, which is not a Gospel (although Origen
speaks of a Gospel of Basilides) but an exposi
tion of the Gospels. There is in this work an
undoubted reference to the parable of the Rich
Man and Lazarus. According to Hippolytus, 2 he
gave a mystical explanation of the Incarnation,
quoting St Luke (i. 35). We may hold, there
fore, that St Luke s Gospel was known and ac
knowledged by Basilides.
When we come to the APOSTOLIC FATHERS,
we find still traces of the Third Gospel, although
these are neither numerous nor explicit. We
have already seen that HERMAS knew the Four
Gospels, but the possible traces of St Luke s
Gospel by itself are very slight. It is probable
that IGNATIUS had St Luke s Gospel in his mind
(xxiii. 7-9) when he referred to the crucifixion
as having taken place in the time of Pontius
Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch ; 3 and when he
quotes the Risen Lord as saying to St Peter and
those that were with him, "Take ye and feel
me, and see that I am not a bodiless spirit "
(^ai^ovLov) (Luke xxiv. 39). These two last
words are found, however, in the Gospel accord
ing to the Hebrews, and it might be held that
Ignatius, though he has no other uncanonical
1 H. E., IV. 7. 6, 7. 2 Ref. Hser., vii. 26. 3 Smyr., i. 2.
The Apostolic Fathers. 233
allusion, may have obtained it from that source.
In POLYCARP S Epistle to the Philippians, which
is saturated with the Synoptic tradition, there
are passages which seem to exhibit a combination
of St Matthew and St Luke. One of these pass
ages is quoted also by Clement of Rome with an
almost identical formula of quotation : " Especi
ally remembering the words of the Lord Jesus
which He spake teaching meekness and long-
suffering. For thus He spake : Show mercy,
that ye may receive mercy ; forgive, that ye may
be forgiven ; as ye do, so shall it be done unto
you ; as ye give, so shall it be given to you ;
as ye judge, so shall ye be judged ; as ye lend,
so shall it be lent to you ; with what measure
ye mete, it shall be meted unto you again." x
Clement of Alexandria also gives the passage
with a few unimportant variations, 2 and the
Didascalia and Macarius give portions more or
less exactly. The Oxford Committee, who have
sought out the traces of the New Testament
books in the Apostolic Fathers, 3 have subjected
this reference to a careful analysis, and are of
opinion that there is no one documentary source
common to all these writers. " We incline to
think," they say, "that we have in Clemens
1 Clem., xiii, I. Compare Polycarp ad Phil., ii.
2 Strom., ii. 18. 91.
3 New Testament in Apostolic Fathers, pp. 58-61.
234 $t Luke. II.
Romanus a citation from some written or un
written form of Catechesis as to our Lord s
teaching, current in the Roman Church, perhaps
a local form which may go back to a time before
our Gospels existed." While BARNABAS may be
regarded as a witness on behalf of St Matthew s
Gospel, it is doubtful whether he had any
acquaintance with St Luke. The Synoptic
tradition was no doubt before him, but it is
difficult to determine how far he was acquainted
with our Third Gospel, since nothing peculiar
to St Luke occurs in his citations. The search
for traces of St Luke in the DIDACHE is not
much more successful. In the opening chapter
we have a mosaic of quotations from the Sermon
on the Mount (Matt. v. 44, 46, 47 ; Luke vi.
29, 30), a perusal of which begets the feeling
that the writer has been using St Luke as well
as St Matthew. In another passage describing
"the true prophet," the Didache speaks of
him as worthy of his meat, which is the exact
expression of St Matthew and i Timothy v. 18,
whereas St Luke has for meat (T/JOC^?)?), hire
(fjLio-dov) (Luke x. 7 = Matt. x. 10). In the
eschatological chapter concluding the Didache
there is another of those mixed references made
up of St Matthew and St Luke, where St Luke
has the best of it : " Watch ye for your life.
Let not your lamps be put out, and let not
The Apostolic Fathers. 235
your loins be loosed, but be ye ready. For ye
know not the hour in which our Lord cometh." *
This is more distinctively St Luke s language
(Luke xii. 35): he uses Xv^voi (lamps) and
oo-(j)ve<; (loins) exactly as the author of the
Didache. The first and the last sentences are
more suggestive of St Matthew (Matt. xxiv. 44).
Upon the whole we may decide for the knowledge
of St Luke, although St Matthew is the favourite
source. Here, again, there may be the influence
of oral instruction in Christian morality given to
catechumens, which in Dr Sanday s judgment
accounts for combinations such as these.
We have thus traced the Third Gospel by
means of references in the early Fathers more
or less clear, up into the first century. It has
to be borne in mind that down to the time of
Irenseus it is never quoted or referred to as St
Luke s. It is in this respect not so much
different from the other Gospels. The First and
the Second Gospels are called by their authors
names by Papias, but the Fourth Gospel is not
quoted as St John s till Theophilus of Antioch
quotes it by name about 180 A.D. There is no
indication that Irenaeus was led by internal
evidence to ascribe the Third Gospel to St
Luke. The name of the Evangelist does not
occur either in his Gospel or in the Acts of
1 Did., c. xvi. I.
236 S* Luke. II.
the Apostles. Irenseus was no doubt guided,
as the Church was in those days, by primitive
tradition, which in the case of St Luke, as of
the others, never varied. Marcion, though he
mutilated the Gospel and did not call it by St
Luke s name, seems nevertheless to have known
it as his. The fact that he left out the refer
ence to "the beloved physician" in the greeting
of St Paul to the Colossians (iv. 10) may point
to such knowledge. Tatian, though regarded
as a heretic, acknowledged its authority, and
included it in the Diatessaron. Justin as
cribes the Memoirs to the Apostles of Jesus
and those who followed them (7raparco\ov-
OrjcravTwv, Luke i. 3) when he is referring
to incidents narrated by St Luke alone, being
apparently aware of the Lucan authorship of
the Gospel, though he does not ascribe it to
him by name. Those who collected the Gospels
into a quartette, as we have reason to believe,
shortly after the appearance of the Fourth
Gospel, no doubt gave the Third the title
which it afterwards bore without challenge,
According to Luke (tcara Aov/cav). And they
did so because the prologue must have from
the beginning pointed to the author. " Anony
mous compilations," says Professor Harnack,
" in the course of tradition easily acquire some
determining name, and it is easy to imagine an
Evidence of the Gospel itself. 237
author writing under a pseudonym. But in the
case of a writing determined by a prologue and
a dedication, we require some very definite
reasons for a substitution of names, especially
when this is supposed to occur only one gener
ation after the date of publication." l The
tradition, so unvarying and so constant from
the first, and becoming vocal and explicit by
the time of Irenaeus, is to be explained only by
the fact that St Luke was the writer. The book
was ascribed to him just as the Annals are
ascribed to Tacitus and Romeo and Juliet to
Shakespeare.
In the case of our Gospel, the internal evidence
is so far from contradicting the ascription of it to
St Luke by primitive tradition that it actually
establishes it beyond dispute. Not only so, but
the internal evidence here is of so marked and
special a character that it furnishes us with a
test of the intrinsic value of Christian tradition
in its bearing upon the composition of the
Gospels.
The tradition of Luke s authorship is fully
confirmed and vindicated by the evidence of the
Gospel itself. It is part and parcel of that
tradition that the Luke whose name is associ
ated with this two-volume Christian history, the
Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, is the Luke
1 Lucas der Arzt, p. 2.
238 S* Luke. II.
mentioned in St Paul s Epistles (Col. iv. 10 ;
Phil. 24; 2 Tim. iv. n), and from that his
tory can be shown to be a Greek by birth, a
physician, a follower of St Paul, and a fellow-
labourer of the great Apostle of the Gentiles.
It is hardly necessary any longer to support the
statement that the Third Gospel and the Acts
are by the same hand. Dr Hobart of Dublin, in
his work on the Medical Language of St Luke,
Sir John Hawkins in his Horse Synopticae, and
Dr Plummer in his Commentary on St Luke,
have adduced evidence of the common author
ship which is irresistible, and have brought it
home to St Luke by unassailable proofs. Firstly,
the language, style, and literary arrangement are
identical. Characteristic words and expressions
are found in both. The writer of both books
has skill in writing Greek, and the Septuagint
was his Bible more than St Paul s. Secondly, as
suming that the Gospel and the Acts are by one
author, we learn from the We-sections of the Acts
that he was a companion in travel and fellow-
labourer of St Paul. It is not enough to say
that these sections are interpolations, or portions
of a diary of travel, belonging to some other
person. The literary characteristics, the mirac
ulous incidents, and other special phenomena,
show them to be of exactly the same texture as
the rest of the work. Thirdly, the crowning
Importance of Lucan Authorship. 239
proof of identity which fixes the authorship un
mistakably upon Luke, the Beloved Physician,
is the indication of medical interest and the
employment of medical phraseology which run
right through the Acts, and are found in the
Acts and the Gospel equally. Professor Harnack
has braved the risk of being called an apologist,
and in his Luke the Physician has adopted,
and to some extent strengthened, the proofs
furnished by the writers named above of the
Lucan authorship of both works. We are, then,
fully warranted in affirming that the evidence
of the books themselves entirely coincides with
the verdict of early Church history regarding
the authorship, and there are few facts of liter
ary history better established than this, that
St Luke, the Beloved Physician, the companion
and fellow - labourer of St Paul, is the author
of our Third Gospel and the Acts.
Through the witness of the early Fathers,
and the phenomena of the twofold history itself,
we are brought right up within the Apostolic
age to the composition of the Third Gospel
somewhere between 60 and 80 A.D. We have a
history eminently worthy of credit, whether we
place it earlier or later within these limits.
When, moreover, we reflect that St Luke avails
himself largely of St Mark s materials, and that
he draws from the same fountain-head as
240 S* Luke. II.
St Matthew for other material, we see how
fundamental is his position as a witness to the
truth of the Gospel history. He not only en
ables us to vindicate the general truth of the
literary traditions of the early Church regard
ing its sacred writings, but himself in his Gospel
and in the Acts of the Apostles guarantees the
historical character of the earliest Christian
records.
241
CHAPTER XIV.
ST JOHN. I.
SINCE rationalistic criticism marshalled its forces
early in the nineteenth century for the assault
upon the sacred books of our Christian faith,
St John s Gospel has had to bear the brunt of
the fiercest attacks. No naturalistic theory of
Christianity could possibly succeed so long
as the Fourth Gospel, with its representa
tion of the Word made flesh, held its ground
as the work of the disciple who stood closest
to the Divine Master. We have noticed 1 the
ascription of the Fourth Gospel to Cerinthus
by the Alogi in the second century, a view
which found but scant acceptance at the time,
and was ignored by writers like Irenseus and
Clement of Alexandria, not to speak of Eusebius
afterwards. Irenseus 2 even supposed that St John
wrote his Gospel to combat the Docetic teach
ing of Cerinthus regarding the Person of Christ.
1 P. 6. 2 Adversus Hsereses, iii. n. I.
Q
242 St John. 7.
From the second century to the end of the
eighteenth the Gospel was accepted without
challenge as the work of St John the Apostle.
Its authenticity was first questioned by English
Deism, in the person of Edward Evanson, in
1792, and again by a German scholar, Bret-
schneider, in 1820. Then came Strauss with
his Life of Jesus in 1835, an d Baur in 1844
with a still more formidable assault, both reject
ing the Johannine authorship and the historical
character of the Gospel. According to Baur,
the Gospel was written after the middle of the
second century in Asia Minor, or perhaps in
Alexandria. For a time Baur s extreme views
seemed to have triumphed, and the genuineness
of the Fourth Gospel ceased to be a tenet of
scientific criticism.
It was impossible for Christian faith to ac
quiesce in such a disastrous conclusion. Believing
scholarship was roused to do battle for that which
had been received as truth for seventeen hundred
years. The New Testament books and the Chris
tian literature of the first and second centuries
were investigated afresh, and discoveries of long-
lost works of early Christian literature contributed
opportunely to the thoroughness of the examina
tion. The result of the critical labours of the last
half -century and more has been to bring the
Fourth Gospel again within the Apostolic age.
Recent Criticism. 243
" Generally between 95 A.D. and 115 A.D.," says Dr
Moffatt, 1 " nearer the latter year in all probability
than the former, the Gospel may be conjectured
to have been written. Sanday, after Godet, limits
the date to 83-89 A.D., but it is much safer to take
the closing decade of the century as the earliest
limit." Even some who deny the genuineness
admit the credibility. Wendt 2 asserts that the
Fourth Evangelist is a post-Apostolic writer who
has preserved notes of the Apostle John s recollec
tions, has given them a historical framework suit
able to the requirements of the post- Apostolic
Church, and has arranged them in a form which
secured their acceptance in post-Apostolic Chris
tendom. He by no means classes the Fourth
Gospel with works of fiction. He attributes to it
a considerable measure of historical worth as a
record of the life and discourses of Jesus. Pro
fessor Harnack, 3 who ascribes the Fourth Gospel
to John the Presbyter, admits that in some way
John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, stands
behind the Gospel, and that it cannot have been
written later than no A.D. Schmiedel, 4 on the
other hand, contends that it is not the work of
the son of Zebedee, nor of an eyewitness or con-
1 Historical New Testament, p. 495.
2 Gospel according to St John, p. 254.
3 Chronologic, p. 659 ff.
4 Encyclopaedia Biblica, art. "John."
244 St John. /.
temporary, but of a later writer (probably after
132 A.D.), who was " easily accessible to Alexan
drine and Gnostic ideas." Professor Julius
Grill of Tubingen, whose work on the Fourth
Gospel l is very able and scholarly, declares that
the Fourth Gospel comes from the period of
Gnostic speculation in the second century, and
that the author never intended to be known, and
never will be known. There are other negative
critics who do not admit the Gospel to be so close
to the time of the Apostles, but whose positions
are an immense advance upon Baur. We shall see
what the earliest Christian literature has to say
in opposition to those more negative views, and
what it has to say in favour of the traditional view
after all that has been written of recent years.
Eusebius, in a chapter 2 on "The order of the
Gospels," says that "of all the disciples of the
Lord, only Matthew and John have left us written
memorials, and they, tradition says, were led to
write only under the pressure of necessity. . . .
The three Gospels, . . . having come into the hands
of all, and into his own also, they say that he
accepted them and bore witness to their truthful
ness, 3 but that there was lacking in them an
1 Untersuchungen liber die Entstehung des vierten Evangeliu;ns,
p. vi and p. 384.
2 H. E., III. 24,
3 Compare what the Presbyter, quoted by Papias, says of Mark,
p. 189; also Muratorian Fragment, p. 84.
Eusebius and Irenczus on the Gospel. 245
account of the deeds done by Christ at the begin
ning of His ministry. . . . One who understands
this can no longer think that the Gospels are at
variance with one another, inasmuch as the
Gospel according to John contains the first acts
of Christ, while the others give an account of the
latter part of His life. And the genealogy of our
Saviour according to the flesh John quite naturally
omitted, because it had been already given by
Matthew and Luke, and began with the doctrine
of His divinity, which had, as it were, been re
served for him, as their superior, by the Divine
Spirit." This account of the motive of St John
in the composition of his Gospel reminds us of
the notable saying of Clement of Alexandria,
already quoted : x " Last of all, John, perceiving
that the external facts (ra aw^anKa) had been
made plain in the Gospel, being urged by his
friends and inspired by the Spirit, composed a
spiritual Gospel (Trvev/jLari/cov evayye\Lov)."
Irenseus, himself of Asia Minor, the disciple of
Polycarp, the scholar of St John, expressly calls
John the Apostle the author, and does so as if he
had never heard of any other view. Theophilus
of Antioch, who is credited with a Harmony of
the Gospels, and was a commentator of note in
the early Church, has left a treatise in three books
addressed to Autolycus. He wrote about 180 A.D.,
1 See pp. 45, 46.
246 St John. I.
and is the first to name St John as the author of
the Fourth Gospel. " Whence the holy Scrip
tures teach us, and all the inspired writers, of
whom John says : In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, showing
that at first God existed alone, and in Him the
Word. Then he says, * And the Word was God.
All things were made by Him, and without Him
was not anything made (John i. i, 2)." 1 This
is the oldest Gospel quotation in which the
Evangelist is quoted by name, and Theophilus
expressly places him on a level with the inspired
writers of the Old and the New Testament.
We have already dealt with the Diatessaron
of TATIAN and its testimony to the Fourfold
Gospel. His Address to the Greeks has refer
ences which show beyond doubt acquaintance
with the Fourth Gospel. " Renouncing the
demons," he says, 2 "follow ye God alone. All
things were made by Him, and without Him
was not any one thing made " (John i. 3). This
is clearly a quotation from St John, and the
form of the quotation (not including o yeyovev,
attached to it in the text underlying the Author
ised Version) is that of the oldest manuscripts,
of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Irenseus,
and Theophilus, and other early writers, both
1 Ad Autolycum, ii. 22.
2 Address to Greeks, p. 158 D.
Tertian s Address to the Greeks. 247
orthodox and heretical. "And this," he says
again, 1 " is accordingly what has been said : The
darkness does not overtake the light (John i. 5) ;
the light of God is the Word." In another
passage of some length 2 expounding the Christian
view of the creation, there are phrases and ex
pressions which betray unmistakable familiarity
with the prologue of St John s Gospel by the
easy and natural manner in which they are woven
into the exposition. Outside of the prologue
there is at least one reference 3 " God is a Spirit
(John iv. 24), but not even the God without a
name is to be bribed with gifts." Tatian s
Address to the Greeks, says Professor Stanton, 4
" shows admirably how the substance and purpose
of a work by a Christian writer might naturally
affect the number and character of the Scriptural
quotations in it. This discourse contains clear
evidence of the knowledge and use of the Fourth
Gospel, but none, or scarcely any, of acquaint
ance with the other Gospels. Moreover, in
regard to the Fourth, it is almost exclusively
the language and thoughts of the prologue that
we meet with. We have, besides, only the words,
God is a Spirit. The explanation is, however,
obvious when we notice that, apart from his
attacks on Paganism, the themes of which Tatian
1 u.s., p. 152. 2 u.s., p. 145. 3 u.s,, p. 144.
4 Gospels as Historical Documents, p. 149.
248 St John. I.
here treats are the creation of the world and the
nature of man. If the work concerning the Chris
tian system, which he promises in the present
treatise, had come down to us, we should in all
probability have found quite a different class of
evangelical quotations and parallels there." The
testimonies now advanced, when taken along with
the witness of the Diatessaron, furnish indisput
able proof that the Fourth Gospel was already
familiarly known and invested with high authority.
We have the CLEMENTINE HOMILIES l some
where about the middle of the second century,
and this notable treatise contains evidence of the
use of St John s Gospel, which is now scarcely
questioned. It was largely on the * Clementine
Homilies that Baur founded his reconstruction
of the history of early Christianity. Here, he said,
is primitive Christianity, the Petrine teaching, the
genuine doctrine of the first followers of Jesus.
This view has been shown to be baseless, but not
a little of the interest of the treatise remains. The
eminent scholar de Lagarde, who published an
edition of the Clementines, and who had no
theological end to serve, gives in his Prolegomena
fifteen instances of quotations from the Fourth
Gospel or reference to it. Here is an unmistak
able example: 2 " Therefore He Himself being a
1 See Canonicity, pp. Ixiii-lxviii ; pp. 184, 185 ; pp. 438-444.
2 Clem. Horn., iii. 52.
Clementine Homilies. 249
prophet, said, I am the gate of life : he that
entereth in by me entereth into life (John x. 9) ;
. . . and again, My sheep hear my voice (John
x. 27)." A reference, 1 which appears also in
Justin (Apol., i. 61), has been the subject of much
discussion : " For thus the Prophet swore unto
us, saying, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be
born again of living water, in the name of Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven (John iii. 5)." It has been
contended that both Justin and the Clementine
writer quote here from an apocryphal book, but
as the quotations of the passage by the two writers
differ from one another, that view seems im
probable. The quotation is much more likely a
free combination of St Matthew (xxviii. 19) with
St John (iii. 3-5), a kind of combination which is
common when, as may be the case here, the
quotations are made from memory. Although
some of Lagarde s references are unimportant,
and some of the quotations vary from the
language of the Gospel, they served to convince
scholars that the Clementine writer was ac
quainted with our Fourth Gospel. The denial of
such references was, however, essential to the
theory of Baur, and he and Schwegler and
Hilgenfeld maintained it strenuously, regarding
the references as too doubtful to be admitted.
1 Clem. Horn., xi. 26.
250 Stjohn. /.
But when Dressel published his edition of
Twenty Homilies of Clement of Rome in 1853,
with the long -lost concluding portions of the
work derived from a manuscript he had dis
covered in the Vatican, denial of the use of St
John s Gospel was no longer possible. The
evidence available before was supplemented by a
direct and striking allusion to the man blind from
his birth (John ix. i). " Wherefore," so runs
the reference, 1 " also our Master, inquiring about
the man blind from his birth, who recovered his
sight through Him, made answer to those who
asked whether this man sinned or his parents
that he should be born blind : Neither this man
sinned nor his parents, but that through him the
power of God might be manifested curing sins
of ignorance." Not only is the reference direct
and detailed, but the very words of the Gospel
narrative appear in the quotation (e/c 761/6x779,
ai/e/SXe-v/ro), and the Clementine writer notes the
sins of ignorance alluded to in the context. The
only weak link in this evidence is the uncertainty
as to the date of the Clementines. Stanton 2
thinks the date too uncertain to found any con
clusion upon them. Professor Sanday gave the
date as somewhere about the middle of the
second century, and although certainty is not
attainable, the phenomena of quotation, when
1 Clem. Horn., xix. 22. 2 Gospels, p. 159, n. 2.
References in Gospel of Peter. 251
compared with Justin Martyr, tend to support
this view.
The GOSPEL OF PETER, already referred to,
has what appear to be distinct references to
our Fourth Gospel. The following seem to be
clear references to the crucifixion and burial as
narrated in St John s Gospel (chap, xix.) :
" They clad Him with purple, and they placed
Him on a seat of judgment, 1 saying, Judge
righteously, O King of Israel ; and one of them
brought a crown of thorns and set it upon the
head of the Lord" (vv. 2, 13). "And they were
scourging Him, and saying, This is the honour
wherewith we will honour the Son of God"
(v. i). "And they brought two malefactors and
crucified the Lord between them. But He was
silent, as if in no wise feeling pain ; and when
they set up the cross they inscribed upon it the
words, This is the King of Israel. And having
laid down His garments before them, they divided
them and cast lots for them " (vv. 18, 24). "And
the Jews being provoked at Him, commanded
that His legs should not be broken, in order that
He might die in torment " (v. 31). " And Joseph
. . . wrapped Him in a linen cloth and brought
Him into his own tomb, which was called
Joseph s garden" (v. 41). The account of the
1 It is possible that in John xix. 3 <?Ka0to-e, used of Pilate, is trans
itive. But this is not St John s usage. See Westcott, ad loc.
252 St John. I.
resurrection follows St John s narrative in the
twentieth chapter : " And they came there and
found the sepulchre opened, and drawing nigh
thither they stooped down " (xx. 5). " He is
risen and gone" (v. 15). "But we, the twelve
disciples of the Lord, wept and grieved, and each
of us in grief at what had happened, withdrew
to his house. But I, Simon Peter, and Andrew,
my brother, took our nets and departed to the
sea, and there was with us also Levi, the son of
Alphseus, whom the Lord . . ." (xx. 10, xxi. 3). 1
However we may account for the variations from
the evangelical narrative and the additional par
ticulars, the narrative undoubtedly presupposes a
knowledge of the Fourth Gospel, embodying as
it does so many particulars peculiar to it. " We
consider it certain," says Rendel Harris, " that
our false Peter had a good acquaintance with St
John s Gospel." " Of all the discoveries of the
last century in the domain of early Christian
literature," says Professor Harnack, 2 " this is the
most notable, for it is the only relic of any size
of genuine, even if already of secondary or ter
tiary, Gospel literature which has been preserved
to us alongside of the Four Gospels." Harnack
1 The fragment from which these passages are taken can be con
veniently consulted in Rendel Harris, The Newly Recovered
Gospel of Peter, chap. iv.
- Chronologic, p. 625.
References in Justin Martyr. 253
was at first in doubt as to the use of St John s
Gospel here, but now he is certain that it is re
ferred to, and it is really because of the proved use
of St John s Gospel, which he puts not later than
no A.D., that he does not ascribe to the Gospel
of Peter a higher antiquity. Without, however,
putting this apocryphal Gospel fragment so early,
we have in it by general consent a witness to the
use of St John s Gospel about 150 A.D.
The relation of JUSTIN MARTYR to the Fourth
Gospel has already been discussed. 1 In Dr
Charteris s Canonicity there are nineteen express
references to the Fourth Gospel collected from
the Apologies and the Dialogue, and sixteen
references which cannot be counted as more than
echoes. We have already mentioned Justin s
reference to Christian baptism. His teaching on
the subject may be considered in its bearing upon
his acquaintance with the Fourth Gospel. In
Justin s exposition of baptism for the instruction
of the Roman Emperor, he says: 2 " As many
as have been convinced and believe the truth of
what is taught and told by us, and promise to
endeavour so to live, are taught to pray and to
seek from God, with fasting, forgiveness of the
sins committed before, while we pray and fast
along with them. Then they are led to a place
where there is water, and are born again in the
1 P. 102. 2 Apol., i. 61.
254
same manner in which also we ourselves were
born again, for they receive the washing with
water on the spot in the name of the Father of
all and God the Lord, and of our Saviour Jesus
Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. For Christ said,
Except ye be born again, ye shall in nowise enter
into the kingdom of heaven. But that it is im
possible for men who have once been born to
enter into the womb of the mothers that bare
them, is manifest to all. . . . Now the doctrine
with respect to this we learned from the Apostles."
Justin evidently refers to the words of institution
in St Matthew (xxviii. 19), and passes on to the
spiritual significance of the ordinance, blending
St John s " Except a man be born from above,
he cannot see the kingdom of God " (iii. 3) with
St Matthew s " Except ye be converted, and be
come as little children, ye shall in nowise enter
into the kingdom of heaven " (xviii. 3). If it
should be held that the baptismal reference is
to St Matthew alone, we can still adduce the
purely Johannine words : " Nicodemus saith unto
Him, How can a man be born again when he is
old ? Can he enter a second time into his
mother s womb and be born ? " (John iii. 4).
It is impossible to resist the conviction that we
have here a reference to St John s account of
the interview of Nicodemus with Jesus recorded
in this familiar chapter.
References in Justin Martyr. 255
Similarly in his account of the Lord s Supper,
Justin has what must be regarded as a remin
iscence of our Lord s great discourse in the syn
agogue at Capernaum (John vi. 52-56), setting
forth the spiritual significance of the ordinance.
" For it is not common bread nor common drink
that we take," says Justin, 1 "... but we were
taught that the bread and wine were the flesh
and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh,"
a reference corresponding in particular to the
words in St John s Gospel, " He that eateth my
flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life "
(John vi. 52). It is of importance to notice here
that Justin adds : " For the Apostles, in the
Memoirs composed by them, which are called
Gospels, have handed down that so it was
commanded to them." Once more, in the
Dialogue, 2 we read how Jesus " healed those who
from birth and in the flesh were blind and deaf
and lame, making one to leap, another to hear,
and a third to see by His word." The expression
" from birth " (etc yeverfy) is peculiar to St John,
who is the only evangelist mentioning the cure
of any congenital infirmity, and it points clearly
to the Fourth Gospel as the source of Justin s
knowledge.
There are clear indications that Justin was
acquainted with the narrative of the Passion as
1 Apol., i. 66. * Dial., c. 69.
256 StJohn.I.
it is given in the Fourth Gospel. "For when
they had crucified Him they pierced His hands
and His feet, fixing the nails into them ; and
they that crucified Him divided His garments
among them, and by casting lots determined
what each should take by the throw of the dice "
(compare John xx. 25 and Matt, xxvii. 35). 1 One
quotation which Justin 2 reproduces regularly in
the same form is that in fulfilment of prophecy
regarding the piercing of the Saviour s side
"They shall look on Him whom they pierced"
(John xix. 37).
There are several passages in Justin which
presuppose acquaintance with the Prologue of
the Gospel, and show that his doctrine of the
Person of Christ is that of St John. Principal
Drummond, who has made the subject a life-long
study, examines the subject anew in his very able
volume on The Character and Authorship of
the Fourth Gospel. He finds that the words
of the Prologue "the Word was God" are
paralleled again and again in Justin, only with
greater emphasis and fulness. " In this point,"
he says, 3 " the Justinian doctrine is not only
more copious than the Johannine, but presents
1 Dial., c. 97. Cf. Apol., i. 35. 2 Apol., i. 52 ; Dial., c. 32.
8 Character and Authorship, p. 114. Dr Drummond s second
chapter, and especially his exposition of Justin s doctrine of the
Person of Christ, is masterly and convincing.
Johannine Thought in Justin. 257
the appearance of a true development, an un
folding of the implicit contents of the brief and
pregnant statement of the Gospel. And if it be
said that thus far Justin is indebted to Philo, still
the incorporation of the Alexandrine theology
with Christianity must itself have required time,
and its more abundant mixture in the writings
of the Apologist than in that of the Evangelist
betrays, if not a later date, at least a more
advanced post on the march of dogmatic form
ulation." This doctrine, and the doctrine of the
pre-existence of Christ, Justin declares also that
he and his fellow-believers " have been taught "
(eSt8a%0?7//,ei>), " have understood " (vevorj/ca/jiev)
from the Memoirs of His Apostles, "have learned"
(efjLa6ofjiev) from the Memoirs.
There are further Johannine thoughts which
frequently make their appearance in Justin that
Christ came forth from the Father, that the Father
sent Him, that He fulfilled the Father s will. The
keywords of the Fourth Gospel, /jLovoyevr)?, </>&&gt;<?,
?ft>?7, recur frequently in Justin. Like St John,
and no doubt following him, he uses the type of
the Brazen Serpent, 1 saying, in the spirit of the
Evangelist, " there is salvation to those who fly
to Him who sent into the world His crucified
Son " (John iii. 14-16).
It is difficult to see how the attestation of St
1 Dial., c. 91.
R
258 StJohn.I.
John s Gospel by Justin could reasonably be
made stronger. No doubt he quotes it less fre
quently than the Synoptics. But that does not
prove that he set it upon a lower level. His
treatment of it has been explained as follows:
" Rather does he employ Johannine conceptions
and lines of thought as he does also Pauline
almost as one employs a dogmatic writer of
similar tendency and position from whom, as
one s standard, one has learned to think and to
express one s self; whereas Justin cites after the
Synoptics, he reflects after St John." 1 A good
deal has been made, by opponents of the Johann
ine authorship, of the fact that while he knows
the name of the author of the Apocalypse, and
calls him John, he never mentions him as his
authority for any fact or doctrine which he sets
forth. But neither does he name the Synoptists,
whom he quotes so frequently, nor St Paul,
though he uses expressions (TT/XOTOTO/CO? and
others) peculiar to him, and must have known
some, if not all, of his epistles. Even when he
is following St Paul in citations from the Old
Testament which differ from the Septuagint and
are not literally translated from the Hebrew, he
never mentions him by name. But though he
1 Thoma, Genesis des Johannes- Evangelium, p. 824, quoted by
Stanton, Gospels, p. 130. Cf. Drummond, Character and
Authorship, p. 158 ff.
Testimony of Heretics. 259
does not call them by their names, and really
has no occasion to do so, there can be no
reasonable doubt that the Memoirs of Justin
are the Gospels of Irenseus, and that Justin knew
the Fourth Gospel to be the work of the Apostle
John.
Besides the testimony from the * Clementine
Homilies and the Gospel of Peter, which can
not be classed with orthodox writings, we have
valuable testimony to St John s Gospel from a
GROUP OF HERETICS in the first three-quarters of
the second century. Among them is HERACLEON,
who was, so far as we know, the earliest com
mentator on the New Testament. He wrote
commentaries, possibly on St Matthew, and cer
tainly on St Luke and St John. None of them
have survived, but copious extracts are to be
found in the works of Clement of Alexandria
and in Origen. His commentary on St John is
largely quoted by Origen in his commentary on
the Fourth Gospel, and an index of passages
of Scripture quoted, or explained, or referred to
by Heracleon, shows frequent references to the
first, second, fourth, fifth, and eighth chapters of
St John. His comments on the story of the
woman of Samaria at Jacob s well are largely
quoted by Origen, who gives the quotations with
such explicitness that we even have Heracleon s
testimony to various readings. It is not necessary
260 St John I.
to elaborate the witness of the extant fragments
of Heracleon to St John s Gospel. Of his know
ledge and use of it there is no doubt, and we
can gather what sacredness and authority he,
although a heretic, attributed to it from the
fact that he deemed it worthy of a commentary,
and bestowed such minute care upon the letter
of its text. The only question is, again, as to
his date, which is believed to lie between 140-
160 A.D. Adopting the later date, we shall allow
time for the Gospel to have won the esteem
which occasioned a detailed and verbal com
mentary on it.
Heracleon was the intimate friend (yv&pifAos)
of VALENTINUS, and belonged to the school of
that great Gnostic teacher. Clement of Alexandria
calls Heracleon the most esteemed of the school
of Valentinus. 1 This renowned head of the school
accepted the whole New Testament integro
instrument*) as Tertullian 2 says, but perverted it
by fanciful interpretations to support the theory
of emanations, by which he sought to bridge over
the gulf between a spiritual Supreme Being and
the material world. He was a contemporary
of Justin Martyr, and was in Rome during the
episcopates of Hyginus, Pius, and Anicetus. The
date 140-160 A.D. represents the closing period
1 Origen, In Joan., ii. 66 ; Clem. Stromateis, iv. 9.
2 De Pnescriptione Hereticorum, c. 38.
Testimony of Heretics. 261
of his activity. We have from Irenseus l an
account of the treatment of the Prologue of
St John s Gospel by Valentinus and his school.
" This is what he says : * In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God ; the same was in the beginning
with God (John i. i, 2). Having first distin
guished these three God, the Beginning, and
the Word he unites them again in order that
he may show the projection of the two of them,
of the Son and of the Word, and the union of the
two to one another and to the Father. . . . All
things were made by Him, and without Him was
not anything made (John i. 3), for the Word was
the author of form and beginning to all the ^Eons
that came into existence after Him. But * What
was made in Him, says John, is life. Here
again he indicated conjunction ; for all things,
he said, were made by Him, but in Him was
life. . . . He styles Him A light which shineth
in darkness, and was not comprehended by it
(John i. 5), inasmuch as when He imparted form
to all those things which had their origin from
passion, He was not known by it. He also styles
Him Son and Truth and Life and the Word
made flesh, Whose glory, he says, * we beheld,
and His glory was that of the Only- begotten,
given to Him by the Father, full of grace and
1 Adversus Haereses, i. 8. 5.
262 St John. /.
truth (John i. 14). But what John really says
is this: * And the Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory, the
glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth. Accurately therefore does
he set forth the first Tetrad, speaking of the
Father and Grace, and the Only-begotten and
Truth. In this way does John speak of the first
Ogdoad and that which is the Mother of all the
^Eons. For he mentions the Father and Grace,
the Only-begotten and Truth, the Word and Life,
and Man and the Church." We see here how
Irenaeus attributes these quotations to John, the
son of Zebedee, for he knows no other ; and how
he takes pains to show the misquotation of the
words of the Evangelist by these heretics. Hip-
polytus, whose great work on the Refutation of
Heresies is a storehouse of information on this
subject, has references to the use of St John by
Valentinus. He represents him l as quoting words
of Jesus recorded only by St John. " Therefore,
he says, says the Saviour, All that came before
me are thieves and robbers (John x. 8)." In
another place 2 Hippolytus represents him quoting
the words of the Fourth Gospel cited by Justin :
" This, he says (<prjo-i), is what the Saviour saith
(Xe^et), Except a man be born of water and
Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of
1 Ref. Hxr., vi. 35. 2 viii. 10.
Testimony of Heretics. 263
heaven, because that which is born of the flesh
is flesh (John iii. 5, 6)." When Baur contends
that so far from Valentinus founding upon the
Fourth Gospel for his elaborate system of ^Eons
and emanations, the Evangelist has adopted his
characteristic key-words from him, we feel that
he is putting the cart before the horse. Any
such view is quite out of keeping with the whole
tone and style of St John s Gospel. The simple
use of terms by the Evangelist approves itself
as fundamental and original ; the distortion by
the philosophers and system-builders is clearly
a subsequent stage.
BASILIDES is a witness who brings St John s
Gospel considerably nearer to the Apostolic age.
It is from Hippolytus also that we obtain infor
mation regarding this eminent Gnostic teacher.
By means of the fresh light thrown upon the
history of Gnosticism by the discovery of the
Refutation of all Heresies about the middle of
last century, and the certain recognition of
Hippolytus as the author, we become ac
quainted with a Gnostic theory not of dualism
but of pantheistic monism, not of emanation
from the higher to the lower but of evolution
from the lower to the higher. The author of
this system is Basilides, and we have an exposi
tion of it in Hippolytus. Investigation has
shown that in the pages of Hippolytus there is
264 StJohn.I.
a faithful representation of the original work.
This is important, because when appeal is made
to the authority for the doctrine of this Gnostic
sect we believe that we have the views and opinions
of Basilides himself, and not of his philosophical
descendants a generation or two later. Hippoly-
tus l states expressly that the Basilidian account of
all things " concerning the Saviour " subsequent
to the birth of Jesus agreed with that given " in
the Gospels." It was not any particular Gospel,
such as that of St Luke, 2 but the Gospels collect
ively, which were expounded by Basilides. The
expression TO evayyeXiov would not of itself
necessarily denote our Four Gospels, although
their use by Justin so soon after Basilides s
day, and the fact that St Luke and St John at
any rate are commented upon separately, make
it probable that our Four Gospels made up the
vayye\iov of Basilides.
What, then, are the references we find to St
John s Gospel? Here is one of them: That
each man has his own appointed time, he says
(</>77<7t), the Saviour sufficiently indicates when He
says, * My hour is not yet come (John ii. 4)." And
here is another : " The word spoken Let there
be light, he says, has become the seed of the
world from non-existent things, and this, he says,
is what is mentioned in the Gospels, He was
1 Ref. Haer., vii. 27. 2 See before, p. 231.
Dr Ezra A bbot on Heretical Testimony. 265
the true Light, which lighteth every man coming
into the world (John i. 9)." These seem to be
express quotations, and have convinced scholars
that Basilides used St John s Gospel. The only
drawback is that ^aL (he says), which is the
formula of quotation, cannot be held for certain to
imply Basilides himself as apart from his philo
sophical school. Yet the probability lies this
way. " In general," says Matthew Arnold, 1
" Hippolytus uses the formula * according to
them (/car* avrovs) when he quotes from the
school, and the formula he says (^rjcri) when
he gives the dicta of the master. And in this
particular case he manifestly quotes the dicta of
Basilides, and no one who had not a theory to
serve would ever dream of doubting it. Basilides
therefore, about the year 125 A.D., had before him
the Fourth Gospel." This clear and definite
adhesion of Matthew Arnold is supported by all
moderate scholars. The evidential value of this
Gnostic testimony may he summed up in the
words of the late Dr Ezra Abbot of America : 2
" The use of the Gospel of John by the Gnostic
sects in the second century affords a strong, it
may seem a decisive, argument for its genuine
ness. However ingeniously they might pervert
its meaning, it is obvious to every intelligent
1 God and the Bible, p. 269.
2 Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, pp. 84, 85.
266 StJohn.I.
reader that this Gospel is in reality diametrically
opposed to the essential principles of Gnosticism.
Such being the case, let us suppose it to have
been forged about the middle of the second
century in the heat of the Gnostic controversy.
It was a book which the Gnostic sects which
flourished ten, twenty, or thirty years before
had never heard of. How is it possible then to
explain the fact that their followers should not
only have received it, but received it, so far as
appears, without question or discussion ? It must
have been received by the founders of those sects
from the beginning; and we have no reason to
distrust the testimony of Hippolytus to what is
under these circumstances so probable and is
attested by evidence. But if received by the
founders of these sects, it must have been received
at the same time by the Catholic Christians.
They would not at a later period have taken the
spurious work from the heretics with whom they
were in controversy. It was, then, generally re
ceived both by Gnostics and their opponents
between 120 and 130 A.D. What follows ? It
follows that the Gnostics of that day received
it because they could not help it. They would
not have admitted the authority of a book which
could be reconciled with their doctrines only by
the most forced interpretations if they could have
destroyed its authority by destroying its genuine-
The Alogi. 267
ness. . . . The fact of the reception of the Fourth
Gospel as the work of St John at so early a
date by parties so violently opposed to each other
proves that the genuineness was decisive. The
argument is further confirmed by the use of the
Gospel by the opposing parties in the later
Montanistic controversy and in the disputes
about the time of celebrating Easter."
We shall not dwell upon evidence for St John s
Gospel which comes from other heretical sects, such
as the Peratae and the Ophites, from Cerinthus
and Simon Magus. 1 We need only mention the
one exception from the universal consent of early
Christian antiquity to the genuineness of the
Fourth Gospel. The exception, to which refer
ence has already been made, is that of the Alogi.
It is doubtful whether the sect thus named was
anything but a few eccentric individuals, whom
Epiphanius mentions in the fourth century under
a nickname having the double meaning of "deniers
of the doctrine of the Logos " and " unreasoning
mules." 2 There is nothing to show that they
were ever formally dealt with as heretics,
and this again makes it doubtful whether they
really opposed the doctrine of the Logos set forth
in the Fourth Gospel. They were, however, op-
1 See Canonicity, p. 383 ff.
2 &\oyov is the name given by the modern Greek to the beast on
which he rides.
268 St John. I.
ponents of the Montanist movement, and it is
in all probability they whom Irenaeus l mentions
as not admitting St John s Gospel, and who by
frustrating the gift of the Spirit, therein pro
mised and set forth, " sin against the Spirit of
God and fall into the unpardonable sin." They
are the same people who, according to Dionysius
of Alexandria, 2 attribute the Apocalypse to Cer-
inthus; and Epiphanius, 3 who alone calls them
by their name, says they receive neither the
Gospel nor the Apocalypse as St John s, but
attribute both to Cerinthus. That St John s
Gospel was written by Cerinthus is so far from
being the case that Irenaeus 4 supposed the Apostle
to have written it to controvert the docetic teach
ing of that heretic. Even the Alogi, however, did
not dispute that the Fourth Gospel came down
from the Apostolic age, seeing that they attributed
it to one who was at least a contemporary of the
disciple whom Jesus loved. The opposition of
the Alogi has been used by Professor Harnack 5
as an argument against the universal acceptance
claimed for the Fourfold Gospel in the last de
cades of the second century by Irenseus. The
subject has been discussed at length by Zahn 6
1 Adversus Haereses, iii. n. 6-9. 2 Euseb. H. E., vii. 25.
3 Epiph., li. 35. 4 Adversus Hsereses, iii. n. I.
5 Das rceue Testament um das Jahr 200 A.D., pp. 58-70, and
Chronologic, i. 670, 671.
6 GK. i. 220-262 and ii. 967-973.
Position of Papias. 269
and Stanton, 1 the latter of whom concludes a
careful and detailed examination with the verdict
that the existence of this opposition " does not
show that the beliefs to which they were opposed
were not commonly held or had been quite re
cently adopted, still less that they were only then
spreading ; it does, however, show that the con
ception of the Fourfold Gospel had not as yet
acquired that firm hold on the mind of every
professing Christian which only clear and positive
definitions and a prescription of some generations
could give." This is a very cautious verdict to
pronounce, and Irenaeus was well entitled to hold
that opposition from a party who do not seem to
have ever reached the dignity of a sect, who were
of no influence in the Church, who were destined
to disappear in the course of a generation, and
whose criticism rested solely on internal grounds,
was not sufficient to break the unanimity of ac
ceptance experienced by the Four Gospels within
the Church.
The position of PAPIAS has already been under
consideration. His testimony to St John s Gospel
is largely inferential, but it is affirmative and not,
as opponents would have it, negative. Eusebius,
who gives his references to St Matthew and St
Mark, gives none to the Gospel according to St
John. It has been in consequence inferred that
1 Gospels, pp. 198-212.
270 StJohn.I.
Papias never quoted and did not know the Fourth
Gospel. This objection has been conclusively dis
posed of by the essay of Bishop Lightfoot l on
The Silence of Eusebius. Eusebius did not
undertake to collect references to the "acknow
ledged " books of the New Testament, among
which he placed the Four Gospels, and Papias
might have quoted St John s Gospel with the
greatest frequency without Eusebius ever noticing
any instance. Lightfoot has, however, made it
probable that when Papias makes the Elder
attribute a lack of order (ov fievroi rdgei) to St
Mark, he is contrasting it with another order,
that of the Fourth Gospel. Papias, according
to Eusebius, 2 " used testimonies from the First
Epistle of John," and as the Gospel and the
First Epistle are from the same hand, the testi
mony to the Apostolic authorship of the Epistle
is indirect testimony to the Gospel. When he
speaks of preferring testimonies proceeding from
" the Truth itself," 3 we may have an echo of
St John s Gospel (John xiv. 6); and there is
reason to believe that an anonymous quotation
in Irenaeus 4 is to be referred to him, "For this
reason (they taught) the Lord said, There are
1 Essays on Supernatural Religion, pp. 32-58.
2 II. E., III. 39. 16. 3 III. 39. 4.
4 Adversus H erases, v. 36. i. 2.
Testimony of Poly carp. 271
many mansions in My Father s house " (John
xiv. 2). 1
The testimony of POLYCARP is inferential too.
It is notable that, while he knows St Paul s
writings, and frequently quotes the First Epistle
of St Peter, and shows some acquaintance with
the Synoptic Gospels, he not only has no quota
tion from St John s Gospel, but is apparently
uninfluenced by St John s characteristic concep
tion of Christ. We may be fairly certain, how
ever, that he knew the Fourth Gospel and
admitted it to be a true witness to the Person
and work of Christ. Assume that St John s
Gospel had been written about 130 A.D., Irenseus
might have been a hearer of Polycarp by that
time; he may have heard him as late as 150,
but the more probable date is 130-140. If
a Gospel had already appeared, attributed to
St John, but containing a representation of our
Lord and His ministry different from that which
the Apostle himself was accustomed to give in his
oral teaching, Polycarp would have known and
commented upon the fact. If Polycarp had pro
nounced such a Gospel a forgery, Irenaeus would
1 Much stress cannot be laid upon the " Argumentum " to St John s
Gospel in a manuscript of the ninth century, where we read : " The
Gospel of John was revealed and given to the Churches, . . .
even as Papias of Hierapolis, a dear disciple of John, has related in
his Five Books."
272 St John. /.
have heard it. Irenaeus accepted the Fourth
Gospel unhesitatingly as the work of St John,
and this he could not have done if Polycarp
had expressed doubts regarding the correctness
of its representation of the Lord. Irenseus,
when he vouched for the existence and credi
bility of the Fourfold Gospel and attributed the
Fourth of the series to John the Apostle, was
speaking of what he learned from Polycarp,
who related his reminiscences " altogether in
accordance with the Scriptures," 1 among which
Irenseus reckoned the Fourth Gospel. John,
Polycarp, Irenaeus, are the links of an inde
structible chain of proof in favour of the genu
ineness of the Fourth Gospel and its credibility
as a historical work. 2
1 See above, p. 63.
2 See a cogent argument by the late Dr R. W. Dale in The
Living Christ and the Four Gospels, p. 260 ff.
273
CHAPTER XV.
ST JOHN. II.
WHEN we come to IGNATIUS we are upon the
very brink of the Apostolic age. The exact
year of his martyrdom cannot be determined
from any data extant, and various years from
107 to 117 A.D. have been assigned to that
event. But adopting the latest of these years,
we are but a little distance removed from the
last survivors of the Apostles, and, as we shall
see, the latest of those years is even more favour
able for the traditional view of the Fourth Gospel
than the earliest. We may now approach the
consideration of his testimony with the convic
tion that the seven letters of what is called the
Vossian recension of the Ignatian Epistles are
genuine. Lack of assurance as to the genuine
ness of any of the letters in their various forms
for a long time prevented scholars from doing
justice to their evidence. The labours of Light-
foot, Zahn, and Harnack, and the more recent
S
274 St John. II.
investigations of Von der Goltz and Dietze, 1 have
discovered a weight of testimony in the Ignatius
letters not realised before.
Ignatius was undoubtedly acquainted with the
Gospel history, and his acquaintance with the
Gospel records and St Paul s Epistles is un
questionable. Yet though his letters abound in
allusions and references, there are no express
quotations, and scarcely any formula of quota
tions, in the references he makes. 2 St John s
name is never mentioned, not even in the Epistle
to the Church of Ephesus, so long instructed and
presided over by the last survivor of the Apostolic
band. But though he is not expressly named in
this Epistle, it is more than likely that there is
an implicit reference to him in words in which
Ignatius prays that he may be found in the
lot of the Ephesian Christians " who also have
1 Lightfoot in his great edition of the Apostolic Fathers, Zahn
in an early work, Ignatius von Antiochien, as well as in his His
tory of the New Testament Canon, Harnack in his Chronologic
(p. 381 ff.), Von der Goltz in an examination of the doctrinal bear
ings of the letters in Texte und Untersuchungen (xii. 3), and
Dietze in Studien u. Kritiken (1905), have done much to give us
certainty on the subject. Funk in his Patres Apostolici (p. Iv
ff.), Ramsay in his Church in the Roman Empire (p. 311 ff.), and
Von Dobschiitz in his Christian Life in the Primitive Church (p.
235 ff.), accept their genuineness. There are at the present time few
scholars who question their genuineness, and the result is a greater
interest in the personality and the writings of Ignatius.
2 Me does use the expression us yfypairrat in Magn. xii. , but in
an Old Testament reference.
Ignatius. 275
always agreed with the Apostles in the power
of Jesus Christ." l Since St Paul and St John
were the Apostles who founded and built up
the Ephesian Church, it is natural to think of
them as "the Apostles" referred to. In the
very next chapter of the Ephesian Epistle he
singles out St Paul for mention, calling the
Ephesians " fellow -partakers of the mysteries "
with him (Hav\ov crv/jL/jLv<TTai), but he does so
because of the resemblance between his outward
circumstances and those of St Paul the prisoner
and martyr of Christ (rov fie/jLapTvpTj/jLevov, afto/xa-
fcapio-Tov). 2 For a like reason he refers in the
Epistle to the Roman Church 3 to St Peter and
St Paul as men with whom he is not worthy to
be compared in the prospect of martyrdom. In
his undoubted allusions to i Corinthians, and
less certain references to Ephesians, Romans,
Galatians, and other Epistles, he is as reticent
regarding St Paul as he is regarding St John
in equally sure allusions to the Fourth Gospel.
The absence of any appeal to documents, even
if that had been already a customary thing, is
not to be wondered at. Ignatius wrote as a man
under sentence of death, held prisoner by ten
1 Ephes. xi. 2.
2 See Lightfoot, Ignatius, Ephes. xii. ; and compare Harnack,
Chronologic, p. 675 n.
3 Rom. iv.
276 St John. II.
" leopards " a company of Roman soldiers who,
the more generously they were treated, became
the fiercer. 1 His letters were thrown off in the
white heat of an intense excitement, under emo
tions of no ordinary power, with martyrdom as his
overmastering ambition, which he implores his
friends to do nothing to disappoint. Christ is
his passion ; His Cross and Death and Resurrec
tion are the sure foundation of his hopes ; and the
faith that is in Him will carry the martyr through
all. That he does not in these circumstances
mention his source, and that he does not formally
quote, can be no objection to his testimony.
When it is suggested 2 that sometimes another
passage than that alluded to would have been
more to his purpose if the Fourth Gospel had been
before him, the criticism is unreasonable. He
had no documents with him and no opportunity
to search for exact parallels; and when one is
quoting from memory, the best does not always
come at command. Prolonged verbal quota
tions are out of the question ; and so far as the
exact reproduction of the language of Scripture
is concerned, it may be doubted " whether
Ignatius, in whatever age he might have lived,
would have strictly conformed himself to the
1 Rom. chaps, iv., v.
2 New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, p. 83.
The Gospel and Epistles in Ignatius. 277
religious phraseology of his times." 1 It is clear
from every page that he is saturated with the
Evangel, and has its great facts and truths
laid up in the chambers of memory and in the
depths of his soul. 2
When we proceed to references to St John s
Gospel and Epistles in the Ignatian Letters, we
find quite a large number of the kind we might
expect. For example, in five of these Letters, 3
and in two of them twice, the expression,
"the prince of this world" (o apywv rov alwvos
TOVTOV), is found, and found in connexions so
analogous to the passages in St John that we
can scarcely doubt its derivation from the Fourth
Gospel (John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. n). 4 Again,
1 Swete, Patristic Study, p. 6.
2 Referring to at least a dozen allusions to I Corinthians and as
many echoes of its language all through the Epistle, a writer in The
New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (pp. 67, 68) says, " Ignatius
must have known this Epistle almost by heart. Although there
are no quotations (in the strictest sense, with mention of the source),
echoes of its language and thought pervade the whole of his writings
in such a manner as to leave no doubt whatever that he was
acquainted with the First Epistle to the Corinthians."
3 Eph. xvii. xix. ; Magn. i. ; Trail, iv. ; Rom. vii.; Philad. vi.
4 There is a verbal divergence, cuwcos, which is never used in this
sense by St John, who employs K6(Tfj.os. But as the governing
word in the expression is #px wj/ > an ^ as the connection is analogous,
we may surely waive the divergence. The parallel more verbally
exact with I Cor. ii. 6, 8, given by the writer in New Testament
in the Apostolic Fathers, is made much more remote by the plural
&pxovres and by the context.
278 St John. II.
there is good reason to hold with Zahn and
Lightfoot that the passage in Ephesians (xvii. i)
is a reminiscence of St John s Gospel (John xii.
3) rather than of St Matthew or St Mark :
" Therefore the Lord received ointment upon
His head, in order that He might breathe im
mortality upon the Church."
In the Epistle to the Romans 1 there is the
striking saying, " My love has been crucified (o
6/A09 e/30)? ea-Tavpwrai) ; there is not in me the fire
of material love, but water living and speaking in
me, saying within me, * Come to the Father. "
Lightfoot declares this passage to be wholly " in
spired by the Fourth Gospel," and it is quite
parallel to "Thou wouldest have asked of Him,
and He would have given thee living water. . . .
For the water which I shall give him shall be in
him a well of living water springing up unto ever
lasting life" (John iv. 10, 14); and is also to be
compared with, "Jesus cried and said, If any
man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.
He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath
said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water" (John vii. 37, 38).
In a consecutive passage of the same Epistle
(vii. 3) there is a strongly Johannine reference :
" I take no pleasure in food of corruption, nor
yet in pleasures of this life. I desire the bread
1 vii. 2.
Johannine Phraseology in Ignatius. 279
of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who
was of the seed of David, and I desire as
drink His blood, which is love incorruptible."
Here the phrase " food of corruption " (rpo<pf)
(f>0opa<i) is a characteristically Ignatian parallel
to " meat that perisheth " (rrjv fipcocriv TTJV a-TroX-
\v/jLV7jv) (John iv. 32) ; and " the bread of God,
which is the flesh of Jesus Christ," strongly
recalls "he that eateth My flesh and drinketh
My blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him
up at the last day " (John vi. 54). To the same
great discourse of Jesus as it is recorded by St
John belong "the bread of God" (Eph. v. 2),
and "breaking one bread which is an elixir of
immortality " ((frdp/jLafcov aOavaaias) (Eph. xx.)
In the Epistle to the Philadelphians (c. vii.)
there is another Johannine passage : " For though
some have desired to deceive me according to the
flesh, yet my spirit is not deceived, being from
God. For it knoweth whence it cometh and
whither it goeth, and discloseth hidden things."
The word "discloseth " (e Xe7%et) is not exclusively
yet peculiarly Johannine, especially when used of
the Spirit (John iii. 20, xvi. 8). The whole passage
recalls, " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and
thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell
whence it cometh and whither it goeth " (John
iii. 8) ; and also, " I know whence I came and
whither I go " (viii. 14).
280 St John. II.
In this connexion also a striking saying of
Ignatius may be quoted (Eph. viii. 2) : " They
that are fleshly cannot do spiritual things, nor
they that are spiritual fleshly things, as also faith
cannot do the works of unbelief, nor unbelief the
works of faith." This may very well be derived
from John iii. 6 : " That which is born of the flesh
is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit." And when we read again (Eph. xiv. 2) :
" No one professing faith sinneth, nor does any
one who has got love hate," we have Ignatian
echoes of passages in St John s First Epistle.
These passages show the martyr steeped not
only in Johannine doctrine, but also in Johann-
ine phraseology. There are other passages in
which Ignatius has seized upon a thought or
a truth of the Fourth Gospel and clothed it in
metaphors and similes wholly his own giving
it a practical application quite different from
what it originally possessed. An excellent illus
tration is furnished by the words of Jesus : " I,
if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all
men unto me" (John xii. 32). In Ignatius 1 this
takes the highly pictorial representation : " Who
was truly nailed to the tree under Pontius Pilate
and Herod in His flesh (and we are the fruit of
His Divinely blessed passion), in order that by
His resurrection He might set up a banner for
1 Smyr., i. 2.
Johannine Doctrine in Ignatius. 281
ever for His saints and them that believe, whether
among Jews or among Gentiles in the one body
of His Church." And he may have combined
with this the thought that " Jesus should die for
that nation, and not for that nation only, but that
He should gather into one the children of God
that were scattered abroad" (John xi. 51, 52).
It may even be from the former passage that
Ignatius has obtained the suggestion which has
grown into the picture : l " Prepared for a build
ing of God the Father, raised up to the heights
by the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the Cross,
using for a rope the Holy Spirit." Of this
manner of treating his evangelic source there are
not a few examples. Von der Goltz 2 takes ex
ception to this unconventional treatment, and
argues that because Ignatius does not use the
language of St John, and gives his thought a
turn quite different, therefore he cannot have been
acquainted with a written Gospel. His manner
of treating St Paul, however, is precisely similar,
and his references to i Corinthians, Ephesians,
and other Pauline Epistles are not disputed. 3
More conclusive, perhaps, than even these
striking correspondences is the profound affinity
between the theological teaching of Ignatius
and that of St John. We find not only the
1 Eph. ix. i. 2 Texte u. Untersuchungen, xii. 140.
3 See Dietze, Studien u. Kritiken, 1905, p. 589.
282 St John. II.
key-words of St John reappearing in the letters
of Ignatius, such as Life, Knowledge, Truth,
Faith and Love 1 (%cotf, yvcoa-iSj a\r)6eia t Trio-ns
/col dydirrj), Life and Death, God and the Prince
of this World, Flesh and Spirit, and other such
relations, but also the Johannine presentation of
the Person, Words, and Work of Christ, and
even of the Christian life. With both St John
and Ignatius the Christian life is Christo-centric.
Both of them exalt what Dr Chalmers called
" the expulsive power of a new affection." If
St John dwells upon the mystical union of
Christ and His people, Ignatius speaks of Christ
ians as Christ - bearers (X/jtcrroc^opot, eo^o/oot).
St John says (i John v. i) : " Every one that
believeth is begotten of God, and every one that
loveth Him that begat loveth also Him that is
begotten of Him." Ignatius sums up this in the
words (Eph. xiv.) : " Faith is the beginning of
true life and love is the end " (0)779 apx*) p*v Trier?,
re Xo? Be dyaTrr)). The emphasis he lays upon
the Person of the historic Christ shows that his
1 This, however, is not St John s characteristic order, which is
"Love and Faith" (Rev. ii. 19). St Paul s order is that which
Ignatius follows (cf. i Thess. iii. 6 ; v. 8, and other places). As
regards Truth (dA^fleia), Grill hazards the statement that it
represents (ro<pia, which the writer of the Fourth Gospel could not
use because of its degradation by Gnostic sects, and makes this
negative inference a point in favour of the late origin of the book
(Untersuchungen, p. 183). E. F. Scott, in The Fourth Gospel,
p. 93, has the same statement with no better ground.
Johannine Doctrine in Ignatius. 283
interest, like that of St John, is not speculative
but practical ; so different from the interest, for
example, of Philo, who, dealing with similar
themes, is abstract and metaphysical. It is not
the light which the Logos sends streaming into
humanity that is the salvation of men, but the
Divine Christ, 1 who appeared in real human
activity, that brings the knowledge of God and
life eternal. It is His manifestation in the flesh
that brings to men salvation. In the God-man
the Evangelist has seen the fulness of grace and
truth. In all this, St John s representation, as
we know it in the Gospel, is closely reproduced
by Ignatius. St John affirms the perfect unity of
Jesus with the Father (x. 30, xiv. 10) : Ignatius 2
speaks of the Son as perfectly joined in one
with the Father (rjvwpevos rw jrarpi) ; He is the
unity of God (eoz) evwo-is) ; to Him alone the
secrets of God are confided (o? /-toz/o? TreTnWeimu
ra KpvTrra rov eov). Yet there is a subordination
1 Ignatius does not shrink from speaking of " Our God, Jesus
Christ," and uses this language again and again (Eph. inscription ;
Rom. inscription ; Pol. viii. 3). This use of 0eJs as a designation
of Christ is itself Johannine. St Paul "never used the expression
f6s of Christ, since he has not adopted, like John, the Alexandrine
form of conceiving and setting forth the Divine essence of Christ,
but has adhered to the popular, concrete, strictly monotheistic
terminology, not modified by philosophic speculation even for the
designation of Christ; and he always accurately distinguishes
God and Christ " (Meyer on Romans ix. 5).
2 Magn. vii. ; Trail, ix. ; Phil. ix.
284 St John. II.
in St John s conception of the relation of the Son
to the Father which is exactly reproduced in
Ignatius. As the Christ of St John can do
nothing of Himself but what He sees the Father
do (John v. 19), so is it with the Christ of
Ignatius. " As therefore the Lord did nothing
without the Father, being united with Him,
neither by Himself nor by His Apostles," he
says. 1 But he adds, " Have ye all recourse as
unto one temple of God, as unto one altar, unto
one Jesus Christ, who came forth from one
Father and is with One (KOI ek eva ovra\ cf. John i.
i, 2, 18), and hath returned unto One " (cf. John xvi.
28). He is "an Imitator of the Father" (/-U^LM/T^S
rov TrarpoY) ; 2 He submits Himself wholly to His
Father s will ; 3 He was upon earth in everything
obedient to His Father. 4 Jesus is the Sent of
God, the Door of the Father, both in St John
and in Ignatius. The characteristic designation
of Christ as the Word (o Acfyo?) in St John s
prologue finds a parallel also in Ignatius. Writ
ing to the Romans, 5 he says, " If ye should keep
silence and leave me alone, I am a word of
God." In the highest sense of all, only One is
o Xo709, the Word of God ; but all His saints
made perfect in knowledge are utterances, words
of God, as being fragments of the One Word.
1 Magn. vii i, 2. 2 Phil. vii. 2.
3 Magn. xiii. 4 Smyr., viii. 5 ii. i.
Little Divergence from Gospel Tradition. 285
Throughout his letters Ignatius lets it be seen
that he builds his Christian theology on other
than philosophical and speculative conceptions.
Like St John, his interest is experimental and
religious. 1
Though verbal quotations are almost entirely
wanting, the whole course of the thought of
Ignatius in these letters betrays the influence of
St John. What is the nature of that influence?
Does it come from some stream of oral tradition
carrying down the teaching of the Beloved
Disciple ? Or does it come from the Fourth
Gospel, studied and pondered till the thought
of Ignatius became saturated with its character
istic doctrine ? There are one or two consider
ations to be borne in mind in deciding what
should be our answer.
i. It is remarkable how little there is in the
Epistles of Ignatius substantially new or diverg
ent from the written Gospel tradition. When
we have mentioned the reference to a bodiless
Spirit 2 (OVK elfu ^ai^oviov d<ra)fj,aTov), and to
the star surpassing in brightness all the stars 3
V ovpavo) e^a/A^jrev vTrep Trdvras rot"?
, we have mentioned the most import
ant of the allusions which can be called extra-
1 See the whole of the excellent discussion in Dietze.
- Smyr., iii. Cf. St Luke xxiv. 39. See p. 232.
3 Eph. xix. 2. Cf. St Matt. ii. 2.
286 St John. II.
canonical. If Ignatius had been dependent
upon oral tradition floating downwards from the
times of Christ and the Apostles, it seems very
improbable that his writings would have been
so free from accretions and impurities, and that
he would have kept with such strictness within
Evangelic limits.
2. With special reference to St John, it is
scarcely less remarkable how closely he adheres
to his text when, as seems so probable, he does
found upon his Gospel. The direction and appli
cation which he gives to a thought may some
times be different, but it is ultimately traceable
to the Apostle, and is consistently developed and
worked out from the Johannine germ. This is
all in accordance with his manner. "With an
aptitude for creating compounds and a happy
gift of using old words in new lights, he
united a power of sarcasm in which he is,
to use a word of his own, davy/cpiTos, * sans
pareil, and a vividness of imagination that
enabled him to transform a simple word
into a picture, which is often framed in true
poetry." 1
3. When Von der Goltz assigns his reproduc
tions of Johannine doctrine to some tradition of
the Apostle s oral teaching, to the " influence
of a community itself influenced by Johannine
1 Montgomery Hitchcock, Hermathena, xxxi. p. 456.
Acquaintance with Written Gospel. 287
thought," * he suggests an explanation of which
there is no hint in the letters. There is, more
over, no reason to believe that the type of Gospel
tradition embodied in St John s Gospel had
established itself within reach of Ignatius at
Antioch or in Syria for such a length of time
as to give him the grasp of its contents which
he displays apart from the written Gospel. It is
scarcely credible that such intimate and profound
apprehension of its spiritual teaching could have
been obtained through an intermediate process
of this character. Even if Ignatius had been
such an interpreter of St John as St Mark was
of St Peter, deriving his knowledge of Johannine
teaching straight from St John himself, he could
scarcely have done greater justice to his source.
If he was acquainted with the Synoptic Gospels
and St Paul s Epistles, which is generally ad
mitted, no a priori theories of the origin of St
John s Gospel should be allowed to depreciate
the clear testimony of Ignatius to it.
4. Acquaintance with the written Gospel of St
John would explain everything. It would explain
the verbal correspondences such as they are, and
the far more important correspondence in doc
trine, in the conception of Christ s person, and
in the view of the Christian life. The absence
1 Texte und Untersuchungen, p. 139. Cf. Sanday, Criticism
of the Fourth Gospel, p. 243.
288 St John. II.
of reference to St John himself in express terms
is no objection. None of the other Evangelists is
named ; and even St Paul, who is known to the
writer, and whose doctrine also colours the letters,
is mentioned apart from the references that are
made to his Epistles. Those who, like Professors
Harnack and Von Dobschiitz, 1 attribute the
Fourth Gospel to John the Presbyter are pre
cluded from making this objection, for it lies
equally against their view of the authorship.
Assuming that the author is John the Apostle,
we have seen that the irrelevant applications of
Johannine thought are only in the manner of
Ignatius. Fifteen or twenty years before he
wrote these letters, Ignatius may have had ac
cess to the Johannine writings ; and those years
of thought and study by a mind so active and
daring upon the presentation of Christ and His
salvation therein contained may have yielded
those views of the Incarnation, the Crucifixion,
and the Life that is in Christ which are poured
forth fresh and fervent from his heart as he goes
forward to meet the wild beasts and to grasp the
martyr s crown. We cannot tell when the Fourth
Gospel first in written form was introduced into
1 Christian Life in the Primitive Church, p. 235 ff. Professor
Ilarnack (Chronologic, p. 68l n.) considers it highly probable that
the Apostle John had once been in Ephesus, although the Ephesian
Christians were St Paul s fellow- members of Christ
Her mas. 289
Syria, but it is not altogether without signifi
cance that it is Theophilus of Antioch who first
of early Christian writers, about 180 A.D., gives
St John as the name of the writer. If we are
right in accepting the Ignatian letters from which
we have quoted as genuine, we have in Ignatius
a most valuable witness to the early circulation
and use of the Fourth Gospel. 1
Of the less certain early witnesses it is not
necessary to say much. POLYCARP has no rem
iniscences of the Gospel, but he has a quotation 2
from the First Epistle of John (i John iv. 2 ; cf.
2 John 7), " For every one who shall not confess
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is anti
christ." As the Gospel and the Epistles are held
to be a unity, this quotation is probable evid
ence of the knowledge of the Gospel by Poly-
carp. HERMAS 3 speaks of Christ as "the Gate"
(77 7rv\7j) and the only way of access to the
Father; as having cleansed the sins of His
people and shown them the paths of life, giving
them the law which he had received from His
1 It is hardly worthy of mention that Kreyenbuhl, in his Evan-
gelium der Wahrheit, makes St John dependent upon Ignatius, re
versing the order of tradition and of nature. A similarly impossible
view is taken by Conrady in his Quelle der kanonischen Kindheits-
geschichte Jesu, who maintains that the star of surpassing bright
ness in Ignatius, and the star of the Magi in St Matthew, are de
rived from a common source the Protevangelium Jacobi. Freaks
of criticism like this do not require refutation.
2 Pol. ad Phil., vii. I. 3 Sim. ix. 12. 5 ; v. 6. 3 ; Mand. xii. 3. 5.
T
290 S^ John. 77.
Father; Whose commandments are not griev
ous (John x. 7, 18 ; i John v. 3). BARNABAS has
no verbal correspondences with St John, but
Johannine thought is present in the Epistle. 1
Like Justin, he has a reference to the Brazen
Serpent (John iii. 14, 15) ; he has the words,
"Whosoever shall eat of these shall live for
ever" (John vi.); and there is a reference to
Abraham looking forward to Jesus (John viii.
56). 2 The DIDACHE has phrases suggestive
of the Fourth Gospel as well as ideas
recalling the Johannine presentation of Christ
and His words. The eucharistic prayers in
chapters ix. and x. contain several such words
and phrases. " The holy vine of Thy servant
David " resembles the teaching of Jesus in the
allegory of the Vine and the Branches, but the
words may be derived from the Old Testament or
Jewish apocryphal literature. " We thank Thee
for the life and knowledge Thou didst make
known to us through Thy servant Jesus," re
minds us of John xvii. 3, and the verb (yvwpi^co)
is one of St John s characteristic words. These
expressions, however, on our view of the position
of the Didache in early Christian literature,
1 Compare also e Aflelv tv (rapid (Bar. v. io=l John iv. 2);
ovaQai applied to Christ (vi. 7, 9=1 John i. 2, iii. 5, 8) ;
fifuv (vi. 14= John i. 14).
55 Bar. xii., xi., ix.
Composition of the Gospel. 291
rather point to a later origin for the Didache than
witness to the early use of the Fourth Gospel.
Of the actual composition of the Fourth Gospel
we have an account in the Muratorian Fragment.
"The author of the Fourth Gospel," says the
writer, " was John of the disciples." And he
tells * how it was revealed to the Apostle Andrew
that John should write, the rest of them acting
as revisers of the result of his labour. " For
thus," the Fragmentist concludes, " he professes
himself not only an eyewitness but also a hearer,
and, moreover, a historian of all the wonderful
works of the Lord in order." There is also the
tradition which comes through Clement of Alex
andria, preserved in the pages of Eusebius, 2 and
the tradition given by Eusebius 3 himself, to the
effect that St John wrote his Gospel because
there was lacking in the other three " an
account of the deeds done by Christ at the be
ginning of His ministry." In his closing years
at Ephesus the Beloved Disciple, in the last
decade of the first century, placed on record
his recollections of the life and work and dis
courses of his Master. He had completed his
task when others give a final word of authen
tication : " This is the disciple which beareth
witness of these things and wrote these things,
and we know that his witness is true. And there
1 See above, pp. 84, 85. 2 See pp. 244, 245. 3 H. E., III. 24.
292 St John. //.
are also many other things which Jesus did, the
which, if they should be written every one, I
suppose that even the world itself would not con
tain the books that should be written " (John xxi.
24, 25).
293
CHAPTER XVI.
IDENTITY OF THE FOURTH EVANGELIST.
THERE remains still to be considered the identity
of the Evangelist, a subject which has come to
bulk largely in the criticism of the Fourth Gospel.
Just when it seemed as if the Gospel, which had
been placed late in the second century by Baur
and the Tubingen school, had been restored to
the Apostolic age by the efforts of a saner criti
cism, the doctrine is promulgated that not John
the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, but John the
Presbyter, the disciple of the Lord, is really the
author.
Keim, in his Jesus of Nazareth, 1 is the first
explicitly to ascribe the traditions concerning
John the Apostle to the Presbyter of that name
mentioned by Papias. Liitzelberger, as early as
1840, had maintained that John the Apostle
never set foot in Asia Minor, and consequently
could not have written there the Revelation or
1 i. 211 ff.
294 Identity of the Fourth Evangelist.
the Fourth Gospel or the Epistles. Keim ad
vances upon this, and, denying that the Apostle
ever was in Ephesus, makes the Presbyter John
of Papias "the veritable hero of Church History
in Asia Minor, and the true winner of the fame
which has been allowed to gather round the
name of the son of Zebedee." He appeals to the
absence of any allusion to John in Asia Minor by
Ignatius or Polycarp, and declares that Irenseus,
partly from misunderstanding and partly from the
necessity of having an Apostolic authority to op
pose to the progress of Gnosticism, proclaimed
John the Apostle of Asia Minor about 190 A.D.
Upon this Professor Harnack in turn improves.
He maintains 2 that those followers of John of
Ephesus, who set their seal to the Fourth Gospel
as the work of the disciple whom Jesus loved
(John xxi. 24), of set purpose started the legend
that the author was John, the son of Zebedee.
" When the Gospel, after the death of the Pres
byter John, began to be circulated, it was at first
still well known that it was no literary production
of the son of Zebedee. Papias has definitely
distinguished between the Presbyter and the
Apostle, and has referred to the former the
opinions given regarding Matthew and Mark
(which have later also been transferred to the
Apostle). But already Papias, through the oral
1 Canonicity, p. xlv. 2 Chronologic, p. 674 ff.
Recent Theories. 295
traditions about which he took such pains, stood
under the influence of Presbyters, of whom some
perhaps purposely set on foot the legend that the
Presbyter John was the Apostle." 1 Harnack
bravely faces the consequences of this theory,
that Polycarp, in those recitals of John s accounts
of the Lord s life and discourses which Irenaeus
and Florinus heard from him, was speaking not
of John the Apostle but of John the Presbyter ;
that the John who had the encounter with Cer-
inthus was really the Presbyter. It was, on
Harnack s theory, not the Apostle that was the
teacher of Papias, that was the hero of the story
of the young robber told by Clement of Alex
andria, that declared love to be all that was needed
for the welfare of the Church, and that was the
author of the Fourth Gospel, the Epistles, and
the Apocalypse (for he holds to the unity of the
Johannine writings), the credit of all these was
surreptitiously niched from the rightful owner
and associated by deliberate fraud with the name
of an Apostle, the son of Zebedee. And yet he
feels that the process would have been easier
if it could be shown that John the Apostle had
been, even for a little while, in Ephesus, and
thinks it "overwhelmingly probable" that John
the son of Zebedee was one of those whom
Ignatius had in his eye when he reminds the
1 Chronologic, p. 679.
296 Identity of the Fourth Evangelist.
Ephesians in his letter 1 of the intercourse they
had had with Apostles.
We have already 2 shown good grounds for
holding that the Presbyter John of Papias is
himself the Apostle, and owes what shadowy
importance he had to the mistaken conception
of Eusebius. But granting that such a person
existed, a man who filled the place in Ephesus
which came to be attributed to John the Apostle,
and who was sufficiently gifted to write the
Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse, what a
marvel his complete disappearance from early
Church history, and how rapid the vanishing of
all trace of him from the region and the age
which he is supposed to have adorned !
One of the most interesting of the numerous
variations of the theory maintained by Keim is
that of the late Dr Hugo DelfP of Husum, in
Hanover. The disciple whom Jesus loved was
not of the number of the Twelve, not a fisher
man of Galilee, but a member of the aristocracy
of Jerusalem, not only acquainted with the
high priest, but even connected with one of the
high priestly families. He found his way to Asia
Minor and Ephesus, and is the John whom the
1 See p. 274. 2 See pp. 190-200.
3 Geschichte des Rabbi Jesus von Nazareth ; Das vierte Evan-
gelium. His views are criticised in detail in Zahn s Introduction
(Eng. trans., iii. 227, 230 ff.)
De Boor s Fragment. 297
Church in Asia honoured and revered. He is
the Presbyter John of Papias, the author of the
Fourth Gospel, and the John mentioned by
Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus about 190 A.D.,
as having worn the high priest s frontlet of gold.
Although this view plausibly gathers up points
in the testimony of the Fourth Gospel and
points in the patristic testimony to our Evan
gelist, it can only subsist by doing violence to
the whole of the early Christian tradition. This
John of Jerusalem, who stood outside the number
of the Twelve, and who in course of time appears
as the Presbyter of Papias, can only be made to
displace John the son of Zebedee by the most
violent treatment alike of the Gospels and of the
testimony of the Fathers.
There is one point in the external evidence
which has not yet been noticed, and which finds an
important place in the theory of DelfT and others.
This is the testimony of what is now known
as De Boor s Fragment, 1 almost the only one
of the discoveries of recent years which has
not gone to confirm the traditional view of the
Gospel history, in which it is said that "John
the Divine (o #60X0709) and James his brother
had been slain (avypeOrjo-av) by the Jews." This
statement comes from an Oxford manuscript of
1 Texte u. Untersuchungen (v. 2, p. 170). Cf. Funk, Fatres
Apostolici, p. 366.
298 Identity of the Fourth Evangelist.
the seventh or eighth century, and may be an epi
tome of what is said in his Chronicle by Philip of
Side. It has been seized upon with avidity, and
has become an important buttress to the view
that John the Apostle never was in Asia, and
could not have been the author of the Fourth
Gospel. The statement is not without some
corroboration. A manuscript of the ninth
century, containing the Chronicle of Georgius
Hamartolus, 1 after telling how Nerva had recalled
John the Apostle and Evangelist from his exile
on Patmos and given him permission to live the
rest of his days in Ephesus till he "was counted
worthy of martyrdom," goes on to say that
Papias, who had seen the Apostle "with his
own eyes " (auTo -Trr?;?), declares, in the second
book of his Expositions, that he was put to
death (dvypeOrj) by the Jews. The Chronicle
adds that by this martyr death John, with
his brother, fulfilled the prediction of Christ
that they should drink of His cup and be
baptised with His baptism (Mark x. 38, 39).
Upon this prediction of Christ and its pre
sumed fulfilment in the death of both the sons
of Zebedee at the hands of the Jews, as vouched
for by Papias, Dr E. Schwartz, the learned
editor of the Berlin Eusebius, bases a thesis, 2
1 See Funk, Patres Apostolici, p. 368.
2 Uber den Tod der Sohne Zebedaei.
Criticism of Theories. 299
the object of which is to prove that the entire
tradition concerning the long-lived Apostle John
of Ephesus is a myth. He holds that the words
of Christ as recorded by St Mark predict the
simultaneous martyrdom of both Apostles, or,
rather, that on the basis of that fact the prophecy
was invented. Upon his view that the deaths
both took place together in 44 A.D. (Acts xii. 2),
there could be no residence of the Apostle in
Ephesus and no authorship by him of Gospel
or Apocalypse.
Arguments based upon testimony so precari
ous and so largely hypothetical might well be
met with a blank refusal to entertain them.
The following considerations will serve to show
what a slender basis the huge fabric of specula
tion reared by this recent negative criticism has
to rest upon.
i. The statement purporting to come from
Georgius Hamartolus (850 A.D.) is given on
the authority of a single transcriber of his
Chronicle, all the other known manuscripts
of which his most recent editor 1 has described
twenty-six being without it. It may represent
an extract in some collection of passages, and,
at any rate, even though it gives chapter and
verse of the Expositions of Papias, does not
1 Muralt, St Petersburg, 1859, p. xvii. See Zahn, Forschungen,
vi. 147 ff.
300 Identity of the Fourth Evangelist.
represent the work of Georgius himself. That
the statement of the De Boor Fragment cannot
be a direct quotation is equally certain, because
Papias could not have written of John under
the designation of " the Divine," an epithet
which did not attach itself to the Apostle till
the fourth century. Testimony which comes to
us from documents so late as the ninth and
tenth centuries, and which may have come
through several hands before it was taken from
its ultimate authority, Papias, is not to be enter
tained ; and, when it does violence in its main
statement to all other known tradition on the
subject, can only be regarded as essentially
erroneous. That such feeble support to their
theories has been seized upon so eagerly by the
advanced critics shows how slender a foundation
they have in the early literature and history for
their fantastic theories.
2. The two authorities thus relied upon are
by no means in accord in what they tell us re
garding John. The De Boor Fragment can by
itself be interpreted to mean that James and
John died together at the hands of the Jews
at Jerusalem, and is so interpreted by Schwartz,
even though such an interpretation does violence
to the Apostolic history in the Acts and the
Epistles. The excerpt of Georgius implies that
John had lived in Asia and was known to Papias,
Criticism of Theories. 301
and the context tells of his residence in Ephesus
as the last survivor of the followers of the Lord.
How the blunder arose we may not be able to
say. Lightfoot 1 has surmised that a line has
been left out by the transcriber of the excerpt
from Georgius, and Zahn favours the view that
John the Baptist has been confused with John
the Apostle. The likelihood of such error and
confusion on the part of transcribers of the fifth
or ninth centuries is vastly more credible than
that the Churches and Christians of Asia Minor
in the second century were ignorant of the fact,
known to Papias alone, that John, who leaned
upon the Master s breast at Supper and was so
prominent among the Twelve, perished in the
persecution of Herod Agrippa, and never had the
career Christian antiquity has been wont to
assign to him at all. If Papias had really written
the words which are attributed to him, why, as
Professor Zahn 2 asks, did people vex them
selves for centuries about the fulfilment of the
prediction of the Lord (Mark x. 28), and already
in the second century invent the legends of the
poisoned cup and the boiling oil in order to
show how the prediction was fulfilled in the case
of St John? And why did Eusebius leave a
passage unnoticed which would have served so
1 Essays on Supernatural Religion, p. 212.
2 Forschungen, vi. 150.
302 Identity of the Fourth Evangelist.
well as a weapon against the Apostolic character
of the author of the Apocalypse and the teacher
of Papias, if Papias himself had furnished him
with it?
3. If there had been an early mistake as to the
identity of the Evangelist, or if the Church had
purposely transferred from the rightful owner to
John the Apostle the traditions which have been
for so long associated with his name, it is re
markable that so many early writers had been
involved in the transference, independently and
in different generations. Justin Martyr, 1 in the
middle of the second century, speaks of a man
named John, the Apostle of the Lord, as the
author of the Apocalypse, a reference carrying
the Asiatic residence of St John along with it.
Irenaeus testifies that John the disciple of the
Lord, who also leaned upon His breast, himself
too published the Gospel while he was living at
Ephesus, in Asia. Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus,
190 A.D., writing 2 to Victor and the Church of
Rome on the Paschal controversy, appeals to the
example of the Apostles John and Philip, and to
the uniform practice established by them in Asia
in support of the day for the celebration of the
Christian passover as the fourteenth of Nisan,
whatever the day of the week, instead of the
Friday customary in Rome. He classes John,
1 Dial., c. 81. 2 Euseb. H. E., V. 24.
Identity of Evangelist with Apostle. 303
to whom he appeals, with Philip, and calls him
" a witness and a teacher who reclined upon the
bosom of the Lord." Clement of Alexandria, who
lived till 212 A.D., and who had for one of his
teachers a certain Ionian with special know
ledge of Asia, tells the story of John and the
young robber * without the slightest doubt that
it was the Apostle who was concerned. Ter-
tullian of Carthage, in North Africa, speaking 2
of the Apostolical succession in the Churches of
Christendom, refers to the Church of the Smyr-
naeans as relating that Polycarp was appointed
their bishop by John, and takes for granted that
this was the Apostle. That all these authorities,
having independent sources of information and
being well versed in the history of the times,
could have been mistaken, or could have con
spired in the publication of a falsehood, is in
credible.
4. The identity of the Evangelist, the eVt-
o-T??009 of Irenseus, the teacher of Polycarp, with
the son of Zebedee, the son of Thunder, the
Apostle of the Lord, is established by man^
infallible proofs. That he was associated with
St Peter in the events succeeding Pentecost, as
recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, and that
he was present with St Peter and St James,
the Lord s brother, at the Apostolic Council at
1 Euseb., III. 23. 2 De Prescript. Hceret., 32.
304 Identity of the Fourth Evangelist.
Jerusalem, 51 or 52 A.D., some years after James
his brother had been slain by Herod, as St Paul
testifies (Gal. ii. 9), is part of unquestionable
Apostolic history. 1 That he left Jerusalem
some years later, and with others of the
Apostles and disciples of Christ settled in Asia
and became head of the Church of Ephesus, is
a tradition of the early Church which was never
questioned till the nineteenth century. That he
was banished to Patmos in the reign of Domitian,
and there saw the visions of the Revelation which
he has put on record ; that on his return to
Ephesus on the death of the tyrant, he lived
there, teaching and guiding the fortunes of the
Church in Asia until the reign of Trajan, is testi
fied by authorities who could scarcely be mistaken.
That he wrote his Gospel and Epistles towards
the close of his long life has been shown to be
supported by a great mass of credible evidence.
In the controversy regarding the celebration of
Easter, which arose about 160-170 A.D., one of
the parties appealed to his practice in Asia, as
one who had been intimately associated with
1 Dr Schwartz holds that the author of Acts, " for the sake of the
later tradition," omitted the name of John in telling of the death of
James in Acts xii. 2, and that the John mentioned by St Paul in
Gal. ii. 9 is John Mark of the Acts, whom the author of that book
mistook altogether, and who is not the Mark of St Paul s Epistles.
To such mutilation of the Apostolic history he is driven in the
attempt to make good an impossible case.
Peculiarities of Fourth Gospel. 305
the Lord, and had partaken of the Last Supper
with the rest of the Twelve. Montanism, which
originated in Phrygia about 156 A.D., based itself
upon the doctrine of the Paraclete set forth in
the Gospel according to John. The story of the
flight of John 1 from the bath, in which he found
the heretic Cerinthus, "the enemy of the truth,"
is in keeping with what is recorded of the son
of Thunder in the Gospels ; and there is much
in the Epistles and Revelation of St John to
recall the disciple who (with his brother James)
wished to call down fire from heaven upon the
inhospitable Samaritans. With the phantom
Presbyter John eliminated from the sub-Apos
tolic history on the one hand, and the erroneous
assertion of the death of St John by the Jews
cleared out of the way on the other, the ancient
tradition of the residence of St John in Ephesus
must stand, and the Johannine authorship of the
Fourth Gospel is established.
Into the differences between St John s Gospel
and the Synoptic Gospels, raising suspicion as to
the credibility of the former, and into other diffi
culties arising from the peculiarities of the Fourth
Gospel, we cannot enter here. We believe there
is no need to come past St John himself to a school
of disciples who preserved and set forth his recol
lections. It was possible for the Apostle to have
1 Euseb. H. E., IV. 14. 6.
u
306 Identity of the Fourth Evangelist.
retained by dint of a well-trained memory and by
constant repetition, even to extreme old age, his
own recollections of his Master ; and it is just a
question how far those discourses which he puts
into his Master s lips have taken their special
mould and colour from the Apostle himself. In
affirming the possibility that the former fisherman
of Bethsaida might have been able at the close of
his long life to produce a work like the Fourth
Gospel, we take account not only of the natural
gifts and the spiritual susceptibilities which made
him " the disciple whom Jesus loved," but also of
the training he had enjoyed during those three
years in the company of Jesus, of the teaching of
the Holy Spirit, who was promised to bring all
things to the remembrance of the disciples, and
of the tendencies of thought and speculation with
which he was familiar at Ephesus in the closing
decades of the first century. That the Apostle s
own spiritual experience and his own intellectual
affinities should have dwelt upon certain aspects
of his Master s teaching, and should have cast
them in the mould in which we have them in the
Fourth Gospel, is surely in the highest degree
probable. It is in this direction that we are to
seek the explanation of the differences in the sub
stance and presentation of our Lord s discourses
in St John and the Synoptics respectively. This
is the view taken by many scholars who maintain
Apostle John Author of Gospel. 307
the Johannine authorship. Luthardt 1 has said:
"When Hilgenfeld thinks that the historical is sunk
in the doctrinal, we can readily own it, rightly
understood. What they call doctrinal is just the
soul of the history, which shines out everywhere
from the body of the history. It is true that this
is not possible without a certain freedom in the
handling of the historical materials, and indeed a
greater freedom than we permit to ourselves and
to others. But in antiquity in general, and on
Biblical ground in particular, they stood towards
the historical material in a manner different from
ours." This is perhaps the utmost latitude which
a defender of the genuineness of the Gospel per
mits himself, and it is the position of scholars
whose theological position is much more advanced
than Luthardt s. The late Dr P. J. Gloag 2 has
no hesitation in allowing a certain degree of sub
jectivity on the part of John. The thoughts and
sentiments were those of Jesus, but "John clothed
them in his own language, and in some cases
subjoins to those discourses of Jesus his own
reflections. Probably, also, he unites into one
discourse utterances of Jesus spoken at different
times."
We have thus traced the Fourth Gospel up to
the threshold of the Apostolic age, and we have
1 St John, the Author of the Fourth Gospel, p. 247.
2 Introduction to the Johannine Writings, pp. 146, 147.
308 Identity of the Fourth Evangelist.
seen that modern attempts to rob the Apostle
John of its authorship have not proved success
ful. When we turn to the Gospel itself, despite
acknowledged difficulties in the internal evidence,
we find proofs which satisfied scholars like West-
cott and Lightfoot and Luthardt of a former
generation, and scholars like Professor Sanday,
Principal Drummond, and Professor Zahn, still
spared to us, that the external and the internal
evidence converge upon John the Apostle, the
son of Zebedee, as the author.
309
CHAPTER XVII.
CONCLUSION.
THE Four Gospels, it may be reasonably con
cluded, were written by the Evangelists whose
names they bear, and to whom they were
ascribed by the almost unbroken tradition of
seventeen centuries. That tradition derives con
sistency and strength from the society within
which the Gospels originated, and for whose
spiritual requirements they were written the
Church of believers in Christ, which early
spread over the Roman world. The Church
as it passed beyond the borders of the
Holy Land preserved its continuity still with
the mother Church of Jerusalem. Hegesippus, 1
a Jewish Christian writer of the second century,
tells how on his journey from the East to the
West he met a great number of bishops, and
found the same doctrine held by them all ; from
which it is clear that the life, the thought, and
1 Euseb. H. E., IV. 22.
3io Conclusion.
the activity of the Churches of Antioch, Ephesus,
Corinth, and Rome were governed from the first
by the traditions of the Life and Teaching of
the Lord which came down from the Apostles.
Considering the importance attributed to the
works of Apostles and Apostolic men, it would
be strange if the Church which recognised the
Four Gospels as precious above all others and
gave them currency making copies of them and
using them early in the Christian assemblies for
worship and instruction should have lost all
trace and knowledge of their authors. It is
nothing wonderful that the Evangelists them
selves do not put their names in the title-
page of their Gospels. Not one of Plato s
dialogues designates him the author ; we owe
the attribution to literary tradition. The tradi
tion within the Church of the authorship of the
Gospels is equally worthy of acceptation. The
Evangelists whom Irenaeus quotes by name
without the shadow of a doubt, the Apostles
and those who followed them referred to and
quoted by Justin Martyr, the St Matthew and
St Mark noticed by Papias, the St John named
by Theophilus of Antioch, are not pseudonymous
writers, but the Apostolic and inspired authors
of our Four Gospels. It is as certain as any
thing in the history of literature can be that
St Mark and St Luke wrote the Gospels attrib-
Church before the Gospels. 311
uted to them. Difficulties have been raised
by criticism regarding the authorship of the
First and Fourth Gospels, yet even they are
held by advanced critics to be somehow closely
associated with Matthew and John, the Apostles
of the Lord. The Four Gospels, therefore, being
essentially of the character of contemporary
records, contain a consistent and trustworthy
history of the Life and Work and Teaching of
Christ, written by men who had adequate
opportunities of ascertaining the facts and took
pains to set forth in their narratives the truth
regarding Him.
Whilst the Gospels are a veracious record of
the work of Christ in human redemption, the
Church is the living witness from the beginning
both to them and to Him. The Church existed
before the Gospels. First of the New Testament
Scriptures came, in all probability, the Epistles
of St Paul, who had none of the written Gospels.
The casual and occasional character of these
Epistles has been more and more recognised
of recent years, but this does not detract from
their value as an interpretation of the Person
and Work of Christ and as a witness to the
facts of the history. Though in St Paul s
Epistles and the other New Testament books
there is no certain reference to written docu
ments containing the words of Jesus, and but
312 Conclusion.
scanty references even to the incidents of His life
in detail, the Gospel writers and St Paul draw
from the same fountain-head, the fundamental
presuppositions of St Paul s Epistles and the
other New Testament writings being in entire
accord with the Gospel presentation of the
Person and Teaching of Christ. It is little to
say that the New Testament writings form a
consistent and homogeneous whole, the Person
of Christ being the keystone which binds them
all harmoniously into one, the Spirit of Christ
giving them their vitality and moral power.
From the death of St Paul about 65 A.D.
to the martyrdom of Polycarp in 155 A.D. the
history of the Church flows through a dark
tunnel, where the remains of early Christian
literature are scanty and the light of tradition
uncertain and dim. Yet the chain of early
witnesses through that period is of great
strength. Polycarp unites the generation of
the Apostle John, the last survivor of the
Twelve, with that of Irenaeus and its manifold
literary and ecclesiastical developments. Even
in the first quarter of the second century one
of the early Apologists, Quadratus, could appeal
to personal testimony : " The works of our
Saviour were ever present ; for they were real,
being the men who were healed, the men who
were raised from the dead, who were not only
Aggressive Character of Early Christianity. 313
seen at the moment when the miracles were
wrought, but also were seen continually, like
other men being ever present, and that not
only when the Saviour sojourned on earth,
but also after His departure for a considerable
time, so that some of them survived even to
our times." 1
More impressive even than this testimony of
eyewitnesses are the evidences of the working
of a creative force of the first magnitude,
which is met everywhere within the Roman
empire by the middle of the second century.
Its effects are seen from Antioch of Syria to
Carthage and Gaul, and from Bithynia on the
Black Sea to the Nile and the borders of
Ethiopia. They are found in a network of
communities calling themselves by the name
of Christ, united under a simple rule of Church
organisation, by the observance of common rites,
and by an ardour of devotion to their Divine
Master which opposition and persecution are
unable to quench. They attribute their new
life, with its lofty moral purpose, its benevolent
activity, and its heavenward aspirations, to
Him who was born of the Virgin, suffered
under Pontius Pilate, rose from Joseph s
sepulchre, and ascended to God s right hand.
"The archives for me," says Ignatius, "are
1 Euseb. H, E., IV. 3.
314 Conclusion.
Jesus Christ, the inviolable archives of His
Cross, and Death, and Resurrection, and faith
which is through Him." 1 He speaks of himself
as " having fled to the Gospel as to the flesh
of Jesus," and declares " the excellence of the
Gospel to be the Advent of the Saviour, His
Passion, and His Resurrection." And here is
another witness : " God gave up His own Son
a ransom for us, the Holy for the unholy, the
Innocent for the wicked, the Righteous for the
unrighteous, the Incorruptible for the corrupt
ible, the Immortal for the mortal. For what
else could cover our sins but His righteous
ness? In whom was it possible for the unholy
and ungodly to be justified but in the Son of
God alone ? O sweet exchange ! O unsearch
able contrivance ! O unlooked-for blessing, that
the transgression of many should be hidden in
the Righteous One, and that the righteousness
of One should justify many transgressors ! " 2
That is the voice of a soul out of the second
century whose name has not come down to
us, but clearly a follower of St Paul, and one
whom Luther and the Reformers would have
claimed as spiritually kin with themselves.
But all this spiritual life goes back to those
Four Gospels already acknowledged to be pre
eminent, and exercising their primacy because
1 Ign. Philad., viii. 2. 2 Ep. ad Diognetum, ix. 2-6.
Old Testament Bible of First Christians. 315
they alone, and they sufficiently, meet the
spiritual necessities of the living and expand
ing Church of Christ. The process by which
they and the other Scriptures of the Christian
Church came to be regarded as of Divine
authority has already been noted. They are,
in the first instance, preferred and put in
circulation because they contain a record by
Apostles and Apostolic men of the Divine
Founder of Christianity, and an interpretation
of His great work as the Revealer of God and
the Redeemer of men. Whatever has to do
with Christ is in special demand, and the
Apostles and their followers from their nearness
to Him are at once reliable witnesses and
authorities to be held in special reverence. It
was thus that not only the Gospels directly
telling of Christ, but the Scriptures as a whole,
came to be called the Lord s Scriptures"
(fcvpiaical rypatyai). 1 In this way the writings
which come from the hands of Apostles acquire
that sacredness and authority which belong to
them from the earliest notices of them.
It must be remembered that the Bible of the
first Christians was the Old Testament. What
it was to the Evangelists and St Paul and the
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and to
our blessed Lord Himself, we learn from the
1 See for references Zahn, GK. i. 96 f.
316 Conclusion.
Christian Scriptures. To the first Christians it
was Holy Scripture (tepal ypa<j>ai, iepa ypafji^ara)
and Scripture par excellence (77 ypacjiij), and it is
quoted in the New Testament with "as it
stands written " (&&gt;9 yeypaTrrai, yeypa^evov eari)
and other such phrases. We may be sure
that Marcion, who would have none of Judaism
or of anything that pertained to that dispensation,
and who therefore rejected the Old Testament,
was not the first to feel the need of a Christian
canon of Scripture. The very existence and use
of the Old Testament Scriptures, and the taste
begotten thereby, could not fail to awaken
very early the desire within the Church for a
similar collection of sacred books with Christ
for their centre. We see the process far ad
vanced by the close of the second century. 1
To Origen, and even to Clement of Alex
andria, and to Tertullian and Irenseus, the New
Testament Scriptures were already on a level
with those of the Old, The books of the New
Testament (ra TT}? Kaivr\<$ BiaOij/c^) were rever
enced by those great Fathers and within the
Church as much as those of the Old (r?}?
TraXata? SiaOtf/cTjs). Of those sacred Scriptures,
the Gospels were earliest in evidence. They
were read in Justin s day (150 A.D.) in the
weekly assemblies of the Christians. They were
1 See p. 49 ff.
New Testament placed on Level of Old. 317
translated into the tongues of people beyond
the Greek-speaking world. Heracleon wrote a
commentary upon St John. Barnabas quotes St
Matthew s Gospel with the formula, " As it is
written " (&&gt;? yeypaTrTcu). Even the heretic
Basilides (125 A.D.) quotes a new Testament
writing as Scripture (77 ypacf)^), showing how
quickly this feeling towards the new body of
writings had established itself. It was thus
that the heart of the Church, seeking for edifi
cation, was directed to the Gospels and those
other Apostolic writings which yielded quicken
ing and impulse to the spiritual life of the
faithful, and gave them a place of honour
and sacredness beside the Old Testament
Scriptures.
This placing of the Gospels and the New
Testament books on a level with the Old
Testament Scriptures implied the consciousness
and the belief of the inspiration of these books.
Theophilus of Antioch calls St John the Evan
gelist inspired (Trvev/jLarocfropos), and declares that
the writings of Prophets and Evangelists agree
" because all the inspired men (Trvev^aro^opoi)
have spoken by one Spirit of God." Irenaeus
speaks of the Fourfold Gospel as held together
by one Spirit (evl Se Trvev/jiari o-vve^ofjievov} ;
and the Muratorian Fragment refers to the
facts of the Lord s life as declared in the Gos-
318 Conclusion.
pels by " one guiding Spirit " (uno ac principali
Spiritu}. By the time of Clement and Origen
the word " given by inspiration of God" (Oeo-
Trvevorros) is applied to the New Testament as
it was applied by St Paul to the Old (2 Tim.
iii. 16).
It was into the channels marked out by the
Four Gospels that there flowed all the tradi
tions circulating among the first believers which
were necessary for the faith and life of Christians.
Oscar Holtzmann, in his Life of Jesus, refers
to this, regretting we have no more. " For our
knowledge of the whole of this Gospel literature,"
referred to by St Luke in the preface to his
Gospel, " it was a disastrous circumstance that
already in the second century the Church took
the Gospels which were then current, sifted
them, and made a selection amongst them. These
writings which from her point of view were the
more valuable she retained to be read in the
services of the community ; such as were less
valuable, or in her opinion were hurtful to the
faith of the community, she excluded from use
in Divine worship." We cannot be too thankful
that the heart of the Church, guided by the
Holy Spirit, who was promised to lead her into
all truth, chose as it did. Even if there had
been preserved to us those earlier and pre
sumably fragmentary Gospels to which St
Four Gospels Sufficient. 319
Luke refers, we have no reason to believe
that they would have set before us another
Christ, or would have handed down any word
or act of His out of accord with that sinless
Life and Divine Teaching mirrored in the Four
Gospels.
INDEX.
Abbot, Dr Ezra : on the Fourth
Gospel, 265.
Abbott, Dr Edwin A., 22 n.
Allen, W. Q, quoted, 156.
Alogi, the : on the Fourth Gos
pel, 6, 241, 267.
Apostolic Fathers : testimony to
St Mark s Gospel, 203 ; testi
mony to St Luke s Gospel,
232.
Aristides, Apology of: refer
ence to St Matthew s Gospel,
143-
Aristion : possible author of last
twelve verses of St Mark s
Gospel, 184 ; mentioned by
Papias, 1 88.
Arnold, Matthew : on the Fourth
Gospel, 265.
Augustine : on St Mark s Gos
pel, 181.
Authorship of Fourth Gospel :
the Alogi, 6 ; Bretschneider,
7 ; Strauss, 9 ; Muratorian
Fragment, 86 ; Theophilus of
Antioch, 245 ; discussion on,
294 ff. ^
Authorship of Gospels : Faustus,
6 ; Origen, 42 ; Tertullian,
52 ; Irenaeus, 66, 122.
Authorship of Third Gospel,
235-
Barnabas, Epistle of: character
and date of, 169 ; parallels
with St Matthew s Gospel,
170; incorporated in Sinaitic
Manuscript, ib.
Basilides : his relation to St
Luke s Gospel, 231 ; his Ex-
egetica, 232 ; references to St
John s Gospel, 263 ff.
Baur, F. C. : his theory of
primitive Christianity, 11-18;
dating of Gospels, 14 ; his
opinion of Fourth Gospel,
242 ; on Valentinus and the
Fourth Gospel, 263.
Blandina, martyrdom of, 129.
Bretschneider : his Probabil
ities, 7 ; on authenticity of
St John s Gospel, 242.
Bryennios : complete text of
Second Clement, 139; dis
covery of the Didache, 172.
Burkitt, Prof. : on St Mark s
Gospel, 181, 206.
Burton, Prof., of Chicago,
quoted, 150.
Canon, the, of New Testament :
earliest use of word, 35 ;
determination of books of,
36 ; in Tertullian, 49 ; Mar-
cion s canon, 216, 225, 316.
322
Index.
Canonical : opposed to apocry
phal, 35 ; quality, criterion
of, 36; process by which
N.T. Scriptures became, 315.
Canonicity, quoted, 108, 168,
294.
Celsus : his attack on Christian
ity, 43 ; founding on Barnabas,
170; references to St Mat
thew, 126 ; to St Luke s Gos
pel, 230.
Cerinthus : suggested by the
Alogi as author of Fourth
Gospel, 6 ; his use of St
Mark s Gospel, 205.
Charteris, Prof. : on Gospels
known by Justin Martyr, 108 ;
on Epistles of Clement and
Polycarp, 168 ; on Presbyter
John, 199.
Clement of Alexandria, 44-47 ;
on St Mark s Gospel, 46, 182 ;
on St John s Gospel, 46, 245,
260 ; loose practice in quoting,
47 ; references to St Matthew s
Gospel, 126.
Clement of Rome : his First
Epistle, 165 ; his formulae of
quotation, 166 ; references to
the Gospels, ib. ; references
to St Matthew, 168.
Clement, Second Epistle of:
authorship and character of,
140 ; quotations from St Mat
thew s Gospel, 141 ; uncanon-
ical sayings, 143.
Clementine Homilies : in Baur s
scheme, 13, 248 ; references to
St Matthew, 138 ; references
to St Mark, 205 ; references
to St John s Gospel, 248;
complete text of Dressel, 250 ;
uncertainty as to date, ib.
Comparative religion, analogies
from, 19.
Credner, Karl A. : on Justin
Martyr, 99.
Cruttwell : Literary History of
Christianity, 60.
Date of the Gospels, 2 ; Baur,
14 ; Pfleiderer, 28, 32 ; of St
Luke s Gospel, 239; of St
John s Gospel, 242.
De Boor s Fragment, 297-302.
Delff, Dr Hugo : theory of John
the Presbyter, 296.
Von Der Goltz : on Ignatian
Epistles, 286.
Didache, the, 172-176 ; discovery
of, 172 j St Matthew, the Gos
pel of, 173 ; Golden Rule in,
174; traces of St John in,
290.
Dietze : on Ignatius, 274, 281,
285.
Von Dobschiitz, 288.
Drummond, Principal: onPapias
and the Presbyter John, 199 ;
on Justin and the Fourth Gos
pel, 256.
Early heretics : acceptance of
Gospels, 37, 172,
Edessa, 55.
Egyptians, the Gospel of the,
47, 143-
Elders of Papias, 188, 191.
Eusebius, H. E., 42, 45, 63, 89,
126, 146, 147, 149, 152, 158,
182, 188, 190, 196, 197, 198,
209, 210, 215, 232, 244, 270,
291, 302, 303, 305, 309, 313 ;
quotes Origen on Gospels, 42 ;
quotes Clement of Alexandria
on Gospels, 45 ; questions
Irenaeus as to Papias, 145,
146 ; on Papias and John the
Presbyter, 188-190; on St
Luke, 209 ; on St John s
Gospel, 245; "silence of,"
270.
Evanson : on St John s Gospel,
7, 242.
Faustus : authorship of the Gos
pels, 6.
Florinus : letter of Irenseus to,
62, 63.
Index.
323
Georgius Hamartolus, Chronicle
of: on death of St John, 298,
300 f.
Gloag, P. J., 307.
Gregory, Prof. Caspar Rene : on
Syriac version, 55 ; on Tatian s
Diatessaron, 90 ; on St Mat
thew, 1 68.
Grill, Prof., of Tubingen : on
date of St John s Gospel, 244,
282 n.
Gutjahr, Prof. : on the trust
worthiness of Irenreus, 65.
Gwatkin, Prof. : on critical
methods, 31 ; on Irenoeus, 76.
Harmonising, early traces of, 95,
J 05> 135-
Harnack, Prof., 4, 5, 15, 17,
47, 63, 75, 77, 91, 97, 103 f.,
118, 120, 127, 137, 140, 151,
162, 175, 202, 229, 236, 239,
243, 252, 268, 273, 288,^ 294 ff. ;
on credibility of the Gospels,
4; on Tubingen School, 15;
objection to testimony of Iren-
seus, 75 ; on Tatian, 88 ; on
chronology of Justin, 97 ; on
Justin and the Fourth Gospel,
104 ; on Four as number of
the Gospels, 118, 120; on St
Matthew s Gospel, 127; on
the Second Epistle of Clement,
140 ; on St Luke s Gospel,
236, 239 ; on the Alogi, 268 ;
on the authorship of the
Fourth Gospel, 243, 294.
Harris, Dr Rendel : Gospel of
Peter, 78, 252.
Hawkins, Sir John, 238.
Hegesippus, 138, 309.
Heracleon : on St Mark s Gos
pel, 205 ; his Commentaries,
259 ; his date, 260.
Heretics, early : testimony to St
Matthew, 172; testimony to St
Mark, 205 ; testimony to St
Luke, 231 ; to St John, 267.
Hermas : the Shepherd of, 112 ;
part incorporated in Sinaitic
Manuscript, 113; the Four
Gospels in, 114; correspond
ence between Hermas and
Irenseus, 115 ; use of St Mark s
Gospel in, 204.
Hilgenfeld, 15, 151.
Hippolytus : on heresies, 38 ;
references to St John s Gos
pel, 262, 263, 265, 266.
Hobart : medical language of St
Luke, 238.
Ignatius : mentioned in Poly-
carp s letter to Philippians,
159; martyrdom of, 161 ;
seven genuine letters of, 161,
162 ; references to Synoptic
tradition, 162, 163 ; references
to St John s Gospel, 273-289.
Irenseus, Bishop of Vienne and
Lyons : chronology of, 59 ; his
book Against Heresies, ib. ;
his relations with Polycarp,
62 ; letter to Florinus, 62, 63 ;
number and authorship of
Gospels, 66 ; Fourfold Gos
pel, 67 ; objections to his
testimony, 71-79 ; Hermas and
Irenseus, 115; on St Mark s
Gospel, 183 ; Irenseus and
Papias, 195 ; his critical
capacity, 211, 214; on St
Luke s Gospel, 213 ; on Val-
entinus, 261 ; his relation to
St John s Gospel, 272.
John, Gospel according to :
authorship questioned by the
Alogi, 6, 241, 267 ; early
attacks upon, 6, 7, 10; modern
criticism upon, 242-244, 293 ff.;
Eusebius upon, 244 ; Clement
of Alexandria upon, 245 ;
Irenseus upon, 246 ; Tatian,
246 ff. ; Ignatius, 273-289 ;
Synoptics in relation to, 305.
John the Apostle : object in
writing Gospel, 241 ; circum-
324
Index.
stances of its composition, 84,
291 ; alleged death by Jews,
297 ; identical with the Evan
gelist, 303.
John the Presbyter : Papias on,
187 f. ; Eusebius on, 188 f. ;
as author of Fourth Gospel,
293 ; Dr Delff s theory on, 296.
Jiilicher : on St Mark, 206.
Justin Martyr : chronology of,
97 n. ; his three surviving
writings, 98 ; Memoirs, loo ;
the Fourth Gospel, 102, 253 ;
Memoirs a harmony, 105 ;
quotations from the Gospels,
131 ; allusion to St Mark s
Gospel, 1 86 ; references to
last twelve verses of St Mark s
Gospel, 227.
Kalthoff, 29-31.
Keim : on John the Presbyter,
293-
Leipoldt, 104, 119.
Lightfoot, Bishop : in defence
of Gospels, 17; on Irenceus,
60 f. ; on Second Clement,
140; on Papias, 147 ff., 201 ;
on "the silence of Eusebius,"
270 ; on Ignatius, 273, 274,
275 ; on Georgius Hamarto-
lus, 301.
Luke, Gospel according to :
Eusebius on his parentage,
209 ; Irenreus on his intimacy
with St Paul, 211 ff . ; Mar-
cion s treatment of, 217 ff. ;
Justin Martyr, 227 f. ; not
Gospel of Basilides, 232 ;
authorship of, and of Acts,
235 ; date of, 239.
Marcion : on St Luke s Gospel,
214 ; his teaching, ib. : his
Antitheses, 215; his sect,
ib. ; his canon, 225.
Mark, Gospel according to : in
Baur s scheme, 14 ; compara
tive paucity of references to,
1 80; Augustine on, 181 ; in
fluence of St Peter on, 182,
206 ff. ; last twelve verses,
183 f. ; Muratorian Fragment,
185 ; Memoirs of Justin, ib. ;
testimony of Papias, 187 ff . ;
testimony of St John to, 200-
203.
Matthew, Gospel according to :
in Baur s scheme, 14 ; early
and wide attestation, 125 ;
Harnack on, 127 ; early allu
sions to, 129, 130; testimony
of Justin, 131 ff . ; of Second
Clement, 141 ; Papias on
Hebrew Gospel of, 148-157 ;
references in Clement of Rome,
1 66 ; in Barnabas, 170; in
Didache, 174; authorship of,
176 f.
"Memoirs": mentioned by
Justin Martyr, 100 ff.
Milligan, Prof. : on Barnabas,
169 ; on John the Presbyter,
200.
Muratorian Fragment, 81 ; in
ferential testimony to St
Matthew and St Mark, 185 ;
composition of the Fourth
Gospel, 291.
Negative criticism and the
Fourth Gospel, 7.
Nisibis, 55.
Number of Gospels : Origen, 42 ;
Irenreus, 66 ff. ; Muratorian
Fragment, 86 ; Tatian, 87 ;
Justin Martyr, 108 ; Hermas,
116.
Origen : head of Catechetical
School of Alexandria, 40 ; on
"attempts" at Gospels, 41;
number and order of Gospels,
42 ; in reply to Celsus, 43 ; on
Heracleon, 43, 259 f. ; on in
fluence of St Peter on St
Mark s Gospel, 182.
Index.
325
Oxford Committee : New Testa
ment in Apostolic Fathers,
233, 276 f.
Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis :
hearer of John the Apostle,
145 ; references to Philip, 146 ;
his Expositions, 147 ; on St
Matthew and his Logia, 149 f. ;
testimony to St Mark s Gos
pel, 187-203 ; testimony to St
John s Gospel, 268 ; silence
of Eusebius about same, 270 ;
De Boor s Fragment, 297 ff.
Patrick, Prof. : Apology of Ori-
gen against Celsus, 126, 231.
Paulus, Prof. H. E. G. : on
miracles, 8.
Peter, the Gospel of : discovered
by Dr Rendel Harris, 78 ;
acquaintance with St Mark s
Gospel, 205 ; references to St
Luke s Gospel, 229 ; to St
John s Gospel, 251, 289.
Pfleiderer, Prof., 27 ff., 32.
Plummer : on St Luke, 230, 238.
Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna :
teacher of Irenaeus, 62 ; testi
mony of, to the Gospels, 158 ;
letter to the Philippians, ib, ;
his encounter with Marcion,
215; inferential testimony to
Fourth Gospel, 271, 289 ; link
in chain of early witnesses, 272.
Polycrates of Ephesus, 198, 297,
302.
Pothinus, Bishop of Lyons : mar
tyrdom of, 129.
Quadratus, 312.
Ramsay, Prof. Sir. Wm. : quoted,
5 ; on the earliest Gospel, 137,
151 ; on Ignatian Epistles,
274.
Ritschl, 221.
Salmon, 185, 198.
Sanday, Prof. : on Gospel har
mony, 96; on Justin s Memoirs,
loo ; on Epistle of Barnabas,
171 ; on the Presbyter John,
199; on Marcion s Gospel,
221 ; on Gospel of Peter, 229 ;
on catechetical instruction,
235 ; on Clementine Hom
ilies, 250 ; on Ignatius, 287 ;
on St John s Gospel, 308.
Schaff, 78.
Schmiedel, Prof. : on the credi
bility of the Gospel history, 3,
4; transformation of tradition,
4, 201 ; on Gospels, 22 ff. ;
on the date of St John s Gos
pel, 244.
Schwartz, DrE., 298, 304.
Semisch : on Justin Martyr, 102.
Stanton, Prof. : on Acta Pilati
in Justin, 107 ; on date of
Hermas, 1 12; on the Four
Gospels in Hermas, 116; on
St Matthew, 160 ; on Tatian s
Address to the Greeks, 247.
Strauss, D. F. : on the dating of
the Gospels, 4 ; his Leben
Jesu and mythical theory,
9 ff., 242.
Swete, Prof. : Apocalypse quoted,
197 ; St Mark, 203 ; on Ig
natius, 276.
Syriac New Testament, the, 55 ;
Peshitta version, 56 ; Mrs
Lewis s Sinaitic, ib. ; Tatian s
Diatessaron, 90 ff.
Tatian : his connection with
Justin Martyr, 88 ; his Diates
saron, 90 ; used in Syrian
Church, 91 ; account of it by
Theodoret, ib. ; first Gospel
harmony, 95 ; his Address to
the Greeks, 246 ; witness to
St John s Gospel, 246 f.
Taylor, Dr C. : on the witness of
Hermas to the Four Gospels,
113 ff.
Teaching of the twelve Apostles.
Cf. Didache.
326
Index.
Tertullian, 47-52 ; his views on
the canon, 49; his treatise
against Marcion, 50, 217 ff. ;
authorship of Gospels, 52, 182 ;
explanation of St Mark s Gos
pel, 182 ; on Marcion s treat
ment of St Luke s Gospel, 217 ;
on Valentinus, 260.
Testaments of the twelve Patri
archs, 230 n.
Theodoret : account of Diates-
saron, 91.
Theophilus of Antioch : on au
thorship of St John s Gospel,
39> 245.
Tregelles, S. P. : on Muratorian
Canon, 81.
Valentinus, 260 ff.
Versions, early, 53 ; Syriac, 55 ;
Latin and Egyptian, 56.
Victor of Capua, 93.
Vienne and Lyons, Letter of
Churches of, 129.
Weizsacker, 15.
Wellhausen, 137, 155, 201.
Wendt : on St John s Gospel,
243-
Westcott, Bishop : in defence of
the Gospels, 17 ; on the Canon,
35, 82, 83, 126.
Westminster, Dean of (J. A.
Robinson, D.D.), quoted, 207.
Zahn, 17, 42, 47, 49, 63, 71, 77,
81, 83, 86, 88, 91, 93) 106,
III, 112, 128, 143, 153, 154,
155, 157, 193. 195, 196, 20 3 ,
204, 219, 222-224, 268, 273,
301, 308, 315 ; on Irenseus, 71 ;
on Tatian, 88 ; on Hernias,
112 ; on Papias and St
Matthew s Gospel, 154; esti
mate of St Matthew s Gospel,
178 ; on Presbyter John, 193,
260 ; on Marcion, 222, 224 ;
on Delff s theory of the Fourth
Gospel, 296.
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